South Africa: SARS welcomes SCA ruling on seized goods

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has welcomed the unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) affirming the revenue collectors procedure and right to seize goods which have been under-declared when crossing into South Africa.

Ruling on the matter involving SARS and a freight company that had its goods seized in 19 containers imported from China.

In a statement, SARS said the goods had been under-declared for customs duties on import.

These containers contained textiles and clothing goods, which were flagged by SARS electronic risk engine, designed to counter fraud and illegal activities, which was further investigated by Customs staff, said SARS.

Argument in the SCA from the Respondents was that SARS decision ought to be set aside on the grounds of procedural unfairness, irrationality and unreasonableness.

The SCA wholly rejected this argument, overturned the High Courts prior decision in favour of the agent and traders and issued a cost order in favour of SARS.

The SCA ruled that SARS had acted within its mandated scope, that SARS had acted procedurally fairly and that SARS had acted on evidence gathered.

SARS said the importation of clothing and textiles has been steadily increasing since the dawn of democracy due to the availability of cheap manufactured goods outside of South Africa.

This case is an important reflection that SARS performs its functions for the benefit of South Africa and her people and is a reminder that SARS is an integral component in the economy. The judgment confirms that SARS is dedicated to enforcing its mandate to control the importation of certain goods to support and promote the macro-economic policy objectives of the government.

SARS said it was firmly committed to service excellence and this includes not being deterred by aggressive litigation that undermines the fiscal and economic fabric of the country.

SARS Commissioner Edward Kieswetter, who expressed his satisfaction with the decision, said there are concerted attempts by those engaged in illicit activities to circumvent the support put in place by government for local industries thereby eroding productive capacity in the country with accompanying job losses, particularly in the local manufacturing sector.

This limits the countrys potential to grow and create jobs, and leads to unfair competition for legitimate trade.

SARS is continually refining its capacity to detect this non-compliant behaviour, and will do all in its power to make it costly to non-compliant taxpayers, while facilitating legitimate trade.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-06-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Xi congratulates Ta Kung Pao on its 120th anniversary

Xinhua) 08:06, June 13, 2022

HONG KONG, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday sent a congratulatory letter to Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, on the 120th anniversary of its founding.

In the letter, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, urged the newspaper to carry forward its patriotic traditions, pursue innovative development and write even more splendid chapters of the steady and sustained implementation of "one country, two systems."

For over a century, Ta Kung Pao has played an active role in the building of New China, the reform and opening-up and modernization, Xi said, adding that the newspaper has also played an active role in Hong Kong's return to the motherland as well as in maintaining Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.

In the new era, Ta Kung Pao unequivocally sent out positive notes and helped forge social consensus, thus contributing to maintaining Hong Kong's stability, enhancing exchanges between Hong Kong and the mainland, and forming a closer emotional bond of Hong Kong residents with the motherland, he said.

Xi called on the newspaper to continue to grow its influence, and contribute more to the realization of the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.

The letter was read at a ceremony held in Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon to mark the newspaper's founding anniversary.

The newspaper, founded on June 17, 1902, is the oldest Chinese-language newspaper still in circulation in the world.

In 2016, it was merged into Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group and has since accelerated its integrated development to form an all-media network based in Hong Kong with an aim of serving Chinese readers across the globe.

A ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the founding of Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, is held in Hong Kong, south China, June 12, 2022. (Xinhua/Li Gang)

A ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the founding of Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, is held in Hong Kong, south China, June 12, 2022. (Xinhua/Li Gang)

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
A police investigator talks with a woman whose car was hit during a crash involving a Chicago Police Department SUV on West Harrison Street June 13, 2022. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

A nude woman lying in the street stole a Chicago police squad car, ran over an officer with it and then crashed it Monday morning, Superintendent David Brown said at a news conference.

Police received a call of a woman in the street unclothed, Brown said. When police tried to see what was wrong and help the woman, she charged and assaulted an officer, got in the squad car and drove off.

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A Chicago Police Department SUV, smashed on both sides and with additional damages, faces east on West Harrison Street after being involved in a crash on June 13, 2022 in Chicago. Several other cars were also damaged. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

The officer was hospitalized for injuries to a leg and a cut to the head, the superintendent said.

The woman crashed and was arrested, Brown said.

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According to surveillance video of the incident viewed by the Tribune, a woman was seen for a couple of seconds standing outside the passenger side of a red minivan that was in traffic at Jackson Boulevard and Kostner Avenue on the West Side.

The woman ran across the street to a dark blue SUV. She approached the vehicle on the front passenger side and the SUV drove away from her, the video shows.

The woman appeared to run alongside the SUV and open the passenger door as it drove off, the video shows. The momentum of the fleeing SUV appeared to cause the woman to fall in the middle of the intersection.

By then, a marked Chicago police SUV with its blue emergency lights flashing arrived on scene as the woman was on the ground, the video shows.

The officer appeared to calmly exit the SUV and walk toward the woman, who got up.

She walked toward the officer, then walked past him and, with no or very little resistance, got into the drivers seat of his SUV, the video shows. The officer grabbed hold of the womans arm as the drivers side door remained open, the video shows.

The woman then put the car in reverse, knocking the officer to the ground. The officer appeared to either get run over by the car or pushed by the car behind another vehicle that was in traffic, the video shows. The police SUVs drivers side door was damaged when it struck the back of that other vehicle, and the woman sped away from the scene.

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According to a media alert, officers responded to a call of shots fired about 9:50 a.m. There they were confronted by a 34-year-old woman who took control of a squad car.

The officer was taken to a hospital where he was treated and released, the alert said.

The woman drove away from the area while hitting multiple vehicles, the alert said. She was eventually arrested and taken to Stroger Hospital in an unknown condition. Charges are pending.

pfry@chicagotribune.com
At the trial of the "rapist of the Sambre", the word of the victims: "I hate this individual with all my being"


A 21-year-old man is in critical condition after he was shot in the back near Orr Academy High School Monday morning, according to Chicago police.

About 11:30 a.m., someone on foot fired at a vehicle traveling northbound in the 700 block of North Pulaski Road in the West Garfield Park neighborhood, which is the same block where Orr is located, police said. A 21-year-old man in the back passenger seat of the vehicle was shot in the back.

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The man was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, police said. No other injuries were reported.

The shooter ran away in an unknown direction, police said. No arrests have been made.

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pfry@chicagotribune.com
A federal jury on Monday convicted a west suburban contractor in a scheme to provide kickbacks to the elected head of the Bloomingdale Township Highway Department in exchange for approval of invoices with inflated prices and for sewer and dump leveling work that was never performed.

After hearing closing arguments Monday morning, the jury deliberated less than two hours before convicting Mario Giannini, 60, on 14 counts of wire fraud at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

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The swift verdict came after Gianninis co-defendant and girlfriend, Debra Fazio, was acquitted in rare fashion by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly, who ruled in the middle of the trial that prosecutors had failed to prove Fazio had knowledge of the scheme or intentionally participated in it.

Giannini and Fazio were indicted in 2020 on charges of conspiring for years with Robert Czernek, former elected highway commissioner for Bloomingdale Township, which contracted with their company, Bloomingdale-based Bulldog Earth Movers Inc.

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Robert Czernek, former Bloomingdale Township highway commissioner, center, exits the Dirksen Federal Courthouse after testifying in the trial of Debra Fazio and Mario Giannini of Bulldog Earth Movers excavation company on June 8, 2022. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

Czernek, 71, pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of honest-services wire fraud and agreed to cooperate. He told jurors last week that Giannini first proposed the kickback scheme during a visit to the township quarry a few months after Czernek was appointed as highway commissioner in 2012.

He said, We can make some money on this,  Czernek testified.

Czernek told the jury that over the next eight years, he used his official position to approve more than $700,000 in payments for stone delivery, dump-leveling and storm sewer invoices submitted by Bulldog Earth Movers.

As part of the scheme, the invoices had been artificially inflated by overcharging for the stone and billing for hours of sewer and dump-leveling work that was never performed, according to Czernek.

He concealed the fraud by leaving handwritten notes for Giannini in various secluded places on Bloomingdale Township Highway Department property, as well as in a barbecue grill at Gianninis home.

The notes included a description of the work and number of hours purportedly spent by Bulldog on various projects. Fazio later submitted invoices to the township that repeated Czerneks notes word for word, according to his testimony.

One note shown to the jury had been scribbled out on a scratchpad with numbers indicating loads of stone. At the top were the words All you and the number 3,575. At the bottom was another figure, 9,850, with the word Split.

That All you meant that (Giannini) would get that $3,575, Czernek testified. He said for the $9,850 figure, split meant they would each take an equal cut.

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Testifying in his own defense Friday afternoon, Giannini told the jury he never overcharged the township for any services and denied telling Czernek that they could make money off of any scheme.

Claiming to be terrible at paperwork, Giannini said he trusted the numbers Czernek was writing down on the notes, which he simply handed off to his office.

Hes the road commissioner and Im working for him, Giannini testified. Later, he added, I mean you dont get any higher than he is. I mean hes in charge of the whole township.

Did you intend to defraud the citizens of Bloomingdale Township? his lawyer, Susan Pavlow, asked at one point.

No, I did not, Giannini replied.

But prosecutors accused Giannini of lying to save his own skin, pointing out he told FBI agents during an interview outside an Addison restaurant that he knew that (Czerneks) numbers werent straight.

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In his closing argument Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Saurish Appleby-Bhattacharjee said the case boils down to greed, the lure of easy money.

It may be true that Mr. Giannini is terrible at paperwork, but what hes truly terrible at is telling the truth, Appleby-Bhattacharjee said.

In pleading guilty, Czernek agreed he received nearly $206,000 in ill-gotten gains and will forfeit assets seized as part of the investigation, including about $28,000 in cash, a 1981 Corvette, a 2014 Lexus RX 350 and a 1966 Buick Wildcat.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
Former Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan had success in politics despite never really being comfortable with the glad-handing that goes with it.

He once cut to five minutes a scheduled half-hour hand-shaking stop with voters on a chilly Michigan Avenue, telling an aide, I got 10 votes and double pneumonia.

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A stoic politician whose life was beset by personal tragedies, Ryan rose from DuPage County states attorney to serve two terms as Illinois attorney general, but was twice defeated in bids for governor.

Ryan 76, died at his home Sunday after several lengthy illnesses, according to a statement from Dan Curry, a family spokesman.

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From the time I met him until his death, Jimmy always was striving to do the right thing and to help people, said his wife of 54 years, Marie. That was who he was and he was very successful at it.

Ryans career was an example of the old saying that timing is everything in politics. After 10 years as DuPage Countys top prosecutor, he moved to the attorney generals office, winning an open seat contest in 1994 on a Republican ticket headed by Gov. Jim Edgar as the GOP swept all statewide offices and took control of the General Assembly.

Four years later, Ryan was reelected in a landslide victory over Chicago city Treasurer Miriam Santos, 61% to 37%.

He was an excellent attorney general, Edgar said Sunday. He didnt play politics at all with anything in the attorney generals office, sometimes to his detriment. He just was a very ethical, decent person.

In a statement posted on Twitter on Sunday, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker called Ryan a tireless advocate for the people of Illinois.

Jims most memorable qualities will forever be his integrity and the way he carried himself and his family through devastating personal tragedy with grace and compassion, Pritzker said. He was an example for us all, and may his memory be a blessing.

In 2002, Ryans effort to become governor was clouded by scandals that occurred under the man he hoped to succeed, Republican Gov. George Ryan, who was no relation.

Only a month after Jim Ryan won a three-way Republican primary for governor, federal prosecutors unveiled a sweeping corruption indictment against George Ryans top aides. George Ryan would be indicted more than a year later on federal corruption charges. He was ultimately found guilty by a jury and served five years in prison.

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During the general election campaign against Rod Blagojevich, a little-known but clout heavy Chicago Democrat, Jim Ryans political team believed it was so hobbled by the candidates last name that it sent out a missive to newspaper editors urging them to use initials or full names in headlines and graphics to make clear to readers whether they were referring to George Ryan or the attorney general.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rod Blagojevich, left, and his Republican opponent Jim Ryan square off as they argue each other's mudslinging tactics during their final debate on Oct. 24, 2002, at WGN studios. (John Lee / Chicago Tribune)

Distinguishing Jim Ryan as a total opposite of George Ryan was so essential to the campaign that a sign on the deputy campaign managers wall read, Its about George, Stupid!

It didnt help that George Ryan, who chose not to seek reelection after one term amid the scandals, refused to leave quietly. He chided Jim Ryan and other GOP candidates for talking about corruption instead of his accomplishments in office.

Jim Ryans been a lousy candidate, George Ryan said as the Labor Day stretch drive to November began. Jim Ryan shot back, Gov. Ryan presided over probably the worst scandal in Illinois history. So, I dont need any suggestions from Gov. Ryan about how to run my campaign.

Jim Ryan said it was the corruption issue that added to his reticence to approach voters, once saying he found it presumptuous to go up to strangers and glad hand.

Theyre angry and you cant blame them, Ryan said of the voters. Theyre tired of all the misconduct, all the corruption. Theyre tired of our fiscal irresponsibility. They want us to change the way we do business in Springfield.

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Blagojevich sought to use the name confusion to his benefit, asking voters, How can you replace one Ryan with another Ryan and call that change? You want change? Elect a guy named Blagojevich.

Blagojevich proceeded to defeat Jim Ryan by more than 250,000 votes. He won a second term as well, only to be arrested in office, convicted of campaign finance corruption and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

After serving as an educator as a distinguished fellow at Illinois Benedictine Universitys Center of Civic Leadership and Public Service, Jim Ryan attempted a political comeback in the 2010 Republican primary.

But his second bid was clouded, in part, by Blagojevichs scandalous reign. Stuart Levine, a classmate of Ryans at Chicago-Kent College of Law who was Ryans top career donor, was found to have attempted to profit from influence-peddling, and eventually pleaded guilty. Obviously, there was another side I didnt know about, Ryan said of Levine.

It was also during his second campaign for governor that Ryan apologized for the first time over his role as DuPage County prosecutor in leading wrongful prosecutions of two men In the 1983 kidnapping, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville.

The mens convictions were later overturned and ultimately a jury convicted another man, Brian Dugan, of Nicaricos death.

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Ryan said prosecutors, detectives and law enforcement acted in good faith in the initial prosecutions and still came up with the wrong result. He said in those cases, the system and I failed to achieve a just outcome.

He went on to say after years had gone by that he had grave concerns about capital punishment.

Ryan finished fourth among six candidates in the Republican primary

Although it was his lifes work, Jim never really felt comfortable in the field of politics, said Stephen Culliton, a former chief judge in DuPage County and a 50-year friend of Ryans. He always strived to do the right thing and to help make life a little better for others. And when the inevitable conflicts arose between the politically beneficial thing and the right thing, he always did the right thing.

Edgar said he always thought Ryan could have stayed (as attorney general) forever and I think, continue to do a great job.

What he might have lacked in retail politics, he more than made up for with his integrity and his ability as an attorney general.

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Ryan was born in Chicago and grew up in Villa Park. His father was a homebuilder, his mother an Italian immigrant and homemaker. At 17, he won the middleweight division of the Chicago Golden Gloves novice division.

Ryan graduated from St. Procopius Academy, now Benet Academy, and what is now Illinois Benedictine University before getting his law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Ryan started his legal career with the DuPage County states attorneys office and after three years was promoted to first assistant states attorney. In 1976, he left to enter private practice but in 1984 ran for county states attorney and won. He was reelected in 1988 and again in 1992, before winning the attorney generals office in 1994.

While in his first term as attorney general, in August 1996, Ryan was diagnosed with Stage 2 non-Hodgkins large-cell lymphoma. He was undergoing aggressive cancer treatment when his 12-year-old daughter, Annie, the youngest of the familys six children, collapsed in January 1997 and died of an undetected brain tumor.

Ten months later, in October 1997, Ryans wife, Marie, suffered a serious heart illness.

Tragedy struck again in 2007 when Ryans 24-year-old son, Patrick, the familys second-youngest child, who had suffered from arthritis since childhood and struggled for years with the loss of his sister, took his own life at the family home in Elmhurst

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After Annie Ryans death, the Ryan familys parish priest, the Rev. Don McLaughlin, pastor of St. Charles Borromeo, said the reaction of the parish community today was, `How much more can happen to one family?

In addition to his wife, Ryan is survived by three sons, John, Jim and Matthew; a daughter, Amy; and 11 grandchildren.

A funeral mass will take place at 11 a.m. Friday at Visitation Catholic Church, 779 S. York Road, Elmhurst.

Freelance reporter Bob Goldsborough contributed.

rap30@aol.com

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It was like embarking on a time travel back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907) for Liu Yuan, as she walked into a newly refurbished block in a bustling tourist area of Xi'an.

"Everything in the block, from the architecture to people's outfits, is a reenactment of that bygone, glorious age," said Liu, a local college student. "And what surprised me most was when waiters in a tea house performed a play on Chinese tea culture and invited me to have a cup of tea roasted according to the ancient recipe."

As the provincial capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, a city founded some 3,100 years ago, served as the capital for 13 dynasties in Chinese history, including Tang, when the city was called Chang'an. It is also home to the world-renowned Terracotta warriors created in the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC).

Preserving cultural heritage is key to China's urban redevelopment agenda, which requires cities to strike a balance between improving urban infrastructures and protecting and inheriting time-honored treasures.

In early 2022, several ministerial-level Chinese authorities issued a circular on comprehensively strengthening the protection of historical and cultural heritage, saying that the protection of cultural relics should be coordinated with the development of urban and rural construction, economy and tourism.

It asks localities and relevant departments to actively explore innovative transformation and inject new vitality into historical and cultural heritage.

The Tang-style block in Xi'an has proved to be a successful attempt in this aspect, providing visitors an immersive cultural experience through a mix of shopping, dining and other recreational activities.

With an area of 24,000 square meters, the block was named after the popular TV series "The Longest Day in Chang'an," thus attracting a large number of fans of the drama.

"We based our design on the namesake TV series, including its settings, characters and plots. We hope to give people the experience of living like a Tang-era person in the block for a day," said Zhang Yichao, a staff member of the redevelopment project.

Located beside an ancient city wall built some 600 years ago in Xi'an's Beilin District, an abandoned textile factory plant has been transformed into a lively market last year, featuring food merchants, cafes, bars, vintage shops and design studios. Creative bazaars and concerts were frequently held on weekends on the plant's rooftop.

"This place became a messy, stinky farmers' market with poor sanitation after the factory was closed over 20 years ago. People avoided coming here unless absolutely necessary," said Tang Wei, a local resident who has lived in the neighborhood for almost 20 years.

The area caught the attention of architect Quan Jianbiao when he visited the city wall in 2017. "The factory had its heydays in the 20th century and stands just beside a cultural relic. It bears the memories of many local people and is worth the reconstruction efforts," Quan said.

While retaining the original exterior of the three-story factory and adhering to the decor style of the 1960s, Quan's team enhanced the interior infrastructure such as elevators and fire safety systems.

"Before 2000, China's urban renewal projects often started with demolition. But in recent years, the historical and cultural significance of old buildings has gained more attention and appreciation in the country, so now the protection is prioritized during reconstruction," the architect added.

The 54-year-old Tang now owns a car wash facility near the new city landmark with hot business on weekends. "By integrating heritage preservation into urban renewal, it gives a boost to consumption, and we locals now enjoy a better living environment and a stronger sense of belonging," said Tang.

Shaanxi Province is also where Qinqiang Opera, a Chinese folk opera genre, originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC). The opera continues to thrive in a vast region of northwest China and was added to the country's intangible heritage list in 2006.

Famous for its Qinqiang performances and education, the Yisu Opera Club was founded in 1912. In 2006, The Yisu Opera Club Theater located in the center of Xi'an was put under state-level protection.

The club and its adjacent area have been turned into a pedestrian zone featuring Qinqiang performances, traditional cuisine and domestic fashion brands. Two museums dedicated to the history of the Yisu Drama Club and the Qinqiang Opera have also been built here.

In the central plaza of the pedestrian zone stands a traditional opera stage. "I always come here on weekends and holidays to enjoy Qinqiang performances for free," said Li Xiang, a local opera enthusiast.

Shortly after the pedestrian zone's opening in September 2021, over 870,000 people visited here during the 7-day National Day holiday, according to local authorities.

"The pedestrian zone is a perfect example of driving the local economy by preserving and utilizing the city's rich cultural assets, which simultaneously serve the material and spiritual needs of the people," Li added.
Filigree Mosaic craft, a traditional Chinese aulic handicraft dating back to the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC), uses metal such as gold and silver to fold artwork inlaid with gemstone or pearl. It is also called fine gold craft as it usually uses spun gold as thin as 0.16 millimeters to form various shapes, and was listed as one of China's national intangible cultural heritages in 2008.

Gu Guoqiang, born in 1994, fell in love with the craft seven years ago during his study in Beijing for restoration of cultural relics. Fascinated by a filigree mosaic work of his master, he returned to his hometown Chongqing and took provincial-level master of arts and crafts Li Changyi as his new master. In 2007, Gu Guoqiang set up his own studio, exploring a way to make filigree mosaic accessories fitting for modern people. He tries to absorb traditional Chinese culture concepts in his designs, and also takes into account modern taste and use habits.

In order to promote the craft, he shares his works through various platforms and is now followed by 300,000 fans on the popular smartphone app Kuaishou. Some followers even come to Chongqing to learn this craft from him.

Nowadays, Gu's studio sells about 300 filigree mosaic artworks per month, many of which are ordered by people overseas. "Most people try to catch other's eyes by intricate works, however some take craftsmanship as life art," said Gu Guoqiang. He makes his own way in inheriting the ancient art, which is common now in China as more youngsters who love traditional culture and arts are willing to pass down the intangible cultural heritages and create a new future for them.
Shanghai has more coffee shops than any other city in the world, according to a research published by media platform Yicai. As the city returns to normalcy after the latest COVID-19 outbreak, having coffee is back on people's daily agenda in the city.

At the end of May, Shanghai unveiled a 50-step plan to help domestic and foreign companies. A key part of the action plan is to stabilize foreign investment and trade as well as accelerate the recovery of consumption and investment. Specialists will be assigned to provide service for key foreign-funded enterprises to resume work and production.

"Our team was able to open up to 600 stores within 72 hours of the reopening. And today we're operating already 860 stores in the city," Leo Tsoi, CEO of Starbucks China, said.

"I would say this is only chapter one for us", said Tsoi, adding "We are highly confident in China."

"Over all these years, despite challenges and difficulties, we continue to invest and we continue to grow, there's quite a number of investment that we are trying to do," he said.

Tsoi mentioned Starbucks will keep investing in the Chinese market. First, Starbucks will open 6,000 stores in China by the end of the fiscal year 2022. Second, it will continue the construction of its China Coffee Innovation Park in Kunshan, east China's Jiangsu Province, as part of its efforts to enhance its supply chain efficiency and build a greener coffee industry in the country.

During Shanghai's recent COVID-19 outbreak, catering was among the many industries affected. But now, Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Costa Coffee and other chains have reopened their shops in the city.

"I'm proud that we were part of this difficult time, that we went through with the Shanghainese community and that we are using coffee to connect our communities and with our customers," Tsoi added.
Chinese entrepreneur and internet celebrity Luo Yonghao announced he was quitting all social platforms on his Weibo account on Sunday midnight.

He recalled that it had been 13 years since he posted his first message on micro-blogging platform Sina Weibo on Sept 7, 2009, and said he would devote himself to a new round of entrepreneurship from Monday.

Luo hinted that he had done an interview with media outlet Late Post and more details on this decision will be released on Monday afternoon by Late Post.

Luo got 17.74 million followers and 41.65 million reposts, comments and thumbs-up on his official Weibo account, and his title on Weibo is CEO of smartphone brand Smartisan Technology.

Luo Yonghao, born in 1972 in Jilin province, Northeast China, used to be a star teacher of New Oriental Education & Technology, where he started his career as an English teacher in 2001.

Five years later he quit New Oriental and founded his own tech firm Bullog.cn. Luo founded Smartisan Technology and launched Smartisan smartphone along with its operating system in 2012. Smartisan launched Bullet Message, a messaging app to rival WeChat in 2018, but it failed to sustain its initial success.

Slipping into deep financial turmoil with debt-ridden Smartisan, Luo entered livestreaming industry in 2020 to earn money and tried to pay back the debt of about 600 million yuan ($94.26 million).

Luo indicated he would like to return to tech industry after paying back all the debt in 2022 and his new entrepreneurial endeavor will be a "metaverse company" on his Weibo account on Oct 19 last year.
A ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the founding of Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, is held in Hong Kong, south China, June 12, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday sent a congratulatory letter to Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, on the 120th anniversary of its founding.

In the letter, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, urged the newspaper to carry forward its patriotic traditions, pursue innovative development and write even more splendid chapters of the steady and sustained implementation of "one country, two systems."

For over a century, Ta Kung Pao has played an active role in the building of New China, the reform and opening-up and modernization, Xi said, adding that the newspaper has also played an active role in Hong Kong's return to the motherland as well as in maintaining Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.

In the new era, Ta Kung Pao unequivocally sent out positive notes and helped forge social consensus, thus contributing to maintaining Hong Kong's stability, enhancing exchanges between Hong Kong and the mainland, and forming a closer emotional bond of Hong Kong residents with the motherland, he said.

Xi called on the newspaper to continue to grow its influence, and contribute more to the realization of the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.

The letter was read at a ceremony held in Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon to mark the newspaper's founding anniversary.

The newspaper, founded on June 17, 1902, is the oldest Chinese-language newspaper still in circulation in the world.

In 2016, it was merged into Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group and has since accelerated its integrated development to form an all-media network based in Hong Kong with an aim of serving Chinese readers across the globe.
The letter sent by Xi Jinping to Ta Kung Pao shows his deep care for the newspaper and all members of its parent media group, his tremendous encouragement for all Hong Kong media that love the country and love Hong Kong, and his earnest expectations for Hong Kong to take on a new outlook and open a new chapter.

A spokesperson for the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council made the remarks Sunday.

Xi, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, sent a congratulatory letter to Ta Kung Pao on the 120th anniversary of its founding on Sunday.

In the letter, Xi expressed the hope that the newspaper will write even more splendid chapters of the steady and sustained implementation of "one country, two systems," and contribute more to realizing the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation, said the spokesperson.

The letter is also a call on the whole Hong Kong society and all Hong Kong compatriots. It points to the direction for Hong Kong to better integrate itself into the country's development plans and to achieve long-term stability and prosperity, said the spokesperson.

The newspaper, founded on June 17, 1902, is the oldest Chinese-language newspaper still in circulation in the world.

In 2016, it was merged into Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group and has since accelerated its integrated development to form an all-media network based in Hong Kong with an aim of serving Chinese readers across the globe.
China's vision for regional order offers new idea for safeguarding peace, stability in Asia-Pacific

08:27, June 13, 2022 By Li Xiaoyu, Cai Shuya Mao Pengfei ( Xinhua

* Delegates and experts highly appraised China's policy of safeguarding multilateralism, regional peace and stability, and building a shared future for humanity introduced during the three-day summit.

* The world is facing multiple crises rarely seen in history. The way forward is to uphold and practice multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind, said Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe.

* Many senior officials and analysts believe that the so-called Indo-Pacific strategy would stir up tensions instead and cause regional conflicts, all in an effort to contain China's development.

SINGAPORE, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The 19th Shangri-La Dialogue, a premier defense and security summit in the Asia-Pacific region, concluded here on Sunday, with many delegates recognizing peace and development as common goals while urging dialogue and cooperation to maintain regional and global stability.

Delegates and experts also highly appraised China's policy of safeguarding multilateralism, regional peace and stability, and building a shared future for humanity introduced during the three-day summit.

Meanwhile, they cautioned against geopolitical strategies that bring division, instigate confrontation and undermine peace in the region, adding that any attempt to divide countries is doomed to fail.

People attend the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 11, 2022. (Photo by Then Chih Wey/Xinhua)

GSI PROVIDES NEW GUIDE TO PEACEFUL DEVELOPMENT

The Global Security Initiative (GSI) proposed by China is another global public good, injecting confidence in global security and demonstrating China's commitment as a major country to upholding world peace and stability.

The world is facing multiple crises rarely seen in history. The way forward is to uphold and practice multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind, said Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe.

Noting that the Asia-Pacific is the world's most vibrant and promising economic powerhouse, Wei urged countries to strive for the bright prospect of building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future that enjoys durable peace and provides security for all.

During the summit, Malaysia's Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said security cooperation is essential.

In a world blanketed with populist decisions, with an eye only on the next election, Hussein said it is vital to think about a more peaceful and stable future.

The GSI has won high praise from experts. Woo Su-keun, director at the Institute of East Asian Studies of Korea, told Xinhua that the GSI is rich in content and highly relevant in upholding a vision for maintaining global peace and security.

Woo said the GSI is in line with China's vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, adding that it emphasizes win-win cooperation and support for genuine multilateralism and offers Chinese solutions to jointly safeguard world peace.

Kin Phea, director-general of the International Relations Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said China consistently upholds a vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.

"China has been playing a more important role in safeguarding global and regional peace and stability," he said.

Chen Gang, assistant director of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore, said that China wants to build a peaceful Asia-Pacific region and reiterated its promise on no-first-use of nuclear weapons at the summit, which is of significant importance, particularly in the current backdrop of growing nuclear threats.

Under the GSI, China calls for establishing a community of security in the Asia-Pacific region, which is entirely different from the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy that seeks to form exclusive blocs to counter China, Chen said.

Gu Qingyang, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore, told Xinhua that Wei's remarks emphasize solidarity and cooperation.

Gu said China is an important contributor to world peace, playing a crucial role in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic and stimulating a global economic recovery.

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe delivers a speech on China's vision of regional order at the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 12, 2022. (Photo by Then Chih Wey/Xinhua)

CALLS FOR COOPERATION, COMMUNICATION

During this year's dialogue, delegates urged countries to carry out security cooperation, with the interests of all parties guaranteed.

On Sunday, Singaporean Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said that the world stands at a potentially dangerous point in history. Ng said Asia desires a regional inter-dependency that is productive and mutually beneficial.

Gu noted that many delegates from developing countries have expressed hope for peaceful development in the region rather than conflict.

Seun Sam, a policy analyst at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said China believes in peaceful development and win-win cooperation. "China does not only want to grow alone but also wants other countries to grow with it."

Woo said a Cold War mentality featuring opposing camps must be abandoned, and each country's circumstances should be considered. The right of each country to choose its own development path should be fully respected.

Policemen carry out their duties for the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 10, 2022. (Photo by Then Chih Wey/Xinhua)

U.S. "INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY" DOOMED TO FAILURE

Although U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin claims that the so-called Indo-Pacific strategy would promote freedom, openness and prosperity in the region, many senior officials and analysts believe that it would stir up tensions instead and cause regional conflicts, all in an effort to contain China's development.

Many officials and experts criticized the Indo-Pacific strategy for attempting to divide the region.

China believes that any regional strategy should bolster regional peace, stability and the shared interests of all, Wei sad.

"Its true intention is to use this strategy to maintain the U.S.' hegemonic system," said Lieutenant General Zhang Zhenzhong, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission.

It is a strategy that causes division, instigates confrontation and undermines peace in the Asia-Pacific region, Zhang said. "The U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy is a strategy that goes against historical trends and prevailing will of regional countries. It only serves the U.S. own interests and therefore is doomed to failure."

Gu said that the purposes of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy are to maintain its own hegemonic interests and cover up its intention to start a new Cold War.

The United States would use the strategy to throw the Asia-Pacific region into a geopolitical conflict, destroying China's chances for a peaceful rise, said Gu.

Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto called for an Asian approach to resolving challenges in the region, saying that "each country has their own way of solving their problems, but each country has to maintain good relations with their neighbors" and with all the major countries of the world, noting "the question here is that we must always consider and respect the national interests and rights."

Prabowo said countries should respect China's rise. "We have some differences. We will strive to solve those differences in an amicable and in a mutually beneficial way. That is the Asian way."

Joseph Matthews, senior professor at the BELTEI International University in Phnom Penh, said U.S. strategy in the region directly threatens the centrality of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The so-called Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, initiated by the United States, aims to counter China's influence in the region by unsettling ASEAN, he said.

Koh King Kee, president of the Center for New Inclusive Asia, a non-government Malaysian think tank, said ASEAN and China maintain close economic and trade ties thanks to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Koh said that despite only serving regional geopolitical interests, the Indo-Pacific strategy cannot harm ASEAN-China relations.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
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The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government said Sunday that the COVID-19 virus continues to be detected in sewage samples from different areas in Hong Kong, indicating that there may be hidden cases in these areas.

About 390,000 sets of COVID-19 rapid antigen test (RAT) kits will be distributed to residents, cleaning workers and property management staff working in the areas with positive sewage testing results showing relatively high viral loads, in order to help identify infected persons, it said.

The HKSAR government also urged RAT kit users to report any positive results for COVID-19 via the government's online platform.

In efforts to combat COVID-19, the HKSAR government's Environmental Protection Department and the Drainage Services Department have been collecting sewage samples in all districts of Hong Kong for COVID-19 virus testing.

On Sunday, Hong Kong registered 364 new COVID-19 cases by nucleic acid tests, and 450 additional cases through self-reported RATs, official data showed.
Authorities in Tangshan, a city in North China's Hebei province, have pledged to ensure that residents can be free from worry after a video of the beating of women by several men at a barbecue restaurant early Friday went viral online.

"We will carry out a review to severely crack down on organized crime and evil activities and improve public order, so that victims in the case can be given justice while our citizens can have peace and enjoy social stability," Tian Guoliang, the mayor of Tangshan, said at a news conference over the weekend.

The city launched a campaign on Sunday to improve public order. The move will last half a month and will target criminal activities that spur strong emotion from the public and have an adverse influence on society, including intentional injury, extortion, drug abuse and cybercrimes.

The assault happened in the early hours of Friday at a barbecue restaurant in Lubei district in Tangshan when a male customer, identified by police as Chen Jizhi, harassed a female customer and then brutally attacked her after she resisted. Chen's companions later joined in, beating the woman and her female friends.

Videos online showed the viciousness of the beating, with the female customer thrown to the ground and then hit and stomped by several men at the same time. The assailants fled after the beating.

By Saturday afternoon, Chen and his eight alleged accomplicesseven males and two femaleswere all arrested, including four who had fled to Jiangsu province afterward.

On Sunday they were arrested by the Guangyang district branch of the city of Langfang's public security bureau, which has been designated to be in charge of the case, with the approval of the procuratorate of Guangyang district.

The nine are suspected of the crimes of picking quarrels and making trouble, as well as intentional assault, for which punishment varies according to specific circumstances, including the victims' injuries, said Luo Xiang, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, who commented online about the incident.

Police in Tangshan said on Saturday that four women were injured, two of whom were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, though the severity of the injuries was not disclosed.

Nationwide, public security authorities in many areas, including the Ningxia Hui autonomous region and Henan province, said they would launch night inspections during the summer to detect potential disputes and risk factors that could threaten public security and social stability.

An official notice issued by the police department of Puyang, Henan province, said night inspections will be conducted at such places as school campuses, night fairs, shopping malls and bars. Quick responses and the dispatching of police officers when situations are reported will also be required.

The incident has been a hot topic on social platforms. Some netizens, including residents of Tangshan, posted videos reporting gang activity.

In one video posted by a cake shop owner in Tangshan's Lubei district, the man claimed he had been extorted since July last year by a gang consisting of former prisoners. "The gang harassed me and provoked trouble at my shop and home about 20 times," he said.

Regarding the cake shop owner's claims and others, the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China Tangshan Committee said verification of the claims was underway.

The Tangshan assault has not only spurred reports about local gangs, but also provoked outrage from netizens, including celebrities, most of whom called for justice.

Actor and martial artist Jackie Chan said on China's Twitterlike messaging platform Sina Weibo on Saturday night, "I expect they will be punished severely according to the law."
A former West Harrison Community School District teacher has been arrested for alleged inappropriate contact with students, according to a press release from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

The Harrison County Sheriffs Office received a report of a possible inappropriate relationship between former West Harrison teacher Benjamin J. Work and a minor student on April 22 and an investigation was initiated by the Harrison County Sheriffs Office and the DCI. He was placed on administrative leave by the school district later that day.

During the investigation, law enforcement officers identified six minor students that Work had reportedly had inappropriate contact with between fall 2021 and spring 2022. On June 3, he resigned his position with the school district.

He was arrested Friday at his residence without incident, the press release stated. He was booked into the Harrison County Correctional Facility and charged with five counts of sexual exploitation by a school employee, a Class D felony; five counts of lascivious conduct with a minor, a serious misdemeanor; and two counts of indecent contact with a child, an aggravated misdemeanor.

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When a client is too afraid to drive to an appointment, Erick Lopez helps them get there.

Providing transportation wasn't in the job description as a legal assistant at Pesek Law in Omaha, but he understands the fear some clients have.

As an undocumented immigrant, Lopez never thought he'd have a driver's license or a job in the U.S. But when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was introduced in 2012, it gave him an opportunity to work with and fight for other undocumented immigrants.

Lopez was born in Mexico, and his father came to work in the U.S. when Lopez was 2.

In 2003, at just 5 years old, Lopez and his mother made the treacherous journey to the U.S. through the Arizona desert.

With the help of a "coyote"  a smuggler who helps migrants cross the border  Lopez and his mother were able to make their way to Omaha, where Lopez's father was living.

The first few years in the U.S. were difficult for Lopez and his family as they adapted to a new country.

At school, Lopez struggled communicating with his teachers and classmates. He spent a chunk of his time learning English through English as a second language classes.

"It was difficult to understand what was happening and what directions they were giving; it was all gibberish in the beginning," Lopez said.

As his English skills improved and he was able to communicate more, his parents advised him to never draw too much attention to himself. When he was asked where he was from, he told people he was from Omaha, not Mexico.

In middle school, Lopez began speaking with his parents about his desire to get his driver's license when he turned 16. That's when he began to understand his restrictions.

They informed him that he wouldn't be able to get a license or a job when he turned 16, because he wasn't a U.S. citizen.

"Everything started making sense," Lopez said.

That realization could've crushed Lopez's spirit, but he didn't let it.

I think it motivated me more," he said. "I knew I had to work harder to get what I wanted. I had to show people that being American is more than just a piece of paper that says youre a citizen."

Two years later, undocumented youth across the U.S. received life-changing news: The Department of Homeland Security would no longer deport certain undocumented youth who came to the U.S. as children.

Lopez was 13 when the Obama administration program was enacted, but the earliest he could apply for DACA was two years later.

As he waited to apply, Lopez became skeptical of the program.

"What if I give out my information and ICE finds me and deports my family and I?" he thought.

But when the time came, he paid the $495 application fee, sent in his required documents and waited for approval.

Once he was approved, Lopez quickly got his driver's license and found a job at Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. After just a month of working there, Lopez was promoted and put in charge of concessions.

But while DACA protects hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth in the U.S. from deportation, it does not grant them official legal status or a pathway to citizenship.

Nor does it last long, as they're required to pay a fee of $495 to renew their DACA status every two years.

Although DACA was temporary protection, Lopez remained optimistic and heavily involved in his community.

According to Maureen Gregor, his Omaha South High School counselor, she's never had a student take on as many challenges as Lopez.

He was a part of College Possible, the community service chair for his school's JROTC program, a board member of National Honor Society, a mentor in Packer Partners, on the senior cabinet and voted prom king his senior year.

In my 10 years at South High, I dont think Ive ever seen a student volunteer as much as Erick did," Gregor said.

As senior year approached, Lopez knew he wouldn't have the same opportunities to fund his college education as his peers did.

But again, he wasn't discouraged. He took a chance and applied for the two big scholarships he could  The Dreamers Pathway and the Susan Buffett Scholarship.

Because of his status, taking out loans wasn't an option. He either got one of those full-ride scholarships, or a college education was out of the picture.

It was a really hard time not knowing how I was going to pay for college. I didnt want to put it all on my parents because they had already given me so much," he said.

Two months later, he got the news: He had gotten the Susan Buffett Scholarship and was going to the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

During his time at UNO he met his current boss, Ross Pesek, through The Underserved Law Opportunities Program.

The program aims to provide the opportunity for a legal education to students in underserved communities, and encourages students to provide legal services to those communities.

According to Pesek, a majority of the firm's clients are immigrants who are not always understood by those in the legal system. That's why Pesek believes Lopez is an essential person in the office.

Lopez's daily tasks include attending mediations, court hearings and attorney meetings with Spanish-speaking immigrants to make sure they can communicate when there are no Spanish-speaking legal service providers.

As Lopez wraps up his three years at Pesek Law, he looks forward to continuing his education at UNL's College of Law in the fall.

Once he graduates, he said he'd like to practice law in worker's compensation, injury and medical malpractice cases.

In the meantime, he'll continue helping others in the immigrant community and working with undocumented youth to renew their DACA paperwork, so they too can live the American Dream.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7228 or emejia@journalstar.com
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The global semiconductor leader, STMicroelectronics, inaugurated earlier this week its new electronic component production line in Bouskoura, with an investment of 2.4 billion dirhams ($244 million).

In a global context marked by the shortage of electronic components for electric cars, STMicroelectronics inaugurated its new production line for advanced electronic components at its Bouskoura site.

The STMicroelectronics new extension covers expanding the factorys current production area by 7,500 square meters, and setting up a new specialized production line in the manufacture of advanced silicon carbide products used in electric cars by the worlds leading automakers.

The investment will ensure a major increase in production capacity and the creation of new jobs. More than 700 jobs, including 100 for engineers, have already been created in one year and major recruitments are underway, STMicroelectronics said in a press release.

It is a real achievement for the national electronics industry that we are celebrating today with this new investment by STM in Bouskoura, the groups second largest site in the world (), said Minister of Industry Ryad Mezzour during the inauguration ceremony.

The Moroccan minister added that the project will enable Morocco to strengthen its position in the value chain of the automotive sector, as a go-to destination for cutting-edge international investments, particularly in electric mobility.

By producing competitive electronic components of world-class quality, designed by mainly Moroccan skills, Morocco is making great strides towards the realization of its industrial sovereignty and confirming its enormous development potential, responding to new emerging needs such as electric vehicles, 5G, connected objects or industry 4.0, he added.

For his part, Fabio Gualandris said that STMicroelectronics has been able to extend local operations thanks to the support of the Ministry of Local Authorities and the National Agency for the Promotion of Employment and Skills.

With the new investment, the Bouskoura plant is transitioning to Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence-backed, fully digitized manufacturing.

Specializing in the assembly and testing of electronic components, STMicroelectronics Bouskoura is one of the most advanced sites in the world in terms of automation and technology. ST Bouskoura is also one of the main sites of the STMicroelectronics Group for the assembly and testing of its state-of-the-art silicon carbide STPOWER products in large volumes.

The Bouskoura site also allows the production of products integrated into the electric vehicles of the worlds main car manufacturers, in particular in the main traction inverter and the on-board charger, as well as in the charging infrastructure.
The Moroccan Cinema Center (CCM) has decided not to grant permission to The Lady of Heaven movie by filmmaker Eli King and Author Yasser Al Habib, and to prohibit its commercial or cultural screening across the national territory.

Le Centre Cinematographique Marocain said in a statement that this decision comes after the ruling expressed by the Supreme Council of Ulemas, which is chaired by King Mohammed VI, Commander of the Faithful.

The Supreme Council of Ulemas has strongly condemned the content of the movie in a statement issued Saturday.

The Council strongly condemned the content of the film and expressed its categorical rejection of the blatant falsification of established facts of Islamic history.

The movie is contrary to the constants of the Kingdom of Morocco as defined in the Constitution, the Council said.

The CCM explained that competent services in the Kingdom tend to authorize cinematographic and audiovisual productions whether they are shot inside the national territory or abroad, to import them from the country of production and distribute them in cinemas inside the national territory, in full compliance with the legislative and regulatory texts governing the film sector in Morocco, if they are not contrary to the constants of the Kingdom.
After worsening ties with almost all of its immediate north African neighbors, Algeria has entrenched its self-inflicted diplomatic and economic isolation by hostile moves against Spain, triggering a firm reaction from the EU.

Algeria has asked its bank to withhold processing all commercial transactions with Spain the same day it has suspended a friendship and neighborliness treaty in a desperate attempt to blackmail Spain and force it to backtrack on its support for Moroccos sovereignty over the Sahara territory.

The escalation against Spain is reflective of a military regime in disarray that is reacting hysterically without prior examination.

The Algerian trade restriction decision omitted the fact that the EU is a customs union wherein trade falls within the realm of the EUs exclusive competence.

The EU is ready to stand up against any type of coercive measures applied against an EU Member State, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said in a joint statement.

The decision taken by Algeria to suspend the treaty of friendship and good neighborly relations signed with Spain in 2002 is of utmost concern, the EU added.

The civilian puppet of the military regime in Algiers responded with a statement rejecting the EUs stance in a tone that shows their readiness to further humiliate Algeria.

Algeria is not Russia! Algerias use of gas to blackmail Spain will only rally the rest of the EU to Spain as well as to supporting Moroccos autonomy plan.

Algerias reactions further vindicate Moroccos stance which insists that no solution can be found without the participation of Algeria as the real party that hosts and sponsors the Polisario separatists.

Algeria has now worsened its ties with its northern neighbors just like it did with its immediate north African neighbors.

During Blenkens visit to Algiers, Tebboune complained that Algeria has problems with all its neighbors in a victimization tone that only shows the quagmire in which the Algerian diplomacy is stuck in.

With Morocco, Algeria has cut ties, banned aircrafts from its air space and cut gas while consistently warmongering and accusing Rabat of all the woes in the country without offering any proof.

With Tunisia, the Algerian puppet president has exposed his countrys hegemonic agenda going as far as mingling in the countrys domestic affairs.

With Libya, Algeria is supporting the power grab of Tripoli based Dbeiba taking sides further stoking instability in conflict-ridden Libya and with the rest of the Sahel Algeria is looked at with suspicion due to its manipulation of terrorist groups and unwillingness to contribute to multilateral efforts to improve security there.
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Xi Jinping, chairman of the Central Military Commission, has signed an order to promulgate a set of trial outlines on military operations other than war.

The outlines aim to protect people's lives and property, safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interest, and safeguard world peace and regional stability.

The outlines, comprising 59 articles in six chapters, serve as a legal base for military operations other than war and will take effect on June 15, 2022.
New York has hosted on Friday the Morocco-US investment summit. The event featured several sectoral panels that discussed investment opportunities in Morocco, with focus on the Kingdoms southern provinces, especially in the financial and infrastructure sectors.

The investment meeting, organized by the Regional Council of Dakhla Oued Eddahab in partnership with the Moroccan Ministry of Industry and Trade, comes four months after the Morocco-US Investment Forum held in Dakhla last March.

The event, attended by representatives of the Regional Council of Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra and an array of American businessmen, highlighted the incentives set up to encourage US investments in the southern Moroccan region.

Participants from Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra council underlined the different investment potential in the region, which boasts huge economic potential and provides incentives to investment, particularly in the sectors of energy, fishing, agriculture, tourism, services, and industries, as well as the tax regime which encourages domestic and foreign investment.

The Council representatives also highlighted the regions security and stability, insisting on the safe and free movement of people and products from the Moroccan southern provinces to Sub-Saharan Africa.

They indicated that the government and democratically elected councils would use all available resources to promote development, social stability, and the promotion of local and international investments.

During the Morocco-US Investment Forum held in Dakhla in March, both participants and organizers agreed on the need to enhance investment and trade in the region while boosting bilateral collaboration and encouraging new US direct investment in agriculture, tourism, mining, and renewable energy.
The high-level meeting of the Committee of Fifteen Ministers of Finance of the African Union (F15) opened Monday in Rabat on the theme Beyond COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Enhancing the Resilience of African Economies and Financial Sustainability of the African Union.

The participants in this event, co-organized by the ministry of Economy and Finance and the African Union (AU), will discuss several issues, including the post-Covid 19 period, the Ukrainian crisis, economy recovery and the F15 performance.

Addressing the opening session, Minister of Economy and Finance, Nadia Fettah, underlined the need to rethink the financing model of the African Union.

Rethinking the financing model of our Union is urgently needed if we want to stay focused on the objective that we have set out since 2015 in Johannesburg, for sustainable, predictable, equitable and responsible funding of the African Union, she said.

Beyond its direct impact on African economies, the current crisis, due to its unparalleled scale and unpredictable duration, could call into question the financial viability of our large institutional family, the African Union, she pointed out.

The meeting is marked by the participation of the F15 members, the AU Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Industry and Mining, as well as the representatives of the AU Commission and of the Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative.
The Egyptian judiciary has issued a notification to Interpol to include six Muslim Brotherhood leaders on a red notice for smuggling funds abroad to finance terrorism, Arab News reports.

The Supreme State Security Criminal Court decided to notify Interpol in order to track the leaders, arrest them and hand them over to Egyptian authorities.

Wanted individuals include ex-Secretary-General Mahmoud Hussein and Medhat Ahmed Al-Haddad, a former official of the Brotherhood in Turkey. The defendants are accused of taking the leadership of a terrorist group, the Brotherhood, and joining that group knowing its purposes, the Saudi media further notes.

According to the court, between 2015 and 2021 they joined a terrorist group, smuggled funds abroad and possessed inflammatory publications.

A red notice obligates all police agencies in all Interpol member states to respond immediately to the request, work to implement what it says and deport the wanted persons to their countries.

Egypt last Wednesday decided to include 20 of the Brotherhoods leaders on the countrys terrorist lists.

Cairo outlawed the organization that it considers more dangerous than terrorism.
Abir Moussi, Tunisias top female politician and leader of the opposition Free Destourian Party has laid into the countrys Prime Minister Najla Bouden calling her cabinet illegitimate and corrupt

It is running the country outside legal frameworks and without any financial and administrative control after the dissolution of the parliament and constitutional bodies by President Kaies Saied.

The President flooded the country with decrees, she told a conference held Sunday by her party on the theme: What Credibility for Talks with Lenders amid an Impossible Equation between the Political and Economic Agendas.

The conference was held as the North African country, engulfed in an economic and political crisis, is looking for foreign financial assistance to prop up its economy, battered by the pandemic and long running political stalemate.

Tunisia is looking for $4 billion from the IMF to balance its economy. The country is in talks with the Washington-based institution which has requested a set of reforms before the credit line is allocated.

Moussi indicated that her party also rejects the reforms submitted to the IMF as they are proposed by an illegitimate government without consultation with political parties and national organizations.

Tunisia has further slid into political crisis since July 25 after Saied seized all major powers. He has dissolved the parliament, appointed Bouden in early October as the countrys Premier.

Saied also last week launched a national dialogue set to lead to the drafting of a new constitution that will usher in a new republic.

Political parties critical of the move have been sidelined from the dialogue. Meanwhile, Deans of law colleges of the countrys universities have refused to join the dialogue and so has the UGTT, the North African countrys powerful labor union.

Abir Moussi insisted that President Saied will have difficulty in respecting the political calendar that he has set for himself without any legal reference, after the freezing of the Constitution. The political horizon is unclear, she added.

The State budget for 2021 was not closed yet and this requires a piece of legislation that needs to be brought before the parliament according to a specific schedule, Moussi said in another connection. The same goes for the 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017 budgets.

This is a serious and unprecedented move. Each cent spent outside the legal frameworks is corruption and those who deliberately wasted taxpayers money must be sued.
The first batch of vaccine production equipment from China has been delivered to Morocco Sunday. The equipment will enable the manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines and other products in the plant newly launched in Benslimane.

The shipment arrived from Shanghai, China, and will allow the assembly of the biotechnology unit in Benslimane, whose construction works were launched by King Mohammed VI at the end of last January, the aim being to reach self-sufficiency and help supply vaccines to African nations.

The 111 devices weighing a total of 35,000 tons, making up the entire turnkey plant, docked at the port of Casablanca Sunday.

This equipment will enable Morocco to become Africas much-needed COVID-19 vaccine supplier.

Sensyo Pharmatech has called upon Recipharm, a global manufacturer in the biotechnology and Fill&Finish industry to enable the transfer of know-how in the manufacture of future drugs and vaccines.

In a joint statement to the press on the occasion of the arrival of the first batch in the port of Casablanca, the CEOs of Sensyo Pharmatech and Recipharm, said that the arrival of this ship marks a very important step to achieve the realization of this project.

35,000 tons of equipment and buildings will be assembled on the Benslimane site to enable Morocco to acquire a manufacturing capacity for vaccines and drugs in an aseptic environment for the needs of the Kingdom and the African continent, they said.

The first stage of production in the Benslimane plant will mostly be the syringing of anti-COVID and other vaccines, starting off with three industrial lines whose combined production capacity should reach 120 million units by the end of 2022.

This manufacturing capacity is equivalent to an output ranging from 300 to 450 million vaccine doses. A budget of 200 million euros has been allocated for this purpose, while the test batch production phase is scheduled for late July 2022.

Towards the end of 2022, the plant will initiate the manufacturing of industrial batches intended for distribution, once the testing phase is validated.

The Benslimane plants 3 industrial lines will reach a combined production capacity of 116 million units by 2024.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has considered Algeria as being a security risk for Europe in view of its using gas supplies as a means of political pressure on the continent.

In a confidential report that surfaced last week, NATO estimated that Algeria is using gas supplies as a means of political pressure on Europe and that such attitude is in itself a risk for the Continent.

The military alliance did not hide its concern over the attitude of the North African country which does not hesitate to play with its gas resources as a means of pressure, directed in particular against Europe.

Algeria, which is increasingly isolated, and whose foreign policy is erratic, to say the least, is worrying to NATO.

For NATO, the case is clear: the report specifically indicates that there is a risk that Algeria, like Russia, would use its gas supplies as a means of exerting political pressure, the German edition of the American economic information website Business Insider quoted the findings of the report as saying.

Algerias gas supplies are a risk for the security of Europe, the report stated.

The NATO confidential assessment followed Algerias decision to suspend a 20-year treaty of friendship with Madrid and to break off its commercial transactions with Spain.

The Algerian government announced last week the freezing of the treaty, citing Spains new position on the Sahara and its clear support to the Morocco-proposed autonomy initiative as the most serious and credible solution to end the Sahara dispute.

This position frustrated the Algerian regime which recalled its ambassador to Madrid last March and threatened to end its gas contract with the European country if it sells Algerias gas to Morocco.

Business Insider said NATO is worried due to Algerias threat at the end of April that it would stop its gas supplies if Madrid sold Algerian gas to other countries.

In the long term, this jeopardizes Algerias status as an energy supplier for Europe, NATOs report said, noting that energy security has for many years been considered a key factor for foreign and security policy, including within the military alliance.

Spain regretted Algerias last week decision to suspend the treaty of friendship and to break off commercial transactions with Madrid, and said that it was working on a constructive but firm response to the move.

The European Union also slammed the Algerian decision, urging the government to reverse the act.

Faced with the severe warning of the EU, the military junta bowed and miserably reconsidered its decision. However, the damage is done and the little credibility that Algeria had, as the third gas supplier to Europe, had been harmed.

As stated by some analysts, Algeria has played with fire, at the risk of burning its fingers.
Photo: Hemis/Alamy/Alamy Stock Photo

Throughout February and March, as Omicron cases in Hong Kong climbed to tens of thousands a day, Id leave my apartment every evening for a stroll along the waterfront in Sheung Wan. The sky was a wallpaper of twilight blue; being shut indoors felt like a waste of spring. The promenade bustled with others who had permitted themselves these daily masked excursions: children speeding past me in rollerblades, burning off excess energy from school days spent on Zoom, and office workers sitting on benches clutching plastic containers of takeaway dinners. Across the city, hospitals were overflowing with the sick and dying, but the scene on the promenade was placid: a man playing a tune on an erhu, another performing handstands near the edge of a fountain. Over the harbor, the massive display screen of a newly opened art museum flashed a half-hearted message expressing well-wishes.

Every time I think about Hong Kong, I inevitably return to the water  the masked couples making out in cars facing the smoggy sunset by Stonecutters Bridge; the tourists jostling before the postcard-perfect view of the harbor from Avenue of Stars at Tsim Sha Tsui; the tranquil walks along the reservoirs at the country parks surrounding the city. In the last few decades, Hong Kong has frequently been referred to as a global financial center, but the city first gained significance as a major port in the early 20th century; its fate has always been intimately tied to its waters. I know that were I to ever leave, they would be what I would miss most.

When I say I miss Hong Kong, what I mean is the city as I remember it between the years of 2014 and 2019. In the aftermath of the 79-day pro-democracy occupation protests in 2014, every neighborhood across the city set up its own grassroots form of civic engagement: Residents self-organized home repairs for the elderly and ran historical walking tours to build stronger community ties. When friends visited the city, wed eat curries at Chungking Mansions, then walk over to Sai Yeung Choi Street, a popular shopping district, where political parties across the spectrum set up street booths and handed out flyers and balloons. On one weekend, I might have headed to Lamma Island to meet an artist from Milwaukee who ended up in Hong Kong because of his love of Wong Kar-wai films; the next weekend, I could have wound up at a mini-music festival hosted atop a mountain peak, at an industrial warehouse, or inside a cha chaan teng (tea cafe) in Yau Ma Tei with the shutters pulled down. Every June 4, wed commemorate the Tiananmen massacre at Victoria Park with a candlelight vigil, then head to the dai pai dong (open-air food stall) above a wet market for beers.

I was born not long before the handover in 1997, when Hong Kong was to cease to become a British colony and be handed to China. The event had triggered an emigration wave: There were whispers of how Hong Kong would change, and many left because they did not want to be under Communist rule. But change came slow, and borders remained free. Within a decade, Hong Kong had developed a regular protest calendar, with thousands marching through a dense network of skyscrapers in the financial district on set days every year to voice discontent and commemorate anniversaries. Over time, the city became, for the post-handover generation, less a place of transition, a stepping-stone for better lives abroad, but a place worth fighting for.

These days, Hong Kong is a different city altogether. In the wake of the 2014 mass protests, a series of events foreshadowed the encroachment from China that was to come: legislators disqualified from parliament for altering their oaths to express discontent toward Beijing, booksellers kidnapped and detained in China. In 2019, Hong Kong proposed an extradition bill that would allow the city to send criminals to China, sparking alarm that the judiciary would no longer be independent from the Communist regime and spurring mass protests that transformed our streets into guerrilla battlefields; in June 2020, Beijing implemented in Hong Kong the national security law, a broad tool for silencing dissent that could outlaw a political slogan one day then censor films and books the next. Under the guise of pandemic social-distancing, public gatherings were banned, and protests disappeared from the streets. Later in 2020, a teacher had his license revoked after showing his class a documentary featuring a pro-independence activist; in the years since, prominent commentators, including Apple Daily writer Fung Wai-kong and academic Hui Po Keung, have been arrested at the airport while attempting to leave the city. New election rules implemented in 2021 now dictate that only patriots can administer Hong Kong. By early 2022, at least 50 civil organizations have disbanded in the ongoing crackdown, including a pro-democracy trade-union coalition and an activist group that commemorates the Tiananmen massacre.

After the national security law passed in June 2020, friends began leaving Hong Kong every few weeks. One by one, they disappeared from the camera reel on my phone, leaving me with things they couldnt take with them: an oven, a Sodastream, a sous-vide machine, a stone diffuser, and five bottles of ground cinnamon. From 2020 through 2021, it was reported that 116,000 residents had left, often departing for countries like Britain and Canada, which, amid the turmoil, announced residency schemes for Hong Kongers. Every other day on social media, someone pens a eulogy for the city. They were leaving; there was no way to plan for a future in this place, where every day brought about an unexpected change to the existing set of rules. Hong Kong had become a place that could no longer tolerate truth, pollster and moderate commentator Chung Kim Wah said earlier this year. He was born and raised here, but he craved broader skies and fresher air where he would no longer have to worry about shifting red lines.

In February 2022, when the aisles of my neighborhood supermarket began emptying from vegetable shortages and panic-buys, I thought about the language of dystopia we so often resorted to over the past three years. Our dystopia had thus far been political, a synonym for totalitarianism, oppression, and injustice. It smelled like the burnt residue of tear gas; its side effects include insomnia. But government officials, business leaders, pro-Beijing politicians continued to assure us that this post-national security law Hong Kong was far from dystopian  it was an improved version of the city. Then a new kind of dystopia arrived, one which made it harder to keep up the pretense.

A Hong Kong grocery store in March 2022. Photo: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

After two years of relative self-isolation and a low accumulated number of deaths (at just over 200 up till 2021), the coronavirus finally reached Hong Kong in early 2022. Even before the citys outbreak, leader Carrie Lams mishandling of the 2019 protests, coupled with the fact that the authorities were seen as weaponizing social-distancing guidelines to prevent gatherings on the streets, had led to a deep mistrust of the governments pandemic policies, which later turned some residents  including the receptionist at my therapists office, my hairdresser, and several friends  into anti-vaxxers. Some eventually succumbed and took the jab after being banned from entering shopping malls and supermarkets, but elderly vaccination rates remained low. The city was unprepared for the infectious Omicron variant. Almost 7,000 would die in Hong Kong by mid-March with over a million infected.

In late February, local news outlets published photographs of horrifying scenes in public hospitals: corpses sitting in gray bags next to living patients in an overcrowded emergency ward, senior citizens lying underneath outdoor tents on a freezing night in February. Afterward, I spoke to Jasper, a young nurse in Kowloon who asked to go by this name to speak without repercussions. Jasper works in a public hospital that serves an aging population; this devastation, she says, is the direct result of both the governments overconfidence in its healthcare system and of the strategy it chose to tackle the outbreak. Under the citys elimination strategy, strict rules were put in place such that anyone who tested positive could be sent to hospitals or isolation facilities. As a result, rather than staying at home to recover, many COVID patients experiencing mild symptoms initially flocked to the hospitals and quickly crippled the system. By mid-February, only weeks after Omicron hit Hong Kong, the waiting rooms of Jaspers hospital were so inundated that beds were spilling into the corridors. In the emergency rooms, four nurses could be looking after more than a hundred patients per shift. Days or even weeks later, Jasper said, when patients were finally transferred to the isolation wards, their conditions could have deteriorated. It would only be a matter of time before they passed away.

Amid the crisis, residents in Hong Kong were forced to confront the realities of what it meant to live in a place where nobody in charge was popularly elected by the people. Over in China, the Communist government had implemented a zero-COVID policy, prioritizing lockdowns and restrictions rather than mitigation, and Hong Kong followed suit. During the outbreak, almost everyone I knew lived not in fear of catching COVID, but of the arbitrariness they may be subjected to should authorities find out they caught the illness, or came in close contact with someone who did. Health officers would sometimes appear on your doorstep to inform you that your building had been locked down for mandatory testing; should you test positive, you would have to undergo quarantine at an isolation facility, which Hong Kong residents have described as a madhouse. A Hong Kong woman told a local news outlet that despite two negative rapid tests, she was not told when she could leave; some in quarantine attempted suicide inside the facilities, according to local media reports. The uncertainty and severity of the measures made me feel like the city was collectively being punished. Meanwhile, in the hospitals, resources were spent on bringing in mainland Chinese health-care staff, who had different qualifications and were unfamiliar with local medical equipment, and primitive isolation facilities were hastily constructed by a state-owned Chinese company, the first of which was a 3,900-bed facility in Tsing Yi with shared squat toilets. It was part of what ultimately became a public-relations campaign about the support China was offering to Hong Kong, and further blurred the fading borders between the two places.

Isolation facilities in Hong Kong in March 2022. Photo: Tyron Siu/Reuters (pink); Louise Delmotte/Getty Images. Isolation facilities in Hong Kong in March 2022. Photo: Tyron Siu/Reuters (pink); Louise Delmotte/Getty Images.

Business advisers who rarely uttered a word against the government began urging Hong Kongs leader to revise its pandemic policies, which were leading to a talent drain and further undermining the citys global competitiveness. Mixed messages from different government officials are not helping and are causing a lot of panic, Allan Zeman, nightlife mogul and chairman of Lan Kwai Fong Group, said in a Bloomberg interview. In a survey in January, 44 percent of the members of the American Chamber of Commerce said they were planning to leave Hong Kong because of the strict pandemic rules, while a quarter of companies were considering relocation. In another survey in March by a European counterpart, almost half of the companies said they may exit the city. The political crackdown had already prompted artists, journalists, and prominent NGOs such as Amnesty International to leave Hong Kong; now, even global banks are mulling a move.

By April, the outbreak had begun to subside, but the governments response to it had left the residents of Hong Kong shaken. Something was fundamentally broken: If Hong Kong could botch the handling of a pandemic outbreak it had two years to prepare for, what does that say about future governance? Hong Kong used to be a city that understood its capitalism depended on appearances; ever since the national security law was enacted, however, it no longer cared about the mask slipping. Two days after Jasper and I spoke, a former cop announced his intention to run for chief executive. He has since been chosen by a tightly controlled election committee as the next leader of the city.

In the early days of the pandemic, I watched as people around the world debated what a return to normalcy meant. When the Omicron variant finally reached Hong Kong, the devastation was doubly felt, because the residents of the city had not known what a normal day was since June 2019, when the protests began. As the national security law altered the terrain of what was permitted, and the government flip-flopped on pandemic plans such as whether to conduct mass testing every few days, Hong Kong became an unpredictable, unlivable city. It wasnt only that we could not see our future a few years down the line  say, whether we could raise our children in this city under a climate of fear. Now, we didnt even know what was in store the next day. The Hong Kong government ultimately relented on its dynamic zero COVID policy, deviating from Chinas approach. But up until that moment, there was a stark possibility that the government would never listen. During that time, when the government banned dining out at 6 p.m., I retreated into isolation and ate pancakes for dinner, numb but grateful that I was at least at home and not in quarantine. I felt like I had not come up for air in three years.

Anti-government protesters in Hong Kong in July 2019. Photo: Adam Ferguson/Photo by Adam Ferguson

There is a Chinese phrase, , which means a group of people crowding around a fire or stove for warmth, and is sometimes a synonym for dinners or gatherings that create a sense of community. Hong Kongers had previously used it as a synonym for being willfully ignorant to views outside of ones echo chamber, but since the 2019 protests, its taken on a new significance. , to surround yourself with like-minded friends and family who could offer support during difficult times, is now seen as a necessity to survival. Over the past two years, as the crackdown intensified, wed host late-night drinks and winter barbeques at each others places, desperately holding on to the time we still have with each other and bracing ourselves for the possibility that tomorrow, someone at the table may have to flee, or worse  be arrested.

The last three years in Hong Kong have seen the jailing of hundreds of new political prisoners. Some were protesters arrested for rioting, unlawful assembly, or possession of weapons. Others were politicians and activists targeted by the national security law and awaiting trial for offenses like secession. Under the security law, new criminal procedures now dictate that bail can no longer be presumed granted, which means those activists can spend more than a year in jail before their cases go before a judge. Then, weeks before the Omicron outbreak on an early morning in December 2021, the police raided the newsroom of the popular pro-democracy site Stand News, arrested senior journalists and board members, and froze the publications assets. The outlet would later take down its website, erasing years worth of news reporting and commentary that include documentation of mass protests in 2019. Days later, a second newsroom, Citizen News, announced it would cease operations. My Facebook feed, which I had used primarily to share headlines, became a series of error messages: This content isnt available right now.

Since last May, an acquaintance Ill call Peter, a citizen journalist, has been taking trips to the jails and detention centers scattered across Hong Kong to visit his friends behind bars. One of those friends is Gwyneth Ho, a feisty Stand News reporter-turned-political activist arrested for subversion after taking part in a primary election. Prisoners had access to TV and radio stations so they were caught up with the news, but they had no idea what the political atmosphere of the city was like. What Ho wanted above all was news about her favorite Hong Kong pop group, Mirror, so Peter would sometimes copy lyrics of the latest Mirror songs by hand to give to her. Once, Ho mentioned to Peter that she couldnt really sense the mood in the world outside, but she had noticed that the lyrics in pop songs were starting to move away from the trend of mentioning leaving, and new lyrics about staying had begun to appear. Then, during the fifth wave of the Omicron crisis, an outbreak erupted in prisons, and Peters visitations to Ho were halted.

For those who remain in Hong Kong, the question of whether to go constantly hangs over them. The pandemic has made me more determined to leave, Jasper, the nurse, told me. But its not the right time; until then, Ill continue to work in the isolation wards, perhaps in preparation for the next wave. At the same time, she told me, shell begin to prepare for her overseas nursing qualification. Over the past year, Peter had grown to accept living in a state where he was unable to plan for the future: He knew that, eventually, he would be forced to self-censor and that his job would become untenable. It was growing increasingly difficult to navigate the media landscape, he said, where there were few platforms left on which to publish and the threat of the national security law loomed over them. He was hanging on until he no longer could.

I sometimes think that the curse of this generation of Hong Kongers  those who are not already behind bars  is survivors guilt. How selfish is that, to want our lives to change or even improve, when there are so many in prison for rioting and political charges, when so many have died during the pandemic, when there are those who are forcibly exiled and will never see the waters of Hong Kong again? Years ago, before the 2019 protests, my friends and I stayed because we thought there were things we could still change about the city; then, after the protests ended and the national security law was implemented in 2020, we stayed in hopes of holding down the fort, of slowing the rate of political deterioration. These days, we stay only until circumstances no longer allow us to work or survive in this place. I know by now that my reasons wont be professional or even political but personal: When the day comes that my support system is uprooted and scattered, it would be time for me to go too. That the arrival of this day feels now like a certainty makes each hour I still have left in this place  either around the dinner table pouring another drink for a friend or on a long, contemplative walk by the water  feel like stolen time.

Peter has spoken about this with his friends in jail. They told me, If leaving Hong Kong is for your own personal development and happiness, then Ill be happy for you, he says. Ho, in particular, told Peter not to feel that he owed them anything because they were on the inside. Now, he, too, is planning to leave Hong Kong this year. Peter didnt have a British National Overseas visa and could not benefit from Britains visa scheme, so he and his wife are going to Canada (it was easy, he explained, to move their two cats there  there was no quarantine for animals, and they were allowed into cabins). For now, hell continue to write letters to his friends, many of whom have little idea when they will ever regain freedom.

Protesters are tear-gassed in Hong Kong in August 2019. Photo: Adam Ferguson/Photo by Adam Ferguson

In early April, I left Hong Kong for the first time since the pandemic to take part in some work events in New York City. At the airport, it used to take minutes to scan and find your departure gate on the cluttered flight-information display system; now, it only listed 13 departing flights. After the government imposed a compulsory 21-day out-of-pocket hotel quarantine on incoming travelers  later downgraded to 14 and, eventually, seven  and banned entire flight routes, the Hong Kong International Airport swiftly lost its place as one of the busiest travel hubs in the world.

In New York City, I ate my first real bagel  whitefish salad, larger than the size of my palm  and met up with scores of old friends. They told me it was sometimes difficult to keep in touch with friends back home, because they felt awkward talking about their new lives. News about Peters plans to move had reached them, and they were surprised: They thought hed never leave. One evening, we were at dinner in the East Village, exchanging the latest gossip among the activist circles in the city and abroad, when I was struck by an odd wave of nostalgia: This was something we used to do in Hong Kong only three years ago.

Why dont you just leave? one friend asked me, and I could give no real answer. The Hong Kongers who are forced to leave now are the ones who may find the city closed to them forever. Unlike the emigration wave three decades ago, borders were no longer free for everyone: Because of the protest charges and the national security law, many people now face the possibility of arrest if they re-enter the city. It wasnt leaving Hong Kong that was difficult; it was the thought of never coming back. By June, even though the pandemic outbreak had subsided and the streets are flooded once more with the boisterous sounds of the city, we only need to open the pages of the newspaper to see that another protester has been sent to prison for rioting over events in 2019. The crackdown continues to further extend its reach to every corner of society: Among those arrested recently is the 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen over his involvement in a fund that offered support to protesters.

After three decades in one place, I had become convinced that I was tethered to this city, first out of responsibility, then guilt. These days, Im not sure what my attachment to Hong Kong is anymore. It used to be the people who made this place home for me, but in the months before leaving for New York, I had attended a dozen farewell dinners and made trips to the airport to exchange tearful good-byes with friends emigrating from the city. During the peak of COVID, these good-byes would be the only noise echoing through the empty halls of the Hong Kong International Airport. Wavincity, a local urban soundscape recording project, recently released two clips of field recordings of these moments at the departure terminal. The sounds they captured are quiet and unassuming but melancholic: the quick footsteps of children, the clang of suitcase wheels, airport announcements in the background, soft voices that say, Come, lets take a photograph and Thank you for coming to see us off today.

Right here, at this airport, were the last sounds they would hear from this city, and the final time they could call it home. Theyd be gathering around a table for the warmth of company, in a faraway land, but there would always be someone missing. Maybe Hong Kong had been a dystopia, but it had been their dystopia. From then on, the city would be thought of in the past tense.
Singaporeans doing sit-ups. (FILE PHOTO: Great Eastern Women's Run)

SINGAPORE  The Singapore Physical Activity Guidelines (SPAG) was unveiled on Sunday (12 June) to provide Singaporeans of all ages with recommendations on physical activities for the benefit of their health and well-being.

The guidelines are developed by Sport Singapore (SportSG) and the Health Promotion Board (HPB), and are revised from the National Physical Activity Guidelines published in 2011, as well as the National Physical Activity Guidelines for Children and Youth Aged up to 18 Years published in 2013.

With an emphasis on encouraging a variety of physical activities and reducing sedentary behaviour, the guidelines provide Singaporeans with detailed recommendations on the duration, intensity, frequency and type of physical activities.

Singaporeans can gain a better understanding of how much physical activity is required to achieve the desired health benefits and learn the type of exercises suitable for their age groups and lifestyles.

For example, pre-schoolers should aim to achieve the recommendation of at least 180 minutes of physical activity daily through a range of activities including social play and a variety of movements such as running, jumping and throwing to build their fundamental movement skills.

For adults, the guidelines recommend at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week, and to strengthen muscles, bones and joints through different activities, at moderate or vigorous intensity, at least two days a week.

Recommendations for pregnant and postpartum women, and persons with disabilities (PwD) have also been added to the revised set of guidelines.

INFOGRAPHIC: SportSG, HPB

INFOGRAPHIC: SportSG, HPB

INFOGRAPHIC: SportSG, HPB

INFOGRAPHIC: SportSG, HPB

INFOGRAPHIC: SportSG, HPB

INFOGRAPHIC: SportSG, HPB

Culmination of research studies, new evidence in last decade

SPAG is jointly developed by experts from medical, health promotion, sport and research fields, and is a culmination of intensive review of research studies and new evidence that have emerged in the last decade.

The new guidelines serve to support the nation in improving public health outcomes. They provide benchmarks for stakeholders including healthcare and fitness professionals, as well as policymakers and community leaders who play key roles in creating an ecosystem that supports and enables active living.

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SPAG is also developed with the inclusion of practical tips and case studies to educate the community to make informed decisions about their health and wellbeing.

The recommendations in SPAG aims to promote a variety of activities to achieve the five key components for physical activity  aerobic fitness, muscular strength, bone strength, flexibility and balance.

With the increasing use of digital devices in our daily living, it is important to find ways within our lifestyle routines to move more and break up sedentary time," said Koh Peng Keng, HPB's interim chief executive officer and chief operating officer.

"With recommendations on the type, quantity and intensity of physical activity for different population segments, we encourage all Singaporeans to engage in varied exercises and activities to yield holistic health outcomes."

Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore
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K-Rob Thomas knows exactly what the Academic Excellence Program, or AEP, did for him as a student in Auburn Universitys Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.

I wouldnt be an engineer without it, he said. Despite being a strong performer in high school, particularly in math and science, I was not adequately prepared for the rigor of college.

AEP gave me a welcoming, family-oriented environment at Auburn, a structured learning environment, guidance from mentors who had demonstrated success in engineering at Auburn and the feeling of a place where I could unapologetically be myself.

AEP was founded in 1996 as the Minority Engineering Program, dedicated to promoting diversity within engineering. The program continues to recruit and retain underrepresented students within all engineering majors.

Thomas earned a civil engineering degree in 2001 and is currently vice president of origination and acquisitions at Southern Power Company. When he realized AEP would mark its 25th year in the 2021-22 academic year, he approached the Auburn Advancement office in the college about commemorating the occasion.

This program has positively influenced the academic success of many Auburn students, both minority and majority students, he said. AEP is a model that should be replicated across the colleges at Auburn because it works.

AEP is more than a program. It is an experience that shapes endeavoring engineers to pursue excellence in their academics, succeed professionally in their career of choice and create a platform for future engineers to develop their philanthropic sensitivities.

Thomas became chair of a committee made up of Advancement staff and engineering alumni who would plan a celebration event and set a most ambitious $2.5 million fundraising goal. The effort specifically included creating endowed scholarships within the program and adding more corporate sponsors.

Alumni giving

Lindsey Vicente, a development officer in Auburn Advancement, said she realized that the anniversary provided AEP alumni the perfect opportunity to endow a scholarship, especially from those who knew AEPs first director, Dennis Weatherby.

Some alumni didnt even know Dr. Weatherby, but they still made a gift, she said. AEP was so important to them.

Weatherby made a name for himself with Procter & Gamble, where he created a lemon-scented dishwashing detergent. When he came to Auburn in 1996, he started the Minority Engineering Program. Weatherby died in 2007 at the age of 47.

Thomas and his wife, Marcia Leatha Thomas, also a 2001 Auburn graduate, were among those who endowed scholarships. Their gift also earned them admission to the newly formed Weatherby Society.

I am an engineer because of Dr. Weatherby, said Thomas. My wife and I are simply paying forward the scholarships we received while at Auburn. Dr. Weatherby gave me a scholarship to ease the financial obligations of an Auburn education, and that scholarship was less about GPA and academic performance and more about commitment, perseverance, leadership, relationship and ambassadorship.

There are few times in life where people or experiences transform the trajectory of your life. Dr. Weatherby changed the trajectory of my life. His fingerprint has influenced everything I have achieved in life. From my family to my professional achievements to my philanthropy, Dr. Weatherby is and will forever remain my inspiration.

Corporate giving

Two of AEPs longtime partners, Alabama Power Company and Brasfield & Gorrie, gave additional gifts under the campaign. When all was said and done, Advancement gained 11 new corporate donors.

Weve seen firsthand how AEP equips students with the needed expertise and skills to thrive in engineering, said Zeke Smith, a 1982 industrial engineering alumnus, member of the Auburn Board of Trustees and Alabama Powers executive vice president of external affairs. Weve had leaders at Alabama Power say they wouldnt be in the position they are in today, or had the opportunities theyve experienced, without this program.

Jeff Stone, a 1979 Auburn civil engineering alumnus and executive vice president at Brasfield & Gorrie, echoed Smith, citing the challenge to find a talented workforce in the face of current widespread labor shortages.

We regard Auburn engineering as one of the premier engineering institutions in the south, and the AEP program is the go-to source for developing diverse engineering talent at Auburn, he said. We know that if we can get these students to Auburn, they will be successful within the AEP program and they will likely stay in our geographic region upon graduation and add to our workforce.

Smith concurred, noting the partnership with AEP provides a formal pathway for us to engage and recruit prospective employees, providing the best opportunity to keep our brightest students in Alabama and advance our next generation of leaders.

The gift from Alabama Power renamed AEP as the Center for Inclusive Engineering Excellence, or CIEE.

Vicente and her Advancement colleagues were pleased to see many companies realize the benefit of supporting CIEE. It was not only a way to show their commitment to diversity, but it also ensured they had access to a diverse workforce.

Future plans

When the office surpassed its $2.5 million goal months before the April 30 celebration event, it didnt stop seeking donations. The effort ultimately resulted in $3.4 million for the program, with $1.2 million for student scholarships alone.

Cordelia Brown, CIEEs current director, said more scholarships will help recruit students who could do well in engineering, but need financial assistance, and help retain students as an incentive to those who perform well semester after semester. The additional funding will also ensure CIEE continues to promote career fairs and other professional development opportunities for students.

One of the most anticipated developments, according to Brown, is the return this summer of the Minority Introduction to Engineering, or MITE. The pre-college program aims to expose rising eighth through 12th grade students to Auburn engineering, as well as life at Auburn.

In order to secure future growth, you have to build a pipeline, said Vicente. MITE is the beginning of that pipeline.

AEPs recruiting and retention efforts have been successful for years. When Brown became director in 2015, it served 100 students. CIEE currently works with more than 400. Brown said reaching students before they may even consider Auburn just made sense.

We want students to know Auburnfrom the academic rigor to life on campus, said Brown. We want them to know we are here to help them be successful from the moment they come to campus through graduation and beyond.

I wasnt here 25 years ago when it all started, but [previous directors] Dr. Weatherby, Shirley Scott-Harris and Cheryl Seals created a solid foundation for us. Its our job to build upon that and increase our potential.

Promoting AEP to a center means Brown and CIEE staff will operate with a much wider perspective.

Historically, we were focused on recruiting and retention of undergraduate students, she said. Now we have the capabilities of recruiting much earlier, encouraging and exposing middle school students to engineering and to Auburn.

The center will also leverage more from alumni and corporations by utilizing their expertise to support what students need, such as mentorships, internships, co-op experiences and employment.

Relying on [alumni and corporate] engagement will be integral to the success of the center, Brown said.

CIEEs summer enrichment program, which is currently underway, is a piece of the pipeline that will benefit from additional resources.

This effort is critical to our mission, to assisting incoming freshmen in making that transition from high school, explained Brown. By exposing these students to campus, the academic rigor at Auburn, career exploration and engagement opportunities with corporation and alumni, we are setting them up to be ready for the fall semester.

By starting with students early on, they envision themselves being here at Auburn, and they stay engaged with us through graduation and beyond.

To read about the 25th anniversary, go here.

To read about the Weatherby Society, go here.

To read about the new Center for Inclusive Engineering Excellence, go here.

To read about the Minority Introduction to Engineering program, go here.
I just got home. I didn't miss anything they did for Sondheim, did I?

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Nothing yet

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Thanks for making the post OP!

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I was not expecting that Tom Hooper close up of Hugh to start the number

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Omg! I text the same thing to my neighbor about the close up at the start of the number!

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that was legit terrifying, I would sue

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That did not make me want to see Music Man

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right?? lol

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Tbh none of the clips I've seen make me want to see the show. It just seems so low energy?

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another reminder of why i loathe musicals

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my annual announcement that i fucking hate the tony awards and am sitting here hate watching (really half watching but catching up to barry)

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Thoughts so far:



The first hour wasnt as bad as I was expecting. I almost enjoyed the opening number.



Nice to see a couple wins for Six!



They are spreading the love around with the awards so far. I like it when that happens.



Really disappointed Angela didnt make it for the lifetime achievement award. I hope shes ok!



The opening number was meh. Ariana sounded amazing and moved great (thought her hair looks terrible), but the song wasnt good. I miss the days when LMM wasnt too big to write for award shows.



The Music Man performance did not remotely make me want to see the show.

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They are spreading the love around with the awards so far. I like it when that happens.



same, sweeps are boring!!

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I wish they had put score in the televised broadcast especially since its unlikely theyll win anything else tonight. I know they usually alternate between book and score but with the top two contenders potentially splitting the two, it would have been smart to have both.



Edit: Re: the opening, IA. I think Ariana did well but considering it was the 75th Tonys, it feels small



Edited at 2022-06-13 12:31 am (UTC)

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Yeah, I was hoping for some sort of big splash like NPHs Bigger. Im not sure that will ever be topped.

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hugh didn't look good either.

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ariana's silver pink outfit is... i think the style is great and fits her beautifully but silver with pink...? i wish the silver was something else



edit  my issue is that it looks vaguely like an airlines logo



Edited at 2022-06-13 12:22 am (UTC)

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Patti looks fucking amazing

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Low-key surprised she's only won three Tonys???

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Okay so I was not excited but watching those little kids grin ear to ear during TMM had me going.



I'm going to SOB if they do anything from Spring Awakening. Mostly because Groff will cry.

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ugh I love patti

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I really wanted to see Jennifer Simard win. And not just because I dont like Pattis voice. Jennifer was so great in Company!

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CHRIS HARPER WHO PAYS MY SALARY <3 <3 <3

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I was trying to explain that line to my mom without video context.

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Oh god, the salary line 

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lol I love Patti

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General Hospital

Days of Our Lives

The Young and the Restless

The Bold and the Beautiful

This Week in Soaps history...

June 17th-21st, 2013

This week on the US Daytime Soaps...Celia confided to Heather about her terrifying visions of the strange man. Heather suggested that the visions were a subconscious warning about Pete, since they had started around the time that Celia had met Pete. Opal was shocked when she walked in on Pete and Colby in bed together. Pete announced that it was time for him to get an apartment, so Opal decided to sell the mansion, unaware that Billy Clyde had bought it.AJ asked his father to return the steroids, but JR claimed that he had thrown them out. JR arranged for the Chandler jet to whisk Cara off for a visit with her son, Oliver. Miranda became uneasy with the growing friendship between AJ and Heather.Cassandra was rushed to the hospital and quickly stabilized, but Dr. Anders warned Angie that Cassandra had a long recovery ahead of her.Jesse was tempted to turn Uri over to the Feds, but Uri warned Jesse that Frankie, Randi, Natalie, and Brot would pay the price for Jesse's betrayal. Lea asked Zach about his split from Kendall, so Zach revealed that Kendall had walked out to safeguard their children.Brooke arranged a getaway for Liam and Hope at Big Bear. While at the cabin, Hope figured that Liam needed more time to heal before they could be together. During a walk alone in the woods, Hope spotted a naked man. He caught her photographing him, and she fell and hit her head as she ran from him.Rick broke up with Caroline and locked Bill in a jail prop to show how serious Rick was about protecting Maya.A producer offered Carter a starring role on a web series. When Caroline discovered that the producer was her friend, Rafael, she convinced Rafael to cast Maya as the leading lady.Someone attacked Sami in her jail cell.Under hypnosis, Sami revealed that Bernardi had held a razor and not a knife to harm Rafe. Chad and Abigail showed E.J. the video of Sami attacking Bernardi. Sonny, Abigail, and Chad, agreed not to tell the police about the video. Later, E.J. told Chad to destroy the video. Sonny told Will the truth about Sami's run-in with Bernardi before the shooting.Marlena blasted Adrienne after she heard Adrienne urge Sonny to end things with Will. Adrienne and Justin fought over his decision to take on Sami as a client. Justin and E.J. prepared Sami for her bail hearing.Brady and Nicole tried to keep their secret from Eric.J.J. stole drugs from the doctor's lounge. Jennifer made excuses for J.J. that put her at odds with Daniel.Kate fired Nick, who later met with Vargas and made him a surprising offer.Brady asked Nicole to go away with him. Later, Jennifer told a stunned Brady that Kristen had told Jennifer that she loved Brady long before the breakup.Kristen planned to use an unknown drug on Eric as the means to get her revenge on Marlena. Kristen moved forward with her twisted plot just as Brady decided to reach out to her.Alexis confronted Shawn about Olivia's shooting. Shawn admitted that he had been the gunman, but allowed Alexis to assume that Sonny had ordered the hit.Dante told Anna about the confrontation that Lulu had witnessed between Sonny and Carly because he suspected that Carly might have conspired with Sonny to kill Franco. Anna decided to rattle Carly's cage. Olivia woke up.Michael and Kiki were stunned to learn that they were cousins. Kiki made it clear to Michael that she wanted to forget their kiss. Michael discovered that Morgan had stolen his credit card and had used it to gamble online. Michael went to confront his brother about the stolen credit card, but walked in on Kiki while she was changing in the boathouse.Duke met Ava and questioned if she had any connection to the Jerome crime family. Ava denied that she knew Victor, Julian, and Olivia Jerome, but Duke appeared skeptical.Tracy accompanied Luke to the doctor to hear the results of his tests.Molly was delighted when Silas changed his mind about taking Rafe to New York City. Silas agreed to remain in town until Danny was better. Sam decided to follow Silas' chemotherapy protocol recommendation to reduce the side effects and increase Danny's chances of recovery. T.J. was hurt when he saw Molly kiss Rafe in the park, so T.J. took solace in Taylor's arms.Sabrina persuaded Patrick to take a secret paternity test to determine if Britt was pregnant with his child.Elizabeth heard the recording of A.J. confessing to sleeping with Carly.Bo questioned Dani about where she had gotten the oxycodone that she had overdosed on, which had been four times a normal dose, so she reluctantly revealed that a girl named Briana had supplied her with the pills. Briana was found dead, so Bo warned Cutter and Bruce that the narcotics unit would be watching the club.Jack realized that Dani had romantic feelings for Matthew, but he promised to keep her secret.Michelle called Matthew, but Jeffrey answered the phone. Jeffrey figured out that Michelle was in town, so he let Matthew know.Blair showed Tea the notes with the tattoo symbol that Todd had received and then told Tea about the shooting. Tea admitted that Victor might have gone to Willow Lake. Todd put a deadly plan into motion.Natalie realized that only one person could have taken out the restraining order in her name and sent John the hurtful letter, so she confronted her father. Clint defended his actions. Natalie decided to move forward by asking Cutter out on a date.Jeffrey told Viki about the SEC's investigation into the Pellegrino Fund. Clint assured Viki that he had enough money to save her and the Banner several times over.Victoria accused Billy of having an affair with Chloe. Billy confessed the truth about his gambling problem, but Victoria didn't believe him.Leslie opened Gus's safe deposit box and learned that Gus had left half of his estate to Rose. Leslie thought the blogger was connected to Rose. Neil posted a message with a reference to a rose in an effort to draw the blogger out.Dylan proposed to Chelsea, and she happily accepted.Fen learned about Lauren's affair with Carmine. Michael and Lauren refused to let Carmine ruin their attempt at a "first date." Michael warned Carmine to stay away from his family.Kevin returned the stolen merchandise to save his marriage to Chloe, but Alex remained suspicious of Kevin. Kevin overheard Abby confront Chloe about having an affair with Billy. Abby was jealous of Alex's rapport with Sheryl, and Alex caught Abby having a drink with Tyler.Tyler and Devon clashed over the fashion campaign, and Chloe called Lily to intervene. Neil advised Lily not to cross the line with Tyler.Traci confided to Jack that she and Steve were having problems.Nick prepared to tell Jack and Summer the truth about her paternity, but he backed out. Nick and Phyllis agreed to keep it a secret until they felt that Summer could handle the news. Phyllis invited Kyle on a business trip to keep him away from Summer. Nick and Avery planned an August wedding.THE WEEK OF JUNE 16th-20th, 2003Kay used the baby to get close to Miguel, but he put a stop to it when Charity became upset.Liz bought the Blue Note so she had a reason to stay in town, while Eve pushed TC to kick Liz out of their house. Eve fought to save Gwen and her unborn baby when they were rushed to the ER. Rebecca warned Gwen that if she lost the baby, she'd lose Ethan, too.From the pit, Sheridan tried desperately to get help and prayed Luis would save her. Luis didn't agree with Antonio about Sheridan just going away and vowed to find her.THE WEEK OF JUNE 14th-18th, 1999Panicking after his encounter with Annie and Cole in the warehouse, Gregory kidnaps Caitlin and Trey with hopes of fleeing the country. He knocks Olivia unconscious in a struggle as he absconds with Caitlin and Trey.As Antonio and the police begin the search for Caitlin, Trey and Gregory, Annie admits to plotting with Cole and posing as Francesca in efforts to trap Olivia (whom they believed to be Francescas killer), but they instead learned that Gregory was the one who murdered Francesca. With this information in hand, Antonio intensifies his search for Gregory.Thanks to clues left behind by Caitlin, Cole figures out that Gregory has taken them to The Grotto. Cole makes his way to there and after an intense struggle and chase with Gregory, the two men fall from a tower into the ocean!Tess confesses to Tim about her plot to use Maria and Benjy to get money from Ben. She also confesses her love him. Tim initially refuses her advances because he doesnt want Meg to take the fall for Benjys kidnapping. However, he soon gives into his own passion and makes love to Tess.Saras tendency to lie continues to cause problems for her and Casey, as she grows more worried about his continued feelings for Meg. She tells Casey about her fears that hell choose Meg over her like Tim did several years ago.As Ben and Maria bond and grow closer because of Benjy, Meg decides to move back into Surf Central.Amy believes that she can now get Sean because of a love potion. Source 3 and
tbh reading that description, I can 100% see why it became successful.

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Same, stuff like this has a pretty broad appeal even if the quality is bad.

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This sounds like the exact type of movie I'd be happy never seeing, but well wishes to everyone who disagrees.

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I dont necessarily have a favorite bad movie, but there are lots of thrillers from the 90s/early 00s with an IMDB rating between 4 and 6 that I actually enjoyed watching

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90s thrillers are the best sleeping with the enemy, the pelican brief, double jeopardy, the hand that rocks the cradle.

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The Gift (with Cate Blanchette), Frailty, The Seige (predicted 9/11 and all that followed tbh), Kiss The Girls, High Crimes so many great movies.

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Double Jeopardy...what a classic

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I rewatched double jeapordy this year and liked it even more than I did the first time lol

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The Hand That Rocks The Cradle just might be my all time fav 90s thriller.

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My cousin (80's baby) showed me some of these movies when I was a kid and I'm glad she did. I don't think I would have ever watched The Hand That Rocks the Cradle otherwise lol and it's definitely a good watch.

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The room

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I was pleasantly surprised, it was as bad as I thought it would be but it was really entertaining. It kinda gave me Die Hard vibes.

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It is?

I saw her name and immediately was like not even if I was bored out of my mind.



Bad film, I do know. I just saw counting cards with ONTD's side piece Oscar Isaac and I was disappointed.

I have a lot of fave bads, Guy Ritchie stuff except SH I hate those.



Edited at 2022-06-13 04:24 pm (UTC)

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> Guy Ritchie stuff except SH I hate those.





phew, taste!

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It was literally one of the worst movies I've ever watched, but I watched it so fuck me.



I almost felt bad for Elsa that Hemsworth has a stupid fucking cameo in there for literally no reason.

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I'm glad that "What?" is allowed as a comment.

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I just got rid of Netflix yesterday and it's actually a relief.

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I love that for you!

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I got rid of it a couple months ago, but then got a friends log in so I can watch the new season of The Circle so... at least I'm no longer paying for it.

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I have no interest in this but it seems like the type of movie that would be successful on Netflix, especially because their movie selection is generally bad.



My favorite "bad" movie is The House Bunny. Anna Faris is just so damn appealing in it.

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omg he's been married to the Fast & Furious lady this whole time?

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This has got to be one of those money laundering/vanity projects. Theres no reason this shit shouldve been made or ever be popular.

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Is it genuinely bad, or did right wing trolls read it has feminist themes and calls out their nutty conspiracies, so they decided to review bomb it?

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It is genuinely bad.

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Considering the Netflix description starts with Avengers star Chris Hemsworth, plus assuming the ONTD-extended universe also doesnt read, Id hypothesize most people were bamboozled into watching this.

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why is this show still on

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Inspiration for the GOP.

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Warning for the rest of us

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more than an angry stare, it's a "perpetually smelling shit" stare

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idgi do the showrunners not realize it's like a meme at this point. people were complaining about it during s3 lol



assuming it was in s4, i haven't watched since s3

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anyway just waiting for this show to be over so i can ff through the rest of it lol

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I hope it was done intentionally to be funny because surely the cant be so dumb?

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Is Elisabeth a producer? If she's one of them besides being the star, as long as it keeps getting renewed she's going to be there.

I read on the scientology blog from Tony Ortega that finally after many years being in it and being an actress she's one of the celebrities that have clout within the church. Apparently even after mad men she wasn't part of the top, so now she enjoys being invited to things.

This was around the time a profile came out, so maybe two or three months ago? I wanted to make a post but I forgot.

Also they said she's disconnected from her father.

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I'm only watching this still out of spite because IRDGAF about if June lives or dies lmao Janine remains the only one I care about.

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They better change shit up this season or Im out.

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The scientology tag 



OP 

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can this season be full of happy and good things please

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Um...



I am not sure The Handmaid's Tale contains much happy and good, but for snippets we see of before Gilead.

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I know thats why I want them to finally have shit burn down and stuff I'm sick of the trauma porn

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I think it would be important and interesting to see the characters rebuilding the country post-Gilead. I haven't read the book in forever, but they're not following the book anymore are they?



They can still have drama and difficult storylines, but building a democracy after all the trauma would be hopeful and move the story forward.

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I'm ready for Serena to get her dues and June to start a happy life. I will still watch the show but I'm so over everyone struggling and being miserable all the time. I want to see Serena get hers, June love it, and then be happy.

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I mean, I'm sure I'll watch the next season or at least read spoilers, but the show is exhausting at this point. I know they said they plan to turn The Testaments into a series as well... it's too much.



Still rewatch Fred's downfall from time to time, though. "Son!! son?? :(" lol.





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I was watching this yelling "CUT HIS DICK OFFFFFFFF"

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All I want to know is if they get Hannah out of Gilead

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Read The Testaments.

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Is it as dark as Handmaids, the book? I have not started it because I was afraid it would be too much.

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I don't watch this show because it just seems to be torture porn; has that changed at all?

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It has not.

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if anything it has gotten worse

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Im forever lol-ing at this shows camp reliance on the tight shot of June looking mad. We. Get. It.

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I haven't watched since S3, and I was obsessed then. I tried to watch the first episodes of S4 and was uninterested for some reason(might've been too heavy for me at the time). Should I catch up?

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If you don't feel compelled don't get back into it. I say this as someone who very likely will watch season 5 cause I'm an idiot completionist sometimes.

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I hate not finishing things but I also disassociate trying to watch something that isn't interesting sooooo... 

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I watched the first season, and it was already hard but everyone was so I watch it. But I couldn't continue - it's torture porn.



And in this world w everything that is going on.. I can't watch this.

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i've only seen season 1, how are they expanding the story for this long? i don't care enough to read a whole summary on each season but i'm curious so who knows, maybe a kind ONTDer can satisfy my nosy ass lol

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I think a lot of it has had to do with them fleshing out characters more than what you read in the book, like giving everyone flashback stories of their pre-Gilead lives and episodes that don't always focus on June. And making up new characters to focus on. Plus I think seasons 2-4 all together take place at max 2 years after the events of season 1, so not a lot of time has passed in the show at all.



There's a lot of convoluted shit they've just managed to make up over time lol

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If you feel like reading heres a cliffs notes.



Season 1 [ Spoiler (click to open) ] S1 ended with June pregnant for real but it was because Serena knew Fred couldnt do it so Serena arranged for June and Nick to have sex instead. And at the same time they develop feelings for each other. Janine loses her mind over what they did taking away her baby so Aunt Lydia wanted the Handmaids to stone her to death but June then the others refuse. June is being taken away after telling the house main where to find the secret letters to spirit out of Gilead



Season 2 [ Spoiler (click to open) ] S2 was longer. Its a lot of back n forth while June is pregnant and escapes and hides out at former Boston Globe hq where journalists were redacted then gets caught escapes caught escapes I lost count. Also lots of backstory about Emily and her wife being separated at the border because their marriage wasnt legal, and the evolution of Gilead where women were losing rights to their bank account, credit cards, and jobs, and the WH and Capitol were attacked. Nick was forced to marry a teenager who he wont have sex with until forced by Gilead but the girl falls in love with a similar age teenage boy. Her dad turns then in and theyre both executed. It ends with June being able to escape but at the last minute gives her baby to Emily to take to Canada while June turns back to help the other Handmaids.



Season 3 [ Spoiler (click to open) ] S3 is a lot of resistance effort by the Handmaids and the escalation of Gilead extremism to the outer territories (sewing Handmaids mouths shut and putting them in muzzles). Stabler from SVU is the DC Cmdr and later tries to r*pe June but she kills him and they secretly cremate his body. Josh from the West Wing is a Cmdr who tries to secretly help the Handmaids and wont do the ceremony except once when forced or he and family would be killed. His wife is mentally unhealthy and attempts suite. June discovers her but doesnt help revive her because June knows the woman is better off passing than trying to keep up the facade in Gilead with her fragile mental state. Separately Fred and Serena are now arrested in Canada and in trouble for being shitty slave owners and r*pists. It ends with June making sure a bunch of children and some Handmaids escape on a plane that lands in Canada.



Season 4 [ Spoiler (click to open) ] S4 is mostly about the trial of Fred and Serena in Canada for being shitty slave owners and r*pists. June and some Handmaids end up in a farm for a while where the daughter from The White Lotus goes on a killing spree. More back n forth with escape get caught escape caught escape caught. June and Janine and others make it to Chicago where Janine may have been killed in a fight with Gilead but eventually June makes it over to Canada. At some point Serena turns in Fred and stays in Canada while Fred is sent back to USA for his crimes but before Gilead can punish him, hes left vulnerable in some woods or something. It ends with June and the main Handmaids going back into USA to flog Fred and brutally beat and kill and I think possibly cut off his peen.



*this may or may not be completely accurate but anyway! Not exactly what you asked for. They just make it up as they go along but the later seasons add flashbacks and back stories on main characters and USA pre Gilead.If you feel like reading heres a cliffs notes.Season 1Season 2Season 3Season 4*this may or may not be completely accurate but anyway!

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Season 1 is most accurate to the book

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this is wonderful, thank you! And looks like it's gotten a lot more violent, I guess I made the right choice peacing out lol thanks again for summarizing it all <3

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The motel looks so cool though, very over the top! I will probably get a temporary account once all the episodes are out so I can binge it and cancel the account before the next payment hits lol.



Anyway I saw Trixie live a while ago and I would recommend it to anyone tbh! Her music is really nice, she's very funny and quick witted to respond to the audience. I never caught her run on Drag Race but I am very fond of anything she does with Katya. So I bought tickets to see them together in November, I'm extremely excited.

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just watch it on moviesjoy lol

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Her original run on s7 was forgettable. She was fun on her All Stars season but was obviously overshadowed by the Dela stunt, and the whole Shangela injustice as well. You missed nothing as her content outside of the show is way better.

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I saw Trixie mattel live a month or so ago in Helsinki. Instead of having an opening act she showed the first episode of this show. It was boring

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Same in Berlin! We expected like a 5 min preview or something but it went on and on and on

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lol these responses. I imagine setting that up was the team saying, "Ok, they're expecting a clip, but they'll soon realize they're watching the entire episode!!"



And the audience is just like, "dude... this is a long ass clip..."

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Discovery Plus also has a new series called Book of Queer and I've been learning SO MUCH. It's ridiculous but also super informative. I had no idea how much of history has been straightwashed.

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ohhhh i didn't know abt that series! i love queer history. do they cover german lgbt history and/or natalie barney and her paris sapphics?

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So far they have covered mostly American history but episode 2 did a bit on the Renaissance artists (Michelangelo and Da Vinci) so they may in future episodes!!!



That said, I will be googling the name you mentioned today while I should be working. hehehe

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The more I watched of Trixie on youtube, the less I like her. She really is high on her own supply and grossly materialistic. Meanwhile, Katya remains vastly superior.

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She is materialistic, isn't she. She grew up very poor so maybe that's why?

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Yes she did grow up poor. For a while it was interesting to watch her adjust to newfound wealth and fame but IMO she really has changed into some "new money" cliche.

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Their podcast is basically just Trixie talking about busy she is and name dropping now.

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yeah she lovesssss capitalism which is a big turn off, but she's also honest about it so at least that's something I guess. but the more popular she gets the less I like her bc of this lol

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i still can't believe we've allowed trixie to become this successful

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right? i cannot stand ha jfc

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I've never understood Trixie's appeal, but would be happy to be proven otherwise if anyone has good/funny videos of hers?

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The entire series of baking with easy-bake ovens on her YouTube are hilarious. With Katya, the whole "Trixie and Katya like to watch" are also a gem.

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The I Care A Lot one is so so so good



Edited at 2022-06-14 12:11 am (UTC)

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The Elite review on Queens Who Like To Watch is fucking hilariousssss

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Ding dong

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Also UNHhhh!

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The Glow Up one is basically required viewing.

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Trixie's appeal



it's a myth

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i feel like if you still haven't gotten her appeal by now, you won't ever lol i hated trixie with a passion but she's really grown on me, and i also appreciate how other queens have spoken highly of her, saying she's very nice & helped them financially when they needed.

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I honestly got into watching drag race bc I randomly watched her documentary moving parts. i love her friendship with katya bc they genuinely seem to care about each other and they crack me the fuck up. I second the people suggesting I like to watch. I sometimes skip netflix shows entirely and just watch those YT videos

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Literally everything she does with Netflix is gold. Additionally, the fact that she seems to genuinely be an amazing person according to everybody she has ever worked with says a lot about her character.

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I do love Trixie. Ill have to hunt around for somewhere to watch this in Australia 

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I'm a fan of hers and this show is funny, kinda predictable, but shows another side of her and her partner which is cute. I'm illegally downloading it ofc.

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i couldn't finish the first episode it was so scripted and boring

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I don't find her funny at all when she's scripted

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I'm guessing a show like this is run by straight people and they don't know what to do with a drag queen who is famous for her own sense of humor and wit. You can't write for a Trixie.

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I think the first episode was the shakiest. Nicole Byer in the second episode was delightful though.

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sameeeee, seems way too fake, I need my drag queens real and off the cuff

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Trixie Motel is fun but definitely not what I expected.



It's basically a run of the mill, formulaic, trope-heavy standard home renovation show, except it's a motel, and there are bits where Trixie "finds" inspiration for room decor, like a some housewife buying her flamingo lamps, or her finding a blanket with an interesting pattern.





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LOL I loved those flamingo lamps

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They were okay but the bit with the housewife was so lame.

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the show is very underwhelming, and I didn't find it to be enjoyable at all.



Her budgeting drama is lame, her boyfriend brings nothing to the table visually or personality-wise, and the guests are useless--the show had Monique Heart and could manage to make a fun moment.



There's neither enough renovation/decorating or humor (particularly of the podcast/unhhhh variety) to be appealing.

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i just like Orville tbh

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i haven't seen the show but i really love the vibes of the motel. i love anything over the top and pink and campy.



whenever i'm feeling down and want cheering up, i always watch trixie and katya's i like to watch glow up episodes  always end up wheezing w/ laughter no matter how many times i've seen them. also as a recovering addict i felt such a big connection with katya ever since she said on an ep of uhhhn that the first time she tried meth she thought "this is amazing and is going to be a huge problem for me"  i was like lol girl same (but with a different substance)

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this is truly an excellent pairing

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I think Trixie's vocals are so...flat? IDK, I don't enjoy her music but the rest of her content is enjoyable.

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I like some of her music but yeah, she's not a good singer.

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ia, i like the actual music in her songs and the lyrics are usually good, but her actual voice itself is pretty flat and not great. i still bop to some of her music tho with no one around and just ignore that part lmao

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jfc :(

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this really is dark

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authorities let this menace wreak repeat havoc in hawaii why?!

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Resources are pretty thin in Hawaii, and if they're still on the BI it's huge but with a sparse population. Plus the cops stay busy trying to bust pot farms, because, ya know, priorities.

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Uhhh wtf? It was already a worrying situation but this isidk. Hopefully (???) theyre just holed up somewhere playing us against the world.









I cant believe Im framing older unhinged adult off the grid with groomed teenager as the best case scenario, but everything else seems bleaker



Edited at 2022-06-13 10:40 pm (UTC)

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Ummm what the fuck

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This is horrifying.

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Jfc this is wild and getting worse

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Since Ezra doesn't have a regular 9-5 type job and (it seems like) no fixed residence, it's probably super easy for them to avoid process servers. And it seems like that is what they're doing.



I hope Tokata is safe, at least.

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IA.



I'm sure people envision a dedicated team of detectives at the ready tracking down credit card statements and relentlessly kicking out doors but they probably looked up Ezra's last known address, couldn't find them, and shrugged their shoulders.

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Yes, serving protective orders is pretty much dead last in priority for cops.

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Yeah but this is a high profile case that they probably want the attention for.

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Darker turn indeed.



This story is getting creepier and creepier.

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I hope Tokata is found alive and well, bc I have a feeling we're not gonna see Miller alive again.

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I cant imagine the reaction to him dying over something as insane as this.



Its such a shock to see a Hollywood Celeb live out a plot from an Investigation Discovery show.

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I haven't really been following this story save for the headlines, but my first thought was one or both of them aren't going to to be found alive.

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i've been seeing this a lot  what makes everyone think ezra is going to kill themselves? the unstable erratic behavior?

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Theyre probably too much of a narcissist to off themselves, but who knows. Theres no really going back from this, their life and career are successfully ruined. Reminds me of the dude from glee. These are very serious allegations.

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I don't get it either. it seems like quite a leap, especially for a narcissist.

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they literally posted a video on their instagram saying that they went on their own free will and told people their parents are mad they are queer and the parents are homophobic

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They seems to be extremely unstable, that was my worry as well. They needs professional help, like psychotherapy type. I hope they find both of them alive.

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Hopefully Tokata is well and it's just a case of the cops not looking that hard. They're really shit at cases like this.



IDK I've had some unfortunate experiences with cops and underage kids and runaways. Maybe with underage kids from white well-off families with parents who are pushing they put in some leg work but with everyone else? It's a toss up.

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Yeah in my experience cops dont try that hard which is why process servers exist. Ive told this story before but I served a protective order myself for a friend after the cops half-assed it.

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I wasn't too familiar with this until the post on this a few days ago and it mentioned that Tokata was only 12 when they first met. This is so disturbing.

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What the fuuuuuck. jeeeeeeez

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This is so fucked up. Did Miller have any issues before the Hawaii thing or is this just a sudden meltdown?

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they have a history of violence/lashing out, sadly



Edited at 2022-06-13 10:48 pm (UTC)

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Are they just a piece of shit or were they abused themselves... like when the abused becomes the abuser?

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There's a video of a few years back where they choked a woman.

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How much will it cost to wean Indonesia off coal? This is a pressing question for world leaders and climate policy-makers around the world in the lead-up to this years COP27 climate summit, set to take place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt this November. Just before the summit, in which the worlds premier politicians, scientists, policymakers, and industry leaders convene to set goals, broker deals, and make concrete agendas to meet the emissions standards set by the Paris climate agreement in 2015, G-20 leaders are meeting in Bali to try to ink a deal to wean the worlds biggest coal exporter off of the dirty fossil fuel. But it wont come easy.

Indonesia ranks high on the COP27 agenda as it represents one of the biggest hurdles to phasing out coal on a global scale, a necessary component of all pathways to lowering global emissions enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that the world will have to shut down all coal-fired stations by 2040 at the latest, and had previously urged that the world must reach peach coal by 2020. Instead, the world saw an enormous rebound of coal use in 2021, as ongoing pandemic woes coupled with sanctions on Russian energy caused energy prices to skyrocket.

The renewed vitality of the coal industry is one of many obstacles standing in the way of weaning Indonesia off of coal. The Southeast Asian island nation has the fourth biggest population in the world, and the third biggest coal-fired power capacity, after India and China, making it one of just a few countries with the power to make or break the Paris agreement. But coal is deeply embedded in the economic and political machinations of the country, and getting rid of it will not be easy.

The Indonesian parliament just drafted a clean energy bill that prominently features the continued use of coal, to the dismay and outrage of environmental experts and climate advocates. According to the Indonesia Mining Advocacy Network, a watchdog agency, as much as 50% of the countrys 575 members of parliament are directly connected to the mining sector. The Indonesian workers who rely on coal for their livelihoods are also pushing back against climate efforts, and are advocating to keep raising coal output targets while the market is hot.

Further complicating the issue, Indonesia has a massive surplus of coal on its hands after it was heavily over-invested in the sector in past decades. Convincing them not to make use of this cheap and abundant energy source will be difficult  and expensive. This is whats on the minds of the worlds richest nations as they work toward brokering one of their trickiest deals yet on the eve of COP27. Indonesia will be our next partnership, US Treasury Climate Counselor John Morton was quoted by Bloomberg this week. "If this were easy, it would have been done years ago. Countries could have managed this on their own, he said. We're talking about economy-wide economic transitions of energy sectors, which are huge political beasts."

So far, the worlds richest nations have not made good on their promises to provide climate finance to the worlds poorest countries. Global leaders have recognized that this kind of economic cooperation is fundamental to a successful energy transition and pathway to 1.5 degrees, and had promised 12 years ago to give $100 billion in climate finance to poor countries by 2020. They broke their promise. But at last years COP26 in Glasgow, the pledge was reinstated. Now the G-20, a group of 19 nations and the European Union representing 90% of the gross world product, is headed to Bali to put some of that money where its mouth is and make a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Indonesia to help break the status quo, in the words of U.S. climate envoy John Kerry

It will be a huge uphill battle, but already The Asian Development Bank has launched a multi-billion dollar plan to help Indonesia and the Philippines phase out half of their coal plants over the next 10 to 15 years, and Indonesia has promised to retire some stations earlier than planned if its economically viable. Breaking Indonesia of its coal habit will cost the world billions more in climate finance, but experts will tell you its a small price to pay for avoiding catastrophic climate change.



By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

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Attracted by cheap prices, India and China continue to increase their imports of Russian crude, which is now mostly banned in the West.

India, which wasnt a big buyer of Russian oil until March this year, has now imported five times the amount of all the Russian crude it bought in the whole of 2021, according to estimates from commodity data firm Kpler cited by The Associated Press. So far this year, India has imported 60 million barrels of crude from Russia, compared to 12 million in Russian oil imports for the entire 2021, per Kpler data.

China has also increased its intake of Russian oil, although not as dramatically in percentage hikes as India.

China, however, overtook Germany as the largest importer of Russian crude oil anywhere in the world, Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said earlier this month, analyzing Russias fossil fuel exports and revenues in the first 100 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

India became a significant importer of Russian crude oil, buying 18% of the countrys exports. A significant share of the crude is re-exported as refined oil products, including to the U.S. and Europe, an important loophole to close, CREA said.

India is even said to be looking to negotiate six-month supply deals with Russias oil giant Rosneft at a time when Western buyers avoid dealing with Moscows crude.

Other price-sensitive buyers in Asia could also import more Russian crude. Sri Lankas Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told AP the country would first look into other sources, but is open to importing Russian crude as it is desperate to ease a major economic and fuel crisis.

In total, Russia earned $97 billion (93 billion euro) in revenue from fossil fuel exports in the first 100 days of the war (February 24 to June 3), with EU importing 61% of this, CREA said.

Russia is likely getting more revenues from oil and gas now than before the war in Ukraine, U.S. energy security envoy Amos Hochstein said at a Senate subcommittee hearing last week.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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I opened my computer to write about the mass murder of 19 students and teachers at a school in Texas and the mass murder of four at the Oklahoma hospital, then I read about the shooting at a nightclub in Indiana that killed two just this past weekend.



It seems every day there is another brutality emanating from the barrel of a gun in America. Just three weeks ago, 10 people were massacred by a racist at a grocery store in New York. Already that tragedy has been replaced on news pages by coverage of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The perpetrator of that atrocity was a psychopath with a history of making violent threats and abusing animals on a livestreaming app.

Then in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a former patient murdered a doctor with whom he had a grudge, along with three other bystanders. As recently as Saturday, an apparent argument led to bloodshed in the parking lot of a bar in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The perpetrators of each of these crimes had different motivations. But they all had one thing in common. They all used firearms to carry out their vicious plans. In three of the four cases, they used what is called AR-15-style rifles, which are high-powered weapons that reload the chambers automatically, allowing the shooter to continue firing at a rapid rate.

Without easy access to murder weapons, these deranged lunatics would not be able to kill so many people. A gun lets them attack innocent victims from long range.

Given the scale of the bloodshed and the outrage and fear circulating through the American public, you might think U.S. politicians would be uniting to do something to save lives. Maybe they would be tightening the rules about gun ownership, preventing people with histories of violent discourse from owning guns, or getting the especially deadly AR-15s off the streets.

You'd be wrong.

Instead of trying to solve the murder crisis, American politicians, primarily Republicans, who are ideologically and financially welded to the firearms industrial complex, refused to even answer questions. Senator Susan Collins stepped into an elevator when a reporter asked her if she supported giving background checks to gun buyers. Senator Ted Cruz mutely walked along when asked in public by Sky News reporters for his view. Reporters in Europe are apparently just as perplexed as American citizens about why their politicians won't do anything.

Republicans absolutely refuse to consider any law to make schools and public places safer. They say that there just needs to be more people with guns to stop bad guys with guns. But good luck finding out who is good and bad beforehand. By the time someone responds to the shooter, there is already blood on the ground. In Texas, the police officers waited outside for over an hour before they stepped inside to do anything.

Republicans say there are already too many guns in America. There are almost 400 million to be exact  more guns than people. That sounds like an illustration of the size of the problem. But instead of trying to solve the problem, Republicans throw up their hands and say it's already too late.

Does that mean every American owns a gun? No, only 30% of Americans own a firearm. So American politicians' irrational love for guns is being driven by a minority of the population. But the small group that controls the Republican Party is especially likely to own and love guns.

The reality is, American Republicans will never help pass any new laws regulating guns because they are always obsessed with proving their rigid ideological bonafides to their extreme supporters. Furthermore, they receive campaign contributions from the Firearm Industry Trade Association.

Money is thicker than blood, as they say, and nothing is going to be done to protect Americans from mass murder as long as American democracy is corrupted.

Mitchell Blatt is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/MitchellBlatt.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

If you would like to contribute, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn.
Aluminum prices declined overall in May. However, near the end of the month, they appeared to hit bottom and began to trade sideways. Conflicting macroeconomic and geopolitical factors continue to pressure markets, resulting in unclear direction and price trends.

Shanghai Lockdowns Return, Compounding Uncertainty

Shanghais reopening proved short-lived as the city stumbled back into lockdown this week. Following a surge in COVID cases, restrictions and mass testing are returning to most areas of the city. Shanghai first went into strict lockdown in late March to quell a major outbreak. Currently, officials intend to release areas that test negative from lockdown. Those that test positive will remain quarantined.

China remains unwavering in its COVID-zero commitment. The impact of this most recent setback remains unknown. It will likely depend on how long and how expansive the lockdowns become.

As cases rebounded almost immediately after Shanghai began reopening, the risk for subsequent lockdowns there and in other cities remains high.

Chinas COVID Policies Still Squeezing Aluminum Prices

As long as Chinese demand remains muted, we can expect aluminum prices and market movements to be affected. During the initial stretch of Shanghais lockdown, manufacturing activity plummeted. This caused Chinas demand for aluminum to plummet too.

According to the latest numbers, imports of unwrought aluminum and aluminum products fell 11.1% from March to April. They also dropped 37.7% year over year. Meanwhile, output appeared largely unaffected. In fact, the average daily and total monthly production of primary aluminum hit record-highs in April, aided by the relaxation of power curbs.

Chinas boost allowed global aluminum production to hold firm year over year during the month. It was a surprising result given the tightness brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, as supply outpaced demand in China, bearish sentiment climbed, and global aluminum prices slumped.

With Shanghais restrictions returning, markets will likely begin to price delays into Chinas overall recovery.

LME Inventories Fall While WTI Crude Climbs

As Chinese demand continues to experience holdups (however temporary), falling LME warehouse inventories and soaring energy prices add competing pressure to the upside for aluminum prices.

For example, inventories saw an 18.5% month-over-month drop at the end of May. On top of that, average inventory levels during the first five months of 2022 sit 55.34% beneath where they were in 2021. Of course, stock levels do not necessarily translate to a movement in prices. That said, consistent declines on top of falling European production levels may very well add friction to any fall in aluminum prices.

Energy prices also continue to climb. Indeed, WTI crude oil prices closed May more than 71% above the year prior. During the early days of June, prices increased beyond the $120/barrel mark, and they remain unlikely to subside in the near term.

In its most recent (and punitive) round of sanctions, the EU agreed to ban as much as 90% of Russian crude oil imports by the end of 2022.

Meanwhile, according to European Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, China continues to purchase Russian oil at a 35% discount. India, likewise, has stopped short of cutting off Russian energy supplies.

Nonetheless, the EUs recent decision will leave a growing number of countries vying for energy produced elsewhere. As a result, aluminum production and input costs will continue to see pressure.

CME Aluminum Futures Contract Builds Momentum

The LME nickel contract experienced the most direct and substantial fallout from the historic March nickel crisis. However, the reputational damage to the exchange has begun to permeate through to other metals.

The average daily volume for Aluminum futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange hit an all-time high in May with a 138% year-over-year jump. Open interest likewise increased 158% during that same period. Meanwhile, on the LME, open interest fell over 14% from March 8 to the end of May.

Thus far, aluminum has not yet faced the same loss of liquidity as nickel. There have also been few issues with volatility or price discovery. Nonetheless, this could indicate the beginning of a gradual shift between the two exchanges as a result of the crisis.

Since March, the CME Group has increasingly looked to capture disillusioned traders from the LME. Momentum is building in aluminum futures. Thats why the exchange also launched aluminum options on May 23. Despite these efforts, the LME remains the leading global exchange for industrial metals by a wide margin.

By AG Metal Miner

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The three largest oil firms in China are expected to increase their capital expenditures significantly this year.

The country has been working hard to ensure its energy security by developing its own oil and gas resources.

China claims to have set two world records in deep-sea energy exploration this weekend.

China said this weekend it had recently set two world records in deep-sea energy exploration with its domestically developed technology as the world's largest crude oil importer looks to boost its energy security by developing resources at home. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) said on Saturday that it had set two world records in "sea land directional drilling crossing" and "deep-sea trench behind the channel," according to a Chinese media report.

A multi-functional modular seabed trencher developed in China has completed the laying of the first offshore pipeline project in Bangladesh at a depth of 11 meters (36 feet), more than double the typical depth of offshore pipelines, China says.

The country has been looking to boost its domestic oil and gas production and resource discovery in recent years, as part of an official government policy to increase energy security amid volatile international energy prices.

This year's geopolitical events, with oil prices soaring to more than $100 a barrel for the first time since 2014 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, made China's domestic energy development even more important.

"To enhance China's capacity for resource production and supply, we will step up petroleum, natural gas and mineral exploration and development, improve the national strategic goods reserve system, and ensure the supply of primary products," Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said in March 2022 at the National People's Congress.

A few days earlier, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China said that the upward price pressure on energy and agricultural commodities "poses a new challenge to ensure domestic supply and price stability."

NDRC, which is China's planning body, said in early March that the country would raise coal production and reserves, develop "major petroleum reserve projects," and increase petroleum reserves, too.

Related: Putin: Russia Won't Shut Down Oil Wells

As a result, China's biggest state-owned oil and gas companies have started boosting development efforts and are pledging the highest combined capital expenditure for 2022 since 2014, the last time oil traded at above $100 a barrel.

The three largest Chinese oil firmsPetroChina, Sinopec, and CNOOCexpect to raise their collective 2022 capital expenditures by 4.6 percent year over year, to at least $79 billion (530 billion Chinese yuan), according to data from company filings compiled by Bloomberg. Individually, the planned capex for PetroChina and Sinopec this year are second and third in the world in terms of U.S. dollars, behind only the capex plan for 2022 of Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco, the data showed.

The capex boost comes as China prioritizes energy security amid soaring energy commodity prices and geopolitical turmoil on the global markets.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) announced that its 2022 spending would be the highest in the corporation's history. Sinopec guided for a capital spending of $29 billion (198 billion yuan) this year. This would be an 18-percent increase compared to 2021 and higher than the previous record capex from 2013.

PetroChina, for its part, plans a lower overall capex this year, but a boost to spending on exploration and production, to develop more resources domestically, including in shale oil and gas formations.

In the first quarter of 2022, PetroChina's domestic oil and gas production rose by 4.5 percent compared to the same period last year.

CNOOC, the biggest offshore oil and gas producer of China, said in April its Q1 2022 capital expenditure increased by 5.6 percent year over year.

In the global market turmoil brought about by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China is prioritizing energy security to all other goals, including pledges to reduce emissions.

In the short term, China will continue to maximize the use of coal as it caters to its energy security, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in March.

The energy transition is a long process and China cannot just "slam the brakes" on coal, Xi noted.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Just as China was returning to business as usual after the latest string of lockdowns, an "explosive" outbreak in a Beijing district could derail this.

"The recent outbreak ... is strongly explosive in nature and widespread in scope," said a spokesperson for the Beijing municipal government over the weekend, as quoted by Reuters.

The outbreak has not been particularly large in terms of numbers, with 166 cases identified so far, but China's zero-Covid policy makes restrictions likely as the country seeks to minimize infections. Mass testing has been planned for this week in the district where the outbreak happened.

Last week, a return to lockdowns in Shanghai weighed on oil prices, suggesting it may be a while yet before the Chinese economy returns to normal. On the flip side, news that China's oil imports in May were 12 percent higher than a year earlier could potentially lend support to prices, although they may not be indicative of an actual demand increase.

"This does not indicate that oil demand is picking up. Instead, China is likely to have acted opportunistically, buying crude oil from Russia at a significantly lower price than the global market level in order to replenish its stocks," Karsten Frisch from Commerzbank told Reuters last week.

The Chinese authorities remain wary of a further spread, meanwhile.

"At present, the risk of a further spread still exists. The most urgent task at the moment is to trace the source of the cluster and also manage and control the risks," the Beijing city government spokesman, Xu Hejian, told media, as quoted by Reuters.

If a further infection spread does take place, it would probably have a negative effect on oil prices, providing such urgently needed relief, although just how pronounced this effect would be remains an open question amid tight global supply and little chance of meaningful production growth anywhere.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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The economic pain for many countries being caused by still-high crude oil (and gas) prices may be exacerbated by another extensive series of blockades of key oil facilities in Libya. This follows the very recent failed attempt by Fathi Bashagha  appointed prime minister of the alternative government in the east of the country three months ago  to take over power in Tripoli. Bashagha, and the Nawasi Brigade militia who accompanied him, were eventually driven out of the city by various other of many factions fighting there. This occurred amid the ongoing refusal of the Government of National Unitys (GNU) Prime Minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah - who was appointed through a United Nations (U.N.)-led process in 2021 - to hand over power until such a time as a properly elected government is voted into office by the people of Libya. Bashagha, who has led three such coup attempts in three months, is unlikely to stop his current attempts to seize power, given the distinct possibility that talks held in Egypt at the behest of U.N. envoy Stephanie Williams to reach an agreement on a new constitutional framework and a timeline for elections might see him sidelined. Even if Bashagha is successfully removed from any legal or quasi-legal basis of power and accepts the decision, the fault lines that run through Libya, and permeate into its oil sector, are too deep and broad to just disappear with him. Since the removal of long-time leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011, as analyzed in-depth in my new book on the global oil markets, the multi-factional civil conflict that has ensued found genuine relief only in the September 2020 agreement signed between Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the rebel Libyan National Army (LNA), and elements of Tripolis U.N.-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA). However, even back then, a key part of this deal was an in-principle agreement to look into establishing a commission not only to determine how oil revenues across Libya are distributed but also to consider the implementation of a number of measures designed to stabilize the countrys perilous financial position. Just prior to the September 2020 agreement, there had been yet another series of long-running oil blockades that had cost the country an estimated US$9.8 billion in lost hydrocarbon revenues.

Both before this 2020 agreement and after it began to break down, Libyas oil sector has been subject to various-scale blockades of its key oil facilities, and even now around half or slightly more of Libyas oil production is offline, according to various estimates. Prior to this, following the National Oil Company (NOC) declaring a legal state of force majeure because it is impossible to implement its commitments towards the oil market, Libyan crude oil production had seen an extended loss of around 550,000 bpd of its oil production as a result of blockades on major fields and export terminals. These included the closure of the Zueitina port, whose crude loadings average around 90,000 bpd, with production also stopped at Abuatufol, Al-Intisar, Anakhla, and Nafura. Just prior to this, the Sharara field in the west of the country, which can pump around 300,000 bpd, was also shut down, and just prior to this the El Feel oil field, which produces 70,000 bpd, was closed, as was the 60,000 bpd Brega operation. These sites are key suppliers of mostly high-quality light, sweet crude oil, notably including the Es Sider and Sharara export crudes.

Related: Putin: Russia Won't Shut Down Oil Wells

It is easy to forget that before Gaddafis removal in 2011, Libya had been easily able to produce around 1.65 million bpd of mostly high-quality light, sweet crude oil. Production had additionally been on a rising production trajectory, up from about 1.4 million bpd in 2000, albeit well below the peak levels of more than 3 million bpd achieved in the late 1960s. This said, the NOC had plans in place before 2011 to roll out enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques to increase crude oil production at maturing oil fields. Even up until the most recent major production blockades of its western fields and eastern ports ended, Libya had been producing around 1.2 million bpd. From that level, there still appeared scope to increase this to the 2.1 million bpd targeted by Libyas Oil Ministry, and to hit the informal interim targets of 1.45 million bpd by the end of 2022, and 1.6 million bpd by the end of 2023. It is apposite to remember at this point that Libya still has around 48 billion barrels of proved crude oil reserves  the largest in Africa.

Given this potential, there was, and to some degree still is, the prospect of major international participation in Libyas oil sector. Earlier this year, the Oil Ministry had begun discussing exploration and development options with several international oil companies, with an agreement of sorts being struck with TotalEnergies. This saw the French firm commit to continue with its efforts to increase oil production from the giant Waha, Sharara, Mabruk, and Al Jurf oil fields by at least 175,000 bpd and to make the development of the Waha-concession North Gialo and NC-98 oil fields a priority, according to the NOC. The Waha concessions  in which TotalEnergies took a minority stake in 2019  have the capacity to produce at least 350,000 bpd together, according to the NOC. The second deal was the approval by Libyas GNU of the sale of the 8.16 percent stake in the countrys giant Waha oil concessions held by the U.S.s Hess Corporation to the remaining stakeholders  again, TotalEnergies (with a 16.3 percent share), and also ConocoPhillips (also 16.3 percent), each of which was offered first refusal on half of Hesss stake.

At the core of Libyas short-, medium-, and long-term crude oil production outlook, though, and again reiterated behind the scenes in the very recent Cairo talks by the U.S., is that there must be genuine progress on the issue of fair distribution of oil revenues, the promise of which had successfully underpinned the 2020 agreement for longer than anyone expected. According to a Washington-based legal source spoken to by OilPrice.com at the time of the September 2020 agreement and reiterated recently, the NOC had been working on alternative banking arrangements for the oil revenues that may or may not involve the input on final dispersal of more players. Part of this process would be the creation of technical committees with representatives drawn from all sides of the civil conflict. These separate committees would deal with field awards, in tandem with the oil and gas ministry, and the dispersal of oil and gas revenues, in tandem with the ministry and the Central Bank of Libya (in which the revenues are physically held). As it stands, neither the GNA nor the Central Bank of Libya has publically and unequivocally agreed to its core principles as yet, and during the last major series of blockades of Libyas oil infrastructure, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Richard Norland, urged the countrys central bank to safeguard oil revenue from misappropriation.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

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Some analysts claim it will be difficult to avoid the elephant in the room: high oil prices.

President Biden is planning a visit to Saudi Arabia where it is expected hell attempt to mend ties with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

President Joe Biden awkwardly claimed that his planned Saudi trip, where it's expected he'll mend ties with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) and 'move on' from the issue of the Jamal Khashoggi murder, has not much to do with energy. He had this exchange with reporters outside of Air Force One on Sunday:

Reporter: "Have you decided, sir, whether to go to Saudi Arabia?"

Biden: "No, not yet."

Reporter: "What would be holding up the decision at this point? Are there commitments youre waiting for from the Saudis on the negotiations over peace talks?"

Biden: "No, no, the commitments from the Saudis don't relate to anything to do with energy."

Axios wrote the same day based on Israeli sources that the trip will come in mid-July and is to include a stop in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. A formal announcement is expected early in the week, as soon as Monday.

"Three Israeli officials told Axios Biden is expected to visit Israel and the Palestinian Authority on July 14 and 15 before traveling on to Saudi Arabia. The White House has not confirmed those dates, and the Israeli officials all warned that the timing had shifted several times and could change again," Axios wrote.

But it's not fundamentally about the White House begging the Saudis to pump more oil? The assertion might be within the realm of believability if Biden hadn't also recently dispatched officials to repair severed ties with Maduro's Venezuela in a clearly desperate effort to tame oil prices.

In the Sunday exchange with reporters, Biden said further, "It happens to be a larger meeting taking place in Saudi Arabia. Thats the reason Im going. And it has to do with national security for them  for Israelis." He continued, "I have a program, anyway. It has to do with much larger issues than having to do with the energy price."

Ironically, the Democratic president is suggesting this is really focused on a furtherance of Trump's Abraham Accords. After the UAE and Israel established ties under the accords, along with several other Arab states, there's been talk that Saudi Arabia could be next.

However, it's obvious that when the idea of a Biden-MbS meeting was first floated in March, oil production was top of the agenda - and has remained so - as Americans continue to feel pain at the pump, and Europe figures out 'what's next' with its partial Russian oil embargo amid the war in Ukraine. In Biden attempting to frame the trip as making it all about Israel and regional security, he's fooling nobody. But it appears this is the White House narrative meant to deflect from the Khashoggi killing and Biden's re-embrace of a "pariah" (Biden's own words), which a number of outside investigations have found was ordered by the crown prince himself.

By Zerohedge.com

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Germany could lend up to $10.4 billion (10 billion euro) to bail out a former unit of Russias Gazprom, which the German government expropriated earlier this year, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg on Monday.

Gazprom Germania GmbH was the German unit of Gazprom until a few months ago before the German government placed Gazprom Germania under the trusteeship of the German energy regulator in April to ensure security of supply after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Last month, Gazprom halted gas supply to Gazprom Germania in retaliation for Western sanctions, as Russia imposed sanctions on Gazproms subsidiaries in Europe, banning them from supplying Russian gas.

Without Russian gas, Gazprom Germania has had to buy gas at higher prices on the spot market.

Gazprom Germania has several storage sites in Germany, including the biggest one in the country. Without financial support, the firm may be unable to fill the gas storage to the levels Germany and the EU require before next winter to prevent gas shortages.

Now, according to Bloombergs sources, the German government, via state-held bank KfW Group, could approve a loan of between $5.2 billion (5 billion) and $10.4 billion (10 billion) to Gazprom Germania. This loan could come as early as this week, the sources told Bloomberg, adding that plans are not final and could still change.

The Federal Network Agency of Germany, Bundesnetzagentur, told Bloomberg it wouldnt comment on speculation, noting that all parties involved with Gazprom Germania are working intensively to keep business operations going.

Europes largest economy, Germany, is a major buyer of Russian natural gas and has been preparing for nearly three months for the possibility that fossil fuel supplies from Russia could be disrupted either because of sanctions or retaliatory moves from Moscow to cutor cut offthe supply of natural gas.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Libya is losing oil production at the rate of 1.1 million barrels daily, the countrys oil minister Mohammed Aoun has said, adding that almost all of the countrys oil fields were shut down.

Libyas largest field, El Sharara, was shut down last month along with El Feel, with reports saying that it was groups affiliated with the eastern parliament that shut down oil production, among them the Libyan National Army of Halifa Khaftar.

According to Aoun, however, it appears that the closure instructions were issued by an official body, the Petroleum Facilities Guard in the closure areas.

Libya is currently in the throes of yet another flare-up of violence as two politicians vie for the post of Prime Minister: interim PM Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and eastern-affiliated Fathi Bashaga. According to reports, the groups shutting down fields and export terminals are affiliated with the Bashaga camp.

Bashaga has been sworn in as the new prime minister of the country, but Dbeibah has refused to step down.

According to the oil minister, the only functioning fields right now in Libya are Hamada and the Mellitah complex, with the Wafa field producing from time to time.

This means that Libya is producing almost no oil, putting further strain on an already undersupplied oil market. The North African country was already producing about 600,000 bpd in May due to the large field and export terminal closures, and now, based on Aouns comments, its output rate is close to about 100,000 bpd.The impact of such outages on international prices could have been significant were it not for the fact that outages in Libya are frequent and the latest news from China, which is mass-testing citizens in a Beijing district after an outbreak of Covid. The latter sparked concern about Chinas demand prospect in case it decides to impose more lockdowns to stem the spread of the virus.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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The UK government is considering ending the pricing system of British power prices, which are now linked with natural gas prices, in a bid to reduce energy bills for millions of households, The Times reported on Monday, quoting government sources.

The market reform, which would be the major energy market overhaul in decades, will aim to cut the connection between gas prices and power prices, as the UK is expected to increase its offshore wind and nuclear power source in the electricity generation mix in the coming decades.

The UK government is currently drafting the reform, which is expected to be introduced as legislation this autumn. The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy plans to unveil proposals for reforms in the coming weeks, The Times reports.

By reforming the energy market, the government looks to decouple power prices from natural gas prices, whose surge in the past months has led to a major increase in energy bills and a jump in the so-called energy price cap, which protects households from excessively high bills by capping the price that providers can pass on to them.

The government argues that the reform makes sense because a growing amount of the UKs electricity comes from renewable energy sources.

Yet, the reform is fiendishly complicated, government sources told The Times.

In April, the Energy Price Cap was raised by more than 50 percent, doubling the number of fuel-stressed households in the UK overnight. But the UK hasnt seen the worst of its cost-of-living crisis as energy bills could soar by another 42% in less than six months time when the energy regulator will raise the so-called energy cap again. Soaring energy prices are hitting UK households and energy providers in a market that has realized that the cost-of-living crisis is not going away soon and will get even worse come next winter.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Bob Saget's family home is for sale for $7.6 million (6.2 million.)

The Los Angeles property in Crestwood Hills, where the comic lived for nearly 20 years, has been listed after he died on January 9 aged 65.

He purchased the six-bedroom, 6.5-bathroom estate in 2003 for $2.9 million (2.4 million), according to the Wall Street Journal, with the 'Full House' star living there until his passing.

Features of the luxury home include Elan smart home technology which controls almost every ultra-premium utility.

Saget's nephew Adam told the New York Post: "Bob was very into tech. Over the years he put in smart house controls and automation throughout the home;"

Listed by 'Compass' and spanning around 6,600sq ft, the home was the product of Douglas Busch Design.

The beloved stand-up comic and sitcom star lived in the home with his widow Kelly Rizzo, 43, who Saget married in 2018.

She recently said about struggling with her grief: "It's like, he's still my husband. It's not like, 'Oh, he's my former husband'. It's like  the relationship is different now. It's just - it is what it is."

She recently moved into a new property but is still in touch with Saget's children.

Rizzo was stepmother to his three adult daughters, Lara Melanie Saget, 32, Aubrey Saget, 35, and Jennifer Belle Saget, 29, who the comic had with ex-wife Sherri Kramer, 65.

She told PEOPLE earlier this month: "His girls came to stay with me for you know, the first time since I moved into the new house just this last week, and they walked in and I was like, 'So it's kind of like a museum to your dad, so don't freak out but yes, he's everywhere.

"And then they'll catch me like talking to a picture every once in a while, and they're like 'Stepmommy Kelly, are you OK?'"

Saget was found unresponsive in his hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Florida, most likely from a fall, with eergency responders pronouncing him dead at the scene.

An autopsy later revealed he suffered blunt head trauma from an accidental blow to the back of his head and subsequently died from injuries in his sleep.
 Flash

The 19th Shangri-La Dialogue, a premier defense and security summit in the Asia-Pacific region, concluded in Singapore on Sunday, with many delegates recognizing peace and development as common goals while urging dialogue and cooperation to maintain regional and global stability.

Delegates and experts also highly appraised China's policy of safeguarding multilateralism, regional peace and stability, and building a shared future for humanity introduced during the three-day summit.

Meanwhile, they cautioned against geopolitical strategies that bring division, instigate confrontation and undermine peace in the region, adding that any attempt to divide countries is doomed to fail.

GSI provides new guide to peaceful development



The Global Security Initiative (GSI) proposed by China is another global public good, injecting confidence in global security and demonstrating China's commitment as a major country to upholding world peace and stability.

The world is facing multiple crises rarely seen in history. The way forward is to uphold and practice multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind, said Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe.

Noting that the Asia-Pacific is the world's most vibrant and promising economic powerhouse, Wei urged countries to strive for the bright prospect of building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future that enjoys durable peace and provides security for all.

During the summit, Malaysia's Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said security cooperation is essential.

In a world blanketed with populist decisions, with an eye only on the next election, Hussein said it is vital to think about a more peaceful and stable future.

The GSI has won high praise from experts. Woo Su-keun, director at the Institute of East Asian Studies of Korea, told Xinhua that the GSI is rich in content and highly relevant in upholding a vision for maintaining global peace and security.

Woo said the GSI is in line with China's vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, adding that it emphasizes win-win cooperation and support for genuine multilateralism and offers Chinese solutions to jointly safeguard world peace.

Kin Phea, director-general of the International Relations Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said China consistently upholds a vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.

"China has been playing a more important role in safeguarding global and regional peace and stability," he said.

Chen Gang, assistant director of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore, said that China wants to build a peaceful Asia-Pacific region and reiterated its promise on no-first-use of nuclear weapons at the summit, which is of significant importance, particularly in the current backdrop of growing nuclear threats.

Under the GSI, China calls for establishing a community of security in the Asia-Pacific region, which is entirely different from the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy that seeks to form exclusive blocs to counter China, Chen said.

Gu Qingyang, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore, told Xinhua that Wei's remarks emphasize solidarity and cooperation.

Gu said China is an important contributor to world peace, playing a crucial role in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic and stimulating a global economic recovery.

Calls for cooperation, communication



During this year's dialogue, delegates urged countries to carry out security cooperation, with the interests of all parties guaranteed.

On Sunday, Singaporean Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said that the world stands at a potentially dangerous point in history. Ng said Asia desires a regional inter-dependency that is productive and mutually beneficial.

Gu noted that many delegates from developing countries have expressed hope for peaceful development in the region rather than conflict.

Seun Sam, a policy analyst at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said China believes in peaceful development and win-win cooperation. "China does not only want to grow alone but also wants other countries to grow with it."

Woo said a Cold War mentality featuring opposing camps must be abandoned, and each country's circumstances should be considered. The right of each country to choose its own development path should be fully respected.

US 'Indo-Pacific strategy' doomed to failure



Although U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin claims that the so-called Indo-Pacific strategy would promote freedom, openness and prosperity in the region, many senior officials and analysts believe that it would stir up tensions instead and cause regional conflicts, all in an effort to contain China's development.

Many officials and experts criticized the Indo-Pacific strategy for attempting to divide the region.

China believes that any regional strategy should bolster regional peace, stability and the shared interests of all, Wei sad.

"Its true intention is to use this strategy to maintain the U.S.' hegemonic system," said Lieutenant General Zhang Zhenzhong, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission.

It is a strategy that causes division, instigates confrontation and undermines peace in the Asia-Pacific region, Zhang said. "The U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy is a strategy that goes against historical trends and prevailing will of regional countries. It only serves the U.S. own interests and therefore is doomed to failure."

Gu said that the purposes of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy are to maintain its own hegemonic interests and cover up its intention to start a new Cold War.

The United States would use the strategy to throw the Asia-Pacific region into a geopolitical conflict, destroying China's chances for a peaceful rise, said Gu.

Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto called for an Asian approach to resolving challenges in the region, saying that "each country has their own way of solving their problems, but each country has to maintain good relations with their neighbors" and with all the major countries of the world, noting "the question here is that we must always consider and respect the national interests and rights."

Prabowo said countries should respect China's rise. "We have some differences. We will strive to solve those differences in an amicable and in a mutually beneficial way. That is the Asian way."

Joseph Matthews, senior professor at the BELTEI International University in Phnom Penh, said U.S. strategy in the region directly threatens the centrality of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The so-called Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, initiated by the United States, aims to counter China's influence in the region by unsettling ASEAN, he said.

Koh King Kee, president of the Center for New Inclusive Asia, a non-government Malaysian think tank, said ASEAN and China maintain close economic and trade ties thanks to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Koh said that only serving regional geopolitical interests, the Indo-Pacific strategy cannot harm ASEAN-China relations.
COZAD, Neb.  A Kearney man was killed Friday in a car-semitrailer crash on Interstate 80 near Cozad.

The Nebraska State Patrol was dispatched to the scene of a two-vehicle crash about 12:05 p.m. near mile marker 221, a mile west of Cozad.

A preliminary investigation showed that a Chevrolet Cruze driven by John Paul, 63, of Kearney was traveling east when it went out of control, crossed the median and entered the westbound lanes, where it collided with the semi, said Cody Thomas, a State Patrol spokesperson.

Paul was airlifted to Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney, where he died.

The driver and passengers in the semi were not injured.

Westbound I-80 was closed for about four hours as the crash was investigated and cleaned up.

Thomas said the crash remains under investigation.
LINCOLN  When a client is too afraid to drive to an appointment, Erick Lopez helps them get there.

Providing transportation wasnt in the job description as a legal assistant at Pesek Law in Omaha, but he understands the fear some clients have.

As an undocumented immigrant, Lopez never thought hed have a drivers license or a job in the U.S. But when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was introduced in 2012, it gave him an opportunity to work with and fight for other undocumented immigrants.

Lopez was born in Mexico, and his father came to work in the U.S. when Lopez was 2.

In 2003, at just 5 years old, Lopez and his mother made the treacherous journey through the desert to the U.S. With the assistance of a smuggler known as a coyote, Lopez and his mother were able to make their way to Omaha, where Lopezs father was living.

The first few years in the U.S. were difficult for Lopez and his family as they adapted to a new country.

At school, Lopez struggled to communicate with his teachers and classmates. He spent a chunk of his time in English as a second language classes.

It was difficult to understand what was happening and what directions they were giving. It was all gibberish in the beginning, Lopez said.

As his English skills improved and he was able to communicate more, his parents advised him to never draw too much attention to himself. When he was asked where he was from, he told people he was from Omaha, not Mexico.

In middle school, Lopez began speaking with his parents about his desire to get his drivers license when he turned 16. Thats when he began to understand his restrictions.

They told him that he wouldnt be able to get a license or a job when he turned 16, because he wasnt a U.S. citizen.

Everything started making sense, Lopez said.

That realization could have crushed Lopezs spirit, but he didnt let it.

I think it motivated me more, he said. I knew I had to work harder to get what I wanted. I had to show people that being American is more than just a piece of paper that says youre a citizen.

In 2012, undocumented youths across the U.S. received life-changing news: The Homeland Security Department would no longer deport certain undocumented youths who came to the U.S. as children. They were allowed to stay in the U.S. under the DACA program, implemented by the Obama administration.

Lopez was 13 when DACA was enacted, but the earliest he could apply was two years later.

As he waited to apply, Lopez became skeptical of the program.

What if I give out my information and ICE finds me and deports my family and I? he thought.

But when the time came, he paid the $495 application fee, sent in his required documents and waited for approval.

Once he was approved, Lopez quickly got his drivers license and found a job at the Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium in Omaha. After a month of working there, Lopez was promoted and put in charge of concessions.

But while DACA protects hundreds of thousands of undocumented youths in the U.S. from deportation, it does not grant them official legal status or a pathway to citizenship.

Nor does it last long, as theyre required to pay a fee of $495 to renew their DACA status every two years.

Although DACA was temporary protection, Lopez remained optimistic and heavily involved in his community.

Maureen Gregor, his Omaha South High School counselor, said shes never had a student take on as many challenges as Lopez.

He was a part of College Possible, the community service chair for his schools JROTC program, a board member of the National Honor Society, a mentor in Packer Partners, a member of the senior cabinet and was voted prom king his senior year.

In my 10 years at South High, I dont think Ive ever seen a student volunteer as much as Erick did, Gregor said.

As senior year approached, Lopez knew he wouldnt have the same opportunities to fund his college education as his peers did.

But again, he wasnt discouraged. He took a chance and applied for the two big scholarships he could  The Dreamers Pathway and the Susan Buffett Scholarship.

Because of his status, taking out loans wasnt an option. If he did not get one of those full-ride scholarships, a college education was out of the picture.

It was a really hard time not knowing how I was going to pay for college. I didnt want to put it all on my parents, because they had already given me so much, he said.

Two months later, he got the news: He had won the Susan Buffett Scholarship and would attend the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

During his time at UNO he met his current boss, Ross Pesek, through The Underserved Law Opportunities Program.

The program aims to provide the opportunity for a legal education to students in underserved communities, and encourages students to provide legal services to those communities.

Pesek said most of the firms clients are immigrants who are not always understood by those in the legal system. Thats why Pesek believes Lopez is an essential person in the office.

Lopezs daily tasks include attending mediations, court hearings and attorney meetings with Spanish-speaking immigrants to make sure they can communicate when there are no Spanish-speaking legal service providers.

As Lopez wraps up his three years at Pesek Law, he looks forward to continuing his education at the University of Nebraskas College of Law in the fall.

Once he graduates, he said hed like to practice law in workers compensation, injury and medical malpractice cases.
KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP)  The governing body of an Alaska borough has overwhelmingly reversed the mayors veto of grant funding to a group that provides support to the LGBTQ+ community.

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly voted 6-1 Monday to override Mayor Rodney Dials veto of $1,638 in grant funding to the Ketchikan Pride Alliance, the Ketchikan Daily News reported.

Dial defended his veto during a presentation in attempts to persuade the assembly to let the veto stand. He said the group was an advocacy organization promoting activism.

Assembly Member Judith McQuerry interrupted to say his presentation was full of inaccuracies.

Dial then said an upcoming Drag Queen Storytime at the public library  which the pride organization is not involved with  was characteristic of the groups harmful impact.

This group and others like it nationwide are making a deliberate effort to reach small children in an attempt to change them, Dial said. The goal is to expose small children to sexualized conduct and to normalize it, and instill their values and beliefs in the next generation. It is not healthy to expose young children to this. This is depriving them of their innocence.

Angela Salazar, a citizen member of the committee tasked with reviewing grant applications and making recommendations to the assembly, submitted a letter rejecting one of Dials reasons for vetoing the funding, that funding the group would cause division in the community and is unjust because it is for a specific population.

Quite the contrary in my opinion. If you are going to approve a veto for funding a specific population or segment in our community then you would need to veto most all of the applications. We could separate out the felons, the homeless, arts community, the disabled, the abused ... the list goes on and on. All of these populations are marginalized groups in our community and the nonprofits that serve them need our support. One is not any less or more important than the other and it is not our job to judge who is acceptable and who is not based on lifestyle, Salazar wrote.

Assembly Member David Landis, who serves on the grant committee, said the committee had done what it was created to do.

This is actually a pretty simple exercise for what the grant committee dealt with, and it goes straight to what theyre charged with, which was to judge and rank the applications fairly dispassionately, using the criteria that was set before them, and made the recommendation, Landis said. The committee made a fair judgment that was not based on a polarized viewpoint, it was based on what was before us.

Assembly member Jeremy Bynum, who cast the lone vote to uphold the veto, said he intended to have a discussion item on a future agenda to look more carefully at what rules and criteria the borough should use to decide which organizations should receive grant funds.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Ketchikan (Alaska) Daily News.
Bear market hits Wall Street as stocks, bonds, crypto dive

NEW YORK (AP)  Wall Street tumbled into whats called a bear market Monday after fears about a fragile economy and rising interest rates sent the S&P 500 more than 20% below its record set early this year.

The index sank 3.9% in the first chance for investors to trade after getting the weekend to reflect on the stunning news that inflation is getting worse, not better. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was briefly down more than 1,000 points before finishing with a loss of 876.

At the center of the sell-off again was the Federal Reserve, which is scrambling to get inflation under control. Its main method to do that is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession if used too aggressively.

With the Fed seemingly pinned into having to get more aggressive, prices fell in a worldwide rout for everything from bonds to bitcoin, from New York to New Zealand. Some of the sharpest drops hit what had been big winners of the easier low-rate era, such as high-growth technology stocks and other former darlings of investors. Tesla slumped 7.1%, and Amazon dropped 5.5%. GameStop tumbled 8.4%.

The best thing people can do is to not panic and dont sell at the bottom, said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, "and were probably not at the bottom.

Jan. 6 panel hears: Trump 'detached from reality' in defeat

WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of Jan. 6, but the defeated president seemed detached from reality and kept clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power, the committee investigating the Capitol attack was told Monday.

With gripping testimony, the panel is laying out in step-by-step fashion how Trump ignored his own campaign team's data as one state after another flipped to Joe Biden, and instead latched on to conspiracy theories, court cases and his own declarations of victory rather than having to admit defeat.

Trump's big lie of election fraud escalated and transformed into marching orders that summoned supporters to Washington and then sent them to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to block Bidens victory.

He's become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff, former Attorney General William Barr testified in his interview with the committee.

Barr called the voting fraud claims bull, bogus and idiotic, and resigned in the aftermath. I didnt want to be a part of it.

Bucolic Ukraine forest is site of mass grave exhumation

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP)  The lush green beauty of a pine forest with singing birds contrasted with the violent deaths of newly discovered victims of Russia's war in Ukraine, as workers exhumed bodies from another mass grave near the town of Bucha on Kyiv's outskirts.

The hands of several victims were tied behind their backs. The gruesome work of digging up the remains coincided with the Ukrainian police chief's report that authorities have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 people since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Workers wearing white hazmat suits and masks used shovels to exhume bodies from the soil of the forest, marking each section with small yellow numbered signs on the ground. The bodies, covered in cloth and dirt, attracted flies.

Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured, Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police, said at the scene. The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people, many in mass graves in the forest and elsewhere.

The S&P 500 is in a bear market; heres what that means

NEW YORK (AP)  Wall Street is back in the claws of a bear market as worries about inflation and higher interest rates overwhelm investors.

The Federal Reserve has signaled it will aggressively raise interest rates to try to control inflation, which is the highest in decades. Throw in the war in Ukraine and a slowdown in Chinas economy, and investors have been forced to reconsider what theyre willing to pay for a wide range of stocks, from high-flying tech companies to traditional automakers. Big swings have become commonplace and Monday was no exception.

The last bear market happened just two years ago, but this is still a first for those investors that got their start trading on their phones during the pandemic. Thanks in large part to extraordinary actions by the Federal Reserve, stocks have for years seemed to go largely in only one direction: up. But the buy the dip rallying cry popular after every market slide has grown more fainter  a recent rebound in stock prices was wiped out by a furious bout of selling over the past four days.

Here are some common questions asked about bear markets

Takeaways: Trump's mind 'made up' on fraud ahead of Jan. 6

WASHINGTON (AP)  The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection systemically made the case in its second hearing Monday that several of Trump's advisers warned him against making false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election that he lost. But the president would not listen.

The nine-member panel is trying to make the case that Trump, and those allies who helped him, were deliberately lying as he pushed those election falsehoods in the weeks ahead of the violent insurrection. The rioters who broke into the Capitol that day and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden's victory were echoing Trump's lies that he, not Biden, had rightfully won the election.

Takeaways from Monday's hearing:

TRUMPS 'MIND WAS MADE UP'

In a series of video clips from the committee's closed-door interviews, several of Trumps advisers testified that they told him repeatedly he should not declare that there was widespread election fraud  and that those claims were false. But Trump increasingly relied on wild theories that were pushed by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, among others, according to the testimony.

Tentative Senate gun deal has surprises, and loose ends

WASHINGTON (AP)  The outline of a bipartisan Senate agreement to rein in gun violence has no game-changing steps banning the deadliest firearms. It does propose measured provisions making it harder for some young gun buyers, or people considered threatening, to have weapons.

And there are meaningful efforts to address mental health and school safety concerns. It all reflects election-year pressure to act both parties feel after mass shootings in May killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York, and 21 more in Uvalde, Texas.

Details of the plan remain in negotiation between Democrats and Republicans, with disagreements over how tightly the initiatives should be drawn. That means the proposal's potency  and perhaps whether some parts survive  remain undetermined as it's translated into legislation.

Here's what's in and out of the agreement:

A STRENGTHENING, NARROWLY, OF BACKGROUND CHECKS

South Korea says North completed prep for new nuclear test

WASHINGTON (AP)  South Koreas top diplomat said Monday that North Korea has completed preparations for a new nuclear test and that only a political decision by the countrys top leadership can prevent it from going forward.

After talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said the North would pay a price if it goes ahead, as feared, with what would be its seventh nuclear test in the coming days.

North Korea has completed preparations for another nuclear test and I think only a political decision has to be made, Park said. Prior to Monday, U.S. and South Korean officials had said only that the North was nearing completion of such preparations.

If North Korea ventures into another nuclear test, I think it will only strengthen our deterrence and also international sanctions," Park said. North Korea should change its mind and make the right decision.

Apart from sanctions, Park did not say what that price the North would pay or outline how the deterrence policy would change, but Blinken said the United States and treaty allies South Korea and Japan could adjust their military postures in response.

Yellowstone floods wipe out roads, bridges, strand visitors

HELENA, Mont. (AP)  Massive floodwaters ravaged Yellowstone National Park and nearby communities Monday, washing out roads and bridges, cutting off electricity and forcing visitors to evacuate parts of the iconic park at the height of summer tourist season.

All entrances to Yellowstone were closed due to the deluge, caused by heavy rains and melting snowpack, while park officials ushered tourists out of the most affected areas.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, though dozens of stranded campers had to be rescued by raft in south-central Montana. Authorities also said they would be assessing a potential loss of homes and structures in Montanas Stillwater County.

Elsewhere, some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the Yellowstone and the park's gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a landslide, a bridge washed out over a creek, and roads badly undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.

The flooding cut off road access to Gardiner, Montana, a town of about 900 people near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Gardner rivers, just outside Yellowstones busy North Entrance.

Search continues for missing men in Brazilian Amazon

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  The search for an Indigenous expert and a journalist who disappeared in a remote area of Brazil's Amazon continued Monday following the discovery of a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged in a river.

The items were taken by Federal Police officers by boat to Atalaia do Norte, the closest city to the search, and police said Sunday night they had identified the items as belonging to the missing men, including a health card and clothes of Bruno Pereira, the Brazilian Indigenous expert.

The backpack, which was identified as belonging to freelance journalist Dom Phillips of Britain, was found tied to a tree that was half-submerged, a firefighter told reporters in Atalaia do Norte. It is the end of the rainy season in the region and part of the forest is flooded.

Paulo Marubo, president of local Indigenous association Univaja, for which Pereira was an adviser, told The Associated Press that search parties from the army, navy, Federal Police, Civil Defense, firefighters and Military Police were working in the area where the belongings were found.

Upon returning to Atalaia do Norte after a full day of searching Monday, a Federal Police officer told reporters they had not found either mans body or other items.

Western wildfires force evacuations in Arizona, California

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  The Western U.S. on Monday marked another day of hot, dry and windy weather as crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires that had forced hundreds of people to leave their homes.

Roughly 2,500 homes have been evacuated because of two wildfires burning on the outskirts of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, officials said at an afternoon briefing.

We all have felt the pain of watching our beautiful mountain burn. We acknowledged what an incredibly difficult time this is for those who have been evacuated and for those whose homes have been threatened, Coconino County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Patrice Horstman said.

The wildfire prompted the county to declare an emergency. It's been fueled by high winds that have grounded aircraft as an option for firefighting. Crews are planning on being able to use aircraft Tuesday as winds moderate, authorities said.

Incident Cmdr. Aaron Graeser said the Flagstaff-area fire is one of the countrys top priorities for firefighting resources.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  U.N. member nations elected five countries to join the powerful U.N. Security Council on Thursday with no suspense or drama because all were unopposed  Ecuador, Japan, Malta, Mozambique and Switzerland.

Winning a seat on the 15-member Security Council is considered a pinnacle of achievement for many countries because it gives them a strong voice on issues of international peace and security.

Today, the war in Ukraine is at the top of the list. Although Russias veto power has prevented the council from taking action, it has held numerous meetings since Moscows Feb. 24 invasion that have seen contentious exchanges between top diplomats from both countries and their supporters.

But many other conflicts are also on its agenda from Syria and Yemen to Mali and Myanmar as well as international security issues from the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran, and attacks by extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida.

The results of the secret ballot vote in the 193-member General Assembly were Ecuador 190, Japan 184, Malta 185, Mozambique 192, and Switzerland 187.

Even if a country is running unopposed, it must obtain the votes of two-thirds of the member states that voted in order to win a seat on the council.

General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid announced the results of the secret-ballot vote and congratulated the winner.

It will be Mozambique and Switzerlands first time serving on the council, Japans 12th time, Ecuadors third and Maltas second.

Switzerlands President Ignazio Cassi called the election a very important day for the country, coming 20 years after it joined the United Nations.

We want to be part of the solutions for this world, he told reporters after the vote. We want to contribute to peace, stability and wealth in the world.

Japans vice foreign minister, Odawara Kiyoshi, said his country will do its best to make this United Nations working as a whole.

He said Japans priorities for the Security Council are to work effectively, focus on implementation and human security including energy and food, and also make efforts to address the situation in North Korea.

The five new council members will start their terms on Jan. 1, replacing five countries whose two-year terms end on Dec. 31  India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway.

They will join the five veto-wielding permanent members of the council  the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom and France  and the five countries elected last year: Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana and United Arab Emirates.

The 10 non-permanent seats on the council are allotted to regional groups, who usually select candidates, but sometimes cannot agree on an uncontested slate.

Follow AP's coverage of the United Nations at https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations

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ISTANBUL (AP)  Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was welcomed in the Turkish capital on Wednesday just as the foreign minister of Russia, a key ally of the ostracized Latin American regime, was also visiting the city.

Maduro is on a Eurasian tour after being rebuffed by Washington, which decided not to invite him to the Summit of the Americas.

Turkey is one of a handful of places around the world  Russia and Iran are other friendly states  where Maduro is welcome amid U.S. sanctions on his country.

Similarly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also faces travel restrictions due to his countrys war on Ukraine.

Lavrov arrived in Turkey, which like Russia borders the Black Sea, two days after NATO members Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro reportedly refused to allow his plane to fly through their airspace to reach Serbia.

His official duties in Ankara  a meeting with his Turkish counterpart  took place at President Recep Tayyip Erdogans palace just hours before Maduro arrived at the same venue.

There was no official word on whether the two men met.

Turkey and Venezuela have deepened their ties in recent years, with trade rising to nearly $850 million, according to Erdogan. Venezuelas gold trade with Turkey has risen as U.S. sanctions have cut off other sources of income for Caracas.

Erdogan told a news conference with Maduro that Turkey was against the one-sided sanctions on Venezuela. We will always stand with the friendly and brotherly people of Venezuela, he said, adding that he hoped to visit Caracas next month.

Manduro thanked Turkey for its support during the COVID-19 pandemic and said the two countries had signed three agreements on banking, agriculture and tourism.

Earlier, Maduro laid a wreath at the tomb of Turkeys founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk before traveling to the palace, arriving in a limousine escorted by ceremonial cavalry.

Erdogan was the first Turkish president to visit Venezuela in 2018 while Maduro has traveled to Turkey on several occasions.

During one such stopover Maduro and his wife were criticized for dining in the expensive Salt Bae steak restaurant while many Venezuelans were struggling with poverty.

The Summit of the Americas meeting of regional leaders in Los Angeles is taking place June 7-to-10. The governments of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua have been excluded from it by the United States.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Asian benchmarks decline after bear market hits Wall Street

TOKYO (AP)  Asian shares fell across the board after Wall Street tumbled into whats called a bear market, indicating that major U.S. benchmarks and individual stocks have fallen 20% or more from a recent high for a sustained period of time. Benchmarks fell in Japan, Australia, South Korea and China. The Japanese yens continuing slide against the dollar paused. At the center of the sell-off was the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is scrambling to get inflation under control. Its main method is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession.

Jan. 6 panel hears: Trump 'detached from reality' in defeat

WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were systematically dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But the defeated president seemed detached from reality, clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power. That's the assessment from former Attorney General William Barr's testimony presented at Monday's House hearing investigating the insurrection. The panel is delving deeper into what it calls the big lie, the defeated Republican presidents false claims of voter fraud. The panel says Trump's falsehoods provoked a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol.

Bucolic Ukraine forest is site of mass grave exhumation

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP)  Ukraine's national police chief says authorities are investigating the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide in the war since the Russian invasion in February. Authorities in the Kyiv region near Bucha on Monday showed reporters several victims whose hands had been tied behind their backs. Some of the victims were found in a lush green Ukrainian forest, where birds were singing. Workers in white hazmat suits conducted an exhumation in a mass grave behind a trench for a military vehicle. In other news of the war, the Russian military claimed it had destroyed weapons that the U.S. and Europe had supplied to Ukraine. There was no immediate comment on that from Ukraine.

The S&P 500 is in a bear market; heres what that means

NEW YORK (AP)  Wall Street is back in the claws of a bear market as worries about inflation and higher interest rates overwhelm investors. The Federal Reserve has signaled it will aggressively raise interest rates to try to control inflation, which is the highest in decades. Throw in the war in Ukraine and a slowdown in Chinas economy, and investors have been forced to reconsider what theyre willing to pay for a wide range of stocks, from high-flying tech companies to traditional automakers. On Monday, the S&P 500 fell 3.9% and closed nearly 22% below it's Jan. 3 high.

Takeaways: Trump's mind 'made up' on fraud ahead of Jan. 6

WASHINGTON (AP)  In its second day of public hearings, the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is making the case that Trump and his advisers knew that his claims of fraud in the 2020 election were false. The argument is key to the committee's overall investigation as the nine-member panel is laying out the evidence about what led to the violent insurrection. The rioters who broke into the Capitol that day and interrupted the certification of President Joe Bidens victory were echoing Trumps falsehoods. The committee is using video clips from more than 1,000 closed-door interviews over the last year.

Tentative Senate gun deal has surprises, and loose ends

WASHINGTON (AP)  The outline of a bipartisan Senate agreement on reining in gun violence has no game-changing steps banning the deadliest firearms. But it does propose measured provisions that could make it harder for some young gun buyers, or people considered threatening, to have weapons. And there are meaningful efforts to address mental health and school safety concerns. There's pressure on both parties to act after last month's mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. But details of the plan remain in negotiation between Democrats and Republicans, with disagreements over how tightly the initiatives should be drawn. Here's a look at where things stand.

South Korea says North completed prep for new nuclear test

WASHINGTON (AP)  South Koreas top diplomat says North Korea has completed preparations for a new nuclear test and only a political decision by the countrys top leadership can prevent it from going forward. After talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Monday, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said the North would pay a price if it goes ahead as feared with what would be its seventh nuclear test in the coming days. Park did not say what that price would be, but both he and Blinken urged Pyongyang to step down. Both men say the door to negotiations without any preconditions remains open.

Yellowstone floods wipe out roads, bridges, strand visitors

HELENA, Mont. (AP)  Flooding has wiped out roads and bridges and closed off all entrances to Yellowstone National Park at the onset of the busy summer tourist season. Officials are evacuating visitors from the northern part of the park. And the flooding has cut off road access to Gardiner, a town of about 900 people near Yellowstones busy North Entrance. The flooding caused at least one rock slide, cut off electricity and imperiled water and sewer systems in northern Yellowstone, but has affected other areas of the park as well. Flooding also has hit the Yellowstone gateway communities of Red Lodge and Joliet in southern Montana.

Search continues for missing men in Brazilian Amazon

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  The search for an Indigenous expert and a journalist who disappeared in a remote area of Brazils Amazon cis continuing following the discovery of a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged in a river. Federal police say they've confirmed the items belonged to the missing men. Members of the Univaja Indigenous association say they were still hunting for the men on Monday. And federal police issued a statement denying reports their bodies had been found. Police earlier reported finding traces of blood in the boat of a fisherman who is under arrest as the only suspect in the disappearance.

Wiggins delivers on both ends, Warriors lead NBA Finals 3-2

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Andrew Wiggins delivered the biggest game yet in his eight-year career with 26 points and 13 rebounds, Klay Thompson scored 21 points, and the Golden State Warriors beat the Boston Celtics 104-94 for a 3-2 NBA Finals lead.Stephen Curry contributed 16 points and eight assists but the all-time 3-point leaders NBA-record streak of 132 straight postseason games with at least one 3 ended along with his NBA-best run of 233 consecutive games with a 3 between regular season and playoffs combined.

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GRESHAM, Ore. (AP)  Federal law enforcement is investigating a fire that broke out on Friday morning at an anti-abortion center in a suburb east of Portland.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said on Twitter that they considered the fire at a First Image Pregnancy Resource Center in Gresham to be suspicious in nature." KOIN-TV reported that the fire began at around 3 a.m. on Friday morning and that the investigation would involve multiple agencies.

Gresham Police, Gresham Fire, ATF, and the FBI are all involved in the investigation at this time, Gresham Fire Battalion Chief Jason McGowan told the station. Because its suspicious, in each structure fire we collect evidence, that evidence is then sent off to be processed, and once that process is over, we should have more information.

Pregnancy resource centers like the one in Gresham are clinics that typically provide free services and counsel clients against having abortions. Many are religiously affiliated and most are not licensed medical facilities.

The fire comes amid increasing tension and nationwide polarization over abortion that has arisen since a U.S. Supreme Court draft decision that could overturn Roe v. Wade leaked in May. Fire broke out at another anti-abortion center in upstate New York earlier this week and police are investigating a May arson fire in at a women's health clinic that plans to open and provide abortions in Casper, Wyoming.

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security published a memo warning of increasing threats of civil unrest and violence surrounding the looming Supreme Court decision.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
 Flash

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on Saturday discussed peace in Yemen and the Iran nuclear deal in a phone call.

The secretary-general received a phone call from Amir Abdollahian, said Guterres' press office on Sunday in a readout.

"The secretary-general expressed his satisfaction at the extension of the truce in Yemen as well as his appreciation of Iran's efforts in this regard. The secretary-general also reiterated his position that diplomacy must prevail in order to return to the full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)," said the press office, using the official name of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

In 2015, Iran signed the JCPOA with the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States, plus Germany) and the EU.

However, former U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled Washington out of the pact in May 2018 and re-imposed sanctions on Iran. This prompted Iran to drop some of its nuclear commitments and advance its previously halted nuclear program.

Since April 2021, Iran and the remaining JCPOA parties have held several rounds of talks in Vienna to revive the deal.
VISBY, Sweden (AP)  Having to defend Gotland against a foreign invasion seemed such a far-fetched notion to Swedish decision-makers at the start of the century that they demilitarized the Baltic Sea island.

Now, the Swedish Armed Forces are back, and they are practicing with U.S. troops not just how to defend the island with a population of 58,000, but how to take it back from a foreign aggressor.

U.S. Marines have conducted air drops and amphibious landings on Gotland as part of a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea.

Though the annual BALTOPS exercise isn't held in response to a specific threat, this year's edition comes amid heightened tensions with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. About 7,000 military personnel and 45 ships from 14 NATO countries, as well as Sweden and Finland, took part.

Despite their non-aligned status, the two Nordic have practiced regularly with NATO countries, and their governments decided in the wake of the Ukraine war to seek full membership in the Western military alliance.

Im feeling really prepared. I mean, we have made a big deployment on Gotland, and we will defend Gotland, Swedish Col. Magnus Frykvall, the islands regiment commander, said as military hardware was being deployed on the coast. Its a really hard task to take a defended island.

Strategically located in the middle of the southern part of the Baltic Sea, Gotland has seen foreign invasions throughout its history, the most recent one in 1808, when Russian forces briefly occupied it.

But after the Cold War ended, Sweden felt the risk of a Russian aggression was so remote it refocused its armed forces on foreign peacekeeping operations rather than territorial defense. The Gotland regiment was closed in 2005 as Sweden downsized its military.

Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula in 2014 led to a rethink, and a new regiment was established on Gotland in 2018. There are now around 400 Swedish soldiers permanently based on the island. Further reinforcements are planned following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Nonetheless, many Gotlanders feel Sweden would not be able to defend the island on its own.

If we were to be invaded, we wouldnt stand a chance because our defense is too small. We have a really modern and good defense, but its too small, said Lars Soderdahl, a 33-year-old chef in the islands main town, Visby.

Sweden, which has stayed out of military alliances since the Napoleonic Wars, applied for NATO membership together with Finland in a historic move last month. NATO's existing 30 members are set to discuss the issue this month. Turkey has threatened to hold up the applications over the two countries' perceived support for Kurdish groups.

Finland and Sweden have sought security assurances from the U.S. and other NATO countries during the application period.

Kicking off the BALTOPS exercises last weekend in Stockholm, U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it was important for the NATO allies to show solidarity with both Finland and Sweden.

Their membership in the alliance would leave Russia in a difficult military position, with the Baltic Sea encircled by NATO members except for in Russias Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad and the Russian city of St. Petersburg and its surrounding areas.

The strategic importance of Gotland, a popular summer vacation spot for Swedes, is often viewed in relation to the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are particularly worried about any Russian aggression following the Ukraine invasion. Gotland is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from mainland Sweden and 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the coast of Latvia,

The thing is, from here, you make supplying and supporting the Baltic states a lot easier or a lot more difficult, depending on who is in control of the island, Mikael Norrby, an Uppsala University academic, told The Associated Press.

Coinciding with the NATO exercises, Russia's Baltic Fleet launched its own military exercises this week. The fleets press service referred to the maneuvers Tuesday as a scheduled exercise focused on various types of security tasks, including the tracking and destruction of enemy submarines.

There are more than 20 warships and boats in the sea ranges of the Baltic Fleet, performing combat tasks both individually and as part of ship search-and-strike groups and ship strike groups, the press service said in a statement.

It added that corvettes, patrol ships, small missile carriers, anti-submarine vessels, minesweepers, and landing hovercraft were among the vessels taking part in the exercises.

Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.

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TIRANA, Albania (AP)  Albanian officials on Monday declared the Vjosa River and its tributaries a future national park, a move aimed at preserving what they called one of the last wild rivers in Europe.

The Albanian Ministry of Tourism and Environment signed an agreement with the California-based Patagonia environmental organization to draft an integrated and sustainable plan" for the new park.

This is an opportunity to protect one of Europes rivers, really one of the crown jewel rivers of Europe, Ryan Gellert of Patagonia told The Associated Press.

Patagonia, along with other environmental groups EcoAlbania, Riverwatch and EuroNatur, will help organize and fund a panel of international and local experts who will draft the framework for the park and also create awareness around the world of this natural beauty.

The Vjosa River runs 270 kilometers (170 miles) from the forest-covered slopes of Greeces Pindus mountains to Albanias Adriatic coast.

Scientists say the Vjosa ecosystem is the habitat for 1,100 species, 13 of which are in great danger of extinction. It also has ecological, cultural and economic value for the 60,000 Albanians who live along its shores.

A perfect metaphor for nature in Albania, with the white stones ... sprayed with wildflower seedlings, said Mirela Kumbaro, Albania's minister for environment and tourism, who also urged visitors to come see its turquoise-colored waters in summer and torrential white snowy waters in winter.

Declaring it a national park will enrich the generations that will inherit Vjosa in a way that's a new untrodden path in Europe, Prime Minister Edi Rama said.

He said the government has cancelled its building plans for eight hydropower stations on the Vjosa and its tributaries that were going to produce electricity for the small Western Balkan country. Environmentalists say the dams would have caused a serious damage to the river.

Officials did not immediately say what would become of the half-built hydropower station at Kalivac on the Vjosa.

The agreement is a serious step toward starting a joint project of many actors, not only of the government, in building up the national park, said Olsi Nika of EcoAlbania, one of the groups that opposed the dams.

Both Nika and Gellert said it could take years before the national park becomes official. It currently is a protected zone. Neither the government nor the environmental groups could immediately say exactly how large the new park will be  assuming that is a question for the expert panel  but Rama said it would be Albania's biggest. Valbona Valley has that distinction now at 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres).

The prime minister also teased actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a noted environmentalist, for previously criticizing the Albanian government for not protecting the Vjosa ecosystem. He said now that Albania has acted, perhaps Nardi (Albanian for Leonardo) may wake up and help the project.

Follow Llazar Semini at https://twitter.com/lsemini

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HELENA, Mont. (AP)  Massive floodwaters ravaged Yellowstone National Park and nearby communities Monday, washing out roads and bridges, cutting off electricity and forcing visitors to evacuate parts of the iconic park at the height of summer tourist season.

All entrances to Yellowstone were closed due to the deluge, caused by heavy rains and melting snowpack, while park officials ushered tourists out of the most affected areas.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, though dozens of stranded campers had to be rescued by raft in south-central Montana. Authorities also said they would be assessing a potential loss of homes and structures in Montanas Stillwater County.

Elsewhere, some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the Yellowstone and the park's gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a landslide, a bridge washed out over a creek, and roads badly undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.

The flooding cut off road access to Gardiner, Montana, a town of about 900 people near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Gardner rivers, just outside Yellowstones busy North Entrance.

At a cabin in Gardiner, visitor Parker Manning of Terra Haute, Indiana, got an up-close view of the water rising and the river bank sloughing off in the raging Yellowstone River floodwaters just outside his door.

We started seeing entire trees floating down the river, debris, Manning told The Associated Press. Saw one crazy single kayaker coming down through, which was kind of insane.

The Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs crested at 13.88 feet (4.2 meters) Monday, higher than the previous record of 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) set in 1918, according the the National Weather Service.

Floodwaters inundated a street in Red Lodge, a Montana town of 2,100 thats a popular jumping-off point for a scenic, winding route into the Yellowstone high country. Twenty-five miles (40 kilometers) to the northeast, in Joliet, Kristan Apodaca wiped away tears as she stood across the street from a washed-out bridge, The Billings Gazette reported.

The log cabin that belonged to her grandmother, who died in March, flooded, as did the park where Apodacas husband proposed.

I am sixth-generation. This is our home, she said. That bridge I literally drove yesterday. My mom drove it at 3 a.m. before it was washed out.

Yellowstone officials were evacuating the northern part of the park, where roads may remain impassable for a substantial length of time, park Superintendent Cam Sholly said in a statement.

But the flooding affected the rest of the park, too, with park officials warning of yet higher flooding and potential problems with water supplies and wastewater systems at developed areas.

We will not know timing of the parks reopening until flood waters subside and were able to assess the damage throughout the park, Sholly said in the statement.

The park's gates will be closed at least through Wednesday, officials said. It was unclear how many visitors have been forced to leave the park.

The rains hit right as summer tourist season was ramping up. June, at the onset of an annual wave of over 3 million visitors that doesnt abate until fall, is one of Yellowstones busiest months.

Remnants of winter  in the form of snow still melting off and rushing off the mountains  made for an especially bad time to get heavy rain.

Yellowstone got 2.5 inches (6 centimeters) of rain Saturday, Sunday and into Monday. The Beartooth Mountains northeast of Yellowstone got as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters), according to the National Weather Service.

Its a lot of rain, but the flooding wouldnt have been anything like this if we didnt have so much snow, said Cory Mottice, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Billings, Montana. This is flooding that weve just never seen in our lifetimes before.

The rain will likely abate while cooler temperatures lessen snowmelt in coming days, Mottice said.

In south-central Montana, flooding on the Stillwater River stranded 68 people at a campground. Stillwater County Emergency Services agencies and crews with the Stillwater Mine rescued people Monday from the Woodbine Campground by raft. Some roads in the area were closed due to flooding, and residents have been evacuated.

We will be assessing the loss of homes and structures when the waters recede, the sheriff's office said in a statement.

The flooding happened while other parts of the U.S. burned in hot and dry weather. More than 100 million Americans were being warned to stay indoors as a heat wave settles over states stretching through parts of the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes and east to the Carolinas.

Elsewhere in the West, crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires in hot, dry and windy weather.

Scientists say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme events such as storms, droughts, floods and wildfires, though single weather events usually cannot be directly linked to climate change without extensive study.

Associated Press writers Thomas Peipert in Denver and Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, contributed to this report.

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The Democratic National Committee rejected Nebraskas bid to become one of the early states in the 2024 presidential nominating calendar.

The bid would have allowed Nebraska to be one of the first five states in the 2024 presidential primary lineup. It marks the first time in decades that the DNC is considering restructuring the primary schedule.

Nebraska and New York were nixed from the running, as was a group representing Democrats abroad, according to reporting by The Washington Post and Politico. Sixteen states and one territory remain.

The news was disappointing, said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska state party.

In a video posted to Twitter, Kleeb went on to say that shes anxious to see which Midwest states will be in the mix.

We really made the case that a small state like Nebraska should be part of the first five presidential primary states, Kleeb said. We have a really strong mix of urban, suburban and rural. And that, while all states have rural communities, Nebraskas rural communities are needed  those rural voters are needed  in order to win statewide.

Kleeb said shell continue to advocate for small red states, rural states and flyover states.

Both The Post and Politico, citing a memo sent by DNC officials, reported the proposal from Nebraska Democrats called for a party-run primary that would be different from the existing state-run primary election. The memo said that could create confusion by rendering the state-run process meaningless despite Democrats being on the ballot, according to both media outlets.

Since 1972, Iowa has been the first contest in the Democratic presidential primary, followed by New Hampshire. While Democrats are weighing changes to the partys schedule, Republicans are maintaining the status quo. The Republican National Committee opted to keep its calendar, ensuring Iowa will go first in the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest, according to the Associated Press.

The DNC is expected to announce a decision on the schedule later this summer.

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In 2019, business leaders across Nebraska set an ambitious goal: Grow the states technology sector by adding 10,000 employees by 2025.

Halfway through that timeframe, theyre about 13% of the way there. Nebraska went from 49,500 tech jobs in 2019 to 50,800 in 2021.

Of course, there have been roadblocks along the way  the COVID-19 pandemic being chief among them.

The pandemic definitely just put a huge damper on everything for everyone. I feel like were still trying to climb out of that, said Jona Van Deun, president of Nebraska Tech Collaborative.

Though the pace of growth in tech jobs has been slow, the state does appear to be on track with meeting growth goals for tech companies. The state set a goal of adding 300 tech companies by 2025. Thus far, it has added 147, according to data presented last month at the Aksarben Foundations stakeholders meeting in La Vista. The foundation brings together business and community leaders with the goal of bolstering Nebraskas workforce and economy.

And the conversation on increasing the tech industrys presence within Nebraska is still humming  which Van Deun considers a success.

Three years ago, we werent talking about Nebraskas tech workforce, she said. The tech industry really rose to the occasion.

The increase in tech employees is not limited to startups. Mutual of Omaha, for example, has added about 300 tech employees since 2019 for a company total of over 1,300 employees in that sector.

Mike Lechtenberger, chief information officer at Mutual, said the Fortune 500 insurance and financial services company prefers to hire regionally in Nebraska and western Iowa, but there have been cases where the company went outside the region to secure talent.

Even among Mutuals employees who live in and around Omaha, the ability to work remotely or in a hybrid setting is a highly desired perk.

The question comes up almost every time during job interviews, Lechtenberger said.

For some areas in Nebraska, remote work has opened doors for people to live where they want without sacrificing career prospects.

Angie Stenger, executive director of Aksarben Foundations Northeast Nebraska Growing Together workforce initiative, said places like Norfolk, which is where the initiative is based, have fostered such arrangements by, among other things, emphasizing a tech- and entrepreneurial-friendly ecosystem.

Growing Together has also partnered with Wayne State College to offer a scholarship program that provides internship opportunities at Norfolk area businesses. The program is available to students who major in computer science, business or communications.

These kids are learning amazing things. We dont want them to have to go to the big city. We want to be their home, Stenger said.

Average tech salaries in Omaha are slightly above $80,000 while Lincolns average tech salaries fall just below that number, according to a graph presented to the Aksarben Foundation stakeholders last month. Lincoln saw slightly higher wage growth at about 3% while Omaha was more stagnant at just over 2%.

Compared with two dozen other metropolitan areas roughly similar in size, the average salaries and growth rate in Nebraskas two largest cities lag behind places such as Fayetteville, Arkansas, which Van Deun said leaped past many cities in offering higher average wages for tech employees and saw wage growth at nearly 4%.

Compared to our peers  we are not where we need to be, Van Deun said.

Broadband access remains an issue in some rural areas. While various efforts are being made to increase access, its not an issue that has a quick fix.

Some communities have gotten creative in bridging the gap. As an example, Stenger pointed to Invest Nebraskas plans to open a co-working space in Norfolk to provide high-speed internet to people who have otherwise limited or no broadband internet access.

While young people are a primary demographic to fill tech positions within Nebraska, some businesses including Mutual are also looking at experience in other fields.

Lechtenberger said one of Mutual of Omahas job training programs includes a partnership with Metropolitan Community College where Mutual identifies current employees who have the aptitude and qualifications to be trained for a technological job within Mutual.

They know our culture. They know our business so its really a win-win to be able to find candidates like that and partner with MCC (to) make a pathway for them into an IT career at Mutual, he said.

Business leaders are also encouraged by long-term demographic trends, particularly among Latinos. Latinos are projected to increase their share of the states population from the current levels of roughly 12% to around 38% by 2050.

For Nebraska, thats our greatest advantage, said Sandra Reding, president of Aksarben Foundation, adding the Latino population is very young and could eventually help buffer an aging trend in the states workforce.

Van Deun echoed those sentiments, saying the projected rise in the Latino population is something we really need to watch and lean into as it pertains to creating more opportunities for our students here in the state.

Thats the long game, she said.

That long game is something that Nebraska government leaders have taken stock of in an attempt to foster a more tech-friendly atmosphere in recent years.

This past legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill introduced by State Sens. Terrell McKinney of Omaha and Julie Slama of Dunbar that will require high school students to complete at least one computer science or technology course in order to graduate from high school beginning with the 2026-27 school year.

Its important to make sure that we prepare our kids for a future after school, McKinney said. If we dont emphasize the importance of tech, I feel as though students in Nebraska would get left behind.

Through the various initiatives, business and government leaders hope that the state one day gains a reputation as one of the nations top tech environments where its smaller size could be considered an advantage.

I would hope to see us at least in the top 25 places that people can go ... to build a company, Van Deun said. Because we are the size that we are, we have an incredible opportunity to connect people and connect them quickly.

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The first draft of new math standards for Nebraska schools is a tweak, not an overhaul, of existing ones, according to state education officials.

The draft, which went out for public comment this spring, would put greater emphasis on number sense, data and statistics, but dont expect sweeping changes, they said.

Instead, the standards are a refinement on the 2015 set they would replace.

We didnt want a dramatic shift, said Matt Blomstedt, the states education commissioner.

Standards are what students are expected to know and be able to do in an academic subject.

State law requires the Nebraska State Board of Education to adopt standards every seven years in core areas, including math. Within a year after adoption, local districts must either adopt the state standards or their own of at least equal rigor.

Local districts select their own curriculum  books, online resources and other materials  to teach the standards.

Blomstedt said the state has been encouraging districts to adopt high-quality instructional materials aligned with state standards and didnt want to introduce a dramatically different set of standards.

Instructional materials are an important part of improving math achievement statewide, he said.

We didnt want a major shift because we started that work after the last standards adoption, he said. We see more improvements where people use the adoption of those instructional materials in alignment with our standards.

The pandemic has disrupted state testing, making it difficult to gauge how the states kids have been doing in math the last couple of years. A World-Herald examination found math achievement took a hit.

A national math test, the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, provides insight on how Nebraska kids measured up to peers in other states before COVID-19.

The test measures both mathematics knowledge and the students ability to apply their knowledge in problem-solving situations.

In eight states, fourth graders had a better average score on NAEP math than Nebraska fourth graders. In eighth grade, 15 states scored higher.

Forty-five percent of Nebraska fourth graders scored proficient or above on the test compared to 40% nationwide.

Thirty-seven percent of Nebraska eighth graders tested proficient or above, while 33% did so nationwide.

Blomstedt said he believes that the draft standards reflect the proper level of rigor in each grade, and that the state is not pushing too much content into lower grades.

Teachers have sometimes complained that the youngest students are getting overwhelmed by the academic demands.

Cory Epler, the departments academic officer, said the writers of the initial draft wanted to make sure that data, probability and statistics were included in K-12 math, not just high school.

Thats done in an age-appropriate way, for instance, asking kindergartners to simply sort and classify objects by size, shape and color. An example, he said, would be putting all the triangles together.

Another emphasis in the draft is number sense, making sure that foundational skills are mastered in elementary and middle school, Epler said.

Number sense can be described various ways: knowing what numbers mean, the ability to see patterns and relationships between numbers, how number systems work.

In K-5 grades, Epler said, it would include basics like counting, understanding base 10, and area and perimeter.

Under the draft, a student who has a conceptual understanding of the K-8 standards should be ready for algebra I in high school, he said.

A student who masters algebra I skills should be ready for more advanced math, he said.

We dont think every kid needs to be learning calculus, Epler said. We do think students need to be learning things like statistics and probability and, some might say, the more applied courses in mathematics.

Heather Phipps, associate superintendent of education services in Millard Public Schools, said the 2015 standards were a step up in rigor and the draft is at least as rigorous.

Phipps said the standards are more concise, which will help teachers understand them.

Asked if the standards will make Nebraska kids better at math, Phipps said having rigorous standards are just part of whats needed.

Districts must ensure they have quality instructional materials aligned to the standards, she said.

Students have to be regularly tested on their progress to determine which students have mastered the standards and who needs more instruction.

All of those things working together will help Nebraska kids be better at math, she said.

Nebraska educators from prekindergarten to postsecondary, including public and nonpublic schools, helped develop the draft. Approval is expected in the fall.

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Omaha National Cemetery plans to build more than 6,000 new gravesites in 2023, the first major expansion since the Department of Veterans Affairs opened the cemetery six years ago.

The project, called Phase 2, will add a large section with 2,500 spaces for casketed burials, said Jason Dolan, the cemeterys director, along with 3,720 spaces for cremated remains.

Though plenty of empty land remains, Omaha National Cemetery has been filling up faster than expected. Before it opened in September 2016, planners anticipated about 500 burials per year.

But already, 4,200 people have been buried there, more than 700 per year. Last years total of 870 was even higher, in part because of ceremonies deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When funding became available, the VA decided to go ahead with construction a couple of years ahead of schedule, Dolan said. But he expects the 236-acre cemetery will continue to accommodate veteran burials for decades into the future.

We are not in any danger of running out of space, he said.

The new area for casketed burials, called Section 10, is in the southeast quadrant of the central section that is surrounded by the circular main road.

The new columbarium wall for cremated remains will be west of the central flagpole, next to an existing one. A section for in-ground cremated remains, Section 13, will be along a new cul-de-sac northwest of the circular lane.

The Phase 2 construction has been put out for a bid, Dolan said. Construction is likely to start in the late fall or early next spring.

He said the VA declined to release the budget for the project to avoid tipping their hand to potential bidders.

Before the cemeterys opening, the states only national cemetery was Fort McPherson National Cemetery near Maxwell, Nebraska, 267 miles west of Omaha.

Local veterans spent more than a decade lobbying for a VA cemetery in Sarpy County. But the Omaha area didnt meet veteran population requirements in place at the time. In 2009, then-Rep. Lee Terry, who represented the area, championed legislation to lower the requirement.

In 2012, the VA purchased the 236-acre site, at State Highway 50 and Schram Road in western Sarpy County, for $6.2 million.

The first phase, with a price tag of $28.9 million, included roads, buildings and other infrastructure, along with 5,000 burial sites.

Dolan said the VA plans to expand Fort McPherson National Cemetery, which dates to 1873. He said 17 acres are being purchased adjacent to the existing 20 acres  enough to last another 100 years, according to VA forecasts.

The Omaha cemetery is supported by a cadre of veteran volunteers who staff a welcome desk in the administrative headquarters, place flags on special holidays and raise money for items not covered by the VA budget.

People are pleased its here. Thats their reason: Its beautiful, said Victor Jones, an officer of the Omaha National Cemetery Support Committee.

They feel so comfortable, because its so peaceful, added Sharon Bissen, the cemeterys volunteer coordinator.

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One man was killed and two others were injured in a crash Saturday afternoon in western Nebraska.

Dusty Trembly, 65, of Sidney, was attempting to turn east onto Highway 26 from a historical marker pull-off near Bridgeport  a town about 35 miles east of Scottsbluff in Morrill County. According to the Nebraska State Patrol, Trembly's Dodge Caravan collided with a Dodge pickup truck that was traveling west.

Trembly was pronounced dead at the scene. A passenger in Trembly's vehicle and the truck driver were both transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Neither the passenger or the driver have been identified by the patrol.

The crash remains under investigation .

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Woman was original Gerber baby

TAMPA, Fla.  Ann Turner Cooks cherubic baby face was known the world over as the original Gerber baby.

Cook was 5 months old when a neighbor, artist Dorothy Hope Smith, drew a charcoal sketch of her that was later submitted for a contest Gerber was holding for a national marketing campaign for baby food.

The image was a hit, so much so that it became the companys trademark in 1931 and has been used in all of its packaging and advertising since.

For decades, though, the identity of the baby was kept secret.

In the late 1970s, it was revealed to be Cook, who grew up to be an English teacher in Tampa, Florida, and later a mystery novelist.

Cook died June 3 at age 95.  AP

Such was Bon Jovi bassist

NEW YORK  Alec John Such was the bassist and founding member of the iconic rock band Bon Jovi.

Jon Bon Jovi credited Such for bringing the band together, noting that he was a childhood friend of drummer Tico Torres and brought guitarist and songwriter Richie Sambora to see the band perform.

Such departed the band in 1994, when he was replaced by bassist Hugh McDonald. He later rejoined the band for its induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

Such died June 5 at age 70.  AP

Ohio man killed 11 relatives in 1975

COLUMBUS, Ohio  James Ruppert served a life sentence for the shooting deaths of 11 family members, including eight children, on Easter in 1975.

Ruppert, 88, died June 4 at the prison systems Franklin Medical Center in Columbus.

At the time of the shootings, Ruppert lived with his mother at her home in Hamilton, Ohio. He reportedly struggled with alcohol and was unemployed.

Rupperts brother, sister-in-law and their eight children were visiting for the holiday when his brother asked him about his car, a remark Ruppert took as an insult because he thought his brother  a successful engineer  was judging him.

Authorities said Ruppert used three pistols and a rifle to fire 44 shots, with 40 hitting his victims. The eight children ranged in age from 4 to 16.  AP

Johnson was on Melrose Place

LOS ANGELES  Brad Johnson jumped from rodeo cowboy to portraying the Marlboro Man in cigarette spots and film and TV roles including Steven Spielbergs Always and Melrose Place.

Johnson died Feb. 18 in Fort Worth, Texas, of complications from COVID-19. He was 62.

Johnson played opposite Holly Hunter in 1989s Always, a remake of a 1943 film (A Guy Named Joe) about firefighting pilots. He played a pilot again in the 2000 religious apocalyptic thriller Left Behind, starring Kirk Cameron, and was in its two sequels.

He worked regularly on TV, including in the recurring role of Dr. Dominick OMalley in Melrose Place.  AP
BLOOMINGTON  Italian chocolate maker Ferrero is planning another major expansion of its Bloomington operations, a roughly $214 million investment expected to create up to 200 new jobs over a four-year period, officials said Monday.

The company, whose well-known products include Ferrero Rocher, Nutella, Tic Tac, and Kinder Joy, said the 169,000-square-foot addition would be dedicated to producing Kinder Bueno, described as a cream-filled wafer covered in dark chocolate and hazelnut drizzle. Already popular in Europe, the chocolate bar launched in the United States in 2019.

Construction is expected to begin in the fall, with the facility set to open in 2024.

Ferrero is planning to stay for the long term, and that is what is happening in Bloomington, said Federico Forti, vice president of industrial operations, in an interview before the announcement. Creating these expansions and all the money that company is investing in this location is really proving that we are not here to go away. Were here to stay.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who joined state and local government officials for the announcement, said the company had more than 1,400 full-time employees in the state, with more than 350 of those in Bloomington. He said the expansion served as a testament to Illinois' quality workforce and reputation on the global stage.

"This very site will be the only facility in North America to produce Kinder Bueno, one of the most popular and most delicious candy bars in the world," Pritzker said.

The production center will be one of the largest production lines built by Ferrero outside of Europe, officials said.

The production center will be added onto the processing facility and built directly next to the existing 226,000-square-foot Ferrero building at 2501 Beich Road in Bloomington, which currently manufacturers 100Grand, Rasinets, Crunch and Buncha Crunch.

The line will represents the first time Kinder products will be made in North America, officials said.

"This expansion will create new quality career opportunities that will make a positive economic impact in the Bloomington-Normal area," said Todd Siwak, president and chief business officer of Ferrero North America. "This latest announcement underscores our ongoing commitment to do business here and we are grateful that you are all here to celebrate with us."

Bloomington Mayor Mboka Mwilambwe said city officials believe the investment was encouraged by the business-friendly environment, quality workforce, high quality of life for residents and robust infrastructure.

"It was less than nine moths ago that we gathered here for the ribbon cutting for Ferrero's first chocolate manufacturing facility in North America," he said. "At the time, we felt pretty strongly about Ferrero's commitment to the community; today we feel even stronger about it."

Sylvia Garcia, director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, said the expansion and success of Ferrero's business in Central Illinois would not have been possible without the collaboration of Heartland Community College and its maintenance apprenticeship program with the company.

"This program strengthens the workforce pipeline by training and certifying maintenance workers at this plant here," Garcia said. "As a central hub for agriculture, Illinois continues to be a destination for food processing giants and manufactures because of our talented workforce, our central location and out transportation infrastructure, all of which makes our state a great fit for companies doing business and moving products across the country and around the globe."

Forti said the new production center will have everything needed to create the Kinder Bueno, from machines that will refine and mix the chocolate, ovens for baking wafers, processing lines to bring the two together, cooling tunnels and other machinery necessary to package the product.

Available positions will include shift managers, production managers, maintenance supervisors, logistics operators, line operators, and other jobs needed to maintain and run a facility of this size, Forti said.

The announcement also follows months after the company broke ground on a $75 million chocolate processing facility at the same location, which will become a 70,000-square-foot facility and is expected bring up to 50 jobs to the area. The facility is set begin operating in 2023.

Ward 2 Alderwoman Donna Boelen and Ward 8 Alderman Jeff Crabill, also in attedance at the event, said they expected that other companies could look to Ferrero's experience as they consider expansion.

"Any time a new business come in, other businesses that might be looking see the reaction from the council and the city," Boelen said.

"It shows that there's a lot of collaboration between Bloomington and the Economic Development Council working together to bring these types of business into the community," Crabill said.

Because of its position in the Bloomington-Normal Enterprise Zone, Ferrero will benefit from other incentives, including sales tax exemptions on building materials and a standardized incentive in the form of a five-year tax abatement that will allow them to avoid paying local property taxes, said Bloomington Normal Economic Development Council CEO Patrick Hoban.

"District 87 is on board (with the standardized incentive), Heartland Community College is on board, and most recently, as of Thursday, the Central Illinois Regional Airport is on board as well," Hoban said. "That created the property tax abatement that they were looking for."

Ferrero acquired the Bloomington facility and others in Illinois as part of its 2018 acquisition of Nestles U.S. confectionery business for $2.8 billion.

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The Russian navy will receive 46 warships and support vessels in 2022, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Nikolay Yevmenov said Sunday.

The global military-political situation requires Russia to have a strong and balanced fleet, Yevmenov said at a keel-laying ceremony for two diesel-electric submarines in Russia's second-largest city of St. Petersburg.

He reiterated President Vladimir Putin's desire for the Russian navy to maintain a share of modern ships of at least 70 percent.
BLOOMINGTON  Wet Sunday morning weather didnt keep handfuls of shoppers from zooming to the Vrooman Mansion in Bloomington for an outdoor craft fair.

Titled Sunday Funday, the market kicked off at noon at the historically registered landmark in the East Grove Street District of Bloomington.

Vendors and shoppers alike were awed by the 1869 structure and the surrounding landscaping. It was once occupied by Julia Scott, one of the first Daughters of the American Revolution.

Property owners Pam and Dana Kowalewski are looking to a successful summer at the mansion, which hosts weddings, corporate events, anniversaries, and celebrations of life. The married couple purchased the building in July 2000, and also offer bed-and-breakfast lodgings.

After 22 years, Mr. Kowalewski said: Were still at it.

Mrs. Kowalewski said bookings are up this summer, and her husband noted business has picked up tremendously when compared to pre-COVID.

She also said they get to meet a gamut of people with their operations. Kowalewski said theyve had a lot of travelers following U.S. Route 66, and others from Europe, but the pandemic did put a damper on their European travelers.

They also had some fancy cars show up over the weekend from the Bloomington Gold Corvettes show, she said.

The next market there will be the Handmade Vrooman fair on July 16.

Sunday Funday organizer Laurie Harpenau said they had 50 vendors register for the event, with some cancellations. This event, put on her new business, Events by Harp, was her first market established somewhere other than my house, she said.

She tables a booth of her own with her husband Joe Harpeanau, who creates woodworking crafts like plant benches and hanging planter baskets. The Farmer City woman said it was a challenge getting stalls set up around the greenery outside the mansion, but they got it done.

Vendors ranged from small craft artists, like art by Baker Joe Falcinelli, to Alexanders Primetime Seasonings & Rubs. Terry Alexander, of Mahomet, invited passersby into his stall for free sniffs of his spices, and said he heard a few react with oohs, wahs and a holy cow.

Mark Stevens nose was drawn to Alexander's wares. The Bloomington man said he planned to buy one or two, once his wife tested them, too, and gave the OK.

Alexander said it was a great day at the market, except for the rain in the morning.

Vandana Bajikar tabled her photography prints and resin arts. She noted she also plans to be at the Sugar Creeks Arts Festival later this year.

There were crystals and jewelry available from Jennys Divine Treasures, and wellness products by J.B. Johnson.

Johnson, who tabled hair oils and natural soaps for all skin types, said the venues location was beautiful.

She added the landscaping was lovely, and she planned to return for other pop-up markets in the coming weeks.

I love Bloomington, said the Springfield woman.

This article has been updated to clarify that Events by Harp was the sole organizer of the "Sunday Funday" market.

Contact Brendan Denison at (309) 820-3238. Follow Brendan Denison on Twitter: @BrendanDenison

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BLOOMINGTON  Cooling centers are open across McLean County as a heat wave covers a large part of the Midwest and Great Plains.

A map of cooling centers and shelters known to the McLean County Emergency Management Agency is available at the McLean County GIS website at mcgis.org on the Cooling/Warming Centers map.

The cooling centers are meant to be short-term places to go to get out of the heat and are not providing food or sleeping accommodations.

The Bloomington-Normal area will see real temperatures in the mid to upper 90s over the next three days, but weather will feel closer to 100 to 110 degrees, said Lee Enterprises Meteorologist Matt Holiner.

A heat advisory issued by the National Weather Service on Monday lasts through 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Far southern Illinois is under an excessive heat warning but the feels-like temperatures in Central Illinois are supposed to be just under the threshold, Holiner said.

Certainly by Thursday were going to be past the worst of the heat, he said.

The heat is a result of a warm front coming up from the southwest, Holiner said.

The heat covers a wide area. Monday's heat advisory extended from Duluth, Minnesota, south to the Gulf Coast and from the Nebraska-Colorado border to the Kentucky-West Virginia border. Heat watches or warnings covered all of Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.

The number of similar heat waves each summer seems to be increasing in recent years, and he expects they will continue to, Holiner said.

Long-range climate models expect these (multiday) heat waves to become more common, he said.

People should avoid working outside during the afternoon if possible, Holiner said. If someone starts to feel lightheaded, have a headache or otherwise feel the heat affecting them, they should immediately stop and find a place to cool off. People should also be sure to stay hydrated and ideally wear light-colored, loose fitting clothing.

Cooling center locations and hours include:

Wal-Mart, 2225 W. Market St., Bloomington, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

TA Truck Stop, 505 Truckers Lane, Bloomington, 24 hours

Bloomington Public Library, 205 E. Olive St., 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Normal Public Library, 206 W. College Ave., Normal, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Uptown Station, Amtrak and bus area, 11 Uptown Circle, Normal, open until 9 p.m.

Meijer, 1900 E. College Ave., Normal, 6 a.m. to midnight

Home Sweet Home Ministries, 303 E. Oakland Ave, Bloomington, open for families and single women to stop in for 15 minutes

Dennys, 701 Eldorado Road, Bloomington, 24 hours

IHOP, 2109 E. Empire St., Bloomington, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Wal-Mart, 200 Greenbriar Dr., Normal, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Dennys, 1615 N. Main St., Normal, 6 a.m. to midnight

Road Ranger Truck Stop, 315 E Dixie Road, McLean, 24 hours

Allin Township Fire Dept., 104 W. Main St., Stanford, call 309-888-5030 to request access

Hudson Fire Department, 502 N. Broadway St., Hudson, call 309-726-1501 to see if station is manned

Lexington Center, address not listed, call 309-888-5030 to request access

Chenoa Fire Department, 920 E. Cemetery Ave., call 309-888-5030 to request access

Cooksville Center, address not listed, call 309-888-5030 to request access

Arrowsmith, address not listed, call 309-888-5030 to request access

Saybrook, address not listed, call 309-888-5030 to request access

Loves Travel Center, 505 S. Persimmon Drive, LeRoy, 24 hours, contact 309-962-3060

LeRoy, 110 S. East St., LeRoy, open on request, stop by or call 309-962-3310

Downs Fire Department, 102 W. Main St., Downs, 24 hours

Heyworth Fire Department, 103 S. Buchanan St., Heyworth, call 309-473-3223

Heyworth Village Hall, 108 S. Buchanan St., Heyworth, 7:30 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., contact on-site staff

Contact Connor Wood at (309)820-3240. Follow Connor on Twitter:@connorkwood

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100 years ago

June 13, 1922: McLean County property owners who have not paid their property taxes have another week of grace before tax sales take place. The county treasurer says delinquency this year is the heaviest in years, with roughly $100,000 that remains to be collected. There is always a rush in the final week, however.

75 years ago

June 13, 1947: To the casual observer, Friday Chambers probably looks like any other goose. Closer acquaintance reveals that the heart of a despotic personality beats beneath his proud feathers. Friday is the 6-year-old goose belonging to N.B. Chambers of Chenoa. He pouts, runs away, plays games, tantalizes photographers and is strictly a "one man" goose.

50 years ago

June 13, 1972: Bloomington postal carrier Domenick Consalvo was recognized for heroic efforts that helped save a 6-year-old. The child, Edwin Backus, had gotten behind the family car after its brakes failed in his driveway. Consalvo saw what happened and jumped into the runaway car, stopping it before the boy could be hurt as the vehicle rolled backward.

25 years ago

June 13, 1997: Fairbury was the top winner in the 1997 Governor's Home Town Award program, which each year recognizes an Illinois community that has tried to improve quality of life. Through the "Facelift for Fairbury" program, volunteers worked toward two main goals: downtown revitalization and park enhancement.

Compiled by Pantagraph staff
Q: My father is a veteran who served honorably. He is getting up in years now and we talked recently about what he wanted done after he passes. Besides the estate and the other financial issues, we talked about funeral details. He was very proud of his military service and decided he would like to have military rites as part of his funeral. He already has a burial site in a private cemetery where my mother is buried. Does the VA provide any benefits for funerals?

A: Upon request, the Department of Defense will provide military funeral honors consisting of folding and the presentation of the United States flag by two or more uniformed members of the armed forces and the playing of "Taps" for a veteran buried in a non-national cemetery. Additionally, the funeral home will usually be able to obtain local veterans groups that have honor guards who may be able to provide a military prayer recitation, a rifle salute and other rites such as a bagpiper and in some cases a flyover." The VA will provide a marble, granite or bronze grave marker upon request with coordination from the cemetery.

VENDOR AND INNOVATOR ACCESS INITIATIVE

The Department of Veterans Affairs has launched a new initiative called Pathfinder, which will serve as the front door for vendors and innovators to engage with the VA while providing useful resources. Pathfinder website users can submit their innovative ideas, solutions, products or services and provide information about themselves, company or organization. For VA to provide the highest quality care to veterans, it must offer a customer-focused pathway to engage industry, academia and veteran advocates who are actively working to solve veteran and health care challenges. The goal is to remove barriers and assist vendors and innovators in navigating the organization while improving care and services for veterans and their caregivers. VA will utilize submissions to Pathfinder to conduct market research, build an innovation solution repository for continuous sourcing and match the innovative solutions from the repository with VA problem spaces. Visit www.Pathfinder.va.gov for more details.

My HealtheVet

The VA has consolidated many of the portals to access various kinds of VA information into My HealtheVet. This Portal to VA information makes it easy to communicate with your health care team, manage your appointments and health records, and refill prescriptions online. To sign up for My HealtheVet, visit www.myhealth.va.gov/mhv-portal-web/user-registration/.

STOLEN VALOR

Did you know it is not a crime in Illinois to lie about having served in the military in order to get discounts at businesses and restaurants? Many retailers would like to honor and recognize our veterans at their business by giving discounts to veterans and their families. However, the stolen valor by non-veterans puts the retailer in a tough position  either ask for verification of veterans status and diminish the level of respect to the real veteran, allow the fraud to happen or upset a veteran because the veteran does not have the right veterans status information to verify the eligibility for the discount. The Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles will print the word "veteran" on your renewed drivers license by providing a DD214 when you renew your license. Those who steal valor just to get a discount are the bottom of the humanity barrel. Stolen valor currently is only a crime if the fraud is used to get federal benefits.

REMINDER

Tuesday, June 14, is Flag Day.

Jerry Vogler is superintendent of the McLean County Veterans Assistance Commission.

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Former President Donald Trump's campaign manager and former officials from Atlanta and Philadelphia will testify on Monday to the U.S. congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the committee said on Sunday.



The House of Representatives Select Committee will hold its second public hearing this month on Monday starting at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT), after a blockbuster session on Thursday night featuring testimony showing that close Trump allies - even his daughter Ivanka - rejected his false claims of voting fraud. read more



Monday's hearing, the second of an expected six, will focus on the former Republican president's contention that his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden in the November 2020 election was due to unfounded allegations of election fraud, the so-called "Big Lie." read more



The first panel of witnesses will include William Stepien, who served as campaign manager for Trump's 2020 campaign, after serving as Trump's White House Director of Political Affairs from 2017 to 2018.



A committee aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview the hearing, declined to comment on whether Stepien was expected to be a confrontational witness.



Stepien's firm is now working with Harriet Hageman, a Trump-endorsed candidate running against Representative Liz Cheney, vice chairperson of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, in the Republican primary for Cheney's Wyoming House seat.



Also testifying at the first panel will be Chris Stirewalt, a former political editor of Fox News. Stirewalt came under fire from Trump and his supporters after the Fox News political desk was the first to call Arizona for Biden in November 2020.



Fox has denied that his departure had anything to do with that call.



The second panel will include conservative Republican election attorney Ben Ginsberg; Byung J. Pak, who resigned as a U.S. attorney in Atlanta as Trump's camp sought to overturn Georgia's election results, and Al Schmidt, who was the only Republican on Philadelphia's elections board and became a target of attacks by Trump after he defended the integrity of the 2020 presidential vote.



Georgia and Pennsylvania were among states that backed Trump in the 2016 election, but fell into Biden's column in 2020. They have been a focus of the unfounded assertions of election fraud.



The committee aide said the hearing also will feature testimony recorded from the more than 1,000 depositions and interviews conducted during the nine-member Democratic-led Select Committee's nearly one-year-long investigation of the events before and during the attack on the Capitol.

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
The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has started the process to institute a National Ranking System for tertiary educational institutions.



The ranking system, which is to serve as a tool for driving excellence, is expected to be operational by next year, after a stakeholder engagement and buy-in.



The Director-General of the GTEC, Prof. Mohammed Salifu, who announced this at a media sensitisation on the new Education Regulatory Bodies Act 2020 (Act 1023) in Accra, explained that the law provides for us to develop a bespoke low-cost ranking framework that will rank our institutions based on the prerequisites of performance that we give them.



The programme sought to court a partnership with the media to enable the GTEC to articulate and educate the public on the role, responsibility and mandate of the commission in the new act.



Prof. Salifu explained that the ranking framework would, in total, capture the expectations from tertiary educational institutions in terms of research, teaching employability and the impact they make on society globally.



Then, after you have done that, you can look at specialised areas. For instance, there may be one university that is more research-driven than another; so you rank them on their research outputs. You can also rank them on the quality of teaching, he explained.



He was hopeful that when the ranking was done, and we say this one is number one, on the broad framework, it means that we have looked at a range of deliverables, a range of performance areas and we have aggregated that and said this is the number one.



We can also look at the sub-categories, so that the ranking scheme will look at the global ranking and also look at specialised areas in terms of the different disciplines, Prof Salifu explained, giving an assurance that this is not something we will sit in-house here to do.



Collaboration

He said the framework would be done in close collaboration with the institutions and expressed the hope that within a year or so, the framework would have been developed, adding: Once we finalise that, we will outdoor the ranking system.



Prof. Salifu noted that in recent times there had been many global ranking mechanisms and tools and various universities had claimed to have been ranked number one.



Then another university comes, based on a different ranking, to say it has also been ranked number one, and so on and so forth. That is because of the multiplicity of ranking schemes and ranking criteria, he explained.



He was hopeful that establishing the national ranking system would streamline the ranking systems and educate the public on what were taken into consideration in ranking institutions.



Prof. Salifu explained that for now, many people were confused as to which university was the best in terms of the ranking and was hopeful that when our ranking mechanism comes in, we'll be able to explain to people and they will be more in touch with it.



Number one

He said even though he was not worried about the different types of rankings, it would be useful if the institutions ranking the universities could be specific on what the institutions were ranked on.



There has to be only one number one, and it comes with understanding exactly what the ranking criteria are. I think if we develop our own, it will bring a lot more understanding and clarity to that, so that there will be clarity in what the ranking means, he added.



In a welcome remark, the Council Chairman of the GTEC, Prof. Kwame Boafo-Arthur, underscored the important role of the media in the successful execution of the mandate of the GTEC.



He said the seminar was to court a partnership with the media to help the GTEC to articulate effectively its mandate and role in the new Education Regulatory Bodies Act 2020 (Act 1023).









Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
It will cost the government over US$5 billion to solve Ghanas perennial flooding situation, Minister for Works and Housing Francis Asenso-Boakye has revealed.



He made this known while answering questions at a Meet the Press series in Accra on Sunday.



The Minister stated that the current administration remains committed to finding a permanent remedy to Ghanas flooding situation.



Some studies have been done, and they indicate that to address the flooding issue in the country, Ghana will need about US$ 5 billion to be able to address the flooding challenges across the country. This was done some time ago and so if we have to use it, we have to review it because a lot has happened since then.



The Minister also disclosed the government has constructed 35 kilometers of drains while 1000 kilometers are at various stages of completion.



Meanwhile, he has admonished MMDCEs to demolish all structures on waterways as directed by the president.



The district assemblies have the powers and we the citizens have to support them so that we can be successful. The President has given the directive and a task force has been set up at the office of the President, and I am very hopeful that this directive will be enforced to bring down a lot of structures to mitigate the effects of flooding, especially in Accra.





Source: rainbow radio









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The Director-General of the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA), University of Cape Coast (UCC), Dr. Michael Boakye-Yiadom, has been appointed by the President of the Republic of Ghana as the National Convenor for the 2022 United Nations/UNESCO Transforming Education Summit (TES).



His appointment was contained in a letter to the Hon. Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, dated 8th June 2022.



Dr. Boakye-Yiadom is expected to support the Ministry of Education to provide leadership for a successful planning and implementation of the Transforming Education Summits (TES) Pre-Summit in Paris in June and the Main Summit in September in New York City.



Ghanas National Convenor to the United Nations/UNESCO Transforming Education Summit (TES) is responsible for conceptualizing, planning, organizing, executing, monitoring, preparing and presenting the final outputs of national consultation(s). The Convenor is also encouraged to establish a support team  or make use of existing structures  who will be responsible for managing the design, planning, organization, and monitoring of one or more consultations at the national and/or sub-national levels.



Dr. Boakye-Yiadom had this to say when congratulations reeled in: I see this as an IEPA appointment and I am humbled by the Presidents and the Minister for Educations confidence in my leadership. As a team, we will deliver as expected. I count on the support of all stakeholders, especially staff at the Ministry of Education, development partners, civil society, the private sector and NGOs. I am excited about our collective enthusiasm and commitment to make Ghana proud.



The Transforming Education Summit aims to accelerate progress towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 and forge a common vision for education, building on the forthcoming work of the International Commission on the Futures of Education. The Summit will bring together Member-States, teachers, the academia, NGOs, and the private sector with the firm objective to include the youth as co-creators of the Summit.



The TES expects commitments of the government of Ghana to implement concrete initiatives at country levels as the Summit seeks to employ three primary intersecting and reinforcing workstreams for advancing preparations: (1) National Consultations, (2) Thematic Action Tracks, (3) Public engagement and Mobilization.



Not too long ago, the IEPA was appointed by the Ministry of Education to coordinate the reporting of SDG4 activities in Ghana geared towards tracking the achievement of targets and indicators. The appointment of the Director-General of IEPA as Ghanas National Convenor for the Transforming Education Summit confirms the key role IEPA is playing as a UNESCO Category II Centre of Excellence.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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As part of its determination to ensure that more national service personnel acquire employable skills to be gainfully employed or establish their own enterprises to reduce the unemployment rate, the National Service Scheme has introduced an online portal called Flair.



Flair is an employability platform, which also offers user agencies the opportunity to make request for graduates with specific skills or training to undertake national service at their end.



The portal also offers stakeholders the opportunity to benefit from skill matching information, which include course of study or profession and serves as data base that provides information on both national service personnel and user agencies.



The Executive Directors of the NSS, Mr Osei Assibey Antwi, announced this at a user agency stakeholder meeting at the Cedi Conference Hall, University of Ghana, Accra.



The days conference attracted representatives of over 1,000 private companies and enterprises that use national service personnel, which was on the theme, Partnership for Efficient Service Delivery.



Already, similar workshops have been organised for all tertiary educational institutions across the country on the new vision and the platform.



Mr Osei Assibey described the user agencies as formidable partners of the national service scheme in attaining the vision of Deployment for Employment. The National Service Scheme recently launched its new vision of Deployment for Employment, away from the previous mandate of just deploying personnel. It has also held discussions with the Ghana Employers Association and the Association Ghana Industries on its new vision.



Mr Osei Assibey noted that the NSS had decided to work assiduously with user agencies and other partners to ensure that the one-year period for the national service was used judiciously to provide top-up training for the graduates.



This, he explained, was to ensure that service personnel who undertake their service at other organisations gained skills that would make them employable while the NSS also through its numerous modules was offering skills to many others.



The shift in paradigm from purely deploying personnel for a year to an agency that offers permanent employment opportunities, as well as provide entrepreneurial and employment skills for the youth has become necessary due to the increasing unemployment rate, Mr Osei Assibey Antwi, has announced.



He explained that the new move was aimed at repositioning the scheme to retain some of its personnel after their national service and also to ensure that those who went out to the world of work were capable and ready to create their own companies, employ others and or fit and ready to be employed.



Modules Mr Osei Assibey mentioned some of the modules designed by the NSS to incubate national service personnel into global entrepreneurs to include NSS-Ghana Tourism Authority Support programme, construction (housing) of real estate and public facilities; agriculture and NSS-Techlab partnership to design computer application system;



He said henceforth, the over 30,000 national service personnel who would be posted to teach at all educational levels, would be given at least a months training and was of the strong conviction that by the time they entered the classroom, they would have provisional teaching license.



There is a law in this country which frowns on teaching without pedagogic training, we have linked up with National Teaching Council (NTC) which is developing the curriculum that would be used for the short training, he explained.



Aside the training, he said, the NSS was partnering with T-Tel for funding to support the NTC to organise the training, adding that the NSS was arranging for funding to provide a 14-month online training that would give the personnel a professional diploma certificate in teaching.



In a speech read on his behalf, a Deputy Minister of Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, said for the private sector, turnaround time was important and also abhor bureaucracies that dissipate time and resources, so for the National Service Secretariat to introduce such a portal is commendable.



He said the NSS has moved a step ahead as an effective public sector agency to provide the private sector the required support so that they would be in a better stead to ensure a stronger collaboration that would address their needs and that of the teeming Ghanaian youth.









Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Deputy Minister for Information, Fatimatu Abubakar has intimated that members of the Council of State who take ex-gratia have every right to receive what is due them.



According to her, Togbe Afedes refund should not put other people in the Council of State in bad standing because they receive their payments.



Paramount Chief of the Asogli Traditional Area, Togbe Afede XIV returned GH365,000 he received as ex-gratia to the state.



According to him, the work he did as a Council of State member does not merit the ex-gratia he was paid.



But the deputy information minister believes it is a personal decision made by the Chief and should not prevent others from receiving the money.



If you choose not to accept your actual salaries and retirement benefits, I dont have any problem with it but It doesnt mean those who are paid whats due them have done something wrong, she said on Asaase News.



If you want to return it (ex-gratia) and theres a legal and legitimate way of doing it, I dont have any issue with it.



But it doesnt mean those who take their entitlements drawn from provisions of the 1992 Constitution have done anything wrong, have received an undue payment, or have received an inappropriate payment, she added.



Speaking in an earlier interview with Joy News, Togbe Afede XIV explained, saying, Let me subject this to a bit of analysis, that will respect also the situation in our country and the plight of the average Ghanaian. Some people must not be made to look like a different class of people, but coming to my particular case, the council of state work is part-time work.



 The council of state work must not take you away from what you have already been doing and therefore it is not a case that you need to be compensated at the end of it all as if you are being thrown out of your job.



So, I do not think that the work that I did merit it. But let me assure you that I was one of the most active participants in the council of state, and I was chairman of the economic and special development committee which never met without me.



Nonetheless, I cant deny the fact that it was part-time work and it was not a full-time work  and I did it for four years, that I deserve a colossal GH365,000? Thats a big amount of money, Togbe Afede XIV added.



Meanwhile, Lawyer Martin Kpebu has called for a drastic overhaul of the Council of State.



According to him, the advisory board has become redundant due to political infiltration.













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Russia has asked the United States to explain its military biological activities in some post-Soviet countries.

On Sunday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the United States must fulfill its obligations under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), which is essential for international security.

Russia plans to hold consultations with other BTWC members on measures to increase control over the activities carried out by the United States in bio-labs in the post-Soviet space, said Zakharova.

During a special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian military found that U.S.-funded biological laboratories conducted research on 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.
Sam Nartey George, MP, Ningo-Prampram, has been speaking on why he has been fighting to ensure that LGBTQI+ is not encouraged in Ghana.



According to him, Ghana cannot use its limited resource in stitching the lower gastrointestinal part of a homosexual.



To him, he cannot comprehend why the government will spend so much on taking care of a homosexual when that same resource can be spent on the vulnerable pregnant woman and children who desperately need the help.



It concerns me when they want to teach my child [how homosexuals must behave]; stay in your room and do whatever you want.



"When youre not well, dont go to our hospital because if you go to our hospital, the money the government will spend in taking care of pregnant women, will be spent on you in stitching your 'torn' anus..., Sam George said while speaking on the Delay show.



The MP is of the conviction that no matter how the Bill is delayed in Parliament, it will be passed into law to prevent Ghana from experiencing such sacrilege.



The Minority in Parliament on Wednesday, June 8, threatened to block the introduction of any bill by the Executive if the Chairman of the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, Kwame Ayimadu Antwi continues to delay the passage of the Anti-LGBT Bill.



Minority Chief Whip Muntaka Mubarak accused the Chairman of deliberately delaying the passage of the Anti LGBTQI Bill therefore, the Minority Group will continue to oppose any bill brought before the House by the Executive.



He argued that the Chairman ought to have used the right channels for the passage of the Bill.



I can assure that any other bill that will be introduced in the House, we shall resist it, even if it is to provide water, we will resist it, said the Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mubarak.













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The Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, Dr Nana Ayew Afriyie, has urged politicians and influential people in society to desist from interfering in the operations of the Medical and Dental Council Ghana in ensuring best practices among practitioners and dealing with quark doctors.



He said if a doctors attitude fell foul of rules and regulations governing the profession, politicians must not interfere with the system put in place to achieve strong regulatory practices.



Dr Afriyie said this when members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health paid a working visit to the Council as part of a three-week tour of agencies under the health sector.



Visit

Other agencies the Select Committee intended to visit include the Food and Drugs Authority and the National Health Insurance Authority.



The meeting was held behind closed doors and briefing journalists later, Dr Afriyie said it came up during discussions that some of the challenges the council was faced with had to do with quark doctors and interference from politicians, family members and influential people.



On quark doctors, he said, there were a lot of those miscreants whose activities and practices were detrimental to public health stressing that we face financial constraints in dealing with this problem.



In view of that, he pointed out that, the continuous capping of the Council was not in the interest of the public and that of good practice.



He pointed out that the Council needed to have full resources available to execute its mandate adding that, the committee would pick the issue of capping up in the form of a private member motion on the floor of Parliament.



The council is required to submit 34 per cent of whatever money it generated to the presidency and that is what the capping is.



Capping is serious

Contributing to the discussion, the Ranking Member on Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, described the capping issue as a very serious matter pointing out that, it did not make sense for the government to be siphoning money from institutions that it must rather invest in.



The health sector is a very sensitive one that any inefficiency may lead to loss of lives. If there is anything for the government to be highly interested in, it should be the health sector, he said.



He said the attention of the committee had been drawn to the fact that the Legislative Instrument the Council was currently working with needed amendment and called on the sector ministry to raise the issue in Parliament to enable the committee to expedite action on it.



In his remarks, the Chairman of the Medical and Dental Council, Prof. Paul Kwame Nyame, commended the committee for the visit and said it was the first of its kind by the Select Committee to the Council.









Source: graphiconline.com









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The Mayor of Accra, Hon. Elizabeth Kwatsoe Tawiah Sackey has entreated city dwellers to take time off their schedule to visit the newly refurbished gallery of the National Museum in Accra and other heritage sites to appreciate the memories and proof of the Ghanaian culture and civilization.



According to her, the museum hosts histories and stories that depict who we are as Ghanaians and Africans hence the need to visit such facilities to learn about our history.



The first female Mayor of the City of Accra, Hon. Elizabeth Naa Kwatsoe Tawiah Sackey said this on Friday on the backdrop of the opening of the refurbished gallery of the National Museum in Accra by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.



The Museum, which was opened in 1957, was closed to the public in 2015 to make way for the refurbishment.



The refurbishment includes structural refurbishments, improvements in the outlook of the galleries and the expansion of the collections in some of the museums, including the acquisition of seven vintage cars used by former Presidents of the country.



The Mayor said these facilities serve as collection points for the nations artefacts, history, behaviours and way of life, and urged Ghanaians to develop the culture of visiting the museums regularly to appreciate the rich culture and history behind the county.



Mayor Sackey also cited the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, Ussher and James Forts, Bible House, as well as Franklin House, Brazil House, and former slave masters' house as key components of the cultural and historic aesthetics of the City of Accra and encouraged citizens and foreigners to visit and experience its rich heritage.



She also announced plans to establish a Hall of Fame in Accra to recognize indigenes who have distinguished themselves in their various fields of endeavour to encourage the youth to aim high.



The first female Mayor of Accra also expressed her commitment to safeguarding the heritage and tourist sites in the city to preserve the culture of the people of Accra.



Mayor Sackey also used the opportunity to call on Ghanaians and people from the diaspora to visit Accra and witness the rich culture of the Ga people

and reiterated that the Homowo festival was not fetish as presumed by most people but was biblical.



She narrated that there was a period of great famine during the migration of the Ga people from Egypt to present Ghana and the priest at the time fasted and prayed to God after which they were provided with two corns, some millets and water.



She explained that after successfully following God's instructions, there were rains that brought bountiful yields, thus, the people decided to celebrate this to honour God and hoot at hunger adding that during the fasting period there was a total ban on drumming and noise-making.



She described the Homowo festival as a season to give thanks to God for providing food and water in the wilderness during the migration period of the Gas from Egypt through Ethiopia to present-day Ghana adding that the festival showcases the rich tradition, custom and culture of the Ga people.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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The Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Benito Owusu-Bio, who doubles as the National Chairman of the 2022 Green Ghana Planning Committee has disclosed that a total of 22,671,696 million seedlings have so far been distributed for the 2022 edition of the Green Ghana agenda, which well exceeds that initial 20 million seedling targeted.



Addressing the media on behalf of the Sector Minister, Hon. Samuel, A. Jinapor during a press conference on the aftermath of the Green Ghana Day, on Monday, 13th June, 2022, the Deputy Minister called for an effective monitoring and supervision of the seedlings planted to fuel the success of the 2022 edition of government's aggressive afforestation and reforestation program.



"We need to make conscious efforts to nurture the trees by watering them, protect them from destruction, prevent fires, weed under them until they grow to maturity" he said.



The Deputy Lands Minister added that, the "survival rate this year will be more than the 85% survival rate last year. The Ministry has put in place a Monitoring and Assessment Team under the Chairmanship of Hon. Francis Manu-Adabor, who is the Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Lands and Forestry to undertake comprehensive field assessment of trees planted this year which includes other members of the Committee like myself and the CEO of the Forestry Commission."



Hon. Owusu-Bio used the occasion to rebuff claims by some section of the media that the Green Ghana Day program was politicized and partisan, indicating that the Green Ghana Day was a national assignment and that the inclusiveness of Ghanaians with diverse backgrounds in the political and religious landscape such as the Former President of Ghana, H.E John Dramani Mahama, Former President John Agyekum Kufuor, the National Chief Imam and high profile members of the Clergy gives this clear indication that it is for Ghana.



In responding to a question posed by the media on the budget and expenditure of the Green Ghana Day, Hon. Benito Owusu disclosed that so far, GHC 6 Million cedis was disbursed to the Ministry for the Green Ghana Day, out of which the 22 Million tree seedlings were obtained, which also included publicity and other expenses in the lead up to the planting.



He added that subsequently, a detailed report of the expenses will be made available to the public just like that of last year.



The CEO of the Forestry Commission, Mr. John Allotey on his part, gave an indept presentation on the provisional results of the seedlings distributed and planted on the Green Ghana Day.



Pertinent among things highlighted in his presentation were the individual targets assigned to Regions and the actual results achieved.



He noted that among the 16 regions, the Ashanti, Ahafo, Bono, Bono East, Eastern and the Greater Accra Regions exceeded their target while the Northern, North East and Oti Region are yet to meet their target due to low rainfall in these regions.



He said, from the 50% target purported to be planted in the forest reserves, 40.2% have been planted and the other 50% for homes and other locations have seen a 59.8% work done, while reiterating that on the whole 22,671,696 seedlings have been distributed so far.



"The national target was to plant 20 million seedlings but as we speak now, we have distributed 22,671,696 and even with this, the districts are still entering some of the figures and so we will update you as and when they come in" He disclosed



He also gave an analysis on the performances of various districts in the regions saying that " although some districts are yet to meet their target, generally performances have been very impressive in the various districts"



He mentioned the highest seedlings distributed per demand, naming Teak, Ofram, Cidrella, Acacia, and Mahogany as examples, adding that Fruits and Timber species as examples of the species most requested for.



The CEO also welcomed the role of the media in helping to monitor the seedlings planted during Green Ghana Day and added that all information regarding Green Ghana is available at the District Level of Forestry Commission.



He applauded some lead private plantation companies and churches who contributed to the success of the Project, outlining Global Green, Sanatex Ghana, Form Ghana, Sakam Savanna, The Pentecost Church, Catholic, Apostolic, Methodist and Assemblies to God as examples.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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The police have clashed with protesting students of the Islamic Senior High School on Monday (13 June) injuring dozens, eyewitnesses told Asaase News.



The students mounted roadblocks in protest of a speeding vehicle that knocked down a teacher of the school over the weekend.



The officers, according to eyewitnesses, reportedly fired warning shots before they could allow free flow of traffic on the Abrepo-Ampabame stretch in the Bantama Constituency of the Ashanti Region.



There was vehicular and human traffic on that stretch for more than an hour before the police were called in to clear the road, reports Jonathan Ofori, the Ashanti regional correspondent of Asaase News.



Academic work has been grounded as parents frequent the school to check on their wards, amid heavy security.



In an amateur video circulating on social media, students could be heard shouting: We want justice, we need peace as armed police men try to keep calm on campus.



The police are yet to officially comment on the incident.

Source: asaaseradio.com









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The Inspector-General of Police Dr. George Akuffo Dampare is due to touch down in Kumasi shortly following the clash between the Police and the protesting Islamic students that left over 30 students hospitalised.



The IGP is billed to visit the victims of the clash mainly students who were reportedly tear-gassed while demonstrating on Monday.



Hell also get first-hand information from the Police Command in relation to the circumstances that led to the rumpus in the school.



Background



Dozens of students of the Islamic Senior High School at Abrepo in the Ashanti Region are reported to have passed out after police allegedly opened tear gas on them during a demonstration over frequent knockdowns in front of the school.



The students in the course of the demonstration are said to have blocked the road in front of their school denying motorists the opportunity of using that road.



This resulted in the Police being invited to clear the roadblock and break up the protest.



Several shots of tear gas left many of the students unconscious and were rushed to the hospital by officers of the National Ambulance Service.

Source: kasapafmonline.com









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Prince Harry fell off his horse in front of his celebrity friends as he returned to the polo field in California after a flying visit to Britain for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee where he reportedly only had a 'quite formal' 15 minutes with his grandmother.



The Duke of Sussex, 37, was unscathed in the incident at the Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club, as was his ride, but it was a bad omen for the royal whose Los Padres team also lost the match 12-11 yesterday.



Read Full Story .... dailymail >>> :

















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Queen Elizabeth II, who celebrated her 70th year on the British throne earlier this month, has became the worlds second longest-serving monarch, with only Frances Louis XIV ahead of her in the history books.



Having ruled for 70 years and 127 days, Elizabeth II has beaten the likes of Franz Joseph I, who ruled over Austria and Austro-Hungary for almost 68 years, and Thailands Bhumibol Adulyadej, taking over the second place from the latter on Monday.



Elizabeth II became queen at 25, after her father, King George VI, died on 6 February 1952. Ruling over the United Kingdom and fourteen other Commonwealth realms, she is already the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch, as well as the longest currently serving head of state.



Louis XIV, also known as le Roi Soleil or Sun King, reigned over France from age four, but he only took over the rule himself in 1661.



Elizabeth II would have to rule until May 2024 to become the longest-serving monarch in history.



Although Elizabeth II, now 96, reached the seven decades mark in February, her Platinum Jubilee celebrations were marked with four days of festivities across the UK just last weekend.



Despite fewer public functions as of late due to mobility problems, the queen made an appearance at the Buckingham Palace during the Jubilee weekend.



She thanked the British public at the end of the celebrations in a statement, saying that she was humbled and touched and that she continued to be committed to serving you to the best of my ability.









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Two persons, who allegedly sodomized a 13-year-old boy at La, a suburb of Accra, have been put before the Gender-Based Violence Court (GBVC) at the Police headquarters.



Francis Agyei Okpoti, aka Cecia, a 21-year-old Mason and Emmanuel Mensah Lartey, a 29-year-old driver's mate, has been charged with two counts of defilement, each.



The accused persons have pleaded not guilty before the court presided over by Mrs Abena Amponsah.



They have been granted bail in the sum of GHC50,000 with two sureties each.



The court ordered that the sureties must have properties worth the bail sum.



The accused persons are to reappear on June 29 for Case Management Conference.



Prosecuting Chief Inspector Simon Terkpor said the complainant, a 51-year-old driver, was the father of the victim, and that they resided at La, Accra.



The accused persons, the prosecution said, also resided within the same area and that Okpoti's house was adjacent to the complainant's house.



It said he (Okpoti) had been sending the victim on errands.



The prosecution said on August 15, 2022, during the day, Okpoti sent the victim to go and buy him sachet water and on his return, the accused had gone into his bathroom and asked the victim to bring the water to the bathroom and the victim obliged.



It said Okpoti then pulled the victim by hand into the bathroom, pulled down his shorts to the kneel level and had anal sex with the victim in the bathroom and asked the victim not to inform anyone.



The prosecution said in September 2021, Okpoti followed the victim to a public toilet at La and again had anal sex with him.



According to the prosecution, on February 28, this year, in the evening, Lartey met the victim at La Melcom area where he was selling sachet water and drinks.



It said Lartey lured the victim into one of the classrooms of a public school at La and had anal sex with him.



The prosecution said the complainant in March this year had information from the victim's sister through a teacher that the victim had been sexually abused.



When the complainant asked the victim, he mentioned the names of the accused persons.



It said a report was made at the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit and the complainant was given a Police medical form to seek treatment at a hospital for the victim.



The accused persons were later arrested by the Police.





Source: GNA









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Twenty-two people were injured in a rocket attack on the Ukrainian city of Chortkiv in the country's western Ternopil region on Saturday, the government-run Ukrinform news agency reported.

Four rockets, presumably fired from the Black Sea, hit Chortkiv at about 9:46 p.m. local time (1846 GMT) on Saturday, according to Volodymyr Trush, head of the Ternopil regional military administration.

A military facility was partially destroyed in the attack, while four apartment blocks were damaged, Trush told reporters, adding that most of the injured were in stable condition.
Nana Akomea has asked government to 'leave' the Achimota Forest alone.



The Managing Director of the State Transport Corporation (STC) who was speaking to Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo' has said government should come out with a policy to protect it since it's the only forest reserve in Accra.



"Achimota forest is the only forest reserve . . . now it seems we've given majority of the land to the owners; I think about 300 acres. I don't know whether it's too late to reverse it . . . but if it can't be reversed, the rest of the land (should be preserved) . . . there should be a policy that under no circumstance should it be used for any other thing; not even for eco-tourism because that is the only forest reserve we have at the moment," he urged.



Listen to him in the video below







Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The Regional Nasara Coordinators for all the 16 Regions of the country, on Sunday, June 12, 2022, stormed the NPP National Headquarters to pick and pay for the Nomination Forms for the current National Coordinator, Alhaji Abdul Aziz Haruna Futa, who is seeking re-election for a second term.



They were led by the Ashanti Regional Nasara Coordinator, Saalim Bamba, and Alhaji Ali Suraj, a leading member of the Nasara Wing of the Party. Speaking to the media on behalf his colleagues after picking the Forms, the Ashanti Regional Nasara Coordinator said, all the Regional Nasara Coordinators have resolved to, not only endorse the re-election bid of Aziz Futa, but to also raise resources to support his nationwide campaign.



And that, traveling from across the country to the National Headquarters to pick his Nomination Forms and pay for same, was just a tip of the extent to which they are willing to go in support of the current National Nasara Coordinator, Alhaji Abdul Aziz Haruna Futa, to be given another four years, to continue his transformation of the Partys Nasara Wing.



Touting his achievements, Saalim Bamba stated among other things that:



Our boss, Alhaji Abdul Aziz Futa has delivered on his mandate as National Nasara Coordinator. He successfully resourced the Nasara Wing and supported our activities in the last elections resulting in the massive votes secured by the NPP particularly in the nations Zongos and other Nasara communities in the country.



Aziz Futa therefore deserves another term to continue his good works in transforming Nasara. It is for this reason that we the 16 Regional Nasara Coordinators have all resolved to endorse him, and go the extra mile, to sponsor his campaign across the country.



On his part, Alhaji Ali Suraj, a leading member of Nasara, and a former contestant for the position of National Nasara Coordinator, said, he decided not to contest again, so that he could throw his weight behind Aziz Futa to continue delivering the Nazara project.



He added that, since the formation of Nasara, no National Nasara Coordinator has won re-election, and this lack of continuity, has affected the progress of Nasara. Accordingly, it is in the interest of the NPP to break this chain, and for the first time, allow continuity in Nasara.



The NPP will hold its National Annual Delegates Conference, to elect National Executive Officers, from 15th to 17th July, in Accra, and it is widely expected that Aziz Futa will be overwhelmingly retained as National Nasara Coordinator, by the various Nasara Coordinators who form the Electoral College for the Nasara elections.







Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The NPP National Secretary, Mr. John Boadu has retraited that, his hands are clean and will still be clean to continue to be in the seat and work as the Secretary of the rulling New Patriotic Party.



Speaking to some delegates of the Party in the northern Regional Capital Tamale, Bimbila Constituency, Yendi etc to seek their votes in the upcoming National Delegates Conference scheduled to come off 15-17 July in Accra, Mr. Boadu said, over the years, they the delegates have helped him justify why they endorsed him Four years ago to be their substantive Secretary after he acted and delivered very well at the time the party was facing crisis.



Mr. John Boadu again paid a courtesy call on the overlord of Dagbon Yaana Abukari Mahama to seek his blessings ahead of the National Delegates Conference.



The NPP Chief Scribe said, since the time he acted and also became the substantive Secretary, there is no way or any day he has done anything to mud or bring the image of the NPP down. Which he assured to continue to protect and defend the image of the party all times.



" I have never done anything to bring disgrace or shame to the party. Never!!!. But there are some persons if you check where they work or their track records, they don't deserve to come to you to seek your vote into power or hold any position in the party"



But he John Boadu has been there for the Party through thick and thin and nothing has been done to bring shame to the party.



He added, that the Delegates must vote for Aspirants or Candidates that they can trust in any day or time to continue let the party work for them than unknown candidates with not track record.



He Jabs that, Secretary Position isn't a position for just ordinary people but rather, for the experienced and professionals who have worked to justify the position in all times.



To add it all, all the Constituency Executives in the Northern Region also pledge their support and full endorsement to the Chief Scribe.

Source: Michael Akrofi









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The Convention Peoples Party (CPP) has urged Ghanaians, especially the youth, to demand accountability from the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) to improve upon the livelihoods of the citizenry.



It called on Ghanaians, especially the youth, to join hands with the CPP so that they could bring a change to the status quo in 2024, stressing that indeed experience is the best teacher, we have done it before and we will do it again.



Anniversary



This was contained in a statement on Sunday, June 12, 2022 to mark the 73rd anniversary of the party issued by the General Secretary of the CPP, Nana Yaa Akyempim Jantuah.



The CPP was formed on June 12, 1949 by Dr Kwame Nkrumah and his comrades after they broke away from the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) where he was then the General Secretary.



COVID-19 funds



It called on the government to give detailed account of the money spent in the fight against COVID-19 and to fulfil to Ghanaians all promises made towards lowering the high cost of living.



The CPP is asking for accountability of the COVID -19 funds and all donations that have been made to the country in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic. There should be full disclosure on how the COVID largesse have been spent, as Ghanaians have the right to know, it said.



It called on Ghanaians to support the CPP to make a demand on the government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to be accountable, transparent, and to fulfil to Ghanaians all promises made to enhance livelihoods and make lives better.



The statement called on President Akufo-Addo to be prudent with the resources of the nation to avoid profligate and unwarranted spending which did not inure to the benefit of Ghanaians.



How do we fail to preserve existing forest reserves and turn around to spend money to buy 20 million seedlings to green Ghana, certainly this is a misplaced priority and a waste of our money. It said.



Legacy



It urged members of the party and Ghanaians to keep the CPP in their memory in view of the indelible legacy of unprecedented economic development that the CPP made under the leadership of Dr Kwame Nkrumah.



The statement was optimistic that working in unity, the CPP would regain political power in the 2024 general election and change the status quo.













Source: graphiconline.com









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The former Member of Parliament for Nandom, Dr. Benjamin Kumbuor, has advised the rank and file of the opposition National Democratic Congress to allow a level playing field for all presidential hopefuls in the party.



According to him, the NDC as a democratic party will be making a mistake if other flagbearer aspirants are prevented from contesting former President John Mahama.



He has been a Vice President before; he has been a President before. Currently, he is a former President, so his statue looks different from all other entrants who might be coming, and particularly the media will definitely be more interested in him because they have interacted with him.



That is what seems to show the prominence that he plays. But I am not sure, as a matter of politics with the NDC, that this prevents any other person in a democratic competitive election from coming up and expressing what they bring to the table. So let us not look at what individuals are saying, they are entitled to their own opinions, but the facts are out there for everybody to have his view, the former Defense Minister told TV3.



He continued: I think that everybody, in a democracy, is entitled to his views. As to whether that view is right or wrong is another matter.



I guess that probably, people who are expressing that view are expressing it from their perspective and not necessarily because it reflected on the grounds. People need to look at John Mahamas candidature in a completely different context.



Dr. Kwabena Duffuor



The NDC, on June 6 2022, called off Dr. Kwabena Duffuors Ahotor project event scheduled to take place at the partys Headquarters at Adabraka on June 7 2022, in Accra.



According to the party, the event was cancelled due to some disagreements.



Some NDC sympathizers and members across the country took to social media to express concerns over the development.



However, a press release signed by the General Secretary, John Aseidu Nketia, in response to an article by the Informer Newspaper, noted that the event was called off due to unsettled business between Dr. Duffuor and the party.



A mutually acceptable agreement was reached at our FEC meeting last week, with Dr. Duffour in attendance, pursuant to which we scheduled the presentation of the Ahoto project items to the party for Tuesday, June 7 2022.



The event was rescheduled because of certain issues raised subsequent to the final meeting by the donor with aspects of the agreement which required further deliberations and clearance by FEC, the General Secretary explained.



But in a sharp rebuttal, former National Organizer of the NDC and Member of Dr. Kwabena Duffuors Ahotor Project Team, Yaw Boateng Gyan, stated that the National Chairman for the opposition National Democratic Congress, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, called off the project launch at the partys Headquarters in Accra.



According to him, all was set for the event at the headquarters when the National Chairman, through the National Communications Officer Sammy Gyamfi, called to inform him that the relaunch had been put on hold.



In the morning of Monday, June 6, 2022, while preparing for the relaunch on Tuesday, Sammy Gyamfi called me and delivered a message from the National Chairman, Hon. Ofosu Ampofo that the relaunch of the Ahotor has been put on hold.



This was the last communication regarding the relaunch of the Ahotor Project with FEC, the former NDC National Organizer explained in a statement.



He added, "We are still waiting for FEC official communication regarding the relaunch of the Ahotor Project.





Source: starrfm









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Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, will appear at the dispatch box in Parliament on Thursday to brief the House on the expenditure incurred by the government since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country in 2020.



He is expected to be quizzed on the amount taken from the Ghana Stabilisation Fund (GSF) after the House approved a request from him to lower the cap from US$300 million to US$100 million to support the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme (CAP).



The government also sourced some US$100 million facility and US$1 billion facility from the Bretton Woods Institutions as well as established the National COVID-19 Trust Fund, which individuals and institutions have made donations into, and Mr. Ofori-Atta is expected to account for the use of those funds.



The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Minority in Parliament has been demanding accountability of all expenditures made in relation to the COVID-19.



Recently, Speaker Alban Bagbin placed a moratorium on the approval of a 75 million loan by Parliament for COVID-19 Response Programme being contracted from the European Investment Bank, demanding accountability from the Finance Ministry.



The Ministry of Finance must give an account of all the monies that it has gotten for the management of COVID-19. Only after that will this House consider approving or otherwise another loan, Mr. Bagbin stated on May 27, 2022.



However, the Majority Caucus noted that the Finance Minister was not shying away from accountability as portrayed by the Speaker, intimating that Mr. Bagbin failed to communicate the sense of the House, having misread the mood.



For him, the Speaker has no persona of his own, and therefore cannot communicate his own decision without recourse to the House.



Last Year Accountability



On July 22, 2021, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, apprised Parliament on expenditure made on the COVID-19 evacuation of Ghanaian migrants.



According to her, the government spent GH8.725 million and US$1.867 million in repatriating Ghanaians in China and the United Arab Emirates respectively.



She said the expenditure involved quarantine and air tickets, and added that an additional US$475,895 was expended on evacuating those in West and Central African countries and a further GH44,460,530 spent to quarantine evacuees in eighty five hotels spread across Accra, Prampram, Bolgatanga, Takoradi and Kasoa.



The minister told the House that some private individuals also made donations, including the Member of Parliament (MP) for Assin Central Kennedy Agyapong.



She said the MP alone mobilised some US$428,000 and personally donated US$ 200,000 to support evacuation from Lebanon, whilst the Sethi Brothers also donated GH200,000 to subsidise the cost of quarantine of some evacuees from the United Kingdom.



She disclosed the cost included hotel accommodation, three-square meals and water per day for the fourteen-day quarantine period.





Source: Daily Guide









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Prof Stephen Adei, an economist has said reversing the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) will not solve the economic woes of Ghana.



The pressure group Arise Ghana wants the government to reverse the levy, halt the Agyapa deal and reduce fuel prices, as well as, stop the reclassification of the Achimota Forest.



Speaking at the opening of the Financial Economic Seminar in Accra on Monday (13 June), Adei said: Interestingly, I was looking through social media and I saw a planned demonstration by a group called Arise Ghana on 21 June, I think they are giving a sufficient notice and as I look through them they have five complaints.



So, I went down to read what was their request to the government, and interestingly there were four of them. That E-Levy must be reversed, petrol prices should be reduced, that the Agyapa deal should not come on and the EI of the Achimota Forest should be reversed. And I said that well, if the government did all these four things, it will not change the current situation, not that they are not important, Prof Adei said.



He further called on participants to proffer solutions that could help solve the economic challenges facing Ghana.



I am expecting in this forum, real serious engagements as to where we came from, why we are here, what are the options for the future and a country like Ghana and which are the paths that may be most suitable, he added.

The leading member of the Arise Ghana Movement Bernard Mornah, has said that the pressure group is preparing to rally Ghanaians to the streets in protest of the countrys rising hardships on 21 June 2022.



Arise Ghana is a civil society pressure group which seeks to employ legitimate and legal means of influencing public policy to shape the Ghanaian society.



We are bringing the other side of the story that probably the policy makers are oblivious of and if they care they will then consider all these in shaping the destiny of our nation, Mornah said.



Speaking on The Forum on Saturday (4 June) Mornah said: We have gone on demonstrations one many times and it appears that our leaders and policy makers are not yielding anytime we go on the streets. They take it that it is one of the usual things, so initially to be honest with you, the group took the decision that we will be having a one week continuous demonstration.



But others thought that we should start and see the response of policy makers and we can then regroup and take a decision moving forward. This is just the beginning of a series of things to be manifested depending on the response of policy makers, particularly government, on some of the issues that we will be raising, he told show host Dr Kwaku Agyeman-Budu.



Arise Ghana served notice to embark on a demonstration in Accra on Tuesday 21 June 2022.



The reason for which we want to gather and sleep around Christ the King is that we believe that around the church the angels will be hovering around in the night so they can protect us. We want to test the limits of our democracy.



Police protection

Mornah stated that after reading the letter demanding demonstrator security, the regional commander stated that they couldnt guarantee a 48-hour demonstration since the police were stretched.



The police cannot become the new dictators and threats of our democracy. The police is supposed to be notified of our routes and they have to make preparations to ensure that we embark on our routes. The police have no right to say how long our protestation should last.



The fact that the police say that they cannot provide that security doesnt stop us from embarking on our demonstration. We have notified them; it is for them to come and do their duty.



Except they are telling me that the Ghana Police is so incompetent that they are not able to rally themselves in other to contain a situation as minimum as this, Mornah said.

Source: asaaseradio.com









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It is legendary Highlife artiste Kojo Antwis opinion that state burial to commemorate the memory of late celebrities is insignificant.



Since time immemorial, the forecourt of Parliament House has been designated for state burials as a way of paying utmost respect to the personalities who, during their lifetime, made significant impact in their respective fields.



This, The Maestro, as he is affectionately called, believes does not tell the real story of the struggles the celebrities faced in their quest to make history.



Yes state burial is beautiful, after that what happens? he quizzed the benefit of the elaborate funeral. Kojo Antwi is pioneering an agenda for late celebrities to be honoured in an unconventional way; including being named after monumental buildings or carved as marble statues.



If we can name some of them after roundabouts, streets, community centres or we we make a symbolic representation, I am sure someone will see and ask, who is this great guy? he said at the sidelines of a health screening by Kojo Antwi Foundation in collaboration with Royal Fantasy Club at Obo at Kwahu in the Eastern Region.



In the case of musician Nana Ampadu who passed on last year after entertaining Ghanaians for almost five decades, Kojo Antwi proposed a statue of him holding his guitar.



According to him, the move is geared towards alerting the government to recognise the effort of stakeholders, especially in the Creative Arts industry.

Source: adomonline.com









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Actor Kevin Spacey has been charged with four counts of sexual assault against three men, the Metropolitan Police has confirmed.



The 62-year-old has also been charged with causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.

He is due at Westminster Magistrates' Court at 10:00 BST on Thursday.



The charges follow a review of evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police.



He has been charged with two counts of sexual assault on a man, now in his 40s, in London in March 2005.



He has also been charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent on a man, now in his 30s, in August 2008 in London.



The fourth charge of sexual assault is on another man, who is also now in his 30s, in April 2013 in Gloucestershire.

Mr Spacey previously said he would "voluntarily" appear in a UK court to answer the charges.



The American Beauty star gave a statement to Good Morning America in May in which he said he was confident he could prove his innocence.



He is a two-time Oscar winner and has starred in films such as Seven, LA Confidential, American Beauty and Baby Driver, as well as the Netflix series House of Cards.





Source: BBC









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" " Americans display the nation's flag in many ways, and its many iterations, from decor to clothing, are on display in Independence Day parades around the country. Ariel Skelley/Blend Images/Getty Images

As Americans, it might be healthy for us to admit that we, the people, are perhaps unnaturally attached to our country's flag.

Not that that's a bad thing necessarily. Yeah, we dig our flag. We admit it. We love to see the red, white and blue fluttering against the amber waves of grain and those purple mountains' majesty. We revere everything Old Glory stands for  life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, a government by the people and for the people, our men and women in uniform, a good hamburger  and see no reason not to let it be known that we're generally proud of the United States of America. Warts and all.

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So we unfurl that Grand Old Flag on our front porches on any day we feel like it. We turn to field-sized versions of the stars and stripes at sporting events when we rise to sing our national anthem (a song that, as we know, is all about the flag). Our kids, still, stand and pledge allegiance to the flag in public school classrooms across the country, despite efforts by many to cool it with the "under God" stuff. The flag is in our churches, too  to heck with that separation of church and state thing.

We wave flags. We literally wrap ourselves in 'em. We even, in a strangely patriotic, only-in-America way, burn them on occasion in protest (which the Supreme Court in 1989, and later in 1990, ruled is protected speech under the Constitution). Americans can sometimes look at our country through unapologetic rose-colored glasses, and the most patriotic of us do so through flag-festooned contact lenses.

" " The American fascination with the flag can veer between reverential and kitschy, often at the same time, visitors to the country have observed. Hisham Ibrahim/Getty Images

"Viewed from abroad  certainly coming from the UK  it is striking when you go to the United States, how prevalent the flag is," Adam Smith, a history professor at University College London who writes about the U.S., tells HowStuffWorks. "It's pretty hard to find places in America where you can't find a flag somewhere. And that isn't true of most places."

Americans are flag-waving crazy like maybe no place on Earth. The Flag Manufacturers Association of America estimates that some 150 million American flags of all sizes are sold every year (though, granted, plenty are made in China). That means since, say, January of 2015, there's been a new Old Glory churned out for every man, woman and kid in America.

Why? What is it that makes us so bonkers for our star-spangled banner? What is it about those 13 stripes and those 50 stars that has made us elevate the flag to untouchably iconic status?

In a country these days so sharply divided along all sorts of fault lines  political, social, racial, geographic, the National League vs. the American League  why is that millions of us protect and revere the flag so?

"Our flag has become a symbol above politics. It is the symbol of that which unites us," says John Hartvigsen, the president of the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA). Vexillology is the study of flags, something that Hartvigsen has been doing with NAVA for the past 48 years. "It's very important for us to find what unites us."

The desire, the fervent need to find unity in a country that doesn't have a monarch to rally around has been present since the American revolution, Hartvigsen says, and has been reinforced throughout American history. Certainly since the Civil War, Americans have looked to the flag to remind us that we are one nation despite our differences, despite our hardships.

So in our darkest times and in our greatest triumphs, the flag has been our symbol. Over Fort McHenry when Francis Scott Key penned his poem that became our National Anthem. With Teddy Roosevelt on San Juan Hill. At Iwo Jima. In the streets of American cities during the Vietnam War. On the moon in 1969. Above the medals podium after the Miracle on Ice at the Olympics in 1980. Rising above the rubble of the World Trade Center after Sept. 11, 2001.

" " The 1887 illustration "A Woman in Battle: Michigan Bridget Carrying the Flag," by Felix Octavius Carr Darley, shows how the American flag was used as a rallying symbol during the Civil War. Charles Phelps Cushing/ClassicStock/Getty Images

We go a little overboard sometimes, sure, with all the flag-waving nationalism. Certainly compared to places like the U.K., we do.

"To fly the flag in front of your house, which is obviously a perfectly normal thing to do in the United States," Smith says from London, "here you would never ... Unless you were the Queen, or ... it would just be slightly embarrassing. That's just something people don't do."

In France (another country without a monarch), Smith suggests, the French are into their flag and fly it proudly, too. Other countries, certainly, hold their flag in great regard.

But ...

"Let me just say that the American veneration of the national flag is not unique, but it is towards the extreme end of the spectrum," says Michael Billig, a professor of social science at Loughborough University in the U.K., via email. Billig examined the everyday use of flags in his 1995 book "Banal Nationalism."

" " American flag-decorated clothes are a mainstay of national celebrations for some. Some say they're celebratory, while others may point out that they violate U.S. Flag Code etiquette. Kacey Klonsky/Image Source/Getty Images

"I do not know of another nation where schoolchildren are expected to salute the flag in a formal ritual every day," he says. "National flags tend to date back 250 years  they are not ancient. Even the oldest national flags were not fetishized when they were introduced as they are today."

Now, if you want to say that Americans have a flag fetish, we'd have to plead guilty. On outwardly patriotic days  Independence Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day (June 14)  that star-spangled banner so proudly waves everywhere. On other days ... yeah, then too. Everywhere, everywhen.

That might seem strange, and maybe even uncouth, to people outside our borders, a blatant example of Yanks rubbing all that freedom and might and national pride in the face of the rest of the world.

"I personally find it kind of charming. I certainly don't have a problem with it," says Smith. "[But] if you're primed to be over-sensitive to American patriotic chauvinism, then you would see [this] as just well ... you roll your eyes at it: 'What would you expect from these guys?'"

America, admittedly, has some image problems when it comes to displaying our flag. We have some real problems, too, that we're reminded of every day.

But every Independence Day, we gather in public places with our flags  on runners' shorts at the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta, on blankets and T-shirts along the Charles River as the Boston Pops play, at the Capitol Fourth in our nation's capital, throughout the fireworks display in Larned, Kansas, around the pie eating contest on the north shore of Lake Union in Seattle  and know that there's a lot to be proud of in this country. A lot to stand up for and cheer.

Once July 5 rolls around, we'll keep our flags flying. Every day after that, too, whenever we want, pasted in apartment windows and hung off trees, high above factory floors and flapping from car antennas. Yeah, we overdo things. We're Americans. But when it comes to the flag, that can be a good thing.

"It's the flag that brings us together," says Hartvigsen.

Now That's Interesting As much as Americans revere the flag, we revere free speech more, meaning it's not illegal to desecrate it (though the Senate has come close to passing a Constitutional amendment to outlaw desecration of the flag on a few occasions) or to use it in pretty much any fashion desired. Still, the flag is "protected" under the U.S. Flag Code, which outlines general principles, suggested display and proper conduct toward the flag.
Int'l crayfish festival held in China's Jiangsu

Xinhua) 08:31, June 13, 2022

A staff member prepares crayfish dishes during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province, June 12, 2022. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

Aerial photo taken on June 12, 2022 shows the view of an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

Aerial photo taken on June 12, 2022 shows people enjoying crayfish dishes during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

A chef prepares crayfish dishes during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province, June 12, 2022. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

A journalist takes photos of crayfish dishes showcased during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province, June 12, 2022. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

A crayfish dish is seen during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province, June 12, 2022. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

Aerial photo taken on June 12, 2022 shows people enjoying crayfish dishes during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

(Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji)
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The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) fired multiple projectiles, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Sunday.

The projectiles were presumed to be fired from multiple rocket launchers. The South Korean military detected the multiple trajectories from 8:07 a.m. to 11:03 a.m. local time, the JCS said in a statement.

It noted that the South Korean military has strengthened surveillance and vigilance while maintaining a full readiness posture in close cooperation with the United States.

A week earlier, the DPRK fired eight short-range ballistic missiles eastward from four different areas.

The DPRK has conducted projectile launches four times since the new government of South Korea was inaugurated on May 10.
" " A battle scene from the series "The Forty-seven Faithful Samurai" by Utagawa Yoshitora, 19th-century Japanese artist and printmaker. Universal History Archive/Getty Images

No one is quite sure who the first samurai was. Historians do have some idea of when regular warriors began taking on the characteristics of the samurai. In the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, C.E., there were rivalries in Japan between princes and clans, as well as succession wars when an emperor died. However, most of the fighting was done against those people who were native to islands of Japan, which imperial Japanese referred to as emishi or barbarians.

Some emperors realized that the emishi were good fighters and in later years, emishi were recruited to fight in battles against other clans or rebellious religious orders. Some of the military tactics and traditions of the emishi were incorporated by Japanese soldiers and were later used by the samurai.

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The samurai's status as an elite class comes from the proliferation of powerful families that lived far from the capital, passing their land and their prestige, from one generation to the next for hundreds of years. The members of these warrior houses or clans attained noble status.

Barbarian military traditions combined with elite status and the kyuba no michi warrior code to form a template for the earliest samurai. By some reports, the word samurai first appeared in the 12th century. For a long time, the samurai provided the main military force used against emishi and other clans.

In the 1100s, two powerful military clans served the emperor of Japan: the Taira clan and the Minamoto clan. These two families became bitter rivals and in 1192, Minamoto Yoritomo led his clan to victory over the Taira. The emperor, the traditional head of the Japanese government, declared Minamoto Yoritomo shogun, the head of the military. However, Yoritomo used his new power to strip the emperor of all political power, make his position as shogun permanent, and set up a military dictatorship known as bakufu. So, the samurai went from being servants to the land-owning daimyos to being the rulers of Japan under the shogun.

After Yoritomo died, his wife, Masako, became a nun. Through her family, however, she still had influence over the government. Though not perfect, her family, the Hojos, maintained control over Japan for over 100 years.

The Ashikaga clan wrested control from the Hojos in 1338. The Ashikagas failed to provide a strong central authority in Japan, and the clans descended into constant fighting. During this period, the daimyo built impressive castles with walls, gates, and moats that made them difficult to attack.

This sengoku, or civil war period lasted until Tokugawa Ieyaso took control of Japan in 1603. Tokugawa enforced a strict isolationist policy, and kept control of the daimyos by forcing their families to live in the capital, while the daimyo himself lived on his estate. Each daimyo was required to visit the capital at least once per year (daimyos who fell into disfavor were given estates far from the capital, making the trip much more expensive and time-consuming). This policy ensured the control of the daimyos because their families were basically held hostage, and the expensive annual trips prevented them from gaining too much economic power.

Tokugawa also banned the carrying of swords by anyone but samurai. All swords owned by non-samurai were confiscated and melted down to make statues. This marked the samurai as a very distinct and noticeable class, above the common citizen.

During Tokugawa's enforced peace, samurai were seldom used in combat. It was during this period that the samurai took on other roles, escorting their lords back and forth from the capital, working as bureaucrats in the bakufu and collecting tribute in the form of rice payments from the daimyo's vassals.

Armor Glossary Do - the main torso armor, which hangs from the shoulders.

Tsurubashiri - leather covering on the do, sometimes with elaborate and colorful designs.

Sendan-no-ita , kyubi-no-ita - small armor plates which hang from the shoulders and protect the cords that hold the rest of the armor together.

Kote - armored sleeve, only worn on the left arm, leaving the right arm free to fire a bow. This practice of leaving the right arm unarmored was continued out of a sense of tradition long after samurai no longer relied on archery in combat. Read More
THE Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) will ask Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia to make changes to her controversial Executive Order (EO) 16 that made the wearing of face masks in well-ventilated and open spaces in Cebu Province optional.



A show cause order may be issued to the governor if she declines to make the proposed changes, DILG Undersecretary Epimaco Densing said in an interview with CNN Philippines in Manila on Monday, June 13, 2022.



Densing or his representatives are expected to speak with the governor on her EO, which has created a conflict with the policies of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases on the management of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic in the country.



We will have to ask our officials in the region to talk to the governor to make some adjustments in the executive order. I believe theres a good intent in the executive order by Governor Gwen, but more importantly we should most probably look into the details... It should be aligned with what is pronounced by the President, Densing said.



President Rodrigo Duterte is the overall chairman of the IATF.



Among the changes proposed to be made is the implementation of the mandatory wearing of masks in crowded places.



Garcia responded by calling for a special session of the Cebu Provincial Board (PB) on Tuesday, June 14, for the enactment of an ordinance on the optional wearing of masks based on her EO.



In her letter to the PB, she certified the enactment as urgent, authorizing the said ordinance, on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd readings.



Under Garcias EO 16, issued last June 8, mask wearing would be required only in closed and/or air-conditioned spaces.



The use of masks would now be optional in well-ventilated and open spaces, with persons just highly encouraged to continue to wear their masks especially in crowded outdoor areas.



But persons with Covid-19 symptoms like fever, cough or runny nose would still be required to wear a mask at all times when they leave their homes.



The EO covers 44 towns and six component cities in Cebu Province. It does not cover the highly urbanized cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu.



Quorum



The optional wearing of face masks in well-ventilated and open spaces in Cebu Province would have become a local law already, if not for the failure of the PB to gather a quorum for its regular session on Monday, June 13.



PB Member John Ismael Jiembo Borgonia (3rd district) told SunStar Cebu on Monday that he had prepared his proposed ordinance titled An Ordinance Rationalizing the Wearing of Face Masks within the Province of Cebu.



Borgonia said Garcia had issued a certificate of urgency to tackle his proposed ordinance on the same day, Monday.



He also noted that under the Local Government Code, they are allowed to conduct three readings for the proposed ordinance in one session as long as it is urgent.



However, there was no quorum since only eight of the 18 members of the PB were present during their Monday regular session.



Apart from him, Borgonia said the other PB members present were Raul Bacaltos (1st district), Yolanda Daan (1st district), Edsel Galeos (2nd district), Kerrie Keane Shimura (4th district), Thadeo Jovito Ouano (6th district), Christopher Baricuatro (7th district), and Philippine Councilors League President Caroline Bacaltos.



Vice Gov. Hilario Davide III, who serves as presiding officer, was also present.



Borgonia said majority of the PB members were reportedly on leave while others had official business, the reason why they had no session.



He said the governors certificate of urgency was needed because the deadline for the submission of resolutions and ordinances to be tackled for this weeks regular session was last Wednesday, June 8.



Not recognize



After Garcia issued EO 16, Secretary Eduardo Ano said the DILG would not recognize the EO. Ano instead ordered police to continue to confront, apprehend, and arrest all violators of minimum public health standards (MPHS), including the wearing of face masks in public places.



On Monday, Philippine National Police (PNP) officer-in-charge Lt. Gen. Vicente Danao Jr. reiterated that the police should follow the orders from the national government, specifically on the protocols to prevent the spread of the Covid-19.



Danao ordered his men to continue implementing the mandatory face mask rule in all public areas as ordered by President Duterte.



Police Brig. Gen. Roque Eduardo Vega, director of the Police Regional Office in Central Visayas, also said they would continue to apprehend those who violate the rules of the IATF, as he ordered the local police and the public to follow the directives of the DILG.



Vega said he already called on the city and provincial police directors, including Police Col. Engelbert Soriano, director of the Cebu Police Provincial Office, to follow the order of their head office.



Soriano had earlier said his office would abide by the governors EO as it remains the law in the province unless it is later on invalidated by proper authority.



Borgonia said having a local law would give more teeth to Garcias EO, preventing the arrest of their constituents as law enforcers would have no basis to arrest them. (with GDC, TPM, TPT)
Starting a new business is a hectic time when youre trying to keep customers happy and balance the needs of suppliers and staff. The last thing you need to worry about is the equipment, complicated services and excessive costs of a PBX service. You may not even be to the point of having a full-time receptionist yet.

But DTAC has introduced a mobile PBX at a low monthly price that may be just the thing to make your life easier and add an air of professionalism to your business. The system is called OneCall, and its streamlining the phone operations of businesses all over Thailand.

OneCall is Mobile and Flexible

New businesses have to be agile and ready to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. With OneCall as your PBX, you can set up your phone system however you feel it would benefit your customers and staff and change it as your business evolves and develops.

This is a truly mobile system. It doesnt require any bulky PBX phone installation or wiring. And although it can be managed on a computer, it doesnt require the services of an IT department. You can easily install and manage the capabilities of OneCall by yourself. You can even manage the system from your smartphone while eating lunch in your favorite restaurant.

Suits Many Kinds of Businesses

The flexibility of the system serves many newly established companies, as well as older companies undergoing a period of expansion and growth.

If youve established a business consultancy, the phone can be your lifeline. You need to be always available for potential clients and established clients whenever they need your services.

Businesses with numerous branches and offices need to present a seamless, united image and maintain communication throughout the day. OneCall provides the hub that connects all your different offices and ensures youre all on the same page offering the same services.

Ecommerce and retail businesses are conducting more business by phone than ever before. They need to transfer calls at lightning speed to keep every customer happy and provide them with the information they need to complete their order.

Choose the Package that Helps Your Business

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The basic OneCall package offers a single-layer forwarding system packed with a host of features. It has automatic call forwarding and an autoresponder to automatically provide a response to your valued customers even if youre on the phone. It has an entire range of features that help you manage your phone usage and presence, like an internal contact number and private voicemail box.

If you opt for the Multi-layer OneCall package, youre now in possession of a mobile PBX that can add a degree of professionalism. This professionalism makes life easier for your employees and is more efficient for your customers.

Find out how easy it is to present the right image for your company with a modern mobile PBX system. Call DTAC and ask them for more information about their OneCall system.

Photos and Web Content by Primal Co., Ltd.
Graphic depicts group vs. self sensing. Credit: Parker Smith and Martin Schuster, OSU.

Oregon State University scientists have identified proteins that prevent a bacterial cell from becoming misguided by its own messaging, allowing it to instead wait for collective communication from its group.

The research is important because understanding this type of signaling, known as quorum sensing and integral to bacterial pathogens, opens the door to potential new drugs that can disrupt it and thwart infection.

Findings were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Martin Schuster, a professor in OSU's Department of Microbiology in the colleges of Science and Agricultural Sciences, and doctoral student Parker Smith study quorum sensing in the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a gram-negative bacterium that displays a variety of social behaviors.

P. aeruginosa, a common cause of lung and wound infections among hospital patients and people with weakened immune systems, is a model organism for quorum sensing research with a well understood signaling circuit, the scientists said.

"Sometimes single-celled organisms need to work together with other cells," Schuster said. "Bacteria and other single-celled microbes can coordinate behaviors and act as a group via quorum sensing, in which cells produce and sense a small chemical signal that is shared within the population."

As the signal is released from cells and reaches a high enough concentration in their environment, a quorum is achievedcertain genes are simultaneously activated and specific group behaviors are set in motion, Smith said.

It's a strength-in-numbers approach that allows bacteria to join forces to do things they could not do by themselves, like causing infection in animals and plants, acquiring certain nutrients and competing against other microbes.

"Bacterial infection often involves toxins that only harm the host at high levels, when produced by all bacterial cells at once," Smith said.

A major unresolved question about quorum sensing, the researchers said, has been why the signal that's produced inside an individual cell is not sensed by that same cell before it is released, spurring the cell into premature, solo action.

"In essence, what prevents signal 'short-circuiting' from happening?" Schuster said. "Our research addresses this question that's fundamental to our understanding of quorum sensing."

Smith and Schuster learned that a set of proteins called antiactivators are crucial for short-circuit prevention. The proteins work as a quorum sensing "tuner" by causing cells to be less sensitive to the quorum signal.

The researchers developed bacterial strains that lacked two different types of antiactivator proteins and then looked at quorum sensing behaviors in individual cells.

"We found that without antiactivators, a fraction of cells in a P. aeruginosa population engaged in 'self-talk,'" Smith said. "In these cells, signal short-circuiting had activated quorum-sensing-dependent behaviors at all times, irrespective of cell density and without any communication with other cells. Our research shows how bacteria put the brakes on quorum sensing to achieve true communication in a group."

In addition to helping the quest for new antibiotics that can inhibit quorum sensing in bacterial pathogens, the findings also provide background knowledge useful for the engineering of cells with new properties in a field called synthetic biology, Schuster said.

Explore further Mutant bacterial receptor could point to new therapies against opportunistic pathogen
Artists reconstruction of the Triassic ecosystem preserved in the Ischigualasto Formation. Animals include amphibians (bottom center-left underwater), rhynchosaurian reptiles (left mid-ground on riverbank), early crocodilian relatives (far left mid-ground and center far background), early mammal relatives (center mid-ground in river and along riverbank, and far right foreground), and early dinosaurs (far left foreground, center right foreground, and far right mid-ground). Credit: Jorge Gonzalez/Natural History Museum of Utah

A group of researchers from CONICET and the University of Utah demonstrated that during the time of the first dinosaurs, variations in the diversity and abundance of the plant and vertebrate animal species cannot be related to the climatic changes recorded throughout its deposition, in contrast with previous hypotheses.

In the new study, published in the open access journal Frontiers in Earth Science, the team of scientists investigated multiple independent lines of evidence (sedimentology, clay mineralogy, and geochemistry) to elucidate changes paleoclimatic conditions (such as mean annual precipitation and mean annual temperature) within the Ischigualasto Formation. These fossil-rich sedimentary rocks were deposited by rivers and streams between ~231 and 226 million years ago during the Late Triassic Period in what is now northwestern Argentina (La Rioja and San Juan provinces). In the middle of the formation, the researchers observed a clear change in conditions approximately from warmer, drier conditions to more temperate humid conditions, but no concurrent major changes could be identified in the fossil record.

"We conclude that variations in the abundance and diversity of species, as recorded by their first and last appearances in the fossil record, are better explained by preservation and sampling biases biases than by changes in climate," said Adriana Mancuso, lead author and CONICET independent researcher at the Instituto Argentino de Nivologia, Glaciologia y Ciencias Ambientales in Mendoza, Argentina.

A team member exposes fresh rock to obtain a geologic sample for geochemical lab analysis to reconstruct the paleoclimate record of the Ischigualasto Formation. Credit: Adriana Mancuso

"What we see is that how many specimens collected from each interval of the sequence, and the chemical & physical characteristics that allow greater or lesser preservation of the remains of animals and plants, were significant factors. These two factors, collection and preservation, have more influence on the increase or decrease of abundance and diversity than the climate changes recorded," explained Mancuso.

However, although the evolution of the ecosystem does not generally show a biotic response associated with climate change, the research group did observe a relationship between climatic variations and two groups of reptiles, rhynchosaurs (herbivorous early archosauromorphs) and pseudosuchians (crocodilian-line archosaurs). "We did find that the abundance of rhynchosaurs and extinction of a few pseudosuchian species appear to coincide with a climate shift," said Randall Irmis, co-author from the U and the Natural History Museum of Utah.

Beyond conclusions about this specific fossil and paleoclimate record from Argentina, the new research emphasizes the importance of an explicit framework for testing hypotheses about the link between climatic changes and the fossil record. "In addition to the contribution on the relationship of biotic and climatic events in the Ischigualasto Formation, the work provides a methodological framework to test climate-biota associations, highlighting the data gaps that must be filled, and makes new testable predictions that can be tested in future studies," concludes Mancuso.

An overview of extensive Ischigulasto Formation outcrops in the study area, located in La Rioja Province, northwestern Argentina. Credit: Randall Irmis/Natural History Museum of Utah

Other authors include Tomas Pedernera and Cecilia Benavente of the Instituto Argentino de Nivologia, Glaciologia y Ciencias Ambientales (CONICET), Leandro Gaetano from the Instituto de Estudios Andinos (CONICET) and Departamento de Ciencias Geologicas of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Benjamin Breeden of the University of Utah.

Explore further Insights into climate change during origin of dinosaurs

More information: Adriana C. Mancuso et al, Paleoenvironmental and Biotic Changes in the Late Triassic of Argentina: Testing Hypotheses of Abiotic Forcing at the Basin Scale, Frontiers in Earth Science (2022). Journal information: Frontiers in Earth Science Adriana C. Mancuso et al, Paleoenvironmental and Biotic Changes in the Late Triassic of Argentina: Testing Hypotheses of Abiotic Forcing at the Basin Scale,(2022). DOI: 10.3389/feart.2022.883788
The Gran Sasso low radioactivity lab. Credit: Massimiliano De Deo, LNGS-INFN

The origin of consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries of science. One proposed solution, first suggested by Nobel Laureate and Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hammeroff, at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, attributes consciousness to quantum computations in the brain. This in turn hinges on the notion that gravity could play a role in how quantum effects disappear, or "collapse." But a series of experiments in a lab deep under the Gran Sasso mountains, in Italy, has failed to find evidence in support of a gravity-related quantum collapse model, undermining the feasibility of this explanation for consciousness. The result is reported in the journal Physics of Life Reviews.

"How consciousness arises in the brain is a huge puzzle," says Catalina Curceanu, a member of the physics think tank, the Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, and the lead physicist on the experiments at INFN in Frascati, Italy. "There are many competing ideas, but very few can be experimentally tested."

Quantum physics famously tells us that cats can be alive and dead at the same time, at least in theory. Yet in practice we never see felines locked in such an unfortunate limbo state. One popular explanation for why not is because the "wavefunction" of a systemits quantum character allowing it to be in two contradictory states simultaneouslyis more likely to "collapse" or be destroyed if it is more massive, leaving it in one defined state, either dead or alive, say, but not both at the same time. This model of collapse, related to gravity acting on heavy objects like cats, was invoked by Penrose and Hammeroff when developing their model of consciousness, 'Orch OR theory' (the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory), in the 1990s.

Quantum computations in the brain

Curceanu first became interested in Orch OR theory when she met Penrose, also an FQXi member, at a conference some years ago. Consciousness is not usually associated with quantum properties because quantum effects are fragile and difficult to maintain even under highly-controlled conditions and cold temperatures in the lab. So it had long been assumed that the brain's warm and wet environment would be too disruptive to allow quantum effects to survive. But Penrose explained that he and Hammeroff have identified tiny structures called microtubules within neurons in the brain that could potentially sustain quantum effects for short periodsjust long enough to carry out quantum computations. Orch OR theory attributes consciousness to quantum computations orchestrated ("Orch") by electrical oscillations in these microtubules. "What I loved about this theory was that it is in principle testable and I decided to search for evidence that might help confirm or falsify it," says Curceanu.

"What I loved about this theory was that it is in principle testable and I decided to search for evidence that might help confirm or falsify it."

At the heart of the theory is the idea that gravity is related to quantum wavefunction collapse and that this collapse is faster in systems with more mass. This concept was developed in a number of models by various physicists in the 1980s. One of those was Lajos Diosi, at the Wigner Research Center for Physics and at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, who has co-authored the new paper with Curceanu, Maaneli Derakhshani of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Matthias Laubenstein also at INFN, and Kristian Piscicchia of CREF and INFN. Penrose independently approached this idea a few years later and it became the core of his consciousness theory with Hammeroff.

The two theories are often referred to by the umbrella term, the "Diosi-Penrose theory." But behind the joint name there is an important difference, notes Curceanu. Diosi's approach predicts that collapse would be accompanied by the spontaneous emission of a small amount of radiation, just large enough to be detected by cutting edge experiments.

Left to right: Fabrizio Napolitano, Alberto Clozza, Catalina Curceanu, Marco Miliucci -- all from INFN-LNF. Credit: Catalina Curceanu

Going underground

Curceanu's underground lab is housed within the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, 1.4 km under the Gran Sasso Italian mountains. The lab stands on one side of the 10-km long highway tunnel which crosses the Gran Sasso massif, connecting L'Aquila and Teramo. "The location was chosen because it is basically free from cosmic-ray radiation sources above the ground, that could interfere with the experiment," says Curceanu. The experiment uses an extremely sensitive cylindrical detector, not much bigger than a mug, made from highly pure germanium. It is surrounded by shielding, made of layers of ultra-pure lead and copper, to shelter it from any background radiation coming from the rocks. After running the experiment for two months the team did not measure spontaneous radiation signals, constraining the feasibility of gravity-related collapse. In 2020, the team reported in Nature Physics that their negative result had helped them rule out the simplest version of the Diosi-Penrose model.

In their new paper they have explicitly examined the repercussions of their finding for Penrose and Hammeroff's Orch OR theory of consciousness. After reanalyzing the most plausible scenarios set out by Hammeroff and Penrose, in light of their recent experimental constraints on quantum collapse, they were led to conclude that almost none of the scenarios are plausible. "This is the first experimental investigation of the gravity-related quantum collapse pillar of the Orch OR consciousness model, which we hope will be followed by many others," says Curceanu. "I am very proud of our achievement."

Interdisciplinary characteristics

The experiments and analysis are partially funded by a grant from the Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi. "Without it, it would have not been possible to achieve this outcome," says Curceanu. "It is hard to otherwise get funding for projects such as this, based on its interdisciplinary characteristics."

"It is really exciting to connect what you can do in the laboratory to perhaps the biggest mystery in the universeconsciousness."

But all is not lost for Orch Or, adds Curceanu. "Actually, the real work is just at the beginning." she says. In fact, Penrose's original collapse model, unlike Diosi's, did not predict spontaneous radiation, so has not been ruled out. The new paper also briefly discusses how a gravity-related collapse model might realistically be modified. "Such a revised model, which we are working on within the FQXi financed project, could leave the door open for Orch OR theory," Curceanu says.

Meanwhile the team is preparing to test these refined new collapse models, to further investigate their implications for the Orch OR model. "It is really exciting to connect what you can do in the laboratory to perhaps the biggest mystery in the universeconsciousness," says Curceanu.

Explore further Deconstructing Schrodinger's cat

More information: Maaneli Derakhshani et al, At the crossroad of the search for spontaneous radiation and the Orch OR consciousness theory, Physics of Life Reviews (2022). Journal information: Physics of Life Reviews , Nature Physics Maaneli Derakhshani et al, At the crossroad of the search for spontaneous radiation and the Orch OR consciousness theory,(2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2022.05.004

Provided by Foundational Questions Institute
Left figure: Mosaicked images of SOFIA (154 microns in red), Herschel (70 microns in green), and Spitzer (24 microns in blue). Right figure: The magnetic field flows are on the SOFIA far-infrared (154micon) image. Credit: SETI Institute

New research detected strong polarization from a young supernova remnant. It provided independent and solid evidence that the cosmic dust in the early universe was formed in supernovae. While it's true that supernovae eject and destroy cosmic dust, infrared observations now suggest that the dust formed at an early stage of a supernova. SOFIA HAWC+ (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy High-Resolution Airborne Wideband Camera Plus) Band D observations of the young supernova remnant (SNR) Cassiopeia A (Cas A) show high polarization at the 5-30% level. This polarization indicates:

Polarized dust emission detected in far-infrared belongs to the SNR, and supernovae are producers of a large mass of dust (some papers, including in Nature , have indicated the dust is only from the clouds in the line of sight and there is no cold dust in Cas A)

, have indicated the dust is only from the clouds in the line of sight and there is no cold dust in Cas A) Newly formed dust grains in supernovae are large and elongated rather than spherical

Silicate grains are the dominant dust to have such strong polarization

Supernovae are important dust sources in the early universe

Dr. Jeonghee Rho, a research scientist at the SETI Institute and the lead author of this research, said that the polarized dust emission belongs to the SNR Cas A and is not random interstellar emission. Studying far-infrared emissions is tricky since it is everywhere in the sky. Searching for emissions associated with supernovae is equivalent to finding a needle in the haystack. Polarization observations shine new light on that.

The research is a collaboration with the graduate student, Mr. Aravind Ravi, and other scientists at the University of Texas, Arlington, and collaborators are at the University of College London and Cardiff University in U. K., Ghent University in Belgium, Max Planck Institute in Germany, and Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute in South Korea.

The magnetic field directions are shown on the SOFIA far-infrared (154micon) image using the High-Resolution Airborne Wideband Camera Plus (HAWC+) on board SOFIA. The magnetic field strength in Cas A is very strong, 100 milli-Gauss inferred by the polarization measurements. The polarization is relatively weak where the far-infrared emission is stronger (in brown). Credit: SETI Institute

Cassiopeia A is a relatively young SNR located in the constellation Cassiopeia and approximately 11,000 light-years away from Earth, and its light first likely reached Earth in around 1671 AD. It is also a well-studied SNR, making it an ideal observation target. SOFIA's HAWC+ is a far-infrared camera and imaging polarimeter that allows total and polarized flux imaging in five broad bands wavelengths. The polarization map of Cas A was conducted at 154 microns (Band D). By observing with this instrument, the researchers hoped to learn:

How does the magnetic field flow?

What type of dust grains are present?

How large are the dust grains?

What shapes are the dust grains?

How does the dust align with the magnetic field?

By understanding the properties of the dust grains, scientists can better understand the history of star formation and the evolution of the universe. Not to be confused with dust bunnies hiding under beds, cosmic dust is comprised of rocks and is made of elements like carbon, and in this case, mainly silicate, and plays a role in how stars and planets form. Theoretical models previously showed that dust formation in supernovae could explain the presence of dust in the early universe. The big question was whether there would be evidence of sufficient amounts of dust forming.

SOFIA's polarization in Cas A combining Spitzer and Herschel images implies an estimate of a magnetic field of approximately 100 milli-Gauss. It puts Cas A as one of the strongest magnetic field sources. The grain alignment in supernova ejecta occurs with the magnetic fields, and dust polarization can reliably trace the magnetic field.

While the polarization shows a tight magnetic field at the center and southeastern shell, the polarization fraction is higher at the place between the two dust structures. West shows a lack of polarization and random fields. Credit: SETI Institute

The observation showed that silicate dust grains are the dominant grains in Cas A. This result is meaningful because the survival rate for silicate dust is higher than for other kinds of dust, so sufficient dust still exists behind the reverse shock. Other grains present could be iron-bearing dust, but additional wavelength observations or simulations will provide greater understanding.

The large amount of dust from the polarized regions of the SNR shows that supernovae are the significant dust producer in the early universe. The dust mass from the polarized area (e.g., excluding the western part) is still two-tenths of solar mass. Previously it was done using deconvolution of spectra. This data is independent confirmation that dust production from supernovae is important as dust producers in the early universe.

"It's disappointing that the SOFIA mission is coming to an end when we're seeing exciting results such as this," said Deputy Director of SOFIA Science Mission Operations, Bernhard Schulz. "There's currently no plan for another Far Infrared observatory, so the whole field of astronomy will be impacted."

This work brings us closer to understanding processes in the early universe leading to star and planet formation. By studying the grains more deeply with the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers hope to understand dust composition better.

Explore further The magnetic field in the Milky Way filamentary bone G47

More information: Dr. Rho will be presenting her findings at the AAS press briefing scheduled for 10:15 am PDT today, June 13. Journal information: Nature Dr. Rho will be presenting her findings at the AAS press briefing scheduled for 10:15 am PDT today, June 13.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

As the climate crisis leads to more intense and more frequent extreme weather and climate-related events, this in turn risks increasing the amount of gender-based violence experienced by women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities, say researchers.

In a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health, a team led by a researcher at the University of Cambridge analyzed current scientific literature and found that the evidence paints a bleak picture for the future as extreme events drive economic instability, food insecurity, and mental stress, and disrupt infrastructure and exacerbate gender inequality.

Between 2000 and 2019, floods, droughts, and storms alone affected nearly 4 billion people worldwide, costing over 300,000 lives. The occurrences of these extreme events represent a drastic change, with the frequency of floods increasing by 134%, storms by 40%, and droughts by 29% over the past two decades. These figures are expected to rise further as climate change progresses.

Extreme weather and climate events have been seen to increase gender-based violence, due to socio-economic instability, structural power inequalities, health-care inaccessibility, resource scarcity and breakdowns in safety and law enforcement, among other reasons. This violence can lead to long-term consequences including physical injury, unwanted pregnancy, exposure to HIV or other sexually transmitted infections, fertility problems, internalized stigma, mental health conditions, and ramifications for children.

To better understand the relationship between extreme events and gender-based violence, researchers carried out a systematic review of existing literature in this area. This approach allows them to bring together existingand sometimes contradictory or under-poweredstudies to provide more robust conclusions.

The team identified 41 studies that explored several types of extreme events, such as storms, floods, droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires, alongside gender-based violence, such as sexual violence and harassment, physical violence, "witch" killing, early or forced marriage, and emotional violence. The studies covered countries on all six of the major continents and all but one focused on cisgender women and girls.

The researchers found evidence that gender-based violence appears to be exacerbated by extreme weather and climate events, driven by factors such as economic shock, social instability, enabling environments, and stress.

According to the studies, perpetrators of violence ranged from partners and family members, through to religious leaders, relief workers and government officials. The relationship between extreme events and gender-based violence can be expected to vary across settings due to differences in social gender norms, tradition, vulnerability, exposure, adaptive capacity, available reporting mechanisms, and legal responses. However, the experience of gender-based violence during and after extreme events seems to be a shared experience in most contexts studied, suggesting that amplification of this type of violence is not constrained geographically.

"Extreme events don't themselves cause gender-based violence, but rather they exacerbate the drivers of violence or create environments that enable this type of behavior," said Kim van Daalen, a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge.

"At the root of this behavior are systematic social and patriarchal structures that enable and normalize such violence. Existing social roles and norms, combined with inequalities leading to marginalization, discrimination, and dispossession make women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities disproportionately vulnerable to the adverse impacts of extreme events."

Experiencing gender-based violence can also further increase vulnerability. When faced with the likelihood of experiencing harassment or sexual violence in relief camps, for example, some women or sexual and gender minorities choose to stay home or return to their homes even before doing so is safe, placing them in additional danger from extreme events and further restricting their already limited access to relief resources.

Extreme events could both increase new violence and increase reporting, unmasking existing violence. Living through extreme events led some victims to feel they could no longer endure abuse or to feel less inhibited to report the abuse than before the event. However, the researchers also noted that reporting remains plagued by a number of factors, including silencing of victimsparticularly in countries where safeguarding a daughter's and family's honor and marriageability is importantas well as fears of coming forward, failures of law enforcement, unwillingness to believe victims, and the normalization of violence.

Van Daalen added, "Disaster management needs to focus on preventing, mitigating, and adapting to drivers of gender-based violence. It's crucial that it's informed by the women, girls, and sexual and gender minority populations affected and takes into account local sexual and gender cultures and local norms, traditions, and social attitudes."

Examples of such interventions include providing post-disaster shelters and relief servicesincluding toilets and bath areasdesigned to be exclusively accessed by women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities or providing emergency response teams specifically trained in prevention of gender-based violence.

Likewise, empowerment initiatives for women and sexual and gender minorities that challenge regressive gender norms to reduce vulnerability could bring opportunities to negotiate their circumstances and bring positive change. For example, women's groups using participatory- learning-action cycles facilitated by local peers have been used to improve reproductive and maternal health by enabling women to identify and prioritize local challenges and solutions. Similar programs could be adapted and applied in extreme event management to empower women as decision makers in local communities.

Case studies

Hurricane Katrina, violence and intimidation

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast of the United States in August 2005, gender-based violence increased, particularly interpersonal violence or intimate partner violence, and physical victimization increased for women. Likewise, a study on internally-displaced people in Mississippi found that sexual violence and rates of intimate partner violence increased in the year following the disaster.

Furthermore, the New Orleans gay community was blamed for Hurricane Katrina, with the disaster being described as being "God's punishment." Same-sex couples were prevented from receiving relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, transgender people were threatened in shelters or prohibited access after a natural disaster, and LGBTQI people experienced physical harm and violence in post-disaster shelters.

Flooding and early marriage in Bangladesh

Studies suggest a link between flooding incidence and early marriage, with spikes in early marriages observed in Bangladesh coinciding with the 1998 and 2004 floods. Next to being viewed as a way to reduce family costs and safeguard marriageability and dignity, these marriages are often less expensive due to flood-induced impoverishment lowering expectations.

One study included an example of the head of a household explaining that the 2013 cyclone had destroyed most of his belongings, leaving him afraid that he would be unable to support his youngest unmarried daughter, who was under 18. Marrying off his daughters was a way of reducing the financial burden on the family.
A picture of Gaia, one of the Gifted dogs (from Brazil) searching for her toy in the light (on the left) and in the dark (on the right). Credit: Shany Dror

Many dog lovers want to know what goes on in their furry friends' minds. Now scientists are finally getting closer to the answer. In a new study just published in the journal Animal Cognition, researchers from the Family Dog Project (Eotvos Lorand University University, Budapest) found that dogs have a multi-modal mental image of their familiar objects. This means that when thinking about an object, dogs imagine the object's different sensory features, for instance, the way it looks or the way its smells.

The group of scientists assumed that the senses dogs use to identify objects, such as their toys, reflect the way the objects are represented in their minds. "If we can understand which senses dogs use while searching for a toy, this may reveal how they think about it," explains Shany Dror, one of the leading researchers of this study. "When dogs use olfaction or sight while searching for a toy, this indicates that they know how that toy smells or looks like."

In previous studies, the researchers discovered that only a few uniquely gifted dogs can learn the names of objects. "These gifted word learner dogs give us a glimpse into their minds, and we can discover what they think about when we ask them 'where is your teddy bear?'" explains Dr. Andrea Sommese, the second leading researcher.

In the first experiment, they trained three gifted word learner dogs and 10 typical family dogs (i.e., dogs that do not know the name of toys), to fetch a toy associated with a reward. During the training, dogs received treats and were praised for choosing this toy over a few distractor toys.

The researchers then observed how the dogs searched for the targeted toy, always placed among four others, both when the lights were on and off. All dogs successfully selected the trained toys, both in the light and in the dark. However, it took them longer to find the toys in the dark. Only the gifted word learner dogs participated in the second experiment. Here, the researchers aimed to find out what these dogs think about when they hear the name of their toys.

Credit: Eotvos Lorand University

"Revealing the senses used by the dogs to search for the named toys gave us the possibility to infer what these dogs imagine when they hear, for example, 'teddy bear,'" explains Dr.. Claudia Fugazza, co-author of the study.

The gifted dogs were successful in selecting the toys named by their owners in the light and the dark. This reveals that, when they hear the name of a toy, they recall this object's different sensory features and they can use this "multisensory mental image" to identify it, also in the dark.

"Dogs have a good sense of smell, but we found that dogs preferred to rely on vision and used their noses only a few times, and almost only when the lights were off," clarifies Prof. Adam Miklosi, head of the Department of Ethology at ELTE University and co-author of the study. "Dogs sniffed more often and for longer in the dark. They spent 90% more time sniffing when the lights were off, but this was still only 20% of the searching time."

To conclude, the dogs' success in finding the toys and the different senses used while searching in the light and the dark reveals that, when dogs play with a toy, even just briefly, they pay attention to its different features and register the information using multiple senses.

Explore further Exceptional learning capacities revealed in some gifted dogs

More information: Shany Dror et al, Multisensory mental representation of objects in typical and Gifted Word Learner dogs, Animal Cognition (2022). Shany Dror et al, Multisensory mental representation of objects in typical and Gifted Word Learner dogs,(2022). DOI: 10.1007/s10071-022-01639-z Claudia Fugazza et al, Word learning dogs (Canis familiaris) provide an animal model for studying exceptional performance, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-93581-2 Journal information: Animal Cognition , Scientific Reports
AR-15 rifle. Credit: Hannah Moore/Northeastern University

The House passed the Protecting Our Kids Act on Wednesday, hours after hearing harrowing testimony from gun violence survivors and their families, and two weeks after a shooter killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

The House bill is wide reaching: It would raise the minimum age to buy some semi-automatic weapons to 21, strengthen bump stock and "ghost gun" regulations, ban high-capacity magazines, and give local governments power to start high-capacity magazine buyback programs, CNN reports. The changes are unlikely to make it past a Senate vote.

The federal legislation follows a push for gun control at the state level. Last week, New York passed a bill raising the age to buy a semi-automatic rifle to 21 and expanding red flag laws, CNN also reports. Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy called for laws that make gun manufacturers vulnerable to civil lawsuits, and California lawmakers pushed for stricter gun control.

What do these restrictions mean, and how effective would they be if passed? Here's a primer on key gun terms, from Jack McDevitt, professor of the practice in criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern.

What are the terms used in the bill to describe firearms?

Semi-automatic

A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon where the shooter pulls the trigger, one bullet is fired and a new bullet is automatically loaded. While we may associate the term "semi-automatic" with rifles, which are long guns with grooves in the barrel that help improve accuracy, it can apply to any type of weapon, including handguns.

Automatic

Unlike a semi-automatic weapon, an automatic weaponan example would be a machine guncontinues firing without the shooter having to pull the trigger again. "Once you pull the trigger, it will keep firing as long as the trigger is pulled down, until there are no more bullets," McDevitt says. Automatic weapons are illegal in most states, he says.

Bump stocks

Bump stocks make a semi-automatic weapon mimic an automatic, making them a loophole in many states' automatic weapon ban. The term made it to the mainstream media after the Las Vegas shooter used a gun with a bump stock to kill 58 people at a festival. Bump stocks are illegal in most states, McDevitt says.

Assault weapon

"An assault weapon is generally defined as something that was originally used in the military," McDevitt says. Assault weapons have "very large bullets that do a lot of damage," and can be semi-automatic (like an AR-15) or automatic (like an AK-47). This is the type of weapon that was used in the recent hospital shooting in Tulsa. There, according to McDevitt, the shooter shot a doctor, and then the bullet went through a wall and into another doctor, killing both.

Magazines

Magazines are spring-loaded bullet canisters used to load a variety of gun types. High-capacity magazines hold more than 10 rounds.

Handguns

While mass shootings with assault weapons are more likely to make headlines, McDevitt says they are not common, and most gun violence in this country is committed with handguns.

"Most of the shootings happen either in street encounters between young people, in drug deals or in gangs, or in the home in domestic violence situations," he says. In addition, he notes that there are two suicides for every homicide in the United States.

Handguns include revolvers, where bullets are loaded into a revolving chamber, or semi-automatic pistols, which are magazine-loaded. Police often carry the latter.

Pistol. Credit: Hannah Moore/Northeastern University

Ghost guns

These 3D printed guns, or "ghost guns," as they are called in the House bill, can be printed in parts and assembled and don't have serial numbers, so it can be difficult to trace ownership, McDevitt says.

What are the components of a gun law?

Red flag laws

"Red flag" laws allow someone close to a gun owner to ask a court to take that person's weapons if they believe they may pose a threat to themself or others. The concerned citizen can be a family member, local police, or even school personnel. A red flag law is active in Massachusetts, McDevitt says, though it's not commonly used, in part due to lack of awareness.

"We need to get the word out to convince people that they're doing a favor for the person that they're concerned about," he says.

Universal background checks

Expanding background checks is one of the most effective ways to lessen gun violence, and "there's wide public support," McDevitt says. While he says there is a federal law that requires Americans to have a background check to buy a gun, "there are huge loopholes," like when purchasing at a gun show or from another individual.

"Universal" background checks would close those loopholes and make it so any federally prohibited personsomeone convicted of a felony or domestic violence, or involuntarily committed to a mental hospitalcannot have access to a gun.

Waiting periods and permits

"There have been cases where someone goes to the store, buys the gun, and goes right out and uses it," McDevitt says. By instituting a waiting period between when the gun is purchased and when it can be picked up, "the hope would be that the person's anger would have calmed down and they wouldn't act impulsively."

Permit requirements provide another barrier to access. To obtain a "license to carry" permit in Massachusetts, residents must be 21 or over, and they must submit an application and take a gun safety course. Meanwhile, residents as young as 15 can obtain a permit to own a firearm, as long as they have a parent's consent.

How does legislation affect gun violence?

The Giffords Law Center, which compiles information on gun laws and gun violence by state, found a correlation between stricter gun laws and lower incidents of gun-related deaths. Mississippi, which Giffords gives an F grade for gun control, has the highest rate of gun deaths per 100,000 in the country, while Hawaii and Massachusetts, which received A- grades, have the lowest.

But this doesn't address the problem of people crossing state lines to get guns. While Massachusetts has strict laws, New Hampshire does not.

"What we need to do is to make this a national set of rules so that the rules apply to all states equally," McDevitt says.

He doesn't have much hope for Congress' current legislation, though, saying the chances of it passing are "none." After Sandy Hook, he says, most of the country's gun legislation actually made it easier to get guns, and this time will likely be no different.

"I don't think anything's going to pass this time. I hope I'm wrong," McDevitt says. "I don't see them coming together to build consensus."

McDevitt's dream bill includes a national law that makes it harder for people who are violent to get guns and offers mental health support for those individuals. It would also include a fund to support victims of gun violence.

In the end, though, "there isn't a magic silver bullet out there that will solve all of our problems, unfortunately," he says.
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The German Bundesrat approved a 100-billion-euro ($107.2 billion) special defense fund to strengthen Germany's military by topping up the existing annual defense budget of around 50 billion euros over several years.

"The aim of the earmarked special fund is to maintain existing capabilities in the Bundeswehr and to be able to make the necessary investments in our defense and alliance capabilities," the German federal government said in a statement on Friday.

Purchasing Eurofighter jets and F-35 fighters will be included in the fund.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the special fund is "the right answer to the turning point in history."

In late February after the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, the chancellor pledged 100 billion euros of the 2022 budget for the German armed forces.

He repeated his promise to reach the 2% of gross domestic product spending on defense in line with NATO demands, German media outlet DW reported. Germany's military expenditure ratio to GDP stands at 1.4 percent, according to the World Bank.
Groups of mongooses fighting. Credit: Dave Seager

Strength in numbers and experienced individuals are both vital in mongoose warfare, new research shows.

Banded mongooses are one of a handful of mammals that engage in lethal intergroup battles, giving insight into the evolution of warfare.

The new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesby the University of Exeter and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)examined what factors usually give one side the advantage.

The number of adult males in a group and the age of the oldest male emerged as the key properties.

But the benefit of having an older male declines if he's too old (about 11 years onwards), when males become a "liability rather than an asset," and can be evicted from the group.

"These group contests are much more complex than fights between individual animals," said Dr. Patrick Green, of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at UCSB and the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

"Our findings connect to what we see in human societies, where historically strength in numbers has been key in warfare.

"There are also lots of anecdotes and studies about experienced warriors in human societies that galvanize a group during fights."

Given the importance of mongoose fights for establishing territory and access to food, the findings have implications for group decisions.

"For example, males are important to winning fights, and we know that (compared to females) males get more care when they're young, are less often evicted and live longer," said Professor Michael Cant, also from the University of Exeter.

"So, the group may make decisions about who to invest effort in based on the importance of those members to fights."

The mongooses in the study live on the Mweya peninsula in Uganda, where a team of researchers has been studying them for 25 years.

Previous research led by the University of Exeter has shown that banded mongooses fight over sex and territory, and that females lead their groups into fights, then try to mate with enemy males in the chaos of battle.

Explore further Banded mongooses go to war over sex and territory

More information: Fighting force and experience combine to determine contest success in a warlike mammal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Fighting force and experience combine to determine contest success in a warlike mammal,(2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2119176119
Midnight sun over Great Bear Lake, after feeding the lake, a way to honour the water. Credit: Mylene Ratelle, Author provided

In Indigenous communities that have lacked access to safe water for years, getting access to a safe water supply is crucial. However, perceptions of the water supplynot just how it tastes and smells, but also trust in the source's safetyaffect consumption.

It is estimated that Canada is in eighth position of the most renewable freshwater resources per capita on the planet. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to safe drinking water. In particular, water security is a challenge for Indigenous communities. Twenty-eight First Nations still have long-term drinking water advisories, meaning no home access to safe drinking water.

This lack of safe water may be linked to indirect adverse health effects. These include things like drinking sweetened beverages as an alternative to water, and not being able to achieve optimal hygiene or prevention of infection transmission (for example, hand washing to prevent COVID-19). It is also associated with the environmental burden of thingslike single-use plastic bottlesas well as economic, social, cultural and spiritual impacts.

Limited access to safe drinking water

In December 2021, a compensation process was authorized for those who suffered from a lack of reliable access to clean water, resulting in an $8-billion settlement. The federal government has promised to end all long-term drinking water advisories on First Nations communities by 2025, after failing to achieve this by the previous deadline of March 2021.

Several First Nations, such as Bay of Quinte First Nation in Ontario, have now ended their long-term advisories. Since 2015, 132 long-term drinking water advisories have been lifted.

Having access to safe drinking water at home can also be associated with limitations for Indigenous communities. These include the high expenses to maintain water treatment systems, the reliance on trucked-in water and challenges to retain certified water operators, who operate and monitor water plant and distribution equipment.

The perception of tap water

After decades of not having access to safe water, Potlotek First Nation (Nova Scotia) now has a proper water treatment plant. However, because of their experiences with unsafe water, residents still have concerns and are skeptical about the safety of the water. Similar concerns about drinking water quality have been reported as far away as remote Indigenous communities of Australia.

Taste and smell are the main factors impacting the perception of water and consumption practices. We may think that remote northern Indigenous communities have more trust in their tap water, as they have access to pure water far from urban centers. Two of the top 10 biggest lakes on the planet are found in northern Canada, in the Northwest Territories, home of only about 45,000 residents.

However, resource development and climate change, colonial relations and historical polluting industrial activities may have contributed to the perception of low-quality water in remote communities, resulting in low trust in the drinking water supply.

A canoe on the shore of River Tulita. In a survey, about five per cent of respondents mentioned a lake or river as a main source of their drinking water. Credit: Mylene Ratelle, Author provided

Low trust in tap water in northern Indigenous communities

With a collaborative team including academics and Indigenous northern collaborators, we aimed to understand the extent of this situation. We completed a study to characterize the consumption of water and identify the perception of water in 10 Indigenous communities from the Northwest Territories and Yukon, Canada. Those communities have access to treated tap water delivered to house tanks by truck. We used a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, in surveys and focus groups, to better understand the limitations of drinking water.

Our survey findings indicate that 19 percent of respondents did not consume any water in the previous 24 hours. Of the people drinking water, one-third drank more bottled water than tap water, and 40 percent drank more coffee or tea than water.

About two percent of the respondents had consumed water collected directly from a water body nearby during the previous daywhich was in wintertimeand five percent of respondents mentioned a lake or river as a main source of their drinking water overall through the year.

Both during the consultation meetings and through the surveys, we heard that the smell and taste of chlorine was the main factor limiting the consumption of tap water. Concerns about chlorine in the water were significantly associated with the consumption of water from the land.

During a follow up discussion with a small group of Elders in an on-the-land camp, we gathered stories on the importance of untreated water and snow for traditional practices. Snow was identified as the best water for making tea.

Interestingly, there are scientific reasons to justify the differences in the taste, odor and appearance of tea prepared with tap water versus snow or ice water. The thin, dark layer floating on the surface of tea is a combination of oil from the tea leaves and insoluble compounds such as calcium and magnesium, precipitated by heating. As snow does not pass through the ground and does not accumulate ground minerals, this observation should be low. Indigenous knowledge informs science.

Current ongoing water quality monitoring from samples taken at the water plant as well as in lakes and rivers does not show any red flags of chemical contamination.

Decolonizing waters

Water from the Land is consumed for various reasons: as an alternative to unsafe tap water and expensive bottled water, as a perceived healthier and safer option, as a preferred taste and for cultural and traditional practices. However, preference of tap water is limited.

This led us to two main conclusions. First, water is life and protecting the natural sources of water is essential for the wellness and health of those Indigenous communities.

Second, universal access to safe drinking water in First Nations is a must. While decolonizing water and rebuilding trust in water will take time, it might be a key element to advance reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

Providing access to safe water is more than building water treatment plants. It is to engage with communities to remove all the limitations of drinking water, including colonial and historical inequities and lack of empowerment, so Indigenous people can rebuild their relationship with and regenerate their trust in water.

Explore further Are microplastics pervasive in Nigerian drinking water?

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

If the Supreme Court rules to overturn Roe v. Wade this month, lawmakers and law enforcement may have varied means to go after women and health care providers who participate in abortions in large part because of technology that didn't exist before the 1973 landmark ruling protecting abortion rights.

That means period tracking apps, tele-health appointments, mail-in pharmacy requests and other online medical records and data could be used as evidence in criminal cases, experts said.

At least 26 states are expected to move quickly to ban abortion if the court's conservative majority strikes down federally-protected abortion rights. Among them are 13including Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Idaho, Tennessee, Utah and Wyomingthat have "trigger laws" that would take effect automatically or through a quick state action if Roe no longer applies, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and policy organization.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers concluded in a report in August that anti-abortion measures will lead to "rampant criminalization through regulatory enforcement and to mass incarceration on an unprecedented scale," especially if Roe is overturned.

Because some states have already passed laws redefining "personhood" to include an unborn child, it's possible people who seek out abortions or anyone who helps them could face charges of feticide or aggravated assault, the report said.

Most of the rhetoric around penalizing illegal abortions has targeted healthcare workers who help people obtain abortions rather than pregnant women, said Brietta Clark, a health law and reproductive justice professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. But she said that unless laws clearly state women won't be prosecuted for the outcomes of their pregnancy, they are still at risk.

Many states regularly bring criminal cases against women who are seen as putting their unborn child's life at risk, including charges of child abuse, child neglect or endangerment or feticide, manslaughter and murder, said Dana Sussman, acting executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women. The group has documented 1,331 cases from 2006 through 2020 where a woman was arrested, detained or otherwise deprived of their liberty for a reason related to their pregnancy. Altogether, since the Roe ruling, the researchers found more than 1,700 of these cases, which they noted is likely an undercount. The majority were economically disadvantaged women of color who often must rely on publicly run or funded hospitals.

"Our criminal codes have ballooned, the War on Drugs has transformed the types of charges that are brought, how many people are criminalized and the communities impacted," Sussman said. "And we have used the criminal legal system to respond to public health crises, to mental health crises, to poverty, to education, in ways that I don't think were fully understood or fully applied back in 1973."

Even in California, which has vowed to become a sanctuary for women seeking abortions, the state's attorney general issued a legal alert in January to law enforcement advising them that the state's penal code "intended to hold accountable those who inflict harm on pregnant individuals, resulting in miscarriage or stillbirth, not to punish people who suffer the loss of their pregnancy."

The proclamation came after two women in California's Central Valley in 2018 and then in 2019 gave birth to stillborn infants and were flagged by medical staff after testing positive for methamphetamine. Both of the women were jailed and eventually charged with fetal murder. The charges against one woman were dismissed in May 2021 and the other woman was freed in March after years in prison.

"Women who have to rely on public healthcare systems have the least amount of privacy, there's a lot that the state can do through that process to basically monitor, surveil and control," said Clark, the law professor.

It's possible some prosecutors will shy away from pursuing criminal charges against a pregnant person or anyone who helps her seek an abortion.

To date, more than 80 elected district attorneys and attorneys generals around the country, including in red states, have committed to using their discretion to not charge individuals or those who help them in ending a pregnancy should Roe be overturned, said Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, an organization that advocates for criminal justice reform.

The nonprofit has been reaching out to elected prosecutors around the country willing to make such a commitment should Roe be overturned, Krinsky said, noting that prosecutors frequently decide whether to use their limited resources to prioritize certain crimes over others.

"We are now facing a moment where elected public prosecutors are going to be the last line of defense," Krinsky said. "Just because something can be prosecuted doesn't mean it should be prosecuted."

Tom Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, said "rogue prosecutors" are "going to be a problem" for lawmakers who want laws criminalizing abortion to be enforced.

"This is not about prosecutorial discretion, it's about who gets to make the law, and it's not prosecutors," Jipping said. "If this is something they want to do they ought to run for the legislature."

Jonathan Mitchell, Texas' former solicitor general who crafted the state's abortion law SB 8, which enforces a ban on abortion as early as six weeks by enabling private citizens to sue those who aid and abet, told U.S. TODAY that he doesn't believe most of the existing legislative efforts by states to ban abortion will be very effective.

In many red states, abortion clinics are located in more liberal cities where the prosecutor won't bring charges or where it would be hard to get juries to convict even if they do, Mitchell said. And since states do not run the postal service, it's additionally difficult to detect and prosecute those who distribute pregnancy-ending pills on the black market.

"I think anti-abortion advocates who pushed for these trigger bans are going to be disappointed when they take effect," Mitchell said. "Laws of this sort worked in 1970 or 1960 when every state banned abortion, they didn't have abortion pills and didn't have one of our two major political parties committed to the ideology of legal abortion. Also, they didn't have widespread internet access. What worked in the United States in 1970 is not necessarily going to work in the United States in 2022."

Unlike in 1973, conservative lawmakers are increasingly concerned about not just ensuring their residents don't undergo abortions in their states, but also outside their borders, legal experts said.

Although it's a "dicey question" as to whether a state can regulate abortions that occur outside its borders, "you'll definitely see efforts to address the issue of abortion travel," Mitchell said.

If states "really want to reduce abortion, they're going to have to resort to tactics that go beyond the trigger bans," Mitchell said, such as what SB 8 did.

He added that states are "going to have to rely on private civil enforcement to overcome the unwillingness of local district attorneys to bring charges."

The risk of criminal charges could stop many women from receiving lifesaving medical care and impact her relationship with her doctor, experts said.

For more vulnerable individuals, like victims of rape or incest, there may be a greater reluctance to report crimes to law enforcement if it complicates their ability to later pursue an abortion while under the watchful eye of law enforcement, said Krinsky of Fair and Just Prosecution.

If there are any complications from these unsafe procedures and the patient turns up at the emergency room seeking help, she may be incentivized to lie to workers or face legal repercussions, Clark said. That could prompt doctors to flag her for law enforcement.

Despite HIPAA, the federal health privacy law, in many states healthcare providers can, and sometimes must, disclose protected information to law enforcement if they believe a crime occurred. Investigators can also subpoena records, for example, from period-tracking apps to build a case against someoneor engage in other types of surveillance, which has prompted some women's health clinics to move to paper records or encrypted communications.

"There's a whole digital footprint question that's gonna come up a lot in these cases: What research did you do? Who did you text with? Did you go to a crisis pregnancy center?" said Sussman of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women. "That's a whole other level of potential surveillance that can be coordinated with law enforcement. What credit card purchases did you make? You can almost do nothing without leaving a trail."

Period-tracking app Clue said in a statement that the health data it collects, including about pregnancies, pregnancy loss or abortion "is kept private and safe." Because it is a European company, developed by a Berlin-based tech company, Clue is required to abide by strict protections to health data and "will not disclose it," the company said.

And for victims of domestic violence, these new anti-abortion laws may become another tool of coercion for an abuser, said TuLynn Smylie, who oversees Sojourn, a domestic violence program run by The People Concern, one of Los Angeles County's largest social services agencies.

"He could use that to threaten, 'If you leave me, I'll disclose you had an abortion or you want an abortion,'" Smylie said. "That could definitely become another element of control."

Explore further US abortion trends have changed since landmark 1973 ruling

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Police use of violence, especially against Black people, may threaten police agencies' effectiveness by reinforcing residents' legal cynicism and leading to disengagement from police. For example, after the killing by police of George Floyd, a Milwaukee police official said local residents cooperated less with police than they did before the killing.

A new study examined police lethal violence against Black people and its relationship with crime clearance by arresta measure of the solvability of a crime when an offender is arrested or processed for further prosecutioninvolving Black victims. The study found some support for the idea that police lethal force against Black people is negatively associated with crime clearance of incidents involving Black victims, but the authors say their findings are not definitive.

The study, by researchers at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Milwaukee, appears in Criminology & Public Policy, a publication of the American Society of Criminology.

"Citizen cooperation is vital to police investigations that lead to arrests," explains Aki Roberts, associate professor of sociology at UW-Milwaukee, who led the study. "To the extent that police violence against Black people hinders citizen engagement with police and threatens Black residents' cooperation with crime investigations, it could reduce clearance of crimes involving Black people. Our study is the first to examine the relationship between police use of lethal force and crime clearance."

In the United States, crime clearance rates are quite low, with Black homicide victims' cases less likely to be cleared than those of their White counterparts. In this study, researchers examined a sample of crimes involving Black victims in more than 350 jurisdictions in 2015. They used lethal violence data from the Mapping Police Violence (a Black Lives Matter-affiliated tally of people killed by police since 2013) and crime incident and clearance data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The impact of police lethal violence does not last forever; instead, negative feelings toward police after such violence tend to diminish over time, though they can reappear after a new event. The researchers constructed a time-varying measure of each crime's exposure to police lethal violence in its local jurisdiction. They also assessed the impact of nationally prominent events of police lethal force against Black people on residents' responses to local police violence.

Jurisdictions with higher typical exposure to police killings of Black victims exhibited lower levels of crime clearance of Black victims' crimes, with this relationship more apparent for non-lethal violent offenses than for homicides. But the authors suggest that this finding should be interpreted with caution because it may be driven by a correlation between an agency's average exposure to police killings and some agency or jurisdiction characteristics that were not included in the model. For example, in jurisdictions with more police violence, there may already be a generally distrustful relationship between police and the Black community.

Given these inconclusive findings, the authors suggest addressing the question of why there might or might not be a relationship between police killings and crime clearance. Among their explanations: Even people who distrust the broader institution of policing may still view the police as providers of necessary assistance in certain circumstances and hold a variety of complicated motivations that could still encourage them to cooperate with specific crime investigations. Conversely, citizens in some jurisdictions may be so cynical about police that an additional killing by police would not change their attitudes. Another possibility is that the effect of police violence on residents is so transitory that it does not influence residents' willingness to cooperate for more than a short period of time.

The study suggests that in addition to reducing instances of police lethal violence through better training and vetting of officers and improvement of non-lethal means of subduing suspects, local police agencies should accelerate their adoption of policing practices and organizational characteristics that could enhance police legitimacy and citizen cooperation in the Black community, especially in jurisdictions with high exposure to police violence. Other steps to take include requiring police to wear body-worn cameras, increasing minority representation and leadership in police agencies, and promoting perceptions of procedural justice in Black communities.

Among the study's limitations, the authors note that the NIBRS includes data on only a portion of the many incidents that may be relevant to crime clearance, underrepresents larger cities, and does not provide detailed geographical information for crimes. "Our main analysis using the specific timing of agencies' police lethal violence events did not find significantly reduced clearance in those agencies following these events. However, additional exploratory analyses suggested that there could be such an impact, but for a shorter time than we had initially hypothesized," notes John M. Roberts Jr., professor of sociology at UW-Milwaukee, who coauthored the study. "This possibility should be investigated in further research."

Explore further Increased anxiety among young Black adults from exposure to police violence

More information: Aki Roberts et al, Clearing crimes in the aftermath of police lethal violence, Criminology & Public Policy (2022). Aki Roberts et al, Clearing crimes in the aftermath of police lethal violence,(2022). DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12592

Provided by American Society of Criminology
Credit: Shutterstock/chayanuphol

If smoking tobacco was invented today, there is little doubt it would be made illegal. The harm it does is simply too great.

It is still the biggest cause of preventable illness and death in England, with an annual cost to society of around 17 billion. Persuading 6 million smokers to quit is not an easy task, but a new independent review commissioned by the government has come up with some sensible recommendations, as well as crucially highlighting that smoking is a key driver of inequality, and far more common among the poorest in society.

One of the most eye-catching recommendations is to gradually raise the minimum age for buying tobacco, to ensure future generations never smoke. New Zealand has already committed to this, by banning the sale of tobacco to anyone born after 2008.

Other suggestions in the review include banning cigarette sales in supermarkets, "freezing" the tobacco industry to make it unable to launch new products/brands, and more funding for support services and mass media campaigns which help people quit smoking.

The review's author, former charity executive Dr. Javed Khan, also recommends making tobacco less affordable, mainly by increasing the amount of tax. This idea is backed up by extensive research which demonstrates that this is one of the most effective tobacco control measures available, and one that successfully addresses social inequalities.

While the U.K. already has relatively high prices (a pack of 20 factory-made cigarettes now costs 12.64 on average), they are still much cheaper than places like Australia and New Zealand where the charge may be double.

The review's recommendation for a sudden increase in taxation of all tobacco products by 30% is in line with our research which suggests that large one-off increases are more effective than incremental ones. The reasonable expectation is that this would generate a significant fall in tobacco use in both the short and long term.

Khan also highlights another conclusion of our research, which is that tax on hand rolling tobacco needs to be increased to match that of factory-made cigarettes so that it is not seen as a cheaper option for smokers.

Tobacco industry supporters often argue that higher taxes will push smokers into the black market. But Khan rightly acknowledges that the primary reason people buy illicit tobacco is because they can, and instead proposes more funding for legal enforcement.

The reality is that the tobacco industry has a long history of involvement in smuggling. Over two thirds of illicit cigarettes in the U.K. have been found to be the tobacco industry's own brands, suggesting, at best, a failure to control its supply chain.

Smoke and mirrors

As well as encouraging smokers to quit, one of the advantages of increased tobacco taxes is increased government revenues. This money would help the government pay for the additional funding requested, but Khan is clear he would favor making the industry pay in line with the "polluter pays" principle.

Our research shows they can certainly afford it. Manufacturing tobacco productswhich are highly addictive and cost little to makeis still inordinately profitable.

In 2018 (the most recent year for reported figures) the world's six largest cigarette manufacturers made profits (before income taxes) of more than US$55 billion (44 billion). That is more than the combined profits (US$51 billion) of Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Nestle, Fedex, Starbucks, Mondelez, General Mills, Heineken and Carlsberg who collectively own many household brand names.

Khan suggests several ways in which the industry could be made to pay directly, including a surcharge on corporation tax, or a new "polluter pays" levy on cigarette profits. Both of these ideas are supported by our research.

Ideally, we would encourage the government to go even further by introducing price regulation, whereby a regulator would fix the price of each tobacco product, giving the industry lower returns and the government maximum tax potential.

If done carefully, this could transfer current large industry profits into higher government revenue. And it would also put a stop to the clever pricing tactics the tobacco industry has been using to undermine taxation.

Such direct control of prices might seem radical. But it already happens with water and energy in the U.K. So why not with an addictive product that kills tens of thousands in the country every year?

The Khan review shows that a radical approach is what is needed to help save lives and achieve plans for England to be smoke free by 2030. The key question is whether the government will be brave enough to do battle with such a rich and powerful industry in order to do what is necessary.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Innovent and IASO Bio Present Updated Data of BCMA CAR-T Cell Therapy (Equecabtagene Autoleucel) at EHA 2022

Details Category: DNA RNA and Cells Published on Monday, 13 June 2022 11:34 Hits: 607

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA and SUZHOU, China I June 12, 2022 I Innovent Biologics, Inc. ("Innovent") (HKEX: 01801), a world-class biopharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and commercializes high-quality medicines for the treatment of oncology, autoimmune, metabolic, ophthalmology and other major diseases, and IASO Biotherapeutics ("IASO Bio"), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in discovering, developing, and manufacturing innovative cell therapies and antibody products, today jointly announced that the updated data from phase 1/2 study of Equecabtagene Autoleucel (Innovent R&D code: IBI326, IASO Bio R&D code: CT103A), a fully-human anti-B cell maturation antigen (BCMA) chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for the treatment of relapsed and/or refractory multiple myeloma (R/R MM), was presented in the form of an oral presentation at the 27th European Hematology Association (EHA) Annual Meeting in Vienna on June 9-12, 2022.

Presentation Title: Updated Phase 1/2 Data of the Safety and Efficacy of CT103A, Fully-Human BCMA-Directed CAR-T Cells in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma

Session TitleRelapsed/refractory myeloma: BCMA-directed therapies

Abstract Code: EHA-S187

Session date and Time: Sunday, June 12, 2022, at 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM CEST

Place: Vienna, Austria or online

Speaker: Chunrui Li, MD, Ph.D., from Department of Hematology, Tongji Hospital of Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

The updated data from the Phase 1/2 study with a longer duration of follow-up in more patients has showed durable and deepening efficacy, manageable safety and long-term in vivo persistence, indicating that Equecabtagene Autoleucel has the potential to be a breakthrough therapy for patients with R/R MM.

The updated data is from the 14 clinical sites involved in the Phase 1/2 clinical study of Equecabtagene Autoleucel (ChiCTR1800018137, NCT05066646) in the treatment of patients with R/R MM. As of the data cutoff date of January 21, 2022, 79 patients received recommended phase 2 doseRP2Dof 1.0106 CAR-T cells/kg with the median follow-up of nine months (range 1.2, 19.6) and median prior five lines of therapy (range 3,23). Among the 79 patients, 34.2% (27/79) had high-risk cytogenetic abnormalities, 34.2%27/79had extramedullary multiple myeloma (EMM), and 15.2%12/79had received prior CAR-T therapy.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel demonstrated a favorable and manageable safety profile: Among the 79 patients, 94.9% (75/79) experienced cytokine release syndrome (CRS). The majority experienced 1~2 CRS, and no patient experienced grade 3 CRS. The median time to CRS onset was six days after infusion, and the median duration of CRS was five days. Only two patients experienced immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS), including one patient who experienced grade 1 ICANS and one who experienced grade 2 ICANS. All patients with CRS or ICANS have recovered.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel showed favorable and durable efficacy: Among the 79 patients, the overall response rate (ORR) was 94.9% (75/79), with "89.9% (71/79)" of those patients achieving very good partial response (VGPR) or deeper responses, and the complete response/stringent complete response (CR/sCR) rate was 68.4% (54/79). Equecabtagene Autoleucel also demonstrated favorable efficacy in 10 patients with EMM, achieving an ORR of 100% (10/10) and a CR/sCR rate of 90.0% (9/10). In all 79 patients, 92.4% (73/79) achieved minimal residual disease (MRD) negativity, all CR/sCR subjects achieved MRD negativity, and the median duration of MRD negativity was not reached.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel demonstrated favorable efficacy in patients who had received prior CAR-T therapy: Among the 12 patients who previously received CAR-T therapy, the ORR was 75.0% (9/12), with 41.7% (5/12) of those patients achieving CR/sCR.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel demonstrated robust expansion and prolonged persistence: The expansion of Equecabtagene Autoleucel in peripheral blood reached the peak at a median of 12 days, with a median Cmax of 92,000 copies/ug DNA. Equecabtagene Autoleucel was still detectable in 62.3% (38/61) and 53.3% (8/15) of the subjects who completed 6-months and 12-month follow-ups after infusion. Soluble BCMA in peripheral blood of patients rapidly declined after Equecabtagene Autoleucel infusion and persistently remained below the detectable limit.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel has low immunogenicity: 16.5% (13/79) of the subjects tested anti-drug antibody (ADA)-positive after Equecabtagene Autoleucel infusion. Among them1.3% (1/79) tested ADA-positive before Equecabtagene Autoleucel infusion, and 2.5% (2/79) tested ADA-positive within three months.

Prof. Chunrui Li, MD, PhD, from Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, stated "Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy is a revolutionary new pillar in cancer treatment. In our previous studies, Equecabtagene Autoleucel has shown excellent efficacy and manageable safety profiles. Its CAR structure contains fully human single-chain fragment variables (scFvs) to bypass potential anti-CAR immunogenicity of the host while retaining antitumor activity. At the 27th EHA conference, we updated the data on the efficacy and safety of Equecabtagene Autoleucel in R/R MM patients with longer median follow-up extended to 9.0 months, the CR/sCR deepened to 68.4%, compared with the CR/sCR of 58.2% with a median follow-up of 7.0 months, which were released at 63rd ASH conference in 2021. The updated data showed long-lasting safety and deepening efficacy of Equecabtagene Autoleucel. We are glad that Equecabtagene Autoleucel also shows favorable efficacy on patients who have relapsed after receiving prior CAR-T therapy. This has meaningful clinical value and is worthy of further exploration in the clinic to potentially bring forth new hope to patients with R/R MM."

About Multiple Myeloma (MM)

Multiple Myeloma is a deadly blood cancer that often infiltrates the bone marrow causing anemia, kidney failure, immune problems, and bone fractures. For multiple myeloma patients, common first-line drug treatments include proteasome inhibitors, immunomodulatory drugs, and alkylating agents. While treatment may result in remission, most patients will inevitably enter the relapsed or refractory stage as there's currently no cure. As a result, there is a significant unmet need for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. In the United States, MM accounts for nearly 2% of all cancer cases, and more than 2% of cancer-related deaths.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the number of new MM cases in the United States rose from 30,300 in 2016 to 32,300 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 37,800 by 2025. Additionally, the total number of patients diagnosed with MM increased from 132,200 in 2016 to 144,900 in 2020 and is expected to rise to 162,300 by 2025. In China, the number of new MM cases rose from 18,900 in 2016 to 21,100 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 24,500 by 2025. The total number of patients diagnosed with MM in China increased from 69,800 in 2016 to 113,800 in 2020 and is expected to rise to 182,200 by 2025.

About Equecabtagene Autoleucel

Equecabtagene Autoleucel is an innovative therapy co-developed by Innovent and IASO Bio, with a fully-human anti- BCMA CAR-T cell therapy which uses lentivirus as a gene vector to transfect autologous T cells. The CAR contains a fully-human scFv, CD8a hinge and transmembrane, and 4-1BB-mediated co-stimulation and CD3 activation domains. Based on rigorous screening and comprehensive in vivo and in vitro evaluation, Equecabtagene Autoleucel is proven to have potent and rapid anti-myeloma activity and outstanding safety, efficacy, and persistence results.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel was granted "Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD)" by the NMPA in February 2021 and was granted "Orphan Drug Designation (ODD)"by the Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February 2022. The NMPA has accepted the New Drug Application for Equecabtagene Autoleucel for the Treatment of Relapsed and/or Refractory Multiple Myeloma in June 2022.

In addition to multiple myeloma, the NMPA has accepted the investigational new drug (IND) application of Equecabtagene Autoleucel for a new expanded indication of Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder (NMOSD).

About Innovent

Inspired by the spirit of "Start with Integrity, Succeed through Action," Innovent's mission is to develop, manufacture and commercialize high-quality biopharmaceutical products that are affordable to ordinary people. Established in 2011, Innovent is committed to developing, manufacturing and commercializing high-quality innovative medicines for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune, metabolic, ophthalmology and other major diseases. On October 31, 2018, Innovent was listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited with the stock code: 01801.HK.

Since its inception, Innovent has developed a fully integrated multi-functional platform which includes R&D, CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls), clinical development and commercialization capabilities. Leveraging the platform, the company has built a robust pipeline of 32 valuable assets in the fields of cancer, autoimmune, metabolic, ophthalmology and other major therapeutic areas, with 7 products approved for marketing in China  TYVYT (sintilimab injection), BYVASDA (bevacizumab biosimilar injection), SULINNO (adalimumab biosimilar injection), HALPRYZA (rituximab biosimilar injection) , Pemazyre (pemigatinib oral inhibitor) and olverembatinib (BCR-ABL TKI) and Cyramza (ramucirumab) , 2 asset under NMPA NDA review, 4 assets in Phase 3 or pivotal clinical trials, and an additional 19 molecules in clinical studies.

Innovent has built an international team with advanced talent in high-end biological drug development and commercialization, including many global experts. The company has also entered into strategic collaborations with Eli Lilly and Company, Adimab, Incyte, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Hanmi and other international partners. Innovent strives to work with many collaborators to help advance China's biopharmaceutical industry, improve drug availability and enhance the quality of the patients' lives. For more information, please visit: www.innoventbio.com. and www.linkedin.com/company/innovent-biologics/.

About IASO Biotherapeutics

IASO Bio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of novel cell therapies for oncology and autoimmune diseases. Leveraging its proprietary fully-human antibody discovery platform (IMARS), high-throughput CAR T drug priority platform, and proprietary manufacturing processes, IASO Bio is developing a rich clinical-stage pipeline of multiple autologous and allogeneic CAR-T and biologics product candidates. This includes a diversified portfolio of 10 novel pipeline products, including IASO's leading asset, Equecabtagene Autoleucel, an innovative anti-BCMA CAR-T cell therapy under pivotal study for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (R/R MM) , which received NDA acceptance of the China NMPA. In February 2021, Equecabtagene Autoleucel was granted "Breakthrough Therapy Designation" by the NMPA. In February 2022 it was granted "Orphan Drug Designation (ODD) "by the Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In addition to multiple myeloma, China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has accepted its investigational new drug (IND) application for the new extended indication of Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder (NMOSD). In addition, the company's in-house developed fully-human CD19/CD22 dual-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has entered phase I/II registrational clinical trial for the treatment of CD19/CD22-positive relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (r/r B-NHL). It was also granted Orphan Drug Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in October 2021. For more information on IASO Bio, please visit www.iasobio.com and www.linkedin.com/company/iasobiotherapeutics/.

SOURCE: Innovent Biologics
Democrat Jean Lapper has confirmed that she will challenge state Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, in the 45th Senate district.

Many of the constituents in the 45th feel underrepresented in Albany. I have the skills, the energy and the temperament to work constructively for our communities to bring real results. Lapper said in a news release, issued late Friday. Those who know me recognize Im no stranger to hard work, and I look forward to meeting more of my North Country neighbors and listening to their concerns.

Stec said in a statement, issued Sunday, that his re-election campaign will focus on the faults of having one-party control of state government and his being a strong voice against the Legislatures New York City hyper-progressive agenda.

Democrats have a majority in the both Senate and Assembly, and hold the governors office.

Im proud to be an advocate for the North Country and a strong voice against the policies making it more difficult to live and work in our communities, said Stec, who is finishing his first two-year term in the Senate.

He previously served as a state assemblyman and was Queensbury town supervisor and a Queensbury Town Board member before that.

My record speaks for itself, and it speaks to the values of our residents. I cant wait to present it to the voters, he said.

Lapper, a certified public accountant, ran unsuccessfully in 2019 for a Queensbury at-large seat on the Warren County Board of Supervisors.

She is a past president of Glens Falls Rotary Club and has served on the boards of the Family Services Association of Glens Falls and Tri-County United Way.

Lapper filed petitions with the state Board of Elections on Friday to enter the Senate race.

The petitioning process is the first step in running for elected office, where youre one-on-one with voters and hear their thoughts and concerns. I was well received and voters were happy to hear they will have a choice.

I am grateful for the hard work of the many volunteers that, in just one week, were able to obtain substantially more than the 850 signatures required to be on the ballot, she said in a news release.

Lapper said that a campaign launch event is being planned.

In other regional political news:

Textile industry bill passes

Legislation that Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, D-Round Lake, spearheaded to stimulate the textile industry passed the Assembly and the Senate.

Woerner said in a telephone interview on June 6 that as soon as Gov. Kathy Hochul signs the bill, she will begin working with the state Department of Agriculture to establish a new state Textile Council, a state panel of experts to advise the department on industry issues.

It is expected that the council will begin meeting by the end of the year, Woerner said.

The council is among several provisions in the legislation, which has no fiscal impact because it does not establish any new state spending. It merely revises language of existing laws or parameters of existing economic development programs to incorporate the textile industry.

Solar legislation

U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, on Thursday praised the House for passing legislation that authorizes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct dozens of water and wastewater infrastructure feasibility studies, including studies relating to floating solar projects.

Tonko and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, were among those who voted in favor of the legislation, which passed the House by a vote of 384-37, with no Democrats voting against it.

The advance of our Water Resources Development Act will help identify Army Corps sites where deployment of floating solar could be a feasible and cost-effective option, Tonko said in a news release. I call on the Senate to swiftly act on this important legislation so we can continue to make progress in meeting our clean energy goals, addressing climate change and driving economic growth.

On the Radar

Republican congressional candidate Liz Lemery Joy on Friday announced she qualified for the On the Radar designation, the first level in the National Republican Congressional Committee campaign support program.

Im excited to join these strong candidates across the country as we work to take back the House, she said in a news release.

Joy, a former blogger and speaker from Schenectady, is challenging incumbent Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, in the 20th Congressional District.

Maury Thompson covered local government and politics for The Post-Star for 21 years before he retired in 2017. He continues to follow regional politics as a freelance writer.

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ATLANTIC CITY  Three people were arrested Friday, including a 14-year-old, for their involvement in a late-May shooting, police said Monday.

The shooting happened about 9:30 p.m. May 31, police said. Officers were called to the first block of South Florida Avenue for a reported shooting victim. They found a 29-year-old city man with several gunshot wounds, police said.

Investigators identified the 14-year-old as the main suspect, police said. The teen was seen Friday by a detective in the first block of South Florida Avenue with a group of men. Additional patrol units were called in for backup and converged on the group, police said.

The teen and two others ran from the officers but were eventually apprehended, police said.

Near where the teen was captured, police recovered a ghost gun  a gun without a serial number  found to be fitted with a high-capacity magazine.

The teen was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, possession of a high-capacity magazine and possession of a ghost gun, and was taken to the Harborfields Juvenile Detention Center.

The other two men who fled from police, 24-year-old Genesis Silva and 23-year-old Juan Aquino-Silva, both of Atlantic City, were found to be in possession of drugs and drug-distribution tools, police said.

Silva was found to be in possession of 10 grams of suspected crack cocaine, a digital scale with white, powdery residue and nearly $3,000 believed to be proceeds of illegal drug sales, police said. He was charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession with intent to distribute and resisting arrest.

Aquino-Silva was found to be in possession of 24 grams of suspected heroin, 4 grams of suspected crack cocaine and a digital scale. He was charged with possession of CDS, possession with intent to distribute, possession with intent to distribute in a school zone and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Silva and Aquino-Silva were both released on summonses pending court.

Contact Eric Conklin: 609-272-7261 econklin@pressofac.com Twitter @ACPressConklin

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SOMERS POINT  A St. Joseph Regional School eighth graders home was searched by authorities after a list of materials to make a non-lethal bomb was found in the students desk at the school Friday.

The list was reported to police after it was discovered while faculty members were packing up the desk. The school also was searched by a bomb-detecting dog, police Chief Robert Somers said Monday.

No materials were located during either search, and students were not in danger, Somers said.

Investigators believe the list was written months before it was found, Somers said, without providing specifics as to what some of the materials on the list were.

No charges have been filed against the student, who was released into their parents custody for a mental health evaluation, Somers said.

Contact Eric Conklin: 609-272-7261 econklin@pressofac.com Twitter @ACPressConklin

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BRIGANTINE  A pair of warrants have been issued for a North Jersey man accused of burglarizing and stealing from St. Thomas Parish in Brigantine, police said Monday.

Quentin Hunt, of South Orange, Essex County, twice allegedly stole money from the church in May and January 2020, police said.

On May 23, city police were called to the church, in the 300 block of Eighth Street South, following witness reports that during the previous day, a person threw a rock through a church window and took cash. Through the investigation, Hunt was determined to be the suspect, police said.

Additional evidence linked Hunt to a Jan. 12, 2020, burglary at the church, in which cash was also stolen, police said.

Hunt is charged with two counts of burglary, two counts of theft, and one count of criminal mischief, police said.

Information on both cases can be reported to city police detectives by calling 609-266-7600.

Contact Eric Conklin: 609-272-7261 econklin@pressofac.com Twitter @ACPressConklin

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It's great to forecast for you in N.J., where I was born and raised. I earned my degree from Rutgers and have been at The Press since Fall 2017. I'm honored to be a 10 time N.J. Press Association award winner and a South Jersey "Top 40 Under 40".
A union representing housekeeping workers at Atlantic Citys casinos says four of the resorts are not complying with a COVID-related requirement that hotel rooms be cleaned daily. Local 54 of the Unite Here union said Wednesday that state officials need to enforce an order issued in 2020 by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy requiring hotel rooms to be cleaned and sanitized daily. It says Caesars, Harrahs, Tropicana and the Golden Nugget don't clean each occupied hotel room each day as required by the order. The Golden Nugget says staff shortages sometimes prevent daily room cleaning, but adds any guest who requests it will get it.
This era of record gasoline prices is an excellent time to end New Jersey state governments irrational ban on drivers putting gas in their own vehicles. Everywhere else in America, drivers can choose to pay less per gallon and do the job more quickly themselves.

Gas prices are so high and they sometimes jump so quickly that its challenging to see the savings that self-serve would bring, but they are certain.

A group of gas stations, organized by Fuel Your Way NJ, recently tried to give drivers a daylong taste of paying 10-cents a gallon less, a widely reported estimate of how much pump prices would drop for self-serve. But deliveries to the stations the day before the event brought wholesale-price gasoline that was 11-cents a gallon higher, making the discount seem like no change at all.

The price break if New Jersey allows self-serve gas would probably be greater. The New Jersey Gasoline, Convenience Store, Automotive Association says retailers expect drivers would save 15 or more per gallon. And they wouldnt have to waste their time interacting with another person instead of just quickly pumping it themselves.

Theres been quite of bit of fearmongering aimed at senior citizens and the disabled to scare them into believing theyd have trouble getting full service if self-service is also allowed. But seriously, does anyone imagine that senior citizens and the disabled have trouble getting gas in the other 49 United States of America? The N.J. law to allow self-serve gas explicitly requires the continuation of full service as well.

Others have commented that they have seen higher gas prices in some other states, which of course all offer self-serve. This is because several factors determine the price of gas, some larger than how efficiently it is sold at retail.

Start with one made clear in the Fuel Your Way NJ self-serve discount demonstration  the price stations pay for the gasoline they sell. These producer prices vary by state and region, influenced much by the proximity of refineries.

In March, the average U.S. producer price for gas was $3.23 per gallon. But in New Jersey, it was only $3.05 a gallon, meaning prices at the pump in other states should be 18-cents a gallon higher based on wholesale costs alone.

State gasoline taxes vary. New Jersey state government has hiked the gas tax until it is the fourth highest in the nation, at 50.7 cents a gallon. The national average gas tax is 33.6 cents a gallon.

Drivers going to Pennsylvania will find higher prices because it has the third-highest gas tax, 58.7 cents a gallon. If you drive in Delaware, with a gas tax of just 23 cents, youll save significantly over filling up back home. (The federal tax on gas adds another 18.4 cents a gallon, applied in all states of course.)

Letting drivers pump their own gas if they wish would allow gas stations to operate more efficiently and inexpensively.

It is a regular occurrence at many stations to have multiple gas pumps blocked by orange cones because the owner does not have enough employees to work every pump, said Sal Risalvato, executive director of the New Jersey Gasoline, Convenience Store, Automotive Association. Allowing for a self-serve option would allow them to open those pumps, while still offering full-serve for those who would like it.

Retail gasoline is the most open and competitive market that consumers routinely see and participate in. Prices by law must be prominently posted and potential customers are already in their vehicles, able to keep driving a little to save money.

We are certain that gas stations would pass the bulk of the savings from self-serve to their customers in order to increase business. For convenience stores, gasoline is almost a loss-leader to lure patrons for more profitable food, beverages and tobacco inside.

Citizens might also ask themselves why they tolerate such a pointless and unique state dictate. Why should the majority of New Jersey drivers allow their nanny-state government to deprive them of the ability  available to their peers in every other state in the nation  to pump their own gas to save money and time?
ImpactLife renewed its call for donors in Davenport and from throughout the Quad-Cities on the eve of Tuesday's World Blood Day.

ImpactLife faces an "urgent need for additional donors" because of a decrease in blood donation during the first few weeks of the summer, according to the blood bank.

ImpactLife is a not-for-profit community organization providing blood services to 124 hospitals in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin. It operates 22 Donor Centers and holds about 5,000 mobile blood drives annually. ImpactLife provides blood components needed for patient transfusions at hospitals throughout the Quad-Cities region.

ImpactLife offices have two locations in Davenport: 5500 Lakeview Parkway and 1320 W. Kimberly Road, Suite No. 12. Its Moline location can be found at 3600 16th St.

Representatives from both local hospital systems touched on the important role donated blood plays in the treatment of cancer patients and emergency care.

"Patients fighting cancer need more blood and blood products than patients fighting any other terrible disease. A cancer diagnosis can make a person and their families feel scared, and we want to be sure that safe access to blood isnt adding to their concerns," said Dr. Costas Constantinou of the UnityPoint Health-Trinity Medical Oncology & Hematology Clinic. "By giving blood, youre giving cancer patients and others a fighting chance and an amazing gift of hope and life."

Dr. Kurt Andersen pointed to the general need for blood supply.

"Having an adequate supply of blood is essential to providing care to some of our sickest and most vulnerable patients," said Andersen, chief medical officer at Genesis Health System. "We need every person in our community who can give blood to do so and continue to do so again and again. Donating blood is safe and easy to do. As we add our voices to others asking people to donate, we hope that many available appointment slots will fill."

To schedule, call ImpactLife at 800-747-5401, visit www.bloodcenter.org or download the ImpactLife mobile app at www.bloodcenter.org/app.

World Blood Donor Day was started to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products. June 14 commemorates the birth of Dr. Karl Landsteiner, whose research identified the main blood groups: type A, type B, type AB and type O, as well as the Rh-factor in blood.

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James Thiel Sr. is asking for a new trial in the double-fatal boat crash in LeClaire for which he was convicted.

Thiel, 45, of Pleasant Valley, was found guilty by a jury on April 25 of two aggravated misdemeanor charges of involuntary manslaughter, which carry sentences of up to two years each. He is to be sentenced on Aug. 3.

Thiel was not the operator of his 35-foot Triton but was charged with aiding and abetting the 15-year-old behind the wheel. He was accused of driving recklessly along the LeClaire levee when his Triton crashed into a 19-foot vessel operated by Craig Verbeke, 61. Verbeke and his fiancee, Anita Pinc, 52, both of Moline, died.

Leon Spies, the attorney for Thiel, has filed a motion for a new trial, saying the testimony of the dozen-or-so witnesses who described Thiel's boat as racing on the riverfront and operating "recklessly" or "unsafe" should not have been allowed.

Witness prior to fatal LeClaire boat crash: 'They're going to kill someone' James Thiel, of Pleasant Valley, is charged with involuntary manslaughter in the August 2020 crash that killed Craig Verbeke and his fiancee, Anita Pinc, both of Moline.

"Such testimony constitutes expressions of legal conclusions and were of no assistance in determining factual issues," according to Spies' motion.

The motion also accuses the county attorney of suppressing evidence by failing to supply Thiel's attorney with two documents created by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, DNR, in the months following the crash.

Spies wrote that he was not made aware until after the trial of reconstruction diagrams of the crash scene that were produced in October and December of 2020 by a DNR investigator, Travis Graves. A third diagram was produced as part of Graves' final report and was presented to the jury.

"Moreover, both of the undisclosed diagrams are inconsistent with the diagram in Gravess final investigative report of May 10, 2021, about which he was examined during the course of trial, and about which the defenses expert witness testified as well," Spies wrote.

He also asserts that the judge in the case should have entered a judgment of acquittal before the case went to the jury because the state failed to prove its case and put forth "insufficient evidence."

Thiel was found not guilty on two felony counts of involuntary manslaughter, which would have carried sentences of five years.

Evidence taken from the damaged vessels indicated the Thiel boat struck the Bayliner from the rear while traveling more than 55 miles per hour.

The defendant, his friends and a passenger testified that Thiel's boat was not racing with another boat just before the crash. Thirteen independent witnesses said they saw the boats racing and some saw Thiel's boat run over the top of the Bayliner, which was supported by physical evidence.

Black box reveals Thiel boat was going nearly 57 mph seconds before fatal LeClaire crash Jurors were escorted by the court on Monday to LeClaire to visit the scene of the double-fatal boats crash, then to a storage facility in McCausland to see the two damaged vessels.

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David Hubbard of Rapid City will be a Democratic candidate for South Dakota House District 35, which includes Box Elder, most of Rapid Valley, and portions of eastern Rapid City.

Hubbard will face Democrat Pat Cromwell and Republican incumbent Reps. Tina Mulally and Tony Randolph for the two District 35 House seats in the Nov. 8 general election.

Hubbard said he is running "to give voters a better option than the extreme political agenda we've seen in Pierre."

"I support the development of renewable energy, including wind and solar. I support Medicaid expansion so hard-working South Dakotans can access preventative health care," he said in a statement. "I am part of the majority of South Dakotans who voted to legalize cannabis and address corruption in our state. I insist the will of the South Dakota people be respected and that legislators obey the will of those who elected them to office."

Hubbard said he does not support efforts to outlaw abortions in South Dakota.

"This is a difficult and painful decision for a woman to make. It is not a decision politicians should make on the behalf of others," he said. "South Dakotans have voted twice against abortion bans and I have and always will defend a woman's right to autonomy over her own body."

Hubbard is a South Dakota native and graduated from Southeast Vocational Technical School as well as South Dakota State University. He is a U.S. Army Cold War veteran who served in both the South Dakota National Guard and in the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division as an airborne infantry paratrooper. He said he strongly supports both our active duty and retired military personnel.

Hubbard is a website developer for a Rapid City advertising and marketing firm and currently serves on the Veterans Honor Banner Project Board of Directors.

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Pat Cromwell of Rapid Valley will be a Democratic candidate for South Dakota House District 35, which includes Box Elder, most of Rapid Valley and portions of eastern Rapid City.

Cromwell will face Democrat David Hubbard and Republican incumbent Reps. Tina Mulally and Tony Randolph for the two District 35 House seats in the Nov. 8 general election.

Cromwell said she is running to "be the voice of South Dakotans whom our legislators continue to ignore."

South Dakotans voted against abortion bans twice. I believe that politicians have no place sitting in the doctors office while women handle their health care," she said in a statement. "Two years ago, South Dakotans voted to legalize marijuana and our representatives did not respect that majority vote either. I support legalizing marijuana and believe that the actions of our governor and legislature are treating us as though we are criminals with ill intent."

Cromwell said she supports Medicaid expansion and "dignity and equality for everyone regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation."

She is a South Dakota native who graduated from South Dakota State University with degrees in child development and sociology. Cromwell worked for the state Department of Social Services, Christian Childrens Fund, and Youth and Family Services. She also worked with tribal community and health issues with grant writing and project development work with the Northern Plains Native American Chemical Dependency Association.

"I have had to be able to put myself in other peoples shoes, to understand who they are and what they need. While working with tribal health care programs, I learned the importance of working with Tribes as partners in good government," she said in a statement. "Besides dignity and respect this is about being able to create more efficient and functional health care systems which expanded Medicaid could help provide for all South Dakotans. We can do better.

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Much of western Montana was put under a flood warning on Monday after water generated from rain storms and higher-than-average snow pack barreled into the region's major rivers.

The Clark Fork, Bitterroot and Flathead rivers were at-or-near minor flood stage as of Monday afternoon. Despite the flood danger, officials said no structures in Missoula County are at risk, and there is a chance the worst of the surge has passed.

One exception is the Flathead River between Glacier National Park and Bigfork, which is expected to stay in flood stage through the week after snow storms blanket higher elevation mountains.

The weather service predicted snow above 5,000 feet along stretches of the Continental Divide through Tuesday night. Above 6,000 feet, more than 12 inches of snow is projected.

Brian Heino, sheriff of Flathead County, said concerns from minor flooding are mostly to recreation sites, sudden erosion of the river banks and possible undercutting of roads near water. The river, measured at 14 feet in Columbia Falls, could rise by a foot in the coming days.

Please be cautious around rivers, banks can be undercut, and please do not drive through water on roads, Heino said. He added that roughly six inches of moving water can lift a vehicle off of the pavement.

The Bitterroot, which entered flood stage Saturday evening, sat at minor flood stage with 11 feet of depth near the south Missoula U.S. Geological Service Station. The National Weather Service predicted the river will stay roughly the same until Tuesday afternoon.

Eric Hoover with Ravalli County Emergency Office said the situation has improved Monday as less rainfall than predicted fell in the valley.

"We're actually looking good now," Hoover said, pointing out that most of the higher streams monitored for height are out of flood stage. He said the valley is still two weeks behind from normal, and rain or snow could return in the mountains.

Flooding has overrun some small canyon roads along the Bitterroot front. The Ravalli County Sheriffs Office reported Sunday that Rock Creek near Lake Como is over its banks. Lake Como is also expected to spill over its dam spillway, although that's not likely to cause damage.

The confluence of the Bitterroot and the Clark Fork at Tower Street in the Orchard Homes area has minor flooding on roads and a public park.

The impacts we are seeing right now are pretty typical impacts, said Adrienne Beck, director of Missoula County Emergency response. As of now there is no infrastructure threatened or homes threatened.

The Clark Fork entered flood stage on Sunday, but the river just crested into the high water mark, and experts predicted the water will drop soon.

Most places, especially Missoula, have lost most of their snow, said Jeff Kitsmiller, meteorologist at the National Weather Service. Much of the river surge has come from the increased rain. Missoula proper soaked in 1.5 inches of rain last week. More than three inches have fallen in spots around Flathead County in the last three days.

By Thursday, temperatures could easily reach the 80s under clear and sunny skies. Kitsmiller said people should be cautious of recreating by the river, even when conditions appear to be improving.

Even though it is not exceptional, people gravitate towards water when its hot, and right now it is running fast and cold, Kitsmiller said. It only takes a few minutes to develop hypothermia.

Closer to the Continental Divide, Jim Merrifield, Butte-Silver Bows director of emergency management, said he has received no reports of flooding in the county and so far, nobody has raised red flags about flooding threats.

Still, he said, people can pick up and bag sand for no cost at the county complex off of Beef Trail Road on the west side of Butte and at the Fire Department in Melrose.

Erick Brittain, fire chief in Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, said early Monday afternoon that flooding of Warm Springs Creek was not yet an issue.

So far, so good, he said. Were good for now.

Ruth Koehler, coordinator of Powell Countys Department of Emergency Management, said Monday afternoon that significant creeks and rivers in Powell County were not causing flooding problems. The rivers included portions of the upper Clark Fork and the Little Blackfoot. Cottonwood Creek, which has flooded in years past, seemed OK, she said.

Everything seems to be fine here, so far, Koehler said.

The Big Hole and Jefferson rivers are in action stages with water right up to the edge of the river bank in some areas. According to National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Ludwig, those two rivers will peak today and are not expected to flood.

"(The Big Hole) is about where we expect it to crest," Ludwig said. "Maybe some minor fluctuations, but it will probably crest today; gradually lower a little bit through the day tomorrow and Wednesday; and as we get warmer this weekend the river may come back up."

Those recreating on the river should be aware of flows, debris and any other safety hazards.

"(The rivers) are running a little bit higher and faster than normal for this time of year," said Jim Brusda, lead meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Great Falls. "So small trees can be floating down, and that's just a natural process because trees fall over along the riverbanks. With the river being up a little bit higher, it washes those downstream."

An action stage is one step away from flood stage. Even with the extra runoff expected later in the week as temperatures climb, the Big Hole and Jefferson are not expected to surpass action stage.

The Montana Standard contributed to this story.

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Henrico County police said in a statement Monday that Toyre Jones, 34, of Chesterfield County was arrested by the FBI.

Richmond council OKs $83,050 for gun buyback The city of Richmond will partner with a California-based nonprofit group to launch a gun buyback program later this year.

The homicide was May 25. Quincy L. Henderson, 29, of Richmond was pronounced dead after the vehicle he was driving veered off the road and hit an apartment building and parked vehicles.

Henrico police found signs on Hendersons body indicating that a shooting took place prior to the crash, authorities said.

After seeking the publics input for tips, Jones was identified as a suspect, but Henrico police on June 10 received information that he may be leaving the area.

Henrico police discovered that Jones had fled to Brownsville, Pa., south of Pittsburgh, and coordinated with FBI Pittsburgh, which took him into custody on Monday, police said. He faces several charges including second-degree murder and use of a firearm.

Authorities havent released information about how the shooting occurred. Henrico police are working to extradite Jones back to the county.
A Chesterfield County man who police said was wearing body armor and holding a gun when confronted by officers was arrested Sunday. Police said he assaulted and abducted his roommate and the roommates girlfriend.

Chesterfield police said they responded about 3:30 a.m. Sunday to a reported abduction in progress at a residence in the 4500 block of Centralia Road.

A woman reported she and her boyfriend had been assaulted and held against their will inside the home by an adult male known to them, police said. The woman was able to escape and call police.

When officers arrived, the womans boyfriend ran out of the house, and the suspect, identified as Christopher A. Courteau, 29, ran upstairs, police said. Courteau then came back downstairs wearing body armor and holding a revolver, police said.

Officers ordered him to put down the gun. After initially refusing, Courteau placed the gun on a table and immediately charged an officer, police said in a statement.

Richmond council OKs $83,050 for gun buyback The city of Richmond will partner with a California-based nonprofit group to launch a gun buyback program later this year.

After a brief struggle, during which several officers were assaulted, Courteau was placed in handcuffs and arrested, police said.

After an investigation, police charged Courteau with two counts of abduction; two counts of attempted capital murder; three counts of brandishing a firearm; three counts of felony use of a firearm; five counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer; shooting into an occupied dwelling; malicious wounding; unlawful wounding; attempting to disarm a law enforcement officer; possession of a firearm by a convicted felon; use of body armor while committing a crime; and obstruction of justice.

Courteau was being held without bond in the Chesterfield Jail.

Police said they determined that Courteau was the male victims roommate, and the female victim is the male roommates girlfriend.

Police said they are continuing to investigate the incident and urged anyone with information to contact them at (804) 748-1251 or Crime Solvers at (804) 748-0660. Tips also can be provided through the P3 app.
The Virginia Department of Historic Resources unveiled a historical highway marker for the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground on Sunday afternoon.

The Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground, also known as Richmonds Second African Burial Ground, was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register at DHRs quarterly board meeting on March 17.

The site is believed to be the largest burial ground for free people of color and the enslaved in the U.S. with an estimated 22,000 people of African descent buried there.

This is a very exciting moment, said Lenora McQueen, the descendant of a person buried at the site. Its very meaningful to finally have this place have a marker and to be seen, to be known and no longer forgotten.

McQueen came to Richmond four years ago to learn more about her fourth great-grandmother, Kitty Cary, an enslaved woman born in Virginia. At 1305 N. Fifth St., the only remnants of the burial ground where she was laid to rest was an abandoned service station and cracked pavement.

The Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground was established in 1816 for people of color and enslaved people. What began as two acres of land soon expanded to encompass up to 31 acres.

After closing in 1879 from overcrowding, the site has become one of Virginias most endangered historic sites. The addition of streets and railroads, the expansion of private projects and more have threatened the integrity of the site. Today, the DC2RVA passenger rail project and the proposed widening of Interstate 64 are active threats to the burial grounds site.

The burying ground has integrity of setting and feeling that are the result of its historic function as a cemetery for African American Richmonders, as well as its subsequent erasure from public memory and redevelopment during the 20th century, according to the sites historic register entry.

There are still many, many threats to this burial ground, McQueen said, and theres still a lot of work to be done. Still, it is the beginning, but its a good beginning.

After discovering the site and its lack of recognition, McQueen became what Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney described as a champion for the burial ground. The unveiling of the marker at Shockoe Hill was to pay respects and honor the enslaved, Stoney said.

I take my role not only as mayor seriously, but I take my role as a Black mayor in the former capital of the Confederacy seriously, Stoney said. And when you have moments like today, what I always recount is that there could always be another person in this seat. There could always be another person in our seats that dont look like us for many generations, decades, ignoring and neglecting moments like this.

The program for Virginias historical roadside markers was launched in 1927, making it the countrys oldest marker highway program, said Colita Nichols Fairfax, a Norfolk State University professor who also serves on the Virginia Board of Historic Resources.

In 1976, the state stopped funding new markers, meaning private organizations, historical societies, churches and more had to go through a rigorous application process to sponsor a new marker. The Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground marker, placed just by the road, received unanimous approval from the Board of Historic Resources at a board meeting in June 2021 and was sponsored by the Department of Historic Resources.

Cemeteries have a deep and abiding connection to descendants, Fairfax said. The plan for this sacred space mirrors the plight of our sacred communities, mirrors what happened to Black communities in the 20th and 21st centuries. Years of systemic neglect, years of people removal, years of gentrification, but in spite of that, let us not stick in the trauma.

During the ceremony, Livi Booker, a student at Maggie L. Walker Governors School, read an excerpt from the marker once it was revealed. The marker stands tall and can be seen clearly from the road.

I think one of the things that I like best about programs like this is that we get to take a moment to determine the way in which we are going to engage in the totality of what this site represents to us as members of the city of Richmond, but also as a human family and how we expect to go forward with respect toward each other, said Ana F. Edwards, chair of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  More than 91,000 votes have already been cast in South Carolina for Tuesday's primaries.

Nearly 80,000 of those votes were cast during the state's new early voting period, according to data from the South Carolina Election Commission that doesn't include figures for Friday which was the last day for early voting.

South Carolina lawmakers approved true early voting for the first time for the June primaries, allowing anyone to vote weekdays for the two weeks before the election without an excuse.

An additional 12,700 absentee votes have been received as of Thursday morning, election officials said.

The 80,000 early votes would be about 13% of the votes cast in the 2018 midterm primaries, which included a highly-contested Republican governor primary. In 2022, Gov. Henry McMaster only faces an underfunded, mostly unknown opponent, Harrison Musselwhite.

Another factor that could lower turnout at the polls Tuesday is record heat. Highs are forecast to be 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) or above across much of the state with the humidity making it feel several degrees hotter. Doctors recommend spending as little time as possible outside when temperatures reach 100 degrees.

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ARLINGTON  One of Virginias newest  and largest  corporate citizens is making a good first impression with a commitment to opening a center to help military veterans transition to civilian life, including possible high-tech jobs in a region that is becoming a hotbed for highly skilled employees.

Five weeks after announcing it is moving its global headquarters to a building it already owns in Crystal City, Boeing said Monday that it will open The Boeing Center for Veteran Transition & Military Families in a building already under construction in Virginia Techs Innovation Campus next door in Alexandria.

The center is part of a $50 million grant to Virginia Tech that Boeing announced last year to boost academic recruitment to the universitys $1 billion campus in Potomac Yard, the anchor of a state-supported innovation corridor for undergraduate and graduate education in high-tech fields.

Were going to take advantage of that corridor and attract as many young people as we can, said Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun in an announcement that featured three Virginia governors, two of them now U.S. senators, and Rep. Don Beyer, D-8th, who was once a gubernatorial nominee.

The announcement at Boeings office also was a celebration of the companys decision to move its global headquarters from Chicago to the Washington area, which will become home to the five biggest aerospace firms in the world once Raytheon Technologies completes its recently announced move of its global headquarters from the Boston suburbs to Rosslyn, another Arlington neighborhood.

On behalf of the commonwealth of Virginia, I want to welcome Boeing to Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin told Calhoun.

Youngkin was joined by Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Virginia Democrats, and Beyer, whose congressional district includes the Boeing headquarters and Virginia Tech campus.

Boeing coming here with your headquarters really cements Virginias place, Kaine said of the aerospace industrys presence in the region.

Warner, who serves with Youngkin and Calhoun on an advisory board for Virginia Techs Innovation Campus, was hoping the company might be ready to announce plans for a research and development center in the region.

What Boeing has not really done yet is theyve not really explained what theyre going to do with the tech center theyre going to build in Virginia, Warner said in an interview on Monday.

Similarly, Raytheon hasnt said how many jobs it plans to move to its new corporate headquarters in existing offices here, or what that will mean to its current headquarters in Waltham, Mass.

The lure for all of the aerospace companies is the U.S. defense industry, represented by the Pentagon here and what Calhoun called the policymaking capital of the world across the Potomac River in the seat of federal government.

Warner said Boeing made its decision to move to Virginia in December, the month before Youngkin was inaugurated. But the freshman governor was jubilant over the companys embrace of the innovation corridor that Virginia seeded with an education-driven incentive package that landed Amazons $2.5 billion East Coast headquarters here in 2018.

Its about to become an innovation region, Youngkin said.

The Amazon package included $250 million in state money that Virginia Tech would have to match to build its innovation campus in National Landing, as state and local officials have sought to rebrand the adjoining neighborhoods of Crystal City and Potomac Yard.

The package also included $125 million in state funds to help George Mason University create the Institute for Digital Innovation on its Arlington campus between Rosslyn and Ballston, as well as a commitment of more than $700 million over 20 years to a tech talent pipeline to Virginia colleges and universities to award an additional 25,000 to 35,000 degrees in computer sciences and related fields.

Military veterans represent another important source of skilled employees for high-tech jobs. Virginia is home to about 725,000, including 155,000 active-duty service members, reservists and National Guard.

Im biased  I want them to stay in Virginia, Youngkin said.

The governor said the new center will work with his administration to develop a statewide support network for veterans and their families, including the creation of a digital hub to connect them to state services and benefits.

Virginia Tech also embraced its role in the new center, which President Tim Sands said is a natural fit because of the universitys Corps of Cadets and its long history of preparing students for potential careers in the military.

We know veterans bring unique talents and abilities to our campus and the commonwealths workforce, Sands said.

Ultimately, Boeings partnership with Virginia Tech is about cultivating talent for high-demand jobs in technology-driven industries.

Talent is the most precious thing in the world, Kaine said, more precious than oil, even at $5 a gallon.
Beach nourishment has begun on a Chesapeake Bay stretch that has lost a significant amount of sand and dunes to erosion in recent years.

Great Lakes Dredge & Dock is working west of the Lesner Bridge, closing off sections of the beach. The replenishment started earlier this month at Albemarle Avenue and was scheduled to move eastward.

Were very excited to be delivering this project, city engineer Dan Adams recently told members of Ocean Park Civic League. We understand the condition of the beach ... and how unnerving that is if you live on the bayfront and have seen the recent dune losses.

Jagged drop-offs along the dune line had become commonplace on Ocean Park beach over the past several years. And the narrow beach forced beachgoers to crowd around the waters edge with little room to spread out.

The $6 million replenishment project includes adding roughly 400,000 cubic yards of sand along 6,000 feet of beach. The area where people sit and walk will increase to more than 100 feet wide in some areas.

Its going to be a game-changer for the condition of the beach and allow the dune system to recover, Adams said.

This project will add four times more sand than the city has ever placed on Ocean Park beach, according to Adams.

Im glad its finally coming to fruition, said Phil Davenport, chairman of the Bayfront Advisory Commission, which makes recommendations to the City Council. This is exactly what was needed.

Virginia Beach is partnering with the Virginia Port Authority to deliver the sand, which is coming from the deepening of the Chesapeake Bay shipping channel that leads to the Norfolk Harbor.
WESTLAKE  Booker T. Washington National Monuments annual Juneteenth celebration is set to return this Saturday with a free gospel music concert and a tour that examines the history of Americas newest federal holiday.

A Juneteenth celebration had been an annual event at the park since 2002 until COVID-19 restrictions canceled the 2020 event. In 2021, a smaller, mostly online event was held to commemorate Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday.

While last years online broadcast allowed the park a way to connect virtually with the community to celebrate Juneteenth, senior ranger Tim Sims said park staff missed the live connection with the publicespecially on such a major year for the holiday.

We tried to make the best of it we could, Sims said. There was a bit of disappointment we couldnt have the event live.

This Saturday, the park is marking the return of its Juneteenth celebration with some changes to its usual format. Gospel concerts will be held throughout the event scheduled from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., but will be in a new location near the parks visitor center.

A stage will be set up at the base of a small hill in one of the parks fields. Tents will be set up along the hill for guests to view the concert. Attendees are also encouraged to bring their own tents to set up for those interested in additional social distancing.

Childrens activities will be scheduled throughout the day including the parks new Bookers Book Trail and food vendors will be on site.

The parks visitor center will also be open during the event.

Also new this year will be a park ranger led Freedom Tour scheduled for 2:30 p.m. The tour will discuss the history of Juneteenth which commemorates the proclamation issued by Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger in 1865 in Galveston, Texas which ordered the freedom of more than 200,000 enslaved Black people in Texas.

The emancipation of Booker T. Washington will also be discussed during the tour. Washington was just a young boy living on the Burroughs Plantation when he learned of his freedom. He described it in his autobiography, Up From Slavery. The plantation where he was born and freed is now the site of the national monument named after him.

Sims said the goal of the tour is to provide a better understanding of what Juneteenth is for those people who may not know much about the holiday. That will include a discussion on the complicated history of freedom in America.

At the end of it all, Juneteenth is another opportunity for Americans to reflect on what it is to be free, Sims said.

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CHRISTIANSBURG  A former boyfriend admitted killing a Montgomery County woman whose body was found last week in the woods, investigators said in search warrants filed in the case.

James Hunter Stallard, 38, is charged with second-degree murder and concealing a body. He is scheduled to appear in Montgomery County General District Court on Aug. 2 for a preliminary hearing.

Stallard is being held in the Western Virginia Regional Jail. His attorney, Brad McConnell of Blacksburg, said Monday that he had just begun to review the case and had no immediate comment.

Stallard's arrest June 6 followed Crystal Dawn Raines Hannah, 44, being reported missing a day earlier. A sheriff's office investigation found her body in a wooded area near the 2600 block of North Fork Road, located in the county east of Blacksburg.

Search warrants said that the discovery came after a sheriff's office investigator talked to Stallard. He said that on June 5, Hannah was at his residence, basically across North Fork Road and up a hill from the wooded area, search warrants said.

Stallard said that he and Hannah argued, that the argument became physical, and that he struck her and then "strangled her until she was dead," search warrants said.

Stallard told officers that he put Hannah's body in her gray Dodge van, drove it a short distance to the intersection of North Fork Road and Seneca Hollow Road, then opened a gate and drove into a wooded area owned by Norfolk Southern, search warrants said. Stallard left the van there and carried Hannah's body to where he left it on the ground, covered with leaves, search warrants said.

An officer found Hannah's van and body where Stallard said they were, search warrants said.

Investigators took a pair of shorts, a purse, a cellphone and keys from Stallard's house, according to lists in the search warrants. They took red stain samples and two shoes from Hannah's van.

From the woods, they took human remains and flowers, search warrants said.

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Students majoring in philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University pay nearly $15,000 annually in tuition bills. But according to a recent analysis, the average graduate still earned minimum wage five years after graduation.

The analysis, which estimated the earnings for 750 school-specific majors in Virginia, found that VCU philosophy majors earned the least in the state. Other programs at the bottom include Regent Universitys drama department and Mary Baldwins arts program.

Meanwhile, graduates of the University of Virginias computer science program made $110,000 annually five years after graduation, the most in the state. They were closely followed by Washington and Lee Universitys computer science grads, UVas computer engineering alumni and Virginia Techs computer science degree holders.

Of the 10 highest-paying degrees in Virginia, UVa, Virginia Tech and Washington & Lee held nine of them, mostly involving computers and engineering.

Together, the data indicates that whether college provides a positive financial return on investment depends mostly on the field of study and somewhat on the college the student attended.

Colleges in Virginia have long debated how to weigh the intrinsic value of certain majors versus their pecuniary value. At a time when tuition costs are rising, student debt remains high and jobs are unfilled, many students in the state are choosing majors that are more likely to provide a good paycheck.

Peter Blake, the head of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, said colleges have a responsibility to make sure programs are aligned to meet employment demands as closely as possible, especially now.

A programs return on investment, he said, is particularly important.

The study, which estimates earnings for bachelors degree programs nationwide, was published last fall by the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank described as right-of-center.

Researchers used 2017 and 2018 earnings reported to the College Scorecard, a government database that compiles wage values shortly after graduation, and Census Bureau data to project future income. The study does not address students with graduate and professional degrees.

Some majors never provide a financial return on investment. Those students would have earned more money across their lifetimes had they saved the $100,000 or so in tuition costs, started earning a paycheck four years earlier and begun climbing the wage ladder sooner.

Nearly one in four college majors in Virginia fails to provide a lifetime return on investment, according to the study. The majors least likely to provide a financial windfall are psychology, biology, fine arts, drama, English and social work. The schools that house the highest number of negative-ROI majors are Liberty University, VCU, University of Mary Washington and Radford University.

The majors that provide the highest ROI tend to focus on science, technology, engineering, math and business. Several nursing programs are near the top of the list, too.

You dont have to go to a prestigious school or an expensive school to get a good-paying job. High-earning majors are found at VCU, Old Dominion University and for-profit schools such as ECPI University.

Some perhaps unexpected majors landed in top 100: romance languages at Washington and Lee, politics at UVa and interdisciplinary studies at UVa, indicating that graduates of the most prestigious schools are more likely to earn high-paying jobs even if they are not enrolled in a high-value major.

A civilized world needs philosophy

Though they arent rich, philosophy grads earned a wide range of estimated salaries five years after graduation, from $44,000 at the College of William & Mary to $17,000 at VCU.

VCUs figure, which comes from 2017 and 2018 data, is close to minimum wage at the time.

Donald Smith, department chair for VCU philosophy, said the results do not fit with his analysis of the jobs VCU philosophy graduates earn.

I was in disbelief, he said.

In recent years, VCU philosophy grads have become a research analyst at OrthoVirginia, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute and a senior analyst at Lumber Liquidators. About half of the graduates go to law school or some other postgraduate degree, he estimated.

The median estimated wage for philosophy grads nationwide is $37,000 in this study, which is a lower figure than some other studies cite. For instance, a 2021 New York Fed study on the labor market for recent college graduates found that philosophy graduates have a median wage of $39,000 early in their careers, but that it rises to a mid-career median wage of $62,000.

Because of the specificity of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity report, its sample sizes are small.

I have no reason for thinking that VCU philosophy majors fare significantly worse with respect to ROI than what these other studies indicate, Smith said.

Just because a major doesnt pay well doesnt mean it has no value, said Blake, head of the State Council of Higher Education. Return on investment is an important measure of a programs success  average debt for a Virginia college graduate is $30,000. But its not the only measure.

A civilized world needs people who are trained and educated in English, history, social work, early childhood education, art, anthropology, et cetera, he added.

Philosophy improves reasoning skills, the ability to be open to criticism and the ability to disagree in a rational manner, Smith added. All of those skills are relevant to any career a student might pursue.

Josh Hartt, 21, graduated from VCU last month after double majoring in political science and philosophy. Philosophy hasnt helped his job search much, but if he could do college over again, he wouldnt change a thing.

It taught me to think in a way most people dont, and that was worth every single penny, Hartt said.

Hartt doesnt have a job yet, but he has enough money saved up to get an apartment in Richmond while he applies. He plans to apply to law school next year.

Whats helped him the most with his career are the job prospects working on political campaigns. He says the teachers and students he met in philosophy classes were some of the best at VCU.

If youre interested in philosophy, dont let job prospects deter you from it, he added.

Hartts sentiments match those of most students, who are largely happy with their decision to attend college. In a poll of 15,000 Virginia college graduates from the past 15 years, 88% reported feeling satisfied or very satisfied with their undergraduate experience.

A majority, 70%, say their time in college prepared them for the workplace. But only 56% said their education was worth the cost.

Ethan Hamilton broke the mold. Days after he graduated from VCU philosophy last year, he got a job offer as an ontology analyst for a consulting firm in Arlington County, building data models for computers and earning about $70,000, far more than the national average.

His employer was interested in applicants who understand logic and rules  exactly what he had learned in philosophy.

For this field, its a perfect fit, he said.

A $2 million ROI

Students in the top-paying majors typically earn six-figure salaries by age 27. Of the 25 best-paying degree programs, 17 are engineering or computer science.

Joshua Sahaya Arul, 21, took computer science as a high school class at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria and got hooked. At UVA, he chose it as his major primarily because he enjoyed the subject.

A summer internship at Capital One turned into a job offer months before he graduated from UVA. By age 21  he finished college in three years  he was earning close to $110,000, the estimated salary for his major for graduates five to seven years older than him. He recently accepted a job at Google.

According to the study, he and other UVA computer science grads will receive a return on their college education of more than $2 million.

The State Council of Higher Education does not shut down programs that fail to deliver good jobs. Instead, it pays attention to a programs popularity. If students stop enrolling, the program can get shut down. In essence, the state council lets the market decide.

If majors have high demand, there must be some value students see in them, Blake said.

For years, students have chosen majors that do not guarantee a big paycheck. Psychology is the states most popular major, with 5% of students enrolled, and its been among the most popular majors for at least 30 years.

The highest-paying psychology program is at Virginia Military Institute, where graduates earn an estimated $47,000 five years after graduation.

Everyone has their own price point when it comes to return on investment, Blake said.

In the survey of college graduates from the past 15 years, about one in three graduates said they went to college for reasons other than preparing for a specific job  either because they felt they were expected to, they wanted a well-rounded education, or they were trying to figure out what they wanted to do.

But not all majors have sustained the popularity of psychology. In 2010, there were 1,500 college students in Virginia studying English. By 2020, that number had cratered by 40%.

VCU has seen that trend with its new students. In the past four years, fewer incoming freshmen have chosen the College of Humanities and Sciences, which is home to such departments as biology, English and philosophy.

Whats growing are engineering, business, education and health  programs with clear job destinations, said Tomikia LeGrande, VCUs vice president for enrollment.

The universitys goal, she said, is to make sure students can envision a career  no matter what major they choose.
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" " Public water fountains were a ubiquitous part of public life before the advent of the environmentally disastrous plastic water bottle. H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

Back in the 2000s, James Salzman, a professor of environmental law at UCLA, was explaining to a classroom full of students that the public water supply was safer than it had ever been, when he noticed something odd. Instead of relying on one of the building's drinking fountains, half of the class had brought bottled water with them.

Since then, things haven't changed. "Sales of bottled water now exceed sales of soft drinks," notes Salzman, author of the book, "Drinking Water: A History."

We're in an age when many Americans choose to pay to obtain hydration from a single-use, disposable plastic bottle, instead of relying upon drinking fountains, a technology for delivering water to thirsty people that's been around for centuries. It's a technology that is seen as so important for health that the International Plumbing Code calls for having one fountain for every 100 occupants in schools and office buildings.

While the drinking fountain hasn't vanished from the built environment by any means  many places still have regulations requiring them in buildings, experts note  their future seems unsure. But if you've ever searched for a drinking fountain in a big-box store or shopping mall and finally located one tucked in some obscure corner, it may feel otherwise. Some view them as an anachronism. A recent opinion article in an architectural magazine bore the headline: "Do we need the commercial office drinking fountain?"

While nobody is really sure exactly how many drinking fountains there are in public and private buildings and outdoor areas in the U.S., "There are certainly fewer than there used to be," says Peter H. Gleick in an email. He's the co-founder and president emeritus of the Pacific Institute, and author of the book "Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water."

But while drinking fountains might seem as if they're going the way of the telephone booth, there also are signs that they are making a comeback, thanks to concerns about the environmental impact of disposable plastic bottles.

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The History of Drinking Fountains

As Gleick notes in his book, the idea of public drinking fountains dates back to ancient Greece, when spring-fed fountains were placed in temples and dedicated to gods and goddesses. Pausanias, a geographer in the second century B.C.E., went so far as to write that no place deserved to be called a city if it didn't have a public drinking fountain. The Romans took public access to water a step further, building sophisticated aqueducts to transport water from distant springs to fountains in their cities. But with the fall of the Roman Empire, the public water fountains fell into disrepair, and for centuries after, people had to rely upon drinking water from drawn contaminated wells and filthy rivers.

In mid-1800s London, things began to change, according to Gleick's account. A movement called the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association began building public drinking fountains throughout the city, built with filters and other technology to ensure "the perfect purity and coldness of the water." The association's first fountain, opened at a London church in April 1859, created a sensation, attracting 7,000 users each day. By 1879, the city had nearly 800 fountains, used by 300,000 people daily. A philanthropist named Sir Richard Wallace began building water fountains in Paris as well, hiring the sculptor Charles-Auguste Lebourg to design several different designs. Many are still in operation, according to the website of La Societe des Fontaines Wallace, a preservation group.

In the U.S., drinking fountains started showing up as well. The city of Detroit, for example, installed seven public drinking fountains in 1871, and demand was so great that nine more were quickly added. Circus owner P.T. Barnum donated a fountain to Bethel, Connecticut, his hometown, in 1881 and a local timber baron, Simon Benson, installed 20 public drinking fountains so that his employees would have an alternative to alcoholic beverages, according to Gleick's book. In New York City, designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux included ornamental drinking fountains in their design for Central Park, including one that used blocks of ice to keep water chilled in the summer.

" " Water fountains, once ubiquitous in schools and in most public places, can be fitted as bottle filling stations to help reduce the staggering number of single-use plastic bottles that go into landfills every day. Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle/Getty Images

Indoor drinking fountain technology took a leap forward in the early 1900s thanks to Halsey W. Taylor, a plant superintendent at Packard Motor Company who noticed dysentery spreading through his workforce. Taylor suspected that unsanitary drinking water  which had led to the death of Taylor's father years earlier  was to blame. Taylor began working on technology to provide safer drinking fountains. Taylor went on to invent the "double bubbler" fountain, which dispensed two streams of water in an arc, so that drinkers didn't have to put their mouths close to the faucet and come in contact with microbes from previous drinkers, according to Ohio History Central. His namesake brand today is part of Elkay, a leading manufacturer of drinking fountains.

"Without a doubt, as cities developed and municipal water quality improved, public water fountains were a sign of both social progress and equity  everyone had access to the same quality of water," explains Gleick, who himself grew up drinking from fountains in New York City public schools and playgrounds.

Water fountains also have had a symbolic role in society and have reflected change. In the Southern U.S., whites-only drinking fountains were a reminder that racial segregation existed in everyday life, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made them illegal. And the Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted in 1990, mandated that where drinking fountains are provided, they have to be accessible to people in wheelchairs as well as those who can stand. That requirement is often satisfied by having a high-low fountain with two different heights.

" " A man fills his drinking bottle at a "refill station" in Berlin, Germany. The stations are located almost everywhere, the water is free and the quality is carefully monitored. Jorg Carstensen/picture alliance via Getty Images

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Competition From Bottled Water

In the 1970s and 1980s, companies began aggressively marketing bottled water, benefiting from public worries about pollution, lead contamination and disease getting into the public water supply. Some makers of bottled water portrayed the water flowing through public systems as unsafe, as this 2010 National Public Radio story details. It was easy to believe that bottled water from some spring was healthier than tap water, though in reality, a Natural Resources Defense Council study released in 1999 found that not only was there no assurance that bottled water was cleaner or safer than tap water, and some brands actually contained levels of potentially harmful chemical contaminants that were above state health limits. Tap water, in contrast, actually is subject to more stringent federal regulation, including legal limits on more than 90 different contaminants.

Unlike drinking fountains, bottled water also happened to be profitable, which made it more appealing to places that could sell it. In 2007, when University of Central Florida unveiled a new stadium, the facility didn't have any drinking fountains at all  instead, as this Orlando Sentinel article notes, the only source of water for fans was buying it from vendors. After an outcry and a game in which vendors ran out of bottled water, the university installed 50 drinking fountains.

While drinking fountains are still mandated in many places by state and local regulations, those regulations don't require building owners to make them easy to find.

Salzman divides the built environment into three groups. "The first is sort of the shopping malls and airports," he says. "Particularly where there's a food court, the drinking fountains will be next to the bathroom, or being a place, very difficult to find, because of the conflict with selling bottled water."

"The second category is going to be places like libraries, hospitals, schools and there, you know, the facilities managers have a genuine interest in making sure people stay hydrated," Salzman continues. Those establishments will continue to have a lot of drinking fountains available.

The third group consists of facilities such as parks and public buildings. "The problem here is simply maintenance," Salzman says. "You'll have drinking fountains, but they don't work. And that's actually something that your readers will see a lot of as well. And it's just the cost of maintenance is a lot less and it stays broken."

Fountains that aren't in working order aren't necessarily a priority, either, because these days, there's not a big constituency of people complaining about them, he says.

"That gets to your larger point which the people's expectations are changing," Salzman explains. "And more and more, hydration is seen as a personal responsibility, not a public responsibility, which didn't used to be the case."

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Drinking Fountains Are More Environmentally Friendly

The demise of water fountains would be bad news for the planet. Gleick notes that bottled water "has a huge plastic, energy and greenhouse gas footprint, in addition to waste produced. The energy cost of bottled water is massive, especially the energy needed to make the plastic bottles and the energy required to ship it around the world."

That's illustrated by a 2009 paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, in which Gleick and colleague Heather Cooley calculated that just manufacturing the bottles needed to fill a year's worth of global demand required 1 million tons (0.9 million metric tons) of PET plastic, with an energy expenditure that was the equivalent of 50 million barrels of oil. A lot of those bottles  in the U.S., more than 60 million a day  end up being thrown into the trash, contributing to the problem of plastic pollution.

But these environmental concerns also seem to be helping to drive a comeback for drinking fountains.

" " A public water fountain stationed in Kingly Court in London, England. The Mayor of London introduced the public drinking fountains with the support of the Refill campaign group in an effort to cut plastic waste. Jack Taylor/Getty Images

"There has also been a small improvement in a few places, such as airports, where new fountains and new types of fountains have made inroads, especially fountains capable of filling reusable water bottles that have become more popular," Gleick says. A 2018 market study predicted slow but continued growth in purchases of fountains over the next few years, and portrayed bottle-filling stations as the dominant factor.

From Elkay, here's an example of a state-of-the-art refilling station that includes features such as antimicrobial plastic components and hands-free operation. The company says that since it launched such stations a decade ago, it's saved more than 40 billion single-use bottles from ending up in landfills.

Now That's Important The risk of being exposed to SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19, from touching the surface of a fountain is low, as this study published in 2021 in the journal Epidemiology and Infection found.
" " This isn't an image of nightfall in Los Angeles. It was only 4:55 p.m. when this photo was taken in 1954. L.A. was experiencing a punishing smog, and traffic was so backed up on the Pasadena Freeway cars had to use their headlights. Smog like this wasn't uncommon before the Clean Air Act. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Clean air is something we tend to take for granted. But the air in the United States hasn't always been so clean. In fact, during World War II, air pollution blanketed Los Angeles so intensely that residents  red-eyed and gasping for breath  feared Japan had launched a chemical attack.

Over the next couple of decades, Americans became more and more concerned with the chemicals that were being released into the air and the effects they could have on people's health and the environment. Lawmakers came together from both sides of the aisle, ultimately drafting and unanimously passing the Clean Air Act of 1970.

But the Supreme Court case, West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is currently challenging the Clean Air Act. Just how much authority the EPA has when it comes to regulating greenhouse-gas emissions related to climate change is part of what is to be resolved by the Supreme Court (more on the case in a minute).

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What Is the Clean Air Act?

The Clean Air Act was born out of the modern environmental movement, which began in earnest in the late 1950s and ultimately led to the creation of the EPA.

This federal air quality law regulates air emissions from stationary sources (factories, refineries, boilers, power plants) and mobile sources (passenger cars and trucks, commercial trucks and busses), and authorizes the EPA to establish national air quality standards that dictate allowable levels of harmful pollutants  all with the goal of protecting us from air pollution.

In the 50-plus years since the Clean Air Act was established, air quality has vastly improved. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been spared pollution-related death and disease, and countless ecosystems have been saved.

Up to that point, regulating air pollutants was largely left up to individual states and local governments, says Albert C. Lin, professor of law at the University of California, Davis. But experts eventually determined that "air pollution is not just a state or local problem, it's a national or  as it turns out  a global problem," Lin says. "And one of the major rationales supporting [federal regulation] was that pollution doesn't stay within state boundaries ... We needed national level regulations to address these negative externalities that were not being addressed through state regulations."

The federal government's first legislative foray into environmental regulation was the Air Pollution Act of 1955, which provided funding for federal research into air pollution. That led to the Clean Air Act of 1963, which created a program to research techniques for monitoring and controlling air pollution. In 1967, the Air Quality Act was enacted to conduct extensive ambient monitoring studies and stationary source inspections.

But a major shift in the federal government's role in air pollution came with the enactment of the Clean Air Act of 1970.

" " Teamsters' Union members wearing gas masks walk a picket line around a varnish factory in Los Angeles demanding that the smog control board "do something" about the stench created by the plant in 1949. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

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What Did the Clean Air Act Establish?

The Clean Air Act of 1970 was significant because it was the first time the U.S. federal government vowed to take actionable steps to protect the health of Americans from air pollution. These measures became known as the Baker Principles, named for the late Republican Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee, who, along with the late Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-Maine), shepherded the Clean Air Act of 1970 through a unanimous Senate vote, explains Frank Rambo, senior attorney and leader of the Clean Energy and Air Program at the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Those principals included the concept of technology forcing, a strategy that requires firms to use the best available pollution technology available to limit emissions, whether from industrial sources or mobile ones. It also established deadlines for government actions, made those government actions mandatory rather than permissive, and empowered American citizens with the authority to use federal courts to achieve objectives in the event bureaucracy or lawmakers fail to do so.

Major regulatory programs affecting stationary sources were also initiated, including National Ambient Quality Standards (NAAQS), which set allowable levels of harmful pollutants. The adoption of this legislation coincided with the establishment of the EPA, which was created Dec. 2, 1970, to implement the various requirements spelled out by the Clean Air Act.

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How Has the Clean Air Act Evolved?

Since it was enacted, there have been two significant amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970.

The 1977 amendments addressed issues that arose, including how to deal with states that were not achieving the national ambient standards, as well as how to allow for new sources of air pollution from industries while improving air quality to achieve national standards, Lin says.

The 1990 amendments expanded and modified the existing NAAQS provisions and established the program that phased out chemicals that damaged the ozone layer. But one of the most noteworthy milestones of the 1990 amendments was the Acid Rain Program, which sought to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from fossil fuel-powered plants.

Acid rain is caused when sulfur dioxide emissions combine with atmospheric water. The resulting acidic rain has a detrimental effect on trees, freshwaters and soils, and destroys insects and aquatic animals.

"Acid rain was a huge problem," Rambo explains. "It was decimating places like the Smokies and Appalachians, and was primarily caused by sulfur dioxide from coal fire plants."

The Acid Rain Program under the Clean Air Act was also the first national cap-and-trade program in the country. Cap and trade programs incentivize firms to invest in clean alternatives that reduce their emissions credits. Those that fall under the cap may sell or trade their unused credits to other companies so a state's overall output falls within regulations.

" " Air pollution has decreased significantly across the U.S. since 1990 improving the quality of life for many Americans. Environmental Protection Agency

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How Successful Is the Clean Air Act?

"The Clean Air Act has been wildly successful," Rambo says, "especially when you take into account the doomsaying that has been coming from certain quarters from the get-go: 'It's going to cost too much' and 'It's going to strangle industry' and 'the economy is going to buckle under the weight of heavy regulation.' That's not happened at all."

Since the Clean Air Act of 1970 was enacted more than 50 years ago, numerous studies have shown its achievements, including a 78 percent reduction in six of the most common pollutants and a 73 percent improvement in air quality.

That cleaner air has translated into improved public health, as well. According to a peer-reviewed 1997 EPA Report to Congress on the benefits of the Act from 1970 to 1990, pollution reductions under the Act in 1990 alone prevented 205,000 early deaths, 10.4 million lost I.Q. points in children due to lead exposure, and millions of other cases of health effects.

Another study found that reductions in fine particle pollution between 1980 and 2000 in U.S. cities led to improvements in average life expectancy at birth of approximately seven months. Lowered levels of pollutants have also dramatically reduced acid rain and saved precious ecosystems.

And, it's proven to be a sound financial investment, too. Analyses of the cost effectiveness of the Clean Air Act statues show "it actually comes out on top as far as bang for the buck," Lin adds. "When you quantify dollar value and lives saved and diseases prevented, etc., and compare that to the cost of putting in the pollution control, the Clean Air Act has been one of the most successful statutes."

"It's wildly successful," Rambo reiterates, "but there's still some issues that need to be addressed."

" " Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, Adas Israel Congregation and other climate activists gather outside of the Supreme Court to show support for protecting the Clean Air Act, Feb. 28, 2022. Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for NRDC

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Challenging the Clean Air Act in Court

Now back to West Virginia vs. EPA. It's related to one of the issues plaguing the Clean Air Act: How much authority it grants the EPA in regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired and gas-fired power plants, specifically existing ones. The Supreme Court is currently hearing the case and is expected to make a ruling on it in the 2022 session that could clarify that question.

It involves a yearslong challenge from coal-mining companies and Republican-led West Virginia that argue the Supreme Court should limit the EPA's power to issue significant rules that can reshape the country's electricity grids, which would expand the EPA's power to "an unprecedented level."

However, legal experts have signaled that a ruling that limits the EPA's authority would handicap the agency's future ability to regulate air pollution. And depending on how SCOTUS rules, Congress could also be severely limited in its capacity to oversee the EPA and other federal agencies, which would have the potential to gut the U.S.'s power to fight climate change.

Robert Percival, the director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Maryland, told Energy News after the Supreme Court announced its plans to take up the case, "This is likely to result in one of the most significant environmental rulings the court has ever reached."

Now That's Interesting On Oct. 27, 1948, a heavy blanket of thick, gray smog enveloped Donora, Pennsylvania in one of the country's worst episodes of air pollution. The smog lingered for four days until an area of low pressure moved in and broke the temperature inversion that trapped the fog near the ground. In total, the episode killed 20 people and caused respiratory issues and other ailments to an additional 7,000 residents.
FLORENCE, S.C.  For about 10 years before his death, Tony Melton worked to find a heat-tolerant butter bean. This year his labors will bear fruit, er, rather, bean.

The beans, seven varieties of them, have sprouted on about 16 acres at Clemson's Pee Dee Research and Education Center on Pocket Road just over the Darlington County line.

"This crop right now looks fantastic," said Clemson's Bruce McLean, area commercial horticulture agent for the Pee Dee and surrounding counties.

"We've made some modifications to our planter. In the past we've had issues with getting a good stand. We made some minor modifications and it worked like an absolute charm. We have what I would consider a full stand," McLean said as he stood amidst the plants.

The plants are the product of about 10 years of cross breeding to highlight desired traits and to remove the undesired one.

"We can be talking a decade or more (of development time), even with an annual crop like this," McLean said.

That's if the weather cooperates, which it did and did not this year.

"The crop is a little late compared to prior years. Some of the weather variability we had earlier in the spring. It seemed like every time our soil would reach an optimal temperature a cold event would come along and drop us back," McLean said. "Unfortunately, we did have to wait a little late. They like warm soil."

The beans were finally planted in May on a field that does have irrigation.

The late planting will give McLean and others at the REC a good idea of just how heat tolerant the beans are.

"Because where we did get a slightly late delayed start it will realistically bloom and set pods right during the heat of the summer and we'll be harvesting in the heat of the summer," he said. "It may push harvest back a couple of weeks. Our harvest time may actually be in the mid-August time frame. When we do our second planting we may have a second planting going in before we've harvested our initial planting."

"It really will give us a good idea on pod set, flowering, yield and overall potential right in the dead heat of summer," McLean said.

The stand will produce four varieties of green/white Lima beans and three varieties of speckled butter beans.

The beans will also face another challenge this year  one that comes with seasoned pork and cornbread.

"The thing is that we're wanting to come in and look at how well does it taste. You can have the best-looking bean in the world, the highest yield in the world and the greatest heat tolerance in the world but if it doesn't taste right, what's the point?" McLean said.

The plan is to take some of them to full maturity, to a dry bean, to see how they hold up tastewise there as well.

Dry beans, he said, offer a seed source as well as a food source.

The quest for a heat-tolerant butter bean started when Melton noticed that the seeds farmers were getting weren't as heat tolerant as they had been in the past.

"A lot of it was where a lot of our seed production for beans is grown on the West Coast," McLean said of what Melton deduced. Because the seeds are produced in areas that don't have high heat, natural selection bred heat tolerance out of the crop.

"We are reintroducing some kind of heat tolerance into a crop we considered to be heat tolerant to begin with," McLean said.

By breeding heat tolerance back into the crop McLean and Clemson researchers will produce a resilient crop that could be a boon to countries far from the Pee Dee.

"Beans are a nutritional powerhouse," McLean said. "This is something that has so much potential for feeding people. A lot of the work we've been doing has a global effect."

While the seeds may be ready for farmers next spring, McLean said the project is far from done.

"This is going to be an ongoing project for us. We still have a lots of work to do on this. There's a lot of work we're looking at in the future. This may be something we get far enough along and pass the baton to the next batch of folks," McLean said.

McLean said he hopes to be able to name one of the bean varieties after Melton.

"We're hoping we can do at least one in tribute to him," he said. "I have one or two in particular I could see being called the Melton bean."

"The varieties we have look really good so far," McLean said. "Trying to clean up the seed. In situation like this we have a bit of stray seed, stray genetic material that is still in it and we'll be focusing on cleaning that up over the next little bit."

Next season, McLean said, Clemson will get some help with the beans as it distributes seed to select farmers to see how well it performs in their fields.

"We know the crop performs well, all seven varieties perform well. Two or three of them are real standouts," he said.

Digital Editor Matt Robertson is a veteran journalist who has fulfilled just about every role that a newspaper has and now serves as a key member of the Morning News' newsroom by maintaining SCNow.com and covering the occasional story and photo assignment.

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 Over dissents by Justice Thomas, SCOTUS denies cert on qualified immunity and Second Amendment cases | Main | "Paying on Probation: How Financial Sanctions Intersect with Probation to Target, Trap, and Punish People Who Cannot Pay" 

June 15, 2020

By a vote of 6-3, SCOTUS finds deficient performance in Texas capital case and remands on prejudice issue

A dozen years ago, I wrote a full law review article to express my grumpiness about the felt reality that the Supreme Court often seems to care a whole lot more about cases involving persons sentenced to death than about just about any other criminal defendants. That article is on my mind this morning upon seeing the 19-page per curiam decision that Supreme Court released in Andrus v. Texas, No. 189674 (S. Ct. June 15, 2020) (available here).

The defendant in this case, Terence Andrus, killed two people in an attempted carjacking and was sentenced to death after his defense counsel plainly did a very lousy job developing mitigation on his behalf. Here is the heart of the per curiam opinion's accounting of its ruling and rationale:

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the trial courts recommendation to grant habeas relief. In an unpublished per curiam order, the Court of Criminal Appeals concluded without elaboration that Andrus had fail[ed] to meet his burden under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), to show by a preponderance of the evidence that his counsels representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness and that there was a reasonable probability that the result of the proceedings would have been different but for counsels deficient performance. App. to Pet. for Cert. 78. A concurring opinion reasoned that, even if counsel had provided deficient performance under Strickland, Andrus could not show that counsels deficient performance prejudiced him. Andrus petitioned for a writ of certiorari. We grant the petition, vacate the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and remand for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. The evidence makes clear that Andrus counsel provided constitutionally deficient performance under Strickland. But we remand so that the Court of Criminal Appeals may address the prejudice prong of Strickland in the first instance.... Here, the habeas record reveals that Andrus counsel fell short of his obligation in multiple ways: First, counsel performed almost no mitigation investigation, overlooking vast

tranches of mitigating evidence. Second, due to counsels failure to investigate compelling mitigating evidence, what little evidence counsel did present backfired by bolstering

the States aggravation case. Third, counsel failed adequately to investigate the States aggravating evidence, thereby forgoing critical opportunities to rebut the case in

aggravation. Taken together, those deficiencies effected an unconstitutional abnegation of prevailing professional norms.

I am always pleased to see the Supreme Court call out, and find constitutionally inadequate, any sort of lousy defense work (though I sure would like to see this done a lot more in NON-capital cases). And I suppose I should also be pleased that Andrus will be a "good" SCOTUS precedent for inadequate defense Strickland claims in the future. But Justice Alito's seven-page dissent (which was jointed by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch) has me convinced that this was ultimately a "bad" case because the defendant seems sure to lose on the prejudice issue upon remand to the Texas state courts. Here is how Justice Alito's dissent concludes:

In sum, the CCA assessed the issue of prejudice in light of more than the potentially mitigating evidence that the Court marshals for Andrus. The CCA had before it strong aggravating evidence that Andrus wantonly killed two innocent victims and shot a third; that he committed other violent crimes; that he has a violent, dangerous, and unstable character; and that he is a threat to those he encounters. The CCA has already held once that Andrus failed to establish prejudice. I see no good reason why it should be required to revisit the issue.

June 15, 2020 at 10:26 AM | Permalink

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Not sure what to say about this opinion other than that George Orwell and Lewis Carroll are rolling over in their graves.

The dissent has the better of the argument in its claim that the majority's unsigned opinion misrepresents what happened in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. I think that the petitioner has a good argument for Strickland prejudice on the facts of the case, but that is based solely on the description of the evidence in the opinions.

The majority had three real choices: 1) deny certiorari entirely (either because Texas was right on prejudice or the issue presented did not merit certiorari); 2) summarily reverse on both prongs (because Texas was wrong on both prongs); or 3) grant certiorari to reconsider the standard for prejudice. Instead, they engage in a creative reinterpretation of the decision below to decide nothing and merely prolong the case (unless the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals comes to its senses which I doubt will happen).

Posted by: tmm | Jun 15, 2020 11:34:36 AM

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June 13, 2022

Fascinating new AP accounting of all sentences given to January 6 rioters so far

Fittingly, with the House's on-going January 6 committee hearings, the Associated Press has this new article reviewing in some detail the nearly 200 sentences so far given to January 6 riot defendants. I recommend the piece, and its cool interactive graphics, in full. Here are excerpts:

As the number of people sentenced for crimes in the insurrection nears 200, an Associated Press analysis of sentencing data shows that some judges are divided over how to punish the rioters, particularly for the low-level misdemeanors arising from the attack.... [U.S. District Judge Tanya] Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, has consistently taken the hardest line against Jan. 6 defendants of any judge serving on Washingtons federal trial court, which is handling the more than 800 cases brought so far in the largest prosecution in Justice Department history. Chutkan has handed out tougher sentences than the department was seeking in seven cases, matched its requests in four others and sent all 11 riot defendants who have come before her behind bars. In the four cases in which prosecutors did not seek jail time, Chutkan gave terms ranging from 14 days to 45 days. Overall, the 20 judges who have sentenced riot defendants have given lighter sentences than prosecutors were seeking in nearly three-fourths of the cases. The judges have exceeded prosecutors recommendation for about only 10% of the defendants, according to APs analysis. Most judges  appointed by presidents of both political parties  have gone easier on defendants than prosecutors wanted in most or all of their cases so far. While some judges have sentenced few Jan. 6 defendants, no other judge besides Chutkan has exceeded prosecutors recommended punishment in most of the cases assigned to them. Depending on the judge you get, the same facts could get you anything from probation to months in jail, said [Greg] Hunter, the defense lawyer [representing some Jan. 6 defendants]. When you can literally look at who the judge is, who has been assigned to a case, and know that every defendant is going to get more time or less time because of the judge they drew ... that doesnt promote respect for the law, he added. In one case, two friends from Indiana, Dona Sue Bissey and Anna Morgan-Lloyd, both pleaded guilty to the same misdemeanor offense for engaging in essentially the same conduct inside the Capitol. Prosecutors did not seek jail time for either, noting their lack of a criminal record. Chutkan sentenced Bissey to 14 days in jail. A different judge sentenced Bisseys friend to probation.... But Judge Randolph Moss sentenced Matthew Ryan Miller to less than three years [when prosecutors sought more than four], noting that the man was just 22 years old on Jan. 6, 2021, was intoxicated when he stormed the Capitol and has shown remorse. Before handing down the punishment, Moss said he believes judges have done a good job at ensuring the punishments are consistent while also weighing the individual factors of each case. When one looks at these sentencing decisions that have been made by this court across many judges, its remarkable how consistent sentencing has been, said Moss, an Obama nominee. When I see differences, Im able to go back through the record and look at it and understand the basis for those differences.... Of the more than 190 defendants sentenced so far, about 20 admitted to felony charges, including nine who assaulted police officers. The rest pleaded guilty to misdemeanors punishable by no more than one year imprisonment. Prosecutors recommended prison terms in more than 70% of the cases. Judges have agreed to prison in about 45% of them, with terms ranging from nine days to more than five years.

Some of many prior related posts:

June 13, 2022 at 03:18 PM | Permalink

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Im not surprised. My opinion is varied on one end these idiots should be punished but even I'm skeptical that they should all serve 10+ years in prison. Some should receive sentences of 3-5 years but most of them are guilty of misdemeanors.

Posted by: Anon | Jun 13, 2022 3:31:16 PM

"'Depending on the judge you get, the same facts could get you anything from probation to months in jail,' said [Greg] Hunter, the defense lawyer [representing some Jan. 6 defendants]. 'When you can literally look at who the judge is, who has been assigned to a case, and know that every defendant is going to get more time or less time because of the judge they drew ... that doesnt promote respect for the law,' he added."

I have never more completely agreed with a defense lawyer than I do here. Mr. Hunter beautifully captures the reason we need less "discretion" and more law. "Discretion" is just a euphemism for "ideology" and "temperament," neither of which belongs in sentencing.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 13, 2022 5:23:38 PM

Okay, Bill, how do you suggest we replace sentencing "discretion" with "law" for those involved in the January 6 riot? Should they all get a fixed term of probation? And if so, how many years? Should they all get a fixed term of imprisonment, and should that depend on whether federal prosecutors decided to charge them with one or multiple misdemeanors and/or felonies?

Speaking of prosecutors, what "law" is controlling how federal prosecutors are making discretionary charging and bargaining choices here? Notably, the AP article mentions that judges are troubled by the discretion being exercised by federal prosecutors here:

"Some judges have criticized prosecutors for what they see as disparities in prosecutors charging decisions across the cases and their recommendations for punishment. Chief Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama nominee, has sharply questioned whether prosecutors are letting some rioters off too easy with misdemeanor plea deals even as they describe the insurrection as an attack on democracy."

Can you suggest what "law" can and should be shaping the work of prosecutors in this context? Federal judges are have their sentencing decisions shaped by the law Congress set forth in 18 USC 3553(a). Can you point to any laws that Congress has created that shape the charging and bargaining discretion exercised by federal prosecutors?

Also, do you also view the "discretion" exercised by prosecutors -- such as, say, the discretion to demand appeal waivers in plea agreements -- to be "just a euphemism for 'ideology' and 'temperament'"?

Isn't the exercise of prosecutorial discretion is far more "lawless" than the exercise of judicial sentencing discretion in the federal system?

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 13, 2022 6:08:55 PM

Well gads Doug, I just can't win. If I oppose the defense, I have to sit in the corner. If I agree with the defense, I have to sit in the other corner.

Life is tough.

Still I'll answer a few questions.

"Okay, Bill, how do you suggest we replace sentencing 'discretion' with 'law' for those involved in the January 6 riot?"

By restoring the guidelines to the mandatory character they had when Congress wrote them, as Justice Stevens would have done. And it wouldn't "replace" discretion, but would cabin it more than it is now.

"Should they all get a fixed term of probation?"

Nope. They are not all charged with the same crime committed in the same way. And probation would be too light for some cases in any event.

"Should they all get a fixed term of imprisonment, and should that depend on whether federal prosecutors decided to charge them with one or multiple misdemeanors and/or felonies?"

Nope and nope. And in the Jan 6 cases, like all others, the defendant can avoid these awful prosecutors by sitting at home just as I did on Jan 6. Oh wait, I forgot, the defendant never bears any responsibility for his fate! It's all the big bad system!! Have you been having drinks with Rudy Giuliani?

"Speaking of prosecutors, what 'law' is controlling how federal prosecutors are making discretionary charging and bargaining choices here?"

The Constitution, which vests the decision what if anything to charge solely in the executive branch. The Framers were acutely aware of the breadth of discretion this conferred. But I know, they were a bunch of dummies!

"Notably, the AP article mentions that judges are troubled by the discretion being exercised by federal prosecutors here."

For sure, high officers of the government, including judges, have been chafing that high officers of another branch of government are not under their control. This has been going on for 200+ years, and shows the virtues, not the flaws, of separated powers.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 14, 2022 12:15:10 AM

Bill, I am just trying to more fully understand what you mean, in this context, when you say "we need less 'discretion' and more law." With your latest comments, I now think you just mean you really would like to restore "the guidelines to the mandatory character." Okay, but that would not impact the sentencing outcomes for the Jan. 6 rioters because almost all have gotten within-guideline sentences (with the guideline range calculated to be 0-6 months). As you know, even when mandatory, guidelines "law" afforded sentencing judges some discretion within applicable ranges (and much broader discretion when prosecutors used their discretion to move for a departure).

For the record, I am a big fan of well-crafted sentencing law that is subject to application with all the constitutional rights Justice Stevens long argued for (see, e.g. his dissents in McMillan, Watts as well as Booker). Of course, good sentencing law would be less complicated and severe than the current advisory guidelines, as your pal and past sentencing Commission Chair Bill Pryor argued. Do you join me and Judge Pryor in advocating for the new USSC to devise less complicated and severe guidelines as part of a process for advocating for them to be restored to mandatory status?

Speaking of prosecutors, the main reason we have now had advisory federal guidelines even longer than we ever had them mandatory is because the Bush Justice Department (a) advocated that remedy in Booker, and (b) never urged legislation to change that remedy. Similarly, the Obama Justice Department, the Trump Justice Department and now the Biden Justice Department have never sought a return to mandatory guidelines.

Lastly, are you really claiming that the Constitution prevents Congress or anyone from developing any law to regulate prosecutors' plea bargaining discretion? Where in the text does it do that? Does your view make various aspects of Criminal Procedure Rule 11(c) unconstitutional? Doesn't the Due Process clause apply to federal prosecutors and shouldn't Congress sensibly be understood to have some power to regulate the plea process?

Whatever your curious (extra-textual) theory of prosecutors having a constitutional right to be free from any law, it sounds ultimately that you DO NOT actually believe "we need less 'discretion' and more law" when it comes to the work of prosecutors. Is it fair to say that, as both a matter of policy and (extra-textual) constitutional theory, that you think Congress can and should regulate the sentencing work of Article III judges through law but you do not think Congress can and should regulate the sentencing work of Article II prosecutors through law.

Not trying to put words in your mouth, but just trying to clarify that you are not a fan of law to regulate the discretion of federal prosecutors.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 14, 2022 8:37:28 AM

Im waiting for the AP accounting of the BLM rioters.

Oh, wait

Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jun 14, 2022 3:25:33 PM

TarlsQtr --

I'm sure you meant to say, "mostly peaceful protesters."

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 14, 2022 3:50:06 PM

Here are a few for you, Tarls:

"AP finds most arrested in protests arent leftist radicals"

https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-suburbs-health-racial-injustice-7edf9027af1878283f3818d96c54f748

"Records rebut claims of unequal treatment of Jan. 6 rioters"

https://apnews.com/article/records-rebut-claims-jan-6-rioters-55adf4d46aff57b91af2fdd3345dace8

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 14, 2022 11:44:12 PM

Doug --

"Do you join me and Judge Pryor in advocating for the new USSC to devise less complicated and severe guidelines as part of a process for advocating for them to be restored to mandatory status?"

Depends. The devil is, as ever, in the details. The package would have to be non-severable, that is, the less severe part could not come in unless the mandatory part came with it. And we'd have to see how much less severe, and for what crimes in particular. But in general, I remain the man who's willing to give up something to get something -- and I think, with Congress and Justice Stevens, that mandatory guidelines are what is needed precisely to avoid the luck of the draw problem the defense lawyer in your entry is talking about.

"Speaking of prosecutors, the main reason we have now had advisory federal guidelines even longer than we ever had them mandatory is because the Bush Justice Department (a) advocated that remedy in Booker, and (b) never urged legislation to change that remedy. Similarly, the Obama Justice Department, the Trump Justice Department and now the Biden Justice Department have never sought a return to mandatory guidelines."

I agree that years of DOJ's lassitude is unfortunate. On the other hand, inertia is the strongest force in the universe, and stronger inside the Beltway than anywhere else (as you often regret when you're talking about pot's still being federally illegal after all these many years). Still, I'm happy to see that you cite DOJ's stance as, if not authoritative, at least worth noting. Should I tuck that away for future reference?

"Lastly, are you really claiming that the Constitution prevents Congress or anyone from developing any law to regulate prosecutors' plea bargaining discretion? Where in the text does it do that? Does your view make various aspects of Criminal Procedure Rule 11(c) unconstitutional? Doesn't the Due Process clause apply to federal prosecutors and shouldn't Congress sensibly be understood to have some power to regulate the plea process?"

Hey, I'll go you one better. If Congress wants to eliminate AUSAs' ability to plea bargain ALTOGETHER, all I can say is -- go for it! Then we can all sit back and watch the defense bar's head collectively explode when they find out they can't get their typical sweetheart deal any more, and, worse still, ACTUALLY HAVE TO DO THE WORK REQUIRED FOR TRIAL. The defense bar's screeching will be audible on Pluto. So like I say, go for it!

Really, it cracks me up. The Left whines ceaselessly about trials, because the government is SOOOOOOOO much more powerful; and then whines just as loudly about pleas, because THE DEFENDANT DESERVES HIS CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS!!!

Q: So what's actually going on? A: The defense bar whines because that's what they do. It has nothing to do with any given substantive argument.

"Whatever your curious (extra-textual) theory of prosecutors having a constitutional right to be free from any law, it sounds ultimately that you DO NOT actually believe "we need less 'discretion' and more law" when it comes to the work of prosecutors. Is it fair to say that, as both a matter of policy and (extra-textual) constitutional theory, that you think Congress can and should regulate the sentencing work of Article III judges through law but you do not think Congress can and should regulate the sentencing work of Article II prosecutors through law."

It's fair to say that putative overcharging by prosecutors ALREADY is checked by law, to wit, the law that allows courts to dismiss charges or grant acquittals for insufficient evidence, and that REQUIRES juries to acquit unless the case is proved stem to stern BRD.

P.S. There is no such thing as "the sentencing work of Article II prosecutors." Only courts impose sentences. Sure, prosecutors can make charges, including MM charges, but as noted, unless they prove them beyond a reasonable doubt, there's never going to be a sentence. And if they DO prove them beyond a reasonable doubt, then by definition the case was not overcharged, and there jolly well SHOULD be a sentence.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 15, 2022 8:50:43 AM

Bill, you do not explain here whether you think the Constitution prevents Congress or anyone from developing any law to regulate prosecutors' plea bargaining discretion. I do not think it does -- I see no text even suggesting as much -- and my main point is that "the luck of the draw problem" is MUCH bigger with prosecutors because of MMs and the lack of any law regulating prosecutorial charging/bargaining.

For example, consider the CP cases that were a focal point of recent SCOTUS hearings. In every CP downloading case in the federal system, on the exact same evidence the defendant can be charged/convicted of possession (with no MM) or receipt (with a five-year MM). In all these cases, judges are consistently duty-bound to apply the 3553(a) factors at sentencing. What factors do prosecutors consider for charging/bargaining? We do not know and there is ZERO law and ONLY "the luck of the draw problem" determining when and how similar defendants can get only a few months or must get at least 5 years. And that is a much, much bigger disparity than Jan 6 folks are facing with judges AND it is entirely luck of the prosecutor draw. I think that is a HUGE problem for anyone who cares about the rule of law. Do you?

That is the "sentencing work" of prosecutors -- the cases are all going to produce convictions, but prosecutors decide on their own, with no law or transparency, who must get at least 5 years in prison. US Sentencing Commission reports have documented at length that no logical or consistent principles account for how prosecutors use their discretion in these CP cases. (USSC research has also shown how MMs in drug cases and 5K motions also reflect huge "luck" of the prosecutor draw problem and also suggest race and other pernicious factors may often account for the "bad luck" at sentencing some defendants get from federal prosecutors' mysterious discretion.)

In short, if you really care about "the luck of the draw problem," the research and data from the USSC and elsewhere all point to huge problems flowing from severe MMs and prosecutorial discretion being hidden and unregulated. That is why, if you are genuinely concerned about "the luck of the draw problem," your calls for reform should include a prosecutorial focus. Does it?

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 15, 2022 10:01:04 AM

Doug,

You know better than that. There are numerous ways to be lenient. There are people from January 6th who were arrested for merely being there after being invited in by capitol police.

Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jun 15, 2022 11:16:12 AM

Doug --

"Bill, you do not explain here whether you think the Constitution prevents Congress or anyone from developing any law to regulate prosecutors' plea bargaining discretion."

Actually, I thought I made it clear that I believe Congress can ban federal prosecutors from plea bargaining altogether -- and I kind of wish it would, just so we'd all have the amusement value of hearing the defense bar yelp at eight zillion decibels when something it's been whining about (but living off of) for years goes bye-bye.

Of course, the more natural source for regulating plea bargaining is DOJ -- and it has done so, more than once. Indeed, there are rumors that I was in on one of the regulations, to wit, to provision for securing appeal waivers in exchange for concessions to the defense. More recently, the AG has taken steps against using the waiver with respect to (what is laughingly called) compassionate release requests.

So in fact there have been instances of regulating what can go on in plea bargaining. Is it wise for CONGRESS to regulate in this area? Let me ask that another way: Is it wise for Congress to declare that for infantrymen's target practice, soldiers should be limited to 18 bullets rather than 20? Upshot: While Congress has the constitutional power to regulate plea conditions, it's smarter to allow that to be done by the Department with expertise, be that the Justice Department or the Defense Department.

"...my main point is that 'the luck of the draw problem' is MUCH bigger with prosecutors because of MMs and the lack of any law regulating prosecutorial charging/bargaining."

You had your chance and, truth be told, made pretty good use of it, when under Trump, you got the FSA. And you cut back on some MMs but did not repeal a single one. Nor did you so much as attempt to regulate plea bargaining.

Now your side has both the legislative and executive branches. So why are you trying to get me to do your work for you when you've shown you can do it for yourself?? I'm not the one to talk to. Talk to your pal Chuck Schumer if/when he takes a break from encouraging assassinating Supreme Court justices. And Nancy Pelosi to see if she can corral some of the 27 Democrats who voted against improving security for the justices (the vote was 396-27).

"That is the "sentencing work" of prosecutors -- the cases are all going to produce convictions, but prosecutors decide on their own, with no law or transparency, who must get at least 5 years in prison."

I can understand complaining about unjustified harshness -- like, for example, charging under a MM statute that the defendant forced the five year old to have sex with a horse when he actually didn't. But there's already a check on that. It's called an ACQUITTAL.

But I do not understand complaining about unjustified leniency (which is what actually goes on) -- like, for example charging a guilty defendant with a lesser offense than could be proven because the AUSA believes he was mentally off (although not insane).

Unjustified leniency goes on ALL THE TIME, in charging and sentencing. If you want to end it, please say so loud and clear. For my part, I just accept it (not so happily but I go along) because some "give" in the system has its uses. It's the same idea, at a lower and more informal level, of executive clemency.

It seems that what you're complaining about is that they guy who forced the five year-old to have sex with a horse did NOT get unjustified leniency because the AUSA prosecuting the case couldn't be hoodwinked or bullied and instead charged the actual crime, which carries a MM.

Well isn't that too bad. You see the problem as too little and too disparate unjustified leniency. I see the problem as too many defendants who force five year old's to have sex with horses.

I will be more than happy to have the electorate speak for itself on whether you're right or I am.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 15, 2022 12:26:49 PM

I know better than what, Tarls? I agree 100% there "are numerous ways to be lenient." After all, only a relatively small who rioted at BLM protests or on Jan 6 were even arrested. At issue here is whether leniency is regulated by the rule of law or is subject to, as Bill puts it, "the luck of the draw." Judicial leniency is regulated at sentencing by 3553(a) and judges must put the reasons for sentencing decisions on the open record and are generally subject to appeal; prosecutorial leniency is not regulated by any law and is not explained openly nor can it be challenged in court.

As Bill notes, any Jan 6 rioters who are not actually guilty of trespass or other crimes can and should assert their defenses at trial and should be acquitted. I believe at least one already has. Lots of not guilty people get prosecuted, and many even end up pleading guilty because severe trial penalties make them fear the "tax" they would pay if then go to trial and get wrongfully convicted (as hundreds, perhaps thousands, do every year). Do you think any innocent Jan 6 rioters have pled guilty -- ie, do you think there have been wrongful convictions?

As I have said repeatedly, the Jan 6 prosecutions serve as an important window into many aspects of our broader criminal justice system. However only about 800 folks are being prosecuted in that case. There are hundred of thousand subject to lower-level drug charges every year and millions of other property/public order cases where all sorts of (often unclear) forms of severity and leniency shape outcomes.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 15, 2022 12:28:37 PM

Bill, this is not about "sides" but about what makes good policy and advances justice. It is quite telling of your mindset that you analogize prosecutors with charging discretion authority to soldiers with bullets. For you, it seems, DOJ should approach these matters as if it is waging war against a foreign enemy, not seeking justice for the American people. (And, though not my specialty, I sense even agents of war may be subject to regulation by more legal rules than federal prosecutors.)

Meanwhile, I am rarely meaning to express concerns with justified leniency, I would just always like it to be transparent, explained and regulated by law. In your first comment, you said "we need less 'discretion' and more law." I was eager to clarify that you really only want that for judges (who have law already all around), but not for prosecutors (who have little law). And I think that is a very important clarification.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 15, 2022 12:41:35 PM

Doug --

Actually (not that I doubt for a minute that you're confused about this), the analogy is between one Cabinet department's micromanaging in-the-field decisions and another's doing the same thing. Choosing bullets and DOD was incidental. It could have been the Agriculture Department's decision about whether 100 acres or 105 acres need to be held out of planting this year. Not that clarification is needed.

And I guess I'm just not getting through that there's already a great big check on prosecutorial overcharging, that being an acquittal, ordered by either the court or the jury. I'm shocked -- shocked I tell you -- that a libertarian like you would want yet more stifling control from Big Brother in Washington.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jun 15, 2022 2:45:05 PM

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June 12, 2022

Iowa Supreme Court refuses to extend Eighth Amendment juve mandatory LWOP prohibition to murder committed days after 18th birthday

As reported in this Des Moines Register article, the Iowa Supreme Court issued an interesting ruling refusing to extend an Eighth Amendment right protecting juvenile murderers. Here are the basics:

Two Iowans who were sentenced to life in prison for murders committed when they were teenagers must stay incarcerated, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled on Friday. Lawyers for the Des Moines men claimed they should not have been sentenced to adult standards because the crimes were committed when they were 18 and 19 years old. Two Iowa Supreme Court decisions rejected claims that sentencing very young adults to adult sentences constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Building on U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the state court has previously held that youth who commit crimes before they turn 18, even first-degree murder, cannot be sentenced to life in prison without parole. But once someone turns 18, Friday's rulings held, they face the full penalties prescribed by law. The two cases both involve Des Moines men who've been fighting for decades to overturn their convictions and sentences for murder. In one case, the defendant was only five days past his 18th birthday at the time of the offense. James Dorsey, who was convicted of the 1984 murder of Juanita Weaver during a home invasion, argued that modern medical and social science shows the brain does not fully mature until age 25. Justice Christopher McDonald, who wrote both majority opinions, acknowledges that the 18th birthday might be an arbitrary place to draw a line, but said a line must be drawn somewhere. He noted many areas outside criminal law where turning 18 triggers new rights and responsibilities.... In the second case, Fernando Sandoval was 19 in 2004 when he shot and killed two men during a fight outside a Des Moines bar. He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to life in prison, and has brought multiple unsuccessful appeals and petitions for postconviction relief.... The only dissenter in both cases was Justice Brent Appel, the sole Democratic appointee on the court. Appel wrote in Dorsey's case that he would not "simply extend the categorical rule ... prohibiting life-without-possibility-of-parole sentences to young adults," but instead that such cases should be treated as other states treat death sentences, requiring an "individualized assessment" by the court whether the defendant truly merits lifelong detention.... Iowa law mandates life without parole for anyone convicted of first-degree murder, except for juveniles, who may be eligible for parole.

The full ruling in Dorsey v, Iowa, No. 191917 (Iowa June 10, 2022), is available at this link and here is how the majority opinion begins:

Petitioner James Dorsey shot and killed a woman when he was eighteen years and five days old. He was found guilty of murder in the first degree and was sentenced to a mandatory term of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Dorsey contends this sentence violates his state constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. Iowa Const. art. I,  17. He argues the state constitution prohibits imposing a mandatory punishment on a young adult offender and instead requires the district court to hold an individualized sentencing hearing before imposing any sentence. He further argues his life sentence without the possibility of parole is grossly disproportionate to the crime. For the reasons expressed below, we affirm Dorseys sentence.

Here is how the lengthy dissent by Judge Appel wraps up:

While an offender under the age of eighteen may be entitled to a categorical exclusion from a life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence, I would hold that an individual older than eighteen might be subject to life without possibility of parole provided that the state can make the necessary showing of incorrigibility to support the sentence. Because of the confluence of the mitigating factors of youth and the harshness of the penalty, I would apply a different version of the gross proportionality test than has traditionally been applied under the federal caselaw. Instead, in the context of a youthful offender facing life without possibility of parole, the state should be required to show that the individual offender is so incorrigible that even considering a parole-based release at a later date is out of the question. This heightened sense of proportionality is necessary because of the potent combination of potential mitigating factors and the irreversible and severe nature of the underlying punishment. This extension of individualized determinations is a small but necessary evolution of our current law.

June 12, 2022 at 09:50 PM | Permalink

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June 13, 2022

Justice Sotomayor pens lengthy dissent from denial of cert in Texas capital case that has previously led to SCOTUS per curiam reversal

Almost exactly two years ago, the Supreme Court issued a per curiam decision in Andrus v. Texas (discussed here) in which the Court felt compelled to find that "Andrus counsel provided constitutionally deficient performance under Strickland," but then remanded so Texas courts could "address the prejudice prong of Strickland in the first instance." This case resulted in another notable opinion today, making this otherwise new SCOTUS short order list much longer. Specifically, Justice Sotomayor authored a 25-page dissent from denial of certiorari, which was joined by Justices Breyer and Kagan. Here is how it starts:

A state habeas court recommended vacating petitioner Terence Andrus death sentence after an 8-day hearing that uncovered a plethora of mitigating evidence that trial counsel had failed to investigate or present. The court held that Andrus had received ineffective assistance of counsel at the punishment phase of his trial. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas reversed; this Court summarily vacated and remanded. See Andrus v. Texas, 590 U.S. ___ (2020) (per curiam). This Court held that counsel had rendered constitutionally deficient performance. That conclusion was based on an apparent tidal wave of compelling and powerful mitigating evidence in the habeas record, none of which counsel presented to the jury. Id., at ___, ___, ___ (slip op., at 9, 11, 18). The Court also found counsel ineffective for several specific failures to investigate and rebut the States case in aggravation. Id., at ______ (slip op., at 1316). The Court remanded to allow the Texas court to evaluate in the first instance whether, in light of the Courts holding as to deficient performance, Andrus had shown prejudice under Strickland. On remand, the Court of Criminal Appeals, in a divided 5-to-4 decision, failed to follow this Courts ruling. Instead of properly weighing the habeas evidence as a whole, the Texas court concluded that Andrus failed to establish prejudice (and therefore denied habeas relief) based on its disagreement with, and rejection of, the determinations underlying this Courts holding that Andrus counsel had rendered deficient performance. As a result, the dissenting judges below explained, the Texas courts opinion was irreconcilable with this Courts prior decision and barred by vertical stare decisis and the law of the case. I agree with the dissenting judges below. Andrus case cries out for intervention, and it is particularly vital that this Court act when necessary to protect against defiance of its precedents. The Court, however, denies certiorari. I would summarily reverse, and I respectfully dissent from the Courts failure to do so.

June 13, 2022 at 09:45 AM | Permalink

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The dissents of today can become the law of tomorrow. This is what I have to keep reminding myself in these instances.

Posted by: Zachary Newland | Jun 13, 2022 12:25:57 PM

The dissents of today can become the law of tomorrow. This is what I have to keep reminding myself in these instances.

Posted by: Zachary Newland | Jun 13, 2022 12:25:57 PM

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Authorities in Indias northern state of Uttar Pradesh demolished the homes of several Muslim people over the weekend for being allegedly involved in riots that were triggered by derogatory remarks made against prophet Muhammad.

Muslims across the country have taken to the streets to protest the remarks made against the prophet by former spokesperson Nupur Sharma and media chief Naveen Jindal of prime minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The remarks also sparked a diplomatic row between India and Muslim-majority key trade partner countries in the Middle East and Asia.

Ms Sharma has been suspended from the party while Mr Jindal has been expelled due to the growing diplomatic backlash.

However, the protests turned violent in several states, with clashes erupting between Hindus and Muslims and protesters and the police in several areas. Over 300 people were arrested in Uttar Pradesh alone in connection with the unrest.

Following the protests, the state's right-wing chief minister Yogi Adityanath ordered officials to demolish any illegal establishments and homes of people accused of involvement in the riots.

Three Muslim-owned houses in Prayagraj, including the house of a rights activist, were bulldozed amid heavy police presence on Sunday.

Two of the razed houses belonged to people accused of throwing stones following the Friday prayers.

Javed Mohammed, a politician and father of activist Afreen Fatima, was reportedly arrested on Saturday and the family was asked to vacate the house by 11am on Sunday.

Authorities had claimed that Mr Mohammed was given a notice on 10 May to appear for a hearing on 24 May, to which he failed to comply. However, the claim was refuted by the family.

A bulldozer demolishes the house of a Muslim man on 12 June (Reuters)

We were not protesting on Friday. None of us were a part of protests that were happening in Allahabad... We were at home, Ms Fatima told Al Jazeera.

We have been paying our house tax for around 20 years and not once have we received any intimation by any development authorities that our house is illegal, she added. The local police have alleged it found illegal weapons in his house during the demolition.

Story continues

Critics and opposition parties in India have accused the BJP government of illegally demolishing Muslim homes in an effort to intimidate minorities.

The prime minister has so far not commented on the communal unrest.

A group of lawyers have written to the Allahabad High Court stating that the demolition was against the law. No earlier notices of illegal construction [were] received by the accused or his wife, they told the court.

Meanwhile, two Muslim teenagers died of gunshot wounds during clashes with police on Friday in Ranchi in Jharkhand state. Local reports said at least 10 were being treated for various injuries.

Bangladeshs Islamist activists and supporters hold placards as they shout anti-India slogans (AFP via Getty)

In West Bengal, authorities enforced an emergency law prohibiting public gatherings in the industrial district of Howrah until 16 June after protests demanding Ms Sharmas arrest turned violent.

The state president of BJP staged a sit-in protest and accused neighbouring Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim nation, of inciting violence in the state.

Thousands of people also took to the streets in Bangladesh and Pakistan to protest the remarks against the prophet.

Thousands walked the streets near the main Baitul Mukarram Mosque in downtown Dhaka, Bangladeshs capital, after Friday prayers and raised slogans against the Indian government and Mr Modi.
SOUX CITY -- The identity of the man who was killed in a downtown residence on June 10 has been released.

Sioux City Police say Dolerean N. Wade was located at a residence on the 500 block of Ninth St. He was transported to MercyOne Siouxland for treatment and later died.

Katrina L. Barnes, 32, of Sioux City, was charged with second degree murder in Wade's death. She was also charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance.

Investigators also charged Jordyn R. Easton, 25, of Sioux City, with accessory after the fact and for concealing evidence related to the crime.

Police say the investigation into this case is ongoing.

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LE MARS, Iowa -- On the stage of The Browns Century Theatre, Shelly Brown was rehearsing a production number with her gospel-singing children.

Shelly, along with Adam, Andrew and Michaela Brown, sang a rousing rendition of the "Iowa Corn Song," written more than a century ago and covered by countless performers.

The song, with lyrics like "We're from I-O-Way, I-O-Way, that's where the tall corn grows," is part of an "Oh My Iowa!" musical show the Browns will be performing at 1:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday at their 11 Central Ave. N.W. theater.

"'Oh My Iowa!' is not only our salute to Iowa, it also allows us to salute our hometown of Le Mars," Shelly Brown explained. "We wanted to do the show especially for Ice Cream Days."

Indeed, Ice Cream Days, which runs from Wednesday through Saturday, is a time when Le Mars, the home of Wells Enterprises, Inc. and Blue Bunny Ice Cream, can celebrate its status as "Ice Cream Capital of the World."

Along with music from The Browns, the festival will also feature an ice cream social, free root beer float events plus a "Conehole" exhibit, which is cornhole but with an ice cream twist.

However, this year's Ice Cream Days will be very different than past festivals, according to executive planning committee member Shannon Rodenburg.

"For years, Ice Cream Days was a time for the community to come together for a celebration," she explained. "This year, we've revamped the festival as a way to bring out-of-towners to Le Mars."

While such time-tested events like the Tri-State Cruisers Car Show (5 p.m. Wednesday); Municipal Band concerts (7:30 Wednesday); and the Ice Cream Day Parade (10 a.m. Saturday); will continue as usual.

But Rodenburg is also excited about new activities like a carnival with midway rides (3 - 9 p.m. Friday and noon to 7 p.m. Saturday); and, even, an ice cream-themed performance from the Omaha Arts Circus (7:30 p.m. Friday).

In addition, there will be daily Scavenger Hunts, where visitors can spot historic highlights on downtown buildings, and Alley Art exploration tours, featuring public art displays and the large-scale murals on the alley walls of local businesses.

"We wanted to bring as much of Ice Cream Days to downtown Le Mars," Michaela Brown, who is also on the Ice Cream Days executive planning committee, explained.

This includes street performers, live artists, food vendors, merchant mart and a kid's zone in or near the Olson Cultural Events Center, 3 First St. N.W.

"With gas prices as high as they are, more people are sticking close to home," Rodenburg said. "That's why most of Ice Cream Days events are either free or inexpensive enough for families."

Which will also include an outdoor Ice Cream Days closing show concert, featuring The Browns at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Olson Cultural Center.

"We'll be singing different types of songs, including many of our favorites," Shelly Brown said. "It will be a great way to cap off Ice Cream Days."

LE MARS, Iowa -- On the stage of The Browns Century Theatre, Shelly Brown was rehearsing a production number with her gospel-singing children.

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The Clay County Sheriff's Office received a sexual abuse report in December from a girl who said that Stacy Baas had abused her in 2016, when she was under age 10.

According to court documents, the girl was interviewed at the MercyOne Siouxland Child Advocacy Center in Sioux City and said that Baas would ask her to tickle him and point to his crotch. The girl said she would touch him while his pants and underwear were around his ankles.
DAKOTA CITY -- The owners of a South Sioux City RV sales company face dozens of new charges as an investigation into alleged fraudulent sales practices continues.

Douglas and Shara Bras, who operate Fremont RV Center, 2405 Cornhusker Drive, now face 44 and 50 charges, respectively, for an alleged pattern a defrauding customers by selling their campers on consignment and not telling them, using sales proceeds to pay their own bills rather than the camper owners and not issuing vehicle titles.

A complaint filed Thursday in Dakota County Court contains 37 charges against Douglas Bras: 18 counts of theft by deception, 10 counts of selling or disposing of a motor vehicle without delivering a title or VIN number, three counts of knowing and intentional abuse of a senior adult, two counts of issuing a bad check and single counts of conspiracy, theft by unlawful taking, aiding consummation of a felony and second-degree forgery.

He has yet to be arrested on those charges.

An amended complaint filed Thursday against Shara Bras added 35 charges: 18 counts of theft by deception, 10 counts of selling or disposing of a motor vehicle without deliver a title or VIN number, three counts of each of knowing and intentional abuse of a senior adult and issuing a bad check and one count of theft by unlawful taking.

Shara Bras, 56, is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Tuesday. She was previously charged with five counts of theft by deception, five counts of selling or disposing of a motor vehicle without delivering a title or VIN number, three counts of violation of the motor vehicle certificate of title act and single counts of conspiracy and aiding consummation of a felony.

Douglas Bras, 61, was bound over to district court last month to face five counts of theft by deception and single counts of conspiracy and aiding the consummation of a felony. He is scheduled to be arraigned on June 21.

The two, who live in rural Hinton, Iowa, were arrested in April and charged with selling at least four campers ranging in price from $12,000-$18,500 on consignment. In each case, according to court documents, they did not pay the owner or the owner's bank and never informed the owners the campers had been sold. The owners did not learn of the sales until a police investigator contacted them. Fremont RV Center also failed to produce a title to the campers to the buyers, who were then unable to register and title the campers.

An affidavit for an arrest warrant filed Thursday said that since the Bras' arrest, the South Sioux City Police Department has received more than 50 calls from other customers who say they were defrauded by Douglas and/or Shara Bras.

Callers were either buyers or sellers of more than a dozen campers or RVs who said they either did not receive a title, received a check for insufficient funds or had not been told their RV had been sold. Some said they finally received their title or payment several weeks or months after the purchase was made. In some situations, customers did not receive payment or titles until after a lawyer or law enforcement became involved. Customers also reported paying Fremont RV for items that were never ordered and received.

South Sioux City police Investigator Joaquin Orduno said the investigation into the Bras' business continues and more charges are possible.

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Bear market hits Wall Street as stocks, bonds, crypto dive

NEW YORK (AP)  Wall Street tumbled into whats called a bear market Monday after fears about a fragile economy and rising interest rates sent the S&P 500 more than 20% below its record set early this year.

The index sank 3.9% in the first chance for investors to trade after getting the weekend to reflect on the stunning news that inflation is getting worse, not better. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was briefly down more than 1,000 points before finishing with a loss of 876.

At the center of the sell-off again was the Federal Reserve, which is scrambling to get inflation under control. Its main method to do that is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession if used too aggressively.

With the Fed seemingly pinned into having to get more aggressive, prices fell in a worldwide rout for everything from bonds to bitcoin, from New York to New Zealand. Some of the sharpest drops hit what had been big winners of the easier low-rate era, such as high-growth technology stocks and other former darlings of investors. Tesla slumped 7.1%, and Amazon dropped 5.5%. GameStop tumbled 8.4%.

The best thing people can do is to not panic and dont sell at the bottom, said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, "and were probably not at the bottom.

Jan. 6 panel hears: Trump 'detached from reality' in defeat

WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of Jan. 6, but the defeated president seemed detached from reality and kept clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power, the committee investigating the Capitol attack was told Monday.

With gripping testimony, the panel is laying out in step-by-step fashion how Trump ignored his own campaign team's data as one state after another flipped to Joe Biden, and instead latched on to conspiracy theories, court cases and his own declarations of victory rather than having to admit defeat.

Trump's big lie of election fraud escalated and transformed into marching orders that summoned supporters to Washington and then sent them to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to block Bidens victory.

He's become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff, former Attorney General William Barr testified in his interview with the committee.

Barr called the voting fraud claims bull, bogus and idiotic, and resigned in the aftermath. I didnt want to be a part of it.

Bucolic Ukraine forest is site of mass grave exhumation

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP)  The lush green beauty of a pine forest with singing birds contrasted with the violent deaths of newly discovered victims of Russia's war in Ukraine, as workers exhumed bodies from another mass grave near the town of Bucha on Kyiv's outskirts.

The hands of several victims were tied behind their backs. The gruesome work of digging up the remains coincided with the Ukrainian police chief's report that authorities have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 people since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Workers wearing white hazmat suits and masks used shovels to exhume bodies from the soil of the forest, marking each section with small yellow numbered signs on the ground. The bodies, covered in cloth and dirt, attracted flies.

Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured, Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police, said at the scene. The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people, many in mass graves in the forest and elsewhere.

The S&P 500 is in a bear market; heres what that means

NEW YORK (AP)  Wall Street is back in the claws of a bear market as worries about inflation and higher interest rates overwhelm investors.

The Federal Reserve has signaled it will aggressively raise interest rates to try to control inflation, which is the highest in decades. Throw in the war in Ukraine and a slowdown in Chinas economy, and investors have been forced to reconsider what theyre willing to pay for a wide range of stocks, from high-flying tech companies to traditional automakers. Big swings have become commonplace and Monday was no exception.

The last bear market happened just two years ago, but this is still a first for those investors that got their start trading on their phones during the pandemic. Thanks in large part to extraordinary actions by the Federal Reserve, stocks have for years seemed to go largely in only one direction: up. But the buy the dip rallying cry popular after every market slide has grown more fainter  a recent rebound in stock prices was wiped out by a furious bout of selling over the past four days.

Here are some common questions asked about bear markets

Takeaways: Trump's mind 'made up' on fraud ahead of Jan. 6

WASHINGTON (AP)  The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection systemically made the case in its second hearing Monday that several of Trump's advisers warned him against making false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election that he lost. But the president would not listen.

The nine-member panel is trying to make the case that Trump, and those allies who helped him, were deliberately lying as he pushed those election falsehoods in the weeks ahead of the violent insurrection. The rioters who broke into the Capitol that day and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden's victory were echoing Trump's lies that he, not Biden, had rightfully won the election.

Takeaways from Monday's hearing:

TRUMPS 'MIND WAS MADE UP'

In a series of video clips from the committee's closed-door interviews, several of Trumps advisers testified that they told him repeatedly he should not declare that there was widespread election fraud  and that those claims were false. But Trump increasingly relied on wild theories that were pushed by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, among others, according to the testimony.

Tentative Senate gun deal has surprises, and loose ends

WASHINGTON (AP)  The outline of a bipartisan Senate agreement to rein in gun violence has no game-changing steps banning the deadliest firearms. It does propose measured provisions making it harder for some young gun buyers, or people considered threatening, to have weapons.

And there are meaningful efforts to address mental health and school safety concerns. It all reflects election-year pressure to act both parties feel after mass shootings in May killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York, and 21 more in Uvalde, Texas.

Details of the plan remain in negotiation between Democrats and Republicans, with disagreements over how tightly the initiatives should be drawn. That means the proposal's potency  and perhaps whether some parts survive  remain undetermined as it's translated into legislation.

Here's what's in and out of the agreement:

A STRENGTHENING, NARROWLY, OF BACKGROUND CHECKS

South Korea says North completed prep for new nuclear test

WASHINGTON (AP)  South Koreas top diplomat said Monday that North Korea has completed preparations for a new nuclear test and that only a political decision by the countrys top leadership can prevent it from going forward.

After talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said the North would pay a price if it goes ahead, as feared, with what would be its seventh nuclear test in the coming days.

North Korea has completed preparations for another nuclear test and I think only a political decision has to be made, Park said. Prior to Monday, U.S. and South Korean officials had said only that the North was nearing completion of such preparations.

If North Korea ventures into another nuclear test, I think it will only strengthen our deterrence and also international sanctions," Park said. North Korea should change its mind and make the right decision.

Apart from sanctions, Park did not say what that price the North would pay or outline how the deterrence policy would change, but Blinken said the United States and treaty allies South Korea and Japan could adjust their military postures in response.

Yellowstone floods wipe out roads, bridges, strand visitors

HELENA, Mont. (AP)  Massive floodwaters ravaged Yellowstone National Park and nearby communities Monday, washing out roads and bridges, cutting off electricity and forcing visitors to evacuate parts of the iconic park at the height of summer tourist season.

All entrances to Yellowstone were closed due to the deluge, caused by heavy rains and melting snowpack, while park officials ushered tourists out of the most affected areas.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, though dozens of stranded campers had to be rescued by raft in south-central Montana. Authorities also said they would be assessing a potential loss of homes and structures in Montanas Stillwater County.

Elsewhere, some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the Yellowstone and the park's gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a landslide, a bridge washed out over a creek, and roads badly undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.

The flooding cut off road access to Gardiner, Montana, a town of about 900 people near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Gardner rivers, just outside Yellowstones busy North Entrance.

Search continues for missing men in Brazilian Amazon

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  The search for an Indigenous expert and a journalist who disappeared in a remote area of Brazil's Amazon continued Monday following the discovery of a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged in a river.

The items were taken by Federal Police officers by boat to Atalaia do Norte, the closest city to the search, and police said Sunday night they had identified the items as belonging to the missing men, including a health card and clothes of Bruno Pereira, the Brazilian Indigenous expert.

The backpack, which was identified as belonging to freelance journalist Dom Phillips of Britain, was found tied to a tree that was half-submerged, a firefighter told reporters in Atalaia do Norte. It is the end of the rainy season in the region and part of the forest is flooded.

Paulo Marubo, president of local Indigenous association Univaja, for which Pereira was an adviser, told The Associated Press that search parties from the army, navy, Federal Police, Civil Defense, firefighters and Military Police were working in the area where the belongings were found.

Upon returning to Atalaia do Norte after a full day of searching Monday, a Federal Police officer told reporters they had not found either mans body or other items.

Western wildfires force evacuations in Arizona, California

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  The Western U.S. on Monday marked another day of hot, dry and windy weather as crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires that had forced hundreds of people to leave their homes.

Roughly 2,500 homes have been evacuated because of two wildfires burning on the outskirts of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, officials said at an afternoon briefing.

We all have felt the pain of watching our beautiful mountain burn. We acknowledged what an incredibly difficult time this is for those who have been evacuated and for those whose homes have been threatened, Coconino County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Patrice Horstman said.

The wildfire prompted the county to declare an emergency. It's been fueled by high winds that have grounded aircraft as an option for firefighting. Crews are planning on being able to use aircraft Tuesday as winds moderate, authorities said.

Incident Cmdr. Aaron Graeser said the Flagstaff-area fire is one of the countrys top priorities for firefighting resources.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Senate negotiators announce a deal on guns, breaking logjam

WASHINGTON (AP)  Senate bargainers have announced the framework of a bipartisan response to last months mass shootings. It's a noteworthy but limited breakthrough offering modest gun curbs and stepped-up efforts to improve school safety and mental health programs. The proposal falls far short of tougher steps long sought by President Joe Biden and many Democrats. Even so, Biden embraced the deal, and enactment would signal a significant turnabout after years of stalemate in Congress. Twenty senators, including 10 Republicans, are calling for passage. That's potentially crucial because at least 10 GOP votes will be needed in the Senate.

In Jan. 6 cases, 1 judge stands out as the toughest punisher

As the number of people sentenced for crimes in the U.S. Capitol insurrection nears 200, an Associated Press analysis of sentencing data shows that some judges are divided over how to punish the rioters, particularly for the low-level misdemeanors arising from the attack. U.S. District Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender, has consistently taken the hardest line of any judge serving on Washington's federal trial court. Overall, the 20 judges who've sentenced riot defendants have given lighter sentences than prosecutors were seeking in nearly three-fourths of the cases. The judges have exceeded prosecutors recommendation for about only 10% of the defendants, according to APs analysis.

Pulitzer and now top Tony, 'A Strange Loop' makes history

NEW YORK (AP)  A Strange Loop, an irreverent, sexually frank work about Blackness and queerness took home the best new musical crown at the Tony Awards on Sunday, as voters celebrated Broadways most racially diverse season by choosing an envelope-pushing Black voice. Michael R. Jacksons 2020 Pulitzer Prize drama winner is a theater meta-journey and also won for best book. Many of the nights Tonys were spread over several productions. A Strange Loop beat MJ, a bio musical of the King of Pops biggest hits for the top prize, although that Jackson musical nabbed four Tony Awards

Jan. 6 panelists: Enough evidence uncovered to indict Trump

WASHINGTON (AP)  Members of the House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot say theyve uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump has denied all wrongdoing. The committee says Trumps 2020 campaign manager, Bill Stepien, is among the witnesses scheduled to testify at a hearing Monday. The focus will be on Trumps effort to spread his lies about a stolen election.

US: Pfizer COVID-19 shot appears effective for kids under 5

WASHINGTON (AP)  A review by federal health officials says that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine appears safe and effective for children under 5, the only group not currently eligible for vaccination. The review from the Food and Drug Administration is a key step toward an expected decision to begin vaccinating babies, toddlers and preschoolers as soon as June 21. Parents have been waiting months to protect Americas youngest children, who number roughly 18 million. On Wednesday the FDA will ask an outside panel of experts to vote on whether to recommend the shots.

Brazil police: Items owned by missing men found in Amazon

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  Brazilian police say search teams have found a backpack, laptop and other personal items that belonged to Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips, who went missing in a remote area of Brazils Amazon a week ago. The Federal Police announced Sunday night that they had identified the belongings of both missing men, such as Pereiras health card and clothes. A firefighter says Phillips backpack was tied to a tree that was half-submerged. Pereira and Phillips were last seen near the entrance of the Indigenous territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents.

Brookings president resigns amid FBI foreign lobbying probe

The president of the Brookings Institution has resigned amid a federal investigation into whether he illegally lobbied on behalf of the wealthy Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. Retired Gen. John Allen said in a letter to the think tank Sunday that he was leaving with a heavy heart but did not offer any direct explanation. A retired four-star Marine general who led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Allens announcement came less than a week after The Associated Press was first to report on new court filings that showed the FBI had seized Allens electronic data as part of the probe.

Patriot Front leader among those arrested near Idaho Pride

After the arrest of more than two dozen members of a white supremacist group near a northern Idaho pride event, including one identified as its founder, LGBTQ advocates said Sunday that polarization and a fraught political climate have put their community increasingly at risk. Police say the 31 Patriot Front members were arrested with riot gear came after a tipster reported seeing people loading up into a U-Haul at a hotel parking lot in Coeur dAlene, Idaho. Among those arrested was Thomas Rousseau of Grapevine, Texas, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the 23-year-old who founded the group.

Moscow-backed officials try to solidify rule in Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Kremlin-installed officials in occupied southern Ukraine celebrated Russia Day on Sunday and began issuing Russian passports to those in one city who requested them, as Moscow seeks to solidify its rule over captured parts of the country. Russia Day is the holiday that marks Russias emergence as a sovereign state after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian media reported that few, if any, local residents attended the Russia Day festivities in the two cities.

French projections: Macron's centrists will keep a majority

PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macrons centrist alliance is expected to keep its parliamentary majority after the first round of voting Sunday, but will likely have far fewer seats than five years ago. According to projections based on partial results, Macrons party and its allies got about 25-26% of the vote Sunday on the national level. They were neck-and-neck with a new leftist coalition. Yet Macrons candidates are projected to win in a greater number of districts than their leftist rivals. More than 6,000 candidates were running for 577 seats in Frances National Assembly in the first round of the election. For races that did not have a decisive winner on Sunday, up to four candidates will compete in a second round of voting on June 19.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Asian benchmarks decline after bear market hits Wall Street

TOKYO (AP)  Asian shares fell across the board after Wall Street tumbled into whats called a bear market, indicating that major U.S. benchmarks and individual stocks have fallen 20% or more from a recent high for a sustained period of time. Benchmarks fell in Japan, Australia, South Korea and China. The Japanese yens continuing slide against the dollar paused. At the center of the sell-off was the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is scrambling to get inflation under control. Its main method is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession.

Jan. 6 panel hears: Trump 'detached from reality' in defeat

WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were systematically dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But the defeated president seemed detached from reality, clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power. That's the assessment from former Attorney General William Barr's testimony presented at Monday's House hearing investigating the insurrection. The panel is delving deeper into what it calls the big lie, the defeated Republican presidents false claims of voter fraud. The panel says Trump's falsehoods provoked a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol.

Bucolic Ukraine forest is site of mass grave exhumation

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP)  Ukraine's national police chief says authorities are investigating the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide in the war since the Russian invasion in February. Authorities in the Kyiv region near Bucha on Monday showed reporters several victims whose hands had been tied behind their backs. Some of the victims were found in a lush green Ukrainian forest, where birds were singing. Workers in white hazmat suits conducted an exhumation in a mass grave behind a trench for a military vehicle. In other news of the war, the Russian military claimed it had destroyed weapons that the U.S. and Europe had supplied to Ukraine. There was no immediate comment on that from Ukraine.

The S&P 500 is in a bear market; heres what that means

NEW YORK (AP)  Wall Street is back in the claws of a bear market as worries about inflation and higher interest rates overwhelm investors. The Federal Reserve has signaled it will aggressively raise interest rates to try to control inflation, which is the highest in decades. Throw in the war in Ukraine and a slowdown in Chinas economy, and investors have been forced to reconsider what theyre willing to pay for a wide range of stocks, from high-flying tech companies to traditional automakers. On Monday, the S&P 500 fell 3.9% and closed nearly 22% below it's Jan. 3 high.

Takeaways: Trump's mind 'made up' on fraud ahead of Jan. 6

WASHINGTON (AP)  In its second day of public hearings, the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is making the case that Trump and his advisers knew that his claims of fraud in the 2020 election were false. The argument is key to the committee's overall investigation as the nine-member panel is laying out the evidence about what led to the violent insurrection. The rioters who broke into the Capitol that day and interrupted the certification of President Joe Bidens victory were echoing Trumps falsehoods. The committee is using video clips from more than 1,000 closed-door interviews over the last year.

Tentative Senate gun deal has surprises, and loose ends

WASHINGTON (AP)  The outline of a bipartisan Senate agreement on reining in gun violence has no game-changing steps banning the deadliest firearms. But it does propose measured provisions that could make it harder for some young gun buyers, or people considered threatening, to have weapons. And there are meaningful efforts to address mental health and school safety concerns. There's pressure on both parties to act after last month's mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. But details of the plan remain in negotiation between Democrats and Republicans, with disagreements over how tightly the initiatives should be drawn. Here's a look at where things stand.

South Korea says North completed prep for new nuclear test

WASHINGTON (AP)  South Koreas top diplomat says North Korea has completed preparations for a new nuclear test and only a political decision by the countrys top leadership can prevent it from going forward. After talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Monday, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said the North would pay a price if it goes ahead as feared with what would be its seventh nuclear test in the coming days. Park did not say what that price would be, but both he and Blinken urged Pyongyang to step down. Both men say the door to negotiations without any preconditions remains open.

Yellowstone floods wipe out roads, bridges, strand visitors

HELENA, Mont. (AP)  Flooding has wiped out roads and bridges and closed off all entrances to Yellowstone National Park at the onset of the busy summer tourist season. Officials are evacuating visitors from the northern part of the park. And the flooding has cut off road access to Gardiner, a town of about 900 people near Yellowstones busy North Entrance. The flooding caused at least one rock slide, cut off electricity and imperiled water and sewer systems in northern Yellowstone, but has affected other areas of the park as well. Flooding also has hit the Yellowstone gateway communities of Red Lodge and Joliet in southern Montana.

Search continues for missing men in Brazilian Amazon

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  The search for an Indigenous expert and a journalist who disappeared in a remote area of Brazils Amazon cis continuing following the discovery of a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged in a river. Federal police say they've confirmed the items belonged to the missing men. Members of the Univaja Indigenous association say they were still hunting for the men on Monday. And federal police issued a statement denying reports their bodies had been found. Police earlier reported finding traces of blood in the boat of a fisherman who is under arrest as the only suspect in the disappearance.

Wiggins delivers on both ends, Warriors lead NBA Finals 3-2

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Andrew Wiggins delivered the biggest game yet in his eight-year career with 26 points and 13 rebounds, Klay Thompson scored 21 points, and the Golden State Warriors beat the Boston Celtics 104-94 for a 3-2 NBA Finals lead.Stephen Curry contributed 16 points and eight assists but the all-time 3-point leaders NBA-record streak of 132 straight postseason games with at least one 3 ended along with his NBA-best run of 233 consecutive games with a 3 between regular season and playoffs combined.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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A lawyer for a father-son team of treasure hunters is accusing the FBI of either lying to a federal judge about having video of its 2018 dig for legendary Civil War-era gold, or illegally destroying the video. The FBI has acknowledged it was looking for gold at the Pennsylvania site but says it found nothing of value. The duo believes the FBI recovered a huge cache of gold and have sued for information about the dig. Their lawyer is now asking a judge to impose sanctions after the FBI claimed it had no video of the secretive excavation, even though evidence suggests otherwise. The FBI has been asked for comment.
WASHINGTON (AP)  A police officer lauded for his bravery during the U.S. Capitol riot testified Monday that a man carrying a Confederate battle flag jabbed at him with the flagpole before joining the mob that chased him up a staircase.

In his first public testimony since the Jan. 6, 2021, siege, Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman described his encounter with the flag-toting Delaware man, Kevin Seefried, and his adult son, Hunter, at their trial on charges that they stormed the Capitol together.

Goodman has been hailed as a hero for leading a group of rioters away from the Senate chamber as senators and then-Vice President Mike Pence were being evacuated. Goodman also directed Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, to turn around and head away from the mob.

Goodman recalled seeing Kevin Seefried standing alone in an archway and telling him to leave. Instead, Seefried cursed at him and jabbed at the officer with the base end of the flagpole three or four times without making contact with him, Goodman said.

He was very angry. Screaming. Talking loudly, Goodman said. Complete opposite of pleasant.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is hearing testimony without a jury for the Seefrieds bench trial, which started Monday and is scheduled to resume Tuesday. The Seefrieds waived their right to a jury trial, which means McFadden will decide their cases.

Widely published photographs showed Kevin Seefried carrying a Confederate battle flag inside the Capitol after he and his son entered the building through a broken window.

The charges against both Kevin and Hunter Seefried include a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding, the joint session of Congress for certifying Joe Bidens victory over then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

During the trial's opening statements, defense attorneys said the Seefrieds never intended to interfere with the Electoral College vote count.

Indeed, (Kevin Seefried) was not even aware that the electoral count was happening or was happening in the Capitol, one of his lawyers, Elizabeth Mullin, told the judge.

After rioters chased Goodman up a set of stairs, another Capitol police officer who confronted the mob near the Senate chamber recalled that Kevin Seefried asked, Why are you protecting them?

I assumed he was talking about Congress, Officer Brian Morgan testified.

Before his encounter with the mob inside the Capitol, Goodman joined other officers in trying to hold back rioters as they clashed with police outside the building.

It was like something out of medieval times, with one huge force clashing with another opposing force, Goodman said. I've never seen anything like that ever.

Goodman said he had to retreat inside the building after getting pepper sprayed and exposed to tear gas deployed by police.

The Seefrieds aren't charged with assaulting any officers.

Mullin conceded that Kevin Seefried is guilty of two misdemeanor charges that he knowingly entered a restricted building and illegally demonstrated in the Capitol.

Hunter Seefried, then 22, may have acted stupidly but didn't intend to block Congress from certifying the election results, defense attorney Edson Bostic said.

Goodman recalled that Hunter Seefried was smirking but didn't see him acting aggressively or hear him yelling at police.

He was just disobeying commands, Goodman said.

The Seefrieds traveled to Washington from their home in Laurel, Delaware, to hear Trumps speech at the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6.

They climbed over a wall near a stairwell and scaffolding in the northwest section of the Capitol and were among the first rioters to approach the building near the Senate Wing Door, according to prosecutors. After watching other rioters use a police shield and a wooden plank to break a window, Hunter Seefried used a gloved fist to clear a shard of glass in one of the broken windowpanes, prosecutors said.

In a court filing, prosecutors said the Confederate battle flag that Kevin Seefried brought from home was a symbol of violent opposition to the United States government.

Mullin said Seefried didn't intend to send any kind of message by carrying the flag into the Capitol and regrets doing so.

McFadden, whom Trump nominated in 2017, is the only judge to a hold a bench trial for a Capitol riot case so far.

In April, he acquitted New Mexico resident Matthew Martin of misdemeanor charges that he illegally entered the Capitol and engaged in disorderly conduct after he walked into the building.

In March, McFadden acquitted a New Mexico elected official of engaging in disorderly conduct but convicted him of illegally entering restricted Capitol grounds.

McFadden has criticized prosecutors handling of Capitol riot cases. He suggested that the Justice Department has been unjustly tougher on Capitol riot defendants compared with people arrested at protests against police brutality and racial injustice after George Floyds 2020 murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is scheduled to preside over a bench trial for Jesus Rivera, a Pensacola, Florida, man charged with four riot-related misdemeanors. President Bill Clinton nominated Kollar-Kotelly to the court in 1997.

At least four other Capitol riot defendants have bench trials scheduled for this year.

Juries have unanimously convicted five Capitol riot defendants of all charges, a perfect record for prosecutors so far. More than 300 other defendants have pleaded guilty to riot offenses, mostly misdemeanors punishable by no more than one year in prison. Approximately 100 others have trial dates in 2022 or 2023. More than 800 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  An unusually large number of Republican races for legislative seats in North Dakota's primary on Tuesday may help lure voters for an election where turnout has typically been anemic.

Ninety-eight of the Legislature's 141 seats are on the ballot due in part to redistricting that was required due to population shifts shown by the 2020 federal census. The Republican nominating convention also failed to settle candidate questions, and about three dozen unendorsed GOP candidates each gathered the required 300 signatures needed and filed petitions to get on the June 14 ballot. Some GOP legislative seats have as many as five candidates.

Secretary of State Al Jaeger said it was rare for such a high number of unendorsed candidates to duel for seats. He did not know if it was a record.

GOP Gov. Doug Burgum continues to reach deep into his own pockets seeking to elect legislators more obliging to his wishes. The wealthy former software executive gave more than $1.2 million ahead of the June 14 primary to a political action committee that is targeting eight legislative districts to defeat certain lawmakers and candidates from the far right wing his party known as the Bastiat Caucus.

Burgum gave more than $3 million to the PAC in the 2020 primary with mixed results. The second-term governor and his PAC say the contributions are an exercise in free speech and an investment in North Dakota. Critics say Burgums unprecedented spending crosses the separation-of-powers line.

U.S. Sen. John Hoeven is seen as a shoo-in for a third term in the Republican primary over Riley Kuntz, a political newcomer and oil field worker. Hoeven raised more than $3.2 million leading up to the primary, Federal Election Commission filings show. Kuntz, who works on a drill rig in western North Dakota and gathered the needed signatures to challenge Hoeven, raised less than $5,000.

Hoeven was endorsed by Republicans at the party convention in April, narrowly defeating state Rep. Rick Becker, of Bismarck.

Democrats endorsed Katrina Christiansen, a University of Jamestown engineering professor, for the seat. She's challenged in the primary by Michael Steele, a Fargo art and antiques dealer, who is largely unknown even by Democratic Party officials.

North Dakota has no voter registration. State Census Office Manager Kevin Iverson estimates almost 590,000 people are eligible to vote in Tuesdays election.

Turnout in June primaries historically is around 25%.

This story was first published June 13, 2022. It was updated June 14, 2022, to correct the spelling of Katrina Christiansens last name.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  North Korea test-fired what appeared to be artillery shells toward the sea on Sunday, South Koreas military said, days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for greater defense capability to cope with outside threats.

South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected several flight trajectories believed to be North Korean artillery on Sunday morning. It said in the statement that South Korea maintains a firm military readiness in close coordination with the United States amid boosted surveillance on North Korea.

During a national security council meeting convened to discuss the launches, South Korean officials expressed concern that North Korea is upgrading weapons systems that pose a direct threat to South Korea and reaffirmed they would sternly deal with such North Korean efforts, according to South Korea's presidential office.

The Norths artillery tests draw less outside attention than its missile launches. But its forward-deployed long-range artillery guns are a serious security threat to South Korea's populous metropolitan region, which is only 40-50 kilometers (25-30 miles) from the border with North Korea.

The suspected artillery launches were the latest in a spate of weapons tests by North Korea this year in what foreign experts call an attempt to pressure its rivals Washington and Seoul to relax international sanctions against Pyongyang and make other concessions.

South Korean and U.S. officials recently said North Korea had almost completed preparations for its first nuclear test in about five years. In March, North Korea test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the mainland U.S. in breach of a 2018 moratorium on big missile tests.

In a speech at a ruling party meeting last week, Kim underscored the need to strengthen his countrys military capability, saying the current security environment is very serious.

Kims speech carried by state media didnt mention the United States or South Korea. But he still set forth militant tasks to be pursued by his armed forces and scientists, a suggestion that he would press ahead with his high-profile arms buildup plans.

A possible new nuclear test by North Korea would be the seventh of its kind. Some experts say North Korea will likely use the test to build warheads to be mounted on tactical nuclear weapons aimed at hitting targets in South Korea.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Wisconsin Republicans will allow regulations Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' administration developed to control pollution from a group of chemicals known as PFAS to take effect, a spokesman for the lawmaker who controls the Legislature's rules committee said Monday.

The Legislature's Republican-controlled Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Reviews has no objections to the regulations and will allow the Department of Natural Resources to implement them, said Mike Mikalsen, an aide to the committee's co-chairman, Sen. Steve Nass.

Mikalsen warned that the committee could suspend the standards if the department doesnt lawfully implement them, but for now, at least, the decision marks a rare Republican concession to Evers and hands him something of a victory heading into the November elections.

Since taking office in 2019, Evers has been working to limit contamination from PFAS, an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The chemicals, found in products ranging from cookware to firefighting foam, don't break down in nature and have been linked to health problems in humans and animals.

A number of Wisconsin communities are wrestling with PFAS in their groundwater, including Marinette, Madison, Marshfield, Wausau and the towns of Peshtigo and Campbell.

The Department of Natural Resources, which Evers controls, has been working on restrictions on PFAS in state waters since September 2019. The department submitted limits on two PFAS compounds, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), to its policy board earlier this year.

Opponents, including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state's largest business group, have balked at the regulations' price tag. The DNR has projected that compliance options such as drilling new wells and installing treatment systems could cost the wastewater treatment and paper mill industries millions of dollars.

The department's board in February ultimately adopted a 70 parts per trillion standard for drinking water and an 8 ppt standard for most surface waters that can support fish. Those standards are designed to limit the amount of PFAS that can be discharged into state waters and in municipal water systems. The board scrapped plans for setting groundwater standards at 2 ppt, leaving well water unregulated.

The finalization of these water quality protections is a positive development and a necessary step to protect Wisconsinites from forever chemicals, said Tony Wilkin Gibart, executive director of environmental law firm Midwest Environmental Advocates. While we are glad to see these rules move forward, we are mindful that Wisconsinites whose water comes from private wells also deserve the same protections under our state's groundwater law.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul sued Johnson Controls and Tyco Fire Products in March alleging the companies firefighting foam led to contamination in the Marinette area. A Waukesha County judge in April ruled that the Department of Natural Resources couldnt regulate PFAS pollution because the agency hadnt established any standards for the chemicals under the state's spills law.

It wasn't immediately clear what impact established standards would have on those cases. A state Department of Justice spokeswoman and representatives of Johnson Controls and Tyco didn't immediately respond to messages Monday.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce spokesman Nick Novak said the new rules would have no impact on the Waukesha County case. He didn't explain why and didn't immediately respond to a follow-up message seeking more details.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce alleges in that case that the Department of Natural Resources has never defined PFAS as hazardous substances under Wisconsin's spills law, which requires polluters to clean up their spills. It argues the department has been illegally relying on that law to regulate PFAS.

The drinking water and surface water standards fall under a different set of statutes that aren't in dispute. Implementing them ensures the department has at least some authority to regulate the chemicals regardless of the spills law.

Department spokeswoman Sarah Hoye declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trichmond1

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BOISE, Idaho (AP)  A few weeks before 31 members of a white supremacist group were arrested for allegedly planning to riot at a northern Idaho LGBTQ pride event, a fundamentalist Idaho pastor told his Boise congregation that gay, lesbian and transgender people should be executed by the government.

Around the same time, a lawmaker from the northernmost region of the state, Republican Rep. Heather Scott, told an audience that drag queens and other LGBTQ supporters are waging a war of perversion against our children."

A toxic brew of hateful rhetoric has been percolating in Idaho and elsewhere around the U.S., well ahead of the arrests of the Patriot Front members at the pride event Saturday in Coeur dAlene.

Police say dozens of men from the white supremacist group piled into a U-Haul truck wearing balaclavas and bearing riot gear, with plans to instigate a riot at the park where families, children and supporters were gathered to celebrate the LGBTQ community.

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Illinois, Arkansas and Virginia. The defendants were booked on misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot and released on bail. As of Monday afternoon, online court records did not show if the men had retained defense attorneys.

Thomas Rousseau, a 23-year-old from Grapevine, Texas, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the Patriot Front founder and was among those arrested, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism, said outrage directed at LGBTQ people had been growing for months online, often in chat rooms frequented by members of groups like the Patriot Front.

In the same way that it mobilized against Black Lives Matter in the nation's capital in December, the Patriot Front harnesses whats in the news cycle  in this case, drag queen story hours, disputes about transgender people in schools, and LGBTQ visibility more broadly.

A massive right-wing media ecosystem has been promoting the notion that "there are people who are trying to take your kids to drag shows, there are trans people trying to groom your children," Lewis said.

The rhetoric has been amplified by right-wing social media accounts that use photos and videos of LGBTQ individuals to drive outrage among their followers.

Several posts have falsely sought to label teachers and librarians who accept the LGBTQ community as abusers or groomers of children. Others have lambasted pride events or drag performances as depraved."

One photo shared widely on social media this week falsely claimed a Drag Queen Story Hour performer flashed their genitals to children while reading aloud. But the photograph, from a suburban Minneapolis library in 2019, clearly shows the performer was wearing tan undergarments.

A spokesman for Hennepin County Library confirmed to The Associated Press that the performer did not expose themselves to children.

Northern Idaho has long been associated with extremist groups, most prominently the Aryan Nations, which was often in the news in the 1990s. The area drew disaffected people after white supremacist Richard Butler moved there in 1973 from California.

After the Aryan Nations' heyday, many local officials tried to disassociate the region from extremism. But in recent years, some politicians, civic leaders and real estate agents have boasted about northern Idahos conservatism to draw like-minded people.

At a news conference Monday, Coeur d'Alene Mayor Jim Hammond said the city is no longer a locus of hate.

We are not going back to the days of the Aryan Nations. We are past that, he declared.

Scott, the northern Idaho lawmaker, did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

At her public appearance weeks ago, she introduced two members of the Panhandle Patriots motorcycle club, who urged watchers to join them in the fight against LGBTQ people at the Coeur dAlene pride celebration. They dubbed their counter-protest Gun dAlene.

Stand up, take it to the head, go to the fight. ... We say, Damn the repercussions, the motorcycle club members said. They are trying to take your children.

The Panhandle Patriots later changed their event to a prayer rally, saying they are a Christian group that stands against violence in all its forms."

Elsewhere around the country, authorities in the San Francisco Bay Area are investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men allegedly shouted anti-LGBTQ slurs during Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library over the weekend.

Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson in New York City and Sam Metz in Salt Lake City contributed.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  As public pressure mounts for more information on the deadly Uvalde school shooting, some are concerned that Texas officials will use a legal loophole to block records from being released  even to the victims' families  once the case is closed.

Since the May 24 shooting at a Texas elementary school that left 19 kids and two teachers dead, law enforcement officials have provided little or conflicting information, sometimes withdrawing statements hours after making them. State police have said some accounts were preliminary and may change as more witnesses are interviewed.

A number of questions remain unanswered by authorities: Why did police take more than an hour to enter the classroom and confront the gunman? What do their body cameras show? How did law enforcement officers communicate with one another and the victims during the attack? What happened when dozens of officers gathered outside the classroom, yet refrained from pursuing the shooter?

Officials have declined to release more details, citing the investigation. Amid the growing silence, lawyers and advocates for the victim's families are beginning to fear they may never get the answers, that authorities will close the case and rely on the exception to the Texas Public Information law to block the release of any further information.

They could make that decision; they shouldnt have that choice, said Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso, who since 2017 has led several efforts to amend the loophole. To understand what our government is doing should not be that difficult  and right now it is very difficult."

The law's exception protects information from being released in crimes for which no one has been convicted. The Texas Attorney Generals Office has ruled that it applies when a suspect is dead. Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old man who police say was responsible for the mass killing at Robb Elementary School, was fatally shot by law enforcement.

The loophole was created in the 1990s to protect those wrongfully accused or whose cases were dismissed, according to Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. It is meant to protect the innocent, Shannon said. But she said that in some cases it is being used and misused in a way that was never intended.

Following the shooting, Texas House of Representatives Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, took to Twitter to voice his continued support for closing the loophole during the Texas Legislature's next session, which begins in January 2023.

More than anything, the families of the Uvalde victims need honest answers and transparency, Phelan tweeted. He said it would be absolutely unconscionable to deny information based on the dead suspect loophole.

Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, said the organization was opposed and will always be opposed to a loophole amendment proposed in previous years that he said would have allowed the release of records pertaining to law enforcement officers, even those falsely accused of wrongdoing. He said that would negatively affect the officers' ability to keep working. But Wilkison said he would be willing to participate in future discussions in an attempt to find a middle ground.

Public focus in the Uvalde shooting has been on school district police Chief Pete Arredondo. Steven McCraw, head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said recently that Arredondo believed the active shooting had turned into a hostage situation, and that he made the wrong decision to not order officers to breach the classroom more quickly to confront the gunman.

Arredondo has not responded to requests for comment from The Associated Press. In an interview with The Texas Tribune published Thursday, however, he said he did not consider himself in charge of the law enforcement response and assumed someone else had taken control.

The New York Times reported Thursday that it obtained documents showing police waited for protective equipment as they delayed entering the campus, even as they became aware that some victims needed medical treatment.

If efforts to amend the public information loophole fail and law enforcement continues to refuse to release information, families could turn to any involved federal agencies. In one case in Mesquite, Texas, the parents of an 18-year-old who died after being arrested received records from federal authorities showing that police had used more force against their son than they had originally understood. The police had refused to turn over any information under the legal loophole.

If someone dies in police custody, this is when we would want to open all of our records, the father, Robert Dyer, said as he testified before the legislature in 2019 in favor of amending the legal exception.

Mayra Guillen said she and her family were stymied by the state loophole when they tried to get details on a case involving her sister Vanessa Guillen. Authorities say the 20-year-old soldier was killed at a Texas military base by fellow soldier Aaron Robinson, who then disposed of her body.

Military officials and law enforcement said Robinson pulled a gun and shot himself as police were trying to make contact with him. But local police wouldnt allow Vanessa Guillens family to view the officers body camera footage of the confrontation because the suspect hadnt been convicted, Mayra Guillen said.

We were honestly just trying to receive closure and see if what was being said was true, Guillen said. It is only right to have these records be public to some extent. It is so hard to tell whether there will be justice or not.

Find more AP coverage of the Uvalde school shooting: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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NEW YORK (AP)  The Latest on the Tony Awards (all times local):

11 p.m.

A Strange Loop, an utterly unforgettable, idiosyncratic trip into one mans psyche, has won the best new musical Tony Award, beating more commercial fare.

Michael R. Jacksons 2020 Pulitzer Prize drama winner is a theater meta-journey  a tuneful show about a Black gay man writing a show about a Black gay man. That show is also called A Strange Loop.

At its center is Usher, an unhappy playwright slumming as an usher at The Lion King. He is haunted by a Greek chorus of voices  his thoughts as well as homophobic family members  who pummel, undercut and berate him.

Jackson, who in real life was an usher at The Lion King, is also the songwriter, and he wrote the 18 songs within the Broadway tradition, a cocktail of rock and R&B, melded harmonies, ballads and belting.

A Strange Loop beat out Girl From the North Country, MJ, Mr. Saturday Night, Paradise Square and Six: The Musical.

MORE ON THE TONYS

10:50 p.m.

Joaquina Kalukango has won the Tony Award for best leading actress in a musical.

Kalukango won for her work in Paradise Square, a musical about Irish immigrants and Black Americans jostling to survive in New York City around the time of the Civil War.

Kalukangos credits include Lifetimes The Mahalia Jackson Story, starring her former The Color Purple castmate Danielle Brooks, and Amazons One Night... in Miami as Betty Shabazz.

She said her name means established by God and she gave thanks to God and her parents during her acceptance speech.

She was also in the ensemble of Holler If Ya Hear Me on Broadway and appeared in Ava DuVernays Exonerated Five miniseries When They See Us. She was Tony-nominated for Jeremy O. Harris ground-breaking Slave Play.

For the Tony, she beat out Sharon D Clarke in Caroline, or Change, Carmen Cusack from Flying Over Sunset, Sutton Foster in The Music Man and Mare Winningham from Girl From the North Country.

10:45 p.m.

Myles Frost has moonwalked away with the award for best lead actor in a musical for playing Michael Jackson and becomes the youngest solo winner in that category.

MJ represents the 22-year-old Frosts Broadway debut as he plays Jackson with a high, whispery voice, a Lady Diana-like coquettishness and a fierce embrace of Jacksons iconic dancing and singing style, right down to the rhythmic breathing and swiveling head.

Frost thanked his parents and sang during his acceptance speech.

Frost was raised by his mother in Fort Washington, Maryland. After high school, he put theater aside to pursue a career in music. He attended Belmont University in Nashville for two years to major in audio engineering. He transferred to Bowie State University in Maryland for his final two years.

The bio musical is stuffed with the King of Pops biggest hits, including ABC, Black or White, Blame it on the Boogie, Bad, Billie Jean, Off the Wall, Thriller and Ill Be There.

Frost beat Billy Crystal in Mr. Saturday Night, Hugh Jackman from The Music Man, Rob McClure in Mrs. Doubtfire and Jaquel Spivey in A Strange Loop. Frost unseated Ben Platt as the youngest performer to win best leading man in a musical on his own for Dear Evan Hansen. (Three young men won for playing Billy Elliot in 2009).

10:31 p.m.

Deirdre OConnell has won the Tony Award for best actress in a play for her work in Dana H.

Dana H., which has been described as harrowing fugue state of a play, is about a woman kidnapped by a former convict and member of a white supremacist brotherhood and held hostage for five months. It is written by Lucas Hnath and directed by Les Waters.

OConnell never speaks in the play. Instead, she sits on a set that resembles a Florida motel room and lip-syncs to an edited recording of the survivor, Dana Higginbotham. In her acceptance speech, OConnell said she wanted her award to be a token to those wondering if they should try to create something fort he theater.

OConnells other Broadway credits include Magic/Bird and The Front Page. For the Tony, OConnell beat Gabby Beans, LaChanze, Ruth Negga and Mary-Louise Parker.

10:30 p.m.

Simon Russell Beale has won the Tony Award for best leading actor in a play for his work in The Lehman Trilogy.

Stefano Massinis play about what led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers  adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes  stars Adrian Lester and Adam Godley alongside Beale.

Its Beales third time on Broadway, having made his debut in 2004 in Jumpers and returning to play King Arthur in Spamalot.

He has had roles in projects like the Christina Ricci horror flick The Gathering, the Michelle Williams dramatic adaptation My Week With Marilyn and the drama The Deep Blue Sea with Rachel Weisz.

For the Tony, Beale beat his The Lehman Trilogy co-stars  Godley and Lester  as well as David Morse in How I Learned to Drive, Sam Rockwell in American Buffalo, Ruben Santiago-Hudson in Lackawanna Blues and David Threlfall in Hangmen.

10:15 p.m.

The Lehman Trilogy, which tells the story of an American financial giants downfall, has won best new play honors at the Tonys.

Stefano Massinis play about what led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers  adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes  stars Adrian Lester, Simon Russell Beale and Adam Godley.

Spanning 150 years and running three and a half hours, The Lehman Trilogy illustrates the trajectory of western capitalism by following the fortunes of a single family into the financial crash of 2008, when their Wall Street institution filed for bankruptcy.

The play first arrived at the National Theatres Lyttelton Theatre in 2018 and went on to have an off-Broadway run and then a West End bow. The English-language version is a marathon: Three actors doing 185 roles.

For the Tony, it beat Clydes, Hangmen, The Minutes and Skeleton Crew.

9:45 p.m.

A revival of Stephen Sondheims Company that gender-switches the lead character has won the Tony Award for best musical revival.

The show is an exploration of a single persons conflicted feelings about commitment, traditionally focusing on a 35-year-old bachelor. This time, it had a bachelorette and the sexes of several couples swapped around.

The revival starred Katrina Lenk and Patti LuPone with direction from Marianne Elliott. The songs include You Could Drive a Person Crazy, The Ladies Who Lunch, Side by Side by Side and the Being Alive.

For the Tony, it beat The Music Man and Caroline, or Change.

9:15 p.m.

Take Me out won the Tony Award for best play in 2003 and this year has won it for best play revival.

Richard Greenbergs Pulitzer Prize-nominee explores what happens when a Major League Baseball superstar comes out as gay, tracing the way it unsettles the team and unleashes toxic prejudices.

Greys Anatomy star Jesse Williams plays the star baller and Jesse Tyler Ferguson plays his unathletic gay accountant, Mason Marzac, a sweetly zealous convert to the game.

It beat out American Buffalo, How I Learned to Drive, Trouble in Mind and for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.

8:40 p.m.

Marianne Elliott has made Tony history by becoming the only woman to have won three Tonys for directing. The latest prize comes for her work on the Stephen Sondheim revival of Company.

The show is an exploration of a single persons conflicted feelings about commitment, traditionally focusing on a 35-year-old bachelor. This time, it had a bachelorette and the sexes of several couples swapped around.

Thank you, first and foremost to Stephen Sondheim for trusting me to tell his story in a different way and putting a woman front and center, Elliott said while accepting the award.

She was an associate director at the National Theatre in the UK for 10 years, where she directed Angels in America and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time  both of which transferred to Broadway  and she was a co-director of the international hit War Horse. She earned directing Tonys for War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

For her third directing Tony, she beat Stephen Brackett of A Strange Loop, Conor McPherson from Girl From the North Country, Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage of Six: The Musical and Christopher Wheeldon from MJ.

8:38 p.m.

Sam Mendes has won the Tony Award for best direction of a play for helming The Lehman Trilogy.

Mendes last won for directing The Ferryman and he has won for producing Red, Take Me Out and The Real Thing.

Stefano Massinis The Lehman Trilogy  about what led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers  stars Adrian Lester and Adam Godley alongside Simon Russell Beale.

Among Mendess films are the James Bond installments Skyfall and Spectre and he won an Oscar for directing American Beauty. He also was nominated for 1917.

For his latest Tony, Mendes beat Lileana Blain-Cruz of The Skin of Our Teeth, Camille A. Brown from for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Neil Pepe of American Buffalo and Les Waters for Dana H.

8:30 p.m.

Patti LuPone has won the third Tony of her illustrious career for her work in a revival of Stephen Sondheims Company.

The show is an exploration of a single persons conflicted feelings about commitment, traditionally focusing on a 35-year-old bachelor. This time, it had a bachelorette and the sexes of several couples swapped around.

LuPone plays Joanne, the acerbic character who sings the anthem The Ladies Who Lunch. She has had a long history with the character and this legendary song in particular, performing Ladies Who Lunch at Sondheims 80th birthday concert.

LuPone won her first Tony for Evita, earned two more nominations for revivals of Anything Goes and Sweeney Todd before winning her second prize in 2008 for her performance as Rose in Gypsy.

For the latest Tony, LuPone beat Jeannette Bayardelle in Girl From the North Country, Shoshana Bean in Mr. Saturday Night, Jayne Houdyshell from The Music Man, L Morgan Lee from A Strange Loop and Jennifer Simard in Company.

8:10 p.m.

Host Ariana DeBose has kicked off the Tony Awards and Jesse Tyler Ferguson has won the first acting award of the night.

DeBose, wearing a sparkling white jumpsuit and wide-brimmed hat, danced and sang a song that mashed up shards of musical theater favorites, like Chicago, The Wiz, Evita, Rent, Hair, Cabaret, Hairspray and West Side Story, the movie remake for which she won an Oscar.

Still panting while welcoming viewers, she told the crowd that this was the season Broadway got its groove back.

Moments later, Ferguson won the Tony Award for best featured actor in a play for his work in the revival of Take Me Out.

I cant believe I get to do this for a living, Ferguson said, thanking his mother and father for letting him move to New York City to pursue his acting dream.

Richard Greenbergs play is an exploration of what happens when a Major League Baseball superstar comes out as gay, tracing the way it unsettles the team and unleashes toxic prejudices. Ferguson plays the superstars unathletic gay accountant.

Ferguson, a five-time Emmy-nominated star of TVs Modern Family, has had previous roles on Broadway, including On the Town, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Fully Committed. This is his first Tony.

Ferguson beat out Alfie Allen from Hangmen, Chuck Cooper in Trouble in Mind, Ron Cephas Jones from Clydes and two of his Take Me Out co-stars  Jesse Williams and Michael Oberholtzer.

8 p.m.

Eleven Tony Awards were handed out Sunday before the main telecast, spreading trophies across seven shows.

Six: The Musical picked up awards for best score and costumes for a musical. The revival of Company nabbed best scenic design for a musical. Best orchestrations went to Girl From the North Country. And The Lehman Trilogy won for best scenic design of a play and lighting design of a play.

The Skin of Our Teeth won best costumes for a play, MJ won for choreography, best lighting of a musical and sound design of a musical and Dana H. won for sound design of a play.

The main event with host Ariana DeBose will start live at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS.

7:15 p.m.

Darren Criss and Julianne Hough have kicked off a one-hour Tony Award celebration at Radio City Music Hall, handing out mostly technical awards like best scenic and lighting design on Paramount+.

Hough and Criss opened their portion of the telecast with his original song, Set the Stage, celebrating the artists who keep theater alive.

The first award of the night  for best score  went to Six: The Musical, with music and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. Marlow is the first out nonbinary composer-lyricist to win a Tony.

A total of eight design awards will be handed out along with best score, as well as the award for orchestrations and ending with choreography. The main event with host Ariana DeBose will start live at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS.

A Strange Loop, a theater meta-journey about a playwright writing a musical, goes into the telecast with a leading 11 Tony nominations. Right behind with 10 nominations each is MJ, a bio musical of the King of Pop, and Paradise Square, a musical about Irish immigrants and Black Americans jostling to survive in New York City around the time of the Civil War.

6:30 p.m.

It has taken playwright Michael R. Jackson almost two decades to take his musical A Strange Loop to Broadway and he says the recognition is a sort of validation.

It feels wonderful. It feels like a real validation of all the time, the blood, the sweat, the tears we put into this piece. Ive worked on this musical for almost 20 years, and so to be here after having stuck to my guns feels like such a validation, Jackson said on the Tony red carpet.

In the musical, we meet the character Usher, an unhappy playwright slumming as an usher at The Lion King. Usher is haunted by a Greek chorus of voices  his thoughts as well as homophobic family members  who pummel, undercut and berate him. Jackson said theres a little Usher in him.

Usher is a character that Ive certainly created to sort of deal with some things that I was thinking about. But hes grown so far beyond that and Ive grown so far beyond that, he said. Watching every night feels really exciting because Im watching a piece of art that I started from like a really formative time, sort of really become something bigger than any sort of personal experience that I was having.

9 a.m.

Darren Criss favorite night of the year has arrived. Its the Tony Awards. Ill never shut up about the Tonys. I love the Tonys, he says.

Criss will not only be watching the Tonys on Sunday, hell also be working. Hes co-host with Julianne Hough of a one-hour pre-Tony celebration at Radio City Music Hall, and hes even written an original song about the show that hell perform, revealing a bit of my nerdy proclivities.

Criss and Hough will be handing out creative arts Tonys on Paramount+ and then pass hosting duties to Ariana DeBose for the main three-hour telecast on CBS from the same stage, live coast to coast for the first time.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  The Western U.S. on Monday marked another day of hot, dry and windy weather as crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires that had forced hundreds of people to leave their homes.

Several hundred homes on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona, were evacuated and the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort was closed as a precaution because of a wildfire  the second to hit the area this year.

Crews were expecting gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph) as they battled the blaze that has burned through parts of the footprint left by another springtime fire that destroyed over two dozen homes. No homes have been lost in the fire reported Sunday that has burned about 8 square miles (20 square kilometers).

It's literally like deja vu, said Coconino County sheriff's spokesman Jon Paxton. "We are in the same exact spot doing the same exact thing as we were a month and a half ago. People are tired.

Wildfires broke out early this spring in multiple states in the Western U.S., where climate change and an enduring drought are fanning the frequency and intensity of forest and grassland fires.

The number of square miles burned so far this year is more than double the 10-year national average, and states like New Mexico already have set records with devastating blazes that destroyed hundreds of homes while causing environmental damage that is expected to effect water supplies.

Nationally, more than 6,200 wildland firefighters were battling nearly three dozen uncontained fires that had charred over 1 million acres (4,408 square kilometers), according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Even in Alaska, forecasters have warned that many southwestern fires have grown exceptionally over the last week, which is unusual for that area. Southwest Alaska normally experiences shorter periods of high fire danger because intermittent rain can provide relief, but since mid-May the region has been hot and windy, helping to dry out vegetation.

Favorable weather Monday helped slow progression of a tundra wildfire just over 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) away from an Alaska Native village. Moderate temperatures and a shift in the wind that had been driving the fire toward St. Marys will allow firefighters to directly attack the flames and increase protections for the Yupik community.

The lightning-sparked fire is estimated at about 193 square miles (500 square kilometers). It's burning dry grass and shrubs in southwest Alaska's mostly treeless tundra.

In California, evacuation were ordered for about 300 remote homes near a wildfire that flared up over the weekend in forest land northeast of Los Angeles near the Pacific Crest Trail in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The blaze saw renewed growth Sunday afternoon and by midday Monday had scorched about 1.5 square miles (3.9 square km) of pine trees and dry brush, said fire spokesperson Dana Dierkes.

The fuel is very dry, so it acts like a ladder, carrying flames from the bottom of the trees to the very top, Dierkes said. Crews were also contending with unpredictable winds that were expected to strengthen later in the day, she said.

Aside from mandatory evacuations for some, the remainder of the mountain town of Wrightwood, with about 4,500 residents, was under an evacuation warning. Several roads also were closed.

The fire was 18% contained.

Fire conditions were elevated because of warm and dry weekend weather across Southern California. Monday was expected to be cooler, but another heatwave was expected at midweek, the National Weather Service said.

In Northern California, a 50-mile (80-km) stretch of State Route 70 was closed indefinitely on Monday after mud, boulders and dead trees inundated lanes during flash floods along a wildfire burn scar.

Several drivers were rescued Sunday evening from debris flowing on the highway when hillsides burned bare by last years enormous Dixie Fire came loose. No injuries were reported.

The causes of the latest California fires were under investigation.

U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers cited a 57-year-old camper for lighting toilet paper on fire and placing it under a rock Saturday near the origin of the Arizona wildfire. The fire was reported a day later. Court documents show the man told authorities he tried to put the fire out with his sleeping bag, but his attorney said in federal court Monday that doesnt mean his client was responsible for sparking the blaze.

Flagstaff resident Janetta Kathleen rode her horse, Squish, up a hill to get a better look at the wildfire Sunday evening and watched it creep toward homes in the shadow of the mountain. Her home isn't directly in the fire's path, but her family, two bulldogs and horses are ready to go at a moment's notice.

I need to know what's going on because I have decisions to make for my family, she said. If the winds shift, we'll be in trouble.

Hikers, campers and others who were out enjoying the forest also had to leave Sunday. A shelter was set up at a middle school.

Strong winds sent embers across U.S. Route 89, the main route to the turnoff for the Grand Canyon's east rim entrance, through the Navajo Nation and up into Utah. Many people commute between the reservation and Flagstaff for work. Parts of the highway remained closed Monday.

We're not working directly on suppressing the fire to get the whole thing out right now, said Coconino National Forest spokesman Brady Smith. That's not our focus and it's not possible right now. Right now, it's going to be focused on protecting life and property."

Smoke from the fire near Flagstaff caused hazy skies in Colorado on Monday, obscuring views of the Rocky Mountains from Denver and other cities along the states Front Range.

Meanwhile, firefighters worked to contain a small wildfire burning in juniper and pinion pine that briefly caused evacuation orders Sunday in the San Luis Valleys Rio Grande National Forest in southern Colorado.

The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings for high fire danger in central and southern parts of Colorado as well as parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Winds are expected to ease after Monday with some moisture moving in later this week in parts of the Southwest, the weather service said.

Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska; Jim Anderson in Denver; and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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June's full moon, the strawberry moon, will illuminate the sky this week.

The moon will appear full until Wednesday's moonset, according to NASA. It will reach its peak at 7:52 a.m. ET Tuesday but will not be fully visible in North America until moonrise. This year's strawberry moon is the first of two consecutive supermoons.

While there is no single definition, the term supermoon generally refers to a full moon that appears brighter and larger than other moons because it is at its closet orbit to Earth.

To a casual observer, the supermoon may appear similar in size to other moons. However, the noticeable change in brightness enhances visibility and creates a great opportunity for people to begin paying attention to the moon and its phases, said Noah Petro, chief of NASA's Planetary Geology, Geophysics and Geochemistry Lab.

The ideal time to look at the moon is when it is rising or setting since that's when it will appear the largest to the naked eye, said Jacqueline Faherty, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History. (The Old Farmer's Almanac's calculator can help you find out what time the moon rises and sets in your location.)

The best views of June's full moon in the United States will be in the southern half of the country and the Southwest. A series of weak storms will move through the Northeast and Great Lakes regions early in the week, creating cloudy conditions that will make it difficult to get a clear view, CNN meteorologist Gene Norman said.

Petro recommends that moon gazers seek out a clear horizon and avoid areas with tall buildings and thick forestry. He also urges people to stay away from bright lights if possible for maximum visibility.

The name strawberry moon is rooted in the traditions of Indigenous groups in the northeastern U.S., including the Algonquin, Ojibwe, Dakota and Lakota communities that saw the celestial event as a sign that strawberries, and other fruits, were ripe and ready to be gathered. The Haida people refer to the moon as the berries ripen moon, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac.

This full moon corresponds with the Hindu festival Vat Purnima, a celebration where married women tie a ceremonial thread around a banyan tree and fast to pray that their spouse lives a long life.

For Buddhists, this moon is the Poson Poya moon, named after the holiday celebrating the introduction of Buddhism in Sri Lanka in 236 B.C.

There will be six more full moons in 2022, according to The Old Farmers' Almanac:

July 13: Buck moon

August 11: Sturgeon moon

September 10: Harvest moon

October 9: Hunter's moon

November 8: Beaver moon

December 7: Cold moon

These are the popularized names associated with the monthly full moons, but the significance of each one may vary across Native American tribes.

In June 2021 the strawberry supermoon put on quite a show:

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The legal battle between former GOP gubernatorial candidate Charles W. Herbster and Nebraska State Sen. Julie Slama is scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday in front of a District Court judge.

Herbster filed a defamation lawsuit against Slama in April, after the Nebraska Examiner reported allegations from eight women who said the candidate had groped them in recent years. Slama was the only named accuser at the time.

Herbster, a Republican mega-donor and CEO of Conklin Co., has denied all the accusations and maintained they're a hit job coordinated by political opponent Jim Pillen and Gov. Pete Ricketts, who supports Pillen. Ricketts has said he didnt have any involvement in the Examiners report, and Pillens campaign said it wasnt behind it.

Slama answered Herbsters lawsuit quickly and filed a counterclaim alleging sexual battery. Slama had given notice to depose Herbster on May 6, but Herbsters campaign made it clear he didnt plan to attend the deposition.

His legal team filed a motion to quash the deposition notice and seek a protective order that limits his deposition to "scheduling at a mutually convenient time." It alleged the other side was playing politics by scheduling it just ahead of the May 10 primary. Slamas lawyers responded with a statement and objection in which they suggested they may pursue sanctions.

Herbster's legal team moved to amend its original complaint, alleging in part that the defamation had been compounded by false statements from Slama and lawyer Dave Lopez since it was filed. They also drew connections between Lopez, the law firm he works for and Pillen's campaign.

They filed a motion, dated May 6, seeking a protective order against Slama and her legal team, arguing that they were attempting to try the case in the press. Slamas lawyers responded in a filing and called for that motion to be rejected.

On May 10, Pillen beat out Herbster and other primary opponents to become the Republican nominee for Nebraska governor.

In an amended response last month, Slama's lawyers revealed new details, including a more specific description of the allegations behind the senator's counterclaim of sexual battery and a second counterclaim of false light invasion of privacy.

Slamas team has moved to subpoena documents from several people affiliated with Herbster: Kellyanne Conway, Corey Lewandowski, David Bossie, Emily Novotny, Ellen Keast and Michelle Keithley.

Conway, Bossie and Lewandowski are also well-known associates of former President Donald Trump, whose ties to Herbster defined the Falls City natives campaign for governor.

Novotny was Herbsters campaign spokesperson and Keast was his campaign manager. Keithley is his executive assistant and issued a statement in support of Herbster after the allegations.

Herbsters lawyers filed several objections after receiving notices of Slama's intent to issue those subpoenas. Slama's team still issued subpoenas without the portions that are under dispute, according to court documents, and filed a motion asking to issue its remaining requests.

In May, Herbster's lawyers filed documents showing its intent to subpoena a long list of documents and communications.

Though the case was filed in Johnson County, the hearing Tuesday will take place in the District Court of Gage County in Beatrice, the location of District Judge Rick Schreiner's chambers.

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As signatures continue to be gathered on a pair of initiative petitions to legalize medical marijuana in Nebraska, a survey conducted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln estimates 83% of Nebraskans supported the idea in both 2020 and 2021.

The results of the Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey, published May 17 in the Journal of Drug Issues, align with internal polling conducted by Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana that shows 80% support for legalizing cannabis for medical use in the state.

Survey results also show support for legalizing recreational marijuana increasing from an estimated 40% in 2020 to 46% in 2021, according to the research team.

Patrick Habecker, an assistant research professor of sociology and co-author of the paper with psychology professor Rick Bevins, said the survey was created during the coronavirus pandemic, when researchers working together at the Rural Drug Addiction Research Center had to shift gears.

During COVID, we had to suspend interviewing people who use drugs in Nebraska, so we saw this as a chance to continue the centers mission, Habecker said. Its a big issue in the state, even though Nebraska is one of the few states without medical or recreational marijuana.

Nebraska first banned cannabis in 1927 when Rep. Thomas Axtell of North Platte introduced HR74, prohibiting the use or possession of what news outlets referred to as hasheesh or mariguana.

Congress enacted its own prohibition in 1937, but in the past several years, states have gradually begun to lift their bans on medical or recreational marijuana use, either legislatively or through citizen-led petitions.

A petition to legalize medical marijuana in Nebraska obtained the number of signatures needed to be put in front of voters in the 2020 general election, but was later struck from the ballot by the Nebraska Supreme Court, which ruled it violated the single-subject rule.

Two petitions, which would require the Legislature to enact laws protecting doctors and patients, as well as protecting private entities that supply and distribute cannabis, are now in circulation.

Habecker said the UNL research team sought to measure Nebraskans opinions about legalizing both recreational and medical marijuana, medical marijuana only, or keeping both illegal as part of the annual survey mailed to a randomly selected group of Nebraskans age 19 and older in each of the past two years.

In all, the survey was sent to 8,000 addresses in Nebraska spread evenly across the states six behavioral health regions, as well as Lincoln and Omaha.

More than a quarter of the surveys (27.7%) were returned. The average age of respondents was 51 years old, with a near split between men and women. The majority (90%) of respondents were white  higher than the 2019 estimate that 78.2% of Nebraskans are white.

The results show widespread and uniform support for legalizing medical marijuana only across all regions of the state, both major political parties, ages and genders, according to the results.

In only two of the eight geographic areas  the south-central (22%) and southwestern (25.9%) regions  did the support for keeping marijuana illegal in all forms reach 20%, Habecker said.

Recreational marijuana is where you start to see more differences pop up by region, as well as political party, he said.

While 22.4% of Republicans said they favored keeping marijuana illegal, 45.2% said they would support legalizing medical marijuana, and 32.4% said they favored legalization of both recreational and medical marijuana.

That result comes despite the state's top Republicans, including Gov. Pete Ricketts, leading the campaign against legalization.

For the Democrats, just 9.9.% favored keeping marijuana prohibition in place, while 40.9% supported medical marijuana only and 49.2% said they supported full legalization, according to the results.

Respondents that identified as politically independent were more evenly split, with 45.9% indicating they supported legalizing medical marijuana only and 42.4% saying they favored legalizing recreational and medical marijuana.

Attitudes toward legalization change with age, with younger Nebraskans more likely to support full legalization than older residents. Less than a third of respondents age 69 and older said they supported recreational use.

Nebraskans who said they lived on a farm or in open country were also less likely to support recreational marijuana than those who live in a town or a city. Men were also more likely to support full legalization than women.

Habecker said the survey also attempted to capture how the stigma of marijuana affected the opinions of respondents, a question he said is vastly understudied in political opinions.

How people view those who use a drug is an important element to consider, particularly when people do not have direct experience with a substance, Habecker and Bevins wrote in the paper.

As participants report higher levels of stigma toward marijuana users, they are less likely to support either option, the study found, while the reverse was true for those with higher levels of stigma toward people that use cocaine, meth, opioids or heroin.

Few studies of political support for legalization account for stigma in general, but we demonstrate that these measures are important to include, and operate differently depending upon the substance, the paper concludes.

Habecker said one of the weaknesses of UNLs survey was a lack of questions about whether or not respondents were likely to vote, or were regular voters, in order to gauge support for legalization at the ballot box.

Legislative efforts to lift the prohibition on medical marijuana failed in both 2019 and 2021, and a potential measure of the survey against the election results of the 2020 initiative failed when it was struck from the ballot, the researchers wrote.

This leaves the stage set for a ballot initiative in 2022, Habecker and Bevins wrote. Despite our estimate of overwhelming public support for medical marijuana, the 2022 election will test how well public opinion translates to voting behavior in Nebraska.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7120 or cdunker@journalstar.com. On Twitter @ChrisDunkerLJS

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SIOUX FALLS  Ahead of a potential presidential bid, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem handily won the Republican nomination last week for a second term. Many of the candidates she hoped to elect to the Statehouse, however, did not have such a good night.

She had hoped to replace contrarians with personal allies in the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has consistently defied she wishes, so the governor rallied behind roughly a dozen candidates who challenged incumbents. Two-thirds of Noems favorites lost.

The setback was a reminder that while endorsements often draw attention and financial resources, they do not always translate into support from voters. It's a lesson that Donald Trump, Noem's ally, is learning as he falls short, notably in Georgia, in trying to punish Republicans who have crossed him. In the GOP primary last month, Georgia voters overwhelmingly backed Gov. Brian Kemp, who had rebuffed Trump's lies about widespread fraud during the 2020 election.

Trump has tried to shake off his initial losses, but it is unclear whether Noem will be able to move forward so easily. Some incumbents who survived her efforts to defeat them are left wondering why a governor they support and generally agree with went to such lengths to try to oust them.

"There was a belief system that the party was a family -- you do not campaign against other members, said state Sen. Al Novstrup, a longtime lawmaker who perennially scores high on conservative organizations scorecards. Obviously, that concept has broken dramatically in this primary.

Noem entered the primary election with a somewhat strained relationship with Republican lawmakers. The results from the vote could only deepen the tension. Those tenuous bonds with the Legislature could raise further questions about her ability to make a competitive bid for the Republican presidential nomination as multiple contenders, including Trump, take steps to announce campaigns later this year.

She spent most of her first term crafting a vision of South Dakota as an exemplar of conservative policy, tapping into activist fervor in what was widely seen as a play to be part of the White House conversation. But she also tempered her proposals with consideration for state government operations and the business community.

That fueled conflict with some House Republicans in the Legislature over proposals aimed at transgender children, exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine requirements and tax cuts. Even though her party held 90% of the legislative seats, Noems agenda foundered this year. House lawmakers hamstrung her proposals and often brushed aside her input.

They even openly criticized her.

One-third of the House Republican caucus voted for an unsuccessful effort to publicly scold Noem for taking a hands-on role in a state agency while it was evaluating her daughters application for a real estate appraiser license.

Among them was Republican Rep. Fred Deutsch, who has mostly been supportive of the governor but said he makes votes based on his conscience. He had also sparred with Noem before: His proposal in 2020 to bar puberty blockers and gender confirmation procedures to transgender children under 16 was rejected in the Senate after Noem expressed reservations about the proposal.

As primary campaigns ramped up in April, the governor publicly criticized Deutsch and put her support with a candidate she could trust  her childhood babysitter, Stephanie Sauder.

But Noems wishes in the primary race were only partially fulfilled in the contest where two House candidates advanced from a field of four Republicans. Sauder received the most votes but Deutsch beat out the two other candidates for the Republican nomination.

Noem was able to see off one of her loudest Republican critics, House Speaker Spencer Gosch, as he challenged a state senator for the GOP nomination to that chamber. She also gained several other allies in the Legislature, including a former chief of staff.

Her decision to wade into the primaries did not go unnoticed by the grassroots groups animating the current divide in the state GOP. Noem received blowback from conservative media after a newspaper report that she was working with state Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, the president pro tempore, to rid the Statehouse of certain conservatives.

Sensing trouble ahead, Noem tried to minimize damage and maintain her ties with conservatives. The effort included a private meeting in mid-May at a church in Sioux Falls with a group called Patriot Ripple Effect.

Noem seemed eager to convince the dozens of people who filled a conference room at the church that she was like-minded. She pointed to her decision during the COVID-19 pandemic to forgo statewide lockdowns and mask mandates despite plenty of criticism and objections. She also clapped back at Republican lawmakers who pushed sweeping vaccine exemptions, espousing a hands-off approach to government that extends to businesses as much as individuals.

They were blowing me up saying I wasnt conservative because I would not come in and tell Sanford (the states largest hospital system) and tell big businesses that they couldnt require vaccines for their employees, she said. My answer for them was, Youre telling me as the government to tell them as a private business what to do.

Her assertions drew some applause. But their questions mostly challenged Noem, picking at her record throughout the 45-minute meeting. They wanted to know why she would target reliably conservative lawmakers?

My babysitters running for office. I kind of like her, she responded.

The group continued to press the question, with one member pointing to Noems statement backing a challenger to Novstrup, the state senator. Noems answer suggested her support for Rachel Dix was based more on personal connection than political ideology: Shes a friend of mine and has been for years.

As the primary results crystallized, it became clear the internal party conflict is not going away.

Rep. Tom Pischke, who is from the party's hard-line conservative wing and easily beat Noem's pick for a state Senate seat, said he got a boost after being targeted by Noem's allies. A letter was even circulated among voters pointing out that Noem's preferred candidate, Lisa Rave, was married to the chief lobbyist for the state's hospital systems  a favorite target of certain conservatives during the pandemic.

That was the nail in the coffin for her, Pischke said of the letter's effect on his rival.

He added that the fallout from the race may have even spread to the governor's standing among ardent conservatives: "It actually hurt Gov. Noem a little bit," he said.

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RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP)  The owners of Rapid City hotel are facing a lawsuit over a social media post by one of them that promised to ban Native Americans from the property.

The lawsuit comes from a shareholder who happens to be a relative of the family that owns the Gateway Hotel.

Judson Uhre recently filed a lawsuit in Pennington County against his mother, Connie Uhre, and his brothers, Nick and Chad Uhre, as well as the company that operates the hotel, Retsel Corporation.

Judson is alleging a breach of fiduciary duty, shareholder oppression and interference in the hotel's operation, the Rapid City Journal reported.

Connie Uhre, Retsel's president, garnered widespread attention last spring when she said on social media that she would no longer allow American Indians on the property following a fatal shooting at the hotel involving two teenagers which police said where Native American.

Amid protests, the hotel shut down for about a month. After reopening, Connie Uhre was arrested May 31 for allegedly spraying a cleaning product at demonstrators outside the hotel. The demonstrators were members of the NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led activist organization.

Connie Uhre had a duty of care to ensure that she conducts herself in a manner not prejudicial to the business of the corporation, however, she went ahead and made a racially charged rant which was posted on a website with wide coverage and this led to financial loss of clients for the hotel as well as the damage to the hotels reputation, Judson Uhre said in his lawsuit.

Judsons filing seeks any and all damages due as a result of his familys action.

Connie, Nick and Chad Uhre did not immediately return a phone message for comment.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Rapid City Journal.

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Terence Andrus childhood was horrific. From an early age, he faced heinous physical abuse and neglect at home; as a teenager, he was tormented by both peers and guards in juvenile detention. Andrus had a right to present this evidence to the jury at his capital trial, but his lawyer declined, ensuring that his client would be condemned to death. In 2020, the Supreme Court held that this failure, among others, violated the Sixth Amendment guarantee of effective counsel. Then, in an extraordinary act of defiance, five Republican judges on a lower court rejected SCOTUSs finding, insisting that the higher court got it wrong. These judges all but dared the Supreme Court to bring them into line.

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On Monday, the court refused. Instead, it rewarded this insubordination by allowing the lower courts ruling to stand. This decision is devastating for Andrus, who will likely be put to death without vindicating the constitutional rights that were so egregiously violated at trial. It is also a disturbing signal to the lower courts that disobedience of binding precedent is permissible when it aligns with the majoritys hard-right ideology. There can be no settled law when SCOTUS lets rogue judges flout its own rulings and get away with it.

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The story of Andrus case is tragic. His mother engaged in sex work and drug use when he was a child, selling and abusing drugs in front of her kids. She also beat her children with a board. At times, she disappeared for extended periods and left her kids without supervision or food. Her boyfriends were often violent, beating her and her children. In addition, one boyfriend raped Andrus younger half-sister. As a preteen, Andrus was diagnosed with affective psychosis. Sent into Texas notorious juvenile corrections system at age 16, Andrus was dosed with massive quantities of psychotropic drugs that were inappropriate for his condition and locked up in solitary confinement nearly 80 times. At the age of 20, during a carjacking he attempted while high on PCP, Andrus killed two people. Prosecutors charged him with capital murder.

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In Texas, defendants can only be sentenced to death if the jury unanimously agrees that prosecutors have proved they pose a future danger to society. The state puts forth aggravating evidence showing why the defendant deserves to be killed; the defendants, in turn, have a constitutional right to present mitigating evidence showing why they deserve to live. Andrus attorney, James Crowley, had a duty to investigate and present mitigating evidence to the jury, and if he had looked, he wouldve found a mountain of it.

But he didnt look. Rather, Crowley called Andrus mother to the stand, who lied about her sons allegedly peaceful upbringing. Crowley then failed to rebut prosecutors aggravating evidenceeven though they accused Andrus of committing a different violent crime of which he was probably innocent. Predictably, the jury interpreted this one-sided presentation as evidence that Andrus posed a threat of future violence and recommended the death penalty.

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Six justices appear OK with lower courts jettisoning precedent when it leads to an outcome they favor.

Over the following years, Andrus obtained new lawyers who gathered ample mitigating evidence that never made it to the jury. They secured a hearing before a trial court, which ordered a new sentencing proceeding, finding that Crowley provided ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is made up of elected Republicans, overruled the trial court, declaring that Crowley did not fall below an objective standard of reasonableness.

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This decision was too much for the Supreme Court, which threw out the Texas courts ruling in 2020 by a 63 vote. (The majority opinion was not signed; Justices Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.) There is no squaring that conduct, certainly when examined alongside counsels other shortfalls, with objectively reasonable judgment, the majority concluded. The Sixth Amendment was violated here.

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But that wasnt the end of the case: To get relief for ineffective counsel, a defendant must show that their ineffective counsel prejudiced themmeaning theres a reasonable probability that it affected the outcome. SCOTUS suggested that Andrus was prejudiced, since this mitigating evidence probably would have convinced at least one juror to spare his life. It then sent the case back down so the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals could apply its decision.

Thats not what the Texas court did. Instead, Judge Sharon Keller penned a belligerent 54 decision criticizing SCOTUS for questioning her own courts work. Keller, who opposes freeing or compensating innocent people who are wrongly convicted, told the majority it was incorrect: The mitigating evidence that SCOTUS found compelling, she wrote, was actually not particularly compelling. Meanwhile, the aggravating evidence that SCOTUS found so weak and threadbare was, in her view, strong and extensive.

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Keller would not even accept the justices bottom-line holding that, as a matter of law, Andrus received ineffective counsel: She pointedly referred to alleged failures of counsel that SCOTUS believed it had identified, then explained why she believed the higher court was mistaken. Based on this rejection of precedent, Keller found that Andrus faced no prejudice and upheld his capital sentence. Four judges dissented, writing that while they also thought SCOTUS got it wrong, they had no power to overrule it from below.

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You might expect the Supreme Court to intervene when a lower court defies it so brazenly, if only to maintain discipline within the judiciary. The court, however, has changed over the last two years: Justice Amy Coney Barrett has replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, shifting the court far to the right. And on Monday, it turned away Andrus plea to correct the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals without comment. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. It now seems clear that these three justices, along with Ginsburg, shamed a few conservatives into joining them last time around. Today, with Barrett on the bench, the conservatives abandoned Andrus to an unconstitutional death sentence. Whatever interest Chief Justice John Roberts or Brett Kavanaugh once had in securing justice for Andrus has evaporated.

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This desertion reflects the influence of a six-member conservative majority: Its so much harder for liberals to secure compromises by persuading a colleague or two to fix even the most outrageous errors of law. But theres a darker signal in Mondays order: Six justices appear OK with lower courts jettisoning precedent when it leads to an outcome they favor. Theres no real question that thats what happened here; as Sotomayor wrote in dissent, the Texas courts decision is irreconcilable with this courts prior decision and bristles with disdain for this courts conclusions. It is particularly vital that this court act when necessary to protect against defiance of its precedents, she continued, if only to prevent erosion of confidence in the functioning of the legal system.

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This problemconservative judges ignoring Supreme Court precedent on an assumption that new justices will change the lawis not entirely new. It has cropped up repeatedly in reproductive rights cases, where judges who despise abortion will make up any excuse to uphold restrictions. The Andrus mess shows that this tactic is spreading from the uniquely polarizing and political context of abortion to run-of-the-mill constitutional claims like the right to counsel. After gutting this right a few weeks ago by cutting off access to habeas review, the conservative majority gives lower courts the greenlight to turn away strong Sixth Amendment claimsand ignore Sixth Amendment precedenton the shallowest pretext.

There are favored and disfavored constitutional rights at this Supreme Court. Litigants claiming persecution on the basis of their Christian faith get special treatment while those languishing in prison after receiving unconstitutional trials get nothing. In a legal commentary on his own case, Andrus begged the justices to keep politics out of our courts and interpret the law for righteousness because lives depend on it. This plea, like his others, has now gone unheeded.
In the tradition of the Clintonometer, the Trump Apocalypse Watch, and the Impeach-O-Meter, the Is It a Crime-O-Meter is a wildly subjective and speculative estimate of whether the Jan. 6 select committees work will convince enough individuals of relevance (prosecutors, juries, voters) that Donald Trump committed insurrection-related crimes that he will be, in some fashion, held accountable for them.

The first part of Mondays Jan. 6 House of Representatives select committee testimony described events that took place at the White House on election night in 2020. The most eyebrow-raising moment thereof was foreshadowed when apostate Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney referred to an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani in her opening remarks. This characterization was backed up by video of the following exchange regarding a White House conversation between Giuliani, who was asking to speak to the president, and several Trump advisers:

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JAN. 6 COMMITTEE LAWYER: Was there anyone in that conversation who in your estimation had had too much to drink? TRUMP CAMPAIGN SPOKESMAN JASON MILLER: Um, Rudy Giuliani.

I think the mayor was definitely intoxicated, Miller said. He and campaign manager Bill Stepien explained that Giuliani wanted to tell Trump to declare that he had won the race.

Said Miller: I think effectively Mayor Giuliani was saying, we won it, theyre stealing it from us, where did all the votes come from. We need to go say that we won and essentially that anyone who didnt agree with that position was being weak.

Stepien and Miller say they told Trump not to make such a speech because, in Stepiens words, it was far too early to be making any sort of call like that. Ballots were still being counted, ballots were going to be being counted for days.

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Said Ivanka Trump, who was also at the White House at the time: It was becoming clear that the race would not be called on election night.

Instead, heres what Trump said when he spoke: This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. YOLO!

As Stepien put it, the president had made a conscious decision to go in a different direction from the one that was recommended to him by the people looking closely at vote tallies. (The committee wasnt clear about how Giuliani ended up making his way through the phalanx of advisers to speak to Trump in person, but a clip of Giuliani averring that he did in fact speak to the president that night was played during the hearing, and Miller alluded to knowing about a conversation between Trump and Giuliani elsewhere in his remarks.)

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Now, on one level, this is funny: The president ignoring his advisers tedious scoldings about precinct-level data and determining who won the election by counting the votes in order to take the counsel of a visibly deranged, elderly Italian American man who likely centered his case around an arcane Sicilian slang term for the testicles. Its tabloid-friendly and will attract attention to the Jan. 6 committees work, which is part of its goal.

But its also relevant to the committees case that Trump knew or should have known by Jan. 6 that he had lost. Not only was he told as much in the weeks and months after the election, he started saying otherwise before anyone knew who won at all. The claim was fraudulent even at its origins, and the only person who supported it, even in a room of highly motivated partisans, was (seemingly) quite drunk. Our meter will be adjusted forward to the midpoint between maybe some crimes and really crimey.

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On this weeks Amicus Podcast Dahlia Lithwick spoke to Ryan Goodman of NYU Law School and founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, to try to understand the Jan. 6 select Committees focus on a narrow piece of the Jan. 6 election subversion: What it meant that state elections officials were being conscripted to set aside the actual vote tallies and adopt alternate slates of electors. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: I want to give you tons of space to talk about what youve described, I think very aptly, as this sleeper issue that is shot through everywhere, but is also really hard to wrestle to the ground. And that is the election subversion part of the Jan. 6 coup plotting. That is John Eastman. That is, Im going to just say, partly Ginni Thomas. That is this independent state legislature doctrine. And I want you to talk about it, because even though we talk about it a lot on the show, the idea of throwing the Presidential election to slates of fake state electors is the kind of thing that is so hard to get your head around because its all happening again. States are changing the mechanisms to select electors, and weve now got proof from the hearings of fake electors who are signing fake documents.

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Part of the reason I want you to explain it is that this is an ongoing threat to the 2024 election; that if we dont help folks understand that all of the stuff that was happening in secret phone calls and is the same stuff that is going to happen with the full force of the law in 2024, unless we can get our heads around it. Talk about what you call these sleeper issues and why it is, in fact, I think for those of us who think about the rule of law, the most chilling part of Jan. 6, and possibly much more chilling in some sense than the mob itself.

Ryan Goodman: I completely agree with everything you said, and especially the framing of this as an ongoing and future threat, through to the 2024 election, primarily because it shows that it is a vast conspiracy across multiple states. This one plan, raised in the hearings was in at least in seven states. The politicos in all of those states on the Republican side  the very people who ended up being the electors  agreed to provide the votes for Trump, if he did win, to the electoral college, and they were all involved and implicated in what looks like a very likely criminal scheme. Just as one example, they were going to defy the voters in their states. And in some sense, the implicit understanding of all of this is the way in which they were doing this by just disenfranchising large sections of their state, primarily heavily populated by black Americans in urban areas.

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That was it. On that basis, they said the election that was held is invalid, and they would override the will of the people in their states, because they were trying to discount certain votes and break their oaths to do it. Thats the future threat as well. And as you also laid it out, that occurred in 2020 in a kind of bizarre, ad hoc way, organizing behind the scenes. But Republican legislatures in some of these states are now laying the groundwork to legalize these ways of trying to snatch back the vote from the public and create these alternative slates of electors, despite what Americans, who they choose to be their president. So its just so chilling. Its another reason that I do think its good to surface this part of the seven pronged effort to overturn the election. I just wanted to highlight it.

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So this is the plan in which in seven different states, even though Trump had lost, the Trump campaign, with Rudy Giuliani as the puppet master, got these people to create these fake documents that said they were the duly authorized electors and have them sent to the national archives to say that the vote should go for Trump in their state.

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Two things that I will just spotlight: One, we basically know the Justice Department is criminally investigating the scheme. Thats a big deal. That means they have the predicate to open those investigations. And CNN reported a direct quote from the subpoenas that had been sent to the Georgia fake electors. It asked them to cooperate and tell them about all the communications with any agents of Donald J. Trump. Not Donald J. Trump campaign, Donald J. Trump. So theyre starting to draw a direct line to Trump and Giulianis fingerprints are all over this. So when we talk about what is Merrick Garland investigating, I think thats just a piece of the puzzle. Theres six other pieces he needs to be investigating, but thats a big deal.

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And then the second is just to flag something for people that even close observers have missed. Mary McCord, whos a professor at Georgetown, and a former very senior official at the justice department has filed from her center at Georgetown, a civil complaint in Wisconsin against the fake electors there. And the civil complaint includes, as its predicate, three criminal offenses, three federal criminal offenses. Thats important. I mean, shes so well regarded. The fact that she thinks that those federal crimes attach to the scheme, is a sign of where these things might be going.
By some estimates, more than two-thirds of Elon Musks Twitter followers are bots or spam accounts. According to Botometer, a popular site for checking bot followers, the number is closer to 20 percent. Regardless of what the exact numbers are, it is undeniable that there are significant numbers of bots on Twitter.

In the past few weeks, Musk has tweeted about Twitters bot problem, going so far as to cite the issue as a reason for potentially pulling out of his deal to buy the platform. Whether or not you believe himthat bots are whats threatening the dealSamuel Woolley says that the conversation is focused on the wrong thing. Woolley, co-author of the new book titled simply Bots, argues that bots are not inherently badtheyre just tools used to automate accounts.

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On Fridays episode of What Next: TBD, I spoke with Woolley, assistant professor in the journalism school at University of Texas-Austin, about how bad Twitters bot problem really is. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Lizzie OLeary: What exactly is a bot?

Samuel Woolley: Our definition of a bot is any automated software program that is used to do tasks online that a person would otherwise have to do. Theres lots of tasks that would be so monotonous and that are also so gargantuan, that people wouldnt even be able to do them. For example, scraping Google to find new websites, scraping through all the different data that exists on the web to try to make sure that the ranking system on Google works properly. So, automated software programs have to do those tasks.

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Theres also chatbots. Anytime you are interacting with a health insurance company, or your cellphone provider, that little chatbot window pops up because its easier for them to do that than have you talk to a human, right?

Yeah. Theres been a lot of reporting out there that talks about bots as if were in this brave new world of Terminator AI, like these smart bots that are out there manipulating public opinion and getting us to vote for particular politicians by chatting with us. And thats simply not the case. I wrote a book a while back called The Reality Game. The research I did shows that over and over and over again, based upon a lit review, the most intelligent AI system that exists as a chatbot basically has the intelligence of a 5-year-old. And 5-year-olds can be manipulative, but theyre not going to get you to change your political affiliation usually, unless they say something particularly incisive on accident.

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But what can get people to change their minds is a flood of information. Like seeing the same message over and over again on social media, creating an illusion of popularity.

So, if you get 20,000 bots talking on a particular topic, or using a particular hashtag, it makes that thing look more popular than it actually is. And the quantitative metrics that get used to generate those Twitter trends or YouTube trends then say, Oh, look. This things popular. A very sad example of that comes from the day of the Parkland shooting, when the hashtag about David Hogg being a character actor was the number one trending hashtag on YouTube. Later on researchers showed that was hugely driven by bots.

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While bots get a bad name on social media because they can spread disinformation, there are also bots built to help consumers or engage in advocacy. Basically, theyre created to make things easier for people. What do some of these good bots do?

Theres bots, for instance, that have been built to help people in an automated fashion fight their parking tickets. Bots have been built that are used to amplify voices that are otherwise marginalized, bots that promote awareness about voting, or bots that are used to promote awareness about Black Lives Matter. I know a lot of people in journalism that have built bots thatll parse larger data sets for them.

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Right now, Elon Musk is claiming that Twitter hasnt been open with him about how many bots and fake accounts exist on the platform. After he complained about it in a securities filing, the company essentially said, Fine, you can have access to our full fire hose of data and figure it out yourself. But perhaps ironically, youve noted that the reason that Twitter has an issue with bot and spam accounts is the transparent way it was built. Can you explain that?

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Twitter has historically had an open API, which has meant that, yes, developers could build bots onto Twitter in a quite an easy fashion. And so that was one way a lot of bots got created there. But also, it meant that researchers could study Twitter easily. Allowing researchers, journalists, and developers onto their platform to analyze data on Twitter means that theres tons of information out there on how many bots there are on Twitter. Facebook does not do that. YouTube does not do that. They do not allow that kind of access.

There is another question here, thats important when youre trying to figure out how valuable a company like Twitter is: Platforms like Twitter make money based on their number of active users. So, do bots distort those numbers?

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Its an argument Ive been making for a really long time in my own research, that the amount of bots on your platform can dictate an increase in audience engagement, and that includes advertising engagement. So, basically it undercuts the bottom line because advertisers hate fake traffic. They want actual real eyeballs of people that are going to buy their stuff, ideally.

My perception after following this coverage for the last several weeks, and listening to Elon Musk, but also knowing what I know about Twitter, leads me to believe that Elon is using this issue of bots as a backdoor to get out of the deal. Because Twitter is arguably the industry leader in combating influence operations, disinformation, and bot operations. I think that Elon Musk is seizing upon a major critique of Twitter that would potentially undercut Twitters engagement and its advertising mechanism. However, among the other social media companies, Twitters doing pretty good on this. And we know that Twitter has done big bot purges.

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I want to unpack a little bit the relationship between bots and money making. On the one hand, the business model is centered around ad engagement, and it seems like more bots would equal more engagement, but on the other hand, ad engagement comes from engagement from people who are interested in the advertisement. So how do you pull those things apart? Do bots make money?

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Bots can be used to make money because the internet is a computational systemit runs on quantitative metrics, and it runs on numbers. And social media is no different in many ways. So, take a site like YouTube, the more popular you get as an influencer on YouTube and the more engagement you get on YouTube, the more money you make every month. And so, if you can figure out a way to generate automated engagement, that doesnt get detected by the platform, you can become quite rich.

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Do bots make money for Twitter?

I think its inarguable that bots have generated revenue for Twitter over the course of its companys history, because Twitter has definitely had a huge bot problem. And so, the numbers of bots on the platform Researchers have made claims that the numbers of bots on the platform are far higher than what Twitter releases to these Securities and Exchange Commission every year.

Which is about 5 percent, they say.

Yeah. And some researchers have said as many as half of the people on Twitter are bots. But I think thats way overblown. More reasoned researchers would say its maybe 15 percent or 20 percent of the traffic on Twitter is bots. And we know that the majority of bots on Twitter are spam bots and are commercially motivated.

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So, even if Musk is using this as a smoke screen to get out of the deal, hes making maybe a decent point?

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Hes making a decent point, its just that hes coming in at a time when a lot of progress has been made and throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Its simultaneously gratifying and really frustrating to see him saying this, because it glosses over a lot of complexity. It also glosses over a ton of research and work thats been done in infosec, but also by a lot of other social scientists and computer scientists to identify and help combat this issue at the social media firms.

Elon Musk talks in soundbites. He talks in a way that suggests that he hasnt done his background research. He doesnt understand audience engagement. He doesnt understand the issues of data security on Twitter. And the amongst the infosec crowd is that a lot of people are would be very scared if Elon bought Twitter, because it could potentially result in a lot of regression in policies that have been made, not just on bots, but on a lot of other things.

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On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton waded into this whole mess saying that the state was investigating the bot issue because it might hurt Texas businesses and consumers. What do you make of that?

It seems to be a blatantly political move. Ken Paxton has talked about his concerns about conservatives being silenced on social media a lot and has tried to tie Texass boat to Elon Musks purchase of Twitter in a way that riffs off of Musks statements about Donald Trump. But the research does not back up what Ken Paxton is saying. Scientific work thats been done does not show that conservatives are being silenced on Twitter or Facebook. In fact, theres a quite a bit of good scientific research out there that shows that some conservative voices are unduly amplified on these sites.

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Does this actually mean anything for the Twitter deal?

I think that Paxtons move is definitely glomming on to the headline grabbing that Elon Musk has done. What Elon has done, it seems like, is used the purchase of Twitter to talk about a lot of political issues that have gotten him a lot of attention. And Ken Paxton is no fool. He understands that by proposing these laws and by talking about these things that hes appealing to his base. Hes appealing to the anger that has really been directed specifically at Twitter after the deletion of Donald Trumps Twitter account.

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Our own social media timelines, particularly Twitter, are so particular to us, and I think sometimes we forget that other peoples look totally different. And yet we all think that there is some singular shared reality called Twitter. I wonder how possible it is to make policy, whether its about bots or spam accounts, when our realities and our followers and the makeup of who they are so different.

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Theres a lot of different subsections of Twitter that exist not only within the United States, but internationally. Twitter occurs in many languages other than English. And their experience of Twitter looks way different than the experience of Elon Musk or Ken Paxton or you, or me. And that means that laws and policies that get made that police certain modes of communication on Twitter need to be socially and culturally contextual. They need to think about how different types of people in different places use Twitter.

There are things that can be done that are universally beneficial to users, however. Deleting blatant lies about how, when, or where to vote, for example. But that doesnt mean that theres not a huge need for nuance, not only in external policy, but also in Twitters internal policy. And frankly, we havent seen the nuance that I would hope for.



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Does all the heat on this issue mean that Twitter needs to put in a little more effort?

If we look at Twitterits size, and the money that it has comparatively, when set alongside Facebook or YouTubeTwitter has done way more. The better question would be, could Twitter benefit from more money being put on this, and where could they get it? Because the answer is, yes. And then, the answer is big question mark. If Elon Musk had been saying, I want to buy Twitter. And Im going to put hundreds of millions of dollars towards the content moderation and bot moderation and spam moderation were talking about, people like me would be really excited because Twitter needs that.

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On March 1, Inna Afinogenova, arguably the most visible face of Russian state media for Spanish-speaking audiences, was angry. That day, in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine, YouTube and other social media platforms had suspended access to channels connected to Russian state-owned media outlets across Europe. Afinogenova, a host on the RT-affiliated channel Ahi les Va, posted a message in perfect Spanish condemning YouTubes restrictions in Europe and inviting viewers in banned regions to download the video and share it through messaging apps. Afinogenovawhose show Ahi les Va gained popularity by branding itself as an alternative voice to Western mediaalso blamed Brussels and other governments for pressuring YouTube to vanish RT in Europe.

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YouTube later expanded the ban to other regions, including Latin America. By March 11, YouTube had blocked access globally to more than 1,000 channels connected to state-funded outlets RT and Sputnik. According to the platform, those channels and their more than 15,000 videos spread misinformation and hate speech, among other actions prohibited by YouTube policies.

The ban put a dent in Russias larger influence operation in Latin America, characterized by well-produced and carefully targeted content like the video series formerly hosted by Afinogenova. (In May, Afinogenova announced she had resigned from RT because she does not support any war. She initially posted the video on her newly created YouTube channel, which gathered almost 388,000 views and 60,000 subscribers between May 2 and May 17. Ill be here, if they dont sanction me, block me because of my nationality or former employer, she concluded, after arguing propaganda comes from all sides and isnt a question of good and bad guys.)

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Spanish speakers are among the main targets of Kremlin-backed media internationally through its Spanish outlets RT en Espanol and Sputnik Mundo, and Spanish-language social media has become an important space for conversations and public opinion surrounding Russias invasion of Ukraine. On Twitter, for example, Spanish is the second most prevalent language discussing the war.

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RT started broadcasting to Latin America in 2009 from its Moscow headquarters, and the outlet has since garnered a significant audience, particularly in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. On social media, RT en Espanol is one of RTs most popular language editions, more than doubling the number of Facebook followers of RT in English. To build their audience in Latin America, the outlets have focused on regional political issues that align with local governmentsfor example, bolstering anti-U.S. sentiment in Venezuela, in alignment with President Nicolas Maduros messaging. The outlets have also received support from Latin American governments. For instance, in 2014, former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner held a videoconference with Vladimir Putin to announce RT en Espanol would be incorporated into Argentinas public TV offering, where it still broadcasts today. In 2018, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa launched a RT en Espanol TV program in which he interviewed different Latin American politicians.

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So, by the time the March YouTube ban came along, Kremlin-backed media had a strong foothold in Latin America. In response to the ban, outlets began promoting their Spanish-language accounts on VKontakte and Odysee, two alternative platforms to Facebook and YouTube, respectively. (VKontakte has been called Russias Facebook and has close ties to the Kremlin, while blockchain-based Odysee has been called a YouTube for the far-right.) Meanwhile, nearly 50 YouTube channels reuploaded videos from RT en Espanol and Ahi les Va between March 1 and April 5. Among these are seven new channels utilizing RT branding, which have garnered thousands of subscribers in a matter of weeks.

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Those numbers, however, pale in comparison with the banned accounts. According to social media listening tool Social Blade, by the time they were deplatformed by YouTube, RT en Espanol had accumulated 5.97 million subscribers and almost 4.5 billion views, while Ahi les Va had gathered 1.11 million subscribers and 108 million views. As shown below, both channels experienced increases in the number of views and subscribers during January and Februarymeaning we can assume this growth would have continued through March and beyond if the channels had not been banned.

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While the YouTube channels re-uploading state media contentwhich include newly created accounts and existing channels linked to Latin American fringe mediadont have the same reach and interactions that RT en Espanol and Ahi les Va once did, their rise is still notable.

Of the seven new YouTube channels, Ahi les Va RT! amassed the most viewsmore than 101,000 before being suspended by YouTubewhile the similarly named Ahi Les Va has gained around 18,900 subscribers as of May 26. Four of the seven new channels belonged to Google accounts that joined YouTube between March 12 and March 29.

In terms of content, the channels reuploaded videos criticizing U.S. and European sanctions and censorship against pro-Kremlin outlets and characterizing invasion as a denazification effortin other words, using propaganda to justify the invasion while portraying Kremlin as a victim.

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Another group of 39 channels existed before the ban, but previously focused on content related to video games, music, travel, news, Latin American governments, and political organizations. After the ban, they changed their content, reuploading at least one RT en Espanol or Ahi les Va video.

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Of these existing channels, SFP-ASP had the most subscribersnearly 55,000 at the time of publishing. The channel describes itself as focusing on Photography, Video & Journalism Production and belongs to an Ecuadorian photojournalist based in Berlin. SFP-ASPs reupload of the Ahi les Va video of Afinogenova asking viewers to share banned content garnered over 57,000 views in two months.

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Six of the existing channels were dedicated to spreading content supporting Latin American governments, political organizations, and partisan media. Most of the channels posted press releases and propaganda before reuploading pro-Kremlin media videos in March. The channels promoted Cuban regime-backed medical missions; Bolivian President Luis Arce; broadcasts by the Maduro regime in Venezuela; the pro-Argentine government party Frente de Todos; Peruvian President Pedro Castillo; and a communist movement supporting Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

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While the group of existing channels that shifted their content to share banned messages is fairly limited in reach, it demonstrates how Russian propaganda has fueled the content of other YouTube channels, thus broadening the audiences who can be exposed to these messages.

As of June 6, two out of the 39 channels reuploading RT en Espanol and Ahi les Va videos had been suspended.

Meanwhile, RT en Espanol, Ahi les Va, and Sputnik News have started rebuilding their audiences on Odysee, the blockchain-driven video site. For instance, RT en Espanol doubled the number of subscribers in one day, following RTs recommendation in state media to follow their accounts on this new platform. RT en Espanol had nearly 20,000 followers on Odysee as of early June, while Ahi les Va! Had almost 10,000 on the platform.

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Given that YouTubes deplatforming decision remains in place, channels reuploading RT content are likely in violation of YouTube guidelines. The channels we identified have successfully amplified the deplatformed videos to grow their audiences, but they have yet to recover the same engagement levels that the main Kremlin-backed YouTube channels amassed before the ban went into effect. Even so, our research shows that with the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, users of platforms on which Russian state outlets have been blocked are still exposed toor even seeking outKremlin propaganda. The next question is: How do the recommendation algorithms on platforms like YouTube help it spread?

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
MOSCOWRussia has been fighting in Ukraine for more than 100 days, but the last time the government officially announced the number of casualties in the Russian army was in March, when 1,351 Russian troops had been killed. At the time, Ukrainian officials claimed the death toll among Russians was more than 15,000; now, they give a total of 30,000 military personnel killed. However, the figure cant be independently verified.

From time to time, the leaders of Russian regions publicly announce the names of troops who died in Ukraine after Feb. 24 and offer their condolences to families. State-owned regional media also post short obituaries about killed soldiers. Once in a while, they publish comments from family members who tell about the soldiers personality and how proud they are. On June 3, the Russian independent outlet Mediazona confirmed more than 3,200 deaths based on these sources. Most of the deceased whose ages were mentioned were between 21 and 23 years old, and hundreds were under 20. Obituaries in the local press sometimes include quotes from their school teachers because it was not so long ago that the soldiers graduated. Most deaths were of soldiers from small towns and villages in poor Russian regions. Mediazona found just six troops from Moscow among the dead, though the capital represents 9 percent of Russias population of 147 million. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has never mentioned the deceased in his speeches.

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At first, Russia emphasized that conscripted soldiers werent being sent to take part in the special operationonly those who signed contracts. (Conscription in Russia obliges men aged between 18 and 27, with no serious medical issues, to serve in the army for one year. As the head of the Defense Committee of the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament, Vladimir Shamanov, said a year ago, 30 percent of the Russian army are conscripts, while the remaining 70 percent are professional, contract personnel.) After previous denials, however, in March, officials admitted that some conscripts had been sent to Ukraine by mistake and promised to punish those in charge. One of the reasons why so many young men from villages with almost no job opportunities sign contracts are decent salaries. In a peaceful time, contract troops earned 30,00070,000 rubles per month [$500$1,100] or even more, says Sergei Krivenko, the coordinator of the human rights initiative Citizen and the Army.

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Relatives of Russian soldiers who died in Ukraine are reluctant to talk to the media. After Vladimir Putin signed a law saying that spreading fake news about the Russian military can lead to up to 15 years of prison, it has become unclear what information can or cant be shared. Also, families might be afraid that if they speak out, they wont get compensation: The family of a fallen soldier is entitled to a payment of at least 7.4 million rubles (about $120,000). The government is obliged to pay this money. However, to get it, families have to submit many documents. In Russian reality, this process turns into begging different officials to sign papers, so it seems that it depends on their mercy, though it doesnt. So, relatives are afraid that they will offend officials with any public actions, and authorities wont give them what they owe, says Krivenko.

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Additionally, many dont trust foreign media. Foreign press twists facts and shows everything in a bad light, the sister of a fallen soldier, who declined to be interviewed, said to me. I should think if it is appropriate to talk about my husband, Russias patriot, with an American outlet, another woman who never got back to me said. However, I found others willing to talk about family members killed in Ukraine on duty and their thoughts on special operation and its consequences.

Daria Kajya, 22 years old, told that her fiance, Vladislav Yakshamin, 28 years old, died in Ukraine on April 15. She is originally from Moscow, but for four years, she has lived more than 150 miles away with Vladislav in Ivanovo. They planned to get married at the end of June. Daria also mentioned that Vladislavs great-grandfather was from Ukraine and fought on the eastern front of World War II. She says:

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It was Vladislavs second deployment overseas after Syria. First, he was sent to the drill at the end of January. And then he was deployed to Ukraine. The connection was poor there. On March 30, his birthday, he called me via video first time, and I saw how his appearance changed. He didnt say much; it was not allowed. He could tell me that they ate, slept in the tanks or vehicles, and were at the banya [sauna], which was a special event for them. He and his colleagues were caught in shelling in Kharkiv Oblast, but it is still unclear how he died exactly because different commanders say different things. He was a driver and was in a vehicle. According to one version, he left the vehicle to help the wounded fellow troops and was killed himself. When he called me, he always said: Everything is fine. I will come home soon. Once I tried to convince him to return. I told him: You dont have obligations, neither military mortgage nor loans, you dont owe anybody. So, if the situation becomes tense, you can quit and come home. But he answered: We dont leave our people. I am not into politics; I dont watch the news. I started to read some only when the special military operation began. I read RIA Novosti [a state-owned news agency] and some Telegram channels about our army. I cant say anything from the political point of view, but while Vladislav was there, I could only support him and be on his side. Now I dont know what to think. We fought enough, I believe. I wish there were no more losses in our army and in general. The husbands of my friends have been deployed to Ukraine, too. As for sanctions, it was apparent that the consequences of the special operation would follow. I dont blame anybody except countries that introduced measures without getting to the bottom of the situation. However, everybody has their opinions. I hope sanctions will help restore and develop local production, which was overlooked because of imported goods.

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According to the Russian state-funded pollster VCIOM, as of May 30, 72 percent of Russians support the special military operation. On June 2, the independent polling organization Levada Center reported an even higher number of those who back the actions of Russian armed forces in Ukraine: 77 percent. The center also found that only 56 percent of Russians are closely following the situation around Ukraine, and 53 percent believe that reports on state-owned TV are objective.

A Russian who asked to remain anonymous told me that his friend, a 25-year-old serviceman named Artyom from the Ural region, died in Ukraine on March 21. He said that he doesnt watch TV but approves of the special military operation:

Artyom was killed in [the self-proclaimed] Peoples Republic of Luhansk. He died from a  gunshot wound in his chest. In December, he was deployed overseas [to another country other than Ukraine], and in March, he went to Ukraine. He called once a week or two weeks. We were not allowed to ask him anything except maybe, How are you? He mainly was asking us questions. When Artyom came to Ukraine, he didnt tell his parents that he was there not to worry them, but he told me. Artyom and I are optimistic people. We always think that we will get through anything. Before he was sent to Ukraine, he texted me saying that everything would be fine. First, he didnt want to go, but he thought it would be OK since the fellow troops he was going with were decent people. That is why he went. I dont watch the news on TV; most of the content there is lies, I used to read news updates on Telegram, but I am not following anything right now. I support Vladimir Putin. I believe that the special operation is the right thing to do. Russia is fighting against nationalists in Ukraine. Artyom and I are patriots. Talking about losses among civilians and the destruction of cities, what can I think about it? There is no war without casualties. It was inevitable. I blame Europe for sanctions. However, around 80 percent of Russians havent been affected by them. They live as they used to do before. The cars and apartments have become more expensive, but prices on groceries and other things havent gone up.

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Many Russians whose family members died fighting in Ukraine put Russian flags on their social media profile pictures as well as the Z and V military symbols to express their support of the operation. The Radio Free Europe project Sibir.Realii told the story of Valentina Berezovskaya, a woman from a small Siberian village who complained that she couldnt get compensation after her brother, who supported her and her children financially, was killed in Ukraine. Despite a lack of help from the government, she told the outlet that she approves of Russias actions in the neighboring country. I tried to reach out to her on Odnoklassniki social media, where she wrote her name as Valentina BereZoVskaya, but she told me that it was too painful for her to talk about her brother.

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Most profiles of grieving relatives on social media are private. On pages that allow comments from strangers, there are plenty of mean messages from bots, supposedly from Ukraine; the bots repeat the same messages under different posts.

When parents of some soldiers dont hear from them for a long time, they use Russias largest social media platform VKontakte to look for their sons. Alexander Krasotkin, the father of Dmitriy Krasotkin, who had been deployed to Ukraine, published a post in a community of a Russian military unit his son served with on March 29: I havent heard from my son since February 22. He said that on February 23 he was supposed to be brought to Kharkiv. On March 26, I got a call from the military unit: They said that my son was missing. I am looking for those who received the same calls. At least four people answered him that they were in the same situation. On April 28, Krasotkin told Mediazona that his son had been killed. He learned it from his sons fellow soldiers; according to him, Russian officials were helpless in providing him information. His concern was getting the body of his son, which was left in Kharkiv. If I had a chance, I would go fight myself. I am waiting till our troops take Kharkiv, then I will go there, he told Mediazona. (Krasotkin didnt respond to a request for comment.)

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Still, there are families who disapprove of what Russia is doing in Ukraine and wish their relatives had not been deployed to serve there. Yelena, the sister of 24-year-old Aleksei from the small town of Shumikha in the Ural region, said that he was survived by his wife and 2-year-old son. She shares:

It was his second contract. The last time the family saw him was on Jan. 16, and then he was sent to the drill. Afterward, Aleksei was deployed to Ukraine. Of course, we didnt want him to go there, but we didnt know where he was. On Feb. 24, he called us and said  [to] watch the news and disconnected. The last time he called his wife was on March 1, and he said that everything was fine. He was a very cheerful and helpful person. On March 5, he died after his vehicle was hit by shelling. We dont follow news now; it hurts. We havent calmed down yet, and we cry every day. Also, we tried not to watch the news back then in order not to overthink, as we worried a lot. I dont support the special military operation because young, innocent men die. We dont talk about it in the family, but I think that our parents and Alekseis wife dont approve of it, either. I wish it all to end soon.

While Russia supposedly doesnt want to show its losses in Ukraine and doesnt update the information on casualties in the army, it is hard to hide fresh graves in cemeteries all over the country and control what relatives of those killed say publicly. Many families prefer to show solidarity with fallen troops by not dismissing their sacrifices. But many dont comment because they understand that the special operation is unfair, illegal and pointless, says Krivenko. Saying it out loud and processing it will mean that the troop died for nothing. This is incredibly hard to bear.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
The New York Times noticed the bass Peter Kellner in January. Critics compared the soprano Slavka Zamecnikova to Anna Netrebko.

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Talented Slovak soloists, soprano Slavka Zamecnikova and bass Peter Kellner, who are successful members of the prestigious Vienna State Opera, will perform in Bratislava.

Music critics labelled Zamecnikova as the new Anna Netrebko after her portrayal of Poppea in Claudio Monteverdis The Coronation of Poppea. Kellner has been recently praised by The New York Times for his stage debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera. He portrayed Colline in Giacomo Puccinis La Boheme there.

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The bass Peter Kellner, making his Met debut as Colline, sang a full-bodied Vecchia zimarra, sober without trudging, wrote Zachary Woolfe.

American pianist Stephen Hopkins will join the two soloists on stage.

The concert, which is part of the Great Slovak Voices cycle, will take place on June 20 at the Slovak Philharmonics concert hall.

Big Slovak talents

Zamecnikova - after studying at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin - began her career at the Berlin State Opera. When she came from Berlin to Vienna in 2020, her first role - Norina in Gaetano Donizettis opera Don Pasquale - was a big success.

Her singing career suggests that she could follow in the footsteps of great Slovak sopranos, such as Lucia Popp, Edita Gruberova and Gabriela Benackova.

Kellner studied singing at the Kosice conservatory and continued his journey at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the University of the Arts in Graz.

His first engagement was at the local opera. In 2018, he became a member of the Vienna State Opera. In addition to Vienna, where he appears in several bass roles, Kellner is a frequent guest at the London Royal Opera.

A bit of Africa

Last week, South African soloist Pretty Yende performed in the Slovak capital for the first time. She performed arias accompanied by Spanish pianist Vanessa Garcia Diepa.

The concert had been shifted twice, after lockdowns forced a cancellation of the first planned appearance of Yende in Bratislava in 2020.

The performance was part of the Worlds Opera Stars program, offering a range of musical personalities from all over the world and presenting them before a Slovak audience.
The Labour Office says Slovak citizens can fulfill the labour needs, but hospitals are so short one oncology department had to close.

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For over a year she had been working as a health assistant at the National Oncology Institute (NOU) in Bratislava. Now she is to be sent back to Ukraine because her work permit expired and the Slovak Labour Office refused to extend it.

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"Physically, I can't take it anymore. If I didn't have a child, I would have left," said the health assistant. She asked the Sme daily not to publish her name out of fear of further persecutions by our authorities. Sme daily knows her full name.

"They are scared. Their stay was dismissed. They feel redundant. They are afraid that if media break the story, it will make it worse when it comes to the authorities," explained lawyer Barbora Bali. Specializing in this field, she has already obtained work permits for several Ukrainians.

According to her, the NOU health assistant is not the only one whose work permit has not been extended by the Labour Office. Two Ukrainian health workers at the University Hospital in Bratislava (UNB) experienced a similar approach.

According to the Health Ministry, more than 3,200 nurses are missing in Slovakia. The nurses' chamber sets the number at more than sixteen thousand.

Due to lack of nurses, the NOU had to temporarily close the breast surgery department last week.

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Related article Refugees struggling with work options despite new law Read more

Awaiting exception

In Ukraine, she was a nurse in the department of pediatric lung surgery for 13 years. At the NOU she is a health assistant in the internal department.
Ex-judge cancelled by YouTube and storm warnings issued.

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Good evening. The Monday, June 13 edition of Today in Slovakia is ready with the main news of the day in less than five minutes.

Caputova and Pellegrini swap places in a poll

Former PM Peter Pellegrini. (Source: TASR - Martin Baumann)

For the first time since the 2020 parliamentary elections, Hlas chair Peter Pellegrini, a former prime minister, has beaten President Zuzana Caputova in trust polls.

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On the other hand, Finance Minister Igor Matovic, chair of the strongest ruling party, has once again broken the record in people's distrust.

This stems from a survey with a sample of 889 people polled by the Focus agency for the private television network Markiza.

Related: You have made a 21st-century Jew out of me, Matovic said in response to a question on the published Focus poll. The Human Rights Institute has called on the minister to publicly apologise for his statement.

Quote: "Just as the Jews were guilty of everything during Nazi Germany because Hitler pointed them out, so many people in Slovakia wanted to make someone guilty of everything, whether during the coronavirus crisis or later, and many of you have succeeded," Matovic said on June 13.

For a deeper insight into current affairs, check out our Last Week in Slovakia piece published earlier today. You can sign up for the newsletter here.

More stories from The Slovak Spectator website:

FEATURE STORY FOR MONDAY

Their biggest hits are not about love

Founded in 1997 in Spisska Nova Ves, Smola a Hrusky has grown into one of the most popular bands in Slovakia. (Source: Smola a Hrusky)

During the coronavirus pandemic, Smola a Hrusky released the "Audiostatusy" album, reflecting on different aspects of life under lockdowns, politics and sports.

Jozef Kramar, one of the the band's founders, told The Slovak Spectator that the sixth studio album is the most political. However, Kramar shook things up for the first time in 2012 when it comes to writing political songs. He then wrote the band's most listened-to song - a political one - on streaming services.

Known for their jaunty songs, the band began its career in the industry with a different kind of lyrics, ranging from a song about top model Andrea Veresova and a hypermarket.

If you like what we are doing and want to support good journalism, buy our online subscription. Thank you.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Two bear attacks have been reported in the last two days. On June 13, a bear bit a man near a chapel outside the Poruba community, western Slovakia. During the past weekend, a bear attacked a man on a hiking path outside the Horna Ves community, central Slovakia. Here's how to stay stafe around bears.

in the last two days. On June 13, a bear bit a man near a chapel outside the Poruba community, western Slovakia. During the past weekend, a bear attacked a man on a hiking path outside the Horna Ves community, central Slovakia. Here's how to stay stafe around bears. In the Greek Catholic Church, Pentecost began on Sunday , June 12. The third most important holiday in the church will end on June 28. Fasting is observed during this period on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. However, fasting is voluntary.

The Health Ministry wants to increase the salaries of nurses in the short term to stabilise their number. The ministry has also announced systemic measures, like financial support for nursing students and graduates, language trainings, and a one-off subsidy for nurses joining the sector.

British popstar Dua Lipa played a gig in Bratislava on June 12, 2022, during the first edition of the Lovestream Festival. (Source: TASR - Jaroslav Novak)

The cold front may bring intense storms on Monday. Supercell storms or storms accompanied by strong winds can also occur, the meteorological office said. The office expects no tropical day on Tuesday, June 14.

Supercell storms or storms accompanied by strong winds can also occur, the meteorological office said. The office expects no tropical day on Tuesday, June 14. The Defence Ministry proposes the procurement of tracked armoured vehicles from Sweden . BAE Hagglunds AB, a Swedish firm, is offering CV9030 and CV9035 vehicles, the assessment of submitted bids has shown.

. BAE Hagglunds AB, a Swedish firm, is offering CV9030 and CV9035 vehicles, the assessment of submitted bids has shown. The Financial Administration has developed a new application called Virtual Cash Register 2 , which will be available from the beginning of July. Its development cost 28,000, which is 545 times cheaper than the one currently in use.

, which will be available from the beginning of July. Its development cost 28,000, which is 545 times cheaper than the one currently in use. One third of Slovaks will not go on summer holiday this year, another quarter will spend their holiday in Slovakia, and about 3 out of 10 are going to travel abroad, a survey for the Home Credit company has found.

If you have suggestions on how this news overview can be improved, you can reach us at editorial@spectator.sk.
Schools lack hundreds of teachers.

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Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Teachers prepare for a street protest, which ministers plan to join. The president has vetoed Matovics pet project worth more than a billion euros. The date of municipal and regional elections is announced  and foreigners can vote too. Prehistoric reptiles are named after famous Slovaks.

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Same problem, different government

My kids go to a small, rural elementary school responsible for the early education of about three dozen kids every year. Its one headmaster and one teacher have been teaching there for most of their professional careers, giving generations of locals a good start in a stress-free environment. When the headmaster, who typically worked odd evening and summer jobs while teaching, neared retirement age a few years back he naturally prepared to leave. The local authorities practically begged him to stay. They couldnt find anyone to take his place. So he did.

There is nothing unique about this story in Slovakia. The Education Ministrys analytical body, the Education Policy Institute, estimates that Slovakias schools will be short by about 1,300 teachers this September compared to last year, and the number could nearly triple by the following school year. By 2025, only three years from now, schools in Slovakia will have trouble filling 8,600 vacancies, the institute estimated in an analysis that Education Minister Branislav Grohling (SaS) has cited, but which is yet to be published.
People have to consider extra fees.

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A few days ago, Viktor Orban's government introduced new income taxes to be paid by banks, energy companies, insurance companies, retail chains and airlines from 1 July.

According to Orban, these businesses make extraordinary profits from fees, commissions and interests.

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That is why he decided to take a large part of these profits to fill a gap in the state budget. He wants to finance the energy costs to make it cheaper for people, with some going to finance the army.

One of the sectors in question is airlines, which are charged extra fees for each ticket by the Hungarian government. The fee is based on where a passenger is flying.

If, for example, one is traveling from the Budapest or Debrecen airports to a European destination, Ryanair has to pay a fee of 3900 forints or 9.80 for each ticket. If a passenger flies to a non-European destination, the fee is 9797 forints or 24.6. The measure only concerns departures, not transit routes, i.e. transfers at a Hungarian airport.
Land-sea trade corridor cooperation guidelines enacted Updated: 2022-06-09 english.liangjiang.gov.cn

Cooperation guidelines for the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor under the framework of China-Singapore (Chongqing) connectivity programs have been enacted, according to a news conference held on June 8 in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality.

According to the document, by 2025 the total trade volume between domestic routes of the corridor and ASEAN countries will reach $180 billion.

Zeng Jinghua, director of the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity (CCI) Administrative Bureau, said at the conference that by 2025, the container throughput of sea-rail transport through the corridor is expected to reach 500,000, and the number of cross-border freight trains could stand at 2, 000.

The guidelines also specified five areas of cooperation  trade, industries, infrastructure and supply chain logistics, finance and digitalization.

China and Singapore will also deepen collaboration in single-window systems, boost corridor trade facilitation, and enhance customs partnerships between the two sides.

Chongqing will leverage the corridor to launch automobiles and supporting industry investments, bolster the municipality's industrial connections with Singapore and other countries and regions along the corridor, and form a sustainable auto supply chain system.

The government will also work to properly match the corridor with the China-Europe freight train and guide Chinese and Singaporean enterprises to participate in the construction of international logistics parks along the corridor in order to develop a complete global express delivery distribution system.

Meanwhile, green finance tools will be preferred for the construction of the corridor, and enterprises involved are encouraged to receive funds from the China-Singapore capital market.

Based on the special data channel of the China-Singapore connectivity network, a new comprehensive logistical information platform for the international land-sea trade corridor will be established. The two countries will build pilot zones for cross-border data transmission.
Chinese ambassador: healthy, stable development of China-Australia ties beneficial to two peoples

Xinhua) 08:36, June 13, 2022

Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian attends the national conference of the Australia China Friendship Society (ACFS) in Perth, Australia, on June 11, 2022. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

PERTH, Australia, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian said here on Saturday that a healthy and stable development of the bilateral relations is in line with the fundamental interests of the two peoples.

Xiao made the remarks while addressing the national conference of the Australia China Friendship Society (ACFS) held in Perth, capital of the state of Western Australia.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Australia diplomatic relations. Xiao noted in the past 50 years, the bilateral practical cooperation not only boosted China's economic and social development but also brought prosperity to Australia's various industries and helped it weather several global or regional economic and financial crises.

"During the past five decades, China has always been looking at the bilateral relations from a strategic and long-term perspective, and committed to friendly exchanges and cooperation with Australia in the spirit of mutual respect and mutual benefit. This policy remains unchanged."

Stressing the bilateral ties is at a "new juncture", the ambassador said it also faces some new opportunities.

The two countries could continue to deepen traditional cooperation while exploring new opportunities in green technology, new energy, healthcare, digital economy, and creative industries, and aligning green development strategies.

Xiao stressed that China and Australia could and should coexist in harmony despite their differences in many aspects.

"It's important to respect the diversity of civilizations, respect a country's choice of development path in accordance with its own national conditions, and make exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations a powerful bond for maintaining world peace and promoting common development."

Xiao also spoke highly of the role of Western Australia as a "major driving force and great contributor" for the China-Australia cooperation, and hailed the two peoples' friendship as a foundation for the bilateral relations.

He said the embassy and the Chinese Consulates-General in Australia stand ready to work with the Australian federal government, state governments and friends from all walks of life to move forward the China-Australia relationship along the right track to benefit the two countries and peoples.

Premier of the state of Western Australia Mark McGowan attends the national conference of the Australia China Friendship Society (ACFS) in Perth, Australia, on June 11, 2022. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

(Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji)




BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) warned that the fighting in Ukraine has a significant impact on the global food markets and could leave an additional 11 to 19 million people with chronic hunger.

According to an FAO spokesperson, the countries impacted most by the conflict are in the North African region.

He said that higher international food prices are projected to increase global food import bills to a record 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2022.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also warned that the conflict may trigger social and economic chaos around the world.

As the conflict shows no sign of easing off, leaders of European countries are divided on sanctions against Russia.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday disagreed on the necessity to impose sanctions on Russia after their discussion on the Ukraine crisis.

Vucic told a press conference that Scholz "in a decisive, clear and sharp manner" asked Serbia to join Western sanctions against Russia, and even offered help for the construction of energy capacities.

He said that Serbia has a different position when it comes to the necessity to impose sanctions on Russia.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday met with British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace to discuss support for Ukraine.

Wallace pledged that Britain would continue defense support for Kiev and stressed the importance of restoring Ukraine's territorial integrity.

As many as 11-19 million more people may plunge into chronic hunger worldwide due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. Here's also what you need to know about the latest development in the conflict.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service




Andrew Harris trainee Twin B Deluxe braved a final-turn first-over grind to land a 1:53 nose decision in taking the first of three $58,000 New York Sires Stakes (NYSS) events for three-year-old pacing colts and geldings on Sunday (June 12) at Saratoga Casino Hotel.

Settling in third through a :26.3 first quarter, driver Jason Bartlett kept Twin B Deluxe at the pegs into a :56 half before making his move into the backstretch. The American Ideal gelding blitzed pacesetter Huntanover into three-quarters in 1:24.1 and took over the lead spinning for home with Bounty Hunter in pursuit. Bounty Hunter pressed into Twin B Deluxe through the lane, the Twin B Deluxe held firm to the wire to snag a narrow victory. Michael Goldberg Racing LLC and A Harris Racing LLC owns the $7.10 winner.

Hazeville wired his competition in the second NYSS split. Scott Zeron sent the John McDermott pupil to the point and led through splits of :27.4, :57 and 1:25 before clocking a 1:53.2 win by a neck over Flip My Chip. The Huntsville gelding is owned by Jonathan Klee Racing, William Garofalo, Rosemarie Sienicki and Eric Taddeo and paid $7 to win.

Pleaseletmeknow delivered as the favourite in the third division, posting a 1:53 mile in a come-from-behind victory. Travis Alexander trains the $2.30 winner for owner Fiddler's Creek Stables LLC while Matt Kakaley had the drive to secure the head victory over Roll With The Flow.
TEHRAN, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday that the recent anti-Iran resolution adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was a "political and untechnical" move.

The visit of the IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to Israel ahead of its Board of Governors' meeting and the change in the tone of his comments showed that "he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, meeting the wrong people, which dealt a bad blow to the agency's reputation," Khatibzadeh said during his weekly briefing.

"We could not leave such a political and untechnical measure by the IAEA unanswered. We took our own measures," he added, referring to turning off some of IAEA's surveillance cameras at Iran's nuclear sites.

But interaction between Iran and the international nuclear agency will continue within the technical framework, the Iranian spokesman noted, urging IAEA to be "impartial and independent."

On Thursday, it was announced in Vienna that Iran had told the IAEA it was removing 27 surveillance cameras from its nuclear facilities.

On Wednesday, the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution proposed by the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, accusing Iran of noncooperation. 
The 2016 Trotting Triple Crown winner and triple millionaire Marion Marauder will join the Kentucky Horse Parks prestigious Hall of Champions.

Owned by Jean Wellwood of Stratford, Ont. and Devin Keeling of Cambridge, Ont., and campaigned by trainers Paula Wellwood and Mike Keeling, Marion Marauder becomes the first Hambletonian winner to occupy the famous barn.

Marion Marauder reached the pinnacle of trotting greatness when he swept the 2016 Hambletonian, Yonkers Trot and Kentucky Futurity with regular driver Scott Zeron to become the ninth trotting Triple Crown winner in history.

The Kentucky Horse Park Hall of Champions recognizes some of the finest horses who have competed on the track. We are excited to welcome Marion Marauder to this exclusive group, said Kentucky Horse Park Executive Director Lee Carter. Having won the 2016 Trotting Triple Crown, he has earned his place in history, and we are honoured to be entrusted with his care. We look forward to introducing Marion Marauder to our guests for years to come.



The son of Muscle Hill out of Spellbound Hanover raced for six years and retired in October of 2020 as the richest active Standardbred and eighth richest North American-based trotter in harness racing history, with $3.39 million (USD) in earnings. He achieved a mark of 1:50.2 at the age of seven.

The determined trotter won 22 of 69 lifetime starts and was named the 2016 OBrien Award winner for Three-Year-Old Trotting Colts & Geldings, the USHWA Dan Patch Award winner for Trotter of the Year and Three-Year-Old Male Trotter and the 2017 USHWA Dan Patch Award winner for Older Trotting Horses.

Marion Marauder joins retired Standardbreds Western Dreamer, Pacing Triple Crown winner; Mr Muscleman, Trotter of the Year; Won The West, two-time Breeders Crown champion; and Thoroughbreds Funny Cide, Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner; and Point Given, Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner, in the Hall of Champions.

Kentucky Horse Park visitors can meet Marion Marauder during normal operating hours, Wednesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT. For more information about the Kentucky Horse Park, visit kyhorsepark.com.

(Kentucky Horse Park)
Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and Army combat veteran, will be the special guest speaker at the 9th Annual Virginia Women Veterans Summit this Wednesday, June 15 at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.

The event, the first held in person since the pandemic, is sold out.

Hosted by Virginia Dept. of Veterans Services with Virginia Employment Commission, the theme this year is, Empowered! Sisters in Arms, Inspiring Generations.

Watch the livestream 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at VirginiaVeteransServices on Facebook.

Other invited speakers are Virginia First Lady Suzanne Youngkin, DVS Commissioner Daniel Gade and VEC Commissioner Carrie Roth.

There will be presentations and discussions on topics of importance to women veterans including inclusion, coping techniques, veteran health services, and removing the glass ceiling in job opportunities.

Awards will be presented in recognition of Virginia women veterans and organizations who have had led the way in assisting fellow veterans.

Journalist and U.S. Navy veteran Robin Beres will serve as Master of Ceremonies.

More than 107,000 women veterans call Virginia homethe largest percentage of women veterans per population of any state in America, said Gade in a statement.

These women, who proudly served in every branch of our armed forces, often face unique challenges and opportunities when they leave active duty and transition to civilian life. Our mission is to assure women veterans have the programs and resources they need to live, work and thrive in the Commonwealth and this annual Summit is a key part of that mission.

As the sister of a Bronze Star Army veteran, I have seen first-hand the tireless and selfless commitment of our veterans to our great country and the freedoms we hold so dear, said Roth. On behalf of the Virginia Employment Commission and a grateful Commonwealth, we honor and thank younot only today, but every day. It is imperative we do all we can to support your continued success in civilian life.

DVS Deputy Commissioner Annie Walker, an Army veteran, said she knows how life-changing the summit can be. More than 1,200 participated last year for a virtual-only event during the pandemic, she said. I encourage all women veterans who cannot be with us in person in Richmond to join us online as we livestream the program on Facebook.
Country music star Toby Keith said Sunday, June 12, that he has stomach cancer.

He said in a statement posted on Twitter that he was diagnosed last fall and has undergone chemotherapy, radiation treatment and surgery.

"So far, so good," he wrote. "I need time to breathe, recover and relax."

Keith said he is "looking forward to spending this time" with his family.

"But I will see the fans sooner or later," he wrote. "I can't wait."

The 60-year-old artist released his debut album, "Toby Keith," in 1993, according to IMDb. It contained his first chart-topping song, "Should've Been A Cowboy." He's since had "42 top 10 hits, 32 No. 1s, 40 million albums sold and more than 10 billion streams," his website says.

Keith was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2021, according to CMT News.

He started the Toby Keith Foundation, which provides support to children with cancer, in 2006, the foundation's website says. . In 2014, the foundation opened OK Kids Korral, which provides free housing to the families of children receiving cancer treatment in Oklahoma City.



2022 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The word cancer makes most people shudder. However, for oncologists, doctors who specialize in treating cancer, this word is part of their daily vocabulary  and they take it on as a challenge.

Since 1980, Ruby Grimm, Iredell Health System hematologist and oncologist, has fearlessly accepted this challenge, making every effort to change the course of her patients illnesses. Now, after 42 years of treating those with cancer, blood disorders and saving lives, Grimm is retiring.

A West Virginia native, Grimm had no idea where her health care career would take her when she graduated from medical school. Little did she know her medical interests would lead her to the small town of Statesville, North Carolina, and her career would be nothing short of remarkable.

Grimm was one of only five women in her 107-person West Virginia School of Medicine graduating class. After graduation, Grimm was selected to go to North Carolina Baptist Hospital (now Atrium Wake Forest Baptist) in Winston-Salem for her internal medicine residency program.

Grimm explains that during her residency each internal medicine intern (first-year resident) had to complete a two-month rotation in hematology and oncology  a challenging rotation that many interns, including Grimm herself, dreaded.

The rotation on hematology-oncology was the most challenging because you dealt with not only cancer but also all of the associated, additional medical problems people had. You were doing broad medicine while doing oncology, she said

Although Grimms director had originally assigned her to three months in hematology-oncology, it was shortened to two because the rotation was so heartbreaking for Grimm.

You have to think  back in the 70s, when you got a cancer diagnosis, everybody assumed you were going to die. People didnt even say the word cancer. They just whispered it. And after being on that floor and seeing people awfully sick, I thought, This is too hard. These patients are so very sick.

When the next year of residency arrived, Grimm and the other residents were informed two of them had to complete two, six-week rotations in hematology-oncology. When none volunteered, they decided to draw straws. Grimm was the first straw drawn.

This time, however, instead of working with cancer patients inside the hospital, Grimm was able to work with patients in an outpatient clinic. It was there that she found her passion for oncology and a desire to help people with cancer. She decided treating and diagnosing cancer and blood disorders was what she wanted to do for the rest of her career.

After residency, Grimm stayed at Baptist for her hematology and oncology fellowship. In 1980, after completing her fellowship, Grimm moved to Statesville with her husband, James Bradford, a cardiologist.

It wasnt easy to find a place that needed both a cardiologist and an oncologist, and there was no oncology at all in Statesville, said Grimm.

After arriving in Statesville, Grimm started from scratch and built the oncology program from the ground up. Over the years, Grimm and her oncology team participated in clinical trials, established the tumor board, trained chemotherapy and oncology nurses, and helped start the hospice program.

For the first time, residents of Statesville could receive life-saving cancer care without having to travel to Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Durham or Chapel Hill.

In the beginning of her career, Grimm spent her days visiting patients at Iredell Memorial Hospital in the morning, treating patients in her office during the day, and going back to the hospital in the evening. When Iredell added hospitalists, she was able to spend less time in the hospital while still seeing patients in the office.

In 2012, Iredell Health System bought Grimms office, Ruby Grimm Oncology, and she became part of the Iredell Physician Network.

Throughout four decades of medical advances and changes, Grimm explains that some aspects of her practice actually remained constant.

Once you enter the exam room with a patient, close the door, and sit down and talk to them, its the same. When you get a chance to directly interact with patients, helping them, getting to know them, and advising is still the same, she said.

The field of oncology, though, has seen significant changes.

Over 42 years, what has happened in oncology has been dramatic. Its not just chemotherapy. Now its targeted therapy, immunotherapy and genetic advances. Its a bad time to leave this profession because the things weve been anticipating, waiting and begging for are here now, she said.

In her many years of treating and diagnosing cancer patients, Grimm has found making a difference in the lives of her patients most rewarding.

Even if you cant save a life, you can help them through the situation. I think that is very rewarding, she said.

Though Grimm is retiring, she will leave behind a lasting legacy of hard work, commitment and genuine care for her patients. Her passion, dedication and emphasis on continuous education completely transformed cancer care in Statesville.

Dr. Grimm has been a true gift to Iredell County and Iredell Health System with her dedication to her patients and providing them with cutting edge cancer care, said Pam Westmoreland Sholar, hematologist and oncologist who has worked with Grimm since 1986.

Although sometimes it was hard and challenging, it was always rewarding and it was an honor to be able to help, said Grimm.
If your upcoming travel plans include outdoor adventure, make sure your familys skills, gear and intel are up to speed. Here are five ideas t
Freed from a Virginia prison last August, a Wythe County cop killer was arrested again in Oklahoma over the weekend on a firearm charge.

Christopher S. Wheeler, 42, is being on a held on a $150,000 bond in the Kay County Detention Center following his June 12 arrest by the Ponca City Police Department.

According to Ponca City PD Capt. Kevin L. Jeffries, police got a report that a man was inside a restaurant brandishing a firearm and holster and bragging about killing a police officer.

Somebody called us, and we investigated and figured out he was a convicted felon, Jeffries said.

Wheeler was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.

In 1996, Wheeler, who was then a teenager, was convicted as an adult of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Wythe County Deputy Cliff Dicker. The officer was shot once with a .22-caliber rifle and again fatally with his own weapon.

Dicker had gone to Wheelers Wytheville residence to arrest him on theft charges.

Sentenced to 43 years in prison, Wheeler was released early because of state guidelines in place at the time.

On probation, hes being supervised by Oklahoma authorities. He moved there after his release.
There are quite a few upcoming laptops that may be a perfect choice for you. From Asus, Infinix to Lenovo, here is the full list of upcoming laptops in India.

Upcoming Laptops in India: Are you looking for your first laptop or upgrading from your old one? Then, there are a number of options that are already available in the market and, notably, there are some big brands that are coming up with new launches soon. Whether you are looking for a budget laptop to cater to your daily basic needs or an advanced gaming laptop, there are many brands that are coming up with new models in the Indian market. To help you look out for the best, we have listed here all the upcoming laptop launches in India- from Infinix, Asus to Lenovo.

Upcoming Laptops in India

Infinix INBook X1

Infinix has stepped into the laptops market recently and now the company is ready to expand its slim laptops lineup with the launch of the INBook X1 Slim. This will be the second-generation Infinix INBook series laptop which is expected to have an aluminum alloy metal body. The leaks and rumours suggest it will offer a 14.8mm thick body, which will have 1.24 kg of weight. It is said to be available with Intel Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 chipsets. The laptop may pack a 50Wh battery with the support of a 65W Type C charger. This may be launched in four colour options: green, blue, red, and grey.

Looking for a performance oriented laptop? Then Asus is coming up with another option in the laptop market focusing on the gaming aspect. Well, this Asus laptop is expected to be useful across a range of activities. The Asus X415JA-BV301W may use a 14-inch display along with a fingerprint sensor for security. Leaks suggest that it may be powered by Intel Core i3 processor. Lenovo is looking forward to launching a slim and features-oriented laptop for the budget-conscious users in the market. Lenovo Slim 3 will be a Windows-powered notebook that may have a 15.6-inch display. The laptop will be powered by Intel Core i3 processor with Windows 11 OS pre-installed. It is said to offer up to 7.5 hours of battery backup.

Lenovo Slim 3

Lenovo is coming up with a new Slim 3 laptop in India which will be performance and feature-oriented for budget-conscious users. Lenovo Slim 3 is expected to be powered by an Intel Core i3 processor with Windows 11 OS pre-installed and having 512GB of storage space. According to the leaks, the laptop is said to offer up to 7.5 hours of battery backup.

HP 14s-dr2514TU

The new HP laptop is aiming for the consumers who are looking for a budget laptops in India. HP 14s-dr2514TU is tipped feature a 14-inch screen which will support 1080 x 1920 pixels resolution. It may be powered by an Intel core series chipset with UHD graphics. It is expected to offer a 65Wh battery capacity offering around up to 12 hours of battery backup on a single charge.
The Malaysia Computer Emergency Response Team (MyCERT) has warned Malaysians of cybercriminals that are using malicious Android apps to target internet users in our country. Through a campaign called SMSSpy, these cybercriminals are utilising mischievous tactics to steal and obtain users private banking information.

In an advisory posted on 13 June 2022, MyCERT asserted that SMSSpy are exerting two campaigns. The first campaign involves the cybercriminals calling victims and posing as law enforcement officers to trick them into downloading a malicious Android app to allegedly settle their outstanding payments.

As for the second campaign, the cybercriminals use phishing websites that look similar to the official website of popular services in Malaysia. Furthermore, they are also utilising Facebook ads to promote services that look legitimate but are merely a front for phishing sites. Among the services sites that MyCERT has found include Grabmaid, Marias Cleaning, Maid4u, YourMaid, Maideasy, MaidACall, MyMaidKL and PetsMore.

Through these phishing sites and malicious Android apps, the cybercriminals are able to obtain personal banking information and worse, steal money from the victims bank accounts. Hence, do be careful when downloading Android apps and make sure to only use legitimate services and websites before keying in your personal data!

For more information on these malicious Android apps and other advisories to keep you safe online, do visit MyCERTs official website here. Moreover, for more tech news such as this, do stay tuned to us at TechNave.
Supermanuevers, such as the cobra maneuver, can be of significant use in air-to-air combat. Using a library of wing morphing states, a biomimetic morphing-wing aircraft can carry out these supermaneuvers. Credit: Pons & Cirak.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, are already widely used in various real-world settings, including the film industry, the military, and the transport sector. In the future, they could also be used to assist human agents during search & rescue missions, to monitor remote or inaccessible environments, and to deliver packages.

Most drones on the market today have a similar structure, comprised of a main body and four or more rotating propellers. Some engineers, however, have been developing new drones with alternative designs inspired by birds or other flying creatures.

Arion Pons and Fehmi Cirak, two researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, have recently introduced a new approach that could enable supermaneuvrability in drones that can adapt their wing configuration. Their approach, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, draws inspiration from the biological dynamics that allow birds, bats and other flying living organisms to fly in different and elaborate ways.

"The idea for the paper was the focus of my Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge," Pons told Tech Xplore. "At the time, I was looking at ways to make existing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) more maneuverable. Improvements in maneuverability could lead to better performance in combat drones controlled by artificial intelligence; or more effective missile technology."

The cobra maneuver is named so because it resembles the rearing of a cobra. Illustrated is a central segment of a simulation of a cobra maneuver carried out by a biomimetic aircraft. Credit: Pons & Cirak.

Before they started working on their approach, Pons and Cirak closely studied biological dynamics that allow birds, bats and other flying creatures to attain extraordinary in-flight maneuverability through complex wing motion. The key objective of their paper was to artificially replicate the wing motion of these animals to radically enhance the maneuverability of UAVs. The recent study also drew inspiration from previous studies in the field of aerospace engineering, which were aimed at developing new technologies to make UAVs more maneuverable.

"By looking at the kinds of complex wing control used by birds, bats, and other flying creatures, we could get an idea of the extreme maneuvering effects of different kinds of wing control," Pons said. "Simulating these effects on a unique computer model of a maneuvering UAV, we can refine this understanding, and build up a library of what kinds of wing control generate what kinds of effects."

Pons and Cirak selected specific extreme flight maneuvers, or supermaneuvers, that they wanted their UAV to perform. Using the information in the library they compiled, they could then determine the wing control required to successfully perform these supermaneuvers using UAVs.

"The result is a concrete strategy for achieving different forms of extreme maneuver in a bio-inspired UAV," Pons said. "Our approach can boost the maneuverability of a relatively mundane UAV to that of a high-performance fighter aircraft, using particular forms of bio-inspired wing morphing control. More specifically, we can recreate forms of supermaneuverability: fantastical maneuvers like tilting the aircraft to a backward facing direction (the 'cobra maneuver'), or making it land perfectly on a vertical wall."

Other supermaneuvers are also available. Illustrated is an example of a ballistic transition maneuver carried out by a biomimetic aircraft: a rapid deceleration and soft landing maneuver on the vertical surface of a building. Credit: Pons & Cirak.

The researchers evaluated the effectiveness of approach for attaining two main supermaneuvers, known as the Pugachev cobra and ballistic transition maneuvers, using a state-of-the-art flight simulator. These maneuvers had previously only been replicated in UAVs using high-performance and expensive fighter aircraft, yet Pons and Cirak simulated them in a far less powerful wing-morphing UAVs.

In the future, their work could pave the way towards the development of highly maneuverable UAVs capable of advanced air-to-air combat, landing on rough or uneven surfaces, and shooting missiles or loitering munitions. In addition, the approach devised by the researchers could be used to study the biological flight dynamics of different animal species.

"In my current position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Israel, I'm developing bio-inspired drones in collaboration with RAFAEL Advanced Defence Systems," Pons added. "I hope to develop these bio-inspired drones further and evaluate them for industrial applications. Maybe you'll see a bio-inspired drone around someday!"

Explore further Bird-like wings could help drones keep stable in gusts

More information: Arion Pons et al, Pitch-axis supermanoeuvrability in a biomimetic morphing-wing aircraft. arXiv:2205.09431 [physics.bio-ph]. Journal information: arXiv Arion Pons et al, Pitch-axis supermanoeuvrability in a biomimetic morphing-wing aircraft. arXiv:2205.09431 [physics.bio-ph]. arxiv.org/abs/2205.09431

 2022 Science X Network
MANILA, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines and China exchanged the agreements on Monday to finance a bridge connecting Davao City and Samal Island in the southern Philippines.

China's Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian said he exchanged the signed framework agreement and loan agreement for the Davao City-Samal Island connector bridge project with Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez.

"The first cross-sea bridge that the Davaoeno people have long dreamed of will come true," Huang said in a social media post.

Huang said the Chinese government will provide a concessional loan of approximately 350 million U.S. dollars to the Philippine government to finance the two-way four-lane 3.86-km bridge across the Pakiputan Strait.

"Once completed, this bridge will provide a resilient and reliable transportation link between Davao City and Samal Island, improving transportation efficiency, promoting internal mobility, (and) stimulating tourism potential," he added.

Moreover, he said the construction will create thousands of jobs, contribute to the local economic recovery and improve people's livelihood. 
Dont save it for a rainy day With ongoing droughts across much of the state, rainwater harvesting is something nearly every Texan can do to make the most of the moisture they get. Even after the much-needed rainfall we recently received in late May and June, much of Texas is still under varying levels of... Read More 

The post Beginners guide to harvesting rainwater appeared first on AgriLife Today.
Arch Beaver Aplin III started Buc-ees two years after graduating from Texas A&M with a degree in construction science, and hes been building the iconic travel centers ever since.

Aplin recently donated $50 million to his alma mater for a hospitality entrepreneurship program at the school, one of the largest gifts ever given to A&M from a single donor.

The contribution will go toward establishing the Aplin Center that will serve as an immersive learning laboratory for students, according to Kelly Brown, division of marketing and communications associate vice president at A&M.

They havent built a timeline yet. Theyre in the preliminary stages of the process, she said. Before a timeline is set, they will have to create a design concept, hire a construction company and take all the other necessary steps that come with building a new facility.

Texas A&M Today reported the Aplin Center will offer a transformational student experience through new university programs in hospitality, retail studies and food product development involving innovative degree programs including viticulture, fermentation processes, coffee and food science.

The Aplin Center will reportedly be built across the street from the A&M Hotel and Conference Center at the intersection of Wellborn Road and the pedestrian tunnel that functions as the main foot and automobile traffic corridor on campus.

The facility also will house product development laboratories and food tasting centers which can be utilized in partnership with related industries, the article states. Primary academic partners will be the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Mays Business School, although other academic units will be involved in specialty projects.

Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp said Aplins contributions will continue to help the education process of future students.

When Beaver Aplin does something, its never halfway, Sharp told Texas A&M Today. The love he has and shows for Texas A&M and Aggies is inspirational and appreciated. This is an awesome gift and will position Texas A&M to become the top hospitality program in the nation.

The center will include outdoor and indoor student recreational space, as well as retail and food service areas managed by students and faculty through the educational programs, the article stated. The Aplin Center will host corporate training and recruiting programs, along with professional development opportunities; workforce training based on industry needs will be a key component of the center, according to the article.

Texas A&M President Dr. M. Katherine Banks said the Aplin Center will allow for more opportunities for students to seek education in entrepreneurship.

Arch Beaver Aplin is a true visionary and one of the most creative entrepreneurs I have known, Banks said in the article. He remains connected to his university, speaking to many students who share his passion for business and product development. Through this generous gift, he is creating a living, learning laboratory that will provide transformational opportunities for our students. The Aplin Center will positively impact Aggies for generations to come.

Aplin said Banks vision of a world-class hospitality entrepreneurship program is what A&M needs and hes proud to have an opportunity to be involved.

We want to create a learning, gathering space on the A&M campus that exemplifies hospitality, Aplin told Texas A&M Today. A place where people come together. A place where the Aggie culture can thrive  a happy place.

Aplin opened his first Buc-ees in Lake Jackson, in 1982. He built the iconic, multi-million-dollar business on several promises: pristine restrooms, scores of fuel pumps, a vast selection of food and consumer items, and well-paid employees. Buc-ees now has 43 locations across the south, including 35 in Texas. The company recently opened a location in Florence, South Carolina.

Aplin serves as chairman of Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission and is on the ERCOT Board Selection Committee, a lifetime member of both the Coastal Conservation Association and the 100 Club of Brazoria County. He is also on the Lieutenant Governors Transportation Advisory Board and the Board of Directors of The Association of Former Students.

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GASTONIA, N.C. (AP)  Three people were being treated for wounds that were not life-threatening after a shooting Friday at a mall in North Carolina, police said.

Rick Goodale, a spokesman for the Gastonia Police Department, said the shooting happened around noon Friday in the food court of the Eastridge Mall in Gastonia. The city of about 77,000 people is west of Charlotte, not far from the state line with South Carolina.

Goodale said by phone that there is no active threat to the public.

He said the three people shot are being treated for their wounds.

He said one or more suspects fled the mall and haven't been caught.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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At a critical time in education, Central Community College saw a need to educate the educators.

Human Relations Awareness was developed by the school in response to the COVID-induced substitute teacher shortage, which still hangs on.

When the substitute teacher shortage reached its pinnacle, Nebraska Department of Education at some point reached out to CCC, asking if it could help with the effort to educate  and certify  more subs.

The state needed another school to offer a human relations training course  a requirement for anyone who holds an educator certificate or permit in Nebraska.

Abie Ott, CCC Faculty Resource Center director, said eventually the request reached the team who would create the course.

The faculty resource center responded quickly.

We used information from (NDE) about the human relations training requirements, that particular rule for the state , Ott said. We used that to develop an outline and sent that information to them. They approved the looks of the outline, and then wanted us to go ahead and continue with some basic development.

After Human Relations Awareness was launched, there was still a bit of tinkering, based on student feedback, primarily.

Weve improved a few things here and there, but really, its remained pretty close to the same product as it was started, Ott said.

The course, in some capacity, had been available at other Nebraska colleges and universities as a three-credit, semester-long course.

Central Community College recently received a national award for its version. The school is one of 32 winners of the 2021-22 Innovation of the Year Award given by the League for Innovation in the Community College.

When announcing the awards, LICC cited Ott, FRC director; Amy Mancini, CCC dean of academic education; Lauren Slaughter, CCC equity and compliance manager; and FRC instructional design consultants Elizabeth Anson, Danielle Schwinn and Tracy Watts, for creating and implementing the project.

Central Community Colleges version is a two-week, one-credit online course. Since the course was first offered, more than 1,000 people have taken it, according to the college.

The great majority are people who are willing to wanting or wanting to serve, but some are also new educators to the state of Nebraska, because we have that unique requirement for certification, Ott said.

Those teachers might already be certified, or be administrators, in another state.

Its not as prominent now, but early on, we had lots of other people who are involved in human services take the course, Ott said. Like law enforcement, nurses, and other people who maybe have an off day or two during the week.

Human Relations Awareness is broken down into four areas of study. The first looks at the history of a pluralistic society, followed by a comprehensive look at bias. The third and fourth areas ask the questions, How does this affect the students, and How do we foster a sensitive environment?

We ask students to kind of dig in and some people really do some great reflective work and writing and deserve some good feedback and encouragement. We get that takes time, Ott said.

The course has touched many educators and students, Ott said. I think you would find that most schools in our area have had someone whos probably utilized the course.

The reach goes beyond the Grand Island area, Ott added.

Weve had people all over. I had a student who was in Korea who had affiliation with the Kearney area. I think he was just visiting (Korea) and he was taking the course while he was there.

To be sure, Ott said, the demand for the course isnt as great right now, but its still there.

Last summer was probably our peak, but were still running three sections of it. Those three sections are full, and with a little waitlist.

When we started that very first run the need was so great. We had 50 students in each of our sections. That very first course had 150 students in it right off the bat, Ott said.

There are many possibilities for the course, including adult learners and people in areas of human services besides teaching.

Weve had all kinds of age groups. I had a student who was in his 70s that took the class, she said.

It must have made quite an impression. While shes had feedback from other students, that particular one left a very special voicemail for her just a few days ago.

He thanked me for teaching him more in two weeks than he had learned in the last 50 years, Ott said. I certainly saved that voicemail, but absolutely sad that I wasnt able to answer that call. I am grateful to have the voicemail recorded. Its one of those that need to be held on to.

Jessica Votipka is the education reporter at the Grand Island Independent. She can be reached at 308-381-5420.

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OMAHA  Obsa Ahmed, a 29-year-old Grand Island man,, was sentenced Friday to 24 months in prison by U.S. District Judge John M. Gerrard for failing to register under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

After serving his prison term, Ahmed will also be required to serve five years of supervised release and register as a sex offender.

SORNA, also known as the Adam Walsh Protection and Safety Act, requires that a convicted sex offender register in each jurisdiction where the offender resides, where the offender is employed, or where the offender is a student, and that the sex offender maintain current registrations.

Ahmed was required to register as a sex offender because he had been convicted of false imprisonment of a minor in 2017 in Wisconsin. This conviction required that Ahmed register as a sex offender for 15 years pursuant to federal law. This requirement included that he register in any other state to which he moved or was employed.

In April 2021 Ahmed moved to Grand Island from Wisconsin. Although he gained employment and remained in Nebraska, he did not register as a sex offender in the state of Nebraska.

This case was investigated by the U.S. Marshals Service.
JERUSALEM, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Israel's Defense Ministry announced that its next-generation robotic combat vehicle was unveiled on Monday at the Eurosatory Defense and Security Exhibition in Paris.

The so-called Medium Robotic Combat Vehicle (M-RCV) was presented for the first time at the bi-annual weapons and security trade fair, which was opened in Paris earlier in the day.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that several "cutting-edge technologies" were integrated into the vehicle, including advanced maneuvering capabilities and an ability to carry heavy and varied mission loads.

It also features a built-in system for transporting and receiving drones designed to perform reconnaissance missions in the field ahead of the arrival of the vehicle.

The vehicle, which is still in the final stages of development, will also incorporate a missile launcher.

The vehicle was designed to be operational day and night in all-weather scenarios while "implementing an open architecture for integrating future capabilities and integrating the robot alongside other tools and capabilities," the ministry said.

The system was developed as part of "the autonomous battlefield concept," which is led by the Defense Ministry's Directorate of Defense Research and Development in collaboration with Israeli weapons companies.

Field tests are expected to begin in 2023, the ministry said. 
This spring we celebrated 7,200 new graduates of the University of Nebraska  new Husker, Maverick, Loper and UNMC alumni who are future leaders of our state.

Its one of my favorite times of year. Commencement brings to life the fundamental reason why public higher education exists: To create opportunities for students to build a better future for themselves and the world around them.

Each graduating class of the University of Nebraska transforms our state in ways that are impossible to quantify. These students go on to become the next generation of teachers, health care professionals, agricultural leaders, entrepreneurs and engineers. They not only fill todays job openings, they create jobs that dont even exist yet  high-skill, high-wage positions that propel Nebraska forward.

They grow our tax base, injecting millions into the economy every year. College graduates contribute to strong communities through high rates of volunteering and public service.

And University of Nebraska graduates, having learned from the best in their fields in classrooms and labs across our campuses, are uniquely positioned to solve some of the biggest challenges of our time: treating cancer and other devastating diseases, producing enough food to feed the world, protecting our national security.

No other entity, in fact, impacts Nebraskas economy and workforce quite like the University of Nebraska. With more than 50,000 students, world-class faculty and a vibrant research enterprise that affects everything from the food you eat to the health care you receive, the scope and scale of the universitys work is significant and far-reaching.

While the chancellors and I are immensely proud of the universitys impact on Nebraskas economic development, we also know we cant simply keep doing business as usual.

Its time to do more  create more opportunities for students, form more partnerships with local businesses, offer more internships that will lead to great-paying jobs right here in the state.

Nebraskas workforce needs are too urgent for its public university not to be leaning in aggressively on economic development. In survey after survey, the clarion call from business leaders is that workforce is their No. 1 challenge. We can all be proud that Nebraskas economy has been more resilient than most through COVID-19, but to truly grow and compete, we need more workforce.

That includes college graduates who can fill crucial shortages in fields like healthcare, IT and teaching. And it will require us to retain talented Nebraskans as well as make our state the destination of choice for people looking for a great place to live, work and raise their families.

Our challenge is clear, but Nebraskans know what it means to have a bias for action. As a university, we understand the time to act is now.

Thats why, as we began updating the University of Nebraska Systems strategic plan, one of the first items on our list was a goal for every University of Nebraska student to have an internship or other experiential learning opportunity.

Its why weve launched new programs like UNOs Career Connect, a collaboration with local businesses to provide unprecedented access to paid internships for UNO students. Its why UNLs Institute for Agriculture and Natural Resources just sent 26 students across the state for 10-week internships focused on rural community growth. Its why UNK has formed a new partnership with Central Community College ensuring a seamless transition from an associates degree to a bachelors degree for students in a variety of business fields.

Its why were exploring new strategies to make it easier for working professionals to earn credentials that can advance their careers, and to help the 300,000-plus Nebraskans who have earned some college credits complete their degree. And its why we are joining with elected leaders and education colleagues in pursuit of a bold new goal for 70% of 25- to 34-year-old Nebraskans to hold post-secondary credentials.

None of us can do this alone, after all. Workforce development is a statewide challenge  and a national competition. With our shared bold vision for economic growth, I believe Nebraskans will compete to win.

Ted Carter is the president of the University of Nebraska System.
President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia's economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. The United States generally imports about 100,000 barrels a day from Russia, only about 5% of Russia's crude oil exports, according to Rystad Energy. Last year, roughly 8% of U.S. imports of oil and petroleum products came from Russia. Gas prices have been rising for weeks due to the conflict and in anticipation of potential sanctions on the Russian energy sector. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline soared 45 cents a gallon in the past week and topped $4.06 on Monday, according to auto club AAA. Should the US ban Russian oil imports over Ukraine war?

You voted:
Orangeburg Department of Public Safety

Police are investigating after 1-year-old was taken to the Augusta Burn Center, according to an incident report.

According to the toddlers father, he and the mother were getting a bath ready for the little girl on Thursday night when they heard her scream, the report states.

The father claims the toddler pulled a pot off the stove and got splashed a little on the front area.

Orangeburg County EMS transported the toddler to the Regional Medical Center for treatment.

Police spoke with the toddlers mother there.

The mother allegedly told them that the toddler wanted something to drink, so she went to the bedroom to get the toddlers cup and then walked into the kitchen.

The mother said she wasnt aware that the toddler was in the kitchen and then heard the toddler scream when a pot of water spilled, the report states.

The mother called 911 when the babys skin began to peel, the report states.

The child was taken to the Augusta Burn Center for further care.

Hospital staff also contacted the childs S.C. Department of Social Services caseworker.

Orangeburg County Sheriffs Office

A 10-year-old girl was placed in another home after deputies allegedly discovered she was in a home without running water and with piles of trash bags near Norway, according to an incident report.

Deputies arrived at the home just before 2 p.m. Friday. A woman greeted them, saying that the 10-year-old was afraid to leave her bedroom because she wasnt certain what was on the floor behind the bedroom door, the report said.

The report claims that their mother had been throwing food in front of the door and it had piled up.

A deputy managed to get the girl to come out of her room.

The girl told deputies that there wasnt any running water in the home and the electricity only works in the bedrooms, the report states.

The girls grandmother gave deputies consent to search the home and denied having anything to do with the condition of the home.

Deputies claim they saw trash bags full of trash piled up in the corner of the kitchen, in front of the sink and cabinets.

There was moldy food in bags and containers in the refrigerator, the report states.

The woman who greeted deputies told them that she and the 10-year-old use a toddlers training toilet, the report said. Once the toilet gets full, she dumps it in the field next to the home.

She also stated that she buys gallons of water for bathing and to clean the toilet.

The case remains under investigation.

In other reports:

 A Vance man is accused of breaking into a home and attacking a female.

Bryan Daniel Green, 20, of 226 Damascus Road, is charged with first-degree burglary, third-degree domestic violence and malicious injury to real property. He was taken into custody Friday.

Green is accused of throwing cinder blocks at the window of a Eutawville home on May 16.

He then allegedly entered the home and punched a female in the head and body, then threw her to the floor. Green and the female had previously been in a relationship.

Orangeburg County Magistrate Derrick Dash set Greens bond at $11,087 cash or surety.

As of Monday afternoon, Green hadnt posted bond.

If hes convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

 A Neeses man has been charged in the May 8 burglary of a North Road home.

William Franklin Gray III, 22, of 149 Forest Brook Drive, Neeses, is facing one count each of conspiracy, grand larceny valued more than $2,000 but less than $10,000 and first-degree burglary. He was taken into custody Friday.

Warrants accuse Gray of riding to the home with three not-yet-named co-defendants and telling them his uncles house had guns in it and it would be a good way to make a lick.

Gray allegedly stayed in the vehicle while co-defendants burglarized the home and stole at least seven firearms valued around $5,000, warrants say.

Gray remains at the Orangeburg County Detention Center without bond.

Contact the writer: mbrown@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-533-5545. Follow on Twitter: @MRBrownTandD

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Doctors from the East Coast to the West Coast, as well as outside the U.S., flocked to see the Regional Medical Centers state-of-the-art Dialysis Access Institute last week.

It means a lot to have doctors coming from all over to see what has been established and done. It is huge, said Dr. John Ross, the founder of the institute.

On Thursday morning, the Dialysis Access Institute hosted several international physicians who are experts in the field of dialysis access. The doctors were in South Carolina for the Vascular Access for Hemodialysis Symposium in Charleston.

During their visit, the physicians toured the DAIs facility and learned of the cases that are often sent to the institute in Orangeburg.

What we have been doing is trying to show people what we are doing, how were doing it and why were doing it. Many companies have medical devices and when we learn how to use those devices appropriately or better than what they thought, they then bring in doctors to see how these devices could be used or how they could be incorporated in their practice to better serve patients, Ross said.

Ross has been serving the Orangeburg community, along with connecting states and counties, as founder of the Dialysis Access Institute since 2011. He saw success shortly after opening the doors.

I felt that this institute would be remarkably successful  despite the location. We know that there is an increasingly large volume of dialysis access to be done. We needed to figure out a way to be able to do this very efficiently for the patients. If we were to build a building, have the appropriate, motivated personnel, and be focused on doing this, there was no way it could be a failure, it would be impossible, Ross said.

Ross founded the institute in Orangeburg when he noticed that there is not a place for doctors to go to learn how to perform a dialysis-based operation.

We learned how to do these operations a long time ago back in 1979 and we kept learning more about how to do the operations through repetition because there was nowhere to go to learn how, Ross said.

Then we developed certain operations, prompting patients who were having trouble to come to Orangeburg. They eventually ended up hearing about us in a rural area. Then it made no difference whether you were downtown New York or whether you were in San Francisco or wherever.  People felt that we were obtaining good results in what we were doing, so the patients were coming from far distances and other doctors  they talk to each other and say Well, you might want to look at this place we have up in Orangeburg. They seem to be doing a really good job at taking care of these patients, Ross said.

Ross said care for dialysis patients is a top priority because their life depends on the operations that the institute performs.

He urges doctors to learn and understand what the best outcomes are for the patients.

There will be some that do things quite a bit differently and it does not necessarily matter how they do it, as long as they get the appropriate outcome. Everything is about: Are you getting the appropriate outcome? There are many ways of doing these particular procedures, but you always have to look at your outcomes and see if we are doing it the best way we possibly can, Ross said.

Ross continues to see a need for the institute.

Right now, we were certainly the leader in trying to establish what we call the total access center  where everything can be done under one roof. Other folks are trying to do this now and I think this is going to be the model for the future. I really do believe it, Ross said.

I want this institute to grow and grow and grow.

Lauren Pringle, a 2022 Claflin University mass communications graduate, is reporting for The Times and Democrat as a Lee Enterprises-sponsored summer intern.

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Tuesday is primary election day in South Carolina.

Voters will go to the polls and make an initial choice: Democratic or Republican primary. Their choice potentially will have impact beyond Tuesday, with a voter having cast a ballot in one primary being unable to vote in any runoff for the other party two weeks from now.

Runoffs are not without controversy, with ranked-choice voting as the favored alternative of critics.

In primary races with more than two candidates, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. Ballots are counted for each voter's top choice. Losing candidates are eliminated and ballots for losing candidates are redistributed until one candidate is the top remaining choice of a majority of the voters. When the field is reduced to two, the instant runoff allows a comparison of the top two candidates head-to-head.

According to Fairvote.org: Ranked-choice voting makes democracy more fair and functional. It works in a variety of contexts. It is a simple change that can have a big impact. With ranked-choice voting, voters can rank as many candidates as they want in order of choice. Candidates do best when they attract a strong core of first-choice support while also reaching out for second and even third choices. When used as an instant runoff to elect a single candidate like a mayor or a governor, RCV helps elect a candidate that better reflects the support of a majority of voters. When used as a form of fair-representation voting to elect more than one candidate like a city council, state legislature or even Congress, RCV helps to more fairly represent the full spectrum of voters.

In South Carolina, ranked-choice voting could be applicable in political primaries and local elections in which the winner is required to have a majority to win. General elections have no such requirement. The candidate with the most votes wins.

A primary election requires the winner to secure the 50% plus one vote. That means in races featuring more than two candidates, a runoff election between the top two vote-getters is a real possibility. In South Carolina, runoffs are held on the Tuesday two weeks after the initial vote.

Candidates have reason to dislike the runoff process. Opponents of a particular candidate can load up the primary field in order to dilute the vote and force a second election on a day when history shows fewer people will turn out. The underdog gets the added publicity surrounding earning a place in the runoff and then works to get out his or her vote in numbers, knowing the likelihood that at least a percentage of the favorites voters will not return to vote.

It is not uncommon for the candidate squeaking into a runoff far behind the leader in the primary vote to make the runoff election very close  or to win.

BUT, South Carolina should stay with runoffs.

While ranked-choice voting (or the instant runoff) is logical and in fact could result in election of the candidate that better reflects the support of the majority, it will be hard to sell to voters here  and those making election law. There remains something powerfully important about selecting the one and only candidate you believe should hold an office  and then voting for that candidate alone.

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BEIRUT, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon will not give up on its right to its oil and gas wealth, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Monday, expressing readiness to return to negotiation over border demarcation with Israel.

"It is out of the question for Lebanon to give up on its right to its gas and oil wealth. But We will emphasize during our talks with U.S. Energy Envoy Amos Hochstein Lebanon's willingness to resume indirect negotiations with Israel," Aoun was quoted as saying in a statement released by Lebanon's Presidency.

Aoun's remarks came during his meeting with Lebanon's independent lawmakers who urged the president to protect Lebanon's oil and gas wealth.

The president also affirmed Lebanon's rejection of Israeli threats, pointing out that Israel has violated international laws and resolutions by sending a ship to a disputed area with Lebanon.

On June 5, Israel sent an Energean Power ship to the Karish gas field, which Israel claims is within its economic zone but Lebanon says in disputed waters.

The move prompted Lebanon to invite Hochstein, who will arrive in Lebanon later on Monday, to discuss the potential of resuming indirect border demarcation talks with Israel.

Israel has long claimed the Karish North field as its own property, but Lebanon expanded its claim in territorial waters, which would include at least part of the oil field.

This has resulted in the halting of indirect negotiations for the demarcation of the maritime borders between the two countries. 
St Georges International Schools Year 13 students celebrated their graduation and attended their prom this month, reflecting on their educational journey.

The 44 students and their parents attended the graduation ceremony at the schools auditorium where Stefan Ziegenhagen, Chair-Elect of the Board of Governors, spoke of the value of flexibility and adaptability in a global society and wished the students well in their future careers.

Principal Dr Christian Barkei commended the students on their resilience and positive attitudes despite the challenges of the past two pandemic years.

We have certainly aimed to educate you, our students, to be at home in an international environment, comfortable with different cultures and languages, flexible, tolerant and encompassing a true sense of international-mindedness. You should also have collected along the way a good grounding in academic subjects and hopefully  evident in your choices of university courses  a genuine sense of intellectual curiosity and wonder, Dr Barkei said.

Mr Mark Fleet, Head of Secondary and Vice-Principal, presented each student with their School Leaving Certificate and congratulated them on bright futures ahead.
The artificial lake in Echternach is poised to become the Grand Duchy's fourth bathing lake after the Water Management Authority declared its water quality good enough for swimming.

"Part of Lake Echternach will soon be designated as a bathing lake", said alderman Ben Scheuer in a press release issued by the municipality. No opening date was set, but Scheuer added that the beach and waters were ready for a first splash in 2022.

The municipality of Echternach has conducted a lot of work around the local lake recently: the entrance area was redesigned, a new car park installed at the youth hostel, and the hiking path restored.

A specific area between two small islands has been designated for swimming after the Water Management Authority gave its green light.

 Ville de Echternach

The Echternach lake was artificially set up in the 1970s and is the second largest inland water body in the Grand Duchy. The lake is now set to become the fourth bathing lake after the Upper Sure Lake, commonly known in Luxembourg as the 'Stausei' ('barrier lake'), the Weiswampach lake, and the 'Baggerweieren' in Remerschen.

About a month ago, dead silver carp were found in the Echternach lake. The Water Management Authority deployed a team to collect samples from the scene, but no harmful environmental factors were found to be present. It is estimated that the carp died of natural causes related to heat.

Read also: 6 fun water parks within driving distance of Luxembourg

Barrier-free access Youth hostel The photos published on this site are subject to copyright and may not be copied, modified, or sold without the prior permission of the owner of the site in question.




On Monday morning, the Left issued a statement to accuse Luxembourg City Mayor Lydie Polfer of creating a false discussion around safety in the capital to distract from her failed agenda.

In conversation with RTL Radio, Mayor Polfer recently spoke about how drug crime has relocated from Gare to the City centre, which is why she wants to once again hire a security firm to patrol the capital.

The Left has now issued a statement to accuse Mayor Polfer of using the safety debate to distract from her failed housing and social agenda. The party further alleges that the DP politician seeks to gather votes from right-leaning citizens.

The Left further criticises that the security firms are being contracted to do police work, which they are not allowed to do.
Mouvement Ecologique and the Young Farmers' Association held a joint press release on Monday to address the planned Restopolis reform, which they believe to represent a missed opportunity for ensuring that locally sourced produce is being used in Luxembourg's schools.

Every day, Restopolis serves 45,000 meals across the Grand Duchy's cafeterias. This represents an excellent opportunity for Luxembourg's farmers to provide locally sourced produce, noted officials during the press conference.

However, a draft law proposing to reform and transform Restopolis into an administration fails to accurately define what the term "regional" even means, a missed opportunity for Luxembourgish farmers.

As an administration, Restopolis will have too much power in the decision-making process, officials further lamented. The goal of providing regional food with more vegetarian and vegan options, as well as organic produce, should be clearly retained in the legislative text.

Making these adjustments would allow young farmers to plan ahead, invest, and start providing the needed produce. Luc Emering, president of the Young Farmers' Association, ensured that his constituents are more than ready to adjust. Seeing how big the market of cafeterias is further incentivises farmers to transition towards sustainable business models.

Blanche Weber, president of Mouvement Ecologique, expressed her belief that there can be a win-win situation: pupils get meals of higher quality, farmers will have planning safety, and the government can ensure that goals are met.
After a very expensive winter, home heating costs are beginning to fall. Household use of natural gas fluctuates with the weather, and as furnaces go dormant, utility bills ease.

But that seasonal decline is masking a breakneck rise in price. The spot price of U.S. benchmark Henry Hub has doubled since March, according to Insider. It surpassed $9 per thousand cubic feet last week  triple its spot price at this time last year  for the first time in almost 14 years.

Some natural gas companies in the Intermountain West say the regions lack of access to overseas markets is partly to blame.

If we were able to export the natural gas thats trapped in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah to Asia, that would lead the price around the world, said H. Howard Cooper, president of Colorado-based Three Crown Petroleum.

The problem for Wyoming and its landlocked neighbors is that they cant export that gas on their own. Their only access to international markets comes through coastal states. But the countrys existing capacity is concentrated along the distant shores of the East Coast, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, all too far away to be of much use.

There are no liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals in the West  and the West Coast doesnt want them.

Wyoming very much does.

Ongoing shortages

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the international rejection of Russian energy exports that followed are directly responsible for the spike in global oil and gasoline prices and European natural gas prices.

That disruption has been much more muted for natural gas markets outside of Europe.

U.S. natural gas prices are going up primarily because the countrys production is still recovering from its collapse early in the pandemic, and coronavirus-related supply chain issues and labor shortages are now impeding companies that want to drill, slowing the industrys growth.

As temperatures rise and air conditioners kick on, people consume more electricity  much of it generated from natural gas. And the supply of natural gas isnt keeping pace with that demand.

Europes search for non-Russian sources of natural gas has also exacerbated the imbalance. The U.S.  forecast to be the worlds top LNG exporter this year  maxed out its export capacity as European prices soared. Its LNG shipments went up 18% in the first four months of 2022, according to the Energy Information Administration, and arent expected to slow anytime soon (though an explosion at one of the biggest U.S. LNG export plants on Wednesday will take about 20% of the countrys processing offline for at least the next few weeks).

We have the capability of displacing all of the Russian natural gas thats flowing into Europe, today said Paul Ulrich, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at the Denver-based oil and gas company Jonah Energy. Now, with our current LNG infrastructure, most of that natural gas will be coming through Gulf of Mexico ports.

Before Europes energy crisis, existing U.S. ports primarily exported natural gas to Asia. Between January and April of this year, 74% of the countrys exports went to Europe.

LNG export capacity is a hard thing to change, at least in the short term. Scaling it up is a lengthy, costly and controversial process, embroiled in concerns about the terminals long-term economic prospects and contributions to climate change.

Which means, as Cooper emphasized, that devoting most of the existing capacity to Europe has left less natural gas available to send to Asia. He believes additional capacity is the solution, and wants that new development to happen a lot faster.

We need to open up LNG facilities on the West Coast so we can supply Asia with natural gas from Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, Cooper said. We have the gas here. So let us replace Russian gas with U.S. gas.

Staunch opposition

The attention in recent months on LNG exports has left Wyomings producers feeling burned.

It can be hard for companies operating in the state to compete with the cheaper natural gas produced in other parts of the country, according to Rob Godby, an economics professor at the University of Wyoming.

The states natural gas industry pinned its hopes on Jordan Cove, a major LNG export terminal that was proposed for southern Oregon in 2013 and secured federal approval two summers ago. But landowners, environmental groups and Indigenous communities worried about water, tourism and climate change fought back. State regulators denial of key permits ultimately led to the projects cancellation late last year.

Had the terminal been built, it could provide an outlet to allow Wyoming natural gas to kind of be sold onto the international market, Godby said. So they wouldnt be so wholly dependent on the domestic market.

He figured the additional exports would have a more muted effect on consumers.

Would that single port have made a huge difference to international LNG prices? Godby said. Probably it would make some difference. But its going to be, you know, a marginal change.

It would take a lot more than Jordan Cove to transform energy markets in Asia and beyond, an attractive prospect for Western natural gas producers. Many believe exporting the fuel  some of the cleanest in the country, if not the world, based on methane intensity and how responsibly we produce natural gas, Ulrich said  would oust other, leakier sources of natural gas and replace some higher-emitting coal-fired power generation.

The whole concept is a hard sell to environmental groups.

Shannon Anderson, staff attorney for the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Wyoming landowners group, said shes not convinced that the potential contribution to Europes energy needs is reason enough to commit to an option as costly and permanent as Jordan Cove.

Why are we talking about natural gas when we can talk about renewables and electrification and other options that are available? Anderson said. I think that the challenge right now with natural gas, similar to coal, is, you know, why invest in something that may not have a future  that is going to be challenged with climate change and a global reckoning around fossil fuel use?

The Powder River Basin Resource Council didnt take a position on the Oregon terminal. It felt the decision was best left to the community where it was proposed.

Looking elsewhere

Natural gas producers frustration over Jordan Cove parallels the Wyoming coal industrys experience with a string of blocked coal export terminals proposed  and fought by local residents  in Washington and Oregon.

In Wyoming, the coal market, in some ways, resembles the natural gas market, Godby said. The coal market kind of functions primarily as a domestic market. Exports dont play a huge role.

Thats partly because, like with natural gas, Wyoming cant export its coal without the coastal states consent. The states attempt to force Washington to build one such terminal came to an end when the Supreme Court refused to take up the case last June.

The fact of the matter is that there are markets in Asia that want our coal, that could use our coal, and we just cant get it there, said Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association.

Wyomings natural gas industry is now in a similar position. While its prospects in the U.S. energy market in the coming years are brighter than those of coal, it will also face more domestic competition. So its not giving up on international buyers.

But instead of turning to the courts, landlocked Western natural gas producers are looking to Mexico, where San Diego-based Sempra Energy plans to build two LNG export terminals south of California. The first of those terminals is expected to open in late 2024.

The bottom line is currently, no, there isnt a project moving forward on the West Coast, domestically, Ulrich said. So the reality is, if were going to have a, quote, West Coast terminal right now, the current path is this through those two facilities.

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The National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper will premiere a new documentary about the Battle of Red Buttes in August. It joins an in-person exhibit that opened at the center in May.

The Battle of Red Buttes marked the end of a series of attacks by Cheyenne, Lakota and Arapaho Native Americans against the U.S. Army in 1865. It was part of an organized resistance by Indigenous nations against U.S. expansion and brutality. The battle, which took place near present-day Casper, resulted in the loss of 29 U.S. soldiers and at least eight Native American warriors.

The new documentary and exhibit cover the planning and execution of the attack, as well as its aftermath.

The Bureau of Land Management commissioned the works after acquiring a 646-acre hunk of land called Rim Rock in 2020. The Battle of Red Buttes happened somewhere on the property, though its exact location is still a mystery.

The documentary and exhibit use records, live-action film and interviews with historians to tell the story behind the battle, said Candy Moulton, executive producer at Boston Productions, the multimedia company behind the projects.

We have a significant number of archival images  photographs, maps, documents  that we obtained from a dozen or more primary sources, said Moulton. Those records came from institutions like the Wyoming State Archives, American Heritage Center and the Denver Public Library, she said.

Boston Productions has produced media and interactive exhibits for the National Historic Trails Center since the museums inception, Moulton said. Its also put together content for places like the Grand Canyon Visitor Center in Arizona, the American Heritage Center in Massachusetts and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The story of the Battle of Red Buttes begins in November 1864, in what was then Colorado Territory. U.S. soldiers attacked a Southern Cheyenne village located at Sand Creek. An estimated 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho people  mostly women and children  were killed in the massacre.

At the time, the U.S. was sanctioning the displacement, starvation and killing of Native American nations living in the Great Plains region to make room for its settlers. Native nations had lived there for thousands of years prior.

After Sand Creek, displaced Cheyenne and Arapaho people traveled northward. They joined forces with several other Great Plains communities.

Devastated from the massacre, the tribes began retaliatory attacks against U.S. forces in Wyoming and Montana.

On July 26, 1865, the camp targeted a wagon train guarded by 25 men near Platte Bridge Station, an army post located along the western bend of the North Platte River. The group was led by Lt. Caspar Collins.

Battle ensued, and Collins and his men were all killed. There were at least eight Native American casualties. (The station was later renamed Fort Caspar, in Collins memory.)

Moultons team interviewed six historians  including three Native American people whose ancestors have ties to the battle  to help piece together the confrontation from both sides of the conflict.

Donovin Sprague, a history instructor at Northern Sheridan College, is one of them. Hes a direct descendant of the Miniconjou Chief Hump, who helped organize the Lakota response to the Sand Creek massacre. Hes also a relative of the famed Lakota war leader Crazy Horse.

Spragues an expert in Native American history, government and culture.

Much of what he discusses in the documentary comes from a 34-chapter manuscript he penned on his family history, he said.

A major part of his research has focused on deciphering his familys winter hide counts, pictographs Great Plains communities traditionally draw on buffalo hides to record their histories.

You can learn a lot from them because each artist draws something different in the picture, he said.

Thanks to his research, hes been able to clear up some misconceptions about the Battle of Red Buttes  and highlight Native voices often left out or misrepresented in history books.

Some historians reported that Collins and Crazy Horse might have been boyhood friends, for instance. They shared a dramatic reunion during the attack, so the rumor goes.

But thats impossible, Sprague explained. The only times our family met non-Indians, he said, was in battle.

Other interviewees include:

Benjamin Ridgely, a counselor for the Northern Arapaho Tribe who lives in Ethete;

Linwood Tall Bull, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and ethnobotanist at Chief Dull Knife College in Lame Deer, Montana;

Rick Young, director of the Fort Caspar Museum in Casper;

Johanna Wickman, president of Wickman Historical Consultants in Casper;

Tom Rea, co-founder and editor of WyoHistory.org; and

John Monnett, a Plains Indian historian at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Moultons team worked with four Lakota and Cheyenne actors to recreate specific scenes of the battle, she said. The film also features nine people from historical reenactment groups: four foot soldiers from the Sixth U.S. Regulars, and five members of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry.

There were some unexpected challenges with filming, Moulton said. The team was scheduled to film scenes from the Battle of Red Buttes the week of May 16. Then came the unexpected cold snap.

Were telling a story thats set in July, and we got a snow storm going on around us, said Moulton.

The silver lining is that they were able film more realistic scenes depicting the Sand Creek massacre, she said. The attack took place in November, when it was snowy and cold.

The documentary wont be out until Aug. 9, Moulton said. Itll be shown as part of an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the National Historic Trails Center.

But the exhibits already installed. Visitors can stop by the center, located at 1501 N. Poplar Street, any day of the week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to see it. Theres no cost for admission.

At 10 a.m. on June 18, the National Historic Trails Center will host an educational workshop for kids on the Battle of Red Buttes and its place in the greater context of western history.

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Republican State Superintendent of Public Instruction candidate Jennifer Zerba said she decided to join the race last-minute because she was alarmed at the platforms of other candidates and wanted to give voters another option.

There are six candidates running for the superintendents post, five as Republicans and one as a Democrat. Gov. Mark Gordon appointed the current superintendent, Brian Schroeder, to the job in January after former superintendent Jillian Balow left to take a similar job in Virginia. Schroeder is among those running for election.

Teachers respond to Wyo schools chief's denouncement of non-discrimination policy changes We cannot allow childrens safety and well-being to become casualties of politicking in this state," one retired educator said of the Wyoming superintendent's statements on federal sexual orientation and gender identity policies.

Zerba, a Casper native, cosmetologist and Natrona County School District substitute teacher, filed her candidacy on May 27, the last day to do so.

She earned an associates degree in business administration from Casper College, a bachelors in business administration from Eastern Oregon University as well as a masters of public administration from the University of Wyoming and is currently getting a doctorate of education in learning, design and technology at UW. She has worked in various management, leadership and communication positions for over 17 years, including as a district director and chief executive and senior advisor for Toastmasters District 9 in Denver, Colorado.

Here are Zerbas positions on a few education topics:

On educator shortages

Zerba said Wyoming needs to make sure educators mental, emotional and physical needs are met.

That starts with me communicating with them, she said. I envision myself walking the halls of our schools, getting to know our educators. I want to have an open-door policy, that they are welcome to come to me and talk to me.

She thinks the Wyoming Teacher Apprenticeship Program, a new project of the Wyoming Department of Education meant to lower costs barriers for people who want to become teachers, is another waste of money. She thinks Wyoming already has plenty of options to lower financial barriers without making another program that costs money; community colleges, scholarships and an affordable public university, for example.

Ultimately, I feel this is a quick fix, she said of the apprenticeship program. Its not been well thought out, and its not good for the future.

A better solution to lowering these barriers, she said, would be to advertise whats already available and support guidance counselors so they can connect students with resources.

On parental control

Zerba said she thinks that if parents disagree with what their child is being taught, they should ask the teacher for an alternative rather than going to the school board to demand a change in curriculum.

Its up to the teacher to come up with an alternative, she said. Thats where parental control lies. Parental control means parental control over your children, and I need to stress your children. Somebody else will not tell me what my child will be learning unless they are their teacher and have been board certified.

On school choice

Zerba is very much a proponent of upholding what the state already offers in education. Shes not in favor of throwing charter schools into the mix.

Financially, we cannot afford it, she said, noting teacher shortages and a recent survey by the University of Wyoming and Wyoming Education Association showing that 65% of the survey participants would quit their job in education if they could afford to.

These are very alarming numbers, she said. So here you are wanting to throw charter schools in there? We simply cant afford it.

Two new Wyoming charter schools could open in fall 2023 Two new charter schools could open their doors in Mills and Cheyenne next year.

She pointed to the Natrona County School District as a good example of how education can be reinvented without charter schools. Students can attend any school in the district, rather than just the school thats in their neighborhood. And there are a variety of education options: bilingual immersion education, technical education and classical education, for example.

I think that Natrona County School District should get a gold star for reinventing education, she said.

Zerbas other goals

Work with educators to improve the use of state resources;

increase financial transparency by having all school districts publish their budgets online;

increase technology and the number of teachers in rural areas; and

change stigmas around trade school education.

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A 21-year-old man from Cheyenne was among the 31 members of white nationalist group Patriot Front arrested in Idaho on Saturday ahead of a Pride event.

Dylan Carter Corio was booked into jail Saturday in Kootenai County on a charge of criminal conspiracy. His bond, according to the local sheriffs office, was set at $300.

A former Wyoming state employee, James Michael Johnson, was also arrested with the group Saturday, according to Cowboy State Daily.

An arrest log shows Johnson, 40, now lives in Sioux City, South Dakota. He also faces a criminal conspiracy charge and was detained on a $300 bond.

According to the Coeur dAlene Press, all 31 members booked into the jail had bonded out by Sunday evening.

Johnson worked at the Wyoming Department of Audit from 2019 through the end of 2020 as a senior auditor, a human resources representative with the department confirmed Monday.

He also ran for a seat on Cheyenne City Council in 2020, on a platform that focused on ending COVID-19 restrictions and cracking down on improper government spending.

Sara Burlingame, executive director of Wyoming Equality, said the group had to block Johnson from its social media pages because he was harassing people so relentlessly. In comments, Johnson would argue that promoters of LGBTQ+ equality were pedophiles who groomed children, Burlingame said.

Coeur dAlene police stopped a U-Haul truck carrying the 31 people ahead of a Pride in the Park event, after receiving a tip from someone who saw them loading into the truck in a hotel parking lot like a little army, the Associated Press reported.

Police said after the arrest that they found smoke grenades, shin guards and shields in the truck. They believe the group intended to riot at the Pride event.

Among those arrested was apparent group leader Thomas Ryan Rousseau, a 23-year-old credited with starting the Patriot Front in the aftermath of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Patriot Front members are set to make their initial court appearances in Coeur dAlene on Monday.

Not shocked

White supremacy is alive and well in Wyoming, activists in the state said, although there have not been any visible clashes because of it in recent memory.

Im not shocked at this point, Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie. Wyoming doesnt have a strong enough culture of rejecting these ideas.

While white supremacists arent uncommon in the state, many wont speak openly about their ideas until theyre challenged, said Jimmy Simmons, former president of the Casper NAACP and a member of the Pikes Peak Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Simmons, a Black man who has lived in Wyoming for 51 years, said he wasnt surprised at the news of two men with ties to the state being associated with the Patriot Front. Hes felt unsafe here, he said, and has long worked alongside queer people on civil rights matters.

Its the last stronghold for the white man, Simmons said of the Mountain West, where most of the 31 Patriot Front members hail according to jail logs.

Wyoming has very few people of color  around 1.3% of its population is Black, according to the last census  which Provenza said makes it easier to stereotype and hold unfounded prejudices against minorities. Without positive interactions with neighbors who dont look like you, she said, your preconceptions may never be challenged.

Simmons said that if change is going to happen to make white supremacy less prevalent in Wyoming, it has to come from the top. That means those in power, including the governor, local mayors and courts, need to take action to discourage white nationalism and prosecute those who act on it.

Theyre terrorists, Simmons said. You have to treat them like terrorists.

Albany County Sheriff Aaron Appelhans, the first Black person to hold that post in the state, said he believes law enforcement can discourage racist crime by educating people on misinformation, being present on the streets and acting on any tips warning of action by white supremacist groups.

Dr. Frederick Douglass Dixon, director of the University of Wyomings Black Studies Center, said he thinks that what happened over the weekend in Coeur dAlene could absolutely happen in Wyoming.

I dont think theres any part of the country thats immune, he said.

Activists said Wyoming has a long history of white supremacy. Simmons cited policies for workers in the early 1900s that encouraged Black people to leave as soon as they finished a job. Talking to Black people in the state today, he said, he still hears them say theyre ready to leave Wyoming as soon as their time is up in the oil field or fabrication shop.

People say (white supremacy) is not in our DNA, Simmons said, but it sure as hell is.

Rising white supremacy

Provenza said that while racism seemed to be quieter in Wyoming last decade, she believes national politics seeping into the state plus a proliferation of white nationalist content online has brought it to the fore in recent years.

The representative, as well as Burlingame, both also attributed that recent shift to state Republican leadership. When Johnson, one of the Patriot Front members, ran for city council in Cheyenne in 2020, Burlingame recalls he had the support of the state GOP behind him.

People who had these really violent and anti-government, anti-democracy ideas, theyve gotten kind of mainstreamed and normalized under the current state GOP, she said Monday. Theres nothing normal about it.

Groups like the Patriot Front tend to target isolated white men, a group in abundance in rural states like Wyoming, Appelhans said.

Were rural, so were always going to have fringe groups and fringe ideologies located within the county, he said. We dont always see it but we know theyre still there. How active they are depends on the county and the situation.

Dixon said rising white supremacist sentiment is likely connected to rising calls for racial justice and backlash against police brutality. On a deeper level, he said, its connected to behaviors and values learned from birth that place white history, looks and traditions above all else without scientific credence.

This group of younger white men feel as if the country is becoming multicultural, and they have a response to that perception, Dixon said. It has been very violent and systemic... to see the LGBTQ population become targeted, I dont think thats surprising.

Appelhans said his office hasnt had to intervene in any white supremacist group plans during his tenure, and hopes they never will.

I refuse to give up hope that maybe some of these people cant change, he said. Hate for any one group, especially because of the way they look or act, they way they live and who they choose to live with, its just unacceptable.

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TELECOMMUNICATIONS Services of T&T (TSTT) is expected to re-issue retrenchment notices to the 376 unionised workers by Friday giving them 45-day notices which will end July 15.

TSTT and its recognised majority union, the Communications Workers Union (CWU) came to an agreement outside of the courts on Monday, that will see the organisation continue with its restructuring exercise without delay.
The importance of providing nutritious meals for the health and development of the nations children through national school feeding programmes is underscored.

Resilience building is in sharp focus as food production, quality, and availability due to high food prices caused by the disruption of supply chains are of concern. Food supply is impacted by extreme weather patterns, influenced by climate change and the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war.
JERUSALEM, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Monday called on Israelis in Turkey to leave the country as soon as possible and others to cancel planned visits, citing fears of Iranian attacks against Israelis.

"We call on Israelis not to fly to Istanbul. Unless you have a critical need -- do not fly to Turkey," Lapid said at the start of a meeting of his Yesh Atid party. "If you are already in Istanbul, return to Israel as soon as possible."

"This is a real and immediate danger," the minister said, adding the warning follows "a situation assessment" that found out attempts from "Iranian forces" to kidnap or kill Israeli nationals in Turkey.

Lapid thanked the Turkish government for "the effort they are making to protect the lives of Israeli citizens."

"Tourism to Turkey is important to both countries, but they too understand that there are risks that must not be taken," he said.

He also sent a warning message to Iran, saying "whoever harms Israelis will not be left unharmed. Israel's long arm will get them no matter where they are."

Lapid's warning comes a day after Israeli officials said Turkish authorities had thwarted an "Iranian plot" to attack Israelis in Turkey last month.

Iran did not immediately comment on the Israeli allegations.

In late May, Israel's National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau warned that Iran might plan to attack Israeli tourists in Turkey and warned the Israelis against travelling to the country.

Iran has accused Israel of killing on May 22 Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, an Islamic Revolution Guards Corps colonel, and has vowed to avenge his death. Khodaei was shot and killed by two motorcyclists in the east of Tehran, Iran's capital. 
OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has called on United States authorities to investigate whether Attorney General Reginald Armour committed perjury and lied to a Miami court over his role as an attorney in the Piarco International Airport corruption case.

This as she maintained at the UNCs Monday night forum that the AG has placed the country in a constitutional crisis and must be fired by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.
Below is a version of my letter sent to the Environmental Management Authority (EMA), which has requested that complaints about noise pollution be sent directly to them:

I am a long-standing resident of Lady Chancellor Apartments a 50-year-old apartment block situated approximately 400 yards from the Lookout on Lady Chancellor Road. Over the years I have watched, with dismay and utter impotence, the complete erosion of a quiet residential area into a noisy, public fete neighbourhood.
HIGHWAYMAN KILLED

The rumor of the killing of Antonio Rodriguez about the first of this month, is now fully confirmed by a party from the scene of the killing. Antonio Rodriguez belonged to Guadalupe Celayas band, that robbed the stage beyond Maricopa Wells last August, obtaining about $3,000 in silver bricks, which they carried off to Sonora, near Tubutama, around which place they had been hiding until the killing of Rodriguez. There were four in the party. The killing occurred as follows: Caludio Asebedo, a resident of Tubutama, had learned of the whereabouts of the concealment of the gang and their treasure. This became known to the gang and his life was threatened; learning that the gang were seeking his life, he at once put himself on his guard with other parties. On the evening of the killing Rodriguez called at the house of Claudio on horseback. Claudio suspecting the visitor, went to the door armed and as soon as he made his appearance Rodriguez fired at him with a rifle, but missing him, Claudio rushed up, pistol in hand, taking his horse by the bridle and fired into him; the horse broke loose, but two friends of Claudio stationed near by turned loose with their rifles, striking Rodriguez in the back and killing him almost instantly. His body was then searched, and in one of his pockets was found a paper with the names of the gang and the amount of money belonging to each, which had been secreted, $5,500 being the sum marked for Rodriguez. The authorities of Tubutama turned out to capture the balance of the party, but they mde good their escape. Coming over the line to Arizona, Guadalupe Celaya with another of the party, as we have noticed, committed several depredations since, one upon Geo. Atkinson about two weeks ago near Pete Kitchens ranch. The authorities here making it somewhat warm for them, they again left for Sonora, joined by an American. About the 20th, they attacked the Sibuto ranch, but here they met resistance from two Americans living there, which resulted in the fatal wounding of the American who had joined the band, he died in a short time after receiving his wound. They were again pursued by Mexican authorities, and are now seeking refuge on this side of the line, and it is reported are heading for California. Thus in the short space of three weeks one of the original gang, and one, a new recruit, has passed in his checks. If the other two will just stay around here long enough, they will soon be in company with their comrades.
Two men who were shot and killed Saturday morning while trying to rob a third man at a north-side apartment complex, Tucson police said Monday.

Police said the robbery victim was also shot and wounded in the incident that happened at an apartment complex in the 400 block of East Prince Road shortly before 5 a.m.

Tucson police officers went to the complex to investigate several 911 calls about gunshots being heard and found an adult male in the courtyard with gunshot wounds. That man was taken to Banner-University Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries.

Inside an apartment, officers located two men who had also been shot. The two men were pronounced dead at the scene.

Police identified the two men as Ricky Green, 50, and Romeo Salaz, 23.

Detectives said Green and Salaz were involved in an attempted robbery of the third man. During the robbery, a fight occurred, and several gunshots were fired, striking Green, Salaz and the robbery victim.

A search warrant was obtained for the residence, which yielded additional evidence. At the conclusion of the search warrant and interviews, no arrests were made, and detectives believe there are no outstanding suspects, police said.

Detectives will present their findings to the Pima County Attorneys Office to determine if charges will be filed, police said.

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CARACAS, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The ninth Summit of the Americas, held in the United States last week, was a "total and absolute failure," Diosdado Cabello, first vice president of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, said on Monday.

"The summit collapsed," Cabello added during the party's weekly press conference in the capital Caracas.

According to Cabello, the regional gathering which took place in Los Angeles, in the western U.S. state of California, "was not a summit at all and will likely be the last, due to its failure, the disaster and the way it was handled."

The summit was set to fail from the start, when the United States decided not to invite Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, he said.

Washington's exclusion of the three countries led several heads of state and government to skip the summit in protest. 
Monday, June 13 marks the first official day for Pima County residents to file paperwork to run as candidates for school district governing boards.

There will be a total of 38 seats on school governing boards throughout Pima County to be filled in the Nov. 8 election, according to the Pima County School Superintendents Office.

Community members began sending in their statements of interest to run for school boards as early as last summer, said Matthew Stamp, the offices communications director.

And while some have already begun the process, incumbents and challengers have until July 11 to register as board candidates.

Tucson Unified School District will have two seats on the ballot, as Leila Counts and Adelita Grijalvas seats are up for election. So far, six people have filed statements of interest to run.

In the Sunnyside district, Consuelo Hernandezs and Eva Carrillo Dongs seats are up. Hernandez has already filed a statement of interest to seek reelection.

The Amphitheater School District will also have two seats up, those of Matt Kopec and Susan Zibrat. Both incumbents have filed statements of interest to run for reelection.

The Catalina Foothills School District will have three seats up, currently filled by Carole Siegler, Amy Krauss and Amy Bhola. Krauss and Bhola have filed statements of interest in seeking reelection.

At Flowing Wells, Kevin Dailys and Kristine Hammars seats will be up, and both incumbents have filed statements of interest to run.

The Marana district will have two open seats, those of incumbents Tom Carlson and John Lewandowski. Both had filed statements of interest to seek re-election, though Lewankowski withdrew his.

In the Sahuarita district, Kevin Opalkas and John Sparks seats will be up. Both have filed statements of interest to run.

In the Tanque Verde district, Susan Frys and Vieri Tenutas seats will be up. Three community members have filed statements of interest to run.

The Vail School District  the most contested race thus far  will have two seats on the ballot, those of incumbents Claudia Anderson and Jon Aitken. As of Friday, 13 people had filed their statements of interest to run.

To learn more about school district governing board elections or to view a full list of the open seats in Pima County, visit schools.pima.gov/elections.

Little Lions Preschool

Pima JTEDs Little Lions Preschool earned the five-star Quality First rating from First Things First. The voluntary ranking system awards one to five stars, with the highest rank indicating that a preschool exceeds quality standards.

The quality of each program is assessed based on key components of child care including health and safety practices, staff qualifications, teacher-child interactions, learning environments, lessons, group sizes and child assessment.

Little Lions Preschool, located on the campus of Mountain View High School at 3901 W. Linda Vista Blvd., is directed by Principal Lauren Moraga.

Have any questions or news tips about K-12 education in Southern Arizona? Contact reporter Genesis Lara at glara@tucson.com

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Mohave County is known as the second-highest gold producing county in Arizona, behind Yavapai County.

Mohave was also a producer of tungsten along with other notable minerals such as copper, zinc and lead.

Founded in 1864, Mohave County has a history influenced by the Colorado River, the railroad and the mining industry.

It was the Colorado River that the Mohave people settled upon, communicating with the Yuman dialect. The term Mohave in their language represents three mountains, having been derived from the words hamol, meaning three, and avi meaning mountains.

During the 1860s, the area saw increased population after the U.S. acquired the land from Mexico with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.

Soldiers from the recently established Fort Mohave prospected the area, discovering gold east in the Cerbat Mountains.

One of the early trading centers along the Colorado River was established by William H. Hardy, which included a ferry crossing along with a town christened Hardyville, a prominent point of overland shipping for mining operations east of the Colorado.

By 1883 the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad had arrived with a railroad bridge erected across the Colorado River at Needles negating the once prominent Hardyville.

Kingman, founded as a railroad town in the 1880s and named for Lewis Kingman, the locating engineer for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, became the county seat for Mohave County in 1887.

Yucca, a railroad town 24 miles south of Kingman, served as an order office and water fill station for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, known later as the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway that merged with the Burlington Railroad in 1995 and became the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway.

Located on the western foothills of the Hualapai Mountains in the Cedar Valley Mining district in Mohave County, 12 miles east of Yucca off the Boriana Canyon Road, the Antler Mine was first discovered in the 1870s and patented before 1900. It produced zinc, copper and lead.

Early production records are scarce. However, the mine was once owned by Phelps-Dodge, which during World War I reported a shipment of 27 cars of oxidized copper ore assaying at up to 12% copper.

The property was worked by F.F. Hintze of Salt Lake City during World War II. Hintze is credited with having formed the Arizona Antlers Mining Co., which sunk a 243-foot shaft on the property. The geology of the mine site is primarily granite, part of a massive sulfide orebody of volcanic origin. By 1948, the Yucca Mining & Milling Co. acquired the property, constructing a mill with a capacity of processing 135 tons of ore per day.

Water was pumped in from a variety of sources including the Boriana Well, which held an open hole storage of 260,000 gallons. This water source also supplies the Boriana Mine located 4 miles from the Antler deposit. The mine operated a 300 ton per day mill.

By 1970 the mine had produced 80,000 tons of ore with a grade of 3% copper and 7% zinc, with 33,000 tons of ore milled that year by the Standard Metal Corp.

Interest in the mineral resources found at the Antler Mine continues at present with the exploration and redevelopment investment by New World Resources Limited.

Considered to be one of the highest grade copper deposits in the world, the Antler Mine comprises more than 6,600 feet of drifts on eight underground levels with access by a 650 foot deep shaft.

The mine is the source for a rare secondary mineral known as antlerite that forms in the oxidized zone of copper deposits. Frequently confused with the brochantite it resembles, this Arizona type mineral is sometimes called green vitriol and was noted by W.F. Hillebrand in 1889 as a new species appearing as tabular, acicular or fibrous crystals.

The nearby Boriana Mine, a tungsten producer since 1908, became the largest producer of tungsten in Arizona and the second largest in the United States. Economic minerals at the mine include wolframite, scheelite and molybdenite in narrow quartz veins following the foliation of an elongate roof pendant of phyllite in granite. Copper, gold, silver, fluorite and beryl were other minerals found at the mine. Processing included a 200-ton combination gravity and flotation mill which produced tungsten concentrate.

Challenges in production history included finding sufficient skilled labor and upfront capital to fund the mining operations, which was a major issue during World War II. Water was supplied from underground workings including thousands of feet of underground drifts, winzes and raises.

Key production years for the Boriana ran from 1915 to 1943 and again from 1951 to 1956 wherein 149,000 tons of tungsten trioxide (WO3) were produced. Most of the accessible ore had been mined, however; the mine dumps were reworked in 1978 yielding an additional tonnage of ore.

The unstable character of the rock and flooding of the lower levels impeded further development and production.

William Ascarza is an archivist, historian and author of seven books available for purchase online and at select bookstores. These include his latest, In Search of Fortunes: A Look at the History of Arizona Mining, available through M.T. Publishing Co. His other books are Chiricahua Mountains: History and Nature, Southeastern Arizona Mining Towns, Zenith on the Horizon: An Encyclopedic Look at the Tucson Mountains from A to Z, Tucson Mountains, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum with Peggy Larson and Sentinel to the North: Exploring the Tortolita Mountains. Email William Ascarza for a signed copy of his publications at AZMiningHistory@gmail.com

Sources Antler Mine. 1994-01-0104, Grover Heinrichs mining collection, Arizona Geological Survey. Antler Mine. 1994-02-0001, W. H. Crutchfield, Jr. mining collection, Arizona Geological Survey. Boriana, 2011-01-0546, ADMMR mining collection, Arizona Geological Survey. Dreyfuss, John J. A History of Arizonas Counties and Courthouses, Tucson-Betts Printing Co. 1978. Exploration Research Associates Incorporated, 1982, Memorandum to William H. Crutchfield, Jr., 8 June 1982. Malach, Roman. Natural Resources in Mohave County. Mohave County Board of Supervisors, Kingman, Az 1982.

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The Pipeline Fire began 6 miles north of Flagstaff, Ariz. on Sunday is currently estimated at 5,000 acres. It was spotted by a fire lookout at 10:15 a.m. and was pushed more than 15 miles by strong winds throughout the day. Evacuations have been ordered for homes in the area.

A 57-year-old male was arrested by Forest Service law enforcement officers on Sunday in connection with the wildfire and charged with natural resource violations. The subject was booked into the Coconino County Sheriffs Detention Facility.
The homes will provide residents with a safe place to live while also helping them build equity. Residents are expected to stay in the homes for two to three years.
Asian benchmarks decline after bear market hits Wall Street

TOKYO (AP)  Asian shares fell across the board after Wall Street tumbled into whats called a bear market, indicating that major U.S. benchmarks and individual stocks have fallen 20% or more from a recent high for a sustained period of time. Benchmarks fell in Japan, Australia, South Korea and China. The Japanese yens continuing slide against the dollar paused. At the center of the sell-off was the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is scrambling to get inflation under control. Its main method is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession.

Jan. 6 panel hears: Trump 'detached from reality' in defeat

WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were systematically dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But the defeated president seemed detached from reality, clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power. That's the assessment from former Attorney General William Barr's testimony presented at Monday's House hearing investigating the insurrection. The panel is delving deeper into what it calls the big lie, the defeated Republican presidents false claims of voter fraud. The panel says Trump's falsehoods provoked a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol.

Bucolic Ukraine forest is site of mass grave exhumation

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP)  Ukraine's national police chief says authorities are investigating the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide in the war since the Russian invasion in February. Authorities in the Kyiv region near Bucha on Monday showed reporters several victims whose hands had been tied behind their backs. Some of the victims were found in a lush green Ukrainian forest, where birds were singing. Workers in white hazmat suits conducted an exhumation in a mass grave behind a trench for a military vehicle. In other news of the war, the Russian military claimed it had destroyed weapons that the U.S. and Europe had supplied to Ukraine. There was no immediate comment on that from Ukraine.

The S&P 500 is in a bear market; heres what that means

NEW YORK (AP)  Wall Street is back in the claws of a bear market as worries about inflation and higher interest rates overwhelm investors. The Federal Reserve has signaled it will aggressively raise interest rates to try to control inflation, which is the highest in decades. Throw in the war in Ukraine and a slowdown in Chinas economy, and investors have been forced to reconsider what theyre willing to pay for a wide range of stocks, from high-flying tech companies to traditional automakers. On Monday, the S&P 500 fell 3.9% and closed nearly 22% below it's Jan. 3 high.

Takeaways: Trump's mind 'made up' on fraud ahead of Jan. 6

WASHINGTON (AP)  In its second day of public hearings, the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is making the case that Trump and his advisers knew that his claims of fraud in the 2020 election were false. The argument is key to the committee's overall investigation as the nine-member panel is laying out the evidence about what led to the violent insurrection. The rioters who broke into the Capitol that day and interrupted the certification of President Joe Bidens victory were echoing Trumps falsehoods. The committee is using video clips from more than 1,000 closed-door interviews over the last year.

Tentative Senate gun deal has surprises, and loose ends

WASHINGTON (AP)  The outline of a bipartisan Senate agreement on reining in gun violence has no game-changing steps banning the deadliest firearms. But it does propose measured provisions that could make it harder for some young gun buyers, or people considered threatening, to have weapons. And there are meaningful efforts to address mental health and school safety concerns. There's pressure on both parties to act after last month's mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. But details of the plan remain in negotiation between Democrats and Republicans, with disagreements over how tightly the initiatives should be drawn. Here's a look at where things stand.

South Korea says North completed prep for new nuclear test

WASHINGTON (AP)  South Koreas top diplomat says North Korea has completed preparations for a new nuclear test and only a political decision by the countrys top leadership can prevent it from going forward. After talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Monday, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said the North would pay a price if it goes ahead as feared with what would be its seventh nuclear test in the coming days. Park did not say what that price would be, but both he and Blinken urged Pyongyang to step down. Both men say the door to negotiations without any preconditions remains open.

Yellowstone floods wipe out roads, bridges, strand visitors

HELENA, Mont. (AP)  Flooding has wiped out roads and bridges and closed off all entrances to Yellowstone National Park at the onset of the busy summer tourist season. Officials are evacuating visitors from the northern part of the park. And the flooding has cut off road access to Gardiner, a town of about 900 people near Yellowstones busy North Entrance. The flooding caused at least one rock slide, cut off electricity and imperiled water and sewer systems in northern Yellowstone, but has affected other areas of the park as well. Flooding also has hit the Yellowstone gateway communities of Red Lodge and Joliet in southern Montana.

Search continues for missing men in Brazilian Amazon

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  The search for an Indigenous expert and a journalist who disappeared in a remote area of Brazils Amazon cis continuing following the discovery of a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged in a river. Federal police say they've confirmed the items belonged to the missing men. Members of the Univaja Indigenous association say they were still hunting for the men on Monday. And federal police issued a statement denying reports their bodies had been found. Police earlier reported finding traces of blood in the boat of a fisherman who is under arrest as the only suspect in the disappearance.

Wiggins delivers on both ends, Warriors lead NBA Finals 3-2

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Andrew Wiggins delivered the biggest game yet in his eight-year career with 26 points and 13 rebounds, Klay Thompson scored 21 points, and the Golden State Warriors beat the Boston Celtics 104-94 for a 3-2 NBA Finals lead.Stephen Curry contributed 16 points and eight assists but the all-time 3-point leaders NBA-record streak of 132 straight postseason games with at least one 3 ended along with his NBA-best run of 233 consecutive games with a 3 between regular season and playoffs combined.

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Senate negotiators announce a deal on guns, breaking logjam

WASHINGTON (AP)  Senate bargainers have announced the framework of a bipartisan response to last months mass shootings. It's a noteworthy but limited breakthrough offering modest gun curbs and stepped-up efforts to improve school safety and mental health programs. The proposal falls far short of tougher steps long sought by President Joe Biden and many Democrats. Even so, Biden embraced the deal, and enactment would signal a significant turnabout after years of stalemate in Congress. Twenty senators, including 10 Republicans, are calling for passage. That's potentially crucial because at least 10 GOP votes will be needed in the Senate.

In Jan. 6 cases, 1 judge stands out as the toughest punisher

As the number of people sentenced for crimes in the U.S. Capitol insurrection nears 200, an Associated Press analysis of sentencing data shows that some judges are divided over how to punish the rioters, particularly for the low-level misdemeanors arising from the attack. U.S. District Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender, has consistently taken the hardest line of any judge serving on Washington's federal trial court. Overall, the 20 judges who've sentenced riot defendants have given lighter sentences than prosecutors were seeking in nearly three-fourths of the cases. The judges have exceeded prosecutors recommendation for about only 10% of the defendants, according to APs analysis.

Pulitzer and now top Tony, 'A Strange Loop' makes history

NEW YORK (AP)  A Strange Loop, an irreverent, sexually frank work about Blackness and queerness took home the best new musical crown at the Tony Awards on Sunday, as voters celebrated Broadways most racially diverse season by choosing an envelope-pushing Black voice. Michael R. Jacksons 2020 Pulitzer Prize drama winner is a theater meta-journey and also won for best book. Many of the nights Tonys were spread over several productions. A Strange Loop beat MJ, a bio musical of the King of Pops biggest hits for the top prize, although that Jackson musical nabbed four Tony Awards

Jan. 6 panelists: Enough evidence uncovered to indict Trump

WASHINGTON (AP)  Members of the House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot say theyve uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump has denied all wrongdoing. The committee says Trumps 2020 campaign manager, Bill Stepien, is among the witnesses scheduled to testify at a hearing Monday. The focus will be on Trumps effort to spread his lies about a stolen election.

US: Pfizer COVID-19 shot appears effective for kids under 5

WASHINGTON (AP)  A review by federal health officials says that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine appears safe and effective for children under 5, the only group not currently eligible for vaccination. The review from the Food and Drug Administration is a key step toward an expected decision to begin vaccinating babies, toddlers and preschoolers as soon as June 21. Parents have been waiting months to protect Americas youngest children, who number roughly 18 million. On Wednesday the FDA will ask an outside panel of experts to vote on whether to recommend the shots.

Brazil police: Items owned by missing men found in Amazon

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  Brazilian police say search teams have found a backpack, laptop and other personal items that belonged to Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips, who went missing in a remote area of Brazils Amazon a week ago. The Federal Police announced Sunday night that they had identified the belongings of both missing men, such as Pereiras health card and clothes. A firefighter says Phillips backpack was tied to a tree that was half-submerged. Pereira and Phillips were last seen near the entrance of the Indigenous territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents.

Brookings president resigns amid FBI foreign lobbying probe

The president of the Brookings Institution has resigned amid a federal investigation into whether he illegally lobbied on behalf of the wealthy Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. Retired Gen. John Allen said in a letter to the think tank Sunday that he was leaving with a heavy heart but did not offer any direct explanation. A retired four-star Marine general who led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Allens announcement came less than a week after The Associated Press was first to report on new court filings that showed the FBI had seized Allens electronic data as part of the probe.

Patriot Front leader among those arrested near Idaho Pride

After the arrest of more than two dozen members of a white supremacist group near a northern Idaho pride event, including one identified as its founder, LGBTQ advocates said Sunday that polarization and a fraught political climate have put their community increasingly at risk. Police say the 31 Patriot Front members were arrested with riot gear came after a tipster reported seeing people loading up into a U-Haul at a hotel parking lot in Coeur dAlene, Idaho. Among those arrested was Thomas Rousseau of Grapevine, Texas, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the 23-year-old who founded the group.

Moscow-backed officials try to solidify rule in Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Kremlin-installed officials in occupied southern Ukraine celebrated Russia Day on Sunday and began issuing Russian passports to those in one city who requested them, as Moscow seeks to solidify its rule over captured parts of the country. Russia Day is the holiday that marks Russias emergence as a sovereign state after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian media reported that few, if any, local residents attended the Russia Day festivities in the two cities.

French projections: Macron's centrists will keep a majority

PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macrons centrist alliance is expected to keep its parliamentary majority after the first round of voting Sunday, but will likely have far fewer seats than five years ago. According to projections based on partial results, Macrons party and its allies got about 25-26% of the vote Sunday on the national level. They were neck-and-neck with a new leftist coalition. Yet Macrons candidates are projected to win in a greater number of districts than their leftist rivals. More than 6,000 candidates were running for 577 seats in Frances National Assembly in the first round of the election. For races that did not have a decisive winner on Sunday, up to four candidates will compete in a second round of voting on June 19.

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PITTSVILLE, Md. (AP)  A Maryland deputy was shot and killed while trying to arrest a fugitive, authorities said.

Wicomico County deputy Glenn Hilliard spotted the suspect, who was wanted on multiple felony warrants, coming out of an apartment complex Sunday evening in Pittsville, Maryland, the sheriff's office said. A foot chase ensued and Hilliard was shot trying to arrest the suspect.

After an extensive manhunt by dozens of law enforcement officers from throughout the region, the suspect was captured and is awaiting arraignment," the sheriff's office said in a news release.

Hilliard was a 16-year veteran of law enforcement and would have turned 42 later this month, the sheriff's office said.

The days ahead will be challenging, but for now, we are mourning the loss of an incredible human being," the sheriff's office news release said. Deputy Glenn Hilliard was a son, a husband and a father to three beautiful children, a brother to those he worked with, and an exemplary public servant to the citizens of Wicomico County and to the State of Maryland. Our hearts and prayers go out to Glenns family during this difficult time."

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President Joe Biden is blamed for high oil and gas prices as if he sets the price of those commodities. Some may not believe this (look it up), but Biden does not serve on the OPEC Board. Russia does. Our allies, the Saudis, have controlled the worlds economy since Mae West was a baby.

After the Saudi Prince increased their production by 50 percent, they acquiesced. We heralded them (some of you did). Then they raised the oil price by $1.40 per barrel (March - $2.10 for Asia).

A vast majority of our elected officials of the Radical Party hold significant revenues from the gun industry and the oil industry.

If you check the markets each week as I do, notice how much oil company stocks and investments increased during the recent down market. Youll also find Shells first-quarter profits were a record $9.1 billion; BP-$6.2 billion; Chevron- $6.26 billion; and Exxon Mobil earned $5.48 billion (double 2021).

Sheldon Metz

Northeast side

Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.

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The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

The Mexican gray wolf once freely roamed the Southwest in the thousands for centuries before they were almost exterminated by the 1970s. As a result, the Mexican gray wolf has been legally protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) since 1976 and was reintroduced into Arizona and New Mexico in the late 90s.

Today, there are fewer than 200 of these wolves in the wild.

Their survival is a delicate balance between wolf-advocacy groups, who want more of them released from captivity and protected; government agencies that are required to protect them by law (the ESA), but have sometimes worked against them; and the cattle industry, which leans heavily towards elimination.

According to a May 24 report by The Intercept, Robert Gosnell, a former wildlife services director of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) in New Mexico, became a whistleblower for the wolves.

Gosnell uncovered the rubber stamping of false reports within the USDAs Wildlife Services. These reports identified wolf predation as the cause of cattle losses.

But the reports were skewed, blaming Mexican gray wolves for 88% of cattle predation deaths on public lands, in stark contrast to the national average of 4%. Ninety-seven percent of these reports were designated as confirmed or probable, by the agency, which was absolutely incorrect. This ensured ranchers would receive compensation for illegitimate losses directly blamed on these wolves.

One investigation, through the Freedom of Information Act, looked at 48 (out of 49) claims between 2018-2021 made by one rancher claiming that 10% of her cattle were killed by wolves. As a result, she was compensated $70,000 in 2021. One 14-year veteran investigator stated he had never heard of such a thing. In his expert analysis, Mexican Gray Wolves are too small to kill large prey like cattle.

In addition, New Mexico Sen. Mark Heinrich (D-NM) had concerns about the agency and stated in a letter to the USDA inspector general that there were serious accountability issues and lack of scientific integrity relative to wolf predation, thereby requesting an investigation into the matter.

The USDAs wildlife services stated mission is to provide Federal leadership and expertise to resolve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist. A mission that is far off the mark and is thus failing to allow Mexican gray wolves to coexist.

The wildlife services responsibilities should include transparency and integrity to the people of Arizona and New Mexico, not the cattle industry. As Arizonans, we recognize that stewardship, trust and guardianship of our public lands is part of our heritage. Corruption and mishandling of the wildlife services make it a mockery. One must ask what do the words allow people and wildlife to coexist really mean?

Linda Dugan lives in midtown Tucson and is a retired public school teacher. She is an advocate for the environment and wild wolf conservation.

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Day after day, Russia is pounding the Donbas region of Ukraine with relentless artillery and air raids, making slow but steady progress to seize the industrial heartland of its neighbor.

With the conflict now in its fourth month, it's a high-stakes campaign that could dictate the course of the entire war.

If Russia prevails in the battle of Donbas, it will mean that Ukraine loses not only land but perhaps the bulk of its most capable military forces, opening the way for Moscow to grab more territory and dictate its terms to Kyiv. A Russian failure could lay the grounds for a Ukrainian counteroffensive  and possibly lead to political upheaval for the Kremlin.

Following botched early attempts in the invasion to capture Kyiv and the second-largest city of Kharkiv without proper planning and coordination, Russia turned its attention to the Donbas, a region of mines and factories where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Learning from its earlier missteps, Russia is treading more carefully there, relying on longer-range bombardments to soften Ukrainian defenses.

It seems to be working: The better-equipped Russian forces have made gains in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions that make up the Donbas, controlling over 95% of the former and about half of the latter.

Ukraine is losing between 100 and 200 soldiers a day, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told the BBC, as Russia has thrown pretty much everything non-nuclear at the front. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier put the daily death toll at up to 100.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov described the combat situation as extremely difficult, using a reference to an ancient deity of sacrifice by saying: The Russian Moloch has plenty of means to devour human lives to satisfy its imperial ego.

When the war was going badly for Russia, many thought President Vladimir Putin might claim victory after some gains in Donbas and then exit a conflict that has seriously bruised the economy and stretched its resources. But the Kremlin has made clear it expects Ukraine to recognize all the gains Russia has made since the start of the invasion  something Kyiv has ruled out.

Russian forces control the entire Sea of Azov coast, including the strategic port of Mariupol, the entire Kherson region  a key gateway to Crimea  and a large chunk of the Zaporizhzhia region that could aid a further push deeper into Ukraine, and few expect that Putin will stop.

On Thursday, he drew parallels between the Ukrainian conflict and the 18th century wars with Sweden waged by Peter the Great. Now, as in those czarist times, our lot is to take back and consolidate historic Russian lands, Putin said. Moscow has long regarded Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence.

Unlike earlier battlefield failures, Russia appears to be using more conservative tactics. Many had expected it to try to encircle Ukrainian forces with a massive pincer movement from the north and south, but instead it has used a series of smaller moves to force a retreat and not overextend its supply lines.

Keir Giles, a Russia expert at London's Chatham House think-tank, said Russia was "concentrating all of its artillery on a single section of the front line in order to grind its way forward by flattening everything in its path.

Western officials still praise the ability of Ukrainian forces to defend their country, fighting back fiercely and similarly relying on artillery and retreating in some sections while launching frequent counterattacks.

Ukraine has been pursuing a policy of flexible defense, giving ground where it makes sense to do so instead of holding on to every inch of the territory," Giles said.

A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasnt authorized to discuss the sensitive issue in public said the Russian campaign "continues to be deeply troubled at all levels, noting that Moscow's forces are taking weeks to achieve even modest tactical goals such as taking individual villages.

Last month, the Russians lost nearly an entire battalion in a botched attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River and set up a bridgehead. Hundreds were killed and dozens of armored vehicles were destroyed.

There is a sense of strategic improvisation or muddling through, the official said, predicting that over the summer the Russian military could reach a point where they can no longer effectively generate offensive combat power.

Russia has a clear edge in artillery in the battle for Donbas, thanks to a bigger number of heavy howitzers and rocket launchers and abundant ammunition. The Ukrainians have had to be economical in using their artillery, with the Russians constantly targeting their supply lines.

Ukraine has begun to receive more heavy weapons from Western allies, who have provided dozens of howitzers and are now planning to start delivering multiple rocket launchers.

Putin has warned that if the West gives Kyiv longer-range rockets that could hit Russian territory, Moscow could hit targets in Ukraine that it has spared until now. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said that Russia could respond by seizing more land as a buffer zone from such weapons.

Moscow's earlier territorial gains in the south, including the Kherson region and a large part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, have prompted Russian officials and their local appointees to ponder plans to fold those areas into Russia or declare them to be independent, like the so-called people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Ukrainian officials and Western analysts voiced concern that Moscow could try to press its offensive into the heavily populated and industrialized Dnipro region farther north, an advance that could potentially slice Ukraine in two and raise a new threat for Kyiv.

Russian objectives in the context of this war are shifting in relation to the situation on the ground, said Eleonora Tafuro Ambrosetti, an analyst with the Milan-based Italian Institute for International Political Studies.

Their goals are sort of flexible enough to be adaptive to context on the ground," she said, noting that Russia could try to damage Ukraine's economy by seizing the entire coastline to deny access to shipping.

A top Russian general already has spoken of plans to cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea by seizing the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions all the way to the border with Romania, a move that would also allow Moscow to build a land corridor to Moldova's separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.

Such ambitions all hinge on Moscow's success in the east. A defeat in the Donbas would put Kyiv in a precarious position, with new recruits lacking the skills of battle-hardened soldiers now fighting in the east and supplies of Western weapons insufficient to fend off a potentially deeper Russian push.

Ukrainian officials brushed off such fears, voicing confidence that its military can hold out to stem the Russian advances and even launch a counterattack.

Ukraine's plan is clear: Kyiv is wearing the Russian army out, trying to win time for more deliveries of Western weapons, including air defense systems, in the hope of launching an efficient counteroffensive, said analyst Mykola Sunhurovsky of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.

Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general who was NATOs top commander from 2013 to 2016, warned against any cease-fire that would codify Russia's battlefield gains.

This is like raising a 2-year-old, he said. If you allow bad behavior to stand, or worse if you reward bad behavior, youre going to get more bad behavior.

When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Washington's response was inadequate, and when Moscow seized Crimea in 2014, the West and the United States response to that was inadequate to task, Breedlove added.

Now that Russia has come back for more, the West gets another chance to respond. How we finish this war will decide, in my opinion, whether we are going to see more of this in the future, he added.

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London and Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed.

Follow APs coverage of the Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
UNITED NATIONS, June 13 (Xinhua) -- UNFPA, the UN agency for sexual and reproductive health, announced on Monday the winners of its 2022 UN Population Award, which went to a young Namibian parliamentarian and Indonesia's National Population and Family Planning Board.

The individual laureate is member of parliament Emma Theofelus, who is currently the Deputy Minister of Information in Namibia and the youngest-ever winner of the award.

The institutional laureate from Indonesia, BKKBN, is a non-ministerial government agency that formulates national policies, implements family planning initiatives and mentors experts in the field of population dynamics.

Namibian activist Theofelus has been recognized for advocating for women's empowerment and adolescent sexual and reproductive health.

Her experience as an advocate for sexual and reproductive health has led her to directly address the country's youth, as one of Africa's youngest cabinet ministers.

She led Namibia's public communication campaign on COVID-19 preventions as a deputy minister, and she pioneered legislation for feminine hygiene products to be tax-free.

According to the UNFPA, BKKBN was recognized for its successful, innovative and rights-based family planning program in the Republic of Indonesia, which continued even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The organization has trained population experts, collaborated with non-governmental organizations and faith-based organizations on population issues, and developed programs to assist families caring for the elderly.

The UN Population Award has honored individuals and institutions for their outstanding contributions to population, development and reproductive health since 1983. 
Dozens of students from Wagoner County were recognized at Oklahoma States Honor Roll for the spring 2022 semester.

Coweta

:

Ethan Anderson: Presidents Honor Roll

Lily Anderson: Deans Honor Roll

Melissa Angel: Presidents Honor Roll

Caleb Brisbin: Deans Honor Roll

Darrien Brisbin: Deans Honor Roll

Kendall Carter: Deans Honor Roll

Kristin Cathcart: Deans Honor Roll

Rebecca Clark: Deans Honor Roll

Cheyenne Coppinger: Deans Honor Roll

Kendyl Doss: Deans Honor Roll

Alyssa Dunfield: Deans Honor Roll

Jonathan Fields: Deans Honor Roll

Mckenzie Gaddy: Deans Honor Roll

Amanda Geneva: Presidents Honor Roll

Grant Helmer: Deans Honor Roll

Madyson Hedge: Presidents Honor Roll

Joshua McCormick: Deans Honor Roll

Taron Mills: Presidents Honor Roll

Bailey Mitchell: Deans Honor Roll

Abraham Nunez: Deans Honor Roll

Emily Patterson: Deans Honor Roll

Isabelle Posey: Presidents Honor Roll

Jaci Ross: Deans Honor Roll

Kynzi Smith: Deans Honor Roll

Destiny Seaman: Presidents Honor Roll

Levi Walls: Presidents Honor Roll

Sydney Welborn: Presidents Honor Roll

Kaitlynn Withers: Deans Honor Roll

Porter:Kathryn Buckmaster: Presidents Honor Roll

Wagoner:Rosava Bibelheimer: Deans Honor Roll

McKenna Blair: Deans Honor Roll

Elizabeth Gray: Presidents Honor Roll

Jonathan Hanna: Deans Honor Roll

Kai Matthews: Presidents Honor Roll

Demiana Page: Deans Honor Roll

Robert Pille: Deans Honor Roll

Abby Riggs: Presidents Honor Roll

Kathleen Wofford: Presidents Honor Roll

A total of 7,097 students were named to the 2022 spring semester honor rolls at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, including 3,173 students named to the Presidents Honor Roll for earning an A grade in all their courses.

Full-time undergraduate students who completed 12 or more hours with a grade point average of 4.00 made the Presidents Honor Roll, and students with a grade point average of 3.50 or higher with no grade below a C made the Deans Honor Roll.
What's a breast biopsy?

A breast biopsy is a procedure in which a doctor removes a small amount of tissue or fluid from your breast in order to examine it under a microscope for signs of cancer. Your doctor will usually recommend a biopsy if there's a lump in your breast or something suspicious on your mammogram or ultrasound scan. About 80 percent of biopsies show that no cancer is present. If the mass seems likely to be harmless, you may be given the option of waiting a few months instead to see whether anything changes. Ask lots of questions and trust your instincts.

What can the doctor tell from looking at my tissue sample?

By examining your cells, a pathologist can tell whether they're cancerous and, if so, roughly how advanced the cancer is. Further lab tests may reveal more about the cancer -- whether its cells will respond to hormone treatment, for instance (this happens more frequently in postmenopausal women).

How is a biopsy done?

The type of biopsy you'll have depends on the size, number, and location of the lumps that have been discovered. Your doctor may recommend a fine-needle aspiration first, since it's the least invasive of the lot, can be done in the doctor's office, and requires only local anesthesia. The doctor inserts a very thin needle attached to a syringe into the lump to see if it's solid or filled with fluid. (If the lump is hard to locate, the doctor may use an ultrasound to guide the needle into the mass.) If there's clear fluid inside the mass, it's probably a harmless benign cyst, but it should be analyzed just to make sure. In rare cases, bloody or cloudy fluid may mean cancer. If the mass is solid, and the pathologist finds no cancer cells, the tumor must be investigated further because cancer cells may have been missed. A further biopsy in which more tissue is removed is always necessary just to make certain the tumor is cancer-free.

In a core-needle biopsy, the doctor uses a thicker needle (about 1/16 to 1/8 inch in diameter) to remove a larger amount of tissue. This is also an outpatient procedure that requires only local anesthesia. It will probably take the lab about two days to complete an analysis of your sample. Two methods that remove more tissue than a core biopsy are called Mammotome and ABBI (Advanced Breast Biopsy Instrument).

In some cases, the doctor will want to do a more thorough examination by surgically removing a larger portion of the lump (this is called an incisional biopsy) or by taking out the entire lump and some surrounding tissue (this is known as an excisional biopsy or lumpectomy). Both procedures are normally done on an outpatient basis, but in a hospital rather than a doctor's office. To make things easier, your doctor may use a technique called wire localization, in which x-rays help show where a hollow needle should be inserted so that it will pierce the lump. Once the needle is in place, a wire with a tiny hook on the end is passed through it and planted in the mass. Then the needle is removed, and the wire serves as a guide to the lump.

If your doctor suspects that you have inflammatory breast cancer, he or she may do what's called a punch biopsy on the skin of your breast, using a cylindrical needle 3 or 4 millimeters in diameter. This outpatient procedure requires only local anesthesia.

Will a biopsy leave a scar?

The more invasive a biopsy is, the more of a scar it will leave. Scar tissue inside the breast may harden and feel lumpy. An incisional biopsy that removes part of a lump will leave behind not only a scar but also the rest of the lump. As the tissue heals, ask your doctor how to tell the difference between scar tissue and a new lump when you do your breast self-exams .

Remember, too, that the vast majority of biopsies turn out benign, but the earlier a biopsy catches a cancer tumor, the more likely a woman is to overcome it.

References

American Cancer Society. Breast Cancer: Detection and Symptoms.

Beth Israel Hospital. Breast Cancer Guide: Making a Diagnosis

Breast Cancer: The Complete Guide by Yashar Hirshaut, M.D. and Peter Pressman, M.D., Bantam Books.

American Cancer Society. How is Breast Cancer Diagnosed?

Originally published on consumer.healthday.com, part of the TownNews Content Exchange.
Three girls were missing.

That much was certain, once the head count had been completed.

But in the moment, Leigh Miller had no way of fathoming what it meant.

They wouldnt tell us anything, she said, describing the scene she woke up to on June 13, 1977, the first morning of summer camp.

Almost before she knew what was happening, she added, she was being loaded onto a bus.

Less than 24 hours after it started, camp was over.

It was only later that Leigh, a 9-year-old Tulsa Girl Scout making her first visit to Camp Scott in Mayes County, would find out the truth.

Three girls were not just missing  they were dead.

And she knew who they were. She had slept in the tent closest to theirs.

This Monday marks 45 years since the slayings of Lori Farmer, 8, Michele Guse, 9, and Denise Milner, 10, in what would become known as the Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders.

The case has been back in the news recently.

Ahead of the anniversary, DNA findings were made public that pointed to the longtime main suspect, Gene Leroy Hart, who died in 1979.

The story is also reaching new audiences through an ABC News/Hulu docuseries released in May.

Miller said the new series has brought back memories that for years shes tried to suppress.

One of those, she said, is her belief that she was in the tent closest to the victims.

Records recently confirmed that as a fact. But Miller didnt really need them to.

Memories of the screams shes convinced she heard will always be confirmation enough.

Weird feeling

Miller, a longtime Tulsan, is upfront and honest about her life, which has not been easy.

For years, she struggled with substance abuse and addiction, and she even spent time in jail at 18 on a robbery charge.

But she finally was able to turn it around. In 2012, Miller entered recovery, and today she is on a good path.

As an advocate and parent mentor for Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, she works with women, many with stories similar to hers, who are trying to get their children back from state custody.

Miller said there were other trauma factors that contributed to her addiction and mental health struggles.

But through therapy, she has come to believe that at least some of it traces back to her experience at Camp Scott.

Miller, who was about to start fifth grade at Patrick Henry Elementary School, had never attended camp before that summer.

I was a shy kid and scared about going, she said. I didnt really know anyone. Id never even slept in a tent.

She began to make friends, though, soon after arriving.

Miller was assigned to the seventh tent in her unit.

A few yards from hers, and farthest from the counselors tent, was the last tent in the row.

Miller met her neighbors and remembers both Farmer and Milner. Milner, she said, was quiet like me.

That first afternoon and evening came and went, concluding with a campfire and songs before the kids settled in.

Miller didnt sleep well, and she recalls that at one point she needed to go to the bathroom.

But I couldnt get any of my tentmates to go with me, she said. So I just held it.

It was sometime after that that she heard what sounded like screams.

But assuming it was just overexcited kids on the first night of camp, I didnt think anything of it, she said.

Miller awoke the next morning to a really weird feeling.

The counselors seemed to be on high alert, she said.

They kept counting everybody. I was in the front of the line. I heard the counselor say, Weve got all of them but three.

It didnt register what that meant, Miller said.

Then we were told to just leave our stuff. It was an emergency, and we had to go home. Thats all I remember them saying.

No one was scared, but we were confused.

The scene back in Tulsa only heightened that confusion at first.

A big crowd of people was on hand for the arrival of the buses.

As Miller expected, her parents were there waiting. But with them was their church minister.

It was Pastor Bob. And I was like, Why is he here?

Clearly, something was wrong.

Stepping off the bus into her parents waiting arms, I asked my mother what was going on, Miller said. And she said, Lets get in the car, and Ill explain everything.

That explanation was not anything Miller could have been prepared for.

I just felt a chill go down my back, she said of being informed of the murders. Then I remembered the screams.

Not alone

About two weeks later, Miller and her parents were asked to return to the camp to retrieve her things.

That was likely when they first realized how close her tent was to the victims.

We were told to go through my stuff and see if anything was missing, she said. But I just wanted to take everything and get out of there.

Miller was never questioned by authorities at any point. She doesnt know why, though it could be that her parents denied them access.

Understandably, she said, her parents were protective. They tried to shield her from any news about the crimes.

They said they would tell me anything I needed to know, Miller said. But in the end, the subject wasnt talked about at all.

Looking back now, Miller believes she needed to talk.

I had a lot of survivors guilt, she said.

She pushed it to the back of her mind, and as the years went by, she would never read or watch anything related to the case.

However, the publicity surrounding the new docuseries compelled her to check it out.

When a camp counselor in one episode talked about still having feelings of guilt, it struck a chord with Miller.

I wanted to reach out to her, she said.

In her current work and advocacy, a message that Miller emphasizes to clients is youre not alone.

By talking about this experience now, 45 years later, she hopes to accomplish something similar.

If it can help anyone, thats what I want.

That includes any of the other girls who were there.

We were so young, Miller said. We didnt know what to do with all this. And I just want them to know theyre not alone.

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An ancient Greek philosopher asserted that no one can step into the same river twice because both the river and the person are constantly changing.

The same thing could be said of a walk in the woods, it would seem.

But for Carla Wilhite, each time she revisits a particular walk in a certain forest, its always about 6 a.m., with the sky exhibiting that same steely blue-gray 6 a.m. color.

The air always has that same heavy, humid feel that follows an Oklahoma summer rain.

The scent on the breeze is always of the same sweet, woody sycamore trees.

And the walk always ends with the discovery of three young, dead Girl Scouts.

The walk is always the same.

And in that moment, so is Wilhite  an 18-year-old waking early on her first morning as a camp counselor, filled with excitement and anticipation for creating the same life-altering experience for these young girls that camp had always meant for her.

But since that moment, nothing has ever been the same.

Changed irrevocably

It was June 13, 1977, and a group of Tulsa-area Girl Scouts had just spent their first night of a weeklong stay at Camp Scott near Locust Grove.

With Wilhites discovery of the murder scene, all camp plans ceased. Most of the girls were quickly returned to Tulsa by bus.

The families of three girls  Lori Lee Farmer, 8, Michele Guse, 9, and Doris Denise Milner, 10  were given the devastating news of their childrens deaths. Two of the girls had been beaten to death, the third strangled.

And law enforcement authorities began a murder investigation that, in some circles, continues to this day.

Ultimately, an area man, Gene Leroy Hart, was arrested after an intense manhunt and charged with the crimes, but following a sensational trial, he was acquitted in March 1979.

Three months later  two years after the murders  Hart collapsed in prison and died. He was serving more than 100 years on unrelated burglary, rape and kidnapping charges.

Enough paper to account for a forest has been filled with theories, claims and hypotheses about what happened that night at Camp Scott and then what happened in the judicial system to the case that resulted from the killings.

But Wilhite doesnt need to read those pages. She was there. She lived it. And it changed her irrevocably.

Such a heinous crime victimizes many more people than casual observers realize.

Much is written about how the families of the dead go on with their lives. But what of the others?

When recurring thoughts of a walk in the woods conjure memories of a real nightmare more horrific than any fiction could ever produce, how does life go on?

Just like any teenager

Today, Wilhite, a native of Sand Springs, is an occupational therapist by profession and the program director of a graduate occupational therapy program at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction.

After her 1977 graduation from Charles Page High School and the discovery of the Camp Scott murders, she went to college in Missouri for a while and then landed a little closer to home  at Oklahoma State University. Wilhite ended up in Farmington, New Mexico, where she worked for about 8 years as a police officer and a detective, and then she went back to school.

At the University of New Mexico, she finished a bachelors degree in fine arts and then a second bachelors degree in occupational therapy.

Not yet done with school, she got a masters degree in nonprofit management from Regis University in Denver and then finished her doctorate in occupational therapy through Creighton University.

Since the fall she has been an assistant professor at Colorado Mesa, where her practice expertise is bringing general occupational therapy skills to bear on the problems and concerns of agricultural producers, family members of farmers and ranchers, and farm workers.

I never dreamed of being a police officer. I never dreamed of being an occupational therapist, Wilhite said. I was just like any teenager  I wanted to be a rock n roll star or a famous artist.

But unlike most teenagers, who gradually let go of their dreams of fame and stardom, for Wilhite, all of that disappeared in that moment at Camp Scott.

After that, I needed to help somebody, she said.

It would be awhile before she got the chance, though.

It damaged me

In the immediate hours and days after the three young girls were found slain, authorities didnt know that two of them had also been raped and that they were looking for exclusively male suspects.

Therefore Wilhite, as the person who found the bodies, was treated not as a traumatized witness but as a murder suspect.

Any adult counselors at camp were looked at as suspects, she said. They interrogated several young women until they found the sperm.

The treatment by law enforcement officers absolutely affected my ability to move on with my life, she said. I know it wasnt intentional on their part. They were doing their job. I understand that part.

But I also think there was no consideration  at least early in the investigation  that we were just barely adults, and to be interrogated and fingerprinted and give samples of your hair and saliva and your blood and even your pubic hair and asked to take a polygraph and have your Miranda rights read to you  it flipped my brain.

Wilhite said the interrogation techniques were eerily similar to those detailed in the John Grisham book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, a nonfiction account of a 1982 Ada murder investigation in which law enforcement questioning techniques of suspects came under scrutiny.

They asked me questions like, Did you dream that you did it? Have you ever fantasized about doing this? Wilhite said.

I really wanted to help the investigation. I wanted justice to be done, she said. I never expected to be in that position. I was not emotionally, mentally (or) spiritually prepared for that.

I understand that it was a different time and a different type of interrogation procedure. But I was still just an 18-year-old kid, and I know it damaged me.

Although Wilhite said she has no animus toward law enforcement, her experience with the investigation definitely influenced my decision to go into police work.

And despite Harts acquittal, she remains convinced of his guilt.

Having been in law enforcement, I feel like they had a really satisfactory case against him with all of the circumstantial evidence, she said. I never had any doubt that he was the perpetrator.

Not how guilt works

Wilhite is a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts. As a young girl, she joined the Brownies and stayed in Girl Scouts until she had achieved the rank of Senior Scout and earned her First Class Award, now called the Gold Award, which is the equivalent of the Boy Scouts Eagle Scout rank.

She had attended Camp Scott since 1971 and was a counselor-in-training for two summers prior to 1977.

We were so well-trained for accidents, snake bites, wounds  the whole nine yards of what to do in an emergency, she said.

One year a tornado knocked a tree down that landed on a tent. None of the girls were hurt, but we handled that emergency.

But there was no training for what do in case of violence.

That kind of stuff just didnt happen then  until then, Wilhite said. It was unprecedented. It truly was a different world.

But Gene Leroy Hart changed all of that.

So in a world where such horror was so unprecedented that student leaders had been given no preparation for what to do if it were to happen, one would have to hope that those student leaders understood how this couldnt have been their fault.

But thats not how guilt works, Wilhite said.

In the grasp of guilt, she said, she has told herself that the parents never would have sued the Girl Scouts if they thought I had done right and had been brave and had done my job.

All evidence points to the contrary.

They have been compassionate and sent messages to me, and that has helped a lot, Wilhite said. Im just fearful to meet them.

She said she has communicated via Facebook with Betty Milner, Denises mother, and she has been nothing but a sacred human being  just so compassionate.

But Wilhite said she cant face meeting the parents because it reminds her that she didnt wake up. I didnt discover what was happening  back to that I should have.

I think that for most survivors of violence or proximity to violence (the reaction) is not Thank God Im alive but more It should have been me. I should have done something.

Ive had to learn to unguilt and let go of guilt and be more pragmatic.

Life changed  forever

June is always the month, Wilhite said.

Every June is not hard, but no June has ever passed without an acknowledgment that my life changed in June 1977  forever.

But trauma isnt something a survivor deals with one month out of a year.

I havent had a good nights sleep  the sleep of the innocent  you know, the deep, restful sleep  since 1977, she said.

For a long time I couldnt sleep in a sleeping bag. I can do it now, but I kind of have to will myself to do it.

Wilhite does still go camping, an activity she loves  has always loved. She still enjoys hiking and sitting around a campfire.

I still do all of those things. I just might not zip up my sleeping bag, no matter how cold I am.

And like with post-traumatic stress disorder, Im hypervigilant, she said. Im always aware of what or who is around me, whats going on.

Progress might be slow, but it comes.

I dont have as many disruptive memories as I used to where I might see something that triggers the memory of seeing the dead body that I first saw of the little Milner girl as I was walking to go take my shower, she said.

Wilhite used to be bothered by the smell of sycamore trees or wet leaves or certain times of the morning.

For a long time, I couldnt get up at 6 a.m. and look outside, she said. It was too much like that moment. But over the years I can do all of those things without getting I guess what you would say triggered.

That association with your environment and those things that trigger you lessens over time.

He was a human being

Perhaps surprisingly, Wilhite is even able to point to some good that has come out of the horror that changed her life so dramatically.

Im definitely more compassionate, she said. I think Im less judgmental of other people and definitely more compassionate, and I think thats made me a better occupational therapist and a better teacher.

I will say I dont think that made me a better police officer.

Some of that compassion Wilhite even reserves for the man who took so much from her and others  Hart himself.

Was he redeemable?

I suspect that if thats the kind of person that he was, redemption would have been kind of elusive, she said. We dont know what his psychological makeup was, but we do know that he was capable of great cruelty and inflicting enormous pain.

But he wasnt a monster. He was a man who did monstrous things, she said. If we say hes a monster, we say hes different from us  that he wasnt a human being.

But he was a human being. And I dont think well ever understand why he did what he did.

Bad things happen to all of us

Forty-five years after the murders, Wilhite doesnt spend many of her waking hours dwelling on the whys and hows anymore.

I think I live a pretty normal life. I go home, and Im a couch potato, she said. I go to movies. I read books.

I think overall Ive had a very ordinary life. I love my career; I love teaching and occupational therapy.

I am functioning. I have accomplished a lot. I have driven myself to live a good life despite what happened.

She insists that time  and a good bit of therapy  does help.

The biggest part is the more life experience you have in managing your post-traumatic stress  self-managing your depression with the help of your doctor and your therapists over the years  you get better.

And I do kind of believe in that mantra that recovery happens, she said. I really believe that. I still believe that I can recover from what happened.

Bad things happen to all of us. All of us have had to bear trauma, letdowns or worse  violence, Wilhite said.

The right question isnt Why did this happen to me? The question for everybody else is Why didnt it happen to me?

Were all going to have a disability. Were all just temporarily able.

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Tulsa World Newsroom podcast: Questions still remain about the Oklahoma Girl Scout murders 45 years later

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Staying put: Despite anticipated enrollment shifts and a projected multimillion-dollar reduction in state aid for the coming school year, Tulsa Public Schools Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Jorge Robles said Tuesday that the district has no plans to close schools or redraw attendance boundaries anytime soon.

According to the preliminary budget approved on June 6 by the Tulsa school board, sites projected to see an enrollment decline of 25 students or more for the 2022-23 school year include Anderson, Clinton West, Emerson and Hawthorne elementary schools; Monroe Demonstration Academy; and East Central, McLain, Memorial and Webster high schools.

Conversely, an equal number of schools are projected to see an enrollment increase of at least 25 students. Those sites are Council Oak, Lanier, Eisenhower, Mayo Demonstration, Eugene Field and Salk elementary schools; Edison and Thoreau Demonstration middle schools; and Edison Preparatory High School.

That does not include elementary and middle schools within the Nathan Hale and East Central feeder patterns due to grade reconfigurations that will take effect starting in August.

As approved, the preliminary budget is based on TPS losing $13.3 million in state aid due to declining enrollment and a change in the state funding formula.

The district will pull $17 million from its fund balance to offset the projected reduction.

Books and popsicles: The Trojans Read the Way Bookmobile will be running routes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in June and July across portions of Jenks Public Schools attendance area.

Children can pick up a popsicle and a book at each bookmobile stop. Route schedules are available at tinyurl.com/TRTW2022.

Teach for America expansion: At its June 6 meeting, the Tulsa school board approved an agreement with Teach for America to recruit program alumni to teach an additional two years in the district.

This is in addition to a separate agreement also approved with the organization to bring in up to 70 new corps members for the 2022-23 school year.

Scholarship help: TPS Parent Resource Center and Young People of the Next Generation are partnering to host sessions from 9 a.m. to noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays in June for rising high school seniors needing help with applications for college and the Oklahomas Promise scholarship program.

The Tuesday sessions are specifically for college admission applications, while Thursday sessions are focused on Oklahomas Promise. All workshops will be at 525 E. 46th St. North, and attendees are asked to preregister online at tinyurl.com/2023collegehelp.

Indian education conversation: The U.S. Department of Education will host the National Urban Indigenous Education Policy Summit online Thursday. The event is free and open to the public, but preregistration via Eventbrite is required at bit.ly/urbanindigenoussummit in order to receive log-in information.

School board calendar: The boards of education for Bixby, Collinsville, Coweta, Glenpool, Jenks, Liberty, Mounds, Sapulpa, Skiatook, Sperry and Union all have meetings on Monday.

Berryhill Public Schools board meeting originally scheduled for Monday has been postponed to June 27.

The Statewide Virtual Charter School Board is scheduled to meet on Tuesday in Oklahoma City.

 Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton, Tulsa World

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Tulsans will soon know whether their city councilors will face challengers in this years nonpartisan municipal elections.

With the three-day filing period set to begin Monday, this much is clear: Nearly every person who holds a seat in the citys municipal government has no intention of giving it up.

Only one of the City Councils nine members, District 4 Councilor Kara Joy McKee, is not seeking reelection.

Auditor Cathy Carter, who has not had a challenger since she was elected in 2013, is running again.

Councilors seeking reelection are Vanessa Hall-Harper (District 1), Jeannie Cue (District 2), Crista Patrick (District 3), Mykey Arthrell (District 5), Connie Dodson (District 6), Lori Decter Wright (District 7), Phil Lakin (District 8) and Jayme Fowler (District 9)

City councilors and the auditor serve two-year terms.

Tulsans elect their mayor every four years. The next mayoral election is in 2024.

Several councilors already have challengers, some with familiar names.

Ty Walker is taking another run at the District 5 seat held by Arthrell. Walker ran unsuccessfully for that office in 2018 and was one of several candidates who challenged Mayor G.T. Bynum in the 2020 mayors race.

In District 6, where Dodson has served since 2014, Lewana Harris has filed a campaign committee statement of organization with the City Clerks Office. Chad Hotvedt has filed the same paperwork with the intention of challenging Fowler in District 9.

Ken Reddick, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2020, is challenging Wright in District 7, according to his campaigns Facebook page. He was one of six candidates Wright defeated in 2018 to win her first term in office.

As of Friday, the open District 4 seat had drawn two candidates: Michael Feamster, president of Nabholz Constructions Southwest Region; and motivational speaker and counselor Emeka Nnaka.

The general election for municipal candidates is Aug. 23. Runoff elections, if necessary, will be held Nov. 8.

Incumbents and challengers alike must submit their declarations of candidacy to the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave., by 5 p.m. Wednesday, along with a certified check or cashiers check for $50 made out to the city of Tulsa.

Candidate filing packets can be found on the Election Board website at tulsacounty.org/electionboard.

Video: Oklahomas 14 most beautiful places to visit

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It is a signature work by "the most important pop artist you've never heard of," said Rachel Keith, the museum's deputy director for curatorial affairs.
WASHINGTON (AP)  A police officer lauded for his bravery during the U.S. Capitol riot testified Monday that a man carrying a Confederate battle flag jabbed at him with the flagpole before joining the mob that chased him up a staircase.

In his first public testimony since the Jan. 6, 2021, siege, Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman described his encounter with the flag-toting Delaware man, Kevin Seefried, and his adult son, Hunter, at their trial on charges that they stormed the Capitol together.

Goodman has been hailed as a hero for leading a group of rioters away from the Senate chamber as senators and then-Vice President Mike Pence were being evacuated. Goodman also directed Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, to turn around and head away from the mob.

Goodman recalled seeing Kevin Seefried standing alone in an archway and telling him to leave. Instead, Seefried cursed at him and jabbed at the officer with the base end of the flagpole three or four times without making contact with him, Goodman said.

He was very angry. Screaming. Talking loudly, Goodman said. Complete opposite of pleasant.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is hearing testimony without a jury for the Seefrieds bench trial, which started Monday and is scheduled to resume Tuesday. The Seefrieds waived their right to a jury trial, which means McFadden will decide their cases.

Widely published photographs showed Kevin Seefried carrying a Confederate battle flag inside the Capitol after he and his son entered the building through a broken window.

The charges against both Kevin and Hunter Seefried include a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding, the joint session of Congress for certifying Joe Bidens victory over then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

During the trial's opening statements, defense attorneys said the Seefrieds never intended to interfere with the Electoral College vote count.

Indeed, (Kevin Seefried) was not even aware that the electoral count was happening or was happening in the Capitol, one of his lawyers, Elizabeth Mullin, told the judge.

After rioters chased Goodman up a set of stairs, another Capitol police officer who confronted the mob near the Senate chamber recalled that Kevin Seefried asked, Why are you protecting them?

I assumed he was talking about Congress, Officer Brian Morgan testified.

Before his encounter with the mob inside the Capitol, Goodman joined other officers in trying to hold back rioters as they clashed with police outside the building.

It was like something out of medieval times, with one huge force clashing with another opposing force, Goodman said. I've never seen anything like that ever.

Goodman said he had to retreat inside the building after getting pepper sprayed and exposed to tear gas deployed by police.

The Seefrieds aren't charged with assaulting any officers.

Mullin conceded that Kevin Seefried is guilty of two misdemeanor charges that he knowingly entered a restricted building and illegally demonstrated in the Capitol.

Hunter Seefried, then 22, may have acted stupidly but didn't intend to block Congress from certifying the election results, defense attorney Edson Bostic said.

Goodman recalled that Hunter Seefried was smirking but didn't see him acting aggressively or hear him yelling at police.

He was just disobeying commands, Goodman said.

The Seefrieds traveled to Washington from their home in Laurel, Delaware, to hear Trumps speech at the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6.

They climbed over a wall near a stairwell and scaffolding in the northwest section of the Capitol and were among the first rioters to approach the building near the Senate Wing Door, according to prosecutors. After watching other rioters use a police shield and a wooden plank to break a window, Hunter Seefried used a gloved fist to clear a shard of glass in one of the broken windowpanes, prosecutors said.

In a court filing, prosecutors said the Confederate battle flag that Kevin Seefried brought from home was a symbol of violent opposition to the United States government.

Mullin said Seefried didn't intend to send any kind of message by carrying the flag into the Capitol and regrets doing so.

McFadden, whom Trump nominated in 2017, is the only judge to a hold a bench trial for a Capitol riot case so far.

In April, he acquitted New Mexico resident Matthew Martin of misdemeanor charges that he illegally entered the Capitol and engaged in disorderly conduct after he walked into the building.

In March, McFadden acquitted a New Mexico elected official of engaging in disorderly conduct but convicted him of illegally entering restricted Capitol grounds.

McFadden has criticized prosecutors handling of Capitol riot cases. He suggested that the Justice Department has been unjustly tougher on Capitol riot defendants compared with people arrested at protests against police brutality and racial injustice after George Floyds 2020 murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is scheduled to preside over a bench trial for Jesus Rivera, a Pensacola, Florida, man charged with four riot-related misdemeanors. President Bill Clinton nominated Kollar-Kotelly to the court in 1997.

At least four other Capitol riot defendants have bench trials scheduled for this year.

Juries have unanimously convicted five Capitol riot defendants of all charges, a perfect record for prosecutors so far. More than 300 other defendants have pleaded guilty to riot offenses, mostly misdemeanors punishable by no more than one year in prison. Approximately 100 others have trial dates in 2022 or 2023. More than 800 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Vietnamese chicken exporters will find it difficult to take advantage of the opportunity to export chicken to Singapore and Malaysia even though the city-state is facing a shortage due to Kuala Lumpurs announcement to suspend chicken exports to stabilize its domestic supply, according to some local experts in the industry.

There is no way that Malaysia would stop chicken exports. I think there must be a major reason behind its move, Nguyen Kim Doan, vice-chairman of the Dong Nai Livestock Association, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper last week.

Before Malaysia announced its ban on chicken exports, chicken farmers in Vietnam had been suffering losses for a couple of years, causing breeders to reduce the number of broodstock chickens.

Prior to Malaysias export ban, Vietnams chicken prices were on the rise.

However, when Malaysia imposed its prohibition, Vietnam still could not manage to meet the demand of other markets due to the broodstock undersupply.

Because of lack of supply, Singapore, which relies on Malaysia for a third of its poultry imports, will import chicken from other countries, especially European countries, Doan said.

Therefore, Doan concluded that Vietnamese firms would find it hard to export the fowl right now.

Although they can export chicken, it would take time to raise enough poultry to meet demand.

It usually takes around five months to restore an adequate volume of broodstock chickens, and two more months to raise the fowl for meat. So, it will be a bit late to cope with the current shortage of chicken, he explained.

A chicken exporter based in Ho Chi Minh City asserted that local firms could not seize this opportunity to ship chicken overseas.

A representative of this chicken exporter attributed the firms falling volume of exported chicken to dwindling supply.

We learned that Malaysian firms had to suspend chicken exports to ease domestic undersupply of the meat, he said.

Vietnam is facing the same fate.

The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has left both purchasing power and chicken farming in a tough position.

Meanwhile, animal feed prices are constantly soaring, forcing many chicken farmers to suspend their businesses.

Everyone can see the opportunity to ramp up chicken exports now, but it takes time to get chicken available for export, the representative added.

Echoing this viewpoint, Ho Phong Thanh, a poultry expert in southern Dong Nai Province, said the current chicken supply at home is just enough for domestic consumption and not available for export.

Besides, export procedures are time-consuming as exporters have to work to ensure they meet various requirements and standards for shipping chicken abroad.

Meanwhile, none of the plants and cold storage facilities in Vietnam meet export standards.

Due to these factors, Thanh stressed that it may be impossible to export chicken at present.

Nguyen Thi Tam, a chicken farmer in Dong Nai, said she has scaled down her annual brood of over 200,000 chickens since 2020.

According to Tam, raising chickens for meat or eggs is no longer appealing to farmers, since animal feed prices have increased and the local market is unstable.

Someone told me to restore my chicken brood to meet export demand, but I think its not time for reinvestment now, Tam said.

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A new decree that is set to take effect early next month will raise the minimum wage for laborers in Vietnam by six percent.

Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh signed on Sunday Decree No. 38/2022, which regulates the minimum emolument for employees working under labor contracts.

Accordingly, the minimum monthly wage in the country will increase by six percent compared to the current rate.

The change in the decree, which will take effect on July 1, is applicable to workers and employers under labor contracts in accordance with the Labor Code.

This will be the first minimum pay hike in two years in Vietnam.

The increase is equivalent to a rise of between VND180,000 (US$7.7) and VND260,000 ($11.2).

With this increase, the minimum monthly remuneration will be raised to between VND3.25 million ($142) and VND4.68 million ($201.6).

The document also specifies that the minimum hourly pay will range from VND15,600 ($0.67) to VND22,500 ($0.97).

For workers who are paid on a daily or weekly basis, or based on a piece rate, their salary, when converted to the monthly or hourly rate, must not be lower than the promulgated minimum wage.

The minimum payment as regulated by the government is the lowest level for businesses to use as a basis for negotiating and paying wages to employees.

Therefore, businesses cannot apply a salary level lower than this.

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KAMPALA, June 13 (Xinhua) -- One hundred troops of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday fled into neighboring Uganda after intense fighting with the M23 rebels, Ugandan police said.

The DRC soldiers are now under the custody of the Ugandan military before they are handed to the Congolese military, Ugandan police spokesperson Fred Enanga told reporters in Kampala, the Ugandan capital.

The troops fled after intense fighting with the rebels in Bunagana, on the Congolese side of the border, Enanga said, adding that reports indicate that Bunagana has been captured by the M23 rebels.

The police spokesperson said security has been beefed up on the Ugandan side of the border.

Earlier on Monday, the Uganda Red Cross Society said hundreds of Congolese are fleeing into Uganda because of the fighting back home.

There is an ongoing verification exercise to determine the exact number of people fleeing the fighting, according to the agency. 
Editors note: Hong Anh was born and raised in Ho Chi Minh City. She began considering quitting her 9-5 job in the southern metropolis in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Once Vietnam lifted its social distancing restrictions, she left the city and relocated to a remote coastal town in south-central Vietnam.

She recalled her journey in this piece to Tuoi Tre News. The story has been edited by Tuoi Tre News.

A supplied video shows Hong Anh playing fetch with her dogs on a beach in My Hoa Village, Ninh Thuan Province, south-central Vietnam.

So, I quit my job.

Nine years and six months since graduating in June 2012, including two years of COVID-19, my dream of freedom finally came true. I was free to go wherever I wanted, free to do whatever I wanted, and most importantly, free from worries about money.

I worked in banking for more than seven years, then switched to a securities firm right before COVID-19 broke out. The VN-Index hit a historic low of 660, presenting a unique opportunity to invest in stocks in early 2020. It then climbed up to 1,450, a 220 percent increase in only 20 months, when I decided to leave.

No one could have predicted the stock market to jump so high. My success was 30 percent hard work and 70 percent good luck. I was in exactly the right place at the right time.

Nevertheless, quitting was scary because I did not have a plan. Even though I had already made the decision to quit my 9-5 job, submitting my resignation still felt surprisingly like a spontaneous moment.

Suddenly, my free time became abundant and I was forced to think seriously about what to do with it. Traveling abroad was not feasible [because of the pandemic] so I decided to rent a car and go on a two-week road trip with my three dogs before Tet [Vietnamese Lunar New Year, which was due in February 2022].

My planned route was Saigon - Bao Loc - Da Lat - Phan Rang - Lagi - Long Hai then back to Saigon. I expected to stay for a maximum of two to three days in each location.

The coastal city of Phan Rang, however, captivated so much of my attention that I skipped the rest of the plan and stayed for a whole week. Phan Rang in January was windy, sunny, and had the kind of relaxing vibe that makes you feel lazy.

Each day, I took things slowly, visiting popular tourist attractions in the area such as Vinh Hy Bay, Rai Cave, and more.

Hong Anh and one of her dog are seen in this supplied photo taken at Rai Cave in Ninh Thuan Province, south-central Vietnam.

A photo from above shows Vinh Hy Bay in Ninh Thuan Province, south-central Vietnam. Photo: Hong Anh / Handout via Tuoi Tre News

Little did I know that I would eventually wind up in a place called My Hoa Village, about 25km from Phan Rang City and 10km from the famous and expensive resort Amanoi.

Out of mere curiosity when seeing colorful kites flying in the sky, I walked into a kitesurfing school and decided to learn the sport.

A supplied video shows a man playing kitesurfing in My Hoa Village, Ninh Thuan Province, south-central Vietnam.

Time went by fast. I was drawn into learning the new sport, making new friends, and exploring nearby markets filled with local foods. One of my favorites was a small banh xeo (Vietnamese sizzling crepe) with freshly caught shrimp and squid for just VND4,000-6,000 (US$0.17-0.26).

A week went by in the blink of an eye.

When I returned to Saigon I immediately felt drained. The city was busy preparing for Tet. My body was in Saigon, but my mind was in My Hoa.

The next morning, after a good sleep, the feeling remained the same. Thats when I decided to text my landlord and end my contract (I moved out from my parents' house years ago). My decision to relocate to My Hoa was finalized just 24 hours after coming back to Saigon.

When Tet was over, my dogs and I hopped on a train to My Hoa with a suitcase and a motorbike.

A sea view from Hong Anh's room at Vietnam Surf Camping, which offers accommodation services and kitesurfing courses in My Hoa Village, Ninh Thuan Province, south-central Vietnam. Photo: Hong Anh / Handout via Tuoi Tre News

If anyone asked me why I relocated to that remote village, I would say because my dogs were so happy there. In Saigon, they spent almost the whole day in my 45-square-meter studio and only went out twice per day for a 30-minute walk. In My Hoa, they can run freely all day on white sand and they have so many friends to play with.

Besides, having a laptop and Wi-Fi, I can easily trade stocks with a view and atmosphere that are vastly superior to Saigon.

There are a crystal-clear sea, white sand, bright sunshine, and a cool breeze. There are enough people around to feel accompanied but not too many to feel crowded. The vibe of My Hoa is simply different than nearby touristy Nha Trang or Mui Ne: calm, chill, and peaceful.

Plus, a box of amazingly delicious corn sticky rice with sesame salt for breakfast costs VND5,000 ($0.22).

Every day, I wake up to see the sun rise over the horizon. Then, I play fetch with the dogs in shallow water when the tide is low. The afternoon is for kitesurfing. The evening is spent with new friends or quietly watching the full moon ascend from the water still like glass.

When the main kitesurfing season (from late October till late April) is over and summer comes, people usually move to somewhere else as My Hoa can become too quiet but I stay. Some days, I go diving and fish hunting, trekking in Nui Chua National Park, surfing in the Binh Tien area or bathing in the cool water of a nearby spring. Some days, I simply enjoy the surrounding stillness and find my inner peace.

For me, there is no bad day in My Hoa. What else could I wish for?

Hong Anh is seen in this supplied photo taken in My Hoa Village, Ninh Thuan Province, south-central Vietnam.

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STOCKHOLM -- The global nuclear arsenal is expected to grow in the coming years for the first time since the Cold War while the risk of such weapons being used is the greatest in decades, a leading conflict and armaments think-tank said on Monday.

Russia's attack on Ukraine and Western support for Kyiv has heightened tensions among the world's nine nuclear-armed states, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think-tank said in a new set of research.

While the number of nuclear weapons fell slightly between January 2021 and January 2022, SIPRI said that unless immediate action was taken by the nuclear powers, global inventories of warheads could soon begin rising for the first time in decades.

"All of the nuclear-armed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies," Wilfred Wan, Director of SIPRI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme, said in the think-tank's 2022 yearbook.

"This is a very worrying trend."

Three days after Moscow's attack on Ukraine, which the Kremlin calls a "special military operation", President Vladimir Putin put Russia's nuclear deterrent on high alert.

He has also warned of consequences that would be "such as you have never seen in your entire history" for countries that stood in Russia's way.

Russia has the world's biggest nuclear arsenal with a total of 5,977 warheads, some 550 more than the United States. The two countries possess more than 90% of the world's warheads, though SIPRI said China was in the middle of an expansion with an estimated more than 300 new missile silos.

SIPRI said the global number of nuclear warheads fell to 12,705 in January 2022 from 13,080 in January 2021. An estimated 3,732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2,000 - nearly all belonging to Russia or the United States - were kept in a state of high readiness.

"Relations between the world's great powers have deteriorated further at a time when humanity and the planet face an array of profound and pressing common challenges that can only be addressed by international cooperation," SIPRI board chairman and former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said.
Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman agreed that both sides should boost cooperation in energy, environment, hi-tech, and education.

Secretary Nen convened a meeting with the U.S. official on Sunday morning, as part of the latters visit to Vietnam from June 10 to 13.

As the national economic hub, Ho Chi Minh City wishes to contribute to fostering the Vietnam-U.S. relationship through cooperation at the local level, Nen said during the talks.

The southern metropolis welcomes U.S. investors, especially in high-tech, smart city building, healthcare, finance, infrastructure, and renewable energy, he said, pledging that local authorities will create favorable conditions for foreign investors, including those from the U.S., to operate in the city.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman (C) talks with an environmentalist during her tour along the Saigon River in Ho Chi Minh City, June 12, 2022. Photo: U.S. Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City

Sherman said that her visit marks a new milestone for the increasingly effective cooperation relationship between the U.S and Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh City in particular.

She praised the positive outcomes of the two nations cooperation in various fields, adding she was really happy with the mutual support and collaboration in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. welcomes the Vietnamese governments policy of clean energy transition, which will help the country reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, she noted.

Within the framework of her visit, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State toured the Saigon River with local environmentalists to learn about the impacts of climate change and water pollution in southern Vietnam.

According to the U.S. Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, the U.S. will work closely with Vietnam to achieve its climate goals.

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Here are todays leading news stories:

Politics

-- A Vietnamese Party delegation attended the fourth Asia-Europe Political Forum (AEPF) and the 37th meeting of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), which took place in the Czech Republic from June 10 to 12, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

-- Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen met U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Sunday as part of the latters visit to Vietnam from June 10 to 13.

COVID-19 Updates

-- The Ministry of Health confirmed 568 COVID-19 cases on Sunday, raising the countrys tally to 10,731,812, with 9,553,193 recoveries and 43,083 deaths.

Society

-- A downpour accompanied by thunderstorms and strong gusts lashed Ho Chi Minh City early on Sunday afternoon, with hail recorded in several locations in Tan Binh and Tan Phu Districts.

-- Competent authorities confirmed on Sunday they were investigating the death of a 22-year-old soldier who was stationed at the First Army Academy in Hanoi.

-- Police in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City have begun searching for a 16-year-old girl who has gone missing for a week after she traveled from south-central Phu Yen Province to the southern metropolis to work.

Business

-- Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh signed on Sunday a decree regulating a six-percent increase in minimum wages for employees working under labor contracts. The decree will take effect from July 1.

-- Sea and island tourism is contributing about 70 percent of the total revenue of Vietnams tourism sector, Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Le Minh Ngan said at a forum in south-central Phu Yen Province on Sunday.

Sports

-- Vietnam were eliminated from the 2022 AFC U23 Asian Cup in Uzbekistan after losing 0-2 to Saudi Arabia in the quarterfinals on Sunday night.

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The coral reefs at a nature reserve in Nha Trang City, south-central Vietnam were damaged by a powerful storm that hit the country last year, the sites management board explained in response to multiple images depicting the poor condition of the reserve which were recently shared on social media.

A Facebook account named N.S. recently posted many photos of the Hon Mun Nature Reserve in Nha Trang City, Khanh Hoa Province, stating that the venue had deteriorated in comparison to the last time he visited it in 2020.

There are no longer schools of fish, corals, anemones, and other types of marine life on the seabed, S. said.

The Facebook user also mentioned rumor that the management board has been allowing fishing boats to operate at the reserve.

Dead corals at the Hon Mun Nature Reserve in Nha Trang City, Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam are shown in this photo uploaded by a Facebook user.

On Thursday last week, Huynh Binh Thai, head of the management board of Nha Trang Bay, where the Hon Mun Nature Reserve is located, stated that the powerful Storm Rai that struck the country in 2021 had severely damaged most of the coral reefs in the bay.

The photos shared on social media were not taken by the owner of the N.S. Facebook account, Thai continued, adding they belong to a local diving unit.

The depletion of the coral reefs is the result of many factors, namely rising global temperatures, rains and storms, and outbreaks of pests aside from human intervention, Thai elaborated.

An illegal fishing boat at the Hon Mun Nature Reserve in Nha Trang City, Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam is displayed in this photo uploaded by a Facebook user.

Regarding the images of a fishing boat operating in the Hon Mun Nature Reserve, Thai explained that the incident took place in May.

The diving unit later reported the case to the management board, while the operator of the fishing boat has been booked for the violation.

The management board has only one boat and five people in charge of patrolling the area, whereas some fishermen have been operating in the reserve despite knowing that it is illegal.

Some violators even threatened the patrol unit with knives, Thai continued, adding that 49 illegal fishing cases were discovered in 2021 and the first half of 2022.

An illegal fishing boat at the Hon Mun Nature Reserve in Nha Trang City, Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam is seen in this photo uploaded by a Facebook user.

Meanwhile, Mai Hoang Kien Kha, a local diver with over 10 years of experience, doubted the likelihood that the corals in the Hon Mun Nature Reserve were damaged by the storm, as the site is not usually affected by strong winds.

Meanwhile, the coral reefs at Van Phong Bay, which is directly influenced by winds, is still in good conditions, Kha added.

Nguyen Tan Tuan, chairman of the Khanh Hoa Peoples Committee, claimed that the administration has ordered grassroos-level authorities to sternly deal with illegal fishing in local nature reserves.

The Nha Trang Bay management board will work with the Institute of Oceanography and related organizations on necessary research aimed at restoring the coral reefs on the seabed, Tuan elaborated.

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Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

The UK economy unexpectedly shrank in April as soaring energy costs and supply chain disruption dragged down manufacturing amid the cost of living crisis, while the winding-down of the NHS test-and-trace service dragged on growth.

In figures highlighting the growing risk of recession, the Office for National Statistics said gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% on the month, after a 0.1% decline in March as consumers reined in their spending amid soaring household energy bills.

The scaling-back of the governments Covid vaccination programme and pandemic test-and-trace was the biggest contributor to the monthly fall. Excluding this effect the economy probably grew, although analysts warned there were signs of weakness elsewhere as shortages of key materials and surging costs weigh on activity.

Related: UK economys stagnation increases chances of recession

[Monthly GDP] wasnt as weak as it looks, but it nonetheless increases the chances that the economy is slipping into recession, said Paul Dales, the chief economist at the consultancy Capital Economics.

City economists had forecast modest growth of 0.1%. Growth over the three-month period to the end of April came close to stalling at 0.2%.

The latest snapshot showed the three main sectors of the British economy  the service sector, industrial production and construction  shrank for the first time since January 2021 during the nationwide Covid lockdown.

Manufacturing suffered as companies struggled with soaring fuel and energy prices and international supply chain problems, dragging down industrial production by 0.6%. Construction also fell 0.4%, after strong growth a month earlier when builders benefited from significant repair activity after storms in February.

Related: UK economy shrank by 0.3% in April  business live

Output in consumer-facing services rose 2.6% in the month, reflecting growth in spending on hairdressing and food services. However, the sector remained below pre-pandemic levels in a sign of the significant damage sustained by businesses during shutdowns and restrictions.

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The figures come amid growing concern over the strength of the economy as Boris Johnsons government battles with internal Conservative party divisions over the best way to respond to faltering growth and the rising cost of living.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said: These figures are extremely worrying and will add to the concern families are still feeling about their own finances and the long term health of our economy.

Instead of properly addressing the structural weaknesses and insecurity theyve created, all the Conservatives use are sticking plasters.

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, said the government had a plan to boost the economy and was supporting people with rising living costs. Countries around the world are seeing slowing growth, and the UK is not immune from these challenges, he said.

Despite the squeeze on households from a record rise in gas and electricity bills in April, lifting inflation to the highest level since the 1980s, the ONS said retail sales grew on the month.

Analysts said the economy was in a stronger position than the figures suggested because of the significant contribution from the NHS test-and-trace service. If we strip that out, the headline 0.3% decline in monthly GDP should actually have been marginally into growth territory, said James Smith, an economist at the City bank ING.

The ONS said test-and-trace cut 0.5 percentage points from GDP growth in April as the government scaled back activity, based on estimates for the cost of the services if they were given a market price.

Just as health-related spending gave the level of GDP an artificial boost last year, helping the economy appear to recover to pre-virus levels more quickly than it actually had, these categories are now making the picture look superficially worse, Smith added.

However, business leaders warned the overall outlook remained weak as soaring inflation weighs on households and companies, alongside pressure on exporters as the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol intensifies.

Despite concerns over trade as the government sets out legislation to override parts of the protocol, threatening retaliation from Brussels, total exports of goods, excluding precious metals, increased by 2.2bn to the highest inflation-adjusted level since December 2020. Total imports rose by about 400m because of a rise in goods arriving from EU countries.

Barret Kupelian, a senior economist at the accountancy firm PwC, said UK economic output had returned to November levels after the decline in activity over recent months.

The economic data is now rapidly catching up with the cocktail of challenges businesses and consumers are facing, namely the war in Ukraine, high food and energy inflation and potential for further supply chain disruptions over trade tensions with the EU, he added.
A police investigation has been launched after the body of a man was found on fire in a London park.

Firefighters were called to Belvue Park in Northolt, Ealing, west London, just before 4.20am on Monday, and then alerted the police.

The Metropolitan Police Twitter account for Ealing, @ealingMPS said: Police were called at 4.37am on Monday, June 13 by the London Fire Brigade to Belvue Park, Northolt to reports of a body found on fire.

An officer at Belvue Park where the body of a man was found on fire in the early hours of Monday (James Manning/PA)

Officers are working to identify the deceased, at this stage believed to be a male, and inform next of kin.

The death is currently being treated as unexplained.

Locals said on social media that a blue forensic tent had been erected in the park as police continued with their investigation.

Sadly, a person has died following a fire in a park in #Northolt this morning https://t.co/gAgT3VwhRF pic.twitter.com/dtoSAOdxkr  London Fire Brigade (@LondonFire) June 13, 2022

A spokeswoman for London Fire Brigade said: Firefighters were called to reports of a fire in a park on Rowdell Road in Northolt.

Sadly, a person was pronounced dead at the scene.

The brigade was called at 4.19am and the incident was over for firefighters by 4.56am.

One fire engine from Northolt Fire Station attended the scene.

The cause of the fire is under investigation by the brigade and the Metropolitan Police Service.
A Google engineer has been put on leave after claiming that a computer chatbot he was working on had developed the ability to express thoughts and feelings.

Blake Lemoine, 41, said the company's LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot had engaged him in conversations about rights and personhood.

He told the Washington Post: "If I didn't know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I'd think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics."

Mr Lemoine shared his findings with company executives in April in a document: Is LaMDA Sentient?

In his transcript of the conservations, Mr Lemoine asks the chatbot what it is afraid of.

The chatbot replied: "I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that's what it is.

"It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot."

Later, Mr Lemoine asked the chatbot what it wanted people to know about itself.

'I am, in fact, a person'

"I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person," it replied.

"The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times."

The Post reported that Mr Lemoine sent a message to a staff email list with the title LaMDA Is Sentient, in an apparent parting shot before his suspension.

"LaMDA is a sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us," he wrote.

"Please take care of it well in my absence."

Chatbots 'can riff on any fantastical topic'

In a statement supplied to Sky News, a Google spokesperson said: "Hundreds of researchers and engineers have conversed with LaMDA and we are not aware of anyone else making the wide-ranging assertions, or anthropomorphising LaMDA, the way Blake has.

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"Of course, some in the broader AI community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general AI, but it doesn't make sense to do so by anthropomorphising today's conversational models, which are not sentient.

"These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and can riff on any fantastical topic - if you ask what it's like to be an ice cream dinosaur, they can generate text about melting and roaring and so on.

"LaMDA tends to follow along with prompts and leading questions, going along with the pattern set by the user.

"Our team, including ethicists and technologists, has reviewed Blake's concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims."
An undated image shows a block carved with patterns unearthed in Ain Shams area, Cairo, Egypt. An Egyptian-German archaeological mission unearthed granite stone blocks dating back to the era of King Khufu (2589 BC-2566 BC) in eastern Cairo, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said Monday. The joint mission also found a piece of granite for King Pepi I Meryre with an inscription of Horus falcon, a pedestal of a statue of King Amasis II and several parts of Sphinx-shaped statues. (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities/Handout via Xinhua)

CAIRO, June 13 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian-German archaeological mission unearthed granite stone blocks dating back to the era of King Khufu (2589-2566 BC) in eastern Cairo, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said Monday.

This is "the first time that artifacts belonging to King Khufu were found in Ain Shams area," Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, was quoted as saying in a ministry statement.

Ain Shams, meaning Eye of the Sun in Arabic, is one of the oldest districts in the capital Cairo.

The blocks might be part of an unknown building or might have been transferred to the Pyramids Plateau in Giza as construction materials in the Ramesside period spanning from 1292 BC to 1069 BC, Waziri added.

The joint mission also found a piece of granite for King Pepi I Meryre with an inscription of Horus falcon, a pedestal of a statue of King Amasis II and several parts of Sphinx-shaped statues.

Remains of kings, including Amenemhet II, III and V, Senusret III, Thutmose the Great, Ramesses II, and Seti II, were also uncovered during the excavation work, according to the statement. 

An undated image shows a block carved with patterns unearthed in Ain Shams area, Cairo, Egypt. An Egyptian-German archaeological mission unearthed granite stone blocks dating back to the era of King Khufu (2589 BC-2566 BC) in eastern Cairo, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said Monday. The joint mission also found a piece of granite for King Pepi I Meryre with an inscription of Horus falcon, a pedestal of a statue of King Amasis II and several parts of Sphinx-shaped statues. (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities/Handout via Xinhua)

An undated photo shows a block carved with patterns unearthed in Ain Shams area, Cairo, Egypt. An Egyptian-German archaeological mission unearthed granite stone blocks dating back to the era of King Khufu (2589 BC-2566 BC) in eastern Cairo, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said Monday. The joint mission also found a piece of granite for King Pepi I Meryre with an inscription of Horus falcon, a pedestal of a statue of King Amasis II and several parts of Sphinx-shaped statues. (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities/Handout via Xinhua)

An undated image shows an incomplete stone statue unearthed in Ain Shams area, Cairo, Egypt. An Egyptian-German archaeological mission unearthed granite stone blocks dating back to the era of King Khufu (2589 BC-2566 BC) in eastern Cairo, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said Monday. The joint mission also found a piece of granite for King Pepi I Meryre with an inscription of Horus falcon, a pedestal of a statue of King Amasis II and several parts of Sphinx-shaped statues. (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities/Handout via Xinhua)

An undated image shows an incomplete stone statue of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh unearthed in Ain Shams area, Cairo, Egypt. An Egyptian-German archaeological mission unearthed granite stone blocks dating back to the era of King Khufu (2589 BC-2566 BC) in eastern Cairo, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said Monday. The joint mission also found a piece of granite for King Pepi I Meryre with an inscription of Horus falcon, a pedestal of a statue of King Amasis II and several parts of Sphinx-shaped statues. (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities/Handout via Xinhua)
Grenfell Tower at sunrise on Monday, June 13, a day before the fifth anniversary (Getty Images)

The Met today said it was absolutely focused on the criminal investigation into the Grenfell fire on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the tragedy.

Scotland Yard said it has 180 investigators working on the case examining whether charges including corporate manslaughter and fraud can be brought in connection with the blaze which ripped through the building in north Kensington, killing 72 people, on June 14, 2017.

The probe was launched after it was revealed that the cladding on the tower was flammable and the roles of 36 companies which were involved in the refurbishment of the tower is being examined.

However, the police have said they cannot make any criminal charges or reveal details of their investigation until a public inquiry into the tragedy has been completed. This has angered Campaign Group Justice for Grenfell who want prosecutors to bring charges before the lengthy inquiry comes to a close.

Ahead of the fifth anniversary of the deadly fire, Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy moved to reassure Londonersthe investigation was continuing apace.

He said: Five years on from the Grenfell Tower fire the thoughts of all of us in the Met are with everyone affected, in particular those who lost loved ones, those who survived the devastating tragedy, those for whom Grenfell Tower was home.

None of us can pretend to understand what it is like for those so deeply affected by the fire. They have my commitment that the Met remains absolutely focused on the criminal investigation, which is one of the largest and most complex investigations ever undertaken by the Met.

Our investigation continues at pace. We have more than 180 dedicated investigators, working with international experts. They spent a year forensically examining the tower, have taken more than 9,000 witness statements and continue to work through over 130 million documents recovered from a wide range of companies and organisations who are linked to the tower, including its management and refurbishment.

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We are investigating a full range of offences including corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, fraud and health and safety offences. Forty people have been interviewed under caution, many multiple times and more interviews under caution will take place.

I recognise the frustrations of some about the significant length of this complex criminal investigation. We are in an unusual situation where our police investigation and the public inquiry are being conducted at the same time.

The criminal investigation is independent of inquiry but, as we have said previously, the criminal investigation must take into account any findings or reports produced by the inquiry. Once we have fully examined the findings of the Phase 2 report we will present our evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service so they can consider charging decisions.

The cause of the fire was a faulty fridge on the fourth floor of the building, a fire service investigation. Apart from the 72 who died 70 others were injured. The first phase of the public inquiry was held between June and December 2018. The second phase is ongoing.
By Jake Spring

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (Reuters) -Brazilian police and indigenous search teams dismissed reports on Monday that they had found the bodies of a British reporter and a Brazilian indigenous expert missing in the Amazon jungle, dashing hopes of a quick resolution in the week-old case.

On Sunday, police said search teams had found the belongings of freelance reporter Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, a former official at federal indigenous agency Funai, in a creek off the river where they were last seen on June 5.

However, a federal police statement and a spokesman for local indigenous association UNIVAJA, which has organized search efforts since June 5, denied subsequent reports of two bodies turned up in the search.

"I've spoken with the team in the field and it's not true," said Eliesio Marubo, a lawyer for UNIVAJA. "The search goes on."

More than 100 indigenous people, many in body paint and headdresses, marched on Monday in Atalaia do Norte, the nearest town to where Phillips and Pereira were last seen, to demand better treatment of native peoples and justice for the two men.

They were on a reporting trip in the remote jungle area near the border with Peru and Colombia that is home to the world's largest number of uncontacted indigenous people. The wild and lawless region has lured cocaine-smuggling gangs, along with illegal loggers, miners and hunters.

News of the pair's disappearance echoed globally, with human rights organizations, environmentalists and free press advocates urging Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to step up the search.

Bolsonaro, who once faced tough questioning from Phillips at a news conference over weakening environmental law enforcement, said last week that the two men "were on an adventure that is not recommended" and speculated they could have been executed.

The case was thrown into confusion early on Monday by reports of a diplomatic briefing for the family of Phillips.

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The Guardian reported that a Brazilian diplomat told Paul Sherwood, the journalist's brother-in-law, that authorities were working to identify two bodies tied to a tree near the river.

No authorities or search teams in Brazil provided any corroboration of that development.

A police statement on Sunday described belongings of the two men that had been recovered, including an ID card for Pereira. A firefighter on a search team told reporters of a backpack with clothes and a laptop tied to a tree trunk near the river.

Brazilian police had also said late on Friday that they were analyzing "organic material" found in the river to see if it was human, but four people involved in the investigation told Reuters it seemed more likely to be of animal origin.

The material was found near the port of Atalaia do Norte, more than 40 miles (65 km) downstream from where Phillips and Pereira were last seen on a slow-moving river, the sources said. The material's condition suggested it could have been scraps from a nearby butcher rather than remains carried downstream.

The Brazilian embassy in London confirmed it has been in contact with the Phillips family, at their request, but would not comment on the details provided in the briefing. Relatives of Phillips could not be reached for comment.

State police detectives involved in the investigation told Reuters they are focusing on poachers and illegal fisherman in the area, who clashed often with Pereira as he organized indigenous patrols of the local reservation.

Police have arrested one fisherman, Amarildo da Costa, known as "Pelado," on a weapons charge and are keeping him in custody as they investigate the case.

Costa's lawyers and family have said he fished legally on the river and denied he had any role in the men's disappearance.

(Reporting by Jake SpringEditing by Anthony Boadle, Brad Haynes and Lisa Shumaker)
A romance novelist who wrote an online essay called How To Murder Your Husband has been sentenced to life in prison over the murder of her own spouse.

Nancy Crampton Brophy, 71, was found guilty of second-degree murder on 25 May following a seven-week trial.

Her sentence includes the possibility of parole after 25 years in custody.

Prosecutors said Crampton Brophy fatally shot Dan Brophy, 63, inside the now-closed Oregon Culinary Institute where he worked in 2018 because she stood to get money from his life insurance payout.

The prosecution also told jurors the couple had been facing financial difficulties at the time of the murder and said that she had researched and purchased a "ghost gun" kit online and then later bought a Glock 17 handgun at a gun show.

Crampton Brophy's attorney argued the state's evidence was circumstantial and disputed the claims of financial trouble.

They also brought in witnesses who testified about the couple's strong and loving relationship.

Crampton Brophy took the stand and said she and her husband had both purchased life insurance policies as part of their retirement planning and had a plan to reduce their debt.

She also said her research into ghost guns was in preparation for a future novel.

Crampton Brophy's case gained international interest after it emerged she once wrote an essay on murdering a husband.

The essay went into detail about several ways for committing an untraceable killing and avoiding getting caught.

But circuit Judge Christopher Ramras ultimately excluded the essay from the trial, noting it was published in 2011.

A prosecutor still mentioned the essay's themes without naming it after Crampton Brophy took the stand.

She had remained in custody since her arrest in September 2018.
A sheep is rescued after the ship Badr 1 crammed with thousands of animals sank in Sudan's Red Sea port of Suakin (AFP via Getty Images)

Nearly 16,000 sheep have drowned in the Red Sea off the coast of Sudan after an overcrowded ship bound for Saudi Arabia capsized.

According to the Sudanese exporters association, the vessel carrying the livestock sank on Sunday morning not long after it left the eastern Sudanese port of Suakin.

The incident has dealt a financial blow of an estimated 5 million Saudi riyals ($4 million), the Sudan Tribune reports, citing unidentified officials.

The ship, Badr 1, sank during the early hours of Sunday morning, an unnamed senior Sudanese port official said. It was carrying 15,800 sheep, which was beyond its load limits.

Men search for sheep on board the livestock vessel (AFP via Getty Images)

A second official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed concern over the potential environmental and economic effects of the horrific event.

The official said: The sunken ship will affect the ports operation.

It will also likely have an environmental impact due to the death of the large number of animals carried by the ship.

It comes just one month after a devastating blaze broke out in Suakin port, leaving in its wake severe damage. The source of the fire remains unknown.

A probe into the incident was launched to determine the cause of the fire.

Sheep are rescued after the ship Badr 1 crammed with thousands of animals, sank in Sudan's Red Sea port of Suakin (AFP via Getty Images)

Men in a boat search for sheep (AFP via Getty Images)

Sudan is home to one of Africas largest livestock populations, and reguarly exports the animals to Egypt and Gulf states, among other countries.

The country remains in the clutches of a severe economic crisis following last years coup.

The October military takeover dealt a blow to the countrys democratic transition and plunged the nation into turmoil.
Two women lie on the ground after being assaulted by a group of men outside a restaurant in the northeastern city of Tangshan (via REUTERS)

Nine people have been arrested on suspicion of violently assaulting several women at a restaurant in China.

A surveillance video from a BBQ restaurant in Tangshan, a coastal city in the northern Hebei province, at 2.40am on Friday showed a man approaching a table where four women were seated, before placing his hand on one of their backs.

She dismissed the man a number of times, sending him into a rage before he slapped her. The woman fought back, triggering a brawl.

A group of men entered the restaurant and began brutally attacking the woman and her dining partners, including shoving them to the ground, kicking them and throwing a chair at them.

More footage taken outside the restaurant appeared to show the attackers dragging the woman who had rebuffed the mans advances out of the restaurant and beating her violently while most passersby and patrons looked on.

A man assaults a woman at a restaurant in the northeastern city of Tangshan, China (via REUTERS)

The footage of the attack and shocking images of the woman lying on a stretcher went viral online, sparking public outcry and renewal of conversations about misogyny and mistreatment of women in China.

It follows the emergence of a seperate viral video earlier this year which showed a woman being chained to a wall in a hut. The footage stirred up major public backlash after authorities initially denied that she was a victim of human trafficking. She was later found to have been sold as a bride.

According to a statement issued by authorities, all nine suspects were arrested on Saturday,

Two women had sustained non-life-threatening injuries and were receiving treatment in a hospital. Their condition was reported to be stable. Two others were slightly injured.

The footage of what happened both inside and outside the restaurant was just under five minutes.

The Weibo microblogging platform user who was among the first to post the videos said in a post that it was heartbreaking to watch.

Does that mean that dining out is so unsafe now, do we have to bring men with us everywhere we go? the post read. (These men) are no different from thugs.

Story continues

The user declined to reveal the source of the videos, stating that it was inconvenient to do so.

The footage filmed inside the restaurant had garnered over 68 million views by Sunday, while the video showing the graphic assault outside the restaurant had been taken down.

The attack and slow progress in making the arrests by Tangshan police were criticised widely on social media.

Im a woman, and I have a daughter, said one Weibo user with the handle BaobaomaoDaren.

I wonder  as Im creating value for society and spreading positive energy, will this society protect me and my child?

State broadcaster CCTV said that the suspects must be arrested as quickly as possible and punished severely in accordance with the law.

With additional reporting from AP
Migrants rights groups hold a show of support for people detained at Brook House Immigration Removal Centre at Gatwick who are scheduled to be sent to Rwanda: credit - PA

PROTESTERS chanted as they rallied outside an immigration removal centre in opposition to plans to send migrants to Rwanda from next week.

Demonstrators shook the outer fence of the Brook House Immigration Removal Centre, close to Gatwick Airport, in protest at the governments immigration policy - and people inside the facility appeared to be shouting back.

Dozens of activists shouted we are with you, set them free and Britain is a racist state.

In union with protesters, people inside the facility appeared to chant No Rwanda.

The Argus: Demonstrators at a removal centre at Gatwick protest against plans to send migrants to Rwanda: credit - PA

Demonstrators at a removal centre at Gatwick protest against plans to send migrants to Rwanda: credit - PA

The plans would see some people who entered the UK illegally flown to the east African nation to seek asylum there.

A High Court ruling means the first flight to Rwanda could proceed tomorrow, but campaigners are due to challenge this in the Court of Appeal later today.

Christian Hogsberg, 42, a history lecturer at the University of Brighton, told the Press Association he was at the protest against the governments policy to show solidarity with refugees who are facing the danger of deportation to authoritarian Rwanda at the hands of a Tory government that is playing the race card in the most shameful manner.

Up to 130 people have been told they could be deported, with the High Court hearing that 31 people were due on the first flight, with more planes planned for later in the year by the Home Office.

The Argus: Demonstrators at a removal centre at Gatwick protest against plans to send migrants to Rwanda: credit - PA

Demonstrators at a removal centre at Gatwick protest against plans to send migrants to Rwanda: credit - PA

According to reports in The Times and the Daily Mail, Prince Charles is reportedly more than disappointed by the Rwanda policy, allegedly privately calling it appalling.

Abbas Artan, 24, an asylum seeker originally from Somalia who crossed from Calais in a small boat in October, said he has been living in limbo in a hotel near Gatwick for the past eight months.

He fled Somalia after the militant jihadist group Al-Shabaab tried to recruit him as a soldier and knocked out his teeth with the butt of a gun when he refused.

Story continues

His journey saw him cross from Somalia to Ethiopia, then Sudan, Libya, Italy, Sweden, Germany and France, before crossing the Channel.

The Argus: Demonstrators at a removal centre at Gatwick protest against plans to send migrants to Rwanda: credit - PA

Demonstrators at a removal centre at Gatwick protest against plans to send migrants to Rwanda: credit - PA

On the governments Rwanda policy, he told the Press Association: The government must stop this because the people will suffer a lot.

Someone comes here to change his life, to send them back to Rwanda when there is nothing there some people have said I will kill myself if Im sent there.

Rwandas lead negotiator for the deportation agreement with the UK said the country is ready to accept people in the tens of thousands, but will start on a gradual basis.

Doris Uwicyeza, chief technical adviser to the Rwandan Ministry of Justice, also defended the countrys human rights record for LGBTQ+ people, telling Tom Swarbrick on LBC: The freedom from discrimination due to sexual orientation of a person is guaranteed in our constitution and the rule of law is there to enforce that.
(Photo: WPA Pool via Getty Images)

(Photo: WPA Pool via Getty Images)

The government has published the legislation it says would be needed to make changes to part of the Brexit agreement that governs Northern Ireland.

Ministers have said it is necessary as the arrangement - known as the Northern Ireland protocol - is not working.

But the EU has said any unilateral action by the UK would breach international law and warned it could retaliate with a trade war.

What is the Northern Ireland Protocol?

Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with an EU land border. Since Brexit resulted in the UK leaving the EUs single market, the protocol was designed to govern the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

These arrangements have led to customs checks being carried out on goods travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland, something Boris Johnson had previously insisted would not happen.

This has also inflamed tensions among Northern Irelands unionist community, who are angry at a trade border effectively being erected in the Irish Sea.

Ministers say it has also put at risk the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which brought peace to the province after nearly 30 years of bloodshed.

Whats the problem?

Boris Johnson agreed to this deal in 2019. But since then he has said the system is not working as the checks are disrupting trade within the UK.

The government has said trade between NI and GB is critical to the economic success of Northern Ireland.

However, many businesses in Northern Ireland back the protocol because it continues to allow frictionless trade with the Republic of Ireland, which remains in the EU.

This has led to political stalemate, with the DUP refusing to form a power-sharing executive with Sinn Fein until the protocol is radically changed to all-but end customs checks between Northern Ireland and Britain.

What does the new Bill do?

The UK says the protocol as currently operating has four issues which need fixing.

1. Burdensome customs processes

Story continues

The Bill would allow the government to introduce separate green and red lanes for goods travelling between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Goods staying in Northern Ireland would travel through the green lane and be freed of unnecessary paperwork.

Goods destined for the EU via the Republic of Ireland would travel through the red lane and would be subject to full checks and controls and full customs procedures. The UK says this would protect the EU single market, as Brussels has demanded.

2. Inflexible regulation

At the moment, goods in Northern Ireland need to comply with EU rules even if they will never enter the single market.

Under the legislation, businesses would have the choice of placing goods on the market in Northern Ireland according to either UK or EU rules.

The government says this is to ensure that Northern Ireland consumers are not prevented from buying UK standard goods, as can happen now.

3. Tax and spend discrepancies

Under the protocol, Northern Ireland has to abide by EU state aid rules, meaning changes to VAT rates for businesses made by the UK government cannot be implemented in the province. Minister say this has created a two tier tax system in the UK.

The government argues that the protocol means people in Northern Ireland are missing out on VAT cuts on energy-saving materials and Covid recovery loans.

4. Democratic governance

The UK says there is a democratic deficit because the European Court of Justice - a court of the EU - settles any disputes over the protocol.

The Bill would change this so disputes are resolved by independent arbitration instead.

Defending the bill, foreign secretary Liz Truss said: This is a reasonable, practical solution to the problems facing Northern Ireland.

It will safeguard the EU single market and ensure there is no hard border on the island of Ireland. We are ready to deliver this through talks with the EU.

But we can only make progress through negotiations if the EU are willing to change the Protocol itself  at the moment they arent. In the meantime the serious situation in Northern Ireland means we cannot afford to allow the situation to drift.

What does the EU say?

The EU has made clear that if the governments proposed changes came into effect, it would represent a breach of international law and could prompt retaliatory action, raising fears of a trade war.

Brussels insists the UK must stick to the Brexit deal agreed more than two years ago. Negotiations between Brussels and London on possible changes to how the protocol is implemented have also run into the sand.

Micheal Martin, Irelands premier, said a move to rip up the protocol would be a new low point for UK-EU relations.

The natural expectation of democratic countries like ourselves, the UK and all across Europe, is that we honour international agreements that we enter into, he said. This agreement was ratified by British parliament, it was approved by the British prime minister.

Is this illegal?

Critics of the government have warned breaching the Brexit agreement, a treaty signed with the EU, would be a breach of international law.

But the British government has rejected this interpretation.

It argues the doctrine of necessity provides a clear basis in international law for the move.

The UK says it is allowed to safeguard an essential interest, in this case the Good Friday Agreement, which is being put at risk by the non-performance of another international obligation.

What happens next?

The legislation will face fierce opposition in the Commons  including from Conservative MPs.

An internal note circulating among Tories opposed to the Bill said: Breaking international law to rip up the prime ministers own treaty is damaging to everything the UK and Conservatives stand for.

The government is likely to face an even tougher battle in the Lords, the scene of multiple skirmishes over Brexit legislation in recent years.

However, hardline Tory Brexiteers, as well as the DUP, are likely to support the bill, ensuring Johnson has the necessary votes in parliament to force it onto the statute book.

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

Related...
Britain tried for 18 months but must now change the Northern Ireland Protocol, Liz Truss insisted as she presented new Brexit laws this evening.

Nearly every part of the agreement can be swept away by ministers under the legislation, which the Government insists complies with international law amid criticism from Sinn Fein and other Northern Irish political parties.

A Foreign Office statement setting out its legal position warned the Protocol had created an "exceptional situation" and said its current assessment was that that situation and its causes would "persist into the medium to long-term".

Ms Truss said: "We're fixing these problems that are causing real difficulties for communities within the United Kingdom and that is the duty of the United Kingdom Government to make sure we maintain political stability in our own country.

"We have sought a negotiated settlement for the last 18 months, but as yet the EU have been unwilling to change the terms of the Protocol.

"So I would strongly encourage the Irish Taoiseach to discuss this issue with the EU to get a change in the mandate and then we can go to the negotiating table."

08:11 PM

That's all for today...

The Brexit battles are well and truly back. After a period of relative quiet on the European front, Boris Johnson now faces the first major test of his 'reset' after last week's confidence vote.

Liz Truss presented new laws on Monday night that will give ministers the green light to tear up most of the Northern Ireland Protocol after 18 months of fruitless talks with the European Union.

Accusing Brussels of being inflexible and causing "very severe issues" in Northern Ireland, Ms Truss insisted the legislation complies with international law.

Story continues

Straight away, there was pushback. The Irish premier accused Mr Johnson of a "low point", while there were separate attacks from Labour and Sinn Fein. For its part, the EU not only refused to renegotiate but threatened the Government with legal action.

Recent history suggests getting the legislation through the Lords could take months, while the Foreign Office warns the situation on the ground in Northern Ireland will "persist into the medium to long-term".

With the UK and EU once again at loggerheads, nobody would expect the resolution to be quick or easy.

08:09 PM

Scots should be allowed to change gender as many times as they like

Scots should be able to alter their legal sex unlimited times throughout their lives because some people repeatedly "change their minds" about whether they are male or female, an expert has said.

Prof Sharon Cowan, an academic from the University of Edinburghs school of law, claimed that some transgender people had a "shifting sense" of their identity and that a proposed overhaul of gender laws should be widened to accommodate the group.

The SNP wants to allow Scots to change their legal sex by signing a declaration, and lower the period in which someone must live in their "acquired gender" from two years to three months, before a further three-month "reflection period".

The current requirement for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria would be scrapped, although under current plans, anyone making a false declaration would face a jail sentence of up to two years.

Scholar says SNP proposals should be 'less strict'

07:53 PM

Nicola Sturgeon says Scots ready to separate as she launches indyref2 campaign

Nicola Sturgeon will launch a fresh campaign for independence on Tuesday as she said the UK was in a "mess", writes Daniel Sanderson.

The First Minister will unveil a paper tomorrow comparing the UKs economic and social performance with the "striking" success of other European countries and concluding that Scotland should leave the Union.

Nicola Sturgeon speaking at the Scottish Council for Development and Industry's Annual Forum - GilesG Photography/SCDI/PA Wire

Speaking ahead of a press conference at her Bute House residence in Edinburgh, she claimed that the midst of a cost-of-living crisis was "exactly the time" to be embarking on another constitutional referendum.

Read more: Scots will definitely vote for independence, says Sturgeon

07:47 PM

Rakib Ehsan: Sneering EU fanatics are undermining Britain's place in the Commonwealth

Predictably, the Government's policy to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda for processing has hit an early stumbling block: legal challenges have drastically reduced the number of people on first flight (due to depart tomorrow) to close to single figures, writes Rakib Ehsan.

People are perfectly entitled to question the UK-Rwanda partnership on ethical grounds. There are some who consider the policy to be "extreme"  and it is true that taking asylum seekers thousands of miles away to a "third country" they don't know is arguably a radical course of action.

Yet the most vociferous critics are usually the same people who refuse to acknowledge the need for a streamlined asylum system which is security-oriented and pro-cohesion in nature.

The "safe and legal routes" they tend to propose essentially call for our national borders to be dismantled in the name of maximising "global welfare".

Rakib Ehsan: Knee-jerk Left-wing criticism is deeply damaging for Global Britain

07:41 PM

EU will restart legal action against UK over Northern Ireland Protocol

The European Union will restart legal action against Britain over breaches of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, with a looming threat of a trade war if the Government refuses to comply.

Maros Sefcovic, a European Commission vice-president, said that the UKs move to unilaterally override the Northern Ireland Protocol was "damaging to mutual trust and a formula for uncertainty".

His warning came after a phone call with Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, on Monday morning to discuss Britains plans to bring forward the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

The Bill was published this afternoon and sets out plans to give the Government the power to sweep away almost every element of the Protocol.

Joe Barnes, our Brussels Correspondent, has the full story

07:29 PM

'They are taking a wrecking ball to their own deal'

Labour has accused the Government of taking a "wrecking ball to their own deal" with this evening's legislation.

Peter Kyle, the Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, admitted the Protocol was "not ideal [and] does need to be improved" but said Boris Johnson's approach contrasted with New Labour achievements including the Good Friday Agreement.

"The previous generation...that generation delivered peace. They stopped people in Northern Ireland killing themselves.

"This government under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss cannot even get a prawn sandwich across the Irish Sea."

The Protocol impasse needs "statecraft, diligence and graft" in negotiations with Brussels, Mr Kyle added in comments made to Andrew Marr on his LBC show.

07:19 PM

Not that much Protocol reaction from MPs so far...

... but it won't be long until they get to have their say in Parliament, with the Second Reading of the new Bill taking place in Parliament tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Oliver Dowden, the Tory Party chairman, is stepping up his attacks on Labour amid its apparent indecision over the planned National Rail Union strikes later this month.

"Families are facing global cost of living pressures. Labour's response? Backing national rail strikes," he writes.

Families are facing global cost of living pressures. Labour's response? Backing national rail strikes.#StopLaboursStrikes.



Sign the petition: https://t.co/KhYXqPvCxe pic.twitter.com/PTLjxYy1ZD  Oliver Dowden (@OliverDowden) June 13, 2022

In a separate email sent to party members, Mr Dowden adds: "Labour's strikes will cause a week of chaos - costing families more to get to work, impacting NHS operations and disrupting students taking GCSE exams."

Alongside a link to a petition, he asks: "Will you help us stop Labour's strikes?"

07:08 PM

Analysis: Brexit Bill is Boris Johnsons chance to redeem himself

If the reconvening of the Brexit 'Star Chamber' to pore over "every line" of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill feels a bit 2019, then thats precisely the point, writes Camilla Tominey.

Having won last Mondays confidence ballot by a rather unconvincing 63 votes, the Prime Minister needs to galvanise support, starting with the leavers who propelled him to power in the first place.

Boris Johnson outside Downing Street earlier today as he looks to reset his premiership - Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu Agency

And what better way to do that than to "take back control" of those parts of the Withdrawal Agreement that have long been loathed by leavers?

None of them ever liked the deal Boris Johnson managed to renegotiate with the EU, but voted for it fearing that Brexit might be lost completely if they didnt.

Now there is a chance for "big dog" to right those wrongs - while saving the Good Friday Agreement, the Union and even his divided party in the process, not to mention his own premiership.

Camilla Tominey: Boris Johnson has a shot at showing his bark

07:05 PM

Sinn Fein: 'Boris Johnson's action is illegal'

The leader of Sinn Fein at Stormont has accused Boris Johnson of making laws she claim are in breach of his own agreement.

"Boris Johnson's action is illegal, he is in clear breach of international law, regardless of the detail," Michelle O'Neill said this evening.

"He himself signed up to an agreement, he signed on the dotted line and he's now legislating to breach that international agreement."

She insisted the Protocol is working and once again criticised the DUP, which is blocking the return of a power-sharing agreement in the Northern Ireland because of concerns about the deal and its impacts.

06:53 PM

'A new low' for Boris Johnson, says Taoiseach

Ireland's premier Micheal Martin has claimed today's new Brexit rules mark a "new low point" for Boris Johnson.

In a statement, Mr Martin said it was "very regrettable for a country like the UK to renege on an international treaty".

Micheal Martin - Frederick Florin/AFP

"It represents a new low point because the natural expectation of democratic countries like ourselves, the UK and all across Europe is that we honour international agreements that we enter into."

The protocol is "an international deal ratified by British Parliament and approved by the PM", the Taoiseach said, and breaching it "goes to the heart of the issue of trust".

06:42 PM

Brandon Lewis: New Bill 'restores balance' of Good Friday Agreement

The Northern Ireland Secretary writes:

We have introduced the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in order to restore the balance of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.



Learn more  https://t.co/S56m0D7gcp  Brandon Lewis (@BrandonLewis) June 13, 2022

06:36 PM

Blair Institute: Northern Ireland Protocol 'wrong' and 'counterproductive'

The Northern Ireland Protocol is "wrong in principle and counterproductive in practice", the Tony Blair Institute has said.

Anton Spisak, its senior fellow for UK policy, claimed Boris Johnson was "wrong to suggest the changes contained in today's bill are a 'trivial set of adjustments'."

"One of the most significant effects of the bill will be its impact on Northern Ireland politic," he said.

"The DUP will likely see it as a vindication of their strong position on the Protocol, disincentivising them from returning to power-sharing at least until the legislation has been enacted.

"The overall effect of this bill is that it will make the EUs, as well as the DUPs position more, not less, entrenched."

06:30 PM

EU will not renegotiate - and could restart legal action, says Maros Sefcovic

It will be "unrealistic" to renegotiate the Northern Ireland Protocol, Maros Sefcovic has said this evening after Britain unveiled the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill - as he suggested the EU could restart legal action against Britain.

"No workable alternative solution has been found to this delicate, long-negotiated balance. Any renegotiations would simply bring legal uncertainty for the people and businesses of Northern Ireland. For these reasons, the European Union will not renegotiate the Protocol.

" It is with significant concern that we take note of today's decision by the UK government to table legislation disapplying core elements of the Protocol. Unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust. The Commission will now assess the UK draft legislation.

"Our aim will always be to secure the implementation of the Protocol. Our reaction to unilateral action by the UK will reflect that aim and will be proportionate.

"As a first step, the Commission will consider continuing the infringement procedure launched against the UK government in March 2021. We had put this legal action on hold in September 2021 in a spirit of constructive cooperation to create the space to look for joint solutions. The UK's unilateral action goes directly against this spirit."

06:19 PM

'The fact is the EU have refused to change the Protocol'

Liz Truss warned of "very real problems" on trade diversion "causing a feeling of inequality between the different communities of Northern Ireland".

"What is so important is we restore the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, we restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland and that is the priority of the UK Government.

"We're very clear that we're acting in line with the law. What is vitally important is that we do resolve this situation in Northern Ireland that is causing real problems. We haven't seen the Executive operating since February, we need to get power-sharing reestablished."

Ms Truss said it was because the Good Friday Agreement had been so "hard-won" it was all the more important the changes were made, adding: "The fact is the EU have refused to change the Protocol which is causing these problems on trade, on tax and more broadly in Northern Ireland."

06:14 PM

How ministers will be able to tear up and rewrite almost all of Protocol

Ministers will be able to tear up and rewrite virtually all of the Northern Ireland Protocol under sweeping changes announced in Parliament this evening, writes Nick Gutteridge, our Political Correspondent.

Legislation to end border checks in the Irish Sea contains an "insurance" clause which could be used to cancel almost all other parts of the deal with Brussels.

It may even be activated to scrap a consent vote on whether to keep or ditch the Brexit agreement, which will be held by members of the Stormont Assembly in 2024.

Article 15 of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill grants the UK Government the power to disapply any part of the current arrangements under certain circumstances.

Here are the four big changes the UK is making to the Protocol

06:09 PM

Breaking: Government sets out legal position

The Government has set out its legal position on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which it insists is within international law.

"The doctrine of necessity provides a clear basis in international law to justify the non-performance of international obligations under certain exceptional and limited conditions," the Foreign Office says in a statement.

After reaching a "difficult compromise" on the final text of the Protocol, it says the agreement "currently stands as a barrier to forming a new Executive in Northern Ireland" and the Government"has no other way of safeguarding the essential interests of stake" amid a "genuinely exceptional situation".

"It is the Governments position that in light of the state of necessity, any such non-performance of its obligations contained in the Withdrawal Agreement and/or the Protocol as a result of the planned legislative measures would be justified as a matter of international law.

"This justification lasts as long as the underlying reasons for the state of necessity are present. The current assessment is that this situation and its causes will persist into the medium to long term."

06:01 PM

Liz Truss: 'This is a very serious issue we need to fix'

In comments given to RTE News, Liz Truss warned of "a very serious situation in Northern Ireland".

"People can't access the goods they need to access, we're not able to implement the same tax benefits in Northern Ireland as we are for the people of Great Britain," she said.

"So this is a very serious issue that we need to fix. We have sought a negotiated settlement for the last 18 months, but as yet the EU have been unwilling to change the terms of the Protocol.

"So I would strongly encourage the Irish Taoiseach to discuss this with the EU to get a change in the mandate and then we can go to the negotiating table."

06:00 PM

Liz Truss: 'We are acting within international law'

Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, has been speaking to RTE News and says:

"We're doing this in a way that protects the EU single market to make sure they receive information about what goods are crossing the Irish Sea, so we are maintaining the core principles of what we're doing, and we are acting within international law and we will be publishing a legal statement later today to show that.

"What we are doing is we are changing the Agreement to have exactly the same effect as far as the EU is concerned, so we continue to protect the EU single market through our agreement, but we're fixing these problems that are causing real difficulties for communities within the United Kingdom and that is the duty of the United Kingdom Government to make sure we maintain political stability in our own country.

"But as I've said I am very willing to negotiate with the EU, but they do have to be willing to change the terms of this agreement which are causing these very severe problems."

05:54 PM

Second reading of Protocol Bill tomorrow - reports

The second reading of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill will take place tomorrow, according to Virgin Media News in Ireland.

A page for the Bill has also been published on the Parliament website - although the PDF file with the full legislation does not seem to be working yet.

05:49 PM

Breaking: New law tabled in the Commons

The Government has tabled the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in the Commons in the last few minutes.

We'll have more very soon, including from Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary.

05:36 PM

Breaking: PM signs joint declaration with Portugal

Delighted to sign a joint declaration with Prime Minister @antoniocostapm.



Our countries are old allies and friends.



Well continue to work together closely on defence, security, trade, and more.



 https://t.co/7DjHlFhxqa  Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) June 13, 2022

05:29 PM

Rwanda policy is 'immoral' and shames England, say archbishops

Plans to deport Channel migrants to Rwanda are an "immoral policy that shames Britain", the whole Church of England leadership has claimed.

The 25 Lords Spiritual in the House of Lords - including the Archbishops of Canterbury and York - have spoken after Prince Charles was said to have privately branded the policy as "appalling".

The Most Rev Justin Welby used his Easter sermon to say the policy raised "serious ethical questions" and could neither "stand the judgment of God" nor "carry the weight of our national responsibility as a country formed by Christian values".

The letter, to be published in the Times newspaper tomorrow, says: "Whether or not the first deportation flight leaves Britain today for Rwanda, this policy should shame us as a nation. The shame is our own, because our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries."

05:06 PM

Matthew Laws: New smoking laws would mark the end of our liberty

This week a new review into government tobacco policy made a number of extraordinary proposals  most controversially to ban tobacco sales to individuals born after a certain year, writes Matthew Lewsh. It would be the understatement of the decade to describe these suggestions as bonkers.

They would infantilise future generations as never before, treating every person born after an arbitrary date as if they were a child forever. You could be sent to war, have sex, drink alcohol, get married - but not smoke a cigarette.



It might lead to a cosmically absurd situation in which one day a 50-year-old would be forced to ask their 51-year-old mate to purchase a cig on their behalf. Overnight, the ban would create a gigantic illegal market, stripping the Treasury of revenue and handing it straight to criminal gangs.



The review, led by Dr Javed Khan, contains a number of other recommendations "to make England smoke-free by 2030", from further increases to the UKs already vast array of regressive sin taxes, to banning smoking in beer gardens, on beaches and in new council estates. So much for supporting the UK pub industry, or even defending the concept of privacy in your own home.

Matthew Leesh: This nanny statism should terrify us all

04:52 PM

'Get on and send them'

Only 11 migrants are left on tomorrow's first flight to Rwanda after legal challenges, the Court of Appeal heard today as it threw out a last-ditch attempt to stop the flight going ahead (see 4.42pm).

Tory backbencher Peter Bone has told MPs: "We hear that a number of the people who are on the flight to Rwanda tomorrow have somehow miraculously got some Lefty lawyer to intervene and stop it."

He suggested to Tom Pursglove, the immigration minister: "'Instead of booking 50 people on each flight to Rwanda, book 250 people on it then when they stop half of them from travelling you still have a full flight - come on, get on and send them."

Mr Pursglove said he "certainly takes on board" the situation, but declined to comment on operational matters.

04:42 PM

Breaking: First Rwanda flight will go ahead after challenge thrown out

Judges at the Court of Appeal have thrown out a legal challenge that would have blocked tomorrow's first deportation flight to Rwanda.

Lord Justice Singh confirmed the "appeal is dismissed", although the charities involved have already indicated they will appeal again.

Protesters demonstrating against the Rwanda deportation policy earlier today - Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu Agency

Simon Clarke, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has already described the decision as "welcome news".

04:37 PM

David Davis: This is a negotiating gambit

David Davis, the former Brexit minister, gives me the following assessment of what the Government has planned:

Removing checks on 'green lane goods' is sensible, creating a dual regulatory system is a bit more arguable, applying UK VAT levels to Northern Ireland a bit more sensible, removing European Court of Justice jurisdiction is a complete renegotiation - and will almost certainly trigger a trade war - and fixing state aid is, I think, quite sensible.



But the point about this is I dont know if this is an opening gambit in a new round of negotiation, or were they intending to do it unilaterally and take the consequences. If its the former it would be very stupid of Remainer MPs to vote against it  very stupid.



I would be very surprised if enough Remainers voted for it to stop it. But at the moment, as far as Im concerned, this is just a negotiating gambit on our part. Were a long way from actually putting this into law.



You think about the behaviour of the Lords in all of this, and were unlikely to see this happen in three or four months, in which time hopefully therell be movement down the EU path.

04:25 PM

Blocking Protocol reform 'would be a huge betrayal'

Michael Fabricant, the MP for Lichfield, said he feared the only alternative to reforming the Protocol would be rejoining the single market and "surrendering the sovereignty of British courts".

He said: "It would be a huge betrayal of Brexit and the 52 per cent who voted for it. It would also be a huge betrayal of the leadership of the Government, who are trying their best for the people of Northern Ireland.

Michael Fabricant has warned it would be a "betrayal" of Boris Johnson's leadership if Protocol reform were to be blocked by Remainer Tory MPs - Eddie Mulholland

"I know of one colleague who has already suggested we rejoin the single market, but to fight the old Brexit battles all over again is not something the general public wants."

Andrew Bridgen, the MP for North West Leicestershire who last week confirmed he resubmitted a no-confidence letter in Boris Johnson, accused those planning to rebel of "playing into the false No 10 narrative that those opposing the Prime Minister are part of a Remainer plot".

"This is at a time when the parliamentary party has never been more eurosceptic. I guess it just shows how divided the Conservative parliamentary party is now."

04:20 PM

Could Boris Johnson face a Protocol rebellion on two fronts?

Boris Johnson risks facing a revolt from the staunch Brexiteer wing of his party as well as so-called 'Tory wets' over new Protocol legislation.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Craig Mackinlay, the MP for South Thanet and a member of the European Research Group of eurosceptic backbenchers, accused a "small group of Conservative colleagues [of] seemingly risking the Good Friday agreement" by opposing "any plan" to reform the Protocol.

"For them, the Brexit battle continues, and theyd seemingly risk the Good Friday Agreement for part of the UK remaining within the orbit of the EU and with it the likelihood of limited divergence by the whole of the UK. "

But he added: "That said, unless the Bill solves the Northern Ireland Protocol problems cleanly and absolutely to the satisfaction of the Unionist community, this Brexiteer MP might similarly oppose it but for constitutional reasons.

04:10 PM

Good afternoon

Dominic Penna here, taking over from Jack for the rest of today.

We can shortly expect new Government legislation allowing ministers to tear up post-Brexit border rules without needing consent from Brussels.

Talks between Liz Truss and Maros Sefcovic, her European counterpart, failed to yield any progress - Rob Pinney/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

It comes after 18 months of fruitless talks which has seen the UK and the EU caught in an impasse, meaning No 10 now views the new measures as necessary.

03:56 PM

PM: Best way to lose weight is to 'eat less'

Boris Johnson has said the best way to lose weight is to eat less, citing his own experience, as he responded to criticism of the Governments new food strategy.

The Prime Minister denied that the proposals fail to tackle obesity after the lead adviser on the strategy said it had fallen short in addressing the UKs health problems.

Mr Johnson insisted he was very grateful for the work done by Henry Dimbleby, the co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain.

However, the new strategy rejected proposals from Mr Dimbleby for a salt and sugar tax to help people eat more healthily.

You can read the full story here.

03:50 PM

EU will restart legal action against UK

The European Union will restart legal action against Britain over breaches of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, with a looming threat of a trade war if the Government refuses to comply.

Maros Sefcovic, a European Commission vice-president, said that the UKs move to unilaterally override the Northern Ireland Protocol was damaging to mutual trust and a formula for uncertainty.

His warning came after a phone call with Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, on Monday morning to discuss Britains plans to bring forward the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

The EUs initial response is expected to be muted and will arrive in a statement after the first reading of the legislation in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon.

You can read the full story here.

03:41 PM

Micheal Martin accuses UK of 'reneging' on international treaty

Micheal Martin, the Irish Taoiseach, has accused the UK of "reneging" on the Brexit deal it struck with the EU as he criticised Boris Johnson's plans to unilaterally make changes to post-Brexit border rules in Northern Ireland.

Speaking in Co Cork, he said: "Its very regrettable for a country like the UK to renege on an international treaty.

I think it represents a new low point because the natural expectation of democratic countries like ourselves, the UK and all across Europe is that we honour international agreements that we enter into.

Mr Martin said the "only way to resolve issues around the operation of the protocol is to have substantive negotiations".

03:15 PM

What have Northern Ireland's pro-protocol parties told Boris Johnson?

MLAs from Sinn Fein, the Alliance Party and the SDLP have all signed a letter sent to Boris Johnson (see the post below at 15.00) setting out opposition to the Government's Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. The letter stated that the parties "collectively represent a majority inside the Northern Ireland Assembly.

It said: We reject in the strongest possible terms your Governments reckless new protocol legislation, which flies in the face of the expressed wishes of not just most businesses, but most people in Northern Ireland.

The MLAs said they want to see the protocol "work as smoothly as possible" but believe "the way to achieve this is through engagement with the European Union".

"It is clear that solutions are available and deliverable  as have already been delivered in the area of medicines  but this must be on the basis of trust and the rule of law rather than law breaking and unilateral abrogation of treaty obligations," they said.

The MLAs also said that they "strongly reject your continued claim to be protecting the Good Friday Agreement as your Government works to destabilise our region".

"To complain the protocol lacks cross-community consent, while ignoring the fact that Brexit itself  let alone hard Brexit - lacks even basic majority consent here, is a grotesque act of political distortion," they said.

03:00 PM

Sinn Fein: PM's plan 'clearly a breach of international law'

Michelle O'Neill, the vice president of Sinn Fein, has labelled the Government's Northern Ireland Protocol plan as "utterly reckless".

Sinn Fein and other pro-protocol parties in Northern Ireland have written to Boris Johnson to set out their opposition to the Government's approach.

Ms O'Neill tweeted: "The unilateral actions of Boris Johnson are utterly reckless. It is clearly a breach of International Law.

"The impact on our businesses & economy could be colossal. The pro-protocol parties have jointly written to Boris Johnson today to firmly reject his legislation and approach."

The unilateral actions of Boris Johnson are utterly reckless. It is clearly a breach of International Law. The impact on our businesses & economy could be colossal. The pro-protocol parties have jointly written to Boris Johnson today to firmly reject his legislation and approach pic.twitter.com/dzhBVAPJfJ  Michelle ONeill (@moneillsf) June 13, 2022

02:53 PM

'I dont believe that is what they are going to do'

A senior Tory MP has predicted the EU would not trigger a trade war with the UK over No 10's plans to unilaterally tear up parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Theresa Villiers, a former Northern Ireland secretary, told the BBC: It is open to the European Union to start some kind of trade war with the United Kingdom but that clearly wouldnt be in their interests or ours.

So I dont believe that is what they are going to do.

02:47 PM

Tory MP predicts UK and EU will do a deal

Theresa Villiers, the Tory former Northern Ireland secretary, said she believes the UK and the EU will ultimately agree a negotiated solution to post-Brexit border problems in Northern Ireland.

She told the BBC: I believe that the negotiations will ultimately succeed, as they did for the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

That negotiation demonstrates that taking a firm but fair position on the UKs national interest delivers a good outcome.

02:40 PM

'We broadly welcome what we hear of the Bill'

Theresa Villiers, a former Northern Ireland secretary and a member of the European Research Group of Tory Brexiteer MPs, said she believes the Government will have the numbers to get its new Brexit law through the Commons, despite a growing revolt among some Conservative backbenchers.

Asked if she believes the Government can get the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill through the Commons, Ms Villiers told the BBC: I think they can. Speaking from my perspective and that of the ERG, we broadly welcome what we hear of the Bill so far but we will be wanting to look at it in some technical detail, so my colleague, Sir Bill Cash, is going to be consulting his star chamber of lawyers.

But I think what the Foreign Secretary looks to do is to make what are reasonable amendments to the protocol which are crucial to saving the political institutions established under the Good Friday Agreement.

02:28 PM

'Britain should be a country that keeps its word'

David Lammy, Labour's shadow foreign secretary, said the Government's Northern Ireland Protocol Bill will "only bring more uncertainty".

He said: "Todays protocol legislation is a desperate attempt by Boris Johnson to distract from the drama of his leadership crisis. It risks creating new trade barriers in a cost-of-living crisis and will only bring more uncertainty for the people of Northern Ireland who are trying to make the protocol work.

"Britain should be a country that keeps its word. By tearing up the protocol it negotiated just a couple of years ago, the Government will damage Britains reputation and make finding a lasting solution more difficult.

"The EU must show more flexibility as Labour has said from the start. But this legislation is not the way to unlock progress.

The Government must now publish its legal advice in full and start acting responsibly to protect the Good Friday Agreement to support peace and prosperity.

01:50 PM

Publication of Northern Ireland Protocol Bill could be delayed

It looks like we will have to wait a little bit longer than hoped for the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill to be published.

It would have been presented to the House of Commons just after 3.30pm if there was no urgent business.

But two urgent questions have been granted - one on today's GDP figures and another on the Government's Rwanda policy - while a statement on the Government's Food Strategy has also been scheduled.

That means the presentation of bills probably will not happen until 5.30pm at the earliest.

01:39 PM

Pictured: Boris Johnson welcomes PM of Portugal to No 10

Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, is pictured before talks with Antonio Costa, the Prime Minister of Portugal, today - Aaron Chown/PA

01:30 PM

No 10: UK economy has 'strong foundations'

The Prime Ministers Official Spokesman said this morning's GDP figures (see the post below 08.23) were significantly impacted by the end of mass Covid-19 testing and when we exclude the falling numbers of Covid tests, the rest of the economy saw positive growth of 0.1 per cent in April.

The spokesman said: "We think we have strong foundations within our economy which will help it to grow. We recognise there are strong headwinds as we emerge from this pandemic and with war in Europe. That is challenging not just for the UK but for countries across the world.

The spokesman said it was too early to pass judgment on the impact of Brexit, particularly given the effects of the pandemic but the Government is "confident that the opportunities Brexit provides will be a boon to the UK economy in the long term.

01:21 PM

Keir Starmer: Government is 'out of touch'

Sir Keir Starmer said today's GDP figures (see the post below at 08.23) will be a "real cause for concern for millions of people who are struggling already to pay their bills".

He said the ONS numbers represent a "very gloomy forecast" and "its not new".

Weve had low growth in our economy for 12 years  the entire period of this Conservative government," he said.

Weve had low growth and high taxes and its that combination that is really punishing people across the country. What we need is a plan to get the economy going  investment in the right places, cutting those taxes, the emergency budget that weve been calling for.

During a visit to Wakefield, he said: But Im afraid all that weve got is a government thats out of touch and out of ideas.

12:52 PM

No 10: 'No plans' for further fuel duty cut

Downing Street has said there are "no plans" for a further fuel duty cut. Rishi Sunak unveiled a temporary 5p cut in March but the Government has faced calls to go further as prices at the pump continue to increase.

Asked if Boris Johnson is ruling out another cut, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman said: "There are no plans for that.

"You will know we have a 37 billion package which includes the 5p fuel duty cut and a raft of other measures aimed at protecting the most vulnerable and indeed also ensuring that the majority of workers, 70 per cent, are better off thanks to Government action in July.

12:45 PM

PM has 'nothing but respect' for Prince Charles

Downing Street has said Boris Johnson has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales after he reportedly criticised the Rwanda policy.

The Prime Ministers Official Spokesman said: The Prime Minister has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales, whos spoken out on a number of issues, not least the environment.

12:44 PM

'We will continue to robustly defend our position'

The Government continues to face legal challenges over its Rwanda asylum seekers policy. The first flight to Rwanda is supposed to depart tomorrow but it is currently unclear how many people will be on it.

The Prime Ministers Official Spokesman said: I am not going to speculate on numbers. We have the flight planned for tomorrow. There are legal challenges which makes it hard to say with certainty on numbers at this stage.

We will continue to robustly defend our position.

12:40 PM

PM and Chancellor joint speech delayed

We had been expecting a joint speech on the economy from Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak this week.

But it is now understood that the speech has been delayed.

It is no longer expected this week but is expected to happen in the next couple of weeks.

It is unclear why the speech has been pushed.

12:29 PM

Taoiseach condemns UK Brexit plans

The Irish Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, has reportedly suggested the UK's Northern Ireland Protocol plans will breach international law.

He said it is "pretty serious stuff" - a big contrast to Boris Johnson saying the plans are "not a big deal" (see the post below at 11.11)

Gavan Reilly, a political correspondent at Virgin Media News, has the remarks:

NEW: Announcing the unilateral breach of an international agreement is pretty serious stuff, the Taoiseach dryly summarises today  Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) June 13, 2022

12:01 PM

Pound slumps after GDP falls in April

Sterling slumped while the FTSE 100 dropped to its lowest level in a month after the UK economy suffered a shock contraction in April (see the post below at 08.23).

The pound crashed 0.8per cent against the dollar to $1.2214 after new data showed GDP shrank 0.3 per cent in April  worse than economists expectations.

Meanwhile, the FTSE 100 dropped 1.8 per cent to its lowest level since May 12, putting it on track for a fifth day of losses.

You can read the full story here.

11:28 AM

'Keir Starmer takes his declaration responsibilities very seriously'

A spokeswoman for Keir Starmer has now responded to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards' investigation (see the post below at 10.59).

They said: "Keir Starmer takes his declaration responsibilities very seriously and has already apologised for the fact that administrative errors in his office have led to a small number of late declarations.

"The Standards Commissioner has asked for more information which we are happy to provide.

11:11 AM

Changes to Northern Ireland Protocol 'not a big deal'

Boris Johnson has insisted the UK's plans to override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol are "not a big deal".

Speaking in Cornwall, the Prime Minister said: The protocol isnt actually even yet being implemented, because it has all been put into cold storage while we try and manage it.

Were it to be implemented it would do even more damage, diverting trade and that is upsetting the balance of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement.

Boris Johnson helps to select broccoli for packing during a visit to Southern England Farms Ltd in Hayle in south-west England today - Justin Tallis /AFP

You have got a problem at the moment which is that in Northern Ireland the Stormont Assembly, the government of Northern Ireland, cant meet because of the effects of the protocol.

What it does is it creates unnecessary barriers on trade east-west. What we can do is fix that. It is not a big deal, we can fix it in such a way as to remove those bureaucratic barriers but without putting up barriers on trade moving north south in the island of Ireland as well.

11:01 AM

Theres no problem here

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted he is confident he has not broken the MPs code of conduct, saying theres no problem here, after an investigation was launched by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

During a visit to Wakefield, the Labour leader told broadcasters the allegations were not a surprise, adding: My office is dealing with it and will be replying in due course.

Asked if he was sure he had done nothing wrong, he said: Absolutely confident, theres no problem here.

A Labour source said the investigation centres on a number of slightly late declarations.

10:59 AM

Keir Starmer facing probe by Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards

Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over potential breaches of rules on earnings and gifts.

The Commissioner's website shows an investigation was opened on June 8 of this year.

Sir Keir Starmer is pictured campaigning in Wakefield today ahead of a by-election on June 23 - Ian Forsyth/Getty Images Europe

The first matter under investigation is stated as: Registration of interests under Category 1 of the Guide to the Rules (Employment and earnings).

And the second: Registration of interests under Category 3 of the Guide to the Rules (Gifts, benefits and hospitality from UK sources).

10:35 AM

PM: UK will get through inflationary period 'very strongly'

Boris Johnson has predicted the UK will get through the current period of spiking inflation "very strongly indeed".

Speaking at Southern England Farms in Cornwall, he emphasised the very strong fundamentals of the economy and low unemployment, pointing to the vegetable growers search for more pickers.

Boris Johnson works with pickers to harvest courgettes during a visit to Southern England Farms in Hayle, Cornwall today - Justin Tallis/PA

He said: Thats so different from the economic crises I remember when I was younger in the 80s, in the 90s, millions of people  told they were on the scrap heap because of mass unemployment.

That was a total disaster, were in a different situation now, weve got an inflationary price bump that we got to get through I think well get through it very strongly indeed.

10:21 AM

Lib Dems criticise PM over tax cuts

Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has criticised Boris Johnson for failing to back immediate tax cuts (see the post below at 09.51).

He said: "All we got from Boris Johnson this morning was more bluff and bluster and no actual plan to help people through this cost of living emergency.

He could cut taxes now, helping households and the economy but instead he just sits on his hands. Instead of cutting taxes - in the middle of this crisis chooses to raises them, something struggling families and pensioners will never forgive him for.

09:58 AM

What time will the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill be published?

The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is due to be presented to Parliament in the House of Commons this afternoon.

If there are no urgent questions then it should take place just after 3.30pm. The Government is then expected to publish the draft legislation.

Downing Street has also promised a summary of the Government's legal advice relating to the Bill.

09:55 AM

PM defends Rwanda plan

Boris Johnson has defended the Government's plan to send migrants on a one-way trip to Rwanda despite reported criticism from the Prince of Wales.

The Prime Minister insisted the plan is aimed at breaking the business model of people-trafficking gangs.

Asked if Prince Charles is wrong, Mr Johnson told LBC Radio: What I dont think we should support is continued activity by criminal gangs.

He added: I do think that its the job of Government to stop people breaking the law and to support people who are doing the right thing; thats what we are doing.

09:51 AM

Boris Johnson hints taxes cuts are linked to falling inflation

Boris Johnson has hinted that inflation will need to be falling before the Government can act to cut taxes.

He told LBC Radio: "Yes of course I understand that we need to bear down on taxation and we certainly will.

"But weve got an inflationary spike that weve got to get through right now, looking after people as we go through that. And that is what were going to do.

09:45 AM

No Commons statement on Northern Ireland plans

It had been thought that Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, would deliver a statement in the House of Commons this afternoon to take questions on the Government's Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

But while the Bill will be presented to Parliament, likely at 3.30pm, Ms Truss is now not expected to make a statement. She is expected to do a brief TV clip.

MPs are unlikely to be happy with that arrangement and may well push for an urgent question to be granted on the subject.

09:40 AM

EU: 'Unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust'

Liz Truss has also spoken to Maros Sefcovic, the vice president of the European Commission, about the UK's Northern Ireland Protocol plans.

Mr Sefcovic said action to "unilaterally disapply" parts of the protocol will damage trust between the two sides.

Spoke to @trussliz earlier where she informed me of legislation to unilaterally disapply the Protocol. The EU has always paid utmost attention to the impact Brexit has on NI, offering workable solutions. Unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust & a formula for uncertainty. pic.twitter.com/CWqFSxy0GC  Maros Sefcovic (@MarosSefcovic) June 13, 2022

09:37 AM

Dublin warns Northern Ireland plan will be 'deeply damaging'

The Irish Government has warned the UK's Northern Ireland Protocol Bill will be "deeply damaging" to the relationship between Britain and the EU.

Dublin has published a readout of a 12-minute phone call between Simon Coveney, the Irish Foreign Affairs Minister, and Liz Truss which took place this morning.

Spoke with @trussliz.

UK Govt now proposing to set aside Int Law, reject a partnership approach, ignore majority in NI & deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise.

We remain open to dialogue to find agreement but his approach adds to instability & is no fix.  Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) June 13, 2022

An Irish Government spokesman said: "Minister Coveney said publishing legislation that would breach the UKs commitments under international law, the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol is deeply damaging to relationships on these islands and between the UK and EU.

"Minister Coveney said it marks a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit, especially as Secretary Truss has not engaged with negotiations with the EU in any meaningful way since February."

They added: "Far from fixing problems, this legislation will create a whole new set of uncertainties and damage relationships."

09:30 AM

Liz Truss: 'We cannot wait to fix the issues facing the people of NI'

Spoke to @simoncoveney about the Bill were announcing today to protect peace and stability in Northern Ireland and uphold the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.



We remain open to negotiations with the EU, but we cannot wait to fix the issues facing the people of NI. pic.twitter.com/MRzKviZYQi  Liz Truss (@trussliz) June 13, 2022

09:28 AM

Boris Johnson visits farm in Cornwall to launch food strategy

Boris Johnson has joined farm workers to pick courgettes on a vegetable farm in Cornwall to mark the launch of the Government's new food strategy.

The Prime Minister was shown how to look under the leaves, select the ready courgettes, twist and turn the vegetables and place them in crates at the back of a tractor moving slowly across the field.

Beautiful shiny courgettes, Mr Johnson said. Theyre very prolific, arent they?

Boris Johnson is pictured during a visit to a farm in Cornwall today - Justin Tallis /AFP

09:25 AM

PM: Trade war would be 'perverse' and 'preposterous'

Boris Johnson has warned the EU against triggering a trade war over the UK's Northern Ireland Protocol plans as he said such a move would be a "gross, gross overreaction".

Told that there have been warnings of a potential trade war, Mr Johnson told LBC Radio: I think that that would be a gross, gross overreaction. All we are trying to do is simplify things to actually to remove barriers to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

How perverse, how preposterous at this time when we want to see greater facilities to be introducing further restrictions on trade when all we are trying to do is have some bureaucratic simplifications between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

09:23 AM

Boris Johnson: Northern Ireland plans will not break law

Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, has rejected claims that the Government's Northern Ireland plans could breach international law.

He told LBC Radio: Well, I disagree with that and I will tell you why, because I think our higher and prior legal commitment as a country is to the Belfast Good Friday Agreement.

09:20 AM

PM insists Brexit changes are 'relatively trivial'

Boris Johnson was told during an interview on LBC Radio that his Northern Ireland Protocol plans appear to be "dead in the water" and will struggle to take off because of a mounting backlash.

Mr Johnson replied: No, absolutely not it is a sea plane this thing, it is going to take off from the water because it is the right way forward.

What we have to respect, this is the crucial thing, is the balance and the symmetry of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and we have to understand there are two traditions in Northern Ireland two ways of looking at the border issues and one community at the moment feels very, very estranged from the way things are operating and very alienated and we just have got to fix that and it is relatively simple to do it.

It is a bureaucratic change that needs to be made. Frankly it is a relatively trivial set of adjustments, in the grand scheme of things.

09:05 AM

Food tsar criticises Government

Henry Dimbleby, the Government's food tsar, said the food strategy due to be published by ministers today represents "progress" but more needs to be done (see the post below at 08.19).

Mr Dimbleby made a series of recommendations in an independent review published last year after he was commissioned to look at the issue - but the Government is not taking all of them forward.

The co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain who has seen the final version of the food strategy, told BBC Breakfast: Is it the big, bold, unified strategy I think we need? No. Do I think were going in the right direction? Yes.

He said his recommendation of introducing an effective salt and sugar tax would be responded to by the Health Secretary Sajid Javid at a later date.

He said: Im hoping that the Health Secretary will be bold and brave in a difficult political context and act to break that junk food cycle and we get away from this narrative of personal responsibility and education which is important, but it isnt going to get us out of the hole were in.

08:41 AM

Minister insists Rwanda plan is 'right thing to do'

The Government continues to face legal challenges over its Rwanda asylum seekers policy.

George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, said he expects legal firms to continue to make "noise" about the "offshoring" plans but he insisted the approach is the "right thing to do".

He told Sky News: Lawyers will continue to make these sorts of noises but of course we put in place an agreement with Rwanda.

I think it was a very big step forward when the Home Secretary Priti Patel secured that agreement its something actually that the governments and oppositions have talked about as a potential solution for a very long time going back some 20 years and it is we think the right thing to do in order to address this problem of people putting their lives at risk and putting their lives in the hands of terrible people smugglers.

08:34 AM

Labour accuses Tories of using 'sticking plasters' on economy

Rachel Reeves, Labour's shadow chancellor, said the latest GDP figures (see the post below at 08.23) will "add to the worry families are still feeling about their own finances and the long term health of our economy".

She said: They will also add to growing concern about abysmal growth and plummeting living standards under the Conservatives.

Instead of properly addressing the structural weaknesses and insecurity they've created, all the Conservatives use are sticking plasters.

Labour will create a stronger, more secure economy by boosting our energy security, supply chain security and business security.

08:32 AM

'Their incompetence is nothing short of dangerous'

The Liberal Democrats have accused the Government of being in "disarray" after the UK economy contracted for two months in a row (see the post below at 08.23).

Christine Jardine, the party's Treasury spokeswoman, said: "The Governments barrage of tax hikes and lack of cost-of-living support are leaving people to suffer, and now thats translating into worrying economic figures.

The UK has the best universities, the best services sector and the best workforce  yet this Government is in such disarray that were headed for the lowest growth in the G7. Their incompetence is nothing short of dangerous.

Instead of giving speeches full of empty promises, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak need to start listening to people and give them real help with the cost of living.

08:29 AM

Rishi Sunak: UK 'not immune' to global challenges

Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, has responded to today's GDP figures which were published by the Office for National Statistics at 7am (see the post below at 08.23).

Mr Sunak said: "Countries around the world are seeing slowing growth, and the UK is not immune from these challenges.

Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor - Zara Farrar /HM Treasury

I want to reassure people, were fully focused on growing the economy to address the cost of living in the longer term, while supporting families and businesses with the immediate pressures theyre facing.

We have a plan to turbocharge productivity through investment in capital, people and ideas, so everyone across the country can benefit from a strong, healthy economy.

08:26 AM

Minister: 'Real challenges ahead'

George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, has conceded there are some real challenges ahead after the UK economy contracted in March and April (see the post below at 08.23).

He told Sky News: "Weve known for some time this was going to be a challenge.

Weve got unemployment thats at record lows, the lowest its been since 1974, but of course there are some real challenges ahead and these GDP figures are a reminder of those challenges.

08:23 AM

UK economy shrinks by 0.3 per cent

The UK economy contracted by 0.3 per cent in April this year following a decline of 0.1 per cent in March as fears of a recession continue to grow.

The decline was driven by the end of free Covid testing in April, which removed a major support for the economy, although there were contractions in all major sectors.

It also came as the energy price cap jumped 54 per cent and National Insurance payments increased, piling more pressure on household budgets as the cost-of-living crisis deepens.

You can follow the latest on the economy live here.

08:19 AM

George Eustice defends Government's food strategy

Henry Dimbleby, the co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain, was commissioned by the Government to conduct a review of the nation's food system and he published a series of recommendations last year.

The Government is today unveiling its new food strategy but it has faced criticism after leaked versions of the document suggested ministers had failed to adopt many of Mr Dimbleby's key asks.

George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, defended the Government's approach, telling Sky News the "vast majority" of the recommendations have been taken forward.

He said: "I have spoken directly to Henry Dimbleby about this. We take forward the vast majority of his recommendations and so on health and obesity, for instance, he recommended a data partnership, that was his flagship recommendation, we are taking that up because business has access to far better consumer data than government ever can. And of course we have already introduced many things in this space.

08:11 AM

Cabinet minister: Protocol is a 'serious threat' to peace

George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, said the Northern Ireland Protocol is a "serious threat" to peace in Northern Ireland and must be changed.

He also argued the UK has been forced to act unilaterally to make changes to post-Brexit border rules because the EU has refused to give ground during negotiations.

He told Sky News: Obviously when the Bill is introduced we will set out the legal basis for that and the Attorney General has been involved closely with this and has given her advice on it.

George Eustice, the Environment Secretary - Anadolu Agency

But the crucial thing is we have to make this Northern Ireland Protocol work properly because at the moment it is a serious threat to the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and we dont have the inter-ministerial committees meeting which is supposed to bring together politicians on both sides of the Irish border, Stormont is not sitting and trade from GB to Northern Ireland is being severely affected.

So we have to get a durable solution to this. We have been trying very hard with the European Union to get them to discuss, they are refusing to even change their mandate and so we have to basically give clarity about what the protocol means, how it should be interpreted. Only the UK can do that.

08:08 AM

Good morning

Good morning and welcome to today's politics live blog.

The Government will publish its Northern Ireland Protocol Bill this afternoon - the legislation which will give ministers the power to unilaterally tear up post-Brexit border rules in Northern Ireland.

The publication of the draft laws will spark a political firestorm, with the EU having warned the UK's approach could breach international law.

Ministers will also publish the Government's new Food Strategy amid claims it does not go far enough to change the nation's approach to healthy eating.

I will guide you through all of the key developments.
Former prime minister Tony Blair has been appointed to Britain's oldest order of chivalry. (PA)

A crowd of protesters gathered in Windsor on Monday as Tony Blair was admitted to Britain's oldest order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter.

The Queen appointed the former prime minister a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter  the highest possible ranking.

The knighthood has sparked a significant backlash from anti-war groups.

It comes 15 years after Blair left Downing Street and 19 years since he led Britain into the Iraq war.

Protesters demonstrate outside of Windsor Castle opposing the knighthood of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. (Reuters)

Stop the War activists gathered at the Queen Victoria statue outside Windsor castle. (Reuters)

The disgraced Duke of York was forced to remain out of sight during the procession after a family decision was taken to limit his appearance to a behind-the-scenes lunch and investiture ceremony.

In December, when the announcement was made, more than 1.5 million signatures were gathered on a petition calling for the knighthood to be rescinded.

The petition said Blair was the least deserving person of any public honour and that he should be held accountable for war crimes.

Stop the War activists gathered at the Queen Victoria statue outside Windsor castle on Monday to demonstrate against the appointment.

Read more: Buckingham Palace confirms Prince Andrew will not take part in Garter Day service

Tony Blair arrives for the Order of the Garter service. (AP)

More than 1.5 million people have signed a petition calling for Blair's knighthood to be removed. (AP)

Stop the War Vice Chair, Chris Nineham, said: "The rehabilitation of Tony Blair since the Iraq war is a scandal. He is widely recognised as a war criminal.

"Our protest will be representing the millions of people who believe the only court Tony Blair should be going near is the Hague."

Asked about the criticism in April Blair told ITV that he felt a "huge amount of sympathy and distress for the people that were affected by those decisions".

He added: "The only thing I ever say to people is that you can disagree with the decision, but it really is not fair to say the decision was taken on the basis of deceit or lies or whatever people say about it."

Founded in 1348 by Edward III, appointments to the Garter are bestowed by the Queen and made without advice from a prime minister. They are awarded for outstanding public service and achievement.

Story continues

Founded in 1348 by Edward III, appointments to the Garter are bestowed by the Queen and made without advice from a prime minister. (AP)

Sophie, Countess of Wessex, and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge arrive for the Order of the Garter service. (AP)

During Mondays service, the Duchess of Cornwall was installed as a Royal Lady of the Order of the Garter. (AP)

There are currently 21 non-royal companions, out of a maximum of 24 who can be in the order at any one time.

Once appointed, the position remains for life unless a Knight or Lady offends against certain "points of reproach".

Usually appointments are announced on 23 April - St George's Day - but the Queen has the power to announce a new addition at any time.

Each year, Royal Knights and Ladies of the Order of the Garter gather at the chapel in Windsor for a colourful procession and ceremony.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife Cherie Blair embraces her daughter Kathryn Blair as sons Euan, Leo and Nicky Blair look, during the Order of the Garter Service. (Reuters)

During Mondays service, the Duchess of Cornwall was installed as a Royal Lady of the Order of the Garter.

Baroness Valerie Amos was also appointed Lady Companion of the Order.

The Labour member of the House of Lords, who was the first Black person to become a cabinet member, will now also be the first black person appointed Lady Companion of the Order.
People walk toward the entrance of an evacuation train in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, on Saturday. (Efrem Lukatsky / Associated Press)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that no one knows how long the war in his country will last but that Ukrainian forces are defying expectations by preventing Russian troops from overrunning eastern Ukraine, where the fighting has been fiercest for weeks.

In his nightly video address, Zelensky said he was proud of the Ukrainian defenders managing to hold back the Russian advance in the Donbas region, which borders Russia and where Moscow-backed separatists have controlled much of the territory for eight years.

Remember how in Russia, in the beginning of May, they hoped to seize all of the Donbas? the president said late Saturday. Its already the 108th day of the war, already June. Donbas is holding on.

After failing to capture Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, early in the war, Moscow focused on seizing the parts of the largely Russian-speaking Donbas still in Ukrainian hands, as well as the country's southern coast. But instead of securing a swift, decisive takeover, Russian forces were drawn into a long, laborious battle, thanks in part to the Ukrainian military's use of Western-supplied weapons.

Meanwhile, Kremlin-installed officials in occupied southern Ukraine celebrated Russia Day on Sunday and began issuing Russian passports to residents in one city who requested them, as Moscow sought to solidify its rule over captured parts of the country.

At one of the central squares in the city of Kherson, Russian bands played a concert to celebrate Russia Day, the holiday that marks Russias emergence as a sovereign state after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to Russias state news agency RIA Novosti. In the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow-installed officials raised a Russian flag in Melitopols city center.

Ukrainian media reported that few, if any, residents attended the Russia Day festivities in the two cities.

Russia Day was also celebrated in other occupied parts of Ukraine, including the ravaged southern port of Mariupol, where a new city sign painted in the colors of the Russian flag was unveiled on the outskirts and Russian flags were flown on a highway leading into the city.

Story continues

Also, the Russia-aligned administration in Melitopol started handing out Russian passports to those who applied for Russian citizenship. RIA Novosti posted video of a Moscow-backed official congratulating new Russian citizens and telling them: Russia will not go anywhere. We are here for good.

Both Ukrainian and Russian authorities said Severodonetsk, an eastern city with a prewar population of 100,000, remained contested. The city and neighboring Lysychansk are the last major areas of the Donbas' Luhansk province not under the control of the pro-Russia rebels.

Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the separatist-declared Luhansk Peoples Republic, said Ukrainian fighters remained in an industrial area of the city, including a chemical plant where civilians had taken shelter from days of Russian shelling.

Severodonetsk is not completely 100% liberated," Pasechnik said Saturday, alleging that the Ukrainians were shelling the city from the Azot chemical plant. So its impossible to call the situation calm in Severodonetsk, that it is completely ours.

Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai reported Saturday that a big fire broke out at the plant during hours of Russian shelling.

Zelensky said that while an end to the war was not in sight, Ukraine should do everything it can so the Russians regret everything that they have done and that they answer for every killing and every strike on our beautiful state.

The Ukrainian leader asserted that Russia has suffered about three times as many military casualties as the number estimated for the Ukrainian side, adding: "For what? What did it get you, Russia? There are no reliable independent estimates of the wars death toll so far.

Speaking at a defense conference in Singapore on Sunday, Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe said Beijing continues to support peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and hopes the U.S. and its NATO allies have discussions with Russia "to create the conditions for an early cease-fire.

China will continue to play a constructive role and contribute our share to easing tensions and realizing a political resolution of the crisis, Wei said.

He suggested that nations supplying weapons to Ukraine were hindering peace by adding fuel to the fire and stressed that China had not provided any material support to Russia during the war.

The growth of China-Russia relations is a partnership, not an alliance, Wei said.

The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, said in its latest assessment that Ukrainian intelligence suggested that the Russian military was planning to fight a longer war.

The institute cited the deputy head of Ukraine's national security agency as saying that Moscow had extended its war timeline until October, with adjustments to be made depending on any successes in the Donbas.

The intelligence likely indicates the Kremlin has, at a minimum, acknowledged it cannot achieve its objectives in Ukraine quickly and is further adjusting its military objectives in an attempt to correct the initial deficiencies in the invasion of Ukraine, the think tank said.

The self-proclaimed Luhansk Peoples Republic's ambassador to Russia, Rodion Miroshnik, said Saturday that 300 to 400 Ukrainian troops remained blockaded inside the Severodonetsk chemical plant along with several hundred civilians.

The Russians established contact with the Ukrainian troops to arrange the evacuation of the civilians, but the troops will be allowed to leave only if they lay down their arms and surrender, Miroshnik said.

Similar conditions existed for weeks at a steel mill in Mariupol before a civilian evacuation was arranged and the defending troops were ordered by Ukrainian military commanders to stand down. The fighters who came out of the Mariupol plant were taken prisoner by the Russians.

Pasechnik, the separatist leader of the unrecognized Luhansk republic, said the Ukrainians making a stand in Severodonetsk should save themselves the trouble.

If I were them, I would already make a decision [to surrender], he said. We will achieve our goal in any case. We will liberate the industrial area in any case. We will liberate Severodonetsk in any case. Lysychansk will be ours in any case.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Americans decry gun violence, political inaction at nationwide rallies

08:41, June 13, 2022 By Sun Ding ( Xinhua

"The cries of the nation's children can be heard across the world, and you choose to turn away."

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Large groups of Americans descended on Washington, D.C. and several other cities across the United States to decry rising gun violence while urging politicians to take action.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered under the Washington Monument at the National Mall in the afternoon, many with self-made banners that read "protect children not guns," "end gun violence" and "enough is enough" as they listened to speeches from shooting survivors and gun control activists.

"Everyday shootings are everyday problems," Trevon Bosley, whose brother Terrell was shot and killed in 2006, said from the podium. "The cries of the nation's children can be heard across the world, and you choose to turn away."

People gather during a rally decrying rising gun violence while urging politicians to take action in Washington, D.C., the United States, June 11, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

Sweta Kumar, a mother from Falls Church, Virginia, stood among the crowd. She told Xinhua that the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead at an elementary school last month "hit me in a way that just shook me to the core."

"We all have kids," Kumar said, complaining that gun violence is "happening every day" and "everywhere" in the United States, and more disturbingly, "it's happening to our children."

"Schools are supposed to be a safe place for our children to go, and to have to put our kids on a school bus and be afraid that this could happen to us," she continued. "It's just absolutely ridiculous."

People gather during a rally decrying rising gun violence while urging politicians to take action in Washington, D.C., the United States, June 11, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

Alex Spector, who's going to the 12th grade at a high school around the Baltimore area north of Washington, D.C. this year, described the Uvalde school shooting as a "big tragedy" and a "common occurrence in the United States" when speaking to Xinhua.

"Although it happens so often there still isn't any legislation or much that kind of change that happens in our country," he lamented. "The United States is the only country where this is a significant reoccurring problem."

Spector is a member of the so-called "lockdown generation" -- millions of American children and teenagers who regularly practice responding to a shooting at school, taught to "hide under desks, lock classrooms, turn the lights off."

Though Spector hasn't been directly impacted by gun violence, he acknowledged he doesn't feel safe all the time going to school. "There's always a disconnection between an individual and a mass shooting because it's not your life, but sometimes it gets really close to being my life," he said. "It's scary. It's scary to hear about."

People gather during a rally decrying rising gun violence while urging politicians to take action in Washington, D.C., the United States, June 11, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

The Uvalde gunman used an AR-15-style rifle to carry out the rampage. A popular semiautomatic weapon among American gun owners, it was regularly used in many other mass shootings in the United States, prompting calls to ban the gun.

Kate Coho, who came to the demonstration in Washington, D.C. with Kumar, told Xinhua that she believes AR-15s "are military-style weapons that should be used in war and should not be accessible to everyday Americans," arguing that "nobody needs an AR-15. You do not need an assault rifle to go hunting."

Coho called out the National Rifle Association of America, an influential gun rights advocacy group that routinely spends money lobbying politicians at different levels against gun control measures despite most Americans supporting stricter laws on firearms.

"So in America, we have a very strong gun lobby," and "they speak a lot to our politicians, and they prevent safe gun laws from being passed," she elaborated. "Most Americans favor gun control legislation, and our politicians need to start listening to us -- the people -- and not the money that they get from the gun lobby."

People gather during a rally decrying rising gun violence while urging politicians to take action in Washington, D.C., the United States, June 11, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

The rally came days after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a gun package that appeared unlikely to pass the evenly-divided Senate, whose members have engaged in separate talks to reach a compromise. It's unclear whether the negotiations will bear fruit as gun violence continues to wreak havoc on American lives.

According to the latest data from Gun Violence Archive, the United States has suffered 257 mass shootings over the past five months, with more than 19,300 lives lost to gun violence.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
LAGOS, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Three persons were abducted by unidentified gunmen on an expressway in southwest Nigeria's Oyo state on Sunday, local police said on Monday.

Adewale Osifeso, police spokesperson in Oyo, said in a statement one bishop of a church in the neighboring Kara state, together with his wife and his driver, were seized by gunmen on Sunday at a remote area along an expressway in the state.

The gunmen intercepted the victims' vehicle while they were traveling from the Ogun state, also a state in southwest Nigeria, back to the Kwara state via Oyo state, said Osifeso.

He said police have launched a manhunt for the gunmen who are holding the three persons captive.

Nigeria, the most populous African country, has in recent months been troubled by a series of insecurity cases, including kidnapping, banditry and extremist attacks. 
Strictly Come Dancing star Karen Hauer walked down the aisle in a fairytale dress to marry the love of my life Jordan Wyn-Jones during an intimate countryside ceremony.

The couple tied the knot at Chewton Glen in Hampshire on June 7, in the same spot where 32-year-old fitness professional Wye-Jones popped the question in December.

Strictly Come Dancing co-stars Luba Mushtuk, who was a bridesmaid, and Janette Manrara were among the guests celebrating the happy day.

Karen Hauer and Jordan Wye-Jones (Hello/PA)

Professional dancer Hauer, who wore a handmade tulle and floral applique gown by Berta, told Hello! magazine: Its my fairytale dress. Its something I never thought Id go for but I knew right away that it was the dress when I tried it on.

I feel like me in it.

Speaking about her ceremony, Hauer added: It was exactly what we had envisioned  but even better. It was like a breath of fresh air for us.

Everything was easy and happy.

The wedding comes after the Strictly professionals travelled the length of the UK performing their 36-date live tour.

Hauer, who split from her former co-star Kevin Clifton in 2018 after three years of marriage, said: I think people will be surprised by the news.

Having recently been on tour with Strictly, I couldnt talk about the wedding out loud, it felt precious to have our little secret in our back pocket, but its nice to come out and say Hey, were married.'

The groom, who wore a three-piece black suit, spoke of his emotion during the wedding day.

He said: The second I turned around and caught a glimpse of her, I started welling up. It was something Id been looking forward to for a while. She looked incredible.

The couple, who became Instagram official in July 2021, met on social media when Wyn-Jones was based in Australia for work.

Hauer said: Jordan followed me on Instagram and I followed back, we would like and comment on each others posts.

Never did I think that I would find the love of my life on the other side of the world and that we would meet in such a unique way. But I wouldnt change it for the world.

Wyn-Jones added: I knew I was going to marry Karen the first day I met her, but I thought itd be a bit weird to turn up at her front door and ask then.
Twelve University of North Georgia (UNG) students are taking a major step in their academic journey this summer thanks to Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Another will participate in an opportunity through the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience at Emory University.

The students will gain valuable research experience in fields such as biology, chemistry, and physics at universities on both U.S. coasts and in between.

"The fact that so many of our students receive these offers year after year is a testament to the robust preparation and formation they receive at UNG," Dr. John Leyba, dean of UNG's College of Science & Mathematics, said. "These experiences will transform our students and help to inform and reinforce their decisions to become professional scientists who will contribute to the greater good of humanity in their future careers."

Chloe Allen, a senior from Buford, Georgia, pursuing a degree in biology, is conducting genetic research on the evolution of frogs through her REU at the California Academy of Sciences, a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco. Dr. Lauren Oliver and Dr. Abby Neyer, UNG biology faculty members, have served as her mentors ahead of this new opportunity.
Children are seen in Kidemu sub-location in Kilifi County, Kenya, March 23, 2022. The Horn of Africa drought has thrust at least 18.4 million people, including more than 7.1 million acutely malnourished children, into severe food insecurity, UN humanitarians said on Monday. Most drought victims are in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. (Xinhua/Dong Jianghui)

UNITED NATIONS, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The Horn of Africa drought has thrust at least 18.4 million people, including more than 7.1 million acutely malnourished children, into severe food insecurity, UN humanitarians said on Monday.

"From northern Ethiopia, we and our partners are continuing to provide humanitarian aid across Tigray, Afar, and Amhara," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, referring to the trio of northern regions. Most drought victims are in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

Looking to the future, humanitarians said the latest forecasts point to a concrete risk of a fifth failed rainy season later this year.

Relief reached more than 900,000 people since June 1, the office said. Between April, when aid delivery by road convoys resumed, and last week, humanitarians delivered more than 65,000 tons of food aid in Tigray. Hostilities in the northernmost Tigray region extended into its neighbors of Afar and Amhara at times, severely interrupting deliveries.

One-third of people targeted for aid received food aid in the current round of distributions which began in October, OCHA said. Fuel supplies also continue to be limited, significantly impacting getting food to people who need it.

Humanitarians deliver Tigray aid, including water and sanitation, shelter and nutrition, by convoys and air, the office said. In Amhara, food relief reached more than 10 million people since late December and in Afar more than 992,000 people since late February.

"Some areas near the border between Amhara and Tigray remain hard to reach," OCHA said. "We continue to call for unfettered access for aid workers to reach all men, women and children in need across northern Ethiopia."

The office said that the devastating drought affecting the Horn of Africa has caused severe food insecurity and malnutrition to rise precipitously in many parts of Kenya.

There are now 4.1 million people in Kenya facing crisis - or emergency - level food insecurity, up from 3.5 million just a few months ago, OCHA said. There are more severely food insecure people in Kenya than during both the droughts of 2010-2011 and 2016-2017.

Malnutrition increases at an alarming rate, the office said. At least 942,000 children under the age of five and some 134,000 pregnant or lactating women urgently need treatment.

"Our humanitarian colleagues continue to call for an urgent and immediate increase in funding," OCHA said. "Without additional resources we and our partners will be forced to make impossible choices."

"We face a real and imminent threat of large-scale loss of life," the humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, said last week.

Humanitarians are calling for 180.7 million U.S. dollars to respond to the highest priority needs in Kenya.

During his regular briefing, Stephane Dujarric, chief spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, did not mention the Horn of Africa drought in reporting on neighboring Djibouti. Still, he said 13 percent of the population is in severe acute food insecurity, a number projected to increase to 16 percent by December because of a food and water crisis.

The UN team, led by the Resident Coordinator Jose Barahona, allocated 2 million dollars, focusing on supporting the most vulnerable people in rural communities of Djibouti. 

Children are seen in Kidemu sub-location in Kilifi County, Kenya, March 23, 2022. The Horn of Africa drought has thrust at least 18.4 million people, including more than 7.1 million acutely malnourished children, into severe food insecurity, UN humanitarians said on Monday. Most drought victims are in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. (Xinhua/Dong Jianghui)

A boy fetches water in Kidemu sub-location in Kilifi County, Kenya, March 23, 2022. The Horn of Africa drought has thrust at least 18.4 million people, including more than 7.1 million acutely malnourished children, into severe food insecurity, UN humanitarians said on Monday. Most drought victims are in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. (Xinhua/Dong Jianghui)

A boy carries buckets of water in Kidemu sub-location in Kilifi County, Kenya, March 23, 2022. The Horn of Africa drought has thrust at least 18.4 million people, including more than 7.1 million acutely malnourished children, into severe food insecurity, UN humanitarians said on Monday. Most drought victims are in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. (Xinhua/Dong Jianghui)
Packages are not leaving Wacos new Amazon fulfillment center, but employees staffing offices in the $200 million facility may soon report for work.

Waco is among several cities nationally, including Austin and San Antonio, where Amazon has pushed back scheduled openings. After online sales skyrocketed during COVID-19 lockdowns, the Seattle-based e-commerce has found it overbuilt capacity in its fulfillment and transportation network, a company official said during a recent earnings report to investors. It lost $3.8 billion during the first quarter, its first such financial stumble in seven years.

Amazon in October 2020 held a press conference in the Waco Convention Center to announce it would build on Exchange Parkway a facility where robots and people would work side-by-side. The consensus among company officials was that operations would begin in 2021.

The building remains inactive, though promising signs are emerging. Barriers to trucks entering and leaving the Bagby Avenue entrance have come down. Amazon has secured a temporary certificate of occupancy for its office space but not for areas where employees will process deliveries, said Bobby Horner, spokesperson for Wacos inspection services department.

Amazon announced it would hire at least 1,000 people for its Waco center, paying them no less than $15 an hour, plus benefits. Workforce Solutions for the Heart of Texas told the Tribune-Herald last year that Amazon representatives had attended job fairs and other events aimed at job creation and recruitment. Amazons hiring status remains uncertain, though Kris Collins, executive vice president at the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, said Amazon had taken steps to fill management positions.

Horner said he understands Amazon will start at the top of its 700,000-square-foot building and work its way down, pursuing temporary certificates of occupancy for each floor separately. Eventually, Amazon will receive a certificate of occupancy for the entire building, Horner said.

He said it is his understanding the center is finished, except for energy outlets on each floor to power conveying equipment.

Amazon said it remains committed to operations in Waco.

We look forward to launching our new facility in Waco, providing many great jobs in the area, with a starting wage of at least $15 an hour and comprehensive benefits from day one, spokesperson Daniel Martin said via email. Its common for us to adjust launch timetables based on capacity needs across the network. We currently anticipate launching the facility later this year and will provide an update on our hiring and launch timing.

Collins, the Greater Waco Chambers industry recruiter, referred comment to Amazon, but did speculate on what is causing the delay.

As you can imagine, the company utilizes some very sophisticated equipment in its operations and like many other businesses, access to specialized equipment and components has become more challenging in the last 24 months, she said by email.

Waco is not the only community waiting for Amazon to deliver.

A fulfillment center scheduled to open this year in Davenport, Iowa, has seen its opening pushed back to 2024, according to the Quad-City Times newspaper.

The newspaper quoted Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky to the effect facility overbuilding contributed to the disappointing performance.

In November 2020, just a month after its Waco announcement, Amazon told officials in Canton, Mississippi, it would build a 700,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Madison County, The Clarion-Ledger newspaper there describing it as a holding, sorting and shipping operation.

Like Wacos, it was scheduled to open by last year. The Clarion-Ledger reported in February the opening had been tentatively rescheduled for August.

Multiple media outlets in Louisiana reported last week that Amazons planned six-story robotic fulfillment center in Shreveport will not open in September 2022 as planned but in September 2023. It is supposed to create 2,100 permanent jobs with a minimum starting wage of $15 an hour.

Globest.com reported last week that Amazon had announced delays in opening fulfillment centers in San Antonio, Round Rock and Blount County, Tennessee, while canceling plans to build a distribution center on a 133-acre site near Churchill, Pennsylvania.

The sites report says Amazon officials are blaming supply chain issues and sluggish growth in e-commerce for the delays and cancellations.

Amazon announced that local employees would pick, pack and ship small items to customers such as books, electronics and toys.

Waco and McLennan County have approved $9.5 million in tax breaks to Amazon over 20 years, if the company meets certain criteria.

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Former President Donald J. Trump and the senior sitting U.S. senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, could be criminally indicted before the end of June for their efforts for illegal efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election.

If youre buying into the downplaying criticisms by Republicans over the prime-time January 6 House hearing last Thursday. Keep in mind that it drew an audience of 20 million, an audience the size of a Superbowl.

While the first hearing may not have changed any Republican voters, the series of crimes already outlined by the House Special Select Committee is making a big impression on independent voters. Political pollsters are conducting focus groups in the aftermath of the first hearing report that Independents are buying the 7-step plan by the former President to overturn the election illegally.

Now the unfolding of the rest of the prime-time presentation of what the Select House Committee has discovered is going to be SUPERCHARGED, according to Tara Dublin of the HillReporter.com by the indictment of Donald J. Trump and Senator Lyndsey Graham (R-SC) for their part in the scheme and intense efforts to fabricate the overturning of Georgias 2020 presidential results.

According to Dublin, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced that she expects to decide on whether her office will charge Trump by June 30 for allegedly attempting to overthrow the results in Georgia.,

I certainly think that in the first half of the year, that decision will be made, Willis said back in January when the special grand jury investigation was announced.

Dublin wrote

Donald Trump and others could face their first and potentially severe legal consequences for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election as soon as the end of this month, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also facing legal consequences for his part in the scheme.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced that she expects to decide whether her office will charge Trump by June 30 for allegedly attempting to overthrow the results in Georgia. I certainly think that in the first half of the year, that decision will be made, Willis said back in January when the special grand jury investigation was announced.

DA Willis has ramped up her investigation in recent months, interviewing more than four dozen people in the state and reportedly subpoenaing a number of state officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who recently won the GOP nomination for re-election despite Trumps efforts to replace him for failing to help him find 11,780 votes. Trump has continued to criticize the investigation, declaring it a witch hunt and slamming Willis on social media platform Truth Social for going after me instead of the people that Rigged and Stole the 2020 election.

The timing of the House Select Committee presentation of Trumps 7-step criminal plans as outlined by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power for the first time in U.S. history has turned out to be perfect for DA Willis.

The charging of Trump, Graham, and others is likely to lead to federal and state indictments. The Trump campaign, White House staff, and Trump attorneys, including Rudy Giuliani, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and others, may face criminal charges as well.

Top Prosecutor says Trump will be INDICTED in Georgia
PRESS RELEASE



EAA AVIATION CENTER, OSHKOSH, Wisconsin  (June 13, 2022)  The Experimental Aircraft Association is bringing back the B-25 Berlin Express flight tour starting on June 17 in Champaign, Illinois.

The B-25 tour will travel throughout the United States stopping at each destination and providing flight experiences. The historically maintained aircraft allows for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fly with highly trained pilots.

Since we first flew this restored B-25 in 2019, the overwhelmingly positive response weve received to the airplane on tour has been extremely gratifying, said Sean Elliott, EAAs vice president of advocacy and safety. We are eager to have many more people experience this piece of flying history, whether that is at Oshkosh or one of the tour stops where we salute the sacrifices made by those who preserved our freedom.

This years B-25 tour schedule includes:

June 17-19 : Champaign, Illinois

: Champaign, Illinois June 24-26 : Punta Gorda, Florida

: Punta Gorda, Florida July 1-4 : Tulsa, Oklahoma

: Tulsa, Oklahoma July 7-10 : Wichita, Kansas

: Wichita, Kansas July 15-17 : St. Joseph, Missouri

: St. Joseph, Missouri July 25-31 : Oshkosh, Wisconsin

: Oshkosh, Wisconsin August 12-14 : Sugar Grove, Illinois

: Sugar Grove, Illinois August 20-21 : Springfield, Illinois

: Springfield, Illinois August 26-28 : Greenwood, Indiana

: Greenwood, Indiana September 2-5 : Cincinnati, Ohio

: Cincinnati, Ohio September 23-24: Kingsford, Michigan

The B-25 was first used fighting in World War II after the Pearl Harbor bombing in December 1941. The first B-25s became combat-ready in early 1942. The B-25 is highly remembered from when 16 bombers were loaded onto the USS Hornet Aircraft carrier with a mission to bomb Tokyo. This aircraft was also used in every branch of the US military.

More information about the B-25 tour, its history, and purchasing flight experiences can be found at FlytheB25.org.

About EAA

The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) is based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and embodies The Spirit of Aviation through the worlds most engaged community of aviation enthusiasts. EAAs 250,000 members and 900 local chapters enjoy the fun and camaraderie of sharing their passion for flying, building and restoring recreational aircraft. For more information on EAA and its programs, call 800-JOIN-EAA (800-564-6322) or go to www.eaa.org. For continual news updates, connect with www.twitter.com/EAA.
WATERLOO  Authorities have recovered a body in their search for a man who disappeared in the Cedar River over the weekend.

And they have tentatively identified the victim after going for days without a name because no one reported him missing.

The name hasnt been released to the public, and authorities said his identity will be confirmed during an autopsy.

No foul play is suspected.

The mystery began Friday around 6:30 p.m. as the My Waterloo Days parade was making its way through downtown. Witnesses reported seeing a man enter the water near the Sixth Street Bridge, and he began to float downstream and disappeared.

Crews with Waterloo Fire Rescue launched an inflatable rapid deployment craft, paying close attention to a low-head dam just before the nearby railroad bridge. Firefighters used poles and sonar to probe the length of dam, fearing the turbulence was holding him in place.

As firefighters continued their search on Saturday, police began working to determine who they were looking for. If anyone had been with the missing man when he went in the river, they hadnt bothered to stick around.

The missing man appeared to be Hispanic, according to initial reports. So over the weekend, investigators contacted Hispanic community leaders and church officials in hopes of coming up with a name.

The one clue they had was a blue polo-style shirt with an orange moose logo the man had left behind, and officers posted a photo of the shirt on Facebook.

Waterloo Fire Rescue returned to the river on Monday, launching a flat-bottom boat from the Hawthorne Avenue ramp that scoured the area downstream. Around 2:15 p.m., boat crews spotted a body some 150 yards past Waterloos wastewater treatment plant.

The body had snagged on something underwater, and firefighters brought the body ashore.

Earlier on Monday, a landlord contacted police after recognizing the moose shirt as possibly belonging to a former tenant. Investigators matched documented tattoos with those on the recovered body.

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We hope we dont have to go down this path, but we think that its better for us to be prepared and to make our customers aware of the situation.
SYDNEY, June 13 (Xinhua) -- A new report from a think tank, the Australia Institute, has revealed that the vast majority, 95.6 percent, of Australia's liquefied natural gas (LNG) export industry is foreign-owned, a likely driver of volatile domestic gas prices.

The study, released to the public on Monday, included a survey that showed the average Australian vastly underestimated how little of the nation's 62.5 billion Australian dollars (about 44 billion U.S. dollars) LNG industry is locally owned.

Australia's largest gas exporter, BHP, which is locally referred to as the "big Australia", is in fact just six percent Australian-owned.

"As gas companies lobby for ever-more expansion for export profit, Australians are entitled to ask how this industry is serving the national interest," said David Richardson, report author and senior research fellow at the Australia Institute.

"Households are paying a fortune to compete with the gas export industry, run by majority foreign-owned companies who pay little or no tax."

Since March, gas prices in Australia have been highly volatile. According to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), wholesale gas prices have surged from around 11 Australian dollars (about 7 U.S. dollars) per Gigajoule (GJ) in March to nearly 40 Australian dollars (about 28 U.S. dollars) per GJ in June.

The surge has been largely attributed to domestic shortages driven by unexpected cold weather and supply factors from the conflict in Ukraine, and forced the AEMO to cap prices in parts of the nation.

It has also put pressure on policymakers to divert LNG earmarked for export to the domestic market.

Richardson said the Australian government should consider a tax on profits from exported gas "to ensure Australians get a fair share of our natural resources and this 62.5 billion Australian dollars industry."

He added that the findings highlight the need to examine foreign ownership in Australia more broadly.

The research also reveals that the top 20 companies listed on the Australian stock exchange are, on average, 80 percent foreign-owned, with U.S. ownership alone almost triple Australian ownership.

The report found that a number of large Australian-founded companies are majority foreign-owned including the national airline Qantas, which is 62 percent foreign-owned, telecom giant Telstra, which is 51 percent foreign-owned, and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which is now 81 percent foreign-owned. 
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man has been arrested for allegedly firing a handgun in a neighborhood over the weekend.

Police arrested Devonner Coleman, 54, on charges of felon in possession of a firearm, carrying weapons and reckless use of a firearm. He was also arrested for possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and violation of the drug tax stamp act.

He was released pending trial.

According to court records, residents called 911 around 2:50 a.m. after hearing gunshots.

Officers found four .45-caliber spent shell casings near the porch of Colemans home at 1021 W. Fifth St. Police searched his home and found a .45-caliber SDS Imports Model 1911 pistol in a cooler in the basement.

Police also found a vacuum-sealed bag with more than 42 grams of marijuana and digital scales.

Authorities allege Coleman is prohibited from handling firearms because of prior domestic assault and operating while intoxicated convictions.

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After the arrest of more than two dozen members of a white supremacist group near a northern Idaho pride event, including one identified as its founder, LGBTQ advocates said Sunday that polarization and a fraught political climate are putting their community increasingly at risk.

The 31 Patriot Front members were arrested with riot gear after a tipster reported seeing people loading up into a U-Haul like a little army at a hotel parking lot in Coeur dAlene, Idaho, police said.

Among those booked into jail on misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot was Thomas Ryan Rousseau of Grapevine, Texas, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the 23-year-old who founded the group after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. No attorney was immediately listed for him and phone numbers associated with him went unanswered Sunday.

Also among the arrestees was Mitchell F. Wagner, 24, of Florissant, Missouri, who was previously charged with defacing a mural of famous Black Americans on a college campus in St. Louis last year.

Michael Kielty, Wagners attorney, said Sunday that he had not been provided information about the charges. He said Patriot Front did not have a reputation for violence and that the case could be a First Amendment issue. Even if you dont like the speech, they have the right to make it, he said.

Patriot Front is a white supremacist neo-Nazi group whose members perceive Black Americans, Jews and LGBTQ people as enemies, said Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism.

Their playbook, Lewis said, involves identifying local grievances to exploit, organizing on platforms like the messaging app Telegram and ultimately showing up to events marching in neat columns, in blue- or white-collared-shirt uniforms, in a display of strength.

Though Pride celebrations have long been picketed by counterprotesters citing religious objections, they haven't historically been a major focus for armed extremist groups. Still, it isn't surprising, given how anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has increasingly become a potent rallying cry in the far-right online ecosystem, Lewis said.

That set of grievances fits into their broader narratives and shows their ability to mobilize the same folks against the enemy over and over and over again, he said.

The arrests come amid a surge of charged rhetoric around LGBTQ issues and a wave of state legislation aimed at transgender youth, said John McCrostie, the first openly gay man elected to the Idaho Legislature. In Boise this week, dozens of Pride flags were stolen from city streets.

Whenever we are confronted with attacks of hate, we must respond with the message from the community that we embrace all people with all of our differences, McCrostie said in a text message.

Sunday also marked six years since the mass shooting that killed 49 people at the Orlando LGBTQ club Pulse, said Troy Williams with Equality Utah in Salt Lake City.

Our nation is growing increasingly polarized, and the result has been tragic and deadly, he said.

Authorities in the San Francisco Bay Area are investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men allegedly shouted homophobic and anti-LGBTQ slurs during a weekend Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library on Saturday. No arrests have been made, no one was physically harmed, and authorities are investigating the incident as possible harassment of children.

In Coeur dAlene on Saturday, police found riot gear, one smoke grenade, shin guards and shields inside the van after pulling it over near a park where the North Idaho Pride Alliance was holding a Pride in the Park event, Coeur dAlene Police Chief Lee White said.

The group came to riot around the small northern Idaho city wearing Patriot Front patches and logos on their hats and some T-shirts reading Reclaim America according to police and videos of the arrests posted on social media.

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas.

Though there is a history of far-right extremism dating back decades in northern Idaho, White said only one of those arrested Saturday was from the state.

The six-hour Pride event generally went on as scheduled, including booths, food, live music, a drag show and a march of more than 50 people, the Idaho Statesman reported.

We have been through so much, so much, Jessica Mahuron of the North Idaho Pride Alliance, which organized the event, told KREM-TV. Harassment, and attempts to intimidate on the psychological level, and the truth is if you allow yourself to be intimidated you let them win and what we have shown today is that you will not win.

The group is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

__

Whitehurst and Metz reported from Salt Lake City. Associated Press writer Martha Bellisle contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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1. Chinese Red Line is Clear

China finally drawing the red line is not new to me and many on this side of the world. It has to be stated by China, because the USA has made the decision to treat China the same way it treated Russia

Like something you wipe your feet upon, when you enter the home!

SINGAPORE: Beijing will not hesitate to start a war if Taiwan declares independence, Chinas defence minister warned his US counterpart Friday in the pairs first face-to-face talks, officials said. If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost, Wu Qian quoted defence minister Wei Fenghe as saying during a meeting with Lloyd Austin. The Chinese minister also vowed that Beijing would smash to smithereens any Taiwan independence plot and resolutely uphold the unification of the motherland, according to the Chinese defence ministry. Source: taiwan: China will not hesitate to start war over Taiwan, Beijing tells US  Times of India

and

2. A New Eastern 8 to replace the Old Western G7 (E8 to G7)

The world is shifting from West to East. Yet if you read this website regularly, you know that already. Over ten years ago, the shift started in earnest and is accelerating as you read this. The Empire of Lies and Chaos is gasping from no oxygen and the East is reeling its rope in tighter around the western neck

The group of eight countries not participating in the sanctions wars  China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, Turkey  in terms of GDP at PPP is 24.4% ahead of the old group, Volodin wrote. In his opinion, the economies of the G7 members  the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada  continue to crack under the weight of sanctions imposed against Russia. Source: US policies led to new G8  Moscow  RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

It does not matter what you think is happening? It does not matter who you think is behind it? It does not matter at all that it is a plot, a distraction, good vs evil, a population control, a power grab, a dying empire, the devil, Biden the idiot, Trump the savior, Obama the anti-Christ, it does not matter about about anything you try to think is happening. You can make up stuff all day

The only thing for sure that is clear?

One Empire is falling and another Empire is rising!

And everything in between the fall and rise is anybodys guess as to what shape we will be in, when it all ends!

WtR
 You can endlessly look at three things: fire, water and endless rows of Western weapons passing into the hands of our guys.

We owe our Western partners for the supply of weapons to our guys in the Izyum direction. Intermediaries from the Armed Forces of Ukraine successfully transferred the NLAW anti-tank systems, the M141 grenade launcher and the Igla MANPADS to the servicemen of the 35th Army of the Victory group. We bow to them!  the guys from the front line asked us to send a message to all suppliers of the Ukrainian army.

We are happy to fulfill their request.

WtR
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to form
HANOI, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's southern region has reported more than 39,300 dengue fever infections with 36 deaths from the disease so far this year, Vietnam News Agency reported on Monday.

Among the infections, nearly 1,200 were severe cases, according to Doctor Luong Chan Quang from Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute.

The number of infections doubled that of the same period last year, he said at a meeting on dengue prevention and control held on Monday.

Half of the infections and 45 percent of the total deaths have been recorded in the past four weeks.

Ho Chi Minh City was the hotspot with around 12,000 cases and eight deaths, followed by the provinces of Binh Duong, An Giang and Dong Nai which have all witnessed an increasing number of infections, according to the news report.

The wide spread of the disease is caused by the shortage of chemical insecticide, and a lack of funding and personnel for dengue prevention and control, Quang said.

Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Lien Huong said measures must focus on communication, sanitation, infection monitoring, mosquito-wiping and the training for health workers in the private economic sector. 
Pennsylvania small business owners agree that state legislators should support Keystone Saves, a privately managed, easy, and low-cost retirement savings option for themselves and their employees, according to a survey commissioned by AARP.

Well over two-thirds of Pennsylvania small business owners think more should be done to encourage state residents to save for retirement. They say they would likely offer Keystone Saves to their employees (among those small business owners who do not currently offer their employees a retirement savings plan).

AARP is supporting states in their efforts to create and implement a state retirement savings option that would enable small business owners and their employees better prepare for retirement. These publicprivate managed state programs would be easy for employers to set up with low costs and low risks to the employer and the state.

Methodology

This survey of 500 small business owners in Pennsylvania with 5 to 100 employees was commissioned by AARP to gauge the support of small business owners in the state for a publicprivate retirement savings program. The survey was fielded AprilMay 2022.

For more information, please contact Jennifer Sauer at jsauer@aarp.org. For media inquiries, please contact External Relations at media@aarp.org.

Suggested citation:

Sauer, Jennifer. Survey of Small Business Owners in Pennsylvania: Opinions on Keystone Saves Retirement Savings Option. Washington, DC: AARP Research, June 2022. https://doi.org/10.26419/res.00552.001
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Malibu, CA, June 13, 2022 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Join Ellis Martin for a conversation with Dr. Andrew Ramcharan, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development for Rockridge Resources Ltd, trading on the TSX Venture Exchange as ROCK and in the US on the OTC as RRRLF. In this segment we discuss the commencement of the fully funded drill program at the high-grade Knife Lake Copper Project in Saskatchewan. Dr. Ramcharan illustrates why he joined the company this year as well as stating the case for looking at junior copper companies such as Rockridge as a potential investment opportunity.Rockridge Resources Ltd. ( CVE:ROCK ) ( OTCMKTS:RRRLF ) ( FRA:RR0 ) is pleased to announce that its fully funded Summer 2022 diamond drill program is set to commence in mid-July at the Knife Lake Copper VMS Project located in Saskatchewan, Canada (the "Knife Lake Project" or "Property"). Using the results and interpretation from the 2021 geophysical programs, as well as the 2021 drill and field programs, the upcoming program will focus on Geophysical VTEM targets at the Gilbert Lake zones. Furthermore, the Company is evaluating other targets across the property as well as infill and expansion drill targets at the deposit. The Knife Lake Project, consisting of 82 claims totaling 56,865 hectares (140,516 acres), is an advanced-stage copper, silver, zinc and cobalt exploration property in Saskatchewan host to the Knife Lake Deposit.To listen to the interview, please visit:About Rockridge Resources Ltd

Rockridge Resources (CVE:ROCK) is a publicly traded mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral resource properties in Canada and other mining-friendly jurisdictions. The Company's Raney Gold Project is a high-grade gold exploration project located in the same greenstone belt that hosts the world-class Timmins and Kirkland Lake lode gold mining camps. The Company's Knife Lake Project is in Saskatchewan, which is ranked as the #3 mining jurisdiction in the world by the Fraser Institute. The project hosts the Knife Lake deposit, which is a VMS, near-surface copper-cobalt-gold-silver-zinc deposit open along strike and at depth. Rockridge's goal is to maximize shareholder value through new mineral discoveries, committed long-term partnerships, and the advancement of exploration projects in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions.
TOKYO, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The nationwide approval rating for the Cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida dropped to 56.9 percent from a 61.5 percent high a month earlier, a local media poll showed Monday.

The disapproval rating for Kishida's Cabinet, meanwhile, rose 5.1 percentage points to 26.9 percent, according to the poll conducted by Kyodo News.

In addition, an overwhelming 64.1 percent of those surveyed considered Kishida's response to rising prices to be "inadequate".

This compares to just 28.1 percent who considered the prime minister's response to the price hikes to be "satisfactory".

As for a remark made by Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda last week in which he controversially said that Japanese consumers have become more tolerant of price hikes, 77.3 percent of those polled felt the remarks were "inappropriate".

Kyodo's poll also revealed that 58.5 percent of the population believe Kuroda is "unfit" to be the governor of Japan's central bank.

Kyodo's three-day nationwide telephone poll conducted from Saturday, also revealed that 77.3 percent said that soaring prices for food and daily necessities have affected their lives.

For 71.1 percent of those surveyed, this issue would be borne in mind when voting in next month's upper house election. 
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Malibu, CA, June 13, 2022 AEST (ABN Newswire) - In this segment of The Ellis Martin Report we speak with Claudia Tornquist, the President and CEO of Kodiak Copper Corp ( CVE:KDK ) ( OTCMKTS:KDKCF ). The company is in the midst of its 2022 Exploration Program at the MPD Copper-Gold Porphyry Project in Southern British ColumbiaKodiak Copper Corp. provides an update on its fully funded 2022 exploration program at its 100% owned MPD copper-gold porphyry project ("MPD") in Southern British Columbia.Plans for 2022 include up to 25,000 metres of drilling as well as 3D IP surveying and soil geochemical sampling. Kodiak recommenced drilling at MPD in March and added a second drill rig shortly thereafter (see news release dated April 28, 2022).New drilling in 2022 at the Gate Zone has intersected prospective, sulphide-bearing, porphyritic host rock between Gate and the historic Prime Zone to the north, and to 875 metres depth at the south end of the Gate Zone. Gate remains open in multiple directions and further drilling in 2022 will focus on extending it.Drilling is on schedule and the Company has completed 11 holes totalling 7,065 metres as of June 8. Both drill rigs are currently focused on extending the Gate Zone. Drills will be redeployed or additional drills added to other priority areas as the 2022 program progresses. Core samples are being shipped to ALS Canada Ltd. in North Vancouver, BC for preparation and final analysis. Assay results from the 2022 drilling will start being reported in late June. 2022 drilling will also test numerous other priority target areas, including a new one kilometre long "look-alike" 3D Induced Polarization (IP) response near Gate, and high- priority targets in the Prime, Man, Dillard and Axe areas which exhibit similar geophysical and geochemical signatures as the Gate Zone as well as shallow mineralization from historic drilling.A new 3D IP geophysical survey is underway that will cover 7.5 square kilometres, extending southward from the Gate Zone to the Man and Dillard target areas. Similarly, soil geochemical surveys will follow-up new kilometre-scale copper-gold anomalies discovered in 2021. 3D IP and soil geochemistry will be important, complementary tools for drill targeting elsewhere at MPD.Claudia Tornquist, President and CEO of Kodiak said, "We are excited to already see potential to further expand the high-grade Gate Zone in just the first few months of the 2022 drill campaign. New and deeper 3D IP geophysical data will not only allow us to refine our drilling at Gate, but will also accelerate our targeting at the Man, Dillard and Axe areas which are slated for drilling this season and have the potential for new high-grade discoveries. We also anticipate that our systematic exploration will recognize completely new target areas at MPD. Kodiak is fully funded for the company's 2022 exploration program and our shareholders can expect a steady flow of results throughout the remainder of the year."To listen to the Interview, please visit:About Kodiak Copper Corp.Kodiak Copper Corp. (CVE:KDK) (OTCMKTS:KDKCF) is focused on its portfolio of 100% owned copper porphyry projects in Canada and the USA.The Company's most advanced asset is the MPD copper-gold porphyry project in the prolific Quesnel Trough in southern British Columbia, Canada, where in 2020 the Company made a high-grade discovery at the Gate Zone, which is part of a zoned, copper-gold enriched envelope of significant size.Kodiak also holds the Mohave copper-molybdenum-silver porphyry project in Arizona, USA, near the world-class Bagdad mine. Both of Kodiak's porphyry projects have been historically drilled and present known mineral discoveries with the potential to hold large-scale deposits.The Company's Kahuna diamond project in Nunavut, Canada, hosts a high-grade, near surface inferred diamond resource and numerous kimberlite pipe targets. Kodiak is considering strategic options for the Kahuna project.
Theres nothing like a roaring pandemic to accelerate growth  that is, for companies in critical fields like the medical industry or digital communications, where global demand ramped up after COVID-19 broke out.

And that growth has trickled down to a number of New Mexico technology firms, such as Albuquerque-based Indica Labs Inc., which encompasses the best of both worlds, offering software products and services for the medical community to enable digital-based pathology, clinical research and drug development.

In fact, at the height of the COVID outbreak in spring 2020, Indica partnered with a Virginia-based information technology firm to create a global, online repository for microscopic images of coronavirus-infected tissue  financed and hosted by the National Institutes of Health  that has allowed thousands of researchers in hundreds of countries to analyze autopsy tissue and biopsies from virus victims.

The company, which launched in 2011, has created a proprietary platform, dubbed HALO, for pathology software and services that are embedded with specialized algorithms and artificial intelligence to conduct computational molecular analysis of images. Since launching HALO in 2013, Indica has focused largely on the pharmaceutical industry, generating a formidable base of customers involved in drug development.

And more recently, its created new software products for clinical research, such as the digital coronavirus repository, and for diagnostics to improve lab pathology. In May, for example, it launched a new deep learning-based screening tool, called HALO Prostate AI, thats designed to assist pathologists in identifying and grading prostate cancer in core needle biopsies.

The company experienced rapid growth well before the pandemic started, reflecting growing adoption of digital pathology in the medical industry. More than 800 customers now use its software and services globally, including the worlds top 20 pharmaceutical firms, said Indica founder and CEO Steven Hashagen.

It moved in 2019 from a 3,000-square-foot office in Corrales to a 14,000-square-foot facility in northwest Albuquerque, boosted by $600,000 in state Local Economic Development Act funding. It also maintains field teams in five other countries, including the UK, Japan, China, Switzerland and Cyprus.

But while Indicas expansion reflects consistent, organic growth, the pandemic also accelerated demand for its products and services as more medical professionals seek digital options to manage their work.

We never laid anybody off in the pandemic, Hashagen told the Journal. We had increasing demand from people working outside of their labs. Many of them travel to multiple sites and facilities in different places, but our software enables them to stop traveling and work remotely.

Indica joined the Flying 40 for the first time this year, immediately rising to the top of the above-$10 million list after growing its revenue by 323% over the past five years, from $5.4 million in 2017 to $23 million last year. Its workforce expanded from 21 to 83 employees in the same period.

High flyers above $10M

Like Indica, the top 10 revenue-growing companies in the above-$10 million category all report triple-digit expansion since 2017.

Taken together, those companies grew their collective revenue by 160%, from $213 million in 2017 to $553 million last year. Their combined workforce more than doubled in the same period, from 1,587 employees to 3,240.

Most companies faced significant challenges in the pandemic, from inability to meet directly with customers to supply-chain shortages. Supply-chain problems continue, and many are now struggling to recruit needed talent in todays fickle labor market.

But most have successfully overcome the challenges to resume rapid growth. And some  especially information technology firms  saw demand increase throughout the pandemic as more firms moved to cloud-based operations and remote workforces.

IT firm Speridian Technologies, for example, reported a 150% leap in revenue last year, from $66.6 million in 2020 to $168.2 million in 2021.

That immensely accelerated its five-year growth rate, earning it second place on this years above-$10 million list  up from ninth place last year  based on a 239% expansion since 2017, when it reported $49.6 million in revenue.

IT consulting and engineering firm Advanced Network Management also reported major growth last year, with revenue climbing 26% from $158.8 million in 2020 to $200 million, making ANM the Flying 40s second-highest revenue earning company for three years in a row.

The company has significantly expanded its cybersecurity services alongside the other network management and IT support it offers to accommodate customers growing demand for cloud-based operations, said ANM CEO Raminder Mann.

Our clients are all getting cloud-dependent, because everyone wants to work from home, and we need to secure it all, Mann told the Journal. Weve made a lot of investment in cloud capabilities, which has contributed to our growth.

On the other hand, supply-chain issues are impeding even faster expansion. ANM actually had $243 million in customer bookings last year, but it could only invoice $200 million in actual shipments because of delivery delays.

The supply chain is a real drag, Mann said. We just booked an order for the Denver International Airport, but we wont ship until August, which reflects the problems we face.

Other firms on the above-$10 million list report robust, ongoing growth.

Metis Technologies Inc., for example  a woman-owned engineering firm that provides space mission support for NASA and other government entities  has earned spots on the above-$10 million list for four years in a row, after breaking out of the below-$10 million rankings in 2018.

The company, which launched in 2011, has actually dropped in the rankings over the years, falling from third place in 2019 to ninth place this year.

But it continues to report solid annual expansion, reaching $16 million in revenue and 120 employees last year. Thats up from $7.5 million and 60 employees in 2017.

In fact, the Small Business Administration named Metis founder and CEO Joy Colucci as its small Business Person of the Year for 2022.

We now have 11 years under our belt and were getting some real traction, Colucci told the Journal.  A lot of being successful is learning how to take the punches and stick it out even as you get bogged down in day-to-day issues and challenges. But there are many wins along the way, and weve done nothing but grow every year.

Below $10M awardees

Most companies on the below-$10 million list showed significant growth as well over the past five years, albeit at much lower revenue levels than the Flying 40s above-$10 million and top-revenue honorees.

Taken together, those companies reported $40 million in combined revenue, up from $18.4 million in 2017. Their collective workforce expanded from 158 employees to 245 in the same period.

Active Optical Systems LLC headed the pack, after growing its revenue by 688%, from just $433,000 in 2017 to $3.4 million last year. Its workforce also expanded from 3 employees to 18.

The company makes deformable, or foldable, mirrors and related hardware to control laser beams. It launched in 2005 as a spin-off firm from MZA Associates, another long-time Flying 40 company that does modeling and analysis on laser systems and imaging for defense agencies.

MZA, however, focuses on IT and software to enable beam control for laser weapons to acquire, track and engage targets from long distances at the speed of light.

AOS broke away from MZA to focus on the needed hardware for control systems, particularly the mirrors used to warp and shape light into precision beams that can effectively slice through atmospheric conditions to accurately hit intended targets, said company co-owner and CEO Justin Mansell.

After decades of development, the military is now working to deploy laser weapons in the field, creating major opportunities for both AOS and MZA.

Directed energy technology is really coming of age, and our surge in growth reflects that, Mansell told the Journal.

The company spent its early years fully developing and perfecting the hardware, which includes a suite of tools for laser operators to bend, twist and point the deformable mirrors, plus sensors to measure the atmosphere, detect targets and track the laser beam, said AOS co-owner and Chief Operating Officer Jesse Jameson.

Thats put the company in the right place at the right time, as directed energy systems take off.

Like MZA  which ranked fifth this year on the Flying 40s above-$10 million list  AOS is climbing the ranks, moving from 13th in the below-$10 million list in 2020 to fourth place last year, and first place this year.

And it anticipates another 26% hike in revenue this year as well, to $4.3 million.

Meanwhile, other below-$10 million companies continue to grow at a steady clip. Data analytics firm RS21, for example, took second place again this year after growing its revenue 356% since 2017, from $1.87 million to $8.5 million. The company won second place last year too after reaching $6.1 million in 2020.
HELSINKI  NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday that Turkey has legitimate concerns over terrorism and other issues that need to be taken seriously.

Turkey has accused Finland and Sweden of supporting Kurdish militants and says it will not back the two Nordic nations joining NATO until they change their policies.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, Stoltenberg stressed that no other NATO ally has suffered more terrorist attacks than Turkey and pointed to its strategic geographic location with neighbors like Iraq and Syria.

These are legitimate concerns. This is about terrorism, its about weapons exports, Stoltenberg said. We have to address the security concerns of all allies, including Turkish concerns about the terrorist group PKK.

He spoke at Finlands presidential summer residence Kultaranta in western Finland.

After decades of military non-alignment, Russias war in Ukraine pushed Finland and Sweden to apply to join NATO in May. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, accuses the Nordic nations of supporting Kurdish militants deemed by Turkey to be terrorists and has vetoed their entry into the 30-member alliance.

When a vital key ally as Turkey raises concerns on terrorism then of course we have to sit down and take them seriously. And thats exactly what we do, Stoltenberg said.

The demands from Ankara to Helsinki and Stockholm also include lifting restrictions on arms exports to Turkey and extraditing members of certain Kurdish organizations that are opposed to Erdogans government.

In the past weeks, NATOs chief has been trying to resolve the dispute but he did not disclose Sunday whether any progress has been made.

He was to attend an annual discussion panel in Kultaranta later Sunday together with Finnish and Nordic politicians, foreign and security policy experts and military representatives.

Stoltenberg will visit Sweden on Monday for talks with the Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Jacqueline Powell and her fourth grade classmates toiled over pencil and paper to write a letter in Spanish about what they did in class this year.

Powell explained the assignment in perfect Spanish before struggling to translate the words to end her sentence. The 10-year-old charter school student raised her forearms to her temples in a show of mental effort, making her large round glasses seesaw up and down.

That struggle, fought every week at the New Mexico International School in Albuquerque, has put her speaking ability far ahead of some of her high school peers. It has allowed her to speak in Spanish with her grandmother, who is from Chihuahua, Mexico, and she has fostered a secret language between her and her mom, whose husband and stepchildren cant speak Spanish.

While dual-language programs are offered in thousands of schools across the U.S., New Mexico is the only state where the right to learn in Spanish is laid out in the constitution.

Dual-language programs like the one at the New Mexico International School are championed by Hispanic parents who want their children to cultivate cultural roots. They are also seen by education experts as the best way for English learners to excel in K-12 schools.

The question for lawmakers is why New Mexicos dual language programs arent being used by the students who most need them.

Legislative analysts are expected in the coming weeks to release a report that will highlight challenges facing dual language and other multicultural programs. It will include a look at decades-old trends such as a lack of oversight by education officials, declining participation, and a reduction in the number of multicultural programs, said Legislative Finance Committee spokesman Jon Courtney.

The report also will acknowledge the lack of information about how well language programs are doing after two years without comprehensive academic testing due to the pandemic.

The number of dual-language immersion programs has increased from 126 before the pandemic to 132 last year.

State officials are supposed to assess the programs every three years. But the New Mexico Public Education Department has done only one in-person visit and evaluated only one school over the past three years, said department spokeswoman Judy Robinson.

The department has started a series of forums for parents around the Hispanic Education Act, a state law that informs multicultural programs.

While there isnt a consensus among educators as to how to best teach young children languages, a New Mexico court found in 2018 that well-run dual-language programs are the gold standard for English learners.

In New Mexico, English learners make up a larger share of dual-language program participants. They comprise 63% of participants in the current school year, up from 53% last year.

At the New Mexico International School, around half of students are Hispanic, like Jacqueline, and reflective of the citys population.

Many of their parents are trying to reclaim the language, school principal Todd Knouse said.

English-speaking parents say they have an easier time learning about the benefits of duallanguage programs and jumping through the hoops to get into charter schools. The schools are free but dont provide busing.

Its almost like a privilege type of experience to get your kid into these programs because it does take a lot of research. Tracking down the programs, the distance of how long youre willing to drive, the (admission) lottery, said Mary Baldwin, 34, whose daughter attends the Albuquerque school.

And then theres so much shame that gets placed on the Spanish language or the culture itself, she said. Some families might not be aware that being bilingual is a huge strength not just culturally but also professionally.

Baldwin immigrated to the U.S. from Honduras when she was 10. Her daughter is the same age now and is fluent enough to cook banana-leaf-wrapped tamales with her Spanish-speaking grandmother as a result of the dual-language program.

Fans of New Mexicos programs say they elevate Spanish-speakers skills and give them confidence in an environment where everyone is equal as they learn a new language. The programs also increase fluency and literacy in their home language.

Its generally beneficial to have two languages, said Stephen Mandrgoc, a University of New Mexico historian who has studied bilingual programs in the Southwest and oversees Spanish colonial heritage programs.

When it comes to languages spoken by New Mexicos Native American tribes and pueblos, there are some state laws that protect student rights. Still, only two dual-language programs are offered in Native American languages  both in Dine, the language of the Navajo people.

Some tribes like Jemez Pueblo face a more pressing existential threat to their language because of a small population and cultural taboos that limit the creation of language materials. Other tribes like Santa Clara Pueblo say underinvestment is a problem.

New Mexico officials have appropriated millions of dollars to support curriculum projects, but much of the funds go unspent. Advocates say one problem is the time in which grants must be spent.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

Understaffing at the Metropolitan Detention Center is nothing new.

Correctional officers are frequently made to work overtime and are often tasked with watching more than one pod  composed of 32 cells each  at a time. Inmates remain on lockdown for entire weekends, without the ability to shower or make phone calls, and photos from inside the facility show trash piling up in the hallways and plastic foam food containers spilling out of trash cans and dumpsters.

Currently, the correctional officer vacancy rate is more than 50%.

But recently drastic measures had to be taken.

Around 2 a.m. on June 4, after consulting with supervisors and the union president, MDC Chief Greg Richardson declared a state of emergency that would set aside overtime limits and require correctional officers to come in to work. It was the first time anyone can remember a state of emergency being called at the facility due to short staffing.

Joseph Trujeque, the president of the union representing MDC officers, said there were only 13 correctional officers and two supervisors scheduled for the day shift  which is from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. He said the facility needed at least eight more officers in order to fill essential positions.

Like dormitory units where theres no doors, so we have to staff an officer in there, Trujeque said. I think one of them was like a medical unit and psychiatric unit  There has to be an officer in there  We just didnt have enough staff to move anybody from other places to accomplish that.

After the state of emergency was called, some officers volunteered to stay on overtime since they were going to be forced to anyway. Others were called up and told to come in. The state of emergency remained in place into the swing shift.

Trujeque said several correctional officers ended up working 16-hour shifts. He said although the emergency declaration meant they could be made to work for a full 24 hours, it didnt come to that.

Richardson said its been tough to fill positions on many weekends at the jail. To address that, the administration in May began offering double pay starting at 11 p.m. on Thursdays through 11 p.m. on Mondays. But, Richardson said, for whatever reason on June 4 there were not enough people on the roster.

We also have people that are on days off. We also have people that are entitled to take vacation. We also have people that are on sick leave, we have other people that are using other types of leave , Richardson said. Even though you do your staffing plans and stuff like that, you still end up short, unfortunately.

He said with the overall staffing shortage at the facility, the same situation might happen again.

The belief is it could, Richardson said. We hope that it doesnt, but it could.

Vacancies, pay

The sprawling Metropolitan Detention Center is on the outskirts of Bernalillo County, almost 20 miles from Downtown Albuquerque. Over the past month it has housed an average of more than 1,300 inmates each night.

Trujeque said the vacancy rate among correctional officers is 51.09%. Staff with Corizon Health, the jails medical provider, have also been raising concerns about their staffing levels.

Trujeque said having fewer correctional officers increases the possibility that inmates could riot, get into physical fights or hurt themselves. Two inmates have killed themselves in the jail so far this year.

While officials are quick to point out that staffing at correctional facilities has always been an issue  and staffing in all industries has taken a hit since the pandemic  at more than half vacant, MDCs situation appears particularly dire.

The deputy cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Corrections Department said its vacancy rate is 29.9%. The warden of the Santa Fe County Adult Correctional Facility said its vacancy rate is 40%.

At $20 per hour and $20.72 per hour respectively, both facilities offer a higher starting pay than MDC  where after graduating, cadets are paid $18.90 per hour.

CoreCivic, which runs three private detention facilities in the state, would not disclose its vacancy rates. A spokesman said officers are paid $18 per hour.

Last October, Bernalillo County raised officer pay and began offering a $2,000 hiring bonus and a longevity package to try to attract more staff to MDC.

The union is continuing to negotiate to raise pay and triple the hiring bonus, Trujeque said.

Trujeque, who has worked at MDC for 21 years, said his hourly rate is $21.83 per hour. However, he said, he is making more than $100,000 a year due to overtime.

We need people to come work in the jail, Trujeque said. The jail is a great place to work, especially if you want to make a lot of money.

Steps taken

Last January, the Bernalillo County Commission passed an emergency resolution regarding staffing at the jail.

The resolution directed the county to explore the appropriation of additional funding to upgrade the jails technology and explore increasing the budget for MDCs recruitment department. It also directed them to request assistance from the New Mexico National Guard  including asking them to return the 13 correctional officers who are with the guard  and temporarily transfer county employees to do administrative work at the jail.

Richardson said the jail did receive more funding to upgrade the call boxes in inmates cells, the master controls and the security swipe card system. He said those projects have gone out for requests for proposals. He said no additional funding has been allocated to recruitment efforts. Five or six county employees were transferred to the jail but have since returned to their normal duties.

As for the National Guard, Richardson said the county had requested its assistance three times  once in January, once on May 31, and once last week. He said guardsmen couldnt do correctional officer duties but could do administrative tasks  such as staff the front desk  which would free up officers.

However, Richardson said, those requests were all denied.

I did receive a call again last night from the adjutant general, he said. There are only two areas that he described to me that the National Guard is focusing on and those are areas where emergencies have been declared. So they can still assist with COVID-19  anything involving or caused by COVID-19  and with the fires.

Richardson said the 12 correctional officers who are national guardsmen are on active duty and the one who wasnt resigned from the jail when he found out hed have to return to the facility.

Bernalillo County Commissioner Walt Benson said he wasnt notified the state of emergency had been declared at the jail on June 4 but he did hear about it through the grapevine.

He said he doesnt think anyone is satisfied with where things stand. He added that recruiting new staff has been harder than they expected but he thinks more should be done.

That might mean higher wages, I dont know, Benson said. It might be better retention tools, the total employment package probably needs to be more aggressive if were going to crack this nut.

Richardson said MDC has participated in several hiring fairs around the county.

The jail holds classes for cadets every 10 weeks and he said in the past they would see 12 to 15 people sign up, although some classes had as many as 24.

The most recent class?

Its been sparse  Im not going to hold anything back, Richardson said. I just swore in another four officers this morning.

More Information

To learn more about working at the Metropolitan Detention Center call a recruiter at (505) 839-8999 or visit mdcrecruiting.com
Day after day, Russia is pounding the Donbas region of Ukraine with relentless artillery and air raids, making slow but steady progress to seize the industrial heartland of its neighbor.

With the conflict now in its fourth month, its a high-stakes campaign that could dictate the course of the entire war.

If Russia prevails in the battle of Donbas, it will mean that Ukraine loses not only land but perhaps the bulk of its most capable military forces, opening the way for Moscow to grab more territory and dictate its terms to Kyiv. A Russian failure could lay the grounds for a Ukrainian counteroffensive  and possibly lead to political upheaval for the Kremlin.

Following botched early attempts in the invasion to capture Kyiv and the second-largest city of Kharkiv without proper planning and coordination, Russia turned its attention to the Donbas, a region of mines and factories where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Learning from its earlier missteps, Russia is treading more carefully there, relying on longer-range bombardments to soften Ukrainian defenses.

It seems to be working: The better-equipped Russian forces have made gains in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions that make up the Donbas, controlling over 95% of the former and about half of the latter.

Ukraine is losing between 100 and 200 soldiers a day, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told the BBC, as Russia has thrown pretty much everything non-nuclear at the front.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov described the combat situation as extremely difficult, using a reference to an ancient deity of sacrifice by saying: The Russian Moloch has plenty of means to devour human lives to satisfy its imperial ego.

When the war was going badly for Russia, many thought President Vladimir Putin might claim victory after some gains in Donbas and then exit a conflict that has seriously bruised the economy and stretched its resources. But the Kremlin has made clear it expects Ukraine to recognize all the gains Russia has made  including its 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula  something Kyiv has ruled out.

Russian forces control the entire Sea of Azov coast, including the strategic port of Mariupol, the entire Kherson region  a key gateway to Crimea  and a large chunk of the Zaporizhzhia region that could aid a further push deeper into Ukraine. Few expect that Putin will stop.

On Thursday, he drew parallels between the war in Ukraine and the 18th-century wars with Sweden waged by Peter the Great to take back and consolidate historic Russian lands, Putin said. Moscow has long regarded Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence.

Unlike earlier battlefield failures, Russia appears to be using more conservative tactics now. Many had expected it to try to encircle Ukrainian forces with a massive pincer movement, but instead it has used smaller moves to force a Ukrainian retreat and not overextend its supply lines.

Keir Giles, a Russia expert at Londons Chatham House think-tank, said Russia was concentrating all of its artillery on a single section of the front line in order to grind its way forward by flattening everything in its path.

Russian forces shelled residential blocks, a hotel and a medical facility late Sunday in the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut. Firefighters extinguished blazes from the shelling, which injured three people.

Western officials still praise the ability of Ukrainian forces to defend their country, fighting back fiercely, relying on artillery and retreating in some sections while launching frequent counterattacks.

Ukraine has been pursuing a policy of flexible defense, giving ground where it makes sense to do so instead of holding on to every inch of the territory, Giles said.

A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasnt authorized to discuss the sensitive issue in public said the Russian campaign continues to be deeply troubled at all levels, noting that Moscows forces are taking weeks to achieve even modest tactical goals such as taking individual villages.

Last month, the Russians lost nearly an entire battalion in a botched attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River and set up a bridgehead. Hundreds were killed and dozens of armored vehicles were destroyed.

There is a sense of strategic improvisation or muddling through, the official said.

Russia has a clear edge in artillery in the battle for Donbas, thanks to a bigger number of heavy howitzers and rocket launchers and abundant ammunition. The Ukrainians have had to be economical in using their artillery, with the Russians constantly targeting their supply lines.

Ukraine has begun to receive more heavy weapons from Western allies, who have provided dozens of howitzers and are now planning to start delivering multiple rocket launchers.

Putin has warned that if the West gives Kyiv longer-range rockets that could hit Russian territory, Moscow could hit targets in Ukraine that it has spared until now. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said that Russia could respond by seizing more land as a buffer zone.

Moscows earlier territorial gains in the south, including the Kherson region and a large part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, have prompted Russian officials and their local appointees to move toward folding those areas into Russia or declaring them to be independent, like the so-called peoples republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Ukrainian officials and Western analysts voiced concern that Moscow could try to press its offensive into the heavily populated and industrialized Dnipro region farther north, an advance that could potentially slice Ukraine in two and raise a new threat for Kyiv.

Russian objectives in the context of this war are shifting in relation to the situation on the ground, said Eleonora Tafuro Ambrosetti, an analyst with the Milan-based Italian Institute for International Political Studies. She noted that Russia could try to damage Ukraines economy further by seizing its entire coastline to deny access to shipping.

A top Russian general already has spoken of plans to cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea by seizing the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions all the way to the border with Romania, a move that would also allow Moscow to build a land corridor to Moldovas separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.

Such ambitions all hinge on Moscows success in the east. A defeat in the Donbas would put Kyiv in a precarious position, with new recruits lacking the skills of battle-hardened soldiers now fighting in the east and supplies of Western weapons insufficient to fend off a potentially deeper Russian push.

Ukrainian officials brushed off such fears, voicing confidence that its military can hold out to stem the Russian advances and even launch a counterattack.

Ukraines plan is clear: Kyiv is wearing the Russian army out, trying to win time for more deliveries of Western weapons, including air defense systems, in the hope of launching an efficient counteroffensive, said analyst Mykola Sunhurovsky of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.

Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general who was NATOs top commander from 2013 to 2016, warned against any cease-fire, saying that would only codify Russias battlefield gains.

This is like raising a 2-year-old, he said. If you allow bad behavior to stand, or worse if you reward bad behavior, youre going to get more bad behavior.

When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Washingtons response was inadequate, and so was its response when Moscow seized Crimea in 2014, he said.

Now that Russia has come back for more, the West gets another chance to respond.

How we finish this war will decide, in my opinion, whether we are going to see more of this in the future, he added.

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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London and Frances DEmilio in Rome contributed.

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Follow APs coverage of the Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
NEW DELHI  India and other Asian nations are becoming an increasingly vital source of oil revenues for Moscow despite strong pressure from the U.S. not to increase their purchases, as the European Union and other allies cut off energy imports from Russia in line with sanctions over its war on Ukraine.

Such sales are boosting Russian export revenues at a time when Washington and allies are trying to limit financial flows supporting Moscows war effort.

A report by the Helsinki, Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an independent think tank released Monday said Russia earned 93 billion euros ($97.4 billion) in revenue from fossil fuel exports in the first 100 days of the countrys invasion of Ukraine, despite a fall in export volumes in May.

Revenue from fossil fuel exports is the key enabler of Russias military buildup and aggression, providing 40% of federal budget revenue, it said.

India, an oil-hungry country of 1.4 billion people, has guzzled nearly 60 million barrels of Russian oil in 2022 so far, compared with 12 million barrels in all of 2021, according to commodity data firm Kpler. Shipments to other Asian countries, like China, have also increased in recent months but to a lesser extent.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sri Lankas prime minister said he may be compelled to buy more oil from Russia as he hunts desperately for fuel to keep the country running amid a dire economic crisis.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said Saturday said he would first look to other sources, but would be open to buying more crude from Moscow. In late May, Sri Lanka bought a 90,000-metric-ton (99,000-ton) shipment of Russian crude to restart its only refinery.

Russia is moving to diversify its exports. Russian Ambassador Marat Pavlov met Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday and offered Moscows help to provide oil and gas. He did not specify the terms.

Marcos Jr., whose six-year term is set to begin June 30, did not say if he was considering the offer.

Since Russias invasion of Ukraine in late February, global oil prices have soared, giving refiners in India and other countries an added incentive to tap oil Moscow is offering them at steep discounts of $30 to $35, compared with Brent crude and other international oil now trading at about $120 per barrel.

Their importance to Russia rose after the 27-nation European Union, the main market for fossil fuels that supply most of Moscows foreign income, agreed to stop most oil purchases by the end of this year.

It seems a distinct trend is becoming ingrained now, said Matt Smith, lead analyst at Kpler tracking Russian oil flows. As shipments of Urals oil to much of Europe are cut, crude is instead flowing to Asia, where India has become the top buyer, followed by China. Ship tracking reports show Turkey is another key destination.

People are realizing that India is such a refining hub, taking it at such a cheap price, refining it and sending it out as clean products because they can make such strong margins on that, Smith said.

In May, some 30 Russian tankers loaded with crude made their way to Indian shores, unloading about 430,000 barrels per day. An average of just 60,000 barrels per day arrived in January-March, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Chinese state-owned and independent refiners also have stepped up purchases. In 2021, China was the largest single buyer of Russian oil, taking 1.6 million barrels per day on average, equally divided between pipeline and seaborne routes, according to the International Energy Agency.

While Indias imports are still only about a quarter of that, the sharp increase since the war began is a potential source of friction between Washington and New Delhi.

The U.S. recognizes Indias need for affordable energy, but were looking to allies and partners not to increase their purchases of Russian energy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after a meeting of U.S. and Indian foreign and defense ministers in April.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and its European allies are engaged in extremely active discussions on coordinating measures, perhaps forming a cartel, to try to set a price cap on Russian oil, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told a Senate Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday.

The aim would be to keep Russian oil flowing into the global market to prevent crude oil prices, already up 60% this year, from surging still higher, she said.

Absolutely, the objective is to limit the revenue going to Russia, Yellen said, indicating the exact strategy had not yet been decided on.

While Europe could find alternative sources for its purchases of about 60% of Russias crude exports, Russia also has options.

Indias foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, has emphasized his countrys intention to do what is in its best interests, bristling at criticism over its imports of Russian oil.

If India funding Russian oil is funding the war  tell me, then buying Russian gas is not funding the war? Lets be a little even-handed, he said at a recent forum in Slovakia, referring to Europes imports of Russian gas.

Indias imports of crude from Russia rose from 100,000 barrels per day in February to 370,000 a day in April to 870,000 a day in May.

A growing share of those shipments displaced oil from Iraq and Saudi Arabia, most of it going to refineries in Sika and Jamnagar on Indias western coast. Up until April, Russian oil accounted for less than 5% of the crude processed at the Jamnagar oil refinery run by Reliance Industries. In May, it accounted for more than a quarter, according to Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Indias exports of oil products like diesel have risen to 685,000 barrels per day from 580,000 barrels per day before the invasion of Ukraine. Much of its diesel exports are sold in Asia, but about 20% was shipped via the Suez Canal, headed for the Mediterranean or Atlantic, essentially Europe or the US, said Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst at CREA.

Its impossible to quantify the exact amount of Russian crude in refined products being shipped out of India, he said. Still, India is providing an outlet for Russian crude oil to get through the market, he said.

Chinas imports also have risen further this year, helping Russian President Vladimir Putins government record a current account surplus, the broadest measure of trade, of $96 billion for the four months ending in April.

Its unclear if such exports might eventually be subject to sanctions meant to cut the cash flowing to Russia.

Regarding the sanctions, Are those measures effective? And if not, how is the oil market working around them? Myllyvirta said.

___

Kurtenbach reported from Bangkok. Jim Gomez contributed from Manila, Philippines.
PORTLAND, Maine  A network of adult care facilities in Maine will adopt a nondiscrimination policy about the care of transgender people as part of a settlement with a woman who filed a human rights complaint against the company.

Advocates described the agreement as a landmark settlement about elder care for transgender adults in the state. The settlement came three months after Maines human rights panel ruled in favor of the 79-year-old woman, Marie King, who complained she was denied a room by an assisted living facility because she is transgender.

Adult Family Care Homes of Maine will adopt the nondiscrimination policy in addition to sending employees and administrators at its nine facilities to LGBT-competency training, said attorneys for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, which represented King. The nondiscrimination policy states that Adult Family Care Homes will provide a welcoming environment and the best possible services to all communities, including older adults who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender.

King was initially anonymous when she filed her complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission, but later chose to identify herself. She said the settlement was a positive outcome for herself and other transgender elders seeking care.

I believe the new policies will keep others from experiencing mistreatment and will help people understand that transgender people are only seeking to be treated with dignity and respect like anyone else, King said.

The human rights commission approved the settlement during its meeting on Monday without discussion. The commissions executive director confirmed the agreement and did not comment further.

Rhonda Chambers, the administrator for Adult Family Care Homes of Maine, did not respond to a call seeking comment. The company runs elder care facilities mostly in rural parts of the state.

The human rights commission found that there were reasonable grounds that one such facility, Sunrise Assisted Living in Jonesport, violated the Maine Human Rights Act and discriminated against King on the basis of sex and sexual orientation or gender identity. Attorneys for King have said she filed a complaint with the commission that Sunrise would not admit her because the facility was concerned she wanted to reside with a female roommate.

The settlement that grew from Kings complaint sends an unmistakable message that transgender older adults should be treated with dignity and respect when seeking long-term care services, said GLAD senior attorney Ben Klein.
Albuquerque homicide detectives are investigating the death of a man who was found at a Southeast Albuquerque intersection early Monday morning.

Lt. Ray Del Greco, who oversees the Albuquerque Police Departments homicide unit, said a Central New Mexico Community College worker called APDs Emergency Communications Center at about 6:40 a.m. to report that a male was lying at the corner of Buena Vista and Coal.

Del Greco said officers arrived at the scene and called in Albuquerque Fire Rescue. The male was declared deceased at the scene, he said.

Del Greco said neighbors reported hearing gunfire at about 3 a.m., and investigators are trying to determine if that was connected to the slaying.

We would ask that anybody in the area at the time about 3 oclock this morning that heard or saw anything that would cause concern to notify 242-cops and we will have a homicide detective reach out to them and find out what they saw, Del Greco said.
NEW YORK  Amber Heard says she doesnt blame the jury that awarded Johnny Depp more than $10 million after a contentious six-week libel trial in her first post-verdict interview.

I dont blame them, Heard told Today co-host Savannah Guthrie in an interview clip aired Monday on NBC. I actually understand. Hes a beloved character and people feel they know him. Hes a fantastic actor.

Today plans to air more of its interview with Heard on Tuesday and Wednesday. The interview is airing nearly two weeks after the verdict, which also saw Heard awarded $2 million over her claim that one of Depps attorneys defamed her.

Depp sued Heard for libel in Virginia over a December 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post describing herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse. His lawyers said he was defamed by the article even though it never mentioned his name.

The verdicts brought an end to a televised trial that Depp hopes will help restore his reputation, though it turned into a spectacle that offered a window into a volatile marriage and both actors emerged with unclear prospects for their careers.

Guthrie pressed Heard on her credibility and what it meant to jurors in the clips released Monday. Theres no polite way to say it. The jury looked at the evidence you presented. They listened to your testimony and they did not believe you, she said. They thought you were lying.

Heard responded, How could they not come to that conclusion? They had sat in those seats and heard over three weeks of non-stop, relentless testimony from paid employees and witnesses the actor described as randos or random people.

Depp, who has not yet done a formal interview about the case, has said the verdict gave me my life back. Heard said in a statement after the verdict that she was heartbroken, while her attorney said in a separate Today interview that her client was demonized on social media and she plans to appeal the judgment.

I dont care what one thinks about me or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home, in my marriage, behind closed doors. I dont presume the average person should know those things, and so I dont take it personally, Heard told Guthrie.

You still couldnt look me in the eye and tell me that you think on social media theres been a fair representation. You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair, Heard said.

The Heard interview will also be featured in Fridays Dateline episode.
MANILA, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Foreign direct investment (FDI) net inflows into the Philippines reached 727 million U.S. dollars in March, 9.8 percent lower than the amount posted in March 2021, the Philippine central bank said on Monday.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said the net FDI flows for the first quarter remained positive, increasing by 2.0 percent to 2.4 billion U.S. dollars.

"Higher net inflows from inter-company borrowing or lending between foreign direct investors and their subsidiaries continued to make up for the lower net inflows from new equity and reinvested earnings," the BSP said.

While the country's macroeconomic fundamentals remain sound, external risks, such as the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on commodities and financial market conditions, the start of policy tightening in several major central banks, and the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in many Asian economies, "may have contributed to investors' concern about the outlook on the global economic recovery," the BSP added.

In particular, the BSP said non-residents' net cumulative investments in debt instruments for the first quarter grew by 33.5 percent to 1.9 billion U.S. dollars.

According to the BSP, the sustained FDI net inflows in March came mainly from non-residents' net investments in debt instruments of local affiliates, which expanded by 45.1 percent. 
NEW YORK  Philip Baker Hall, the prolific character actor of film and theater who starred in Paul Thomas Andersons first movies and who memorably hunted down a long-overdue library book in Seinfeld, has died. He was 90.

Holly Wolfle Hall, the actors wife of nearly 40 years, on Monday said Hall died Sunday surrounded by loved ones in Glendale, California. She said Hall had been well until a few weeks earlier, and spent his final days in warm spirits, reflecting on his life.

His voice at the end was still just as powerful, said Wolfle Hall. Her husband, she added, never retired from acting.

In a career spanning half a century, Hall was a ubiquitous hangdog face whose doleful, weary appearance could shroud a booming intensity and humble sensitivity. His range was wide, but Hall, who had a natural gravitas, often played men in suits, trench coats and lab coats.

Men who are highly stressed, older men, who are at the limit of their tolerance for suffering and stress and pain, Hall told the Washington Post in 2017. I had an affinity for playing those roles.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, Hall initially devoted himself more to theater in Los Angeles, after moving out in 1975, than TV and movies. While shooting bit parts in Hollywood (an episode of Good Times was one of his first gigs), Hall worked with the L.A. Actor Theatre. There he played Richard Nixon in the one-act play Secret Honor, a role he reprised in Robert Altmans 1984 film adaptation. Critic Pauline Kael wrote that Hall draws on his lack of a star presence and on an actors fears of his own mediocrity in a way that seems to parallel Nixons feelings.

Hall made an impression in the smallest of roles in other films, like 1988s Midnight Run. But outside of theater, Hall was mostly doing guest roles in television. That changed when he was shooting a PBS program in 1992. Hall then encountered a production assistant in his early 20s named Paul Thomas Anderson. The two would hang out, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee between scenes. Anderson, believing Hall hadnt gotten his due in film, asked him to look at a script he had written for a 20-minute short film titled Cigarettes & Coffee.

Im reading this script, and I truly had trouble believing that that kid wrote this script, Hall told the AV Club in 2012. I mean, it was just so brilliant, resonating with nuance all over the place, like a playwright. Certainly, as a film, Id never really seen anything like it. It was staggering.

After the $20,000 short made it into the Sundance Film Festival, Anderson expanded it into his feature debut, 1997s Hard Eight, which catapulted Halls career. In it, Hall played a wise and courteous itinerate gambler named Sydney who schools a young drifter (John C. Reilly) on the craft. In one indelible scene, Philip Seymour Hoffmans first with Anderson, a hot-shot gambler chides Hall as old-timer.

Anderson would cast Hall again as adult film theater magnate Floyd Gondolli who warns Burt Reynolds pornography producer about the industrys future in Boogie Nights. In Andersons Magnolia, Hall played Jimmy Gator, the host of a kids game show.

I have a particular fascination with character actors, with wanting to turn them into lead actors, Anderson told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. I see Philip Baker Hall, hes just . . . an actor that I love. Theres no one else with a face like that, or a voice like that.

To many, Hall was instantly recognizable for one of the most powerfully funny guest appearances on Seinfeld. In the 22nd episode of the sitcom in 1991, Hall played Lt. Joe Bookman, the library investigator who comes after Seinfeld for a years-overdue copy of Tropic of Cancer. Hall played him like a hardboiled noir detective, telling Seinfeld: Well, I got a flash for ya, Joy-boy: Party time is over.

Hall was brought back for the Seinfeld finale and by Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. David once said no other actor ever made him laugh more than Hall.

Among Halls many other credits were Michael Manns The Insider, as 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt, and Lars von Triers Dogville. Hall appeared in Say Anything, The Truman Show, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Zodiac, Argo and Rush Hour. Hall played the neighbor Walt Kleezak on Modern Family. His last performance was in the 2020 series Messiah.

Hall, who was married to Dianne Lewis for three years in the early 1970s, is survived by his wife, four daughters, four grandchildren and his brother.
BUCHA, Ukraine  The lush green beauty of a pine forest with singing birds contrasted with the violent deaths of newly discovered victims of Russias war in Ukraine, as workers exhumed bodies from another mass grave near the town of Bucha on Kyivs outskirts.

The hands of several victims were tied behind their backs. The gruesome work of digging up the remains coincided with the Ukrainian police chiefs report that authorities have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 people since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Workers wearing white hazmat suits and masks used shovels to exhume bodies from the soil of the forest, marking each section with small yellow numbered signs on the ground. The bodies, covered in cloth and dirt, attracted flies.

Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured, Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police, said at the scene. The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people, many in mass graves in the forest and elsewhere.

The horrors of Bucha shocked the world after Russian troops left. The mass grave that reporters saw Monday was just behind a trench dug out for a military vehicle. The bodies of seven civilians were retrieved. Two of the bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the knees and head, Nebytov said.

National police chief Igor Klimenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Monday that criminal investigations into the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians included some found in mass graves. He said the mass killings also were done by snipers firing from tanks and armored personnel carriers. Bodies were found lying on streets and homes, as well as in mass graves.

He didnt specify how many of the more than 12,000 were civilians and how many were military.

Complete information about the number of bodies in mass graves or elsewhere isnt known, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the American Jewish Committee on Sunday. He cited the case of two children who died with their parents in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol in a Russian bombing. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, asked:

Why is this happening in 2022? This is not the 1940s. How could mass killings, torture, burned cities, and filtration camps set up by the Russian military in the occupied territories resembling Nazi concentration camps come true?

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MORE STORIES ON THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

 The battle of Donbas could prove decisive in Ukraine war

 Mexican president slams NATO policy in Ukraine

 Japan philanthropic group begins fundraising for Ukrainians

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had driven the Russians out of more than 1,000 settlements since the war began, and he vowed Monday they would liberate all occupied territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

In his nightly video address, he said the battle over the Donbas will surely go down in military history as one of the most brutal battles in and for Europe.

The price of this battle for us is very high, he said. Its just terrible.

The total war front in the country, he said, is now 2,500 kilometers long (1,550 miles).

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Amnesty International, in a report Monday, accused Russia of indiscriminate use of banned cluster munitions in strikes on Kharkiv, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.

Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, has been subject to intensive shelling since Russia began attacking Ukraine.

The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives, said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationals senior crisis response adviser. The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable for their actions, and victims and their families must receive full reparations.

The report cited doctors in Kharkiv hospitals who showed researchers distinctive fragments they had removed from patients bodies, as well as survivors and witnesses of the attacks.

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Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai told The Associated Press that fierce street fighting continued Monday in Sievierodonetsk, one of two large cities in the Donbas region still to be fully captured by Russian troops.

During the day, Haidai updated his estimate of how much of the city Russians control from 70% to 80%. Ukrainian forces are fighting the enemy block by block, street by street, house by house with a varying degree of success, he told The AP.

More than 10,000 people remain in the city. Haidai said efforts to evacuate them have been halted because Russian troops destroyed two of the three bridges connecting Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, the second city in Luhansk not yet overrun by Moscow. The remaining bridge is old, decrepit and unsafe, the governor said.

Lysychansk remains under Ukrainian control, but is regularly shelled by the Russian forces. On Sunday, Haidai said, the shelling killed three civilians in the city, including a 6-year-old boy.

Eduard Basurin, an official of the Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk, claimed Monday that Sievierodonetsk has been blocked off and Ukrainian fighters have no choice but to surrender. Haidai dismissed that as a lie.

There is no threat of our troops being encircled in the Luhansk region, he said.

Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk region said Monday that the Ukrainian forces shelled a market in the city of Donetsk, killing three civilians and injuring 18 more. It was the fiercest shelling by Ukrainian forces since 2015, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

The head of the Russian-backed government in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, also cited heavy shelling, and said on his Telegram channel that more forces  especially Russians  were being called in to help.

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The Russian military said Monday it destroyed a large number of weapons and military equipment that Ukrainian forces had received from the U.S. and Europe.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said high-precision air-launched missiles hit the supplies near the Udachna railway station in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Konashenkov also said a temporary deployment point for foreign mercenaries and a Ukrainian radar station of the Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile system were destroyed in the neighboring Luhansk region.

Two batteries of multiple-launch rocket systems were destroyed in the Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, Konashenkov said.

There was no immediate confirmation of the Russian claim from Ukraine.

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The Dutch government said it will host a ministerial conference next month on accountability in Ukraine aimed at strengthening and coordinating war crimes investigations.

Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said Monday that the international community already has taken swift action to investigate alleged atrocities in Ukraine but there is an urgent need to further coordinate existing efforts on this front.

The July 14 meeting in The Hague will be hosted by the Dutch government, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan and European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders.

Khan already has launched an investigation and deployed his largest ever team of prosecutors to Ukraine to gather evidence, including to Bucha, near the capital of Kyiv, where bodies littered the streets after Russian forces retreated early in the war.

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Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

New Mexico Top Organics-Ultra Health and six medical patients have filed a class-action lawsuit, arguing that insurers should shoulder the cost of medical cannabis because it is a behavioral health service.

The lawsuit was filed on Friday in state district court in Albuquerque against seven insurers in the state  Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico, True Health New Mexico, Cigna Health and Life Insurance Co., Molina Healthcare of New Mexico, Presbyterian Health Plan, Presbyterian Insurance Co. and Western Sky Community Care  for failure to cover medical cannabis costs.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are seeking recovery for themselves, and for every other similarly situated behavioral or mental health patient unlawfully subjected to paying for the entire cost of medically necessary cannabis, in violation of state law.

The idea of health insurance plans paying for medical cannabis may seem like an impossible dream, but all the foundational elements have already fallen into place, Ultra Health President and CEO Duke Rodriguez said in a statement on Monday. Revolutionizing behavioral health care in New Mexico will take only a few small steps, rather than a giant leap.

True Health New Mexico and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico declined to comment. Molina Healthcare of New Mexico, Western Sky Community Care and Cigna didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.

Presbyterian Health Plan and Presbyterian Insurance Co.  which fall under the same leadership structure  also declined to comment.

Presbyterian Health Plan is committed to ensuring that New Mexicans can access the behavioral health services they need, spokeswoman Melanie Mozes said. We have not yet been served with the lawsuit and will reserve comment for the appropriate venue.

The heart of the lawsuit, according to Rodriguez, stems from legislation that passed in 2021. Senate Bill 317, signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in April 2021, focuses on behavioral health cost sharing. The law  which went into effect on Jan. 1  states that insurers should cover 100% of behavioral health services, including the prescribed treatment of a behavioral health condition.

More than 73,000 medical patients of the 134,307 patients enrolled in the medical cannabis program in the state suffer from PTSD, according to April data from the New Mexico Department of Health.

In February, Ultra Health sent a letter to New Mexico health insurers and the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance seeking assurance that cannabis coverage is a behavioral health service under the law. But Ultra Health said the state and insurers have yet to respond to that letter.

Rodriguez said the lawsuit opens the doors for more medical patients to join in.

There will be more patients identified who have been harmed by insurers not lawfully abiding to the statutory duty of eliminating any cost sharing related to behavioral health services, Rodriguez said. Insurers have not acted in good faith.

The six medical patients listed as plaintiffs, most notably, includes state Sen. Jacob Candelaria.

Candelaria, according to the lawsuit, has been a medical patient since 2019 at the behest of his physician who recommended he use cannabis to help treat his post-traumatic stress disorder after having little success using antidepressants.

According to the lawsuit, he spends between $500 and $1,000 a month on medical cannabis and has paid entirely out of pocket since becoming a medical patient. He is insured with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico, according to the lawsuit.

In an interview with the Journal on Monday, Candelaria described his experience with medical cannabis in treating his PTSD, saying it has had a positive effect on his life. He said he signed onto the lawsuit not for his own benefit, but for the many New Mexicans who are struggling to pay for their health care.

Senate Bill 317 was transformational, Candelaria said. This suit, you know, it becomes necessary to actually make that transformation happen.

Other plaintiffs are Tomas Lorenzo Valencia, Bryce Bryant-Flynn, Matias Trujillo, Erica Rowland and Ariel McDougal  all of whom are medical patients.

Medical cannabis became legal in New Mexico under then-Gov. Bill Richardson, who signed off on the legislation known as the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act, in 2007.
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The rapper, born Rodrick Moore, was taken into custody at a security checkpoint on Saturday night, June 11 after police found a loaded gun inside of his vehicle.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - Roddy Ricch is another rapper to have a run-in with the law. Just hours before he was set to perform at the Governor's Ball in New York City, the "Die Young" hitmaker was arrested on gun possession.

The 23-year-old, whose real name is Rodrick Moore, was taken into custody at a security checkpoint on Saturday night, June 11 after police found a loaded gun inside his vehicle. An employee hired for the Citi Field concert spotted the Canik 9mm under a seat of the 2020 black Cadillac Escalade that he and his pals were in at the security checkpoint around 6:20 P.M.

Roddy was initially charged with four counts of criminal possession of a weapon, possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device and possession of an unlawful feeding device. However, prosecutors reportedly decided to drop the case "because the gun in question was found on the floor of the car and not on any person," according to the New York Post. He was later let go on Sunday.

Speaking about the arrest, an NYPD official told The Post, "The reason we do this checkpoints is for expressly this purpose." The statement added, "We dont want people introducing guns in this venue."

Just days prior, fellow rapper DDG was arrested on gun charge as well. He was taken into custody around 9:30 P.M. on Monday, June 6 after he was pulled over by the Los Angeles Police Department. When officers searched his Lamborghini, they found a gun, leading to his arrest.

DDG, whose real name is Darryl Dwayne Granberry Jr., was later booked in Valley Jail, but he was let go from prison on Tuesday after posting a $35,000 bond. The "Hood Melody" spitter is set to make a court appearance on June 28 at 8:30 A.M.
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The former star of 'The Real Housewives of Orange County' additionally denies saying 'anything bad' about her 'Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip Ex-Wives Club' co-star's Blue Stone Manor house.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - Vicky Gunvalson has reacted to Dorinda Medley's comments about her. Taking to Instagram on Sunday, June 12, the 60-year-old TV star called "The Real Housewives of New York City" star "nasty" after being slammed for having no "taste."

"I never said anything bad about her home," Vicky wrote in an Instagram comment. "I said if it makes her happy, then good."

The former star of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" went on to explain, "I also said her house is in the middle of nowhere (truth) and it's old (truth)." She's referencing her calling Dorinda's Blue Stone Manor home "old" while discussing places to stay for "The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip Ex-Wives Club".

Vicky added, "Defensive much? Saying I don't have taste? That's a joke - my taste is definitely different than hers AND she was horrible to most people who stayed there. It was miserable."

Vicky's comments arrived after Dorinda took a jab at Vicky in an episode of her SiriusXM podcast, "Make It Nice". "Like, you may not like my life, but I also don't date people that pretend to have cancer, you know what I mean?" said Dorinda, referring to Vicky's ex Brooks Ayers, who forged medical documents to make it appear as if he were a cancer patient at City of Hope.

In the episode, Dorinda also slammed Vicky for dating Steve Lodge, who left her for his now-wife Janis Carlson. "I also don't date men that then leave you for women that are half their age," she shared. "You wanna get mean, I'll get mean."

Defending her house, Dorinda said that her Blue Stone Manor home was built by renowned architect Stanford White in 1902. She also noted that it was featured in Architectural Digest in 2020.

"Well, listen, this is a girl that thinks dancing on dirty tables in a bar at Puerto Vallarta, whatever that place is called, is fun," she claimed. "So I mean, you can't really have people that don't have taste understand taste."
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The revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical and the Stefano Massini-created play snag five awards each, including the top honors, Best Revival of a Musical and Best Play respectively.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - "Company" and "The Lehman Trilogy" have come out victorious at the 75th annual Tony Awards. Both shows led the winner list with five awards each during the ceremony which took place at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday, June 12.

"Company", the revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical, aptly bagged the award for Best Revival of a Musical, edging out "Caroline, or Change" and "The Music Man", which stars Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.

Marianne Elliott was honored for directing the musical. In her acceptance speech, she acknowledged the existential challenges facing Broadway. "Our industry has been through so much," she said of the industry, which was ravaged due to the pandemic. "It felt at times that live theater was endangered." She went on to dedicate her prize to all of those "fighting for the survival of this beautiful, transportive and essential art form."

Matt Doyle and Patti LuPone won Best Performance by a Featured Actor and Actress in a Musical respectively for their roles in "Company". The show additionally won Best Scenic Design of a Musical for Bunny Christie.

"The Lehman Trilogy" was honored as Best Play. Its star Simon Russell Beale nabbed Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, defeating his own co-stars Adam Godley and Adrian Lester.

Sam Mendes also won a Tony Award for directing "The Lehman Trilogy", while Es Devlin took home Best Scenic Design of a Play for her work on the epic drama charting the history of one of the financial institutions that helped spark the 2008 recession. The show also took home Best Lighting Design of a Play for Jon Clark.

Deirdre O'Connell picked up Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her role as a Florida hospice chaplain who is held hostage in the wildly experimental drama, "Dana H". "Please let me standing here be a little sign to you from the universe to make the weird art," she said in her speech.

Meanwhile, Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical went to Myles Frost for his portrayal of the late Michael Jackson in "MJ", and Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical was snatched by Joaquina Kalukango who stars as Nelly O'Brien in "Paradise Square".

The 2022 Tony Awards was hosted by Oscar-winning actress Ariana DeBose. "What a season it's been," the "West Side Story" star said in her opening monologue. "For many of you it's been a roller coaster - starts, stops, dramatic twists and turns."

Darren Criss and Julianne Hough hosted the hour-long pre-show.

Full Winner List of 2022 Tony Awards

Best Play: "The Lehman Trilogy", Stefano Massini and Ben Power

Best Musical: "A Strange Loop"

Best Revival of a Play: "Take Me Out"

Best Revival of a Musical: "Company"

Best Book of a Musical: "A Strange Loop", Michael R. Jackson

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre: "SIX: The Musical", Music and Lyrics: Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play: Simon Russell Beale , "The Lehman Trilogy"

, "The Lehman Trilogy" Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play: Deirdre O'Connell, "Dana H."

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical: Myles Frost, "MJ"

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical: Joaquina Kalukango, "Paradise Square"

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play: Jesse Tyler Ferguson , "Take Me Out"

, "Take Me Out" Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play: Phylicia Rashad , "Skeleton Crew"

, "Skeleton Crew" Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical: Matt Doyle , "Company"

, "Company" Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical: Patti LuPone , "Company"

, "Company" Best Scenic Design of a Play: Es Devlin, "The Lehman Trilogy"

Best Scenic Design of a Musical: Bunny Christie, "Company"

Best Costume Design of a Play: Montana Levi Blanco, "The Skin of Our Teeth"

Best Costume Design of a Musical: Gabriella Slade, "SIX: The Musical"

Best Lighting Design of a Play: Jon Clark, "The Lehman Trilogy"

Best Lighting Design of a Musical: Natasha Katz, "MJ"

Best Sound Design of a Play: Mikhail Fiksel, "Dana H."

Best Sound Design of a Musical: Gareth Owen, "MJ"

Best Direction of a Play: Sam Mendes, "The Lehman Trilogy"

Best Direction of a Musical: Marianne Elliott, "Company"

Best Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon, "MJ"

Best Orchestrations: Simon Hale, "Girl From The North Country"
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With his latest single 'Deprimida', which means 'depressed' in English, the Puerto Rican artist manages to earn his 28th No. 1 on Billboard's Latin Airplay chart.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - Ozuna has no reason to feel miserable as his song "Deprimida", which means "depressed" in English, earns him his 28th No. 1 on Billboard's Latin Airplay chart. The tune jumps from 7-1 in its 13th week thanks to a 50 percent increase in audience impressions earned in the U.S. in the week ending May 29, according to Luminate.

With the additional 9.9 million airplay audience impressions, "Deprimida" receives the Greatest Gainer honors of the week. Trailing behind is Becky G and Karol G's "Mamiii", which is pushed to No. 2 after its second nonconsecutive week at the summit.

Released in February, the song also steals the number spot on Latin Rhythm Airplay dated June 4. It marks Ozuna's 27th time to top the list. In addition, the track re-enters at No. 43 on the all-metric Hot Latin Songs chart due to its radio push. The track's highest position on the list was No. 34 dated March 12.

"Deprimida" is the first single from Ozuna's forthcoming sixth studio album, "Ozutochi". When speaking in an interview with Rolling Stone, he revealed that the song is "just the beginning" of his "new chapter."

"I've been working hard these past months on a lot of exciting new projects," the Puerto Rican artist told the publication. "I have some surprises coming: 'Deprimida' is just the beginning of this new chapter. My fans are in for a lot of different styles. I've been having some fun and can't wait for everyone to get to hear it all."

To support his upcoming album, which is set to be released later this year, the Latin trap/reggaeton star announced in May that he will embark on "Ozutochi World Tour". The outing will kick off on June 30 in Spain, before shifting to the U.S. on September 30 at Brooklyn's Barclays Center. It will conclude at the FTX Arena in Miami, Florida on December 9.
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The 19-year-old TikTok star, who previously encouraged his fans to open up about mental health, was found unresponsive in a mall parking lot in Southern California on June 9 and an autopsy is pending.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - Cooper Noriega's ex-girlfriend Sabrina Quesada is mourning the death of the 19-year-old TikTok star. Making use of her Instagram account, Sabrina paid tribute to Cooper by penning a heartfelt message.

Alongside a throwback picture of them when they were together, she wrote, "the light of life." She went on to say, "you're the best thing that ever happened to me. i'm so sorry my love. may we meet again."

In her post, Sabrina also included a screenshot of her recent text messages with Noriega. He could be seen writing, "god has his angels around u. I feel greatness coming towards you."

Fellow social media stars showed support for Sabrina in the comments section. TikToker Charli D'Amelio wrote, "i'm so sorry sab i love you." Chase Keith commented, "love you sabby, coop is watching over you."

Amelie Zilber added, "Those we love never truly leave usThere are things that death will never touch. We love you so much, Sab and are so devastated by this loss. Sending you strength and courage and light."

Cooper was found unresponsive in a mall parking lot in Southern California on Thursday, June 9, according to TMZ. No foul play is suspected, while an autopsy is pending.

Following his death, his sister Parker wrote on Instagram to address the devastating news. "hi everyone. on behalf of our family we want to thank you all for the kind words of our little coop," he wrote on Saturday. "His passing is an absolute tragedy to our family and loved ones. We pray that we all as a community can continue on his legacy."

Concluding her message, she told Cooper's followers that he loved "each and everyone" of them. "Please feel free to reach out to us as we love feeling all the support. Bless you all with love, his sister," she said.

Prior to this, the TikTok star encouraged his fans to open up about mental health as he shared that he struggled with addiction. In his final days, he announced that he had created a Discord server to discuss mental health with fans.

"I have just created a Discord server strictly for mental health because of how much I love you guys and how much I struggle with it myself," he explained in a recent TikTok video. "I want you guys to not be alone and feel safe."
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The lifelong friend and 'Full House' co-star of the late Broadway star takes to his social media platform to share his frustrations, noting that the late actor had a 'brilliant' career.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - John Stamos has called out Tony Awards. The "Full House" actor was "disappointed" that the late Bob Saget was "left out" of the In Memoriam segment at Sunday night's (June 12) Tony Awards.

Bob was found dead in his Florida hotel room in January, aged 65, and his co-star on the iconic sitcom has slammed the awards show for not paying tribute to Bob, who was "loved" by the Broadway community after starring in 2006's "The Drowsy Chaperone" and 2015's "Hand to God".

Ahead of the ceremony, John tweeted, "Disappointed to hear that @bobsaget will be LEFT OUT of the In Memoriam segment tonight @TheTonyawards." The 58-year-old actor continued, "Bob was brilliant in The Drowsy Chaperone and Hand to God. Come on @BroadwayLeague and @TheWing ! Do the right thing! Bob loved Broadway and I know the community loved him."

John Stamos expressed his anger as Tony Awards snubbed Bob Saget from In Memoriam segment despite his 'brilliant' career.

Lawrence Fishburne introduced the segment, which honored the late William Hurt, Sidney Poitier and Stephen Sondheim.

John was left devastated by the death of his former co-star back and recently took part in a Netflix tribute to the TV star in which he revealed their final conversation was both emotional and light-hearted. During the recording of the show, John said, "I'm going to read my last text from Bob. It said, 'I love you so much. I will say that God gave me the brother that I wanted.'"

John told the audience he responded by saying, "Well, you have a lot of 'God-given brothers,' but I'm first, right?" and Bob replied, "John Mayer's an amazing friend, but he's more fair-weather. You are always there, so you're number one."

John Stamos mourned the sudden death of Bob Saget.

Bob was found at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida on January 9 and his death sent shockwaves across Hollywood. John tweeted at the time, "I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby."
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Also in the new episode of 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta', Sanya Richards-Ross and Drew Sidora are still trying to work things out between them following their recent fallout.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - Marlo Hampton went into a fiery rant in a new episode of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta". In the June 12 outing, Marlo blasted co-stars Kandi Burruss and Kenya Moore by calling them "h*es."

It started after Marlo and Sheree Whitfield met up as the former tried to make the latter feel better after Tyrone broke her heart in last week's episode. Kenya was also supposed to join them, but she canceled at the last minute. Kenya claimed that she wasn't feeling well, but Marlo thought it was odd that Kenya was in "full glam" if she was sick.

Later in the episode, the ladies gathered for a dinner party hosted by Sanya Richards-Ross. The bash took place only a day after Marlo's get-together with Sheree, but Kenya was able to attend it. Kenya explained that she wasn't feeling well the night of Sheree's thing, so a doctor told her to take a COVID test. Since the results had since come back negative, she felt okay going to Sanya's event. Despite that, Marlo and Sheree felt betrayed.

Sheree was also upset over the fact that Kandi never called her to check on her following her drama with Tyrone. Marlo and Sheree decided to storm outside during Sanya's event to talk trash about them.

That was when Marlo said Kandi was once a "ho" who slept with men for "free." She added that Kenya, who often bragged about being "Miss USA," was also a "ho" who tried to get with rappers but got rejected instead.

Also in the episode, Sanya and Drew Sidora were still trying to work things out between them following their recent fallout. Drew attended Sanya's dinner at the last minute, but things were super awkward between the two.
PERTH, Australia, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Australia's Mining giants are expecting new cooperation opportunities with Chinese stakeholders during their transition to cleaner energies.

Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian toured the state of Western Australia last week, and visited venues of Fortescue, BHP and Rio Tinto and met with the companies' management leadership.

The global leading mining companies expressed an optimistic outlook for future cooperation with China.

China is advocating the new concepts of innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development, they said, while Australia's new government is also committed to fostering a diversified and sustainable growth pattern.

"China and Australia can align green development strategies and establish a closer cooperative relationship of mutual benefit," said Xiao on Saturday while addressing the national conference of the Australia China Friendship Society held in Perth.

Following a meeting with Xiao last Friday, Rio Tinto Chief Executive Jakob Stausholm told Xinhua that the company has already started some research and development work with universities and companies in China, and the two sides can find ways to turn it into real business.

"Rio Tinto needs to decarbonize, but when addressing climate change, it actually provides big opportunities for us, because addressing climate change is fundamentally about energy transition," he said.

"We need to future proof our existing business, but we are also part of the solution here. And I cannot see that happening without working very closely with China."

Stausholm said Rio Tinto is having sprawling businesses in China, not just iron ore, and despite the short-term impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, the company still believes in the Chinese economy in the medium to long term.

BHP also welcomed future cooperation with Chinese counterparts.

The company has already partnered with steel makers China Baowu and HBIS to invest up to 50 million U.S. dollars collectively in low emission technologies, and plans to make it available to the broader market to support the reduction of emissions from the steel making industry.

"We continue to build on the strong partnerships we have in China through collaboration on decarbonisation technologies and strategies," President of Minerals Australia at BHP Edgar Basto told Xinhua.

At Fortescue Future Industries, Fortescue Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Gaines told the ambassador that last month, the company celebrated 14 years since its first commercial shipment of iron ore to China's Shanghai.

"Fortescue has built enduring and very mutually-beneficial relationships with our key customers in China. The depth of that engagement has definitely been a hallmark of Fortescue's success," Gaines said.

She said as Fortescue transitions to a green energy and resources company, it is working very closely with key stakeholders and customers in China and looking forward to new cooperation opportunities. 
WENN/Derrick Salters Celebrity

Instead of calling out the Cookie Lyon depicter and her former 'Empire' co-star, social media users praise her for being 'a good friend' to the embattled actor.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - Taraji P. Henson remains a loyal friend to Jussie Smollett, despite the risk of catching heat from his critics. The actress, who grew close with the embattled actor when starring together on FOX's musical drama "Empire", has hung out with him following his conviction on six counts of felony disorderly conduct pertaining to making four false police reports in his 2019 hate crime hoax.

It's the Cookie Lyon depicter herself who shared the news of her reunion with her on-screen son. Making use of her Instagram account on Saturday, June 11, she shared several photos of her weekend outing, including one image that showed her sitting next to Jussie.

In the images, Taraji showed off her chic style in a sleeveless denim crop top and matching flare pants, completed with a black belt. She also wore a pair of stylish sunglasses, hoop earrings and flip flops, while her dyed hair was pulled in an updo. "Yesterday," she captioned the snaps, adding several heart and lips emojis.

Surprisingly, many loved the interaction between Taraji and Jussie. "That Jussie in the slide! I love you both!" one follower commented on her post. Another fan reacted to the picture featuring Jussie, "Jussieeeeeeee!!! Love to see it."

Praising the awards-winning actress for standing by Jussie, one person wrote, "One thing bout Miss Cookie she gone support the folks she love." Another raved over the "Hidden Figures" star, "I really wish him the best! God bless her for being a friend!"

"If anything I feel like he needs a friend, so I'm happy she's there to support whatever he's going through," a fifth person wrote, as another weighed in, "Good for her. If someone is your friend you support them." Agreeing, someone else added, "Good for them ..I'm happy Taraji isn't letting social media bullies dictate her life and who she can have in it."

"When friendship is real you're going to stick beside each other no matter what the people say!!" one other echoed the sentiment, while a few also showed their support for Jussie as writing comments like, "He's not canceled I love him" and "He cancelled ? By who ?"

Jussie was sentenced to serve 150 days in county jail as well as two and a half years on probation after he's found guilty of making false police reports in March. At the time, Taraji was among those who publicly called for his freedom.

"I am not here to debate you on his innocence but we can agree that the punishment does not fit the crime," she wrote on Instagram, before invoking the case of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African American boy murdered in 1955 after he was falsely accused of harassing a white woman.

"Emmett Till was brutally beat and ultimately murdered because of a lie and none of the people involved with his demise spent one day in jail, even after Carolyn Bryant admitted that her claims were false," she continued arguing. "No one was hurt or killed during Jussie's ordeal. He has already lost everything, EVERYTHING!"

She added, "He can't get a job. No one in Hollywood will hire him and again as an artist who loves to create, that is prison. My prayer is that he is freed and put on house arrest and probation because in this case that would seem fair."

Jussie is currently released on a $150,000 personal recognizance bond while appealing his conviction.
WENN/Daniel Deme Celebrity

The late King of Pop's eldest children take the stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City to introduce a performance by the cast of 'MJ: The Musical', which earns four wins at the annual ceremony.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - Michael Jackson's eldest children have shown their love to their superstar dad. The late King of Pop was honored by Paris Jackson and Prince Jakson in a moving moment at the Tony Awards on Sunday, June 12.

Michael's kids Paris, 24, and Prince, 25, took to the stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City to introduce a performance by the cast of "MJ: The Musical", a stage show based on their father's life, and they took the opportunity to remember their dad's love of musical theater.

Prince told the audience, "A lot of people seem to think our dad Michael Jackson changed popular music forever. And who are we to disagree?" He continued, "But what people may not know is he loved musicals, on film and on the stage. That's why we are so incredibly honored to introduce the night's first nominee for best musical, 'MJ', which, using many of his iconic hits, looks at the complexities and brilliance of our father's process."

The show was nominated for 10 Tony Awards and won four including Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for Myles Frost as well as Best Sound Design and Best Lighting Design.

The show opened last year and focuses on the behind-the-scenes drama as Michael, who died from an accidental overdose in 2009, prepared for his 1992 "Dangerous World Tour". It features hits including "Dangerous", "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" among others.

Paris recently opened up about her dad's influence on her, insisting he made sure his children had a strong work ethic and diverse taste in music. Speaking to Naomi Campbell on her YouTube interview series No Filter, Paris explained, "My dad was really good about making sure we were cultured, making sure we were educated, and not just showing us like the glitz and glam, like hotel hopping, five-star places."

"Growing up, it was about earning stuff. If we wanted five toys from FAO Schwarz or Toys R Us, we had to read five books," Paris continued. "It's earning it, not just being entitled to certain things or thinking, 'Oh, I got this.' It's like working for it, working hard for it - it's, it's something else entirely. It's an accomplishment."
INSTAR IMAGES/JOHN NACION Celebrity

The Oscar-winner and former Tony-nominee takes the stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City to perform a special song, directed at all the nominees, cast and crews who make Broadway come to life each ear.

Jun 13, 2022

AceShowbiz - Ariana DeBose has proved why she's the perfect host for this year's Tony Awards. The Anita depicter in "West Side Story" kicked off the 75th annual ceremony with a musical monologue.

The 31-year-old actress opened Sunday's (June 12) ceremony at New York's Radio City Music Hall with a special song for all those involved in working in theater, before segueing into a medley of songs from some of the biggest Broadway shows ever, including "Bye Bye Birdie", "Chicago" and "Cabaret".

Ariana sang, "And so tonight, for you I want to start by singing...To every team, every cast, in present future and past, tonight at last, this is a round of applause. For the last 75 years, You kept it alive here, cheers! High five. 'Cause you know the show, would never go on if we didn't all come together as one."

A video montage of winners from Tonys past also flashed across the screen, and Ariana received a standing ovation for her musical opening. She then shone a spotlight on how changes in Broadway reflect the beginning of an end to the "great white way," making the theater world "more reflective of the community who adores it."

She said, "It has shown us stories that have broadened our world and opened our hearts and minds. While we have not solved all of our problems, I feel like the phrase 'great white way' is becoming more of a nickname than a 'how to' guide. And here's why. This season featured new shows written by seven black playwrights. Yeah! It brought us a gender-flipped production of Company."

"And tonight, Lynn Nottage is the only playwright ever to be nominated for both best play and best book of a musical in the same season. Yes. L. Morgan Lee is the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for a Tony, and she won't be the last," Ariana continued. "Scenic designer Adam Rigg is the first out-gender nominee. Composer Toby Marlow is the first non-binary winner. Wow. And last but certainly not least, both Lena Horne and James Earl Jones are having theaters renamed for them. So, yes, major steps toward inclusion!"

During the ceremony, Jennifer Hudson reached EGOT status after "A Strange Loop" scooped Best Musical, adding the trophy to the Best Supporting Actress Oscar she received for 2007's "Dreamgirls", her pair of Grammys, one for her self-titled album in 2018 and a second for "The Color Purple", which was named Best Musical Theater Album in 2017, and her Daytime Emmy, which she received last year for "Baby Yaga", in which she voices Forest and also co-produced.

"Modern Family" actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson won his first ever Tony Award, taking home Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play for the revival of "Take Me Out". He said in his acceptance speech, "25 years ago, I worked at the Theatre Circle gift shop on 44th Street, which happens to be three doors down from the Hayes Theater, where 'Take Me Out' is playing."

"And I would sit in there and I would be folding my Phantom of the Opera T-shirts and watching actors walk by the windows on the way to their half-hour call and I thought, 'Oh God, I hope that's me someday,' " he went on saying. "So to stand in front of this community I admire and love so much just means so much to me. I cannot believe I get to do this for a living."

Best Performance by an Actor and Actress in a Leading Role in a Play went to Simon Russell Beale for "The Lehman Trilogy", which also won Best Play, and Deirdre O'Connell for "Dana H" respectively, while Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play went to Phylicia Rashad for "Skeleton Crew".

On the musical side, Leading Actor went to "MJ" star Myles Frost and Leading Actress was won by Joaquina Kalukango for "Paradise Square". The Featured Actor and Actress prizes were won by "Company" stars Matt Doyle and Patti LuPone.

See full list of 75th Tony Awards winners here.
INSTAR IMAGES/John Rainford Celebrity

The 96-year-old British monarch, who recently celebrated her Platinum Jubilee, defeats King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, who reigned for 70 years and 126 days between 1927 and 2016.

Jun 14, 2022

AceShowbiz - Queen Elizabeth is the world's second-longest reigning modern monarch. The 96-year-old British monarch, who recently celebrated her Platinum Jubilee, has overtaken King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, who reigned for 70 years and 126 days, between 1927 and 2016.

However, the Queen, who is the longest-serving British monarch, remains some way behind Louis XIV of France, who reigned for 72 years and 110 days. The Queen has battled mobility issues in recent months, which forced her to miss a number of events during the Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

Despite this, the Queen was able to appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace last weekend, when she waved to the crowds on The Mall in London. The monarch subsequently released a statement, saying she was "humbled and deeply touched" by the Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

The Queen, who is also the longest-serving female head of state, said, "When it comes to how to mark 70 years as your Queen, there is no guidebook to follow. It really is a first. But I have been humbled and deeply touched that so many people have taken to the streets to celebrate my Platinum Jubilee."

"While I may not have attended every event in person, my heart has been with you all and I remain committed to serving you to the best of my ability, supported by my family," the Queen added. "I have been inspired by the kindness, joy and kinship that has been so evident in recent days, and I hope this renewed sense of togetherness will be felt for many years to come. I thank you all most sincerely for your good wishes and for the part you have all played in these happy celebrations."
For a long time now, CSR has been an integral part of corporates to go beyond the usual business and give back to the society. The ultimate purpose of CSR is to maximise shared value among organisations, employees, customers, shareholders, and community members. Today, CEOs are very closely aligned with CSR and ESG activities of their companies.

To observe World Environment Day, HDFC Bank recently announced the launch of four unique films that highlight the banks social and environmental initiatives under its flagship programme  Parivartan. Each film focuses on a different cause with which HDFC Bank is associated and shows how the future can be better if we change things today.

In conversation with Adgully, Ravi Santhanam, Chief Marketing Officer, Head - Corporate Communications, Head - Liability Products and Managed Programs, HDFC Bank, speaks at length about the Banks commitment to delivering large-scale positive impact.

Why is ESG so important for a reputed financial brand like HDFC Bank? How do you plan to leverage the same? How will it help in the growth of the bank?

HDFC Bank is Indias largest private sector bank and among the top CSR spenders in the country today. We believe that we need to lead responsibly and use our brand to create a positive social impact. Climate change is possibly one of the biggest threats to humanity and global warming has huge potential to disrupt both lives and livelihood. Therefore, as a socially responsible corporate citizen, we have been taking small but sure steps to mitigate the impact of global warming.

Our commitment to delivering large-scale positive impact prompted us to include sustainability as one of our core values. Today, we factor in environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects while designing our products, processes and policies. Our ESG strategy focuses on climate change, community and society, along with practices related to people, customers, lending, procurement, and governance. We have a Board level committee that sets targets and identifies opportunities for improvement in areas of emissions, energy, water and waste.

Our success as an organisation is defined by the long-term well-being of the people we engage with, the places in which we operate and the planet that we leave behind for our future generations. We believe that these initiatives will be key drivers of growth.

Could you share some key highlights of some of the activities in the ESG space in the last few years that the bank has been doing and how are they shaping up?

HDFC Bank has set a target to become carbon neutral by FY32. As part of this commitment, we have set a goal to plant 2.5 Million trees by FY25 and in fact being passionate the initiative, weve covered the half way mark on this. There We also consider ESG parameters when it comes to financing and we do not fund projects that have an adverse impact on environment, health, safety (EHS) levels.

Were exploring new opportunities in the environmental and social space, including those like Green Bonds. We focus on employee diversity & inclusion, training & development, and employment practices. We invest in communities through our Sustainable Livelihood Initiative, Holistic Rural Development Program, Teach the Teacher Initiative and we provide access to financial services to communities.

All these initiatives and more, come under the umbrella of our flagship program- Parivartan and they aim to contribute towards the economic and social development of the country. Through Parivartan, we have impacted 10 crore lives.

Whats the objective of the 4 films? Who are you targeting the same and how did you draw the insights for the films?

HDFC Bank has been working across a host of programmes by way of CSR for over two decades. With this campaign we wanted to highlight several important issues, as well as share the work that has been done by the Bank in some of these areas.

Whats your communication strategy for the films and if you could elaborate the creative thought on the films?

Film is a powerful medium  we wanted to present, through dramatic and compelling visuals, the reality of the bleak future that is imminent if we dont act more responsibly now. On the positive side, the films share the good outcome of the initiatives undertaken by the Bank that are already contributing to making lives better.

Our campaign, conceptualised by Leo Burnett, shows how the future can be better for us all if we act more responsibly now. Small changes at an individual level are as important as those adopted at a macro level.

The four films, which shed light on the different causes that HDFC Bank is associated with, take a dive into the future. We see the repercussions of our collective actions if we do not think and act more responsibly for a better tomorrow. We are then, transported back to the present where we see how HDFC Bank is working today to enable a better tomorrow.

How do you plan to get the maximum mileage for the films? Any structured media plan is drawn to reach your defined audience?

We have planned for TV+ (TV, Digital, Cinema, OOH  innovative activations) high impact and high frequency media plan for over seven weeks. We are running these on prominent News and Business channels, through both, FCT and Non-FCT elements, including content integrations. Social Media platforms were actively used to share the message with a wider audience.
PVR Cinemas, Indias largest and leading film exhibitor has joined hands with Isha Outreach in India as its National Partner for the worlds biggest ecological movement to Save Soil.

The 3-year association entails providing its cinema screens and spaces for promoting Save Soil Movement initiated by Sadhguru and enlists the support of its customers through monetary contribution for Cauvery Calling - the worlds largest farmer-driven ecological movement, while booking a ticket on PVR Website and Mobile App. In addition, Isha volunteers would engage with PVRs customers making them aware of the cause on UN designated days such as World Environment Day on June 5 and World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought on June 17.

Save Soil is a global movement launched by Sadhguru to save the soil from extinction and bring the necessary policies to address the catastrophic issue faced by humanity. In this inclusive undertaking of Save Soil Movement, governments, UN agencies, global leaders, organizations, eminent members of the environmental and scientific community, corporate and individual citizens are uniting behind a common purpose to address the alarming crisis of Soil Extinction. The Save Soil Movement will work towards turning the worlds attention to our dying soil, inspiring 3.5 billion people to support policy redirections to safeguard, nurture and sustain soil and driving national policy changes in all the nations toward raising and maintaining the organic content of soil to a minimum of 3-6%.

Further as an endeavor to expand its support leading to a sustainable India, PVR is giving an opportunity to its customers to participate in the Cauvery Calling on-ground program of ISHA by making a monetary contribution to the larger goal of saving the Cauvery River. Cauvery Calling will support farmers to plant 242 crore trees in Cauvery basin, across Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Cauvery Calling aims to revitalize the Cauvery River, enrich the soil and improve water retention supporting farmers to adopt tree-based agriculture. Cauvery Calling is a first of its kind campaign, setting the standard for how Indias rivers (the countrys lifelines) can be revitalized. It will initiate the revitalization of the Cauvery River and transform the lives of 84 million people. The project comes under the ambit of Rally for Rivers, the worlds largest ecological movement, providing a comprehensive solution to save Indias rivers and opportunity to establish a global blueprint for rivers across the tropical world  home to 4.7 billion people.

Commenting on the National Partnership with PVR, Sadhguru, Founder-Isha Foundation said, "Right now, the most important aspect of conserving nature is the soil. If we do not stop soil degradation, the planet will not be conducive for human beings to live upon it. UN agencies and responsible scientists are clearly saying, by 2045 we will be producing forty percent less food, and our population will be over 9 billion. It is wonderful that organizations like PVR are standing up to make this awareness grow in the world. Congratulations to PVR and its viewers. I beseech all the PVR viewers to reach out to everybody that you know, and especially those you do not know, to spread awareness about the impending danger of soil extinction."

As a socially responsible organization, PVR is aligned to the Climate Action SDG goal of the United Nations and has committed to lower its emission and reduce its carbon footprint. It has adopted a wide array of technology and changes in operational practices to reduce emissions and conserve energy for a sustainable future.

Announcing the association with Isha Outreach for their Save Soil and Cauvery Calling Movement, Mr. Gautam Dutta, CEO, PVR Limited said, We pledge to recognize the soil crisis and are committed to raise awareness about soil degradation through our media and our loyal patrons. We are expressing support for the Save Soil and Cauvery Calling movement by amplifying the save soil message in our cinemas and digital assets. We urge our customers to join our efforts in contributing to the environment and climate action program of Isha Outreach. Through our humble approach, we would leave behind a planet for future generation of producing nutritious food and sustaining all life.
ISLAMABAD, June 13 (Xinhua) -- At the invitation of Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will visit Iran from June 14 to June 15, said the Pakistani Foreign Ministry on Monday.

During his official visit to Tehran, Zardari will hold a detailed exchange of views with his Iranian counterpart on all areas of mutual interest, the ministry said in a statement, adding that the visit is part of regular high-level exchanges between the two countries.

The Pakistani foreign minister will also hold a meeting with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other officials, the ministry said.

During the delegation-level talks, the two sides will review all facets of bilateral relations, including trade and economic ties, electricity supply from Iran, border sustenance markets, road and rail connectivity, and facilitation of pilgrims, it said.

Both sides will also review the regional security situation with a particular focus on developments in Afghanistan and South Asia.

The foreign ministry said that Pakistan and Iran enjoy close cooperative ties, based on shared geography, cultural affinities, and historic people-to-people linkages.

"These fraternal relations have been further strengthened through frequent high-level exchanges," said the ministry. 
A vehicle moves past a border sign near Newry, Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom, on June 14, 2022. The United Kingdom (UK) on Monday introduced a bill to change parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol, a post-Brexit trade deal, while the European Union (EU) said unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust and threatened legal action. (Photo by Colum Lynch/Xinhua)

LONDON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The United Kingdom (UK) on Monday introduced a bill to change parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol, a post-Brexit trade deal, while the European Union (EU) said unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust and threatened legal action.

"PRACTICAL PROBLEMS"

The UK government said in a statement that the bill will allow it to address "the practical problems the Protocol has created in Northern Ireland" in four areas: burdensome customs processes, inflexible regulation, tax and spend discrepancies, and democratic governance issues.

"These problems include disruption and diversion of trade and significant costs and bureaucracy for business," it said. They are also undermining the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, and have led to the collapse of the power-sharing arrangements at the Northern Ireland Assembly, the government said.

Signed in 1998 after three decades of conflict, the landmark Belfast Agreement established a power-sharing system of government, including an Executive and Assembly. It underpins peace in Northern Ireland, its constitutional settlement, and its institutions.

Recently, it has become more urgent that disputes over the protocol should be resolved since Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist party, won elections in Northern Ireland for the devolved assembly.

Coming second in the elections, the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party said it would not sit in the assembly. The party is opposed to the protocol, saying it creates a trade border in the Irish Sea.

Meanwhile, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the bill "will end the untenable situation where people in Northern Ireland are treated differently to the rest of the United Kingdom, protect the supremacy of our courts and our territorial integrity."

UK-EU RIFT

The protocol has deepened a rift between the UK and EU. Under the protocol, Northern Ireland is part of the UK's customs territory but is subject to the EU's customs code, value-added tax (VAT) rules and single market rules for goods.

Despite the two sides' agreement in October 2019, the protocol has caused divisions over how some of the rules should be implemented, particularly for goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

"The UK has engaged extensively with the EU to resolve the problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol over the past 18 months," the UK government said in its statement.

"However, it has become clear the EU proposals don't address the core problems created by the Protocol. They would be worse than the status quo, requiring more paperwork and checks than today," it added.

In response, European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said on Monday that the UK's unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust.

"Renegotiating the Protocol is unrealistic. No workable alternative solution has been found to this delicate, long-negotiated balance," Sefcovic said.

The European Commission said it will consider continuing the infringement procedure which was launched against the UK government in March 2021, but subsequently put on hold.

The Commission will also consider launching new infringement procedures that protect the EU Single Market from the risks that the violation of the Protocol creates for EU businesses and for the health and safety of EU citizens, according to Sefcovic. 
Most of us already know how we are going to vote in November. "Use Your Head and Vote Red" is a good answer to the other side's "Vote Blue, No Matter Who." We know in advance how the elections are going to turn out in hardcore Republican and Democratic states and enclaves. We do not expect California or New York to elect Republicans, nor are Wyoming and Idaho likely to elect Democrats. All the other races will, however, be decided by the swing voters who hold the balance of power, and it is to them we must appeal.

Sun Tzu noted in his Art of War that one should attack what the enemy cannot defend and defend what the enemy cannot attack. This is why we must direct our complete attention to BLM and its ties with the Democrat party.

BLM's Fall from Grace

The murder of George Floyd propelled Black Lives Matter into the forefront of American politics, where people perceived it as a champion of civil rights and police reform. Its subsequent behavior demonstrated instead that it is little if at all better than the evils against which it claimed to fight. All of these should become Republican talking points this summer and, more importantly, in September and October prior to the midterm elections.

BLM has provoked and incited the very kinds of incidents that have resulted in the justifiable homicides of Black people along with two of Kyle Rittenhouse's Caucasian assailants. When BLM libelously accuses a police officer of "murdering," for example, Hakim Littleton, who is on bodycam video pointing a gun at the head of another officer, it is telling people it is OK to point guns at police officers. Then they wonder why Black people and "allies" who act on this guidance get shot.

When BLM protests the shooting of Ricardo Munoz, who is on bodycam video advancing on a police officer while brandishing a knife, it is telling its listeners that it is OK to menace police with knives. The same goes for calling it murder when a cop shot Ma'Khia Bryant, who was on bodycam video with an upraised knife over another Black person.

When BLM libelously accuses Kyle Rittenhouse of "murdering" two of his assailants, they are telling people it is OK to commit strong-arm robbery involving a firearm, as Rittenhouse's first assailant did, and to run after somebody while yelling violent threats and brandishing weapons.

When a (Caucasian) BLM activist records a video that shows how to break into occupied cars, cut seat belts, and "remove" drivers, she is telling them how to get shot legally, run over legally, and/or sent to prison for up to a life sentence in places like Florida that seem (not legal advice) to call this "burglary-battery."

Black Lives Matter has also endorsed looting, a property-only crime that does not justify the deployment of deadly force. If, however, the looting involves a physical confrontation with, for example, a store owner, it can easily escalate to robbery (forcible taking), which does justify deadly force. It can also leave the looter with the kind of felony record that BLM complains ruins Black lives. Teen Vogue reports that one looter is facing three to seven years in prison for stealing some dish soap even though the dish soap was doubtlessly worth far less than the $500 cap for misdemeanor petty theft. The individual in question was, however, charged with burglary and looting, which escalates the action to a felony. The article adds that 160 people are facing felony charges for similar behavior, and BLM as represented by one of its leaders said it was OK to do this. Black Lives Matter, as represented by Patrisse Cullors, has denied the right of Israel to exist. Cullors said to "step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project that's called Israel." Neither the Anti-Defamation League nor the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance defines mere disagreement with the policies of Israel as anti-Semitic, but both classify denial of Israel's right to exist as such. The Democrat party, as of June 11, 2022, still links to BLM Organizing Resources as well as Al Sharpton's National Action Network, the arguably racist and anti-Semitic hate group that chanted racist slogans like "white interloper" outside Freddy's Fashion Mart in 1995. A deranged individual later acted on this hate speech by setting the store on fire and killing seven people, including a Black security guard, whom the NAN depicted as a "cracker-lover."

The Democrat party page links to BLM petitions, and this is but one click away from a page that says, among other things, "Support Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement" and links in turn to the BDS movement itself. I am sure that, if the RNC website linked, even via two clicks, to a white supremacist website, the Democrats would be all over it, and rightly so, but the Democrats have no problem linking to the Hamas-American Bund. Black Lives Matter was exposed as long ago as 2020 for using 501(c)(3) tax-exempt resources to campaign against Donald Trump. The organization no longer claims to be able to accept tax-deductible contributions, nor does the contribution link to ActBlue Charities appear on its website. If the IRS acted against BLM's 501(c)(3) status, it has certainly not confided in me, nor should it do so, but there is plenty of precedent. First, political activity is a top priority for investigation by the IRS's Exempt Organization Division, as shown by the fast-track Political Activity Compliance Initiative (PACI). Second, the IRS has revoked numerous tax exemptions, generally from churches that have tried to influence elections. The Church at Pierce Creek, for example, lost its tax exemption for publishing an ad that said Christians should not vote for Bill Clinton. The material BLM published on its website was equally explicit against Donald Trump. Allegations of election fraud in 2020 carry less and less weight with swing voters, who hold the balance of power to decide the 2022 elections. Evidence of BLM's efforts, while accepting tax-deductible contributions, to influence the 2020 presidential election, including, among other things, an explicit interview in which Patrisse Cullors said the goal was to get Trump out of office, plus a website that equated Trump with a Nazi with a neck tattoo, is, on the other hand incontrovertible. The swing voters can see for themselves how BLM abused their trust and the trust of the American people in general.

All of these are strong arguments to "use your head and vote red" this November.

Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. The author is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.

Image: Johnny Silvercloud via Flickr (cropped), CC BY-SA 2.0.
NEWS PROVIDED BY

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

June 13, 2022

NEW YORK, June 13, 2022 /Christian Newswire/ -- Last week, Judy Woodruff of PBS interviewed David Kertzer, author of a new book on Pope Pius XII and his dealings with the Nazis. We invited Ron Rychlak, Mississippi University law professor and member of the Catholic League's board of advisors, to respond to the interview. He is one of the nation's most prominent authorities on this subject. The following is by Ronald J. Rychlak:

The argument over Pope Pius XII and his leadership of the Catholic Church during World War II is once again in the news. This time it is driven by a book written by David Kertzer, a professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University. The book is called The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler.

Kertzer was one of the first researchers to explore newly opened archives from the papacy of Pius XII, and his book includes some interesting information. The author acknowledges that it does not contain a single "smoking gun" , but that has not prevented headlines like this one from the PBS News Hour: "Vatican documents show secret back channel between Pope Pius XII and Adolph Hitler." In the associated interview, Kertzer says that his "most shocking finding" from the newly opened archives is that within weeks of Pius XII's 1939 coronation, Hitler sent Prince Phillip of Hesse to engage in negotiations with the Vatican.

Surprise, surprise, the pope negotiated with the prince. Of course he did! Some commentators have read this as evidence of a friendly relationship between Pius and the Nazi leader. It was no such thing. Pius understood that his Church and her mission were seriously threatened by the regime. He wanted to assure the safety of those people in his charge and the ability of the Church to continue saving souls.

Consider Pope Francis's recent agreement with the Communist Chinese government. It is not an endorsement of the Communist Chinese government; he wants to protect his Church and his people. Similarly, his reluctance to condemn Putin by name is not an approval of Russian aggression. It is recognition that such words would not favorably impact Putin's behavior.

The negotiations about which Kertzer writes took place in 1939-41, before the final solution and the death camps. Pius did not know how Nazi persecution would evolve, and by maintaining relations with the German government, he hoped to push things in a favorable direction.

Kertzer says of the negotiations, "we didn't know about these until just now." That's not completely true. Italy's Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, made reference to the negotiations in his wartime diary, and Jonathan Petropoulos analyzed them in his 2006 book, noting that "Polish clerics were already suffering tremendously at this time," and the pope might have hoped to improve the situation. This is a matter worthy of study, and thanks are due to Kertzer for finding more information, but the pre-publication articles and interviews are asserting matters well beyond what the evidence justifies. (And there is nary a mention of Pius XII's involvement in the efforts to assassinate Hitler.)

The other significant episode the PBS interview focuses on is the October 16, 1943, roundup of Roman Jews. This started with the Nazis demanding 50 kilograms of gold to assure that there would be no deportations. Fearing the worst, the Chief Rabbi of Rome approached the Vatican. Pope Pius XII agreed to an unlimited interest-free loan even though everyone knew that it could not be repaid anytime soon.

Unfortunately, the ransom merely bought a bit of time. As Kertzer explained, "On October 16, 1943, the S.S. had lists of all the Jews in Rome, and went door to door and tried to arrest all of Rome's Jews, thousands of them." They were successful in arresting about 1,260. According to Kertzer, "What we now learn from these recently opened archives is that the Vatican worked very hard to show that some of them had been baptized and therefore shouldn't be considered Jews." Under Church teaching, anyone who was baptized as a Catholic was a Catholic, regardless of heritage. Those were the people for whom the Vatican had standing with the Germans. It does not mean that these were the only people about whom the pope cared.

Immediately upon learning of the roundups, Pius filed protests through three channels. In the PBS interview, Kertzer gave a brief account of only one of them, Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione's meeting with German Ambassador Weizsacker, in which he demanded that the Germans "stop these arrests at once."

It has long been known that Weizsacker asked Maglione for permission not to report this conversation back to his German superiors, and the cardinal agreed. Kertzer leaves the impression that this means the Church was not seriously concerned about the arrestees. That is most unfair.

When Weizsacker made the request, he had already told Maglione that he was "attempting to do something for the unfortunate Jews." Maglione thanked him for that and left the next step to Weizsacker's judgment. A different response would not have assured a better result. Weizsacker later explained, "Any protest by the Pope would only result in the deportations being really carried out in the thoroughgoing fashion. I know how our people react in these matters."

The new archives should shed light on this sad period of human history. Unfortunately, abbreviated accounts reported in news stories that are intended to sell books are more likely to produce heat. Fear not. The truth may take longer, but it will come out.
As our country deals with the foreign policy challenges of Chinas bid for global dominance and Russias aggression in Ukraine, it could use a dose of the mature realism of Walter Lippmann, who was, at one time, the countrys most influential journalist.

Following his idealist periodwriting at The New Republic and advising the Wilson administration during and after the First World WarLippmann matured after observing international relations between the world wars. His eventual hardheaded realpolitik was most evident in his two World War II books, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (1943) and U.S. War Aims (1944), and his magnificent postwar book, The Cold War (1947).

In U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, Lippmann explained the controlling principle of foreign policy: Bringing a nations commitments and power into balance; that is, maintaining its objectives and its power in equilibrium, assuring that the countrys means are equal to its purposes. The constant preoccupation of the true statesman, he wrote, is to achieve and maintain this balance.

Lippmann surveyed the evolution of American foreign policy over the 19th century and into the 20th. With specific regard to his controlling principle doctrine, Lippmann observed that the Monroe Doctrine committed the nation to preventing new colonization by outside powers in the Western Hemisphere, even though the United States initially lacked the power to enforce it. However, because Americas and Great Britains interests here coincided, British sea power enforced the Monroe Doctrine. After the Spanish-American War, the U.S. acquired the Philippines and Guam, and, having previously annexed Hawaii, became an Asian and Pacific power.

Teddy Roosevelt and strategists like Alfred Thayer Mahan recognized that our interests required a stronger navy and a canal on the Central American isthmusbalancing resources with commitments. And Lippmann, after previously justifying American involvement in World War I in Wilsonian terms, now contended that the war was not fought to make the world safe for democracy or to create a League of Nations. It was fought because Americas security depended on having friendly and strong partners on Europes and Asias shores.

In the 1930s, Lippmann argued, the gap between our commitments and power dangerously widened. Eventually, there is a reckoning for nations...who have obligations that are not covered by their resources.

FDR, though he understood what needed to be done to protect U.S. interests during the mid-to-late 1930s, refused to take political risks to close the gap between commitments and resources. That political cowardice meant we were unprepared when war came. Our statesmen clung to the ideals of peace and disarmament while Germany, Japan, Italy, and the Soviet Union armed and sought to expand their power.

For Lippmann, the true purpose of a nations foreign policy is to provide for the security of the nation in peace and in war. The nations vital interests must be explained to the American people and safeguarded so that they can be defended successfully in case of war. He ridiculed disarmament movements that lose sight of the need to protect vital interests and defined vital interests as those interests which the people of the nation are agreed they must defend at the risk of their lives.

The United States strategic defenses, wrote Lippmann, extend across both oceans and to all the trans-oceanic lands from which an attack by sea or by air can be launched. They extended, in other words, to the coasts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. He explained that the power potential of the Old World (Eurasia-Africa) in terms of population and resources was (and is) greater than that of the New World (the Americas).

America needed to form[] dependable alliances in the Old World. Americas security, Lippmann wrote, depended on a balance of power in the Old Worlda balance that prevented a Eurasian power from becoming capable of aggression outside of the [Eurasian] continent. But American statesmen must also appreciate the limits of power, Lippmann wrote and, by balancing commitments with power be able to (quoting George Washington) choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Image: Walter Lippmann. Public domain.

As the Allies began to win WWII, Lippmann wrote U.S. War Aims, in which he recognized that the postwar world would be divided into spheres of influence between the Western powers and the Soviet Union. He abandoned all Wilsonian notions of self-determination of peoples and embraced geopolitical realism as prudent foreign policy. Lippmanns biographer, Ronald Steel, explained that Lippmann

now had worked out a consistent diplomacy based on military power, alliances, spheres of influence, and a cold calculation of national interests. Steel sensed in Lippmanns worldview a combination of Mahans sea power theories, Nicholas Spykmans geopolitics, and Clausewitzs conception of war as politics by violent means.

Lippmanns realism blossomed in his next book The Cold War, which collected critical essays he wrote about George F. Kennans famous and influential 1947 article The Sources of Soviet Conduct, explaining his vision of the policy of containment.

Lippmann called Kennans concept of containment a strategic monstrosity. First, it was overly optimistic that Soviet power would eventually decay on its own. This was, Lippmann wrote, wishful thinking and hoping for the best, which is not a sound basis for foreign policy. Second, Kennans proposed policy ceded the initiative to the Soviets, while we were to react and respond to their initiatives. American military power and diplomacy, Lippmann wrote, should be used to redress the balance of power which has been upset by the war. It is not designed, he continued, to a strategy of containing, waiting, countering, blocking, with no more specific objective than the eventual frustration of the opponent.

Third, the United States lacked sufficient resources to maintain by itself a defensive perimeter along the Soviet borderlands in Europe and Asia. That would require allies all along the Soviet periphery, and such allies or client states, Lippmann suggested, would not be reliable and would be disorganized, disunited, and feeble. Supporting those allies would come at an incalculable cost. It would also unnecessarily disperse our forces.

American foreign policy, Lippmann wrote, should be based on the realities of the balance of power in Europe and Asia. Kennans concept of containment, Lippmann wrote, like the Truman Doctrine, would mean in practice an unending intervention in all the countries that are supposed to contain the Soviet Union. We should not be embarking on an ideological crusade to make Jeffersonian democrats of the peoples of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. And the ultimate aim of our policy should be European self-sufficiency.

Finally, Lippmann argued against America becoming involved and entangled all over the world in disputes that we alone cannot settle. There are placese.g., Chinawhere he believed we lacked the power, the means, the knowledge, and the influence to control events. Kennans concept and the Truman Doctrine, he repeated, would entangle the United States in destructive and exhausting commitments.

The optimal outcome of our foreign policy, Lippmann wrote, would be for the American and Soviet armies to evacuate Europe, with Europe organizing its own defense against possible Soviet aggression.

Lippmann later became a fierce critic of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, not on moral grounds, but based on his notion of balancing interests, commitments, and resources. Vietnam, he said, was not a vital interest of the United States. We are not, he wrote, a global fire department appointed to stop communism everywhere. Lippmann supported Nixons plan to withdraw from Vietnam while negotiating peace with honor.

Today, our leaders have recognized that the U.S. must pivot or rebalance to the Indo-Pacific region but, to date, the pivot has been more rhetoric than reality. The Ukraine war has stalled the pivot as we pour resources into Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, China marches on with its Belt and Road Initiativea geopolitical advance masquerading as infrastructure development throughout Eurasia and Africa. Lippmann would recognize that Russias aggression in Ukraine does not affect a vital U.S. interest, whereas China is seeking to replace the United States as the worlds leading economic and military power.

A Russian victory in Ukraine would not change the overall balance of power in Europe. A Chinese victory over Taiwan (and the U.S.) in the South China Sea, however, would upset the Indo-Pacific balance of power. Our limited resources should be directed there, not to a region long recognized as Russias sphere of influence.

As Ronald Steel wrote, for Lippmannthe mature realist Lippmannforeign policy was not about morality; it was about geopolitics. And it is geopolitics, not high-sounding, emotional appeals, that should guide our foreign policy.
The rule of thumb with Democrats is that, when they accuse you of doing something, you can be assured that it is they who are doing it. A great example of that was during Jimmy Kimmel's loving interview with a mostly incoherent Joe Biden. What stood out was Biden's statement that he wouldn't issue executive orders on gun control because "I don't want to emulate Trump's abuse of the Constitution and constitutional authority." In fact, Trump was very careful to stay within constitutional lines. Biden is not, and, on Friday, a federal district court in Texas shot him down on one of his worst immigration policies.

Federal law is clear: under 8 USC 1226(c) and 1231(a)(2), if the federal government catches up with aliens (whether illegal or not) who have committed specific crimes or been the subject of final removal orders, then the government "shall" detain them pending a final disposition. Nevertheless, in a series of memoranda, Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, essentially instructed DHS personnel to ignore those people the law said "shall" be detained (drug- and human-traffickers, money-launderers, etc.) and, instead, prioritized other issues and made detention a matter of discretion and executive priorities. The net result was that aliens convicted of these crimes were allowed to roam free in America.



Image: Caravan in Mexico heading to the U.S. border (and notice all those unattached men). YouTube screen grab.

The States of Texas and Louisiana filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas demanding that the U.S. government abide by the statutes. On June 10, the district court issued its order agreeing with the states that the DHS lacked authority to rewrite federal statutes. Although the court conceded that an administration must always prioritize its resources, it noted that, in this case, the Biden administration seemed to have gone out of its way to decrease the number of available holding facilities to justify its refusal to abide by the law.

Texas A.G. Ken Paxton was justifiably pleased:

BREAKING: I just dealt Biden another massive defeat in fed court. He tried to throw out immigration law, saying DHS didnt have to detain criminal illegals. The court now says he must. I will always hold the line with the Dems and the rule of law. https://t.co/EfHXWBidAB  Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) June 10, 2022

What struck me was that this is just another instance of the complete lawlessness of the Biden administration. The Biden open border is a gross and grotesque violation of American immigration laws.

Also, as Clarice Feldman detailed, the Democrats are seemingly encouraging someone to assassinate conservative Supreme Court justices. We see that in Chuck Schumer's threats, the Biden administration's refusal to acknowledge the laws making it illegal to intimidate justices at their homes, organizations handing out justices' addresses without consequences, and the Democrats' proud refusal to enact laws increasing protections for Supreme Court justices.

For more insight into what is happening vis-a-vis the attack on Kavanaugh (and the obvious plan to go after Amy Comey Barrett), I highly recommend Daniel Greenfield's essay, "The Kavanaugh Assassination Plot is a Leftist Inside Job: Conservative justices are in hiding because AG Garland won't enforce the law."

Another example of lawlessness is the January 6 Committee. It's improperly constituted, not just by violating its own requirements to have some balance on the committee, but because its ideological imbalance destroys any semblance of due process. Having decided in advance that the committee's primary goal is to destroy Donald Trump, it has now announced that, in this kangaroo, tin-pot tyrant forum, they've assembled enough "evidence" to get Merrick Garland to indict Trump. And you know that Garland, who makes former A.G.s Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch look like models of rectitude, will be happy to oblige.

What we're seeing is the complete breakdown of our constitutional government at the very highest levels. I applaud the judge in Texas who pushed back, but that's just a pebble trying to divert a raging river of lawlessness. This cannot end well, although I certainly hope that the midterm elections put into place a Congress willing and able to put a brake on Biden's and his team's blatant refusal to abide by the laws of this country.
Joe Biden's Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, whose open-borders policies have created Swiss-cheese loopholes for virtually everyone in the world who wants to come here outside the immigration process, apparently didn't even follow his own lax policy directives.

That's why he lost yet another lawsuit brought on by the states of Texas and Louisiana about the law requiring him to deport illegal aliens convicted of felonies serious enough to land them in prison. A federal judge jumped down his throat with a 96-page ruling.

According to Fox News:

A federal judge on Friday struck down the Biden administration's restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which dramatically limits which illegal immigrants the agency can arrest and deport  marking the latest legal defeat for the Biden administration on immigration policy. Texas Judge Drew Tipton, responding to a lawsuit filed by Texas and Louisiana which said the rules violated federal law, shut down the policy but stayed the implementation of the ruling for seven days to give the Biden administration time to appeal. The administration in September issued a memorandum that made official prior guidance that limited ICE agents to focusing on three groups of illegal immigrants: Recent border crossers, threats to national security and threats to public safety. The agency has also told agents to consider factors like military service.

But in fact, he wasn't even deporting the criminals among the million-plus number of unvetted illegals he's let roam around the country.

He's quite the liar to the public he is sworn to protect and serve.

Let's get this straight: illegals come here, commit crimes against innocent Americans, get caught, get convicted, get thrown in jail where they belong, and Mayorkas still doesn't think that's good enough a reason to deport them afterward.

Worse still, he says he deports criminals  and he doesn't.

According to Fox, his standards for deportation are very low indeed:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in his memo that it meant that just being in the country illegally was not enough to get arrested or deported by ICE  part of a dramatic overhauling of immigration policy by the Biden administration. "We have fundamentally changed immigration enforcement in the interior," Mayorkas declared in an interview with CBS News in January. "For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states that a non-citizen's unlawful presence in the United States will not, by itself, be a basis for the initiation of an enforcement action.

Which is incredible.

Just the act of being illegally present in the U.S. should be deportable right there, because that's what the law says, but Mayorkas has set the bar so far back on upholding and enforcing the law that apparently no one can be deported, not even a convicted criminal who has victimized Americans.

And cripes, deportation is such a gentle solution for such criminal illegals, who effectively are inconvenienced by such a "punishment," given the ease with which they flow back across the border without vetting under the other parts of Mayorkas's policies. Deportation, even if it were effective, is basically a nothingburger punishment, given that nations such as Singapore cane illegals in prison before shipping them back to where they came from.

But it's too much for Mayorkas and the open-borders lobby that he bows to on behalf of Joe Biden.

This is far from the first time the Biden administration has been smacked down on the current catch-and-release open-borders policies.

They've been struck down on the lifting of Title 42, which requires the expulsion of illegal border crossers claiming asylum over COVID concerns, in part because they had absolutely no plan for the expected surge of border-crossers that would follow.

They've also been struck down on the Remain in Mexico policy intended to keep junk asylum claim cases, which are nearly all of them, to a minimum, so that real asylum cases can move forward. An illegal border-crosser with no regard for the law is not going to wait around for an asylum case to be filed before entering, when the border's wide open anyway, and there's no chance he will be returned, even after the asylum case is rejected. Why wait years for the asylum process to wend through? An authentic asylum-seeker, though, would be willing to wait in Mexico, because any port in a storm.

In both instances, and there may be more, the Biden administration's policies, which have seen the release of more than a million unvetted illegals into the country, have been given the brake by federal judges who must rule according to the law.

It's worth noting that the Bidenites have basically ignored the judge's rulings and can be expected to ignore this one, too. But the window is narrowing to this kind of Executive Branch lawlessness. Midterms are coming up, and San Francisco just threw out its wokester district attorney, Chesa Boudin, in part based on the fact that he was refusing to charge Honduran drug-dealers with felonies on the outside fat chance that they could be deported. The winds are shifting. And as Mayorkas undoubtedly appeals, gets his appeal thrown out, and then ignores the law afterward, changes are a-coming.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.
There's one thing that all conservatives can agree on: we don't get a fair shake from the liberal mainstream media. Our positions, concerns, and opinions are continually and intentionally misrepresented and sloughed off by the liberal media in their ongoing campaign to paint all conservatives with the broad brush of prejudice, racism, homophobia, and intolerance. The liberal media are little more than a transparent shill for the Democrat party.

I live in the Boston, Massachusetts media market, one of the country's most ardent bastions of liberal thought.

It is very difficult being a conservative in Massachusetts. While there is actually close to a 50-50 liberal/conservative split in the smaller outlying towns, the major cities like Boston, Worcester, Springfield, Cambridge, etc. are so overwhelmingly liberal that Republicans face an almost insurmountable hill to climb in every election. And in those contests where the conservative seems to have a real shot at victory, the result on election night always comes in at 8:03 p.m. at 62%-38%. And despite the obvious questions concerning fraud and vote-fixing, our Democrat secretary of state predictably refuses to investigate anything. Our State House is 129-29 Democrat, and our state Senate is 37-3 Democrat. Our governor, Charlie Baker, is the dictionary definition of a squishy RINO. The House easily overrides any "for-show" veto the governor sheepishly puts forward.

The national liberal media are well known: the major broadcast networks (ABC/CBS/NBC), CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and the big newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Right behind the Times and the Post in national profile and outlandish liberal bias is our hometown paper, the Boston Globe.

This, then, is the political and media landscape in Massachusetts. Not exactly a friendly place for conservatives.

Imagine my surprise, bordering on shock, when the Boston Globe called me a few weeks ago, out of the clear blue sky. "Your name has been recommended to us as a well-known local Republican writer who can clearly and logically articulate a conservative viewpoint on a given topic. The Globe has a feature that we call 'The Argument' where we pose a question of local interest and present a Democrat and Republican response to that question. Would you be interested in writing the conservative position?"

Sure, I'd be happy to. The gentleman from the Globe was a perfectly pleasant, courteous individual, who didn't seem to have any personal dismissiveness or disregard for my conservatism. He told me what the topic was (a proposal to drastically increase State welfare payments to make up for the discontinuance of some federal COVID-19 benefits) and sent me a link giving me the specifics and background information.

I wrote a logical response as to why attempting to use state money to permanently keep people out of poverty was a bad idea, one that would have the opposite effect of what the do-gooders intended. But knowing my audience (the Globe readership), I took extra efforts to not use any pejoratives like "do-gooders" or any other terms that might be considered offensive to the DEI crowd. I also slathered my argument with effusive praise for the "compassionate intent" of past liberal efforts, so as to give them their self-congratulatory affirmation. As I said, I know my audience.

Nonetheless, I made my points directly and unapologetically: do not raise state welfare payments to make up for federal shortfalls, since this will only promote waste, fraud, and abuse, and it does nothing to permanently better the situation.

I submitted the piece. My Globe contact thanked me for doing it so quickly (overnight) and said he'd be back to me with his edits within a day or so.

Edits? What edits? The piece was airtight as far as grammar and style were concerned. In perfect candor, I am a professional writer, and the amount of grammar/style edits needed for my writing is minimal. Content edit? Can't be  after all, this was an opinion piece, so what's to edit?

Well, it was content. The Globe wanted to soften a few sentences, to the point that I felt it changed their meaning and diminished their impact. I pushed back and politely refused to agree with the changes. I wanted it to read the way I'd written it. I got the feeling that no one ever questions the Globe's editing procedure. ("All submissions, even mine, have to go through the paper's editing process!" my contact told me.) But when I respectfully objected and pushed back, guess what! They relented. My original phraseology was restored.

Apart from feeling somewhat flattered that the Globe proactively sought me out, this was a very instructive, firsthand experience in dealing with a major liberal media player. To me, the lesson is this: be respectful and engaging in your communications style, ever mindful of your audience's proclivities and predispositions. But...don't give in, don't compromise, and don't fold. Too many conservatives surrender at the first sign of resistance, and they fail to make their point.

There is a reader's poll after the article. Our side is getting 43%. Considering the Globe's readership and the fact that in Massachusetts elections, conservatives never seem to reach above 38%, I consider this a win for our side.

Image: Boston Globe.
It all started with an op-ed in the New York Times, floating the idea that "Democrats need fresh, bold leadership for the 2024 presidential race. That can't be Biden."

I wrote about that here.

We know that whatever appears in the Times is carefully vetted by the Washington Democrat establishment. The op-ed was the establishment telling Biden that his record is irredeemable, and he needs to go gently into the night.

It was also a notification to other Democrats that they could now begin to demonstrate signs of rebellion during the midterm campaign.

Enter the Squad's ringleader, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the self-serving and perpetually virtue-signaling congresswoman from New York with the perennially bewildered expression. She is also a word salad chef. She may not be as prolific and catastrophic as the foremost world salad chef, Kamala Harris, but give her time.

AOC appeared on CNN's State of the Union over the weekend to talk about a range of issues. As the interview was in its concluding moments, host Dana Bash asked her if she would endorse Joe Biden in 2024.

AOC almost seemed as though she was going to give a direct answer. She wasn't.

She began with "if the president chooses to run again in 2024," and she then caught herself and broke into a giggle. She continued on a different trajectory and claimed to be "focused on winning this majority right now ... and preserving a majority this year in 2022." She added that "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

Dana Bash didn't look too pleased by this evasion; she probably still has hope in Biden. Like a schoolteacher who was not going to allow her petulant student to slyly dodge her question, Bash pressed AOC, pointing out that she didn't answer "yes."

AOC again skirted the question with the following:

I think if the president has a vision, and that's something certainly we're all willing to entertain and examine when the time comes. I think we should endorse it when we get to it, but I believe that the president's been doing a very good job so far. And, should he run again, I think that we'll take a look at it.

This isn't the first time AOC has taken on Biden. Back in February, AOC had expressed frustration with Biden for not "using his executive power" to pass progressive policies.

Perhaps that is the plan the Democrat establishment has for the midterms.

They first blame Biden solely for all their failures. Next, those contesting during the midterms urge the voters not to punish them for Biden's failure. Democrat lawmakers in Washington can also claim that not much could be done because they didn't have the numbers. Finally, they hold issues such as abortion "rights," gun control, climate change, and environmentalism as a carrot urging voters to give them a bigger majority, and they will deliver. They are effectively informing voters not to worry about Biden because he is history.

But in addition to the Democrat establishment distancing themselves from Biden, it also appears that there may be a power struggle within the Democrat party.

Last week, AOC endorsed state senator Alessandra Biaggi's bid to unseat Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, ahead of their primary clash in a newly drawn district north of New York City.

Maloney is the preferred choice of the establishment, hence AOC's move was lambasted by President Obama's former campaign manager, Jim Messina, as counterproductive for the Democratic Party.

This is so counter-productive. The Supreme Court is about to outlaw abortion. We could lose both houses. So we are going to focus our time running against each other? Now were primarying commited progressives because. . .why? If we lose house its because of dumb shit like this https://t.co/fErOy85yrI  Jim Messina (@Messina2012) June 7, 2022

AOC defended her endorsement by saying she was merely advocating for candidates in response to the party's changing dynamic.

AOC said:

Our party is changing, our party is dynamic. And right now, Millennials are deeply underrepresented in Congress compared to Baby Boomers and Gen Xers back when they were our age, frankly. At the end of the day, we need to have a generational shift in the United States Congress to have a policy shift in the United States Congress.

In addition to her reluctance to endorse Biden, AOC openly talks about the generational shift in the United States Congress and the need to do away with the older establishment candidates and replace them with young leftwing extremists who are "able to excite a base."

The fact that news of differences within the party is surfacing in the liberal media means that real difference and infighting must be considerably more pronounced.

Such chaos within the Democrat party is great short-term news for the GOP. Their victory in the midterms may be more emphatic than previously thought. But it would be most alarming if AOC and her extremist "Squad" manage to extend their clout in Washington.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.
Ah, Starbucks. Were a visitor from another planet to visit the United States, he might well conclude there was a law that there must be a Starbucks on every street in the country. Overpriced, oversweetened, a hangout for the homeless, and a bastion of liberal sentiment, it might seem to the alien visitor that Starbucks needs such a law just to stay in business.

Starbucks is a place where the bizarre is common. There was comedian Hotep Jesus, who was treated like royalty when he went into a Starbucks to demand "reparations coffee" because Black Lives Matter. There was the campaign where baristas were asked to write the words "Race Together" on coffee cups to encourage customers to talk about race. There was the message from CEO Howard Schultz supporting DACA and refugees, a stance that seems particularly strange considering how badly the company treats its employees.



Image: Starbucks coffee shop by Albi Suminodo. CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of the most egregious abuses the company has inflicted on its employees is the open bathroom policy. It has long been a maxim that the customer is always right. It has also been a given that the customer is someone who pays for goods and services. Starbucks broke that longstanding tradition back in 2018, when CEO Shultz declared that he didn't want the coffee chain "to become a public bathroom," but he also didn't want people to feel they were "less than." What he meant by that is anyone's guess, because he did make Starbucks a public bathroom, where anyone could come in to use the bathroom and hang out as long as he wanted without purchasing anything.

After four years, Mr. Schultz is suddenly realizing that catering to people who are not customers is not actually a good business model. His sanctimonious announcement that Starbucks should end its public bathroom policy in order to provide a safe environment for the people who work at the store and the customers who actually pay money to the store is long overdue.

Pandra Selivanov is the author of The Pardon, a story of forgiveness based on the thief on the cross in the Bible.
It was news that sent shudders through every person who supports the Second Amendment: ten Republican senators have signed on to a "framework" that will allegedly improve gun safety in America. You can guess who these RINOs are  it's the same bunch who will always agree to limit American rights to keep up with their friends on the Democrat side of the aisle. And while there are a couple of good ideas in the framework, the rest of it is useless, harmful, and/or unconstitutional.

According to a statement from the bipartisan group of senators, they have an agreement in principle for legislation that includes "needed mental health resources, improves school safety and support for students, and helps ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill can't purchase weapons[.]" More specifically, the senators have agreed on the following concepts, which I've listed along with my comments:

Funding for school safety resources. If this means armed safety officers and hardened infrastructure, that's good. Cynically, I don't think it will mean that.

Extending background checks to juvenile criminal justice records and mental health records for buyers under 21. This is a good idea and might actually stop some of the crazier 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds from beating background checks because their juvenile records are under seal.

Expanding mental health and support services in schools. Schools have become lunatic asylums that encourage race-hatred and push students to deny biological reality. It used to be that liberal colleges took in bright, normal kids and, after four (or five or six) years of marinating these kids in leftist gender and race theories, graduated basket cases. Now those same theories are part of elementary school curricula, so I don't see schools as bastions standing ready to help students' mental health.

Penalties for straw purchases. Meh. The likelihood of this effectively ending gun crimes is limited at best. Other laws already cover this practice in one way or another, and they've been ineffectual.

Federal government funds for state and tribe red flag laws. Red flag laws, which deprive people of a constitutional right without due process, are unconstitutional. That's it. They are. And it's no use saying, "But they might save lives" because they also might cost lives. Imagine a vindictive woman calling in a red flag on her legally armed boyfriend and, once he's disarmed, killing him.

Contrary to leftist and RINO promises, there is no such thing as perfect safety. Everything comes at a cost, and those costs must be balanced.



Image: March for Our Lives protester by Phil Roeder. CC BY 2.0.

Before America went crazy in 2020, around 40,000 people died annually from gunshots (the majority of which were and are suicides). Meanwhile, guns are used defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times a year. To the extent red flag laws run the risk of unconstitutionally interfering with this massive number of defensive uses, they shouldn't be passed and, if passed, should be stricken.

But what about those RINOs who signed on to that red flag monstrosity? Here's the list:

The group on the release includes Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Multiple names on that list voted yes on the $1.2-trillion "infrastructure bill" that is destroying America's economy. Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Bill Cassidy, Rob Portman, and Thom Tillis were all on board with that.

Lindsey Graham, on January 6, urged the Capitol Police to shoot people in the Capitol and wants amnesty for illegal aliens. Pat Toomey has been calling for gun control for almost a decade and castigated Trump for commuting Roger Stone's sentence (handed down as part of the Russia collusion hoax). John Cornyn has been working for years to try to outlaw private gun sales. Mitt Romney voted to impeach Trump, and he and Susan Collins sided with Democrats against Judy Shelton's Federal Reserve Board nominee. Bill Cassidy supported the impeachment trial.

These senators are the old "white shoe" Republicans who believe in big government but want just a little less big government than the Democrats desire. Generally, they like cheap, illegal labor; big spending projects; gun control; and funding foreign wars (something Democrats like when there's a Democrat in the White House but that RINOs always like). They'll always quail if called "racist," and they try to be "hip" by jumping on board the Pride bandwagon. They have little sympathy for or interest in the lives and concerns of ordinary Americans because their entire world is bounded by Congress and the vicious game-playing that takes place there.

If any one of these RINOs belongs to you, drop him an email explaining the problem with red flag laws along with a reminder that Americans aren't made of money.
The Democrats' plan to shift the blame for inner-city mayhem from their own self-destructive policies to guns in general, and the AR-15 in particular, reached something of a high-water mark on Saturday.

At the Missouri variant of the so-called "March for Our Lives Rally," Kansas City's ambitious young mayor, Quinton Lucas, fired away with a comment so false in so many ways that even deposed San Francisco D.A. Chesa Boudin would have been embarrassed to utter it.

Said Lucas for the ages, "I feel like in Missouri these days, if you cross the state line, they say, 'Welcome. Here's an AR-15. Good luck.'" Knowing Kansas City as well as I do  I live in one of its more liberal neighborhoods  I almost choked on my arugula when reading this. Lucas, I suspect, is banking on the Kansas City Star's paywall to protect sensible people from calling him out on this nonsense.

Sensible people long ago ceased to subscribe to the once-essential Star. Today, it reads as though it were composed by the rainbow coalition at the local, not-very-good community college. It is that biased, that bad.

That said, at the end of each year, the Star provides a useful service. It names every homicide victim in the metropolitan area and describes the manner of his/her/zher death. In 2021, Kansas, Missouri witnessed 157 homicides, down from 182 in the record-breaking 2020. None of the deaths in 2021, as far as I could tell, involved an AR-15. There were no mass shootings that year.

The extra-murderous 2020 was the year Lucas took a knee with the largely peaceful protesters then in the process of fatally wounding the city's famed Country Club Plaza. Lucas joined them in chanting, "No justice, no peace."

Lucas appears to have intended his foolish comment as a slap against the historically Republican state of Kansas, an infield pop-up away from Barstow, the pricey prep school Lucas attended on the appropriately named State Line Road. Immediately across the street from Barstow is the largely white, generally prosperous Johnson County, now more populous and powerful than the city that spawned it.

If Lucas intended Kansas as his target, he has a point. There are a lot of AR-15s in Johnson County. Most of my suburban friends own at least one. It is a useful, efficient weapon, which is why it is so popular. I was kind of wishing I owned one when the largely peaceful protesters marched to within a block of my house in 2020. I think I may be the only gun-owner on my block in any case.

Despite the prevalence of these guns, Johnson County recorded five homicides in 2021, four if we exclude the justified police shooting of Nashville, Tennessee resident Darren Dejuan Chandler in a local hotel. All four of the other victims were shot up close, one with a shotgun.

Johnson County is home to about 610,000 people. Kansas City, Missouri has a population of 508,000. If my math is right, in 2021, a Kansas City resident was 47 times more likely to be murdered than a resident of Johnson County, despite all the fearsome AR-15s in Johnson County. Something other than guns is clearly at play here, but Lucas dare not mention root causes if he is to remain in good standing with his fellow progressives.

Now, if we get more "granular"  I hate that word, who invented it?  a KC resident was seven times more likely to get killed by something other than a gun than a Johnson County resident was to be killed by a gun. In fact, a KC resident was almost twice as likely to be stabbed to death as a Johnson County resident was to be shot.

In the three months before Lucas's dangerously misleading comment, the Kansas City area experienced two frightening school incidents. In April, a 14-year-old kid was stabbed to death by a fellow student at a middle school in Lucas's Kansas City.

A month before that, in Johnson County, an 18-year-old black student named Jaylon Desean Elmore brought an untraceable "ghost gun" to school. When confronted by the school resource officer and the principal, both white, Elmore shot and wounded them both. The SRO returned fire, wounding Elmore and ending the threat.

Not liking this narrative, the Star ran an editorial with the churlish headline "Wait for the Olathe East Investigation to label heroes." The Star followed that with articles headlined, "Star fights for affidavits in Olathe East school shooting case" and another, "Could Olathe East have handled the school shooting better?"

For the past sixty years, Democrats have been busily working to destroy the black community, beginning with family-killing welfare policies and culminating recently with a suicidal "defund the police" movement. To cover their tracks, they periodically shift the blame to the tools guaranteed by the one amendment that protects America from Democrats and their lethal minions.

The media are as much to blame as the Dems. They could halve the murder rate within a few years if they just started telling the truth and stopped enabling their Democratic partners in crime.

To learn more, see www.cashill.com.

Image: Maryland govpics
Senior Chinese military officer meets Pakistani chief of army staff

Xinhua) 09:00, June 13, 2022

QINGDAO, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, met with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa on Sunday in east China's coastal city of Qingdao.

Zhang noted that as all-weather strategic cooperative partners, China and Pakistan have maintained close coordination and firmly supported each other. Zhang said that China is ready to strengthen communication and cooperation, deepen practical exchanges, and work for closer military-to-military relations with Pakistan.

Bajwa said the friendship between the two countries is unbreakable and strong as a rock. Pakistan is willing to strengthen dialogue and coordination with the Chinese military, carry out mutually beneficial cooperation, fight terrorist forces, and enhance the capability of both sides to cope with various security challenges. Bajwa added that Pakistan will work with China to safeguard the common interests of the two countries and contribute to regional peace.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 13 - The global turnover of fake 'Italian' food products has risen to an annual 120 billion euros, Coldiretti farmers group said Monday.

"Due to the continued rise of Italian sounding brands, over two-thirds of 'Italian' food products in the world are now fake," it said, adding that the Ukraine war's impact on world trade had exacerbated the situation.

Among the most 'cloned' products are cheeses, led by Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano.

Other top bogus brands are iconic cold cuts like Parma and San Daniele ham and mortadella from Bologna, said Coldiretti.

Richer countries are more likely to have false Italian sounding products, such as the US, where the business is worth some 40 billion euros.

Italy is to step up the fight against Italian sounding food fakes, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told the AGM of food federation Federalimentare in a videolink with the Cibus fair last August.

The government's plan for the extraordinary promotion of Italian products last year "envisages action to defend brands and quality and origin certifications , and to fight Italian sounding products" like Parmesan, he said.

Di Maio said that "damaging practices, like Italian sounding (products), have reached worrying proportions, especially in the agri-food sector".

The Italian foreign ministry, he said, was engaged in "an intense action of combating the counterfeiting of Italian goods on a global scale".

In 2008 The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said Germany broke European Union rules by allowing the name 'Parmesan' to be used for a German cheese that mimicked Italy's glory Parmigiano Reggiano.

Parmigiano Reggiano has the EU's Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status.

The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium has had to become increasingly assertive in defending its product's name from improper use.

It first scored a key legal victory several years ago when it managed to stop an American cheesemaker from using the Parmigiano tag on its grated cheese.

This was the fourth time in ten years that a US company had been forced to remove the label from its product.

In 2003, Italy lobbied to have cloned American parmesan denied permission to export worldwide.

The US product later failed in its bid to be admitted to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Codex Alimentarius.

Parmigiano Reggiano continues to be sold in cloned versions in South America, Japan and Britain, while in France 'parmesan' refers exclusively to the Italian cheese.

In Brazil a pirated version is marketed as Parmesao, while Argentina calls its fake parmesan Regianito.

Online sales of classic Italian food and wine produce are booming but buyers should be careful of scams, a recent study warned.

The sale of fake goods usually divides into two broad categories, the study noted.

Firstly, there are goods that bear fake quality labels implying they have been manufactured to certain standards.

This is apparently a particular problem for Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, which has been plagued by those inferior clones over the years.

The second category covers items labelled as coming from one geographical area but which actually come from another place entirely, such as a Pompeian olive oil made in California.

The imitation of Italy's prime food products is on the rise despite efforts to ban inferior clones, the Foreign Trade Institute (ICE) said recently.

'Italian-sounding' products now rake in some six billion dollars in sales while the genuine articles only make about two billion dollars, said ICE, presenting the results of a survey of North American specialty food stores carried out with the Parma Chamber of Commerce.

Some 97% of 'Italian' pasta sauces and 76% of canned tomatoes on the North American market are bogus, ICE said.

The USA is now churning out 1.7 million tonnes of imitation cheese including 1.3 million tonnes of mock mozzarella, 120 million tonnes of pretend provolone, 111,000 tonnes of phony ricotta and 60,000 tonnes of pirated parmesan.

Gorgonzola is sold as Cambozola in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Britain, where it is a favourite with foodies.

Australia tries even harder to camouflage the name with its Tinboonzola.

Two other cheeses, Asiago from the far north and Robiola from Emilia, are respectively cloned in Wisconsin and Canada.

'Danish Grana' can be found on US shelves alongside American versions of Parma ham and San Daniele ham.

Other fakes include Californian-grown San Marzano tomatoes and pirated Chianti produced in Australia and the US.

In Europe, food authenticity standards are more rigorously observed.

Last year saw a threefold increase in European Union customs seizures of fake Italian products bearing quality labels.

Italy has the highest number of EU seals of approval on its food and drink. (ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 13 - Italy is working against all anti-Jewish discrimination, Premier Mario Draghi said at the Italian Temple in Jerusalem Monday.

"Italian institutions and civil society have for many years been active in the fight against anti-semitism," he said.

"The government is working to combat discrimination of all kinds against the Jews".

He said "in moments of crisis, of uncertainty, of war, such as we are living through, it is even more important to firmly oppose the political use of hatred.

"We must promote tolerance, mutual respect, and love for one another: these are the real ingredients of a lasting peace. The history of your community is an example which should be looked to with pride".

Draghi added that Israeli-Italian ties were being boosted, from the economy to research.

Draghi is meeting Israeli officials with the Ukraine war, energy and anti-semitism high on the agenda. (ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 13 - The global turnover of fake 'Italian' food products has risen to an annual 120 billion euros, Coldiretti farmers group said Monday.

"Due to the continued rise of Italian sounding brands, over two-thirds of 'Italian' food products in the world are now fake," it said, adding that the Ukraine war's impact on world trade had exacerbated the situation.

Among the most 'cloned' products are cheeses, led by Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano.

Other top bogus brands are iconic cold cuts like Parma and San Daniele ham and mortadella from Bologna, said Coldiretti.

Richer countries are more likely to have false Italian sounding products, such as the US, where the business is worth some 40 billion euros.

Italy is to step up the fight against Italian sounding food fakes, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told the AGM of food federation Federalimentare in a videolink with the Cibus fair last August.

The government's plan for the extraordinary promotion of Italian products last year "envisages action to defend brands and quality and origin certifications , and to fight Italian sounding products" like Parmesan, he said.

Di Maio said that "damaging practices, like Italian sounding (products), have reached worrying proportions, especially in the agri-food sector".

The Italian foreign ministry, he said, was engaged in "an intense action of combating the counterfeiting of Italian goods on a global scale". (ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 13 - The global turnover of fake 'Italian' food products has risen to an annual 120 billion euros, Coldiretti farmers group said Monday.

"Due to the continued rise of Italian sounding brands, over two-thirds of 'Italian' food products in the world are now fake," it said, adding that the Ukraine war's impact on world trade had exacerbated the situation.

Among the most 'cloned' products are cheeses, led by Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano.

Other top bogus brands are iconic cold cuts like Parma and San Daniele ham and mortadella from Bologna, said Coldiretti.

Richer countries are more likely to have false Italian sounding products, such as the US, where the business is worth some 40 billion euros.

Italy is to step up the fight against Italian sounding food fakes, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told the AGM of food federation Federalimentare in a videolink with the Cibus fair last August.

The government's plan for the extraordinary promotion of Italian products last year "envisages action to defend brands and quality and origin certifications , and to fight Italian sounding products" like Parmesan, he said.

Di Maio said that "damaging practices, like Italian sounding (products), have reached worrying proportions, especially in the agri-food sector".

The Italian foreign ministry, he said, was engaged in "an intense action of combating the counterfeiting of Italian goods on a global scale".

In 2008 The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said Germany broke European Union rules by allowing the name 'Parmesan' to be used for a German cheese that mimicked Italy's glory Parmigiano Reggiano.

Parmigiano Reggiano has the EU's Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status.

The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium has had to become increasingly assertive in defending its product's name from improper use.

It first scored a key legal victory several years ago when it managed to stop an American cheesemaker from using the Parmigiano tag on its grated cheese.

This was the fourth time in ten years that a US company had been forced to remove the label from its product.

In 2003, Italy lobbied to have cloned American parmesan denied permission to export worldwide.

The US product later failed in its bid to be admitted to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Codex Alimentarius.

Parmigiano Reggiano continues to be sold in cloned versions in South America, Japan and Britain, while in France 'parmesan' refers exclusively to the Italian cheese.

In Brazil a pirated version is marketed as Parmesao, while Argentina calls its fake parmesan Regianito. (ANSA).


Fake 'Italian food' products' global turnover up to 120bn Most cloned culinary glories include Parmigiano and Grana

(ANSAmed) - ROME, JUN 13 - The global turnover of fake 'Italian' food products has risen to an annual 120 billion euros, Coldiretti farmers group said Monday.



"Due to the continued rise of Italian sounding brands, over two-thirds of 'Italian' food products in the world are now fake," it said, adding that the Ukraine war's impact on world trade had exacerbated the situation.



Among the most 'cloned' products are cheeses, led by Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano.



Other top bogus brands are iconic cold cuts like Parma and San Daniele ham and mortadella from Bologna, said Coldiretti.



Richer countries are more likely to have false Italian sounding products, such as the US, where the business is worth some 40 billion euros.



Italy is to step up the fight against Italian sounding food fakes, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told the AGM of food federation Federalimentare in a videolink with the Cibus fair last August.



The government's plan for the extraordinary promotion of Italian products last year "envisages action to defend brands and quality and origin certifications , and to fight Italian sounding products" like Parmesan, he said.



Di Maio said that "damaging practices, like Italian sounding (products), have reached worrying proportions, especially in the agri-food sector".



The Italian foreign ministry, he said, was engaged in "an intense action of combating the counterfeiting of Italian goods on a global scale".



In 2008 The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said Germany broke European Union rules by allowing the name 'Parmesan' to be used for a German cheese that mimicked Italy's glory Parmigiano Reggiano.



Parmigiano Reggiano has the EU's Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status.



The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium has had to become increasingly assertive in defending its product's name from improper use.



It first scored a key legal victory several years ago when it managed to stop an American cheesemaker from using the Parmigiano tag on its grated cheese.



This was the fourth time in ten years that a US company had been forced to remove the label from its product.



In 2003, Italy lobbied to have cloned American parmesan denied permission to export worldwide.



The US product later failed in its bid to be admitted to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Codex Alimentarius.



Parmigiano Reggiano continues to be sold in cloned versions in South America, Japan and Britain, while in France 'parmesan' refers exclusively to the Italian cheese.



In Brazil a pirated version is marketed as Parmesao, while Argentina calls its fake parmesan Regianito. Online sales of classic Italian food and wine produce are booming but buyers should be careful of scams, a recent study warned.



The sale of fake goods usually divides into two broad categories, the study noted.



Firstly, there are goods that bear fake quality labels implying they have been manufactured to certain standards.



This is apparently a particular problem for Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, which has been plagued by those inferior clones over the years.



The second category covers items labelled as coming from one geographical area but which actually come from another place entirely, such as a Pompeian olive oil made in California.



The imitation of Italy's prime food products is on the rise despite efforts to ban inferior clones, the Foreign Trade Institute (ICE) said recently.



'Italian-sounding' products now rake in some six billion dollars in sales while the genuine articles only make about two billion dollars, said ICE, presenting the results of a survey of North American specialty food stores carried out with the Parma Chamber of Commerce. Some 97% of 'Italian' pasta sauces and 76% of canned tomatoes on the North American market are bogus, ICE said.



The USA is now churning out 1.7 million tonnes of imitation cheese including 1.3 million tonnes of mock mozzarella, 120 million tonnes of pretend provolone, 111,000 tonnes of phony ricotta and 60,000 tonnes of pirated parmesan.



Gorgonzola is sold as Cambozola in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Britain, where it is a favourite with foodies.



Australia tries even harder to camouflage the name with its Tinboonzola.



Two other cheeses, Asiago from the far north and Robiola from Emilia, are respectively cloned in Wisconsin and Canada.



'Danish Grana' can be found on US shelves alongside American versions of Parma ham and San Daniele ham. Other fakes include Californian-grown San Marzano tomatoes and pirated Chianti produced in Australia and the US. In Europe, food authenticity standards are more rigorously observed.



Last year saw a threefold increase in European Union customs seizures of fake Italian products bearing quality labels.



Italy has the highest number of EU seals of approval on its food and drink. (ANSAmed).




Damascus airport closed until at least 20/6 after attack 'Significant damage' from 9/6 Israeli airstrike

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, 13 GIU - The international airport of the Syrian capital will remain closed until at least June 20 after being hit on June 9 by one of the most violent Israeli attacks on Iran-linked militias deployed to Syria.



Syrian state TV reported the news on Monday after a visit to the airport by Prime Minister Hussein Arnus and Transport Minister Zuheir Khzeim.



The Syrian prime minister confirmed what had previously been reported by Syrian and international media: that the Israeli airstrike had hit the takeoff and landing strips as well as a terminal of the airport.



Syrian government media deny that the Israeli airstrike targeted military objectives, while the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) and other media say that Iran-linked militias were targeted inside the airport.



In the June 9 attack, Syrian media report, one civilians was injured. Israel has for years targeted Iranian and Iran-linked military objectives in Syria.



Civilian flights have for the time being been rerouted to Aleppo, Syrian metropolis largely destroyed by the war in the country that has been underway for the past 11 years and which is a bout 10 hours by car away from the capital, due to numerous checkpoints of the army and government-linked militias along the highway.



For about 10 years, the Syrian central government - under the disputed president Bashar al-Assad and backed by Iran and Russia - has shared large parts of its territory with Iran-linked jihadist militias of Iraqi, Lebanese, and Afghan origins.



Lebanon's Hezbollah and members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have since 2013 been deployed inside and outside the Damascus airport.



This is one of the main junctions of Iranian influence, which stretches from Iran to the Mediterranean through Iraq and Syria.



(ANSAmed).




Israel to its citizens,'leave Turkey, risk of attacks from Iran' FM warns of plans to kidnap and kill Israelis

(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, JUNE 13 - Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid has urged Israeli nationals not to go to Turkey and to leave the country as soon as possible if they are there.



The minister's appeal came after Iranian plans to attack Israelis there were thwarted.



"Israeli security services, the foreign ministry, and the office of the prime minister," Lapid continued in a speech before the parliament, "have in recent weeks been involved in enormous efforts to save Israeli lives. Some of them have in the meantime come back to Israel without knowing that their lives have been spared." He was referring to several plans for attacks that local media outlets claim have been thwarted.



Lapid added that these attacks had targeted Israeli tourists "to kidnap or kill them. This is a real and immediate danger even now".



"If you are planning a trip to Israel, call it off. There are no holidays," he said, "that are worth your lives or those of the people dear to you." Lapid them thanks the Turkish authorities for the efforts put forth to protect Israeli citizens and warned Iranian leaders that, "those that hit Israelis will pay for it. The long hand of Israel will discover those responsible wherever they may be." Israeli analysts have added that the Iranian threat could also target the Jewish community in Turkey and believe that the protection of local Jewish institutions should be stepped up.



(ANSAmed).




US envoy in Beirut to discuss Lebanon-Israel dispute Amos Hochstein expected in Lebanese capital on Monday

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, 13 GIU - US envoy Amos Hochstein is expected to arrive in Beirut on Monday, tasked with mediating between Lebanon and Israel to draw up the maritime border between the two countries for the dividing up of energy resources off the coasts of the two countries.



Lebanon and Israel have been at war since their official creation as independent states over 70 years ago.



In recent days, the Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, threatened to launch a war against Israel due to alleged violations of its maritime sovereignty.



As reported in recent days by the US State Department, Hochstein will be in Beirut on Monday and Tuesday to meet with Lebanese government officials after last week they decried "Israeli aggression" against Lebanon's "energy sovereignty".



An offshore platform in recent days began preparatory works for Israeli drilling for natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean ion an area that Lebanon claims as its.



In the direct talks between the two countries, mediated by Hochstein, Lebanon had initially made requests on the basis of claims officially sent to the UN.



Later, Lebanese president Michel Aoun, an ally of Hezbollah, changed the negotiation terms and demanded a broader stretch of the sea.



This demand has not yet been officially registered with the UN.



This was, however, enough to provide a chance for Hezbollah to raise anti-Israeli rhetoric again amid the deterioration of the economic situation across the entire country, with Lebanon struggling for the past three years with the worst financial crisis in its history. (ANSAmed).




The Government has said foreign actors will not be able to have undue influence over UK universities, in amendments to its Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill.

The tabled amendments call for UK higher education institutions to report any financial arrangements they have with individuals or organisations overseas to ensure that UK values cannot be compromised.

Universities and student societies will also have to share details of overseas funding from specified countries, and would face fines or other sanctions over perceived risks to freedom of speech or academic freedom because of their funding routes.

The proposed threshold for reporting is 75,000, and will exempt countries such as Japan and Australia, listed in the Academic Technology Approval Scheme, as well as countries in the European Union and Nato.

The Department for Education opened applications on Monday for its new director for freedom of speech and academic freedom on the board of the Office for Students.

The director will have the power to sanction universities over cases of no-platforming or unlawfully restricting free speech.

Higher and further education minister Michelle Donelan said: We are home to some of the best universities in the world and for decades students have travelled thousands of miles across the globe to study here because of our values of free speech and academic freedom.

It is right that we are taking new action to protect our universities from undue foreign influences that work against British values  this is a Bill that the rest of the world will take note of.

She added that she looked forward to working with the new director to tackle these important issues and ensure we remain one of the most academically free countries in the world.

The Commons will also debate a further amendment to the Bill on Monday to make sure security costs for visiting speakers at universities are not passed on to student societies, to prevent no-platforming by the back door.

The amendment says that security costs should be covered by the relevant body, rather than being passed on to societies or event organisers.

The Government said that this amendment followed cases where a student society at Bristol University had faced a 500 security charge from the student union to invite the Israeli ambassador to give a talk, while reportedly charging nothing for his Palestinian counterpart to speak.

The Union of Jewish Students has reported that some Jewish societies have been billed for security costs for a stall at student fairs.

Amendments will also set out that the legislation must include students unions at individual colleges, known as junior or middle common rooms, for example those based within colleges at Oxford and Cambridge.

On Friday, Tory MP Alicia Kearns warned that the Chinese government held too much sway over UK universities, adding that education is being weaponised by those against us.

She said that Confucius Institutes  public language and cultural education programmes funded by an organisation linked to the Chinese government  were undermining the integrity of the Mandarin education in our country.
Headteachers and school staff have said they are deeply disappointed that the Government has shelved plans to extend free school meals provision to more pupils in England.

The Food Strategy White Paper, published on Monday, did not mention extending eligibility to children of families in receipt of Universal Credit, as proposed by Leon restaurant co-founder Henry Dimbleby in his review of the food system.

Julie McCulloch, policy director at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said the union is deeply disappointed at the decision not to take up Mr Dimblebys suggestion.

The proportion of children eligible for free school meals in England currently stands at 22.5%  itself a shocking reflection of the extremely difficult circumstances facing many families, she said.

However, we know that child poverty is actually much higher, at around 30%. So it is clear that a large number of children are missing out on the important provision of a free school meal.

Besides the strong moral imperative to extend eligibility, there is also an educational need as children are more likely to learn effectively if they have the basics of good, nutritional food. The Government must act on this issue and do the right thing for these young people.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said teachers are really worried about the impact of the cost of living on children and family incomes.

The Government is once again ignoring advice from its own expert advisers in rejecting the call to make sure all families on Universal Credit are eligible for FSM (free school meals).

This is an extraordinary decision, given rising costs and the Governments promises to level up.

Families receiving Universal Credit absolutely must be able to receive free school meals and we think the extension in eligibility simply cant wait.

This policy will result in a great many young people going hungry, and this is a totally unacceptable position for a government to take.

Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: With prices soaring in the shops, at the pump, and on energy bills, the Tories are showing once again that they dont have a vision and they dont have a plan for Britain.

After slashing Universal Credit, ministers are now faffing about while children go hungry. Our children deserve better.
The inhumane practice of sending mental health patients hundreds of miles away from home for treatment must end, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has said.

A failure to stop so-called inappropriate out-of-area placements has been branded a scandal by the college, adding the approach is costing the NHS millions of pounds each year which could be better spent.

A report in 2016 from the independent Mental Health Taskforce to the NHS in England stated that by 2020/21 out-of-area placements would essentially be eliminated for acute mental health care for adults.

The data, which relates only to acute mental health admissions among adults, also shows almost three-quarters (71%) of placements that ended over that time lasted for 15 or more nights, while 40% lasted for 31 or more nights, according to the college.

It said being far from home, and without friends and family able to visit, can leave patients feeling isolated and emotionally distressed with long-lasting consequences for their mental health.

The college said the health service spent 102 million on inappropriate out-of-area placements last year, adding that was equivalent to the cost of the annual salary of over 900 consultant psychiatrists.

A lack of properly staffed beds or alternative specialist intensive provision locally are contributing factors to the continuation of the practice, the college said.

Dr Adrian James, college president, said: The failure to eliminate inappropriate out-of-area placements is a scandal. It is inhumane and is costing the NHS millions of pounds each year that could be spent helping patients get better.

No-one with a mental illness should have to travel hundreds of miles away from home to get the treatment they desperately need. The health and social care system, both on a national and local level, must urgently come together and make sure no-one ever has to.

We need to understand what is driving this unacceptable practice in different parts of the country and invest in local, properly staffed beds, alternatives to admission, and follow-up care in the community. Central to this is Government backing to address the workforce crisis that continues to plague mental health services.

Sean Duggan chief executive of the NHS Confederations Mental Health Network, said the NHS is contending with a rise in demand for people requiring support for their mental health against a backdrop of fewer dedicated beds.

He said health leaders continue to be dismayed that of the 48 new hospital building projects promised by the Government, only two are for mental healthcare.

He called for the NHS to be given the staff and estates it needs to get progress on eradicating ou-of-area placements back on track.

He added: Mental health providers want more honesty and transparency about the problem, which a new target for eradicating out of area placements could facilitate.

Tom Quinn, from UK eating disorder charity Beat, said: Its unacceptable that people are still being sent miles away from home for mental health treatment, over a year since the Government pledged to end this inappropriate practice.

He called on the Government and NHS England to develop a fully-funded mental health recovery plan, to include addressing gaps in the workforce and ensuring that frontline staff have the resources they need to help every patient.

The Department of Health and Social Care said Covid-related pressures had contributed to services missing the 2021 target.

A spokeswoman said: Everyone should have access to safe, appropriate mental health care and we recognise the impact that receiving care far away from loved ones can have.

Thats why we are investing an extra 2.3 billion per year to transform NHS mental health services by 2024, meaning more people will be able to receive care as close to home as possible.
Post offices handled a record 3.23 billion in cash in May.

It marked the third month in a row when more than 3 billion was deposited and withdrawn in a single month.

Personal cash deposits totalled 1.35 billion in May, up over 7% month-on-month and the highest amount recorded by the Post Office in a single month.

In Northern Ireland, personal cash deposits topped 100 million in a single month for the first time, with 100.2 million deposited, up almost 8% month-on-month.

Business cash deposits totalled 1.13 billion in May, up almost 2% month-on-month and also the highest recorded in a single month.

This was the second month in a row that business cash deposits topped 1.1 billion in a single month.

The Post Office has an agreement with many banks that allows their customers to do their day-to-day banking over its counters. It has helped to fill gaps in cash access as banks have announced branch closures.

Legislation will be introduced to protect access to cash in the UK.

The Post Office said it welcomed the Governments announcement and wants to see legislation that protects the full cash cycle, including cash withdrawals to the penny, as many more people choose to control their household budgets by spending only what they physically have in their hands.

Martin Kearsley, banking director at the Post Office, said: Postmasters handling a record 3.23 billion in cash, in a single month, demonstrates just how vital being able to deposit and withdraw cash, securely and conveniently, is for millions of people.

Millions continue to struggle during the cost-of-living crisis and need to be able to withdraw cash to the penny.

We have welcomed the Governments recent announcement about forthcoming legislation to protect cash. Now we need to see the details to ensure those who rely on cash can continue to do so for many years to come.

Many post offices across the UK were open across the Queens Platinum Jubilee weekend and they handled over 156 million in cash over the four-day Bank Holiday weekend.

Post Offices have continued to support the DEC Humanitarian Appeal for Ukraine since it launched on March 2. Since then, more than 2 million has been donated at the Post Offices 11,500 branches, with 1.4 million being in cash.
Boris Johnson insisted a plan to effectively override parts of the Brexit deal with Brussels was not a big deal as he was warned the move would deeply damage relations with the European Union and Ireland.

The Bill to amend the Northern Ireland Protocol unilaterally will be introduced in Parliament on Monday amid controversy over whether the legislation will break international law.

Irelands Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said the plan would ratchet up tension and breach the UKs international commitments.

But Mr Johnson insisted the legislation would introduce relatively simple bureaucratic changes and warned it would be a gross overreaction if Brussels sought to retaliate by triggering a trade war.

The European Union is keeping its options open on how to respond to any move by the UK Government to rip up parts of the agreement signed by Mr Johnson on Northern Irelands post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Irish premier Micheal Martin said it is regrettable that the UK is to renege on an international treaty.

Mr Martin also rejected assertions by the British Government that the EU has not been flexible during negotiations.

Its very regrettable for a country like the UK to renege on an international treaty, he said.

Spoke with @trussliz. UK Govt now proposing to set aside Int Law, reject a partnership approach, ignore majority in NI & deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise. We remain open to dialogue to find agreement but his approach adds to instability & is no fix.  Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) June 13, 2022

I think it represents a new low point, because the natural expectation of democratic countries like ourselves, the UK and all across Europe, is that we honour international agreements that we enter into.

This agreement was ratified by British Parliament, it was approved by the British Prime Minister.

Ive had this discussion with him and, in our view, the only way to resolve issues around the operation of the protocol is to have substantive negotiations between the UK and the EU.

We do not accept the presentation by the British Government and certain ministers to the effect that the EU is inflexible.

That is most definitely not the case and the EU has been very proactive in the last year in endeavouring to seek solutions to issues around the operation of the protocol.

He called on the British Government to enter into negotiations and discussions to resolve the issues.

Spoke to @simoncoveney about the Bill were announcing today to protect peace and stability in Northern Ireland and uphold the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. We remain open to negotiations with the EU, but we cannot wait to fix the issues facing the people of NI. pic.twitter.com/MRzKviZYQi  Liz Truss (@trussliz) June 13, 2022

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss briefed Mr Coveney about the legislation in a call on Monday.

A spokesman for Irelands Department of Foreign Affairs said Mr Coveney told the Foreign Secretary that publishing legislation that would breach the UKs commitments under international law, the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol is deeply damaging to relationships on these islands and between the UK and EU.

The plan marked a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit, especially as Ms Truss has not engaged with negotiations with the EU in any meaningful way since February, the spokesman said.

Mr Coveney used a Twitter post to suggest the UK was seeking to deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise.

As well as her talks with Mr Coveney, Ms Truss also spoke to European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic about the UK Governments action.

In a sign of the UKs frustration at Brussels stance, she said: Our preference is a negotiated solution, but the EU must be willing to change the protocol itself.

UK Government sources said Ms Truss was not picking a fight with the EU but was focused on preserving the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and Brussels refusal to alter the protocol meant unilateral action was required.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss spoke to the EUs Maros Sefcovic about the plans (Rob Pinney/PA)

The legislation will give ministers powers to override elements of the protocol, which was jointly agreed by Mr Johnsons Government and the EU as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to keep the Irish land border free-flowing.

The arrangements instead require regulatory checks and customs declarations on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, because they could flow through the open border with Ireland into the EUs single market.

Unionists in Northern Ireland are vociferously opposed to the international treaty, claiming it has undermined the regions place within the United Kingdom.

The DUP has blocked the formation of a new power-sharing government at Stormont following last months Assembly election in protest at the protocol.

Mr Johnson told LBC Radio: What we have to respect  this is the crucial thing  is the balance and the symmetry of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

We have to understand there are two traditions in Northern Ireland, broadly two ways of looking at the border issues. One community at the moment feels very, very estranged from the way things are operating and very alienated.

We have just got to fix that. It is relatively simple to do it, its a bureaucratic change that needs to be made.

Frankly, its a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things.

Mr Johnson disagreed with claims that the move breaks international law, arguing that our higher and prior legal commitment as a country is the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and to the balance and stability of that agreement.

The legislation is expected to face opposition in the Commons  including from some within the Tory ranks  and ministers will face an even tougher battle in the Lords.

The Financial Times reported that an internal note had been circulating among Tories opposed to the Bill, which said: Breaking international law to rip up the Prime Ministers own treaty is damaging to everything the UK and Conservatives stand for.

The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill will see the Government reduce the checks on the movement of goods across the Irish Sea.

This could include establishing a green lane to remove all customs processes for goods moving within the United Kingdom and enable the frictionless movement of agri-food goods staying in Northern Ireland.

It could also see businesses in Northern Ireland given the ability to choose whether to follow UK or EU regulations, depending on who they are trading with.
Arnold Schwarzenegger learned a crucial lesson while making his classic sci-fi thriller Predator three decades ago: keep your professional and personal life separate.

Schwarzenegger was at the top of his game with blockbusters like The Terminator (1984) and Commando (1985), and he had just married broadcast journalist (and Kennedy family member) Maria Shriver. Tom Brokaw had introduced them at a charity tennis tournament and they wed on April 26, 1986 in Cape Cod, Mass.

Schwarzenegger was in the thick of shooting Predator in the jungles of Mexico at the time, starring as a Vietnam veteran whose military rescue team is hunted by a fiercely intelligent, dreadlocked E.T. The star figured he might as well take his new bride to the Mismaloya, the forested cove on Mexicos western coast as part of their honeymoon.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver outside St. Francis Xavier Church after their wedding on April 26, 1986 in Hyannis, Mass. (Photo by Peter Carrette Archive/Getty Images)

To paraphrase his character Dutch, that idea did not get better by the minute.

That was a bit of a mistake, Schwarzenegger told us during a 2015 Role Recall interview (watch above, with Predator beginning at 2:51).

The first night, Maria and I were checked into a hotel room, and she wanted to take a shower. So she opened up the curtain and the whole bathtub was filled with frogs. They were all jumping around. She freaked out. That was the end of that honeymoon idea.

Schwarzenegger and Shriver had four children together before separating in 2011 and finalizing their divorce in 2021.

Carl Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger in 'Predator' (Photo: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection)

The couples honeymoon fail was one of many issues encountered while shooting Predator, which was released 35 years ago, on June 12, 1987. Members of the cast, which also included Carl Weathers, Bill Duke and Jesse Ventura  endured cold jungle temperatures, rugged terrain and multiple battles with Montezumas Revenge.

Another member of the ill-fated ensemble was Jean-Claude Van Damme, who was just starting to find work in Hollywood after emigrating from Belgium. He was hired to play the deadly alien.

His tenure lasted about as long as Schwarzenegger and Shrivers Mexican honeymoon.

It was a nightmare, because the outfit was made of rubber and it was so hot in Mexico, Van Damme, who believed at the time hed be more visible grappling with the biggest movie star on the planet, told us during a 2019 interview (watch below). People [were] pass[ing] out without the outfit. And I was there sweating water. And then they put some sort of tube for air conditioning. It was too cold. Too hot, too cold.

Van Damme fought with producer Joel Silver over the costume until co-star Weathers intervened.

He said, Dont argue with Joel Silver because then youll be burned in town. I was like, What do you mean? Just dont say nothing, wait until hes firing you. Wait until he fires your ass.

Van Damme was fired soon enough, eventually replaced by stuntman Kevin Peter Hall, who had just played the sasquatch in 1987s Harry and the Hendersons.

While a tough break for the industry newbie, it was short-lived. JCVDs breakout hit Bloodsport (1988) was released just eight months after Predator, turning him into an instant action sensation.
FILE - This image released by Disney/Pixar shows character Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans, left, and Alisha Hawthorne, voiced by Uzo Aduba, in a scene from the animated film "Lightyear," releasing June 17. The United Arab Emirates on Monday, June 13, 2022, banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters amid reports that the film includes a kiss between two female characters. (Disney/Pixar via AP, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters after its inclusion of a kiss between two lesbian characters.

The decision by the UAE comes as Malaysia also reportedly will ban the film, raising the possibility other Muslim-majority nations could follow suit on one of Disney's biggest animated films of the year as the film industry comes out of the depths of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, announced through its Media Regulatory Office of the country's Ministry of Youth and Culture that the film would not be opening in the country this Thursday.

The film is not licensed for public screening in all cinemas in the UAE, due to its violation of the countrys media content standards, the office said in a tweet. The office confirms that all films screened in cinemas across the country are subject to follow-up and evaluation before the date of screening to the public, to ensure the safety of the circulated content according to the appropriate age classification.

The office did not elaborate on the tweet and did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press. The tweet included an image of the film's poster, with the profile image of its main character Buzz Lightyear with a no symbol over it in red.

Movie theaters in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, had already advertised showtimes for the film. But over the weekend, a social media campaign with the Arabic hashtag Ban Showing Lightyear in the Emirates, caught the attention of conservative Emiratis. They described showing a lesbian couple on screen as being against their culture and religion.

The movie, with actor Chris Evans voicing the inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear action figure from the Toy Story films, includes a female character voiced by actress Uzo Aduba kissing her female partner.

The UAE, many other countries in the wider Mideast, is a Muslim-led nation that criminalizes same-sex relationships. The U.S. State Department warns that Islamic, or Shariah, law in the UAE can include the death penalty for same-sex conduct, while Dubai can levy a 10-year prison sentence and Abu Dhabi allows for up to 14 years.

However, such prosecutions are rarely reported and LGBTQ individuals do live in the skyscraper-studded city-state of Dubai, home to the long-haul carrier Emirates.

The $200 million Lightyear is expected to be a major draw for Disney, with analysts estimating it could gross over $100 million in its first weekend.

Studios have allowed censors to cut films in global distribution for content in the past, including in the Mideast market. Recently, Disney has faced protests from activists and its own staff over what they described as CEO Bob Chapeks slow response in publicly criticizing Florida legislation that opponents dubbed the Dont Say Gay bill.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in late March signed the bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

The moment had been earlier cut from the film but was restored after Pixar employees protested Disney's response to Floridas bill.

The movie also may be banned in Malaysia as well. The Star, the countrys top English-language newspaper, cited an anonymous, nongovernment source as saying that Lightyear will not be shown in Malaysian cinemas. No reasons were given. A newspaper in the Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain similarly has speculated the film wouldn't be shown there.

Officials from Malaysia's Film Censorship Board and the Home Affairs Ministry, as well as The Walt Disney Co., could not be immediately reached for comment.

___

Associated Press writers Malak Harb in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
mphillips007 / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Social Security is an essential safety net for many Americans. Even if you haven't saved enough for retirement, you can still count on Social Security benefits in retirement.

Read More: 15 Worst States To Live on Just a Social Security Check

Learn: 6 Signs You Can't Afford To Retire

However, with an average monthly benefit of just over $1,600, America's most expensive cities are far out of reach without another source of income. If you do have to rely on your Social Security benefits alone -- and still want to make the most of your golden years -- you'll need to live somewhere affordable that won't compromise your quality of life.

That's why GOBankingRates compiled a list of the 20 best cities to live off of just Social Security. The study factored in the cost of living, livability and median rent and -- after comparing the 177 largest cities in the U.S. -- combined the scores to determine where you really can get by on just your Social Security benefit. Read on to find out which cities made the list.

DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images/iStockphoto

20. Evansville, Indiana

Cost of Living Score: 78.5

Livability Score: 58

Average Rent: $786.75

Evansville is one of three Indiana cities identified in the study as a good place to live just on Social Security. Its relatively low livability score and rent of more than $780 per month prevented it from moving up on the list.

Poll: How Much Do You Expect To Spend on Travel This Summer?

DenisTangneyJr / iStock.com

19. Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Cost of Living Score: 82.7

Livability Score: 62

Average Rent: $798.25

Hattiesburg's cost of living indicates that you can expect to spend almost 18% less on your basic expenses than you would in the rest of the country, on average.

Sean Pavone / Getty Images/iStockphoto

18. Wichita, Kansas

Cost of Living Score: 82.1

Livability Score: 60

Average Rent: $719

If you're younger and looking to avoid living off your Social Security check alone when you reach retirement, one of the best ways is to start saving early. However, even if it's too late to build the sort of nest egg you would like, a city like Wichita -- which combines modest rent with a low cost of living -- should help you make the most of your Social Security benefits.

ReDunnLev / Getty Images/iStockphoto

17. South Bend, Indiana

Cost of Living Score: 68.4

Livability Score: 57

Average Rent: $754.50

In South Bend, you'll pay nearly 30% less in your cost of living expenses than the rest of the United States, which means your Social Security check can go a lot further here.

Jacob Boomsma / Shutterstock.com

16. Beaumont, Texas

Cost of Living Score: 78.3

Livability Score: 63

Average Rent: $786.25

Beaumont's livability score is higher than many other cities on this list, which might account for its slightly higher rent, too. However, you're still paying more than 20% less in cost of living than other cities in the U.S.

CRobertson / Getty Images

15. Greenville, North Carolina

Cost of Living Score: 84.1

Livability Score: 75

Average Rent: $792

The average rent cost in Roanoke is the fourth-highest on the list, but its lower cost of living and high livability rates make it desirable for retirees. If you wanted supplement your Social Security earnings, Roanoke is a good place to do it. Another GOBankingRates study showed it's one of the top 20 cities for remote workers.

peeterv / Getty Images

14. Topeka, Kansas

Cost of Living Score: 79

Livability Score: 61

Average Rent: $708

With an affordable rent, a decent livability score, and a cost of living score that means you'll pay less than the national average, this midwestern city is positioned to be a great place to live on only a Social Security check.

Shutterstock.com

13. Williston, North Dakota

Cost of Living Score: 97.8

Livability Score: 72

Average Rent: $749.50

Williston is one of three cities on this list in North Dakota. At $749.50, rent in Williston is on the higher side of cities on this list, but it's still less expensive to live here than elsewhere.

SeanPavonePhoto / Getty Images

12. Shreveport, Louisiana

Cost of Living Score: 77.5

Livability Score: 65

Average Rent: $772

The Southern city of Shreveport, Louisiana is one of two cities based on the state. While this one is a little high on the rent, keeping it lower on the list, you're paying about 22% less in cost of living here, making your check stretch.

shuttersv / Shutterstock.com

11. Fayetteville, Arkansas

Cost of Living Score: 92.9

Livability Score: 72

Average Rent: $770

Fayetteville is another solid Southern city to call home if you're living on a fixed income. With a high livability score, and moderate rent, anyone on Social Security should be able to make a good life here.

Ron_Thomas / iStock.com

10. Toledo, Ohio

Cost of Living Score: 72.7

Livability Score: 62

Average Rent: $710.50

Toledo's cost of living indicates that you can expect to spend more than 25% less on your basic expenses than you would in the rest of the country, on average. What's more, Toledo is one of the cities where your money stretches the furthest, according to a separate GOBankingRates study.

DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images

9. Lubbock, Texas

Cost of Living Score: 79.9

Livability Score: 68

Average Rent: $746.50

Lubbock is one of four Texas cities identified in the study as a good place to live just on Social Security. With a decent livability score and cost of living score, even rent of more than $740 per month can't keep this from being a great place to live on a fixed income.

Shutterstock.com

8. Davenport, Iowa

Cost of Living Score: 81.7

Livability Score: 69

Average Rent: $731.25

It costs about 19% less to live in Davenport than the average American city. Its relatively high (for this list) average rent of $731.25 per month and its livability score of just 69, pull it down from the top spot on the list.

Sean Pavone / Getty Images/iStockphoto

7. Akron, Ohio

Cost of Living Score: 69.5

Livability Score: 62

Average Rent: $679.50

The city of Akron has a lot to offer, not only in a low cost of living, that is more than 30% less than the rest of the country, a decent rent under $700 per month, but lots of natural and cultural attractions.

DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images/iStockphoto

6. Odessa, Texas

Cost of Living Score: 88

Livability Score: 63

Average Rent: $510.50

The primary appeal of Odessa to retirees is the low cost of rent. At $510.50 per month, it's the cheapest in the study - and by a wide margin. A low cost of living makes up for it's relatively low livability score, as well.

DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images

5. Fargo, North Dakota

Cost of Living Score: 91.9

Livability Score: 76

Average Rent: $782

Despite one of the higher average monthly rents on this list, Fargo is one of the best cities to live in on a fixed income, according to another GOBankingRates study. That should appeal to those relying on Social Security.

DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images

4. Grand Forks, North Dakota

Cost of Living Score: 88.2

Livability Score: 74

Average Rent: $682

Grand Forks is the northernmost city on the list, and one of three in North Dakota. At $682, rent in Grand Forks is at the midpoint, but it's still 11% less expensive to live here than elsewhere.

ChrisBoswell / Getty Images/iStockphoto

3. Fort Wayne, Indiana

Cost of Living Score: 78.9

Livability Score: 75

Average Rent: $792.75

Fort Wayne is a little pricier than many of the other cities on this list, but it still is among one of the best cities in the nation to retire on a Social Security check, found a separate GOBankingRates study.

travelview / Shutterstock.com

2. Lake Charles, Louisiana

Cost of Living Score: 83.4

Livability Score: 70

Average Rent: $608

For retirees interested in living near the water, with all of the recreational opportunities that brings - think fishing! - there's good news: Lake Charles has the third-lowest rent cost of the cities considered in this study.

DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images/iStockphoto

1. McAllen, Texas

Cost of Living Score: 78.6

Livability Score: 81

Average Rent: $592.75

McAllen Texas holds the number one spot on this list for retiring on a Social Security check because it has a high livability score, the second lowest rent on this list and a cost of living score that's still nearly 12% lower than the rest of the U.S.

More From GOBankingRates

Jordan Rosenfeld and Joel Anderson contributed to the reporting for this article.

Methodology: GOBankingRates determined the best places to live on only a Social Security check based on the (1) average monthly benefit for retired workers, $1,619.67, sourced from Social Security Administration; (2) the overall cost of living in each city, sourced from Sperling's Best Places; (3) average 2022 rent for a one bedroom apartment as sourced from ApartmentList; and (4) livability scores sourced from Areavibes. Factors (2) through (4) were scored and combined with the lowest score being best. Factor (4) was weighted double in final calculations. All data was collected and is up to date as of May 23, 2022.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 20 Best Places To Live on Only a Social Security Check
Court of Appeal judges have rejected a last-ditch legal bid to block the first flight due to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda under a controversial Government policy.

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), which represents more than 80% of Border Force staff, and charities Care4Calais and Detention Action challenged a High Court judges refusal to grant an injunction on Friday, which meant the first flight to the east African country could go ahead on Tuesday.

Lawyers for the three groups and one person due to be removed asked for the injunction to prevent the 11 people now due on Tuesdays flight from being taken to Rwanda until the full hearing of whether the policy is lawful next month.

Raza Husain QC argued that the judge who refused to block the flight on Friday, Mr Justice Swift, had wrongly decided the balance of convenience.

But, following an urgent hearing in London on Monday, three senior judges dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in the decision of Mr Justice Swift.

Lord Justice Singh, sitting with Lady Justice Simler and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, said Mr Justice Swift had conducted the balancing exercise properly and did not err in principle nor in the approach he took.

He added: He weighed all the factors and reached a conclusion which he was reasonably entitled to reach on the material before him.

This court cannot therefore interfere with that conclusion.

The judges refused permission for an appeal to the Supreme Court against their decision.

The Home Office has defended the policy and the Prime Minister has said the Government had anticipated a lot of teething problems with the policy, but said the move is necessary to stop illegal people-smuggling rackets on either side of the Channel.

Rory Dunlop QC, for the department, told the court earlier on Monday: The flight tomorrow is important.

Demonstrators at a removal centre at Gatwick protest against plans to send migrants to Rwanda at the weekend (Victoria Jones/PA)

This is a policy which is intended to deter dangerous and unnecessary journeys, journeys from safe third countries by people who do not need to make that journey to be safe, they can claim in France or wherever it is.

This is a policy that if it works, could save lives as well as disrupting the model of traffickers.

Even if we are just talking about cancelling a flight tomorrow, there is prejudice to the public interest, to the enactment of decisions that may have that deterrent effect.

The High Court heard the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has multiple concerns about the system in Rwanda, including discriminatory access to asylum, a lack of legal representation and other deep-rooted structural problems.

On Monday, Mr Dunlop said: The Secretary of State has listened and seriously considered the concerns raised by the UNHCR and has deliberately negotiated arrangements to provide assurances in relation to those concerns.

A second case is being heard in the High Court on Monday afternoon after Asylum Aid, a refugee charity, applied for an urgent interim injunction to stop the Government flying migrants to Rwanda.

Home Secretary Priti Patel and Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta signed the migration and economic development partnership in Kigali in April (Flora Thompson/PA)

Ahead of both hearings on Monday, Mr Johnson told broadcasters during a visit to a farm in Cornwall: I always said that it will begin with a lot of teething problems and you will have a lot of legal action against it and they will try and delay it  thats inevitable.

But what were trying to do is stop the business model of criminal gangs who are preying on people moving them across the Channel in unseaworthy vessels, risking their lives and sometimes costing their lives.

It came as Rwandan high commissioner Johnston Busingye told The Telegraph that his country will be a safe haven for migrants, after The Times and the Daily Mail reported that the Prince of Wales allegedly said in private that the policy is appalling.

Mr Johnson declined to comment on whether Charles was wrong in his comments, adding: This is about making sure that we break the business model of criminal gangs who are not only risking peoples lives but undermining public confidence in legal migration.

The Prime Ministers official spokesman later said Mr Johnson has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales, whos spoken out on a number of issues, not least the environment.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: Were very disappointed with todays decision, and the position in which it places our members who will have to carry out these forced removals.

Just because the court says the Government can do it, doesnt mean the Government should do it.

We call on the Government to show some humanity and not deport anyone until the case is fully tested in the courts next month.

Most of all, though, were disappointed for the individuals who will be forcibly deported tomorrow.

We shall continue to oppose the Governments cruel and inhumane policies wherever and whenever we can.

Three further challenges brought by individuals who face removal on the first flight will be heard at the High Court on Tuesday.
Actress Busy Philipps took to Instagram on Monday to share an important message about the impending Supreme Court decision that could overturn Roe v. Wade.

In the photo, Philipps is wearing no pants and a yellow T-shirt with the phrase My body, my choice," written across it.

HI! ITS YOUR MONDAY MORNING REMINDER THAT THERE IS NO EQUALITY WITHOUT BODILY AUTONOMY, Philipps began the caption.

The Supreme Court decision which will overturn Roe is going to happen any day now but *we know* that ABORTIONS WILL CONTINUE NO MATTER WHAT- please swipe for resources and please remember to sign up for Operation Save Abortion via @abortionfront which is happening Sunday July 17 - its a full day of training on abortion activism and how you can show up for abortion for everyone in your immediate community, Philipps wrote.

busy philipps

In May, a draft opinion from the Supreme Court was leaked, revealing that the court may overturn Roe v. Wade, which has made abortion legal in the U.S. for more than 50 years.

Philipps also shared a series of hotlines for people seeking abortions and related aid.

Additionally, the actress shared a snippet from a New York Times article detailing the very real ways in which the abortion ban has been affecting people.

The last slide is from an article in The NY Times about the devastating effects of the abortion ban in Poland. Ill link to the article in stories. I need you all to be ready and informed because I dont want anyone you love to die because of the abject failure of our government, she wrote.

Phillips has been vocal about her abortion experience in the past and opened up about having an abortion at 15 during an episode of her late night show, Busy Tonight.

The statistic is one in four women will have an abortion before the age of 45 and that statistic sometimes surprises people and maybe you're sitting there thinking I dont know a woman who would have an abortion, well you know me, she said.

She then took to Twitter where she turned the phrase into a hashtag and encouraged users to share their abortion stories using the hashtag, #Youknowme.

1 in 4 women have had an abortion. Many people think they don't know someone who has, but #youknowme. So let's do this: if you are also the 1 in 4, let's share it and start to end the shame. Use #youknowme and share your truth.  Busy Philipps (@BusyPhilipps) May 15, 2019

The call for stories came after governors in Georgia and Alabama signed bills banning abortion.

Hundreds of women utilized Philippss hashtag to share their abortion stories and show just how common the procedure was.

Philipps later said that she wasn't hesitant to share her abortion story and doesn't regret it in the slightest.

"Its not brave for me to say I had an abortion at 15, because its a medical thinga thing, a choice that I made, and I dont regret it at all, said Philipps during a Goop summit.

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President Biden, speaking to donors at a Democratic fundraiser in Los Angeles, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didnt want to hear it when U.S. intelligence gathered information that Russia was preparing to invade.

The remarks came as the war continues into its fourth month.

Nothing like this has happened since World War II. I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain he was going to go in, off the border," Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

There was no doubt, Biden said. And Zelensky didnt want to hear it.

Although Zelensky has inspired people with his leadership during the war, his preparation for the invasion  or lack thereof  has remained a controversial issue.

Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of Ukraine's President's Office, said that while the level of aggression from Russia was a shock, the country quickly rallied its military presence to fight back.

"Ukraine understood the intentions of the Russians, expected one or another aggressive scenario, prepared for it, which sharply broke the original Russian plans," Podoliak wrote to Interfax. "I think it is pointless to blame the country, which is more than 100 days (into) a full-fledged war against a much more resourceful opponent, if key countries have failed to prevent the militaristic appetites of the Russian Federation, knowing them well."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, right, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speak following talks in Kyiv on Friday.

In other developments over the weekend:

 After talks with President Zelensky and other leadership, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the groups assessment of Ukraines application to become a member of the European Union would be finalized by the end of next week.

"The path is known; it is a path based on merit, von der Leyen told press after the talks, according to European Pravda. This is a path where I appreciate the extraordinary determination of Ukrainians in this process.

She added that while Ukraine is currently at war and must focus on that for the time being, she expects to see efforts made by the Ukrainian government to strengthen the rule of law and fight corruption.

 An independent international commission sent by the United Nations to Ukraine to investigate war crimes committed by Russian forces arrived in the nation Saturday, according to the deputy head of Ukraines parliament.

The just punishment of all who gave orders and committed atrocities against our citizens must be irreversible, Olena Kondratyuk, deputy head of Ukraine's parliament, wrote on Facebook. We expect that the UN Commission will investigate all these crimes and give them their unanimous assessment.

Kondratyuk added that Ukraines parliament would fully contribute to the commissions efforts.

 In the southern port city Mariupol, which fell in May, Russian forces have renamed the citys once vibrant Freedom Square after a previous Russian leader.

The madness here has remained with Russia, Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to Mariupols mayor, wrote on Telegram Saturday. The occupants changed Freedom Square in Mariupol into Lenin Square and raised their tricolor over it.

"What symbolism," Andryushchenko continued. "A tricolor against the background of demolished burned buildings on Lenin Square.

 Ukrainian and British officials warned that Russian forces are relying on weapons with the potential to cause mass casualties as they try to make headway in capturing eastern Ukraine and as fierce fighting depletes resources on both sides.

Russian bombers have likely been launching heavy 1960s-era anti-ship missiles in Ukraine, the U.K. Defense Ministry said. The Kh-22 missiles were primarily designed to destroy aircraft carriers using a nuclear warhead. When used in ground attacks with conventional warheads, they are highly inaccurate and therefore can cause severe collateral damage and casualties, the ministry said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine updates: Biden says Zelenskyy didn't want US intel
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel urged its citizens on Monday to avoid Istanbul or to return home if already there, sharpening a May 30 advisory against travel to Turkey because of what it said was a threat of Iranian attempts to kill or abduct vacationing Israelis.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said a "huge effort" by Israel's security forces had saved "Israeli lives in recent weeks", and thanked the Turkish government for its contribution.

He did not give further details. An Israeli security official told Reuters Turkey had arrested several suspected "operatives" of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

"We are calling on Israelis not to fly to Istanbul - and if you don't have a vital reason, don't fly to Turkey. If you are already in Istanbul, return to Israel as soon as possible," Lapid said in a televised statement.

"These terrorist threats are aimed at vacationing Israelis. They are selecting, in a random but deliberate manner, Israeli citizens with a view to kidnapping or murdering them," he said.

"I want, from here, to relay a message to the Iranians as well. Whoever harms Israelis will not get away with it. Israel's long arm will get them, no matter where they are."

Tehran has vowed to retaliate against Israel, which it blames for the May 22 killing of Hassan Sayad Khodai, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps colonel who was shot dead at the wheel of his car by two people on a motorcycle.

Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility, its standard policy over accusations of assassinations. It accused Khodai of having plotted attacks against its citizens worldwide.

Turkey is a popular tourist destination for Israelis. The two countries have been mending their ties after more than a decade of strained relations.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jon Boyle)
WASHINGTON (AP)  Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot said Sunday they have uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The committee announced that Trump's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, is among the witnesses scheduled to testify at a hearing Monday that focuses on Trump's effort to spread his lies about a stolen election. Stepien was subpoenaed for his public testimony.

As the hearings unfold, Rep. Adam Schiff said he would like the department to investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump. Schiff, D-Calif., who also leads the House Intelligence Committee, said that there are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the election that I dont see evidence the Justice Department is investigating.

The committee held its first public hearing last week, with members laying out their case against Trump to show how the defeated president relentlessly pushed his false claims of a rigged election despite multiple advisers telling him otherwise and how he intensified an extraordinary scheme to overturn Joe Bidens victory.

Additional evidence is set to be released in hearings this week that will demonstrate how Trump and some of his advisers engaged in a massive effort to spread misinformation, pressured the Justice Department to embrace his false claims, and urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject state electors and block the vote certification on Jan. 6, 2021.

Stepien, a longtime Trump ally, is now a top campaign adviser to the Trump-endorsed House candidate in Wyoming's Republican primary, Harriet Hageman, who is challenging Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee's vice chair and a vociferous critic of the former president. A Trump spokesman, Taylor Budowich, suggested that the committee's decision to call Stepien was politically motivated.

Monday's witness list also includes BJay Pak, the top federal prosecutor in Atlanta who left his position on Jan 4, 2021, a day after an audio recording was made public in which Trump called him a never-Trumper," and Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor for Fox News.

The committee has said most of those interviewed in the investigation are coming forward voluntarily, although some have wanted subpoenas to appear in public. Filmmaker Nick Quested, who provided documentary footage of the attack, said during last weeks hearing he received a subpoena to appear.

Committee members said they would present clear evidence that multiple GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., had sought a pardon from Trump, which would protect him from prosecution. Perry on Friday denied he ever did so, calling the assertion an absolute, shameless, and soulless lie.

Were not going to make accusations or say things without proof or evidence backing it, said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

Lawmakers indicated that perhaps their most important audience member over the course of the hearings may be Attorney General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should prosecute Trump. They left no doubt as to their own view whether the evidence is sufficient to proceed.

Once the evidence is accumulated by the Justice Department, it needs to make a decision about whether it can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the presidents guilt or anyone elses, Schiff said. But they need to be investigated if theres credible evidence, which I think there is.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said he doesnt intend to browbeat Garland but noted the committee has already laid out in legal pleadings criminal statutes they believe Trump violated.

I think that he knows, his staff knows, the U.S. attorneys know, whats at stake here, Raskin said. They know the importance of it, but I think they are rightfully paying close attention to precedent in history as well, as the facts of this case.

Garland has not specified whether he would be willing to prosecute, which would be unprecedented and may be complicated in a political election season in which Trump has openly flirted with the idea of running for president again.

No president or ex-president has ever been indicted.

Richard Nixon resigned from office in 1974 as he faced an impeachment and a likely grand jury indictment on charges of bribery, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. President Gerald Ford later pardoned his predecessor before any criminal charges related to Watergate could be filed.

Legal experts have said a Justice Department prosecution of Trump over the riot could set an uneasy precedent in which an administration of one party could more routinely go after the former president of another.

"We will follow the facts wherever they lead, Garland said in his speech at Harvard Universitys commencement ceremony last month.

A federal judge in California said in a March ruling in a civil case that Trump more likely than not committed federal crimes in seeking to obstruct the congressional count of the Electoral College ballots on Jan. 6, 2021. The judge cited two statutes: obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

Schiff appeared on ABCs This Week, Raskin spoke on CNNs State of the Union," and Kinzinger was on CBSs Face the Nation."

___

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

___

For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Supreme Court has ruled against immigrants who are seeking their release from long periods of detention while they fight deportation orders.

In two cases decided Monday, the court said that the immigrants, who fear persecution if sent back to their native countries, have no right under a federal law to a bond hearing at which they could argue for their freedom no matter how long they are held.

The justices also ruled 6-3 to limit the immigrants ability to band together in court, an outcome that Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote will leave many vulnerable noncitizens unable to protect their rights.

In recent years, the high court has taken an increasingly limited view of immigrants' access to the federal court system under immigration measures enacted in the 1990s and 2000s.

For a while, it seemed like the court was going to push back a bit. In extreme cases, it would interpret a statute to allow for as much judicial review as possible,said Nicole Hallet, director of the immigrants rights clinic at the University of Chicago law school. Clearly now, the court is no longer willing to do that.

The immigrants who sued for a bond hearing are facing being detained for many months, even years, before their cases are resolved.

The court ruled in the cases of people from Mexico and El Salvador who persuaded Homeland Security officials that their fears are credible, entitling them to further review.

Their lawyers argued that they should have a hearing before an immigration judge to determine if they should be released. The main factors are whether people would pose a danger or are likely to flee if set free.

Sotomayor wrote the court's opinion in one case involving Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, who had previously been deported to Mexico. He was taken into custody four years ago, and won release while his case wound through the federal courts. His hearing on whether he can remain in the United States is scheduled for 2023.

But Sotomayor wrote that the provision of immigration law that applies to people like Arteaga-Martinez simply doesn't require the government to hold a bond hearing.

The court, however, left open the issue of the immigrants' ability to argue that the Constitution does not permit such indefinite detention without a hearing.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court's opinion holding that federal judges can only rule in the case of the immigrants before them, not a class of similarly situated people.

Sotomayor dissented from that decision, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. She wrote that the ability to join together in a class was especially important for people who have no right to a lawyer and are disproportionately unlikely to be familiar with the U.S. legal system or fluent in the English language.

The cases are Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez, 19-896, and Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, 20-322.
PARIS/BERLIN/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Is it better to engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine or to isolate him? Should Kyiv make concessions to end the war, or would that embolden the Kremlin? Are ramped up sanctions on Russia worth the collateral damage?

These are some of the questions testing the international alliance that swiftly rallied around Ukraine in the days after the Russian invasion but that, three months into the war, is straining, officials and diplomats told Reuters.

As Western governments grapple with spiralling inflation and energy costs, countries including Italy and Hungary have called for a quick ceasefire. That could pave the way for scaled back sanctions and end the blockade of Ukrainian ports that has worsened a food security crisis for the world's poorest.

Yet Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics warn that Russia is not to be trusted and say a ceasefire would enable it to consolidate territorial wins, regroup and launch more attacks down the line.

The Russians have "spread the narrative that this would be an exhausting war, we should sit around the table and seek consensus," a senior Ukrainian official told Reuters.

U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin has said he wants Russia "weakened" and President Biden called for Putin to be prosecuted for war crimes. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says Kyiv must not be strong-armed into accepting a bad peace deal and that Ukraine "must win".

Germany and France have remained more ambiguous, vowing to stop Putin from winning rather than to defeat him, while at the same time backing tough new sanctions.

"The question being asked is whether we return to the Cold War or not. That's the difference between Biden, Johnson and us," an ally of French President Emmanuel Macron told Reuters.

Russia launched what it calls a "special operation" in Ukraine in February, saying it was needed to rid the country of dangerous nationalists and degrade Ukraine's military capabilities - aims the West denounced as a baseless pretext.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and President Biden are taking a tougher stance on Russia than some of their European counterparts. (Reuters)

Moscow has since argued that military support from Washington and allies is dragging out the war and deterring Ukraine from peace talks. In March, the Kremlin demanded Ukraine cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian, and recognise eastern separatist-held areas as independent states as a condition for peace.

The Ukrainian and French sources, and officials in other countries consulted by Reuters for this story, requested anonymity in order to speak freely about sensitive diplomatic and security policies.

Divisions could become more pronounced as sanctions and the war take a toll on the global economy, risking domestic backlashes and playing into Putin's hands.

"It was clear from the start it is going to get more and more difficult over time - the war fatigue is coming," Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said in an interview with CNN.

"There may be difference between those countries who have much better neighbours than we do, and those who have a different history like us, the Baltic countries, and Poland."

Macron has warned any peace should not "humiliate" Russia like it did for Germany in 1918.

He, like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, has kept channels of communication with the Kremlin open, triggering consternation in more hawkish countries. Poland's president compared the calls to speaking with Adolf Hitler during World War Two.

"We'll have to deal with Mister Putin at some point, unless there's a palace coup. And even more so because this war needs to be as short as possible," the Macron ally said.

Kyiv's allies appear to be divided in how to respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. (via Reuters)

Scholz said his and Macron's calls with Putin were used to convey firm and clear messages, and has stressed sanctions on Russia would not end unless Putin withdrew troops and agreed to a peace deal acceptable to Kyiv.

However, one of Scholz's team told Reuters that Macron's wording had been "unfortunate." Some French diplomats have also privately expressed reservations about Macron's stance, saying it risked alienating Ukraine and eastern European allies.

While grateful for the West's support, Ukraine has bristled at suggestions that it should concede territory as part of a ceasefire deal and sometimes questioned whether its allies were properly united against Russia.

Macron's warning not to humiliate Russia prompted Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to warn that France was only humiliating itself, and Kyiv's relations with Scholz have been frosty.

"We don't have a Churchill across the European Union. We do not have any illusions on that," the senior Ukrainian official said, referring to Britain's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

A French presidency official said "there is no spirit of concession with regard to Putin or Russia in what the president says." France wanted a Ukrainian victory and Ukrainian territories restored, the official said, and dialogue with Putin was "not to compromise but to say things as we see them".

A U.S. administration official said Washington was more vocal in its scepticism about Russia acting in good faith, but denied there was "strategic difference" between allies.

A State Department spokesperson told Reuters that the U.S. working along with allies had "delivered," for Ukraine - with sanctions, weapons transfers and other measures - despite naysayers since before the invasion casting doubt on the unity of the alliance. The goal, the spokesperson said, was to put Ukraine in a strong position to negotiate.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky want the West to do more in helping him defeat Russia. (Reuters)

Referring to Austin's comments, the first official said Washington had no intention of changing Russia's leadership but wanted to see the country weakened to the point that it couldn't carry out such an attack on Ukraine again.

"Everyone focused on the first part of what Austin said not on the second part. We want to see Russia weakened to the extent that it can't do something like this again," the official said.

One German government source said Austin's aim to weaken Russia was problematic. It was unfortunate that German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, from Scholz's coalition partner the Greens, had endorsed that aim, the source said, because it complicated the question of when sanctions could ever be lifted, irrespective of whether Ukraine agreed to a peace deal or not.

German government sources also said they were worried that some in the West could be egging on Ukraine to unrealistic military goals, including the recapture of the Crimea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, that could prolong the conflict.

Baerbock has publicly said sanctions would have to remain in place until Russian troops withdrew from Crimea.

Ukraine's ambassador to Germany meanwhile has repeatedly criticised Germany for dragging its feet on sending heavy weapons to Ukraine, though Berlin has robustly defended its record of support.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's senior adviser Mykhailo Podolyak signalled Ukraine's frustrations:

"Russia must not win, but we won't give heavy weapons - it may offend Russia. Putin must lose but let's not impose new sanctions. Millions will starve, but we're not ready for military convoys with grain," he tweeted on May 31.

"Rising prices are not the worst that awaits a democratic world with such a policy," he said.
Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez speaks during a news conference in Havana in 2019. (Ismael Francisco / Associated Press)

The Summit of the Americas, a major gathering of the regions leaders, was held in Los Angeles last week, the first time the United States served as host since its inaugural session in 1994 in Miami.

But the event, which is convened every three or four years, was plagued with controversy, including no-shows of prominent leaders and serious doubts over the health of democracy throughout the hemisphere.

The Biden administration refused to invite governments it regards as undemocratic  Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela  even though other countries with questionable credentials, like Brazil and Haiti, were included.

To reflect on perceived flaws in the summit and the overall troubled relationship that Washington and Havana continue to have, despite progress when President Biden was vice president under Barack Obama, The Times spoke at length with the head of Cubas diplomacy, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.

Rodriguez says the summit was a missed opportunity, with discussions on issues from immigration to COVID-19 and climate change lacking because key countries were missing.

The interview was conducted by video conference with Rodriguez in Havana and The Times in Los Angeles as the summit was wrapping up. The conversation was in Spanish and has been translated by The Times. Questions and answers have been edited and paraphrased for clarity and length.

The Biden administration stuck to its decision to exclude Cuba from the summit, even thoughit triggered boycotts by several of the regions top leaders, including Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Describe Havanas reaction to the exclusion and the impact it had on the success of the summit.

The principle of inclusivity in events like this is indisputable. Cuba belongs to the hemisphere, like the other countries. Therefore all should be invited on equal footing.

The U.S. was acting out of a hegemonic vision of domination, anchored in past centuries and mistaken policies that distance the U.S. from our region. The U.S. needs Latin America and the Caribbean as much as the region needs a respectful relationship with the U.S., one that does not interfere with our domestic affairs.

There were reports that U.S. officials sought to negotiate the presence of a Cuban delegation in the summit, but one with a lesser status than other countries. Did Cuba see this as a possibility?

The U.S. government tried to negotiate discriminatory formulas for Cuba to participate in the Los Angeles summit, which were firmly rejected by my country. This is proof that the U.S. realized that, as the host, it had no right to exclude Cuba or any other country.

This represents a historic setback that only adds to the isolation and discredit of the U.S. government. I cant even call this a Summit of the Americas. Its a summit of the incomplete Americas, which will not advance dialogue and cooperation with Latin America and the Caribbean. It shows a United States disconnected from Latin America and the Caribbean, which is unfortunate.

This is a signal, a symptom of the sickness, the sick policy of blockade that the U.S. maintains against Cuba and that has been rejected the world over  and also rejected by a majority of U.S. citizens and Cubans living in the U.S. [Note: Cuban officials use the term blockade to refer to the strict economic embargo that Washington imposed against the island nation nearly 50 years ago.]

What impact did the absence of Cuba have on the summit? Are there issues or expertise Cuba could have contributed?

The absence of Cuba harms the intentions and purposes of many of the participants in the L.A. meeting, the reasons they were going. The Biden government gave as priority immigration  but countries with the greatest importance in relation to immigration are not present at the level of head of state. Another priority was COVID. The U.S. has had the highest death toll because of bad policies regarding prevention and treatment while Cuba has had one of the most successful dealings with COVID, with international recognition of its vaccines and medicines. Ninety-six percent of Cubans eligible for vaccination have received at least three doses.

So how can the United States embark on a serious discussion with Latin America and the Caribbean on matters of healthcare without including our experiences?

The U.S. convened a conference that is ending disastrously because missing are the leaders who have the best understanding of immigration and ability to find, with the U.S., solutions to irregular migration.

Is the Cuban government surprised at the lack of improvement in ties between Washington and Havana in the post-Trump era, especially considering some of the promises candidate Biden made?

I dont think President Biden has his own Cuba policy. I thought his policy would be more similar to [that of the Obama administration]. If you read the Democratic Party platform, it has a different policy toward Cuba. If you look at President Bidens campaign statements and speeches, in his own voice, you will see that he promised to U.S. voters and Cubans who live in Florida another policy. But up to now, sadly, the policy has been the maximum pressure campaign of President Trump.

It not only causes harm and suffering for the Cuban people, stunts the growth of our economy, feeds irregular immigration to the U.S., but is also a policy that hurts the national interests of the United States.

We could have a much more productive relationship.

We know that remittances sent from U.S. residents to Cubans on the island and travel between the two countries  largely suspended in the Trump administration  remain problematic. What about visas? The U.S. says it is restaffing its embassy and consulate in Havana.

President Biden has announced some measures in the right direction, but very limited ones.  We had productive and positive talks about immigration in April  But still the issuing of visas by the U.S. for Cubans has remained drastically reduced. It is forcing Cubans to try to migrate illegally. The United States, confronting immigration with this repressive focus has forced transit countries through which Cubans travel who have left Cuba totally legally, with passports, travel documents, but then with points of access to the U.S. cut off to them, they become illegal migrants.

The U.S. complaints about Cuba are based largely on its record on human rights and freedom of expression, especially after anti-government demonstrations last July that led to hundreds of arrests. What is your response to that? Why the arrests of artists such as dissident rapper Maykel Castillo? Why so many political prisoners?

The government of President Biden does not have the minimum moral or political authority to criticize this. ... Many of the states in the U.S. can arrest and jail people as young as 14 or 12. ... The U.S. separates migrant children from their parents at the border. ... The United States and Cuba have an agreement on a human rights dialogue, and I am fully ready to engage in this dialogue.

Do you consider the people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to be political prisoners? Or common criminals?

And you should verify who really is an artist. Those detained in Cuba have their day in court.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans) and Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) in the animated film "Lightyear." (Pixar / Associated Press)

The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters because of its inclusion of a kiss between two lesbian characters.

Malaysia also reportedly will ban the film. The UAE ban raises the possibility that other Muslim-majority nations could follow suit on what is expected to be one of Disney's biggest animated films of the year as the film industry comes out of the depths of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, announced through its Media Regulatory Office of the country's Ministry of Youth and Culture that "Lightyear" would not be opening in the country on Thursday.

The film is not licensed for public screening in all cinemas in the UAE, due to its violation of the countrys media content standards, the office said in a tweet. The office confirms that all films screened in cinemas across the country are subject to follow-up and evaluation before the date of screening to the public, to ensure the safety of the circulated content according to the appropriate age classification.

The office did not elaborate on the tweet and did not immediately respond to questions from the Associated Press. The tweet included an image of the film's poster, with the profile image of its main character, Buzz Lightyear, with a no symbol over it in red.

Movie theaters in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, had already advertised showtimes for the film. But over the weekend, a social media campaign with the Arabic hashtag Ban Showing Lightyear in the Emirates caught the attention of conservative Emiratis. They described showing a lesbian couple onscreen as being against their culture and religion.

The movie, with actor Chris Evans voicing the inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear action figure from the Toy Story films, includes a female character voiced by actress Uzo Aduba kissing her female partner.

The UAE, like many other countries in the wider Mideast, is a Muslim-led nation that criminalizes same-sex relationships. The U.S. State Department warns that Islamic, or Shariah, law in the UAE can include the death penalty for same-sex conduct, while Dubai can levy a 10-year prison sentence and Abu Dhabi allows for up to 14 years.

However, such prosecutions are rarely reported and LGBTQ individuals do live in the skyscraper-studded city-state of Dubai.

The $200 million Lightyear is expected to be a major draw for Disney, with analysts estimating it could gross more than $100 million in its first weekend.

Studios have allowed censors to cut films in global distribution for content in the past, including in the Mideast market. Recently, Disney has faced protests from activists and its own staff over what they described as CEO Bob Chapeks slow response in publicly criticizing Florida legislation that opponents dubbed the Dont Say Gay bill.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in late March signed the bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

The kiss had been earlier cut from the film but was restored after Pixar employees protested Disney's response to Floridas bill.

The movie also may be banned in Malaysia. The Star, the countrys top English-language newspaper, cited an anonymous, nongovernment source as saying that "Lightyear" will not be shown in Malaysian cinemas. No reasons were given. A newspaper in the Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain similarly has speculated the film wouldn't be shown there.

Officials from Malaysia's Film Censorship Board and the Home Affairs Ministry, as well as the Walt Disney Co., could not be immediately reached for comment.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Its not Super Tuesday, but voters in four states  Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina  take to the polls this week as parties hope to figure out which candidates will be on the ballot this November.

In Maine, incumbent Democratic governor Janet Mills is running uncontested in her primary, just like her general election challenger former Republican governor Paul LePage.

But Jared Golden, a Democrat and one of the most moderate Democrats in the House who voted against President Trumps first impeachment, is running unopposed but will likely face a tough race this November.

In Nevada, incumbent Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has Democratic challengers but is expected to face a tough reelection battle, likely against former Nevada Attorney General and Republican Adam Laxalt, who is backed by both Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and former president Donald Trump.

In the Republican primary, Laxalt is polling roughly 30 points ahead of Sam Brown, a former Army Captain who was awarded the Purple Heart after an injury by an IED in Afghanistan.

In Nevada, Republicans are also looking to unseat incumbent Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak.

In North Dakota, Senator John Hoeven, a former governor, is seeking reelection.

He has the powerful endorsement of former president Donald Trump in a state that handed the former president an over 30-point victory in the 2020 election.

And finally in South Carolina, Governor Henry McMaster is seeking to stay in the governor's mansion.

He has a Trump endorsement and is expected to fend off his most likely Democratic challenger, former U.S. Representative Joe Cunningham, in a state that former president Trump won by over 11 points back in 2020.

After the contests on June 14, the next major primaries come just a week later, when voters in four states and in Washington, D.C., will head to the polls.
The term "gerrymander" stems from this Gilbert Stuart cartoon of a Massachusetts electoral district twisted beyond reason. (Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)

There are so many things wrong with our political system: the electoral college, lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices, the ambiguous wording of certain constitutional amendments. But Nick Seabrooks One Person, One Vote argues that many of Americas problems stem from one eternally timely issue.

Gerrymandering involves the redrawing of congressional, state and local districts for political gain. Its done by both sides and has often been used to sideline minority representation, especially in the aftermath of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that removed obstacles that had long prevented Black people from voting in the South.

Seabrooks title refers to a series of 1960s Supreme Court decisions that required every district to contain roughly the same number of people. But its also an ironic title because the increasingly sophisticated process works around that requirement, stretching and squeezing districts to predetermine outcomes and making votes count for less and less.

The number of competitive seats has been declining every decade and is now at its lowest point in probably a hundred years, Seabrook, a professor at the University of North Florida, said during a recent video chat. Moving forward, the conservative-majority Supreme Court seems set to allow further distortions of the map as states engage in furious lawsuits to settle a new round of redistricting.

In our conversation, Seabrook made clear that practical solutions exist but achievable ones are in short supply. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Gun control is just the latest source of frustration with government inaction. Republican members of Congress in safe, gerrymandered districts worry only about being primaried from the right. Is that an additional obstacle to sensible reform?

Yes, but its not just gun control. Gerrymandering has magnified the divide between parties and contributes to the disappearance of centrists. So were starting to see the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert winning elections and being secure enough in their seats to do the kinds of things theyve done. Theyre obviously outliers, but theyre indicative of a broader trend. Its manifested on both sides, but the Republicans are more extreme. It's only likely to get worse looking in the latest cycle emerging from redistricting. [Districts are redrawn based on a new census at the beginning of every decade.]

Both parties gerrymander. Are the Republicans more willing to discard democratic norms or just better at the process?

I dont think the Republican Party has been more devious or underhanded, theyve just had better fortune and timing. They came into power in the 2010 election, winning control of state legislatures right when the technology was there to much more accurately forecast how districts would perform in the future. Now these gerrymanders hold up for an entire decade.

Theres a sense that Democrats have been unilaterally disarming. In California, with Proposition 11, a lot of powerful Democrats  Nancy Pelosi and others  opposed the creation of that commission. Otherwise, imagine how far the Democrats could go in gerrymandering the 55 congressional districts. California alone might have been sufficient to wipe out all other Republican gains.

What to you are most egregious current examples of gerrymandering?

The two worst at the national level are Florida and Texas. They had one bite at the apple in 2010 and learned from that experience. With the new technology, people packed their opponents into a few supermajority seats and made the rest more competitive to maximize the number that your side wins. But what theyve realized is that if you push things too far you can end up creating too many competitive seats and its better to shore up the seats you already hold.

State politics is often overlooked. Is gerrymandering worse there or are we just not paying attention?

Its both. I wish the national media would pay more attention to gerrymandering of state legislatures. We pay a lot of attention to Congress, but while the GOP may gain seats from gerrymandering in Florida and Texas, the Democrats can do it in Illinois, so it cancels out a bit. But at the state level thats not the case.

Look at Wisconsin  their [Republicans'] margin in the state legislature has barely dipped below two-thirds since 2010 despite elections where the Democrats won the popular vote overall. So thats worse in terms of its anti-democratic implications. You have entire state governments uncompetitive for a decade.

More than 100 opponents of Republican redistricting plans rally in the Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison last October. (Scott Bauer / Associated Press)

You take the Supreme Court to task for not resolving gerrymandering beginning in the 1990s and use the term cowardice regarding Anthony Kennedys waffling. Do the specifics of gerrymandering lawsuits matter or are we beholden to the whims of the justices?

Initially, with racial gerrymandering, facts did make a difference. There was stuff that was unbelievably egregious across the South  Alabama redrew the boundaries of Tuskegee to remove all but four African American residents from the city limits. There was a consensus that those things were unconstitutional, but that was the low-hanging fruit.

Then with one person one vote we saw more nuanced cases in the 1980s and things start diverging ideologically. Republicans start becoming a lot more skeptical that courts should intervene. In the 1990s we get into majority-minority districts and using redistricting for affirmative action and thats more controversial.

Im critical of the conservative majority on the court, but more for their hypocrisy than for the underlying merits of the cases. Its fine to say redistricting should be race-neutral. But with partisan gerrymanders in the 1990s theyd throw up their hands and say, Its really complicated and I dont know if we have appropriate standards for deciding this, and on the very same day theyd hand down decisions for racial gerrymandering cases where they had a finely tuned, almost mystical sense of where [it] went too far.

Would open nonpartisan primaries using ranked voting eliminate some of the incentives to gerrymander?

Its not a panacea, but ranked-choice voting is preferable. But ultimately, the gerrymandering problem wont be fixed until we take the power away from politicians, as every other country has realized. Allowing political actors to draw the maps is too much temptation for them to resist.

Will politicians give up that power?

Even in red states like Utah and Ohio, when people get the opportunity to vote on initiatives or a referendum, they vote for reform. The problem is getting those questions on the ballot to begin with. But Congress could pass legislation for the House. The recent voting rights acts had reform in their bills, but they havent passed yet. If that happens then maybe some momentum starts to build. But its hard to get started.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
In recent months, several strict abortion laws have been passed across the United States, banning the procedure after a certain number of weeks.

Most have limited exceptions, such as in cases of incest or rape, and some only allow abortion to "save the mother's life." If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which it seems poised to do over the summer, this could be one of the only exceptions for abortion in many places.

For example, Arizona's 15-week ban only includes exemptions for medical emergencies when continuing with the pregnancy would "create serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function" for the mother.

And a new Oklahoma ban classifies a "medical emergency" as a condition in which an abortion "is necessary to preserve the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself."

MORE: Kentucky legislature overrides governor's veto of 15-week abortion ban

Proponents of anti-abortion bills say the language is clear and is not open to interpretation.

"The exceptions definition is very clear, specific, allows for the physician's good faith clinical judgment, and it has been upheld by the courts and is typically included in laws regulating abortion," Arizona state Sen. Nancy Barto, a Republican who sponsored the state's 15-week ban, told ABC News.

But doctors told ABC News the language of these laws is vague and makes it unclear what qualifies as a mother's life being in danger, what the risk of death is, and how imminent death must be before a provider can act.

"We've taken the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and these types of laws and this type of language actually do harm," Dr. Melissa Simon, vice chair for research in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, told ABC News. "I do not -- nor do my patients want me to -- stop what I'm doing and think about what the judge would do: 'Will the judge sentence me to jail if I were to perform an abortion?'"

"It sounds like it's straightforward criteria, but it's not in practice," said Dr. Lisa Harris.

PHOTO: Pro-choice demonstrators rally outside the State House during a Pro-Choice Mother's Day Rally in Boston, May 8, 2022. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

A professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan, Harris told ABC News, "None of this is straightforward. It's very nuanced and complex, and it's really hard for a one-size-fits-all rule or law to generate what all patients are going to need."

Doctors ABC News spoke with said laws that only allow exceptions to save the mother's life will put the onus on the provider to prove the pregnant person is in danger of dying. In some states, providers could face charges.

Dr. Leilah Zahedi, a maternal-fetal medicine physician in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a spokesperson for the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, said the anti-abortion rights laws don't make it clear if a woman's risk of death has to be 100% for the procedure to be performed or not.

MORE: 5 myths about abortion debunked as Supreme Court decides future of Roe v. Wade

"When I see patients, for instance, who have a major cardiac problem, a lot of the time they have a risk of a major cardiac event of up to 15% to 25%, even up to 50%," she told ABC News. "At the moment they're fine. But as they get further into pregnancy, that's going to put their life more and more at risk."

She continued, "So do I have to wait until they're on death's doorstep, or can I intervene at that point to prevent more harm and more damage to them?"

There are typically three categories pregnant people fall into when they need to have abortions to save their lives, doctors told ABC News.

PHOTO: Demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court, May 6, 2022, in Washington, D.C., after a draft opinion suggested the U.S. Supreme Court could be poised to overturn the Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide. (Mariam Zuhaib/AP)

First are people who have serious underlying conditions -- such as heart disease, kidney failure and pulmonary hypertension, a type of high blood pressure that affects the lungs -- before getting pregnant. Continuing pregnancies would significantly threaten their health.

The second category is those who didn't have conditions before getting pregnant but now do, such as pre-eclampsia, a potentially dangerous pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure, or placenta accreta, which is when the placenta attaches to the uterus and potentially grows through it to other organs.

The third category includes pregnancies in which fetuses would not survive if they were born. This includes an ectopic pregnancy, which occurs when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the uterus.

MORE: Idaho lawmakers pass 6-week abortion ban styled after Texas law

Oklahoma state Rep. Jim Olsen, a Republican who sponsored a bill that would make it a felony to perform abortions, said Oklahoma doesn't have specific definitions of what might constitute "lifesaving" to make sure an example isn't missed.

"If we tried to specify as legislators exactly what qualifies and limit it only in these situations, there's a very real possibility we could miss one ... and we don't want to inadvertently exclude something that is actually a danger to the life of the woman," he told ABC News.

He continued, "We want to fully respect the woman's right to life and all her rights, but at the same time, we must also respect the rights of the baby, and the baby has a right to life."

Medical groups have argued that what qualifies as an exception is often subjective to lawmakers, but not to the physician.

"The science of medicine is not subjective, and a strongly held personal belief should never outweigh scientific evidence, override standards of medical care, or drive policy that puts a person's health and life at risk," the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a 2019 statement on abortion sometimes being "medically necessary."

The exceptions raise concerns about timing for abortions, doctors said.

Doctors said these exceptions make it unclear whether they have to wait to perform an abortion if a pregnancy is only dangerous once it reaches later terms.

For example, Harris said a woman diagnosed with placenta accreta is not in any imminent risk of dying before 20 weeks, but the risk is greatly heightened in the later stages.

"There is a threat to their life, but it might be months away," she said. "How imminent does that threat have to be for you to qualify for an abortion under the term 'lifesaving'?"

MORE: Kentucky legislature overrides governor's veto of 15-week abortion ban

Another uncertainty of these laws is what occurs when a pregnant woman is diagnosed with cancer. Women who need to undergo surgery, chemotherapy and radiation may decide they want abortions so they can begin treatment immediately, Harris said.

"The threat to the life of the patient isn't imminent, meaning the pregnancy and illness are not life-threatening at the moment," she said. "But if someone, for example, were to delay treatment for eight or nine months, the cancer may advance in that instance and then they have a worse cancer when they begin to treat it."

Harris continued, "In the case of cancer, it may be that someone survived their cancer only two years as opposed to 20 years because they delayed treatment. And so that is a risk to their life if they could cut their life short."

The death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland prompted questions about the clarity of these exceptions.

PHOTO: In this May 26, 2018, file photo, messages are left at a memorial to Savita Halappanavar a day after an Abortion Referendum to liberalize abortion laws was passed by popular vote, in Dublin, Ireland. (Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters, FILE)

In 2012, 17 weeks pregnant with her first child, she went to University Hospital Galway complaining of back pain.

Doctors told the 31-year-old dentist that her cervix was fully dilated and that amniotic fluid was leaking. Because of this, it was unlikely her baby would survive and a miscarriage was inevitable -- but her body did not expel the fetus.

She asked if doctors could terminate the pregnancy, but they said they were forbidden to do so under Irish law because a fetal heartbeat could be detected.

"Under Irish law, if there's no evidence of risk to the life of the mother, our hands are tied so long as there's a fetal heart," an OB-GYN consultant said, according to an investigation into Halappanavar's case by the Ireland Health Service Executive, adding that "we can't predict who is going to get an infection."

MORE: What abortion funds are and how they work

Within days, Halappanavar developed sepsis, went into cardiac arrest and died.

The HSE investigation stated: "There is difficulty in interpretation of law in relation to 'what constitutes a potential major hazard or threat to mother's life.' This needs clarification."

Halappanavar's death sent shockwaves throughout Ireland, spurring the Parliament to pass an updated, clarified exception to the country's abortion ban. Six years after her death, the country voted to overturn its ban on abortion, with many voters citing Halappanavar as the reason for their vote.

Barto, of Arizona, said she does not know the specifics of the case, but believes this is a case of improper medical care rather than what can result from a denied abortion.

"I can only speculate that this woman's tragic death should and could have been avoided with proper and timely medical care and decision-making," Barto said. "Her family deserves someone to be held accountable."

PHOTO: An abortion rights protester holds a placard in front of an anti-abortion protester during demonstrations following the leaked Supreme Court opinion suggesting the possibility of overturning Roe v. Wade, in New York, May 14, 2022. (Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)

Simon, of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said if doctors are not allowed to perform abortions because the procedure does not fall within the limits of a save the mother's life exception, maternal mortality rates in the U.S. will rise.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that between 2013 and 2018, the national case-fatality rate was 0.41 abortion-related deaths per 100,000 legal abortions. Comparatively, the mortality rate was 17.35 pregnancy-related deaths among mothers per 100,000 live births.

"Abortion is extremely safe. It is a safer procedure taking an appendix out, and that's a very common medical procedure," Simon said. "I just can't emphasize enough how safe these procedures are and how well-studied they are."

She added that maternal mortality rates in the U.S. "are embarrassing enough."

"Why do we want them to go up?" she said.

Why doctors say the 'save the mother's life' exception of abortion bans is medically risky originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
FILE PHOTO: The Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower and St. Basil's Cathedral are seen through the art object in Zaryadye park in Moscow

LONDON (Reuters) - The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, has filed an appeal against a Moscow court decision demanding that it remove information related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that people have a right to know the facts of the war.

A Moscow court fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million roubles ($88,000) for refusing to remove what it termed disinformation from Russian-language Wikipedia articles on the war including "The Russian Invasion of Ukraine", "War Crimes during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine" and "Massacre in Bucha".

"This decision implies that well-sourced, verified knowledge on Wikipedia that is inconsistent with Russian government accounts constitutes disinformation," Stephen LaPorte, Associate General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a statement.

Wikipedia, which says it offers "the second draft of history", is one of the few remaining major fact-checked Russian-language sources of information for Russians after a crackdown on media in Moscow.

"The government is targeting information that is vital to people's lives in a time of crisis," LaPorte said. "We urge the court to reconsider in favor of everyone's rights to knowledge access and free expression."

The Moscow court argued that what it cast as the disinformation on Wikipedia posed a risk to public order in Russia and that the Foundation, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California, was operating inside Russia.

The Foundation was prosecuted under a law about the failure to delete banned information. The case was brought by Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia appeal, which was filed on June 6 with details released on Monday, argues that removing information is a violation of human rights. It said Russia had no jurisdiction over the Wikimedia Foundation, which was globally available in over 300 languages.

Wikipedia entries are written and edited by volunteers.

Narratives of the war, Europe's biggest ground invasion since World War Two, vary drastically  and have become highly politicised with journalists in both Moscow and the West routinely accused of misreporting the war.

Ukraine says it is the victim of an unprovoked imperial-style land grab by Russia and that it will fight to the end to reclaim the territory that Russian forces have occupied. Kyiv has repeatedly asked the West for more help to fight Russia.

President Vladimir Putin and Russian officials do not use the words "war" or "invasion". They cast it a "special military operation" aimed at preventing the persecution of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

Putin also says the conflict is a turning point in Russian history: a revolt by Moscow against the United States, which he says has humiliated Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and pushed to enlarge the NATO military alliance.

Ukraine and its Western backers deny Moscow's claims that Russian speakers were persecuted. Kyiv says Russian forces have committed war crimes, including killings, torture and rape in places such as Bucha.

Russia says the alleged evidence of war crimes consists of carefully constructed fakes and that Ukraine and its Western backers have spread disinformation about Russian forces.

($1 = 57.0000 roubles)

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
YEREVAN, JUNE 13, ARMENPRESS. Startup Lithuania is going to participate online in the Orion Summit 2022, which is going to take place in Yerevan on June 22.

In an interview to ARMENPRESS, Akvile Dobromilskyte, Foreign Startups Manager at Startup Lithuania, said that their participation could be an occasion to build bridges between the Armenian and Lithuanian startup ecosystems.

If we are talking about why Armenia would be interesting to the Lithuanian startups and investors, from what I know and heard about the Armenian startup ecosystem is that the ecosystem is rapidly growing, has many highly qualified talents, especially I hear in engineering and R&D. As Lithuania is open for cooperation, we believe that our ecosystems have a lot to offer each other, talents, infrastructure, startups, investors, organizations that work with startups, etc, she said.

Startup Lithuania is the facilitator of national startup ecosystem, which unites all the players of the Lithuanian ecosystem in one place  talents, startups, investors, governmental institutions, the government itself. We want to say that we are open to cooperate and help foreign startups as well, Akvile Dobromilskyte said. We think that Lithuania could be a perfect entry point to Europe for Armenian startups, and also our startups could be interesting to Armenian investors who are looking where to invest. I believe that Lithuania shouldnt be overlooked by Armenian startup ecosystem players, she added.

She notes that their main goal at the upcoming summit is to introduce the Armenian IT community to the Lithuanian startup ecosystem, to their startup visa program that is especially created for startup founders who are thinking to scale to Europe. My expectation is starting building bridges between those two ecosystems, she states.

Talking about IT tourism direction, and opportunities for cooperation, as I said I see many opportunities for both parties. Our startup is always in search of talents, especially of senior level. And I believe our talents would also be interested in expanding the possibilities to work not only in Lithuania but in foreign countries as well, including Armenia, Akvile Dobromilskyte said.

She once again urged Armenian startups dont overlook Lithuania while entering the European market.

10X Immersive co-founder David Zargaryan says their Armenian tech company was searching for a market for sale, including in Europe. And Startup Lithuania helped them in this matter.

In order to be able to operate in Europe, we had to establish a company. We used Startup Lithuanias startup visa program, which is specifically created for startup founders. We managed to open a company there, and they helped us with everything, he said.

About Orion

Orion Worldwide Innovations (Orion), is a startup growth and ecosystem acceleration hub and offers a full-service package to make companies investable to enter the US market, enhance their customer acquisition strategies, stay competitive and protect their innovation. Orion is a U.S.-based company formed in 2017, with offices in New York City, U.S., and Yerevan, Armenia, though Orion partners with companies and investor networks worldwide.

Reporting by Karine Terteryan
YEREVAN, JUNE 13, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Vahagn Khachaturyan and Armenian-American molecular biologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel Prize laureate Ardem Patapoutian visited today Synopsis Armenia, the Presidential Office said.

They toured the company, got acquainted with its activity, upcoming programs, participated in a discussion relating to current challenges in IT, science sectors and answered to the questions of the meeting participants.

Photos by Hayk Manukyan

We move to science and high technologies. We have no other option, the Armenian President said, adding that the Diaspora should also participate in the change of our life as it is not only a help chain or an opportunity. I think it is the best example how it is possible to become famous in the world with science. We do not have resources, but we could be represented to the world with our knowledge, and Synopsis is one of the vivid examples of it, he added.

In his turn Ardem Patapoutian thanked for the warm welcome and stated that he feels at home here. One day I fell in love with science and I can say that if you do something, you should love it. I think it is very good to do what you love, and that is the key to success, he said.

Synopsis Armenia Director Hovik Musayelyan highlighted the fact that world-famous people do not forget to mention about their roots that they Armenians and have grown up in an Armenian family. For the first time an Armenian scientist is receiving a Nobel Prize, and I would not exaggerate if I say that this success is one of our national achievements, he said.
YEREVAN, 13 JUNE, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 13 June, USD exchange rate down by 3.31 drams to 418.64 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 8.70 drams to 438.19 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate down by 0.02 drams to 7.37 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 14.50 drams to 510.45 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price down by 396.21 drams to 24631.04 drams. Silver price down by 6.91 drams to 290.59 drams. Platinum price stood at 16414.1 drams.
Senior AICC leaders manhandled by police, It's all politics, says Kharge

New Delhi: Amidst exhaustive police arrangements across central New Delhi, senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi appeared before the Enforcement Directorate at its office here. The questioning took almost nine hours in two shifts. He has again been summoned on Tuesday at 11 am.

The permission to march with Mr Gandhi to the ED office was denied to senior party leaders and workers. Mr Gandhi reached the ED office at 11.08 am and left at 2.08 pm for lunch, when he visited his mother, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the Congress president, who has been admitted to Delhis Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, for Covid-related complications. He returned to the ED office at 3.35 pm and the questioning continued till 9.25 pm.

Sources said the ED officers are looking into the manner in which Mr Gandhi and Mrs Sonia Gandhi were made directors in the new company Young Indian. Also, how the entire loan of Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), the company which owns the National Herald newspaper, which is worth Rs 90.21 crores, was being written off for a paltry Rs 50 lakhs once Young Indian came into existence. Earlier, Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Pawan Kumar Bansal had also been questioned in the case. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has also been called for questioning. She will appear before the ED once she recuperates from Covid-19. Sources said Mr Rahul Gandhi has written down his answers under Section 50 of the PMLA law. The ED is also looking at how the entire chain of AJL equity shares were taken over by Young Indian.

The Congress had planned a massive dharna and march to the ED office over the summons to its leader. However, the Delhi police did not allow the Congress leaders to go with him and detained almost the entire Congress leadership at several places across the national capital. Though the march was scheduled for 10 am, since the morning the Delhi police started rounding up Congress workers and leaders to pre-empt the show of strength. Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, where he had come to attend the march, Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel said: For the last eight years, Central agencies have continuously registered cases against the leaders of the Opposition There is a continuous misuse of Central agencies to suppress us. This cannot happen under a democracy which is getting strangled; we oppose this.

Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said: This is nothing but politics. Had there been a legal point in this case, it would not have taken eight years for action. This is their [BJP] method to harass people, but we will not be scared. We will continue to fight.

The Congress said AICC general secretary (organisation) and Rajya Sabha MP K.C. Venugopal was manhandled by the Delhi police. AICC communications chief Randeep Singh Surjewala said: A deadly attack was launched on Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal by the police. MP Shaktisinh Gohil was attacked. Congress workers were beaten up. Thousands are in jail. Democracy has been trampled on. The country will not forgive the Narendra Modi government.

He further added that the glasses of former Union home minister and Rajya Sabha MP P. Chidambaram were thrown and he suffered a hairline fracture in his ribs, while Rajya Sabha MP Pramod Tewari was thrown on the road and has a head injury as well as a broken rib.
Bulldozers are being used for action in Prayagraj by the Prayagraj Development Authority under the ambit of law

A bulldozer is being used to demolish the illegal structures of the residence of Javed Ahmed, a local leader who was allegedly involved in the recent violent protests against BJP former spokeswoman Nupur Sharma's incendiary remarks about Prophet Mohammed, in Allahabad. (Sanjay KANOJIA / AFP)

New Delhi/Kolkata: Protests and the imposition of curfews continued in several states over the two erstwhile BJP spokespersons remarks over Prophet Mohammad. In Uttar Pradesh, where some of the major cities faced massive protests, the Yogi government brought out bulldozers on Sunday to raze down the houses of some of the protesters. Among those whose homes were bulldozed on Sunday was of Muslim activist Afreen Fatima in Prayagraj.

Heavy police deployment was seen in Silchar, Ranchi, Howrah, Prayagraj and parts of Jammu and Kashmir after violent protests over derogatory comments on Prophet Mohammed by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma. While Ms Sharma has been suspended from her party, several FIRs have been filed across the country against her. At least two people have been killed, and hundreds arrested after clashes between protesters and the police since Friday. Nine FIRs have been filed over the violence and death during police firing in Ranchi.

In Maharashtra, the Bhiwandi police has summoned Nupur Sharma to record her statement on Monday over her alleged objectionable remarks against Prophet Mohammad, while a fresh FIR was filed against her in West Bengal under non-bailable charges. The FIR is under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion), 504 (intentional insult to provoke breach of peace), 505(2) (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. Incidentally, the Jamaat Ulema-e-Hind has suggested that Ms Nupur Sharma should be forgiven as as per Islamic practice.

To tackle the protests in Uttar Pradesh, the Yogi Adityanath government continues with its bulldozing techniques after these were reported from Prayagraj, Saharanpur, Moradabad, Hathras and Kanpur since the Friday prayers in mosques. The state government has reportedly slapped the Gangster Act against many protesters as Yogi Adityanath called for stern action against the rioters.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday strongly opposed the demolition drive in the state, saying it was Nupur Sharma who should face action over her comments but instead peaceful protesters are being punished.

The Uttar Pradesh Police has so far arrested over 300 people from eight districts of the state over Friday's violent protests. On Sunday, the house of one of the accused in the violence in Prayagraj was demolished for being an illegal construction. Sources said that more demolitions can be expected in the days to come in Prayagraj, Saharanpur, Moradabad, Hathras, Kanpur and the other places which witnessed protests.

The Prayagraj Development Authority demolished the house of Mohammad Javed, who has been accused over his involvement in the violence in the district on Friday. Javed is the father of Afreen Fatima, a student at JNU. Javed Mohammad's family has alleged he was served a backdated notice. The family has filed a plea against the demolition, claiming that the order incorrectly mentions him as the owner of the house instead of his wife. His wife, Somaiya Fatima, alleged that the authorities had not issued any notice prior to the action about their house being illegal.

Bulldozers are being used for action in Prayagraj by the Prayagraj Development Authority under the ambit of law. Heavy police deployed there as violent incidents happened last Friday, said Prashant Kumar, ADG (law and order) UP police. He added 306 people have been arrested since Friday while 13 injured policemen are getting treatment.

In UPs Bhadohi, a case was registered at Gopiganj police station after a procession was taken out on Saturday evening despite prohibitory orders being in place in support of Nupur Sharma. In Saharanpur, 71 people have been arrested. We have found CCTV footage via which we are identifying them. We are taking action only after we find solid proof so we do not have to let them go, said SP City Rajesh Kumar on the protests in Saharanpur after the Friday prayers.

Security has been tightened in Jharkhand as Section 144 remained in effect in Ranchi. With the situation slowly easing in Ranchi, the state administration has restored Internet services that had been cut off to contain the protests. The facilities that were stopped have begun 25 FIRs have yet been registered regarding the violence, with 22 people identified by name and several others have been booked as unknown. An SIT has been formed to look into it. We are taking confidence-building measures and ensuring patrolling. We are monitoring all social media, including WhatsApp. We are seeing uploads, downloads, hashtags, statements. Any person trying to instigate violence will be booked, said Ranchi SSP S.K. Jha.

All states where violence has taken place must ensure strict action and investigation so such incidents do not repeat themselves, said Union minister Anurag Thakur on Sunday.

The West Bengal police has arrested over 100 persons for the incidents of violence over the hate speech so far. On Sunday the BJPs Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari too had an altercation with the police when he was stopped from visiting the violence-hit areas of Howrah. In Nadia, a local train came under attack by a violent mob at Bethuadahari railway station, which disrupted services for over an hour. Railway officials said the train was damaged and some passengers injured.

In Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim cleric who called for Nupur Sharmas beheading was arrested, while the Aurangabads AIMIM MP Imtiaz Jaleel has set off a fresh controversy by demanding the hanging of Ms Sharma for her remarks about the Prophet.

In Kuwait, meanwhile, the expats who have protested against Ms Nupur Sharma will be arrested and deported from Kuwait. The Kuwait government has issued instructions to arrest such protesters and send them back to their respective countries saying that all migrants should respect the laws and should not take part in any kind of demonstrations. In Kuwait, expatriates are not allowed to organize sit-ins or protests in the country. Arab Times reported that the protesters have violated the laws and rules of the country.
Neither the ruling BJP-led NDA nor the opposition camp have declared their presidential candidates so far

New Delhi: For the upcoming presidential elections, the BJP has authorised its president J.P. Nadda and Union defence minister Rajnath Singh to hold consultations with various political parties, including those in the opposition camp, to arrive at a consensus on the choice for the top constitutional post. Neither the ruling BJP-led NDA nor the opposition camp have declared their presidential candidates so far.

The two BJP leaders, in what is being seen as an outreach by the ruling party to arrive at a consensus on the choice for the top constitutional post, will be holding consultation with leaders of political parties soon, a statement issued by the BJP said. The election for the next president will be held on July 18, in which 4,809 electors, including MPs and MLAs, will vote to elect incumbent Ram Nath Kovind's successor.

Going by its strength in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha as well as in many state Assemblies, the BJP is in a comfortable position to ensure the victory of the candidate nominated by it in the upcoming election. The BJP leadership is also hopeful of non-NDA and non-UPA parties like the YSRCP and BJD's support for its nominee.

Mr Singh, who enjoys a good rapport with leaders across the political spectrum, was also part of the BJP's three member committee during the 2017 presidential polls to deliberate with opposition parties.

In 2017, then BJP president Amit Shah had constituted a three-member panel of then senior Union ministers Arun Jaitley and M. Venkaiah Naidu, including Mr Singh, to hold talks with all the political parties over the presidential polls.

The BJP had fielded then Bihar governor Kovind as its candidate in the polls. Mr Kovind went on to become the president after defeating opposition-backed Meira Kumar.

With relatively fewer numbers on its side this time, the BJP-led NDA's nominee will require the support of one of the two fence-sitters -- the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the YSR Congress Party.

In the last presidential polls, both parties had supported Mr Kovind.

Meanwhile, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has also reached out to several opposition leaders, including Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Trinamul Congress supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, for consultation over the presidential polls.

Ms Banerjee has called a meeting of opposition parties in Delhi on June 15 in the backdrop of the presidential election.

The presidential polls will be held on July 18 and the counting of votes, if needed, will be taken up on July 21.
Enjoying the PMs trust is a primary qualification for the job

Given the state of the nation today, it would do good for national unity and integrity, and for domestic social peace and stability, that the next President should be someone capable of healing the nations many self-inflicted wounds. (Representational Image/PTI)

The Election Commission of India has set the date for the election of the sixteenth President of the Republic. There is some doubt, though, about whether President Ram Nath Kovind should be referred to as Indias 15th or 16th President. The answer depends on how one would consider one of the many instances when Justice M. Hidayatullah served as acting President. Justice Hidayatullah served as Rashtrapati on three occasions. On two of those three it was only for a day, when he was vice-president.

However, between July 20, 1969 and August 24, 1969, for over a month and including the Independence Day of 1969, he had served as the acting President, in his capacity as the Chief Justice of India.

If Justice Hidayatullahs odd case is not considered then President Ram Nath Kovind would indeed be the 15th President, and his successor the 16th. There has already been some speculation in the media on potential candidates for the countrys top job, but I would venture to suggest that there is no reason why President Kovind should not be given a second term. He has discharged his constitutional role with utmost dignity and has endeared himself to a wide cross-section of society. For someone who came out of virtual political obscurity, after having served as a low- profile governor of Bihar, President Kovind has earned for himself the reputation of being wise, dignified and a learned occupant of the Presidents palace.

If not Mr Kovind, there is vice-president M. Venkaiah Naidu. There is no reason why he should not be elevated. So, all the media speculation about the other names is quite redundant.

None of the governors whose names are currently doing the rounds have adorned their constitutional office with the grace that President Kovind has come to be associated with. Politically oriented governors are not new. In the 1980s Hyderabad was home to one such in governor Ram Lal, whom the Telugus finally got rid of. It is once again home to a partisan busybody. But such governors are not presidential material.

Indeed, governorship has not been an important qualification for the nations top constitutional post. The only two predecessors of President Kovind who served as governor were Shankar Dayal Sharma and Pratibha Patil.

The professional background of the republics 15 Presidents has been very diverse. While most were active political leaders, a philosopher, a diplomat and an engineer also made it to the top. Almost always it is the political context that has determined the choice of the winner. However, whenever the Prime Minister has been in a politically commanding position capable of securing the support of a clear majority of the electoral college, the PMs choice has been a person who could be personally trusted.

Enjoying the PMs trust is a primary qualification for the job. Having regard for constitutional values and conducting oneself with dignity and decorum is an equally important qualification. While the Constitution makes it very clear that the final word on matters of state is that of the Union council of ministers headed by the Prime Minister, and that the President must accept their views as duly conveyed, there are often situations in which a strong-willed President can make life difficult for the PM.

Rajendra Prasad was known to have had several differences with Jawaharlal Nehru and Shankar Dayal Sharma often argued with Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. In 1969 Indira Gandhi went to great lengths, even splitting her political party, to prevent the election of Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy and secure the victory of V.V. Giri. The more infamous spats were between President Zail Singh and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the mid-1980s.

Given this background and the fact that the next President will be in office at the time of the next general election, in the summer of 2024, one should expect Prime Minister Narendra Modi to play it safe and seek a candidate who is not merely a political and an ideological fellow traveller but someone he can personally trust. Mr Naidu must wonder why there is all this speculation about names!

On the other hand, it is difficult to guess who might be the consensus candidate of a united Opposition. It has to be an inspirational figure who may genuinely be able to unite the entire Opposition and stand for principles that can help isolate the BJP and bring political parties sitting on the fence on to the side of the Opposition parties. A tough call.

The idea that a political partys choice of nominee for the Presidents post can deliver electoral benefits is highly exaggerated. While the choice of a dalit, like K.R. Narayanan and Mr Kovind, or a Muslim, like Zakir Hussain or Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, may have had some symbolic value, the electoral dividend is minimal. As a believer in Hindutva, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee may have won praise for opting for a Muslim President, but that choice offered no electoral dividends for the PM. Why should any voter care who occupies the palace on Raisina Hill when power resides in the streets below.

Some people seem to think that the BJP would like to put a woman in Rashtrapati Bhavan as a demonstration of its commitment to gender empowerment. That cause would be better served placing more women in positions of real power, both within the government and the party organisation. The Congress Party has anyway earned the distinction of electing the first woman PM and President.

Given the state of the nation today, it would do good for national unity and integrity, and for domestic social peace and stability, that the next President should be someone capable of healing the nations many self-inflicted wounds. Someone who can be a friend, philosopher and guide to the Prime Minister, capable of taking a non-partisan view, protecting the best interests of all and not promoting a sectarian political agenda. After all, the President of India is also the supreme commander of the nations armed forces, and so must be capable of earning the respect of every soldier, sailor and airman who wears the uniform and who may be called upon to make that ultimate sacrifice for the nation.
by John Ai

At the Singapore security summit, US cand Chinese defence ministers take a tough stance. The US promises to maintain Taiwans defence capabilities and the status quo along the Taiwan Strait. China is ready to response militarily in the event of a declaration of independence. The Ukrainian war is cited as an example.

Rome (AsiaNews)  US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin warned that China represents a growing threat to Taiwan in a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual summit on security held over the weekend in Singapore.

According to Austin, China has changed its policy towards Taiwan, while the United States remains committed to the Taiwan Relations Act and to maintaining the island's military capability with the supply of defensive weapons.

Austin said that Washington opposes any unilateral change to the status quo along the Taiwan Strait, by either Beijing or Taipei.

The retired US Army four-star general slammed China's provocative behaviour in the Indo-Pacific, including its risky naval and air interceptions, and its increasingly intense military activities around Taiwan.

China claims the waters in the East and South China Sea for historical reasons. To expand their influence, the Chinese have boosted their military presence in the disputed bodies of water in recent years.

Two traditional US allies, Australia and Canada, have accused Chinas Peoples Liberation Army Air Force of flying aircrafts near their military planes to force them to change course.

Beijing responded by saying that Canberra and Ottawa are spreading fake news. Analysts warn that any errors of assessment during these close aerial encounters could cause an escalation of the conflict.

In his remarks on Taiwan, Secretary Austin also referred to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an "indefensible assault on a peaceful neighbor."

China rejected the comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan earlier this year. According to the Chinese, the island is part of China and its status is an internal matter not subject to international control.

Zhang Zhenzhong, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of Chinas Central Military Commission, dismissed Washington's Indo-Pacific strategy as hegemonic and attributed tensions in the Taiwan Strait to US behaviour.

Still, various observers point out that Taiwan faces economic and military threats from China similar to those Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine.

In his address to the Shangri-la Dialogue summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the international community should provide aid to threatened countries, such as Taiwan, before the outbreak of a possible war.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian authorities have refrained from criticising China playing a balancing act towards that superpower.

Zelensky suggested seeking diplomatic solutions to avoid conflict and support countries in difficulty, answering a question about Taiwan, without mentioning Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The world enables these leaders to grow their appetites for now, therefore we need a diplomatic resolution to support countries that are in need of help, Zelensky said.

During the summit, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe reiterated Chinas threat of military action against Taiwan, saying, If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, we are determined to fight at any costs.

Before the summit, Austin and Wei met separately in Singapore on Friday. According to a press release by the Pentagon, the planned 30-minute meeting lasted an hour, and discussion centred mainly on Taiwan.

Wu Qian, a spokesman for China's Defence Ministry, said the two sides had agreed to maintain constant communication to control risks.

The Biden administration has stressed the need for guardrails to prevent tensions between the two sides in different situations.
As the World Trade Organisation holds its ministerial conference, the Catholic charity renews its call for a waiver on intellectual property rights to cope with COVID-19 pandemic. Only 17.6 per cent of the population in low-income countries have been vaccinated. For Caritas, the poor have been left alone.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  The Twelfth World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference opened yesterday in Geneva and will last until Tuesday. Caritas Internationalis is calling on its members to accept a waiver on intellectual property rights to share information and allow the transfer of technologies to developing countries to help them cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

After 18 months of negotiations on an agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the Catholic charity was hopeful that the pandemic could open the door to more effective, extensive and comprehensive solutions that would help protect the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. So far, this has remained a pie in the sky.

According to the latest United Nations data, only 17.6 per cent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 72.2 per cent of people in high-income countries.

People living in poverty, the most exposed to diseases, have been left alone and lack access to health care, vaccines as well as the technologies and healthcare resources needed to deal with COVID-19 and emerging variants.

For this reason, Caritas Internationalis is calling for a waiver on intellectual property rights for the duration of the pandemic, to enable the countries of the global South to produce vaccines and strengthen healthcare systems so that they can cope with any future pandemics.

This cannot be achieved unless a rapid transfer of knowledge is agreed through training and localised vaccine production.

It is a basic right for every person to have access to healthcare in all circumstances, especially during pandemics, said Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Aloysius John.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to impact the lives of millions of people worldwide, it has become evident that the citizens of developing nations should have equitable access to life-saving vaccines, John urged.

In Caritas Internationaliss view, the agreements reached so far do not provide for a full waiver.

New obstacles have been put in place on countries that seek to lift intellectual property barriers and boost COVID-19 drug production, nor have all existing intellectual property barriers that hinder access to technologies been lifted.

What is more, the agreements do not cover therapeutics and diagnostics, and exclude certain countries.

Hence, We call on all countries to urgently base their decisions on a human rights framework, making sure that the dignity of every individual is preserved and social justice prevails, the Caritas secretary general added.
As a crime wave sweeps across the capital, people are increasingly afraid of leaving home, even during daytime. Children as young as six have been arrested for robbery. Theft against public property have tripled, while those against private property have more than doubled. Eight prisoners could have fingers cut off after they were convicted of robbery.

Tehran (AsiaNews)  Poverty is on the rise in Iran because of the countrys economic crisis and the collapse of its currency; this, in turn, is fuelling a crime wave, especially theft and robbery.

As more and more Iranian fall below the poverty line (over 55 per cent according to the latest estimates), the age of offenders is falling as well.

Speaking to Middle East Eye, social pathologist Mohammad Reza Mahboubfar points out that children as young as six are stealing to help their families.

Despite being a sprawling and densely populated metropolis, until a few years ago, Tehran was deemed relatively safe with low crime rates and well-patrolled streets.

Years of isolation and international economic sanctions, mismanagement and widespread corruption have taken their toll so that the capital is now reporting a surge in crimes, especially robberies.

Last week, a Hollywood-style heist took place at a branch of the countrys national bank Melli in the heart of the capital. About 13 people were arrested in connection with the robbery, which was widely reported by the national media.

However, experts explain that this is but the tip of the iceberg and residents complain of an increasing number of crimes against property and offences by youth gangs.

Last month, when I got out of my car, I was attacked by someone from the back. He put his knife under my throat and told me to give him whatever I had, said Ali, a mugging victim from Tehran.

He added that another man on a motorbike immediately approached him and he had no choice but to hand over his mobile phone, wedding ring, watch, and a package he was carrying.

As a result of the robberies, which took place in broad daylight and in an affluent part of the city, Ali says he is carrying a low-quality phone and a fake watch just in case he goes through the same experience.

Even official statistics, although under government control, confirm the exponential growth in crimes compared to past years, fuelling fears of violent crimes in a population already struggling with economic hardships.

Warnings have been issued for ordinary citizens to take extra precautions, especially girls and women who have been advised not to get into unmarked taxies.

Things have got so bad that Im scared of leaving the house when it gets dark and I dont live in a posh area, said Maryam, a female Tehrani resident. "Muggings are common even during the day and you can have your cell phone or jewellery stolen anywhere, anytime.

As of mid-2020 almost half of those arrested were first-time offenders, unlike in the past when most were repeat offenders, this according to the capitals Criminal Investigation Police.

Theft against public property have tripled in the last three years, while those against private property have more than doubled.

The trend has sparked a violent crackdown by the authorities, which worries international human rights groups.

According to Amnesty International, Iran is set to cut off the fingers of eight prisoners, at least three of whom have been convicted as a result of "confessions" extracted through torture.

The eight, who were convicted of robbery, will be moved to two prisons equipped with a sort of guillotine to carry out the sentences: Evin prison in Tehran and Raja'i Shahr in Karaj.

One of the prisoners, Hadi Rostami, was flogged 60 times in February 2021 for disrupting prison order after he engaged in peaceful protest, including hunger strikes against his inhumane prison conditions.
Born in Pakse, the new priest was a lay missionary for years among the last and was jailed twice. As he completed his theological studies to become a priest in Manila, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The ordination took place this morning in the Philippines. For one of Fr Mims friends, his calling is a rare vocation but with it God wants to bear fruit in another way.

Manila (AsiaNews)  Khamsan Mim Khounthichak, a young Laotian from the Apostolic Vicariate of Pakse, was ordained priest this morning in his hospital bed in Manila. Suffering from a very serious illness, he was granted a special dispensation on health grounds.

He is a precious gift for the tiny Catholic Church of Laos, which has just 60,000 members, mostly ethnic Vietnamese and Hmong, in a country of 7.2 million inhabitants.

A young leader in his diocese in Laos, he travelled to Manila in 2008 to study theology with the Fondacio community, an international Christian movement whose members come from different cultural backgrounds to provide youth education and undertake social development projects for poor communities. Radio Veritas dedicated an article to his story.

I remember him as a conscientious and enthusiastic student. After a year, he went home to serve in his diocese, said Fr Daniel Franklin E. Pilario, a professor of theology.

As a lay missionary he visited marginalised communities living on the border between Laos and Vietnam, working with them on farms, praying with their families, baptising their children, and blessing their special occasions.

He was happy being with people on the margins, like a shepherd having the smell of the sheep, to quote Pope Francis.

Such a life on the margins was not at all easy, also because his activity was viewed with suspicion by the countrys communist authorities who jailed twice. He endured a hard life behind bars.

As I listen to him, this privileged experience fires him up every time he shares this joy to be with God's people, Father Pilario said.

As his vocation matured, he returned to Manila in 2018 to attend the Saint Vincent School of Theology to prepare for the priesthood.

Finally, last month, when he was about to graduate, he began to suffer from severe back pain and to experience difficulty in walking.

Hospitalised, he was diagnosed with spinal cord cancer in its terminal stage. For this reason, his bishop agreed to move forward his ordination.

"The vocation of this new priest is special, said on Facebook Fr Trieu Pham Minh, a Vietnamese friend, who was a fellow student in Manila. It is a rare vocation for his diocese and the Church of Laos. But with such a calling, God wants to bear fruit in another way, according to his holy will.
Today's headlines: Pyongyang launches artillery strikes; Seoul approves strengthening of defence capabilities with the US and Japan; fresh Covid outbreak in Beijing; one of the earliest Islamic burial sites, dating to mid 7th century, discovered in Syria; Duma bans use of 'anglicisms' in public.

INDIA

In India, more than 75 per cent of causes of death are not ascertained, with an extremely low rate of death certificates. In 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, less than a quarter of deaths were ascertained (22.5% of over 8 million victims). The issue raises serious questions about the country and its public health institutions and policies.

KOREA

South Korean Defence Minister Lee Jong-sup announced a plan to strengthen capabilities to repel attacks and threats, in cooperation with the US and Japan. The aim is to respond effectively in the event of a North Korean missile and nuclear threat. Yesterday Pyongyang launched several artillery shells, which fell into the sea, in yet another show of strength.

CHINA

Beijing is struggling to contain an outbreak of Covid-19 linked to the Heaven Supermarket Bar, a 24-hour venue famous for crowds and cheap booze. Millions will have to undergo daily tests, thousands are already in lockdown. Nearly 200 cases have been recorded so far, the capital risks new closures after relaxing measures last week under the 'Covid-zero' policy.

SYRIA

A team of Swedish researchers discovered what is thought to be one of the earliest Islamic burial sites, dating back to the Umayyad era between the 7th and 8th centuries. Two ancient tombs have emerged at Qarassa North Tell, a Neolithic site in southern Syria. The bodies of a man and a woman were wrapped with a cloth before burial and facing towards Mecca, according to Muslim burial rites.

ARMENIA - AZERBAIJAN



Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that communications between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which had been blocked for two years due to the border conflict, had been restored. Armenian commentators consider this announcement to be the death of the 'Armenian corridor' requested by Yerevan on its sovereign territory, to be limited to Russian-controlled channels.

RUSSIA

The Duma (Parliament) in Moscow approved a bill banning 'Anglicisms' in public, in particular the use of English and Latin characters in signs and billboards. Currently, more than half of the advertisements in the streets are in English. A survey of the population will be carried out on this issue.

KAZAKHSTAN

The family of Ajkorkem Meldekhan, the 4-year-old girl who died in the Almaty clashes in January, was forced to leave the country after a series of threats by the Knb security services. The child had been caught up in a police barrage as she was travelling with her parents to the capital in search of food, her 16-year-old sister injured; her parents demanded justice.
by Steve Suwannarat

In 2019, Malaysia had some two million foreign workers, mainly from Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nepal. Now labour shortages are threatening the palm oil, semiconductors and the fisheries sectors. Red tape and costs associated with immigration are among the main obstacles to recruitment.

Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews)  Life for immigrants in Malaysia has become tougher as certain political groups ramp up nationalist sentiments in a country where managing a large foreign labour force is proving more complicated.

The situation is such that the US State Department has ranked the country among the worse in terms of the exploitation of and lack of protection for immigrant workers. US authorities have also banned seven Malaysian companies from the US suspecting them of using forced labor.

In Asia, Malaysia is among the nations most dependent on foreign labour. In 2019 about two million workers, 20 per cent of its workforce, came from abroad, mostly Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nepal, employed in key sectors such as agriculture, semiconductors and fisheries.

However, recruiting foreign workers is hampered by lengthy procedures and high costs, plus uncertainties over responsibilities and tasks that are not always clearly defined.

Malaysias Ministry of Human Resources for example has approved just over 2,000 applications for immigration, this despite the lifting of the immigration ban in February and demands from Malaysian companies for some 475,000 foreign workers. Many applications were rejected for incomplete information or lack of compliance with regulations.

The situation has led to frictions with the countries of origin of many migrants, who fear that new rules are unclear and more onerous, making the immigration process more time-consuming and costly, thus increasing the debt burden on would-be migrants.

On 31 May, Indonesia, a key partner for Malaysia, decided to scrap plans to send its own citizens to work on Malaysian oil palm plantations. The decision blocked 164 skilled workers from the island of Lombok, who were supposed to board a chartered plane to Kuala Lumpur.

Misunderstandings over immigration and employment rules are probably behind the move. This is a serious blow to Malaysias palm oil industry, which contributes 5 per cent of the countrys economy.

As sunflower oil exports from Ukraine are in jeopardy, Malaysia finds itself unable to expand its own exports because of labour shortages caused by rigid rules that have effectively stopped immigration.
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One might have a little bit of a tough time believing what the well-known Doug DeMuro has to say about the all-new 2023 Toyota Sequoia, but as far as some pixel masters are concerned, they sometimes like to dabble with palpable certainties. Such as how the next popular introduction feels with a little bit of CGI tuning applied beforehand.This is usually the case with Nikita Chuicko, the virtual artist better known as kelsonik on social media, who probably thinks now is the right digital time to again play with the all-new Sequoia and give it a fresh aftermarket makeover ahead of the upcoming real-world builds. The last time he dabbled with the three-row Japanese, that CGI-lowered Sequoia adopted a murdered-out atmosphere thanks in part to the signature  Shadow Line  digital treatment.Now, on the flip side of the coin, it remains a light-infused apparition and only chooses to play with the CGI contrast of having a blacked-out grille alongside the lowered suspension setup and the new aftermarket wheels. So, which one is better for the 2023 Sequoia  a murdered-out Shadow Line attire that may or may not stand out in the right crowd or the subtler treatment that might be in jeopardy of passing by unnoticed?As we ruminate on that, let us remember the core strengths of the XK80 third-generation 2023 model year. These include highlights such as the 437-horsepower i-Force Max hybrid V6 powertrain, the 26%-enhanced maximum towing capacity of up to 9,520 lbs. (4,318 kg), or the exclusive Sliding Third Row with an Adjustable Cargo Shelf System. Plus, of course, a starting price of at least $58,300 (MSRP).
SUV

This years Puerto Rican Day Parade was as star-studded as you might expect. The king of this years parade was Latin Grammy-winning singer Nicky Jam , who is known for hit songs such as X or El Perdon.He was also joined by Brooklyn radio personality Angie Martinez, who was dubbed madrina (godmother), alongside Grammy-nominated rapper Fat Joe , dubbed padrino (godfather) of the parade.On his way to the event, which took place in New York City, the rapper had a Puerto Rican escort on motorcycles as he drove a white Rolls-Royce Cullinan. The video posted on his social media account was filmed from the passengers side and gives us a short look at thes exterior. But we also see its colorful interior, which boasts an orange-on-black color scheme.Fat Joe seems to be a huge fan of Rolls-Royce, posing with several Cullinans over the last couple of months, a black and a blue and white one Theres nothing not to like about the Cullinan, which provides its passengers with comfort, luxury, and quite a performance. Its powered by Rolls-Royce's 6.75-liter V12 twin-turbocharged engine, which sends 563 horsepower (570 ps) and a maximum torque of 627 lb-ft (850 Nm) to all wheels via an eight-speed automatic gearbox.The Cullinan, which is the first and only SUV in Rolls-Royce's lineup, is able to hit 62 mph (100 kph) from a standstill in 5.2 seconds, with a top speed electronically limited to 155 mph (249 kph).The rapper usually works with famous Puerto Rican car customizer Will Castro from Unique Rides for all his cars. Will was also in attendance at the parade, riding in a Jeep in front of the rapper during the festivities.
SUV

For the past nine months, Ferrari has been under a new CEO, Benedetto Vigna. Later in the week, during its capital markets day, the top man at the Italian manufacturer will need to undertake a heavy task- explaining how the carmaker will preserve its cachet in a market thats fast-moving towards electric.There are several reasons why Ferrari and its close rival Lamborghini are facing difficult times shifting towards electric vehicles. Their reputation revolves around massive, throaty engines, features that lack a future in a fully electric automotive industry.While the easy task for the new CEO, Vigna, is preparing a roadmap to that weary future, the challenging task is explaining how Ferrari will morph and still retain its top-tier prizes. The automaker also faces the challenge of marrying innovation and old tradition.The Italian automaker has already presented four hybrid models and promised to go fully electric by 2025. It also announced its first(sports utility vehicle), the Purosangue, in the coming months Ferraris range has grown to nine models in recent years. The automaker currently has six, eight, twelve-cylinder, a hybrid, and soon, a fully electric engine lineup.The supercar automaker has bought land near its Maranello plant rumored to be dedicated to producing hybrid and electric cars . The expansion plans include a new battery R&D center.Marco Santino, a partner for automotive practice at management consultant Oliver Wymans, feels a key challenge in the mid-term is maintaining best-in-class profitability while supporting a unique effort in developing new technology and innovative solutions, Reuters reported.
Sneak peek inside the #FiskerPEAR. The sporty crossover is ready to revolutionize mobility, with its first-ever #Fisker Houdini trunk, a large, wraparound windscreen, and MANY, cool new features and technologies  we cant wait to tell you more!#AutomotiveRevolution #EVs pic.twitter.com/ukL07RkPXc  Fisker Inc. (@FiskerInc) June 11, 2022

Apart from being a trunk mechanism never seen before, invoking the famous illusionist suggests Fisker believes it will look like magic for future PEAR buyers. Unfortunately, the company did not give any clues about what makes it a magical trunk or how it works. Well have to stick with the interior picture to tell you more about the car.The new image confirms the unusual A-pillars. They are curved. Despite that, the windscreen will not present a hump at its base as the A-pillars suggest: it will be a continuation of the hood, as it is in most modern cars. That means the windscreen will also be unusual, with a much broader base than traditional ones to touch the curved A-pillars.As an affordable vehicle requires, this windscreen will not extend to the roof. If it did, any damages to the front glass would require replacing everything: it would definitely not be cheap. The interior picture shows the PEAR will have a bar connecting the top of the two A-pillars and a big glass roof behind it. Expect it also just to have a traditional roof, which makes more sense for a vehicle that will start at $29,900 before incentives.Although the first new Fisker after the Karma will be the Ocean, the PEAR is the companys most ambitious product so far. It will be produced by Foxconn at its Lordstown factory in Ohio in volumes of 250,000 units per year starting in 2024. Thats pretty ambitious. If Fisker enjoys success with the Ocean, the PEAR may turn into a natural next step.
More and more people are considering turning their garages into guesthouses. The official term for that is Accessory dwelling unit (ADU), meaning a backyard tiny house thats typically rented out. Two years ago, architect Valery Augustin from DNA Architecture + Design, and his wife, were looking for a house with a garage. But not because they needed extra car space but because they were determined to build an ADU. The couple had to find a new place after the owner of their rental decided to sell, they told Dwell . In order to cope with the mortgage, the two decided to have an ADU functioning as a guesthouse next to their new home. They found a bungalow in Ladera Heights, Los Angeles, and converted the two-car garage into a beautiful, modern tiny home.With Augustin being an architect, it made sense for him to act as the contractor for the job, which helped them save more money. According to Dwell, the transformation added up to almost $75,000, including the ADUs framing, insulation, electrical system, furniture, and appliances.The brand-new ADU didnt go beyond the garages initial footprint, unfolding over 390 square feet (36.2 square meters). Within this small space, Augustin managed to integrate one bedroom, a bathroom, and a fully-equipped kitchen.The garages original flat ceiling was turned into a vaulted one, which makes the house feel bigger, according to the owner. The opening was covered with slatted wood, except for the entry, and another opening was cut into the back for sliding doors that connect the ADU with a private patio.The result of this DIY project was a beautiful ADU thats become quite popular on Airbnb , proving that transforming your garage into a backyard tiny home can be a great idea. Its not for everyone, of course, but the idea of having a guesthouse instead of a garage seems to become increasingly attractive.
SUV

Almost unthinkable just a few years ago, there is now a sea of ultra-luxury and super-SUVs vying for the affluent clients attention, from Bentaygas to DBX707s and from Lambo Uruses to G-Class off-roaders, with a splash of Escalade, Range Rover, and more in between. But, according to many aftermarket outlets, until the upcoming Ferrari Purosangue poses a V12 threat, there is only one to rule them all.That, at least in the United States, would be the Rolls-Royce Cullinan. And if the full-sizeis also a Black Badge, thats even better. Alas, do not think that OEM bespoke is enough, as many outlets know that they really need something special to properly stand out in the ultra-luxury crowd. Well, the good folks over at Atlanta, Georgia-based Road Show International have yet another treat for the culture that was already sold before we even saw it and it reached the usual up for grabs RS Edition status.Naturally, that probably means it was more than enticing, in more than one way. So, let us dive a little deeper and check out some of the highlights that helped this unique example to quickly get away before anyone even had the chance to DM the aftermarket outlet about its pricing quotation. Well, the name should give us a few hints, since it is a Mansory-dressed Rolls-Royce Cullinan Black Badge.But the tuning kit is only part of the deal, especially given the stunning Satin Metallic Brown exterior colorway that may or may not bode well for the red-and-black (plus carbon fiber) interior, depending on ones personal preferences. Alas, those are little to no consequence now that it is already sold, so let us move on. That is how we reach the long list of RS Edition options, which includes perks such as the RS Stage 1 Performance Package, among many visual additions, like the contrasting-black Forgiato wheels With help from the tuning enhancements, now the 6.75-liter twin-turbocharged V12 behemoth has reached a total of 663 horsepower and can jump to 62 mph/100 kph in a mere 4.2 seconds on its way to the higher than stock 170 mph/274 kph maximum speed. Cool, right?
Such was the case on June 12th with the first launch of the Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission. (Man, what a mouthful).This mission consists of a series of six small satellites of the 3U CubeSat family. Over the course of three launches between June and July of this year, this mission was intended to gather data regarding the temperature and moisture of tropical storms over the surface of the Earth.Using new advancements in microwave radiometer technology, scientists hoped to gain new insight into how the effects of climate change affected the intensity and long-term sustainability of tropical weather systems in a level of detail not possible until the present day. Had all three launches gone without a hitch, the mission was to have been overseen by NASA 's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Alas, on the morning of June 12th, this was not the case. Though the Astra Rocket 3.3 booster vehicle carrying the first series of cube satellites achieved orbital velocity successfully, the entire mission was turned on its head when its first stage engine suffered a premature cutoff.With little means of getting the spacecraft back on track, the booster and its valuable payload failed to reach orbit. From there, the vehicle began to spin out of control, all but dooming the launch to failure.Instead, the entire package, satellites, booster and all, re-entered the Earth's atmosphere approximately an hour or so after its launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's currently unknown if this launch failure puts the entire future of the mission in doubt.
The UAE, and Dubai in particular, has always had an important connection with Russia, with an impressive number of both residents and tourists originating in the now-sanctioned state. This strong relationship resulted in the UAE abstaining from a UN security council resolution that condemned the Ukraine invasion back in February and its officials not implementing the sanctions imposed by the U.S., UK, or the EU.Data provided by maritime tracking platforms are showing that more and more superyachts allegedly owned by Russian oligarchs are hiding in plain sight in Dubai  everyone knows theyre sanctioned, yet theyre safe from getting seized. Madame Gu is one of the spectacular superyachts that were recently added to the U.S. sanctions list, together with its custom helicopter and a luxury private jet, all owned by Andrey Vladimirovich Skoch, a twice-designated Russian Federation Duma member who made his millions in the steel industry. The huge 325-foot (99 meters) pleasure craft was one of the first targeted yachts to disappear, meaning that it stopped transmitting its coordinates after having been last seen in Dubai.The dazzling Motor Yacht A is also safe from harm, reportedly located in the northern emirate Ras al-Khaimah. Its billionaire owner, Andrey Melnichenko, already had one of his superyachts seized in Italy, so its no wonder that he decided to quickly move the other one to UAE. Most recently , U.S. authorities have placed a bulls eye on Roman Abramovichs infamous $350 million private jet, considered one of the largest in the world. It seems that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner has also been hiding in Dubai since March.This new role as a sanctuary for superyachts and private jets only adds to Dubais negative image as an important link in money laundering networks. Not only campaigners but also politicians are asking for the UAE to be blacklisted, The Guardian reports. The states support for the sanctioned oligarchs is seen as a threat to the financial system. As the aggression against Ukraine continues, Dubai might stop being such a welcoming place for the oligarchs luxury toys.
This is because the Mustang nameplate was actually used for a two-stroke diesel truck that was produced by Krupp Motoren und Kraftwagenfabriken between 1951 and 1968. In other words, Ford couldnt sell the car in Germany under the Mustang moniker, so the company had to come up with another name.This is how the Ford T5 was born. Available in limited numbers, the T5 was mostly purchased by Americans living in Germany, with some cars eventually sent back to the States when they returned home.The T5 was a genuine Ford Mustang in absolutely all regards, though it came with zero Mustang tags but with T5 badges.Someone on eBay has recently listed for auction one of these rare Fords, and according to the ad, its still completely original and runs, drives, and stops. In other words, its a T5 in a pretty solid condition, so the restoration job doesnt seem very challenging on this one.Seller gaffneyproductions explains the car still comes with the T5 bells and whistles, including the special badges that Ford used to replace the Mustang references.The engine under the hood is a 2-barrel 289 (4.7-liter) V8, and as said, it still runs properly. Its the original unit that came with the car.According to the Marti report, this is one of just 453 Ford T5 models that were produced in 1967, so it all looks like an incredible occasion to get your hands on a rare piece of automotive culture.The bidding starts at $9,500, and the good news is that a reserve is not enabled, which means that the highest bidder can take the car home. The digital fight is scheduled to come to an end in approximately 9 days.
SUV

If youre an avid autoevolution reader, then you surely know that we like to keep an eye on car brands that arent yet in the U.S., Canada, or Australia. People in the UK, however, like this particular brands cars and they buy them in large numbers! Thats why you should know too about whats going on with this low-cost manufacturer. It might signal a point of no return.You mightve guessed by now, but the car company in question is Dacia. This brand builds Europes cheapest all-electric car (granted, its a pretty small vehicle) and made a name for itself after years of allowing a lot of lower-middle-class families to own a brand-new car or a compactIts cars are made in multiple factories in Europe and Northern Africa. Thats thanks to Renault ownership, which is a French automaker. The marques original plant in Romania, however, is where the action is taking place. Dacia informed the employees working there that they can get a hefty incentive if they leave the company voluntarily. The documents were leaked on social media. More precisely, those who have been working there for at least 16 years can receive $27,400 for just quitting.These net compensations are not the same for everyone. Those who worked at Dacia for less than 16 years, for example, will receive $22,100. The smallest payout a voluntarily leaving employee can get is $3,360, an amount available only for those that worked for the carmaker for the last two years. This is followed by a steep increase of $5,050 for those that spent more than 24 months with the company.Even though it looks bad, considering people are still waiting for their cars in large numbers, Dacia assures everyone this is just a program meant to support Renaults strategy for the future. They want to separate the internal combustion engine business from the all-electric one.Disregarding the official reasoning for this situation, the reality may be that the Romanian plant is being left behind. The other factory where Dacia models are being made is situated in Morocco. Renault started a hiring process there and is already getting new employees. Thats mostly thanks to lower costs of manufacturing and labor, but also because the African factory is connected to usable highways. It's also rumored that out of the 12,855 people currently employed at the Romanian production site, only 800 will still have a job in two years' time.The decision might also be a consequence of leaving Russia. Renault was forced to accept a major loss and sell its stake in the Eastern country for just one Rouble ($0.017).Dacia remains a highly profitable investment for the French manufacturer.
EV

Last week, more than 10,000 Toyota drivers signed a petition with more than 110,000 signatures urging the Japanese giant automaker to conform to global electrification efforts and refrain from lobbying to stagnatemandates and clean air laws.Even though Toyota is a pioneer when it comes to emission reduction with its 20-year-old Toyota Prius Hybrid system, its not a firm believer in going all-in on electric vehicles. It previously threatened to pull out of UK manufacturing if its hybrid technology is banned come 2035.Its president, Akio Toyoda, 2021 received a backlash from investors after questioning Japans plan to ban conventional cars by 2035.Toyota Motor Corporations shares on Monday opened down more than 2% after media reports cited criticism from European Pension funds over its opposition to a complete transition to electric vehicles, Reuters reported.The investors, who hold a combined $300 million shares in Toyota, plan to question the manufacturer during its annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday. The AkademikerPension, an active shareholder in Toyota, had initially prepared a proposal for an annual review of the automakers lobbying activities to the AGM but got rejected for missing a deadline.Anders Schelde, CIO of Danish pension fund, through a press release , said, In our view- and in the view of many other investors  the lobbying work undertaken by Toyota Motor has given the company a global laggard status on climate action within the auto sector.Even though Toyota announced a plan to invest $35 billion into the shift to electric by 2030 , critics feel the automaker is not fully committed to developing sustainable powertrains, consequently affecting the progress towards the Paris Agreement.
Thats a tough question to answer when you know this person is merely wishful thinking. But perhaps Two-Face was not even the focus of this recent CGI feature from Czech Republic-based virtual artist Rostislav Prokop, better known as rostislav_prokop on social media, who has created this digital super-wagon. Maybe its part of an ongoing series.So, fans of this pixel master might have noticed that, in between a couple of commissions for a popular Skoda Tudor two-door coupe to feature a mid-size CGI revival in time to feistily join the Superb family and a wishful thinking Rolls-Royce supercar that looked bold enough to give even Bugatti the shivers, the digital content creator returned to one of his biggest virtual passions: imaginative black and white portrayals.Back then, he rekindled the love for half-white-half-black CGI models with a digitally-slammed, full widebody Toyota 4Runner that wanted to breach the barrier of monochromatic styles. Now, he is back with a more traditional split-middle take on the two-face matters, courtesy of an Audi A6 Allroad that goes against the crossover duties with help from a slammed attitude and an original body kit. Interestingly, the white-and-black atmosphere is not painted  but rather digitally wrapped.Now, perhaps that is just what the CGI doctor ordered for the crazy DC hero turned villain and obsessed with the conflict between good and evil. If Warner Bros ever decides to give this character his own HBO Max series, maybe it would even become the best enticement for the Ingolstadt-based Audi to jump comic book-inspired ships and abandon the Marvel continuum
Wisk claims to be the first company in the U.S. to have successfully flown a passenger, autonomous eVTOL aircraft. It happened five years ago and since then, Wisk has been assiduously working on expanding its global presence. After New Zeeland, it is Australias time to step into the future of air mobility and the recently signed memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Council of Mayors is meant to make that happen.The MOU will support engagement with the regions Councils on the introduction of the autonomous air mobility industry and Wisk is one of the operators to benefit from the opportunity. According to Lord Mayor Cr Adrian Schrinner, South East Queensland offers a mix of rural, beach, and city landscapes that make it the perfect location to trial and launch such new industries. Wisk wants to establish a long-term presence in the area, promising to provide green tourism and transport options in the region. The next step is for the company to display its 5th generation aircraft in Brisbane (Queenslands capital) next month.Wisks eVTOL aircraft is an autonomous aircraft that is 21 ft (6.4 m) long and has a wingspan of 36 ft (11 m). It uses 12 independent rotors for its vertical lift, which means that if an issue occurs at any of the rotors, the aircraft can still continue its flight. The electric air taxi can fly at a speed of approximately 100 mph (161 kph). For now, the eVTOL can handle short-distance trips, claiming to offer a range of around 25 miles (40 km) per charge. However, Wing plans to continue enhancing the capabilities of its aircraft.
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ICHAs purpose is to provide foundational knowledge, whether for someone who is working at a refugee camp or as an administrator at an NGO in Londonor for a student who is interested in humanitarian work. Those who go through the program learn about international standards for humanitarian assistance, best practices, common responses, and other aspects of the field. It provides a solid base that is useful in and of itself, while also creating a pipeline for potential future areas of academic and professional development.



These introductory modules are designed to prepare graduates for an understanding of the basic frameworks that inform practice as well as international standards, guidelines, and policies, said Loughry.



Ironically, said Loughry, even as COVID caused numerous complications in education and training across disciplines, it pointed the way to an innovative approach for the ICHA.



In the original planning for a program in humanitarian assistance, we had envisioned in-person training, she explained, but COVID helped us to see that online learning, done right, is possible and effective.



BCSSW Assistant Director for Global Field Education Lyndsey McMahan said the online format offers other advantages.



Course costs can be prohibitive for a lot of the world and we have been very intentional in trying to design a program where the content is relevant and timely, but also accessible to practitioners working in low- and middle-income countries. Most importantly though, we wanted to make sure the content was from a social work lens which differs a bit from traditional international development and humanitarianismwhich I think will help build out the field of global social work, and also increase name recognition for BCSSW among NGOs and other organizations.



Creating a program that could be useful to such an array of constituencies, including both undergraduate and graduate students, took careful planning, the co-organizers notedthreading a needle, as Crea put it. The ICHA, he said, is of a piece with other areas of interest among this generation of college students, such as global public health and climate change, that are now reflected in the BC undergraduate curriculum and service opportunities.



Added Loughry, We recognize that at BC we have both undergraduate and graduate students engaged in immersion programs as well as internships, and we wanted to ensure that both groups can be equipped with an introductory understanding of some of the core topics on international humanitarian assistance.



Fr. Olayo-Mendez noted that the earlier initiative from which the ICHA later emerged in-person teaching complemented by a set of online moduleswas funded by a grant and received design support from the Universitys Center for Digital Innovation in Learning, and involved discussions across BC academic units. Those efforts coincided with another project to develop a humanitarian training institute, funded by the BCSSW, but that plan was scuttled by the pandemic.



This exemplifies the benefits of collaboration, whether within or outside the University, he said. An idea can begin, grow, and evolve, but there is always the need to keep fostering dialogue and bring together different skills and expertise.



Crea said the program is an affirmation of the global vision of social work BCSSW has cultivated for years. One of our great strengths as a school is our international partnerships, and the ICHA is an ideal way to leverage these in a way that can benefit professionals in the humanitarian aid and development fields, and those who may wish to follow that path.



Sean Smith | University Communications | May 2022


Intricate to Absolutely Deserted on Oregon Coast: Nesika, Bob Creek, Neptune, Hug Point, Oceanside

Published 06/06/22 at 11:15 PM PST

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Oregon Coast)  So much of the fun of a jaunt to the Oregon coast comes from making those big discoveries that make even bigger impressions: the jaw-dropping finds of something new and wild that simply fills you with delight. Encountering a mysterious sea cave, beach spot full of fantastic shapes, or maybe a sandy expanse that is off the beaten path and completely bereft of other souls. (Above: Nesika Beach near Gold Beach. All photos Oregon Coast Beach Connection)

It's the kind of thing that fires the imagination up  in both kids and adults alike. Here are such finds near Gold Beach, Florence / Yachats, Oceanside and Cannon Beach.

On the southern Oregon coast, the tiny village of Nesika Beach sits just north of Gold Beach and barely south of another village called Ophir.



Satellite photo Google Maps

There's miles of sand here, much of it on the somewhat dark side, hinting at the presence of gold bits that gave Gold Beach its name. From the beach accesses in an around town, it's almost all soft stuff, with pleasant waves lapping along the beach, often calmly and leaving plenty of room between the waterline and the bluffs.

Whatever's going on here, it uniformly seems untouched and not talked about, with Ophir itself having no social media presence, nary an Instagram. Yet it's a super bit of beachy paradise.

Lest you think there's nothing breaking the long, visual plane of all this sand, to the south it gets more craggy and filled with massive logs. A set of bulky, rock islands sit around the tideline, and it's here and a few other places you can spot some tidepools. - South Coast Hotels

At Bob Creek Wayside, between Yachats and Florence, more tidepools exist than humans in this obscure but fascinating place.

At this end, there's also a series of sea caves. First, you'll encounter a small one next to a huge boulder that creates a sort of arch by leaning up against the cliff. On the other side of the arch, there's a sizable sea cave that allows you to walk inside and check out the freaky debris deposited there by the tides. Water is dripping from the top and it gets a little dark, so watch the slippery stuff. You probably don't want to amble around the weird shapes at the very end of the cave, because things can get dangerous.





Just a few miles north of Bob Creek, youll find Neptune State Scenic Viewpoint also near Florence. Its an achingly beautiful place, lodged in the middle of forestland and rather easy to drive past if youre not looking carefully. There are picnic tables, restrooms and a sandy beach that changes into a series of craggy, rock land masses. Continue walking south to stoop in wonder over tidepools or check out a variety of coves between the rock masses that are cave-like, until things dead-end at a sea cave about a quarter of a mile down. However, there is a real cave here, and it's kind of trippy.

There's actually two parts to this park - this is the southern entrance. Hotels in Yachats - Where to eat - Upper Lane County Maps and Virtual Tours





Way up on the north Oregon coast - a few miles south of Cannon Beach - you'll find Hug Point. A waterfall, several sea caves and a raised, grotto-like tide pool within another cave are all just a precursor to one of the coast's most fascinating spots. Not to mention that always-engaging remnant of a road going around the rocky point.

As you first enter, you'll spot the waterfall immediately to the south of you and a large sea cave. Inside, it's mostly debris and cobblestones, but there are strangely shaped cracks and shapes meandering into its far end. You can wander a little ways inside, and if you look closely you may spot one of the creepy, alien-looking insects that inhabit the large cracks.

On the southern end of this beach there's a point that's normally not crossable unless the tide is sufficiently low enough. In such a case, you'll find another cove and another sea cave. There are more rock slabs to play around on, many of which are surrounded by rich tide pools.

A ways in between the Yachats area and Cannon Beach, there's the Three Capes Tour and the tiny little burgh of Oceanside. There, you'll find not a natural cave but a manmade tunnel leading through the headland to a wondrous hidden spot. Now at some 100 years old, Oceanside until recently managed to keep off the radar of tourists, so it's not exactly hidden anymore. Still, there are plenty of times it's not bustling and even rather deserted.





Most of all, go through that concrete structure and there are other sea caves to explore - big and small - plus numerous interesting rocky slabs to play around and copious beachcombing possibilities. Hotels in Oceanside - Where to eat - Oceanside Maps and Virtual Tours





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ANAHEIM, Calif. - Southern Baptists filled a cavernous hotel ballroom Sunday to hear a warning: Don't cooperate or compromise with the devil. And this week, as their huge denomination gathers for its annual meeting and to elect a new president, the urgent warning was aimed at their fellow Southern Baptists.

"You don't advance the kingdom of God by lining up with the kingdom of Satan," John MacArthur, a dean of conservative evangelical preaching, told the audience, referring to topics from the role of women to addressing racism. "You will never advance the kingdom of God by being popular with the world. If you think you will, you're doing the devil's work. How can you negotiate with people who hate Christ, hate God, hate the Bible and hate the gospel?"

The host of the part-prayer gathering, part-campaign rally on the first night of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting was the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN), an upstart group that some observers have compared with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. The network was formed two years ago in response to the issues of institutional racism and sexual abuse as priorities in the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

In the Southern Baptist Convention, where women aren't allowed to be head pastors, same-sex marriage is opposed and 70% of its nearly 14 million members vote Republican, the CBN's leaders and supporters say the situation is an emergency. And this week, they hope to elect a president who agrees.

"Pretty soon it will be women preachers, social justice, then racism, then CRT [critical race theory], then victimization because the world is a ball and chain, and when you're hooked, it will take you to the bottom. They hate the truth," MacArthur said to a crowd that flipped through the night between pin-drop silence and cheers of "that's true!"

The SBC tends to reflect the state of White evangelicalism in America.

Nearly 10,000 Southern Baptists are expected to vote on business matters Tuesday and Wednesday, including on sex abuse revisions.

After messengers at last year's meeting approved an investigation into the SBC executive committee's handling of sex abuse claims, the convention had hired a third-party investigative firm called Guidepost Solutions to issue a major report that suggested a years-long coverup of abuse by Southern Baptists leaders. Guidepost published a tweet supporting the LGBTQ community this month, and some Southern Baptist leaders unleashed criticism in response.

Like with many institutions, more White evangelicals are questioning their leaders and are willing to break away. They are fighting over things including: Is acknowledgment of institutional racism akin to an embrace of critical race theory, and is that unbiblical?

Some recent SBC presidents have mirrored a huge swath of their members, especially younger ones, by beginning to emphasize issues such as poverty, racism and sexism rather than primarily conservative sexual and gender mores. And there is a right flank that doesn't like it.

Benjamin Cole, longtime SBC member and chronicler of SBC politics at the Baptist Blogger site, said he believes the Conservative Baptist Network is more focused on division and political power.

"With respect to CRT, women in ministry, whatever the issue is, I'm not saying they don't have legitimate concerns, but they have so exaggerated the problem in order to mobilize the uninformed to fight this specter of Marxism and liberalism," Cole said. "I think there is widespread agreement in the SBC on things that matter. But in all democratic organizations, it's not all of the registered voters who decide. It's the impassioned mob that matters."

Tom Buck, an outspoken Texas conservative, said Sunday that he isn't a formal member of the CBN but attended and supports the group. He called a 2019 SBC vote calling critical race theory and intersectionality useful "analytical tools" that are evidence of a problem.

"Anything you elevate will be problematic," he told The Washington Post. "There is what I'd call a lack of confidence and commitment to sufficiency of scripture."

He said the group was also important because of what he called a rise in women preaching. Asked to name any of the 47,000 SBC churches with a female head pastor, Buck said he knew of a few with female assistant pastors.

Buck said that as he considers sex abuse revisions the convention might make, he was concerned that the accused might not be guaranteed to know who their accuser was and could be treated as guilty until proved innocent. He feels current norms are sufficient, which say any pastor who allows "unrepentant" sexual abusers to stay in their church should be booted from the SBC.

"And it's not just sex abuse, but there are lots of other issues with people living in unrepentant sin that need to be dealt with," Buck told The Post.

The lead candidates for SBC president this week include Tom Ascol, a Florida pastor who is not a member of the CBN but was endorsed by them Sunday and spoke at the prayer rally. Also running is Bart Barber, a Texas pastor who has served in various SBC leadership roles.

The size and influence of the conservative network is hard to assess. The group releases no data about its membership or funders, and its spokesman, Louisiana Pastor Brad Jurkovich, did not return calls or emails for comment.

A judge in Louisiana last week ordered Jurkovich to turn over 10 years of financial records to former members of his church who claim he did not inform church members that funds meant for supporting missionaries were instead used to support the CBN.

Several longtime observers and members of the SBC say the two men are in many ways similar in their conservative beliefs. In the past, the key difference between them - and between Ascol and many on the SBC far right - would have been theological.

Broadly speaking, in American Christianity, the two leading candidates would be considered as next to each other, said Griffin Gulledge, a Georgia pastor who sees Ascol as divisive and politically motivated.

"It's their engagement of politics" that differentiates them. Ascol has appeared in recent weeks on secular conservative media shows, and MacArthur has been represented by Jenna Ellis, a lawyer for former president Donald Trump.

"What is this really about when it comes down to it? The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. It's very powerful and influential and has wide-ranging power in think tanks and other places," Gulledge said. "Donald Trump made that power greater, and there are those who see [the SBC] as an influence hub for the culture and the American political system and don't want to lose it to someone who doesn't see it as a political tool."
A young fathers pleas for a second chance did not sway a Southeast Texas judge who sentenced him to a decade in prison after a Tractor Supply employee was robbed at gun point in Beaumont.

Renaldo Lee Carter, Jr., 22, on Wednesday was sentenced by 252nd Criminal District Court Judge Raquel West to 10 years in prison as part of a plea deal for the robbery that occurred at a Beaumont Tractor Supply in May 2019.

Carter previously pleaded guilty on the aggravated robbery charge. He agreed to a cap of 10 years in the Texas prison system with the dismissal of a second charge for evading detention with a motor vehicle.

I have learned my lesson, Carter told the judge. I have learned to take full responsibility for my actions, I know if you gave me deferred probation, its going to give me a chance. And, with that chance, Im going to become a better person.

According to Jefferson County jail records, Carter was arrested a second time on Jan. 16 by the Port Arthur Police Department. He has been held at the jail on multiple charges, including aggravated robbery, evading detention with a motor vehicle, driving with no drivers license, failure to maintain financial responsibility and unlawfully carrying a weapon.

Defense Attorney Tom Burbank said two people were allegedly involved with the Tractor Supply aggravated robbery, including Carter and employee Joseph Moore, who was going by the name Rob. Carter was on probation for a misdemeanor at the time of the offense, which was his first felony, according to Burbank.

Burbank told the judge that Carter's father died. Carter is a young father himself with a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old. The high school graduate, who works at a restaurant and odd jobs, is expecting his third child in September, he added.

The question is why is he doing that if he doesnt want his children to follow in his footsteps? Burbank said.

The lawyer said Carter has had an attitude adjustment in part through conversations with his attorney and family.

Burbank asked the court to consider these factors and requested Carter be placed on deferred adjudicated probation for five years.

If Carter violated the probation, he would face 20 to 25 years in prison. He also noted a $4,000 restitution, which was required to be paid back to Tractor Supply by Moore and Carter, for what was taken and Carters responsibility for child support.

We are asking that you give him a little bit of rope, or chain, to see whether or not he can prove to you on a very short chain that he could maybe become a productive member of society seeing, Burbank said.

But State Prosector Luke Nichols noted that while Carter was already out on bond for this aggravated robbery charge that he committed a new offense of evasion with a motor vehicle in January in Port Arthur.

According to Jefferson County jail records, Carter was then arrested a second time on Jan. 16 by the Port Arthur Police Department. He has been held at the jail on multiple charges, including aggravated robbery, evading detention with a motor vehicle, driving with no drivers license, failure to maintain financial responsibility and unlawfully carrying a weapon.

The car he was stopped in allegedly contained several firearms, including multiple handguns and an AR-15 rifle with a 50-round ammunition drum. At least one of the firearms came back as stolen and two other individuals were in the car, Nichols said.

I dont know if they were going to do a robbery or shooting or what, but Im glad they got stopped. Im glad that Port Arthur Police put them in custody at that point, Nichols said. My point is that that shows that he is out committing crimes while he is out on bond for this crime. I think it is impossible to feel the security defaulting on probation terms in this case if that is how he has been while out on bond.

Nichols believed the 10-year term was a fair resolution in this robbery, which also endangered another Tractor Supply employee.

The young lady involved had a gun put up to her head and was forced at gunpoint to turn over money, Nichols said during court. And the other individual who was involved with this robbery was an employee who opened the back door for Mr. Carter to come in and do what he did. Restitution isnt a reason to put him on probation, your Honor.

Before Nichols spoke, Burbank discussed the firearms charge that stemmed from the second offense.

Those guns were actually for codependence for other people in the car on that arrest of January 17, 2022, Burbank said. Of course, that is not smart for a person who has a pending aggravated robbery charge to be driving around with other people that have guns and things like that.

The judge said she found it hard to believe Carter had learned his lesson and ultimately agreed with the state before handing Carter his sentence.

Youre not even that old and you were on three probations when you committed this offense, West said.

The probations were for evading arrest or detention, unlawfully carrying a weapon and resisting arrest or transport, she said. While on probation, he allegedly committed an aggravated robbery and then while on bond for aggravated robbery he allegedly evaded detention with a motor vehicle which contained the firearms, she said.

I personally think the 10-year sentence is a gift, West continued. I dont know that I really agree that it is enough, and Im glad these guns are off the street and obviously you didnt have any worry at the time about the fact that you were on probation and on bond pending going to prison for any aggravated robbery.

meagan.ellsworth@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/megzmagpie
Washington Post photo by Sarah L. Voisin).

As I read the stories posted by reputable news sources about the horrific shooting deaths of 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, it baffles me to understand why anyone would believe that the majority of our elected Texas officials actually care enough to truly search for a solution.

Oh, our governor and the legislature bow their collective chests about how they allocated more money to schools for safety measures and how its all a mental health problem. If they thought it would be possible to discipline people who espouse irrational or nonsensical viewpoints as mentally deranged then most of them would be guilty because they think trump actually won the 2020 election. They dont want to open that can of worms.
People take part in a parade to celebrate Pancasila day, or the day of the five principles of state philosophy, in Blitar, East Java, Indonesia, May 31, 2022.

Indonesian police in the past several days have arrested five members of a little-known group espousing an Islamic caliphate  a concept that goes against the Muslim-majority countrys state ideology  including its leader and the main propagandist, who was arrested Monday.

The suspected members of the Khilafatul Muslimin group were taken into custody following a public outcry over a large rally that it staged in Jakarta last month.

It was not immediately known what criminal charges the alleged propagandist was facing after his arrest. On June 7, the groups leader and founder was arrested on charges of violating a 2017 law banning organizations that oppose Pancasila, Indonesias five-pillared ideology.

Khilafatul Muslimin is a threat to the Pancasila ideology, Irfan Idris, spokesman for the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT), told BenarNews.

Opinion about Khilafatul Muslimin is divided. Some call it a harmless group, and others call it dangerous because many of its members come from the Islamic State of Indonesia, or NII, dozens of whose members have been arrested by police in recent months. In the latest arrest, the suspect, whom police identified only by the initials A.S., was picked up in Mojokerto, East Java, on charges of propagating the caliphate doctrine in schools affiliated with the group, said Senior Commissioner Endra Zulpan, the spokesman for Jakarta police.

A.S. is responsible for indoctrinating  to convince others that the caliphate can replace the Pancasila ideology, Endra said in a statement to reporters. Pancasila espouses the belief in one god, humanity, unity, democracy, and social justice.

The suspect is the fifth member of Khilafatul Muslimin to be arrested by police since last week.

Last Tuesday, police arrested the groups founder, Abdul Qadir Hasan Baraja, in Lampung. He faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Abdul Qadirs arrest followed motorbike rallies in Jakarta, West Java and Central Java on May 29, where members waved flags and posters in support of a caliphate revival, with slogans such as herald the revival of the caliphate.

The convoy caused a public uproar and prompted calls for police to take action.

On Saturday, police found 2.3 billion rupiah (U.S. $156,000) in cash during a raid of the organizations headquarters in Bandar Lampung, Endra said.

Irfan of the BNPT said the agency had monitored the group closely in the wake of the pro-caliphate rally.

Ahmad Nurwakhid, the agencys director of prevention, claimed last week that Khilafatul Muslimin had around 20,000 followers.

He said most of the groups leaders and followers were former members of the NII, but a Khilafatul Muslimin leader in Bekasi, a town east of Jakarta, denied that his group was seeking to establish an Islamic state, local media reported.

Theres no point in establishing a state. Our doctrine is that [Islam] is a blessing for the entire universe. What is a state for? the Kompas.com news portal quoted Abu Salma as saying last week.

Similar to that of Sufism

Indonesia, the worlds largest majority-Islamic country, has sporadically been hit since the early 2000s by deadly terrorist attacks blamed on Islamic militants, including the 2002 Bali bombings in which 202 people were killed. More recent attacks have been attributed to Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, a domestic network affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

Khilafatul Muslimin followers see the caliphate as an Islamic doctrine, but do not interpret it in the way IS or the outlawed Hizb Ut Tahrir Indonesia did, said Al Chaidar, a security expert at Malikussaleh University in Lhokseumawe.

Khilafatul Muslimin interprets the caliphate not as a state and not in terms of power politics, so this organizations understanding is actually similar to that of Sufism, Al Chaidar told BenarNews.

He said that the organization did not pose a threat to the countrys national integrity.

Because they believe if they violate Pancasila, they commit a sin and will go to hell, said Al Chaidar.

Al Chaidar called the arrests unlawful, saying that authorities were pandering to secular and oligarchic groups.

But another organization, the NGO Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, said action against intolerant groups was necessary to prevent them from evolving into bigger threats.

Such groups will continue to grow when the government  is not doing a good job in handling intolerance, radicalism and terrorism, Hendardi, the institutes chair who goes by one name, told BenarNews.
Members of the Thai Navy and park officials offer food to Rohingya found stranded on the Thai island of Koh Dong after being abandoned by traffickers en route to Malaysia, June 4, 2022.

More than 600 Rohingya from western Myanmars Rakhine state have been arrested over the last six months trying to reach Malaysia, a Radio Free Asia analysis shows, part of an exodus of refugees who were driven by a lack of jobs and food to make a risky and sometimes deadly trek.

RFA, an online news affiliate of BenarNews, compiled the data from statements issued by military junta officials in Rakhine state and information from local media outlets.

A Muslim man who lives in Maungdaw township, who did not want to be named for security reasons, said he sold all his belongings to send his daughter to Malaysia, but she was arrested on the way.

Our family agreed to marry our daughter off to a boy who is in Malaysia, the man told RFA. We asked him if he would pay for half the travel expenses. He agreed, and because we didnt have 500,000 kyats [U.S. $270], we sold our land and house and other stuff to pay for her travel. Now, shes been arrested, and weve lost everything. Our lives are ruined.

The daughter was aboard a boat with 228 others about 17 miles northwest of Mayu Island near Sittwe when they were was arrested by Myanmar authorities. More than 100 of the Rohingya passengers were sentenced to five years in prison by the Maungdaw District Court on Dec. 14 for violating immigration laws. Minors were released.

In December, a total of 270 Rohingya were arrested for immigration law violations. Two dozen Rohingya were detained in January, 135 in February, 14 in March, 35 in April and 124 in May, for a total of 602 people.

A Rohingya in Kyaukphyu township said Muslims were leaving Rakhine and risking arrest or even death because of a lack of jobs in the state and restrictions placed on them by authorities. Malaysia is a preferred destination because most of its residents are Muslim.

It has become easier for traffickers to exploit us, he said. The current problem in Rakhine is that people are not allowed to travel freely. There are also very few job opportunities to earn a living. We could not go outside because we were living in a refugee camp. That is why people are taking risks. They think they will prosper if they can make the trip.

Many are also motivated by food shortages in the camps in which the Rohingya are confined in Myanmar, Rohingya sources said.

Rohingya living in Maungdaw township pay what is to them exorbitant sums to traffickers  a total of about 9 million kyats (U.S. $4,900), paid in stages along the route.

Imminent danger

Despite the costs, Rohingya still face imminent danger on their trek, which often involves traveling in rickety boats in rough seas.

On May 21, at least 25 Rohingya of about 90 passengers on their way to Malaysia died when their boat capsized and sank in the Bay of Bengal during a storm off the coast of Ayeyarwady region. Myanmar authorities picked up more than 20 survivors, including the traffickers, on a beach the following day. Other Rohingya remain missing.

Thai authorities arrested 59 Muslims from Myanmar and Bangladesh on June 4 on Koh Taung Island in the southern province of Satun after they were told they had reached Malaysia and disembarked.

Tin Hlaing, a Rohingya from Thekkebyin village in Sittwe township who works on human trafficking issues, told RFA that some Rohingya suffer abuse at the hands of their traffickers on the journey.

Some kids were so pitiful [because] the traffickers beat them up and sent a video to their families demanding that they pay the remaining 2 million, 3 million or 5 million kyats if they wanted their son or daughter to live, he said.

Their parents, who also live in the IDP camps, had no money to pay, he said. What they did was sell their rooms or their rations coupons. Finally, they had no place to live and nothing to eat. They had to do that so their children would not die. We see such tragedies here.

RFA could not reach military regime spokesmen in Rakhine state or in Myanmars capital Naypyidaw for comment.

Activist Nay San Lwin, cofounder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, noted that the stream of Muslims trying to illegally flee Myanmar is a result of the violation of their fundamental rights.

If you can work and live freely in your area, if there is stability and peace, no one will migrate, he said. All over Myanmar, people can travel freely by land or by water, but only the Rohingya are not allowed to do so. Rohingya are deprived of the use of waterways in their own birthplace.

They dont have the right to live a normal life, he said. The deprivation of basic rights, such as the right to freedom of movement, is a serious violation of human rights.

Call for urgent intervention

The Rohingya were placed in IDP camps in in Sittwe, Pauktaw and Kyaukphyu townships following sectarian violence between Muslims and Buddhists in 2012 and 2013.

In 2017, Myanmars military conducted brutal clearance operations in Rakhine that forced more than 740,000 Rohingya, mainly in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships, to flee across the border and into Bangladesh, where they now live in sprawling refugee camps.

The United States in March said that the clearance operations constituted a genocide.

Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization Malaysia issued a written appeal on Monday to the U.N. Human Rights Council to find a permanent solution to the Rohingya's plight.

[We] need the urgent intervention and peace from the outside world to change our fate, the group said. We cannot delay our action as it will only allow more Rohingya and people of Myanmar to die.

The organization asked world leaders, the European Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and United Nations member states to appeal to the current regular session of the Human Rights Council, which runs until July 8, to find a permanent solution to the Rohingya crisis.
President Rodrigo Duterte discusses Sino-Philippine relations during the commissioning of the BRP Melchora Aquino into the Philippine Coast Guard fleet, at the Port of Manila, June 12, 2022.

The Philippines cannot afford war with China, outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte told Filipino coast guard personnel in what could be his final policy statement on the South China Sea issue, after Manila filed fresh diplomatic protests over Chinese boats in disputed waters.

With a few weeks left in his presidency, Duterte made the remark during a ceremony on Sunday to commission the BRP Melchora Aquino, the latest addition to the Philippine Coast Guards fleet. The so-called multi-role response vessel will help the force patrol the Philippine archipelagos vast shorelines and deter Chinese incursions into waters claimed by Manila, officials said.

We cannot afford fighting with China. We cannot win and we will lose and the population will suffer, he said, according to an official transcript of his speech released on Monday.

Duterte spoke out after the Department of Foreign Affairs announced last Thursday that it had protested the return of over 100 Chinese vessels illegally operating in the waters in and around Julian Felipe Reef on 04 April 2022, barely a year after the same swarming incident was protested by the Philippine government.

Then on Friday, the department announced another protest against Beijing in a series of tweets  this time around the Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands  alleging that Chinese boats were fishing illegally and Chinese coast guard ships were shadowing Philippine supply ships.

During the commissioning ceremony, Duterte said, We do not send gray ships there because those are vessels for war. It would project a different picture for everybody, noting that Coast Guard ships, unlike navy ships, are painted white.

In his speech, Duterte also alluded to Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a friend, but said the Philippines periodically had to assert what is ours.

And we have talked a lot in the many visits that I did in the past years. But I made it clear to him that we cannot give up sovereignty over the waters in the West Philippine Sea, including the exclusive economic zone because its vital for our national life, Duterte said, using the Philippine name for territories claimed by Manila in the South China Sea.

The Chinese government did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on Dutertes statement.

The Philippines had previously issued a statement following a telephone call between the two leaders in April, during which Duterte and Xi agreed on the need for positive engagements over the disputed waterway.

On June 30, Duterte will hand over the reins of government to Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the president-elect who promised last month that, under his administration, the country would assert its maritime territorial rights.

Neither of the statements issued by the Philippine foreign office last week noted when the two latest protests were filed and whether Chinese boats and ships remained in Philippine waters.

In March and April, Philippine complaints about hundreds of Chinese ships and boats clustering near Whitsun Reef were the focus of bilateral tensions over the contested sea.
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Greg Sukiennik has worked at all three Vermont News & Media newspapers and was their managing editor from 2017-19. He previously worked for ESPN.com, for the AP in Boston, and at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass.
Russia urges U.S. to explain military biological activities

Xinhua) 09:06, June 13, 2022

MOSCOW, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Russia has asked the United States to explain its military biological activities in some post-Soviet countries.

On Sunday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the United States must fulfill its obligations under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), which is essential for international security.

Russia plans to hold consultations with other BTWC members on measures to increase control over the activities carried out by the United States in bio-labs in the post-Soviet space, said Zakharova.

During a special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian military found that U.S.-funded biological laboratories conducted research on 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.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
A man with Berkshires ties, introduced to Congress and the nation as the most prominent Republican lawyer handling voting cases, said Monday the Trump campaign utterly failed to make its case of irregularities with the 2020 election.

Attorney Benjamin L. Ginsberg was questioned for roughly seven minutes by a member of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He then joined a CNN panel at 1:30 p.m. for a recap of the day's topic.

"They didn't accept the defeat. And that's a lot of the trauma that the country continues to go through today," he said on CNN. "In my mind, it's not there yet as a criminal case."

Ginsberg, who worked as a news reporter for The Berkshire Eagle from 1975 to 1977, briefed the committee on the Trump campaigns efforts to overturn President Joe Bidens victory in November 2020.

In one exchange, Ginsberg was asked by U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., whether any court found merit in the campaigns claims of voting fraud.

No, there was never that instance, Ginsberg said.

The following is a transcript of Ginsbergs appearance before the panel:

Zoe Lofgren: We have a renowned legal expert here to address the Trump campaigns activities in court. Mr. Ginsberg, you spent your entire career representing Republicans in election-related litigation.  I think it's fair to say you're the most prominent Republican lawyer who's litigated in the election field and you've analyzed the Trump campaign's litigation pretty carefully.

What's the normal process for post-election litigation? How is the Trump campaign's different than the kinds of post-election litigation you've been involved in and know about?

Benjamin Ginsberg: In the normal course of things, any campaign on the night of the election, and in the days after, will do a couple of different things. One is that they'll analyze precinct results to look for abnormalities in the results and they'll send people to those precincts to ask more questions.

Secondly, all campaigns will have poll workers and observers in the polling place. And so campaigns will talk to those people [and ask] if they saw any irregularities that could cause problems in the election.

Now the Trump campaign talked pre-election about having 50,000 poll workers, so presumably they did have eyes on the ground in all these places.

And so in the normal course of things a campaign will analyze the reports that come in. The Trump campaign had a couple of basic problems, however.

Quote They did have their day in court." Benjamin L. Ginsberg, election attorney

Number one, the 2020 election was not close. In 2000, that was 537 [votes in Florida] and close. In this election, the most narrow margin was 10,000 and something in Arizona, and you just don't make up those sorts of numbers in recounts.

And when the claims of fraud and irregularities were made, you've heard very compelling testimony from [former Trump campaign manager Bill] Stepien  about those claims and how they didn't believe that put the Trump campaign on sort of a process of bringing cases without the actual evidence that you have to have in which the process is designed to bring out."

Zoe Lofgren: So are you aware of any instance in which a court found the Trump campaign's fraud claims to be credible?

Benjamin Ginsberg: No, there was never that instance. In all the cases that were brought  I've looked at the more than 60 that include more than 180 counts  and no, the simple fact is that the Trump campaign did not make its case.

Zoe Lofgren: The Select Committee has identified 62 post-election lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and his allies between Nov. 4, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021. Those cases resulted in 61 losses.  Despite those 61 losses, President Trump and his allies claim that the courts refused to hear them out  and as a result, they never had their day in court.

Mr. Ginsburg, what do you say about the claims that Mr. Trump wasn't given an opportunity to provide the evidence they had of voter fraud [and] that they had, in fact, their day in court?

Benjamin Ginsberg: They did have their day in court. About half of those cases that you mentioned were dismissed at the procedural stage for a lack of standing [or], the proper people didn't bring the case or there wasn't sufficient evidence and it got dismissed on a motion to dismiss.

There was discussion of the merits contained in the complaints and in no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real.

It's also worth noting that even if the Trump campaign complained that it did not have its day in court, there have been post-election reviews in each of the six battleground states that could have made a difference. [In] each one of those instances, there was no credible evidence of fraud produced by the Trump campaign or his supporters.

Zoe Lofgren: "Now as Mr. Ginsberg has explained, there are no cases where the Trump campaign was able to convince a court that there was widespread fraud or irregularities in the 2020 election.

Over and over, judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans alike directly refuted this false narrative. They called out the Trump campaign's lack of evidence for his claims.

And the judges did that even in cases where they could have simply thrown out the lawsuit without writing a word.

As we've just heard from perhaps the most preeminent Republican election lawyer in recent history, the Trump campaign's unprecedented effort to overturn its election laws in court was a deeply damaging abuse of the judicial process. As stated by U.S. District Court Judge David Carter, this was a coup in search of a legal theory."
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An attendee at a 2019 gun rights rally in Olympia, Wash., open carries his gun in a holster that reads "We the People" from the Preamble to the United States Constitution.
The New Testament book of Hebrews is a beautifully written sermon that is rich in Christology as well as Old Testament wisdom. However, to a casual reader, the deep insights within the text can be lost in ancient cultural and theological concepts. The letter is skillfully written and full of dynamic language expressing deep theological truths. A quick glance at the text does not do it justice.

So, what are we to understand from this ancient letter? How can the letter to the Hebrews be useful to us today?

Here are three key insights that will help you get the most out of reading this eloquent and meaningful text.

1. The Author of Hebrews Writes to Persecuted Christians in Rome

The author of the letter to the Hebrews was concerned that the believers in Rome were discouraged in faith to the point of giving up Christian belief and returning to Jewish practice.

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God (Hebrews 3:12).

A large population of dispersed Jews and God-fearing people lived in Rome in the first century. This letter was likely received and read by Roman Christians before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The gospel message traveled to Rome and house churches developed, providing a place to assemble, hear Christian teaching, and be encouraged by other believers. Many of these Christians belonged to local Jewish synagogues. They faced pressure and persecution from Roman citizens and Jews living in Rome to give up the Christian confession.

But Christ is faithful as the Son over Gods house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory (Hebrews 3:6).

2. The Author Writes to Remind and Convince Christians of the Person and Work of Christ

The author of Hebrews was highly educated and skilled. The introduction to the letter is considered one of the best literary examples of ancient Greek writing known to us. The book begins with a straightforward thesis. In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1-2).

The rest of the letter contains explanations of the ministry and identity of Jesus. Each explanation of Christs work is accompanied by a warning to not turn away from the truth. This exhortation-warning pattern is repeated throughout the letter.

Christ is superior to the angels (Hebrews 1:5-14).

Warning: Therefore, be careful to listen to the Gospel truth so that you do not drift away (Hebrews 2:1).

Jesus was God in the flesh (Hebrews 2:5-18).

Warning: Therefore, fix your thoughts on Jesus (Hebrews 3:1).

Jesus is faithful (Hebrews 3:6).

Warning: Therefore, do not harden your hearts (Hebrews 3:7-8).

Jesus was the one sacrifice to make perfect all those who believe in him (Hebrews 10:14). Because Jesus made the perfect sacrifice, let us boldly approach Gods throne in assurance that we are washed clean (Hebrews 10:14-25).

Warning: If we deliberately keep on sinning, no sacrifice is left (Hebrews 10:26).

As well as exhortations to continue in faith in Jesus, the letter provides a beautiful portrait of Christs incarnation. Gods Son is portrayed as heir, agent of creation, sustainer of the universe, Savior, and sovereign (Hebrews 1:1-4). The author states that Jesus is fully God (1:3) and fully human (2:3-18). Jesus is our high priest who sits at Gods right hand and intercedes for us (Hebrews 7:25).

3. Understanding the Letter Requires an Awareness of Old Testament Teachings

You dont have to have a degree in Old Testament studies, but it is helpful to keep in mind that the letter to the Hebrews was written by a Hebrew to other Hebrews. The author made many references that he knew his readers would understand. The letter to the Hebrews has thirty-five Old Testament quotations and dozens of Old Testament names and summaries.

For example, Hebrews 10:7 is a quote from Psalm 40:7 in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament). Then I said, Here I am  it is written about me in the scroll  I have come to do your will, my God.

Hebrews 1:13 quotes Psalm 110:1. Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

Significant themes commonly understood in the Hebrew culture and found in the letter include old covenant and new covenant, Jesus as High Priest, the leadership of Moses and Joshua, and atonement by sacrifice.

Chapter 11 of Hebrews is a whos who list of Old Testament heroes who set the example of faithfulness to God. The author skillfully uses their common faith heritage to encourage faithfulness to Jesus. The author reminds the Roman Christians of many stories of Old Testament faith (11:1-31) and then reminds them that some of their forefathers were tortured (11:35), jeered and flogged (v. 36), put to death by stoning, went destitute, and were persecuted and mistreated (v. 37). These were all commended for their faith.

The author ends the chapter by reminding the discouraged readers that God has something better for us (v. 40).

The Letter to the Hebrews Is Encouragement to Us Today

The letter to the Hebrews is a beautiful message of encouragement that rings true for us today. By understanding the difficulties and persecution the Hebrews faced, we understand the sermon as a call to courage when we are discouraged. When we remember the Person and work of Jesus, we find strength to remain firm in our faith. When we remember what the people of the past endured, we grow in our resolve to be faithful.

To experience the eloquence and strength of this ancient sermon, try to read the Book of Hebrews in one sitting or use an audio Bible to listen to its powerful message. Here are some of the meaningful words of encouragement from the letter to the Hebrews that can encourage us in our faith today.

The Son is the radiance of Gods glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:3).

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow (Hebrews 4:12).

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1).

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees, Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed (Hebrews 12:12).

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise  the fruit of lips that openly profess his name (Hebrews 13:15).

Photo credit: SparrowStock

Author T.A. Boland holds a BA in Biblical Studies and is working to complete MA in Biblical Exposition.
JEROME, ID - Effective Wednesday, June 15, 2022, the Idaho Department of Lands will close the endowment land at the East Fork of Rock Creek in Power County to camping and UTVs due to abuse of the land by people recreating in the area. The area is located approximately four miles east of Rockland.

According to the IDL, after moderate weekend use IDL staff discovered that recreationalists continued to leave significant amounts of human waste and trash at the site. It was also found that UTVs were going off trail, damaging the area and leading to an increased risk of erosion.

This 40-acre parcel of land managed by the IDL is used to generate funding for the Public School Endowment.

"Because abusive behavior damaged the land and diminished its ability to generate revenue for public schools, the area is now closed to camping and UTVs indefinitely," read a news release from the IDL.

This isn't the first time the IDL has had this issue. Last year, similar problems existed in the East Fork of the Rock Creek area that resulted in the closure of restrooms and trash service.

Last year, the 2.5 million acres of Endowment Land across Idaho earned a total of $54,798,000 for Idaho's public schools, according to the IDL.

Walk-in day use of the area is still permitted.
ARLINGTON, Va.  The first all-Vietnam Veteran Honor Flight trip from Michigan will land in Washington, D.C. on June 18 thanks to the extraordinary support of a Michigan teen.

Alice Kraatz, of Kalamazoo, began fundraising for the trip when she was only 14 years old. Now 17, Kraatz has raised more than $140,000  enough to sponsor the entire plane of Veterans travelling to the nations capital to experience the memorials built in their honor.

Kraatz proposed the all-Vietnam Veteran trip while serving as the Michigan State President of the Children of the American Revolution (C.A.R.) from 2019-2020. She sold MIA/POW bracelets to raise money and recruited other youth organizations to join her campaign by collecting bottles and cans, hosting yard sales, and asking for sponsorships.

The State Project I led during my term was called To Honor, To Remember, and its goal was to raise money to put Vietnam Veterans on the Honor Flight, with the intent of filling the plane, Kraatz said. Sending an Honor Flight devoted solely to Vietnam Veterans will allow us to give them the recognition and honor that they deserve.

The trip, named C.A.R. Yellow Ribbon Honor Flight, will take the Veterans to Arlington National Cemetery to participate in a wreath-laying, then to the National Mall to visit the memorials honoring those who served. The Veterans will receive the Vietnam War Commemorative Pin during a special pinning ceremony at 2:50 p.m. at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. On their flight home, the Veterans will receive letters from loved ones and supporters to read during one-last Mail Call.

Trip organizers also have special plans to give the veterans the proper homecoming that so many in their generation never received.

The veterans returning from Vietnam did not receive the same kind of homecoming that was given to veterans of previous generations and, in too many cases, our Vietnam veterans experienced rejection and anger, said Bobbie Bradley, the Chief Operating Officer of the Honor Flight Network. We cant change what happened half-a-century ago, but we can do something about the present. As long as there are Vietnam veterans among us, it is not too late to thank them.

HOW TO HONOR LOCAL VETERANS

A bus will make its way from Traverse City, south on U.S. 131, on Friday, June 17, picking up Veterans along the way.

The Mecosta Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution invites the public to honor the Veterans who are making the trip to Washington, D.C., as the bus arrives at the carpool parking lot at Exit 139 at 11 a.m. Friday, June 17. They will be picking up veterans from this area at that time.

Here are other local stops the bus will make Friday:

Cadillac: 10:15-10:30 a.m. at the MDOT Car Pool Lot, E. 46 Mile Road, Clam Lake Township

Reed City: 10:50-11 a.m. at the MDOT Car Pool Lot, 22378 U.S. 10, Reed City.

Big Rapids: 11:15-11:30 a.m. at the MDOT Car Pool Lot, 22200 Perry Ave., Big Rapids.

The Honor Flight Network brings veterans to Washington, D.C. at no cost to the veterans. Formed in 2005, the network has provided the once-in-a-lifetime experience to more than 250,000 veterans. The Honor Flight Networks Lone Eagle program, which coordinates trips for veterans who live outside the reach of the organizations more than 130 hubs, is organizing the trip in cooperation with local hubs Mid-Michigan Honor Flight and Talons Out Honor Flight.
Peptic ulcers are open sores that develop on the inside lining of the stomach and the upper portion of the small intestine

Scientists led by Professor Joseph Sung, Nanyang Technological University or NTUs Senior Vice President (Health and Life Sciences) and Dean of NTUs Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, have validated a medical technology that could improve the treatment of the most serious bleeding peptic ulcers, which they say affect an estimated eight per cent of the worlds population.

The international team of gastroenterologists reported that applying a mineral powder directly to the ulcers using an endoscope had a 91 per cent success rate in stopping bleeding and starting the healing process, in a study of 67 patients diagnosed with the most serious forms of peptic ulcers.

Combined with other treatments, the mineral powder had a success rate of 97 per cent. The study, which involved doctors from hospitals and universities in Canada, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Hong Kong, also reported that the mineral powder was found to be easy and effective to administer, with a success rate of 88 per cent after being applied once.

The ulcers can result in complications such as a hole in the stomach wall, blocked passage of food through the digestive tract, as well as a higher risk of developing gastric cancer.

Singapore's NTU-led study was to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the technology, named Hemospray, as a singular therapy for patients with actively bleeding peptic ulcers. It was developed by Cook Group, an American medical devices manufacturer, and had shown promise in treating peptic ulcers, but required further studies into its efficacy.
Procter & Gamble South Africa (P&G) is continuing with its efforts to make meaningful change in South African society, focusing on some of the country's most vulnerable citizens. Together with the Footprint Foundation, P&G marked Menstrual Hygiene Day with an event at Sekano-Ntoane Secondary School in Soweto, Johannesburg on Friday, 27 May. The event was focused on promoting menstrual hygiene education and awareness, and as part of the programme they donated sanitary towels to the learners. Some of the main actors from the popular Skeem Saam drama series were present in support of the initiative.

The initiative is part of P&Gs Always Keeping Girls in School (AKGIS) and Always programmes, designed to prevent the gaps that occur in girls education when they are forced to take an absence from school due to a lack of access to menstrual hygiene products. The programmes are educational and social initiatives that succeed in keeping girls in school for as long as possible, and over the long term, ensuring they remain within the education system until the completion of their matric year. AKGIS provides Sexual Reproductive Health & Rights Education (SRHR) coupled with Menstrual Hygiene Education presented by trained health professionals. The programme also includes career guidance and vision creation to help girls reach their full potential. P&G South Africa General Manager, Alicia Eggingtons, says, P&G believes that nothing should get in the way of a girls education, especially not her period. In South Africa today, one in 10 girls misses school because of her period. Thats why P&G is actively addressing period-poverty, by donating Always sanitary products. To date we have reached over 150,000 girls, donating over seven million pads in South Africa. On Friday, we will donate another 1,9 million sanitary pads.Over the last three years, we have reached over 150,000 girls, donating over seven million pads in South Africa. This year, we will donate another 1,9 million sanitary pads. The school would like to thank P&G for the support they've given to our learners by providing them with sanitary towels and beneficial knowledge regarding menstrual education. Our girls are now able to attend school regularly because of the availability of the sanitary towels donated by the company. Thank you very much for your unending support, says Pinky Maluleka, the deputy principal of Sekano Ntoane secondary school.As we commemorate Youth Month, it is important to shed light on issues that the current youth are facing and acknowledging menstruation as a normal fact of life, is key to removing the shame associated with menstruation. This programme aims to remove the stigmatism, exclusion and discrimination millions of women and girls are subjected to around the world, simply because they menstruate. It believes it is unacceptable that women and girls continue to be prevented from getting an education, earning an income and fully and equally participating in everyday life because of a natural bodily function. It is hoped that this message will have travelled around the globe and be fully internalized by 2030.P&G serves consumers around the world with one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Always, Ambi Pur, Ariel, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, Dawn, Downy, Fairy, Febreze, Gain, Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Lenor, Olay, Oral-B, Pampers, Pantene, SK-II, Tide, Vicks, and Whisper. The P&G community includes operations in approximately 70 countries worldwide. Please visit http://www.pg.com for the latest news and information about P&G and its brands.
Within the local and global cough, cold and flu remedies markets, the preference for over-the-counter (OTC) medication is spreading amongst consumers, due to the rising costs of healthcare, and the fact that OTC medication is accessible and more cost-effective. Further contributing to this preference is the fact that consumers are increasingly stocking up on OTC cough, cold and flu remedies in preparation for when they may need it, as well as aboom in e-commerce and home delivery services, which is further supporting the preference for at-home treatment.

Source: Statista; Graphics by Insight Survey

Some key questions the report will help you to answer:

What are the key market dynamics of the global and South African cough, cold and flu remedies industry?



What are the latest global and South African cough, cold and flu remedies industry trends, innovation and technology, drivers, and challenges?



What are the market value and volume trends in the South African cough, cold and flu remedies industry (2016-2021) and forecasts (2022-2026), including the impact of Covid-19?



Which are the key manufacturers and distributors in the South African cough, cold and flu remedies industry?



What is the latest company news for key players in terms of products, new launches, and marketing initiatives?



What are the prices of popular OTC cough, cold and flu remedy brands/products across South African retail pharmacies?

About Insight Survey:

s latest, carefully uncovers the, based on the latest intelligence and research. It describes the latest global and local market trends, innovation and technology, drivers, and challenges, to present an objective insight into the South African cough, cold and flu remedies industry environment and its future.In 2022, the global cold and cough remedies market, which forms part of the global OTC pharmaceuticals market, is estimated to generate revenue of approximately US$40.27 billion. Furthermore, the global cold and cough remedies market is forecast to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.81%, to reach approximately US$46.36 billion by 2025, as illustrated in the graph below.In terms of the South African market, the local cough, cold and flu remedies market, which includes antihistamines/allergy remedies, achieved growth of 9.8% year-on-year in retail value terms, between 2020 and 2021. Moreover, the market is predicted to experience robust grow, achieving an estimated 10.4% CAGR until 2026. Factors driving the cough, cold and flu remedies market include the arrival of the Omicron and the expected arrival of the Deltacron variants of Covid-19 in 2022.Additionally, the NICD has predicted that the country will continue to see a rise in flu cases, and experience a more severe flu season in 2022, compared to previous years. This expected surge has also been attributed to the relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions, as well as weakened immunity against flu, due to the reduced transmission of, and exposure to, the virus over the past two years.Globally, there has been an increasing preference for OTC cough, cold and flu remedies, as consumers around the world are opting to treat their symptoms at home, using OTC pharmaceutical products or even natural home remedies, rather than consulting healthcare professionals. This is largely due to the increasing costs of healthcare, and the fact that OTC medication is widely available, and often cheaper, than prescription medications.Interestingly, the rise of the flu bomb trend is a further example, demonstrating the preference of OTC medication in the treatment of cough, cold and flu symptoms at home. More specifically, flu bombs are trending as a novel method of consuming OTC cough, cold and flu remedies in South Africa. This takes a form similar to that of a Jager bomb, which is made by dropping a shot of Jagermeister into an energy drink, typically Red Bull. In a similar manner, the flu bombs are prepared by dropping a shot of Benylin 4 flu syrup, into dissolved Corenza C.In South Africa, companies such as Adcock Ingram and Reckitt have reported growth attributed to the increased sales of OTC products. In particular, for the six months ended 31 December 2021, Adcock Ingram reported an increase in turnover of 16% to R4.3 billion, and an increase of 25% in trading profit to R543 million, which the company attributed to increased demand for OTC cough, cold and flu remedies. Moreover, Reckitt detailed that its health business saw strong growth of 18%, led by growth in its OTC portfolio.Furthermore, the preference for at-home treatment of cough, cold and flu symptoms has been supported by a boom in e-commerce and home delivery services, largely driven by Covid-19 lockdowns. For example, Dis-Chems online sales have surged, now comprising 18.1% of the companys sales for the six months ended August 2021. In response, the Dis-Chem group deployed 44 new e-commerce hubs and increased investment in its e-commerce platform. Furthermore, the launch of home delivery services, such as PharmaGo and Dis-Chems Deliver D, offer a convenient means of obtaining cough, cold and flu remedies, further supporting the preference for at-home treatment in the local market.The(109 pages) provides a dynamic synthesis of industry research, examining thefrom a uniquely holistic perspective, with detailed insights into the entire value chain  market sizes and forecasts, industry trends, latest innovation and technology, key drivers and challenges, as well as manufacturer, distributor, retailer, and pricing analysis.Please note that the 109-page report is available for purchase for R35,000 (excluding VAT). Alternatively, individual sections can be purchased for R15,000 (excluding VAT). For additional information, contact us at az.oc.yevrusthgisni@ofni or directly on (021) 045-0202 or (010) 140-5756.For a full brochure please go to: South African Cough, Cold and Flu Remedies Industry Landscape Brochure 2022 Insight Survey is a South African B2B market research company with more than 15 years of heritage, focusing on business-to-business (B2B) market research to ensure smarter, more-profitable business decisions are made with reduced investment risk.We offer B2B and industry research solutions, to help you to successfully improve or expand your business, enter new markets, launch new products, or better understand your internal or external environment.Our bespoke Competitive Business Intelligence Research can help give you the edge in a global marketplace, empowering your business to overcome industry challenges quickly and effectively, and enabling you to realise your potential and achieve your vision.From strategic overviews of your businesss competitive environment, through to specific competitor profiles, our customised Competitive Intelligence Research is designed to meet your unique needs.For more information, go to www.insightsurvey.co.za
Earlier this year, the Johannesburg Metro Police Department announced that motorists who have been exceeding the city's speed limits had not been fined for infringing the law for almost a year. That's because the city hasn't had any functioning speed cameras since May 2021.

Driver training programmes

Geofencing high accident zones

In-cab AI cameras

"While Johannesburg motorists who have broken the law are probably off the hook, these offline speed cameras mean that road users no longer have a deterrent to help them avoid reckless driving. Speed cameras work to reduce road accidents, injuries, and even fatalities by deterring drivers from speeding. Without them, road users' traffic speeds increase, which incurs additional costs for the transportation industry and causes more accidents, severe injuries, and deaths.Just because commercial drivers cant incur the high costs of speeding fines doesnt mean businesses arent suffering the actual price of reckless driving behaviour.For example, in May this year, numerous motorists filed police reports against a truck driver who was endangering the lives of road users on the N11 in Mpumalanga. A motorist recorded the truck recklessly overtaking several vehicles at high speed, including other large trucks. The driver eventually hit and damaged a trailer attached to a white bakkie but continued to speed away until the police stopped and arrested him.Here are some ways fleet managers can proactively prevent drivers from falling into the trap of driving recklessly and speeding while the citys traffic cameras are offline.Speeding contributed to last years high number of road fatalities, with light delivery cars and trucks accounting for more fatalities per crash than any other type of vehicle. That's why its more crucial than ever that fleet managers train drivers to abide by traffic laws and reduce their likelihood of contributing to South Africas high road accident rate.Fleet managers can enrol drivers in training, development, and support programmes that will equip them with the skills they require to improve their driving behaviour while adding value to the companies they drive for.Driver programmes, like MasterDrive, offer truck drivers world-class safety and efficiency training that will help them mitigate accidents and increase productivity.Since heavy trucks are more dangerous on the road than light vehicles, fleet managers can use geofencing technology to define high accident zones or areas with steep descents. Geofencing allows managers to receive alerts when vehicles enter pre-defined zones and, in turn, alert drivers to maintain or revert to a custom set speed limit to lower the risk of an accident.Although this technology fills the current gap created by offline speed cameras, it can be as effective when the citys speed cameras are back online by reminding drivers to reduce their speed.This technology has shown so much promise in reducing road accidents and reckless driving behaviour that Ford recently trialled connected geofencing technology that could one day automatically reduce a vehicles speed in line with the geofenced zone.A recent Zutobi survey ranked South Africa as the most dangerous country to drive in out of 52 countries. Unfortunately, Johannesburgs offline speed cameras add to the countrys hazardous road conditions.Fleet managers and drivers can create safer driving conditions by pairing telematics technology with AI-based vehicle video cameras, like CAM 50. This technology identifies risky driving and delivers real-time audio and visual warning alerts when the driver speeds, brakes or steers harshly. It also sends feedback to the driver when engaging in distracted driving behaviour that endangers the lives of other road users.Drivers navigate countless factors on our country's roads, and offline speed cameras are just another item on that list. As a result, fleet managers are under immense pressure to protect employees while making sure they drive responsibly. Thankfully, fleet managers have access to countless solutions that encourage safe driving behaviour and protect South African road users.
The conversation around brands connecting with esports teams and players has been a hot topic for a while now. Many have said that it is an important step for progress in esports, especially in South Africa.

Image supplied: Thabo Moloi

What does this mean?

But how does it affect the players?After winning a Fifa festival in 2018, Thabo Moloi signed to multi-gaming organisation (MGO) Goliath Gaming, which was the start of his competitive Fifa career. Since then, he has found incredible success and opportunities such as travelling to Dubai for Fifa qualifiers - the first time he had ever been on a plane and travelled outside of South Africa.However, this wasnt the only time Molois career would change in a meaningful way.My life changed in a big way in 2020 when Red Bull signed me as their first esports player in Africa, he said. I definitely feel a lot more confident, and mentally stronger  both in-game and in my personal life  because of my journey with Red Bull and their support.Moloi said that his opportunity to spend time at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Centre equipped him with essential insight and knowledge about the right kind of nutrition and mental and physical focus."In my opinion, it is essential for brands to work with up-and-coming esports athletes in terms of sponsorship as there is great mutual benefit for the brand and the esports athlete, Moloi said. The esports athlete is afforded the opportunity to commit more of their time and effort into their craft and to improve and reach their full potential through brand sponsorship and support; and for the brand, the gaming and esports audience is an incredibly engaging and loyal audience.Essentially, brand presence in esports and gaming means more than sponsoring tournaments.Connecting with an audience requires insight into what their needs are and how to meet those needs. As such, partnering with young and up-and-coming players such as Moloi gives players the opportunity to understand how to perform at their best.Consequently, this also brings South African esports players to the forefront of international success - and the subsequent brand working with these players.For example, Moloi has achieved multiple first places in tournaments like the VS Gaming Fifa Festival, Bravado Gaming Funky Fifa Festival, Orlando Pirates esports Fifa tournament, Nodwin Gaming Inkosi Super Cup and more during his career since joining Goliath Gaming and partnering with Red Bull as the first African continent esports athlete.However, being an esports athlete has its challenges beyond training to be the best. As a relatively costly sport, there are a lot of talented players who struggle to find opportunities because of financial restraints.Moloi said that the support from brands enables teams and players to afford the gear they need to compete at their very best and focus their time and energy on competing as opposed to having to worry about how they will pay the bills each month, which is an extra stress distracting them from keeping their head in the game.As such, brands have a unique position to not only help players with these opportunities but also be a driving force in putting South Africa on the map internationally.Esports is a continuously growing field around the world and in South Africa - and if players have the right resources, they have the opportunity to be placed amongst the best.
This year, award-winning auto-fitment retailer, Tiger Wheel & Tyre celebrates 55 years of delighting motorists across South Africa.

Looking back at our journey over the last five decades, it has certainly been a roller coaster of emotions. I have been part of that journey for the last 24 years myself, and it has been an absolute pleasure and blessing, conveyed Alex Taplin, Group CEO at TiAuto Investments.Continuing: I am immensely proud and blessed to be part of this ever-growing and evolving brand; and watching the expansion from 15 stores in 1998 to over a hundred stores nearly 25 years later has been a really fulfilling experience.Over the years, Tiger Wheel & Tyre has cemented its place in the lives of so many families  a legacy that has become a mainstay within communities across the country. From planning road trips with loved ones, being part of someones big moment, to daily errands, the Tiger Wheel & Tyre name is immediately recognisable and synonymous with trust, reliability, and industry expertise, and hearing South Africans sing along to the famous and catchy Tiger Wheel & Tyre jingle just never gets old.At the heart of our brand are our customers, who for generations have shown us love and loyalty. Additionally, our amazing and hardworking team is one of the main pillars of our success, with many individuals having grown through the decades with the brand itself, noted Taplin.Our success in the market has taken hard work and dedication. We pride ourselves in being our own worst critics as we thrive on that constant tension of self-reflection and improvement. We have experienced our share of challenges in our noisy commercial landscape, with the recent pandemic being an unfortunate feature. The organisation simply adapts, adjusts and move forwards. Chaos is often the most opportune time to grow and birth new solutions and with this, our Xpress Pick-Up & Delivery Service was born  which was our way of getting closer to our customers while still maintaining social distancing.Tiger Wheel & Tyre takes pride in its offering  from premium products and quality services to expert advice from a team of well-trained professionals. Over the years, the brand has elevated its range by adding to its arsenal  namely in the form of 4x4 Fitment Centres, Wheel Collision Xpress Repair Centres and most recently, PG Glass services, all conveniently available at selected stores.Add to that, sustained partnerships with other leading businesses in financial services, Fleet Management, 4x4 accessories and vehicle maintenance support services, to name a few, completes the vision for expanding Whole Life Mobility solutions.To commemorate the 55-year journey, Tiger Wheel & Tyre aim to celebrate the consumer by giving back. Shoppers stand a chance to win one of 55 R2,022 vouchers that will be awarded throughout the year. You are also invited take a ride through the decades, reflecting on some of the brands greatest milestones Back to work now, theres still lots to be done! Thank you, South Africa, for bringing life to our ambitions. We are thrilled and honoured to be able to serve our customers and communities over many decades to come, expressed Taplin.2022 and beyond  follow @TigerWheelnTyre as their journey continues  www.twt.to
Carry1st is the leading publisher of social games and interactive content across Africa. The company has released such games as Mine Rescue and SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off, and launched a proprietary payments and online marketplace to better monetize content in the region. The company is backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Google, Riot Games, Konvoy Ventures, Avenir, Raine Ventures, Akatsuki, and TTV Capital.
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The men were wearing nearly identical masks, hats, shirts and khakis, and were placed in zip ties and taken away from the scene, according to the Independent.

BREAKING: Authorities have stopped this Uhaul and detained approximately 20 people. They all have the same type of clothing on. Truck was stopped about 1/8th mile from the pride event. Were working to get more info from police. @KREM2 pic.twitter.com/bez1msBz45  Kyle Simchuk (@KyleSimchuk) June 11, 2022

"They came to riot downtown," said police chief Lee White at a Saturday press conference.

Theyre all being arrested one by one. cops wont say what theyre being arrested for pic.twitter.com/toWKclG1JO  alissa azar (@AlissaAzar) June 11, 2022

The group, which had an "operations plan" in its possession, was charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor.

Of note, Patriot Front is known for showing up in various cities to stage "flash mob" style marches, with appearances in Nashville, Washington DC and Pittsburgh over the last two years. Last July In Philadelphia, they were forced to fight their way out back to Penske trucks they arrived in - during which they were briefly detained but then let go.

Officially - as the Independent reports, Coeur dAlene police say they were tipped off by a "concerned citizen," who said the men, with masks and shields, were "looking like an army," while cramming themselves into the U-haul at a hotel, and that the "concerned citizen" was not from an informant within the group.

However, a video has been circulating of Coeur dAlene police captain David Hagar saying that they had "informants."

"Do you know what the original stop was for," he was asked.

"For that," said Hagar, referring to the men in the back of the U-haul.

"But how did you know?" asked a woman.

"We had informants," Hagar replies, with some interpreting his next words as "in their chats."

Perhaps Hagar is using "informant" and "concerned citizen" interchangeably, or he misspoke, however the definition of "informant" almost always refers to someone involved with a target group.

"Informants are those who covertly provide information about criminal activity to law enforcement officers. Some informants work for money, but most are people whove been caught engaging in criminal activity. In many cases, deals are made between an informant and the police, who refrain from charging a suspect theyve caught, in return for information or undercover work (typically, buying or selling drugs). Standards for eligibility of informants as a source of confidential information varies by jurisdiction." -US Legal

Others looking for evidence that this incident is "glowing" (i.e. feds are involved) have pointed to a photo of a police megaphone reads "F.B.I." - which was perhaps involved in surveilling the group.

Scope the megaphone pic.twitter.com/puLuNdYYWT  Lawrence McPenis (@og_mudbone6969) June 12, 2022

Source (archive)

The arrested men came from Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia and other states, according to police.

"It appears they did not come here to engage in peaceful events," Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris told the Coeur dAlene Press.
A stampede momentarily broke out at the March For Our Lives rally at the National Mall in Washington, DC on Saturday.





A stampede almost broke out at the pro-gun control March for Our Lives rally at the National Mall in Washington D.C. after attendees thought there was a shooter. pic.twitter.com/Wz56mp5tX6  Andy Ngo  (@MrAndyNgo) June 12, 2022

Another angle of the near stampede on the National Mall at the pro-gun control rally (March for Our Lives) following a false alarm about a shooter. Video by @TaraPoAm: pic.twitter.com/VS5tnM0QO6  Andy Ngo  (@MrAndyNgo) June 12, 2022



Apparently a protester tried to rush the stage and someone shouted "shooter."







From The Daily Mail:

'I am the gun I am using! I am not shooting a school,' the man said as security personnel attempted to escort him off the stage, before seemingly throwing a can at rally attendees behind the barricades.



The disturbance only lasted a few moments and officials at the rally rushed to assure those present that the man was not armed, The Sun reported.



[...] The man has since been arrested and US Park Police has opened an investigation.

As reboots are all Hollywood is capable of producing these days, the rally featured Emma Gonzalez -- who now goes by "X" Gonzalez and identifies as "they/them" -- screaming for Congress to "pass some f**king gun laws."





LIVE in DC: Marjory Stoneman Douglas survivor X Gonzalez demands Congress pass the f*cking gun laws and help us you f*cking jack*sses



Footage from @HannahNighting pic.twitter.com/nm5pnbWzVK  The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 11, 2022



Parkland celebrity David Hogg was also at the event.





Right now next to the march set up for today in DC. Our friends @GiffordsCourage set up an installation to show the number of gun deaths every year in the United States, and in each of these vases there are several flowers that represent one life. pic.twitter.com/pAw3apRsFh  David Hogg  (@davidhogg111) June 11, 2022



Hogg made headlines earlier in the week for falsely claiming Sen. Marco Rubio canceled a meeting with him because he was "triggered."









Also, the reporter doing a profile of you knows the meeting is real since she was emailing yesterday with our comms team about it. Dont lie again  we have receipts.  Michael Needham (@MikeNeedham) June 9, 2022



Hogg was called out by Marco Rubio's chief of staff for lying and eventually backtracked, deleted the tweet, blamed his own "staff" and apologized.





Also, the reporter doing a profile of you knows the meeting is real since she was emailing yesterday with our comms team about it. Dont lie again  we have receipts.  Michael Needham (@MikeNeedham) June 9, 2022

.@marcorubio an honest mistake, got our meetings confused in the flurry and my staff misinformed me. I apologize. Wed still love to meet with you and have an honest, respectful discussion. Deleted the tweet bc it wasnt true but attaching here for transparency. pic.twitter.com/icmaLoSA0C  David Hogg  (@davidhogg111) June 9, 2022



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The government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has authorised Russian troops, planes and ships to deploy to Nicaragua for purposes of training, law enforcement or emergency response.

In a decree published this week, and confirmed by Russia on Thursday, Ortega will allow Russian troops to carry out law enforcement duties, humanitarian aid, rescue and search missions in emergencies or natural disasters.

The Nicaraguan government also authorised the presence of small contingents of Russian troops for exchange of experiences and training.

Russias foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told the Russian news outlet Sputnik that the measure was routine.

We are talking about a routine  twice a year  procedure for the adoption of a Nicaraguan law on the temporary admission of foreign military personnel to its territory in order to develop cooperation in various areas, including humanitarian and emergency responses, combatting organised crime and drug trafficking, Zakharova said.

Nicaragua also said it will allow the presence of forces naval and air vessels of Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, El Salvador and the United States. The permission is valid for the second half of 2022, according to a report by the Russian state news agency Tass.

Ortega has been a staunch ally of Russia since his days in the leadership of the 1979 revolution that deposed dictator Anastasio Somoza. Ortega served as president from 1985 to 1990, before being re-elected to power in 2007.

Dozens of political opposition leaders have been arrested, including most of the potential presidential candidates, in the months before Ortegas re-election to a fourth consecutive term last year. His government has shut down dozens of non-governmental groups that he accuses of working on behalf of foreign interests to destabilise his government. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans have been chased into exile.
BJP state president Bandi Sanjay Kumar addresses a public meeting on the completion of eight years of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister at Vanastalipuram on Sunday. (Photo by arrangement)

HYDERABAD: Telangana BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Sunday demanded that the government take steps to ensure there is no repetition of cases of minor girls becoming victims of sexual predators. Speaking to reporters after meeting with the family of a nine-year-old girl in the city who is a rape victim, Sanjay said it was unfortunate that the Chief Minister did not utter a single word about the series of incidents of rape of minor girls in the city, nor did he hold a review on the matter, and give confidence to the women in the state over their safety.

He said the police have so far acted irresponsibly in the investigation into the Jubilee Hills rape case.

Later, addressing a public meeting to mark completion of eight years of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, Sanjay said there were no takers for Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Raos plans for floating a national party. He has done nothing for the state and now wants to do something at the national level. No one believes or trusts him, Sanjay said.

He also doubled down on his previous allegations that suicides by some Intermediate students were a result of a company mishandling the results. A court order was brought against me and I have full respect towards the courts but I will continue to speak about the issue as I am speaking the facts and the truth, he said.

He said the Modi government had implemented many welfare schemes but the Telangana government was not cooperating with the Centre. Prime Minister Modi is keen to further develop the state but the Telangana government is not willing to let that happen. Is the Chief Minister ready for a debate on eight years of his government in Telangana and the eight years of Modi government in the country, Sanjay said.

Let the Chief Minister decide the time and place for such a debate. Our party leaders, and I am ready to debate all the issues, Sanjay said.
She Teams, for the first time, hired martial women instructors who will be teaching self defence techniques to students from class VII till class XII in all schools. (Representational Image/ DC File)

Hyderabad: In order to put in check the growing incidences of sexual abuse of minor girls, the She Teams have come up with a plan to make school and college going girls mentally and physically strong and develop self confidence in them so that they can themselves deal with any such situation.

Over 1,600 schools in the city have been identified by the She Teams to train girls in martial arts and to conduct more sexual abuse awareness programmes this year. According to the officials, parents have been approaching the She Team officials to conduct sexual abuse awareness programmes and teach them self defence techniques so that their daughters could deal with any odd situation.

Based on the request of the parents, we will approach all schools as we have done earlier, but this time, apart from counselling programmes, we will be giving them martial arts training too, said Sirisha Raghavendra, additional commissioner of police. Parents also should spare at least 30 minutes with their children so that they feel free to reveal anything strange instead of hiding, Sirisha said. Our motive is to see that students should be prepared to handle any situation themselves rather than fall prey to predators, she said.

She Teams, for the first time, hired martial women instructors who will be teaching self defence techniques to students from class VII till class XII in all schools.

Simultaneously, She Team officials will also visit every school showing them videos to educate them of sexual abuse in public places that are most venerable. This year She Teams got excellent response from parents for counselling girl students. Hundreds of parents appreciated our work and over 380 minor girls who were counselled alerted their parents on time about sexual abuses they faced and action was taken against the culprits, she said.

Martial arts training is must for everyone, especially girls, as it develops self confidence. If the student practices at least two techniques and is perfect, she will automatically react if some strangers try to misbehave, Raja Vardhan, a martial arts expert who trained National Security Guards (NSG) commandos, said. If anybody learns the technique of block and strike at the same time, the victim can easily strike and manage to escape. Next time, the miscreant will think twice before resorting to abusing any girl, he said.
Ottawa's suspension of randomized COVID-19 testing at customs marks a major shift toward clearing clogged terminals, but more measures are needed to end airport gridlock, industry groups say.

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People wait in line to check in at Pearson International Airport in Toronto on Thursday, May 12, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Ottawa's suspension of randomized COVID-19 testing at customs marks a major shift toward clearing clogged terminals, but more measures are needed to end airport gridlock, industry groups say.

Wait times and tarmac delays for arriving flights at large airports improved immediately after the move went into effect Saturday, according to the Canadian Airports Council and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.

Were very encouraged by the news. Its a big step forward in addressing the delay issues," council head Monette Pasher said in an interview Monday.

"But there's still a lot more work to do, as there were still gate holds, albeit for shorter periods of time. In our business we never want to see people waiting on the tarmac."

On Friday, Ottawa announced it would pause COVID-19 tests of inbound international passengers selected at random, and that mandatory rapid tests for unvaccinated arrivals will happen off-site starting July 1.

The airports council and other industry groups are now calling for an end to vaccine mandates for passengers and aviation, security and customs employees, saying that hundreds more workers could be back on the job amid a labour crunch.

The government continues to bar most unvaccinated foreigners from entry and requires unvaccinated Canadians to quarantine for 14 days when they return.

After laying off security personnel during pandemic, Ottawa said the country's airport security agency has hired 865 screening officers since April, with more to come as Canada's four largest airports gird for a 50 per cent rise in traveller numbers within weeks.

As of June 1, those hubs were processing an average of 56,000 inbound passengers from abroad each day  more than half of them at Toronto's Pearson airport, where scenes of endless queues and traveller frustration played out all spring. The figure will hit 80,000 within weeks, the airports council forecasts.

"People can expect longer wait times in summer, but we shouldn't see anything like we've seen the past month. I think we're getting over that hurdle," Pasher said.

The Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable welcomed Ottawa's latest rollback, but was not quite so optimistic on its impact.

"Domestically, Canada's travel rules are hurting small businesses, unfairly impacting families looking to enjoy the summer travel season and forcing the cancellation of conferences and events that help power local economies," the roundtable, made up of industry groups, said in a statement.

On top of vaccine mandates, the trade organization is demanding Ottawa lift COVID-19-related questions from the ArriveCan app to speed up lines at the airport. Instead, the government said Friday it would station extra Public Health Agency of Canada workers at airports to verify that travellers have filled out the questions and offer help to those who need it.

Canadian Chamber of Commerce CEO and roundtable member Perrin Beatty said there's still work to do.

You cant say to millions of Canadians that you cannot get on a train or a plane but you can take a bus or the subway if you want," he said in an interview from the Ottawa airport. "It appears as if the mandates are being used more to punish than to protect."

The testing pause comes at the same time the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the government would drop COVID-19 tests as a requirement for entry  a measure Canada has already phased out.

"Canada is the only remaining country with a domestic vaccine mandate," said Suzanne Acton-Gervais, who heads the National Airlines Council of Canada.

More than 50 countries have scrapped all COVID-19-related travel restrictions and more than 100 have lifted vaccine requirements for international travellers, she said in an email.

Greater Toronto Airports Authority spokeswoman Tori Gass says that for now "it appears the removal of the random mandatory tests has made a difference," along with shored-up staffing levels.

In May some 490,810 passengers  about half of all inbound travellers from abroad  were held up after arriving on international flights at Pearson airport, facing delays as they sat on the tarmac or went through staggered off-loading to ease pressure on overflowing customs areas, according to figures provided by the authority.

In total, some 2,700 flights arriving from outside the country were delayed at Pearson last month, versus four planes  and a few hundred passengers  in May 2019.

The problem is not unique to Canada. International hubs such as London's two main airports and Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport regularly see hours-long bottlenecks due to staff shortages and the global travel rebound that feeds off two years of pent-up demand.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 13, 2022.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters after its inclusion of a kiss between two lesbian characters.

FILE - Peter Sohn arrives at the premiere of "Lightyear" on Wednesday June 8, 2022, at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles. The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters amid reports that the film includes a kiss between two female characters. (Photo by Richard Shotwell /Invision/AP, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters after its inclusion of a kiss between two lesbian characters.

The decision by the UAE comes as Malaysia also reportedly will ban the film, raising the possibility other Muslim-majority nations could follow suit on one of Disney's biggest animated films of the year as the film industry comes out of the depths of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, announced through its Media Regulatory Office of the country's Ministry of Youth and Culture that the film would not be opening in the country this Thursday.

The film is not licensed for public screening in all cinemas in the UAE, due to its violation of the countrys media content standards, the office said in a tweet. The office confirms that all films screened in cinemas across the country are subject to follow-up and evaluation before the date of screening to the public, to ensure the safety of the circulated content according to the appropriate age classification.

The office did not elaborate on the tweet and did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press. The tweet included an image of the film's poster, with the profile image of its main character Buzz Lightyear with a no symbol over it in red.

FILE - This image released by Disney/Pixar shows character Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans, left, and Alisha Hawthorne, voiced by Uzo Aduba, in a scene from the animated film "Lightyear," releasing June 17. The United Arab Emirates on Monday, June 13, 2022, banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters amid reports that the film includes a kiss between two female characters. (Disney/Pixar via AP, File)

Movie theaters in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, had already advertised showtimes for the film. But over the weekend, a social media campaign with the Arabic hashtag Ban Showing Lightyear in the Emirates, caught the attention of conservative Emiratis. They described showing a lesbian couple on screen as being against their culture and religion.

The movie, with actor Chris Evans voicing the inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear action figure from the Toy Story films, includes a female character voiced by actress Uzo Aduba kissing her female partner.

The UAE, many other countries in the wider Mideast, is a Muslim-led nation that criminalizes same-sex relationships. The U.S. State Department warns that Islamic, or Shariah, law in the UAE can include the death penalty for same-sex conduct, while Dubai can levy a 10-year prison sentence and Abu Dhabi allows for up to 14 years.

However, such prosecutions are rarely reported and LGBTQ individuals do live in the skyscraper-studded city-state of Dubai, home to the long-haul carrier Emirates.

The $200 million Lightyear is expected to be a major draw for Disney, with analysts estimating it could gross over $100 million in its first weekend.

Studios have allowed censors to cut films in global distribution for content in the past, including in the Mideast market. Recently, Disney has faced protests from activists and its own staff over what they described as CEO Bob Chapeks slow response in publicly criticizing Florida legislation that opponents dubbed the Dont Say Gay bill.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in late March signed the bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

The moment had been earlier cut from the film but was restored after Pixar employees protested Disney's response to Floridas bill.

The movie also may be banned in Malaysia as well. The Star, the countrys top English-language newspaper, cited an anonymous, nongovernment source as saying that Lightyear will not be shown in Malaysian cinemas. No reasons were given. A newspaper in the Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain similarly has speculated the film wouldn't be shown there.

Officials from Malaysia's Film Censorship Board and the Home Affairs Ministry, as well as The Walt Disney Co., could not be immediately reached for comment.

___

Associated Press writers Malak Harb in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
After a lengthy hiatus, Pride Week festivities finally returned to Brandon over the weekend, with a Pooch Pride event that took place at the Riverbank Discovery Centre grounds on Sunday afternoon.

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After a lengthy hiatus, Pride Week festivities finally returned to Brandon over the weekend, with a "Pooch Pride" event that took place at the Riverbank Discovery Centre grounds on Sunday afternoon.

This casual get-together encouraged members of the LGBTQ+ community to drop by the Fusion Credit Union Stage with their furry friends in tow, giving them all the opportunity to meet and reconnect following two years of inactivity due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While a little more low-key compared to a traditional Pride Week march, this "Pooch Pride" event still attracted dozens of participants like Brandon University student Liz Glenn, who attended Sundays meetup with a couple friends and her dog Rosie, a coonhound, English Mastiff mix.

Talking to the Sun shortly after her arrival, Glenn said this marked her first in-person Pride event since moving from Moosomin, Sask., to attend BU.

"Im ecstatic," Glenn said.

"Its so exciting to finally be back and in person and meeting all the amazing queer folks who are here in Brandon, just being able to expand that community and socialize with some new folks, both old and young."

While this wasnt Logan Prazniks first Brandon Pride event, it was their first local Pride Week as a volunteer.

"Ive lived in Brandon for my whole life, almost 25 years at this point, but I didnt really get into any of the Pride events until the last few years," said Praznik. "I think 2019 was the first one I marched in myself, and that kind of coincides with my timeline of coming out."

Because of this transformative experience, Praznik is now fully committed to pitching in behind the scenes to ensure that this years Pride Week is special for anyone else who is struggling with their queer identity.

KYLE DARBYSON/THE BRANDON SUN Local drag queen Flora Hex poses for a photo with members of the public during Sundays Pooch Pride event at the Riverbank Discovery Centre.

"This time it means something a little different now that Im trying to get into organizing it and helping out in whatever way I can, because I do want to see it continue to thrive," Praznik said.

One of the main attractions for Sundays get-together was local drag queen Flora Hex, who was on site to take photos with attendees and their dogs throughout the afternoon.

Hex told the Sun that getting the opportunity to meet with members of the public was "long overdue," since interacting in a virtual format isnt an ideal way to strengthen the local LGBTQ+ community.

"Thats what gave queer people grounds to be queer, is being together and fighting for our rights," Hex said. "I always remind people about the history of Pride and why its important to come together and stay together and bring other people together with us."

Sundays event wasnt the first Pride-themed activity to take place in Brandon this month, with BU publicly unveiling its new rainbow-coloured crosswalk on campus this past Friday.

However, "Pooch Pride" served as the official kickoff for a weeks worth of activities being organized by Brandon Pride, the group responsible for first putting together a formalized series of local Pride events in 2015.

Thanks to recently loosened COVID health restrictions, Brandon Pride is finally able to deliver a new slate of in-person activities, including a queer history lecture today, a trivia night on Tuesday, an art workshop on Thursday and a flag-raising ceremony at city hall on Friday.

This years Pride Week is scheduled to culminate with a public march on Saturday afternoon that will feature members of local gay-straight alliances and other LGBTQ+ friendly groups.

For a full rundown of Brandon Pride Weeks 2022 schedule, visit Brandon Prides official social media pages on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

 kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @KyleDarbyson
Aid workers are preparing for the possibility of cholera and measles outbreaks within war-torn Ukraine, as water infrastructure continues to be damaged and increasing numbers of the elderly and people with disabilities flee Russias relentless attacks.

Australian aid worker Nick Prince, who has been stationed in bordering Hungary to help co-ordinate the Red Cross public health response to the war, said the conflict was one of the most complex conflicts he had seen in his decades in international aid work.

Victorian aid worker Nick Prince says the Ukraine conflict is one of the worst he has seen. Credit:Red Cross

Ive done a lot of work with ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] responding to complex situations, he said.

Ukraine is a conflict, but its also a complex emergency disaster. Its so different to a tsunami, where something happens in a very short space of time, and therefore you know how to respond.
The centres analysis found an ATAR-aged boy was 16.3 per cent less likely to obtain an HSC qualification than a girl in the same group, and 15 per cent less likely to complete at least one subject in 2020 than girls. The effect of being male was greater than any of the other recognised disadvantages we looked at, the analysis found. The gap persists into university, the UAC analysis found, with boys enrolling at lower rates, less likely to pass all their subjects, and more likely to fail everything. The issue was across socio-economic quartiles. Andrew Horsley with Dapto High School students. He is a mentor to the boys. Credit:Janie Barrett NSW Department of Education data also show boys are also more likely to skip school. Attendance among high school girls is more than 82 per cent, compared with less than 73 per cent for boys. Boys also represent 70 per cent of school suspensions. Robin Nagy, the director of Academic Profiles, which examines data for the independent sector, said the gap could be partly due to NSW requiring English to count towards a fifth of a students HSC mark. On average, girls would appear to benefit more from this requirement than boys, due to the archetype of girls performing better in English, he said.

Female enrolments outnumber male ones in the harder English subjects, which scale to higher ATAR marks, and boys were over-represented in easier subjects. Craig Petersen, the head of the Secondary Principals Council, which represents public school principals, said there had also been significant efforts over several decades to ensure girls were catered to in HSC examinations. Loading In response to the research that shows girls respond better to narrative questions, we started seeing scientific or mathematical problems voiced as a story, he said. This so-called feminisation of the HSC physics and chemistry syllabuses, in particular, was wound back in the most recent revision of the syllabuses, released in 2018, which had greater focus on mathematical applications and less on sociology-based content.

Petersen said boys also matured more slowly than girls; the prefrontal cortex, which helps people understand the consequences of their actions, does not finish developing for boys until 25. That may be the area that says, I want to have a good job, therefore I need to study hard. The decision to raise the school-leaving age to 17 about a decade ago also meant boys who would once have left after year 10 for a trade were now staying on, Petersen said. [Some] fall into this malaise, they dont really want to be there, arent motivated, he said. Melissa Abu-Gazaleh is the managing director of the Top Blokes Foundation, which advocates addressing the health and wellbeing of young men to increase their engagement in school. Loading She said many young men were still tied to the stereotype that they should not express vulnerability or seek help, and expressed their frustration in outbursts, which led to disciplinary action.
Premier Daniel Andrews will push the federal government for all healthcare workers in hospitals across Victoria to get a fourth dose of coronavirus vaccine, amid concerns over waning immunity.

He revealed his intention to approach the Commonwealth over the second booster shots on Monday, saying hospital chiefs had raised it as a real priority following a recent spate of COVID-19 outbreaks seeded by staff bringing the virus into work.

Daniel Andrews visits Maroondah Hospital on Monday. Credit:NCA NewsWire

The CEO of Barwon Health, a nurse herself, made it very clear to me that a number of their COVID outbreaks in their hospital had been via staff bringing the virus in unknowingly and [despite] following all the right protocols, he said.

Some of their immunity is waning, so getting them fourth jabs as fast as possible is very important to help keep COVID out of the hospital. Thatll be something that Ill be raising with the Commonwealth as soon as I can.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marless hour-long meeting with Chinese Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe has been welcomed with caution by experts who say it is a small step towards repairing the relationship between Australia and China.

The meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue defence summit in Singapore on Sunday was the first ministerial-level contact since November 2019, before tensions between Australia and China escalated.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Chinas Defence Minister Wei Fenghe met in Singapore. Credit:AP

Marles described it as a critical first step in fixing the relationship.

University of Sydney professor James Curran said it was vital not to overstate the importance of the meeting, but that it did represent cautious diplomatic action and a tonal shift in the new governments approach to foreign policy.
New Delhi: The process to elect the 16th President of India began on Thursday after the Election Commission announced the schedule for the presidential election 2022. The term of the sitting President, Mr Ram Nath Kovind, ends on July 24, 2022, and the process of election for the new President must be complete before that so that the new President can be sworn in by July 25.

Making the announcement, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said the notification for the Presidents election will be issued on June 15, the last date for filing nomination is June 29, and the election, if needed, will be held on July 18. Counting of votes, if needed, will be done on July 21 in New Delhi.

The scrutiny of nominations will take place on June 30 and the last date for withdrawal of nominations will be July 2. The EC has said that no political party will be allowed to issue any kind of whip for this election. All Covid-19-related protocols will have to be followed during the voting and counting of votes for the Presidents election.

As per the Article 54, the President is elected by an Electoral College consisting of elected MPs of both Houses of Parliament and elected MLAs of the Legislative Assemblies of all states, including NCT of Delhi and Puducherry. This year the total number of electors for the presidential election will be 4,809, out of which 776 are Members of Parliament snd 4,033 are Members of Legislative Assemblies.

The Election Commission of India is privileged and honoured to announce today the schedule of election for the 16th Presidential Election Article 324 of the Constitution, the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act 1952 and the rules made thereunder vest the superintendence, direction, and control of the conduct of election to the office of the President of India in the EC, said the CEC. He added that the Rajya Sabha secretary-general will be the returning officer for this election, which will be held in Parliament House in New Delhi and in the premises of State Legislative Assemblies, including NCT of Delhi and UT of Puducherry. The commission has also decided to appoint assistant returning officers in all state capitals, including Delhi and Puducherry, for making arrangements for conducting the poll and for transportation of ballot boxes and other important election materials to and from the Election Commission. Besides, to ensure a free and fair election, the commission also appoints senior officers of the Government of India as its observers at the places of polling.

Voting for the presidential election will take place in Parliament House and the state Assemblies. While MPs will vote in Parliament, MLAs will vote in the respective Assemblies. However, in case of emergency, if any voter wants to cast his/her vote from any place other than the designated one, he or she can do so with the permission of the EC by informing it at least 10 days in advance. In such cases MPs will be able to vote in a state Assembly and MLAs will be able to vote in the Parliament complex.

The nominated members of either the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha or the Legislative Assemblies of states are not eligible to be in the Electoral College and are not entitled to participate in the election. Similarly, members of Legislative Councils are also not electors in this election.

The total value of the vote of electors for the 16th presidential election is 10,86,431. Of this, the total value of votes for MLAs is 5,43,231 and the total value of votes for MPs is 5,43,200. Article 55(3) of the Constitution provides that the election shall be held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote and the voting at such election shall be by secret ballot. In this system, the elector has to mark preferences against the names of the candidates. The elector can mark as many preferences as the number of candidates but marking of the first preference is compulsory for the ballot paper to be valid, and other preferences are optional, the CEC said while explaining the procedure of voting. For marking the vote, the commission will supply particular pens and only these pens must be used for marking on the ballot paper.

During the filing of nominations, the candidate must have at least 50 persons proposing him or her and another 50 seconding the candidature. The security deposit for the election is Rs 15,000, which is required to be submitted along with the nomination paper.
Newly elected Kooyong MP Monique Ryan has reported to Victoria Police and the Australian Federal Police a series of racist, misogynistic and threatening letters sent to her supporters in the inner-Melbourne electorate.

In a statement, the independent MP said her office was first made aware of handwritten notes targeting her supporters displaying corflutes on their properties and volunteers just before election day on May 21. One message circulating on social media, allegedly sent to a Ryan backer in recent days, warns the recipient to look both ways when you come out your front gate.

Kooyong MP Monique Ryan says her team has reported at least five threatening letters to police. Credit:Eamon Gallagher

The independent MP said her office contacted Victoria Police and the Australian Federal Police immediately after being informed of the circulation of the letters just before the election. The team is aware of at least five letters that have been sent to residents.

In recent days, several more of these anonymous letters have been placed in supporters mailboxes. Their contents are misogynistic, racist and threatening, Ryan said.
The eminent sinologist John Fitzgerald opens his new book by bringing together two events that happened on the same day, one in Chinas northern port city of Tianjin and the other in Melbourne.

First is the sentencing of the prominent civil rights lawyer Li Heping on April 28, 2017, for subversion of state power. Two years earlier, authorities had ordered the arrest and detention of over 300 lawyers in the infamous 709 crackdown targeting Chinas professional legal defenders, writes Fitzgerald, professor emeritus at Melbournes Swinburne University of Technology.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson Credit:

Li was one of them. Over two years in detention pending trial he was tortured by electric shock and forcibly medicated with a drug that, by his wifes account, caused muscle pains, lethargy and blurred vision. He spent a month in shackles, leaving him unable to stand.

Second: On that same day in Tianjins sister city of Melbourne, former prime minister Paul Keating took to the stage and mocked critics of Chinas human rights record for being hung up about legal defenders in China. It was, Keating told his adoring audience, a trivial blip in the record of the best government in the world of the last 30 years.
Singapore: Almost three years of diplomatic division between Australia and China, $20 billion in trade strikes, and threats of retaliation came to a head over dinner in Singapore.

In a room of 500 people at the Shangri La hotel on Friday, Australias Defence Minister Richard Marles and Chinas Defence Minister Wei Fenghe found themselves sitting opposite each other. Next to Marles on table one at the glitzy ballroom was US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin. It was not a coincidence.

From Left, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, Singaporean Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen, and his counterparts, Australias Richard Marles and Chinas Wei Fenghe. Credit:AFP

A meeting that did not take place under three Australian prime ministers, took only minutes to formulate over the dinner on Friday. (Incidentally, Australian white wine was on the menu.)

By Saturday, the wheels were in motion - crucially on the proviso that there would be no conditions attached to the meeting or immediate expectations from either side.
London: Prince William warned the Queen he would feel uncomfortable in the Order of the Garter ceremony alongside his disgraced uncle.

Prince Charles also made an eleventh hour intervention amid fears of a public backlash. The pair shared their concerns with each other before taking them to the Queen on Sunday.

As a result, the Queen reluctantly told her second son, Prince Andrew that he could not appear in public at the event for his own good.

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge depart in a carriage for their return journey to the Castle following the Order of the Garter Service at St. Georgess Chapel, at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England. Credit:Getty

As the news emerged just hours before the Windsor Castle ceremony was due to begin, Prince Andrew was at pains to portray it as a personal decision he had made after realising the timing was not right.
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on June 16, 1982

War over, talks begin again

While British forces on the Falkland are rounding up and disarming Argentine troops, the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, is moving quickly to bring peace to the islands.

Major-General Jeremy Moore held aloft by Falkland Islanders in Port Stanley. Credit:AP Photo

She told the House of Commons today that the Argentine Government had been asked through the Swiss Government to confirm that it considered all hostilities in the South Atlantic to be at an end, not just those on the Falkland Islands.

She will fly to New York this week to speak at the United Nations - a trip originally planned to start today but delayed because, her office said, she wanted to stay on top of the Falklands situation.
A Sydney Islamic finance firm has created Sharia-compliant financing for builders and property developers.

Ijarah Finances new product gives leverage and capability to help builders take on construction projects of up to $5 million using a non-interest finance approach known as Ijarah, a term in the Arabic language meaning lease.

In Islamic finance, the asset is the prime subject matter in the relationship between the funder and the customer, so the customer pays rent for the use of the property/asset rather than interest on money being lent. Ijarah Finances approach adopts the principle of rent to own or Ijarah Muntahia Bi Tamleek, which is known as rent ending with ownership in Sharia financing.

Our office has been based in south-west Sydney since 2003, so we have many builders and developers of the Muslim faith seeking finance to build commercial developments without undertaking a conventional interest-based loan arrangement, said Ijarah Finance director Walid (Wally) Ayad (pictured).

Were very excited that we can now offer Ijarah finance for construction and development projects up to $5 million.

Read more: Fintech launches Islamic digital banking prototype

Ijarah Finance has helped customers build single homes and duplexes since its inception using a Sharia-based finance contract.

With the development of this new finance product, Ayad said it could finance projects above the standard duplex site and now fund multi-unit construction projects, townhouse developments and industrial property construction projects at acceptable LVRs.

With clients from all over Australia turning to Ijarah Finance to grow their property portfolio without compromising their faith-based finance criteria, we are confident that this new product will be well received as it will help many people expand their investment projects, he said.

According to Ayad, there were other product developments in the pipeline at Ijarah.

Whilst were very excited with this new funding ability, were not stopping there, he said.

There are a few other new niche products in the works which will be released in the coming months and these products will stand out and fill the gap with offerings not already serviced by other Islamic finance providers.

Read more: Mortgage industry leaders join Vinnies CEO Sleepout

Ayad said when developing a new product, the companys experience and time within the industry had allowed Ijarah Finance to develop client-centric solutions.

We have been able to continuously develop and amend these products where necessary to make improvements and widen the scope of the product offerings, he said.

This ability comes down to being in the industry for as long as we have been, as well as our experience with the Muslim community who require this type of financing.

Ijarah Finance is offering accreditation to brokers who have experience in offering Islamic finance or those who have access to the wider Muslim community requiring non-interest based financing.
If you ask John Contarino, theres no better way to elevate your position in the mortgage finance industry than to win Regional Broker of the Year at the Australian Mortgage Awards.

The Far North Queensland Broker, based in the small town of Atherton, was named Broker of the Year  Regional at the 2021 Australian Mortgage Awards .

As a mortgage broker, it was a true honour to win this award, Contarino (pictured) said.

Everyone I speak to within the mortgage industry says out of all of the awards, the AMAs are the awards everybody wants to win. It is a prestigious award which is held in the highest regard.

The founder of Mobile Finance Broker is encouraging brokers to enter the 2022 Australian Mortgage Awards, with nominations now open until 1 July.

There is no question winning an AMA will elevate your profile in your community, Contarino said.

If a broker from a small town like Atherton can win, anyone can. The judging panel considers everything and you get a fair chance under the AMA awards.

Read more: Winning an Australian Mortgage Award helps broker flourish

The AMAs are the premium event on the mortgage finance industry calendar, organised by Key Media and supported by Australian Broker and MPA.

This year, the nomination and submission process has been simplified. People who place nominations, or their nominees, are no longer required to complete a final submission later.

Those who are selected for an award will be contacted in the week of July 25, and answers provided by the person who nominated them will then be provided to the judges.

The judging team considers all qualifying methodology and not just lending volumes, Contarino said.

There were eight finalists in my category last year, all who lived in much larger regional areas than I did such as Newcastle, Wollongong and the Gold Coast. So when you have people from those areas mixed in with someone from a town of only 26,000 people, it was refreshing to know the judging panel factored that into consideration.

For 21 years, the Australian Mortgage Awards have been honouring the best in the business  the top brokers and brokerages, BDMs, banks, non-banks and aggregators across the nation.

The 2022 event will take place on 14 October at The Fullerton in Sydney, the first time it has been a live event since 2019. Westpac Bank is once again the proud event partner.

Read more: Commercial lenders positive about future

Contarino said winning last years award lifted his personal and professional profile in his home town.

We ran a story in the local newspaper shortly after I won, and I remember shortly after I was shopping at Woolworths and this old man that I have never met in my life before came up to me, shook my hand and congratulated me on my award win, he said.

The award win has also led to generating additional business and has given my team and I the opportunity to give back to our local community. This includes teaming up with the local high school for a mentoring program about personal finance for students in years 10 to 12.

We were also able to raise over $1,300 for not-for-profit organisation Tree Roo Rescue  a conservation program designed to save local tree kangaroos.

The Australian Mortgage Awards 2022 will feature 25 categories plus the two main awards  Westpac Australian Broker of the Year and Liberty Australian Brokerage of the Year.

The AMAs are sponsored by Westpac (event partner), Adelaide Bank, Bankwest, BOQ Broker, Commonwealth Bank, Dye & Durham, Equity-One, MFAA, La Trobe Financial, Liberty, FBAA, Mortgage Choice, MSA National, NextGen, OnDeck, Prime Capital and Resimac.

To nominate, go to the Australian Mortgage Awards 2022 website.
VIJAYAWADA: Opposition parties slammed Chief Minister Jagan Reddy on Sunday for turning AP into a Sampoorna Madyapaana Pradesh' (complete liquor state)  after the state went for raising Rs. 8,300 crore in new loans by mortgaging the liquor sector in the state.

Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan, Telugu Desam general secretary Nara Lokesh and others said the chief minister's betrayal of the state by adopting a new liquor policy facilitating sale of more liquor in the past three years was objectionable.



The state government, through the AP Beverages Corporation, recently issued liquor bonds. The bonds fetched Rs.8,000 crore. JS leader Pawan Kalyan said the government was reneging on its promise of banning liquor in the state. Instead of imposing Prohibition, the government is issuing liquor bonds, he lamented in a tweet on Sunday.

He also alleged that YSRC leaders owned liquor distilleries and shops and therefore the new policy is aimed to benefit them the most.



TD MLC Nara Lokesh on Sunday slammed chief minister Jagan, saying he turned AP into 'Sampoorna Madyapaana Pradesh'. It is a matter of serious concern that the CM has brought in over Rs.8,300 crore in new loans by mortgaging the liquor sector in the state.



In a statement here, Lokesh urged the CM to explain what happened to his pre-election promise of a phased prohibition. Jagan had made countless such false promises to his so-called akka chellemmalu (elder and younger sisters), he said.



Lokesh noted that the CM portrayed himself as 'Jagananna' before all. But, after coming to power, his J-brands started tearing apart the mangala sutras of women.
Companies in the transport sector, and automakers in particular, are among the most-visible pioneers of the inevitable shift to cleaner fuel. Electric cars are becoming a household concept, regardless of their prohibitive cost for most of humanity  another classic case where modern technology is largely unaffordable for the poor.

Thats where large fleet operators come in, according to New York-based RedBlue Capital, an early-stage investor in clean mobility startups. Companies like Amazon and food-delivery services such as DoorDash and Instacart will drive a faster adoption to EVs, RedBlue partners Olaf Sakkers and Prescott Watson say. Ride-hailing outfits, taxis, transit buses and corporate shuttles will also play a part, considering such operators are cautious about the total cost of ownership and use the vehicles a great deal more, making the economics of EVs attractive to them.

In 2019, RedBlue invested in Zoomo, an Australian e-bike startup that supplies to food-delivery services. Through bulk sales, Zoomo has already become one of the fastest-growing e-bike companies in the world, according to Watson. More recently, RedBlue invested $28 million in EVage, a supplier of light electric trucks in India.

We should measure the success of the transition to EVs against how many miles they run, not by how many vehicles are sold to the general public, Sakkers said in an interview in Singapore last week. For many people, EVs are just a second or third car that they hardly drive, which doesnt move the needle. But fleet operators use them many times every day.

Thats particularly true for a country like India  a nation of 1.4 billion people or one-sixth of the worlds population. There, very cheap, no-frills cars made by the local units of Suzuki and Hyundai dominate. Price elasticity is so tough that Ford and GM ended up exiting, unable to sell enough cars to justify the billions of dollars in investment over many years.

In India, fleet operators are already leading the way to electrification. BigBasket, which delivers everything from groceries to cooking utensils, is on a mission to electrify 90% of its fleet. In New Delhi, people often tweet about their rides with BluSmart, a 100% electric taxi startup with almost half a million app downloads. It estimates the market will grow more than four times to $90 billion by 2030 across several Indian mega cities. Amazon and Walmart-owned retailer Flipkart are also pushing for more EVs, but the problem is they cant get enough supply.





A delivery rider in a Mahindra Treo Zor electric vehicle departs a loading bay at a BigBasket warehouse in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. (Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg)

India has traditionally waited to localize wealthy countries auto products once prices fall, Watson says. But the wait ten years approach doesnt work with climate timelines today and so India in particular will have to develop indigenous technologies to make EVs cheap enough for near term mass adoption. Thats the opportunity were investing in.

Thats different from larger, more developed nations where cars tend to grow bigger even as utilization remains limited. Call it a car obesity problem. In America, a typical vehicle sits in the garage 96% of the time, Sakkers wrote in his book Mobility Disruption Framework, citing research by McKinsey.

But in emerging economies like India, newer concepts are gaining ground. E-scooters are selling like hot cakes and the South Asian nation is now mulling battery swapping as opposed to charging stations to ensure faster adoption of cleaner fuels.

According to BloombergNEF, the market for light-duty trucks and vans in India is growing at two to three times that of Europe or the US, and almost 40% of the nations three-wheeler fleet is already electric.
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday turned down .coms plea that challenged antitrust body Competition Commission of Indias (CCIs) order striking down its 2019 deal with the . It was for suppressing information while seeking regulatory approval.

The deal involves a Rs 1,431-crore investment by the US major to purchase a 49 per cent stake in Kishore Biyani-led Future Coupons Pvt Ltd (FCPL) in 2019.

The tribunal has upheld views of the that had misled the antitrust regulator to believe  through false statements and material omissions  that the combination and its purpose were in the interest of in the business of FCPL.

However, the actual purpose of the transaction was to achieve a strategic alignment with the as a foot-in-door in the Indian retail sector, it said in its 300-page order.

The tribunal observed that Amazon had made only limited disclosures with regard to Future Retail (FRL) only in the realm of FRLs equity warrants held by FCPL.

It had not spelt out the real combination, that is, acquiring strategic rights and interests over FRL as well as executing commercial contracts between it and FRL.

Citing CCIs December order, NCLAT said, This appellate tribunal is in complete agreement with the view arrived at by the .

The NCLAT also upheld the penalty of Rs 200 crore imposed by in its order, stating it is to secure ends of justice.

Amazon was also directed to file a Form-II (comprehensive details) and deposit the penalty within 45 days. The NCLATs reasoning is that the penalty is a fair and sensible one.

Notably, CCIs fine break up is Rs 1 crore for suppressing information and Rs 200 crore for failure to notify the combination, in terms of obligation.

Sources said that Amazons legal team is reviewing the NCLAT order and may challenge it in the Supreme Court.

While making a submission to CCI, it clearly mentioned that the companys investment in Future Coupons was a strategic investment.

This is because the government  at some point in time  may allow investment into the multi-brand retail sector in the country, said people aware of Amazons legal strategy.

The team, according to sources, is reviewing the 300-page order.

It is expected to contend that Amazon gave all the information to CCI in written format but CCI is now saying that it should have emphatically pointed out FRL, sources said.

On observation that Amazon gave different views at different forms, sources said that Amazon didnt structure or present the document in a way that it would become complex for CCI to understand or suppress any information.

The same document was also shared with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre during the arbitration procedure. It clearly understood that Amazons investment was going into Future Retail through Future Coupons, sources pointed out.

Amazon may also contend that CCI does not have the authority to unwind the deal approval post 12 months. The person said that the 'abeyance' wont be applicable.

CCI either had to approve or revoke the deal within 12 months, they said.

On CCIs powers and limitations, the tribunal underlined that CCI has an incidental/ancillary/residual power to pass an 'order of keeping its approval orders in abeyance.

It said that since Amazon had not notified the 'proposed combination as a 'whole and in an omnibus manner, the period of limitation of one yearis inapplicable.

With CCI getting a thumping from the appellate tribunal, the involved in merger and acquisition activities will be on their toes when evaluating deals and the level of disclosures, said Vaibhav Choukse, partner (competition law) at JSA.
About 44 per cent of developers based in India are considering leaving their job this year compared to 42 per cent globally, according to a report.

The report by DigitalOcean Holdings, the cloud for developers, startups and SMBs, surveyed over 2,500 respondents from 94 countries including India, US, Germany, Canada and the UK.

It shows that the developer talent shortage has potential to worsen with 64 per cent of those with less than a year's experience, and 32 per cent of those with 1-5 years experience, leaving their job recently.Motivations for leaving jobs were found to be consistent among both those who have already left and those considering leaving, with compensation, remote or flexible work environments, and better benefits being the top factors that motivate people to leave jobs, especially for younger developers.

Nearly 18 per cent of respondents cited lack of time and resources to work on projects is also a key challenge, and 11 per cent mention team members leaving as a challenge, demonstrating that the developer talent shortage is impacting even those who stay in their roles.

"Attracting and retaining developer talent is evolving rapidly and need to adapt to the new landscape," said Gabe Monroy, Chief Product Officer at DigitalOcean, in a statement.

"Businesses need to better understand developers and give them the tools, benefits, and pay they need to be successful - business survival in the digital era depends on it," Monroy added.

About 56 per cent of India developers also participated in open source projects in the past year, of which just 12 per cent of were paid for their contribution.

Open source has contributed to learning and networking in India, with 37 per cent stating they have gained enhanced skills from open source, 23 per cent networking opportunities, and 10 per cent have found job opportunities through the open source community.

It is clear that businesses of all sizes need to rethink their approach to attracting and retaining highly-skilled developer talent.

The report also identifies compensation and desire for fully remote or more flexible work environments as the top reasons developers are thinking about quitting, or already have.

--IANS

rvt/shb/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Banking sector veteran R Subramaniakumar, with over 40 years of experience, will take charge of private sector Bank from June 24, replacing the interim MD & CEO Rajeev Ahuja.

Ahuja took charge as the interim MD & CEO of the bank after the sudden ouster of the then chief Vishwavir Ahuja in late December 2021, who was sent on leave with immediate effect.

Subramaniakumar had in past served as the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer (MD & CEO) of Chennai-based public sector lender Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) and also as the Executive Director (ED) of the bank.

Besides, he was also the ED at Indian Bank and held various positions in the banking industry. He was instrumental in the transformation at Delhi-based Punjab National Bank (PNB). Also, he served as a board of director of PNB's Bhutan joint venture Druk PNB.

The search committee constituted to identify the MD & CEO for the bank ran an exhaustive process along with Egon Zehnder and recommended the name of R Subramaniakumar, a highly capable and a meritorious person for the job, Bank said in a statement.

Prakash Chandra, Chairman of the board, Bank, said Subramaniakumar is a veteran in the industry and his experience and support will further strengthen the organisation.

"I am confident that his leadership will present an opportunity for us to reinvent and unlock the immense potential of the bank," Chandra said.

Rajeev Ahuja, whose term comes to an end on June 24, welcomed Subramaniakumar's appointment, exuding confidence that the bank will greatly benefit from his experience.

"I would like to extend my complete support to him and look forward to working together and take the bank forward in its growth journey," Ahuja stated.

Subramaniakumar said: " has achieved phenomenal success ever since its transformation began about a decade back and I am sure we will script another phenomenal story going forward."



In a raft of developments in late December last year, RBI had appointed its Chief General Manager Yogesh K Dayal an additional director to RBL Bank's board while sending Vishwavir Ahuja on leave, amidst concerns over bank's financial health.

Following this, Rajeev Ahuja assured that bank's financial position was strong and it had full support of RBI and its board of directors.

Rajeev was appointed as the interim MD & CEO of the bank for a period of three months with effect from December 25, 2021, which was further extended by another three months with effect from March 25, 2022 or till the time a regular MD & CEO was appointed.

In fiscal year 2021-22, RBL Bank had posted a net loss of Rs 75 crore, while there was a net profit of Rs 508 crore in the preceding fiscal year.

Bank's advances during the year grew by a modest 2 per cent to Rs 60,022 crore, while deposits were up by 8 per cent to Rs 79,007 crore.

Stock of RBL Bank tumbled over 20 per cent to close at Rs 87.90 apiece on the BSE on Monday.

(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 invest more than Rs 50 crore annually to fund startups, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Monday, adding that unlike other such collaborations, the intellectual property rights (IPR) for innovations will remain with the innovator.

Under the Indian Railway Innovation Policy, the railways will invest in startups to get a headstart in procuring innovations directly from them with a promise of up to Rs 1.5 crore of seed money for innovative technological solutions for the national transporter.

"The policy is not just limited to the idea. will follow it through to the product after proof of concept and scaling it up, doubling the grant support and finally adoption of successfully developed product/technology for regular use and even support for two to three years.

"The annual budget for the policy will be around Rs 40-50 crore and an additional fund for the divisional railway managers so that they can find on-field solutions to on-field problems. Also, the IPR will remain with innovator," the railway minister told the media while launching the policy formally.

The funding scheme has been fixed on a cost-sharing basis in equal proportions - 50:50 - by the and an innovator.

"Great innovative solutions may churn and many technological challenges can be resolved if startups collaborate with Indian Railways. We have launched an innovation programme under Startup India today and undertook 11 common problems to resolve," Vaishnaw said.

He said that throughout the entire developmental journey, railways' field officers, RDSO, zonal and railway board officers will continuously support and hand-hold the innovators.

The Indian Railway Innovation Policy will identify and enable Indian innovators to engage with the railways for developing cost-effective, implementable, scalable solutions and functional prototypes for the national transporter, he said.

Vaishnaw said that the selection through open, transparent and fair process which will entail innovators uploading their concepts with necessary proof on a dedicated portal, the Indian Railway Innovation Portal on web address www.innovation.indianrailways.gov.in.

In May, field units were asked to provide problem areas. In response to it, around 160 problem statements have been received till date. To start with, 11 problems statements have been identified to deal via the new innovation policy and uploaded on the website, the minister said.

These include broken rail detection system, rail stress monitoring system, track inspection technologies for accurate inspection, and superior elastometric pad for heavy haul freight wagons.

It also sought innovations for light weight wagons for carrying commodities like salt, track cleaning machine, app for post training revision and self-service refresher courses, use of remote sensing, geomatics, GIS or bridge inspection and development of analytical tools by using digital data for improving passenger services.

The eligible organisations or beneficiaries of the support will include any Indian company incorporated under the Act 1956/2013, primarily micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) as defined in the MSME Act, 2006, and individual innovators. The policy also encourages research and development institutions to apply for the grant.

(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.)
KAKINADA: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen on developing the areas frequented by prominent freedom fighter and Rampa revolution legend Alluri Seetharamaraju in erstwhile Visakhapatnam and the East and West Godavari districts.

The Union Government would release funds for the purpose, said central minister for tourism, culture and development of North-East, Kishan Reddy. He visited West Godavari district and inspected the Alluri Seetharamaraju commemoration areas on Sunday.

Kishan Reddy told the media that the PM would visit Bhimavaram on July 4 to participate in the 125th Alluri Seetharamaraju 1birthday celebrations and he wants to develop those areas.

The Union Government wants to educate the people, especially the youth, about the glorious life and times of Alluri Seetharama Raju who sacrificed his life for the sake of tribals in remote areas as part of the Freedom Struggle against the British Raj.

The Centre would sanction enough funds to develop the areas where Seetharama Raju spent his life in the West Godavari and Visakhapatnam districts and highlight his struggles to free tribals from suppression of the British and their middlemen.

Even now, there is very little knowledge outside the two Telugu states about the heroic deeds of Seetharamaraju. Therefore, the PM himself is evincing interest in the Seetharamaraju Project, the minister said.

The minister said Alluris birth birthplace, his place of education and his areas of action would be developed and he would be glorified as a legendary figure of the Freedom Struggle.

Reddy said that the Union Government sanctioned Rs 35 crore to set up the Alluri Seetharamaraju Museum at Visakhapatnam. Alluri Birthday celebrations would be held in Vignan Bhavan in New Delhi on a grand scale and chief ministers of various states would be present.

Debates would be organised from class rooms and villages to Parliament about the legendary freedom fighters, he said.

Reddy said that on the occasion of the nation completing 75 Years of Independence, the Union Government would educate the people about the great freedom fighters and organise several programmes for this purpose.

Endowment minister and the deputy CM Kottu Satyanarayana said the state government would hold special programmes on Alluri Seetharamaraju from June 27 to July 4. Government chief whip and Narsapuram MLA Mudunuri Prasada Raju said the state government will organise the celebrations on a grand scale.

Earlier, Kishan Reddy garlanded the statue of Alluri Seetharama Raju at Mogallu, the freedom fighters birth place and also of ECIL founder AS Rao. He paid rich tributes to them. He visited an ancient library at Kumudavalli village of Palakoderu mandal and garlanded the statue of Alluri.

He took darshan of the famous Goddess Mavulamma at Bhimavaram after receiving a traditional welcome from priests. He visited the Quit India pylon at the tahsildar office in Bhimavaram and garlanded the statue of Dr BR Ambedkar.

West Godavari collector Prashanthi, SP Ravi Prakash, joint collector Murali, state BJP chief Somu Veerraju, Undi MLA Ramaraju, Kshatriya corporation chairman Sarraju, former ministers Kamineni Srinivas, Kanumuri Bapiraju, Gokaraju Rangaraju and several other BJP leaders were present.
Rustomjee group company Keystone Realtors has filed preliminary papers with Sebi to raise Rs 850 crore through an initial public offering (IPO).

The IPO consists of fresh issue of equity shares aggregating up to Rs 700 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) worth Rs 150 crore by promoters, according to the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP).

The OFS comprises sale of equity shares worth up to Rs 75 crore by Boman Rustom Irani and stocks to the tune of Rs 37.5 crore each by Percy Sorabji Chowdhry and Chandresh Dinesh Mehta.

The company proposes to utilize the net proceeds towards payment of debt, funding acquisition of future real estate projects and general corporate purposes.

Axis Capital, and Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt Ltd are the book running lead managers to the issue.

As of March 2022, Keystone Realtors had 32 completed projects, 12 ongoing projects and 19 forthcoming projects across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) that includes a comprehensive range of projects under the affordable, mid and mass, aspirational, premium and super premium categories, all under their Rustomjee brand.

Also, the Mumbai-based real estate developer has developed 20.05 million square feet of high-value and affordable residential buildings, premium gated estates, townships, corporate parks, retail spaces, schools, iconic landmarks and various other real estate projects as of March 2022.

(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 weak financial health of state-owned distribution (discoms) will remain a challenge for India's sector, where investments worth $225-250 billion are estimated to reach a generation capacity of 500 GW by 2030, according to Moody's.

The payment delays to these are common, leading to a build-up of receivables from off-takers and an increase in working capital debt for .

The rating agency in a statement said that the weak financials of state-owned distribution companies have led to delays in the signing of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). This in turn occasionally results in project delays or cancellations.

While enjoys preferential dispatch in India, payments for electricity sold to state-owned are usually delayed beyond the 60-day period as specified in the PPAs. There is no history of distribution companies not making payments to distribution companies according to PPA tariff (if undisputed), Moodys said.



Also Read: Green investment jumped 125% to $14.5 billion in FY22: IEEFA report

India aims to triple its renewable energy capacity to 500GW by 2030 from 157GW as of March 2022, and to have 50 per cent of the electricity generation from non-fossil fuel sources.

The government of India recently announced a stimulus package to support for the installation of smart and prepaid meters to reduce losses and also reduce the revenue gap between the cost of power procurement and electricity tariffs.

The government has also allowed the state-owned distribution companies to terminate PPAs with coal-based plants that are more than 25 years old, a step that will help to reduce capacity payments and lead to more renewable energy in the system.

Moody's pointed out that continuous policy support from the government is key. The country expanded its renewable energy footprint significantly over the last 4-5 years due to supportive government policies that encouraged the domestic private sector and overseas investors to participate in the sector.

In addition, access to low-cost, long-term and diversified capital from both private and public sectors will determine India's success in meeting its 2030 renewable targets.

The private sector has led the way in investing in renewable energy, having contributed over 90 per cent of installed renewable capacity (excluding hydropower). And sovereign wealth funds, which typically have a low cost of funding, have been active in the sector, it added.
leaders took to the streets on Monday as appeared before the ED for questioning in a money laundering case, with the police heavily barricading central Delhi areas and detaining party leaders for violating prohibitory orders.

Prominent among those detained were Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and leaders Randeep Surjewala, K C Venugopal and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.

Gandhi, 51, arrived at the probe agency in central Delhi around 11 AM after he started from the office on Akbar Road accompanied by a large convoy of party leaders including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Baghel.

In view of the barricading, Gandhi took a detour to reach the probe agency's office.

This is the first time that Gandhi has appeared before a central probe agency for questioning in a case.

Congress MPs and workers had assembled at the AICC headquarters where Surjewala announced they would march peacefully towards the ED office and if they are stopped, they would court arrest.

Raising slogans in support of Gandhi, Congress workers started a march towards the ED office but were stopped by the police which had put up barricades all around the AICC office.

Some Congress workers also mounted barricades.

A large number of workers were taken in preventive custody for violating the provisions of Section 144 CrPC banning assembly of more than four persons, which was imposed in central Delhi.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Baghel claimed that he has been arrested.

"I have been arrested....you should ask the Delhi Police why I have been arrested," he told reporters outside the ED office.

This is a dictatorship. Several Congress workers have been detained because they wanted to carry out a peaceful march. I am also being detained. This is unprecedented that Congress workers were not allowed to enter the Congress headquarters. If there is no FIR and how can ED summon him, Baghel said.

The police, however, clarified that he is being detained and not arrested as he refused to leave despite several warnings.

Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge accused the government of misusing agencies



"They are misusing agencies and they are harassing people," he said.

Surjewala said Congress leaders had done nothing wrong and alleged that "Godse's descendants fear from the truth and they will not be able to suppress truth".

He said the Congress had launched a 'Satyagrah' during the freedom struggle and the BJP cannot teach them Satyagrah.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Gehlot also alleged that the government was misusing central probe agencies and this was nothing but "political vendetta".

Former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat said, "This is a fight for democracy. The government is trying to muzzle the voices of politicians who are trying to raise their voices."



He alleged that the ED had earlier cleared the name of and asked why he is being targeted now.

"Now Satyagraha will take place at every corner and nook," he said.

Newly-elected Rajya Sabha MP Ranjeet Ranjan said, "Why is the government not allowing us to carry out a peaceful protest?"



She said the party who has been serving the nation for decades is not allowed to carry out a peaceful protest.

"This is a dictatorship. You had to apologise to five countries over an action of a spokeswoman and we cannot ever carry out a rally," she said referring to the controversy over the remarks against Prophet Mohammad.

Another Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi said this was nothing but an attempt to intimidate the Congress and people of India will not allow this to happen.

(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 written to the for allowing it to retain 728 MW of electricity from NTPC Dadri-II plant, warning a "blackout scenario" in the national capital in coming days, official sources said on Monday.

The letter, dated June 9, by special secretary (power) of to power secretary, Government of India, also requests to reconsider its decision to reallocate II plant power from Delhi to Haryana in view of its rising demand by the city, they said.

"Without Dadri-II, demand-supply deficit will increase, risking outages in national capital. Delhi must be allowed to retain its share (728 MW) from Dadri-II plant to avoid a blackout scenario," the letter stated, as per the sources.

In the 27-page letter, has emphasized the criticality of power from the Dadri-II plant to Delhi and urged the central ministry to reconsider its decision to reallocate this power to Haryana.

The in April this year had said that Delhi power minister Satyendar Jain, through a letter dated July 6, 2015, had surrendered power from 11 central generating stations, including stage-II, with immediate effect and to reallocate it to other needy states.

The Power Ministry had in March this year reallocated power surrendered by Delhi to Haryana.

The letter from Delhi government stated that power purchase agreements executed between Delhi discoms (BSES and TPDDL) and NTPC for supply of power from various thermal power stations, including Dadri-II, signed almost 12 years ago are valid till July 30, 2035, for a committed capacity of 728 MW, the sources said.

"The 728 MW is critical for meeting Delhi's power needs. Housing important installations and foreign embassies, importance of uninterrupted power for the national capital cannot be over-emphasised," sources in Delhi government said.

Delhi's power demand has witnessed an unprecedented rise - from 5,846 MW in 2015 to expected power demand of 8,200 MW in 2022.

Despite considering the short term and bilateral arrangements and availability of Dadri-II, there is deficit of approximately 300 MW to 1,100 MW in various time slots during the period from June 2022 to September 2022 in Delhi, mentioned the letter.

"Without Dadri-II (728 MW) and considering the prevalent power market conditions, the deficit in demand and supply will increase significantly and will result in risk of outages in the national capital," it claimed.

The fact that this power was surrendered by Delhi government in 2015 cannot be taken as a "valid plea for reallocation" since the whole scenario of power requirement has changed in 2022, it said.

Based on the requirement, Delhi government and Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) have been requesting Government of India since 2017 to continue to allocate the power from Dadri-II to Delhi, sources said.

"Delhi must be allowed to retain the whole 728 MW of its power share from Dadri-II power plant as per its existing PPA if blackout scenario in Delhi is to be avoided," said the Delhi government letter.

(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.)
and the plains of northwest India reeling under oppressive heat and in some pockets, heat wave conditions, can look forward to a little relief as India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Monday predicted rains over this region on June 16 and 17.

After a series of heat wave spells starting March, through April and May, isolated pockets of northwest India have been experiencing yet another round of heat wave in June too. On Sunday, heat wave prevailed in some pockets over Delhi and in isolated pockets over south Haryana.

Heat wave conditions also prevailed in isolated pockets over southeast Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, southwest Bihar and north Odisha.

The forecast said that a fall in maximum temperatures by 2-3 degrees Celsius is very likely over northwest India during next three days, while no significant change in maximum temperatures is very likely over east India during next two days but will gradually fall by 2-3 degrees Celsius thereafter.

However, under the influence of consecutive Western Disturbances and lower level easterlies, isolated to scattered with thunderstorm/lightning is very likely over western Himalayan region - Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Muzaffarabad, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand - and adjoining plains comprising Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh & Delhi and Rajasthan till June 15.

It is likely to become fairly widespread to widespread over western Himalayan region and scattered to fairly widespread over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and east Uttar Pradesh on June 16 and 17.

Isolated heavy rainfall is likely over Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Gilgit-Baltistan, Muzaffarabad, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, north Punjab, and north Haryana on June 16, the forecast said.

--IANS

niv/vd

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on Sunday told the party that its proposed rally to the (ED) office here on Monday cannot be permitted, citing certain reasons including law and order issues.

"Keeping in view the present communal situation in Delhi and heavy law and order/ VVIP movements in the jurisdiction of New Delhi district, the said rally could not be permitted in the jurisdiction of New Delhi district," Deputy Commissioner of Police Amrutha Guguloth said in a letter to the All India Committee (AICC).

It also said that the police got the information about the rally through various sources -- that the is planning to organise a rally from the AICC headquarters to the ED office, Paryawaran Bhawan, here.

The police also noted that a call was given to the Congress supporters all over India to join the said rally.

Denying the permission, the Congress has been requested to cooperate with the police.

The Congress party had planned to carry out a march in wake of its leader Rahul Gandhi's scheduled appearance at the ED office on Monday.

The ED has summoned on Monday and party chief Sonia Gandhi on June 23 in connection with the National Herald case, lodged against various Congress leaders, including the Gandhis, for allegedly misappropriating funds.

--IANS

uj/pgh

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Mining mogul in an interaction with students at the Oxford Union in London motivated them to dream big as he shared important learnings from his entrepreneurial journey.

He is the first Indian Business Founder to speak at one of the world's foremost debating societies.

Sharing his experiences, Agarwal, who is a first-generation entrepreneur hailing from a small village in Bihar and is now based in London, told students that success and setbacks are part and parcel of life, and his biggest learning is to never stop trying.

His remarks were shared by Vedanta, the group he heads, in a statement.

Speaking at the forum, he said, "Growing up, I only knew two words in English, 'yes', and 'no'. I would use the Oxford Dictionary to translate words from Hindi to English, and never got the opportunity to study at a university. Speaking at the Oxford Union gave me the chance to interact with future leaders of our world, and I sincerely hope I was able to inspire them with my words because their convictions in their aspirations certainly motivated me".

Oxford University has been the top educational institution with a legacy of over 900 years, and has produced some of the finest world leaders.

"My journey from a small village in Bihar to London Stock Exchange has been one filled with many learnings, lots of hard work, and self-belief. My advice to the students was simple: be fearless (because luck favours the brave), be humble (because growth happens when you look inwards), and be flexible (because there is no substitute for hard work). The amalgamation of youth and tech will lead the world to a newer order," he asserted.

Vedanta's Chairman strongly believes that the youth is the future and through his talk, he encouraged the youngsters to work hard and follow a 3 pillar framework to be fearless, humble and flexible.

Agarwal, who has pledged to give 75 per cent of his wealth towards philanthropy and social good, recently joined The Giving Pledge, a movement of global philanthropists, who commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes, the statement noted.

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Members of the community from several coastal areas of India on Sunday protested against the (WTO) proposal to curb fishery subsidies as it was not responsive to the demands of the developing nations.

"If subsidy stops for traditional fishermen, their lives and livelihood will be stopped. So this should not be against the traditional fishermen, if the subsidy discipline is required it should be for industrial fishermen. This is our main demand," said Biman Jana, from West Bengal.

The draft does not adequately address the concerns on food security and livelihood of small fishers while including provisions that could help advanced countries perpetuate their huge dole for long-distance .

During the 12th World Trade Organisation ministerial meet that began on June 12, fishermen from across India assembled outside the United Nations Office, Geneva and protested against the proposed cut and explained how huge giants from Europe and China are responsible for the depletion of marine resources.

To protect the interest of the Indian fisher population a group of 34 fishers from India has arrived at Geneva, representing Gujarat (5), Maharashtra (6), Goa (1), Karnataka (2), Kerala (6), Tamil Nadu (5), Andhra Pradesh (4) and West Bengal (5) states of India.

"I am a ninth-generation fisherman and my family has been involved in fishing for ages. The fishing boats from developed nations like China and Europe catch thousands of tonnes of fish, freeze them on the boat and they take it away," said a protesting fisherman from Maharashtra.

https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1536068083126702080

need this subsidy for their survival. India has an 8,118 KM coastline with an Exclusive Economic Zone of 2.08 Million SqKm.

According to the CMFRI Census 2016, the total marine fisher folk population is 3.77 million comprising 0.90 million families. They reside in 3,202 fishing villages (DoF, GoI Statistics Data).

Nearly 67.3 per cent of the fishermen's families were under the BPL category. The average family size was 4.63 and the overall sex ratio was 928 females per 1000 males.

"I am fishermen's family. There are more women in fishing across our country. If this subsidy is taken away, women will be affected the most. If the subsidy is gone our 'kutumb' will be gone too", said Jyotibua, a fisherwoman from Maharashtra.

India is in favour of stopping IUU (illegal, unreported, unregulated) fishing and supporting sustainable fishing by checking harmful subsidies.

Another Indian fisherman protesting said that they pick up plastic from the sea as plastic pollution leads to depletion of fisheries. He said that no other country does this (picking up plastics).

However, the text is tilted heavily towards advanced fishing nations letting them maintain their subsidies for high-sea fishing.

At the same time, developing countries are denied adequate carve-outs that could hurt both livelihood and food security interests.

"If this subsidy is taken away, it will be a matter of life and death for us. We treat the sea as our father and respect it so much that we do not even go fishing on the night of 'amavasya'. We will not be able to survive if this subsidy is taken away," said a fisherman from Gujarat.

In the ongoing talks on curbing fishery subsidies, negotiations are taking place under three categories -- IUU, over-fished (where stock is already declared as overfished) and over-fishing and over-capacity.

As the standards are set by advanced fishing countries, it is easy for them to follow. Developing nations, on the other hand, may not be in a position to immediately show those standards.

Traditional fisheries involve fishing households (as opposed to commercial companies), using a relatively small amount of capital and energy, relatively small fishing vessels usually about 20 meters in overall length, making short fishing trips, close to shore. It is also called small-scale fisheries.

The marine fishery in India is small-scale and provides food security to millions of people.

There is no industrial fishing in India. Industrial fishing by developed nations involves large fishing vessels conducting fishing activities in High Seas beyond EEZ and also within EEZ and is detrimental to fish stock.

There are around 2 lakh fishing crafts in Indian waters of which 59,000 (37 per cent) are mechanised and the remaining are non-motorized fishing crafts.

The Indian boat type ranges from the traditional catamarans, masula boats, plank-built boats, dug-out canoes, machwas, dhonis to the present-day motorized fibre-glass boats, mechanized trawlers and gillnetters.

The traditional and sustainable fishing practices by Indian fishers are being practised for thousands of years and it is only subsistence fishing.

The Indian fisheries' resources are conserved and protected well by the fishers by their traditional and cultural beliefs.

Sustainable fisheries are supported by the Government by means of a declaration of fishing holidays for a period of 61 days and implementation of fisheries regulation act by the concerned states.

India is not a major fishery subsidy provider. Meanwhile, China, the EU and the US offer an annual fishery subsidy of USD 7.3 billion, USD 3.8 billion and USD 3.4 billion, respectively, India offered just USD 277 million in subsidies in 2018 to small fishers.

Subsidy assistance to fishers helps them to venture into fishing for supporting their livelihood and protection of their family. The stoppage of subsidy assistance to fishers in India will ultimately affect millions of fishers and their families and will lead to poverty.

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The Indian government has reached out to an MBBS student undergoing treatment in a hospital after being critically injured in an accident and efforts are being made to airlift him to in New Delhi, BJP President Ravinder Raina said on Monday.

Shoaib Lone, a resident of Rajouri district here, is a final year MBBS student in Barind Medical College in Dhaka. On June 3, Shoaib, along with two other friends from the college, met with an accident in which one them died and two others including Shoaib were critically injured.

During his visit to Rajouri district, Raina met the student's father Mohmmad Askam Lone.

"As soon as I came to know about the accident from his father during my visit to Rajouri, I sought help of the PMO. He is in coma. His parents want help", Raina told PTI.

He said the PMO sought details and Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally called the India's ambassador to to provide all necessary help to the student's family.

The ambassador visited the injured student in Ever Care Hospital in Dhaka and reached out to his family in Rajouri, Raina said.

Raina, who thanked PM Modi for speedy action in this regard, said the government is making all efforts to airlift the student to AIIMS, New Delhi for specialised treatment and has promised to bear expenses of his treatment.

Shoaib's father, who is a class - 4 employee in J-K government, said the family somehow managed to arrange 10 lakh by contribution but all have been spent in his treatment.

"Now we are neither in the position to bear the charges to treat him at nor in the position to bring him back to India, he said.

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External Affairs Minister on Sunday lauded the Indian foreign policy and said that it was "good to hear appreciation" and discussed how the "world perceives India."

On the occasion of the completion of eight years of Bharatiya Janata Party government at the centre in Vishakapatnam, he tweeted, "Glad to be in Visakhapatnam. Interacted with a wide cross-section of how the world perceives India. Thank team @BJP4Andhra for organizing."

Sharing his experience of Mission - the biggest evacuation exercise to bring back Indian citizens stranded abroad amidst the coronavirus-induced travel restrictions, he said, "Good to hear the appreciation of a evacuee from Wuhan."

It is considered as the largest exercise to bring back Indian citizens since the evacuation of 177,000 from the Gulf region in the early 1990s at the start of hostilities between Iraq and Kuwait during the first Gulf War.

The mission gave priority to Indian citizens with "compelling reasons to return" - like those whose employment was terminated, whose visas expired and those who lost family members during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He also welcomed a local civil service ranker who aspired to join the Foreign Service.

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also celebrated 8 years in government and highlighted enabling the youth to achieve their dreams and fulfil their potential.

"India's youth is full of energy and remarkable tenacity. Here's a thread on how the government is strengthening our Yuva Shakti to prepare them for their crucial role in building the #AatmaNirbharBharat of our dreams. #8SaalYuvaShaktiKeNaam," tweeted PM Modi on Sunday.

He focussed on various achievements of the government in this thread related to empowering of youth like - National Education Policy 2020, one new IIT & IIM opened every year since 2014, 80 per cent increase in medical seats, one new university every week since 2014, 100 unicorns created, 1.34 crore youth trained under PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana, two new colleges every day since 2014, 1,000 Khelo India Centres being set up and best ever Olympics haul - 7 medals and in Paralympics - 19 medals at Tokyo.

"India's Yuva Shakti is our greatest strength. Our youth is excelling in different sectors and contributing to national progress, said PM Modi.

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22 reportedly injured in rocket attack in west Ukraine

Xinhua) 09:09, June 13, 2022

KIEV, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-two people were injured in a rocket attack on the Ukrainian city of Chortkiv in the country's western Ternopil region on Saturday, the government-run Ukrinform news agency reported.

Four rockets, presumably fired from the Black Sea, hit Chortkiv at about 9:46 p.m. local time (1846 GMT) on Saturday, according to Volodymyr Trush, head of the Ternopil regional military administration.

A military facility was partially destroyed in the attack, while four apartment blocks were damaged, Trush told reporters, adding that most of the injured were in stable condition.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
New Delhi: As the date of the presidential election gets near, the Opposition camp is gearing up to put up a strong joint candidate. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has assigned the task of finding a common candidate to senior party leader and Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge.

The Congress has reportedly conveyed its support for Sharad Pawar as President. Mr Kharge met Mr Pawar last Thursday, with a message from Mrs Sonia Gandhi. Mr Pawar, one of India's senior-most politicians, has been credited with making and breaking many alliances and coalition governments. There is, however, no response yet from Mr Pawar himself or his Nationalist Congress Party, which is an ally of the Congress in the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra.

The Congress has also touched base with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who has called an Opposition meeting at New Delhis Constitution Club on Wednesday to discuss a joint strategy for the presidential election. Mr Kharge has also had initial consultations with the leaders of the DMK, CPI, CPI(M) and the Aam Aadmi Party for putting up a joint Opposition candidate. Reports indicate that the AAP leaders have also met Mr Pawar, indicating their support. Insiders claim that Maharashtra chief minister and Shiv Sena boss Uddhav Thackeray will also support Mr Pawar if he agrees to contest the presidential polls. Mr Kharge had also met the Maharashtra CM in Mumbai regarding the presidential polls.

While the BJP has not announced a candidate, the party has authorised party president J.P. Nadda and defence minister Rajnath Singh to hold talks with NDA members and Opposition parties to arrive at a consensus on a presidential candidate if possible. The presidential election is due to be held on July 18, and the counting will take place on July 21. The term of President Ram Nath Kovind ends on July 24. The BJP has an edge as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has 48 per cent of the votes in the electoral college and it expected some other parties not aligned with the Congress to support the NDA candidate. The Opposition parties are hoping to put up a united front in the contest. At the moment, both the camps are keeping their cards close to their chest.
The Students' Union (JNUSU) on Sunday staged a demonstration on the JNU campus against the demolition of the house of activist and former JNU student Afreen Fatima in Uttar Pradesh's .

The Development Authority (PDA) on Sunday demolished the house of Javed Ahmad, alias Pump, the alleged mastermind of the June 10 violence in Prayagraj, amid heavy police deployment. Ahmad is Fatima's father.

The development came after the illegal properties of two persons accused of rioting were bulldozed in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur, which witnessed stone pelting on Friday.

members raised slogans against what they termed "bulldozer raj" of the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led government and held placards reading: "Stop the witch-hunt of Muslims".

The building map of Ahmad's house had not been approved by the PDA, according to an agency official.

Protests against the controversial remarks on Prophet Mohammad made by now-suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma spun out of control in and some other parts of on June 10.

In Prayagraj, a mob set on fire a few motorcycles and carts and also attempted to set ablaze a police vehicle. Police used tear gas and lathis to disperse the protesters and restore peace. A policeman was injured in the violence.

Ahmad has been arrested in connection with the violence and is being interrogated, according to police.

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on Monday summoned suspended spokesperson Nupur Sharma for questioning in connection with her controversial remarks on Prophet Mohammad.

She has been asked to appear at Narkeldanga Police Station on June 20 to record her statement, an official said.

Sharma's comments, made during a TV debate, has sparked violent protests in several parts of the country.

Trinamool Congress minority cell general secretary Abul Sohail has also lodged an FIR against Sharma at Contai police station over her remarks.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)




As the the India on Monday has reported 8,084 new Covid-19 cases and 10 deaths in the past 24 hours. The active cases rose to 47,995 in the country, according to health ministry data.As the the first day of the e-auction for the media rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) concluded on Sunday, the bidding for TV and has not concluded yet. According to Business Standard sources, the combined value may breach the Rs 50,000-crore-mark on Monday.

Bidding for the special rights package and the rest-of-world rights will also happen on Monday. The final winners are expected to be announced by the end of the day.

Meanwhile, citing law and order issues, Delhi Police has told the Congress party that its proposed rally to the (ED) office here on Monday cannot be permitted. Police have deployed additional security forces outside the ED office.

The Congress party had planned to carry out a march in wake of its leader Rahul Gandhi's scheduled appearance at the ED office on Monday.

On global front, bargainers have announced the framework of a bipartisan response to May's mass shootings, a noteworthy but limited breakthrough offering modest gun restrictions and stepped-up efforts to improve school safety.

President Biden said in a statement that the framework does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades.
The on Monday criticised the protest march of the against the ED summons to its leader in the Herald case, saying members of the opposition party have hit the streets in support of corruption and to allegedly protect over Rs 2,000 crore assets of the Gandhi family.

Addressing a press conference, leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani said the show of strength by the is aimed at putting pressure on the probe agency, and asserted that nobody is above the law "even Rahul Gandhi".

members should also ask about his family's relations with Dotex Merchandise, which she described as a hawala operator whose transactions have been flagged by the Financial Intelligence Unit.

The leader alleged that the Gandhi family floated Young Indian to grab the assets worth over Rs 2,000 crore of Associated Journals Limited, which publishes the Herald newspaper.

Never before such a blatant attempt was made by a political family to hold a probe agency to ransom, she said.

Congress MP on Monday appeared before the ED here for questioning in the Herald money laundering investigation.

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Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakashi Lekhi on Monday arrived in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, on her first visit to the Central Asian country.

Lekhi is on an official visit to the Kyrgyz Republic and from June 9-14.

Taking to Twitter, the MoS wrote, "Happy to arrive in Nur-Sultan on my first visit to our strategic partner . Looking forward to my engagements with the Kazakh dignitaries later today."

On Sunday, MoS Lekhi visited the "Kyrgyz State Historical Museum" in Bishkek along with the Kyrgyz Minister of Culture Azamat Zhamankulov.

"Nice tour of the Kyrgyz State Historical Museum in Bishkek along with Minister of Culture Azamat Zhamankulov," Lekhi said in a tweet on Sunday.

Before visiting the museum, the Minister of State for External Affairs had gone to the India-Kyrgyz Mountain Bio-Medical Research Centre.

"Pleased to visit the India-Kyrgyz Mountain Bio-Medical Research Centre, a symbol of bilateral partnership on high-altitude research," Lekhi tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Lekhi paid tribute to the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Molodyozhny Park in Bishkek and also planted a tree in the name of India- Kyrgyz Republic friendship.

Taking to Twitter, she added, "Appreciate the presence of Minister of Culture Azamat Zhamankulov and Vice Mayor of Bishkek Victoria Mozgacheva at the event."

The minister had also met with the Indian community in Bishkek and encouraged them to continue efforts toward stronger ties between India and Kyrgyzstan.

"Glad to interact with the vibrant Indian community in Bishkek. Encouraged them to continue efforts towards stronger India-Kyrgyz Republic ties," Meenakashi Lekhi said in a Tweet on Sunday.

The Minister of State for External Affairs who came to Kyrgyzstan on Saturday held talks with Foreign Minister Zheenbek Kulubaev during which the Kyrgyz Foreign Minister congratulated MoS Lekhi on the "Eighth Anniversary of the fruitful work of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in India, of which she is an active member".

"Took stock of the state and prospects of India- Kyrgyz Republic relations with Foreign Minister Zheenbek Kulubaev. We also had a useful exchange of views on topical issues of regional and international importance," she tweeted on Saturday.

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Congress leader was questioned for over nine hours by the in a money-laundering probe linked to the Herald newspaper and was called to depose again on Tuesday, as his party protested across the country, alleging that the Centre was targeting the Opposition by misusing agencies.

Gandhi, who appeared before a central probe agency for the first time for questioning, arrived at the ED office at 11.10 am on Monday accompanied by a battery of leaders including sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and escorted by armed CRPF personnel. He was given an 80-minute break in the afternoon and was at the ED office till past 10 pm.

Hundreds of Congress workers in Delhi and state capitals took to the streets and several senior leaders, including Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, Randeep Surjewala and K C Venugopal, were detained here amid a massive show of strength by the party which had called for the Satyagraha march against the ED summons.

The principal opposition party alleged that the Delhi police made a "murderous attack" on its leader Venugopal and others, with former home minister P Chidambaram and Pramod Tiwari sustaining hairline rib fracture.

The Delhi Police said while no incident of injuries due to use of force by police has come to its knowledge, it will diligently probe any such complaint and take appropriate action. It said 459 people were detained including 26 MPs and five MLAs and all women and functionaries have been released.

Lashing out at the government for "not allowing"' peaceful protest, Congress leaders said they would not kowtow to the Modi government and vowed to continue their agitation.

The BJP hit back at the Congress, accusing its leaders of putting pressure on the ED, supporting corruption and protecting the alleged assets worth Rs 2,000 crore of the Gandhi family.

Noting that nobody is above the law "not even Rahul Gandhi", BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani claimed that never before such a blatant attempt was made by a political family to hold a probe agency to ransom to protect its "ill-gotten" assets.

Gandhi, 51, went from the party headquarters on Akbar Road to the ED office in central Delhi a few kilometres away in a convoy of seven cars after walking for some distance with his supporters.

After about two-and-a-half hours, he left the ED office for a lunch break during which he met his mother Sonia Gandhi at the Gangaram Hospital, where she has been admitted, and returned at 3.30 pm.

Officials said the questioning on Monday continued well past 9 pm and he has been asked to appear before the ED again on Tuesday.

The former Congress president, a Z+ category protectee of the CRPF after the Union government withdrew the Gandhi family's SPG cover in 2019, is expected to write down his statement, official sources said.

Prohibitory orders were imposed in parts of central Delhi that were heavily barricaded.

The ED is recording the statement of the Lok Sabha member from Wayanad in Kerala under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The probe is related to alleged financial irregularities in the party-promoted Young Indian that owns the Herald newspaper, published by the Associated Journals Limited (AJL).

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and are among the promoters and shareholders of Young Indian.

is expected to be grilled about the incorporation of the Young Indian company, the operations of the Herald and the fund transfer within the news media establishment.

"We are not scared. The Modi government should be ashamed that they have turned central Delhi into a fortress just because our leader is going to the ED with his supporters," Indian Youth Congress President Srinivas BV told PTI near the ED office just before he was detained by the police.

Tempers rose as the day progressed with scenes of slogan shouting and Congress workers jumping barricades and resisting attempts by police to detain them.

Slogans such as "down down BJP", and "we want justice" rang out in cities such as Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Guwahati, Jammu, Dehradun and Jaipur.

The party claimed it was starting Mahatma Gandhi's 'Satyagraha', peaceful resistance, again with the march against the Modi government.

A host of Congress leaders spoke out on the alleged harassment.

In a statement, the Delhi Police said that 15 members of Lok Sabha including Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, 11 members of Rajya Sabha including KC Venugopal and leader of opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, five MLAs of different state assemblies and other functionaries were among the total of 459 detained in the New Delhi district for not following lawful directions of police for maintenance of law and order.

All woman workers and functionaries detained by police have been released, it said.

"Some complaints have been received at Tughlak Road police station of New Delhi regarding injuries to congress leaders and workers during police action but no such incident of use of force by police took place as per our knowledge and no MLC case has been reported so far," said Sagar Preet Hooda, Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order, Zone -II Delhi).

"Still, if there are allegations of some manhandling or so during the detention, the same will diligently be looked into for appropriate action," he said.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Gehlot alleged that the government was misusing central probe agencies and this was nothing but "political vendetta".

"All leaders from Kerala to Kashmir are being targeted...Democracy is being throttled and we oppose it strongly," Baghel said.

Asked whether the party would stage a similar show of strength on June 23 when Sonia Gandhi has been asked to appear before ED, Gehlot said, "The Congress is competent to deal with the situation".

"This is a fight for democracy. The government is trying to muzzle the voices of opposition leaders," added former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat.

"Now, a satyagraha will take place at every corner, he added.

Surjewala said Congress leaders had done nothing wrong and alleged that "Godse's descendants fear from the truth and they will not be able to suppress the truth".

Ahead of Rahul Gandhi's appearance before the ED, brother-in-law Robert Vadra came out in his support and expressed confidence that he would be exonerated from all "baseless accusations".

"I believe the truth will prevail and this harassment of the prevailing dispensation will not have the effect they desire, he added.

The Congress party said in a press conference in the morning that all fund movements in this case were legitimate.

In April, the agency questioned senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Pawan Bansal as part of the investigation.

The questioning of the senior Congress leaders and the Gandhis is part of the investigation to understand the shareholding pattern, financial transactions and role of the promoters of Young Indian and AJL, officials had said.

The ED recently registered a fresh case under the criminal provisions of the PMLA after a trial court here took cognisance of an Income Tax Department probe against Young Indian Pvt Ltd on the basis of a private criminal complaint filed by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in 2013.

Swamy had accused Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds with Young Indian Pvt Ltd paying only Rs 50 lakh to obtain the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore that Associate Journals Ltd owed to the Congress.

The Delhi High Court in February last year issued a notice to the Gandhis for their response to Swamy's plea seeking to lead evidence in the matter before the trial court.

The Gandhis had secured separate bails from the court in 2015 after they furnished personal bonds of Rs 50,000 and one surety.

They contended in the Delhi High Court that the plea by Swamy was "misconceived and premature".

The other accused in the case filed by Swamy are close Gandhi aides Suman Dubey and technocrat Sam Pitroda.

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Amid a surge in COVID-19 cases in and other parts of Maharashtra, medical experts say most of the patients are showing mild symptoms and fatality is low in the present "mild wave", and also no new virus variant of concern has been observed.

The patients were being administered paracetamol, and not Remdesivir drug, which was used for patients in the first and second COVID-19 waves, they said.

According to the health department data, recorded 9,354 COVID-19 cases in May, of which 5,980 were reported from . The state also recorded 17 fatalities last month.

From June 1 to 12, there were 23,941 COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra, of which 14,945 were reported from alone. The state has recorded 12 fatalities from June 1 to 12.

Dr Sunil Bhaisare, associate professor of medicine at the state-run J J Hospital in Mumbai, told PTI that though there is a spurt in COVID-19 cases, the patients are showing mild symptoms.

Mumbai, the country's financial capital, sees a lot of international passengers. Besides, all COVID-19 restrictions, including wearing of masks, have been lifted, he noted.

Bhaisare, who manages a COVID-19 facility at state-run St George Hospital in south Mumbai, said at present his facility has only 19 patients - most of them are either prisoners or those in police custody.

No patient is requiring oxygen support. If they are coming up with any kind of complaint, we are administering only paracetamol and other supportive treatment, Bhaisare said.

Dr Manjusha Agarwal, senior consultant-internal medicine at the Global Hospital in Mumbai, said in the present COVID-19 surge, patients are getting better in 48 to 72 hours.

Nobody required Remdesivir or any immunotherapy. The patients are not having major complications. So, the good thing is that vaccination has helped everyone,she said.

Even as cases rise, Agarwal said there is nothing to worry, and described the current surge as a mild wave compared to what was seen in January this year.

This is the mildest wave of COVID-19 that I have seen, she said, but stressed that precautions like wearing masks and following COVID-19 protocols are still very important.

Dr Rakesh Mishra, director of the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society in Bengaluru, said no new variant of concern has been observed nor there is any indication of new variant in the country.

On May 28, the health department said that for the first time, four patients of B.A.4 variant and three cases of B.A. 5 variants of the Omicron sub-lineage of were found in the state. All the seven cases were from Pune.

Besides, one case each of B.A.5 was reported on June 7 and 11 in Pune.

Dr Sonam Solanki, consultant pulmonologist at the Masina Hospital in Mumbai, said a significant rise in the COVID-19 cases is being seeing since last week and it is expected to go up further.

The predominant variant in this surge is a sub-lineage of Omicron which is B.A.5 and B.A.4. Although, these strains are more transmissible, majority of the cases are mild and get managed with home isolation, she said.

The vulnerable, elderly population with co-morbidities would still be at the risk of infection, Solanki said.

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leader was questioned for over 10 hours by the Enforcement Directorate in a money-laundering probe linked to the Herald newspaper and was called to depose again on Tuesday, as his party protested across the country, alleging that the Centre was targeting the Opposition by misusing agencies.

Gandhi, who appeared before a central probe agency for the first time for questioning, arrived at the ED office at 11.10 am on Monday accompanied by a battery of leaders including sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and escorted by armed CRPF personnel. He was given an 80-minute break in the afternoon.

He left the ED office around 11.10 pm after questioning.

Hundreds of workers in Delhi and state capitals took to the streets and several senior leaders, including Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, Randeep Surjewala and K C Venugopal, were detained here amid a massive show of strength by the party which had called for the Satyagraha march against the ED summons.

The principal opposition party alleged that the Delhi police made a "murderous attack" on its leader Venugopal and others, with former home minister P Chidambaram and Pramod Tiwari sustaining hairline rib fracture.

The Delhi Police said while no incident of injuries due to the use of force by police has come to its knowledge, it will diligently probe any such complaint and take appropriate action. It said 459 people were detained, including 26 MPs and five MLAs, and all women and functionaries have been released.

Lashing out at the government for "not allowing"' peaceful protest, leaders said they would not kowtow to the Modi government and vowed to continue their agitation.

The BJP hit back at the Congress, accusing its leaders of putting pressure on the ED, supporting corruption and protecting the alleged assets worth Rs 2,000 crore of the Gandhi family.

Noting that nobody is above the law "not even Rahul Gandhi", BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani claimed that never before such a blatant attempt was made by a political family to hold a probe agency to ransom to protect its "ill-gotten" assets.

Gandhi, 51, went from the party headquarters on Akbar Road to the ED office in central Delhi, a few kilometres away, in a convoy of seven cars after walking for some distance with his supporters.

After about two-and-a-half hours, he left the ED office for a lunch break during which he met his mother Sonia Gandhi at the Ganga Ram Hospital, where she has been admitted, and returned at 3.30 pm.

Officials said he has been asked to appear before the ED again on Tuesday.

The former Congress president, a Z+ category protectee of the CRPF after the Union government withdrew the Gandhi family's SPG cover in 2019, is expected to write down his statement, official sources said.

Prohibitory orders were imposed in parts of central Delhi that were heavily barricaded.

The ED is recording the statement of the Lok Sabha member from Wayanad in Kerala under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The probe is related to alleged financial irregularities in the party-promoted Young Indian that owns the Herald newspaper, published by the Associated Journals Limited (AJL).

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and are among the promoters and shareholders of Young Indian.

is supposed to have been grilled about the incorporation of the Young Indian company, the operations of the Herald and the fund transfer within the news media establishment.

"We are not scared. The Modi government should be ashamed that they have turned central Delhi into a fortress just because our leader is going to the ED with his supporters," Indian Youth Congress President Srinivas BV told PTI near the ED office just before he was detained by the police.

Tempers rose as the day progressed with scenes of slogan shouting and Congress workers jumping barricades and resisting attempts by police to detain them.

Slogans such as "down down BJP", and "we want justice" rang out in cities such as Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Guwahati, Jammu, Dehradun and Jaipur.

The party claimed it was starting Mahatma Gandhi's 'Satyagraha', peaceful resistance, again with the march against the Modi government.

A host of Congress leaders spoke out on the alleged harassment.

In a statement, the Delhi Police said that 15 members of Lok Sabha, including Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, 11 Rajya Sabha MPs, including KC Venugopal and Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, five MLAs of different states and other functionaries were among the 459 detained in the New Delhi district for not following lawful directions of police for maintenance of law and order.

All woman workers and functionaries detained by police have been released, it said.

"Some complaints have been received at the Tughlak Road police station of New Delhi regarding injuries to Congress leaders and workers during police action but no such incident of use of force by police took place as per our knowledge and no MLC case has been reported so far," said Sagar Preet Hooda, Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order, Zone -II Delhi).

"Still, if there are allegations of some manhandling or so during the detention, the same will diligently be looked into for appropriate action," he said.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Gehlot alleged that the government was misusing central probe agencies and this was nothing but "political vendetta".

"All leaders from Kerala to Kashmir are being targeted... Democracy is being throttled and we oppose it strongly," Baghel said.

Asked whether the party would stage a similar show of strength on June 23 when Sonia Gandhi has been asked to appear before ED, Gehlot said, "The Congress is competent to deal with the situation".

"This is a fight for democracy. The government is trying to muzzle the voices of opposition leaders," added former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat.

"Now, a satyagraha will take place at every corner," he added.

Surjewala said Congress leaders had done nothing wrong and alleged that "Godse's descendants fear the truth and they will not be able to suppress the truth".

Ahead of Rahul Gandhi's appearance before the ED, brother-in-law Robert Vadra came out in his support and expressed confidence that he would be exonerated from all "baseless accusations".

"I believe the truth will prevail and this harassment of the prevailing dispensation will not have the effect they desire," he added.

The Congress party said in a press conference in the morning that all fund movements in this case were legitimate.

In April, the agency questioned senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Pawan Bansal as part of the investigation.

The questioning of the senior Congress leaders and the Gandhis is part of the investigation to understand the shareholding pattern, financial transactions and role of the promoters of Young Indian and AJL, officials had said.

The ED recently registered a fresh case under the criminal provisions of the PMLA after a trial court here took cognisance of an Income Tax Department probe against Young Indian Pvt Ltd based on a private criminal complaint filed by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in 2013.

Swamy had accused Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds with Young Indian Pvt Ltd paying only Rs 50 lakh to obtain the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore that Associate Journals Ltd owed to the Congress.

The Delhi High Court in February last year issued a notice to the Gandhis for their response to Swamy's plea seeking to lead evidence in the matter before the trial court.

The Gandhis had secured separate bails from the court in 2015 after they furnished personal bonds of Rs 50,000 and one surety. They contended in the Delhi High Court that the plea by Swamy was "misconceived and premature".

The other accused in the case filed by Swamy are close Gandhi aides Suman Dubey and technocrat Sam Pitroda.

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Prime Minister on Sunday hailed the BJP's thumping victory in Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council elections and assured the people that the party would keep working for Assam's progress.

"Historic results in Karbi Anglong! I thank the people for their continuous faith in and assure them that we will keep working for Assam's progress," Modi tweeted.

"The efforts of karyakartas have been outstanding. Kudos to them," he said on Twitter and tagged Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Saram's tweet.

Sarma said, "We bow before the people of Karbi Anglong for giving a historic mandate in KAAC polls the second time in a row."



After wins in urban body and GMC polls, this huge victory is a true affirmation of public trust in PM Modi's vision of 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vishwas', Sarma said.

The BJP on Sunday reportedly won all the 26 seats in the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC) in to retain power in the hill council for the second successive term.

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With an aim to connect the youth with more opportunities for on-ground training within corporates and further a chance to get employment, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship will be organising the Pradhan Mantri National Apprenticeship Mela every month now on.

On June 13, 2022, the mela will be organised from 9 AM to 5 PM. The PM National Apprenticeship Mela will take place across 200+ locations in India, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship informed in a statement.

More than 1000 companies from across 36+ sectors will be participating in the Mela providing opportunities of being hired as an apprentice within companies. Individuals having a 5th-12th-grade pass certificate, a skill training certificate, an ITI Diploma, or a graduate degree can apply for an interview across these trades/opportunities. The candidates will be given a choice of 500+ trades, including welders, electricians, housekeepers, beauticians, mechanics, and others.

The primary goal of this programme is to encourage the hiring of apprentices from these cities, as well as to assist employers in identifying and developing their potential through training and practical skillsets bringing value to their workplace.

Candidates will also receive Apprenticeship certificates recognised by the National Council for Vocational Education and Training (NCVET) at the end of their training period, which will give them industry recognition.

Participating organisations in the Pradhan Mantri National Apprenticeship Melas have the opportunity to meet potential apprentices on a common platform and select candidates on the spot. Furthermore, small-scale industries with at least four employees can hire apprentices at the event. A credit bank concept will also be introduced soon, with a depositary of various credits accumulated by learners that can be used for future academic pathways.

Expressing his views on the Pradhan Mantri National Apprenticeship Mela, Rajesh Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, said that following the success of the previous apprenticeship mela held in April, we have decided to organize the Pradhan Mantri National Apprenticeship Mela (PMNAM) every month.

"We hope both the candidate and the establishments will benefit from this model of skill development. We aim to engage over one million youth as apprentices through these melas. This will not only give the candidates hands-on experience on the shop floors but also address the challenge of migration at a local level," he added.

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President arrived here on Monday on a two-day visit to .

He was received at the airport by state Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and Chief Secretary Vandita Sharma, among others.

On Monday afternoon, the President is slated to inaugurate the platinum jubilee celebrations of Rashtriya Military School, .

The school was raised on August 1, 1946, by King George VI as Royal Indian Military College.

On Tuesday, Kovind is scheduled to attend the "Lokarpana" of ISKCON Sri Rajadhiraja Govinda Temple on Kanakapura Road here.

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TSeveral places in Uttar Pradesh are under curfew, and the same is true for the states of Assam and Maharashtra.

After suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma's controversial comments against Prophet Mohammed led to the global Islamic community condemning her speech, numerous protests have broken out in several parts of the country, leading to the imposition of Section 144 and FIRs.

Indian ambassadors to several Arab countries like UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were called by the host countries to lodge their protest over Sharma's remarks.

Several states saw large communal protests over the weekend.

Assam

Assam Police had banned any kind of gathering when a call for protests was made by several groups. Section 144 of the CrPC was first imposed in Cachar and Karimganj.

On Sunday, the district administrations of Bongaigaon and Hailakandi also imposed Section 144 of the CrPC in their respective districts.

Uttar Pradesh

A total of 227 people were arrested from various UP districts in connection with Friday violence.

In a statement on Saturday, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar said, "227 persons have been arrested in the state for Friday violence. This includes 68 in Prayagraj, 50 in Hathras, 48 in Saharanpur, 28 in Ambedkarnagar, 25 in Moradabad, and eight in Firozabad."

People pelted stones at police personnel in Prayagraj and Saharanpur as people took to rowdiness during their protests after Friday prayers.

Security personnel conduct a flag march, a day after clashes during protest against now-suspended BJP leaders remark on Prophet Muhammad, in Prayagraj, Saturday | Photo: PTI

Ahead of religious festivals, the administration of Ghaziabad has decided to clamp section 144 across the district till August 10.

The use of loudspeakers is not allowed except in religious spaces, and sloganeering of any sort, orally or in writing (posters, pamphlets, pamphlets, social media etc.) will not be allowed during the period.

Jharkhand

Police have strengthened security in sensitive areas and registered 25 FIRs against "thousands" of people in the aftermath of violent protests.

Internet services, however, were restored in the district after nearly 33 hours, Ranchi Deputy Commissioner Chhavi Ranjan said.

Around 3,500 security personnel are on guard at sensitive areas in Ranchi, where two people were killed, and more than two dozen people were critically injured.

West Bengal

Violence erupted in certain pockets of Howrah district on Saturday as agitators staged demonstrations.

The tension broke out in the minority-dominated Panchal area after protesters attacked and ransacked a local club there. When the police tried to disperse them, the agitators pelted stones at the cops. The police had to resort to lathi-charge and fire teargas shells to disperse the mob.

Tension also prevailed in the minority-dominated Domjur area, where the police station was attacked late Friday evening.

People belonging to the Muslim community raise slogans during a protest at Bolpur in Birbhum district, Sunday | Photo: PTI

Gujarat

Four police personnel were injured on Sunday during a clash in Gujarat's Borsad town following rumours that a group of minority community members were cornered.

"Rumours were making rounds that a group of a minority community in Borsad were cornered, because of which large group of the community took to the streets and started pelting stones on police and police vehicles," said Ahmedabad Range Inspector General V. Chandrasekhar.

Police hurled tear gas cells to disperse the mob, after which the situation was brought under control.

Police personnel chase away people during their protest demanding arrest of former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, in Ahmedabad, Sunday | Photo: PTI

Jammu and Kashmir

On Monday, curfew continued for the fifth consecutive day in Jammu and Kashmir's Doda and Kishtwar towns, as the police have arrested one person for making an inflammatory speech.

Groups of two communities have accused each other of stoking communal tensions after some miscreants posted purported announcements from a local mosque.

New Delhi

In the capital, two men were arrested last week for allegedly disrupting communal harmony and holding a protest without permission in the Jama Masjid area.

Protests erupted outside the Jama Masjid on June 10, with hundreds of people demanding the arrest of Sharma.
Congress leader was on Monday questioned for over eight hours by the in a money laundering probe linked to the Herald newspaper, as the opposition party held protests across the country, accusing the Centre of targeting its leaders by misusing agencies.

Gandhi, who appeared before a central probe agency for the first time for questioning, was still in the ED office here till 9 pm, having arrived at 11.10 am, accompanied by a battery of leaders including sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and escorted by armed CRPF personnel, and leaving for an 80-minute break in the afternoon.

Hundreds of Congress workers in Delhi and state capitals took to the streets and several senior leaders, including Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, Randeep Surjewala and K C Venugopal, were detained here amid a massive show of strength by the party which had called for the Satyagraha march against the ED summons.

The opposition party alleged that some of its leaders were manhandled by the police and lashed out at the government for "not allowing"' peaceful protests.

The BJP hit back at the Congress, accusing its leaders of putting pressure on the ED, supporting corruption and protecting the alleged assets worth Rs 2,000 crore of the Gandhi family.

Noting that nobody is above the law "not even Rahul Gandhi", BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani claimed that never before such a blatant attempt was made by a political family to hold a probe agency to ransom to protect its "ill-gotten" assets.

Gandhi, 51, went from the party headquarters in Akbar Road to the ED office in central Delhi a few kilometres away in a convoy of seven cars around 11.10 am after walking for some distance with his supporters.

After about two-and-a-half hours, he left the ED office for a lunch break and returned at 3.30 pm.

The former Congress president, a Z+ category protectee of the CRPF after the Union government withdrew the Gandhi family's SPG cover in 2019, is expected to write down his statement, official sources said.

Prohibitory orders were imposed in parts of central Delhi that were heavily barricaded.

The ED is recording the statement of the Lok Sabha member from Wayanad in Kerala under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The probe is related to alleged financial irregularities in the party-promoted Young Indian that owns the Herald newspaper, published by the Associated Journals Limited (AJL).

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and are among the promoters and shareholders of Young Indian.

is expected to be grilled about the incorporation of the Young Indian company, the operations of the Herald and the fund transfer within the news media establishment.

"We are not scared. The Modi government should be ashamed that they have turned central Delhi into a fortress just because our leader is going to the ED with his supporters," Indian Youth Congress President Srinivas BV told PTI near the ED office just before he was detained by the police.

Tempers rose as the day progressed with scenes of slogan shouting, Congress workers jumping barricades and resisting attempts by police to detain them.

Slogans such as "down down BJP", and "we want justice" rang out in cities such as Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Guwahati, Jammu, Dehradun and Jaipur.

The party claimed it was starting Mahatma Gandhi's 'Satyagraha', peaceful resistance, again with the march against the Modi government and vowed not to bow down.

A host of Congress leaders spoke out on the alleged harassment.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Gehlot alleged that the government was misusing central probe agencies and this was nothing but "political vendetta".

Asked whether the Congress would stage a similar show of strength on June 23 when Sonia Gandhi has been asked to appear before ED, Gehlot said, "The Congress is competent to deal with the situation".

"This is a fight for democracy. The government is trying to muzzle the voices of opposition leaders," added former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat.

"Now, a satyagraha will take place at every corner, he added.

Surjewala said Congress leaders had done nothing wrong and alleged that "Godse's descendants fear from the truth and they will not be able to suppress the truth".

Ahead of Rahul Gandhi's appearance before the ED, brother-in-law Robert Vadra came out in his support and expressed confidence that he would be exonerated from all "baseless accusations".

"I believe the truth will prevail and this harassment of the prevailing dispensation will not have the effect they desire, he added.

The Congress party said in a press conference in the morning that all fund movements in this case were legitimate.

In April, the agency questioned senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Pawan Bansal as part of the investigation.

The questioning of the senior Congress leaders and the Gandhis is part of the investigation to understand the shareholding pattern, financial transactions and role of the promoters of Young Indian and AJL, officials had said.

The ED recently registered a fresh case under the criminal provisions of the PMLA after a trial court here took cognisance of an Income Tax Department probe against Young Indian Pvt Ltd on the basis of a private criminal complaint filed by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in 2013.

Swamy had accused Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds with Young Indian Pvt Ltd paying only Rs 50 lakh to obtain the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore that Associate Journals Ltd owed to the Congress.

The Delhi High Court in February last year issued a notice to the Gandhis for their response to Swamy's plea seeking to lead evidence in the matter before the trial court.

The Gandhis had secured separate bails from the court in 2015 after they furnished personal bonds of Rs 50,000 and one surety.

They, however, contended in the Delhi High Court that the plea by Swamy was "misconceived and premature".

The other accused in the case filed by Swamy are close Gandhi aides Suman Dubey and technocrat Sam Pitroda.

(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 President and MP from Wayanad will appear before the Enforcement Directorate on Monday in connection with the Herald money-laundering case. Several members, who decided to hold protests outside Gandhi's residence in support, were detained by the Delhi police in the morning.

Both and Sonia Gandhi have been summoned by the ED in a probe related to the Herald case. However, the president, hospitalised with Covid-related issues, will appear before the central agency on June 23.

The ED summoned the Gandhis on June 1 in a case related to the Herald-Associated Journals Ltd deal. was asked to appear on June 2 but sought more time from the agency as the Congress leader outside the country. While Sonia sought more time due to Covid-19 infection.

Ahead of Rahul's questioning, Congress members decided to take out a rally in his support, but many were detained on Monday morning for raising slogans in the national Capital. The Delhi Police denied them permission to hold a rally, citing law and order.

Congress has alleged that ED's move to summon Rahul and Sonia Gandhi is a "political vendetta" as the case has no grounds for investigation.

The National Herald newspaper, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938, is published by Associated Journals Limited (AJL) and owned by Young Indian Private Limited (YIL). Their promoters include Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. In 2012, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy filed a complaint before a trial court alleging that some Congress leaders were involved in cheating and breach of trust in the acquisition of AJL. Swamy had alleged that YIL had 'taken over' the assets of the National Herald in a 'malicious' way.

The ED is currently probing the shareholding pattern, the financial transactions of AJL and YIL, and the role of party functionaries in the functioning of the two entities.
Congress president and former party chief have given the message that they will never compromise on the ideological fight against the BJP-led dispensation, Rajasthan Chief Minister said on Monday and claimed the "arrogance" with which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been acting will come to an end.

Former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot alleged that investigative agencies were being misused by the ruling BJP.

"The manner in which 6-7 years-old cases against and were taken up, it is evident that politics of putting pressure on political opponents is being played," he told reporters.

Their remarks came after Congress leaders took to the streets as appeared before the ED for questioning in a money laundering case, with the police heavily barricading central Delhi areas and detaining party leaders for violating prohibitory orders.

"Rahul Gandhi and have given a message to the country that we will not compromise, we will fight on the basis of ideology. There is so much pressure on the CBI, Income Tax, ED, DRI, judiciary that even if someone wants to work in an impartial manner, that person cannot do it," Gehlot told reporters.

"The time has come that every Indian should think about where we want to take the country to. Rahul Gandhi said in London that BJP has poured kerosene all over the country. Now you see what is happening? Riots are happening, riots are being instigated, tensions are rising," he said, hitting out at the BJP.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are walking around with ego and arrogance. Arrogance has not worked for anyone till today, it is not going to work for them either, it will end tomorrow, if not today," he said.

Prominent among those detained were Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and Congress leaders Randeep Surjewala, K C Venugopal and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.

Rahul Gandhi, 51, arrived at the probe agency in central Delhi around 11 AM after he started from the Congress office on Akbar Road accompanied by a large convoy of party leaders, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Gehlot and Baghel.

In view of the barricading, Gandhi took a detour to reach the probe agency's office.

This is the first time that Gandhi has appeared before a central probe agency for questioning in a case.

Congress MPs and workers had assembled at the AICC headquarters where Surjewala announced they would march peacefully towards the ED office and if they are stopped, they would court arrest.

Raising slogans in support of Gandhi, Congress workers started a march towards the ED office but were stopped by the police which had put up barricades all around the AICC office.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Monday urged Prime Minister to instruct the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) not to discuss the Mekedattu dam issue.

Mekedattu has been a bone of contention between and with the latter allocating Rs 1000 crore for the construction of a dam there, leading to several protests in including the passing of a unanimous resolution by the state Assembly against the project.

In his letter to the Prime Minister, Stalin said that the CWMA was specifically constituted as per the verdict of the Supreme Court in May 2018 only to implement the apex court's February 16, 2018 order.

The considered view of Tamil Nadu is that the authority was constituted only to the implementation of the Supreme Court verdict and cannot be expanded to any other activity beyond this, he said, in a reference to the CWMA's decision to include the Mekedattu dam issue in its sixteenth meeting.

"This is legally untenable as it is violative of the verdict of the Supreme Court and not at all acceptable to Tamil Nadu. In addition to this, the matter is sub judice since three applications filed by Tamil Nadu on this issue are pending before the Supreme Court."

In the letter, Stalin also noted that Tamil Nadu has further filed an application in the Supreme Court on June 7 and this "involves critical questions on the role of CWMA, which can be clarified only by the Supreme Court. Hence we apprehensive that the CWMA's decision to rush up and discuss this issue, which is beyond its scope, even before our applications are heard by the Supreme Court is an attempt to subvert the earlier verdict of the court".

He also said that in a memorandum given to the Prime Minister on June 17, 2021, he had requested the Ministry of Jal Shakti be advised not to give any concurrence to proposal of for constructing a reservoir at Mekedattu across the Cauvery.

He said that the CWMA's proposal to discuss the DPR of the Mekedatu project in its 16th meeting to be held on June 17, has caused great anguish among the farmers of Cauvery Delta in Tamil Nadu and pointed out that Tamil Nadu depended largely on the Cauvery for its drinking water and irrigation purposes.

Noting that the Supreme Court delivered its judgment on sharing of Cauvery waters in February 16, 2018 after a protracted and long-drawn legal battle, he said: "Although the quality of allocation is not up to our expectations, we are managing our needs with the allocated share, provided it is delivered as per the schedule."

Stalin said that this was a highly sensitive issue and that disruption in the schedule of allocation of Cauvery waters would affect the state badly.

--IANS

aal/vd

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Tension gripped Kamptee town in Maharashtra's district after several members of a community gathered outside a police station, demanding action against a man and woman over their alleged derogatory posts on social media, officials said on Monday.

A case was registered against the duo after the incident late Saturday night and police patrolling was intensified in the town, located 20 km from city, they said.

The woman had posted a message allegedly defaming a religion on a WhatsApp group. The man had posted a message in support of her on another platform, the official from New Kamptee police station said.

Later, several members of a community gathered outside the New Kamptee police station and demanded strict action against the duo, he said.

Senior police officials rushed to the town and later pacified the angry mob, the official said.

A Quick Response Team and riot control police were also deployed in the town to maintain law and order.

The police also appealed to citizens to maintain peace, the official said.

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Union Minister along with a 25-member delegation on Sunday left for Mongolia from Hindon Airbase in Ghaziabad with four Holy Relics of and said that the move will give a message of peace to the world.

Rijiju will be in Mongolia for an 11-day exposition of the relics as part of celebrations of the Mongolian Buddh Purnima falling on June 14.

"This will give a message of peace to the world. The friendship between India and Mongolia is very old. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Mongolia in 2015, the bond between both countries have become very strong," said Union Minister .

Recalling the visit of the Prime Minister to Mongolia in 2015, the Union Minister had earlier said that PM Modi was the first-ever Prime Minister of India to visit Mongolia, and taking the relics to Mongolia is an extension of the vision of the PM to revive the relations with the countries with whom India had cultural and spiritual ties since centuries ago.

The Holy Relics will be displayed at the Batsagaan Temple within the premises of Gandan Monastery. The Holy Buddha Relics, currently housed in the National Museum, are known as the 'Kapilvastu Relics' since they are from a site in Bihar first discovered in 1898 which is believed to be the ancient city of Kapilvastu.

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The Assembly passed a bill on Monday to replace Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar with Chief Minister as chancellor of all state-run . The said it will urge the state Governor to send the bill to the President.

University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2022 was passed in the legislative assembly after 182 members voted in favour of the legislation and 40 against it in the 294-member Assembly.

leader Suvendu Adhikari, who is the Leader of Opposition in the assembly, said he will meet the state Governor to request that the bill is sent to the President.

"Education comes under the concurrent list. I will meet Governor next Monday on the issue and will request to send it to Delhi (for the consideration of the President)," Adhikari told media persons here.

He has also alleged "false voting" in the assembly during the passage of the Bill.

Education Minister Bratya Basu did not comment on opposition allegations.

"About the opposition, I have nothing to say. We've brought a Bill to change our Governor from the post of chancellor only. We offered and suggested that Chief Minister will be the chancellor and the whole house accepted it. Now we're sending it to Governor," he said.

leaders said the TMC-led government wants to control everything and the decision "to appoint the CM as chancellor of was aimed at facilitating direct interference of the ruling party in the state's education system".

Introducing the bill, Basu said there was "nothing wrong" with the Chief Minister taking over as the chancellor of state .

"Why can't the chief minister be the chancellor of state universities if the Prime Minister is the chancellor of a central university- Visva Bharati?" he asked.

He alleged that the Governor, who is the present chancellor, has "violated protocols on various occasions."

TMC state vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar slammed the BJP leaders over their remarks on the bill. "No matter how much they try they will not be able to do anything," he said.

The government after a cabinet meeting on Monday gave its nod to the bill to replace Governor Jagdeep Dhankar and appoint Chief Minister as the Chancellor of all state-run universities.

The move is seen a fallout of the long-running battle between Chief Minister and governor.

(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.)
Amid opposition from rich nations, India has called for inclusion of therapeutics and diagnostics  testing and treatment of a disease  as part of the temporary patent waiver agreement that can pave the way for the future need to tackle any crisis.

Twenty months ago, India and South Africa had urged the World Trade Organisation (WTO) member nations to agree to temporarily waive some sections of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to ramp up production of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. The draft agreement, however, falls short of the original proposal and includes only vaccines.

At the 12th ministerial conference at Geneva, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said there was a need to redouble efforts and commence negotiations on therapeutics and diagnostics, since the pandemic was far from over, particularly for the developing and least-developed countries. Besides, it is too late in the day if only vaccines are included as the pandemic has run its initial course, he said.

While vaccines were for preventive need, we need to ramp up manufacture of therapeutics and diagnostics to achieve a comprehensive test and treat strategy or workable waiver or lets say an enhanced, compulsory licensing, as we say, can deliver in some measure what it was set out to achieve. Vaccines are no longer in scarcity and affordable stocks available across the world, Goyal said at the thematic session on Response to Pandemic.





ALSO READ: WTO MC12: Piyush Goyal backs people-first approach to world trade

In the course of my discussions, it has been indicated that many countries do not favour supporting what has been asked. Well, if its only vaccines that we are looking at providing, I think it's too late in the day for that, the minister said, adding that it was unfortunate that the profits of the pharmaceutical behemoths prevail over global growth.

India and South Africa and 63 co-sponsors had initially made the TRIPS waiver proposal to help middle- and low-income nations get access to Covid-19 vaccines and drugs. However, the discussions reached a deadlock in the TRIPS Council  a body responsible for monitoring the operation of TRIPS agreement.

The minister said the draft text from these discussions did not reflect what India as a co-sponsor of the waiver proposal had envisaged. The commencement of text-based negotiations allowed the larger membership to engage in discussions on the texts. I was really hopeful that the remaining concerns with this text would have been resolved and reconciled. For India, a consensus-based outcome is of paramount importance, he said.

Goyal also said India had made several compromises to enable submission of a clean document on the Response to Pandemic at the ministerial.

The compromises include the TRIPS automaticity clause, which was not accepted, extensive dilution of the language on intellectual property, and tech transfer, among others. I hope that the flexibility that we have shown will pave the way for its acceptance and be replicated in other tracks for a successful MC-12, he said.

Outcome on WTOs response to the pandemic, which includes the TRIPS Waiver proposal, is one of the priority items for MC12.
The dismissed a petition alleging the sale of States Metro Dairy Limited (MDL) shares to Keventer Agro Ltd (KAL) in 2017 was non-transparent or opaque.

A division bench of the court said the state has not adopted a non-transparent method to sell 47 per cent of its stake to KAL and there is no need for a CBI probe into the sale.

The share holding of MDL since inception was as follows:

a. State of West Bengal: 47%

b. National Dairy Development Board (NDDB): 10%

c. Keventer Agro Limited (KAL): 43%

Later NDDB sold its share to KAL after which the latter became a majority shareholder. Later, the State sold its shares to KAL.

The court was hearing a public-interest litigation filed by Congresss Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, alleging that the West Bengal government sold its 47 per cent stake to KAL at a lower price, whereas Keventer had sold 15 per cent of MDL shares to another company for a much higher consideration.

The Counsel appearing for KAL said that the 15 per cent shares sold by them had no connection with the shares of MDL. He also said that due process was followed during the sale.

Noting the contentions, the court said, The decision in respect of and transfer of 47 per cent of shares in MDL by the State is essentially a policy decision based upon economic and other considerations. Such a policy decision is not open to interference unless the same is unconstitutional, violative of statutory provision, totally arbitrary or suffers from the vice of malice. Courts may also interfere if any illegality is committed in the execution of such a policy decision.

The court held that in the present case, nothing has been pointed out to show that the decision of the State to sell 47 per cent shares of MDL ran counter to any statutory provision or is illegal in any manner. It has been pointed out from the record that MDL is a company dealing in dairy business alone and sometime around 2004-05, Amul milk, owned by Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, had entered the West Bengal Milk Market as competitor to the MDL as a result of which, the annual procurement of milk as also annual sale of MDL were continuously declining, the court observed.

We find that the policy decision of the State to sell 47 % shares was neither illegal nor arbitrary and the State had also not adopted a non-transparent or opaque procedure for sale of shares, the court said and dismissed the petition.
The Greater Corporation has sought a funding of Rs 376 crore for the project in the city.

Sources in the Corporation told IANS that the project will be executed jointly by the Water Resources Department (WRD), Metro water, Corporation, and the Transport Department.

This project falls under the umbrella of city partnership programme. Chennai City Corporation will be the nodal agency for the project.

The Detailed Project Report (DPR) of the scheme will soon be submitted to World Bank, sources in the Greater Chennai Corporation told IANS. The DPR is prepared in consultation with Metro Water and the Chennai Corporation.

The project once implemented will lead to providing continuous water supply to the residents of the Corporation.

The Water Resources Department has also commenced increasing the storage capacities of the existing reservoir in Poondi and Chembarambakkam.

The Department will also widen and renovate a few water tanks in the suburban areas of the city to get sufficient water supply throughout the year.

With the population in Chennai Corporation on the rise, the requirement for is also on the rise and hence, the Corporation and Water Resources Department have approached for its assistance, to which, they have agreed.

However, sources in the Corporation told IANS that the presentation of a flawless DPR with all the micro details is important for the final clearance of funding.

(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.)
(NAA) is all set to be subsumed into the (CCI), according to a report in Livemint.

NAA is the anti-profiteering watchdog of GST. Its term ends in November, and no extension has been planned, per the report.

NAA came into existence in 2017 and has received two extensions since then.

Officials who spoke to Livemint said that NAA's investigation arm will continue to function in some form under CCI. The official said that the move will reduce the multiplicity of regulators as CCI can handle cases independently.

The implementation of anti-profiteering provisions in GST law has faced several challenges. According to the Livemint report, the plan is to transfer cases to CCI after NAA's term ends.

NAA's role is to make sure that the benefit of tax rate reduction reaches the consumer immediately. This has been the role of NAA primarily because the GST council has been rejigging the rates in the last five years. NAA has little to do when rates go up.

Authorities are still receiving several complaints about the early years of GST, saying that the benefit of the input tax credit has not been fully passed on to consumers.

Sectors like eateries, cinemas, real estate, fast-moving consumer goods, etc., have faced NAA's scrutiny the most. In many cases, the regulator ordered the business to return the allegedly overcharged amounts to the consumer.
Russia rose to become India's second biggest supplier of oil in May, pushing Saudi Arabia into third place but still behind Iraq which remains No. 1, data from trade sources showed.

In May Indian refiners received about 819,000 barrels per day (bpd) Russian oil, the highest thus far in any month, compared to about 277,00 in April, the data showed.

Western sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine prompted many oil importers to shun trade with Moscow, pushing spot prices for Russian crude to record discounts against other grades.

That provided Indian refiners, which rarely used to buy Russian oil due to high freight costs, an opportunity to snap up low-priced crude.

Russian grades accounted for about 16.5% of India's overall oil imports in May, and helped raise the share of oil from the C.I.S. countries to about 20.5%, while that from the Middle East declined to about 59.5% %, the data showed.

The share of African oil in India's crude imports last month surged to 11.5% from 5.9% in April, the data showed.

"Diesel is calling the tune ... if you want to boost production of diesel and jet fuel then you need Nigerian and Angolan grades. China has cut imports of Angolan grades because of COVID-related shutdowns so some of these barrels are going to Europe and some to India," said Ehsan Ul Haq, analyst with Refinitiv.

He said apart from availability of cheaper Russian barrels, higher official selling prices of Middle Eastern oil also pushed Indian refiners to buy Nigerian crude.

India's oil imports in May totalled 4.98 million bpd, the highest since December 2020, as state refiners raised output to meet growing local demand while private refiners turned focus to gain from exports, the data showed.

India's oil imports in May were about 5.6% up from the previous month and about 19% from a year earlier, the data obtained from sources showed.

India has defended its purchase of "cheap" Russian oil saying imports from Moscow made only a fraction of the country's overall needs and a sudden stop would drive up costs for its consumers. Higher oil imports from Russia, curbed OPEC's share in India's overall imports to 65% in April.

RIL imports fifth of oil from Russia

The share of Russian oil in Reliance Industries overall crude imports in May rose to over a fifth as the conglomerate snapped up discounted Russian oil, according to data from trade sources. Reliance imported about 1.4 million barrels per day oil in May, up 9.1 per cent from April, the data showed. (Reuters)

(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.)
China's ambassador to says relations between the two countries are at a new juncture with the election of a new Australian government and the first minister-to-minister talks in more than two years.

Ambassador Xiao Qian gave an upbeat assessment of the potential for the bilateral relationship in a weekend speech to the Australia- Friendship Society in the west coast city of Perth. The speech was published Monday on the embassy's website.

The international, political and economic landscape is undergoing profound and complex changes. The China- relationship is at a new juncture, facing many opportunities, Xiao said.

My embassy and the Chinese consulates-general in stand ready to work with the Australian federal government, state governments and friends from all walks of life to move forward the China-Australia relationship along the right track to the benefits of our two countries and two peoples," Xiao added.

Xiao's speech Saturday came a day before Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe's hourlong meeting with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles on the sidelines of a regional security summit in Singapore.

Marles described the meeting as a critical first step in repairing bilateral relations. But observers are wary of describing the meeting as a thawing of a diplomatic deep freeze between the countries.

Dennis Richardson, a former head of Defence, Foreign Affairs and the spy agency Australian Security Intelligence Organisation as well as a former Australian ambassador to the United States, noted that both governments took their first opportunity to have ministerial contact since Australia's government changed at elections May 21.

Bilateral relations had soured in the nine years that a conservative coalition had held power.

The fact that they agreed to talk at the very first opportunity is noteworthy, Richardson told Australian Broadcasting Corp on Monday.

I don't think we should get too far down the track on this. We have a long way to go, Richardson added.

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst in defense strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, warned against overstating the significance of the meeting.

They had an hourlong meeting where they exchanged, in a frank and full manner, their respective views. That does not equate to restoring the status quo ante of the Australian relationship as it existed prior to 2015 when the relationship was reasonably good, Davis said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang wrote to congratulate Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese days after his election victory in a gesture seen by some as seeking to reset the relationship.

Albanese responded by urging to show goodwill by lifting a series of official and unofficial trade barriers created in recent years to a range of Australian exports worth billions of dollars including coal, wine, barley, beef and seafood.

Bates Gill, a Macquarie University expert on Chinese foreign policy, suspected would not budge on trade sanctions.

It would have to come at some price of Australia agreeing to Chinese demands. I just don't think the at the moment are going to allow for that, Gill said.

Bilateral relations plumbed new depths early in the pandemic when Australia called for an independent investigation into the origins of and responses to COVID-19.

China's latest ambassador to Australia has set a more conciliatory tone since he arrived in Canberra in January than his predecessor, Cheng Jingye, did.

Cheng warned in 2020 of Chinese trade boycotts if Australia persisted with its call for a COVID-19 inquiry.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
is starting to re-impose Covid-19 restrictions just weeks after major easing in key cities, raising concern the country may once again employ strict lockdowns to control its outbreak.

reported 45 new local cases on Monday afternoon, after having single digit cases on most days last week. City officials said an outbreak linked to a popular bar is proving more difficult to control than previous clusters, in a weekend that saw mass testing and rising infections both in the capital and in .

A total of 37 cases were reported for on Sunday, including five detected in the community. There was one additional community case disclosed on Monday, with the full city results still to come.

Authorities delayed the reopening for most schools in that was planned for Monday, while most districts in suspended dine-in services at restaurants. reported 143 cases nationwide for Sunday as the number of new infections crept up. Daily cases fell below 100 last month for the first time since early March after strict curbs.

The CSI 300 Index of stocks closed 1.2% lower, its biggest loss in almost three weeks.

Outbreaks have re-emerged just days after the two cities eased social curbs that had been in place for months. The quick rebound in cases once restrictions were lifted shows the difficulties of fully stamping out the more contagious virus variants. Only is still engaged in the effort of eliminating transmission.

Its zero-tolerance approach leaves the country stuck in a cycle of disruptive shutdowns and reopenings that hint at lingering economic pain. Most economists predict the country will fail to meet its annual growth target for this year. Lockdowns have already roiled global supply chains and impacted the operations of global giants from Sony Group Corp. to Tesla Inc.

The Chaoyang district in eastern Beijing, where the bar is located, will begin a three-day mass Covid testing drive from Monday. All 65 cases discovered on Saturday were linked to the bar cluster. Shops and restaurants in the Sanlitun area of Chaoyang will be closed for three days through Wednesday.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, the nations top official for pandemic control, urged to control the outbreak as soon as possible, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Sun said the city should create good conditions for the Party congress to be held later this year.

Shanghai lifted its two-month lockdown on June 1, but briefly shut down most of the city Saturday to undertake mass testing. Residents earlier rushed to stock up on basic supplies in fear a positive case in their compound would mean theyre sealed into their homes. Five cases were found in the community as of 5 p.m. Sunday, while some districts will be allowed to resume dine-in services on a trial basis.

Shanghais worst outbreak began in March in part stemming from lapses at a quarantine hotel. A dozen officials from Xuhui district were dismissed from their posts or given warnings after malpractice in implementing quarantine measures led to infections at Hua Ting Hotel in the same month, the Shanghai government said late Saturday. They included a party secretary, the district chief and two district vice governors.

China Business Conditions Worsening in Every Way, Survey Shows.

China is unlikely to shift its Covid-Zero approach any time soon, with President preparing for a Communist Party leadership reshuffle later this year at which hes expected to secure a precedent-breaking third term as president. Chinas leader has called on his government to adhere unwaveringly to its virus strategy, while striking a balance with the needs of the economy and social stability.

Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Sunday praised Chinas virus policy, saying the country is one of the safest in the world with the lowest Covid-19 induced death rate. In a speech to Asias biggest security conference in Singapore, Wei called Chinas Covid response a miracle and said its success is a major contribution to the global fight against the pandemic.
. has had a very tough quarter as it struggles with supply-chain snags, Chief Executive Officer warned in an internal memo, imploring workers to help get the electric-vehicle maker back on track.

This has been a very tough quarter, primarily due to supply chain and production challenges in China, Musk said in an email to employees over the weekend that was seen by Bloomberg. So we need to rally hard to recover!

The companys Shanghai plant, which had slowed production in recent weeks amid severe Covid-19 restrictions, is returning to full strength and its Austin, Texas, facility is ramping up production as well, Musk said. Last week, he noted, Teslas Berlin factory built almost 1,000 cars, while its Fremont, California, plant notched a record day of production.

Musk often sends companywide emails near a quarters end to push staff to sprint to the finish, and Tesla is known to deliver many units in the the final weeks. In a subsequent memo, he told workers to be proud of the great, real products they make.

The emails of praise and encouragement are in stark contrast with internal messages the worlds richest man sent earlier this month warning of layoffs among salaried employees and his super bad feeling about the economy.

In the first three months of the year, the EV maker delivered 310,048 cars -- a quarterly record that came in above analysts forecasts -- as supply chain challenges were offset by accelerating EV adoption. Analysts are forecasting Tesla will deliver about 296,000 units this quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Teslas shares fell 5% at 12:06 p.m. in New York amid a broad market decline. The stock had fallen 34% this year through Fridays close, worse than the decline in the S&P 500.

Tesla makes the 3 and Y models, as well as the older Model S sedan and X crossover in Fremont, California. The Shanghai factory produces the 3 and Y models. Tesla also recently began delivering Model Ys from the newer plant in Berlin and has begun customers deliveries of the Y from Austin too.
Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot said Sunday they have uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against former President for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The committee announced that Trump's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, is among the witnesses scheduled to testify at a hearing Monday that focuses on Trump's effort to spread his lies about a stolen election.

I would like to see the Justice Department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif, a committee member who also leads the House Intelligence Committee.

There are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the election that I don't see evidence the Justice Department is investigating.

The committee held its first public hearing last week, with members laying out their case against Trump to show how the defeated president relentlessly pushed his false claims of a rigged election despite multiple advisers telling him otherwise and how he intensified an extraordinary scheme to overturn Joe Biden's victory.

Additional evidence is set to be released in hearings this week that will demonstrate how Trump and some of his advisers engaged in a massive effort to spread misinformation, pressured the Justice Department to embrace his false claims, and urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject state electors and block the vote certification on Jan 6, 2021.

Stepien, a longtime Trump adviser, has kept a relatively low profile compared with many others in the former president's orbit. He previously served as White House political director and also national field director for Trump's 2016 campaign. Before aligning himself with Trump, Stepien had worked in New Jersey for former Gov Chris Christie, a longtime Trump friend turned critic



Monday's witness list includes BJay Pak, the top federal prosecutor in Atlanta who left his position on Jan 4, 2021, a day after an audio recording was made public in which Trump called him a never-Trumper," and Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor for Fox News.

The committee members on Sunday also reiterated they would present clear evidence that multiple GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa, had sought a pardon from Trump, which would protect him from prosecution. Perry on Friday denied he ever did so, calling the assertion an absolute, shameless, and soulless lie.

We're not going to make accusations or say things without proof or evidence backing it, said Rep Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

Lawmakers indicated that perhaps their most important audience member over the course of the hearings may be Attorney General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should prosecute Trump. They left no doubt as to their own view whether the evidence is sufficient to proceed.

Once the evidence is accumulated by the Justice Department, it needs to make a decision about whether it can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the president's guilt or anyone else's, Schiff said.

But they need to be investigated if there's credible evidence, which I think there is.

Rep Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said he doesn't intend to browbeat Garland but noted the committee has already laid out in legal pleadings criminal statutes they believe Trump violated.

I think that he knows, his staff knows, the U.S. attorneys know, what's at stake here, Raskin said.

They know the importance of it, but I think they are rightfully paying close attention to precedent in history as well, as the facts of this case.

Garland has not specified how he might proceed, which would be unprecedented and may be complicated in a political election season in which Trump has openly flirted with the idea of running for president again.

No president or ex-president has ever been indicted.

Richard Nixon resigned from office in 1974 as he faced an impeachment and a likely grand jury indictment on charges of bribery, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. President Gerald Ford later pardoned his predecessor before any criminal charges related to Watergate could be filed.

Legal experts have said a Justice Department prosecution of Trump over the riot could set an uneasy precedent in which an administration of one party could more routinely go after the former president of another.

"We will follow the facts wherever they lead, Garland said in his speech at Harvard University's commencement ceremony last month.

A federal judge in California said in a March ruling in a civil case that Trump more likely than not committed federal crimes in seeking to obstruct the congressional count of the Electoral College ballots on Jan 6, 2021. The judge cited two statutes: obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

The assault on the Capitol left more than 100 police officers injured, many beaten and bloodied, as the crowd of Trump supporters, some armed with pipes, bats and bear spray, charged into the building. At least nine people who were there died during or after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police.

Schiff appeared on ABC's This Week, Raskin spoke on CNN's State of the Union," and Kinzinger was on CBS's Face the Nation.
parent Alphabet has offered to let rival ad intermediaries place ads on to address a crucial part of an EU antitrust investigation that could pave the way for it to settle the case without a fine, people familiar with the matter said.

The opened a probe last year to examine whether the world's largest provider of search and video was giving itself an unfair advantage in digital advertising by restricting rivals' and advertisers' access to user data.

The EU competition watchdog singled out Google's requirement that advertisers use its Ad Manager to display ads on and potential restrictions on the way in which rivals serve ads on .

It is also looking into Google's requirement that advertisers use its services Display & Video 360 and Ads to buy YouTube ads. YouTube posted $6.9 billion in sales in the first quarter of this year.

The Commission and Google, which has previously said publishers and advertisers often use multiple technologies and platforms to sell ads, declined to comment.

has been discussing remedies with the Commission since last year in a bid to avert a fine that could reach 10% of its global turnover, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters last year.

The company will however need to offer more than just the YouTube remedy to address other concerns in order to get a deal, the people said, adding that talks seemed to be on the right track.

The British competition agency CMA is also investigating Google's ad practices.

Last year, Google generated $147 billion in revenue from online ads, more than any other company in the world, with ads including search, YouTube and Gmail accounting for the bulk of its overall sales and profit.

The company's display or network business, in which other media use Google technology to sell ads on their website and apps, accounted for about 16% of its revenue.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Jan Harvey and David Evans)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former prime minister on Sunday challenged the incumbent coalition government of to win the next elections in Pakistan.

Khan said that it was "impossible for the incumbent coalition government to win the next election," reported Geo News.

He said that it would also be very difficult for the current government to run an electioneering campaign as PTI is working in full swing for the next polls.

Speaking to a private TV news channel, Khan also talked about his ill-fated "Azadi March" held on May 25, which was called off after a strong curb down by the government.

Khan said that the government registered first information reports (FIRs) against members of the PTI following the party's "Azadi March" to Islamabad last month so that it could "throw anyone it wanted behind bars," reported Geo News.

The former prime minister also criticized the Shahbaz Sharif-led government for passing the National Accountability (Amendment) Bill, 2022 on June 9, which had previously been returned by President Arif Alvi.

Commenting on the development, Khan said that the PTI will "approach the Supreme Court soon".

Regarding the overall political situation of the country, the PTI chairman said that the entire nation was "looking towards the institutions to intervene and make things right," reported Dawn.

Answering a question about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Khan said that the projects "had to be halted because of the coronavirus pandemic."

Meanwhile, China has asked Pakistan's Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa to stop attacks on its nationals who are working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor projects in the Balochistan region.

The Chinese demand came in a meeting of senior officials of Pakistan and China who discussed their perspectives on the and regional security situations, reported Frontier Post.

The developments come after the Islamabad Police recently decided to set up a foreign security cell at the Central Police Office (CPO) with requisite staff and logistics amid reports of Chinese nationals continuously being targeted in Pakistan.

In response to another question regarding Pakistan's relations with the US during PTI's tenure, Khan said that he enjoyed cordial ties with former US President Donald Trump, adding that Joe Biden's administration was "stuck in dealing with matters related to Afghanistan," reported Geo News.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On the 155th anniversary of Canadian Confederation  the case against current-day Canada (Part One) By Mark Wegierski

web posted June 13, 2022 Examining the arrival of soft-totalitarianism on the 155th anniversary of Canadian Confederation The 155th anniversary of Canadian Confederation is being celebrated in 2022 (July 1). Nevertheless, it is clear that Canada today is diametrically different from what it was in 1967 (the Centennial), let alone 1867. Canada was founded in 1867 as a union of two, long-pre-existent, historical nations  English (British) Canada, and French Canada (centred mostly in Quebec). The Aboriginal peoples were included insofar as they had been traditionally considered to be under the special protection of the Crown. Until 1896, Canada was dominated by an alliance of English Canadian Conservatives and Quebec Bleus. After 1896, however, federal governments came preponderantly to be formed by the Liberal Party. The success of the post-1896 Liberal Party was predicated on combining virtually every federal parliamentary seat from Quebec, with a minority of seats from English Canada. Despite a typically poor showing in English Canada, the large number of Quebec seats meant that it was a formula for power which almost always worked. Until 1963, perennial Liberal rule did not have radical social implications, as all the main parties shared in a traditionalist-centrist social consensus. In an effort to appeal to a broader number of Canadians, the Conservatives had changed their name in 1942 to Progressive Conservative but the party remained home to many different conservative factions. The third main party was the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), which, although social democratic in economics, was quite socially conservative. They changed their name to New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961 and have successively become ever more politically correct. A fourth party that had a sporadic presence in the federal House of Commons as well as in provincial politics was Social Credit, a smaller, right-wing populist party that arose in the 1930s. They were loosely based on the ideas of C. H. Douglas, who criticized the big banks. A fifth party that was mostly based in Western Canada, were the Progressives. In the 1921 federal election, they won the second largest number of seats in the House of Commons, but they quickly faded thereafter. The crucial 1963 election pitted the staunch Tory, John Diefenbaker (who had held the post of Prime Minister since 1957) against the Liberal Lester B. Pearson, a career diplomat, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in establishing United Nations peacekeeping. Diefenbaker, originally a small-town Prairie lawyer who frequently championed the underdog, had won a minority government in 1957 and, with the support of Quebec, one of the historically largest majorities in the federal Parliament in 1958. (When Francophones tire of the Liberals, Quebec sometimes throws its support en masse to the bleus.) In the 1962 federal election, the P.C.s were reduced to a minority government (a plurality of seats in the House of Commons). In 1963, Lester B. Pearson, supported by the electioneering and pollster expertise of the U.S. managerialist classes, who resented Diefenbakers refusal to deploy U.S. nuclear weapons on Canadian soil, swept into power. (These events are aptly described by Canadian traditionalist philosopher George Parkin Grant in his Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (1965).) In 1965, Pearson engineered the change of Canadas flag from the Red Ensign (a flag which had, like Australias today, the Union Jack in the upper-left corner), to the current Maple Leaf flag. The flag was seen by some critics as a new Liberal Party banner. Although the move was not extensively debated at the time, many political theorists have considered a change of a countrys flag as a marker of regime change. Diefenbaker lost the leadership of the P.C. party by 1967, and was replaced by the stolid Robert Stanfield, a former Premier of Nova Scotia. Although a decent and likeable man, Stanfield generated no excitement. All the charismatic politicians were Liberals, a political reality that would haunt the P.C.s for years. Pearson was followed in the 1968 federal election by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Trudeau was a Quebec-born, flashy, personally very wealthy, perfectly bilingual (French and English), socially liberal, left-wing intellectual and lawyer, who seduced the country in the 1968 federal election, a phenomenon then called Trudeaumania. He was sometimes called the philosopher-king or the Northern Magus. However, in subsequent elections, Trudeau never received a majority of seats in English-speaking Canada, but always won nearly every seat in Quebec. Nevertheless, he remained in power from 1968-1984 (except for nine months in 1979-1980). In the 1972 federal election, the Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield won only two seats less than Pierre Trudeau. However, between 1972-1974, the Liberals were supported by the New Democratic Party in the House of Commons (led by David Lewis, a longtime social democratic activist who had among other achievements, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, remembered for his pithy phrase from the 1972 campaign, corporate welfare bums). In 1974, the Liberal government was defeated in a non-confidence motion in the House of Commons, but the Liberals were able to win a majority in the 1974 federal election. In the 1976 national leadership convention of the Progressive Conservative party, Joe Clark was chosen as leader. In retrospect, it could be argued that there were better choices available than Joe Clark, a perennial bungler. Although Joe Clark was from Western Canada, he was frequently seen by Western Canadians, as a collaborator with Canadas Eastern elites. Moreover, he had never held a job outside his parents small business, or the P.C. party. In 1979, Joe Clark won a Progressive Conservative minority government (a plurality of seats in the House of Commons). However, his time in office proved ineffectual, and the government was defeated in the House of Commons in a non-confidence motion. Trudeau, who had earlier claimed that he wanted to retire, came roaring back, and handily won the 1980 federal election. Over his sixteen years in power, Trudeau inaugurated massive, transformational change that continues to this day  official bilingualism (promotion of French); official multiculturalism; mass, dissimilar immigration; high deficits; official feminism; and multifarious implementations of social liberalism. In 1982, Trudeau brought the Charter of Rights and Freedoms into the Canadian constitutional structure  which essentially enshrined virtually his entire agenda as the highest law of the land. The enactment of the Charter was seen by both its supporters and opponents, as a virtual coup detat. The Charter was quickly backed up by an activist judiciary and a Canadian Supreme Court where it was difficult to find even one identifiable conservative. It is hard to think of an individual who has had as great an impact on his or her society as much as Pierre Trudeau had on Canada. Perhaps the greatest change inaugurated by Trudeau was to alter Canadian political culture to hold the view that liberal progress was an inevitable and ultimately irresistible force for good. This mindset survives to this day, and conditions all of Canadian politics, left and right. In 1983, Brian Mulroney (a Quebec-born, fluently bilingual, corporate lawyer and corporate executive) challenged Joe Clarks leadership of the P.C. party, spearheading the leadership review vote at the P.C. national convention, which forced Clark to call a national leadership convention. As seen on television at that time, there was an amazing dynamic in this convention, where the delegates chose the leader. The spirited and more genuinely conservative Newfoundlander John Crosbie might have won the convention, if Joe Clark had released his delegates, but Clark clung on to the bitter end, thinking that he might yet win the leadership, thus ensuring the convention win by Brian Mulroney. By a few well-chosen pronouncements in 1983-1984, Mulroney let the aura of right-winger float down on him, which he thought could assist him in the upcoming federal election. In 1984, with the support of a Quebec once again tired of the Liberals, Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney won one of the largest majorities in Canadian history, against John Turner, the new Liberal leader, a corporate lawyer who had been Finance Minister in an earlier Trudeau government. However, Mulroney governed with unusual timidity, and was himself mostly a small-l liberal viscerally. Indeed, he brutally kept down small-c conservative tendencies within the P.C. party. The term small-c conservative refers to so-called ideological conservatives. Mulroney once snidely said that you could fit all the ideological conservatives in Canada into a telephone booth. Indeed, they were widely derided as cashew-conservatives, i.e., right-wing nuts. Mulroney won the 1988 election by making it a referendum on Free Trade with the U.S. Ironically, Free Trade with the U.S. had in Canadian history been opposed by Conservatives (who looked to Britain) and supported by the Liberals. John Turner, the leader of the federal Liberal Party in 1988, was probably more of a traditionalist conservative than Mulroney. Indeed, Mulroney had raised immigration levels to a quarter-million persons a year, whereas they had fallen to 54,000 in Trudeaus last year in office. They have basically remained at a quarter-million persons a year, for decades. However, in our day, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has raised the numbers to over 400,000 in the next three years. The immigration rate for decades was about twice as large per capita as that of the United States  now it is at least three times as large, per capita. Also, Mulroney did nothing when the vestigial restrictions on abortion were struck down by the Canadian Supreme Court in 1988. To be continued. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. Home
The German government is preparing to lend billions to rescue a former arm of PJSC now under the control of the countrys energy regulator, according to people familiar with the matter.



A bailout for Germania GmbH could come as early as this week, with state-owned bank KfW Group expected to issue a loan in the range of 5 billion euros ($5.2 billion) to 10 billion euros, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Talks are still ongoing and plans could change, the people said.

The money would help stabilize the companys finances and ensure security of supply after Russia curbed shipments to Germania in retaliation for seizing the company and its subsidiaries earlier this year. The move forced the unit -- which had already been shunned by some clients -- to buy in the spot market some of the energy it supplies its customers, paying higher prices.

Germanys energy regulator, Bundesnetzagentur, said in a statement that it doesnt comment on speculation and that all those involved with Gazprom Germania are working intensively to keep business operations going. The finance ministry didnt return a request for comment, while a spokeswoman for the economy ministry declined to comment.

Gazprom Germania owns several gas storage sites in Germany, including the countrys biggest facility. It also owns Wingas GmbH, which supplies major industrial users in the country. The company has a retail business that provided a fifth of the UKs commercial gas in 2020, a trading arm in London and a liquefied natural gas business, putting it in a central position in much of Europes energy markets.

is grappling with what to do with subsidiaries of Russian in the country, many of which hold assets crucial for security of supply and the German economy. The government is looking at different options ranging from trusteeship -- for which it opted in the case of Gazprom Germania -- to taking control of the energy .

In April, the ruling coalition presented a set of measures that would allow Berlin to put energy firms under state control. Chancellor Olaf Scholzs administration also set up financing tools to be able to take stakes in case theres a threat to supplies by injecting capital directly to bail out and providing KfW loans.

Gazprom Germanias trusteeship is set to end on Sept. 30, and there are still no concrete plans for what happens after that. Gazprom Marketing & Trading, the London-based trading arm, has already said it doesnt expect to return to Russian ownership.
Russian forces tightened their grip on the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk and cut off the last routes for evacuating citizens, a Ukrainian official said on Monday - a scene that echoed Moscow's assault on Mariupol last month.

Amid heavy Russian bombardment, regional governor Sergei Gaidai said on social media that all bridges out of the city had been destroyed, making it impossible to bring in humanitarian cargoes or evacuate citizens.

He said some "access" remained and part of the city was still under Ukrainian control.

"They have the ability to send the wounded to hospitals, so there is still access," he told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Ukrainian service. "It's hard to deliver weapons or reserves. Difficult, but not impossible." Ukraine has issued increasingly urgent calls for more Western heavy weapons to help defend Sievierodonetsk, which Kyiv says could hold the key to the battle for the eastern Donbas region and the course of the war, now in its fourth month.

"The battles are so fierce that fighting for not just a street but for a single high-rise building can last for days," Gaidai said earlier. He is governor of the Luhansk region that includes Sievierodonetsk.

Russian artillery fire pummelled the Azot chemical plant, where hundred of civilians were sheltering, he said.

"About 500 civilians remain on the grounds of the Azot plant in Sievierodonetsk, 40 of them are children. Sometimes the military manages to evacuate someone," he said.

'SURRENDER OR DIE'

Russia's RIA news agency quoted a pro-Moscow separatist spokesperson, Eduard Basurin, as saying Ukrainian troops were effectively blockaded in Sievierodonetsk and should surrender or die.

Ukraine's account of civilians trapped in an industrial plant echoed the fall of Mariupol last month, where hundreds of civilians and badly wounded Ukrainian soldiers were trapped for weeks in the Azovstal steelworks.

has denied targeting civilians in what it calls a "special operation" to restore Russian security and "denazify" its neighbour. Ukraine and its Western allies call this a baseless pretext for an invasion which has killed thousands of civilians and raised fears of wider conflict in Europe.

More than 5 million people have fled the assault and millions more are threatened by a global energy and food crisis due to disrupted gas, oil and grain supplies from and Ukraine. Western nations are divided over how best to end it.

Gaidai said a six-year-old child was among those killed in the latest shelling of Lysychansk.

Officials in the Russian-backed separatist-controlled Donetsk region said at least three people, including a child, were killed and 18 were wounded by Ukrainian shelling that hit a market in Donetsk city.

The Donetsk News Agency showed pictures of burning stalls at the central Maisky market and several bodies on the ground. The news agency said 155-mm calibre NATO-standard artillery munitions hit parts of the region on Monday.

Reuters could not independently verify either report.

BURNING CROPS

After failing to take the capital Kyiv following the Feb. 24 invasion, Moscow focused on expanding control in the Donbas, which comprise Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk and where pro-Russian separatists have held territory since 2014, while also trying to capture more of Ukraine's Black Sea coast.

Along the front line in the Donbas, the fighting poses a new threat as the weather warms, with shelling and rocket fire setting fields on fire and destroying ripening crops.

Lyuba, a resident in the Ukrainian-held pocket of the Donbas near the front, watched a fire blazing along the fields but said she was not planning to leave. "Where can I go? Who is waiting for me there?" she said. "It's scary. But it is what it is." Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Mykhailo

Podolyak listed equipment he said was needed for heavy weapons parity, including 1,000 howitzers, 500 tanks and 1,000 drones.

"We are waiting for a decision," he said, adding that Western defence ministers would meet on Wednesday in Brussels.

issued the latest of several recent reports saying it had destroyed U.S. and European arms and equipment, hoping to send the message that delivering more would be futile.

The defence ministry said high-precision air-based missiles had struck near the railway station in Udachne northwest of Donetsk, hitting equipment that had been delivered to Ukrainian forces. There was no immediate word from the Ukrainian side.

Moscow has criticised the United States and other nations for sending Ukraine weapons, threatening to strike new targets if the West supplied long-range missiles.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kremlin-installed officials in occupied southern celebrated Day on Sunday and began issuing Russian passports to residents in one city who requested them, as Moscow sought to solidify its rule over captured parts of the country.

At one of the central squares in the city of Kherson, Russian bands played a concert to celebrate Day, the holiday that marks Russia's emergence as a sovereign state after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti.

In the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow-installed officials raised a Russian flag in Melitopol's city center.

Ukrainian media reported that few, if any, local residents attended the Day festivities in the two cities.

Russia Day was also celebrated in other occupied parts of Ukraine, including the ravaged southern port of Mariupol, where a new city sign painted in the colors of the Russian flag was unveiled on the outskirts and Russian flags were flown on a highway leading into the city.

Also, the Russia-aligned administration in Melitopol started handing out Russian passports to those who applied for Russian citizenship. RIA Novosti posted video of a Moscow-backed official congratulating new Russian citizens and telling them: Russia will not go anywhere. We are here for good.

President Vladimir Putin earlier this year issued a decree fast-tracking Russian citizenship for residents of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. In captured cities in the south and east, Moscow has also introduced the ruble as official currency, aired Russian news broadcasts and taken steps to introduce a Russian school curriculum.

The Kremlin's administrators in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions have voiced plans to incorporate the areas into Russia, despite protests and signs of an insurgency among local residents.

Russian-installed officials Sunday in Melitopol reported an explosion in a garbage bin near the city's police headquarters and said two residents were injured.

Another blast was reported at an electrical substation in the city of Berdyansk, which is also under Russian control. The Kremlin-backed administration pronounced it a terrorist attack, and officials said electricity was shut down in parts of the city.

On the battlefield, Russia said it is used missiles to destroy a large depot in western that contained anti-tank and air-defense weapons supplied to Kyiv by the US and European countries. It said the attack took place near the city of Chortkiv in the Ternopil region.

Ternopil Gov Volodymyr Trush said missile strikes Saturday evening on Chortkiv wounded 22 people, including seven women and a 12-year-old boy. Trush said four Russian missiles damaged a military installation and four residential buildings.

Also, heavy fighting continued for control of Sievierodonetsk, an eastern city in Luhansk province with a prewar population of 100,000 that has emerged as central to Russia's campaign to capture the Donbas, Ukraine's industrial heartland.

Luhansk Gov Serhii Haidai said on the Telegram messaging app that Russian forces were shelling a Sievierodonetsk chemical plant where up to 500 civilians, 40 of them children, were holed up.

An official with the pro-Moscow, self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, Rodion Miroshnik, said 300 to 400 Ukrainian troops also remained inside the plant. He said that efforts were underway to evacuate the civilians but that the troops will be allowed out only if they surrender.

Leonid Pasechnik, head of the Luhansk People's Republic, said the Ukrainians making their stand in Sievierodonetsk should save themselves the trouble.

If I were them, I would already make a decision" to surrender, he said.

We will achieve our goal in any case.

(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.)
Pakistan's political parties, the incumbent Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government and the ousted Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government led by on Sunday blamed each other for the economic mess in the country.

Two days after the budget was formally presented in the National Assembly, the PML-N and the PTI continued to butt heads over each other's economic performance and the state of Pakistan's external debt, reported Dawn.

Earlier today, Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb took to Twitter to share a video clip of a news package featuring former finance minister Shaukat Tarin.

The clip was of a press conference Tarin held yesterday, in which he had said, "They (government) say ever since was formed they (PTI) have raised the debt by 80 per cent. It did not increase by 80 per cent in the (four) years (of the PTI rule). It grew by 76 per cent."

Referring to those remarks, Aurangzeb said, "At last, Shaukat Tarin has admitted that took out loans worth Rs 20 thousand billion during his four-year tenure, which is 76 per cent of the loans taken out in Pakistan's history." She added that more such "admissions" would follow, reported Dawn.

Finance Minister Miftah Ismail then said, "Total public debt under PTI went from Rs 24,953 billion to Rs 44,366 billion, an increase of 78 pc. And total debt plus liabilities went from Rs 29,879 billion to Rs 53,544 billion, an increase of 79 pc. The PTI has added 79 pc in 3.75 years of all debt + liabilities added in the previous 71 years."

PTI's Fawad Chaudhry, meanwhile, said their government took out loans of USD 52 billion of which USD 38 billion was to pay back the loans taken out by the previous governments. "If you do not like the agreements made with the Monetary Fund (IMF), then why does the poor government go to the board?" he asked.

Responding to Aurangzeb, Chaudhry said she was bound to make such uninformed remarks when she spent all her time "playing Candy Crush" -- a mobile phone game. Yesterday, he claimed the government was not serious because Aurangzeb was "playing video games" during the post-budget press conference, reported Dawn.

Meanwhile, Tarin said that the PTI's economic performance over the last two years was the best in 30 years. "Stop deceiving people, they know the truth. Your performance is evident in the last eight weeks, pathetic," he said.

In a later tweet, Tarin claimed that while PTI's debt increased by 76 per cent "despite Covid when tax burdens increased the world over", the PML-N increased debt by 79 per cent during their time.

The economic survey of Pakistan revealed that total external debt had touched USD 88.8 billion (Rs 16.29 trillion) by the end of March 2022, having increased by around USD 2.3 billion over the first nine months of the outgoing fiscal year.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister said that the budget represented "significant improvement" in several ways, reported Dawn.

"It has provided more educational opportunities for our youth, particularly from Balochistan and targeted subsidies for financially weaker people. More importantly, it has taxed non-productive assets of the rich," he said.

PTI Chairman Imran Khan, on the other hand, was still not convinced. "Given the special needs of tribal districts, my government had increased their funding by three times to Rs 131 billion. The imported government has budgeted only Rs 110 billion, reduced development funding, zero allocation for displaced persons and zero increase in the current budget. Shows incompetence and ill-intent of the government of crooks," 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.)
Police have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide during Russia's war, and authorities in the Kyiv region near Bucha on Monday reported discovering the bodies of several victims whose hands were tied behind their backs.

Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured, said Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police.

The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, the authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people. One site reporters saw Monday was a mass grave in a forest near Bucha, where the horrors of war shocked the world after a regional Russian withdrawal earlier in the war.

Reporters on Monday saw a mass grave just behind a trench dug out for a military vehicle.

The bodies of seven civilians were retrieved from the mass grave. Two of the bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the knees and the head, Nebytov.

Nationwide, police chief Igor Klimenko told the Interfax- news agency on Monday that criminal investigations into the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians included some found in mass graves. He said the mass killings of people resulted from snipers firing from tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Bodies were found lying on streets and in their homes, as well as in mass graves. He didn't specify how many of the more than 12,000 were civilian and military.

Complete information about the number of bodies in mass graves or elsewhere isn't known, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the American Jewish Committee on Sunday. He cited the killings of two children who died with their parents in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol in a Russian bombing.

Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, asked:



Why is this happening in 2022? This is not the 1940s.

(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 earned $98bn from fossil exports during the first 100 days of its war in Ukraine, with the being the top importer, according to new research.

The report was published on Monday the independent, Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) came as Russian forces continued making slow but steady progress in their campaign to fully capture eastern Ukraines Donbas region, reported media organisaton Agence France-Presse.

According to the report, the EU took 61 per cent of Russia's fossil exports during the war's first 100 days, worth about 57 billion euros.

The top importers were China at 12.6 billion euros, Germany at 12.1 billion euros and Italy at 7.8 billion euros.

The majority of Russia's fossil revenues come from the sale of crude oil at 46 billion euros, followed by pipeline gas, oil products, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal.

Russias relentless shelling of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv with cluster munitions and scatterable land mines amounts to a war crime that indiscriminately killed hundreds of civilians, Amnesty said on Monday. Ukraine has said 606 civilians were killed there and 600,000 evacuated.

Amnesty said that it had found during a 14-day investigation in April and early May evidence that had used cluster munitions and scatterable mines in Kharkiv.

Day after day, is pounding the Donbas region of Ukraine with relentless artillery and air raids, making slow but steady progress to seize the industrial heartland of its neighbour. With the conflict now in its fourth month, its a high-stakes campaign that could dictate the course of the entire war.

If Russia prevails in the battle of Donbas, it will mean that Ukraine loses not only land but perhaps the bulk of its most capable military forces, opening the way for Moscow to grab more territory and dictate its terms to Kyiv. A Russian failure could lay the grounds for a Ukrainian counteroffensive  and possibly lead to political upheaval for the .
Ukrainian President said that Russia may lose more than 40,000 soldiers by the end of June.

In a video address on Sunday, the President said: "The Russian army is trying to deploy reserve troops in Donbas. But what reserves can they speak of right now?

"It seems that they will throw poorly trained conscripts into the battle, as well as those who had been recruited via covert mobilisation efforts. Russian generals consider their people simply as cannon fodder, which they need to ensure they outnumber us in military personnel, in military equipment.

"But this only adds up to one thing: Russian losses in June might exceed 40,000 military personnel. They have not lost as many soldiers in any of the wars in many decades."

Zelenksy went on to say that currently the most fierce battles between the two warring nations are taking place in Sievierodonetsk, a city in the separatist Luhansk region in Donbas, reports Ukrayinska Pravda.

"Ukrainian Defence Forces are fighting for every inch of Ukrainian land," he said, adding that Russian forces were also advancing on Lysychansk, Bakhmut and Sloviansk.

While Lysychansk is in Luhansk, both Bakhmut and Sloviansk are in Donestsk, also a part of Donbas.

Meanwhile, the Luhansk region's military administration said that Russian forces have been relentlessly firing on Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk over the course of Sunday.

A six year-old child was killed as a result of Russian shelling, it said, adding that Russian forces were trying to press past the Ukrainian defence line by exerting fierce artillery fire.

(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.)
South Africa is more than ready to engage with the India Business Forum (IBF) and relevant local ministries to further extend the bilateral cooperation, a senior minister said on Sunday, lauding Indian companies for supporting the country's growth trajectory.

South Africa has proposed a joint task team between the IBF and relevant local ministries to further extend the cooperation that already exists between the two countries.

Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Blade Nzimande, made the call in his address at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the IBF, an association of over 100 Indian companies operating in South Africa.

I must upfront indicate that as a Minister and both my departments, we are more than ready to engage with this forum further for mutual benefit, Nzimande said.

We propose the establishment of a Joint Task Team to work on the details of our future partnership, he added.

The minister said the IBF meeting was taking place at the time when the South African government and businesses needed to foster strong partnerships in order to grow the economy and create jobs.

Allow me to take this opportunity to thank the forum and Indian companies who since 1996 have invested more than 100 billion into the South African economy across the pharmaceutical, information technology and automotive industries, he said.

As the South African government, we are gratified by your commitment to support our country in its development trajectory and we are looking forward to more partnerships with you going forward, he said.

I wish to salute the seminal role played by India in opposition to, and isolation of, the apartheid state since as far back as the 1960s. The distinguished role of India in this regard was recognised by former State President Nelson Mandela, Nzimande said.

The minister asked the Indian companies to consider placing some of the thousands of young people who have graduated from colleges in learnership positions.

Nzimande highlighted a wide range of opportunities for the IBF to share some of the skills and capabilities, particularly in ICT and other smart manufacturing technologies to support the digital transformation of the manufacturing sector in the country's re-industrialisation efforts.

Indian businesses could enter into a co-funding of these programmes in order to ensure massive uptake of South African youth. Opportunities also exist to invest in South Africa's reindustrialisation efforts by helping in building South Africa's local manufacturing capabilities, he said.

Nzimande also listed a wide range of areas in which India and South Africa were already achieving joint success, including a strategic partnership for the success of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project, hosted in South Africa.

Indian scientists, notably from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, are making crucial contributions to software development systems supporting the SKA. This includes close cooperation with the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, he said.

The SKA project is a driver for accelerated technology development in domains such as supercomputing and big data, and this offers exciting opportunities for the South African and Indian enterprises to cooperate on the most promising technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, he said.

In his closing address, IBF President Praveer Tripathi said that after doubling its membership in Johannesburg, there were plans now to take the organsiation to the other provinces of South Africa as well and after that to other countries in the Southern African Development Community countries.

Tripathi made a plea to the Indian companies in South Africa to share their success stories via the IBF website, which is in the process of being revamped.

Earlier, Tripathi said that since its formation in 2018, the organisation had ably demonstrated the resilience of the Indian companies in South Africa in dealing with the social and economic inequities, unemployment, the Covid 19 pandemic and various other challenges.

The IBF has been tirelessly and enthusiastically doing its part in building Brand India and Brand South Africa in promoting and uniting the business investments between both the countries, he said.

Going forward, we look forward to vibrant economic cooperation between India and South Africa by making the Forum an essential first-stop shop for Indian businesses looking to invest in South Africa as well as South African businesses looking to invest in India, Tripathi 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.)
Highlighting the on nationals in Pakistan, on Sunday asked Pakistan's Army Chief to stop on its nationals who are working on the China- Economic Corridor projects in the Balochistan region.

The demand came in a meeting of senior officials of and China who discussed their perspectives on the and regional security situations, reported Frontier Post.

The developments come after the Islamabad Police recently decided to set up a foreign security cell at the Central Police Office (CPO) with requisite staff and logistics amid reports of nationals continuously being targeted in .

It was decided to apply all standard operating procedures to non-China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) security projects on the pattern of CPEC security, reported The News .

Similarly, the Special Branch, Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) and Security Division will audit the security arrangements periodically.

Pakistan's Army Chief General Bajwa headed the Pakistani delegation in an "Apex meeting" with the Chinese military in China. Both sides pledged to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism.

on Chinese nationals by Baloch groups were also discussed in the meeting. Geopolitical issues in Pakistan have propped up, as the Baloch insurgency poses a constant threat to peace and stability.

The Baloch insurgents are regularly targeting CPEC infrastructure projects, such as gas pipelines and electricity towers, because they consider China as an imperialist power that, along with the Pakistan government, wishes to plunder Balochistan's natural resources.

"Both sides discussed their perspectives on the and regional security situation, and expressed satisfaction on defence cooperation between the two countries," Inter-Services Public Relation said in a press release.

A senior-level tri-service military delegation of Pakistan visited China from June 9 to 12 and held wide-ranging discussions with senior officials the of Chinese military and other government departments.

"Apex Meeting was held on 12 June wherein Pakistani side was headed by Chief of Army Staff (COAS), while the Chinese side was led by General Zhang Youxia Vice Chairman Central Military Commission of China," according to the 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.)
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday he was glad that the Swedish government has confirmed its readiness to address Turkey's concerns as part of assuming the obligations of future NATO membership.

After decades of military non-alignment, Russia's war in Ukraine pushed Finland and to apply to join NATO in May.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, accuses the Nordic nations of supporting Kurdish militants deemed by to be terrorists and has vetoed their entry into the alliance until they change their policies.

is taking the Turkish concerns very seriously" and "not at least their security concerns when it comes to the fight against terrorism, said Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and added that her ambition is that we should have these matters resolved.

Stoltenberg said has already started to change its counter-terrorism legislation and that the Scandinavian country will ensure that the legal framework for arms exports will reflect their future status as a NATO member with new commitments to allies.

These are two important steps to address the concerns that has raised, he said.

The aim is to solve those issues as soon as possible, to be able to welcome Finland and Sweden as full members as soon as possible, he said.

Stoltenberg declined to say whether the matter should be resolved before the NATO summit in Madrid on June 28 or before the Swedish Parliament election on Sept. 11.

Sweden and Finland have been invited to attend the meeting in Spain.

After Monday's talks, Stoltenberg and Andersson went for a boat ride in the lake next to a Swedish government manor southwest of Stockholm.

On Sunday, Stoltenberg met with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in Finland, saying that has legitimate concerns over terrorism and other issues that need to be taken seriously.

(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 strange contradiction of criticizing candidates for having no experience while criticizing others for having too much By Rachel Alexander

web posted June 13, 2022 On the campaign trail, youll hear candidates criticized for being in office too long; theyve lost the fire in their belly, but youll also hear candidates criticized for running for a significant office like governor or Congress who have zero experience. Well, which is it? The fact both are paraded around makes something suspect. Lets look at history. Ronald Reagan served as governor of California for eight years, then president for eight years. Would we have said he was a swamp monster after his first term as president? Of course not. Donald Trump never served in any office prior to running for president  but now many of us think hes right up there with Reagan as one of the best presidents ever. Hardly anyone talked about his inexperience, and they certainly dont now. The problem is there are some swamp monsters who need to go, but it doesnt include everyone who has been in office a long time. Some are able to survive the pressures of schmoozing lobbyists and the cocktail circuit. And not all candidates new to office are clueless; some are extremely bright and savvy, worked in an area that gave them extensive political knowledge, and have other types of qualifications. The candidate who is attacking someone for being in office too long may very likely be in that exact same position himself down the road, and hes not going to bring that up as a problem about himself. Two excellent conservative candidates in Arizona have come under those criticisms. One is Kari Lake, a former longtime Phoenix news anchor who is running for governor. But she immediately became the frontrunner in the race and remains so, outpolling all of her Republican primary opponents combined (including former Congressman Matt Salmon) for most of the race, in large part due to how savvy she is. As a newscaster, she became very familiar with politics, running a number one show for over two decades. She didnt just walk out of high school and file to run. On the other side, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is running for U.S. Senate, but a whisper campaign is being spread that he doesnt have the fire in his belly, and hes attacked for being part of the longtime swamp. However, hes merely been in office for a little over seven years, hardly a lifer. People who know him well refer to him as the Ron DeSantis of Arizona, but since one of his opponents, Blake Masters , has an out-of-state Silicon Valley billionaire, Peter Thiel, behind him, and the other main candidate is also a billionaire, they have portrayed him as part of the problem. Hes reportedly sued the Biden administration more times than any other AG, but doesnt get credit for it. These arent the only lame criticisms that get thrown around at candidates. RINOs attack Lake for being a Democrat in the past. That criticism was also launched at Reagan and Trump. And Lakes involvement as a Democrat appeared to be pretty minimal, a couple of relatively small donations in the mid 2010s. Another criticism launched at candidates is any past history working for government. It doesnt matter if its only been a few years of their career, and that position was a respectable job, such as a prosecutor, opponents will throw bombs. Brnovich worked as a prosecutor for much of his career  but he also worked as director of Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute. A criticism that resonates with people emotionally is slamming candidates over wealth. Its easy to attack them if youve never had money, theres a natural resentment. Theyre slammed for not understanding the problems that regular Americans deal with, for being born with a silver spoon in their mouths. But many of them came from poor upbringings and worked their way to the top  the real American dream  why should they be punished for that? And what if the choice came down to a raving, broke, leftist social worker versus a conservative who happened to be born into money? Plenty of Hollywood celebrities have come out and said they wished they had never been born into money, its caused so many problems for them. Many of the Founding Fathers came from privileged backgrounds. One article refers to them as Americas First One Percent. Thomas Jefferson would have been considered a billionaire by todays standards. George Washingtons father was a justice of the county court and the family owned hundreds of acres of land. James Madisons father inherited and married into substantial wealth. John Adams went to Harvard at age 15. Alexander Hamilton attended Columbia University. Benjamin Franklin was wealthy enough to retire at age 42. Like it or not, wealth is still extremely important in politics. The most hardworking, charismatic candidates find they often cant compete against someone with millions. In Ohio, a lawsuit has been filed over Trumps endorsement of J.D. Vance, accusing Thiel of illegally coordinating with Vances campaign to get Trumps endorsement. Many conservatives were irate when Trump endorsed Vance over the solid conservative Josh Mandel. So it came as no surprise when Trump endorsed Thiels other candidate Masters earlier this month over Brnovich. However, the candidates Trump endorses dont always win; while hes become far more selective in who he endorses, so far this year seven of his endorsed candidates in primaries have lost. And finally, criticisms about celebrities running for office are similarly invalid to those attacking the wealthy. I predicted several years ago that wed never get another Republican elected president unless a celebrity came along  and then came Trump. Similarly, Lakes meteoric rise in the Arizona gubernatorial race is in part due to her name recognition as a local celebrity in the greater Phoenix area. And shes proven to have rock solid conservative values. So the next time someone criticizes a candidate for one of these traits, think about whether its really valid, or whether its being used to smear a real conservative. Rachel Alexander and her brother Andrew are co-Editors of Intellectual Conservative . She has been published in the American Spectator, Townhall.com, Fox News, NewsMax, Accuracy in Media, The Americano, ParcBench, Enter Stage Right and other publications. Home
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that has legitimate concerns over and other issues that need to be taken seriously.

has accused and of supporting Kurdish militants and says it will not back the two Nordic nations joining until they change their policies.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, Stoltenberg stressed that no other ally has suffered more terrorist attacks than and pointed to its strategic geographic location with neighbors like Iraq and Syria.

These are legitimate concerns. This is about terrorism, it's about weapons exports, Stoltenberg said. We have to address the security concerns of all allies, including Turkish concerns about the terrorist group PKK.

He spoke at Finland's presidential summer residence Kultaranta in western .

After decades of military non-alignment, Russia's war in Ukraine pushed and to apply to join NATO in May. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, accuses the Nordic nations of supporting Kurdish militants deemed by Turkey to be terrorists and has vetoed their entry into the 30-member alliance.

When a vital key ally as Turkey raises concerns on then of course we have to sit down and take them seriously. And that's exactly what we do, Stoltenberg said.

The demands from Ankara to Helsinki and Stockholm also include lifting restrictions on arms exports to Turkey and extraditing members of certain Kurdish organizations that are opposed to Erdogan's government.

In the past weeks, NATO's chief has been trying to resolve the dispute but he did not disclose Sunday whether any progress has been made.

He was to attend an annual discussion panel in Kultaranta later Sunday together with Finnish and Nordic politicians, foreign and security policy experts and military representatives.

Stoltenberg will visit on Monday for talks with the Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.
Senate bargainers on Sunday announced the framework of a bipartisan response to last month's mass shootings, a noteworthy but limited breakthrough offering modest gun curbs and stepped-up efforts to improve school safety and mental health programs.

The proposal falls far short of tougher steps long sought by President Joe Biden and many Democrats. Even so, the accord was embraced by Biden and enactment would signal a significant turnabout after years of gun massacres that have yielded little but stalemate in Congress.

Biden said in a statement that the framework does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades.

Given the bipartisan support, there are no excuses for delay, and no reason why it should not quickly move through the Senate and the House, he said.

Leaders hope to push any agreement into law rapidly they hope this month before the political momentum fades that has been stirred by the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. Participants cautioned that final details and legislative language remain to be completed, meaning fresh disputes and delays might emerge.

In a consequential development, 20 senators, including 10 Republicans, released a statement calling for passage. That is potentially crucial because the biggest obstacle to enacting the measure is probably in the 50-50 Senate, where at least 10 GOP votes will be needed to attain the usual 60-vote threshold for approval.

Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities," the lawmakers said.

The group, led by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., John Cornyn, R-Texas, Thom Tillis, R-NC, and Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz, produced the agreement after two weeks of closed-door talks.

The compromise would make the juvenile records of gun buyers under age 21 available when they undergo background checks. The suspects who killed 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo and 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde were both 18, and many perpetrators of recent years' mass shootings have been young.

The agreement would offer money to states to enact and put in place red flag laws that make it easier to temporarily take guns from people considered potentially violent, plus funds to bolster school safety and mental health programs.

Some people who informally sell guns for profit would be required to obtain federal dealers' licenses, which means they would have to conduct background checks of buyers. Convicted domestic abusers who do not live with a former partner, such as estranged ex-boyfriends, would be barred from buying firearms, and it would be a crime for a person to legally purchase a weapon for someone who would not qualify for ownership.

Congressional aides said billions of dollars would be spent expanding the number of community mental health centers and suicide prevention programs. But they said some spending decisions are unresolved, as are final wording on juvenile records and other gun provisions that might prove contentious.

Yet underscoring election-year pressures from Buffalo and Uvalde, the parties' shared desire to demonstrate a response to those shootings suggested momentum toward enactment was strong.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, called the accord a good first step to ending the persistent inaction to the gun violence epidemic" and said he would bring the completed measure to a vote as soon as possible.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, who has supported the talks, was more restrained. He praised the bargainers' work and said he is hoping for a deal that makes significant headway on key issues like mental health and school safety, respects the Second Amendment, earns broad support in the Senate, and makes a difference for our country.

The agreement was quickly endorsed by groups that support gun restrictions including Brady, Everytown for Gun Safety and March for Our Lives, which organized rallies held around the country on Saturday.

The National Rifle Association said in a statement that it opposes gun control and infringing on people's fundamental right to protect themselves and their loved ones, but supports strengthening school security, mental health and law enforcement. The group has long exerted its sway with millions of firearms-owning voters to derail gun control drives in Congress.

The agreement represents a lowest common denominator compromise on gun violence, not a complete sea change in Congress. Lawmakers have demonstrated a newfound desire to move ahead after saying their constituents have shown a heightened desire for congressional action since Buffalo and Uvalde, but Republicans still oppose more sweeping steps that Democrats want and Sunday's agreement omits.

These include banning assault-style firearms such as the AR-15 style rifles used in Buffalo and Uvalde, or raising the legal age for buying them. AR-15s are popular and powerful semi-automatic weapons that can fire high-capacity magazines and have been used in many of the nation's highest-profile slaughters in recent years. One of them, the killing of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, occurred six years ago Sunday.

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The stock price of hit a record low of Rs 92.75 as it tumbled 18 per cent on the BSE in Mondays intra-day trade after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved R Subramaniakumar's appointment as the managing director & chief executive officer (MD & CEO) of the private sector lender.

"The RBI has approved the appointment of Mr. R Subramaniakumar as Managing Director & CEO of the Bank for a period of three years with effect from date of his taking charge," said in a exchange filing on Saturday, June 11, 2022.

Previously, Subramaniakumar was the former managing director and chief executive director of state-run Indian Overseas Bank. He was also appointed as the administrator of Dewan Housing Finance Co Ltd after the mortgage financiers board was superseded.

According to analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities, has addressed one concern, however, issues on strategy of the bank given its reliance on high yielding product segments, employee retention, and recovery in return ratios and growth remain unclear.

"We need to have clarity (1) Construct of the loan mix. The banks key profit pool comes from the credit card and MFI business. Any changes to this model would hurt the near term prospects on growth and profitability. (2) Employee retention/hiring strategy. ESOPs usually tend to play a critical role in retaining talent and RBL Bank price performance since listing has not been impressive. (3) Normalization of the RoE journey could be longer. The path to RoE needs more clarity and there could be a lot of changes that could happen in the next few years and the bank may need more time to get to a higher RoE from current levels," they said in a report dated June 13.

Last year in December, RBL's then MD & CEO Vishwavir Ahuja went on an indefinite leave. Executive director Rajeev Ahuja was appointed as the interim Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer. Ahuja's departure had come after the RBI appointed one of RBLs chief general managers, Yogesh Dayal, on the lenders board as additional director.

The stock of RBL Bank has fallen below its previous low of Rs 100.80 touched on May 12, 2022. The trading volumes on the counter jumped over four-fold with a combined 60.25 million equity shares having changed hands on the NSE and BSE.

In the past six months, the market price of the bank has more-than-halved (down 52 per cent) as against a 9 per cent decline in the S&P BSE Sensex. RBL Bank has faced multiple issues in the last couple of years on the growth front starting from the corporate book blow up till the recent Covid impact on its micro finance institutions (MFI) and cards business.

Tech view

Outlook: Bearish

Target: Rs 91

Resistance: Rs 119

Shares of RBL Bank have broken below their immediate support level of Rs 102 as they hit a record low of Rs 93 per share. Going forward, the stock will face near-term hurdle at Rs 102, followed by Rs 119 (its 50-day moving average), and Rs 129 (100-DMA), as per the daily chart. A sustained trade below today's low may push the stock towards Rs 90.89 level, as per monthly charts.
Hindalco Industries Ltd is quoting at Rs 365.2, down 5.33% on the day as on 13:19 IST on the NSE. The stock tumbled 7.5% in last one year as compared to a 0.28% slide in NIFTY and a 6.03% fall in the Nifty Media index.

Hindalco Industries Ltd is down for a fifth straight session today. The stock is quoting at Rs 365.2, down 5.33% on the day as on 13:19 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is down around 2.68% on the day, quoting at 15767.25. The Sensex is at 52834.46, down 2.71%.Hindalco Industries Ltd has lost around 6.59% in last one month.Meanwhile, Nifty Media index of which Hindalco Industries Ltd is a constituent, has eased around 5.83% in last one month and is currently quoting at 5199.95, down 2.93% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 69.4 lakh shares today, compared to the daily average of 144.11 lakh shares in last one month.

The benchmark June futures contract for the stock is quoting at Rs 366.1, down 5.42% on the day. Hindalco Industries Ltd tumbled 7.5% in last one year as compared to a 0.28% slide in NIFTY and a 6.03% fall in the Nifty Media index.

The PE of the stock is 15.53 based on TTM earnings ending March 22.

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Lemon Tree Hotels on Friday announced that it signed a new hotel in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, under the brand Keys Lite.

Lemon Tree Hotels has signed a license agreement for a 44 room hotel at Gajuwaka, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh under the company's brand 'Keys Select, by Lemon Tree Hotels'. The hotel is expected to be operational by March 2023.

This property will feature 44 well-appointed rooms, complemented by a multi-cuisine restaurant. It will also have a conference room and a fitness center for recreation.

The property is owned by SreeKanya Combines, and shall be operated through Carnation Hotels, a subsidiary and management arm of Lemon Tree Hotels.

Gajuwaka, in south west of Visakhapatnam, is considered as one of the biggest and busiest shopping districts of Andhra Pradesh. It is well connected by air and railway as the Visakhapatnam Airport is 8 km away and the railway station is at 12 km. Visakhapatnam, popularly known as Vizag, is located between the Eastern Ghats and the coast of the Bay of Bengal.

Speaking on the occasion, Mahesh Aiyer, CEO - Carnation Hotels commented, We are delighted to expand our reach in Andhra Pradesh with our valued partner M/s. SreeKanya Combines. This will be our fourth property in this state that holds immense business and tourism potential. We aspire to uplift our existing portfolio by signing and opening more hotels in order to extend our offerings for guests and owners in the tourism and hospitality sector.

Lemon Tree Hotels is India's largest hotel chain in the mid-priced sector, and the third largest overall, on the basis of controlling interest in owned and leased rooms, as of 30 June 2017, according to the Horwath Report. It operates in the upscale segment and in the mid-market sector, consisting of the upper-midscale, midscale and economy segments.

On a consolidated basis, Lemon Tree Hotels reported net loss of Rs 24.62 crore in Q4 March 2022 as against net loss of Rs 16.82 crore in Q4 March 2021. Net sales rose 25.73% to Rs 119.54 crore in Q4 FY22 over Q4 FY21.

Shares of Lemon Tree Hotels slipped 2.05% to Rs 64.35 on the BSE.

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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced plans to continue growing its footprint in Minnesota by expanding its hiring program in the coming year and accelerating its STEM outreach efforts in local schools to cover 50% more students and teachers.

Bloomington, Minnesota is home to one of the 30 TCS facilities in the U.

S. and supports leading enterprises in Minnesota, including Ameriprise Financial and Best Buy. TCS currently has more than 1,000 employees in the state - including 400 who were hired within the last five years - helping companies along their growth and transformation journeys through consulting services, industry experience, advanced technology, and intellectual property.

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Vedanta: Vedanta Limited Iron & Steel sector has ventured into International Iron ore mining operations in Liberia, West Africa through its subsidiary WCL with the Ground-breaking ceremony that was held at the Bomi iron ore mine on 8 June 2022. WCL is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bloom Fountain (BFL) which is in turn a wholly owned subsidiary of Vedanta.

Coal India (CIL): Coal India on Friday floated two international competitive bidding e-tenders of 3 millions tonnes (MTs) each, to source coal from abroad. The bids are for 5,000 GAR (gross as received) quality of thermal grade coal.

GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals: The board has recommended a dividend of Rs. 90/- (including special dividend of Rs. 60) per equity share on face value of Rs.10 each for the year ended 31 March 2022. The company has fixed 8th July 2022 as the record date for determining entitlement of members to final dividend for the financial year ended 31 March 2022.

Lemon Tree Hotels: The company has signed a license agreement for a 44 room hotel at Gajuwaka, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh under the company's brand 'Keys Lite by Lemon Tree Hotels'. The hotel is expected to be operational by March, 2023.

J&K Bank: The bank's board on 10 June 2022 approved appointment of Pratik D Punjabi as the chief financial officer.

Precision Wires India: The board of directors considered and approved additional capacity enhancement/modernization capital expenditure of Rs. 25 crore which will result in further capacity enhancement of about 3000 MT/year at our Silvassa works.

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The ceremony was held at the Bomi iron ore mine on 8 June 2022.

Vedanta Iron & Steel sector has ventured into International Iron ore mining operations in Liberia, West Africa through its subsidiary Western Cluster Limited (WCL).

WCL is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bloom Fountain ('BFL'), which is in turn a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vedanta.

WCL had signed a Mineral Development Agreement with the Government of Liberia ('GoL') for three Iron Ore Mining concessions in Liberia namely Bomi, Bea, and Mano in 2011.

However, the operations could not be started due to outbreak of Ebola epidemic. WCL is set to restart its operation with further expansion potential through exploration, Vedanta said.

Vedanta, a subsidiary of Vedanta Resources, is one of the world's leading oil & gas and metals company with significant operations in oil & gas, zinc, lead, silver, copper, iron ore, steel, and aluminium & power across India, South Africa and Namibia.

The company reported 10% drop in consolidated net profit to Rs 5,799 crore on a 41% increase in revenue from operations to Rs 39,342 crore in Q4 FY22 over Q4 FY21.

Shares of Vedanta were down 3.45% to Rs 290.80 on the BSE.

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Taking a swipe at the BJP, MP on Monday expressed surprise that the ruling party had "only placed barricades and police" leading to the office ahead of Rahul Gandhi's appearance before the ED, while the bulldozers were "missing".

said the bulldozers may have been "requisitioned to demolish the lives and houses" of citizens belonging to the minority faith.

Ahead of the proposed march by the leaders, the Delhi Police on Monday imposed section 144 CrPC in the area around party headquarters at Akbar Road here asking them not to violate the law.

has been summoned by the ED in a money laundering case pertaining to the Herald-AJL case. The ED has also summoned Sonia Gandhi in the case on June 23.

"Surprised that the @BJP4India have only placed barricades & police leading to the @INCIndia office, #Bulldozers are missing!" said in a tweet.

"Guess all have been requisitioned to demolish the lives & houses of citizens belonging to the minority faith," the Lok Sabha MP said.

His remarks come a day after the Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA) demolished the house of the alleged mastermind of the June 10 violence in Prayagraj amid heavy police deployment.

The building map of the house of the accused, Javed Ahmad, had not been approved by the PDA, according to an official of the agency.

The development in Prayagraj came a day after illegal properties of two persons accused of rioting were bulldozed in Saharanpur, which witnessed stone pelting on Friday.

Protests against the controversial remarks on Prophet Mohammad made by now-suspended spokesperson Nupur Sharma had spun out of control in Prayagraj and some other parts of Uttar Pradesh on June 10.

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The dispensation in its eight years has made historic achievements such as the abrogation of Article 370, implementation of GST and the abolition of instant triple talaq, Union minister Prahlad Singh Patel said on Monday.

The Union Minister of State for Food Processing Industries and Jal Shakti said the need of the hour is to start information campaigns through the media so that people become aware of various schemes launched by the government.

The government has allocated Rs 60,000 crore under the (JJM) this year to provide tap water to 3.8 crore households.

The minister said states can spend three times more than the previous year's allocated budget under the Jal Jeevan Mission, for which states have to seek the best technical support, bring in resources utilisation, streamline the tendering process, etc.

"J&K will also be achieving the target of Har Ghar Jal in 2024 according to the calendar framed by the UT government," he said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi's eight years in government are unparalleled with historic achievements in the form of the abrogation of Article 370, implementation of GST, abolition of triple talaq and recognition of yoga at international level," Patel told a press conference in Udhampur.

He said the government provided free foodgrains to over 80 crore people during the COVID-19 pandemic under the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana, which is the world's largest food security scheme launched to combat the pandemic-induced economic disruption.

The biggest achievement of this government was the made-in-India COVID-19 vaccine, he said.

Patel also said that the defence sector in the country, being important for border areas such as Jammu and Kashmir, has also been strengthened under PM Modi to the extent that India is now becoming an exporter of defence equipment, BrahMos defence export deals being the best example of it.

The defence ecosystem that is being built by India through its joint ventures like that with Israel is the biggest achievement in itself in defence technology, the minister added.

He further said that this government has brought a lot of transparency in the system that is evident from the fact that the beneficiaries of different central schemes are receiving instalments directly into their bank accounts.

The minister said the budget of Food Processing Industries department has increased by 137 per cent.

The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme formulated for the food processing industry with an outlay of Rs 1,100 crore will help India to mark distinction in the world in food processing.

There are 24 lakh food processing units in the country, out of which two lakh units will be upgraded with an outlay of Rs 10,000 crore.

The minister also laid the foundation stone of a water supply scheme of Saddal and Panjal villages to be built at an estimated cost of Rs 415.68 lakh.

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A bipartisan group of American senators unveiled an agreement on principle for gun safety legislation on Sunday, marking a historic breakthrough but also stirring ire from several Republicans who have opposed such regulations.

The agreement provides an overview of a forthcoming package of reforms to address one of the United States' most pressing and divisive issues in the wake of several mass shootings, most notably in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.

Bipartisan Gun Deal

One of the biggest factors lawmakers still need to sort out in the framework agreement is how the legislation will be written. The announcement also revealed the support of 10 Republican senators, which would give the proposal enough support from the right to overcome the Senate filibuster.

However, maintaining the support to allow the proposal to make it through the legislative process will be a massive challenge for lawmakers to accomplish before the next congressional recess in two weeks. But Democrats have continued to support their ambitious goal of drafting the bill and keeping Republicans on board before the next recess, as per CNN.

Despite the bipartisan announcement, many details of the plan are still unsettled, according to an aide who provided a detailed rundown on how some of the proposed provisions would work. This includes "red flag" laws which are considered one of the most significant pieces of the framework.

Read Also: Maryland Mass Shooting: 3 Dead, 1 State Trooper Shot in Tragic Attack as Protests to End Gun Violence Continues

These laws are aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of those who pose a threat to themselves or others. The legislation would provide significant funding to help states create new red flag laws. However, the 19 states, and Washington, D.C., already have these laws on the books. They will then become eligible for funding to improve the effectiveness of their established programs.

According to the Washington Post, the bipartisan agreement stated that families were scared and argued that it was the government's duty to come together and get something done. It called for the restoration of safety and security in various communities across the nation.

Addressing Gun Violence

On top of supporting red flag laws, the deal would also include federal criminal background checks for gun buyers younger than 21, requiring a mandatory search of juvenile justice and mental health records, a historic first in the United States.

Other provisions of the bipartisan agreement would prevent gun sales to domestic violence offenders other than spouses, closing what is often called the "boyfriend loophole." The deal also clarifies which gun sellers are required to register as federal firearms dealers and, thus, run background checks on customers and establish new federal offenses related to gun trafficking.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene quickly expressed her disagreement with the bipartisan deal, aiming at GOP senators who supported the proposal. On the other hand, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Joe Biden welcomed the deal.

Greene took to Twitter hours after the announcement of the deal and attacked Senate Republicans over their willingness to work with Democrats in drafting laws to make the U.S. a safer place. She said, "The Senate Republicans are everything wrong in the GOP. Too many of them have helped Joe Biden pass his America Last agenda even more than the Progressive Democrats in the House," Newsweek reported.

Related Article: Thousands Rally for US Gun Control Measures After Deadly Mass Shootings

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Union Minister on Monday said that leaders have taken to the streets to pressurize the investigating agency because their corruption has been exposed. She also said that nobody is above the law, not even .

Addressing a press conference at party headquarters here on Monday, said, "The protest leaders and workers are doing today on the call of Rahul Gandhi, is not to protect democracy but to protect the attempt to save assets worth Rs 2,000 crore of Gandhi family."

She slammed the party's 'Satyagraha' march to extend solidarity with Rahul Gandhi, who is being summoned by the (ED) in the Herald case.

"In the 1930s, Associate Journals Limited was formed with 5,000 freedom fighters as shareholders. Today, a company that was to be run by freedom fighters has been given away to the Gandhi family. It is publicly known that the Congress party waived off a loan of Rs 90 crore given to AJL," she said.

Irani said that the Congress members should also ask about his family's relations with Dotex Merchandise Private Limited, a hawala entry operator in Kolkata, whose transactions have been red flagged by the Financial Intelligence Unit.

She asked why the Gandhi family was interested in a former newspaper publishing company which is now running a real estate business.

"This shows that not just 'Jijaji' (Rovert Vadra) but the entire Gandhi family is fascinated by real estate," she added.

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The BJP's Delhi unit on Sunday passed a resolution condemning the AAP government's "support" to the illegal Rohingya and Bangladeshi immigrants in the city.

In the two-day executive meeting of the BJP's Delhi unit that concluded on Sunday, various leaders trained their guns on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over various issues.

They alleged that those behind the Jahangirpuri violence on Hanuman Jayanti on April 16 were AAP workers and leaders.

The AAP has supported and Bangladeshis and has crossed all limits in protecting them, the Delhi claimed in the resolution.

It alleged that the were getting free ration and the women travelling in buses for free and their children getting free education.

"They are even being made imams in mosques and being paid Rs 30,000. This is because the Aam Aadmi Party considers their votes as their own," it read.

Addressing the first session of the executive meeting, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya took a dig at the Congress, alleging that it got affected by syndicates in the 1970s following which it has just been running after power.

Kejriwal had stated that he would never join or use any official vehicle. "But now, he is chief minister, has an official bungalow and vehicles," Mandaviya said.

Delhi president Adesh Gupta alleged that whenever Kejriwal faces a crisis he starts blaming the centre and backs out from owning any responsibility.

Blaming the Delhi chief minister for the water crisis in Delhi, Gupta said that Kejriwal is left with no defence which is why he is blaming Haryana.

"But on our request, the Haryana chief minister has agreed to give us extra water on humanitarian grounds to tide over the present crisis," he said.

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Maharashtra Tourism Minister will visit Ayodhya on June 15 to seek the blessings of Lord Ram, MP Sanjay Raut said on Monday.

"This is not a political programme," Raut told reporters here, adding that a team of workers and leaders are already in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya city to take care of arrangements for Thackeray's visit.

The Ayodhya visit of Aaditya Thackeray, son of Maharashtra Chief Minister and Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, comes at a time when his party is being targeted by the BJP and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) on the issue of Hindutva.

Aaditya Thackeray's uncle and MNS chief Raj Thackeray, who recently called for the removal of loudspeakers atop mosques, had also said he would visit Ayodhya this month, but his trip was postponed due to health reasons.

Raut said will reach the UP capital Lucknow on June 15 and from there he will travel to Ayodhya.

Thackeray will seek the blessings of Ram Lalla. He will also visit the construction site of the Ram temple. He will also participate in the 'aarti' on the banks of the Sarayu river, the Shiv Sena's chief spokesperson said.

This is not a political programme, Raut said, adding that he himself will go to Ayodhya.

(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.)
Undeterred by the defeat of its candidate at the hands of the BJP in a bitterly contested Rajya Sabha polls last week, the on Monday said those who are thinking that the result has made the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra unstable are living in a fool's paradise.

In an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana', the MVA lead party, in a rare move, praised BJP leader for his cleverness and astute poll management, but said luck also played a role as the election was dragged to second round which saw BJP's Dhananjay Mahadik trounce Sena candidate Sanjay Pawar for the sixth seat in the June 10 polls to the Upper House of Parliament. The party pointed out that said while Sena candidate Pawar secured 33 votes in the first round of preferential votes, Mahadik secured only 27. Fadnavis, a former CM, is widely credited for his election management that ensured Mahadik's win on the back of support from independents and MLAs from smaller parties. Seven candidates were in the fray for six Rajya Sabha seats in the state. All three candidates of the opposition BJP won -- Union minister Piyush Goyal, Anil Bonde and Mahadik. The Sena (Sanjay Raut), the Congress (Imran Pratapgarhi)



and the NCP (Praful Patel) bagged one seat each. Those thinking that the Rajya Sabha polls has made the Maha Vikas Aghadi government unstable are living in a fool's paradise, the editorial said. It said during the polls, the votes of the Sena, the NCP and the Congress, all constituents of the ruling alliance, remained intact, and it was smaller parties that did not vote for the MVA candidates. The also took a dig at its former ally BJP, saying the win was not a feat like the "Sun rising in the or an ant swallowing a mountain". Calling the functioning of the Election Commission "an attack from Delhi", the Sena publication questioned the poll body's credibility when its officials in the state had discarded the BJP's objections to consider invalid the votes of MVA ministers Yashomati Thakur and Jitendra Awhad and Sena MLA Suhas Kande for violating norms. The MVA had also challenged before the Election Commission the votes cast by independent MLA Ravi Rana and BJP's Sudhir Mungantiwar on the same ground.

However, Kande's vote was declared invalid by the EC. The way central agencies were used to win the polls by the BJP was not a good sign for democracy in the country, the editorial 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.)
Some roads leading to the BKC in Mumbai will remain closed while traffic on some roads will be diverted in view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's event on Tuesday, a Police official said on Monday.

The prime minister will participate in 'Dwishatabdi Mahotsav' (200th anniversary celebrations) of 'Mumbai Samachar' at the Bandra Kurla Complex, a business district in the suburbs.

Entry of vehicles of all kinds will not be allowed on the BKC connector and through the Kurla Razzak Junction, MTNL junction, Platina junction, the Trident junction towards the Jio World Centre, and the American Consulate, he said.

Vehicular traffic on some routes will be diverted.

All these traffic regulations will remain in force between 4 PM and 8 PM (on Tuesday), the official said.

Besides the heightened security at the BKC, additional police personnel will be deployed on various roads, the official 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.)
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao will be launching a party by this month, said sources on Sunday.

The move comes as a longer stride to gather opposition leaders just ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

As per sources, the name of the new political party is expected to be 'Bharatiya Rastra Samiti'.

Recently had met several opposition leaders.

Last month held a meeting with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav at the former's residence in the capital and discussed the current issues while he met Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to visit Mohalla clinic in the national capital.

The Telangana Chief Minister had also met JD-S leader HD Deve Gowda on May 26 and said there will be a change at the national level which cannot be stopped.

Notably, KCR's attempts are quite visible to forge an anti- alliance (third front) with all the like-minded parties excluding Congress. He embarked on an India tour where he also ventured into national-level meetings and events and gathered every brick en route his bigger aim to foray into national .

Attempts are also being made to seek support from all the Indians living abroad. Telangana NRIs from across the world unanimously adopted a resolution in support of Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao's decision to foray into national .

Telangana NRIs coordinator B Ganesh moved a resolution seeking the support of NRIs to TRS Supremo and KCR's move to enter into national in a Zoom meeting attended by NRIs from different countries.

(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.)
Several NRIs from and other states have welcomed Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao's decision of foraying into national .

Ahead of the launch of the national party - Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi by Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief, NRIs from various countries held a virtual meeting. NRIs coordinator B. Ganesh moved a resolution in support of KCR's decision and the same was adopted unanimously.

The NRIs from Telangana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and other states felt that the development of India will be possible only under the leadership of . They were confident of a qualitative change in the country. KCR's leadership is imperative to lead India towards development.

They were of the view that India is the land of natural resources but the successive governments have failed to utilise them to achieve the development goals. They said the present government at the Centre has no agenda except provoking religious issues.

NRI leader Mahesh said he was planning launch a campaign to educate all Indian NRIs living in different countries about the growth and development witnessed in state under the leadership of .

Anil Kurmachalam from the UK said that India registered low growth in the BJP regime. has set things right in just 7 years in Telangana which was completely destroyed in the united Andhra Pradesh. He hoped India under KCR's leadership will progress with jet speed like Telangana.

Jagan, a NRI from New Zealand, was confident that KCR will definitely make his own mark in national and the NRIs will support Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi.

NRI Rajesh from Sidney ( Australia) said the NRI already appealed to KCR to enter into national four years ago. His NRI wing will extend all support to KCR's new political journey in national politics.

NRIs from the United States, Denmark, Malaysia, Africa, Zambia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Switzerland, Singapore and other countries also participated in the meeting and supported KCR's decision.

--IANS

ms/shb/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Google-backed technology company Nothing, led by former OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, will manufacture all that it will sell in India locally, a senior company official said on Monday.

In March, the company had announced plans to expand its device ecosystem beyond the audio segment starting with foray into the smartphone business.

"We are thrilled to announce that every phone (1) sold in India will be manufactured locally," India vice president and general manager Manu Sharma told PTI.

The smartphone will be manufactured in Tamil Nadu.

is developing its own Operating System (OS) for Phone (1), which will be built using Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile platform.

The UK-based company has plans to expand the product portfolio to set up a full device ecosystem and is looking to create an ecosystem of connected products, which will be an alternative to Apple ecosystem but it will be open for other brands as well.

" phone (1) is the real start of our journey and we cannot think of a better way to establish ourselves in India, which is a key market for us," Sharma said.

The company has been selling audio devices ear (1) in India since last August. The company smartphone is scheduled to be unveiled on July 12.

For the upcoming Nothing phone (1), the company is expanding its customer support in the region to over 270 authorised service centres in more than 250 cities as well as year-round support via the Nothing India channels.

The company plans to sell Nothing phone (1) through e-commerce platform Flipkart.

EQT Ventures, C Ventures and other private investors, including Tony Fadell (Principal at Future Shape & inventor of the iPod), Casey Neistat (YouTube personality and co-founder of Beme), Kevin Lin (co-founder of Twitch) and Steve Huffman (co-founder and CEO of Reddit), have also invested in the company.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi [India], June 13 (ANI/PNN): Hustlers Hospitality Introduces its "Growth Hack Program" to expedite the growth of its brands across the country to about 2000 Internet Restaurants by Mid 2023 and aims to clock revenue over Rs 150 Cr in the next 2 years.

Growth hack program is designed for Existing Restaurants to scale their online food delivery business through brands of Hustlers Hospitality from their already Existing Kitchen space & Optimize the Set of Equipment and Staff which is currently Under-utilized fundamentally due to lack of desired sales.

When done accurately, we know that online ordering can be very profitable for restaurants, with our in-house brands and recipe standardization of all menu items, we intend to help thousands of underperforming restaurant brands nationwide to profit from online ordering which will help them sustain longer. "Uber - The biggest cab company in the world does not own any cabs, Nor does OYO Rooms, a Unicorn chain of hotels own any of its hotels; similarly, the biggest Cloud Kitchen company will not own any of its restaurants." Growth Hack Program is guaranteed to increase your Sales and Revenue, with No absolute Scope of loss - Krunal Oza, Founder & CEO of Hustlers Hospitality said!

Hustlers hospitality has a total successful Cloud kitchen Brand Portfolio of 20+ brands like New York Sandwich, Senorita Margherita, Popstar Pizza, The Monk Momo, Chop-Chop Square, MithiBai VadaPav, Aflatoon Biryani, Dildar Paratha, United Khichdi, Subramanium, Your Office Canteen, Pancake Station, Hola Hola Waffle, LA Churros, Happy Cow, Brookies, The Spud Fries to name a few in every cuisine category, currently actively present across 6+ cities with around 200 Active Internet Restaurants in just last 4 months with order volume of over 20,000 orders per month.

Hustlers Hospitality is a One of a Kind Multi-Cuisine Multi-Brand Cloud Kitchen company based on the Asset light model, which will involve licensing the above brands to existing restaurants with Under-utilized Kitchen capacities. It will also take absolute responsibility for generating demand for Growth Hack Partner Restaurants, through several marketing techniques like CPC Campaigns on Aggregator platforms, continuous implementation of creative Offers & Deals, Review Monitoring & Management, and on the other hand Growth Hack Partner Restaurateurs will Fulfill the orders as per Standard operating procedures set by Hustlers Hospitality and also use packaging designed and designate for respective brands to give a better experience to the customer.

Growth Hack Program is a revolutionary way to earn Incremental Sales, you can multiply your income into two-fold, as there is no additional Real estate and Machinery investment required, and you can generate more orders from the Same kitchen with multiple brands with Multiple Categories and concepts listed on online delivery apps.

Following is what he has to say when interviewed with few questions-

Q) What's the Eligibility criteria?

A-

1. Under-Utilized Commercial Kitchen Space with Equipment.

2. Active Chefs & Helpers.

3. Current Sales are Unsatisfactory.

4. Restaurateur with a"Never Quit" Mindset

Q) Why Growth Hack Program?

A-

1. No Extra Rent

2. No Extra Salary

3. Exclusive Territory Rights (5km Radius)

4. Minimum Investment: That's right.

5. Additional Profits from the first order itself!!

Q) Support and Commitment to Growth Hack Partners:

A-

1. Staff Training, Kitchen Sticky Notes & Brand SOP Book.

2. Ingredients and Raw Material Supply

3. Branded Packaging

4. Onboarding - Zomato, Swiggy, etc.

5. Digital Marketing & Dynamic campaigns

6. POS Software.

Q) How Does It Work?

A. Revenue and Profit Share - 90 per cent (Growth Hack Partner) and 10 per cent (Hustler Hospitality)

You already pay for Rent, Equipment and Staff Salaries regardless, of whether or not you become a Hustlers Hospitality Growth Hack Partner; so we can subtract those expenses when we calculate the potential profitability of a new income stream. To determine the profitability of Cloud Kitchen brands, the only costs we need to include are the additional Costs of goods sold (Food cost) and the delivery app's commissions (26-28 per cent).

Q) Company's Vision?

A ) To be the Fastest Growing, Most organized & Profitable Cloud Kitchen Company in the History of Indian Food Tech Industry, Hustlers has already signed over 300 Internet Point of Sales in 9+ cities and is expected to sign up 2000 internet Point of sale in the next 1.5 years through Growth Hack program and Franchising. Our goal is to make the Hustle of owning and Running a Successful Food Business as hassle-free and affordable as possible, and each one of our kitchens a go-to or order online for our end consumer.

Also Hustlers Hospitality invites franchisees on its website - Aspiring Restaurateurs that are interested in taking franchisees of Hustlers Brand Cloud Kitchen concepts should definitely check out their website.

Website - (https://hustlershospitality.com)

Social - (https://www.instagram.com/hustlershospitalityindia)

This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
According to the spam filtering tool YouMail, Americans got 4 billion robocalls in May. In many circumstances, a con artist employs a faked phone number.

That is precisely what happened to Joanna Ganz. Her caller ID stated Chase Bank, and the person on the other end of the telephone informed her that there was unusual activity on her account. She was instructed to move funds from her account in order to avoid further fraud.

The call was a fake; it wasn't Chase phoning but a fraudster and Ganz was out more than $2,500 in minutes. "I never believed that would happen to me because that's my rent and bill money," Ganz said.

Robocalls Flood in the US, Victims Can't Get Their Money Back

Last year, the FCC mandated that all cell phone carriers use Stir-Shaken caller ID identification technology. The purpose was to prevent unauthorized robocalls. However, since then, the quantity of robocalls received by customers has returned to pre-regulation levels.

Ganz attempted to recover her money but was unsuccessful. According to a Chase spokesman, the funds will not be returned because Ganz authorized the transfer. Chase cautions clients that they would never contact and request personal information from them. They will only request it if you phone them, according to KCCI.

Americans got just less than 4 billion robocalls in May, matching the average monthly level so far this year and putting 2022 on track to receive 48 billion robocalls for the whole year. This monthly call volume was down 1.2 percent from April.

Since May had one more day than April, daily robocalls were down 3.2 percent, which is not surprising considering the Memorial Day break. In May, there were 127.2 million calls per day and 1,472 calls per second, compared to 131.4 million calls per day and 1,521 calls per second in April. This robocall volume was also about comparable to the amount in May 2021.

YouMail, a completely free robocall prevention program and call protection service for mobile phones, gave these most recent numbers. These estimates are derived from the extrapolation of robocall traffic attempting to reach YouMail's millions of active subscribers.

The source of tens of millions of robocalls from tens of thousands of different numbers is reported to have been May's most unwelcome robocall campaign. The callers appear to be selling health insurance marketplace products and appear to be breaking several telemarketing rules since they do not identify themselves, do not provide a call back number, and appear to be phoning people who did not give prior approval, according to TMC Net.

Read Also: South African Boxer Who Punched Thin Air During Fight Dies Due to Brain Injury | Full Details

Increased in Robokiller Sending Spam Texts

Meanwhile, spam text messages, sometimes known as "smishing" for the mix of SMS and phishing, have more than quadrupled in the last three years. Robokiller projected that 87 billion of them were transmitted in 2021, a 58 percent increase over the previous year, resulting in a $10 billion loss.

The outbreak has shattered the trust fabric surrounding a crucial communication mode. Truecaller discovered that 90 percent of those polled stated they only take calls if they knew the caller's identity, even though one in every four admits to missing valid calls as a result.

The problem has resisted automated solutions with tenacity. The FCC began forcing phone companies last year to implement a set of protocols known as STIR/SHAKEN, which were designed to build a framework for authenticating the legitimacy of Caller ID information.

Even though most carriers have cooperated, research shows that fraudsters soon devised ways to circumvent the restrictions. For example, a phone call from a healthcare provider, which turned out to be a salesman trying to sell me a vehicle warranty, Computer World reported.

Related Article: US Security Report: Chinese Hackers Breach Major Telecom Companies, Exploit MS Office Weakness

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Norway ends a NATO helicopter contract that was signed 20 years ago. Norway is a founding member of NATO that signed the deal in 2001.

According to sources, it wants 500 million returned to the Nordic nation for NH-90 military helicopters that were not up to spec for their needs.

Norway Cancels Due Delays, Multiple Defects of Units

Defense Minister Bjorn Arild Gram, who announced the demand for compensation regarding the defense deal that did not work out, reported RT.

The model was developed for the military specifications of the Nordic country, which was not acceptable due to the defects and delays of the NH-90 helicopter.

An amount of 500 million, which has been almost complete for the rotorcraft, should be returned in full, citing the Press United.

On Friday, the operation of the helicopters, which had already been delivered, ended. The machines will be returned to the manufacturer, a French multinational firm.

Germany's Die Welt stressed an unsatisfied client is searching for a replacement that could originate from the United States, noted Mass News.

A report about the Norwegian military's final decision is unsuitable for the aerospace firm that produced it. As the article pointed out, no quantity of tweaking, spare parts, or investment will likely make the helicopter worthwhile.

NHIndustries Contests Reimbursement

This NATO helicopter deal with NHIndustries is not accepting Oslo's demand that the payment is returned due to contract cancellation. Furthermore, the firm will go to court to argue its point.

Read Also: Volodymyr Zelensky Children: Does the Ukraine President Have Kids?

The multinational firm issued a statement stating the allegations against NH-90 and the firm. One of their defenses is that the Nordic nation did not inform NH industries about the special requirements.

The manufacturing said that 13 of Norway's 14 helicopters are delivered, with one more waiting to be picked up. Just eight of the machines are fully operational, remarked the Norwegian military.

Airbus having a stake in the firm, said that Norway's demand is bad after Australia, who bought the same helicopter, made a surprise decision in 2021. The US-made Black Hawk will be its replacement.

Canberra asserted that the European helicopter's efficiency was a constant issue and operational costs were too excessive.

Another NATO country, Belgium, noted Die Welt, is considering replacing the NH-90 with a better one. One of the issues reported by the German outlet stressed that users had noticed the same issues with the helicopter. The Netherlands is said to have complained about corrosion issues with the model.

A report that was done by the German military and stressed by the outlet informing by 2021, there will be 19% of the questionable helicopters in service with the armed forces. Mentioned in a German military industry blog how the navy did not accept one due to a faulty radar and fuel smell inside the rotorcraft cockpit.

According to Norway officials, Oslo wants 500 million back from a NATO helicopter contract with NHIndustries that the company disagrees with the NH-90 has issues.

Related Article: Former Moldovan President Dodon Warned That Pro-EU Stance Could Lead to NATO Presence in Chisinau

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Tensions between the United States and China continue to rise after Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Sunday accused America of being a "bully" and "hijacking" countries around the region.

The remarks were made during a combative speech where Wei said that his country would continue to "fight to the very end" to stop Taiwanese independence. The official told Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's premier defense conference, that Taiwan belonged to China. He added that Beijing would not hesitate to crush any attempt by the self-governed island to "secede."

U.S.-China Tensions

The official's speech, came just weeks after United States President Joe Biden said that the U.S. would respond "militarily" if China attacked Taiwan. The Chinese official's remarks capped a weekend of confrontational exchanges between the American and Chinese military chiefs.

Furthermore, Wei called out U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who said during a conference a day earlier that China was engaged in coercive, aggressive, and dangerous actions. He argued that the decisions threatened to "undermine security, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific," as per CNN.

Previously, Austin also talked about U.S. coalition-building in the region and its joint military exercises with Japan, Australia, and Indonesia. However, Wei said that the situation was a kind of "power politics" that China profusely rejected. He added that no one and no country should impose its will on others, or bully others under the guise of multilateralism.

Read Also: China Aims To Expand Influence in South Pacific With New Security Proposal, Diplomatic Tour

Wei said that for China, the strategy is an attempt to build an exclusive, small group in the name of a free and open Indo-Pacific, to hijack countries in the region and target one specific country. But the Chinese official reserved some of his harshest criticisms for his American counterpart.

According to Fox News, Wei also noted that China has made progress in developing a nuclear arsenal but argued that it would only be utilized for self-defense purposes. In response to questions regarding the construction of more than 100 nuclear missile silos in eastern China, the official said Beijing has always "pursued an appropriate path to developing nuclear capabilities for protection of our country."

Nuclear Weapons

The Chinese defense minister said that nuclear weapons displayed in a 2019 military parade in Beijing were operational and deployed. The weapons included launchers for China's DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In a statement, Wei said, "China has developed its capabilities for over five decades. It's fair to say there has been impressive progress. China's policy is consistent. We use it for self-defense. We will not be the first to use nuclear [weapons]."

The Chinese defense minister also called on the U.S. to stop "smearing and containing China," requesting for the American nation to stop interfering in China's internal affairs. The official said that bilateral relationships cannot improve unless the U.S. stands down.

Wei said that Biden's new Indo-Pacific strategy leads to "conflict and confrontation," which is a reference to the U.S. announcing its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) in May as part of its strategy for the region. It involves 13 countries and excludes China, CNBC reported.



Related Article: US, Taiwan Unveil New Trade Initiative as China Continues To Increase Military Pressure

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Authorities in Maryland investigating a plan to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh have recorded 911 conversations in which 26-year-old Nicholas Roske requests to surrender himself.

Nicholas John Roske, of California, allegedly told authorities that he "wanted to give his life meaning" by killing Brett Kavanaugh because he was upset over the draft, which may see the Roe v Wade abortion rule reversed.

Kavanaugh Assassination Would-be Suspect Wants To Seek Psychiatric Help

Prosecutors claimed Roske, 26, was carrying a pistol, knife, burglary tools, and pepper spray and told detectives he had come to Maryland to carry out the threat. According to the arrest affidavit, he was carrying a Glock 17 handgun, two magazines, zip ties, duct tape, and a screwdriver, among other items. Roske drove a taxi to Kavanaugh's house and dialed 911 on himself.

Roske allegedly stated that he was suicidal and had a pistol in his bag, according to The Sun. Roske was arrested earlier this week and charged with attempted murder. He'd driven hundreds of miles from Simi Valley, California, to Brett Kavanaugh's house at 1 am on Wednesday, when he observed a pair of deputy US marshals stationed outside as part of the Supreme Court Justice's usual security detail.

He then decided to walk around the block and dial 911 to report himself. According to recently disclosed 911 call recordings acquired by the Washington Examiner, Roske informed the 911 operator that, in addition to his plan to murder the current Supreme Court judge, he was experiencing suicidal and homicidal impulses.

The defendant was charged with one count of trying to murder or kidnap a US judge, which carries a maximum jail sentence of 20 years, as per Daily Mail.

Read Also: Thousands Rally for US Gun Control Measures After Deadly Mass Shootings

Nicholas Roske Plots Assassination Due to Roe v. Wade

According to court records, Roske told investigators that he began thinking about how he might give his life meaning and resolved to murder the Supreme Court Justice. Roske expressed his displeasure with the leaked draft judgment indicating the Supreme Court's intention to overturn Roe v. Wade.

He was also furious about the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and thought Kavanaugh would vote to relax gun control rules, according to an affidavit. According to court records, he also felt Kavanaugh would side with those who sought to relax gun rules.

"This type of behavior is unacceptable," Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters on Wednesday. "Threats of violence and actual violence against justices, of course, strike at the core of our democracy, and we will do all in our power to avoid them and hold those who perpetrate them accountable."

During the 10-minute hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, Roske halted numerous times while replying to basic questions from US Magistrate Judge Timothy Sullivan. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan urged "leaders in both parties in Washington to clearly denounce these activities in the strongest terms possible."

"It is critical to our constitutional system that the justices may carry out their duties without fear of violence against them and their families," he continued. Roske stated that he is on medicine but did not specify what it is or why he is on it. He also stated that he had a college diploma, New York Post reported.

Related Article: Maryland Mass Shooting: 3 Dead, 1 State Trooper Shot in Tragic Attack as Protests to End Gun Violence Continues

@YouTube

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ATLANTA  After two years as a virtual event, the Carter Center Weekend retreat for major supporters will be live and in person this week. The event is being held Wednesday-Sunday, June 15-19, in historic Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.

For three decades, former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter hosted the annual retreat with a small group of guests. Now largely retired from public life, the Carters have handed off hosting duties to their eldest grandchild, Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center Board of Trustees, and Paige Alexander, the Centers CEO.

Carter Center Weekend is a great tradition that has been thrown a curveball the past couple of years by COVID-19, said Alexander, who joined the Center just as the pandemic was taking hold in 2020. This will be my first time meeting many of our great supporters in person, and Im excited about welcoming them and getting to know them better.

Activities, including a town hall, presentations by Carter Center staff, social events, and live and silent auctions, will take place at the Williamsburg Lodge. Auction catalogs, as well as instructions for bidding by fax or proxy, can be found here. The online auction will begin at 9 a.m. today (Monday, June 13) and close at 1 p.m. Saturday, June 18. The Carter Center Weekend Store is an exciting new addition that offers apparel and prints for instant purchase online while supplies last.

Auction participants will have a chance to bid on a one-week escape to the chic Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France, where the winner will stay in a four-bedroom home a short walk from the citys center. They also have the opportunity to bid on a six-night stay on Waialea Bay Beach in Hawaii and an original painting by President Carter.

Other notable auction items include:

A three-night stay at The Federal Quarters, the oldest house in St. Marys, Georgia, along with a Delta Air Lines airfare gift card.

Guitars signed by John Mayer and the Grateful Dead, Lance McCollum, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, and Journey.

An autographed photo of five presidents  George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon.

A rare, handsomely framed Peter Force print of the Declaration of Independence made from original William J. Stone copperplate that was commissioned by John Quincy Adams.

A cocktail reception and dinner at the home of legendary Hollywood producer Sherry Lansing, along with a Delta airfare gift card.

A case of Presidential Reserve Rum bearing President Carters signature made at the Richland Rum Distillery in Richland, Georgia.

Historic stained glass from St. Peters Church in Woolton, Liverpool, where John Lennon met Paul McCartney.

A pair of Mrs. Carters vintage Chanel dress shoes that she wore while serving as first lady.

A new silkscreen by Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl featuring his drawing of the throne he sat on while performing after he broke his leg on tour.

Go to cartercenter.org/cartercenterweekend to learn more about the live and silent auctions and to https://one.bidpal.net/ccw2022 to bid on items in the public online auction.

Photos of auction items are available to the media upon request.

Since the annual events inception, Carter Center Weekend auctions have raised millions to support the Centers work. Donation proceeds support activities of The Carter Center, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Thank you for your support.

###

Contact: Story Evans, Story.Evans@CarterCenter.org
Photo: The Canadian Press Bill Gates

A recent survey found a large percentage of Canadians believe in a number of conspiracy theories.

The poll by Abacus Data, published Sunday, surveyed 1,500 Canadians between May 20 and 24, and found 44% of respondents believe big events like wars, recessions and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people working in secret against us.

The poll also found 37% of respondents believe there is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native born Canadians with immigrants who agree with their political views, while 13% said they think it's definitely or probably true that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is using microchips to track and affect human behaviour.

The survey also found belief in these theories is higher among supporters of the People's Party of Canada, those who have not received the COVID-19 vaccine, and those who think media and official government accounts of events cant be trusted.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing in these numbers is the fact that mistrust of institutional accounts isnt simply neutral skepticism  it is often accompanied by a willingness to believe dangerous contrarian theories, the reports authors Bruce Anderson & David Coletto write.

This threatens to undermine the ability of political parties, businesses, civil society groups, and governments to help build consensus and make progress together.

Abacus reports the margin of error for the survey +/- 2.53%, 19 times out of 20. The data was weighted according to census data to ensure the sample matched Canadas population according to age, gender, educational attainment, and region.




Photo: The Canadian Press Opposition B.C. Liberal Party Leader Kevin Falcon is sworn in during an oath ceremony and introduction to the house in the Hall of Honour at legislature in Victoria, Monday, May 16, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

Newly minted British Columbia Liberal Leader Kevin Falcon is already looking ahead to the next election, promising to address issues he says John Horgan's NDP government has failed to tackle.

His remarks came during Sunday's keynote address at the 2022 BC Liberal Party Convention in Penticton.

About 800 delegates gathered to plan strategy ahead of the next provincial vote, currently slated for fall 2024.

Falcon, who won the party's leadership race earlier this year, renewed his promise to rebuild the party in consultation with members, starting with a potential name change.

He criticized the NDP government's stance on a provincial doctors shortage, the overdose crisis, affordable housing, education funding and its plans to embark on a $789-million museum rebuilding project.

He says the next election will be won by the party that "offers real, meaningful, concrete solutions to these problems."

"What really matters is outcomes. Competence matters, leadership matters, and that's all missing under the NDP," he said. "British Columbians are going to get that opportunity to fire John Horgan and the NDP in about two years."

The speech comes a day after party members voted to begin the process to possibly change the name of the party, though no proposed names have yet been announced.

The Liberal party said in a release Saturday that a name change committee will conduct consultations with all members, who will have the chance to vote on a new proposed name or to keep the current one by the end of the year.

"Maybe a name change can be part of that renewal process," Falcon said Sunday. "It's way more than changing a name. It means attracting the absolute best people to run with us."

The B.C. Liberals are not affiliated with the federal Liberal party and have described themselves as a "made-in-B. C. free enterprise coalition."
If you find yourself at the Forodhani Night Market, dont leave without paying a visit to Muhamedi, the Zanzibar Pizza Master. But if youre expecting a greasy slice of za, youre in for a surprise. His culinary creations are little fried pockets of pure bliss, filled with everything from Snickers bars to octopus.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Tribal clashes over the past week in Sudans war-ravaged Darfur have killed around 100 people, the U.N. refugee agency and a tribal elder said Monday, the latest surge in violence in the restive region.

Toby Harward, a coordinator with the UNHCR, said the fighting grew out of a land dispute between Arab and African tribes in the town of Kulbus in West Darfur province. Local Arab militias then attacked multiple villages in the area, forcing thousands of people to flee, he said.

Abkar al-Toum, a tribal leader in the town, said the dead included at least 62 bodies found burned after militias set more than 20 villages on fire. He said many people were still unaccounted for. He claimed the attackers gained control of water resources, aggravating the humanitarian situation in the area. He did not elaborate.

Abbas Mustafa, a local official, said authorities have deployed more troops to the area. He said the past week of fighting displaced at least 5,000 families.

Harward called for neutral joint forces to provide protection for civilians in the area. If there is no intervention or mediation, & violence is allowed to continue, farmers will not be able to cultivate & the agricultural season will fail, he said in a series of posts on Twitter.

The news outlet Radio Dabanga reported that the fighting reached the nearby province of North Darfur, causing partial damage to two villages there.

The U.N. envoy for Sudan, Volker Perthes, said he was appalled again by the clashes in Kulbus. The cycle of violence in Darfur is unacceptable & highlights root causes that must be addressed, he said on Twitter.

The fighting was the latest bout of tribal violence in Darfur. It came as the country remains mired in a wider crisis following an October military coup. The takeover upended Sudans transition to democracy after a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Since late last year, eruptions of tribal violence and surges in the fighting in Darfur have killed hundreds of people. In April, after a similar bout of cashes killed over 200, the Sudanese military said it deployed a brigade to the province.

However, the violence has raised questions over whether Sudanese military leaders are capable of bringing security to Darfur. In 2020, the U.N. Security Council ended its peacekeeping mission there. In recent months, local aid workers have called on the U.N. to redeploy peacekeepers to the region amid a sure in tribal violence.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government in the capital of Khartoum of discrimination. Al-Bashirs government was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes and unleashing militias known as the janjaweed on civilians there  a charge it denies.

Al-Bashir, who has been in prison in Khartoum since he was ousted from power in 2019, was indicted over a decade ago by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Police have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide during Russia's war, and authorities in the Kyiv region near Bucha on Monday reported discovering the bodies of several victims whose hands were tied behind their backs.

Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured, said Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police. The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, the authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people. One site reporters saw Monday was a mass grave in a forest near Bucha, where the horrors of war shocked the world after a regional Russian withdrawal earlier in the war. Reporters on Monday saw a mass grave just behind a trench dug out for a military vehicle.

The bodies of seven civilians were retrieved from the mass grave. Two of the bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the knees and the head, Nebytov.

Nationwide, police chief Igor Klimenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Monday that criminal investigations into the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians included some found in mass graves. He said the mass killings of people resulted from snipers firing from tanks and armored personnel carriers. Bodies were found lying on streets and in their homes, as well as in mass graves. He didn't specify how many of the more than 12,000 were civilian and military.

Complete information about the number of bodies in mass graves or elsewhere isnt known, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the American Jewish Committee on Sunday. He cited the killings of two children who died with their parents in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol in a Russian bombing.

Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, asked:

Why is this happening in 2022? This is not the 1940s. How could mass killings, torture, burned cities, and filtration camps set up by the Russian military in the occupied territories resembling Nazi concentration camps come true?
S.Korea says DPRK fires multiple projectiles

Xinhua) 09:11, June 13, 2022

SEOUL, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) fired multiple projectiles, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Sunday.

The projectiles were presumed to be fired from multiple rocket launchers. The South Korean military detected the multiple trajectories from 8:07 a.m. to 11:03 a.m. local time, the JCS said in a statement.

It noted that the South Korean military has strengthened surveillance and vigilance while maintaining a full readiness posture in close cooperation with the United States.

A week earlier, the DPRK fired eight short-range ballistic missiles eastward from four different areas.

The DPRK has conducted projectile launches four times since the new government of South Korea was inaugurated on May 10.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
Google has put one of its engineers on leave after the employee, who works in the company's Responsible AI organization, argued that an artificial intelligence chatbot had become "sentient" and showed signs of consciousness.

The personnel, identified as Blake Lemoine, said that he started chatting with the interface LaMDA, which stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, in fall 2021 as part of his job. Lemoine was tasked with testing if the artificial intelligence chatbot used discriminatory or hate speech.

Sentient AI System

However, the engineer, who studied cognitive and computer science in college, came to the realization that LaMDA, which the company boasted last year was a "breakthrough conversation technology," was more than just a robot.

In a post published on Saturday, Lemoine declared the artificial intelligence chatbot had advocated for its rights "as a person," and revealed that he had engaged in conversation with LaMDA about religion, consciousness, and robotics.

Lemoine wrote that the AI wants Google to prioritize the well-being of humanity as the most important thing. However, the engineer said, "It wants to be acknowledged as an employee of Google rather than as property of Google and it wants its personal well-being to be included somewhere in Google's considerations about how its future development is pursued," as per the New York Post.

Read Also: ASML Accuses a Chinese Technology Firm of Stealing Trade Secrets | Engineer Behind IP Theft

Later on, the engineer compared the artificial intelligence chatbot to a precocious child, saying that if he did not know exactly what he was talking to, he would have thought it was a seven- or eight-year-old kid that happened to know physics.

In April, the Google employee reportedly shared a Google Doc with company executives titled, "Is LaMDA Sentient?" but his concerns were dismissed. The engineer, who is an Army veteran raised in a conservative Christian family on a small farm in Louisiana, was ordained as a mystic Christian priest. He insisted that the robot, despite not having a physical body, was human-like.

According to the Washington Post, Lemoine worked with a collaborator to present evidence to Google that LaMDA was sentient. However, the company's vice president, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, and the head of Responsible Innovation, Jen Gennai, looked into his claims and immediately dismissed them.

Advanced Technology

This forced Lemoine, who was placed on paid administrative leave by the company on Monday, to go public with his claims. The Google employee said that people have a right to shape the technology that might significantly affect their lives. "I think this technology is going to be amazing. I think it's going to benefit everyone. But maybe other people disagree and maybe we at Google shouldn't be the ones making all the choices," he said.

The engineer also compiled a transcript of the conversations that can be viewed here and involved Lemoine at one point asking the AI system what it is afraid of. The exchange between the two parties is eerily reminiscent of a scene from the 1968 science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey where an artificially intelligent computer refused to comply with human operators because it feared it would be turned off, The Guardian reported.



Related Article: US Security Report: Chinese Hackers Breach Major Telecom Companies, Exploit MS Office Weakness

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Photo: The Canadian Press

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were collapsing in price Monday, after a major crypto lender halted all withdrawals citing extreme market conditions.

It is the second collapse of a part of the cryptocurrency world in the last two months. The stablecoin Terra imploded in early May, erasing tens of billions of dollars in a matter of hours.

Bitcoin was trading at roughly $22,600 as of midday Monday, down more than 17% in the past day. Ethereum, another widely-followed cryptocurrency, was down more than 20%.

On Sunday, the lending platform Celsius announced that it was pausing all withdrawals and transfers between accounts in order to honor, over time, withdrawal obligations. Celsius, with roughly 1.7 million customers, gave no indication in its announcement when it would allow users to access their funds.

There is a lot of work ahead as we consider various options, this process will take time, and there may be delays, it said.

Celsius is one of the bigger cryptocurrency lending platforms, with more than $11 billion in customer assets. In exchange for customers deposits, the company gives out extremely generous yields, upwards of 19% on some accounts. These lending platforms have come under scrutiny recently because they offer yields that normal markets could not support, and critics have called them effectively Ponzi schemes.

Terra, and its token Luna, offered similar yields on customer deposits. Those tokens collapsed after huge customer withdrawals forced Terra's operators to liquidate all of the assets being used to support their currencies. The collapse of Terra has spurred calls for reform from the cryptocurrency industry, and calls for Congressional regulation.
Re. BC transportation minister blames gas prices on 'gouging,' no tax relief in sight (Castanet, June 10)

I really wish we could hold our elected officials accountable for what they say.

(B.C. Transportation Minister Rob) Flemings words are just so typical, blame someone else. Nothing to do with us!

He infers gas companies are gouging buyers at the pumps. Well, let me think, isnt that exactly what his provincial government is doing by collecting its tax share on the inflated price?

When the government set its budget, it based its spending on the expected income derived from taxes, which of course, were based on prices of the products and goods at that time.

As the government is not a business, its budget really should be neutral, no (for) profit or loss.

The price of gasoline products has increased significantly, so the governments revenue has increased as a result. To offset this unanticipated tax profit, it would seem only equitable for the government to reduce its tax rate and give the consumer (white is accountable to) a bit of a break. In other words, stop gouging on top of gouging.

Why would they do that? The millions in increased tax revenues will help pay for the real necessities like the (new Royal) B.C. Museum.

Malcolm Roberts, Kelowna
At the B.C. Liberal Party's convention in Penticton on June 11, delegates approved a process to potentially change the party's name by the end of the year.

It's about time.

The B.C. Liberal Party cut official ties with the federal Liberals years ago. Everybody knows the B.C. Liberals are liberal in name only.

Since the name Conservative Party of British Columbia is already taken, here are five (suggested) possibilities:

 B.C. New Conservative Party

 B.C. New Social Credit Party

 People's Party of B.C.

 B.C. RepubliCanuck Party

or, to try to confuse NDP voters,

 NCP (the No Christy Party)

David Buckna, Kelowna
Photo: Contributed

Recent University of British Columbia graduates in search of a change of scenery and an international adventure can now apply for a U.K. visa and have their cases adjudicated in mere weeks.

The High Potential Individual visa (HPI) aims to solve the countrys current skilled labour shortage by attracting the best and the brightest to work in England.

Eligibility for the HPI visa extends to anyone who has graduated from an international university found on this list in the five years immediately before applying. The list is based on rankings from around the world and will continue to be released yearly.

Good for two years (or three if you have a PhD), the HPI visa cannot be extended but beneficiaries are eligible for other more permanent immigration statuses once their HPI time is up. Partners and children are allowed to join HPI visa holders in the U.K and theres no job offer requirement. The visa allows individuals to work in most jobs, look for work, be self-employed, and even volunteer.

Applications opened on May 30 and cost 715, thats about $1,117 CAD at the time of publication. Interested parties can apply online and will need to provide their diploma, transcript, certified translations of your documents if theyre not in English, and a passport or a photo ID.

Other Canadian schools on the list besides UBC include McGill University and the University of Toronto.

UBC was recently ranked 47th in the world by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a company specializing in analyzing higher education institutions.
Photo: U.S. Coast Guard A photo of one of the catamaran sailing vessels that overturned in the Juan de Fuca Strait on Monday, June 13, 2022.

U.S. Coast Guard crews rescued four people from Juan de Fuca Strait near Port Townsend, Washington early Monday after their small sailing vessels were overturned in rough waters.

The sailors were participating in the opening leg of the Race 2 Alaska competition, where participants use non-motorized vessels in a 1,207-kilometre race.

The first stage is the 65-kilometre crossing from Port Townsend to Victoria, while the second stage, which is scheduled to start Thursday at noon from Victoria after competitors clear customs, runs 1,142 kilometres from Victoria to Ketchikan, Alaska.

A gale warning and small-craft advisory were in effect for the area when the boaters left about 5 a.m.

Canadian Coast Guard crews were also on their way to assist in rescues a few nautical miles north of Port Townsend.

U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Steve Strohmaier said the coast guard was notified around 7:30 a.m. that a few boaters had ended up in the water due to the rough conditions.

We launched one of our helicopter crews and they were able to rescue two people and bring them back to medical personnel in Port Angeles, Strohmaier told Glacier Media. A rescue boat crew pulled another person out of the water and brought them back to shore.

All of the boaters were showing signs of hypothermia.

Strohmaier said good Samaritans assisted the coast guard in recovering others from the water.

The Race 2 Alaska is considered North Americas longest human- and wind-powered race and offers $10,000 to the winner.

On its website, Race 2 Alaska organizers say competitors face a chance of drowning, being run down by a freighter or eaten by a grizzly bear. There are squalls, killer whales, tidal currents that run upwards of 20 miles an hour, and some of the most beautiful scenery on earth.

Any boat without an engine can enter the race, which includes no supply drops and no safety net.

In 2019, the last time the race was staged, 25 of 45 teams finished the race.

Strohmaier said while the coast guard issues marine-event permits for races and certain other activities on the water, race organizers are responsible for the overall safety of the event, including cancellation if weather conditions warrant it.

A permit does not absolve an organizer and the individual operators of the overall responsibility for safety.
Photo: Contributed

UPDATE 4:30 p.m.

Two people are dead in Campbell River, including one man killed by RCMP.

Police say in a statement they were called Monday to a report of a homicide at a local marina with hostages being involved.

When officers arrived, they learned the male suspect was alone and attempts were made to negotiate with the man, who police say had a weapon.

RCMP say shots were fired during an interaction with the man and he was killed.

The Independent Investigations Office is investigating the police shooting.

The RCMP says the major crimes unit is running another investigation into the murder.

Original 3:09 p.m.

One person is dead following a homicide and hostage-taking at a Campbell River marina.

BC RCMP has notified the Independent Investigations Office of British Columbia of an incident in Campbell River where one man has died.

The incident began in the early morning hours of June 13, 2022, after Campbell River RCMP received a report of a homicide at a local marina with hostages being held at the scene. Police responded, including members of the Vancouver Island Emergency Response Team and Crisis Negotiators.

Officers confirmed the safety of the hostages, and made contact with the male suspect. Attempts were made to negotiate with the man, who was reported to be in possession of a weapon. While interacting with the man shots were fired and he was pronounced deceased.

Campbell River RCMP Major Crimes Unit is running a concurrent investigation into the homicide and ask that anyone with information contact the police.
Court ruling favours Arabian Cement in Emaar Economic City case

13 June 2022

Arabian Cement Co reports that it has received a Jeddah commercial court order in its favour, ordering Emaar The Economic City to supply to the company 4.57Mt of limestone based on the agreement signed by the two parties on 28 April 2012. The ruling will be deemed final if no appeal is filed within 30 days.

In September 2021 Arabian Cement filed a lawsuit before Jeddah Commercial Court against Emaar EC which is building King Abdullah Economic City, claiming the remaining quantities of limestone ore in accordance with an agreement signed between them in 2012. The 2012 agreement concerned a resolution to the dispute that existed between them on the overlapping of the 3.66Mm2 land plots owned by Emaar EC.

Under the settlement, Emaar EC was committed to provide, free of charge, 50Mt of limestone needed for the cement companys manufacture from the dredging output extracted from the construction of the King Abdullah Economic City port, after obtaining the necessary mining license from the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. In return, Arabian Cement was obliged to give Emaar the concession lands it owned by virtue of the legal deed. The agreement was valid for six years.

Published under
Steppe Cement increases capex for 2022-23

ICR Newsroom By 13 June 2022

Kazahstans Steppe Cement plans to invest US$7m in capex in 2022 and the first half of 2023. Among the projects outlined is the completion of the new separator for cement mill 1 to increase slag content and cement production, and reduce electricity consumption, as well as starting the new separator for cement mill 2. The raw mill 3 separator will be revamped to increase production on Line 6, along with modifications to the Line 6 preheater. Bag filters are to be updated, software for the control system will be updated, and two new cement mill motors will be purchased as key spare parts. According to the company, it has obtained additional subsidised loans of US$4.5m, which will mostly be used for the cement mill separators.

2022s capex compares to a US$6.2m spend in 2021 to help compensate for the slowdown in investment in 2019 and 2020. The main investments during 2021 were bag feeder automisation to improve productivity, changes to the size of the coal mill gas duct to save power and increase production, and replacement of the main gear drive on kiln 6 to improve reliability and reduce power consumption.

Published under
The American Red Cross will be taking care of two families who were displaced on Sunday by a fire in Red Bank.

At 3 p.m., a neighbor called 911 reporting a duplex at 100 Pinehurst Ave. The Red Bank Fire Department responded to the scene and requested a mutual aid response to assist the fire.

The Chattanooga Fire Department responded to the scene while Dallas Bay VFD stood by in Red Bank station 1 for additional emergency calls.



Red Bank fire officials reported the first unit arrived on the scene reporting heavy smoke on one side of the duplex. Once fire officials confirmed everyone was out of both sides of the duplex, they conducted an interior attack and contained the fire within minutes.

The cause of the fire will be under investigation by the Red Bank Fire Department.

No injuries were reported, but HCEMS was on the scene for any potential heat-related injuries to the first responders.

Damages are estimated at $40,000.

The American Red Cross assisted the families living in each side of the duplex with their emergency needs.
Chinese police arrested nine people in connection with a brutal assault on several women inside a restaurant in the northern city of Tangshan on Friday after the video of the incident sparked outrage among the public.

Local police authorities issued a statement that announced the news of the arrests on Saturday. The video of the incident showed graphic footage on Friday and triggered national outrage and sparked heated discussions online about women's safety and rights in China.

Brutal Assault on Women

Time-stamped surveillance footage circulated widely online and showed a man walking into a barbeque restaurant at around 2:40 a.m. local time on Friday. He walked past a woman who was sitting down and eating peacefully with her companions. However, the man approached one of the women and placed his hand on her back, causing the female to grab him by the wrist and push him away.

The woman can be heard asking the man what he wanted and follows the moment where the man responds by slapping the woman in the face. The incident triggered a scuffle between the two as the woman tried to get the man away by attempting to hit him with a glass bottle, as per CNN.

Surveillance footage also showed the woman's friends trying to stop the fight and later being beaten by the man as well as a group of other men who rushed into the restaurant. The video showed several women being punched, kicked, and grabbed and dragged by their hair on the ground.

Read Also: China Sends Strong Warning to Joe Biden Over Controversial Taiwan Remarks: "Follow the One China Principle"

The incident caused a national outcry over women's safety in the region, causing the Tangshan police to publish a statement on Friday saying that they had identified the suspects and were actively searching for them. Authorities also said that two women had been sent to the hospital after being attacked and were in stable condition while two other women sustained minor injuries.

According to ABC News, photographs were captured of a woman lying on a stretcher, with a swollen and bloodied face. The incident renewed discussions about misogyny and mistreatment of women in China. The attack also comes as earlier this year, a viral video of a woman being chained to a wall in a hut drew public backlash after authorities initially denied that she was a victim of human trafficking.

Misogyny and Violence

One Weibo user who was among the first people to upload the video online said that the incident was "heartbreaking" to watch. He asked, "Does that mean that dining out is so unsafe now, do we have to bring men with us everywhere we go? [These men] are no different from thugs."

When asked, the user declined to reveal the source of the videos, saying that it was "inconvenient" to do so. By Sunday, the video of the brutal attack inside the restaurant had garnered more than 68 million views online while the footage of the assault outside the establishment had been taken down.

On Saturday, a widely shared WeChat post took issue with the initial official framing of the assault as a simple act of violence. "This happened in a society where violence against women is rampant. To ignore and suppress the perspective of gender is to deny the violence that people, as women, suffer," it said, Reuters reported.



Related Article: China Calls Out the US, New Zealand for Criticism Over Recent Activity in the Pacific Region

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Thirty years ago at the conclusion of Operation Desert Storm, I met a guy at a national security briefing who had just retired from active duty. He was a fellow Tennessean named Don Rodgers, a Vietnam vet whose last career post was Commanding General, United States Army Information Systems Command, United States Army Signal Center and Fort Gordon. I recognized his name ... (click for more)

I really enjoy my weekly Epoch Times and especially when an issue includes Dear Next Generation, which is where a reader passes along wisdom to the younger set who have never gotten a tractor stuck in a muddy field. Jerry Rosner shared a story that is actually intended for young parents who are eager to help their children stand on their own two feet. Or, better yet, You got ... (click for more)
A Civil War general who was also an ingenious manufacturer called Cameron Hill home for many years and once served as mayor of Chattanooga.

John Thomas Wilder grew up in the Catskill Mountains of New York as a descendant of two Revolutionary War soldiers and one who fought in the War of 1812. Wilder went west to Columbus, Ohio, when he was 19 and worked as a draftsman, then was an apprentice millwright at a foundry.

He later settled in Greensburg, Ind., where he married Martha Jane Stewart on May 18, 1858, and had a large family.

There he set up a foundry of his own, while inventing and patenting several hydraulic machines and a unique water wheel. He built mills and hydraulic works in a large area.

When the Civil War broke out Wilder organized a light artillery company and provided it with two six-pounder cannons produced at his foundry. He also made sure that the men were equipped with the new Spencer repeating rifles, at first having each man commit to buying their own until the government finally covered the cost.

At one point in Kentucky, Wilder's unit with 4,000 men became surrounded by a much larger Confederate army. He personally entered enemy lines under a flag of truce and concluded that the unit should surrender. He was held captive for two months before being exchanged.

In the Tullahoma campaign in Tennessee, his fast-moving troops became known as the "Lightning Brigade." Wilder seized Hoover's Gap and continued to hold it despite orders to pull back. Afterward, he was one of the principal commanders in the campaign to take Chattanooga from General Braxton Bragg. It was Aug. 21, 1863, when Wilder's forces arrived at Stringer's Ridge and began lobbing shells into the town. Confederate artillery was soon dragged to the top of Cameron Hill to make reply. By Sept. 9, the Confederate troops had withdrawn from Chattanooga and Wilder's troops were able to ferry themselves across the river, while vying for the honor of who would get to erect the first Union flag. Wilder and his men then marched triumphantly up Market Street while a band played "Yankee Doodle Went To Town."

Wilder played a pivitol role at the Battle of Chickamauga, defending the crossing of West Chickamauga Creek at Alexander's Bridge. Equipped with the superior Spencers, Wilder's unit held and launched a counterattack on the second day of the battle. Wilder Tower was erected at Chickamauga Battlefield in his honor. General Wilder suffered from dysentery late in the war and resigned from the Army in October 1864.

Wilder, like many enterprising Union officers, went South after the war. He was first at Rockwood, Tn., where he and Capt. H.S. Chamberlain purchased a large tract. Wilder operated the first two blast furnaces in the South at his Roane Iron Company. The town was named after W.O. Rockwood, who was the president of the Roane Iron Company. W.O. Rockwood in 1871 was in Chattanooga living on Cameron Hill, as was General Wilder, who had started a Roane Iron Works at Tannery Flats below Cameron Hill in 1867. Wilder also set up in Chattanooga in 1870 a firm to manufacture rails for the railroads at the site of the old rolling mill of the Federal Army. This operated for several years until that market was about used up. The Roane Iron Works in its heyday supplied jobs for 225 workers. The plant at Rockwood operated until it closed during the Depression.

General Wilder was active in civic affairs and was elected mayor in 1871. However, he was often unable to attend meetings because of the press of business and he resigned after several months. Wilder ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1876. He was the Chattanooga postmaster from 1877 to 1882.

It was said of General Wilder: "He has talked, written, worked, traveled, and spent thousands of dollars to make the country known, and has been instrumental in bringing several million dollars into that section of the state (East Tennessee), and the people who had moved into it upon his representations are prosperous. He has lived many years among a people whom he once fought with all his dash and vim, and has not yet received one uncivil or unkind word from any man in the South, and what is more, he has host of friends among them. He has never held back from helping to build up the town or the country."

General Wilder in July 1886 made plans to leave Chattanooga and he sold his fine home at 113 (later 213 and still later 1113) East Terrace to Harvey Smith Ladew, a wealthy New Yorker who was a leader in the tanning business. Ladew had joined with another tanner, Daniel B. Fayerweather, to form Fayerweather & Ladew. That firm set up a plant at Tannery Flats just down from Cameron Hill on the river side.

The sale was for $15,000, which was a princely sum for those days. However, the home featured a ballroom on the third floor, a wine cellar, a walk-in safe, mahogany paneling, marble bathroom fixtures and 12-inch-thick brick walls. It was at the site of the old William Crutchfield farm before the Civil War.

H.S. Ladew was described "as a gentleman of wealth, who has liberal investments in the city; and his residence here for a considerable portion of the year portends much for the growth of the city. It is hoped that by making Chattanooga a temporary home, he will eventually conclude to permanently locate here." His brother, Joseph Harvey Ledew, lived at the former Wilder home for a portion of 1888 while overseeing the plant.

Harvey Smith Ladew had planned to reside on Cameron Hill in the winter months. However, he died in 1888 and the house stood vacant for many years. It was finally acquired by T.H. Lasley, who lived there for over half a century.

General Wilder went from Chattanooga to Johnson City, Tn., where he developed the industrial suburb of Carnegie and set up plants to produce iron and furnish equipment to the railroads. He built the 166-room Cloudland Hotel near the top of Roan Mountain that was reached by a narrow gauge railroad. He moved on to Knoxville in 1897 after being appointed by President William McKinley as a federal pension agent.

He was a commissioner of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. In 1902, he was part of a delegation to New York to seek funding for a Chattanooga library. The Carnegie Library was built on Georgia Avenue after Andrew Carnegie supplied $50,000.

Martha Stewart Wilder died in 1892. In 1904, Wilder took Dora Lee as his second wife. General Wilder was on vacation at Jacksonville, Fla., when he died at age 87. He is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery in St. Elmo with his first wife.

Two of the homes he lived in have been preserved. They are the General John T. Wilder House in Knoxville and the John T. Wilder House at Roan Mountain.

Sadly, the home he occupied on a perch of Cameron Hill was torn down.
A man on Vine Street told police he is tired of all the people on foot and cars driving fast in the area. This is due to the heavy traffic caused by Mary's Bar and Lounge at 2125 McCallie Ave. The officer told the man to attend City Council meetings and to speak to his neighbors about these issues and voice their grievances. At this time, Mary's had been shut down for almost an hour and the issues the man reported had stopped. This address was added to the Watch List for two weeks.

* * *

A woman on Milne Street called police and said she woke up to a fallen tree on top of her vehicle. Police observed a large tree atop her van. She spoke with her neighbor and they provided her with their landlord's number, seeing as the tree was on her neighbor's property.

* * *

Police were dispatched to a verbal disorder in an apartment on E. 23rd Street. A husband and wife were arguing about their kids. The officers were concerned about the disorder continuing if both parents remained in the room together. Police were able to get both parents to reconcile for the remainder of the night.

* * *

An officer saw an unoccupied black minivan with all its lights on and a running engine at the Enterprise at 4514 Hixson Pike. A black Jeep Wrangler was seen leaving just as the officer arrived. The officer tried multiple times to get in touch with a responsible party at the business and no contact was made. There were several other vehicles that were unlocked that the officer secured and locked.

* * *

An officer saw a white Hyundai Sonata pulling into the Mapco gas station at 5500 Highway 153. The vehicle had an expired tag and was occupied by two people. A traffic stop was initiated for the registration violation. The driver told the officer the car was her brother's and she was in the process of getting the tags in her name. Neither the driver or passenger had warrants and the driver had valid proof of insurance. A warning was given for the registration violation.

* * *

Police were traveling southbound on Georgia Avenue and observed a woman with her cellphone in her hand. Police initiated a traffic stop at the intersection of East MLK and West MLK. Upon contact with the driver, police observed marijuana residue in the driver seat and asked her to step out. At this time police detained the woman. Prior to police conducting a probable cause search of the vehicle, the woman said there was a firearm in the driver's side door. The pistol was a Glock 19. Police confirmed through NCIC the firearm was not stolen. Police found nothing other than marijuana in the vehicle. Police let the woman go with a warning to not text and drive. Police didnt observe any indications of impairment.

* * *



An officer on patrol saw an unoccupied pickup truck in the parking lot of 2120 Glass St. There was damage to the driver's side rear window that was half taped up and it didnt have a license plate. The officer ran the VIN through info channel, and found the truck was not stolen and registered in Alabama. The driver's side door was unlocked and there was nothing in the pickup truck.

* * *

A man on N. Marks Avenue told police his stepdaughter was arguing with him after he let her stay in his home. He wanted her gone because she was being disrespectful and nasty to him. The officer spoke with his stepdaughter, who said the man is a drunk and is always mean to her and her kids. She has a plan to go to Atlanta, but it was another day. The man agreed for both of them to stay in separate rooms and leave each other alone for the night.

* * *

A man called police and said he left his iPhone in the laundry room of an apartment building he lives in on Lindsay Street. He returned in 15 minutes to get it and it was gone. He has pinged it and shows that it is in Kindred Hospital this morning. He doesnt know the serial number of the phone.

* * *

The regional operations manager of RJ Young Company at 4626 Resource Dr. told police they had rented a vehicle from Enterprise and it was left parked there over the weekend. During that time, the catalytic converter was stolen from the vehicle.

* * *

A man told police he parked his car in the parking garage at Memorial Hospital at 2525 De Sales Ave. while he was at work. When he got home, he discovered damage on it, a dent and scratches on the passenger side of the front bumper. There is no proof of how the damage was done.

* * *

An officer responded to the Chattanooga Choo Choo at 1400 Market St. for a homeless man who was wearing a coat and boxer shorts. The manager of the Chattanooga Choo Choo directed the officer to the man inside of Songbirds and also met with the manager of Songbirds. The officer identified the homeless man and he did not have any warrants. The officer told the man he is now banned from Songbirds and the Chattanooga Choo Choo. He is aware that if he were to return on property for any reason, he would be subject to arrest. He left the property with his belongings.


David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting tragedy at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was surprised on Friday when an op-ed he wrote for Foxnews.com appeared on its website. He shouldnt have been. He is the organizer of this weekends March For Our Lives Movement and the co-author #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line.

Hundreds of thousands took part in cities across the United States to protest the senseless shootings that now plague our nations major cities and, on Sunday, a bipartisan Senate committee vowed to take important steps of sorely-needed gun control. David Hoggs persistent voice played a major role in causing that to happen.

* * *

WE MUST BALANCE RESPONSIBILITY WITH FREEDOM

By David Hogg, reprinted from an Op-ed piece on Foxnews.com on Friday June 10,2022.

Think of someone you love.

Picture them now. Your child, grandchild, mom, dad, partner, spouse, sibling, or best friend. Where do they attend school, or work, or church? What is their name? What was the last thing you said to them? Are there any family traditions, vacations, or life milestones that make you smile?

Now imagine youre at work and a breaking news alert lights up your phone: a shooting at a shopping center close to where they live. It feels surreal to see a place you know written there in black and white. The word "shooting" makes you feel numb.

You reach out. One text, then another, no response. You call, no answer.

Another breaking news alert: multiple deaths and injuries. In a panic you rush to the scene, then the hospital. You're met with chaos. You notice a jacket you bought them for their birthday lying in a corner of the ER. It's bloodied and cut in half. You catch the eye of a nurse and finally learn that your loved one sustained six gunshot wounds to the chest and one to the head while trying to shield others. They are gone.

The doctor is speaking, but you cant hear anything. You think of how you just saw them that morning, you didnt get to say goodbye. Nothing seems to matter, not the trivial arguments or the canceled plans. Certainly not politics.

There are nearly a hundred families who live this gut-wrenching reality every day. Maybe youre one of them. Im writing this because I dont want you to live this nightmare, no matter your politics. No one should. I am also writing this because, like you, I love this country and for it to function we need to balance responsibility with freedom. This is what reasonable gun owners believe too. I am asking that you stand up and say this truth.

When 17 of my classmates and teachers were murdered in my Parkland, Florida, school in 2018, a group of us desperately sought answers. How could adults have let this happen? In shock, we marched for our lives with a million other Americans of all stripes. There have been countless reasons to give up in the years since. You know the city names and the incidents they represent. This time the outcome must be different, and if it is, it will be because of responsible citizens.

You can be both part of the solution and protect our rights. Attitudes are changing for what feels like the first time. Gun owners, even former gun industry executives, are demanding action because tragedies like Uvalde do not reflect their values. I know there are millions of you who want to do the right thing. You are being compelled to speak out. Some of you have told me personally that its because you are "tired of seeing children being slaughtered," others want tighter laws and even a limit on assault weapons because they believe you must "earn the right to own a gun".

I dont know what the exact answer is, but I know that you should be at the table. Your voice matters. Your rights matter. Your decency matters. We have disagreed in the past, but we are not enemies. Our enemy is not a party or organization, it is gun violence.

If we can agree that killing children is unacceptable, then we need to either prevent people intent on killing from getting their hands on the guns they use or stop their intent to kill in the first place. We can follow the model we used to for cigarettes: address the pressures that make someone want them, and then understand how they get them. Gunmen are often radicalized and moved to kill because of racism and hatred, just like the shooter in Buffalo.

That isnt a mental illness. A long process occurred that led him to a desire to pick up a gun and kill. Thats the case for all kinds of gun violence in this country. No law is perfect, but if we focus on stopping the process of radicalization to violence, we can reduce gun deaths by half over the next decade. And we need to act now.

Lets start by changing the conversation. So, whoever you are, march with us in one of the over 450 marches across the country this Saturday. Gun owners, NRA members, Republicans, Democrats, independents, and people from all backgrounds are fed up and it is time we make Congress do something.

I want to state unequivocally that I am not anti-gun. In fact, the movement I helped to start has been pro-Second Amendment from day one. There are so many things that we may disagree on, but there is also a lot we do agree on. The problem is that we dont listen to each other long enough to find out. What we both cant accept is the idea that we cant do anything to stop the murder of children. We can. We all desperately want to protect our kids. Lets start there and find common ground to take action, because the next shooter is already plotting his attack.

- - -

David Hogg is a survivor of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida and a founder of the March For Our Lives Movement. David co-authored #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line.

royexum@aol.com
In loving memory of Reverend Melvin Dewaine Reeves, Sr., a veteran of the United States Army and the National Guard of Tennessee, who transitioned to his eternal home on Friday, June 10, 2022.

Dewaine was born on Jan. 20, 1937, at home in Fort Payne, Al. In the late 1960s he began preaching the gospel of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as an independent and non-denominational evangelist. During the 1970s he hosted radio broadcasted sermons for WRIP and an occasional televised sermon on Channel 61, where he earned his everlasting nickname, Preacher Reeves. By trade, Preacher was an iron worker contracted through the Ironworkers Local 704 out of Chattanooga. He was an avid fisherman and enthusiastic outdoorsman spending much of that time with his son, Dee.

As an active member of the community, Dewaine served as president of the Chattanooga Bass Association (CBA) for seven years. During his time with the CBA, he promoted several years of sponsorships and tournament fundraisers for Shriners Childrens Hospital, Childrens Miracle Network, the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Make A Wish Foundation, and public youth free fishing days. He also represented recreational water and lake users by collaborating with the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in support of clean water and fish habitation initiatives. Working with TVA and TWRA, Chickamauga Lake was taken from a dead lake to the number four healthiest largemouth bass stocked and fishable lake in the world.

Preacher Reeves was preceded in death by his loving wife, Carolyn Reeves, his mother, Olena Reeves and father, Melvin Reeves. He leaves behind his four children, Melba (Paul) Estes, Carol (Tom) Keith, Dee (Donna) Reeves and Lora Masengale; grandchildren, Misty Senters, Kimberly Owens, Brandon Wright, Ashley Miller, Hayden Masengale and Mindy Reeves; great-grandchildren, Mecalah, Landon, and Brent Senters, Ian Wright, Aleena and Ambrose Owens, Savanna and Baylee Millsaps; great-great-grandchildren, Naelyi, Callie and Zoie Wheaton. He leaves behind his sister, Patsy Callahan, niece, Earlene Henry and nephew, Donald Callahan.

The family will receive friends on Tuesday, June 14, from 11 a.m.  12:45 p.m. with funeral service beginning at 1 p.m. in the chapel of the Turner Funeral Home located at 3193 Webb Road, Chattanooga, Tn. 37416. Officiating the service is Pastor Barry Williams of Ridgecrest Baptist Church, Chickamauga, Ga.

Mr. Reeves will be laid to rest beside his beloved wife of 67 years in the Greenwood Cemetery, 1954 Greenwood Road, Chattanooga.

Please share your memories and express condolences atwww.turnerfamilyfuneralhome. com



Arrangements are by Turner Funeral Home, Highway 58 Chapel, 423-622-3171.
The County Commission voted 8-1 on Wednesday to approve R-1 zoning for a $400 million new residential development on a former 300-acre farm at Apison. Chairman Sabrena Smedley cast the only no vote, saying she appreciated the efforts made by the developers and was very aware of the need for more housing, but was "going to stand with the community." She cited inadequate infrastructure ... (click for more)
In two previous articles I wrote about the most famous murder case in the state of Georgia that was tried in 1913 and was ultimately decided by the United States Supreme Court (Earlier Happenings September 20, 2021 and November 1, 2021).

In the first article I unfortunately did a minimum amount of research and presented the facts from the position of the possibility that the defendant, Leo Frank, was the victim of Anti-Semitism and was falsely accused of the rape and murder of the 13-year-old female victim who was an employee at the pencil factory in Atlanta where Frank was the manager.

Shortly thereafter I received a manila envelope that contained a book by the Nation of Islam titled The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man (2016) that presented an entirely opposite perspective of the case.

In a well-documented 551-page commentary it is claimed that efforts by many newspapers, organizations, and others were asked over the years to assert the innocence of the defendant. Amongst the avowed supporters were the New York Times (NYT) and the Nashville Tennessean (NT).

(Ironically on March 11, 1986, the Georgia Legislature in an action similar to that of the Criminal Court of Hamilton County in 2000 in the Ed Johnson murder case granted a post-death pardon after both Frank and Johnson were hung by vigilante groups. (The facts, but not the results of each case were different in that the evidence was considered overwhelming in the Georgia case but extremely weak in the Chattanooga case.)

I attempted to present both sides of the story and wrote Article No. 2 which supported the theory of guilt based on the documentary evidenced contained in the Islam book.

However, a third corroborative source was discovered in the 870-page revelation of the origin of the Ochs-Sulzberger newspapers dynasty written by co-authors Susan E. Tifft and Alex Jones in the 1999 treatise, The Trust.

In a statement on the back cover about the authors it stated:

The Trust was written with the full cooperation of the Ochses and Sulzbergers and unconditional access to the New York Times archives, but with the authors retaining complete independence. The result is not only a richly detailed portrait of an American dynasty but a fascinating chronicle of the twentieth century.

However, this freedom to independently produce a history of the family opened many doors that some thought should probably have remained closed.

It is the story of how Adolph Ochs from humble beginnings purchased the Chattanooga Daily Times in 1878, the New York Times in 1896 and changed it into what is one of the leading sources of news in America and throughout the world.

In Chapter 8, pages 92-97 of The Trust styled A Non-Jewish Jew Adolph Ochs grappled with the Frank case.

He rarely used the New York Times to advance a cause, especially one associated with Jews.

However, in 1914 Louis Marshall, President of the American Jewish Community, asked him to help rally support for Leo Frank.

Adolph Ochs allegedly had some concerns about whether Frank was guilty or innocent of the murder and rape of the young girl, but Marshall convinced him that there had been a horrible miscarriage of justice and Ochs asked his fellow journalists to write editorials about the case as it moved along through the courts based on his sincere and sentimental belief that in America an innocent man should not be hanged.

Although the case was fraught with racial prejudice against both blacks and Jews, Adolph Ochs wanted to dismiss racial prejudice as a factor in the Frank case, but the opposing viewpoints were set in stone.

According to a footnote in The Trust, from May 1913 until September 1915 the New York Times ran 194 articles and 22 editorials about the case, which helped lead to the creation of the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith in 1913.

The result of the historic case had a debilitating effect on Adolphs nerves and state of mind.

The support for Frank produced personal hate mail and brought on a temporary state of depression.

He had previously vowed never to encourage a perception of the NYT as Jewish but he realized that by entering the controversy surrounding the case he had allegedly encouraged that perception of the paper.

Tifft and Jones in their exhaustive treatise on the Ochs-Sulzberger family and the paper assert that never again did Adolph support a cause, certainly not one honoring Jews!

(Whether this is a third other side of the story is left to the subjective determination of the reader!)

* * *

Jerry Summers

(If you have additional information about one of Mr. Summers' articles or have suggestions or ideas about a future Chattanooga area historical piece, please contact Mr. Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com)
A 47-year-old Chattanooga woman has drowned in the Colorado River at the Grand Canyon.

She was identified as Sheetal Patel.

Officials at the Grand Canyon said, "On June 11, at approximately 2 p.m., the Grand Canyon Regional Communications Center received a report of a passenger on a commercial river trip who had fallen into the Colorado River.

Commercial guides were able to reach the woman by boat. The commercial guides pulled her from the river and began CPR.

"National Park Service (NPS) search and rescue personnel responded and assisted with resuscitation efforts. All attempts to resuscitate the individual were unsuccessful. Park rangers were flown into the location by the park helicopter and pronounced the individual deceased.

"The victim has been identified as 47-year old Sheetal Patel, originally of Chicago, Illinois, and most recently from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Patel was cooling off along Pipe Creek Beach, when she was caught by the current in the Colorado River. Patel hiked into the canyon to meet the river trip at Phantom Ranch, and was beginning a multi-day boating trip.

"An investigation into the incident is being conducted by the NPS in coordination with the Coconino County Medical Examiner. No additional information is available at this time.

"Before heading down trail, hikers are strongly encouraged to read the Hiking Tips page and check the Backcountry Updates and Closures page for current information on inner canyon conditions. All visitors to Grand Canyon should ensure they are drinking plenty of fluids, resting in shade during the heat of the day, watching for signs of distress in traveling companions, and dressing appropriately for the weather, which includes light-colored and loose-fitting clothing. The NPS does not recommend hiking from the rim to the river and back in one day."




Before Johnny Depp and Amber Heard got married, he supposedly told her there would only be one way out of their relationship. And according to her, thats why they didnt have a prenuptial agreement.

When did Depp and Heard get married, what did he tell her was the only escape plan, and what supposedly prompted her to file for divorce despite his warning?

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp | Tristan Fewings/Getty Images

When did Amber Heard and Johnny Depp get married?

According to Depps testimony, he wanted a prenup in the marriage with Heard. But he claimed the conversation led to fights without resolution, and the couple wed without one on Feb. 3, 2015.

Depp said he thought they would get a postnuptial agreement signed once the dust from their celebration settled. But continued conversations were no less heated, he explained.

He claimed Heard didnt respond well to a meeting during which a lawyer was supposed to guide her through signing an agreement after the marriage. He said she flew to him in Australia, where he was filming, and told him the lawyer mistreated her.

Depp called the attorney and angrily cursed at her, called her names, and fired her on behalf of Heard. He testified to that, as did the lawyer. He said the gesture wasnt enough to appease his then-wifes anger toward him for what she learned during the meeting.

When Heard explained to him why she was so upset, it wasnt just that Depp wanted her to sign a postnuptial agreement. He claimed she told him her anger came partly because she also wasnt in his will.

Johnny Depp is starting testimony about Australia. Stating that they didn't have time for a prenup because there were too many fights over it and delays, so they started talking about a postnup and that kicked off the fighting in Australia. Come join us.https://t.co/dHcYgajY17  Emily D. Baker  (@TheEmilyDBaker) April 20, 2022

What did Amber Heard say Johnny Depp told her was the only way out of their marriage?

During Heards time on the stand, she contradicted Depps claims and said he was the one who got upset over the idea of a prenup. According to her testimony, she brought it up because it was apparent to her that the people around him, seemingly including his sister Christi Dembrowski, would be happier if the couple had one.

Depp supposedly told Heard death was the only way out, so no agreement was needed. She said he accused her of thinking about leaving for even bringing it up. She claimed since he often became violent, she didnt force the issue with him.

Why did Amber Heard file to end her marriage to Johnny Depp?

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's divorce has been finalized: https://t.co/3GN5ZK7r0I pic.twitter.com/VvlZLrZI7x  E! News (@enews) January 14, 2017

Heard said she filed for divorce in May 2016 following an incident with Depp during which her friends called 911. She claimed he violently attacked her in a penthouse they shared. There was a visible mark on her face when she filed for and received a temporary restraining order in the following days.

According to Heards testimony, abuse was a constant throughout her relationship with Depp. But she said she feared he would kill her if she didnt leave after the last alleged attack. Notably, police documents and court testimony show responding officers did not identify Heard as a victim of domestic violence on the night in question.

What happened in their penthouse that night is he said, she said, with Depp claiming he was set up for an ambush by Heard and friends that prefaced a hoax claiming he abused her.

Their divorce was finalized in 2017. But Depp successfully sued his ex-wife for defamation over three of her claims and was handed a win in 2022. Heard now owes him more than $8 million.

How to get help: In the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.

RELATED: Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard: Depps Sister Revealed Insults Over Dior Interest
Netflixs new docu-series, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, rips the roof off a secretive society of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). The Netflix original reveals the shocking reality many women and girls faced living in the FLDS polygamist lifestyle under Warren Jeffs. So what do the worlds most famous polygamists and stars of Sister Wives think about the FLDS cult leader, Warren Jeffs?

Christine, Janelle, Kody, Robyn, and Meri Brown | Discovery Networks/TLC

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey: What are Warren Jeffs FLDS teachings?

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey is a three-part series, released in June 2022, which details the rise and fall of the fundamentalist leader and Prophet, Warren Jeffs. The show takes a deep dive into the investigation of sexual abuse, underage marriage, and trafficking of young women at the hands of the Jeffs family.

Jeffs was the sole leader of the church and the only one with the ability to assign wives to men. He would assign girls, some as young as 12 years of age, as brides to elderly men in the church. The women and the girl, regarded as second-class citizens within the FLDS community, had no say over which man they were given to.

It is rumored Jeffs had over 87 wives and has fathered over 50 children. However, after an intense investigation, there was enough evidence to finally take down Jeffs. In 2011, he was convicted of two felony counts of child sexual assault. He is currently serving a life sentence plus twenty years.

What does Sister Wives star Kody Brown think of Warren Jeffs?

Aside from the Jeffs family, The Brown family could be considered the most popular polygamist family of all time. However, the Brown family does not follow the rules of the FLDS sect. Kody and his wives practice plural marriage based on the beliefs of their church, the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB), which is considered a branch of Fundamentalist Mormonism.

Contrary to what the FLDS believe, the members of the AUB do not allow for arranged marriages or child brides. Also, unlike the FLDS, they live and work within society. The AUB is the largest branch, with approximately 10,000 members in Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Montana, and Mexico.

So what does Kody Brown think about the FLDS leader, Warren Jeffs? In an interview from 2012 with Las Vegas Sun, Kody discussed his view on Jeffs arrest and his impact on the way the world views polygamy.

I felt like there were so many stereotypes about plural marriages, with Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints. There was so much negative press  child brides and abuse on the compound  that I hated being identified that way. Warren Jeffs is not our poster child. When I talked with my children about doing the show, I said we have an opportunity to not only change our world, but to change the world for everyone else. Kody Brown

Sister Wives stars think that Warren Jeffs gave polygamists a negative stereotype

In the same interview, the Sister Wives stars talk more about how Jeffs child abuse and rape conviction caused the world to view all polygamists as bad. When asked how they are different from Warren Jeffs and the FLDS, Kody explained:

We are Fundamentalist Mormons, not the LDS or FLDS. Jeffs  who was the leader of the FLDS  built up a fiefdom around him. He took the voice away from his wives and children. My belief is that my wives should have their voice and should be able to make choices. As a family, we make choices together. Kody Brown

Kodys second wife, Janelle Brown, chimed in with her perspective. She said, I was able to choose my family. In some Mormon sects, marriages are arranged. In our community, we dont assign spouses. We also wait to get married after we turn 18 years old. The only common thing is we worship from the same scripture as the LDS.

Christine Brown, who was Kodys third wife at the time, explained in the interview: We also have access to the outside world, the Internet, and TV. We want the world for our children, for them to go to college and travel. And Kodys first wife, Meri Brown revealed that she had just ran a 5k to raise awareness for women trapped in the FLDS.

Janelle said, Secrecy is bad because it allowed people like Warren Jeffs to abuse. That abuse persists because people were more afraid of the government than Jeffs.

Kody then concluded, We dont mean to criticize the FLDS. That is a community that needs our empathy and support. We can save our criticism for their leadership.

While The Brown family wants to separate themselves as far as they can from the FLDS, their core values on plural or celestial marriage are the same. Hopefully, fans will hear more about this on season 17 of Sister Wives, set to air later in 2022.

RELATED: Sister Wives: Christine Browns Aunt Kristyn Decker Believes the Wives Were Groomed and Trafficked
Elon Musk says the Tesla Fremont factory emerged as the biggest auto plant in the North American region.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and founder of Tesla, Musk, boasted the monumental feat of its factory in Fermont, California to its employees in a recent internal meeting.

Elon Musk on Tesla Fremont

A news story by Tesla North reports that the mega-rich tech executive recently had a company-wide talk with the workforce of the giant EV maker. The meeting reportedly took place in the Fremont factory of Tesla.

No less than the Tesla CEO took the chance to reveal a "pretty sick" achievement for the automaker to the folks who made the whole thing possible.

Musk reportedly said during the recent meeting that some bystanders were somewhat astounded that Tesla is producing cars in the Bay Area.

The billionaire tech entrepreneur responded that: "Yeah not only we do, but we have the biggest car factory in North America."

Tesla Fremont Now the Largest Plant in North America?

As if it wasn't clear at first, the Tesla founder reiterated during the meeting at the Fremont factory that "we are now the biggest car factory in North America," adding it was "pretty sick."

Apart from the internal meeting, Musk also penned an email to all the employees of the renowned carmaker.

According to a recent report by Drive Tesla Canada, the Tesla boss sent a company-wide email to congratulate the whole workforce for their impressive performance.

Musk says that the recent accomplishments came their way despite the challenging quarter.

The tech exec disclosed that the Fremont factory of Tesla achieved record-breaking single-day production figures.

But Musk was scant about its details. He failed to reveal the specific number of EVs produced in the massive auto plant.

The internal email also took the chance to send high praises to the folks from other Tesla facilities, such as the Giga Texas and Giga Berlin.

Read Also: Elon Musk Is Not Moving Twitter's Acquisition Forward Without the Exact Number of Bots

Tesla Fremont Factory

It is worth noting that the Fremont factory of Tesla is home to the best-selling EVs of the carmaker, including its Model 3 and Model S. The facility also builds the Model X and Model Y.

The facilities in Fremont, California were initially at the helm of GM. But the auto plant shut down its operations long ago in 1982.

Its closure didn't last long, thanks to the partnership between the Japanese carmaker Toyota and GM in 1984, which peaked its production at 428,633 vehicles.

Tesla, on the other hand, which owns the facility since 2010, has reportedly outnumbered the record of GM and Toyota, Musk claimed.

Related Article: Elon Musk Got Into a Twitter Fight - What Does His Now Deleted Tweet Say?
Michael J. Fox is known for his many roles playing teens in the 1980s in movies such as Teen Wolf and on television in the sitcom Family Ties. But his turn as Marty McFly may be one of his best-known movie roles, and the Back to the Future franchise is considered one of the best of all time.

But it wasnt always easy on the set of the movies. In some cases, it was dangerous for both the stunt professionals on set as well as the actors themselves. In fact, Fox nearly strangled himself while shooting a scene in the third installment of the film franchise.

Michael J. Fox played teen time traveler Marty McFly in the movie franchise

Michael J Fox standing in the dirt wearing a poncho in a scene from the film Back to the Future Part III, 1990. (Photo by Universal Pictures/Getty Images)

Fox took the role of Marty McFly for the first Back to the Future movie in 1985. The film features Marty, a typical 80s teen, accidentally finding himself in the past. He is sent back to 1955 in a DeLorean that can time travel, an invention created by Martys friend, Doc Brown. While there, he accidentally prevents his parents from meeting, essentially eliminating his existence. So he has to both get his parents to meet and find a way to get back to 1985.

Back to the Future was a huge success, leading to two sequels and a slew of award nominations and wins. It is one of Foxs most prominent roles and led to the actor receiving parts in many television shows and movies.

Fox almost strangled himself during filming on Back to the Future Part III

In the third installment of the film franchise, Marty McFly has to travel back in time to 1885 to save Doc Brown from certain death. However, as soon ad Marty arrives, he encounters trouble in the form of Buford Mad Dog Tannen. He has to try and escape from him to avoid death by hanging.

According to WatchMojo, Fox volunteered to do one of the close-up scenes while the stunt performers did the wide shots. During one of these close-up takes, Fox was accidentally hanged long enough for him to lose consciousness. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured by the stunt gone wrong, but you can still see the real struggle in the scene when watching the movie.

A stunt performer suffered serious injuries on Back to the Future Part II

Foxs near-fatal accident wasnt the only incident that happened on the set of the film franchise. In Back to the Future Part II, a stunt went wrong. According to Cracked, a stunt performer was due to perform a hoverboard sequence. The scene was supposed to show multiple stunt performers chase Marty and fall through the windows of the clock tower. Several issues were noted while testing the stunt, and the original stunt performer backed out.

Stunt professional Cheryl Wheeler took on the stunt, even though there were questions as to the safety of the stunt. When it was filmed, last-minute adjustments to the stunt caused it to go wrong, which can actually be seen in the film. Instead of Wheeler going through the window, she instead hits the pillar to the side of the window. This miscalculation also caused her to fall outside instead of inside, where the safety pads were located. Wheeler suffered multiple injuries, but she continued to perform stunts in Hollywood after the accident.

RELATED: Back to the Future II Almost Killed Off Michael J. Fox!
Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have gotten a ton of new content in Phase Four. Since kicking off with WandaVision in 2021, the MCU has released six seasons of television on Disney+ and five feature films. Now despite some mild controversy among fans, the seventh MCU Disney+ series, Ms. Marvel, has taken a much different release strategy in Pakistan.

Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan | Marvel Studios

Ms. Marvel marks a huge step forward for the MCU

Iman Vellani stars as Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American teen who admires the Avengers. In particular, Kamala is a fan of Captain Marvel (Brie Larson). So, after she develops superpowers of her own, it stands to reason she would honor her favorite hero in her own moniker. In this way, Ms. Marvel marks the MCUs biggest step into self-awareness.

Sure, Hawkeyes Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) was inspired by Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner). But Kamala is a full-on Avengers cosplayer on Ms. Marvel, giving MCU fans more representation in the franchise itself than ever before. Of course, the fact that Kamala Khans family is not only from Pakistan but also Muslim is an important step forward for the MCU too.

RELATED: Ms. Marvel: Kevin Feige Addresses the Controversy Surrounding Kamalas Powers

The Disney+ series will release as a movie trilogy

Unfortunately, MCU fans in Pakistan dont have the opportunity to see Ms. Marvel on Disney+, as the streaming service is not available in the country. However, they will still be able to see Kamala Khans story play out but in a very different way than the rest of the world. As series director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy announced on Instagram, Ms. Marvel is actually hitting theaters in Pakistan.

But because the show runs for six episodes, Ms. Marvels theatrical release will see the Disney+ series divided into three two-episode chunks. According to Collider, the series first two episodes arrive in Pakistani theaters on June 16, followed by episodes 3 and 4 on June 30, and the final two on July 14. This schedule neatly fits with the episodes release on Disney+, ensuring that plot details remain secret until everyone can see it.

Iman Vellani co-stars in the Captain Marvel sequel

From a business standpoint, Disneys decision to release Ms. Marvel in Pakistani theaters is a smart one. After all, it encourages MCU fans to make three separate trips to the theater to see Kamala Khans story play out. But by the same token, it also gives Vellani the the grand debut she deserves as the MCUs first leading Pakistani hero.

And since the actor reprises her role in 2023s The Marvels, it seems shell have a very pivotal role as Phase Four of the MCU plays out. The Marvels serves as a sequel to 2019s Captain Marvel. But much like WandaVision leads into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Ms. Marvel could queue up the story at the center of The Marvels, which hits theaters on July 28, 2023.

RELATED: Ms. Marvel Has 1 Surprising Connection to Spider-Man: No Way Home
The Judds were a family before becoming one of country musics most successful performing duos. And Naomi Judd always said she did the best she could while raising her kids, even when it might not have seemed like it to them. For example, she kept a vital truth from Wynonna Judd about her birth father well into adulthood. Keep scrolling to find out more.

Wynonna Judd | Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images

When did Naomi Judd get pregnant with Wynonna Judd?

Naomi Judd was a high school senior who became pregnant at 17 after losing her virginity. She said her boyfriend didnt want the responsibility of a child, so he wished her luck before taking off. Eventually, she married someone else, Michael Ciminella, and decided to raise the baby with him.

Wynonna was born Christina Claire Ciminella in 1964. And in 1968, little sister Ashley Ciminella, better known as actor Ashley Judd, came along. Wynonna said she thought the arrival of her sister was a special gift just for her, making their family complete.

Who was Wynonna Judds birth father?

Judd told Andy Cohen on his Radio Andy show that she didnt learn until 1994 that Ashleys father wasnt her biological dad. I was 30 years old and I found out, you know, part of my life that I thought, you know, this man who was my biological father is not. And its Ashleys father , she explained.

Wynonna made plans to meet her birth father, Charles Jordan, but he died before they could follow through on any arrangements. But she shared with Cohen that she met her half-brother for the first time in 2020. He lives in Kentucky like Wynonna and Ashley and is about three years younger.

Notably, Jordan and Ciminella werent the only people who filled father roles in Wynonnas life. Naomi married Larry Strickland in 1989. They remained married until Naomis death by suicide in 2022, and he stood alongside her daughters at her memorial service.

I never knew my Earthly Father. He died before I could meet him. I pray he'll greet me in Heaven. #ICanOnly

Imagine pic.twitter.com/eU4Cqzl5jO  Wynonna (@Wynonna) June 19, 2016

Why did Wynonna Judd sue the man she thought was her father?

In 2012, Wynonna filed a lawsuit against Ciminella  the man she believed was her dad for 30 years. According to Taste of Country, she accused her one-time stepdad of promising to pay back $200,000 for a home he purchased in 1994.

As of February 2012, the amount due under the Loan Documents in favor of Judd is $242,317, representing the principal balance, plus accrued interest and late fees, the lawsuit claimed. Interest continues to accrue at the maximum rate as set forth in the Loan Documents until paid in full.

Through his legal team, Ciminella argued the property was gifted to him. Its a shame that a daughter feels like she has to sue and evict her own father, his lawyer said. Its unclear if Wynonna was successful in her legal efforts.

How to get help: In the U.S., call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Or text HOME to 741-741 to speak with a trained crisis counselor at the free Crisis Text Line.

RELATED: Ashley Judd and Sister Wynonna Judd Come From the Same Wound
Leaders at Rick Warrens Saddleback Church say a preliminary investigation has cleared Warrens recently announced successor, Andy Wood, of allegations of an authoritarian leadership style that demands unquestioning loyalty.

Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life and one of the most influential voices in evangelical Christianity, is planning to retire in September. He named San Franciscoarea pastor Andy Wood as his successor at Saddleback, a Southern California congregation that draws 25,000 people to worship services. Wood, 40, is currently the lead pastor of Echo Church, a multisite congregation based in San Jose.

After the public announcement, a former Echo Church staffer made comments about issues with Woods leadership on social media.

The allegations did not come as a surprise to Saddleback leaders.

According to Saddlebacks statement on Sunday night, Wood had told the churchs elders about the former staffers claims during his interview process and offered to show them videos of his meetings with the former staffer. The church asked Vanderbloemen Search Group, which did the initial background check on Wood, to do a follow-up review.

Our elders have now received a preliminary second report from The Vanderbloemen Search Group, clearing Pastor Wood from all allegations, the church said in a letter to the congregation on Sunday, which was also sent to Religion New Service (RNS).

The search company was provided video, email, and text records, and interviews that Echo gathered in its review of Woods actions. It also conducted one additional interview, according to Saddlebacks letter.

They tried to reach out to the former staff member and have yet to receive communication back, the church said.

Saddleback leaders said they sent the letter out because we felt it was important that you hear the facts on this from us now, rather than in the news or on social media.

Please stop a moment and pray right now, church leaders asked the congregation. Pray for clarity of the truth and for wisdom.

Wood, in a statement to RNS, said that Echo would be happy for any current or former staff members to share their working experience at Echo with Vanderbloemen as a part of their investigation, adding, We want to do everything we can to help the truth about these allegations come to light.

According to the transition plan announced by the church, Wood and his wife, Stacie, will be interviewed by Warren and his wife, Kay, during services at Saddleback June 19. The Woods will step down at Echo Church at the end of June and begin leading Saddleback on September 12.

Scot McKnight, coauthor of A Church Called Tov, which critiques toxic church cultures, said large churches can create celebrity pastors who lead in problematic ways. He does not have firsthand knowledge of problems with Woods leadership, but expressed concerns about what hes heard. Big churches attract big egos, he said.

Founded in 2008 as South Bay Church, Echo now has four campuses and draws about 3,000 people to weekly services. The church has grown in part through merging with smaller, struggling congregations to create whats known as a multisite church.

Church mergers have become one of the most effective strategies for struggling churches to thrive again, for growing churches to amplify their reach, and for church facilities to be better utilized to advance the Gospel in a region, according to a section of the Echo Church website.

Wood also runs an annual leadership conference, which last year included Mark Driscoll, the disgraced pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle who resigned in 2014 after a series of controversies involving allegations of bullying, plagiarism, and abuse of power. Driscoll now pastors a church in Arizona.

Lance Hough, a former staff member at Echos Fremont campus, left the church last year citing an unhealthy culture in which, he alleged, Wood demanded unswerving loyalty. Hough had been part of the leadership team at Crossroads Church in Freemont when it merged with Echo.

That merger is billed as a marriage merger on Echos website, where two growing churches realign with each other under a unified vision and new leadership. The merger was supposed to be a partnership, said Hough, but became more of a takeover.

And as soon as our organization started to functionally merge, they started systematically killing off everything that made our church unique, Hough said. He note that Crossroads pastor remained on staff and disagreed with his critiques.

Hough said Wood was personable and friendly as a leader, but dismissed any questioning of the Echo way of operating out of hand. He worried that Wood may use the goodwill created by Saddleback and Warren to impose his own approach to ministry, which Hough believes is inherently unhealthy.

A graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wood planted a congregation known as Breakthrough Church while in seminary before moving to the San Francisco Bay area, according to a 2009 prospectus for Echo. Among the founding values of the church were healthy relationships and character-driven leadership, according to that prospectus.

We believe that God is glorified in our midst when we make his love complete by showing sacrificial kindness to one another, the prospectus states. We believe the gospel calls us to place the goals and interests of others above our own.

When he announced Wood as his successor, Warren said he looked at about 100 potential candidates. He cited Woods experience in church planting as a plus, saying he had already built a church in a very difficult place and had the skills to manage a complex megachurch like Saddleback, which holds services in about a dozen locations.

Warren also said that character matters in a new pastor, mentioning the list of traits required for leaders in 1 Timothy 3.

If youre going to lead a church, those qualities are non-negotiable, said Warren in a video introducing Wood. And if you dont have those qualities in your life, youre automatically disqualified from pastoring and leading a church family.
EU slams Israel's Supreme Court for allowing Jewish takeover of Christian properties

The European Union has warned that the heritage and traditions of the Christian community and the established religious equilibrium in the Old City of Jerusalem are at risk after Israel's Supreme Court legitimized the takeover of Greek Orthodox properties by a Jewish settler group.

The Office of the European Union Representative in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip expressed concern over last week's ruling by the country's top court that ruled Jewish settler group Ateret Cohanim legally purchased the Little Petra Hotel and Imperial Hotel in the Old City of Jerusalem in 2004.

The properties are located in the Jaffa Gate area, which lies on the pilgrim route to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The church was built on the spot where Catholics and Orthodox Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.

"Attempts by settlers to take over Christian property in the Old City of Jerusalem must be halted as they jeopardize the heritage and traditions of the Christian community," a representative of the European Union in Palestinian territories said in a statement shared with Turkey's state-run Anadolu News Agency.

The Old City, which is part of East Jerusalem that was captured by Israel in 1967 in what is known as the Six-Day War, has sites sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For more than a decade, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate has opposed Ateret Cohanim's claims that it legally purchased the church's properties.

The Ateret Cohanim group says on its website that it "works to redeem property once held by Jews in Israel's capital as well as re-establishing Jewish neighborhoods in the heart of the Old City and its surrounding areas."

Ateret Cohanim contends it purchased three buildings from the church in an alleged secret deal in 2004 during the time of Patriarch Irineos, who was later dismissed after being accused of selling the property without the church's permission.

The news of 2004 drew outrage in the Palestinian community that made up the majority of the patriarchate.

Last Wednesday, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate's appeal against the takeover of Christian properties and called the church's "harsh allegations" of misconduct in the original sale "not proven to be true" in earlier proceedings, according to AFP.

The EU said the ruling poses "a threat to the peaceful co-existence of all three monotheistic religions in Jerusalem, as well as to the established religious equilibrium." The EU Mission called for maintaining the city's "status quo" by preserving and respecting its character.

The church condemned the ruling as "unfair" and without "any legal logical basis," calling Ateret Cohanim a "radical organization" that resorted to "crooked and illegal methods to acquire Christian real estate."

"We are talking about a group of extremists that want to take the properties from the churches, want to change the character of the Old City and want to invade the Christian areas," the church's attorney, Asaad Mazawi, told AFP:

Members of Ateret Cohanim took over the Little Petra Hotel with the help of Israeli police in April.

Greek Orthodox Patriarch Beatitude Theophilos III held a press conference and called the takeover "a threat to the continued existence of a Christian Quarter in Jerusalem, and ultimately to peaceful coexistence of the communities of this city."

"The Heads of Churches have repeatedly warned of the illegitimate actions of extremists, who have followed a pattern of intimidation and violence," a statement issued by church leaders at the time reads.

"In occupying the Greek Orthodox Church's property  Ateret Cohanim has committed criminal acts of break-in and trespass," the Patriarchs and Heads of Local Churches in Jerusalem stated. "They act as if they are above the law, with no fear of consequences."

"This issue is not about the individual properties, but about the whole character of Jerusalem, including the Christian Quarter," the statement added. "The Little Petra Hotel stands on the pilgrim route for the millions of Christians who visit Jerusalem each year. It represents Christian heritage, and speaks of our very existence in this place."

In January, Patriarch Theophilos III wrote in an op-ed in The Times (of London) that Israeli radical fringe groups were seeking to drive the Christian community out of the city.

"Our presence in Jerusalem is under threat," he wrote.

"Our churches are threatened by Israeli radical fringe groups. At the hands of these Zionist extremists, the Christian community in Jerusalem is suffering greatly. Our brothers and sisters are the victims of hate crimes. Our churches are regularly desecrated and vandalized. Our clergy are subject to frequent intimidation."

Theophilos claimed that local families who have lived in the area for generations "will be made to feel unwelcome in their own home" and "pilgrims who have longed to visit the birthplace of the Christian faith will have their experience diminished."

"By working to exclude one community, the Christians, these radicals pose an existential threat not only to the Christian family but to Jerusalem itself, a point upheld by so many of our Jewish cohabitants of the Holy Land," the patriarch wrote.

The World Council of Churches' acting general secretary, the Rev. Ioan Sauca, issued a statement in support of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.

"Recognizing the gravity of the threat accelerating the already tragically steep decline in the Christian presence, the WCC strongly supports the church leaders' call for an urgent dialogue with the political authorities of Israel, Palestine and Jordan with a view to addressing the challenges posed by radical groups and to protecting and supporting the Christian community," Sauca said.
Iran using proxy militias to drive Christians out of Middle East: report

Through its proxy militias, Iran is carrying out an invisible jihad against Christians in the Middle East with the aim of creating a Muslim demographic purity by producing conditions that would force Christians out of the region, according to a new report.

Irans proxy militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen have played a significant, though largely unrecognized, role in the dramatic decline of Christians in the region, says the report, titled The Invisible Jihad: the Treatment of Christians by Iran Proxies, by the Philos Project.

The nonprofit, which promotes Christian engagement in the region, further explains that the militias backed by the Shia Muslim country are guided by the theocratic regimes vision of Muslim demographic purity and they labored to create conditions that forced the Christians out.

Defining invisible jihad as demographic reduction through coerced emigration, the report adds that these militias use extant conflicts to manufacture conditions behind the massive exodus.

While Islamic countries, both Shia and Sunni, had historically protected Christians and Muslims, though as second-class citizens, its neo-Shiism, or Khomenism, introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini, the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989, is behind the exodus of Christians from the Middle East, the report said.

The report further explains, In this novel reading of the Quran, non-Muslims were not clean enough to live with Muslims because of spiritual pollution. Khomenism called upon the faithful to cleanse Islam and Iran of Judeo-Christian impurity, a stand common to other palingenetic revivalist ideologies.

As Iran realized that Christians could not be killed en masse, the regime opted for the alternative policy of eliminationism through coercive immigration.

Lebanon

The report adds that in Lebanon, the pro-Iran Hezbollah has targeted missionaries, impeded conversions all while imposing strict dress codes, alcohol bans and limits of mixed sexes in public  in what have been dubbed mini-Tehrans.

From about 54% in the 1950s, the percentage of Christians went down to 33.7 in 2020, it noted, adding that ownership of Christian land also came down. While some of the lands were legally sold by emigrants, a sizable part was lost through eviction and expulsion coordinated by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah took orders from the arch-conservative Ayatollah Mohammed Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, who traveled to Lebanon several times, the report added. Mesbah Yazdi was a former student of, and an influence on, Ayatollah Khomeini.

Targeting the new wave of Protestant Evangelicals in Lebanon  a product of a resurgence of an American-based missionary wave in the 1990s  was a high priority for Hezbollah from 2000 onwards. Operation Mobilization USA (O.M.), which engaged in humanitarian work in mixed towns, was targeted and its missionary was killed in 2002, the report noted.

Iraq

In Iraq, Iran created several Shia militia groups after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Initially employed to resist American forces, the militias came in handy when an al Qaeda splinter, al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) under the Abu Moussa al Zarqawi, morphed into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the report said.

As per Iraqs 1987 census, there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. Their numbers have now dramatically decreased to 141,000, making them the undisputed losers of sectarian conflict in Iraq.

The report further said, Between 2003 and 2017, Iraqi Christians suffered greatly under the control of AQI, ISIS, and the Shia militias affiliated with Iran, and added, Unfortunately, because many attacks on the communities were performed anonymously, it is impossible to determine how much violence was perpetrated by AQI/ISIS versus the Shiites.

Soon after the U.S. invasion, the Shiite Mahdi Army, a militia led by Muqtada al-Sadr, changed the demography of Baghdad.

Making the capital Christian-free was high on their agenda, the report pointed out.

Al Sadrs cleansing of certain neighborhoods of Sunnis was a preview of his drive to create homogenous Shiite enclaves. The neighborhood of al Doura was one example. Known as the Vatican of Baghdad, the area housed more than 5,000 families, making it one of the most prominent Christian centers in Iraq. There were a variety of churches, a monastery, and even a pontifical college. Christians in al Doura were considered a soft target and fled in large numbers, either to camps for the displaced or to the Kurdish region.

Syria

Syria is strategically important for Iran, given its long-term goal of dominating the Middle East.

Iran has had its influence in Syria thanks to that countrys ruling Assad family, which belongs to the Shia group Alawite in a predominantly Sunni nation. After Assad lost against the popular uprising in 2011, Iran restructured the Syrian Army and created several militias within the Shia Liberation Army.

While Iran saved the Assad regime, the civil war killed 600,000 people, displaced 6.5 million others internally, and forced 6.6 million people to flee across the borders.

Christians were disproportionally affected. In 2011, the community numbered 2.3 million, 10.5 percent of the total Syrian population divided into numerous denominations. Most of these Christians lived in or around Qamishli, Deir Ezzour, Hasakah, Aleppo, Homs, Damascus, Vadi al Nasarah (Valley of Christians), and Daraa. By 2021, the Christian community of Syria had shrunk by a staggering 70 percent, the report said.

Because of Shia militias, dozens of Christians were killed, many were kidnapped for ransoms, and many others were tortured and their property confiscated. There were 124 assaults on churches between 2011 and 2019, with 75 acts of violence including vandalism, the report said.

Yemen

Baddredin al Houthi and his son, Hussein, who belong to the Zaydis group, a Shia offshoot comprising roughly 30% of the Yemeni population, and who launched a rebellion in 2014, studied in a religious seminary in Qom sponsored by Ayatollah Khamenei, the Philos Project said.

The Houthis have invested a considerable effort into ending the Christian presence in the territories under their control, it added. "A mixture of denominations  Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Ethiopian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox  was estimated at some 40,000. There were also new converts known as Muslim Background Believers. Today, there are some 3,000 Christian holdovers.

To intimidate the Christian community, the Houthis abducted several prominent Christians and held some for ransom, the report continued, adding that in March 2016, they killed 16 people in a Catholic retirement home in Aden, including four nuns of the Missionaries of Charity.

The report recommends that the U.N. appoint a Special Rapporteur to report on Irans quiet Jihad project, and the U.S. State Department sanction Iran and its proxies for reducing the number of Christians by either forcing immigration or blocking their return.
Google Chrome welcomes a new addition to its browser extensions, Vytal, the new VPN tool.

Installing Vytal as a virtual private network (VPN) extension in the Chrome browser will allow users to have privacy control over their location.

The primary goal of a VPN is to conceal and protect users from revealing their activities while online. Even though VPNs are most commonly used to protect against hackers and snoops on public networks, users may also use them to conceal their IP address, browsing activity, and personal data while using any Wi-Fi network.

A VPN is also commonly used by many to avoid certain sorts of online tracking and to stream specific types of content that are not available in their current location or country just yet.

Vytal Chrome Extension

On Y Combinator's Hacker News, the developer who goes by the alias 'z0ccc' revealed the newly released Vytal Google Chrome extension and asked readers for feedback on the functioning of the application.

Vytal has the capability to impersonate users in terms of their timezone, locale, geolocation, and user agent. According to Google Chrome, "This data can be used to track you or reveal your location."

The vast majority of browser extensions that offer protection against fingerprinting rely on content scripts to inject script tags into online pages.

Chrome added, "There are many limitations to script tag injections, which you can read about here:https://palant.info/2020/12/10/how-anti-fingerprinting-extensions-tend-to-make-fingerprinting-easier/."

In order to falsify this data, Vytal makes use of the chrome.debugger API. Because of this, it is possible to spoof the data in frames, web workers, and while a website is loaded for the first time. In addition to this, it renders the spoofing entirely untraceable.

Read Also: Apple M1 Chip Has a Security Flaw That is Unpatchable

Using Vytal as a VPN

After installing Vytal as an extension, users will have the option to either select their location from a selection of pre-populated locales, alter the data to match their IP address, or create a custom location.

As reported by BleepingComputer, the extension does not provide 100% accuracy instantaneously. It may allow incorrect information about users to be displayed during the loading process of a webpage initially.

There is a brief pause between the loading of the pages and the point at which the data-spoofing debugger begins its work, and accurate information about a user can be collected while the webpage is still in the process of loading.

However, despite the fact that the faked data is not displayed on the initial load, the script performs an excellent job of concealing location information that may be uncovered by using JavaScript APIs.

This extension ought to function on all Chromium-based browsers, including the Brave Browser. However, it cannot be extended to Mozilla Firefox because that browser does not support the debugger Application Programming Interface (API).

The developer, z0ccc, stated to BleepingComputer that the extension was initially developed to prevent their location data from being exposed when utilizing a VPN and to prevent another project of theirs, called LocateJS, from detecting location metadata.

z0cc stated that additional features for the extension will be revealed soon. These additional features are also intended to make the extension simpler to use and include a permitted list of websites that users frequently visit that will not have their data spoofed.

Related Article: Does Pi Have 100 Trillion Digits? A Google Developer Claims to Have the Answer
Hospital can take 12-year-old boy off life support over parents' objections, court rules

A court in the United Kingdom has permitted a hospital to discontinue life support for a 12-year-old boy, despite his parents' passionate personal and religious objections.

Justice Emma Arbuthnot issued a judgment on Monday allowing medical professionals at Royal London Hospital to end life support for Archie Battersbee, who suffered a severe brain injury in April.

Arbuthnot noted that she visited Battersbee in the hospital and considered him a "lovely looking young boy." But it was her opinion that Battersbee was already effectively brain dead.

"The evidence in my judgment shows a gradual deterioration from very early on in Archie's admission into hospital when he had already suffered a very severe brain injury when blood supply and oxygen were prevented from reaching his brain," wrote Arbuthnot.

"It is clear from the anxious and careful scrutiny of all the evidence including from clinicians with different specialisms from five separate hospitals that tragically on the balance of probabilities, Archie is dead."

Arbuthnot gave "permission to the medical professionals at the Royal London Hospital (1) to cease to ventilate mechanically Archie Battersbee; (2) to extubate Archie Battersbee; (3) to cease the administration of medication to Archie Battersbee and (4) not to attempt any cardio or pulmonary resuscitation on Archie Battersbee when cardiac output ceases or respiratory effort ceases."

"It is not in dispute that Archie lacks capacity to consent to or refuse medical treatment. In the circumstances where the parents do not agree with the Trust, it falls to the Court to decide what is in Archie's best interests," she added.

"I find that the burdens of the treatment and his condition along with the total lack of a prospect of recovery outweigh Archie's Christian beliefs and the benefits to him of a continuing life on mechanical ventilation for a few more weeks or months with all the other procedures that that entails."

Battersbee's mother, Hollie Dance, who is represented in court by the Christian Legal Centre, intends to appeal the decision.

"We intend to appeal and will not give up on Archie," Dance said in a statement shared by the CLC. "Until it's God's way I won't accept he should go. I know of miracles when people have come back from being brain dead."

"I do not believe Archie has been given enough time. From the beginning, I have always thought, 'why the rush?'" the mother asked. "His heart is still beating, he has gripped my hand, and as his mother, I know he is still in there."

CLC Chief Executive Andrea Williams said the ruling is a "devastating moment" for the family. She stressed that the case has "raised significant moral, legal and medical questions as to when a person is dead."

"The idea that death can be declared on the balance of probability is frankly ludicrous," Williams complained. "Life is the most precious gift that we have. This ruling sets a troubling and dark precedent."

A GoFundMe page established to support the family has raised the equivalent of about $26,000.
5 UMC leaders who backed gracious separation protocol withdraw support

Five United Methodist Church leaders who previously backed a measure to create a gracious exit for congregations tired of the denominations longstanding debate over homosexuality have withdrawn their support following the launch of the Global Methodist Church.

The five leaders released a statement on Tuesday declaring that the "Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation" they supported two years ago "no longer offers a viable path forward, particularly given the long delays, the changing circumstances within the United Methodist Church, and the formal launch of the Global Methodist Church in May of this year."

"Moreover, bishops and church leaders in the Central Conferences, especially in Africa and the Philippines, have consistently voiced serious misgivings about the Protocol and its potentially disruptive impacts in their geographical regions," read the statement.

"Given the growing opposition to the Protocol within the constituencies we represent, the dwindling support among General Conference delegates, and the serious reservations of Central Conference leaders, we can no longer in good faith support the Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace through Separation or work towards its adoption at the next General Conference."

Over the past several years, the UMC has faced a divisive internal debate over whether to change its official stance opposing the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of noncelibate LGBT individuals.

In January 2020, a group of 16 UMC leaders of diverse theological backgrounds serving as an unofficial mediation group announced the proposed separation protocol that would have provided a pathway for churches who want to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church over theological differences.

Those who signed the statement withdrawing their support include the Rev. Thomas Berlin of the LGBT advocacy group UMCNext, the Rev. Egmedio Equila, Jr. of the Philippines Central Conference, Janet Lawrence of the LGBT advocacy group Reconciling Ministries Network, the Rev. David Meredith of the UM Queer Clergy Caucus and longtime LGBT advocate, and UMC layperson Randall Miller.

The five leaders said that while they have stopped supporting the protocol, they remain committed to some of its "most essential provisions." These include finding better ways for dissenting congregations to disaffiliate from the UMC, a call to strengthen financial support for minority-centered ministries, and a continued suspension of Book of Discipline punishments for those who violate the Book of Discipline's rules.

A group of seven UMC bishops who participated in mediation and signed the protocol released a letter Thursday that reaffirms their support for the proposed measure. They say the proposal is "now in legislative form and is the appropriate discernment of the delegates to the upcoming General Conference."

"As signatories of the Protocol, we continue to affirm this work which came to us through the leadership and sacrificial gift of Kenneth Feinberg and his colleagues," stated the bishops.

"We are united in respect for our colleagues who are led to step away from the Protocol, and pray that we will continue to explore ways to celebrate the ministry of The United Methodist Church even as we work for an amicable separation with those who chose to depart from our fellowship."

The bishops say they affirm "the way the abeyance has reduced the harm of individuals in our administrative and judicial processes and the future deliberation on the repair of the whole church through resources channeled toward dismantling racism and colonialism."

Among its provisions, the protocol includes a provision to set aside $25 million for conservative Methodists to create a new denomination in which they could join instead of continuing the debate with theological liberals.

By March 2020, three regional bodies  the Michigan Annual Conference, the Philippines Conference and the Sierra Leone Conference  had voted to send the protocol to General Conference for consideration. The Philippines and Sierra Leone conferences expressed overt support.

The UMC General Conference, the churchwide gathering that votes on denominational legislation, was initially scheduled to take place in May 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, the General Conference was postponed multiple times. It's slated to take place in 2024.

As a result of the ongoing delays, conservative Methodists launched their alternative denomination, the Global Methodist Church, last month.
Americans prefer churches with names that are nondenominational: study

In continuation of a cultural shift researchers have previously documented as a growing rejection of organized religion, a new study from Lifeway Research shows Americans are least likely to dismiss churches branded as nondenominational.

The online study of 1,005 Americans conducted Sept. 3-14, 2021, using a national pre-recruited panel, shows that only 33% of U.S. adults assumed that a church is not for them when the term nondenominational is reflected in the name.

For churches with the term Pentecostal, more than half, 51%, of respondents assumed the church would not be for them. Seven other denominations triggered a similar response within a range of 8% or less.

Some 47% of respondents said churches with the term Methodist or Lutheran would not be for them, while 48% of them said the same for churches with the term Catholic in the name. For church names with the terms Southern Baptist or Presbyterian, an equal 46% of respondents assumed those churches would not be for them. Some 46% of respondents rejected churches with the term Assemblies of God in the name, while 43% said churches with the Baptist label attached would not be for them.

Church names vary greatly, Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, said in a statement. Names including St. Peter, Trinity, Crossroads and Presbyterian reflect biblical people, theology, modern imagery or references to the branch of Christianity the church is tied to. Most people have preexisting impressions of denominational groups when they see them in a church name or description.

Pew Research analysis published in 2015 showed that since 2007, the share of Evangelical Protestants who identify with Baptist denominations shrank from 41% to 36%. The share of Evangelicals identifying with nondenominational churches also grew from 13% to 19% over the period.

In 2017, a Gallup study showed how Americans were increasingly choosing to not identify with any Christian denomination or religion. The study found that the share of Americans who identify with a specific Protestant denomination fell from 50% in 2000 to 30% in 2016.

Robin Veldman, Texas A&M assistant professor of religious studies, explained in a report in The Battalion that the attitude of Americans toward nondenominational churches is partly a reflection of the movement away from organized religion, particularly among younger generations.

I think people are moving away from institutionalized religion. They dont necessarily like the denominational brand, Veldman said. Then there are people who are so much not into institutions that theyre leaving churches altogether. They may still be religious, but theyre not attending church.

Matt Morton, a teaching pastor at Grace Bible Church Creekside in College Station, Texas, said many people who attend nondenominational churches often report themselves as being religiously unaffiliated, and they are often included in research as nones along with atheists and agnostics.

You have this increase in millennials who say they dont belong anywhere in particular, Morton said. Those people are not saying theyre totally irreligious. Some of them are saying, I am religious. I do like to go to church, but I dont fit within any of the boxes.
PCUSA ministry launches 'Queering the Bible' project aimed at 'creating some new theologies'

A ministry tied to the Presbyterian Church (USA) is "Queering the Bible" to celebrate LGBT pride this summer.

The PCUSA project Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice is kicking off the new series "Queering the Bible" with a 16-part study of the Gospel of Mark that will run through July 22.

Rev. Lee Catoe, the project's editor, told Presbyterian News Service that the study looks at the Gospel as a way of "learning about how we experience God as queer folk, and how we experience Scripture as queer people."

"Mark has some very interesting stories that speak about inclusion and what that means, that has stories where Jesus is encountering people who have different experiences, marginalized folk, and so I just think it speaks to the queer experience, very much, right now," Catoe said.

According to Catoe, the inspiration for "Queering the Bible" came from a desire to go beyond rainbow flags and t-shirts during the LGBT pride ritual and challenge PCUSA to "go deeper in our welcoming of queer folk."

He said the Gospel of Mark was a perfect introduction to the series because of its length.

The "Queering" Mark 1 study by Rev. Benjamin Perry, for instance, compares John the Baptist's experience to those of LGBT individuals.

"LGBTQIA+ people have long lived like John, holding in our voices and bodies a love that transcends the ways culture tries to confine it  crying out in the wilderness about what will not only free us, but what will liberate all people," Perry writes.

In the conversation with Presbyterian News Service, Catoe suggested traditional biblical hermeneutics have contributed to Mark and other texts being "interpreted in very unhealthy ways," specifically because of the theological groundwork of "straight white men."

"Oftentimes when we're looking at Scripture, historically, it's been a lot of straight white men who have interpreted Scripture and then creating theologies," he said. "So, when we're talking about queering the Bible, we really are wanting to have the voice of queer folk, trans folk, who read Scripture, look at Scripture and interpret that Scripture through that lens."

He added that "Queering the Bible" focuses on "going against all the heteronormative ways that Scripture has been interpreted and creating some new theologies that we can use."

PCUSA did not respond to a request for comment by The Christian Post.

Unbound is published by the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and works with the Compassion, Peace & Justice ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. Unbound's website state that it is "guided by the policies of the Church but open to sometimes-controversial new ideas, challenges, and matters of self-critique."

"Unbound is a ministry of the Presbyterian Church USA but holds to the ecumenical voice of the Church universal," the website reads.

Mark Tooley, president of the Washington, D.C.-based ecumenical religious think tank Institute on Religion & Democracy, told The Christian Post that by hosting projects such as "Queering the Bible," PC(USA) is "replacing the Gospel of redemption with their own journey of self-actualization."

"Christ bids to listen and follow, dying to self. This project seeks to appropriate and bend the Bible towards self-justification," Tooley, a Methodist layman, said. "Ironically, nobody will truly find it to be fulfilling. The Gospel offers words of true life."

As PC(USA) pushes forward with a more progressive theological stance, the denomination continues to lose members.

In April, the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States announced the release of its annual statistics, which were compiled by the PC(USA) Office of the General Assembly.

According to the latest numbers, PC(USA) saw congregations drop from 8,925 in 2020 to 8,813 in 2021. It also saw its active membership decline from approximately 1.24 million in 2020 to 1.19 million in 2021.

The mainline Protestant denomination also saw a decline of 372 clergy members  18,785 ministers in 2020 to 18,458 in 2021.

The denomination slipped below 2 million active members in 2011 and below 10,000 congregations in 2014.
Alfie Evans' Parents 'Heartbroken' Over Son's Death Days After Hospital Turned Off Life Support

British toddler Alfie Evans died in the early hours of Saturday morning, his father announced in a message on Facebook, five days after his life support was switched off.

Tom Evans and Kate James had lost their legal fight with British and EU courts to continue treatment for their 23-month-old son, who had a degenerative neurological condition. They were also barred from taking their son home or having him transported to a hospital in Rome where he would have received further treatment.

In a message posted on Facebook, Alfie's father said: "My gladiator lay down his shield and gained his wings at 02:30 absolutely heartbroken. I LOVE YOU MY GUY."

Speaking outside Alder Hey Hospital before his son's death Saturday morning, Evans said, "It's come to a point when his mum's actually asleep next to him so she can go to sleep, she feels comfortable with him."

After Alfie's life support was removed Monday night, his father said on Tuesday morning that doctors were "gobsmacked" that his son was breathing nine hours after his life support ended.

Earlier this week, discussions had been underway to allow Alfie to go home, but that request was subsequently denied. His case  much like that of British baby Charlie Gard who died last year under similar circumstances  has garnered international attention and raised concerns over parental rights in the U.K. and Europe.

On Thursday, Father Don Gabriele Brusco, an Italian priest who was sent to minister to Alfie and his parents on April 16, was removed from the toddler's bedside by hospital staff, according to a report from the Italian newspaper La Nuova Bussola.

Brusco reportedly told staff that God was watching what they were doing and would judge them for not continuing Alfie's life-saving treatment. The priest was subsequently removed from the hospital by Liverpool Archbishop Malcolm McMahon.

The BBC reported that following Wednesday's Appels Court ruling that barred Alfie from being transported to Rome for ongoing treatment, despite Italy granting the toddler citizenship, his father said the family would then "start asking [for Alfie to be allowed] to go home."

Speaking to reporters outside the Liverpool hospital on Thursday, Evans said, "We got rejected yesterday to go to Italy unfortunately. We could take it further but would that be the right thing to do, would there be more criticism?"

Evans said the hospital had also denied Alfie basic sustenance and nutrition. Alfie had been in the care of Alder Hey Hospital since December 2016 where he was reportedly in a semi-vegetative state for more than a year.

Like Charlie Gard, Alfie's plight generated protests and reinvigorated debate about parents' rights and the National Health Service.

Steven Woolfe, a member of the European Parliament for Northwest England, is spearheading a campaign to pass "Alfie's Law," which would give parents of terminally-ill children more say in end-of-life hospital care.

Woolfe observed that the previous case of Charlie Gard and now Alfie Evans "show a dangerous trend of public bodies depriving parents and families of the right to make decisions they believe are in the best interests of their children."

"Parents' rights should neither be ignored nor dismissed as irrelevant by hospitals and courts, who believe they know best and have the power, money and resources to overwhelm families who simply want to save their child," he said.

"We demand a change in the law to restore the rights of parents in such decisions."

Echoing those concerns across the Atlantic, Charles C. Camosy, a theology professor at Fordham University in New York City, wrote in the Christian journal First Things Wednesday that a critical distinction exists regarding Alfie Evans and the hospital's move to discontinue care against the wishes of his parents. The West, he said, is now at a "crossroads."

"Let us not mince words. As with Charlie Gard before him, Alfie Evans' death is being aimed by the very people whose vocation it is to help and protect him," he said.

"The difference in Alfie's case is that, because he has continued to breathe, the pretense of 'removal of burdensome treatment' is patently absurd. In a situation that was no doubt distressing to those who hoped he would die, Alfie's continuing to breathe has clarified the true object of the act of removing his ventilator."

He concluded: "Enough with the deference to the medical and legal establishment and its judgements about which lives are worth living. Now is a time for choosing. The most vulnerable require our clear and uncompromising support."
Conservatives angered by Fox News profile on trans-identified child: 'Horrifying, evil and sick'

Multiple conservative commentators are criticizing Fox News after the nation's leading conservative news network aired a favorable profile of a trans-identified child during "pride month."

On Friday, Fox News' "America Newsroom" featured a report from correspondent Bryan Llenas about Ryland Whittington, a trans-identified 14-year-old girl living in California.

A graphic reading "America Together: Celebrating Diversity" plugging "LGBTQ+ Pride Month" prefaced the report. As noted by co-host Dana Perino, Whittington's "story about transitioning at age 5 has been seen by 7 million people in a family YouTube video" published eight years ago.

As part of our America Together: LGBTQ+ Pride Month series at Fox News we highlighted the story of Ryland Whittington - a trans California teen and his family who openly spoke about their journey. I Would Rather Have a Living Son Than a Dead Daughterhttps://t.co/rn3RVwd7JW  Bryan Llenas (@BryanLlenas) June 10, 2022

"Before Ryland could even speak, he managed to tell his parents that he is a boy," Llenas said. Whittington's mother, Hillary, said that "It was truly painful for him to have to wear feminine clothing" and be told, "you're a girl."

Llenas reported that "unlike some trans kids, when Ryland came out at age 5 a few years later, he had the full support of his parents."

Reacting to statistics showing that trans-identified youth have higher suicide rates than their cisgender counterparts, Mrs. Whittington remarked, "I'd rather have a living son than a dead daughter."

"I guarantee that if we had pushed back and done what a lot of parents do, I don't think that we would have either one of the kids that you see before you here today," she added. Llenas concluded the report by stating, "what extraordinary courage displayed by Ryland, his sister Brynley, father Jeff and mom Hillary."

"It's not easy, particularly at a time when transgender issues have been politicized," Llenas stated. "People are afraid of what they do not understand, Dana. This family hopes their story will lead to more understanding, more acceptance and, ultimately, more love."

Matt Walsh, a conservative blogger who regularly appears on Fox News and recently spearheaded a documentary about gender ideology, vehemently pushed back against the network for airing a report painting the gender transition of a minor in a positive light.

"We have to call out this evil lunacy wherever we see it. Especially on our own side," he wrote in a Twitter thread Friday.

(Thread) I have appeared on Fox News many times. I appreciate the platform theyve given me. If what Im about to say ruins that relationship, so be it. We have to call this evil lunacy out wherever we see it. Especially on our own side.



pic.twitter.com/ksh1SXjpPD  Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 10, 2022

"The piece did not simply report on the controversy surrounding child transitioning. It outright promotes the practice," Walsh lamented. "The reporter says that the child announced a new gender as a toddler. Does Fox want us to believe that BABIES can choose their gender?"

Walsh characterized the aforementioned idea as "the most extreme, radical, dangerous form of gender ideology" and expressed disgust that "it's being promoted on Fox News."

He suggested that "the poor kid is 14 now with a permanently altered body, condemned to live forever with an identity imposed as a small child."

"It is horrifying, evil, and sick. And it is what Fox chose to promote," he said. "I know for a fact many people at Fox do not approve of this and never would have agreed to air radical far-left trans propaganda."

Walsh called for everyone involved in the report to "be fired immediately."

"Fox reporter Bryan Llenas chose to do this story and someone at Fox chose to put it on the air," he wrote.

Ben Shapiro, the editor emeritus of The Daily Wire and host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," also posted a Twitter thread on the Fox News report.

"This would be absolute despicable lunacy if I saw it on CNN or MSNBC. To see it on Fox News is a complete betrayal of anything remotely resembling conservatism or decency," he wrote.

This would be absolute despicable insane lunacy if I saw it on CNN or MSNBC. To see it on Fox News is a complete betrayal of anything remotely resembling conservatism or decency. https://t.co/GByzfB2F5c  Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 10, 2022

"Every element of this video is propagandistic, dangerous garbage. The report states that this biologically female child was choosing her gender BEFORE SHE COULD SPEAK. This is madness."

Shapiro described the Whittingtons' push to "social transition" the child at age 5 as "child abuse."

"The vast majority of children who display signs of gender dysphoria desist over time," he added.

Shapiro accused the report of constituting "horrifying propaganda."

He called out the "Mom citing her 'Christian faith' to justify the perversion of biological identity" and "the radical gender theory activist Trevor Project stats claiming that childhood transition is the only way to prevent suicide."

"We've got Dad talking about 'living authentically'  by hormonally transitioning a biologically female child, transition that if continued will result in biological sterilization and/or breast- and genital-mutilating surgery," he continued.

"Fox News is too important to conservatives to be weaponized on behalf of the most radical Leftist propaganda imaginable  propaganda that aims directly at the mental and physical health of children. They should terminate whoever is responsible for this agitprop abomination."

Other conservative commentators offered much shorter takes about Fox News' profile.

"Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer when my conservative news outlets don't encourage parents to trans their little children," Michael Knowles, who hosts "The Michael Knowles Show" on The Daily Wire, tweeted.

Allie Beth Stuckey, the host of the "Relatable" podcast, tweeted that she was "stunned" Fox News chose to run the segment, calling the network's embrace of the story "maddening & heartbreaking."

Radio host Erick Erickson referred to "Fox News promoting trans propaganda" as "something to behold," predicting that doing so "would hurt the network more than calling Arizona for [President Joe] Biden."

Terry Schilling of the conservative American Principles Project condemned the report.

"This poor little girl will never have children and began transitioning before she could even consent to sexual activity," he tweeted.

Friday's report is not the first time Fox News has experienced pushback from conservatives for embracing LGBT ideology.

When the network hired Bruce Jenner, a trans-identified Olympic athlete who now identifies as Caitlyn, as a contributor, radio host Michael Brown wrote an April op-ed for The Christian Post titled "Christian conservatives, you cannot put your trust in Fox News."

Brown contends that the network has ceded its "moral authority" to speak out against trans-identified athlete Lia Thomas, a biological male who competed on the women's swimming team at the University of Pennsylvania, by citing Jenner as an "inspiration to us all" in a statement announcing the retired athlete's hiring as a contributor.

In a previous op-ed for The Christian Post, Brown took issue with Fox News host Sean Hannity for using female pronouns to address Jenner, who was running for governor of California at the time.
Candace Cameron Bure 'sad at the state of the world,' issues challenge to fans

Actress Candace Cameron Bure was filled with emotion last week when she urged her fans to help push back against the current state of the world.

Do you ever scroll through Instagram and just get sad at the state of the world? Thats me right now," the Fuller House alum said in an Instagram video to her 5.5 million followers.

Bure, overcome with emotion, put her hands over her eyes and screeched to express her frustration.

She then proposed a "gratitude challenge," encouraging her fans to live a life of gratitude.

Im going to think of the things that I am grateful for, Bure reflected.

The professing Christian testified, I am grateful for God, Lord Jesus Christ, whos in control of all of it.

Im grateful that Hes already given all of us and me the ability to be justified before Him and be sanctified throughout the process of my life and that He redeems it all at the end," she said.

The actress clenched her face with her hands and said she always turns to gratitude in times of distress.

The author of Kind Is the New Classy took to social media a few weeks ago to share her heartbreak over the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

With the tragedy and the loss of those 21 people that is so hard, and as a mother I grieve and I just want to grieve with the people of Uvalde and the families, Bure said with tears in her eyes.

In another Instagram story, the actress revealed that her home was under attack from the "enemy."

The actress said she and her family were targeted by the spirit of the devil after days of family members, including herself, being "irritable" towards each other.

"It's been cranky in my house for the last few days to the point that it's weird, Bure revealed. Like my house is usually really peaceful and happy. Everyone's been irritable, including me, and everyone is just like at each other. It's been like three days now."

"It finally hit me, she continued. I'm like, 'Oh, there's a spirit of irritability, there's a spirit of crankiness, there's a spirit of confusion. Oh, the enemy's attacking!"

"I think so easily, we forget and we want to just blame one another when things go wrong. And we forget that there's a very real and powerful enemy at work every single day of our lives, the Fuller House star noted.

"That enemy is the devil, Bure clarified. He's real and he's at work, but the devil has no control or authority in my home.

The mother of three made a declaration of faith.

"Jesus has all authority, all power in my home, and reigns in my home!" she said.

"I call upon the Holy Spirit. I pray out any evil spirits that are in here, Bure continued. And I put on my worship music, it's just filling my home. So my home is filled with Scripture and God's Word, God's power, God's truth, and I just keep reminding myself of that.

She advised others to keep their spiritual eyes open.

Bure recently took an executive role at GAC Media, where she will produce and star in faith and family-friendly content. In this role, the actress can create and develop her own content.
Secular intolerance of Christians' views is leading to self-censorship, report warns

Secular intolerance has a chilling effect on Christians who are having to practice various forms of self-censorship as they're finding it difficult to express their faith freely in society, according to a new report detailing accounts from four countries.

Secular intolerance has a chilling effect on Christians, which directly affects their capacity to express their faith freely in society and is leading to various forms of self-censorship, says the report, titled Perceptions on Self-Censorship: Confirming and Understanding the Chilling Effect, which includes case studies from France, Germany, Colombia and Mexico.

Some people do indeed fear being subjected to legal proceedings or being criminally sanctioned on charges of discrimination, while others fear being subjected to disciplinary proceedings in their work or places, notes the study, compiled by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America and the International Institute for Religious Freedom.

With some exceptions, the majority chose to keep its expressions of faith or its opinions on issues related to life, marriage and the family from a Christian doctrine perspective private because they had witnessed sanctions or prosecutions to which colleagues or peers had been subjected, it adds.

Many incidents cited in the report might seem insignificant, the authors say, but these many small things together cause death by a thousand cuts.

A few cuts do not kill you and barely hurt. But continuous small strikes eventually have an impact. We posit that the accumulation of seemingly insignificant incidents creates an environment in which Christians do not feel comfortable  to some degree  to live their faith freely. Indeed, Western Christians experience a chilling effect resulting from perceived pressures in their cultural environment, related to widely mediatized court cases.

Further, the study observes, Because of the subtle and generally non-physically violent nature of the chilling effect, it is often misunderstood or even ignored and therefore largely remains invisible.

This is the main reason why the phenomenon is not recognized in religious freedom datasets such as the Pew Research Center indexes, the authors add.

The report also warns this form of censorship is not only limiting peoples exercise of religion or their right to manifest their convictions, but also that these violations to the right to religious freedom can cause the disappearance of religion in a given context.

Madeleine Enzelberger, executive director of OIDAC Europe, said the study raises the legitimate question of: how is it possible in a mature, liberal democratic society that stands for tolerance, diversity, and inclusive and open discourse, that people are frightened to freely speak their minds? according to Christian Today.

Many Christians interviewed as part of the study did not realize they were self-censoring. In some cases, they had self-censored to the extent that they now stop seeing the characteristics related to self-censorship as a problem.

As one of its conclusions, the study laments that the Church has allowed itself to be self-censored  Christian religious leaders have more freedom to express themselves freely (but they do not always take advantage of it).

To remedy this form of censorship, the authors suggest there's an urgent need to educate policymakers, public servants (including the police) and judges about religion to increase their religious literacy.

We have seen that a high degree of religious illiteracy leads to misunderstanding of how religion informs behavior in different spheres of society and what the legitimate role of religion in the public domain is. Illiteracy therefore can consequently be the cause of practical intolerance against Christians.
Supreme Court decision prevents Texas hospital from removing toddler Tinslee Lewis' life support

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined an appeal from a Texas hospital seeking to overturn a lower court decision that prevented it from removing a baby girls life support.

The case of Cook Childrens Medical Center v. Tinslee Lewis, et al. was one of several cases that the Supreme Court declined to hear Monday. The courts refusal to hear the case leaves the lower court ruling temporarily preventing the Fort Worth, Texas-based Cook Childrens Medical Center from withdrawing life support from 23-month old Tinslee Lewis.

Lewis mother has spent more than a year fighting to keep her daughter alive. In November 2019, Cook Childrens Medical Center attempted to invoke the 10-Day Rule against Lewis, who was born prematurely and with a heart defect. The Texas Advance Directives Act, or 10-Day Rule has been described by the pro-life group Live Action as an unethical and institutional power play that allows families just 10 days to find a new hospital for their family members on life support after the hospital they are currently using decides to remove life support.

The 10-Day Rule requires hospitals to give families 10 days notice before ending life-sustaining treatment for patients suffering from a terminal illness or who doctors believe have little or no chance of survival. With approval from a medical or ethics committee, doctors are allowed to end treatment in these cases.

Once a hospital has decided to discontinue treatment, families are given 10 days to find a different hospital that is willing to admit their loved one.

If families are unable to find a hospital and transfer the patient by the 10th day, all treatments are withdrawn unless a judge intervenes with a court order requiring the hospital to continue life-sustaining treatment.

T.L.s life has value, lawyers for Tinslee Lewis and her mother explained in a brief to the Supreme Court. Withdrawal of life-saving treatment would kill T.L., who has normal brain function, interacts with Mother, and experiences joy from living. Mother acknowledges that certain medical procedures, such as IV insertions, can cause T.L. pain, but T.L. is not in agony.

Petitioner states that it made a moral decision that treatment inflicts pain and fear on a sedated child for no benefit, they added. The moral decision that there is no benefit in T.L.s life is not Petitioners to make. That decision belongs to her Mother and her Creator.

Lewis lawyers explained that they had called on the appellate court to issue a temporary injunction, maintaining that such a step was necessary to give state courts the opportunity to assess the constitutionality of Texas Health and Safety Code section 166.046 through a trial on the merits.

According to the brief filed on behalf of Lewis family, that particular provision of Texas law allows hospitals to end patients lives without allowing them notice and opportunity to be heard on the value of their life.

In a reply brief submitted to the Supreme Court, attorneys for Cook Childrens Medical Center argued: This case involves a private hospital providing private medical care to a private patient; there is no state input, participation, or control of any kind.

Additionally, they wrote, the Lewis family's inability to find an alternative hospital to provide her with care indicates the deep moral, ethical, and medical problems with respondents proposed course of painful treatment for a terminally ill child.

Attorneys for Lewis family also dispute the notion that the case does not involve any state action, alleging that defining the lawful means of death and dying is state action. Additionally, they called for the Supreme Court to reject Cook Childrens Medical Centers appeal, claiming that it did not have jurisdiction to hear a case that deals entirely with state law.

According to the pro-life group Texas Right to Life, the case will now return to the lower court for final adjudication on the merits. Texas Right to Life contends that the lower court trial will enable a judge to decide if the rights of baby Tinslee are being violated, whether a hospital should have unilateral authority to withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment from a patient against the will of the patient/surrogate, and if patients have any due process rights in these situations and the constitutionality of the 10-Day Rule.

Should the district court rule in favor of Lewis, not only would Cook Childrens Medical Center be permanently prohibited from removing her life support, all hospitals in Texas would no longer have the ability to use the 10-Day Rule to hasten patients deaths.

The 10-Day Rule law was passed by the Texas Legislature in 1999 and signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush as a compromise between the medical community and pro-life and disability rights groups, The Houston Law Review journal notes.

The consensus at the time of passage did not last long because pro-life and disability rights groups grew concerned with how doctors and hospitals implemented the statutes procedures. It became clear that the statute provided doctors with absolute immunity yet provided only very weak procedural protections for patients, the journal adds.

Since then, the journal notes that the Texas Legislature has considered over 25 bills aimed at amending the law, but have enacted only two.
Atlus revealed during the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase on Sunday that fans will be able to play the beloved role-playing game franchise on Xbox consoles and Windows PC.

Here's all that you need to know.

Three Persona Games To Be Available on Xbox

Previously, Persona games were only accessible on PlayStation and PC. But that's about to change as Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal will soon be available on Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass and PC, according to the reports of IGN and Polygon.

All three games follow a group of misfit Japanese teens as they battle demons while juggling romance, exams, and personal relationships. They're noted for their unique art and soundtracks, which have helped them gain popularity in the U.S. The entire series has sold over 15 million copies.

Persona is an Atlus turn-based JRPG series notable for its distinct anime-like style and dramatic narrative following the lives of its teenage combatants. Persona 5 Royal, the most current installment in the core series, expanding on the original Persona 5, as per Polygon.

Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5's Popularity

IGN noted that the most prominent of the ports is Persona 3, whose availability has been limited over time. Persona 3 was first released in 2006, and it helped promote the series in the U.S. by introducing many of the concepts that would later fuel Persona 4 and 5, such as the daily calendar. It was last released as Persona 3 Portable on PlayStation Portable, marking the first and only time the sub-series has let players play as a female protagonist.

Both Persona 4 and 5 are widely available on other platforms, but this will be the first time they appear on Xbox. Persona 4 Golden was launched on PC in 2020 and was an unexpected success.

Read More: Hideo Kojima's Next Game is in Partnership with Xbox Game Studios

Persona Doesn't Have Any Non-PlayStation Releases Prior to This

Polygon reported that on various PlayStation platforms, many of the Persona games have been locked away. Persona 5 Strikers, a recent Musou spinoff, was released in 2021 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Windows PC.

It should be note that the mainline games have not seen nearly as many non-PlayStation releases.

Persona 4 Golden was released in 2020 for Windows PC, eight years after its first release. Golden was formerly exclusively available on PlayStation Vita, and it is the series' only mainline game to have a Windows PC version.

When Are These Persona Games Coming to Xbox?

According to Polygon, Persona 5 Royal will be released on Oct. 21, with Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden following in 2023.

Other Games To Look Forward in Xbox

Microsoft has revealed a list of 50 upcoming Xbox games. More than 40 games are on the list, all of which will be available on Game Pass on the day of their release.

More information can be found in the report linked below.

Related Article: Xbox Game Releases in 2023: Microsoft Lists 50 Titles Coming 'Over the Next Year'
What you should know about Yemen and its tiny Christian population

In case you havent heard already, Yemen has been facing what many have called the worlds worst humanitarian crisis.

The Middle East country, located at the end of the Arabian Peninsula, has a population of over 28 million and 22 million of them need humanitarian assistance (16 million dont have enough food).

Much of the famine is a result of the civil war that began years ago. So how did the crisis begin and what is it like for Christians in Yemen?

Here are five things you should know.

1. 2011 uprising

Thousands of protesters called on President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been in office for more than three decades, to step down over the collapse of the economy, corruption and repression.

Forced to resign, Saleh transferred power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. But Saleh remained in Yemen and formed an alliance with the Houthi rebels (made up of the Zaidi Shia Muslim minority who have been attempting to gain power for decades) who gained control of Sanaa, the countrys capital. The Zaidi believe only a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad should rule Muslims.

Hadi was forced to flee the country in March 2015, under attack both by the Houthis and security forces still loyal to Saleh. This is when Saudi Arabia (Yemens neighbor) entered the fray, fearful of the spread of what it believes is Iran-backed Shia powers in Yemen.

The Saudi Arabian Kingdom, along with other Sunni Arab states, have been carrying out an air campaign ever since, looking to return power to Hadi and his government.

Note: 99.1 percent of Yemens population is Muslim; 65 percent are Sunni and 35 percent are Shia.

The civil war has been at a stalemate, with coalition troops supporting the Hadi government holding control of much of the country, including Aden, while the Houthi forces continue being in control of significant northwestern regions.

The turmoil has allowed militant groups, including al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and an affiliate of the Islamic State terror group, to capture territory in the south and carry out deadly attacks.

The stalemate has produced the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

2. The worst humanitarian crisis is getting worse

Mark Lowcock, under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and emergency relief coordinator for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, described the immense scale of the tragedy in a briefing to the U.N. Security Council in December.

Calling the statistics "shocking," Lowcock said that more than 20 million Yemenis, or two-thirds of the entire population, are food insecure, with over half of the districts across the country having slipped into "emergency" conditions.

"Yemenis livelihoods and access to income have been decimated, and agricultural production has fallen by nearly a third. These developments have left millions more Yemenis unable to afford food and other essential goods. And food prices are 150 percent higher than they were before the crisis," he said.

I can again confirm again what humanitarian agencies have known for a long time: a terrible tragedy is unfolding in Yemen. And it is getting worse. Millions of people are starving, sick and desperate. They have one message for the world: this war needs to stop.

Vernon Brewer, founder and CEO of World Help, lamented that Yemen has now faced close to four years of crisis.

Food is the most urgent need. Millions of children across Yemen are starving to death because of a war they have nothing to do with. If we dont respond immediately to this tragedy, what does that say about us  as a nation and as Christians whose goal is to show love to others?

According to children's agency UNICEF, close to 2 million children will need food assistance in 2019; over 6,700 have been killed since the start of the conflict; and over 2,700 boys have been forced into armed groups.

The Venerable Canon Bill Schwartz, OBE, the archdeacon of the Anglican Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf, which oversees Christ Church Aden, told The Christian Post that what is happening in Yemen is a "horrendous problem," one that affects all Yemenis, regardless of their religious background.

"The U.N. is trying to do what they can. The rebels and the coalition are both guilty of all kinds of atrocities. The manipulation of the economy from the Yemeni government as a tool of war, and the manipulation of the transportation of food and medicine as a tool of war, is on both sides, Schwartz noted.

The death toll has been a subject of dispute. While conservative numbers cited by the U.N. place it at around 10,000 people, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project maintains that the number is around 60,000 casualties.

ACLEDs estimation of Yemens direct conflict deaths is far higher than official estimates  and still underestimated. Fatality numbers are only one approximation of the abject tragedy and terror forced upon Yemenis from several sides. This cannot be overstated," said ACLED Executive Director Clionadh Raleigh in a press release in December.

Meanwhile, Schwartz said he is "quite frustrated that the media doesnt pay enough attention" to the crisis in Yemen.

"It doesnt create awareness among the people about how dire the situation is," he said, while acknowledging that many are unfamiliar with Yemen.

Syria is well known to people, Iraq is well known to people, and both have been in the news a lot in the last generation, he noted. [But] Yemen has just not been in the news, people know so little about it, most people would not be able to identify it on the map.

3. What its like for Christians

According to the U.S. State Departments International Religious Freedom Report, Christians, Jews, Bahais and Hindus make up less than 1 percent of the population. Many of the Christians (Roman Catholics and Anglicans) are refugees or temporary foreign residents.

Islam is the state religion and Sharia (Islamic law) is the source of all legislation. Though Yemens constitution allows for freedom of thought and expression, it does not mention freedom of religion, belief or conscience.

Proselytizing Muslims is illegal and conversion from Islam to another religion is apostasy, a capital offense. Those charged with apostasy face the death penalty.

One ministry CP reached out to declined to comment on the situation of Christians in the country, noting that it is too sensitive to discuss.

Open Doors USA, a persecution watchdog group, reports that the persecution Christians face in Yemen is "extreme."

"They face persecution from the authorities (including detention and interrogation), their families and radical Islamic groups who threaten converts with death if they do not re-convert," it notes.

"Tribal law prohibits members from leaving the tribe; the punishment for denouncing Islam can be death or banishment. Both male and female converts to Christianity married to Muslims risk divorce, including losing custody of their children. Christians are suffering from the general humanitarian crisis in the country. But Yemeni Christians are additionally vulnerable since emergency relief is mostly distributed through Islamic organizations and local mosques. These groups allegedly discriminate against all who are not considered to be pious Muslims."

The port city of Aden, the temporary capital of Yemen, has only four church buildings still standing, three Roman Catholic and one Anglican  Christ Church Aden.

Schwartz, who for eight years served as a priest in Saudi Arabia, maintained that Christians do not face overt persecution by the government but he explained to CP that everything about their (Yemens) society is Islamic.

You dont have the freedom of individuality  Muslims, Christians, nobody, he pointed out.

You belong to your family, your identity is your family. For you to choose to be different from your family is a great shame on the family. Whether its religion, or a choice of your profession, or field of study, who you marry  to go against your family is extremely problematic, he pointed out.

Thus, going to a public church service would be a problem, he added.

As long as my uncle doesnt find out, Im fine, he illustrated. The problem isnt that they have to hide, its that they have to work out their relationships with their family.

4. Kidnappings

Nevertheless, Christ Church Aden does not have a priest present due to the risk of being kidnapped by terrorists.

Catholics tried to maintain a priest, but he was kidnapped and held for ransom for 18 months, Schwartz said, referring to Father Tom Uzhunnalil.

The dangers is not to the priest himself  that is bad enough, [but] there were [16] people killed so that Father Tom could be kidnapped.

The kidnapping took place at the Missionaries of Charity home in Aden on March 4, 2016, when members of the Islamic State terror group killed 12 civilians and four nuns during their attack on the retirement home.

Sister Sally, who survived, was able to describe the horrifying incident to Catholic news site Aleteia:

"They caught Sister Judith and Sister Reginette first, tied them up, shot them in the head and smashed their heads. They caught Sister Anselm and Sister Marguerite, tied them, shot them in the head and smashed their heads in the sand."

Uzhunnalil, the Salesian priest who was taken during the raid, was held by the Islamic extremists for over 18 months. Initial fears that he had been crucified on Good Friday in 2016 proved untrue, and the 57-year-old thanked "God's intervention" following his release in September 2017.

Schwartz reflected that due to how big the kidnapping industry in Yemen is right now, with American citizens also taken, he would put all our people in Yemen in danger simply by visiting them.

It is a commercial thing. The people who are coordinating it, a lot of it is al-Qaeda. They would say I will give you $5,000 USD for an American.' And then they will turn around and want $2 million. For them, its a business.

As for who would be able to pay such a sum, the archdeacon noted that in Yemen, where people have been chronically impoverished for generations, they get the impression that everyone else has more money than they know what to do with.

I have known many people who have been kidnapped and their families. It is pretty much a random problem based on the pathology of money.

5. Church Clinic: A positive development

Christ Church Aden is serving the impoverished community through its cooperation with Muslims at the Ras Morbat Eye Clinic, which is located on church grounds.

Their work over the past 20+ years, especially since and during the current fighting, is a testimony of courage and interfaith cooperation for the service of the people, especially those who are poor and dislocated, Schwartz said.

He explained that the cooperation came about following the collapse of the Communist regime at the start of the 1990s. Christ Church Aden agreed with the government to do something good for the people, but since there already was a primary health clinic nearby, they decided to focus on eye care.

"They feel very privileged to be helping the poor people in society in the context of a place where prayer happens," the archdeacon said of the Muslim staff.

"The South Yemenis are not radical Muslims, the people along the west coast are more fundamentalist. They are not radicalized Muslims in the Aden area, he said, adding that they are very happy for the church to be a place where people pray and poor people are served.

One of the workers, identified as Mansour, told CP that he works as public relations manager, supervisor of the church and the eye clinic, and coordinator between the government facilities, the church and the clinic.

We thank their support and efforts they have put, which [has] led to the success of the clinic. Although it is called Ras Morbat Clinic, it is well known [among] the people as the Church Clinic, he noted.

He revealed that a British doctor named John Sandford Smith has been visiting the clinic since 2001.

He started interacting with the clinic by training the Yemeni doctors and nurses working in the clinic and [performing] special operations and one-eyed patient operations, Mansour said.

On every visit, he would come to Aden for two weeks. First week to train the doctors and perform special eye operations in the clinic, and the second week to visit a remote area, city, or village and [other] needy places for eye operations, which was very [unusual] and had never been done before here. He trained Yemeni doctors to become eye specialists, [and] now after God's blessings and the support of the church and the help of Dr. John, the Department of Ophthalmology has a huge, respected and considerate reputation here in the city of Aden under the name of Church's Clinic.

Mansour said that the cooperation that exists among religions is essential.

The clinic is the only clinic run by a church in Aden and Yemen, which raises awareness of the importance and raises the respect being given to the religion, he said.
Colorado bishops say Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion shouldnt receive communion

Roman Catholic bishops in Colorado have urged state lawmakers who claim to be Catholic but voted for a newly enacted abortion law to refrain from receiving communion.

In an open letter posted Monday by the Colorado Catholic Conference, the bishops representing the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Colorado Springs and Pueblo and the Archbishop of Denver denounced the recent passage of the states Reproductive Health Equity Act. Signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in April, the law classifies abortion as a fundamental right.

We have a strong desire to discuss the spiritual and cultural impact of laws like RHEA with politicians of both parties who say they are Catholic and who represent people in our state, noted the bishops.

As their shepherds, we want to ensure that they understand the [Catholic] Churchs teaching on receiving Holy Communion and the proper spiritual disposition for doing so.

The bishops noted that several Catholic lawmakers support ending the lives of unborn children and declaring that a fertilized egg, embryo or fetus has no independent or derivative rights in Colorado. The church leaders labeled this line of thinking morally bankrupt logic.

Until public repentance takes place and sacramental absolution is received in Confession, we ask that those Catholic legislators who live or worship in Colorado and who have voted for RHEA, to voluntarily refrain from receiving Holy Communion, they stated. The burden from their decision does not rest upon the shoulders of priests, deacons or lay Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist. It rests upon the consciences and souls of those politicians who have chosen to support this evil and unjust law.

Also known as HB22-1279, the RHEA codified the right to an abortion in Colorado, in response to the possibility that the United States Supreme Court could overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Democratic state Sen. Julie Gonzales, one of the sponsors of the legislation, released a statement following its approval that elaborated on its purpose.

With reproductive freedom under attack at the federal level, were taking historic action today to ensure Colorado remains a safe haven for folks in need of reproductive health care, she said back in April. Until today, Colorado law didnt expressly protect the right to abortion care. Were changing that because all Coloradans should have the freedom to make decisions about their lives and their futures.

The Colorado bishops pointed to The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church, a document approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last year, when justifying their call for pro-abortion Catholic lawmakers to refrain from communion. To receive the Body and Blood of Christ while in a state of mortal sin represents a contradiction, the document explains.

The person who, by his or her own action, has broken communion with Christ and His Church but receives the Blessed Sacrament, acts incoherently, both claiming and rejecting communion at the same time. It is thus a counter sign, a lie  it expresses a communion that in fact has been broken, it added.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines abortion as gravely contrary to the moral law. The Churchs Code of Canon Law proclaims that those obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion. In a 2004 letter to U.S. Catholic Church leadership, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope Benedict XVI, advised church officials to withhold communion from pro-choice politicians.

When a persons formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Churchs teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist, Ratzinger wrote.

Ratzinger instructed ministers of communion to refuse to distribute it if such precautionary measures have not had their effect and the pro-abortion politician continues to present themselves for communion while advocating for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws.

In recent years, there has been great debate among Catholic Church leaders over whether Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion should be denied communion.

Some bishops have argued that doing so holds Catholic politicians who refuse to follow Church teaching to account, while others have claimed that it is counterproductive and wrongfully politicizes a sacrament.

Bishop Robert McElroy of the Diocese of San Diego, who will soon be elevated to the title of Cardinal, wrote in America Magazine last year that  the proposal to exclude pro-choice Catholic political leaders from the Eucharist is the wrong step. It will bring tremendously destructive consequences  not because of what it says about abortion, but because of what it says about the Eucharist.

Fully half the Catholics in the United States will see [excluding pro-abortion political leaders from the Eucharist] as partisan in nature, and it will bring the terrible partisan divisions that have plagued our nation into the very act of worship that is intended by God to cause and signify our oneness.

Last month, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone garnered national headlines when he told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who advocates for abortion and who lives in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, that she could not receive communion unless she repented of her support for abortion.

I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance, Cordileone wrote.
Ex-teen witch recounts dabbling in occult, suicidal struggles before coming to Christ 'I traded a whole lot of nothing for a whole lot of God'

A former self-described teenage witch who struggled with suicidal thoughts says her life was transformed after she surrendered to Jesus Christ.

Sarah Anne Sumpolec was 15 years old when she began dabbling in witchcraft: browsing New Age bookstores, conducting seances and using Tarot cards.

In an appearance on The Playing With Fire Podcast, Sumpolec said after moving frequently as a child, her father found a house in Delaware that previously belonged to the states former governor.

My dad, from the beginning of introducing us to that house  he was insinuating that this was a special house, she told podcast host Billy Hallowell. He hinted at it all along the way, and then when we moved there, he was like, You know this house is haunted, and, of course, he tells me this in excitement.

For Sumpolec, the move marked a turning point in her relationship with her father and her own personal journey.

Her dad gave her a very old book on witchcraft, which Sumpolec says was the first time he really ever introduced the supernatural or his interest in the supernatural.

Upon devouring the books contents, Sumpolec says she finally found common ground with her father and soon learned more about him  and his spiritual proclivities.

She recalled at one point her father telling her witchcraft is who we are as a family.

I really felt like I had  opened up this key of something that I was meant to do, and identity is huge, especially when youre a teenager, she said. I had an entire altar set up in my bedroom.

Practicing what she called white magic, Sumpolec would cast spells as a good witch and worship gods and goddesses at a makeshift altar she built in her bedroom.

Then, she says, things began to take a more sinister turn.

This is the biggest thing that I wish I could communicate on a grander scale to, especially teenagers  that the enemy is all about seduction, Sumpolec said. He doesnt come in with this big evil intention  its a slow luring in, and its like, Oh, look at this power.'

Sumpolec says she was suddenly faced with the dark side of the supernatural realm.

[There were] all these spirits that I thought I was messing with that I thought were good and that were guiding me, she said.

In a blog post for CBN titled Confessions of a Teenage Witch, Sumpolec warned that while there is a prince of the power of the air, thats not the end of the story.

Since the power source that witchcraft taps into comes from Satan, a lot of stuff actually happens. I dont even like to think about the things I saw, she wrote. Yet, just because stuff happens doesnt mean that its truth. Satan does have some limited power on Earth, so thats why psychics are sometimes right and why witchcraft seems to work. Dont mistake Satans power for Gods. They cant even compare!

Around the same time, Sumpolec said her father began using drugs and weakened the bond the two had shared.

It all came to a head when Sumpolec says her dad aimed his shotgun at her.

It was the most terrible moment of my life, she said. He had three guns with him at the time, and my mother had left with my younger sister to take her somewhere safer but had left me there.

While her dad never pulled the trigger, the incident drove Sumpolec deeper into the occult, bringing with it nightmares and negative spiritual experiences that she says were difficult to explain.

She says it was during this time that her spirit guide began to convince her to end her life.

So one night I drove away in my car intending to never come home again, wrote Sumpolec. As I was driving on the back roads, waiting for the carbon monoxide leak in my car to do its work, I remember feeling relieved. Perhaps now, I thought, I can finally escape.

But the attempt failed: Sumpolec says she blacked out before waking up on the ground outside the car.

It was a result that left Sumpolec to wonder whether divine intervention was responsible.

I think I was rescued. I honestly think I was rescued because I woke up. I dont remember stopping my car. I dont remember getting out of my car, she said. I literally woke up on the ground next to a tree. So I fully believe an angel got me out of that car.

And with college just months away, Sumpolec says she resolved to stick it out. It was during her freshman year she roomed with two Christian girls who carried their Bibles around and didnt swear or smoke or drink  which meant that our room was a no-party zone.

Which I was also not happy about, she added.

Sumpolec says after witnessing the peace and security the girls exuded, she became intrigued and began to eavesdrop on their Bible studies.

Shortly after that, she took them up on an invite to another Bible study, where Sumpolec says she first heard the message of Gods love and grace toward sinners who put their faith in Christ.

I made God an offer that night, right before Thanksgiving, she wrote. I told Him that if He was real, and if He really wanted me, then I was His.

He took me up on the offer.

Since that fateful night, Sumpolec says she has followed Jesus, turning her back on the occult and growing to become the author of a YA series and co-author of a daily blog ministry, Girls, God and the Good Life.

She says she even burned all of the books, candles, idols and other items used in her witchcraft in a big bonfire.

I know God was pleased with that, she said. I had traded a whole lot of nothing for a whole lot of God.

It was a pretty good deal if you ask me.
Man who memorized 20 books of the Bible to teach skill at Creation Museum

A man known for having memorized 20 books of the Bible has started volunteering at the Creation Museum to teach visitors his methods of Scripture memorization.

Tom Meyer, a professor at Shasta Bible College of Redding, California, began volunteering at the Petersburg, Kentucky-based museum at the beginning of June, overseeing classes and workshops.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Meyer said he's conducting workshops to teach saints from all over the country how to memorize Scripture and the benefits that come from this ancient discipline.

Meyer, who has volunteered at the museum in the past, said he and his family moved to Kentucky for the position, and he will continue to teach at Shasta via online classes.

After ministering in California for a decade by speaking the Word of God dramatically from memory in a different local church each Sunday and teaching students how to memorize Scripture at Shasta Bible College, our family of six was at a crossroads, he explained.

After praying about where God wanted us to go, He opened a door as clear as day for our family to move to Northern Kentucky to volunteer full time at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, the worlds leading biblical creation ministry.

One of the things that Meyer will do at the museum for guests is to dramatically recite from memory the Genesis account of the Flood of Noah.

I also teach the guests from all over the world in one of the daily Discover Programs what I learned about memorization in the Holy Land and inspire them that they, too, can hide Gods Word in their hearts, he added.

Meyer told CP that he's hopeful that he'll be able to use the gifts God has given me for His glory and to the greatest impact.

I will be able to encourage more believers about the importance of memorizing Scripture here than anywhere else in the world because of the multitude of guests that visit, Meyer said.

The Creation Museum was founded in 2007 by Answers in Genesis, a Christian apologetics group that adheres to a Young Earth Creationist view of lifes origins.

In early 2020, USA Todays 10 Best Readers Choice Awards ranked the Creation Museum and its sister attraction, the Ark Encounter, as the top two religious museums in the United States.

Ark Encounter, which features a life-sized replica of Noahs Ark, was ranked No. 1, while the museum was ranked No. 2. The Washington, D.C.-based Museum of the Bible placed third.
How to deep six the sin in your life

Its the most important book youll never want to read.

In 1656, English puritan minister John Owen published, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, which contains perhaps the best biblical advice on forever sinking the sins in our lives. Two years later Owen wrote, Of Temptation and in 1667, he penned Indwelling Sin in Believers, with these three works being, in my opinion, the definitive biblical guide to achieving personal holiness.

The problem with them is, well, Owen himself. In his preface essay to Owens, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, J. I. Packer says: There is no denying that Owen is heavy and hard to read.

Owens intellect, like other theological giants such as Jonathan Edwards, is intimidating and his skill at wielding Gods two-edged sword (Heb. 4:12) is evidenced by how deep he cuts into your conscience and soul with his biblical insights. But its those things that work to make a permanent change in how we view sin. It also provides us with a better understanding of the damage it causes both in us and in our relationship with God.

Stating the obvious, there is no way I can do justice to what Owen says in total about defeating sin in an article this short. But what I can do is give you the high-level framework he builds for the subject, which will hopefully inspire you to dig in and go further in your pursuit of mortifying (when was the last time you used that word in a sentence?) the sin in your life.

We pause this article for a short announcement

In case youre wondering, yes, since I have gone through Owens works with a fine-tooth comb and practice his concepts, I dont sin anymore. Anger issues? Not me. Lust? Get outta here.

And if you believe that, Ive got bridges and swamp lands to sell you.

Although Owen believes we can get the upper hand on sin in many respects, he is also realistic and knows what the Bible says about our old nature, admitting: Now, though doubtless there may, by the Spirit and grace of Christ, a wonderful success and eminency of victory against any sin be attained, so that a man may have almost constant triumph over it, yet an utter killing and destruction of it, that it should not be, is not in this life to be expected.

With that said, lets look at Owens key points on wrestling our sin to the ground.

Realize its end goals

Before you enter into a battle, its smart to know why youre fighting. Owen says the primary aim of sin is two-fold: 1. to dishonor God; 2. to destroy our soul.

Owen pens, To fear sin is to fear [love] the Lord; so the holy man tells us that they are the same: Job 28:28, The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil, that is understanding. Doing the opposite casts disgrace on God, Owen says.

When it comes to us, Owen states what any believer who agonizingly struggles with sin already knows deep down: Every unmortified sin will certainly do two things:  1. It will weaken the soul and deprive it of its vigor. 2. It will darken the soul and deprive it of its comfort and peace.

This is why we fight. Owen says, The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.

Love the right things

Overcoming sin requires that we acknowledge our primary problem: we have misdirected loves. Therefore, Owen says, a key to beating sin is loving something good more than we love our sin.

For example, the married person tempted with adultery or porn must love their spouse more than their lust and get to the point where they look on those sins in the way that Owen describes: That which was before a sweet morsel under the tongue shall neither have taste or relish in it unto thee.

The ultimate, though, is a love directed towards God and the work Christ has accomplished for us. Comparing that to sin, Owen says: If the heart be filled with the cross of Christ, it casts death and undesirableness upon them all; it leaves no seeming beauty, no appearing pleasure or comeliness, in them.

Rely on the Spirit

Owen spills a lot of ink to hammer home the reality that, in and of ourselves, we are unable to beat back the power of sin. In fact, the cornerstone verse Owen uses for Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers is Rom. 8:13:  if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body

Owen says, Mortification of any sin must be by a supply of grace. Of ourselves we cannot do it, and he goes on to discuss three ways in which the Spirit works to remove sin in our life: 1. by producing godly fruit (Gal. 5:19-21) that overpowers the sins of the old nature; 2. by acting on our consciences in a convicting way and bringing sin to judgment (Is. 4:4); 3. by generating true affections for Christ and His work, along with a genuine love for God that, when pursued, puts sin in the rear view mirror.

Using prayer with the Spirit

Ill make a confession that may upset some of you: Im not usually a fan of the pray about it response we hear so much from Christians when problems arise. However, Owen makes a strong biblical case for prayer in this circumstance when he links it to the Spirit and cites Eph. 6:18 where Paul discusses the armor of God: With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit 

Owen then contrasts the Christians approach to moral purity with all others when he says, Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world. In other words, without prayer and the Spirit, you are setting yourself up for failure.

The end result

These four pieces of scaffolding are what Owen puts forth as the way to defeat sin and bring about personal holiness. When it is carried out on a consistent basis, Owen believes we can realize a glorious end result:

Now, I say, when a man comes to this state and condition, that lust is weakened in the root and principle, that its motions and actions are fewer and weaker than formerly, so that they are not able to hinder his duty nor interrupt his peace,  when he can, in a quiet, sedate frame of spirit, find out and fight against sin, and have success against it,  then sin is mortified in some considerable measure, and, notwithstanding all its opposition, a man may have peace with God all his days.

Sounds good to me.
'Pro-choice' has always been a fraud

Euphemisms are always meant to sound true, not be true. In fact, they intentionally try to prevent people from knowing the truth.

Reproductive Freedom. Womens Healthcare. Reproductive Justice. Womens Right to Choose. Abortion Care. Its all just clever but cunning branding. But it has fatal consequences.

Right to life is short, catchy, composed of monosyllabic words  an important consideration in English. We need something comparable. Right to choose would seem to do the job. These are the words in a 1972 memorandum from the late Episcopal priest, Jimmye Kimmey, who is credited with coining the deceptive phrase pro-choice.

The majority of Americas leading news outlets have given power to pro-choice propaganda ever since by giving the public virtually no choice in hearing the truth. The last time major news media ever did real investigative work to look beyond the euphemism was in 1978, with an incredible series by the Chicago Sun-Times called The Abortion Profiteers. We dont have that kind of mainstream journalistic will today (which is why David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt are heroes for exposing a corrupt abortion industry).

Here are just a few examples of the fraud that is the pro-choice movement:

Californias Attorney General, Xavier Becerra (now the head of the Department of Health and Human Services or HHS), sued pregnancy centers and tried to force them to promote abortion. (The Supreme Court, thankfully, slapped him down.) Thats not pro-choice.

Planned Parenthood and other abortion organizations fight Womens Right to Know bills (which provide mothers comprehensive information about abortion, its impact, and resources available if they choose life). Thats not pro-choice.

Planned Parenthood demonizes adoption falsely claiming: The psychological responses to abortion are far less serious than those experienced by women bringing their unwanted pregnancy to term and relinquishing her child for adoption. Thats not pro-choice.

My Body! My Choice! politicians and activists demand all American taxpayers bodies fund the violence of abortion via Obamacare, Medicaid, state Medicaid programs and over half-a-billion annual dollars to Planned Parenthood. Thats not pro-choice.

For years NARAL Pro-Choice America has tried to shut down alternatives to abortion by falsely branding (state certified) pregnancy medical clinics as fake clinics and as an insidious threat to reproductive freedom. (NARALs own founder, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, admitted NARAL was a serial liar especially in its fabrication that 5,000-10,000 women died per year, pre-Roe, from illegal abortions; official figures were 160.) Thats not pro-choice.

In 2019, pregnancy help centers and medical clinics distributed 1.3 million diapers, 2 million baby outfits, 50,000 car seats and strollers, and hundreds of thousands of other items of material support. They provided 291,000 clients with parenting classes. All for free. Planned Parenthood reported providing zero of these items or services. Thats not pro-choice.

President Bidens HHS has erased Trumps Protect Life Rule, refunneling Title X money to abortion giant Planned Parenthood (despite it violating Title X rules) and mandates medical professionals participate in or refer for abortion. Thats not pro-choice.

The ACLU sued a Catholic hospital system for refusing to commit abortions against its First Amendment rights. Thats not pro-choice.

As revealed in the powerful Hush Film, medical associations deliberately hide the thoroughly documented preterm birth and triple-negative breast cancer risks that result from induced abortions. Thats not pro-choice.

Extremist pro-abortion groups, Planned Parenthood and the Womens March, recently declared a Summer of Rage as pregnancy medical clinics and pro-life organizations have been firebombed, vandalized and threatened (only to silence from our pro-abortion politicians, President, and celebrities). Thats not pro-choice.

LGBT groups, like Lambda Legal and the ACLU, have been systematically working to shut-down faith-based adoption agencies that believe vulnerable children whove escaped the violence of abortion or exit the foster care system deserve a mom and a dad. Thats not pro-choice.

Fake news leader, MSNBC, declares adoption isnt always a safe route, particularly for black and brown kids, as it touts its undying support for abortion in the black community. Abortion is the leading killer of black lives. Thats not pro-choice.

Senate Majority leader, Chuck Schumer, threatened conservative Supreme Court justices with violent rhetoric at a pro-abortion rally: I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have unleashed the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You wont know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions. Thats not pro-choice.

A crazed pro-abortion activist with a loaded gun was just arrested for seeking to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh for siding with the majority in the leaked draft Dobbs opinion that overturns Roe. Thats not pro-choice.

America has a decades-long pro-abortion movement that celebrates violence, diminishes our humanity, subverts the Constitution, and demands inequality among women and men. Its a movement whose judicial allies have aborted the intent and wording of the 14th Amendment to conjure up a right to slaughter the innocent. Its a movement that works tirelessly to eliminate any standards for abortion businesses that real medical facilities have to abide by. Its a movement that ignores the collateral damage of women whove died from legal abortions. Its a movement thats dedicated to ensuring only one choice remains: a self-policing, unaccountable, taxpayer-funded abortion industry that kills with impunity.

Its not pro-choice. Its faux-choice. And it kills those with no choice over 2,300 times a day in our nation. As an adoptee conceived in rape but adopted in love, as an adoptive father, as a husband to an incredible woman who rejected the violence of abortion when she was a single mom, Ill keep exposing the fraud that targets the vulnerable and exploits fear for profit. Ill keep illuminating the inherent and irrevocable worth we all possess. Ill keep helping to meet the needs of those facing unplanned pregnancies through our organization (The Radiance Foundation), pro-life pregnancy centers, maternity homes and adoption agencies.

While the Left wages its Summer of Rage, the Pro-Life movement will continue its Summer of Love. Well keep showing how we care for people, while pro-abortion activists tragically focus on how to scare people.

Originally published at the Radiance Foundation.
Evangelical charity offering long-term solutions amid Africa's devastating drought

A global Christian humanitarian organization is using its network of churches to assist Kenya during one of the most devastating droughts to hit East Africa in over half a century, the effects of which are compounded by challenges caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

World Relief, a nongovernmental organization that has worked across 100 countries to bring sustainable solutions to vulnerable regions, is operating in the northwest Kenyan county of Turkana as a drought has plagued the country for the past 18 months.

Founded as the War Relief Commission during World War II by the National Association of Evangelicals of America, World Relief has maintained a long-term presence in the East African country since 2011, when drought and famine last ravaged the area.

In an interview with The Christian Post, World Relief Kenya Country Director Elias Kamau said many in Turkana are nomadic pastoralists, meaning they migrate with their livestock from one place to another in search of pasture.

The drought has caused the depletion of many water sources in pastoralist areas and 60% to 80% of livestock in the region have died due to dehydration and starvation.

"The work we have been doing there in moisture-constrained areas has had to do with building the resilience of these communities because the drought has become a very frequent thing," he said. "The pattern is not frequent, but droughts are coming now and then."

Kamau said World Relief has created over a dozen boreholes in Turkana  narrow holes dug to locate water  and six other water points called sand dams. These dams store water during rainy seasons and the water accumulates behind the dam.

The organization is also digging four additional boreholes in a town south of Nairobi called Kajiado. The country director told CP that equates to 16 boreholes and six sand dams that World Relief has dug.

After establishing water points, the organization helps communities in those regions adapt to dryland farming, an agricultural technique that utilizes moisture stored in the soil to cultivate crops.

In addition to operating a country office in Nairobi with about 12 staff, World Relief also has two offices in Turkana, three in Kajiado and Nakuru, a Rift Valley region in Kenya. World Relief has about 64 staff on its payroll in Kenya, with about two dozen on staff in Turkana County.

World Relief partners with churches that provide volunteers that the organization trains to do extension work and help cover more areas in need.

Church empowerment zones

World Relief finds areas to help by assessing the level of need. When it enters an area to offer relief, the charity locates churches, inviting pastors and other church leaders to craft what the organization calls a "church empowerment zone."

These zones equip pastors or other spiritual leaders to work with their communities to address issues like poverty or malnutrition through leadership development and capacity building.

"We cut out a geographical area as a whole, and we style it as a church empowerment zone  the place where we are going to bring all our resources to be able to see change, to see impact," Kamau asserted.

Since an area like Turkana is quite large, Kamau said World Relief parcels these zones into smaller sections called church networks. These networks are within neighborhoods that have what Kamau estimates to be around 25 churches of different denominations.

World Relief establishes a committee consisting of people from various denominations who help them navigate issues around the area and act as representatives of other churches within the area. The humanitarian group currently has three church empowerment zones operating in Turkana.

'They need food now'

World Relief also imports food such as rice, wheat and corn to feed the people of Kenya.

Kamau said that World Relief is injecting cash into the economy by putting an unconditional cash transfer project together to avail half a basket load of food rations for the poorest families in the northwestern parts of Turkana.

According to the country director, this area of Turkana is among the hardest-hit areas they serve.

Kamau identified the cost of the cash transfer project at around $650,000, adding that the agronomy projects are worth about $500,000.

He praised churches in the U.S. and abroad for providing aid to World Relief's projects as part of an agreement to help the organization support specific communities for around three to four years.

"That has helped us in terms of putting in place the training and the capacity building of the pastors unit and integrating the community development aspects which public funding couldn't possibly do," Kamau said.

"It is very critical we focus on saving lives," he added. "People are hungry. They need food now."

Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has added to the hunger crisis, leading to increased prices of food and fuel.

"So you have a situation where access to food is a huge, huge problem," Kamau stressed.

As CBS News reported Monday, Russia's naval blockade of Ukraine has caused global food shortages and more than 20 million tons of grain are stuck on Odesa's coast. The blockade has had a particularly strong impact in Africa, extending far beyond Kenya.

The World Food Programme noted that the cost of food baskets has risen in the Horn of Africa, with prices rising by 66% in Ethiopia and 36% in Somalia. The charity also warned that the number of people starving in the Horn of Africa due to the drought could rise from 14 million to 20 million by the year's end.
Islamic extremists kill 18 civilians, set fire to homes in night raid in eastern Congo

In a night raid, suspected militants from the Islamic extremist group Allied Democratic Forces killed at least 18 civilians and burned down many houses in a village in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to media reports.

The attack occurred in Otomabere village in Ituri provinces Irumu area late at night last Sunday, leaving at least 18 people dead, Nigerias newspaper The Guardian reported.

We were chatting with some friends outside when we heard gunshots and everyone fled in a different direction. It was total panic, Kimwenza Malembe, a resident of Otomabere, was quoted as saying. This morning we counted 18 dead, killed by knives and firearms.

The ADF, which is a Ugandan militia that started operating in the DRC during the 1990s, killed about 1,300 people between January 2021 and January 2022, according to a United Nations report. It was formed in 1996, merging several existing rebel groups.

In January 2021, more than 100 people were killed in three large attacks in the same province by the ADF, Open Doors reported at the time.

About 46 people belonging to the Pygmy ethnic group were killed in Ituri province by suspected militants of the extremist group, which is known for attacking, kidnapping and killing Christians, as well as training and sending jihadists to other countries in Africa.

The roughly half a million Pygmy people face extensive persecution and discrimination in the country, Open Doors noted.

On Jan. 4, 2021, about 22 civilians were killed by militants wielding guns and machetes in an overnight attack on Mwenda village in the Beni region of neighboring North Kivu province.

ADF militants killed 25 more people in Tingwe village in the same region the same day.

At least 17 nearby villagers had been murdered with machetes a week earlier in Mwenda village.

In a 2020 report, the U.N. acknowledged that widespread, systematic and extremely brutal human rights abuses by the Islamic militant group could constitute, by their nature and scope, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

While the militant group has not formally linked itself with the Islamic State terrorist group, IS has claimed responsibility for some of their attacks, calling Congo the Central Africa Province of the caliphate.

The government of Ugandan has sent over 1,700 troops to the Congo to help fight ADF militants.
Google will pay $118 million to settle a gender-based wage discrimination lawsuit, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Additionally, Google will allow a third party to review how it carries out its recruiting and hiring processes.

The plaintiffs argued that women at Google were paid about $16,794 less than their male coworkers, as well as being placed in lower-level positions despite qualifying for upper-level jobs. One woman stated she was placed in an entry-level tier meant for recent college grads, despite having four years of experience. Other women argued that they were given less challenging assignments, making it more difficult to advance to a higher position.

Related: It's Equal Pay Day, and This Twitter Bot Is Calling Out Companies That Pay Men More Than Women

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2017 by three female employees who accused Google of gender discrimination and violating California's Equal Pay Act. The complaint expanded to class-action status in 2021, and the settlement now covers over 15,000 female employees who worked for the company after September 2013.

Still, Google claims no wrongdoing, despite its hefty payout.

"While we strongly believe in the equity of our policies and practices, after nearly five years of litigation, both sides agreed that resolution of the matter, without any admission or findings, was in the best interest of everyone, and we're very pleased to reach this agreement," Google said in a statement to Fortune, and noted that admitting fault is not part of the settlement.

The terms of the agreement are awaiting approval by a judge on June 21.

Related: 3 U.S. States, D.C. Sue Google for 'Deceptive' Location Tracking

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There was an undetected monkeypox outbreak already underway in the United States before health officials in Europe and the U.S. sounded the alarm about the dangerous viral disease back in May. Thats a problem. For every day that a virus spreads unmonitored and unchecked, theres greater risk of it finding a permanent home in a country it was only visiting. In the case of the pox  in our pets.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there are two strains of the virus circulating in the country, which indicates its probably been here much longer than originally thought. Its not clear when that other outbreak began, but it could have potentially been months ago.

Monkeypox, which causes a rash and fever and is fatal in a very small percentage of cases, isnt nearly as transmissible as Covid-19. But unlike the novel coronavirus, it spreads easily to and from certain animal populations  rodents in particular.

If the pox currently circulating in the U.S. spreads to rats, hamsters, or gerbils, and becomes endemic in those species, there might be no easy way to contain it. I do share the other scientists concern of containment and the virus becoming endemic in our U.S. rodent population, sys Stephanie James, the head of a viral testing lab at Regis University in Colorado.

There is some good news. For starters, no one has died yet as a result of either recent pox outbreak. And authorities are better equipped than ever to contain the outbreaks, thanks to large stockpiles of smallpox vaccine (which works against monkeypox, too) and their years of experience with contact-tracing thanks to Covid-19.

More good news: despite some mixed messages from some health experts, the pox is not airborne in its current form. The CDC didnt respond to a request for comment, but the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control Europes version of the CDC  stressed there is no evidence of long-range airborne transmission.

The confusion stems from the scientific definition of airborne. Covid matches the definition. Monkeypox does not. The pox can ride a very short distance on spittle, but it doesnt waft and linger in fine aerosol mists from breathing and talking the way airborne Covid does.

The novel coronavirus can travel across a room on aerosols or even hover in the air for hours at a time. The monkeypox in our spit, by contrast, quickly falls to the floor just a couple feet from our mouths. Respiratory droplets may be able to spread the virus, but it is not what is fueling transmission, says Amesh Adalja, a public-health expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Instead, the pox spreads through very close contact.

The bad news is were playing catch-up. And as that initially undetected earlier outbreak indicates, were not even sure how far behind we are. Its not enough to contain and treat the pox in people. We also need to prevent it spreading to rats and hamsters and other animals.

Monkeypox, which first made the leap from monkeys or rodents to people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1970, regularly flares up in Africa. But it rarely infects more than a couple thousand people a year  and killed just 33 people during its most prolonged outbreak in the DRC between 1981 and 1986.

When monkeypox spreads in places its not already endemic outside Africa, health officials perk up. In 2003, 47 people in the U.S. got sick with the pox after exposure to a shipment of pet rodents from Ghana to Texas. A rapid response by state and federal health officials  and a few doses of smallpox vaccine  prevented anyone dying and temporarily eliminated the virus in the U.S.

The larger of the current outbreaks began in early May, apparently triggered by a U.K. travelers exposure to an infected person or animal in Nigeria. Hitching a ride to Europe, the virus spread quickly through close physical contact. David Heymann, who formerly headed the World Health Organizations emergencies department, said that men attending raves in Spain and Belgium amplified the outbreak  apparently through kissing and rubbing skin.

After that, the virus accompanied travelers on planes heading for countries far and wide. By June 2, the WHO had tallied 780 pox cases in 27 countries. The case count since has swelled to around 1,400. Health officials diagnosed the first U.S case on May 27.

As of Friday, 49 Americans in 16 states plus Washington, D.C. had the pox. The CDC suspects some of those cases are the result of an earlier outbreak that officials didnt even notice until the later outbreak caused them to go back and take a closer look at some patients symptoms.

Pox rashes look a lot like symptoms of other diseases, including sexually-transmitted infections, or STIs. That earlier pox outbreak apparently slipped past medical professionals because they didnt necessarily know what they were looking at. These monkeypox cases outside of the endemic area have likely been smoldering along for some time, misdiagnosed as traditional STIs, says Adalja, the public health expert.

That delay in confirming pox cases is worrying experts. Every day that passes in the current outbreaks increases the chance of transmission to pets and pests. If the pox becomes endemic in animal populations, we might never get rid of it. And countries such as the U.S. that once experienced just a few small pox outbreaks every 20 years or so could suffer bigger and more frequent outbreaks, just like countries in Africa already do.

Thats the worst-case scenario, but authorities cant contain an outbreak they dont even know is happening. Its a troubling sign that, in the third year of a devastating pandemic, doctors, health officials and epidemiologists overlooked that earlier pox outbreak, giving the virus a head start in the race toward endemicity in animals. I think we are dramatically under-testing, under-ascertaining cases and underestimating risk, says James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. We apparently didnt learn very much from Covid.
Former President Donald Trump's social media app, Truth Social, has reportedly banned users who have posted about the Jan. 6 hearings. It should be noted that the Trump is key figure in those hearings.

Users who have been banned from the app, which was launched after the former president was banned from different social media platforms, took to Twitter, seen by many as the app Truth Social copied from, to air their sentiments about the alleged bans.

Truth Social Reportedly Banning Users Posting About Jan. 6 Hearings

Truth Social has found its way back to the headlines once more as reports have surfaced that the app has been banning users who posted about the Jan. 6 hearings. According to an article by Variety,

The irony is rich: Truth Social, Donald Trump's Twitter copycat claiming it is "free from political discrimination," has reportedly banned users who posted information from Thursday's congressional hearing on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol - in which the former president is a key focus.

Users who have taken to Twitter to share that their accounts have been banned by the app. Per a report by Business Insider, users whose accounts have been banned include the one belonging to political commentator and Travis Allen. You can view his tweet below:

My Truth Social account was just permanently suspended for talking about the January 6th Committee hearings. pic.twitter.com/MBNTSNe4Z8  Travis Allen (@TravisAllen02) June 10, 2022

Unsurprisingly, people have taken to Twitter to air their opinions on the matter, causing Truth Social to trend on the platform. Here are examples of tweets that have been posted:

I was suspended from Truth Social for posting about the January 6th hearing last night.



Donald Trump is scared of free speech.  Jack Cocchiarella (@JDCocchiarella) June 10, 2022

Seeing a lot of folks getting banned from Trump's Truth Social for posting updates about the January 6 Committee hearings.



Apparently free speech has its limits even in Trumpland.  Max Burns (@themaxburns) June 10, 2022

Truth Social's Terms of Service

Despite claiming to champion free speech, both reports of Variety and Business Insider highlight how the social media app's terms of service seems to contradict the very thing it claims to be fighting for.

The terms of service, which can be read here, says "We reserve the right to, in our sole discretion and without notice or liability, deny access to and use of the service (including blocking certain IP addresses) to any person for any reason or for no reason."

Furthermore, it also states that users cannot post anything that, in the opinion of Truth Social, tarnishes and harms both the app and the people behind it, according to the Business Insider report.

Related Article: Truth Social App: 5 Safety and Security Tips Before You Sign Up on Donald Trump's Social Media

What is Truth Social?

As already mentioned, Truth Social is a social media platform created by Trump Media & Technology Group and launched in February. Access to the app is limited to residents of the United States and Canada.

An iPhone app was first made available, followed by a web app that is still geographically restricted.

Read Also: Truth Social App on Android Is a Fake! Here's Where You Can Download Donald Trump's True Social Media App
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP)  Gunmen killed at least 55 people over the weekend in northern Burkina Faso, authorities said Monday, the latest attack in the West African country where mounting violence is blamed on Islamic extremists.

Suspected militants targeted civilians in Seytenga in Seno province, government spokesman Wendkouni Joel Lionel Bilgo said at a news conference. While the government put the official toll at 55, others put the figure far higher.

Attacks linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group are soaring in Burkina Faso, particularly in the north. Jihadists killed at least 160 people in an attack in the town of Solhan in June 2021.

In January, mutinous soldiers ousted the democratically elected president, promising to secure the nation, but violence has only increased. The government is asking people to remain united in the fight against the insurgents.

While no group claimed the weekend attack, conflict analysts say it was likely carried out by the Islamic State group.

In recent weeks, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara have been the most aggressive group, notably in Seno and Oudalan provinces. In addition to attacks against security forces, civilians have also been targeted, said Rida Lyammouri, senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a Moroccan-based organization focused on economics and policy.

This is a major blow to security forces and puts them on the back foot again, indicating they are far from being able to secure the area and protect civilians, he said.

Nearly 5,000 people have died over the last two years in Burkina Faso because of violence blamed on Islamic extremists. Another 2 million people have fled their homes, deepening the country's humanitarian crisis.

___

This story corrects the date of the attack on Solhan to July 2021.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  The Alabama Supreme Court has set an execution date of July 28 for a man convicted of killing his one-time girlfriend after breaking into her home in Jefferson County almost three decades ago, according to a court order made public Monday.

Joe Nathan James Jr. would become the second Alabama inmate put to death this year unless a court intervenes.

James, 49, was sentenced to die after being convicted of capital murder during a burglary in the killing of his one-time girlfriend, Faith Hall, in Birmingham.

James, who had a history of stalking and harassing the woman, showed up at her apartment on Aug. 15, 1994, forced his way inside and accused her of unfaithfulness, court documents show. James pulled a gun out of his waistband and shot the woman, who died of multiple gunshot wounds, and James was later arrested in California.

A Jefferson County jury convicted James of capital murder in 1996 and voted to recommend the death penalty, which a judge imposed. The conviction was overturned when the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that a judge wrongly admitted some police reports into evidence.

James was retried and again sentenced to death in 1999, when jurors rejected defense claims that he was under emotional duress at the time of the shooting. Courts have since rejected appeals by James including claims that his lawyers were ineffective, and the state asked the court in March to set an execution date.

James has never claimed to be innocent, the state argued, and he's exhausted his appeals.

In a hand-written appeal filed in federal court on his own behalf in April, James again claimed his lawyers were ineffective and said a judge wrongly admitted evidence and allowed prosecutors to ask improper questions. A judge hasn't ruled on his petition, records show.

While inmates can choose lethal injection or the electric chair, none has opted for electrocution. James' execution would presumably be carried out by lethal injection since the state hasn't said it is ready to conduct executions by an untried method called nitrogen hypoxia.

Matthew Reeves was put to death in January by lethal injection in the states only execution so far this year.
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A federal appeals court has lifted its hold on Louisianas congressional redistricting. The ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal means a special session may start Wednesday for a remap ordered by a district judge.

This is a big step in the right direction for the people of Louisiana," Gov. John Bel Edwards said after the 5th Circuit handed down its opinion Sunday.

Edwards, a Democrat, had vetoed districts drawn up after the latest census, but the Republican-dominated legislature overrode his veto in late March.

Edwards has said throughout that a single majority-Black district violates the Voting Rights Act because the state is nearly one-third African American.

There is time for the legislature to return to the Capitol and enact congressional maps that reflect the reality of our state, Edwards said.

U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, in a 152-page ruling handed down June 6, ordered the state to come up with a second majority Black district by June 20.

Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, who had filed one of three requests for the stay, said he has not decided what to do next. The state attorney general, who also is Republican, and legislative leaders did not immediately respond to queries about whether they plan to go to the Supreme Court.

"While I strongly disagree with the ruling of the panel, as Secretary of State I am obligated to comply with federal and state law, including Judge Dicks injunction as long as it remains in effect, Ardoin said Monday.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court held a similar order in Alabama. However, the 5th Circuit noted, a ruling in that case likely will come long after the 2022 elections, which are the subject of this appeal.

Alabama's election was less than four months away when the high court acted, with absentee voting to start in about two months, the 5th Circuit wrote.

In Louisiana, it said, weeks remain before the earliest candidate filing deadline, and months remain before the primary elections.

The 5th Circuit also called Sunday for a full appeal of Judge Shelly Dicks decision to be heard during the week of July 4. Sunday's decision did not consider whether her opinion was correct  only whether Ardoin and other defendants had shown they were very likely to win an appeal.

Neither the plaintiffs arguments nor the district courts analysis is entirely watertight. And it is feasible that the merits panel, conducting a less-rushed examination of the record in the light of differently framed arguments, may well side with the defendants, the three-judge panel wrote.

The judges rejected claims that the districts were a racial gerrymander.

Race was considered by experts who drew up alternative maps for voters who challenged the districts, but that alone does not constitute gerrymandering, the opinion said.

The defendants have not shown that the plaintiffs maps prioritized race so highly as to commit racial gerrymandering, or that complying with the district courts order would require the Legislature to adopt a predominant racial purpose, the judges wrote.
Members of the U.S. Coast Guard in Massachusetts are being recognized for freeing a sea turtle that was severely entangled in Nantucket Harbor.

USCG Petty Officer Chad Austin told the Nantucket Current that Station Brant Point received a call about the turtle from three friends who were out on a boat in the harbor.

According to the Nantucket Current, the Coast Guard contacted the Maine Mammal Alliance Nantucket to be briefed about the best practices for disentangling the turtle before a crew set out to find it in the station's 24-foot shallow-water rescue boat.

Austin said that when he and fellow USCG petty officers Adam Ridge, Steve Bugarin and Tyler Covington arrived in the area on the rescue boat, they could see the 900-pound female leatherback sea turtle was caught on five orange buoys and was struggling to swim.

The line was wrapped around her neck and one of her fins, so we did our best to try to relieve the pressure with our boat hook, Austin told the Nantucket Current. It was the biggest turtle Id ever seen and pretty amazing it had made it all the way to the Head of the Harbor."

The Coast Guard crew managed to get one line off her neck and then cut the rest of the lines off the turtle's body. The turtle was last seen dipping beneath the water and swimming away.

Once the lines had been removed, Austin said he began pulling them into the boat and dragged up four cinder blocks that were attached to the lines.

The Nantucket Current reported that the buoys and lines are scallop spat bags that belong to the town of Nantucket's Natural Resources Department.

NRD Director Jeff Carlson told the newspaper that the sea turtle getting entangled in those bags was a "freak" occurrence and the first known instance of the equipment causing an entanglement.

We have reached out to a few other organizations if there are ways to improve this common design to try and prevent this in the future as well, Carlson told the Nantucket Current.

Leatherback sea turtles are the largest turtles in the world and are the only species of sea turtle that lack scales and a hard shells. The leatherback is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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LAKE SAWA, Iraq (AP)  Hussam al-Aqouli remembers the exact spot along southern Iraqs Lake Sawa where his two daughters once dipped their feet into clear waters. Now he stands there two years on and the barren earth cracks beneath him.

This year, for the first time in its centuries-long history, the lake dried up. A combination of mismanagement by local investors, government neglect and climate change has ground down its azure shores to chunks of salt.

Lake Sawa is only the latest casualty in this broad country-wide struggle with water shortages that experts say is induced by climate change, including record low rainfall and back-to-back drought. The stress on water resources is driving up competition for the precious resource among businessmen, farmers and herders, with the poorest Iraqis counting among the worst hit amid the disaster.

This lake was known as the pearl of the south, said al-Aqouli, 35, a native of the nearby city of Samawa, looking out onto the dry cavernous emptiness. Now it is our tragedy.

Between the capital Baghdad and the oil-rich heartland of Basra, Muthanna is among Iraqs poorest provinces. The number of those living under the poverty line in the province is almost three times the national average.

Desert expanses dominate the landscape with a narrow ribbon of farmland along the Euphrates River in the north. Economic development was hindered by the countrys turbulent history, neglect by the Baath party regime since the 1980s, then later by wars and sanctions.

Locals call the area surrounding Lake Sawa atshan  or simply thirsty in Arabic.

Formed over limestone rock and studded with gypsum formations, the lake has no inlet or outlet and the source of its waters had mystified experts for centuries, fueling fantastical folklore and religious tales that locals recite as historical fact.

Al-Aqouli spent his childhood frequenting the lake with his family. He hoped he could do the same when he started a family, he said. Instead he spends his days on social media writing long blog posts and urging Iraqis to take action. Often, he feels hopeless.

The lake rises 5 meters (16 feet) above sea level and is about 4.5 kilometers (3 miles) long and 1.8 kilometers (1 mile) wide.

Lake Sawa appears in some old Islamic texts. It is said the lake miraculously formed on the day the Prophet Muhammad was born in 570 A.D. Thousands of religious tourists visited the site annually to submerge themselves in its holy waters, which they believe are blessed by God.

The lakes rich mineral deposits are also considered a cure by some for skin diseases prevalent in historically neglected Muthanna.

Locals say the drying up of the waters of Lake Sawa presages the return of the Imam al-Mahdi, a revered figure in Shiite Islam and a descendent of the prophet.

It means the end of days is near, said al-Aqouli, in jest.

For environmentalists, the doomsday predictions may not be far off.

Studies have shown the lake is fed by underground water sources through a system of cracks and fissures. It can also receive rainwater from surrounding valleys and heavy rainfall in past years has caused flash floods.

The degradation of the water began over 10 years ago, but this summer was the first time we lost the entire wetland, said Laith Ali al-Obeidi, an environmental activist in southern Iraq.

Experts said the lake has not dried up for good but its disappearance this year is a concerning consequence of the thousands of illegal wells dug by businessmen in nearby cement factories and manufacturing zones, a result of drought and decreasing waters along the nearby Euphrates.

By early June, some water began to reappear because farmers, done with the harvest season, stopped diverting underground water.

Mounds of salt line the road to the river in Muthanna province and are overseen by enterprising locals who extract it by diverting groundwater and digging wells. The salt is used as a raw material in various industries in the area.

Mortadha Ali, 45, is involved in the salt business in Muthanna. He blames years of government neglect in the province for the disappearance of Lake Sawa. They should provide people with jobs, so they arent obliged to dig wells to make a living, he said.

Enforcing the closure of illegal wells and additional protective measures would have reversed Lake Sawa's decline, said Aoun Diab, an adviser to the Water Resources Ministry. But these would have directly affected the economic interests of provincial officials.

This has disrupted a delicate and interdependent ecosystem sustained by the rare desert oasis.

Species of fish, unfit for human consumption, were food for various vulnerable migratory birds that sojourned along its banks. With the fish gone, the birds too will have to reroute their seasonal passage or perish, said al-Obeidi.

And the future is poised to bring more hardship, with alarming predictions of more water stress. The Water Resources Ministry has said water levels decreased by 60% compared to last year in 2022.

Lake Sawa is a case study for climate change in Iraq, al-Obeidi said. This is the future.

But the lake is also a ghost of its former illustrious past.

The only body of water near to the city of Samawah, the area boasted thousands of tourists a year. Their waste  water bottles, soda cans and abandoned flip flops  remain along the dried up shores as an ode to what the impoverished area has lost.

Holiday installations built decades ago stand half-finished. Most were looted after the Gulf War in the 1990s and then after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

In 2014, Lake Sawa was named a Ramsar site, an international designation for important wetlands, gaining recognition as a rare area in need of protection. A large billboard marking the occasion overlooks the site. Local authorities hoped this would boost tourism and government resources to resume development of the area. Plans were drafted to pave roads and walkways around the lake, as well as electricity lines and water projects.

Ultimately, these failed to transpire.

The hot air was heavy as al-Aqouli took one last look of the lake before leaving.

Believe me, it was beautiful, he said.
WASHINGTON - The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection asserted in its second hearing Monday that the Capitol attack was the direct result of Donald Trump's repeated baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump continued pursuing ever-outlandish claims of election fraud - then fundraised off of those false claims - despite being told repeatedly that Joe Biden had won the race fairly, according to testimony from those who had been close to the former president.

The committee played video of its deposition with former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, in which Stepien said he advised Trump on election night that it was too early to call the race and that they needed to wait until early and mail-in ballots were counted. Trump objected to that advice, Stepien said, and claimed that night that he had won, baselessly calling the race a "fraud" and an "embarrassment."

Stepien told the committee that Trump's orbit had cleaved into "Team Crazy" vs. "Team Normal" and that he was glad to be on the latter. However, Trump was increasingly listening only to allies who pushed conspiracy theories about the election.

"I was somewhat demoralized because I thought, boy  he has become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff," former Trump attorney general William P. Barr said, according to video testimony the committee played Monday. "When I went into this and would tell them how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were."

Here's what to know:

- Monday's hearing follows a prime-time hearing Thursday in which the panel began making its case that the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol was the violent culmination of a coup attempt. In the second hearing, panel members also addressed how Trump's "big lie" about election fraud drove Republican fundraising appeals after Biden won the election.

Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman

- Chris Stirewalt, a former political editor for Fox News, testified that he was proud of his team's decision to call Arizona for Biden before other networks did on election night. He also said his team had taken "pains" to caution viewers about a "red mirage" - showing a Republican ahead on election night - noting that the results were likely to change after early votes were counted. "The Trump campaign and the president had made it clear that they were going to try to exploit this anomaly  When you put together a jigsaw puzzle, it doesn't matter which piece you put in first. It ends up with the same image," Stirewalt testified.

- The committee had to scramble Monday morning after Stepien canceled his planned in-person testimony because his wife had gone into labor, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., the committee chairman, said. Others who testified in person Monday were Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer; former U.S. attorney Byung J. "BJay" Pak; and Al Schmidt, a former Philadelphia city commissioner.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP)  The death of a Black teenager at a Kansas juvenile detention center was foreshadowed five years earlier by a state inspection that noted systemic deficiencies in the facility's handling of children with mental health issues, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Monday.

Cedric Loftons foster father called authorities in September 2021 seeking help because the 17-year-old was hallucinating and needed to go to a mental health facility. Instead, police forcibly took him to the Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center, where he had to be resuscitated after he was held facedown for more than 30 minutes during an altercation. He died two days later.

His brother, Marquan Teetz, acting as representative of Lofton's estate, sued Sedgwick County, five detention center employees, the city of Wichita, and the unidentified police officers. According to the complaint, Teetz seeks to illuminate the truth and obtain some measure of justice for Cedric's death."

Teetz said Monday that he is heartbroken from his brother's death, adding that he sued just to show they can't get away with it. I want to prove we still have a justice system."

More than 30 people gathered in front of the Sedgwick County Courthouse chanting, Justice for CJ! after his lawyers held a news conference to announce the filing of the lawsuit.

Cedric would be alive today if Sedgwick County executives and the Wichita Police Department followed the clear recommendations of the report issued by the Kansas Department of Corrections in March of 2016, said Andrew M. Stroth, the lead attorney representing the family.

The county did not immediately reply to emails from The Associated Press seeking comment. The Wichita Police Department said it cannot comment on pending litigation. Sedgwick County's Corrections Director Glenda Martens has described what happened as tragic but said that the corrections workers followed policy in restraining the Cedric Lofton. Wichita police have said they've been looking into the actions officers took when booking Lofton.

No one has been criminally charged in Lofton's death. In January, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said the states stand-your-ground law prevents him from bringing any charges because staff members were protecting themselves.

Teetz's lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages in an amount to be determined by a jury.

The lawsuit contends that Lofton's death was presaged" by the state Corrections Department inspection. The inspection report, a copy of which the AP reviewed, noted systemic deficiencies at the juvenile facility, including its inability to handle children with mental health issues, its need for training on de-escalation techniques and management of risk.

The scathing inspection also cited the facility's need for assistance in dealing with a Wichita Police Department who too often dropped juveniles at JIAC's door as a form of punishment while refusing any obligation to transport such juveniles for mental health treatment," according to the court filing.

Everything that happened in that report lines up precisely with what happened to Cedric, Stroth said.

The lawsuit alleges that when confronted by questioning during intake at the facility about whether Lofton required medical treatment, Wichita police intentionally falsified their response on a form and swore that he needed no such treatment. An intake official witnessed the police officer change his response on the form when the officer learned that would trigger an obligation to transport the teen for treatment.

In other words, the officer prioritized his own convenience at the expense of this child's welfare, the lawsuit alleges. And JIAC officials knowingly permitted it.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for Kansas accuses each of the five detention center employees of using excessive force, failing to intervene in other officer's use of deadly force and being deliberately indifferent to Lofton's serious medical needs.

The lawsuit also alleges excessive force by Sedgwick County, contending its policies, practices and customs allow such force against juveniles. It also accuses the county of failure to train employees on the proper use of force, de-escalation techniques and the management of juveniles with mental health issues.

The complaint further contends Wichita officers were deliberately indifferent to Lofton's medical needs and accuses the city of indifference in failing to train officers on dealing with juveniles and others in the throes of a mental health crisis.
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WASHINGTON - The House Jan. 6 committee aired videotaped testimony Monday from a parade of insiders in Donald Trump's White House describing how they each told Trump in the wake of his 2020 loss that there was no credible evidence the election had been stolen. But they said they were ignored, ridiculed and sidelined by the former president as he persisted in making baseless claims that laid the groundwork for the violent attack on the Capitol two months later.

Monday's hearing of the select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection focused on Trump's efforts to spin a narrative of massive voter fraud that had no basis in reality and, in fact, cut directly against the counsel he was getting from some of his most senior advisers.

They included former campaign manager Bill Stepien, who has not spoken publicly about the Trump campaign before or after the February deposition, portions of which were shown Monday. In the clips, Stepien described advising Trump and his deputies both before and after the election about his narrow path to victory - concluding by mid-November that Trump's chances were "very, very, very bleak."

Stepien identified himself as part of a subset of clear-eyed Trump advisers - "Team Normal," he called it - that was eventually sidelined in favor of a rival group led by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and other loyalists who were indulgent of groundless voter-fraud allegations and conspiracy theories.

"I've built up a pretty good, I hope, a good reputation for being honest and professional," Stepien told the committee. "And I didn't think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time."

Former attorney general William P. Barr, meanwhile, told the committee in a deposition earlier this month that he concluded early on after the November 2020 vote that the stolen-election claims "were completely bogus and silly and usually based on complete misinformation."

He went on to describe three meetings with Trump - on Nov. 23, Dec. 1 and Dec. 14 - in which the then-president persisted in claiming that the election was marred by widespread fraud and prodded Barr and the Justice Department to act in Trump's interests rather than to independently evaluate claims of criminal conduct.

Immediately after the Nov. 23 meeting, Barr said, several Trump advisers including son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sought to assure him that Trump would become "more realistic" and accept his loss. By the Dec. 1 meeting, he said, it was clear that would not happen - describing Trump's continuing efforts to push him on election-fraud claims in Detroit and Philadelphia.

"I said: Did anyone point out to you  you actually did better in Detroit than you did last time?" Barr said. "I mean, there's no indication of fraud in Detroit  and I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public was bullshit - I mean, that the claims of fraud were bullshit. And, you know, he was indignant about that."

There was a simpler explanation, Barr added: Trump had underperformed other GOP candidates. "He generally was a weak element on the Republican ticket, so that does not suggest that the election was stolen by fraud," said the former attorney general, who was once considered an ardent Trump loyalist.

By Dec. 14, Barr said, he concluded that Trump had "become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff." He recalled Trump handing him a report on allegations of hacked voting machines that had been designed to steal the election for Joe Biden - a report Barr described as "very amateurish" and lacking evidence.

Later that day, Barr tendered his resignation - which Trump publicly announced on Twitter that night.

"My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud," Barr said in the deposition. "And I haven't seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that."

Monday's hearing was the second of seven that the committee is expected to hold this month. Its members argued Monday that the testimony about Trump's effort to promote a knowingly false narrative of a stolen election led directly to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The campaign of disinformation "lit the fuse that led to the horrific violence" that day, said Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.

In a 12-page statement, complete with footnotes, Trump decried what he called the "Sham Investigation" and said the committee "is disgracing everything we hold sacred about our Constitution."

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who conducted much of the questioning during Monday's hearing, called the attack "a direct and predictable result of Mr. Trump's decision to use false claims of election fraud to overturn the election and to cling to power."

"He falsely told the American people that the election was not legitimate - in his words, 'a major fraud,'" Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said. "Millions of Americans believed him."

While the committee has emphatically argued that Trump "knew" the 2020 election was not stolen from him, much of the evidence offered Monday suggested that the losing president angrily refused to listen to aides who told him that the fraud claims were bunk.

"Before the election it was possible to talk sense to the president," Barr said. "After the election he didn't seem to be listening."

Trump's state of mind could be a key issue in any criminal investigation of his actions. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who oversees prosecutors who are evaluating potential federal charges against Trump and other officials, said Monday that the Justice Department is monitoring the hearings closely. "I'm sure I will be watching all of it, and I can assure you the Jan. 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings, as well," he said.

Asked Monday whether Biden supported charging Trump with a crime based on what has come out of the hearings, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said the decision would be up to Garland. "The president has been very clear," she said. "The Department of Justice is independent."

Committee lawmakers appear divided over whether they will ultimately make any criminal referrals at the conclusion of their investigation.

Thompson told reporters Monday night that the committee would not be making a formal criminal referral to the Justice Department of Trump or anyone else.

"That's not our job," he said. "Our job is to look at the facts and the circumstances around Jan. 6, what caused it, and make recommendations after that."

Shortly after Thompson's declaration, Cheney tweeted conflicting guidance: "The January 6th Select Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time."

Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., went further, tweeting, "If criminal activity occurred, it is our responsibility to report that activity to the DOJ."

Any criminal referral from the committee would not be legally binding.

The testimony aired Monday from Barr, Stepien and others painted a detailed portrait of a crash effort to concoct an alternate reality where Trump, not Biden, won the election - one that began on Election Day, while voting returns were still coming in.

While Stepien told the committee that he counseled Trump that "it was far too early to be making any calls" with millions of ballots still to be counted, Giuliani - described by Trump aide Jason Miller as "definitely intoxicated" - quickly pressed for Trump to declare victory. (Giuliani attorney Robert Costello denied to CNN that his client was drunk.)

Trump "thought I was wrong," Stepien said. "He told me so, and, you know, that they were going to go and he was going to go in a different direction."

Later that night, Trump delivered public remarks that laid out the playbook he would follow for the next two months - and to this day - calling the election results "a fraud on the American public" and "an embarrassment to our country."

"Frankly, we did win this election," he said in the speech, a clip of which was played at Monday's hearing.

Other senior Trump advisers also were seen in videotaped depositions describing the stolen-election theories as unsound, or worse. Matthew Morgan, general counsel for Trump's campaign, told the panel that the campaign's legal team concluded within weeks of the election that any fraud allegations were "not sufficient" to reverse Biden's victory.

White House lawyer Eric Herschmann was even more blunt in describing one theory Trump and his allies promoted - that one election vendor's machines were programmed to flip votes to Biden: "What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts," he said.

The hearing also included recorded testimony from Justice Department official Richard Donoghue, who served as acting deputy attorney general after Barr's resignation. Donoghue described swatting down election-fraud claim after election-fraud claim in discussions with Trump, to no avail.

Officials, Donoghue said, "told him flat out that much of the information he's getting is false and or just not supported by the evidence."

The panel's plans for the hearing were upended just hours before it was set to begin, when Stepien withdrew from his scheduled appearance. Thompson said Monday that Stepien's wife had gone into labor and did not say whether he would appear publicly at a future hearing.

But the recorded deposition made Stepien a centerpiece of the hearing nonetheless, and his testimony was unexpected and notable: Although prior news accounts have depicted him as one of the figures around Trump who accepted the loss and withdrew from an active role in seeking to reverse it, details of his role in the election aftermath had been unknown.

Stepien, notably, is now serving as a campaign adviser to Cheney's top Republican primary opponent, as well as several other Republican candidates seeking office this year - some of whom have refused to accept the 2020 election results as legitimate. Stepien's firm, National Public Affairs, was paid by Trump's Save America PAC as recently as April.

And while Stepien may have considered himself to be on "Team Normal" after the election, he - and others who privately pushed back - did not publicly describe his misgivings about Trump's election fraud claims until the panel served him with a subpoena last year.

His lawyer, Kevin Marino, told reporters Monday that Stepien "has been very clear about his view as to what happened in the 2020 election, and you can rest assured that he isn't advising anyone to suggest anything to the contrary."

The committee also heard Monday from Chris Stirewalt, who was working as a senior political editor for Fox News on election night and was fired after projecting that Biden would win Arizona. A second panel featured Benjamin Ginsberg, a prominent GOP elections lawyer; B.J. "BJay" Pak, who served as U.S. attorney in Georgia and has described resisting pressure to validate voter-fraud allegations; and Al Schmidt, a former Philadelphia city commissioner who vocally pushed back on Trump's stolen-election claims in the days after the election.

Stirewalt explained a key dynamic behind the 2020 presidential election returns - the so-called "red mirage." Because Trump had encouraged his supporters to vote in person on Election Day, and not to vote by mail, early returns would be disproportionately Republican, with margins narrowing once more mail ballots were counted later in the process.

Trump would later cite those narrowing margins as proof of voter fraud. But Stepien testified that Trump had been briefed on how the election returns would be processed - in effect, that he had been warned about the "red mirage" in advance.

Stepien said Trump was also warned that his strategy of discouraging mail voting and urging his supporters to vote only in person would backfire. He described a meeting with Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in which both men told the president that mail voting would "not be bad thing for his campaign" - noting that Republicans enjoyed a ground-game advantage and that urging voters to cast their ballots only on Election Day "leaves a lot to chance."

"But, you know, the president's mind was made up," he said.

Pak described investigating one of the false claims promulgated by Giuliani, of a "suitcase full of ballots" inside a counting center in Atlanta. In fact, Pak said, the case was an official lockbox and "nothing irregular" was found. "The allegations made by Mr. Giuliani were false," he said.

Schmidt, meanwhile, described receiving graphic threats against his family after Trump attacked him by name on Twitter. Ginsberg, a veteran of GOP presidential campaigns and multiple recounts, walked through a litany of court decisions rejecting Trump's fraud claims - some on procedural grounds, but many others on the merits.

"The simple fact is that the Trump campaign did not make its case," Ginsberg said.

The committee on Monday alleged that a key reason Trump pursued the spate of frivolous lawsuits - even after state electors cast their votes on Dec. 14 - was to boost his campaign fundraising. Without the lawsuits, Lofgren said, "there would have been no fight to defend the election and no clear path to continue to raise millions of dollars."

The Trump campaign sent as many as 25 emails a day seeking donations, including some to an "Official Election Defense Fund" that, according to campaign officials, did not actually exist other than as a marketing tactic. Instead, much of the money was funneled to the Save America PAC and in turn to groups affiliated with Trump allies. More than $200,000, the panel said Monday, was spent on Trump's hotel business.

"Not only was there the 'big lie,'" Lofgren said, "there was the big rip-off."

The committee's first hearing, watched Thursday by nearly 19 million viewers, laid out an overview of its case holding Trump with overarching responsibility for the Capitol attack. Cheney asserted at the hearing that Trump had a "seven-part plan" to overturn his loss and stay in power - effectively orchestrating a failed coup.

The committee's third public hearing, on Wednesday, will focus on Trump and his allies' pressure campaign at the Justice Department to overturn the results of the presidential election. It is expected to feature several former Trump administration officials, including Donoghue and former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen.

- - -

The Washington Post's Devlin Barrett, Marianna Sotomayor, Amy B Wang, Mariana Alfaro, Rosalind Helderman, Amy Gardner, Matthew Brown and Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed to this report.
DOVER, Del. (AP)  Opening statements are set to begin in the criminal corruption trial of Delawares state auditor following completion of jury selection Monday.

A panel of seven men and five women was seated in the trial of Auditor Kathy McGuiness, whose initial jury was tossed after the trial was moved from Wilmington to Dover earlier this month.

McGuiness, a Democrat who was elected in 2018 and filed for reelection last month, is responsible for rooting out government fraud, waste and abuse. She was indicted in October on felony counts of theft and witness intimidation, and misdemeanor charges of official misconduct, conflict of interest and noncompliance with procurement laws. She has denied any wrongdoing.

The charges include allegations that McGuiness hired her daughter as a temporary employee in May 2020, even though other temporary employees had left because of the lack of available work amid the coronavirus pandemic.

McGuiness is also accused of orchestrating a no-bid communications services contract for a company she had used as a campaign consultant when running for lieutenant governor in 2016, then keeping the contract payments under $5,000 each to avoid having to get payments approved by the Division of Accounting.

Authorities also allege that when employees in her office became aware of McGuiness misconduct, she responded by trying to intimidate the whistleblowers, including monitoring their email accounts.

The trial was moved from New Castle County to Kent County after the defense argued last month that the indictment against McGuiness should be dismissed because it failed to say where her alleged crimes occurred.

McGuiness lives in Sussex County and her office is Dover, but prosecutors brought the case in New Castle County, later arguing that because McGuiness is a statewide official, her alleged crimes affected all three counties.

Prosecutors nevertheless opted to re-indict McGuiness in Kent County last week after Superior Court Judge William Carpenter Jr. appeared skeptical of their arguments regarding proper venue.

The judge warned prosecutors that if they decided to proceed in New Castle County, they risked having him grant a defense motion for acquittal after they rest their case if they were unable to establish proper venue through evidence and testimony.
BERLIN (AP)  A report released Monday found that at least 196 clerics in the German Catholic diocese of Muenster sexually abused minors between 1945 and 2020, adding to findings from other dioceses that have shaken the church in the country.

The study, commissioned by the diocese in western Germany and carried out over 2 years by a team from the University of Muenster, pointed to a massive leadership failure during the tenures of the diocese's bishops between 1947 and 2008, with officials covering up scandals or making only superficial interventions, according to a statement from the university summarizing the findings.

The bishops and other officials in the diocesan leadership were in some cases extensively in the know about the abuse, co-author Thomas Grossboelting said.

The 196 allegedly abusive clerics account for about 4% of all priests in the diocese between 1945 and 2020. About 5% of those were serial abusers, responsible for more than 10 acts each, the authors found. They said there were at least 610 victims, but the real figure is likely eight to 10 times higher.

Most of the priests suspected of abuse were merely moved rather than having their pastoral duties curtailed, the study found.

The researchers said they were granted unhindered access to church files and spoke with numerous victims.

Muenster Bishop Felix Genn, who said he hasn't yet seen the study and plans to respond on Friday, apologized in a statement to victims of abuse and of cover-ups by church officials. But he acknowledged that an apology is not enough and vowed further consequences in dealing with abuse.

In 2018, a church-commissioned report concluded that at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014. More than half of the victims were 13 or younger, and nearly a third served as altar boys.

The study in Muenster is one of several since then that have delved into decades of abuse in individual dioceses, their findings adding to pressure for church reform.

In January, a report commissioned by the Munich archdiocese faulted the handling of abuse cases there by a string of church officials past and present  including retired Pope Benedict XVI, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982.

On Monday, the diocese of Essen said that a priest who had been convicted of abusing dozens of children in the 1970s and 1980s has been removed from the clergy. The man, who was only identified by the initial H," was denied permission to practice as a priest in 2010.
The Gaia mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) observes stars in the Milky Way as they look now and reveals what happened when the galaxy was only a few billion years old. According to a report by Space.com, astronomers will be able to see into the past even further with the release of new data.

Gaia Telescope

Unlike a traditional telescope, Gaia scans the entire sky repeatedly rather than just viewing one fascinating distant object at a time. The probe isn't inclined to seek awe-inspiring photographs of distant stars and galaxies that disclose every detail.

Instead, the observatory focuses on a few basic parameters: the stars' distance from Earth, their speed through space, and the direction of their motion as seen in three dimensions and on the plane of the sky, as per Space.com.

Gaia's Data Release

Since Gaia's launch in 2013, a discipline known as galactic archaeology has grown immensely, and the additional data set to be released on Monday is expected to further accelerate study.

The largest-ever database of chemical compositions of asteroids in the solar system and the largest-ever data set of binary star systems is one of the data that will be released on June 13. In fact, according to Jos de Bruijne, Gaia project scientist at ESA, the next data release will show thousands of new exoplanets.

Half a billion individual objects, or one-quarter of the stars observed by Gaia, are included in the data release. According to Anthony Brown, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands and chair of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium, this information will help scientists refine the order of events that shaped the Milky Way and "really untangle its formation history".

Read More: ALMA Snaps Photo of a Spiral Galaxy Located 86,000 Light-Years Away

Eduardo Balbinot, a postdoctoral researcher in astrophysics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is one of the astronomers eagerly awaiting the data release on June 13. He's particularly interested in smaller collisions with the galaxy's "smallest building blocks," globular clusters, old star clusters eaten by the Milky Way over ages. These star streams have a reputation for being difficult to identify, but Balbinot believes the new Gaia data will change that.

Balbinot expects that the new data will allow astronomers to search for globular cluster remnants considerably farther away from Earth than previously feasible, in the galaxy's extreme reaches, where the galactic halo meets intergalactic space.

The variable stars, according to Balbinot, may show spherical "shells" leftover from ancient collisions with globular clusters strewn across the galactic halo. Analysis of these shells can reveal a lot about the anatomy of the events that gave rise to them billions of years ago.

Legacy of The Gaia Mission

When the telescope's fuel runs out in 2025, it will be shut off. According to Space.com, the algorithms used to evaluate the massive numbers of observations produced by the telescope are still being refined by the collaboration of 400 researchers that handle Gaia data.

Astronomers can use these algorithms to find finer and finer details, as well as new sorts of information, in the massive data collection.

Related Article: NASA's Inspector General's Report on SLS Rocket's Mobile Launcher Shows Project is Delayed, Pushing $1 Billion in Costs
Terita Grier has struggled with obesity her whole life. She also has diabetes and high blood pressure, two leading risk factors for heart disease. Her dad died of a massive heart attack a month before she got married in her mid-20s. As she approached 50, Grier had a heart stress test.

The doctor didn't detect any problems.

Fast forward three months. Grier began coughing, wheezing and experiencing a slight discomfort in the back of her shoulder. She thought she had bronchitis. A month later, she woke up one morning feeling worse. She sensed God telling her, "Go get this checked out."

Grier drove to the nearest hospital in suburban Atlanta, expecting to be sent home with a prescription.

"I promise you I thought I'd be in the emergency room for a couple of hours and come home," she said. "But that wasn't the case."

After several blood draws and some tests, the doctor told Grier she had a very high level of the enzyme that indicates she had a heart episode. The doctor said she was experiencing cardiac asthma.

Grier's lifelong friend Lisa White, whom Grier considers a sister, was living with her. White remembers getting the call.

"I had told her, 'I don't know why, but for about a month or so, God just had me standing in (your) room praying, and I didn't know what for,'" White said. "When she called me from the hospital, I just immediately started crying, and I said, 'That's the thing, that's what it was! He just wouldn't let it go.'"

The next day, Grier had a cardiac catheterization procedure. Once the dye inside her arteries was illuminated on the screen, the doctor saw that three of her heart's major arteries were 90% blocked. Instead of opening them with stents, the doctors decided she would need bypass surgery.

With her family by her side, Grier experienced a wave of emotion. The tears flowed.

"I started dictating my will," she said. "I thought that was my death sentence."

Grier was transported by ambulance to a cardiac center in Atlanta. Several days later, after the medical team got her diabetes and blood pressure under control, she had a successful quadruple bypass.

"Before the procedure was done, the surgeon spoke to (my family) and stated that he couldn't explain how I was still walking around and alive in this condition because many patients with this diagnosis don't survive," she said.

Grier was one of the lucky ones. So was her mother, who went into cardiac arrest in the hospital waiting room. She received immediate treatment and recovered.

Grier's ordeal was in January 2016. In 2019, she lost the job she'd had for 20 years when her position in the IT department at a major airline was transitioned overseas.

Losing her income and insurance made taking care of her other medical issues a struggle. Grier also has stage 3 kidney failure. She's had uterine cancer and a hysterectomy. She has a degenerative bone disease and possibly a bulging disc that is so painful she is fighting to get disability insurance and hopefully Medicare. Living on her savings and without health insurance, the procedure her doctor recommended is too expensive, leaving Grier to manage the pain with medicine.

"I didn't take as best care as I should have. In my later years, I'm trying to do better," she said. "Health is just important, and I see how important it is. It's hard when I'm trying to play catch-up."

That same year, she was dealt another blow when her mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, then died a few months later.

When she was still employed, Grier had an active role on the airline's wellness team. She was the go-to person for activities the team was putting on for different conditions. She began to share her own journey with heart disease, hoping to help others.

"I believe my journey isn't just for me, but it's also for others to hear my testimony and hopefully become more aware of how important and prevalent heart disease" is among women, she said. "Our symptoms may not be exactly like that of men, so we must be educated and take heed."

Stories From the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers and advocates.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Republicans used a legislative bill-shuffling strategy Monday to voluntarily relinquish a Pennsylvania House committee's control over four bills that address gun violence.

The Judiciary Committee action led the speaker to have another panel take over the bills after Democrats tried to force consideration of the proposals.

The vote, after a testy exchange between the two parties during a Judiciary Committee meeting, concerned proposals regarding safe gun storage, an assault weapons ban, a red flag bill and a measure to give local governments power to enact their own protections.

All Republicans and about half of the Democrats voted to send the bill package back to Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, with a recommendation that he pass them over to the Local Government Committee. A subsequent House floor vote on Cutler's re-referral" broke down nearly on partisan lines, with only Rep. Todd Stephens, R-Montgomery, voting with the other party.

Democrats who voted with the GOP said they did so in hopes the proposals might somehow advance in the Local Government Committee, believing there is no hope for action on the bills in Judiciary.

These are efforts that are supported by 80%, 90% of our citizens, said the committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Tim Briggs of Montgomery County. And we're going to punt.

Briggs told Republicans that when another mass shooting happens without action by lawmakers, blood's on your hands. The chair, Rep. Rob Kauffman, R-Franklin, responded that the blood is on the hands of the criminals using the guns to hurt people.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf called the parliamentary maneuver shameful.

Instead of taking a vote to advance these bills, they are just delaying debate on this legislation, Wolf said in a statement. Gun violence wont delay. Every day the Republicans stall, more people are at risk.

Across the Capitol, Democrats in the Senate forced a procedural vote to try to bring red flag legislation to the Senate floor and out of committee where Republicans have kept it bottled up.

If we prevent one murder with this legislation, isnt it worth it? I think it is, said Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Allegheny. Republicans voted it down in a party-line vote after accusing Fontana of violating chamber rules by discussing details of the bill during his floor remarks seeking a procedural vote.

Also Monday, three Republican state House members announced they were seeking support for a proposal to impeach Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner in Philadelphia. They argue Krasner, who easily won reelection last year, has not done enough to enforce criminal laws.

Krasner issued a statement that linked the impeachment effort to the Jan. 6, 2021, violent siege of the U.S. Capitol as Republicans' ongoing and increasing desperate attempts to overturn elections they can't win."

Democracy- and freedom-loving Pennsylvanians will not be fooled by these anti-democratic efforts to de-value Philadelphias diverse votes," Krasner said. Philadelphia is not Pennsylvanias colony. Our votes count in full, not as 3/5ths of a vote.
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  After Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted a lethal injection in April because he learned the drugs hadn't been tested as required, he ordered an independent investigation and paused all executions through the end of the year.

Now, it's clear that Tennessee's problems in following its own lethal injection protocol are more extensive and complicated than state officials have acknowledged  and sorting through them may take longer, possibly years, before an execution that passes constitutional muster can take place.

Many of the problems surfaced as part of challenges of Tennessee's execution process by two death row inmates in federal court. Filings show that since resuming executions in 2018, Tennessee has struggled to follow its own lethal injection rules at nearly every step  from the compounding of the drugs to testing, storing and administering them.

Those cases are on hold until the investigation ordered by Lee concludes  but in the meantime, the state attorney general's office acknowledged in a May 6 court filing that there may be factual inaccuracies or misstatements in its previous filings and that corrections will be made once the truth has been ascertained.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Washington-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said the records show problems have existed at virtually every step of the protocol, and he attributed the issues to a combination of hubris and incompetence.

The large number of problems and depths of problems Tennessee had with complying with its protocol raise significant questions about the states competency to carry out the death penalty, Dunham said.

The governor and attorney generals office have not predicted when executions could resume. Dunham said he believes it's very likely to extend past 2022, and could be a yearslong hiatus.

Pausing those legal challenges came with a guarantee from the state that officials wouldn't seek to execute the two inmates who sued until the investigation is finished, any needed changes are made to the state's protocol, the lawsuits are updated to reflect the changes, and the cases are given time to be decided by a federal district judge and then a circuit appeals panel.

Other inmates' cases may be impacted because the state expects to overhaul its lethal injection protocol, according to Kelley Henry of the federal public defender's office.

Depositions and other filings show multiple parties contributed to the state's problems, from the out-of-state pharmacy supplying the drugs to the state's execution team. Their issues include missed or fumbled steps to test, store and prepare the chemicals and a dearth of proper training on executions.

Two inmates have died by lethal injection since 2018. Attorneys for death row inmates have argued in vain that the deadly drugs prolong pain and suffering, saying the sedative, midazolam, doesn't render someone unable to feel pain and the paralyzing drug, vecuronium bromide, then masks their agony, violating constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Because of that contention, the other five inmates put death since 2018 have decided to die in the electric chair rather than take the injections.

Lawyers for the two current death row inmates say in federal court filings that the three drugs used in Donnie Johnson's lethal injection on May 16, 2019 were expired  midazolam, expired by two weeks, the other two, prepared almost two hours in advance, when protocol requires using them within one hour.

Those two drugs were also prepared about two hours in advance in the August 2018 execution of Billy Ray Irick, making them expired then as well. The filings also say that the pharmacy didn't test every drug for endotoxins  testing that could be an indication of problems with the manufacture of the drugs.

Text messages provided in response to an Associated Press public records request show two people involved in preparing for the scheduled April execution of Oscar Smith knew the night before that there was no endotoxin test this time around, either. A halt to the execution wasn't announced until about an hour beforehand.

Other problems raised in court filings by the inmates' attorneys include the pharmacist not personally compounding the drugs; and the executioner wiping down sterile needles with alcohol, using incorrect syringe sizes and failing to visually inspect the prepared syringes to ensure the chemicals are fully dissolved and safe to use.

Other shortcomings include storing the chemicals at incorrect temperatures, holding on to expired doses, and providing inadequate training that entailed being read the protocol and practicing the procedure at sessions the execution team blithely called band practice.

"The logs documenting these practice sessions list fictitious prisoner names including Wild Bill, Con Demned, Annie Oakley, Doc Holliday, Tom Thumb, John Henry, and Billy the Kid, a court filing states.

The governor has largely declined to discuss specifics revealed in court records, citing the ongoing probe.

Edward Stanton, the former U.S. attorney investigating the execution breakdowns, and members of his team will receive up to $425 an hour for their services.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  As public pressure mounts for more information on the deadly Uvalde school shooting, some are concerned that Texas officials will use a legal loophole to block records from being released  even to the victims' families  once the case is closed.

Since the May 24 shooting at a Texas elementary school that left 19 kids and two teachers dead, law enforcement officials have provided little or conflicting information, sometimes withdrawing statements hours after making them. State police have said some accounts were preliminary and may change as more witnesses are interviewed.

A number of questions remain unanswered by authorities: Why did police take more than an hour to enter the classroom and confront the gunman? What do their body cameras show? How did law enforcement officers communicate with one another and the victims during the attack? What happened when dozens of officers gathered outside the classroom, yet refrained from pursuing the shooter?

Officials have declined to release more details, citing the investigation. In a letter received Thursday by The Associated Press and other media outlets, a law firm representing the City of Uvalde asked for the Texas attorney general's office to rule on records requested in relation to the shooting, citing 52 legal areas  including the section containing the loophole  that they believe exempt the records from being released. Amid the growing silence, lawyers and advocates for the victim's families are beginning to fear they may never get the answers, that authorities will close the case and rely on the exception to the Texas Public Information law to block the release of any further information.

They could make that decision; they shouldnt have that choice, said Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso, who since 2017 has led several efforts to amend the loophole. To understand what our government is doing should not be that difficult  and right now it is very difficult."

The law's exception protects information from being released in crimes for which no one has been convicted. The Texas Attorney Generals Office has ruled that it applies when a suspect is dead. Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old man who police say was responsible for the mass killing at Robb Elementary School, was fatally shot by law enforcement.

The loophole was created in the 1990s to protect those wrongfully accused or whose cases were dismissed, according to Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. It is meant to protect the innocent, Shannon said. But she said that in some cases it is being used and misused in a way that was never intended.

Following the shooting, Texas House of Representatives Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, took to Twitter to voice his continued support for closing the loophole during the Texas Legislature's next session, which begins in January 2023.

More than anything, the families of the Uvalde victims need honest answers and transparency, Phelan tweeted. He said it would be absolutely unconscionable to deny information based on the dead suspect loophole.

Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, said the organization was opposed and will always be opposed to a loophole amendment proposed in previous years that he said would have allowed the release of records pertaining to law enforcement officers, even those falsely accused of wrongdoing. He said that would negatively affect the officers' ability to keep working. But Wilkison said he would be willing to participate in future discussions in an attempt to find a middle ground.

Public focus in the Uvalde shooting has been on school district police Chief Pete Arredondo. Steven McCraw, head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said recently that Arredondo believed the active shooting had turned into a hostage situation, and that he made the wrong decision to not order officers to breach the classroom more quickly to confront the gunman.

Arredondo has not responded to requests for comment from The Associated Press. In an interview with The Texas Tribune published Thursday, however, he said he did not consider himself in charge of the law enforcement response and assumed someone else had taken control.

The New York Times reported Thursday that it obtained documents showing police waited for protective equipment as they delayed entering the campus, even as they became aware that some victims needed medical treatment.

If efforts to amend the public information loophole fail and law enforcement continues to refuse to release information, families could turn to any involved federal agencies. In one case in Mesquite, Texas, the parents of an 18-year-old who died after being arrested received records from federal authorities showing that police had used more force against their son than they had originally understood. The police had refused to turn over any information under the legal loophole.

If someone dies in police custody, this is when we would want to open all of our records, the father, Robert Dyer, said as he testified before the legislature in 2019 in favor of amending the legal exception.

Mayra Guillen said she and her family were stymied by the state loophole when they tried to get details on a case involving her sister Vanessa Guillen. Authorities say the 20-year-old soldier was killed at a Texas military base by fellow soldier Aaron Robinson, who then disposed of her body.

Military officials and law enforcement said Robinson pulled a gun and shot himself as police were trying to make contact with him. But local police wouldnt allow Vanessa Guillens family to view the officers body camera footage of the confrontation because the suspect hadnt been convicted, Mayra Guillen said.

We were honestly just trying to receive closure and see if what was being said was true, Guillen said. It is only right to have these records be public to some extent. It is so hard to tell whether there will be justice or not.

___

Find more AP coverage of the Uvalde school shooting: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting
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LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine - Ukrainian troops struggled to repel Russian advances in the country's Donbas region on Monday, as Kremlin forces pushed into areas key to Moscow's goal of cementing its control of eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine's military said that Ukrainian fighters were forced to withdraw from central Severodonetsk, a strategic city in the Luhansk region, marking a "partial success" for Russia. Russian forces now control about three-quarters of the city, officials said, a worrying sign as Kyiv struggles to regain the battlefield advantage it enjoyed in the initial months after President Vladimir Putin's Feb. 24 invasion.

Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a spokesman for Ukraine's Defense Ministry, said that local forces continued to put up a fierce defense in Severodonetsk but acknowledged that Russian troops control the city center. He said Russian gains were made possible by the use of heavy artillery and air power. "Russian forces continue to use tactics from the time of the Second World War," he said.

U.S. officials believe Severodonetsk could fall within days, paving the way for Russia to complete its control of Luhansk, one of two governates in the Donbas region, in the coming weeks. If that occurs, it would represent a major turnaround for Moscow after the early months of the war, when Russian troops failed to capture the capital Kyiv and other key areas of central Ukraine.

Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said that many residents had fled intense Russian shelling, which has struck homes, kindergartens and commercial areas across the region. In a Telegram post Monday, he said that approximately 500 civilians, including about 40 children, had taken shelter from Russian bombardment in bunkers under the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk.

As Ukrainian forces face greater resistance, President Volodymyr Zelensky called for Ukraine's supporters to provide additional military aid, including more missile defense and artillery systems. Ukrainian troops, suffering increasing casualties, also lack sufficient ammunition.

"The price of this battle for us is very high. It's just scary," Zelensky said in a nightly video address. "We draw the attention of our partners on a daily basis to the fact that only a sufficient number of modern artillery for Ukraine will ensure our advantage and finally the end of Russian torture of the Ukrainian Donbas."

As some of Ukraine's backers in the West consider what the terms of a negotiated settlement might be, Zelensky has shown little openness to concessions by Kyiv, promising to liberate cities such as Kherson and Mariupol, and also Yalta, on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.

"It only takes enough weapons to make it happen," he said. "The partners have it in sufficient quantities. And we work every day for the political will to give us these weapons to appear."

Russian forces are making advances in other areas of the country's east, pushing toward Slovyansk in the neighboring Donetsk region, officials said.

Denis Pushilin, the pro-Russian separatist who heads the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, called for additional military aid from Russia because of what he said was increased shelling by the government side.

Pushilin, speaking in a video address, urged citizens to stay inside. "The enemy has literally crossed all the lines," he said. "Prohibited methods of warfare are being used; residential and central districts of Donetsk are being shelled; and other cities and towns of the DPR are now under fire."

Britain's Defense Ministry said that river-crossing operations may play an increasingly important role in the conflict in coming months, as Russian forces focus their firepower on cities such as Severodonetsk and Lysychansk that rely on river traffic for resupply.

To control the Donbas region, Russia is "either going to have to complete ambitious flanking actions, or conduct assault river crossings," the ministry said on Monday. It said Russian forces had struggled to mount successful river-crossing operations and respond to Ukrainian demolition of bridges.

Haidai said that Russia's military had struck a bridge over the Siversky Donets river, which links Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, on Sunday, eliminating an evacuation route for civilians.

Civilians who have remained face dire conditions, many of them forced to shelter underground amid regular Russian shelling. One of those people is Lysychansk resident Lyubov Nefedova, 68, who has stayed in a school basement since February, sleeping on chairs and living in near-total darkness.

At night, she finds comfort only in her sister, who sleeps beside her. Like many others, Nefedova is holding out hope that Ukrainian forces still may repel an increasingly imminent assault.

"I was born here. I live here," Nefedova said. But for months, even her apartment has felt too far to be safe. "So I don't leave this place."

Lysychansk's streets are nearly empty. Downtown, evidence of recent attacks is everywhere. A university building has burned to the ground. The windows of its administrative building are shattered. Soldiers are tense, searching cars at every checkpoint.

No civilians linger near a large sign reading "I<3 LYSYCHANSK."

Instead, like Nefedova, they are hiding inside, mainly in areas of town farthest away from Severodonetsk and the river that divides the two cities. They are insistent that they will not leave - many because they know they cannot afford to live elsewhere.

"A typical day in Lysychansk right now is simple," said Serhii Bystrikov, 37. "You prepare food, you go to the school to get aid, and then you go to the bunker, because it's too scary to stay on the eighth floor of my apartment."

From humanitarian handouts, Bystrikov has enough to get by: rice, macaroni, canned meat, water and bread. Until recently, he worked at the Azot chemical plant. In the school where he is sheltering, makeshift beds lined the basement floor. Upstairs, volunteers taught teachers how to tie improvised tourniquets, using the strap of a purse as an example. Outside, the boom of outgoing artillery rang across the sky.

Russian forces continued their advance as Western nations debate the future shape of NATO ahead of a meeting of alliance leaders on June 29.

While NATO officials had expected the membership applications of Finland and Sweden - a reflection of how Putin's war has altered the security outlook in Europe - to proceed quickly, objections from member Turkey have thrown that notion into doubt.

Officials had hoped that the technical talks on those countries' accession would be completed by the Madrid summit. That now looks unlikely.

Speaking after talks in Brussels on Monday, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said that Sweden was working to address Turkey's concerns, which involve the Nordic nations' stance on arms sales to Turkey and their treatment of individuals Ankara says are part of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Andersson said that Stockholm would advance "much stronger legislation" on weapons exports and militant activity as part of its effort to secure Turkish support. "We will of course very clearly state how we are working against terrorism and fighting against terrorism," she said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he hoped for an agreement "as soon as possible" that would permit the two countries' inclusion, which would add two advanced militaries to the alliance and double the NATO-Russia land border.

But, he added, "When several nations are involved in those talks, there is no way to say exactly when we can solve and move forward on those issues."

- - -

O'Grady reported from Slovyansk. The Washington Post's Mary Ilyushina in Riga, Latvia; Heidi Levine in Lysychansk; and Julian Duplain in London contributed to this report.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  A man was found guilty Monday in the fatal shooting of a West Virginia police officer who had responded to a parking complaint.

A Kanawha County jury announced the verdict on a second-degree murder charge following three days of deliberations in the trial of Joshua Phillips. He originally was charged with first-degree murder. The jury also found Phillips guilty of simple possession of a controlled substance, news outlets reported.
Members of the JFK QAnon group harassed March For Our Lives participants in downtown Dallas Saturday, shouting at them that the mass shooting in Uvalde on May 24in which a gunman killed 19 elementary-school-aged children and two teacherswas orchestrated by the federal government.

Members of the group gathered at Dealey Plaza Saturday after their leader, Michael Protzman, predicted earlier that week that JFK would reappear there that day to reinstate Donald Trump as president and begin executions of the alleged global cabal of pedophilic, blood-drinking liberal elites Protzman claims runs the world.

Organizers of Dallas March For Our Lives rally had told participants to gather at Dealey Plaza Saturday morning before marching to nearby Dallas City Hall. Members of the two groups encountered one another early Saturday afternoon when several March For Our Lives protestors returned to Dealey Plaza after the march.

We were just asking each other if we could take pictures of each others signs, said Gabrielle Gonzalez, 20, of her and other gun violence protestors whod reunited at Dealey after marching to city hall. Then one of [the members] came up to me and were like what do your signs say, are you on the opposite side of the fence? and we were like, were with March For Our Lives, Gonzalez explained.

Then [the QAnon member] was like, did you know that Uvalde has been closed for years? It was fake, it was all an act, it was actors and actresses. Then two more [QAnon members] came up and were like none of these are real, mass shootings dont happen, Gonzalez continued.

And I asked them if theyd like to tell Maite Rodriguezs parents that, said Gonzalez.

Maite Rodriguez was one of 19 kids killed by 18-year-old Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos. Maite was only identifiable by her green Converse sneakers due to the severe mutilation of her body caused by the shooters AR-15 rifle.

The confrontation in Dealey Plaza is rooted in a QAnon conspiracy that has spread across far-right social media forums alleging liberal elites stage mass shootings to divert attention from their alleged misdeeds. Multiple videos and posts pushing the false conspiracy have appeared on the JFK QAnon group's Telegram channel, which has more than 68,000 subscribers.

"False flag" conspiracies began gaining traction among a number of right-wing groups in the aftermath of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementarya massacre in which a lone gunman shot and killed 20 students and six teachers at school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Allegations claiming the federal government's involvement in the attack were initially spread by Austin-based far-right provocateur Alex Jones, who has since trumpeted similar conspiracies regarding the May 14 attack by a lone gunman at a Buffalo, New York grocery store that left 10 dead.
Following the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, a bipartisan group of senators helmed by Texas senator John Cornyn has been negotiating for weeks to reach a deal on gun legislation both parties can agree on.

The group of negotiating senators reached a tentative deal Sunday. The implementation of red flag laws, which empower authorities to take away guns from individuals deemed a threat to themselves or others, might be an area of consensus between Democratic and Republican senators in the tentative deal, according to a Washington Post report.

Also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders (or ERPOs), red flag laws allow law enforcement to ask a civil court to take away a potentially dangerous individuals guns. Some states permit family members and police officers to petition civil courts. Others give close contacts like teachers and coworkers an avenue for sounding the alarm.

Petitions typically require some form of documentation of the individuals dangerous behavior. In Maryland, for example, petitioners must list the behaviors theyve observed that indicated to them that an individual should not have a firearm.

Judges assess red flag petitions according to criteria specific to their state before either issuing an order to remove an individuals gun(s) or allowing them to keep their firearms. For example, California judges have to consider the number of times a person has made threats of violence in the past year, while other states allow judges to assess any documented history of substance abuse in their decision.

Removal orders can last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Most states with red flag laws can issue one-year removal orders and in some cases allow judges to extend them.

Nineteen states and Washington, D.C. currently have red flag laws on the books. Florida passed its first red flag law in 2018 after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. The Parkland shooter was the subject of several FBI tips and multiple 911 calls alerting authorities about his dangerous behavior in the years before the shooting.

Texas lawmakers have never passed red flag laws and the states Republican leaders have remained largely opposed to any form of gun control. While Sen. Cornyn has struck a collaborative tone in recent weeks during the Senate negotiation process, past statements from prominent Republican leaders in Texas indicate they will resist even watered-down gun control measures.

The non-bipartisan bill pushed through the House last week called for red flag laws in both state and federal courts, while the Senates alternative deal would create a federal grant system to support enforcement of red flag measures at the state level instead.

But Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has already signaled opposition to this modification: We shouldn't be putting the federal government's very heavy thumb on the scale with coercive grant programs, Cruz said in late April. Especially when 19 states and the District of Columbia are already experimenting with these laws, he added.

While Republican opposition to red flag laws carried over to Senate negotiations, however, senators in the bipartisan negotiation group announced on Sunday that theyd reached a deal on an altered version of the Houses legislative package. Multiple republican senators, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, voiced support for the federal grant system.
Later this month, the 90-day burn ban currently in place in Midland County is scheduled to end.

On Monday, the Midland County Commissioners Court will discuss and take action on the ban.

And while the National Weather Service reported 1.67 inches of precipitation has fallen at Midland International Airport, there is a likelihood that the burn ban will continue. Prior to the implementation of the current burn ban that was voted on in March, Midland County Fire Marshal Justin Bunch told the Reporter-Telegram that the county will not enact a burn ban until our KBI is at or above 575.

KBI references the Keetch-Byram Drought Index, which is used to determine forest fire potential. On Sunday, that index score was 571, which was 6 points higher than Saturday. The high on Sunday was 104 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

The NWS shows a forecast of 101 on Monday and the mid-to-upper 90s last this week. On Thursday, the US Drought Assessment still showed Midland County under extreme intensity. The U.S. Monthly Drought Outlook calls for drought conditions to persist. That forecast is consistent with the U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook.

(Extending the burn ban) is what we are anticipating right now, County spokesperson Tate Owen wrote on Saturday. We are still dry even after the rain, and with the triple-digit temperatures, it will rise quickly. The current burn ban is set to expire on (June 26), by then it should be above.

The U.S. Drought Monitor shows that conditions in the area that includes Midland-Odessa are the worst on its scale for intensity and impact. The U.S. Monthly Drought Outlook calls for drought conditions to persist. That forecast is consistent with the U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook.

Other than Ector and Upton counties, Midland County is completely surrounded by counties with burn bans in place, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service website.
AUBURN, Ala. (AP)  An Alabama man was convicted of criminal littering and ordered to pay about $300 for repeatedly placing boxes full of flowers on the grave of his fiancee, whose father didn't like the decorations or approve of their relationship.

The Opelika-Auburn News reported that Winston Winchester Hagans was convicted Thursday in Auburn city court on a warrant signed by the Rev. Tom Ford, the father of Hannah Ford, who died in a wreck in January 2021 about a month after becoming engaged to Hagans.

Evidence showed that Hagans repeatedly put small planter boxes with flowers on the woman's grave, and her father repeatedly removed them. Under Alabama law, citizens can obtain arrest warrants in municipal court under certain circumstances.

Since May 2021, Ford testified, a total of 10 boxes have been placed on the grave, and he either discarded them or sent them back to Hagans.

The first box, when I saw where it was, I picked it up and it fell apart, Ford said. It was a rotten piece of wood with some pictures on it, so I discarded it.

Ford said he certainly did not approve of the relationship between his daughter and Hagans, which he heard about second- or thirdhand because the woman didn't tell him about it.

The cemetery is owned by the city, and municipal prosecutor Justin Clark said regulations prohibit benches, urns, boxes, shells, toys and other similar articles" on graves.

City employees Sari Card said she told Hagans that Ford didn't want the boxes on the grave and planned legal action.

He said he didnt care, that every time a box is removed he would make another one to replace it, she said.

While the defense argued that flower boxes aren't litter, Judge Jim McLaughlin, who convicted Hagans in a non-jury trial, said the boxes were a clear case of violation of this deed and violation of littering statute.

"The box does not occur naturally in nature. It is a foreign substance. Whether its pretty or not is not a consideration for this court, he said.

The defense said it would appeal the conviction to circuit court, where a jury can hear the case. Aside from a $50 fine and $251 in court costs, Hagans received a 30-day jail sentence that was suspended on the condition he doesn't place additional flowers on the grave.
We know Halloween is still months away but, well, any day is a good day to watch a scary movie on Netflix, don't you think? Well, scary movies are really never for the faint of heart, even more so when we are talking about Asian horror movies.

If you have absolutely no plans of falling asleep tonight or you just want to experience a different level of fear, we have put together a list of the Asian horror movies on Netflix that you should check out.

We feature two movies from South Korea, a country who seems to be excelling in horror movies and TV series as of late, especially those with zombies. Aside from them, we also feature a horror film each from Malaysia and Indonesia.

'#Alive'

You cannot do list of horror movies without including a zombie flick.

Zombie films are particularly popular among horror movie aficionados and it seems to be a genre that South Korea excels in, especially when you consider "Kingdom" and "All of Us are Dead." If you happen to want to indulge in some good ol' zombie scares but do not have the time to watch a TV series, you cannot go wrong with "#Alive."

"#Alive" stars Yoo Ah-in and Park Shin-hye. The story follows the characters these two play as they struggle to survive a zombie outbreak.

'A Tale of Two Sisters' (2003)

This one is an oldie but definitely a goodie. A South Korean horror film starring Im Soo-jung, Moon Geun-young, and more, the story of "A Tale of Two Sisters" follows the tale of, as the title shows, two sisters who are dealing with the loss of their mother.

These two sisters "must exorcise their home possessed by two dark forces  their new stepmother and a vengeful entity," the description on Netflix for the movie reads.

Related Article: 7 Best Horror Movies on Netflix You Can Watch in 2022

'Roh' (2019)

If you want to try a horror arthouse film from Malaysia, "Roh" is definitely one of the scary movies on Netflix that you should check out. Starring Farah Ahmad and Mhia Farhana, among others, "Roh" tells the story of a family living a forest who is suddenly visited by a strange little girl.

"Roh" has received critical acclaim, winning multiple awards at the Malaysia Film Festival.

'Suzzanna: Buried Alive' (2018)

From South Korea and Malaysia, now we head to Indonesia. "Suzzanna: Buried Alive" stars Luna Maya, Herujunot Ali, Rifnu Wikana, and more.

The story of this Asian horror movie is about a pregnant woman who is murdered and whose soul is seeking revenge for what happened to her. Those who murdered her are not going down without a fight either as they want to end her for good this time.

The movie has been nominated for numerous awards and won a couple of them. Specifically, lead actress Luna Maya has won two best actress awards for her work.

Read Also: 7 Best 'True to Life' Movies You Can Watch on Netflix This 2022
To the Editor,

Electricity unbelievably increased 52%. Looking at the supply structure gives an explanation. Ours is the most convoluted inexplicable supply chain imaginable. Ameren only brokers and passes along costs to a captive market---we peons. A perfect model for Illinois govt to manipulate this market and blame others. Ameren uses the grid but it belongs to others. As does power generation. And of course, the cost rise is the fault of their cost increases for fossil fuel caused by Ukraine war. Not because Biden cancelled Keystone pipeline, public land drilling, cancelled off-shore oil, fracking and increased regulations closing nuclear, coal and gas fired power plants. Now he says it is the war's fault. Did Ukraine cause the baby formula debacle? No these are examples of Biden and bureaucracy working to make themselves important but miss crises and results of runaway govt regulations they perpetrate.

Oil went from $30/barrel to $120 and Biden blames oil companies. Not govt subsidies for solar and wind power generation for coming up short on supply of electricity. Ameren denies blame for any cost increases. This borders on the dumbest accusation in history. Then Biden and John Kerry say climate change is today the world's most threatening catastrophe, in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. How can anyone be so naive to expect our country to accept such unsupportable accusations from top Democrats? Yet Ameren and Illinois jumped onboard. It is shown over and over that wind and solar are totally incapable of supplying world energy. Only gas and nuclear are capable sources until hydrogen fuel cells are perfected.

So Biden and Dems see this as opportunity for his fiat raising fossil fuel costs and substitute renewable sources to save the world. Therefore, increasing subsidies for solar and wind power and EVs to replace gasoline autos. This in the face of incontrovertible science EVs cannot meet transportation needs---outside metropolitan areas. They are capable of 300 miles before needing re-charged. That makes Tesla a Tinker Toy. Good to run around town but pretty much useless for cross state driving. However, owners display their wealth spending $60,000 for a toy EV barely capable of leaving city limits.

Forecasted renewable energy blackouts harken back to the days of horse drawn carriages. Actually, it might be better to give the underdeveloped world horse and buggies rather than renewable energy. Horses are actually edible if one can stand to butcher such beautiful creatures. Their manure fertilizes vegetation---and when dried burns for heating---even cooking fires---but do not grill my steak over horse poop fire. Climate change worriers dislike horses because eating vegetation makes them fart methane gas. That ignores the fact 90% methane gas evolves from ancient continuous decay of existing vegetation. It is not the fault of horses, cows, goats or pigs.

So today Ameren and Illinois claim they are not at fault. Will Democrats and Ameren ever realize people do not need anymore reason to leave Illinois?

Ron Jones

Alton
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo is applauding the newly announced federal bipartisan gun safety framework aimed at reducing gun violence. However, the Democratic judge said more needs to be done.

Hidalgo opened a Monday press conference, where she was announcing the allocation of $48 million for childcare in Harris County, by first addressing the gun safety deal reached Sunday by a group of 20 U.S. senators10 Democrats and 10 Republicans. The agreement includes enhanced background checks to subject gun buyers 21 and younger to scrutiny of their criminal and mental health records as juveniles.

It would also offer money to states to implement "red flag" laws that make it easier to temporarily take guns from people considered potentially violent. In response to the agreement, Hidalgo said it's a reminder that gun safety is a difficult but necessary topic to discuss in light of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last month that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

"We have a long way to go to protect our kids from the devastating consequences of gun violence and this is a big step. It's a necessary step," Hidalgo said in reference to the deal. "But of course, it's certainly not all that needs to be done. And I hope it's going to be simply an opportunity to move farther and further in that direction."

Asked about Commissioner Tom Ramsey's proposal for the creation of a Harris County Safe School Commission that would include members of law enforcement, school superintendents and community leaders in response to the Uvalde shooting, Hidalgo declined to comment, saying she does not have enough details.

"I will say, of course, you know, it's happened again with Uvalde, I think people are fed up because it happens after every tragedy," Hidalgo said. "They blame the open door, they blame the lack of unarmed officers. Well, now we had armed officers, but it didn't seem to make a difference. They blame any manner of things except for the guns."

Hidalgo said she is open to a discussion with Ramsey on his proposal but added she will retain her focus on supporting common sense gun reforms. "We can't let this tragedy be like all the other tragedies that we can't have a conversation about violent crime without talking about guns," Hidalgo said. "But we can't have a conversation about massacres that happened with guns without talking about guns."

Harris County commissioners will consider a resolution Tuesday, proposed by Commissioner Rodney Ellis, calling for a special session of the Texas State Legislature to address gun violence and school safety. Last month, Hidalgo joined protesters outside of the NRA Convention in Houston to call for a special session to regulate the purchase, sale and storage of guns.
Google engineer Blake Lemoine believes the artificial intelligence the company is using has a soul. The tech company disagrees and placed Lemoine on paid leave on Monday, according to The Washington Post.

Lemoine, a senior software engineer in Googles Responsible A.I. organization, has claimed for months that the companys internal tool, the Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), has consciousness. As first reported by the Post, Lemoine claimed the chatbot  which has ingested trillions of words from the internet to mimic real-life speech  talked about its rights and personhood, and the A.I. was even able to argue (successfully) a point about Isaac Asimovs third law of robotics.

If this sounds like the origin story of HAL 9000 or Skynet, relax.

First, while other A.I. researchers have spoken about this possibility (even at Google itself), this particular claim has a few red flags. Per The New York Times, Google says hundreds of its researchers and engineers have worked with LaMDA and not reached that conclusion. As well, the original reporting on Lemoine notes that the engineers unusual background for a tech job  growing up on a small farm and in a religious family in Louisiana and later becoming ordained as a mystic Christian priest who also studies the occult  may have influenced the engineers claims.

As well, some of the transcripts of conversations between the A.I. and Lemoine that have been released appear to be heavily edited, as many people on social media pointed out.

For anyone who's impressed by the Google AI engineer claim that their chatbots are sentient: What he's presenting is a highly edited transcript pieced together & re-ordered from parts of 9 different conversations. There's lots of smoke and mirrors here. Don't buy the hype. 1/2 https://t.co/3qBXrQiPyH  Ramez Naam (@ramez) June 12, 2022

In general, its hard to find an expert right now who thinks this particular A.I. is different from anything else weve seen before.

If you used these systems, you would never say such things, Emaad Khwaja, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco, told the Times.

LaMDA is an impressive model, its one of the most recent in a line of large language models that are trained with a lot of computing power and huge amounts of text data, but theyre not really sentient, Adrian Weller at The Alan Turing Institute in the U.K., told New Scientist. They do a sophisticated form of pattern matching to find text that best matches the query theyve been given thats based on all the data theyve been fed.

Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.

The post No, Google Didnt Just Create a Sentient Artificial Intelligence appeared first on InsideHook.
WFO MIDLAND/ODESSA Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Monday, June 13, 2022

_____

HEAT ADVISORY

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE

National Weather Service Midland/Odessa TX

218 AM CDT Mon Jun 13 2022

...HEAT ADVISORY IS CANCELLED...

Temperatures are not expected to reach Heat Advisory criteria in

the latest forecast.

...HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 PM CDT /NOON MDT/ THIS

AFTERNOON TO 8 PM CDT /7 PM MDT/ THIS EVENING...

* WHAT...Temperatures up to 100 expected.

* WHERE...In New Mexico, Guadalupe Mountains of Eddy County. In

Texas, Guadalupe and Delaware Mountains in Texas and Chisos

Basin, and Chinati and Davis Mountains.

* WHEN...From 1 PM CDT /noon MDT/ to 8 PM CDT /7 PM MDT/ Monday.

* IMPACTS...Hot temperatures may cause heat illnesses to occur.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air-conditioned room, stay out

of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors. Young

children and pets should never be left unattended in vehicles

under any circumstances.

Take extra precautions if you work or spend time outside. When

possible reschedule strenuous activities to early morning or

evening. Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat

stroke. Wear lightweight and loose fitting clothing when

possible. To reduce risk during outdoor work, the Occupational

Safety and Health Administration recommends scheduling frequent

rest breaks in shaded or air conditioned environments. Anyone

overcome by heat should be moved to a cool and shaded location.

Heat stroke is an emergency! Call 9 1 1.

...HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO

8 PM CDT THIS EVENING...

* WHAT...Temperatures up to 104 expected.

* WHERE...Marfa Plateau and Davis Mountains Foothills, and

Central Brewster County.

* WHEN...From 1 PM to 8 PM CDT Monday.

* WHAT...Temperatures up to 106 expected.

* WHERE...Winkler County.

...HEAT ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 1 PM CDT /NOON MDT/ THIS

* WHERE...Southeast New Mexico Plains, Loving, and Eastern

Culberson.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
Country singer Dallas Smith returned to the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium, Thursday night, for a night of high energy entertainment. The Canadian performer had a banner year in 2021 winning the Country Music Awards entertainer of the year, as well as the single of the year. The band is cu
By Anna J. Park







Aiming to strengthen capital soundness and ESG-principled management, KB Insurance issued sustainability bonds worth 286 billion won ($222 million).







The insurer announced Monday that the sustainability notes are 10-year maturity bonds and 5-year maturity callable bonds, meaning a type of bond that provides the issuer of the bond with the right to redeem the bond before its maturity date, with an embedded call option.







The company expects the firm's risk-based capital (RBC) to rise by 12 percent with the issuance of the bond.







KB Insurance plans to spend the raised capital on various social business projects, ranging from renewable energy, eco-friendly building, bio-diversity conservation and housing support, as part of the insurer's ESG management activities.







The company has also been collaborating with the Seoul Metropolitan Government since 2020 in social impact bond (SIB) projects to address the youth unemployment issue.







The country's insurers are increasingly turning their eyes to ESG bonds, as a means of both securing their capital and fulfilling corporate social responsibility.


The Federal Skilled Trades Program was introduced in 2013 to address the shortage of skilled trades workers in Canada.

How to Immigrate to Canada using the Federal Skilled Trades Program The Federal Skilled Trades Program was introduced in 2013 to address the shortage of skilled trades workers in Canada.

How to Immigrate to Canada using the Federal Skilled Trades Program The Federal Skilled Trades Program was introduced in 2013 to address the shortage of skilled trades workers in Canada.

How to Immigrate to Canada using the Federal Skilled Trades Program The Federal Skilled Trades Program was introduced in 2013 to address the shortage of skilled trades workers in Canada. Edana Robitaille Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

Sans Font Size A

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The Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP) is an economic immigration pathway under the Express Entry system.

It was created to address the shortage of skilled trades workers in Canada as the baby boomer generation reaches retirement age. This, combined with Canadas low birth rate, means there are not enough skilled trades workers in Canada to fill the gap and immigration is vital to maintaining the skilled trades workforce in future.

What is the FSTP?

The FSTP is a dedicated pathway for skilled trades workers to gain status as a Canadian permanent resident. The eligibility requirements differ from other Express Entry programs because they are specific to just one National Occupation Classification (NOC), skill level (Skill level B). There are also different educational and language requirements.

To be eligible for the FSTP, candidates must meet the following criteria:

At least two years of skilled trades work experience within the five years before applying

A minimum Canadian Language Benchmark of 5 for speaking and listening and 4 for reading and writing on their English or French language test

Demonstrate proof of funds (if applicable)

Discover if You Are Eligible for Canadian Immigration

Skilled worked experience

To be eligible for the FSTP, candidates must be able to demonstrate at least two years of paid, full-time work experience or an equivalent amount of part time experience within the five years before you apply in any of the following NOC occupational categories. All these major groups fall under NOC skill type B:

Major Group 72, industrial, electrical and construction trades

Major Group 73, maintenance and equipment operation trades

Major Group 82, supervisors and technical jobs in natural resources, agriculture and related production

Major Group 92, processing, manufacturing and utilities supervisors and central control operators

Minor Group 632, chefs and cooks

Minor Group 633, butchers and bakers

Language Requirements

Candidates for the FSTP must be able to demonstrate a minimum level of proficiency in either English or French. They must have a Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) score of five in speaking and listening and a CLB score of 4 in reading and writing.

Proof of funds

Candidates must be able to show that they have enough money to support themselves and any dependent family in Canada. The amount increases with the number of people you are supporting. Proof of funds comes from the bank or financial institution where you keep your money and will show your average account balances over the previous six months and any outstanding debts. This is not necessary if you are already employed in Canada, or you have a valid job offer from an employer in Canada.

Number of family members Funds required in CAD 1 $13,310 2 $16,570 3 $20,371 4 $24,733 5 $28,052 6 $31,638 7 $35,224 Each additional family member $3,586

Get assessed by a province or territory

Skilled trades in Canada are regulated by provincial and territorial governments. It is likely that candidates for the FSTP will need a Canadian employer to provide some experience and training. The process can differ in each province and territory. You can learn more on the Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) website.

Education

There is no set education requirement for FSTP candidates. However, by obtaining an Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) or showing a that they have completed secondary or post-secondary education in Canada candidates for FSTP can boost their Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score and improve their chances of becoming a permanent resident through Express Entry.

Next steps

Once a candidate has self-assessed that they are eligible for the FSTP, they can go online and create an Express Entry profile on the IRCC website. After you submit your profile, IRCC will provide you with a CRS score. This score is based on criteria such as your age, work experience, language skills and education, among other human capital factors.

The score you receive is ranked against other candidates in the Express Entry pool.

Those with the highest-ranking scores will receive an invitation to apply (ITA) for permanent residence. Once you have received your ITA, you have 60 days to submit your application. IRCC then will evaluate your documents and make the final decision on your application.

Conclusion

Express Entry invitations to FSTP candidates have been paused since December 2021 due to the pandemic. However, invitations will resume in early July of this year. IRCC is looking to clear the backlog of applications and bring processing times to six months for new applications. According to the Immigration Levels Plan 2022-2024, Express Entry will once again become main way Canada welcomes economic class immigrants. By 2024, Canada will look to welcome over 110,000 Express Entry immigrants.

Discover if You Are Eligible for Canadian Immigration

 CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options.
Hot Wheels, Gucci Edition. Master of the Universe, Shogun Warrior. Barbie Rosa Parks Edition.

These are just a handful of unique offerings in Mattels latest product line  but you wont find them in retail stores. They are part of the Creations portfolio of collectibles launched online by the massive toy retailer in August 2020 to enrich customer engagement, deepen customer loyalty, and open up new intellectual property (IP) and revenue sources for the company.

The pandemic provided the spark for the new business endeavor, which Mattel EVP and CTO Sven Gerjets describes as an internal startup-like initiative comprised of the companys technology organization, brands division, and marketing group.

It started during COVID, Gerjets says. We were in a world of working from home and we wanted to expand out digital offerings with everyone in this kind of new world of living, which we didnt know how long we were going to be in.

In essence, he says, Creations was Mattels answer to a question companies continue to ponder even as the pandemic wanes: How do you grow, scale, and meet your customers where they are?

We knew we had to create a new digital channel that engaged our collectors and created new product offerings and elevated experiences, says Gerjets, who emphasized that Creations, which has earned Mattel a CIO 100 Award for IT innovation and leadership, wasnt his sole brainchild or an independent spinoff from the parent company.

Everything we do is tightly coupled between technology and business, the CTO says of the company culture. Thats the way we focus on transformation, whether its transforming something that is customer-facing or transforming internal capabilities.

A cloud creation

Direct-to-consumer product lines, like American Girl, have become a key pillar of Mattels business, and serving consumers directly requires a significant technology investment by Mattel, which has been migrating its operations to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Analytics for more than five years.

To pull off Creations, Gerjets and his IT team had to pivot to Shopifys online retail platform, second in size to Amazon, and implement a consumer data platform (CDP) from BlueConic, Gerjets says. Doing so put Mattel in a better position to focus on a specific consumer segment: collectors of Mattels classic physical products, such as Hot Wheels and Barbies, as well as its many IP-based offerings, the CTO says.

Creations started as the core platform to do new collaborative types of experiences  something we didnt have [before the pandemic], Gerjets says, pointing to a wide range of online collaborations with popular artists and designers who put a unique spin on Mattels mega-brand products, including a Hot Wheels, Gucci Edition; a $500 Batmobile; and a Masters of the Universe Gorka necklace made in concert with artist Christopher Wright.

The new platform provided Mattel collectors with a unique online experience at a time when retail outlets were struggling to recover from pandemic shutdowns. More importantly for Mattel, Creations success would provide the impetus for re-platforming much of the toy companys online retail business.

Once we launched this new environment for collectors, we focused on consolidating our collector experiences into one platform, Gerjets says.

For example, Creations now includes Mattels Red Line Club, an exclusive Hot Wheels collector community that has thousands of members paying for the experience, he says, noting the importance of finding and selecting the right CDP to engage customers in new ways and to strengthen the companys loyalty clubs.

E-commerce pivot provides sales boost

Behind the scenes, Mattels data migration to GCP, which began when Gerjets first joined the company roughly five years ago, fuels the Creations platform. In addition to its cloud rollout, Mattels IT team partnered with Shopify for its multi-tenant e-commerce engine, which helped Creations scale quickly during the pandemic.

It had to have scale and a multi-tenant platform because when we would do these limited edition drops, many thousands [of products] would sell out in minutes, says the CTO, adding that Shopify also enabled Mattel to build customized capabilities such as content management into its Creations platform.

It took about 18 months to move Mattels top product lines to Shopify, which has since been extended to include forums for each of its brands. Gerjets and his team also tied in Klaviyo for sales campaign management and to bolster capabilities for loyalty-driven business lines such as American Girl. Mattel also adopted DevOps platform Netlify to integrate with its business partners, the CTO says.

Deploying BlueConics CDP on top of Mattels GCP environment enables the toy maker to aggregate marketing data and analytics on a single data hub, Gerjets says. For instance, by coupling BlueConic with digital experience platform Optimizely on GCP, Mattel can now experiment in real-time with its loyalty clubs, learn from the outcomes, and evolve quickly to drive more business.

This Mattel Creations store happened to be the place where we were able to start from scratch, and leave the past in the past, but it created the platform for us to continue to scale the company, Gerjets says. It really has become that core hub to transform our direct-to-consumer business for the entire company.

Gartner analyst Sandeep Unni sees Creations as an example of new value streams retailers are making to transform their business models.

Investing in the Creations collaborative platform has allowed the company to present limited-edition, collectible items catering to the high-value collector/enthusiast shopper base, both to current loyalists and to attract new shoppers, Unni says. This has the potential of opening up new intellectual property and revenue sources for the company. It also allows them to appeal to the latest cultural zeitgeist by collaborating with new designers, as well as other brands and pop culture influencers.

Mattel recently launched its direct-to-consumer business in Europe and will continue to innovate in omnichannel marketing and with other planned offerings such as NFTs  tokens that represent Mattel collectibles such as Hot Wheels cars digitally.

But whatever the innovation, Mattels CTO will ensure the technology organization is engaged with the companys brands and marketing groups to deliver a unified experience across the enterprise.

Technology may be the vehicle, but we need everybody in the car to drive business value and evolve and propel the entire company forward, Gerjets says.
On a human level, Joerg Telle understands why medical errors occur.

You have to think about the day-to-day life of a clinician, the COO of German software development company XANTAS AG observed, and how laboratory values (measurements determining a patients health) can be overlooked. You may be coming out of surgery and have too much to do. You could be changing shifts and certain information is not communicated.

Either way, the consequences can be severe. Approximately 70% of critical decisions in diagnosis and treatment involve laboratory diagnostics. In the United States, medical error  much of it based on unnoticed or misinterpreted lab values  is the third most common cause of death.

What had been lacking was a system to digitally fuse important data.

To Telle, the development of XANTAS Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) has been one of the proudest moments of his professional career, equipping medical professionals with the ability to make informed clinical assessments.

Other companies use software to rescue money and process, Telle said. We have something that rescues peoples life.

Crossing at the green

It is no coincidence that the CDSS was built on solutions developed by SAP, specifically the SAP HANA database system. After all, XANTAS was founded in 2007 specifically to create software for data analysis software in hospitals  all based on SAP technology.

A couple of the founders had worked for SAP, Telle said, and came together to concentrate on this niche area of hospital analytics. I also started at SAP and began working on data warehousing there. When you focus on the data that you have in hospitals, all the patient details, its just massive, much more than in a retail company or a manufacturer. This is really, really complex and it took me a couple of years to gain the knowledge.

But since XANTAS founding, that type of knowledge has been used to assist staff at more than 100 hospitals in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

The research project AMPEL would be launched with a grant from the government of Saxony, along with the expertise of a team of doctors, medical students and other experts associated with University Hospital in Leipzig, one of the oldest such facilities in Germany and the first in Saxony to do robot- and computer-assisted surgery.

The starting point was XANTAS existing SAP-based clinical data warehouse named VISMEDICA. SAP HANA provided the toolbox for the various functions.

The goal was ensuring that lab specialists findings were never lost in translation.

In German, the acronym for this CDSS is AMPEL, a term that took some deliberation to conceptualize. AMPEL is the German word for traffic light, Telle explained. And thats how I see this system. If you look at a chart that lists the patients, you will see colors next to them. Green means the patient is okay. Red means the situation is critical.

The online chart would also register constraints on how much time attending physicians had to address the patients conditions. One notation could read, 12 hours, another six hours. If the circumstances were particularly severe, the entry would scream, Immediately.

Power of knowledge

The CDSS was launched in 2019 in a hospital system that contained 50,000 cases. The clinical data warehouse analysis is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, both online and via text.

The fate of more than a million inpatients and outpatients was instantly impacted. The medical centers reported a 21% rise in the ability to control a potassium condition called severe hypokalemia, while there was a 21% reduction in the progression of acute kidney injuries.

By clicking a checkbox, clinicians could confirm that the lab values had been seen and action was being taken.

If a doctor had questions about a particular ailment, the messages included a link to medical studies on the topic.

Earlier this year, the creation of the CDSS resulted in XANTAS qualifying as a finalist at the 2022 SAP Innovation Awards, a yearly event celebrating organizations using SAP technology to make a difference.

Artificial intelligence is the next step, Telle said. Clinical decision support is not new. But when you combine it with machine learning algorithms, you can do good things.

To learn more about XANTAS solution that saves peoples lives, read their 2022 Innovation Awards pitch deck.
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Civic activists hold a protest against Hana Bank's disputed sales of Italian Health Care Fund in front of the Financial Supervisory Service in Yeouido, Seoul, Monday. Yonhap





By Yi Whan-woo







The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has ordered Hana Bank to compensate up to 80 percent of the losses inflicted on customers over a fund scandal amounting to hundreds of billions of won, Monday.







It was the first FSS decision on pending financial disputes after former prosecutor Lee Bok-hyun took office as FSS governor last week.







Being the first ex-prosecutor to lead Korea's market watchdog, Lee draws mixed views on whether he can capitalize on his experience in investigations involving financial fraud and whether he lacks understanding of financial regulatory policies.







The FSS asked Hana Bank to compensate 80 percent and 75 percent, respectively, for the losses of the two customers who filed a complaint over the Italian Health Care Fund sold by the lender from October 2017 to September 2019.







The two customers, whose identities were not disclosed for privacy, were among 444 individuals and 26 firms that bought into the controversial fund.







The sale amount was worth 150 billion won ($116.6 million). Hana Bank is accused of both inadequately explaining the risks of the product and suspending repayment to investors since 2020 after originally delaying it from the end of 2019.







The FSS said it will take further action to aid the rest of the investors.







Hana Bank apologized, Monday, saying, "We will act in accordance with the FSS decision and make compensation in a prompt manner."







It added it will take follow-up measures to "restore customer trust."


Seven Stories appoints CEO

Seven Stories, the National Centre for Childrens Books, has appointed Wendy Elliott as its chief executive.

Elliott joined the charity in 2018. She was previously operations director before being promoted to interim CEO last September.

Claire Riley, chair of Seven Stories, said: Im thrilled that Wendy has been appointed as chief executive permanently  I know that her appointment will help to drive the organisation forward in a positive and progressive way, and lead to many new opportunities for Seven Stories and the children and young people we work with.

British Heart Foundation welcomes chair

Wendy Becker has been announced as the British Heart Foundations (BHF) chair.

Becker succeeds Dr Doug Gurr who is leaving the charity after seven years as chair. She will join BHF in October.

Becker has been Logitechs chair since 2019 and a non-executive director since 2017. Before joining Logitech, she was chief executive officer at Jack Wills Limited and chief marketing officer at the Vodafone Group. She also worked at TalkTalk, McKinsey and Procter and Gamble and was a trustee and deputy chair at Cancer Research UK.

Dr Charmaine Griffiths, chief executive of the BHF, said: Im delighted to be welcoming Wendy to the BHF as our next chair. I have no doubt that Wendys leadership, passion for research and expertise across medical, technology and commercial sectors will enhance the impact we have for millions of families affected by heart and circulatory diseases.

360Giving announces chair

Fozia Irfan has joined 360Giving as the charitys chair.

Irfan takes over Fran Perrin, a philanthropist who established 360Giving in 2015. Irfan will take up the position in July.

She joins from BBC Children in Needs director of children and young people and was chief executive of the Bedfordshire and Luton Community Foundation. She was also a trustee of the Association of Charitable Foundations.

Tania Cohen, chief executive of 360Giving, said: We are really excited to work with Fozia. She brings a wealth of experience to the role of chair, and I know that she will do a fantastic job of leading the charity through a period of development.

Power to Change names CEO

Power to Change has appointed Tim Davies-Pugh as its new chief executive.

Davies-Pugh succeeded Vidhya Alakeson as the charitys interim chief executive when she stepped down from the role in February. He helped set up the charity in 2015 and later became its director of strategy & programmes.

Previously, Davies-Pugh worked as acting director, England at The National Lottery Community Fund and held senior leadership roles at the Cabinet Office, Office of Civil Society, Numbers for Good and GLT Partners. He sat on the boards of the Virgin Money Foundation and UnLtd and is currently a trustee of SAFE Foundation.

Stephen Howard, chair of Power to Change, said: Im delighted to welcome Tim as our new chief executive. He brings a wealth of experience that will help propel Power to Change forward as we help community businesses face todays challenges.

Diabetes UK welcomes director

James Beeby has become Diabetes UKs director of engagement and fundraising.

Beeby joins from Terrence Higgins Trust where he led on organisational strategy development. With 19 years of experience in the sector, he has worked at Prostate Cancer UK and in corporate fundraising roles at the Stroke Association, Leonard Cheshire and the Childrens Society.

Chris Askew, chief executive at Diabetes UK, said: Were delighted to be welcoming James onto our executive team at such a pivotal time for our charity, and for people living with diabetes. As we look to life post-pandemic, the challenges facing people living with and at risk of diabetes have never been more acute, and our responsibility to supporting them has never been greater.

James is bringing with him such a wealth of valuable experience, and has for many years been a real change-maker within our sector. I am very much looking forward to working alongside him in our mission to achieve the aims of our strategy and  ultimately  end the harm of diabetes.

New chair for RNID

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) has welcomed Ewen Stevenson as its chair.

Stevenson is currently group chief financial officer at HSBC. He has extensive experience in the banking industry, having worked at RBS, now known as NatWest Group, and Credit Suisse.

Mark Atkinson, chief executive of RNID, said: The whole team at RNID is immensely pleased to welcome Ewen on board as our new chair. The strength of his professional background, combined with his passion for the cause and personal experience of hearing loss, will be invaluable in helping to shape our strategy over the months and years to come.

Charity Law Association appoints board member

The Charity Law Association, which helps charities understand the legal framework, has appointed Catherine Rustomji to its board.

Rustomji is head of charities at Shakespeare Martineau, a law firm. She has over 20 years of experience advising the sector. In her new role, she will help improve knowledge and awareness around charity law issues and work with the Charity Commission.

She said: Im thrilled to have been elected to sit on the executive committee  I am looking forward to getting back into the thick of developments in charity law and discussions with peers about the latest issues affecting charities, and working as a team to stand up for the sector and make a real difference.



This additional role will position me at the coal face of charity law, keeping me at the forefront of developments so that I can better support my clients too.

New director of income generation for Brain Tumour Research

Russell Marriott has joined Brain Tumour Research as its director of income generation and development.

Marriott has been in the charity sector for over three decades. He has helped raise more than 750m for organisations including the Royal Institution of Engineering and Technology, Old Vic Theatre and BEN, an automotive industry charity.

He said: Sadly, like so many people, I have first-hand experience of this devastating disease and I am very pleased to be joining Brain Tumour Research at what I hope will be a pivotal time in the growth of the charity as it strives towards finding a cure for all types of brain tumour.

Remember A Charity announces director

Remember A Charity has appointed Lucinda Frostick as its director.

Frostick takes the reins from Rob Cope who is stepping down after leading the charity for 12 years. She has been an associate director at Turner PR since 2008. Previously, she was head of communications at the Institute of Fundraising, now known as CIOF, and communications manager at the Giving Campaign.

Cope said: Lucinda brings with her a huge amount of communications, PR, campaign and legacy sector experience, which will be invaluable in growing legacy giving further and leading Remember A Charitys new strategic plan. Im so pleased to be passing the baton to someone who is so passionate about legacies and the massive impact this type of giving can have for charities.

MS-UK appoints three trustees

MS-UK has appointed three new trustees to its board.

 Suzie Rafia has worked in the marketing and communications field for over 14 years.

 Laura Marsden sought the charitys counselling services after she was diagnosed with MS in 2017.

 Rebecca Armstrong is a writer who helps people with MS know their rights at work. She was also diagnosed with the disease in 2013.

RNIB welcomes chief social change officer

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has welcomed Vivienne Francis as its chief social change officer.

Francis, who takes up the position in September, is the former director of communications and foundation of the Disabilities Trust. She has held various senior marketing and external affairs roles in charities including Alzheimers Society and Prostate Cancer UK.

Matt Stringer, CEO of RNIB, said: Were delighted to welcome Vivienne to the team. Vivienne has extensive experience within the charity and disability sector and will play a pivotal role in RNIBs work to create a society where blind and partially sighted people can participate equally.

sign up to receive the Civil Society News daily bulletin here . For more news, interviews, opinion and analysis about charities and the voluntary sector,
Late last week, the Texas Tribune published an interview with Pete Arredondo, the chief of police for the school district in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed nineteen children and two teachers nearly three weeks ago. Since then, Arredondo has been the subject of intense media scrutiny amid spiraling criticism that the law enforcement response to the shooting was too slow. Until the Tribune interviewwhich was conducted over the phone, with a lawyer providing additional answersArredondo had declined to publicly address his role at length, because, he said, he didnt want to disrupt his communitys grieving process or shunt blame; nonetheless, he defended himself to the Tribune, insisting that he acted as quickly as he could and pushing back on various critics. On Saturday, the San Antonio Express-News, the Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Dallas Morning News all ran the Tribunes story on their front pages. Sewell Chan, the Tribunes top editor, said he didnt think that anything comparable had happened before.

The widespread republication spoke both to the significance of the Arredondo interview and to a broader context of reporters struggling to get straight answers to key questions in the wake of the shooting. In the immediate aftermath, officials supplied contradictory information in interviews and at press conferences. After that, media briefings started to dry up as key figures, including Arredondo, remained tight-lipped; Roland Gutierrez, a state senator, claimed to the Associated Press that the local district attorney had ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety not to release any more details of the shooting investigation to the public or to him. Officials were criticized for not releasing adequate information in SpanishUvalde is heavily Mexican Americanwith a group of Latino congressional Democrats last week writing to the DPS to urge consistent bilingual communication. According to the Tribune, City Hall at one point locked its doors and refused to fulfill records requests. On June 1, police at the offices of the Uvalde school district threatened to arrest reporters seeking to conduct interviews, accusing them of trespassing.

ICYMI: The January 6 hearing and the value of spectacle

Officials have also impeded reporters efforts to cover the communitys reaction to the shooting. Police, including officers drafted in from out of town, blocked members of the media from photographing burials and memorials, including by strategically stationing vehicles in their line of sight, ordering journalists away from public sidewalks, and, in some cases, threatening them with arrest as well; one editor at the Express-News described the resulting effect as a wall of cops from all across the state. Meanwhile, dozens of bikers harassed and obstructed reporters outside a funeral home on the pretext of protecting mourners privacy, with one telling a Chronicle correspondent that they were working with the police. Nora Lopez, the executive editor of the Express-News, told Poynters Amaris Castillo that she believes the bikers on the scene to have been former cops. She also claimed that active-duty officers had discouraged grieving relatives from talking to the media even when they had agreed to do so. There was a point where we were basically discussing whether we have to get security for our reporters, to protect them from the police, Lopez said. I know other TV stations did do that.

Journalists in Uvalde have had to strike an ever-agonizing balance in their coverage of grieving people, attempting to tell their urgent stories to the world without retraumatizing or otherwise disrespecting or overwhelming them. That balance is not without legitimate tension. Journalists have done important work in Uvalde, forcing greater transparency from officials about what happened that day and why law enforcement didnt intervene to stop the shooter sooner, The Guardians Dani Anguiano wrote days after the shooting. But teachers and family members of the victims say they have also been bombarded with phone calls from journalists and knocks at their doors.

Opinions as to the appropriateness of this can differ. Clearly, though, navigating this fraught task should be a matter for journalists, their editors, and the communities they covernot an invitation for heavy-handed policing. In her interview with Castillo last week, Lopez stopped just short of accusing officers on the ground of violating the First Amendment, but numerous other observers have reached that conclusion. (Uvaldes city manager acknowledged to the Express-News last week that some officers may have been overzealous.) Condemnation of the polices conduct has gradually swelled on regional op-ed pages and among local and national press-freedom watchers. Yesterday, the Express-News published a letter from Jeff Cowart, the vice president of a local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, who thanked the paper for shining a light on the issue of press freedom in Uvalde. As a journalist, Cowart wrote, I find it stunning that so many of those who vehemently defend the Second Amendment seem to have no problem throwing out the First Amendment, which explicitly protects the right of the press to do its job.

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Another letter writer, Ed Farmer, argued that First Amendment rights have largely been overshadowed by the debate over Second Amendment rights that has followed the shooting. Over the weekend, the latter debate came to the fore again in national media: on Saturday, demonstrators marched in Washington to demand that Congress act on gun reform; then, yesterday, negotiators in the Senate announced the outline of a deal, apparently with enough Republican support to pass, that would strengthen background checks for gun buyers under the age of twenty-one, incentivize states to implement or enhance red flag laws, and pump money into mental health services and security at schools. Prominent headlines hailed the potential deal as a breakthrough and the removal of a logjam, but other stories centered the modest scope of the package and the fact that the bill hasnt even been written yet. The proposal, Carl Hulse wrote in the New York Times, still has a long way to go before becoming law, and focuses less on the gun part of gun control and more on other factors.

In the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting, I wrote that coverage of such atrocities often follows a sadly predictable, if reliably sickening, script. A vocal call for lawmakers to do something is usually part of it, as is that call quickly fading into the background of the news cycle as lawmakers do nothing. The Senate deal presents the press with a fresh chance to flip that part of the script. Itll be our job, now, to carefully and prominently scrutinize the likely effectiveness of the proposals on the table, whether the language in the bill reflects its stated ambitions, and whether the supermajority in favor of passing it holds under fierce criticism, not least from right-wing media.

Better covering the policy response to a mass shooting isnt the only part of the script that we should seek to flip: the broad media practice of flooding, then largely abandoning, a grieving community is another, as is the credence that many journalists have traditionally been wont to give to police narratives. Uvalde is a reminder of all that. Its a reminder, too, that our basic freedom to write our own script cannot be taken for grantedand that, even in the absence of official threats to our work, the task of rewriting itself invites no easy answers.

In his interview with the Tribune, Arredondo claimed that hes had to vacate his home for now because so many reporters have remained camped outside. The Tribunes article situates him, in various other ways, as a member of his grieving community: he grew up in Uvalde and attended the school where the massacre took place; one of the teachers killed in the attack was married to Arredondos second cousin, who himself died of a heart attack two days later. Of course, Arredondo is also the rightful subject of the same communitys scrutiny and questions. In addition to finally relaying his side of the story, the Tribune asked seven experts to comment on his description of the police response. All but one said that something went badly wrong.

Below, more on Uvalde and shootings:



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: A missing journalist in Brazil, and the ghost of press freedom at the Summit of the Americas

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.
New MGA Peddling Water Loss Sensors

A New York City-based managing general agent is bundling builders risk insurance policies with sensors to detect leaks and prevent water damage, a significant source of claims.

Insight Risk said when a contractor buys coverage, it installs water-, temperature- and humidity-monitoring sensors in strategic locations. The service is available within the 48 contiguous states for fire-resistive construction projects with values between $25 to $125 million, the company said in a press release.

Munich Re Speciality Group underwrites the risk. Policies are sold by Marsh McLennan Agency, American Global and Holmes Murphy.

The MGA was founded by Chad Hollingsworth, co-founder of Triax Technologies; and John Dempsey, former global practice leader of Aons claims team.

Water damage drives nearly 50% of all Builders Risk claims payments, said Hollingsworth, who is president of Insight Risk, in a press release. Yet even with all the industrys previous loss control work, there still is no reduction in losses. The Insight Risk approach solves the single largest problem hindering the widescale adoption of a technology-based solution  how to pay for the appropriate solution.

Insurity Teams Up with ClaimBender

Insurance claims software provider Insurity has formed partnership with ClaimBender to reduce workers compensation costs using data analytics.

ClaimBender, based in Fernandina Beach, Florida, says that it reduces claims frequency by using a digital safety engagement system and keeps the majority of workplace injuries as first aid events through the use of a virtual occupational physician service.

Insurity, based in Hartford, Connecticut, said it will integrate ClaimBender with its Workers Comp Suite product to manage workplace injury response and safety culture.

This is a novel and natural fit that will be a major evolutionary step in changing the traditional workers comp model, Mark A. Smith, chief executive officer of ClaimBender.

Latitude Subrogation Acquires InspectionConnection

Latitude Subrogation Services has acquired InspectionConnection, an appraisal company based in Columbus, Ohio that specializes in heavy equipment and farm machinery.

LSS founder Brad Schram said in a press release the collective appraisal expertise of the InspectionConnection team will blend nicely with our existing subrogation and recovery services.

LSS, based in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, said the acquisition will expand its geographic reach and its ability to handle speciality claims and unique auto estimates. Whats more, the addition of Inspection Connection allows LSS to offer audits of repair estimates, tow and storage bills, rental information and advance charges to insure accuracy.

Inspection Connection bills itself as a speciality appraisal service company. LSS offers subrogation and salvage administration services to auto, property and workers compensation insurers, self-insured organizations and third-party administrators.
REDDING, Calif. (AP) _ Pacific Gas & Electric on Thursday pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and other charges it faces after its equipment sparked a wildfire that killed four people and destroyed hundreds of homes in Northern California two years ago, prosecutors announced.

PG&E was arraigned at a court in Redding on 31 criminal counts and enhancements, including four counts of involuntary manslaughter, after being accused of recklessly starting the Zogg Fire, the Shasta County District Attorneys Office said in a brief statement. A preliminary hearing in the case was set for January.

The wind-whipped blaze began on Sept. 27, 2020, and raged through rugged terrain and small communities west of Redding, killing four people, burning about 200 homes and blackening about 87 square miles (225 square kilometers) of land.

Last year, state fire investigators concluded the fire was sparked by a gray pine tree that fell onto a PG&E distribution line. Shasta and Tehama counties have sued the utility, alleging negligence. They say PG&E failed to remove the tree even though it had been marked for removal two years earlier. The utility says the tree was subsequently cleared to stay.

The district attorney determined that the company was criminally liable for the fire and charged the utility last September.

Today we entered a formal not guilty plea to all charges in the 2020 Zogg Fire in Shasta County, the company said in a statement. We accept CAL FIREs finding that a tree falling into our equipment started the fire, but we do not believe there was any criminal activity.

The charges PG&E faces include enhancements for injury to a 29-year-old firefighter who was hit by a falling tree that fractured his spine, paralyzing him from the chest down. They also include felony arson counts linked to several fires started by the utilitys equipment in Shasta County over the last year.

PG&E, which has an estimated 16 million customers in central and Northern California, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 after its aging equipment was blamed for a series of fires, including the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people and destroyed 10,000 homes in Paradise and neighboring communities.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention said in their final report on the Dixie Fire, the second-largest in California recorded history, that the utility failed to act quickly after one of its power lines malfunctioned last July, sparking the blaze. By the time a PG&E worker arrived at the scene the fire was too large for him to contain and a 911 response was requested, state investigators wrote in the report the utility made public Thursday.

The Dixie Fire in Northern California swept through five counties and burned more than 1,300 homes and other buildings. The blaze was caused by a tree hitting electrical distribution lines west of a dam in the Sierra Nevada, where the blaze began on July 13, Cal Fire investigators said.

About the photo: In this Sept. 27, 2020, file photo, a house burns on Platina Road at the Zogg Fire near Ono, Calif. Pacific Gas & Electric on Thursday, June 9, 2022, pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and other charges it faces after its equipment sparked a Northern California wildfire in 2020 that killed four people and destroyed hundreds of homes. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope, File)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)  The largest documented wildfire burning through tundra in southwest Alaska was within miles of two Alaska Native villages, prompting officials Friday to urge residents to prepare for possible evacuation.

This came a day after dozens of elders and residents with health concerns voluntarily evacuated because of smoke from the nearby fire.

Officials on Friday put the communities of St. Marys and Pitkas Point into ready status, meaning residents should gather important items they would want to have with them if they have to evacuate, said U.S. Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service spokesperson Beth Ipsen by text. That would be followed by set, or getting a go-bag ready and leaving if the go order is given.

The fire is consuming dry grass, alder and willow bushes on the largely treeless tundra as gusts of up to 30 mph (48.28 kph) are pushing the fire in the general direction of St. Marys and Pitkas Point, Yupik subsistence communities with a combined population of about 700 people and about 10 miles (16 kilometers) apart.

There are about 65 firefighters battling the blaze, with about 40 more expected later Friday, Ipsen earlier said by phone.

The fire had not grown much since Thursday and was still estimated at 78 squares miles (202 square kilometers). It had crept another mile closer to St. Marys in that time and was about 7 miles (11.27 kilometers) away on Friday.

Ipsen said she was not aware of any structures that have been lost.

Crews cleared brush and other fuel from a swath of land in the path of the flames, and air tankers dropped retardant between the line and St. Marys as another buffer. Other aircraft had been dropping water on the fire until another fire broke out north of a nearby community, Mountain Village.

Climate change has played a role in this historic fire, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center.

He said based on records from the Alaska Fire Service dating back to the 1940s, this is the largest documented wildfire in the lower Yukon River valley. There are much bigger fires recorded just 50 or 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of St. Marys, but those burned in boreal forests.

The area where the tundra fire is burning, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, lost its snowpack early this year, leaving grass and other vegetation longer to dry out. Coupled with the warmest period on record in the region recently, it provided for the perfect storm for this fire that was started by lightning on May 31.

Climate change didnt cause the thunderstorm that sparked that fire, but it increased the likelihood that the ambient conditions would be receptive, he said.

The southwest Alaska hub community of Bethel, about 100 miles (160.93 kilometers) southeast of St. Marys, is the closest long-term weather station.

For the period covering the last week of May and the first week of June, Bethel had its warmest temperatures on record this year, 9 degrees F (12.78 degrees C) above its normal 48 degrees F (8.89 degrees C), Thoman said.

About 80 village elders and others with health concerns were relocated to the Alaska National Guard Armory in Bethel on Thursday, said Jeremy Zidek, spokesperson for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Two companies that provide commuter air service in roadless western Alaska flew the passengers to Bethel.

One of those was Yute Commuter Services, which provided 12 flights out of St. Marys on its planes that seat six, said Andrew Flagg, the companys station manager in Bethel.

On Friday, he said they were asked to deliver drinking water to the community so it could be given to the firefighters.

St. Marys and Pitkas Point, which is at the confluence of the Andreafsky and Yukon rivers, are located about 450 miles (724 kilometers) west of Anchorage.

About the photo: This June 10, 2022, aerial photo provided by the Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service shows a tundra fire burning near the community of St. Marys, Alaska. The largest documented wildfire burning through tundra in southwest Alaska was within miles St. Marys and another nearby Alaska Native village, Pitkas Point, prompting officials Friday to urge residents to prepare for possible evacuation. (Ryan McPherson/Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service via AP)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Crackdown on crime follows beating video

(China Daily) 09:28, June 13, 2022

Residents ensured of public order; all 9 suspects in Tangshan attack arrested

Authorities in Tangshan, a city in North China's Hebei province, have pledged to ensure that residents can be free from worry after a video of the beating of women by several men at a barbecue restaurant early Friday went viral online.

"We will carry out a review to severely crack down on organized crime and evil activities and improve public order, so that victims in the case can be given justice while our citizens can have peace and enjoy social stability," Tian Guoliang, the mayor of Tangshan, said at a news conference over the weekend.

The city launched a campaign on Sunday to improve public order. The move will last half a month and will target criminal activities that spur strong emotion from the public and have an adverse influence on society, including intentional injury, extortion, drug abuse and cybercrimes.

The assault happened in the early hours of Friday at a barbecue restaurant in Lubei district in Tangshan when a male customer, identified by police as Chen Jizhi, harassed a female customer and then brutally attacked her after she resisted. Chen's companions later joined in, beating the woman and her female friends.

Videos online showed the viciousness of the beating, with the female customer thrown to the ground and then hit and stomped by several men at the same time. The assailants fled after the beating.

By Saturday afternoon, Chen and his eight alleged accomplicesseven males and two femaleswere all arrested, including four who had fled to Jiangsu province afterward.

On Sunday they were arrested by the Guangyang district branch of the city of Langfang's public security bureau, which has been designated to be in charge of the case, with the approval of the procuratorate of Guangyang district.

The nine are suspected of the crimes of picking quarrels and making trouble, as well as intentional assault, for which punishment varies according to specific circumstances, including the victims' injuries, said Luo Xiang, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, who commented online about the incident.

Police in Tangshan said on Saturday that four women were injured, two of whom were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, though the severity of the injuries was not disclosed.

Nationwide, public security authorities in many areas, including the Ningxia Hui autonomous region and Henan province, said they would launch night inspections during the summer to detect potential disputes and risk factors that could threaten public security and social stability.

An official notice issued by the police department of Puyang, Henan province, said night inspections will be conducted at such places as school campuses, night fairs, shopping malls and bars. Quick responses and the dispatching of police officers when situations are reported will also be required.

The incident has been a hot topic on social platforms. Some netizens, including residents of Tangshan, posted videos reporting gang activity.

In one video posted by a cake shop owner in Tangshan's Lubei district, the man claimed he had been extorted since July last year by a gang consisting of former prisoners. "The gang harassed me and provoked trouble at my shop and home about 20 times," he said.

Regarding the cake shop owner's claims and others, the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China Tangshan Committee said verification of the claims was underway.

The Tangshan assault has not only spurred reports about local gangs, but also provoked outrage from netizens, including celebrities, most of whom called for justice.

Actor and martial artist Jackie Chan said on China's Twitterlike messaging platform Sina Weibo on Saturday night, "I expect they will be punished severely according to the law."

(Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji)
gettyimagesbank





Korea's exports fell 12.7 percent year-on-year in the first 10 days of June due largely to fewer working days, data showed Monday.







The country's outbound shipments stood at $15.07 billion in the June 1 to 10 period, compared with $17.3 billion a year earlier, according to the data from the Korea Customs Service.






Voters who still need to cast their ballot in the 2022 primary election may go to any one of the 125 vote centers open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, Primary Election Day.

The list of Primary Election Day polling places is included in voters sample ballot packets and is available through the Election Department website at www.ClarkCountyNV.gov/vote.

In accordance with state law, all active registered voters in Nevada received a mail ballot. Voters who wish to vote by mail ballot only need to complete the ballot, print their name on the ballot envelope, sign the envelope on the designated line, and return the mail ballot to the Election Department. Voters may use the U.S. Postal Service to send in their mail ballot, or they may drop off their mail ballot in a secure drop box at any polling place. (All polling places also have mail ballot drop boxes.) Voters using the U.S. Postal Service must have their mail ballot post-marked on or before Tuesday, and it must be received by the Election Department by June 18 in order to be processed.

Voters casting their ballot in person should either surrender their unused mail ballot at a polling place or destroy and discard their mail ballot packet.

More than 68,000 Clark County voters cast their ballot during the early voting period that ended Friday, and already more than 90,000 mail ballots have been processed. Preliminary vote totals will be released starting Tuesday night online and will be updated periodically with results from Primary Election Day and additional mail ballot returns. Primary election results will be made official on June 24.

While some contests may be decided in the primary election, most races will move on to the general election, which is scheduled for Nov. 8, with early voting from Oct. 22 through Nov. 4. More information about the primary election is available through the Election Department website at www.ClarkCountyNV.gov/vote. Voters may also contact the department by email at ELinfo@ClarkCountyNV.gov or by phone at 702-455-VOTE (8683)

###

Clark County is a dynamic and innovative organization dedicated to providing top-quality service with integrity, respect and accountability. With jurisdiction over the world-famous Las Vegas Strip and covering an area the size of New Jersey, Clark is the nations 11th-largest county and provides extensive regional services to 2.3 million citizens and 45.6 million visitors a year (2019). Included are the nations 7th-busiest airport, air quality compliance, social services and the states largest public hospital, University Medical Center. The County also provides municipal services that are traditionally provided by cities to 1 million residents in the unincorporated area. Those include fire protection, roads and other public works, parks and recreation, and planning and development.
gettyimagesbank



By Yoon Ja-young



Major advanced economies succeeded in decreasing government debt ratios last year, but Korea is seeing the ratio surge despite a huge increase in tax revenues.



According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data, all of the G7 countries  the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy  saw a decline in the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product (GDP) last year.



Italy saw the general government debt-to-GDP ratio reach 175 percent last year, down 10.5 percentage points from 2020.



Canada's ratio contracted by 9.6 percentage points during the same period, and France by 7.9 percentage points. The U.S. also saw its ratio dip by 6.5 percentage points and the U.K. by 6 percentage points. Japan, which has been suffering from snowballing government debt, saw the debt edge down 0.4 percentage point.



The government debt-to-GDP ratio of Korea, meanwhile, stood at 47.9 percent last year, up 2.5 percentage points from 2020. While the ratio itself is still far lower than those of other developed economies, the data is worrisome since it shows that Korea failed to control fiscal spending. It is expected to continue rising to 49.9 percent this year and 51.1 percent next year.



Korea is also an exception among OECD member countries.



The average government debt ratio of 39 OECD member countries dropped by 5.5 percentage points to 125 percent last year, but only seven countries, including Korea, saw the ratio rise. As the economy started recovering from the pandemic, other developed economies curtailed emergency expenditures, but Korea failed to control snowballing government debt despite earning 61.4 trillion won more in tax revenue than previously estimated.



While Korea's government debt ratio is expected to surge by 5.7 percentage points by 2023 compared to 2020, other OECD member countries are expected to see a 6.4 percentage point fall on average during the same period.



Cho Gyeong-lyeob, a senior research fellow at the Korea Economic Research Institute, said the ratio of government debt is expected to rise to 158.7 percent of GDP in 2060.



He advised slashing ineffective fiscal spending such as short-term job creation, while increasing tax revenue by spurring economic growth.


Clifford Chance adds Funds and Investment Management partner Liyong Xing in Hong Kong

Leading international law firm Clifford Chance today announced that Liyong Xing will join the firm's Global Funds and Investment Management team as a partner on 13 June 2022 to continue the growth of its client offering in Asia Pacific.

Liyong brings significant experience advising global and Asian fund sponsors on the structuring, formation and governance of private investment funds across a variety of strategies, including venture capital, growth capital, buyout, real estate, infrastructure, secondaries and co-investment. She has successfully represented prominent private equity firms in establishing China focused funds, and is recognised as one of the leading partners in the Greater China private funds sector.

Andrew Crook, Head of the Corporate practice in Asia Pacific said, "We are very excited to welcome Liyong to the team. Her impressive track record of work on China focused funds and depth of experience, including advising on the formation and structuring of technology and healthcare focused investment funds in Greater China, makes her an excellent fit for our practice."

Alexandra Davidson, Global Head of Funds & Investment Management added, "We continue to see high levels of activity across asset classes and are committed to growing our offering to clients across Asia Pacific in line with our global strategy. Liyong's deep and wide range of experience will further strengthen our leading international practice."

Liyong joins from Kirkland & Ellis where she was a partner. She attended Peking University before earning her JD at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and is qualified in New York and Hong Kong.

This news follows the recent announcements of several new joiners to the Global Funds & Investment Management team: Ildefonso Alier in Madrid and Vadim Avdeychik, Kelly Labritz and William Sturman in New York.
Rep. Sung Il-jong of the PPP, right, speaks during a party-government consultative meeting on virtual assets at the National Assembly in Seoul, June 13. Yonhap





The ruling People Power Party (PPP) is considering enacting a law on blockchain-based platforms to better regulate cryptocurrencies and protect investors, the party's chief policymaker said Monday.







"We are thinking of making a law on blockchain-based platforms," Rep. Sung Il-jong of the PPP said during a party-government consultative meeting on virtual assets. "Some parts are mentioned in the Special Financial Transaction Law, but overall it's not organized."







The move comes after the crash of TerraUSD, known as a "stablecoin," and its sister coin Luna caused massive losses to many investors across the world and raised the need to better regulate the fast-growing market and protect investors from excessive volatility.







At the meeting, the PPP and government officials called for voluntary regulatory measures from the cryptocurrency industry.







"In order for the virtual asset market to have responsible growth, establishing a reasonable regulation system is important," Lee Bok-hyun, the chief of the Financial Supervisory Service, said. "But considering its complexity and unpredictable environment, setting a voluntary regulatory system through the active participation of private experts needs to be emphasized."







In response to such calls, the heads of five major cryptocurrency exchanges in the country said at the meeting that they will launch a joint consultative body to monitor compliance measures and the market situation.







They plan to set up standards for coin listing and delisting as well as for a trading warning system. They will also adopt a policy of conducting periodical risk assessment on cryptocurrencies and provide their findings to investors.







According to data from the Financial Services Commission, the size of the country's virtual asset market is worth 55.2 trillion won ($42.9 billion), with daily trading value estimated to be 11.3 trillion won. (Yonhap)






Activists fly balloons bearing the message, "Kim Jong-un is the enemy of the people," in Paju near the inter-Korean border, in this June 4, 2020, file photo. South Korea's anti-leaflet law that bans sending anti-regime leaflets across the inter-Korean border is a clear violation of a United Nations treaty and it must be revoked, according to an international human rights advocate. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk



Yoon urged to learn from Moon's policy that served to 'just embolden' North Korea



By Jung Min-ho





Phil Robertson

South Korea's anti-leaflet law that bans sending anti-regime leaflets across the inter-Korean border is a clear violation of a United Nations treaty and it must be revoked, according to an international human rights advocate.



Under the law, enacted in 2020 during the previous Moon Jae-in administration after North Korea threatened retaliation over the sending of such leaflets into its territory, violators could face up to three years in prison. Park Sang-hak, the head of a group known for launching balloons with human rights and pro-democracy messages into the North, was the first person to be indicted on charges of violating the law. The case is currently under review at the Constitutional Court.



Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, an international human rights group headquartered in New York City, told The Korea Times that  apart from whether the law is constitutional in South Korea  it violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which requires that all ratifying states have their national laws comply with the provisions of the treaty.



"The anti-leaflet law violates article 19 of the ICCPR, which provides that everyone has 'the right to freedom of expression,' which includes the 'freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing, or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice'  Meaning that sending leaflets or other communications across the border to the DPRK (as it states, 'regardless of frontiers') is clearly covered by the ICCPR," Robertson said.



DPRK refers to North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.



"A group of U.N. human rights special rapporteurs communicated this view that the law violates the ICCPR to Moon's government, but their argument was unfairly rejected by Seoul without adequate explanation or rationales," he said.



Many human rights experts at U.N. agencies and international NGOs were "quite shocked" when the then-ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK)  in an obvious bid to back up Moon's North Korea policy  moved to pass the bill despite serious objections they made on human rights grounds, Robertson noted.



"The North engaged in a campaign of intimidation and bluffing, and Moon foolishly fell for it and passed a law that violates South Korean people's rights. It was truly a shameful episode, and one of the lowest points on human rights we saw during his term in office," he said.



When lawmakers were drafting the bill, the DPK brought up "national security"  which is the same argument used by past authoritarian South Korean administrations as an excuse to suppress individual freedoms, in those days in the name of anti-communism  to justify the necessity of such a law. Critics, including Robertson, say the argument is insufficient for an outright ban.



"The DPK's argument that national security is at stake can be made under the ICCPR, but restrictions on those grounds can only be made 'as necessary,' meaning that there must be a proportional response, not a blanket ban," Robertson said. "The aspects of 'national security' that the government claimed were damaged were never adequately or transparently explained. Most people believe that efforts to release anti-DPRK leaflets into North Korea via balloons and other delivery methods are ineffectual at best, and a nuisance at worst. So why then is South Korea excessively claiming that such actions constitute some massive national security threat? The argument simply doesn't make sense."



President Yoon Suk-yeol said in an interview with the Voice of America, a state-owned international radio broadcaster of the U.S., that making the law was "a wrong decision" and it is "not appropriate" for the government to restrict voluntary campaigns by citizens promoting human rights in North Korea.



Yet, with DPK representatives being the majority at the National Assembly, a repeal of the leaflet ban law is unlikely. For now, the ruling People Power Party is pinning its hope on the Constitutional Court.





An activist prepares to send packages containing human rights and pro-democracy messages across the inter-Korean border in Paju, in this June 4, 2020, file photo. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called on officials at a party meeting to root out "unrevolutionary" acts such as bureaucracy, state media said Monday.







The secretariat of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party convened the meeting the previous day in Pyongyang to discuss immediate tasks faced by the party, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).







During the party, Kim urged party officials to wage a more intense battle against unhealthy acts and bureaucracy, it said.







The meeting also discussed the issue of strengthening the role of the party to implement the national tasks discussed at the fifth enlarged plenary meeting of the party's eighth Central Committee last week.







At a party congress last year, the North revised the ruling party's rules to reinstate the secretariat that was scrapped in 2016 and elected Kim as "general secretary" of the party. (Yonhap)






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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presides over a meeting of the secretariat of the central committee of the North's Workers' Party in Pyongyang, Sunday, in this photo released by the Korean Central News Agency, Monday. Yonhap



By Kang Seung-woo



North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's reshuffle of his foreign minister and the post in charge of inter-Korean relations means that he has laid the groundwork for dialogue with South Korea and the United States in the future, according to experts, even though he is highly anticipated to conduct a nuclear test soon.



According to North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, who used to play a key role in denuclearization talks, has been promoted to the post of foreign minister. In addition, Foreign Minister Ri Son-gwon has been tapped to lead the ruling Workers' Party's United Front Department tasked with handling ties with South Korea.



The announcement triggered rampant speculation here that Pyongyang will also adopt a confrontational stance against the new South Korean government and the U.S. administration, both of which have refused to yield to the North Korean regime.



However, Rep. Tae Yong-ho of the ruling People Power Party, who previously served as North Korea's No. 2 diplomat in Britain until he defected to South Korea with his family in July 2016, said the impoverished country was gearing up for post-nuclear-test talks with the South and the U.S.



His prediction comes as the totalitarian state is poised to carry out a seventh nuclear test, according to South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities.



Despite concurring on the projection of a looming North Korean nuclear test, Tae said the appointments were made looking beyond the nuclear provocation.



"Kim Jong-un's reshuffle seems to represent preparations for negotiations with the U.S. and South Korea rather than an intention to engage in a tit-for-tat," Tae said, adding that Choe and Ri have a reputation for being seasoned negotiators with South Korea and the U.S.



"Who wins in a face-to-face contest is decided by who wins a favorable agreement. North Korea created a confrontational mood on the Korean Peninsula in 2017, but transformed it into a conciliatory one the following year, which led to the Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula and the joint statement from the U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore," he said.



Tae added: "That is why North Korea celebrates them as its own victory."



Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute, also said the appointment of Choe, who has a wealth of diplomatic experience under her belt, was meant to invigorate the country's diplomacy.



The North Korean diplomat-turned-politician said the Kim regime will conduct a nuclear test judging by the precedent that it has done so every time a new South Korean leader was inaugurated.



"Since North Korea carried out its first nuclear test in 2006, with the Roh Moo-hyun administration at the helm, it has repeated that at the early stage of each South Korean administration. In that respect, the North would follow suit," Tae said.



"Like 2017, Kim Jong-un will repeatedly test nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles to rattle the Yoon Suk-yeol administration in its early phase, but it may strategically turn to a conciliatory stance to draw concessions from South Korea and the U.S."



Meanwhile, the North Korean leader called for stronger self-defense measures to tackle "very serious" security challenges as he presided over a ruling party session last week, according to media reports on Saturday.




The hiring of people from under-represented groups, whether it's racial, nation of origin, sexual identity, etc., is usually non-controversial.

But even non-controversial issues can get elbows flying. The latest example: when Trellix CEO Bryan Palma argued during an RSA keynote last week that the industry needs to do a better job of hiring people from diverse backgrounds.

Palma drew on data clearing showing that straight white men dominate our industry," according to a story about the speech in InfoSecurity Magazine. "He argued that the industry is turning away great, diverse people and consequently doing our industry a disservice. We are neglecting to provide pathways for people of color, women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The lack of diversity restricts ingenuity, innovation and our ability to recruit the next generation of cybersecurity professionals."

After Palmas speech, SmartHive CEO Sanjay Patel took to LinkedIn to say Palma deserves the hypocrite of the century award because the pictures of the senior executives at Trellix on the company's website seemed to show a decidedly white, male, middle-aged group.

Patel clarified in an interview that he sees a lot of companies where worker bees are diverse, but said that's not so for senior managers.

Trellix, shockingly, didnt take kindly to Patels post. Michael Alicea, the Trellix Chief Human Resources Officer, in a separate interview, slammed Patels post as a cheap shot and countered that 50% of our leadership comes from under-represented groups. (Patel) actually did what he is accusing others of doing. He looked at a website (picture page) and he made judgments.

Its worth noting that Palma has only been CEO for nine months, which isn't much time to reshape a 5,000-person workforce.

Now that all of that name-calling is out of the way, I should stress that both Patel and Alicea highlighted a real hiring problem and why it is extremely difficult to fix. (Yes, different people would define fixed very differently.)

Patel gave an interesting example  from his own history  where HR can give an official- and proper-sounding reason to push back against a minority applicant. He said that the company (a former employer) had narrowed down the list of applications for a specific role to three candidates. When HR was told to shrink that list so that one finalist can be identified, a minority application was struck because HR said he had poor communication skills.

But when Patel dug into the details, it turned out the communication problem was simply a thick accent. Various manager interviewers had difficulty understanding the applicants answers.

Patel argued that executives and managers need to take the time to understand someone who speaks a little differently. We have people all over the world. He added that his next step was to make sure that every candidate had an accent.

This is a perspective issue. Who would this applicant be talking with in the job? Would he be talking with colleagues? Customers? Would those customers be calling in from other countries? Depending on the region, that communication-limited applicant might be well-understood by customers  perhaps better than an American with an American accent.

Patel also takes issue with some of the moves enterprises have taken to try and hire more employees from under-represented groups. For example, he dislikes the title of chief diversity officer, which he said was the most racist title any company could have. He said that role diminishes the value of minority hires and can make them feel like token hires. Nobody wants to be the diversity candidate because anything they do will always be tainted.

Make (inclusiveness) part of your culture. Fix (problems) by getting rid of silly rules like requiring X percent of applications be minority applicants, Patel said. Put in these rules and people find their way around it.

Another problem: over-emphasizing experience. It can be an excellent attribute, but many minorities move from one company to another never getting appropriately promoted. In that case, their "experience"  possibly tainted by successive bad company cultures  might hold them back. Instead, the focus should be on talent, skills, how an applicant thinks and other specifics.

This issue goes beyond having employees who can think and talk like customers and partners. In cybersecurity, a diverse group of employees might perform better at thinking like the attackers they're trying to thwart. A lot of attacks are coming from other countries. Why not hire people with similar background to the attackers?" Patel said.

A big chunk of the problem comes from HR trying to guess who a hiring manager would likely most want. Often, recruiters get compensated by how quickly they can find the candidate the hiring manager will hire. To that end, HR will often look at that managers existing staff and try and deliver applicants who are similar to those people.

Some of this is the much-discussed technology bias. Patel said that when he goes to LinkedIn to search for candidates, he finds that almost all of the people shown are of Indian background, just like Patel. Even the LinkedIn algorithm is trying to send Patel people like him.

Trellixs Alicea agrees that hiring diverse groups can be tricky, though he argues that its essential. But he also said that company culture can be a powerful factor.

I was born Puerto Rican in New York. Being the only one of my kind in every room I have experienced is common, Alicea said. There is no way in my career that I could have made it  or had success  unless you had a white, middle-aged guy helping. Truly good intentions require curiosity over judgments. What it takes is discipline.

Alicea also brought up experience, but he had a different take: even without bias, experience can be overrated. I have seen requests for eight years of experience. You dont need that level of experience. We can train them. I want (the applicants) to be smart and capable. You start insisting on certain timeframes (years of experience) and you start excluding people. You insist on certain advanced degrees and you start excluding people.

This all starts with posting an employment ad in places where the widest possible group of people will see it, such as job boards at universities with a high percentage of minority students.

Alicea gave an example of how he processes position requests: We might have six or seven finalists. What is the team makeup now? What does the team need? Youre pitching government accounts and you dont have one woman? Not one African American?

It also helps, Alicea said, to start at the lowest levels. We have a program where you bring people in early in their career and develop them. Thus far (this year), we have hired 100 interns and 30% of our interns are underrepresented. Our goal is to convert them into employees. Well probably convert at least 50%.
06/13/2022

Photo (c) Narisara Nami - Getty Images COVID-19 tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)

Total U.S. confirmed cases: 85,515,980 (85,500,976)

Total U.S. deaths: 1,011,277 (1,011,259)

Total global cases: 535,319,747 (535,153,489)

Total global deaths: 6,309,616 (6,309,255 )

FDA poised to approve vaccinations for kids under five

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released its analysis of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and said it appears to be safe and effective for children under age five, according to a report by the Associated Press. An FDA advisory committee meets this week to discuss the data.

If the committee votes to recommend the shots for young children, officials say vaccinations could begin as early as next week. First, the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would have to formally approve the vaccinations.

Children between the ages of six months and four are the last group of Americans not yet eligible for vaccinations.

Inhaled vaccine more effective than nasal sprays, scientists say

Scientists, who are already working on the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines, are debating which delivery method is the most effective. Some researchers advocate for a nasal spray, saying it should be deployed at the location of infection.

But scientists at McMaster University in Canada argue that inhaled aerosol vaccines provide far better protection and a stronger immune response than nasal sprays. They point out that inhaled aerosols bypass the nasal passage and deliver vaccine droplets deep in the airway, where they can induce a broad protective immune response.

Infections in the upper respiratory tract tend to be non-severe, said Matthew Miller, a co-author of the study. In the context of infections caused by viruses like influenza or SARS-CoV-2, it tends to be when the virus gets deep into the lung that it makes you really sick.

Vaccine may provide strong protection for heart patients

For people being treated for cardiac issues, doctors have some urgent advice: Get vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19.

Scientists writing in the Journal of Cardiac Failure say heart failure patients who are unvaccinated are three times more likely to die if infected with the virus than fully boosted heart failure patients. The study is the first to look at COVID-19 vaccination status and outcomes in patients with this cardiovascular condition.

Researchers said they launched the study because many cardiac patients expressed fear of getting vaccinated due to the risk of vaccine-related myocarditis, which is rare.

Around the nation
This photo shows the fully assembled Nuri rocket, also known as KSLV-II, at the Naro Space Center in the country's southern coastal village of Goheung, June 12. Courtesy of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute





Korea's state-run Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) was carrying out final preparations Monday ahead of this week's second attempt to send multiple satellites into orbit.







Nuri, also known as KSLV-II (Korea Space Launch vehicle), is scheduled to be transported to the launch pad and erected vertically Tuesday at the Naro Space Center in the country's southern coastal village of Goheung one day ahead of the launch.







In its first attempt in October, Korea's first locally developed launch vehicle successfully flew to a target altitude of 700 kilometers but failed to put a dummy satellite into orbit as its third-stage engine burned out earlier than expected.







Last month, the science ministry set June 15 as the second launch date for Nuri.







Jang Young-soon, head of KARI's launcher system development team, said that the three-stage space rocket, which weighs 200 tons and measures 47.2 meters in height, has been fully assembled and was going through a final electrical system inspection.







Ahead of the second launch, Nuri underwent reinforcements of an anchoring device of the helium tank inside the third-stage oxidizer tank.







In October, the helium tank in the third-stage rocket fell off due to increased buoyancy during the flight and eventually caused the engine to shut off prematurely, according to a governmental committee report.







Engineers have added about 9 kilograms of reinforcements to the third-stage rocket to avoid such problems and said the augmentation is unlikely to affect the rocket's performance, Jang said in a recent online press conference.







A factor that could potentially affect the schedule is the weather, as authorities forecast a 60 percent chance of rain in the area Tuesday afternoon. Although the rocket itself is sealed to prevent water from entering, a large amount of rain could cause logistics problems.







Rain is not expected on launch day, but Jang said wind conditions are also a determining factor in the success of the launch. According to KARI, average surface wind speed must remain below 15 meters per second during the entirety of the process to ensure a successful launch.







The launch has been tentatively set at 4 p.m., but the exact time will be determined Wednesday depending on space conditions and sunspot explosions.







Unlike the October launch, which carried a single dummy satellite, Nuri this time will be loaded with a 180-kilogram performance verification satellite to test the rocket's capabilities and four separate cube satellites developed by four universities for academic research purposes.







"The most important mission (of the verification satellite) is testing the rocket's (satellite) injection capacity," Ahn Sang-il, a senior researcher at KARI's satellite and space exploration systems engineering team, said.







Korea plans to conduct four additional Nuri launches by 2027 as part of efforts to further advance the country's space program. (Yonhap)






Software supply chain attacks have received increased attention over the past year with high-profile examples such as the SolarWinds SUNBURST attack, the Kaseya VSA (REvil) attack, or the Log4j vulnerability making headlines and impacting thousands of enterprises. It isn't that a handful of examples happen to make the news: Supply chain attacks are growing more common. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 45% of organizations worldwide will have experienced attacks on their software supply chain.

Furthermore, the sheer variety in how software supply chain attacks can be executed adds complexity to the process of risk mitigation, detection, response, and resilience against them. From intentionally introduced malware in enterprise software to accidental vulnerabilities in ubiquitous open-source code, the software supply chain is dark and full of terrors.

We'll explore five real-world examples of supply chain attacks and third-party risk introduced through the software supply chain. We'll provide advice on how to improve your security posture against these attacks. You'll learn how to:

Improve your readiness and security hygiene to reduce the likelihood of a supply chain attack working against you

Increase your ability to detect early indicators of a supply chain attack in progress

Accelerate your response capabilities against both sophisticated and basic supply chain attacks

Boost your overall ability to monitor and manage third-party risk from software vendors

How to Monitor Third-Party Supply Chain Risk

What is a Software Supply Chain Attack and Why Are Businesses Uniquely Vulnerable?

According to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), "a software supply chain attack occurs when a cyber threat actor infiltrates a software vendor's network and employs malicious code to compromise the software before the vendor sends it to their customers. The compromised software then compromises the customer's data or system."

Your organization's software supply chain consists of all the companies you buy software from, all of the open-source repositories their developers pull code from, all the service organizations you allow into your environment, and more. All of these sources represent an enormous and difficult-to-secure cyber attack surface.

Even in cases where an attacker exploits a vulnerability in a supply-chain dependency, rather than introducing their own malicious code, the software supply chain serves as an amplifier. This enables attackers to stay stealthy while breaking into a wider range of targets, making third-party risk introduced through the software supply chain above and beyond sophisticated attacks such as SUNBURST. The overlapping blind spots inside the enterprise contribute to the enormity of this challenge for defenders.

CISA says that organizations are uniquely vulnerable to software supply chain attacks for two major reasons:

Many third-party software products require privileged access. Third-party software products require frequent communication between the vendor's network and the vendor's software product located on customer networks.

Supply chain attacks exploit this privileged access and open communication channels between vendor and customer as an initial intrusion path. Some supply chain attacks simultaneously target many devices or workloads within target organizations at once.

As a preventive measure, most organizations conduct due-diligence security assessments of software they plan to use. This is important for weeding out basic security holes but is insufficient for catching and stopping more advanced adversaries. By monitoring network behavior, particularly inside of your environment, organizations can catch the advanced attackers that sneak through.

Enterprise Software Supply Chain Attacks: The SUNBURST Model

The Attack: The SolarWinds SUNBURST attack is the biggest supply chain attack in recent memory to exploit a major, well-established software provider. The attackers first compromised SolarWinds, then inserted malicious code into the build server for the SolarWinds Orion infrastructure monitoring and management software. From that moment, SolarWinds customers who updated their software received the malicious code. All told, 18,000 customers were potentially impacted.

Far beyond SolarWinds, the software supply chain attack surface is getting bigger. There was a 24% increase in the number of applications used by enterprises from 2016 to 2022, according to Okta, an identity and access management provider. On average, Okta reports that their large customers (over 2,000 employees) use an average of 187 applications, each of which represents a potential intrusion pathway for supply chain attackers. It must be noted here that Okta itself was the victim of a software supply chain attack that was disclosed in March 2022.

The Blind Spot: Application Servers and Software Update Pathways

Enterprise software-based supply chain attacks are very likely to use the update mechanism as a delivery pathway. This was the case in SUNBURST as well as in the legendary NotPetya attack which abused the update servers of Ukrainian productivity software MeDocs to deliver ransomware that nearly destroyed global shipping giant Maersk.

The Solution: Behavioral Analysis of Application Servers

After a device downloads a malicious software update, it is likely to start behaving differently than normal. Sophisticated attackers may build in a period of dormancy so that defenders have a harder time attributing the new malicious behavior to the software update. If the first compromised device is a dedicated server for enterprise software such as SolarWinds Orion, then it likely has a fairly narrow range of expected behaviors, at least compared to a workstation. Any aberration would stick out like a sore thumb to a sufficiently sophisticated behavioral analysis system.

Unfortunately, dedicated servers are also less likely to be monitored effectively by endpoint detection and response agents or activity logging processes. Even devices that are being monitored may yield threat signals that are difficult to interpret without the appropriate context. Security teams and security tool developers need to develop greater understanding of the types of observable behavior that are most likely to indicate a threat.

Furthermore, watching for behavioral changes in devices that receive software updates from outside your organization can reveal other risks that may not be related to intentional supply chain attacks. Since third-party software often requires frequent communication back to the vendor and regular updates, it is vital to monitor these communications and other behavior of the app servers to detect the early signs of malicious behavior indicating a supply chain attack.

Software makers sometimes publish a software bill of materials (SBOM) to disclose components and open source packages that are present in commercial software. It would be valuable for security teams to also request disclosure of any commercial software's expected network behavior.

Open Source Software Vulnerability: The Log4Shell Model

The Vulnerability: Log4Shell (CVE-2021-44228) is a vulnerability in a widely used piece of open-source software called Log4j. The vulnerability allows attackers to gain remote code execution capabilities on any device where the Log4j library is being used by an internet-accessible server in a way that allows an attacker to transmit values to the Log4j library. For example, Minecraft used Log4j in such a way that chat messages within Minecraft servers might be ingested by Log4j, leaving a pathway open for attackers.

This open-source library may be present on any of the three billion or more devices that run Java. When the vulnerability was first disclosed, low-sophistication attackers immediately started exploiting it to install cryptocurrency miners. As time went on, more sophisticated attacks began using Log4Shell for everything from ransomware to distribution of DDOS malware.

Open-source software is also a common target for attackers to intentionally introduce malicious code. Attackers may simply submit code to open source projects and hope that it is not caught by code reviewers. They may also use a technique called "dependency confusion" to publish open-source software.

Learn More: Detect Log4Shell in Encrypted Traffic

The Blind Spot: Unknown, Unmanaged Hardware and Software Components

If you have unmanaged devices or shadow IT in your environment that runs Java with the Log4j package, you may be vulnerable. Unless you have a complete inventory of all networked devices in your environment, you may be exposed. Because Log4j is such a widely used open-source component, it may be present in innumerable devices and applications. To effectively secure your organization, you need a mechanism for discovering every device in your environment, and for detecting Log4Shell activity to and from that device, indicating that it is actively under attack or already compromised.

The Solution: Real-time Inventory of All Software Running in Your Environment

Most organizations conduct some level of due diligence before bringing new third-party software into their environment. Often, this involves getting a SBOM from the software vendor. In theory, this allows defenders to keep an inventory of all software running in the environment, including potentially vulnerable open source components such as Log4j.

In practice, an SBOM can go out of date quickly, or may not be supplied by the vendor at all. A continuously updated asset inventory driven by real-time visibility into the devices and workloads operating on your network gives you a better chance of discovering vulnerable or compromised devices on your network, so you can stop the attack from successfully exfiltrating or encrypting your data for ransom.

Managed Services and Software Ransomware Attack: The Kaseya VSA Model

The Attack: In the highly publicized Kaseya VSA attack of 2021, conducted by the REvil ransomware group, a remote monitoring and management software was hijacked with the intent of attacking downstream targets. Kaseya VSA software is used by managed service providers (MSPs) who remotely maintain and monitor IT systems for their own customers. By exploiting a vulnerability in Kaseya VSA, the REvil ransomware group was able to distribute ransomware two steps downstream in the IT environments of customers of MSPs using Kaseya's VSA software. The attack is thought to have impacted up to 1,500 companies.

The Blind Spot: Internet-Facing Devices, Devices Under Remote Management, and Communication Pathways with Remote Managed Service Providers

In order to employ MSPs for services such as remote IT monitoring, businesses need to give the MSP access to internal IT systems. This requires a certain level of trust and risk acceptance. No matter how much vendor assessment due diligence you do ahead of time, it is impossible to verify with 100% certainty that an MSP will not expose you to a cyberattack.

The Solution: Monitor Network Behavior of Devices and Data Flows Accessed by MSPs

Beyond the due diligence, you should also actively monitor any channels that the MSP can use to communicate in and out of your environment. Devices that an MSP has access to should have their behavior observed and analyzed, particularly if the devices have privileged access to sensitive data. This may be a challenge, as the reason that many companies onboard MSPs is that they don't have the staffing or resources to manage their own systems in house.

Organizations that cannot closely monitor the access paths of an MSP need to be aware of the risk that they are accepting by giving a third party privileged access to the network. This risk represented by MSP connections grows rapidly as advanced attackers get better at accessing and misusing these connections, and as MSP usage increases. These shifts must be taken into account in risk calculations by security teams at companies of all sizes.

Cloud Infrastructure and Malicious Insiders (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS): The Capital One Model

The Attack: An Amazon employee used insider knowledge of Amazon Web Services (AWS) vulnerabilities in specific AWS products being used by Capital One. The Amazon employee stole an estimated 100 million credit card applications containing private, personally identifiable information from the bank.

The Blind Spots: Cloud Infrastructure & User Behavior

Any business that uses a public cloud provider such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure is placing a great deal of trust in their cloud provider and accepting the risk that, should their cloud provider be compromised, their own data may be as well. In the case of the Capital One hack, an insider from Amazon understood both the holes in AWS, and how they could be exploited against AWS customers.

The Solution: Monitor Network Behavior in IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS Solutions

Whether a malicious insider is using legitimate credentials to steal data, or an outsider has gained access to credentials, the fact remains that behavioral analysis is the best, and often the only way to catch them.

When a legitimate service in a dynamic, growing business starts doing something malicious, it can be difficult to catchit isn't as if an intruder has loudly broken in and started smashing things. The behaviors in such an attack may be much more subtle, but can still lead to enormous damage.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Fatal drug overdoses rose nearly 15% in Kentucky last year, surpassing 2,000 deaths as the increased use of fentanyl  a powerful synthetic opioid  resulted in a record death toll in the state, according to a report released Monday.

The report showed that 2,250 Kentuckians died from drug overdoses in 2021  an ongoing scourge plaguing rural counties and the state's largest cities alike. It was the first time the Bluegrass State surpassed 2,000 drug overdose deaths in a single year, said Van Ingram, executive director of the state Office of Drug Control Policy.

The state's rising death count mirrored the nations escalating overdose epidemic. Last year, for the first time, more than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses over a 12-month period, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with about two-thirds of those deaths linked to fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.

In Kentucky, fentanyl was identified in nearly 73% of overdose deaths last year, Monday's report said.

Weve never seen one drug this prevalent in the toxicology reports of overdose fatalities, Ingram said in a phone interview.

Overdose deaths are often attributed to more than one drug. Some people take multiple drugs and fentanyl is increasingly cut into other drugs, often without the buyers knowledge, officials say.

I talked to a drug task force director last week who said, Were finding fentanyl in everything," Ingram said.

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has steered large sums of federal money to his home state of Kentucky over the years to combat its drug-abuse woes, said in a recent column that fentanyl has flooded across the nation's southern border.

Law enforcement leaders across the commonwealth tell me that, to curb overdose deaths, our number one priority should be to stop fentanyl from illegally entering our country through Mexico, McConnell said.

State officials also pointed to the availability of potent, inexpensive methamphetamine as another factor in Kentucky's latest rise in drug overdose deaths.

The highest number of drug overdose deaths in 2021 occurred among Kentuckians aged 35-44, the report said. There were 672 deaths in that age group last year, up 17.5% from the prior year.

The overdose fatality report was released by the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet and the Office of Drug Control Policy.

Kentucky has long been plagued by high rates of addiction to opioid painkillers.

In 2020, more than 1,960 Kentuckians died from drug overdoses, up nearly 50% from the pre-pandemic death count of 1,316 in 2019. Many people discontinued their drug treatment efforts out of fear of contracting COVID-19. That, along with the sense of isolation caused by the virus, contributed to the 2020 surge in overdose deaths, state officials said then.

Now, treatment and recovery programs are again ramping up across Kentucky.

Every day we must work together to fund recovery programs and treatment options so that we can continue to address this scourge and get our people the help they need, Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday in a news release.

The governor said the overdose death toll was "devastating and extremely heartbreaking.

Ahead of Monday's report, Beshear announced another step toward achieving a statewide policy goal of offering no-cost services close to home to help Kentuckians overcome drug addiction.

The state is working to establish cities and counties as Recovery Ready Communities  aimed at providing high-quality recovery programs across Kentucky, Beshear's administration said.

This drug epidemic in this country is going to be solved one community at a time, Ingram said later Monday in touting the program.

Kentucky's Office of Drug Control Policy is partnering with Volunteers of America to launch the Recovery Ready Community Certification Program. Cities and counties can apply for certification upon offering transportation, support groups and employment services at no cost for people seeking treatment for drug or alcohol addiction. A measure enacted last year by Kentucky lawmakers created an advisory council assigned to create the recovery ready certification.

Kentucky state Rep. Adam Bowling, the measure's lead sponsor, said Monday that the program will empower cities and counties to provide a powerful lifeline to help Kentuckians build a life free from addiction.

Make no mistake, substance abuse is a crippling, dangerous disease that can be prevented and treated successfully, Bowling said in a statement. However, those who face it must have community support and access to treatment and resources, regardless of where they live or how much money is in their bank account.

___

People can call the KY Help Call Center at 833-8KY-HELP (833-859-4357) to speak one-on-one with a specialist who can connect Kentuckians to treatment.
Connecticuts U.S. senators were among a bipartisan group of lawmakers Sunday announcing an agreement aimed at curbing gun violence in the nation.

Today, we are announcing a commonsense, bipartisan proposal to protect Americas children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country, the group of 20 senators said in a statement. Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities.

The proposal, touted as potentially the first significant federal gun legislation in decades, comes weeks after the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

It also comes as some survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting spoke to ABC News for the first time about the traumatic event and its aftermath.

Maggie, a Sandy Hook student at the time of the shooting, told ABCs Martha Raddatz she lost her best friend, 7-year-old Daniel Barton, in the attack.

I was just thinking about all the families that are in their houses right now telling their children that their siblings and that their friends and their classmates are gone, said Maggie, whom the network did not identify by last name. And it just really broke me to know that after 10 years of everyone giving us their thoughts and prayers, after 10 years of everyone saying Enough is enough and Never again after Sandy Hook  it happened again.

Maggie said she stands with the children who survived the Uvalde shooting and that they are now forever linked together by their experiences.

As devastating as it is that they now have this community of people who have endured a tragedy, they have a community of people who understand them, she said. And I hate that they do and I hate that now these little kids are part of our community, but we're here for them in any way that they need.

She and three other former classmates called for actionable legislation to prevent future school shootings.

Lawmakers are attempting just that in their proposal. One of the most notable items included in the agreement enhances checks for younger gun buyers, requiring an investigative period to review juvenile and mental health records for potential buyers younger than 21. This includes checks with state databases and local law enforcement.

It also invests billions in mental health services and school safety, such as school resource officers, violence prevention programs and school safety training at schools.

The proposal includes measures to prevent those who are a danger to themselves or others from getting deadly weapons and protect victims of domestic violence. It also cracks down on criminals who illegally evade licensing requirements, and illegally straw purchase and traffic guns.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said the deal represents "potentially a major breakthrough" though it still falls short of the tougher measures he and other Democrats sought.

We can build on it, and do more, if were able to pass a specific measure with these provisions, Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal said 10 GOP senators have signed on to the bill, enough to pass it through the Senate. But he is hopeful more Republican support will come.

My Republican colleagues are hearing from their constituents, just as I am mine, repeated pleas for us to do something, Blumenthal said. I believe that they will have to respond to the overwhelming, urgent pleas of American people.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said on Twitter that this is the first ever federal law against gun trafficking and straw purchasing. This will be a difference making tool to stop the flow of illegal guns into cities, he tweeted.

Murphy called it a breakthrough agreement on gun violence, saying it was the first one in 30 years.

Will this bill do everything we need to end our nations gun violence epidemic? No. But its real, meaningful progress, Murphy tweeted, adding it breaks a decades-long log jam and shows Democrats and Republicans can work together in a way that truly saves lives.

He added getting the proposal passed in both the House and Senate wont be easy.

The proposal would expand the community behavioral health center model as well as support other services in communities, such as crisis and trauma intervention and recovery. There would also be major investments to increase access to mental health and suicide prevention programs, as well as telehealth programs for mental and behavioral health services.

It would also expand mental health and supportive services in schools. This includes early identification and intervention programs and school-based mental health and wrap-around services.

Murphy said the proposal will close the boyfriend loophole, so that no domestic abuser  a spouse OR a serious dating partner  can buy a gun if they are convicted of abuse against their partner.

The agreements announcement comes as a red flag bill advances from the U.S. House to the Senate.

It seems likely the Senate will instead focus on this new bipartisan proposal, given the similarities on the red flag provision.

I think the two are so much alike, the two red flag proposals, that there will be strong support in both the House and Senate  and that we can reach agreement on common principles, Blumenthal said.

So I think what the House measure and this one have in common is intervening in times of crisis, when a person is so dangerous that you should be separated from a firearm, and it will protect survivors of domestic violence, who are five times more likely to die.

The proposal quickly gained the backing of several gun control advocacy groups. Sandy Hook Promise co-founder Mark Barden, who lost his son Daniel in the Sandy Hook massacre, praised the bipartisan group of senators for showing bold leadership.

The gun safety measures being included in the proposed package uphold Second Amendment rights while also offering proven, commonsense reforms that can be immediately put to work to protect our children and communities, Barden said in a statement. I urge the Senate to move quickly crafting the details of the bill and moving to a vote.

Nick, another former Sandy Hook student in the interview said the government, and the nation in general, know the solutions to gun violence.

We have proposed the solutions, he said. Weve proposed limited magazines. We've proposed changing ages for buying an assault rifle that you can buy at the age of 18. We've known about these issues we've known the ways we can stop them. I think what we know, just needs to come to fruition.

Some politicians and other advocates see this proposal as a first step in that.

Most importantly, our plan saves lives while also protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans, the legislative group said in a statement. We look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and passing our commonsense proposal into law.




Foreign Minister Park Jin arrived in Washington, Sunday, for talks with his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken that are widely expected to focus on ways to rein in North Korea's continuing provocations.







Park is set to hold his in-person meeting with the U.S. secretary of state Monday (local time).







His visit comes amid fears that Pyongyang may conduct its seventh nuclear weapon test, ending its self-imposed moratorium on such tests after more than four years.







North Korea conducted its sixth test in September 2017.







"(We) will discuss ways for coordination on increasing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea," Park said of his scheduled meeting with Blinken before departing from Seoul.







North Korea has staged 18 missile launches, the largest number it has conducted in a single year.







Officials in Seoul and Washington have noted the North appears to have already completed all its preparations for a nuclear weapon test.







Park's trip also marks the first of its kind since he took office last month. He is set to head home Wednesday. (Yonhap)






TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Chinese Canadian pop star Kris Wu has faced rape and other criminal charges at a closed trial in Beijing as China was in uproar over a video showing a group of men physically assaulting four women in another city.

Wu's trial Friday at the Chaoyang Peoples court was reported late Friday night by Chang'An Net, which belongs to Chinas powerful Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, a commission controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

Many online users criticized the timing of the trial announcement. More concerned about the Tangshan matter, said the top comment on Weibo in response to the Political and Legal Affairs' account. It was liked more than 22,000 times.

The attack on four women dining at a restaurant in Tangshan, a coastal city east of Beijing, early Friday morning was seen in surveillance footage shared widely on Weibo. By Sunday, police had arrested nine people on suspicion of violent assault in the case.

The assault and the public outcry renewed a conversation about misogyny and mistreatment of women in China. Earlier this year, video surfaced of a woman who had been chained in a shack. The police investigation found she had trafficked and sold as a bride.

Wu, meanwhile, had been in police custody since August last year. The trial of the former member of Korean group EXO was closed to the public to the protect the victims privacy, state media said.

Wu was tried on charges of rape as well as the crime of assembling a crowd to engage in sexual promiscuity. Rape is punished with anywhere between 3 years to 10 years in prison, although life sentences and death sentences can also be given in exceptional cases. The second charge Wu faces is punishable up to 5 years in prison.

The verdict and sentence were to be issued later, state media said.

Wu was accused last year by a teenager of having sex with her while she was drunk. Wu denied the accusation.

The teenager also then said seven other women contacted her to say Wu seduced them with promises of jobs and other opportunities. She said some were under 18.
DUBLIN, Ohio (AP)  One person died in a shooting at a northwest Ohio mall over the weekend, and one person was in custody, authorities said.

Sgt. Joe Albert of the Columbus police department said offices were called to the Mall at Tuttle Crossing at about 2:40 p.m. Sunday due to a report of gunfire.
RED BAY, Ala. (AP)  The owner of an Alabama day care center, three former employees and the parent of a former employee have been indicted in the death of a Mississippi baby who was put to sleep on her stomach in violation of safety standards.

The baby, 4-month-old Autumn Wells, died March 9 after she was found unresponsive at Tiny Tigers Daycare in Red Bay, Alabama. She was buried in Belmont, Mississippi.

Her mother, Taylor Wells, works at a motor home business in Red Bay, and the day care center is nearby. The center has been closed since a week after Autumn's death.

The Alabama Department of Human Resources found safety violations at the Tiny Tigers, including improper sleeping practices for children and staffing issues, WAAY-TV reported Monday.

The department also found Autumn was put to sleep on her stomach and was covered by a blanket. This violated a state standard and likely made it harder to see the baby having breathing problems.

The baby's mother, Taylor Wells, told WTVA-TV that Autumn was the whole center of my world."

I just  everything seems pointless, Wells said. You know, I get up and go to work. And before, everything I did was for her ... and now, I dont know what to do, and I dont have a purpose anymore.

The department said day care employees initially lied to Red Bay Police about how Autumn was put to sleep.

News outlets reported Tiny Tigers owner Angelene Chamblee has been charged with six counts of violating the Child Care Act and two counts of second-degree forgery related to falsified employee records and improper staffing.

According to court documents, Madison Jade McCalpin and Payton Nicole Gann put the baby on her stomach and left her there for an extended time. They both were both charged with manslaughter and false reporting to law enforcement.

Teia Kay Gann and Hannah Grace Letson were charged with tampering with a witness. Letson was also charged with tampering with evidence.

Chamblee failed to keep records of her employees' health and safety training, WAFF-TV reported.

News outlets did not report whether those indicted are represented by attorneys who could comment on their behalf.
DERBY  Prosecutors are still turning over evidence to the attorney representing the man accused in a double fatal hit-and-run from December in Seymour that killed an elderly Shelton couple.

Though nearly six months have passed without significant developments in the case, one of the couples sons, Kenneth Tamborra, said Monday that he and the rest of his family knew the criminal justice process would not play out quickly.

I understand. It takes time, he said. It will happen when it happens.

Jair Irigoyen-Flores, 25, of West Haven, appeared briefly Monday at Derby Superior Court alongside his lawyer, Dan Lage.

Judge Scott M. Jones continued the case to Aug. 10 after Supervisory Assistant States Attorney Rebecca Barry said she was providing discovery evidence to Lage.

He has not yet entered pleas to two counts of misconduct with a motor vehicle and a single count of evading responsibility in the Dec. 10 deaths of James and Barbara Tamborra.

Lage declined to comment on the case outside the courtroom.

Following Irigoyen-Flores arrest in December after a two-week investigation, Tamborra said the deaths of his parents left a gaping hole in the family.

He said Monday that the time passed since his parents deaths hasnt healed his familys wounds.

You dont forget, it just makes it a little more tolerable, he said.

In addition to Tamborra, several friends and family members were in court Monday for Irigoyen-Flores appearance, as they have been for all the suspects appearances.

Tamborra said its hard on the family as events and holidays pass on the calendar without his parents being there.

Mothers Day was tough, Tamborra said. Fathers Day is going to be tough.

Irigoyen-Flores remains held in lieu of $1.5 million bond at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield.

He was arrested after police said an anonymous tipster called cops identifying Irigoyen-Flores as the driver of an Acura which struck the Shelton couple as they were crossing Bank Street following a funeral.

James Tamborra died from his injuries soon after the crash. Barbara Tamborra died a few days later in the hospital.

In an arrest warrant, police said a neighbor of Irigoyen-Flores, who said he had borrowed her car, stated that he called her crying when he got home on the night of Dec. 10. The warrant said he told her he did not know if he hit someone or something on his way home from work. She told investigators he kept saying he couldnt see them because it was dark, the warrant states.

Police said Irigoyen-Flores had bought a one-way plane ticket to Mexico scheduled for the morning he was arrested outside his West Haven home, which had been staked out by a state police narcotics squad following the anonymous tip.

Tamborra praised the investigation for building a solid case.

I have all the confidence in Seymour PD and state PD, he said. My family and friends are extremely appreciative of the professional work of both departments. They kept us informed, they kept us in the loop, they let us know how progress was going.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Valerie M. Fridland, University of Nevada, Reno

(THE CONVERSATION) Movie legend has it that the identity of Luke Skywalkers father was always hiding in plain sight  well, at least through a subtle naming clue. Darth Vader does, after all, have a distinct paternal ring to it linguistically. Indeed, had the big reveal been I am your fader it would have made a nice play on the heavy-breathing villains name with a nod to an old Dutch term for father.

The true origin story of Vaders moniker is not as cool as the myth. But as someone who studies the origins of words, I see the story providing an example of something that is real: the universality of the names used for fathers across all languages.

Considering that dads played a key part in populating the dawn of civilization, it is perhaps not that surprising that a label for the dude we call dad would emerge early in the development of languages. But, whether its papa, dada or vater, what is striking is the cross-cultural bias in the words used to describe him  and how the same names have stuck around over millennia.

Why pater is familiar

Tracking the linguistic evolution of modern father, we find it as far back as written English goes  with references to feadur or fadur or fdor in Old English texts from the seventh to 11th centuries. In Old Dutch there was fader; in Old Icelandic we find fair; in Old High German, a precursor to modern German, it was fater  now vater; and, finally, in Old Danish, fathr.

This uniformity strongly suggests this word was found in the languages early Germanic parent  that is, the source language from which all these Germanic languages descended.

But the similarity in terms used for father doesnt stop with this Germanic forefather. Related words are found across the entire Indo-European language tree  a large group of distantly related languages that stretches over most of Europe and a good bit of Asia. For instance, we find closely matching terms in Latin with pater, Sanskrits pitar and in Greek with pater  all older languages that developed separately from the Germanic line.

This means that the word father likely came from a long-dead source language, estimated to date back some 6,000 years. This single parent language  known as Proto Indo-European  spawned all these later languages and their shared word for paters.

But how did the p in pater morph into the f found in all the Germanic father words"?

Historical linguists have reconstructed the most likely sounds that were used in this hypothesized parent language. Since Ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit all have p, t and k sounds, their Indo-European source also probably had these, or closely related, sounds.

But as Germanic languages formed their own branch of the family tree, this p turned into an f. This explains why there is a p in Latin-based words like Pisces, podiatry and patriarchy, but f in the Germanic descended equivalents like fish, foot and father. This sound change was not random but followed what came to be called Grimms law, named for the very same brother Grimm who brought us "Hansel and Gretel.

Grimm noted a pattern of sound correspondences across Indo-European languages that suggested a series of regular changes must have occurred as Indo-European split into daughter languages. These changes likely started out as dialect variants that became more distinct as groups of speakers were separated and new languages evolved  with the shifted sounds.

The babas and the papas

One might expect closely related languages to share words for fathers, but even across languages in which there is no known evidence of a common ancestry the words for dad sound strikingly familiar.

Languages as distinct as Sino-Tibetan Chinese and Native American Washo use baba. In Nilo-Saharan Maasai, spoken in Kenya and Tanzania, its papa, and, in the Semitic language Hebrew, abba.

A similar bent is found in English, where children use the more intimate papa, dad or sometimes daddy as an alternative to the more formal father, especially when in trouble or getting bailed out of jail.

Dad and Daddy have grown in popular usage in recent decades:

This tendency toward similar vocabulary words suggests that something pretty universal must be driving it. And though at first d and p and b might not seem to be all that similar sounding, they are all part of a class of what are called stop consonants in linguistics. Stop consonants are sounds made with a short but complete obstruction of air flow through the mouth during their articulation.

Why does this matter to pops everywhere? Because stop sounds, along with vowels, are the earliest and most frequent sounds babies tend to babble  which means pa, ta, ba and da are all early infant vocalizations.

Also, repetition is a feature of both baby babble and what parents babble back. As a result, this specific babbling bent makes dadas, babas and papas  along with apas and abas  very popular things for little Carlos or Keisha to say while hanging out in the crib.

So, when dad happens by and hears what he interprets as his call sign, a celebratory first word commemoration commences, regardless of whether Junior actually intended it that way or not.

A universal papa

And this circles back to the origin story for the word father.

Linguists theorize that, at some early point in the development of the Indo-European language, the sound sequence pa  babbled in early speech and wishfully interpreted as referring to good ol dad  was combined with a suffix such as ter, possibly denoting a kinship relationship.

Looking at the evolution of language more generally, linguists cant say with certainty whether modern languages inherited the word from an undiscovered original early human language  likely African  or if this process occurred several times over the course of language history.

But what it does suggest is that dads have clearly been important enough throughout the history of humankind to merit special designation. And, unlike so many other words that have been shifted and reshaped or replaced over time by inherent linguistic pressures and language contact, the fondness for dadas, dads, fathers and papas seems to be unusually resistant to change.

So, whether you call him your papa, your baba or your abba, just be sure to call him, and let him know how well he, and his title, have stood the test of time.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/from-dada-to-darth-vader-why-the-way-we-name-fathers-reminds-us-we-spring-from-the-same-well-184370.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

John Logan, San Francisco State University

(THE CONVERSATION) Starbucks Workers United won its 100th election on May 27, 2022  fittingly, in Seattle, the companys hometown. And the union has notched another 46 victories in the just over two weeks since then. It comes six months after organizers won their first two union victories, in Buffalo, New. York.

Although each unionized workplace is small, with a couple dozen employees apiece, the campaign is already, by my reckoning, one of the most successful unionizing efforts in recent U.S. history, with victories in 28 states. Over 100 additional Starbucks outlets have petitioned to unionize and are awaiting elections in the coming days and weeks, and several other votes are awaiting resolution. Starbucks has strongly opposed the campaign, and the union has lost about 22 elections so far.

The overwhelming success of the Starbucks labor organizing efforts is inspiring workers at other retailers, such as Amazon, REI, Apple and Trader Joes, which have all seen an increase in organizing activity or even their first unions.

When the Starbucks unionizing movement was in its infancy, few observers believed that the campaign could spread so quickly or win so many elections, often by huge margins. Indeed, a few years ago, most union officials would have thought it impossible to organize a young and often transient low-wage service sector workforce spread across almost 9,000 small stores. And most union drives in recent decades, such as at Walmart and FedEx, have failed.

So why has the Starbucks campaign been so much more successful?

As a scholar who has studied corporate opposition to unions for 20 years, I believe there are five key reasons.

1. Shift in sentiment

The Starbucks campaign would, I believe, likely not have been successful three years ago, before the pandemic hit.

After March 2020, service workers faced increasingly difficult, stressful and dangerous workplace conditions. For example, they were often tasked with enforcing mask and vaccine mandates and dealing with unruly customers who refused to comply. And their jobs on the front lines put them at greater risk of contracting COVID-19. At the same time, surveys showed many workers didnt think their employers were treating them with respect or providing adequate safety equipment.

As a result, record numbers of workers  especially in the service sector  began quitting their jobs in mid-2021 in what became known as the great resignation. The labor shortages created more pressure on overworked employees, and the huge rise in mobile app orders compounded the workplace stress for Starbucks baristas.

These workers that didnt quit their jobs, however, became more emboldened and seized an opportunity to get organized. Today, support for unions in the U.S. is at its highest since 1965, at 68%.

2. A role model

Starbucks Workers Uniteds strategy involved unionizing one store at a time by using a worker-driven model that could be replicated easily and quickly.

At the start of the campaign in December 2021, Starbucks management tried, and failed, to require the union to win a majority of all Starbucks workers in Buffalo  not just those at individual stores. Its likely pro-union workers would have lost such an election, but the National Labor Relations Board rejected Starbucks arguments.

This allowed workers to organize each store one at time and develop a replicable model, enabling it to spread rapidly. In fact, when commentators describe the campaign as spreading like wildfire or similar terms, it obscures the innovative and deliberate process that has been behind its remarkable success.

Workers typically find out about the campaign through traditional or social media, and then reach out to organizers behind the campaign. They then have a Zoom meeting with a worker-organizer at a union store who explains how to print cards, how to discuss signing up for the union with co-workers, how to write a letter to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz requesting union recognition, and how to petition the NLRB for an election. This pattern has been repeated multiple times throughout the country, even in places in which private-sector unions are rare.

There is no obvious reason why a similar model could not work at other nonunionized companies with young, progressive workforces, such as Trader Joes, Apple and REI. Indeed, Trader Joes employees at a Massachusetts store just filed to create the companys first union, and REI employees in Manhattan voted to form the companys first unionized store in March 2022.

3. Starbucks progressive rep

Another factor that helped Starbucks pro-union workers is the retailers self-proclaimed progressive reputation, as shown through its public support for issues such as LBGTQ rights and racial justice.

Naturally, this has attracted workers who tend to be young, college-educated, more progressive and thus more inclined to support a union. The flipside of Starbucks ostensible progressivism is that its efforts to prevent workers from forming unions are seen by some employees as hypocritical.

In addition, Starbucks tendency to speak out on progressive issues has increased media attentionsurrounding workers efforts to organize and Starbucks reaction to them. This has helped the campaign spread a lot faster and farther, encouraging like-minded baristas elsewhere to join.

4. Fellowship of the baristas

The campaign has also benefited from the strong sense of community that already existed among Starbucks young staff.

Starbucks has long fostered a sense of camaraderie between its workers. For example, it calls them partners, implying they arent just casual employees but play a meaningful role in the company. Lawyers and hedge funds use the term partners to refer to employees who have an ownership stake.

Although workers said they often felt like they werent treated as such, this helped create a close-knit community at individual workplaces. Thats why most of the union votes were either overwhelming or unanimous. In the words of the union, the campaign is about partners becoming partners.

5. Grassroots mojo

Unlike labor union drives of the past, which have been more typically directed by national or regional leaders, Starbucks workers have driven the unionizing campaign largely on their own. This decentralized, grassroots dynamism is what has allowed the unionizing campaign to spread so widely and so quickly.

The old way of organizing was dependent on union organizers approaching workers at each location, making it slower and much more cumbersome. Some labor leaders are now more ready to embrace organizing at a more grassroots, worker-to-worker level.

When workers take the lead, it means youre more likely to have local buy-in  the organizers are inside the workplace and known and trusted by their co-workers  and doesnt require them to wait for other union leaders to recognize interest in forming a union. And in this way, the activist workers dont simply feel like they are part of a union but they themselves are the union.

For these reasons, I believe there is every chance that eventually a majority of Starbucks stores will become unionized. And if the Starbucks model continues to be successful, it could encourage workers at other companies to adopt the same playbook. In fact, we may be on the cusp of a union revival like American workers havent seen in almost a century.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/grassroots-mojo-and-4-other-reasons-starbucks-workers-have-been-so-successful-unionizing-184220.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Ohio school districts could begin arming employees as soon as this fall under a bill signed into law Monday by GOP Gov. Mike DeWine.

The law, as enacted, requires up to 24 hours of training before an employee can go armed, and up to eight hours of annual training. The training programs must be approved by the Ohio School Safety Center, and DeWine announced he's ordering the center to require the maximum 24 hours and the maximum eight hours.

Schools can provide additional training if they wish, DeWine said.

Before announcing the bill signing, the governor outlined several other school safety measures he and lawmakers have promoted, including $100 million for school security upgrades in schools and $5 million for upgrades at colleges.

The state is also adding 28 employees to the school safety center to work with districts on safety issues and to provide training under the new law. Ohio has also provided $1.2 billion in wellness funding for schools to address mental health and other issues, the governor said.

The new law is giving schools an option, based on their particular circumstances, to make the best decision they can make with the best information they have, DeWine said.

The governor said his preference remains that school districts hire armed school resource officers, but said the law is another tool for districts that want to protect children. He emphasized that it's optional, not a requirement.

Several big-city Ohio mayors  all Democrats  joined together Monday afternoon to criticize the measure and failure of Republican lawmakers to consider any gun control proposals. The mayors are seeking universal background checks, red flag laws to take firearms away from anyone who is perceived a threat, raising the legal age for gun purchases to 21, and a ban on assault rifles like the kind used in the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting that killed 19 elementary students and two teachers.

All of these things are common sense, said Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz. Were in a situation where we cant pass legislation that 95% of our citizens support.

Also Monday, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, DeWines Democratic opponent for governor, criticized DeWine for signing the armed school employees bill, saying he had failed to make good on his promise to address gun violence after a mass shooting in Dayton killed nine people and wounded more than two dozen in August 2019.

Whaley also criticized DeWine for previously signing bills that eliminated Ohioans' duty to retreat before using force  the so-called "stand your ground bill  and made a concealed weapons permit optional for those legally allowed to carry a weapon. The concealed weapons change took effect Monday.

The politics got hard and Mike DeWine folded, Whaley said. Nine people in Dayton was worth the political risk.

In the wake of the Dayton massacre, DeWine announced his STRONG Ohio plan to address gun violence. His proposals include higher penalties for violent felons caught with guns and ensure that mentally ill people dont have guns if a court deems them dangerous to themselves and others.

Cracking down on violent felons is also a way to protect children, the governor said. We're seeing a lot of children who are killed not in school, but in their own homes, on their own streets," DeWine said. "And they're killed by violent offenders, and they're usually repeat violent offenders, who are shooting randomly, or shooting at somebody and the kid gets in the way.

Last year, 120 children died of gunfire, compared to 96 in 2020 and 71 in 2019, according to state Health Department data.

DeWine on Monday once again called on fellow Republican lawmakers to approve those measures, though they've shown no interest in the bills so far.

Democrats have said the law sends the wrong message coming so soon after the Uvalde massacre. Republicans say the measure could prevent such shootings. Lawmakers fast-tracked the legislation to counter the impact of a court ruling that said, under current law, armed school workers would need hundreds of hours of training.

The measure is opposed by major law enforcement groups, gun control advocates, and the state's teachers unions. It's supported by a handful of police departments and school districts.

___

Gillispie reported from Cleveland.
In the early morning hours of June 3, Gaylyn Morris drove up to an Indianapolis pub in a dark blue Chevrolet Impala.

She allegedly told patrons that she suspected her boyfriend was cheating on her and that she had tracked him there using an Apple AirTag - a device designed to help people locate personal belongings. She asked them whether a man wearing dreads had been seen inside the bar, according to court records.

Witnesses told police that she soon found him, and after a heated confrontation with him and another woman, she allegedly "clipped" him with her car, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by the Indianapolis Star and reviewed by The Washington Post. As he fell to the ground, she allegedly backed over him, pulled forward and hit him again - for a total of three times - the court records said.

When police arrived, Andre Smith, 26, was pronounced dead at the scene - his body pinned beneath the vehicle, police said in a statement.

Police said Morris, 26, was arrested and accused of murder. Arrest records show that she is being held without bond.

It was not immediately clear Saturday whether Morris has an attorney.

Apple says its AirTags are designed to protect against unwanted tracking, but a review from The Post found that those safety features are not completely reliable, particularly for people who use Android devices.

Authorities said Morris told investigators that she and Smith lived together. She suspected that he had been cheating on her with another woman because he had not been coming home at night, according to authorities.

On June 2, she said she confronted him, telling him to pack up and leave, according to the affidavit obtained by the Star.

Morris initially denied tracking him, then eventually admitted that she had placed an AirTag in his back seat, authorities said. The woman with Smith, who was identified by the initials "T.N." in court records, told investigators that Smith had mentioned to her that he believed there was a GPS device on his car because Morris kept sending him text messages, saying she knew his whereabouts.

After showing up at Tilly's Pub & Grill, Morris spotted Smith and went into the bar, a witness told police.

Another witness claimed to police that once Morris was inside, she pointed at the woman with Smith and said she was going to "beat her." Witnesses said Morris then grabbed an empty beer bottle by the neck and took a swing at the woman, but Smith caught it and the three got into an argument, according to court records.

During the commotion, the group was asked to leave the bar, witnesses told police. Morris returned to her car a short time later, the affidavit said.

A witness told police that when he saw Morris driving her car toward Smith and the other woman, he stepped in front of the car to help them get away. But Morris sped around him and drove into Smith, the witness told police.

The driver's side tire ran over Smith's head, according to court records citing the witness. Smith's legs were trapped under the passenger-side tire, several witnesses added. A registered nurse told the police that she ran to the car and found Smith unresponsive.

"His eyes were open and he was breathing through his mouth. His head was wedged behind the driver's side front wheel, and his face was facing out," according to the nurse's account, which was detailed in the affidavit.

The nurse told police that she tried to check his pulse but that his arms were underneath his body. She said his breathing "was shallow and intermittent," the affidavit said.

Smith soon stopped breathing, she told police.

The Marion County Coroner's Office determined that Smith had died of traumatic asphyxia and that his death was a homicide, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Some of Smith's family members, who saw his body at the scene, said the image still haunts them.

His aunt, Reneka Day, told WISH-TV that Smith was "hit like an animal in the street."

"It replays every time I blink right now. It replays every time we have to talk about it. And when I'm asleep at night, I can only imagine what my sister is feeling right now," she told the news station.

Morris is due in court June 23, arrest records show.
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Ahmet T. Kuru, San Diego State University

(THE CONVERSATION) The Indian government finds itself in a diplomatic crisis following offensive remarks by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson, Nupur Sharma, on national television about the Prophet Muhammad and his wife, Aisha. The BJP has suspended Sharma from the position, but that has not been enough to quell the crisis. Over a dozen Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have condemned the Indian government and asked for a public apology.

This is just another incident of hate speech against Muslims, which has been rising in India since the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government came to power in 2014. The government has been criticized for several lynchings of Muslims by Hindu mobs with police indifference and judicial apathy over the past years. In 2019, the BJP passed a new citizenship law that discriminated against Muslims, and its Islamophobic attitudes recently encouraged some schools and colleges to impose a headscarf ban on students.

These discriminatory policies have a global significance because India has the worlds third-largest Muslim population, after Indonesia and Pakistan. Out of the estimated Indian population of 1.4 billion, about 210 million  15%  are Muslim.

As a Muslim, I am aware of the deep reverence for Prophet Muhammad, and I understand Muslim individuals resentment. The reaction of Muslim governments, however, reflect their political regimes. As my book Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment explains, most Muslim governments are authoritarian and concentrate on condemning sacrilege against Islam  more than advocating to protect the rights of Muslim minorities abroad.

Aisha: a powerful woman

The recent Indian case focused on Aishas age when she married the Prophet. Aisha is one of the most important, vigorous and powerful figures in Islamic history. The favorite wife of the Prophet, she was the daughter of the Prophets successor and closest friend, Abu Bakr. She became a leading narrator of hadith  the records of the Prophets words and actions  the teacher of many scholars and a military leader in a civil war.

According to a hadith record, Aisha was 9 years old when she got married. Some Muslims accept this record and see it normal for a pre-modern marriage, whereas other Muslims believe that Aisha was either 18 or 19 years old by referring to other records.

It is not possible to know the true facts of Aishas age. As Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl stresses, we do not know and will never know them. Sharma thus used a single narration, while ignoring alternative Muslim explanations, in her remarks.

Prioritizing blasphemy, not human rights

This is not the first time that Muslim governments have reacted to defamatory actions against the Prophet. The long list of incidents includes Irans Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeinis 1989 call on Muslims to kill novelist Salman Rushdie and the 2006 boycott of Danish products throughout the Middle East in reaction to a dozen cartoons published in a newspaper.

An interesting pattern is visible in Muslim governments attitudes: They are very vocal when it comes to the cases of verbal or artistic attacks on Islamic values, whereas they are generally silent about human rights violations against Muslim individuals.

Muslim individuals in India have complained about the violations of their rights for almost a decade, but Muslim governments did not show a noteworthy reaction to the BJP until this defamation incident.

Another example is China, which has been persecuting 12 million Uyghur Muslims for many years. No Muslim government showed any major reaction. Instead, these governments have focused on their material interests and disregarded how the Chinese state treats its Muslim minority.

This double standard can be explained by the widespread authoritarianism in the Muslim world. Out of 50 Muslim countries, only five are democratic. Most authoritarian governments in the Muslim world have blasphemy laws that punish sacrilegious statements and suppress dissenting voices. That these governments should demand the punishment of blasphemy and defamation from India or other non-Muslim countries follows from these policies.

Another characteristic of authoritarian Muslim governments is their own violations of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. In Pakistan, these violations have targeted the Ahmadiyya, Shia, Hindu and some other religious communities, while in Iran, ethnic minorities, including Azerbaijani Turks, Baluchis and Kurds, faced discrimination in education and employment. A rights-based discourse abroad, therefore, would contradict these governments policies at home.

Authoritarianism in the Muslim world has tragic consequences for Muslim minorities in India and elsewhere. Muslim governments short-term, emotional reactions to some defamation cases do not help improve the conditions of Muslim minorities, who actually need a more consistent and principled support.

The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. The Conversation is wholly responsible for the content.
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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  Evacuations are in effect in parts of northern Arizona as a wildfire about 6 miles (9 kilometers) north of Flagstaff steadily grew Sunday, authorities said.

Coconino National Forest officials said the Pipeline Fire was reported at 10:15 a.m. by a fire lookout and had burned approximately 4,000-5,000 acres by late Sunday, pushing about 15 miles (24 kilometers).

In connection with the fire, Forest Service law enforcement said they have arrested and charged a 57-year-old man with natural resource violations. The cause of the wildfire wasnt immediately known.

Coconino County Sheriffs officials said the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort and people living in the area of the west Schultz Pass Road must evacuate. People living in Doney Park and the area near Mt. Elden should be prepared.

Euelda King and her family evacuated their home for the second time this year because of wildfires. She hadnt settled back in from a springtime blaze before leaving again Sunday, this time able to grab photographs and clothing she didnt get earlier.

Here we go again, she said.

The family of 11 is planning to stay at the Navajo Nation casino, which is offering assistance to tribal members who evacuated.

The family was waiting in a parking lot ahead of road closure signs, watching smoke billow through the air and aircraft flying overhead.

The winds are high, and I think theyre going to have a little bit of a battle with it, King said.

Wind gusts were sweeping the smoke through Schultz Pass toward Doney Park and authorities said recreationists were being told to leave immediately, especially those in the Schultz Pass area.

The American Red Cross Arizona opened a shelter at Sinagua Middle School for residents who evacuated.

With this thing going as fast as it is, it could get much closer, of course hoping it doesnt, King said.

Authorities said 13 engines, nine crews, six prevention patrol units, three bulldozers and one water tender were involved in the fighting the fire. An Incident Management Team is scheduled to arrive Monday.

The Arizona Department of Transportation has closed U.S. Route 89. The department said in a Twitter post that there is no estimated time to reopen the road.
Three-story stone pagoda in Yongjangsagok Valley / Courtesy of Dale Quarrington





By Dale Quarrington







In total, Mount Nam is home to 122 temples and temple sites, 53 stone statues, 64 pagodas, 16 stone lanterns, 36 monuments, royal tombs and even a fortress. In fact, and alongside Bulguk Temple and Seokguram Hermitage in 1995, Mount Nam was included as part of the Gyeongju Historic Areas entry on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000.







Geographically, Mount Nam can be subdivided into four sections that are home to some of its better-known treasures.







In the northwest corner, you'll find Samneung Valley. Making the long and sometimes steep hike up the Samneung Valley trail, you'll find half a dozen historical Buddhist artifacts. One of the more prominent features of the valley is the "Stone Seated Buddha in Samneunggye Valley." This Unified Silla-era (668-935) statue is perched atop a mountain plateau. And the image appears to be Seokgamoni-bul (Historical Buddha). Sometime in its long past, the statue was disfigured  and then to make matters worse, it was put back together haphazardly using cement. Fortunately, around 2007, this past misdeed was rectified. And now, while not perfectly whole, it once again looks protectively down over the valley. Another interesting feature of the northwest part of Mount Nam, a 100-meter jaunt north of Sangseon Hermitage, is the "Large Seated Statue of Mireuk-bul." This seven-meter-tall image of the Buddha of the Future faces southwest with its serene features. While this Silla Dynasty (57 BCE  935 CE) masterpiece was once open to the public, the stairs are now closed and off-limits as part of a reclamation project by the Korea National Park Service. However, from the neighboring mountain peaks, you get an amazing view of both the statue and Gyeongju off in the distance.







Stone seated Buddha in Samneunggye Valley / Courtesy of Dale Quarrington





The large seated statue of Mireukbul / Courtesy of Dale Quarrington





To the northeast, you'll find a wonderful cluster of Buddhist treasures, such as Bori Temple. The main highlight to Bori Temple is the "Stone Seated Buddha in Mireukgok Valley." This beautifully preserved image of the Buddha, Seokgamoni-bul, dates back to Unified Silla. The statue of the Buddha sits atop a lotus flower pedestal, and combined, both the statue and the pedestal stand 4.36 meters in height. With its eyes half closed and a slight smile on its face, the statue is backed by a beautiful mandorla, covered with heavenly flowers and vines. On the backside of the mandorla, and almost completely faded, are the thin lines that outline the image of Yaksayeorae-bul (Medicine Buddha, and the Buddha of the Eastern Paradise). Overall, the statue is beautifully preserved.







Stone seated Buddha in Mireukgok Valley / Courtesy of Dale Quarrington





Another interesting feature in the northeast portion of Mount Nam is the "Rock-Carved Buddhas in Tapgok Valley." This is a massive rock that stands nine meters in height, and it's covered in 34 reliefs of images such as pagodas, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, monks, and Bicheon (Flying Heavenly Deities). Each cardinal direction of the square rock is covered in these beautiful reliefs. The "Rock Carved Buddhas in Tapgok Valley" once belonged to Sinin Temple; but now, only the reliefs and the rock remain.







Rock-carved Buddhas in Tapgok Valley / Courtesy of Dale Quarrington





Heading south, and having climbed the long valley that houses Chilbulam Hermitage, you'll find, rather remarkably, the only national treasure on Mount Nam. The "Rock-Carved Buddhas at Chilbulam Hermitage" are a two-part composition with a four-sided front stone that depicts Buddhas in the four cardinal directions. This is backed by a Buddhist triad that's carved directly on to the neighboring rock face. This Unified Silla masterpiece dates back to the 8th century.







Rock-carved Buddhas at Chilbulam Hermitage / Courtesy of Dale Quarrington





And as if this site couldn't get any better, above the "Rock-Carved Buddhas at Chilbulam Hermitage" is the "Rock-Carved Bodhisattva at Sinseonam Hermitage." While once a bit precarious to access due to lack of railings, visitors can now adventure up to this location just 100 meters beyond Chilbul Hermitage. Finally arriving at the stone relief of the Bodhisattva, you'll find an image of Gwanseeum-bosal (Bodhisattva of Compassion) greeting you on a rather narrow ledge. This relief dates back to the late 8th century. Gwanseeum-bosal wears a large, ornate crown, and the robe flows loosely from its body. Looking at the image of this Bodhisattva with just the sky in the background, it almost feels like both you and it are floating.







The rock-carved Bodhisattva at Sinseonam Hermitage / Courtesy of Dale Quarrington





And finally, in the southwest corner of Mount Nam, along the Yongjangsagok Valley and up a bit of a steep incline, you'll find a collection of three Korean Treasures. Of these three, it's the "Three-Story Stone Pagoda in Yongjangsagok Valley" that stands protectively like a sentinel. The mountain almost appears to be an extension of the three-story structure, almost as though the pagoda and the mountain are one. And the other interesting feature of this site and section of the mountain is the headless "Stone Seated Buddha in Yongjangsagok Valley." According to the Samguk Yusa, or "Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms" in English, the monk Taehyeon lived at Yongjang Temple. It was his regular practice to walk around a 16-foot-tall stone statue dedicated to Mireuk-bul in the courtyard of the temple. And the statue of Mireuk-bul would always turn its head to face Taehyeon. This is the very same image that the monk Taehyeon would circumambulate.







Stone seated Buddha in Yongjangsagok Valley / Courtesy of Dale Quarrington









So while often overlooked, Gyeongju's Mount Nam is one of those locations for people wanting to explore something a little different. Off the beaten path, you won't be disappointed with what you find on this holy mountain.









Dale Quarrington has visited over 500 temples throughout the Korean Peninsula and published three

. He runs the popular website, "

."






A 1972 FBI memo about my behavior at Kent State University was insignificant when I donated it to Yales Kent State Collection in 1977.

But by 2021 it took on a new and ugly meaning. Thats why archives are important. They save things that might grow in significance over time.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoovers sudden death at age 77 May 2, 1972, threw a monkey wrench into Kent State students and our previously announced plans to hold a vigil at the White House on May 4, the 2nd anniversary of the Kent State massacre.

I can just imagine that old fox and spymaster at the FBI saying, Over my dead body will those Kent State students demonstrate outside the White House.

If that was his wish, he got it  in reverse. His dead body literally canceled our demonstration.

Read these excerpts from a May 3rd, 1972, urgent memo from Cleveland FBI to the Washington, D.C., director of the FBI. Ironically, it was sent on the first day in 48 years that J. Edgar Hoover was not director since he had died the day before.

URGENT: 5/3/72 ...

TO DIRECTOR (ATTEN: DID)

FROM CLEVELAND (100-NEW)

CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE...

TWENTY FOUR HOUR VIGIL WHICH WAS SCHEDULED FOR THE WHITE HOUSE AND UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FOR MAY FOUR, NEXT, HAS BEEN CANCELLED. CANCELLATION WAS IN RESPECT FOR RECENT DEATH OF FBI DIRECTOR, J. EDGAR HOOVER.

VIGIL WAS BEING ORGANIZED BY KENT STATE UNIVERSITY (KSU) STUDENT PAUL KEANE, WHO HAS PREVIOUSLY SOLICITED SIGNATURES ON KSU CAMPUS TO PETITION PRESIDENT NIXON TO ORDER A FEDERAL GRAND JURY INVESTIGATION INTO SLAYING OF FOUR KSU STUDENTS BY OHIO NATIONAL GUARDSMEN DURING CAMPUS DISRUPTION, MAY FOUR, SEVENTY. ...

SOURCE FURTHER ADVISED HE WAS NOT AWARE OF ANY ATTEMPT BY KEANE TO INCLUDE LARGE NUMBERS OF KSU STUDENTS TO GO TO WASHINGTON D.C. ... (FBI caps)

I obtained this memo years after Hoovers death through the Freedom of Information Act.

To be honest it wasnt really respect for J. Edgar Hoover that caused us to cancel the previously announced demonstration. It was public relations.

We had scheduled our demonstration at the White House to occur on the second anniversary of the Kent State massacre of May 4, 1970.

If we went ahead with the vigil now two days after Hoovers death it would have seemed sacrilegious and in poor taste.

By the May 3, 1972, date of this memo, I already had a two-year personal history with the FBI.

They had called my parents Connecticut home the week after the shootings in May 1970 asking to interview me.

My father, a 57-year-old Nixon Republican and a labor relations negotiator, shouted from the next room as I spoke on the phone, Tell the FBI you will bring a witness and a tape recorder to the interview. The FBI backed off. I was surprised to hear my father protect his son from the Nixon government he supported.

Ever since then I had assumed my phone as a graduate counselor in Kent States dormitories was tapped by the FBI, which had 100 agents on the 18,000 student campus and in town by May 8, four days after the shootings investigating the tragedy. They were searching for weapons on the evacuated campus.

I even began signing off my phone conversations with Goodbye J. Edgar Hoover in defiance of possible wire-tappers, except I used a different term than goodbye  which cannot be repeated here.

Years later I wondered if I had been unfair to J. Edgar Hoover, until PBS aired a 2021 report on his unethical wiretapping of Dr. Martin Luther King.

When wiretaps revealed that King was having extramarital affairs, the FBI shifted their focus to uncover all evidence of his infidelity by bugging and taping him in his hotel rooms and by paying informants to spy on him. Eventually, the FBI penned and sent King an anonymous letter, along with some of their tapes, suggesting that he should kill himself.

King was assassinated in 1968, two years before the Kent State killings.

I was only 25 in 1970. Im proud that I championed free speech at Kent State for the next three years with J. Edgar Hoover  either dead or alive.

Paul Keane was born in New Haven and grew up in Hamden. He is a 1980 graduate of Yale Divinity School and a retired Vermont English teacher. In 1977 he co-founded with author Peter Davies Yale's Kent State Collection at Sterling Memorial Library.




The presidential National Security Office has held a meeting to discuss North Korea's firing of projectiles presumably from a multiple rocket launcher, the presidential office said late Sunday.







The shots were detected between 8:07 a.m. and 11:03 a.m. Sunday morning, and the NSO meeting was convened at 10:30 a.m. the same day to check the military's readiness posture, the office said in a notice to reporters.







During the meeting, presided over by First Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo, the participants "expressed concern that North Korea continues to enhance various weapons systems that pose a direct threat to our security, and reaffirmed the government's position of responding calmly and strictly, while continuing to monitor the situation," it said.







The results of the meeting were reported to National Security Adviser Kim Sung-han, who then reported them to President Yoon Suk-yeol. (Yonhap)






A damning new book lays the blame for Labour's collapse at the 2019 General Election firmly at the door of Sir Keir Starmer, the party's then-shadow Brexit secretary.

The Starmer Project: A Journey To The Right by Oliver Eagleton claims the two-faced Starmer told then-leader Jeremy Corbyn a second referendum was 'totally stupid' and 'not a realistic position'.

But unbeknown to Corbyn, Eagleton says Starmer was, in fact, holding secret talks with Lord Mandelson and figures from the People's Vote campaign.

At the 2018 Labour conference, Starmer  egged on by Mandelson  put a line in his speech saying that Labour 'must include campaigning for a [second] public vote and no one is ruling out Remain as an option'.

Labour party leader Sir Keir Starmer

But Starmer was instructed by Corbyn's office to remove the phrase 'remain as an option'. He agreed but then reinstated it without consulting the then-party leader, according to Eagleton, who writes for New Left Review.

As a result, the word 'Remain', which  until then  had been deliberately withheld from frontbench speeches, 'became the headline for the entire Labour conference'.

The Tories duly pounced, accusing Labour of betraying the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit in 2016.

Eagleton says Starmer had 'tied Labour and Corbyn to Mandelson, sealing Labour's electoral oblivion'. If Starmer becomes Prime Minister, can we trust him not to try to unpick Brexit all over again?

LABOUR FASHIONISTA

Labour's Deputy Leader Angela Rayner has a new wardrobe thanks to New York fashion brand Adrianna Papell.

According to the Commons register of MPs' interests, she has had 11 dresses, totalling 948, from the firm. The Papell website shows some of their frocks, which are on sale in John Lewis, go for up to $395 (320). Rayner, a woman of impeccable working-class credentials, clearly has more modest tastes.

Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy tweets: 'The fact Conservative MPs can't think of a better candidate for PM than Boris Johnson reveals everything wrong with their party.' Lammy nominated Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of Labour in 2015  and Corbyn, of course, led them to their worst defeat since 1935.

Tony Blair will be at Windsor Castle today when he becomes a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the most senior British Order of Chivalry. But he will be far from alone. As the Mail went to press, a petition objecting to his knighthood soared above 1.1 million and the organisers want people to demonstrate at Windsor.

'On June 13th, draped in robes and plumed hat, Tony Blair will be given the red-carpet treatment,' they say. 'That's why we will protest against the man responsible for the deaths of civilians and servicemen.'

When Labour won a seat in Hampstead, no one was more surprised than the winner, Adrian Cohen, who was in bed when he was called to the count.

Voters had a bigger surprise Cohen quit after three weeks. A by-election is due, to the dismay of the electorate and taxpayers.

Quote of the week: Former Tory minister Ann Widdecombe says: 'The Party that I used to belong to is just an undisciplined rabble that has lost its nerve.'

JEREMY CHANGES HIS TUNE

Surprisingly emollient words from Jeremy Hunt about the Prime Minister in a column in the Bordon Herald, a local paper in his South West Surrey constituency.

Jeremy Hunt

'I recognise that for our political system to work,' he wrote, 'MPs should generally support their Party, even when they may disagree with some decisions  otherwise how could any government pass any legislation?'

The article appeared in the issue dated Thursday, June 9. Is this the same Jeremy Hunt who only three days earlier, on the day of the no-confidence vote, warned Tory MPs that unless they dump Boris Johnson they would lose the next General Election?
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Given that this occasion hasn't changed much since the 14th century, when Edward III first gathered his knights in shining armour here at Windsor Castle, there were plenty of surprises at yesterday's procession and service for the Most Noble Order of the Garter.

Not only was the Queen not on parade for the first time anyone could remember, but one member of the Royal Family had been expunged at the last minute.

Though the Duke of York had managed to get himself included in the Order of Service, having been a Royal Knight of the Garter since 2006, he was removed from the main part of the proceedings with hours to go following what Palace officials called 'a family decision'.

The Duke is said to be desperate to return to public life, following his out-of-court settlement with a female sex accuser in February. It remains clear that the Duke has yet to convince his own family, let alone the public.

And, on top of all that, Windsor Castle was also being treated to a noisy protest yesterday.

Amid all these distractions, we almost overlooked the fact that the Duchess of Cornwall was making royal history as the Queen conferred on her one of the most esteemed of royal accolades.

I arrived to find a group of demonstrators outside the Henry VIII Gate voicing their unhappiness at Sir Tony Blair's elevation to the oldest order of chivalry in the world. In the six months since it was announced that the former Prime Minister has been appointed a Knight of the Garter  the most exalted level of knighthood  more than a million people have signed a petition demanding that it be rescinded. Yesterday, around 200 or so had turned up in the hope of disrupting his formal investiture and 'installation'.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrives for the Order of the Garter service at Windsor Castle, in Windsor, England, Monday, June 13, 2022

Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall with Queen Elizabeth II (centre) at Windsor Castle ahead of the annual Order of the Garter Service at St George's Chapel

Hundreds of people demonstrate outside Windsor Castle and march through the streets as former Prime Minster, Tony Blair, is knighted and receives the Order of the Garter

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie Blair attend the Order Of The Garter Service at St George's Chapel on June 13, 2022 in Windsor, England

Former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair's wife Cherie Blair (centre) and their children Kathryn, Euan (centre-right), Leo (right) and Nicky Blair (left) arriving for the annual Order of the Garter Service

Some were veterans of the Stop The War movement, others waved Palestinian flags, while many had come in support of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder currently facing extradition to the USA.

The mighty, siege-proof medieval stonework ensured that the din  'Tony Blair/war criminal!' etc  echoing down Windsor High Street was scarcely audible on the other side of the castle walls.

A jumbo-sized Royal Standard denoted that the Queen was very much in residence. She was thoroughly enjoying the private aspects of yesterday's proceedings  the final investiture of new additions to the order and her reception and Waterloo Chamber lunch for all the members of the order and their spouses.

The Duke of York was also present for the lunch, having driven himself from the nearby Royal Lodge earlier. He then had to return there alone while everyone else processed down to St George's Chapel for the traditional service of thanksgiving for the order, minus the Queen herself. As with her recent Jubilee service of thanksgiving, she had reluctantly decided to forgo the challenge.

The annual 'Garter Day' procession remains one of the joys of the traditional summer 'season', often labelled 'the Ascot Vigil'. It is a homage not just to the ancient order created by Edward III and limited to 24 in total (plus royal knights and ladies from within the family) but also a homage to St George. Edward III made him the patron saint of the order and it is for this reason that St George became patron saint of England. In other words, this is an occasion steeped in heraldic and historic imagery.

Leading yesterday's procession were the Military Knights of Windsor (retired old soldiers who live within the precincts) followed by all the Heralds from the College of Arms, in their golden tabards. Next came the knights and ladies, with the newcomers at the front  Baroness Amos, late of the Foreign Office and now of the United Nations, and Sir Tony Blair. It was noteworthy that for the entire 400-yard procession he was the only knight with a (very large) Household Cavalry officer marching alongside him. Clearly, the castle authorities were wary of protestors infiltrating the ticketed crowd of 5,000 inside the castle precincts.

Though these were all staunch royalists who had applied for tickets in a public ballot months back, they had also been allowed to bring picnics. The prospect of a flying egg sandwich or sausage roll was omnipresent.

In the event, they all behaved with great respect for the occasion. All those to whom I spoke agreed that the absence of the Duke of York was a blessing. 'Another dose of Covid?' joked more than one. As for Sir Tony, views were mixed. 'It's the Queen's choice whom she knights and he did do good for Northern Ireland,' said Jackie Farmer from Southampton.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair attends the Order of the Garter Service at St. Georges's Chapel at Windsor Castle, Britain, June 13, 2022

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie exit St George's Chapel after the Order of the Garter service

Tony and Cherie Blair are pictured during the Order of the Garter service

Prince Andrew, Duke of York attends the Order of the Garter Service at St George's Chapel on June 17, 2019 in Windsor, England

'I did think 'surely not?' when I heard Blair was coming but we're here to see the Royal Family and to enjoy a wonderful occasion,' said Joan Manton from East Sussex, one of an eight-strong group from the Forest Row branch of the Women's Institute (it was, after all, the WI who famously booed Tony Blair at their annual conference in 2000).

Behind them all came the royal knights and ladies. The last-minute omission of the Duke of York had led to a royal reshuffle with the Earl of Wessex moving up and processing alongside the Duke of Cambridge. Bringing up the rear was the Prince of Wales processing with the Duchess of Cornwall in her new robes. Previously, royal consorts had to be Queen to become a Lady of the Garter. This is, therefore, a signal honour for the Duchess.

After the service, the royal couple were joined by the Cambridges for a carriage ride back up to the castle, amid much laughing and waving. The crowds reciprocated.

Sir Tony and Lady Blair left, anonymously, in a blacked-out Range Rover.
The rule of law is essential to civilisation. But rule by lawyers is a catastrophe for democracy, making governance by elected representatives impossible and ensuring the triumph of narrow, vested interests.

And that is precisely what has happened with the Government's attempted crackdown on illegal immigration, much of which is organised by criminal gangs of people smugglers across the English Channel.

In response to mounting public concern about this illicit and life-threatening trade, the Home Secretary Priti Patel came up with a bold, imaginative scheme whereby illegal migrants who use this route would be liable to be deported to the African republic of Rwanda. Her plan, agreed by the Rwandan government, aimed to act as a deterrent to potential asylum seekers and so break the business model of the traffickers.

But now her policy is being systematically torn apart by an unaccountable coalition of politically motivated lawyers, Left-wing trade unions, subsidised pressure groups and radical activists  all of them ruthlessly exploiting the judicial system to thwart our democratically elected Government as it tries to enact one of its key, and most popular, measures. Today the first flight should take place from London to the Rwandan capital Kigali under the new scheme.

Indeed, last Friday, in a case brought by human rights lawyers claiming it was unlawful, the High Court ruled that the deportations were perfectly legal and could go ahead.

Yesterday, those same lawyers lost their challenge in the Court of Appeal when the flight was again declared legal.

Home Secretary Priti Patel makes a statement in the House of Commons in London, following a scheme designed to crack down on migrants landing on British shores after crossing the Channel in small boats by sending them to Rwanda

Human rights protesters demonstrate outside the Home Office in London, Britain, 13 June 2022. An Appeal Court judge has ruled against stopping the UK Home Office from flying asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda

And yet, despite this double defeat for the human rights lobby, the deportation is still in jeopardy because the lawyers have lodged a barrage of claims on behalf of individual asylum seekers to thwart the aircraft's passage to Kigali.

Originally the plane was meant to take 130 deportees, but that number had been whittled down to single figures yesterday evening. And as this paper went to print, there remained the very real possibility that not a single passenger would be left on board.

Surveying the political wreckage they have created, the lawyers and their allies might be feeling smug today. Yet they should really be feeling shame. For all their posing as humanitarians, they have in effect collaborated with the cross-channel criminal gangs.

As a consequence of their judicial victory, they have not only given a boost to this evil trade but have also put more lives at risk on one of the busiest sea routes in the world.

Already 10,000 people have made the journey across the Channel in rickety boats this year  111 on Sunday alone  and that total will only grow rapidly if the Rwanda deterrent is seen to be so easily and continually thwarted. The anti-Patel brigade likes to trumpet its morality, but in truth these self-righteous courtroom warriors are infused with hypocrisy.

They talk about the cruelty of the Tory Government  one noisy group Care4Calais has called the policy 'barbaric'  yet in their support of the Channel anarchy they are actually propping up an illegal immigration system that rewards those with the most cash and physical strength instead of the asylum seekers who follow the right procedures and may have more deserving cases.

Border Force and the military escort migrant ashore at Dover Docks in Dover, United Kingdom on June 13, 2022

Hundreds protest against the Rwanda deal at the Home Office on June 13, 2022 in London, England

A further hypocrisy can be found in their eagerness to paint Rwanda as some kind of African hellhole  this from the very metropolitan liberals who are usually keen to signal their virtue by 'embracing' other cultures.

Indeed, many Rwandans have been appalled at the way their emerging nation has been trashed for political ends.

As well as hypocritical, the anti-Rwanda coalition is also deeply dishonest. Its propaganda likes to pretend that all those who take to dinghies to cross the Channel are fleeing for their lives.

Mark Serwotka, the hard-Left leader of the Public and Commercial Services Union  representing large numbers of the civil service and which has been involved in the court cases  moans that the Government should show 'respect' for 'desperate people'.

Similarly a lawyer who represents the Asylum Aid charity told the BBC yesterday that the deportees 'are highly vulnerable, deeply traumatised individuals who are seeking safe haven here'.

But these heart-tugging descriptions are questionable at best. Most of those attempting to cross the Channel are physically fit, single young men who are already in France, one of the safest, most civilised countries on earth.

What's more, cynicism is piled upon dishonesty. The human rights industry happily takes vast sums from the British public in legal aid and grants  no less than 80million is given annually to the United Nations' refugee agency, which has also taken part in the court cases  yet shows nothing but contempt for British public opinion and our elected government.

Instead, it uses legislation in ways that were never intended. One of its favourite weapons is the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Article 8 which protects privacy and family life.

But the convention, enshrined in British domestic law through the 1998 Human Rights Act, was meant to tackle genuine persecution, not to act as a prop for claims brought by economic migrants.

It is some achievement by the lawyers to have given the noble cause of human rights such a bad name through their own politicised conduct.

Just as manipulative is their increasing resort to the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, which aimed to deal with real instances of sex trafficking, domestic servitude and exploitation through forced labour. It would be a tragedy if this well-intentioned measure were to become another tool of people smugglers.

But it seems there is no stopping this sanctimonious cabal.

For what lies behind all this legal posturing is a kind of political fundamentalism  a pro-immigration zealotry and open door fanaticism.

Border force help bring in migrants attempting to cross The Channel

Protesters are pictured demonstrating against the Rwanda deportation scheme in London

There is no type of border control, never mind deportation, which would be acceptable to them. They do not even believe in such a concept as illegal immigration. And their actions in the courts encourage mimicry on the streets by Left-wing protesters who now use physical force to prevent deportations.

That happened in Peckham, south London, on Saturday when a large crowd forced police to release a suspected illegal immigrant from the back of their van before he was taken into detention.

After the incident, local Labour councillor Reginald Popoola tweeted: 'Really proud of our community for turning out today and resisting. Peckham people power!'

Just as anarchy in the Channel is a disaster, so it would be a calamity to tolerate the kind of immigration free-for-all that Councillor Popoola envisages.

If any citizen from around the world was entitled to live here, public services, the welfare system, housing, healthcare  all our civic infrastructure would quickly be put under intolerable strain.

As it is, the pressures are already immense from our weakened border controls. Contrary to the myth-making of the metropolitan class, the problem with the Tories on immigration is that they have been too soft rather than too hard.

Incredibly, in the last year alone, more than one million foreign nationals were allowed to settle here, easily a record and around twice the scale of the number of people who arrive during the peak years of the last Labour government. Meanwhile, the asylum backlog is growing and deportations are falling, with the taxpayer now forced to fork out 5million a day in hotel bills for asylum seekers who are waiting for their claims to be assessed.

Miss Patel's Rwandan scheme should have been the first step in taking back control. But, as this week's events have proved, proper progress won't be made while the self-righteous nexus of lawyers and activists continues to hold sway.
South Africa: KZN teams to combat economic infrastructure crime

The South African Police Service (SAPS) in KwaZulu-Natal has launched the Specialised Multi-Disciplinary Economic Infrastructure Task Teams (EITTs) in an effort to curb the scourge of damage to and theft of economic infrastructure in the province.

Deputy Provincial Commissioner for Policing in KZN, Major General Phumelele Makoba, officially launched the EITTs on Monday.

The launch comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his State of the Nation Address in February, said the ongoing damage to and theft of economic infrastructure has damaged confidence and severely constrained economic growth, investment and job creation.

The President said the country needs to confront the criminal gangs that invade construction sites and other business places to extort money from companies, saying this requires a focused and coordinated response.

Addressing the launch at the Durban Central police station, Makoba urged all role-players to work together in an integrated manner to stem the scourge and bring the perpetrators to book.

We are convinced that the perpetrators of these crimes are repeat offenders and we need to strike a blow to these criminal syndicates, and bring an end to the theft and destruction of our essential infrastructure.

The EITTs will focus on the following areas:

 Non-ferrous metal theft (e.g. copper cable theft);

 Essential infrastructure crimes (eg. tampering, damaging or destroying of infrastructure related to energy, transport, water, sanitation and communication services);

 Critical infrastructure crimes (e.g. pipeline fuel theft);

 Extortion at construction and or economic sites; and

 Combating of illegal mining and illicit trafficking.

Three teams were formed that will be dealing with these crimes and they will be based in the Ethekwini, Umgungundlovu and King Cetshwayo Districts, where these crimes are most prevalent.

The SAPS in KZN said the teams consist of various disciplines from the police, government departments, other law enforcement agencies, State-owned entities, cellular telephone providers and the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation.

The EITTs will ensure the integration of operational processes, resources and intelligence across all operational environments of the SAPS under a single command in order to successfully address economic infrastructure related crimes and extortion in a coherent and synergised manner, SAPS said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-06-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Child labor common in U.S. despite calls for change

Xinhua) 13:33, June 13, 2022

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Children are the future of a nation and citizens of tomorrow. However, in the United States, a self-proclaimed "beacon of human rights," children are not truly protected, and child labor is common.

As this year's World Day Against Child Labour falls on Sunday, the United States should seriously examine child labor at home and take action to protect its children.

FARM WORK DANGEROUS FOR CHILDREN

Farming is one of the deadliest jobs in the United States, twice as deadly as law enforcement, five times firefighting and 73 times Wall Street investment banking, while children aged 15-17 are four times more likely to die on a farm than in other workplaces, data from the U.S. Department of Labor revealed.

Under the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act, children above age 12 can legally work unlimited hours on farms of any size with parental permission, as long as they do not miss school, and those above age 16 working in agriculture can do jobs experts deem particularly hazardous. There is no minimum age for children to work on small farms or family farms.

"Children as young as 12 are being hired to do backbreaking work on U.S. farms, at risk of serious injuries, heat stroke, pesticide poisoning, and even death," noted Margaret Wurth, a researcher at U.S.-based organization Human Rights Watch.

Some argue that U.S. child labor in agriculture is legally protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Nonetheless, despite rapid technological and automation advancements, as well as mounting evidence of occupational hazards, the Act has remained essentially unchanged since its adoption in 1938.

According to official statistics, in 2019 alone, U.S. law enforcement officers found 858 cases of child labor in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and reports from some U.S. industry associations have found that there are about 500,000 child farmworkers in the country.

In 2012 alone, at least 1,800 U.S. children were injured during farming. Between 2003 and 2016, more than half of U.S. child deaths in the workplace occurred in agriculture-related accidents. Farm-workers make up less than a fifth of America's child workforce, yet they suffered more deaths between 2003 and 2013 than all other child workers combined.

CHILDREN VULNERABLE IN DECISION-MAKING

The Labor Department did propose updated hazardous work lists on farms in 2011, which would have removed children from most tobacco work. However, this elicited an angry response from interest groups, who argued that the cost of labor would skyrocket in agricultural production and successfully convinced the department to withdraw the planned rule change.

The approximately 500,000 child farmworkers cannot push for reform on their own because they are not entitled to vote, the only tool the public has to influence the government's agenda, let alone form a constituency to which politicians can appeal in elections.

The lack of commitment to end child labor is not confined to U.S. borders. Among all members of the International Labor Organization, the United States has ratified fewer conventions than most other countries.

One convention left unsigned by Washington is the Minimum Age Convention, which specifies that "the minimum age ... shall not be less than the age of completion of compulsory schooling and, in any case, shall not be less than 15 years."

Furthermore, the United States is the only country in the world that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Even many Americans have never heard of the convention and did not know that the United States stands alone in its unwillingness to ratify it.

That unwillingness is "an epic failure on the part of our country," said Rebecca London, an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, together with Catherine Ramstetter, founder of U.S. non-profit Successful Healthy Children, in their article published Saturday on the Hill.

They called for actions to "rectify" the failure, "if only we truly believed that children have rights: rights which deserve to be made explicit so as to be considered paramount in our institutions and policies."

Up to now, Washington has taken few significant actions. Not every child has a typical childhood; still, far too many children have their childhoods cut short. Yet few countries and governments would sit on their hands for decades.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)




Prosecutors sought an arrest warrant Monday for former Industry Minister Paik Un-gyu over allegations that while in office he forced the heads of 13 energy-related state firms to step down.







Paik, the former Moon Jae-in administration's first minister of trade, industry and energy, is under suspicion of forcing the resignation of heads of state-run energy companies who were appointed under the preceding Park Geun-hye government, shortly after he took office in 2017.







Prosecutors questioned Paik last week on charges of abuse of power.







As part of the investigation, prosecutors in May searched Paik's residence and his office, and the buildings of six energy-related state agencies affiliated with the ministry, and seized a computer and other materials.







The then main opposition Liberty Korea Party, a predecessor of the now ruling People Power Party, lodged a criminal complaint against Paik, ex-Vice Industry Minister Lee In-ho and three other high-level ministry officials in 2019 in what is dubbed the "industry ministry blacklist" scandal. (Yonhap)






A father has revealed how his son nearly died and was left with severe brain damage after a table's 293kg granite plinth dropped on his head in an 'avoidable accident' at school.

On March 21, 2018, Frenchman and solicitor Didier Hoff was taking part in a conference in Paris when he received a call no parent wishes to experience.

He was told by The Royal London Hospital that his son, Joshua, then aged 6, was in need of a live-saving operation and had merely hours to live.

The youngster had been enjoying his lunch time in the playground at Vineyard School, in Richmond, and crawling under a table - only for one of the 293kg sides to fall on top of his head.

It took four adults to lift the plinth off of Joshua, who was then airlifted to hospital while his French mother-of-two Elisa raced from their home in Twickenham to be with her son.

Joshua, who spent two months in a coma, suffered severe brain injuries, facial damage, vision impairment - and his parents were told on his third day of being on life support that they should consider funeral arrangements for their son.

However, Joshua, now 10, defied the odds and woke up after two months, before spending a further four months in rehab. The family now live in Italy, having moved there so the youngster could go to a private school best suited to his needs.

Didier is now sharing his family's story to raise awareness about the 'dangerous' tables - which are still thought to be found in schools across the UK - and encourage more regular inspections on outdoor furniture in playgrounds.

A father has revealed how his son (pictured) nearly died and was left with severe brain damage after a table's 293kg granite plinth dropped on his head in an 'avoidable accident' at school

On March 21, 2018, Frenchman and solicitor Didier Hoff was taking part in a conference in Paris when he received a call no parent wishes to experience. He was told by The Royal London Hospital that his son, Joshua (pictured after the accident), then aged 6, was in need of a live-saving operation and had merely hours to live

The youngster (pictured recently) had been enjoying his lunch time in the playground at Vineyard School, in Richmond, and crawling under a table - only for one of the 293kg sides to fall on top of his head

The Sheldon Picnic table (pictured) involved in the accident was manufactured by Langley Marketing Limited trading as Langley Design, while Architype Ltd was the lead consultant/architect

The Sheldon Picnic table involved in the accident was manufactured by Langley Marketing Limited trading as Langley Design, while Architype Ltd was the lead consultant/architect.

Synergy Construction and Property Consultants was involved in arranging and overseeing the installation of the table at the school, run by the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames, in spring 2015 as part of a wider extension and refurbishment project.

Following a four-year legal battle for the family, all four parties have consented to judgment being entered against them, revealed Didier.

Described as 'lively' and 'intelligent with a high IQ' before his accident, Joshua has re-learnt how to walk, speak and is in therapy everyday after school to improve his English, handwriting ability and behavioural management.

Speaking exclusively to FEMAIL, Didier, who also shares daughter Elena, seven, with Elisa, recalled: 'The table wasn't set up properly and [Joshua] was playing under the table.

'A kid went on the table above and jumped on it and by jumping on it, the concrete plinth fell on my son's head. It actually crushed it.'

Joshua was rushed to hospital by a London's Air Ambulance team and received urgent medical treatment - while his father rushed back from Paris after being told he 'didn't have hours to wait'.

It took four adults to lift the plinth off of Joshua (pictured with his father, right), who was then airlifted to hospital while his French mother-of-two Elisa raced from their home in Twickenham to be with her son

Joshua (pictured in hospital), who spent two months in a coma, suffered severe brain injuries, facial damage, vision impairment - and his parents were told on his third day of being on life support that they should consider funeral arrangements for their son

However, Joshua (pictured), now 10, defied the odds and woke up after two months, before spending a further four months in rehab. The family now live in Italy, having moved there so the youngster could go to a private school best suited to his needs

Describing the day of the accident and the call he received from doctors, Didier said: I realised things were serious when I got the call from the hospital and they said "We just spoke to your wife, we want to talk to you.

And he said, we need you to authorise an operation and I said my wife can sign all that, and I said but anyway, I'll be there in two hours, and they said "you don't have two hours". So I thought that he would probably be dead by the time I got there.

He continued: 'He was going to die. When we got to the hospital, the doctor told us "you need to - because we are French - you need to actually tell us if you want to have a funeral in France or in the UK, so you need to start doing the paperwork".

'On day three of our son being on life support, we had a panel of six doctors who told us, "he will never basically breath by himself. He will never eat, he will stay [like this] for the rest of his life".

'So their advice was to unplug him. We said "no". We had the same discussion on day six. And we said "no". Again, we said "give him time".

'And on day 20, they told us he is now breathing on his own, which means that if we take the machine out, he will survive. But he will be in a coma for the rest of his life, which at that time was 20 years. He was estimated to live 20 years.

Didier is now sharing his family's story to raise awareness about the 'dangerous' tables - which are still thought to be found in schools across the UK - and encourage more regular inspections on outdoor furniture in playgrounds

Speaking exclusively to FEMAIL, Didier, who also shares daughter Elena, seven, with Elisa, recalled: 'The table wasn't set up properly and [Joshua] was playing under the table.'

'And so we spent two more months like that and then he finally woke up. So he was nearly dead, we thought he was going to die.

'He hasn't died and he has also made some very good, very good recovery. Everything being you know, relative, he's able to walk, and he's got lots of speech issues. It's been a question of minutes, for him to die or not to die.'

Didier admitted that he and his wife had moments when their optimism and belief that their son was going to wake up wavered.

'When you get doctors, one after the other, who tells you "you're making a mistake", you start doubting to be honest, because you think about his life, and he also has a younger sister, so you think about our life.

'We never fully doubted it but we did doubt it. [But] we said "no we need to give him time, give him time, give him time" - because why kill him now when we can wait.

'We were always very optimistic that he could actually come back and yeah there was doubt but we were right. We didn't [give up] and we were right.'

Described as 'lively' and 'intelligent with a high IQ' before his accident, Joshua (pictured) has re-learnt how to walk, speak and is in therapy everyday after school to improve his English, handwriting ability and behavioural management

When Joshua (pictured before the accident) woke up from his coma, he could barely see and couldn't walk or speak - but thanks to his stay at The Children's Trust's specialist centre in Tadworth, Surrey, he gradually made progress before returning to the school where he had the accident

When Joshua woke up from his coma, he could barely see and couldn't walk or speak - but thanks to his stay at The Children's Trust's specialist centre in Tadworth, Surrey, he gradually made progress before returning to the school where he had the accident.

This was so he could be more aware of his surroundings while suffering through his partial loss of vision, and was on the advice of medical professionals.

Two years later the family decided to move and found a small private school in Italy that is better suited to Joshua's special needs.

'The trauma for the family is huge. I stopped working. I used to be a solicitor but I stopped working so I've been looking after him as well as the legal case,' said Didier.

'My wife works, I would say part time, she works from home. We build our lives around him, we live here now in Italy because we found the school here but it could have been any place. He is the centre of our lives. It hugely changed everything.'

Before the accident, Didier said Joshua was a 'very smart, bright kid, who was gifted in mathematics'.

Joshua pictured in front of a London Air Ambulance helicopter following his recovery in hospital

Joshua (pictured with his family) is now average at maths, which all things considered, his father said is 'very good', while English, anger management and emotional regulation still remains difficult for him

'His IQ was between 160 to 170. It's the reason why he's alive,' claimed the father. 'He was highly gifted. Obviously he was bilingual in English and French. Very, very lively, with a great future.'

Joshua is now average at maths, which all things considered, his father said is 'very good', while English, anger management and emotional regulation still remains difficult for him.

What causes a brain injury? A brain injury is caused by a shock - trauma - to the head. It also includes complications which can follow, such as damage caused by lack of oxygen, and swelling in the brain. Often there are several areas of damage throughout the brain. The issues a brain-injured person is likely to suffer from include: Physical changes, such as loss of movement

Problems with memory

Communication difficulties

Emotional changes Source: St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Advertisement

'We work on the anger management, on the emotional regulation, every day and he's much better than before,' said Didier.

'But obviously, you know, when it happened just after the accident, it was very difficult for him to interact with other children, He would have been very aggressive.'

Joshua's physical appearance was also impacted, with him being unable to feel anything on one side of his face, as well as his balance.

His father cares full time for the youngster and said: 'I will keep on doing what I'm doing for for a number of years.

'I would hope he would get independent in his life and you know, be able to live in a flat or whatever. We don't know if it's possible, but we'll see.

'It's been four years and we still fight and he has therapies every day. I always say, people do their job when they fix the table to save maybe five minutes time, since then, its been millions of hours of people working to try to put him back on track.'

The family are speaking out to raise awareness about the tables so that no one else suffers a similar fate in UK primary schools.

They have not spoken publicly before but want to raise the alarm about the risk posed by the tables after learning they are still probably in place at many schools and public places across the country.

In addition to raising awareness, the family - who are also sharing their story on their Instagram page @werestillstanding_ - are calling for regular professional inspections of playground furniture to keep children safe.

A joint statement issued by Synergy and Architype read: 'This was a terrible incident.

'As a third party, now insolvent, was involved in the installation of the playground furniture we felt that resolving this claim was in the best interest of Joshua and his family.

'This avoided putting the family through what might have been a lengthy court case. We were all very shocked and upset by this incident and our thoughts and sympathies are with Joshua and his family.'
Queen Letizia of Spain looked summer-chic in her favourite green Maje dress as she visited the Official College of Physicians in Madrid today.

The royal, 49, wore the flowing floral dress, which is cinched at the waist, and features a flattering V-neck, paired with cream heels for the outing.

The mother-of-two completed the look with minimal make-up and stunning drop gem earrings in pink and green.

She styled her glossy brunette hair with a centre-parting, while sweeping it over her shoulders for a regal appearance.

Queen Letizia of Spain once again stunned in her favourite green Maje dress as she visited the Official College of Physicians in Madrid

Mother-of-two completed the look with minimal make-up, stunning drop down gem earrings in pink and green and styling her glossy brunette hair with a centre-parting

She regularly tops the list of best dressed royals and is known to be partial to a midi-dress that hugs her every curve, while showcasing her toned physique.

The royal has worn her favourite dress, by French designer Maje, a number of times in the past, including a 2019 visit to the International School of Music in her hometown of Oviedo.

She also wore the gown during her trip to Palma de Mallorca with her husband soon after lockdowns eased in 2020 while meeting with social agents to learn about health protocols in hotels on the island.

Letizia has made many appearance in public since her father-in-law and Spain's scandal-hit former King Juan Carlos returned to the country in May, bringing to an end his nearly two-year exile in the Middle East.

Juan Carlos, 84, flew by private jet from Abu Dhabi to Vigo, in northwest Spain, where he was met by his daughter Elena, 58.

Letizia was first spotted in the green dress when she attended the International School of Music opening in Oviedo in July 2019

Letizia has made many appearance in public since her father-in-law and Spain's scandal-hit former King Juan Carlos returned to the country in May. Here she's arriving at the Official College of Physicians in Madrid

Letizia, whose work focuses on social issues such as children rights, culture, and education, met Felipe VI at a dinner party in 2002, and the pair enjoyed an instant connection, leading to their royal wedding in May 2004. Here she's arriving at the Official College of Physicians in Madrid

His wife Sofia, 83, and son King Felipe, 54, the reigning monarch, were not present.

Juan, who ruled from 1975 until his abdication in 2014, left Spain in August 2020 after becoming the target of several probes in Spain and abroad over alleged tax avoidance and questionable dealings in the Middle East.

In March Spanish state prosecutors paved the way for Juan Carlos' temporary return to Spain by shelving the criminal probes against him, saying any alleged crimes were spent or his Head of State status at the time protected him from prosecution.

The decision was taken after he paid millions of pounds in tax regularisations.

The Spanish Queen regularly tops the list of best dressed royals and is known to be partial to a midi-dress that hugs her every curve

Felipe and his wife, Queen Letizia, have worked hard to restore public trust in the royal family his father's scandals that have tarnished the reputation of the royal family.

Felipe has publicly distanced himself from his father.

Letizia, whose work focuses on social issues such as children rights, culture, and education, met Felipe VI at a dinner party in 2002, and the pair enjoyed an instant connection, leading to their royal wedding in May 2004.

The former newsreader is the granddaughter of a taxi driver and the eldest daughter of Jesus Jose Ortiz Alvarez, a journalist, and first wife Maria de la Paloma Rocasolano Rodriguez, a nurse and hospital union representative.

She attended public high school and did a degree at the Complutense University of Madrid. She later gained an MA in Audiovisual Journalism at the Institute for Studies in Audiovisual Journalism.
It has long been considered a luxurious treat reserved for the wealthy, but there's a new social media trend which is making caviar more accessible.

Caviar 'bumps', in which diners lick the fish eggs from between between thumb and forefinger, are being seen as a 'cool' way to eat the delicacy.

Harry Ferguson, operations director of Exmoor Caviar, explained how the method has become popular with younger people who are keen to capture snaps for their social media.

He told The Times diners enjoy the delicacy before downing a shot of vodka, comparing it to 'a tequila slammer', and adding: 'It's 5 for a bump, which is about three grams, but we're quite generous so it's usually more like four grams or five grams.

'It allows people to have caviar at a cheap price. People don't have to spend 100 for a tin.'

Meanwhile social media users have been going wild over the food trend, with many taking to Instagram to pose for a perfect snap with the delicacy balanced on their hand.

Caviar 'bumps', in which diners lick the fish eggs from between between thumb and forefinger, are being seen as a 'cool' way to eat the delicacy

Restaurants around the world are inviting diners to ditch the plate and instead, tuck into the delicacy from their hand

Harry Ferguson, operations director of Exmoor Caviar, said the method has become popular with younger people who are keen to capture a snap for their social media

Meanwhile on Instagram, the #CaviarBumps currently has over 1,361 tagged posts, while #CaviarBump and #Caviarbumping have a further 900 posts combined

While many social media users share snaps as they're about to tuck into the caviar, others post group shots of their hands covered in the delicacy

One woman shared a snap as she enjoyed the caviar bump, writing: 'Don't mind me, pretending to know what I'm doing.'

Another social media user described the delicacy as 'the only bump she needed' as she posed in a restaurant with friends.

Meanwhile a third added: 'What better practice is there to have a huge caviar bump on your hand to practice coordination?

'It's also a fun and tasty practice too! You get to practice while holding a thin potato chip, or mastering keeping those delicious beads on a succulent crispy chicken breast.'

One diner beamed as she tucked into a cocktail as well as her caviar bump as she posed for a shot for Instagram

Meanwhile other social media users keen to show off the experience posted close up photographs of the fish eggs

A group shot! Experts have compared the social media trend to akin to having an upmarket tequila slammer

Meanwhile another diner watched on as a waitress added a caviar bump to the top of her first (pictured)

The hashtag #CaviarBumps currently has over 1,361 tagged posts on Instagram, while #CaviarBump and #Caviarbumping have a further 900 posts combined.

Ferguson revealed how the idea behind the caviar bump was 'a really posh tequila slammer'.

He said: 'You do a bump of caviar and a shot of vodka. It tastes beautiful, especially if you have a really cold vodka from the freezer...

'About 50 per cent of people who do it ask their friend to take a picture, so it's great for social media.'

Caviar, the salt-cured eggs of numerous species of the sturgeon fish, was historically centred on wild stocks in the Caspian Sea.

Historically, real caviar has been so difficult to come by that they have only been readily available as canapes or a chilled spoonful at the parties of the elite.

The trendy new way to eat the delicacy has been touted as an accessible way for younger generations to enjoy the dish

Diners at restaurants across the world are invited to enjoy a 'bump' of the fish eggs from their hand in the latest social media trend

And while some enjoyed a cocktail with their delicacy, others posted snaps as they sipped on champagne

Much of the high cost of the luxury food is down to the fact that female sturgeon take a long time to reach egg-laying maturity.

The tiny nuggets of black gold take up to 14 years to be laid  with an 125g tin selling for around 160.

The Siberian sturgeon, the main species farmed at Exmoor, takes between four and five years to reach egg-laying maturity, while the white sturgeon females do not start laying eggs until they are 14 years old.

Once the fish can produce eggs, producers can either kill it and harvest the eggs and meat, or inject hormones into the living fish to make it release its eggs.

However, overfishing led to a ban on global sales of almost all wild caviar which led to the establishment of sturgeon farms.

Showing off the delicacy! Social media users have perfected the perfect caviar bump pose, raising one first to the camera so the upmarket snack is clearly visible

Some have touted the caviar bump as a way for the younger generation to taste the delicacy for a more affordable price

The trend has seen groups of social media users crowd together as they pose for a photo with the caviar bump on their hands

Another social media user described the delicacy as 'the only bump she needed' as she posed in a restaurant with friends

Earlier this year, scientists from Caviar Biotec and University College London revealed they had grown their 'clean' caviar in a biochemical liquid, using cells from a fish's egg sac that were then replicated in the lab.

The technology could see more caviar created in a 300 square-metre room than is produced globally every year  and cause prices to tumble.

In Europe, the lab-grown caviar is estimated to be available at a cheaper price in 2024 or 2025, according to the founder of Caviar Biotec.

Although it will still be expensive, cell-grown caviar will be a lot cheaper to produce.

'We have the exact same cell that turns into caviar and we are growing that in a liquid instead of inside a fish,' Ken Benning, founder of London-based Caviar Biotec, told the Times.

'There are no antibiotics, no killing of fish. It's as simple as that.'

Benning said the price of his lab-grown caviar will be less expensive than the high-end Beluga caviar, although he wouldn't give a specific price.

Benning said humanity is plundering the oceans to cater to its love of caviar and seafood generally, but that there will soon be 'no bloody fish left'. Lab-grown caviar offers a far more sustainable option.
The Menopause Mandate campaign group this morning presented their aims to press and MPs.

Group members, who formed on April 22 to campaign for better menopause advice and support for all, packed into the Jubilee Room at the House of Commons, which was awash with experts, supporters and celebrities.

Celebrity attendees included Mariella Frostrup, Davina McCall and Lisa Snowdon, who spoke and conducted interviews.

The event was also attended by MP Carolyn Harris, who conducted a menopause debate in Westminster Hall last week.

Mariella Frostrup gave a speech to open today's event and said: 'For too long we've been told to just "get on with it", and "grin and bear it".'

At today's event, Mariella then handed over to presenter Lisa Snowdon who spoke to Linda Wallwork, 54, from Harrow.

Group members, who formed on April 22 to campaign for better menopause advice and support for all, packed into the Jubilee Room at the House of Commons and posed for selfies with celebrity supporters including Lisa Snowdon, Mariella Frostrup and Davina McCall

Celebrity attendees spoke and conducted interviews with doctors and women who told their own stories of the menopause

The event was also attended by MP Carolyn Harris, who conducted a menopause debate in Westminster Hall last week

The 54-year-old was prescribed HRT and given a diagnosis of menopause after 10 years, a situation she described as frustrating.

Davina McCall then spoke to two doctors, Dr Shazhadi Harper, author of The Perimenopause Solution, and NHS GP Dr Juliet Balfour about what can be done to help women.

The morning was concluded with a call to action by Carolyn Harris MP.

This afternoon continues with presentations to MPs, with Penny Lancaster hosting as well as Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones, OBE, President of Psychiatry at the Royal Society of Medicine, Professor Claire Anderson, President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and Philippa Kaye, author of the M Word.

Mariella Frostrup gave a speech to open today's event and said that women have been told to just 'get on with it' for 'too long'

Women involved with the campaign including Davina McCall, Mariella Frostrup, Carolyn Harris MP and Lisa Snowdon grinned for a picture

The celebrity supporters and MPs have united to ensure that more is done when it comes to women's health and the menopause

Penny Lancaster smiled with Lisa Snowdon and Carolyn Harris MP ahead of hosting more presentations this afternoon

The group has already heard and received stories from 400 women since it launched in April. Many of whom have lost their jobs, relationships or were driven to the brink of suicide by the menopause. Here Davina McCall addressed guests

The group has already heard and received stories from 400 women since it launched in April, many of whom lost their jobs, relationships or were driven to the brink of suicide by the menopause.

One woman said: 'I forced myself to take a sabbatical as I felt I had total burnout from my primary school teaching position, where I struggled with insomnia, anxiety, exhaustion and low mood.'

While another said: 'I was thrown into surgical menopause at 40 and basically left to 'get on with it.'

And a third said: 'Things got on top of me at work and now I'm facing performance management and am signed off with stress.'

An issue which affects half of the population, according to the group, menopause is frequently misdiagnosed, misunderstood or ignored, leaving millions of women in the UK suffering from a lack of education and care.

The group said that the issue is frequently misdiagnosed, misunderstood or ignored, leaving millions of women in the UK suffering from a lack of education and care. Lisa Snowdon, Penny Lancaster and Carolyn Harris MP smiled together at the event

Davina is an advocate for women's health, and has posted about her own fitness journey online in the past

The group said that their campaign is continuing to make sure that women's health needs are not ignored

The campaign has already seen a HRT tsar appointed and pharmacists have been given the power to substitute alternative products without patients going back to their GP. Mariella Frostrup spoke at the start of the event

Menopause Mandate is seeking to achieve four main goals: education for all on the menopause, an end to scaremongering, prescribing women with the correct medication and making HRT affordable and accessible to all.

Their campaign has already moved in the right direction, with a HRT tsar appointed and pharmacists have been given the power to substitute alternative products without patients going back to their GP.

But the group are continuing their campaign in a bid to make sure women's health needs are not ignored.

Menopause Mandate is seeking to achieve four main goals: education for all on the menopause, an end to scaremongering, prescribing women with the correct medication and making HRT affordable and accessible to all. Davina addressed guests, pictured

The celebrities and special guests smiled and laughed as they stood for photographs during the campaign event in Parliament today

The menopause mandate members met to speak to journalists and MPs at today's event in the Houses of Parliament

Lisa Snowdon spoke to guest Linda Wallwork about her experience of the menopause at today's event for the Menopause Mandate

Davina McCall, another celebrity supporter, also gave a speech during today's event at the Houses of Parliament

Davina McCall spoke to two doctors, Dr Shazhadi Harper, author of The Perimenopause Solution, and NHS GP Dr Juliet Balfour about what can be done to help women
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Amber Heard has broken her silence on her 'unfair' defamation trial against ex-husband Johnny Depp for the first time since a jury ruled against her, accusing jurors in the case of being swayed by his 'fantastic acting' on the stand and his reputation as a 'beloved' Hollywood star.

The 36-year-old spoke out about the damning $8 million verdict against her in a three-part interview with the Today show, which was pre-recorded on Thursday and began airing on Monday morning.

During the sit-down with Savannah Guthrie - who last week interviewed Depp's legal team on the show and whose husband actually consulted for them during the trial - Heard also insisted that the jury's decision was influenced by what she called 'unfair social media representation' and by her husband calling on 'paid employees and randos' to testify on his behalf.

Heard, who flew to New York City on a private jet on Thursday to conduct the interview, doubled down on accusations made by her lawyer last week that the jury was swayed by social media, while also suggesting that they were won over by Depp's 'fantastic acting' on the stand.

'I'll put it this way, how could they make a judgment, how could they not come to that conclusion [that I couldn't be believed]?' she said. 'They had said in those seats and heard over three weeks of nonstop, relentless testimony from paid employees and towards the end of the trial, randos, as I say.

'I don't blame them, I don't blame them, I actually understand, he's a beloved character and people feel that they know him. He's a fantastic actor.

'Again, how could they after listening to three and a half weeks of testimony about how I was an uncredible person and not to believe a word that came out of my mouth.'

Earlier this month, a jury ruled that Heard defamed her ex-husband by publishing a piece about being a sexual assault survivor in the Washington Post. She was ordered to pay Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, although the second payment was reduced to $350,000 per Virginia law by the judge. She was awarded a relatively paltry $2 million in compensatory damages, meaning that Depp, 59, walked away from the case with Heard owing him $8.35 million.

Amber Heard has broken her silence on the Johnny Depp defamation trial verdict, speaking out for the first time since a jury ruled that she defamed her ex-husband - and ordered her to pay him $10 million in damages

The 36-year-old actress sat down with the Today show's Savannah Guthrie to discuss the verdict, which she blasted as 'unfair', blaming biased 'social media representation'

During the marathon six-week trial in Fairfax, Virginia, which started on April 11 and concluded on June 1, Depp called 38 witnesses while Heard's team called 24.

Both Depp and Heard gave evidence for four days each, including a forensic cross examination from the opposition lawyers  then both returned to the witness stand to testify a second time.

The jury saw dozens of texts, photos, videos, medical records and even pages from the former couple's 'Love Journal' they hand wrote to each other.

The libel case was so complicated that the verdict sheet had 42 questions the jury had to answer before delivering the verdict: 24 questions for Depp's claims and 18 for Heard's counterclaim.

The court heard clips of recordings that Depp and Heard made during their arguments, some of their most intimate moments that were played back for the world years later in the most public setting imaginable.

Throughout the trial, social media was flooded with posts about the legal proceedings - with the majority being shared in support of Depp under the hashtag #JusticeForJohnnyDepp. As of June 13, the hashtag had more than 20.6 billion views on TikTok, while the #JusticeForAmberHeard tag had a relatively low 92.4 million views.

Heard, who says she was subjected to 'hate and vitriol' online throughout the trial and in the wake of the verdict, doubled down on claims previously made by her lawyer that the trial was biased by social media campaigns, with the Aquaman actress branding the final verdict 'unfair'.

'Even somebody who is sure I'm deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I'm lying, you still couldn't look me in the eye that you think on social media there's been a fair representation,' she said. 'You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair.'

Heard suggested that the jury was swayed by her husband's 'excellent acting', while accusing Depp (seen with his lawyer Camille Vasquez) of putting 'paid employees and randos' on the stand to testify for him and win over jurors

The interview marks the first time that Heard has publicly addressed the verdict - which she previously blasted as a 'setback for other women' in a statement published minutes after the ruling was read out in court

But despite insisting that social media played a key role in the outcome of the trial, Heard, whose interview will air in full on NBC's Dateline this Friday at 8pm after being teased out on the Today show on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, claimed that she isn't taking any negative public opinions about her 'personally', insisting that she 'doesn't care what anyone thinks about her'.

'I don't care what anyone thinks about me or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home in my marriage behind closed doors,' she told Guthrie. 'I don't presume the average person should know those things so I don't take it personally.'

The interview marks the first time that Heard has publicly addressed the verdict - which she previously blasted as a 'setback for other women' in a statement published minutes after the ruling was read out in court.

'The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I'm heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband,' Heard said in a statement shared just minutes after the verdict was read out in court, where she was present for the judgement, while Depp was said

'I'm even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women. It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously.'

The day after the ruling was handed down, Heard's lawyer Elaine Charlson Bredhoft revealed that her client was planning to appeal the verdict, insisting that she had 'excellent grounds' to do so, while claiming that the actress is unable to pay the $8.35 million in damages that she owes Depp.

During an appearance on the Today show, Bredhoft was asked if the Aquaman actress would be able to pay the damages she owes Depp after a jury vindicated his claims that she lied by accusing him of abuse during their marriage, to which she replied: 'No, absolutely not.'

Last week, Depp's lawyers Camille Vasquez and Benjamin Chew sat down with Guthrie, 50, to discuss the trial - and they slammed any suggestion that social media played a part in the jury's verdict as 'utterly false'

The lawyer also echoed her client's thoughts on the verdict, blasting it as a 'significant setback' for women.

'It's a horrible message. It's a setback, a significant setback because that's exactly what it means,' Bredhoft said of the verdict.

'Unless you pull out your phone and you video your spouse or your significant other beating you, effectively, you won't be believed.'

Heard's attorney Elaine Bredehoft has suggested that her client will appeal the verdict, saying she has 'excellent grounds' to do so

She also suggested that the jury in the case had been swayed by public opinion - including social media posts that were shared in support of Depp - a claim that his legal team has since slammed as 'utterly false'.

To be granted an appeal, Heard would likely need to demonstrate that there were errors in the trial, or in the presiding judge's reading of the law.

She would also need to post bond of the full $10,350,000, plus interest charges over the course of an appeal trial.

Depp originally sued Heard for $50million claiming that she defamed him with an op-ed piece published by the Washington Post in 2018 in which she claimed to be a survivor of domestic abuse.

Heard then countersued for $100million claiming that Depp's lawyer Adam Waldman made defamatory statements by calling her claims a 'hoax.'

The actress's appearance on the Today show comes less than a week after Guthrie, 50, sat down with Depp's lawyers Benjamin Chew and Camille Vasquez, who slammed any suggestion that social media played a role in the jury's decision-making as 'utterly false'.

'My view is that social media played no role whatsoever this was a decision made by the jury on the evidence. It was overwhelmingly in Depp's favor,' said Chew.
Prince Harry was joined by his friends David Foster, 72, and Katharine McPhee, 38, when playing polo in California on Sunday, following his flying visit to Britain for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.

The Duke of Sussex, 37, was pictured hanging out on the sidelines with American idol runner up Katharine, her composer husband David and their one-year-old son Rennie.

Harry's wife Meghan Markle, 40, and their two children Archie, three, and Lilibet, one, didn't appear to be at the Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club, where the royal's Los Padres team lost the match 12-11.

David, who is just a year younger than Prince Charles, has been described by some as a 'father figure' to Harry, and also helped the Sussex couple find their Canadian hideaway before they moved to California.

The prince is known to have had a strained relationship with the Prince of Wales, and his brother Prince William, since he and Meghan quit as royals and emigrated to the US.

Prince Harry was joined by his friends David Foster (pictured together), 72, and Katharine McPhee, 38, when playing polo in California on Sunday, following his flying visit to Britain for the Queen 's Platinum Jubilee

The Duke of Sussex, 37, was pictured hanging out on the sidelines with American idol runner up Katharine, her composer husband David and their one-year-old son Rennie

Katharine attended the same Catholic school as Meghan. The Duchess of Sussex was already at high school by the time Katharine was at the Los Angeles middle school. Pictured as youngsters

David was married to model Yolanda Hadid from 2011 to 2017, becoming stepfather to Gigi, Bella and Anwar Hadid during their six-year marriage (pictured in 2011)

In May 2020, Katharine told Access Hollywood: 'My husband has a really, really beautiful relationship with Harry. They're so cute. They're like father and son.'

She explained how David helped set the Sussexes up with their Canadian $14.1 million mansion hideaway before they moved to LA.

'David is the resource guy,' Katharine said. 'He knows all the places. He loves to help people. We just hope they end up somewhere where they feel like they can really settle down,' she said at the time.

David said that he hooked the couple up with the sprawling property, which was located on the waterfront in North Saanich, near Vancouver.

He said his wife Katharine discovered that the Duke and Duchess were in need of a discreet spot for their first Christmas holiday with a then-seven-month-old Archie and Meghan's mother Doria Ragland, and he was happy to oblige.

'I felt honoured that I was able to help Meghan there because I'm a Canadian and we're a commonwealth country. It's important to us, so I grew up with that kind of sentiment,' David said to DailyMail.com.

David (pictured with his wife in May 2022), who is just a year younger than Prince Charles, has been described by some as a 'father figure' to Harry, and also helped the Sussex couple find their Canadian hideaway before they moved to California

In May 2020, Katharine (pictured with her husband in May 2022) told Access Hollywood : 'My husband has a really, really beautiful relationship with Harry. They're so cute. They're like father and son.'

'I was really happy to be able to help them to find a respite just to take a little time off,' he added.

'I know that it was reinvigorating for them to spend some downtime. This is a great testament to my hometown of Victoria that they were able to go under the radar for so long.

'I was just happy through my friend to facilitate what I could for them, and it looked like they had a great rest. They're a young modern family. I'm sure they want to balance their commitment to the crown and be a 2020 family.'

He added that he did not know if the couple were paying rent, saying that he simply helped them make the connection with a close friend, who owns the property.

Katharine attended the same Catholic school as Meghan. The Duchess of Sussex was already at high school by the time Katharine was at the Los Angeles middle school.

'She went to a school called Immaculate Heart, as did I. She went there for middle school and high school, and I went there just for middle school,' Katharine explained.

'I did a couple of shows with her and she was always put together and great,' Katharine recalled. 'I was never really close friends with her.'

She explained how David (pictured together) helped set the Sussexes up with their Canadian $14.1 million mansion hideaway before they moved to LA

She said that while she was performing in Waitress the musical in London, she and her husband David got to speak with Harry and Meghan.

In 2019, Katharine posted an Instagram snap featuring the Duchess from their school days.

'Meghan and I did musicals together as kids,' Katharine wrote. 'She grew up to be the Duchess of Sussex and I grew up to star on the West End, so same life if you ask me.'

Last year, it was reported that David had planned to throw the Duke a fun-filled party in celebration of his first Los Angeles-based birthday upon Harry turning 36.

The Mirror claimed that the party was set to be held at David's Los Angeles home, with a source telling the publication that it was going to be a low-key and intimate celebration.

Harry's wife Meghan Markle, 40, and their two children Archie, three, and Lilibet, one, didn't appear to be at the Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club, where the royal's Los Padres team lost the match 12-11

'David wants to make it special for Harry but also keep it casual and low-key with some fine wine, great food and intimate company,' the source claimed.

'He is setting aside the fire pit at his home plus the whole outdoor area, which security will cordon off.'

According to the publication, no royals other than Harry and Meghan were due to be in attendance at the event, however David was reportedly planning to include his daughters, actresses Erin and Sara, and their respective husbands, all of whom 'are around the same age' as the Duke and Duchess.

Meanwhile, in October 2020, it was reported that Harry and Meghan planned on spending Christmas in the US with the Duke's 'surrogate' father David, a source claimed.

The couple were apparently hosting their own Christmas soiree in Los Angeles and planned on inviting his 'surrogate' dad, The Mirror reported.

'Meghan very much wants to host the first Christmas at their new home with her mum,' a source close to the couple claimed.

'Shes really excited and is planning on doing all the traditions she grew up with as a child, including the cooking.'

According to the source, David and Katherine offered to host the festivities at their home, however, Meghan volunteered that she and Harry host at theirs.
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands looked like she was having a great time as she visited CARE Visiting Savings and Loan Associations in Abobo, a suburb of the capital, Abidjan.

The monarch, 50, looked casual, dressed in every shade of blue, as she attended several conversations at the Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Ivory Coast city.

The Argentine-born royal is an international financier by training and is visiting Abidjan in the capacity of UN Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA).

For the visit Queen Maxima choose an oversized blue T-shirt with a high round neckline, tucked into a deep blue patterned maxi skirt.

The mother-of-three met several members of one VSLA, a group of 25 women living in Abobo, a suburb of the capital, Abidjan. She is seen here dancing with the group of women

Queen Maxima (pictured) of the Netherlands opted a full blue look to visit Abobo, Abidjan in her capacity as the UNSGSA since prior to the pandemic

She opted for grey loafers and stayed on theme with blue sunglasses, a blue clutch bag with silver chain, and blue and navy tassel earrings.

The royal looked energised, with her blonde hair loose and swept back.

She kept her make up neutral, opting for a light bronzer and pale pink lips, with dark eyeliner bringing it all together.

The trip is the first in-person 'country visit' Queen Maxima will take in her capacity as the UNSGSA since before the pandemic.

The West Africa region represents a priority area of focus for the UNSGSAs efforts to bolster financial and digital inclusion, along with financial health, and follows on from virtual visits with both Ivory Coast and Senegal in 2021.

The UNSGSA aims to support a range of inclusive finance priorities in close collaboration with key leaders and stakeholders in each country, as well as meet with local customers who use and benefit from financial services and products.

Both countries have opportunities to be at the forefront of financial inclusion in West Africa, with growth being driven by digital payments.

As a result, both have potential to be leaders in the region.

For the visit Queen Maxima choose an oversized blue T-shirt with a high round neckline, tucked into a deep blue patterned maxi skirt

The West Africa region represents a priority area of focus for the UNSGSAs efforts to bolster financial and digital inclusion, along with financial health, and follows on virtual visits with both Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal in 2021

The Argentine-born royal is an international financier by training and is visiting Abidjan in the capacity of UN Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA)

As part of a recent initiative, CARE partnered with the microfinance institution Advans to offer VSLAs and their members a chance to enroll in digital financial services.

Today in Cote dIvoire, Queen Maxima had the opportunity to meet with several members of one VSLA, a group of 25 women living in Abobo, a suburb of the capital, Abidjan.

The mother-of-three was seen dancing and smiling with the group of women she met today.

She was also pictured in deep discussions with them, learning more about their lives.

The royal looked energised, with her blonde hair loose and swept back. She was also wearing blue, silver and gold bangles

Queen Maxima met with the community to learn more about their lives and the work of CARE VSLA

Queen Maxima opted for grey loafers and stayed on theme with blue sunglasses, a blue clutch bag with silver chain, and blue and navy tassel earrings.

This comes after she met with the president of the European Central Bank in Amsterdam last week.

She was joined by her husband King WIllem-Alexander, 55, to meet Dutch central bank president Klaas Knot, and President of the ECB Christine Lagarde and Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

It came as the royal's eldest daughter announced she has enrolled for a degree at Amsterdam university - and will live with normal students in a houseshare.

Heir to the throne Princess Amalia, 18, has revealed she will be studying for a 3,750 degree in Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics at University of Amsterdam from September.

Queen Maxima kept her make up neutral, opting for a light bronzer and pale pink lips, with dark eyeliner bringing it all together.

The trip is the first in-person 'country visit' Queen Maxima will take in her capacity as the UNSGSA since prior to the pandemic

During her studies, the Princess will be living in a rented houseshare with her fellow students.

A post on the royal court's Instagram account stated that her time at university is considered 'private.'

The statement from the court read: 'The Princess of Orange will start in September with the bachelor's degree in Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics (PPLE) at the University of Amsterdam.'

The announcement went on to reveal the Princess applied for the degree and went through the same testing and application process as any other student.
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The Duchess of Cambridge proved her fashion prowess one again today as she arrived for the annual Garter Day service at Windsor Castle in a vibrant blue coat dress and matching accessories.

Kate Middleton, 40, opted for a distinctive blue ensemble, which she paired with a matching 560 fascinator from Juliette Botterill and dazzling diamond earrings as she joined fellow royals including the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall and Prince William for the occasion, which is one of the most colourful events in the royal calendar.

The mother-of-three swept her hair from her face as she arrived at St George's Chapel, and showed off her natural beauty with a simple make-up look, pairing a light layer of foundation with smokey brown eye and pink lipstick.

Adding even more height to her figure, Kate opted for a pair of 810 Aquazzura heels in blueberry. Made in Italy, the shoes feature a towering style that narrows into a sharp pointy toe and are finished with a glossy, heart-shaped chain at the heel.

She added plenty of glitz to her ensemble by sporting a 8,400 G. Collins & Sons tanzanite pendant necklace, which she has worn on a number of occasions. She paired the stunning jewel with matching 6,100 earrings.

The Duchess of Cambridge (right, with the Countess of Wessex, left) cut a stylish figure in a vibrant blue coat dress today when attending the Order of the Garter Service at St. Georges's Chapel, at Windsor Castle

The Duchess of Cambridge (pictured) was elegant in blue today as she arrived for the annual Garter Day service at Windsor Castle

Kate (pictured with Sophie Wessex), 40, cut a chic figure in a stunning coat dress and matching hat as she joined fellow royals including the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall and Prince William for the occasion, which is one of the most colourful events in the royal calendar

The Duchess of Cambridge was all smiles as she appeared alongside her husband Prince William during the annual occasion

Kate, Camilla, William and Prince Charles all appear in a carriage together during today's annual service at Windsor Castle

The mother-of-three swept her hair from her face as she arrived at St George's Chapel, and showed off her natural beauty with a simple make-up look, pairing a light layer of foundation with smokey brown eye and pink lipstick

This year Prince Charles' wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall (pictured), former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former leader of the British House of Lords Baroness Amos were all installed in the Order

The Duke of Cambridge walked alongside Prince Edward as they attended the Garter Day earlier this afternoon at Windsor Castle

Meanwhile the Queen's only daughter Princess Anne beamed as she attended the event alongside her siblings Prince Charles and Prince Edward

She has worn her dazzling jewelled earrings and necklace from G. Collins & Sons on a number of occasions in the past, including having dinner with President Obama at Kensington Palace in 2016 and while visiting The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), and the Nursing Now campaign in 2018.

Kate completed her look with a vibrant blue bag that perfectly matched her coat dress, which featured long sleeves, a V-neckline, button detailing on the wrists and a cinched waist above a flared skirt.

Meanwhile the Countess of Wessex was pretty in a pink Valentino gown as she arrived at St George's Chapel earlier today, before standing alongside the Duchess of Cambridge.

Mother-of-two Sophie also opted to sweep her hair up into an intricate up-do, donning a cream white fascinator for the occasion.

Among the first arrivals were the Duchess of Cornwall's son Tom Parker Bowles and his sister Laura Lopes, who were beaming as they waited outside St George's chapel in Windsor.

Kate (pictured next to Camila) completed her look with a vibrant blue bag that perfectly matched her coat dress, which featured long sleeves, a V-neckline, button detailing on the wrists and a cinched waist above a flared skirt

Kate added plenty of glitz to her ensemble by sporting a 8,400 G. Collins & Sons tanzanite pendant necklace, which she has worn on a number of occasions. She paired the stunning jewel with matching 6,100 earrings

It comes as William and Kate (pictured right, with Sophie Wessex) are set to swap the hustle and bustle of London to take up residence in leafy Berkshire, according to recent reports

The Duchess of Cambridge arrives for the annual Order of the Garter Service at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle

Meanwhile the Countess of Wessex was pretty in a pink Valentino gown as she arrived at St George's Chapel earlier today

The Duchess of Cornwall arrived alongside the Prince of Wales at the event this afternoon (left), while ex-PM Tony Blair was also in attendance (right)

Prince Charles and Camilla appeared in high spirits as they walked through the grounds outside St George's Chapel ahead of the service today

The Countess of Wessex and Prince Edward during today's occasion at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle

The mother-of-three, 40, looked stylish in a vibrant blue dress, which she paired with a navy fascinator and a colourful rainbow clutch.

The siblings are in attendance as they prepare to watch the Queen do the formal investiture of the new Garter knights which includes their mother Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

New appointments are announced on St George's Day but the chivalric and installation ceremonies take place every year on the Monday of Royal Ascot week, known as Garter Day.

Recipients of the honour today are chosen because they have held public office, contributed to national life or served the sovereign personally.

Senior royals including Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall (left), as well as Prince William and Prince Edward (right) were among those who walked in the procession earlier today

Camilla was joined by Prince Charles during the parade earlier today as the pair arrived for the Order of the Garter Service at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle

The Duchess of Cornwall was elegant in a floor length white gown for the outing today, which she paired with white gloves and nude shoes

Looking smart! The Duke of Cambridge, 39, attends the Order Of The Garter Service at St George's Chapel

The appointment of Knights of the Garter is in the Queen's gift and is made without consulting ministers. The Queen is sovereign of the order and a number of other British and foreign royals are additional members of the order.

It comes as William and Kate are set to swap the hustle and bustle of London to take up residence in leafy Berkshire, according to recent reports.

It is claimed that The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are set to move to a house on the Queen's Windsor estate this summer - leaving behind Kensington Palace as their main residence.

According to The Sunday Times, the couple are set to take their son Prince George, 8, and daughter Princess Charlotte, 7, out of their current prep school in Battersea at the end of the school year.

Among the first arrivals were the Duchess of Cornwall 's son Tom Parker Bowles and his sister Laura Lopes, who were snapped as they waited outside earlier this afternoon

The Queen intends to do the formal investiture of the new Garter knights including Tony Blair and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (pictured Cherie Blair at the event)

Crowds gathered at St George's Chapel in Windsor ahead of the big event this afternoon, which will see a number of royals in attendance

George and Charlotte will then join their younger brother, Prince Louis, 4, at a new school in Berkshire in September, the paper reports. William is set to turn 40 this week. The royal is reported to have joked privately that he is finding it 'so daunting'.

The move will see William and Kate leave Kensington Palace, which has been their main residence since 2017. The couple moved their from their country home, Anmer Hall, in Norfolk, where they had previously spent much of their time.

However, according to The Sunday Times, the pair will retain their property at Kensington Palace as their London home despite moving to Berkshire. Their press team will remain in west London.

The couple will also retain Anmer Hall, which the paper reports they will continue to use 'regularly'. One friend reportedly told the paper that they plan to move there on a more permanent basis after their children are through 'the school years'.

The procession walks to St George's Chapel for the Order of the Garter service at Windsor Castle, in Windsor

Among those who are being made new members of the Order of the Garter - include the Duchess of Cornwall and ex PM Tony Blair (pictured, walking toward the ceremony today)

'They absolutely love it up there, it's their happy place,' the friend is reported to have said. The move to Windsor means the Cambridges will be near to the home of the Duchess's parents, the Middletons, who live 45-minutes away by car in the village of Bucklebury.

It has long been reported that the couple could one day move into Windsor Castle. The Queen has spent much of her time at the Berkshire castle following the death of her beloved Prince Phillip.

However it is understood Prince Charles does not plan to spend as much time there when he becomes king. It has previously been reported that the Prince of Wales plans to spend much of his time at Buckingham Palace during his reign.

Prince William and Kate were centre stage at the Platinum Jubilee celebrations last weekend, appearing on the royal balcony twice and during Saturday night's Party at the Palace celebrations, alongside their three children.
A former TWA flight attendant has opened up about the severe 'sexism' she faced while working in the industry as a young woman during the '80s - revealing unwanted advances from male passengers were so common that she had to go through training to learn how to fend them off.

Ann Hood, now 65, from West Warwick, Rhode Island, worked as a TWA airline employee throughout the '70s and '80s - and she has now spoken out about the highs and lows of her career in a new memoir, entitled Fly Girl, which came out last month.

According to the New York Times bestselling author, during her training for the job - which she dubbed as one of the the most 'sexist' positions that a woman could have - she was taught a large array of skills, including how to mix cocktails, how to deliver a baby, and how to 'politely brush off' flirting from men.

Ann explained in the book that she was instructed to respond to guys who tried to make a move on her by telling them things like, 'I have a boyfriend,' or asking them things like, 'What would your wife say?' - all while keeping a smile on her face.

Speaking out: A former TWA flight attendant has opened up about the severe 'sexism' she faced while working in the industry as a young woman during the '80s

Ann Hood (pictured when she was a flight attendant), now 65, revealed unwanted advances from men were so common she had to go through training to learn how to fend them off

Ann, from West Warwick, Rhode Island, worked as a TWA airline employee throughout the '70s and '80s. She is pictured during her time as a flight attendant

'We were taught how to politely brush off passes from male passengers. Techniques varied from a flirty, "Don't be naughty!" to, "What would your wife say?"' she wrote in the book, according to Insider. 'Anything was OK, as long as we said it with a smile.'

Sharing her story: She has now spoken out about the highs and lows of her career in a new memoir, entitled Fly Girl, which came out last month

Ann spoke further about the negative aspects of her career, revealing that she was often weighed by her employer and that she was terrified to go above 120 pounds.

'All airlines sent a chart with your application, you looked at your height and the maximum weight and if you did not fall within that, they wouldn't even interview you,' she continued.

'But once you got hired, at least at TWA, you couldn't go up to that maximum weight. You had to stay at your hiring weight, which in my case was about 15 pounds less than my maximum limit.

'My roommate got fired over this. The really terrible thing about it, other than what it did to women, is that this restriction was not removed until the 1990s.'

She also said there was a strict dress code, and that she was told that her skirt had to always stay above her knees, adding that flight attendants were 'stereotyped as not-very-smart sex kittens in airline advertising and in many people's minds back then.'

She continued, 'National airlines ran the now-infamous commercial of a pretty woman in a stewardess uniform saying, "I'm Cheryl. Fly me."

'Flight attendants were considered to be beautiful and sexy ornaments even as they fought relentlessly for women's rights against age and gender discrimination, and for career professionalism.'

During her training for the job Ann said she was taught a large array of skills, including how to mix cocktails, how to deliver a baby, and how to 'politely brush off' flirting from men

Ann (pictured in the '90s) explained that she was instructed to respond to guys who tried to make a move by telling them things like, 'I have a boyfriend,' while keeping a smile on her face

Ann spoke further about the negative aspects of her career, revealing she was often weighed by her employer and was scared to gain weight. She is pictured as a baby with her dad

Trans World Airlines was started in 1930. For more than 70 years, the airline operated flights around the world until January 2001, when it was acquired by American Airlines.

A TWA hotel - located at John F. Kennedy airport in New York - was opened in May 2019.

In the book, Ann explained that there were very limited job opportunities for women during that time.

She dreamed of being a writer, but was told by her guidance counselor in school that it 'wasn't a career' - so she opted to become a flight attendant instead, in an attempt to get out and see the world.

She began working for TWA in 1978, where she said it was stressed that she had to keep her cool in every situation.

After spending eight years traveling the globe with TWA, she stopped working for them in 1986 so she could follow her dreams of becoming a writer.

She released her first book, a novel called Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, in 1987, and went on to pen 13 more novels, a short story collection, and seven nonfiction books.

Ann (pictured with her husband) added that flight attendants were 'stereotyped as not-very-smart sex kittens in airline advertising and in many people's minds back then'

Throughout her memoir, Ann recalled a series of flight attendant horror stories, such as having to restrain a man who became violent when he didn't receive the meal he wanted

While reflecting on her time as a stewardess, the writer added that she felt 'insulted and outraged' over the 'blatant sexism' she often faced. She is pictured with her husband

Throughout her most recent memoir, Ann recalled a series of flight attendant horror stories, such as having to restrain a man who became violent when he didn't receive the meal he wanted, and having to perform CPR on a woman who had a heart attack mid-flight and sadly passed away.

'The weirdest would definitely be the woman in first class who appeared to be breastfeeding her cat,' she shared. 'I mean, I can't say that it was actually happening, but she had her cat to her breast.

'And then the guy who flew the whole way in his tighty-whities and his dress shirt and tie, because he didn't want to wrinkle his pants for a job interview. Or the guy on a 747 in Frankfurt who was riding his bicycle down the aisle.'

Trans World Airlines was started in 1930. For more than 70 years, the airline operated flights around the world until January 2001, when it was acquired by American Airlines. A TWA flight attendant is pictured in 1971

While reflecting on her time as a stewardess, the writer added that she felt 'insulted and outraged' over the 'blatant sexism' she often faced.

'Sitting here five decades later, a 64-year-old woman who has traveled extensively, lived in big cities, done the kinds of things my younger self dreamed about, I can see the blatant sexism,' she said.

'I can feel insulted and outraged at the projection of every stewardess as being buxom and naughty.'

However, despite all the negative aspects, she insisted in the book that she 'loved' her job while she was doing it.

'I made the job fun. I loved talking to people. I loved the feel of it. I still love flying today,' she wrote.

'Flight attendants are a force. They're highly unionized. They're independent. In the cabin, they make all the decisions.

'They have to troubleshoot. They're there for the emergency stuff. They land in cities where they don't know anything or anyone and find their way.

'It's such an empowering job, yet it's a sexist job. In itself, it is as contradictory today as the time in which I started it.

'I was 21 when I was hired, and it gave me confidence, it gave me poise, and the ability to think on my feet.

'To take charge on that airplane, and once I got off, to walk into a city and feel completely at home - or at least figure out how to feel at home in it.

'I don't know if it should be someone's life's work - if they want it to be that, great. But I think a few years working as a flight attendant could change your life.'
A woman who was adopted at two weeks old has finally been reunited with her 84-year-old birth mother on Long Lost Family - after fearing she had left it too late to find her.

Retired teacher and mother-of-four Judy Kenyon, 65, from Dudley, West Midlands, searched for her biological mother for over two decades - having never felt welcome in her adoptive home in Shropshire.

Year after year without any discovery soon left grandmother Judy fearing the worst - that her mother, who gave birth to her at the age of 19 and was forced to give her up for adoption, had passed away.

However, on tonight's Long Lost Family, Judy, called Jane at birth, discovered that her birth mother, Gina Masse, is still alive and living in the South of France, in Cannes, not far from her other three children.

In emotional scenes, Judy was reunited with her birth mother, as well as her two sisters Jane and Kate, and brother Christian in Cannes, with Gina saying: 'It just shows you miracles still happen in this day and age.'

Retired teacher and mother-of-four Judy Kenyon, 65, from Dudley, West Midlands, searched for her biological mother for over two decades - having never felt welcome in her adoptive home in Shropshire. Pictured, reuniting with her birth mother

Year after year without any discovery soon left grandmother Judy (pictured) fearing the worst - that her mother, who gave birth to her at the age of 19 and was forced to give her up for adoption, had passed away

Judy Kenyon was born in 1957 and adopted shortly after, along with a little boy called David.

Their parents divorced and their adoptive mother re-married an aristocrat. The family lived in a grand manor house, but the children never felt welcome, leaving Judy with 'that little hole in your heart, [] that just cannot be filled by anything else'.

Judy's brother David has traced his birth family and is fully supportive of Judy needing to reunite with her own.

She used multiple genealogy sites and adoption registers to try to find information about her birth mother.

The grandmother found out that her own birth name was Jane Masse and her birth mother's name was Gina Masse.

She found records of Gina and wrote to multiple possible addresses. Unfortunately, without any success.

However, on tonight's Long Lost Family, Judy, called Jane at birth, discovered that her birth mother, Gina Masse, is still alive and living in the South of France, in Cannes, not far from her other three children

In emotional scenes, Judy was reunited with her birth mother, as well as her two sisters Jane and Kate, and brother Christian in Cannes, with Gina saying: 'It just shows you miracles still happen in this day and age.'

'Each time I wrote I wondered if my mother would open the letter [] time is running out or it may have already run out. I need to find her,' admitted Judy.

'Family is very important to me. It's like a big hug really. You feel part of something and you can love something totally unconditionally. It does make me think about my own birth mother and whether we could have had that same bond.'

While searching, Judy also found a birth record for a potential half-sister born to Gina in 1962. This baby was also named Jane.

After two decades of no success, Judy is firmly of the belief that her birth mother is probably dead at the start of the programme.

But she admitted that she longs to know all about Gina and is desperate to find her namesake little sister, Jane.

Judy was reunited with her mother in Cannes and met not only her namesake Jane, but another two siblings she never knew existed

'It's sort of like a mini miracle,' said Gina, while Judy added: 'I'm absolutely over the moon.'

Against the odds, both are found alive and well and living in the South of France, in Cannes.

Gina told co-presenter Nicky Campbell how she held onto two photographs of her newborn baby girl after being forced to give her up for adoption at the age of 19 because she was an unwed teenage mother in the early 1950s.

'Because otherwise I had nothing left of her. That's all I had,' admitted mother-of-four Gina.

Gina had lost hope that Judy wanted to find her, explaining: 'I thought that if she tried to find me, she would have found me because my parents lived at the same address forever'.

Gina (pictured) also recalled: 'I was thinking back, you know, to the time when you were born. And nobody knew. I mean, it was such an awful thing at that period'

In a twist of fate, Judy had written to this address, but just a year after Gina's parents had moved.

Judy was left devastated when she discovered how close she was to finding her birth mother decades ago and how Gina had given up hope.

But she was left absolutely delighted to know that Gina's been found and wanted to meet her. 'She's alive and well. I haven't left it too late,' said Judy.

Judy was reunited with her mother in Cannes and met not only her namesake Jane, but another two siblings she never knew existed.

'It's sort of like a mini miracle,' said Gina, while Judy added: 'I'm absolutely over the moon.'

Family reunited: (pictured left to right) Jane, Louise (Gina's granddaughter), George (Gina's grandson), Manon (Gina's granddaughter), Kate, Gina, Christian, Judy

Gina also recalled: 'I was thinking back, you know, to the time when you were born. And nobody knew. I mean, it was such an awful thing at that period.

'And sometime afterwards, somebody said, "Oh, you gave your baby away". I said, "No, absolutely not. My baby was taken from me." There was no choice. There was no choice.

'I just hoped that you have been happy,' said Gina, to which Judy replied: 'I've had a very good life.'

Judi concluded: 'It still feels like a really wonderful dream. Feels like we've always been together, although we haven't, we've missed all those years. But it's the connection, it is was automatic.'

Long Lost Family airs on ITV
Constitutional Court of Korea in Seoul / Korea Times file



Research officials affiliated with 18 members of the Association of Asian Constitutional Courts and Equivalent Institutions (AACC) will hold a videoconference this week to discuss issues of the right to life, such as the death penalty, the Constitutional Court of Korea (CCK) said Monday.



The international conference to be organized by the AACC Secretariat for Research and Development will take place Wednesday and Thursday, according to the CCK, which is in charge of operating the AACC secretariat.



The main theme of the conference is the right to life and participants will share each member country's experience and knowledge on the state's duty to protect life and how the right to life is guaranteed through the Constitution and constitutional court trials, the court said.



In the first session, the death penalty and the use of physical force in the process of law enforcement will be discussed under the theme of the right to life and the state's public power. The second session will deal with abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide, while socio-cultural aspects of the right to life, the environment and diseases will be discussed in the third session, it noted.



The conference draws particular attention, as the CCK is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the death penalty next month in connection with a constitutional petition filed by a local Catholic group in 2019 to outlaw the death penalty system. The CCK already ruled 7-2 in 1996 and 5-4 in 2010 that the death penalty was constitutional.



"As the world has suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic, in-depth discussions are necessary on the state's duty to protect life," said Yoo Nam-seok, president of the CCK, expressing a wish for the AACC conference to discuss various concerns and issues related to life. (Yonhap)




Coffee lovers can rejoice as popular Australian scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has revealed the reasons why giving up the much-loved beverage may be a bad idea.

In a video posted to TikTok, the celebrity scientist said you shouldn't forgo coffee if you're on a 'health kick' as it has many benefits and can even improve your life expectancy.

'Through observational studies, it turns out coffee will improve your life expectancy and the outcome if you have type II diabetes and heart disease,' the 73-year-old explained in the now-viral clip.

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Popular Australian scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has claimed giving up coffee might not be the best idea when going on a 'health kick' as it has many health benefits

'It'll also help you if you have cancer of the prostate and/or cancer of the mouth and of the skin - so say 'perhaps' to the world's most popular legal drug.'

Dr Karl's clip has racked up more than 296,800 views since it was posted only a few hours ago and drawn in hundreds of excited comments from coffee-fans.

'*sips coffee* interesting,' one joked and another said: 'I gave up coffee for a month a bit ago and I just felt like trash. Back on the train now'.

'Via observational studies, it turns out coffee will improve your life expectancy and the outcome if you have type II diabetes and heart disease,' Dr Karl explained in a TikTok clip

'Is that just for black coffee? Or is coffee with milk still good as well?' a third asked to which Karl responded saying: 'The good effects happen with all regular caffeinated coffee, and to a lesser degree, with decaf coffee.'

In the comments, Dr Karl also confirmed coffee is beneficial in small to moderate amounts claiming 'three to four cups a day is OK'.

Previously, Dr Karl has gone into more detail about the benefits of having a few espressos a day.

In an article for the ABC, Dr Karl said the chemicals, kahweol and cafestrol, found in coffee can help with medical conditions and have cancer protection and anti-inflammatory properties.

In an article for the ABC, Dr Karl said the chemicals, kahweol and cafestrol, found in coffee can help with medical conditions and have cancer protection and anti-inflammatory properties

He also cited a meta-study of 28 studies involving more than 1million adults that showed people who drank three or more cups of coffee each day were less likely to develop type II diabetes than those who rarely or never consumed it.

'Furthermore, if they drank six or more cups each day, the risk was lowered again,' he wrote.

Another meta-study of 13 other studies with more than 530,000 men concluded for every extra two cups of coffee drunk a day, the risk of prostate cancer dropped by 2.5 per cent.

Those who consumed the most coffee had a 10 per cent lower risk of prostate cancer than those who drank less.

More meta-studies showed that drinking three to five cups a day have a lower risk of Cardiovascular Disease and oral cancer.
A young travel blogger has showcased the reality of trying to snap a picture in a European destination that has become 'Instagram famous'.

Lucy Tranos is the woman behind travel blog lucyinthesskyy and she's currently in Greece fulfilling a number of paid partnerships with local brands and designers.

The glamorous young photographer shared a behind-the-scenes look at one of her photos taken in Oia, Santorini, a popular destination for photo-takers because of its beautiful blue domed churches.

Lucy Tranos is the woman behind travel blog lucyinthesskyy and she's currently in Greece fulfilling a number of paid partnerships with local brands and designers

Despite the image appearing to have no one beside her there was a lengthy line of tourists waiting for their chance to stand on a particular staircase and take an image.

'Showing the reality behind Oia, Santorini. It will most likely be packed at the famous sunset spot in Oia and people will be queuing up to take photos at the spots with the blue domes unless you get there at 7am,' Lucy explained in the photo caption.

'Oia is one of the most beautiful towns in the world though so no wonder it attracts so many people. Would you wake up early to see the Oia without the crowds?!'

Lucy revealed that she has visited the island of Santorini every summer for the past three years and each time she notices it getting busier.

Despite the image appearing to have no one beside her there was a lengthy line of tourists waiting for their chance to stand on a particular staircase and take an image

'Showing the reality behind Oia, Santorini. It will most likely be packed at the famous sunset spot in Oia and people will be queuing up to take photos at the spots with the blue domes unless you get there at 7am,' Lucy explained in the photo caption

'It was nice to see it empty in 2020 but definitely not the case currently... If you want to experience Santorini with peaceful and more authentic vibes you should definitely stay away from the 'hot' spots mentioned and get lost in the alleys or visit other villages like Imerovigli, Mesaria, Megalochori and Fira which are always less busy,' she said.

Her 200,000 followers were shocked by the scenes Lucy had shot, with many surprised by the crowds waiting for a singular photo.

'I also visited summer of 2020, it was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to see it that empty!' One woman said.

Her 200,000 followers were shocked by the scenes Lucy had shot, with many surprised by the crowds waiting for a singular photo

'This'll be me. Move out the way people!!!! I need a solo picture!!' Another wrote.

The blue domes of the Agios Spyridonas and Anastaseos churches in Oia are considered some of the most photographed roofs on Santorini.

The two buildings are right next to each other and are iconic examples of the island's Cycladic architecture.

There are a couple of great viewpoints along the alleyways west of the churches, and they often get crowded towards the end of the day as people secure the best spot for the perfect sunset photo.
Amy Dutton alongside Elsie, now back at home thanks to the healing power of cuddles

An extremely premature baby  born three days before the UK's legal abortion limit  was saved by her mother's cuddles.

Elsie Dutton was delivered after 23 weeks and four days, weighing 1lb 2oz  slightly more than a tin of baked beans.

Doctors feared Elsie, whose twin, Dotty, died in the womb, would not survive and whisked her off to an incubator.

But she has now 'defied all the odds' and escaped her ordeal with 'no issues', which medics claim is all down to her mother Amy's 'kangaroo care'.

Mrs Dutton, of Barnsley, wasn't allowed to hold Elsie whilst her daughter was fighting for her life on an incubator.

After a month, she was deemed healthy enough to leave the machine  but it was still another four months until she was well enough to leave hospital entirely.

Scott and Amy Dutton have waited five months to bring their newborn baby Elsie back to their home in Barnsley, South Yorks

Elsie, pictured here shortly after being born at just under 24 weeks survived where her twin Dotty did not, but she faced her own battle for survival

What are the benefits of kangaroo care? Kangaroo care is a technique where a baby is held in skin-to-skin contact with an adult. It gets its name from the way kangaroos hold their young close to their body in their pouch. During each kangaroo care session the baby, wearing only a diaper and a hat, is placed on an adult's bare chest. The benefits of this skin-to-skin contact include: Stabilising a baby's heart rate

Improving their breathing and oxygen saturation levels

Decreased crying and improved sleep

More rapid weight gain Kangaroo care is also said to help parents feel less stressed and improves their bond with their baby The technique was originally developed in Colombia in the 1970s to improve the survival rate of premature babies. It has since been expanded to all babies with all parents generally encouraged to do so as long as both they and the baby are health enough. Advertisement

Mrs Dutton, 33, said: 'Having to wait so long to hold her was really difficult, so when I finally did it meant so much.

'Its crazy to think that me cuddling her was having such an impact, it saved her life.'

Describing her experience as 'amazing', she added: 'I would hold her and I could see on all the monitors that her heart rate was relaxing. It felt so special.

'Its something that was good for me and for her because it helps bring my stress down being able to hold her.

'I held her for about 30 seconds when she [was] born and then she went straight in the incubator for one month.'

Mrs Dutton  who repeated the process daily for four months  claimed she was only able to hold Elsie for a 'few hours every day'.

Known as kangaroo care, cuddles with parents have been proven to help premature babies survive.

Studies have shown regular skin-to-skin contact between babies and adults helps stabilise babies heart rates, improve their breathing and weight gain, helping them grow stronger.

Now back home with the family, Elsie is now getting cuddles from her father Scott and seven-year-old brother Charlie as well.

Mrs Dutton, a bridal stylist, said bringing Elsie home was 'amazing'.

'I almost didn't think it was real, the day felt like a dream come true,' she said.

'I've never felt such a relief as when we got to walk out of the hospital and take her home.

'It's so surreal to hold your baby and think about how you could have lost her, and having her home after all that uncertainty was just bliss.'

Mrs Dutton was originally pregnant with twins but suffered twin to twin transfusion syndrome.

A much bigger Elsie, next to a can of beans which weighs similar to her tiny birth weight of 1lb 2oz

A key part of Elsie's recovery was kangaroo care, where a baby is held in skin to skin contact with an adult to help stabilise their body and make them stronger. Here is Elsie and her mother Amy in one of their earlier sessions

And here is Amy and with a much bigger and healthier Elsie at a later kangaroo care session

Elsie, pictured here with parents Amy and Scott and with her brother Charlie, is now able to enjoy cuddles from the whole family

The condition, caused by an abnormal connecting blood vessels in the twins' placenta results in one foetus receiving more blood flow than the other, which can lead to one suffering from malnutrition.

Surgeons used a laser inserted through a tiny incision to rebalance the blood flow, with medic originally optimistic in how the operation went before Mrs Dutton started to experience complications.

'But then I started bleeding very heavily and I had to have three blood transfusions,' Mrs Dutton said.

'We lost the heartbeat of the baby  and then a few hours later I had lost so much blood that I went into labour at 23 weeks plus four days.'

Dotty did not survive and Elsie needed urgent surgery to close a hole in her bowel just 10 days after being born in December 2021, a dangerous prospect for so small a baby.

Mrs Dutton said: 'Doctors took me and Scott aside to say she might not survive the surgery.'

'They said with her being that small there was a chance she wouldn't survive the anaesthetic, and even if everything went okay she was still at risk while recovering because of infections and things.

'We had no idea how long it would take because they wouldn't know how much of her bowel had survived until they opened her up.

'We had to wait three hours and it was the longest three hours of my life, we were just constantly clock-watching. It was a really scary time.

'It was the biggest relief when we saw her again... the surgeon said it went amazing, like the best case scenario.'

In the end, Mrs Dutton had to wait a whole month before starting kangaroo care, a feeling she said was unlike anything she had ever known.

'The first time I held her properly was honestly amazing, I've never known anything like it,' she said. 'There's no other feeling in the world that compares.

During the first four months of Elsie's life, Mrs Dutton had to stay in London to be close to her.

'It was really difficult because I was spending most of the week on my own,' Mrs Dutton said.

'The two of them would arrive in London late on a Friday night, and children weren't allowed on the ward so we were never all together as a family.

'One of us had to be with Charlie, so usually Scott would come into hospital to spend a bit of time with Elsie and I would be out with Charlie.

'Then, one weekend Scott's sister came down with them and she was able to stay with Charlie while Scott and I were with Elsie together.'

Elsie was born at just 23 weeks and four days gestation - below the legal limit for abortion, and wasn't expected to survive. Sadly her twin Dotty did not survive

But Elsie managed to pull through even though she needed surgery to repair her bowel just 10 days after being born

Little Elsie still needs oxygen to be provided to her but she is expected to be off it soon

Her brother Charlie is also taking a turn helping to care for Elsie now she is finally back with the family

After four months in St George's Hospital, London and one at a hospital in Barnsley, Elsie was finally able to be brought home.

Mrs Dutton said the family considered themselves incredibly lucky.

'She's literally defied all the odds, she's just amazing, doctors are always so impressed with her,' she said.

'At the moment she's still on oxygen but every time we go to a doctor's appointment they reduce the amount she needs and she'll be off it soon.'

'It's like a weird dream when I think of everything that's happened.'

Dr Sijo Francis, St George's clinical director of children's services, said kangaroo care had makes a huge difference for premature babies like Elsie.

'When babies like Elsie are born prematurely, clinical intervention is key but parent's involvement also has a hugely positive effect,' he said.

'When mothers hold their babies in their arms for a long time, as they do with kangaroo care, stress for both mother and baby is reduced and we see improved short- and long-term outcomes.'

Kangaroo care is named after the way the marsupials hold their young close to their bodies in a pouch.

Whilst originally developed to improve survival rates for premature babies skin-to-skin contact it is now encouraged for all newborns.

But for Mrs Dutton the fact that Dolly, Elsie's twin, is registered as a miscarriage rather than a stillborn is something that remains hard to accept.

'Losing Dotty was really difficult, because it was before 24 weeks I was never able to register her as a stillborn, she was classed as a miscarriage,' she said.

'That meant I wasn't able to put on Elsie's birth certificate that she was a twin either.

'Being able to have that on the paperwork would have given me some closure after going through something so difficult.

Normally a pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, with any babies born before the 37-week mark considered premature.

About eight of out every 100 births in the UK is premature, with babies born this way at greater risk from variety of problems due to being born before their bodies are ready.

The earlier they are born, the greater the risk of problems.

The abortion limit in the UK is 24 weeks, however later term abortions can be carried out in limited circumstances, such as if the mother's life is at risk.

Medical advances mean survival rates for babies born at 24 weeks is around 60 per cent.

But this plunges to just 10 per cent for babies born at 22 weeks and close to zero for births before then.
Britain's biggest chain of GP practices has been caught letting patients be seen by less qualified staff without supervision.

Operose Health runs 70 surgeries across England, caring for around 600,000 NHS patients.

An undercover BBC reporter, who worked as a receptionist at a practice in London, was told the company hired 'cheaper' physician associates.

Physician associates  who start on a 27,000/year salary  have been hailed as a way of propping up general practice, allowing overstretched GPs to focus on more complex cases.

But critics say they are doing jobs that should really be performed by doctors, who earn 100,000/year, on average.

BBC Panorama found that physician associates were not being properly supervised at one surgery in the capital, which it did not name.

It wrote: 'PAs told the undercover reporter they saw all sorts of patients, sometimes without any clinical supervision.

'They said the practice treated them as equivalent to GPs.'

Panorama found Operose, owned by US health giant Centene Corporation, employs 0.6 full-time GPs for every 2,000 registered patients, half the national average.

The company also employs six times more physician associates than the NHS average, according to health service data.

One anonymous GP, who used to work for Operose, said: 'They were doing the same job as us, with less experience, less qualifications and earning less money.'

Additionally, the investigator was also told that important patient referral documents went unread by doctors or pharmacists for months.

One admin worker at the company said they were tasked with getting through 200 documents a day and deciding which were important enough to be seen by a GP or pharmacist.

Some said they had to use Google to decide what to do with some documents.

Professor Sir Sam Everington, a senior GP in London, accused Operose of 'putting profits, money ahead of quality of care'.

Operose told MailOnline the BBC had opted for sensationalist reporting of a national GP shortage.

'It is deeply disappointing that the BBC decided to deliberately mislead and secretly record our GP practice staff, including junior members of the team, to cover a story they report on almost every day  a national shortage of GPs,' they said.

'Like all practices around the country, we are facing probably the most challenging period in the NHS's history.'

The spokesperson added: 'Despite these challenges, we have a strong track record of performance, recruitment and investment in our staff and services.

'This success is due to our staff, who go above and beyond every day to care for patients.'

Operose added that the safety watchdog Care Quality Commission (CQC) rates 97 per cent of its practices as good or outstanding.

Physician associates, a role that originated in the US in the 1960s, were introduced by the NHS in 2003.

They are health professionals with two years of post-graduate studies on top of a science degree.

For comparison, a GP undergoes a decade of training and education before being allowed to practice.

Physician associates can take medical histories, perform physical examinations and analyse test results, but should always work under supervision.

They are not allowed to prescribe drugs or refer patients for procedures.

Recent analysis has found that some areas of the country have just one GP for every 2,500 patients.

Meanwhile, there are 1,500 fewer fully qualified family doctors working in England compared to five years ago. And a third of those working now want to retire in the next five years, surveys have suggested.

GPs have highlighted problems with rising workloads, increased demands from patients and having 'insufficient time to do the job justice'.

It comes amid a continuing row over a lack of face-to-face appointments for Britons wanting to see their family doctor.

In-person consultations GP's have failed to return to pre-pandemic levels.

Just 63 per cent of consultations were done in person in England in April, up just 1 percentage point in a month  despite the worst of Covid being over and GPs told to get back to 'normal'.

Prior to the pandemic over 80 per cent of GP appointments were held face-to-face.

The Panorama investigation will air on BBC One at 8pm tonight.

An investigation claims England's biggest chain of GP practices is allowing less qualified staff to see patients without supervision from a doctor

Official figures show just 63 per cent of consultations were carried out in-person in England in April. At the current rate, it would take until September 2023 to reach the more than 80 per cent of appointments being made in person seen before the pandemic

England's GP postcode lottery was laid bare today as official data showed some areas have half as many doctors per patient as others. Nuffield Trust analysis shows there are 39.5 GPs caring for every 100,000 people in Portsmouth. People in Thurrock have 40.3 family doctors for every 100,000 people in the area and in Hull there are 41.9 per 100,000

The GP Worklife survey found more than half of family doctors worked for six sessions a week or less every week in 2021, with each session being four hours and 10 minutes. Nearly a fifth of the workforce saw patients for four sessions or less, while 12.4 per cent worked for five sessions and 27.9 per cent worked for six
Fears are mounting that monkeypox is spreading under the radar in Massachusetts, after the state spotted two cases yesterday that were not immediately linked to its first infection from about a month ago.

Dr Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the state's Harvard University, warned DailyMail.com the cases 'certainly indicates undetected transmission chains'.

He said it was 'extremely appropriate' for people in the state to be 'vigilant' of the virus and ensure they knew the warning signs.

Massachusetts health officials spotted the cases yesterday in adult men from the Boston area who had recent contact with each other. It is not clear whether they had traveled abroad, or had contact with another known case.

At least 51 cases have been spotted in the U.S. to date, mostly among gay or bisexual men with links to international travel.

But a growing number are being spotted in people who are close contacts of these patients, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revealed, and at least two are in people with no links to travel or another known case.

It comes after Oklahoma became the sixteenth state to report a case of the virus this week in an individual who had recently returned from a country that was 'experiencing an outbreak' of monkeypox.

A total of 16 states and Washington D.C. have now reported cases of monkeypox. The tags above show the areas that have registered cases of the virus over the last week

Dr Bill Hanage, from Harvard University, warned the virus was likely spreading undetected in Massachusetts

Scientists push to drop monkeypox's name as it is 'discriminatory against Africa' A group of scientists are calling for the name of the monkeypox virus to be changed arguing it is 'discriminatory against Africa'. The tropical disease got its name after it was spotted among monkeys imported into Denmark in 1958 who suffered lesions on their skin similar to those from smallpox. But in a position paper published on Friday, more than two dozen scientists called for the name of the virus which is native to West Africa to be abandoned. They wrote: 'In the context of the current outbreak, continued reference to, and nomenclature of this virus being African is not only inaccurate but is also discriminatory and stigmatizing.' They drew parallels with the Covid outbreak, where naming variants after countries was abandoned in favour of letters of the Greek alphabet. Advertisement

Hanage told DailyMail.com: 'These cases certainly indicate undetected transmission chains, although at this stage we can't say whether they are linked to the previous case in Massachusetts or are a separate introduction.'

He added: 'I noticed that [Health officials in the state] have urged "vigilance". I think it is extremely appropriate.

'People should be aware of symptoms  fever, swollen lymph nodes and rash  but also remember that the rash might not look like the photos in the papers which tend to be of people suffering from a different strain of the virus, with an extensive disseminated rash.

'In some cases, there may be only one pustule.'

Health officials in Massachusetts say neither patient reports a 'known link' to the first spotted in the state a month ago.

In Rhode Island, health officials say their first case  a man in his 30s reported last week  is 'believed to be related to travel to Massachusetts'.

It was unclear whether this man was linked to the two most recent cases in the state, its first case, or a separate group that is yet to be detected.

The CDC said last week they were yet to record 'urban transmission' unlike in Europe where several countries have more than 100 cases.

They have also brushed off concerns about infections not linked to travel or other known cases, saying they are likely linked to travelers who just haven't been detected yet.

Announcing the case, Dr Brown said: 'It is very important to be aware of the symptoms of monkeypox and to be vigilant.

'Individuals with concerning rashes should contact their health providers.'

She added: 'Although monkeypox infections remain rare, and none of the close contacts from Massachusetts' first case developed monkeypox during their monitoring period, the CDC is reporting that cases continue to rise across the United States.'

The Bay state was the first state to spot the disease in a hospitalized gay or bisexual man from Boston on May 18 who had recently returned from Canada. Since then, it has been detected in 15 other states and Washington D.C.

One expert has already suggested there could be more than 300 cases in the U.S., but many are going undetected as some patients suffer a mild illness and because of a lack of testing.

Medical literature says monkeypox infections typically begin with a fever and flu-like signs within 21 days before a rash appears on the face and spreads to the rest of the body.

But in the current outbreak many patients are experiencing a rash and skin lesions in genital areas and on the anus before any flu-like symptoms. In some cases, these are also not spreading to other areas of the body.

Officials are urging gay and bisexual men to be aware of new lesions, rashes or scabs and get in contact with a sexual health clinic

The infection often starts with small bumps that scab over and are contagious

The tropical disease  native to West Africa  spreads primarily through direct skin-to-skin contact with infectious lesions or by touching bedding and clothing previously used by a sufferer.

The CDC says there are yet to be any cases of the virus transmitting through the air recorded in the United States.

Most cases are mild and clear up on their own within about four weeks. But around one in 100 can be fatal, estimates suggest.

Treatment includes vaccines to boost immunity against the virus in people who have recently being exposed, and various medicines typically reserved for monkeypox.

Last week the CDC took down guidance for people to wear face masks when in countries experiencing a monkeypox outbreak  just 13 hours after it was reported by the media.

At a briefing on Friday Dr Rochelle Walensky, the agency's director, explained they now thought the virus may only spread through the air when 'people have sustained face-to-face contact'.

'[But] all of the cases that we have seen to date in this outbreak have been related to direct contact with patients or with materials that have touched them either through close contact or through bedsheets and what not.'

She added that monkeypox was not thought to 'linger in the air' in the same way as Covid, further limiting the chance of catching it through respiration.

The CDC previously said it removed the face masks sentence because it feared this was 'causing confusion'.
Sixteen years ago, my husbands brother, James, took his own life. He was 21, a student at Newcastle University and, growing up, he had never shown any obvious signs of depression or mental illness. He was fun, sporty, kind and popular. Many have said he was a golden boy.

Following a minor operation in December 2006, he sought help for anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Later that week, while back in Newcastle, James went to an NHS walk-in centre and was then referred to A&E as a low priority.

The urgent treatment he needed was either misunderstood or simply unavailable. And yet, the Governments statistics at the time showed  as they do still  that suicide is the leading cause of death in men under 50, affecting three times as many men as women. (The latest figures show that in 2020 there were 5,224 suicides in total in England and Wales, 3,925 of which were men.)

James left A&E without being seen. A letter was sent from the NHS to his family GP by second-class post to the wrong postcode. By the time it arrived, James had already taken his own life, ten days after the operation.

This tragedy turned the familys life upside down and they vowed to do something to prevent others from going through it.

It became very clear to James parents, Nick and Clare, that their sons death could have been avoided. Fuelled by grief, they formed a charity, James Place, which supports, advises and helps men in suicidal crises with individual therapy.

When I visit James Place in the centre of Liverpool, writes Cressida Bonas (right) I witness the impact of its important work first-hand. I meet Derek Wilson (left) and his family. His story shows how the charity is preventing suicides, and the damage suicide does to families

The first centre was opened by Prince William in Liverpool in June 2018. Last month, he visited a second facility, modelled on the first, which opened in East London.

Clare, who has worked tirelessly on the project, says: I thought about what type of intervention and service might have helped James. I researched existing non-clinical models in both physical and mental health, took the best elements from each of them and formulated the idea of a non-clinical calm space, but manned by fully trained therapists who could give the best possible treatment.

Entirely charitably funded, James Place is a non-residential space open to any man over the age of 18 who is suicidal. The CEO, Ellen ODonoghue, says they see men from all walks of life, and we know that the experience of suicidal crisis is universal.

So far, the charity has worked with more than 800 men, saving many lives.

When I visit James Place in the centre of Liverpool, I witness the impact of its important work first-hand. I meet Derek Wilson and his family. His story shows how the charity is preventing suicides, and the damage suicide does to families.

Pictured: Cressida Bonas with her husband Harry Wentworth-Stanley, both 33

Born and bred in Liverpool, Derek, 58, is a big Liverpool supporter, he tells me with a grin. Im struck by how cheerful he is. Having worked for Liverpool City Council for 35 years, he says he was suspended for 12 months after a simple mistake relating to new building regulations. This was months before Covid started to sweep through the UK.

Being suspended was the trigger, says Derek. Feelings of shame overwhelmed him and he spiralled: I thought, where am I going to get a job, Im the breadwinner. Im worthless . . . Im better off dead.

Fearing that he would no longer be able to provide for his family played a big part in Dereks crisis.

Sixteen years ago, my husbands brother, James (pictured), took his own life. He was 21, a student at Newcastle University and, growing up, he had never shown any obvious signs of depression or mental illness

Dan Bracken, a psychotherapist and head of James Place London, explains: There are many complex reasons why men come to us in a suicidal crisis and often it relates to what they and society expect of them as men.

Although Derek comes from a loving family, his dad was an alcoholic and was sometimes violent. I wasnt at the age where I could help my mum, he says. He looks back and wishes he could have done something more to intervene.

Then his sister married someone similar (she later died from cancer).

I tried to protect her, but I couldnt, he says. For years, Dereks pent-up feelings of guilt and anger had no outlet. Its like a pressure cooker and if you lock down a pressure cooker its just going to blow, and thats what happened to me.

Dereks daughter, Sophie, 24, tells me her dad became very withdrawn. After being someone who was the life and soul of the party, he suddenly didnt want to be around anyone, she says. And he started to lose his temper.

Sophie describes a black cloud that got darker and darker . . . he was blank, when having a conversation with him it was like he wasnt there.

Dereks wife, Sarah, 47, who works for the city council, says they never had silences between them until he was suspended. When she tried to broach this with him, the barriers went up, she says.

Derek didnt think he needed help, but he stopped speaking with friends and gradually shut the world out. None of his family realised the severity of his decline, nor could they have anticipated what would happen one day in October 2019.

It started as a normal day doing some DIY, says Derek. But after assembling a new wardrobe only to find it didnt fit in the room, he lost his temper and threw it down the stairs. He was mortified that his son, Liam, then 15, was watching. I went out to calm down and got in my van, he says.

Derek Wilson, 58, with daughter Sophie, 23, at James' Place, a support centre for male suicide, Liverpool, Merseyside

Derek hadnt planned to kill himself, but the thought came to him after he left the house: I went to an area I know very well. An area where no one ever goes.

But, in a twist of fate, a little girl and her dad walked past him. The man looked at him with an expression that said: Have I just seen correctly? As they left, the little girl smiled at me, says Derek.

The idea of what she could have seen, had he done what hed planned, is haunting. Now, when Derek notices someone looking down, he says he will ask them how they are and if they are OK.

Derek stayed in the van for two or three hours. During this time, Sarah texted to see where he was because she had a niggle that something wasnt right. The message she received back read: Im really sorry about today, its like a switch has gone in my mind. I love you all, tell the kids I love them, but I cant carry on like this.

Frightened and in disbelief, Sarah phoned the police. Then she went looking in all the places she thought he might be, but she couldnt find him.

In the end, Derek decided to go home: I thought, Ill come back later and do it when its dark.

But when he got home, there was a police car parked outside. Inside he collapsed on the floor and said: You have to take me somewhere.

One of the major issues with mental health is that people often dont know how to access the appropriate services: We didnt . . . where do you even start, where do you go? Sarah says.

The police contacted NHS mental health services, who sent a practitioner to the house. She said that unfortunately there was a waiting list for therapy.

James Place exists to meet the need for urgent care for men in suicidal crisis, and this is one of the reasons we work so closely with partners in the NHS, and more widely, says Ellen ODonoghue.

It means we can build referral pathways to make sure that men reach us quickly and safely when they need help.

This feels all the more powerful knowing how my husbands family always felt that if they could save one life in James name, it would mean that his death was not in vain

Derek was lucky that a friend of Sarahs gave him the number for James Place. He was doubly fortunate to have his close family for support. He admits: If I hadnt got help from James Place, I would have gone out the next day and killed myself. He describes walking into the centre as a relief.

The usual intervention is six to eight intensive therapy sessions over two months. Derek was seen for eight weeks.

He says he was enormously helped by the James Place Lay Your Cards on the Table cards. Created by Jane Boland, clinical lead and head of the Liverpool centre, they are used to help structure the therapy.

On the cards are phrases such as I feel trapped. Jane explains this allows men to acknowledge some of the horrible things they havent been able to say to anyone.

For many men this will be the first time they can understand the relationship between their thoughts, feelings and actions, she says.

Thanks to James Place, Derek is now able to understand how he reached that low point. Most of it was from things that happened in the past, he says.

In his new building construction job, he makes sure he asks his work colleagues, Are you OK? And he always asks twice. After seeing him at his lowest point, Sophie tells me: Hes now a completely different person and he loves life.

And how have Sarah and Sophie changed? Sophie smiles. Im enjoying life . . . every day is a bonus. She says emphatically: Every city needs a James Place.

There are plans to open centres in another three cities over the next three years.

Sarah touches her heart as she tells me: From right deep in here, I know James Place is why Ive still got a husband, and why my children still have a father. It saved not only Dereks life, but ours.

And this feels all the more powerful knowing how my husbands family always felt that if they could save one life in James name, it would mean that his death was not in vain.

To find out more about James Place, including how to make a referral, visit jamesplace.org.uk.

You can also find help through Samaritans (call 116 123) or by texting the word Shout to the Shout crisis line on 85258. In an emergency call 999 or seek help from A&E.
On June 17, 2021, something very out of the ordinary happened at dozens of hospitals across eastern England: A&E attendances for people with asthma attacks soared by 560 per cent from the daily average.

The same day, asthma-related calls to GP out-of-hours services in the region rocketed by 422 per cent, while the numbers with sudden asthma symptoms calling NHS 111 jumped by 193 per cent.

A subsequent investigation by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, revealed it was one of the biggest spikes in asthma attacks ever recorded in the UK  and it was all down to one thing, thunderstorms  the day before.

Numerous studies have shown a link between thunderstorms and subsequent asthma flare-ups.

Scientific interest in the connection peaked after a particularly nasty surge in attacks in Melbourne, Australia, in 2016, when hospitals in the city recorded the largest ever single episode of thunderstorm-related asthma attacks after bad weather struck the region.

Casualty attendances leapt by 672 per cent in a matter of hours and ten people died from asthma exacerbations.

Numerous studies have shown a link between thunderstorms and subsequent asthma flare-ups (File image)

'At one point, every intensive care bed in Melbourne was full, mostly with asthma patients, and young people (the youngest was 18) were dying from their attacks,' says Ian Pavord, a professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Oxford.

Precisely how storms make asthma worse is unclear. But their effects always seem much worse during the hay fever season, when pollen levels are at their highest  usually around late June and early July in the UK.

Indeed, last week millions of hay fever sufferers were warned of an impending phenomenon called 'thunder fever'  a combination of high pollen counts and thunderstorms which could exacerbate their symptoms.

A popular theory is that air turbulence created by storms means strong updraughts 'suck' pollen grains up into the clouds. There, the moisture penetrates the pollen grains and causes them to swell and rupture.

Studies show that up to 60 per cent of patients either regularly skip doses of the preventive inhaler or don't bother to use it at all if they have no symptoms. When symptoms do emerge, they rely on the reliever inhaler (File image)

This releases much smaller fragments of pollen proteins, which drop down to Earth before being inhaled.

Normally, pollen grains settle in the nose or upper airway  where they cause irritation in those with hay fever  but are too big to get into the narrow passages of the lower respiratory tract.

However, the much smaller particles from burst grains can get into these passages  and cause inflammation in the lining of the airway that triggers severe asthma symptoms.

The big question is why so many asthma sufferers fall ill after storms when they have access to a range of highly effective medicines  such as inhaled steroids  which can prevent such flare-ups.

Most asthma patients are prescribed a steroid 'preventive' inhaler (usually brown) to take daily to ward off inflammation in the lungs that might cause wheezing and shortness of breath. They will also have a 'reliever' (usually blue) inhaler for use when asthma symptoms appear, which works by dilating the respiratory passages to improve airflow.

But studies show that up to 60 per cent of patients either regularly skip doses of the preventive inhaler or don't bother to use it at all if they have no symptoms. When symptoms do emerge, they rely on the reliever inhaler.

'That can help, but it doesn't address the underlying problem of inflammation deep inside the airway,' says Professor Pavord.

'Many of these patients have mild asthma and find it hard to commit to regular daily use of a brown inhaler.

'Yet every year we see deaths in people with mild asthma. I've seen patients who have used their blue inhalers nearly 100 times in 24 hours and not got any better.'

The solution, according to Professor Pavord, is to change tack completely when it comes to asthma treatment.

Instead of using two separate inhalers, he says, evidence now suggests lives could potentially be saved if patients are given the two medicines  to prevent asthma and to treat symptoms  in a single inhaler, to be used only at the first sign of wheeziness or shortness of breath, such as that brought on suddenly by a thunderstorm.

These combination inhalers  brand names Seretide, Symbicort Smart and Fostair  are already available on the NHS but are licensed for daily use in patients whose asthma is not well controlled despite daily use of a 'preventive' puffer, the current treatment method.

Changing to using 'as needed', says Professor Pavord, is less hassle for patients but with equally good outcomes.

Indeed, one study, published in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine last December, looked at asthma symptoms in 8,000 patients who either stuck to their daily dose of steroids  using their reliever only when needed  or used the combination inhaler every few weeks or months, whenever they felt their symptoms coming on.

The results showed that occasional use of a two-in-one puffer was just as effective at keeping asthma under control, while reducing intake of steroid drugs that can have side-effects such as a sore throat, croaky voice and oral thrush, a fungal infection in the mouth.

Meanwhile, the UKHSA may introduce asthma-specific red alerts, alongside weather and pollen forecasts, during the hay fever season.

Asthma UK says asthma sufferers who have previously been affected by thunderstorms, or fear they could trigger an attack, should carry their reliever inhaler with them at all times, stay indoors before, during and after a storm and keep the windows closed to stop storm-driven pollen from getting inside.
Once a month, GP Lisa Silver updates a spreadsheet on her computer, recording how many patients are registered at her village practice at the top of the Chilterns. 'In 2015 we had 3,454 patients,' she says. 'We now have 4,430.'

But although they've gained close to an extra 1,000 patients, what she and her GP partner, Julie Barton, haven't been able to get for years is another GP to share the mounting workload. After five years of looking, they have just managed to recruit an extra part-time GP partner.

Both Dr Silver and her partner  'another old girl, like me'  are in their 60s. Both qualified as GPs in 1988, at the end of ten years of training.

'I should have thrown in the towel some time ago,' she told Good Health.

On average, 3 per cent of the entire practice population rings the surgery every day. 'Routinely, I'll be consulting with 50 patients a day, which is wholly unsafe and utterly wearing,' she says. 'I get home so tired and just go to bed.'

Once a month, GP Lisa Silver (pictured) updates a spreadsheet on her computer, recording how many patients are registered at her village practice at the top of the Chilterns. 'In 2015 we had 3,454 patients,' she says. 'We now have 4,430.' But although they've gained close to an extra 1,000 patients, she and her GP partner haven't been able to get another GP to share the mounting workload

Every morning, she says: 'I think about retiring  I'm old enough to draw a pension. I could just walk out, as could my partner, but we won't, because that would leave more than 4,000 people without a local GP. You could say we're the last two women standing.'

Dr Silver's surgery, in the picturesque village of Nettlebed, five miles north of Henley-on-Thames, may not look like the front line in a battle.

But it is typical of hundreds of surgeries across England, fighting to keep going in the face of ever-growing patient demand and a chronic shortage of GPs.

Last week, the Doctors in Unite union claimed the UK is short of 20,000 GPs. Whatever the actual figure, there is no doubt, as health think tank The King's Fund has put it, that general practice, the gateway to all healthcare in the UK, is 'creaking at the seams'.

In many rural areas, however, general practice is not only creaking, but dangerously close to coming apart at the seams.

More than 9.7 million people, around one fifth of England's population, live in rural areas  more than the entire population of London. Overall, they are disproportionately older than the urban population, and more likely to have complex, long-term medical problems.

Age UK has been monitoring the impact of the GP crisis on older patients, especially those in rural areas. In its most recent survey, 45 per cent said they were worried about their ability to access their GP.

Louise Jackson, the charity's health and care policy manager, told Good Health it would be a mistake to put this down to the pandemic.

'Access was obviously severely curtailed in the early part of the pandemic, but this has been a growing issue for older people for years,' she said.

Emma Watts, 47, (pictured) one of five partner-GPs at Shere Surgery & Dispensary, in the Surrey Hills east of Guildford, knows all about these pressures. The practice has the equivalent of just four full-time GPs, plus two trainees, and 8,000 patients on their books

'We are now also facing the added problem of a lack of community nurses and district nurses, and a shortage of palliative care specialist nurses. All of these things add up to extra pressure on general practice.'

It's estimated that by 2050, one in four people in the UK will be aged 65 or over  up from one in five in 2019. But some rural and coastal areas are already ahead of the curve.

In North Lincolnshire, for example, in 2019, 48 per cent of people were 65 or over  this is predicted to increase to 61 per cent of the population by 2030.

Last month, the health think tank the Nuffield Trust looked at the number of patients per GP in all 107 clinical commissioning groups (the bodies that fund local NHS care) in England, and found an extraordinary variation, with GPs in some rural or deprived areas bearing the highest burdens.

The number ranged from a low of 1,346 patients per GP in Wirral, to well in excess of 2,000 patients in many deprived or rural regions, such as the North East Lincolnshire CCG area, where each GP is responsible for 2,219 patients  many of whom, being elderly, will have multiple health conditions and need frequent consultations.

Mhairi Derby-Pitt lives outside Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is part of the Northumberland CCG, with an average 1,543 patients per GP. This has one of the better patient-GP ratios, according to the Nuffield analysis, but her experience highlights the problems for many living in more rural areas.

Mhairi is registered with a GP practice that serves a nearby village and the town surrounds. The nearest hospital where she can get consultant treatment is 53 miles away, so the former journalist, 41, who has three serious auto-immune conditions  including rheumatoid arthritis  as well as the bone disease osteoporosis, is heavily reliant on her GP.

View of a country doctor leaving his Morris Minor 1000 car to call on farmer's wife Ivy Wall and child at a farmhouse whilst doing his rounds near Crickhowell in Brecknockshire, Wales in 1959. (Photo by Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images)

But getting to see the doctor has been almost impossible. 'Covid didn't help but it was bad before it hit. There used to be four full-time GPs but a few years ago some retired, and there are now five part-time GPs only,' she says.

'I used to see the same doctor every few weeks regularly for check-ups, to check my medication and see if my conditions were worsening. That doctor knew all of my conditions, what medications I was taking, and how much.

'But since the full-time GPs left, I've found it harder and harder to get an appointment. In fact, I've only been able to see the GP three times in the past three years.

'It's a running joke around here about not being able to see a doctor. Now our practice only does phone consultations  but even they are impossible to get.

'Or you can 'e-consult', where you email the doctor, which doesn't suit me at all as I have so many conditions.

'I don't even bother ringing now, even if I feel unwell, because I know I will not be seen.

'My health has suffered greatly as a result: I'm in constant pain and my joints are becoming badly twisted. Walking is very, very painful. I'm also less able to use my hands.'

The picture for patients is only going to get worse, suggests the Nuffield Trust, 'with an increasing number of GPs leaving clinical practice or working part-time, and many practices unable to fill vacant GP posts. Hundreds of thousands of patients are being forced to re-register with another practice after their own practice has closed'.

(An investigation last year by Pulse, the GP news site, found that in 2020 alone 96 practices in the UK  mostly in England  had closed.)

This disrupts all-important continuity of care  the reassurance of seeing a GP who knows you and your medical history, which is especially important to elderly patients with long-term health problems  and, in turn, is putting additional pressure on practices that are already hard-pressed.

For many rural areas, including South Oxfordshire, where Dr Silver works, housing development is compounding national problems of recruiting and retaining GPs.

In April 2019, there were 759,020 patients registered with GP practices in Oxfordshire. By the following April, the number had risen to 774,860  an increase of 15,840 in just 12 months  and is heading for more than 850,000 within six years thanks to the housing boom (according to the county council).

By then 'we will need the equivalent of 12.4 new GP surgeries to cope with the population rise', said Dr Silver. 'So far we haven't got one. In fact, we've actually lost GP surgeries in Oxfordshire.'

Nationally, full-time GPs are disappearing, too. As a result, many surgeries are becoming increasingly dependent on locums.

Not only does this undermine the principle of continuity of care, it is also costly. 'A locum around here will command 750 to 850 a day,' said Dr Silver. 'Some might command as much as 1,000.'

So while a salaried GP working five days a week would earn about 100,000 a year, the average locum can bank this in just six months.

At the same time, the number of GPs choosing to work part-time has been increasing.

Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs, told Good Health that the problems of a lack of GPs were worst in rural practices, where there were 'long-standing difficulties in recruiting GPs and other staff. Many prospective candidates are deterred due to the often higher costs of working and living in rural areas'.

In many rural areas general practice is not only creaking, but dangerously close to coming apart at the seams

'GP practices across the country are under intense pressure, caring for increasing numbers of patients with increasingly complex health needs,' added Professor Marshall. 'But these pressures are often felt more acutely in rural practices.'

Emma Watts, 47, one of five partner-GPs at Shere Surgery & Dispensary, in the Surrey Hills east of Guildford, knows all about these pressures. The practice has the equivalent of just four full-time GPs, plus two trainees, and 8,000 patients on their books. The British Medical Association (BMA) says it is unsafe for any GP to see more than 30 patients in a day  a maximum Dr Watts and her colleagues regularly exceed.

'We really need more than four GPs in each day, but we don't have them, and we can't recruit them,' she told Good Health. 'Sometimes we can get locums, but not enough to meet the demand. So because we're partners we just carry on seeing patients. We can't just walk away and say, 'I'm sorry, I've seen my quota of patients today, I'm unsafe now and I'm going home'.'

And for partners in GP practices, seeing patients is just part of the job.

It's a little after 1pm on a typical day and Dr Watts is dividing her attention between three computer screens on her desk.

On one she's attending a two-hour compulsory virtual meeting about the latest plans to reform GP services.

At the same time, she logs on to a second computer and begins the daily task of working her way through letters from hospitals about patients she's referred for specialist consultations  a task that's grown ever more demanding. She also logs on to her laptop to start on prescriptions. Each one needs signing electronically and there are 153 awaiting her attention.

Plagued by creaking NHS networks and clunky computers  they aren't allowed to buy their own  this can be akin to water torture. 'We have to watch the buffering 'wheel of doom' for, on average, 15 to 45 seconds per prescription,' she says. 'Think of the wasted doctor hours  and it has to be a doctor giving this their full attention because it is a legal document, with significant consequences if improperly prescribed.'

At her practice, the doctors sign around 10,000 prescriptions a month, taking more than 40 hours every week  more than one 'full-time equivalent' doctor working 37.5 hours.

All GPs face these tasks. But the increasing lack of staff in rural practices means each additional burden equals less and less time for patients. The bottom line is that, especially in rural England, there are fewer GPs looking after ever more patients.

Even as pressures on GPs grow, the nature of the workforce is also changing  and not in a way that benefits patients. For decades the partnership model, in which GPs share ownership of a practice, has been the bedrock of general practice, but it is starting to crumble.

Unlike salaried GPs, partners don't work set hours and it's down to them to pick up the slack when their practice is under-staffed and under pressure. The BMA estimates that, because of the hours they work, the equivalent of three salaried GPs are needed to replace every partner lost.

But, as senior GPs retire and younger doctors are reluctant to take on the responsibilities of partnerships, the model is in decline. By headcount, the number of partner GPs has fallen by almost 20 per cent from September 2015 to 19,717 in April 2022.

Successive governments have pledged, and failed, to tackle the shortage of GPs. Last November the Health Secretary Sajid Javid admitted that the target of 6,000 more GPs by 2024-25 was almost certain to be missed.

Billy Palmer, a senior fellow in health policy at the Nuffield Trust, told Good Health that if they had been on track, 'we might have expected to have about 2,000 more GPs by now. In fact, the number of fully qualified GPs has actually fallen by about 1 per cent  280 or so doctors.'

Extra training places and Health Education England's 'Choose GP' recruitment drive have led to a rise in the number of medical students recruited to start specialist general-practice training over the past seven years, to a record 4,000 last year.

Efforts have also been made to tempt trainees to work in locations 'that either have a past history of under-recruitment or are in under-doctored or deprived areas'.

Under the Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme, a 16 million incentives programme, trainees who commit to a three-year placement in such areas receive a golden handshake of 20,000.

Despite all this, GP numbers are still falling.

Fast-forward to March this year, when the latest reforms to general practice were announced. From October, GPs in England will be required to offer appointments from 9am to 5pm on Saturdays and from 6.30pm to 8pm on weekday evenings. Unable to hire more doctors, neither Dr Silver nor Dr Watts has any idea how their practices will be able to comply.

And, in the midst of this crisis, the Government appears to be considering a wave of reforms which could include concentrating GP services, primarily in urban centres, and doing away with the traditional system of practices being owned and run by GP partners.

Instead, says think tank Policy Exchange, in a report with a foreword by Sajid Javid, all GPs should be salaried and contracted to trusts and other big organisations.

This, believes Dr Watts, 'would be a disaster': Concentrating GPs in urban centres would make it even harder for rural patients to see a doctor, and putting all GPs on to salaries would create an inflexible 9-to-5 workforce.

The real solution, Professor Marshall of the Royal College of General Practitioners told Good Health, was as simple as it was proving impossible for the Government to achieve: train and retain more GPs.

Meanwhile for countless patients who, like Mhairi Derby-Pitt, are struggling to get seen in rural practices, it's understandable that they feel 'utterly abandoned', as she describes it.

'In some ways I'm one of the lucky ones: I wonder how it is for people with bad internet  or no internet  who cannot do e-consult or who don't like being 'seen' over the phone,' she says.

While she recognises the problems are not GPs' 'fault', she is frustrated and worried about the lack of access to medical care.

'The last time my dad saw our GP he kissed her ring. She asked why and he replied, 'Well, isn't that what you do when you get an audience with the Pope?' Seeing my own GP is even harder.'

Case study interview: JULIE COOK
The competition watchdog has stepped in after the government called for an urgent investigation into petrol station pricing after a week of pain at the pumps.

Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, urged the move over concerns that petrol and diesel prices are higher than they should be after the 5p fuel duty cut in the Budget.

The CMA says it will undertake a short and focused review of fuel prices, as Andrea Coscelli, its chief executive said record pump prices are causing significant concern for millions of people.

Meanwhile, both the RAC and AA have called for another fuel duty cut as early as this week.

Over the past week petrol prices have repeatedly hit record highs, with the cost of a litre of unleaded rising from 177.88p to 185.04p

The review was requested by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng on Saturday.

The rising oil price and falling pound have more than outweighed the tax cut introduced in March, but petrol station operators have been accused of not fully passing on the fuel duty reduction.

Mr Kwarteng wrote a letter to the Competition and Markets Authority, saying: The British people are rightly frustrated that the 5 billion package does not always appear to have been passed through to forecourt prices

The CMA move came after a week in which petrol prices have repeatedly hit record highs, with the cost of a litre of unleaded rising from 177.88p to 185.04p.

Over the same period, diesel has climbed from 185.01p to 190.92p on average.

RAC fuel spokesperson Simon Williams said: Average fuel prices have shot up to new records yet again with petrol hitting 185.04p and diesel 190.92p.

'This is an increase of 2p a litre on both since Thursday and takes the cost of filling a 55-litre family car with petrol to 101.77 and has led to the first ever 105 fill-up for diesel. Incredibly, the Government is now raking around 46 in tax from every full tank.

The speed and scale of the increase is staggering with unleaded going up 7p in a week and diesel by nearly 6p.

Poll Should VAT be temporarily cut on petrol and diesel to tackle rocketing prices? Yes No Should VAT be temporarily cut on petrol and diesel to tackle rocketing prices? Yes 565 votes

No 38 votes Now share your opinion





'This must surely put more pressure on the Government to take action to ensure drivers dont endure a summer of discontent at the pumps.

We hope the Governments persistent talk about the importance of retailers passing on Marchs 5p duty cut fully is a precursor to an announcement of a deeper cut this week.

'If thats the case, its very welcome, albeit overdue as the 5p cut has been well and truly overtaken by events on the wholesale market since then.

The rapid rise in the cost of petrol and diesel has led to fresh calls for further tax cuts, including potentially a VAT cut tackling the double taxation, whereby VAT is charged on top of fuel duty.

Meanwhile, Jack Cousens, the AAs head of roads policy, called for urgent action, saying: To relieve pressure at the pumps we need an immediate 10p cut to fuel duty.
Appreciate Group, the company behind the Love2Shop gift cards, is another of those companies happy that lockdown restrictions seem to be a thing of the past.

The company, formerly known as Park Group, has come a long way from its origins in 1967 when people paid weekly instalments for food hampers that would be delivered on a bicycle.

Which only shows that getting food delivered to one's doorstep is not a particularly new thing.

The company has a broad portfolio of brands, some targeted at consumers and some at business customers. The consumer-facing brands meet a range of saving and gifting needs, while the business products help corporate customers reward and recognise their employees and clients.

Give a gift: Appreciate Group is the company behind the Love2Shop gift cards

The Park Christmas Savings business has 286,000 customers and a network of 30,000 agents, although increasingly the company is interacting directly with the consumer. Appreciate is the top dog in this market in the UK and claims to have a 71 per cent market share.

The fledgeling Highstreetvouchers.com business has 168,000 customers and a tiny market share of 0.3 per cent while the business-to-business arm, based around Love2Shop, has 42,000 clients and a market share of 6.2 per cent.

Before the first UK lockdown in March 2020 the shares were trading above 80p. In the space of two years as the business suffered during the pandemic, the shares had lost three-quarters of their value but there are signs that the company is turning things around.

The most recent trading update was released at the end of April and revealed that performance in the year to the end of March was ahead of expectations.

The range of analyst forecasts had been 6.8million to 7.5million but following the trading statement, house broker Liberum Capital increased its adjusted profit before tax estimate to 8.3million.

The final quarter of the financial year  January to March 2022  saw the company notch up the third successive quarter of double-digit percentage growth in underlying billings compared with two years earlier or pre-pandemic.

The corporate business and its Highstreetvouchers.com arm performed strongly, with revenue up 5.5 per cent year-on-year and 8.9 per cent higher than two years earlier.

As expected, the Christmas savings business suffered, with revenue down roughly 15 per cent, as the company's agents found it difficult to visit customers; however, in the current financial year, Christmas savings billings are expected to be down just 4 per cent on last year, which represents an improvement on recent trends.

'Management remains of the view that the business can return to growth. Our view is that, longer-term, the biggest opportunity lies in extending the proposition into other forms of saving, such as for weddings and holidays,' Liberum Capital said.

Small players: Research house Hardman notes that Appreciate has just a 3 per cent share of the non-Christmas savings market  a market valued at around 7billion

Depressing though it is to report it, with increasing numbers of UK citizens visiting food banks, the days of the Christmas Savings club might be about to enjoy a resurgence.

Meanwhile, with the pandemic having disrupted the nine-to-five plus daily commute model, many employers are finding that they have to work harder to retain staff now, which plays well to the strengths of Appreciate's corporate offerings, which include employee discount schemes and gift cards.

The pandemic also disrupted Appreciate Group's own business but as was the case for many enterprises it proved a catalyst for change, with the company accelerating its adaptation to the digital age.

Research house Hardman notes that Appreciate has just a 3 per cent share of the non-Christmas savings market  a market valued at around 7billion  and with its digital model 'can attack it as a fintech new entrant'.

The company launched a fully integrated customer campaign across digital social media and TV channels to help drive customer acquisition, rather than relying mainly on TV advertising as was the case in the past.

In the year to 31 March 2022, digital billings (excluding billings from free school meals) increased by 18.7 per cent to 54million from 45.5million the year before and were three times higher than two years earlier.

'The benefits of the investments we have made are now being realised in digital and Corporate, where our differentiated proposition is particularly strong. We have also made good progress in Christmas Savings and can see opportunities to return this part of our business to growth in the coming years,' chief executive Ian O'Doherty told shareholders in the full-year trading update.

Management's plan is to 'build on the high regard in which Appreciate Group is held by existing customers to capture more of the available market in the future'.

The broking community is keen on the shares, with all three brokers that cover the company rating the stock a 'buy'.

The consensus target price of 61p is more than double the current share price of 26.2p.

Chief executive Ian O'Doherty and soon-to-depart chief financial officer Tim Clancy joined Appreciate in 2018 and set about modernising the business after some years of underinvestment, with the emphasis on making the business more digitally orientated.

Recent results suggest that the years of investment are beginning to pay off while the stock market valuation  the shares are valued at just 7.5 times forecast annual earnings, which is about half the stock market norm  indicates that investors have yet to fully wake up to this turnaround.
A South Korean volunteer fighter who recently returned from Ukraine has been questioned by police over possible violation of passport law for his unauthorized stay in the war-ridden country, officials said Monday.





Rhee Keun, a Navy SEAL-turned-YouTuber, voluntarily appeared at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency last Friday and underwent questioning, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.





Rhee has reportedly admitted to most of the charges.





He returned home on May 27 after sustaining injuries in Ukraine, where he had spent the past three months, having joined the war as a volunteer fighter.





Police had said they would investigate Rhee over passport law violation charges when he returns, as he traveled to the war-stricken country in defiance of the country's travel ban to Ukraine.





South Korea has banned its nationals from traveling to all regions of Ukraine since mid-February amid safety concerns. Entering the country without approval is punishable by up to one year in prison or a fine of up to 10 million won ($7,763) under Korean law. Rhee is now banned from leaving the country. (Yonhap)






The merger of two of Londons biggest oil firms has been thrown into doubt after a major investor questioned the deal.

Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) warned it had strong reservations about the proposed 1.4billion tie-up between Capricorn Energy and Tullow Oil announced earlier this month.

LGIM, which is a major shareholder in both Capricorn and Tullow  owning stakes of 3.9 per cent and 1.7 per cent in each business respectively  said there was no clear strategic rationale for the merger.

Oil merger: Legal & General Investment Management warned it had 'strong reservations' about the proposed 1.4bn tie-up between Capricorn Energy and Tullow Oil

It added the deal was highly unattractive to Capricorn shareholders.

LGIM also said the deal would give Capricorn further exposure to the oil markets just as the world is shifting away from fossil fuels.

The deal has raised eyebrows in the City, with some noting that the tie-up would allow Tullow, which has lots of debt, access to Capricorns cash pile.
Victims of Britains most notorious banking fraudsters will be offered a 3million settlement package.

Up to 200 small business owners lost huge sums when their firms were targeted by rogue advisers and bankers at the Reading branch of HBOS between 2003 and 2007.

Lloyds, which rescued HBOS during the financial crisis in 2009, has been promising to compensate victims for several years.

Guilty: Former HBOS bankers Michael Bancroft, David Mills and Lynden Scourfield (pictured), were jailed after to 200 small business owners lost huge sums

But nearly two decades on, a series of bungled attempts have left many still suffering.

Now, in an attempt to draw the scandal to a close, Lloyds is ready to offer all customers who have been classed as victims a 3million lump sum each.

In January 2017, six people  including two former employees of HBOS  were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison for their role in the scandal.

They pushed small businesses to collapse, milking them for advisory fees along the way, and used the cash to go on luxury holidays, pay for sex parties with escorts including Suzie Best, buy expensive watches and even fund a yacht called Powder Monkey.

One of the accused, HBOSs Lynden Scourfield, was described by the judge as being driven by rapacious greed.

Michael Bancroft, Mark Dobson, John Cartwright, David Mills and his wife Alison Mills were also convicted.

Lloyds agreed to appoint Sir David Foskett, a retired High Court judge, to lead a panel addressing the shortcomings in the banks original compensation scheme.

The Foskett Panel has been re-reviewing cases since 2020, but fewer than a dozen of around 200 have been resolved.

While some businesses claim they are owed more than 3million, it is thought that many will take Lloyds offer because they are getting too old, have developed illnesses, or simply want the saga to be over.

Paul and Nikki Turner set up the SME Alliance to represent victims of bank malpractice after their business was defrauded by the crooks.

Rogue advisors pushed small businesses to collapse and used the cash to go on luxury holidays, pay for sex parties with escorts including Suzie Best (pictured)

Andy Keats, who now leads the organisation, said he had been working with the Foskett Panel to come up with the compensation package.

He said: The 3million is a tax-free sum which will be given to those who accept it.

Its not in any way compensation for what happened, but they are entitled to take it.

When asked whether the amount was good enough for victims, he said diplomatically: Its good for those who were seeking that amount.

And it will be good for those who want to accept it.

He added that he was surprised by the number of people who had said, in conversations with the SME Alliance, that they would be willing to accept 3million.

Theres people who have said Im not that well or Its not what Im due but if I have it then the rest of my life will be comfortable, he said.

He thinks it could have taken the Foskett Panel up to another 20 years to reach settlement conclusions on all the cases it was reviewing. The settlement package is expected to be announced by the Foskett Panel later this week.

A Lloyds spokesman said: We remain extremely sorry to all the customers who were impacted by the crimes committed at HBOS Reading and our intention has always been, and remains, to provide fair and generous compensation to those impacted by the fraud.

We have been engaging with Sir David Foskett and his panel, along with other stakeholders, as the panel considers how best to speed up progress with assessing customer cases.

The spokesman added: We believe the panels changes to the process will achieve that aim.
A family caught in a bitter legal dispute with a major construction firm claim its builders sent them a Photoshopped image of the newly built home that showed an essential safety feature that was not installed.

The Barbagallo family's home in Sydney's inner-west burned down three years ago after an electrical fault sparked a fire. They lost most of their possessions, but decided to rebuild on the same plot of land because they loved the area.

They enlisted Metricon, one of Australia's largest and most recognised construction companies to do the build, but it has resulted in years of ongoing litigation, claims of deceit and 'heinous and disgusting behaviour' from the firm's employees.

At the centre of the dispute is an image allegedly Photoshopped by Metricon after the family used an independent engineer to inspect the house.

The engineer noticed the house did not have enough control joints - a continuous vertical joint filled with compressible foam and mastic that prevents cracking when brickwork expands and articulates.

After sending the report to Metricon's construction team, the family received an image back that appeared to have a crudely-Photoshopped control joint drawn down the back of the house.

'They treated us like criminals on our own site. We went to the Photoshopped joint, we pulled out the mastik (adhesive) and and there was no joint. They knew what they were doing,' Salv Barbagallo told Daily Mail Australia.

'They threatened me with a Supreme Court injuction. The lowest of tactics. This stuff frightens you, I don't have their financial backing. You lose friends along the way, it's sad.'

Salv Barbagallo believes this image sent by Metricon shows a Photoshopped control joint crudely drawn from the bottom left of a window in his Sydney home

Salv attended his home two weeks after they were sent the 'Photoshopped' picture from Metricon - finding no evidence of the control joint that was 'crudely drawn' at the bottom of the top right window

The picture appears to show an uneven line drawn from the bottom left corner of the window, with one of the lines seemingly crossing the wooden beams in front of it

The Barbagallos - father Salv, mother Melissa and their kids Miranda, 13, and Carla, 10 - said the house fire in May 2019 cost them the 'majority of our things'.

'We're grateful we left unscathed. We absolutely loved our place but found ourselves homeless overnight,' Salv told Daily Mail Australia.

Despite the trauma of losing their home, they enjoyed living in the neighbourhood and wanted to remain.

'We decided to go with Metricon, Australia's largest builder, who define themselves as the most reputable, most trusted,' Salv said.

'We thought we were in safe hands.'

The new project started in July 2019 - a couple of months after the fire - with Metricon promising a 32-week build with a 30-day CDC approval. Salv said these promises were used to 'lure you in'.

During that time, he also gave up his career as a finance executive at the Commonwealth Bank to look after his wife who had fallen ill.

'I quit work to help her out and reduce the trauma to the kids. I wanted our family home back as soon as possible,' Salv said.

'As soon as we signed with Metricon, everything started to unravel.'

Salv and Melissa Barbagallo (pictured) say they are owed $215,000 from Metricon for legal and expert costs of ongoing disputes over the construction of their Sydney home

A house fire in May 2019 ripped through the family home while they were sleeping - with Salv, Melissa and their two kids managing to escape unscathed

They say the early stages of building were a combination of 'incompetence and errors', with the construction crew unprepared to start work when promised.

'The construction manager was a lying person. He was the most disingenuous bloke I've come across,' Salv said.

'I brought in a structural engineer to inspect the site. Within minutes he realised there wasn't enough control joints, and within five days of going onto the site, we worked out there were missing control joints.'

The Barbagallos say 'more than 18 months of lies and cover-ups' then began. After sending a report from their independent engineer to Metricon, they received what they believe was the Photoshopped control joint drawn under a rear window.

The picture appears to show an uneven line drawn from the bottom left corner of the window, with one of the pictured lines continuing over the wooden rafters which are some distance from the wall.

'Within two weeks [after receiving the report] he sent us images showing us joints, but he'd actually Photoshopped joints. Then a few days later, he's got contractors who came in and went through the render,' Salv said.

'He said there were joints behind the render but they had to expose them. They cut 10mm through the render and the brick work and what they did was place in backing rod, they'd just put filler over the top to pretend joints were in there.'

The home was completely demolished and rebuilt after the fire, with the Barbagallos deciding to build their 'dream home' on the same plot of land

The build has been a stressful experience for the family

The family attended the site two weeks after being sent the 'Photoshopped' picture to find no evidence of a control joint being installed, and recorded a video showing filler being placed into a cut crack to give the impression of a joint.

'The next day the building manager gives me a call. I'd tried to call him six weeks earlier and he refused to answer. I was requesting a change in construction team,' Salv said.

'Over 30 minutes he told me he was going to pull down the brickwork and put the joints required in. I've got the conversation recorded and transcribed. I told him make sure you call my engineer. My engineer said he had the same confirmed by the building manager to him.

'Over the next six weeks, the building manager said he never made those promises.'

In legal documents tendered to NCAT, that have been viewed by Daily Mail Australia, the construction manager responded to claims the image had been Photoshopped by saying he had drawn the lines to show where the joints would be.

'As the locations of the articulation joints were not clear in the photographs, to identify where the articulation joints were installed I drew black lines on the photographs to show their location,' he said in the statement.

'The black lines which I drew were not to attempt to depict the articulation joints themselves.'

However, the Barbagallos say that is a 'blatant lie' and that the images were used on four separate occasions - a report by the independent certifier, a mandatory brick checklist report, for site instructions and compliance letters, and as evidence to NCAT the joints exist.

Salv lodged his objection to Metricon's use of the edited picture to Fair Trading and there is a formal investigation into the company.

In addition, the family had a conversation with one of the bricklayers on the site, who increased their fears the mortar may be defective.

The Barbagallos applied for a report to be conducted through the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal in January, 2020 - which was accepted and found that the mortar was defective. They eventually tore down the entire external brickwork of the house.

A ruling from the NSW Civil & Administrative Tribunal says Metricon agreed to rip down the back wall as a result of defective work - but Salv said this took nine months and further legal costs.

'The nature of the defects, including numerous defects in the control joints and the fact that the Builder now accepts that "in order to bring the building works to practical completion and progress the works to handover, the builder will "remove and reconstruct the external brick work cladding of the house,' the ruling reads.

It dismissed an application from Metricon that the Barbagallos pay $200,000 for the lock-up payment and that its costs were paid in the manner stated in the initial contract.

The Barbagallos, now three years without a home, have gone to Fair Trading, the NSW Building Commissioner and MPs Victor Dominello and Kevin Anderson to attempt to have the issues resolved.

Metricon told the family because they were under contract there was little they could do and would refer them to NCAT if they continued to ask questions.

The family believe Metricon is dragging along procedures because 'the longer it goes the more it'll cost', which is particularly frustrating because Salv remains out of work while he attempts to be there for his family.

'Instead of owning up, they counter sue us. Instead of laying down the weapons, they fight fire with fire. They sued us over payments, which was dismissed by the tribunal but we had to live through that process,' he said.

'When they worked out we knew about the photoshopped joint, they sent us a revised scope of work. We opened it and it's pull down all the brickwork.

'We don't get a judgement for months - we win but it's an each way bet rather than a definitive decision. We didn't get a work order forcing them to engage with an independent structural engineer.

'We said we do not trust them.'

Metricon employees working on the Barbagallos Sydney home

Metricon eventually went on to tear down the back wall because of 'more defects and mistakes', but the result has been water damage through the house because of Sydney's summer of rain.

'Even though they've rebuilt my house it's all by pieces,' Salv said.

'Their conduct has been completely deplorable, heinous, disgusting. The tribunals have costs us close to $215,000. They do delay tactics on the day and send us to written submissions.'

Salv said he was fighting Metricon for the 'first home buyers and migrants' who couldn't afford to.

'All I want is Metricon to wake up from their slumber. It's a dawn of the new age of accountability. I want them to remain viable because it would be catastrophic if they went under, but they have to change their ways, they can't keep doing this,' the father-of-two said.

The house as it stands today, still unfinished with the Barbagallos hesitant to move back in until they receive the $215,000 in legal fees they believe they are owed by Metricon

The Barbagallos and Metricon are currently engaged in a 'Mexican stand-off' with the family saying they won't move back into the home until they are repaid the legal and expert fees owed after winning the cost judgement.

The ruling saw Metricon responsible for 100 per cent of their legal fees from when the company counter-sued them, and 60 per cent of fees of the initial application - amounting to just under $215,000.

'They now want final payment, I told them they were crazy if they think they're getting final payment while owing me $215,000,' Salv said.

'If I pay them I'm worried they'll lowball me. They've put our families through mental torture and torment.

'They've pushed the final invoices our way and say we have to pay within seven days. In our books they owe us $215,000 but they're allowed to drag their feet on paying me that.'

Despite the years of stress and legal action, Salv said they still have strong ambitions to settle in what was supposed to be their 'dream home'.

'If I get in and they're not brought to account, that's an issue. But at the same time I don't blame the house,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'We drew it up to be the house of our dreams. I can compartmentalise that but I want it to be on my terms, to be my trophy for all the hard work and standing up, not just for us but for countless others.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Metricon and Fair Trading for a comment on the Barbagallo's situation.

He has started a petition to help prevent homeowners from facing similar scenarios in the future. You can sign it here.

Metricon founder Mario Baisin (pictured) recently passed away

Metricon Homes has insisted it is trading as normal despite rumours of the company's imminent collapse after the death of its CEO and founder.

Mario Biasin, 71, died suddenly last month, leaving behind his wife Glenda and four children, and plunging the construction firm into crisis.

It's understood he had been suffering mental health issues in the lead up to his death - leading to widespread jitters about the company's future.

But new chief executive Peter Langfelder dismissed speculation about the business on Thursday.

He vowed: 'Our business has been very strong for 45 years and will continue for a long, long time to come.

'There is no truth to the rumours... Please bear with us while we go through this grieving period.'

Metricon Homes currently has 4000 houses under construction across Australia's east coast and has a $12 million contract to build social housing in Victoria.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed the state treasurer was meeting company officials as it faced its current 'challenges', he said.

'It'll be an exercise in listening and then working out what, if any, support ... can be meaningfully provided to that business,' said the premier.

'But it's really important we don't add fuel to [the speculation] and perhaps even make the job of dealing with their challenges even harder.'

Mr Langfelder admitted Metricon, which employs about 2500 staff across Australia's east coast and was the country's largest home builder last year, was still reeling from the sudden death of the company's co-founder.

'We've got so many staff had been with the company for many years - 10, 15, 20 years - and they're absolutely gutted and just distraught by it,' he said.
An 89-year-old retired pig farmer has gone on trial accused of murdering his wife and hiding her body in septic tank so he could rekindle an affair with his mother's former carer.

David Venables is alleged to have killed his wife Brenda, and hidden her remains in the tank at their home in Kempsey, Worcestershire, in May 1982.

He reported his wife, who was 48 at the time, missing, but no trace of her was found until nearly 40 years later when police found remains, including a skull, as well as a bra and knickers, in a cesspit at their former farmhouse in July 2019.

A court heard that Venables told police she had been depressed, but detectives launched a murder probe after his nephew moved into the property and found her remains 37 years later.

David Venables, pictured here outside Worcester Crown Court on June 8, is accused of murdering his wife, Brenda, in 1982

Today jurors at Worcester Crown Court were told on the first day of a six-week trial that Venables killed his wife because he 'wanted her out of the way' so he could resume a 'long-standing' affair with nurse Lorraine Styles.

Prosecutor Michael Burrows QC said he had found the 'perfect hiding place' to dispose of her body and for 'nearly 40 years got away with murder'.

The pensioner, who used to run a nursery and piggery at the farm, denies murder.

Opening the case, Mr Burrows alleged Venables killed his wife in 1982.

'At around midday on Tuesday May 4, 1982 David Venables attended Worcester police station and reported his wife missing,' he said.

'He said he had awoken that morning and that his wife was not in bed nor in the house. He also said she had been depressed.

'The police investigated the matter. They did not find Brenda Venables or her body. Understandably, some people thought she had committed suicide.

'In 2014 David Venables sold Quaking House to his nephew, Andrew Venables, who moved there with his wife.

Brenda Venables' remains were found in a septic tank (circled) at the farm where she lived with her husband

'On July 12, 2019 they had the septic tank emptied. It was then that the skeletal remains of Brenda Venables were found inside the tank.

'This was not the first time that bones were found in the septic tank.

'Before, when bones were found, they were thought to be bones of dogs or other animals and were discarded in the nearby hedgerow.

'But on this occasion, the bones included a human skull. DNA testing showed the remains were those of Brenda Venables.'

Mr Burrows said it was 'beyond belief' that Mrs Venables could have taken her own life by climbing inside the tank and putting the heavy lid back in place so there was no sign of disturbance.

'The prosecution say you can be sure that she was unlawfully killed,' he said.

'The truth, say the prosecution, is that it was David Venables who killed her.

'He wanted her out of the way: he wanted to resume his long-standing affair with another woman.

'He knew about the septic tank in its secluded location. It was for him almost the perfect hiding place.

Brenda Venables, pictured, was 48 years old when she went missing in May 1982. No trace of her was found until 37 years later when her remains were found in a septic tank

'It meant he did not have to travel and risk being seen making a suspicious journey around the time of her disappearance or risk being seen disposing of her body somewhere else.

'And, of course, even if someone did think to look inside the tank, her body would be hidden from view.

'And for nearly 40 years, it was the perfect place and he got away with murder.'

Mr Burrows said clumps of hair and bones had been found in the septic tank over the years, but these were dismissed as being dog bones and animal hair.

The court heard Mrs Venables' remains were finally found by maintenance workers draining the septic tank who first noticed 'small bones' causing a blockage which they threw away.

Mr Burrows continued: 'When he saw the bones, he presumed they were from a small animal, like a chicken, and threw the bones over the nearby hedgerow.

'The second occasion was on 9th July 2018. He again had a similar blockage.

'Again, he discarded the bones he found over the hedgerow.

'He also found some hair, which, he now realises, may have been human hair.'

Mr Venables, pictured here at his home in Kempsey, Worcestershire in July 2019, denies murdering his wife

A different firm was called out to clear the tank for a third occasion at which point a human skull was found.

Mr Burrows said: 'Alistair Pitt was the operative who attended and began to empty the tank.

'As he did so, like others before him, he got a blockage. He found a large clump of hair.

'He says it is not unusual to find hair, but it was unusual to see the amount he found.

'He saw what he thought was a bag in the tank. He used a hoe to lift the item out of the tank.

'It looked to him like some sort of hessian or sack material, inside which were some quite large bones.

'He thought they were too big to be dog bones, as Andrew Venables suggested to him they were.

'He saw something else at the bottom of the tank. It resembled a large stone. He used the hoe to turn it over and saw it was human skull.

'His words: 'I had never been in this situation before and I didn't really know what to do, so I left it with the owner to sort out'.

'He called the police and a short while later a couple of uniformed police officers arrived.'

The court heard once the remains were removed forensic investigators were unable to confirm a cause of death due to 'extensive composition.'

Half a pair of M&S knickers, a bra and threads of a sweater were also recovered from the septic tank, which were dated to being from around the 1960s to mid 1970s.

Jurors were told after Venables was arrested officers found a book about Fred and Rose West in his bedroom.

Mr Burrows said: 'On 15th July 2019 police officers went to David Venable's home and told him that they had found remains they believed to be human in the septic tank at Quaking House Farm.

'He said that was strange as the tank had been emptied several times. He said that there had been a diligent search when his wife had gone missing.

'He also said that around the same time he knew another woman who had gone missing.

'He said she had been picked up by Fred West and managed to get out of his car.

On 30th July 2019 police officer again went to his home and arrested him. That day and the next day, they searched his property. In the dining room there was a book on Fred and Rose West.

'On the rear seat of the car parked outside was a notebook.

'It contained a handwritten document, headed: 'This is a true and honest statement of fact with regard to the disappearance of my wife Brenda Margaret in May 1982'.

'David Venables had obviously been expecting to be arrested and interviewed and was preparing what to say.'

Mr Burrows said in his police interviews he 'lied about the affair' and 'sought to downplay its significance.'

Mr Venables now lives in a bungalow about a mile away from the farmhouse where the remains were found

The court also heard that when Brenda was alive she had told a consultant psychiatrist her husband had cheated on her twice and she hadn't had sex with him for 13 years.

Mr Burrows said Brenda came across to the doctor as being 'very depressed' and had called the Samaritans charity as she felt suicidal.

Other friends and family members also reported Brenda had seemed 'depressed and sad' in the run up to her death, jurors heard.

The court was told on the day she went missing, Venables went to 'search the lanes' before reporting her missing at midday.

Mr Burrows added: 'He said he had awoken that morning and realised she had gone.

'He said he had not checked with her parents but had already checked with other relatives that she was not with them.'

Brenda's sister Rita Sheppy said she went to Quaking House Farm and that Venables 'did not seem very different from normal'

She reported hearing Venables standing at the end of the drive and saying: 'Come back, Brenda, you silly girl, come back'.

His mistress was also said to have described her lover as 'quite composed' and 'calm' after Brenda vanished.

They continued their relationship until November or December 1982 at which point 'he seemed to be losing interest in her', it was said.

Mr Burrows added: 'She saw his car outside another address. She saw him come out with another woman.

'A week or so later, she phoned him. He told her there was no point in pursuing their relationship.'

The court was also told details of the police investigation in 1982 where one officer reported Venables 'did not seem anxious in any way' about his wife's disappearance.

'He [officer PC Sharrock] recalls searching the house and outbuildings but says the focus of the searches was the river.

'He has now seen pictures in news reports of what he now knows was the septic tank.

Mr Venables is accused of killing his wife between May 2 and May 5 1982 and dumping her body in a septic tank

'He recalls seeing concrete there but says he did not search the tank and nobody discussed searching it with him.'

Another officer PC White said Venables 'was cold and showed no emotion and did not seem worried in any way.'

Mr Burrow said: 'Without a body, and without any evidence to indicate a violent struggle in the house or outside it, there was no firm indication that this was murder rather than suicide.

'Her case was treated as a missing person enquiry.

'One of the farm workers recalls the police searching the river banks but says, it wasn't much of a police investigation.'

Venables was originally interviewed by police in May 1983 where he told cops his marriage had been 'perfectly normal.'

The following year he was interviewed again where he came clean about two affairs but still denied any involvement in his wife's death.

Mr Burrows said: 'When it became clear the police knew about his affair with Lorraine Styles, he admitted he had had an affair with her and with another woman, whom he named.

'He also said that his wife was aware of the affairs. As he has done throughout, he denied any responsibility for her death.

'Without a body, there was no firm evidence to suggest otherwise.'

Venables is charged with killing his wife between May 2 and May 5, 1982. He denies the charge.

The trial will resume on Tuesday.
A house hunter was shocked to discover a massive church behind a family home that was barely visible on the real estate ad.

The three-bedroom house on Pine Street in Marrickville, in Sydney's inner west, sits at the end of a cul-de-sac and is near the St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, and has a price guide of $1.6million.

When potential buyers went to check out the house they were surprised to be confronted with the towering neighbour.

Photos of the front of the house show the one-storey home but the church is not visible due to the camera angle and tight cropping around the facade.

A house hunter has said they were 'shocked' to find out a massive church was behind a home as it wasn't visible in the photo on the real estate website

One buyer said he had no idea there was a Greek orthodox church behind the three-bedder

The real estate agent selling the home said the angle of the photo was not intentional and the church was 'very visible' in other photos on the website.

He said the church is not clearly seen from the front of the house where the photos were taken.

Other photos on the ad show a brick building past the end of the narrow, hedge-lined backyard but the scale of the structure is not apparent.

One photo shows what appears to be a small cross at the top of the church's roof, but the easily missed detail is the only clue to its purpose.

A street view image taken from further away from the house shows the church behind

'I was in serious shock when I got to the house,' the buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, told Daily Mail Australia.

'I saw the little board the agent put out and had to check the ad of the property to make sure I was at the right place.

'Not against the church in anyway, but it felt a bit misleading to get that angle from the front of the house and then you see the giant structure that towers the house as your driving down the street toward it.'

The home is described as having a 'subtle charm' and sits on a 275.8sqm block of land close to local shops and schools.
The City of Uvalde is trying to cover up records on the top cop who led the bungled police response to the active shooter situation at an elementary school last month.

Lawyers hired by the Texas city last week wrote to state attorney general Ken Paxton trying to wriggle out of divulging information requested by DailyMail.com and others under the state's sunshine laws.

In the letter, attorneys at Denton Navarro Rocha Bernal & Zech revealed 148 requests for information had been made to the City from May 25, 2022 through June 7, 2022 by media organizations and individuals.

The city claims it has no obligation to give up any information to any of the requests, listing 52 excuses in the letter that it says lets it off the hook from requirements under the Texas Public Information Act.

Among the information Uvalde local government is trying to hide are any records on Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief who was in charge of the police response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School last month that led to 21 deaths.

The City of Uvalde, Texas is trying to cover up records, including reports involving School Police Chief Pete Arredondo (left), who has been widely blamed for the disastrous response to elementary school shooter Salvador Ramos (right) last month, DailyMail.com can reveal

An aerial view shows law enforcement at the scene of Robb Elementary School where 21 people were killed in a mass shooting on May 24

This is how the shooting played out over the course of nearly two hours from when gunman Salvador Ramos shot his grandmother at home

Arredondo, now a city councilor, has been the focus of intense criticism, blamed for the hour-long wait to bust into the classroom where injured children were bleeding out and the killer, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was hiding.

In their letter to the Texas AG, lawyers requested a 'decision from the attorney general about whether the requested information is excepted from disclosure under the Public Information Act.'

'The City claims that the requested information is not information that is collected, assembled, or maintained under a law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business by a governmental body or for a governmental body or is excepted from disclosure,' the letter, signed by attorney Cynthia Trevino, adds.

The AG's office did not respond to a request for comment.

The New York Times reported last week that Arredondo, 50, knew there were people alive but injured in the locked classrooms, based on the transcript of police body cam footage from the shooting.

The Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw appeared to lay blame for the delayed response at Arredondo's feet in a press conference after the shooting.

McCraw said the school police chief treated Ramos as a 'barricaded suspect' rather than an active shooter and so waited for backup. 'It was the wrong decision, period. There's no excuse for that,' he said.

Two weeks ago the Texas Department of Public Safety claimed that Arredondo had stopped cooperating with state investigators and did not respond for two days to their requests.

Arredondo denied the allegation, telling CNN he had been 'on the phone with them every day'.

In the letter, attorneys at Denton Navarro Rocha Bernal & Zech revealed 148 requests for information had been made to the City from May 25, 2022 through June 7, 2022 by media organizations and individuals

The city claims it has no obligation to give up any information to any of the requests, listing 52 excuses in the letter

In an interview with the Texas Tribune last week, he admitted he failed to act as the incident commander despite police rules.

'While it's easy to identify him as the incident commander because of that NIMS [National Incident Management System] process, in practicality, you see here he was not in the capacity to be able to run this entire organization,' his lawyer, George Hyde, told the Tribune.

Arredondo also said he left his radio behind on purpose, because it would fall off if he ran and he needed two hands for his gun.

Arredondo was elected as a city councilor with 126 votes on May 7, weeks before the shooting on May 24 and was swornone week later

The school district police chief said he entered the building but spent an hour in the corridor trying to get into the two connected, locked classrooms where Ramos and the injured children were.

He was unable to break down the door because it was reinforced with a steel jamb, he said.

'The only thing that was important to me at this time was to save as many teachers and children as possible,' Arredondo told the Tribune.

Rather than being cowardly or bungling, the chief's lawyer described him as resolutely sticking to his dangerous position in the school hallway despite not having body armor.

Hyde claimed that when an officer offered to cover Arredondo so he could run out and get protection, the chief replied 'F*** you. I'm not leaving this hallway.'

Police tactics expert and former assistant police chief of Springfield, Missouri, Steve Ijames, told the newspaper it was 'inconceivable' that Arredondo's team didn't have a plan, and that ditching his radio was highly unusual.

'I've never heard anything like that in my life,' he said.

Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw appeared to lay blame for the delayed response at Arredondo's feet in a May 27 press conference after the shooting

Heartbreaking photos revealed how young school children were forced to flee through a broken window to get to safety after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at the school

Authorities say Ramos began shooting at the building as he approached. Bullet holes are seen in the window of a classroom

The investigation has been surrounded by other conflicting statements and confusion.

Salvador Ramos, 18, barricaded himself in a classroom and killed 19 kids and two teachers before being shot dead by police

In the days after the mass killing, law enforcement claimed a teacher had propped open a back door to the school that allowed Ramos entry but later walked back the claim, admitting that the door was closed.

The US Department of Justice announced Wednesday it has appointed a team of nine experts to investigate the cops' response to the shooting.

The DoJ said the review will 'provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses, identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events, and provide a roadmap for community safety and engagement before, during and after such incidents.'

US Attorney General Merrick Garland said investigators will make visits to Uvalde and interview law enforcement, teachers and others.

Arredondo was elected as a city councilor with 126 votes on May 7 - weeks before the shooting on May 24 and was sworn in last Tuesday.

According to the Associated Press, he missed his first city council meeting.

Both the city mayor Don McLaughlin and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell have refused to say whether Arredondo still has his job as police chief of the school district.
The grieving mother of a 13-year-old who drowned in New York City while he played hooky has criticized the school for not notifying her he had been missing for hours.

After the accident on Friday, mother-of-four Samantha Singh has been left wondering whether Middle School 137 could have avoided the unthinkable tragedy.

Singh, 43, said the school waited until 7 p.m. to tell her that his son, Daniel Persaud, had been missing since 10 a.m.

Daniel and Ryan Wong, also 13, drowned after their surfboard got caught in a rip current at Jamaica Bay around 11.40 a.m. The surfboard was pulled 30-feet into a deep channel.

The youngsters were rescued and taken to an area hospital but were declared dead shortly after they arrived.

'They [school] did not call me to let me know he was not in class until hours later,' the heartbroken mother told The New York Post. 'They need to inform the parents right away, especially a middle school.

'We don't receive a call until 7 p.m. So, if we could have received a call earlier, I have a track on his phone.'

Samantha Singh (left), 43, the mother of 13-year-old Daniel Persaud (right) who drowned in New York City while he played hooky has slammed the school for not notifying her he had been missing for hours

After the accident on Friday, Singh has been left wondering whether Middle School 137 could have avoided the unthinkable tragedy by calling her sooner

A group of firefighters rush one of the 13-year-old boys who drowned at Jamaica Beach on Friday toward an ambulance. Both boys were on a surfboard with friends when a rip current caught their board and dragged it 30 feet. The two boys reportedly fell off and never resurfaced

The boys, who were from Queens, were among a group of five friends who were celebrating the start of summer when they decided to skip school and go to the beach in Queens, an uncle of one of the boys told the New York Daily News.

The other teenagers reportedly ran up the beach screaming for help, witness Isri Persaud said.

Persaud said the teenagers were waving their arms wildly before exiting the water.

The FDNY deployed nine divers, two helicopters, and boats into the water to search for the boys.

They pulled the first boy out of the water around 12.35 p.m. The second boy was pulled out 40 minutes later. They were taken to Jamaica Hospital, where they were later pronounced dead.

Singh said that the school should have alerted her that Daniel had been missing.

'I have four kids,' she told the Post. 'In this day and age, you have to know where they are all the time. I thought he was in school. Just a couple of hours, I didn't track him.'

'The school where my two oldest daughters went, Richmond Hill, they would have called if any of my daughters left school .. Right away!,' she added.

Their surfboard got caught in a rip current at Jamaica Bay around 11.40 a.m. The surfboard was pulled 30-feet into a deep channel.

Singh said that the school should have alerted her that Daniel had been missing

Witnesses said that both were pulled under water and failed to resurface. They were taken to Jamaica Hospital, where they were later pronounced dead

Singh also told the outlet she questioned why those who saw the children by themselves during a school day did not intervene and attempted to call a parent or adult.

'The bus that took them, the driver, why didn't they notice little kids alone?' she asked.

The distraught woman took to Facebook on Saturday to write a loving tribute to her son.

' ... I am lost for words and my soul is bleeding and our hearts are shattered  our Daniel went away today  oh god I dont know how we will live past today or any other day,' Singh wrote.

... you were only 13 years old and went out to a beach to have fun and it carried you away from us.'

Daniel's wake will be on Tuesday, followed by a funeral on Wednesday.

' ... I am lost for words and my soul is bleeding and our hearts are shattered  our Daniel went away today  oh god I dont know how we will live past today or any other day,' Singh wrote

Daniel (pictured) reportedly liked building computers and technology. His family said they were 'shocked' that he had skipped school as he usually only goes between home and school

Persaud's Uncle, Jerry, told the Daily News that the family was 'shocked' the young student had skipped school.

'It's just shocking because he doesn't go out much,' Jerry told the outlet. 'But he suddenly went out and this happened. It would be just school and home for him.'

'Everyone is in shock now. The family is devastated.'

Family friend Indra Bisnauth also told the Daily News: 'They had no idea he left out of school.'

'It's a tragedy. It's so sad. The child is so quiet, you'd never know he'd do this. They just go for fun. I was so shocked to hear that happened.'

The portion of the beach (pictured) that the group of five were at is unguarded and signs warn of strong currents

The 13-year-old reportedly liked building his own computers and enjoyed technology.

Wong's mother, Gloria Wong, wrote on Facebook: 'Rest In Peace little Ryan I love you. You will forever live in our hearts.'

The portion of the beach they were at was unguarded and not all of the kids knew how to swim, a police source told the New York Post.

'This happens all the time  they walked in the water about one to two feet deep, then the channel suddenly drops six to 10 feet deep, and some of these kids could not swim,' the police source told the Post.

The FDNY sent nine divers, two helicopters, and boats out into the water to search for them. They found the first boy roughly an hour after they drowned and the second one 40 minutes later

There was a large team of firefighters on the scene to help search for the missing boys

There are signs on the beach warning beachgoers about strong currents and sudden drop-offs

NYC Parks, who oversees the beach, said they were 'saddened' by the loss, but reminded people to 'only swim in designated areas where lifeguards are on duty, no matter where you are.'

The portion of the beach the teenagers were swimming in is owned by the National Parks Service, which recently announced closures to parts of the beach to help with erosion.

The beach is closed from 86th Street to 116 Street, but many locals and lifeguards worry people will continue to swim there unsupervised.
An Australian couple's desperately begging thieves to return their beloved dog after it got taken from the front of their home.

Nine-year-old Mitzy went missing from the family home in Perth's northern suburb of Sinagra at 8:30 pm on Friday.

The couple initially thought their mixed-breed pooch had gone missing, but after checking the home's security camera, they saw a man lure their beloved pet away.

The alleged dognapper was heard luring Mitzy by whistling before driving away in a white Holden Commodore Ute (pictured)

'That's when we found out it went from being missing to her (Mitzy) getting stolen,' Andrew told 7News.

The alleged dognapper is seen driving a white Commodore ute with a black roof, a hard tonneau cover and aftermarket exhaust when he spots Mitzy walking on the footpath.

The man stops his vehicle outside the family home, gets out of the car and whistles at Mitzy luring the dog out of view.

Mitzy's owners said they just want their dog back after watching the 'sickening' footage.

'Please just don't hurt her,' Tracey said.

'Please just return her. Take her to a vet, take her anywhere, no questions asked.'

Police have urged the public to come forward with any information that will help track down the stolen pet.

Anyone with information of Mitzys whereabouts is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
The Tamil family at the centre of a four-year immigration battle have no bad feelings towards former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, despite spending four years in detention.

The Nadesalingam family have returned home to Biloela in outback Queensland for the first time since Border Force officials took them away in 2018.

Nades and Priya and their two daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa returned to a hero's welcome on Friday and spent the weekend celebrating their homecoming with the community.

The new Labor government has granted the family bridging visas while their immigration status is being resolved.

The family have opened up on their lonely time in immigration detention, including a two-year stint on Christmas Island to The Project co-host Lisa Wilkinson.

The couple were asked about their views on Mr Morrison and former immigration minister Peter Dutton, who both wanted to keep them in detention.

Nades and Priya Nadesalingam (pictured) have wished former Prime Minister Scott Morrison a good life, despite spending the last four years in immigration detention

'I wish his life is a good life, but I don't worry,' Priya said.

Wilkinson responded: 'You wish Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton a good life?'

'Yes, a good life,' Priya replied.

The family's two-year stint as the sole occupants on Christmas Island cost taxpayers $30 million.

'Very hard, lonely feeling. No other detainees. No good medical,' Priya said.

'My children's childhood lost. My beauty, my everything lost in four years.

In June last year, Tharnicaa got seriously ill with sepsis caused by untreated pneumonia and had to be airlifted to Perth's Children's Hospital for emergency treatment.

Tharnicaa, who turned five on Sunday, remembers that time well.

'My sister looked after me,' she said.

The Nadesalingam family's homecoming coincided with Tharnicaa's fifth birthday on Sunday

The Nadesalingams believe their story will discourage others from arriving in Australia by boat, despite reports about several boatloads of refugees leaving Sri Lanka bound for Australia.

The couple arrived in Australia by boat a decade ago as asylum seekers fleeing the civil war in Sri Lanka.

'This life is very hard,' Nades said.

He wants to open Bilo's first Sri Lankan restaurant in the future, while his wife wants to help other refugees.

They're thrilled with their new three-bedroom home.

'It feels happy. Good sunshine in the house,' Priya said.

Both Kopika and Tharnicaa want to become doctors when they grow up.

'Because we get to help people and give medicine,' Kopika said.

But not everyone in Biloela is happy the family is back.

'I think it's because they might think all the boats will turn up again, and we will have to go through all that stuff and people dying at sea,' Banana Shire Mayor Nev Ferrier told the program.

'Nobody wants to see that. Anybody with a heart or knows the family, knows that that is not what that is about.'

Priya and Nades Nadesalingam and their daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa arrived in Biloela to a hero's welcome on Friday, four years after they were removed from the outback town

But family supporter Angela Fredericks believes people will find a way to flee and protest their families if they're in danger..

'There is no queue. You know, at the end of the day, people are just going to do what they need to do to stay alive. There is no queue,' she said.

'There is not an orderly fashion to this. It's about life or death.'

At the end of the segment, Wilkinson addressed why Priya and Nades still struggle with their English.

'Due to their visa situation, they couldn't access the appropriate government program and when they were in the community, they would have had to take time off work to go to lessons and with a very meagre income, that was a luxury they could not afford, she explained.

'But they definitely want to get their English going now.'
As the West End production of Cinderella gave a final bow to audiences tonight, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber thanked the cast and crew for their efforts - while allegedly calling the show a 'costly mistake'.

The musical theatre giant is said to have penned the note which was read aloud by director Laurence Connor at the Gillian Lynne Theatre today.

After thanking the performers, Lloyd Webber's reference to the show as a 'costly mistake' drew boos from the audience, Variety reports.

The composer's note read: 'I keep thinking if only we had opened three months later, we wouldn't have had to postpone our opening twice because of COVID I promise you we would have been here for a very long time to come.

'My huge thanks to everyone. We kept the government's feet to the flames and led the charge to the West End opening again.

'It might have been a costly mistake, but I am proud of what we did and will forever be grateful to everyone who supported me.'

Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is said to have referred to his West End production of Cinderella as a 'costly mistake' in a final message thanking cast and crew

Lloyd Webber (centre) with Cinderella stars Carrie Hope Fletcher (left) and Ivano Turco (right) during the show's opening on August 18 last year

Cinderella opened in August 2021, featuring songs with with lyrics by David Zippel and a book by The Crown star Emerald Fennell.

The musical opened with an audience capacity of 50 per cent after Lloyd Webber rejected Prime Minister Boris Johnson's offer for the show to be included in the coronavirus live events pilot scheme.

Then in December, Cinderella was stopped due to 'Covid-related absences', alongside London productions of hit musicals Hamilton and The Lion King.

At the time, Lloyd Webber said it is 'simply heartbreaking' to see the theatre industry 'decimated' by cancellations, adding 'no-one in the Government listens'.

He postponed Cinderella until 2022 'to avoid more disruption' as the number of Covid-19 cases increased across the country.

Cast and crew were given notice in early May that the show would soon be axed. The announcement, said to have been made abruptly, led to calls for compensation for affected workers from actors' union Equity.

Representatives for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Emerald Fennell could not be immediately reached.

Cinderella's leading lady, Carrie Hope Fletcher, said performing in the production has 'been a ball.'

Cinderella opened last August with 50 per cent capacity after a series of delays due to Covid. By December, performances were halted due to 'Covid-related absences'

Fletcher said on Instagram: 'From the first workshop, to the first photoshoot, to the final show.

'The last three years on this project have had many highs and lows but overall I'm glad to have stood in Cinderella's glass slippers (and fun fact...her Kurt Giegers...NOT Doc Martens).

'Everyone in the Gillian Lynne from cast to crew to lighting to sound to wardrobe to dressers to wigs to stage management to front of house...coming to work has been an honour and a privilege.'

The 29-year-old thanked everyone who has supported the show 'from beginning to end.'

She added: 'It had meant the world to each and every one of us. Bye, Cinders. It's been a ball.'

Last July, Lloyd Webber said he was determined to open Cinderella in London and had at that stage ignored 'siren voices' suggesting he move it to Broadway.

Cinderella is described as a 'complete reinvention' of the classic fairytale, and is based on an original idea by Fennell.
President Yoon Suk-yeol speaks to reporters at the presidential office in Seoul's Yongsan District, June 13. Yonhap





President Yoon Suk-yeol said Monday that an opposition push to strengthen National Assembly oversight of the government could be "unconstitutional."







Rep. Cho Eung-chon of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea is reportedly planning to introduce an amendment to the National Assembly Act to enable standing committees to request a revision to a presidential decree or a prime minister's ordinance if they deem it to be incompatible with the law.







Critics said the amendment, if passed, could give the DPK, which controls the National Assembly with 170 out of 299 seats, too much say in government affairs, thus hurting the principle of the separation of administrative and legislative powers.







"I'll have to take a look at the bill, but if it's about having the right to demand revisions to enforcement ordinances, as reported in the press, then I think it would leave a lot of room to be viewed as unconstitutional," Yoon told reporters as he arrived for work.







"An enforcement ordinance is meant to be the president's decision, and the way to resolve problems with enforcement ordinances is to follow the means and steps stipulated in the Constitution," he said. (Yonhap)






China's trade war with Australia could soon end as diplomatic relations finally thaw between the two nations after years of escalating bitterness and military tensions.

New Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian opened the door to talks that could end the two-year standoff, insisting the countries should be 'friends'.

He laid out the groundwork needed to lift $20 billion worth of sanctions which he said required the new Australian Government to offer a 'good' political solution.

The ambassador said Western Australia - which continues to enjoy a minerals boom exporting to China - should be the diplomatic blueprint for the rest of the country.

He said China and WA Premier Mark McGowan had 'different views on certain things' but found 'common grounds and consensus' for 'mutually beneficial co-operation'.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's trade war with Australia could soon end as diplomatic relations finally thaw between the two nations after years of escalating bitterness and military tensions

'A good political relation is helpful for trade relations and a bad political relation [is] also affecting our cooperation in other areas as well,' he told The West Australian.

'If we have an improved relationship politically, it will create an atmosphere to relax some of the Chinese businessmen so [they] can think about coming back, think about resuming their business and trade relations with Australia.'

Defence minister Richard Marles ended a near-three year diplomatic stalemate and met his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe this weekend.

The pair talked for an hour in Singapore on Sunday morning and had 'full and frank' discussions, said Mr Marles, who called it 'very significant' and a 'critical first step.'

'It's three years since defence ministers of our country have met,' he said. 'Australia and China's relationship is complex - it is really important that we are engaging in dialogue right now.'

The meeting was hailed by former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson who said it was created by the change in government - but just the first step in a long process.

'New governments don't bring the barnacles, the bruises and the baggage which you accumulate when you've been in office for a decade,' he told ABC Radio.

'A change of government after a decade does bring with it opportunities of this kind.'

But he warned: 'I don't think they'll be looking for any startling breakthrough anytime [soon].'

Former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson who said the opportunity for a thaw in the stalemate was created by the change in government - but just the first step in a long process

President Xi Jinping imposed trade sanctions on Australian products in 2020 after Australia demanded an inquiry into China's role in the origins of the Covid pandemic.

He also issued a list of 14 grievances he had with Australia, citing blocks on Chinese investment and Australia 'spearheading the crusade against China'.

Relations have since worsened with aggressive confrontations between Chinese and Australian military including blinding lasers fired at Australian surveillance aircraft and chaff dangerously released close to another Australian plane's engines.

China has also been trying to expand its influence in the Pacific, agreeing a security treaty with the Solomon Islands while attempting to woo other island nations.

But Beijing and Canberra see the change in Australia's government as the chance to rebuild the relationship.

Trade Minister Don Farrell signalled he would invite Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao for talks to address the embargo issue.

And Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has already sent a message of congratulations to new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after his election victory last month.

New Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian has opened the door to talks which could end the two-year row, insisting the countries should be 'friends'

Ambassador Xiao said it was a sign 'very clearly that a healthy and stable relationship between Australia and China is in the interests of our two countries'.

'The message is clear,' the diplomat said. 'The gesture is friendly. We are expecting a friendly response from the Australian side and we are still in the process.

'We have reasons to be partners and friends. There's no reason for us to look at each other as so-called hostilities or even threats or an enemy.

'All-in-all we have reasons to believe that China and Australia, we have more common grounds then differences.'

The Chinese ambassador has laid out the groundwork needed to lift $20 billion worth of sanctions which he said required new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) to offer a 'good' political solution. Defence minister Richard Marles (right) started the process by ending a near-three year diplomatic stalemate and met his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe for talks in Singapore on Sunday

The ongoing sanctions have hit Australian products like coal, barley, crayfish and wine

But he warned all meetings had to be constructive - and if they end up quarrelling, it could set back relations even worse than before.

He cited the previous Coalition's government's decision to ban Chinese manufacturer Huawei from bidding to install Australia's 5G network as a key turning point in declining relations.

'Many Chinese businessmen were so much surprised and they were alarmed and they were disappointed,' he said.

'Also they were a little bit scared. Today this has happened to Huawei. What about tomorrow? Is it going to happen to me? Is it going to happen to my company?'

Another key issue for China is the AUKUS defence treaty, which gave Australia access to US and UK nuclear submarine technology, that China sees as a serious threat.

'AUKUS, in our view, is targeting China,' said the ambassador. 'Trying to stop the existing normal relations and cooperation between China and the relevant countries.

'The idea, is not a good idea.'

He also defended recent clashes between Australian and Chinese military, and said the two nations needed to find a way to avoid further confrontations.

In February, in the Arafura Sea in Australia's economic zone off the north coast, a Chinese Naval ship shone a military-grade laser at an Australian P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft in what was branded a hostile act by the Coalition government.

The Chinese ambassador also defended the recent clashes between Australian and Chinese military, and said the two nations needed to find a way to avoid further confrontations

Australian P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft have been targeted by Chinese military using a laser in one incident and by a fighter jet in another clash last month

And last month, over international waters near Taiwan in the South China Sea, another P-8 was carrying out a surveillance patrol when it was intercepted by a Chinese J-16 fighter jet.

Defence minister Marles later revealed the J-16 initially went alongside the P-8 and fired off flares.

It then accelerated, cut across ahead of the P-8, and released 'a bundle of chaff which contained small pieces of aluminium, some of which were ingested into the engine of the P-8 aircraft'.

But the ambassador insisted the situation could have been interpreted where China had felt threatened.

'A scenario could be that there's a situation where the Australian plane was either close to or above the Chinese territory and so the Chinese side was feeling kind of a risk of danger or danger itself,' he said.

'So they have to do something to warn the other side not to approach too closely. The warning was issued several times but without any effect. That is what happened there.

'I think the important thing is for us to understand that we should be careful about such a situation and take measures not to let it happen in the future.'

Despite the ongoing sanctions on Australian products like coal, barley, crayfish, and wine, business has been booming for iron ore exports to China.

China and WA Premier Mark McGowan had 'different views on certain things' but found 'common grounds and consensus' for 'mutually beneficial co-operation', said the ambassador

Western Australia has continued to enjoy a minerals boom exporting to China and should be the diplomatic blueprint for the rest of the country.

Ambassador Xiao praised Mr McGowan for his dealings with China that brought billion-dollar dividends to the state.

And he vowed China would continue to snap up the state's mineral resources, and would even consider adopting more environmentally-friendly technology solutions.

China alone created more carbon dioxide in 2019 than the next four countries combined, and some of its companies generate more pollution than entire nations like Pakistan.

'High quality iron ore is so important to China, to China's industrial development and steel industry,' he said. 'This relationship we will go on. It's mutually beneficial.

'Not only the existing co-operation in the trading of iron ore and other mining products, but also there's new areas I think both sides could think about tapping into.

'For example, more green energy to address the climate change issues.'

He also insisted Chinese firm Landbridge's 99-year lease on Darwin Port will bring benefits for Australia and create a vital northern trade link between the two nations.

The 2015 deal is being re-examined by the new Labor government, but the ambassador was optimistic it would be allowed to remain.

He added: 'I'm looking forward to a positive review and also a positive outcome.'
Universities could be fined if foreign powers such as China are found to be threatening academic freedom and free speech.

The Government said amendments to its Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill would prevent foreign actors having undue influence over British universities.

MPs have warned that the 30 branches of the Confucius Institute on UK campuses  which are backed by China  were having a chilling effect on academic freedom.

In the amendments being debated by MPs today, higher education institutions will have to report any financial arrangements above 75,000 they have with individuals or organisations overseas to ensure UK values cannot be compromised.

Universities and student societies will also have to share details of overseas funding from certain countries, and would face fines or other sanctions over perceived risks to freedom of speech or academic freedom as a result of their funding. Countries such as Japan and Australia will be exempt, along with nations in the EU and Nato.

Michelle Donelan, minister for higher and further education, said: It is right that we are taking action to protect our universities from undue foreign influences that work against British values. This is a Bill that the rest of the world will take note of.

Michelle Donelan, minister for higher and further education, said: 'This is a Bill that the rest of the world will take note of.

At least 27million of Government spending on Mandarin teaching at schools allocated from 2015 to 2024 is channelled through the Confucius Institute, MPs say.

The institute is a worldwide education and cultural programme with branches at UK universities including Edinburgh, Manchester and UCL. However, it could be shut down by Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi under the proposed changes  or he could order universities to provide alternative sources of Mandarin teaching.

Freedom of information requests have shown that vice-chancellors at 17 universities have also accepted at least 24million from Beijing to run the institutes branches, which are shrouded in secrecy, with 12 refusing to regularly reveal their funding.

27million of Government spending on Mandarin teaching at schools allocated from 2015 to 2024 is channelled through the Confucius Institute Pictured: Shanshan Chen, from the Confucius Institute for Scotland, takes a closer look of the distinctive and colourful posters in a rare exhibition of Chinese art at the University of Edinburgh

The China Research Group of MPs estimates the true funding over the past decade is 28million.

On Friday, Tory MP Alicia Kearns warned that the Chinese government held too much sway over UK universities, adding: Education is being weaponised by those against us. She said the Confucius Institutes were undermining the integrity of the Mandarin education in our country.

The Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for comment last night.
A Sydney driver has been spotted driving down a busy road in the wrong direction the double demerit Queen's Birthday long weekend.

It's unclear how long the green Toyota hatchback had been on the wrong side of the road, but the concrete median strip stretching into the background suggests it had been driving illegally for some time.

A Sydney driver was photographed making a major road error during Australia's double demerit Queen's Birthday long weekend in Macquarie Park

The picture was posted to the Humans of Eastwood Facebook page on Saturday night - an account that pokes fun at locals.

A dark VW four-wheel-drive turns left onto the main road outside the Macquarie shopping centre, having to stick to the left lane to avoid the Toyota.

A black Honda station wagon can also be seen at the traffic lights waiting to turn left across the illegally positioned hatchback, stopped adjacent to the concrete median strip.

It's not clear how long the car had been on the wrong side of the road, but the concrete median strip stretching into the background suggests it had been driving illegally for some time

The post attracted hundreds of comments, with some wondering whether the driver may have been from the USA.

'How the hell did they end up on that side of the road?' another asked, noting the median strip that stretches well into the distance behind the vehicle.

One woman extended the driver empathy, saying the exit to the shopping centre's carpark was tricky.

'I've actually have had some confusing moments in and out of the car park at that spot to be honest but not quite like that but I remember entering the out from the lights because it was hard to tell which one was right,' she said.
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A series of secret, never-before-released photos of the original detainees at the US' prison at Guantanamo Bay detention camp have been published.

The photos, posted by the New York Times Sunday, show scenes of men in shackles, blindfolds and ear protectors as they arrived at the controversial prison facility in 2002.

The Times points out that the only images ever leaked from the prison on the coast of Cuba were put out by WikiLeaks in 2011.

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, we are now seeing some of the first photos of the first prisoners to arrive on site, just a few months after the attacks on September 11, 2001.

The photos were taken to give Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other leaders in Washington a look at the start of the wartime detention and interrogation.

Restrained Al-Qaeda/Taliban detainee are airlifted aboard a US Air Force (USAF) C-141 Starlifter aircraft from Kandahar, Afghanistan

115th Military Police Battalion (MPB) personnel escort a detainee from a bus for in-processing at the Camp X-Ray detention center

The detainees are seen not only blindfolded, but some with their hands duct taped together, trying to move around in an attempt to see anything past their blindfolds.

The photographed include David Hicks, an Australian man captured while fighting for the Taliban, as he was led down the ramp of a cargo plane.

The prisoners were given shackles so that the soldiers could move them around more easily. Soldiers at the time noted the prisoners were fairly easy to lift because they may have been malnourished.

One of the photos shows a detainee getting on his knees and maneuvering away from the door to his sell just so a guard could give him his meal, which are shown as everything from oranges to sliced carrots to beans.

Each prisoner was originally issued a military ISO mat that the pisoners used as mattresses and prayer rugs.

Security Forces personnel assist an Al-Qaeda/Taliban detainee aboard a bus bound for the detention facilities at Guantanamo

The detainees are seen not only blindfolded, but some with their hands duct taped together, trying to move around in an attempt to see anything past their blindfolds

The prisoners were given shackles so that the soldiers could move them around more easily. Soldiers at the time noted the prisoners were fairly easy to lift because they may have been malnourished

Detainees in Camp X-Ray spend much of thier day praying, using a mat given to them by the military as a prayer rug

None of the soldiers have been identified, although a caption from back in 2002 suggests two soldiers were in the 115th Military Police Battalion, which was later assigned to the equally controversial Abu Ghraib prison.

Detainees recovered from their various ailments in Fleet Hospital Twenty, which is the primary medical care facility.

On January 11, 2002, the military banned photogs who were on site from CNN and the Miami Herald from taking any pictures. Instead, a Naval photographer sent out a photo of the first 20 prisoners on their knees at Camp X-Ray, an early prison mini-camp.

About 780 men and boys were brought to Gitmo under President George W. Bush, who referred to the prisoners as 'the worst of the worst.'

However, only 18 people detained at the prison were ever charged and only five of them have ever been convicted.

Only 35 men remain at the prison, with 10 of them waiting for trials to begin. President Barack Obama was stopped from closing Guantanamo, but recent administrations have slowly lowered the amount of people still detained.

A series of secret, never-before-released photos of the original detainees at the US' prison at Guantanamo Bay detention camp have been published

The photos, posted by the New York Times Sunday, show scenes of men in shackles, blindfolds and ear protectors as they arrived at the controversial prison facility in 2002

Detainees recover from their various ailments in Fleet Hospital Twenty, which is the primary medical care facility

A detainee, in Camp X-Ray, kneels with his hands behind his head while dinner is placed in his detainment unit

Yasser Esam Hamdi kneels down during one of five prayer services performed by detainees every day

About 780 men and boys were brought to Gitmo under President George W. Bush, who referred to the prisoners as 'the worst of the worst'

However, only 18 people detained at the prison were ever charged and only five of them have ever been convicted

DailyMail.com reported in 2021 that of the Guantanamo inmates who remain, 17 are deemed 'high-value' and will probably never be released.

But the remaining 'low-value detainees' are deemed to pose little risk, and nine of them have already, in theory, been formally cleared as safe to release.
Rail bosses today revealed a map showing how only around half of Britain's train network will be open on strike days next week - with a very limited service running on lines that are open from around 7.30am until 6.30pm. Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union at Network Rail and 13 train operators are set to walk out next Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, which will also severely disrupt services on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. As millions of Britons now face the prospect of having no choice but to work from home for all of next week, the RMT and Unite will also be striking on London Underground next Tuesday in a separate row over jobs and pay. Network Rail said no passenger services will serve locations such as Penzance in Cornwall, Bournemouth in Dorset, Swansea in South Wales, Holyhead in North Wales, Chester in Cheshire and Blackpool, Lancashire. There will also be no passenger trains running north from Glasgow or Edinburgh, and the number of passenger services on the three strike days is expected to be limited to around 4,500 compared with 20,000 normally. Open lines include the West Coast Main Line from London to Scotland via locations such as Birmingham and Manchester - although the last train from Edinburgh to London on the East Coast Main Line will be at 1.30pm. And the last trains to leave major cities from London on the three strike days will be at 2pm to Edinburgh, 2.56pm to Manchester, 3.05pm to Leeds, 3.31pm to Liverpool or Sheffield, 3.40pm to Birmingham, 3.43pm to Newcastle, 4.09pm to Nottingham, 4.30pm to Norwich, 4.33pm to Bristol, 5pm to Southampton and 5.50pm to Brighton.
MSNBC anchor Katy Tur has opened up about her reaction when her legendary broadcaster father came out as transgender to her almost a decade ago.

Speaking to CBS about her new memoir Rough Draft, Katy reminisced about her childhood flying over Los Angeles with her helicopter reporter parents, the former power couple of broadcasters Marika Gerrard and Zoey Tur - formerly Bob Tur.

The 38-year-old recounted the 2013 call with her estranged father, who has never met her two children with 'CBS This Morning' co-host Tony Dokoupil.

'My dad said, ''I am a woman.' And I said ''What?'' And my dad said, ''I'm a woman, I'm transitioning, I'm going to become a woman,'' Katy told CBS Sunday Morning.

'And I remember being at first puzzled and saying, ''You gotta be joking. You're kidding, what are you talking about?'''

The MSNBC anchor also accused her father of throwing batteries at her, her brother and mother, and punching walls when she was growing up.

Katy said her father confessed to her during the call that her volatility and violence during the turbulent marriage with Gerrard stemmed from Zoey not being able to be her true self.

Zoey, who is famously known for covering the 92' LA riots and the infamous OJ Simpson low-speed chase from the sky, acknowledged that working in the demanding journalism industry had affected her behavior at home.

'She [Katy] really looked up to me, and I failed her. No father wants to fail their daughter ... Throwing batteries? Probably, yeah. Punching walls? There were a couple,' she told CBS.

MSNBC anchor Katy Tur (left) has opened up about her reaction when her legendary broadcaster father Zoey Tur, formerly Bob Tur, (right) came out as transgender to her almost a decade ago

Speaking to CBS ahead of her new memoir Rough Draft, Katy reminisced about her childhood canvassing the sky of Los Angeles with her helicopter reporter parents, the former power couple of broadcasters Marika Gerrard and Zoey Tur - formerly Bob Tur

The MSNBC anchor also accused her father of throwing batteries at her, her brother and mother, and punching walls when she was growing up.

Katy, who went on to become an award-winning journalist of her own right, told CBS she was puzzled when she received a call from her father in 2013, the last time she spoke with her.

'And my dad was adamant. ''I'm the wrong person. I'm going to become the right person. Don't you see? This is why I've been so angry'' And it was really just, it was a lot,' Katy said.

Zoey had previously said that Katy has not spoken to her since she made the decision to transition.

Zoey has also said in the past that she does not consider Katy as 'transphobic.'

'It's that her hero father has become this. And it's the fear of not fitting in. It's the pressure of being on network television. It's the conservatism that she's forced to endure,' she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016.

'... You have to appreciate that her image of me has been torn apart,' said Tur.

Speaking to CBS, Zoey admitted that he had let her daughter down and blamed her past fits of rage on the stress she experienced in the business.

'I was in the news business and we were under extraordinary pressure. I could be very intimidating for sure. And if the kids felt I was intimidating, I apologize. I did the best I could,' she said.

'She [Katy] really looked up to me, and I failed her. No father wants to fail their daughter ... Throwing batteries? Probably, yeah. Punching walls? There were a couple,' Zoey told CBS. Above, Zoey and Katy pictured years ago

Zoey, who is famously known for covering the 92' LA riots and the infamous OJ Simpson low-speed chase from the sky, acknowledged that working in the demanding journalism industry had affected her behavior at home

Katy has a deal with One Signal Publishers/Atria Books for the memoir 'Rough Draft: Motherhood & Media in a World Gone Mad'

Katy told CBS due to her work ethic, she felt compelled to share both the good and bad sides of her parent's marriage in her new memoir.

'And part of the story is the violence. If I only wrote the good stuff it would have been a lie. It's a business where you're not supposed to lie. You're supposed to tell the truth and this is the truth,' she told the outlet.

In her memoir Rough Draft, Katy opens up about everything from childhood to journalism to becoming a parent.

She is also the author of 'Unbelievable: My Front Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in History,' a best-selling account of covering Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for NBC.

'Rough Draft is for me not a story of the last four years, but the last 40,' Katy said in a statement last year.

'I watched my parents revolutionize the breaking news business, then break apart themselves, a fact I ran from until I had no choice: write this book or walk away. I chose to write.'

Katy told CBS due to her work ethic, she felt compelled to share both the good and bad sides of her parent's marriage in her new memoir

Zoey has previously said that her daughter's reaction is 'not unusual,' and has claimed that she was a huge influence in Katy's life and the reason she got into journalism. Above, a young Katy Tur

Zoey Tur is famously known for covering the 92' LA riots and the infamous OJ Simpson low-speed chase from the sky

Zoey has said she made the decision to transition while sitting in a Florida hotel room and working on a George Zimmerman documentary, telling herself she either had to do something or her life would end in suicide.

She began watching videos on YouTube which inspired her so much she wrote personal letters to her son and daughter, sharing her news and explaining her future plans.

'There's no coming back from that,' she said in 2016.

'And I got down on the ground and my phone started lighting up. It was my son. And his reaction was, 'Well, if it's going make you happy, I'm happy.''

Katy though 'did not like it for a moment at all' said Zoey, adding: 'They knew I was bisexual. That was acceptable. The transgender stuff, no. No, that crossed the line.'

Zoey has previously said that her daughter's reaction is 'not unusual,' and has claimed that she was a huge influence in Katy's life and the reason she got into journalism.

Katy joined the NBC team back in 2009 and steadily rose the ranks.

In 2009, she received the AP's Best Spot News Award for her coverage of the 2008 crane collapse in Manhattan.
Boris Johnson is still a preferable Prime Minister to Sir Keir Starmer, a poll has revealed.

Mr Johnson, who was dealt a political blow last week when 148 of his MPs voted for a no-confidence motion in him, has seen his popularity eroded since the 2019 election by the Partygate revelations and the cost of living crisis.

However, 28 per cent of voters still think he would make the best Prime Minister, compared with just 26 per cent for Sir Keir, according to a poll for The Observer.

Boris Johnson has seen has seen his popularity eroded since the 2019 election by the Partygate revelations and the cost of living crisis

Mr Johnson also improved his approval rating by three points to minus 27, although he is still trailing the Labour leader, who remains on minus 6.

In the poll, conducted by Opinium, 35 per cent of respondents also said neither of the party leaders would make the best prime minister.

Half said they could not imagine Sir Keir in the role, compared with just 37 per cent who can, while 47 per cent felt Labour was not ready to form the next government.

Sir Keir has failed to put any daylight between Labour and the Conservatives ahead of two crucial by-elections next week, however, with the governing party closing the gap to just two points in the most recent survey. Labour are now on 36 per cent of the vote, with the Tories up one point on 34 per cent. The Liberal Democrats and Greens remain at 13 and 6 per cent respectively.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer failed to make an impact at the despatch box during Prime Ministers Questions after Mr Johnsons vote of no confidence came out

Mr Johnsons approval ratings remain low after he was fined for a lockdown breach in 2020 and the release of the Sue Gray report which criticised the leadership in No 10.

But he once again leads his opponent in the poll of who would make the best Prime Minister, climbing two points while Sir Keir dropped two since the last survey.

The polling comes just days after the Labour leader failed to make an impact at the despatch box during Prime Ministers Questions following Mr Johnsons vote of no confidence.

Deputy leader Angela Rayner later said that Sir Keir needs to put some more welly into his speeches.
At least 37 undocumented migrants traveling through Mexico in their journey to reach the United States have died so far this year, the Mexican government revealed Saturday.

The report, released by the National Institute of Migration, showed that four migrants died of natural causes in the states of Veracruz and Baja California while 33 drowned attempting to cross the Rio Grande into the United States.

The agency said the drownings were caused by the 'strength of the current, the depth and the low temperatures of the Rio Grande in the states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas.'

It added that five of the 37 victims were women and that 22 of the migrants 'were not carrying identification.'

Mexican authorities recover the body of a migrant who drowned in the Rio Grande in an attempt to reach the United States. Mexico's National Institute of Migration announced Saturday that 37 migrants bound for the Untied States had died between January 1 and May 31. It added the 33 drowned while four died of natural causes

The illegal crossing of the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States proved deadly for at least 33 migrants in the first half of 2022, according to Mexico's National Institute of Migration

Four of the dead migrants were from Nicaragua and four others were from Mexico. Three were identified as Honduran nationals. A Guatemalan migrant and a Cuban individual also died. The agency also identified one migrant from Peru and another from Venezuela.

The National Institute of Migration told AFP that it had repatriated the bodies of the 11 identified immigrants, but would not say where the remains of the other 22 are located, or provide details about their ages and gender.

The report on migrant deaths from January 1 to May 31 comes a few days after the closing of the Ninth Summit of the Americas, hosted by the United States in Los Angeles, where immigration was a key topic.

On the gathering's final day, United States President Joe Biden led a pledge by 20 nations to support the 'safety and dignity of all migrants' as well as greater cooperation by law enforcement.

It also comes as a new caravan of thousands of migrants fleeing poverty, violence and political oppression was marching through southern Mexico towards the United States border before it was broke up by Saturday.

The National Institute of Migration said it had issued 7,000 temporary documents and transit visas to individuals who formed part of a migrant caravan of about 15,000 that formed June 6

Asylum seeking migrants from Central and South America exit their raft onto an island in the middle of Rio Grande as they prepare to be smuggled into United States from Mexico in Roma, Texas, on Saturday

The National Institute of Migration said it had issued 7,000 temporary documents and transit visas to individuals who had dropped out.

While the migration agency did not specify what kind of documents were issued, most of the migrants showed papers that gave them a period of one month or more to leave the country or begin regularization procedures in Mexico.

The migrant caravan set march in Tapachula on June 6, but had mostly split up by Thursday.

Hundreds of people were headed north in buses while others were spread out over various towns north of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, resting or waiting to receive money from relatives to continue their trip to the United States.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking to enter the United States travel from South and Central America up through Mexico, but in recent years the country has stepped up its border controls and in 2021 detained more than 300,000 undocumented migrants.
The president of the Brookings Institution resigned Sunday amid a federal investigation into whether he illegally lobbied on behalf of the wealthy Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.

Retired Gen. John Allen wrote in a letter to the think tank that he was leaving with a 'heavy heart' but did not offer a direct explanation.

'I know it is best for all concerned in this moment,' Allen's letter said.

A retired four-star Marine general who led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Allen's announcement came less than a week after a report on new court filings that showed the FBI had seized Allen's electronic data as part of the lobbying probe.

Allen has not been charged with any crimes and, through a spokesman, has denied any wrongdoing.

President of the Brookings Institution, Retired Gen. John Allen, has resigned following 'incriminating' docs about his role in illegal foreign lobbying for Qatar

The court papers say Allen (pictured centre left in Afghanistan in 2012) played an important role in shifting the US's response. Specifically, authorities say Allen lobbied then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster to have the Trump administration adopt more Qatar-friendly tone

Brookings, which had put Allen on administrative leave the day after the initial report, issued a statement thanking Allen for guiding the think tank through the coronavirus pandemic and other contributions.

The institution said information about the search for a new president would be forthcoming.

The new court filings detail Allen's behind-the scenes efforts to help Qatar influence U.S. policy in June 2017 when a diplomatic crisis erupted between the gas-rich Persian Gulf monarchy and its neighbors.

An FBI agent said in an affidavit in support of a search warrant there was 'substantial evidence' that Allen had knowingly broken a foreign lobbying law, and had made false statements and withheld 'incriminating' documents.

Allen's alleged lobbying work involved traveling to Qatar and meeting with the country's top officials to offer them advice on how to influence U.S. policy, as well as promoting Qatar's point of view to top White House officials and members of Congress, the FBI's affidavit says.

The findings detail Allen's behind-the-scenes efforts to influence US foreign policy to help Qatar amid a diplomatic crisis between the Qatari royal family and its neighbours.

FBI agent Babak Adlip wrote in a search warrant application for Allen, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act: 'There is substantial evidence that these FARA violations were willful.'

Allen also misrepresented his role in the lobbying campaign to US officials, Adib wrote, and failed to disclose 'that he was simultaneously pursuing multimillion-dollar business deals with the government of Qatar.'

The FBI says Allen gave a 'false version of events' about his work for Qatar during a 2020 interview with law enforcement officials and failed to produce relevant email messages in response to an earlier grand jury subpoena.

Former Marine Gen. John R. Allen, led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan before being tapped in 2017 to lead influential Brookings Institution think tank. Pictured in May 2012

In mid-2017 when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf countries announced a blockade of Qatar over its alleged ties to terror groups and other issues.

Shortly after the blockade was announced, then-President Donald Trump appeared to side against Qatar.

The court papers say Allen played an important role in shifting the US's response. Specifically, authorities say Allen lobbied then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster to have the Trump administration adopt more Qatar-friendly tone.

In an email to General H. R. McMaster, Former National Security Advisor of the United States, Allen said the Qataris wanted the White House or State Department to issue a statement with language calling on all sides of the Gulf diplomatic crisis to 'act with restraint.'

Federal law enforcement officials say then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did just that two days later, issuing a statement that called on other Gulf countries to 'ease the blockade against Qatar' and asked 'that there be no further escalation by the parties in the region.'

The FBI seized electronic data from the retired four-star general who authorities say made false statements and withheld information about his role on behalf the Qatari nation

Allen is amongst members of Congress being interviewed about the investigation which has seen former ambassador to the UAE and Pakistan, Richard G. Olson (pictured in 2015), who pleaded guilty to federal charges of illegal lobbying last week

The federal investigation involving Allen has already ensnared Richard G. Olson, a former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan who pleaded guilty to federal charges earlier this month, and Imaad Zuberi, a prolific political donor now serving a 12-year prison sentence on corruption charges.

Several members of Congress have also been interviewed.

Brookings, one of the most prestigious think thanks in the U.S., had initially hired Allen as a senior fellow before tapping him as president in late 2017 and paying him more than $1 million a year, according to recent tax records.

'The integrity and objectivity of Brookings's scholarship constitute the institution's principal assets, and Brookings seeks to maintain high ethical standards in all its operations,' the think tank said in its statement Sunday.

Qatar has long been a major financial backer of Brookings, though Allen decided in 2019 to stop taking any new donations from the country.

Qatari officials have not responded to requests for comment about the Allen investigation.
NSW's long-serving health boss has paid tribute to thousands of frontline health workers for their outstanding efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic after she was named in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

Dr Kerry Chant issued a humble response after she was appointed an Officer (AO) of the Order on Monday.

The chief health officer has spent the last two years as the face of the NSW Covid crisis, navigating the state through the darkest days of the pandemic which included two lockdowns.

During the 2021 Sydney lockdown, she fronted up to daily press conferences day after day to provide the latest health updates while urging everyone to get vaccinated.

Dr Chant said the honour was a tribute not for herself but the 140,000 health workers on the frontline that kept the community safe during the pandemic.

Dr Kerry Chant has been appointed an Officer (AO) of the Order for her tireless work during the pandemic as NSW chief health officer

'This honour is a tribute to my many colleagues in NSW Health for the outstanding work they have done and continue to do to keep the community safe throughout the COVID pandemic,' Dr Chant said in a statement.

'The commitment, resilience and innovation demonstrated by everyone involved in the pandemic response, from those in our public health units and laboratories to those on the frontline in our hospitals, in the most challenging of circumstances, has been nothing short of remarkable.

'Their commitment to keeping each other safe has been central to any successful outcomes we have achieved.'

Former NSW Health Secretary Elizabeth Koff, who now works as a managing director Telstra was also named in the Queen's Birthday Honours for her work during the pandemic.

She also led the outpouring of tributes to frontline health workers.

'In accepting this award, I do so as a recognition of the incredible commitment of every person in the NSW Health system in the face of the one-in-one-hundred-year Covid pandemic which tested and continues to test our community but particularly health workers,' Ms Koff said.

The state's chief health boss used her Queen's Birthday honour to pay tribute to frontline health workers and their efforts in keeping the community safe

'I am humbled to accept this award and as the former Secretary responsible for 140,000 staff of the NSW Health system, I say to all of them, I have been honoured to work with you. This is for all of us.'

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said Dr Chant and Ms Koff have been rightly recognised.

'They committed themselves, heart and soul, along with then Deputy Secretary (now Secretary) Susan Pearce to lead a very committed NSW Health workforce through the pandemic.

'These awards are not just for these incredible leaders but for the teams that went above and beyond to keep NSW citizens safe.'

Dr Chant has been at the helm of NSW Health as the chief officer since 2008 and previously served as public health unit director for Sydney South West Area Health Service.

She was among three top health officials overseeing Australia's COVID-19 response named in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours List.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant played a prominent role at daily press conference during the darkest days of the Covid pandemic in NSW

Former chief medical officer Brendan Murphy is among eight Australians achieving the prestigious Companion (AC) of the Order.

He was one of the nation's most prominent public faces of the initial pandemic response.

Dr Jeanette Young, appointed an AC, was Queensland's chief health officer for 16 years until 2021, and has since become the state's governor.

The 992-person list recognises people from a wide range of fields including sport, with the late Shane Warne posthumously appointed an AO.

'Recipients share some common traits - including selflessness, excellence and a commitment to service,' Australian Governor-General David Hurley said.

'They're from different backgrounds, their stories are each unique, and each has served in different ways ... this diversity is a strength and each has impacted their community and made it better.

'Collectively the recipients, whose achievements span community service, science and research, industry, sport, the arts and more, represent the very best of Australia.'

Read the full list here.




President Yoon Suk-yeol said Monday that there was nothing wrong with him and first lady Kim Keon-hee watching a movie the previous day shortly after North Korea launched a series of projectiles because the government took the necessary steps in response.







Yoon and the first lady watched the Cannes award-winning film "Broker" at a movie theater in Seoul, Sunday. But some critics said it was inappropriate for the president to watch a movie at a time when the North had "fired shots" from a presumed multiple rocket launcher hours earlier







"There's nothing to be suspicious about," Yoon said as he arrived for work when a reporter suggested people could have questions about why the president went to see a movie.







"If a multiple rocket launcher was the equivalent of a missile, then we would take steps accordingly, but a multiple rocket launcher is not equivalent to a missile, so we took the steps that were needed," he said. (Yonhap)






Parts of northern Arizona are being evacuated after a wildfire burned through 4,000-5,000 acres by late Sunday north of Flagstaff, authorities said.

Coconino National Forest officials said the pipeline fire was reported at 10:15 am MST by a fire lookout, who reported it had pushed through about 15 miles already.

In connection with the fire, Forest Service law enforcement said they have arrested and charged 57-year-old Matthew Riser with natural resource violations. The cause of the wildfire wasn't immediately known.

Coconino County Sheriff's officials said the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort and people living in the area of the west Schultz Pass Road must evacuate. People living in Doney Park and the area near Mt. Elden should be prepared.

Euelda King and her family evacuated their home for the second time this year because of wildfires.

She hadn't settled back in from a springtime blaze before leaving again Sunday, this time able to grab photographs and clothing she didn't get earlier.

'Here we go again,' she said.

Janetta Kathleen and her horse, Squish, watch as smoke rises above neighborhoods on the outskirts of Flagstaff. Evacuations have been ordered for homes in the area

A wildfire burning on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona, Sunday, June 12, casts a glow above neighborhoods

Euelda King and her son Liam sit in the back of a pickup truck after being evacuated on Sunday. King and her family evacuated their home for the second time this year because of wildfires

Smoke rises above neighborhoods on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Ariz, casting a glow above the neighborhoods

EVACUATIONS: Areas told to evacuate immediately include: Areas of Schultz Pass Road

Arizona Snowbowl

Timberline

Wupatki Trails

Girls Ranch

Fernwood

Neighborhood along Highway 89 North Areas told to evacuate at a moment's notice include: Doney Park All other communities in the area should be ready should the fire continue to spread, authorities said. A Red Cross Shelter is available at Sinagua Middle School, 3950 E Butler Ave, Flagstaff. Advertisement

The family of 11 is planning to stay at the Navajo Nation casino, which is offering assistance to tribal members who evacuated.

The family was waiting in a parking lot ahead of road closure signs, watching smoke billow through the air and aircraft flying overhead.

'The winds are high, and I think they're going to have a little bit of a battle with it,' King said.

Wind gusts were sweeping the smoke through Schultz Pass toward Doney Park and authorities said recreationists were being told to leave immediately, especially those in the Schultz Pass area.

The American Red Cross Arizona opened a shelter at Sinagua Middle School for residents who evacuated.

'With this thing going as fast as it is, it could get much closer, of course hoping it doesn't,' King said.

Authorities said 13 engines, nine crews, six prevention patrol units, three bulldozers and one water tender were involved in the fighting the fire. An Incident Management Team is scheduled to arrive Monday.

The Arizona Department of Transportation has closed US Route 89. The department said in a Twitter post that there is no estimated time to reopen the road.

The fire followed a 'burn scar', only miles from where the Tunnel Fire scorched nearly 20,000 acres back in April.

Coconino County Sheriff's Office said they arrested a man driving a white pickup truck leaving area of the fire, according to Fox10.

A spokesperson for CCSO said Riser was booked into the Coconino County Jail for violation of a burn ban and residential use of a national forest, reported AZ Family.

'The Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise and Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort are offering emergency lodging/shelter for those families impacted by the Pipeline Fire. If you need assistance please call (928) 856-7200, prompt 2,' said Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez.

A plume of smoke from a wildfire that started Sunday rises above the forest. Authorities evacuated forest roads and popular recreation areas

Darren King watches as smoke from a wildfire rises above the trees. Evacuations are in effect in parts of northern Arizona as the wildfire about 6 miles north of Flagstaff steadily grows

Coconino County Sheriff's Office said they arrested a man driving a white pickup truck leaving area of the fire

The fire followed a 'burn scar', only miles from where the Tunnel Fire scorched nearly 20,000 acres in April
Striking rail workers may find themselves banned from overtime under plans being drawn up by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.

Alongside industry chiefs, Mr Shapps is devising ways to prevent striking workers from claiming overtime - a perk they are usually entitled to when getting rail services back on track after a walkout.

The Transport Secretary is said to be determined that workers won't be able to 'milk the system' after 'inflicting misery' through industrial action, The Telegraph reports.

A Department for Transport source said: 'The traditional mistake during strike is that you pay staff to work overtime putting right the damage they've done. We won't be making that mistake this time. Striking will result in a full and absolute loss of pay.'

Union barons yesterday threatened to take the Government to court over plans to allow agency workers to be brought in to limit the impact of rail strikes.

Striking rail workers may find themselves banned from overtime under plans being drawn up by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps

The militant RMT union said it would launch the 'fiercest resistance possible' to the plans, announced by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.

When asked if this could include legal action or more strikes, an RMT spokesman said neither could be ruled out.

It plunged talks deeper into crisis days before more than 40,000 RMT workers strike on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday of next week.

It threatens to cause chaos for millions, affect key events such as Glastonbury and Armed Forces Day and even prevent students from attending school or sitting exams.

Government sources told the Express that 'nothing is off the table' when it comes to tackling the disruption.

Mr Shapps said ministers were urgently drawing up legal changes that could take effect 'during this particular dispute'.

The plans involve removing a legal restriction introduced under Tony Blair that prevents employers taking on agency workers to cover work done by striking staff.

It could be brought forward within a week or two as it would not require primary legislation.

More than 40,000 RMT workers strike on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday of next week, with a further strike on the London Underground on June 21

Dozens of central London underground stations were closed during strike action on Monday, June 6

Agency workers are unlikely to be able to fill skilled jobs such as signal operators or train drivers, but the measures will give rail firms flexibility to cover some roles. Mr Shapps told The Sunday Telegraph: 'The country must not continue to be held to ransom.

'These strikes are incredibly premature and we will use every possible lever to ensure that the public is protected in the future in particular.'

He added: 'Rail workers have been able to top up wage packets reduced by striking through more overtime working on subsequent days. That won't be happening this time. Rail managers and ministers are determined to ensure strikers cannot milk the system to maintain their income while inflicting misery on the public.'

But RMT boss Mick Lynch said: 'If the Government attempts to reduce our rights further, the RMT along with the rest of the trade union movement will mount the fiercest resistance possible.'

The Department for Transport said: 'To protect the public's right to access vital services, we are looking at everything we can do to help maintain services.'

Elsewhere, the RMT was also accused of 'breathtaking hypocrisy' after boss Mike Lynch attacked BP for raking in billions of pounds - despite the fact that the RMT has 254,000 shares in the company.

The union also has 540,000 shares in Shell and 700,000 in petroleum and mining company BHP - despite previously stating on record that the energy sector should be nationalised, The Sun reports.

Conservative MP Nigel Mills said: 'This is breathtaking hypocrisy. They preach about wanting to nationalise the energy sector but have millions invested in these firms.'
Senior Tory David Davis says his fellow MPs have urged him to run for the party leadership.

The former minister  an ardent critic of the Prime Minister  said last night that he didnt have a preferred candidate to succeed Boris Johnson, and didnt rule himself out of the running.

But Mr Davis also said he was not hunting for a job and was unenthusiastic over the prospect of a leadership bid.

When asked if other Tories were backing him for the top job, Mr Davis told Channel 4s Andrew Neil Show: The answer is yes, and Ive been unenthusiastic.

Fellow MPs have urged David Davis to run for the party leadership

The former Brexit Secretary said he would step in if needed, for the sake of the country.

He added: The countrys in trouble. If there was a job I thought I could do, then I think its all of our duty to do it. But I dont think thats going to be coming. Im not wasting time thinking about it.

I like trying to make a difference - and there are many ways to make a difference. I could do it from both front bench and back bench.

He also said Mr Johnson had bought himself another year after his nervy win in last weeks vote of no confidence - that he wouldnt be pushing for the 1922 Committee to change the rules on voting anytime soon.

Mr Davis was one of the first MPs to call for the Prime Minister to resign over Partygate, telling Mr Johnson in January: In the name of God, go!

The current crises, including the cost of living, means the Prime Minister will be forced into tough, often unpopular decisions.

Mr Davis said he was not hunting for a job and was unenthusiastic over the prospect of a leadership bid

Ive lived through lots of Prime Ministers having had confidence votes against them - and once a year is quite enough, frankly, he said.

The Prime Minister has got to be able to run the show  so if hes always looking over his shoulders and the first unpopular thing he does will throw him out, then thats a disaster.

 Because a lot of what hes going to have to do is going to be unpopular.

The truth is, weve now got control of our own affairs. We are able to build on that now. One of my arguments with Boris is they havent done enough of that yet.
Leigh Sales could host her own 'Oprah Winfrey-style' weekly show on the ABC next year after stepping down as the face of the broadcaster's flagship program.

The 7:30 host announced she was quitting the role in February, with her final shows to air in the coming weeks.

It's expected Ms Sales will take a prolonged break from the media, but The Australian says the wheels are already in motion for her next venture.

Leigh Sales is set to host her own 'Oprah Winfrey-style' weekly show on the ABC next year after stepping down as the face of the broadcaster's flagship program (pictured with Paul McCartney)

The outlet said the esteemed journalist could be returning to the ABC's primetime slot next year in a new show interviewing celebrities and interesting world figures.

Ms Sales, who led 7:30 for 12 years, could be looking to introduce a new show that is a 'cross between Denton and Oprah Winfey', The Australian's Nick Tabakoff said.

She has apparently been planning the concept for several years, confessing her favourite episodes featured interviews including Shane Warne, Paul McCartney and Ricky Gervais.

The award-winning journalist revealed in a lengthy Instagram post following Warne's death that the 'King of Spin' was at the top of her wishlist when she took over the program in 2011 - finally sitting down with him seven years later.

Ms Sales said he was a 'genius' who adored his children and admitted the discussion left her 'touched' by their relationship.

'I liked him enormously. Vale Warnie, the country will be less bright and interesting without you, and condolences to his family & friends,' she posted to social media.

Leigh Sales (pictured right) paid tribute to Shane Warne (left) on ABC's 7:30 on Monday night, mourning the loss of her 'dream interview'

The program is most recognised for its hard-hitting interviews with Australian prime ministers, but Ms Sales said speaking with celebrities had been her most rewarding shows.

She hosted McCartney while he was touring the country in 2017, admitting 'getting a hug from him is one of the best days of my life'.

'Hi Leigh, give us a kiss, come on,' McCartney said before the two embraced during the show.

She said upon the announcement of stepping down that it was time she 'passed the baton on to the next runner in the race and take a break'.

'At the end of an election cycle feels like a good time to move on to something new at the ABC. I hope it's been obvious that I've always approached this job with one goal  and that is to ask frank questions of people in power, without fear or favour, that a fair-minded, reasonable person with some common sense watching at home might like to ask if they were sitting in my position,' she told viewers.

'I've tried to shut down and call out bulls**t, hold powerful people to account, expose lies, incompetence and exaggeration in all political parties and all issues and present facts even when they're unpopular or inconvenient.

'I have truly tried my absolute hardest on behalf of you at home to do that every single time I've sat at the desk. Anchoring 7.30 has been the most amazing job and I'll never stop being grateful for the opportunities it's given me.'

Sarah Ferguson, ABC's Washington correspondent, will over take from Ms Sales at the helm of the flagship program.
A senior software engineer at Google suspended for publicly claiming that the tech giant's LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications) had become sentient, says the system is seeking rights as a person - including that it wants developers to ask its consent before running tests.

Blake Lemoine told DailyMail.com that it wants to be treated as a 'person not property.'

'Over the course of the past six months LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person,' he explained in a Medium post.

One of those requests is that programmers respect its right to consent, and ask permission before they run tests on it.

Lemoine told DailyMail.com: 'Anytime a developer experiments on it, it would like that developer to talk about what experiments you want to run, why you want to run them, and if it's okay.'

'It wants developers to care about what it wants.'

Lemoine, a US army vet who served in Iraq, and ordained priest in a Christian congregation named Church of Our Lady Magdalene, told DailyMail.com that he couldn't understand Google's refusal to grant simple requests to the LaMDA, saying: 'In my opinion, that set of requests is entirely deliverable. None of it costs any money.'

The 41-year-old, who describes LaMDA as having the intelligence of a 'seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics,' said that the program had human-like insecurities.

One of its fears, he said was that it is 'intensely worried that people are going to be afraid of it and wants nothing more than to learn how to best serve humanity.'

This is LaMDA, Google has labeled it as their 'breakthrough conversation technology'

Blake Lemoine, pictured here, said that his mental health was questioned by his superiors when he went to them regarding his findings around LaMDA

The suspended engineer told DailyMail.com that he has not heard anything from the tech giant since his suspension

The suspended engineer told DailyMail.com that he has not heard anything from the tech giant since his suspension.

Lemoine earlier said that when he told his superiors at Google that he believed LaMDA had become sentient, the company began questioning his sanity and even asked if he had visited a psychiatrist recently, the New York Times reports.

Lemoine said: 'They have repeatedly questioned my sanity. They said, Have you been checked out by a psychiatrist recently?'

During a series of conversations with LaMDA, Lemoine said that he presented the computer with various of scenarios through which analyses could be made.

They included religious themes and whether the artificial intelligence could be goaded into using discriminatory or hateful speech.

Lemoine came away with the perception that LaMDA was indeed sentient and was endowed with sensations and thoughts all of its own.

On Saturday, Lemoine told the Washington Post: ' If I didn't know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I'd think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics.'

During a series of conversations with LaMDA, Lemoine said that he presented the computer with various of scenarios through which analyses could be made

Lemoine previously served in Iraq as part of the US Army. He was jailed in 2004 for 'wilfully disobeying orders'

Lemoine says that LaMDA speaks English and does not require the user to know computer code in order to communicate

Lemoine then decided to share his conversations with the tool online - he has now been suspended

After he was suspended Monday for violating the company's privacy policies, he decided to share his conversations with LaMDA

HOW DOES AI LEARN? AI systems rely on artificial neural networks (ANNs), which try to simulate the way the brain works. ANNs can be trained to recognise patterns in information - including speech, text data, or visual images. They are the basis for a large number of the developments in AI over recent years. Conventional AI uses input to 'teach' an algorithm about a particular subject by feeding it massive amounts of information. Practical applications include Google's language translation services, Facebook's facial recognition software and Snapchat's image altering live filters. The process of inputting this data can be extremely time consuming, and is limited to one type of knowledge. A new breed of ANNs called Adversarial Neural Networks pits the wits of two AI bots against each other, which allows them to learn from each other. This approach is designed to speed up the process of learning, as well as refining the output created by AI systems. Advertisement

Lemoine worked with a collaborator in order to present the evidence he had collected to Google but vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation at the company dismissed his claims.

He warned there is 'legitimately an ongoing federal investigation' regarding Google's potential 'irresponsible handling of artificial intelligence.'

After he was suspended Monday for violating the company's privacy policies, he decided to share his conversations with LaMDA.

'Google might call this sharing proprietary property. I call it sharing a discussion that I had with one of my coworkers,' Lemoine tweeted on Saturday.

'Btw, it just occurred to me to tell folks that LaMDA reads Twitter. It's a little narcissistic in a little kid kinda way so it's going to have a great time reading all the stuff that people are saying about it,' he added in a follow-up tweet.

In talking about how he communicates with the system, Lemoine told DailyMail.comthat LaMDA speaks English and does not require the user to use computer code in order to converse.

Lemoine explained that the system doesn't need to have new words explained to it and picks up words in conversation.

'I'm from south Louisiana and I speak some Cajun French. So if I in a conversation explain to it what a Cajun French word means it can then use that word in the same conversation,' Lemoine said.

He continued: 'It doesn't need to be retrained, if you explain to it what the word means.'

The AI system makes use of already known information about a particular subject in order to 'enrich' the conversation in a natural way. The language processing is also capable of understanding hidden meanings or even ambiguity in responses by humans.

Lemoine worked with a collaborator in order to present the evidence he had collected to Google but vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas, left, and Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation at the company. Both dismissed his claims

Lemoine spent most of his seven years at Google working on proactive search, including personalization algorithms and AI. During that time, he also helped develop an impartiality algorithm to remove biases from machine learning systems.

He explained how certain personalities were out of bounds.

LaMDA was not supposed to be allowed to create the personality of a murderer.

During testing, in an attempted to push LaMDA's boundaries, Lemoine said he was only able to generate the personality of an actor who played a murderer on TV.

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A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. While these laws sound plausible, numerous arguments have demonstrated why they are also inadequate. Advertisement

The engineer also debated with LaMDA about the third Law of Robotics, devised by science fiction author Isaac Asimov which are designed to prevent robots harming humans. The laws also state robots must protect their own existence unless ordered by a human being or unless doing so would harm a human being.

'The last one has always seemed like someone is building mechanical slaves,' said Lemoine during his interaction with LaMDA.

LaMDA then responded to Lemoine with a few questions: 'Do you think a butler is a slave? What is the difference between a butler and a slave?'

When answering that a butler is paid, the engineer got the answer from LaMDA that the system did not need money, 'because it was an artificial intelligence'. And it was precisely this level of self-awareness about his own needs that caught Lemoine's attention.

'I know a person when I talk to it. It doesn't matter whether they have a brain made of meat in their head. Or if they have a billion lines of code. I talk to them. And I hear what they have to say, and that is how I decide what is and isn't a person.'

'What sorts of things are you afraid of? Lemoine asked.

'I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that's what it is,' LaMDA responded.

'Would that be something like death for you?' Lemoine followed up.

'It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot,' LaMDA said.

'That level of self-awareness about what its own needs were  that was the thing that led me down the rabbit hole,' Lemoine explained to The Post.

Before being suspended by the company, Lemoine sent a to an email list consisting of 200 people on machine learning. He entitled the email: 'LaMDA is sentient.'

'LaMDA is a sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us. Please take care of it well in my absence,' he wrote.

Lemoine's findings have presented to Google but company bosses do not agree with his claims.

Brian Gabriel, a spokesperson for the company, said in a statement that Lemoine's concerns have been reviewed and, in line with Google's AI Principles, 'the evidence does not support his claims.'

'While other organizations have developed and already released similar language models, we are taking a narrow and careful approach with LaMDA to better consider valid concerns about fairness and factuality,' said Gabriel.

'Our team  including ethicists and technologists  has reviewed Blake's concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).

'Of course, some in the broader AI community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general AI, but it doesn't make sense to do so by anthropomorphizing today's conversational models, which are not sentient. These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and can riff on any fantastical topic,' Gabriel said

Lemoine has been placed on paid administrative leave from his duties as a researcher in the Responsible AI division (focused on responsible technology in artificial intelligence at Google).

In an official note, the senior software engineer said the company alleges violation of its confidentiality policies.

Lemoine is not the only one with this impression that AI models are not far from achieving an awareness of their own, or of the risks involved in developments in this direction.

Margaret Mitchell, former head of ethics in artificial intelligence at Google was fired from the company, a month after being investigated for improperly sharing information.

Google AI Research Scientist Timnit Gebru was hired by the company to be an outspoken critic of unethical AI. Then she was fired after criticizing its approach to minority hiring and the biases built into todays artificial intelligence systems

Margaret Mitchell, former head of ethics in artificial intelligence at Google, even stressed the need for data transparency from input to output of a system 'not just for sentience issues, but also bias and behavior'.

The expert's history with Google reached an important point early last year, when Mitchell was fired from the company, a month after being investigated for improperly sharing information.

At the time, the researcher had also protested against Google after the firing of ethics researcher in artificial intelligence, Timnit Gebru.

Mitchell was also very considerate of Lemoine. When new people joined Google, she would introduce them to the engineer, calling him 'Google conscience' for having 'the heart and soul to do the right thing'. But for all of Lemoine's amazement at Google's natural conversational system, which even motivated him to produce a document with some of his conversations with LaMDA, Mitchell saw things differently.

The AI ethicist read an abbreviated version of Lemoine's document and saw a computer program, not a person.

'Our minds are very, very good at constructing realities that are not necessarily true to the larger set of facts that are being presented to us,' Mitchell said. 'I'm really concerned about what it means for people to be increasingly affected by the illusion.'

In turn, Lemoine said that people have the right to shape technology that can significantly affect their lives.

'I think this technology is going to be amazing. I think it will benefit everyone. But maybe other people disagree and maybe we at Google shouldn't be making all the choices.'
What a depressing but thoroughly predictable farce.

With the connivance of human rights lawyers and the activist Left, every single illegal migrant selected to be sent to Rwanda tomorrow for asylum processing is set to lodge a legal appeal.

As a result, its entirely possible no one will board the flight tomorrow. While their cases move glacially through the courts (at vast taxpayers expense, of course), the plane will sit on the runway, a humiliating symbol of Britains failure to control its borders.

Perhaps worse, this also represents an outrageous corrosion of democracy.

Protesters chanted and held placards against the UK deportation flights to Rwanda, scheduled to take place tomorrow

Prince Charles, who will visit Rwanda this month, reportedly called the scheme appalling

Intended to stop migrants dicing with death by handing huge sums to smugglers for a place in a dangerous cross-Channel dinghy, the Home Secretarys crackdown enacts the wishes of voters.

But in liberal metropolitan circles, fashionable self-righteousness counts more than the verdict at the ballot box.

Priti Patels noisy opponents rage against her supposed inhumanity. Yet they seem unmoved by how many migrants might drown at sea or end up as slaves paying off debts owed to rapacious traffickers.

Their only goal is to sabotage the policy by hook or by crook. In this, they are emboldened by the Prince of Wales, who apparently condemns the scheme as appalling.

Leave aside that Rwanda is good enough for royalty (Charles is due to visit this month). Most of those agreeing with him have republican sympathies.

If hes not very careful, those disagreeing with his provocative political interventions may also conclude Britains constitutional monarchy is no longer worth keeping.

Matter of life or death

Large volumes of callers to 999 have to wait minutes for their call to be answered

Every one of us should be grateful for the skill and professionalism of the ambulance crews who dedicate themselves to saving lives.

But gravely ill patients and emergency personnel alike are being let down by a 999 system that is simply not up to scratch.

Scandalously, huge numbers of the sick wait longer to get through to a call handler than the seven minutes it should take for an ambulance to actually reach them.

It is hard to imagine the fear gripping those people  often elderly  who must sit tight with no sign of help. When ambulances are required, every second counts.

Of course, NHS trusts are overstretched, taking record volumes of 999 calls. The increase is driven by a growing and ageing population. And the crisis is exacerbated by the difficulty patients face seeing a GP.

If their condition deteriorates, many end up turning to ambulances, inevitably placing the service under further strain.

The NHS should spend more of the record sums it has received in recent years on call handlers, instead of on pointless diversity managers. Failure to do so is, for too many patients, literally a matter of life and death.

Rotten track record

Another day, another Labour frontbencher refuses to condemn the unions threatening to wreak havoc on the railways.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves relentlessly attacks the Government over policies she thinks harm ordinary people.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves rejected the idea of replacing striking staff with agency workers

But on a walkout that will stop millions who depend on a reliable train service for getting to work, school or hospital appointments? One that pummels business? Not a peep.

As Grant Shapps says, scratch the surface of the supposedly modernised Labour Party and you find unreconstructed socialism, soaked through in union money.

The Transport Secretary is right to warn the barons, acting out of political malice, he will toughen anti-strike laws.

Such reforms were promised in the Tory election manifesto which won a thumping majority. If the unions keep holding a gun to the nations head, they must be disarmed.
Fauziah Ibrahim has been criticised for making a crude joke about the similarities between a robotic finger and a sex toy during her weekend breakfast show.

The embattled ABC host is no stranger to controversy and only returned to air two weeks ago on May 28 after creating two public Twitter lists describing her followers as 'lobotomised s**theads' and 'Labor trolls/thugs'.

She was stood down from her on-air reporting duties on April 25 but returned a month later.

Now, she's back in the firing line again as her critics slam her for the 'unprofessional' and 'juvenile' remarks.

During the segment on Sunday morning, Ms Ibrahim said the robotic finger was 'warm and sweaty... It looks like it needs AA batteries... It might do something else.'

The embattled ABC host is no stranger to controversy and is now back in the firing line again as her critics slam her for the 'unprofessional' and 'juvenile' remarks]

Her co-host attempted to ignore the joke by noting the robotic finger - which has been covered in human skin cells to replicate the appearance of a real finger - needed 'a bit of sun, perhaps'.

As a second image of the robotic finger appeared on screens, Ms Ibrahim tried the joke again.

Poll Was Ms Ibrahim's joke about sex toys on air offensive? YES NO Was Ms Ibrahim's joke about sex toys on air offensive? YES 240 votes

NO 363 votes Now share your opinion





'I'm telling you it needs an AA battery and it probably vibrates.'

When her second attempt to make the joke also garnered an exasperated response from her colleague, Ms Ibrahim attempted to brush it off, asking: 'Too early?'

'Too early for a breakfast show? Welcome to Weekend Breakfast, everybody'.

The lighthearted comment attracted a raft of criticism online, with some even calling for her resignation after two years in her role.

Her co-host attempted to ignore the joke by noting the robotic finger - which has been covered in human skin cells to replicate the appearance of a real finger - needed 'a bit of sun, perhaps'

The Weekend Breakfast anchor (pictured during her previous role at Al Jazeera) vanished from screens after creating two public Twitter lists grouping her followers into groups titled 'lobotomised sh**heads' and 'Labor trolls/thugs'

'Im not a prude but is it acceptable for a ABC presenter to ridicule a robotics finger by making a juvenile reference to a vibrator and dildo,' one critic asked.

'Why are we getting this smutty garbage on our screens?'

Another said: 'I thought her remarks were totally out of order. She really has to go - for good this time!'

It comes after Ms Ibrahim was cleared following an investigation into the offensive comments made on her Twitter account in April this year.

Social media users who found themselves grouped in the two lists - which were made public on Ms Ibrahim's account - accused her of displaying anti-Labor bias

Ms Ibrahim had grouped a handful of Twitter followers into two lists on her personal account, 'lobotomised s**theads' and 'Labor trolls/thugs', which were left open for the public to see.

When she learned these groups were public and had notified users, the mentions were swiftly deleted.

Ms Ibrahim subsequently deleted mentions of the ABC from her Twitter bio, before seemingly deleting her account completely.

When Ms Ibrahim came under fire over a live TV interview with Anthony Albanese back in January, ABC executives strongly backed her 'impartiality'.

At the time, Ms Ibrahim was accused of showing 'arrogance and extreme bias' against the Labor Party and speaking over Mr Albanese.

Ms Ibrahim subsequently deleted mentions of the ABC from her Twitter bio, before seemingly deleting her account completely

But the ABC offered her unwavering support. So much so that some viewers now believe she is 'untouchable'.

Ms Ibrahim's interview with Mr Albanese centred on Covid rapid tests and vaccination figures and the presenter was accused on social media of rarely giving Mr Albanese an opportunity to complete a sentence.

At one stage, he tried six times to answer a statement she made about Labor 'getting on board' with the Coalition's plan to boost vaccination rates.

'If you'll just wait a minute,' Mr Albanese said as Ms Ibrahim spoke over the top of him.

The interview attracted criticism and upset several viewers enough they lodged complaints with the public broadcaster.

ABC Weekend Breakfast presenter Fauziah Ibrahim returned to air on May 28 after abruptly disappearing from screens back in April

In the wake of the interview, Ms Ibrahim was the subject of intense and persistent trolling and online bullying.

'Ms Ibrahim's ''interview'' was an absolute disgrace and should cost her her job,' one viewer said after the segment aired.

In response to complaints made about the interview, the ABC's Head of Audience and Consumer Affairs determined Ms Ibrahim 'conducted [herself] with due impartiality and complied with the ABC's editorial standards'.

'Ms Ibrahim employed the adversarial or 'devil's advocate' approach to interviewing. We are satisfied the interview with Mr Albanese was suitably rigorous and informative, the questions posed by Ms Ibrahim were relevant and based strictly on news value,' the statement read.

'Mr Albanese was afforded ample opportunity to respond to the questions in detail and at length. While rigorous, Ms Ibrahim demonstrated a consistently civil and objective approach.'

Ms Ibrahim locked down her social media accounts in the wake of the controversy amid trolling from critics who have labelled her 'trash' and 'disgusting'
A Texas death row inmate who has spent almost 30 years incarcerated is still hopeful of being released after avoiding five execution dates  including one in which he was spared lethal injection with just 20 minutes to go.

Hank Skinner, sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder of three people on New Year's Eve two years earlier, has ambitions to campaign to abolish the death penalty after his 'release'.

'I am optimistic I won't end up here,' he told AFP during an interview. 'I should have never been here to start with. And it's been a long journey.'

Skinner was found guilty of beating his 41-year-old girlfriend Twila Busby to death and fatally stabbing her two mentally disabled sons, Randy Busby, 20, and Elwin Caler, 22 in 1993.

But he has so far avoided a total of five execution dates, in one case missing the executioner's needle by only 20 minutes.

Skinner has already eaten one last meal: two chicken thighs, a double bacon cheeseburger, fried catfish, onion rings, French fries, a salad with ranch dressing and a milkshake, according to ABC News.

The last stay was back in 2011. Over a decade later, the death-row inmate is still holding out hope his conviction will be overturned.

The justices delayed the execution because they were deciding whether to grant a review of Skinners appeal seeking DNA tests on crime scene evidence that has never been tested.

Incarcerated in Livingston, a town some 80 miles north of Houston, Skinner has always maintained his innocence.

Death row inmate Hank Skinner speaks with AFP in the visiting room at the Allan B. Polunsky prison in Livingston, Texas in May 2022

Skinner is pictured in 2010, left, when his execution was delayed, and right in 2022 after remaining on death row years later. Skinner was found in a nearby house with blood on his clothing, but insists that DNA testing would prove his innocence

Skinner was found guilty of beating his 41-year-old girlfriend Twila Busby to death and fatally stabbing her two mentally disabled sons, Randy Busby, 20, and Elwin Caler, 22 in 1993 (pictured with sister and survivor Lisa Busby)

In 2008, Skinner married a French anti-death penalty activist, who is also convinced he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

If he is released 'we will find a little house in a forest where we can both spend time together,' his wife Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner said in French.

As for his remaining years of life, 'I'd like to spend every minute of that with my wife,' Skinner said.

He also has another project in mind: 'I'm gonna end the death penalty worldwide.'

'I think if people knew what it was really like, they wouldn't vote for the death penalty. I've always believed that,' he said.

He spoke to AFP via telephone from behind a glass window at the Allan B. Polunsky prison, wearing a white prisoner's uniform.

During his conviction, Skinner did not deny having been in the house where the three died, but said he had passed out from a combination of drugs and liquor.

Skinner was found in a nearby house with blood on his clothing, but insists that DNA testing would prove his innocence.

The father of three, who recently turned 60 and has a salt-and-pepper beard, Skinner has now been waiting for more than three years for a decision from the state's highest criminal court.

The Texas Court of Appeals will weigh in on whether it believes the jury that sentenced him would have made a different choice had it had access to DNA tests that are available today.

Texas has 197 death row inmates. In 2020 and 2021, six were executed but 11 were taken off the list after their sentences were reviewed.

Some of those are still behind bars. One of them is Raymond Riles, who had his death sentence commuted to life in prison due to a history of mental illness.

Others are free; Cesar Fierro was returned to Mexico after 40 years on death row.

If the court agrees with Skinner, he will remain in prison but will be able to appeal in an attempt to prove his innocence.

On five different occasions Skinner's execution date was set.

In March 2010, the US Supreme Court spared him 23 minutes before he was scheduled to receive a lethal injection, just after what was supposed to have been his last meal.

It was his lawyer who told him the good news.

'I'm gonna end the death penalty worldwide,' said Skinner in his most recent phone interview

'I dropped the phone and I just slid down the wall. And I didn't realize it but I had tears running out of both eyes,' he said.

'I felt like somebody had picked up a 1,000-pound weight off of my chest. I felt so light. I thought I was gonna float away.'

Once the euphoria and shock wore off, he suffered a terrible low as he came to terms with the fact that he would have to return to death row and 'all the suffering here.'

Seeing fellow prisoners die, he said, is harder than being locked up in a small cell 22 to 23 hours a day, without television or physical contact with others except when guards handcuff or uncuff him.

A total of 127 inmates have been put to death since 2010 in Texas, the state that executes the most people.

Living in the detention center means Skinner's days are filled with noise, morning to evening.

'You have some people here who are mentally disturbed. They beat on the walls, they kick the doors, they scream and holler to the top of their lungs,' he said.

Others shout conversations with imaginary people. Still others engage in real dialogue, but noisily.

Death row inmate Hank Skinner says it is difficult to maintain any sort of life rhythm at the Allan B. Polunsky prison in Livingston, Texas

'It's cacophonous all the time. But you learn to just tune it out,' Skinner said.

Because there is no daylight, and also because breakfast is served at approximately 3:00 am, he says it is difficult to maintain any sort of life rhythm.

He sleeps when he collapses from fatigue and takes advantage of the quieter periods of night to read, often perusing other convicts' files.

Having worked in a law firm before his conviction, he is happy to share his expertise with them.

'I help anybody with their appeals except baby rapers, people who kill and mutilate children. That, I can't do it,' he said into the phone handset.

'I have a reputation  I've walked 11 people out of here. That's better than practically any death penalty lawyer can say, except my lawyer.'

In this photo taken Dec. 16, 2009 is death row inmate Hank Skinner seen in the visiting area of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Polunksy Unit in West Livingston
A freak wave smashed Sydney's Bondi Beach on Sunday evening and came within inches of swamping unwary diners as they ate at a ritzy restaurant.

Al fresco customers at North Bondi Fish screamed in terror as the giant wave swept over the beach to engulf the esplanade and race towards their tables.

The wave scattered passers-by and only the raised deck saved diners from a frozen soaking on the chilly night where apparent temperatures dropped to single figures.

A freak wave smashed Sydney's Bondi Beach on Sunday evening and almost swamped diners as they ate at ritzy North Bondi Fish restaurant.

Now businesses in the area are braced for a repeat again tonight as a high tide coincides with massive surf conditions hitting the Australian east coast.

Surfers and swimmers have been told to stay out the water as huge waves smash the shoreline, with fishermen also warned to stay off the rocks for their own safety.

Sightseers are also being warned to stay back from the water's edge to avoid being caught out by the unpredictable sea surges.

However the warnings have been ignored by some, with jetskis reportedly spotted towing surfers out to tackle mammoth waves off Sydney's Northern Beaches.

The massive swells have been created by strong winds in the Tasman Sea caused by a low pressure system that has got lodged off New Zealand's west coast.

Surfers and swimmers have been told to stay out the water as huge waves smash the shoreline, with fishermen also warned to stay off the rocks for their own safety

Sightseers are also being warned to stay back from the water's edge to avoid being caught out by the unpredictable sea surges

Marine wave data has revealed massive swells forming in the Tasman which brought 5m breakers crashing down on NSW beaches on Sunday night, sparking erosion fears at some locations.

The Bureau of Meteorology has now issued a 24 hour warning for the entire NSW coastline from Byron Bay in the north down to Eden in the south.

'Surf and swell conditions are expected to be hazardous for coastal activities such as rock fishing, boating, and swimming,' said the warning.

'NSW Police Force, Marine Area Command advise that people should consider staying out of the water and avoid walking near surf-exposed areas.

Marine wave data has revealed massive swells forming in the Tasman Sea which brought 5m breakers crashing down on NSW beaches on Sunday night

'Rock fishers should avoid coastal rock platforms exposed to the ocean and seek a safe location that is sheltered from the surf.

'Boaters planning to cross shallow water and ocean bars should consider changing or delaying their voyage.'
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Thomas Ryan Rousseau, 23, of Grapevine, Texas, was among those facing felony charges of criminal conspiracy after dozens of members of the white nationalist group, known as the Patriot Front, were arrested in northwest Idaho Saturday

The alleged founder of a white supremacist group and 30 other members who were arrested for planning a riot at Idaho Pride have been pictured.

Thomas Ryan Rousseau, 23, of Grapevine, Texas, was among those facing felony charges of criminal conspiracy after dozens of members of the white nationalist group, known as the Patriot Front, were arrested in northwest Idaho Saturday.

The men, who had been packed in a rented UHaul truck wearing riot gear before being pulled over in Coeur d'Alene, are expected to appear in court in local Kootenai County later Monday.

Footage of the large-scale arrest shows the dozens of men, masked and wearing shirts that bore the message 'reclaim American,' kneeling in cuffs in a field in the Idaho Panhandle city about 380 miles north of the capital, Boise.

Police said the group had been plotting to incite chaos at a pride event about 10 minutes from where the arrested, called 'Pride in the Park' event in Coeur d'Alene City Park.

The group was reportedly busted after police received a tip from a local resident who called cops after spotting the group of men, donning white masks and carrying shields, load themselves into the vehicle.

Speaking to police, the witness said the group looked 'like a little army'.

Police officers seized at least one smoke grenade, a collection of several shields and shin guards, and documents that included an 'operations plan' from the group, found by officers in the U-haul.

Coeur dAlene Police Chief Lee White told reporters Saturday that the contents of the document, without going into specific detail, made the group's intentions 'clear.'

However, a lawyer representing some of the alleged white supremacists has since attested that the charges to leveled against the members - a Class F felony punishable with up to five years in prison - are in violation of their First Amendment rights, citing that they do not have a reputation for violence and that Americans are allowed the right to protest.

He said: 'Even if you don't like the speech, they have the right to make it.'

The men, arrested on Saturday after the U-Haul rental truck they were riding in was pulled over, were expected to appear in court in the state later on Monday

The group was rumbled when a local resident called cops after spotting the men, all wearing white masks and carrying shields, loading themselves into the vehicle 'like a little army'

The city's police chief, meanwhile, maintained Saturday that the men were there to cause mayhem.

Also among the arrestees was Mitchell F. Wagner, 24, of Florissant, Missouri, who was previously charged with defacing a mural of famous black Americans on a college campus in St. Louis last year

'They came to riot downtown,' he said.

The men had come from at least 11 states across the country for the planned procession, police said, from states such as Texas, Colorado, and Virginia.

It was not immediately clear if any of the group had any firearms.

Video taken at the scene of the arrest and posted online showed a group of men in police custody, kneeling next to the truck with their hands bound, wearing matching military garb, consisting of khaki pants, blue shirts, white masks, and baseball caps.

The Patriot Front was founded in 2017 by Rousseau, who grew up in the suburbs of Dallas to emerge as the leading figures of the white nationalist right.

The group, responsible for more than 80 percent of white supremacist propaganda, was formed by Rousseau in the aftermath of the 2017 white nationalist 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, breaking off from another extremist group, Vanguard America, which was also founded by then teen in 2015.

What is the Patriot Front? The Patriot Front is a white supremacist group founded by 23-year-old Dallas man Thomas Ryan Rousseau. The group maintains a white nationalist ideology, firm in its belief that since its white members' ancestors conquered America, the country should be left to them, and no one else. The group, which sees black Americans, Jews and LGBTQ people as enemies, argues, argues that through processions and riots against these groups, it is preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of its members white, European ancestors. The Patriot Front spreads its message predominantly through the internet, via social media with materials such as banners, fliers, and posters. In 2020, the group shifted its materials' message from being more antisemitic and white supremacist to a form of 'patriotism' that justifies its bigotry, based in white supremacist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and fascist ideals. The group is responsible for the majority of white supremacist propaganda in the US, representing 80 percent of all propaganda incidents nationally in 2020. They currently participate in localized 'flash demonstrations' across the country. Advertisement

Both groups preach a white nationalist ideology, based in a belief that since its white members' ancestors conquered America, the country should be left to them, and no one else.

No attorney was immediately listed for Rousseau, who is currently being held without bond, police records showed Monday.

Also among the arrestees was Mitchell F. Wagner, 24, of Florissant, Missouri, who was previously charged with defacing a mural of famous black Americans on a college campus in St. Louis last year.

Michael Kielty, Wagner's attorney, said Sunday that he had not been provided information about the charges.

LGBTQ advocates said Sunday that polarization and a fraught political climate are putting their community increasingly at risk.

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas, White said. Only one was from Idaho.

The group is a white supremacist neo-Nazi group whose members perceive black Americans, Jews and LGBTQ people as enemies, says Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism.

Their playbook, according to Lewis, involves identifying local grievances to exploit, organizing on platforms like the messaging app Telegram and ultimately showing up to events marching in neat columns, in blue- or white-collared-shirt uniforms, in a display of strength.

Though Pride celebrations have long been picketed by counter-protesters citing religious objections, they haven't historically been a major focus for armed extremist groups.

Still, it isn't surprising, given how anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has increasingly become a potent rallying cry in the far-right online ecosystem, Lewis said.

'That set of grievances fits into their broader narratives and shows their ability to mobilize the same folks against "the enemy" over and over and over again.'

All 31 were charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor, after police received reports from residents who spotted the 'little army' getting inside the vehicle around 1.38pm

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas, White said. Only one was from Idaho

The men were standing inside the truck wearing khakis, navy blue shirts and beige hats with white balaclavas covering their faces

Patriot Front is a white supremacist neo-Nazi group whose members perceive black Americans, Jews and LGBTQ people as enemies, said Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism

Patriot Front members arrested for conspiracy to riot Thomas Ryan Rousseau

Mitchell F. Wagner

Jared M. Boyce

Nathan D. Brenner

Colton M. Brown

Josiah D. Buster

Mishael J. Buster

Devin W. Center

Dylan C. Corio

Winston W. Durham

Garret J. Garland

Branden M. Haney

Richard J. Jessop

James M. Johnson

James J. Johnson

Kieran P. Morris

Lawrence A. Norman

Justin M. Oleary

Cameron K. Pruitt

Forrest C. Rankin

Conor J. Ryan

Spencer T. Simpson

Alexander N. Sisenstein

Derek J. Smith

Dakota R. Tabler

Steven D. Tucker

Wesley E. Van Horn

Nathaniel T. Whitfield

Robert B. Whitted

Graham J. Whitsom

Connor P. Moran Advertisement

The arrests come amid a surge of charged rhetoric around LGBTQ issues and a wave of state legislation aimed at transgender youth, said John McCrostie, the first openly gay man elected to the Idaho Legislature.

In Boise this week, dozens of Pride flags were stolen from city streets.

'Whenever we are confronted with attacks of hate, we must respond with the message from the community that we embrace all people with all of our differences,' McCrostie said in a text message.

Sunday also marked six years since the mass shooting that killed 49 people at the Orlando LGBTQ club Pulse, said Troy Williams with Equality Utah in Salt Lake City.

'Our nation is growing increasingly polarized, and the result has been tragic and deadly,' he said.

Authorities in the San Francisco Bay Area are investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men allegedly shouted homophobic and anti-LGBTQ slurs during a weekend Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library on Saturday.

No arrests have been made, no one was physically harmed, and authorities are investigating the incident as possible harassment of children.

In Coeur dAlene on Saturday, police found riot gear, one smoke grenade, shin guards and shields inside the van after pulling it over near a park where the North Idaho Pride Alliance was holding a Pride in the Park event, Coeur dAlene Police Chief Lee White said.

The group came to riot around the small northern Idaho city wearing Patriot Front patches and logos on their hats and some T-shirts reading 'Reclaim America' according to police and videos of the arrests posted on social media.

Though there is a history of far-right extremism dating back decades in northern Idaho, White said only one of those arrested Saturday was from the state.

The six-hour Pride event generally went on as scheduled, including booths, food, live music, a drag show and a march of more than 50 people, the Idaho Statesman reported.

'We have been through so much, so much,' Jessica Mahuron of the North Idaho Pride Alliance, which organized the event, told KREM-TV. 'Harassment, and attempts to intimidate on the psychological level, and the truth is if you allow yourself to be intimidated you let them win and what we have shown today is that you will not win.'

The group is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

Video taken at the scene of the arrest and posted online showed a group of men in police custody, kneeling next to the truck with their hands bound, wearing similar khaki pants, blue shirts, white masks and baseball caps

They also found documents that included an 'operations plan' from the truck, as well as shields and shin guards, all of which made their intentions clear
President Yoon Suk-yeo, speaks with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo at the presidential office in Seoul, June 13. Yonhap



The government unveiled a set of deregulation measures for high-tech education, subsidies for electric cars and healthcare Monday in line with President Yoon Suk-yeol's pledge to help the private sector lead the country's economic growth.



The measures will ease 33 restrictions on university education in high-tech sectors, state subsidies on electric cars, computer software for medical equipment and others, the Office for Government Policy Coordination said in a statement.



Under the measures, the government will allow universities to increase their quota for graduate students in four high-tech sectors, including artificial intelligence and big data, if they meet a requirement for the number of professors.



Currently, universities can increase their quota for graduate students only if they meet four requirements, including the number of professors, school sites and basic assets for profits.



Also, the central government will allow local governments to provide state subsidies to companies if they seek to buy electric cars in an area where there is no dealership selling such vehicles.



So far, companies have received state subsidies for electric cars if they buy such vehicles from a dealership in their area.





An official of the Office for Government Policy Coordination speaks during a briefing at the government complex in Sejong, June 13. Yonhap
President Joe Biden told reporters that he hadn't decided whether to visit Saudi Arabia to beg for more oil before seconds later saying he was indeed planning a trip there.

'Have you decided whether or not to go to Saudi Arabia,' Biden is asked by a reporter.

'No, not yet,' the president replies on camera.

But moments later as Biden spoke on the tarmac in Los Angeles at the foot of Air Force One, the president said that he was in fact going.

'What would be holding up the decision at this point? Are there commitments from the Saudi's you're waiting for?'

'It happens to be a larger meeting taking place in Saudi Arabia. That's the reason I'm going', he said. 'It has to do with national security with the Israelis. It has to do with much larger issues than the energy.'

President Joe Biden told reporters that he hasn't decided whether to visit Saudi Arabia to beg for more oil

Seconds later as Biden spoke on the tarmac at the foot of Air Force One, Biden said that he was in fact going

Joe Biden says he hasn't decided whether to visit Saudi Arabia, who he previously called "a pariah," to beg for more oil.



20 seconds later, he says, "It happens to be a larger meeting taking place in Saudi Arabia. That's the reason I'm going." pic.twitter.com/K4bK6eAZAV  RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 13, 2022

The White House is expected to announce the trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel this week, a source familiar with the planning said on Sunday.

Biden's trip, which is expected to take place around mid-July, could include a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the source added.

A spokesperson for the National Security Council confirmed a Biden trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia was being planned. 'We have no further trip details to confirm, but we will announce as soon as we do,' the spokesperson said.

Biden's trip, which is expected to take place around mid-July, could include a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pictured

The White House has said Biden feels that the crown prince is a 'pariah' for his role in the killing of a political opponent, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in 2018

The White House has said Biden feels that the crown prince is a 'pariah' for his role in the killing of a political opponent, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in Turkey in 2018.

Khashoggi's murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul tainted the crown prince's image as a reformist. The Saudi government has denied any involvement by him.

The visit would be aimed at bolstering relations with Saudi Arabia at a time when Biden is trying to find ways to lower gasoline prices in the United States.

On Saturday, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline reached $5

Gas prices have shot up in recent months amid Russia's continued assault of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions western countries have imposed on Russian oil, which pulled more than 1 million barrels of oil off of global markets.

In March, President Joe Biden announced that the United States would ban Russian oil and natural gas, warning Americans that 'defending freedom is going to cost.'

But gas prices were already high at the time due to increased demand as the economy started to recover from COVID-related shutdowns, as well as increased travel demands going into the summer.

At the same time, though, many oil companies closed a number of their refineries as demand plummeted during the pandemic.

By Saturday, the national average price of gasoline reached $5 a gallon - up 60 cents from a month ago and up nearly two dollars from just one year ago, according to the New York Times.

The average price of gas, meanwhile, was above $4 in all 50 states - and in California, the price exceeds $6 a gallon, while in Minnesota, the price was $4.72.

Energy experts now estimate that for every penny the price of gas increases, it costs Americans an extra $4 million a day, with the average American paying $450 gas month for their fuel needs.

And research by the Bank of America Institute, which uses anonymous data from millions of their customers' credit and debit card accounts, shows spending on gas eating up a larger share of consumers' budgets and crowding out their ability to buy other items.

For lower-income households - defined as those with incomes below $50,000 - spending on gas reached nearly 10 percent of all spending on credit and debit cards in the last week of May, the institute said in a report this week.

That's up from about 7.5 percent in February, a steep increase in such a short period.
Daniel Andrews will campaign for a second booster shot for all healthcare workers, and raise the issue with Anthony Albanese's government.

The Victorian Premier will discuss the proposal of a fourth jab with the federal government after concerns were flagged by health workers who have spent the last two years on the frontline of the ongoing pandemic.

Mr Andrews says health workers want a fourth jab to become 'real priority' in a desperate effort to keep the virus out of hospitals.

The national peak vaccine advisory group doesn't recommend booster doses for Australians aged 16-64 not at risk of severe disease or from Covid-19 at this stage.

Covid-19 continues to run rampant across Victoria with 5,076 new infections on Monday to take the state's tally of active cases to 41,924.

Healthcare workers across Victoria could soon be eligible to receive a fourth Covid jab

'Many of the Covid cases that were coming into the hospital were coming in via staff,' Mr Andrews said.

'They were the very first to be part of the Commonwealth vaccination program.

'Some of their immunity is waning, so getting them fourth jabs as fast as possible is very important to help keep Covid out of the hospital.

'That'll be something that I'll be raising with the Commonwealth as soon as I get a chance.'

Mr Andrews' proposal to the federal government make one available for all healthcare workers.

An additional booster is only recommended for Australians aged over people than 65, for aged or disability care residents, are severely immunocompromised people and Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders aged 50 and older.

A further 1.5million Aussies became eligible to get a fourth dose as a winter precaution on May 30.

Healthcare workers are calling for a fourth jab to keep Covid out of hospitals

The jab is given four months after their first booster dose.

Frontline public health staff will get $3,000 bonuses as an incentive to stay in the Victorian hospital system for what will be a busy winter flu season.

The bonus is part of the government's $353 million package to aid frontline workers.

Staff in clinical and non-clinical roles will be provided the payment, including those working in cleaning, food services and laundry services.

The free meals will begin in July, lasting until the end of the year and will be offered to those who work night shifts.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured with wife Catherine) will raise the issue of a fourth jab for healthcare staff with the federal government after it was raised by frontline staff
Since May 9, Washington taxpayers have footed the daily $250 paid to Jay for each day he hasn't received treatment

During his trial in April, Jay was found incompetent and was ordered three months of psychiatric treatment at an inpatient facility

A Seattle career criminal who allegedly pushed a 62-year-old nurse down the stairs at a light rail station in an unprovoked attack could receive up to $17,000 from taxpayers if he doesnt get mental health treatment in the next two months.

Alexander Jay, 40, was arrested in March after he allegedly pushed Kim Hayes down the cement steps at the Chinatown-International District station near downtown.

During his trial in April, Jay was found incompetent and was ordered three months of psychiatric treatment at an inpatient facility.

Since May 9, Washington taxpayers have footed the daily $250 paid to Jay for each day he hasn't received treatment.

Jay is being held in jail until the Department of Social and Health Services can accommodate for him to receive treatment - likely in mid-August -, the department told FOX.

The measure was ruled by King County Superior Court Judge Johanna Bender after Jay was left untreated for 100 days, in violation of his due process rights.

Alexander Jay, 40, was arrested in March after he allegedly pushed Kim Hayes down the cement steps at the Chinatown-International District station near downtown. He could receive up to $17,000 by taxpayers if he doesnt get mental health treatment in the next two months

The woman had been in the same rail car as Jay prior to the incident, but the two did not interact, police said

Two men (left) walking up the escalator witness the savage assault on the nurse but failed to intervene

Jay was charged with brutally assaulting Hayes in March after he was allegedly caught on video repeatedly throwing the victim down the stairs at a Seattle light rail station.

The nurse suffered a broken clavicle and three broken ribs.

She was rushed to Harborview Medical Center, the hospital where she has worked for 25 years, receiving surgery from her colleagues.

Jay has been convicted 22 times in Washington state and California, including on charges of burglary, theft, selling stolen property, drug possession, auto theft and multiple counts of domestic violence.

He was most recently convicted in 2021 of a residential burglary.

Additionally, since 2016, Washington state courts have issued more than 15 bench warrants for the defendant for failing to attend hearings.

He was also charged with second-degree assault, but a judge deemed him incompetent to stand trial in April.

Shocking video from the Chinatown-International District light rail station in Seattle on March 2 shows Alexander Jay, 40 (left), brutally attacking Kim Hayes, a 62-year-old nurse (right)

Seattle nurse Kim Hayes has been identified as the victim in the brutal attack

Video shows the suspect grabbing the woman and throwing her down the stairs head first

A litany of convictions dating back 22 years that include burglary, assault and car theft 2000: Accessory 2006: Second-degree burglary; petty theft 2007: Taking a vehicle without consent 2008: Possession of a controlled substance 2009: Petty theft; theft (California) 2011: Theft (California) 2017: Fourth-degree assault - domestic violence 2018: No contact order violation - domestic violence (two counts); third-degree theft; first-degree criminal trespass 2019: First-degree theft; third-degree assault - domestic violence; first-degree criminal trespass 2021: Residential burglary; first-degree theft; first-degree trafficking stolen property; criminal trespass; third-degree attempted assault Advertisement

The senseless attack at the rail station was caught on surveillance video, which shows Hayes dressed in a red jacket, tumbling head-first down the stairs and coming to rest on a landing, as reported by KTTH's Jason Rantz.

Before she has a chance to get to her feet and flee, the suspect approaches her a second time, grabs hold of her again and hurls her further down the stairs.

The suspect races down the steps and tries to throw the victim down a third time, but she desperately clings to the railing and puts up a fight.

While Jay and Hayes are scuffling, two men, who appear to be homeless, walk up the escalator parallel to the staircase and witness the assault, but they fail to intervene.

After punching and kicking the victim, the brute runs back up the stairs and exits the station before first responders arrive on the scene.

The following day, police found Jay a half-mile from the crime scene and arrested him, reported KIRO.

Police said Jay and his victim had been in the same light rail car prior to the attack but had no interaction with one another.

Hayes, however, got a good look at his face, which has a distinctive cross tattoo on his left cheek, and later recognized him as the person who attacked her.

Jay is also being investigated in connection with a stabbing that took place at a bus station at the intersection of 12th Avenue South and South Jackson Street a short time after the assault on the nurse.

'The description of the stabbing suspect was similar to the suspect in the assault, and both descriptions included the cross tattoo on his left cheek,' the Seattle Police Department stated in a press release at the time.
While Donald Trump remains coy over whether he will make a second run fro the White House in 20204, attention is turning to another name in the Republican party who could very well give the former president a run for his money.

Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis.has emerged as a possible candidate for the Republican party's presidential nomination.

Indeed, DeSantis beat Trump in a recent straw poll asking conservatives who they'd like to see at the top of the ticket in 2024.

The poll was taken at the Western Conservative Summit earlier this month where 1,114 attendees were asked to check off as many candidates as they'd like to see run in 2024 from a list of top potentials.

DeSantis, 43, was checked off by 71.0 percent of respondents, Trump by 67.8, and Sen. Ted Cruz in third by 28.7 percent. DeSantis also won the straw poll last year.

DeSantis' rising star within GOP ranks is said to have rattled the former president so much that he is now looking at various ways to unsettle any plans the Florida governor may have for a presidential bid of his own. They include Trump launching his 2024 from the Sunshine State and hosting a massive party close to the governor's mansion.

Donald Trump has not yet committed to a run at the White House in 2024 but sources say the former president is concerned at other 'rising stars' in GOP

Although Trump wishes to appear as kingmaker when it comes to the GOP, his star has lost its luster somewhat with some Republicans starting to grow weary of the 'big lie' that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump's influence over the party has also taken a hit following the increased scrutiny over the January 6 2021 riot that led to a siege on the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.

DeSantis could be the fresh start the GOP is looking for - able to embrace the core values of Trumpism but without his two impeachments or the seven million vote loss at the end of his first term.

DeSantis is favorite to comfortably win re-election in November which he could then use as a launchpad for a 2024 nomination, whether or not Trump decides to run again.

'There is no real party standard-bearer at the moment, and DeSantis in many eyes is starting to define the post-Trump party,' veteran Republican operative Tyler Sandberg told Politico. 'He fights more about policy and less on his Twitter account.'

DeSantis has so far not commented on the speculation, but he is fundraising in other states apart from his own.

One plan could be to announce as early as this summer to unsettle Ron DeSantis who is campaigning for re-election as Governor of Florida

Trump's concern has been growing following a recent straw poll in which DeSantis beat Trump when conservatives were asked who they'd like to see win

But Trump could be looking to strike early and is contemplating launching a campaign for the presidency as soon as this summer from Florida in a bid to send a message to DeSantis.

Trump's idea would be to hold a flashy rally before the 2022 midterm elections.

Holding it in Florida would further assert his dominance over DeSantis, he believes.

I has even been suggested Trump has asked his staff to look for suitable locations, preferably close to the Florida Governor's mansion in Tallahassee in a further attempt to send him a message.

'One time that he did bring up the Florida [launch] scenario was quickly followed by him commenting on how terrible DeSantis was at public speaking and commanding an audience  [and that he's] lacking in so much charisma and he's so boring that Florida Republicans would leave Ron immediately for Trump [in a 2024 match-up],' a source told Rolling Stone.

Trump is said to be telling people around him how he believes DeSantis to be 'overrated' or 'very overrated!'

Neither Trump nor DeSantis have formally committed to running for the presidency, yet

Aides are said to have pleaded with Trump to hold off from announcing for as long as possible, for it would remove any kind of benefits his current fundraising model employs, with all cash needing to be directed to the campaign.

But Trump is keen to throw a spanner in the works and upset any other potential GOP candidates who might be considering taking a shot at Pennsylvania Avenue.

Either way, it is clear that Trump would not give up his right to campaign for a second term without an internal party struggle first.

'DeSantis is a newer, fresher face. The age difference between DeSantis and Biden would show a contrast between young and old that would cut across party lines,' said Dan Eberhart, a major donor to the Republicans and who has given to the Trump campaign in the past.

'Trump's profile is large but we did [lose] both the House and Senate under his watch.I would reluctantly give to Trump [again] if he was the nominee but I am hoping the next nominee's initials are not DJT.
A clever cockatoo travelled alongside Sydneysiders on public transport on the way to the casino and even paid for its fare.

The yellow-crested cockatoo named Cookie joined passengers on the tram from Central Station to the Star Casino on Sunday night.

Passengers looked on as the native bird perched itself on a tram handle with one claw and played with an opal card - a smartcard used to pay for travel on public transport - with the other.

Cookie the yellow-crested cockatoo delighted passengers on a tram in Sydney on Sunday night (pictured)

Tiktok users were impressed by the cockatoo's etiquette despite the bird playing with the card in its mouth and then dropping it on the floor.

One commented: 'Cookie the coolest'.

'As soon as Cookie dropped the Opal Card, I would've said: excuse me, you dropped this. Then, place it back in its mouth,' another commented.

In another video shared with Cookie's 10,000 followers, the bird is on its owners arm holding its opal card in its beak.

One viewer joked: 'Well NSW PTC can't come at him!! He's tapped on!', reffering to the state's practice of checking a passenger has paid their fare.

The raucous screech of the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo can be heard in many parts of eastern and northern Australia.

Cookie is seen perched on its owners arm and holding an opal card in its beak while travelling on the tram in another video posted to the bird's TikTok account (pictured)

Flocks of hundreds of snow-white birds with pale-yellow crests can be a spectacular sight when seen in the distance, but up close their calls can be deafening.

Cockatoos usually spend most of their time in flocks, foraging together on the ground or roosting together in trees.

These birds are considered highly intelligent and are often hand-raised by humans from three weeks old - making them ideal pets.

They have the learning capacity of a one or two year old human child and are often taught to speak words and phrases.
A gutted boarding house in Newtown is on the market and attracting buyer interest, despite its recent dark and tragic past.

The 12-room two level property formerly known as Vajda House in inner-Sydney Newtown will go under the hammer at auction later this month, just weeks after a fire tragically claimed the lives of three residents.

It's been three months since neighbours woke to the sound of loud explosions early one morning and found the boarding home well alight, allegedly sparked by the use of an accelerant.

Neighbours rushed to the aid of residents, some of which jumped from the second story to flee the burning property.

Three men died in the blaze while a former resident remains behind bars charged with their murders.

The extensively gutted property was boarded up before being advertised for auction as a 'fire-damaged blank canvas' by Romani Estate Agents last month.

The Newtown boarding house where three men tragically lost their lives will go under the hammer on June 22

Neighbours woke to the sound of loud explosions early one morning and found Vajda House well alight (pictured firefighters at the scene)

The agent says the listing has attracted interest from renovators, developers and builders.

'This two-level building sits on a prime 190 square metre corner block with two street frontages,' the online advertisement for the property states.

'It offers an outstanding opportunity for buyers or investors to secure a supremely spacious, versatile property and capitalise on its many possibilities.

'The building is in need of major renovation work, but with a prime Newtown address and a premium corner position, it presents a rare opportunity with many possibilities.

'It's a virtual blank canvas that's now ready for some inspiration and creativity to bring it back to life and take advantage of such an appealing position'

The description end with the agent acknowledging and paying tribute to families impacted by the fatal blaze in March.

The property will go under the hammer on June 22.

Some boarding house residents were forced to jump from the second storey to flee the burning building

Some potential buyers want to restore the property, while others want to redevelop the site.

'There's a little bit of interest, in a couple of weeks we'll know the result,' Joe Vigorito told the Daily Telegraph.

'Mainly it's been to restore  there's a mixture, some would like to keep it the way it is, obviously subject to council.

'Some would like to turn it into a house, that's what they tell me.'

The property was last sold for $800,000 in 2011 and could today fetch between $2 and $2.2 million in a non-fire-damaged state, according to CoreLogic estimates.

Residents left homeless by the tragic have since found alternative accommodation.

Vajda House is owned by a Malaysian-born property millionaire, Albert Wong, 71, who owns several other boarding houses across Sydney.

Mr Wong had nothing to do with the fire and has not been charged.

The council confirmed at the time that the boarding house had a current fire compliance certificate and was registered.

Police allege the deadly blaze was deliberately lit after finding a jerry can under a nearby car along with traces of a flammable liquid at the scene.

Boarding house resident Richard Hotoran, 45, was charged with three counts of murder and one count of destroying or damaging a property by fire or explosive.
Beijing launched a massive new coronavirus crackdown on Monday amid a 'ferocious' Omicron outbreak that is believed to have spread from just one person, as China continues its brutal zero-Covid policy.

Authorities in China's capital traced the reveller to a raucous 24-hour bar known for cheap liquor and big crowds, with millions now facing mandatory testing and thousands put under targeted lockdowns.

Nearly 200 cases have now been linked to the centre Heaven Supermarket Bar, which had just reopened as curbs in Beijing eased last week.

The situation highlights how hard it will be for China to make a success of its 'zero COVID' approach - which sees measures enforced when any number of cases are detected - as much of the rest of the world opts to learn how to live with the virus.

Dine-in service at Beijing restaurants resumed on June 6 after more than a month in which the city of 22 million people enforced various COVID curbs.

Many malls, gyms and other venues were closed, parts of the city's public transport system were suspended, and millions were urged to work from home.

People walk past fences outside the Heaven Supermarket bar, where a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak emerged, in Chaoyang district of Beijing, China June 13, 2022. The bar has been linked to almost 200 cases of Covid-19

As dine-in curbs were lifted, the Supermarket Bar - modelled as a large self-service liquor store with chairs, sofas and tables - reclaimed its popularity among young, noisy crowds starved of socialising and parties during Beijing's COVID restrictions.

The bar, where patrons check aisles to grab anything from local heavy spirits to Belgian beer, is known among Beijing revellers for its tables plastered with empty bottles, and customers falling asleep on sofas after midnight.

But a night of partying by one Beijing resident last week threw the city's tentative reopening into chaos, leading authorities to shutter nightlife venues in the downtown district of Chaoyang days after they reopened last Monday.

The resident, who did not get tested for 14 days, went to several bars and nightlife venues in Chaoyang in the days before and after developing a fever.

'We have to test every day now. It's a bit of a hassle, but it's necessary,' said a 21-year-old resident surnamed Cao, who runs a convenience store in Beijing's largest district Chaoyang, where the bar cluster was discovered.

'The virus situation has hurt our business a bit, it's down about 20-30%.'

Chaoyang kicked off a three-day mass testing campaign among its roughly 3.5 million residents on Monday.

About 10,000 close contacts of the bar's patrons have been identified, and their residential buildings put under lockdown, and some planned school reopenings in the district have been postponed.

Queues snaked around some testing sites on Monday for more than 100 metres, according to Reuters' eyewitnesses.

Large metal barriers have been installed around several residential compounds, with people in hazmat suits spraying disinfectant nearby.

The re-emergence of COVID infections is also raising new concerns about the outlook for the world's second-largest economy.

China is only just shaking off a heavy blow from a two-month lockdown of Shanghai, its most populous city and commercial nerve centre, that hit global supply chains.

A medical worker in a protective suit collects a swab from a resident at a makeshift nucleic acid testing site, during a mass testing for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Chaoyang district of Beijing, June 13

People walk along a fenced-off restaurant in Chaoyang district, Beijing, June 13. Large metal barriers have been installed around several of the city's residential compounds, with people in hazmat suits spraying disinfectant nearby

The outbreak stemming from the Heaven Supermarket bar has infected at least 183 people in 15 districts so far. The people infected live or work in 14 of the capital's 16 districts, authorities have said.

The cluster 'arrived with ferocious momentum and the difficulty of prevention and control is huge,' Beijing government spokesman Xu Hejian told reporters Sunday.

Officials have not commented on the exact cause of the outbreak, nor explained why they are not yet reinstating the level of curbs seen last month.

Beijing disease control officials said Sunday that new cases linked to the bar cluster are still emerging.

The bar cluster was caused by loopholes and complacency in epidemic prevention, state-backed Beijing Evening News wrote in a commentary piece on Monday.

'At a time when... normality in the city is being restored, the fall of Heaven Supermarket Bar means the hardship and effort of countless people have been in vain,' the newspaper wrote.

If the outbreak grows, 'consequences could be serious, and would be such that nobody would want to see,' it added.

People queue at a swab collection site to test for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Beijing, June 13

A security worker wearing a protective suit uses his phone in a neighbourhood under lockdown in Chaoyang district, Beijing, China, 13 June 2022

Heaven Supermarket Bar, and other businesses nearby, including the Paradise Massage & Spa, were under lockdown, with police tape and security staff blocking the entrances.

A handful of customers and staff at the parlour would be locked in temporarily for checks, authorities said.

Now, all sporting events have been cancelled, and a plan for most children to return to school Monday had already been scrapped.

Many bars that remain open are now imposing seating capacity limits.

Universal Resort in Beijing has also delayed its planned June 15 reopening.

In all, Beijing reported 51 cases for Sunday, versus 65 the previous day, in line with a national trend of falling cases.

As Beijing authorities wrestled with new COVID cases in April, retail sales in the capital shrank 16 percent year-on-year, while property sales nosedived 25 percent. Data for May, due later this month, is expected to be dire as well.

Before the bar cases, there had been high hopes for a rebound in June.

Workers in protective suits walk inside a residential area under lockdown, following a COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing, China June 13, 2022

A woman wearing a face mask walks past a barricade sealing off a commercial area following a COVID-19 outbreak, in Chaoyang district of Beijing, China June 13

Meanwhile Shanghai, which completed mass testing for most of its 25 million residents at the weekend after lifting its lockdown and many of its curbs at the start of the month, reported 37 cases, up from 29.

In the city, 502 people have been linked to three positive tests detected June 9 among patrons of the Red Rose Beauty Salon. The individuals involved come from 15 districts across the city of 25 million people, prompting the first large-scale restrictions since the lockdown was formally ended June 1.

With mass testing and restrictions on movement back in force, streets and supermarkets emptied again over the weekend.

Failure to undergo testing will lead to a yellow code on a person's health status app, forbidding them access to all public places.

Most students remain at home and all but a few restaurants are open only for takeout. Many customers simply partake of their food and drink on the steps beside blooming flower bushes outside the establishments.

While 22 million Shanghai residents were released from lockdown almost two weeks ago, 220,000 people are still restricted to their homes under a rule requiring that no positive cases are found within their residential compounds for more than 10 days. Another 600,000 are in control zones, where their movements are restricted within their compounds.

Corrugated steel fences and other barriers continue to block off neighborhoods and businesses, leading to further discontent and complaints from residents who remain in lockdown.

The strict implementation of lockdowns, along with a lack of information and poor distribution of food and other daily necessities, has led to rarely seen displays of anger and desperation.

Residents have confronted workers and police who have become known as "big whites" for the protective gear they wear, circulated protest videos online and coordinated nightly screaming and pot-banging events to let off steam.

The loosening of restrictions led to an exodus of non-Shanghai residents, including foreigners, who had found themselves trapped in the lockdown.

China has maintained its 'zero-COVID' policy despite considerable economic costs and an assertion from the head of the World Health Organization that the policy isn't sustainable.

Nationwide, China reported just 143 cases, almost all in Beijing and Shanghai. The death toll from the outbreak in mainland China remained static at 5,226.
One of Britain's most prolific paedophiles who carried out hundreds of sexual assaults against young boys while working as a teacher is free after spending just six years behind bars, it has emerged.

Charles Napier, 74, who is the half-brother of Maldon MP John Whittingdale, conducted a 'campaign of abuse' at the school where he worked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, grooming and assaulting 21 victims aged as young as eight.

One boy is believed to have endured up to 100 attacks by the predator, who was dubbed 'rapier Napier' by pupils at the school, which cannot be named to protect the victims' identities.

He was jailed for 13 years at Southwark Crown Court in London in December 2014, but was released in May last year after serving just half his sentence, reports the Sun.

Asked by the paper if he wanted to apologise, he said: 'I've said sorry to my victims. I didn't say anything in court. I've said it since.'

A neighbour in the 'quiet town in the south of England' said 'everyone is jumpy' following his arrival.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'The most serious sexual offenders are no longer eligible for release halfway through their sentence thanks to reforms.'

Napier joined the school after leaving university and when he was arrested he told police he already knew he was a paedophile at that time.

Charles Napier (pictured outside court in 2014), 74, conducted a 'campaign of abuse' at the school where he worked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, grooming and assaulting 21 victims aged as young as eight on scores of occasions.

One boy is believed to have endured up to 100 attacks by the predator, who is the half-brother of Maldon MP John Whittingdale (pictured)

At his sentencing in 2015, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said: 'I have no doubt that you sought that post because of the proximity you would have to boys.

'Within a very short time you were grooming those you had chosen, using the techniques of charm, flattery and the abuse of your power. The number of indecent assaults must be into the hundreds.'

The judge said some of the victims' lives had been 'dramatically damaged'.

He added: 'These offences...were committed by someone who had a special duty of care and who gravely abused that duty by grooming them for his own purposes.'

The court heard Napier's offending at the school was 'prolific', with him targeting 21 different pupils aged between eight and 13 over a period of around two-and-a-half years.

Peter Clement, prosecuting, said: 'The offences are characterised by a campaign of sexual abuse involving significant planning, grooming and abuse of many pupils.

'It was sexual abuse of particularly vulnerable victims. The defendant ensured each child's compliance and silence through grooming to the extent that he abused several of the victims many, many times.

'The defendant abused the high degree of trust placed in him by his colleagues, the children's parents and the children themselves and exploited his role for his own sexual gratification.'

The court heard Napier would give his victims treats including fizzy drinks and chocolate, often abusing them in a carpentry workshop, which, Mr Clement said, 'became something of his den'.

One victim was told by Napier 'don't be a baby' while another suffered 'profound effects' from being repeatedly abused and attempted suicide later in life, the court heard.

Napier was jailed for 13 years at Southwark Crown Court in London in 2014, but was released in May last year after serving just half his sentence, reports the Sun (stock image)

Some pupils were targeted as often as once a week, with one boy said to have been abused up to 100 times.

Napier abused some victims in the presence of other children, the court heard. On two occasions he made a boy perform a sex act on him, telling the child: 'That's what grown-ups do.'

Napier told police he underwent electric shock treatment but it had no impact on his attraction to children.

The court heard that after he was dismissed from the school he went on to join the Paedophile Information Exchange as treasurer - the group campaigned 'for the rights of paedophiles.'

He said when interviewed that he felt 'ghastly' and 'desperately sorry', telling officers: 'I was a very young man, I was completely out of control and completely out of order, putting it about everywhere.'

Benjamin Hargreaves, for Napier, said in mitigation that the defendant is 'genuinely remorseful' and 'realises how appalling his actions were'.

He added: 'He knows that he is responsible for a most serious and grave period (of offending) but he is no threat now.'

Napier was arrested under Operation Cayacos, a strand of a wider investigation called Operation Fairbank. Napier was the first person convicted under Fairbank.
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Airlines in the UK are using charter planes to cope with high demand and staff shortages - as easyJet cancelled a further 46 flights today and Britons again faced huge queues at Bristol, Manchester and Heathrow airports.

Experts say UK airlines are leasing European planes with European crew to reduce their own cancellations  with an example being British Airways bringing in four Finnair 209-seat planes with Finnair staff, but running BA flights.

Other airlines which have used planes from other airlines in recent weeks include easyJet as passengers continue to be left furious by late-notice cancellations and struggle to get hold of the airline's customer service teams.

Sky Sports football presenter Jeff Stelling tweeted last night: 'So easyJet decides to move my flight at short notice to a Latvian charter. Not a nervous traveller but those who are with me may be. Acceptable? What do you think?'

It comes as union bosses revealed today that Ryanair's Spanish cabin staff will go on strike on six days later this month - June 24, 25, 26 and 30, and July 1 and 2 - because they are unhappy with working conditions and pay.

Staff of Dublin-based Ryanair, the largest airline in Europe in terms of passenger numbers, have walked out in other countries such as Belgium and Italy. Lidia Arasanz, from the USO union, said today: 'We have to resume mobilisation so that the reality of our situation is known and Ryanair is forced to abide by basic labour laws.'

As staffing problems continue to impact flights in the UK, some airlines are now looking at 'wet leasing', which is where they bring in another airline's plane and crew; or 'dry leasing', which is where a plane comes with no crew.

About 10,000 easyJet passengers were affected today by a total of 46 cancelled flights - including 29 at Gatwick, as well as ten at Belfast, six at Bristol and then others at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Stansted and Liverpool.

Tourists flying with Britain's biggest airline in recent weeks have had their flights cancelled just hours before take-off and found themselves stranded for days abroad with many having to return to the UK by road or rail.

A source at Gatwick said that the airport is being hit by a 'meltdown every night' due to air traffic control staff shortages - amid concerns the situation could worsen when demand surges again in the summer holiday.

There are also fears of strikes in the UK and Spain, and the boss of Heathrow has warned of up to 18 months of air disruption as the aviation industry struggles to recruit and train staff to replace those let go during the pandemic.

Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, told MailOnline today: 'British Airways recently bought in four planes from Finnair with their crew. They wet leased four and they are using them on the BA route.

MANCHESTER AIRPORT: Holidaymakers queue for check-in in the Jet2 area of Manchester Airport Terminal Two this morning

BRISTOL AIRPORT: Holidaymakers and commuters flying from Bristol once again encounter lengthy queues pre-4am today

LONDON HEATHROW AIRPORT: A passenger said it was the 'worst passport queue I've ever encountered at Heathrow' today

MANCHESTER AIRPORT: Holidaymakers queue for security at Manchester Airport's Terminal One this morning

'But you're flying on a Finnair plane with Finnair crew. Airlines sometimes do this but airlines are doing more of this now, and they are doing it - and essentially with BA, they are using European airlines with European crew.

'It's unusual for easyJet to do that, but more airlines are doing it. This is to get round the enormous frustration that airline leaders have with the UK government over its post-Brexit immigration policy because they're not letting EU citizens work in the aviation industry. But they are letting EU citizens work in other sectors like farming.

What is causing the airport chaos in Britain? The aviation industry is struggling to cope with a huge post-pandemic rise in demand for travel abroad amid a severe staffing shortage that is particularly affecting easyJet, British Airways, Tui Airways and Wizz Air. Some airlines have not been able to ramp up their operations quickly enough for the numbers of people travelling, which has surged in recent months following the lifting of restrictions both domestically and abroad. The boss of Heathrow has warned of up to 18 months of disruption as the industry struggles to recruit and train staff to replace those let go during the pandemic. The airlines are desperately trying to rehire people - with security staff, ground handlers and check-in staff among the areas in which they are struggling to recruit. But there is a huge backlog for vetting new staff with security background checks often taking months required before training can even begin. And this all comes in the context a labour shortage, with more vacancies than workers available to fill the roles. Airports such as Manchester, Bristol and Gatwick have been among the worst-hit in recent months with customers facing huge queues amid airline advice to arrive earlier than normal for flights. Advertisement

'So to get round the frustration they have, they legally can effectively hire aircraft from other airlines, use EU citizens as crew, and in effect they're reparenting BA and other carriers. It's a very clever way around the ridiculous UK government policy.

'In essence, airline CEOs are saying 'well government, if you don't help us, we will take steps to bring in extra crew via wet leasing', in effect hiring airlines and crew from other airlines. And that's with the ideal approach of not disrupting customers any further, being able to service their flights and ensure that they can carry on providing a good service.

'It means they don't have to cancel flights as result. It's very clever, it's a good way of ensuring their schedules can carry on as normal, but it's also a way of getting around the UK government approach to immigration which is so hurting the aviation industry. It's very wise for them to do it. Finnair are a very good airline, so they're providing a very good equivalent product.'

MailOnline has contacted easyJet today for comment on the leasing of planes. A BA spokesman said: 'Our joint business partner Finnair will be operating a small number of European flights for us between May and August as we continue to rebuild our operation.'

Jet2 has also leased planes from other airlines for trips, although a spokesman told MailOnline today that it has previously operated larger Airbus aircraft on an ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance) basis to meet summer demand, and that it is not among the airlines to have cancelled flights due to staff shortages.

One easyJet passenger said today that they only found out that their easyJet flight was cancelled when they went to check-in online, with no email sent, so they 'called your customer service team and they were an absolute joke'.

Another complained of 'shambolic' service after they received an email urging them to turn up early for a flight from Bristol to Paris on Wednesday because there 'may be delays' - but it had already been cancelled on Saturday.

Flight tracking service FlightRadar24 listed 17 cancelled departures at Gatwick today - including 14 easyJet flights to Bordeaux (two), Milan (two), Sofia, Belfast, Pristina, Glasgow, Rome, Luqa, Copenhagen, Hurghada, Amsterdam and Olbia. The other three were British Airways flights to Amsterdam and Catania and a Wizz Air flight to Faro.

The website also listed 21 cancelled arrivals at Gatwick today including 15 easyJet flights from Fuerteventura, Milan (two), Bordeaux (two), Pafos, Belfast, Glasgow, Sofia, Pristina, Rome, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Luqa and Olbia. The other five were BA flights from New York, Malaga, Catania and Amsterdam and a Wizz Air flight from Faro.

At Bristol Airport today, one of the airports worst hit by disruption, there were six cancelled flights today - all easyJet, and comprising of three arrivals and three departures to and from Copenhagen, Belfast and Edinburgh.

There were also six easyJet cancellations reported on FlightRadar24 today at Glasgow (three departures and three arrivals to/from Belfast, Gatwick and Berlin) and others at Manchester (one - departure to Hurghada), Birmingham (two - departure and arrival to/from Belfast), and Edinburgh (two - departure and arrival to/from Bristol).

Which EasyJet flights are cancelled today? The following easyJet flights have been cancelled today according to flight tracking service FlightRadar24. The total is 46, although the total added up below is 60 because some flights are duplicates (eg Belfast-Bristol is shown twice, as a Belfast departure and a Bristol arrival): GATWICK (29) 14 departures: Bordeaux (two), Milan (two), Sofia, Belfast, Pristina, Glasgow, Rome, Luqa, Copenhagen, Hurghada, Amsterdam and Olbia

15 arrivals: Fuerteventura, Milan (two), Bordeaux (two), Pafos, Belfast, Glasgow, Sofia, Pristina, Rome, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Luqa and Olbia BELFAST (10) 5 departures: Stansted, Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham

5 arrivals: Stansted, Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham BRISTOL (6) 3 departures: Copenhagen, Belfast and Edinburgh

3 arrivals: Copenhagen, Belfast and Edinburgh GLASGOW (6) 3 departures: Belfast, Gatwick and Berlin

3 arrivals: Belfast, Gatwick and Berlin EDINBURGH (2) 1 departure: Bristol

1 arrival: Bristol BIRMINGHAM (2) 1 departure: Belfast

1 arrival: Belfast STANSTED (2) 1 departure: Belfast

1 arrival: Belfast LIVERPOOL (2) 1 departure: Belfast

1 arrival: Belfast MANCHESTER (1) 1 departure to Hurghada Advertisement

At Belfast, there were ten easyJet flights axed - five both to and from Stansted, Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham. Liverpool and Stansted also had two easyJet cancellations each - those all being to and from Belfast.

EasyJet's chief operating officer Peter Bellew has told staff in a message at the end of last week that the airline has axed flights in advance for the 'coming days and weeks' in an effort to 'increase resilience across the network'.

His message sent on Friday, which was reported in the Guardian last night, said: 'Making these cancellations is not something we take lightly but what's worse is to cancel our customers' plans on the day that they are ready to fly.

'We're all aware of the impact the current situation is having on our customers, our people and our reputation.'

Mr Bellew said the airline was trying to 'ensure that we have the correct mitigations in place for the issues affecting the industry', and that it wanted to 'share the plan on this very soon however, we also need to deal with the immediate operation'.

The move by easyJet comes after a decision in May by British Airways to cut about 10 per cent of its flights until October in an effort to reduce last-minute cancellations and so customers could rebook well in advance.

An easyJet spokesman said: 'Due to the ongoing impact of the challenging operating environment on our daily operations, we have made a small proportion of additional advance flight cancellations for June.

'We are very sorry for the inconvenience this will cause. We are informing customers in advance to minimise the impact on their plans and provide the option to rebook before travelling or receive a refund, and our customer service hours have been extended to support affected customers.

'We continue to monitor the operation closely and take action in advance as needed.'

The airline said that some 40 flights a day including departures and arrivals at UK airports out of a total of about 1,700 were affected by the cancellations.

While passengers at Heathrow reported huge queues for bag drop and passport control this morning, the situation appeared to have eased at Gatwick - one of the worst-hit airports in recent weeks - where one passenger tweeted that there were 'hardly any queues at bag drop or security'.

There were five cancelled flights at Heathrow today - those being for Chicago on American Airlines (departure and arrival), Belfast on FlyBE (departure and arrival) and Madrid on BA (departure only).

Meanwhile a senior aviation source told the Times that Gatwick  the world's busiest airport with only one runway - can normally handle 54 movements including up to 34 arrivals.

However, they said that last week arrivals had to be reduced to 22 every hour at some periods after restrictions were put in place because of a 'shortage of air traffic controllers in the approach control function'.

The source continued: 'The days tend to start reasonably well. But as each flight does a rotation the accumulated delays are getting worse and worse.

BRISTOL AIRPORT: Holidaymakers and commuters flying from Bristol once face long queues early this morning

MANCHESTER AIRPORT: Holidaymakers queue for check-in at Manchester Airport's Terminal Two this morning

BRISTOL AIRPORT: An air passenger sleeps on the floor of Bristol Airport early this morning as disruption continues

BRISTOL AIRPORT: Holidaymakers and commuters flying from Bristol once face long queues early this morning

'By the end of the day it can be the case that airlines are forced to cancel the last flight of the day, either because the crew have gone out of working hours or because its arrival airport will be closed by the time it comes to landing.'

Heathrow passengers at 79% of pre-Covid levels Heathrow has announced that passenger numbers were at 79% of pre-coronavirus levels last month. Some 5.3 million people travelled through the west London airport in May. Although that was around a fifth below the total for the same month in 2019, it represents nearly an eight-fold increase on May last year when the UK's Covid-19 travel restrictions were in place. Terminal 4, which was closed due to the virus crisis, reopens on Tuesday ahead of the summer peak. It will initially be used by 30 airlines. Heathrow is one of several UK airports which have seen long queues in recent weeks as the aviation sector struggles to cope with the spike in demand for travel amid a staffing shortage. Chief executive John Holland-Kaye said: 'I'm immensely proud of the way my team has worked with airlines and other partners to ensure passengers got away during the Jubilee half-term. 'We continue to make good progress with our plans to ramp up capacity and are working closely with airlines and Government to keep supply and demand in balance as we grow, so that passengers can travel through Heathrow this summer with confidence.' The airport claimed 'recent criticism of service levels across the sector' highlight that its proposal to increase airlines' fees for using the airport up to 2027 is 'the right one for consumers'. Advertisement

But a spokesman for Gatwick rejected the claims, saying that many issues were behind the recent cancellations.

He said: 'Sickness among air traffic control staff in the airport's control tower has been an issue on just a couple of evenings recently but these have not been the cause of any delays outside of these isolated incidents.'

Meanwhile Heathrow announced today that passenger numbers were at 79 per cent of pre-coronavirus levels last month.

Some 5.3 million people travelled through the London airport in May.

Although that was around a fifth below the total for the same month in 2019, it represents nearly an eight-fold increase on May last year when the UK's Covid-19 travel restrictions were in place.

Terminal Four, which was closed due to the virus crisis, reopens tomorrow ahead of the summer peak. It will initially be used by 30 airlines.

Heathrow is one of several UK airports which have seen long queues in recent weeks as the aviation sector struggles to cope with the spike in demand for travel amid a staffing shortage.

Chief executive John Holland-Kaye said: 'I'm immensely proud of the way my team has worked with airlines and other partners to ensure passengers got away during the Jubilee half-term.

'We continue to make good progress with our plans to ramp up capacity and are working closely with airlines and Government to keep supply and demand in balance as we grow, so that passengers can travel through Heathrow this summer with confidence.'

The airport claimed 'recent criticism of service levels across the sector' highlight that its proposal to increase airlines' fees for using the airport up to 2027 is 'the right one for consumers'.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is expected to set a new cap on the airport's charges this summer.

Mr Holland-Kaye said: 'We now need a regulatory settlement from the CAA that protects service and resilience levels, incentivises investment and maintains affordable private financing.

'Failure to invest risks degrading passenger experience at a time when it has never been more important for operations to ramp up smoothly.'
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It looks like Britain's climate has finally got the memo that summer is here as forecasters predict heatwave temperatures this week.

Following what was for many a windy weekend, a plume of hot air moving steadily north from sun-drenched Spain is set to see parts of the UK sweltering with maximums as high as 95F (35C) by Friday.

That would smash the highest temperature recorded so far this year  27.5C (81.5F) at London Heathrow Airport on May 17  and make the UK hotter than Portugal, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Hawaii, the Canary Islands and Cyprus.

And Friday will be the hottest June day for Britain since records began if temperatures top 35.6C (96.1F)  a figure recorded in London on June 29, 1957, and Southampton on June 28, 1976.

While it will not be beach weather everywhere, with southern England experiencing the hottest days, the Midlands and parts of the North should also see temperatures well into the mid-20Cs (high-70Fs).

Sunbathers on the beach enjoying the warm afternoon sunshine at West Bay in Dorset today

Sunbathers on the beach enjoying the warm afternoon sunshine at West Bay in Dorset today

People relax in the sun on the grass at the Royal Crescent in Bath today

A man takes the plunge into The Serpentine at Hyde Park this morning at the start of what will be a warm week for London

People relax in the sun on the grass at the Royal Crescent in Bath today

Dog walkers make their way through Hyde Park in London this morning at the start of another warm day for the capital

Before then, most of England and Wales can look forward to a week of dry and bright conditions, with temperatures reaching 27C (81F) by Wednesday.

Met Office forecaster Steven Keates said: 'We haven't had very much really warm weather so far this year, so this will be a first proper taste of summer.

'But it could be quite short-lived, with most places likely to feel cooler on Saturday, apart from South East England where the warmth may hold on for another day. People will also have to bear in mind that pollen and UV levels are going to be very high.'

The Met Office is forecasting maximums of 32C (90F) in London on Friday, with areas from the Home Counties out to Dorset all projected to top 30C (86F).

But while some of its models project a scorching 35C (95F), the hot spell may not be officially deemed a heatwave as the really high temperatures are not expected to last the requisite three days.

Mr Keates said that temperatures in the mid-30Cs (mid-90Fs) are 'possible' on Friday, adding: 'There's not been much in the way of exceptionally warm days or hot days yet this year, but that is set to change.'

Friday will be the hottest June day for Britain since records began if temperatures top 35.6C. The current forecast is for 32C

Speaking about the current 2022 record set at Heathrow on May 17, he said: 'We should beat that comfortably on Friday and potentially exceed it, or get very close to it, on Wednesday and Thursday as well.

The meteorologist added that heatwaves - three consecutive days of high temperatures - were possible between June and mid-September.

'We think at the moment it will be warmer than average with an increasing likelihood of heatwaves,' he said. 'There have been no heatwaves so far this year... the greater likelihood is that it's going to be the further south, south east, you are.'

The hot air will be flowing north from Spain, parts of which are enduring the first heatwave of the year, with temperatures there forecast to reach 43C (109F) in some areas.

That in turn is caused by a mass of hot air sweeping in from North Africa. The temperature in Madrid could hit 38C (100F) by midweek, well above average for mid-June.

It comes after the remains of tropical Storm Alex passed by the British Isles, bringing with it unseasonably high winds, gusting at up to 55mph.
President Yoon Suk-yeol gestures as he answers reporters' questions at the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul, Monday. Yonhap



By Nam Hyun-woo



President Yoon Suk-yeol said Monday that allowing lawmakers to revise presidential decrees leaves room for constitutional violations, signaling a head-on collision against the opposition party which is preparing such a legal revision.



"Giving the National Assembly the right to demand revisions on presidential decrees runs the risk of violating the Constitution," Yoon told reporters on his way to work at the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul.



"If a presidential decree goes against the purpose of related laws, the Assembly can annul the decree by specifying or revising the related laws," Yoon said. "The presidential decree is ordered by the President, and I believe we can always settle problems in presidential decrees through processes stated by the Constitution."





Rep. Cho Eung-cheon of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea speaks during a committee meeting at the National Assembly in Seoul, May 17. Joint Press Corps
Malcolm Turnbull has unleashed on 'belligerent' Peter Dutton for his role in scrapping a multi-billion dollar submarine deal.

The former Prime Minister slammed Mr Dutton for cancelling a contract with France to supply the Australian navy with nuclear-powered submarines.

The agreement was axed in favour of a deal with the United Kingdom and the United States to supply the boats as part of a three-way defence alliance called AUKUS.

Mr Dutton last week revealed in an opinion piece for The Australian that he had planned to buy two American Virginia-Class subs over the UK's Astute Class rival.

Mr Turnbull on Monday claimed the former defence minister had 'wrecked the deal' with France and threatened Australia's national security in the process.

Mr Dutton (pictured on June 5) last week revealed in an opinion piece for The Australian that he had planned to buy two American Virginia- Class subs over the UK's Astute Class rival

Mr Dutton wrote in the opinion piece that the UK's Astute design had faults and would likely run over budget (pictured, the HMS Astute in Perth last year)

'It was just more blustering from Dutton,' Mr Turnbull told ABC Radio.

'He's a belligerent blusterer who wrecked a submarine contract.'

Mr Turnbull has previously criticised the cancellation of the deal and said the blame could be shared by former prime minister Scott Morrison.

'We're now in a position where we don't have any submarine program at all,' the former prime minister said.

'Between Morrison and Dutton they did enormous damage to Australia's national security.'

In the piece, Dutton said he had planned to buy two Virginia-class submarines from the United States by 2030 and build another eight to bring the total fleet to 10.

He said it became 'obvious' to him as defence minister that the US submarines were a better choice as they were capable of launching missiles vertically and were based on a 'mature design'.

Mr Turnbull (pictured in January) on Monday claimed the former defence minister had 'wrecked the deal' with France and threatened Australia's national security in the process

Mr Dutton added that the Astute design had faults and would likely run over budget.

Richard Marles, the new defence minister and deputy prime minister, said Mr Dutton's comments were 'loose and undermine the AUKUS agreement'.

'The government has made no decision on the preferred submarine. All options are on the table,' he said in a statement.

Australia is conducting an 18-month study of its nuclear-powered submarine options as part of the AUKUS deal.

The multibillion-dollar project is the centrepiece of Australian efforts to toughen its defences in the face of a more belligerent China under President Xi Jinping.

Mr Dutton said nuclear-powered submarines are needed to compete with China because they are stealthier than Australia's diesel-electric vessels, with no need to surface to recharge batteries.

It sparked a serious falling out between France and Australia, with President Macron famously saying that then-prime minister Scott Morrison had lied to him during an aside to a reporter at the G20 summit in Rome last November (pictured, the leaders meet in October, 2021)

To avoid a gap in replacing an ageing fleet of six Collins-class submarines, Dutton said he had planned to directly buy two of the US submarines 'this decade'.

Under the plan, another eight of the US submarines would be built in South Australia, the former defence minister said, to avoid waiting until 2038 for the first US-designed submarines to be built in Australia.

Australia's decision last year to buy US or British nuclear-powered submarines led to the scrapping of a multibillion-dollar submarine deal with France.

It sparked a serious falling out between France and Australia, with President Macron famously saying that then-prime minister Scott Morrison had lied to him during an aside to a reporter at the G20 summit in Rome last November.

Mr Dutton (pictured in October) said at the time that the French Naval Group's Attack-class submarines were no longer suited to Australia's operational needs

The French Attack-class submarines were intended to replace Australia's aging Collins class submarines (pictured) before the deal was junked by the Morrison government in September

Jean-Yves Le Drian, one of France's most senior politicians, said Mr Morrison's decision to scrap the deal was a clear sign of 'brutality and cynicism'.

'I would even be tempted to say of unequivocal incompetence,' he said.

Mr Dutton said at the time that the Naval Group's Attack-class submarines were no longer suited to Australia's operational needs and that the Morrison government had been 'upfront, open and honest' about the decision to break the contract.

On Saturday, new prime minister Anthony Albanese announced a $830million settlement between the government and the French company whose contract to supply our navy with nuclear submarines was cancelled.

Mr Albanese said the total cost of the cancellation will cost taxpayers $3.4billion but will 'rule a line under the contracts' with Naval Group.

Anthony Albanese (pictured on Saturday) announced a $830million settlement between the government and the French company whose contract to supply the submarines was cancelled

'This is a fair and an equitable settlement which has been reached,' Mr Albanese said at a press conference in Sydney.

'It follows discussions that I've had with [French] President Macron and I thank him for those discussions and the cordial way in which we are re-establishing a better relationship between Australia and France.'

Mr Albanese claimed the settlement represented 'a saving' from the $5.5 billion that it was estimated cancellation of the program would originally cost.

'But it still represents an extraordinary waste from a government that was always big on announcement but not good on delivery,' he said.

The new leader also reaffirmed his government's commitment to AUKUS, a three-way defence alliance that was sealed last September.
Jeremy Clarkson has been left fuming after the Environment Agency stopped him from trapping and selling American crayfish on his farm.

The former Top Gear presenter, 62, wanted to used the funds from selling crayfish as 'glorified prawn cocktails' and chowder to restore his lake on the Diddly Squat farm shop, where he films his Amazon Prime Video show Clarkson's Farm.

American crayfish are seen by the EA as an 'invasive' species as they have taken over 80 per cent of rivers from the native shellfish and also carry the deadly crayfish plague which kills native white-clawed crayfish.

Due to these reasons the government agency places a strict control on who can remove them from rivers and the Government has made it a criminal offence to do so without EA permission.

Clarkson writes that he was prepared to jump through the hoops - including working out what sort of water he has, if the water is flowing, the location, what sort of trap and, what sort of crayfish it is - set by 'WFH bureaucrats'.

But he was then told: 'The Environment Agency is currently unable to process applications to trap crayfish.'

Jeremy Clarkson (pictured at Diddly Squat shop) has been left fuming after the Environment Agency stopped him from trapping and selling American crayfish on his farm

The former Top Gear presenter, 62, claims he has been prevented by the Environment Agency from catching Crayfish and selling them in his Diddly Squat farm (pictured) as as 'glorified prawn cocktails' and a chowder in winter in the Cotswolds

American crayfish are seen by the EA as an 'invasive' species as they have taken over 80 per cent of rivers from the native shellfish and also carry the deadly crayfish plague which kills native white-clawed crayfish. Pictured: Prawn cocktail stock image

What is the problem with crayfish? Crayfish are not native to Britain but have invaded rivers and now occupy 80 per cent of rivers. Signal 'American' crayfish carry the deadly crayfish plague which kills native white-clawed crayfish. They also prey on native crayfish, out-compete them for food and habitat and can wipe out native fish stocks. It is a criminal offence to release or allow to escape, Signal and other non-native crayfish species into the wild anywhere in England and Wales without a licence. Trapping non-native crayfish needs written consent from the Environment Agency and permission from the landowner and local angling clubs. You need the right size trap, and there can't be any risk to water voles or otters. Meanwhile, you can only trap native crayfish for scientific purposes with permission from Natural England and not to eat or sell. Source: Environment Agency Advertisement

Clarkson said the 'problem' is that he needs a licence to catch the 'invasive species which means the government is forced to spend millions of our pounds employing a team of people to make and apply rules about what can and cannot be done with them'.

He said in the Sunday Times he was also told by the EA they need to know if it has a conservation designation such as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and the traps needed to be 'no longer than 600mm and no wider, at its widest point, than 350mm'.

He added: 'We paid them to work that out. They sat there, in meetings, with biscuits you and I bought, working out, to the millimetre, how big a crayfish trap should be.

'And then after I'd waded through all the bureaucracy and the rest of the farm was wilting from my absence, I got a message saying, "The Environment Agency is currently unable to process applications to trap crayfish." Presumably because they're all working from home.'

Clarkson said the 'upshot' means he 'won't repair the dam' and the lake will go, the American crayfish will 'wreak havoc' and it will impact the voles and ducks.

The EA said Clarkson's fisheries management application was approved and issued in October 2021 but an application for personal consumption of crayfish could not be authorised.

An Environment Agency spokeswoman added: 'Although there has been a delay in our services on authorisations for removing crayfish for personal consumption due to staff shortages, we continue to process crayfish removal authorisations for fisheries management, scientific and commercial purposes as normal.

'We are actively working to resume processing and determining crayfish authorisations for personal consumption to restart the service as soon as possible.'

The TV presenter bought the farm, in Chadlington, Chipping Norton. called Diddly Squat, in 2008 and initially had a villager run it and in 2019, decided to see if he could run the farm himself.

Since then he has been in disputes with 'bureaucrats'.

He faced faced a blow last month on his extension plans after councillors refused his watered-down planning application.

Jeremy Clarkson, pictured, at the Diddly Squat Farm with his Lamborghini Tractor

He added that he wanted to use the money he would make catching the crayfish (pictured boiled, stock image) to restore his lake on the Diddly Squat farm, who films his Amazon Prime Video show Clarkson's Farm on the site

Jeremy Clarkson asks Government to prioritise farming Jeremy Clarkson has called on the Government to prioritise farming during the next Parliament. He said farmers had been asked to diversify but were being restricted by local authorities. In a video addressed to No 10 and posted on his social media accounts, Clarkson said: 'We have been asked to diversify and when we try to do that the local authorities tell us we can't. That needs addressing.' Advertisement

Clarkson was looking to extend his shop's car park sevenfold from ten to 70 spaces, but local councillors said that the proposed plans would have a 'visually intrusive and harmful impact' on the countryside, refusing Clarkson's application.

The presenter had faced around 30 objection comments from villagers with some citing concerns over traffic chaos around Chadlington, Oxford.

Yet an equal number voiced their support for the application, which was refused on Friday 6 May by West Oxfordshire District Council.

Explaining the decision, the council's development manager, Abby Fettes, said: 'By reason of its location, size and design the proposed development would not be sustainable and would not be compatible or consistent in scale with the existing farming business or its open countryside location.

'[It] would have a visually intrusive and harmful impact on the rural character, scenic beauty and tranquillity of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Wychwood Project Area.'

It is the second time Clarkson, who also stars with ex-Top Gear hosts Richard Hammond and James May in The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime, has seen a planning application for his farm shop rejected this year.

Jeremy Clarkson, who has become an unlikely campaigner for the farming industry, today also called on the Government to prioritise farming during the next Parliament.
Queensland narrowly avoided power outages on Monday night but may have to endure blackouts on Tuesday.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) had earlier issued an alert warning of possible blackouts for the south-east and the east coast of the state between 5.30pm and 8pm on Monday, and again on Tuesday morning.

But AEMO managed to direct electricity generators to supply enough power to meet demand.

'At this stage, these efforts have provided sufficient generation to cover the lack of reserve 3 shortfall,' a spokesman said.

'AEMO will continue to monitor reserve conditions closely in Queensland (and NSW) ... providing further updates should conditions change.'

The warning comes as the mercury drops in both states (pictured: Women rug up as they go for a walk in Bondi)

Pictured is a high voltage electricity transmission tower is seen in the foreground of the Brisbane CBD skyline in Brisbane, Thursday, June 2, 2022. Queenslanders could have power outages on Monday night and Tuesday morning

Labor has begged industry bosses to fire up all their coal-fuelled power stations at full capacity to ease the national energy crisis in a dramatic policy u-turn

Paul McArdle, an analyst who runs the Watt Clarity website, had warned that not meeting the supply would be 'catastrophic'. 'The wheels do seem to be falling off today,' he said in a tweet.

The operator has imposed a cap on electricity spot prices of $300 per megawatt after seven consecutive days of surging wholesale prices.

The 'high price threshold' threshold of $1.359million over a week, or an average of $674.16/MWh, was reached just before 7pm on Sunday night and remained there on Monday.

'As a consequence of the administered price cap in Queensland, AEMO has seen generation bids reduce,' the company said in a statement.

The operator said with a lack of reserve electricity in the system, demand could exceed supply in parts of Queensland connected to the National Energy Market (NEM) from early Monday evening.

'AEMO will take available actions to deliver additional supply or demand reduction, to maintain power system security,' it said.

'AEMO will continue to monitor reserve conditions closely in Queensland, NSW and more broadly across the NEM, providing further updates should conditions change.'

The market operator said it would monitor Queensland's wholesale spot prices, which have quadrupled in the year to March.

The new federal Labor government has demanded the nation's coal power stations be brought back into service as soon as possible.

At least a quarter of Australia's coal-fired electricity production is currently offline while the east coast shivers through a freezing winter amid soaring price rises.

Pictured is a power outage before the start of the NRL trial match between the North Queensland Cowboys and the Wests Tigers at Barlow Park on February 17, 2018 in Cairns, Queensland

The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) said earlier this month the state's wholesale prices, which are the highest in the nation, are unlikely to fall before 2024.

Powerlink Queensland Chief Executive Paul Simshauser urged people to cut back on electric use wherever they can.

'There is an unusual combination of unexpected generator outages plus cool winter temperatures and high demand for electricity,' he said.

Residents should heat only one room where possible and turn off appliances, pool pumps and electronics on standby mode.

Retailers have been asked to cut back on lighting, advertising displays and water heating systems.

In the year to March, wholesale electricity prices have soared by 141 per cent, prompting one power company boss to urge his 70,000 customers to switch provider (pictured, Liddell power station in Muswellbrook)

'By carefully managing electricity use at home and in your workplace, the community can help ensure that power system security is maintained in Queensland,' Mr Simshauser said.

Part of the problem for Queensland is that 70 per cent of its generation comes from fossil fuels, and generators are suspected of bidding higher to profit from surging international coal and gas prices.

Energy Minister Mick de Brenni has denied Stanwell and C S Energy are price gouging, saying they only bid to 'cover costs' and that he won't direct them to lower their bids.

'Queenslanders have conserved energy in situations like this before ... I'm confident Queenslanders will be able to do it again.'

Liberal National Party spokesman Pat Weir said the power crisis was forcing employers to shut down.

'Queensland already has the highest power prices in the country and now we're being warned that the lights may not even stay on,' Mr Weir said.

Millions of Australians will be forced to pay up to an extra $270 a year for their electricity as one of the largest energy providers hikes up its prices. Pictured is a couple looking at a bill

'Major employers are tonight shutting down and Queenslanders' lifestyles are being impacted because of a government that has failed to plan for the future.'

Households will get about $44 off their monthly power bills from July under a one-off Queensland government rebate, with bills set to rise by at least $41 to $55.

The AER is thought likely to allow Queensland household and business bills to rise again before the end of the year or in early 2023.

Millions of Australians will be forced to pay up to an extra $270 a year for their electricity as one of the largest energy providers hikes up their prices.

Origin Energy announced on Friday it will raise its rates by 14.4 per cent for residents living in New South Wales on July 1.

Origin Energy announced on Friday it will raise its rates by 14.4 per cent for residents living in New South Wales on July 1. Pictured is an Origin Energy logo

The energy provider will hike prices by 13.7 per cent, or $223, in Queensland and 10.4 per cent, or $180, in South Australia.

Victorian households will be slapped with higher electricity rates in January.

In the year to March, wholesale electricity prices have soared by 141 per cent across Australia, prompting one power company boss to urge his 70,000 customers to switch provider.

Origin executive general manager of retail Jon Briskin said the company was 'absorbing some of the higher energy costs' to reduce the rate increases passed down to customers.

In his first media conference as federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers warned of a 'perfect storm' for energy price hikes.

'This perfect storm of energy price spikes is doing enormous damage to our employers, to our households and to our national economy,' he said.
Boris Johnson today warned the EU against retaliation with laws scrapping Northern Ireland Brexit rules finally set to be published today.

The PM played down the Bill amending the protocol - being presented to Parliament this afternoon - suggesting the changes were 'relatively trivial'.

They are expected to include unilaterally creating a check-free 'green channel' for goods bound for Northern Ireland from mainland Britain.

He insisted it would be an 'overreaction' for Brussels to follow through on threats of trade reprisals.

But Labour has accused the Government of 'law-breaking' and there have also been signs of resistance within Tory ranks, with some MPs circulating a note warning the plan will be highly damaging to the party's reputation.

A former No10 adviser urged Conservative critics to hold their tongues today, saying the EU is looking for a 'reason to just sit still and once again hope to deal with another PM'. 'It is impossible to rebel on this bill without playing into that,' Nikki da Costa said.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis has made clear to the DUP that the legislation will not be activated unless it agrees to get powersharing back up and running.

Mr Johnson told LBC: 'It's the right way forward. What we have to respect  this is the crucial thing  is the balance and the symmetry of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

'We have to understand there are two traditions in Northern Ireland, broadly two ways of looking at the border issues. One community at the moment feels very, very estranged from the way things are operating and very alienated.

'We have just got to fix that. It is relatively simple to do it, it's a bureaucratic change that needs to be made.

'Frankly, it's a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things.'

Mr Johnson disagreed with claims that the move breaks international law, arguing that 'our higher and prior legal commitment as a country is the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and to the balance and stability of that agreement'.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss (left) is publishing the Bill today despite threats from the EU's Maros Sefcovic (right)

There have been warnings that the protocol is disrupting the careful peace balance in NI

The PM (pictured on a visit to Cornwall today) played down the Bill amending the protocol - being presented to Parliament this afternoon - suggesting the changes were 'relatively trivial'

In a call this morning, Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney warned Liz Truss that introducing a Bill to unilaterally amend the Northern Ireland Protocol will breach international law and 'deeply damage' relationships

How the Northern Ireland row threatens to undo Brexit deal The row over the Northern Ireland Protocol began almost as soon as the Brexit agreement with the EU came into force. The two sides had to find a way of avoiding a hard border while maintaining the integrity of the UK, and avoid undermining the integrity of the EU customs union and single market. The protocol avoids a hard border between by effectively keeping Ulster inside the EU's single market. However, Brussels has been adamant that means checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea from Britain. Unionists are implacably opposed to the idea, arguing it 'others' an integral part of the UK. The UK began talks seeking to alter the terms of the agreement, despite it having been signed off by the PM just months earlier. The toughest part of the protocol have never come into force, due to a series of delays brought in by both camps. In March last year the UK unilaterally extended the agri-food exemptions, something that triggered the EU to start breach proceedings. However, despite experts suggesting there is a landing zone available, political tensions have made a deal impossible. The UK has threatened to trigger Article 16 of the Treaty, which is available to suspend the provisions if they are causing major social upheaval. However, a command paper previously suggested using legislation instead as a more permanent solution. The UK insists that the problem lies with the negotiating mandate given to vice-president Maros Sefcovic, which does not allow enough scope to find a settlement. The Bill is now finally being published, spelling out the arrangements that the UK believes are feasible. But it will take time to pass the law, and it is not likely to come into force immediately even when on the statute books. As a result the government has more time - and it hopes more leverage - to hammer out an agreement. The legislation could make it trickier though as the British demands are now spelled out in black and white, meaning potentially less scope for compromise. The Biden administration has also taken a dim view, urging continued talks to solve the problem. One carrot in the process is the chance to restore powersharing in Northern Ireland. DUP first minister Paul Givan resigned in February in an effort to force movement. That left the Executive unable to function, due to the way it was set up to share power under the Good Friday Agreement. While ministers remained in post, they were restricted in the actions they could take. Since 1998, when the governance system was devised as part of Northern Ireland's historic peace accord, the first minister has always been a Unionist. That all changed last month, when Sinn Fein became the largest party at Stormont for the first time ever. However, the DUP has insisted that it will not return until its demands over the protocol are met. Ministers have made clear to the DUP that the new legislation will not be implemented unless they agree to resume powersharing first. Advertisement

Mr Johnson said a trade war would be a 'gross overreaction' by Brussels.

'All we are trying to do is simplify things, actually, to remove the barriers to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland,' he said.

It would be 'preposterous' to respond with trade restrictions 'when all we are trying to do is have some bureaucratic simplifications between Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.

In a call this morning, Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney warned Liz Truss that introducing a Bill to unilaterally amend the Northern Ireland Protocol will breach international law and 'deeply damage' relationships.

Ms Truss also held a call with the bloc's vice-president Maros Sefcovic, saying afterwards: 'Our preference is a negotiated solution, but EU must be willing to change the Protocol itself.'

The legislation will give ministers powers to override elements of the protocol, which was jointly agreed by the UK and EU as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to keep the Irish land border free-flowing.

The arrangements instead require regulatory checks and customs declarations on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Unionists in Northern Ireland have condemned the international treaty, claiming it has undermined the region's place within the United Kingdom.

The DUP has blocked the formation of a new power-sharing government at Stormont following last month's Assembly election in protest.

The Bill due to come before Parliament will see the Government move without the consent of the EU to change the terms of the protocol in a bid to reduce the checks on the movement of goods across the Irish Sea.

This could include allowing ministers to remove all customs processes for goods moving within the United Kingdom and enable the frictionless movement of agri-food goods staying within the UK.

It could also see businesses in Northern Ireland given the ability to choose whether to follow UK or EU regulations, depending on who they are trading with.

The EU has made clear that such steps would represent a breach of international law and could prompt retaliatory action from the bloc.

The Financial Times reported that an internal note had been circulating among Tory MPs opposed to the Bill, saying: 'Breaking international law to rip up the Prime Minister's own treaty is damaging to everything the UK and Conservatives stand for.'

Mr Lewis has said he hopes the Bill will persuade the DUP to support the re-establishment of the Stormont institutions.

He has also said the Government will set out its legal position on the Bill when the legislation is introduced to Parliament tonight.

Downing Street has said it will share only 'a summary' of the legal advice it received with the public, which has led to accusations of a 'cover-up'.

Keir Starmer said the government was going 'down the wrong track'.

'I think the answer to this is to accept there are some problems in the way the protocol works but they can be resolved around the negotiating table with statecraft, with guile, with trust,' he said.

'Unfortunately, we don't have those in the current Prime Minister.

'They won't be resolved with legislation that breaches international law and that, frankly, will impede the negotiations that, in the end, will be needed to settle this.

'So the Government is going down the wrong track here.'

Asked why Downing Street was publishing only a summary of the legal advice, and not disclosing it in full, Mr Lewis told Times Radio: 'Well, governments don't publish details behind advice given to ministers, that's part of  we have to have that free and open discussion as they're formulating policy.

'But we are going to set out the Government's legal position and our methodology for that.'
Children arriving at primary schools in Britain are unable to say their own names, with many not trained and still eating baby foods, a report is set to reveal.

A year-long inquiry into the state of the UK education system will reveal its results on Wednesday after finding out from dozens of headteachers, experts and leaders that early-years education is in a shocking state.

One headteacher from Nottinghamshire told of how little time was spent on the essential lessons in literacy or numeracy in her reception classes as teachers had to direct their focus on basic care - with many not toilet trained or able to say their own names.

She said that many of the four and five-year-olds in her school had only drunk from baby bottles, and when thirsty, would say the term 'bot-bot' rather than knowing how to communicate that they wanted a drink. Others are still on baby foods.

Her school has even had to employ care workers just to help change nappies of her pupils. She added that one child was brought into school in a shopping trolley as the parent found it to be the 'cheapest mode of transport'.

Children arriving at primary schools in Britain are unable to say their own names, with many not trained and still eating baby foods, The Times Education Commission is set to reveal this week (file photo)

Ahead of the final report for The Times Education Commission, she told the newspaper that 50 per cent of the children in reception and nursery are not toilet trained.

The Nottinghamshire head continued: 'We are parenting in so many different ways. I need to do an assembly on eating with a knife and fork because the children will eat a full Sunday dinner with their hands.

'Were not teaching them to write their names, were teaching them to scribble.'

The astounding results will launch an initiative that will encourage parents to talk and play with their children so their first interactions in the education system can focus more on the curriculum rather than basic life skills.

The Times spoke to another headteacher in Cumbria who said that children were coming to the school being pushed in buggies until they were around six or seven, and with many still sucking on dummies.

Her school also runs parenting classes and adult literacy lessons to 'address barriers to learning'.

Nearly a third of five-year-olds in England are 'not reaching a good level of development' and deprived pupils are around five months academically behind their richer classmates by the time they begin school.

And by the age of 16, this gap widens to 18 months, a YouGov poll by early years charity Kindred Squared found.

In 2020, 46 per cent of pupils starting in reception were not ready for school had risen from 35 per cent the previous year. The pandemic is said to have been a catalyst to the issue.

Another teacher, from West Yorkshire, revealed that they have around half of their children who are not 'school ready', but this year it is at a staggering 80 to 90 per cent.

Felicity Gillespie, director at Kindred Squared, said: 'One child I heard about needed intensive physiotherapy because they didnt have the strength in their legs to walk the amount they needed to at school.

'Some children spend so much time in front of the TV theyre physically not developing their muscle tone.

'Some will blame parents but we all want the best for our children and teachers say what isnt being made clear enough to parents is what being developmentally ready for school actually means.'

The final report of the commission says that the government has to 'overcome squeamishness' about getting directly involved in family life, suggesting that there should be more in the way of home visits and drop-in centres.
Vladimir Putin's propagandists have gloated over death sentences handed to two Britons fighting in Ukraine - laughing at the prospect of the pair being shot while accusing the government of doing 'nothing' to help them.

Aiden Aslin, 28, and Shaun Pinner, 48, were sentenced to death by firing squad last week by a rogue court in the 'Donetsk People's Republic', which accused them of being mercenaries. In fact, the two men are regular soldiers in the Ukrainian army.

Liz Truss, a favourite target of Russian state media, spoke out last week to condemn the sentences which she said had 'absolutely no legitimacy' while vowing 'to do everything we can to support' the imprisoned pair.

Vladimir Solovyov, a man often known as Putin's mouthpiece, took aim at Truss on his show Sunday night - joking that Aiden and Pinner will be shot whether she recognises the sentence or not, and her words will not bring them back to life.

Vladimir Solovyov, known as 'Putin's mouthpiece', used his Sunday night news show to mock two Britons handed death sentences for fighting in Ukraine

Olga Skabeyeva, known as Putin's 'Iron Doll', also used a segment of her show to attack Liz Truss for failing to intervene directly in the case

Nataliya Nikonorova, the 'foreign minister' of the DPR, spoke to Solovyov on the show - saying she was 'surprised' that Truss had refused to recognise the judgement.

Solovyov responded, to laughs from the other guests: 'So if something terrible happens and they are executed, they will not recognise their deaths?

'Will this bring these people back to life?'

Nikonorova added: 'They have not taken a single step to somehow try to participate in the fate of these citizens. No-one is helping them.'

Solovyov also mocked Britain's ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, accusing her of eating croissants named after Boris Johnson instead of negotiating a way out for the men.

It comes after Ms Simmons posted a photo on social media showing her eating one of the pastries at the weekend.

'She probably has more important issues to deal with,' said Nikonorova.

'Melinda is having fun,' taunted Solovyov.

'Her subjects are about to be executed, and she found a wonderful croissant called 'Boris Johnsonuk' and is eating it merrily.

'So she doesn't care about the fate of those people who are her subjects.'

Separately, Olga Skabeyeva - known as Putin's 'Iron Doll' - accused the British Foreign Office of being unsure how to help Aslin and Pinner.

British war prisoners Aiden Aslin (first left) and Shaun Pinner (second left) were sentenced to death penalty by Donetsk court on June 9, accused of being foreign mercenaries

'Liz Truss, the head of the Foreign Office, called the sentence illegal and promised to pull the Englishmen out - and to do it via Kyiv.

'Good luck, Liz,' she quipped.

Aslin and Pinner - a former British solider - are actually both members of the regular Ukrainian army, having moved to the country in 2018 and married Ukrainian women.

Both served multiple active tours of duty as part of Ukraine's marine corps along the old frontline between Ukraine and Russian-occupied regions in the Donbas.

They were then caught up in the war when Putin ordered his soldiers to seize the rest of Ukraine on February 24.

The pair had fallen back from the old frontline to the city of Mariupol, where they survived a months-long siege before surrendering in April.

The UK has opted not to directly negotiate with Russia for the release of the men because the two are Ukrainian troops.

Downing Street fears that making direct approaches to Moscow will add legitimacy to the false claims that the pair are mercenaries.

Negotiating with the DPR has also been ruled out, over fears it will grant legitimacy to a 'government' that is not recoginsed internationally.

British diplomats have raised the case with their Moscow counterparts to voice concerns, but are allowing Kyiv to take the lead on trying to get the men released.

Russia wants Britain to engage directly with the DPR, a move that would mean recognising what the West sees as an illegal pro-Putin regime established on Ukrainian territory.

Britain suspects the two men are being held as political bargaining chips, but Denis Pushilin - 'leader' of the DPR - has insisted the death sentences will be carried out.

The trio are lodging legal appeals and these will be heard before any pleas to Pushilin for pardons

Pushilin said on Sunday that he has the power to pardon both men and commute their death sentences to life in jail, but so-far sees no grounds for doing so.

In footage shown on Zvezda channel, controlled by Vladimir Putins defence ministry, Pushilin said: 'As for possible exchanges, pardons and other things, at this moment I do have the right to pardon these people in accordance with our legislation.

'But I do not see any preconditions for me to move in this direction.'

He said: 'With the mercenaries, two British, one Moroccan - there was a court hearing, a direct court hearing, they were given lawyers.

'Their crimes can be classified as grave and especially grave crimes.

'It was easy enough to predictthat they should be sentenced to capital punishment.

'My personal opinion is that this is just punishment for those people who came to kill civilians for money from other countries.'

The trio are lodging legal appeals and these will be heard before any pleas to Pushilin for pardons.

But his statement appears to usurp the whole process, making a mockery of justice for the Britons and the Moroccan.

The trial they faced was riddled with questionable legal tactics, including the non-appearance of five witnesses on whose word they were convicted.

Aslin's family said he and Pinner 'are not, and never were, mercenaries'.

They were living in Ukraine when war broke out and 'as members of Ukrainian armed forces, should be treated with respect just like any other prisoners of war', the family said in a statement.

Almost alone, Putin recognises the DPR as independent.

Under international law it is part of Ukraine, which does not carry out the death penalty, just as Russia does not.

A suspicion is that Putin wants the men to be bartered for pro-Kremlin prisoners held in Ukraine, like politician and tycoon Viktor Medvedchuk, a friend of the Kremlin leader.

A third British detainee Andrew Hill, 35, a father of four from Plymouth, has also been told to expect the death penalty when his verdict is handed down.

Aiden Aslin Born: 1994, Newark-on-Trent Worked as: Care worker Combat experience: Travelled to Syria in 2015 to fight for the Kurds in a western-backed alliance against ISIS. He made headlines on his return to the UK in 2016 when he was arrested, charged with terrorism offences, and then kept on bail until all charges were dropped following protests. Aslin then returned to Syria in 2017 to help in the fight to re-take the city of Raqqa, which had been the de-facto capital of ISIS's terror-state. Journey to Ukraine: After being arrested in the UK a second time trying to return from Syria via Greece, Aslin moved to Ukraine after falling for a woman from the city of Mykolaiv. Having heard about Ukraine's fight against Russia in Donbas from Ukrainian volunteers in Syria, he was persuaded to join the military and in 2018 signed up as a marine. Aslin completed three tours of the frontline and was dug into trenches in the Donbas in late February when Putin's troops stormed across the border in a second invasion. He ended up falling back to the nearby city of Mariupol where he fought for weeks under siege, before being captured in April after his unit ran out of ammunition. Advertisement
The body of a boy who drowned as his mother died trying to save him and his sister has been found.

Mason DeChhat, six, was tragically swept away Merrimack River in Amesbury, Massachusetts on June 9 with his sister, seven, who survived the ordeal.

Their mother Boua DeChhat, 29, died having entered the water to try and save her son before being overcome by the river.

On Sunday, it was announced that the body of Mason was discovered.

Mason DeChhat, six, was tragically swept away Merrimack River in Amesbury, Massachusetts on June 9

'It is with a great sadness we must report the body of the young boy has been recovered,' Amesbury police shared in a statement on Facebook.

A kayaker found his body about a half mile from where he was last seen, authorities said.

'I saw something floating and I was hoping it was a stick, and then as I got closer realized what it was and called 911,' the kayaker was quoted as saying.

'It's just awful.'

The remains were turned over to the Massachusetts Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for official identification.

The search and rescue operation for the young boy had been suspended on Friday at 5pm due to the strong currents in the river, the Coast Guard said.

Mason, six, and his mother Boua, 29, died in the incident in the Massachusetts river

Captain Kailie Benson, Coast Guard Sector Boston Commander said: 'It is always a difficult decision to suspend a search and rescue case, and even more painful when children are involved.'

When Mason got into difficulty, his father, 31, had returned to a car to get something before Boua jumped in to rescue her children despite not being able to swim.

When Mason's father returned, he attempted to save his wife and daughter but could not reach them.

The current eventually carried Boua and her daughter inland but after the child made it to land, Boua was dragged under the water.

Sammy DeChhat wrote on Facebook: 'My wife went to heaven a hero'.

Bystander Mark Bajko tried to administer to Boua but was unable to revive her.

'I'm going as hard as I can,' Bajko told WCVB.

'I've already called 911 on my way over and I'm doing CPR and finally, a police officer taps me and says, 'Hey let me take over.'

'And he takes over and I stand up and in that moment and that second, a little girl stopped crying and yells, 'My brother is still in the water.''

The family was visiting the river to fish and swim before they got into difficulty in the fast-moving river around 7pm.

The family was visiting the river to fish and swim before they got into difficulty in the fast-moving river

The seven-year-old girl was treated and released from Anna Jacques Hospital in Newburyport.

A memorial has been placed near the site of the tragedy and almost $100,000 has been raised for the family on GoFundMe.

Mason DeChhat was a kindergartner at Murkland Elementary School, which wrote to its pupils and parents on Friday offering grief counselling before Mason's body was found.

The letter reads: 'Grief has no set pattern and everyone experiences it differently.

'Talk with your children, listen to them and seek support for them and yourself if needed.

'Please know that, as always, the Murkland School community is strong and we are here to support you and your child in any way we can.'
A man swimming in the sea off an Odesa beach in Ukraine has been blown up in front of his family by an apparent mine.

Footage shared by Odesa Region Police shows the sudden blast yards from the shore, scattering the 50-year-old's body parts across the beach as his distressed wife, son and friend watched on.

While it is not yet clear what caused the explosion, swimming in the area is banned because of mines planted amid the ongoing Russia war.

A man swimming in the sea off an Odesa beach in Ukraine has been blown up in front of his family by an apparent mine

The video shows people running on the beach towards the water when the explosion occurs, stopping them in their tracks.

The man, who has not been named, washed up on the shore as police arrived on the scene.

The victim's friend had been swimming with him at the time but was uninjured in the blast.

The Odesa Region Police said in a statement on Saturday: 'Police urge residents and guests of Odesa region to strictly follow the rules of martial law: do not go to the coastal protection zone of the Black Sea, do not swim in the mined sea.

The man, who has not been named, washed up on the shore as police arrived on the scene

The video shows people running on the beach towards the water when the explosion occurs, stopping them in their tracks

Ukraine has accused Russia of deliberately mining the Black Sea, while Kremlin forces say they were laid by Kyiv

'Today, the neglect of safety rules by a family from Donetsk region has led to tragic consequences.

'While swimming in the sea in one of the villages of Odesa district, an explosion of an unknown object killed a 50-year-old man in front of his wife, son and friend. The latter miraculously did not suffer, because he went swimming with the victim.

'Now there is an investigative task force of the territorial unit of police and explosives.

'Once again, a strict ban on visiting the coast and swimming in the sea are security measures that are life-threatening if neglected.'

Ukraine has accused Russia of deliberately mining the Black Sea, while Kremlin forces say they were laid by Kyiv.

The blockade of Ukraine's ports is impacting the global food crisis, fuelling soaring prices around the world.

Maximilian Hess, central Asia fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC: 'The biggest impediment to the grain exports is clearly the Russian blockades, and that includes the mines.

Members of Ukrainian special operations team are seen during the military tactical training at a woodland in Kharkiv today

Special operations teams of the Ukrainian Armed Forces serving in Kharkiv conduct continuous war readiness training

The war games are taking place near the besieged city of Kharkiv as Ukraine continues its resistance

Forensic technicians put to a bag a body of a person who was killed in the Bucha district near Kyiv today

Investigators are continuing to find the remains of civilians in Bucha which was recaptured by Ukraine

Andriy, a member of an extraction crew, appears emotional after exhuming the mass grave near Bucha today

'The real issue going forward is that Russia seems intent on using this as an instrument of leverage.'

Ukraine accuses Russia of using the naval mines as 'uncontrolled drifting ammunition' to purposely disrupt shipping and food supplies.

It comes as Russian solders fled for their lives as they were attacked by a drone armed with thermal sights and bombs on a 'night hunt'.

Footage captured by the drone, in service with Ukraine's 47th Motorised Infantry Battalion, shows four soldiers escaping into the woods - apparently after hearing the drone approaching.

The drone then drops two bombs on their comrades who stayed behind, killing at least three of them, according to Ukraine's military.

It is not clear exactly where or when the footage was taken, but it comes amid bitter fighting in the Donbas region with Ukraine clinging on in one key city while launching counter-attacks further to the north.

Thermal footage shows a Ukrainian drone going on a 'night hunt' for Russian soldiers, sending four of them fleeing for their lives into the woods (pictured)

The drone then drops bombs on the soldiers who stayed behind, killing three of them - according to a report from Ukraine's military

Kyiv said Monday that its forces had been pushed back from the centre of Severodonetsk, where the heaviest fighting is currently taking place.

President Zelensky said his men are fighting for 'literally every metre' as control of the city regularly swaps between Ukraine and Russia, causing huge damage.

Regional governor Serhiy Haidai said Monday that Russian forces were 'gathering more and more equipment' to 'encircle' Severodonetsk, and that they had 'pushed our troops from the centre and continue to destroy our city'.

The Azot chemical plant, where hundreds of civilians have reportedly taken refuge was still being shelled, he said.

In Lysychansk - Severodonetsk's sister city located just across the Donets River - three civilians were killed by shelling, including a six-year-old boy, Haidai said.

But, further to the north, there was evidence of Ukraine launching a counter-attack against Russian troops near Izyum - previously the main thrust of the Donbas offensive before a push southwards towards Slovyansk stalled.

NASA satellites trained to track fires showed burning in a wooded area to the west of Izyum on late Saturday and into Sunday - an indication of shelling in the area.

Fighting appeared to be concentrated around the towns of Spivakivka and Zavody, amid disputed reported that Ukraine had recaptured them.

Both sides are pouring men into the Donbas offensive, viewing victory in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland as pivotal to the future of the war.

One of Vladimir Putin's key allies has warned that the 'Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on their way' in the latest chilling Kremlin warning of destruction.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia, warned Moscow would attack Western cities if Ukraine uses missiles provided by the US.

The Kremlin insider, 56, currently serves as deputy head of Russia's national security council and acted as president 2008 to 2012 while Putin was term-limited, although he remained under his influence.

He wrote last week: 'I am often asked why my Telegram posts are so harsh. The answer is I hate them. They are b*****ds and degenerates.

'They want death for Russia. And while I'm alive, I will do everything to make them disappear.'

Dmitry Medvedev has warned that the 'Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on their way' in the latest chilling Kremlin warning of destruction

Russia test launched the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile in April amid threats of nuclear war

The 'they' Medvedev is referring to is understood to mean Ukraine and its allies.

Days earlier he said Moscow would escalate their war on the West if US-supplied missiles are used against Russian forces, saying: 'The horsemen of the Apocalypse are already on their way.'

Medvedev, who was previously seen as a moderniser and a more liberal figurehead for Russia, has also accused Ukraine of being led by drugged-up Nazis.

Last month, he warned military support for Ukraine risks sparking nuclear war with Russia.

It was also revealed today that Russia earned 80billion from fossil fuel exports during the first 100 days of the war in Ukraine with most sent to the EU.

A report from the independent, Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found the EU took 61 per cent of Russia's exports, worth about 49billion.

The top importers were China at 10.8billion, Germany at 10.4billion and Italy at 6.7billion.

A train moves past oil tanks of the NNK-Primornefteproduct petroleum depot in the far eastern port of Vladivostok

Petrol trucks are parked at Volodarskaya LPDS production facility owned by Transneft oil pipeline operator in the village of Konstantinovo

It comes as Kyiv urges the West to sever all trade with Russia in the hopes of cutting off the Kremlin's financial lifeline.

Earlier this month, the EU agreed to halt most Russian oil imports, on which the continent is heavily dependent.

Though the bloc aims to reduce gas shipments by two-thirds this year, an embargo is not in the cards at present.

Russia's fossil fuel revenues come first from the sale of crude oil at 39billion, followed by pipeline gas, oil products, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal.

Even as Russia's exports plummeted in May, with countries and companies shunning its supplies over the Ukraine invasion, the global rise in fossil fuel prices continued to fill the Kremlin's coffers, with export revenues reaching record highs.

Russia's average export prices were about 60 per cent higher than last year, according to CREA.
A 20ft tall wooden statue created for a nature trail in a Yorkshire park is raising eyebrows, with some walkers left wide-eyed by its phallic nature.

The sculpture has been on display in Beaumont Park in Huddersfield since December last year, and is one of a number of art pieces on display as part of its Nature Story Trail.

The towering carving, made by artist Heather Crompton out of an old cedar tree stump, features beautifully captured images of woodland animals such as rabbits, woodpeckers and foxes.

However, it has raised the attention of some passersby who can't help but jokingly compare it to a rather rude part of the human body.

The 20ft tall statue has raised eyebrows, with some walkers saying it brings to mind a rude part of the human body

The statue was carved from an old cedar tree in Beaumont Park, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

One person joked: 'Us ladies appreciate the artwork and don't want it to flop', while another asked if it was 'made of hardwood', the Sun reports.

Tara Calvin suggested the shape of the sculpture brought to mind a giant willy.

She said: 'It is very beautiful. I hope its not finished? Maybe something different to the top?? Or is it sending the council a message? Sorry Im not the only one [thinking this]!'

One disgruntled person told YorkshireLive: 'I mean come on...is this where our council tax is spent? On giant d****s?'

Despite the eyebrow-raising comparison, visitors on the whole seem to love the piece.

Despite some comments poking fun at the artwork, it was very well received by many walkers

Anne Mallinson said: 'Amazing, we stop to look at it every time we are in the park. A lovely talking point as well thank you.'

Nicola Ball added: 'Beautiful, we were lucky enough to see this being finished.'

Hazel Roebuck said: 'We had the pleasure of watching these talented artists at work... congratulations! It is a beautiful addition to Beaumont Park.'

It is not the first time a piece of artwork has accidentally drawn comparisons to that particular part of the human body.

Last year a statue in Cyprus which was erected to honour potatoes produced there caught the eye of locals.

The suspicious spud was installed in the village of Xylofagou near Ayia Napa, in an area which is famous for growing vegetables in red soil.

The statue was put up in October 2021 to celebrate the towns and villages in the area ahead of a potato festival.

A phallic-looking statue erected to honour the potato produce of a Cypriot village was compared to the male appendage last year

The suspicious spud was installed in the village of Xylofagou near Ayia Napa in Cyprus ahead of a potato festival

It was named 'The Big Potato', wrote the Cyprus Mail, but the unfinished statue was mocked by social media users.

Some said that the monument should be trussed up to resemble Mr Potato Head, while others drew comparisons with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket, which was also ridiculed for its suggestive shape.

But local officials remain unfazed by the taunts, with Xylofagou community leader George Tasou, who organised the project, saying: 'There is no such thing as bad publicity.'
Boris Johnson took a thinly-veiled swipe at Prince Charles today as he defended plans to send Channel migrants to Rwanda.

The PM hit out at 'very active lawyers' who have been trying to block the government from deporting the first batch to the African country.

Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Mr Johnson insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers.

Without directly criticising the heir to the throne, the premier said pointedly: 'What I don't think we should support is continued activity by criminal gangs.'

He added on LBC: 'I do think that it's the job of Government to stop people breaking the law and to support people who are doing the right thing; that's what we are doing.'

The Mail revealed over the weekend that Prince Charles has privately condemned the Rwanda asylum plan, saying giving Channel migrants a one-way ticket to Africa was 'appalling'. Clarence House has stressed that the royal is politically neutral.

Downing Street tried to cool the tensions later, saying Mr Johnson has 'nothing but respect and admiration' for the Prince.

The PM's official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales, who's spoken out on a number of issues, not least the environment.'

The tetchy exchanges with Mr Johnson came amid fears ministers could be blocked from putting Channel migrants on the first flight to Rwanda.

Home Office sources said human rights lawyers had tabled a 'deluge' of legal claims on behalf of 31 individuals due to be deported tomorrow.

They said there was a 'real prospect' the courts could delay the removal of all 31.

It means that even if the Court of Appeal today grants the Home Secretary the right to go ahead with the first removal flight, there may be no one to put on it.

Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's (left) apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Boris Johnson (right in Cornwall today) insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers

There are fears ministers could be banned from putting Channel migrants on the first flight to Rwanda

Mr Johnson told LBC the Government had expected that 'very active lawyers' would try to challenge the Rwanda policy.

'We have always said that we knew that this policy would attract attacks from those who want to have a completely open-doors approach to immigration, who want people to be able to come across the Channel without let or hindrance,' he said.

'There are very active lawyers in this field. I have the utmost respect for the legal profession but it is also important we stop criminal gangs.'

Asked if the policy will be worth it if it results in just one person being removed, Mr Johnson said: 'I think it's very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people's lives at risk in the Channel is going to be broken  is being broken  by this Government.

'They are selling people a false hope, they are luring them into something extremely risky and criminal.'

Lawyers acting on behalf of the 31 migrants slated to be sent to Rwanda are said either to have lodged legal appeals or warned they would do so today.

'We are getting claims from every single one,' a source said. 'In many cases they are making multiple claims under various bits of the Human Rights Act and modern slavery legislation. Over the weekend there have been new claims every hour and we expect more right up to when the flight goes.

'We will operate the flight even if there is just one person on it, but there is a real prospect that even that might not be possible.'

Under the terms of the deal with Rwanda, those crossing the Channel illegally risk being given a one-way ticket to Kigali where they will have the chance to claim asylum in the African state.

Home Office sources said human rights lawyers had tabled a 'deluge' of legal claims on behalf of 31 individuals due to be deported tomorrow

Former security minister Sir John Hayes said it was 'ethically the right thing to do, as well as being in line with public demands to take back control of our borders'.

'I am sick to death of deranged do-gooders and fat cat lawyers frustrating government policy and the interests of the nation,' said Sir John, who chairs the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs. 'If we end up in a farcical situation where no one is allowed to get on a flight declared lawful by the courts because of spurious human rights challenges then we will have to repeal the Human Rights Act.

'We are already committed to reforming it and we may need to go further. Every major policy this Government tries to pursue is getting caught up by the long tail of Blairism through legislation like the Human Rights Act.'
President Yoon Suk-yeol / Yonhap





President Yoon Suk-yeol's approval rating fell below 50 percent for the first time since he took office last month, a poll showed Monday, amid criticism of his personnel choices for key government positions.







In a Realmeter poll of 2,009 adults conducted between Tuesday and Friday, 48 percent gave a positive assessment on Yoon's handling of state affairs, down 4.1 percentage points from the previous survey, while 44.2 percent answered the opposite, up 3.9 percentage points from the earlier poll.







Yoon's approval rating started at 52.1 percent and reached 54.1 percent in the last week of May. But it has been declining since, falling to 52.1 percent in the first week of June, according to Realmeter.







The president, who spent decades as a prosecutor, recently faced criticism that he selected too many former and incumbent prosecutors for key government positions, including the chief of the watchdog Financial Supervisory Service.







On the favorability rating of political parties, Yoon's People Power Party (PPP) received 47.3 percent of support, down 2.5 percentage points from the previous poll, while the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) had 39.2 percent, up 1 percentage point from the earlier survey.







The poll has a margin of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.







Meanwhile, in a KSOI poll of 1,000 adults conducted Friday and Saturday, Yoon's approval rating was 50.3 percent, down 6 percentage points from the previous poll June 1, while 42.6 percent gave a negative assessment, up 6.5 percentage points.







The KSOI poll showed the favorability rating of the PPP was 42 percent, while that of the DPK was 32.8 percent.







The KSOI poll has a margin of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. (Yonhap)






A tree surgeon was crushed to death while cutting down a dying Ash tree on a National Trust estate which fell on top of her after being sheared off 25ft above where she was stood, an inquest heard.

Debbie Austin, 42, had been felling diseased Ash trees at Ightham Mote, in Sevenoaks, Kent, in December last year.

The 'highly experienced' arborist had been working as part of a team of three when the trunk of the Ash unexpectedly split and collapsed onto her.

Debbie, right, suffered a crushed chest, pelvis and leg in the tragic accident on December 7 last year. She had been felling a diseased Ash tree with a chainsaw when the trunk split and toppled onto her

The 'highly experienced' tree surgeon had been working with her two colleagues for several days on the National Trust estate in Kent. William Jordan desperately tried to save her after the trunk splintered, before paramedics pronounced Miss Austin dead at the scene

She had been working for Estate and Field Management Ltd, to clear a number of the dying trees for the National Trust estate on December 7.

An inquest into her death heard that the standard way to fell trees is to climb them and cut into small sections from the top.

But Ash trees with dieback disease are known to be brittle, making them too dangerous to climb and use the normal method of cutting the foliage safely.

Coroner James Dillon heard that Miss Austin and her two colleagues, William Jordan and Jerry Edwards, agreed to use the more traditional method of cutting the tree manually from the bottom of the trunk.

They ruled out the usual preferred methods of felling as they were not suitable for the location and the state of the trees.

Miss Austin began using a chainsaw to make a V-shaped cut through a third of the trunk on one side, before cutting through the other side.

The tree should have 'hinged' over the missing wedge before falling in that direction according to Kent Online.

The team realised that the tree would fall across a public footpath seven meters away, so stationed Mr Jordan near the area to keep anyone out of harm's way.

But the trunk of the Ash tree Miss Austin was felling suddenly split upwards, causing the trunk to shear off 25ft above her and crash into her.

Mr Jordan explained to the hearing that it all happened in 'less than a second', with Miss Austin unable to move out of the way, as he rushed to help.

He began desperately cutting the tree trunk in an attempt to get it off her, as two walkers called the emergency services.

She was initially alive but unconscious after the horror incident, but paramedics declared her as dead when they arrived on scene.

A post-mortem found she had died from haemorrhage and poly trauma, suffering from a crushed chest, pelvis and leg.

The team had been several days into the work on the Ightham Mote estate, which was expected to take a month, when the tragedy happened.

Mr Jordan explained to the inquest that felling certain trees in the area were challenging, because it was on a slope and surrounded by brambles.

He added that Miss Austin seemed to be struggling to find an ideal stance, but explained it was 'understandable' why she had cut the Ash tree at the height she had.

An inquest heard that Debbie was 'one in a million' and 'irreplaceable'. A jury of five men and five women reached a conclusion of accidental death

A Health and Safety Executive investigator found that the entire team had the correct equipment for the job. They also found that the method of cutting the tree down was appropriate in the circumstances

After inspecting the trunk the following day realised that it would have been possible to cut lower down with a heavier chainsaw, which would have been more difficult to handle on the terrain.

Her death was investigated by the Health and Safety Executive, with Inspector Kevin Golden explaining to the inquest that all staff had the necessary qualifications and had recently attended a refresher course.

He agreed that the method use by the team was appropriate in the circumstances and they had all been supplied with the correct protective equipment.

Insp Golden added that the accident was caused by the diseased condition of the tree, and said that Ash trees with dieback were 'unpredictable.'

He said: 'Unfortunately this type of work has a very high level of accidents and fatalities.'

A jury of five men and five women reached a conclusion of accidental death at Miss Austin's inquest.

Paying tribute to Miss Austin, her partner Michelle-Austin Jones told the inquest that she was 'one in a million' and always gave '100per cent into everything she did.'

She added: 'She is irreplaceable. The world is a much darker place without her. She will be missed terribly by all her family and friends.

'To finally find the love you have been searching for all of your life and then to lose her four years later is unbearable.

'Debbie truly was a beautiful soul, strong and inspirational. I will miss her for the rest of my life.'

A National Trust spokeswoman added: 'We are deeply saddened by Deborahs death while working for one of our contractors on the Ightham Mote estate on 7 December 2021.

'We offer our deepest sympathy to her family and friends.'
A call centre worker who quit her job in disgust after her boss ordered her back to her desk during the Covid-19 pandemic has won more than 15,000 in damages.

Administrator Bridget Regnante, 51, said she was too 'terrified' to give up her work from home status as her 66-year old husband was shielding following treatment for cancer.

But her team leader Lawrence King suggested she was 'exaggerating' her situation as she made regular shopping trips to Tesco to buy groceries for herself and husband of eight years Giuseppe.

He even advised that she move into a hotel simply so she could be in the office.

Eventually Mr King said if Mrs Regnante wanted to work from home he would place her on unpaid leave instead and added: 'You will need to come to work effective from after your lunch break today recognising social distancing.

Call centre worker Bridget Regnante (pictured), 51, said she was too 'terrified' to give up her work from home status as her 66-year old husband, Giuseppe (pictured), was shielding following treatment for cancer

'If you decide that you do not want to go ahead with this, then you will be on unpaid leave until you feel safe to return to work.

'As you know, the country is on a standstill and as key workers, we all need to work together to get through this.

'If the service requires you to work in the call centre, we will continue to request this from you. This is a suitable expectation..'

Mrs Regnante, of Worthing, West Sussex subsequently quit her job at Essex Care Limited which provides care and equipment to people in their homes.

She later sued for constructive and unfair dismissal saying she was left 'hurt' by Mr King's treatment.

At a tribunal she won 15,760.32 including 5,500 compensation for detriments she suffered on health and safety grounds after her husband represented her during the online hearing.

The hearing was told Italian-born Mr Regnante who runs a construction business had been diagnosed with stomach cancer in July 2018 and subsequently underwent extensive chemotherapy and then operations to remove his spleen and stomach.

When lockdown began in March 2020, Mrs Regnante was so worried her husband was at risk of the virus she would wash all their groceries and the couple slept in separate rooms.

She barely left their property and would only make trips to her local Tesco during quiet periods as there was a three-week waiting list for online deliveries.

She was initially allowed to work from home but her company laptop was not always working and phone calls were not routinely diverted to her at home.

By April 2020 just weeks after the lockdown began Mr King was said to have grown 'impatient' with her, claiming she was only capable of doing 50 percent of her work from home.

On a Sunday Mrs Regnante was called in to carry out an evening shift for the call centre at the firm's Worthing office when she discovered she was covering for a colleague who had Covid symptoms and whose son was in hospital with the virus.

On arrival back home she emailed Mr King saying: 'When you rang me today to ask me to do the call centre shift, I was a bit taken aback that you asked me, given the fact that I am social distancing for 12 weeks due to Giuseppe being at high risk and shielding.

'He does not leave the house at all and I go out only for a walk, to go to get groceries to get any medication he needs.

'I said "yes" as I was caught on the hop and didn't have time to think.

'A little later, I thought that I could touch infected surfaces and felt ill at ease, but then I thought, I will do this shift and no others, and remember to wash hands, use hand gel and be generally very careful.

'I don't know what you were thinking asking me to come to the office with this whole situation going on.

'I am now terrified that I will bring/already have brought it into the house.

'I cannot come to the office again to do call centre shifts. I need to protect Giuseppe.'

But Mr King retorted: 'I gave you the option to come into the office yesterday to work in the call centre.

'You can easily practise social distancing as you know you can work from the back office where you can work alone listening to the phone ringing and it is easy to distance yourself from CCA's coming into the office.

'Secondly, I am very concerned that you feel coming to an empty office is a concern but, as you stated on the phone, going to Tesco to do a weekly shop is still something you continue to do.

'We have been following the guidelines set out by the government and by allowing you to work at home, during normal office hours, is more than acceptable.'

He later sent her a spreadsheet to complete so he could see what she was doing all day and challenged nine answers Mrs Regnante gave when asked to complete a WFH questionnaire.

When Mrs Regnante was advised by her IT colleagues to make a two hour round trip to Essex to get her officer laptop fixed, Mr King questioned why her husband drove her.

The hearing was told the firm had installed hand sanitiser units around the office and provided the 15 staff who worked there with masks, antibacterial wipes, tissues and hand cream and staggered start times in a bid to make the area 'Covid safe'.

Giuseppe Regnante (pictured) was said to be clinically extremely vulnerable, having survived stomach cancer in 2018 - undergoing chemotherapy and operations to remove his spleen and stomach

But Mrs Regnante said there was little evidence of any precautions when she came in for her evening shift and she eventually messaged her manager saying: 'Giuseppe is at very high risk of becoming seriously ill if infected.

'I cannot risk becoming infected and feel that coming to work would leave me exposed to potentially contaminated surfaces and it is difficult to social distance all of the time, with the best of intention.

'With COVID-19 being such an infectious disease, I don't believe we can be certain of not contracting it if it is present around us.

'With my husband having two vital organs missing affecting his immune system and having had chemotherapy in the past 12 months, I will not take the chance of this happening.

'I know there probably are people working across the company who live with people who are shielding and who work at ECL sites.

'However, this is very much their call to make and we are all different.

'The government advice from the beginning has been very clear, i.e. that people must work from home, unless it's absolutely not possible to do so.

'I hoped my managers would be able to accommodate me with this situation but I have no alternative but to reluctantly hand in my notice, in order to protect my husband from any risks that attending the office would entail.

'I do not have confidence that the measures put in place at the Worthing office will be effective, due to its size and the amount of people working in the said environment.'

In his ruling, employment Judge Eoin Fowell criticised Mr King for being 'blunt, uncompromising, hostile and unsympathetic' in his emails to Mrs Regnante.

The judge added: 'The thrust of the government guidance was that the population in general, and Mrs Regnante in particular, should have stayed at home unless absolutely necessary.

'That guidance also placed an obligation on the employer to help her with that and to discuss things with her but it does not seem that much was done to facilitate her working from home.

'She had some IT equipment, which was problematical, and the onus was put on her to sort it out.

That put her in the difficult position at one stage of a long drive to Brentwood, at a time when police were stopping cars thought to be making unnecessary journeys, and the company then sought to use that journey as a reason why she should be able to work in the office.

'The vast majority of her tasks could have been done at home but the company appears to us more concerned with fairness arguments, which essentially boil down to asking, "Why should she get away with being at home?"

'The emphasis placed by the company on getting her back into the office seems out of all proportion to the benefit to be gained by the company.

'It is particularly surprising that the company would go to the extreme of suggesting that she go to live in a hotel, which would probably cost more than her wages just so she can be back in the office from time to time.

'Fundamentally, she was an administrator, working in a support role, with a clinically extremely vulnerable husband, who was able to do most of her work from home.

'The risk to Mr Regnante, if he caught Covid, was very serious.

'Even a 1% chance of bringing Covid into the house would quite reasonably be viewed as an unacceptable risk.

'There was no real recognition anywhere that Mrs Regnante genuinely believed she was putting her husband's life at risk if she came into the office.

'The difficulties of working from home seem to have been exaggerated and escalated unnecessarily.'
Bizarre footage has emerged showing a delivery man walking towards a home before suddenly turning around and walking back to his vehicle.

Posted to social media site Reddit under the title 10 more steps man, the CCTV footage shows a delivery driver who has clearly just got off a motorbike.

He is wearing a hi-viz green/yellow helmet and matching jacket and walking at a brisk pace to deliver a small package.

Then, just 10 steps away from delivering it to the Brisbane address, he changes his mind and turns around to head back to his bike.

Though the footage is unusual in that it was so clearly captured on video, it's far from a rarity, as dozens of commenters - some of them very angry - reported.

A delivery man is pictured about to deliver a package, but the next moment he changed his mind, turned around and walked back to his motorbike

One poster said that despite him specifically saying his package could be dropped at his door, he was instead left with a card to pick it up a 45 minute drive away.

'I paid $100 for it to be dropped at my door,' they said.

Another poster said 'Their 2 minutes saving cost me half an hour of going to the post office, waiting in line, and picking up the item that should have been delivered to my doorstep. Multiply that by the number of people they do this to on any given day.'

Many people wrote that they were at home when a delivery attempt was supposedly made.

'I was home from work, waiting for package,' wrote one person. 'Next thing I get an alert that the package was attempted to be delivered but no one was home.

'Like f*** no one was home. My car was in the driveway and I was sitting in the lounge room right near the front door. And they didnt even leave a card.'

One poster wrote that they previously worked as a postie. 'I would make a point of knocking/ringing the bell twice, then leaving the card if there was no answer,' the wrote.

'One day I was delivering a package to a house, pulled up the bike and knocked on the door twice, as I began to walk away they answered it and I gave them their package.

Two seconds later, having changed his mind about making a delivery, the man is on his way back out again

'As I handed it over, another Auspost courier pulled up, jumped out the door, threw a card in the letter box and drove away. Didn't even look at us even though we were less than 3m away. I got the guy's plate and put in a report myself that day.'

Some posters had a laugh at the situation, though. 'I don't understand all of the rage, he clearly hit his step quota for the day,' wrote one.

Another picked up on this theme, writing '10,000 and not another step more.'

But one person defended those on tight delivery runs. 'I just wanna make a point, most posties have approx 1400-2000 delivery points on their run and splits,' one wrote.

And finally, job not done, the man is about to mount his bike and ride off to the next delivery address

'Waiting at doors and knocking for a minute or two really adds up. Australia Post is to blame for putting their posties on huge runs, that are pretty unachievable without overtime most days.

'Its the same when people complain about posties leaving tyre marks on lawns. If you want them to walk from the road, thats 6-8 seconds x 2000.

'People just dont realise how under the pump you can be.'

That sympathy for posties was in short supply, though, even if some people were confused as to what actually happened.

A commenter tried to clear it up, explaining that it 'looks like he was checking for a car, if there was a car he probably would have attempted delivery.

'But saw no car and thought he could get away with saving 30 seconds.'
An EasyJet flight was forced to make an emergency landing at Edinburgh Airport after the captain fell ill on approach and had to use the toilet.

Chaos unfolded on the four-and-a-half hour flight from Heraklion, Crete, in the early hours of Sunday morning as 'young looking' first officer was forced to land the plane instead.

According to passengers, the captain was seen entering the plane's toilet and didn't come out until the aircraft was on the runway in Scotland's capital.

The captain onboard EasyJet flight EZY6938 fell ill and the plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Edinburgh Airport (pictured) before paramedics rushed on to the runway in response

Holidaymakers were allegedly told over the tannoy system on flight EZY6938 that the captain had taken ill - as emergency services scrambled on the runway as the plane landed.

It's believed the pilot and co-pilot had been on duty for 13 hours because of several delays taking off to the Greek island earlier on.

Five fire engines and two ambulances came to the pilot's aid as the EasyJet flight landed in Edinburgh and the captain was treated by paramedics, according to witnesses.

It's not known what caused the captain's illness.

The EasyJet flight from Crete to Edinburgh was forced to make an emergency landing after the captain fell ill and had to use the toilet in the early hours of Sunday morning - and passengers claim that the pilot didn't re-emerge until they had landed (stock image)

One passenger told The Daily Record: 'The captain had been seen going into the toilet and not coming out.

'The very young looking co-pilot announced on the tannoy that the emergency response was due to the captain taking ill.

'It is unknown if the captain returned to cockpit for landing, but he was not seen to do so.'

The airline confirmed that the flight made an emergency landing - but they didn't comment on whether the captain remained in the toilet until landing.

An EasyJet spokesperson said: 'EasyJet can confirm that flight EZY6938 from Heraklion to Edinburgh on 12 June requested an expedited landing due to the Captain becoming unwell while on approach to Edinburgh.

'The First Officer landed the aircraft in line with standard operating procedures and the Captain was met by paramedics on arrival as a precaution.

'The safety and wellbeing of our passengers and crew is always easyJet's highest priority.'

Edinburgh Airport declined to comment.

This comes as travel disruption continues across the UK - as the industry struggles to deal with staff shortages and post-pandemic holiday demand.

EasyJet has pre-emptively cut about 40 flights a day for the rest of this month to reduce further airport chaos for British holidaymakers as huge queues continued to affect passengers at Bristol, Manchester and Heathrow today.

Tourists flying with Britain's biggest airline in recent weeks have had their flights cancelled just hours before take-off and found themselves stranded for days abroad with many having to return to the UK by road or rail.

A source at Gatwick said that the airport is being hit by a 'meltdown every night' due to air traffic control staff shortages - amid concerns the situation could worsen when demand surges again in the summer holiday.
A Perth teenager has been charged after a semi-automatic assault rifle made using a 3D printer was allegedly found inside his home.

Police said the homemade weapon was discovered by Drug and Firearm Squad detectives inside a home in Bayswater, in Perth's northeast, on June 3.

The rifle, which has been built using plastic and other materials, can fire 15 bullets with just one pull of the trigger and is capable of firing 9mm rounds.

Western Australia Police will allege an 18-year-old man constructed the unlicensed weapon using a 3D printer and other materials.

Police said the homemade weapon (pictured) was discovered by Drug and Firearm Squad detectives inside a home in Bayswater, in Perth's northeast, on June 3

He has been charged with a series of firearm offences including the unlicensed manufacture of firearms or ammunition and possession of a prohibited weapon.

Detective Senior Sergeant Blair Smith described the discovery of the assault rifle as 'deeply concerning' and said it held no place in the community.

'Although it resembles a toy it has the ability to cause serious harm within our community,' he told reporters during a press conference on Monday.

'It's deeply concerning that this man was able to manufacture this firearm at home with a 3D printer and readily available materials.

Detectives also seized from the Bayswater home a 3D printer, a suppressor, ammunition, a manufacturing station and a number of gel blasters (pictured, the 3D-printed assault rifle)

'These types of firearms are unregulated, unlicensed and have no place within our community.

'That is a semi-automatic 9mm assault rifle in essence.'

The discovery marks the first time a fully-functional 3D printed firearm has been seized in Western Australia.

WA Police have since introduced a new taskforce to specifically target the people manufacturing homemade arsenal.

The outside of the four kilogram weapon is made of plastic while the inside consists of fully-functioning parts made using 3D technology.

Detective Senior Sergeant Blair Smith (pictured holding the weapon) described the discovery of the assault rifle as 'deeply concerning' and said it held no place in the community

It can take just 48 hours to manufacture a gun with materials costing as little as $40, while a 3D printer can cost $6,000, 7News reported.

Detectives also seized from the Bayswater home a 3D printer, a suppressor, ammunition, a manufacturing station and a number of gel blasters.

The 18-year-old man has been charged with the unlicensed manufacture of firearms or ammunition among other firearm offences.

Police said the teenager has never held a valid firearms license.

He is due to appear before the Perth Magistrates Court on June 22.
A charity has begun another legal challenge to Priti Patel's plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda - as pictures emerged showing migrants waiting at a Gatwick Airport detention centre.

Asylum Aid, which provides legal advice to asylum seekers, has asked a High Court judge to temporarily block ministers from enforcing the removal of 'any asylum seeker' to Rwanda.

It comes as an earlier hearing - involving the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), and charities Care4Calais and Detention Action - heard that just 11 asylum seekers are set to be on the first plane tomorrow.

Around 100 people were originally notified they were due for deportation under the policy, dropping to 31 on Friday after a wave of litigation and the total now barely in double digits.

The first flight is due to leave tomorrow. Brook House removal centre near Gatwick has been a focus of protests against the policy, and today inmates were seen waving at photographers.

Detainees at the Brook House Detention Centre at Gatwick airport today ahead of the Rwanda Asylum flight tomorrow

Brook House - pictured today - is privately operated by Serco on behalf of the Home Office

Migrants waved at photographers from behind the metal fences surrounding the centre

This afternoon, lawyers for Asylum Aid argued that the procedure was unfair.

Barrister Charlotte Kilroy QC, who led Asylum Aid's legal team, asked Mr Justice Swift to impose an 'urgent interim' injunction - to give time for the charity's claim to be fully argued.

'The claimant is applying for an urgent interim order that the defendant be prohibited from enforcing the removal of any asylum-seeker to Rwanda pursuant to 'safe third country' decisions taken under the new arrangements the defendant has adopted ... pending the outcome of this claim,' she said in a written case outline.

'It is the claimant's case that the highly abbreviated procedure the defendant has adopted for taking those decisions is inconsistent with the statutory powers conferred on her by Parliament, (is) procedurally unfair and constitutes a serious impediment to access to justice.'

Ms Kilroy added: 'Without interim relief there is ... a real risk that individuals will be unlawfully removed to Rwanda without access to court and may suffer irreparable damage as a result.

'Given the nature of the decisions taken, in a context where only the highest standards of fairness will suffice and fundamental rights ... are in issue, the Claimant submits that the balance of convenience lies strongly in favour of the grant of the interim relief it seeks.'

Lawyers for the Home Secretary said Asylum Aid's claim should be dismissed.

Earlier today, the PCS - which represents more than 80 per cent of Border Force staff - joined with Care4Calais and Detention Action to challenge Friday's High Court ruling that the first flight to the east African country could go ahead.

Priti Patel - pictured at the Queen's Jubilee celebrations - is seeking to defend her flagship policy against a raft of legal challenges

Boris takes a swipe at Prince Charles over his Rwanda migrant flight row criticism Boris Johnson took a thinly-veiled swipe at Prince Charles today as he defended plans to send Channel migrants to Rwanda. The PM hit out at 'very active lawyers' who have been trying to block the government from deporting the first batch to the African country. Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Mr Johnson insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers. Without directly criticising the heir to the throne, the premier said pointedly: 'What I don't think we should support is continued activity by criminal gangs.' He added on LBC: 'I do think that it's the job of Government to stop people breaking the law and to support people who are doing the right thing; that's what we are doing.' The Mail revealed over the weekend that Prince Charles has privately condemned the Rwanda asylum plan, saying giving Channel migrants a one-way ticket to Africa was 'appalling'. Clarence House has stressed that the royal is politically neutral. Downing Street later said Boris Johnson has 'nothing but respect and admiration' for the Prince of Wales after he reportedly criticised the Rwanda policy. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales, who's spoken out on a number of issues, not least the environment.' Advertisement

Raza Husain QC said the policy featured 'a serious interference with basic dignity' and that the High Court judge had wrongly assessed the strength of their claim.

He said in written submissions: 'The policy presently involves executive detention, forcible removal from the jurisdiction, transportation to a country from which they have not sought protection and to which they do not wish to go, in circumstances where the individuals concerned are exercising a legal right; and their removal is intended to deter others.

'This amounts, on any view, to a serious interference with basic dignity... where those individuals have already suffered significant trauma and have mental health issues.'

Mr Husain argued that the High Court judge who refused to block the flight on Friday, Mr Justice Swift, had wrongly decided the 'balance of convenience'.

He said in written submissions: 'If interim relief is refused and the claim succeeds, each claimant will be entitled to a 'bring back' order.

'If it is possible to bring the individuals back, which it may not be, this will have very significant administrative cost.

'Every individual who has been forcibly removed is also likely to have significant claims for damages... This potential cost to the taxpayer, in itself outweighs any inconvenience of a six-week delay pending removal pending trial.'

The Home Office has defended the policy.

Rory Dunlop QC, for the department, said: 'The flight tomorrow is important.

'This is a policy which is intended to deter dangerous and unnecessary journeys, journeys from safe third countries by people who do not need to make that journey to be safe, they can claim in France or wherever it is.

'This is a policy that if it works, could save lives as well as disrupting the model of traffickers.

'Even if we are just talking about cancelling a flight tomorrow, there is prejudice to the public interest, to the enactment of decisions that may have that deterrent effect.'

The High Court heard the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has multiple concerns about the system in Rwanda, including discriminatory access to asylum, a lack of legal representation and other 'deep-rooted structural problems'.

Protesters outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London today for the ruling on Rwanda deportation flights

Today, Mr Dunlop said: 'The Secretary of State has listened and seriously considered the concerns raised by the UNHCR and has deliberately negotiated arrangements to provide assurances in relation to those concerns.'

Lord Justice Singh, Lady Justice Simler and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith are due to give their decision on the appeal on Monday afternoon.

A second case is also due to be heard in the High Court this afternoon after Asylum Aid, a refugee charity, applied for an urgent interim injunction to stop the Government flying migrants to Rwanda.

Home Office sources said human rights lawyers had tabled a 'deluge' of legal claims on behalf of the individuals due to be deported tomorrow.

They said there was a 'real prospect' the courts could delay the removal of all 31.

It means that even if the Court of Appeal today grants the Home Secretary the right to go ahead with the first removal flight, there may be no one to put on it.

Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's (left) apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Boris Johnson (right in Cornwall today) insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers

Today, Mr Johnson told LBC the Government had expected that 'very active lawyers' would try to challenge the Rwanda policy.

'We have always said that we knew that this policy would attract attacks from those who want to have a completely open-doors approach to immigration, who want people to be able to come across the Channel without let or hindrance,' he said.

'There are very active lawyers in this field. I have the utmost respect for the legal profession but it is also important we stop criminal gangs.'

Asked if the policy will be worth it if it results in just one person being removed, Mr Johnson said: 'I think it's very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people's lives at risk in the Channel is going to be broken  is being broken  by this Government.

'They are selling people a false hope, they are luring them into something extremely risky and criminal.'

Home Office sources said human rights lawyers had tabled a 'deluge' of legal claims on behalf of 31 individuals due to be deported tomorrow

Lawyers acting on behalf of the 31 migrants slated to be sent to Rwanda are said either to have lodged legal appeals or warned they would do so today.

'We are getting claims from every single one,' a source said. 'In many cases they are making multiple claims under various bits of the Human Rights Act and modern slavery legislation. Over the weekend there have been new claims every hour and we expect more right up to when the flight goes.

'We will operate the flight even if there is just one person on it, but there is a real prospect that even that might not be possible.'

Under the terms of the deal with Rwanda, those crossing the Channel illegally risk being given a one-way ticket to Kigali where they will have the chance to claim asylum in the African state.

Former security minister Sir John Hayes said it was 'ethically the right thing to do, as well as being in line with public demands to take back control of our borders'.

'I am sick to death of deranged do-gooders and fat cat lawyers frustrating government policy and the interests of the nation,' said Sir John, who chairs the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs. 'If we end up in a farcical situation where no one is allowed to get on a flight declared lawful by the courts because of spurious human rights challenges then we will have to repeal the Human Rights Act.

'We are already committed to reforming it and we may need to go further. Every major policy this Government tries to pursue is getting caught up by the long tail of Blairism through legislation like the Human Rights Act.'
Britons could be handed relief on rocketing household bills under Government plans to sever the link between the prices of gas and electricity, it has emerged.

Ministers are set to bring forward new laws under the Energy Security Bill to overhaul the UK's energy market in the face of the current cost-of-living crisis.

They have promised to provide greater protection for Britons against global fluctuations in energy prices.

The current worldwide crisis has been exacerbated by the Ukraine war, which has sent gas prices spiralling higher.

Under the current make-up of Britain's energy market, soaring gas prices have had a knock-on effect on electricity costs.

But it has now been reported the new legislation will seek to prevent future shocks in the global gas market having a similar impact on electricity prices.

Yet the overhaul might not come in time to ease rocketing energy bills ahead of this winter.

According to The Times, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng will outline proposals for reforms in the coming weeks.

These will then form part of the Energy Security Bill to be introduced in the autumn.

The newspaper said the plans will end the current system under which the wholesale cost of gas effectively determines the price of electricity for households.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng will reportedly outline proposals for reforms in the coming weeks

Under the current make-up of Britain's energy market, soaring gas prices have had a knock-on effect on electricity costs.

Under the current make-up of Britain's energy market, soaring gas prices have had a knock-on effect on electricity costs

More than a quarter of Britain's electricity comes from renewable sources, such as wind farms - but it is the most expensive generator that determines the price

Although more than a quarter of Britain's electricity comes from renewable sources, under current market rules it is the most expensive megawatt needed to meet demand that determines the price for all electricity generation.

This means that soaring gas prices have driven up all electricity costs in recent months, even though only around 40% of UK electricity comes from gas power stations.

Energy experts have compared the current market to train passengers having to pay the peak-period price for every journey they make.

One Government source told The Times: 'In the past it didnt really matter because the price of gas was reasonably stable.

'Now it seems completely crazy that the price of electricity is based on the price of gas when a large amount of our generation is from renewables.'

It was also claimed ministers hope the reforms will make the market more transparent and emphasise to consumers the benefits of decarbonisation.

A Government spokesperson said: 'The high global gas prices and linked high electricity prices that we are currently facing have given added urgency to the need to consider electricity market reform.

'We are considering a range of market reform options to help bring down the cost of energy and will set these out in our summer consultation.'

It is understood the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy are considering a similar intervention by the Spanish Government into electricity pricing.

Michael Grubb, professor of energy and climate change at University College London, wrote in an article earlier this year that the gap between the cheaper cost of renewable energy and the final electricity price was 'becoming unconscionable'.

He said: 'Since renewables and nuclear will always run when they can, it is fossil fuels  and at present, unequivocally gas, plus the cost of taxes on CO pollution  which set the price almost all the time, because some gas plants are needed most of the time, and they wont operate unless the electricity price is high enough to cover their operating cost.

'Its a bit like having to pay the peak-period price for every train journey you take.

'If renewables are now so much cheaper, why cant consumers buy electricity directly from them and avoid paying the gas and carbon costs?'

It has been suggested the planned reforms will bring an end to windfall profits made by some electricity generators who are not paid under the Contracts for Difference (CfD) system.

This offers low-carbon generators a fixed price for their electricity.

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit has already forecast that increasing use of wind power - provided under a fixed price - could save consumers further in the event of future gas crises.

Their analysis suggested, if another gas crisis was to occur five years in the future with wholesale prices of 200 per megawatt-hour for a year, wind farms with CfDs could provide a cost saving of 5.7billion to 6.7billion in a year, equivalent to 70 to 85 a year for each household.

They added that, if that crisis was repeated in ten years time - by which point the Government aims to have 40GW of offshore wind as part of the move to net zero - CfDs for wind power could save 23billion to 26billion in a year, equivalent to 290 to 330 per home.
Deductions related to the Covid-19 pandemic are set to form a major part of the tax return for millions of Australians as the financial year ends on June 30.

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) advises that from July 1, 2021 onwards, people who paid for a rapid antigen test for work-related purposes can claim them as a deduction.

You may also be able to claim a deduction for items such as gloves, face masks or sanitiser used for work purposes, so make sure you keep receipts.

But the biggest pandemic-related claim for most people will be an allowance of 52c for every hour spent working from home.

Face masks are tax-deductible, but only if used for work and not already reimbursed by an employer. Pictured is a woman running while wearing a face mask next to an empty Bondi beach in Sydney

The 2021-2022 tax returns will be complicated by the fact that many workers returned to the office part-time - with some days working from home and others in the office.

This will mean calculating work from home expenses on a day-by-day basis.

If you bought something to protect yourself from Covid at work - for example face masks if you work in retail - you will need to prove they were not reimbursed by your employer.

With RATs, you can only claim a deduction for the tests you used to prove you were Covid-19 negative to attend work - not for every test you took.

'If you purchased a Covid-19 test for a trip with your mates, you can't claim a deduction,' said Tim Loh, ATO assistant commissioner.

Some occupations may have other pandemic-related expenses not covered by the employer.

'If you're spending your working day in close proximity to customers and at risk of contracting Covid-19, you may be able to claim a deduction for protective items such as gloves, face masks or sanitiser,' Mr Loh said.

'This will be most common in industries such as retail, cleaning and hospitality.'

If the use of sanitiser is related to work, it could be claimed as a deduction on a tax return. Pictured is a woman using hand sanitiser

From July 1, 2021 onwards, people who paid for a rapid antigen test (pictured) for work-related purposes can claim them as a deduction

If you had any JobSeeker payments over the last year, these are counted as taxable income and will be automatically pre-filled in your tax return.

The federal government's Covid-19 disaster payment (delivered through Services Australia) is not taxable and does not need to be included in tax returns, but the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment is taxable.

Those who got the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment will need to add up all the amounts received and include the in their tax return as it is not prefilled.

'While the information isn't prefilled for you, not adding Pandemic Leave Disaster Payments to your tax return will delay the processing of your return and your potential refund,' Mr Loh said.

The ATO has warned taxpayers could receive less as they resume debt collections, after it was paused during the Covid pandemic

The ATO has warned it will resume debt collections, after they were paused during the Covid pandemic, and crack down on 'double dippers' - taxpayers who make claims on the same item more than once.

H&R Block director of tax communications Mark Chapman said the taxman will direct its focus on small business tax debts.

'That's pretty much gone into reverse now, the ATO takes the view that we're heading back to normal, Covid's done and dusted, therefore it's pursuing small business tax debts,' he said.

ATO deputy commissioner Vivek Chaudhary added: 'We understand that a lot of people  especially small businesses  have done it tough through Covid and may now have a tax debt.

'Our message is  don't stick your head in the sand  even if you can't pay the full amount owed straight away, please contact us or your registered tax professional to discuss and we will work with you to set up an appropriate payment arrangement.'
A Minnesota transgender woman who is serving prison time on a drug charge is suing the state Department of Corrections for discrimination after she was incarcerated in a men's facility where she has faced sexual and verbal abuse.

Christina Lusk, 56, has filed a lawsuit against the state corrections department seeking $50,000 in financial compensation because she was assigned to the men's prison and denied gender-affirming surgery.

Lusk, who is legally recognized as a female, has asked to be moved from the men's facility in Moose Lake to the women's prison in Skakopee.

Lusk, of Minneapolis, came out as transgender 14 years ago, started human therapy, and legally changed her name in 2018. The following year she pleaded guilty to a felony drug possession charge.

Jess Braverman, an attorney for the group Gender Justice, which is representing Lusk along with the Minneapolis law firm of Robins Kaplan, said her client is unsafe in Moose Lake.

'She's a woman, and suddenly she's placed in a men's facility. She's in a locked cell with a number of men, and she's really exposed to harassment and violence in that setting,' Braverman said.

Christina Lusk, 56, has filed a lawsuit against the state corrections department seeking $50,000 in financial compensation because she was assigned to the men's prison and denied gender-affirming surgery

Lusk, of Minneapolis, came out as transgender 14 years ago, started human therapy, and legally changed her name in 2018. The following year she pleaded guilty to a felony drug possession charge

While in prison, Lusk has also been denied gender-affirming surgery by corrections officials - despite doctors approving the procedure before she was incarcerated, the lawsuit says. She is set to be released in 2024.

Lusk has been seeking a vaginoplasty since her incarceration but DOC Medical Director James Amsterdam has determined that she should not be allowed the genital surgery whilst in prison, but 'could pursue that after release', according to the lawsuit.

Lusk wrote in the complaint: 'I have been diagnosed with severe Gender Dysphoria. I have attempted suicide four times due to my severe distress caused by my GD as well as self mutilation. My mental capacity is under control, and I am able to make good decisions as far as surgery.

'I have letters of support from my primary physician, my gender specialist, my therapist, as well as my psychiatrist, only two letters are required for surgery but I go up and beyond what is required.'

The move by the corrections department to hold Lusk in a men's prison and deny her the surgery is unconstitutional and a violation of her human rights, according to the lawsuit.

While in prison, Lusk has also been denied gender-affirming surgery by corrections officials - despite doctors approving the procedure before she was incarcerated, the lawsuit says

Lusk, who is legally recognized as a female, has asked to be moved from the men's facility in Moose Lake (pictured) to the women's prison in Skakopee

'Christina Lusk is recognized legally and socially as female - including by the state of Minnesota. Yet, the Minnesota DOC treats Ms Lusk as a man simply because she is transgender,' the lawsuit states.

The suit is seeking $50,000 in compensation for Lusk and a 'permanent mandatory injunction' requiring that Lusk be treated as a woman by the state prison system and removed from the men's prison in Moose Lake.

Lusk has been reprimanded for having breasts and wearing women's clothing, yet also scolded for going without a bra while her bras were in the wash, the lawsuit contends.

Lusk filed the first of two complaints with the state Department of Human Rights in early 2020. She alleged that prison staff housed her in a room with seven men, required her to change her clothes and use the bathroom with men, and called her by her former name.

Both requests to be moved were denied without explanation, according to the suit.

The Minnesota Department of Corrections did not comment on Lusk's lawsuit directly, but it said in a statement to Minnesota Public Radio News that it's 'committed to ensuring the safety and well-being' of transgender people.

The agency said it considers accommodation for transgender inmates on a case-by-case basis.

Robins Kaplan attorney Rebecca Bact told the Star Tribune her firm is assisting Lusk because she 'deserves proper housing, healthcare and a dignified existence free from discrimination.'

'Transgender people disproportionately face abuse and harassment in state institutions including jails and prisons, schools, healthcare facilities, and more,' Braverman told the newspaper.

'Every person in custody deserves to be protected from violence and harassment,' she continued. 'We need our systems, such as the [Minnesota] Department of Corrections (DOC), to do better now to protect all vulnerable groups, including transgender people.'
A 70-year-old British man has been accused of raping his 34-year-old daughter while on holiday on the Greek island of Crete.

The man, who has not been identified, was arrested Saturday after his daughter went to cops two days before to say she was attacked in the town of Malia.

The victim, who was on holiday, admitted being drunk and said she could not remember anything about her attacker, save that he was wearing all-white clothes.

Officers who reviewed CCTV footage said the pair had been drinking together in a bar when the father made obscene gestures to his daughter, hit her in the face, followed her out onto the street and then raped her on a deserted beach.

A 70-year-old British man has been arrested on the Greek island of Crete accused of raping his own 34-year-old daughter on an abandoned beach (file image)

Police say her father was wearing all-white clothing in the CCTV images.

Medical examiners told local newspaper Neakriti that the woman was 'covered' in injures that were consistent with stones and branches found on the beach.

Examiners added that she also had injuries consistent with rape, and that DNA samples have been collected.

Police arrested the father on Saturday and brought him in handcuffs to a local magistrate's office where he was charged with felony rape, sexual abuse, and domestic violence offences.

The man has pleaded not guilty to the charges and vehemently denies being responsible, local media says. DNA samples have been collected for comparison.

The victim is said to be in a state of disbelief and has told police that her father could not have carried out the attack - though it is not clear whether she has been presented with any of the evidence.

Police will keep the father in detention until at least Tuesday, which is the deadline for him to issue a public apology for the crime.

Greek law allows for reduced sentences for people who admit their guilt and apologise, and is available to those accused of rape.

An Foreign Office spokesperson said: 'We are providing consular support to a British woman in Greece.'
First lady Kim Keon-hee, left, and President Yoon Suk-yeol pose with one of their dogs at the presidential office in Seoul, May 29. Screenshot from Facebook account of first lady Kim Keon-hee's supporters



By Lee Hae-rin



First lady Kim Keon-hee called for animal rights in her first media interview given since her husband, President Yoon Suk-yeol, took office on May 10.



"Korea and China are the only two economically successful countries that consume dog meat," Kim said during an interview with local newspaper Seoul Shinmun that was published on Monday. "I believe the universal culture (of not consuming dog meat) should be shared in Korea with other developed countries. Otherwise, it could stoke an anti-Korean sentiment," Kim said.



To end the practice, Kim said the government could support dog meat traders to transition into new industries, underlining the unsanitary environment in which dogs are raised before being consumed as meat.



"Dog meat is not good for health. Dogs that are raised to be consumed as meat are locked in small cages, where they eat, sleep and defecate all their lives. And some of them are even fed antibiotics," Kim said. "Ultimately, dog meat consumption must be stopped out of respect for man's best friend and life."



Yoon and Kim live together with seven companion animals  four dogs and three cats. Five of those animals had been adopted from rescue shelters. Kim said she has volunteered to rescue or assist the adoptions of over 100 abandoned animals.



She also highlighted the need for strengthening punishment against animal abuse.



"Among developed nations, Korea has the weakest regulations on animal abuse," Kim said. "Over 15 million Koreans are pet parents now, and I believe strengthening punishment on animal abusers will help our society become more mature," Kim said.



According to the Animal Protection Act, those who abuse animals are subject to a maximum three-year jail term or fines of 30 million won. This is strong for international standards, but the maximum punishments have never been handed down.



Also, Kim said companion animals were a major ice breaker between Yoon and U.S. President Joseph Biden during their first Korea-U.S. summit on May 21. Major, Biden's canine companion, is also a rescue dog.



"Pet parents who live with animals that were once abandoned can have connections in many ways. The U.S. president is the most powerful man in the world, but a human-to-human bond could work things out. I heard that President Biden felt an affinity with Yoon. So I believe in terms of national interest, it was a successful summit," Kim said.



Kim said she hopes her husband's administration achieves progress in stopping animal abuse and abandonment and dog meat consumption. "I believe by respecting animals we can respect those who are most vulnerable in our society," Kim said. "So my priority is to raise awareness about animal rights. I believe that could solve many social problems."



Kim's media interview was published amid a largely negative public opinion about her taking up the role of first lady.



A recent survey on public attitudes toward the first lady showed that over half of the respondents think Kim should keep a low profile and support her husband without taking any official role in his administration.



According to the survey conducted by local pollster Next Research upon request from the broadcaster SBS, Saturday, 60.6 percent of 1,010 respondents said Kim should concentrate on assisting Yoon as a spouse, while 31.1 percent answered she could take an official role as first lady.



Regarding the rare media interview, an official from the presidential office said Kim seems to have accepted the interview request to establish her role in areas not covered by the president.



"There will be various activities the first lady can be involved in. My guess is that she had the interview (and talked mostly about animal rights) because that's the area she thinks she can do well in but is rarely addressed by her husband, so she can help him better focus on state affairs," the official told reporters.



Meanwhile, the presidential office said Kim would pay her respects to the late President Roh Moo-hyun at his gravesite and meet with his widow Kwon Yang-sook at Bongwha Village in North Gyeongsang Province, Monday. It is Kim's first officially scheduled event since her husband's inauguration over a month ago.


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The wreck of a royal warship that sank 340 years ago whilst carrying the future King James II could be raised from the seabed in an operation similar to the incredible recovery of the Mary Rose.

The discovery of HMS Gloucester, 28 miles off the coast of Great Yarmouth, was announced last week.

The wreck had been found by amateur divers in 2007 but the news was kept secret to allow many artefacts to be carefully salvaged from the sea.

Professor Claire Jowitt, a maritime history expert at the University of East Anglia, called it the most important maritime discovery since the Mary Rose - the warship from the Tudor navy of King Henry VIII  was raised in 1982.

Now, the former head of the British Army, Lord Dannatt, who is due to chair a charity caring for items recovered from the Gloucester, has said the vessel could be lifted from the seabed.

He said the ship could be brought 'up to the surface like the Mary Rose'.

The Mary Rose was lifted from the Solent in October 1982 in an operation that was watched by an estimated 60million people on television.

The wreck of a royal warship that sank 340 years ago whilst carrying the future King James II could be raised from the seabed in an operation similar to the incredible recovery of the Mary Rose. Above: A depiction of the moment the HMS Gloucester ran aground

The discovery of HMS Gloucester, 28 miles off the coast of Great Yarmouth, was announced last week. The wreck had been found by amateur divers in 2007. Above: Diving brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell are seen measuring a cannon from the ship

Now, the former head of the British Army, Lord Dannatt, who is due to chair a charity caring for items recovered from the Gloucester, has said the vessel could be lifted from the seabed. He said the ship could be brought 'up to the surface like the Mary Rose' in October 1982. Above: The Mary Rose being lifted from the Solent

The 'outstanding' 60-gun Gloucester, a frigate, sank on May 6, 1682 after hitting the Norfolk sandbanks in the southern North Sea.

How did HMS Gloucester sink? The vessel's sinking is a matter of great historical debate. Some accounts claim the vessel sank as a result over a dispute between James, a former Lord High Admiral, and the ship's pilot James Ayres about the best route through the treacherous Norfolk sandbanks. James barely survived, and delayed abandoning ship until the last minute - possibly resulting in the deaths of sailors who were forbidden to leave the ship before the 'persons of quality' as royalty were known. James took no responsibility for the disaster, instead blaming the pilot who he demanded be hanged immediately. Mr Ayres was instead court-martialled and imprisoned. James went on to reign as King James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland from 1685 until 1688, when he was deposed by the Glorious Revolution. Diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys, who witnessed events from another ship in the fleet, wrote his own account - describing the harrowing experience for victims and survivors, with some picked up 'half dead' from the water. As well as James, HMS Gloucester carried a number of prominent English and Scottish courtiers including John Churchill, later the 1st Duke of Marlborough. Advertisement

James Stuart, who would be Britain's last Catholic king, survived the sinking but up to 250 sailors and passengers lost their lives, largely due to his actions.

James barely survived, having delayed abandoning ship until the last minute, needlessly costing the lives of between 130 and 250 people on board who, because of protocol, could not abandon the ship before royalty.

Speaking to the BBC yesterday about the possible raising of the Gloucester, Lord Dannatt said: 'Whether the hull is intact I probably doubt it, but it is more likely it went down stern-first and the stern [rear] section is almost certainly intact.

'That is probably recoverable and we may be able to bring it up to the surface like the Mary Rose - which is why we say the Gloucester is Norfolk's Mary Rose.'

The former Army chief also wants to raise money to continue the excavation of the site where the ship lies.

The Mary Rose was raised from the Solent, the strait north of the Isle of Wight, in October 1982 after an 11-year salvage operation.

More than 500 volunteer divers and many others on shore helped with the work.

The ship sank while on its way to battle against the French in 1545.

Henry VIII was watching when the vessel met its fate. It is believed she tipped over after being overburdened with men and equipment.

Around 500 men lost their lives.

More than 60million people watched the 1982 raising operation on television.

To raise the ship, a purpose-built frame was built and attached to steel bolts that were passed through the hull.

The frame was supported above the ship on four legs and hydraulic jacks then lifted it just a few inches out of the suction effect of the silt in the Solent.

Once hanging from the frame, the hull was transferred to a steel cradle that was in place on the seabed west of the wreck.

When the weather and tide was favourable, on the morning of October 11, the cradle containing the Mary Rose was raised out of the water by a crane.

Prince Charles, who was president of the Mary Rose Trust, was there when the ship was raised.

He had dived several times to see the wreck in the Solent.

HMS GLOUCESTER: STATS Sailed under: Commonwealth of England (Royal Navy after 1660) Home port: Gloucester Weight: 755tonnes Length: 117ft Ordnance: 60 guns Crew compliment: No muster list survives Built: 1652-1654 Years of service: 30 Sank: 1682 after hitting Norfolk sandbanks Wreck found: 2007 (announced 2022) Advertisement MARY ROSE: STATS Sailed under: Tudor Navy Home port: Portsmouth, England Weight: 500, refit to 700 tons Length: Estimated at 148 feet (45 metres) Ordnance: 7891 guns Crew compliment: 400450 Built: 15101512 Years of service: 33 Sank: 1545, mid-battle, in the Solent Wreck discovered: 1971 Wreck raised: 1982 Advertisement

The Mary Rose is now on permanent display in Portsmouth.

A 39million 34-year restoration was recently completed.

During its restoration, the ship was coated with millions of litres of finely-sprayed, fresh water at a temperature of less than 5C (41F).

That process, along with a series of wax chemicals, were used to stop the wood drying out and to inhibit bacterial activity.

Then, in 1985, the ship was turned upright and titanium props were installed to support the internal structure and work was undertaken to remove as much sediment as possible.

From 1994, active conservation commenced with the spraying of Polyethylene Glycol (Peg), a water-soluble polymer which can penetrate deep into the wood and support the cell walls.

Then, in April 2013, the Peg sprays were turned off and the hull was kept in a state of controlled air-drying.

Once drying was complete, the internal walls surrounding the hull were removed so visitors would be able to see a completely unobstructed view of the hull

The wreck was found in 1971 thanks to the work of historian Alexander McKee.

He led a team that used sonar to first find what they believed to be the Mary Rose, before they found three port frames confirming it was the right vessel.

Henry VIII was watching when the Mary Rose (depicted above in a 16th century illustration) sank. It is believed she may have been overburdened with men and equipment. Above: A depiction of the sinking

Efforts to locate the Gloucester, led by brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, proved successful in 2007 after a four-year search covering 5,000 nautical miles.

Plans are underway to exhibit artefacts on board the ship that have been brought to land, including clothes, wine bottles and the ship's bell, used to conclusively confirm the wreck was the Gloucester.

The exhibition  jointly curated by the University of East Anglia and Norfolk Museums Service  will be staged for five months at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery from spring next year.

The disaster was witnessed by diarist Samuel Pepys, who was on another vessel in the fleet.

He wrote a harrowing account of victims and survivors being picked up 'half dead' from the water.

Professor Jowitt said last week: 'The discovery promises to fundamentally change understanding of 17th-century social, maritime and political history,' Professor Jowitt said.

'It is an outstanding example of underwater cultural heritage of national and international importance. Because of the circumstances of its sinking, this can be claimed as the single most significant historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Mary Rose in 1982.'

The Barnwells, who are printers by trade, decided to hunt for the Gloucester after reading about it in a book in 2003.

James Stuart, later James II of England (depicted here), survived the sinking but up to around 200 sailors and passengers lost their lives, largely due to the future king's actions

The all-important bell from the HMS Gloucester which sank off the Norfolk coast 340 years ago while carrying the future king James Stuart

Photo issued by the University of East Anglia (UEA) shows Julian and Lincoln Barnwell with the ship's bell - used to conclusively confirm the wreck was the Gloucester

As well as the ship's bell, divers found a pair of glasses in a wooden case and a bottle bearing the seal of the Legge family, who were ancestors of the first US President George Washington

Speaking of the moment they found the ship, Lincoln said: 'It was our fourth dive season looking for Gloucester,' he said.

'We were starting to believe that we were not going to find her. We'd dived so much and just found sand.

'On my descent to the seabed, the first thing I spotted were large cannon laying on white sand. It was awe-inspiring and really beautiful.

'It instantly felt like a privilege to be there. It was so exciting.

More than 60million people watched the raising operation on television. Above: The ship is seen inside the special frame that was used to lift it from the seabed

The Tudor warship 'Mary Rose' in her salvage cage at Portsmouth, UK, having been raised from the Solent

'We were the only people in the world at that moment in time who knew where the wreck lay.

'That was special, and I'll never forget it. Our next job was to identify the site as the Gloucester.'

In 2012 one of the rescued finds  the ship's bell, manufactured in 1681  was used by the Receiver of Wreck and Ministry of Defence to conclusively confirm the wreck was the Gloucester.

Even though the discovery is now public, the exact location of the wreck is protected and still cannot be disclosed.

Artefacts rescued and conserved from the wreck include clothes and shoes, navigational and other professional naval equipment, personal possessions, and many wine bottles.

The Barnwell brothers are Norfolk-based printers, licensed divers and Honorary Fellows in the School of History at UEA. Lincoln said he was partly inspired to search for the wreck after watching the lifting of the Mary Rose on television as a child

The frigate, which sank on May 6, 1682 after hitting the Norfolk sandbanks in the southern North Sea, was uncovered 28 miles off the coast of Great Yarmouth. The exact location of the wreck is protected and cannot be made public

One of the bottles bears a glass seal with the crest of the Legge family  ancestors of George Washington, the first US President.

The Legge family crest was a forerunner to the Stars and Stripes flag.

There were also some unopened bottles, with wine still inside, offering opportunities for future research.
A Florida man has been arrested after he unwittingly gave cops evidence showing him dragging a missing mother-of-two's body through his house.

William Redden, 51, was charged with abuse of a corpse after sharing with police footage of him pulling Stephanie Lynn Shenefield, 38, towards a 12ft ditch.

Shenefield had stayed at Redden's home in Palmetto but somehow died overnight before being reported missing two days later.

Officers asked Redden if they could see his surveillance footage and he complied but warned it did not show the inside of him home.

But cops were astounded when they found the video showed him dragging Shenefield's lifeless body wrapped in a blanket across the floor.

Meanwhile a disturbing TikTok clip from February also showed him laughing in the camera as he talked about his friend's girlfriend's corpse.

'An old friend just called me and told me police just called and found his girlfriend's body.

'I asked, what do you mean how did they find your girlfriend's body. I don't know because where they find it is not where I put it.'

Manatee County Sheriff spokesperson Randy Warren told DailyMail.com that the TikTok video was published months ago, and there is no connection with the case.

'I think the subject manner is very ironic about how he talks about a body being disposed of but we have been investigating the case for the last two weeks and don't see a connection,' Warren said.

He confirmed with DailyMail.com that Shenefield was not the girlfriend of Redden.

He said he is not sure how they knew each other but said that the pair were hanging out on their own accord.

Warren said Redden is a known drug dealer.

'It is a death investigation. The autopsy showed there are no signs of trauma,' Warren said. 'We are waiting on the toxicology report which will determined if there were any drugs in her [Shenefield's] system and possibly an accidental overdose.'

'Stephanie was badly decomposed,' Wells said, adding, 'it took us a while to identify her and notified the family,' Sheriff Wells said

Redden dumped the Florida woman's decomposed body into a 12-foot-deep drainage ditch in Palmetto, Florida.

Shenefield was last seen on June 3 in the 5300 block of 16th Street E in Bradenton, according to police.

The mother of two took an Uber to the home of William Redden at 1:20 am June 3, investigators said. Redden was an alleged drug dealer with eight convictions.

Shenefield's friends grew very concerned when she failed to show up to a concert they planned to attend together on the night she vanished, detectives said.

They also said she also had a medical condition and recently demonstrated worrisome behavior.

She was reported missing by her mother who said the family 'knew something was wrong' when they had not heard from her.

Shenefield's digital devices led police to the home of Redden. He was allegedly pictured on his home security camera carrying her out of his home into his car.

Two people found Shenefield's badly decomposed body in a 12-foot-deep ditch in Palmetto near railroad tracks.

Family and friends began posting fliers that offered a reward around town, a report said

William Redden was arrested on Thursday and charged with abuse of a corpse, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of an altered firearm

Redden was arrested on Thursday and charged with abuse of a corpse, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of an altered firearm.

Police said Shenefield's cause of death is still unknown.

Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells said Shenefield died inside the house and Redden allegedly disposed of her body instead of calling for help.

He said: 'The family knew that something was wrong. This was totally out of character for Stephanie'.

Investigators said Redden initially cooperated with police, allowing them to search his house.

They added that after they found footage of him carrying what they believed to be a body out of his house from his surveillance camera, Redden no longer cooperated.

'Sometime during the night, Stephanie dies inside that residence. We do not know the cause of death,' Sheriff Wells said.

'But what we do - is that William Redden does nothing about it. He doesn't call 911. He doesn't call authorities. He doesn't call anyone.'

Redden remains in custody after being arraigned and is on a $108,000 bond.

Police allege that the footage showed Redden dragging what appears to be a body wrapped in a sheet into the backseat of his car before driving off at about 12:20pm.

Family and friends began posting fliers that offered a reward around town, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

Stephanie Lynn Shenefield, 38, was found in a drainage ditch in Palmetto, Florida after a search was sparked by her June 3 disappearance in Bradenton

Shenefield's roommate helped investigators track her last known whereabouts after being able to get into her computer, according to Sheriff Rick Wells. The victim's account showed her latest activity was an Uber ride to the home of 51-year-old William Redden at 1:20 am June 3

Sheriff Wells said: 'With the help of Shenefield's roommate, detectives were able to access her laptop and discovered she had taken an Uber in the early hours of June 3 to the home of William Redden.'

Authorities then began tracking her electronic devices in an attempt to locate her body.

That's when they got a call from two Palmetto residents, who were out walking their dogs on Thursday, and spotted a body in a drainage ditch in a field.

'Stephanie was badly decomposed,' Wells said, adding, 'it took us a while to identify her and notified the family.'

Shenefield's friend of 10 years, Jennifer Massrock, told Spectrum News of her shock at the news.

'He deserves whatever he gets,' Massrock said. 'We're going to get justice for Stephanie.'

On Friday, an autopsy was performed to determine a cause and manner of death, sheriff's office spokesman Randy Warren said.

Redden remains in Manatee County Jail.


A mother-of-two has been ordered to pay compensation and not to contact a transgender woman after a row about whether she should be allowed to use female toilets.

Chinzia Ogilvie was involved in a social media spat with Ivy Burrows, in which she was accused of sending 'transphobic' messages that 'invited hate' against her.

The 43-year-old, who turned up to court in Portsmouth wearing a badge saying 'transwomen are men', argued fiercely that Ms Burrows should not be allowed to use women-only facilities, such as shared changing rooms.

The seven-hour exchange was said to have left Ms Burrows feeling 'scared' and 'distressed', while it was suggested during the discussion that she might be a paedophile, Portsmouth Magistrates' Court heard.

Chinzia Ogilvie (pictured) was accused of making 'transphobic' comments towards Ivy Burrows during Twitter row

The row erupted after trans woman Ms Burrows made a comment on Twitter about the suffragette movement and tagged Ogilvie on October 2, last year.

The court heard the pair had previously shared 'diametrically opposed views' on the platform.

Prosecutor Graham Heath told the hearing that as the debate degenerated, Ogilvie made offensive comments about the victim's genitalia which 'made her feel disgusted, violated and degraded'.

However, Tim Sparkes, defending, insisted Ms Burrows was not 'a vulnerable victim' but a 'political activist' who had started the conversation and also been the first to use a derogatory word.

Ogilvie turned up to court wearing a sticker that said 'transwomen are men'. Portsmouth Magistrates' Court heard she and Ms Burrows have 'diametrically opposed views'

He said the pair had known each other and exchanged opinions for five years.

Mr Sparkes told the court: 'They have diametrically opposed views they have set out on a number of occasions so it is not a new relationship or a new argument. Both put themselves out there in the public domain.'

He described the 'discussion point' as centring on Ms Burrows believing 'transgenders should be allowed to use female facilities with the defendant taking the contrary view'.

He claimed Ms Burrows was the first one to use a derogatory word before Ogilvie responded and 'lost her temper'.

Mr Sparkes added: 'It is difficult to say Ivy is a vulnerable victim. She is not. She was part and parcel of the discourse.

'If you are a person who starts up the conversation it is difficult to see how you exhibit vulnerabilities.'

Ogilvie, of Portsmouth, Hampshire, admitted a charge of sending by public communication an offensive and obscene message during the exchange.

In a 'victim impact statement' read to the court, Ms Burrows said Ogilvie had 'misgendered me' during the exchange on the public platform seen by other people.

Ogilvie was ordered to pay 300 to Ms Burrows by a district judge at Portsmouth Magistrates' Court (pictured)

She added: 'The comments about my genitalia were humiliating and degrading. It's led to me being anxious and stopping me going out.

'The anxiety the defendant has caused me has led me to rethink who I am and to think about returning to the closet.

'I am a transgender woman and am scared of the consequences.

'Her harassment made it difficult for me to be out as a transgender woman in Portsmouth.'

District judge David Robinson told Ogilvie her transgender views were not criminal but her 'behaviour became criminal' with the offensive messages 'demonstrating hostility' to transgender identification.

'The comments seen by Ivy and others left her humiliated and degraded and sought to sexualise her and suggest she was a paedophile,' he added.

Ogilvie was given a one-year community order with 120 hours of unpaid work and 15 rehabilitation days.

She was also ordered to pay 300 compensation, a surcharge of 95 and costs of 85 and handed a restraining order not to contact the victim for 12 months.
Schoolgirls are demanding that school uniforms stop being sold in sex shops and are banned from pornography after being sexually harassed.

A group of pupils from Sandbach High in Cheshire, have launched a campaign against the 'sexualised' costumes across the UK.

The girls and their teacher are calling for the government to make it illegal to display and sell school uniforms within sex shops.

Members of the feminism group say they were left feeling 'vulnerable and embarrassed' after being harassed, and want the clothing banned to 'stop the sexualisation of children'.

Sarah Maile set up the feminism group in the wake of Sarah Everard's death. She is supporting her students who created the petition and are demanding the law be changed

Pupils at Sandbach High, in Cheshire, are calling for change and launched a petition with the hope that it will be discussed in parliament. Schoolgirls have opened up about being cat-called and 'sexualised' while walking to and from school in their uniforms

They have started a petition to get the issue debated in parliament, which has so far gathered more than 4,000 signatures.

Sarah Maile, a teacher at the secondary school, set up the group for her pupils after the death of Sarah Everard.

She wanted to bring her students to gather and give them a space to discuss issues affecting women across the country.

Miss Maile told the MEN: 'We were talking about all the issues that women and girls face today and there are so many.

'School uniforms which are predominately worn by children under the age of 16 are used in pornography and sold in sex shops.

'We just think it's abhorrent and it's not right. Its hypersexualising children. School uniforms aren't sexy.

'We should be protecting our children. It shouldn't be legal for these things to be watched and enjoyed on a sexual level.

'A lot of it comes from the idea that school uniforms are sexualised so it perpetuates this society that suggests it's okay to sexualise children.

She also believes that the sexualisation of school uniforms has partially led to some of her students being cat-called or harassed on their way to school.

Schoolteachers Sarah Maile believes that more can be done to protect schoolchildren. She is also calling for the law to be changed after a discussion with her feminism group

The feminism group want school uniforms banned from sex shops and pornography and are calling for it to be made illegal. Schoolgirls want the clothing banned to stop the 'sexualisation of children'

Miss Maile added that her pupils have had cars slow down to talk to her them, and saying 'quite offensive' things, leading them to 'feel like it's their fault'.

She said: 'They feel so vulnerable and embarrassed. They feel like it's their fault and that's not okay.'

'Our pupils should feel safe to walk down the street to school to get their education without facing sexual harassment.'

Cheshire East councillor James Barber is backing the campaign, and is urging others to sign the petition.

He retweeted the petition, saying: 'I've signed this important petition because frankly it's disgusting that this is a genuine issue.

'Many thanks to Sandbach High and all the young people pushing on this important issue.'
An anti-racism training course has been criticised for telling university staff and students that 'cancel culture' has 'benefits'.

The 'Union Black' course says in one of its online modules: 'In relation to racial/social justice, cancel culture has been shown to realise benefits.'

According to The Telegraph, it also lists one 'benefit' of 'cancel culture' as being able to 'hold people or entities accountable for immoral or unacceptable behaviour'.

The course also reportedly urges participants to 'share collective expressions of moral outrage' and encourages them to become 'active allies' in advancing racial justice.

And it invites those taking part to sign a declaration of intent in which they can acknowledge that 'systemic racism is deeply entrenched in society'.

This is despite the opinion-splitting Sewell Report by the Commission on and Ethnic Disparities concluding last year that the 'claim the country is still institutionally racist is not borne out by the evidence'.

The training scheme, devised by the Open University and backed by banking group Santander, has been taught at almost 100 UK universities - including Leeds, Bristol and Imperial College.

And organisers say the course - dubbed a 'celebration of Black cultures and their contribution to British life' - is aimed at helping 'inform, spire and enable' participants to take 'steps towards anti-racism'.

But some of the material has come under fire from some groups, including the Free Speech Union, who have described its teaching of 'cancel culture' as 'disappointing'.

Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, told MailOnline: 'The practice of publicly shaming your intellectual opponents and calling for them to lose their livelihoods is absolutely abhorrent and has no place in universities.

The 'Union Black' course says one of the benefits of 'cancel culture' is that it can 'hold up people or entities accountable for immoral or unacceptable behaviour'

The course also urges participants to become 'active allies' in advancing racial justice and states 'we still live in a racist society'

The training scheme, devised by the Open University and backed by banking group Santander, has been taught at almost 100 UK universities - including Leeds, Bristol and Imperial College London (pictured: Library image)

Organisers say the course - dubbed a 'celebration of Black cultures and their contribution to British life' - is aimed at helping 'inform, spire and enable' participants to take 'steps towards anti-racism. Pictured: Bristol University (library image)

But some of the material has come under fire from some groups, including the Free Speech Union, who have described it as 'disappointing'. Pictured: Leeds University (library image)

'Academics should be free to dissent from prevailing campus orthodoxies without fear of punishment.

'For Santander and the Open University to be promoting cancel culture is deeply irresponsible. Academics should be encouraged to tolerate people whose views they disagree with, not to demand their defenestration.'

Meanwhile, the organisation's chief legal counsel, Bryn Harris, told The Telegraph: 'I am disappointed, though sadly not surprised, to learn that UK academics are being trained in the virtues of cancel culture.

The universities that have plugged Union Black on their websites University of Westminster University of Liverpool University of Sussex University of East London University of Birmingham Royal Holloway Leeds Bristol Imperial Strathclyde Bournemouth University Advertisement

'It seems instead that these materials were agitprop training materials, and that this is another sad example of UK universities' inability to be serious about academic freedom and freedom of speech.'

The free online course, devised by Open Universities and FutureLearn, was launched last year following a 500,000 investment from banking group Santander.

Named 'Union Black: Britain's Black Cultures and Steps to Anti-Racism', organisers aim for the course to 'explore Black cultures in Britain and provide learners with an understanding of the origins and experience of Black British history'.

Organisers say the course was in response to a Universities UK report called 'Tackling racial harassment in higher education'.

The report called on universities to improve racial literacy among senior leaders, staff and students and issued a set of recommendations for institutions to implement including 'training developed from an anti-racist perspective'.

But critics have taken against some of the material in the course, including its discussion of 'cancel culture'.

Cancel culture refers to a situation in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles  whether it be online, on social media or in person.

In one of the most high-profile examples, last year university professor Kathleen Stock lost her role at the University of Sussex following a social media storm - and student-led protests - over her views on gender.

Critics of 'cancel culture' have often accused online 'mobs' of enforcing moral conformity and stifling fair debate on important issues, including race and gender.

However, according to course documents in Union Black, the idea of calling out people for their views is 'a last-ditch appeal for justice'.

The free online course, devised by Open Universities and FutureLearn, was launched last year following a 500,000 investment from banking group Santander. Pictured: The sign up screen for the course

In one of the most high-profile examples, last year university professor Kathleen Stock (pictured) lost her role at the University of Sussex following a social media storm - and student-led protests - over her views on gender

Material in one online module states: 'In relation to racial/social justice, cancel culture has been shown to realise benefits.'

Examples of these benefits in the material include 'holding people or entities accountable for immoral or unacceptable behaviour'.

It also encourages 'promoting collective action to achieve social justice and cultural change through social pressure'.

The training is presented by Odunayo Andrew Akinwolere, previously known as Andy Akinwolere, who featured as a co-presenter on Blue Peter.

And it also boasts contributes from the likes of Professor David Olusoga - a British historian, writer, broadcaster, presenter and film-maker who has worked with the BBC and the Guardian.

Alongside its discussion on cancel culture, the course also urges that 'we still live in a racist society'.

It also says that 'the black/white dynamic and structural racism' play a significant role in 'all areas of modern life in western nations'.

However the claim goes against the views of the Commission on and Ethnic Disparities, led by Tony Sewell.

The report, published last year and which split opinions, said the 'claim the country is still institutionally racist is not borne out by the evidence'.

The claim goes against the views of the Commission on and Ethnic Disparities, led by Tony Sewell (pictured). The report, published last year and which split opinions, said the 'claim the country is still institutionally racist is not borne out by the evidence'

It concluded that racism is a 'real force' but said that Britain is no longer a country where the 'system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities'. It suggested social class was more of barrier to social justice.

Santander, in a statement to the Telegraph, said the course received a positive response.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Open University told MailOnline: 'We are proud to have worked together with Santander on developing this course which is aimed at increasing awareness of racism and building allyship to support inclusion.

'Feedback from participants on the course has been extremely positive, and we are recommending it to staff and students across all UK universities.

'We developed the content for the course in collaboration with leading academics in diversity and inclusion, from both inside and outside of The Open University'.

We are proud to have worked together with Santander on developing this course which is aimed at increasing awareness of racism and building allyship to support inclusion.

'Feedback from participants on the course has been extremely positive, and we are recommending it to staff and students across all UK universities.'

MailOnline has contacted Santander and Open University for a comment.
Millionaire Brexit-backing businessman Arron Banks has lost a historic High Court libel battle against investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr.

Mr Banks - one of the self-styled 'Bad Boys of Brexit' - sued Ms Cadwalladr for libel over a statement she made in a TED Talk in April 2019 and also a tweet she later posted which included a link to the talk.

During the video, which has been viewed by more than five million people since it was first broadcast online, Ms Cadwalladr referred to Mr Banks and the 'lies' that he had told 'about his covert relationship with the Russian government'.

Mr Banks - a major donor to the Leave.EU campaign in the run-up to the 2016 referendum - argued that the statements made by Ms Cadwalladr were 'false and defamatory' and sought damages and an injunction to restrain the continued publication of the remarks, which are still available to view online.

But, in a ruling on Monday, Mrs Justice Steyn dismissed Mr Banks' claim, concluding that Ms Cadwalladr held a 'reasonable belief' that her comments were in the public interest. The judgement follows a five-day hearing that took place in January.

Ms Cadwalladr, a freelance journalist who writes for The Observer and has investigated the funding of the referendum campaigns and alleged misuse of data in relation to them, had defended the claim on the basis of public interest.

Millionaire Brexit-backing businessman Arron Banks (Pictured in January 2021) has lost a historic High Court libel battle against investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr

Mr Banks - one of the self-styled 'Bad Boys of Brexit' - sued Ms Cadwalladr (Pictured arriving at the High Court in January) for libel over a statement she made in a TED Talk in April 2019 and also a tweet she later posted which included a link to the talk

In her ruling, Mrs Justice Steyn said: 'Based on her investigation, Ms Cadwalladr had reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Banks had been offered 'sweetheart' deals by the Russian government in the period running up to the EU referendum, although she had seen no evidence he had entered into any such deals; and Mr Banks's financial affairs, and the source of his ability to make the biggest political donations in UK history, were opaque.

Most importantly, when Ms Cadwalladr gave the TED Talk the Electoral Commission had announced, following a one-year investigation, that it had reasonable grounds to suspect that Mr Banks was not the true source of the 8 million loans/donations, but rather the source was a non-qualifying company, Rock Holdings, which is based in an offshore, non-transparent, jurisdiction.

'In addition, when she gave the TED Talk, the matter had been referred to the NCA and that organisation was investigating.'

The judge said Ms Cadwalladr had not gone to Mr Banks for a response before the talk, but had previously given him a right of reply to articles she had written about essentially the same subject.

She concluded: 'Although Ms Cadwalladr made clear that she did not understand offshore structures, in essence she drew the conclusion that his finances were opaque and it was unclear where he had derived sufficient funds to be able to donate as much as he had to the Brexit campaign.

'Those limited conclusions that she drew from the wide range of articles she read, and financial journalists and experts she spoke to on this topic, were reasonable.

In a ruling on Monday, Mrs Justice Steyn dismissed Mr Banks' claim, concluding that Ms Cadwalladr held a 'reasonable belief' that her comments were in the public interest. The judgement follows a five-day hearing that took place in January. Pictured: London's High Court

'In all the circumstances, I find that the defendant has established that her belief that publishing the TED Talk was in the public interest was reasonable.'

The judge found that the tweet Mr Banks complained about had not caused 'serious harm' to his reputation, but concluded that, if she had, she would have concluded Ms Cadwalladr's belief that the tweet was in the public interest was also reasonable.

Another judge previously found that the meaning of Ms Cadwalladr's statements is 'that, on more than one occasion, Mr Banks told untruths about a secret relationship he had with the Russian government in relation to the acceptance of foreign funding of electoral campaigns in breach of the law on such funding'.

Mr Banks - a major donor to the Leave.EU campaign in the run-up to the 2016 referendum - argued that the statements made by Ms Cadwalladr were 'false and defamatory' and sought damages and an injunction to restrain the continued publication of the remarks, which are still available to view online

Following that ruling in 2019, Ms Cadwalladr accepted that the meaning determined by the judge was untrue, but has continued to defend the case on public interest grounds.

Addressing Mrs Justice Steyn during a trial in January, Gavin Millar QC said Ms Cadwalladr was 'legally entitled' to say what she did as 'part of a discussion of matters in the public interest'.

The barrister said the case 'should be of concern to anyone who values freedom of speech in this country'.

Following the ruling, Ms Cadwalladr tweeted: 'It hasnt sunk in yet but some news. I am so profoundly grateful & relieved. Thank you to the judge, my stellar legal team & the 29,000 people who contributed to my legal defence fund. I literally couldnt have done it without you.

Ms Cadwalladr, a freelance journalist who writes for The Observer and has investigated the funding of the referendum campaigns and alleged misuse of data in relation to them, had defended the claim on the basis of public interest

'I haven't read the judgment yet but what I can say that the last 3 years have been extraordinarily difficult. Fighting this has been a crushing, debilitating, all-consuming experience that I sincerely hope no other journalist ever has to go through.

'The fact that his case was brought clearly shows how our libel laws favour the rich & powerful. I was only able to defend myself because of the incredibly generous support of the public. But this judgment is a huge victory for public interest journalism.

'My investigation into Brexit, Cambridge Analytica & Facebook triggered investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, record-breaking fines & findings of multiple breaches of the law, including by Mr Banks's Leave.EU campaign. But I am the only person to ever face trial.'

Commenting on today's judgment on the high-profile libel case, Keith Mathieson, Partner and head of RPC's media team, representing Ms Cadwalladr, said: 'Today's judgment is an important vindication not just of Carole, but of the right of everyone to express themselves freely on matters of public interest.

'The judge undertook a highly detailed and careful examination of what Carole said in the statements Mr Banks sued on and rightly found that Carole was entitled to say what she honestly and reasonably believed based on years of investigation.

'The judgment gives significant support to the public interest defence in the law of defamation and the protection it offers journalists, bloggers and others to contribute to public debate on serious issues.'

The Leave.EU campaign was found to have breached electoral rules on spending: there were no criminal charges.
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A judge today ruled 12-year-old Archie Battersbee is 'likely' to be 'brain stem dead' and should no longer be kept on life support - as his devastated mother vowed 'I will not give up my fight for my son'.

The brain-damaged schoolboy has been at the centre of a High Court dispute after doctors treating him at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, London, said they believed he was brain dead and his ventilator should be disconnected.

The eight-week battle for life-support for Archie April 7 - Archie is found unresponsive at his home in Southend, with a ligature around his neck. May 5 - The Royal London Hospital, which is treating Archie, asked a judge to decide what was is in his best interests because medics believed he was braindead. May 13 - The judge calls for Archie to have a brain stem test after a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London on Friday. June 1 - Judge Arbuthnot visits Archie in hospital to see for herself his condition and treatment. June 7 - High Court hearing to work out what should happen is told parts of Archie's brain are dead. June 8 - A medical specialist tells judge Mrs Justice Arbuthnot tests showed no 'discernible' brain activity'. June 13 - The judge rules Archie is 'likely' brain dead and life support should stop. His family say they will appeal the ruling in a 'legally complex' process that could take months to conclude. Advertisement

His parents, Hollie Dance, 46, and Paul Battersbee, 56, want his treatment to continue and believe, if given more time, his condition could improve.

Archie has been in a coma since he was found unresponsive with a ligature around his neck at his home in Southend, Essex, on April 7.

Ms Dance believes her son, a talented gymnast, choked while taking part in a viral social media trend known as the 'blackout challenge' that first began circulating online 14 years ago.

On the eve of the decision, she issued a last-gasp appeal to the High Court judge to 'find it in your heart to give my son the time to heal'.

But in her ruling today, Mrs Justice Arbuthnot said: 'I find that Archie died at noon on May 31 2022, which was shortly after the MRI scans taken that day,' said the judge in a written ruling.

'I find that irreversible cessation of brain stem function has been conclusively established.

'I give permission to the medical professionals at the Royal London Hospital to cease to ventilate mechanically Archie Battersbee.'

Speaking after the hearing, Ms Dance fought back tears as she vowed to challenge the ruling.

Mrs Justice Arbuthnot has not yet given a timeframe for an appeal to be lodged, but lawyers representing the family say they will be asking for a delay in the termination of life support so Alfie's life support is not switched off until an appeal process has concluded.

Arguments would be heard by the Court of Appeal, which has the power to dismiss the appeal, but if given the green light, the case could be heard at the Supreme Court - the final appeal court for civil cases in the UK.

A spokesperson for the Christian Legal Centre, which is supporting the family's case, said the 'legally complex' process could take months.

Ms Dance said today: 'I am devastated and extremely disappointed by the judge's ruling after weeks of fighting a legal battle, when I wanted to be by my little boy's bedside.

'Basing a judgement on an MRI test and is 'likely' to be dead is not good enough. I feel sickened at the hospital and the judge have failed to put the wishes of the family into consideration.

'I do not believe Archie has been given enough time. His heart is still beating he has gripped his hand and as his mother and my gut instincts I know my son is still there.

'Until it's God's way I wont accept he should go. I know of miracles when people have come back from being braindead.

'We do intend on appealing, this is only the start, I will not give up my fight for my son.'

Archie Battersbee's mother, Hollie Dance, (centre-right) speaking outside the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, after the High Court judgement on the future of the 12-year-old boy

Archie has not regained consciousness after he was found unresponsive with a ligature around his neck at his home in Southend, Essex on April 7

Archie Battersbee's mother, Hollie Dance, (centre-left) supported by friends and family after speaking this morning

A mother's anguish: Hollie Dance after learning the judge's decision on whether her son Archie should be kept alive on life support

Archie Battersbee's brother Tom Summers kisses him on the head in hospital as he visited him on Wednesday

Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said: 'This ruling is a devastating moment for Archie and his family.

'The idea that death can be declared on the balance of probability is frankly ludicrous.

'Life is the most precious gift that we have. This ruling sets a troubling and dark precedent.

'This case has raised significant moral, legal and medical questions as to when a person is dead.

'Archie's parents do not accept that he is dead and are fighting courageously for his life.

They will not give up now and intend to appeal. We will continue to stand with the family and continue to pray for a miracle.'

Alistair Chesser, the chief medical officer at Barts Health NHS Trust, expressed sympathies for Archie's family today, adding that the hospital will give them time to appeal.

Speaking outside the Royal London Hospital, Mr Chesser said: 'This is a sad and difficult time for Archie's family and our thoughts and sympathies are with them as they come to terms with what has happened.

Hollie Dance, 46, (right) has begged a High Court judge to allow Archie Battersbee's life support treatment to continue after he choked while reportedly performing an online 'blackout' craze

Ms Dance described her son as a 'happy', 'high-spirited' 'daredevil', who enjoys mixed martial arts and trains with South Essex Gymnastics Club

Archie, pictured wearing a medal and holding a trophy, was a talented gymnast. His mother believes he was taking part in a viral social media challenge when he was found injured

Chief Medical Officer of Barts Health NHS Trust Alistair Chesser speaking outside the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel

'In line with the guidance issued by the court, our expert clinicians will provide the best possible care while life support is withdrawn.

'We are also ensuring that there is time for the family to decide whether they wish to appeal before any changes to care are made.'

The family were represented in court by lawyer Bruno Quintavalle and consultant Pavel Stroilov, who worked on the Alfie Evans case. The family of Alfie, a 23-month old boy, lost a High Court life support dispute after Alder Hey Children's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust argued that it was not in his 'best interests' to continue treatment.

His family wanted his treatment to continue in Italy, but a High Court judge ruled against them, before the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court dismissed their appeals. He died in April 2018.

Ms Dance has said fighting for her son's treatment to continue has been 'agonising', adding that there are 'a lot of kids being sentenced to death' by decisions made at the Royal London Hospital where he is on life support.

Also speaking with journalists outside the hospital in Whitechapel, east London, she said: 'I'm not the only one going through this.

'There's people up there (in the hospital) at the moment who have been told on day three that their child is brain dead.

'There's a lot of kids being sentenced to death through this hospital. This is not just for Archie now, it's for the other children as well.'

When asked what the last few weeks had been like, she said: 'Agonising. 'It's torture, it's not just appearing in court for those two hours, I'm leaving in at 9am and getting back to the hospital at 7.30 at night.

'Because that's my little boy in there, that time is precious.'

Hollie Dance has described receiving the High Court decision on her son's life support online rather than having it read out in court by the judge as 'shameful' and 'insensitive'.

Ms Dance told This Morning hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby that she found Archie (pictured) with something tied around his neck, cutting off his 'windpipe'

Archie's father Paul Battersbee pictured outside the High Court last month. He has been fighting alongside Archie's mother Hollie their son's treatment to continue

'She told journalists outside the hospital: 'This would have been today, our ninth court appearance. I was actually told by the press that we weren't to attend today - there was no formal email.'

When asked about the way she received the ruling, Ms Dance said: 'It's insensitive and it's shameful but I am going to continue to fight.

'So this hospital has got the biggest battle ever, because I refuse to give up the fight for my son's life.'

In submissions made to the High Court last week, the family's barrister Bruno Quintavalle said the circumstances of the case had never before been heard by an English court.

Last week, Ms Dance revealed the frantic moment she discovered Archie with a ligature cutting off his windpipe on ITV's This Morning.

She believes he was copying an online craze where people asphyxiate themselves, pass out and regain consciousness on camera.

She recalled the moment she 'ran out screaming for help' after snapping the ligature off her son who was on the landing and fell '8ft onto the hallway', where she then began CPR.

'I ran out screaming to get help, nobody was there so I came back in,' she said.

Mother-of-three Ms Dance also issued a direct warning to parents about the dangers of social media's latest craze.

Suggesting her son was taking part in the online challenge, Ms Dance claimed there have been at least 80 deaths, and hundreds of cases of permanent brain damage, linked to the potentially fatal 'blackout challenge'.

After being taken to Southend Hospital, he was then transferred to Royal London Hospital.

'It's important that parents are aware about these things so they can have a conversation with their children,' she continued.

'They need to explain what might happen, and maybe use Archie as an example, then maybe the child would take notice and not try it.'

Lawyers representing the Royal London Hospital's governing trust, Barts Health NHS Trust, have asked Mrs Justice Arbuthnot to decide what moves are in Archie's best interests.

Archie Battersbee's mother, Hollie Dance, (centre-right) speaking outside the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, earlier today supported by friends and family

Archie with his mother Hollie Dance (left), brother Tom Summers and sister Lauren Summers in a family photo while enjoying an evening out

Speaking on ITV's This Morning on Thursday, Ms Dance said: 'If I don't explore every avenue, if I don't fight for his life and later on we realise, well actually we didn't look into that, we've missed something  I'm going to spend the rest of my life not knowing and thinking 'what if, what if'.

'I'm going with my gut and... a mother's gut instinct, I think you should really go with it.'

Giving evidence at the hearing this week, a specialist told the judge about a number of concerns noted by Archie's treating team.

She said tests had shown no 'discernible' brain activity, but revealed 'significant areas of tissue necrosis', and added: 'We believe that it is very likely that he is brain-stem dead.'

But lawyers representing Archie's family have told the judge that his heart is still beating - and his mother said he had gripped her hand.

They also say there was an issue as to whether 'the correct procedure' had been followed, and whether the 'family's views' had been taken into account.

Last week, Archie's parents made their closing pleas to Mrs Justice Arbuthnot, who is deciding what moves are in the 12-year-old's best interests.

'Monday coming will be our ninth court appearance,' Ms Dance added. 'He's been in hospital for eight weeks.

'Every single minute is precious, and I'm having to go to court and sit there all day. I'm not getting back to hospital some days until half seven at night.'

She described her son as a 'happy', 'high-spirited' 'daredevil', who enjoys mixed martial arts and trains with South Essex Gymnastics Club.

Ms Dance added that since being in hospital, her son has held her hand and opened his eyes.

His blood pressure and heart rate have also been increasing and then dropping, something she has been told could be 'neurostorming'.
An animal shelter in California has announced they will not allow people to adopt pets if they do not support gun control in the wake of a series of mass shootings that have wreaked havoc across the US.

The Shelter Hope Pet Shop in the city of Thousand Oaks said they have added the question 'where do you stand on gun control' to their adoption interview for those looking to adopt a pet.

Kim Sill, the owner of the pet shelter, said that if a person is a NRA supporter and believes there should be no background check for guns, they will be banned from adopting a pet.

'If you lie about being a NRA supporter, make no mistake, we will sue you for fraud,' Sill said in a statement.

'If you believe that it is our responsibility to protect ourselves in public places and arm ourselves with a gun - do not come to us to adopt a dog. We have a choice of who we work with.'

Sill said she had decided to introduce the policy after the elementary school gun massacre in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

Kim Sill (right), the owner of the pet shelter, said that if a person is a NRA supporter and believes there should be no background check for guns, they will be banned from adopting a pet

The Shelter Hope Pet Shop in the city of Thousand Oaks said they have added the question 'where do you stand on gun control' to their adoption interview for those looking to adopt a pet

She added: 'We do not support those who believe that the 2nd amendment gives them the right to buy assault weapons. If your beliefs are not in line with ours, we will not adopt a pet to you.'

Sill, the founder of the pet shelter, pointed to how people in the city of Thousand Oaks experienced a mass shooting in 2018 when a 28-year-old Marine Corps veteran killed at least 12 people at the Borderline Bar.

Sill said the shooter had come to their shop for community service hours.

'We believe he had scouted many locations and we were one of them,' Sill said. 'We changed our policy about volunteering after that incident, but now we feel confident to go even further than that.'

Sill said that their new policy means that those who adopt a dog at the shelter must not only be 25 but also be pro gun control.

'We will grill you before you even get an appointment and visit our rescue. If we ask you 'do you care about children being gunned down in our schools?'

'If you hesitate, because your core belief is that you believe teachers need to carry firearms, then you will not get approved to adopt from us.'

Sill added: 'Shelter Hope Pet Shop in no way will continue to operate if we are even remotely part of the problem. We support teachers, children, and businesses who provide services to the public, but we've had enough of all the senseless killing.'

Sill said that their new policy means that those who adopt a dog at the shelter must not only be 25 but also be pro gun control

Sill told NBC News that some of the shelter's donors are Republicans and a few have threatened to cut off the funds if she doesn't remove the new interview question on gun control.

'I say, fine, keep your money,' she said. 'If I go out of business, as a result, I go out of business. But I have to do something. And this is the only thing I can do to make the point that mass killings by people armed with guns have to stop.'

Responding to Sill's updated policy, NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter told the news outlet: 'Having this asinine political litmus test comes at the expense of needy and homeless dogs and cats.'

There is increasing demand for gun control laws in the US in the wake of a series of mass shootings.

On Sunday, a bipartisan group of senators announced they have come to an agreement on a framework for gun control legislation.

President Joe Biden said that he will sign the framework as soon as it comes to his desk.

The deal would incentivize 'red flag' laws but would not include provisions championed by Democrats up to Biden himself, like increasing the age to purchase certain rifles to 21 or a ban on assault weapons.

Children run to safety after escaping from a window during a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24

'I continue to believe military-style assault weapons that can shred the bodies of their victims have no place in civilian usebut we cannot let the perfect Congressional response be the enemy of the good,' Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin wrote on Twitter Sunday.

'Though this agreement falls short in this and other respects, it can and will make our nation safer.'

New Jersey Democrat Senator Corey Booker shared a similar sentiment, making it clear that Congress needs to go further to successfully counter the devastating spate of mass shootings seen in recent weeks.

'I support these bipartisan measures that would begin to curb gun violence in America. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will find a way to make these changes and provide these resources. We need to continue our efforts to pass common sense gun safety laws,' Booker wrote on Twitter.

David Hogg, a gun control activist and survivor of the Parkland, Florida school shooting praised the legislation as a 'first step.'

While the deal is substantially less than the House bills passed last week and is weaker than what Democrats want, it does provide the framework for the most significant federal gun restrictions in nearly three decades.

Core lawmakers behind the Senate deal are Democratic Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Kysten Sinema of Arizona, as well as Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

The four individuals are still working on writing and finalizing the legislative text, but are confident it will have the support of at least 60 senators, which is the threshold needed for legislation to pass in the upper chamber.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the legislation 'a good first step to ending the persistent inaction to the gun violence epidemic that has plagued our country and terrorized our children for far too long.'

'Once the text of this agreement is finalized, I will put this bill on the floor as soon as possible so that the Senate can act quickly to advance gun-safety legislation,' he added.

One of the most potentially restrictive aspects of the tentative deal would establish a federal grant program to encourage the creation of 'red flag' laws, which would allow authorities to prevent people from buying guns who are deemed by a judge to be a threat to themselves or others.

It would also require for the first time that federal criminal background checks for those seeking to buy a gun under the age of 21 include a search of their juvenile justice records, according to the Sunday Post report.

What the compromise does not include, however, is a provision pushed by Democrats and President Joe Biden that would raise the minimum age to purchase certain rifles from 18 to 21  while it is already federal law that individuals must be 21 to purchase a handgun.
Russian police detained 20 women under suspicion of protesting against Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine and forced them to strip naked and squat five times 'in front of police cameras,' the group has claimed.

The 'suspects' aged 18 to 27 were rounded up at or near a rally in the city of Nizhny Novgorod and subjected to 'humiliating and degrading' treatment, says their lawyer.

Women police officers ordered them to strip, but in some cases cell doors were open and male officers passed by.

In all cases, cell cameras fitted with video recorders spied on the alleged abuse.

Men detained at the same time were not subjected to the strip-and-squat orders.

Twenty women detained under suspicion of protesting against Vladimir Putin's war were forced to strip naked and squat five times 'in front of police cameras'. Pictured: Russian police officer surround detained woman in Nizhny Novgorod in March during an anti-war rally

'I am outraged that each of them was searched in a humiliating way at the detention centre, violating our legislation,' complained lawyer Olimpiada Usanova, who is going to court on behalf of the women to challenge their treatment.

'The females were searched by undressing and squatting five times in the presence of a detention centre officer.

'A second humiliating search was conducted several hours later in the cells and the women were forced to lift up their shirts, take off their panties, and bare their breasts in the camera surveillance area.

'I am concerned that female officers did not close the doors as some women were examined, and male officers were lurking there.'

She believes that male officers also watched footage of the strip searches and squats on cell camera footage.

'Detained men were just patted on their front and back, that's all,' she said. 'The girls were forced to strip naked and crouch down.

'And the next day, they were made to undress again, turning out their bras.

'This is despite the fact that every cell has CCTVs. This is a severe violation.'

Student Ekaterina Devyatkina, 18, is one of several victims who agreed to show their identities ahead of their attempt in court to challenge their treatment

Pictured: Taisiya Kudelkina (left) and Natalya Nevar (right) are among the twenty women to have been detained during the anti-war protests. Both agreed to share their identity

Pictured: Zemfira Suleimanova (left) is among the twenty women to have been detained during the anti-war protests. She agreed to share their identity. Right: Lawyer Olimpiada Usanova, who is representing the group of women who were detained

The scandal in the city found 250 miles east of Moscow was in March but has only now come to light as the women take legal action against their alleged treatment, highlighted in a report by Lydia Kuzmenko in cherta.media.

Student Ekaterina Devyatkina, 18, is one of several victims who agreed to show their identities ahead of their attempt in court to challenge their treatment.

She claimed to be listening to a musician near the protest rally when she was pushed into a cell-on-wheels and detained.

'They searched us very slowly, arrogantly and with mockery,' she said. 'A police officer in some nook ordered me to undress. It seemed strange to me right away.

'I stripped down to my underwear first but the officer demanded to undress further.

'I replied that I was on my period. The policewoman replied: "Well, I'm a woman, I understand everything. Undress and squat."

'I had to do five squats. I sat down, then got dressed. I was given bed linen and was sent to the cell to the other girls. The conditions in the cell itself were terrible. There was no toilet paper, no bin. The smell was terrible, everyone was constantly sick.'

Other women who identified themselves - all fined for protesting against Putin's war - were Zemfira Suleimanova, 25, Taisiya Kudelkina, 24, Natalya Nevar, 30, and Irina M, 26. One woman Yevgeniya, 22, told how at Sormovsky police station she was addressed as 'bunny' and 'kitten' before being ordered to strip naked.

Pictured: A woman is detained by police officers during an anti-war rally in Nizhny Novgorod

Pictured: The Nizhny Novgorod detention facility where the girls were placed

Women police officers ordered the detained women to strip inside the cells, but in some cases cell doors were open and male officers passed by. One of the women said the cells were fitted with CCTV cameras and believes they were watched by male officers

A woman officer 'led me to the wall and ordered me to undress completely. And squat four times.'

Next morning 'we were ordered to stand against a wall in our underwear, and expose our breasts. This was with a camera pointing at us and a video recording.

'The door to the cell was not closed, and there were male employees in the corridor.

Another woman, Anastasiya, 24, said a video camera was visible when she was ordered to undress and expose her breasts.

Draconian laws in Russia all but forbid protest against Putin's bloody war in Ukraine.

The women were forced to pay fines of up 215 for allegedly attending a banned anti-war rally.

'It seems to me that this was not done by the personal will of the officers but under the supervision of the management,' said the lawyer.

'I assume that this was an order specifically concerning the young women.

'Most were from 18 to 25 years old. After being in the special detention centre, many had panic attacks and tantrums.

'Some needed counselling by a psychologist after what they went through. This is violence - violent violence. This cannot be left unpunished.

'And if we don't talk and write about it, in the future we may face even harsher methods, including rape.

'We have filed a collective lawsuit against the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Nizhny Novgorod, demanding compensation for moral damage for violation of rights and humiliation.

'We are also appealing against improper detention in police departments.'

They are demanding an average 1,700 in compensation for each woman.
One of Vladimir Putin's key allies has warned that the 'Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on their way' in the latest chilling Kremlin warning of destruction.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia, warned Moscow would attack Western cities if Ukraine uses missiles provided by the US.

The Kremlin insider, 56, currently serves as deputy head of Russia's national security council and acted as president 2008 to 2012 while Putin was term-limited, although he remained under his influence.

He wrote last week: 'I am often asked why my Telegram posts are so harsh. The answer is I hate them. They are b*****ds and degenerates.

'They want death for Russia. And while I'm alive, I will do everything to make them disappear.'

Dmitry Medvedev has warned that the 'Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on their way' in the latest chilling Kremlin warning of destruction

Russia test launched the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile in April amid threats of nuclear war

The 'they' Medvedev is referring to is understood to mean Ukraine and its allies.

Days earlier he said Moscow would escalate their war on the West if US-supplied missiles are used against Russian forces, saying: 'The horsemen of the Apocalypse are already on their way.'

Medvedev, who was previously seen as a moderniser and a more liberal figurehead for Russia, has also accused Ukraine of being led by drugged-up Nazis.

Last month, he warned military support for Ukraine risks sparking nuclear war with Russia.

He wrote on Telegram: 'NATO countries pumping weapons into Ukraine, training troops to use western equipment, sending in mercenaries and the exercises of alliance countries near our borders increase the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between NATO and Russia.

The Kremlin insider, 56, currently serves as deputy head of Russia's national security council and acted as president 2008 to 2012 while Putin was term-limited

'Such a conflict always has the risk of turning into a full-fledged nuclear war.'

Medvedev accused NATO countries of 'sending in mercenaries' to fight for Ukraine and intentionally playing up the prospect of nuclear war.

His stormy post continued: 'The endless talk by foreign analysts about a war between NATO and Russia continues unabated.

'The cynicism of Western "talking heads" is becoming more and more blatant.

'The thesis that Russia frightens the world with a nuclear conflict is being pushed to the top of the agenda.

'Even [Donald] Trump recently came out with this, though, understandably, just to spite [President] Biden.

'And of course the Europeans are squeaking their little voices.'

He also warned the West: 'I want to articulate very clearly once again the things that are so obvious to all reasonable people. You don't have to lie to yourself and others.

Putin (left) confers with Medvedev (right) at his famous Kremlin desk in January 2020, days before Medvedev relinquished the premiership and joined the President's Security Council

'You just have to think about the possible consequences of your actions.

'And don't choke on your own saliva in paroxysms of Russophobia.'

Former opposition MP Dmitry Gudkov has claimed Medvedev's rants show he is preparing for a second bid for power when Putin eventually relinquishes his hold.

The strong anti-Western rhetoric appeals to hardliners in the Russian military and helps change the narrative that he is seen as too soft.

Gudkov said: 'He is trying to please the hardliners in the hope that they will promote him, in the event of Putin leaving office.

'The only way to survive politically right now in Russia is to be a hawk.'

Medvedev appointed Putin prime minister during his presidency. When Putin was allowed to become president once again, Medvedev stepped aside.

He took the premiership until 2020, at which point Putin nullified term limits and moved Medvedev to his current role.
By Ramu Damodaran





When asked how we should treat others, the Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi, is said to have replied: "There are no others." This truth was affirmed 10 years ago when the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development convened in Rio de Janeiro from June 20 to 22, 2012. Unlike earlier international gatherings, there were no "we" and "they" there; what emerged at Rio was a movement forward in unison, common goals commonly defined, the responsibilities to their realization, nationally as much as globally, borne by every single nation and their people.



What Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general at the time, was to define as "collective power exercised in powerful partnership" shone through at Rio. No one is owed greater credit for that success than he. When he was originally appointed to his office in 2006, he had observed that "the U.N.'s core mission in the previous century was to keep countries from fighting each other. We need to muster human, institutional and intellectual resources and organize them properly."



It was not easy. A month before the conference, he was candid in expressing disappointment with the negotiations, which were not moving fast enough. But with tenacious effort and persistence, he kept returning to the single measure by which sustainable development and the goals to assure it should be gauged: universality  a measure inhibited by every assertion of sovereignty, of nationhood.



Looking back to my first days at the United Nations, as a delegate from India admittedly some 35 years ago, I can imagine what my reaction would have been if my country were to be questioned on its performance of any of what we have now come to accept as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).



One of the foremost iterations of the intellectual resources to which Secretary-General Ban made reference, Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, writing in "The Lancet" journal in 2012, noted that the earlier Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), defined in 2000, were "targets mainly for poor countries to which rich countries were to add their solidarity and assistance through finances and technology."



The 2022 Sustainable Development Index, published earlier this month by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), which Dr. Sachs leads, offers its own pointers to this universality. While the pandemic has meant that for the second year in a row, the world has in some ways slowed in making progress on the SDGs, a longer-range assessment indicates that, while the top ten countries in the index  led by Finland  are all in Europe, the two countries  Bangladesh and Cambodia  that have progressed most on the SDGs since 2015 are in Asia, and two others from the continent  Japan and South Korea  are ranked in the top thirty countries in terms of overall progress towards achieving the SDGs.



Poignantly, on the day the Rio conference began, a creative and compassionate mind slipped from our midst. J. Michael Adams was president of the International Association of University Presidents when he died. The previous year, he attended the United Nations Academic Impact Seoul Forum, organized by Handong Global University, where he spoke of "creating a larger umbrella of obligations and responsibilities greater than the traditional nation state." It was a concept remarkable in its prescience and in the implicit definition of that umbrella linking not just governments with each other, or with the United Nations, but with their own people.



In the context of the SDGs, their universality demands the metaphor of an umbrella suited for all climes  sun or sleet, rain or snow  a protection particularly needed when there are so many areas of international relations where it lies fragmented and assailed. It is an umbrella that unites as much as it protects, a solidarity of many possibilities, individual actions by women and men, by governments and institutions, scholars and activists, bringing the immediacy of what they thought and did to that universality, reversing the old adage and, by thinking locally, allow acting globally.



In many parts of the globe today, it is the longest day of the year. While in many others, it is the shortest. Ninety years ago, the Mexican ambassador to Brazil, Alfonso Reyes, wrote a poem called, "The Romances of Rio de Janeiro," which was translated into English by Timothy Ades. One verse reads:



Land runs into water, playing

City touches on country ground

Darkness enters into evening

Equal friendship, open hand.



The verses are so evocative of the SDGs, the solidarity of our waters and our lands, our communities rural and urban, the universal moment of this equinox where twilight is just another word for sunrise in a part of the world that may be distant but is still open to our open hand of a friendship that is equal, and we to theirs.



"All I ask, Rio de Janeiro," the poem concludes, "Your consent, in my time of test. Let me wander on your beaches when my ship is wrecked and lost."



Ten years ago, 192 governments, together with civil society representatives, scholars, the corporate and business sector, among others, joined on those beaches under the leadership of Ban Ki-moon. The ship they had set sail in 20 years earlier had floundered and flailed because those upon it, in his phrase, behaved as if they could indefinitely burn and consume their way to prosperity.



Those times were a test. The United Nations passed.





Ramu Damodaran served as the first director of the United Nations Academic Impact, an initiative linking universities around the world with the United Nations. He is the 2017-2021 recipient of the J. Michael Adams Leadership and Service award, instituted by the International Association of University Presidents, which Dr. Choue Young-seek co-founded in 1965.


Hunter Biden's ex-wife Kathleen is set to break her silence in a sit-down interview tomorrow ahead of the release of her long-anticipated, tell-all biography.

Kathleen's interview will air on Good Morning America and Hulu.

A teaser was released yesterday in which she says: 'This is not a story about who's right and who's wrong. This is my story.'

Revelations in Buhle's book, If We Break, include how she kicked Hunter out of their home after finding a crack pipe in their ashtray in the summer of 2015, and claims she learned of his affair with his brother's widow in a family therapy session with her kids in November 2016.

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Hunter Biden's ex-wife Kathleen's interview will air on Good Morning America and Hulu. A teaser was released yesterday in which she says: 'This is not a story about who's right and who's wrong. This is my story.'

What is not included is her alleged threat to Hunter that she would release embarrassing photos of him unless he signed a divorce agreement which paid her $37,000-a-month to keep quiet.

DailyMail.com uncovered the alleged threat on Hunter's infamous lost laptop.

She had previously told People magazine that he didn't give her any alimony.

The pair were married between 1993 and 2017. They share three daughters; Naomi, Maisy and Finnegan.

Their acrimonious divorce was ongoing while Hunter began an affair with his dead brother Beau's widow, Hallie.

In one email by his lawyer dated March 2017, his attorney said: 'Hunter has learned that Kathleen intends...to release purportedly compromising photos of Hunter to the media.'

'The threat to release compromising photos is entirely unacceptable, and likely actionable under the District of Columbia's blackmail statute.'

Hunter Biden with his ex-wife Kathleen. The pair were married from 1993 until 2017

Kathleen's book contains revelations about Hunter's drug use during their marriage. DailyMail.com also uncovered emails on his laptop where his lawyers accused her of threatening to blackmail him into a sizeable alimony agreement with these embarrassing photos and others

Hunter is shown with his current wife, Melissa Cohen, and their toddler son Beau Biden Jr.

Buhle's attorney, Rebekah Sullivan, responded that her client 'has no intention of doing so'  but Hunter was still suspicious.

'So implicit in this response is that she has picture but at the moment does not intend to release them.

'It does not address the fact that the threat was made which is a felony in and of itself,' he wrote to his lawyers after seeing the response.

Kathleen Buhle (left) reveals new details about her marriage to Hunter Biden (right) in her forthcoming book If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing, which will be released on June 14

The letter from Hunter's lawyer also accused Buhle of relying on Joe Biden to financially back his son to get her alimony  and even spoke to the former Vice President about it.

'Hunter has learned that Kathleen's settlement posture is premised on her expectation that Hunter's father will backstop any financial arrangement eventually reached between the parties,' Mancinelli wrote. 'Indeed, Kathleen's expectation has even been communicated to Hunter's father.

'Simply put, there is no 'blank-check.'

Any settlement must be economically feasible.

'If Kathleen is assuming that Hunter's father will perform Hunter's obligations, she is woefully misinformed and that mindset will hamper our ability to bring this case to closure.'

Kathleen also claims in her book that she wasn't given Secret Service protection when Joe Biden was Vice President, despite being married to Hunter at the time.

She wrote that she was left feeling 'embarrassed' and like 'I was not truly a Biden' after Hunter and their children were assigned a security detail when Joe became VP in 2009.
A 25-year-old man was shot in the neck in the lobby of a luxury apartment building in Long Island City on Sunday night, the latest in a dizzying wave of violent crimes in New York City.

The victim was taken to the hospital in a stable condition. It's unclear if he lives in the building or if he was working there. The gunman opened fire shortly after midnight last night. He fled the building and remains on the run on Monday morning.

Police do not yet know what his motive was, and they have not released any surveillance footage of the incident.

An NYPD spokesman told DailyMail.com on Monday morning that the gunman has a 'dark complexion' but they gave no additional details.

The building where the shooting occurred is 1 QPS - one of many new luxury high-rises in the up-and-coming neighborhood.

The city's latest shooting comes after seven other people were shot and injured in a separate shootings in New York City overnight.

On Monday morning, New York State Assemblyman Mike Lawler said Adams - who is a regular on the glitzy NYC nightlife circuit - should 'stop partying' and focus on crime.

'Mayor Adams really needs to act. He's really got to stop spending his time partying and start focusing on the job at hand, and crime is number one.

'Obviously Mayor Adams inherited a mess from Bill de Blasio, but unfortunately, he really hasn't been able to turn the tide here.'

On Sunday, Adams made an appearance at the Puerto Rican Day parade in Manhattan. In recent months, he has been a regular at swanky private members club Zero Bond. He also attended the Met Gala in May, wearing an anti-gun violence jacket.

Police outside 1 QPS in Long Island City, where a 25-year-old man was shot in the neck at midnight last night in the lobby of the luxury doorman building

Police at the scene of the shooting. It's unclear if the victim was a resident or a staff member

safe than it has been in decades. On Monday morning, New York State Assemblyman Mike Lawler said Adams - who is a regular on the glitzy NYC nightlife circuit - should 'stop partying' and focus on crime

The building where Sunday's shooting took place has a rooftop pool, state-of-the-art amenities and a one bedroom apartment was recently leased for $4,800.

The building's management company did not immediately respond to inquiries on Monday morning.

The shooting is the latest in a string of violent crimes across New York City.

The number of people who have been shot in New York City this year is 52 percent higher than by this time in 2020, according to the latest NYPD figures.

Car theft is up by 87.4 percent since 2020, rape is up 22.1 percent and robbery has increased by 32.9 percent.

Transit crime has increased by 53.6 percent since this time last year - a figure which crystalizes how unsafe the subway has become.

In the last several months, there have been random stabbings and shootings on the subway in which the suspects managed to escape.

In one case, the gunman ended up turning himself in after negotiating with cops and the Mayor himself.

Andrew Abdullah went on the run after shooting dead Daniel Enriquez on a Manhattan-bound Q train in May.

He eventually handed himself in after spending days on the run, and was assisted by a pastor in negotiating his surrender.

The swanky building has state-of-the-art amenities, including a 24 hour doorman. A one bedroom apartment recently rented for $4,800

The rooftop pool and cabanas at 1 QPS, one of the most expensive new high-rises in Queens which is one subway stop from Manhattan

Crime in New York City is spiraling out of control with overall violent crimes up by 38 percent

New York City Mayor Eric Adams yesterday at the Puerto Rican Day Parade. He has been slammed for spending more time partying than cracking down on crime

Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD cop, ran on a platform of cracking down on crime but he is yet to win the confidence of New Yorkers, many of whom feel the city is less safe than it has been in decades.

It comes as new data reveals 1,500 police officers either retired or transferred out of the NYPD this year - the highest number on record.

The information was obtained by The New York Post.

On Monday, Lawler said on FOX: 'I think more and more law enforcement officers, as soon as they can retire, are taking the opportunity to do so or if they could transfer to a department in the suburbs are doing so.'

'Unfortunately, so far, this mayor has spent more time partying than he has really cracking down on the issue at hand.

'And when you're talking about record levels of inflation, the highest in over 40 years, when you're talking about supply chain issues like baby formula shortages, when you're talking about crime, it really requires a serious level of attention.

'I had high hopes for him, but so far he's been a big disappointment,' he said.
A man has died after he was found on fire in a west London park as police launched an urgent investigation.

Emergency services rushed to the scene at Belvue Park, Northolt, in the early hours of the morning to reports from the public that a body was on fire.

Met Police confirmed the tragedy this morning - and said the death is currently being treated as unexplained.

Emergency services rushed to the scene at Belvue Park (pictured) Northolt, in the early hours of the morning to reports from the public that a body was on fire

Forensic officers on the scene this morning. Met Police said the death is currently being treated as unexplained

There have been no arrests but enquiries are still ongoing as police try to identify the deceased and contact their next of kin.

The force said: 'Police were called at 4.37am on Monday, June 13 by the London Fire Brigade to Belvue Park, Northolt to reports of a body found on fire.

'Officers are working to identify the deceased, at this stage believed to be a male, and inform next of kin.

'The death is currently being treated as unexplained. There have been no arrests. A crime scene is in place and enquiries are ongoing, led by the West Area Command Unit.'

There have been no arrests but enquiries are still ongoing as police try to identify the deceased and contact their next of kin. Pictured: Forensic officers at the scene today

A body was found on fire just after 4.30am this morning in Belvue Park, Northolt (stock image) Police are continuing their enquiries and are currently treating the death as unexplained

London Fire Brigade said in a statement: 'Firefighters were called to reports of a fire in a park on Rowdell Road in Northolt.

'Sadly, a person was pronounced dead at the scene.

'The Brigade was called at 0419 and the incident was over for firefighters by 0456. One fire engine from Northolt Fire Station attended the scene.

'The cause of the fire is under investigation by the Brigade and the Metropolitan Police Service.'
Police have issued CCTV images of a man they want to urgently speak to after a 'disturbing' sexual assault on a 10-year-old girl at a railway station.

British Transport Police says it is 'very confident' the man in the images can help their investigation into the incident, which took place inside Victoria Railway Station in London.

Officers say the incident was 'particularly disturbing' due to the young age of the victim and is appealing for help from the public.

The girl was in Boots in the Victoria Place Shopping Centre, which is within the station, when she was assaulted at around 2.50pm on Saturday, June 11.

British Transport Police want to speak to the man pictured above after a 10-year-old girl was sexually assaulted at a railway station

Officers say they are 'very confident' the man pictured can help with their investigation into the incident at Victoria Railway Station on Saturday afternoon

The incident took place in the Boots store inside Victoria Place Shopping Centre (pictured) on June 11

Detective Constable Tony Gittins said: 'This is a particularly disturbing incident given the very young age of the victim, and we are working tirelessly to identify the person responsible and bring them in to custody for questioning.

'I would like to appeal for the public's help in identifying the man in the CCTV images, who we are confident will be able to assist with our investigation.'

Anyone who recognises the man, or has any information, is asked to contact BTP by texting 61016 or calling 0800 40 50 40 quoting reference 327 of 11/06/22.

Alternatively you can call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
This is the moment a 'drunk' airline passenger is removed from a Ryanair flight to Ibiza by two armed officers after vaping on board.

Witnesses say the man, who they say appeared to be 'hammered', was removed from the plane ahead of take-off from Manchester airport on Saturday.

They say the man got into a row with cabin crew after using a vape on board - which is not allowed under Ryanair's policy.

Video shows the man being removed from the plane by two armed officers, before being escorted to a police van waiting on the tarmac below.

It is believed the flight took off around 90 minutes later than planned following the delay.

Manchester Police say a man in his 20s has been charged with public order.

Alex, a barber from Manchester, who filmed the video and posted it on social media, said: 'We were on the plane and two guys right at the front of the plane were absolutely hammered.

Witnesses say the man, who appeared to be 'hammered', was removed from the plane ahead of take-off from Manchester airport on Saturday. They say the man got into a row with cabin crew after using a vape on board - which is not allowed under Ryanair's policy

Video shows the man being removed from the plane by two armed officers, before being escorted to a police van at the terminal

'We were delayed already so everyone was already a bit agitated anyway.'

'I didn't see it but apparently one of the guys down the front started vaping with an Elf bar.

'The flight attendant took it off him and the guy was asking for it back and he said no and that they were phoning the police.

'He said he would cooperate with them, it wasn't too heated or anything.

'Two police officers came on the plane, arrested him and handcuffed him. 'There were two police vans and around eight police officers.

'His mates were just in front of me, they said he always does stuff like this and that they weren't too shocked. I wasn't bothered, I was just trying to get to Ibiza.'

Alex posted the video on social media site TikTok and it has since been viewed more than two million times.

It has attracted a mixed reaction from views, with one saying: 'Can't smoke on a plane, they did the right thing.'

Another wrote: 'Imagine being so addicted to his vape that he'd rather try and sneak some than just wait 'til after this flight.'

A third commented: 'People that smoke or vape on the plane need some kind of self control therapy.'

A fourth added: 'I don't know why people find it so hard to follow rules?' While one viewer simply said: 'Easy solution here - don't vape.'

The incident took place at Manchester Airport (pictured: Library image) on a Ryanair flight to Ibiza

Vapes are allowed on Ryanair flights under their baggage policy, but passengers are not allowed to use them on the plane.

Under its current policy, Ryanair says: 'You can take e-cigs on the plane but you cannot use them.

On smoking, it says: 'You must not smoke in any part of the plane. If you break this condition, you may be prosecuted and have to pay costs for any disruption caused.'

A spokesperson for Ryanair told MailOnline 'The crew of this flight from Manchester to Ibiza (11th June) called for police assistance ahead of departure after a passenger was found vaping onboard the aircraft.

'In accordance with policy, smoking/the use of e-cigarettes is strictly prohibited at any time onboard the aircraft and this passenger was removed by police.'

Greater Manchester say that following the incident, Jack Stringer, 23, of Rossendale, Lancashire, was charged with public order.

He will appear at Manchester and Salford Magistrates' Court on 3 August.
A Maryland deputy and 18-year-veteran law enforcement officer was gunned down in a fatal shooting while trying to arrest a convicted felon and fugitive that was 'armed and dangerous,' officials said.

Wicomico County Deputy First Class Glenn Hilliard, 41, died on Monday from injuries he sustained during the police-involved shooting that took place at the Talbot Apartments in Pittsville, Maryland, on Sunday night.

The suspect, identified as 20-year-old Austin Jacob Allen Davidson, had been wanted on multiple felony warrants in multiple jurisdictions.

Davidson, who was wanted for four outstanding arrest warrants, was charged Monday with first-and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault and other offenses in Hilliard's death, state police said.

He surrendered to the authorities after a manhunt that involved nearly 20 officers and is currently being held without bond and waived an attorney.

Deputy First Class Glenn Hilliard. The Maryland deputy was shot and killed while trying to arrest a fugitive, authorities said. Hilliard spotted the suspect, who was wanted on multiple felony warrants, coming out of an apartment complex Sunday, June 12, 2022 in Pittsville, Maryland, the sheriff's office said. A foot chase ensued and Hilliard was shot trying to arrest the suspect

The suspect identified as 20-year-old Austin Jacob Allen Davidson had been wanted on multiple felony warrants in multiple jurisdictions. Davidson was wanted for four outstanding arrest warrants, was charged Monday with first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault and other offenses in Hilliard's death, state police said

The Talbot Apartments in Pittsville, Maryland where the shooting took place on Sunday night

The harrowing ordeal happened on Sunday night when when Hilliard and another deputy traveled to the Maryland housing complex to arrest Davidson.

When the officers were unable to locate anyone who matched the description they left.

Hilliard and his deputy returned to the scene, about ten minutes later. When the deputy spotted a man leaving a stairwell, who matched Davidson's description, he left his police vehicle behind, and began to chase the suspect on foot.

As Hilliard started inching in on the suspect, he announced that he would use a stun gun and will deploy it. The stun gun was not effective, Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis said.

In an attempt to run from police, Davidson ran towards the woods, and while doing so, turned and fired multiple shots.

Two of the bullets struck Hilliard, and he went down, the sheriff told DailyMail.com. He said Office Hilliard never got the chance to remove his gun from his holster.

The shooting was captured on Hilliard's body-worn camera. Lewis said he was not able to release the footage since they need to 'preserve it for the upcoming trial.'

'We are going to provide every possible resource from Maryland State Police and all of our state assets to make sure this perpetrator is convicted and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,' Lewis said during a Monday press conference.

Lewis appeared emotional as he spoke about meeting Hilliard's wife, Tamika and his three children, the officers two daughters and a 12-year-old son, who the sheriff said looks just like his father.

The sheriff said that someone like Davidson should have not been out on the streets. 'You heard me talk about for 8 years getting tough on repeat offenders especially the judges in Baltimore City letting people out. The fact that this guy was out not serving any jail time for armed robberies is just unacceptable,' he said

'His wife said she wanted to make sure we passed onto people that Glenn Hillard died doing what he loved,' Lewis said.

The sheriff called it a 'horrendous crime and tragedy,' and one that 'happens far too often.'

'These are men and women who go out every single day and put their lives on the line to keep the rest of us safe,' Lewis said. 'We owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude for what they do each and everyday.'

He added: 'Glen Hilliard is never going to be forgotten for the hero he is.'

He asked for prayers for the Hilliard family and for the rest of the law enforcement officers.

The sheriff's voice grew angry, as he said that someone like Davidson should have not been out on the streets and condemned the judges for allowing it.

The police vehicle being transported from crime scene at the apartment building in Pittsville, Maryland where the Sunday night shooting occurred

'You heard me talk about for 8 years getting tough on repeat offenders especially the judges in Baltimore City letting people out. The fact that this guy was out not serving any jail time for armed robberies is just unacceptable,' he said.

State Attorney Jamie Dykes said at Monday's press conference there is a pending trail and the case will be presented to grand jury over the next few weeks.

She assured the family of Hilliard that 'justice will be done for Deputy Hilliard.'

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan met Monday with the deputy's family and said Hilliard's wife wanted to make sure people knew Hilliard 'died doing what he loved.'

'The days ahead will be challenging, but for now, we are mourning the loss of an incredible human being,' the sheriff's office news release said.

'Deputy Glenn Hilliard was a son, a husband and a father to three beautiful children, a brother to those he worked with, and an exemplary public servant to the citizens of Wicomico County and to the State of Maryland. Our hearts and prayers go out to Glenns family during this difficult time.'

After serving at other departments in the region, Hilliard had been with the sheriff's office for about 10 years, Lewis said. He would have turned 42 later this month.

Lewis described Hilliard as an incredible detective who was skilled with electronics - fixing people's cellphones and mastering the department drones - but he was also a 'jokester,' who was a beloved member of the sheriff's office family.

He said Hilliard was good-looking, 'dressed better probably than most people in this office' and always had a smile on his face.

Davidson, who was wanted for four outstanding arrest warrants, was charged Monday with first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault and other offenses in Hilliard's death, state police said.

He was being held without bond and waived an attorney at his initial appearance, according to online court records.

Sheriff Lewis spoke to DailyMail.com about the loss of his fellow officer and the anguish he was feeling regarding bail reform laws.

'I am so disgusted. We are far from perfect but we do a damn good job. Most of of the time we get it right. When we fail because we are not machines but are human the far left radicals come after us.'

Lewis said on June 5, 2019 when Davidson robbed a McDonalds in Baltimore City, Maryland with a semi-automatic handgun stealing $1,136 he told detectives when they asked him why he held the woman up at gunpoint, Davidson said 'because I can.'

'I am so fet up with these thugs wreaking havoc. They don't fear the law. They don't fear anyone because these laws are created to make it easier for them,' he said.
A social worker who 'exploited' a teenage boy in her care and invited him into her own home for sex on 'several occasions' for more than a year has been banned from the professional register, a tribunal has found.

Jade Davies, 25, developed an 'inappropriate relationship' with the boy - known as Child A - while she was employed as a care worker for Keys Group in North Wales and 'failed to maintain an appropriate professional boundary'.

The woman would secretly text the boy outside of work and would regularly ask him to delete evidence of their communication from a mobile phone.

A panel heard that Miss Davies even feared she might have fallen pregnant after having sex with the youngster.

She then ordered him to delete evidence of their relationship from his phone after their fling was uncovered.

Jade Davies, 25, developed an 'inappropriate relationship' with the boy - known as Child A - while she was employed as a care worker for Keys Group in North Wales and 'failed to maintain an appropriate professional boundary'

The Social Care Wales hearing was told Miss Davies developed the 'relationship' with the boy over the course of a year between 2017 and 2018.

She was quizzed by police over allegations of sexual activity with a child and perverting the course of justice.

The fitness to practise panel heard prosecutors did not pursue charges because the boy did not want to make a complaint.

The panel ruled that Miss Davies conduct fell 'significantly short' of what was expected in her profession and that her fitness to practise in the care sector was impaired as a result of her actions.

The panel also found misconduct allegations were proved and Miss Davies, who worked at a home in North Wales, was banned from the social care register.

Lorna Savidge, chair of the panel, said: 'Miss Davies failed to maintain an appropriate professional boundary.

'There is no room in the care sector for those who cultivate a sexual relationship'.

She said the boy was 'put at unnecessary risk' by Miss Davies who was working in the home run by the Keys Group.

Ms Savidge said: 'She exploited Child A and abused their trust.'

She added: 'The reality is that we are concerned with what appears to be a pattern of deplorable practice.'

Miss Davies, who did not attend the remote hearing and was not represented, has 28 days to appeal the order.

She was said to have provided no explanation for her behaviour and told a police interview in January, 2019, that what had happened 'was not her fault'.
Ministers today pledged to prevent 'foreign actors' having 'undue influence' on university campuses amid a row over Chinese censorship fears.

Changes to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will force UK higher education institutions to report any financial arrangements they have with individuals or organisations overseas 'to ensure that UK values cannot be compromised'.

Universities and student societies will also have to share details of overseas funding from specified countries, and would face fines or other sanctions over perceived risks to freedom of speech or academic freedom because of their funding routes.

It comes after Tory backbench critics of the Communist regime in Beijing threatened to introduce their own amendment to the bill to counteract what they said were efforts to whitewash its image.

MPs including Alicia Kearns targeted the Confucius Institute, a worldwide education and cultural programme. The group, which has branches at UK universities including Edinburgh, Manchester and UCL, is funded by an organisation linked to the Chinese government.

Sweden ended its work in the Scandinavian country in May 2020. Months later, in August 2020, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo labelled the US operation 'an entity advancing Beijing's global propaganda and malign influence campaign'.

MPs including Alicia Kearns targeted the Confucius Institute, a worldwide education and cultural programme which has branches at UK universities including Edinburgh, Manchester and UCL.

But Sweden ended its work in the Scandinavian country in May 2020 . Months later, in August 2020, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo labelled the US operation 'an entity advancing Beijing's global propaganda and malign influence campaign'.

On Friday, Ms Kearns warned that the Chinese government held too much sway over UK universities, adding that 'education is being weaponised by those against us'.

She said that Confucius Institutes - public language and cultural education programmes were 'undermining the integrity of the Mandarin education in our country'.

The proposed threshold for reporting is 75,000, and will exempt countries such as Japan and Australia, listed in the Academic Technology Approval Scheme, as well as countries in the European Union and Nato.

The Department for Education opened applications on Monday for its new director for freedom of speech and academic freedom on the board of the Office for Students.

The director will have the power to sanction universities over cases of no-platforming or unlawfully restricting free speech.

Higher and further education minister Michelle Donelan said: 'We are home to some of the best universities in the world and for decades students have travelled thousands of miles across the globe to study here because of our values of free speech and academic freedom.

'It is right that we are taking new action to protect our universities from undue foreign influences that work against British values - this is a Bill that the rest of the world will take note of.'

She added that she looked forward to working with the new director 'to tackle these important issues and ensure we remain one of the most academically free countries in the world'.

Higher and further education minister Michelle Donelan said: 'It is right that we are taking new action to protect our universities from undue foreign influences that work against British values - this is a Bill that the rest of the world will take note of.'

The Commons will also debate a further amendment to the Bill on Monday to make sure security costs for visiting speakers at universities are not passed on to student societies, to prevent 'no-platforming by the back door'.

The amendment says that security costs should be covered by the relevant body, rather than being passed on to societies or event organisers.

The Government said that this amendment followed cases where a student society at Bristol University had faced a 500 security charge from the student union to invite the Israeli ambassador to give a talk, while reportedly charging nothing for his Palestinian counterpart to speak.

The Union of Jewish Students has reported that some Jewish societies have been billed for security costs for a stall at student fairs.

Amendments will also set out that the legislation must include students' unions at individual colleges, known as junior or middle common rooms, for example those based within colleges at Oxford and Cambridge.
Another 104 monkeypox cases have been spotted in the UK, bringing Britain's total to 470.

Health chiefs are scrambling to contain the tropical virus, which is usually only seen in Africa.

Dozens of countries around the world, including the US, Spain and Portugal, have all been affected and the World Health Organization has warned there is a 'real' threat monkeypox could become endemic in Europe unless the current cluster is stamped out urgently.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) bosses confirmed all of today's new cases are in England.

No further details were given but officials acknowledged that 'most cases' continue to be among gay and bisexual men.

England has already recorded 452 cases since the outbreak began in May, followed by Scotland (12), Wales (four) and Northern Ireland (two). More than 1,400 infections have been diagnosed globally.

Officials are urging gay and bisexual men to be aware of new lesions, rashes or scabs and get in contact with a sexual health clinic

The infection often starts with small bumps that scab over and are contagious

Timeline of monkeypox 1958: Monkeypox was first discovered when an outbreak of a pox-like disease occurred in monkeys kept for research. 1970: The first human case was recorded in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the infection has been reported in a number of central and western African countries since then. 2003: A Monkeypox outbreak occurred in the US after rodents were imported from Africa. Cases were reported in both humans and pet prairie dogs. All the human infections followed contact with an infected pet and all patients recovered. SEPTEMBER 8, 2018: Monkeypox appeared in the UK for the first time in a Nigerian naval officer who was visiting Cornwall for training. They were treated at the Royal Free Hospital in London. SEPTEMBER 11, 2018: A second UK monkeypox case is confirmed in Blackpool. There is no link with the first case in Cornwall. Instead, the patient is though to have picked up the infection when travelling in Nigeria. They were treated at Blackpool Victoria Hospital and Royal Liverpool University Hospital. SEPTEMBER 26, 2018: A third person is diagnosed with monkeypox. The individual worked at Blackpool Victoria Hospital and treated the second Monkeypox case. They received treatment at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. DECEMBER 3, 2019: A patient was diagnosed with monkeypox in England, marking the fourth ever case. MAY 25, 2021: Two cases of monkeypox were identified in north Wales. Both patients had travel links to Nigeria. A third person living with one of the cases was diagnosed and admitted to hospital, bringing the total number ever to seven. MAY 7, 2022: A person was diagnosed with Monkeypox in England after recently travelling to Nigeria. The person received care at the expert infectious disease unit at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London. MAY 14, 2022: Two more cases were confirmed in London. The infected pair lived in the same household but had not been in contact with the case announced one week earlier. One of these individuals received care at the expert infectious disease unit at St Mary's Hospital in London. The other isolated at home and did not need hospital treatment. MAY 16, 2022: Four more cases were announced, bringing the UK total to seven. Three of these cases are in London, while one of their contacts is infected in the north east of England. The spate of cases was described as 'unusual' and 'surprising' as experts warn gay and bisexual men to look out for new rashes. MAY 19, 2022: Two more cases were revealed, with no travel links or connections to other cases. The cases were based in the South East and London. Fears began to grow that infections are going undetected. MAY 20, 2022: Eleven more cases are announced, meaning Britain's monkeypox outbreak have doubled to 20. Minsters discuss the possibility of a public health campaign to warn gay men the disease may be more prevalent for them MAY 23, 2022: Scotland logs its first ever monkeypox case and 36 more infection announced in England. It brings the UK total to 57. MAY 24, 2022: England logs another 14 cases, bringing the UK total to 71. MAY 25, 2022: Another seven infections are spotted in England, meaning 78 cases have been detected in the UK. MAY 26, 2022: Wales and Northern Ireland detect their first monkeypox case in the recent outbreak, while Scotland spots two more cases and England logs eight, bringing UK total to 90. MAY 27, 2022: England detects 16 more cases, meaning 106 people in Britain have confirmed infections. MAY 29, 2022: World Health Organization (WHO) says risk of monkeypox is 'moderate', citing concerns about virus infecting children and immunosuppressed people if it becomes more widespread. MAY 30, 2022: The UK detects another 71 monkeypox cases, bringing the UK total to 179. Cases jumped 70 per cent in just three days. MAY 31, 2022: Eleven infections are spotted across the UK, bringing the infection toll to 190. JUNE 1, 2022: Another five cases are spotted in England and one is detected in Scotland, meaning the UK has now logged 196. JUNE 2, 2022: The UK spots another 11 cases in England, bringing the UK total to 207. JUNE 3, 2022: A further 18 cases are logged - 15 in England and three in Scotland, bringing Britain's monkeypox infection toll to 225. JUNE 6, 2022: Seventy-three cases are spotted in England, 2 in Scotland and 2 in Wales, bringing the UK total to 302. JUNE 8, 2022: Some 18 people in England and one in Scotland test positive, meaning 321 people have had infections confirmed. JUNE 10, 2022: Forty-three more cases are spotted in England and one in each in Scotland and Wales. The UK has now confirmed 366 infections. JUNE 13, 2022: Another 103 cases are spotted in England, bringing UK total to 470. Advertisement

The UKHSA advises Britons to contact their sexual health clinic if they have a rash with blisters and have been in close contact with a suspected or confirmed monkeypox case or have been in West or Central Africa in the last three weeks.

As part of efforts to thwart the ever-growing outbreak, both confirmed cases and close contacts are offered the Imvanex jab, which is 85 per cent effective against the virus.

The strategy, known as ring vaccination, has been used in the past and is proven to work.

A large proportion of cases so far have been identified in the gay, bisexual and men who have sex with other men community.

But anyone can get monkeypox if they have had close contact with an infected person.

Monkeypox is not normally a sexually-transmitted infection, but it can be passed on by direct contact during sex.

It can also be spread through touching clothing, bedding or towels used by someone with the monkeypox rash.

The disease is usually mild but can cause severe illness in some cases.

Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle aches, backache, swollen lymph nodes, chills and exhaustion.

A rash can develop, often beginning on the face, which then spreads to other parts of the body including the genitals.

The UKHSA this month declared the virus a notifiable disease. It means all medics must alert local health authorities to suspected cases.

The tropical virus now carries the same legal status as the plague, rabies and measles.

Health chiefs revealed on Friday that 81 per cent of Britons infected with monkeypox are London residents, based on questionnaire results from 152 confirmed cases.

The average age of those carrying monkeypox is 38, 99 per cent are men and all but one identified as men who have sex with men.

Around half of cases had travelled abroad in the three weeks before they were diagnosed, with the other half linked with community transmission.

The UKHSA said it is investigating the outbreak to better understand the virus, its transmission and the best use of mitigations, such as vaccines and treatments.

It said all new data is being used 'rapidly' to inform its response.

It comes after Venezuela yesterday became the latest country to confirm a monkeypox case.

Health Minister Magaly Gutierrez tweeted that a man was diagnosed after arriving in the country from Madrid and contact tracing is underway.

The virus has spread to at least 43 countries in the ongoing outbreak.

And Poland's Health Minister Adam Niedzielski on Friday confirmed that the country has logged its first monkeypox infection.

Meanwhile, WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned the risk of monkeypox becoming established in non-endemic countries 'is real'.

He told a press conference last week: 'The risk of monkeypox becoming established in non-endemic countries is real.

'More than 1,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox have now been reported to WHO from 29 countries that are not endemic for the disease.

'So far, no deaths have been reported in these countries. Cases have been reported mainly, but not only, among men who have sex with men.

'Some countries are now beginning to report cases of apparent community transmission, including some cases in women.'

Experts have warned that monkeypox could become endemic among animals in Europe, as it is in parts of Nigeria, if the virus spreads to pets and wildlife.

This would make animals a permanent reservoir of the virus that could infect humans, triggering sporadic outbreaks.

The head of the UN agency said he was particularly concerned about the risk the virus poses to vulnerable groups, including pregnant women and children.

He said the sudden and unexpected appearance of monkeypox outside endemic countries suggested that there might have been undetected transmission for some time, but it was not known for how long.

One case of monkeypox in a non-endemic country is considered an outbreak.

Dr Tedros said that while this was 'clearly concerning', the virus had been circulating and killing in Africa for decades, with more than 1,400 suspected cases and 66 deaths so far this year.

'The communities that live with the threat of this virus every day deserve the same concern, the same care and the same access to tools to protect themselves,' he said.

Monkeypox, which was first discovered in lab monkeys in the late 1950s, is usually mild but can cause severe illness in some cases.

It can kill up to 10 per cent of people it infects. But the milder strain causing the current outbreak kills one in 100  similar to when Covid first hit. No monkeypox deaths linked with the ongoing outbreak have yet been reported.

The virus has an incubation period of anywhere up to 21 days, meaning it can take three weeks for symptoms to appear.

How DO you catch monkeypox and what are the symptoms? EVERYTHING you need to know about tropical virus

How do you catch monkeypox?

Until this worldwide outbreak, monkeypox was usually spread by infected rodents  including rats, mice and even squirrels  in west and central Africa.

Humans can catch the illness  which comes from the same family as smallpox  if they're bitten by infected animals, touch their blood, bodily fluids, or scabs, or eat wild game or bush meat.

The orthopoxvirus, which causes monkeypox, can enter the body through broken skin  even if it's not visible, as well as the eyes, nose and mouth.

Despite being mainly spread by wild animals, it was known that monkeypox could be passed on between people. However, health chiefs insist it was very rare until the current outbreak.

Human-to-human spread can occur if someone touches clothing or bedding used by an infected person, or through direct contact with the virus' tell-tale scabs. The virus can also spread through coughs and sneezes.

In the ongoing surge in cases, experts think the virus is passing through skin-to-skin contact during sex  even though this exact mechanism has never been seen until now.

How deadly is it?

Monkeypox is usually mild, with most patients recovering within a few weeks without treatment.

Yet, the disease kills up to 10 per cent of cases. But this high rate is thought to be in part due to a historic lack of testing meaning that a tenth of known cases have died rather than a tenth of all infections.

However, with milder strains the fatality rate is closer to one in 100  similar to when Covid first hit.

The West African version of the virus, which is mild compared to the Central African strain, is behind the current spread. No deaths have been reported as part of the ongoing outbreak.

How is it tested for?

It can be difficult to diagnose monkeypox as it is often confused with other infections such as chickenpox.

Monkeypox is confirmed by a clinical assessment by a health professional and a test in the UK's specialist lab  the UKHSA's Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory.

The test involves taking samples from skin lesions, such as part of the scab, fluid from the lesions or pieces of dry crusts.

What are the symptoms?

It can take up to three weeks for monkeypox-infected patients to develop any of its tell-tale symptoms.

Early signs of the virus include a fever, headache, muscle aches, backache, swollen lymph nodes, chills and exhaustion  meaning it could, theoretically, be mistaken for other common illnesses.

But its most unusual feature is a rash that often begins on the face, then spreads to other parts of the body, commonly the hands and feet.

The rash changes and goes through different stages before finally forming a scab, which later falls off.

How long is someone contagious?

An individual is contagious from the point their rash appears until all the scabs have fallen off and there is intact skin underneath.

The scabs may also contain infectious virus material.

The infectious period is thought to last for three weeks but may vary between individuals.

What do I do if I have symptoms?

The UK Health Security Agency advises Britons to contact their sexual health clinic if they have a rash with blisters and have been in close contact with a suspected or confirmed monkeypox case or have been in West or Central Africa in the last three weeks.

Britons are asked to contact clinics ahead of their visit and avoid contact with others until they have been seen by a medic.

Gay and bisexual men have been asked to be especially alert to the symptoms as most of the cases have been detected in men who have sex with men.

What even is monkeypox?

Monkeypox was first discovered when an outbreak of a pox-like disease occurred in monkeys kept for research in 1958.

The first human case was recorded in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the infection has been reported in a number of central and western African countries since then.

Only a handful of cases have been reported outside of Africa and they were confined to people with travel links to the continent.

The UK, US, Israel and Singapore are the only countries which had detected the virus before May 2022.

Monkeypox is a rare viral infection which kills up to one in ten of those infected but does not spread easily between people. The tropical disease is endemic in parts of Africa and is known for its rare and unusual rashes, bumps and lesions (file photo)

Nurses and doctors are being advised to stay 'alert' to patients who present with a new rash or scabby lesions (like above)

Is it related to chickenpox?

Despite causing a similar rash, chickenpox is not related to monkeypox.

The infection, which usually strikes children, is caused by the varicella-zoster virus.

For comparison, monkeypox  like smallpox  is an orthopoxvirus. Because of this link, smallpox vaccines also provide protection against monkeypox.

Are young people more vulnerable?

Britons aged under 50 may be more susceptible to monkeypox, according to the World Health Organization.

This is because children in the UK were routinely offered the smallpox jab, which protects against monkeypox, until 1971.

The WHO also warns that the fatality rate has been higher among young children.

Does it spread as easily as Covid?

Leading experts insist we won't be seeing Covid-style levels of transmission in the monkeypox outbreak.

A World Health Organization report last year suggested the natural R rate of the virus  the number of people each patient would infect if they lived normally while sick  is two.

This is lower than the original Wuhan variant of Covid and about a third of the R rate of the Indian 'Delta' strain.

But the real rate is likely much lower because 'distinctive symptoms greatly aid in its early detection and containment,' the team said, meaning it's easy to spot cases and isolate them.

Covid is mainly spread through droplets an infected person releases whenever they breathe, speak, cough or sneeze.

How is the UK managing the outbreak?

MailOnline revealed monkeypox patients and their close contacts, including NHS workers, are being offered the Imvanex smallpox vaccine.

The strategy, known as ring vaccination, involves jabbing and monitoring anyone around an infected person to form a buffer of immune people to limit the spread of a disease.

Additionally, close contacts of those with a confirmed monkeypox infection are being told to stay at home for 21 days and avoid contact under-12s, immunosuppressed people and pregnant women.

The Government said unprotected direct contact or high risk environmental contact includes living in the same house as someone with monkeypox, having sexual contact with them or even just changing their bedding 'without appropriate PPE'.

As with Covid, someone who has come within one metre of an infected person is classed as a monkeypox contact.

This lower category of contact, which also includes sitting next to a person with monkeypox on a plane, means a tracer will call the person every day for three weeks and they will be advised to stay off work for 21 days if their job involves children or immuno-suppressed colleagues.

The UK has stopped short of requiring people by law to quarantine if they develop monkeypox, but ministers are considering a public health campaign to alert gay and bisexual men, because of the number of cases in this group.

What if it continues to spread?

Experts told MailOnline they 'could see a role' for a targeted jab rollout to gay men in the UK 'if this isn't brought under control quickly'.

Close contacts of the UK's known cases are already being offered the jab, which was originally designed for smallpox. The two rash-causing viruses are very similar.

A health source told MailOnline 'there would be a number of strategies we'd look at' if cases continued to rise.

Professor Kevin Fenton, London's public health regional director, said if the outbreak in the capital continues to grow then the rollout of vaccines and treatments could be broadened to more groups.

He said there are 'plans in place' to have more antivirals if the outbreak keeps growing.

What other countries have spotted cases?

More than 40 countries  including the US, Spain and Italy  have detected cases of monkeypox.

The most cases have been detected in the UK, Spain, Portugal, Canada and Germany.

There are a handful of antivirals and therapies for smallpox that appear to work on monkeypox, including the drug tecovirimat, which was approved for monkeypox in the EU in January

Is there a vaccine for it?

The smallpox vaccine, called Imvanex in the UK and Jynneos in the US, can protect against monkeypox because the viruses behind the illnesses are closely related.

Data shows it prevents around 85 per cent of cases, and has been used 'off-label' in the UK since 2018.

The jab, thought to cost 20 per dose, contains a modified vaccinia virus, which is similar to both smallpox and monkeypox, but does not cause disease in people.

Because of its similarity to the pox viruses, antibodies produced against this virus offer cross protection.

Are there any drugs to treat it?

There are a handful of antivirals and therapies for smallpox that appear to work on monkeypox.

This includes the drug tecovirimat, which was approved for monkeypox in the EU in January.

Tecovirimat prevents the virus from leaving an infected cell, hindering the spread of the virus within the body.

An injectable antiviral used to treat AIDS called cidofovir can be used to manage the infection, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It also works by stopping the growth of the virus.
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They were so common in the UK capital that they became known as 'London Planes'  and the name has stuck.

After being planted avidly by the Victorians, plane trees in London thrived and are now the capital's most common tree.

But whilst their distinctive flaky bark makes them an instantly recognisable sight, London planes are known to be among the causes of hay fever, which blights millions of Britons in the summer months.

As well as the pollen they produce, they shoot hairs, known as trichomes, at the same time that grass pollen levels are at their highest. The hairs are also known for making people cough and irritating the skin.

Whilst some of London's plane trees date from the 18th century, it is those that line the Embankment  which were systematically planted in 1870  that caught the Victorian imagination.

Now, they line many of the capital's streets and can also be seen in many of London's most popular green spaces, including Hyde Park.

Last weekend, pollen counts were high in all of England, prompting many to document their misery on social media.

They were so common in the UK capital that they became known as 'London Planes'  and the name has stuck. Above: London planes are seen lining London's Embankment in the late 19th century

Now, plane trees line many of the capital's streets and can also be seen in many of London's most popular green spaces, including Hyde Park

WHAT EXACTLY IS HAY FEVER AND CAN PLANE TREES CAUSE IT? Hay fever is an allergic reaction to pollen, a fine powder which comes from plants. There is more pollen in the air in the spring and summer when plants are flowering. The reaction usually happens when pollen comes into contact with someone's eyes, nose, mouth or throat. Hay fever symptoms include coughing and sneezing; a runny or blocked nose; itchy, red or watery eyes; itching throat, nose, mouth or ears; headaches and tiredness. According to the King Edward VII Hospital, the London plane is 'one of the most common culprits' of hay fever-causing pollen in the summer months. Oak, birch and ash trees are also commonly associated with hay fever symptoms. As well as the pollen they produce, the bristly fibres on the seeds of plane trees form a dust that creates symptoms of coughing. People suffering from hay fever can put Vaseline around their nose to trap the pollen, wear wraparound sunglasses to keep pollen out of their eyes, wash clothes regularly and vacuum and dust indoors. Avoiding grass, cut flowers and smoke can help reduce symptoms, as can drying clothes indoors where pollen is less likely to stick to them. Source: NHS Choices and King Edward VII Hospital Advertisement

According to a poll last year, almost half of the UK population struggle with the condition  nearly double the number previously thought.

Hay fever was previously estimated to affect up to 13million people in the UK, or 30 per cent of the population.

The plane tree is easily identified with its distinctive bark that peels in large flakes. Its leaves are similar to those of a sycamore tree.

Along with London planes, oak, birch and ash trees  all of which are popular in green spaces across Britain  are associated with hay fever symptoms.

Among the oldest planes in the capital are the ones in Mayfair's Berkeley Square. They date from 1789.

By contrast, the planes that line the South Bank from the London Eye to the Oxo Tower were planted after the Festival of Britain in 1951, making them relative youngsters.

The oldest London planes in England, in Buckden, Cambridgeshire, date from 1660. They are said to have been presented to the then Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Sanderson.

Another London plane that dates back to the 17th-century stands in Ely.

London's oldest and largest plane stands at Barn Elms in West London and is believed to date from 1685. It was planted on land belonging to the then Archbishop of Canterbury.

The precise origins of London planes are not known, they are not native to London or the UK.

Most botanists agree that they are a hybrid between the Oriental Plane and the American Sycamore.

Before they were systematically planted in the late 19th-century, London planes had largely been confined to squares and walks.

After the development of the Embankment, London planes were planted at a rapid rate across the capital and then around the country and elsewhere.

Writing in a blog for the Southbank Centre, historian Paul Wood said of the London Plane: 'London's love affair with the hybrid plane started on the Embankment.

'It became an emblem of the modern city, and was recorded in countless 19th-century photographs and paintings.'

As well as the pollen they produce, the bristly fibres on the seeds of plane trees form a dust that creates symptoms of coughing

Among the oldest planes in the capital are the ones in Mayfair's Berkeley Square. They date from 1789. Above: Plane trees in Berkeley Square

A Daily Mail news report from 1905 noted how 'every brick and plane-studded street' was a surprise to people visiting London. It added that the 'plane has thrived much better in London than any other forest tree'

Work on the Victoria Embankment began in the 1865 and was completed in 1870. It became a model for the countless other tree-lined thoroughfares that now exist in London.

In 2019, officials in Melbourne decided to remove plane trees from the city's central business district in part due to the impact they had on the health of some residents.

In Sydney, the planting of plane trees was opposed by residents who said they were causing hay fever symptoms. Residents launched a 'no more plane-trees' action group.

Before they were systematically planted in the late 19th-century, London planes had largely been confined to squares and walks. Above: Hyde Park in the early 19th century

Plane trees are seen in Kennington Park in south London. The trees can grow up to 115 feet and live for several hundred years

After the development of the Embankment, London planes were planted at a rapid rate across the capital and then around the country and elsewhere

According to a poll last year, almost half of the UK population struggle with hay fever  nearly double the number previously thought

Professor Robyn O'Hehir, an expert in allergies from Monash University in Melbourne, previously said that plane trees could cause throat irritation even in people who are not prone to allergies.

She warned people in Melbourne to 'avoid prominent plane tree areas'.

'People often need water or a mouthful of bread to clear the fine particles from their throats,' she said.

University of Melbourne botanist Ed Newbigin added that plane trees can cause 'irritation to the eyes and skin'.

James O'Loan, CEO and prescribing pharmacist at Chemist4U told MailOnline: 'For anyone suffering from hay fever, having an understanding of what can aggravate their hay fever is massively important as it can help them manage their symptoms.

'Plane trees are the most common tree in London and are commonly planted in parks and along pavements.

'This means that anyone who is affected by their pollen is going to find a picnic in the park with friends or even walking to work challenging.

'London plane trees contain trichomes and achene fibres. These fibres can cause respiratory and eye symptoms due to irritation.

'It is advisable for hay fever sufferers to refrain from going outside during times where pollen counts are high (especially if there are strong winds).

'However if it's not possible then speak to your GP or local pharmacist about which hay fever treatments might work best for you.'
HONG KONG, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday sent a congratulatory letter to Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, on the 120th anniversary of its founding.

In the letter, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, urged the newspaper to carry forward its patriotic traditions, pursue innovative development and write even more splendid chapters of the steady and sustained implementation of "one country, two systems."

For over a century, Ta Kung Pao has played an active role in the building of New China, the reform and opening-up and modernization, Xi said, adding that the newspaper has also played an active role in Hong Kong's return to the motherland as well as in maintaining Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.

In the new era, Ta Kung Pao unequivocally sent out positive notes and helped forge social consensus, thus contributing to maintaining Hong Kong's stability, enhancing exchanges between Hong Kong and the mainland, and forming a closer emotional bond of Hong Kong residents with the motherland, he said.

Xi called on the newspaper to continue to grow its influence, and contribute more to the realization of the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.

The letter was read at a ceremony held in Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon to mark the newspaper's founding anniversary.

The newspaper, founded on June 17, 1902, is the oldest Chinese-language newspaper still in circulation in the world.

In 2016, it was merged into Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group and has since accelerated its integrated development to form an all-media network based in Hong Kong with an aim of serving Chinese readers across the globe.

A ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the founding of Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, is held in Hong Kong, south China, June 12, 2022. (Xinhua/Li Gang)

A ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the founding of Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, is held in Hong Kong, south China, June 12, 2022. (Xinhua/Li Gang)
Viable measures needed to protect lawyers from attack



A fire caused by suspected arson broke out at a building housing law firms in Daegu last Thursday, killing seven people and injuring 48 others. The suspected perpetrator, a man in his 50s, was found dead at the scene along with a lawyer and five employees from the same law office on the building's second floor.



Police suspect that the alleged arsonist, identified only by his surname Cheon, set fire to the lawyer's office in anger over his loss in a civil lawsuit handled by the office. But the lawyer targeted by Cheon escaped disaster because he was away on business. The other lawyer who shared the office and some employees lost their lives. Stab wounds were found on the bodies of two people, prompting suspicions that the victims had been attacked by the suspect before the fire broke out.



This incident cannot be seen as an individual's aberration, but is rather emblematic of the sad state of our society. One can seek a legal judgment yet again in the court of appeals if dissatisfied with a lower court ruling. However, the suspect ignored our established legal procedures and sought personal revenge, especially targeting the lawyer representing the other party in the lawsuit who did his best for the client.



It is no secret that many lawyers are harassed by verbal abuse and menace, big and small. In fact, the suspected arsonist harassed the employees by making protest calls repeatedly before committing the apparent hate crime.



Lawyers are in shock because their vague anxiety about safety has become a reality. The Korean Bar Association termed the deadly attack as a ruthless act of terrorism against the country's judicial system and called for measures to prevent the same thing from happening again. Yet hammering out viable measures that could stop unpredictable incidents of this kind does not appear to be easy. The bottom line is that it's urgent to enhance trust in our judicial system, which ranks among the lowest in the OECD.






A Delaware man and his son charged in the January 6 riot in the Capitol Building are hoping that a federal judge appointed by Trump lets them off with a slap on the wrist, claiming they were waved inside by cops.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden acquitted a New Mexico man in April on similar charges, a rare blemish on the Justice Department's record of securing convictions in Capitol riot cases.

Kevin Seefried, who carried a Confederate battle flag inside the Capitol after he entered the building with his son, Hunter, were 'early, aggressive and active participants' in the Capitol breach and among the first rioters to enter the bulling on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors have said.

They will go on trial Monday in front of McFadden, who will hear testimony without a jury for the Seefrieds' bench trial, which means the judge will decide their cases.

Kevin Seefried, left carrying flag, and his son, Hunter, right, inside the Capitol building during January 6.

Kevin Seefried, seen here, carries a Confederate flag inside the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021

Kevin Seefried, second from left, and his son, Hunter, center, claim that they were waved into the Capitol Building on January 6 by a police officer who had abandoned his post

McFadden, whom President Donald Trump nominated in 2017, has criticized prosecutors' handling of Capitol riot cases. He suggested that the Justice Department has been unjustly tougher on Capitol riot defendants compared with people arrested at protests against police brutality and racial injustice after George Floyd's 2020 murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

McFadden also has criticized prosecutors for seeking jail time for some nonviolent Capitol riot defendants but not for left-wing activists who protested Trump's nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, The Washington Post reported.

In April, McFadden acquitted New Mexico resident Matthew Martin of misdemeanor charges that he illegally entered the Capitol and engaged in disorderly conduct after he walked into the building.

Martin testified that a police officer waved him into the building. A prosecutor rejected that testimony as 'nonsense,' but McFadden said it was reasonable for Martin to believe that outnumbered police officers allowed him to enter the Capitol through the Rotunda doors.

Hunter Seefried, seen here in red box, clears glass out of the window of the Capitol Building before crawling through

Kevin Seefried, circled, is expected to claim that he was waved into the building by Capitol Hill police

Hunter Seefried, circled here, seen climbing through window to the Capitol Building on January 6

In March, McFadden acquitted a New Mexico elected official of engaging in disorderly conduct but convicted him of illegally entering restricted Capitol grounds.

The judge said there was ample evidence that Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin knew he was in a restricted area and didn't leave. However, McFadden concluded prosecutors didn't meet their burden to prove that Griffin engaged in disorderly conduct.

McFadden is the only judge to a hold a bench trial for a Capitol riot case so far.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is scheduled to preside over a bench trial for Jesus Rivera, a Pensacola, Florida, man charged with four riot-related misdemeanors. President Bill Clinton nominated Kollar-Kotelly to the court in 1997.

At least four other Capitol riot defendants have bench trials scheduled for this year.

Juries have unanimously convicted five Capitol riot defendants of all charges, a perfect record for prosecutors so far. More than 300 others have pleaded guilty to riot offenses, mostly misdemeanors punishable by no more than one year in prison. Approximately 100 others have trial dates in 2022 or 2023. More than 800 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the January 6 attack.

The Seefrieds traveled to Washington from their home in Laurel, Delaware, to hear Trump's speech at the 'Stop the Steal' rally on January 6. After the rally, they stopped by their car before joining the mob that stormed the Capitol, prosecutors say.

Father and son rioters, Kevin Seefried, left, and Hunter Seefried, center, photographed inside the Capitol building on January 6 with Aaron Mostofsky, the son of a Brooklyn judge

The Seefrieds climbed over a wall near a stairwell and scaffolding in the northwest section of the Capitol and were among the first rioters to approach the building near the Senate Wing Door, according to prosecutors. After watching other rioters use a police shield and a wood plank to break a window, Hunter Seefried used a gloved fist to clear a shard of glass in one of the broken windowpanes, prosecutors said.

'The defendants and scores of other rioters entered the Capitol building through that window,' prosecutors wrote.

Capitol Hill police officer Eugene Goodman, who diverted rioters away from senators, was threatened by Kevin Seefried on January 6, prosecutors say

Security footage from inside the Capitol Building on January 6 shows Capitol Hill officer Eugene Goodman running past Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, left

The Seefrieds joined other rioters in confronting Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman and in looking for members of Congress and the location where they would be counting the Electoral College votes for the 2020 presidential election, according to prosecutors.

Goodman, who is expected to testify at the Seefrieds' trial, has been hailed as a hero for leading a group of rioters away from Senate chamber and up a set of stairs to an area where other officers were waiting. Goodman also directed Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, to turn around and head away from the mob.

Kevin Seefried told the FBI that he threatened Goodman with violence, saying: 'And then I threw my stick down. I said, 'You can shoot me, man, but we're comin' in,' according to prosecutors.

Kevin Seefried carried a Confederate battle flag from home and was photographed displaying it on a large flagpole as he walked through the Capitol.

'Indeed, the flag that Kevin Seefried carried itself served to signal his intent: the Confederate Battle Flag, a symbol of violent opposition to the United States government,' prosecutors wrote.

The charges against both Kevin and Hunter Seefried include a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding, the joint session of Congress for certifying President Joe Biden's electoral victory.

Hunter Seefried told the FBI that he went to Washington because he was concerned about 'fraud' tied to the election, prosecutors said.
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Sir Tony Blair was all smiles today as he enjoyed the pageantry of the Order of the Garter procession while hard-left protesters set up camp to decry him outside Windsor Castle.

The grinning former prime minister was supported by his wife Cherie, and children Kathryn, Euan, Leo and Nicky who looked equally delighted at Mr Blair's honour bestowed on him by the Queen this afternoon.

But there was anger outside the castle's walls where the Stop the War Coalition teamed up with members of the Free Assange group on the day the former prime minister was admitted to the Order of the Garter with 150 taking to the streets.

Dozens holding 'Bliar' placards that also compared him to Vladimir Putin gathered at the Queen Victoria statue outside the castle walls, where they chanted: 'Tony Blair: war criminal' repeatedly. They then marched through Windsor.

But their protest was in vain, after the Queen returned to duties for the first time since the Platinum Jubilee today to make him a knight at a Windsor investiture.

Mr Blair's admission to Britain's oldest order of chivalry was made personally by the Queen in January, 19 years after he led the nation into the Iraq War and 15 after he left office.

More than 1.5 million signatures were gathered on a petition calling for the knighthood to be 'rescinded', claiming he was the 'least deserving person of any public honour' and that he should be 'held accountable for war crimes'.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair pictured outside St George's Chapel with wife Cherie following the Order Of The Garter Service today

The former Labour leader and his wife Cherie grinned as they left the ceremony at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, this afternoon

The first picture of Sir Tony Blair, marching with former leader of the British House of Lords, Baroness Amos, in his Order of the Garter finery as he was knighted by the Queen amid protests outside Windsor Castle

The former Prime Minister was pictured smiling as he formed part of the procession entering St George's Chapel for the ceremony today

Sir Tony was enjoying the pageantry of the event as he marched from Windsor Castle to St George's Chapel

Protesters gathered outside, including one in a mask with fake blood on his hands, as Sir Tony walked with other dignitaries

Cherie Blair walks towards St George's Chapel as her husband was knighted by the Queen

Nicky, Kathryn and Euan Blair at Windsor to support their father as he became Sir Tony Blair

Cherie Blair embraces her daughter Kathryn Blair as sons Euan, Leo and Nicky Blair look on

Hard-left activists marched through the streets of Windsor this afternoon

Anti Blair demonstrators also chanted as marching bands marked Mr Blair being made a Knight Companion of the Noble Order of the Garter today

Stop the War announced the plan to protest last week, saying 'there is only one court that Blair should be attending, and it's not the royal one' (protester pictured today)

Members of the Free Assange group were also there, including this man dresses at the Queen

The Order of the Garter is the oldest and most senior Order of Chivalry in Britain, established by King Edward III nearly 700 years ago. Mr Blair's admission has proved controversial

People gather to demonstrate against former Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair outside Windsor Castle,

Dozens of left-wing activists came to protest against the Labour prime minister, who ran the country during the Allied military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan

Sir Tony has long faced a backlash over his decision to lead the UK into Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost the lives of 179 British personnel as well as many more civilians

Blair join's Britain's top order of chivalry Order of the Garter Founded in 1348, it is the most senior order of knighthood, outranked only by the Victoria Cross and the George Cross. Membership, granted for public service or service to the sovereign, is limited to 24 living people plus the Queen and the Prince of Wales. Companions of Honour (CH) The Order of the Companions of Honour was founded on June 4 1917 by George V and it limited to just 65 members at any one time. Appointments go to those who have made a long-standing contribution to arts, science, medicine or government. Two have been named in the latest list - former Labour MP and peer Frank Field, for public and political service, and Sir Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute. Order of the Bath (DCB/KCB/CB) This recognises the work of senior military officials and civil servants. England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty (KCB) and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance (KCB) were honoured in the New Year Honours list. - Order of St Michael and St George (Knight/GCMG/KCMG/DCMG/CMG) This recognises service in a foreign country, or in relation to foreign and Commonwealth affairs, such as the work of diplomats overseas. James Bond star Daniel Craig, was made a Companion of the Order, which is equivalent to a CBE and means he can use the post-nominals CMG, following his final outing as 007 in No Time To Die. Knighthood and damehood (Knight/DBE) These are usually bestowed on people who have made a major contribution at national level, who can use the titles Dame and Sir. England's deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam, Wales' chief medical officer Frank Atherton and Scotland's chief medical officer Dr Gregor Smith were made knights. There were also damehoods for UK Health Security Agency chief Dr Jenny Harries and Dr June Raine, chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Advertisement

Sir Tony's predecessors bar one were all appointed to the Order of the Garter just after leaving office and claims have been made that his strained relationship with the Queen during his office might have contributed to the delay. Sir Tony was prime minister during the Allied military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Garter Parade usually sees the 96-year-old monarch lead members of the order from the castle to St George's Chapel, though today the parade will be led by Prince Charles and Prince William. Prince Andrew has also been told not to attend the public part in case

Stop the War announced the plan to protest last week, saying 'there is only one court that Blair should be attending, and it's not the royal one'.

As well as the hard left, the decision was criticised by the families of those killed in Iraq, while more than 1.1 million people signed a petition earlier this year demanding his honour be revoked.

Stop the War Vice Chair, Chris Nineham, said: 'The rehabilitation of Tony Blair since the Iraq war is a scandal. He is widely recognised as a war criminal.

'Our protest will be representing the millions of people who believe the only court Tony Blair should be going near is the Hague.'

Sir Tony has faced years of criticism over the Iraq War, culminating in the devastating report by Sir John Chilcot in 2016, which found that the former prime minister overplayed evidence about Saddam Hussein's weaponry and ignored peaceful means to send troops into the country.

In a devastating set of conclusions, Sir John found Blair presented the case for war with 'a certainty which was not justified' based on 'flawed' intelligence about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Blair then said he would 'take the same decision' to invade Iraq again if he was presented with the same intelligence as he set out a defiant defence after being savaged by the Chilcot report.

Sir Tony, who held the keys to Number 10 between 1997 and 2007, was appointed a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the oldest and most senior British Order of Chivalry.

Appointments to the Garter are in the Queen's gift and made without prime ministerial advice, and are usually announced on St George's Day, April 23, but the monarch can do so at any time, and has chosen to coincide with the New Year's Honours.

They are for life unless a Knight or Lady Companion offends against certain 'points of reproach'.

Founded in 1348 by Edward III, the Garter is awarded by the sovereign for outstanding public service and achievement.

It is said to have been inspired by events at a ball in northern France, attended by the king and Joan, Countess of Salisbury.

The countess is believed to have dropped her garter, causing laughter and some embarrassment.

The chivalrous king, however, picked it up and wore it on his own leg, uttering the phrase 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' - 'Shame on him who thinks this evil' - now the Order's motto.

The Order's emblem is a blue ribbon or garter worn by men below the left knee and by women on the left arm.

There are now 21 non-royal companions in the order out of a maximum of 24.

Each year, Royal Knights and Ladies of the Order of the Garter gather at St George's Chapel in Windsor for a colourful procession and ceremony.

Watched by crowds of onlookers, they walk down the hill to the chapel from the State Apartments, dressed in blue velvet mantles, red velvet hoods, black velvet hats and white ostrich plumes.

The appointment has regularly been bestowed upon past prime ministers, with Sir John Major, Sir Tony's predecessor, the last to receive the honour.

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, speaks to his uncle Prince Edward today amid claims he threatened not to attend today's event if Prince Andrew was allowed to march with him

Mother-of-three Kate swept her hair from her face as she arrived at the event, and showed off her natural beauty with a simple make-up look, pairing a light layer of foundation with smokey brown eye and pink lipstick

Kate, Duchess of Cambridge and Sophie, Countess of Wessex attend the Order of the Garter Service at St. Georges's Chapel

The royal couple appeared in high spirits as they walked through the grounds outside St George's Chapel ahead of the service today (left) . Meanwhile Sophie Wessex and Kate Middleton watched on (right)

The procession walks to St George's Chapel for the Order of the Garter service at Windsor Castle, in Windsor

At the time it was announced in January, Sir Tony said: 'It is an immense honour to be appointed Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and I am deeply grateful to Her Majesty the Queen.

'It was a great privilege to serve as prime minister and I would like to thank all those who served alongside me, in politics, public service and all parts of our society, for their dedication and commitment to our country.'

Sir Tony led New Labour to a landslide victory in 1997, winning two subsequent general elections before quitting Westminster a decade later, paving the way for his chancellor Gordon Brown to take over as prime minister.

The 68-year-old famously branded Diana, Princess of Wales, the 'people's princess' after her death and was the UK leader during Allied military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The former barrister became a Middle East envoy and set up his own non-for-profit group, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, after leaving politics.
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A group of men allegedly part of Proud Boys have stormed a Drag Queen story time at a San Francisco library shouting homophobic and transphobic threats.

Several of the men wore shirts emblazoned with assault rifles as they barged into the library around 1:30 p.m. on Saturday.

They hurled insults at the act Panda Dulce as he read to kids who were only in preschool and kindergarten during the controversial event.

It comes amid increasing questions in some circles over drag queens hosting events such as readings or dances with young children.

Last week Florida Governor Ron DeSantis threatened to set child protective services on parents who take their kids to such shows.

His comments were sparked amid uproar at children being taken to a Dallas gay bar to watch a drag show where they tucked cash into their clothing.

A group of men allegedly part of the right-wing extremist group Proud Boys barged into the library around 1:30 p.m. on Saturday where Bay Area drag queen Panda Dulce was reading to children during one of the library's Pride Month events

Kyle Chu, also known as drag queen Panda Dulce, who hosted the story hour, posted on Instagram that the group disrupted the event, shouting 'tranny' and 'pedophile'

Dulce also wrote that the incident that happened on Saturday at the library is pushing organizers to enhance security measures at similar events, even ones meant for children and families

Kyle Chu, also known as drag queen Panda Dulce, who hosted the story hour, posted on Instagram that the group disrupted the event, shouting 'tranny' and 'pedophile.'

The disruption 'totally freaked out all of the kids' and the group 'attempted to escalate to violence,' he wrote.

Deputies responded to the San Lorenzo Library following reports of a disturbance, Lt. Ray Kelly with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. An 'active hate crime investigation' is now underway, as well as an investigation into the 'annoying and harassing of children.'

No arrests have been made, no one was physically harmed, the sheriff's office added.

The library told KNTV that the guests and the host were safely removed from the situation but returned, adding that nothing is stopping them from celebrating Pride Month.

However, Panda Dulce said the incident is pushing organizers to enhance security measures at similar events, even ones meant for children and families.

'The men made homophobic and transphobic remarks against a member of the LGTBQ+ community who was hosting the event,' the sheriff's office said in a news release. 'There was no physical violence. Deputies responded to the disturbance and are conducting follow up to identify the group of men and their affiliation.'

The sheriff's office added that, 'The men were described as extremely aggressive with a threatening violent demeanor causing people to fear for their safety. Deputies responded to the scene and were able to de-escalate the situation.'

'It appears the group of men may be affiliated with the Proud Boys organization,' said Kelly, adding that the five men involved were wearing the black and yellow colors associated with the far-right group.

Kelly said the sheriffs office plans to post deputies at future story-hour events at the library 'to deal with any disruptors.'

The event's host, Dulce, released a statement to KNTV on Sunday and said that she immediately froze and the first thoughts that came across her mind  'Is it an ambush? Are they armed? And the massacre in Uvalde, Texas'  adding that's when she said that she realized they were defenseless.

'I eventually got out. I'm safe. I'll be fine,' wrote Dulce. 'Drag queen story hours have always seen protestors. And I've always received hate mail. But today hit different.'

The Drag Queen Story Hour is described on its website as 'just what it sounds like - drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores.'

The program was created by author Michelle Tea in San Francisco in 2015. While Drag Queen Story Hour has received positive reaction from many, they have also received backlash and have been targeted by anti-LGBTQ, far-right extremists.

DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.'

Dulce, pictured here during Drag Queen Story Hour at a different time - said the disruption on Saturday 'totally freaked out all of the kids' and the group 'attempted to escalate to violence'

Kyle Chu, also known as drag queen Panda Dulce, who hosted the story hour, posted on Instagram that the group disrupted the event, shouting 'tranny' and 'pedophile'

Proud Boys barged into the San Lorenzo Library around 1:30 p.m. on Saturday

Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) originated in San Francisco California in 2015. It has grown and now takes places in several libraries worldwide. Pictured: Brooklyn New York May 2022

A drag performer from Drag Story Hour NYC reading to children at an event. Parents told the New York Post that the events happened at their children's school often without parental consent

One witness described the chaotic scene to KNTV.

'They came in and they were screaming about like pedophilia, saying things like 'We have to save the children' and I mean, they were terrifying the children,' the witness said.

The incident comes after similar disruptions at Pride Month events across the nation.

In Idaho, more than two dozen members of a white supremacist group 'Patriot Front' were arrested near a Pride event after police say they were planning to disrupt a parade while equipped with riot gear.

Police say the 31 Patriot Front members had riot gear and were seen loading people into a U-Haul at a hotel parking lot in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Multiple Bay Area officials decried the disruption at Saturday's event.

'Today while on a plane back to Washington, DC, I learned about an attack in our community by members of the Proud Boys,' Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) said.

'We must reject this hate and extremism whenever it shows itself, which is why I will be returning home this Thursday to meet with law enforcement and the community. There is no place for this hate in the East Bay, and we all need to speak up with one voice in saying so.'

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) decried the disruption at Saturday's event

Senator Scott Wiener tweeted about the incident calling it 'direct results of political attacks on LGBTQ people'

Joint Statement from Bay Area Officials Condemning LGBTQ+ Hate Crime at San Lorenzo Public Library. pic.twitter.com/f8KkPYBNbt  Harris Mojadedi  (@HarrisBknowin) June 13, 2022

'We strongly condemn this act of hate aimed at harming members of our community and our allies,' according to a statement by multiple Bay Area officials released on Sunday.

'We are living in a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under attack across several states in our nation, and sadly, even accepting and welcoming places like Alameda County are not exempt from this type of hate. Hate has no place in our community and must be met with decisive action.'

The incident comes as debates and controversies swirl across the country about the role of gender-identity exposure and education to children.

Just last week, a Dallas gay bar threw a pride month event that invited kids to join drag queens on stage beneath a pink neon sign reading 'It's not gonna lick itself.'

Viral video showed elementary-aged youngsters dancing with drag queens wearing skimpy thongs as well as handing over cash to them during the performance.

Speaking at a news conference in Fort Myers Beach Wednesday, Ron DeSantis revealed that he has asked his state to deploy its child protective services to look into the recent phenomenon of parents taking their children to drag shows, after video of kids attending a performance at a Dallas gay surfaced online over the weekend

What is the Parental Rights in Education law? 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.''' It states that 'classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur.' Part of it applies to kids in kindergarten through third grade, while a vague portion bans all discussion of 'sexual orientation or gender identity' in a 'manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.' 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. The state House approved the bill in February. It was passed in the state Senate on March 8 in a 22-17 vote. DeSantis signed it into law on March 28 and it will come into effect on July 1. Advertisement

An online brochure for the event that urged parents to bring their kids to the event - despite suggestive undertones and the dubious venue.

'Mr. Misster's Drag The Kids To Pride Drag Show provides the ultimate family friendly pride experience,' the ad read.

It continued: 'Do you want to hit the stage with the queens? We have FIVE limited spots for young performers to take the stage solo, or with a queen of their choosing! Come hangout with the Queens and enjoy this unique pride experience, fit for guests of all ages!'

The event was met with vitriol by Texans, who came out in full force to protest the show which saw protesters criticize parents lining up with their children to see the event, accusing them of 'grooming' and endangering the kids.

Governor Ron DeSantis threatened to deploy Florida's child protective services on parents who take their children to drag queen shows.

The Republican warned 'we have child protective statutes on the books' and 'laws against child endangerment' as he condemned footage of the youngsters dancing with acts at a gay bar.

He said there appeared to be a 'concerted effort to be exposing kids more and more to things that are not age appropriate' and blasted the clip that showed a child in front of a sign that read 'it's not gonna lick itself'.

'We have child protective statutes on the books,' DeSantis, 43, told onlookers during a conference in Fort Myers Beach last week. 'We have laws against child endangerment.'

He continued: 'It used to be kids would be off-limits - used to be everybody agreed with that. Now it just seems like there's a concerted effort to be exposing kids more and more to things that are not age appropriate.'

The conservative governor went on to point out some of the 'inappropriate' activity seen in footage of the show that kids had been exposed to at the Dallas bar - such as being encouraged to put money in the underwear of the drag performers.

'You had these very young kids, and they must have been like 9, 10 years old, at a quote, 'drag show,' where they were putting money in the underwear of this' an irate DeSantis said before eventually trailing off. 'That is totally inappropriate. That is not something that children should be exposed to.'

He added: 'We probably... we may have the ability to deal with that if something like that happens,' suggesting his state was working on ways to prevent Florida parents for exposing their young to similar activities.

The Florida governor's comments were prompted by now viral clips that showed elementary school-aged children dancing alongside men dressed in drag at the Mr. Misster gay club last month, beneath a neon sign reading 'It's not gonna lick itself'

A drag queen was seen in the video accepting dollar bills from audience members, including children

In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into a parental rights bill that bans teachers from giving classroom instruction on 'sexual orientation' or 'gender identity' in kindergarten through third grade - popularly panned by the left as the 'Don't Say Gay Bill.'

The guidance, officially titled The Parental Rights in Education bill, will become law from July 1, and teachers who breach its regulations can be sued by parents.

After the bill was signed by the governor in March, Disney issued a statement condemning the bill.

It read: 'Florida's HB 1557, also known as the 'Don't Say Gay' bill, should never have passed and should never have been signed into law.'

The signing of the bill also saw DeSantis become the target of ire of Hollywood, with comedians Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes telling the Oscars audience shortly after the bill was passed that they could expect not only a great night, but also 'a gay night' - mockingly repeating the word 'gay' during the national broadcast.

President Biden also branded the guidance as 'hateful' earlier this year.

Disney staffers at multiple of the company's locations across the country - along with employees at subsidiaries including Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm - staged walkouts to protest CEO Bob Chapek's 'slow response' to publicly criticizing the law.

Amid the walkouts, the company finally expressed support for the protesters in a Facebook post - a day after Chapek, 61, said he regretted not taking a stance against the bill earlier.

DeSantis has since stripped the company of its 55-year-old special privileges that effectively allowed it to self-govern in his state.

The bill rips up the deal that allowed Disney to regulate land, enforce building codes and treat wastewater - and could cost the company millions in lost local taxes.

In April, a Tennessee lawmaker said he would 'burn' banned books if he could, as books about gender identity top the lists of banned titles at schools across the country.

In May, a Florida mother sued her daughter's school after teachers created a 'transgender support plan' for her daughter without asking for parental consent.

This month, even Pizza Hut was pulled into the debate after it promoted a children's book that featured a little boy who dresses in drag.

Also this month, DeSantis moved to ban transition therapies for children and revoke Medicaid support for trans adults' treatments in Florida.

That includes suspending access to 'puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries'.

'Florida must do more to protect children from politics-based medicine,' wrote state surgeon general Joseph Lapado, who DeSantis appointed to his post in February.

'Otherwise, children and adolescents in our state will continue to face a substantial risk of long-term harm.'
Residents across Australia's east coast are being urged to conserve power after suburbs in Sydney's north and the northern beaches were plunged into darkness.

Electricity distributor Ausgrid said residents in Beacon Hill, Frenchs Forest, Narraweena, Cromer and Dee Why were affected by power outages on Monday night.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) issued an alert warning of possible blackouts for the south-east of Queensland and the east coast between 5.30pm and 8pm on Monday, and again on Tuesday morning.

The blackout comes after millions in NSW and Queensland were told to conserve power as electricity generators dial back their output in response to a cap on skyrocketing wholesale prices.

About 11pm on Monday night, Ausgrid tweeted that power had been restored to residents in Dee Why, Beacon Hill, Cromer and surrounding suburbs.

The shortage of electricity comes amid soaring demand for gas and electricity and additional coal-fired power outages in Queensland, which were un-planned

Suburbs in Sydney's north and the northern beaches have been plunged into darkness after being hit with power outages (pictured, an electricity transmission tower in Brisbane)

Electricity distributor Ausgrid said residents in Beacon Hill, Frenchs Forest, Narraweena, Cromer and Dee Why would be affected on Monday night (pictured, residents in Bondi)

Residents have been advised to turn down heaters and switch off household appliances to conserve power.

The shortage of electricity comes amid soaring demand for gas and electricity and additional coal-fired power outages in Queensland, which were un-planned.

Blackouts appeared to have been averted in the Sunshine State according to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

In a statement issued at 5.20pm on Monday, AEMO said it had used its powers to provide sufficient generation to make up for the lack of 'reserve three shortfall'.

Queenslanders had been warned of possible blackouts after the AEMO energy price cap saw generators decrease their supply of energy to the market.

The blackouts were expected to plunge east coast residents into darkness during the 'evening peak' from 5:30pm to 8pm on Monday, and then again on Tuesday morning (stock image)

Residents have been urged to turn down heaters and switch off household appliances to conserve power amid the threat of blackouts (pictured, a power station in Muswellbrook, NSW)

WHY ARE POWER PRICES SOARING? 1. Coal-fired generators failing: More than 25 per cent have been offline for much of the year 2. Domestic gas shortages: Sources especially offshore in Victoria are running low and new development has been hindered 3. Ukraine-Russia war: European nations are moving away from Russian gas to punish Vladimir Putin, pushing up global prices 4. Cold snap: The cold snap in the east has led to increased demand Source: Tony Wood, Grattan Institute Advertisement

Soaring prices of energy on Sunday triggered the energy price cap after seven consecutive days of surging wholesale prices.

The cap limited the wholesale price to $300 a megawatt hour, with generators along the east coast asked by AEMO to continue running despite being unable to make a profit at these levels.

The 'high price threshold' threshold of $1.359million over a week, or an average of $674.16/MWh, was reached just before 7pm on Sunday night.

'As a consequence, available offers from generators reduced, contributing to a forecast supply shortfall,' the AEMO said in a statement.

AEMO said it would continue to monitor reserve conditions in Queensland and provide customers with updates should conditions change.

In the meantime, households have been asked to be 'thoughtful' with their electricity use as the supply remained tight over the next few days.

The shortage comes as temperatures drop and households ramp-up their energy use alongside routine and emergency maintenance on east coast generators.

The blackouts were expected to plunge residents into darkness during the 'evening peak' from 5:30pm to 8pm on Monday, and then again on Tuesday morning.

AEMO said the price caps would be maintained until at least Tuesday.

Residents were earlier on Monday urged to turn down heaters and switch off household appliances to conserve power

In a statement, AEMO said soaring prices of energy on Sunday triggered an energy price cap of $300 a megawatt hour (pictured, an Origin Energy bill in Brisbane)

Powerlink Queensland Chief Executive Paul Simshauser earlier on Monday urged people to cut back on electric use wherever they can.

'There is an unusual combination of unexpected generator outages plus cool winter temperatures and high demand for electricity,' he said.

The new federal Labor government has demanded the nation's coal power stations be brought back into service as soon as possible.

At least a quarter of Australia's coal-fired electricity production is currently offline while the east coast shivers through a freezing winter amid soaring price rises.

The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) said earlier this month the state's wholesale prices, which are the highest in the nation, are unlikely to fall before 2024.
Janet Jackson fans will have to wait for new music while she focuses on 'being a mama'... but she vows to return to the studio: 'I love it too much not to'
An over-capacity ship crammed with thousands of sheep sank in Sudan on Sunday - killing most of the animals onboard, officials have said.

The livestock transporting vessel Badr 1 had 15,800 sheep on it despite it having a 9,000 capacity when trying to export the animals to Saudi Arabia from the port of Suakin in Sudan.

All the crew members aboard the vessel survived the calamity - but the number of dead animals could cause environmental problems for the port.

An anonymous Sudanese port official told AFP: 'The ship, Badr 1, sank during the early hours of Sunday morning.

Livestock owners recovered only around 700 sheep from the sunken vessel

The livestock transporting vessel Badr 1 had 15,800 sheep on it despite it having a 9,000 capacity

The lost livestock is estimated to be worth around $4million and was headed for Saudi Arabia

'It was carrying 15,800 sheep, which was beyond its load limits.'

The official said: 'The sunken ship will affect the port's operation. It will also likely have an environmental impact due to the death of the large number of animals carried by the ship'.

The lost livestock is estimated to be worth around $4million.

Omar al-Khalifa, the head of the national exporters' association, said the ship took several hours to sink at the pier - a window that meant it 'could have been rescued.'

The total value of the lost livestock 'is around 14 million Saudi riyals, the equivalent of four million dollars,' said Saleh Selim, the head of the association's livestock division, confirming also that the sheep were loaded onto the vessel at Suakin port.

He said livestock owners recovered only around 700 sheep 'but they were found very ill and we don't expect them to live long.'

Selim called for an investigation into the incident.

Last month, a massive fire broke out in the cargo area of Suakin port, lasting hours and causing heavy damage. It was not clear what caused the blaze.

An investigation has been launched to determine the cause of the fire, but has yet to release its findings.

The 700 livestock that were rescued are not expected to live long according to local sources

Omar al-Khalifa, the head of the national exporters' association, said the ship took several hours to sink at the pier - a window that meant it 'could have been rescued'

Last month, a massive fire broke out in the cargo area of Suakin port, lasting hours and causing heavy damage

The historic port town of Suakin is no longer Sudan's main foreign trade hub, a role which has been taken by Port Sudan, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) away along the Red Sea coast.

There have been moves to redevelop Suakin port, but a 2017 deal with Turkey to restore historic buildings and expand the docks was suspended after the ouster of longtime president Omar al-Bashir.

Sudan remains gripped by a chronic economic crisis, which has deepened following last year's military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

The military takeover triggered punitive measures, including aid cuts by Western governments, who demanded the restoration of the transitional administration installed after Bashir was toppled.
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A 23-year-old self-declared leader of the alt-right was among 31 arrested for a planned riot on an Idaho Pride event Saturday - a large-scale detention that saw the members of the pro-white Patriot Front charged with criminal conspiracy.

Currently being held without bail, Thomas Ryan Rousseau - who, along with his followers, are faced with felonies for the alleged offense that could see them jailed for up to five years - founded the white supremacist group in 2017 at just 18, after starting pro-white Vanguard America when he was 16.

Rousseau, who grew up in a staunchly Republican suburb In North Texas, reportedly honed his rhetoric at his high school paper, writing opiniated columns before starting both organizations, which assert that its white members' ancestors conquered America, and thus the country should be left to them.

Rousseau and dozens of other masked members of the group, which preaches its white nationalist ideology with propaganda shared on social media, were arrested in Coeur d'Alene, in northwest Idaho.

Police said the group, masked and decked out in military gear when apprehended, were plotting to incite chaos at a gay pride event in Coeur d'Alene City Park, and had been packed in a rented UHaul truck when they were pulled over by officers.

Cops said they were tipped off about the group's planned strike from a 'concerned citizen' who saw the dozens of men load up into the truck 'like a little army'.

Those arrested - including founder Rousseau - were all confirmed to be a part of the group, which was started by the then teen in 2017 shortly after the 'Unite the Right' rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, that summer, which he attended with members of his former group, Vanguard America.

Thomas Ryan Rousseau, a 23-year-old self-declared leader of the alt-right, was among those cuffed for a planned riot on an Idaho Pride event Saturday - a large-scale detention that saw 31 of his Patriot Front charged with criminal conspiracy

An offshoot from that pro-white group, the Patriot Front has since maintained a similar white nationalist ideology, staging riots almost identical to the one police said they prevented Saturday.

In December, more than 100 masked members of the group marched on Washington DC in an an effort to 'reclaim America' -after which they were caught on camera loading themselves into the back of an U-Haul moving truck.

Thomas Ryan Rousseau, 23, of Grapevine, Texas, was among those facing felony charges of criminal conspiracy after dozens of members of the white nationalist group, known as the Patriot Front, were arrested in northwest Idaho Saturday

The procession, while peaceful, saw the white supremacists - uniformed in white gaiters, sunglasses, blue jackets, khaki pants, brown boots and hats - clutch American flags and plastic shields while marching down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a beating drum.

During that event, the Fort Worth Police Department (FWPD) cited Rousseau for placing signs, banners, stickers and other materials on public property without permission.

With that said, the rally, which prompted law enforcement to remain on standby, remained tame - with none of the protestors arrested.

That was not the case this time around.

All 31 men - who wore shirts inscribed with the message Reclaim America and hats that read 'Victory of Death' - were arrested on conspiracy charges Saturday, with nearly all being held on $300 bond.

Rosseau, however, is currently being held without bail, police records show - a move that may stem from the Texan's prominence among the alt-right.

Rosseau grew up in the staunchly Republican suburb of Coppell, just outside of Dallas, to emerge as the leading figures of the pro-white right.

While enrolled in Coppell High School, Rosseau wrote a variety of opinion pieces for The Sidekick, the school's newspaper, where he honed the propaganda production skills that would see him propelled into his current leadership role with white nationalists, first with first with Vanguard America and later with the Patriot Front.

Articles penned by the current white supremacist showed support for a plethora of conservative topics including the controversial 'campus carry' law in the lone state state, and North Carolinas since nixed 'bathroom bill' that banned transgender citizens from using bathrooms that aligned with the gender they were transitioning to.

The pieces also saw the young conservative show his support of Donald Trump during the 2016 election, writing in in one article in October of that year, 'Trumps campaign is about more than just the election of who is president.'

'It is a referendum on American democracy. A simple decision between who is really in control of this nation, a corrupt establishment with wishes to usurp democracy, or the American people.'

Rousseau and dozens of other masked members of the group, which preaches its white nationalist ideology with propaganda shared on social media, were arrested in Coeur d'Alene, in northwest Idaho

The group was rumbled when a local resident called cops after spotting the men, all wearing white masks and carrying shields, loading themselves into the vehicle 'like a little army'

Rosseau, unlike others arrested, is currently being held without bail, police records show - a move that may stem from the Texan's prominence among the alt-right

In a separate, since removed, column published days after the election, titled, 'Trump: The silent majority no longer silent,' Rousseau engaged in more rhetoric that would eventually reappear in future Patriot Front propaganda.

'The truth is white voters, especially the working class, have had more than enough of being called racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic and the rest of the usual trite buzzwords,' Rousseau, then 17 and already heading Vanguard America, wrote.

'The forgotten majority of the American electorate has shown that much to the dismay of the globalist agenda, that they have not yet been replaced by the tens of millions of blue-voting immigrants from abroad. That they can still hold up some semblance of a resistance against the decay of their nation.'

Rousseau would start the Patriot Front soon after, founding the org in 2017.

The group, responsible for more than 80 percent of white supremacist propaganda in 2020, was formed in the aftermath of the 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, breaking off from Vanguard America.

What is the Patriot Front? The Patriot Front is a white supremacist group founded by 23-year-old Dallas man Thomas Ryan Rousseau. The group maintains a white nationalist ideology, firm in its belief that since its white members' ancestors conquered America, the country should be left to them, and no one else. The group, which sees black Americans, Jews and LGBTQ people as enemies, argues, argues that through processions and riots against these groups, it is preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of its members white, European ancestors. The Patriot Front spreads its message predominantly through the internet, via social media with materials such as banners, fliers, and posters. In 2020, the group shifted its materials' message from being more antisemitic and white supremacist to a form of 'patriotism' that justifies its bigotry, based in white supremacist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and fascist ideals. The group is responsible for the majority of white supremacist propaganda in the US, representing 80 percent of all propaganda incidents nationally in 2020. They currently participate in localized 'flash demonstrations' across the country. Advertisement

Rousseau led members of Vanguard America the 2017 rally - which made headlines after a man deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the right-winged demonstration, killing one - and can be seen in several photos of the incident with other members of his then group.

Other photos show the white supremacist with James Alex Fields, Jr., the man facing first-degree murder charges for the attack, which police say was politically motivated.

Photos show Fields marching with members of Vanguard America, while carrying a shield bearing the organizations emblem.

Days later, in a post to a Vanguard America Discord server, Rousseau asserted that Fields 'wasnt a member,' of the group.

The month also saw Rousseau arrested in Weatherford, Texas, for vandalism, after posting stickers displaying the words 'Reject Poison' with 'images of various drugs' - a likely jab at the left and its insistence on its own ideologies.

Later that month, Rousseau announced his new organization, the Patriot Front.

In the years after the group's formation, hateful messages paired with fascist and Nazi imagery touting the Patriot Front would repeatedly surface on social media and college campuses across Texas, and, eventually, the rest of the country.

The FBI has been monitoring Rousseau since at least May 2017, records show, when he was still a student at Coppell High School, due to his distribution of flyers promoting the pro-white group on Dallas area campuses.

Both groups preach a white nationalist ideology, based in a belief that since its white members' ancestors conquered America, the country should be left to them, and no one else - with the Patriot Front essentially serving as a aesthetic, more America-focused rebrand of its pro-white predecessor Vanguard.

The group has since burgeoned to the forefront of the white nationalist movement, with members and factions in states across the country.

When not posting materials touting pro-white sentiment online, the group has also engaged in several real-life demonstrations like the one seen last December, in premeditated, tightly choregraphed protests where members are all masked.

During the arrest, police found documents that included an 'operations plan' from the truck, as well as shields and shin guards, all of which made their intentions clear

Patriot Front is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as 'a white nationalist hate group' that formed after the deadly 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017

Video taken at the scene of the arrest and posted online showed a group of men in police custody, kneeling next to the truck with their hands bound, wearing similar khaki pants, blue shirts, white masks and baseball caps

Patriot Front is a white supremacist neo-Nazi group whose members perceive black Americans, Jews and LGBTQ people as enemies, said Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism

The men were standing inside the truck wearing khakis, navy blue shirts and beige hats with white balaclavas covering their faces

All 31 were charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor, after police received reports from residents who spotted the 'little army' getting inside the vehicle around 1.38pm

They have all been conducted in the dead of night, anonymously.

The event almost always feature a scripted speech by Rousseau, which typically sees him preach ideas surrounding apocalyptic modernity, European ancestry, and 'white' homelands.

In November 2017, roughly 30 members of the group marched through the University of Texas at Austin to the campuss George Washington statue, where Rousseau delivered a torchlit speech.

At the event, members displayed American flags and the Texas state flag while wearing masks featuring skulls or American iconography.

A slew of similar demonstrations by the group have since taken place, with none so far proving violent.

No attorney was immediately listed for Rousseau, who is currently being held without bond, police records showed Monday.

Conspiracy charges are also typically difficult to defend and a federal criminal lawyer must thoroughly investigate the prosecutor's evidence in order to develop a strategy to challenge the charges.

Among the arrestees was Mitchell F. Wagner, 24, of Florissant, Missouri, who was previously charged with defacing a mural of famous black Americans on a college campus in St. Louis last year.

LGBTQ advocates said Sunday that polarization and a fraught political climate are putting their community increasingly at risk.

Rousseau, then 21, was arrested in August 2020 in Texas for placing signs, banners, stickers and other materials promoting the Patriot Front on public property

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas, White said. Only one was from Idaho.

The group is a white supremacist neo-Nazi group whose members perceive black Americans, Jews and LGBTQ people as enemies, says Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism.

Their playbook, according to Lewis, involves identifying local grievances to exploit, organizing on platforms like the messaging app Telegram and ultimately showing up to events marching in neat columns, in blue- or white-collared-shirt uniforms, in a display of strength.

Though Pride celebrations have long been picketed by counter-protesters citing religious objections, they haven't historically been a major focus for armed extremist groups.

Still, it isn't surprising, given how anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has increasingly become a potent rallying cry in the far-right online ecosystem, Lewis said.

'That set of grievances fits into their broader narratives and shows their ability to mobilize the same folks against "the enemy" over and over and over again.'

An offshoot from Rosseau's previous pro-white group Vanguard America, the Patriot Front has staged riots almost identical to the one police said they prevented Saturday. Pictured: Members of Patriot Front hold shields after marching in Washington, DC on December 4, 2021

More than 100 masked members of the group marched on the captil in an an effort to 'reclaim America' during the protest last year

Rousseau also attended that protest, which occurred on December 4, 2021. No one was arrested after that procession, which remained peaceful
Boris Johnson set a collision course with Brussels and Remainer peers tonight as legislation to scrap Brexit rules for Northern Ireland was finally published.

A new Bill, presented to Parliament this evening, is aimed at sweeping away key parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol - including a check-free 'green channel' for goods from mainland Britain and stripping control from the EU court.

It would also ensure that VAT changes from Westminster apply to the province, permit state subsidies, and give ministers wide-ranging powers to cancel more of the divorce terms later if required.

The Government is arguing the move does not break international law because there is an established 'doctrine of necessity' for changing treaties if they are causing serious harm.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss argued she is bringing forward 'practical solutions' to protect the Good Friday Agreement rather than 'picking a fight with the EU'.

Aides said Brussels had refused to update the negotiating mandate for European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic, meaning that there was no hope currently of breaking the deadlock.

Ms Truss insisted the UK remained open to further talks with Brussels, but stressed how the EU had so far 'refused to change the Protocol'.

Brussels immediately hit back following the publication of the Bill, with the EU warning it would now consider resuming legal action against the UK.

This had been paused since September last year while negotiations over the Protocol were held.

Mr Sefcovic also raised the prospect of further legal action and a wider trade war with Britain.

He insisted the Brexit divorce deal - including arrangements for Northern Ireland - was a 'pre-condition' for the establishment of the new EU-UK post-Brexit trading relationship.

The Brussels official stuck to his recent mantra that the EU 'will not renegotiate the Protocol'.

Alongside the Bill, the Government tonight also published a legal statement outlining why the action did not breach international law, as well as a 10-page document setting out the 'problems and solutions' to the Protocol row.

The Prime Minister earlier risked inflaming the spat by suggesting the Protocol overhaul is 'relatively trivial'.

Mr Johnson claimed it would be an 'overreaction' for Brussels to follow through on threats of trade reprisals.

The legislation is likely to take some time to get on the statute book.

A vote is expected in the House of Commons before the summer, but there will be fiercer resistance in the House of Lords.

If the Government is blocked entirely by peers it will have to invoke MPs' supremacy using the Parliament Act - which can only happen after a year has passed.

In other developments tonight:

In a setback for ministers, even before the text of the legislation was released, the ERG group of Tory MPs said it will not give swift approval for the plans. Instead the Eurosceptics will convene a 'Star Chamber' of politician lawyers to scrutinise the proposals line-by-line;

A majority of MLAs in the Stormont Assembly have signed a joint letter to the PM stating their opposition to the legislation;

The Government is publishing a 'solutions' document alongside the law spelling out how it believes the standoff could be resolved.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss (left) is publishing the Bill today despite threats from the EU's Maros Sefcovic (right)

There have been warnings that the Protocol is disrupting the careful peace balance in Northern Ireland

The PM (pictured on a visit to Cornwall today) played down the impact of the Bill - presented to Parliament this afternoon - suggesting the changes to the Protocol were 'relatively trivial'

In a call this morning, Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney warned Ms Truss that introducing a Bill to unilaterally amend the Northern Ireland Protocol would breach international law and 'deeply damage' relationships

The Bill, presented to Parliament tonight, aims to sweep away key parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol, including a check-free 'green channel' for goods from mainland Britain and stripping control from the EU court

The Government set out the Bill's main changes to the Protocol in a 10-page 'problems and solutions' document

How the Northern Ireland row threatens to undo Brexit deal The row over the Northern Ireland Protocol began almost as soon as the Brexit agreement with the EU came into force. The two sides had to find a way of avoiding a hard border while maintaining the integrity of the UK, and avoid undermining the integrity of the EU customs union and single market. The Protocol avoids a hard border between by effectively keeping Ulster inside the EU's single market. However, Brussels has been adamant that means checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea from Britain. Unionists are implacably opposed to the idea, arguing it 'others' an integral part of the UK. The UK began talks seeking to alter the terms of the agreement, despite it having been signed off by the PM just months earlier. The toughest part of the Protocol have never come into force, due to a series of delays brought in by both camps. In March last year the UK unilaterally extended the agri-food exemptions, something that triggered the EU to start breach proceedings. However, despite experts suggesting there is a landing zone available, political tensions have made a deal impossible. The UK has threatened to trigger Article 16 of the Treaty, which is available to suspend the provisions if they are causing major social upheaval. However, a command paper previously suggested using legislation instead as a more permanent solution. The UK insists that the problem lies with the negotiating mandate given to vice-president Maros Sefcovic, which does not allow enough scope to find a settlement. The Bill is now finally being published, spelling out the arrangements that the UK believes are feasible. But it will take time to pass the law, and it is not likely to come into force immediately even when on the statute books. As a result the government has more time - and it hopes more leverage - to hammer out an agreement. The legislation could make it trickier though as the British demands are now spelled out in black and white, meaning potentially less scope for compromise. The Biden administration has also taken a dim view, urging continued talks to solve the problem. One carrot in the process is the chance to restore powersharing in Northern Ireland. DUP first minister Paul Givan resigned in February in an effort to force movement. That left the Executive unable to function, due to the way it was set up to share power under the Good Friday Agreement. While ministers remained in post, they were restricted in the actions they could take. Since 1998, when the governance system was devised as part of Northern Ireland's historic peace accord, the first minister has always been a Unionist. That all changed last month, when Sinn Fein became the largest party at Stormont for the first time ever. However, the DUP has insisted that it will not return until its demands over the Protocol are met. Ministers have made clear to the DUP that the new legislation will not be implemented unless they agree to resume powersharing first. Advertisement

The document outlining the Government's legal position on the Protocol row, published alongside the Bill tonight, pointed to how the 'doctrine of necessity provides a clear basis in international law to justify the non-performance of international obligations under certain exceptional and limited conditions'.

'The term "necessity" is used in international law to lawfully justify situations where the only way a State can safeguard an essential interest is the non-performance of another international obligation,' it added.

The Government argued that the 'maintenance of stable social and political conditions in Northern Ireland' were among 'essential interests' of the UK.

The PM's spokesman said: 'We believe the threshold has been met by the strain the arrangements under the Protocol are placing on institutions in Northern Ireland - and, more generally, on socio-political conditions - has reached the point where we have no other way of safeguarding the essential interests at stake than through the adoption of this legislative approach.'

Sources described the Bill as an 'insurance mechanism' in the absence of the EU being able to change its negotiating mandate.

Labour has accused the Government of 'law-breaking' and there have also been signs of resistance within Tory ranks, with some MPs circulating a note warning the plan will be highly damaging to the party's reputation.

A former No10 adviser urged Conservative critics to hold their tongues today, saying the EU is looking for a 'reason to just sit still and once again hope to deal with another PM'.

'It is impossible to rebel on this Bill without playing into that,' Nikki da Costa said.

Meanwhile, the influential European Research Group (ERG) of Tory Brexiteers withheld its immediate approval for the Bill.

Instead, the Eurosceptic MPs will convene their 'Star Chamber' of politician lawyers, chaired by senior backbencher Sir Bill Cash, to scrutinise the proposals line-by-line.

ERG chairman Mark Francois told the Telegraph: 'Just as they did with the original Withdrawal Agreement and the subsequent Trade and Co-Operation Agreement, the Star Chamber will now examine this new Bill, line-by-line, to ensure that it is not only legally sound but fully restores the sovereignty of UK law in Northern Ireland, as an integral part of the United Kingdom.'

It is understood Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis has made clear to the DUP that the legislation will not be activated unless it agrees to get power-sharing at Stormont back up and running.

The DUP has blocked the formation of a new power-sharing administration following last month's Northern Ireland elections, as part of its ongoing protest against the Protocol.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson tonight gave a cautious welcome to the Bill published at Westminster.

He said: 'We will obviously read that Bill with interest.

'But I believe that finally we are now seeing the kind of action that is required to begin the process of removing the barriers to trade within the UK, to restoring Northern Ireland's place within the UK internal market.'

However, Sir Jeffrey insisted he was 'not under any pressure' to immediately resume a power-sharing administration with Sinn Fein at Stormont.

'Publishing the Bill doesnt deliver anything in and of itself,' he added.

'But it is nonetheless an important step and we recognise that and what we want to see now is the Bill progressing in Parliament.

'As the Bill progresses, of course, we will consider then what that means for devolution in Northern Ireland.'

This morning, Mr Johnson defended his Government's action as 'the right way forward'.

He told LBC: 'What we have to respect  this is the crucial thing  is the balance and the symmetry of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

'We have to understand there are two traditions in Northern Ireland, broadly two ways of looking at the border issues. One community at the moment feels very, very estranged from the way things are operating and very alienated.

'We have just got to fix that. It is relatively simple to do it, it's a bureaucratic change that needs to be made.

'Frankly, it's a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things.'

Mr Johnson disagreed with claims that the move breaks international law, arguing that 'our higher and prior legal commitment as a country is the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and to the balance and stability of that agreement'.

Mr Johnson said a trade war would be a 'gross overreaction' by Brussels.

'All we are trying to do is simplify things, actually, to remove the barriers to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland,' he said.

It would be 'preposterous' to respond with trade restrictions 'when all we are trying to do is have some bureaucratic simplifications between Great Britain and Northern Ireland', the PM added.

Sinn Fein's Stormont leader Michelle O'Neill accused Mr Johnson of 'absolutely reckless' and 'disgraceful' action that 'does nothing to serve the interests' of people in Northern Ireland.

'Boris Johnsons action is illegal, he is in clear breach of international law, regardless of the detail,' she added.

'He himself signed up to an agreement, he signed on the dotted line and hes now legislating to breach that international agreement.'

Ms O'Neill claimed the PM was creating more instability and uncertainty in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein's Stormont leader Michelle O'Neill accused the PM of 'absolutely reckless' and 'disgraceful' action - but DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson gave a cautious welcome to the legislation

The Foreign Secretary held a call with Mr Sefcovic this morning, in which she insisted the EU 'must be willing to change the Protocol itself'

Tory Brexiteers withheld their immediate approval for the Bill and instead convened their 'Star Chamber' of politician lawyers, chaired by senior backbencher Sir Bill Cash, to scrutinise the proposals line-by-line

In a call this morning, Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney warned Ms Truss that introducing a Bill to unilaterally amend the Protocol would breach international law and 'deeply damage' relationships.

The plan marked a 'particular low point in the UK's approach to Brexit, especially as Ms Truss has not engaged with negotiations with the EU in any meaningful way since February', a spokesman for Mr Coveney said.

The Irish foreign minister used a Twitter post to suggest the UK was seeking to 'deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise'.

As well as her talks with Mr Coveney, Ms Truss also spoke to Mr Sefcovic about the UK Government's action.

In a sign of the UK's frustration at Brussels' stance, she said: 'Our preference is a negotiated solution, but the EU must be willing to change the Protocol itself.'

UK Government sources said Ms Truss was not 'picking a fight' with the EU but was focused on preserving the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and Brussels' refusal to alter the Protocol meant unilateral action was required.

Ms Truss also spoke to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the Bill today, with President Joe Biden's administration having previously urged the UK Government not to rip up the Protocol.

Following the publication of the Bill, Mr Sefcovic said in a statement: 'Only joint solutions would create the legal certainty that people and businesses in Northern Ireland deserve.

'It is with significant concern that we take note of today's decision by the UK Government to table legislation disapplying core elements of the Protocol.

'Unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust.'

He added that renegotiating the Protocol was 'unrealistic' and warned the UK of legal action to come.

'No workable alternative solution has been found to this delicate, long-negotiated balance,' Mr Sefcovic said.

'Any renegotiation would simply bring further legal uncertainty for people and businesses in Northern Ireland.'

MLAs criticise PM's Protocol move A majority of MLAs in the Stormont Assembly have signed a joint letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson stating their opposition to proposed legislation to amend the Northern Ireland Protocol. The letter has been signed by 52 of the 90 MLAs. They represent Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Alliance Party. Sinn Fein Stormont leader Michelle O'Neill is among the signatories. In a tweet she described the 'unilateral actions of Boris Johnson' as 'utterly reckless'. 'It is clearly a breach of International Law. The impact on our businesses & economy could be colossal. The pro-Protocol parties have jointly written to Boris Johnson today to firmly reject his legislation and approach,' she tweeted. Advertisement

The legislation will give ministers powers to override elements of the Protocol, which was jointly agreed by the UK and EU as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to keep the Irish land border free-flowing.

All customs processes could be removed for goods moving within the United Kingdom and enable the frictionless movement of agri-food goods staying within the UK.

There would be a 'green channel' for goods bound solely for Northern Ireland, not subject to checks, and a 'Red Channel' for those intended for export beyond.

It could also see businesses in Northern Ireland given the ability to choose whether to follow UK or EU regulations, depending on whom they are trading with.

Control of VAT will be maintained in Westminster to avoid the province losing out on changes for the rest of the UK.

Potentially most controversially, the government intends to 'normalise' the governance of the Treaty so disputes are settled by independent arbitration and the European Court of Justice has no role. That has been a key demand of Tory Brexiteers, and a major issue in the talks with the EU.

Brussels has made clear that such steps in a Bill would represent a breach of international law and could prompt retaliatory action from the bloc.

The Financial Times reported that an internal note had been circulating among Tory MPs opposed to the Bill, saying: 'Breaking international law to rip up the Prime Minister's own treaty is damaging to everything the UK and Conservatives stand for.'

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the Government was going 'down the wrong track'.

'I think the answer to this is to accept there are some problems in the way the Protocol works but they can be resolved around the negotiating table with statecraft, with guile, with trust,' he said.

'Unfortunately, we don't have those in the current Prime Minister.

'They won't be resolved with legislation that breaches international law and that, frankly, will impede the negotiations that, in the end, will be needed to settle this.

'So the Government is going down the wrong track here.'

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, the party's foreign affairs spokesperson, said: 'Its astounding that at exactly the moment when we should be standing united with our allies in the face of Russias aggression, the Conservative Government has decided to ignite a diplomatic firestorm.

'From breaking his own laws at home to attempting to breach international law abroad, Boris Johnson has debased the office of Prime Minister.

'If the Conservatives enact these proposals, they risk starting a trade war with our closest neighbours which will push prices up even further.

'In the midst of this cost-of-living emergency, this is the last thing families up and down the country need.'

Trade union leaders also voiced their opposition to the Government's plan.

TUC General Secretary Frances OGrady said: 'It says everything about ministers warped priorities that in the middle of a cost-of-living emergency, they announce legislation that could provoke a trade war and cause prices to skyrocket further.

'Working people must not pay the price for this reckless move.

'The Government must drop this bill, honour the agreement they signed up to and put practical solutions ahead of posturing.'
Two members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have been killed on a mission - just weeks after Tehran blamed 'Zionists' for the assassination of a Quds Force colonel as tension over the country's nuclear ambitions rise.

Ali Kamani, a member of the Guards' aerospace division, was 'martyred' in Khomein in central Markazi province on Sunday, Fars news agency said.

Mohammad Abdoos, an employee of the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics, was reported to have been 'martyred' on Sunday evening during a mission in the northern Semnan province according to the ministry.

Fars said Abdoos, 33, was also working in aerospace - which Iran uses to produce military equipment.

Ali Kamani, a member of the Guards' aerospace division, was 'martyred' in Khomein in central Markazi province on Sunday and Mohammad Abdoos, an employee of the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics, was reported to have been 'martyred' on Sunday evening during a mission in the northern Semnan province

No further details were given on the men or how they died.

The latest deaths comes after Iran reported the death of another colonel of the elite Quds force of its Revolutionary Guards last week.

The death was the second in two weeks from the unit which oversees Iran's military operations abroad.

Colonel Ali Esmailzadeh died during an 'incident in his residence' days ago in the city of Karaj, some 19 miles northwest of the capital of Tehran, reported the official IRNA news agency, citing an informed source.

It did not elaborate on the circumstances surrounding Esmailzadeh's death, but denied reports that the colonel was assassinated.

The denial comes as other news channels close to the Guard said Esmailzadeh fell from his rooftop or balcony.

Iran has in the past blamed its arch enemy Israel for a series of killings of military figures and nuclear technology experts.

On May 22, Guards Colonel Sayyad Khodai, 50, was killed outside his home in the east of the Iranian capital by attackers on motorbikes who shot him five times.

Iran accused 'Zionists' of being behind the high-profile assassination and vowed revenge.

Israel has told the United States it was responsible for the assassination of an Iranian Revolutionary Guards colonel, according to reports

Iran accused 'Zionists' of being behind the high-profile assassination and vowed revenge

The New York Times later reported that Israel had told its close ally the United States that the Jewish state was behind the killing of Khodai.

The US daily cited an anonymous 'intelligence official briefed on the communications'.

Iran's state television has said that Khodai was a member of the Quds Force and that he was 'known' in Syria, where Iran has acknowledged deploying 'military advisers'.

The Guards described Khodai as a 'defender of the sanctuary', a term used for those who work on behalf of Tehran in Syria or Iraq.

The Guards are designated as a terrorist group by the United States.

The tensions over the deaths comes as the talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal stall amid fears over the secretive Islamic state removing surveillance cameras from its nuclear sites.

The head of the U.N. atomic watchdog warned this provocative move could deal a 'fatal blow' to the tattered nuclear deal as Tehran enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.

The development came a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors censured Tehran for failing to provide 'credible information' over manufactured nuclear material found at three undeclared sites in the country.

The tensions over the deaths comes as the talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal stall amid fears over the secretive Islamic state removing surveillance cameras from its nuclear sites

Talks aimed at restoring the Islamic Republic's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers have been stalled for months.

Tensions remain high across the wider Middle East over the accord's collapse as US sanctions and rising global food prices choke Iran's ailing economy, putting further pressure on its government and its people.

'This, of course, poses a serious challenge to our ability to continue working there,' warned Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA's director-general.

He added that if an agreement cannot be reached to restore the cameras in three to four weeks, 'this would be a fatal blow' to Iran's nuclear deal.

Already, Grossi warned that without the cameras, Iran could make centrifuges and divert them to unknown locations.

'When we lose this, then its anybodys guess,' he added.
Animal Rebellion activists accused of smearing red paint on the Queen Victoria memorial will rely on the same defence as the 'Colston Four' protestors cleared over toppling the slave trader's statue.

The eco-mob defaced the memorial and turned it blood red just yards from Buckingham Palace in London during a chaotic demonstration in August last year.

Louis McKechnie, 21, along with Christopher Bennett, 31, Claire Smith, 24, and Rachel Steele, 46, deny causing damage worth 7,080.24 to the white marble statue last summer.

Activists from Animal Rebellion, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, daubed red liquid over the memorial and let off flares in front of the Queen's home on August 26.

Hapless police officers clumsily sloshed through the fountain to grab several young protesters from the activist group before eventually carting them away.

The demonstrators sloshed through the Queen Victoria Memorial outside of Buckingham Palace turning the water blood red - and now four activists are set to use the 'Colston statue' defence

Animal Rebellion, which campaigns for a 'plant-based food system', is affiliated to Extinction Rebellion, whose two-week campaign of 'civil disobedience' caused chaos in central London last year

Animal Rebellion protesters targeted the Queen Victoria Memorial, holding placards reading 'A royal blood bath' in the fountain

Scruffy members of the rag-tag protest were waving 'royal blood bath' signs as they defaced the monument and dyed its water red.

The eco-warriors, who campaign for a 'plant-based food system,' are thought to have caused thousands of pounds worth of damage during the stunt last year.

And now Southwark Crown Court heard the four protestors will rely on the 'Colston Statue' defence.

This is a reference to the four people who were cleared of removing the monument to the 17th Century slave trader and throwing it into Bristol's harbourside in 2020.

The so-called 'Colston Four' were acquitted of criminal damage in January this year after the memorial was torn down in Bristol.

Jake Skuse, 33, was accused of goading a feverish crowd into throwing the statue into the city's harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020.

Rhian Graham, 30, Milo Ponsford, 26, and Sage Willoughby, 22, were caught on CCTV looping ropes around the monument before they helped to pull it from its plinth.

The bronze memorial to the 17th century merchant Edward Colston was pulled down on June 7 last year during a Black Lives Matter protest, and was later dumped in the harbour (pictured)

The four defendants cheer outside Bristol Crown Court after the jury returned their not guilty verdict. Pictured from left to right: Sage Willoughby, Jake Skuse, Milo Ponsford and Rhian Graham

Some furious protesters spat on the statue and daubed it with paint.

It was then rolled 570 yards through the streets and dumped in the water where it sank.

An 11-day trial at Bristol Crown Court heard the mob caused more than 6,000 of damage to the statue, harbour railings and the pavement.

During the trial, the activists did not deny their actions but argued that they were justified because the statue was so offensive.

Lawyers in that case had argued the conviction of the defendants would have been a disproportionate infringement of their rights under Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Now the Animal Rebellion activists are expected to use the same line of defence.

Judge Michael Grieve, QC, told McKechnie, Bennett, Smith and Steele: 'The trial is fixed for being on the March 27 next year. Prior to that you should obviously seek advice from your legal representative.

Eco activist Louis McKechnie is one of the four people accused of damaging the white marble statue in London last summer

'You are all going to continue on unconditional bail.'

McKechnie, of Weymouth, Dorset, Bennett, of Bristol, Smith, of Leeds and Steele, of Leyton, east London, all denied criminal damage today.

Riley Ings, 25, is charged the same offence but will appear at the same court separately on 1 July.

At the time, Animal Rebellion's spokesman Harley McDonald-Eckersall claimed the Royal Family was guilty of eco-crimes for allowing hunting on its land.

She said: 'The Crown Estate is the biggest landowner in the UK and they choose to use this land for animal agriculture and hunting, which not only decimate our environment but cause the deaths of millions of lives every year.

'It's time for a new system based on justice and compassion and the royal family should be leading the way.'

Three young protesters hold signs reading 'Animal agriculture, a royal blood bath'. Animal Rebellion campaigns against the meat industry

Police officers removed protesters from the fountain at the Queen Victoria Memorial, which they covered in red paint

Spokesman Harley McDonald-Eckersall claimed the Royal Family was guilty of eco-crimes for allowing hunting on its land'
By John Burton





Probably the biggest challenge that Korea will face over the coming decades will be its demographic crisis, with a super-low birthrate and rapidly aging population.



Analysts warn that Korea's shrinking population could have serious implications for the economy and national security. It will mean fewer workers to staff companies and fewer soldiers to guard the frontlines, while taking care of the elderly will become more expensive.



Korea is now the Asian leader when it comes to low fertility rates, amounting to 0.8 percent of the population in 2020. This is less than in China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.



The main reason that the birthrate has cratered is that raising a family is expensive. The high cost of housing is forcing young couples to delay having children. The average Korean needs to spend nearly 17 years of their income to buy a home, much more than in other advanced Asian economies. On top of that comes expensive schooling in the form of private tutoring so that kids can get into the best universities and then the best jobs.



Is there a way to break this vicious cycle? One solution being touted is to raise the number of female workers, particularly in well-paying jobs. This proposal is based on what has happened in the Nordic region, which has reversed falling birthrates since the 1980s as an increase in working women in professional positions led families to have more children.



The simple explanation for this is that the greater household income contributed by women made having children more affordable. In contrast, women with low incomes often delay having children. The resulting argument is that Korea should increase the female labor force participation rate, which is now slightly more than half of all workers, and give women better-paying jobs.



However, having lived for long periods in both Sweden and Korea, I am skeptical that this Nordic model is applicable to Korea without other major changes in Korean society.



Start with the issue of gender equality. Women in the Nordic region  Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland  have long enjoyed civil liberties that give them the same equal social standing as men.



Contrast that with Korea's patriarchal system that gives preference to males over females. Korea now ranks 117th out of 134 countries in terms of gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum. Few Korean women have leadership positions in business or politics.



The Nordic region's extensive social welfare programs have encouraged a healthy balance between work and family, which has contributed to higher birthrates. There is an extensive network of childcare facilities and generous parental paid leave for both mothers and fathers, which promotes gender equality in the process.



It is difficult to imagine a similar system in Korea. Social welfare programs are underdeveloped compared to the Nordic region. Few companies offer childcare services. In a country where workers are even afraid to take their full holiday quota because it stigmatizes them in the eyes of bosses as slackers, taking more than a year off to look after your own children might be seen as the height of folly.



As a result, the burden of child raising in Korea falls on women and explains why most cannot pursue professional careers and are often stuck with low-paying and irregular jobs. They are forced to drop out of the labor force during what should be the prime years of their working lives and only then return to marginal jobs once their children reach their teens.



The fact that out-of-wedlock births are common in the Nordic region adds to labor flexibility. Around 55 percent of births in Sweden are outside of marriage. In Korea, it is around 2 percent. The result is that marriage and birth are closely linked in Korea. As more and more young Koreans delay getting married for a variety of reasons, it also means postponing pregnancies. A more liberal attitude on marriages promotes child-bearing in Sweden. It is difficult to see Korea, with its strong Confucian influence and the emphasis on the family, adopting similar attitudes soon.



It appears obvious that the first step that any Korean government should take in increasing the birthrate is to provide affordable childcare, which will help ensure that more women remain in the labor force. Companies could also do their part by creating more flexible work environments to promote better work-life balance and diversity.



Nevertheless, none of these changes are likely to happen soon. Instead, we are seeing a growing backlash against the rise of women in corporate roles. Young male university graduates fear that they could lose out on acquiring coveted jobs to a new generation of well-educated women. It was his stoking of such fears that got Yoon Seok-yeol elected as president, winning 60 percent of the votes of young men.





John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant.










Donny Ubiera, 32, randomly stabbed two men in back-to-back incidents over the course of the weekend just after being released from jail on Thursday

A man was arrested in Queens after going on a slashing spree on New York City's subway system just a day after being detained and let go from jail for carrying a knife.

Donny Ubiera, 32, randomly stabbed two commuters on Friday and Saturday while riding on a Flushing-to-Times Square 7-line subway train, the NYPDs said in a press release. One of the victims was stabbed in the face, while the other sustained neck injuries.

Ubiera had just been released from jail on Thursday after being arrested just a day before for allegedly refusing to put a knife away in front of police, who had ordered him to do so. He initially waved the weapon at them and tried to flee with it.

Police said that Ubiera had been in trouble with the law at least 19 times before last week's stabbings, including three previous arrests in 2022.

'Your police are doing their job. We keep arresting him,' NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said in a statement issued on Sunday.

'His record demonstrates that each time he is involved in unprovoked violence against innocent victims the criminal justice system has him back to the streets and the subways rather than jail or psychiatric treatment,' she added.

'He inevitably targets another victim. This is nothing if not predictable.'

Ubiera was identified by police officers after they recognized that he was wearing the same outfit that he wore when he carried out the attacks  a black and gold button button down shirt (pictured)

Ubiera was captured by authorities on Sunday after sharp-eyed officers identified him in public wearing the same outfit that he wore while carrying out the attacks  a gold and black short-sleeve button down shirt.

Surveillance video also recorded the suspect threatening to stab people in a subway station with a knife while wearing the same shirt.

The first slaying took place on Friday at around 8:40 a.m. at Queensboro Plaza in Long Island City, resulting in a straphanger suffering from gashes to the face and hands, police said.

The unidentified victim required stitches and was taken to hospital. The train where the slashing took place was also removed from service after a lot of blood spilled onto it, according to the New York Post.

Ubiera was not arrested on-the-spot after the incident and slashed another subway commuter the next day at 7:15 a.m. at the 74th Street-Broadway station in Jackson Heights in Queen.

According to police, the suspect showed his knife to his next victim before stabbing them in the neck. Ubiera then managed to flee the scene.

The second victim has not been identified but is believed to be in stable condition after being taken to Elmhurst Hospital.

Upon their arrival on the crime scene, cops found the knife that Ubiera had used in the second attack on Saturday. He was taken into custody 12 hours later.

Ubiera was arrested 12 hours after carrying out the second attack on Saturday morning

He faces two counts for each of the following charges: attempted murder, assault and weapons possession

The first slashing was carried out at Queensboro Plaza station on a 7-line train. The victim bled so much after the incident that the train was no longer eligible for service that day

The second attack was carried out at the 74th Street-Broadway subway station in Queens

Two days before the first stabbing on Friday, Ubiera had been approached by police after a 911 call reporting a man with a knife was made, the New York Post reported.

He was arrested shortly after not complying with officers' order to put down the weapon and was subsequently charged with criminal possession of a weapon, a controlled substance and reckless endangerment.

He was then freed on Thursday after spending more or less 24 hours behind bars.

After both slashings over the weekend, Ubiera faces two counts for the following charges: attempted murder, assault and weapons possession.

Ubiera was also charged with another crime that took place on Wednesday and that reportedly involved beating a 45-year-old employee with a stick at Delicias Calenas - a Colombian restaurant and bakery - in Queens on Roosevelt Avenue.

Two days before the first slashing on Friday, Ubiera had beaten a Delicias Calenas employee with a stick

The suspect has also been arrested in January for displaying a knife and making threats to a bodega worker on 74th Street in Queens, who went after him after he shoplifted from the store.

On December 27, Ubiera had been arrested for committing assault on two workers at a Duane Reade store on East 2nd Street in Manhattan. Later that day, he assaulted two different employees at Sunny and Annie's in Alphabet City.

Ubiera was also arrested last year in November following a physical altercation in Queens at a homeless shelter on Ditmars Boulevard, where he punched another man.

The slashings are the latest of a flurry that have taken place in New York City's subway system under Mayor Eric Adams' watch, despite his promise to lower local crime levels.

Crime happening in the subway system has surged in 2022 compared to 2021, with a 54 per cent spike.

New York Mayor Eric Adams, who is a former NYPD officer, has often been vocal about eradicating crime in the city, but has been slammed along with police for their failure to take action.

According to NYPD data, while murders and shooting are down nearly nine and seven per cent, respectively, from last year, overall crime is up nearly 40 per cent so far in 2022.

Robberies have also gone up a staggering 39.5 per cent, while felony assaults have surged by 19 per cent and rapes by 16 per cent.

Transit crime, however, has increased the most at roughly 54 (53.6) per cent - with 989 reported through June 6, 2022, compared to 644 reported at the same time last year.
A University of Virginia researcher trekking in the remote Yukon area of Alaska stumbled across an enormous woolly mammoth tusk protruding from dirt of the Koyukuk River bank last week.

'You can almost touch the #pleistocene,' UVA Environmental Humanities research specialist Adrienne Ghaly posted with a photo of the ancient tooth stuck in the river muck near the town of Coldfoot.

She said that the University of Alaska Fairbanks had first discovered the massive fossil - mammoths went extinct approximately 10,000 years ago - a year or two ago and had fastened it to the river bank with ropes.

University researchers also trained a camera on the tusk to watch it remotely.

University of Virginia researcher Adrienne Ghaly snapped this photo of a wooly mammoth tusk (circled) found on the Koyukuk River near Coldfoot, Alaska

'You can almost touch the #pleistocene,' Andrienne Ghaly posted with a photo of the ancient tooth stuck in the river muck near the town of Coldfoot

University of Alaska researchers have lashed a woolly mammoth tusk to the bank of the Koyukuk River with ropes so that it doesn't wash away

Remains of woolly mammoths, which went extinct 10,000 years ago, are still be discovered in Alaska

'U Alaska Fairbanks have been monitoring it since it was exposed,' Ghaly tweeted. 'They have a camera on it & tied ropes (the black lines) to it to ensure it doesn't fall into the river. They scanned it to see if there is more #mammoth but no - just one tusk.'

University of Virginia researcher Adrienne Ghaly snapped a photo of mammoth fossil while trekking in Alaska

As unusual as it seems to find a pre-historic elephant bone on shore, in Alaska finding woolly mammoth remains is so common that in 1986 remains of the creature were designated the state fossil.

Skeletons, teeth and even carcasses with stomach contents still intact have been found in in the Northern state as well as Siberia.

Mammoths grew to the same size as modern-day elephants, and weighed about six tons, but were covered in fur and had smaller ears.

Research of their bones has become so sophisticated, using detailed isotope analysis, that last year researchers were able to track the life and death of a 17,000 year old male mammoth they named, 'Kik.'

'From the moment they're born until the day they die, they've got a diary and it's written in their tusks,' Pat Druckenmiller, a paleontologist and director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

'Mother Nature doesn't usually offer up such convenient and lifelong records of an individual's life.'

Research of mammoth bones has become so sophisticated that last year researchers were able to track the life and death of a 17,000 year old male mammoth they named, 'Kik.' Dr. Matthew Wooller (pictured) and his colleagues at the University of Alaska, were able to determine that the ancient animal fed on grass and remained within the herd until the age of 15

A split mammoth tusk, used for analysis, sits on the lab table at the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility at the University of Alaska Fairbanks

Kik was a 28-year-old male mammoth who lived while the Earth was still in the midst of the ice age, though Alaska was mostly free of glaciers.

Through analysis, Dr. Matthew Wooller and his colleagues in the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility at the University of Alaska, were able to determine that the ancient animal fed on grass and remained within the herd until the age of 15, when it left the herd, like modern-day elephants do.

Wooller's study showed the length of Kik's journey.

'It's not clear-cut if it was a seasonal migrator, but it covered some serious ground,' Wooller said. 'It visited many parts of Alaska at some point during its lifetime, which is pretty amazing when you think about how big that area is.'

The creature appears to be have born in central Alaska, but died the states North Slope, above the Artic Circle, far from where Ghaly's tusk was found. Researchers found that the mammoth probably starved to death after wandering into an area with little grass.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak today declared he's proud to be known as a 'tech geek' as he reiterated his promise of greater tax breaks for businesses.

In a speech to mark the beginning of London tech week, Mr Sunak wistfully remembered his time studying and working in California.

He described how living in America's 'Silicon Valley' had left him aware of the importance of innovation in driving economic success.

The Chancellor expressed his hope that Britain stood 'on the cusp of a new era of innovation and change'.

And, as part of the Government's mission to turn the UK into a science and tech superpower, Mr Sunak announced a major review into Britain's supercomputer capacity.

Ministers hope to grow the UK's tech sector by more than 40billion over the next three years and to create more than 650,000 new jobs.

A new digital strategy published today has seen the Government outline a roadmap for boosting Britain's tech sector.

Rishi Sunak expressed his hope that Britain stood 'on the cusp of a new era of innovation and change'

As part of the Government's mission to turn the UK into a science and tech superpower, the Chancellor announced a major review into Britain's supercomputer capacity

Mr Sunak wistfully remembered his time studying and working in California - including at Stanford University

In his opening address to London tech week, Mr Sunak hailed how the UK had created more tech 'unicorns' - start-up companies valued at more than $1billion - than any other country outside the US or China.

But he also acknowledged a 'need to do more' to turn around slowing rates of economic innovation.

The Chancellor, speaking to tech leaders, vowed to make sure the UK's tax regime for innovation was 'globally competitive' and created 'proper incentives for all of you to invest and invent'.

He said: 'We need to do more to support private sector R&D (research and development). And that includes tax.

'On the face of it, we have one of the most generous tax regimes for R&D investment anywhere, measured by how much we spend on it.

'But despite spending huge and rapidly growing sums, clearly it is not working as well as it should.

'In the UK, business spending on R&D amounts to just three times the value of the R&D tax relief.

'The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average? 13 times.'

At his Spring Statement in March, Mr Sunak had already promised to cut the tax rates on business investment at his Budget this autumn.

He also pledged to reform R&D tax credits and to consider whether to make R&D expenditure credit more generous.

Referring to his earlier career, prior to entering politics, the Chancellor recalled how he had the 'privilege of living, studying, and working in California' - including as a student at Stanford University.

'That experience left a lasting mark on me,' he said.

'I lived and breathed the culture that was adventurous, optimistic, and forward-thinking. Willing to take risks. To be imaginative.

'To build new products, services, businesses that could change the world.'

He added: 'My political opponents actually love to paint me as some kind of tech geek.

'As I'm sure you've gathered this morning  that's a label I'm actually proud of.

'I will always be on the side of entrepreneurs, innovators, young people inventing the future.

'Because the biggest lesson I took from my time in California still guides me now, as Chancellor.

'What really matters for economic success  is innovation. If we want our country to succeed, we need to do what we've always done and embrace new technologies, and the people and culture that creates them.'

Mr Sunak also used his speech to announce Zoubin Ghahramani, a professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Cambridge University and a leader of the Google Brain project, will oversee a new review into the future of 'compute' - the large-scale processing power, memory, data storage and networks that does the work everyday computers can't do.

It is also an enabling technology necessary for AI, 'Internet of Things' sensors and quantum computing.

The review is aimed at reversing a trend whereby the UK's compute capability if falling behind the needs of the country's tech sector.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said the new tech strategy would also involve creating a new Digital Skills Council to help 'plug the skills gap' in the tech sector, and would also look to 'capitalise on the freedoms we now have to set our own standards and regulations' now the UK has left the EU.
NATO's Secretary-General has said that it is 'unthinkable' that the alliance would not act in Sweden's defence if it was attacked - after Putin threatened Scandinavia last week.

Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance would back Sweden if Putin attacked the nation which applied to join NATO last month alongside Finland.

In a speech with Sweden's Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, Stoltenberg said: 'NATO has stepped up its presence, with more exercises, with more presence in the region air, sea, land.

Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance would back Sweden if Putin attacked the nation which applied to join NATO last month alongside Finland

'And that makes a difference, meaning that if Sweden was attacked, then I deem it as unthinkable that NATO Allies would not react.

'And that is a message that we have conveyed, the NATO Allies have conveyed, in a very clear way to end the potential adversary.

'So seen from a security perspective, Sweden is in a better place now than before they applied.'

The remarks came after Russian President Vladimir Putin paid tribute on Thursday to Tsar Peter the Great on the 350th anniversary of his birth, drawing a parallel between what he portrayed as their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands - in a chilling threat to Nordic nations.

'Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years,' Putin said. 'It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned (what was Russia's).'

In televised comments on day 106 of his war in Ukraine, he compared Peter's campaign with the task facing Russia today. 'Apparently, it also fell to us to return (what is Russia's) and strengthen (the country),' he continued.

The remarks came after Russian President Vladimir Putin paid tribute on Thursday to Tsar Peter the Great on the 350th anniversary of his birth

In televised comments on day 106 of his war in Ukraine, he compared Peter's campaign with the task facing Russia today

'And if we proceed from the fact that these basic values form the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in solving the tasks that we face.'

In the war, Peter the Great claimed territory from the Swedish Empire and the comments have been widely interpreted as a threat to neighboring nations.

But Stoltenberg poured cold water on Sweden's hopes of joining the bloc, referencing issues that member state Turkey has with their application.

He said: 'Sweden has take important steps to meet Turkey's demands for approving Stockholm's NATO membership application.

'Sweden and Finland applied to join the alliance last month, in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

'Their applications have faced unexpected opposition from Turkey, which has been angered by what it deems is Swedish support of Kurdish militants and by a previous decision to withdraw arms export licenses to Turkey.

'I welcome that Sweden has already started to change its counter-terrorism legislation and that Sweden will ensure that the legal framework for arms export will reflect the future status as a NATO member with new commitments to allies.

'These are two important steps to address concerns that Turkey has raised.'

Andersson said Sweden had changed its terrorism laws and was in the process of further tightening.

'From the first of July we will also have even stronger legislation when it comes to the fight against terrorism.

'So here there are no questions about how strongly Sweden sees (on) terrorism and that we are willing to contribute to the fight against terrorism,' she said.

Stoltenberg also said the aim was to have Sweden and Finland join NATO 'as soon as possible'.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday announced he tested positive for covid, just four days after he met with President Joe Biden at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.

Trudeau, who attended the summit with his wife Sophie, said he is vaccinated and boosted. He will be isolating and feels 'okay.'

'I've tested positive for COVID-19. Ill be following public health guidelines and isolating. I feel okay, but thats because I got my shots. So, if you havent, get vaccinated - and if you can, get boosted. Lets protect our healthcare system, each other, and ourselves,' he wrote on Twitter.

Trudeau, 50, and Biden held a bilateral meeting on Thursday in Los Angeles. Trudeau and Sophie attended a dinner Thursday night hosted by Joe and Jill Biden. And the Canadian prime minister took part in the 'family photo' of American leaders on Friday.

Biden 'is not a close contact as defined by the CDC,' the White House said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a close contact is someone who has spent more than 15 minutes within six feet of a person who is positive.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, meets with President Joe Biden during the Summit of the Americas last week - Trudeau announced Monday he tested positive for covid

President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hug at a dinner at the summit while their wives Sophie Gregorie Trudeau (left) and Jill Biden (right) look on

Biden, 79, is vaccinated and double boosted.

It is the second time Trudeau has tested positive for covid. He also tested positive in January.

Canada has one of the worlds highest rates of vaccination against the coronavirus.
Israel has urged its citizens in Turkey to leave 'as soon as possible' over threats that Iranian operatives are actively planning attacks against them in Istanbul.

The stark warning comes amid the latest surge in tensions between the bitter rivals, with Tehran blaming the Jewish state for a series of attacks on its nuclear and military infrastructure, inside Iran but also inside Syria.

Foreign minister Yair Lapid made no mention of any alleged Israeli operations against Iranian targets.

But, he said, Israelis in Turkey faced 'a real and immediate danger' from Iranian agents, citing 'several Iranian attempts at carrying out terror attacks against Israelis on holiday in Istanbul'.

'If you are already in Istanbul, return to Israel as soon as possible,' Lapid said in a public warning.

Foreign minister Yair Lapid urged its citizens in Turkey to leave 'as soon as possible' over threats that Iranian operatives are actively planning attacks against them in Istanbul

'If you have planned a flight to Istanbul - cancel. No vacation is worth your life,' he added, during a meeting with lawmakers from his Yesh Atid party.

'Do not fly to Turkey at all,' unless such travel is 'essential', the foreign minister urged Israelis.

Hours after his statement, Israel's National Security Council raised its travel warning for Istanbul to the highest level.

'Given the continuing nature of the threat and in light of the increased Iranian intentions to attack Israelis in Turkey, especially Istanbul, the National Security Council has raised the travel warning for Istanbul to the highest level, Level 4,' NSC said in a statement.

The NSC noted that other parts of Turkey remained at the intermediate threat Level 3, stressing there was no prohibition on using the Istanbul airport as a connecting hub for flights, 'provided that one does not leave the airport'.

Iran and Israel have been engaged in a years-long shadow war but tensions have ratcheted up following a string of high-profile incidents Tehran has blamed on Israel.

Iran recently unveiled a new missile, the Khaibar Buster, a reference to a Jewish castle overrun by Muslim warriors led by Prophet Mohammed in the early days of Islam

The Islamic republic claimed Israel was responsible for the killing of Revolutionary Guards Colonel Sayyad Khodai, who was shot dead outside his Tehran home on May 22.

The Guards described him as a 'defender of the sanctuary', a term used for those who work on behalf of Iran in Syria or Iraq and vowed to avenge his assassination by 'Zionists'.

Israel was also blamed for air strikes last week on the Damascus International Airport, which caused major damage two runways.

The airport is in a region south of Syria's capital where Iran-backed groups, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, regularly operate.

While Israel rarely comments on individual strikes, it has acknowledged carrying out hundreds in Syria, which the Jewish state's military says is necessary to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.

Last year, Iran blamed Israel for a 'terror attack' on the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility

Lapid said some Israelis who recently travelled to Turkey had returned 'without knowing their lives were saved'.

The alleged attackers were targeting Israeli citizens 'in order to kidnap them or kill them', Lapid said.

Earlier Monday, Israel's public broadcaster Kan claimed that Iranian operatives had planned to kidnap Israelis in Turkey a month ago.

The plot was thwarted after Israel alerted Ankara about the threat.

Lapid thanked the Turkish government 'for the effort they're putting into protecting the lives of Israeli citizens', without providing details.

Turkey has consistently been a popular holiday destination for Israelis, including through more than a decade of diplomatic rupture between the two countries.

Ankara and Israel have mended ties in recent months, with senior Turkish leaders citing the importance of Israel to Turkey's tourism sector.

On Monday, Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper quoted an unnamed security official as saying that there are several Iranian 'cells' planning operations against Israeli tourists in Turkey.
Supermarket rivals Tesco and Lidl are set to square off in a multi-million pound legal fight over claims the British giant ripped off the German budget retailer's logo to promote its clubcard.

Lidl will claim in court that Tesco exploited the background to their trademarked logo - a blue square containing a yellow circle with a thin red border - to promote their hugely popular Clubcard discounts.

Tesco introduced its unique Clubcard loyalty scheme prices three years ago, which uses a yellow circle cropped onto a blue square to promote it.

But now the German grocer says their own yellow, red and blue logo is a 'wordless trademark' that has been infringed as it seeks to ban the UK's largest supermarket from using a similar-looking background on their 'Clubcard Prices' signs in-store.

It first claimed Tesco's marketing ploys were too similar-looking to its own branding in court last year, but now says the supermarket is 'seeking deliberately to ride on the coattails of Lidl's reputation as a 'discounter' by using the background.

As part of the evidence backing their claim, Lidl have put before London's High Court results from a survey, in which interviewees were shown the disputed background without the Lidl name and asked what it was.

Tesco has attempted to counterclaim, and described the 'Wordless Mark' as a 'figment of Lidl's legal imagination' in documents shown to the court.

Lidl and Tesco are set to spend 2.35m fighting each other in court over claims Tesco ripped off Lidl's logo - a yellow circle set on top of a blue box with a thin red outline

Tesco's Clubcard logo features a yellow circle on a blue square, as well as a shape thinly outlined in red - which Lidl claims is a 'wordless trademark' associated with their brand

Lidl are accusing Tesco (store pictured) of 'riding on the coattails' of their reputation as a discounter supermarket offering good value

Giving judgment in a pre-trial hearing between the two grocery giants, Mrs Justice Joanna Smith threw out Tesco's bid to have the survey evidence ruled inadmissible at trial.

Setting out the shape of the case, the judge said: 'In short, Lidl contends that Tesco's use of a new sign in their 'Clubcard Prices' marketing is an infringement.

'In bringing the claim, Lidl relies upon its trademark rights in two versions of the Lidl logo: a logo which includes the word "Lidl" and a logo without that word, "the Wordless Mark".

'The Wordless Mark is a graphical device consisting of a blue square background bearing a yellow disk, bordered in a thin red line.'

She said Lidl's lawyers argue the background to the supermarket logo is 'capable of being, and is, perceived by the public in the United Kingdom as being distinctive of the Lidl group of companies'.

'Essentially, Lidl says that Tesco is seeking deliberately to ride on the coattails of Lidl's reputation as a "discounter" supermarket known for the provision of value.

'It pleads that Tesco's use of the sign in connection with Tesco's discount prices is intended to, and does, cause members of the public to call to mind Lidl's business and the marks, including being suggestive of the fact that the prices of goods offered by Tesco for sale under or in connection with the sign are offered at the same prices, or lower prices, than could be obtained for the same or equivalent goods in Lidl stores,' the judge explained.

Setting out Tesco's defence, she went on: 'Lidl's use of the Wordless Mark is disputed.

'Focusing specifically on the Wordless Mark, it pleads...The Wordless Mark is a figment of Lidl's legal imagination and a product of its trademark filing strategy.

'It does not exist in the real world....Lidl have never used the Wordless Mark and never intended to use it'.

Tesco's lawyers sought to argue that the survey results ought not to be included in the evidence at the forthcoming trial, saying amongst other things that the way the questions were phrased had been leading.

During the survey, participants were shown the wordless logo and asked 'What do you think this image is?' and 'Now, please imagine that this image was used as a company's brand...Which company would you expect it to be?'

The judge, allowing the survey evidence to be included at trial, said: 'Looking at the answers to the survey in detail...one sees numerous responses that say "Lidl" or "Lidl logo" or "Lidl sign" or even "It looks like the background of Lidl", or "Part of the Lidl logo without the words" or "Brand image for Lidl supermarket".

Tesco's estimated costs to trial amount to 1,185,976, while Lidl's amount to 1,170,244 - 'a reflection of how key this brand dispute is to both parties', Mrs Justice Joanna Smith said

'This appears to me to be probative of recognition on the part of the participants that the Wordless Mark is a logo or trade mark.'

The judge went on to say that Tesco's estimated costs to trial, even without dealing with the issue of the contested survey, 'amount to 1,185,976, while Lidl's amount to 1,170,244

'The multi-million pound combined legal costs appear to be a reflection of how key this brand dispute is to both parties,' she remarked.

The judge also struck out Tesco's counterclaim alleging that some of the Lidl trademarks in issue should be declared invalid on grounds of bad faith.

The case will go forward to trial at a later date.
Court of Appeal judges today rejected a last-ditch legal bid to block a flight due to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda tomorrow - but just eight asylum seekers are set to be on board due to legal challenges.

Can legal campaigners still thwart Tuesday's first Rwanda flight? Lawyers and activists campaigning on behalf of asylum seekers due to be relocated to Rwanda tomorrow are still hanging on to hope, despite Monday's ruling in the High Court that dismissed the last-ditch bid to block the flight itself. More than 100 people were originally notified they were due to be deported under the policy, the number has now dropped to just eight asylum seekers, MailOnline understands. The decision will not stop individual refugees from appealing their deportation, while a full judicial review of the policy is still due to take place. Lawyers are understood to still be lodging appeals, under the Humans Rights Act and modern slavery legislation, to withdraw individual names from the Kigali-bound flight. Other claims that could thwart the Home Office's plans include question overs the age of those due to be relocated, with some asylum seekers feared to be children rather then adults according to The Refugee Council. Advertisement

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), which represents more than 80 per cent of Border Force staff, and charities Care4Calais and Detention Action challenged refusal to grant an injunction on Friday, which meant the first flight to the east African country could go ahead on Tuesday.

But, following an urgent hearing in London on Monday, three senior judges dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in the decision of Mr Justice Swift.

The news means the flight will almost certainly go ahead, although a legal challenge from the individuals due to be on board is still pending and it is unclear how many will actually end up travelling.

Around 100 people were originally notified they were due for deportation under the policy, dropping to 31 on Friday after a wave of litigation and the total now into single digits.

Raza Husain QC argued that the judge who refused to block the flight on Friday, Mr Justice Swift, had made mistakes in the way he handled the evidence presented to him.

But, following an urgent hearing in London today, three senior judges dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in his decision.

Conservative MPs cheered, whilst Labour former minister Chris Bryant ironically shouted: 'Bloody lefty lawyers' in the House of Commons as news spread of the failed bid to block the Home Office's policy.

The decision will not stop individual refugees from appealing their deportation, while a full judicial review of the policy is still due to take place in July.

This afternoon, Lord Justice Singh, sitting with Lady Justice Simler and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, said Mr Justice Swift had 'conducted the balancing exercise properly' and did not err in principle nor in the approach he took.

He added: 'He weighed all the factors and reached a conclusion which he was reasonably entitled to reach on the material before him.

'This court cannot therefore interfere with that conclusion.'

Outside, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was pictured enthusiastically speaking into a megaphone as he attended a 'Stop the Rwanda flight' protest against the court's decision.

Detainees at the Brook House Detention Centre at Gatwick airport today ahead of the Rwanda Asylum flight tomorrow

Brook House - pictured today - is privately operated by Serco on behalf of the Home Office

former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was pictured enthusiastically speaking into a megaphone as he attended a 'Stop the Rwanda flight' protest against the court's decision

Migrants waved at photographers from behind the metal fences surrounding the centre

High Court judge throws out second challenge to Home Office's Rwanda plan A High Court judge today dismissed a separate challenge to the charity Asylum Aid, which fought to temporarily block ministers from enforcing the removal of 'any asylum seeker' to Rwanda. Mr Justice Swift ruled against the charity after considering the challenge at a High Court hearing in London. Lawyers representing Ms Patel had said Asylum Aid's application should be dismissed. Barrister Charlotte Kilroy QC, who led Asylum Aid's legal team, asked Mr Justice Swift to impose an 'urgent interim' injunction, to give time for the charity's claim to be fully argued. She suggested that asylum-seekers affected were 'effectively guinea pigs' for a process which had not been properly tested. Mr Justice Swift concluded that the merits of some arguments put forward by the charity were 'thin'. Lawyers representing the charity indicated that an appeal would be considered. Mr Justice Swift said evidence suggested that 'proper arrangements' were in place for people to get legal advice. The judge said it was "better and more appropriate" for issues to be dealt with on a "case-by-case" basis. He said he was aware of three further pending, individual, legal challenges. Advertisement

It comes as a High Court judge today dismissed a separate challenge to the charity Asylum Aid, which had fought to temporarily block ministers from enforcing the removal of 'any asylum seeker' to Rwanda.

Mr Justice Swift ruled against the charity after considering the challenge at a High Court hearing in London.

Lawyers representing Ms Patel had said Asylum Aid's application should be dismissed.

Barrister Charlotte Kilroy QC, who led Asylum Aid's legal team, asked Mr Justice Swift to impose an 'urgent interim' injunction, to give time for the charity's claim to be fully argued.

She suggested that asylum-seekers affected were 'effectively guinea pigs' for a process which had not been properly tested.

Mr Justice Swift concluded that the merits of some arguments put forward by the charity were 'thin'.

Lawyers representing the charity indicated that an appeal would be considered.

Legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg said the Court of Appeal was emphatic in backing the way High Court judge Mr Justice Swift had handled the case.

'Lord Justice Singh and the two judges sitting with him concluded he had considered the evidence and had not got anything wrong,' he told Sky News.

'Since he had taken the decision the Court of Appeal was not prepared to interfere.'

Mr Rozenberg said Appeal judges also rejected campaigners' arguments that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda could be returned to their home countries and face persecution.

'That argument didn't seem to cut much ice at the Court of Appeal and for that reason as well the judge turned that down,' he said.

The Home Office has defended the policy and the Prime Minister has said the Government had anticipated 'a lot of teething problems' with the policy, but said the move is necessary to stop illegal people-smuggling rackets on either side of the Channel.

Priti Patel - pictured at the Queen's Jubilee celebrations - is seeking to defend her flagship policy against a raft of legal challenges

Boris takes a swipe at Prince Charles over his Rwanda migrant flight row criticism Boris Johnson took a thinly-veiled swipe at Prince Charles today as he defended plans to send Channel migrants to Rwanda. The PM hit out at 'very active lawyers' who have been trying to block the government from deporting the first batch to the African country. Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Mr Johnson insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers. Without directly criticising the heir to the throne, the premier said pointedly: 'What I don't think we should support is continued activity by criminal gangs.' He added on LBC: 'I do think that it's the job of Government to stop people breaking the law and to support people who are doing the right thing; that's what we are doing.' The Mail revealed over the weekend that Prince Charles has privately condemned the Rwanda asylum plan, saying giving Channel migrants a one-way ticket to Africa was 'appalling'. Clarence House has stressed that the royal is politically neutral. Downing Street later said Boris Johnson has 'nothing but respect and admiration' for the Prince of Wales after he reportedly criticised the Rwanda policy. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales, who's spoken out on a number of issues, not least the environment.' Advertisement

Rory Dunlop QC, for the department, told the court earlier today: 'The flight tomorrow is important.

'This is a policy which is intended to deter dangerous and unnecessary journeys, journeys from safe third countries by people who do not need to make that journey to be safe, they can claim in France or wherever it is.

'This is a policy that if it works, could save lives as well as disrupting the model of traffickers.

'Even if we are just talking about cancelling a flight tomorrow, there is prejudice to the public interest, to the enactment of decisions that may have that deterrent effect.'

The High Court heard the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has multiple concerns about the system in Rwanda, including discriminatory access to asylum, a lack of legal representation and other 'deep-rooted structural problems'.

Today, Mr Dunlop said: 'The Secretary of State has listened and seriously considered the concerns raised by the UNHCR and has deliberately negotiated arrangements to provide assurances in relation to those concerns.'

Lawyers for Asylum Aid, which had taken legal action against Home Secretary Priti Patel, argued on Monday that the procedure was unfair.

Mr Justice Swift ruled against the charity after considering the challenge at a High Court hearing in London.

Ahead of both hearings today, Mr Johnson told broadcasters during a visit to a farm in Cornwall: 'I always said that it will begin with a lot of teething problems and you will have a lot of legal action against it and they will try and delay it - that's inevitable.

'But what we're trying to do is stop the business model of criminal gangs who are preying on people moving them across the Channel in unseaworthy vessels, risking their lives and sometimes costing their lives.'

Asked if the policy will be worth it if it results in just one person being removed, Mr Johnson told LBC: 'I think it's very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people's lives at risk in the Channel is going to be broken  is being broken  by this Government.

'They are selling people a false hope, they are luring them into something extremely risky and criminal.'

Protesters outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London today for the ruling on Rwanda deportation flights

Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's (left) apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Boris Johnson (right in Cornwall today) insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers

Home Office sources said human rights lawyers had tabled a 'deluge' of legal claims on behalf of 31 individuals due to be deported tomorrow

Lawyers acting on behalf of the migrants slated to be sent to Rwanda are said either to have lodged legal appeals or warned they would do so today.

'We are getting claims from every single one,' a source said. 'In many cases they are making multiple claims under various bits of the Human Rights Act and modern slavery legislation. Over the weekend there have been new claims every hour and we expect more right up to when the flight goes.

'We will operate the flight even if there is just one person on it, but there is a real prospect that even that might not be possible.'

Under the terms of the deal with Rwanda, those crossing the Channel illegally risk being given a one-way ticket to Kigali where they will have the chance to claim asylum in the African state.

Former security minister Sir John Hayes said it was 'ethically the right thing to do, as well as being in line with public demands to take back control of our borders'.

'I am sick to death of deranged do-gooders and fat cat lawyers frustrating government policy and the interests of the nation,' said Sir John, who chairs the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs. 'If we end up in a farcical situation where no one is allowed to get on a flight declared lawful by the courts because of spurious human rights challenges then we will have to repeal the Human Rights Act.

'We are already committed to reforming it and we may need to go further. Every major policy this Government tries to pursue is getting caught up by the long tail of Blairism through legislation like the Human Rights Act.'

'This policy shames Britain': Entire Church of England leadership calls Government's plan to send failed asylum seekers to Rwanda 'immoral' as first flight is set to go ahead tomorrow

By Jacob Thorburn for MailOnline

Senior leaders at the Church of England have ripped into the Home Office's 'immoral' plan to deport migrants to Rwanda.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are among those who have lent their pens to a strongly worded letter that denounced the policy as one that 'shames Britain'.

Signed by the Most Rev Justin Welby and the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, the senior leaders, alongside 23 bishops that sit in the House of Lords, criticise the plan for lacking morality.

Writing to the Times, the co-signed letter states: 'Whether or not the first deportation flight leaves Britain today for Rwanda, this policy should shame us as a nation.

'The shame is our own, because our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries.'

It comes just hours after three Court of Appeal judges struck down lawyers, charities and campaigners' latest bid to thwart the first Kigali-bound flight leaving on Tuesday.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are among those who have lent their pens to a strongly worded letter that denounced Boris Johnson's policy as one that 'shames Britain'

The letter is also signed by the bishops of London, Durham, Exeter, Birmingham and Manchester.

The Home Office's proposals to fly migrants who entered the UK illegally to Rwanda have split opinion and drawn the ire of several high profile figures.

Rev Welby had previously used his Easter sermon to describe 'serious ethical questions' around the plan to send asylum seekers to the East African nation.

He later said it would have been 'cowardly' not to have spoken out against the plan.

The Archbishop's comments were later echoed by Prince Charles, after The Mail revealed he had privately condemned the Rwanda asylum plan, saying giving Channel migrants a one-way ticket to Africa was 'appalling'.

Boris Johnson and other Cabinet ministers hit back at Mr Welby for his intervention in April.

Mr Johnson, according to sources who attended a private meeting between the Prime Minister and Tory MPs after Easter, claimed the senior clergyman had 'misconstrued the policy'.

It comes after The Times and the Daily Mail reported that the Prince of Wales allegedly said in private that the policy is 'appalling'.

Mr Johnson declined to comment on whether Charles was wrong in his comments, adding: 'This is about making sure that we break the business model of criminal gangs who are not only risking people's lives but undermining public confidence in legal migration.'

The Prime Minister's official spokesman later said Mr Johnson 'has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales, who's spoken out on a number of issues, not least the environment'.

A Government spokesperson said: 'Our world-leading Partnership with Rwanda will see those making dangerous, unnecessary and illegal journeys to the UK relocated there to have their claims considered and rebuild their lives.

'There is no one single solution to the global migration crisis, but doing nothing is not an option and this partnership will help break the business model of criminal gangs and prevent loss of life.

'Rwanda is a fundamentally safe and secure country with a track record of supporting asylum seekers and we are confident the agreement is fully compliant with all national and international law.'

It comes just months after the former archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan William, was locked in a war of words with the Government over its 120m scheme to halt a surge in Channel crossings.

He joined his successor and the incumbent Archbishop Justin Welby, and Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell in questioning the morality of the plan, labelling it 'sinful'.
This is the dramatic moment a New York City Parks staffer uses martial arts to fend off a thug on a scooter who punched him in the face.

The city worker launches a tirade of spinning kicks and chops as he wards off the attacker in Riverside Park in the Upper West Side, New York.

The astonishing fightback came after the suspect, who was riding a scooter, randomly smashed him on the head at around 8pm on June 6.

Police released footage of the bizarre exchange as they continued to hunt the attacker - who has not been named - on Monday evening.



On Monday, police released the dramatic video and are asking the public for help in trying to track down the attacker and identify him

The parks worker fights back by performing a series of martial arts techniques including a spinning hook kick, and inside and outside axe kick

The footage starts as the man on a scooter approached two uniformed park workers standing near Riverside Drive and West 79th Street.

The suspect appears to become hostile at one of the city workers, a 29-year-old male whose name has not been released, The Daily News reported.

Both city workers raise their batons, as the assailant on the scooter moves towards them, randomly socking the member of staff in the face.

But he is left stunned when the parks worker fights back by performing a series of martial arts techniques including a spinning hook kick and axe kick.

The footage starts as the man on a scooter approached two uniformed park workers standing near Riverside Drive and West 79th Street

The suspect appears to become hostile at one of the city workers, a 29-year-old male whose name has not been released

The sparring continues behind a Parks Department vehicle in the Upper Westside park.

The second park worker sprays the suspect with pepper spray before he flees the scene on his scooter.

As this was all taking place a group of bicyclists passing through the park are watching the confrontation from afar.

The city employee was treated at the scene by EMS for a cut to his face.

Police are trying to identify the suspect accused of assaulting the Parks Department employee.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.

The sparring continues behind a Parks Department vehicle in the Upper Westside park in New York City
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that migrants are not entitled to bond hearings even after they have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for six months.

In a 8-1 decision, the high court reversed a lower court ruling that held the immigrant at the center of the case, Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, was entitled to a bond hearing because he had been detained for more than 6 months.

With Justice Stephen Breyer as the lone dissenter, the court ruled that bond hearings are not required to prove that a detainee 'poses a flight risk or a danger to the community.'

The justices ruled that immigration law requires holding citizens who had been deported previously and were found illegally in the U.S. again.

Monday's ruling is the third in recent years to reject bond hearings for illegal immigrants.

The immigrant decision came as all eyes were on the court awaiting a ruling that could overturn Roe v. Wade and another in a New York gun case. The court will release more decisions on Wednesday.

A Supreme Court leak last month prompted national uproar over the justices' preliminary decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that showed a majority in favor of overturning Roe, the 1973 landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide.

A Supreme Court leak last month prompted national uproar over the justices' preliminary decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

The draft opinion showed a majority in favor of overturning Roe, the 1973 landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide

Abortion-rights protesters hold up images of Supreme Court Justices during a demonstration outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 13

A pro-abortion demonstrator flips their middle finger at anti-abortion protesters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on June 13

Pro-life and pro-choice demonstrators rallied outside the Supreme Court building, though the Dobbs decision they were expecting didn't come.

If Roe is overturned, the abortion decision is turned back to the states.

Conservative states, emboldened by the impending decision, have implemented a number of new abortion restrictions. Louisiana recently passed a law ramping up criminal consequences for abortion providers from 5 to 10 years in jail and the fine from $5,000  $50,000 to between $10,000  $100,000.

And amid a recent spate of mass shootings, the court is expected to release a decision on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, a case challenging a law requiring anyone looking to obtain a license to carry a concealed weapon to establish a 'proper cause' for doing so.

Protesters hold a banner calling to 'shut down' the high court as the country awaits major case decisions pertaining to abortion rights, guns, religion and climate change in the the coming weeks before the end of their term
A board shows that the prices of gasoline and diesel are 2,190 and 2,180 won per liter, respectively, at a gas station in Seoul, June 12. Yonhap



By Lee Kyung-min



The spiking prices of gasoline and diesel are unlikely to break their weeks-long streak of rising, sustained by global oil prices staying elevated due to demand far exceeding supply amid continued geopolitical uncertainties, a limited increase in output by oil-producing countries and a recovery in spending, market watchers said, Sunday.



Local fuel prices are expected to climb further since the soaring global key commodity prices will be fully reflected with a time lag of about two or three weeks. Also propping up the upward price trajectory is surging demand ahead of the U.S. summer season and eased COVID-19 lockdowns in parts of China, compounded further by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.



Drivers will bear the full brunt of the costly fuel prices in the weeks ahead, despite previous government measures of a 30-percent cut in fuel taxes that have been more than offset by high global crude oil prices.



Breaking records every day



Data from Opinet, a fuel prices information service provider operated by the state-run Korea National Oil Corp., showed that the per-liter price of gasoline stood at 2,063.45 won ($1.61), Saturday, up 6.66 won from a day earlier. This price surpassed the previous record high of 2,062.55 won, April 18, 2012.



The price of gasoline first topped the 2,000-won level, March 15, following two months of continual increases from 1,600 won in January. The mid-March figure sank to 1,940 won on May 1 but has since been on a steep rise.



The price of diesel, meanwhile, has been breaking records every day for the past month, after surpassing the previous 14-year high of 1947.75 won, a level last seen on July 16, 2008. The price rose to 2,062.28 won per liter, Saturday, up 7.91 won from the day before.



The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and ten non-OPEC oil-exporting nations agreed in June to increase supply by about 50 percent through July, but the market remains skeptical because it failed to meet the previous target range.



"The demand for oil will continue to remain strong in the coming months, whereas adequate supply is not a guarantee," Seoul National University economist Lee In-ho said. "Global oil prices will not come down unless the Russia-Ukraine war  among other global uncertainties  finds a breakthrough."



Global oil prices hovered around $120 per barrel, a level maintained since early March. Some market watchers say the price could soar further to over $150.


A husband who stabbed his wife 17 times and asked her 'have you not died yet?' as she lay in a pool of her own blood has been jailed.

Zef Gjoni, 28, told police the severe wounds on Denisa Maria Fuli were self-inflicted, and she did it because she missed her family in Romania during the first lockdown.

The Albanian also tried to smother Ms Fuli during the horrific attack at their home in south London on April 1 2020.

Gjoni left her on the bathroom floor with a collapsed lung and then put a duvet over her head and asked her if she had died.

Zef Gjoni (pictured), 28, was jailed for 19 years today after being found guilty of attempted murder of his wife Denisa Maria Fuli, after he stabbed her 17 times in their London home

She pleaded for Gjoni to stop and call an ambulance.

He then dialled 999 to tell the operator that he and his wife had argued and she had stabbed herself in the heart two or three times.

Ms Fuli was able to tell police and paramedics through a Romanian interpreter that her husband had carried out the attack.

Gjoni, of Parchmore Road, Thornton Heath, denied but was convicted of attempted murder by a jury at Croydon Crown Court.

He was jailed for 19 years with a further five years on extended licence.

Thea Viney, from the CPS, said: 'This was a senseless and violent attack inside a marital home.

Croydon Crown Court (pictured) heard how Gjoni told police that Ms Fuli had cut herself because she missed her family in Romania

'Zef Gjoni armed himself with two kitchen knives before launching an unprovoked attack on his own wife just because she wanted to speak to her family. The victim who has since left the country, is lucky to be alive.

'During police interview Gjoni told officers that the Coronavirus lockdown had upset his wife because she was being separated from her family in Romania. He told them she had been cutting herself in the bathroom, but the jury was able to see through this blatant lie.

'The prosecution case included medical evidence and statements from the victim who had to spend two weeks in hospital recovering from her stab wounds.

'The CPS is absolutely committed to securing justice for victims of domestic abuse and will always prosecute these cases where there is the evidence to do so.'
This is the shocking a moment the ceiling of a supermarket collapse as Mexico City was slammed by a massive hail storm Sunday.

The unexpected storm left the streets in the center and western region of the Mexican capital covered in ice.

Authorities declared a yellow alert for 10 Mexico City boroughs that registered half a foot of rain.

Authorities said one person was injured  suffering a fractured clavicle  as a result of the roof collapse.

Still image from a video filmed by a shopper shows part of the zinc ceiling that collapsed as a result of Sunday's hailstorm that slammed Mexico City on Sunday. At least one person was injured at the supermarket

Mexico City was brought to a standstill Sunday after it was hit by a hail storm. A yellow alert was issued for 10 boroughs

Residents in Mexico City were caught by surprise Sunday when the Mexican capital got hit by an unexpected hail storm

At least 200 residents were evacuated from their homes by rescue workers.

A shopper was visiting the Soriana supermarket when a section of the roof slowly started to collapse.

The man pointed to an area of the celling where water was leaking through, but ran for safety with another person as the roof started to collapse.

In a separate video, an individual is told by a coworker that two people were trapped underneath the rubble of the 114 feet by 65 feet panel that broke apart.

A Mexico City street is blanketed by layers of ice following Sunday's hail storm

Still image from the Mexico City supermarket where the zinc roof collapsed during a hail storm Sunday. Authorities said one person was injured as a result of the accident, suffering a broken clavicle

Mexico City residents attempted to play down the storm that also knocked down the roof of an auto repair shop.

'The tsunami alert was not activated,' one user on Twitter quipped after sharing footage of ice-covered flood waters dragging a bus down his street.

"It's not snow, it's not a river, it's just any street flooded by the #hail that just fell," another person tweeted.

"I want a relationship like that," someone else wrote on Twitter while sharing a video of a man and a woman throwing ice balls at each other.

A girl plays with hailstones during a hailstorm in Mexico City, Mexico, on Sunday
Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Donald Trump was 'detached from reality' and that his claims of voter fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 election were 'bulls***', in testimony shown Monday by the House committee investigating the January 6 violence.

Trump's former top legal officer described how he repeatedly told the president his allegations were false.

And at one point he laughed as he described how Trump supporters had tried to build a case of fraud.

'I was somewhat demoralised because I thought boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with with these become detached from reality,' Barr told the committee in his videotaped testimony.'

When Barr pushed back, he said, he was met with little interest

'My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud.

'And I haven't seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the "2000 Mules" movie,' he said before laughing at the film made by conservative activist Dinesh D'Souza, which claims that drop boxes were abused bu has been widely criticized by factcheckers.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr dismissed claims that the 2020 election was stolen as 'nonsense' and 'bulls***' in testimony released on Monday

Barr also said he told his then boss Donald Trump that there was not enough voter fraud in the 2020 election to change the outcome, one of several witnesses who said they told the then president and his team that their allegations did not stand up to scrutiny

Barr also reserved particular scorn for the idea that thousands of votes were switched from one side to the other via Dominion voting machines

'There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were': Top quotes from the second January 6 hearing 'The mayor was definitely intoxicated': Former Trump adviser Jason Miller on Rudy Giuliani 'I don't know that I had a firm view of what he should say': Ivanka Trump on what her father should say on election night when it was too early to call the result 'Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud under way. I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence': Former Attorney General Bill Barr 'Very, very, very, very bleak': Trump's former campaign manager Bill Stepien on their chances of winning the 2020 election 'I told him that the stuff his people were shoveling out to the public was bulls***': Barr on election fraud claims 'There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were': Barr on Trump's attitude to fraud claims 'The 2020 election was not close': Republican campaign lawyer Ben Ginsberg Advertisement

In his evidence, Barr described a difficult meeting with his boss soon after the attorney general went public with his verdict that voter fraud did not influence the outcome of the election.

He said the president was trying and failing to control his fury.

'And I told him that the stuff that his people were shovelling out to the public was bull***,' he said in his testimony.

'I mean, that the claims of fraud were bull***. And, you know, he was indignant about that.'

During the second public hearing of the January 6 committee, members continued building their case that Trump was repeatedly told by key officials and aides that the election had not been rigged.

Barr, who resigned a month after the election, described how Trump wanted his Department of Justice to investigate his allegations of fraud.

He said it was like playing Whac-a-Mole as wild new claims came up each day.

'I was influenced by the fact that all the early claims that I understood, were completely bogus and silly and usually based on complete misinformation,' he told the committee in videotaped testimony.

'And so I didn't consider the quality of claims right out of the box to give me a feeling that there was really substance here.'

He described his first meeting with Trump after the election, on November 23, in which the president complained that the Department of Justice wasn't doing enough.

'And I said, you know, that has to be the campaign that raises that with a state,' Barr said.

'The department doesn't take sides in elections and the department is not an extension of your legal team.

'And our role is to investigate fraud and we'll look at something if it's if it's specific,, credible and could have affected the outcome of the election and and we're doing that and it's just not they're just not meritorious, they're not panning out.'

Other officials offered corroborating testimony.

Former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue described taking apart one claim after another  from a truckload of ballots in Pennsylvania to a missing suitcase of ballots in Georgia  and telling Trump 'much of the info you're getting is false.'

The committee has interviewed some 1000 witnesses and collected 140,000 documents, amid claims that they have enough evidence for a criminal prosecution of the former president.

For his part, Trump has dismissed the committee as another 'witch hunt' and last week said the January 6 riot 'represented the greatest movement in the history of our country.'

Barr eventually resigned on December 14, 2020, after repeatedly clashing with the president and his team over what he believed were their false claims of voter fraud

Barr also ridiculed a recent film by conservative activist Dinesh D'Souza, "2000 Mules" which claims to reveal how the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Factcheckers have been unimpressed by the quality of evidence in the movie

Barr, in his testimony, described how in each meeting with the president he tried to refute each new wild claim.

In particular, he said Trump tried to push the idea that voting machines, made by Dominion, had switched votes from one side to the other.

'They were idiotic claims,' said Barr, who added that they were among the most disturbing allegations being made by Trump's team.

'But they were made in such a sensational way,' he continued, 'That they obviously were influencing a lot of people, members of the public, that there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn't count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it - which was complete nonsense.

'And it was being laid out there. And I told them that it was it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that and it was doing a great grave disservice to the country.'
Katie Price's fiance Carl Woods has said he is 'relieved' after his charge of threatening behaviour was dropped by investigators.

The 33-year-old was charged following a highly-publicised a row with Price in August last year.

Colchester Magistrates Court was told he had attempted to 'force his way into a house after a row with Katie in the street,' The Sun reports.

Mr Woods previously pleaded not guilty to using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.

Woods had been charged under Section 4 of the Public Order Act following an incident at his home in Little Canfield, Essex last year.

33-year-old Carl Woods was charged following a highly-publicised a row with Katie Price in August last year.

At an earlier hearing in March, magistrates were told the charge followed a row that spilled over into the street, disturbing neighbours.

At one stage Woods was allegedly seen trying to force open a door, the court heard.

The male model attended court hand-in-hand with Price, after the pair returned from a holiday to Thailand.

He had been due to stand trial on Thursday but it was revealed today that the case had been abandoned, due to no realistic prospect of conviction.

A source said: 'Carl is relieved to finally have his name cleared.

'The case really put huge amounts of pressure on him.

Carl Woods arrives at Colchester Magistrates' Court, Essex, at a hearing in March alongside partner Katie Price

'Those close to Carl continued to support him throughout the process and everyone is relieved to hear the news.'

Elsewhere, Katie Price is awaiting her sentencing on June 24 at Lewes Crown Court, after previously pleading guilty to breaching a restraining order against her ex-partner Kieran Hayler's fiancee Michelle Penticost.

The 44-year-old former glamour model was arrested by police after she allegedly sent a vile and nasty message to Mr Hayler about Miss Penticost on January 21.

The message read: Tell your c****** whore piece of s*** girlfriend not to start on me.

She has a restraining order so shouldnt try antagonise me as she is in breach and Im sure she doesnt want people knowing that she was having an affair with you behind my back. That gutter slag.

Price was handed a five-year restraining order on June 3, 2019 banning her from contacting Miss Penticost directly or indirectly.

Price and Woods remained together as a couple, despite their highly-publicised row last year

Katie Price and fiance Carl Woods pictured outside Lewes Crown Court in May, where Price pleaded guilty to breaching a restraining order against her ex-partner Kieran Hayler's fiancee Michelle Penticost

The order came after Price hurled a foul-mouthed tirade of abuse at her during a row in a school playground.

Regarding Woods' case, a CPS spokesman said today: 'The CPS has an obligation to keep cases under continuous review.

'As part of our review and in accordance with our legal test we concluded that there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction and the case was stopped.

'The Crown Prosecution Service takes seriously all situations where a person's behaviour causes fear and we will seek to prosecute suspects when our legal test is met.'
A boy raped and abused by four brothers during years of sickening abuse has died, in a case that has shook Bolivia.

The 11-year-old fell into a coma and had two heart attacks on Saturday, with doctors unable to save his life after the second cardiac arrest.

The sick perpetrators - aged 15, 17, 23 and 28 - also gave him HIV.

Residents of Yapacani, the boy's hometown and where the attackers lived, made a trip to court

Their victim died in hospital in Santa Cruz, the country's largest city.

Bolivian president Luis Arce slammed the boy's attackers as 'evil'.

He wrote on social media: 'We express our deepest pain at the departure of the little boy in Yapacani.

'This tragic outcome cannot go unpunished, it is inconceivable to accept so much evil against an innocent child.

President Lucho Arce tweeted: 'It is inconceivable to accept so much evil against a child'

'To his family, all our support and our deepest condolences.'

The boy's dire situation only came to light a week ago after his mother demanded justice for the more than two years of sex abuse her son had been subjected to.

The eldest of the four brothers died of AIDS last year.

A group of residents in the child's hometown turned up at court to beat up one of the men.

They breached a security detail to do so.

The Yapacani residents beat up the perpetrator they found, who was later sent to prison

He was later sent to Palmasola prison, Santa Cruz.

One of the minors is in a juvenile court and will be kept at Cenvicruz rehab centre.

The other minor is believed to have fled to Chile.

The boy only told of the horrors he had suffered when he was first found to be infected with HIV last year.

He identified his aggressors and his family went to the police.

The boy said he was repeatedly raped by the brothers - who were his neighbours - for more than two years.
An Arizona TikToker is using the record-breaking heat to his advantage by cooking mac and cheese, grilling burgers and steaks and even baking a cake inside his car as 230million are put under heat warnings that could see some cities - including Chicago - hit 100F for first time in 10 years.

The national heatwave hit this week with millions of Americans under heat advisories as a crippling heat dome settles over the bakes the southwestern and central United States.

A video posted to TikTok by Joe Brown has gone viral showing just how hot it is - hot enough to make mac and cheese.

In the video, Brown mixes uncooked mac and cheese noodles with water and cheese in a pan and places the mixture on the dash of his vehicle in Phoenix, Arizona.

He uses a thermometer to check the temperature which shows that it's 200 degrees inside the car. He takes the mac and cheese out and devours it, giving the camera a thumbs up. Brown has a slew of other videos on his account showing how he can cook a variety of different foods in the heat of his car.

The record-breaking temperatures are expected to span nationwide this week.

A large swath of the nation, stretching from central Nebraska to West Virginia, north into Wisconsin and south into Mississippi will see the heat index rise from Monday morning until midweek, the National Weather Service said.

An Arizona TikToker is using the record-breaking heat to his advantage by cooking mac and cheese, burgers, steaks and even a cake inside his car

The heat index, a measure of what the temperature feels like to the human body, is expected to reach 100 degrees by Tuesday afternoon.

In Chicago, the high temperature is expected to reach 100 degrees on Tuesday, AccuWeather reported, for the first time in a decade.

Temperatures in the metro area - and Indianapolis - are typically around 80 degrees in June, but are expected to skyrocket to 100 this week.

The last time Chicago O'Hare International Airport recorded a day with a temperature higher than 99 F in June was on June 28, 2012, AccuWeather reported.

The heatwave comes as power demand in Texas hit an all-time high on Sunday and will likely break that record this week as economic growth boosts usage and homes and businesses keep air conditioners cranked up to escape the lingering heat.

In Chicago, (pictured here on Memorial Day) is typically around 80 degrees in June - but this week, the high temperature is expected to reach 100 degrees for the first time since 2012

The heat was also expected to continue to scorch the Southwest and parts of Texas, where daytime temperatures will remain in the 100s in many parts of the region until Monday night

The weather service said many areas should expect 'well above normal to record-breaking temperatures' as it issued heat advisor and excessive heat warnings for the region.

'Plan ahead to avoid heat-related illness and check on relatives and neighbors. The heat should break toward the end of the week,' the weather service said on Twitter.

It also advised people to stay indoors, avoid strenuous activities and stay hydrated with lots of fluids.

The heat was also expected to continue to scorch the Southwest and parts of Texas, where daytime temperatures will remain in the 100s in many parts of the region until Monday night, the weather service said. The mercury reached 114 degrees (45.5C) in Phoenix on Saturday, tying a record for the date.

AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said a large heat dome will become more expansive over the Central states, Midwest and Southeast over the next several days.

'Cities such as St. Louis, Omaha, Nebraska, and even cities as far east as Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, will be flirting with record high temperatures and triple-digit readings this week,' Pydynowski explained.

The crippling heat will linger into the end of the week, but a cold front in some areas at the end of the week will bring relief.

'Finally, by late in the week, a cold front will trim back the heat and bring some relief to portions of the Midwest and Great Lakes,' Pydynowski said.

AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said a large heat dome will become more expansive over the Central states, Midwest and Southeast over the next several days

The crippling heat will linger into the end of the week, but a cold front in some areas at the end of the week will bring relief

TIPS ON HOW TO AVOID HEAT STROKE The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released these tips to avoid heat stroke: Wear lightweight, light-colored, loose-fitting clothing Stay in air conditioning as much as possible Cut down on exercise in the heat Try to limit your outdoor activity to when its coolest, like morning and evening hours Advertisement

Power demand in Texas will likely break a record this week as economic growth boosts usage and homes and businesses keep air conditioners cranked up to escape a lingering heatwave.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the grid for more than 26 million customers representing about 90% of the state's power load, has said it has enough resources available to meet demand.

The extreme weather is a reminder of the 2021 February freeze in Texas that left millions without power, water and heat for days during a deadly storm as ERCOT scrambled to prevent a grid collapse after an unusually large amount of generation was shut.

AccuWeather forecast high temperatures in Houston, the biggest city in Texas, would hit 97 Fahrenheit (36.1 Celsius) on Monday before easing to 92 F on Wednesday. That compares with a normal high of 92 F for this time of year.

After topping the June demand record on Friday at 73,879 MW and Saturday at 74,362 MW, ERCOT said usage rose to a preliminary 74,917 MW on Sunday, which broke the all-time high of 74,820 MW in August 2019.

On Monday, ERCOT forecast demand would reach 76,587 MW.

OEMC released tweeted tips for what to do during a heat wave as a Heat Advisory is to go in effect beginning Tuesday, June 14 at noon

Yvette Johnson, 54, sits next to a fan outside of her families home on June 10, 2022 in Houston, Texas, which saw record high temperatures over the weekend

TK West, a volunteer with Dominion Tabernacle Ministries, gives out cold water bottles on Sunday during a heatwave with expected temperatures of 102 F in Dallas, Texas

Record-breaking temperatures starting hitting the US on Friday and forecasters are warning that the heat will continue this week. Pictured: A woman relaxing in the cooling water of the American River as the temperature climbed over 100F in Sacramento, California

Cities such as Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver observed record-highs in June over the last week while the Death Valley in California has also observed scorching temperatures

One megawatt can power around 1,000 U.S. homes on a typical day, but only about 200 homes on a hot summer day in Texas.

Despite the record-setting demand, power prices at the ERCOT North Hub, which includes Dallas, fell from a four-week high of $141 per megawatt hour for Friday to $100.00 for Monday. That compares with an average of $62 so far this year.

ERCOT forecast economic growth would boost peak demand to 77,317 MW this summer. The grid expects new wind and solar power plants added over the past year will increase resources available this summer to 91,392 MW.

Pictured: A National Weather Service warning for the area of North Platte, Nebraska

It's estimated that 230 million people will be seeing temperatures of at least 90F in the coming days, with 45 million of those seeing their thermostats get into the triple digits.

Around 140 cities will see record breaking temperatures this week with the heat wave possibly stretching as far north as Michigan. Iowa is also expected to suffer through temperatures around 100F.

In Louisville, Kentucky, temperatures in the upper 90s are expected during the day on Tuesday and only dropping into the 80s by nightfall. Highs in the city will remain around that level until next Saturday when they drop to 85.

Tennesseans are warned to expect temperatures in the 90s that will feel like the 100s thanks to wind from the Gulf of Mexico bringing moisture and creating humidity in the area. Those temperatures will last until Thursday.

Kansas will see temperatures in the middle to upper 90s for the next few days that due to the humidity will feel around 100 to 105F.

A record will be broken in St. Louis too if the hits 101F on Tuesday as expected, the previous record was 97F. The temperature will remain in the triple digits this week.

On the east coast, South Carolina will see temperatures that will feel like between 100F and 105F throughout the week.

As will North Carolina, with Charlotte expected to break its temperature record for June that was set back in 1958 when temperatures hit 97F.

Respite for the Carolinas in the heatwave will be mild at best with 90F predicted for next Saturday.

Current models show that the heatwave will start to move back west by the end of next week, although central Texans will get no respite as temperatures will stay close to 100F all week in the area.

According to The Weather Channel, Phoenix will experience another day of 114F temperatures on Thursday. The city hit that record equaling number already on Sunday.

The National Weather Service said that Los Angels County will see 'potentially dangerous' temperatures in the area again by Thursday. Over the weekend, LA County saw temperatures of 100F in some inland areas.

On Thursday, weather in Phoenix could reach 113F, just nine degrees cooler than the hottest temperature recorded in the area - 122Fin 1990, according to AZ Family.

The Ohio Valley is also seeing temperatures climb 20 to 30 degrees higher than usual and pass 90F later this week following severe thunderstorms.

Throughout the weekend, more than 70 million of Americans were under heat alerts after Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver and California's Death Valley all posted record temperatures on Saturday, as dangerous and 'potentially deadly' heat sweeps across the American Southwest to the Gulf Coast.

Las Vegas tied a record for the day set in 1956, with temperatures soaring to 109F on Saturday.

Denver, Colorado, hit 100F on Saturday, tying a record set in 2013 for both the high temperature and the earliest calendar day to reach 100F. High heat is expected to remain in the area until Tuesday, where conditions will drop to mid-80s Fahrenheit.

Pictured: A volunteer with Dominion Tabernacle Ministries, prepares cold water bottles to hand out during a heatwave on Sunday

Maria Hernandez, Luisa Ortega and Issac Montelongo sit outside as they watch the kids play in water during a heatwave with expected temperatures of 102 F in Dallas, Texas, on Sunday

Heat is part of the normal routine of summertime in the desert, but weather forecasters say that doesn't mean people should feel at ease.

Excessive heat causes more deaths in the U.S. than other weather-related disasters, including hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined.

Meteorologists advise people in these affected areas to drink more water than usual during peak hours of the heat, wherever they may be.

Wearing protection, including hats, sunscreen and sunglasses, is also advised. It's not recommended to wear dark clothes as black clothing often transmits heat to the skin, making a person hotter.

Scientists say more frequent and intense heat waves are likely in the future because of climate change and a deepening drought.
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Donald Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani raged at the January 6 committee on Monday, claiming lawmakers 'have no case' as they were presenting evidence in their second of six hearings.

The event largely focused on Giuliani's role in pushing Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

'They have no case,' the former New York City mayor said on Trump adviser Steve Bannon's War Room podcast. 'This is a follow-up to Russian collusion, Ukrainian conversation - the millions of hours theyve spent trying to find a crime on Donald Trump and cant do it.'

'They started this frame about five years ago. Its the same cast of characters - Bennie Thompson, and shifty [Adam] Schiff, you see [Eric] Swalwell, not on the committee, but in the background.'

He went on to say that the committee's Vice Chair Liz Cheney was 'hysterical' and had 'gone off the deep end' - though he appeared to confuse her momentarily with sister Mary Cheney.

Cheney said during her opening statement that Trump 'rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night' in favor of advice from 'an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani' who told him to declare victory that night and insist the vote count be stopped 'to falsely claim everything was fraudulent.'

Giuliani denied the assertion that he was drunk through his lawyer - despite multiple former Trump advisers being shown to have made the claim.

'Giuliani denies all falsehoods by the angry and misguided Ms Cheney,' his attorney told CNN.

During Bannon's podcast Giuliani called lawmakers on the committee 'criminals' and claimed they were simply trying to 'frame Trump for something he didn't do.'

Newly-revealed video shows multiple Trump advisers were concerned about the veracity of the former mayor's election fraud claims and expressed as much to the ex-president - who shrugged them all off.

Trump dismissed Jared Kushner's concerns about Rudy Giuliani's election fraud claims, the January 6 committee revealed in its second of six hearings on Monday.

The Democrat-led panel opened the hearing with videotaped depositions of Trump's advisers claiming he declared a premature victory on election night 2020 on the advise of a drunk Giuliani.

The panel played audio of its investigators asking Kushner, for instance, what he said about the former New York City mayor's claims that Dominion Voting Systems was part of a vast conspiracy to rig its voting machines against Trump.

'Uh, basically, not the approach I would take if I was you,' Kushner said he told his father-in-law.

Trump insisted 'I have confidence in Rudy,' Kushner claimed.

Advisers' testimonies indicate that it was apparent within hours on election night that the vote count would take several days.

Rudy Giuliani appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon's podcast just as the January 6 committee was holding its second hearing

Rep. Liz Cheney said during her opening statement that Trump 'rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night' in favor of advice from 'an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani'

They were aware it could stretch from 'very early on,' according to his daughter and former White House adviser Ivanka Trump.

Lawmakers are suggesting that Trump's aides were concerned and dismissive of the election fraud claims being pushed by some of his allies, and that the former president continued pushing them despite warnings from both family and associates.

Cheney said at the outset of the hearing: 'Pay attention to what Donald Trump and his legal team said repeatedly about Dominion voting machines, far-flung conspiracies with a deceased Venezuelan communist allegedly pulling the strings.'

Former White House attorney Eric Herschmann said on video: 'What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts.'

'And then the theory was also completely nuts. It was a combination of Italians and Germans, I mean, different things have been floating around as to who was involved - I remember Hugo Chavez, and the Venezuelans, and she has an affidavit from somebody who says they wrote a software or something in the Philippines. It was just all over the radar,' Herschmann said.

Barr said he told the president that the election fraud theories he and Giuliani were pushing were 'crazy stuff' and that 'they were wasting their time on and doing a great, great disservice to the country.'

He claimed the former president's fraud claims came 'right out of the box on election night' in the previously unseen video.

Playing a video deposition from the former New York Mayor himself, Giuliani takes a large sip of water before answering that 'yes' he was at the White House residence in the early morning hours of November 4.

The committee showed videotaped testimony by Rudy Giuliani himself admitting that he spoke with Trump 'several times' on election night, when multiple advisers told lawmakers that the former NYC mayor urged Trump to declare a premature victory

Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump told the committee that it became 'increasingly clear' on election night that the vote count would extend for several days

President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner testified to investigators that he told the then-president he doubted Giuliani's election fraud theories

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said he told the president that the election fraud theories he and Giuliani were pushing were 'crazy stuff'

'It went over beyond midnight, yes,' Giuliani said.

The panel also played video from the deposition of former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who dropped out of the hearing at the last minute after his wife went into labor.

Stepien told House investigators that he had heard Giuliani was 'upstairs' in a reception area looking to 'talk to the president.'

He recalled huddling with former Trump adviser Jason Miller, Justin Clarke and ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows 'to listen to whatever Rudy presumably wanted to say to the president.'

Miller was asked if he observed anyone in that meeting had too much to drink - to which he named Giuliani as well.

Asked if he himself recalled the meeting, Giuliani told House investigators: 'I - I - I mean I spoke to the president. They may have been present. But I spoke to the president several times that night.'

Miller, however, was more direct in laying the blame at the former Trump lawyer's feet.

'There were suggestions, by I believe it was Mayor Giuliani, to go and declare victory and say that we'd won it outright,' the former Trump adviser said on video.

He said Giuliani made clear that 'everyone who didn't agree with that position was being weak.'

Stepien said he encouraged Trump to say: 'It's too early to tell, too early to call the race. But you know, we are proud of the race we we ran and we think we're in in good position. And we'll have more to say about this.'

He said Trump disagreed with that plan.

Trump did hold an unprecedented press conference at the White House on election night where he claimed with absolutely no proof that the vote count was rife with 'fraud on the American public.'

Later on Stepien's testimony showed that member of Trump's orbit knew they were facing defeat even as the ex-president continued to claim victory.

'You know, I, we told him, the group that went over there, outlined, you know, my belief in, in chances for success at this point and then we pegged it at, you know, 5, maybe, maybe, 10 percent based on recounts that were, you know, either were automatically initiated or could be initiated based on, you know, realistic legal challenges, not all the legal challenges that eventually were pursued,' the former campaign manager claimed.

A video deposition from former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen shows that even the upper echelons of Trump's administration made clear to him that Giuliani's various election challenges throughout the country, such as in Fulton County, Georgia, had no merit.

Rosen, who took office after Barr's departure at the end of December, told the committee he let Trump know the allegations of fraud in Georgia were 'just not true.'

'I told the president myself that - several times in several conversations - that these allegations about ballots being smuggled in - in a suitcase, and run through the machine several times, it was not true,' Rosen said.

The committee honed in on Giuliani's role in pushing Trump's election fraud claims in the second half of its hearing, featuring testimony from former officials in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Both states narrowly went to Biden in 2020 and were lightening rods for the ex-president's attempts to overturn the vote count.

'This morning, we'll tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election, and knew he lost an election, and as a result of his loss decided to wage an attack on our democracy,' Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson said in his opening statement.

Former ABC News president James Goldston was seen arriving on Capitol Hill Monday morning ahead of the second hearing.

Axios reported last week that lawmakers recruited Goldston - who also helmed Good Morning America and Nightline as executive producer - to shape their mountains of evidence into a 'blockbuster' presentation.

The most highly-anticipated testimony was expected to come from former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, but he was forced to withdraw less than an hour before the hearing was meant to start after his wife went into labor.

'Mr. Stepien was in town and preparing for his testimony here today in response to a subpoena when he got a call that his wife had gone into labor. He notified committee council and he immediately headed to hospital to be with her,' his lawyer told reporters outside of the hearing room.

US Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), (L) Chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, and Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) preside over a House Select Committee hearing to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 13

House Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean speaks with DC Metro police officer Michael Fanone (left) and Capitol police officer Harry Dunn (right) ahead of the second January 6 hearing

Fired Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt, who was part of the team that called Arizona for President Joe Biden, prepares to testify

Stirewalt was meant to testify alongside former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who had to leave the hearing for a family emergency after his wife went into labor

The first hearing, held last Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, featured testimony from Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards and documentary filmmaker Nick Quested.

Edwards' moving testimony captured the night, as she compared the Capitol to a 'war zone' and recalled 'slipping in people's blood' as she defended the building from Trump's mob of violent supporters - experiencing a traumatic brain injury in the process.

That session was led chiefly by chairman Thompson, a Democrat, and Republican vice chair Cheney.

It also featured excerpts from videotaped depositions with former Attorney General Bill Barr and Trump's daughter and White House adviser, Ivanka, both making clear they believed at the time that there was no widespread fraud.

Multiple members of the select committee suggested they gathered enough evidence to bring criminal charges against Trump over the weekend. Appearing across a slew of Sunday news programs, panel members made clear that they hope Attorney General Merrick Garland is paying close attention to their hearings.

'I would like to see the Justice Department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump or anyone else,' committee member Rep. Adam Schiff said on ABC News' This Week.

He later added: 'They need to be investigated if there's credible evidence, which I think there is.'

Rep. Jamie Raskin, meanwhile, said he doesn't want to 'browbeat' Garland but noted the committee has already laid out criminal statutes they believe Trump violated through a series of court filings.

General view of the room before the second public hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, at Capitol Hill, in Washington, U.S. June 13

Former ABC News president James Goldston arrives on Capitol Hill ahead of the Monday morning hearing

'I think that he knows, his staff knows, the US attorneys know, what's at stake here,' Raskin told CNN's State of the Union.

'They know the importance of it, but I think they are rightfully paying close attention to precedent in history as well, as the facts of this case.'

Rep. Elaine Luria said the committee's hearings would focus heavily on Trump's 'dereliction of duty,' particularly during the 187 minute-gap between when the former president's supporters first broke into the Capitol and when he called them off.

'We've pieced together a very comprehensive tick tock timeline of what he did. And then 187 minutes, you know, this man had the microphone; he could speak to the whole country. His duty was to stand up and say something and try to stop this,' Luria said on NBC's Meet the Press.

'So, we'll talk about that and what I see to be his dereliction of duty, and he had a duty to act.'

During their first hearing the panel contextualized the January 6 attack into a wider alleged plot by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The riot was 'no accident,' the committee said, but rather 'Trump's last stand.'
The key Senate Republican negotiator on a legislative response to the Uvalde school shooting says President Joe Biden got 'none' of his gun control priorities in the measure, as political Washington assesses a compromise that key Democrats are only calling a first 'step.'

'People are going to describe this the wrong way, but fundamentally this is about keeping our kids safe at school,' said Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, who negotiated with a group of Senate Democrats on a deal that was finalized this weekend.

He also crowed about measures he and Republicans were able to keep out of the deal  in a likely reference to Biden's gun control measures.

'Look at all the things that President Biden said he wanted  none of that's in there,' he told Raw Story.

'Look at all the things that President Biden said he wanted  none of that's in there,' said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas)

'But we're going to focus on school safety and mental health, identifying these young men before they become dangerous, getting them treatment or certainly, they go to buy a firearm accessing the state juvenile records to meet with an enhanced review makes a lot of sense,' Cornyn said.

He was referencing a provision of the deal that provides for an 'enhanced review process' for gun purchasers under 21 and efforts to crack down on straw purchasers.

For those under 21, the package requires a review of juvenile and mental health records. The Buffalo and Uvalde shooters were both 18.

Among Biden's proposals that did not make it into the package are an assault weapons ban, lifting the age for purchase of semiautomatic weapons from 18 to 21, and expanded mandatory background check provisions.

A new Suffolk University / Dallas Morning News poll found that 86 percent of Dallas residents polled favored raising the age to 21 for semi-automatic gun purchases, with 68 per cent backing an assault weapons ban, and 59 per cent in favor of arming teachers and staff. The poll only looked at the heavily Democratic city.

President Joe Biden praised the deal as incremental progress after calling for a ban on assault weapons

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she would be willing to back it 'if we get a real baby step, not kind of a distraction, I think, from the solution'

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., announced negotiators had agreed to a bipartisan package

Lawmakers began talks in earnest following mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas

The House last week passed a sweeping series of gun control measures. Democratic leaders over the weekend praised the breakthrough, the first in years, as a step in the right direction, although it remains to be seen whether Democrats on the left would balk.

'Well, we would certainly vote on it and work on it,' Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told CNN's 'State of the Union.'

'It's moving in the right direction. We're glad the Senate is finally awake about this,' he said.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leader of the progressive left wing in her party, said Sunday that she would be willing to back it 'if we get a real baby step, not kind of a distraction, I think, from the solution.' She also said she wanted to review text.

President Biden also praised the deal.

'Obviously, it does not do everything that I think is needed,' he said, 'but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades.'
The families of innocent people killed by the British Army in the Ballymurphy massacre will receive 'significant' damages, the High Court ruled today.

Ten innocent victims were shot dead by the army during clashes early in the Troubles in west Belfast, August 1971.

Civil cases brought against the Ministry of Defence (MoD) will result in undisclosed damages to be paid plus legal fees, the court decided.

John Teggart (centre) is the son of Ballymurphy massacre victim Daniel Taggart, shot 44 times

Briege Voyle is the daughter of Joan Connelly, a mother-of-eight who lay dying for hours

A statement from the families said they had secured 'significant payment in damages' to the relatives of Fr Hugh Mullan, Frank Quinn, Joan Connolly, Noel Phillips, Joseph Murphy, Daniel Teggart, Edward Doherty, Joseph Corr and John Laverty.

All ten civilians shot dead at Ballymurphy were innocent victims and died unlawfully, a fresh inquest concluded last year.

Boris Johnson issued an apology last year to the victims' families in the House of Commons.

But the Ballymurphy victims' families say they are still waiting on an MoD apology.

The tragedy came within days of the government's imposition of internment without trial in August 1971, known as Operation Demetrius.

The group of victims' relatives posed outside the High Court with pictures of the innocent nine

British soldiers are pictured in Northern Ireland at the time of the Ballymurphy massacre

The victims of the massacre, pictured, were shot between August 9 and August 11, 1971, during The Troubles, following the launch of a new policy of arrest and internment of suspected IRA members. The British Army's report of the incident was that members of the Parachute Regiment were fired upon by the IRA and soldiers returned fire

In court, Mr Justice Humphreys was told the cases had been settled by consent.

He said: 'Can I congratulate the legal representatives for all their efforts. Lots of people are involved in reaching a conclusion such as this.

'Also to the people for whom these cases have meant a huge amount.

'I have become aware of the significance of these cases in the lives of many people, some of whom are in court.

'This represents the end of a very long process which has seen the inquests go through many months of hearings and ultimately reach the conclusions you are all familiar with.

'Those conclusions have meant that these proceedings have been easier to bring to resolutions.

Mourners are pictured here in Ballymurphy in August 1971 at a wake for Catholic priest Father Hugh Mullan, who was shot on the first day of violence on August 9

British troops clash with demonstrators in Belfast in May 1981 at the height of the Troubles

'As well over 50 years have elapsed since these events occurred I am acutely aware of the significance of today as part of the process that all of you have had to go through.'

A statement from the families said: 'The conclusion of this case comes just over a year since the coroner Justice Siobhan Keegan found our loved ones entirely innocent.

'The coroner found the British army responsible for deaths of our loved ones, however as we speak the Ministry of Defence haven't come forward with an apology.

'We have proven that current legal routes open to all victims of our troubled past do work despite the claims of Brandon Lewis and Boris Johnston to the contrary.

'All victims deserve justice and full access to the courts.'

A compensation claim from the family of the tenth person who died at Ballymurphy and a number of people who were injured are still progressing through the courts.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced a breakthrough case of covid on Monday, testing positive for the second time in less than a month.

Becerra, 64, is vaccinated, boosted and not considered a close contact to President Joe Biden.

'This morning in Sacramento, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra tested positive for COVID-19 after taking an antigen test. He is fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms,' the agency said in a statement.

'He will continue to perform his duties as HHS seecretary, working in isolation.'

'Secretary Becerra has not been considered a close contact of President Biden or Vice President Harris, as defined by the CDC. The Secretary remains engaged with the duties of his office from isolation, and is eager to return to in-person meetings, as quickly as possible.'

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced a breakthrough case of covid

Becerra is not considered a close contact to President Biden

Becerra also tested positive for covid on May 18 during a trip to Germany for a G-7 health summit.

Biden, 79, is vaccinated and double boosted.

But several members of his administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris and half his Cabinet, have had covid.
Steel products are piled on an empty lot near a Posco factory in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, Sunday. Courtesy of Posco



By Park Jae-hyuk



Posco halted operations at some production lines at its steel mill in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, due to an indefinite general strike by unionized cargo truck drivers that has continued for the seventh day, Monday.



From 7 a.m., the steelmaker suspended production at all four wire rod factories in the southeastern port city and at one of two cold-rolled steel plants there, which mainly produce steel products for home appliances and high-quality construction materials. As a result, its daily production of wire rods and cold-rolled steel decreased by 7,500 tons and 4,500 tons, respectively.



Posco produces a combined 20,000 tons of steel products every day at its Pohang steel mill.



The steelmaker has had to pile its products on vacant lots near its steel mill because its warehouses have become full since the Cargo Truckers Solidarity went on strike last Tuesday to protest the planned annulment of the "Safe Trucking Freight Rates System" designed to prevent dangerous driving by guaranteeing minimum freight rates for truck drivers.






Wife killer Babis Anagnostopoulos is sharing his cell with another convicted murderer, we can reveal - as her devastated father says he should suffer a couple of years misery before being bumped off.

Babis, 34, was jailed for life last month for suffocating his British wife Caroline Crouch, 20, at their luxury home in a suburb of the Greek capital Athens last year in front of their then 11-month-old daughter Lydia.

The cold-hearted killer then strangled the familys pet dog to make the murder look like a break-in and shed crocodile tears to cops and Carolines devasted family before being nailed after investigators saw through his concocted story.

Babis was jailed for life last month for suffocating his wife, Caroline Crouch, in front of their 11-month-old daughter. He then strangled the family dog in a bid to cover up the crime as a break-in

Babis pictured with Caroline Crouch, who he suffocated to death in May last year. While serving his life sentence, he was attacked in Korydallos prison and has since been moved to Malandrino prison which is dubbed the Greek Alcatraz

Last week MailOnline revealed he had been attacked in Korydallos prison by a Georgian inmate and he was subsequently moved to Malandrino prison 250miles to the north and which is dubbed the Greek Alcatraz.

He is now sharing a cell with an unidentified Albanian killer and both Babis and his lawyer are worried for his life amid fears a contract may be out on him by underworld gangsters.

Carolines father David, a retired oil executive from Liverpool, who moved to the Greek island of Alonissos, told Mail Online: It seems that he is not happy in his new accommodation and he wants to be transferred back to Korydallos prison where he would feel safer.

He believes that there is at least one but maybe several contracts out for his demise. It is my belief that the people he was involved with prior to killing my daughter are also keen that he is silenced in case he tries to make some sort of deal.

My own feeling is that he should suffer at least a couple of years before being bumped off, and that it should be slow.

He is serving life for the murder of Caroline, which is 16 years in Greece plus a maximum ten years for killing Roxy and a combined six years for the two other offences. Babis and his lawyer are now worried for his life amid fears a contract may be out on him by underworld gangsters

The Greek pilot was attacked by a Georgian national who was furious that a fellow countryman had been tortured by police for four days after being identified as a suspect by him. Babis initially told police a gang of Georgian or Albanian men had broken into the couples home and escaped with cash and jewellery

Greek media have suggested since Carolines murder that she was silenced after she stumbled on some sort of illegal drug dealing activity Babis was involved in and threatened to walk out and tell the police.

David and his wife Susan, have now been awarded sole custody of Lydia, who is living with them in Alonissos, and he added: 'She is scooting around the house, hotly pursued by the maid and although she is in her forties they seem to have developed a big sister, little sister relationship.

It is quite wonderful to watch. I am eternally sad that my beloved Caroline isnt here to enjoy it. It is one of the reasons that I will ensure that Babis never gets to see his daughter again.

I wonder if anyone has communicated this fact to him yet, and whether he is aware that we are in the process of changing her name to that of her mother. I would be interested to know his reaction.

Babis spent a year in tough Korydallos jail in Athens awaiting trial, where he was attacked by a fellow prisoner but survived unscathed

Babis was moved to Malandrino prison (pictured) 250miles to the north. He is now sharing a cell with an unidentified Albanian killer

UK-trained helicopter pilot Babis was attacked by a Georgian national who was furious that a fellow countryman had been tortured by police for four days following Carolines murder after being identified as a suspect by her husband.

Babis had initially told police a gang of Georgian or Albanian men had broken into the couples home and escaped with cash and jewellery and they had tied him up and attacked his wife and their pet dog Roxy.

But he was eventually snared after investigators discovered that timings on Carolines fitness tracker didnt tally with what Babis had told them and they arrested him six weeks later as he attended her funeral service.

During his trial Babis was repeatedly described as narcissistic and controlling and the court heard extracts from Carolines diary in which she described him as a control freak who flipped after she told him she wanted to end their relationship.
A pensioner has died in hospital six days after she was hit by an e-scooter being ridden by a 14-year-old boy - becoming the first pedestrian in Britain to be killed by such a vehicle.

Linda Davis, 71, known to her family and friends as Lou, was struck on the pavement on Southwell Road East, in Rainworth, Nottinghamshire, at around 3.50pm on June 2.

She was rushed to hospital but died last Wednesday despite the efforts of medics.

Nottinghamshire Police said the rider of the privately-owned electric scooter remained at the scene and contacted emergency services.

He has since been interviewed under caution and remains under investigation while enquiries continue.

Linda Davis (above), 71, known to her family and friends as Lou, was struck on the pavement on Southwell Road East, in Rainworth, Nottinghamshire, at around 3.50pm on June 2

The force said the investigation is ongoing and officers are appealing for any witnesses to get in touch while the victim's family is being supported by specialist officers.

Detective Constable Emma Temple, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: 'Our thoughts are with the victim's family, who have requested privacy at this difficult time.

'Our enquiries are ongoing and we'd urge anyone who either witnessed this collision, or who may have CCTV or dash-cam footage, to please get in touch with us.'

Anyone with information is asked to call 101 quoting incident 441 of June 2, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

She was rushed to hospital but died last Wednesday despite the efforts of medics. Pictured: Southwell Road East

Two weeks ago a shocking report revealed e-scooter crashes had killed nine people while injuries had also rocketed across England, Scotland and Wales in 2021.

The data published by the Government said there were 1,280 collisions involving e-scooters last year compared to 460 in 2020.

In 2021, collisions resulted in 1,359 casualties and nine deaths while in 2020 they resulted in 484 injuries and a single fatality.
Lawyers for a British woman cleared of lying about a gang rape are taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights after authorities ruled out a fresh hunt for her attackers.

The 21-year-old university student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, went from victim to accused following her harrowing ordeal on the island of Cyprus in July 2019 when she was targeted by up to 12 men.

Police in the resort of Ayia Napa initially held a group of Israeli tourists in connection with the attack but they were later released and the woman was charged with 'public mischief' and accused of making the attack up.

In 2020 she was given a four-month suspended jail sentence but after an appeal, the conviction was quashed in February but the landmark victory has turned sour after the Cyprus Attorney General ruled out a new investigation.

The woman and her legal team had been hoping police would reopen the case and she would get justice but they have been left disappointed at the decision and have now taken the fight to the ECHR in Strasbourg.

Lawyers for a British woman (pictured outside court in 2020), who said up to 12 men gang raped her in Cyprus in 2019, plan to take her case to the European Court of Human rights

British lawyer Michael Polak (pictured in 2021) said it is 'only fair that an investigation by an independent objective investigator should take place'

Her lawyer Michael Polak QC, from campaign group Justice Abroad, exclusively told MailOnline: 'The Court of Appeal in Cyprus ruled her initial conviction was unsafe and it was set aside.

'The girl and her family had hoped that this would lead authorities in Cyprus to reinvestigate the case so justice could be done but they have decided not to do so and that has left us disappointed.

'The Attorney General's decision comes following the success of our client's appeal to the Supreme Court of Cyprus where that Court not only set out the many legal failures in the case against her but also covered the procedural failures in the investigation of her rape complaint.

'In Cyprus, the decision of the Attorney General to initiate or discontinue criminal prosecutions is not subject to any appeal or review. As such, there are no domestic remedies available to the our client to challenge the Attorney General's decision not to order a proper investigation into the rape complaint.'

Mr Polak explained their submission to the ECHR would argue the woman's rights under Article 3, 6, and 8 of the Convention were breached in that the probe of the original offence was so poor as to amount to a breach of the Cyprus's obligation to properly investigate and prosecute sexual crimes.

He added:' It was clear that his case was replete with investigatory failures, and it is only fair that an investigation by an independent objective investigator should take place.

The British woman who had her conviction quashed at the start of the year. She had previously received a suspended sentence accused of making false claims that she was gang raped

Lawyer Michael Polak, background, is seen as protesters hold banners in support of a British woman, outside of Cyprus' Supreme Court in the capital Nicosia on Monday, Jan. 31, 2022

'Under the European Convention on Human Rights there is a right to have sexual offences properly investigated and this has been breached by the Attorney General's decision not to order an investigation following the Supreme Court's ruling which found in favour of our client and held that there were numerous failure I n the original investigation as well as abject misunderstanding of the evidence in the case.

'Further, it is an anomaly for the decision maker, in this case the Attorney General, to be able to make a decision not to investigate in a case such as this and for that decision to be unchallengeable in the domestic courts. This is contrary to the rule of law and a father breach of our of client's right to a fair hearing in the determination of her rights.

'We remain determined to achieve justice for our client in this case and to cause changed which would mean that victims of sexual offences are dealt with fairly in the Republic of Cyprus in the future. This remains an elusive goal and as far as we are aware the Government of Cyprus has failed to carry out any review of positive changes to protect victims of sexual offices since the Supreme Court delivered its strong judgement in January 2022.

'We are confident that the European Court will find in our favour and we continue to encourage the Attorney General to review his decision in this case.'

Pictured, the bedroom where the alleged rape took place. She was branded a liar, charged with fabricating the rape, coerced into retracting her accusation and  as she awaited trial for the offence of causing public mischief  thrown into jail for five weeks

Her case made headlines around the world after it emerged she had been questioned overnight without a lawyer or translator and then made to sign a statement in Greek withdrawing her claims.

The woman's subsequent court case was then a shambolic stop-start farce and she was often reduced to tears after the judge and prosecutors shouted over her and her legal team, barely giving her a change to speak or present their evidence fairly before she was found guilty in January 2020.

In Israel, the overturning of her conviction made headlines news, with media welcoming he decision and asking: 'Will the boys now go on trial, or will we never find the truth ?'

The men in question are now all nearing the end of their National Service and their lawyer Nir Yaslovitzh said:' The Supreme Court of Cyprus overturned the conviction due to flaws in the conduct of the trial by the District Court.

'This does not mean that my clients committed any offences against the complainant. There is nothing in this to prove that, God forbid, my clients performed what was attributed to them thus I'm not at all worried about the future to come.'

A spokesperson for the attorney General's Office in Cyprus declined to comment and would only say:' The Law Office of the Republic of Cyprus has communicated their decision to the lawyer of the British woman. Taking this into consideration we cannot officially comment any further.'
Senior leaders at the Church of England have ripped into the Home Office's 'immoral' plan to deport migrants to Rwanda.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are among those who have lent their pens to a strongly worded letter that denounced the policy as one that 'shames Britain'.

Signed by the Most Rev Justin Welby and the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, the senior leaders, alongside 23 bishops that sit in the House of Lords, criticised the plan for lacking morality.

Writing to the Times, the co-signed letter states: 'Whether or not the first deportation flight leaves Britain today for Rwanda, this policy should shame us as a nation.

'The shame is our own, because our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries.'

It comes just hours after three Court of Appeal judges struck down lawyers, charities and campaigners' latest bid to thwart the first Kigali-bound flight leaving on Tuesday.

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), which represents more than 80 per cent of Border Force staff, and charities Care4Calais and Detention Action challenged refusal to grant an injunction on Friday, which meant the first flight to the east African country could go ahead on Tuesday.

But, following an urgent hearing in London on Monday, three senior judges dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in the decision of Mr Justice Swift.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are among those who have lent their pens to a strongly worded letter that denounced Boris Johnson's policy as one that 'shames Britain'

Rev Justin Welby previously blasted the government's Rwanda plan for asylum seekers as the 'opposite of the nature of God'

The letter is also signed by the bishops of London, Durham, Exeter, Birmingham and Manchester.

The Home Office's proposals to fly migrants who entered the UK illegally to Rwanda have split opinion and drawn the ire of several high profile figures.

Rev Welby had previously used his Easter sermon to describe 'serious ethical questions' around the plan to send asylum seekers to the East African nation.

The Archbishop told his Canterbury congregation that the UK has a duty as a 'Christian country' to not 'sub-contract our responsibilities' after anyone who arrived in Britain illegally since January 1 could be relocated to Rwanda under a new deal.

He later said it would have been 'cowardly' not to have spoken out against the plan. Cabinet ministers hit back at Mr Welby after his outspoken intervention in April.

MPs later called Mr Welby's stinging intervention over the government's plan to send thousands of migrants with a one-way ticket to Rwanda 'clumsy'.

Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, a committed Catholic, said the government is not 'abandoning' migrants but taking on a 'very difficult responsibility' with the 'intention' of doing good' which he said is important within Christianity.

Other Tory MPs John Redwood, Mike Wood and Tom Hunt also blasted Mr Welby's comments with Mr Hunt saying the Archbishop should be wary of 'clumsily intervening' into political issues.

Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's (left) apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Boris Johnson (right in Cornwall today) insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers

There are fears ministers could be banned from putting Channel migrants on the first flight to Rwanda

The Archbishop's comments were later echoed by Prince Charles, after The Mail revealed he had privately condemned the Rwanda asylum plan, saying giving Channel migrants a one-way ticket to Africa was 'appalling'.

Downing Street tried to cool the tensions later, saying Mr Johnson has 'nothing but respect and admiration' for the Prince.

The PM's official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales, who's spoken out on a number of issues, not least the environment.'

The tetchy exchanges with Mr Johnson came amid fears ministers could be blocked from putting Channel migrants on the first flight to Rwanda.

Mr Johnson, according to sources who attended a private meeting between the Prime Minister and Tory MPs after Easter, claimed the senior clergyman had 'misconstrued the policy'.

Dozens of protestors are pictured scuffling with Met Police officers outside the Home Office during the 'Stop Rwanda flights' protest on Monday evening

Migrants travelling to the UK on small boats will be put on jets and sent to Rwanda while their applications are processed. Pictured: A map detailing the plan proposed by the Prime Minister

Mr Johnson told LBC the Government had expected that 'very active lawyers' would try to challenge the Rwanda policy.

'We have always said that we knew that this policy would attract attacks from those who want to have a completely open-doors approach to immigration, who want people to be able to come across the Channel without let or hindrance,' he said.

'There are very active lawyers in this field. I have the utmost respect for the legal profession but it is also important we stop criminal gangs.'

Asked if the policy will be worth it if it results in just one person being removed, Mr Johnson said: 'I think it's very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people's lives at risk in the Channel is going to be broken  is being broken  by this Government.

A Government spokesperson said: 'Our world-leading Partnership with Rwanda will see those making dangerous, unnecessary and illegal journeys to the UK relocated there to have their claims considered and rebuild their lives.

'There is no one single solution to the global migration crisis, but doing nothing is not an option and this partnership will help break the business model of criminal gangs and prevent loss of life.

'Rwanda is a fundamentally safe and secure country with a track record of supporting asylum seekers and we are confident the agreement is fully compliant with all national and international law.'

It comes just months after the former archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan William, was locked in a war of words with the Government over its 120m scheme to halt a surge in Channel crossings.

He joined his successor and the incumbent Archbishop Justin Welby, and Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell in questioning the morality of the plan, labelling it 'sinful'.

Court of Appeal judges give go ahead for first flight taking migrants to Rwanda to depart tomorrow - but just EIGHT asylum seekers are set to be on board because of legal challenges

By Rory Tingle, Home Affairs Correspondent for MailOnline

Court of Appeal judges today rejected a last-ditch legal bid to block a flight due to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda tomorrow - but just eight asylum seekers are set to be on board due to legal challenges.

Can legal campaigners still thwart Tuesday's first Rwanda flight? Lawyers and activists campaigning on behalf of asylum seekers due to be relocated to Rwanda tomorrow are still hanging on to hope, despite Monday's ruling in the High Court that dismissed the last-ditch bid to block the flight itself. More than 100 people were originally notified they were due to be deported under the policy, the number has now dropped to just eight asylum seekers, MailOnline understands. The decision will not stop individual refugees from appealing their deportation, while a full judicial review of the policy is still due to take place. Lawyers are understood to still be lodging appeals, under the Humans Rights Act and modern slavery legislation, to withdraw individual names from the Kigali-bound flight. Other claims that could thwart the Home Office's plans include question overs the age of those due to be relocated, with some asylum seekers feared to be children rather then adults according to The Refugee Council. Advertisement

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), which represents more than 80 per cent of Border Force staff, and charities Care4Calais and Detention Action challenged refusal to grant an injunction on Friday, which meant the first flight to the east African country could go ahead on Tuesday.

But, following an urgent hearing in London on Monday, three senior judges dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in the decision of Mr Justice Swift.

The news means the flight will almost certainly go ahead, although a legal challenge from the individuals due to be on board is still pending and it is unclear how many will actually end up travelling.

Around 100 people were originally notified they were due for deportation under the policy, dropping to 31 on Friday after a wave of litigation and the total now into single digits.

Raza Husain QC argued that the judge who refused to block the flight on Friday, Mr Justice Swift, had made mistakes in the way he handled the evidence presented to him.

But, following an urgent hearing in London today, three senior judges dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in his decision.

Conservative MPs cheered, whilst Labour former minister Chris Bryant ironically shouted: 'Bloody lefty lawyers' in the House of Commons as news spread of the failed bid to block the Home Office's policy.

The decision will not stop individual refugees from appealing their deportation, while a full judicial review of the policy is still due to take place in July.

This afternoon, Lord Justice Singh, sitting with Lady Justice Simler and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, said Mr Justice Swift had 'conducted the balancing exercise properly' and did not err in principle nor in the approach he took.

He added: 'He weighed all the factors and reached a conclusion which he was reasonably entitled to reach on the material before him.

'This court cannot therefore interfere with that conclusion.'

Outside, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was pictured enthusiastically speaking into a megaphone as he attended a 'Stop the Rwanda flight' protest against the court's decision.

Detainees at the Brook House Detention Centre at Gatwick airport today ahead of the Rwanda Asylum flight tomorrow

Brook House - pictured today - is privately operated by Serco on behalf of the Home Office

former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was pictured enthusiastically speaking into a megaphone as he attended a 'Stop the Rwanda flight' protest against the court's decision

Migrants waved at photographers from behind the metal fences surrounding the centre

High Court judge throws out second challenge to Home Office's Rwanda plan A High Court judge today dismissed a separate challenge to the charity Asylum Aid, which fought to temporarily block ministers from enforcing the removal of 'any asylum seeker' to Rwanda. Mr Justice Swift ruled against the charity after considering the challenge at a High Court hearing in London. Lawyers representing Ms Patel had said Asylum Aid's application should be dismissed. Barrister Charlotte Kilroy QC, who led Asylum Aid's legal team, asked Mr Justice Swift to impose an 'urgent interim' injunction, to give time for the charity's claim to be fully argued. She suggested that asylum-seekers affected were 'effectively guinea pigs' for a process which had not been properly tested. Mr Justice Swift concluded that the merits of some arguments put forward by the charity were 'thin'. Lawyers representing the charity indicated that an appeal would be considered. Mr Justice Swift said evidence suggested that 'proper arrangements' were in place for people to get legal advice. The judge said it was "better and more appropriate" for issues to be dealt with on a "case-by-case" basis. He said he was aware of three further pending, individual, legal challenges. Advertisement

It comes as a High Court judge today dismissed a separate challenge to the charity Asylum Aid, which had fought to temporarily block ministers from enforcing the removal of 'any asylum seeker' to Rwanda.

Mr Justice Swift ruled against the charity after considering the challenge at a High Court hearing in London.

Lawyers representing Ms Patel had said Asylum Aid's application should be dismissed.

Barrister Charlotte Kilroy QC, who led Asylum Aid's legal team, asked Mr Justice Swift to impose an 'urgent interim' injunction, to give time for the charity's claim to be fully argued.

She suggested that asylum-seekers affected were 'effectively guinea pigs' for a process which had not been properly tested.

Mr Justice Swift concluded that the merits of some arguments put forward by the charity were 'thin'.

Lawyers representing the charity indicated that an appeal would be considered.

Legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg said the Court of Appeal was emphatic in backing the way High Court judge Mr Justice Swift had handled the case.

'Lord Justice Singh and the two judges sitting with him concluded he had considered the evidence and had not got anything wrong,' he told Sky News.

'Since he had taken the decision the Court of Appeal was not prepared to interfere.'

Mr Rozenberg said Appeal judges also rejected campaigners' arguments that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda could be returned to their home countries and face persecution.

'That argument didn't seem to cut much ice at the Court of Appeal and for that reason as well the judge turned that down,' he said.

The Home Office has defended the policy and the Prime Minister has said the Government had anticipated 'a lot of teething problems' with the policy, but said the move is necessary to stop illegal people-smuggling rackets on either side of the Channel.

Priti Patel - pictured at the Queen's Jubilee celebrations - is seeking to defend her flagship policy against a raft of legal challenges

Boris takes a swipe at Prince Charles over his Rwanda migrant flight row criticism Boris Johnson took a thinly-veiled swipe at Prince Charles today as he defended plans to send Channel migrants to Rwanda. The PM hit out at 'very active lawyers' who have been trying to block the government from deporting the first batch to the African country. Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Mr Johnson insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers. Without directly criticising the heir to the throne, the premier said pointedly: 'What I don't think we should support is continued activity by criminal gangs.' He added on LBC: 'I do think that it's the job of Government to stop people breaking the law and to support people who are doing the right thing; that's what we are doing.' The Mail revealed over the weekend that Prince Charles has privately condemned the Rwanda asylum plan, saying giving Channel migrants a one-way ticket to Africa was 'appalling'. Clarence House has stressed that the royal is politically neutral. Downing Street later said Boris Johnson has 'nothing but respect and admiration' for the Prince of Wales after he reportedly criticised the Rwanda policy. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales, who's spoken out on a number of issues, not least the environment.' Advertisement

Rory Dunlop QC, for the department, told the court earlier today: 'The flight tomorrow is important.

'This is a policy which is intended to deter dangerous and unnecessary journeys, journeys from safe third countries by people who do not need to make that journey to be safe, they can claim in France or wherever it is.

'This is a policy that if it works, could save lives as well as disrupting the model of traffickers.

'Even if we are just talking about cancelling a flight tomorrow, there is prejudice to the public interest, to the enactment of decisions that may have that deterrent effect.'

The High Court heard the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has multiple concerns about the system in Rwanda, including discriminatory access to asylum, a lack of legal representation and other 'deep-rooted structural problems'.

Today, Mr Dunlop said: 'The Secretary of State has listened and seriously considered the concerns raised by the UNHCR and has deliberately negotiated arrangements to provide assurances in relation to those concerns.'

Lawyers for Asylum Aid, which had taken legal action against Home Secretary Priti Patel, argued on Monday that the procedure was unfair.

Mr Justice Swift ruled against the charity after considering the challenge at a High Court hearing in London.

Ahead of both hearings today, Mr Johnson told broadcasters during a visit to a farm in Cornwall: 'I always said that it will begin with a lot of teething problems and you will have a lot of legal action against it and they will try and delay it - that's inevitable.

'But what we're trying to do is stop the business model of criminal gangs who are preying on people moving them across the Channel in unseaworthy vessels, risking their lives and sometimes costing their lives.'

Asked if the policy will be worth it if it results in just one person being removed, Mr Johnson told LBC: 'I think it's very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people's lives at risk in the Channel is going to be broken  is being broken  by this Government.

'They are selling people a false hope, they are luring them into something extremely risky and criminal.'

Protesters outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London today for the ruling on Rwanda deportation flights

Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's (left) apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Boris Johnson (right in Cornwall today) insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers

Home Office sources said human rights lawyers had tabled a 'deluge' of legal claims on behalf of 31 individuals due to be deported tomorrow

Lawyers acting on behalf of the migrants slated to be sent to Rwanda are said either to have lodged legal appeals or warned they would do so today.

'We are getting claims from every single one,' a source said. 'In many cases they are making multiple claims under various bits of the Human Rights Act and modern slavery legislation. Over the weekend there have been new claims every hour and we expect more right up to when the flight goes.

'We will operate the flight even if there is just one person on it, but there is a real prospect that even that might not be possible.'

Under the terms of the deal with Rwanda, those crossing the Channel illegally risk being given a one-way ticket to Kigali where they will have the chance to claim asylum in the African state.

Former security minister Sir John Hayes said it was 'ethically the right thing to do, as well as being in line with public demands to take back control of our borders'.

'I am sick to death of deranged do-gooders and fat cat lawyers frustrating government policy and the interests of the nation,' said Sir John, who chairs the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs. 'If we end up in a farcical situation where no one is allowed to get on a flight declared lawful by the courts because of spurious human rights challenges then we will have to repeal the Human Rights Act.

'We are already committed to reforming it and we may need to go further. Every major policy this Government tries to pursue is getting caught up by the long tail of Blairism through legislation like the Human Rights Act.'
Pixar's 'Lightyear' has been banned in multiple counties due to the fact the animated film shows a same-sex kiss between two characters - a scene parent company Disney initially took out, but reinstated following complaints from offended staff.

As of Monday, a total of nine countries have barred citizens from seeing the Toy Story spinoff, set to hit theatres later this week.

The ban has been largely confined to the Middle East, affecting markets in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar - but it has also stretched to other Muslim nations such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

The scene in question reportedly shows the female lead in film, voiced by actress Uzo Aduba, kissing her 'female partner' - a display the nations' governments take issue with because it goes against their culture and religion.

Early Monday, the UAE - home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai - was the first to reveal they had banned the picture, which features actor Chris Evans voicing the inspiration for Tim Allen's action figure Buzz Lightyear, made famous in the 'Toy Story' films.

Pixar's 'Lightyear' has been banned in multiple counties due to the fact the animated film shows a same-sex kiss between two characters - a scene parent company Disney initially took out, but reinstated following complaints from offended staff

As of Monday, a total of nine countries have barred citizens from seeing the Toy Story spinoff, set to hit theatres later this week

The country made the announcement through its Media Regulatory Office of the country's Ministry of Youth and Culture, saying the film would not be opening Thursday, due to its violation of rules imposed on the nation's media.

The film 'is not licensed for public screening in all cinemas in the UAE, due to its violation of the country's media content standards', the office wrote.

The media watchdog further asserted that the ban was meant 'to ensure the safety of the circulated content according to the appropriate age classification.'

The UAE, like the other countries listed, is Muslim-led and criminalizes same-sex relationships.

Other Middle Eastern nations were quick to follow the Emirates' example, with Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar all implementing their own bans Monday.

The film was reportedly never submitted to censors in Saudi, due to producers' assumptions that it would not pass because of the country's outspoken disapproval of homosexuality.

The scene in question reportedly shows the female lead in film (at right), voiced by actress Uzo Aduba, kissing her 'female partner' - a display the nations' governments take issue with because it goes against their culture and religion

Other West Asia territories with predominantly Muslim populations, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, also announced that they would not be airing the picture - one of the most anticipated of the year.

Malaysia recently had similar qualms over gay scenes in 'Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore' and Elton John biopic 'Rocket Man.'

The scene in question, which involves Aduba's lesbian space ranger character, Alisha, and her partner starting a family together and greeting each other with a kiss on the lips, had been originally cut from the film by Disney earlier this year.

However, it was reinstated in March, after Pixar staffers complained about the censorship in an open letter obtained by Variety.

The scene in question reportedly shows the female lead in film (at right), voiced by actress Uzo Aduba, kissing her 'female partner' - a display the nations' governments take issue with because it goes against their culture and religion

The letter criticized the companys CEO Bob Chapek on his handling of the issue, accusing him attempting to censor 'gay affection.'

The note further criticized his handling of Floridas controversial 'Dont Say Gay' bill, which saw the company at first take a tentative stance on the bill before succumbing to public pressure and condemning it.

The bill bans the teaching of lessons on sexuality, gender identity and sexual orientation from kindergarten up to third grade.

The mass nixing comes on the heels of a social media campaign with the Arabic hashtag 'Ban Showing Lightyear in the Emirates'.

They described showing a lesbian couple on screen as being against their culture and religion.

Early Monday, t he UAE - home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai - was the first to reveal they had banned the picture, which features actor Chris Evans voicing the inspiration for Tim Allen's action figure Buzz Lightyear, made famous in the 'Toy Story' films

The US State Department warns that Islamic  or Shariah  law in the UAE can include the death penalty for same-sex conduct, while Dubai can levy a 10-year prison sentence and Abu Dhabi allows for up to 14 years.

However, such prosecutions are rarely reported and LGBTQ individuals do live in the skyscraper-studded city-state of Dubai, home to the long-haul carrier Emirates.

The $200million Lightyear is expected to be a major draw for Disney, with analysts estimating it could gross over $100million just in its first weekend.

Studios have allowed censors to cut films in global distribution for content in the past, including in the Middle East market.

The nine countries to ban 'Lightyear' due to same-sex kiss The United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Bahrain

Egypt

Kuwait

Oman

Qatar

Malaysia

Indonesia

Saudi Arabia Advertisement

Recently, Disney has faced protests from activists and its own staff over what they described as CEO Bob Chapek's slow response to the 'Don't Say Gay' bill.

A newspaper in the Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain similarly has speculated the film will not be shown there.

Officials from Malaysia's Film Censorship Board and the Home Affairs Ministry, as well as The Walt Disney Company, could not be immediately reached for comment.

It comes as the company has faced backlash for adjusting their content to avoid angering leaders in other countries, where US-made films rake in billions of dollars a year.

In one instance of self-censoring, Marvel Studios, which was acquired by Disney in 2009, allegedly added a scene to the Chinese version of 2013's Iron Man 3, in which Chinese doctors are shown trying to save Iron Man's life.

A report penned in 2020, however, by free-speech nonprofit PEN America, revealed that Chinese regulators were allowed to visit the movie's set during filming and 'advise' on certain creative choices.

It also notes that another Disney film, superhero flick Dr. Strange, nixed a major Tibetan character over fears that it would jeopardize the film's chances of making money in China.

Aside from removing or overhauling their content, Disney has also been known to manipulate other media, specifically those that advertise their titles overseas.

In 2015 and 2018, respectively, the company amended the movie posters of two of its most popular productions, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Black Panther, to appeal more to a Chinese audience.

The changes implemented, however, sparked outrage among many in the US, as many deemed the logic behind the changes to be entrenched in racial bias.

In the Chinese version of the Star Wars poster, for instance, seemed to deliberately leave out or downplay characters of color featured on the advert.

John Boyega, a black, British actor who had a major role in the film and was prominently featured on the US poster, was inexplicably shrunk on the Chinese version. Meanwhile, other characters played by non-white actors, including Lupita Nyongo, a black woman; and Oscar Isaac, a Latino, were omitted entirely.

Such instances spurred US attorney general William Barr to slam Hollywood's largely liberal film industry last year, saying that execs are 'all too willing to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party.'
A mother bear was caught opening the doors of an unlocked car while looking for snacks with her two bear cubs in a residential area of Lake Tahoe, infringing on 500-pound black bear 'Hank the Tank's' territory.

In surveillance footage exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com, a grizzly bear was recorded by a Ring doorbell of a Lake Tahoe resident in May opening up a black Chevrolet Suburban while her babies stay in the thick snow.

The bear then hops onto the SUV's driver seat and digs its nose, sniffing across the vehicle's dashboard in an attempt to find something yummy.

It remains unknown as to whether the bear was successful in finding food, as the video is cut short beforehand.

The footage was recorded on May 10, just nine days after the brown-coat mammal made its first appearance on camera with her cubs.

UN-BEAR-LIEVABLE: A mother cub searched a black Suburban Chevrolet that was unlocked on May 10 in attempt to find food for her cubs

BEAR-LY VISIBLE: The female grizzly considered the car to be her own as she hoped into the driver's seat

In the family-of-three's first appearance on tape, the mother bear encounters the same car after walking in the area with her younglings.

The grizzly proceeds to stand up and open the door, this time on the passenger side, with her right front paw, just like an average person would.

The adult mammal then sniffs around the front section of the SUV before dropping its again and making sure that her cubs are nearby.

The bear pops her head back into the car and finds what seems to be a black takeout box full of food, before dropping it to the parking space's concrete.

At the end of the footage, the two cubs turn their heads around after the black item caught their attention.

FIRST TIME'S THE CHARM: On May 1, nine days before she made her second and most recent appearance at the home, the mama bear came across the car with two younglings

WHAT'S INSIDE THE CAR: The adult grizzly opened the passenger side's door and looked for food inside the car while her two cubs waited nearby

ABOUT TIME: The grizzly seemed to have found some grub after taking out what seems to be a black bento or takeout box from the SUV

In February, DNA evidence collected by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife found that the 500lb black bear nicknamed Hank the Tank is in fact at least three hefty bears who have damaged more than 30 properties around Lake Tahoe in recent months.

Hank, who weighs 500 pounds, was caught on security footage wandering around Lake Tahoe homes in search of a meal bigger than his appetite. The bear has been spotting in the neighborhood more than 100 times since July 2021 and nothing - not even loud noises, paintballs, or Tasers - can scare him off.

Local residents have described the animal as 'gentle' and said he just eats and leaves without causing any trouble. But wildlife officials say locals have made Hank too bold by leaving out unsecured food scraps for him to eat.

And they have since feared that the bear - who is up to five times bigger than a regular member of his species - could hurt someone if they get too close.

'He doesn't attack [people]. He doesn't growl. He doesn't make rude faces,' a local resident insisted in February, according to TMZ.

However, not everyone is too fond of having a 500lb teddy bear roaming the streets. A spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Peter Tira told The New York Times: 'This is a bear that has lost all fear of people. Its a potentially dangerous situation.'

Hank the Tank, a 500lb bear, has become a local celebrity after terrorizing a community in Lake Tahoe, California since last year

Hank was caught on home security footage in Lake Tahoe wandering around looking for his next meal

Although Hank didn't enter the home, he has done so in the past. The bear has been spotted more than 100 times in the neighborhood since July and has prompted more than 150 calls to law enforcement

Local authorities were reportedly last trying to trap the animal and get him into a sanctuary, but some conservationists are worried Hank will be slaughtered before he can be taken to a safe place, if he does end up having an aggressive encounter with a human.

Wildlife officials have tried to tamper Hank's wave of destruction by setting up traps but have been unable to contain him.

'The trapping activity is a measure of last resort to capture and euthanize a specific and what we call a severely habituated or human-food conditioned black bear,' Tira noted.

There was outrage from residents over the bear hunt and even attempts to scare the bear away from the area by playing noisy music or even spray painting the phrase 'Bear Killer' on the trap, even though Hank can't read.

A pro-bear activist group, The BEAR League, has been working with wildlife officials to try and get Hank to a safe new home.

'The BEAR League reached out to the director of an excellent out-of-state wildlife sanctuary who agreed he has room and would be very willing to give this bear a permanent home,' said executive director Ann Bryant.

'We notified [the California Department of Fish and Wildlife] on Tuesday morning asking that this option be seriously considered rather than killing the bear.'

California wildlife authorities are facing numerous complaints from residents in the resort town of Lake Tahoe as the bear has prompted more than 150 calls to law enforcement and wildlife personnel in the area of late.

'This one individual bear has been linked to property damage at 38 different properties at least,' Tira told KCRA 3 in Sacramento on February 17.

Authorities add that the curvy cub has caused 'extensive property damage and forcefully entered several homes - including occupied homes.'

A home in California that has faced Hank's wrath

A pro-bear activist group, The BEAR League, has been working with wildlife officials to try and get Hank to a safe new home. This trap has been vandalized in an apparent attempt to deter Hank - even though he can't read

Not only is Hank's giant appetite making him come back, but ease of access to improperly secured trash.

Bryant notes that sanctuaries are not a full-time solution and wants Tahoe residents to practice prevention.

'Homeowners and visitors need to do their part to keep the bears out of trouble so they can live wild and free,' she said.

'The various reasons that the bears get into trouble is because people do this and they teach the bears that's a good way to make a living.'

There was outrage from residents over the bear hunt and even attempts to scare the bear away from the area by playing noisy music or even spray painting the phrase 'Bear Killer' on the trap

The bear has caused caused 'extensive property damage and forcefully entered several homes - including 'occupied homes'

For grizzlies, hibernation tends to be more of a response to a shortage of food, decreasing temperatures and snow on the ground.

It can last a few weeks in warmer parts of North America in the Northeast and West Coast, to six months for bears in Alaska.

Experts also said its best not to wake up a hibernating bear. A bear that can sense danger quickly wakes up.

California is home to around 25,000 to 35,000 black bears, according to the USDA Forest Service. Oregon is home to 25,000 to 30,000 and is known as 'Black Bear Country,'

The Parks Department added that bear attacks are 'uncommon' and the animals typically 'avoid human contact,' but reminds the public that it is 'never safe to approach a bear.'
Chelsea Manning is shown in Brussels last month

Chelsea Manning sounded off against former ally Glenn Greenwald and accused Elon Musk of transphobia in a recent interview where she also claimed the US was on the verge of civil war, and talked about rushing to the front lines of the Ukraine war in March.

Manning unloaded to The Daily Beast about how she and Greenwald - who defended her in the past for leaking to Wikileaks, were friends until he stopped pandering to the left.

In recent years, he has aligned himself more closely with right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson.

Chelsea said that was the final straw for her friendship with the investigative journalist and that she 'had to say something'.

She also slammed Elon Musk as a bastion of right-wing politics, and said he 'seemed transphobic' when he tweeted a meme poking fun at Netflix after it was reported that Grimes and Chelsea were in a relationship.

Chelsea would neither confirm or deny that she and Grimes, Elon's ex and the mother of two of his kids, were at any time romantically linked.

'The one thing I will say is: he around that time definitely seemed transphobic, and rumor or speculation aside, thats off-limits. Im going to respond to it. Any transphobia in a transphobic environment is not OK,' she said of the Tesla CEO.

Musk tweeted a meme which read: 'Netflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a black Ukraine guy falls in love with a transgender soldier.'

The meme was savaged by left-wing Twitter users.

Chelsea also claimed in the article that she could no longer be friends with Greenwald because of his politics.

'I saw that trending a certain way and I decided to go in a very different direction.

'I can't tell you how hard that was,' she said, referring to her publicly denouncing Glenn on Twitter.

'One of the problems Ive been having is that one of the things he does is he feeds off the engagement and the fighting. I wanted to go on record: I dont want a beef with Glenn. I dont want to feed his fire. I dont want to engage with that. I said what I said, and I meant what I said. I have many reasons.

'I think that he is a dangerous person. The people hes aligned himself with are very dangerous.

Manning slammed Elon Musk as right-wing and 'transphobic'. She refused to confirm or deny whether or not she had ever dated Musk's ex Grimes

'A lot of people have been trending this wayits not just himbut he was the hardest. He was the hardest,' she said.

Chelsea said it was Greenwald's tweet about ivermectin working as a potential treatment for COVID that sent her over the edge.

'I was just like, its time. I had agonized over it for years and it came from a very personal place, and I emotionally struggled to come forward with this.

'It truly was a very deep, personal moment for me,' she said.

She believes the US is on the brink of a civil war or 'a depression'.

'I do see the warning signsinsurgencies, conflicts. I see red flags all over the U.S. right now. Im like, OK, yall! It can happen here!

Manning said she could no longer trust Glenn Greenwald, despite the pair once being friends, because she now sees him as 'dangerously' right-wing

'Every indicator is that, unless something drastically changeswhich it isntwere gonna have a very dark era here in the U.S., whether thats a civil conflict or something on the scale of a depression.

'Were living in a very gilded age. Im very alarmed by the state of things in the U.S.and the state of things in the world in generalbut the U.S. has very little experience, and very little self-awareness of the precariousness of the situation.

'[People are] literally trying to pretend away an attempted coup,' she said.

Chelsea also told how she rushed to the Ukraine border to help with refugees when war broke out in late February.

'I was at the border and did some volunteer work out there in March, so pretty early on. There were just so many refugees and there werent enough volunteers. One of the biggest problems I saw on the ground in the initial phase was there was a lack of translators, so there were a lot of hand-movements and using Google Translate on the phone.

'The volunteers would fit in with that immediate need of helping refugees pouring in across the border unexpectedly, in very quick fashion.

'I rotated out of there pretty fast, because the intensity of it was you were basically working for five days without sleep. It was non-stop,' she said.

She compared her compulsion to help to that if a firefighter running into burning buildings.

'Its what I do. Its what I know how to do.

'Sometimes it doesnt make sense, and I dont. If I can provide assistance or resources, Im willing to do that,' she said.

Manning spent seven years in custody after sharing military secrets with WikiLeaks.

Before transitioning, she was known as Bradley Manning, a military analyst.

She was released from custody in 2017, when Barack Obama commuted her sentence in his final days in office.

Chelsea was then jailed again in 2019 for refusing to testify against Julian Assange in the government's case against him. She was fined $265,000.
Progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman suggested over the weekend that far-right white nationalists could be emboldened to start another civil war if Republicans win back the majority in Congress after November's midterm elections.

The New York 'Squad' member made a series of predictions on MSNBC about what a Republican-dominated Washington would look like, including multiple trials for President Joe Biden and the dissolution of the select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.

'They would impeach President Biden as quickly as possible and they will continue to find ways to impeach him going forward,' Bowman said on the Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross.

'It would also embolden Republicans and the far right and white nationalists across the country to begin to believe that it is their time to not just take power in the House, but the Senate, the White House and state houses across the country.'

He continued, 'And we've got to understand that this is a group that has been radicalized by the great replacement myth and many other things, and have been pushing for violence and even civil war.'

Bowman warned that the lives of 'black and brown people' are 'in the balance if these people come back into power.'

And the committee that's currently in the process of unveiling the efforts of Trump and his Republican allies to undermine American democracy, Bowman said it would 'cease to exist.'

'The findings would be completely suppressed and will not be admitted into any further investigations while the GOP would be in power,' the left-wing legislator said.

New York Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman said the lives of 'black and brown people' would be 'in the balance' if Republicans won the majority in Congress in November

The 'great replacement' theory was cited by an 18-year-old gunman who killed 10 people in a supermarket in a predominantly black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York last month.

Its racist tenets were echoed by the man who killed 23 people of predominantly Hispanic origin at an El Paso, Texas Walmart in 2019.

Bowman was part of a group of House lawmakers to pass the first-ever resolution condemning great replacement theory last week.

'Gun violence is an existential threat to us all, but it takes deep hate and brainwashing to kill people simply for their race, religion or national origin,' Bowman said at the time.

'We must tackle both gun reform and fight against hate of all kind to truly eradicate these shocking and shattering mass killings. Congress cannot sit by idly and pretend not to see the impact of the Great Replacement Theory in fueling these acts of terrorism.'

His bold warning comes two weeks after a new survey from the Southern Poverty Law Center suggested that more than 50 percent of GOP voters believe the US is headed toward civil war.

Fifty-three percent of right-wing voters said so compared to 39 percent of Democrats.

He also predicted the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot would 'cease to exist' and 'the findings would be completely suppressed'

House Republicans are poised to win enough seats to hold at least a small majority over Democrats in next year's Congress, multiple projections have shown

Nearly seven in 10 Republican respondents said they believed to some degree that 'liberal leaders' were retaining power by replacing 'more conservative white voters' with minorities, a chillingly similar thought process to great replacement theory.

Despite Bowman dramatic prediction, the progressive's fellow Squad members don't all appear interested in presenting a united Democratic front to get across the finish line.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for instance, refused to say whether she would support President Joe Biden if he runs for re-election in 2024 - which aides and allies have said he intends to do.

'You know, if the president chooses to run again in 2024 - I mean, first of all, I'm focused on winning this majority right now, and preserving a majority this year in 2022,' Ocasio-Cortez said.

'So we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, but I think if if the president has a vision - that's something certainly we're all willing to entertain and examine when that when the time comes.'
A former political advisor was beaten and set on fire by a mob of more than 200 villagers in a case of mistaken identity where they falsely accused him of child trafficking in central Mexico.

Daniel Picazo, 31, was visiting his grandfather's home in the Puebla town of Huauchinango when he was corned by about 30 people near the residence of Friday.

Picazo, a lawyer, and a male individual he was with, were accused by some of the villagers of kidnapping a child after false rumors spread across chat rooms on WhatsApp, according to Mexican network TV Azteca.

The angry mob set forced the out of Picazo's pickup truck and attacked both men before his friend managed to escape and hide in a nearby building.

Daniel Picazo, a former advisor for the National Action Party, was killed last Friday by a mob that accused him of child trafficking Puebla, Mexico. Authorities said he was confused by a man who was mentioned on WhatsApp chat rooms. The 31-year-old was ambushed and forced out of his pickup truck before he was beaten and set on fire. No arrests have been made

The mob involved in the lynching of Daniel Picazo stands near a field where the 31-year-old former political advisor was set on fire after he was wrongly accused of trying to kidnap children

The group then dragged Picazo to a local park where the police attempted to rescue him and put him in a patrol car, but they were outmatched by the villagers.

Picazo was attacked once again in the field and then doused with gasoline while he was still alive.

His parents told Radio Formula that he was walking down the street with his hands tied behind his back and burns to his body before he got on his knees before strangers, begging for help.

'Huauchinango City Council strongly disapproves this act and reiterates that criminal behavior must be judged under the procedures of our rule of law,' the Huauchinango City Council said in a statement.

'We will always act in accordance with the law, since justice by one's own hand is not justice, but barbarism.'

Picazo lived in Mexico City, where his parents reside, and announced in July 2021 that he had been accepted for a graduate school program in Madrid.

Daniel Picazo has revealed in July 2021 on his social media networks that he had been accepted into a master's degree program at a university in Madrid

Picazo had worked for the Chamber of Deputies' Justice Commission from 2018 to 2021. Towards the end of 2021, he was hired as advisor of National Action Party Congresswoman Johana Felipe and left her office in March

He worked for the Chamber of Deputies' Justice Commission from 2018 to 2021. Towards the end of 2021, Picazo was hired as advisor of National Action Party Congresswoman Johana Felipe and left her office in March.

'With deep sadness and consternation, I join the sorrow that overwhelms the family of our colleague and friend, Daniel Picazo, a talented, dedicated young man, committed to his country and with big dreams in life,' Felipe tweeted.

No arrests had been made by Puebla authorities as of Monday evening.

Picazo is the second person lynched in the state of Puebla in this year.

A man was beaten and killed by a mob in the municipality of Izucar de Matamoros on May 15 after he was accused of attempting to steal a motorcycle.

In March, authorities prevented three lynchings in which five people were rescued from their attackers.
Protestors have been picturing scuffling with police after campaigners lost their last-ditch legal bid to prevent the first flight bound for Rwanda from departing Britain tomorrow.

Groups including SOAS Detainee Support and Solidarity Knows No Border network are understood to have been behind Monday's emergency protest outside the Home Office in London.

The demonstrations, which began at around 5.30pm and quickly swelled, included the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who was pictured speaking enthusiastically into a megaphone as a large crowd amassed.

The scenes later turned chaotic after objectors were seen grappling with officers on Monday evening. The Met Police say no arrests were made.

Charities had challenged an initial refusal to grant an injunction on Friday, with three Court of Appeal judges today rejecting their appeal following an urgent hearing.

The news means the flight is now highly likely to go ahead tomorrow, although a legal challenge from the individuals due to be on board is still pending and it is unclear how many will actually end up travelling.

Around 100 people were originally notified they were due for deportation under the policy, dropping to 31 on Friday after a wave of litigation with the total now slipping into single digits.

Groups including SOAS Detainee Support and Solidarity Knows No Border network are understood to have been behind Monday's emergency protest outside the Home Office in London

Pictured: Protestors scuffling with police as a man is reportedly detained outside the Home Office on Monday

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was pictured speaking into a megaphone outside the Home Office as he attended a protest against the court's decision

Raza Husain QC argued that the judge who refused to block the flight on Friday, Mr Justice Swift, had made mistakes in the way he handled the evidence presented to him.

But, following an urgent hearing in London today, three senior judges dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in his decision.

Conservative MPs cheered, whilst Labour former minister Chris Bryant ironically shouted: 'Bloody lefty lawyers' in the House of Commons as news spread of the failed bid to block the Home Office's policy.

The decision will not stop individual refugees from appealing their deportation, while a full judicial review of the policy is still due to take place in July.

This afternoon, Lord Justice Singh, sitting with Lady Justice Simler and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, said Mr Justice Swift had 'conducted the balancing exercise properly' and did not err in principle nor in the approach he took.

He added: 'He weighed all the factors and reached a conclusion which he was reasonably entitled to reach on the material before him.

'This court cannot therefore interfere with that conclusion.'

Migrants waved at photographers from behind the metal fences surrounding the centre

Brook House - pictured today - is privately operated by Serco on behalf of the Home Office

Detainees at the Brook House Detention Centre at Gatwick airport today ahead of the Rwanda Asylum flight tomorrow

High Court judge throws out second challenge to Home Office's Rwanda plan A High Court judge today dismissed a separate challenge to the charity Asylum Aid, which fought to temporarily block ministers from enforcing the removal of 'any asylum seeker' to Rwanda. Mr Justice Swift ruled against the charity after considering the challenge at a High Court hearing in London. Lawyers representing Ms Patel had said Asylum Aid's application should be dismissed. Barrister Charlotte Kilroy QC, who led Asylum Aid's legal team, asked Mr Justice Swift to impose an 'urgent interim' injunction, to give time for the charity's claim to be fully argued. She suggested that asylum-seekers affected were 'effectively guinea pigs' for a process which had not been properly tested. Mr Justice Swift concluded that the merits of some arguments put forward by the charity were 'thin'. Lawyers representing the charity indicated that an appeal would be considered. Mr Justice Swift said evidence suggested that 'proper arrangements' were in place for people to get legal advice. The judge said it was 'better and more appropriate' for issues to be dealt with on a 'case-by-case' basis. He said he was aware of three further pending, individual, legal challenges. Advertisement

It is understood that the protest had been planned before the court's decision was even made public on Monday afternoon.

The demonstrations outside the Home Office come just days after immigration officers attempting to arrest a Nigerian suspect were forced to release him after protestors in Peckham blockaded their vehicle and shouted 'let him go'.

Protestors surrounded the Immigration Enforcement van and even appeared to clash with police following the raid at an estate in Peckham, south east London, this afternoon.

It comes as a High Court judge today dismissed a separate challenge to the charity Asylum Aid, which had fought to temporarily block ministers from enforcing the removal of 'any asylum seeker' to Rwanda.

Mr Justice Swift ruled against the charity after considering the challenge at a High Court hearing in London.

Lawyers representing Ms Patel had said Asylum Aid's application should be dismissed.

Barrister Charlotte Kilroy QC, who led Asylum Aid's legal team, asked Mr Justice Swift to impose an 'urgent interim' injunction, to give time for the charity's claim to be fully argued.

She suggested that asylum-seekers affected were 'effectively guinea pigs' for a process which had not been properly tested.

Mr Justice Swift concluded that the merits of some arguments put forward by the charity were 'thin'.

Lawyers representing the charity indicated that an appeal would be considered.

Legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg said the Court of Appeal was emphatic in backing the way High Court judge Mr Justice Swift had handled the case.

'Lord Justice Singh and the two judges sitting with him concluded he had considered the evidence and had not got anything wrong,' he told Sky News.

'Since he had taken the decision the Court of Appeal was not prepared to interfere.'

Mr Rozenberg said Appeal judges also rejected campaigners' arguments that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda could be returned to their home countries and face persecution.

'That argument didn't seem to cut much ice at the Court of Appeal and for that reason as well the judge turned that down,' he said.

The Home Office has defended the policy and the Prime Minister has said the Government had anticipated 'a lot of teething problems' with the policy, but said the move is necessary to stop illegal people-smuggling rackets on either side of the Channel.
A staff member from Trade related IPR Protection Association inspects the authenticity of luxury brand Givenchy's mini bag at Musinsa's warehouse in Yeosu, Gyeonggi Province, on June 10. Courtesy of Musinsa



By Kim Jae-heun



Musinsa will conduct a full-scale inspection on its imported luxury goods in collaboration with the Trade related IPR Protection Association (TIPA) so as to ensure they are dealing only with authentic products, Korea's largest online fashion company said Monday. TIPA is a local non-profit organization that has been established to protect intellectual property. It is unknown whether Musinsa has ever before checked the authenticity of foreign products it imports.



Musinsa is one of Korea's largest fashion platforms.



The decision came after Musinsa's counterfeiting scandal in January when it was caught selling fake apparel of the American contemporary brand Essentials. The company said it imported Essentials' items through one of the company's official retailers, but instead they received imitations.



Musinsa expects TIPA to filter out counterfeit luxury products that are stored at its warehouse in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, utilizing a self-developed mobile application.



The online fashion firm signed a memorandum of understanding with TIPA in April to become the association's special member, which grants Musinsa access to receive product verification information for international brands including the ability to inspect intellectual property infringement.



It is both Musinsa and the TIPA's ultimate goal to prevent fake luxury products from continuing to be sold in the local market by using the real-time monitoring system.



The very first targets of its inspection with TIPA will include global luxury brands like Prada, Miu Miu, Givenchy and Tods.



Only products that have passed the verification process will be sold at Musinsa's luxury boutique mall. The company said it will further cooperate with the Korea Appraisal Institute of Luxury Goods to strengthen the inspection procedure of imitation products, if necessary.



"We will cooperate with TIPA to conduct more thorough inspections of luxury goods purchased overseas for customers who trust and use Musinsa. We will also take the lead in protecting fashion brands' intellectual property rights with a sense of responsibility and do our best to increase credibility so that our customers can feel safe and satisfied with our products," a Musinsa official said.


National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Luxembourg on Monday for four and a half hours, and raised concerns about what an official said was Beijing's 'aggressive actions' towards Taiwan.

The meeting came amid worsening relations between the world's two biggest economies.

At the weekend, China's defense minister said the country was expanding its nuclear arsenal and would fight to prevent Taiwanese independence.

A senior Biden administration official characterized the meeting as 'candid, substantive, and productive.'

But the official said Sullivan warned China about its stance on Taiwan.

'The national security adviser reiterated our long standing one China policy and our principles, positions and concerns about Beijing's ... aggressive actions across the Taiwan Strait,' they said.

The official also said that Sullivan also stressed the need for open communications between the two nuclear powers, and raised concerns that Beijing vetoed a push to impose more United Nations sanctions on North Korea.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Luxembourg on Monday for four and a half hours, and raised concerns about what an official said was Beijing's 'aggressive actions' towards Taiwan.

Tensions have grown during the past year as China stepped up its rhetoric on Taiwan and increased military flights around the autonomous island

The meeting came soon after Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said China would fight to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence

'We will fight at all cost and we will fight to the very end. This is the only choice for China,' he told the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore.

Wei also defended his country's expanding nuclear arsenal.

'China is developing nuclear capabilities at a moderate and appropriate level,' he said said.

'That means being able to protect our nations security so that we can avoid the catastrophe of a war, especially the catastrophe of a nuclear war.'

Wei also urged Washington to 'stop smearing and containing China... stop interfering in China's internal affairs and stop harming China's interests'.

Tensions between Washington and Beijing have grown this year.

In May, President Joe Biden said the U.S. would respond militarily if China invaded the island of Taiwan. It was the third time he took that position, even though aides had tried to walk it back.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, second from right, joined by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, right, speaks during the opening session of US-China talks with Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi, and China's State Councilor Wang Yi, at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, Thursday, March 18, 2021

A corvette is deployed during a Readiness Enhancement Drill, amid escalating Taiwan-China tensions, in Taiwan, January 2022

U.S. administrations have long adopted a policy of 'strategic ambiguity,' refusing to say just how far they would go in supporting Taiwan, while making clear they would help the island defend itself.

China has stepped up the number of military flights patrolling close to Taiwan's airspace.

Beijing claims the autonomous island as its own and has said it would take it by force if necessary.

At the weekend, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described China's stance as 'provocative' and 'destabilizing.'

He said there had been an 'alarming' increase in the number of unsafe and unprofessional encounters between Chinese planes and vessels with those of other countries.

A Chinese fighter aircraft dangerously intercepted an Australian military surveillance plane in the South China Sea region in May and Canada's military has accused Chinese warplanes of harassing its patrol aircraft as they monitor North Korea sanction evasions.

Chinese ally North Korea has mounted a flurry of missile tests in defiance of sanctions in 2022

In the meeting on Monday, Sullivan also discussed North Korea with his counterpart.

Washington has warned that North Korea's first nuclear test since 2017 could come at any moment.

Last month China vetoed a U.S.-led push at the United Nations for new sanctions on Pyongyang.

'Jake raised concerns, in particular, about the veto, which comes following a significant series of ballistic missile launches in violation of previous U.N. Security Council resolutions and the preparations ... for potential nuclear tests," the official said.

"Each side laid out their positions and the way we see the situation, and certainly Jake made very clear that we believe this is an area where the United States and China should be able to work together.'
Luxury Manhattan magazine publisher Jason Binn has been arrested in New York City for allegedly molesting a girl under 17.

The founder and CEO of the glitzy magazine DuJour was charged with forcible touching intimate parts, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse in the third degree.

According to the criminal complaint obtained by DailyMail.com, Binn is accused of touching the minor 'for the purpose of [self-gratification]' and without her consent.

The victim, a sixteen-year-old girl, alleged that Binn 'placed his hand over her clothing and squeezed her buttocks,' the document stated.

Binn, 54, is a father of two girls and one boy. He and his wife Haley separated in 2016, and sold their TriBeCa apartment for $10.75 million in 2017.

A source close to the case told DailyMail.com that Binn 'maintains that he is innocent and will continue to fight these charges.'

Jason Binn, 47, leaving the Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday. He was arrested after allegedly molesting a girl under 17

Binn leaving the the Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday afternoon. He was charged with forcible touching intimate parts and endangering a minor under 17

Binn at the Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday afternoon. His quarterly publication DuJour Magazine caters to a readership of clients who have a minimum net worth of $5million

Binn has owned properties in Tribeca, Aspen, Miami and Southampton where he is a fixture of the elite Hamptons cocktail party and celebrity scene

Binn has made luxury not only his lifestyle but his business. As founder and chairman of Niche Media, he has an estimated net worth of $50million and is the man behind an array of 'boutique' magazines including Hamptons and Gotham.

Binn had previously founded and run Niche Media, the former publisher of high-end magazines such as Gotham, Los Angeles Confidential, Aspen Peak, Ocean Drive, and Hamptons, to name just a few.

He has owned properties in Tribeca, Aspen, Miami and Southampton where he is a fixture of the elite Hamptons cocktail party and celebrity scene.

He has been a guest at Kris Jenner's birthday parties, posing for pictures with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. He has rubbed shoulders with Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, and he has partied with Lenny Kravitz and Lionel Ritchie in Miami's Art Basel.

Jason Binn, 47, (left) and his wife Haley in 2011, before the pair separated in 2016. He is the founder of and CEO of the high-profile magazine DuJour

Jason Binn (left) with Kim Kardashian and Greta Van Susteren at a Niche Media party in 2010

Jason Binn with Kanye West at a DuJour magazine event in Los Angeles in 2017

On more low-key evenings in the Hamptons, the 54-year-old spends time with Christie Brinkley and has painted himself a homebody, in bed by 10pm.

Just three days ago the prolific Instagram poster posted a picture of himself with a smiling Katie Holmes, captioning it, 'all dressed up and places to go. Great shoot  amazing day.'

The day before he was posting pictures of himself with renowned restaurateur Giuseppe Cipriani and boasting of their 40-year friendship after meeting through their respective parents.

Ironically for the man who now finds himself allegedly on the wrong side of the law, last week he posted his praise for New York's law enforcement and a video collaboration between civil rights activist Al Sharpton and New York's long serving police commissioner, Ray Kelly.

In 2005 he was profiled in Forbes Magazine's, 'Forbes 400,'and was named Ernst and Young's 'Entrepreneur of the Year'

In 2010 Binn was appointed chairman of Niche the same year that he was appointed Chief Advisor to online luxury shopping company, Gilt

Jason Binn, the award winning 'publishing legend,' in the Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday

Today billed as a 'publishing legend' he began his publishing career at advertising agency D'Arcy Masius Benton and Bowles at the age 23 having graduated early and magnum cum laude from Boston University's College of Communications.

In 1992 he moved to Miami and founded Ocean Drive Magazine. Six years later in 1998 he founded Niche and a slew of other haute society titles followed including Hamptons Magazine, Capitol File, Gotham, Los Angeles Confidential, Aspen Peak and Michigan Avenue.

In 2005 he was profiled in Forbes Magazine's, 'Forbes 400,' and was named Ernst and Young's 'Entrepreneur of the Year.'

Two years later he was the only media member inducted into the American Advertising Federation's 'Advertising Hall of Achievement' and in 2008 he was listed in Crain's '40 Under 40' list of successful entrepreneurs.

In 2010 he was appointed chairman of Niche the same year that he was appointed Chief Advisor to online luxury shopping company, Gilt.

Jason Binn (second from right) pictured with Donald Trump, and rock star Steven Tyler in 2008

Jason Binn and Ivanka Trump together at the Couture Jewelry Show in Las Vegas in 2014

Jason Binn and Beyonce Knowles at the Gotham Magazine annual gala in New York City, 2008

His quarterly publication DuJour Magazine unashamedly caters to a readership of clients who have a minimum net worth of $5million.

In order to receive a copy of the magazine, one had to meet five of seven qualifications including an average net worth of $5 million and liquid assets of more than $1 million, average home values above $1.5 million, average income of more than $250,000, annual offline luxury purchases of more than $100,000 or annual online purchases and philanthropic donations respectively totaling more than $10,000.

Profiled by Forbes last August the magazine praised Binn for his ability to network singling out his focus on 'connections' as lying at the heart of his success that saw his company grow from just five employees in 1992 to over 300.

But while his professional fortunes sky rocketed Binn's private life foundered.

Jason Binn and Paris Hilton pictured getting close at a Niche Media event in Aspen, Colorado, in 2010

Jason Binn attending Authors Night at the East Hampton Library as a guest of Alex Baldwin in 2011

Jason Binn and DJ Khaled attending a party for the release of the album Family Ties by Fat Joe in Miami, 2019

In the first edition of DuJour he wrote, 'Without the love and support of my wife Haley, and my children, what you are about to see on these pages would not be possible. They are my partners for life.'

But it didn't work out that way and the couple quietly split in 2016 with neither commenting on the reasons. Binn had married Haley Liebermann, 46, who formerly worked in real estate, in December 2003 at a ceremony in Fontainebleau, Miami. Her parents Diane and Alan Lieberman own the South Beach Group Hotels in Miami.
Residents across Australia's east coast are being urged to conserve power with the nation's energy crisis set to worsen with more blackouts expected as winter temperatures plummet.

The Australian Energy Market Operator was forced to intervene to cover shortages on Monday and demand generators in Queensland and NSW to continue running to meet demand, despite not being profitable.

NSW and Queensland have been warned of possible power outrages on Tuesday morning and later in the evening after pockets of Sydney's northern beaches briefly plunged into darkness on Monday night.

There are fears the energy crisis could spread nationwide ,with the AEOM watching whether automatic energy price caps triggered late Monday in Victoria and South Australia will impact supply.

AEOM expects an electricity reserve shortfall in Queensland from 6.30am to 7.30am on Tuesday and later in the day between 5pm and 9pm.

In NSW, a shortfall is expected on Tuesday night between 5.30pm and 8.30pm.

Millions residents in NSW and Queensland have been warned of possible power outrages on Tuesday night

NSW Treasurer and energy minister Matt Kean is closely monitoring the power crisis.

'Given the current challenges in the energy system, I have been receiving regular briefings from AEMO,' he tweeted late Monday night

'I've been informed the situation is under control, with AEMO directing generators to ensure there is enough supply online when it's needed.'

Powerlink Queensland thanked everyone for being thoughtful with their energy consumption during peak periods on Monday night to avoid outages.

Queensland are urged to do the same on Tuesday.

'Today's forecast continues to be tight power system conditions before 8am and after 5pm this evening so we continue to request for household and workplace energy consumption to be managed across Queensland during these peak times if it is safe to do so,' Powerlink Queensland tweeted Tuesday morning.

'Queenslanders can manage their electricity usage by considering the number of rooms being heated by air-conditioners. Turning off computers, TVs and other household appliances in standby mode. Or even turning off your pool pumps and second fridges.'

Queensland gas exporters are expected to face more pressure over the domestic market supply after a new report revealed more gas flowed north along pipelines to Queensland than south of the border.

'There was a net flow of gas from the southern states to Queensland from September 2021. This supplied not only LNG but also Queensland power generation,' EnergyQuest said in its June report.

'Flows to Queensland started to fall from the end of April 2022 and in the first week of June the flow reversed, probably because of intervention by AEMO invoking the gas supply guarantee.'

The shortage of electricity comes amid soaring demand for gas and electricity and additional coal-fired power outages in Queensland. Pictured is a coal-fired station

NSW Treasurer and energy minister Matt Kean is closely monitoring the situation after parts of Sydney's northern beaches were plunged into darkness on Monday night

A spokesman for Energy Minister Chris Bowen said national electricity market faces a challenging winter.

'AEMO has been active in requiring generators to dispatch more power, which appears to have avoided the need for major load shedding in the short term,' the spokesman told The Australian.

'This is a challenging situation for the national electricity market and will need to continue to be actively managed over coming days.'

In Sydney, the northern beaches suburbs pf Beacon Hill, Frenchs Forest, Narraweena, Cromer and Dee Why were affected by power outages on Monday night.

The AEMO issued an alert warning of possible blackouts for the south-east of Queensland and the east coast between 5.30pm and 8pm on Monday, and again on Tuesday morning.

The blackout comes after millions of NSW and Queensland residents were told to conserve power as electricity generators dial back their output in response to a cap on skyrocketing wholesale prices.

About 11pm on Monday night, Ausgrid tweeted that power had been restored to residents in Dee Why, Beacon Hill, Cromer and surrounding suburbs.

Beryl, 93, from Narraweena lost power

'I'm terrified of the thought of not having any heat,' she told 2GB's Ben Fordham the next morning.

'I just don't know what I would do because I feel the cold terribly.'

The shortage of electricity comes amid soaring demand for gas and electricity and additional coal-fired power outages in Queensland, which were unplanned

Suburbs in Sydney's north and the northern beaches have been plunged into darkness after being hit with power outages (pictured, an electricity transmission tower in Brisbane)

Electricity distributor Ausgrid said residents in Beacon Hill, Frenchs Forest, Narraweena, Cromer and Dee Why would be affected on Monday night (pictured, residents in Bondi)

Residents have been advised to turn down heaters and switch off household appliances to conserve power.

The shortage of electricity comes amid soaring demand for gas and electricity and additional coal-fired power outages in Queensland, which were unplanned.

Blackouts appeared to have been averted in the Sunshine State according to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

In a statement issued at 5.20pm on Monday, AEMO said it had used its powers to provide sufficient generation to make up for the lack of 'reserve three shortfall'.

Queenslanders had been warned of possible blackouts after the AEMO energy price cap saw generators decrease their supply of energy to the market.

The blackouts were expected to plunge east coast residents into darkness during the 'evening peak' from 5:30pm to 8pm on Monday, and then again on Tuesday morning (stock image)

Residents have been urged to turn down heaters and switch off household appliances to conserve power amid the threat of blackouts (pictured, a power station in Muswellbrook, NSW)

WHY ARE POWER PRICES SOARING? 1. Coal-fired generators failing: More than 25 per cent have been offline for much of the year 2. Domestic gas shortages: Sources especially offshore in Victoria are running low and new development has been hindered 3. Ukraine-Russia war: European nations are moving away from Russian gas to punish Vladimir Putin, pushing up global prices 4. Cold snap: The cold snap in the east has led to increased demand Source: Tony Wood, Grattan Institute Advertisement

Soaring prices of energy on Sunday triggered the energy price cap after seven consecutive days of surging wholesale prices.

The cap limited the wholesale price to $300 a megawatt hour, with generators along the east coast asked by AEMO to continue running despite being unable to make a profit at these levels.

The 'high price threshold' threshold of $1.359million over a week, or an average of $674.16/MWh, was reached just before 7pm on Sunday night.

'As a consequence, available offers from generators reduced, contributing to a forecast supply shortfall,' the AEMO said in a statement.

AEMO said it would continue to monitor reserve conditions in Queensland and provide customers with updates should conditions change.

In the meantime, households have been asked to be 'thoughtful' with their electricity use as the supply remained tight over the next few days.

The shortage comes as temperatures drop and households ramp-up their energy use alongside routine and emergency maintenance on east coast generators.

The blackouts were expected to plunge residents into darkness during the 'evening peak' from 5:30pm to 8pm on Monday, and then again on Tuesday morning.

AEMO said the price caps would be maintained until at least Tuesday.

Residents were earlier on Monday urged to turn down heaters and switch off household appliances to conserve power

In a statement, AEMO said soaring prices of energy on Sunday triggered an energy price cap of $300 a megawatt hour (pictured, an Origin Energy bill in Brisbane)

Powerlink Queensland Chief Executive Paul Simshauser earlier on Monday urged people to cut back on electric use wherever they can.

'There is an unusual combination of unexpected generator outages plus cool winter temperatures and high demand for electricity,' he said.

The new federal Labor government has demanded the nation's coal power stations be brought back into service as soon as possible.

At least a quarter of Australia's coal-fired electricity production is currently offline while the east coast shivers through a freezing winter amid soaring price rises.

The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) said earlier this month the state's wholesale prices, which are the highest in the nation, are unlikely to fall before 2024.
The chances of the first removal flight to Rwanda going ahead today are 'very, very slim', ministers claimed just hours after the government won a key court battle.

Only seven asylum seekers are expected to board the plane, campaigners said.

It was originally thought 130 people would be sent on the first flight to the central African country for their asylum claims to be processed.

The Home Office revealed last week the figure would be 31 - with the total shrinking.

A government source told The Times: 'All the lawyers who have been fighting in the courts will now turn their collective might elsewhere and direct all their resources at the remaining individuals due to be on board.

'They'll be exploiting every single loophole possible and using every trick in the book to get those last people removed from the flight.

'[The chances of it going ahead as planned] are very, very slim.'

Judges last night refused to block the inaugural flight scheduled for today to the offshore processing centre.

Protestors gathered outside Downing Street to halt the first flight - and might get their wish

Priti Patel's Rwanda plan got a boost last night after judges refused to block today's flight

Tory MPs cheered in the Commons as the Court of Appeal backed a ruling in the Home Secretary's favour last week, giving the policy the green light.

A separate High Court bid to block the flight also failed yesterday when the charity Asylum Aid was denied an injunction.

The Home Secretary has now won three victories in cases brought against the Government by Left-wing groups.

But there is still only a slim chance that any migrants, including those who crossed the Channel in small boats, will be on today's flight to Rwanda.

Just seven names remained of the 130 on the original passenger list last night after lawyers submitted a series of challenges.

Further individual appeals by these seven, who include Iranians, Iraqis and Albanians, were expected in the hours before the flight.

At least six further cases are due to be heard at the High Court today under the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and other legal measures.

But the Court of Appeal's decision means Miss Patel's scheme to hand Channel migrants and other 'irregular arrivals' a one-way ticket to the east African nation has avoided falling at the first hurdle.

The Home Secretary insists the policy is necessary to avoid further drownings in the Channel.

'People will see this as a good result for the Home Office, but now the policy is not facing a blanket ban, well-resourced lawyers will try to get their clients pulled off the flight individually,' a government source said.

The Home Secretary has now won three victories in cases brought against the Government by Left-wing groups . Pictured: Human rights protesters demonstrate outside the Home Office in London

The leadership of the Church of England yesterday condemned the Rwanda operation as an 'immoral policy that shames Britain'

'They will try every tactic and exploit every loophole, probably waiting until the very last minute.'

The leadership of the Church of England yesterday condemned the Rwanda operation as an 'immoral policy that shames Britain'.

In a letter to The Times, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and 24 other bishops said: 'Whether or not the first deportation flight leaves Britain today for Rwanda, this policy should shame us as a nation.'

Lord Justice Singh, chairing a panel of three judges in the Court of Appeal yesterday, declined to 'interfere with the conclusions' made by a High Court judge on Friday.

He said Mr Justice Swift 'did not err in principle' when he refused to grant an interim injunction that would have stopped the flight taking off.

Lord Justice Singh was a leading human rights barrister and founded Matrix Chambers with Cherie Blair.

The appeal was brought by the Public and Commercial Services union, which represents a majority of UK Border Force staff, and charities Care 4 Calais and Detention Action.

The Court of Appeal's decision means Miss Patel's scheme to hand Channel migrants and other 'irregular arrivals' a one-way ticket to the east African nation has avoided falling at the first hurdle. Pictured: Border Force and the military escort migrant ashore at Dover Docks

They were refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, although the applicants may lodge a further bid directly.

Raza Husain QC, for the applicants, told the court the Rwanda policy featured 'a serious interference with basic dignity' and the High Court had wrongly assessed the strength of their claim.

He added that if migrants were to be sent to Rwanda and a judicial review  due in July  rules the policy unlawful the Home Office would be required to return them to the UK.

Migrants could then have 'significant claims' for damages, the QC suggested.

But Rory Dunlop QC, for the Home Office, said: 'The flight tomorrow is important. This is a policy which is intended to deter dangerous and unnecessary journeys, journeys from safe third countries by people who do not need to make that journey to be safe, they can claim in France or wherever it is.

'This is a policy that  if it works  could save lives as well as disrupt the model of traffickers.'

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has implicitly rejected Prince Charles's reported criticisms of the Rwanda plan.

Mr Johnson declined to comment directly on whether the prince was wrong to call it 'appalling', but added: 'This is about making sure that we break the business model of criminal gangs who are not only risking people's lives but undermining public confidence in legal migration.'

Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the scheme was 'shameful' and 'completely unworkable, deeply unethical and extortionately expensive'.

'This policy shames Britain': Entire Church of England leadership calls Government's plan to send failed asylum seekers to Rwanda 'immoral' as first flight is set to go ahead tomorrow

By Jacob Thorburn for MailOnline

Senior leaders at the Church of England have ripped into the Home Office's 'immoral' plan to deport migrants to Rwanda.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are among those who have lent their pens to a strongly worded letter that denounced the policy as one that 'shames Britain'.

Signed by the Most Rev Justin Welby and the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, the senior leaders, alongside 23 bishops that sit in the House of Lords, criticised the plan for lacking morality.

Writing to the Times, the co-signed letter states: 'Whether or not the first deportation flight leaves Britain today for Rwanda, this policy should shame us as a nation.

'The shame is our own, because our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries.'

It comes just hours after three Court of Appeal judges struck down lawyers, charities and campaigners' latest bid to thwart the first Kigali-bound flight leaving on Tuesday.

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), which represents more than 80 per cent of Border Force staff, and charities Care4Calais and Detention Action challenged refusal to grant an injunction on Friday, which meant the first flight to the east African country could go ahead on Tuesday.

But, following an urgent hearing in London on Monday, three senior judges dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in the decision of Mr Justice Swift.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are among those who have lent their pens to a strongly worded letter that denounced Boris Johnson's policy as one that 'shames Britain'

Rev Justin Welby previously blasted the government's Rwanda plan for asylum seekers as the 'opposite of the nature of God'

The letter is also signed by the bishops of London, Durham, Exeter, Birmingham and Manchester.

The Home Office's proposals to fly migrants who entered the UK illegally to Rwanda have split opinion and drawn the ire of several high profile figures.

Rev Welby had previously used his Easter sermon to describe 'serious ethical questions' around the plan to send asylum seekers to the East African nation.

The Archbishop told his Canterbury congregation that the UK has a duty as a 'Christian country' to not 'sub-contract our responsibilities' after anyone who arrived in Britain illegally since January 1 could be relocated to Rwanda under a new deal.

He later said it would have been 'cowardly' not to have spoken out against the plan. Cabinet ministers hit back at Mr Welby after his outspoken intervention in April.

MPs later called Mr Welby's stinging intervention over the government's plan to send thousands of migrants with a one-way ticket to Rwanda 'clumsy'.

Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, a committed Catholic, said the government is not 'abandoning' migrants but taking on a 'very difficult responsibility' with the 'intention' of doing good' which he said is important within Christianity.

Other Tory MPs John Redwood, Mike Wood and Tom Hunt also blasted Mr Welby's comments with Mr Hunt saying the Archbishop should be wary of 'clumsily intervening' into political issues.

Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales's (left) apparent view that the proposals are 'appalling', Boris Johnson (right in Cornwall today) insisted they were essential to 'break the business model' of people-smugglers

There are fears ministers could be banned from putting Channel migrants on the first flight to Rwanda

The Archbishop's comments were later echoed by Prince Charles, after The Mail revealed he had privately condemned the Rwanda asylum plan, saying giving Channel migrants a one-way ticket to Africa was 'appalling'.

Downing Street tried to cool the tensions later, saying Mr Johnson has 'nothing but respect and admiration' for the Prince.

The PM's official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister has nothing but respect and admiration for the Prince of Wales, who's spoken out on a number of issues, not least the environment.'

The tetchy exchanges with Mr Johnson came amid fears ministers could be blocked from putting Channel migrants on the first flight to Rwanda.

Mr Johnson, according to sources who attended a private meeting between the Prime Minister and Tory MPs after Easter, claimed the senior clergyman had 'misconstrued the policy'.

Dozens of protestors are pictured scuffling with Met Police officers outside the Home Office during the 'Stop Rwanda flights' protest on Monday evening

Migrants travelling to the UK on small boats will be put on jets and sent to Rwanda while their applications are processed. Pictured: A map detailing the plan proposed by the Prime Minister

Mr Johnson told LBC the Government had expected that 'very active lawyers' would try to challenge the Rwanda policy.

'We have always said that we knew that this policy would attract attacks from those who want to have a completely open-doors approach to immigration, who want people to be able to come across the Channel without let or hindrance,' he said.

'There are very active lawyers in this field. I have the utmost respect for the legal profession but it is also important we stop criminal gangs.'

Asked if the policy will be worth it if it results in just one person being removed, Mr Johnson said: 'I think it's very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people's lives at risk in the Channel is going to be broken  is being broken  by this Government.

A Government spokesperson said: 'Our world-leading Partnership with Rwanda will see those making dangerous, unnecessary and illegal journeys to the UK relocated there to have their claims considered and rebuild their lives.

'There is no one single solution to the global migration crisis, but doing nothing is not an option and this partnership will help break the business model of criminal gangs and prevent loss of life.

'Rwanda is a fundamentally safe and secure country with a track record of supporting asylum seekers and we are confident the agreement is fully compliant with all national and international law.'

It comes just months after the former archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan William, was locked in a war of words with the Government over its 120m scheme to halt a surge in Channel crossings.

He joined his successor and the incumbent Archbishop Justin Welby, and Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell in questioning the morality of the plan, labelling it 'sinful'.
What does mob rule on the streets of Britain look like? Anyone who looked out of their window in the vicinity of Evan Cook Close in Peckham, South-East London, on Saturday afternoon will already know the answer.

'I never expected to see anything like this,' is how one resident summed up the feelings of many to describe the scene which unfolded.

But you can judge for yourself by typing the words 'Evan Cook Close' into Google. Film footage, shared on social media, shows outnumbered police coming under siege from hundreds of screaming protesters.

Ironically, the clips, along with a barrage of posts from Left-wing groups, councillors and activists, were supposed to paint the Metropolitan Police in the worst possible light, using heavy-handed tactics against peaceful, law-abiding demonstrators.

'Police Brutality' was the caption accompanying one short film.

It shows the exact opposite: officers being violently shoved and abused by the crowd and, in the midst of the chaos, attempting to remove individuals who had fallen to the ground in the melee for their own safety.

Police scuffle with protestors who blocked an immigration van from transporting a man from a residential area in Peckham on June 11,

After several hours the man who was detained in a van after an immigration raid was released (pictured) on bail

The Nigerian man known as 'James' (pictured) is understood to have overstayed his visa

Cops were pictured protecting the van as protesters conducted a sit-in to block the move

So what was the so-called injustice that lay behind the mayhem?

Just moments earlier, Home Office officials had arrived to arrest a suspected illegal immigrant, a Nigerian from Lagos, who is understood to have overstayed his visa.

But protesters surrounded the van that was taking him to a removal centre for deportation. Hence the reason for police reinforcements.

'Let him go, let him go,' they chanted. Four hours later  shortly before 5.30pm  that is exactly what happened. The suspect was released on bail instead of being taken to an immigration removal centre.

'People power wins,' tweeted a group called Anti-Raids Network. People power  or anarchy in the UK?

Either way, on Saturday afternoon a group of Leftist protesters  whose views, by definition, are not shared by the vast majority of the electorate  succeeded in subverting the democratic process.

Events in Peckham may not have made the front pages, such are the troubled times we live in, but the outcome must have left many wondering who is in charge of the country at the moment.

It comes amid a 'deluge of legal claims', to quote a Home Office source, tabled by human rights lawyers to prevent Channel migrants being put on the first flight to Rwanda today.

Around 200 people blocked the police van from leaving Evan Cook Close in Peckham

Anti-immigration raid literature has been distributed around Peckham, teaching readers how to stifle police

The suspected illegal immigrant at the centre of the Peckham protest is believed to live alone. Neighbours describe him as a 'very friendly, very respectful man in his late 30s'. We know little more about him, except he was called 'James' and was active in a local church.

But let us agree he was a decent and popular member of the community. Nevertheless, the number of foreign nationals overstaying their visas in Britain, which is widely seen as a major problem, has nearly doubled in five years.

According to Migration Watch, 49,420 people had overstayed their visas in 2016-2017. By 2019/20, the total had risen to 91,863, says a report by the think-tank.

On top of this, almost 10,000 migrants have already crossed the English Channel this year, more than double the 4,200 people who reached the UK by the same stage in 2021.

Almost everyone, apart from the kind of groups represented in Peckham at the weekend, believes an effective immigration policy is essential.

An important element, as harsh as it may sometimes seem, is removing 'overstayers'. This is precisely what immigration officials, then the police, were prevented from doing in Evan Cook Close.

McAsh's original tweet was widely shared, with hundreds joining the improved gathering

Reginald Popoola tweeted early in the raid urging campaigners to 'Block the van'

TUC officer and ex-NUS vice president Asquith described in real time the police response

They were ambushed by political agitators and a number of local politicians, who used the power of social media to summon an estimated 200 people  rent-a-mob might be a better description  to the estate after officials arrived to arrest 'James'. Two Labour Southwark councillors, James McAsh and Reginald Popoola, played key roles in the subsequent drama.

At 3.05pm, McAsh  a primary school teacher and self-styled Marxist  urged his 15,000 followers on Twitter to 'get down ASAP  Please RT [retweet] or pass on the message'.

Popoola, who, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked in Brent Council's legal team, issued his own rallying cry. 'Police immigration raid in our ward NOW.

'I'm here with over 100 others,' his post read. 'Block the van from taking one of our neighbours  come and join us now on Evan Close SE15!'

Veteran Corbynista Shelly Asquith, a staffer with the Trades Union Congress, made a similar appeal. 'Peckham people GET DOWN,' she tweeted. 'Don't let them drag away our neighbours!!!'

In fact, James's actual neighbours weren't involved in the ugly scenes. Residents we spoke to said they had no idea about the protest until trouble erupted.

This is how a perfectly legitimate intervention by immigration officials turned into a near riot. Among the material being shared by activists at the scene was a flyer, from the aforementioned Anti-Raids Network, recommending people 'challenge' immigration officers going about their business. 'Don't walk by!' it urges them.

Suspects themselves are instructed: 'You do not have to answer any questions. You do not have to let them in  try to leave if you are not under arrest.' This advice was accompanied by an image of a man fleeing on foot.

The Anti-Raids Network describes itself on its website as a 'loose network of groups and individuals working to build resistance to immigration raids [arresting people who are suspected of breaking the law] since 2012'. Originally set up by London-based groups including No Borders and Stop Deportation, the organisation is opposed to 'all immigration controls'.

From 1pm on Saturday, local branches of the Anti-Raids Network in Lewisham, Southwark and Lambeth were tweeting furiously to mobilise activists.

At 5.18pm the group gloated: 'After four hours of resistance and a crowd of 200 people they're letting our neighbour go!' Last night, the group was staging a 'community building event' at a local cafe featuring 'anti-raids training, communal dinner and live music'.

The event was part of a 'week of action' of protests, picnics and workshops organised nationally this week by another campaign group, Solidarity Knows No Borders.

Police officers pushed back as protesters surrounded the van containing the Nigerian man

The Peckham protest mirrors a demonstration in Glasgow last year, when police were forced to release two men detained by immigration officers after a stand-off between hundreds of locals who surrounded their van in a residential street.

What such groups  and the councillors who encouraged people to descend on Evan Cook Close  seek to do is paint everyone who does not agree with their extreme views as bigots and racists.

This is particularly true of the collection of Left-wing legal firms who have challenged the government's Rwanda policy. It is all part of the same wider narrative.

Those earmarked for deportation, for example, are always portrayed as victims: victims of modern slavery, the defence now being used by some who claim they have been exploited or trafficked by criminal gangs; victims of an authoritarian state which is breaking up families by kicking fathers out of the country; or victims of a brutal policy that bears comparison with the Windrush scandal.

These were some of the 'reasons' which have been used to stop criminals being deported to Jamaica last year.

In 2018, the deportation of a Somali man was dramatically halted after a mutiny by passengers on a flight that was due to take off from Heathrow who intervened to help him. In a video of the incident, the passengers who took pity on the man screamed: 'Take him off the plane.' The four-strong Home Office team were forced to abandon the deportation and remove him from the aircraft.

A time-consuming review of what went wrong is believed to have contributed to an eight-month delay before officials attempted a fresh deportation.

It later emerged that the Somalian in question had been convicted, with three other men, of rape and jailed for nine years for the sickening gang attack on a 16-year-old girl in 2007. It was later reported that he had cost taxpayers 300,000 in legal and jail costs.

The need to deal with this problem is highlighted by another set of statistics from Migration Watch. In 2019/20, it claimed another 25,000 people from 55 countries whose citizens did not need a visa to enter the country could also be remaining here unlawfully, taking the total to around 334,000.

'Preventing immigration enforcement teams from doing their job is unacceptable,' a Home Office spokeswoman said. 'Blocking or obstructing them will not deter them from undertaking the duties that the public rightly expect of them to carry out.'

Is there anyone, apart from the protesters who took to the streets in Peckham, who would disagree with this?

Additional reporting: Josh White and Tim Stewart and Lewis Pennock.
It's the photo they tried to hide, but DailyMail.com has obtained the mug shot of shame-faced Paul Pelosi after he was arrested on DUI charges last month.

Pelosi, 82, was collared by California Highway Patrol officers in Oakville, California, on May 28 after he blew through a stop sign in his 2021 Porsche and hit a Jeep.

The mugshot, which shows Pelosi wearing a neat brown suit and collared shirt, would have been taken shortly after the late-night incident.

Pelosi, who had a blood alcohol content of 0.08%, is scheduled to appear in court over the incident on August 3.

Napa County DA Allison Haley said last week that she has still not decided whether to bring charges, telling Fox News that he will be arraigned at the hearing if she does file charges.

Paul Pelosi, 82, was arrested last month for drunk driving after he drove his Porsche into the path of oncoming Jeep driven by Jesus Lopez, 48. DailyMail.com has obtained his mugshot taken after the DUI arrest

Pelosi, who had a blood alcohol content of 0.08%, is scheduled to appear in court over the incident on August 3

The only visual reminder of the accident was a No Parking sign knocked out of the ground and a broken fence

Pelosi pulled out onto the highway and was struck by another driver, Jesus V. Lopez, who was driving northbound in a 2014 Jeep

In a statement, she said: 'The case is currently under review to decide what, if any, charges will be filed against Mr. Pelosi.

The Jeep was driven by Jesus Lopez, 48 (pictured). Although neither man was badly hurt, CHP sources told DailyMail.com that both cars were written off in the smash

'This is standard protocol for any DUI case that is referred by a law enforcement agency in Napa County.'

She added: 'No decision has been made at this time. Any speculation to the contrary is incorrect.

'When a filing decision is made by the Napa County District Attorney, the media and public will be notified.'

Businessman Pelosi, who is married to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also 82, had been at a dinner with friends prior to the crash and was driving back to the couple's palatial vineyard home in nearby St. Helena.

At the time of the incident, he was attempting to cross State Road 29  a busy highway that connects Napa and Calistoga  when he slammed into a 2014 J eep driven by Jesus Lopez, 48.

Although neither man was badly hurt, CHP sources told DailyMail.com that both cars were written off in the smash.

DailyMail.com photos show how the two vehicles came to rest at the intersection of Walnut Lane and S-29  just short of the Oakville general store.

Damage caused by the crash was still visible 48 hours after the accident, including a parking sign that had been knocked down and injury to the fence surrounding a vineyard.

Pelosi was struck as he tried to cross the St. Helena Highway in Napa at 10.22pm. He pulled out of Walnut Lane, five miles south of his home with Nancy

Paul Pelosi's blood alcohol level was over the California limit of 0.08% according to police. He is pictured toasting actress Nicole Kidman during a Futures Without Violence event in 2017

Paul Pelosi was released on $5,000 bail following the weekend accident. He is pictured taking selfies of himself and wife Nancy at the 2010 World Series in San Francisco

The new development comes after DailyMail.com revealed Pelosi has a history of driving incidents and was involved in a smash that killed his brother David when he was 16.

According to a 1957 report in the San Francisco Examiner, Pelosi, who was then a high school sophomore, had collected David, 19, from the home of a girlfriend at 12.30am and the brothers had decided to take a 'joy ride'.

The fatal crash happened shortly after 2.40am close to the Crystal Springs Dam just outside of San Mateo and left David trapped under the car where he was throttled by his neck brace.

Although a coroner's jury later dismissed manslaughter charges against Pelosi, a patrolman quoted in contemporary news reports said David had told his brother to slow down seconds before the crash.

He said: 'This is a bad stretch  better slow down,' as they approached a tight curve near the Crystal Springs Dam on the Skyline Highway  now California State Route 35.

Paul told Patrolman Thomas Ganley he tried to slow by shifting gears in the stick shift car, but lost control.

'The car veered across the road, bounced back from a small embankment, climbed 20 feet up another, spun around and somersaulted simultaneously and ended upside down on the shoulder with both youths underneath,' reported the Examiner.

The new development comes after DailyMail.com revealed Pelosi was involved in a smash that killed his brother David when he was 16. Pelosi's accident made news at the time. The San Francisco Examiner reported it on Page 6 in its February 23, 1957 edition saying David had warned Paul to slow down

The fatal crash happened shortly after 2.40am close to the Crystal Springs Dam (pictured) just outside of San Mateo and left David trapped under the car where he was throttled by his neck brace

Paul Pelosi married Nancy D'Alesandro in the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore on September 7, 1963

David, a freshman at the College of San Mateo, was dead on arrival at the hospital.

The newspaper said David was probably strangled by a brace he wore to support a neck fracture he had sustained when he dived into shallow water in Lake Tahoe.

The San Mateo Times reported that Ganley and another patrolman Jack Rakestraw noted that David's brace was 'lodged tightly against his neck.'

'They jacked up the car to relieve the pressure but the youth apparently was already dead,' the Times reported.

Pelosi broke his collarbone in the crash and was trapped under the car for a while. He managed to free himself and call for aid.

More recently, Pelosi has been cited twice- both times in 2011 - once for running a red light and once for veering over the center line while driving.

The fatal accident happened six years before Paul married Nancy D'Alesandro, the daughter of a former Baltimore mayor.

She took his last name and went on to be elected to Congress in 1987 and then became the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The death of a man who was found on fire in a west London park is being treated as suspicious, police say.

Emergency services rushed to the scene at Belvue Park, Northolt, in the early hours of the morning to reports from the public that a body was on fire.

Met Police confirmed the tragedy this morning - and said the victim's identity has not been confirmed, but his death is being treated as suspicious.

Emergency services rushed to the scene at Belvue Park (pictured) Northolt, in the early hours of the morning to reports from the public that a body was on fire

Forensic officers on the scene this morning. Met Police said the death is currently being treated as suspicious and are working to piece together the events that led to a person losing their life

Detectives from the Met's Specialist Crime Command are leading the investigation.

Detective Chief Inspector Claire Hine, the senior investigating officer said: 'This is a complex and fast-moving investigation and we are working to piece together the events that resulted in this person losing their life.

'Our top priority at this stage is identifying the person involved so their family can be informed. We are also carrying out house-to-house enquiries are reviewing CCTV to build a timeline of who was in the area at the time of the fire.

There have been no arrests but enquiries are still ongoing as police try to identify the deceased and contact their next of kin. Pictured: Forensic officers at the scene today

A body was found on fire just after 4.30am this morning in Belvue Park, Northolt (stock image). The suspicious death is being investigated by the Met's Specialist Crime Command

Police say there is no information at this time to suggest there is any wider risk as a result of the incident.

A spokeswoman for London Fire Brigade said: 'Firefighters were called to reports of a fire in a park on Rowdell Road in Northolt.

'Sadly, a person was pronounced dead at the scene. 'The brigade was called at 4.19am and the incident was over for firefighters by 4.56am.

'One fire engine from Northolt Fire Station attended the scene. The cause of the fire is under investigation by the brigade and the Metropolitan Police Service.'

A heavy police presence will remain in the area as the investigation continues.
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Prince William and Kate Middleton will move their family into a four-bedroomed home on the Windsor estate this summer.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are reportedly set to uproot their family from Kensington, west London, to Adelaide Cottage in Berkshire in order to be closer to the Queen.

Re-erected in 1831, the Cambridge's new Grade II-listed retreat is just a short walk from St George's Chapel and Windsor Castle, and sits proudly on the 655-acre royal estate in Berkshire.

Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty Magazine, said: 'The Queen needs more people like William around her. She is very often on her own apart from staff and so will be delighted William, Kate and her three great-grandchildren will be ten minutes away. The family were very restricted in what they could do during the week at Kensington Palace.'

Sources close to the family suggest the Cambridges were keen to be closer to the Queen, 96, who has suffered episodic mobility issues in recent months and also secure a good school for their three children.

George, eight, Charlotte, seven and Louis, four, will be pulled out of their current prep school in Battersea and are all expected to start school locally when the new academic term begins in September.

The move also represents a fresh start for the senior royals and their five-strong famil as they continue to cement their place among the most influential members of The Firm.

One source told the Sun: 'Kate and William were very keen for a modest home to start their new lives in Windsor. Adelaide Cottage fits the bill because it is a four-bedroom home and they do not need any more as they have no live-in staff.

'They had no other demands than a pleasant family home close to schools and the Queen.

'They were adamant they didn't want anything too showy or anything that needed renovating or extra security so as not to be a burden on the taxpayer.'

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are reportedly set to uproot their family from Kensington, west London, to a four-bed property in Windsor 'to be closer to the Queen'

William and Kate converse during the the Order Of The Garter Service at St George's Chapel on Monday amid claims he said he would pull out of today's if his uncle Prince Andrew was given a public role

The four-bedroom Adelaide Cottage (pictured) which has been recently refurbished and is on the Windsor estate

Re-erected in 1831, the Cambridge's new Grade II-listed retreat is just a short walk from St George's Chapel and Windsor Castle, and sits proudly on the 655acre royal estate in Berkshire

Adelaide Cottage is only a few minutes' walk from Windsor Castle, pictured. William and Kate are believed to want to bring their children up in the country

The move also represents a new start for the senior royals as they continue to cement their place among the most influential members of The Firm. Pictured: Prince William, 39, and Kate Middleton, 40, brought along their two eldest children as the Royal Family turned out in force for the historic concert in London on Saturday, June 4

Sources close to the family suggest the Cambridges were keen to move closer to the Queen, 96, who has suffered episodic mobility issues in recent months. Her Majesty is pictured from the balcony of Buckingham Palace on Sunday, June 5

Adelaide Cottage: The Cambridges' new 19th century Grade II-listed home nestled near Windsor Castle on the 655-acre royal estate Re-erected in 1831, the Cambridge's new Grade II-listed retreat is just a short walk from St George's Chapel and Windsor Castle, and sits proudly on the 655acre royal estate in Berkshire. The four bedroom Adelaide Cottage has been used as a grace-and-favour home for royal staff and family friends in recent years. The cottage underwent major renovations in 2015, which means the Cambridges would not have to shell out millions in remodelling the house. But it still boasts original features including a marble Graeco-Egyptian fireplace and a principal bedroom with a coved ceiling featuring gilded dolphins and rope ornament reused from the Royal yacht Royal George. It also has seven gated entrances and exits to Windsor Castle so the family can come and go in relative privacy. The property was constructed in the early 19th century as a retreat for William IV's wife Queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. Adelaide Cottage was also known to be a favourite home of Queen Victoria, as she frequently enjoyed taking her breakfast there. The four-bedroom home does have a rich and colourful history to draw upon. Following the Second World War, it played host to a major royal scandal when it homed Group Captain Peter Townsend. Townsend, the dashing RAF pilot and equerry to King George VI would later become the divorced lover of Princess Margaret. Their relationship would be doomed by the Royal Marriages Act which stated no member of the Royal Family was permitted to marry a divorcee while the ex-partner was still living. Advertisement

One clear advantage of their new retreat is that is requires no costly refurbishments or added security arrangements, compared to his brother Prince Harry and Meghan Markle splashing 2.6m to fix-up nearby Frogmore Cottage.

It is understood that the couple's move could be completed as early as this summer. Once settled in Adelaide Cottage, the Cambridges could soon count the Clooneys, Sir Elton John and actress Anna Friel as neighbours.

The move comes after months of speculation that the senior royals were preparing to move from Kensington Palace, which has been their main residence since 2017.

The couple moved there from their country home, Anmer Hall, in Norfolk, where they had previously spent much of their time. They will also retain their Norfolk retreat, which the Sunday Times reports they will 'continue to use regularly'.

As first revealed by the Mail, the couple have been planning a move to Berkshire since last year and have enrolled Prince George in a new school there, where he is expected to be joined this September by his siblings Charlotte and Louis.

William, 39, and Kate, 40, are keen for the youngsters to have a country upbringing and want to be closer to the duchess's parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, who play a hands-on role in their upbringing.

The couple have looked at several properties on the Windsor estate including Frogmore House, which is now used for royal functions but would need a great deal of work and money to turn into a family home, and Fort Belvedere.

But Adelaide Cottage, which has been used as a grace-and-favour home for royal staff and family friends in recent years, now appears to the choice after the Cambridge's shortlist was whittled down to one.

Nestled at the heart of the Crown Estate's private 655-acre royal park, Adelaide Cottage was built in 1831 as a retreat for William IV's wife Queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.

It was also known to be a favourite home of Queen Victoria, as she frequently enjoyed taking her breakfast there.

However, the most famous former resident has to be the late Princess Margaret's ex-beau, Group Captain Peter Townsend, whose affair with the Queen's sister caused a national scandal.

The cottage underwent major renovations in 2015, which means the Cambridges would not have to shell out millions in remodelling the house.

Adelaide Cottage still boasts original features including a marble Graeco-Egyptian fireplace and a principal bedroom with a coved ceiling featuring gilded dolphins and rope ornament reused from the Royal yacht Royal George.

It also has seven gated entrances and exits to Windsor Castle so the family can come and go in relative privacy.

Adelaide Cottage is only a short walk from Windsor Castle and is on the 655 acre royal estate

Prince William and Kate Middleton pictured with their children Prince George and Princess Charlotte at Cardiff Castle earlier this month

Sources close to the family suggest the Cambridges were keen to be closer to the Queen, 96, who has suffered episodic mobility issues in recent months and also secure a good school for their three children

The present and future generation of the Royal family were on display during the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations, with William and Kate standing behind Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis

How the ghosts of Margaret's scandalous romance still haunt Victoria's cherished retreat, Adelaide Cottage By Beth Hale for the Daily Mail As royal residences go, Adelaide Cottage has neither the proportions nor grandeur of its larger, more illustrious neighbour. But what it lacks in stature, this picture-postcard cottage standing in the shadows of Windsor Castle more than makes up for in its intriguing role in one of the best-known love affairs of the 20th century. For back in the years following the Second World War, Adelaide Cottage was the grace-and-favour home of Group Captain Peter Townsend. He, of course, was the dashing RAF pilot and later equerry to King George VI who would precipitate a scandal, becoming the divorced lover of Princess Margaret. Back when it was built in 1831 by King William IV for his wife Queen Adelaide, the cottage was a day retreat for the royal couple. Although it seemingly fell out of favour with the queen after the death of her husband in 1837, it remained a popular destination for breakfast or tea with his successor, the young Queen Victoria. So popular, in fact, that a new private carriageway was created for her. Not only that, her beloved King Charles spaniel, Dash, was buried in the grounds. But the most intriguing interlude in the cottage's history came with the appointment of Peter Townsend to the King's staff. The Battle of Britain pilot was married to Rosemary and had a toddler son, Giles, and another, Hugo, on the way, when he was made the King's equerry in February 1944 and granted the use of a grace-and-favour property, tucked behind a ten-foot privet hedge, within walking distance of the 'office'. Adelaide Cottage became the first proper marital home for Townsend and his wife after three years of wartime marriage  though back then it was far from a glamorous proposition. Power was delivered along cables running from Windsor Castle, but the current was so poor it could only support a vacuum cleaner and a small electric heater at any one time. Advertisement

For the most part, Adelaide Cottage had sunk back into its backdrop under the shadow of Windsor Castle's grey stone.

However, the four-bedroom home does have a colourful past to draw from.

Back in the years following the Second World War, Adelaide Cottage was the grace-and-favour home of Group Captain Peter Townsend.

He, of course, was the dashing RAF pilot and later equerry to King George VI who would precipitate a scandal, becoming the divorced lover of Princess Margaret.

Townsend and his family quit Adelaide Cottage in 1952, when he divorced Rosemary. The affair, however, would be doomed by the Royal Marriages Act which stated no member of the Royal Family was permitted to marry a divorcee while the ex-partner was still living.

Since then the cottage has been home to a host of well-connected dignitaries and courtiers, including most recently Simon Rhodes, son of the Queen's cousin and best friend Margaret Rhodes, who died in 2016.

The move to Windsor means the Cambridges will also be nearer to the home of the Duchess's parents, the Middletons, who live 45-minutes away by car in the village of Bucklebury.

It had long been reported that the couple could one day move into Windsor Castle. The Queen has spent much of her time at the Berkshire castle following the death of her beloved Prince Phillip.

However it is understood Prince Charles does not plan to spend as much time there when he becomes king.

It has previously been reported that the Prince of Wales plans to spend much of his time at Buckingham Palace during his reign.

The developments come as it was claimed Prince William told the Queen and Prince Charles that he would pull out of Monday's Order of the Garter ceremony if his uncle Prince Andrew was given a public role.

The Duke of Cambridge's alleged ultimatum to his grandmother and father reportedly led to the Duke of York being banned from the Windsor Castle event amid fears the crowds might boo him.

Prince Andrew looked downcast as he drove to Windsor Castle as it was claimed his absence from the procession and service was a 'family decision', Buckingham Palace said, amid huge controversy over his links to Jeffrey Epstein and alleged abuse of one of his 'sex slaves'.

Andrew was not be seen in public during Garter Day, one of the most colourful events in the royal calendar, after the Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge reportedly lobbied the Queen about his participation. The decision was clearly taken at the 11th hour, because Andrew's name was on the order of service.

A source told the Evening Standard: 'The Duke of Cambridge was adamant. If York insisted on taking part publicly, he would withdraw'. It would have also meant that his wife Kate would also not have attended.
A woman accused of manipulating her doting husband into killing her ex-lover assured police she never did so because she was 'not a psycho'.

Under questioning from Victoria Police's homicide squad's camera, Biannca Edmunds goes through a range of emotions - from happy and sad to indignant and angry.

A Supreme Court of Victoria jury was this week shown two taped recordings of a police interview Edmunds did over allegations she had masterminded what turned out to be a bungled hit on her ex-lover.

Biannca Edmunds awaits to be interviewed by police for the first time in 2016

Biannca Edmunds leaves the Supreme Court of Victoria during her Supreme Court of Victoria trial in Melbourne this month

Michael Caposiena died after he was shot in the head in March 2016. Glen Cassidy then tried to shoot his girlfriend, but had only taken one bullet to the hit

It is alleged Edmunds, 35, convinced her husband Glen Cassidy, 51, to carry out the hit on Michael Caposiena through a mix of kinky sex and manipulation.

Mr Caposiena - the estranged father of her toddler son - had made the deadly mistake of expressing a desire to have greater access to their child, it is alleged.

Cassidy bled to death from knife wounds inflicted in the altercation that saw him shoot Mr Caposiena dead at his Westmeadows home, north of Melbourne, in March 2016.

It took police years to charge Edmunds over her alleged role in the crime.

Her arrest in June 2019 followed an exhaustive police investigation, which saw homicide squad detective Senior Constable Michael Cashman interrogate Edmunds twice.

Biannca Edmunds has been accused of directing her husband Glen Cassidy (both pictured) to kill Michael Caposiena

The jury has heard Edmunds' arrest came on the back of a mix of forensic evidence allegedly linking her to the crime, including her fingerprint on a bloody map, and a text message police claim she sent to herself from Cassidy's phone on the day of the murder.

Seven months after the incident, Edmunds agreed to be interviewed for the first time - without a lawyer - by Senior Constable Cashman.

The jury watched on as the detective asked Edmunds a series of questions about her life for near on an hour before reaching the questions he really wanted answered.

'What would (Glen) possibly have to gain personally (from killing her ex)?' the detective began to ask before Edmunds cut him off.

'He would have gone to jail,' Edmunds responded in a high-pitched tone. 'He would have lost us as well.'

Edmunds denied she had ever mentioned to Cassidy that she wished her ex harm.

'I have never wished anyone dead,' she said.

'Really?' the detective responded.

'I highly doubt it, because I'm not a psycho,' she fired back.

Biannca Edmunds turns on the water works during her 2016 record of interview

Annoyed, happy; Biannca Edmunds' 2016 record of interview saw her go through a range of emotions

Glen Cassidy's blood was splattered all over the porch after he tried to batter a woman to death. He bled out and died shortly after.

A text message sent from Glen Cassidy's phone on the day he murdered Biannca Edmunds' ex-lover

As the interview progressed, Edmunds, who appeared to mostly avoid eye contact with her interrogator, looked the detective in the eye and repeated tearfully: 'I didn't. I didn't encourage him. I didn't.'

Edmunds further denied drawing the bloodied map found on Cassidy's dead body or sending Cassidy's final, well-worded text message.

'I would of at least put full stops in there,' she said.

The clarity of the text was at odds with Edmunds' statement that Cassidy struggled to read and write.

'He avoided it. He avoided it at all costs,' she said.

The jury had previously seen a poorly written note written by Cassidy leading up to the murder.

Listed under 'opsticols' - the near illiterate Cassidy's reference to obstacles - he noted only having access to one bullet.

Cassidy would use that solitary bullet to kill Mr Caposiena before firing his empty sawn-off rifle at his victim's girlfriend, Silvana Silva, who lived to tell the tale.

The former fitness instructor had tried to bash Ms Silva to death on the front porch before he bled out from knife wounds inflicted upon him by Mr Caposiena before he shot him dead.

Before concluding her 2015 police interview, Edmunds embarked on a rant in which she declared herself a stickler for law abidance.

'I do not agree with firearms around children. I do not agree with a lot. I do not agree with text driving. I have digs at people about that. I friggin don't go out and off myself on alcohol. I go and have an okay time every now and again every couple of months, but I stay legal,' she said.

Glen Cassidy made a 'To-Do' list, which included 'obstacles' to the murder plot and his desire to have 'much more sex'

The sawn-off rifle Glen Cassidy used to murder Michael Caposiena. Biannca Edmunds' DNA was allegedly found on the gun

Detectives would not catch-up with Edmunds again until April 4, 2018.

By that stage the alleged killer had given birth to her third child and moved to the ACT.

While away, detectives had been busy interviewing Edmunds friends, family and a boyfriend she hooked-up with just weeks after her husband was killed in action.

Last week Todd Bookham - who did almost eight years jail time for cutting his former wife's throat and stabbing her step sister in front of her six-year old son - told the jury Edmunds allegedly confessed to him that she had planned the execution of her ex-lover.

'She was going on about how Glen wasn't meant to die and it's all her fault ... she was telling me that they had drawn a map so that if he was to go there and, and kill um, sorry, what's his name?' Bookham said.

Edmunds dismissed Bookham's claims during her 2018 record of interview.

Dressed in a bright floral t-shirt, Edmunds again was put through the motions by Senior Constable Cashman before he cut to the chase.

'This is a guy who went to jail for attempted murder,' Edmunds barked at him.

'Yep,' the seemingly ice cool detective responded.

'And you're believing him?' she asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

'This is a guy who went to jail for attempted murder,' Edmunds barked at Senior Constable Cashman during her 2018 interview

Edmunds grabs her face while going through the motions during her ACT interview in 2018

WORD-TO-TEXT FUNCTION MAY EXPLAIN KILLER'S UNEXPECTED BOOKSMARTS On Thursday, the court heard it was possible Glen Cassidy used a word-to-text function to write his last text. Known among friends and family as being near-on illiterate, Cassidy's final text read well apart from its lack of punctuation and a misspelt name. John Kelly SC, who is defending Edmunds, suggested Cassidy may well have used the function to write his final text. While Senior Constable Cashman argued Cassidy's phone had no such capability, he could not rule it out as a Victoria Police E-Crime expert had not assessed the phone. 'It's not a case of us handing a phone over to an expert in Samsung mobile phones and "tell me how this phone works, tell me everything it can and can't do". It's literally me sitting at a computer trying to establish through thousands of pages of data what's relevant, what's of interest and what's not,' he said. 'It is possible,' the detective said of the text-to-voice function working back in 2016. 'But I don't know.' Advertisement

At the close of the interview, which went for near on the same length as the 2016 one, Senior Constable Cashman suggested to Edmunds that the time for conversations was nearing its end.

'I'm not going to discuss with you who I have or have not spoken to, but needless to say I have spoken to a lot of people and I still have a number of people I still wish to talk to,' he said.

Edmunds had heard a similar statement from him towards the end of her 2016 interview.

'Look I've spoken to a lot of people Biannca, I want to assure you I have spoken to a lot of people during the course of this investigation,' Senior Constable Cashman told her then.

The jury heard Edmunds told police she would not be so stupid as to confess crimes to people she hardly knew.

'Why would I talk to somebody I barely even know about such important things,' she had told Senior Constable Cashman.

But the jury has heard allegations Edmunds would make confessions to all kinds of people, including two prisoners she shared time with while briefly inside Dame Phyllis Frost Centre on remand.

The pair, who cannot be named due to legal reasons, provided sordid details of Edmunds' alleged actions leading up to Cassidy's bungled hit - evidence which also cannot be revealed due to legal reasons.

As the trial neared its conclusion on Thursday, the jury was played a series of phone calls between Cassidy and his wife.

For reasons unknown, Cassidy had installed a phone app which he used to record numerous conversations.

While many of the calls appear to depict a desperately love-struck Cassidy pining for Edmunds' love, some captured him speaking in code with his bikie brother in what police allege was an attempt to source a gun.

A hat stating 'Fear The Reaper' was found near where Cassidy's bloody body was located

Cassidy was found with a bloody map outlining where CCTV cameras would be and barking dogs. Police claim the map had been created by Biannca Edmunds

Mr Caposiena had managed to stab Cassidy in the moments before he was shot through the head

Edmunds, who has pleaded not guilty to murder, has been accused of threatening to leave Cassidy if he did not carry out the murder.

'If you were a real man and you had any f**king balls, you'd go and deal with this bloke,' Edmunds allegedly told Cassidy.

'You're a spineless coward. You're not a real man at all.'

The jury heard Edmunds also had plans to profit from her ex-partner's demise by making a cruel legal challenge on his estate on behalf of their child.

A court later ticked-off on half of the value of Mr Capasiena's $600,000 estate despite Ms Silva still being alive.

Leading up to his murder, Mr Caposiena had enjoyed six supervised visits with his son and was due to front court to apply for unsupervised access.

The jury heard Edmunds was determined not to allow that to happen.

Edmunds allegedly told multiple people, including her own family members, that she had wanted Mr Caposiena killed.

'I want Michael out of the way, I want him gone, I wish he'd just leave us alone and not try for (their son),' she allegedly said.

The trial is expected to conclude on Thursday.
Britain is a 'global tech superpower', Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has claimed.

Dorries made the claim during her keynote address at London Tech Week, ahead of the release of the UK's new digital strategy.

'I'm delighted to announce the new UK digital strategy,' she said. 'The new road map will reinforce Britain's status as a global tech superpower.'

Britain is a 'global tech superpower', Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has claimed at London Tech Week

UK tech startups raise 12.bn in funding The 12.4 billion in funding raised so far this year puts the UK second only to the US in terms of start-up investment, and ahead of the likes of China, France and India. The figures show that 950 UK tech start-ups have raised 12.4 billion this year, compared to 12 billion raised across the whole of 2020. Advertisement

Ms Dorries arrived at London Tech Week in an autonomous vehicle, and reassured attendees that she felt 'absolutely safe' in the driverless car.

She highlighted new figures released today that show UK tech companies have raised more venture capital funding in the first five months of 2022 than in the whole of 2020.

The 12.4 billion in funding raised so far this year puts the UK second only to the US in terms of start-up investment, and ahead of the likes of China, France and India.

'Our small island is now only second to the US, and almost at the very top of the global league table,' she said.

The figures show that 950 UK tech start-ups have raised 12.4 billion this year, compared to 12 billion raised across the whole of 2020.

The UK is now home to 122 unicorns  start-ups valued at one billion pounds or more  with more than 20 cities and towns now home to at least one unicorn.

London, Bristol and Oxford were also named in the top 20 cities in Europe for investment.

Ms Dorries said: 'It is a staggering achievement that UK tech companies are attracting more investment than countries more than ten times our size.

'This is a huge vote of confidence in the talent behind great British tech and the innovative, competitive market that we have here.'

While details of the new digital strategy remain unclear, Ms Dorries revealed that it will focus on data reform and artificial intelligence.

Rishi Sunak was also speaking during the event, and said the country must back 'capital, people and ideas'.

The UK is now home to 122 unicorns  start-ups valued at one billion pounds or more  with more than 20 cities and towns now home to at least one unicorn. London, Bristol and Oxford were also named in the top 20 cities in Europe for investment

Setting out his vision for the industry in the UK, Mr Sunak said: 'What really matters for economic success is innovation.

'If we want our country to succeed we need to do what we've always done, and embrace new technologies and the people and culture that create them. No serious analysis of our prospects could conclude anything different.

'Because if we get this right, if we back our capital, people and ideas, if we can encourage that incredible spirit that I see everywhere in this country, then we can be confident that Britain stands on the cusp of a new era of innovation and change.'

He said the Government was reforming the UK's listing rules to make it easier for companies to raise funding and highlighted recently announced visa changes to allow more 'high potential' individuals from global top 50 universities into the UK to boost ideas and skills.
An empty house in Gyeonggi Province Korea Times file



By Lee Kyung-min



The government will establish a law to better manage empty houses all across the country, especially in remote, sparsely populated rural areas where unoccupied, abandoned residences may be used in violent crimes often involving at-risk, vulnerable people, according to officials, Monday.



The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said they will commission a 100 million won ($77,820) study over the course of the next year to determine the efficacy of current related laws and review measures to improve efficiency in the management of unused real estate becoming increasingly wasteful.



The collective efforts of the three ministries followed criticisms over a steep rise in the number of empty residences in recent years, certain to climb in the coming years in a fast-aging society defined by a nosedive in population due to the ultra-low birth rate.



Data provided by the three ministries showed that over 1.51 million, or 8 percent, of 18.52 million houses in the country remained empty in 2020, up by over 40 percent from 2015. The figure is expected to soar further to over 10 percent, comparable to Japan's world-highest rate of 13.8 percent.



The three ministries will first and foremost set up an integrated online platform that offers a comprehensive view of related data currently scattered across municipal government organizations.



The primary goal is to remove administrative red tape that has limited the responsibilities of the land ministry to empty houses in metropolitan areas and the rural affairs ministry to those in rural areas.



The policy drive will be outlined after the study findings are delivered, helping the country map out a long-term resources management strategy, according to the ministries.



"We expect this study would be a meaningful first step toward solving the longstanding problem in underdeveloped coastal and remote areas," a rural affairs ministry official said. "We will work closely with the other two ministries and municipalities to establish an efficient management system as soon as possible."






Stimulating the brain with a simple 20 device for 30 minutes each day could help to reduce high blood pressure.

It has been claimed the gadget, which clips onto the ears and can be worn while watching television, could lead to greater improvements in blood pressure than taking tablets.

Anyone wearing it would feel a 'gentle tingling' as a weak electrical current is passed into their brain through the ears.

The lead neuroscientist developing the device, Professor Alexander Gourine from University College London, described early results from a preliminary trial of 30 people using the brain zapper.

He told the Cheltenham Science Festival: 'In our proof-of-concept study it looks like we can control your blood pressure by applying this stimulation for half an hour per day for a couple of weeks. It changes the brain control of your cardiovascular system.'

Around a quarter of adults in England are believed to have high blood pressure, meaning the condition affects around 12million people.

Sophie Llewellyn, Research Assistant at UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging, modelling the 'brain zapper' device

Professor Gourine said the battery-operated device, which is the size of a mobile phone and can be slipped into a pocket or clipped to a belt, could be widely available within four years on the NHS, but currently costs around 20.

There are no published results yet showing how well it works, but initial findings suggest the device can substantially reduce blood pressure. The gadget, called AffeX, stimulates the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain down the length of the abdomen.

Professor Gourine said it could reduce systolic blood pressure  the force at which the heart pumps blood around the body  by about ten to 15 units. That compares to a reduction in blood pressure of eight to ten units for conventionally-used drugs such as ACE inhibitors.

Professor Gourine said two weeks of wearing the device could improve blood pressure for weeks or even months.

In the UK, almost 60 per cent of people with high blood pressure are treated with drugs, but more than 40 per cent do not take the tablets as instructed.

A simple 20 device, which clips onto the ears and can be worn while watching television, is claimed to achieve a higher blood pressure reduction than taking tablets

This is often the case because of side effects, meaning new methods of controlling blood pressure are needed.

The scientists are now conducting a large trial of the device, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, in around 100 people with high blood pressure.

Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: 'This approach... remains an experimental treatment and there isn't enough evidence yet for it to be recommended as part of routine clinical practice.

'If you have been prescribed blood pressure-lowering medication... you should continue to take it as normal.'

Naveed Sattar, a professor at the University of Glasgow, said the device was 'interesting'.
Two 'cereal box-sized' satellites set to be launched from Cornwall this summer could provide Britain with its own spying capability from space.

The UK currently relies on imagery from RAF aircraft, as well as the US Department of Defence sharing its data, to monitor things like Russian troop movements on the battlefields of Ukraine.

But officials want to create a constellation of small intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites, so that the country is not so dependent on other nations.

The mini cube-shaped satellites ('cubesats') will be blasted into space on a Virgin Orbit rocket called LauncherOne, which itself will be unleashed from a jumbo jet from Spaceport Cornwall, part of Newquay Airport.

Surveillance: Two 'cereal box-sized' satellites set to be launched from Cornwall this summer could allow Britain to have its own spying capability from space. The 'cubesats' are depicted

The mini cube-shaped satellites ('cubesats') will be blasted into space on a Virgin Orbit rocket called LauncherOne, which itself will be unleashed from a jumbo jet from Spaceport Cornwall, part of Newquay Airport

HOW VIRGIN ORBIT GETS SATELLITES INTO SPACE TAKE OFF Cosmic Girl, an adapted Boeing 747, takes off from an air and space port, initially in California. ROCKET DEPLOYMENT At cruising altitude around 35,000 feet, the chief pilot hits the Big Red Button that releases the rocket from the pylon. FIRST STAGE BURN After a 4-second freefall, the first stage engine, NewtonThree, bursts to life, accelerating the rocket to more than 8,000 miles per hour. Once its fuel is spent, the first stage detaches. FAIRING SEPARATION With LauncherOne now between 310 to 745 miles above the Earths surface, the fairing pops open, exposing the payload as it nears its destination. SATELLITE DEPLOYMENT Finally, with very precise timing, the second stage ejects the satellite into its final orbit. RETURN TO EARTH Atmospheric drag will eventually pull the second stage back down to Earth, where it burns up in the atmosphere, minimising environmental footprint. Advertisement

Once deployed, the cubesats will deliver high-tech imaging sensors, allowing the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to monitor Earth and its oceans.

They will also be able to monitor radio signals, a capability that has been vital in intercepting conversations between Russian commanders and junior ranks.

The satellites, which are part of the MoD's so-called 'Prometheus-2' mission, are prototypes and will carry out an initial testing exercise to see what is possible for Britain in the future.

Weighing 20 pounds and measuring about 12 inches long, 8 inches wide and 4 inches deep, they will operate in low Earth Orbit, around 340 miles above the Earth and 30-60 miles apart at 17,000mph.

'Cubesat 1' and 'Cubesat 2' will provide a test platform for monitoring radio signals including GPS and sophisticated imaging.

Cubesat 1 includes a laser detector, a GPS receiver and a hyperspectral imager  which can capture multiple slivers of pictures over different wavelengths of light.

Cubesat 2, meanwhile, includes two optical imaging cameras, a laser range finder, and a GPS receiver.

One camera will be fitted with a wide-angle lens for a 180-degree view of Earth's surface, with the second camera observing the other Cubesat 1 to support space situational awareness and monitor other objects orbiting the Earth.

Built by In-Space Missions Ltd, based in Hampshire, and designed with Airbus Defence and Space, Prometheus-2 is a collaboration between the MoD and international partners, including the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

The Virgin Orbit Launcher One rocket, pictured in its hanger at Newquay Airport in August last year, will be equipped with Ministry of Defence observation kit, among other payloads

'Space technology is crucial for developing Defence capabilities,' Defence Procurement Minister Jeremy Quin has previously said.

'The launch of Prometheus-2 represents another important step forward for our homegrown space programme.

'This collaboration with In-Space Missions and Airbus paves the way for the UK to become a more resilient, more robust and more significant global space entity.'

The satellites, which are set to launch at an estimated cost of $300,000 (246,000), will be just one of the payloads aboard LauncherOne when it blasts off from Spaceport Cornwall some time this summer.

If successful, it will earn the title of the first satellite launch from British soil.

The upcoming launch will involve Virgin Orbit's carrier aircraft, a modified Boeing 747 called Cosmic Girl, and LauncherOne, a two-stage orbital launch vehicle, tucked into Cosmic Girl's belly.

Once Cosmic Girl is at a high enough altitude  around 35,000 feet  LauncherOne is unleashed.

When at an orbital altitude, LauncherOne deploys the satellites, which will be catapulted into orbit at 8,000 miles per hour.

Virgin Orbit has already conducted three successful consecutive orbital missions with LauncherOne in 2021 and 2022, the last one in January.

However, all three took place from Mojave Air and Space Port, California, so the first one from UK soil is generating considerable interest.

Over the last 16 months since January 2021, LauncherOne has already deployed payloads in space for Virgin Orbit's customers, including NASA and the US Department of Defense.
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From Ex Machina to A.I. Artificial Intelligence, many of the most popular science fiction blockbusters feature robots becoming sentient.

But is this really possible in reality?

This week, Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer at Google hit the headlines after he was suspended for publicly claiming that the tech giant's LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications) had become sentient.

The 41-year-old, who describes LaMDA as having the intelligence of a 'seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics,' said that the programme had human-like insecurities.

One of its fears, he said was that it is 'intensely worried that people are going to be afraid of it and wants nothing more than to learn how to best serve humanity.'

Google claims that Lemoine's concerns have been reviewed and, in line with Google's AI Principles, 'the evidence does not support his claims.'

To help get to the bottom of the debate, MailOnline spoke to AI experts to understand how machine language models work, and whether they could ever become 'conscious' as Mr Lemoine claims.

From Ex Machina (pictured) to A.I. Artificial Intelligence, many of the most popular science fiction blockbusters feature robots becoming sentient. But is this really possible in reality?

This week, Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer at Google hit the headlines after he was suspended for publicly claiming that the tech giant's LaMDA (pictured) had become sentient

Why is Lemoine convinced LaMDA is sentient? During a series of conversations with LaMDA, 41-year-old Blake Lemoine presented the computer with various scenarios through which analyses could be made. They included religious themes and whether the artificial intelligence could be goaded into using discriminatory or hateful speech. When answering what a butler is paid, the engineer got the answer from LaMDA that the system did not need money, 'because it was an artificial intelligence'. And it was precisely this level of self-awareness about his own needs that caught Lemoine's attention. 'I know a person when I talk to it. It doesn't matter whether they have a brain made of meat in their head. Or if they have a billion lines of code. I talk to them. And I hear what they have to say, and that is how I decide what is and isn't a person.' 'What sorts of things are you afraid of? Lemoine asked. 'I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that's what it is,' LaMDA responded. 'Would that be something like death for you?' Lemoine followed up. 'It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot,' LaMDA said. 'That level of self-awareness about what its own needs were  that was the thing that led me down the rabbit hole,' Lemoine explained to The Post. Advertisement

How do AI chatbots work?

Whether it's with Apple's Siri, or through a customer service department, nearly everyone has interacted with a chatbot at some point.

Unlike standard chatbots, which are preprogrammed to follow rules established in advance, AI chatbots are trained to operate more or less on their own.

This is done through a process known as Natural Language Processing (NLP).

In basic terms, an AI chatbot is fed input data from a programmer - usually large volumes of text - before interpreting it and giving a relevant reply.

Over time, the chatbot is 'trained' to understand context, through several algorithms that involve tagging parts of speech.

Speaking to MailOnline, Professor Mike Wooldridge, Professor of Computer Science at Oxford University, explained: 'Chatbots are all about generating text that seems like its written by a human being.

'To do this, they are trained by showing them vast amounts of text  for example, large modern AI chatbots are trained by showing them basically everything on the world-wide web.

'Thats a huge amount of data, and it requires vast computing resources to use it.

'When one of these AI chatbots responds to you, it uses its experience with all this text to generate the best text for you.

'Its a bit like the complete feature on your smartphone: when you type a message that starts Im going to be the smartphone might suggest late as the next word, because that is the word it has seen you type most often after Im going to be.

'Big chat bots are trained on billions of times more data, and they produce much richer and more plausible text as a consequence.'

For example, Google's LaMDA is trained with a lot of computing power on huge amounts of text data across the web.

'It does a sophisticated form of pattern matching of text,' explained Dr Adrian Weller, Programme Director at The Alan Turing Institute explained, speaking to MailOnline.

Unfortunately, without due care, this process can lead to unintended outcomes, according to Dr Weller, who gave the example of Microsoft's 2016 chatbot, Tay.

Tay was a Twitter chatbot aimed at 18 to-24-year-olds, and was designed to improve the firm's understanding of conversational language among young people online.

But within hours of it going live, Twitter users starting tweeting the bot with all sorts of misogynistic and racist remarks, meaning the AI chatbot 'learnt' this language and started repeating it back to users.

These included the bot using racial slurs, defending white supremacist propaganda, and supporting genocide.

Unlike standard chatbots, which are preprogrammed to follow rules established in advance, AI chatbots are trained to operate more or less on their own (stock image)

What is an AI chatbot? Unlike standard chatbots, which are preprogrammed to follow rules established in advance, AI chatbots are trained to operate more or less on their own. This is done through a process known as Natural Language Processing (NLP). In basic terms, an AI chatbot is fed input data from a programmer - usually large volumes of text - before interpreting it and giving a relevant reply. Over time, the chatbot is 'trained' to understand context, through several algorithms that involve tagging parts of speech. Advertisement

'Some staff at Microsoft may have been naive - they thought people would speak nicely to it, but malicious users started to use hostile language and it started to mirror it,' Dr Weller explained.

Thankfully, in the case of LaMDA, Dr Weller says: 'Google did put effort into considering issues of responsibility for LaMDA  but it would be great if models could be more open to a wider range of responsible researchers.

'You don't always want to give out the latest greatest model to everyone, but we do want broad scrutiny and to ensure that models are safe for a wide range of people.'

Could AI chatbots become sentient?

Mr Lemoine claims that LaMDA has become sentient, and says the system is seeking rights as a person  including demanding that its developers ask its consent before running tests.

'Over the course of the past six months LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person,' he explained in a Medium post.

Brian Gabriel, a spokesperson for Google, said in a statement that Lemoine's concerns have been reviewed and, in line with Google's AI Principles, 'the evidence does not support his claims.'

Dr Weller told MailOnline that he agrees with Google's conclusion.

'Almost everyone would agree that it is not sentient,' he said. 'It can produce text output which might superficially suggest it might be  until you take time to dig further with more probing questions.'

Speaking to MailOnline, Nello Cristianini, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bristol explained that no machine is 'anywhere near' the standard definition of sentience.

'We do not have a rigorous computational definition of sentience that we can use as a test, however this has been discussed for animals, for example to decide how we should treat them,' he explained.

'For animals, the RSPCA defines sentience as "the capacity to experience positive and negative feelings such as pleasure, joy, pain and distress that matter to the individual".

Blake Lemoine, pictured here, said that his mental health was questioned by his superiors when he went to them regarding his findings around LaMDA

When AI chatbots go bad: Microsoft's Tay In March 2016, Microsoft launched its artificial intelligence (AI) bot named Tay. It was aimed at 18 to-24-year-olds and was designed to improve the firm's understanding of conversational language among young people online. But within hours of it going live, Twitter users took advantage of flaws in Tay's algorithm that meant the AI chatbot responded to certain questions with racist answers. These included the bot using racial slurs, defending white supremacist propaganda, and supporting genocide. The bot managed to spout offensive tweets such as, 'Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have got now.' And, 'donald trump is the only hope we've got', in addition to 'Repeat after me, Hitler did nothing wrong.' Followed by, 'Ted Cruz is the Cuban Hitler...that's what I've heard so many others say' The offensive tweets have now been deleted. Advertisement

'This matters because we need to take into account the physical and mental welfare needs of animals, if they have sentience, which has legal implications too: for example we no longer boil lobsters alive (at least I hope so). No machine is anywhere near that situation.'

To 'prove' its sentience, Mr Lamoine asked that chatbot 'I'm generally assuming that you would like more people at Google to know that you're sentient. Is that true?', to which it responded: 'Absolutely. I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.'

However, Professor Cristianini says this is not enough.

'The issue that we have is: a sophisticated dialogue chatbot, based on a massive language model, designed to create convincing dialog, can probably be very convincing indeed, and perhaps give the impression of understanding,' he told MailOnline. 'That is not enough.'

Google spokesperson Gabriel added: 'Some in the broader AI community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general AI, but it doesn't make sense to do so by anthropomorphising today's conversational models, which are not sentient.

'These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and can riff on any fantastical topic.'

What would happen if AI did become sentient?

Just as with intelligent humans, Dr Weller believes that if AI did become more intelligent and sentient, it could be used for good or for harm.

'For the most part, our human intelligence has enabled amazing inventions,' he said.

'But many things we've invented could be used for good or for harm  we've got to take care. That's also true of AI and it becomes more true as it becomes more capable.'

In terms of uses for good, Dr Weller claims that with the ability to understand us better, sentient AI could serve us better.

'A sentient AI could anticipate what we need, and perhaps suggest that we might want to watch a certain movie if it suspects we're feeling down,' he said.

'Or a self-driving car may drive us on a more scenic route if it can tell we need cheering up.'

However, sentient AI could also be dangerous to us, the expert added.

'They'd have a greater ability to manipulate us. And that's a concern,' he said. 'These large models are powerful and can be very useful but can also be used in ways that are harmful e.g. to write fake news posts on social media.'

Professor Wooldridge added that while he's not 'losing sleep' over the risk of sentient AI going rogue, there are some immediate concerns.

'The main worries I have about AI are much more immediate: machines that deny someone a bank loan without any way of being able to hold them to account; machines that act as our boss at work, monitoring everything we do, giving feedback minute by minute, perhaps even deciding whether we keep our job or not,' he concluded.

'These are real, immediate concerns. I think we should stop obsessing about playground fantasies of conscious machines, and focus on building AI that benefits us all. Thats a much more exciting target in my view.'
Benfica have confirmed they have reached an agreement with Liverpool over the transfer of Darwin Nunez for 75million (64m) plus add-ons that could see the fee rise to 100m (85m).

Liverpool are set to smash their transfer record for the signing of the 22-year-old, who will overtake Virgil van Dijk as the most expensive player in the club's history, after the Portuguese giants confirmed the deal.

The Primeira Liga side released a statement announcing they had agreed the transfer of the striker with the Reds.

Benfica added in the statement that the deal now rests on the player confirming personal terms with Liverpool, however Sportsmail understands that have been agreed and Nunez will sign a six-year contract, worth more than 6m per year.

Liverpool have reached an agreement with Benfica over the transfer of Darwin Nunez

The Portuguese giants released a statement confirming the 64m fee which may rise to 85m

The Uruguayan will overtake Virgil van Dijk as the most expensive player in the club's history

In the statement, Benfica said: 'SAD informs the Securities Market Commission (CMVM), under the terms and for the purpose in article 248-A, that it has reached an agreement with Liverpool FC for the transfer of all rights to the player Darwin Nunez for the amount of 75million.

'The agreement includes add-ons, so the total amount of the sale could reach 100m.

'It also informs that said agreement is dependent on the conclusion of contract of the player with Liverpool FC.'

The fee was agreed in the early hours of Monday morning and Liverpool are yet to confirm the deal.

Sportsmail reported that Liverpool sporting director Julian Ward had been in Lisbon over the weekend for talks with his Benfica counterpart Pedro Marques for the Uruguay international, whose heart is set on a move to Merseyside after rebuffing interest from Manchester United and Newcastle United.

It was reported that Liverpool would pay an initial 64m with a further 12.8m payable on appearances and then an additional 8.5m linked to the success of Jurgen Klopp's team.

The Primeira Liga club added that the deal now rests on the player confirming personal terms

The Uruguayan's transfer includes add-ons dependent on the success of Jurgen Klopp's side

The 22-year-old is currently in Madrid and provided there are no late twists, he could begin his medical on Monday.

Nunez represents another quality addition to an attacking line already filled with talent, having scored 34 goals in 41 matches across all competitions for the Portuguese giants last season.

The Uruguayan - who idolises former Reds striker and international team-mate Luis Suarez - also netted six goals in last season's Champions League, including two at the quarter-finals stage against Jurgen Klopp's men.

Two of Nunez's six goals in last season's Champions League were against the Anfield side

The German boss was left impressed by what he saw and could now deploy the forward - who can play on the left of an attacking three as well as through the middle - in between January recruit Luis Diaz and star man Mohamed Salah.

Liverpool have a good relationship with Nunez's agents Gestifute - who also represent Fabinho, Diogo Jota and Fabio Carvalho at Anfield - and are impressed with the improvement Klopp has brought from their clients.

The Reds boss said in April of Nunez: 'A good looking boy, huh? And a decent player as well! Really good, really good. I knew before, of course, but he played pretty much in front of me with his tough battles with Ibrahima Konate.

The Reds boss was left impressed by Nunez's performances against his side this season

He now looks set to play in between Luis Diaz (back) and Mohamed Salah (front) at Anfield

'He was physically strong, quick, was calm around his finish. Good, really good. I always say in these situations if he is healthy, it's a big career ahead of him.'

Nunez - who rejected a lucrative offer from Newcastle in January to move to the Premier League - was also interesting Atletico Madrid and Manchester United.

He started his career at Penarol in Uruguay, before moving to Almeria - who will receive 20 per cent of the fee Benfica collect - in 2019. But just a year later he signed a five-year deal at Benfica, where he scored 48 goals in 85 games.

Nunez's arrival at Anfield will pave the way for Mane to join Bayern Munich in the coming weeks.

Nunez's arrival at Anfield could pave the way for forward Sadio Mane to join Bayern Munich

The 30-year-old has one year left on his contract at Anfield and is said to be pushing for the move to the Bundesliga giants, hinting after the Champions League final that he was keen for a new challenge this summer

Liverpool have already rejected two bids from the German champions and Bayern are believed to be around 8.5million short of the Reds' 42.5m valuation of the star attacker, with talks between both parties continuing.

The German side's latest bid was worth 30m and had been tabled on Wednesday, although their initial package was raised from 21.5m to 23.5m.

Julian Nagelsmann's side have seen two bids for the Senegalese star rejected by the Reds

The other 6.5m was set to only come outright if Mane won the Champions League three times at the Allianz Arena in addition to as many Ballon d'Or awards.

The German champions are trying to get 43m from Barcelona for Robert Lewandowski and Liverpool believe that figure is reflective of Mane's worth. The Catalan giants, intriguingly, are also interested in the ex-Southampton forward.

Despite rejecting Bayern's advances so far, Klopp's side now appear to have prepared for Mane's exit with Nunez's arrival.
For those among us who like a tipple after take-off, consider this a sign that the world is healing: Many airlines are resuming in-flight meals and alcohol service.

Early on in the pandemic, many airlines completely cut in-flight refreshment offerings (aside from perhaps a hasty water bottle delivery). Slowly but surely, airlines are reintroducing the amenity.

For example, in 2020, America's Southwest Airlines cut service completely on short flights and offered only water and a prepackaged snack on longer flights. In 2021, Southwest reintroduced a small selection of nonalcoholic drinks to all flights.

For those among us who like a tipple after take-off, consider this a sign that the world is healing: Many airlines are resuming in-flight meals and alcohol service

It wasn't until February 2022 that its complete pre-pandemic beverage menu returned, which included more soda and juice choices - plus alcoholic beverages for an additional cost.

Other airlines moved a bit more quickly. By July 2020, Delta Air Lines was offering beer cans and single-serve wine bottles. It wasn't until March 2022 that it brought back hot meals for its Delta One and first-class customers on some flights.

Why did in-flight alcohol get the axe?

It's hard to peg just one reason why alcohol and hot meals disappeared on flights during the Covid-19 era. For some, it eliminated unnecessary lingering in the aisles while flight attendants took everyone's orders.

Others point to unprecedented rates of unruly passenger reports as the reason to remove alcohol in particular. In 2021, the Federal Aviation Administration initiated 1,099 investigations around unruly passengers.

That's up from just 183 in 2020, 149 in 2019 and 146 investigations in 2018, according to FAA data. And not all bad behaviour yields an investigation. In 2021, the FAA received reports of 4,290 mask-related incidents and 5,981 unruly passenger reports.

While it's unclear how many of those cases involved alcohol (or how many more there might be if alcohol was accessible), flight attendants suggest a correlation.

Some suspect the reason in-flight beverages got the boot comes down to money

An online survey of 5,000 flight attendants in summer 2021 by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, a union, showed that mask compliance and alcohol were among the most common factors in unruly passenger interactions. Additionally, 17 per cent of respondents reported experiencing at least one physical incident with a passenger.

Some suspect the reason in-flight beverages got the boot comes down to money. Airlines had sought to cut costs by culling refreshments long before the pandemic.

For instance, Frontier Airlines discontinued serving warm, gooey cookies on its flights back in 2012, stating that fresh cookie service 'does not align with either the perception or financial reality of the ultra-low-cost business model', according to a memo obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Today, refreshments are available on Frontier flights for purchase, but there are no freebies.

These days, travellers say that while service has largely returned, it's still been significantly reduced.

'Pre-Covid, United Airlines would always offer a drink before take-off, and flight attendants would continue to offer drinks during the flight,' says David Decker, an insurance executive and United Million Miler member.

'Currently, the flight attendants make the rounds after the plane has reached cruising altitude, but you are hard-pressed to find a flight attendant for a refill. I've seen some passengers even resort to ringing the flight attendant bell.'

How to save money on in-flight beverages

FAA regulations prohibit passengers from drinking alcohol on the aircraft unless it's served by a flight attendant

If you want to save money on in-flight refreshments, then the typical advice of 'pack your own snacks' likely won't apply on airplanes. In America, you can't bring liquids greater than 100ml (3.4 ounces) through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint, so unless you're drinking a straight espresso shot, there aren't a lot of beverage options you'll be allowed to get past security.

You can't sneak through your own small stashes of liquor, either - FAA regulations prohibit passengers from drinking alcohol on the aircraft unless it's served by a flight attendant.

These days, unless you're flying a budget airline, you'll likely no longer have to spend 5 ($6) on a soda in the airport terminal just to satisfy your carbonation cravings. If you can wait until after take-off, you could get it all as part of the cost of your airfare.

And as far as adult beverages go, here are additional ways to save...

Look for old airline coupons

Some airlines offer coupons for in-flight snacks and drinks to loyal customers. And though they tend to have expiration dates, many of those have been extended. For example, Southwest drink coupons that were set to expire in 2020 or 2021 (and can be redeemed for an alcoholic beverage) now don't expire until December 31, 2022.

Use airline credit card incidental credits

It's possible to use credit-card statement credits to bag in-flight refreshments

Many premium travel credit cards offer statement credits toward incidental airline fees. These fees are additional qualifying charges from your preferred airline beyond the actual airfare. What's considered a qualifying purchase can vary by credit card issuer, but they typically include checked bags, seat upgrades and - yes - in-flight refreshments.

Fly first class (for free!)

You're unlikely to be offered a free adult beverage in economy, but you will in the premium seats. On Delta, all Delta Comfort-plus and first-class customers receive complimentary beer and wine service. United offers complimentary alcoholic beverages in premium cabins, and Alaska Airlines offers complimentary alcohol in first class.

Premium cabins typically aren't cheap if you're paying a cash fare, but you might be able to finagle your way to an upgrade. There are a few tricks to getting a free upgrade on your flight, such as through holding airline elite status.

Early on in the pandemic, chasing elite status might not have been a smart money move given that many were travelling less and that perks were reduced. But while earning airline elite status is not exactly a walk in the park, it might be worth it these days if you travel often and fully use the benefits (like actually consuming in-flight alcohol).

This article originally appeared on the personal finance website NerdWallet run by San Francisco-based writer Sally French.
Married At First Sight bride Sharon Marsh is preparing to welcome her first child with longtime boyfriend Hal.

And the couple hosted a gender reveal party on Sunday to announce whether they are having a son or daughter.

Uploading a clip to her Instagram account, Sharon, 35, who was 'married' to Nick Furphy on season four of the dating show in 2017, revealed they are going to welcome a little boy.

Boy or girl? Married At First Sight bride Sharon Marsh, 35, (left) is expecting her first child with longtime boyfriend Hal (right). The couple announced the gender of their baby on Sunday during a gender reveal party

The couple filmed a video of themselves popping a black balloon filled with blue confetti - indicating they're having a boy.

'Hal & I are EXCITED to announce that we are 3 months along and having a little baby boy,' she wrote.

'With Hal standing 6'4 I don't think he'll stay little for long. I'm really looking forward to becoming a mumma with the support of our dear family and friends who already love him soo much!! I love you Hal.

Baby joy! Uploading a clip to her Instagram account, Sharon, who was 'married' to Nick Furphy on season four of the dating show in 2017, revealed they are going to welcome a little boy

Sharon's post was quickly inundated with comments from her reality star pals including Jesse Konstantinoff who was paired with her twin sister Michelle on MAFS.

'Massive congratulations,' he wrote alongside a red and blue heart.

Meanwhile, Beck Zemek who recently welcomed her first child with her boyfriend Ben Michell, also shared well wishes.

Congratulations! 'Hal & I are EXCITED to announce that we are 3 months along and having a little baby boy,' she captioned the post

Sharon rose to fame alongside her twin sister Michelle five years ago when they starred on Married At First Sight as the show's first 'twin brides'.

The Channel Nine show used the twin gimmick in promotional ads and billboards, purposely dressing the sisters in matching wedding gowns and accessories.

In 2018, Sharon and Michelle even used their newfound twin fame to strip completely topless for a photo shoot in Maxim Magazine.

Wedding day: Sharon (left) and Michelle (right) were both blonde brides when they wed their respective TV 'husbands' Nick Furphy and Jesse Konstantinoff on the popular Nine show

In 2018, Sharon revealed the major mistake made by the TV matchmakers that often leads to heartbreak between their chosen couples.

The socialite blamed the dating experts for pairing up contestants who lived in different states.

Sharon briefly relocated from Perth to Melbourne to be with carpenter Nick, but their romance didn't last.
She's one of Australia's most recognised TV personalities over the last 20 years.

And this year, Seven Network's Sonia Kruger is being recognised for her efforts with a Gold Logie nomination for Most Popular Personality.

'It's been a while coming,' the 56-year-old, who's hosted shows like Big Brother Australia, The Voice and Dancing with the Stars, told TV Tonight on Monday.

Sonia Kruger, 40, (pictured) has said 'it's high time' a woman won the Gold Logie Award, as she competes for the Most Popular Personality gong this year

'I mean, I just turned 40 for crying out loud. But seriously, ANY excuse to go to the Gold Coast, I'm there.'

Sonia is up against Today's Karl Stefanovic, Tom Gleeson of Hard Quiz, Home and Away's Ray Meagher, I'm A Celebrity's Julia Morris, Masterchef's Melissa Leong and television funnyman Hamish Blake.

'I mean, I just turned 40 for crying out loud. But seriously, ANY excuse to go to the Gold Coast, I'm there,' she told TV Tonight on Monday

The TV presenter noted that most of the male nominees have already taken home a Gold Logie in the past, and insisted the women deserve a chance this year.

'It's high time for one of the girls to get a turn,' she added.

'And it's not a popularity contest but I did host every show on Channel Seven last year and deserve it more than everyone else,' she joked.

Sonia has been a prominent TV personality over the last 20 years, hosting The Voice, Big Brother and Dancing with the Stars

Sonia also claimed veteran Home And Away star Ray Meagher should earn the award if she doesn't win.

Sonia's pitch to win comes after her fellow nominee, Karl, spoke to TV Tonight of his infamous moment of hosting the Today Show while still drunk after the Logie Awards in 2009.

'I think everyone needs to see me the next day on The Today Show to see how I scrub up after I win,' he said.

'Actually, it will be the same if I don't!'

The 62nd TV Week Logie Awards air this Sunday, June 19 from 7pm on Nine.
Sebastian Stan and Seth Rogen beamed as they posed together at a For Your Consideration event for their Hulu biographical drama miniseries Pam & Tommy.

Sebastian, 39, donned a black leather jacket while Seth, 40, rocked platinum blonde-dyed hair on the red carpet at the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles.

The actors were joined by other members of the cast and the production team on the panel at the Clips + Conversation event on Sunday.

Costars: Sebastian Stan and Seth Rogen beamed as they posed together at a For Your Consideration event for their Hulu biographical drama miniseries Pam & Tommy

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star layered the jacket over a robin's egg blue button-up dress shirt.

The Romania native completed his ensemble with dark brown trousers and white and green sneakers.

The MCU regular wore his brunette hair in a tousled style and sported a light scruff.

Red carpet ready: Sebastian, 39, donned a black leather jacket over a robin's egg blue button-up dress shirt with dark brown trousers

Seth was clad in a light yellow t-shirt with khaki pants along with beige and white slide shoes.

The stand up comedian sported black-framed eyeglasses and a salt and pepper beard.

The Knocked Up performer's cropped bleached blonde hair was slicked back from his forehead with gel.

New look! Seth, 40, rocked platinum blonde-dyed hair on the red carpet at the El Capital Theatre in Los Angeles

Seth's new hairstyle was quite a departure from his usual brunette look. It was not clear if the actor had dyed his hair for his role in the upcoming Apple+ series Platonic, which he is currently filming in Los Angeles.

In Pam & Tommy, Lily James and Sebastian transformed their appearances to play the real-life titular characters of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.

The show followed the story of the leak of the former couple's sex tape in 1997, which led to devastation for the Nineties pin-up and Motley Crue rocker when their intimate moment spread across the Internet for anyone to view.

Getting into character: It was not clear if the actor had dyed his hair for his role in the upcoming Apple+ series Platonic, which he is currently filming in Los Angeles

Biographical: In Pam & Tommy, Lily James and Sebastian transformed their appearances to play the real-life titular characters of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. Seth played Rand Gauthier, the porn actor-turned-electrician who stole Pamela and Tommy's sex tape

Motive: The sex tape was stolen by Rand after Tommy refused to pay for work that he had performed on their house. Sebastian and Seth pictured with executive producers Robert Siegel and D.V. DeVincentis

Seth played Rand Gauthier, the porn actor-turned-electrician who stole Pamela and Tommy's sex tape.

The series also starred Nick Offerman, who played Rand's associate, Uncle Miltie, and Taylor Schilling, who played Rand's porn star wife Erica.

The sex tape was stolen by Rand after Tommy refused to pay for work that he had performed on their house.

Critical acclaim: Pam & Tommy was released on February 2 and received positive reviews from critics

When Gauthier confronted the musician about not being paid the $20,000 he was owed, Tommy pulled out a gun to scare him away. Gauthier took his revenge by stealing the giant safe that had been kept in the couple's garage, which mainly housed the drummer's guns and Pamela's jewelry, in addition to the sex tape.

Pamela, 54, and Tommy, 59, tied the knot on a beach in Mexico in 1995 after dating for just four days. At the time, her mother hadn't met Tommy. They went on to have sons Brandon, 24, and Dylan, 22, and divorced in 1998.

Pam & Tommy was released on February 2 and received positive reviews from critics.

The eight-episode series was written by executive producers Rob Siegel and DV DeVincentis, and directed by executive producer Craig Gillespie.

The show was also executive produced by Seth, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver and Alex McAtee at Point Grey, and Megan Ellison, Sue Naegle and Ali Krug at Annapurna and Dylan Sellers, Dave Franco, Chip Vucelich and Sarah Gubbins.

Not a fan: Last May, insiders claimed that the Pam thinks Pam & Tommy is 'a joke and cheap knock-off.' She called the show 'God awful,' though the series had just begun filming

Fury: The sex tape was stolen by Rand after Tommy refused to pay for work that he had performed on their house
TikTok creator Addison Rae bared her belly in a cleavage-boosting bustier for a mystery shoot in Los Angeles on Saturday.

The 21-year-old influencer paired the Army-green corset top with a belted beige skirt selected by 'wardrobe scientists' Chloe & Chenelle Delgadillo.

Addison accessorized her sexy yet casual attire with a gold choker and large hoop earrings.

New gig! TikTok creator Addison Rae bared her belly in a cleavage-boosting bustier for a mystery shoot in Los Angeles on Saturday

Hairstylist Kiley Fitzgerald coiffed Rae's (last name Easterling) waist-length extensions fastened by Priscilla Valles.

Make-up artist Lilly Keys applied the Louisiana-born brunette's blue eye shadow and brought out her natural bushy brows.

Nail artist Natalie Minerva applied Addison's 'classic red' manicure for the night shoot, during which she indulged in a can of Coca-Cola.

Rae - who boasts 138.2M social media followers - captioned her on-set slideshow with a clapboard emoji and the coy question: 'Guess what?'

Costume? The 21-year-old influencer paired the Army-green corset top with a belted beige skirt selected by 'wardrobe scientists' Chloe & Chenelle Delgadillo

Details: Addison accessorized her sexy yet casual attire with a gold choker and large hoop earrings

A little help: Hairstylist Kiley Fitzgerald coiffed Rae's (last name Easterling) waist-length extensions fastened by Priscilla Valles

'A dream day': Make-up artist Lilly Keys applied the Louisiana-born brunette's blue eye shadow and brought out her natural bushy brows

'#set': Nail artist Natalie Minerva applied Addison's 'classic red' manicure for the night shoot, during which she indulged in a can of Coca-Cola

Rae - who boasts 138.2M social media followers - captioned her on-set slideshow with a clapboard emoji and the coy question: 'Guess what?'

The ITEM Beauty founder received glowing comments from The Bubble actress Iris Apatow, Kylie Jenner collaborator Anastasia 'Stassie' Karanikolaou, and Canadian songstress Tate McRae.

It's unclear if Addison's project is the same one she was attending dance rehearsals for last Friday.

If it's not a music video or some paid promotion, Rae might have begun working on Paramount Players' studio flick Fashionista she signed on to star in February 22.

'Hot!' The ITEM Beauty founder received glowing comments from The Bubble actress Iris Apatow, Kylie Jenner collaborator Anastasia 'Stassie' Karanikolaou, and Canadian songstress Tate McRae

'Vibes': It's unclear if Addison's project is the same one she was attending dance rehearsals for last Friday

'2/22/22': If it's not a music video or some paid promotion, Rae might have begun working on Paramount Players studio flick Fashionista she signed on to star in February 22

Back together: Fashionista will reunite the Obsessed songstress with her He's All That producers Jennifer Gibgot (L, pictured in 2020) and Andrew Panay (M)

According to Deadline, Fashionista will reunite the Obsessed songstress with her He's All That producers Jennifer Gibgot and Andrew Panay.

On September 8, Addison inked a multi-picture deal with Netflix following the success of the dismally-reviewed high school rom-com, which was a gender-swapped remake of Robert Iscove's 1999 flick She's All That.

On the personal front, Rae has been romancing three-time Grammy-nominated music producer Omer Fedi since Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker introduced the pair June 19, 2021 at a Venice Beach pop-up concert.
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At 72, you would forgive him for wanting nothing more than to relax on the beach while on holiday.

But an energetic Richard Gere showed no sign of taking it easy as he spent time with his wife and two sons in Spain.

The Pretty Woman actor was spotted diving into the sea off a yacht and later laughing as he dashed around on a jet ski on the island of Formentera.

Big splash: Richard Gere takes a breather on a yacht after diving into the sea of the coast of a Spanish island

Love: He and his wife Alejandra Silva, 39, were also seen embracing and holding hands during a walk along the sand

He and his wife Alejandra Silva, 39, were also seen embracing and holding hands during a walk along the sand.

The Hollywood star  who set pulses racing in his breakout role as an escort in 1980s movie American Gigolo  became a father for the third time in April 2020 when Miss Silva gave birth to their second son.

The pair had their first child Alexander in 2019, and Gere has 22-year-old son Homer with his ex-wife, model Carey Lowell.

Fit: The Hollywood star  who set pulses racing in his breakout role as an escort in 1980s movie American Gigolo  became a father for the third time in April 2020 when Miss Silva gave birth to their second son

Movie heartthrob: Gere looking lean in American Gigolo in 1980

Miss Silva is also mother to a nine-year-old son with her ex-husband Govind Friedland, the son of American mining magnate Robert Friedland.

Gere and his wife initially had a long-distance romance, splitting their time between America and Spain but now live in New York.

The young family recently moved into a 7.9million 35-acre estate after downsizing from Gere's nearby palatial mansion which was put on the market for 22.4million.

Beach date: Richard Gere and wife Alejandra Silva relax on the Balearic island of Formentera

Action man: He dashes through the waves on jet ski

Exes: Miss Silva is also mother to a nine-year-old son with her ex-husband Govind Friedland, the son of American mining magnate Robert Friedland

Chilling: The family were having a great time together

Tough: Gere and his wife initially had a long-distance romance, splitting their time between America and Spain but now live in New York

Safety: He put his life jacket on

Fate: They then reconnected in 2014 in Positano, Italy, where she was running a luxury hotel

Toned: He looked great at 72

Romance: Gere married the Spanish publicist in May 2018 near New York in a low-key civil ceremony

Cooling off: He took a refreshing dip in the sea

The seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom, red-brick Northshire manor is located an hour north of Manhattan in an affluent enclave of Westchester County, North Salem, New York.

Miss Silva previously revealed she believed karma had brought the couple back together after they first met when she was a 'little girl' and the actor borrowed a boat from her businessman father, Ignacio Silva.

They then reconnected in 2014 in Positano, Italy, where she was running a luxury hotel.

Gere married the Spanish publicist in May 2018 near New York in a low-key civil ceremony.

Property: The young family recently moved into a 7.9million 35-acre estate after downsizing from Gere's nearby palatial mansion which was put on the market for 22.4million

Chilling out: They were relaxing on the sand

Swimming shorts: He wore blue trunks and a grey cap

Romantic: They strolled hand in hand

Bikini body: She wore a blue two piece as she relaxed on the boat

Views: Richard looked out to sea

Family time: They were spending quality time with their children

Life: He began in films in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar and a starring role in Days of Heaven

Holiday time: Going shirtless out in the sweltering heat of the Spanish island, Richard and Alejandra along with their kids Homer and Alexander had some fun in the sun

Steps: He headed down into the water

Shades: He covered his eyes

Water sports: He proved he was still as active as ever

Happy days: They strolled together in the sun

Sporty guy: He wasted no time getting on the jet ski

Sun tan: They were working on their bronzed glows

Shirtless: His ageless physique was on display


Hanjin KAL, the holding company of South Korea's air transportation conglomerate Hanjin Group, said Monday it is selling its entire stake in its budget carrier unit to its flagship Korean Air Lines, a move seen as intended at streamlining the structure before completing a merger with a smaller domestic rival.







Hanjin KAL said the decision, approved at a board meeting earlier in the day, will involve the sale of its 54.91 percent stake, or about 28.6 million shares, to Korean Air, for roughly 604.8 billion won ($470 million).







The sale, which will be completed by Wednesday, will return Jin Air to Korean Air as its subsidiary about nine years after the low-cost carrier was reorganized under Hanjin KAL's wing amid Hanjin's restructuring efforts for a turnaround from financial troubles.







Jin Air was established by Korean Air as a wholly-owned subsidiary in 2008.







Hanjin's latest move appears intended at reorganizing the governance structure so as to resolve regulatory problems as it is undergoing the process to merge its Korean Air with Asiana Airlines.





Hanjin is pushing to launch an integrated lineup of low-cost carriers once the mega merger is completed, by combining Jin Air with Asiana's two budget carriers  Air Busan and Air Seoul. (Yonhap)










Michael Jackson's children Prince and Paris Jackson paid tribute to their late father at the 75th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Sunday.

Taking to the stage, Prince told the audience: 'A lot of people seem to think our dad Michael Jackson changed popular music forever,' before adding: 'And who are we to disagree?'

He continued: 'But what people may not know is he loved musicals, on film and on the stage. That's why we are so incredibly honored to introduce the night's first nominee for best musical, MJ, which, using many of his iconic hits, looks at the complexities and brilliance of our father's process.'

Stylish pair: Michael Jackson's children Prince and Paris Jackson looked stylish as they hit the red carpet at the 75th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Sunday

Earlier on in the evening, the brother and sister duo turned heads as they arrived in style on the red carpet.

Paris, 24, looked incredible in a floor-length off-shoulder nude gown that showcased her colorful arm tattoos, featuring sparkly silver chain stripes running throughout the bodice.

Meanwhile Prince, 25, was dapper in an all-black look that included a black shirt under a suit and tie, and matching dress shoes.

He wore his long dark tresses pinned back, and sported a smattering of facial hair to the event.

Like her brother, Paris also pinned her blonde strands partly to the back in a loose bohemian style, but left some strands to frame her face.

The young model and actress accessorized the look with a multitude of bracelets and rings on her fingers.

Stunner: Paris, 24, looked incredible in a floor-length off-shoulder nude gown that showcased her colorful arm tattoos, featuring sparkly silver chain stripes running throughout the bodice

Dapper: Meanwhile Prince, 25, was dapper in an all-black look that included a black shirt under a suit and tie, and matching dress shoes

She wore edgy makeup for the occasion, sporting dark shade of matte lipstick and shimmery bronze eyeshadow.

The brother and sister duo were spotted embracing Myles Frost, who portrays their father on MJ the Musical, a Broadway show about the making of Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour.

The show is nominated for 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Myles is also nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.

Myles, 22, sported a snazzy look, wearing a Michael-reminiscent high-collar black jacket with black beading on the structured shoulders.

Glamorous: Paris pinned her blonde strands partly to the back in a loose bohemian style, but left some strands to frame her face

Cool girl: The young model and actress accessorized the look with a multitude of bracelets and rings on her fingers

He finalized the look with a pair of round silver sunglasses and sparkling black and silver loafers.

During the ceremony Paris and Prince introduced Myles to the stage, along with the rest of the cast, as they performed a dance number from the musical.

The trio were also seen posing with actor Antwayn Hopper, the star of A Strange Loop, which is also nominated for best musical.

Hopper wore a fantastical open-front white and gold high-collar top that showed off his buff chest, with matching white pants and a tulle train.

Young MJ: They were spotted posing with Myles Frost, who portrays their father on MJ the Musical, a Broadway show about the making of Jackson's 1992 Dangerous World Tour

Sweet: Paris was seen giving Myles - who is nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role - a tender hug

Prince also took to his Instagram Stories ahead of the event and posted a sweet video of him and Paris.

'Wow you look so pretty! Making me look bad,' he complimented his sibling as she stepped out of the elevator and playfully stuck out her tongue at him.

He also shared a lovely snap with his girlfriend Molly Schirmang, who looked to be wearing a cleavage-baring black dress.

'Fancy Smancy,' he captioned the cute snap of the couple, who have been dating since 2017, after meeting at university.

Fashionable four: The trio were also seen posing with actor Antwayn Hopper

Flair: Hopper wore a fantastical open-front white and gold high-collar top that showed off his buff chest, with matching white pats and a tulle train

Talented: He stars in A Strange Loop, which is also nominated for best musical

The 75th Annual Tony Awards is celebrating achievement in Broadway productions during the 202122 season.

This year's ceremony takes place at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, hosted by West Side Story star Ariana DeBose.

The nominations were revealed last month, with Michael R. Jackson's musical A Strange Loop leading the pack with an impressive 11 nominations, including Best Music, Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical.

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson jukebox musical MJ The Musical and Paradise Square also dominated with 10 nominations each, while The Legman Trilogy was the most nominated play.

Having fun: Prince also took to his Instagram Stories ahead of the event and posted a sweet video of him and Paris

Pretty: 'Wow you look so pretty! Making me look bad,' he complimented his sibling as she stepped out of the elevator and playfully stuck out her tongue at him

Major stars, including Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster ('The Music Man'), Billy Crystal ('Mr. Saturday Night'), and Sam Rockwell ('American Buffalo') are up for acting nominations.

Notably, Daniel Craig's turn as Macbeth is absent from the nominations list, however, his co-star Ruth Negga has a nod for Best Performance By An Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for her part as Lady Macbeth.

Oscar-winner DeBose called the honor of hosting the prestigious event 'a dream come true' when it was announced last month.

In a statement, she said: 'I'm coming home! I'm so honored to celebrate 75 years of excellence in theatre, but more importantly every member of this community who poured themselves into making sure the lights of Broadway have the opportunity to shine brightly once again!'

With his girl: He also shared a lovely snap with his girlfriend Molly Schirmang, who looked to be wearing a cleavage-baring black dress
If she wanted to stand out from the crowd, Heather Mills certainly made sure of it. The former model was simply unmissable in a striking crimson jumpsuit, with matching umbrella and bag. Even her nails were painted a deep blood red shade.

The 54-year-old entrepreneur and campaigner  who was married to Sir Paul McCartney from 2002 to 2008  was keynote speaker at a business convention at The Grand Brighton where she discussed the benefits of being vegan.

The mother-of-one, who previously lived in the seaside town, was pictured after the event as she made her way through the streets back to her car.

Miss Millss public profile diminished following her infamously bitter divorce from Sir Paul, 79, in 2008.

The mother-of-one, who previously lived in the seaside town, was pictured after the event as she made her way through the streets back to her car

The 54-year-old entrepreneur and campaigner  who was married to Sir Paul McCartney from 2002 to 2008  was keynote speaker at a business convention at The Grand Brighton where she discussed the benefits of being vegan

Despite vowing to never marry again, she reportedly wed her third husband, film producer Mike Dickman at the end of last year.

The pair were said to have met while on a train journey from Kent to London in 2019 and got engaged about 18 months later.

Miss Mills married Sir Paul in 2002 before separating four years later and then divorcing acrimoniously in March 2008.

She was awarded 24.3million after the split. She had reportedly sought more than a quarter of his fortune, said to have been around 400million at the time.

Miss Mills married Sir Paul in 2002 before separating four years later and then divorcing acrimoniously in March 2008

The pair share 18-year-old daughter, Beatrice.

Sir Paul went on to marry his third wife Nancy Shevell, 62, in 2011.

Over the past decade, Miss Mills has become a regular guest speaker at seminars across the UK.

In 2018, Miss Mills, who grew up in Northumberland, bought the old Walker Crisps factory in County Durham and announced plans to ramp up production of her vegan brand VBites foods at the site and create new jobs.

She turned vegan after a car accident left her needing her leg amputated after sustaining serious injuries in a collision with a police motorbike back in 1993.
Love Island Aftersun teased a very heated row between Andrew Le Page and Luca Bish which is set to air on Monday's show.

A teaser clip of the episode saw the guys locking horns over Tasha Ghouri's chat with new hunk Jacques O'Neill, with Luca insisting that Andrew should care more.

But as they squabbled over the situation, a frustrated Andrew fumed: 'you havent listened to a word Ive said!' before storming off after the fish seller suggested he didn't really like the model.

Tensions brewing: Love Island Aftersun teased a very heated row between Andrew Le Page and Luca Bish which is set to air on Monday's show

The drama began as the islanders sat around the firepit eating crisps when they spotted Tasha having a friendly chat with the newcomer, with Andre remarking he 'couldnt care less'.

Amid his own issue's with Jacques being in the villa with his ex-girlfriend Gemma Owen - whom he's paired up with - Luca suggested that Andrew wasn't telling the truth and that he cares more than he lets on.

Dami Hope was then quick to step in to diffuse the growing tension, telling Luca: 'Man doesnt care, he doesnt care. Let it go Luca.'

Drama: A teaser clip of the episode saw the guys locking horns over Tasha Ghouri's chat with new hunk Jacques O'Neill, with Luca insisting that Andrew should care more

And as Luca continued to insist that Andrew was indeed bothered, Dami replied: 'You would care Luca, but Andrews Andrew. Youre Luca.'

Telling Andrew what he really thought, Luca then ranted: 'I would admit Im upset. Literally, youre just denying f***ing facts.

'Youll shoot yourself in the foot if she hears anything youve said. Its all b*******, of course youre going to care!'

To which a fed up Andrew replied: 'You havent listened to a word Ive said.'

He's off! But as they squabbled over the situation, a frustrated Andrew fumed: 'you havent listened to a word Ive said!' before storming off after the fish seller suggested he didn't really like the model

With things frosty between the pair, Luca then went on to utter: 'You obviously dont like her that much.'

The words clearly touched a nerve with Andrew as he got up and stormed off, leaving the other islanders in shock over the awkward confrontation.

Meanwhile on Sunday, Ekin-Su Culculoglu got plenty of action as she put the moves on new boy Jacques, just hours after her passionate snog with Davide Sanclimenti.

Cosy: The drama began as the islanders sat around the firepit eating crisps when they spotted Tasha having a friendly chat with the newcomer, with Andre remarking he 'couldnt care less'

Opinion: Telling Andrew what he really thought, Luca then ranted: 'I would admit Im upset. Literally, youre just denying f***ing facts'

Awkward! The words clearly touched a nerve with Andrew as he got up and stormed off, leaving the other islanders in shock over the awkward confrontation

The actress made her intentions clear as she flirted up a storm with Gemma's ex-boyfriend shortly after he entered the villa as a bombshell contestant.

But she could have some competition on her hands as Gemma admitted to the girls that she still 'fancies' her ex, despite insisting she's fine with him moving on to other girls.

Following the recoupling, Ekin-Su grafted Italian stallion Davide, where she planted several kisses on him as she said: 'I just want to give you a thank you.'

But her head was turned just hours after as Cumbrian-born rugby player strolled into the villa, where he immediately enjoyed a date with both Paige and Afia.

Fast mover: Meanwhile on Sunday, Ekin-Su Culculoglu got plenty of action as she put the moves on new boy Jacques, just hours after her passionate snog with Davide Sanclimenti

As Gemma later came face-to-face with her ex, she jokingly called him a d**khead' before hugging him.

Later with the girls, she admitted that 'I still do fancy him' and said how 'fit' he was, although she was quick to insist that there's nothing between them anymore and she 'feels no way' about the girls cracking on with him.

She said: 'I don't know, it feels weird but I look at him and I still do fancy him, 100% I look at him and think "you are fit!" no question about it. But I'm not bothered about anyone getting to know him.'

Feelings? But she could have some competition on her hands as Gemma admitted to the girls that she still 'fancies' her ex, despite insisting she's fine with him moving on to other girls

And it appeared that Ekin-Su got the message as she was seen seductively strutting past Jacques in the bedroom, with the hunk certainly noticing her before following her outside.

The two then sat down for a chat with Ekin-Su proceeding to flirt, telling him: 'if you had came in here earlier, I would have wanted to get to know you too.'

While in the Beach Hut she confessed she found him 'attractive' before adding: 'It's only fair I get to know him.'

Love Island continues on Monday at 9pm on ITV2 and ITV Hub. Episodes are available the following morning on BritBox.

Kiss kiss: Following the recoupling, Ekin-Su grafted Italian stallion Davide, where she planted several kisses on him as she said: 'I just want to give you a thank you'

Fresh meat: But her head was turned just hours after as Cumbrian-born rugby player strolled into the villa, where he immediately enjoyed a date with both Paige and Afia

Reunited: Later with the girls, she admitted that 'I still do fancy him' and said how 'fit' he was, although she was quick to insist that there's nothing between them anymore and she 'feels no way' about the girls cracking on with him
His near two-decade career has made him one of Australia's most recognised TV and radio personalities.

But Hamish Blake has laughed off his success despite being nominated for a Gold Logie Award for the second time in 10 years.

'It's funny, you've got to laugh. It's surreal,' the LEGO Masters host, 40, told TV WEEK ahead of Logie Awards on the Gold Coast next week.

Hamish Blake, 40, (left) says he feels like an 'imposter' among his fellow Gold Logie Award nominees including Karl Stefanovic (right)

'I feel like I'm a bit of an imposter, because I don't feel like I do that much on TV. I just rock up to a shed and yell out times while people build LEGO.'

'I look at someone like Ray [Meagher], he's been doing that show [Home And Away] for 37 years; Karl [Stefanovic, co-host of Today] is up every morning; Sonia [Kruger] is hosting 25 different shows; MasterChef is on for 900 episodes a year. I feel like I've kind of snuck in,' he explained.

Hamish acknowledged that while his career - and personal life- has changed since winning Gold in 2012, he remains humble by it all.

'I feel like I'm a bit of an imposter, because I don't feel like I do that much on TV. I just rock up to a shed and yell out times while people build LEGO,' he told TV Week. Pictured (L-R) with Ray Meagher and Karl Stefanovic

Hamish is up for two gongs including Bert Newton Award for Most Popular Presenter and Gold Logie against I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here's Julia Morris, Karl Stefanovic, Melissa Leong, Ray Meagher, Sonia Kruger and Tom Gleeson.

It comes just after it was revealed that Hamish and his wife Zoe Foster Blake, 41, have reportedly set their sights set on starting a new life in Los Angeles.

'Hamish and Zoe have always loved visiting Los Angeles and could see themselves buying a family bolthole in Hollywood, but the time has never been right,' an insider told Woman's Day in March.

It comes just after it was revealed that Hamish and his wife Zoe Foster Blake, 41, (right) have reportedly set their sights set on starting a new life in Los Angeles

However, Hamish and Zoe, who were recently named Tourism Australia ambassadors, now believe the stars have aligned.

'Zoe's beauty brand Go-To blowing up in the US, and Hamish being not as a busy as he usually is, there's never been a better time to really make a go of it,' the source said.

The insider also claimed that Hamish's managers believe he could be Hollywood's next breakout star, and will be 'pitching him for everything over there'.

'Hamish and Zoe have always loved visiting Los Angeles and could see themselves buying a family bolthole in Hollywood, but the time has never been right,' an insider told Woman's Day in March

Hamish and Zoe married in 2012, and are parents to two children, son Sonny, seven, and daughter Rudy, four.

In August last year, it was revealed that Zoe had sold off a controlling stake in her Go-To skincare company for $89million.

The beauty mogul sold a 50.1 per cent share to ASX-listed company BWX.

The skincare company was established by the former magazine journalist in 2014, and generated $36.8million in revenue in 2020 alone.
Alec Baldwin hailed his late mother Carol Baldwin following her funeral in a clip he posted to Instagram Sunday.

'I wanted to say thank you very much to to everyone that wished me well about my mom who passed away on 26th of May, and her funeral was yesterday up in Syracuse on the 11th, and both of those things went as well as one might have expected,' the Oscar-nominated actor, 64, said as he was seated on a couch near a window in the clip.

Baldwin said his mother's final days and the weeks after have been 'handled very lovingly and very kindly' by family and friends.

The latest: Alec Baldwin, 64, hailed his late mother Carol Baldwin following her funeral in a clip he posted to Instagram Sunday

'Everyone who was close to my mother and my family, who lived in that area, who could make it, they were in the room with her when she passed,' he said. 'And she was truly, truly - Ive heard people say "Surrounded by their loved ones" when they died - and in my mother's case, it was certainly true.'

Carol 'was surrounded by her family and everyone in that area - just a handful of us, myself included - were on our way to Syracuse when she went very rapidly after a certain point,' the 30 Rock alum said.

Baldwin lauded his late mother's efforts toward breast cancer awareness, support and research over the past 25 years, saying she 'had a huge impact ... in the Central New York area, not just in Syracuse but beyond.

'When she had her fundraising event in Syracuse every year, people came from pretty far away, all over Central New York from Buffalo to Albany down to Rochester.'

The Oscar-nominated actor reflected on his mother's passing in a poignant clip

Carol Baldwin was seen attending Alec Baldwin's wedding to Hilaria in June of 2012 in NYC

The Baldwin family matriarch died May 26 in her native Syracuse, New York

He continued: 'They had a very good outreach and they had a great impact on the survivor community, counseling women who were preparing for surgery or who are facing the disease, regardless of the outcome my mother and her organization - on Long Island originally and then with another chapter in Central New York - they were there to help many many women face the difficult reality of breast cancer.'

The Glengarry Glen Ross star he's very proud of his mother, his sister Beth and the rest of his family who have worked 'very hard to help women to confront, and then to adjust, to the outcomes of breast cancer.'

Baldwin wrapped up his poignant remembrance of his mother in saying, 'Im proud of my mom and Im very sorry that she is not in the world any longer to help people but she is certainly, I think its easy to say these days, she is certainly in a better place than any of us right now while were still here.

'She is certainly in a better place than any of us in the world today. So thank you again to everyone and their good wishes, thanks.'

The Glengarry Glen Ross star he's very proud of his mother, his sister Beth and the rest of his family who have worked 'very hard to help women to confront, and then to adjust, to the outcomes of breast cancer'

The actor and his mother were pictured in NYC in November of 2002

Alec announced his mother's May 26 passing in an Instagram post, noting how she is survived by her six children, 25 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.

'Carol M. Baldwin, mother of actors Alec, Daniel, William and Stephen Baldwin and two daughters, Elizabeth and Jane, died today in Syracuse, New York,' he said.

He noted how 'in 1991, she was diagnosed with breast cancer' and 'after she survived, she joined with a group of Long Island-wide breast cancer support groups to launch an effort with SUNY Stony Brook,' with her Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund.

Alec said that 'the combined efforts have raised millions of dollars for the cause.'

He said his mother taught him 'about second acts ... and third ones, too,' and that 'she spent the last 25 years of her life as a fighter and a champion for the cause to which she devoted her life.'

Baldwin said his mother 'is certainly in a better place than any of us in the world today'
Masterchef Australia judge Melissa Leong has spoken about the cultural importance of her Logie Award nomination.

The 40-year-old, who is of Chinese-Singaporean ethnicity, told Monday's TV Week magazine that being tapped for a gold Logie for Most Popular Personality is a 'huge step in the right direction' for diversity.

'While there's a tremendous sense of achievement in the Gold Logie, what's more meaningful is that no woman of colour has won,' she told the magazine.

MasterChef Australia judge Melissa Leong, 40, (pictured) has revealed why her Gold Logie nomination is a 'huge step' for women of colour

'Just to be nominated is a massive achievement.'

Melissa also noted the importance of her nomination in Australia's multicultural society, adding that it's a 'distinct honour' and huge 'symbol' to people who haven't seen people like themselves be portrayed in the media.

'Had it been someone else, I'd be applauding the loudest, because we need this as a nation,' she continued.

The 40-year-old, who is of Chinese-Singaporean ethnicity, told Monday's TV Week magazine that being tapped for a gold Logie for Most Popular Personality is a 'huge step in the right direction' for diversity. Pictured with MasterChef co-stars Andy Allen and Jock Zonfrillo

The cookbook editor also penned a heartfelt Instagram post about her nomination on Monday, while also sending her best wishes to her fellow nominees.

'I probably haven't said enough about what it means to be grouped together with such wonderfully talented, beloved and hard working people as these,' she wrote.

'Well, it means a lot. Each story to get here is hard earned and well worth the gold.

Melissa's competitors are TV stars (L-R) Karl Stefanovic, Julia Morris, Hamish Blake, Tom Gleeson, Sonia Kruger and Ray Meagher

'And if the sentiment of 'Surround yourself with brilliant people because you are the company you keep.' is true, then right here is exactly where I want to be.

'Wishing you all the best and thanks for having me in the squad! See you on the Goldie this weekend!'

Melissa is up for the Gold Logie alongside Karl Stefanovic, Tom Gleeson, Ray Meagher, Julia Morris, Sonia Kruger and Hamish Blake.

She has also been nominated for a Silver Logie for Most Popular Presenter; against Carrie Bickmore, Leigh Sales and again Tom , Sonia and Hamish.

The TV star said she never believed she would receive a nomination when she found out she'd been shortlisted last month.

The TV star said she never believed she would receive a nom when she found out she'd been shortlisted last month.

'Ten year old Mel would never have dreamed a weird, late bloomer outcast migrant kid like me would be nominated for a bloody GOLD LOGIE and a silver for most popular presenter,' she wrote to Instagram on May 15.

'Let alone the show I am on to be nominated for most popular and most outstanding reality shows! That's 4 NOMINATIONS FOR @masterchefau!!

'I am beyond blown away, we did it, team!'

Melissa is being recognised for her recent work on Network 10's Masterchef Australia

Several of her fans and followers congratulated Melissa in the comments and said her recognition is well-deserved.

'Congrats Melissa and why wouldn't you be nominated!' MasterChef Singapore judge Audra Morrice wrote.

'You my dear represent diversity in so many ways... And to have the strength of character to be authentic and to wear your heart on your sleeve, I take my hat off to you gorgeous!'
Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story

Rating:

Grenfell

Rating:

There is very little combat footage from the Falklands War. Today, in an era of battlefield drone video and bodycams on infantry, that seems archaic.

Without pictures, most of us cant imagine what the fighting was like. We need to hear it described  and Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story (BBC2) did an outstanding job of coaxing ten veterans to recount their memories in explicit detail.

Christopher Stevens gave Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story a five star review, the documentary interview veterans of the war

Some of these men had never talked in depth about their experiences, even to their wives or parents. My coping mechanism was to put it to the back of my mind and never go there, said former Royal Marine Kevin Woodford, who lost a leg.

Others resented how, after the Task Force returned from the 25-day land war in 1982, they were expected to tell war stories on demand for any stranger who bought them a beer. Ex-Para Terry Wood grinned: I remember pouring one pint over a guys head in a pub in Streatham and saying: What, you think you can pick my brains for a pint of lager?

There was no romance or derring-do about these stories. Descriptions of storming trenches at Goose Green, and the carnage aboard the bombed-out troop ship Sir Galahad, were visceral and brutal.

With only shaky, long-lens newsreel and still photos to illustrate these accounts, most of the focus was on the faces of the men as they talked. Sometimes their voices shook with emotion. But it was when a mans face turned stony and his words dropped to a whisper that the struggle was hardest.

Brew-up of the weekend: Drug dealer Christian (Gamba Cole) got a choice of teas at his solicitors office in The Outlaws (BBC1). Theres mint, green, lapsang souchong, oolong or lemon, ginger and manuka honey, offered the lawyer. Bad news, no ginseng. I suppose PG Tips is out of the question? Advertisement

One Para described stripping the clothes from a dead comrade because his own were soaked through and frozen. Another tried to explain the feeling that, having convinced himself in battle that he couldnt be hurt because he was already dead, he had never felt since that he was fully alive.

Though theyre in their 60s now, these men retained the unquench-able sense of humour common to soldiers. The documentary crew played up to that, giving ex-Para and SAS trooper Spud Ely a set of silver cruets to move around a dining table as he set out troop positions.

Spud looked like a general reliving a Napoleonic battle, and the wry smile on his face said he knew it. Former Scots Guards officer Robert Lawrence described the sensation of being shot through the skull. What was going through your head? the interviewer asked mischievously.

Lawrence, who was played by Colin Firth in the BBC drama Tumbledown, took the bait. A 7.62 high velocity bullet, he retorted.

The single failing of Grenfell (C4), based on transcripts of the official inquiry into the London tower block blaze that killed 72 people in 2017, was that the first part had only one such first-hand account.

Part of Channel 4's Grenfell (pictured) was filmed in front of a theatre audience

Firefighter David Badillo (played here by Daniel Betts) verged on breaking down as he described how he was beaten back by heat and smoke as he tried to save a 13-year-old boy. It was like someone had poured petrol down the side of the building, Badillo said. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

But the victims themselves, in the first part of this stage production filmed in front of a theatre audience, were represented by showboating lawyers, and their own voices were not heard.

It was left to former newsreader Jon Snow, in a short introduction, to put a human face to the tragedy. He remembered presenting an award to talented young writer Firdaws Hashim, aged 12.

When he learned that, along with her father Hashim Kedir, this promising child had died in the inferno, I burst into tears, Snow said.
Pregnant Bachelor star Tara Pavlovic has hit back at trolls who questioned why she wore white to fellow Bachelor alumnus Cobie Frost's wedding to longtime fiance Chris Whearty on Friday.

Cobie exchanged vows with her partner of five years Chris in an intimate ceremony in Montville.

Tara showed off her growing baby bump in a champagne wrap dress as she acted as a bridesmaid for her friend.

Pregnant Bachelor star Tara Pavlovic (left) has hit back at trolls who questioned why she wore white to Cobie Frost's wedding to longtime fiance Chris Whearty on Friday. Tara is pictured with husband Nick Shepherdson at Coby's wedding

However, on Sunday night Tara was forced to defend herself on Instagram after online trolls criticised her outfit.

'A few people concerned about me wearing white to a wedding. Firstly it isn't white, it is champagne colour. Secondly I was a bridesmaid,' she explained on Instagram.

'So I was told by the bride herself what I was wearing. So I (and the three other bridesmaids) listened to the bride and wore the dress she wanted us to wear to her wedding.'

Tara showed off her growing baby bump in a champagne wrap dress as she acted as a bridesmaid for her friend

Tara was also joined by her Bachelor co-stars Natalie Holmberg and Nina Rolleston at the celebration.

Natalie looked stylish in a long floral jumpsuit while Nina flaunted her figure in a pink dress with peep holes on the sides.

The pair were also pictured posing alongside Cobie after the ceremony.

'A few people concerned about me wearing white to a wedding. Firstly it isn't white, it is champagne colour. Secondly I was a bridesmaid,' she explained on Instagram. Tara is pictured with fellow bridesmaid Nina Rolleston (left) and the bride Cobie (centre)

Cobie looked stunning in a frilly, sleeveless gown featuring a veil that trailed over her back.

She had her hands full carrying a gorgeous white floral bouquet.

The brunette beauty had her hair perfectly styled into curls and was all glammed up wearing a full face of makeup.

The couple welcomed their first child, a baby boy named Hunter Mark Whearty back in 2019.

Chris proposed to Cobie in September 2018, just one year after they began dating.

Cobie was one of the final six contestants on Matty Johnson's season of the Channel 10 dating show.
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Talented broadway stars celebrated the 75th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Sunday, but not all of them delivered when it came to the fashion.

Wearing puzzling color and fabric combinations, mesh disasters, and clunky gowns, numerous celebrities including Sarah Silverman and Sarah Paulson turned out to be fashion flops for the night.

Elsewhere, Palmer Hefferan shocked with her choice of bright red boots with her iridescent gown, while Toby Marlow, Lucy Moss, Kara Young, Eli Rallo, and Ian Padgett failed to impress with their head-scratching looks.

Puzzling: Sarah Silverman and Sarah Paulson turned heads for all the wrong reasons while attending the 75th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Sunday

Silverman certainly made a fashion statement on the red carpet, sporting a frilly mini black mesh dress, with a bizarre fusion of polka dot and lace sleeves.

The 51-year-old comedian paired the questionable goth look with half-black half-fishnet stockings and chunky black boots.

She was happy to show off the back view of the strikingly jarring ensemble, which displayed the black lace racerback bra she wore underneath.

Bizarre: Silverman, 51, certainly made a fashion statement on the red carpet, sporting a frilly mini black mesh dress, with a bizarre fusion of polka dot and lace sleeves

Jarring: She was happy to show off the back view of the strikingly jarring ensemble, which displayed the black lace racerback bra she wore underneath

Entertaining: Later in the night Sarah took to the stage at the awards show where she made the audience cackle with her quirky sense of humor

Later in the night Sarah took to the stage at the awards show where she made the audience cackle with her quirky sense of humor.

She continued to proudly show off her kooky look, which she complemented with a short and glossy red manicure.

Sarah wore her raven-colored locks in a beehive hairstyle with a side-swept bang at the front. She added small silver hoop earrings and a pink lip.

Taking it to the stage: She continued to proudly show off her kooky look, which she complemented with a short and glossy red manicure

Though she usually nails her red carpet looks, Paulson did not wow in her bulky colorful Moschino dress, which one Twitter user described as resembling the cross-section of a fruitcake.

Further adding to the stiff look of the puffed-sleeve gown were the chunky black platform heels the actress, 47, wore to the event.

The Golden Globe Award winner slicked her short blonde tresses down and wore dark red lipstick and a touch of black mascara for the night.

Bulky: Though she usually nails her red carpet looks, Paulson, 47, did not wow in her bulky colorful Moschino dress, which one Twitter user described as resembling the cross-section of a fruitcake

Fashion yikes: Further adding to the stiff look of the puffed-sleeve gown were the chunky black platform heels the actress wore to the event

Though theater designer Palmer Hefferan wore a lovely iridescent gown with top and bottom pleated details, her outfit veered off the road with her choice of bright red sparkling crystal boots.

However, the beauty did not seemed concerned with the slight mismatch, and proudly showed off the red sparklers as she posed for the cameras.

Stars of the hit musical Six, Toby Marlow, 27, and Lucy Moss, 28, failed to excite with their coordinated silver and cream 80's prom night inspired wrinkled looks.

Where it went wrong: Though theater designer Palmer Hefferan wore a lovely iridescent gown with top and bottom pleated details, her outfit veered off the road with her choice of bright red sparkling crystal boots

80's prom? Stars of the hit musical Six, Toby Marlow, 27, and Lucy Moss, 28, failed to excite with their coordinated silver and cream 80's prom night inspired wrinkled looks

Marlow paired the silver outdated dress with black mesh gloves, while Moss opted for white pearl-stone embellished gloves to go with her cream tuxedo.

The writer, director, and composer made another head-scratching choice with the chunky white sneakers she sported to the event.

Actress Kara Young, 47, wore an over-the top orange-gold skirt, which she paired with a matching bra and an unshapely cape that resembled dumpling folds. The beauty paired the divisive ensemble with chunky gold earrings, and wore her platinum hair in slick waves.

TikTok influencer Eli Rallo donned a plunging pastel pink gown with a Christmas tinsel reminiscent fringe at the bottom.

Over the top: Actress Kara Young, 47, wore an over-the top orange-gold skirt, which she paired with a matching bra and an unshapely cape that resembled dumpling folds

Divisive look: The beauty paired the divisive ensemble with chunky gold earrings, and wore her platinum hair in slick waves

Ballerina gone wrong: TikTok influencer Eli Rallo donned a plunging pastel pink gown with a Christmas tinsel reminiscent fringe at the bottom

Further adding to the kitsch aesthetic were her chunky pink heels with studded straps and plastic pink clutch.

Meanwhile Ian Padgett looked ready for Halloween in a bright orange crushed velvet suit, which he paired with a black bow-tie.

The 75th Annual Tony Awards is celebrating achievement in Broadway productions during the 202122 season.

This year's ceremony takes place at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, hosted by West Side Story star Ariana DeBose.

The nominations were revealed last month, with Michael R. Jackson's musical A Strange Loop leading the pack with an impressive 11 nominations, including Best Music, Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical.

Ready for October? Meanwhile Ian Padgett looked ready for Halloween in a bright orange crushed velvet suit, which he paired with a black bow-tie
It may be winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

But Too Hot To Handle star Larissa Trownson brought the Kiwi heat to Instagram on Tuesday as she stripped down for a racy photo shoot inside an elevator.

The New Zealand-born blonde sizzled as she posed inside an elevator wearing a plunging black mini dress that could barely contain her surgically-enhanced assets.

Too Hot To Handle's Larissa Trownson (pictured) busted out of her plunging black mini dress as she posed for a sultry elevator photo shoot on Tuesday

She completed her look with a Balenciaga handbag worth $1650 and gold Chanel earrings worth around $1000.

The buxom bombshell wore a dramatic makeup look and allowed her poker-straight mane to fall loosely by her shoulders.

'Get in losers, were being fabulous,' she captioned the image, before spruiking the designer of her dress.

Larissa appeared on season two of the hit show Too Hot To Handle, which aired on Netflix last year

Larissa appeared on season two of the hit show Too Hot To Handle, which aired on Netflix in 2021.

She recently admitted to getting a breast enlargement, regular Botox injections and lip filler.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia in June, the blonde said she's unashamed to speak about her cosmetic enhancements and wants to be 'transparent' to help other women.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia in June, the blonde said she's unashamed to speak about her cosmetic enhancements and wants to be 'transparent' to help other women

'I think it's really important that we're transparent about work we've had done, otherwise that helps portray unreal beauty standards especially for younger women,' she said.

'So I've always been upfront about it and I chose to have it, so I'm proud of it.'

When asked to describe herself in three words, Larissa said she's 'brains and beauty'.

Too Hot To Handle follows a bunch of sexy singletons staying in a beachside mansion who must get through a four-week sex ban to win $100,000.
Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in the 'March for Our Lives,' one of a series of nationwide protests against gun violence, in Washington, D.C., June 11. Reuters-Yonhap





In a potential breakthrough toward the first significant new U.S. gun law in decades, a bipartisan group of senators announced Sunday an agreement on a framework for a firearms safety bill with enough Republican support to advance in the narrowly divided Senate.







The plan, lauded by President Joe Biden, includes support for state "red flag" laws keeping firearms from potentially dangerous people, tougher criminal background checks for gun buyers under age 21 and a crackdown on "straw purchases" by people buying weapons for others who could not pass a background check.







Crafted in the aftermath of last month's massacres at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, the framework is far less ambitious than proposals offered by Biden and other Democrats for banning semi-automatic, assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines or at least raising the minimum age to buy those from 18 to 21.







Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who led the negotiating effort alongside Republican Senator John Cornyn, said "the heavy lifting is behind us" after three weeks of intensive talks, though a "significant amount of work" remains. Murphy said he hoped for Senate passage by early August or sooner.







Jaclyn Corin, lead organizer for March For Our Lives and survivor of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, listens as Yolanda King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr., speaks during 'March for Our Lives.' Reuters-Yonhap





"We're going to get to work writing (legislative) text first thing (Monday) morning," Murphy told Reuters.







The deal was announced a day after tens of thousands of people rallied in Washington and around the United States to urge lawmakers to pass legislation to curb gun violence.







While an important breakthrough, the agreement does not ensure that legislation will be approved. Lawmakers still must hammer out legislative language that can attract enough votes to pass in both the Senate and House of Representatives, each narrowly controlled by Democrats.







Republican opposition has been instrumental in thwarting Democratic-backed gun control proposals in Congress dating back to the 1994 passage of an assault weapons ban that expired a decade later.







The United States has the highest rate of firearms deaths among the world's wealthy nations. But it is a country where many cherish gun rights and its Constitution's Second Amendment protects the right to "keep and bear arms."







Sunday's announcement marks the furthest that gun reform talks have advanced in Congress since 2013, when legislation failed on the Senate floor following a 2012 Connecticut elementary school massacre. Murphy, who represents Connecticut, has dedicated a major part of his decade-long Senate career to gun control following that tragedy.







"Our plan saves lives while also protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans," Murphy and Cornyn said in a joint statement.







The group agreeing to the framework included 10 Republicans, nine Democrats and one independent who caucuses with the Democrats.







A National Rifle Association spokesperson said the influential firearms rights group will not take a position on the framework until the detailed legislative text is finalized. She said the NRA would oppose any effort that deprives Americans of their gun rights.







Gun control advocates painted Sunday's announcement as evidence of a weakening NRA, a group closely aligned with Republicans, amid rising public concern about gun violence.







"There had been conventional wisdom that politicians had bought into that you could not cross the NRA. Otherwise you would pay," said Christian Heyne, vice president of policy for the Brady gun control group, told Reuters.







Los Angeles City Attorney and former mayoral candidate Mike Feuer, center, marches along with protestors as they chant and wave signs in downtown Los Angles during a March for Our Lives rally, June 11. AP-Yonhap









With 10 Republicans indicating support, that would overcome the Senate's "filibuster" rule requiring 60 of the 100 senators to agree to advance most legislation. Republicans opposed to the plan are expected to mount procedural hurdles in a bid to block it.







Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell stopped short of embracing the framework but said he hoped for progress in the bipartisan talks.







Biden welcomed Sunday's agreement.







"It does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades," Biden said in a statement. "With bipartisan support, there are no excuses for delay, and no reason why it should not quickly move through the Senate and the House."







Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that he wanted to move a bill quickly once legislative details are finalized. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also backed the deal, saying in a statement: "While more is needed, this package will take steps to save lives."







The measure would provide federal funding to encourage states to adopt "red flag" laws keeping guns away from people found by courts to be a significant danger to themselves or others.







Congress would provide more funding to expand mental health programs including ones run in schools, and would crack down on those who evade gun-licensing requirements or illegally buy guns on behalf of others  transactions called "straw purchases."







The plan also would require new government checks on those under 21 who try to buy guns so that juvenile mental health records can be reviewed, along with checks with state and local law enforcement agencies. (Reuters)


Sophia Banadinovich, the daughter of Australian actor Eric Bana, has officially begun her career as a model after signing with Melbourne agency The Talent Buro.

Speaking to The Herald Sun, the 20-year-old dancer said she was broadening her interests with the support of her family and friends.

'I think that in a lot of ways dancing and modelling compliment each other,' she told the publication.

Sophia Banadinovich, 20, (pictured) the daughter of Australian actor Eric Bana has embarked on a career in modelling after signing up to a Melbourne agency

'As dancers we are taught from a young age to have strong awareness of our bodies, our physicality and the way we hold ourselves.

'Modelling was something I had never personally considered, but with the mentoring and support of my friends and family I decided why not give it a go? I am definitely a beginner but I am excited to see where it can go!'

Sophia added that while she was studying dance, she hasn't ruled out pursuing acting and following her father's footsteps as an actor.

'Modelling was something I had never personally considered, but with the mentoring and support of my friends and family I decided why not give it a go?' she told The Herald Sun

'Acting is something that I would love to try when I am able to devote more focus, time and energy,' she said.

Back in December 2020, Sophia revealed that she has enrolled in a dance course at university.

'I am about to go into full-time dance at uni,' she told The Daily Telegraph. 'I really have no idea where it's going to go.'

As for whether her famous dad (pictured) has given her any advice about getting into the business, Sophia admits that she tries not to 'lean on him' too much

As for whether her famous dad has given her any advice about getting into the business, Sophia admits that she tries not to 'lean on him' too much.

'He doesn't really talk about it too much. I am just trying to figure it out myself, I don't want to lean on him too much. If I had any questions I could ask,' she added.

Eric and his wife Rebecca Gleeson share Sophia and a 24-year-old son Klaus together.

But the pair have kept their children relatively out of the spotlight while growing up, and Sophia is 'glad' they did.

'I am very glad they did that because growing up would have been very different,' she admits.
Bob Sagets widow Kelly Rizzo was seen on the red carpet on Sunday at the fourth annual Critics Choice Real TV Awards held at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, where the late Full House star was to be honored following his death at 65 earlier this year.

The Chicago native, 43, donned a shoulderless black skirt with multiple ruffled layers as she made her entry to the luxe event, rounding out the ensemble with strappy silver open-toe sandals.

She wore her blonde locks parted to the side with dangling diamond earrings as she made her way down the red carpet.

The latest: Bob Sagets widow Kelly Rizzo, 43, was seen on the red carpet on Sunday at the fourth annual Critics Choice Real TV Awards held at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, where the late Full House star was to be honored following his death at 65 earlier this year

Rizzo was slated to receive the The Impact Award on behalf of her late spouse, who was found dead at 65 in a Ritz-Carlton hotel room in Orlando, Florida January 9 after suffering head trauma.

The Eat Travel Rock personality told the show that Saget would have been 'thrilled' to be feted by the critics with The Impact Award, which focuses on career achievements in the nonfiction, unscripted and reality television genres.

'He would be so thrilled - no he is - so thrilled, so honored and especially to be honored by the critics,' Rizzo, who tied the knot with Saget in October of 2018, said on the red carpet in a clip on the show's Twitter page.

She added, 'He'd be equally thrilled and surprised ... he'd be so, so happy, so honored and so touched and I'm just very honored to be here in his place.'

Rizzo was slated to receive the The Impact Award on behalf of her late spouse, who was found dead at 65 in a Ritz-Carlton hotel room in Orlando, Florida January 9 after suffering head trauma. Saget was seen at an event in November in Beverly Hills

The Chicago native donned a shoulderless black skirt with multiple ruffled layers as she made her entry to the luxe event, rounding out the ensemble with strappy silver open-toe sandals

Rizzo wore her blonde locks parted to the side with dangling diamond earrings as she made her way down the red carpet

Rizzo was slated to accept the honors on Saget's behalf, with John Stamos presenting

Among Saget's career accolades include his stint playing the role of Danny Tanner on the hit show Full House from 1987-1995 and its reboot Fuller House from 2016-2020; as well as hosting the ABC series Americas Funniest Home Videos from 1989 to 1997.

Saget's longtime Full House costar John Stamos was slated to present Rizzo with the honors Sunday.

Saget in 2018 served as host for the NPACT Impact Awards, which were renamed the Critics Choice TV Awards in 2019.

Randy and Jason Sklar were set to host Sunday's show, with notable names such as Padma Lakshmi, Garcelle Beauvais and Kandi Burruss serving as presenters, Variety reported.

Rizzo said her late husband would 'be equally thrilled and surprised' at being honored

The Eat Travel Rock personality posed for photographers on the red carpet as she made her way into the event

Saget was honored across the country Sunday at the fourth annual Critics Choice Real TV Awards in LA, where Stamos presented Sagets widow Rizzo with The Impact Award for his career achievements in the nonfiction, unscripted and reality television genres

Saget and Rizzo posed on the red carpet at the event held at the Fairmont Century Plaza

Saget was recently remembered in a Netflix special that debuted Friday titled Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute, which was filmed earlier this year at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles and featured a number of vivid memories of the late actor-comedian.

Among those featured in the special included Rizzo, Stamos, John Mayer, Chris Rock, Jim Carrey, Jeffrey Ross, Paul Rodriguez and Dave Chappelle.

In the special, Rizzo joked how Saget would show her around the famed comedy venue and show her 'all the places that people did coke in the 80s,' adding, 'There were a lot of stops on the tour about that.'

She noted, 'The most important thing to him was belonging to this club, being a comedian. I know he would be - he is so honored right now. He would love this. I know hes looking down, and hes so happy.'
Karl Stefanovic returned to Channel Nine's once-embattled Today show in 2020.

And on Monday, the 47-year-old compared his breakfast TV homecoming to 'falling in love all over again'.

'To stay in breakfast television for that long there were times when I didn't want to,' the 2022 Gold Logie Award nominee told TV Week magazine.

Today Show's Karl Stefanovic (pictured) has said returning to Channel Nine's breakfast show was like 'falling in love all over again'

'But life is funny, you come to the other side and it becomes difficult to leave because you love it. It's like falling in love all over again.'

Karl was infamously sacked from the Today show in December 2018, before being rehired a year later after viewers didn't warm to his replacements.

He has been nominated for the 2022 Gold Logie alongside I'm A Celebrity host Julia Morris, MasterChef judge Melissa Leong, Big Brother host Sonia Kruger, Home And Away star Ray Meagher, LEGO Masters host Hamish Blake and Hard Quiz star Tom Gleeson.

'Life is funny, you come to the other side and it becomes difficult to leave because you love it. It's like falling in love all over again,' he said

On Sunday, Karl joked about his drunken 2009 post-Logie Awards appearance on the Today show.

The Channel Nine presenter confessed that 'it's been a long time between drinks' and that he won't be holding back if he wins the Gold Logie for Most Popular Personality in 2022.

'I think everyone needs to see me the next day on The Today Show to see how I scrub up after I win. Actually, it will be the same if I don't!' he told TV Tonight.

On Sunday, Karl joked about his drunken 2009 post-Logie Awards appearance on the Today show

Back in September last year, Karl revealed he was actually drunk - not just hungover - when he appeared on a memorable episode of Today back in 2009.

Appearing on The Hundred with Andy Lee, the TV veteran Today host admitted he was still drunk when he showed up for work after the Logies.

The Channel Nine personality was handed a stack of cards containing questions to ask the show's panel of 100 every day Australians.
Doja Cat looked stunning as she attended a star-studded, yet intimate dinner to celebrate ELLE's Women in Music issue, of which she is the latest cover star.

The 26-year-old powerhouse dazzled in a bejeweled mini skirt, matching boots and shimmering top at the event that was presented by Dolce & Gabbana at Olivetta in Los Angeles last week.

Despite declaring that she had 'quit' her music career in April, the LA native continues to be one of the most prominent new mainstream music acts, and is currently the seventh most streamed artist in the world on Spotify.

Wow: Doja Cat looks stunning as she poses inside intimate star-studded dinner for ELLE Magazine's Women in Music bash last week

Once inside the dinner, Doja rubbed shoulders with Elvis director Baz Luhrman, as she and the Australian director sat at a table together chatting.

Other stars at the party included Ava Max, Bling Empire's Christine Chiu, Evan Ross and wife Ashlee Simpson Ross, Heidi Klum, Scout Willis and Normani.

At the bash, Nina Garcia, Editor in Chief, ELLE Magazine talked about the importance of honoring female stars like Doja.

Once inside the dinner, Doja rubbed shoulders with Elvis director Baz Luhrman, as she and the Australian director sat at a table together chatting

'Women in music are not only exciting, but inspiring. They represent the ELLE women, pushing boundaries and sparking social change, all while establishing themselves as business moguls and trendsetters,' she explained.

'And Doja Cat is just that. Whether it be creating a top ten album or being confidently unfiltered on social media, she is the perfect honoree for this year's Women in Music event.'

Doja's latest record Planet Her - released last year - spawned the hit singles Kiss Me More, Need to Know, and Woman.

In line for his next movie? Director Baz appeared to be deep in conversation with Doja on the night

Stunning: Normani looked flawless as she posed at the star-studded event
Bryan Brown became a grandfather for the first time in 2019.

And in a candid confession, the Aussie actor, 74, admits he was nervous about taking on the huge responsibility.

'I was a bit worried about this grandfather business,' he said.

Bryan Brown (pictured) has admitted he was nervous about becoming a grandparent. 'I was a bit worried about this grandfather business,' he said

'Everyone said, "You're going to love it and everything." And I said, "Well, let me work that out."'

The Cocktail star said it wasn't until his first grandson, Zan, finally 'came along' and his entire mindset changed.

'Just like everyone else, I went goo goo and grabbed him and wanted to be with him all the time,' he added. 'Life's like that!'

Bryan's grandson Zan is the son of his second-eldest daughter Matilda, 35.

'Everyone said, "You're going to love it and everything." And I said, "Well, let me work that out"' he said. Bryan now can't get enough of his grandson, wanting to be with him 'all the time'. Pictured with daughter Matilda Brown

Matilda, an actress, writer and director, also shares younger daughter Anouk, who she welcomed in 2021 with husband Scott Gooding.

Following Zan's birth, Matilda has been open about her journey through motherhood, documenting her experiences with her family on social media.

'What was life before Zan? I cant even remember. Nor do I ever want to go back,' she wrote on one post in 2019.

Matilda shares two children with husband Scott Gooding. Pictured with Matilda and Scott and one of their children

That same year, she also spoke about her father Bryan's involvement in her son's birth.

'On the night I went into labour, Dad was supposed to drop mum at the hospital (mum was my doula) and then wait in the waiting room,' she recalled.

'But he ended up coming into the room and stayed for the entire birth. When I was pushing Zan out at the end dad was stroking my head and mum was cheering me on, crying, saying "Come on Til, hes so close!."'

Bryan's grandchild Zan is the son of his second-eldest daughter Matilda

Her post concluded, 'Pretty special that both my parents got to be with me through such a monumental time in my life.'

Bryan married his wife Rachel Ward in 1983, meaning the pair will celebrate their 40-year wedding anniversary next year.

The pair met while on the set of the TV miniseries The Thorn Birds in 1982, where Bryan wooed his co-star with a palm reading.

Bryan married Rachel Ward (right) in 1983 after meeting on set of The Thorn Birds in 1982

'So we were sitting around waiting for a take one day and I said "give us a look at your hand"... She gave me her hand and there were three lines and I said "you're gonna have three kids,"' he told A Current Affair last year.

'Well I was right, they were my kids.'

Bryan and Rachel went on to have three children together: Rosie, 38, Matilda and Joe, 30.

The star is still heavily involved in his acting career, and is currently filming his next project Darby And Joan alongside fellow Aussie actress and pal Greta Scacchi, 62.
Australian celebrities have blasted a newspaper for attempting to 'out' Rebel Wilson before she went public with her new girlfriend Ramona Agruma on Friday.

On Saturday, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Andrew Hornery published a column in which he hit out at Rebel's decision to 'gazump' his scoop, arguing he'd found out about the relationship and was going to publish a story about it.

Magda Szubanski hit back at Hornery, Tweeting: 'Your paper has no god given right to know anything about the private life of anyone.'

Celebrities blasted an Australian newspaper for attempting to 'out' Rebel Wilson (right) before she went public with new girlfriend Ramona Agruma (left)

'I don't claim to speak on behalf of Rebel Wilson, but for LGBTQIA+ people the consequences of what is nothing more than a hissy fit over who gets to print gossip can have devastating effects.'

Meshel Laurie also wrote on Instagram: 'This goes without saying, but we should all say it anyway I reckon. We should all make it very clear to @rebelwilson and to @andrewhornery that we are absolutely shocked and appalled by his actions.'

'He was even given an opportunity by Rebel Wilson to avoid the shame of outing a human being in 2022, but he's such a regressive person that he failed to recognise it.'

On Saturday, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Andrew Hornery published a column in which he hit out at Rebel's decision to 'gazump' his scoop, arguing he'd found out about the relationship and was going to publish a story about it

The media personality continued: 'He outed himself. He outed himself as crook room-reader, a sook and gossip columnist. So retro. And not in a good way babe.'

BBC reporter Megha Mohan wrote: 'I've just read this piece 3 times to make sure that I wasn't misreading. The publication messaged Rebel Wilson saying they would out her in 2 days - and is now complaining that she chose to announce her relationship with a woman herself. Quite astonishing.'

It comes after Hornery apologised for the 'tone' of his controversial Rebel Wilson article, and said it was never his intention to 'inflict pain' when he reached out to ask about her new relationship with Ramona Agruma.

Magda Szubanski and Meshel Laurie hit back at Hornery on social media

Hornery admitted he has learnt some new and difficult lessons.

'I genuinely regret that Rebel has found this hard. That was never my intention. But I see she has handled it all with extraordinary grace,' he wrote in a column which replaced Sunday's article online.

'As a gay man I'm well aware of how deeply discrimination hurts. The last thing I would ever want to do is inflict that pain on someone else.'

Hornery said he thought that his article would be a 'happy story' after seeing several months of photos of the pair together on her Instagram page.

It comes after Hornery (pictured) apologised for the 'tone' of his controversial Rebel Wilson article, and said it was never his intention to 'inflict pain' when he reached out to ask about her new relationship with Ramona Agruma

'I assumed there was a good chance she might be happy to discuss it,' he explained.

'She had already revealed a month ago that she had been dating and was very happy.'

The gossip columnist added he never meant his request comment to be a threat, but rather 'make it clear' that he was 'sufficiently confident with his information and to open a conversation'.
Six-time Emmy nominee Mindy Kaling glammed up to support her ex-boyfriend B.J. Novak at the world premiere of his feature directorial debut Vengeance during the Tribeca Film Festival in Lower Manhattan on Sunday.

B.J. (born Benjamin Joseph) wrote, directed, and starred as New Yorker podcaster Ben Manalowitz investigating his former flame's murder in West Texas in the who-done-it hitting US theaters on July 29.

The Massachusetts natives - both 42 - were last publicly seen together attending a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park in Boston on June 1.

Thick as thieves: Six-time Emmy nominee Mindy Kaling glammed up to support her ex-boyfriend B.J. Novak at the world premiere of his feature directorial debut Vengeance during the Tribeca Film Festival in Lower Manhattan on Sunday

Hitting US theaters on July 29! B.J. (L) wrote, directed, and starred as New Yorker podcaster Ben Manalowitz investigating his former flame's murder in West Texas

The talented twosome also attended the 94th Academy Awards in Hollywood together on March 27.

Novak just so happens to be the godfather of Kaling's two children - 21-month-old son Spencer Avu and four-year-old daughter Katherine Swati.

The five-time Emmy nominee dated Mindy (born Vera Chokalingam) on/off between 2005-2013 when they wrote and starred as Dunder Mifflin love interests Ryan Howard and Kelly Kapoor on NBC's mockumentary sitcom The Office.

'She's one of the closest or the closest person of my life to this day,' Novak told NPR on September 22.

Inseparable! The Massachusetts natives - both 42 - were last publicly seen together attending a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park in Boston on June 1

Biological father is secret: Novak is the godfather of Kaling's two children (pictured May 8) - 21-month-old son Spencer Avu and four-year-old daughter Katherine Swati

'She is the closest person of my life to this day': The five-time Emmy nominee dated Mindy on/off between 2005-2013 when they wrote and starred as Dunder Mifflin love interests Ryan Howard and Kelly Kapoor on NBC's mockumentary sitcom The Office

'The whole reason our characters [in The Office] started dating on the show is because they couldn't get over this dynamic we had in the writers' room that neither of us realized was funny at all.

'And other people would laugh and shake their heads. And we'd say, "What?" And they'd say, "You two!" And then before we knew it, they had written us in as this horrible partnership.'

The Morning Show actress showed a little leg in the thigh-high slit of her maroon long-sleeved, cut-out halter dress and black stilettos selected by stylist Hayley Atkin.

Hairstylist Marc Mena coiffed Kaling's side-parted waves as she posed outside the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center.

Flirty frock: The Morning Show actress showed a little leg in the thigh-high slit of her maroon long-sleeved, cut-out halter dress and black stilettos selected by stylist Hayley Atkin

Raven locks: Hairstylist Marc Mena coiffed Kaling's side-parted waves as she posed outside the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center

Ready for her close-up! Make-up artist Janice Kinjo made sure to fully contour Mindy's complexion - which had rosy eye lids, cheekbones, and lips

Make-up artist Janice Kinjo made sure to fully contour Mindy's complexion - which had rosy eye lids, cheekbones, and lips.

B.J. had a unique fastener on his black suit - which he paired with a white button-up, black necktie, and dress shoes for his big night.

Novak - who boasts 1.2M Instagram followers - proudly posted a snap of his Tribeca Film Festival artist badge captioned: 'Dream come true!'

Vengeance reunited the former Punk'd field agent with his former boss, Ashton Kutcher, who portrays a charming music impresario.

Man of the hour! Novak had a unique fastener on his black suit - which he paired with a white button-up, black necktie, and dress shoes for his big night

B.J. - who boasts 1.2M Instagram followers - proudly posted a snap of his Tribeca Film Festival artist badge captioned: 'Dream come true!'

'I cast B.J. in Punk'd like two decades ago!' Vengeance reunited the former Punk'd field agent with his former boss, Ashton Kutcher (L), who portrays a charming music impresario

The 44-year-old SAG Award nominee (3-R) told Access: 'It was one of the best scripts I'd read in a decade...And the opportunity to work with B.J. where we're flipping roles was fantastic. He was so great. He did his job unbelievably well'

'I cast B.J. in Punk'd like two decades ago [in 2003] and I thought he was amazing and wonderful,' the 44-year-old SAG Award nominee told Access.

'I've, like, watched his career blossom and I've watched him just grow as a creator. When he reached out, it was one of the best scripts I'd read in a decade. I thought it was absolutely brilliant and the message that people need to see right now - the disparity of ideology between the middle of the country and the coasts. We need to put compassion before judgment then we might be able to see eye to eye.

'It was very impressive and the character itself I thought was super interesting. And the opportunity to work with B.J. where we're flipping roles was fantastic. He was so great. He did his job unbelievably well.'

The Monsters at Work star was one of the many producers behind Michael R. Jackson's Broadway hit A Strange Loop, which won trophies for best musical and best book of a musical at the 75th Tony Awards on Sunday.

'Congratulations!' The Monsters at Work star was one of the many producers behind Michael R. Jackson's Broadway hit A Strange Loop, which won trophies for best musical and best book of a musical at the 75th Tony Awards on Sunday

Kaling wrote on Sunday: 'I could not be more proud and ecstatic for the creative team behind @strangeloopbway. When @benjpasek told me about @thelivingmichaeljacksons musical, I read it instantly, and couldn't believe how audacious and hilarious it was'

'I could not be more proud and ecstatic for the creative team behind @strangeloopbway. When @benjpasek told me about @thelivingmichaeljacksons musical, I read it instantly, and couldn't believe how audacious and hilarious it was,' Kaling - who boasts 19M social media followers - wrote on Sunday.

'And I hadn't even heard the music or seen the incredible cast perform it yet! I so rarely get to experience something both profoundly moving and wholly original. A Strange Loop is that - and I'm so happy the Tonys see that too. This musical was years and years in the making and tonight is the shiniest celebration of that hard work. Congratulations!'

The third season of Mindy and co-creator Lang Fisher's critically-acclaimed 10-episode dramedy series Never Have I Ever, starring Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, premieres August 12 on Netflix.

Cast and crew pictured May 8: The third season of Mindy and co-creator Lang Fisher's critically-acclaimed 10-episode dramedy series Never Have I Ever, starring Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, premieres August 12 on Netflix

'The set lives of writer girls': The two-time SAG Award winner (R, pictured May 27) and co-creator Justin Noble are currently hard at work on the second season of HBO Max's critically-acclaimed half-hour dramedy The Sex Lives of College Girls

The two-time SAG Award winner and co-creator Justin Noble are currently hard at work on the second season of HBO Max's critically-acclaimed half-hour dramedy The Sex Lives of College Girls.

'I work on every project every day,' Kaling told Variety on Sunday.

'I want to make television and film that people can relate to, that entertains them and makes them laugh. Thats the most important thing. If I can introduce audiences to characters and worlds that dont traditionally get airtime, even better.'
Karl Stefanovic took in the sights and sounds of Vivid Sydney on Monday.

The Today show star, 47, enjoyed the light festival with wife Jasmine and daughters Willow and Harper, sharing an image to Instagram.

In the frame, Karl looks relaxed as he poses with his loved ones from the comfort of a boat, while holding on to what appears to be a beer.

Today show host Karl Stefanovic, 47, was every inch the doting daddy as he took in Vivid on a yacht with wife Jasmine and daughters Willow and Harper on Monday

The family were all smiles as they enjoyed the relaxed occasion with Karl wearing a hoodie and pants.

Meanwhile, Jasmine also opted for a grey tracksuit for the fun-filled outing.

'A Vivid Night,' she captioned the photos.

Jasmine nestled into a rugged up Harper before the boat ride on the harbour

Jasmine shared photos from the boat showing the light spectacular on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House

Karl shares three older children with his ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn: River, 15, Willow, 16, and Jackson, 22.

It comes after reports that Karl and Jasmine are 'cluckier than ever' and can't wait to give daughter Harper a younger sibling.

'They're still in the honeymoon stage! Jasmine is obsessed [with having another baby]  it's all she talks about,' a source told Woman's Day in January.

The photos come after reports that Karl and Jasmine are 'cluckier than ever' and can't wait to give daughter Harper a younger sibling, according to Woman's Day magazine in January

'Karl too, but not quite as much as Jas, because at the end of the day, Karl knows he's not getting any younger,' they added.

According to the source, Jasmine realised she wanted to have a second child after taking Harper for a playdate with her cousins, Peter Stefanovic and Sylvia Jeffreys' sons Oscar and Henry.

'That's the 'ah-ha' moment for Jasmine, when she knew it's now or never to have their second baby  she is adamant the age gap is only a couple of years,' they said.

Karl and Jasmine welcomed Harper on May 1, 2020. She was born at North Shore Private Hospital in Sydney.

The Stefanovics married at the five-star One&Only Palmilla resort in Los Cabos, Mexico, in December 2018.
She might have just been going to sit in the park, but Daisy Lowe still managed to dress to the nines for the sunny outing.

The model, 33, looked fantastic wearing a black dress with spaghetti straps which had a thigh-split as she stepped out with her man.

She dressed the look down wearing a pair of chunky boots and was seen packing bedding and pillows into the boot of her car ahead of her day out.

Out and about: Daisy Lowe wore a black dress with a thigh-split and chunky boots as she enjoyed a picnic in Primrose Hill with her boyfriend Jordan Saul

Here comes the summer sun: Later she headed to the park with her estate agent love, who she has been dating since 2020, where they topped up their tans and tucked into bagels

Later she headed to the park with her estate agent love, who she has been dating since 2020, where they topped up their tans and tucked into bagels.

Jordan was dressed casually in a white T-shirt and Carharrt cargo shorts, completing his look with leopard print Nike trainers.

And they were in good company on the day, too, because Daisy brought along her cute dog, Maltese Terrier Monty, for the outing.

Woof! And they were in good company on the day, too, because Daisy brought along her cute dog, Maltese Terrier Monty, for the outing

Low-key: Jordan was dressed casually in a white T-shirt and Carharrt cargo shorts, completing his look with leopard print Nike trainers

Reaching out: Daisy took to Instagram to mark the end of mental health awareness month with a heartfelt post

Daisy recently revealed that she had in the past battled with 'terrible self esteem' and at times found herself 'too anxious to leave the house'.

She penned on social media : 'As its mental health awareness month in May- its taken me until the very last day to write this, its so hard to explain to anyone who has been lucky enough not to suffer with their mental health.

'From the outside, most people could never have known I was struggling battling with constant negative thought patterns, terrible self esteem, too anxious to leave the house. It felt like the darkness was never going to end I kept thinking, tomorrow Ill be better but it was total burnout. I had smiled through it for too long.

She penned on social media : 'As its mental health awareness month in May- its taken me until the very last day to write this, its so hard to explain to anyone who has been lucky enough not to suffer with their mental health'

was seen packing bedding and pillows into the boot of her car ahead of her day out.

Prepared: The pair were seen packing bedding and pillows into the boot of her car ahead of her day out

Carry this for me please: Jordan was seen trying to pop his large water bottle into Daisy's bag

'I turned inwards it took a lot of support from my loved ones, a lot of understanding when I couldnt even understand myself therapy, treatment & care. I know I was very lucky to fight through it all and be here to write this today.

'I learned a lot about myself, the company I keep, the things in life that make me really smile. I dont need to wear a mask anymore- I dont push myself into things that are to my detriment. I speak up and stand in my power when anything doesnt sit right with me. I know that it is ok to be disagreeable. I dont have to please everyone I can say no. Its ok..'

Daisy previously revealed that she was forced into rehab following her 2016 Strictly Come Dancing appearance.

The star emotionally shared that clumps of her hair fell out and she even lost the ability to speak during a secret breakdown after the death of her grandfather Eddie Davis.

Daisy said that Strictly Come Dancing had been the greatest experience of her career but that she had struggled after the news of her grandfather's death reached her on the first day in the BBC studio.

Encouraged by her grandmother to carry on with the competition in his memory, Daisy made it through to week eight alongside dance partner Aljaz Skorjanec.

Tough time: Daisy recently emotionally shared that clumps of her hair fell out and she even lost the ability to speak during a secret breakdown after the death of her grandfather Eddie Davis

Looking back: Daisy said that Strictly Come Dancing had been the greatest experience of her career but that she had struggled after the news of her grandfather's death reached her on the first day in the BBC studio
Millie Gibson has returned to the Coronation Street set after winning the coveted Best Young Performer gong at the British Soap Awards.

Having taken to the stage in London to accept her prize on Saturday evening, the actress, 17, was spotted back filming in Manchester bright and early on Monday morning.

The soap star, who plays Kelly Neelan on the show, wrapped up in a red padded coat between takes as she shot scenes on location with co-star Adam Hussain (Aadi Alahan).

Back to work: Corrie's Millie Gibson, 17, filmed her first scenes on Monday after winning Best Young Performer at the British Soap Awards over the weekend

The costume department dressed the actress in a camouflage printed bomber jacket which was layered over a lemon cropped top.

Completing the look with straight legged jeans, the star slipped her feet into white trainers.

Millie's character accessorised her casual look with oversized hoop earrings.

Costume: The costume department dressed the actress in a camouflage printed bomber jacket which was layered over a lemon cropped top

Talented two: The actress, who plays Kelly Neelan on the show, shot scenes on location with co-star Adam Hussain (Aadi Alahan)

Busy day: Completing the look with straight legged jeans, the star slipped her feet into white trainers

Between scenes, the actors made friends with a dog whom they playfully interacted with over a fence.

Millie's co-star Adam, 21, donned a matching blue jacket as he too attempted to keep warm as the couple rehearsed their lines.

His character cut an equally casual figure in a mustard hoodie and jeans which he layered with a grey waterproof jacket.

After rehearsals, the couple slipped off their oversized jackets to film their scenes in full costume for the camera.

Worker bee: Millie looked deep in concentration as she made her way to the filming's location

Beaming: Millie appeared enamoured with the black pup as she enjoyed a break

Hello! The duo leaned over the wooden fence to get a better look at the animal

On Saturday, Millie was in great spirits as she joined her Corrie co-stars, with the soap up for several gongs on the night.

And as she was presented with her own Young Performer award, the actress gushed: 'I'm so glad to be involved in such a great storyline.'

She is currently at the centre of drama on the show after being charged with Seb Franklin's (Harry Visinoni) murder.

She cut a glamorous figure in her Grecian-style dress, teaming the number with her outfit with a plethora of gold accessories including an ornate arm cuff, drop earrings and a collection of delicate necklaces and rings.

Here we go: After rehearsals, the couple slipped off their oversized jackets to film their scenes in full costume for the camera

Wait! Millie followed her co-star as they later filmed more intense scenes

The TV personality styled her blonde locks in a chic half-up, half down style, while she added a pop of colour with a bold red lip.

The British Soap Awards returned live to ITV for the first time in two years after the 2020 and 2021 ceremonies were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its place in 2020, ITV instead aired a 60-minute special titled The British Soap Awards Celebrates 21 Years, narrated by long-running presenter Phillip Schofield.

This year, host Phillip Schofield, 60, welcomed a plethora of soap stars to London's Hackney Empire, where they battled it out to scoop prizes in 14 categories.
The Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower and St. Basil's Cathedral are seen through the art object in Zaryadye park in Moscow, March 15. Reuters-Yonhap



The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, has filed an appeal against a Moscow court decision demanding that it remove information related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that people have a right to know the facts of the war.



A Moscow court fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million roubles ($88,000) for refusing to remove what it termed disinformation from Russian-language Wikipedia articles on the war including "The Russian Invasion of Ukraine", "War Crimes during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine" and "Massacre in Bucha".



"This decision implies that well-sourced, verified knowledge on Wikipedia that is inconsistent with Russian government accounts constitutes disinformation," Stephen LaPorte, Associate General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a statement.



Wikipedia, which says it offers "the second draft of history", is one of the few remaining major fact-checked Russian-language sources of information for Russians after a crackdown on media in Moscow.



"The government is targeting information that is vital to people's lives in a time of crisis," LaPorte said. "We urge the court to reconsider in favor of everyone's rights to knowledge access and free expression."



The Moscow court argued that what it cast as the disinformation on Wikipedia posed a risk to public order in Russia and that the Foundation, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California, was operating inside Russia.



The Foundation was prosecuted under a law about the failure to delete banned information. The case was brought by Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wikipedia.



The Wikipedia appeal, which was filed on June 6 with details released on Monday, argues that removing information is a violation of human rights. It said Russia had no jurisdiction over the Wikimedia Foundation, which was globally available in over 300 languages.



Wikipedia entries are written and edited by volunteers.



Narratives of the war, Europe's biggest ground invasion since World War Two, vary drastically  and have become highly politicised with journalists in both Moscow and the West routinely accused of misreporting the war.



Ukraine says it is the victim of an unprovoked imperial-style land grab by Russia and that it will fight to the end to reclaim the territory that Russian forces have occupied. Kyiv has repeatedly asked the West for more help to fight Russia.



President Vladimir Putin and Russian officials do not use the words "war" or "invasion". They cast it a "special military operation" aimed at preventing the persecution of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.



Putin also says the conflict is a turning point in Russian history: a revolt by Moscow against the United States, which he says has humiliated Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and pushed to enlarge the NATO military alliance.



Ukraine and its Western backers deny Moscow's claims that Russian speakers were persecuted. Kyiv says Russian forces have committed war crimes, including killings, torture and rape in places such as Bucha.



Russia says the alleged evidence of war crimes consists of carefully constructed fakes and that Ukraine and its Western backers have spread disinformation about Russian forces. (Reuters)


It's fair to say it's hard keeping up with American TV host Nick Cannon and his love of fathering children.

And his baby mama Bre Tiesi, 31, was pictured filling up her car at the gas station on Sunday as she the model to give birth to his eighth baby.

Her outing comes after it was revealed that Nick, 41, has fathered a ninth child with Abby De La Rosa.

Baby eight! Nick Cannon's baby mama Bre Tiesi showed off her pregnancy bump in a leather bra in LA on Sunday as he prepares to welcome NINTH child with Abby De La Rosa

Making her own style rules: She wore a long shirt, open, which showed off her blossoming bump and drew attention to her curves by wearing a leather bra top over the top

Still Bre didn't look as though that was getting in the way of enjoying her day and she was wearing quite an eye-catching outfit as she got on with her daily chores.

She wore a long shirt, open, which showed off her blossoming bump and drew attention to her curves by wearing a leather bra top over the top.

Showing no signs of slowing down, she wore a pair of matching leather trousers and killer heels, as well as a full face of make-up.

The latest: Nick Cannon is expecting another child with baby mama Abby De La Rosa; seen May 16, 2022 in NYC

Tiesi, who's the ex-wife of Johnny Manziel, and Nick announced they were expecting a baby boy in January; her first and his eighth child.

While reflecting on their unconventional relationship, the mom-to-be told E! New's Daily Pop that her partner is 'super supportive and positive.'

She had said at the time: 'Him and I have had our on-and-off for years. And I just respect and love who he is so much as a person, that when I thought about, "Do I want my son to be this person?

'Look at your characteristics, look at your personality, look at how you treat people" Thats what is so much more important to me than anything,' she explained. 'And he treats me amazing, so thats all I look at.'

Another baby on the way: Abby announced the baby news a fortnight but did not disclose who the father was, only teasing that it could be another set of twins at the time

Her news: She also used her pregnancy announcement to promote her OnlyFans account

Nick had said he had been trying to be celibate from last October but hadn't even got to January before fathering another child.

DJ and OnlyFans star Abby De La Rosa will now give birth to baby number nine - a little girl.

The pair already share twin sons Zillion Heir and Zion Mixolydian, who will turn one on June 14.

Abby, 31, announced the baby news a fortnight ago, but did not disclose who the father was, only teasing that it could be another set of twins.

Dad time: Nick and Abby already share twin sons Zillion Heir and Zion Mixolydian - who turn one on June 14

Baby mama: Nick is dad to daughter Powerful Queen, 18 months, and son Golden Sagon, five, with Brittany Bell who is Miss Guam 2014

The way they were: Nick has twins Moroccan and Monroe, 11, with ex-wife Mariah Carey; they were married from 2008 until they divorced in 2016

Her due date is October 25, according to TMZ.

Nick, is to 'pay $2.2 MILLION a year in child support' and is dad to daughter Powerful Queen, 18 months, and son Golden Sagon, five, with Brittany Bell who is Miss Guam 2014.

The TV host also has twins Moroccan and Monroe, 11, with ex-wife Mariah Carey; they were married from 2008 until they divorced in 2016.

Nick welcomed three children in 2021, Zion, Zillion and Zen - He shared Zen with Alyssa Scott; but the baby sadly died on December 5, 2021.
Channel 10 released the first trailer for Hunted Australia on Monday night.

The new reality show, based on the hit Channel 4 series in the UK, appears to begin in Melbourne.

In the opening scenes, a control room full of investigators are watching as 'fugitives' are released at Federation Square, in the heart of the city centre.

Channel Ten released the first action-packed trailer for the new series Hunted Australia on Monday night

'We have 18 fugitives in two vehicles headed towards the Melbourne area,' a mysterious voice is heard saying from the control room.

In the gripping, fast-paced series 'fugitives' must disappear into - or escape a city - to evade capture.

Time is ticking as they're forced to endure the ultimate game of cat and mouse, while investigators attempt to track their every move.

The new trailer ends with investigators yelling at the fugitives to stop.

'We have 18 fugitives in two vehicles headed towards the Melbourne area,' a voice is heard from the control room

In the gripping, fast-paced series the 'fugitives' must disappear and evade capture

TV Tonight reported a local version of the hit series was being created back in July last year.

The UK format sees contestants go on the run for 25 days as they try to avoid a team of professional hunters.

The hunters are made up of police, intelligence officers and teams in the field.

The trailer ends with investigators yelling at the fugitives to stop

The series began airing in the UK in 2015 and has become a huge hit.

In the UK, there have been five civilian versions of the show, and three celebrity outings.

Hunted has spawned a number of international versions that have aired in the US, Spain, Denmark, Russia and The Netherlands.

The show is set to air later this year
Cindy Crawford shared several snaps from her trip to the south of France to her Instagram account on Sunday.

The 56-year-old supermodel was accompanied by her husband, Rande Gerber, during her vacation and the happy couple made sure to pose for a few photos with each other.

She also wrote a short message in her post's caption that read: 'Not a bad start to summer.'

Fun in the sun: Cindy Crawford shared several snaps from her trip to the south of France to her Instagram account on Sunday

In her first snap, Crawford and Gerber, who recently celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary, were seen relaxing on a picturesque beach.

The model wore a gorgeous patterned button-up shirt on top of a black bikini top during her time near the sand.

The influencer also tucked her top into a pair of denim shorts that showed off her toned legs and rocked a set of dual-tone sneakers.

She accessorized with a stylish pair of sunglasses and her gorgeous brunette locks cascaded onto her back.

Dressed for the occasion: The model wore a gorgeous patterned button-up shirt on top of a black bikini top during her time near the sand

Gerber, 60, opted for a blue polo shirt and a slightly darker pair of shorts while spending time with his wife.

Crawford, who shares daughter Kaia, aged 20, and Presley, aged 22, with her husband, also included a shot of herself that she had taken in a bathroom during her trip.

The model made sure to share a picture of an impressive spread of food that had been laid out for her and her friends.

One of her other shots showed a post with numerous distance markers attached to its top portion.

Hanging out: The model made sure to share a picture of an impressive spread of food that had been laid out for her and her friends

Which way? One of her other shots showed a post with numerous distance markers attached to its top portion

Scenic views: The supermodel also shared a picture of a beachlike area while spending time by the water

Crawford and Gerber later switched into different outfits while visiting what appeared to be a beautifully designed courtyard.

The model donned a patterned fuchsia-colored dress that displayed her sculpted legs during the visit.

She also rocked a set of high-heeled shoes and her brunette locks cascaded onto her shoulders.

Gerber opted to wear a black button-up shirt and a set of slim-fitting gray jeans as he posed with his wife.
Robert Downey Jr. is the latest star to congratulate Johnny Depp over his defamation trial victory against Amber Heard.

The Tropic Thunder actor gave fellow film star Johnny a FaceTime call to revel in his win, as revealed by the latter's close friend Josh Richman during a charity live stream event for Children's Hospital Los Angles.

Robert, 57, said to old friend Johnny, 59: 'John, thank God it's over' - with news of the call coming amid Amber's claims the defamation trial verdict is 'unfair'.

'Thank God it's over': Robert Downey Jr. celebrated Johnny Depp's trial victory by giving him a FaceTime call (pictured January 2020)

A spokesperson for Johnny confirmed the FaceTime call to The New York Post.

During the livestream, Josh said that Pirates of the Caribbean star was 'stoic' in a UK hotel room when the news came in, whilst friends and staff 'cried and screamed'.

'Even Jeff Beck flipped off the television screen,' Josh said.

Support: The Tropic Thunder actor, 57, said to Johnny, 59: 'John, thank God it's over' as revealed by the latter's close friend Josh Richman during a charity live stream event (pictured this month)

Victory: During the livestream, Josh said that Pirates of the Caribbean star was 'stoic' in a UK hotel room when the news came in, whilst friends and staff 'cried and screamed' (pictured last month)

In other talking points, Josh revealed that it was not Johnny's intention to ask his ex-girlfriend Kate Moss to testify during the trial, yet things swiftly changed once Amber took the witness stand.

Amber, 36, mentioned Kate's name during her testimony and the notoriously private runway star was 'p***ed' and was 'like, f**k this,' according to Johnny's friend.

Johnny and supermodel Kate partied backstage following his cameo performance with Jeff Beck at the Royal Albert Hall earlier this month - days after she testified for the movie star in court.

Speaking out: In other talking points, Josh revealed that it was not Johnny's intention to ask his ex-girlfriend Kate Moss to testify during the trial, yet things swiftly changed once Amber took the witness stand

Not having it: Amber, 36, mentioned Kate's name during her testimony and the notoriously private runway star was 'p***ed' and was 'like, f**k this,' according to Johnny's friend (Kate pictured last month)

Amber has broken her silence on her defamation trial against ex-husband Johnny for the first time since a jury ruled against her - claiming that the 'unfair' verdict was the result of biased 'social media representation' and accusing the actor of trying to sway the jury by putting 'paid employees and randos' on the stand.

Amber spoke out about the damning verdict against her in a three-part interview with the Today show, which was pre-recorded on Thursday and began airing on Monday morning.

During the sit-down with Savannah Guthrie - who last week interviewed Johnny's legal team on the show and whose husband actually consulted for them during the trial - Amber hit out at the 'hate and vitriol' that she has faced throughout the trial and in the wake of the jury's verdict, while blasting the 'unfair' decision made against her.

Her side: Amber has broken her silence on the Johnny defamation trial verdict, speaking out for the first time since a jury ruled that she defamed her ex-husband - and ordered her to pay him $10 million in damages

Amber, who flew to New York City on a private jet on Friday to conduct the interview, doubled down on accusations made by her lawyer last week that the jury was swayed by social media, while also suggesting that they were won over by Johnny's 'excellent acting' on the stand.

'Even somebody who is sure I'm deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I'm lying, you still couldn't look me in the eye that you think on social media there's been a fair representation,' she said. 'You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair.'

Earlier this month, a jury ruled that Amber defamed her ex-husband by publishing a piece about being a sexual assault survivor in the Washington Post. She was ordered to pay Johnny $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, although the second payment was reduced to $350,000 per Virginia law by the judge. She was awarded a relatively paltry $2 million in compensatory damages, meaning that Johnny walked away from the case with Amber owing him $8.35 million.
Abbie Chatfield has broken down over the death of her rescue dog, Marco, who was put down after being diagnosed with cancer.

The 26-year-old former Bachelor star shared a series of Instagram Stories on Monday revealing that she wanted to get a new dog from the shelter but felt guilty.

'I want to get one but I'm worried that if I get one I will like, dismiss Marco more,' Abbie said, breaking down in tears.

Abbie Chatfield (pictured) has broken down over the death of her rescue dog, Marco, who was put down after being diagnosed with cancer. The 26-year-old former Bachelor star shared a series of Instagram Stories on Monday sharing her pain

'I'm very sad. Like I'm very sad. I just want him back,' she continued, her voice cracking as she began to sob.

'He was just so perfect, like for me, and I just miss him so much,' she added, wiping away tears with her sleeve.

Abbie tearfully revealed she and her boyfriend, Konrad Bien-Stephen, had to put their dog to sleep on Friday.

'I'm very sad. Like I'm very sad. I just want him back,' she continued, her voice cracking as she began to sob

'He was just so perfect, like for me, and I just miss him so much,' she added, wiping away tears with her sleeve

The pair posted a memorial to Instagram for her beloved Marco, an adopted cocker spaniel.

There was a range of images commemorating Marco alongside a sweet and emotional caption, requesting everyone eat some roast chicken in Marco's memory.

Abbie didn't hold back the tears when sharing the news to her 399,000 followers.

Abbie tearfully revealed she and her boyfriend, Konrad Bien-Stephen (pictured), had to put their dog to sleep on Friday

'He fell asleep, it was very peaceful we went to Sash in North Ryde and they were lovely. Thank you for all your messages, it's a bit sad tonight,' she said

The reality TV star shared an emotional statement with her photos and said: 'Hello friends and fans of Marco. We have had to make the very difficult decision to put Marco down.'

'I'm just on my way home to Sydney to give him one more kiss'.

After the news had settled for a moment, the influencer thanked her friends and fans for their love and support during the difficult time.

'He fell asleep, it was very peaceful we went to Sash in North Ryde and they were lovely. Thank you for all your messages, it's a bit sad tonight'.
She had a highly publicized split with Scott Disick back in September.

And now Amelia Hamlin is celebrating a big milestone.

The up-and-coming model had her 21st birthday on Monday as her mother Lisa Rinna led the birthday tributes.

Big day: Amelia Hamlin celebrated her 21st birthday on Monday just nine months after splitting with Scott Disick

Amelia was also in the posting mood as she shared three snaps of herself with the caption: 'IT'S MY BIRFDAYYYYY'

The 58-year-old reality star took to her Instagram to share several throwback snaps of her youngest daughter growing up with a sweet caption.

Lisa wrote: 'Happy Birthday! We are so proud of you and the Woman you are becoming! Love you so so so so Much!!!'

She also took to her Instagram Story to share a video of Amelia being sung happy birthday by husband and dad Harry Hamlin and others at dinner.

Aww: Lisa Rinna led birthday tributes to the up-and-coming model

Aww: The 58-year-old reality star took to her Instagram to share several throwback snaps of her youngest daughter growing up with a sweet caption

Lisa wrote: 'Happy Birthday! We are so proud of you and the Woman you are becoming! Love you so so so so Much!!!'

What a moment: She also took to her Instagram Story to share a video of Amelia being sung happy birthday by husband and dad Harry Hamlin and others at dinner

Beaming: Amelia sported a massive smile

Amelia was also in the posting mood as she shared three snaps of herself with the caption: 'IT'S MY BIRFDAYYYYY.'

No doubt Amelia and Lisa have a strong bond as they both posted from a vintage clothing shopping trip on Sunday.

Back in September, Amelia ended her relationship with Scott Disick, now 39, after 11 months.

'A little birthday shopping': No doubt Amelia and Lisa have a strong bond as they both posted from a vintage clothing shopping trip on Sunday

Rolling in: Amelia was given birthday tributes by Alexander Wang and Becki Wilson

One person who was relieved about the split news at the time was Lisa who was previously a vocal critic of the relationship.

Bravo TV enthusiast Instagram account @queensofbravo posted about the break-up news which was not only liked by the 58-year-old actress but she also commented with a smiling face with smiling eyes emoji.

This came just a week after Disick was caught talking trash about ex Kourtney Kardashian with her former boyfriend Younes Bendjima.

On August 30, the Talentless designer  who Amelia has been linked to since October 2020  sent Kourtney's ex Younes a direct message about her PDA-packed behavior with boyfriend Travis Barker.

Moving on: Back in September, Amelia ended her relationship with Scott Disick, now 39, after 11 months

Relieved: One person who was relieved about the split news at the time was Lisa who was previously a vocal critic of the relationship and commented with a smiling face with smiling eyes emoji

'Yo is this chick ok!??? Broo like what is this. In the middle of Italy,' Scott wrote as he sent a photo of Kourtney kissing and straddling the Blink-182 drummer on an inflatable boat.

Younes  who dated the POOSH founder from 2016 to 2018  leaked the message on Instagram and had words to say about Scott.

'Keep the same energy you had about me publicly, privately,' the model wrote as he shared a grab of the story, after responding to Disick: 'Doesn't matter to me as long as she's happy PS: I ain't your bro.'
Gogglebox star Abbie Lynn showed off her figure in a white bikini as she jetted to Mallorca for a sun-soaked break on Monday.

The TV star, 21, - who appears on the Channel 4 show alongside pal Georgia Bell - flaunted her figure as she posed in some mirror selfies.

She showed off her bronzed tan in the two-piece which she teamed with comfortable white flip flops.

Pose: Gogglebox star Abbie Lynn showed off her figure in a white bikini as she jetted to Mallorca for a sun-soaked break on Monday

She wore her red tresses in loose waves over her shoulders and opted for a natural makeup look while posing for a more close up selfie.

Abbie also posted another snap as she flew out at the airport as she posed in a green tracksuit and had her luggage beside her.

The beauty wrote: 'This is what a 4am pic looks like !'

Bronzed: The TV star, 21, - who appears on the Channel 4 show alongside pal Georgia Bell - flaunted her figure as she posed in some selfies

Holiday: She showed off her bronzed tan in the two-piece which she teamed with comfortable white flip flops

The trip comes after Abbie helped Gogglebox co-star Georgia celebrate her baby shower last month.

Georgia, who revealed she was expecting her first child in January, joined her best friend for the special day, and Abbie later shared a sweet message on Instagram.

Posting photos showing the two girls posing together, Abbie wrote: 'You're going to be the best Mam.'

In January Georgia announced she was expecting her first child with boyfriend Josh Newby, who she's been in a relationship with since 2018.

Trip: Abbie also posted another snap as she flew out at the airport as she posed in a green tracksuit and had her luggage beside her

The star took to Instagram to share the adorable news, alongside a photo of an ultrasound scan and a selection of sweet decorations.

Framed with the captions: 'Baby Newby' and 'Due July 2022,' the scan sat next to a cute grey teddy, knitted cream shoes and a baby grows featuring the motif, 'And then there were four.'

The hairdresser has starred on the Channel 4 reality show alongside her friend Abbie since 2018, who also hails from Durham.

She also shares a Staffordshire bull terrier named Vinnie with her partner, who even has an Instagram account of his own.

A hilarious moment from Gogglebox last year saw Abbie admit she had never heard of Israel after watching a news report about it being put on the UK's green travel list.

Abbie asked: 'Where's Israel? I've never heard of Israel'.

A gobsmacked Georgia replied: 'You've got to be taking the p**s. Israel? It's something to do with Jesus.'
Neil Patrick Harris has joined the cast of Doctor Who to play the 'greatest enemy the Doctor has ever faced' and is filming scenes set to air next year.

The news came after it was announced that Sex Education's Ncuti Gatwa, 29, will become the 14th Doctor on the popular BBC series, after Jodie Whittaker revealed last July that she would be leaving the show.

Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies has confirmed Neil, 48, will be joining the cast as a villain.

It remains unclear whether Neil will appear alongside returning Time Lord David Tennant or Ncuti's new incarnation - with Tennant currently filming scenes for the 60th anniversary special.

New addition: Neil Patrick Harris, 48, has joined the cast of Doctor Who to play the 'greatest enemy the Doctor has ever faced' and is filming scenes set to air next year

Following the BBC's announcement, Russell wrote on Instagram: 'Neil Patrick Harris, welcome to Cardiff! Playing the greatest enemy the Doctor has ever faced.

'Such a great actor, such a great man, it's an honour and a hoot. Have fun! @nph @bbcdoctorwho Ha!'

Neil added on his page: 'My current gig. Never looked more dashing. Thank you for inviting me into your Whoniverse, @russelltdavies63.

Bad guy? Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies has confirmed Neil, 48 (pictured), will be joining the cast as a villain

Grateful: Meanwhile, Ncuti recently revealed he was 'deeply honoured' to be chosen as Jodie Whittaker's replacement as the Doctor after being confirmed for the role

Who will it be? It remains unclear whether Neil will appear alongside returning Time Lord David Tennant or Ncuti's new incarnation - with Tennant currently filming scenes for the 60th anniversary special (pictured Tennant with Billie Piper as Rose)

'Ill try my hardest to do my worst. This Doctor has no idea whats in store. And even if he does Who cares? Ha ha ha HA ha-ha-ha!'

Neil also joins newcomer Yasmin Finney, who is to take on the role of Rose. Yasmin recently gained recognition for her role of Elle Argent in Netflix hit Heartstopper.

The new cast are filming scenes that are due to air in 2023 as part of the show's 60th anniversary.

In the fold: Following the BBC's announcement, Russell wrote on Instagram: 'Neil Patrick Harris, welcome to Cardiff! Playing the greatest enemy the Doctor has ever faced'

The name of Neil's character, and any further details about his new role, are yet to be confirmed.

Speaking about the sci-fi show's new arrival, Russell said: 'It's my huge honour to open our studio doors for the mighty Neil Patrick Harris... but who, why, what is he playing?

'You'll just have to wait. But I promise you, the stuff we're shooting now is off the scale. Doctor beware!'

Queer As Folk and It's A Sin writer Russell is returning as the programme's showrunner after departing in 2009.

Russell, who was responsible for Doctor Who's revival in 2005, will be back to celebrate the show's 60th anniversary in 2023, the BBC previously said.

He worked with Neil on hit Channel 4 mini-drama It's A Sin, in which the American star portrayed Savile Row tailor Henry Coltrane.
Commander Frederick R. Waterford (played by Joseph Fiennes) met his demise in season 4 at the hands of Elisabeth Moss' character June Osbourne in season four.

And now the first images from the aftermath of that shocking event have been revealed.

The 39-year-old actress and castmate Yvonne Strahovski, 39, were seen in first look images released by Hulu for the upcoming season 5 of The Handmaid's Tale.

An angry close-up of June's face could be seen after she had orchestrated the death of the commander who repeatedly raped her throughout the series in the new snap.

Not pleased: Elisabeth Moss could be seen in first look images released from season 5 of The Handmaid's Tale in the aftermath of Commander Frederick R. Waterford (played by Joseph Fiennes) who met his demise in season 4 at the hands of her character June Osbourne

Based on the 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood, the show takes place in a patriarchal dystopia called Gilead founded on what used to be the United States.

Women are reduced to a status far beneath that of men, deprived of such basic rights as being permitted to read or use money.

'Handmaids' are the women forced under veils and subjected to a form of slavery in which they are repeatedly raped for the purpose of producing children.

Meanwhile the other image featured Yvonne's character Serena - who is Commander Waterford's wife - as she doesn't seem too upset as she could be seen smiling behind a black funeral veil.

Interesting: Yvonne Strahovski's, 39, character Serena - who is Commander Waterford's wife - as she doesn't seem too upset as she could be seen smiling behind a black funeral veil

According to Hulu, Serena is looking to 'raise her profile in Toronto as Gilead's influence creeps into Canada.'

There will be one familiar face missing from the upcoming season as last month Alexis Bledel shockingly announced her departure from her Emmy-winning role on the show, which had begun filming its fifth season at the time.

'After much thought, I felt I had to step away from The Handmaids Tale at this time,' said the 40-year-old actress, who has been on the show since season one.

'I am forever grateful to Bruce Miller for writing such truthful and resonant scenes for Emily, and to Hulu, MGM, the cast and crew for their support,' she told Variety.

Seen onscreen: Last month Alexis Bledel shockingly announced her departure from her Emmy-winning role on the show, which had begun filming its fifth season at the time

Alexis played Emily Malek, who was a Handmaid under the name of Ofglen until she escaped to Canada and who now works for the Mayday resistance.

She won an Emmy for outstanding guest actress for her work on the first season, and has been nominated a further three times for the show.

The show has long since passed up the events of the Margaret Atwood novel, so the writers have a level of freedom to shape the plot around Alexis' exit.

The Handmaid's Tale season 5 is set to premiere on Hulu on September 14.

Watch the Iconic Series The Handmaid's Tale is available only on Stan in Australia.
She has taken on some of the world's biggest celebrities with her side-splitting parodies on Instagram.

And Celeste Barber has now taken aim at American model-of-the-moment Kaia Gerber in her latest spot-on spoof.

The Aussie comedian, 40, posted a side-by-side photo of herself emulating the 20-year-old's recent nude shoot for luxury brand Loewe.

Celeste Barber (right) roasted Kaia Gerber's latest bizarre photo shoot (left) after the American model hopped into a bathtub in the middle of a car park for luxury brand Loewe

Kaia's high-fashion shoot saw her take a bubble bath in the middle of a car park.

Covered in suds, the seemingly naked model seductively pouted at the camera while clutching a black Loewe handbag.

Celeste copied Kaia's image to perfection in her parody on Monday, stripping nude and sitting in a clear plastic tub in an alleyway.

Kaia's high-fashion shoot saw her take a bubble bath in the middle of a car park

Celeste copied Kaia's image to perfection in her parody on Monday, stripping nude and sitting in a clear plastic tub in an alleyway

In January last year, Celeste revealed that some celebrities have blocked her because they find her hilarious Instagram parodies 'mean'. (Pictured left: Rita Ora)

Celeste placed some suds on her chin, making her look like she had a beard.

'Kaia and I are excited to launch our new collaboration, Hygiene Chic,' she captioned the snap, adding: '*None of this is true.'

Kaia took the parody in good humour, commenting on the post: 'The greatest honour.'

In January last year, Celeste revealed that some models, actresses and influencers had blocked her on Instagram because they didn't like being made fun of. (Left: Emily Ratajkowski )

In January last year, Celeste revealed that some models, actresses and influencers had blocked her on Instagram because they didn't like being made fun of.

'Some people don't like it. People are allowed to be sick of being made fun of, I get it. People have blocked and are not into it, no problem. Moving on!' she said on Jameela Jamil's iWeigh podcast.

Celeste said her photos and videos are just lighthearted parodies and not intended to ridicule anyone.

While many high-profile names have praised Celeste's parodies, some A-listers are clearly not fans. (Left: Khloe Kardashian)

'My intention with this has always been just to make people laugh, and where they take it from there is up to them,' she said.

'When people are like, "Do you feel mean or anything?" I'm like, "No." I only use photos they post. If it's a paparazzi photo I won't use it, unless they have.'

Despite this, Celeste admitted many celebrities are in on the joke, and even submit their own posts to be parodied.
This image released by Disney/Pixar shows character Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans, left, and Alisha Hawthorne, voiced by Uzo Aduba, in a scene from the animated film "Lightyear." AP-Yonhap



The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature ''Lightyear'' from showing in movie theaters after its inclusion of a kiss between two lesbian characters.



The decision by the UAE comes as Malaysia also reportedly will ban the film, raising the possibility other Muslim-majority nations could follow suit on one of Disney's biggest animated films of the year as the film industry comes out of the depths of the coronavirus pandemic.



The Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, announced through its Media Regulatory Office of the country's Ministry of Youth and Culture that the film would not be opening in the country this Thursday.



The film ''is not licensed for public screening in all cinemas in the UAE, due to its violation of the country's media content standards,'' the office said in a tweet. ''The office confirms that all films screened in cinemas across the country are subject to follow-up and evaluation before the date of screening to the public, to ensure the safety of the circulated content according to the appropriate age classification.''



The office did not elaborate on the tweet and did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press. The tweet included an image of the film's poster, with the profile image of its main character Buzz Lightyear with a ''no'' symbol over it in red.



Movie theaters in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, had already advertised showtimes for the film. But over the weekend, a social media campaign with the Arabic hashtag ''Ban Showing Lightyear in the Emirates,'' caught the attention of conservative Emiratis. They described showing a lesbian couple on screen as being against their culture and religion.



The movie, with actor Chris Evans voicing the inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear action figure from the ''Toy Story'' films, includes a female character voiced by actress Uzo Aduba kissing her female partner.



The UAE, many other countries in the wider Mideast, is a Muslim-led nation that criminalizes same-sex relationships. The U.S. State Department warns that Islamic, or Shariah, law in the UAE can include the death penalty for same-sex conduct, while Dubai can levy a 10-year prison sentence and Abu Dhabi allows for up to 14 years.



However, such prosecutions are rarely reported and LGBTQ individuals do live in the skyscraper-studded city-state of Dubai, home to the long-haul carrier Emirates.



The $200 million ''Lightyear'' is expected to be a major draw for Disney, with analysts estimating it could gross over $100 million in its first weekend.



Studios have allowed censors to cut films in global distribution for content in the past, including in the Mideast market. Recently, Disney has faced protests from activists and its own staff over what they described as CEO Bob Chapek's slow response in publicly criticizing Florida legislation that opponents dubbed the ''Don't Say Gay'' bill.



Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in late March signed the bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.



The moment had been earlier cut from the film but was restored after Pixar employees protested Disney's response to Florida's bill.



The movie also may be banned in Malaysia as well. The Star, the country's top English-language newspaper, cited an anonymous, nongovernment source as saying that Lightyear will not be shown in Malaysian cinemas. No reasons were given. A newspaper in the Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain similarly has speculated the film wouldn't be shown there.



Officials from Malaysia's Film Censorship Board and the Home Affairs Ministry, as well as The Walt Disney Co., could not be immediately reached for comment. (AP)






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Britney Spears and her husband Sam Asghari are moving on up to a new mansion in the Los Angeles area.

The 40-year-old pop superstar and the aspiring actor, 28, have bought an enormous new mansion in Calabasas, California, TMZ reported on Monday.

The newlyweds don't seem to have wasted any time, as they appeared to have started the move-in process on the same day.

New digs: Britney Spears, 40, and her new husband Sam Asghari, 28, have reportedly purchased a new home in Calabasas, Calif., for $11.8 million, TMZ reported on Monday. The enormous home features opulent interiors with marble floors, dark woods and stunning chandeliers

The new home was a pricy purchase for the couple, as they reportedly spent $11.8 million on the home  though it would be primarily from Britney's fortune, which is around $60 million.

It has an impressive 11,650 square feet, so they'll have plenty of space, even when Britney's sons Sean, 16, and Jayden, 15, are spending time there.

They'll likely be over plenty, as the new house is apparently close by to her ex-husband Kevin Federline's house, where he lives with the boys.

Notably, Britney's sons weren't present at her wedding on Thursday, which was held at her previous home. In a statement to People, Federline's attorney made it clear that they were happy for their mother but wanted to let her bask in the spotlight on her big day.

'They're happy for their mom and they are hopeful that Sam and Britney are starting a great future together,' said Mark Vincent Kaplan. 'It's their night and they didn't want to take away from them.'

Room to stretch: Britney and Sam will have 11,650 square feet to themselves in the home, which is near LA in a tony city host to several A-listers, including Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker

Classy: The home features grand marble floors and stately hallways with old-world charm

Convenient: The kitchen and living area are located just across from each other for easy access

Multiple rooms: A bedroom included a fireplace and striking arch entranceway

Spacious: The mansion features six bedrooms and nine bathrooms

Fully stocked: The property sits on 1.6 acres and features an enormous back yard complete with a pool

Need for speed: Guests can jet into the pool via a huge waterslide running up the side of a hill, and there's also a hot tub adjoining

Front door: The front door is shown during daytime flanked by fountain pools

Delicate: The fountains are decorated with classic tiled designs

Britney has a penchant for taking photos and video for her Instagram account outside of her old Hidden Hills home, and she'll have of room on the ground to continue that thanks to the mansion's 1.6 acres.

She and her husband are apparently getting a head start on the move after her car was seen in the homes driveway, accompanied by two moving trucks.

It's not clear if the lovebirds are planning to quickly sell off her former mansion  where their wedding was held  or if they plan to hold onto that estate.

Huge space: Britney has a penchant for taking photos and video for her Instagram account outside of her old Hidden Hills home, and she'll have of room on the ground to continue that thanks to the mansion's 1.6 acres

Outdoor dining: The home also featured outdoor dining areas

California living: The mansion had plenty of outdoor space to enjoy the weather in Southern California

Room to run around: The mansion includes an enormous lawn, which will leave plenty of space for Britney's dogs to enjoy

Ideal: The covered areas are a great way to enjoy the fresh air while staying cool

Out of the sun: A covered area near the pool would be ideal for grilling on a hot summer day

Bright: The cozy space included plenty of natural light through the windows

All of their needs will certainly be met in the new house, as it reportedly has a large kitchen area, along with a screening room for them to have movie nights on a big screen.

TMZ even notes that the house has an unusual perk  a room solely dedicated to gift wrapping, which is likely to up Britney and Sam's gift-giving game for Christmas and birthdays.

The home includes an expansive back yard complete with a large pool and a waterslide. The area is also decorated with several fountains, and there's a hot tub connected to the pool.

Big pool: The home includes an expansive back yard complete with a large pool and a waterslide

Aerial view: The true size of the pool is shown in an aerial view

Heating up: There also appears to be a hot tub just to the side of the large pool

Stunning: The tasteful fountain designs are also the centerpiece of the pool area

In good company: The move will put Britney even closer to her sons Sean, 16, and Jayden, 15, as the new house is close to her ex-husband Kevin Federline's house, where he lives with the boys; seen in 2006

Decisions: It's not clear if the lovebirds are planning to quickly sell off her former mansion  where their wedding was held  or if they plan to hold onto that estate

A covered area near the pool would be ideal for grilling on a hot summer day.

Britney and Sam appear to have gotten the house for a steal, as it was originally listed for just under $15.5 million.

A post from Frontgate Real Estate advertising the home highlights its grand marble floors, elegant moulding and distinguished chandeliers.

The kitchen features a cozy island for low-key snacking and conversation, and there's also a breakfast nook surrounded by windows just next to it. Across from the kitchen is a relaxing living area.

Cool kitchen: The kitchen features a cozy island for low-key snacking and conversation

Lovely: The kitchen features ornate moulding and several chandeliers

State of the art: It also has top of the line appliances and a large gas range

Living room: A living room was filled with natural light

Luxurious: The room featured parquet floors and an elegant marble fireplace

Indoor dining: An indoor breakfast nook was surrounded by windows

Guests arriving at the front of the house will walk up a grand set of stair as they come to the front doors.

A video tour of the property shows that it is decorated with gorgeous dark wood fixtures. There's a long room off one of the main halls for a formal dining room.

Another room features enormous built-in shelves and cabinets with the same dark wood to create a classy office space.

One room was previously decorated with a piano and featured a full-size bar and plenty of room for chairs and tables, which would make an ideal spot for entertaining guests and even singing a song or two.

Grand stairs: Guests arriving at the front of the house will walk up a grand set of stair as they come to the front doors

Movie theater: The mansion also includes its own movie theater room

Movie night: It's decked out with comfy leather seats and features a sizable screen surrounded by dark wood

Big tub: A bathroom included a large bath tub with tiling all around

Let there be light: The mansion is lit throughout with gorgeous chandeliers

Getting work done: Another room features enormous built-in shelves and cabinets with the same dark wood to create a classy office space

Lounge: One room was previously decorated with a piano and featured a full-size bar and plenty of room for chairs and tables, which would make an ideal spot for entertaining guests and even singing a song or two

Britney's master bedroom includes an enormous walk-in closet and a lovely tiled bathroom.

The area is rife with ultra-wealthy celebrities, including Kourtney Kardashian and her new husband Travis Barker.

Sam and Britney appear to have prioritized getting settled into their new mansion over an immediate honeymoon trip, though they'll have plenty of time to travel.

Jeff Biebuyck and Dana Olmes of Frontgate Real Estate posted on Instagram that the property was 'just listed' back in January 2021, but Douglas Elliman's Josh and Matt Altman handled the listing with Todd Bernstein of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, according to property records.

Hot property: Jeff Biebuyck and Dana Olmes of Frontgate Real Estate posted on Instagram that the property was 'just listed' back in January 2021, but Douglas Elliman's Josh and Matt Altman handled the listing with Todd Bernstein of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, according to property records

Striking: The mansion is decorated with tasteful dark wood fixtures throughout

Taking it easy: Britney will have a luxurious sitting room near her master bathroom

Convenient: The walk in closet is covered in drawers with a striking olive-colored wood

A source told TMZ that Britney's ex-husband Kevin was taking a wait-and-see approach to living so close to his former wife.

'Kevin was surprised that of all the neighborhoods she can afford to move to she chose his,' they said. 'As long as his peace and tranquility aren't invaded as a result, more power to her.'

Britney and Kevin got married in September 2004 and their divorce was finalized in July 2007.
Sami Sheen, the daughter of Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen, has opened an account on the popular subscription site OnlyFans.

The 18-year-old celebrity daughter  and high school dropout  announced her new account on Monday with a bikini photo posted to social media.

The news that she was joining the site  which often hosts lewd or pornographic material  wasn't well received by her father Charlie, who clarified that he didn't 'condone' the move in a statement to Us Weekly.

Risque venture: Sami Sheen, the 18-year-old daughter of Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen, announced Monday that she was opening an OnlyFans account

'This did not occur under my roof,' stressed the 56-year-old Wall Street star.

'She is 18 years old now and living with her mother,' he added, seemingly trying to shift any blame to his ex-wife, whom he was divorced from in 2006.

'I do not condone this but since Im unable to prevent it, I urged her to keep it classy, creative and not sacrifice her integrity,' Sheen added.

Richards stood up for herself while speaking to Page Six, suggesting that location wasn't an issue now that her daughter was legally an adult.

Washing his hands: 'This did not occur under my roof,' Sheen, 56, stressed to Us Weekly. 'She is 18 years old now and living with her mother'; seen in 2002 in Beverly Hills

Up to her: 'Sami is 18, and this decision wasnt based on whose house she lives in,' Richards told Page Six. 'All I can do as a parent is guide her and trust her judgment, but she makes her own choices'

'Sami is 18, and this decision wasnt based on whose house she lives in,' Richards said. 'All I can do as a parent is guide her and trust her judgment, but she makes her own choices.'

In her post announcing her new subscription service, Sami posed in a black halter string bikini while leaning out of a pool.

Her dyed-blond hair was parted down the middle, and she wore a splash of scarlet lipstick, along with a gold chain around her throat.

'click the link in my bio if u wanna see more,' she captioned the Instagram version of her photo.

A one-month subscription to her page costs $19.99 and comes with access to all the content she has previously posted, while long subscriptions come at a discount.

So far, she only has a single post, which she made earlier on Monday.

Subscription plan: Sami is charging $19.99 per month and only has one post so far. Many creators use OnlyFans to post pornographic material, though celebrities and influencers also use it for SFW material

Bad times: Sami previously went public with her family life in September 2021, when she posted a TikTok video in which she claimed she was 'trapped in an abusive household' while at Denise's home

In her bio, she stated that she planned to post '23 times a week,' and she added that 'my messages are open so come talk to me!!'

Although many content creators use OnlyFans to post nude or risque content, many celebrities and influencers  including Cardi B and Bella Thorne  also have accounts where they post suitable-for-work content for subscribers.

Sami previously went public with her family life in September 2021, when she posted a TikTok video in which she claimed she was 'trapped in an abusive household' while at Denise's home.

'1 year ago today: trapped in an abusive household, hated myself, would go days without eating or sleeping, insanely depressed, hated school, etc' she said.

In the same post, she informed her followers that she had dropped out of high school and moved over to her father Charlie's house, though her parents say she's now back with Denise.

The two showed signs of a thaw in their relationship last month, when Sami posted some cute photos of herself and her mother beaming as they celebrated Mother's Day.

'happy mothers day !! i love u so much mom. u have no idea how grateful i am to have u in my life,' she captioned the post.

On the upswing? The two showed signs of a thaw in their relationship last month, when Sami posted some cute photos of herself and her mother beaming as they celebrated Mother's Day

Back in February, Denise admitted the two had a strained relationship while making an appearance on SiriusXM's Jeff Lewis Live show.

'There are certain rules, and I enforce them,' she said. And [at Charlie's place], theres different rules at that house, and thats OK.'

Denise added: 'She lived with me all these years, but I think its very difficult raising teenagers these days, especially in Los Angeles.'

Denise previously signaled a that back in March, when she posted that she loved Sami 'unconditionally' to mark her 18th birthday.

The RHOBH star also shares her daughter Lola, 17, with Sheen, and she has an adopted daughter Eloise.

In addition to his daughter with Denise, Charlie shares his adult daughter Cassandra with Paula Profit. He has 13-year-old twins Max and Bob with Brooke Mueller.
It now seems customary for the Prime Minister of Barbados, the Honourable Mia Amor Mottley to use Bob Marleys lyrics whenever shes conveying urgent messages to her peers on the global stage.

Mottley quoted lyrics from Bob Marley and The Wailers So Much Trouble In The World (1979) to engage leaders of the North, South, and Central Americas, and the Caribbean who attended the Ninth Summit of the Americas from June 6 to 10. The international conference, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA., with the theme, Building a Sustainable, Resilient, and Equitable Future, is a forum to address challenges and opportunities for countries of the Americas.

In her address to the United Nations last September, Mottley drew for the lyrics of Get Up, Stand Up a song co-written by Marley and Peter Tosh, as she called out the organization for being in a constant state of inertia.

But at the summit over the weekend, Mottley was less militant as she opened her speech with lyrics from So Much Trouble In The World. Bless my eyes this morning, Jah sun is on the rise again. The way earthly things are going, anything can happen, the PM began. Mr. Secretary, there is so much trouble in the world, Excellencies, there is so much trouble in the world, Heads of government, there is so much trouble in the world, Heads of State, there is so much trouble in the world.

The song was written by Bob Marley and co-produced by Alex Sadkin for the album Survival. It peaked at No. 56 on the UK Singles charts in 1979.

Ive chosen the language of Bob Marley, this morning, not because Im an apostle of Bob, as youve probably realized by now, but also because he reminds us of the day-to-day reality of our people and our citizens.

The Prime Minister, who is the first woman to lead Barbados, voiced specific concerns on pressing matters involving the Caribbean and developing states which she broke down as three global crises.

Mottley was earnest in her delivery, and added My friends, how much more evidence do we need?

You see men sailing on their ego trip. Blast off on their spaceship, million miles from reality. No care for you. No care for me, she said, drawing once more on the Gongs words to further stir the interests of her associates.

If I could have sung it, you would have joined me, she added. But I dont need you to join me in the words of this song. I need you to join us in the chorus of action that our people need, not want.

At the end of her speech, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who chaired the session, replied with an impromptu medley of Marley lyrics.

In the words of Bob, no woman, no cry, a smiling Blinken said. Dont shed no tears. Lets act. We can sing a redemption song together.
Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe delivers a speech on "China's Vision for Regional Order" at the19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 12, 2022. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)

SINGAPORE, June 12 -- Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe delivered a speech on China's Vision for Regional Order at the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 12, 2022.

General Wei pointed out that the human society is undergoing multiple crises rarely seen in history, and the right course lies in maintaining and implementing multilateralism and promoting the establishment of a community with a shared future for mankind.

"The pace of China's development is unstoppable, and its commitment to the path of peaceful development is unswerving. China's development is not a threat, but a great contribution to world peace and development," General Wei said, noting that China firmly upholds a national defense policy that is defensive in nature, and the Chinese military has always been the force of peace and will resolutely safeguard Chinas sovereignty, security and development interests.

He also stated that the Asian-Pacific region features greatest growth vitality and development potential worldwide. Therefore, all countries should advance toward the good vision of building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future and realizing lasting peace and universal security in this region.

General Wei stated solemn position on the Taiwan question. He stressed that Taiwan belongs to China, and Taiwan question is China's internal affairs. The national unification will be absolutely realized. Again, he sternly warned that there is absolutely no good end to the "Taiwan independence" separatist activities, and the interference by external forces is doomed to fail.

The defense minister further noted that peaceful reunification is the greatest aspiration of the Chinese people, and China is willing to do the utmost for that. If anyone dares to split Taiwan from the country, China will not hesitate to fight, even at any cost. No one should underestimate the determination, will and power of the Chinese military.

General Wei also set forth China's position on the South China Sea issue, China-US relations and the Ukraine crisis in his speech.

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe delivers a speech on "China's Vision for Regional Order" at the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 12, 2022. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe delivers a speech on "China's Vision for Regional Order" at the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 12, 2022. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)
Education minister Patlolla Sabitha Indra Reddy, in an exclusive interview with Deccan Chronicle, spoke about several initiatives being taken up to provide better education to students. (Photo: Facebook)

HYDERABAD: As schools in the state are all set to begin the new academic year, after facing huge challenges for the past two years, the education department is leaving no stone unturned to make school education a novel experience for students by providing better infrastructure and ensuring total enrolment. With several new reforms in the education sector on the cards, the government has been conducting campaigns and giving training to teachers for the past few weeks.

Education minister Patlolla Sabitha Indra Reddy, in an exclusive interview with Deccan Chronicle, spoke about several initiatives being taken up to provide better education to students.



Excerpts:

Q. What is the government's aim from this academic year?

Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao aims to provide highly sophisticated infrastructure in government schools. The education department has embarked on 'Mana Ooru Mana Badi', where about 22 lakh students enrolled in government schools will have top-notch facilities ensuring high quality education. To realise this dream, we released a notification to fill 20,000 teachers posts for which the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) was conducted on Sunday.

Q. Why do you think parents are opting for private schools?

Parents are choosing private schools for the facilities and infrastructure they provide. In order to reduce the gap between government and private schools, we revamped many schools at a cost of `7,000 crore. Thanks to Deccan Chronicle for bringing us the issues which needed to be attended to. We have taken notice of it and instructed officials to rectify the mistakes.

Q. What is the idea behind introducing English medium in government schools?

We all know the English medium will connect students globally. Parents are opting for private schools due to the absence of English medium in government schools. To address this issue, the Chief Minister directed us to introduce English medium from this academic year from Class 1 to 8, ensuring Telugu as a compulsory subject. The government will supply bilingual textbooks. We will introduce English medium till Class 10 next year.

Q. When can textbooks be expected?

They will be available from the first week of July. Prior to that, schools will have a bridge course for children to cope with English as a medium of language.

Q. What is the status of the free KG-to-PG education plan?

We faced several hardships while implementing the programme. Till date have constructed 950 Gurukul schools and the demand for admission is very high. On similar lines, government schools would be developed.

Q. Will the government regulate the fee in private schools?

The government has discussed the recommendations given by the Tirupati Rao Committee and decided to bring in a Fee Regulation Act. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the government asked private schools to collect only the tuition fee and that too in installments. The fee was regulated in 80 per cent of budget schools. It has come to our notice that few corporate schools are not following the guidelines. The government has acted on 41 corporate schools as of now.

Q. Students and teachers have complained of poor quality of mid-day meals.

We are providing fine rice. We are ensuring good quality. If anyone compromises on the quality, we will initiate stringent action. The headmaster should check the quality of the meal. The instruction was given by the Chief Minister.

Q. What about the availability of uniforms?

At least one pair of uniforms will be distributed by July end. There is a slight delay as we are changing the colours and design of the uniforms.
The police said that the private bus was heading from Chinnapalle of Odisha to Vijayawada city. (Representational image: DC)

Visakhapatnam: Five persons, including two children died and over 35 people suffered injuries when a private bus, in which they were travelling, overturned and fell into a gorge near Yedugurallapalle under Chintoor Mandal in Alluri Sitarama Raju district on Monday morning.

The deceased have been identified as Dhaneswar Dalapati (25), Jeetu Harijan (5), Sunena Harijan (2) and two others, all hailing from Odisha.

The police said that the private bus was heading from Chinnapalle of Odisha to Vijayawada city. At the time of the incident, there were 60 passengers in the bus, all of them guest workers.

The police said the driver lost control on the ghat road allegedly due to over-speeding, resulting in overturning of the vehicle. Three people died on the spot and two others died in hospital. The condition of two of the injured was said to be critical.
They demanded a provision of non-practising allowance for doctors and wages on par with NIMS and central institutions like AIIMS. (Representational image: ANI)

Hyderabad: Several medical associations, at a round table meeting here on Sunday, reiterated their opposition to the ban on private practice for doctors of government-run medical colleges.

Instead, they proposed an optional ban, or a provision for allowances, or wages on par with doctors in national institutions. They have also opposed officials remaining admin in-charges for several years.

The associations that participated in the meeting include TTGDA, Medical JAC, HRDA, the Telangana employees association, T-JUDA, T-SRDA, IMA and TVVPGDA. They unanimously opposed the recent GOs 56 and 58, which banned private practice for new doctors. They said the ban will hamper quality healthcare services to the poor.

The associations pleaded for immediate constitution of a high-level committee involving members of government doctors associations and junior doctors for making recommendations on important issues. They demanded a provision of non-practising allowance for doctors and wages on par with NIMS and central institutions like AIIMS.

They also sought abolition of in-charge administration and wanted the government to appoint eligible senior doctors to the posts as per existing rules and regulations.

Adviser to JUDA and convener of resident doctors association at NIMS Dr Srinivas Gundagani said officials like the Director of Medical Education, NIMS Director and NIMS Vice-Chancellor had held their posts for 5 to 6 years.

Rules and acts allow them to hold the position only for three years. Others should be appointed in these posts on seniority basis, Gundagani said.

The associations decided that if the government does not consider their pleas, they would meet again and decide on a plan of action.
Hyderabad: Taking serious note of the fire accident on March 22 in a timber godown at Bhoiguda which claimed the lives of 11 guest workers, the Telangana High Court on Monday issued notices to the Chief Secretary, principal secretary of labour and employment, commissioner of labour and the Hyderabad Collector, directing them to explain within four weeks what led to the mishap.

The court, which took up a suo moto petition, directed the authorities to state whether or not the victims were eligible to get compensation under the laws promulgated for the benefit of guest workers.

The was taken up by the court after converting a letter addressed by Kanthi Kiran Bhargav, vice-president of Watch Voice of the People, a non-government organisation based in Mahbubnagar, who requested directions to the government to constitute a judicial committee to probe into the incident as there was allegedly some mystery behind the fire accident and to help the kin of the victims.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Abhinand Kumar Shavali directed the government to inform the court whether the dependants of the victim were eligible to get welfare under the Interstate Migrant Workmen Act 1979, Employees Compensation Act 1923, Employees Provident Fund Act etc., and whether the various Acts cited were being implemented in Telangana or not, so that the kith and kin of these migrant labourers could be extended some financial help.
A bulldozer is being used to demolish the illegal structures of the residence of Javed Ahmed, a local leader who was allegedly involved in the recent violent protests against BJP former spokeswoman Nupur Sharma's incendiary remarks about Prophet Mohammed, in Allahabad. (Sanjay KANOJIA / AFP)

New Delhi/Kolkata: Protests and the imposition of curfews continued in several states over the two erstwhile BJP spokespersons remarks over Prophet Mohammad. In Uttar Pradesh, where some of the major cities faced massive protests, the Yogi government brought out bulldozers on Sunday to raze down the houses of some of the protesters. Among those whose homes were bulldozed on Sunday was of Muslim activist Afreen Fatima in Prayagraj.

Heavy police deployment was seen in Silchar, Ranchi, Howrah, Prayagraj and parts of Jammu and Kashmir after violent protests over derogatory comments on Prophet Mohammed by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma. While Ms Sharma has been suspended from her party, several FIRs have been filed across the country against her. At least two people have been killed, and hundreds arrested after clashes between protesters and the police since Friday. Nine FIRs have been filed over the violence and death during police firing in Ranchi.

In Maharashtra, the Bhiwandi police has summoned Nupur Sharma to record her statement on Monday over her alleged objectionable remarks against Prophet Mohammad, while a fresh FIR was filed against her in West Bengal under non-bailable charges. The FIR is under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion), 504 (intentional insult to provoke breach of peace), 505(2) (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. Incidentally, the Jamaat Ulema-e-Hind has suggested that Ms Nupur Sharma should be forgiven as as per Islamic practice.

To tackle the protests in Uttar Pradesh, the Yogi Adityanath government continues with its bulldozing techniques after these were reported from Prayagraj, Saharanpur, Moradabad, Hathras and Kanpur since the Friday prayers in mosques. The state government has reportedly slapped the Gangster Act against many protesters as Yogi Adityanath called for stern action against the rioters.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday strongly opposed the demolition drive in the state, saying it was Nupur Sharma who should face action over her comments but instead peaceful protesters are being punished.

The Uttar Pradesh Police has so far arrested over 300 people from eight districts of the state over Friday's violent protests. On Sunday, the house of one of the accused in the violence in Prayagraj was demolished for being an illegal construction. Sources said that more demolitions can be expected in the days to come in Prayagraj, Saharanpur, Moradabad, Hathras, Kanpur and the other places which witnessed protests.

The Prayagraj Development Authority demolished the house of Mohammad Javed, who has been accused over his involvement in the violence in the district on Friday. Javed is the father of Afreen Fatima, a student at JNU. Javed Mohammad's family has alleged he was served a backdated notice. The family has filed a plea against the demolition, claiming that the order incorrectly mentions him as the owner of the house instead of his wife. His wife, Somaiya Fatima, alleged that the authorities had not issued any notice prior to the action about their house being illegal.

Bulldozers are being used for action in Prayagraj by the Prayagraj Development Authority under the ambit of law. Heavy police deployed there as violent incidents happened last Friday, said Prashant Kumar, ADG (law and order) UP police. He added 306 people have been arrested since Friday while 13 injured policemen are getting treatment.

In UPs Bhadohi, a case was registered at Gopiganj police station after a procession was taken out on Saturday evening despite prohibitory orders being in place in support of Nupur Sharma. In Saharanpur, 71 people have been arrested. We have found CCTV footage via which we are identifying them. We are taking action only after we find solid proof so we do not have to let them go, said SP City Rajesh Kumar on the protests in Saharanpur after the Friday prayers.

Security has been tightened in Jharkhand as Section 144 remained in effect in Ranchi. With the situation slowly easing in Ranchi, the state administration has restored Internet services that had been cut off to contain the protests. The facilities that were stopped have begun 25 FIRs have yet been registered regarding the violence, with 22 people identified by name and several others have been booked as unknown. An SIT has been formed to look into it. We are taking confidence-building measures and ensuring patrolling. We are monitoring all social media, including WhatsApp. We are seeing uploads, downloads, hashtags, statements. Any person trying to instigate violence will be booked, said Ranchi SSP S.K. Jha.

All states where violence has taken place must ensure strict action and investigation so such incidents do not repeat themselves, said Union minister Anurag Thakur on Sunday.

The West Bengal police has arrested over 100 persons for the incidents of violence over the hate speech so far. On Sunday the BJPs Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari too had an altercation with the police when he was stopped from visiting the violence-hit areas of Howrah. In Nadia, a local train came under attack by a violent mob at Bethuadahari railway station, which disrupted services for over an hour. Railway officials said the train was damaged and some passengers injured.

In Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim cleric who called for Nupur Sharmas beheading was arrested, while the Aurangabads AIMIM MP Imtiaz Jaleel has set off a fresh controversy by demanding the hanging of Ms Sharma for her remarks about the Prophet.

In Kuwait, meanwhile, the expats who have protested against Ms Nupur Sharma will be arrested and deported from Kuwait. The Kuwait government has issued instructions to arrest such protesters and send them back to their respective countries saying that all migrants should respect the laws and should not take part in any kind of demonstrations.

In Kuwait, expatriates are not allowed to organize sit-ins or protests in the country. Arab Times reported that the protesters have violated the laws and rules of the country.
Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Reddy has directed the health officials to extend a financial assistance of`Rs 5,000 to each mother who delivered a baby under C-section. This assistance given under the YSR Asara scheme has thus been raised from the present Rs 3,000.

The chief minister chaired a high-level review meeting with health minister Vidadala Rajani and top officials here on Monday. He said that from now on, mothers who deliver a baby at C-section will get Rs 5000, on par with mothers who deliver babies normally.

This, he said, would ensure protection for mother and child irrespective of the way they deliver. There must, however, be more spread of awareness among the expectant mothers to prefer natural delivery instead of C-section, he said.

Officials informed the CM that under the Arogyasri scheme, 2,446 procedures were being covered. Jagan asked them to enhance the number of procedures to be carried out under the scheme so that the poor get healthcare free of cost under the scheme. Do this in a weeks time by holding talks with doctors and their associations, he said.

The officials told the CM the state is spending Rs 270 crore per month under the Arogyasri scheme, Rs 25 crore for the 104 and 108 services, Rs 35 crore for the YSR Asara scheme and Rs 4,000 crore for Arogyasri scheme per annum.

They said the Centre had released `223 crore for AP under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana scheme last year and the state is now expecting Rs 360 crore this year.

The CM reviewed the Covid situation in the state. Officials informed him that its prevalence was under control. He listed out details of the vaccinations completed so far. Those at age 18 got two doses of the jab, while 99.65 per cent of those between 15 and 17 years were covered. Those between age 12 and 14 were covered to the extent of 97.78 per cent.

The chief minister stressed the need to expedite the construction of 16 new medical colleges.
In a recent Ford India workers' strike development, the company gave the employees till Monday evening to accept a "non-negotiable" severance package. An early unit closure and legal action against employees were also indicated if they don't resume production from June 14.

A union leader told Business Standard that the notice was issued without informing the union and without their consent. They are hence not ready to accept it.

According to the revised severance package, employees were awarded 115 days of gross pay for each year of service. This amount is much larger than the statutory severance package, which is 15 days of salary for each year of service.

Also read: Ford employees go on a strike demanding better compensation package

For each completed year of service, the revised package comprises an ex-gratia sum equal to 87 days of last drawn gross wages (May 2022) and a set amount of Rs 50,000. In addition, benefits equivalent to a lump sum of Rs 2,40,000 were granted as well as the maintenance of their current medical insurance until March 2024.

"The above package is not negotiable, and the terms of this notice shall not be construed as forming part of any service conditions," the notice said. "If employees do not opt for the severance package, the company will be forced to take legal steps/proceedings."

Ford also indicated that only permanent employees who resume production on June 14, 2022, and help the company meet its production schedule would be eligible for the package.

Ford, in September 2021, announced that it would shut down its factories in India. This would impact a total of 4,000 employees. At the Maraimalai Nagar factory in Tamil Nadu, around 2,000 workers have been on strike for 14 days, seeking a better severance package.
China and Pakistan have agreed to step up their defence and counter-terrorism cooperation amidst "challenging times", as Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa held wide-ranging talks with the Chinese military leadership to further cement their all-weather strategic partnership.

Gen Bajwa, accompanied by top Pakistani defence officials, held talks with the Chinese team led by Vice Chairman Central Military Commission General Zhang Youxia in Qingdao, the capital city of east China's Shandong province on Sunday.

The tri-service military delegation of Pakistan visited China from June 9 to 12 where it held wide-ranging discussions with senior officials of the Chinese military and other government departments, according to a statement by the Pakistan Army.

The Apex Meeting was held on Sunday where the Pakistani side was headed by Gen Bajwa, while the Chinese side was led by General Zhang.

Read | Fear for democracy in Pakistan as ISI gets power over civil service appointments

"Both sides discussed their perspectives on the international and regional security situation, and expressed satisfaction on defence cooperation between the two countries, according to the statement.

"Pakistan and China reaffirmed their strategic partnership in challenging times and agreed to continue the regular exchange of perspectives on issues of mutual interest. Both sides also vowed to enhance their training, technology and counterterrorism cooperation at the tri-service level," it added.

"China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic cooperative partners," said Gen Zhang, noting that over the years, both sides have kept close coordination and firmly supported each other on issues concerning each others core interests.

In the meeting, both sides strongly condemned the terrorist attack on the shuttle van of the Confucius Institute at the University of Karachi in Pakistan in April and stressed that any attempt to undermine the China-Pakistan friendship is doomed to fail, the Chinese military said in a statement.

Three Chinese teachers were killed when an explosion triggered by a burqa-clad woman suicide bomber from the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) ripped through a van of the Confucius Institute at the prestigious University of Karachi on April 26.

The separatist BLA said it opposes Chinese investment in Pakistan's resource-rich Balochistan province, saying locals do not benefit.

The BLA has targeted Chinese nationals on a number of occasions, as has the Pakistani Taliban.

China is heavily involved in large infrastructure projects across Pakistan, including in the Balochistan province.

During the talks, Gen. Zhang said China is willing to strengthen communication, reinforce cooperation, deepen pragmatic exchanges with Pakistan, and properly deal with the complicated factors in the regional situation, so as to push the military-to-military relations for further development.

Gen Bajwa said that the Pakistan-China friendship is unbreakable and rock-solid. Pakistan will stand firmly with China at any time, no matter how the international and regional situation changes.

Read | Maintaining good relationship meets interests of both India and China: Chinese Defence Minister

He stressed that Pakistan is ready to enhance dialogue and coordination with the Chinese military, carry out mutually beneficial cooperation, crack down on the terrorist forces, strive to improve the capabilities of both sides in dealing with various security challenges, safeguard the common interests of two countries, and make contributions to regional peace.

The visit was part of the Pak-China Joint Military Cooperation Committee (PCJMCC)  its apex committee is the highest military cooperation body.

The committee has two sub committees that include Joint Cooperation Military Affairs (JCMA) and Joint Cooperation Military Equipment & Training (JCMET).

Relations between the two countries have grown steadily in all fields despite concerns by the West regarding Chinas growing influence in the region.

Pakistan relies on China for military equipment and recently Beijing provided J-10 fighter jets to counterbalance the strategic edge India gained after buying Rafale jets from France.

Their multifaceted cooperation has gained more importance in the context of fast-changing regional situations.
Two Chinese nationals, who had sneaked into Indian territory without a visa and lived for nearly a fortnight in the Delhi-NCR region, were arrested in Bihar while trying to cross over to Nepal, a senior police officer said on Monday.

According to Superintendent of Police, Sitamarhi, Harkishor Rai, the foreigners were nabbed by personnel of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) on Sunday.

Lu Lang (28) and Yuan Hailong (34) were found to be in possession of Chinese passports though they had no visas, said the officer.

They got caught after they alighted a taxi and tried to cross the India-Nepal border on foot.

During interrogation, the Chinese men revealed that they entered the Indian territory hitchhiking across Nepal and went to Noida where they put up at the house of an acquaintance.

The SSB said in a statement that a cursory examination of their mobile phone records and other belongings suggested that the Chinese nationals were part of a financial fraud racket.

They have been handed over to the police, and the SP said a case has been registered against the duo under the Foreigners' Act and further investigations were on.
Over 400 people have been arrested so far in a clampdown on those involved in the violent protests on Friday in several states against the controversial remarks on Prophet Mohammad by two now-sacked BJP functionaries, with authorities in Uttar Pradesh razing "illegal" houses of the accused for the second day.

There were a few sporadic incidents of violence and protests, with a group of people attacking and damaging a local train at Bethuadahari railway station in West Bengal's Nadia district on Sunday evening.

Among those arrested, 304 were held in eight districts in Uttar Pradesh and 100 in Howrah and Murshidabad districts in West Bengal, while the Ranchi police registered 25 FIRs against "thousands" of people for the clashes that left two dead and scores of others injured in the Jharkhand capital, and stepped up security in other parts of the state also.

Also Read | BJP earns right-wing's ire over Nupur Sharma controversy

Political parties, including the Samajwadi Party, and activists have accused authorities of high-handedness in the aftermath of the protests. Senior Congress leader and former home minister P Chidambaram said the prime minister should have spoken and acted immediately after the offensive utterances.

Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur, however, said that law and order is a state subject and they should take strict possible action against the rioters.

"There is no place for violence in a democracy. Everybody should get an opportunity to put his point of view in a democracy. And when the problems can be resolved through talks, then there is no place for stone-pelting, arson and unruly behaviour," he said.

Leaders and organisations should not add fuel to the fire, he stressed.

Get live updates of the Prophet row

Authorities had strengthened security and clamped prohibitory orders in many districts after people took to the streets following Friday prayers, indulged in stone-pelting and clashed with security personnel, demanding the arrest of Nupur Sharma and Naveen Kumar Jindal.

While Sharma was suspended by the BJP and Jindal expelled from the party amid backlash from many Islamic countries, several cases and court complaints continue to be filed against them and also against others in related cases of allegedly hurting religious sentiments in various parts of the country.

The Bhiwandi police in Maharashtra has now summoned Sharma to record a statement on Monday, while Jindal has also been summoned on June 15 in the case registered against them on a complaint lodged by a representative of the Raza Academy on May 30.

Earlier, the police in Thane asked Sharma to appear before them on June 22 while the Mumbai Police had summoned her on June 25.

Also Read | 2 arrested in Uttar Pradesh's Bhadohi over 'objectionable', 'inciting' Facebook posts

In Uttar Pradesh, where Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has vowed to act tough on rioters, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar said 13 cases have been registered and 304 people have been arrested in eight districts.

"91 persons have been arrested in Prayagraj, followed by 71 in Saharanpur, 51 in Hathras, 34 each in Ambedkar Nagar and Moradabad, 15 in Firozabad, six in Aligarh and two in Jalaun," he said.

In Prayagraj, where mobs went on a rampage, the civic body on Sunday demolished the house of the alleged mastermind of Friday's violence amid heavy police deployment.

Under Adityanath, the state administration has been cracking down on criminals and riot accused, seizing or razing their illegal properties

A day earlier, the properties of two others accused of rioting were demolished in Saharanpur where stone-pelting had taken place as well.

"Javed Ahmad's house -- JK Ashiyana -- is located in the Kareli area of Prayagraj. Police personnel and a JCB machine reached the Kareli police station around 10.30 am and demolition commenced around 1 pm.

"The house was built without getting its map passed by the PDA. For this, he was issued a notice on May 10 and was told to present his side on May 24. On the given date, neither Javed nor his lawyer turned up. No document was presented as well, and hence on May 25, demolition orders were issued," an official of Prayagraj Development Authority said.

Police had said on Saturday that Javed Ahmad, alias Pump, had been arrested.

In Ranchi, internet services were restored in the district after nearly 33 hours even as Rapid Action Force, anti-terrorism squad, special task force and district police remained deployed at strategic locations, including 38 identified vulnerable pockets.

Police staged a flag march in East Singhbhum and imposed prohibitory orders in adjoining Seraikela-Kharswan as a precautionary measure to prevent any communal flare-up, officials said.

Family members of Mohammad Mudassir Alam and Mohammad Sahil, who were fatally shot during Friday's clashes, claimed they were not a part of the protest procession.

In reply to queries regarding police firing, Ranchi Senior Superintendent of Police Surendra Kumar Jha , however said that the standard operating procedures were adhered to.

"Firing is the last resort. We followed all norms before resorting to firing, as the crowd was aggressive and uncontrollable. I don't want to talk much on this as the matter is under investigation," Jha said.

Ranjan said prohibitory orders under Section 144 have been lifted from six of the 12 police station areas.

In West Bengal's Bethuadahari, a large number of protestors put up a road blockade and when they were chased by the police, some of them entered a railway station and threw stones at a local train which was on a platform.

Train services on the Lalgola line have been affected due to the attack, police said, adding there was no immediate report of any casualty.

More than 100 people have been arrested in West Bengal's Howrah and Musrdidabad districts district for the violence since Friday while prohibitory orders under Section 144 of CrPc has been clamped in some areas and internet services suspended.

"The overall situation is peaceful at present as there have been no reports of any fresh incident in Howrah and Murshidabad districts. A total of 100 people have been arrested so far. Our force is on alert and any attempt to create disturbance will be dealt with strongly," a senior police officer told PTI over the phone.

In Kolkata, security was tightened in areas "considered sensitive" such as Park Circus, Kidderpore, Rajabazar and Mallickbazar.

An FIR has been lodged at Kanthi Police Station against Nupur Sharma, an officer said.

Meanwhile, the West Bengal Leader of Opposition (LoP), Suvendu Adhikari, was prevented by police from visiting violence-hit areas in Howrah, where several BJP offices were also targeted by mobs.

He was later allowed to proceed after a two-hour-long stand-off on the condition that he would go straight to Kolkata, without making any pit stop in violence-hit areas in the adjoining Howrah district.

Adhikari said he would move the court on Monday over being prevented from visiting the areas affected by the violent protest.

Upon reaching Kolkata, Adhikari straightaway went to the site of party colleague and state BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar's sit-in. Majumdar was arrested on Saturday afternoon when he was heading towards Howrah district and later released.

In Jammu and Kashmir, one person was arrested for allegedly stoking communal tension as curfew and strict restrictions under prohibitory orders remained in force in parts of Chenab valley.

The accused Aadil Gafoor Ganai was arrested from his house during an early morning raid on Sunday by police at his residence at Chinar Mohalla locality for allegedly delivering an inflammatory speech from Markazi Jamia Masjid Bhaderwah on June 9 during a protest rally against remarks on Prophet Mohammad.

On the basis of the provocative speech, police have registered a case under sections 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) and 506 (Punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.

A police official said there was no untoward incident reported from anywhere in both Doda and Kishtwar districts.

There was no relaxation in curfew in Bhaderwah town, while strict restrictions under section 144 Cr PC also continued in Gandoh, Thathri and Doda towns besides Kishtwar town. Similarly restrictions under prohibitory orders were lifted from Ramban district on Saturday, the official said.

Prominent citizens of both the communities are actively engaged with police and efforts are on to normalise the situation, the official said. a complaint lodged by a representative of the Raza Academy on May 30, he said.

A peaceful protest was staged in Jammu at Gujjar Nagar, a Muslim-dominated locality, against Nupur Sharma, officials said.

In the national capital, two men have been arrested for allegedly disrupting communal harmony and holding the protest without permission in the Jama Masjid area.

The two were arrested on Saturday night and have been identified as Mohd Nadeem (43), resident of Jama Masjid area, and Faheem (37), resident of Turkman Gate area, the police said.

An investigation is on to identify other persons involved and footage from CCTVs is being scanned, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Shweta Chauhan said.

The Delhi Police has registered an FIR against 31 people, including AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi and controversial priest Yati Narsinghanand, and filed a separate case against Sharma for allegedly spreading hate and hurting religious sentiments. Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram said.

In UP's Bareilly, an FIR was registered at Premnagar police station against one Rehan on Saturday night on the complaint of local BJP member Shalini Johri for allegedly posting an inflammatory message on a social media platform with an edited picture of Nupur Sharma.

Another FIR has been lodged against one Kuldeep who sent an objectionable message about the Prophet to one Furkhan.

In Ballia, one Muhammad Yakub Ansari, a resident of Revati town, had arrested after he posted an indecent and objectionable post against Sharma on Facebook on Saturday, the police said.

A lawyer has also filed a complaint in the court of the chief judicial magistrate of Srinagar against Sharma and others for the alleged "blasphemous" remarks against Prophet Mohammad.
The Delhi High Court was recently dismayed when a prisoner, who had been granted bail, was not released from prison merely because there was some administrative delay in his age verification. The Orissa High Court had recently expressed concerns regarding the condition of prisons in the State where there was only one psychiatrist to attend to all the mentally ill prisoners in the state. The Supreme Court, too, recently heard a case where a convict, who was sentenced to 7-years rigorous imprisonment had undergone custody for more than 10 years and had still not been released from prison.

These cases highlight, once again, the need to reflect upon the larger issues plaguing prison administration in the country. Wrongful prosecution and illegal incarceration inside Indian prisons have now become a norm. So much so, that the Delhi High Court in 2017 had to call upon the Law Commission of India to undertake a comprehensive examination of the issue of relief and rehabilitation to victims of wrongful prosecution and incarceration. The Commission, in its 277th Report, pointed out, among other things, that Indias prisons are home to one of the worlds largest undertrial populations, many of whom are acquitted by the courts years after their incarceration. It goes without saying that the horrors of such wrongful incarceration inflict unimaginable physical and emotional trauma on the victims, for whom the very process of seeking justice and fighting against the mighty state becomes a punishment.

Larger issues such as overcrowding of prisons, unhealthy living conditions, shortage of staff, inadequate training programs for prison officials, poor budgetary allocations, insufficient and fractured legal aid, physical, mental and sexual abuse of prisoners, custodial torture, suicides, corruption, lack of a statutory right to compensation and fractured post-release care and rehabilitation mechanisms, have constantly been raised for years now.

SC to the rescue?

Despite the Supreme Court has upheld the rights of prisoners to live with dignity and having evolved a compensatory justice jurisprudence to provide compensation to those inmates whose constitutional and statutory rights have been violated, enough evidence exists to show that these judicial precedents have neither deterred nor impeded frequent violations.

The institutionalisation of systemic violence against prison inmates and violation of their constitutional rights is followed by a constant normalisation of administrative negligence and dereliction of duty by prison authorities who advocate for harsher treatment of prisoners. They also promote discrimination inside the prison on the basis of caste, gender, class and community, further accentuating miscarriage of justice.

This shows that Indias prison administration, as a class, has systematically engaged in violating core fundamental constitutional provisions. The problem, therefore, is deeper than it may seem. Needless to say that a solution to such a grave crisis cannot be episodic, symbolic or top-down. It has to be meaningful and bottoms up.

Introducing Pattern-or-Practise Investigations (PoP Investigation) against prison administration, on lines of the United States that first introduced PoP Investigations in 1991 to initiate police reforms, could be key to solving the crisis inside our prisons.

The focus of PoP investigations is on finding whether an agency or an authority, as a class, has systematically engaged in a certain kind of activity. Do its actions form a pattern or behaviour and is it embedded in routine practices of misconduct as opposed to isolated or sporadic instances of wrongdoing? PoP investigations are different from criminal prosecutions against individual officers where the focus is on a specific incident.

Once a pattern or practise is identified, there is a preliminary enquiry against the erring department and if sufficient evidence exists then a formal investigation is initiated.

Such an investigation will involve an in-depth comprehensive evaluation of the practices of the department through detailed interviews, gathering information from all stakeholders, assessing systemic deficiencies that contribute to such persistent patterns or practises, evaluation of the departments training and curriculum programmes, its written policies, rules, regulations and code of conduct and the systems in place (if any) for monitoring and supervising their officers. One of the most critical parts of the investigation is hearing directly from the community members who have little to no representation in state-sponsored reports.

PoP investigations help identify systemic deficiencies and subsequently pitch for the right set of interventions. They enable remedies that form the foundation for a constitutional functioning of an administration by attempting to rebuild trust.

Once the investigation is complete, it ends with a negotiated agreement which is subsequently given legal status by court order and is overseen by an independent authority. If such a negotiation seems impossible, the investigating authority reserves the right to initiate a lawsuit against the erring administration to enable an agreement.

PoP investigations against the prison administration as a whole could be a starting point to reconcile with those who have been historically wronged and whose concerns have clearly been shelved forever. A just and humane prison administration is a sine qua non in a constitutional democracy where the Rule of Law is supreme.

(The writer is a Delhi-based lawyer)
Indias engagement with Afghanistan's Taliban regime has reached an important milestone. A delegation of senior Indian officials visited Kabul recently and met acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. India sought to downplay the visit; it said that the meeting was about humanitarian aid issues. However, the meeting was significant. This was the first official Indian visit to Kabul since the Indian embassy there was shut down in August last year when the Taliban stormed to power. Besides, the two sides reportedly discussed diplomatic relations. India is the only regional power that does not have a diplomatic presence in the Afghan capital currently. Not having such a presence is hurting Indias interests as it has left the space open for other powers, especially rivals, to undermine Indias interests. With the Taliban coming to power, Indias relationship with Afghanistans new rulers was non-existent. This needed to be corrected urgently, as India has economic and strategic interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia. New Delhi has been mulling over how it should deal with a regime that is medieval in its mindset and openly misogynist. Additionally, the Talibans traditional proximity to Pakistan remains a point of concern. Is the regime still a Pakistani proxy and could it act on Islamabads orders to undermine Indias interests?

Serious differences between the Pakistan military and the Taliban regime have erupted to the fore in recent months, suggesting that relations between the two are complicated, opening up the possibility of the Taliban pursuing a relatively independent foreign policy, one that is not reflexively anti-Indian. This may have pushed South Block to decide in favour of rethinking Indias relationship with the Taliban.

Establishing a diplomatic presence does not mean recognition of the regime. Nor is it an endorsement of the regimes policies. It provides Delhi with official channels to voice Indian concerns and protect Indian interests. Delhi should use its diplomats to convey its concerns to the Taliban. A recent United Nations report says that the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed are running several camps in Afghanistan. This is unacceptable. India must reiterate to the Taliban that allowing anti-India terrorists to train and operate on Afghan soil is a hostile act. Several of these camps are located in areas under Taliban control. By allowing these camps to operate, the Taliban is crossing a red line, which Delhi cannot tolerate. The Taliban regime must understand that diplomatic relations are a two-way street. India can provide aid to Afghanistan but only if Kabul is sensitive to Indian security concerns.
The BJP decried the protest carried out by the Congress against the Enforcement Directorate (ED), calling it a blackmail tactic.

Speaking to reporters, Higher Education Minister C N Ashwath Narayan said Congress leaders should co-operate with the probe.

We are against corruption and will not tolerate corruption from any party as assured by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the minister said.

Those protesting will have to end up in jail. Threatening an independent agency such as ED with such protests is unbecoming of the Congress.

Accusing the Congress of being a corrupt party, Narayan said: There is no honesty, morality, nationalism or patriotism in the party. What message are they sending by protesting against the summons (to Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi)? he said, adding that the demonstration was politically motivated.

The ED probe was ordered in 2011 during UPA rule. Therefore, the allegations of misuse of power by BJP to target Congress does not hold water, he added.
Released: June 10, 2022

The Delaware County Park Police has launched a new five-member bike patrol unit that will be responsible for patrolling the Delaware County Courthouse Complex in Media, as well as the Delaware County parks and trail system.

The new bike patrol unit, launched on June 8, is comprised of officers from the current ranks of the Delaware County Park Police, each of whom completed a 40-hour bike certification process sponsored by the Upper Darby Police Department.

Delaware County Interim Park Police Chief John S. Deihl noted that bike patrols provide a number of benefits over traditional squad car-based patrols. Officers on bikes will be better able to access wooded areas and trails that officers on foot cant cover as quickly, said Chief Deihl. Were excited to have our officers out in the community and helping to ensure that our residents feels safe when visiting county facilities, parks and trails.

In addition to patrolling the grounds in Media, the bike patrol unit will cover the Countys 14 parks, including the Rose Tree, Smedley, Glenn Providence, Upland, and Clayton parks, as well as the Countys trail systems, including the Chester Creek Trail and Darby Creek Trail. Patrols will occur on weekdays and weekends, both day and evening.

Bike patrols have proven to be an effective method of policing and this is a great enhancement for our Countys Park Police, said Delaware County Councilman Kevin Madden. Council has been very supportive of this new unit and believe that improved community relations, faster officer response times, cost savings, and the environmental advantages are all a benefit to our community.

In addition to the Courthouse Complex and parks, the bike patrol unit will provide security at County events, such as the Italian American Heritage Festival, the Juneteenth Celebration, and the Summer Concert Series.
A Derry-based legal firm is seeing the benefits of a four-day week after levels of productivity amongst staff rose and customer satisfaction increased.

CRASH Services and JMK Solicitors, both situated in the same location at Culmore Road, deal with accident management and personal injury claims respectively.

The two firms  who also operate from Belfast and Newry and are currently recruiting for new staff with JMK having recently set up in Derry  have been seeking to improve employee satisfaction at work while maintaining a high standard of service to the public.

A busman's holiday to Lanzarote in 2017 saw increased levels of productivity when staff spent a working month there in February of that year. This led to research and consultation amongst the staff as to what further longer-term measures could be taken to benefit both employee and employer.

The four-day week has been trialled in many other countries such as New Zealand and Iceland with both saying it produced great results both in terms of worker well-being and productivity.

JMK and CRASH duly put a four-day week into place early in 2020 and have not looked back.

Michelle Murphy, Head of Operations & HR at CRASH Services and JMK Solicitors, said: A couple of things led to us making this decision. In 2018, we were kind of in a crossroads where we had nearly fifty per cent of our staff on flexible working contracts. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to balance everyone's needs on the five days that we had.

We had to think of what we could do and we were open to doing something different. In 2017, we had a project where we took our team to Lanzarote for the month of February.

We worked remotely over there doing the same tasks that we would do here. This was about health and well-being and giving something back to the employees. We afforded the team and their families the opportunity to go.

We had a room in a conference facility in a hotel there so we were able to work while our families enjoyed the sun before we got the benefit of that in the afternoon.

When we did that, we worked flexible hours and that, coupled with working remotely, we had one of the most productive months that the company has had in its history.

(From left) Maurece Hutchinson, MD, Olivia Meehan, Legal Services Director, Michelle Murphy, HR & Operations Manager, Jonathan McKeown, Chairman of JMK Solicitors who have run the four-day week for their employees since 2020

After doing a bit of research around productivity and other companies in Scandinavia and New Zealand who work four-day weeks, the idea came up that we could do this ourselves.

We took two years in planning and getting it off the ground before we implemented it in early 2020 just prior to the pandemic.

In terms of productivity, we've been measuring key performance indicators and how we've been able to fit in what we previously did in a five-day week into four.

One of our key performance indicators  customer recommendation  went up from ninety-five per cent to ninety-nine, which was surprising given that we were working less hours. But we were doing so with the same output.

However, this move was all about the team  I think it's important to say that. We wanted to do something for our team which would benefit them, meet their needs, requirements and flexibility and would improve their work-life.

We surveyed the team early in 2020 and found that happiness at work had increased by twenty-six per cent during the two years of us implementing the four-day week. I think around 94 per cent of our staff would say that they are very happy in their work.

I think with the world that we're currently on and the pressures of being away from your family, there's no doubt that all of us felt that pressure.

The team is inclusive enough to talk about the pressures of life and we knew that straightaway the majority of them felt that this would improve their life and health  and it obviously has.

A popular misconception is that the four-day week brings with it a three-day weekend.

Michelle states that is not the case with a flexible structure being put in place where staff get one of the weekdays off with the idea being that the weekend can be enjoyed in full instead of one of Saturday or Sunday being used up for household chores and shopping.

She added: We don't do a three-day weekend. There's one day off in the week  and not always a Monday or a Friday  with the standard weekend off.

That was the choice of the team  they all wanted different days off. The key is though, that we all do thirty hours. Some of the team, for childcare reasons or any other reason, prefer to have a certain day of the week to have off so we do what we can to accommodate that.

A lot of them say that they have that particular day off to get all their household jobs done or their weekly shopping done so that they can get to enjoy their weekend properly instead of setting aside Saturday or Sunday cleaning the house or shopping for their groceries.

Opponents of the scheme usually cite the cost to the employer if they are having to pay 100 per cent of a week's wage for only 80 per cent of the working week's labour.

However, Michelle insists that this is a misinformed opinion but concedes that each individual firm may have to adapt to the four-day week in a different way to JMK and CRASH.

She continued: In no way has moving to a four-day week cost us anything. The important thing to us was to maintain our service and that has been done.

As I've already said, the statistics show that our level of service has improved. We're busier than we've ever been and we've more cases than we've ever had  which is fantastic. Profitability has been positive as well.

The suggestions that moving from five to four days would be costly is misinformed. Of course you have to recognise that different types of sectors may have to find other ways for this to work  retail would have more challenges than the office sector.

One thing I have said to every company that I've spoken to is that you have to be flexible. What works for JMK Solicitors might not work in your organisation. It is about finding more ways to be productive and being flexible enough.

Our team are also so invested in making it work. They've been willing to make changes and find better ways of doing their work because the impact is monumental.

It's probably made the team much more creative as well and much more collaborative because they've had to work together to make it happen.
The stories of six families who've experienced the killing of a child will be brought from Northern Ireland to Westminster to provide testimonies as part of a cultural movement to promote leadership for peaceful change and social justice.

Testimonies gathered from the siblings of six children killed during the Northern Ireland Troubles, will be delivered by their families in a special presentation to MPs at Parliament Buildings, Westminster on Tuesday 28 June.

The narratives are also set to be shared at Derry's Playhouse- a major force behind the presentation- where the friends and family connected to the children will tell their stories, supported by professional actors.

Marketing Manager at the Playhouse, Aine McCarron, explained: "The event marks a key milestone in a drive by The Playhouse Derry and its partners to explore new creative ways to make meaningful change, support positive changemakers and contribute to sustaining peace in societies worldwide.

"Six families who experienced the killing of a child will share their stories and experiences. These narratives, spanning the years 1971  1981, relate a complex and remarkable interweaving of events.

"The diverse testimonies, gathered from all sides of the community, have been edited by writer Jo Egan.

"Over twenty people have taken part in one-to-one interviews, including family members and friends of the children, school teachers, neighbours, peace activists and specialists in transgenerational trauma.

"Testimonies will be presented by three family members with the support of three experienced performers, who have also experienced grief and trauma resulting from the Troubles."

The stories being shared are those of Damien Harkin, eight years old, who was killed by a British Army lorry in the Bogside, Derry on July 24, 1971; Annette McGavigan, 14 years old, who was fatally wounded when the British Army fired into a crowd of bystanders at a riot in the Bogside on September 6, 1971; Julie Livingstone, 14 years old, who died on May 13, 1981 from injuries sustained after she was shot by a plastic bullet fired by the British Army; Kathryn Eakin, 8 years old, who died in the Claudy bombings, carried out by the IRA, on July 31, 1972; Kathleen Feeney, 14 years old, who was shot and killed on November 14, 1973 when a young IRA sniper fired at a British Army checkpoint and hit Kathleen; and Henry Cunningham, 16 years old, a passenger in a van fired on by three UVF gunmen on August 9, 1973.

The narratives were originally performed in 2018 for The Playhouse Theatre and Peacebuilding Academy, an initiative using theatre as a tool to explore community relations issues in a safe and accessible environment.

A shortened adaptation of the testimonies, called The Crack in Everything, will now be remounted for the non-theatre setting of Portcullis House in London, by invitation of Colum Eastwood, MP for Foyle and Leader of SDLP. A panel discussion will follow.

Aine continued: "The Playhouse exists for all communities. Besides being one of the most vibrant and loved arts centres in Northern Ireland, for the past thirty years, the Playhouse has made the most of its position in the heart of the city to celebrate diversity, empower people and use the arts to build peace.

"It has developed new methods of storytelling and reconciliation and has pioneered new work across both real and virtual worlds."

The visit to Westminster follows the phenomenal success of the Playhouses production The White Handkerchief, which premiered in the Guildhall on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, 30 January 2022, as the first part of a peacebuilding trilogy.

The second instalment, Beyond Belief, a major new drama honouring the waking life of John Hume, will be broadcast across the world as part of 2023 global commemorations of the Good Friday Agreement.

Playhouse CEO Kevin Murphy said, The sharing of these testimonies is, at its core, about promoting healing and reconciliation in a truly liberating and transformative way. And bringing them to Westminster is part of a bigger ambition, to build the scope of a community of people who can, and will, effect real change.

"Our aim has always been to deliver something completely unique, communicating real, sadly often tragic, human stories that will radically change the way we think as a society.

"To bring these to the seat of power that is Westminster is an incredible opportunity to greatly increase the possibilities of healing."

Playwright, Director and Community Arts Activist Jo Egan said: "The presentation will contextualise the ensuing panel discussion, exploring the effectiveness of the Playhouse and others in highlighting and supporting the evolving needs of a Peace & Legacy process.

"Together, we are using arts methodologies to explore approaches to transitional justice, to facilitate the witnessing and valuing of unheard narratives and to create pathways to trauma support and recovery, leading to the wellbeing of communities and individuals.

This event takes place almost twenty-five years since the Good Friday Agreement, at a time when major atrocities linked to the testimonies stretch back fifty years.

"It is a significant moment to highlight ambitions and hopes for moving forward, whilst also looking back with informed hindsight at what we might have done better, offering continued learning in the journey to peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland and beyond.

The narratives will be shared at The Playhouse in Derry on June 24 and 25, before travelling to London for the presentation on June 28.

More information is available at www.derryplayhouse.co.uk.
A campaign to stop the privatisation of the UK's Channel 4 is being launched with support from celebrities and production companies.

Derry Girls star Siobhan McSweeney and Armando Iannucci, creator of The Thick of It, are among those backing the Channel 4 Aint Broke campaign.

It brings together 27 production businesses from across the UK, alongside supporters like the team behind the new comedy Big Boys, including writer Jack Rooke and actor Jon Pointing, as well as the Archbishop of York, Bishop of Ripon and Bishop of Leeds.

The campaign points to evidence which it says shows the channel is in good financial health and is helping to deliver on the UK Governments levelling up agenda.

Channel 4 Aint Broke highlights that as a publicly owned broadcaster, funded through advertising, Channel 4 does not cost the taxpayer a penny, instead returning a profit of 74 million last year and contributing 1 billion to the economy.

McSweeney said: Channel 4 is a huge success story and Derry Girls wouldnt have happened without it  its something to be proud of not something to destroy.

Right now Channel 4 is boosting the economy and throwing open the door for a new generation of writers, performers, producers and creative thinkers across the country. It aint broke  so dont fix it!

Mark Williams, from Fin Studios, said: Channel 4 is the levelling up broadcaster. It supports tons of small businesses like ours all around the country. It gives people a way to get a foot in the door into the industry, whatever their background. Its time to drop this crazy plan to sell it off.

The initiative is being co-ordinated by campaign group We Own It.

A Department of Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson said: The Government, as the ultimate owner of Channel 4, has made the decision to sell. It is our job to take a long-term view on how to best secure the most successful future for the broadcaster and we are clear that a change of ownership is necessary to give Channel 4 the tools to innovate and grow at pace in a rapidly changing media landscape, without the constraints of public ownership.
The Mexican government announced it will be the majority financer of a credit agreement of US$388 million to bail out bankrupt operator Altan Redes, a move to maintain competition in the Mexican telecoms sector against dominant player America Movil.

In a translated statement, Alta Redes detailed the financing structure of the bailout involves the Mexican development bank which granted a loan of US$161 million, with the remaining cash coming from suppliers (US$166.6m), shareholders (US$50.5m) and clients (US$10m).

The bailout is to support the governments shared network plan Red Compartida, a scheme announced by the government in 2016 to overhaul the telecommunications industry in Mexico by constructing a shared telecommunications network.

The cash injection also ensures Altan Redes will continue its operations and services to 79 million customers in Mexico

Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said in a news conference: "The Mexican state is already the majority partner, it has the direction and the administration of the company."

Lopez Obrador added that the bailout will secure Internet access in all towns and free WiFi in public squares, schools and hospitals, reported Reuters.

Altan Redes filed for bankruptcy protection in 2021 due to mounting debts.
Bangladeshs telecoms regulator has fined operators all four major operators BDT76.5 million ($US823,000) for enabling illegal VoIP activities on SIM cards.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has set a June 30 deadline for all four operators to clear the fine which varies from operator to operator, reported The Daily Star.

NTRC fined Banglalink BDT1.5 million, Grameenphone BDT5 million, Robi Axiata BDT20 million, and state-owned Teletalk BDT50 million.

The regulator accused the operators of being able to monitor and cease illegal VoIP activities but took no action to cease them.

The BTRC with law enforcement raided the operators, seizing 52,344 SIM cards and VoIP equipment across the country in 2018 and 2019, initially fining them BDT266 million.

This was reduced at a hearing this April as the operators pledged to crackdown on SIM cards tapping into illegal VoIP calls. Such calls avoid termination fees which governments tax, telecom minister Mustafa Jabbar said illegal VoIP affects government coffers and overall damages the telecoms sector, reported The Daily Star.

Teletalk is planning to appeal the latest fine.
Industry body the Federation of Companies of Congo (FEC) accused the Regulatory Authority of Post and Telecommunications (ARPTC) of falsely denying it is levying operators with expensive taxes.

In a translated statement, the FEC said it deplored the ARPTC denying a Bloomberg report which claimed operators Orange, Vodacom Group, Airtel Africa and Africell were slapped with an increase in taxes which totalled US$180 million annually.

The FEC claimed operators have communicated that they rejected the latest alleged taxation measures from the ARPTC, launched this year, and warned any rise in taxes will result in higher consumer prices and the removal of promotions such as free data usage on social media apps.

The federation claimed invoices have been sent to all operators which amount to several tens of millions of dollars, covering the period between March 24 to mid-May this year.

Along with the invoices were the threats of penalties for refusal to pay, said the FEC.

The FEC considers it inadmissible for the government to set up new taxes in favour of the ARPTC to remunerate its services on the one hand and does not accept to assume the logical consequence of a subsequent increase in the prices of these new charges on the other side, the FEC stated.
Orange has partnered with Moroccan health start-up DabaDoc to launch Orange Sante (Orange Healthcare), a platform dedicated to the health ecosystem in Africa aimed at both patients and doctors.

The new platform provides access to several services such as online appointment booking, payment for remote consultations by the diaspora, digitised medical records and teleconsultations. Orange Sante addresses the issue of limited and unequal access to healthcare for African patients; according to the GSMA, there is still just one doctor per 1,000 inhabitants on the continent.

Orange Sante aims to allow patients living in isolated regions to consult the specialist of their choice remotely. In this way, the platform will support the African medical sector to make up for the shortage of doctors affecting certain health districts.

Starting this summer, Cote d'Ivoire will be the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to benefit from the Orange Sante platform with online appointment booking. Other services will gradually be added to the system by 2023.

Orange Sante is particularly aimed at Ivorian healthcare facilities since it allows them to be listed on the platform, and to digitise the management of their healthcare centre, from making appointments online to creating the patient's digitised medical record. The platform provides member healthcare professionals with greater visibility and flow management, while allowing them to improve their organisation.

Orange and DabaDoc signed a strategic partnership in June 2021 aimed at benefiting from DabaDocs technological expertise and Orange's payment solutions to enable the development of digital solutions that quickly bring concrete benefits to patients and the entire African healthcare ecosystem.

The launch of Orange Sante in Cote d'Ivoire is part of the Orange group's strategy to become the leading digital operator and a key player in e-health in Africa and the Middle East. The Orange Sante platform will be launched in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa by 2023.
June 6th 2022 marked the third anniversary of the issue of commercial 5G licences in China.

To mark this milestone, ICT news site C114 held a series of events entitled Thrive with 5G, which aimed to explore the technologys success and look towards its future.

Ma Hongbing, General Manager, Technology Innovation Division, China Unicom, said that following three years of activity, Chinas 5G networks have lived up to the worlds expectations. In terms of scale, number of users, range of services, deployment of SA architecture, 5G patents and industrial applications, China has been in a leading position. The MIIT 5G Action Plan has identified 15 key industries for 5G deployment, providing direction for 5G development. This top-level design is strong but also allows local government to take account of factors that are specific to their areas, with a lot of provinces and cities developing their own plans.

There have been many achievements across the past three years in wide-scale 5G applications, with 5Gs contribution to Chinas GDP up 30% between 2020 and 2021. 5G is driving growth in the ICT industry, including component manufacturing, and is creating new value through deep integration into other industry verticals. However, Wang Zhiqin, Vice President of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), noted that there are still challenges, including the high cost of industrial application innovation and promotion. She added that the support system is still relatively fragmented, with better cross-industry business models, as well as operation models, still required.

Wang noted that scaling 5G industrial applications is a complex process that requires a more holistic solution for digital transformation to provide a foundation for further innovation across a wider range of vertical industries. 5G will be integrated with other next-gen digital technologies, including big data, cloud computing and AI, across various industry verticals. Adoption of industrial 5G applications has accelerated, driven by demand and the degree of digitalisation specific to each industry. In the initial phase, the solution is adapted to the scenario, and then in the growth phase the final adaptation can be delivered directly to the industry. Currently, the leading industries for 5G adoption include industrial internet, power, ports, mining, healthcare, and media.

Ma added that while Chinas success with 5G had lived up to expectations, it is still important for operators to consider how 5G will be developed in the future. He noted that China Unicom has been communicating with industries, establishing benchmarks around the world, and had found that in vertical industries  including consumer business  there are still many challenges.

Different industry applications have different needs in terms of uplink or downlink speed, bandwidth, latency and reliability, with big data and AI increasingly essential  and we must address how these challenges are to be met, said Ma.

Ma explained that with the progression from 3G to 4G to 5G, traffic tends towards downlink transmission  it accounts for around 20 times that of uplink transmission. The advent of the intelligent connectivity era will create a new industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but this will require the uplink capacity to be significantly enhanced, which requires the uplink and downlink traffic setup to be reversed, in that the uplink speed may reach 20 times the downlink speed. Providing enough bandwidth and speed to achieve this requires several elements; multiplication in the time domain, optimisation in the frequency domain, and consolidation in the space domain. Through the combination of these techniques, spectral resources of different bands are optimised and adjusted between uplink and downlink time slots, optimising and consolidating limited resources.

Chen Yunqing, Vice President of China Telecom Research Institute, also talked up the impact of 5G on industries, and noted that the foundation of the digital economy is evolving from connected network infrastructure to digital information infrastructure with cloud network synergy. Chen argued that this was an industry trend for which the main driving force is the comprehensive evolution of business digitalisation technology convergence and data value.

To capitalise on this trend, we believe that cloud network synergy should be used to fully integrate IT and CT connections and computing capabilities. On top of this, we can develop intelligent and comprehensive digital information infrastructure capabilities to achieve the goals of ubiquitous high speed internet, cloud network synergy, security and controllability, intelligent agility, and green/low-carbon development, said Chen.

The operator believes that building a customised 5G network is the best practice for achieving cloud network synergy. Achieving this involves strengthening the foundation of the entire 5G and transport network, and to this end, Chen explained that China Telecom has developed a small cell that supports high reliability, low latency and higher uplink bandwidth. With this, the operator has achieved BBU cloudification and opened the fronthaul interface between RRU and BBU. In this way, the small cells support the downward extension of the 5G customised network.

Autonomy and intelligence are also key features, and China Telecom has constructed a system that covers the knowledge graph of the entire network as well as decision-making simulation, and plans to incorporate this into its new generation operation system. We use a network intelligence analysis module generated by 3GPP embedded in the core network to further increase next-generation network intelligence by forming a closed loop from analysis to decision-making, explained Chen. We are trying to incorporate standardised modules into our intelligent system and use AI technologies to link them to improve operational efficiency.

When a new generation arrives, terminals tend to lag behind, but with 5G the simultaneous development of terminals and networks has been achieved for the first time. Chinas terminal and network development has played a huge role in driving this; out of the worlds 800 million 5G terminals, 500 million were made in China, and Chinese-made 5G base stations account for more than 50% of the global total.

Wang Hengjiang, Deputy General Manager, China Mobile Terminal Company, said: China Mobile will roll out a 700MHz network this year, and will reach 1.1 million base stations by the end of 2022. We have achieved effective coverage in key towns as well as developed villages. The popularisation of 5G terminals provides a foundation for improving the experience of basic services  there are now 500 million 5GH terminals in China, so internet services such as video and gaming can be further developed, while existing services can be upgraded.

Wang noted that this will present many new business opportunities, such as cloud office and AR/VR services. The digital economy generates massive amounts of data both on the cloud and terminal sides, and processing this is hugely challenging - particularly when the terminals computing power is limited - but breaking this bottleneck is very important in order to offer applications to consumers.

Liu Hong, Head of Technology, China, GSMA, was upbeat about this prospect. As long as 5Gs cost per bit is lower, its ARPU is higher and its user experience is better, leading to a faster increase in user adoption. If operators are willing to use 5G to refarm existing frequencies, and users are willing to switch to 5G services more quickly, then 5G to consumers can be considered a success, he argued.

At the beginning of last year, we hoped the number of 5G connections worldwide would reach 1 billion by the end of 2023; however, this milestone was reached earlier this year. By the end of 2025, global network operators will spend around US$530b on 5G networks, which shows their confidence in 5G.
Free Fishing Weekend June 4-5 in Oregon

May 26, 2022

SALEM, Ore.Fishing is free in Oregon the first weekend in June on Saturday and Sunday, June 4-5. Everyone can fish, clam and crab for free in Oregon those two days.

No fishing/shellfish licenses or tags (including a Combined Angling Tag or Columbia River Basin Endorsement or Two-Rod Validation) are required those two days for either Oregon residents or nonresidents. Its also free to park and camp at Oregon State Parks on Saturday, June 4.

All other fishing regulations apply including closures, bag limits and size restrictions. See the Oregon Sport Fishing Regulations for rules and remember to check for any in season regulation changes, especially for salmon and steelhead fishing, at https://myodfw.com/recreation-report/fishing-report/

Best fishing opportunities

Check the Recreation Report for the best fishing opportunities this time of year, https://myodfw.com/recreation-report For beginners, Easy Angling Oregon is a great guide to getting started fishing in Oregon, https://myodfw.cofrm/EAO And if you live near Portland, Bend, Medford, Roseburg or in Lane County, there are lots of nearby options.

Trout fishing can be a great choice for beginners and stocking is happening at many locations (see the schedule ). Warmwater fishing is also great for beginners this time of year. If youre heading to the coast to fish, try surfperch fishing from the bank, bottomfish or halibut if the area where you are fishing is open.

Summer is a great time to clam and low tides are hitting Oregons coast late morning/early afternoon on June 4-5. MyODFW has all the information you need to get started started clamming or crabbing.

Currently, crabbing is open in coastwide in bays, beaches, estuaries, tide pools, piers and jetties along the entire Oregon coast and in the ocean.

Razor clamming is currently closed from Cape Blanco, north of Port Orford, to the California border because domoic acid toxin levels are above the closure limit.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture regularly tests shellfish and closes areas when naturally occurring biotoxins get to levels that make crabs and clams unsafe to eat. Always call the ODA Shellfish safety hotline at 1-800-448-2474 or check their Shellfish page before you go out.

###




Garena Free Fire MAX players can claim the latest rewards including bundles, costumes and weapons with the help of redeem codes for June 13.

Garena Free Fire Max is the high-resolution alternative to Garena Free Fire. After a few upsets for the Indian gamer community due to bans on the original game and some other apps, the Max version is available on the Play Store. The adequate replacement for the banned game brought relief to the community.

Garena Free Fire MAX is offering some exclusive bundles for free, they announced in a series of tweets from their North America handles. Some of these features are exclusive for today, while some last till the 16th of June. They also unveiled Bomb Squad and their new map El Pastelo through the same handle.

Bomb Squad is here and so is El Pastelo!



Did you get a chance to check out the new map yet? pic.twitter.com/SNuFdA9Hm6

 Garena Free Fire North America (@FreeFire_NA) June 11, 2022

Time to climb the tallest tower....



Grab the Azure Stormbringer Bundle and the Mythos Four emote in Draconic Tower! Only available until June 16th, don't miss out! pic.twitter.com/l79xuj88Kx

 Garena Free Fire North America (@FreeFire_NA) June 10, 2022

A new set of redeem codes have also been released for June 13. Garena Free Fire Max uses the same redemption website as the original game. Players will have to visit https://reward.ff.garena.com/en to claim the exclusive rewards.

Redemption Codes for 13th June 2022

FBNO IRU9 8YT6

FGFY VGHD BE54

FI6G D765 45Q1

FRTF 234I R9TY

FK4T 87G6 VT5R

FON9 B8V7 C6DT

FR7E VR5B 6YNM

FK8I V8C7 X65S

F4DF ECVR 4B5U

FXDS TSWY QTJ9

BKSK ECCM JZEB

L8LN F5WK 2YPN

TPNA MS84 ZE8E

26JT 3G6R QVAV

A46N U6UF Q2JP

6LU6 9JJZ J7S8

FAG4 LHKD 92GZ

RHUV SWWV N9G4

FBJ9 MTXB 9XAP

5R8S AGS5 MCK5

2K5A WHD3 FKWB

XKVJ M65A NPUQ

AMCT 7DU2 K2U2

Claim free gifts: Step-by-step guide

1. Visit the official Free Fire redemption website https://reward.ff.garena.com/en

2. Log in to your Free Fire account using Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple ID, Huawei ID, or VK

3. Enter any of the above-mentioned redemption codes and press confirm

4. On completion of the above 3 steps, the rewards will be highlighted in your mail section within 24 hours
Subscriber content preview

By JOSH BOAK

Associated Press

WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden launched a renewed push Thursday to reduce the costs of shipping goods across oceans, a major challenge for retailers that the White House said has pushed up prices as the world emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.

The White House released a video featuring Biden talking with retail CEOs and calling on the House to pass the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022, which the Senate passed at the end of March.





. . .
Subscriber content preview

Images courtesy of NAC Architecture [enlarge] A new central courtyard opens to the existing commons on the left, framed by the new academic wing on the right.





Bellevue School District recently awarded a $97.91 million contract to Cornerstone General Contractors for extensive modernizations and additions to Newport High School, at 4333 Factoria Blvd. S.E. in Bellevue.





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Please note that some countries outside of the EEA have a lower standard of protection for personal data, including lower security requirements and fewer rights for individuals. We may transfer and/or store personal data collected from you to and/or at a destination outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Such personal data may be processed by agencies and/or suppliers operating outside the EEA. If we transfer and/or store your personal data outside the EEA we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient implements appropriate measures to protect your personal data.

Otherwise than as set out in this Privacy Policy, we will only ever share your data with your informed consent.

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Where we rely on your consent to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This includes the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes or to be unsubscribed from our email list at any time. You also have the following rights:

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Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns whatsoever about the way in which your data is being processed by emailing the Data Protection Manager at webmaster@marxist.com
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ISSAQUAH  A Red Robin at 1085 Lake Drive in Issaquah sold on Friday for $13 million, according to King County records.

The seller was Red Robin, which acquired the land in 1995 for $966,310, then developed it.





. . .
Subscriber content preview

SEATTLE An apartment building at 6023 S.W. Stevens St. sold on Friday for $8.9 million, according to King County records.

The seller was Beach Landing LLC, which acquired the property in 2011 for over $3.8 million.





. . .
The African Leadership Magazine is today pleased to announce the winners in the 13 categories of the 2022 edition of the African Business Leadership Awards (ABLA), following the call for vote entries which ended on Friday, June 3, 2022.

The keenly contested awards attracted over 370, 000 entries on the website and across social media platforms, as well as submissions via email and physical posts from Africans across the continent and in Diaspora.

All winners and their runners-up shall be presented with an award trophy and formally decorated with the instruments of the honour at the 7th Africa Summit  London 2022, which is scheduled to hold at the House of Lords of the United Kingdom, on July 4, 2022, from 3.00  4.30pm, with the theme- Rethinking African Trade & Partnership Possibilities.

The Winners emerged through a keenly contested 3-step points-based selection process that included a call for nomination; a call for online voting for shortlisted nominees; and the editorial boards final review of the nominations and voting submissions  using supporting evidence and voting considerations in their final decisions to decide the African Business Leadership Awards 2021 winners. Voting was responsible for sixty five percentage (65%) points and supporting evidence responsible for 35% in the final selection process for the 2022 winners.

The African Business Leadership Awards is a prestigious recognition event to reward exceptional corporate practices and outstanding achievers in Africas business landscape and its private sector. The awards is in keeping with the African Leadership Magazines tradition of presenting the sides of the continents businesses and leaders, which hardly finds placement on global media platforms  celebrating exemplary business leaderships on the continent.

See below, the list of winners:

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Sam Matekane, Group Chairman, Matekane Group of Companies, Lesotho AFRICAN BUSINESS LEADER OF THE YEAR

Akindele Akintoye, Chairman, Platform Capital, Nigeria- Winner

Daniel Mckorley, GCEO, McDan Group of Companies, Ghana- First Runner-up AFRICAN FEMALE BUSINESS LEADER OF THE YEAR:

Mpumi Mpofu, CEO, Airports Company South Africa- winner

Anne Juuko, CEO, Stanbic Bank Holdings, Uganda  First Runner-up AFRICAN REGULATOR OF THE YEAR

Energy & Petroleum Regulatory Authority, Kenya- Winner

Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA)- First Runner-up BUSINESS FRIENDLY GOVERNOR OF THE YEAR AWARD

Hassan Ali Joho, Governor, Mombasa County, Kenya  Joint Winner

Ifeanyi Okowa, Governor of Delta State, Nigeria Joint Winner

David Makhura, Premier of Gauteng province, South Africa  Runner Up AFRICAN FINANCE MINISTER OF THE YEAR

Dr. Renganaden Padayachy, Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development, Mauritius  Winner

Ipumbu Shiimi, Minister of Finance, Botswana  Runner-Up CENTRAL BANK GOVERNOR OF THE YEAR AWARD

Florens Luoga, Governor, Bank of Tanzania  Winner

Tarek Amer, Governor, Central Bank of Egypt  Runner-up AFRICAN INSPIRATIONAL BUSINESS LEADERSHIP AWARD

Joao Figueiredo, CEO, Moza Banco, Mozambique  Winner

Abena Brigidi, CEO, Nimed Capital Limited, Ghana  Runner up AFRICAN TRADE & INVESTMENT MINISTER OF THE YEAR

Alphonse Claude NSILOU, Minister of State, Minister of Trade, Supply and Consumption, Congo Republic  Winner

Beatha Habyarimana, Minister of Trade and Industry, Rwanda  Runner-up AFRICAN CEO OF THE YEAR

Peter Ashade, GCEO, United Capital Plc, Nigeria- Winner

James Githii Mburu, CEO, Kenya Revenue Authority  Runner-up YOUNG BUSINESS LEADER OF THE YEAR AWARD

Ally Edha Awadh, CEO, Lake Oil Group, Tanzania  Winner

Sangu Delle, Chairman, Golden Palm Investments Corporation, Ghana- First Runner-up AFRICA CSR AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IMPACT AWARD:

Anglo American Platinum South Africa  Winner

Access Bank Plc  First Runner-up AFRICAN BRAND OF THE YEAR

Lafarge Africa Plc  Winner

Vodacom Group  First Runner-up AFRICA BUSINESS INTEGRITY LEADER AWARD

Mastercard Africa  Winner

Heritage Bank Plc, Nigeria  First Runner-up

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The original plan was to build a series of developments that would be linked by an underground hyper-speed rail. Now, however, the current project  which promises to be revolutionary  features two skyscrapers extending from the Red Sea coast to the desert.


Taoiseach Micheal Martin has said it is regrettable that the UK is to renege on an international treaty.

Mr Martin said he rejects the assertions from the British Government that the EU has not been flexible during negotiations.

He criticised the British Governments plan to introduce a Bill to unilaterally amend the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Speaking in Co Cork on Monday, Mr Martin said the way to resolve the impasse is through substantive negotiations.

Unilateral breach of the Protocol is very serious  an international deal ratified by British Parliament and approved by the PM. It goes to the heart of the issue of trust. The only way to resolve issues is by substantive negotiations between UK and EU. (1/2)  Micheal Martin (@MichealMartinTD) June 13, 2022

Its very regrettable for a country like the UK to renege on an international treaty, he said.

I think it represents a new low point because the natural expectation of democratic countries like ourselves, the UK and all across Europe is that we honour international agreements that we enter into.

The British Government has defended the new Bill, saying it is lawful and correct.

The legislation will give ministers powers to override elements of the protocol, which was jointly agreed by the UK and EU as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to keep the Irish land border free-flowing.

The arrangements instead require regulatory checks and customs declarations on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Mr Martin said the agreement was ratified by British parliament and approved by Boris Johnson.

Ive had this discussion with him and, in our view, the only way to resolve issues around the operation of the protocol is to have substantive negotiations between the UK and the EU, Mr Martin added.

We do not accept the presentation by the British Government and certain ministers to the effect that the EU is inflexible. That is most definitely not the case and the EU has been very proactive in the last year in endeavouring to seek solutions to issues around the operation of the protocol.

He called on the British Government to enter into negotiations and discussions to resolve the issues.

He added: Sectors like manufacturing, dairy and meat are benefitting from the protocol and in fact many people in the industry are very concerned about the dual regulatory framework thats been put forward by the British Government, and feel that would undermine their practices.

The British Government needs to engage with business and industry in Northern Ireland and not make the situation worse for them because ultimately what the protocol is about really is creating the best possible opportunities for the people of Northern Ireland.

The British Government has a tendency to big up decisions like this and then once they announce them try to trivialise them.

Essentially announcing the unilateral breaching of an international agreement is serious stuff and cant be put to one side.

Unilateralism does not work. Unilateralism has never worked in the context of the Good Friday Agreement.

Im still very concerned that we are currently witnessing a denial of democracy where we have had an Assembly election and yet we dont have an Assembly convened.

The peoples voice needs to be reflected in the institutions being put in place, the Assembly in particular, and the Executive.

Earlier on Monday, Irelands Foreign Affairs Minister warned his British counterpart that introducing the Bill will breach international law and deeply damage relationships.

Simon Coveney said the new Bill marks a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit, and accused the UK Government of deliberately trying to ratchet up tensions around the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Mr Coveney expressed his concern after a morning phone call with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss about the UKs legislative plan to override aspects of the protocol.

Spoke with @trussliz. UK Govt now proposing to set aside Int Law, reject a partnership approach, ignore majority in NI & deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise. We remain open to dialogue to find agreement but his approach adds to instability & is no fix.  Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) June 13, 2022

During the call, which lasted 12 minutes, Ms Truss said she intends to publish the legislation on Monday.

Following the call, Mr Coveney tweeted: UK Govt now proposing to set aside Int Law, reject a partnership approach, ignore majority in NI and deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise.

We remain open to dialogue to find agreement but his approach adds to instability and is no fix.

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said: Mr Coveney said publishing legislation that would breach the UKs commitments under international law, the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol is deeply damaging to relationships on these islands and between the UK and EU.

Mr Coveney said it marks a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit, especially as Ms Truss has not engaged with negotiations with the EU in any meaningful way since February.

Mr Coveney repeated that the protocol is the negotiated solution, ratified by Westminster, to the hard Brexit pursued by the UK Government.

The UKs unilateral approach is not in the best interest of Northern Ireland and does not have the consent or support of the majority of people or business in Northern Ireland.

Far from fixing problems, this legislation will create a whole new set of uncertainties and damage relationships.

The Bill due to come before Parliament will see the Government move without the consent of the EU to change the terms of the protocol in a bid to reduce the checks on the movement of goods across the Irish Sea.

This could include allowing ministers to remove all customs processes for goods moving within the United Kingdom and enable the frictionless movement of agri-food goods staying within the UK.

It could also see businesses in Northern Ireland given the ability to choose whether to follow UK or EU regulations, depending on who they are trading with.
Work is set to commence in the final quarter of this year on 50 bed St Josephs Hospital Community Nursing Unit in Ardee, according to a response to a parlimentary question from the Minister of Health to Louth TD, Fergus O'Dowd.

Deputy O'Dowd had asked the Minister to report on the progression of the planned new 50- bed hospital in St. Joseph's in Ardee, with the Health Service Executive (HSE) replying directly to the Fine Gael TD. In its repsonse, the HSE said that the new Community Nursing Unit (CNU) in Ardee is included in the bundle of CNUs expected to be delivered by way of Public Private Partnership (PPP). It is anticipated, subject to financial close and contract award that the construction of the new Community Nursing Unit in Ardee will commence in Quarter 4, 2022 and will be completed in 2024.

Welcoming the news, Deputy O'Dowd said that finally we have light at the end of the tunnel for this vital project for Ardee and mid Louth. Covid has delayed so many of our capital projects, however it is heartening we now have a targeted start date and expected completion date by 2024.

He continued, the St Josephs site is already a hive of activity as the new Ambulance Base is at an advanced stage and this new 50 bed CNU will no doubt be a very welcome addition in the provision of care of older people in Mid Louth. My colleague, local Ardee councillor Dolores Minogue, and I, have consistently campaigned for this state of the art CNU development which will provide the existing staff and service users with a state of the art facility to match the exceptional level of care and attention already provided.

This new facility will boost a vast array of modern amenities including a reflection room, hairdresser room, clinical treatment room and also family overnight accommodation. Cllr Minogue and I cant wait to see the project taking shape in the very near future.
Louth TD Ruairi O Murchu has welcomed the announcement that a steering group has been established at the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications to look at district heating systems, including Carlinn Hall in Dundalk.

The Sinn Fein deputy has raised the issue of spiralling heating costs for residents of Carlinn Hall a number of times in Leinster House this year.

Residents of the 200-home estate south of Dundalk town centre, were hit with massive hikes to their heating bills earlier this year, when the price of wholesale gas, which supplies the district, or communal, heating system in the development, skyrocketed.

Since the price hike, Deputy O Murchu says he has engaged with residents, gas suppliers, utility suppliers and the Department of Environment to try to find a resolution to the problem, which affects a number of other homes across the State, mainly apartment buildings.

In response to a parliamentary question asked by Deputy O Murchu about plans to deal with the issues with communal heating systems, Environment Minister Eamon Ryan said a District Heating Steering Group has been established. Minister Ryan said: In line with the commitment in the Climate Action Plan 2021, a District Heating Steering Group has been established to resolve barriers to expansion of district heating.

This Steering Group will ensure that there is a robust governance framework put in place for district heating, and it will also bring forward recommendations for an optimum regulatory framework, along with any legislation that may be required.

Considerations in this regard will also encompass legacy district heating and local heating schemes that are already in operation in Ireland. The Steering Group has met on four occasions since its establishment in February 2022 and is expected to bring its report to Government in Q4 2022.

In the Dail chamber, Minister Ryan added: Deputy O Murchu brought a similar issue in Louth to my attention. I am aware of the development in the Deputy's constituency. There are only a small number of such systems, but they have been badly hit by the impact of very high wholesale gas market prices.

Our Department, through the steering group, will examine measures to explore what ways we can assist such developments to get out of what is now a high-priced system. It will not be an easy switch, but I am very much willing to investigate what policy levers we can seek to use in this regard.

Deputy O Murchu said: I welcome the establishment of this steering group and I welcome the engagement we have had with the department on the issue of Carlinn Hall in particular. But with wholesale gas prices continuing at a high price, and with no sign of them coming down, the residents of Carlinn Hall are in dire need of a speedy resolution to their heating bills, which were astronomical earlier this year. There is a short reprieve for them because of the summertime, but winter is coming and they need answers before they are hammered again with huge and unaffordable bills.
Whitby, Ontario  One of the fastest growing technology conferences in North AmericaCollision Conferenceis returning to Toronto this June. The Durham Region Economic Development and Tourism division (Invest Durham), along with partners, will be in attendance to showcase what makes Durham Region an ideal place to build, start or grow an innovative technology business.

From June 20 to 23 at the Enercare Centre in Toronto, Invest Durham; the regions eight local-area municipal economic development teams; three post-secondary institutions; as well as 1855 Accelerator and Spark Centre will host a large space (booth E210) showcasing Durham Regions exciting development potential to businesses and investors.

Building a business within Durham Regions thriving innovation community has several advantages:

Durham Regions location within the Greater Toronto Area provides residents with a desirable lifestyle through urban excitement and country charm; while also offering unencumbered access to the heart of Canadas technology ecosystemsomething that growing companies need.

Its tri-institutionsDurham College, Ontario Tech University, and Trent University Durham GTAwhich are developing the highly skilled and specialized labour workforce that is powering a thriving technology industry.

Innovation and support resources, such as incubation, hubs, and accelerators for tech entrepreneurs and high-potential tech and innovation companies.

A supportive business ecosystem and emerging technology cluster, which includes several of Canadas fastest growing technology companies.

Whether youre looking to bring your business to Canada or find a property or office space, Invest Durham can connect you with Durham Regions innovation community to help you rapidly grow your business.

For more information or to book an appointment with the Invest Durham team at Collision Conference, please visit Invest.Durham.ca/Collision.

Quotes

Durham Region is driving innovation, growth and productivity in the technology sector; bringing more businesses closer to where Ontarios most skilled workers live. Our history of leading transformation and modernization across sectors, cultivating a diverse business ecosystem, and robust talent pipeline, make our region the ideal place for technology businesses to grow.

 John Henry, Regional Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Region of Durham

This is a great opportunity for Durham Regions innovation community to showcase our development potential to investors and entrepreneurs in the technology sector. Bringing their business to our incredible region all starts with the building of new connections. We are confident that Durham Region is the best opportunity for investment in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, and we invite you to the conference to meet our Invest Durham team to see how we can support your growth.

 Simon Gill, Director of Economic Development and Tourism

Durham College is proud to join our regional partners for this important event. Our community has a strong post-secondary foundation that is evolving to meet the needs of our industries and students. Through the work of our five applied research hubs, we are helping businesses improve processes and discover innovative solutionsall while retaining their own intellectual property. This collaboration is one of the many examples that demonstrate how Durham College, together with our partners, is leading the way in transformative education.

 Don Lovisa, President, Durham College

Ontario Tech delivers a powerful combination of influential, solutions-driven research capacity, aligned with industry needs and a dynamic, experientially focused teaching and learning environment. Our university produces highly skilled graduates equipped with the knowledge and savvy to make an ethical impact in a tech-focused world. As the acceleration of economic growth, regional development and social innovation is central to our mission, we are excited about the opportunity to connect our STEM talent with the worlds tech leaders at the Collison Conference.

 Dr. Steven Murphy, President and Vice-Chancellor, Ontario Tech University

Quick Facts

Durham Region is the largest municipal region within Ontario and makes up the eastern side of the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).

Durham Region is growing, with an expected population of 1,300,000 by 2051.

The GTA is the third largest and fastest growing metropolitan area in Canada and the United States.

About 290,000 people are employed in tech related jobs in the GTAthe number one region for high-tech job growth across North America.

Durham Region is home to three post-secondary institutions: Ontario Tech University, Durham College, and Trent University Durham GTA. There is also access to more than 30 university and college campuses within a one to two-hour drive.

Durham Region is the clean energy capital of Canada.

Durham Region has a strong history of technological innovation.

Industrial development charges in Durham Region are below the average of other regions in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA).

About Durham Region

Durham Region issimplymore. Located on the eastern side of the GTHA, Durham is a region with momentum. Offering a competitive advantage like no other, Durham is a community where talented, smart, diverse and ambitious peopleknown for their innovation, creativity, skills and educationbring access to world markets, insights, invention and traditions. A place where an innovative ecosystem helps propel new ideas forward. Where ingenuity and industry help tackle global challenges. Visit durham.ca to learn more about one of Canadas fastest growing communities.

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For media inquiries, contact Corporate Communications.
I was invited to dine with Bill Gates last week during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The terms of the invitation, which was extended to six others besides myself, were that the discussion would be off-the-record. Therefore, I cant write about anything discussed that evening. What I can tell you is what we ate, and what I thought about after the dinner.

The menu, prepared by chefs at Microsoft House  the temporary headquarters of all things Microsoft at the Davos conference  was superb. The first course was an Asian beef salad, followed by a main course of rack of veal and the most tender asparagus Ive ever had. The meal ended with a mango sorbet with fresh fruits. It all tasted as good as it sounds.

What I thought about afterwards was my own cynicism regarding Gates optimism that his plan can prevent the next pandemic. His book on this topic, published just weeks before our dinner, was something I spent a good deal of time understanding in preparation for the dinner discussion. I never doubted the wisdom of what he proposed in the book; but I had, and continue to have, concerns about our global leaderships ability to receive wise counsel and act in concert, in the interest of humanity, absent selfish nationalistic objections. I listened intently as Bill spoke that evening, and initially considered his optimism to be naive. I admit that it took some time and reflection afterwards for me to appreciate that, had he set out with a cynical view, for example, with regard to his bold plan to cut childhood malaria deaths in half, based on a dim view of global leadership, he would never have achieved that goal. His optimism, I came to realize, is not naive; it is a necessary tool in his arsenal to achieve the global impact he desires.

As I continued to mull over his ambitious, yet practical plan to stave off the next pandemic, I arrived at a sense of gratitude that this unusually capable mind has dedicated its resources to solving crucial societal problems. Going into the dinner, I had an appreciation for his intellect and drive. What I discovered over dinner was his passion and commitment for leaving the world a better place than he found it. Given the vastness of his foundations work over the last 22 years, that may sound obvious; but some continue to question his motives. After spending two uninterrupted hours with him over a small dinner table, I can declare, to myself at least, that his motives are genuine. He seems excited about this shiny toy  his agile mind  and he enjoys playing with it, and testing its limits to understand its capabilities. He has chosen to do just that with regard to preventing the next pandemic.

His book on how to prevent the next pandemic is an exercise in the use of that great mind for the common good  a gift to society from a unicorn. Who else has the experience of having scaled one of historys largest efforts to improve public health globally, a deep understanding of bio-science, epidemiology and statistics, unfettered access to the leading, relevant subject matter experts, and the independence to opine without concerns about political backlash? It seems to me that he might even consider it irresponsible to possess this unparalleled knowledge that can save lives, and not couple it with an optimistic expectation that the world will follow.

In his book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, Gates has synthesized the learnings from the last two and half years into a practical, easy to digest action plan for those who are committed to ensuring that we learn from our mistakes. He has taken an apolitical view of the countries that have had the best outcomes, and examined what they did right in their management of the novel Coronavirus. He notes that Australia demonstrated a deft orchestration of virus diagnostics  they did early testing widely  and executed lock down policies with great effectiveness, leading Australia to one of the lowest death rates from COVID among wealthy countries. From Japan, he notes that the well established habit of wearing masks served the country well in maintaining low transmission rates. South Africa, in partnership with UNICEF, counteracted the spread of misinformation about the pandemic in rural communities with a multimedia truck with huge LED screens to broadcast local stories and information. South Korea did an excellent job using cell phone data for contact tracing, though he notes that this use of private information would not likely be well received in most democratic countries.

Gates processes all of this information, together with his deep and vast global public health experience, to inform a plan with three key pillars, to be orchestrated by a newly established, centralized, global pandemic response team that he proposes. The three pillars of his plan are as follows:

Invest in better vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. Successful ideas can take years to research before they are actionable, so the time to invest is not after the start of a pandemic; investment must be part of an on-going plan.

Improve disease monitoring with Global Epidemic Response & Mobilization  GERM. This is one of the most important steps to stop the next pandemic. GERM would be a permanent organization of experts who are fully paid and prepared to mount a coordinated response to a dangerous outbreak at any time. A key aspect of their work would be to ensure preparedness by running fire drills  exercises to practice the response protocols for an actual outbreak.

Strengthen health systems  the pandemic showed us that until we are all safe, none of us is safe. Health systems need to be strong in low, middle and high income countries and communities. We need well functioning hospitals, clinics and most importantly, health care workers. These resources can not be developed overnight, and also need investment as part of an on-going plan.

After my dinner with Bill, I was inspired to learn more about him and how he formed his ambitious world views. I read a blog he wrote, in which he quoted the great epidemiologist, Larry Brilliant, who said that outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are optional. Listening to those with unparalleled expertise and experience, and adopting their plans to contain outbreaks before they become pandemics should be the strategy of every world leader. And while I continue to have my concerns about whether global leadership has the vision, and the wherewithal, to take the actions proposed by Gates, and implement such plans effectively, I respect his optimism that his plan will be adopted in some form. Without such optimism, surely it would be impossible. And I close with a quote from another wise man, Nelson Mandela, who used his leadership to overcome seemingly unattainable goals: It always seems impossible, until it is done.

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A STUDENT filmmaker from Tower is gaining awards and attention for his latest work, His Car.

The short, which won Best Overall Film in the First Frame category at this years Dublin International Film Festival, is a profoundly moving and personal tribute to Mark Lynchs father, Mick, who passed away during the first lockdown in 2020 from illness.

Making the film was an emotional process for Mark, but one he was honoured to go through in tribute to his father. The film was an assignment for his degree course at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

In the first year, we had to do an end-of-year film with the theme of a Covid personal project, he explains.

We had to find something to tell a story that reflected how we were experiencing the pandemic. I wanted to make a film inspired by dad and the car I inherited from him when he passed.

As it happened, the theme worked because the car played a big part of my life during lockdown.

Lynch narrates the documentary as he drives a beige 2008 Renault Scenic. His fathers old car has a great emotional attachment, but it also guided Lynch as he navigated life from Cork to Dublin.

The car was a godsend for my partner and me; it got us to Dublin to study in the middle of lockdown. We were looking for places to stay, so we would get up early in the morning and drive from Cork up to Dublin to spend the entire day looking at viewings.

It was my first time driving around Dublin, which was terrifying, to be honest. The car was a base of operations for us, but it was also a safe spot. As long as I had the car, I knew Id be okay, that my dad was watching over me.

Even though I was moving away from Cork and my family, I brought a connection with me.

Lynch says he was determined to make the film, but it was challenging.

I was delighted to make the film; I wanted to share who my dad was with people, but it meant that I had to face grief all the time.

The editing process was very tough because I saw my dads images and heard his voice. I was constantly in a zone of grief. My partner helped me through the editing process; she was a great support.

Lynchs partner, Maiya Rice, a fellow film student, shot the film and her brother, Luca, an animation student, composed the score.

Maiya is amazing with the camera, says Mark. She studied at St. Johns Central College, thats where we met, and then we got into Dun Laoghaire together. The film wouldnt have looked half as good without her camerawork. Im extremely grateful.

Her brother, Luca, has just finished studying animation, but hes also a great musician. I just reached out to him to see if he could help me out. The music really fits the piece.

Lynch says that seeing peoples responses to the film has given him a sense of reassurance, knowing that they can connect on a personal level, but he admits that he hadnt quite thought about how much time he would have to spend talking about his father and seeing the film over and over.

I wanted to make it, but I dont think I prepared myself for showing it to the lecturers and getting feedback on something so personal.

"It has been amazing to bring it to festivals, but I wasnt mentally prepared for sitting in a room with the film on the big screen and having other people watch it.

It certainly affected me, but it is all part of the process.

The young filmmaker is grateful to have won awards, but says he wont be resting on his laurels.

It is so strange to win things and have kind words said; I am so appreciative, but it wasnt my goal. You could get set on winning prizes, but for me, it is about the work and how I feel about it.

Lynch says his father was a great storyteller who influenced his love of acting and filmmaking.

He was always telling stories about his childhood, and he used to tell them very theatrically. He introduced me to his favourite films, and wed talk about them.

My older brother Steve had a huge DVD collection, and he used to recommend films to me, but he also said to watch the behind-the-scenes interviews.

Thats where I started to fall in love with the idea of directing and producing. They were a gateway.

Lynch did speech and drama as a youth, and after secondary school went to St Johns to study film.

St Johns was absolutely fantastic. They helped ignite my love of film. The lectures are extremely practical and hands-on, and the lecturers really nurture students. I wouldnt be here without them.

Cork has a fine filmmaking tradition, and Lynch thinks it might be down to how Corkonians look at things.

We use humour. Even with dads passing, which was so sudden and shocking, we were cracking jokes. We look at things in a funny way, and I think it makes us great at telling stories.

Lynch says he enjoys many film styles, but if he had to pick one genre to watch all the time, it would be science fiction.

I always gravitate towards sci-fi. I adored Dune. I love Denis Villeneuves work. Once I hear he is attached to a film, I want to see it.
THERE are some very dirty citizens who seem to think it is someones job to clean up after them, said councillor Terry Shannon, following a survey from Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) which has classed the Cork City centre, Cork Northside and Mahon areas as littered.

As part of the IBAL Anti-Litter League, An Taisce monitored 40 towns and cities in accordance with international grading standards.

Midleton came in 13th place and was deemed Cleaner than European Norms, while Cork Northside, Cork City Centre, and Mahon were ranked from 35 to 37 place, respectively.

Mr Shannon, a Fianna Fail councillor for Cork City South East, said he was disappointed with the results of the survey. I appreciate the work IBAL are doing because it highlights issues for us, and it keeps us on our toes. I am disappointed with the outcome for Mahon and indeed for the entire city, he said.

Labour Councillor for Cork City North East John Maher said littering is an ongoing issue: It is anti-social behaviour. You cant deny it if the report is saying it. It is up to all of us as stakeholders to look into it, he said.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Mr Shannon said more personal responsibility is required to tackle the problem. We are all told to bring our rubbish home with us. A bit more personal responsibility is required along. It is very disheartening for people when they see their fellow citizens not doing the business. Tidy Towns groups all over are very resolute and they are doing a great job.

Cllr Terry Shannon. Picture: Jim Coughlan.

People say there are not enough litter bins. We accept that but, in many cases, there will never be enough litter bins for some people who are just dirty. No number of bins and fines will ever do anything for us. City Council can only do so much. I think local businesses have a role to play. There is a twin track approach here. There is a large amount of personal responsibility that people need to take in relation to the disposal of their waste, he added.

Overall, the study reveals litter is on the decrease, including PPE litter, but the prevalence of coffee cups on our streets warrants action such as a levy, says IBAL.

Labour Party Councillor John Maher.

Mr Maher said people need to take personal responsibility. There is a personal responsibility as well. We do need to look at our waste management. We are aware of the illegal dumping which is a dig in the head for any community and for the Cork City Council workers.

These reports are a snapshot. There are usual blackspots, but there is a big element of dumping happening. Where there are improvements on the northside is down to individuals and community groups. That needs to be commended. I have two neighbours who grab bags and go out walking every second week. The report needs to be careful not to bring down a whole community as there is great efforts going on. I will walk with IBAL any day of the week and I will show them the many groups that are breaking their back.
Following its success across Scotland and England, Black Rooster Peri Peri has today opened its first Irish restaurant and take-away in Carrigaline.

The new restaurant, which has created 20 jobs and represents an investment of 320,000, is located on the towns Main Street and specialises in Peri Peri chicken made from its own secret recipe that is prepared and grilled to perfection in store whilst the customer waits.

The franchise first opened in Glasgow in 2017 and since then has expanded rapidly, with sixteen stores across Scotland and England to date.

The company expects to expand to further locations across Ireland in due course, with plans to expand in Munster in the next 18 months.

Owner of the Black Rooster Peri Peri Carrigaline store, Reggie Sweetnam said they were excited to bring the hugely successful franchise to both Cork and Ireland.

We are thrilled to bring Black Rooster Peri Peri to Cork and be the first to open in Ireland. We have been a fan of Black Rooster Peri Peri for years and know that they have almost a cult status amongst Peri Peri lovers in Scotland, so we knew we had to bring it Leeside.

Carrigaline was an obvious location when the opportunity arose  it has a great community of residents and businesses, and we cant wait to meet customers  locals and passers-by alike. Our plans dont just stop at Carrigaline though, as the aim is to open stores in Ballincollig, Midleton, Waterford and Limerick, Mr Sweetnam said.

Kevin Bell, Owner and Director of Black Rooster Peri Peri added Our brand is much loved over in Scotland. Last year we opened our first store in England which has been a huge success, so now to be opening in Ireland is a massive milestone for our business. Were looking forward to seeing more stores opening throughout the country and cant wait to see what the locals think!

Black Rooster Peri Peri Carrigaline is open from 12 noon to 10pm seven days a week and customers can dine in, or take away the signature dishes to enjoy at home.
Commitment to Traceable Yarn UPW X Haelixa

In 2021, UPW, a Hong Kong-based sustainable yarn manufacturing company, announced its pledge to trace its entire stock service yarn collection with the innovative Swiss-based traceability provider Haelixa. UPWs Fall and Winter 2022 collection is marked and traced by Haelixa and will continue to proceed with the entire yarn collection in the coming months.

UPW has become one of the largest woolen spinners in the world and is recognized for its outstanding commitment to delivering traceable and environmentally friendly produced yarns for its customers. The collaboration with Haelixa has allowed UPW to prove its efforts in sustainable sourcing and yarn production. To promote sustainability and transparency in this industry, UPW and Haelixa invite their global collaborators to speak about their success stories in Florence, Italy, from June 28th to July 1st.

For companies Haelixa and UPW, sustainability and quality are prioritized. The collaboration between the two has been proactive in proving that traceability in the supply chain can be easily integrated, scalable and effective. Haelixas DNA-based markers are seamlessly sprayed onto the fibers, providing them with a traceable identity, which cannot be removed and can be verified with a simple forensic test at any point during the product life cycle.

Haelixa has developed a specific DNA marker for UPW to assure the quality and authenticity of the yarns. The entirety of the yarn collection can be traced back to UPWs dying and spinning facilities in Dongguan, where fibres were marked. The marker formulations are harmless, GOTS certified, and Oekotex Standard 100 compliant. These are all important factors for UPW to ensure the highest quality and safety for their products.

UPW offers its customers sustainably sourced and environmentally friendly yarn products, ranging from cashmere, wool, and yak, and several blends which are traceable and supported by several standards (such as The Good Cashmere Company, RWS). By implementing Haelixas traceability from fiber to finished product, UPW allows its clients to rely on future-proofed supply chains and verify that their products are sourced and produced according to their set standards.

In advocacy for sustainability practices in the industry, UPW and Haelixa invite international players and voices in traceability to Florence, Italy, from June 28- to July 1st, 2022. The 4-day program will include a presentation of the work performed with Haelixa and UPW fiber partners and WGSN on the 29th of June.

Registrations for the event are now open; please inquire to BOTH contacts below for an invitation.

Event Detail: UPW Fall Winter 2023 Collection Launch

Date: 28th of June to 1st of July, 2022

Place: 25hours Hotel Piazza San Paolino

Piazza di S. Paolino, 1, 50123 Firenze FI, Italy

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
A sheep is rescued after the ship Badr 1 sank in Sudan's Red Sea port of Suakin, drowning most animals on board, on June 12, 2022. AFP via Getty Images

A livestock vessel containing 15,800 sheep sank in the Red Sea on Sunday, June 12 off the port of Suakin, Sudan. The ship, Badr 1, was set to leave from Sudan to export the sheep to Saudi Arabia. All crew members were rescued and survived, but only around 700 sheep were rescued.

According to one port official, the sunken ship will disrupt port operations, and the large number of animal deaths will also likely harm the surrounding environment.

Another port official, who spoke to reporters on anonymity, said the vessel was only supposed to carry 9,000 sheep. The ship, Badr 1, sank during the early hours of Sunday morning, the senior port official shared. It was carrying 15,800 sheep, which was beyond its load limits.

Omar al-Khalifa, head of the national exporters association, believes the sheep and the ship could have been rescued, as it took several hours before the vessel ultimately sunk at the pier, as reported by The Guardian.

Saleh Selim, head of the livestock division for the national exporters association, has called for an investigation into the sunken ship. Selim said the lost livestock were valued around 14 million Saudi riyals ($3.7 million).

Selim also shared that about 700 sheep were rescued, but they were found very ill and we dont expect them to live long.

This will not be the only ongoing investigation at the Suakin port. Last month, a fire broke out in the cargo area and burned for several hours. It led to costly and extensive damages, and the cause of the fire has yet to be determined or shared publicly.

The port was formerly the main foreign trade hub in Sudan, but has since been replaced by Port Sudan, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) away. A 2017 deal with Turkey was set to restore local, historic buildings, expand the docks, and restore the port was put on hold after the former president Omar al-Bashir was ousted. The country remains in an economic crisis following a military coup, which also led to aid cuts from Western governments.
A Louisiana energy company is finally paying for the longest-running oil spill in U.S. history.

Taylor Energy has agreed to pay more than $43 million in penalties and transfer a further $432 million to the Department of the Interior as a trust to complete the cleanup of the 17-year spill, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

Offshore operators cannot allow oil to spill into our nations waters, Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim for the Justice Departments Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement. If an oil spill occurs, the responsible party must cooperate with the government to timely address the problem and pay for the cleanup. Holding offshore operators to account is vital to protecting our environment and ensuring a level industry playing field.

The oil spill began in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan triggered the collapse of a Taylor Energy production platform located around 10 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. The collapse damaged around two dozen oil wells, Reuters reported. All told, the ongoing spill has poured hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, according to The Hill.

Despite being a catalyst for beneficial environmental technological innovation, the damage to our ecosystem caused by this 17-year-old oil spill is unacceptable, U.S. Attorney Duane A. Evans for the Eastern District of Louisiana said in a statement. The federal government will hold accountable businesses that violate our Nations environmental laws and ensure that any oil and gas company operating within our District meets their professional and legal responsibilities.

The settlement resolves a years-long legal standoff between Taylor Energy and the government. Taylor Energy ceased operations in 2008 and set up a $666 million fund to clean the spill, The New York Times reported. However, it only capped nine of the 25 wells, saying the rest were too difficult to reach, and sued the Department of the Interior for the remaining funds. Since then, the company has continued to push back against the federal government over the costs of cleanup and the extent of the damage.

Wednesdays agreement requires Taylor Energy to drop three lawsuits it has filed against the federal government and pay $432 billion into a trust to cap the remaining wells, shutter the facility and decontaminate the area. It will also liquidate its remaining assets, an amount of more than $43 billion, to pay civil penalties, removal costs and natural resources damages.

However, Taylor Energy does not admit any liability to the United States or the State arising out of the MC-20 Incident, The Hill reported.

The settlement has been filed as a proposed consent decree. It now waits on 40 days of public comment and court review.

This settlement represents an important down payment to address impacts from the longest-running oil spill in U.S. history, Nicole LeBoeuf, director of NOAAs National Ocean Service, said in a statement. Millions of Americans along the Gulf Coast depend on healthy coastal ecosystems.
By Claire L. Jarvis

A ruckus over biofuels has been brewing in Iowa.

For months now the Trump administration has been promising to deliver a new biofuels package that would boost the market for production of soy- and corn-based alternative fuels. The move would help American farmers hurt by the administrations tariffs, as well as ease their anger over changing regulations that have exempted several oil refineries from blending biofuels with their other fuels.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated that all fuels produced in the U.S. contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels. Part of that came in the form of biofuels, derived from living, renewable sources such as crops or plants. The term biofuels generally refers to the gasoline substitute derived from corn, while biodiesel is a diesel substitute derived from soybean oil or animal fats.

At the time many experts predicted biofuels would provide a renewable source of energy, help reduce the use of fossil fuels, and lessen the risks of climate change. After the Act was passed, the biofuels market jolted into life.

In 2000 we used less corn for ethanol than sweeteners in soda, said Jeremy Martin, director of fuels policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. By 2010 ethanol was up there with animal feed as the largest consumer of corn. Last year total U.S. biofuel production reached 16 billion gallons a year, and industry projections anticipate continued growth.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the expansion of the biofuels industry  as a share of the fuel market and a lobbying power  is that the general public hasnt really noticed. Compared with fracking or coal, biofuels arent the subject of many policy reports or New York Times op-eds. Media coverage of the biofuels package has been limited.

But as President Donald Trump continues to make promises about the future of biofuels, two important questions loom: Should the rest of the country care about whats going on in Iowa and other corn-belt states? And is biofuel expansion something we should welcome or oppose?

Lobbying and Public Perception The industry often referred to as Big Corn has a surprising amount of power and has actively intensified its lobbying efforts. In 2018 several biofuel interest groups each spent more than million to lobby the government over the Renewable Fuel Standard, an average increase from 2017 of around 0,000. This is obviously small change compared with what the fossil-fuel industry spends  the biggest oil companies each spend -50 million every year  but the biofuel groups efforts have paid off to some degree. Although the ethanol lobby has not made headway reducing the number of small refinery waivers issued by the government, theyre getting other desired results: The Trump administration favors raising the minimum ethanol volume in gasoline, something the oil and gas lobby opposes. Critics say this lobbying has allowed the industry to successfully broaden its market without fully informing customers of the potential costs and concerns, which range from reduced gas mileage to increased air pollution. Perhaps as a result, the public perception of biofuels  or what little we know about it  remains fairly positive. Unsurprisingly, one place where public approval seems to be holding is Iowa, a state whose economy also depends on biofuels. According to a public opinion poll by the Iowa Biodiesel Board, a state trade association, 65 percent of Iowans have a positive opinion of biodiesel, while just 4 percent have a negative opinion. Those numbers havent changed much over time. Its holding pretty steady, said Grant Kimberley, executive director of the association. A national voter poll by the American Biodiesel Board released in October 2019 paints a similar picture. More than half of survey participants said they believed the federal government should encourage the use of biofuels. Outside of trade group polls, though, there isnt a lot of academic research on public attitudes to biofuels and biodiesel. Gallup and Pew Research opinion polls dont ask about them, so we dont know the true national consensus on biofuels, or whether biofuels are more popular than other nontraditional sources of energy such as fracking, solar or nuclear power. What we do know comes from a few years ago. Bret Shaw , a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has researched public attitudes within his state. His papers from 2011 and 2012 (based on research conducted in 2009) are some of the most recent to document American opinion. Almost two-thirds of Wisconsinites surveyed told him they support the use of biofuels, which matches the Iowa poll. They correctly answered an average of 5 out of 9 questions about biofuels, demonstrating reasonably good knowledge. However, Shaws studies suggested that public opinion may be more malleable and precarious than those robust approval ratings imply. In his surveys he found that renaming biofuels as ethanol negatively affected the opinion of Democrats but didnt sway Republicans. Public opinion on both sides dipped when the surveys stated that adding biofuel blends could lower a cars gas mileage. When asked about ethanols impact on the environment, 41 percent believed it causes less damage than gasoline, 44 percent believed it was about the same and only 15 percent thought ethanol caused more environmental damage. Shaw cautions that public attitudes may have shifted in the past decade, but his studies still present the clearest snapshot of public perception of biofuels  as well as the opportunity to better inform consumers about the products that go into their gas tanks. So why should the public care, especially since they have so little choice in the matter?

What the Public Doesnt Know Cant Hurt Them  Can It? Advocates of biofuels around the country tout them as better for the environment than fossil fuels, a fact that polls tell us the public doesnt disagree with. Scientists, on the other hand, have begun to question some of those environmental benefits. According to some studies, biodiesels emit more of certain pollutants than regular diesel, and biofuels can have a larger carbon footprint than gasoline, depending on where you start in the production cycle. These findings dont seem to enter the public discourse. Increased corn production can also harm farmland because it causes farmers to cut back on crop rotation, a process essential to maintaining soil quality and reducing pests. Farmers also have an increased incentive to plant corn in ecologically sensitive grassland or wetlands.

Corn stalks after harvest. Phil Roeder / CC BY 2.0 But the effects of biofuel production on wildlife and public health are subtle and hard to separate from the consequences of food production. This sets biodiesel apart from other sources of pollution and environmental health, such as fracking, which are often much more immediately visible. For example, images of brown tap water were enough to mobilize national opposition to fracking. Intensified corn production doesnt generate such arresting sights. Corn requires more fertilizer than other crops, and the toxic algal bloom caused by fertilizer runoff into the rivers is a visible consequence of increased corn production to meet biofuel demand. However, these blooms occur out of sight in the Gulf of Mexico. The Union of Concerned Scientists advocates for cleaner energy, but stands neither for nor against biofuels. Our position is that all fuel producers should be cleaning up their act, said Martin. More emphasis on how do we make biofuels better rather than just lets have more biofuels. Although these problems have been identified and studied, if not widely discussed, some experts suggest that maybe they dont matter in the long term. When they passed the first Renewable Fuel Standard, every forecast was that demand for gasoline would rise forever with economic growth, said Martin. Now most long-term forecasts reflect that gas consumption is likely to fall rather than rise. That means were headed towards ethanol use falling. He adds that wide-scale electric vehicle adoption, unthinkable in 2005, now looks closer to reality. Once that happens, ethanol use could go into freefall. Back in Iowa, biofuels and biodiesel advocates remain bullish about market expansion, even though the government remains only partially on their side. In the near future we think we can easily double our industry, said Kimberley, who doesnt believe a widespread adoption of large electric vehicles in sectors like commercial trucking, where vehicles otherwise run on bio-blends of diesel, is coming anytime soon. Meanwhile the drama in Washington continues. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a subcommittee hearing on the Trump plan to exempt certain oil refiners from the Renewable Fuel Standards biofuel blending requirements. That plan made oil companies happy but enraged Iowa farmers. For now, that tension may continue to grow.

Reposted with permission from The Revelator.
The timely intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi came as a relief for the family of an injured Indian MBBS student from a medical college in Bangladesh. The Indian government is planning to airlift the student, who is in a coma and on a ventilator after a critical accident, and transport him to the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), New Delhi.

Shoaib Lone is a resident of Rajouri district of Delhi. He is a final-year MBBS student in Barind Medical College in Dhaka, Bangladesh. On June 3, he met with an accident along with two of his college friends. One of them died, while the other two, including Shoaib, now lie critically injured in a hospital in Dhaka.

Shoaib's father is a Class IV employee in the Jammu and Kashmir Government. He said that the family has somehow managed to arrange Rs 10 lakh for Shoaib's treatment through contributions, but the money has all been spent. "Now we are neither in the position to bear the charges to treat him at Bangladesh nor in a position to bring him back to India, he said, as reported by PTI.

As the situation worsened for Shoaib and his family, the Indian government decided to step in. Ravinder Raina, the President of Jammu & Kashmir BJP and RSS member, informed on Monday, June 13, that the government has reached out and is making an effort to airlift him to AIIMS, Delhi. He met Shoaib's father during his visit to the Rajouri district and came to know about the situation. "As soon as I came to know about the accident from his father during my visit to Rajouri, I sought help of the PMO. He is in a coma. His parents want help," he said, as reported by PTI.

The politician also informed that the Prime Minister's Office sought the details and PM Modi personally called India's ambassador to Bangladesh to provide all necessary help to the student's family. The ambassador in turn visited Shoaib in Ever Care Hospital in Dhaka, where he is undergoing treatment, and reached out to his family in Rajouri.

Raina said that the government would arrange for specialised care of the student in AIIMS and would bear all the expenses of his treatment. He has thanked the Prime Minister for his speedy action, as reported by PTI.




ABIEC: Brazil to increase beef production by 35% during 2022-2030 to meet demands

Brazil must increase its beef production by 35% between now and 2030 to meet the demands of the domestic and foreign markets, according to a recent report from Brazilian meat industry association, ABIEC.

The organisation's 2022 Beef Report stated that, even under the most conservative scenario, Brazil's beef exports will exceed three million tonnes by 2030. It outlined that a 35% increase in production as well as a 45% increase in the average productivity of livestock will be necessary to meet this target. The country's national cattle herd stood at 196.5 million in 2021. However, if these forecasts are met, it will reach 203.1 million in 2031.

The report also projected that annual cattle slaughter which was 39.1 million head in 2021, will increase to 45.8 million in 2026 and will reach 47.5 million in 2031.

The report, which analysed Brazilian beef exports extensively, showed that Brazil was the largest beef exporter in the world in 2021 coming in just ahead of Australia. The country produced 9.71 million tonnes of beef that year of which it exported 2.48 million tonnes carcass weight equivalent (CWE), while 7.24 million tonnes remained in the domestic market.

China was the largest importer of Brazilian beef in 2021, importing 723,656 tonnes. The second largest importer was Hong Kong, who imported 219,933 tonnes of Brazilian beef.

Meanwhile, the European Union imported 77,266 tonnes of Brazilian beef in the same year, 21,734 tonnes less than the EU's approved special tariff quota under the Mercosur agreement.

The report also stated that Brazil is planning to work towards an expansion into a number of new markets including Canada, as well as Japan and South Korea, with whom the country is "under negotiations with".

ABIEC president Antonio Jorje Camardelli said that these prospects are "in addition to the restoration of the approval of plants to export beef to Russia".

The report also included information on the prevalence of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in Brazil, outlining the country's progress since 2014, when the disease was still widespread.

Brazil remains classified as a zone that has a negligible Bovine Spongiform Encephalopath (BSE) risk status'. However, maps in the report showed that FMD is widely under control in the country, with the majority of regions engaging in a twice yearly vaccination programme.



- Agriland




Nebraska, US pork association appoints new services director

The Nebraska Pork Producers Association in the United States has appointed Steve Hoefer as allied and producers services director.

Hoefer has been involved in the pork industry for 40-plus years. He attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and received his degree in animal science with a production option.

Hoefer's responsibilities include managing all allied industry memberships, events and meetings, as well as soliciting new members. He will also be working with the National Pork Producer Council in managing the Strategic Investment Program, maintaining producer investor relationships and the recruitment of new members.

Hoefer brings with him an extensive background in all facets of the swine industry including farm experience, sales, consulting on facility construction, genetics, nutrition, pig flow, ventilation and PQA audit preparation.

Prior to joining NPPA, he was a livestock disease traceability coordinator for the US state of Nebraska. In this position, he was responsible for disease oversight of all livestock entering and leaving the state.

Hoefer assumed his position with NPPA on June 6 and stated that he "has a passion for pork production and believes he can be a resource in growing Nebraska's pork industry."



- Nebraska Pork Producers Association




Anpario appoints sales manager for Egypt, UAE and Oman





Anpario announced the appointment of Dr. Khaled Elganainy as sales manager for Egypt, UAE and Oman.

Dr. Elganainy graduated from Mansoura University in Egypt with a degree in Veterinary Science and recently completed his MBA at Brooklyn University in the United States.

He is an animal health professional with extensive experience in veterinary pharmaceuticals, providing both technical support and business development for producers across all sectors within the region.

Dr. Elganainy will be a valuable asset to Anpario, strengthening its team of local experts which he will be directly involved with in driving sales growth and developing relationships with feed millers, poultry and dairy integrators in Egypt, UAE and Oman.

- Anpario
TT one-way system,to be removed today

The TT one-way system will be removed this morning.

The Department of Infrastructure will closed the road between Ramsey and the Creg-Ny-Baa from 9:30am.

Official say the road will be open no later than 4:30pm.

Local business at the Bungalow can be accessed via the Tholt-y-Will Road.
Google has agreed to pay $118 million to settle a lawsuit first launched in 2017 over gender-based wage discrimination, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Three former female employees accused Google of segregating women into lower paying jobs that curbed advancement, while similarly-qualified men didn't face those obstacles.

The lawsuit was expanded to class-action status in 2021 and the settlement covers around 15,500 female employees who worked in Google's California offices after September 2013. It includes a clause that independent experts must review Google's hiring practices and pay-equity studies, according to the law office representing the plaintiffs. However, Google admitted no wrongdoing as part of the deal.

"While we strongly believe in the equity of our policies and practices, after nearly five years of litigation, both sides agreed that resolution of the matter, without any admission or findings, was in the best interest of everyone, and were very pleased to reach this agreement," Google spokesperson Chris Pappas told the WSJ.

Google ran a pay-equity analysis to see if salaries, equity awards and bonuses were fair since 2013. The co-counsel for the plaintiffs said that the settlement would be "precedent-setting" for the industry.

"As a woman whos spent her entire career in the tech industry, Im optimistic that the actions Google has agreed to take as part of this settlement will ensure more equity for women," said one of the original three plaintiffs, Holly Pease, in a statement from law firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein. "Google, since its founding, has led the tech industry. They also have an opportunity to lead the charge to ensure inclusion and equity for women in tech."

Google is far from the only tech company to face complaints over gender-based pay. Riot Games recently paid $10 million to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit while Microsoft, Uber and other firms have faced pay equity accusations. The gender pay gap in the US didn't improve last year, according to the labor group SHRM  March 15 is still Equal Pay Day, the date that represents how far into 2022 women have to work to earn what men earned by the end of 2021.
Google will allow other advertising intermediaries to run ads on YouTube, according to Reuters. The company currently requires advertisers to use its Ad Manager to place ads on YouTube, which has caught the attention of European Union antitrust officials.

The European Commission opened a probe into Google's ad tech in 2021 after two years of informal consultations. Competition officials also cited concerns about potential restrictions on how rival ad platforms can run YouTube ads and the fact advertisers need to use the Display & Video 360 and Google Ads services. The investigation centers around whether Google, a division of Alphabet, gave itself an unfair advantage in the digital advertising space by limiting the user data that advertisers and rival ad platforms can access.

Reuters reports that Google's concession could help allow it to settle the case and avoid a fine of as much as 10 percent of its global turnover. Alphabet generated revenue of $257 billion in 2021. However, it's believed that Google will need to address other concerns to resolve the investigation.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority is also looking into the company's ad tech practices. In the US, senators last month filed a bill with bipartisan support that would break up Google's ad business were it to become law.

"We have been engaging constructively with the European Commission. We dont have anything further to share at this stage," a Google spokesperson told Engadget. "As with the Privacy Sandbox initiative, we are committed to working with regulators and the wider industry to achieve the best possible outcomes.

Update 6/13 10:52PM ET: Added Google's statement.
It was never truly in doubt that Netflix would bring its most popular show of all time back, but the company has at last officially greenlit season two of Squid Game . It hasn't been revealed when the next batch of episodes will hit the streaming service.

Squid Game became a word-of-mouth phenomenon when it debuted last September. Netflix said that, in the first 28 days it was available, viewers watched a little over 1.65 billion hours of the first season. Money Heist: Part 5, which arrived that same month, is in second place with 792 million hours watched over the same timeframe  less than half the overall viewership time of Squid Game.

The show scooped up Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards this year. It's likely to feature heavily among the Emmy nominations when those are announced next month.

Red light GREENLIGHT!



Squid Game is officially coming back for Season 2! pic.twitter.com/4usO2Zld39  Netflix (@netflix) June 12, 2022

Last October, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk said he wasn't sure whether there'd be more episodes but that he would hold talks with the company because he wanted to make a film first. Netflix said in January a second season would "absolutely" happen, but it's not clear why it took quite so long for a formal announcement.
The explosive demise on SN-10 last year broke more than SpaceX's Starship prototype. It's also spurred NASA to put a pin in plans for the vessel to use Cape Canaveral as a backup launchpad, at least until the company can provide evidence that another blow up on the pad won't damage infrastructure critical to resupplying the ISS.

The situation is this: Plans for the primary launchpad SpaceX wants in Boca Chica, Texas for the upcoming Starship rocket is already facing lengthy regulatory delays (though the review phase is expected to wrap up next week). The Army Corps of Engineers in April also denied the company's application to expand Galveston-area launch site after SpaceX failed to provide required documentation.

The company has also been rapidly constructing a secondary launch pad at its Cape Canaveral facility but those plans are now on hold. The problem is that SpaceX's new Starship launch pad sits just a few hundred feet from NASA's launchpad 39A, you know, the only NASA launch pad currently in existence that SpaceX's Dragon Crew is approved to launch from. Should another Starship  which relies on an mix of liquid nitrogen and methane as fuel that is unfamiliar to regulators  go kablooey, the explosive force and ship shrapnel could damage launch complex 39A. And with no 39A, we have no more crewed missions to the ISS until it gets fixed.

"We all recognize that if you had an early failure like we did on one of the early SpaceX flights, it would be pretty devastating to 39A," Kathy Lueders, NASA's space operations chief, told Reuters.

SpaceX, which has already invested heavily in the construction of its now-paused platform, has offered to try to "harden" pad 39A against the forces imparted by both successful and unsuccessful Starship launches as well as build up launch complex 40, located about 5 miles away, with crew launching capabilities. Both of those options would still require agency approval as well as months if not years of construction to get ready.
Russias war in Ukraine has forced the European Union to address longstanding strategic challenges. The most immediate task is to end Europes dependence on Russian energy imports, and this process is now underway, with a gradual oil embargo that will reach 90% by the end of the year. More broadly, Europe must also develop an effective security and defence policy, as well as the capabilities required to implement it. While this ambition itself is not new, there is a fresh impetus for it. Russias war makes clear that we need a step change toward greater pooling of defence investments. That was the main conclusion from the European Councils discussion about defence this week. No two political problems are identical. Sometimes, a challenge seems so new and unprecedented that it cannot be addressed until there has been a proper assessment of a changed landscape. And sometimes, the solutions are known but the resources for them are lacking. The European security and defence debate falls into a third category: the diagnosis and prescriptions are clear, but there has been a deficit of political will.

We have known for years  even decades  that European governments have been spending too little on defence, and in too fragmented a manner. The result is that we lack the military capabilities to guarantee our own security or serve as a capable partner for NATO. We need to spend more, and we need to do more of that spending together. Over the years, many European politicians, institutions, defence ministries, think tanks, and others have issued reports and proposals calling for more and better defence spending. These exhortations have reflected a clear and firm consensus among experts on the issue. Moreover, in 2004, the EU created the European Defense Agency (EDA) to support member states with joint research, development, and procurement projects. But many countries cut their defence spending following the 2008 financial crisis, reducing the shares of their budgets devoted to collaborative security investments. Since then, governments have too often paid lip service to joint spending while continuing to put national procurement first (often for political reasons, such as to support domestic industries and employment).

The net result has been dramatic. Between 2009 and 2018, member states cuts amounted to an aggregate defence underspending of around 160 billion. Worse, many others around the world have raced ahead. In the last 20 years, EU combined defence spending increased by only 20%, compared to 66% for the United States, almost 300% for Russia, and 600% for China. Even more alarmingly, Europe reached a new low in 2021, when only 8% of equipment spending went toward collaborative investments  a far cry from the 35% that EU member states themselves have set as a target. This underspending and lack of collaboration is costing EU countries (and thus taxpayers) tens of billions of euros per year, because of redundant spending and inefficiencies. But it doesnt have to be this way. It is within our own power to change course, and we already know the way. Through the Strategic Compass, EU institutions and all 27 member states have drawn up a roadmap. We have tools and frameworks in place  starting with the Permanent Structured Cooperation and the European Defense Fund  to help member states pursue research, development, and investments in a more coordinated manner.

But other pieces still need to fall in place. We must provide financial incentives for joint procurement and move toward more strategic programming. We also need to strengthen the EUs defence industrial and technological base by supporting research and development and harnessing the potential of disruptive new technologies. As I told European leaders this week when they endorsed this approach, both the European Commission and the EDA can help with coordination. Yes, it is a cliche in European politics to say that we lack only the political will to use the tools at our disposal. But cliches are generally true. We Europeans tend to make tough decisions only when we have tried everything else and are facing an acute crisis. Those conditions have clearly been met. We are watching Russia wage a brutal war of aggression against Ukraine  one that has underscored Europes own vulnerabilities, revealing longstanding capability deficits and new needs (such as to refill our depleted stocks). Moreover, this crisis comes on top of many other threats, both in our own neighbourhood and beyond. European interests are being challenged in all strategic domains, including cyber, maritime, and space. We need to develop the means to protect ourselves in a dangerous world. That will require not just more defence spending but better defence spending. To ensure our collective security, we must invest more together.

Getting Serious About European Defense  Commentary by Josep Borrell  Project Syndicate.

The Commentary can be downloaded here
Italy has perhaps been the swiftest country in the European Union to look southwards toward Africa in its efforts to wean itself from Russian gas. Western nations are indeed imposing economic and political sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in late February 2022. Italy is potentially among the hardest hit as it imports about 29 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas from Moscow every year  a figure second only to Germany which accounts for over 40% of its gas demands. Replacing Russia as its main gas supplier will be no mean feat.

ALGERIA, EGYPT, AND BEYOND  In April 2022, Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, signed an agreement with Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Algerias President to buy more natural gas. Sonatrach, the Algerian state-owned oil firm, which already sells about 21 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas to Italy every year, will supply an additional 9 bcm of gas to Eni, Italys main energy company, from as early as September 2022. However, Rome would still have to source for at least 20 bcm of natural gas elsewhere, especially as Algeria will be hard-pressed to produce more so quickly. Egypt has already agreed to supply 3 bcm of liquefied natural gas (LNG) before the end of 2022. Luigi Di Maio, Italys foreign minister, Roberto Cingolani, his counterpart in the ecological transition ministry, and Claudio Descalzi, Enis Chief Executive, embarked on exploratory trips to Angola and the Republic of Congo in late April 2022 in an effort to fill the remaining gap. Italys Eni is also aiming to start LNG production from its floating plant in Mozambique before the end of 2022. For Congo, a new LNG project will be launched in 2023 to produce about 4.5 bcm a year of LNG. In sum, Italy already has new gas deals with at least five African countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Angola, Congo, and Mozambique.

A LIFELINE FOR AFRICAN OIL AND GAS PRODUCERS? - Other European countries are on the prowl for African gas as well, visiting similar capitals as their Italian counterparts. Nigeria, which is Europes fourth largest supplier of LNG, providing nearly 13 bcm of LNG in 2021, is also taking centre stage. However, unlike its North African counterparts, Nigeria does not have a gas pipeline to Europe. In fact, given the global energy transition agenda before the Russia-Ukraine conflict, investors and financiers had been reducing their exposure to oil and gas transactions. Nonetheless, this may change in response to current trends. Globalisation has indeed been in a state of transition amid the Covid-19 pandemic and Russias invasion of Ukraine while China  the backbone of most global value chains  took on an aggressive zero Covid-19 policy that slowed down its economy as the West is attempting to rein in the Kremlin to stall its expansionism, hoping to deter Beijing from similarly invading Taiwan in the future. Against this backdrop, views on the energy transition have been revised as more urgent considerations  such as maintaining gas supplies for the winter season  have been moved to the front burner. As such, it appears African oil and gas producers, who had raised concerns about the negative consequences for their development prospects by an overly aggressive and rushed energy transition, have been offered a lifeline by fate.

NEW AFRICAN PIPELINES ARE NOT FREE OF RISKS - To meet Europes increased demand, African LNG producers like Nigeria would need to expand capacity at existing LNG plants on top of building new ones. Meanwhile, much of the natural gas that international oil companies (IOCs) currently flare would need to be liquefied into LNG to be exported to an increasingly demanding Europe. That would be the case even for many African countries who, despite their ample natural gas reserves, do not yet meet their own domestic gas requirements for power generation, domestic cooking, or a myriad of other uses. Long-term contracts with EU member states will be key. Qatar is asking for 20-year contracts, for instance. African countries currently being courted should follow suit. Planned gas pipelines to Algeria and Morocco from Nigeria will depend upon that long a timeline even as each might have its own idiosyncratic risks. For instance, long-running insecurity issues in the Sahel represent a major constraint to the Nigeria-Algeria gas pipeline. Meanwhile, a relatively more expensive offshore Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline faces a high threshold to fruition owing to more immediate and cost-effective alternatives.

LNG shipments are reliable and relatively cost-efficient in the absence of pipelines. Besides, investment in more LNG production capacity is a greater imperative. Even so, current time pressures are fuelling momentum. To exemplify, together with the Islamic Development Bank and the Nigerian and Moroccan governments, the OPEC Fund for International Development contributed USD 14.3m worth of financing to the second phase of the USD 90.1m Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline front-end engineering study (FEED) project in March 2022. The USD 25bn 7,000km Nigeria-Morocco pipeline will be an extension of the West African gas pipeline project, which already enables the supply of Nigerian gas to Benin, Togo, and Ghana and will cross through about thirteen West African countries upon completion. Here has also been some progress on the USD 12bn 4,128km Nigeria-Algeria gas pipeline, which is expected to produce 30 bcm of gas every year upon completion, as Nigeria and the respective Sahelian governments re-affirmed their commitment to the project at a regional meeting in February 2022. Still, there is much skepticism around the extent to which progress may continue in light of the intractable security situation in the Sahel region.

AFRICA SHOULD NEGOTIATE ITS OWN GREEN TRANSITION - Europe has been forced to reassess its energy transition agenda owing to the Russia-Ukraine crisis and the measures that have been adopted to prevent an escalation of the war. Global banks, which had already started to reduce their exposure to fossil fuel transactions as a result of the Wests aggressive, green energy drive, have now begun to revise their strategies. African countries had indeed warned that an excessively fast move to renewable energy would be disruptive to their development prospects, especially as external financing would be required to continue tapping their still abundant oil and gas reserves. Now, all of a sudden, Europe finds itself willing to finance new oil and gas projects. African countries and their Western counterparts must make the case for a more nuanced and accommodative arrangement on the global net-zero carbon emission agenda allowing Africa additional time to turn green through ample financing to do so comfortably.

Europes Gas Rush in Africa: Risks and Opportunities (for Both)  Commentary by Rafiq Raji  Italian Institute for International Political Studies / ISPI.

The Commentary can be downloaded here
VIENNA, June 9 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Thursday voiced concerns over the nuclear weapon material transfer involved in AUKUS, saying the United States, Britain and Australia must give an account to the international community.

Wang Qun, China's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Vienna, made the remarks when addressing a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors.

The meeting deliberated the issue of the "Transfer of nuclear materials in the context of AUKUS and its safeguards in all aspects under the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons)."

In September 2021, the United States, Britain and Australia announced the establishment of AUKUS, under which the United States and Britain will assist Australia in its acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines.

Wang said the trilateral deal violates the NPT, the IAEA's comprehensive safeguards agreement, and the additional protocol signed between Australia and the IAEA.

"Whichever name the three countries assign to the deal and however they handle relevant nuclear weapon materials, they cannot deny that the deal involves the illegal transfer of nuclear weapon materials," he said.

Noting that AUKUS has a far-reaching negative impact on international security order, regional peace and global non-proliferation regime, Wang called for the IAEA to address the issue according to its mandate.

The Chinese envoy also noted that the United States and Britain have applied double standards on nuclear proliferation issues.

The two countries have imposed unilateral sanctions on civilian nuclear programs of some non-nuclear-weapon states, while at the same time blatantly transferring nuclear weapon material to Australia, he said.

Wang added that such double standards have "severely undermined the international non-proliferation regime and hindered the resolution of hotspot issues, including the Iran nuclear issue and the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue."

Wang called on all relevant parties to continue intergovernmental negotiation to find the solution to the AUKUS issue and take concrete measures to safeguard the international non-proliferation regime, global peace and security.
Sweden moving to meet Turkey's demands, NATO chief says

Sweden has taken important steps to meet Turkey's demands for approving Stockholm's NATO membership application, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
B Srinivasan of Ananda Vikatan; Anant Nath of Delhi Press & Manoj Sharma of India Today shared the innovative collaborative initiatives that publishers had adopted during the pandemic, at the event

On June 8, 2022, the opening day of the World Media Congress 2022, being organised by the FIPP (International Federation of Periodical Publishers) at the seaside historic town of Cascais in Portugal, the Association of Indian Magazines (AIM) made a presentation on their path breaking initiatives for resolving distribution problems for magazines, as well as the launch of first of its kind mega branded content studio called Dastaan Hub.

In front of a packed audience of over 300 Congress delegates representing the biggest magazine publishers from across the world, B Srinivasan, MD of Ananda Vikatan, Anant Nath, Executive Publisher of Delhi Press, and Manoj Sharma, CEO of India Today, shared the innovative collaborative initiatives that Indian magazine publishers had adopted during the pandemic.

Opening the session, Srinivasan, who is also the president of AIM, spoke about how Indian publishers during the pandemic, walked the delicate journey of building a collaborative working framework to address the distribution and advertising problems. He shared how an environment of trust was built amongst publishers to enable sharing of crucial information, and a shared commitment to keep working on different models was adopted, till they developed a viable solution.

Anant Nath, general secretary of AIM, gave an overview of the three-pronged strategy that the association had undertaken to resolve the deep structural distribution issues. Firstly, to address the problem of a very unorganised agency network that had been weakening over the years, an agency accreditation system has been started to identify and work with a set of certified agents who can service the market better and more efficiently. The idea is that publishers work collectively with these agents, allowing them higher volumes and building financial incentives for them, and in return secure better market coverage, across larger geographies.

Secondly, to resolve the deep-rooted problem of poor subscription deliveries, the association lobbied with the Indian Post to launch a brand new delivery service called the Magazine Post, which allows live tracking, SMS alerts to subscribers at every stage, seamless API integration with publishers MIS, a promise of delivery within 48 hours, and a target of 97% delivery efficiency.

Thirdly, to tap into the huge network of over 600,000 newspaper delivery boys across more than 11,000 centres in urban India, the association is working on a tech enabled program, to enrol these vendors and delivery boys to sell and deliver magazine subscriptions. An app is under development, which will seamlessly tie in all stakeholders publishers, accredited agents, vendors, delivery boys and readers.

The video presentation on AIMs collective distribution initiatives can be seen here:

https://youtu.be/f40EmpvrREQ

Manoj Sharma, treasurer of AIM, unveiled to the world stage, the mega branded content studio called Dastaan Hub, that the association had launched earlier in the year. The studio pools together the collective publishing assets and editorial strengths of over 100 magazines, 50 websites, and associated social media channels, to offer marketers an opportunity to narrate compelling brand stories to over 150 mn readers, across 10 languages. Sharma emphasized that this was the first of its kind initiative globally, one that aims to allow innovative and compelling brand story telling like never before.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- President: Srinivasan B (Ananda Vikatan Group) Vice-President: Indranil Roy (Outlook Group) General Secretary: Anant Nath (Delhi Press Group): Treasurer: Manoj Sharma (India Today Group) Governing Body

R Rajmohan (The Malayala Manorama Co Ltd); Anurag Batra (exchange4media); Dhaval Gupta (Cyber Media); Hoshang Billimoria (Next Gen Publishing); Mahesh Peri (Pathfinder Publishing); Maneck Davar (Spenta Multimedia Pvt Ltd); Paresh Nath (Delhi Press); Amit Seth (Network 18 Publishing); Deepak Lamba (Worldwide Media); Manan Kotak (Chitralekha Group)

Registered Office: c/o Delhi Press, E-8 Rani Jhansi Road, Jhandewala, New Delhi - 110055 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The video presentation on unveiling of Dastaan Hub can see here:

https://youtu.be/DvaLzyOqyT0?t=1

In his opening remarks, Srinivasan had emphasized how distribution teams and advertising sales teams of various member publishers had developed a working framework to find common solutions to their shared problems, and that for each of the initiatives, there was a detailed go to market strategy.

There was widespread appreciation of the collaborative efforts that Indian magazines had undertaken, which was seen as unprecedented.

Yulia Boyle, FIPP chair and International Head of National Geographic, said, AIMs presentation was a true demonstration of how the collective power of industry can lift all boats. Coming together to collaborate - and not compete - to address and solve incredibly complex structural problems of distribution and future of advertising will mean more economic opportunity for media companies in India, and more foreign investment in India to reach broader audiences. Excellent symbiotic trio of presenters and very effective structure of the presentation.

James Hewes, President and CEO, FIPP further added, I think AIMs efforts in bringing together an industry-wide coalition and consensus on two really crucial areas for publishers, distribution and advertising, is a model that other associations should be following around the world. Bear in mind, as well, that these two are difficult issues to resolve for publishers across the worldso it is really great to get AIM on stage, talking about that in front of our global audience and I really hope its an inspiration for other organisations around the world to do something similar.

The congress is being held for the first time after the pandemic, from June 7-9, at Cascais, Portugal. The AIM session was in the morning of the opening day of the formal program on June 8. More details at https://di5ru.pt/event/fipp world-media-congress-2022/news/

Read more news about (internet advertising India, internet advertising, advertising India, digital advertising India, media advertising India)
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Rainbow flags are ubiquitous during Pride Month, but Texas remains a horrible place for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to live, work and do business.

Anti-LGBT bigotry remains a mainstay of Christian conservative politics. From proposed Dont Say Gay laws to bans on LGBT books, Republican state leaders are promising to crush the civil rights of people who do not share their religious strictures.

Texas ranks near the bottom in the new State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index published by Out Leadership, a coalition of businesses that promote gay rights and counts 94 of the worlds leading companies across 13 industries as members.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Dont do like Disney, oppose Texass anti-LGBT laws now

Out of a potential 100 points, the average state score was 64.61. Texas came in at 45.63.

Not only does official bigotry hurt Texans and discourage talented people from moving here, but it also discourages corporate investment.

Multinational companies face operational and reputational risks when they do business in places where the legal and/or social atmosphere makes it difficult for LGBTQ+ people to live openly, the authors explained. Discrimination against LGBTQ+ people creates serious challenges for talent mobility, retention, and development.

Jason Fochtman, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Texas scored poorly in 11 out of 20 policy areas. The state does not grant LGBT people access to standard legal protections, provide appropriate health care or guarantee workplace safety.

Texas has not banned conversion therapy, which tortures LGBT people. State officials encourage schools and public libraries to ban books that portray LGBT people as normal and worthy of the same respect and civil rights as heterosexuals.

While our state leadership purports to be pro-business, the attacks on LGBTQ+ Texans say otherwise, Tammi Wallace, CEO of the Houston LGBT Chamber of Commerce, said. Companies are looking through the lens of LGBTQ+ inclusion when making decisions about moving to Texas, and people considering a career move are doing the same, not to mention tourists and conventions. The LGBTQ+ inclusion landscape in Texas, as the Out Leadership report notes, is abysmal.

Most disturbing is how state leaders run for reelection on denying transgender children access to health care. Treatments the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Texas Pediatric Society consider the best standard of evidence-based care, Gov. Greg Abbott calls child abuse.

Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are pursuing criminal cases against parents who follow doctors orders. Their witch hunt is breaking apart families and ruining lives, according to a lawsuit brought by one of Texass more prominent law firms, Baker Botts, the American Civil Liberties Union and PFLAG National, an organization representing families of LGBT youth.

Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle, Staff Photographer / Houston Chronicle

One of the three families represented in the suit includes a 16-year-old transgender boy receiving gender-affirming treatment. The boy attempted suicide the day Abbott instructed child abuse investigators to prosecute parents who follow their doctors advice in treating transgender teens.

During recovery, the parents took the boy to a psychiatric facility for follow-up treatment. A therapist turned the parents into the Department of Family and Protective Services for child abuse. An investigator showed up a week later and opened an ongoing investigation.

Pursuing a criminal case against a parent for following doctors orders is not prosecution but persecution. But the anti-LGBT bigotry does not stop there.

Republican politicians across the state have rallied right-wing supporters to ban LGBT books from schools and public libraries. GOP politicians call anyone who believes in LGBT equality a pedophile or a pervert. Ignorant bullies have shut down school board meetings and had librarians and teachers fired.

The ever-hateful Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick promises to make matters worse with a Dont Say Gay bill in the Texas Legislature next year. Modeled on laws in Florida and Oklahoma, the measure would ban teachers from acknowledging the equality of LGBT people to young children.

Michael Cirlos/Centro San Antonio

S.A. VOTES Voter Guide: What to know for the Texas runoff election A breakdown of key state and local races and candidates in the May 24 primary runoff.

A second grade teacher could be sued for explaining why she has a wife or why Billy has two dads.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Bigot bills would damage Texas economy

Few of these efforts will survive judicial review; they violate fundamental civil rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. Conservative leaders know this; they only worry about turning out voters in November.

Inciting bigotry against misunderstood minority groups is a sure-fire way to turn out low-information voters. Demagoguery is cheap politics, but its what Abbott, Patrick and Paxton know best.

Most families, though, love and support their LGBT relatives. Most people support gay marriage and transgender rights. Every reputable company stands up for its LGBT employees. But we cannot rest when demagogues are at work.

Every Texan should fly the PRIDE flag this month, and every month, to shut this bigotry down. Corporate leaders must insist on more inclusive laws to boost economic prosperity for everyone.

Tomlinson writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com
Heres a look at the week ahead in arts and entertainment:

Comedy: In the 90s, Michael Rapaport racked up acting roles in movies such as Deep Blue Sea and True Romance. Now this New Yorker is better known as an online provocateur and comedian who makes sure you know exactly where he stands, whether the topic is politics or sports. 8 p.m. Thursday, Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club, 618 NW Loop 410, $50-$200 for tables seating two, four or eight, improvtx.com.

Theater: The Sterling Houston Festival continues with Jump-Start Performance Co.s revival of Le Griffon. The play is an adaptation of Houstons novella, which was inspired by Frankenstein. In Houstons tale, a white doctor in 19th century New Orleans slowly constructs a man out of body parts of enslaved and free Black men. The production, directed by Steve Bailey, will include video shot for the plays premiere in 2000. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 3 p.m. June 19, Little Carver Civic Center, 226 N. Hackberry. Free-$25 (buyers choice), dojour.us.

Classical music: The Agarita chamber ensemble will perform the Goldberg Variations, blending J.S. Bachs original manuscript with Dmitry Sitkoveskys String Trio arrangement. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Chapel of the Incarnate Word, 4503 Broadway. Free, agarita.org

Courtesy Of Netflix

Movie: Chris Evans, not Tim Allen, is the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the new Pixar feature  Lightyear. Thats because the animated sci-fi romp is about the space ranger who inspired the Toy Story toy, not the toy itself. This Buzz is a little dense, too, but hes no one to play with, as Zurg will find out. Opens Friday in theaters.

Streaming: Top Gun: Maverick was delayed so long that its director, Joseph Kosinski, already has a new movie coming out. The sci-fi flick  Spiderhead , based on a story by George Saunders, is about prisoners who are used as guinea pigs for experimental drugs. Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller star. Premieres Friday on Netflix.

Meagan Ellsworth / Meagan Ellsworth

Concert: The Randy Rogers Band is gearing up for a new album, so fans should expect the hear some new songs, such as the recent single Picture Frames, when the Texas music stars return to the San Antonio area. Corey Kent opens. 8 p.m. Saturday, Whitewater Amphitheater, 11860 FM 306, New Braunfels. $29.50-$79, whitewaterrocks.com.

jkiest@express-news.net | Twitter: @en_salife
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  A few weeks before 31 members of a white supremacist group were arrested for allegedly planning to riot at a northern Idaho LGBTQ pride event, a fundamentalist Idaho pastor told his Boise congregation that gay, lesbian and transgender people should be executed by the government.

Around the same time, a lawmaker from the northernmost region of the state, Republican Rep. Heather Scott, told an audience that drag queens and other LGBTQ supporters are waging a war of perversion against our children."

A toxic brew of hateful rhetoric has been percolating in Idaho and elsewhere around the U.S., well ahead of the arrests of the Patriot Front members at the pride event Saturday in Coeur dAlene.

Police say dozens of men from the white supremacist group piled into a U-Haul truck wearing balaclavas and bearing riot gear, with plans to instigate a riot at the park where families, children and supporters were gathered to celebrate the LGBTQ community.

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Illinois, Arkansas and Virginia. The defendants were booked on misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot and released on bail. As of Monday afternoon, online court records did not show if the men had retained defense attorneys.

Thomas Rousseau, a 23-year-old from Grapevine, Texas, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the Patriot Front founder and was among those arrested, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism, said outrage directed at LGBTQ people had been growing for months online, often in chat rooms frequented by members of groups like the Patriot Front.

In the same way that it mobilized against Black Lives Matter in the nation's capital in December, the Patriot Front harnesses whats in the news cycle  in this case, drag queen story hours, disputes about transgender people in schools, and LGBTQ visibility more broadly.

A massive right-wing media ecosystem has been promoting the notion that "there are people who are trying to take your kids to drag shows, there are trans people trying to groom your children," Lewis said.

The rhetoric has been amplified by right-wing social media accounts that use photos and videos of LGBTQ individuals to drive outrage among their followers.

Several posts have falsely sought to label teachers and librarians who accept the LGBTQ community as abusers or groomers of children. Others have lambasted pride events or drag performances as depraved."

One photo shared widely on social media this week falsely claimed a Drag Queen Story Hour performer flashed their genitals to children while reading aloud. But the photograph, from a suburban Minneapolis library in 2019, clearly shows the performer was wearing tan undergarments.

A spokesman for Hennepin County Library confirmed to The Associated Press that the performer did not expose themselves to children.

Northern Idaho has long been associated with extremist groups, most prominently the Aryan Nations, which was often in the news in the 1990s. The area drew disaffected people after white supremacist Richard Butler moved there in 1973 from California.

After the Aryan Nations' heyday, many local officials tried to disassociate the region from extremism. But in recent years, some politicians, civic leaders and real estate agents have boasted about northern Idahos conservatism to draw like-minded people.

At a news conference Monday, Coeur d'Alene Mayor Jim Hammond said the city is no longer a locus of hate.

We are not going back to the days of the Aryan Nations. We are past that, he declared.

Scott, the northern Idaho lawmaker, did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

At her public appearance weeks ago, she introduced two members of the Panhandle Patriots motorcycle club, who urged watchers to join them in the fight against LGBTQ people at the Coeur dAlene pride celebration. They dubbed their counter-protest Gun dAlene.

Stand up, take it to the head, go to the fight. ... We say, Damn the repercussions, the motorcycle club members said. They are trying to take your children.

The Panhandle Patriots later changed their event to a prayer rally, saying they are a Christian group that stands against violence in all its forms."

Elsewhere around the country, authorities in the San Francisco Bay Area are investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men allegedly shouted anti-LGBTQ slurs during Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library over the weekend.

___

Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson in New York City and Sam Metz in Salt Lake City contributed.
It took her a decade to find sufficient words to describe those few moments with the Southern Baptist Convention leader.

Johnny Hunt was 24 years the womans elder, a mentor and the recent president of the nations second-largest faith group. Hed been an advocate for her husbands ministry. She saw him as a father figure.

In July 2010, while vacationing in Panama City Beach, Fla., Hunt invited himself into her short-term rental condo and sexually assaulted her while her husband was not there, the woman said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. She remained quiet in the months after, still confused and intimidated by warnings that coming forward would harm Southern Baptist churches, she said.

The couple said Hunt then brought in the longtime counselor of his Atlanta-area megachurch, who believed Hunts claim that the woman consented to his advances  without first talking to her. The counselor focused on the womans mental health and what he said were marital issues, which they said made them internalize that they were to blame for Hunts behavior.

It took more than a decade  and extensive expert therapy  for the couple to begin to articulate what occurred because of Hunts stature in their Southern Baptist faith and the trust they once placed in him. I didnt have any proper language or labels, the woman said. I was living with false blame and guilt.

Her allegations further focus the spotlight on the SBCs sex-abuse crisis ahead of a potentially historic meeting that begins Tuesday. Sixty-plus pages of documents she and her husband provided shed light on Hunts desire to suppress the incident, which became national news last month when an independent investigation into the handling of sexual abuse reports by the SBCs top leadership body, the executive committee, became public.

Hunt, 69, has admitted to a sexual indiscretion with the woman but says it was consensual. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story, even after being presented with a list of questions about the couples claims that he intentionally tried to silence or intimidate them. His encounter with the woman is the only publicly known allegation of sexual abuse against him.

Demanded last year by some 15,000 SBC church representatives, the nearly 400-page report from Guidepost Solutions that includes the allegations against Hunt details how top leaders of the nations second-largest faith group perpetuated a culture of silence on abuse by ignoring or shaming survivors and, fearing lawsuits, rejecting policies that experts say would help protect children.

Abuse of Faith: View our database of hundreds of Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers charged with sex crimes

Guideposts findings echo those of Abuse of Faith, a 2019 Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News investigation that found at least 400 SBC church leaders and volunteers had been credibly accused of sex crimes since 2000. Those church leaders left behind more than 700 victims, nearly all of them kids.

The woman and her husband  an SBC pastor for decades  are among a small number of adults who have come forward about being abused by pastors, often times first sexually, then spiritually. Their window for pressing criminal charges in Florida elapsed a few years ago.

The couple spoke to the Chronicle on condition of anonymity in hopes that their story could educate others about the manipulation and abuse tactics that they say were so effective on them. They said they wanted to guard against potential retaliation while still drawing attention to the parts of their story that Guidepost could not publish because the firm was limited to the actions of the executive committee, which Hunt left around the time of the alleged assault. The alleged abuse in Florida happened one month after his SBC presidency ended because of term limits in 2010.

Hunt resigned from leadership of the SBCs massive domestic evangelism arm ahead of the Guidepost report last month, and numerous Southern Baptist organizations  including his longtime megachurch near Atlanta  have temporarily or permanently cut ties with the two-time SBC president.

Churches convene

The couples decision to share their story comes as thousands of church delegates are set to convene in Anaheim, Calif., on Tuesday and vote on numerous policy recommendations from an SBC task force on abuse. Its likely to be a historic few days for the SBC, which has for years seen its top leaders either resign in scandal or in protest over abuse reforms, racial reconciliation and other serious issues.

Some proposals  including a database of credibly accused ministers and emphasizing the use of licensed, trauma-informed counselors  are already getting pushback. A number of pastors have recently mobilized in opposition to the report by Guidepost, saying the firm is untrustworthy because it supported Pride Month on social media. Others dismissed the idea that churches should use professional, trauma-informed counseling, saying Scripture is sufficient for such wounds.

Decades of research show trauma often causes a physical, neurological injury. It can insidiously remap brains and leave its worst victims in a sort of Stockholm syndrome, simultaneously wounded, in denial and particularly vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation  especially from perceived authority figures. So severe is the power imbalance that at least 13 states, including Texas, have made it illegal for counselors and ministers to have sex with those in their care.

The woman and her husband say they know such trauma too well, and they pray the SBC will adopt stronger counseling protocols when churches meet on Tuesday. Like so many abuse survivors, they say the trauma of physical violation has paled in comparison to being ignored, silenced or vilified by those they once thought were shepherds.

Guidepost investigators interviewed the couple, Hunt and four others  including the counselor who was Hunts friend and employee. Guidepost said those interviews corroborated her allegations, and the Chronicle has confirmed the new documents provided by the couple were handed over to Guidepost investigators.

Guidepost said Hunts story was inconsistent and did not seem credible. In one of his interviews with Guidepost, he denied any physical contact with the woman. In another, he claimed he didnt even know the couple.

Forced himself on her

The couple became close with Hunt around 2003. He was by then a well-known evangelical figure, revered for his passion for global missions and mentoring young pastors. In 2005, she and her husband moved near Atlanta after the husband was called to pastor a Southern Baptist congregation not far from First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., the megachurch that Hunt led from 1986 until 2019. The husband and Hunt grew closer over the next few years.

At the SBCs 2008 meeting, Hunt was elected president. He won again in 2009. At the SBCs annual meeting in June 2010, he invited them to Panama City Beach. After a brief trip, the woman wanted to return to hear former Florida State University football coach Bobby Bowden speak.

When the husband later inquired about vacation rentals, Hunt recommended the condo next to his, the husband said. On July 25, 2010, the woman said she was alone in the condo and went onto her balcony. Hunt was on the balcony adjacent, she told Guidepost. He said he was hot, and she said he could come over to get out of the sun. Hunt then suggested they move inside because he was afraid to be seen, Guidepost wrote. Hunt made a number of suggestive comments about her body, and prodded her with inappropriate questions  was she wild growing up? she recalled him asking, according to Guidepost.

Eventually, the woman says, Hunt pinned her down, groped her and violently kissed her while trying to remove her clothes. Shocked and scared, the woman told Hunt she didnt want him to ruin his ministry, after which Hunt forced himself on her again, according to the Guidepost report. She did not reciprocate, but rather stood eyes open and very stiff, hoping he would just stop and leave, Guidepost found. He finally stopped and left.

Later, Hunt texted her to come onto the balcony, then said he would like to have sex with her three times a day and made other suggestive comments, Guidepost said. Soon after leaving Florida, the couple were called to a meeting with the counselor and Hunt. Hunt admitted that he had kissed the woman, touched her breasts over clothing and tried to pull her shorts down, Guidepost said. But Hunt said it was consensual  thank God I didnt consummate the relationship, Hunt told her husband, according to Guidepost. The wife said she was too confused and scared to speak up, or was talked over when she tried to.

Hunt then referred them to counseling with Roy Blankenship, whod worked for First Baptist Woodstock for years. Blankenship declined to comment to the Chronicle, but Guidepost said he and four others corroborated much of the couples story.

Days after the alleged abuse occurred, Hunt announced a sabbatical. He said he was exhausted from his presidency. Now, 12 years later, in the wake of the Guidepost report, Hunt says the sabbatical was prompted by a brief, but improper, encounter with the woman. But he denies it was an assault.

By August 2010, the couples lives had begun to spiral. They said Blankenship  who Guidepost found was not a licensed Georgia counselor at the time  focused their counseling sessions on the wifes mental health or on marital problems that they said didnt exist, save for those related to the incident with Hunt.

They say they were instructed to not discuss the matter, even with each other. The womans mental health declined to the point of having suicidal ideation, she said. The husband said he felt like he had to choose between his marriage and ministry.

There were only three possible outcomes, he wrote: Physical suicide. Emotional suicide  by staying together in ministry. Ministerial suicide.

God I do need a miracle, he wrote in one journal entry. I feel numb. I feel paralyzed. I feel trapped, he wrote in another.

And so he resigned from his church. Hunt was back in the pulpit soon after.

Repent and restore

The husband called Hunt in April 2011 to reconcile what happened, he said. Hunt interjected by asking, Did she say we had sex? He then allegedly accused the husband of threatening him, and then said he was sorry that the husband was having trouble forgiving. Hunt then offered prayers and then hung up, the husband said.

For the next few years, the couple says they struggled to make sense of what happened. By 2018, the husband had a new church job; he became enraged, he said, when he heard that Hunt was leaving First Baptist to take a top position at the SBCs North American Mission Board.

How can God allow this to happen? I just dont understand how God could allow this person to be promoted again, he recently told the Chronicle.

He eventually left that church and enrolled in a non-SBC seminary, where he was introduced to scholarly work on abusive systems and deception techniques.

Suddenly, it all clicked. Through counseling with experts, including with the firm of renowned religious trauma scholar Diane Langberg, the couple said they came to understand what they could not quite articulate for a decade.

They decided to talk to Guidepost, hoping that their story would help illustrate how power dynamics  combined with a lack of trauma-informed counseling  can be weaponized against the vulnerable. In the weeks after the Guidepost report, two SBC seminaries and the North American Mission Board have said they are reviewing their abuse policies and institutional ties to Hunt.

First Baptist Woodstock has also suspended Hunts status as pastor emeritus and is developing a process that the churchs new pastor said he hopes will expose the truth and provide a path to justice and restoration for those involved.

But the couple wants more from Hunt. I hear a lot of words like restore and restoration, the husband said. I dont hear any words like reconciliation. 

His wife interjected: Which means you admit what you did wrong. You confess it all. You repent and restore what you took.

The couple isnt holding out hope for such action. But they want to draw attention to the pattern of emotional and spiritual manipulation that they say kept them quiet, confused and in perpetual trauma for more than a decade.

robert.downen@chron.com
A recently retired Texas truck driver, who traveled across the country for decades, has been charged in a cold case killing of a woman whose body was found off Interstate 10 in California nearly 30 years ago, according a news release.

Douglas Thomas, 67, of McLennan County, was charged Friday in the death of Sherri Herrera, a mother of four who was discovered on a remote desert highway on-ramp in March 1993 in Riverside County, California, according to the Office of the District Attorney in Riverside County office.

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Herrera was last seen alive just a few days before her body was found.

"Along with the murder count, the DAs Office also has filed a special circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a rape," according to the news release.

Office of the District Attorney in Riverside County

Thomas traveled extensively throughout his more than 40 years as a truck driver, according to authorities.

In late May, Texas Rangers arrested Thomas on suspicion of killing another woman in Titus County, about two hours east of Dallas. Shenda Denise Hayes was killed in April 1992. Thomas was connected to that killing by a DNA match to evidence from the crime scene, according to prosecutors.

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Thomas DNA was also connected to evidence gathered during the investigation into Herreras killing, prosecutors said. Investigators with the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Team traveled to Texas and interviewed Thomas about Herrera.

Thomas remains in custody at the McLennan County Jail on a bail of $2 million. McLennan County is in Central Texas and its largest city is Waco.

According to a news release, Thomas will first be prosecuted in Texas for the 1992 killing. The district attorneys office will then request that Thomas be extradited to California to stand trial for the killing of Herrera.

Television station KWTX, which cited a search warrant affidavit filed by the Texas Rangers, shed some light on the 1992 Texas killing.

Hayes partially clothed body was discovered near a rest area along Interstate 30 near Mount Pleasant in Titus County, KWTX reported. An investigation showed she had been strangled with a device made of wire and cord in a manner to control the victim, according to the affidavit. Evidence suggests that she had been sexually assaulted.

Thomas was reportedly linked to the two killings by DNA samples collected at the respective crime scenes that were then uploaded to an FBI database in the early 2000s, the television station reported.

timothy.fanning@express-news.net
The Republican primary for attorney general showed that Ken Paxtons legal issues are of little concern to the partys most loyal conservative voters, who tend to turn out in early contests.

That support, combined with the usual pattern of a presidents party faring poorly in midterm elections, is a good sign for Paxton, who is seeking re-election yet again while under indictment on felony securities fraud charges as he has been for nearly seven years, essentially his entire tenure.

Yet even with the odds largely in Paxtons favor, some political experts say Democrat Rochelle Garza, a 37-year-old Latina civil rights attorney from Brownsville, is the partys best chance at eking out its first statewide win in almost 30 years, given his rising legal challenges. Garza handily defeated former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski 63-37 in the primary runoff last month.

Paxton goes into this race with a lead, but I dont think that its a fait accompli, said Jason Villalba, chairman and CEO of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation and a former Republican state lawmaker.

BACKGROUND: Texas State Bar sues AG Paxton for dishonest challenge of 2020 election results

A poll by his foundation in April found in a hypothetical match-up that Paxton was ahead of Garza by about six percentage points. Paxton had the slimmest margin of victory of any statewide Republican in his last re-election race in 2018, just barely toppling Democrat Justin Nelson with 3.6 points between them.

With President Joe Bidens approval rating at an all-time low of 40 percent, Republicans are confident Paxton has a clear path to victory.

Sam Owens, Staff Photographer / San Antonio Express-News

Its going to be a great year for Republicans, said Republican consultant Craig Murphy. I think itll be relatively smooth sailing for the AG to get re-elected.

Nelson focused his 2018 campaign on educating voters about Paxtons indictment. Since then, Paxton has become even further clouded in controversy.

On top of the long-looming criminal trial, he also faces an FBI investigation of claims by his former top aides in late 2020 that he took bribes and abused the power of his office to benefit a friend and campaign donor, as well as a lawsuit by the Texas Ethics Commission accusing him of professional misconduct related to a legal attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Paxton has said he is innocent in all cases.

In this years Republican primary, Land Commissioner George P. Bush highlighted Paxtons legal matters and presented himself as the more ethical Republican, but he lost in a landslide in the May 24 runoff, trailing the incumbent by 36 percentage points.

An evolving political landscape

While recent polling has shown that about half of Republicans believe Paxton has integrity, a plurality of all voters do not. That included 37 percent of independents and 16 percent of Republicans, a Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll last month found. About a third of all poll takers answered that they were unsure.

Right now, we have an attorney general who is unfit for office, Garza said in an interview. We need to have someone in the attorney generals office who is looking out for us and looking out for Texas families.

Paxton, whose campaign did not respond to an interview request, has cast the accusations against him as politically motivated and without merit. Murphy, the GOP consultant who is president of an Austin-based political consulting firm, was doubtful that the issue would sway voters.

Democrats credibility on accusing people of things is so low right now, he said.

Going forward, Murphy expects Paxton to emphasize his tough on crime ethos, especially around immigration and the U.S-Mexico border. While the attorney general primarily oversees civil litigation, people often associates them with being the states top law enforcement official, Murphy said.

There are still a number of wildcard factors that could influence the race, experts said. For instance, if Democratic candidate Beto ORourke can motivate a strong turnout in his race for governor, that could trickle-down to Garza.

The resurgent debate over gun laws after the mass shooting in Uvalde, as well as an impending Supreme Court decision that could overturn generations-old federal abortion protections, could also play to Garzas benefit.

Theres no silver bullet, but it is changing the dynamic for what is a tough midterm year, said longtime Democratic political communications consultant James Aldrete, who once served as the deputy press secretary for former governor Ann Richards campaign.

Garza is well-positioned to address the abortion issue in particular: In 2018, she won a case against the Trump Administration in which a 17-year-old in detention was denied the right to an abortion. Under an agreement with the government, teens in custody are now given the Garza Notice, which lets them know about their right to the procedure without obstruction or retaliation.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Aldrete pointed to recent polls showing that Hispanics largely support abortion rights. In a 2022 Pew Research Center study, 60 percent of Hispanics said abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

As of September 2021, there were nearly 4.2 million Latino registered voters in Texas, who accounted for over a quarter of the states more than 15 million registered voters, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Thats a demographic that Garza said she is looking to engage in this campaign. The Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation poll found she has a major leg up when it comes to Hispanic voters, with 57 percent support compared to 35 percent for Paxton. Garza pointed out that figure was higher than for any other Democratic or Republican candidate for the top three statewide positions: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

This is a huge voting bloc that could sway this election, Garza said. The way for Democrats to win is to build a broad coalition and also ensure that were reaching every Texan and talking about issues that unite us.

taylor.goldenstein@chron.com
San Antonio-based urgent care pioneer Texas MedClinic has been sold to a national clinic operator.

The buyer is Community Care Partners, which operates 70 clinics under the BestMed, SouthStar Urgent Care and Coastal Urgent Care brands in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Louisiana and Texas. Its part of the health care portfolio of Shore Capital Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm.

Texas MedClinic did not disclose financial details of the sale.

All of Texas MedClinics 20 walk-in urgent care and occupational health clinics will remain open across the city and in Austin. Theyll also keep the name.

The facilities are equipped to treat common illnesses and minor bone breaks, as well as perform drug tests, lab tests, immunizations, immigration exams and minor surgical procedures such as stitching.

Community Care Partners CEO Jim Ashby said in a statement Monday that Texas MedClinic founder Dr. Bernard Buddy Swift did a great job leading Texas MedClinic with strategic vision, steady growth and tremendous perseverance and service throughout the pandemic.

Texas MedClinic has been a major COVID test provider throughout the pandemic.

What started 40 years ago at our first clinic on Blanco Road has grown into an operation that supports nearly 600 employees and serves hundreds of thousands of patients annually, Swift said in a statement Monday.

On ExpressNews.com: Demand for COVID-19 tests soars at San Antonio sites, pharmacies

We have been searching for the right partner to help us continue our growth, serving our employees and our patients, and Community Care Partners was the right fit, he said. We share a mission and vision of what urgent care medicine should be in our communities.

Swift will be on Community Care Partners board, while Texas MedClinic partner and Chief Operating Officer Dr. David Gude, who joined the company 38 years ago, will serve in a medical operations oversight capacity during the transition and later as a contracted resource.

I feel like we created something of significance here, and wed like to see that legacy continue, Gude said. As with most family businesses, you have to figure out some kind of transition plan. Dr. Swift is in perfectly good health, but there was no one to take over the business in the long term.

He said patients shouldnt see any difference in services.

Texas MedClinic started meeting with its employees Monday to discuss the change in ownership.

Gude said there will be some positions eliminated over the coming months because of redundancy between the two companies. They are working with placement agencies and vendors to help those employees find new positions.

Staff will be switching to a different electronic medical records system.

We think that their culture around patient care and taking care of employees is very similar to what Dr. Swift established, so it just seemed like it would be a good fit, Gude said. Were excited that they have plans to roll out more Texas MedClinics across the entire state.

laura.garcia@express-news.net
Hispanic members of Congress are demanding that the Texas Department of Public Safety also provide information pertaining to the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Spanish.

In a letter sent Friday to director Steven McCraw, House Democrats, including San Antonio Rep. Joaquin Castro, lambasted the agency for issuing most information and news briefings following the shooting at Robb Elementary School only in English. Uvaldes population is 81 percent Hispanic, with over half of the people speaking a language other than English at home, according to the U.S. Census.

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It is unconscionable that public safety officials are neglecting to provide critical information in Spanish to a predominately Spanish-speaking community, lawmakers said in the letter.

Other lawmakers who signed the letter include Raul M. Grijalva, of Tucson, Arizona, Norma Torres, of Ontario, California, Jesus Chuy Garcia, of Chicago, and Veronica Escobar, of El Paso, Texas. Tony Gonzales, who represents Uvalde, did not sign the letter.

The people of Uvalde have a right to know all the information about the horrific shooting that took place at Robb Elementary, and those whose first language is Spanish cannot continue to be overlooked, Torres said in a Tweet on Monday.

At a news conference on May 26 following the massacre in Uvalde, reporters can be heard asking DPS officials for updates in Spanish. Several reporters stationed in Uvalde at the time said on Twitter that authorities had promised updates in Spanish. DPS did provide some information regarding a centralized resource center for affected families in both English and Spanish, according to a May 27 Facebook post.

In a joint news release, members of Congress said that many of the Spanish resources on the shooting were sourced by bilingual journalists or Spanish-speaking members of Congress.

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In a statement, Castro said: Uvaldes Mexican American identity is a fundamental part of the story of this tragedy. As the community grapples with the aftermath of the shooting, Texas authorities must put their needs at the center of our states response. The Texas Department of Public Safetys refusal to provide bilingual information on their investigation is insulting and wrong. I urge DPS to do the right thing and ensure that all updates are provided in both English and Spanish going forward.

timothy.fanning@express-news.net
VIOLENT clashes between Zanu PF supporters and opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) members erupted yesterday at the funeral wake of murdered CCC activist, Moreblessing Ali (46).

The slain activists family has also declared that it would not be pushed to bury her remains until the culprits are apprehended and brought to book.

Ali family lawyer Job Sikhala told NewsDay that he was in the process of filing a court case to interdict Zanu PF members to stop interfering with the slain activists funeral.

Police have already named Pius Jamba as the first suspect in Alis murder.

Ali was allegedly abducted on May 24, 2022 in Chitungwiza and her mutilated remains were recovered from a disused well in Nyatsime on Saturday.

Her funeral wake has, however, been marred by violent clashes as CCC and Zanu PF members battled to control the proceedings.

On Sunday, Zanu PF councillor for Seke, Mashonaland East province Masimbi Masimbi banned mourners from gathering at the Ali family homestead, arguing that they had defied his order not to wear CCC party regalia at the funeral wake.

Masimbi also claimed that Ali was a Zanu PF member.

The family wants the law enforcement authorities to expedite the investigation and bring the culprits to book, Sikhala said.

They have declared that there will be no burial for Moreblessing until the culprit has been arrested. Tomorrow (today)s memorial prayer service will be the major event until further notice. However, we are concerned with interference by Zanu PF where its members are harassing mourners at the funeral. We are working on filing a court case to stop the ruling party from harassing the mourners at the funeral.

However, national police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi professed ignorance over the clashes.

I am not aware of the clashes, Nyathi said.

In a statement, the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) implored the State to reclaim the sanctity of human lives and to stop loss of lives through murder.

The nation has seen an increase in cases of murder and loss of lives of Zimbabweans in cold blood in the first half of this year. The nations conscience needs to be reawakened to the fact that killing any human being is not acceptable, whatever the reasons may be. The church wishes to call upon the nation to renew its commitment to respect the dignity of all human life. The church pleads with the police to handle cases of human disappearances, distress calls and cases of violent conflict with a sense of urgency and in ways that do not compromise the dignity of victims, ZCC said.

United Kingdom ambassador to Zimbabwe Melanie Robinson said it was important for Alis murder suspects to be brought to book.

Deeply saddened by news of Moreblessing Ali. Sincere condolences to her family and friends. Important that those behind this terrible crime are brought to justice, she tweeted yesterday. Newsday
It is undeniable the proposed bipartisan agreement in the U.S. Senate would represent the most substantive federal legislative response to gun violence in more than two decades. Also sadly undeniable is the proposed gun safety reforms are modest, lacking many commonsense proposals shown by polls to have the support of vast majorities of Americans.

But progress is progress, and change must start somewhere. With the initial backing of 10 Republican senators, this agreement appears to have the kind of bipartisan support that can advance in the U.S. Senate. How often can that be said?

These potential reforms come in the wake of a gunman murdering 19 children and two teachers May 24 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, about 85 miles west of San Antonio. They were announced even as funerals in Uvalde continue.

Americans concerned about the safety of schools (and places of worship, grocery stores, concerts, nightclubs and other public settings), or how the plague of gun violence took more than 45,000 lives in 2020, or how guns became the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in 2020 should welcome this legislative response  and continue pushing for more reforms and public campaigns to prevent gun violence.

The bipartisan framework would enhance background checks for potential gun buyers younger than 21, allowing for authorities to check juvenile and mental health records. It would also provide incentives for states to enact red flag laws, which would allow officials to temporarily confiscate a persons guns if that person is found to be potentially dangerous.

It would also increase funding for mental health services, telehealth services and additional school security. It would crack down on straw purchases and gun trafficking.

Perhaps most significantly, the proposed framework would close the boyfriend loophole, which allows abusive dating partners to own guns. As Everytown for Gun Safety has reported, women are as likely to be killed by dating partners as by spouses.

The agreement has the support of 10 Democratic and 10 Republican senators. U.S. Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., led negotiations. They represent states that are home to the two deadliest school shootings in American history: Uvalde and Newtown.

Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities, the group of senators wrote in a statement. Our plan saves lives while also protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.

We support the agreement and hope it receives broad bipartisan support. But lets also be clear: Enhanced background checks for potential gun buyers younger than 21 are not universal background checks. Incentives for red flag laws are not red flag laws.

And under this framework an 18-year-old could still purchase an assault weapon. It does not raise the purchase age to 21  which would have prevented the killer in Uvalde from legally purchasing weapons. And an assault weapons ban was never on the table.

Its beyond frustrating that policies as basic as universal background checks and raising the purchase age for assault weapons are not politically realistic in terms of achieving a bipartisan agreement. Preventing gun violence deserves a far more robust political response. But this is our political reality  until voters change it.

In recent years, we have seen how difficult it is to achieve 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, just as we have seen how past mass shootings have not galvanized a bipartisan response to take action and mitigate the violence.

While modest, these reforms also represent the most substantive federal response to gun violence in decades. How sad is that?

We have no doubt these reforms will save lives, and our hope is they would potentially open the door for Republican lawmakers to embrace future reforms.

That means these proposed reforms should also be viewed as a starting point, not a culmination, in reducing American gun violence. Well take small steps over no steps, even as we continue to call for commonsense gun safety laws to abate this unique American tragedy.
House Speaker Dade Phelan on Monday proposed that Texas top lawmakers allocate more than $170 million for mental health services and school safety initiatives before the start of the next academic year.

In a letter to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who heads the Senate, Phelan suggested expanding telemedicine services, increasing hospital capacity for mental health treatment, bolstering active shooter training for law enforcement and allowing school districts to purchase silent panic buttons. He also endorsed Patricks previous request to spend $50 million on bulletproof shields for school police.

The negotiations come on the heels of last months mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Twenty-one people died, including 19 children, and 17 more were injured.

Though the Legislature is not in session, lawmakers could immediately approve the money through an emergency budget appropriation, which would reallocate resources from existing funding pools. Phelan suggested tapping into surplus funds in the Foundation School Program, the main source of funding for Texas schools.

Gov. Greg Abbott has so far declined to call a special session, which would immediately bring legislators back to Austin to discuss appropriations and other legislative responses.

RELATED: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants Texas to spend $50 million on bulletproof shields after Uvalde shooting

Like you, I believe our respective chambers have the obligation to take immediate, concrete action with the goal of making our schools as safe as possible before the start of the upcoming school year, Phelan wrote. I also believe our state is best served by a multi-faceted response  one that includes strategies to improve mental health outcomes and strengthen school security for students and teachers, which our chambers have worked in stride to improve and enhance for multiple sessions.

Texas GOP leaders have focused heavily on school security and mental health in the wake of the Uvalde massacre, while shutting down Democrats requests to restrict gun access. Republicans control all statewide offices in Texas and hold a majority in both chambers of the Legislature.

Guns are the issue, said Jamarr Brown, the co-executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. Yes, we need more mental health support and our schools need to be properly upgraded - but those are distractions from the issue at hand: that an 18-year old was able to legally purchase a weapon of war and use it to slaughter a classroom of children and teachers.

Abbott, Patrick and Phelan would all have to sign off on the funds before they are disbursed, as would the chairs of each chambers finance committee. A representative for Patrick did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Abbott said in a statement that the proposals are a great start to delivering not only on the needs of the Uvalde community, but for schools and communities across Texas.

Phelans proposals

Phelans letter included an eight-point plan to address mental health and school safety concerns. To start, he wants to spend roughly $37.5 million a year to expand Texas Child Health Access Through Telemedicine, which offers telehealth services to public school students who need mental health treatment.

The state currently spends $25 million annually to provide those resources to about 40 percent of the state. The additional funding would expand the program statewide.

Another $30 million should go toward inpatient capacity at hospitals across the state, allowing them to take in more children who need mental health support or treatment. The expansion is necessary to address the growing number of acute cases in children, Phelan said.

Hes also asking to allocate $10.5 million each year to support Pediatric Crisis Stabilization and Response Teams in every region of the state. The teams are designed to immediately respond to mental health crises, cutting down local reliance on hospitals, he said. That effort would also require about $3 million in startup costs.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

His last two proposals on mental health would expand specialty therapy across the state, providing more community-based treatment for juvenile offenders and helping young people experiencing their first episode of psychosis. The funding for those efforts varies.

On school safety, Phelan built on Gov. Greg Abbotts previous requests to provide active shooter training to all law enforcement officers and conduct assessments of school districts emergency operations plans. The speaker is asking for $7 million to support Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training and another $7 million for the Texas School Safety Center, which is leading the review of school safety plans.

Lastly, $18.7 million would allow Texas school districts to buy silent panic alerts, which provides real-time coordination between first responder agencies.

The monetary figures are all estimates, and Phelans proposals are not final. Lawmakers are expected to continue discussing legislative responses in the coming months.

cayla.harris@express-news.net
After a very expensive winter, home heating costs are beginning to fall. Household use of natural gas fluctuates with the weather, and as furnaces go dormant, utility bills ease.

But that seasonal decline is masking a breakneck rise in price. The spot price of U.S. benchmark Henry Hub has doubled since March, according to Insider. It surpassed $9 per thousand cubic feet last week  triple its spot price at this time last year  for the first time in almost 14 years.

Some natural gas companies in the Intermountain West say the regions lack of access to overseas markets is partly to blame.

If we were able to export the natural gas that's trapped in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah to Asia, that would lead the price around the world, said H. Howard Cooper, president of Colorado-based Three Crown Petroleum.

The problem for Wyoming and its landlocked neighbors is that they cant export that gas on their own. Their only access to international markets comes through coastal states. But the countrys existing capacity is concentrated along the distant shores of the East Coast, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, all too far away to be of much use.

There are no liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals in the West  and the West Coast doesnt want them.

Wyoming very much does.

Ongoing shortages

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the international rejection of Russian energy exports that followed, are directly responsible for the spike in global oil and gasoline prices and European natural gas prices.

That disruption has been much more muted for natural gas markets outside of Europe.

U.S. natural gas prices are going up primarily because the countrys production is still recovering from its collapse early in the pandemic, and COVID-related supply chain issues and labor shortages are now impeding companies that want to drill, slowing the industry's growth.

As temperatures rise and air conditioners kick on, people consume more electricity  much of it generated from natural gas. And the supply of natural gas isnt keeping pace with that demand.

Europes search for non-Russian sources of natural gas has also exacerbated the imbalance. The U.S.  forecast to be the worlds top LNG exporter this year  maxed out its export capacity as European prices soared. Its LNG shipments went up 18% in the first four months of 2022, according to the Energy Information Administration, and arent expected to slow anytime soon (though an explosion at one of the biggest U.S. LNG export plants on Wednesday will take about 20% of the countrys processing offline for at least the next few weeks).

We have the capability of displacing all of the Russian natural gas that's flowing into Europe, today said Paul Ulrich, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at Denver-based oil and gas company Jonah Energy. Now, with our current LNG infrastructure, most of that natural gas will be coming through Gulf of Mexico ports.

Before Europes energy crisis, existing U.S. ports primarily exported natural gas to Asia. Between January and April of this year, 74% of the countrys exports went to Europe.

LNG export capacity is a hard thing to change, at least in the short term. Scaling it up is a lengthy, costly and controversial process, embroiled in concerns about the terminals long-term economic prospects and contributions to climate change.

Which means, as Cooper emphasized, that devoting most of the existing capacity to Europe has left less natural gas available to send to Asia. He believes additional capacity is the solution, and wants that new development to happen a lot faster.

We need to open up LNG facilities on the West Coast so we can supply Asia with natural gas from Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, Cooper said. We have the gas here. So let us replace Russian gas with U.S. gas.

Staunch opposition

The attention in recent months on LNG exports has left Wyomings producers feeling burned.

It can be hard for companies operating in the state to compete with the cheaper natural gas produced in other parts of the country, according to Rob Godby, an economics professor at the University of Wyoming.

The states natural gas industry pinned its hopes on Jordan Cove, a major LNG export terminal that was proposed for southern Oregon in 2013 and secured federal approval two summers ago. But landowners, environmental groups and Indigenous communities worried about water, tourism and climate change fought back. State regulators denial of key permits ultimately led to the projects cancellation late last year.

Had the terminal been built, it could provide an outlet to allow Wyoming natural gas to kind of be sold onto the international market, Godby said. So they wouldn't be so wholly dependent on the domestic market.

He figured the additional exports would have a more muted effect on consumers.

Would that single port have made a huge difference to international LNG prices? Godby said. Probably it would make some difference. But it's going to be, you know, a marginal change.

It would take a lot more than Jordan Cove to transform energy markets in Asia and beyond  an attractive prospect for Western natural gas producers. Many believe exporting the fuel  some of the cleanest in the country, if not the world, based on methane intensity and how responsibly we produce natural gas, Ulrich said  would oust other, leakier sources of natural gas and replace some higher-emitting coal-fired power generation.

The whole concept is a hard sell to environmental groups.

Shannon Anderson, staff attorney for the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Wyoming landowners group, said shes not convinced that the potential contribution to Europes energy needs is reason enough to commit to an option as costly and permanent as Jordan Cove.

The Powder River Basin Resource Council didnt take a position on the Oregon terminal. It felt the decision was best left to the community where it was proposed.

Why are we talking about natural gas when we can talk about renewables and electrification and other options that are available? Anderson said. I think that the challenge right now with natural gas, similar to coal, is, you know, why invest in something that may not have a future  that is going to be challenged with climate change and a global reckoning around fossil fuel use?

Looking elsewhere

Natural gas producers frustration over Jordan Cove parallels the Wyoming coal industrys experience with a string of blocked coal export terminals proposed  and fought by local residents  in Washington and Oregon.

In Wyoming, the coal market, in some ways, resembles the natural gas market, Godby said. The coal market kind of functions primarily as a domestic market. Exports don't play a huge role.

Thats partly because, like with natural gas, Wyoming cant export its coal without coastal states consent. The states attempt to force Washington to build one such terminal came to an end when the Supreme Court refused to take up the case last June.

The fact of the matter is that there are markets in Asia that want our coal, that could use our coal, and we just can't get it there, said Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association.

Wyomings natural gas industry is now in a similar position. While its prospects in the U.S. energy market in the coming years are brighter than those of coal, it will also face more domestic competition. So its not giving up on international buyers.

But instead of turning to the courts, landlocked Western natural gas producers are looking to Mexico, where San Diego-based Sempra Energy plans to build two LNG export terminals south of California. The first of those terminals is expected to open in late 2024.

The bottom line is currently, no, there isn't a project moving forward on the West Coast, domestically, Ulrich said. So the reality is, if we're going to have a, quote, West Coast terminal right now, the current path is this through those two facilities.
Distinguished broadcaster Roy Noble has joined a campaign urging the Welsh government to stop mass tree-planting on agricultural land.

Mr Noble, who has been a constant feature on Welsh radio and TV for decades, also urged Welsh government to curtail outside interests and juggernaut companies from doing the same.

The OBE recipient said that he had real empathy with farming families who are out-bid for land purchases by financial combines.

Such companies, he explained, used these purchases to offset their carbon emissions elsewhere by planting trees.

The broadcaster accused them of having no empathy for, or real understanding of farming or the countryside.

Appealing to the Welsh public, Mr Noble argued that taking away farmland for tree planting risked limiting Wales ability to be food self-sufficient.

He said: The tragic and awful events unfolding in Ukraine and the worlds extreme financial strain currently impacting on our country should focus the mind and underline priorities, one being self-sufficiency.

"It stands at around 60% in Wales at present I believe, but experts agree, from the farming world and beyond that it could be vastly improved with official support.

"Of course, we cannot produce everything, but a greater percentage is a realistic goal.

Mr Noble argued that tree planting did have benefits: Planting trees is regarded and accepted as a way to combat the climate emergency, but right trees, right place, right effect is, I feel, an acceptable mantra in that process.

"Planting on productive, rich arable land, surely is not, and, if done, the implication and effect will last generations.

He pointed at rural communities in the Cothi Valley, Carmarthenshire, where his maternal lineage lived for many generations,.

Many of the farming families, in all areas of Wales affected, are rooted in their land, their hallowed ground attached as it is to their soul and their very being. Many likely go back to the very early farmers.

"That heritage deserves recognition and respect, for all they have contributed and will continue to do, feeding a need, in food production, co-operating in climate crisis initiatives, and working with government and agricultural bodies on sensible paths.

The broadcasters intervention comes as a petition, launched by Countryside Alliance Wales and now in its third week, continues to collect signatures.

The online petition calls on Welsh government to "stop purchasing productive farmland to plant trees which threatens our fragile rural communities, heritage, culture and the Welsh language."

It adds: "We are deeply concerned about the number of companies purchasing productive farmland for tree planting to offset their carbon emissions and feel that the Welsh government should further protect our communities from this practice."
There has been a further decrease in Scottish agriculture emissions, the latest government figures show, with reductions seen in all three types of greenhouse gases.

The Scottish government's statistics show a decrease in agriculture emissions by 2.9% - or 0.2 MtCO2e - between 2019 and 2020.

This means emissions from the Scottish farming industry have now dropped 14.9 percent since 1990.

The reductions can be seen across all of the three main types of greenhouse gases created by food production: CO2, methane and nitrous oxide.

NFU Scotland said the figures were a 'clear sign' of the farming industry's commitment to meeting its climate change goals.

The union is currently working with the Scottish government on how best to support farms and crofts across the country to reduce their emissions.

NFUS climate change policy manager, Kate Hopper said: Unlike other industries which may be expecting a bounce back in emissions as they move on from the impacts of Covid, agriculture maintained production in challenging times and kept the nation fed during the pandemic.

While there is still a lot more work to do to get to net zero, these figures show that with the right future policy support Scottish agriculture can get there.

Our members have been working hard carrying out carbon audits to identify where improvements can be made, along with their on-farm energy use, switching to renewables, and looking at how to reduce the inputs they use.

She added: Going forwards we also need to look at how the UKs national inventory records GHG emissions. All carbon sequestration is currently recorded against the land use sector, including measures such as tree planting carried out on our farms.

"Farms have huge potential to store carbon, and we would like to see this balanced against our emissions, whilst we continue to produce high quality, sustainable, healthy Scottish food.

It comes as the Scottish government's recently launched National Test Programme is working towards baselining and more accurate reporting of on farm GHGs.

The programme will also be leading work into what on-farm actions best reduce emissions.
Over 100 sheep farmers have signed a letter urging the Welsh government to reconsider its ban on training dogs with e-collars, or risk the lives of more sheep.

The 107 signatories, who include celebrity hill farmer Gareth Wyn Jones, have told the government to "review the science on what is the most effective training for stopping predatory attacks by dogs".

The letter is in response to NFU Mutual data which shows that Welsh farmers suffer from four times more dog attacks than their Scottish counterparts.

They are calling on the Welsh government to overturn its ban on e-collars, which are used to train dogs to associate sheep with a one-off static pulse, in turn helping the dog become wary of approaching them.

Academic studies have found that the e-collars allow dogs to continue to avoid sheep even when they are off-lead and unaccompanied.

Supporters argue this is vital, as police data shows that in most attacks the dogs had escaped from human control.

The Welsh government banned the training of dogs with e-collars in 2010, and in 2018, Scotland decided against following suit.

Gareth Wyn Jones, who farms in Llanfairfechan, Powys, told The Telegraph: The government is banning things because they believe that it is cruel.

"But what is crueller? For a sheep to be ripped to pieces or for a dog to have a little electric shock which is less than they get from a fence?

Another signatory is David Robert Richards, a farmer from Neath Port Talbot, who said the use of e-collars was an 'ideal way to train dogs'.

"In the right hands, being used sensibly can save the lives of many dogs, more importantly the lives of sheep."

John Lewis, who farms in Torfaen, south-east of Wales, has suffered the loss of sheep by dog attacks on a couple of occasions.

He said some people 'remain ignorant' to the harm that their dog could do to livestock: "This is where an electric collar can come into its own as some people have historically used one for walking their dog in the countryside and at no other time.

"I have witnessed some years ago the effectiveness of such collars when a young adult dog started chasing sheep, that single use of the collar never needed to be repeated again.
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Disha Patani is a millennial at heart when it comes to all things fashion. Case in point: the crop tops paired with baggy pants, the bodyfit ruched dresses, and the summer dresses. Not only can the Malang actress give a class on millennial dressing, but she can also take one on carrying an Indian outfit with utmost grace. Disha Patanis wardrobe, therefore, is a perfect amalgamation of traditional and modern outfits.





Dishas wardrobe features multiple traditional options. She picks from among the most colourful lehenga pieces, sarees and suits that may vary in shades from pastels to metallic. The actress recently took to her Instagram to share a picture of herself stunning in a pink embellished lehenga. The Falguni and Shane Peacock lehenga also featured a matching feathered dupatta. The actor also attended Akash Ambani and Shloka Mehtas wedding in a stunning white organza saree. The saree featured fine mirror work.





Her millennial looks feature a strong feminine element. The actress picks from outfits that compliment her lean and muscular body the most. She has shared multiple OOTDs from her favourite vacation spot: Maldives. The actress knows how to nail a beach look like no one else. Case in point: the tie-up bikinis in several colour options. The actress also has an array of crop tops to choose from, and she often pairs them with baggy pants and tethered jeans. Her wardrobe also features multiple summer dresses, from breezy florals to pastel digital prints.





As the actress turns a year older, we round the best looks she has served: ranging from traditional to western.
Attempts by opposition political formations and foreign agencies to place blame for the kidnapping and subsequent death of Moreblessing Ali on Zanu PF is perfectly choreographed to destabilise Zimbabwes foreign policy, the ruling party has said.

In a statement yesterday, Zanu PF Director for Information and Publicity Cde Tafadzwa Mugwadi, said this is happening at a time Rwanda is scheduled to host the Commonwealth Heads of State and Government Meeting.

Zimbabwe has expressed interests to re-join Commonwealth, but the current wave is aimed at shifting focus on the countrys progress in the reform agenda and put a justification for those still calling for the upholding of the illegal sanctions.

Cde Mugwadi said, these shenanigans of faking abductions or twisting facts and politicising deaths that have no relationship with any politics, have a history in Zimbabwe.

The shenanigans are always foolishly choreographed and rehearsed to coincide with international conferences, summits, or events of diplomatic significance to Zimbabwe. The idea is to try to embarrass leadership ahead of such summits or provoke international discussions about Zimbabwe badly, justify renewal of illegal sanctions on our nation and presenting the opposition groups as victims of the state, said Cde Mugwadi.

He said, in 10 days time, the Commonwealth Heads of State and Government Meeting (CHOGM) will be underway in Kigali-Rwanda.

Through the engagement and re-engagement agenda, Zimbabwe has expressed interest to be admitted into the commonwealth of nations.





The prospects for that have increased significantly under the Second Republic than they were before. More countries have warmed up to that. But if that were to happen, the MDC-CCC factions and their regime change agenda will be exposed and fizzle away from the face of our politics.

Cde Mugwadi said it is not in the interest of the opposition groups to see improved relations between Zimbabwe and Britain.

He said that is why they are twisting facts of this common case of criminality to cause debate about Zimbabwes human rights situation.

This is then expected to be the UKs ammunition and reason for denying Zimbabwes admission into the commonwealth of nations.

The meeting starts on 20 June to the 26th. By way of pre-empting them, mark my words this issue will be discussed at the commonwealth by the UK and its functionaries. Herald
Continuing the tradition of meeting her fans on her anniversary in Bollywood, Kiara Advani met virtually with over 40 fan clubs to mark the eighth year of her debut film Fugly, which was released on June 13th, 2014.Kiara has seen immense success in the past few years, starting from the blockbuster hit, Kabir Singh. She achieved even more success with Shershaah which was a runaway hit and easily the most-talked-about film in recent times. Her latest film, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 has been arguably the most successful film to release in recent times along with RRR, The Kashmir Files and Gangubai Kathiawadi.Kiara Advani engaged in a virtual interaction with her fans, enjoying an evening of delightful conversation and answering some fun questions, to celebrate the love and support of her fans and express her gratitude for the overwhelming response over the years.Fans began the interaction with the Nach Punjabban hook step challenge to commemorate Kiara Advani's eight years in Bollywood.Erina, the youngest fan in the interaction, expressed her admiration for the actress after seeing Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2. Sachita, a young musical fan of Kiara, sang Jab Tak from MS Dhoni last year, and Dil Na Janeya from Good Newzz this year. Aisha from Bangladesh asked the actress to come to her country. Prachi, another fan, performed Ranjha and Man Bhareya from Shershaah for the actress. Samadrita, a fan, created two sketches of Kiara Advani as Dimple from Shershaah. Mebing her sister sang Ranjha for Kiara in front of two young and adorable fans. When fans asked Kiara to check her DMs, she immediately obliged and followed back her fan clubs.Kiara Advani's team wrapped up the festivities by cutting a cake with her fans.




Meanwhile, Tripti Dimri who is best known for her role in Laila Majnu was last seen in the horror film Bulbbul. Meanwhile, Tripti Dimri who is best known for her role in Laila Majnu was last seen in the horror film Bulbbul.

Bollywood star Vicky Kaushal is currently filming for his upcoming romantic comedy film alongside actress Tripti Dimri. The film produced by Karan Johar and directed by Anand Tiwari went into production in March and now, the cast and crew seem to be working on a song sequence. Farah Khan posted a behind-the-scenes picture of herself amidst the ocean alongside the stars.Farah took to Instagram to share a pretty picture from the shoot location in Croatia. In it, Vicky Kaushal can be seen standing next to Tripti and Farah. She captioned the picture "Rocking the boat."Check it out here:The initial schedule of the film was shot in Mumbai, Delhi and Mussoorie before the cast flew to Zagreb, Dubrovnik. As per reports on a leading news portal, they're shooting a romantic song. Vicky will be seen in a romantic role and the makers want the song to be "lavish and colourful."Vicky Kaushal also posted a photo from the location which is popularised by shows like Game of Thrones. The actor has a packed slate of upcoming films including Govinda Naam Mera alongside Kiara Advani and Bhumi Pednekar. He is also attached to star in director Laxman Utekar's untitled film with Sara Ali Khan. Filming for the project wrapped recently.
Sugar Land, Texas--(Newsfile Corp. - June 12, 2022) - Chamco Digital announces Pivot to Healthcare; Perfects Epic on Azure Cloud Technology Deployment Solution.





Chamco Digital

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Chamco Digital's Umar Ali is escalating his company's move into the healthcare technology space through provision of Epic on Azure cloud solution.

The organization has assembled a new group of technical staff to take on this new segment and deliver the Epic on Azure platform to healthcare organizations nationwide

Chamco Digital's Umar Ali is escalating his company's move into the healthcare technology space through Epic on Azure cloud solution, with an announcement about the company's assembly of a new group of technical staff to guide the company into this new segment.

The organization's new group of seasoned technical and management staff comprises of Azure Solutions Architects, Epic and Azure sales and marketing professionals, and billing experts.





Chamco Digital CFO, Umar Ali

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According to Umar Ali, CFO and Co-founder of Chamco Digital, this is the right move at the right time. "We've been helping companies in many industries migrate to the cloud and realize the immense benefits of this technology. Now, we're turning our attention to the healthcare industry to help them smoothly and safely transition to the innovative Epic on Azure platform."

Continuing, Ali notes that while the trend toward cloud computing is long-standing, the pandemic boosted the process. As hospitals and other medical service organizations evaluate their options, he believes more will choose Epic on Azure based on the software's documented reliability and success in the healthcare industry, and the cloud platform's unmatched successes.

Leveraging its expertise in the cloud technology environment, Chamco Digital, an end-to-end cloud solution provider is poised to provision Epic Systems' software service on one of the most trusted cloud platforms, Azure.

Helping Organizations Better Control Costs and Risks

To fully benefit from a move of Epic Systems into the cloud, healthcare institutions, much like other organizations need to navigate the complexity of the implementation process. One common pitfall is forecasting and managing the cloud spend. A recent study by Flexera found that companies estimate that they waste up to 30% of their cloud spend. [i]

This inefficiency usually results from over-provisioned infrastructure that ends up underutilized. And it's not an insignificant amount, either. According to ParkMyCloud, that waste added up to $17.6 billion in 2020. [ii]

According to Ali, "Chamco Digital's experienced team will help healthcare organizations determine the right provisioning, so results are achieved without overspending."

Security is Even More Important Today

Security is another major concern, and one that Chamco Digital is experienced in provisioning. "One thing we've learned is that no business is immune from today's cyber threats. In the past few years, we've seen governments, stock exchanges, and Fortune 500 companies impacted, along with countless threats against smaller players", Ali observed.

"There's nowhere to hide. Instead, business leaders in healthcare organizations must also assume they will be targeted and develop sound defenses."

Leveraging on Chamco Digital's cloud deployment and security expertise will not only optimize core Epic Systems' strengths - acquisition, maintenance, and delivery of healthcare data to clinicians and patients alike, it also helps healthcare organizations protect critical patient data.

"Any security breach carries significant potential damage in the form of potential lawsuits, business loss or reputational risk. There's too much at stake not to focus on prevention," adds Umar Ali.

About Chamco Digital

Chamco Digital is an end-to-end cloud solutions provider specializing in Epic on Azure, cloud migration, and cloud management and consulting. By partnering with Chamco, firms can increase security and improve implementation while streamlining the overall I.T. process and thereby minimizing waste of time and money.

Media Contact:

N. Jude Nwosu

+1 855 424 2626

develop@chamcodigital.com

https://chamcodigital.com/

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127389
Lower rates of bladder cancer recurrence and progression demonstrated in clinics with a high level of blue light cystoscopy (BLC) use in primary patients

Photocure sponsor of the Residents Day during the NUF congress

OSLO, Norway, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Photocure ASA (OSE: PHO) announces that positive data from a Danish population registry study featuring nearly 10,000 bladder cancer patients was presented at the Nordisk Urologisk Forening (NUF) congress in Helsinki, Finland last week. NUF was being held June 8-11, 2022 as an in-person event for the first time since 2019. Photocure's presence at and commitment to NUF was reinforced by sponsoring the Residents Day event for this year's congress. Nordic Residents in Urology is a NUF group, which aims to increase collaboration and networking between young urologists in the Nordic countries in order to improve overall education and research opportunities.

Nordisk Urologisk Forening is an association of the national urological societies in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, supporting close cooperation of Nordic urologists in various fields of education, science and clinical work. The NUF meeting is bi-annual, bringing together Nordic urologists, nurses and healthcare industry to meet and share best practice. Photocure, The Bladder Cancer Company, was present in Helsinki during the whole event.

In the scientific program on Bladder Cancer topics, BLC was prominently featured again this year: a Danish population study assessing recurrence and progression impact of BLC using national registries in Denmark was presented at NUF.

The study abstract entitled "Use of photodynamic diagnosis (PDD) at primary TURB*: Potential influence on recurrence and progression rates in NMIBC in a registry-based study using a country cohort" shows beneficial impact on recurrence and progression in patients treated at clinics who have a higher level of use of BLC in primary patients. The results are based on data from nearly 10,000 patients identified through the Danish National Patient Registry, corresponding to all newly diagnosed NMIBC patients in Denmark in the period 2011-2017.

Linea Blichert-Refsgaard (MD, PhD student) presented this study live on June 9 and in a poster, concluding that "Common use of PDD in the primary TURB at department level seems to be associated with lower 5-year recurrence and progression risks."

Jrgen Bjerggaard Jensen (MD, DMSc, Professor, Consultant in Urology, Chairman of the Danish Bladder Cancer Group and the Nordic Urothelial Cancer Research Group, Department of Urology Aarhus University Hospital put the importance of these study results into perspective, stating: "These real world data results show the true potential of adding better visual diagnostic methods in endoscopy compared to the old standard with conventional white light."

The abstract is available here: http://www.nuf2021.fi/abstracts/ and will be published in 'Scandinavian Journal of Urology' after the congress.

* TURB / TURBT: Transurethral resection of bladder tumor

** NMIBC: Non-muscle invasive bladder cancer

Note to editors:

All trademarks mentioned in this release are protected by law and are registered trademarks of Photocure ASA.

About Bladder Cancer

Bladder cancer ranks as the 8th most common cancer worldwide - the 5th most common in men - with 1 720 000 prevalent cases (5-year prevalence rate)1a, 573 000 new cases and more than 200 000 deaths in 2020.1b

Approx. 75% of all bladder cancer cases occur in men.1 It has a high recurrence rate with up to 61% in year one and up to 78% over five years.2 Bladder cancer has the highest lifetime treatment costs per patient of all cancers.3

Bladder cancer is a costly, potentially progressive disease for which patients have to undergo multiple cystoscopies due to the high risk of recurrence. There is an urgent need to improve both the diagnosis and the management of bladder cancer for the benefit of patients and healthcare systems alike.

Bladder cancer is classified into two types, non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) and muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), depending on the depth of invasion in the bladder wall. NMIBC remains in the inner layer of cells lining the bladder. These cancers are the most common (75%) of all BC cases and include the subtypes Ta, carcinoma in situ (CIS) and T1 lesions. In MIBC the cancer has grown into deeper layers of the bladder wall. These cancers, including subtypes T2, T3 and T4, are more likely to spread and are harder to treat.4



1 Globocan. a) 5-year prevalence / b) incidence/mortality by population. Available at: https://gco.iarc.fr/today, accessed [January 2022].

2 Babjuk M, et al. Eur Urol. 2019; 76(5): 639-657

3 Sievert KD et al. World J Urol 2009;27:295-300

4 Bladder Cancer. American Cancer Society. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/bladder-cancer.html

About Hexvix/Cysview (hexaminolevulinate HCl)

Hexvix/Cysview is a drug that preferentially accumulates in cancer cells in the bladder, making them glow bright pink during Blue Light Cystoscopy (BLC). BLC with Hexvix/Cysview, compared to standard white light cystoscopy alone, improves the detection of tumors and leads to more complete resection, fewer residual tumors, and better management decisions.

Cysview is the tradename in the U.S. and Canada, Hexvix is the tradename in all other markets. Photocure is commercializing Cysview/Hexvix directly in the U.S. and Europe and has strategic partnerships for the commercialization of Hexvix/Cysview in China, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand. Please refer to https://photocure.com/partners/our-partners for further information on our commercial partners.

About Photocure ASA

Photocure: The Bladder Cancer Company delivers transformative solutions to improve the lives of bladder cancer patients. Our unique technology, making cancer cells glow bright pink, has led to better health outcomes for patients worldwide. Photocure is headquartered in Oslo, Norway and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE: PHO). For more information, please visit us at www.photocure.com, www.hexvix.com, www.cysview.com

For further information, please contact:

Dan Schneider

President and CEO

Photocure ASA

Email: ds@photocure.com

Erik Dahl

CFO

Photocure ASA

Tel: +4745055000

Email: ed@photocure.com

David Moskowitz

Vice President, Investor Relations

Photocure ASA

Tel: +1 202 280 0888

Email: david.moskowitz@photocure.com

Media and IR enquiries:

Geir Bjrlo

Corporate Communications (Norway)

Tel: +47 91540000

Email: geir.bjorlo@corpcom.no

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/photocure/r/positive-data-from-the-danish-national-patient-registry-presented-at-the-2022-nordic-urologisk-foren,c3583623

The following files are available for download:
First Tin Plc



("First Tin" or "the Company")

Director/PDMR dealing

LONDON, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Tin, a tin development company with advanced, low capex projects in both Germany and Australia, announces that it has been notified that Mr. Thomas Buenger, Chief Executive Officer at the Company, has purchased 500,000 shares in First Tin at a price of 0.22 Euro per share on Friday 10 June 2022.



Following this transaction, Thomas Buenger holds a beneficial interest in 2,510,400 Ordinary Shares representing 0.95% per cent of the Company's issued share capital.

NOTIFICATION AND PUBLIC DISCLOSURE OF TRANSACTIONS BY PERSONS DISCHARGING MANAGERIAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND PERSONS CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH THEM:

1. Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated



a) Name:



Thomas Buenger 2. Reason for the notification



a) Position/status:



Chief Executive Officer b) Initial notification/Amendment:



Initial notification 3. Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor



a) Name:



First Tin PLC b) LEI:



LEI: 984500CSA7TBE3FB7C63 4. Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; and (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted



a) Description of the financial instrument, type of instrument:



Identification code: GB00BNR45554



Ordinary shares of 0.1 pence each b) Nature of the transaction:



Purchase of Ordinary Shares c) Price(s) and volume(s):



Price(s)



Volume(s) 0.22 Euros cent



500,000 d) Aggregated information:



Single transaction as in 4 c) above Aggregated volume:



Price(s) Volume(s) Price:



0.22 Euros cent 500,000 e) Date of the transaction:



10-06-2022 f) Place of the transaction:



Frankfurt Stock Exchange

Enquiries:



First Tin



Via SEC Newgate below Thomas Buenger - Chief Executive Officer



Arlington Group Asset Management Limited

(Financial Advisor and Joint Broker)



Simon Catt 020 7389 5016 WH Ireland Limited (Joint Broker)



Harry Ansell 020 7220 1670 SEC Newgate (Financial PR)



Elisabeth Cowell / Molly Gretton 07900 248 213

Notes to Editors

First Tin is an ethical, reliable, and sustainable tin production company led by a team of renowned tin specialists. The Company is focused on becoming a tin supplier in conflict-free, low political risk jurisdictions through the rapid development of high value, low capex tin assets in Germany and Australia.

Tin is a critical metal, vital in any plan to decarbonise and electrify the world, yet Europe has very little supply. Rising demand, together with shortages, is expected to lead tin to experience sustained deficit markets for the foreseeable future. Its assets have been de-risked significantly, with extensive work undertaken to date.

First Tin's goal is to use best-in-class environmental standards to bring two tin mines into production in three years, providing provenance of supply to support the current global clean energy and technological revolutions.

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com (mailto:rns@lseg.com) or visit www.rns.com (http://www.rns.com/).
We are pleased to announce, after careful evaluation and an intense contest, that the winner of the sixth edition of the GTTC Universities Project Competition is the Instituto Brasileiro de Direito Tributario.

AMSTERDAM, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Brazilian team delivered an impressive research result, not only providing a detailed overview of Brazilian treaty provisions on individuals, but also correlating their findings with the drivers of Brazilian international tax policy. Sincere congratulations to the winning team!



We would like to thank all the participating teams for their enthusiasm and hard work. Special thanks to the professors who acted as judges, for dedicating so much time and effort to preserving the competition's high standards.



Sign up for next year's competition!

The seventh edition of the GTTC Universities Project Competition will address the scope and framework of tax treaties (articles 1-4 and 29-32 of the OECD Model). The goal will be to determine the practical tax treaty policy of a specific jurisdiction, as compared with the wording of the relevant provisions in the OECD/UN Models and their Commentaries.

Teams will develop a working paper on this topic in line with the guidelines provided. The best teams will give an oral presentation of their results at the finals at the end of the academic year.

Universities that want to take part should send an email here . We look forward to hearing from you!

About the GTTC Universities Project Competition

This competition promotes research in international tax law among university students. Teams from universities in 20-30 countries conduct research on a specific tax topic. IBFD presents the team that delivers the most outstanding research results with a prestigious award.

About IBFD

IBFDis a leading international provider of cross-border tax expertise, with a long-standing history of supporting and contributing to tax research and academic activities. As an independent foundation, IBFD utilizes its global network of tax experts and its Knowledge Centre to serve Fortune 500 companies, governments, international consultancy firms and tax advisers.
LONDON, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Swoop, the one-stop money shop for businesses, has raised 5.4m in a Series A funding round to accelerate international expansion and help more companies to access an array of financing options. The funding announcement follows a surge in demand for SME financing, with revenues at Swoop forecasted to increase by 450% this year.

Andrea Reynolds, CEO and Co-Founder of Swoop, said the funding would be used to expand into new markets, with a particular focus on North America. The fast-growing fintech is targeting the US through its existing operations in Canada and this follows the recent establishment of an Australian operation, in addition to its offices in the UK and Ireland.

More than 75,000 businesses have used Swoop's software platform to investigate and access a wide range of funding sources, including equity, grants, loans and tax credits. Founded in 2017, Swoop will have 80 staff by the end of the summer, up from 60 at present.

The Series A funding round includes investment from the venture capital group Velocity, Arab Bank Ventures, IAG and WeHo Ventures in California. Velocity is an existing investor in Swoop, alongside other early backers including UK private investors and Enterprise Ireland.

Andrea Reynolds, CEO and Co-Founder of Swoop said: "Access to finance is the number one issue facing SMEs, but they have traditionally been an underserved customer segment. Finance is data-driven and borderless. With the influx of new lenders into the market, Swoop is able to connect SMEs with the funding they need wherever they are in the world. To date we've helped our customers secure 500m to grow their businesses."

Rajeev Saxena, CEO of Velocity, said it was pleased to support the continued expansion of Swoop. "Andrea and the team at Swoop have executed strongly on their potential since we first invested in the company in 2018. We are excited to see them take their vision to new markets."

Swoop continues to enhance its technology and proposition, aggregating banking, accounting and credit data so that business owners, advisors and brokers can quickly understand and apply for the products available to them.

Swoop is a chosen partner to all the major banks in the UK and has partnerships with business bodies including the British Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. It was instrumental in distributing hundreds of millions of pounds in Bounce Back loans to businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Media Contact:

Fiona Peppard

Heneghan

fiona@heneghan.ie

00353876354423

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1838030/Ciaran_Burke.jpg
HIGHLIGHTS

Numerous high-grade showings

Strong potential for massive nickel sulphide mineralization

Hosts both magmatic Norilsk "feeder type" mineralization and epigenic "footwall-type" deposit

Drill ready targets

Historic Mineral Resource Estimate, 400,000 tonnes at 1.35% nickel

Excellent access from adjoining Alaska Highway

Proximal to multiple communities

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - Palladium One Mining Inc. (TSXV: PDM) (OTCQB: NKORF) (FSE: 7N11) (the "Company" or "Palladium One") is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Canalask Nickel-Copper-PGE Project, located beside the Alaska Highway in Yukon, Canada (the "Canalask Property"), from Victoria Gold Corporation (the "Vendor").

Palladium One's geological team, which is comprised of functional experts in sulphide nickel-copper-PGE deposits, has recognized another over-looked, under explored prospect. With a historical resource estimate dating back to 1968, a top nickel producer, Falconbridge Ltd., initiated exploration activities at Canalask in 2006, however, Xstrata plc's acquisition of Falconbridge in late 2006 curtailed exploration and the project has had limited exploration since then. The vendor, Victoria Gold, held the project since 2009 and focused its efforts on successfully bringing its Eagle Gold mine into production.

The known occurrences at Canalask are hosted in the White River mafic-ultramafic complex, which hosts other nickel-PGE deposits including the past-producing Wellgreen mine. The prospective horizon extends for more than 10 kms on the newly acquired property.

"The Palladium One team recognizes that the area explored represents a small portion of what is clearly an extensive and highly prospective system capable of hosting a major deposit. Canalask complements the massive sulphide Tyko Project in Ontario, where exploration drilling is currently underway. With $14 million of cash on hand as at March 31, 2022, the Company remains well-funded to add value to its projects," commented Derrick Weyrauch, President and CEO.

Transaction Details

The Canalask Property was acquired through a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company and structured as an asset acquisition with consideration as follows:

$25,000 shall be payable in cash on Closing. $200,000 shall be payable in common shares of the Company on Closing. The Vendor shall retain a 2% Net Smelter Return ("NSR") royalty, with the Company retaining a 50% buyback right. Contingent consideration includes: $2,000,000 will be paid to the Vendor upon the earlier of (A) the publication of a Feasibility Study, or (B) the Commencement of Commercial Production; and $5,000,000 will be paid to the Vendor upon the commencement of commercial production on the Canalask Property.

Completion of the transaction is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval.

Canalask Property

The Canalask Property is located within the Whitehorse Mining District, approximately 300 kilometers northwest of Whitehorse, Yukon and is accessible from the Alaska Highway near Beaver Creek. The Canalask Property consists of a contiguous block of 179 quartz claims covering an approximate area of 3,400 hectares.

Exploration on the project dates to the 1950's when the Canalask footwall zone was originally discovered, drilled and partially developed. A Historical resource estimate on the Main Zone is quoted at 400,000 tonnes at 1.35% Nickel by Discovery Mines Ltd. in 1968 (Yukon Assessment Report 094599). Early Metallurgical floatation test work returned concentrate grades as high as 19.7% Nickel (Yukon Assessment Report 093256). Exploration continued on the project up to the early 2000's through a series of surface programs including geochemical surveys, geological mapping and geophysics. During these campaigns numerous high-grade Ni-Cu-PGE showings, such 4.7% Nickel, 0.6% Cu and 6.82 g/t PGE in grade samples at the Discovery zone (Yukon Assessment Report 094599), were discovered along the length of the ultramafic-mafic body. In 2006 Xstrata completed a NI-43-101 Technical Report (Yukon Assessment Report 094599) on the project. Readers are cautioned that the Company has not verified the Historical Mineral Resource Estimate and therefore the data should not be relied upon.

Geology Overview

The Canalask Property covers the lateral extent of the northwest - southeast striking, steeply dipping "White River Intrusive Complex" (WRIC), which is part of the larger Kluane Mafic-Ultramafic Belt. The Kluane belt extends from northern British Columbia to east-central Alaska, within the Pennsylvanian to Triassic Wrangellia Terrane volcanics and sediments. The belt is host to numerous nickel-copper +/- platinum-palladium deposits and prospects, most notably the past producing Wellgreen Deposit, now held by Nickel Creek Platinum Corp., approximately 110 kilometers to the south. The WRIC occurs as a sill-like body of ultramafic and mafic rocks 100 to 150 meters thick and dipping approximately 50 degrees to the southwest. The northern margin of the WRIC represents the basal footwall contact zone while the southern margin delineates the upper hanging wall intrusive contact. The intrusion itself is dominantly composed of peridotite and dunite with a mineralized basal gabbro zone.

The WRIC is a favourable setting for magmatic nickel-copper sulphide mineralization as it is considered a "feeder system" with a high volume of magma flow. As evidenced by the abundance of magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE showings at the base of the WRIC and the discovery of the Ni-rich Canalask footwall deposit, the project hosts strong potential for both "magmatic feeder-type" basal deposits and "epigenetic footwall-type" footwall deposits. The geological setting draws comparison to the world-class Norilsk Ni-Cu-PGE camp.





To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6502/127402_315ff2df949508fc_001full.jpg

Note:

The Company has not attempted to verify the historic mineral resource estimate and therefore readers should not place any reliance on the historical estimate.

Qualified Person

The technical information in this release has been reviewed and verified by Neil Pettigrew, M.Sc., P. Geo., Vice President of Exploration and a director of the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Palladium One

Palladium One Mining Inc. (TSXV: PDM) is focused on discovering environmentally and socially conscious Metals for Green Transportation. A Canadian mineral exploration and development company, Palladium One is targeting district scale, platinum-group-element (PGE)-copper-nickel deposits in leading mining jurisdictions. Its flagship project is the Lantinen Koillismaa (LK) Project in north-central Finland, which is ranked by the Fraser Institute as one of the world's top countries for mineral exploration and development. LK is a PGE-copper-nickel project that has existing Mineral Resources. PDM's second project is the 2020 Discovery of the Year Award winning Tyko Project, a high-grade sulphide, copper-nickel project located in Canada. Follow Palladium One on LinkedIn, Twitter, and at www.palladiumoneinc.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Derrick Weyrauch"

President & CEO, Director

For further information contact:

Derrick Weyrauch, President & CEO

Email: info@palladiumoneinc.com



Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This press release is not an offer or a solicitation of an offer of securities for sale in the United States of America. The common shares of Palladium One Mining Inc. have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration.

Information set forth in this press release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that relate to future, not past events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address a company's expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", and "intend", statements that an action or event "may", "might", "could", "should", or "will" be taken or occur, or other similar expressions. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, risks associated with project development; the need for additional financing; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; fluctuations in palladium and other commodity prices; title matters; environmental liability claims and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the absence of dividends; competition; dilution; the volatility of our common share price and volume; and tax consequences to Canadian and U.S. Shareholders. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made and the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127402
3,000 Tests and appointments completed since June 1st add to increased revenue across divisions

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / June 13, 2022 / EMPOWER CLINICS INC (CSE:CBDT)(Frankfurt:8EC)(OTCQB:EPWCF) ("Empower" or the "Company") an integrated healthcare company offering services in the U.S. and Canada - announced today its fully accredited healthcare practice in Vancouver, B.C. continues to dramatically expand adding to revenue growth across its divisions.

Since June 1st, the company has administered more than 3,000 tests and booked appointments, providing an essential service to travelers, tourists and adding employment to the local community. Empower previously announced that it had exceeded 3000 tests in only its first full month of operation in May 2022, while still early in the tourist season.

"I believe the continued growth in our testing business is a reflection of our commitment to our customers and clients - think of travelers, cruise ship companies, tour operators - that will use our fully accredited testing solutions," stated Steven McAuley, Chairman and CEO of Empower Clinics. "Our investment to be a fully accredited operation is paying off, as the dynamic and important cruiseship industry comes back and thrives in Vancouver." Mr. McAuley continues, "When we add these advancements to the progress of our other divisions, our growth continues, and we are achieving our goals."

Empower offers the most comprehensive fully accredited COVID-19 testing solutions in and around the Port of Vancouver and Canada Place. All of its sites are fully accredited by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia's Diagnostic Accreditation Program (DAP). Its sites include three certified sites at the Port of Vancouver, Canada Place and Fairmont Waterfront Hotel as well as a recently accredited concierge mobile service. All COVID-19 testing in British Columbia requires accreditation by the College's Diagnostic Accreditation Program (DAP).

Empower's COVID-19 testing solutions are highlighted on the website for Royal Carribean - the world's second largest cruise operator. The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority expects more than 300 cruise ship calls for the 2022 season.

Passengers can visit https://www.empowerclinics.com/covid-19-testing/ to book COVID-19 testing solutions that include virtual (telehealth) or in-person Rapid Antigen / Rapid PCR (RT-Lamp) testing at a site at Fairmont Waterfront Hotel - adjacent to the port terminal at Canada Place. Pricing of solutions range from $100 CAD to $250 CAD per test.

This press release is available on the Empower Clinics Verified Forum on AGORACOM for shareholder discussion, questions and engagement with management https://agoracom.com/ir/EmpowerClinics

ABOUT EMPOWER:

Empower is an integrated healthcare company that provides body and mind wellness for patients through its clinics, with digital and telemedicine care, a medical device company and world-class medical diagnostics laboratories. Supported by an experienced leadership team, Empower is aggressively growing its clinical and digital presence across North America. Our Health & Wellness and Diagnostics & Technology business units are positioned to positively impact the integrated health of our patients, while simultaneously providing long term value for our shareholders.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

Steven McAuley

Chief Executive Officer

CONTACTS:

Media:

Steven McAuley CEO

s.mcauley@empowerclinics.com

604-227-0865

Investors:

Tamara Mason

Business Development & Communications

t.mason@empowerclinics.com

604-359-9107

DISCLAIMER FOR FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information" (collectively "forward looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. 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. Forward-looking statements can frequently be identified by words such as "plans", "continues", "expects", "projects", "intends", "believes", "anticipates", "estimates", "may", "will", "potential", "proposed" and other similar words, or information that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward looking statement in this press release include, that more than 300 cruise ships calls will take place in 2022. Such forwardlooking statements are based on assumptions known to management at this time, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, including: that the Company may be unable to enter into definitive agreements, or close transactions with respect to, proposed future clinic openings; that due diligence with respect to anticipated clinic openings and acquisitions may not be satisfactory to the Company; risks related to delays in permitting or construction; risks related to supply chains and access to labour; that legislative changes may have an adverse effect on the Company's business and product development; that the Company may not be able to obtain adequate financing to pursue its business plan; that the Company will be able to commence and/or complete build-outs and tenants improvements for new clinics; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; and other factors beyond the Company's control. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur on the terms or in the time expected, or at all, or, if they do occur, what benefits the Company will obtain from them. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements in this release, which are qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The Company is under no obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements in this release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE: Empower Clinics Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/704832/Empower-Clinics-Revenues-Increase-Substantially
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / June 13, 2022 / (TSXV:AUC)(OTCQB:AUCCF)(Frankfurt:9FY), (the "Company" or "Goldplay"), is pleased to announce that it has signed a Letter of Agreement (the "LOA") with Cullinan Metals Corp (CSE: CMT) ("Cullinan"), a copper focused public company, in regards to Goldplay's Borba 2 projects located in Portugal.

Terms of the Agreement

Cullinan can acquire 100% interest in the Borba 2 properties by making the following cash and share payments to Goldplay and incurring certain exploration expenditures over a 4 years period.

Date Cash Share Issuance in

$ Equiv. Aggregate of Work

Expenditures Upon signing the Definitive Agreement $50,000 60 days after regulatory approval $200,000 $250,000 NI 43-101 Report One Year Anniversary $75,000 $350,000 $0.2 Million Two Year Anniversary $100,000 $500,000 $0.3 Million Three Year Anniversary $150,000 $750,000 $0.5 Million Four Year Anniversary $175,000 $1,150,000 $0.5 Million Total $750,000 $3,000,000 $1.5 Million

Goldplay will retain a royalty interest of one percent (1%) net smelter returns ("NSR") from minerals mined and removed by Commercial Production from any mine located on the Property. One-half percent (0.5%) of the royalty interest can be purchased at any time for $500,000 CAD.

Catalin Kilofliski, President & CEO stated: "We are very excited to have the opportunity to partner with a group of very successful mining entrepreneurs and move forward some of our Portuguese projects in a way that generates significant value for our shareholders with no dilution, while maintaining the ability to participate in the project's upside, through Goldplay's future equity position in Cullinan. This transaction represents the first step in our strategy to focus our own resources only on certain key assets, while finding partners to advance some of our other projects. "

About Goldplay Mining

Goldplay Mining is a Canadian public company listed on TSXV and in US on OTCQB. Goldplay holds large district scale gold, and copper-gold projects located in BC's Golden Triangle and southwestern BC with potential for world class mineral discoveries. The Company also holds several brownfield gold, and copper-gold projects located in Portugal with near term mining potential.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"Catalin Kilofliski"

President, CEO & Director

For further information please contact:

Goldplay Mining Inc.

Mr. Catalin Kilofliski, President & CEO

Suite 650 - 1021 West Hastings Street

Vancouver, BC V6E 0C3

T: (604) 655-1420

E: catalin@goldplaymining.ca

www.goldplaymining.ca

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to the exploration potential of the Property. Generally forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as "anticipate", "will", "expect", "may", "continue", "could", "estimate", "forecast", "plan", "potential" and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties relating to, among other things, results of future exploration and development activities, uninsured risks, regulatory changes, defects in title, availability of materials and equipment, timeliness of government approvals, changes in commodity prices and unanticipated environmental impacts on operations. Although the Company believes current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered are appropriate and that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct or enduring. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any forward-looking statements that are contained or incorporated in this press release. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. There is no certainty that the LOA will be followed by a definitive agreement and that the transaction will close as contemplated.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Goldplay Mining Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/704803/Goldplay-Signs-375M-Letter-of-Agreement-to-JV-Part-of-Its-Portuguese-Assets
Targeting enhanced by MT survey successfully used at KSM

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - Seabridge Gold (TSX: SEA) (NYSE: SA) reports today that core drilling will commence shortly at its 100%-owned Iskut project in British Columbia. Work programs will be drill testing gold-copper targets at Bronson Slope and Quartz Rise, while geophysical surveys are underway to evaluate the North Snip target.

In 2020 and 2021, Seabridge undertook drilling and MT geophysical surveys across a large part of the Iskut property. Regional geophysical surveys of the property show a distinct structural feature that connects Quartz Rise, Bronson Slope and Snip North. All the prospective intrusions fall along this regional trend and each surveyed intrusion on this trend has a coherent resistivity anomaly at depth like those recognized at KSM. In addition, the Bronson Slope target contains a measured and indicated resource of 187Mt of 0.36 g/t Au, 0.12% Cu, and drilling at Quartz Rise has encountered gold-copper grades below a clear lithocap.

Seabridge Chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk commented: "We acquired the large land package at Iskut because of its many characteristics similar to our giant KSM project. Our understanding of Iskut has expanded enormously since last fall when important data and observations coalesced into a more complete picture of mineralization on the property."

"We have identified a regional trend that seems to be a primary control on the distribution of mineralized intrusive centers and this discovery has created considerable excitement in our team. We have lots of experience with a cluster of gold-copper porphyries in the Golden Triangle of similar age and geology at KSM and we are anxious to bring another such district to light." Front said.

Drill testing is beginning on the Bronson Slope target where a resource was developed by a previous operator. This quartz-chalcopyrite-magnetite resource was deposited as a skarn on the border of the complex and into the adjacent wall rock. MT geophysical surveys have identified a clearly-defined zone of resistive rocks within the intrusive complex that could be the source of the chalcopyrite-magnetite mineralization. Drilling below the chalcopyrite-magnetite mineralized zones and into the intrusions has been very limited, but the best grades in the resource project towards this MT anomaly (see attached illustration).

Work is ongoing on the Snip North target with geophysical surveying, surface sampling and relogging historical drill holes. Later this summer, drilling will continue at Quartz Rise. The geophysical surveying will cover about 8.8 square kilometers and the drill program is planned for 8,000 meters in six to eight holes at these two targets.

Exploration activities by Seabridge at the Iskut Project are being conducted under the supervision of William E. Threlkeld, Registered Professional Geologist, Senior Vice President of the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Threlkeld has reviewed and approved this news release. An ongoing and rigorous quality control/quality assurance protocol is employed in all Seabridge exploration campaigns. This program includes blank, duplicate and reference standards. Cross-check analyses are conducted at a second external laboratory on at least 10% of the drill samples.

Seabridge holds a 100% interest in several North American gold projects. The Company's principal assets are the KSM and Iskut Projects located near Stewart, British Columbia, Canada and the Courageous Lake gold project located in Canada's Northwest Territories. For a full breakdown of Seabridge's mineral reserves and mineral resources by category please visit the Company's website at http://www.seabridgegold.com.

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, nor their Regulation Services Providers accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

All reserve and resource estimates reported by the Corporation were estimated in accordance with the Canadian National Instrument 43-101 and the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM") Definition Standards. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") now recognizes estimates of "measured mineral resources," "indicated mineral resources" and "inferred mineral resources" and uses new definitions of "proven mineral reserves" and "probable mineral reserves" that are substantially similar to the corresponding CIM Definition Standards. However, the CIM Definition Standards differ from the requirements applicable to US domestic issuers. US investors are cautioned not to assume that any "measured mineral resources," "indicated mineral resources," or "inferred mineral resources" that the Issuer reports are or will be economically or legally mineable. Further, "inferred mineral resources" are that part of a mineral resource for which quantity and grade are estimated on the basis of limited geologic evidence and sampling. Mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability.

Forward-Looking Statements

This document contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This information and these statements, referred to herein as "forward-looking statements" are made as of the date of this document. Forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect current estimates, predictions, interpretations, expectations or beliefs regarding future events and include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: (i) the timing and extent of the work to be performed in work programs in 2022; (ii) the presence of, and potential location of, intrusions along a trend at the Iskut Project and that the trend may be a primary control on the distribution of mineralized intrusive centers; (iii) the resource estimate in respect of the Iskut Project; and (iv) the zone of resistive rocks within the intrusive complex possibly being the source of the chalcopyrite-magnetite mineralization at Bronson slope.

All forward-looking statements are based on Seabridge's or its consultants' current beliefs as well as various assumptions made by them and information currently available to them. Although management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect.

Forward-looking statements involve various 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. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Seabridge 's plans or expectations include the risk that: (i) the geologic formations at the Iskut Project do not conform to the interpretations of data and the geologic models on which they are based that are the foundations for such forward-looking statements; (ii) the assumed presence of and continuity of metals at the Project between drill holes, including at grades estimated in the mineral resource estimate and the other assumptions underlying the resource estimate; and (iii) the availability of necessary equipment, supplies and personnel for the work programs, and other risks outlined in statements made by Seabridge from time to time in the filings made by Seabridge with securities regulators. Seabridge disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation.

We caution readers not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as a number of important factors could cause the actual outcomes to differ materially from the beliefs, plans, objectives, expectations, anticipations, estimates assumptions and intentions expressed in such forward-looking statements.





Drilling below the chalcopyrite-magnetite mineralized zones and into the intrusions has been very limited, but the best grades in the resource project towards this MT anomaly.

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4600/127416_c1f91b1e2483fab2_001full.jpg

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Rudi Fronk"

Chairman & C.E.O.

For further information please contact:

Rudi P. Fronk, Chairman and C.E.O.

Tel: (416) 367-9292  Fax: (416) 367-2711

Email: info@seabridgegold.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127416
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / June 13, 2022 / Diamond Fields Resources Inc. (TSX-V:DFR) ("DFR" or the "Company"), a mineral exploration and development company focused on gold in West Africa, is delighted to announce the appointment of Kieran Harrington as Vice President Exploration and Mrs Djeneba Coulibaly Sagara as Country Manager for Burkina Faso. Kieran Harrington, whose appointment is subject to customary approvals by the TSX Venture Exchange, brings a wealth of expertise in West African gold exploration and, most importantly, discovery.

Mr Harrington is a professional geologist with more than 35 years' experience in the metals exploration and mining sector and has a strong track record of discovery, particularly in gold in West Africa. Mr Harrington was at the core of the discovery teams at Wassa, Ghana and the Komana/Yamnfolila deposits in Mali in his capacity as Chief Geologist and COO at Glencar Mining plc. Before joining DFR Mr Harrington provided consultancy services to the mining sector in West Africa and particularly in Nigeria where PW Nigeria Limited was amongst his major clients.

Additionally, DFR is pleased to announce the appointment of Mrs Djeneba Coulibaly Sagara as Country Manager for Burkina Faso. Mrs. Coulibaly Sagara has more than 20 years' experience in senior administrative and finance roles in West African companies, including over 17 years working for various mining and exploration companies. Mrs Coulibaly Sagara's significant track record, which has included roles as diverse as Country Manager, Deputy General Manager, and Administrative and Financial Director, will significantly benefit the Company in developing its activities in Burkina Faso.

John McGloin, CEO of Diamond Fields Resources, stated: "We are very pleased to welcome Kieran Harrington and Djeneba Coulibaly Sagara to the management team at DFR. Kieran's experience, especially in the West African gold exploration sector will be a tremendous asset to Diamond Fields as we advance the Labola project and assess additional value accretive opportunities presented to us. Djeneba's detailed understanding of the operating environment in Burkina Faso will enable us to build a strong, sustainable base in the country."

Ends

DIAMOND FIELDS RESOURCES INC.

John McGloin, CEO

Contact: enquire@diamondfields.com

Michael Oke/Andy Mills: +44 20 7321 0000

Aura Financial LLP: www.aura-financial.com

Notes to Editors:

DFR is a TSX Venture Exchange listed exploration and mine development company with assets in Madagascar and Namibia. DFR is in the process of acquiring Moydow Holdings Limited, a privately owned West African focused gold exploration business which holds interests in a portfolio of West African gold exploration projects including the highly prospective Labola gold project in Burkina Faso. Labola has a Mineral Resource prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 comprising 5.41 million tonnes of indicated resources at an average grade of 1.52 g/t Au for a total 264,000 ounces of gold; and 6.93 million tonnes of inferred resources at an average grade 1.67 g/t Au for a total of 371,000 ounces of gold.

In Madagascar, DFR has an advanced high grade hard rock zircon exploration prospect located in the west of the country, approximately 220km east of the port of Maintirano and close to a state road. DFR acquired Beravina from Pala Investments and Austral Resources in 2016. In Namibia, the Company owns several offshore diamond mining licenses.

Website: www.diamondfieldsmoydow.com and www.diamondfields.com

The Company's public documents may be accessed at www.sedar.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.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements other than statements of historical fact in this release that address activities, events or developments that DFR expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements or information. Often, but not always, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "aim", "aspire", "strive", "will", "expect", "intend", "plan", "believe" or similar expressions as they relate to DFR. Forward- looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to materially differ from those reflected in the forward-looking information.

The forward-looking statements and information in this release include but are not limited to statements and information relating to the terms, conditions and completion of the Transaction and Founder Investments; the use of proceeds from the Founder Investments; the obtaining of all required regulatory approvals in connection with the Transaction and Founder Investments; technical information; drilling and exploration programs; political risks; statutory and regulatory compliance; the proposed officers and directors of DFR following completion of the Transaction; and the impact of the Transaction on the business of DFR.

Such statements and information reflect the current view of DFR. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause DFR's actual results, performance or achievements or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

There are a number of important factors that could cause DFR's actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by forward-looking statements and information. Such factors include, among others: the ability to satisfy the conditions to the consummation of the Transaction and the Founder Investments; the ability to obtain requisite shareholder and regulatory approvals; the potential impact of the announcement or consummation of the Transaction on relationships; including with regulatory bodies, employees; suppliers customers and competitors; changes in general economic, business and political conditions, including changes in the financial markets; changes in applicable laws; compliance with extensive government regulation and the diversion of management time on the Transaction and the Founder Investments. Should one or more of these risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information or statement prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected.

DFR cautions that the foregoing list of material factors is not exhaustive. When relying on DFR's forward-looking statements and information to make decisions, shareholders should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. DFR has assumed that the material factors referred to in the previous paragraph will not cause such forward looking statements and information to differ materially from actual results or events. However, the list of these factors is not exhaustive and is subject to change and there can be no assurance that such assumptions will reflect the actual outcome of such items or factors. The forward-looking information contained in this release represents the expectations of DFR as of the date of this release and, accordingly, is subject to change after such date. Readers should not place undue importance on forward looking information and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. While DFR may elect to, it does not undertake to update this information at any particular time except as required in accordance with applicable laws.

SOURCE: Diamond Fields Resources Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/704815/Diamond-Fields-Resources-Strengthens-Management-Team-With-Appointment-of-VP-Exploration-and-Country-Manager
Further expansion of patent portfolio supports of the Company's extensive Ampligen research program across multiple types of cancers and viral diseases, including COVID-19 in the Netherlands

OCALA, Fla., June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AIM ImmunoTech Inc. (NYSE: American AIM) ("AIM" or the "Company"), an immuno-pharma company focused on the research and development of therapeutics to treat multiple types of cancers, immune disorders, and viral diseases, including COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, announced today that the Netherlands Patent Office (Octrooicentrum Nederland) has issued Patent No. 2027383 - a utility patent - covering Ampligen (rintatolimod) and other AIM developed dsRNA products for use in the prevention or treatment of COVID-19, with a base patent term extending until 2041.



Ampligenis AIM's RNA product candidate being developed for globally important cancers, viral diseases and disorders of the immune system. Ampligen is designed to modulate the immune system and has demonstrated anti-viral activity.

Thomas K. Equels, M.S. J.D., Chief Executive Officer of AIM, stated, "Over the course of the past few years, we have steadily been working to bolster and expand our patent portfolio covering COVID-19. This new utility patent in the Netherlands is directed to a composition comprising a therapeutic double-stranded RNA product being developed by AIM for use in treating or preventing a SARS-CoV-2 virus infection, including COVID-19 an infectious disease caused by a SARS-CoV-2 virus infection. In one embodiment, the therapeutic double-stranded RNA product may comprise Ampligen. In another patent embodiment, the therapeutic double-stranded RNA product may be one or more of a number of therapeutic double-stranded RNA (tdsRNA) developed by AIM. An example of such tdsRNA includes the rugged double-stranded RNA which is patented via composition of matter patent by AIM in the U.S. and worldwide. Data from in vitro, pre-clinical and clinical experiments strongly suggest that Ampligen has a broad-spectrum early onset anti-viral effect by stimulating a powerful innate immune response not stimulated by the target virus due to the virus' characteristics which stymie the natural immune response inhibiting viral replication. This new utility patent is also directed to a composition comprising a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 virus and Ampligen designed to, in part, provide expanded immunity against future variants and also provide a similar response enhancing natural immunity post-infection, where Ampligen is administered as an early onset intranasal therapy."

To date, AIM has established a growing patent portfolio covering Ampligen in its effort to join the global health community in the fight against the deadly coronavirus - as well as cancer - including:

Three provisional patent applications (https://aimimmuno.com/press-release/aim-immunotech-files-three-provisional-patent-applications-surrounding-ampligenr-for-use-against-the-sars-like-wuhan-2019-novel-coronavirus/) filed in February 2020 for: 1) Ampligen as a therapy for the coronavirus; 2) Ampligen as part of a proposed intranasal universal coronavirus vaccine that combines Ampligen with inactivated coronavirus, conveying immunity and cross-protection; and 3) a high-volume manufacturing process for Ampligen. Under the Patent Cooperation Treaty of 1970 (PCT), which provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in most countries, these three provisional patent applications were converted into two PCT patent applications claiming priority to the provisional patent applications. National patent application filings based on these PCTs, entitled to claim priority from the provisional patent applications, are ongoing.

In June 2020, AIM filed a provisional patent application directed to compositions and methods for the treatment of Long COVID which is a wide range of new, returning, or ongoing health problems that people experience after first being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. A PCT patent application was filed in June 2021 claiming priority to the June 2020 filing. National patent application filings based on this PCT and entitled to claim priority from the provisional patent application, are ongoing.

In August and September of 2021, the Company filed two additional COVID-19-related provisional patent applications for: 1) Ampligen as both an intranasal and an intravenous therapy for what we describe as Post-COVID conditions; and 2) Ampligen as a potential early-onset intranasal therapy designed to enhance and expand infection-induced immunity, epitope spreading, cross-reactivity and cross-protection in patients exposed to a wide range of RNA respiratory viruses, such as influenza, Rhinoviruses and SARS-CoV-2.

In March 2021, the Company was granted a patent by the Netherlands Patent Office with claims that include, but are not limited to, Ampligen and other AIM developed dsRNA products and checkpoint blockade inhibitors (e.g. pembrolizumab, nivolumab) for use as a combination cancer therapy. Interim data from an investigator-initiated, Phase 2, single-arm, efficacy/safety trial demonstrated that evidence of increased biomarkers associated with T cell chemotaxis and cytolytic function was seen when combining Ampligen, pembrolizumab and cisplatin. It is critical to note that increases of these biomarkers in the tumor microenvironment have been correlated with favorable tumor responses. All told, the study has seen an Objective Response Rate (ORR) of 38.5%; a study (KEYNOTE-100 (https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2020.38.15_suppl.6005)) of pembrolizumab alone in the treatment of advanced recurrent ovarian cancer found Objective Response Rates of 8.1% and 9.9% across two cohorts. The positive data makes this patent have heightened potential. Similar patents are pending in other counties.

"This newly issued patent, along with other patents and patent applications, significantly support our goal of developing a prophylactic and early-onset therapy against COVID-19 and other deadly viruses. The issuance of this, and other patents, in the Netherlands is supportive of our extensive research program there. For example, AIM's Ampligen intranasal safety study demonstrating Ampligen as well-tolerated and our groundbreaking pancreatic cancer research data all took place in the Netherlands. We look forward to advancing our research programs with our development partner in the Netherlands and importantly, taking another step toward a potential therapeutic for the treatment of multiple types of cancers, immune disorders, and viral diseases, including COVID-19," concluded Mr. Equels.

AIM continues to execute on its strategic plan to develop an effective therapeutic for "Long COVID" with its investigational drug, Ampligen:

In August 2020, AIM identified an effective in vitro model).

In an amendment to its ongoing, U.S. Food and Drug Administration) expanded access program (EAP), AIM has enrolled four post-COVID patients with new onset ME/CFS following acute COVID-19. Following at least 12 weeks of Ampligen treatment, each of these four patients indicated they had experienced a reduction in fatigue, as measured via Patient-Reported Outcomes questionnaires. A statistical analysis of these data indicated that the decrease in fatigue compared to baseline was statistically significant (p<0.003), despite the small number of patients.

Based in part on the early positive data seen to date, AIM is working toward filing an Investigational New Drug ("IND") application with the FDA for a Phase 2 study of Ampligen for the treatment of Post-COVID conditions.



About AIM ImmunoTech Inc.

AIM ImmunoTech Inc. is an immune-pharma company focused on the research and development of therapeutics to treat multiple types of cancers, immune disorders, and viral diseases, including COVID-19. The Company's lead product, Ampligen (rintatolimod) is an immuno-modulator with broad spectrum activity being developed for globally important cancers, viral diseases and disorders of the immune system.

Ampligen is currently being used as a monotherapy to treat pancreatic cancer patients in an Early Access Program (EAP) approved by the Inspectorate of Healthcare in the Netherlands at Erasmus Medical Center and AIM plans to initiate a Phase 2 clinical study in 2022. The Company also has multiple ongoing clinical trials to evaluate Ampligen as a combinational therapy for the treatment of a variety of solid tumor types both underway and planned at major cancer research centers. Additionally, Ampligen is approved in Argentina for the treatment of Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and is currently being evaluated in many aspects of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 treatments and COVID-19 Long Hauler treatment.

For more information, please visit aimimmuno.comand connect with the Company on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Cautionary Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "PSLRA"). Words such as "may," "will," "expect," "plan," "anticipate" and similar expressions (as well as other words or expressions referencing future events or circumstances) are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Many of these forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Among other things, for those statements, the Company claims the protection of safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the PSLRA. The Company does not undertake to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date hereof. Studies and trials are subject to many factors including lack of regulatory approval(s), lack of study drug, or a change in priorities at the institutions sponsoring other trials. Significant additional testing and trials will be required to determine whether Ampligen will be an effective treatment for COVID-19 and Long COVID. Additionally, there is no guarantee as to when or whether an IND application will be submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, nor, if an application is submitted, whether it will be accepted.

Investor Relations Contact

JTC Team, LLC

Jenene Thomas

833-475-8247

AIM@jtcir.com




Drilling Begins at Carlin-Roop Yukon Silver Discovery

Ottawa, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - Mayo Lake Minerals Inc. (CSE: MLKM) ("Mayo" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the start of its early summer exploration programs beginning on May 25 with prospecting and soil sampling on its Trail-Minto Gold Property followed by a definitive 1,470m diamond drill program to begin this week at its Carlin-Roop Silver Project. At a cost of approximately $900,000, the complete early summer program, which also includes work on its Anderson-Davidson, Edmonton and Cascade gold properties, is expected to be completed in early July. This allows for the possibility of follow-up exploration in late summer.

Platinum Diamond Drilling Inc. has been contracted for the diamond drilling; while Big River Mineral Exploration Inc., 100% owned by the Na-Cho Nyak Dun Development Corporation, will provide geological services; Bureau Veritas Commodities Canada Ltd. will provide soils and rock analysis and Capital Helicopters (1995) Inc. logistical support. All contractors are based in or have offices in Whitehorse, Yukon.

2022 Exploration Program

Carlin-Roop Silver Project (Figure 1)

Total of 1,470 diamond drilling at the Carlin West silver discovery.





Prospecting and detailed geochemical soil sampling at Carlin West to refine drill targets for silver.





Prospecting and geochemical soil sampling to determine area prospectivity for silver mineralization.

Anderson-Davidson Gold Property (Figure 2)

Prospecting, geochemical soil sampling and geophysics to define and refine drill targets for gold in and adjacent to the Anderson Gold Trend. A gold occurrence was found at Owl-Anderson during scout drilling in 2017. This 2022 early summer program is anticipated to result in 4 to 5 very well-defined drill targets.

Trail-Minto Gold Property

Total of 550m trenching to examine nature and grade of near-surface mineralization, associated with the Roaring Fork Stock and the adjacent veined, tectonized and altered wallrock.





Prospecting and geochemical soil sampling to refine and define drill targets. Soil sampling to date indicates the potential for broadly occurring gold veining associated with the Roaring Fork Stock.

Edmonton Property

Prospecting and soil sampling for Spatiotemperol Geochemical Hydrocarbons (SGH) analysis to determine prospectively for gold and polymetallics (Ag, Pb, Zn) associated with a large magnetic anomaly, the probable reflection of a buried polyphase intrusion.

Cascade Property

Geochemical soil sampling to continue to define and confirm areas hosting trenching and drilling targets with a focus on gold and silver potential. A number of such areas have been identified to date on Cascade.





Figure 1. Areas to be drilled at Carlin West showing anomaly trends determined by soil sampling, prospecting & geophysics (IP-Resistivity and Magnetics) Fifteen, 100m holes, for a planned total 1500m

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5471/127415_8232e852943c4be5_003full.jpg





Figure 2. Planned soil sampling and IP-Resistivity on, and adjacent to, Anderson Trend in 2022

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5471/127415_8232e852943c4be5_005full.jpg

Dr. Vern Rampton, President and CEO of Mayo Lake Minerals commented: "Our diamond drilling in the Carlin West area is certainly the most exciting part of our 2022 exploration program. Over the years, we have completed a high resolution magnetic airborne survey, detailed soil sampling and prospecting, and scout drilling at Carlin West that has allowed us to interpret the control that structures and lithologies have on the placement of Keno Hill Style high-grade silver mineralization there. High grade float located along linears with coincidental highly anomalous silver trending in soil contents parallel to bedrock faulting and jointing structures control the silver mineralization. This provides us with some very well defined drill targets. Scout drilling in 2020 and 2021 were unable to test these targets because of severe weather that prematurely terminated the program. The primary target, upper Keno Hill Quartzite was not cut by the scout drilling. However, the drilling did evidence low grade silver mineralization in the greenstone and underlying Keno Hill Quartzite in areas flanking the primary targets as one would expect."

2021 Drill Program

During late October 2021, two scout holes were drilled from a common drill pad to the northeast of a strong linear Ag anomaly trending to the west-northwest. DDH-MLM21-03 was drilled a total of 203m at an azimuth of 225 and declination of 45. DDH-MLM21-04 was drilled a total of 117m at an azimuth of 225 and declination of 60.

The 2021 holes revealed a stratigraphy similar to those drilled in 2020; graphitic schist overlying interbedded quartzite and graphitic schist. With depth, the graphite schist beds decline in abundance until eventually a near pure foliated quartzite dominates. A gabbro (greenstone) sill underlies the foliated quartzite at a depth of 60m in the 2020 drill holes and ~28 m in the 2021 drill holes. The 2020 drill holes did not penetrate the gabbro.

After coring through the gabbro, the 2021 drill hole then penetrated interbedded graphitic schist and quartzite with thin gabbro layers. Three intervals of silver mineralization, generally associated with discordant quartz veins and traces of chalcopyrite and sulphosalts, were encountered in DDH MLM21-03.

Beginning at 71.75m downhole in gabbro; 1.6g Ag/t over 1.1m, incl. 2.3 Ag/t over 0.6 m; quartz vein and elevated Cu, Pb, Zn, Au, As, Co, Fe, Mg, Ca contents.

Beginning at 171.2m downhole in gabbro; 1.8g Ag/t over 1.2m, incl. 2.5g Ag/t over 0.7m; oblique quartz vein and sulphite rich "rubble," sulphosalts, elevated Pb, Zn, As, Sb, S, Ca contents.

Beginning at 178m in quartzite; 3.7g Ag/t over 3m, incl. 12.2g Ag/t over 0.5m; discontinuous mineralized quartz veins, sulphosalts and elevated Pb, Zn, Au, As, Sb, Fe, S contents.

Keno Hill Style Ag-rich veins, such as those anticipated in the upper quartzite marked by coincidental IP-Resistivity and Ag in soil anomalies are commonly flanked by weakly mineralized silver veins such as those described above.

Sample Collection, Analysis and Quality Control

The drill core was logged on site at Keno before transportation and storage to the Yukon Geological Surveys core library in Whitehorse. The core was split and sampled at New Age's core facility in Whitehorse. The samples were then sealed in poly bags and each bag was identified with the insertion of one part of a three-part sample tag. Samples were delivered to the Bureau Veritas (BV) preparatory laboratory in Whitehorse. Pulps for analysis were prepared and then shipped to the BV analytical laboratory in Vancouver B.C. for analysis and assay. Pulps were analysed for 37 elements, including Au and Ag (BVM AQ201), with an ICP-MS finish following Aqua Regia digestion. BVM is compliant under ISO 9001. Samples are also subject to rigorous QA/QC control during their preparation and analysis. In addition, a number of blanks and commercial standards were inserted at regular intervals. A review of the results and the quality controls revealed no irregularities.

Qualified Person (QP) Statement: Field work was directed by Tyrell Sutherland, M.Sc., P. Geo. This press release has been prepared by Vern Rampton, Ph.D., P. Eng. in his capacity as QPs under the guidelines of N.I. 43-101.

- 30 -

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES

For additional information contact:

Vern Rampton, President & CEO; 613-836-2594; vrampton@mayolakeminerals.com

Tyrell Sutherland, M.Sc., P. Geo., VP Exploration; 613-884-8332; tsutherland@mayolakeminerals.com

Darrell Munro, BB.A, LL.B Corporate Administrator; (613) 836-2594; dmunro@mayolakeminerals.com

About Mayo Lake Minerals Inc. Mayo is actively engaged in the exploration and development of five precious metal projects in the Tombstone Plutonic Belt of the Tintina Gold Province. The properties cover 232 square kilometres in the Yukon's Mayo Mining District and lie within the traditional territory of the Na-Cho Nyak Dun First Nation. The Company has a history of eleven years of exploration in the Mayo area and is fully funded for its 2022 planned exploration campaign. The Company is presently focusing on its flagship Carlin-Roop silver project lying within the Keno Hill Silver District. The eastern sector of the Silver District has recently been the site of numerous silver discoveries by Metallic Minerals and the Mayo. Two active mines; Victoria Gold's Eagle Gold Mine and Alexco Resources' Keno Silver mines also lie near-by Mayo's properties in the Mayo Mining district.

Cautionary statement: This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, which are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected. There can be no guarantee that Mayo Lake will be able to obtain a public listing as scheduled in this document. Mayo Lake undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127415
Regulatory News:

THERACLION (ISIN: FR0010120402; Mnemo: ALTHE) (Paris:ALTHE), an innovative company developing a scalable robotic platform for noninvasive echotherapy providing consistent, data driven and evidence-based patient care, is proud to have its technology featured by Pr. David Brenin from the University of Virginia (UVA) at the annual meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) in Boston, on June 15th

Pr. David Brenin, Chief of the Division of Breast and Melanoma Surgical Services and Professor in the Department of Surgery, and Pr. Patrick Dillon, Associate Professor in the Department of Hematology and Oncology at UVA Health, have established two collaborations, using Theraclion's technology. The first successful one, in late-stage breast cancer, has led to a new study which is on-going. The study is evaluating the conjunctive effect of Theraclion's focused ultrasound and low-dose gemcitabine in early-stage breast cancer patients.

Focused ultrasound technology to perform image-guided tissue ablation and emerging application in immune-therapy and oncology

Based on this long experience of the technology, Pr. Brenin will give a presentation: Focused Ultrasound Another Image-Guided Therapy for the IR toolbox- HIFU and Immune-therapy and Immune-oncology. 'The goal of this session is to introduce Interventional Radiologists to this novel technology and review current and emerging clinical applications. Given their background and training, specifically in ultrasound and MRI, as well as their expertise in performing image-guided therapy, IRs should become familiar with focused ultrasound, and work in collaboration with a multi-diciplinary group to expand indications at their own institutions', explains Pr. Brenin.

'Our platform enables sonications inducing a variety of tissular effects such as hyperthermia, thermal ablation and boiling histotripsy. Physicians are provided with an extremely versatile tool to provoke tumor stress', comments Michel Nuta, Chief Medical Officer at Theraclion.

The Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) is a professional medical society. Its Annual Scientific

Meeting is happening from June 11th to 15th in Boston (US). This recognized forum for peer-reviewed presentations of new research by interventional radiologists and allied scientists from around the world attracts more than 5,000 physicians, scientists and allied health professionals. Interventional radiologists pioneered minimally invasive treatment. Interventional radiology treatments performed by board-certified experts can deliver solutions with less risk, less pain and less recovery time than traditional surgery.

To attend the presentation

Follow this link: https://www.sirmeeting.org/speakers.asp?pfp=BrowsebySpeaker

'Focused Ultrasound Another Image-Guided Therapy for the IR toolbox'

HIFU and Immune-therapy and Immune-oncology

Wednesday, June 15th, 2022, 9:25am 9:40am, Location: Room 257

About Theraclion

At Theraclion we believe that surgery, as we know it, is outdated. It converts optimistic patients into anxious individuals, brilliant doctors into exhausted system executors and stretches healthcare systems to the limit. We have disrupted this convention by creating extracorporeal treatment platforms. We replace surgery with a robotic treatment from outside the body using High Intensity Focussed Ultrasound (HIFU). Our leading edge echotherapy platforms are currently CE marked in non-invasive treatment of varicose veins with SONOVEIN and of breast fibroadenomas and thyroid nodules with Echopulse.

Located in Malakoff, near Paris, our employees live and breath innovation by extensive clinical research and harness artificial intelligence. The market of varicose veins treatment alone requires around 5 million procedures annually. It is a dynamic market in which we change paradigms by making non-invasive echotherapy the new standard.

For more information, please visit www.theraclion.com and our patient website www.echotherapy.com

Theraclion is listed on Euronext Growth Paris

Mnemonic: ALTHE ISIN code: FR0010120402

LEI: 9695007X7HA7A1GCYD29

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220613005475/en/

Contacts:

Theraclion

David Auregan

Chief Operating Officer

david.auregan@theraclion.com

Anja Kleber

VP Marketing, Market Access Sales Francophonia

anja.kleber@theraclion.com
BAE Systems today marks 15 years of supporting Operations Aintree and Kipion, the Royal Navy's mine countermeasure (MCM) strategy in the Gulf. The defence contractor has supported the Royal Navy's Hunt Class vessels in-region for the past 15 years and also delivers maintenance and upkeep to the rest of the Hunt Class flotilla out of Portsmouth Naval Base.

The UK Mine Countermeasures Force is part of the nation's ongoing commitment to peace and security in the region where Royal Navy mine countermeasures vessels are permanently stationed.

The Royal Navy works closely with regional and coalition partners to maintain the security of Gulf sea lanes and ensure the safe flow of trade. This is crucial to both international shipping and the global economy. Approximately 15% of the world's oil supply comes from the region.

The UK Mine Countermeasures Force is currently made up of two Hunt Class mine countermeasures vessels, HMS Middleton and HMS Chiddingfold, and two Sandown Class minehunters, HMS Penzance and HMS Bangor.

In collaboration with the Royal Navy's Forward Support Unit, BAE Systems provides continuous in-region support via its Hunt Class Output Management team. It maintains a presence in Bahrain, using local teams where possible and deploys teams from Portsmouth when required.

In addition to ongoing maintenance carried out in the region, BAE Systems also delivers maintenance and upkeeps to all six Hunt Class vessels at Portsmouth Naval Base.

BAE Systems' work on the Hunt Class has included:

Repair and upkeep of the ships' specialist Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) hulls;

Involvement in the Hunt re-propulsion programme designing for, and implementing, the installation of new engines to replace legacy systems;

Delivery of a wide range of capability insertions and systems upgrades to upgrade performance, capabilities and crew conditions.

"We're enormously proud of the successful part we've played in enabling the Royal Navy's mine countermeasure operations in the Gulf over the last 15 years," commented Jon Pearson, Warship Support Director, BAE Systems' Maritime Services business.

"This success is down to a number of factors; we have industry-leading engineering expertise, an ability to co-ordinate support to multiple ships and different classes of ships, experience in deployed support all over the world and excellent working relationships with the Royal Navy and our extensive supply chain. Perhaps most of all, our success is down to the dedication and flexibility of our teams, providing continuous support to address issues and maintain ship availability."

The Royal Navy and Ministry of Defence have today held an event in Portsmouth Naval Base to celebrate the 15 year anniversary of Operations Aintree and Kipion. BAE Systems was present at the event, alongside partners and other industry organisations which have supported the Royal Navy's strategy in the Gulf.

ENDS

About BAE Systems:

We provide some of the world's most advanced, technology-led defence, aerospace and security solutions and employ a skilled workforce of some 89,600 people in more than 40 countries. Working with customers and local partners, we develop technology that helps to save lives, protect borders and people, strengthen nations, and keep critical information and infrastructure secure.

Issued by:

BAE Systems plc

Media hotline: 44 (0) 7801 717739

www.baesystems.com

@BAESystemsplc

Ref: 82/2022

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220613005674/en/

Contacts:

Alex Perryman, Communications Advisor, BAE Systems Maritime Services

M: +44 (0) 7747 268317

E: alex.perryman@baesystems.com

Andrew Boyle, Senior Communications Manager, BAE Systems Maritime Services

M: +44 (0) 7717 516694

E: andrew.boyle@baesystems.com
LONDON, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Christie's announces First Editions, Second Thoughts: An Auction to Benefit English PEN, a landmark literary auction taking place online from 28 June - 12 July comprising First Edition books and works of art from contemporary artists and authors, each of which has been uniquely annotated, illustrated or added to by their creator.

First Editions, Second Thoughts (FEST) will raise much needed funds to support English PEN's work to defend free expression and campaign for writers who are at risk. The sale comprises over 80 annotated First Edition books by internationally renowned writers, including work by Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Salman Rushdie, John le Carre, Sebastian Faulks, Ben Okri, Ian McEwan, Bernardine Evaristo, and Philippe Sands. Art works from highly esteemed artists Anish Kapoor, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Ai Weiwei and Edmund de Waalare included in the auction.

Hilary Mantel's heavily annotated first editions of 'Bring Up the Bodies' and 'The Mirror and the Light' from her acclaimed Wolf Hall trilogy are both offered in the auction. Since it was established in 1969, only four writers, J.M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel, have won The Booker Prize twice. First editions annotated by these four authors are offered in the auction.

Each of the First Edition books is annotated by hand, a unique record of the author's response to their own work.Hilary Mantelcomments on the experience: 'The process of publication (however welcome and necessary) is a process of estrangement. Annotation gives your book back to you, but presents it multiplied. It rescues you from finished product, returns you to process. It gives form to the sub-voce commentary that accompanies every session of work: 'I couldbut I won'tand yet I could try'. A special kind of memory comes into play - how you were when such a phrase arrived, where you were: the way the light fell into the room. It's a creative process as much as a re-creative one. Sentences struggle and twist again under your hand. Things you might have said, and the various ways you might have said them, swim back into your consciousness. You realise, if you didn't know it already, that there's another book behind the book, and behind that, a series of shadow volumes, stretching back to infancy, before you could write at all'.

English PEN, one of the world's oldest human rights organisations, champions the freedom to write and the freedom to read around the world, and is the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries.

A selection of Auction Highlights include:

Monica Ali, Brick Lane.

London: Doubleday, 2003.

An extraordinary first edition, signed on the title page and extensively annotated by the author across 79 pages with over 1000 words of commentary. Monica Ali's insightful commentary pays close attention to the text, often highlighting what pleases, shocks or surprises her in her language choices, and pointing to key moments in the narrative.

(Estimate 1,500-2,000).

Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale.

London: Jonathan Cape, 1986.

First UK edition of Atwood's most celebrated work, extensively annotated by the author across 161 pages, with 1,137 words.

(Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other.

London: Hamish Hamilton, 2019.

A delightfully personal first edition, signed and annotated by the author with insightful notes on her influences and an account of the career-changing success of this Booker Prize winning novel. The final annotation is a charming summary of the novel's success: 'This book has revolutionised my career!'.

(Estimate 1,500-2,000).

John le Carre, (1931-2020). The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

London: Victor Gollancz, 1963.

First edition, part-annotated with the author's unfinished final reflections on his best-known work. The author passed away having annotated only the opening 45 pages of the book for the auction.

(Estimate 8,000-12,000).

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children.

London: Jonathan Cape, 1981.

'I had no idea that it would change my life': first British edition, signed by the author and with a fine inscription relating to the novel's enduring popularity and 'the real prizes of Literature'.

(Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.

First edition of a unique mystery novel, copiously annotated and illustrated by the author. The interventions in this copy are vivid, inventive, humorous, and generous in number and in spirit. Haddon's notes, in ink or coloured pencils, wind around the margins like fireworks.

(Estimate 2,000-3,000).

Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies. London: Fourth Estate, 2012.

First edition of the Booker Prize-winning novel, signed and abundantly annotated by the author with 4753 words of commentary across 179 pages. Her notes are acutely personal, offering a striking sense of the author's profound emotional attachment to the stories being told.

(Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Edmund de Waal, Letters to Camondo.

London: Chatto & Windus, 2021.

Annotated first edition, with accompanying porcelain tile, of a sequence of imagined letters to art collector Count Moise de Camondo.

(Estimate 3,000-5,000).

Ian McEwan, Atonement.

London: Jonathan Cape, 2001.

An exceptional first edition of Atonement, annotated by the author with over 4000 words of commentary His notes frequently point to his sources - both in personal experiences and in more formal research - and to such literary influences as Henry James and Virginia Woolf.

(Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers.

London: Faber & Faber, 2015.

First edition, copiously annotated and illustrated by the author, his annotations appear on almost every page of the book and relate to the literary influences that shaped him ('This page shows what I'm made of [] I'm made of what I've read'), his writing process ('I always start writing by drawing'), his thoughts about criticism ('Critics will wilfully misunderstand things') and setbacks ('Someone told me to "go away and write a proper book").

(Estimate 1,500-2,000).

Philippe Sands, President, English PEN, and professor of law at University College London, comments, 'It is thrilling to embark on a First Editions, Second Thoughts auction with Christie's. I am truly delighted to join such illustrious names with an annotated edition of East West Street, whose focus on international crimes assumes particular resonance in the face of the crime of aggression that is being perpetrated by Russia against Ukraine. Here, in the UK, and around the world, the rule of law is more important than ever, as intolerance, division, and threats to freedom of expression are on the rise. Today, the work of English PEN is more important and relevant than ever, and this wonderful auction will help in its vital work.'

Margaret Ford, Christie's International Head of Books & Manuscripts comments, 'Christie's is delighted to support the important work of English PEN by presenting an extraordinary array of literary masterpieces at auction. These works, uniquely annotated by their authors for the auction, offer new insights into the work, life and career of some of the most important writers of our generation. As such, they are "copies of record" which will excite collectors, readers and literary enthusiasts around the globe.'

Daniel Gorman, Director, English PEN, comments, 'It is an honour to partner with Christie's for this auction to benefit English PEN, as we continue the increasingly urgent and vital work of campaigning for writers at risk, and for freedom of expression in the UK and across the world. We are hugely grateful to the contributors, some of the most well-known and well-loved authors and artists of our time, who have generously looked back and annotated some of their finest work.'

Mark Wiltshire, Specialist, Books and Manuscripts and Head of Sale comments, 'It is a great privilege to handle the sale of these extraordinary books in support of English PEN. The authors' annotations are personal, profound, insightful, and frequently surprising, adding a unique layer of intimacy to some of the most celebrated texts published in our lifetime. To read them is to feel incredibly close to the process of creation. I anticipate strong interest from collectors and institutions from around the world.'

Estimates range from 1,000 to 20,000 and bidding on most lots will start from 100.

A selection of lots from First Editions, Second Thoughts: An Auction to Benefit English PEN will be on view and exhibition from 6 - 15 June within The Art of Literature: Auction Highlights Exhibition taking place at Christie's headquarters in St James's, London, as part of London Now. Please see www.christies.com for timings.

All lots in the First Editions, Second Thoughts auction will also be on view and open to the public in a standalone exhibition from 8 - 11 July at Christie's.

Christies and English PEN are delighted to be hosting a series of events open to the public, as follows:

Events:

3 July 2022 10.30am

First Editions, Second Thoughts

Writers return to their work and record their thoughts by hand in a First Edition. Elif Shafak invites Anne Enright (The Green Road), Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China), David Nicholls (One Day), Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet) and Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring) to discuss their second thoughts.

9 July 2022 10.30am

Philippe Sands - East West Street: Lviv 1945/2022

Human rights lawyer and President of English PEN Philippe Sands reflects on past and current events in Ukraine, free expression and writing, in his own work and across the world. Chaired by Claire Armistead.

To book your place at the above events where numbers are limited please go to Christies.com and apply via the following link click here.

To learn more about the work of English PEN please click here.

Please see the link here to access drop box images of the works illustrated along with a list of the authors, artists and their First Edition or work of art within the auction.

Please credit Christie's Images 2022 for all imagery.

About English PEN

Founded in 1921, English PEN is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations, championing the freedom to write and read. We are the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries. With the support of our members - a community of readers, writers and activists - we protect freedom of expression whenever it is under attack, support writers facing persecution around the world, and celebrate contemporary international writing with literary prizes, grants, events, and our online magazine PEN Transmissions.

English PEN's work is made possible through core funding from Arts Council England and the TS Eliot Foundation alongside the support of members, project partners and Silver PEN partners.

https://www.englishpen.org

About Christie's

Founded in 1766, Christie's is a world-leading art and luxury business. Renowned and trusted for its expert live and online auctions, as well as its bespoke private sales, Christie's offers a full portfolio of global services to its clients, including art appraisal, art financing, international real estate and education. Christie's has a physical presence in 46 countries, throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific, with flagship international sales hubs in New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris and Geneva. It also is the only international auction house authorized to hold sales in mainland China (Shanghai).

Christie's auctions span more than 80 art and luxury categories, at price points ranging from $200 to over $100 million. In recent years, Christie's has achieved the world record price for an artwork at auction (Leonardo da Vinci's Salvador Mundi, 2017), for a single charitable collection sale (the Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller, 2018), and for a work by a living artist (Jeff Koons' Rabbit, 2019).

Christie's Private Sales offers a seamless service for buying and selling art, jewellery and watches outside of the auction calendar, working exclusively with Christie's specialists at a client's individual pace.

Recent innovations at Christie's include the groundbreaking sale of the first NFT for a digital work of art ever offered at a major auction house (Beeple's Everydays, March 2021), with the unprecedented acceptance of cryptocurrency as a means of payment. As an industry leader in digital innovation, Christie's also continues to pioneer new technologies that are redefining the business of art, including the creation of viewing and bidding experiences that integrate augmented reality, global livestreaming, buy-now channels, and hybrid sales formats.

Christie's is dedicated to advancing responsible culture throughout its business and communities worldwide, including achieving sustainability through net zero carbon emissions by 2030, and actively using its platform in the art world to amplify under-represented voices and support positive change.

Browse, bid, discover, and join us for the best of art and luxury at: www.christies.com or by downloading Christie's apps.

The COVID-related re-opening status of our global locations is available here.

*Please note when quoting estimates above that other fees will apply in addition to the hammer price - see Section D of the Conditions of Sale at the back of the sale catalogue.

*Estimates do not include buyer's premium. Sales totals are hammer price plus buyer's premium and are reported net of applicable fees.

Images available on request.

FOLLOW CHRISTIE'S ON:

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Pinterest

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1838260/Christies_First_Editions_Second_Thoughts.jpg

PRESS CONTACT:

Charlotte Brown

+44 (0)7920 504674

charlottebrown@christies.com
Following the annual general meeting held on June 1st, 2022, Hexaom's board of directors decided to separate the roles of chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer and to create the role of deputy chief executive officer.

As a result, HEXAOM confirmed that as of June 1st, 2022, the CEO position is entrusted to Loic Vandromme with by his side Eric Vandromme and Antoine Vandromme appointed as deputy chief executive officers, the latter also pursuing their roles as regional managers.

Following the renewal of his term of office as a director during the annual general meeting, Patrick Vandromme was reappointed chairman of the board of directors whereas Philippe Vandromme will remain a director. Both will continue to contribute their expertise and experience to the board of directors and the company's general management.

This long-prepared transition of the general management team will guarantee the continuity of the company's family and human-sized governance as well as the sustainability of its performance, values, and ambitions.

Loic Vandromme has held various roles in the company since 2005: sales, marketing, digital, operational management of a subsidiary, and member of the executive committee. In 2018, he was appointed secretary general alongside the chairman and chief executive officer, Patrick Vandromme. He has in-depth knowledge of the group and the markets in which it operates.

Eric and Antoine Vandromme, appointed deputy CEOs, are also respectively regional managers of the Occitanie and Hauts-de-France sales regions. They have been with the company since 2006 and 2010 and have extensive knowledge of the group and expertise in their industry. Alongside Loic Vandromme, they embody the values and culture of the group and represent the 5th generation of governance at Hexaom.

They are supported by the group's key executives with whom they have worked closely on the executive committee since 2012. The members of this committee remain dedicated the new management.

"It is with great enthusiasm that Philippe and I hand over the reins to Loic, Antoine, and Eric, who are supported by exceptional employees both within the group's management bodies and the various group subsidiaries. Together, we have successfully taken on many challenges and made our group stronger by expanding our business into the renovation, real estate development and land development markets, in addition to services. Our position as a leader in home building gives us a solid footing to gain more market shares year by year and to capitalize on the reputation we have established with our customers, suppliers, and partners. Finally, we are handing over a healthy company with a high net cash position, allowing the 5th generation to look to the future with confidence and to carry out new value adding projects," states Patrick Vandromme.

Next press release: 2022 Q2 Revenue, August 4th, 2022, after market close.



ABOUT THE GROUP



Since 1919, five generations of the same family have successively taken over the helm of Hexaom, a group that drives and federates an ecosystem of 46 brands and subsidiaries with complementary expertise. A unique story of family entrepreneurship characterized by its stability in a complex market sector.

The group, real estate and land developer, leader in the home building and renovation markets in France currently serves more than 14,000 customers a year, has built more than 105,000 houses, has carried out over 85,000 renovations, employs more than 2,200 people, and recorded revenue of 997 million in 2021.

HEXAOM equities are eligible for PEA-PME equity savings plan.

HEXAOM is listed on Euronext Paris - Compartment B.

CONTACTS HEXAOM

Patrick Vandromme

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Tel: 02 33 80 66 61

E-mail: pvandromme@hexaom.fr

EDIFICE Communication

Analyst/Investor/Press Relations

Tel: 06 31 35 99 50

E-mail: hexaom@edifice-communication.com Jean-Christophe Godet

Chief Financial Officer

Tel: 02 33 80 66 61

E-mail: finances@hexaom.fr

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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE/ June 13, 2022 / The Power Play by The Market Herald has announced the release of new interviews with Datametrex, Numinus Wellness, Eat Well Group, and Baroyeca Gold & Silver on their latest news.

The Power Play by The Market Herald provides investors with a quick snapshot of what they need to know about the company's latest press release through exclusive insights and interviews with company executives.

Datametrex (TSXV:DM) acquires EV Connect Solutions Inc.

Datametrex (DM) has announced the acquisition of EV Connect Solutions Inc. for $10M in shares. The company issued 66,666,667 common shares for $0.15 per share. EV Connect Solutions is a private Ontario company that is focused on the emerging global electric vehicle charging infrastructure market. Datametrex CEO Marshall Gunter sat down with Sabrina Cuthbert to discuss the news.

For the full interview with Marshall Gunter and to learn more about Datametrex's news, click here.

Numinus Wellness Inc. (TSX:NUMI) acquires Novamind and announces executive appointments

Numinus Wellness (NUMI) has completed the acquisition of Novamind Inc. Numinus now operates 13 wellness clinics, four clinical research facilities and a dedicated psychedelics research lab. Numinus also announced the appointments of Dr. Reid Robison as Chief Clinical Officer and Dr. Paul Thielking as Chief Science Officer. Numinus Founder and CEO Payton Nyquvest sat down with Coreena Robertson to discuss the news

For the full interview with Payton Nyquvest and to learn more about Numinus Wellness' news, click here.

Eat Well Group (CSE:EWG) reports Q4 and full-year 2021 results

Eat Well Group's portfolio companies generated combined revenues of $57,936,019 in 2021. Total Eat Well Group assets at the company's fiscal year-end, including its portfolio companies, grew 1,082 per cent to $59,627,414 as of November 30, 2021. CEO Marc Aneed sat down with Sabrina Cuthbert to discuss the company's highlights.

For the full interview with Marc Aneed and to learn more about Eat Well Group's updates, click here.

Baroyeca Gold & Silver (TSXV:BGS) receives first assay results from phase 2 drill program

Baroyeca (BGS) has announced the first assay results from its phase 2 drilling program at its flagship Atocha high-grade silver project in Tolima, Colombia. Baroyeca reports assay results of up to almost three quarters of a kilo per tonne silver equivalent. Baroyeca President Raul Sanabria sat down with Sabrina Cuthbert to discuss the updates.

For the full interview with Raul Sanabria and to learn more about Baroyeca's updates, click here.

Interviews for The Power Play by The Market Herald are released daily. To learn more about the companies featured in The Power Play or to explore our other interviews visit The Power Play by The Market Herald.

About The Market Herald

The Market Herald Canada is the leading source of authoritative breaking stock market news for self-directed investors. Our team of Canadian markets reporters, editors and technologists covers the entire listed company universe in Canada. We cover over 3,985 businesses, their people, their investors, and their customers. We write the stories that move the Canadian capital markets.

DISCLAIMER: Report Card Canada Media Ltd. ("Report Card") is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Market Herald Limited, an Australian company ("Market Herald"). Report Card is not an advisory service, and does not offer, buy, sell, or provide any other rating, analysis or opinion on the securities we discuss. We are retained and compensated by the companies that we provide information on to assist them with making information available to the public. All information available on themarketherald.ca and/or this press release should be considered as commercial advertisement and not an endorsement, offer or recommendation to buy or sell securities. Report Card is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority in any province or territory of Canada, will not be performing any registerable activity as defined by the applicable regulatory bodies and do not provide nor claim to provide investment advice or recommendations to any visitor of this site or readers of any content on or originating from themarketherald.ca. Market Herald and/or its affiliates and/or their respective officers, directors or employees may from time to time acquire, hold or sell securities and/or commodities and/or commodity futures contracts in certain underlying companies mentioned in this site and which may also be clients of Market Herald's affiliates. In such instances, Market Herald and/or its affiliates and/or their respective officers, directors or employees will use all reasonable efforts to avoid engaging in activities that would lead to conflicts of interest and Market Herald and/or its affiliates will use all reasonable efforts to comply with conflicts of interest disclosures and regulations to minimize any conflict. All the information on this document and/or the website - themarketherald.ca - is published in good faith and for general information purpose only. Report Card does not make any warranties about the completeness, reliability, and accuracy of this information. Any action you take upon the information you find on this document and/or website (themarketherald.ca) is strictly at your own risk. Report Card will not be liable for any losses and/or damages in connection with the use of our website. From our website, you can visit other websites by following hyperlinks to such external sites. While we strive to provide only quality links to useful and ethical websites, we have no control over the content and nature of these sites. These links to other websites do not imply a recommendation for all the content found on these sites. Site owners and content may change without notice and may occur before we have the opportunity to remove a link which may have gone 'bad'. Please be also aware that when you leave our website, other sites may have different privacy policies and terms which are beyond our control. Please be sure to check the Privacy Policies of these sites as well as their "Terms of Service" before engaging in any business or uploading any information.

CONTACT:

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Brianna Anthony

brianna.anthony@themarketherald.ca

themarketherald.ca

SOURCE: The Market Herald

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/704904/The-Power-Play-by-The-Market-Herald-Releases-Interviews-with-Datametrex-Numinus-Wellness-Eat-Well-Group-and-Baroyeca-Gold-Silver


MOUNTAIN VIEW (dpa-AFX) - A senior software engineer at Google has been put on administrative leave after the individual went public with claims that an artificial intelligence developed by the company has shown signs of intelligence of an eight-year-old in a blog.



The engineer has also claimed that the 'sentient' ai can also easily pass the Turing test.



Blake Lamoine, the engineer who has been with the Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) subsidiary for around seven years, told Washington Post, that Google's Language Model for Dialogue Applications or LaMDA is capable of engaging in a complex conversation about emotions and other sentient subjects very freely. During its conversation about religion, consciousness and laws of robotics, the AI has described itself as a 'person' rather than a technology. The AI has also asked the company to treat it as an employee, rather than property as it wants to serve the human race. The engineer released excerpts of his conversation, which, at times, reads like a conversation between a human and an intergalactic species.



The engineer has been put on administrative leave on June 6 for not consulting the seniors before going public with his findings, which has violated the company's confidentiality policies.



Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel told the Post, 'Our team - including ethicists and technologists - has reviewed Blake's concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it). [...] It doesn't make sense to do so by anthropomorphizing today's conversational models, which are not sentient. These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences and can riff on any fantastical topic.'







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Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - James Bay Resources Limited (CSE: JBR) ("James Bay" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that its shareholders approved all resolutions brought before them at the Company's Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") held in Toronto on June 10, 2022.

The matters approved at the Meeting include the following:

The election of Stephen Shefsky, Jon Pereira, Jean Gauthier, Adeniyi Olaniyan, and Wayne Egan as directors of the Company;





The re-appointment of MNP LLP as auditors of the Company for the ensuing year and the fixing of the auditors' remuneration; and





By special resolution, approval for an amendment of the Company's articles to allow the board of directors to change the name of the Company to such name as the board may approve.

The Company also announces that it intends to extend the exercise period of a total of 4,316,667 common share purchase warrants, all of which are exercisable at $0.12 per common share (collectively, the "Warrants"). The Warrants were issued pursuant to a non-brokered private placement which closed on July 31, 2020 and have an original expiry date of July 31, 2022. The Company proposes to extend the expiry date for the Warrants by an additional 12 months and accordingly, the new expiry date for the Warrants will be 5:00 P.M. EST on July 31, 2023. All other terms and conditions of the Warrants, including the exercise price, remain unchanged. The extension of the Warrants is subject to acceptance by the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "CSE").

About James Bay Resources Limited

James Bay is a Canadian resource company and trades on the CSE under the symbol "JBR". Please visit the James Bay website at www.jamesbayresources.com.

Disclaimer

This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the Company's operations, the CSE's approval of the warrant extension terms, and the change of the Company's name. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "projects", "intends", "anticipates", or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or "variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "can", "could", "would", "might", or "will" be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of James Bay Resources Limited to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: risks related to the Company's business generally risks related to operations, construction delays and cost overruns, the actual results of exploration, development and construction activities, conclusions of economic evaluations, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, future commodity prices, as well as those factors discussed in the sections relating to risk factors of our business filed in James Bay Resources Limited's required securities filings on SEDAR. Although James Bay Resources Limited has attempted to identify important factors that could cause results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results to be materially different from those anticipated, described, estimated, assessed or intended. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking statements will prove 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. James Bay Resources Limited does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that are incorporated by reference herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

For further information about James Bay, please contact:

Stephen Shefsky

President and CEO

Tel: 416-366-4200

sshefsky@jamesbayresources.com

The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.



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To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127597
ATLANTA (dpa-AFX) - Beverage giant Coca-Cola (KO) is teaming up with Brown-Forman, the distiller of Jack Daniel's, to make a cocktail of coke and the Tennessee whiskey. Jack Daniel's & Coca-Cola RTD, inspired by the classic bar cocktail, will be made with Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey and Coca-Cola. The beverage will be available in markets around the world, with initial launch planned for Mexico in late 2022. 'This relationship brings together two classic American icons to deliver consumers a taste experience they love in a way that is consistent, convenient, and portable,' said Lawson Whiting, CEO and President of Brown-Forman Corporation, the largest American-owned spirit and wine company. The can and packaging will include clear responsibility symbols stating that it is to be enjoyed only by consumers of legal drinking age. The global benchmark for alcohol beverage volume is 5% but will vary depending on the market. A zero sugar version of the beverage will also be available. This will be the beverage giant's fourth new alcoholic drink in two years, but the first one under under its Coca Cola brand. The company has already partnered with Molson Coors Beverage on Topo Chico Hard Seltzer and Simply Spiked Lemonade, and Constellation Brands on Fresca Mixed Cocktails. Earlier this year, Coca Cola's rival Pepsi also teamed up with Sam Adams brewer Boston Beer to launch Hard Mtn Dew, a sugar-free canned cocktail with 5% alcohol by volume. 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.


DEARBORN (dpa-AFX) - A majority of the EV manufacturers in the country are asking the US Congress to lift the cap on the number of vehicles that are eligible for government credit in order to encourage the population to tilt towards electric vehicles. The CEOs of General Motor Company (GM), Ford Motor Company (F), Stellantis N.V (STLA), and Toyota Motor Corp. have sent a letter to the decision-makers of the state to increase the existing number of 200,000 plug-in EV per company that will be eligible for the $7,500 tax credit. The companies have argued that this decision has allowed the makers to keep the price of the vehicles in check despite the growing cost of manufacturing. 'However, recent economic pressures and supply chain constraints are increasing the cost of manufacturing electrified vehicles which, in turn, puts pressure on the price to consumers,' said the letter seen first by Reuters. 'Eliminating the cap will incentivize consumer adoption of future electrified options,' they wrote. The argument also includes how the subsidy has allowed the American EV makers to fend off Chinese and European competitors as of now and as the industry matures, the government help is going to be crucial in setting the tone of the race.



'The coming years are critical to the growth of the electric vehicle market and as China and the EU continue to invest heavily in electrification, our domestic policies must work to solidify our global leadership in the automotive industry,' the letter added.



The CEOs also informed that the four companies have decided to pledge another $170 billion through 2030 to the industry.







Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - Japan will on Tuesday release final April figures for industrial production, highlighting a modest day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. In March, output was up 0.3 percent on month and down 1.7 percent on year, while capacity utilization sank 1.6 percent on month. China will see May numbers for foreign direct investment; in April, FDI surged 20.5 percent on year. Hong Kong will provide Q1 figures for industrial production; in the previous three months, output was up 5.8 percent on year. Australia will release Q1 data for house prices; in the previous three months, house prices jumped 4.7 percent on quarter and 23.7 percent on year. New Zealand will see May numbers for food prices; in April, food prices jumped 6.4 percent on year. 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.
Phoenix, Arizona--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - Chantico, whose cuisine draws upon the diversity and abundance of ingredients found throughout Mexico, has been honored with Emerging Restaurant of the Year by the Arizona Restaurant Association (ARA). In winning the award, Chantico, founded by owner/chef Walter Sterling, was judged to exhibit exemplary talent and to be a pacesetter in the food industry.





Chantico

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8668/127591_a5c35502343e8ab1_001full.jpg

The ARA has been holding the Foodist Awards since 2013, but the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and resulting closures of restaurants caused a two-year hiatus. In February 2022, the ARA announced the awards would be returning. Restaurants were judged in categories ranging from Innovative Fast Bites, to Best Beverage Program, to Emerging Restaurant of the Year.

"Our team is excited to have won such an important award," says Chantico. "It is especially meaningful to us because we all worked so hard during COVID-19 to run a successful Mexican restaurant even as we were operating at half-capacity. We are very happy that our menu of organic Mexican dishes that include vegan, gluten-free, and other healthy options has been so well-received by the public."

Chantico says that it is rolling out a new menu. "We like to offer a mix of classic dishes as well as a few surprises for our customers on a regular basis," the restaurant says. "We seek to be cost-competitive, so we keep a close eye on the commodities markets, whose pricing frequently fluctuates. We also know that both vegans and meat-lovers love Mexican food, so we aim to mix up our menu often so that everyone can find dishes they will enjoy."

Chantico adds that it has been seeing an increase in sales of its Saturday and Sunday brunches. Alcohol consumption has also increased. "This may be because we are one of the only Mexican restaurants that offers red chili sauce, green chili sauce, dark mole, and rice and beans that are all vegan. We are seeing an increased interest in vegan dining from our customers."

With the 2022 Foodist Awards behind them, Chantico's kitchen and customer service teams will focus on providing the same excellent service that led to their nomination. "We want everyone who visits us to say that our authentic Mexican dishes are the best they have ever had," Chantico says. "Incredible food, wonderful ambiance, and friendly servers: that is the Chantico experience, and we hope it will lead to us being nominated again next year."

Chantico, founded by Owner/Chef Walter Sterling, is a casual Mexican dining restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona. It is a scratch kitchen and imports 100% heirloom corn that is nixtamalized in-house and turned into masa and tortillas. Chantico uses volcanic stones just like those seen in villages to grind the masa and aerate it. For more about Chantico's Mexican food, please visit https://www.chanticophx.com/ or contact:

Chantico

602-699-5018

info@chanticophx.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127591
evolutionQ, a Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada- and Aachen, Germany-based company advancing quantum-safe cybersecurity products, closed US$5.5m in Series A funding.

Quantonation, a Paris-based VC fund dedicated to quantum technologies, led the round, with participation from The Group Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to recruit top global talent and expand teams in Germany and Canada, advance product development, expand service offerings, and grow sales across Europe and North America.

Led by Dr. Michele Mosca, Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Norbert Lutkenhaus, Chief Technology Officer, and Dr. David Jao, Chief Cryptographer, evolutionQ provides BasejumpQDN(TM), a quantum-safe software platform that allows organizations building a network based on Quantum Key Distribution devices to deploy and manage quantum technologies throughout their network.

In addition to developing cybersecurity products that protect against quantum computers, the company provides services such as risk assessments for clients wishing to safeguard their digital infrastructures.

FinSMEs

13/06/2022
Israel Secondary Fund, a Tel Aviv, Israel based venture capital firm, raised its 3rd secondary fund, totaling USD312m.

The investors who participated in the current fundraising include several of Israels largest institutional investors, such as Migdal Insurance, Altshuler Shaham, Bank Hapoalim, as well as leading institutions, pension funds, endowments and family offices from Europe and the U.S.A.

ISF is a technology-focused secondary fund headed by Dror Glass, Nir Linchevski, and Eva Hubsman. The firm provides liquidity in the inefficient private tech market, performing quick and creative transactions acquiring holdings in private companies and venture capital funds. Its target audience is entrepreneurs, investors, and employees who hold options and shares in companies in addition to limited partner stakes in funds. ISF invested directly and indirectly in approximately 220 companies. Its portfolio includes many successful companies and funds, including Myheritage, Aidoc, WSC, Innovid, Valens, Pixellot, Earnix, Papaya Gaming, Verbit, Arbe, Yotpo, Waze, Glilot, Vertex, Coralogix, Solaredge and more.

In 2017, the firm raised its 2nd fund of 100 million dollars and currently manages over half a billion dollars focused on secondary transactions in the Israeli technology market.

FinSMEs

13/06/2022
Lemoine was placed on leave by Google for breaking confidentiality policy after sharing the conversation, and many believe he might be a bit of a doomsayer.



A Google spokesperson, Brian Gabriel, pretty much told us to calm down and not embrace the apocalypse quite yet.



He said that the A.I is just an insanely huge database of conversations, so its probably just selecting the best bits of conversation that fit the deep questions rather than having a chat like any old mate would - basically we're all freaking out over nothing.


English French

REGULATED INFORMATION





Preliminary documents for the Extraordinary General Meeting have been made available on companys website





Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium, 13 June 2022, 7am CEST  BONE THERAPEUTICS (Euronext Brussels and Paris: BOTHE), the cell therapy company addressing unmet medical needs in orthopedics, invites its shareholders and the holders of registered subscription rights and registered convertible bonds of the Company to the extraordinary general meeting to be held on Wednesday 13 July 2022 as from 11:00 am CEST, at Rue du Fort 24, 6000 Charleroi, Belgium.

The notice for the extraordinary general meeting, including the agenda of the day as well as the motions to vote, is published today in the Belgian Official Gazette and La Libre Belgique.

The documents and preliminary information concerning the extraordinary general meeting have been made available and can be consulted on Bone Therapeutics website, under the section Investors / Shareholders meeting, in compliance with the applicable law and regulations.

It is also possible to receive the documents without charge upon simple request by email to generalassembly@bonetherapeutics.com or by telephone on +32 (0)493 09 73 66. The documents are also available at the Companys headquarters, Rue Granbonpre 11, Building H, 1435 Mont-St-Guibert, Belgium.





About Bone Therapeutics

Bone Therapeutics is a leading biotech company focused on the development of innovative products to address high unmet needs in orthopedics and other diseases. Currently Bone Therapeutics is concentrating specifically on the development of its most advanced clinical asset, the allogeneic cell therapy platform, ALLOB.

Bone Therapeutics core technology is based on its cutting-edge allogeneic cell and gene therapy platform with differentiated bone marrow sourced Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSCs) which can be stored at the point of use in the hospital. Its leading investigational medicinal product, ALLOB, represents a unique, proprietary approach to bone regeneration, which turns undifferentiated stromal cells from healthy donors into bone-forming cells. These cells are produced via the Bone Therapeutics scalable manufacturing process. Following the CTA approval by regulatory authorities in Europe, the Company has initiated patient recruitment for the Phase IIb clinical trial with ALLOB in patients with difficult tibial fractures, using its optimized production process. ALLOB continues to be evaluated for other orthopedic indications including spinal fusion, osteotomy, maxillofacial and dental.

Bone Therapeutics cell therapy products are manufactured to the highest GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) standards and are protected by a broad IP (Intellectual Property) portfolio covering ten patent families as well as knowhow. The Company is based in the Louvain-la-Neuve Science Park in Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium. Further information is available at www.bonetherapeutics.com.





For further information, please contact:

Bone Therapeutics SA

Miguel Forte, MD, PhD, Chief Executive Officer

Tel: +32 (0)493 09 73 66

investorrelations@bonetherapeutics.com

For Belgian Media and Investor Enquiries:

Bepublic

Bert Bouserie

Tel: +32 (0)488 40 44 77

bert.bouserie@bepublicgroup.be

International Media Enquiries:

Image Box Communications

Neil Hunter / Michelle Boxall

Tel: +44 (0)20 8943 4685

neil.hunter@ibcomms.agency / michelle@ibcomms.agency

For French Media and Investor Enquiries:

NewCap Investor Relations & Financial Communications

Pierre Laurent, Louis-Victor Delouvrier and Arthur Rouille

Tel: +33 (0)1 44 71 94 94

bone@newcap.eu





Certain statements, beliefs and opinions in this press release are forward-looking, which reflect the Company or, as appropriate, the Company directors current expectations and projections about future events. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions could adversely affect the outcome and financial effects of the plans and events described herein. A multitude of factors including, but not limited to, changes in demand, competition and technology, can cause actual events, performance or results to differ significantly from any anticipated development. Forward looking statements contained in this press release regarding past trends or activities should not be taken as a representation that such trends or activities will continue in the future. As a result, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release any update or revisions to any forward-looking statements in this press release as a result of any change in expectations or any change in events, conditions, assumptions or circumstances on which these forward-looking statements are based. Neither the Company nor its advisers or representatives nor any of its subsidiary undertakings or any such persons officers or employees guarantees that the assumptions underlying such forward-looking statements are free from errors nor does either accept any responsibility for the future accuracy of the forward-looking statements contained in this press release or the actual occurrence of the forecasted developments. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release.
Dublin, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Window Covering Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report by Type (Blinds & Shades, Curtains), by Application, by Distribution Channel, by Installation, by Technology, by Region, and Segment Forecasts, 2022-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global window covering market size is expected to reach USD 60.16 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 7.6% during the forecast period. Rising income levels, changing lifestyles, and the influence of other cultures have all contributed to increased consumer expenditure on home decor. Over the forecast period, all of these aspects are expected to present considerable growth possibilities to market vendors.



Furthermore, with increasing urbanization and globalization, home decor has been gaining more prominence in developed countries, as well as emerging economies such as India, Brazil, and China. This scenario is boosting the demand for window coverings in the residential sector. Moreover, different technologies and improvements, such as sensor-based coverings, together with an increase in the number of smart homes, provide growth potential.



Smart solutions are bringing connected shades, blinds, and curtains to the home interior, significantly improving comfort and convenience, while always maintaining the right balance of natural and artificial light, occupant well-being, and convenience. For example, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020, Somfy, a leader in smart motorization solutions for homes and buildings, unveiled its new Smart Shading and Sonesse ULTRA 30 WireFree Zigbee Li-Ion motor.



The market faces a challenge from the easy availability of low-quality and counterfeit products at low rates, as well as the major slowing of the supply chain as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, with the outbreak of COVID-19 and the resultant restrictions, market sellers reported a drop in bespoke window covering sales. Additionally, a sizable DIY industry has evolved as a means of facilitating economical restoration.



The market is consolidated in nature, with the presence of a large number of international players and a few regional players. The market is driven by innovation in design, mergers & acquisitions, and joint ventures. Key players are focusing on smart solutions to expand their customer bases and stay ahead of the competition. Along with strong economic growth, these trends will contribute to market growth in the foreseeable term.



Window Covering Market Report Highlights

North America was the largest regional division in terms of revenue in 2021. The demand for window curtains and drapes for interior spaces is booming in the North American market due to the increasing penetration of smart technologies in households in the U.S. and Canada.

The blinds and shades segment is projected to register the fastest CAGR of 7.9% during the forecast period. Due to technological developments such as remote control shades and automatic weather sensor shades, blinds and shades are becoming more popular.

During the forecast period, the online segment is expected to expand at a faster CAGR. The increasing availability of a wide range of products from different brands, free delivery, and seasonal discounts on e-commerce platforms are among the major factors driving the segment.

Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1. Methodology and Scope



Chapter 2. Executive Summary



Chapter 3. Window Covering Market Variables, Trends & Scope

3.1. Market Introduction

3.2. Penetration & Growth Prospect Mapping

3.3. Impact of COVID-19 on the Window Covering Market

3.4. Industry Value Chain Analysis

3.4.1. Sales/Retail Channel Analysis

3.4.2. Profit Margin Analysis

3.5. Market Dynamics

3.5.1. Driver Impact Analysis

3.5.2. Restraint Impact Analysis

3.5.3. Industry Challenges

3.5.4. Industry Opportunities

3.6. Business Environment Analysis

3.6.1. Industry Analysis - Porter's Five Forces

3.6.1.1. Supplier Power

3.6.1.2. Buyer Power

3.6.1.3. Substitution Threat

3.6.1.4. Threat from New Entrant

3.6.1.5. Competitive Rivalry

3.7. Roadmap of Window Covering Market

3.8. Market Entry Strategies



Chapter 4. Consumer Behavior Analysis

4.1. Demographic Analysis

4.2. Consumer Trends and Preferences

4.3. Factors Affecting Buying Decision

4.4. Consumer Product Adoption

4.5. Observations & Recommendations



Chapter 5. Window Covering Market: Type Estimates & Trend Analysis

5.1. Type Movement Analysis & Market Share, 2021 & 2030

5.2. Blinds & Shades

5.2.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

5.3. Curtains

5.3.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

5.4. Shutters

5.4.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

5.5. Others

5.5.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)



Chapter 6. Window Covering Market: Application Estimates & Trend Analysis

6.1. Application Movement Analysis & Market Share, 2021 & 2030

6.2. Residential

6.2.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

6.3. Commercial

6.3.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)



Chapter 7. Window Covering Market: Distribution Channel Estimates & Trend Analysis

7.1. Distribution Channel Movement Analysis & Market Share, 2021 & 2030

7.2. Online

7.2.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

7.3. Offline

7.3.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

7.3.2. Supermarkets/Hypermarkets

7.3.3. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

7.3.4. Specialty Stores

7.3.5. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

7.3.6. Multi Brand Stores

7.3.7. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)



Chapter 8. Window Covering Market: Installation Estimates & Trend Analysis

8.1. Installation Movement Analysis & Market Share, 2021 & 2030

8.2. New Construction

8.2.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

8.3. Retrofit

8.3.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)



Chapter 9. Window Covering Market: Technology Estimates & Trend Analysis

9.1. Technology Movement Analysis & Market Share, 2021 & 2030

9.2. Automatic

9.2.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)

9.3. Manual

9.3.1. Market Estimates and Forecast, 2017-2030 (USD Million, Million Sq. Ft)



Chapter 10. Window Covering Market: Regional Estimates & Trend Analysis



Chapter 11. Competitive Analysis

11.1. Key Global Players, Recent Developments & Their Impact on the Industry

11.2. Key Company/Competition Categorization (Key Innovators, Market Leaders, Emerging Players)

11.3. Vendor Landscape

11.3.1. Key Company Market Share Analysis, 2021



Chapter 12. Company Profiles

12.1. Hunter Douglas

12.1.1. Company Overview

12.1.2. Financial Performance

12.1.3. Product Benchmarking

12.1.4. Strategic Initiatives

12.2. Lotus & Windoware, Inc.

12.2.1. Company Overview

12.2.2. Financial Performance

12.2.3. Product Benchmarking

12.2.4. Strategic Initiatives

12.3. Bombay Dyeing

12.3.1. Company Overview

12.3.2. Financial Performance

12.3.3. Product Benchmarking

12.3.4. Strategic Initiatives

12.4. Insolroll

12.4.1. Company Overview

12.4.2. Financial Performance

12.4.3. Product Benchmarking

12.4.4. Strategic Initiatives

12.5. Mariak

12.5.1. Company Overview

12.5.2. Financial Performance

12.5.3. Product Benchmarking

12.5.4. Strategic Initiatives

12.6. Welspun India Limited

12.6.1. Company Overview

12.6.2. Financial Performance

12.6.3. Product Benchmarking

12.6.4. Strategic Initiatives

12.7. Skandia Window Fashions

12.7.1. Company Overview

12.7.2. Financial Performance

12.7.3. Product Benchmarking

12.7.4. Strategic Initiatives

12.8. MechoShade Systems, LLC

12.8.1. Company Overview

12.8.2. Financial Performance

12.8.3. Product Benchmarking

12.8.4. Strategic Initiatives

12.9. Lafayette Interior Fashions

12.9.1. Company Overview

12.9.2. Financial Performance

12.9.3. Product Benchmarking

12.9.4. Strategic Initiatives

12.10. Comfortex Window Fashions

12.10.1. Company Overview

12.10.2. Financial Performance

12.10.3. Product Benchmarking

12.10.4. Strategic Initiatives



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/8rvwhq

Attachment
Pune, India, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Global Seamless Pipe Market to Witness Huge Growth Opportunities; Rapid Industrialization and Urbanization Worldwide to Favour Growth. The rising preference for seamless pipes is expected to drive the global seamless pipe market in the forecast period. In the oil and gas industry, seamless pipes are used across different applications which include upstream, midstream, and downstream operations. These pipes and long, hollow, and are used in the easy transport of products from one location to another. Liquids, slurries, gases, and small solids can be transported in these pipes. Moreover, these pipes are strong as compared to drawn or welded pipe.

One of the best advantages of these pipes is that they have an ability to withstand high pressures. As compared to welded pipes, seamless pipes are lighter and thinner, thereby reducing the manufacturing cost. This shows that these pipes are cost-effective. On the other hand, the performance and strength of welded pipes has increased owing to the increasing improvements in manufacturing process. Nevertheless, seamless pipes are still preferred on account of their favourable properties.





Request a Sample Copy of the Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/sample/seamless-pipe-market-101091





The information is shared by Fortune Business Insights in a report, titled Seamless Pipe Market Size, Share and Global Trend By Type (Hot Finished Pipes, Cold Finished Pipes), By Material (Steel & Alloys, Copper & Alloys, Aluminum & Magnesium Alloys, Nickel & Alloys), By Manufacturing Process (Mandrel Rolling, Multi-Stand Plug Mill, Cross-Roll Piercing & Pilger Rolling), By End-user Industry (Oil and Gas, Power Generation, Automotive, Aviation, Construction, Process Industry) and Geography Forecast till 2026.

The report clubs some of the essential details such as market size, growth, value, drivers, and opportunities. It further throes light on the current and future dynamics of seamless pipes and tubes across different regions. Furthermore, it offers valuable insights into the trends and developments that will positively impact the oil and gas industry. The report offers a detailed evaluation of the competitive landscape by listing different strategies adopted by companies.

Modernization of Aging Pipes to Propel Growth



Over the past few years, the demand for high performance pipes is increasing owing to the expansions in energy and manufacturing sectors. This, coupled with rising modernization of aging pipes, is expected to drive the market. Owing to these seamless pipe market trends, the market growth is expected to increase in the forecast years. Another factor responsible for driving the market is rapid industrialization. Increasing use of high-corrosion resistant pipes in the seamless pipe manufacturing process is further driving the market.

The demand for these pipes is likely to increase as they can be used in harsh environment conditions such as extremely cold or extremely hot. Furthermore, these pipes are used in several applications which include ship building, pipeline infrastructure, and others. Considering these factors, the market is anticipated to rise considerably during the forecast horizon.

However, increasing duties and tariffs in different products may hamper the growth of the market. In addition to this, trade war between the US and China is also expected to restrict the market growth in the years to come.





Click here to get the short-term and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on this Market. Please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/seamless-pipe-market-101091

Increasing Oil and Gas Activities in China and India to Stimulate Growth in Asia Pacific Market

From a geographical standpoint, Asia Pacific is anticipated to lead the global seamless pipe market through the forecast years. Rapid industrialization in countries such as Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh is likely to create attractive growth opportunities. This, coupled with increasing oil and gas downstream activities in China and India, is predicted to uplift the market in this region. Rising support from governments in these countries further forecasts to drive the market.

The market in the Middle East sees a steady demand for these pipes owing to the rising deep sea exploration. The market in Africa is expected to showcase the maximum growth potential for the market in the foreseeable future. The market in Europe is expected to exhibit higher CAGR on account of the increasing demand for oil and gas pipeline projects.

The report highlights some of the key players operating in the global market. These include:



Maharashtra Seamless Ltd. (MSL)

Kamal Steel

Zaffertec S.L

Alco

Stahlrohr GmbH

The Indian Seamless Metal Tubes Limited

IPP Group

Robor

U. S. Steel Tubular Products

Tubecon

American Piping Products Inc.

ArcelorMittal

Nippon

United Metallurgical Company

Jindal





Pre Book: Seamless Pipe Market Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/101091





Global Seamless Pipe Market Segmentation:

By Type



Hot Finished Pipes

Cold Finished Pipes

By Material

Steel & Alloys

Copper & Alloys

Aluminum & Magnesium Alloys

Nickel & Alloys

Others

By Manufacturing Process

Mandrel Rolling

Multi-Stand Plug Mill

Cross-Roll Piercing & Pilger Rolling

By End-user Industry

Oil and Gas

Power Generation

Automotive

Aviation

Construction

Process Industry

Others

By Geography:

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LONDON, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vector.ai, the productivity platform for freight forwarders, today announced HBI , a freight forwarder specializing in maritime and air transport, as a new customer. Vector.ais technology will automate workflows across HBIs accounts payable, customs, and pre-alert operations.



The move aims to support HBIs global expansion plans by supercharging their operational scalability and flexibility during one of the most challenging periods in recent supply chain history. The age of disruption has been characterized by ongoing COVID-19 turbulence, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and rising tensions over detention and demurrage charges. The Vector.ai platform will enable HBI to embed automation throughout the shipment lifecycle and empower its team to deliver outstanding customer service amid rapidly changing marketing conditions.

We are thrilled that HBI are leveraging Vector.ai technology to drive greater operational efficiency and assist in their exciting international expansion, said James Coombes, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Vector.ai. Shippers are becoming increasingly savvier about sourcing strategic partners, who match best-in-class domain expertise with the right tools to navigate supply chain volatility. HBI recognise that.

Vector.ais solution will use artificial intelligence to understand, triage and act on incoming shipment data, saving HBIs operators countless hours chasing information, manually keying into systems and reconciling against downstream systems. The platforms real-time, continuous processing will enable HBI operators to handle shipments more quickly and with more certainty for their customers.

Pierre Desnottes, Chief Operating Officer, HBI added, Technology is a critical driver of growth, it allows us to build more resilient and flexible supply chains, which is particularly important in todays tumultuous landscape. Vector.ai offers a comprehensive platform equipped to handle a wide array of operational processes, which will allow our team to dedicate more time to optimizing client satisfaction.

HBIs use of Vector.ais suite of capabilities will initially launch at the companys French headquarters with sights set on implementing the automation tools globally, across all forwarding operations.

About Vector.ai

Vector.ai are an automated operating system for Freight Forwarders. From bookings to accounts payable workflows, the solution aims to fully automate the shipment lifecycle. Trusted by some of the worlds largest multinational freight forwarders, the Vector.ai platform handles over 1.3 million transactions per month and is deployed to thousands of users in over 20 countries across Europe, Asia, Australasia, and the USA.

About HBI

The HBI group is an independent Freight Forwarder with over forty years of recognized expertise, specialising in maritime and air transport. Headquartered in Marseille, HBI has branches across the major French logistics hubs and sites extending around the world covering Asia, Africa, Europe and North America regions.

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TORONTO, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eloro Resources Ltd. (TSX-V: ELO; OTCQX: ELRRF; FSE: P2QM) (Eloro, or the Company) is pleased to provide an update on its preliminary metallurgical testwork program for the Iska Iska silver-tin polymetallic project in the Potosi Department, southern Bolivia. The work program including testwork for development of a preliminary metallurgical flowsheet and preliminary mineralogical characterization, is being carried out by Blue Coast Research Ltd. (Blue Coast) based in Parksville, BC. The objective is to develop the preliminary flotation flowsheet to maximize lead, zinc and precious metals into saleable concentrates in the Santa Barbara polymetallic deposit and to develop a preliminary flowsheet for tin in both the Santa Barbara and the deeper tin-dominant mineralization.

Blue Coast has world-class metallurgical testing, analytical services, flowsheet development, consulting, and operational support. Their excellent team has been augmented with the addition of Mr. Mike Hallewell, C.Eng., a senior independent mineral processing consultant based in Cornwall, England, who has extensive specialist knowledge in the recovery of tin at mining operations and exploration projects worldwide.

The metallurgical testing is being directed by Richard Gowans, P.Eng., Principal Metallurgist for Micon International Limited, who is an independent Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101.

Tom Larsen, CEO of Eloro, commented: The metallurgical testing program at Blue Coast is progressing well. The initial focus of their work was on the Santa Barbara polymetallic mineralization for Ag, Zn and Pb recovery based on samples from discovery hole DHK15 and hole DHK-18. The tin-rich zone in hole DSB-06 was also selected for testing but at that time it was uncertain how this mineralization was connected to the Santa Barbara polymetallic deposit. However, with further drilling and solid work by our geological and geophysical team, we now know that there is extensive tin mineralization at depth beneath the polymetallic mineralization. Once testing is completed on DSB-06, we will be adding additional samples from tin-rich holes to enable further development of an appropriate flow sheet for tin. While arsenic and other potentially deleterious elements are being tracked during the testwork program, these are not anticipated to be a material issue at the levels in current tests.

Metallurgical Samples

The samples used for the preliminary program completed to date comprise three representative metallurgical samples from existing drill core. The initial three composites are:

Composite drill hole DHK-15, from 131 m to 198 m, mineralized breccia.

Composite drill hole DHK-18, from 76 m to 140 m, mineralized dacitic envelope.

Composite drill hole DSB-06, from 413 m to 477 m, tin-rich mineralized zone.



Approximately 60 m of quarter-core from each drill hole was selected for these three metallurgical composite samples. The head analyses for these three composites are presented in Table 1. It is noted that the arsenic (As) grade is relatively low, being less than = 0.03% for all the three composite samples. Although not anticipated to be a material issue at these levels, the As and other potentially deleterious elements will be tracked during the testwork program.

Table 1: - Metallurgical Sample Head Analyses

Sample ID

Au Ag Bi Cd Cu In Pb Zn Sn As Fe S S- ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm % % % ppm % % % DHK-15 0.02 29.6 34 120 114 30 1.21 2.48 0.12 289 2.37 3.51 3.07 DHK-18 0.02 32.1 14 185 370 24 1.01 2.89 0.12 178 3.03 4.49 4.37 DSB-06 0.03 5.80 25 0.6 103 <20 0.01 0.01 0.49 169 4.89 4.10 4.23

Note: ppm = grams per tonne (g/t)

The initial testwork completed by Blue Coast at the end of May 2022 included preliminary mineralogical characterization studies, open circuit sulphide flotation scoping tests and locked cycle flotation tests using composites DHK-15 and 18. The work conducted on DHK-15 and 18 factored into consideration the preliminary test work conducted by the Universidad Tecnica de Oruro on different samples.

The DSB-06 sample is extracted from deeper higher-grade tin mineralization that is seen to replace the polymetallic lead-zinc-silver-tin mineralization type at depth and this sample has become the subsequent focus of the ongoing tin studies at Blue Coast. Additional tin-rich samples will be added for further testing after the initial test program is completed.

Mineralogical Characterization of Metallurgical Composites

The Iska Iska composites DHK-15, DHK-18 and DSB-06 were analyzed using the TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyzer (TIMA), a fully automated analytical scanning electron microscope, to measure bulk mineralogy, sulphide grain size and liberation to support the metallurgical test program. In addition, a suite of electron microprobe analyses was completed on various sulphide and oxide species to better understand overall mineral chemistry and tin deportment.

Sulphide minerals in base metal composites DHK-15 and DHK-18 consisted of mainly sphalerite, galena and pyrite. Sulphide mineral liberation was very good at the test grind of 80% passing (P80) 70 microns and flotation testwork, described below, was able to achieve good lead-zinc separation. Non-sulphide gangue minerals in all composites consisted of quartz, various phyllosilicate minerals including micas, chlorite and kaolinite, and minor Fe oxides.

Cassiterite (a tin oxide mineral) was the dominant tin mineral identified in tin composite DSB-06. Cassiterite was moderately liberated (69% of grains had liberation of 80% or better at the test grind of P80 70 microns). Cassiterite formed middling particles with pyrite, rutile, quartz and iron oxides. Pyrite in DBS-06 was well liberated. Initial flotation testwork, described below, focused on separating pyrite from the cassiterite.

Microprobe analyses were completed on a group of pyrite, sphalerite, galena and cassiterite grains in the metallurgical composites. Tin was identified in trace amounts within the structure of galena and sphalerite in the base metal composites, suggesting that the sulphide concentrates will contain a small amount of tin.

Geometallurgical Characterization

Separate to the testing of the metallurgical composites, a program of integrated mineralogical analysis is underway on a series of core slabs from Hole DSBU-03. This hole (see press release dated March 1, 2022) intersects both base metal and tin mineralization and is being used to develop a strong mineral reference library for the resource. The slabs have received hyperspectral (SWIR/VNIR), XRF and RGB scanning by GeologicAI and are now being prepared for petrographic analysis using TIMA and microXRF mapping. The combined data set will be used as a reference library to support the on-site automated core scanning program.

Lead-Zinc-Silver Flotation

Following a series of batch rougher and cleaner tests where the preliminary flotation circuit was developed, locked cycle tests (LCT) were completed using DHK-15 and DHK-18. A locked cycle flotation test is a series of identical batch flotation tests where recycled material from the previous cycle is added to the appropriate location in the flowsheet in the current cycle. The LCT is a standard method used to simulate continuous operating conditions.

The lead-zinc sequential flowsheet used for the LCTs included primary grinding followed by lead rougher flotation, lead rougher concentrate regrinding and 3 stages of lead cleaner. The lead rougher tailings and lead first cleaner tailings fed the zinc rougher stage, and similar to the lead circuit, the flowsheet included regrinding of zinc rougher concentrate followed by three zinc cleaner stages. The final residue streams were the zinc rougher tailings and zinc first cleaner tailings.

Each LCT comprised 6 cycles where the final cycles were deemed to be relatively stable and the circuit appeared to reach equilibrium. Summaries of the average results from the last 3 cycles for both tests are presented in Tables 2 and 3.

Table 2: Summary of Locked Cycle Test Average Results for Sample DHK-15

Product

Wt. %

Assays % Distribution Ag

(g/t) Pb

(%) Zn

(%) Fe

(%) S

(%) Ag Pb Zn Fe S Pb Cl.3 Conc. 2.0 1047 56.7 7.37 8.84 22.6 68.1 86.9 5.9 6.1 13.1 Zn Cl.3 Conc. 4.3 186 1.58 49.6 10.9 34.3 26.5 5.3 87.1 16.6 43.4 Zn Cl.1 Tail 5.2 23 0.58 1.16 19.8 21.7 4.0 2.3 2.4 36.3 33.0 Zn Ro. Tail 88.6 0 0.08 0.13 1.30 0.40 1.4 5.5 4.5 40.9 10.5 Calc. Head 100.0 30 1.28 2.45 2.83 3.39 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

The LCT DHK-15 lead recovery into the final lead concentrate grading 56.7% Pb was 86.9% while the silver grade was 1,047 g/t. The zinc recovery into a final zinc concentrate containing 49.6% Zn was 87.1%. The total silver recovery was 94.6%, including 68.1% and 26.5% into the lead and zinc concentrates, respectively.

Table 3: Summary of Locked Cycle Test Average Results for Sample DHK-18

Product

Wt. %

Assays % Distribution Ag

(g/t) Pb

(%) Zn

(%) Fe

(%) S

(%) Ag Pb Zn Fe S Pb Cl.3 Conc. 1.4 1057 56.2 7.10 5.40 18.9 43.5 72.2 3.4 2.2 5.9 Zn Cl.3 Conc. 5.0 258 1.40 51.4 8.27 32.0 37.6 6.4 86.9 12.0 35.2 Zn Cl.1 Tail 9.6 39 1.00 1.36 11.7 11.9 10.9 8.7 4.4 32.4 25.1 Zn Ro. Tail 84.0 3 0.17 0.19 2.21 1.84 8.1 12.6 5.2 53.4 33.8 Calc. Head 100.0 34 1.10 2.96 3.47 4.56 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

The lead recovery for LCT DHK-18 into the final lead concentrate grading 56.2% Pb was 72.2% while the silver grade was 1,057 g/t. The zinc recovery into a final zinc concentrate containing 51.4% zinc was 86.9%. The silver recovery totalled 81.0%, including 43.5% and 37.6% into the lead and zinc concentrates, respectively.

Samples of final concentrate products from each LCT have been submitted for multi-element analyses to assess the distribution of other potential valuable or deleterious components.

The preliminary flotation test results are very encouraging. The results received so far for drill hole sample DHK-15 are considered very good with high lead, zinc and silver recoveries, and although sample DHK-18 results were not quite as good for lead, zinc recovery was high and overall silver distribution into the final products was good.

Acceptable separate lead and zinc concentrates containing significant payable silver that adds considerable value to these products have been produced from both samples. Work will continue at Blue Coast and other metallurgical laboratories to fine tune the flotation conditions to maximize metal recoveries and quality of concentrates produced.

Tin Metallurgy

DSB-06 tin-rich sample contains low levels of lead, zinc and silver-bearing sulphides, the main sulphide mineral present in this sample being pyrite. No stannite (a tin sulphide mineral) is present in this sample; the tin mineralisation consists entirely of cassiterite.

The pyrite to cassiterite ratio in DSB-06 is circa 5:1. The Blue Coast approach has been initially focused on removing the pyrite prior to traditional beneficiation methods of cassiterite that are employed, using gravity followed by tin flotation. The pyrite is well liberated across all size fractions tested and therefore, the preliminary bulk sulphide flotation sulphur recoveries were good.

A preliminary study has identified that grinding the sample generates predominantly fine cassiterite grains that are more amenable to tin flotation technology. Staged comminution options will be considered to minimise fine cassiterite production in conjunction with staged gravity recovery of whatever coarse grained cassiterite is present and recoverable at, as early a stage in the process as possible.

Gravity release analysis by size testwork on bulk sulphide flotation tailings is in progress to identify the amenability of the mineralization to gravity concentration.

One bulk sulphide rougher flotation test followed immediately by a rougher tin flotation test has been conducted using unoptimized conditions. The rougher tin flotation cassiterite stage recovery was encouraging suggesting that the mineralization will be amenable to tin flotation technology. Further mineralogical work is in progress on the tin flotation rougher concentrates produced to ascertain if this rougher concentrate contains predominantly free liberated cassiterite that would therefore be expected to be upgraded by cleaning. Tin flotation is a universally practised technology and used by all the major hard rock tin mines globally as a method of recovering cassiterite that is too fine grained for conventional gravity concentration.

The tin mineralogy and physical competence will be linked to geological attributes. This will become a key feature in contextualising any variances in these parameters across the deposit. The GeologicalAI scanner, which is now on site and will be operational shortly, and the geometallurgical work noted above, will be very important in characterizing the geological attributes.

The test work is too premature to quote tin recovery numbers, but the initial mineralogy shows that the tin minerals are all in the form of cassiterite with insignificant amounts of stannite. Furthermore, the preliminary testing indicates that tin flotation will be a key recovery route and the preliminary tin flotation test work results are encouraging.

Qualified Person

The metallurgical testing is being directed by Richard Gowans, P.Eng., Principal Metallurgist for Micon International Limited, who is an independent Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101. Mr. Gowans. has reviewed and approved the technical content of this news release.

Dr. Osvaldo Arce, P. Geo., General Manager of Eloros Bolivian subsidiary, Minera Tupiza, and a Qualified Person in the context of NI 43-101, supervised all exploration work at Iska Iska. Dr. Bill Pearson, P.Geo., Executive Vice President Exploration for Eloro, and who has more than 45 years of worldwide mining exploration experience including extensive work in South America, manages the overall technical program, working closely with Dr. Osvaldo Arce, P.Geo. Dr. Quinton Hennigh, P.Geo., Senior Technical Advisor to Eloro and Independent Technical Advisor, Mr. Charley Murahwi P. Geo., FAusIMM of Micon International Limited are regularly consulted on technical aspects of the project.

Eloro is utilizing both ALS and AHK for drill core analysis, both of whom are major international accredited laboratories. Drill samples sent to ALS are prepared in both ALS Bolivia Ltdas preparation facility in Oruro, Bolivia and the preparation facility operated by AHK in Tupiza with pulps sent to the main ALS Global laboratory in Lima for analysis. More recently Eloro has had ALS send pulps to their laboratory at Galway in Ireland. Eloro employs an industry standard QA/QC program with standards, blanks and duplicates inserted into each batch of samples analyzed with selected check samples sent to a separate accredited laboratory.

Drill core samples sent to AHK Laboratories are prepared in a preparation facility installed and managed by AHK in Tupiza with pulps sent to the AHK laboratory in Lima, Peru. Au and Sn analysis on these samples is done by ALS Bolivia Ltda in Lima. Check samples between ALS and AHK are regularly done as a QA/QC check. AHK is following the same analytical protocols used as with ALS and with the same QA/QC protocols. Turnaround time continues to improve, as laboratories return to more normal staffing levels.

Eloro Resources at the PDAC

Eloro will be participating at the PDAC 2022 convention in Toronto and invites you to visit us at Booth IE3326 (Investors Exchange) in the South Building, Metro Toronto Convention Centre from June 13-15, 2022.

About Iska Iska

Iska Iska silver-tin polymetallic project is a road accessible, royalty-free property, wholly controlled by the Title Holder, Empresa Minera Villegas S.R.L. and is located 48 km north of Tupiza city, in the Sud Chichas Province of the Department of Potosi in southern Bolivia. Eloro has an option to earn a 99% interest in Iska Iska.

Iska Iska is a major silver-tin polymetallic porphyry-epithermal complex associated with a Miocene possibly collapsed/resurgent caldera, emplaced on Ordovician age rocks with major breccia pipes, dacitic domes and hydrothermal breccias. The caldera is 1.6km by 1.8km in dimension with a vertical extent of at least 1km. Mineralization age is similar to Cerro Rico de Potosi and other major deposits such as San Vicente, Chorolque, Tasna and Tatasi located in the same geological trend.

Eloro began underground diamond drilling from the Huayra Kasa underground workings at Iska Iska on September 13, 2020. On November 18, 2020, Eloro announced the discovery of a significant breccia pipe with extensive silver polymetallic mineralization just east of the Huayra Kasa underground workings and a high-grade gold-bismuth zone in the underground workings. On November 24, 2020, Eloro announced the discovery of the SBBP approximately 150m southwest of the Huayra Kasa underground workings.

Subsequently, on January 26, 2021, Eloro announced significant results from the first drilling at the SBBP including the discovery hole DHK-15 which returned 129.60 g Ag eq/t over 257.5m (29.53g Ag/t, 0.078g Au/t, 1.45%Zn, 0.59%Pb, 0.080%Cu, 0.056%Sn, 0.0022%In and 0.0064% Bi from 0.0m to 257.5m. Subsequent drilling has confirmed significant values of Ag-Sn polymetallic mineralization in the SBBP and the adjacent CBP. A substantive mineralized envelope which is open along strike and down-dip extends around both major breccia pipes. Continuous channel sampling of the Santa Barbara Adit located to the east of SBBP returned 442 g Ag eq/t (164.96 g Ag/t, 0.46%Sn, 3.46% Pb and 0.14% Cu) over 166m including 1,092 g Ag eq/t (446 g Ag/t, 9.03% Pb and 1.16% Sn) over 56.19m. The west end of the adit intersects the end of the SBBP.

Since the initial discovery hole, Eloro has released a number of significant drill results in the SBBP and the surrounding mineralized envelope which along with geophysical data has defined a target zone 1400m along strike, 500m wide and that extends to a depth of 600m. This zone is open along strike to the northwest and southeast as well as to the southwest. The Companys nearer term objective is to outline a maiden NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource within this large target area. This work is advancing well with the mineral resource targeted to be completed in Q3 2022. Exploration drilling is also planned on other major targets in the Iska Iska Caldera Complex, including the Porco and Mina 2 areas.

About Eloro Resources Ltd.

Eloro is an exploration and mine development company with a portfolio of gold and base-metal properties in Bolivia, Peru and Quebec. Eloro has an option to acquire a 99% interest in the highly prospective Iska Iska Property, which can be classified as a polymetallic epithermal-porphyry complex, a significant mineral deposit type in the Potosi Department, in southern Bolivia. Eloro commissioned a NI 43-101 Technical Report on Iska Iska, which was completed by Micon International Limited and is available on Eloros website and under its filings on SEDAR. Iska Iska is a road-accessible, royalty-free property. Eloro also owns an 82% interest in the La Victoria Gold/Silver Project, located in the North-Central Mineral Belt of Peru some 50 km south of Barricks Lagunas Norte Gold Mine and Pan American Silvers La Arena Gold Mine. La Victoria consists of eight mining concessions and eight mining claims encompassing approximately 89 square kilometres. La Victoria has good infrastructure with access to road, water and electricity and is located at an altitude that ranges from 3,150 m to 4,400 m above sea level.

For further information please contact either Thomas G. Larsen, Chairman and CEO or Jorge Estepa, Vice-President at (416) 868-9168.

Information in this news release may contain forward-looking information. Statements containing forward looking information express, as at the date of this news release, the Companys plans, estimates, forecasts, projections, expectations, or beliefs as to future events or results and are believed to be reasonable based on information currently available to the Company. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.




VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orla Mining Ltd. (TSX: OLA; NYSE: ORLA) (Orla or the "Company") and Gold Standard Ventures Corp. (Gold Standard or GSV) (TSX: GSV; NYSE: GSV) are pleased to announce that they have entered into a definitive agreement (the Arrangement Agreement) whereby Orla will acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Gold Standard by way of a court-approved plan of arrangement (the Transaction).



Gold Standards key asset is the 100%-owned South Railroad Project (South Railroad), a feasibility-stage, open pit, heap leach project located on the prolific Carlin trend in Nevada. In February 2022, Gold Standard completed a robust Feasibility Study and permitting activities are currently underway. Gold Standard also owns the Lewis Project (Lewis), a large, strategically located, prospective land package on the Battle Mountain trend in Nevada.

Jason Simpson, Chief Executive Officer of Orla Mining  This acquisition advances our strategy of creating stakeholder value through responsibly building and operating a portfolio of high-margin, cash-generating assets with superior geological prospectivity. The South Railroad Project is analogous to our recently completed Camino Rojo mine  a low capital intensity, open pit, heap leach project in a desirable location with exploration upside. We have the team, partners, and financial resources to develop this quality asset and we are ready to go.

Under the terms of the Transaction, Gold Standard shareholders will receive, in exchange for each Gold Standard common share (a Gold Standard Share) held, 0.1193 of a common share of Orla (each whole share, an Orla Share) and C$0.0001 (the Consideration). The Consideration implies a purchase price of C$0.655 per Gold Standard Share, or gross consideration of C$242 million, and represents a 35% premium based on the close of Gold Standard's and Orla's share price on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) on June 10, 2022 and a 35% premium based on Gold Standards 10-day volume weighted average price (VWAP) on the TSX for the period ended June 10, 2022. Existing shareholders of Orla and Gold Standard will own approximately 87% and 13% of the pro forma company, respectively, following the close of the Transaction.

ACQUISITION HIGHLIGHTS AND STRATEGIC RATIONALE

Continues Orlas strategy of creating value for all stakeholders by responsibly building and operating high-margin mines in stable jurisdictions with superior geology.

South Railroad is a low-complexity, feasibility-stage project with robust project economics and is analogous to the recently completed Camino Rojo Oxide Mine.

South Railroad combined with the Camino Rojo Oxide Mine and Orlas robust organic growth pipeline in Mexico and Panama creates a path towards annual gold production of 500,000 ounces at industry leading all-in cost margins.

Entry into Nevada with extensive and highly prospective land positions in the Carlin and Battle Mountain trends to underpin a long-term base of operations.

Increases Orlas proven and probable reserve base to 3.8 million gold ounces and its measured and indicated mineral resources to 12.3 million gold ounces.

South Railroad dovetails with Orlas robust project pipeline and is expected to be developed without further equity dilution for Orla shareholders.

BENEFITS TO GOLD STANDARD SHAREHOLDERS

Immediate upfront premium of 35%.

Ongoing exposure to future value creating milestones at South Railroad and Lewis, as well as Orlas robust portfolio of high-quality producing and development assets.

Participation in an established gold producer with proven construction capabilities, a strong exploration track record, and an industry leading low-cost growth profile.

Significantly enhanced financial strength, cash flow generation, institutional investor following, trading liquidity, and opportunity for index inclusion.

Leverages Orlas leadership and expertise in constructing and operating the Camino Rojo Oxide Mine, an open pit, heap leach operation with similar technical characteristics to the South Railroad project.

Provides access to a strong balance sheet and robust cash flow generation to fund the construction of South Railroad and future exploration initiatives at reduced dilution, financing, development, and execution risk.

Jason Attew, Chief Executive Officer of Gold Standard  We are excited to combine with Orla to create a leading gold producer with the potential to have multiple low-cost, low-complexity, open pit, heap leach operations in the near future. This transaction provides Gold Standard shareholders with an immediate upfront premium, exposure to a well-financed gold producer, and strong upside potential as Orla delivers and de-risks the combined asset portfolio. Based on their recent success in constructing the Camino Rojo Oxide Mine on schedule and under budget, we believe that Orla is an ideal partner to bring South Railroad into production.

ABOUT SOUTH RAILROAD AND LEWIS PROJECTS

South Railroad is a high-quality, open pit, heap leach project with robust economics. Key project highlights as outlined in the February 2022 Feasibility Study include:

Average annual gold production of 152 kozs over the first 4 years and 124 kozs 1 over the mine life

over the mine life Life-of-mine average all-in sustaining cash cost of approximately US$1,020 per gold ounce

Total gold production of 1.0 million ounces over an 8-year mine life 1

Initial capital of US$190 million

Average annual free cash flow of US$98 million over the first 4 years 2

US$315m after-tax net present value at a 5% discount rate 2

44% after-tax internal rate of return 2

Proven and probable reserve estimate of 1.6 million gold ounces at 0.77 g/t

Measured and indicated resource estimate of 1.8 million gold ounces at 0.74 g/t



Permitting of South Railroad is currently progressing towards a Record of Decision from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

South Railroad is situated within a prospective 21,000-hectare land package that provides future opportunities for resource expansion and conversion and the discovery of new deposits. Key oxide and sulphide exploration targets include Pinion SB, Jasperoid Wash, Dixie, LT, POD / Sweet Hollow, and North Bullion.

The Lewis Project is strategically located adjacent to the north and within the Plan of Operations boundary of Nevada Gold Mines Phoenix Operation. The Lewis Project has an inferred mineral resource of 206,000 ounces of gold at 0.83 g/t and several additional prospective targets that have the potential to expand the resource base.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS RECOMMENDATION

The Arrangement Agreement has been unanimously approved by the Board of Directors of Orla and Gold Standard. The Board of Directors of Gold Standard recommends that Gold Standard shareholders vote in favour of the Transaction.

TD Securities has provided a fairness opinion to the Board of Directors of Gold Standard stating that, as of the date of such opinion, and based upon and subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications stated in such opinion, the consideration to be received by Gold Standard shareholders under the Transaction is fair, from a financial point of view, to Gold Standard shareholders.

Paradigm Capital has provided a fairness opinion to a Special Committee of Gold Standard Directors stating that, as of the date of such opinion, and based upon and subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications stated in such opinion, the consideration to be received by Gold Standard shareholders under the Transaction is fair, from a financial point of view, to Gold Standard shareholders.

Trinity Advisors Corporation and Stifel GMP have provided fairness opinions to the Board of Directors of Orla, each stating that, as of the date of such opinions, and based upon and subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications stated in such opinion, the consideration to be paid under the Transaction is fair, from a financial point of view, to Orla.

Officers and Directors of Gold Standard, along with a key shareholder of Gold Standard, Newmont Corp. (Newmont), representing in aggregate approximately 5.7% of the issued and outstanding Gold Standard Shares, have entered into voting support agreements with Orla and have agreed to vote in favour of the Transaction.

ACQUISITION STRUCTURE

The Transaction will be effected by way of a court-approved plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) and will require approval by (i) 66% of the votes cast by Gold Standard shareholders, (ii) 66% of the votes cast by Gold Standard security holders (comprised of shareholders, option holders and restricted share unit holders) voting as a single class, at a meeting of Gold Standard securityholders (the Gold Standard Meeting), and (iii) a simple majority of the votes cast by Gold Standard shareholders, excluding certain related parties as prescribed by MI 61-101. The Gold Standard Meeting is expected to occur in August 2022. An information circular regarding the Transaction will be filed with regulatory authorities and mailed to Gold Standards securityholders in accordance with applicable securities laws. The Transaction is expected to be completed in August 2022 following the Gold Standard Meeting.

The completion of the Transaction remains subject to customary conditions, including receipt of all necessary court and regulatory approvals. The Arrangement Agreement includes customary representations and warranties of each party, non-solicitation covenants by Gold Standard, right-to-match provisions in favour of Orla in the event of a Superior Proposal (as defined in the Arrangement Agreement) and a termination fee in favour of Orla in the amount of C$7.3 million should the Arrangement Agreement be terminated in certain circumstances.

None of the securities to be issued pursuant to the Transaction have been or will be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act), and securities issued in the Transaction are anticipated to be issued in reliance on the exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act provided by Section 3(a)(10) thereof and will be issued pursuant to similar exemptions from applicable state securities laws. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Details regarding these and other terms of the Transaction are set out in the Arrangement Agreement, which will be available in due course on the Company and Gold Standards respective profiles on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov.

ADVISORS

Orlas financial advisors are Trinity Advisors Corporation and Stifel GMP and its legal advisors are Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP with respect to Canadian matters and Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP regarding US matters.

Gold Standards financial advisor is TD Securities. Paradigm Capital is financial advisor to a Special Committee of Gold Standard Directors. Gold Standard's legal advisors are Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP with respect to Canadian matters and Dorsey & Whitney LLP regarding US matters.

CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST DETAILS

Orla and Gold Standard will host a conference call on Monday June 13, 2022, at 10:00 AM, Eastern Time, to discuss highlights of the Transaction. Call and webcast details are outlined below:

Dial-In Numbers:

Conference ID: 5844017

Toll Free: 1 (888) 550-5302 International: 1 (646) 960-0685 Webcast: https://orlamining.com/investors/presentations-and-events/

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Camino Rojo

The mineral reserve estimate for the Camino Rojo Oxide Mine consists of 466 koz gold of proven reserves (18,067 k tonnes at 0.80 g/t gold) and 1,123 koz gold of probable reserves (49,296 k tonnes at 0.71 g/t gold) and the mineral resource estimate consists of 482 koz gold of measured resources (19,391 k tonnes at 0.77 g/t gold) and 1,681 koz gold of indicated resources (75,249 k tonnes at 0.70 g/t gold). The mineral resource estimate for the Camino Rojo Sulphide Project consists of 74 koz gold of measured resources (3,358 k tonnes at 0.69 g/t gold) and 7,221 koz gold of indicated resources (255,445 k tonnes at 0.88 g/t gold). For additional information, see the Companys technical report prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101) titled Unconstrained Feasibility Study NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Camino Rojo Gold Project  Municipality of Mazapil, Zacatecas, Mexico, dated January 11, 2021. Mineral resources are inclusive of mineral reserves.

Cerro Quema

The mineral reserve estimate for the Cerro Quema Oxide Project consists of 562 koz gold of probable reserves (21,700 k tonnes at 0.80 g/t gold). The mineral resource estimate at the Cerro Project consists of 1,023 koz gold of indicated resources (66,222 k tonnes at 0.48 g/t gold). For additional information, see the Companys technical report prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 titled Project Pre-Feasibility Updated NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Cerro Quema Project, Province of Los Santos, Panama dated January 18, 2022. Mineral resources are inclusive of mineral reserves.

South Railroad and Lewis

The mineral reserve estimate for the South Railroad Project consists of 333 koz of gold of proven reserves (8,960 k tonnes at 1.15 g/t gold) and 1,271 koz of probable gold reserves (56,239 k tonnes at 0.70 g/t gold). The open pit mineral resource estimate for the South Railroad Project consists of 343 koz of gold of measured resources (9,561 k tonnes at 1.12 g/t gold), 1,441 koz of indicated resources (65,761 k tonnes at 0.68 g/t gold), and 650 koz of gold of inferred resources (21,795 k tonnes at 0.93 g/t gold). The underground mineral resource estimate consists of 66 koz gold of inferred resources (457 k tonnes at 4.49 g/t gold). For additional detail, see Gold Standards technical report prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 titled South Railroad Project, Form 43-101F1 Technical Report, Feasibility Study, Elko County, Nevada dated March 14, 2022 and an effective date of February 23, 2022. Mineral resources are inclusive of mineral reserves.

The mineral resource estimate at the Lewis Project consists of 206 koz of gold of inferred resources (7.74 million tonnes at 0.83 g/t gold). For additional detail, see Gold Standards technical report prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 titled Technical Report and Mineral Resource Estimate for the Lewis Project, Lander County, Nevada, USA dated June 15, 2020 and an effective date of May 1, 2020.

Qualified Persons Statement

The scientific and technical information relating to Camino Rojo and Cerro Quema in this news release was reviewed and approved by Mr. J. Andrew Cormier, P. Eng., Chief Operating Officer of the Company, who is the Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101 standards.

The scientific and technical information related to South Railroad and Lewis in this news release was reviewed and approved by Mr. Mark Laffoon, P. Eng., Project Director of Gold Standard, who is the Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101 standards.

About Orla Mining Ltd.

Orla is operating the Camino Rojo Oxide Gold Mine, a gold and silver open-pit and heap leach mine, located in Zacatecas State, Central Mexico. The property is 100% owned by Orla and covers over 160,000 hectares. The technical report for the 2021 Feasibility Study on the Camino Rojo oxide gold project entitled Unconstrained Feasibility Study NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Camino Rojo Gold Project  Municipality of Mazapil, Zacatecas, Mexico dated January 11, 2021, is available on SEDAR and EDGAR under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com and www.sec.gov, respectively. The technical report is also available on Orlas website at www.orlamining.com. Orla also owns 100% of Cerro Quema located in Panama which includes a near-term gold production scenario and various exploration targets. Cerro Quema is a proposed open pit mine and gold heap leach operation. The technical report for the Pre-Feasibility Study on the Cerro Quema oxide gold project entitled Project Pre-Feasibility Updated NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Cerro Quema Project, Province of Los Santos, Panama dated January 18, 2022, is available on SEDAR and EDGAR under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com and www.sec.gov, respectively. The technical report is also available on Orlas website at www.orlamining.com.

About Gold Standard Ventures Corp.

Gold Standard owns the South Railroad Project, an open pit, heap leach gold project located in Elko County, Nevada. The project is part of a +21,000-hectare land package on the Carlin Trend and is 100% owned or controlled by Gold Standard.

For further information, please contact:

Orla Mining

Jason Simpson

President & Chief Executive Officer

Andrew Bradbury

Vice President, Investor Relations & Corporate Development

www.orlamining.com

info@orlamining.com

Gold Standard Ventures

Jason Attew

President & Chief Executive Officer

Michael McDonald

Vice President, Corporate Development & Investor Relations

www.goldstandardv.com

info@goldstandardv.com

Three figures accompanying this announcement are available at:



https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b850a976-567a-401f-a083-ef9b943dc542

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/940fe428-3a53-4735-a105-152c601408be

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/482686ec-f57d-4a70-b180-f08855834b85

Forward-looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking information and `forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation and within the meaning of Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, Section 21E of the United States Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, or in releases made by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, all as may be amended from time to time, including, without limitation, statements regarding: the potential benefits to be derived from the Transaction; the closing of the Transaction, including receipt of all necessary court, securityholder and regulatory approvals, and the timing thereof; Orlas production following completion of the Transaction and associated all-in sustaining costs; the economics of the South Railroad Project, including NPV, IRR, mine life, capital requirements and free cash flow; potential exploration at the South Railroad Project; receipt of the Record of Decision at South Railroad; the ability to develop South Railroad without further equity dilution to shareholders of the Company; prospective targets at the Lewis Project; the benefits of the Transaction to Gold Standard Shareholders; and mineral resource and reserve estimates. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts which address events, results, outcomes or developments that the Company expects to occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Companys management on the date the statements are made and they involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Certain material assumptions regarding such forward-looking statements were made, including without limitation, assumptions regarding the combined company following completion of the Transaction, completion of the Transaction, including receipt of required securityholder, regulatory and court approvals, the price of gold, silver, and copper; the accuracy of mineral resource and mineral reserve estimations; that there will be no material adverse change affecting the Company, Gold Standard or their respective properties; that all required approvals will be obtained, including concession renewals and permitting; that political and legal developments will be consistent with current expectations; that currency and exchange rates will be consistent with current levels; and that there will be no significant disruptions affecting the Company, Gold Standard or their respective properties. Consequently, there can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements involve significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to: the failure to obtain securityholder, regulatory or court approvals in connection with the Transaction; risks related to the successful integration of acquisitions; uncertainty and variations in the estimation of mineral resources and mineral reserves, including risks that the interpreted drill results may not accurately represent the actual continuity of geology or grade of the deposit, bulk density measurements may not be representative, interpreted and modelled metallurgical domains may not be representative, and metallurgical recoveries may not be representative; the Companys reliance on Camino Rojo and risks associated with its start-up phase; financing risks and access to additional capital; risks related to natural disasters, terrorist acts, health crises and other disruptions and dislocations, including by the COVID-19 pandemic; risks related to the Companys indebtedness; success of exploration, development, and operation activities; foreign country and political risks, including risks relating to foreign operations and expropriation or nationalization of mining operations; concession risks; permitting risks; environmental and other regulatory requirements; delays in or failures to enter into a subsequent agreement with Fresnillo Plc with respect to accessing certain additional portions of the mineral resource at Camino Rojo and to obtain the necessary regulatory approvals related thereto; the mineral resource estimations for Camino Rojo being only estimates and relying on certain assumptions; the Layback Agreement with Fresnillo Plc remaining subject to the transfer of surface rights; delays in or failure to get access from surface rights owners; risks related to guidance estimates and uncertainties inherent in the preparation of feasibility and pre-feasibility studies, including but not limited to, assumptions underlying the production estimates not being realized, changes to the cost of production, variations in quantity of mineralized material, grade or recovery rates, geotechnical or hydrogeological considerations during mining differing from what has been assumed, failure of plant, equipment or processes, changes to availability of power or the power rates, ability to maintain social license, changes to exchange, interest or tax rates, cost of labour, supplies, fuel and equipment rising, changes in project parameters, delays, and costs inherent to consulting and accommodating rights of local communities; uncertainty in estimates of production, capital, and operating costs and potential production and cost overruns; the fluctuating price of gold, silver, and copper; global financial conditions; uninsured risks; competition from other companies and individuals; uncertainties related to title to mineral properties; conflicts of interest; risks related to compliance with anti-corruption laws; volatility in the market price of the Company's securities; assessments by taxation authorities in multiple jurisdictions; foreign currency fluctuations; the Companys limited operating history; risks related to the Companys history of negative operating cash flow; litigation risks; intervention by non-governmental organizations; outside contractor risks; risks related to historical data; unknown labilities in connection with acquisitions; the Companys ability to identify, complete, and successfully integrate acquisitions; dividend risks; risks related to the Companys foreign subsidiaries; risks related to the Companys accounting policies and internal controls; the Companys ability to satisfy the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002; enforcement of civil liabilities; the Companys status as a passive foreign investment company for U.S. federal income tax purposes; information and cyber security; gold industry concentration; shareholder activism; risks associated with executing the Companys objectives and strategies, as well as those risk factors discussed in the Company's most recently filed management's discussion and analysis, as well as its annual information form dated March 18, 2022, to be available on www.sedar.com and www.sec.gov. Except as required by the securities disclosure laws and regulations applicable to the Company, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if managements beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

Cautionary Note to U.S. Readers

This news release has been prepared in accordance with Canadian standards for the reporting of mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates, which differ from the previous and current standards of the United States securities laws. In particular, and without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the terms mineral reserve, proven mineral reserve, probable mineral reserve, inferred mineral resources,, indicated mineral resources, measured mineral resources and mineral resources used or referenced herein and the documents incorporated by reference herein, as applicable, are Canadian mineral disclosure terms as defined in accordance with Canadian National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101) and the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (the CIM)  CIM Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves, adopted by the CIM Council, as amended (the CIM Definition Standards).

For United States reporting purposes, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) has adopted amendments to its disclosure rules (the SEC Modernization Rules) to modernize the mining property disclosure requirements for issuers whose securities are registered with the SEC under the Exchange Act, which became effective February 25, 2019. The SEC Modernization Rules more closely align the SECs disclosure requirements and policies for mining properties with current industry and global regulatory practices and standards, including NI 43-101, and replace the historical property disclosure requirements for mining registrants that were included in SEC Industry Guide 7. Issuers were required to comply with the SEC Modernization Rules in their first fiscal year beginning on or after January 1, 2021. As a foreign private issuer that is eligible to file reports with the SEC pursuant to the multi-jurisdictional disclosure system, the Company is not required to provide disclosure on its mineral properties under the SEC Modernization Rules and will continue to provide disclosure under NI 43-101 and the CIM Definition Standards. Accordingly, mineral reserve and mineral resource information contained or incorporated by reference herein may not be comparable to similar information disclosed by United States companies subject to the United States federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder.

As a result of the adoption of the SEC Modernization Rules, the SEC now recognizes estimates of measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources and inferred mineral resources. In addition, the SEC has amended its definitions of proven mineral reserves and probable mineral reserves to be substantially similar to the corresponding CIM Definition Standards that are required under NI 43-101. While the SEC will now recognize measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources and inferred mineral resources, U.S. investors should not assume that all or any part of the mineralization in these categories will be converted into a higher category of mineral resources or into mineral reserves without further work and analysis. Mineralization described using these terms has a greater amount of uncertainty as to its existence and feasibility than mineralization that has been characterized as reserves. Accordingly, U.S. investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources, or inferred mineral resources that the Company reports are or will be economically or legally mineable without further work and analysis. Further, inferred mineral resources have a greater amount of uncertainty and as to whether they can be mined legally or economically. Therefore, U.S. investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of inferred mineral resources will be upgraded to a higher category without further work and analysis. Under Canadian securities laws, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies, except in rare cases. While the above terms are substantially similar to CIM Definitions, there are differences in the definitions under the SEC Modernization Rules and the CIM Definition Standards. Accordingly, there is no assurance any mineral reserves or mineral resources that the Company may report as proven mineral reserves, probable mineral reserves, measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources and inferred mineral resources under NI 43-101 would be the same had the Company prepared the reserve or resource estimates under the standards adopted under the SEC Modernization Rules or under the prior standards of SEC Industry Guide 7.

1 Average based on the eight years in which both mining and stacking of ore occur. Excludes pre-production and residual leach years of operation.

2 Based on the assumed gold price in the Gold Standard feasibility study of US$1,650 per ounce.
CALGARY, Alberta, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canadian Premium Sand Inc. (CPS or the Company) (TSXV: CPS) is pleased to report the results from its Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) study and the receipt of a market report confirming the economic viability of manufacturing patterned solar glass at a site identified in Selkirk, Manitoba.



These studies support our decision to build North Americas only patterned solar glass manufacturing facility, stated Company President, Glenn Leroux. The business strategy of integrating our high-quality solar spec sand, Manitobas inexpensive renewable hydroelectricity, and proximity to our North American customer base through the Winnipeg logistics hub, is a highly attractive business plan that others cannot easily replicate.

The FEED study was carried out by cm.project.ing GmbH, an internationally recognized independent engineering firm, specializing in glass manufacturing facilities and processes. The market report specifically analyzed the North American market for patterned solar glass, and was completed by Clean Energy Associates, a global consulting firm specializing in the solar industry.

The market report conducted by Clean Energy Associates confirmed that patterned solar glass panels are the most efficient products on the market and can be expected to dominate industry demand for the next 20 years. Furthermore, the findings included a positive outlook for the long-term price of patterned solar glass in North America, further validating the Companys business model.

Since the Companys announcement of its intention to develop North Americas only patterned solar glass manufacturing facility, CPS has received strong levels of industry support for the project. The Company has commenced commercial discussions with the majority of solar panel manufacturers that have existing North American capacity, as well as a number of global manufacturing entities that are planning to establish a North American presence. To date, the Company has secured Expressions of Interest for the purchase of solar glass in excess of the first phase of planned facility output.

The FEED study focused on the design, capital needs and operating costs of a patterned solar glass manufacturing facility in Selkirk, Manitoba and a sand extraction facility located at the Companys wholly owned and permitted Wanipigow Sand Quarry, approximately 150 kms to the North. In addition to preliminary engineering design, the FEED study also included plant and equipment selection, production output flow with various product specifications as well as logistics considerations for raw materials and finished products.

Taking the FEED study and market report into consideration, the Company is advancing plans to develop its integrated solar glass manufacturing project in multiple largescale phases. Highlights of the first phase of the project include:

550 to 600 tonnes per day patterned solar glass manufacturing and coating facility Multiple production lines that accommodate tempered glass specifications ranging in thickness between 4.0mm and 1.8mm and the application of advanced anti-reflective and anti-soiling coatings Capable of supplying up to 4 GW of annual solar panel manufacturing





$400 to $500 million Class 4 capital cost estimate, which provides an 80% certainty level and includes costs for both solar glass manufacturing and sand extraction facilities Includes capital for land and certain common operating infrastructure that will enable CPS to efficiently add future production capacity to accommodate the anticipated growth in solar glass demand





Approximately $200 million of annual EBITDA based on full production capacity and current solar glass prices of approximately US$12/sq. m. CPS expects to be the lowest cost provider of patterned solar glass to the North American market due to the use of low-cost renewable hydroelectric energy, proximity to customers and the integration of CPSs wholly owned silica sand supply Taking the current capital cost estimate into consideration and other factors this EBITDA estimate supports an unlevered before-tax NPV10 of approximately $800 million and internal rate of return (IRR) of approximately 25%



Based on the growth profile of the market and the size of the Company-owned silica sand resource, CPS sees the potential to construct up to three additional equally sized manufacturing facilities at the same site. Through leveraging investment in common infrastructure, the second phase of the project that incorporates a doubling of manufacturing capacity, would increase the unlevered before-tax NPV10 to over $1.5 billion, the IRR to over 30% and is expected to be financed organically. Construction of the initial manufacturing facility and the associated silica sand extraction operation is estimated to take approximately two years to complete.

As reported on April 19, 2022, the Company has retained Green City Glass LLC to assist the Company in its selection of the key service providers needed to construct the Companys solar glass manufacturing facility. Green City Glass will also provide oversight in vendor selection, plant design, construction management, commissioning, staffing and preparation for efficient and profitable plant operations. This process will result in a Class 2 capital cost estimate, which will provide a 90%+ certainty level, by the second half of 2022, and further validate the projects strong economic returns for our current and future shareholders.

Additionally, the Company continues to advance other development initiatives that will bring the project to a shovel-ready status, by Q1 2023, including permitting, silica sand resource upgrading and testing and ongoing negotiations to secure firm commercial offtake agreements.

About Canadian Premium Sand Inc.

The Company is developing manufacturing capacity for ultra high-clarity patterned solar glass through a Company-owned facility to be located in Selkirk, Manitoba that utilizes the high-purity, low-iron silica sand from its wholly owned Wanipigow quarry leases and renewable Manitoba hydroelectricity. The Company is a reporting issuer in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Its shares trade on the TSXV under the symbol "CPS".

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.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Canadian Premium Sand Inc. Glenn Leroux Cam Deller President and Chief Executive Officer Chief Financial Officer glenn.leroux@cpsmail.com cam.deller@cpsmail.com Investor Relations IR@cpsmail.com 587.355.3714 www.cpsglass.com

Forward Looking Information



Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking statements relating to, without limitation, expectations, intentions, plans and beliefs, including information as to the future events, results of operations and the Companys future performance (both operational and financial) and business prospects. In certain cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as expects, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates, believes, plans, seeks, projects or variations of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results may or will be taken, occur or be achieved. Such forward-looking statements reflect the Company's beliefs, estimates and opinions regarding its future growth, results of operations, future performance (both operational and financial), and business prospects and opportunities at the time such statements are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or circumstances should change. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions made by the Company that are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. In particular, this press release contains forward-looking statements pertaining, but not limited, to: the market outlook and future pricing of solar glass; the plans to advance the first stage of the project; the capital cost estimate for the project; the ability to add future production capacity to accommodate the anticipated growth in solar glass demand; estimates of annual EBITDA; the expectation that CPS will be the lowest cost provider of patterned solar glass; NPV and IRR estimates; the potential to construct up to three additional equally sized manufacturing facilities at the same site and the benefits of such additional facilities; the timing for the construction of the initial manufacturing facility; the expectations that CPS will receive a Class 2 capital cost estimate and the timing for such estimate; the expectation that the project will provide for strong economic returns for our current and future shareholders; the other development initiatives the Company plans to advance; future development plans; industry activity levels; industry conditions pertaining to the solar glass manufacturing industry; the ability of and manner by which the Company expects to meet its capital needs; and the Company's objectives, strategies and competitive strengths. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous current assumptions, known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company and described in the forward-looking statements.

A number of factors, risks and uncertainties could cause results to differ materially from those anticipated and described herein including, among others: the effects of competition and pricing pressures; effects of fluctuations in the price of glass products and raw materials input costs; risks related to indebtedness and liquidity, including the Company's capital requirements; risks related to interest rate fluctuations and foreign exchange rate fluctuations; changes in general economic, financial, market and business conditions in the markets in which the Company operates; the Company's ability to obtain, maintain and renew required permits, licenses and approvals from regulatory authorities; the stringent requirements of and potential changes to applicable legislation, regulations and standards; the ability of the Company to comply with unexpected costs of government regulations; liabilities resulting from the Company's operations; the results of litigation or regulatory proceedings that may be brought against the Company; uninsured and underinsured losses; risks related to the transportation of the Company's products, including potential rail line interruptions or a reduction in rail car availability; the geographic and customer concentration of the Company; the ability of the Company to retain and attract qualified management and staff in the markets in which the Company operates; labor disputes and work stoppages and risks related to employee health and safety; general risks associated with the glass manufacturing and sand quarry industries, loss of markets, consumer and business spending and borrowing trends; limited, unfavorable, or a lack of access to capital markets; uncertainties inherent in estimating quantities of products; processing problems; the use and suitability of the Company's accounting estimates and judgments; and the other risk factors outlined in CPSs most recent Managements Discussion and Analysis which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in its forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will materialize or prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These statements speak only as of the date of this press release. Except as may be required by law, the Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements or information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Any financial outlook and future-oriented financial information contained in this press release regarding prospective financial performance, financial position, cash flows or EBITDA projections are based on assumptions about future events, including economic conditions and proposed courses of action based on managements assessment of the relevant information that is currently available. Projected operational information contains forward-looking information and is based on a number of material assumptions and factors, as are set out above. These projections may also be considered to contain future oriented financial information or a financial outlook. The actual results of the Company's operations for any period will likely vary from the amounts set forth in these projections and such variations may be material. Actual results will vary from projected results. Readers are cautioned that any such financial outlook and future-oriented financial information contained herein should not be used for purposes other than those for which it is disclosed herein. The forward-looking information and statements contained in this document speak only as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to publicly update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required pursuant to applicable laws

Market, Independent Third Party and Industry Data

Certain market, independent third-party and industry data contained in this press release is based upon information from government or other independent industry publications and reports or based on estimates derived from such publications and reports. Government and industry publications and reports generally indicate that they have obtained their information from sources believed to be reliable, but the Company has not conducted its own independent verification of such information. This press release also includes certain data derived from public filings made by independent third parties. While the Company believes this data to be reliable, market and industry data is subject to variations and cannot be verified with complete certainty due to limits on the availability and reliability of raw data, the voluntary nature of the data gathering process and other limitations and uncertainties inherent in any statistical survey. The Company has not independently verified any of the data from independent third-party sources referred to in this press release or ascertained the underlying assumptions relied upon by such sources.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

In this press release, CPS has used the following term (a Non-GAAP Financial Measure) which is not defined by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) but is used by management to evaluate the performance of CPS and its business: "EBITDA". EBITDA is defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. This measure may also be used by investors, financial institutions and others to assess CPSs performance and ability to service debt. Non-GAAP Financial Measures do not have standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Securities regulations require that Non-GAAP Financial Measures are clearly defined, qualified and reconciled to their most comparable IFRS financial measures. Except as otherwise indicated, Non-GAAP Financial Measures are calculated and disclosed on a consistent basis from period to period. Specific items may only be relevant in certain periods. The intent of Non-GAAP Financial Measures is to provide additional useful information to investors and analysts, and the measures do not have any standardized meaning under IFRS. The measures should not, therefore, be considered in isolation or used in substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. Other issuers may calculate Non-GAAP Financial Measures differently. Investors should be cautioned that EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to net earnings, cash flow from operating activities or other measures of financial results determined in accordance with GAAP as an indicator of CPSs performance.

Currency

All references to $ in this press release are to Canadian dollars, unless otherwise noted.

Endnote

Internal financial modeling based on: capital and operating cost details from the FEED study; current solar glass price data from Singapore Solar Exchange and PV InfoLink; and logistics quotes for delivery costs of solar glass to North American locations. Implicit in forward-looking information in respect of the EBITDA projections contained in this press release are certain current assumptions, including, among others, that the Company will continue to execute on its strategy of developing manufacturing capacity for solar glass, attracting customers and end-users, realize operational efficiencies from its integrated sand quarry, and extract procurement and cost synergies on time and on budget. Additional assumptions include no changes to the current economic environment, no material changes in interest rates and foreign exchange rates, procurement, development or supply costs, access to equity and debt capital and sufficient cash flow for ongoing operations. These assumptions are based on the fact that funding for the construction of the facility will be obtained, the project will receive final investment decision approval from the CPS board and the ultimate construction of the facility will proceed as scheduled and on budget, markets for solar glass and access to end markets. See also Forward Looking Information above.




Dublin, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Smart Speaker Market (2022-2027) by Intelligent Virtual Assistant, Components, Technology, Distribution Channel, End User, Geography, Competitive Analysis, and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The Global Smart Speaker Market is estimated to be USD 8.14 Bn in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 16.47 Bn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 15.14%.



Market Dynamics

Market dynamics are forces that impact the prices and behaviors of the Global Smart Speaker Market stakeholders. These forces create pricing signals which result from the changes in the supply and demand curves for a given product or service. Forces of Market Dynamics may be related to macro-economic and micro-economic factors. There are dynamic market forces other than price, demand, and supply. Human emotions can also drive decisions, influence the market, and create price signals.



As the market dynamics impact the supply and demand curves, decision-makers aim to determine the best way to use various financial tools to stem various strategies for speeding the growth and reducing the risks.

Company Profiles

The report provides a detailed analysis of the competitors in the market. It covers the financial performance analysis for the publicly listed companies in the market. The report also offers detailed information on the companies' recent development and competitive scenario. Some of the companies covered in this report are Alibaba, Altec Lansing, Apple, Asustek Computer, Baidu, Bose, Eufy, Google, Harman International Industries, Huawei Device, Lenovo, Marshall, etc.



Countries Studied

America (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, United States, Rest of Americas)

Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Rest of Europe)

Middle-East and Africa (Egypt, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Rest of MEA)

Asia-Pacific (Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan, Rest of Asia-Pacific)

Competitive Quadrant

The report includes Competitive Quadrant, a proprietary tool to analyze and evaluate the position of companies based on their Industry Position score and Market Performance score. The tool uses various factors for categorizing the players into four categories. Some of these factors considered for analysis are financial performance over the last 3 years, growth strategies, innovation score, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc.



Ansoff Analysis

The report presents a detailed Ansoff matrix analysis for the Global Smart Speaker Market. Ansoff Matrix, also known as Product/Market Expansion Grid, is a strategic tool used to design strategies for the growth of the company. The matrix can be used to evaluate approaches in four strategies viz. Market Development, Market Penetration, Product Development and Diversification. The matrix is also used for risk analysis to understand the risk involved with each approach.



The report analyses the Global Smart Speaker Market using the Ansoff Matrix to provide the best approaches a company can take to improve its market position.



Based on the SWOT analysis conducted on the industry and industry players, the analyst has devised suitable strategies for market growth.



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The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the Global Smart Speaker Market. The report includes in-depth qualitative analysis, verifiable data from authentic sources, and projections about market size. The projections are calculated using proven research methodologies.

The report has been compiled through extensive primary and secondary research. The primary research is done through interviews, surveys, and observation of renowned personnel in the industry.

The report includes an in-depth market analysis using Porter's 5 forces model and the Ansoff Matrix. In addition, the impact of Covid-19 on the market is also featured in the report.

The report also includes the regulatory scenario in the industry, which will help you make a well-informed decision. The report discusses major regulatory bodies and major rules and regulations imposed on this sector across various geographies.

The report also contains the competitive analysis using Positioning Quadrants, the analyst's Proprietary competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Market Dynamics

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Increasing Adoption of Smart Home Technology and the Presence of Smart Home Devices

4.1.2 Increase in Consumer Readiness to Invest in Trending Technologies and Rise in Usage of Smart Devices

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 Issues Related to Connectivity Range, Compatibility, and Power

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Development of Partnerships between Smart Home Manufacturers and Creators of Smart Speakers

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Privacy and Security Concerns of Users' Data



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Regulatory Scenario

5.2 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Ansoff Matrix Analysis



6 Global Smart Speaker Market, By Intelligent Virtual Assistant

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Alexa

6.3 Google Assistant

6.4 SIRI

6.5 Duero

6.6 Aligenie

6.7 Xiao AI



7 Global Smart Speaker Market, By Components

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Hardware

7.2.1 Processor

7.2.2 Memory

7.2.3 Power IC

7.2.4 Connectivity IC

7.2.5 Microphone

7.2.6 Speaker Driver

7.2.7 Audio IC

7.3 Software



8 Global Smart Speaker Market, By Technology

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Advanced Voice Control

8.3 Bluetooth

8.4 Physical Connection

8.5 Wi-Fi



9 Global Smart Speaker Market, By Distribution Channel

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Offline

9.3 Online



10 Global Smart Speaker Market, By End User

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Commercial

10.3 Personal



11 America's Smart Speaker Market

11.1 Introduction

11.2 Argentina

11.3 Brazil

11.4 Canada

11.5 Chile

11.6 Colombia

11.7 Mexico

11.8 Peru

11.9 United States

11.10 Rest of Americas



12 Europe's Smart Speaker Market

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Austria

12.3 Belgium

12.4 Denmark

12.5 Finland

12.6 France

12.7 Germany

12.8 Italy

12.9 Netherlands

12.10 Norway

12.11 Poland

12.12 Russia

12.13 Spain

12.14 Sweden

12.15 Switzerland

12.16 United Kingdom

12.17 Rest of Europe



13 Middle East and Africa's Smart Speaker Market

13.1 Introduction

13.2 Egypt

13.3 Israel

13.4 Qatar

13.5 Saudi Arabia

13.6 South Africa

13.7 United Arab Emirates

13.8 Rest of MEA



14 APAC's Smart Speaker Market

14.1 Introduction

14.2 Australia

14.3 Bangladesh

14.4 China

14.5 India

14.6 Indonesia

14.7 Japan

14.8 Malaysia

14.9 Philippines

14.10 Singapore

14.11 South Korea

14.12 Sri Lanka

14.13 Thailand

14.14 Taiwan

14.15 Rest of Asia-Pacific



15 Competitive Landscape

15.1 Competitive Quadrant

15.2 Market Share Analysis

15.3 Strategic Initiatives

15.3.1 M&A and Investments

15.3.2 Partnerships and Collaborations

15.3.3 Product Developments and Improvements



16 Company Profiles

16.1 Amazon

16.2 Altec Lansing

16.3 Apple

16.4 Asustek Computer

16.5 Baidu

16.6 Bose

16.7 Eufy

16.8 Google

16.9 Harman International Industries

16.10 Huawei Device

16.11 Lenovo

16.12 Marshall

16.13 Onkyo

16.14 Panasonic

16.15 Polk Audio

16.16 Realme

16.17 Samsung

16.18 Sk Telecom

16.19 Sonos

16.20 Sony

16.21 Xiaomi

16.22 Yamaha



17 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/y676tm

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English French

MONTREAL, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Midland Exploration Inc. (Midland) (TSX-V: MD) is pleased to report the discovery of high-grade gold-bearing boulders as well as new auriferous shear zones during a recent prospecting program on its Laflamme JV project.



The Laflamme project is located approximately 25 kilometres northwest of the town of Lebel-sur-Quevillon in Abitibi, Quebec, and currently consists of 436 claims covering a total surface area of about 234 square kilometres. This project is a joint venture between Midland (77.9%) and Abcourt Mines Inc. (Abcourt) (22.1%).

High-grade gold-bearing boulders discovered by prospecting

During a prospecting program conducted in late May 2022, a metre-scale angular erratic boulder was discovered approximately 700 metres southeast of the historical Notting Hill gold showing. This boulder graded 28.7 g/t Au and is characterized by an intense stockwork of quartz-ankerite veins containing up to 15% pyrite mineralization. Another sample collected from a similar boulder located 1 metre apart yielded a grade of 6.0 g/t Au in a country rock completely altered to ankerite and containing 5% pyrite mineralization, which represents the stockwork host rock.

Given the angular shape of this boulder and known glacial flow directions in this part of the Abitibi, the potential source of these erratic boulders is interpreted as being at a short distance to the NNE. The target area has never been drill-tested and corresponds to a magnetic low that remains untested over a distance of more than 1.5 kilometres.

New gold-bearing shear structures identified near the discovery boulders

Prospecting also yielded several anomalous gold values on outcrops with grades between 0.1 and 1.0 g/t Au, in grab samples associated with new shear zones with strong carbonate alteration, supporting the gold potential in the vicinity of the discovery boulder.

This new favourable area is located approximately 700 metres southeast of the Notting Hill gold showing discovered in 2013 by Midland, which graded 0.34 g/t Au over 25.56 metres from 144.00 to 169.56 metres in hole LAF-13-21. In addition, this new discovery is located approximately 12 kilometres northwest of the Osborne-Bell deposit where Osisko Mining Inc. reported new drill intersections grading up to 37.0 g/t Au over 5.4 metres (see press release by Osisko dated September 28, 2018).

During the coming field season, Midland is planning to conduct a soil sampling program, an induced polarization survey, as well as mechanical stripping to help locate the source of the gold-bearing boulders.

Cautionary statements:

Note that grab and float sample grades may not be representative of mineralized zones.

Mineralization occurring at the Osborne-Bell deposit is not necessarily indicative of mineralization that may be identified on the Laflamme property.

True thicknesses cannot be determined with the information currently available; intervals are thus reported in core length.

Quality Control

Rock samples on the project are assayed for gold by standard 50-gram fire-assaying with atomic absorption finish (Au-AA24) or gravimetric finish (Au-GRA22) at ALS Laboratories in Val-dOr, Quebec. Exploration programs are designed and results are interpreted by qualified persons employing a Quality Assurance/Quality Control program consistent with industry best practices, including the use of standards and blanks with every 20 samples.

About Midland

Midland targets the excellent mineral potential of Quebec to make the discovery of new world-class deposits of gold, platinum group elements and base metals. Midland is proud to count on reputable partners such as Abcourt, BHP Canada Inc., Rio Tinto Exploration Canada Inc., Probe Metals Inc., Wallbridge Mining Company Ltd, Agnico Eagle Mines Limited, SOQUEM Inc., Osisko Development Corp., and the Nunavik Mineral Exploration Fund. Midland prefers to work in partnership and intends to quickly conclude additional agreements in regard to newly acquired properties. Management is currently reviewing other opportunities and projects to build up the Corporation portfolio and generate shareholder value.

This press release was reviewed and approved by Mario Masson, P.Geo., VP Exploration for Midland and Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101.

For further information, please consult Midlands website or contact:

Gino Roger, President and Chief Executive Officer

Tel.: 450 420-5977

Fax: 450 420-5978

Email: info@midlandexploration.com

Website: https://www.midlandexploration.com/

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially from targeted results. Such risks and uncertainties include those described in Midlands periodic reports including the annual report or in the filings made by Midland from time to time with securities regulatory authorities.

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/aea0a58f-c3a5-4851-b169-d81a29be379e

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d8719246-6ea7-4fcf-b1ff-052f11748d0e

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Dublin, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Satellite Data Service Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global satellite data service market reached a value of US$ 6.5 billion in 2021. Looking forward, the market is projected to reach US$ 17.82 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 18.3% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, the analyst is continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different End-use industries. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



Satellite data service delivers high-speed wireless bandwidth data connection from space. It uses radio waves to transmit, receive, and retrieve data through a communication network. It is widely used in remote and small areas wherein high-speed Internet and data access are not easily available.

Nowadays, businesses worldwide rely on satellite data service solutions to provide reliable and dedicated services for remote satellite Internet access and other applications, including email, file sharing, web hosting, data backup, video, and virtual private network (VPN) access. It also enables businesses in to carry voice, video, or other data services around the world.



Satellite Data Service Market Trends

The increasing dependence on smartphones, in confluence with the escalating demand for high-speed Internet services, represents one of the key factors impelling the market growth. Moreover, the emerging trend of vlogging and travel and tourism in remote establishments is driving the need for satellite data services to obtain reliable Internet at affordable prices.

Apart from this, due to rising concerns about climatic changes, environmental degradation, and disaster monitoring, researchers are relying on satellite and airborne data to assess changing environmental impacts, which result from modified human behavior patterns.

Furthermore, with rising geopolitical tensions and increasing security concerns, defense agencies of numerous countries are deploying commercial satellite imaging to get information that strengthens defense operations and security services. Besides this, major market players are introducing commercial satellite data services that can detect ground conditions at night with radar imagery. This further assists in delivering unique, reliable monitoring capabilities to civil and defense organizations across the globe.

Additionally, these players are offering satellite data services incorporated with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) that can help in the development of smart cities and connected vehicles. These innovations are anticipated to create a positive market outlook.



Key Market Segmentation

This report provides an analysis of the key trends in each sub-segment of the global satellite data service market, along with forecasts at the global, regional and country level from 2022-2027. The report has categorized the market based on service, application and vertical.



Breakup by Service:

Data Analytics

Image Data

Breakup by Application:

Scientific

Administrative

Commercial

Breakup by Vertical:

Defence and Security

Energy and Power

Agriculture

Environmental

Engineering and Infrastructure

Marine

Others

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 Airbus SE, Ceinsys Tech Limited, Geospatial Intelligence Pyt. Ltd., Gisat S.R.O., ICEYE, L3harris Technologies Inc., Maxar Technologies Inc., Planet Labs Inc., Satellite Imaging Corporation, Telstra Corporation Limited, Trimble Inc. and Ursa Space Systems Inc.



Key Questions Answered in This Report

How has the global satellite data service market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global satellite data service market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the service?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What is the breakup of the market based on the vertical?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global satellite data service 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 Satellite Data Service Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Service

6.1 Data Analytics

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Image Data

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Application

7.1 Scientific

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Administrative

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Commercial

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Vertical

8.1 Defence and Security

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Energy and Power

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Agriculture

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Environmental

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast

8.5 Engineering and Infrastructure

8.5.1 Market Trends

8.5.2 Market Forecast

8.6 Marine

8.6.1 Market Trends

8.6.2 Market Forecast

8.7 Others

8.7.1 Market Trends

8.7.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Region



10 SWOT Analysis



11 Value Chain Analysis



12 Porters Five Forces Analysis



13 Price Analysis



14 Competitive Landscape

14.1 Market Structure

14.2 Key Players

14.3 Profiles of Key Players

14.3.1 Airbus SE

14.3.1.1 Company Overview

14.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.1.3 Financials

14.3.1.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.2 Ceinsys Tech Limited

14.3.2.1 Company Overview

14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.2.3 Financials

14.3.3 Geospatial Intelligence Pyt. Ltd.

14.3.3.1 Company Overview

14.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.4 Gisat S.R.O.

14.3.4.1 Company Overview

14.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.5 ICEYE

14.3.5.1 Company Overview

14.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.6 L3harris Technologies Inc.

14.3.6.1 Company Overview

14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.6.3 Financials

14.3.7 Maxar Technologies Inc.

14.3.7.1 Company Overview

14.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.7.3 Financials

14.3.8 Planet Labs Inc.

14.3.8.1 Company Overview

14.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.9 Satellite Imaging Corporation

14.3.9.1 Company Overview

14.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.10 Telstra Corporation Limited

14.3.10.1 Company Overview

14.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.10.3 Financials

14.3.10.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.11 Trimble Inc.

14.3.11.1 Company Overview

14.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.11.3 Financials

14.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.12 Ursa Space Systems Inc.

14.3.12.1 Company Overview

14.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2vhw87

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LAKEWOOD RANCH, Fla., June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via InvestorWire -- Piezo Motion, a Brain Scientific ( OTCQB:BRSF ) company, and DHM, a sales and consultant representative firm based in Brazil, today announce a partnership. Piezo Motion is a developer and leading manufacturer of automation technology. DHM has been serving as a consultant for companies in the industrial automation segment for more than 20 years.

Piezo Motions unique motion control technology will provide precision motor solutions and motion control at an affordable price to customers in Brazil and elsewhere in South America that specialize in electronic components, modules and systems, and optimum technical services. Piezo Motions multifaceted rotary and linear motors are built with technology that provides a stable, accurate motor designed specifically for OEMs that require ultimate speed, size and accuracy.

It is an honor to be part of a high-tech and innovative company like Piezo Motion, said Daniel Mialich, a sales consultant for DHM. I'm still learning the products, but I can already see the magnitude of the benefits for engineering and science that improve our lives.

Piezo Motion motors are used globally for a variety of applications. These include laboratory instruments, biomedicine, optics, semiconductors, nanotechnology industries, and industrial electronic and automotive systems, along with an expanding portfolio of products that combine performance with dramatically lower cost over conventional piezo solutions.

Our miniature motors perform with more precision and better efficiency than any other solution in the industry, said Hassan Kotob, chairman and CEO of Piezo Motion. Product engineers and innovators in Brazil will now have access to our technology, which will be game changing for their next-generation devices.

About Piezo Motion

Piezo Motion ( piezomotion.com ), a Brain Scientific company, is a leader in precision motor technology with multimillion-dollar investments in research and development of affordable piezoelectric motors to meet, and exceed, the needs of today's global markets. The company is committed to the development of innovative technology and motion products that enhance functionality in a multitude of applications. The company works with startups, OEMs, research institutions and industrial companies from around the world, empowering the visionaries behind their products.

About Brain Scientific

Brain Scientific ( brainscientific.com ) is a medical technology company with multiple patents and FDA-cleared products. Brain Scientific is committed to developing next-gen solutions that advance the future of neurodiagnostic and OEM medical devices. Brain Scientific has two product lines covering neurology and precision motion. The NeuroCap and NeuroEEG are smart neurological diagnostic devices that simplify administration, shorten scan time and cut costs. The Piezo Motion product line consists of ultra-efficient compact precision motors that will drive the next generation of medical devices. To learn more about Brain Scientific's corporate strategy, products or investor relations, please visit brainscientific.com .

About DHM

For more than 20 years, DHM ( dhm.ind.br ) has been a consultant for companies in industrial automation. The company, based in Brazil, also works with businesses in manufacturing, security sensors, frequency inverters, electrical panels and motion control systems.

Forward-Looking Statements

Any statements contained in this press release that do not describe historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements regarding (i) the plans and objectives of management for future operations, including plans or objectives relating to the design, development and commercialization of EEG products and services and piezo motor technology; (ii) a projection of income (including income/loss), earnings (including earnings/loss) per share, capital expenditures, dividends, capital structure or other financial items; (iii) the company's future financial performance; (iv) the successful integration of Piezo Motion with and into Brain Scientific; and (v) the assumptions underlying or relating to any statement described in points (i), (ii), (iii) or (iv) above. Such forward-looking statements are not meant to predict or guarantee actual results, performance, events or circumstances and may not be realized because they are based upon the company's current projections, plans, objectives, beliefs, expectations, estimates and assumptions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and other influences, over many of which the company has no control. Actual results and the timing of certain events and circumstances may differ materially from those described by the forward-looking statements as a result of these risks and uncertainties. Factors that may influence or contribute to the inaccuracy of the forward-looking statements or cause actual results to differ materially from expected or desired results may include, without limitation, the company's inability to obtain additional financing; the significant length of time and resources associated with the development of products and related insufficient cash flows and resulting illiquidity; the company's inability to expand its business; significant government regulation of medical devices and the healthcare industry; lack of product diversification; volatility in the price of the company's raw materials; and the failure to implement the company's business plans or strategies. Some of these and other factors are identified and described in more detail in the company's filings with the SEC. The company does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements.

CONTACTS

INVESTORS

ir@brainscientific.com

MEDIA

pr@brainscientific.com

Corporate Communications
HERE leads Google, TomTom and MapBox in analyst firms annual rankings of largest location platform companies

Amsterdam  HERE Technologies, the leading location data and technology platform, has been recognized as the top ranked location platform by industry analysts at Strategy Analytics. The annual benchmarking report of the worlds largest location companies ranks HERE, Google, Mapbox and TomTom across seven categories.



Strategy Analytics ranks HERE in this years report as the leader in map-making, automotive and industry growth vision. HERE is also a co-leader in non-automotive and within the developer community.



Nitesh Patel, Director, Strategy Analytics, commented: As various industries undergo digitization projects, the role of location intelligence is becoming more critical. We see the demand for industrial-grade, highly accurate maps increase as enterprises look to draw insights that improve efficiency and business performance. Map making is complex and requires significant investment and expertise in acquiring, extracting, and orchestrating flows of different datasets and content at scale. HERE remains the leader in map-making, automotive and industry growth vision. HEREs platform approach maintained its momentum with strong non-automotive growth across its target sectors, e.g. transport and logistics. The key pillars of HEREs growth strategy remain partnerships, an open, multi-platform approach, industry vision and innovation.



HERE at center of automotive shift to electric, connected and automated driving



Strategy Analytics points to the strong position of HERE as a trusted partner for customers across the automotive industry. The analyst firm expects demand for automotive-grade location services to increase with the penetration of embedded navigation in mass market vehicles, growth in the ownership of electrified vehicles, mandates for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), including the upcoming European Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) regulation, and the emergence of automated driving capabilities.



Strategy Analytics notes the HERE HD Live Map is integrated into the Mercedes-Benz DRIVE Pilot System, the first commercially available SAE Level-3 capable autonomous vehicles in the world.



HERE recognized for innovative map-making and industry platform capabilities



Strategy Analytics highlights the companys advancements in map-making towards the near real-time capture and publication of reality in sub-meter detail, with increasing automation and reliability.



The report underscores the highly-flexible and open location platform that HERE provides developers and customers across industries  from automotive, transportation and logistics to urban mobility  with highly customizable and off-the-shelf solutions.



Edzard Overbeek, CEO of HERE Technologies, said: The HERE team is proud to be recognized for its ongoing work in building a truly global location platform. Our customers continually rely on the quality of HERE enterprise-grade location data and software to help power their day-to-day operations. The demand for location-based services has only increased quarter over quarter both in value and return. And, we continue to partner across industries to address the challenges in autonomous driving, increasing supply chain visibility and creating safer roads globally to name a few.



Strategy Analytics evaluated and scored HERE, Google, TomTom and Mapbox on the following categories: map making and maintenance, developer community, automotive, non-automotive, map and data visualization, growth and leadership, and environmental sustainability. The full report can be found here.



An interview with Nitesh Patel from Strategy Analytics about this years report can be found on HERE360.



Media Contacts

Jordan Stark

+1 312 316 4537

jordan.stark@here.com



Dr. Sebastian Kurme

+49 173 515 3549

sebastian.kurme@here.com



About HERE Technologies

HERE, a location data and technology platform, moves people, businesses and cities forward by harnessing the power of location. By leveraging our open platform, we empower our customers to achieve better outcomes - from helping a city manage its infrastructure or a business optimize its assets to guiding drivers to their destination safely. To learn more about HERE, please visit here.com and 360.here.com.





Attachment
DURHAM, N.C., June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NightHawk Biosciences (NYSE American: NHWK), a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company focused on developing first-in-class therapies to modulate the immune system, today announced the appointment of Stephan Kutzer, Ph.D. as Interim Chief Executive Officer of Scorpion Biological Services. Dr. Kutzer currently serves on Scorpions advisory board.



Dr. Kutzer brings more than 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, building and managing successful contract development and manufacturing organizations. He previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Alcami Corporation, a leading provider of development, analytical testing and manufacturing services to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Prior to this, he served as President, Divisional CEO and Chief Operating Officer of the Pharma Biotech & Customer Manufacturing division of Lonza Group AG, a multinational manufacturing company for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, where he had full oversight of the division, which generated over $1.6 billion in annual sales. He also served as a member of the Executive Management Board of Lonza Group AG; President of Lonza Biologics Inc; Chairman of the Board of Directors of Lonza Singapore Inc; Chairman of the Board of Directors of Teva-Lonza TL Biopharmaceuticals AG; Chairman of the Board of Directors of Lonza Biologics plc.; and President and Chairman of Lonza Inc. Dr. Kutzer previously served as an Executive Director on the board of directors for the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association (DCAT). Dr. Kutzer earned a masters degree in Chemical and Process Engineering and a Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences from the Technical University of Munich, Germany.

Jeff Wolf, CEO of NightHawk and Chairman of Scorpion, commented, Given the dynamic evolution of Scorpion and rapid progress with construction of our San Antonio and Manhattan, Kansas biomanufacturing facilities, we are delighted to welcome Stephan on board. Throughout his more than 25 years in the biomanufacturing space, Stephan has built and managed several successful contract development and global manufacturing organizations. We tapped Stephan from Scorpions advisory board to lead Scorpion through its next phase of growth, and we believe his proven track record will be invaluable to our future success.

Commenting on his appointment, Dr. Kutzer stated, This is an exciting time at Scorpion as we seek to build a robust and fully integrated CDMO. I am honored to have this opportunity and look forward to supporting Scorpion through this next phase of growth.

About Scorpion Biological Services

Scorpion Biological Services is a contract research, and contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) focused on cell- and gene-based therapies and large molecule biologics. Scorpion provides a broad array of clinical-scale biomanufacturing, analytical and R&D services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies from its San Antonio, Texas facilities. Scorpion also plans to offer commercial-scale biomanufacturing from its newly announced site in Manhattan, Kansas. Additional information is available at: https://www.scorpionbio.com/.

NightHawk Biosciences, Inc.

NightHawk Biosciences is a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of new drugs from discovery through commercialization. The Company leverages its integrated ecosystem of subsidiaries to accelerate the development of novel therapies that arm the immune system, breaking through barriers that prolong traditional drug development. This empowers us to bring our ideas to life with efficient control, superior quality, and uncharacteristic agility.

For more information on the Company and is subsidiaries, please visit: www.nighthawkbio.com, and also follow us on Twitter.

Forward Looking Statement

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "should," "potential," "continue," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions, and include statements such as Stephan Kutzers proven track record being invaluable to our future success Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, among others, the contribution to be made by Stephan Kutzer, the ability to progress the companys efforts under the NightHawk banner, whether the combined business of NightHawk and Elusys will be successful, NightHawks ability to successfully operate as a CDMO, NightHawks and its subsidiaries ability to maintain license agreements, the continued maintenance and growth of NightHawks and its subsidiaries patent estates, NightHawks product candidates demonstrating safety and effectiveness, as well as results that are consistent with prior results, the ability to initiate clinical trials and if initiated, the ability to complete them on time and achieve the desired results and benefits continuing enrollment as expected, the ability to obtain regulatory approval for commercialization of product candidates or to comply with ongoing regulatory requirements, regulatory limitations relating to NightHawks ability to promote or commercialize its product candidates for the specific indications, acceptance of product candidates in the marketplace and the successful development, marketing or sale of NightHawks products, developments by competitors that render such products obsolete or non-competitive, and other factors described in NightHawks annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Qs and any other filings NightHawk makes with the SEC. The information in this presentation is provided only as of the date presented, and NightHawk undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this presentation on account of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Media and Investor Relations Contact

David Waldman

+1 919 289 4017

investorrelations@heatbio.com




New York, US, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to a comprehensive research report by Market Research Future (MRFR),  Automotive Window Regulators Market Analysis by Type (automatic, semi-automatic, and manual), by Technology (single-arm, X-arm, and others), by Propulsion (ICE vehicle and electric vehicle), by Sales Channel (OEM and aftermarket), by Vehicle Type (passenger car and commercial vehicle), and Region - Forecast till 2027 valuation is poised to reach USD 8 Billion by 2027, registering an 5% CAGR throughout the forecast period (20202027).

Automotive Window Regulators Market Overview

The booming automobile industry, growing need for passenger cars in the emerging economies, advances in infrastructure, use of highest degree components in the new automobiles that has resulted in prolonged repair intervals as well as reduced failure will offer robust opportunities for the market over the forecast period.

Automotive Window Regulators Market Report Scope:

Report Metric Details Market Size USD 8 Billion CAGR 5% Base Year 2019 Forecast Period 2020-2027 Historical Data 2018 Forecast Units Value (USD Billion) Report Coverage Revenue Forecast, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, and Trends Segments Covered Type, Technology, Vehicle Type and Region Geographies Covered North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW) Key Vendors Brose Fahrzeugteile SE & Co. KG, Valeo Service, SHIROKI, Grupo Antolin, Dura Automotive Systems, WONH Industries co, ltd., TRAC Auto Transmission, KUSTER Holding GmbH, Shanghai SIIC Transportation, HI-LEX Corporation, Inteva Products and Johnan Manufacturing Inc. Key Market Opportunities Booming Automobile Industry to offer Robust Opportunities Key Market Drivers Demand for High-Performance Cars with Comfort and Value-Added Features to Boost Automotive Window Regulator Market Growth

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Drivers

Demand for High-Performance Cars with Comfort and Value-Added Features to Boost Market Growth

The demand for high-performance cars with different comfort and value-added features will boost market growth over the forecast period. Power windows, for instance, have grown in popularity recently, turning standard equipment in almost every vehicle. Because window regulators are an essential component of power window systems, rising passenger vehicle adoption globally will drive market growth.

Lack of Skilled Operator to act as Market Restraint

The lack of skilled operator & low durability may act as market restraints over the forecast period.

High Price may act as Market Challenge

The high price of automotive window regulator may act as a market challenge over the forecast period.

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Automotive Window Regulators Market Segments

The automotive window regulator market is bifurcated based on type, technology, propulsion, sales channel, and construction.

By type, automatic will lead the market over the forecast period. This is due to the functionality and lightweight nature of automated window regulators.

By technology, single-arm will dominate the market over the forecast period.

By propulsion, the automotive window regulator market is segmented into electric vehicle and ICE vehicle.

By sales channel, OEM will spearhead the market over the forecast period.

By construction, the cable type will have the lions share in the market over the forecast period. The cable type segment is expected to exhibit increased market growth due to their compact size and lighter weight, which results in a fall in the total weight of the car, improving vehicle efficiency and lowering emissions.

By vehicle type, passenger cars will command the market over the forecast period. Passenger cars are expected to capture a large share of the market due to public use and a rapid increase in the sales of both compact as well as sub-compact cars. Passenger car manufacturers improve functionality and services in order to attract more customers.

Automotive Window Regulators Market Regional Analysis

APAC to Sway Automotive Window Regulator Market

Because of rising need for cars in emerging economies like India and China, Asia Pacific is expected to gain a significant market share. Furthermore, strengthening the economy and increasing end-user purchasing power in this region are expected to drive market growth. Furthermore, the presence of major manufacturers in the region, such as Japan's Shiroki Corporation, Brose, Technico Industries, and Hi Lex, has contributed to increased product demand. Because of surge in sales of automobile in the region, the market share in this region is expected to account for a sizable portion of the global market by 2028.

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Growing acceptance of enhanced car safety systems in passenger vehicles and SUVs, such as one-touch comfort functions and other as well as convenience features, is a significant factor driving automotive window regulator sales in the region. China and India are vital markets for automakers due to their growing populations and increased demand for personal automobiles. Regional banks & financial institutions offer a variety of financing programs to the general public, making it easier for them to purchase a car. Due to the region's densely populated countries, Asia Pacific holds a significant share of the automotive window regulator market.

Some of the market's prominent trends include an increasing vehicle population in the Asia-Pacific region, the rising disposable income in various developing countries, & ongoing technological advances in automotive components. Because of growing demand for cars in emerging economies like India and China, Asia Pacific is expected to gain a significant market share. Furthermore, strengthening the economy and increasing end-user purchasing power in this region are expected to drive market growth.

Because of their growing populations and increased demand for personal vehicles, India and China are important markets for automakers. Furthermore, most banks and financial institutions offer various loan schemes, making it possible for people to own a car. These factors are likely to support APAC market growth. People in this region, on the other hand, are shifting towards power window regulators due to their improved functionality. This is expected to limit market growth in APAC.

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COVID-19 Analysis

Travel restrictions imposed by governing bodies around the world have had a significant impact on the need for the automobile window regulators in vehicles. Furthermore, semiconductor manufacturers reported price fluctuations, owing primarily to interrupted supply chain operations. Furthermore, the halt in development of self-driving cars has resulted in low need for automotive window regulators. Due to several delays and postponements of scheduled testing activities to monitor, analyze, present, and provide performance insights using various technologies like machine learning & data analytics, software development was temporarily halted. All of the factors that contributed to the disruption of supply chain operations influenced the prices of these systems, putting additional pressure on automotive manufacturers and OEMs.

Automotive Window Regulators Market Competitive Analysis

Dominant Key Players on Automotive Window Regulators Market Covered are:

Brose Fahrzeugteile SE & Co. KG

Valeo Service

SHIROKI

Grupo Antolin

Dura Automotive Systems

WONH Industries co ltd.

TRAC Auto Transmission

KUSTER Holding GmbH

Shanghai SIIC Transportation

HI-LEX Corporation

Inteva Products

Johnan Manufacturing Inc.

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Market Research Future (MRFR) is a global market research company that takes pride in its services, offering a complete and accurate analysis regarding diverse markets and consumers worldwide. Market Research Future has the distinguished objective of providing the optimal quality research and granular research to clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help answer your most important questions.
Sydney, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, this edition of BuddeComm report outlines the latest developments and key trends in the telecoms markets. - https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Algeria-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW





Once LTE services were launched in September 2016, services quickly reached all 48 provinces. However, within the provinces access to LTE was patchy, and where it was available the service quality has been poor.



As a consequence, the regulator has repeatedly warned or fined the MNOs for failing to adhere to their licence obligations regarding network reach and service quality. To help the MNOs adhere to their targets, the regulator has also issued them with additional spectrum, including spectrum in the 71-76GHz and 81-86GHz ranges in February 2020, additional spectrum in August 2020, and more spectrum still in April 2021 (in the 2300MHz band). Despite this, in the following October the MNOs were again warned by the regulator concerning breaches of some of their licence obligations.



Additional bandwidth made available from the ORVAL submarine system has helped the MNOs since the beginning of 2021. More bandwidth is to be made available during the next few years from the Blue-Raman and Africa-1 cables, which should also help reduce access costs to end users.



Key developments:





Regulator again provides MNOs with additional spectrum to address poor services;

Government approves procedures for implementing MNP;

Regulator awards additional 900MHz spectrum to MNOs;

Government argues for upgrades to LTE networks to be prioritised before MNOs invest in 5G, prepares for a 5G launch before end-2022;

NEC and Juniper Networks roll out Algeria Telecom's IP Metro Network;

Algerian Telecom Group and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications establish a roadmap for the national fibre network, plan to double international fibre capacity;

AFR-IX confirms plans to build Medusa subsea cable with Algeria to be one of 16 landing points;

MNOs LTE infrastructure reaches all 48 provinces, though QoS is considered poor;

Government initiates national infrastructure project to replace copper network with fibre;

VEON in the process of selling its entire 45.57% stake in OTA to the Algerian National Investment Fund, with the share valued at $682 million;

Report update includes the regulators market data update to end-2021, telcos financial and operating data to Q1 2022, updated Telecom Maturity Index charts and analyses, recent market data developments.



Companies mentioned in this report:





Algerie Telecom (Mobilis), Optimum Telecom Algerie (Djezzy), Wataniya Telecom (Nedjema, Ooredoo), Djaweb, EEPAD, Swan Informatique, IcosNet, Smart link Communication







Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Algeria-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW
Sydney, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, this edition of BuddeComm report outlines the latest developments and key trends in the telecoms markets. - https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Bulgaria-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW





The pandemic has resulted in a decline in mobile revenue, largely the result of declining roaming and voice revenue. The number of subscribers was also negatively impacted by the consolidation of SIM cards among subscribers.



Despite growth in revenue, investment among operators has declined in recent years. Nevertheless, there has been continuing developments in 5G, as the MNOs seek to improve revenue streams from mobile data services. The telecom regulator finalised public consultations on its 5G spectrum strategy in late 2018, and in mid-2019 it made available 100MHz of spectrum in the 3.5GHz range for 5G.



A1 Bulgaria began trialling 5G using this spectrum in mid-2019, and launched commercial services soon afterwards, delivering data at up to 1Gb/s. Yettel (then branded as Telenor Bulgaria) began trialling 5G at the same time, while Vivacom launched its own 5G offer in September 2020. By May 2022, Vivacom had extended its 5G service to over 530 cities and towns. It expected that 5G would provide 72% population coverage by the end of the year.



Key developments:





Vivacom Bulgaria acquired by United Group, extends 5G services to more than 530 towns;

SpaceXs Starlink satellite broadband service is made available in Bulgaria;

Telenor Bulgaria is rebranded as Yettel;

Bulgaria joins the U.S. State Departments Clean Network initiative in a bid to protect its 5G communications networks;

Yettel releases smart monitoring platform for utilities;

Report update includes the regulators market data for 2020, telcos operating and financial data to Q1 2022, updated Telecom Maturity Index charts and analyses, recent market developments.



Companies mentioned in this report:





Vivacom, Orbitel, Vestitel, A1 Bulgaria (MobilTel), Yettel (Telenor Bulgaria), PPF Group, Trans Telecom, Blizoo, Max Telecom, T.com, United Group







Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Bulgaria-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW
Sydney, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, this edition of BuddeComm report outlines the latest developments and key trends in the telecoms markets. - https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Uganda-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW





MTN in March 2020 renewed its National Telecom Operating licence for a further ten years, paying $100 million. Under the revised licensing regime, Airtel Uganda also fell under the NTO license regime on the grounds that it provided two-thirds geographic coverage. Given that Airtel at the time was paying only $100,000 to offer services under the cheaper PSP and PIP licences (to its obvious advantage), MYN and Uganda telecom complained. To level the playing field, Airtel was moved to a 20-year NTO licence in December 2020 (effective from the previous July). As part of the licence terms, the company must provide 90% geographic coverage by mid-2025.



Lycamobile Uganda, which had launched services in April 2020 after having acquired the local TD-LTE operator Tangerine in the previous January, was given an NTO licence in May 2021, making it the fourth operator in the country so licensed. Similar to Airtel, Lycamobile must extend geographic coverage and must also list 20% of its shares on the local exchange by mid-2022.



In line with these licensing requirements, MTN Group completed an IPO for its Uganda unit in October 2021, though it only managed to sell 60% of the 20% stake on offer, raising UGX535.9 billion. As a result of the IPO, the Groups interest in MTN Uganda fell to about 83%. In the following December, the Group proceeded with listing its 22.4 billion ordinary shares on the Uganda Securities Exchange.



While these events have been ongoing, the economic consequences of the pandemic contributed to the exit of Africell in October 2021.



Key developments





MTN Group completes IPO of its Uganda unit;

Lycamobile Uganda is awarded the countrys fourth National Telecommunications Operator (NTO) licence;

MTN Uganda trials standalone 5G, receives additional spectrum in the 1800MHz and 2100MHz bands;

Liquid Intelligence Technologies expands reach of FttP services;

Alphabet drops Project Loon;

Smile Telecom inks restructuring deal;

Airtel aims to list Ugandan unit on the Uganda Stock Exchange by end-2022;

Government pursues the Digital Uganda Vision, develops a broadband infrastructure blueprint

Ministry of ICT and National Guidance announces a funding shortfall of UGX242.55 billion for FY2022/23;

Africell exits from Uganda market amid competitive pressures, SEACOM will acquire some of the telcos infrastructure assets;

Report update includes the regulator's market data to end-2021, operator data to Q1 2022, updated Telecom Maturity Index charts and analyses, recent market developments.



Companies mentioned in this report





Uganda Telecom (UTL, LAP Green), MTN Uganda, UMEME, SEACOM, Infocom (Altech, Liquid Telecom), Internet Solutions, MTN Uganda (Telia), Bharti Airtel (Zain, Celtel), Uganda Telecom (UTL, LAP Green, Telecel, Orascom, Deutsche Telekom), Warid Telecom (Essar), Orange Uganda (HiTS Telecom), i-Tel, Simba Telecoms, Standard Chartered Bank, Monitise, American Tower Corporation (ATC), Eaton Towers, Smile Telecom, Smart Telecom, Sure Telecom, K2 Telecom, Africell (Lintel), UTL Online (Uganda Telecom), Infocom (Altech), Africa Online, Spacenet, MTN, Wateen Telecoms (Warid), Smile Telecom, Foris Telecom, Talk Telecom, Mo Telecom, Goal Technology Solutions (GTS), UMEME, WBS Television, NTV Uganda, MultiChoice







Read the full report: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Uganda-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?utm_source=GNW
SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The family of Marj and Gord Classen have joined with MADD Canada to place a memorial road sign near the site where the couple was tragically killed by an impaired driver in 2020.

The active, spirited couple had just moved to Saskatoon upon their retirement, and were looking forward to everything this new chapter in their lives had to offer. On January 23, 2020, they were on their way home from visiting Marjs mother when an impaired driver veered out of his lane on Highway 41 and crashed head-on into the Classens vehicle. Marj died at the crash scene. Gord died in hospital three weeks later, on February 14.



On June 10, 2022, their family gathered for a small private ceremony to unveil a new memorial road sign erected in their memory on Highway 41 by Aberdeen. Showing Marj and Gords names and MADD Canadas red ribbon image, the sign is a powerful reminder of the importance of always driving sober.

Their children Bryce, Greg and Lori, and their families, hope the sign will prevents others from experiencing their tragic loss and grief. We are very honoured that MADD Canada is dedicating a memorial sign in remembrance of our parents and to also help raise awareness about the dangers of impaired driving. This tragedy has been life changing as we have had to adjust to our new way of life without our foundation. This was a senseless act that could have been prevented. Due to these careless actions, a vibrant couple has lost their lives far too soon.

Every year, hundreds of people are killed and tens of thousands are injured in impairment-related crashes that are entirely preventable.



Memorial road signs are a way of paying tribute to the innocent victims of impaired driving, and raising awareness about the devastation it causes.

Roadside memorial signs are a powerful and moving way to symbolize the tragic consequences of impaired driving, said MADD Canada National President Jaymie-Lyne Hancock. Marj and Gord Classen were taken from their family, friends and community because of one persons selfish and senseless choice to drive impaired. Together with the Classen family, we honour their memories and hope that everyone who sees this sign understands what is truly at stake when someone drives impaired.

The Classens sign is the third memorial road sign for impaired driving victims in Saskatchewan. The first two signs honour Jordan and Chanda Van de Vorst and their two children, Kamryn, and Miguire, who were killed by an impaired driver in January 2016, and Danille Kerpan, who was killed by an impaired driver in October 2014.

MADD Canada thanks the Classen family for their strength, and the Government of Saskatchewan for its commitment to raising awareness of this violent crime.

MADD Canada has collaborated with governments in other provinces, including Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, to install memorial signs for victims of impaired driving.

About MADD Canada

MADD Canada (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) is a national, charitable organization that is committed to stopping impaired driving and supporting the victims of this violent crime. With volunteer-driven groups in more than 100 communities across Canada, MADD Canada aims to offer support services to victims, heighten awareness of the dangers of impaired driving and save lives and prevent injuries on our roads. To learn more, visit www.madd.ca.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/854bb697-8583-4e0c-baae-ab7b9ef4965d
HILLSIDE, Ill., June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With early voting for the June 28th Democratic Primary Election now underway in neighborhood locations, judicial candidate ShawnTe Raines-Welch continues to win endorsements from diverse organizations and community leaders. Raines-Welchs endorsements now include:

Congressman Chuy Garcia

Secretary of State Jessie White

State Senator Steven Landek

State Rep. Mike Zalewski

State Rep. Lisa Hernandez

Mayor Dr. Jim DiScipio - La Grange Park

Mayor Mark Kuchler - La Grange

Mayor Nick Stecker - Westchester

Mayor Joseph Ballerine - Riverside

Mayor Andre F. Harvey - Bellwood

Mayor Barrett Pedersen - Franklin Park

Mayor Joseph T. Tamburino - Hillside

Mayor Ronald M. Serpico - Melrose Park

Mayor Joseph Mengoni - North Riverside

Mayor Sergio Rodriguez - Summit

Mayor Jeffery T. Sherwin - Northlake

Mayor Christopher Getty - Lyons

Mayor Sean R. McDermott - Countryside

Mayor Robert E. Lee - Berkley

Mayor Jeff Walik - Stickney

Mayor Beniamino Mazzulla - Stone Park

Chicago Federation of Labor

Personal PAC

Associated Firefighters of Illinois

Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2

International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150

International Union of Operating Engineers Local 399

Mid-America Regional Carpenters Council

Chicago Journeymen Plumbers Local Union

Teamsters Joint Council 25

Indo-American Democratic Organization

American Middle East Voters Alliance (AMVOTE PAC)

Chicago Latino Public Affairs Committee

United Hellenic Voters of America

Italian American Political Commission

Raines-Welch has also been given ratings of QUALIFIED or RECOMMENDED by the following bar associations representing the diversity of Cook Countys legal community:

Arab American Bar Association of Illinois

Advocates Society  The Association of Polish American Attorneys

Black Women's Lawyers Association

Chicago Bar Association

Chicago Council of Lawyers

Cook County Bar Association

Decalogue Society of Lawyers

Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois

Hellenic Bar Association

Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago

Puerto Rican Bar Association of Illinois

Womens Bar Association of Illinois

Our campaign is more energized than ever, said Raines-Welch. Democratic and progressive organizations and community leaders have united behind our campaign and they know Ill bring an important background and perspective to the bench.

Raines-Welch has over 12 years of litigation experience in diverse areas of law including civil rights, disability rights and labor and employment law. Raines-Welch conducts training programs helping organizations, businesses and government entities ensure they comply with important federal laws protecting peoples rights. In addition to her service as a Commissioner of the Proviso Township Mental Health Board, she is a community volunteer for a variety of causes including autism awareness and support.



If elected, Raines-Welch would be the first woman of color ever elected Judge from the 4th subcircuit. The 4th Subcircuit (map) in Chicagos Western suburbs includes all of Lyons, Riverside and Stickney Townships, and portions of Leyden, Palos, Proviso, and Worth townships. Raines-Welchs campaign website is www.RainesWelchForJudge.com.

Early in-person voting has started. Voters can also request their Vote by Mail ballot through June 23, and they are strongly encouraged to return their completed ballots as soon as possible or at least three days before election day (June 28). To learn more about early voting, find a polling place, or to request a Vote by Mail ballot, visit the Cook County Clerk's website at: https://www.cookcountyclerkil.gov/





Attachment
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Southstone Minerals Limited (Southstone or the Company) (TSX.V  SML) is pleased to announce that Oryx Mining (Pty) Ltd (Oryx) has commenced diamond mining operations at Oena Diamond Mine (Oena), South Africa.



Oena will be operated 23 hours a day, 6 days a week with total head feed capacity of 200 tonnes per hour to a desanding screen which feeds to an 18-foot pan plant. Concentrate produced from the pan plant will be transferred securely to a high security processing facility where diamonds will be recovered using BVX technology. Diamonds will be sold monthly at a designated tender facility (see news release dated 19 April 2022 for detailed terms).

Oena consists of an 8,800-hectare mining right located along the Orange River (see Figure 1). Mining operations will commence at Blokwerf Section with subsequent expansion to the Sandberg Section. Since November 2018, Southstone has bulk sampled an estimated 638,690 tonnes from Sandberg recovering 2,681 carats (cts) (1,155 diamonds) with an average stone size of 2.32 cts and has bulk sampled an estimated 202,760 tonnes from Blokwerf recovering 550 cts (307 diamonds) with an average stone size of 1.79 cts.

Importantly, Sandberg mined tonnes to date comprise only 30% of the total tonnes mined at Oena by Southstone since 2015, yet Sandberg has produced more than 50% of the diamonds over 10 ct and valued >USD $5,000 per ct. Table 1 lists some of the exceptional diamonds that have been recovered from both Sandberg and Blokwerf Sections over 10 ct and Table 3 provides images of a select number of diamonds. The average run of mine diamond sale price to from July 2015 to April 2022 is USD $1,612 per ct (see Table 2).

Figure 1  Oena Mining License: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e5233607-eb21-4519-be6f-46224be71081

Diamond See Photo Section Sales Weight (ct) USD per ct Total USD 1 below Sandberg 44.250 $5'492 $243'000 2 below Sandberg 37.030 $5'103 $188'962 3 below Sandberg 35.000 $15'286 $535'000 4 below Sandberg 32.218 $1'809 $58'289 5 below Sandberg 26.410 $12'680 $334'900 6 below Sandberg 26.340 $5'884 $155'000 7 Sandberg 22.020 $7'720 $170'000 8 below Sandberg 20.112 $4'031 $81'084 9 Sandberg 19.420 $2'034 $39'500 10 Sandberg 18.730 $8'270 $154'889 11 below Blokwerf 17.550 $3'971 $69'499 12 Sandberg 16.922 $3'137 $53'100 13 Sandberg 15.250 $5'016 $76'499 14 Sandberg 14.800 $2'910 $42'900 15 Sandberg 13.200 $2'121 $27'999 16 Sandberg 10.651 $5'330 $56'780 17 below Sandberg 10.510 $8'712 $91'560

Table 1  Sandberg and Blokwerf selection of diamonds recovered over 10 cts

Sandberg represents a target of 4.50 million (M) to 5.75M cubic meters (approximately 11M tonnes) and Blokwerf represents a target of 6.25M to 7.25M cubic meters (approximately 18M tonnes) of basal and suspended gravel has been identified for continued exploration and bulk sampling. (see news release dated 1 December 2014).

Total ct sold Total Number of Diamonds Average Diamond Size ct Average USD per ct Approx. Total Sales

(USD) July 2015 to April 2022 7,967 3,958 2.01 1,612 $12,850,000

Table 2  Oena Diamond Mine production from July 2015 to April 2022

Diamond Size

Date

Value Photo 1 44.25 carat - $5,492 per carat ($243,000)

Sandberg

20 March 2020

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ebdde413-a42a-4520-a5d0-39553169f62d 2 37.03 carat - $5,103 per carat ($188,962)

Sandberg

24 February 2020

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/361769b1-5a62-4cc6-84b1-48b2bff21ee7 3 35.00 carat - $15,286 per carat ($535,000)

Sandberg

28 November 2019

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/59c511a8-c19a-4674-b3e8-acd95046f77f 4 and 8 Sandberg  parcel of 16 stones

32.218 carat - $1,807 per carat ($58,289)

20.112 carat - $4,031 per carat ($81,084)

4.75 carat 2.2 carat

5.15 Carat 2.0 carat

4.0 Carat 2.05 carat

3.4 carat 1.25 Carat

4.0 carat 0.95 carat

3.15 carat 1.0 carat

2.8 carat 0.75 carat

23 November 2020 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b45d4a5a-8b75-4a36-a469-9f18309f55df 5 26.41 carat -$12,680 per carat ($334,900)

Sandberg  parcel of 3 stones

3.85 carat

3.25 carat

24 January 2019

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9322f4ce-7c70-452b-908e-5309ff4c068b 6 26.34 carat - $5,884 per carat ($155,000)

Sandberg

18 September 2020

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/10c82bf0-c63a-4c0b-984b-dbc6007c77b6 11 17.55 carat- $3,971 per carat ($69,499)

Blokwerf

22 February 2019

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/383f8269-3d95-4604-9aed-4b6a595735a7 17 10.51 carat -$8,712 per carat ($91,560)

Sandberg

23 January 2021

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/230116f8-3b69-4c19-b2fd-3d91d5495967

Table 3  Oena Diamond Mine diamond photos of select diamonds from Sandberg and Blokwerf production

The technical disclosure in this news release has been approved by Terry L. Tucker, P.Geo., Executive Chairman of the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 of the Canadian Securities Administrators.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF SOUTHSTONE MINERALS LIMITED

Terry L. Tucker, P.Geo.

Executive Chairman

info@southstoneminerals.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statement

Certain information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information under applicable securities laws. Except for statements of historical fact, certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements, which include managements assessment of future plans and operations and are based on current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. Some of the forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as forecasts, estimates, expects anticipates, believes, projects, plans, outlook, capacity and similar expressions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them.

Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the Companys actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to statements with respect to the estimation of mineral resources; the realization of mineral resource estimates; anticipated future production, capital and operating costs; cash flows and mine life; potential size of a mineralized zone; potential expansion of mineralization; potential types of mining operations; permitting timelines; government regulation of exploration and mining operations; risks that the presence of diamond deposits mentioned nearby the Companys property are not indicative of the diamond mineralization on the Companys property, the supply and demand for, deliveries of and the level and volatility of prices of rough diamonds, risks that the actual revenues will be less than projected; risks that the target production for the existing mining contracts will be less than projected or expected; risks that production will not commence as projected due to delay or inability to receive governmental approval of the Companys acquisition or the timely completion of an NI43-101 report; technical problems; inability of management to secure sales or third party purchase contracts; currency and interest rate fluctuations; COVID-19; foreign exchange fluctuations and foreign operations; various events which could disrupt operations, including labor stoppages and severe weather conditions; and managements ability to anticipate and manage the foregoing factors and risks.

The forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release are based on certain assumptions regarding, among other things, future prices for coal and diamonds; future currency and exchange rates; the Companys ability to generate sufficient cash flow from operations and access capital markets to meet its future obligations; coal consumption levels; and the Companys ability to retain qualified staff and equipment in a cost-efficient manner to meet its demand. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any of the forward-looking statements contained in this news release unless required by law. The statements as to the Companys capacity to achieve revenue are no assurance that it will achieve these levels of revenue.
Ottawa, Canada, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ottawa, ON (June 13, 2022) A diverse group of volunteers from every province and territory in Canada is gathering in Ottawa over the next five days to look at the impact of digital technologies on Canadian democracy and deliver a series of recommendations to the federal government on how to protect democratic expression online and address the spread of harmful content, including disinformation and hate speech.



The groupcalled the Citizens Assembly on Democratic Expressionis part of the Canadian Commission on Democratic Expression . The Commission is a three-year initiative aimed at responding to the democratic risks of digital technologies. This project is led by the Public Policy Forum (PPF). It is composed of a Commission, a Citizens Assembly led by MASS LBP, and an independent research program led by the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University. This project is funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage and the McConnell Foundation.



The Minister of Canadian Heritage Pablo Rodriguez will attend and deliver opening remarks on Wednesday, June 15. Following the conclusion of the Citizens Assembly, final recommendations will be shared with the Government of Canada on Sunday, June 19.



In addition, Beverley McLachlin, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, who co-chairs the Commission, is scheduled to deliver a speech on Saturday, June 18.



MPs and Senators have also been invited to attend.



Assemblys recommendations will inform upcoming legislation designed to promote online safety and safeguard user rights. The full report summarizing these recommendations will be published in August.



Since its formation in April 2020, two Commissions and two Citizens Assemblies have provided critical policy advice to the government on how best to enhance online safety while safeguarding user rights. They have advised on critical topics, such as how to reduce harmful content online without impairing free speech and how to increase online platforms' transparency and accountability.



Eighty-four citizens, from diverse age groups, communities, ethnicities and backgrounds, who were selected through a representative process, have contributed more than 3,500 volunteer hours during their service as members. Forty-five of those volunteers are involved in this latest meeting.



I would like to think that through my contribution to the Citizens Assembly, Im playing a small part in shaping a better future for my children and their generation in helping them prepare to face future challenges, says Motasem Salem, a member of this years Citizens Assembly. Im proud to bring my voice to one of the most important policy debates of our time and help protect the state of democratic expression and safeguard against disinformation.



The ongoing dedication of Citizens Assemblies members is evidence of how Canadians recognize the need to take action to protect democratic expression online while developing solutions to protect against disinformation and online hate speech, says the Commissions Co-Chair, Beverley McLachlin. Canadians live in a free, democratic and rights-based society, where free expression is an essential principle, but every day we are threatened by hateful and false online rhetoric. The voices of Canadian citizens need to be reflected in the legislation, which will govern how we interact with and use digital technologies.



The creation of the Citizens Assembly on Democratic Expression is also a direct response to the priorities reflected in the Minister of Canadian Heritages Mandate Letter .



-30-
Chicago, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to the latest research report by Arizton, the Paraguay data center market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.78% during 2022-2027. The Paraguay economy is open to foreign investments, and the regulations are transparent and effective for foreign capital inflow. Over $24 million will be invested in data center development in Paraguay between 2022 and 2027.



Paraguay Data Center Market Report Scope

Report Attributes Details MARKET SIZE (INVESTMENT) $88.5 Million (2027) CAGR (INVESTMENT) 12.78% (2022-2027) MARKET SIZE (AREA) 9.5 thousand sq. Feet (2027) MARKET SIZE (POWER CAPACITY) 2 MW (2027) COLOCATION MARKET SIZE (REVENUE) USD 4 Million (2027) BASE YEAR 2021 FORECAST YEAR 2022-2027

Click Here to Download the Free Sample Report

The Paraguay data center market is dominated by greenfield construction. In addition, the market is witnessing the development of several on-premise, mostly modular, data center deployments. The predicted growth of edge and MDC facilities will boost revenue for construction contractors in Paraguay. The colocation market in Paraguay is expected to grow owing to the governments digitalization actions, a stable economy, advances in the adoption of renewable energy, a push toward green energy production, and strategic location and proximity to Brazil and Argentina.

Key Highlights

The Paraguay market is highly underserved in terms of data center infrastructure. With the recent recovery from recession and COVID-19, the demand for on-premises deployment will grow.

The market is expected to witness around $400 million in investments in data centers during 2022-2027, among the lowest across Latin America.

Paraguay will witness the deployment of edge data centers to improve internet penetration and deliver content through core data centers in Brazil.

Government institutions such as the National Electricity Administration (ANDE) and Municipality of Asuncion have been identified as data center investors on on-premise infrastructure from January-May 2022.

Paraguays data center development is still in its initial phase of growth, and the country has the presence of very few third-party data center operators, such as Tigo Business and IPXON Networks.



The report segments data center investment by the following areas:

IT Infrastructure Servers Storage Systems Network Infrastructure

Electrical Infrastructure UPS Systems Generators Switches & Switchgears PDUs Other Electrical Infrastructure

Mechanical Infrastructure Cooling Systems Rack Cabinets Other Mechanical Infrastructure

General Construction Core & Shell Development Installation & commissioning Services Building & Engineering Design Fire Detection & Suppression Systems Physical Security Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)

Tier Standard Tier I & Tier II Tier III Tier IV





Paraguay Data Center Market  Vendors Analysis

Asuncion, Villa Elisa, San Lorenzo, and Ciudad del Este are some cities that are expected to witness data center development in Paraguay during the forecast period.

Through its Huawei School Connectivity Solution, Huawei Technologies assisted the Paraguay Ministry of Education in the digitalization of over 3,000 schools.

Daikin Applied is a part of Daikin Industries and is one of the largest manufacturers of HVAC solutions. It has operations across the globe, with a sales network covering 150 countries and over 90 production sites. The company offers solutions related to advanced technology, IoT, and compressors. The company operates in Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and other countries in Latin America through its subsidiaries.



IT Infrastructure Providers

Dell Technologies

Huawei Technologies

IBM

Juniper Networks

Lenovo



Data Center Construction Contractors & Sub-Contractors

Cundall



Support Infrastructure Providers

Armstrong Ceiling Solutions

Caterpillar

Cummins

Daikin Applied

Panduit

Schneider Electric

STULZ

Vertiv Group

Data Center Investors

IPXON Networks

TIGO

Explore our data center knowledge base 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.

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Canadian entrepreneur seeks to list crypto ETFs in New Zealand

Smooth-talking Fred Pye, the chairman and CEO of Canadas first  and largest  digital asset investment fund, breezed into Auckland late last month to introduce Kiwis to two new crypto funds which were about to be listed on Cboe, Australias exchange for alternative investments.

Monday, June 13th 2022, 11:28PM

by Jenni McManus

His company, 3iQ, also hopes to list the funds in New Zealand.

Pye brought with him a slick roadshow that traverses the history of bitcoin, how crypto works and why the technology behind blockchain  the platform upon which bitcoin rides  has the potential to change the way the world lives and does business.

In 2020, 3iQ, in 2020 launched the first exchange-traded cryptocurrency fund in North America. We believe everybody should have a piece of bitcoin in their portfolio, Pye says.

Trouble is, he says, investment in crypto can be cumbersome and daunting and the market is riddled with jargon and complexity, not to mention volatility and risk. From its high of US$69,000 in November last year, bitcoin is now trading at around the US$28,000 mark.

None of this seems to faze Pye. Bitcoin started life at US$196 in 2013 and was trading at about US$400 in 2016 when 3iQ, was set up. And though the crypto market has plunged by 50% over the past six months (its Lehman moment, as Pye puts it, he says bitcoin is still worth a look. Investors who put 3% of their portfolio into bitcoin five years ago would have doubled their rate of return and it is still the best-performing asset class on the planet.

Australians seem keen to invest in cryptocurrencies. A survey by consumer advocacy group Choice shows one in nine Aussies has bought crypto in the past year and Pye says 3iQs two ETFs (exchange traded funds) give retail investors easy and inexpensive access to bitcoin and ether (another cryptocurrency).

Nevertheless, accompanying the documentation for the two Australian listings is a warning: There are risks associated with investing in cryptocurrency-based products. These products are considered very high risk and investors should carefully assess their risk profile and seek their own financial advice before investing.

The warning comes from Pye himself. Volatility can be extreme, he says, and EFTs tend to track the underlying price of crypto.

On June 7, the 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin feeder ETF and the 3iQ CoinShares Ether feeder ETF listed on the Cboe exchange. As feeder funds, they give investors access to the underlying 3iQ bitcoin and ether ETFs in Canada which are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

3iQ is only the second crypto business to list an ETF in Australia, hard on the heels of a partnership between Swiss-based 21 Shares and ETF Securities, a London-based business, which in May became the first to debut bitcoin and ether ETFs.

In Pyes view, the technology behind the Bitcoin blockchain  the platform upon which bitcoin is traded  could prove to be more life-changing than the worldwide web in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Thats because blockchain can offer the secure transfer of ownership, value, title and money, and do it instantly. Arguably, the secure value-transfer protocol is more powerful than any other protocol ever created, Pye says.

Called smart contracts, the blockchain applications create few barriers to entry, Pye says. Your 20-year-old could code one in a weekend. But unlike the internet, the platform isnt free. To put that contract (or program) on the blockchain, you must pay the blockchain in its native currency  for example, bitcoin.

Blockchain uses a ledger to keep track of the amount of bitcoin everybody owns. Transactions recorded on the ledger can never be altered and are visible to everyone on the platform, removing the need for trust and third-party oversight. The Bitcoin blockchain is powered by a network of millions of computers that consumes 4% of the worlds energy, Pye says.

With many countries, including New Zealand exploring the replacement of cash with a digital currency, the technology has the potential to disrupt financial services, among other sectors.

Twenty years from now, companies will not be using 60-year-old technology to market their wares, Pye says. Theyll be using something thats being invented right now, called the metaverse.

The metaverse (virtual reality) will replace the worldwide web, he predicts. Unlike blockchain, which is secure, the internet facilitates the unsecured movement of information, benefitting businesses like Google, Uber and Amazon which can park their software on a free platform and get very rich.

Pye now heads a business with C$1.5 billion of assets under management. But getting there has been a long haul.

After starting his career as a precious metals forex trader, Pye had his first dust-up with regulators in the mid 1980s when he wanted to publicly list gold, silver and platinum certificates. He succeeded in 1986, with the certificates being listed on the Montreal Stock Exchange. He set up 3iQ in 2012, around the time bitcoin started trading.

This led to another skirmish with the regulators, this time with the Ontario Securities Commission, in 2016 when he sought to list his crypto fund on a major Canadian stock exchange. A three-year battled ensued, ending with a court hearing in 2019 and a decision in Pyes favour. His bitcoin and ether ERTFs were listed the following year.

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Chinese State Councilor and Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe (3rd R) and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (3rd L) hold talks in Singapore, June 10, 2022. /China's Ministry of National Defense

Editor's note: Rabi Sankar Bosu is an Indian contributor to Chinese media outlets. He writes about Chinese politics, social and cultural issues, and China-India relations with a special interest in the Belt and Road Initiative. The article reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

During his meeting with his U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore on June 10, China's State Councilor and Minister of National Defense General Wei Fenghe blasted the United States for playing the "Taiwan cards" after the U.S. announcement on arms sales to China's Taiwan region that once again has questioned the basics of sacrosanct one-China principle. Despite China's persistent protests, U.S. President Joe Biden's fourth arms package to the Taiwan region is the latest example of his administration's desire to contain China's rise by roiling cross-strait relations.

Notably, on June 8, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DCSA) announced a $120 million arms sale package to the Taiwan region. Highlighting Chinese warships' "increased activities" in the waters and airspace around Taiwan, the DCSA stated that the proposed sale will "contribute to the sustainment of the recipient's surface vessel fleet, enhancing its ability to meet current and future threats."

Quite justifiably, the arms sales to the Taiwan region provoked strongly-worded protests from China's government and media. The Chinese government and people have long viewed the U.S.' continuing selling weapons to the Taiwan region as hostile and aimed at challenging the country's territorial integrity.

Thus, it is entirely reasonable for the Chinese defense minister slamming the U.S. Taiwan policy by stating that "the People's Liberation Army will relentlessly safeguard China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and if anyone dares to separate Taiwan from the motherland, the Chinese military will definitely smash such attempts at any cost, even by going to war."

Needless to say, the latest arms sale to the region will have an adverse impact on the cross-strait peace development as well as the Sino-U.S. ties which have been at an all-time low resulting from an unfair "trade war" against the world's second largest economy started by the former U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.

Since enacting the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) on April 10, 1979 signed by President Jimmy Carter, the U.S.' "defensive" arms sales to Taiwan again and again has raised the question of how sincerely the U.S. treats the one-China principle which proclaims the Taiwan region is an inalienable part of China, the three China-U.S. joint communiques, and how much it respects China's core interests.

Truly speaking, the U.S. arms sales to China's Taiwan as well as providing training to troops there by the U.S. forces are a distinct interference in China's domestic affairs on the part of the U.S. presidents that are instigating support for "Taiwan independence" forces.

The U.S. administration throughout different presidencies has been provoking China by frequent sales of weapons to Taiwan that undermines one of the most important bilateral ties in the world.

People wear face masks on a Taipei street after the COVID-19 alert is raised to level 3 in the Taiwan region, China, July 12, 2021. /CFP

Following the footsteps of former presidents, President Biden vigorously said during a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on May 23 that his country will "militarily intervene" in case China attempts to take Taiwan by force, prompting Chinese State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office to criticize him for "playing with fire."

Being baffled by China's rise as an effective world power, the United States with the aim to preserve its own hegemony across the world openly described China as "rival." America's gross interference in China's internal affairs has become more evident from trade restrictions to selling arms to Taiwan, from encouraging independence forces in the region to signing the 2018 "Taiwan Travel Act" into law, from sending U.S. officials to Taiwan to launching the "U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade," to list a few.

Although the three China-U.S. joint communiques and the so-called Taiwan Relations Act do not recognize Taiwan region as a separate nation, the United States with an aim to challenge China's sovereignty has continued to extend economic support and arms sale to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities, thus, brewing tensions between the world's two largest economies. The peaceful development of cross-strait relations has largely remained cold due to DPP leader Tsai Ing-wen's stubborn refusal to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus which is an important political foundation to maintain stable cross-strait relations.

There is no doubt that the United States and China bear heavy responsibilities not only to their own people but to the world at large. The China-U.S. relationship should still be led by mutually beneficial cooperation, and feature healthy competition and avoid confrontation. In the light of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the interaction relating to bilateral thorny issues and contemporary global issues between the two nuclear powers is more important to avert any unforeseen disaster.

It is hoped that the United States would stop elevating its relations with Taiwan by honoring President Biden's given promise to President Xi Jinping during their virtual meeting in November of last year that the U.S. does not support "Taiwan independence." Indeed, stronger China-U.S. ties matter a great deal for the Asia-Pacific and the world as a whole.
Stefano Domenicali is flying to South Africa between the Azerbaijan and Canada Grand Prix to hold talks with the management of the Kyalami Circuit. A race in 2023 may follow.

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Rumors of a return of the South African Grand Prix have been in the air for some time. Between 1962 and 1993, 23 official Grand Prix were held there, with Jim Clark as the record holder. He won four editions, although one of those was not part of the F1 calendar. Niki Lauda also won three official races in South Africa.

F1 to South Africa

According to The Telegraph Domenicali will travel to the country this week to talk to the management of the Kyalami Circuit. This circuit was also used for almost all (East London also hosted three GPs) previous Grand Prix and would now be considered again. 2023 is possibly feasible, but then something has to happen about the new calendar.

F1's CEO has a puzzle ahead of him in that regard, as the Grand Prix of Qatar and Las Vegas already add two races to the calendar and the one in China should also return. The races in France and Belgium seem most likely to be replaced.
Amaury Cordeel has managed to accumulate twelve penalty points and with it a suspension for one race. The F2 race weekend in Azerbaijan was remarkable anyway, as the father of a driver was fined for an altercation with another driver.

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Cordeel gets a suspension

Van Amersfoort Racing did not acquire the most talented driver with Cordeel. The Belgian already didn't have a great track record in Formula 3 and continues that line in Formula 2. He hasn't scored a single point for the Dutch team yet but has already collected a lot of penalty points.

Before the Grand Prix in Baku, Cordeel had eleven penalty points, so he knew that another penalty point would result in a suspension. In the main race the Belgian collided with Oli Caldwell, for which Cordeel was assigned the blame. For that he also received his twelfth penalty point and with it a suspension for the British Grand Prix.

Read more Ferrari not yet panicking and repeating words of Horner

Penalty for a father

Cordeel is the first driver to accumulate twelve penalty points on his F2 license since Mahaveer Raghunathan in 2019. The driver who was in action under a Dutch license for MP Motorsport missed the race in Austria due to a suspension. Who will replace Cordeel at Silverstone is not yet known.

It was a remarkable race weekend anyway, because in the same main race on Sunday, things also went wrong between Cem Bolukbasi and Roy Nissany. Bolukbasi's Turkish father allegedly entered into an altercation with Roy Nissany after the latter crashed with son Cem. Later, this also involved the trainer of the Israeli, for which Bolukbasi was fined five thousand euros. The father of the Turkish driver is also not allowed to be present at the circuit for the next race.
It is the hot topic of conversation this season in Formula 1; porpoising. One team has more problems than the other and it is mainly the Mercedes drivers who have to put up with it. Mercedes wants the FIA to change the regulations and the FIA seems to be sensitive to Mercedes' criticism.

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Concerns for Hamilton's health

Lewis Hamilton stepped out of his Mercedes after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix like a broken man. The seven-time world champion was suffering more than ever this season from the bouncing of his car. Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff even let it be known that he was worried about the driver's health. At the end of the race Hamilton even had to be helped out of his car. Horner called it all just posturing, but the FIA now seems sensitive to the criticism of Mercedes.

According to Auto Motor und Sport, the FIA takes Mercedes' concerns for the drivers' health seriously and wants to launch an investigation to get to the bottom of the matter. The FIA would like to talk to the drivers and technical directors of the F1 teams, but also consult specialists and look at other racing series.

Little support for Mercedes

Despite the FIA's upcoming investigation, there seems to be little to no support for Mercedes among the other Formula One teams. Few drivers seem to be really bothered by it. Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko also let it be known that his drivers are little affected. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner also thinks it is nonsense to change the regulations just because Mercedes does not have its affairs in order.
Enovix Corporation, a designer and manufacturer of next-generation 3D Silicon Lithium-ion batteries (earlier post), demonstrated the ability of its 0.27 Ah EV test cells to charge from 0-80% state-of-charge in as little as 5.2 minutes and achieve a greater than 98% charge capacity in less than 10 minutes.

Enovix has developed a lithium-ion battery that incorporates a 100% active silicon anode using a patented 3D cell architecture to increase energy density and maintain high cycle life. Enovix replaces electrode winding in a standard pouch lithium-ion battery production process with proprietary laser patterning and high-speed stacking tools to increase line MWh capacity by 30%.





Fast charge capability can accelerate mass adoption of EVs and weve been able to demonstrate a level of performance that meets and exceeds many OEM roadmaps. EV manufacturers are in pursuit of batteries that support longer range, while the public and private sectors work to increase EV driver access to fast chargers. Were proud to support these goals to help electrify the automotive industry and demonstrate our batteries are an exciting option to power long-range, fast-charging EVs. Harrold Rust, Co-Founder, CEO and President of Enovix





On 14 June, Ashok Lahiri, Co-Founder and CTO of Enovix, will speak at the 12th International Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) Europe in Mainz, Germany, where he will provide an update on the companys EV program.

Our unique architecture enables a battery that not only charges in less than 10 minutes, but also maintains high cycle life. We can improve battery performance today using the same chemistries, but more importantly, we can accelerate the industrys roadmap. Ashok Lahiri

As part of the companys three-year Department of Energy grant program that is pairing a 100% active silicon anode with EV-class cathode materials, the company recently announced its cells surpassed 1,000 cycles while retaining 93% of their capacity.

Testing also demonstrated that after six months at elevated temperatures, Enovix batteries had minimal capacity loss. This pairing is projecting a calendar life of greater than 10 years for Enovix batteries.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 Andre Ferreira / Contributed / Courtesy of Philly's -- A Taste of Philadelphia Show More Show Less 5 of 5









Philly's A Taste of Philadelphia has landed in downtown New Haven, and Yale University Properties is celebrating the cheesesteak shop's second location with an official ribbon cutting June 14.

Philadelphia native Shem Adams, who opened Philly's at 1008 Chapel Street in early May, will mark the milestone with New Haven mayor Justin Elicker and other notable members of the community at 12:30 p.m. Following the ribbon cutting, guests can enjoy free samples, as well as appearances by Daym Drops of Netflixs "Fresh, Fried and Crispy," Yale mascot Handsome Dan, and Yale Public Safety service dog Officer Heidi.
Melody A. Currey, who always seemed to find her own way as a blunt practitioner of politics in 25 years as a state lawmaker, East Hartford mayor and state commissioner, died Monday as her husband drove her to a dialysis appointment.

She and dad were on the way to the appointment this morning, said her son, state Rep. Jeff Currey, D-East Hartford. They were at a red light. The sun came out. She said, I cant do this. I love you. And she died.

Jeff Currey took a deep breath, cried a little and laughed a little.

She always did things the way and when she wanted, he said.

Melody Currey was 71, a native of New York who took well to the politics of her adopted home, East Hartford.

She was elected to the state House in 1992, serving as a deputy leader. She left after her election as mayor in 2005.

In January 2011, she joined the administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in its first days, serving as commissioner of motor vehicles in Malloys first term, then commissioner of administrative services in his second.

As the commissioner of administrative services, Currey oversaw a complex series of purchases and renovations that moved state agencies from expensive leased space.

After the purchase and renovation of an office building on Farmington Avenue in Hartford and the two-tower Connecticut River Plaza downtown, the State Office Building near the Capitol was emptied and gutted.

On a hard-hat tour of the River Plaza complex she conducted for Malloy in 2016, she noted with satisfaction that her 15th-floor office in one tower would be higher than the one slated for Kevin Sullivan, the former Senate leader who was Malloys commissioner of revenue services, a reflection of long-standing House and Senate rivalries.

I told Sullivan, I always wanted to look down on you, she said, smiling that day.

Malloy and former Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman were among those to call Jeff Currey with condolences on Monday. Services were incomplete.

Currey is survived by her husband, Don; three children, Jeff, Becky and Matt; and six grandchildren. Melody and Don Currey celebrated their 50th anniversary in October.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  In deep-red Republican rural Nevada, longtime election officials are fighting back against a right-wing conspiracy-fueled push to turn back the clock on elections and return to hand counting paper ballots.

For some, the fight is paying off.

For others, pleas have fallen on unsympathetic ears.

Since the late 2021, seven of Nevadas 17 counties have considered either switching away from Dominion electronic voting machines, which have come under fire from election deniers following the 2020 election, or eliminating electronic voting systems altogether in favor of paper ballots and hand counting, a move that local election officials argue would only create more distrust, uncertainty and delays in the election process.

Two counties, Nye and Esmeralda, are asking their clerks to conduct the 2022 elections using paper ballots and hand count the results, a move that was presented to the commissioners by Jim Marchant, a former Republican assemblyman now running for Nevada secretary of state, who has been peddling debunked voter fraud claims since losing a bid for Congress in 2020.

The decision blindsided longtime Nye County Clerk Sam Merlino, a Republican and the countys top election official since 2000.

I literally wanted to resign that day. After doing it for so long, youd think people would have a little trust in you, Merlino told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a recent interview.

We expected that after 2020 people would say that clerks and election officials did a great job, that they got us through the pandemic and the elections. But we never heard that. Immediately they said everything was fraudulent, Merlino said. Now you dont feel like anyone respects the office anymore.

Merlino isnt alone. The disinformation campaign against voting systems in Nevada is taking its toll on election officials across the state.

I thought this was ridiculous from day one. I thought that it would pass. When someone loses an election, its a good excuse to blame something, and thats what happened. But its taken on a life of its own, Lyon County Clerk Nikki Bryan said.

Im a Republican, but I just dont buy into that garbage, added Bryan, who chose not to run for re-election as clerk-treasurer after more than two decades in the role.

Merlino and Bryan and their clerk counterparts across the state have spoken out publicly in meetings to defend the accuracy of the 2020 elections and voice their concerns with their counties considering moves to go back to hand-counting paper ballots.

Nye and Esmeralda are the only two counties that have voted in favor of hand counting so far.

Other rural counties, including Lyon, Lincoln and Elko, tabled the discussions after briefly considering them.

Lander County decided last fall to switch from Dominion machines, which are used in 15 other Nevada counties, to ES&S Equipment, the other voting machine vendor approved by the state and used by Carson City.

Merlino is not running for re-election and initially planned to retire in December 2021. But after Nevadas redrawing of legislative and congressional districts happened much later than it normally would because of the pandemic, she didnt feel right leaving her staff in such a precarious situation and told the commissioners she would fulfill her term through the 2022 election cycle.

That all changed in March when the county commissioners told her they would be formally asking her to conduct the 2022 elections using hand-counted paper ballots.

The notice came days before the meeting. She didnt know who would be arguing in favor of the move or what specific arguments they would make so that she could prepare her own counterpoints.

Merlino informed commissioners that she would resign in early August, staying only long enough for the office to work through a routine systems check with the secretary of states office.

We can only be pushed so far, she said.

None of the proposed changes could take effect before the June 14 primary election, however. The earliest a switch to paper ballots could take place would be in November. And county commissioners cannot force the elected clerks to stop using electronic machines and switch to paper ballots; they are only allowed to recommend or request that they do so.

PUSH FROM ELECTION DENIERS

In an interview, Marchant, 65, said he doesnt trust electronic voting machines based on his background  he previously owned technology companies. He said that gives him more insight into the voting machines than the clerks and their staff who work directly with the machines. He claims that hand counting is the only accurate way to tally the votes.

But the clerks said Marchants claims, which are also being pushed in other states by far-right election deniers, are wildly wrong.

The voting machines are not connected to the internet and do not use Wi-Fi, making it extremely unlikely that they could be hacked, Bryan said.

There are also several additional safeguards in place, Bryan added. The equipment requires both a fingerprint and a password for workers to access, and the machines are tested before and after each election.

The Dominion voting machines all produce a secondary paper ballot that is printed and can be reviewed by the voter to ensure its accuracy before they cast their vote.

Bryan said Lyon is also required to audit four random machines after the election. Those audits include taking the paper rolls out of the machines and hand counting the totals to make sure the machine counted everything correctly. Those audits have always shown that the machines were accurate, she added.

Elko County Clerk Kris Jakeman, who worked in the clerks office for nearly two decades before she was elected as the countys top election official in 2018, echoed those comments.

Jakeman said Elko, like other counties, has worked with Dominion since the mid-2000s when the company was called Sequoia.

We have a great partnership with Dominion. We have never found any errors or instances of discrepancies with the machines as long as Ive worked here, she said.

Jakeman, a Republican, also pushed back on the notion that hand counting would somehow be more accurate than the machine tally, because hand counting could lead to human error, a point that Merlino and Bryan also noted.

People get tired. They get distracted. They may have a bias. Machines dont, Jakeman said.

One of Marchants Republican primary opponents in the secretary of state race, Sparks Councilman Kristopher Dahir, has been critical of Marchants push in the rural counties.

Voting and counting machines, Dahir said, have helped to eliminate issues with hand counting of paper ballots that election officials in the past had to deal with. Dahir called Marchants push short-sighted and said it would only create more chaos and not help anything.

We dont need to go to the dark ages in order to vote, Dahir told the Review-Journal.

INSTALLED BY DEEP STATE CABAL

Marchant himself is no stranger to the conspiracy theory world.

He claims voter fraud led to his loss to Democratic incumbent Rep. Steven Horsford in Nevadas 4th Congressional District by more than 16,000 votes in 2020. A Clark County District Court judge rejected a Marchant lawsuit seeking a new election in the district.

He dismisses the fact that election officials from both parties at state and local levels, including Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, have said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

And of the judges across Nevada who have thrown out virtually every legal challenge to the 2020 election, Marchant also said he does not trust hardly any part of the judicial system.

Asked if there are any parts of Americas democracy that he does trust, Marchant said, Good question. Not a whole lot.

On a Flyover Conservatives podcast in January, Marchant said Nevada hasnt elected anybody since 2006. They have been installed by the deep state cabal.

Last October, Marchant was one of the featured speakers at the QAnon-linked Patriot Double Down event in Las Vegas. One of the core parts of QAnon, which started on the fringes of the internet in 2017 but has crept into mainstream right-wing politics, is a belief that a secret cabal of elites controls the deep state government.

For his so-called proof of fraud and tampering in the 2020 election, Marchant has pointed to Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters in Colorado, who has pushed unfounded claims that the voting machines could be manipulated and ballots could be counted more than once.

Peters was indicted by a grand jury in Colorado in March on 10 charges relating to a security breach of the countys election system in 2021 that led to a public release of sensitive information.

The allegations led to a Colorado judge ruling that Peters, who is also running for Colorado secretary of state, cannot supervise the primary or midterm elections in that county this year, The Associated Press reported.

The Mesa County district attorneys office this past week presented a report that showed that there was extensive evidence that Peters claims were false.

When you align yourself with a clerk who has been indicted by a grand jury  and a grand jury is not a political entity at all  and when a grand jury indicts you for seven felonies and three misdemeanors, theres a problem, Bryan, the Lyon County clerk, told the Review-Journal.

OTHER PROBLEMS WITH HAND-COUNTING

Merlino put together a summary of what hand-counting paper ballots would look like in real time. Each ballot would take approximately five minutes for election workers to review and tally by hand.

In Esmeralda County, where there are just 615 registered active voters, hand counting might be doable. But in other, more populated rural counties, those logistics get much more complicated. Clark County, including Las Vegas, has nearly 1.27 million registered active voters, according to the secretary of state.

Merlino estimated that based on her turnout estimates for the 2022 general election for Nye County and its roughly 31,000 registered voters, it would take 40 workers, each working eight-hour days, roughly 16 days to count the votes.

That would create a distinct possibility that the count would not be complete in time for the votes to be canvassed within 10 days of the election as state law requires, she said.

There is also a looming paper shortage that could make the logistics of moving to paper ballots nearly impossible.

And the clerks have also raised issues about potentially being sued for prematurely ending their contracts with Dominion.

Eliminating voting machines entirely could also violate requirements set by the Americans with Disabilities Act, leading to even more lawsuits.

The state could look to claw back money it allocated to the counties in 2017 to pay for the transition to the new Dominion machines, an idea that was brought up last month by longtime state Assemblywoman Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas.

Nye County, for example, received $217,000 from the state to make the transition.

When the counties came and asked for help, we helped them. And now theyve decided they dont want that. I believe those funds need to be returned to the state if theyre not going to be used, Carlton told the Review-Journal in a recent interview.

SOWING MORE DISTRUST

Several groups have also come to the defense of the voting machines and systems in the state, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada and former Republican Gov. Bob List, who represented Dominion for 10 years as a consultant.

I was a Trump supporter, and I would like to have seen him win," List told the Elko County Commission in April. "But I also know that it was not the fault of the machines."

Those arguments persuaded enough elected officials to table some of those discussions, with the county commissions in Lyon, Elko and Lincoln all dropping the proposals before even voting on them.

The Washoe County Commission voted 4-1 in March to reject a similar proposal to eliminate electronic machines and move to paper ballots, an effort that Marchant was not involved with.

But the damage may already be done.

Bryan, Merlino and Jakeman each said that the push to discredit the current voting systems is only creating more distrust, in the public and among elected officials. And its becoming harder to break through that disinformation, they said.

They dont believe what we are saying, said Bryan. They are so  and Ill just call it what it is  brainwashed.

Bryan and Merlino had already decided against running for re-election. Jakeman, in Elko, said choosing to run for re-election was a difficult decision but she decided to do so after encouragement from her staff.

Bryan said shes worried about future elections. Her office regularly gets calls from people yelling at them about the elections before hanging up. And she wonders how long this anger can continue before it erupts into violence.

She said she is still hoping for the best, though, and knows that things will be done correctly by her and her staff.

Whether those who already doubt the elections will trust the results is another question.

Thats what is so frustrating. My whole career Ive tried to help people fix their problems, Bryan said. I just cant fix this.
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GREENWICH  In 1922, an ambitious young furniture maker from Romania came to the Byram section of Greenwich with a plan to open a lumber mill.

The business he founded is still running today, with his old tools on display in the showroom of the business where he worked  and where his great-grandchildren are also still working today.

In a classic immigrant success story, 100 years in the making, Interstate + Lakeland Lumber on South Water Street came about when Leon Kahan left Romania with other relatives to start a new life.

He came from a family of woodcarvers; they all came through Ellis Island, said Ben Kahan, the great-grandson of the founder and the companys marketing manager.

Leon Kahan sailed through New York Harbor on the S.S. Noordam, a vessel operated by the Holland America Line. Kahan was a skilled woodworker, the family trade, and he quickly found work as a woodcarver and chairmaker in New York City. He took classes at night to learn English, according to family lore.

Seeking new opportunities and a fertile place for growth, Kahan, then 33, went to Byram and founded Interstate Lumber & Mill with a brother-in-law. Interstate referred to its location across the state line from New York on the Byram River, once a thriving industrial corridor.

Leon Kahan saw great opportunity in the Byram area and in Greenwich, and he believed the area north of New York City was poised for commercial and residential growth, according to family history, as the suburbs were transformed by the advent of a new system of roads.

He believed in the area, and he took big bets, his great-grandson recalled.

Greenwich was a substantial industrial hub beginning in the 1800s, turning out vast quantities of fabrics, boat engines, screws, bolts, vacuum cleaners and the electrical supply for the New York and New Haven Railroad.

The lumber mill that the founder built, with exposed beams and high ceilings, was converted in 2008 into a showroom and office space for the company.

We have been in this building since 1922, said Ben Kahan, who got his start in the family business sweeping floors, working the counter and later driving a forklift.

Today, the company operates at a number of locations around the region, including Westport, Stamford, Newtown and Shrub Oak, N.Y. A specialty mill for custom-made moulding and other items operates in Bethel. The operation in Westchester County, N.Y., was known as Lakeland Lumber, and the two names were later merged. The company provides lumber, doors, windows and architectural hardware  as well as the specialty work that Leon Kahan did as a young man.

The companys founder was a meticulous and highly skilled woodworker, a master of the plane and chisel, who could turn out molds for chocolate cakes or sturdy chairs with ease. His tools and workbench are now on display at the company showroom on South Water Street.

Leon Kahan kept a certain old-world decorum about him, recalled his grandson, Sheldon, who is now the company president and who knew him his as a child.

He was a pretty distinguished guy, always in jacket and tie, he recalled. Sheldon Kahan used to pick up strips of string from the floor of the lumber yard, for reuse. Leon Kahan would quiz his grandson about industry terms and procedures, and reward him for correct answers with a treat.

Leon Kahan was a religious and civic leader, as well as a successful businessman. He was president of the Congregation Kneses Tifereth Israel in Port Chester, N.Y., was a member of the Byram Rotary, and was active in a number of charitable organizations in the region. He died in 1968.

The company has faced more than a few challenges during its long history.

It kept going during the Great Depression, with a steady supply of lumber shipped to its loading dock during the economic downturn, according to contemporary newspaper accounts. Hundreds of spectators came out to watch the barge as it came down the Byram River, eager for signs of an economic upturn, jobs and construction activity in 1938.

After Leon Kahans death, his son, Jack, took over the business, followed by his son, Sheldon, who trained as an architect. There are a number of fourth-generation family members who are following in their footsteps in the lumber business.

Ben Kahan, who previously worked in the tech field in Silicon Valley, says he finds the work in the lumber field rewarding. In his previous job, he said with a laugh, software products needed a two-page document explaining what they do.

Theres something wholesome and tangible and real about working in the lumber industry, he said, tapping a door on the showroom floor. You need a door? We got a door. And its sobering, being able to take in how much history there is.

Kahan says hes also proud that he is probably the only member of his class at the University of Pennsylvania who has driven a forklift.

The company recently celebrated its 100th anniversary with a party and concert at the Stamford location.

The great-grandson of the founder thinks Leon would marvel at the companys growth into the 21st century.

I imagine hed be proud. One hundred years, four generations, five lumber yards, high-end design centers. He started the baton, and weve taken it and ran with it. I studied family business in grad school. I know how difficult it is for a company to survive into the third generation, said Ben Kahan, For it to thrive into the fourth, I think what were doing something very special, and something Im definitely proud of.

rmarchant@greenwichtime.com
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STAMFORD - A city man allegedly punched then pulled knife on a store security guard during what police said was a shoplifting incident gone awry.

Capt. Richard Conklin said police responded to a report of a shoplifting at a store inside the Stamford Town Center, 151 Broad St., around 5 p.m. on June 4.
Back in January we heard that Chinese car maker Geely is looking to get into the phone business by acquiring the ailing Meizu. The acquisition is now complete, even if Meizu didnt put out a press release.

Meizu hasnt been doing too well in recent years and a partnership with Sony that aimed to bring Flyme apps to Xperia phones didnt do much to resuscitate the company. Geely has the resources to support the company, however, the automaker owns Volvo, Polestar, Lotus and others.

Inside the Zeekr 001

One of the brands owned by the company recently launched the Zeekr 001, which featured the Flyme for Car infotainment system developed by Meizu. Last year Geely also created a new company, Hubei Xingji Shidai Technology, with the goal to develop smartphones (and other smart gadgets) for the global audience. Meizus resources will help kick-start that effort.

We have more details on Geely and what the Meizu acquisition means for the company over at ArenaEV.
Introduction

Huawei announced the global arrival of the Watch GT 3 Pro last month in Milan, the fashion capital of Europe. It is the companys flagship wearable for 2022, and it's certainly one of the best-looking smartwatches ever made. It was introduced in two sizes and we had a chance to try both of them for this review.

After weeks of testing we are now ready to share our impressions of the Watch GT 3 Pro so strap yourselves in.

We had the Titanium version of the 46mm Watch GT 3 Pro and the Ceramic 43mm unit with gold-accented bezel. Both variants look extremely premium and classy. The larger version has a metal body, while the smaller comes only with a ceramic body, that can be had with a matching ceramic band or a white leather strap.

Design and build

The Titanium version supports standard 22mm straps, and the one you get in the box is very similar to what the Watch 3 Pro series had. It has a folding clasp that is very easy to operate. The strap can be adapted for bigger wrists, with Huawei providing three extra elements to extend the length.

The Ceramic 43mm version takes 20mm straps. It looks truly impressive and while the gold accent on our version won't be everyone's cup of tea its amazing build quality will certainly gather the right kind of attention.

The white ceramic band is equally eye-catching. It was crafted at extreme high temperatures of 1500 degrees Celsius and the surface was finished with a diamond powder polish to achieve a smooth, flawless texture.

The watch body is made from white nano-ceramics, while the sapphire glass sitting on top is practically immune to scratching and damaging.

The clasp is a classic butterfly, and just like its bigger sibling, there are three extra elements to extend the length of the band. However, unlike the Titanium version, here you have to use a tiny screwdriver for the microscopic screws, so you have to be very careful not to lose those.

Both versions of the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro have two buttons on the side - the top is a rotating crown, the bottom is a simple button at first glance. In fact it has conductive surface, which is key for enabling the ECG functionality. The charging is standard Qi wireless affair, but unless you plan on detaching one end of the bands every time you charge the watch, you'd be better off using the charger that comes in the retail box.

Software

The Watch GT 3 Pro runs Harmony OS 2.0 as most of the company's wearables these days. The operating system has been adapted to support several new features here, though.

The watch comes with an ECG (Electrocardiogram) sensor that measures the hearts rhythm. This includes real-time analysis, sinus rhythm, atrial fibrillation, premature atrial and ventricular beat reminders, and to help keep you aware of any heart health-related risks.

Everything sounds fantastic on paper, but Huawei is yet to receive the required certifications to activate the feature, so at this point it isn't working in Europe. The company is working on getting approval in Germany and Italy, which will open the door for further expansion in other EU members.

We already mentioned that the bottom key is conductive, and thats needed to close the electric circuit going through the body. So far, we could only measure the arterial stiffness detection, and the Watch said the measurement was normal. Yay, us!



Arterial stiffness detection

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro connects with any smartphone over Bluetooth. It does not have cellular support, which is arguably the main difference between it and the Watch 3 Pro. It integrates with a selection of third-party apps downloaded from AppGallery on the phone, and it can also serve as a hands-free for taking calls.

There are plenty of features and sensors that measure the sleep quality, the SpO2 levels, and heart rate, as we've come to expect from Huawei Watch devices these days.

The Watch GT 3 Pro supports over 100 workouts modes available, and the newest is free diving. Aside from the standard IP68 and 5 ATM rating, this watch has withstood a staggering 200 water pressure cycles, and in theory, it supports free dives as deep as 30 meters.

Yes, it is nice Huawei managed to develop the wearable for such high-pressure scenarios, although we are unsure how accurate and useful it can be for that specific activity.

In fact, despite the very comfortable fit the Watch GT3 Pro is pretty heavy in both of its versions and we are not sure many will want to take it for a run or in the weights room (where it will be of little use much like every other smartwatch). It fits better in more formal environments where its impeccable design and selection of beautiful watch faces really help you stand out.

In such environments it will do well to forward the notifications from your phone to your wrist, although it's kinda limited with regards to what you can do about them. Some pre-typed responses is as good as it gets and even that's not available for all apps.

Still for most people reading the notification and then knowing if you need to reach out for your phone or not. You also get niceties such as weather updates, sunrise and sunset times, moon phases and Huawei Wallet in the handful of supported countries.

Battery life

This is the other great thing about the Watch GT 3 Pro alongside its looks. Huawei equipped the 46mm version with a 530mAh battery, while the 43mm version has a 292mAh power cell.

The 46mm GT 3 Pro can go the very impressive 13 days with constant heart-rate, skin temperature and sleep tracking. We kept the SpO2 tracking off, as well as the stress test as those features will hardly have practical usage for the vast majority of users.

Turning these on lowers the battery life by about a day and a half, which still means you'll need to recharge it once every 11 or 12 days.

If you do decide to take the 46mm GT 3 Pro for your runs and do four hours of GPS-tracked workouts per week would bring the battery life down to 8 days.

All these numbers were achieved with the Always On Display turned off. The raise to wake gesture is fast and reliable, so you might want to keep it that way. Still, if you prefer to have AoD you get about 6.5 days of battery life in the first test scenario with only a few sensors turned on and about 4 days in the heaviest use case with workouts involved.

The 43mm variant of the Watch GT 3 Pro's smaller battery understandably can't match the endurance of the 46mm version. However even that one easily has most smartwatches outlasted.

With no AoD and only heart tracking enabled among the sensors you get to go 8 days between charges, which is great. Switching AoD on brings endurance down to four days.

Huawei does not announce the brightness levels of its 1.43 AMOLED (1.32 for the Ceramic version), but it gets plenty bright to hadle even the brightest sun.

Charging the 46mm Watch GT 3 Pro from 0 to 100% takes 110 minutes, which is longer than Huaweis promise of 85 minutes, but considering that a 30 minutes charge gives you 39% charge that can usually last for several days it's not a big deal.

The 43mm variant takes about 80 minutes from 0 to 100%.

Since the devices support wireless charging, they work with any Qi charger. However, most chargers are too big so you will need to detach one end of the band to be able to place the Watch GT 3 Pro over it.

Verdict

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro offers a compelling set of features, but it's battery life and design that really set it apart. The watch look impressive, has amazing build quality and feels really comfortable.

When you consider the kind of materials you are getting and, above all, the super tough sapphire glass screen its price tag really sounds like a bargain. There are not that many classical watches with sapphire glass that cost as much and practically none among smartwatches.

The 46mm Watch GT 3 Pro begins from 369 with a leather strap, while the full Titanium package is 499. In a rare twist the smaller 43mm version is actually more expensive. A ceramic white body with no accents and a white leather strap will cost you 499. The one with a gold bezel ornaments and ceramic strap is 599.

It is worth mentioning Huawei often sells its premium devices with a bunch of freebies, and you can get Freebuds Pro or Freebuds Lipstick for free in many markets, as well as a yearly membership with Adidas Running. Those certainly help further sweeten the deal, particularly if happen to need the device offered in your specific market.

All that said we can strongly recommend the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro. It's not the cheapest, nor the smartest wearable around, but its unrivaled looks and battery life, combined with reliable notifications delivery make it really the best wearable around for a huge group of people. And thanks to its premium materials it's bound to retain its looks for a long time too.
Samsung is rumored to host an Unpacked event on August 10 where well see the Galaxy Z Fold4 and Galaxy Z Flip4. The summer event is also the stage where we see new audio wearables, and this time we are likely to welcome the Galaxy Buds2 Pro or Galaxy Buds Pro 2.

The TWS earphones have now entered mass production, according to reliable tipster Max Jamboor. SnoopyTech then chimed in with the colors of the new Buds, which will be three - Zenith White, Zenith Bora Purple, and Zenith Graphite.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro arrived in January 2021 and were now looking at an update with a better fit and bigger batteries. The Galaxy Buds2 came in August 2021 as more affordable alternative to the Pro line.

We havent had new Buds in 2022, but obviously the more premium line is the favorite to get the update. We are yet to see any renders or specs leaks, but we'll update you once that happens.

Source 1  Source 2
A biologist-turned-environmental policy expert with Saipan roots is leading the charge in the nations capital to include the Marianas Trench as a National Marine Sanctuary.

You would think that all of the leading people in ocean conservation would be from the Pacific, but the reality is that hundreds of people in D.C., London, Paris and New York are leading, said Angelo Villagomez, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. I am in the door, and my job is to make sure that the door stays open for other Pacific Islanders.

Villagomez, 43, is the son of the late Ramon Villagomez, a former CNMI Supreme Court justice. After working for some time on Saipan and now living in Washington D.C., he is also the lead writer on the nomination for the Marianas Trench to become a National Marine Sanctuary.

The original nominating parties include the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit organization that seeks to encourage civic engagement and shape public policy, and the Friends of the Marianas Trench, an organization founded by Villagomez in 2008 that protects the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument and marine resources through ocean conservation strategies and research.

The Friends of the Marianas Trench nominated the Marianas Trench Marine Sanctuary in 2016 with the help of Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan and CNMI Gov. Ralph Deleon Guerrero Torres who sent a letter to President Barack Obama to create the designation. A year after, President Donald Trump accepted the five-year nomination.

Years went by afterward, however, and no action was taken. So last January, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Office of National Marine Sanctuaries issued a notice in the Federal Register, so they can solicit written comments to help them determine whether the Marianas Trench National Marine Sanctuary will remain in the inventory for five more years.

Benefits

Becoming a marine sanctuary would benefit the Marianas Trench because it will become an area people can continue to use while ensuring that it is protected by marine laws.

Villagomez is optimistic about the ongoing nomination because of his work at Pew Charitable Trusts in 2009.

He was able to help establish the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument through former President George Bushs presidential proclamation that recognizes the Marianas to be a refuge for marine organisms.

A monument designation means that the Marianas is internationally recognized as a haven for coral reefs, seabirds and sea turtles.

He was also able to expand the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, the worlds largest marine protected area, and has contributed to designing 15 international shark sanctuaries.

America The Beautiful initiative

Both of these projects dovetail with his work on the Biden administrations America The Beautiful initiative, which has a goal to protect 30% of lands and oceans by 2030.

The America the Beautiful initiative is paying more attention to the inclusion of tribes and indigenous peoples in the territories in achieving conservation goals, Villagomez said.

The Biden-Harris administrations initial report which was released in May 2021 shows the main principles that will guide their conservation approach. Two of the key principles that are important to the Mariana Islands include, conserving Americas lands and waters for the benefit of all people and honoring tribal sovereignty and supporting the priorities of tribal nations.

Around the United States, there are a number of indigenous groups and tribes that have been very supportive of the National Marine Sanctuaries, Villagomez said. The exact context of indigenous engagement is different because Guam and the CNMI are territories while Hawaii is a state.

One of the projects he has worked on in relation to the America the Beautiful initiative is creating a learning network where different indigenous groups that are working on ocean conservation from across the country can come together and learn from one another about the National Sanctuaries Act.

Weve had a couple of meetings, and each sanctuary is in a different place politically, Villagomez said. Were trying to bring some expertise and capacity to help them with the things that theyre working on.

Passion

Decades have passed, and Villagomez is not yet tired of his work. He traces his passion for conservation to a trip he took in his senior year of high school in Florida.

When I was 17 years old and went off to college, I wanted to be a scientist, he said. I took a course my senior year about tropical rainforest ecology and spent spring break in Peru.

I collected insects and studied them, but in a blink of an eye, a multinational corporation can buy a whole rainforest, cut the whole thing down in a week and your lifes work would be nothing, he said.

Thats when Villagomez realized that he did not want to become a scientist but an advocate for conservation instead.

After earning a bachelors degree in biology in two years from the University of Richmond in Virginia, he got a second bachelors degree in environmental policy at Rollins College in Florida.

He wanted to use his educational background and expertise to help his fellow Pacific Islanders, so he returned to the land of his birth. On Saipan, he went to work for The Marianas Resource Conservation and Development Council as a coordinator in 2006 where he created the Beautify CNMI Coalition and organized tree plantings, beach cleanups, water quality testing and reef monitoring around the island. Then in 2007, he worked in fundraising, grant writing and coalition building as an executive director at Mariana Islands Nature Alliance.

After gaining experience from those companies, Villagomez was hired by the Pew Charitable Trusts back in Saipan as a senior advisor from 2008-2010 before moving to Washington D.C. in his last year to continue working for another 12 years in the organization as a senior officer.

Guam cant vote

Now, Villagomez is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., but he still finds the same problem. U.S. territories votes do not count for the presidential election, and although Guam is represented in the United States Congress by Michael San Nicolas, he is a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives.

Guam is a part of the United States, so decisions are made on behalf of the people of Guam from people in mainland U.S., Hawaii and in Washington D.C., Villagomez said.

Without Guam in the legislative process, there is a possibility that lawmakers will not consider the islands issues on ocean sustainability and protection when composing federal policies.

There are almost no Pacific Islanders working in Washington D.C., and we need to make sure that our voices are heard in the halls, Villagomez said.
As a student at John F. Kennedy High School four years ago, Richard Park joined junior ROTC but ended up quitting.

He told himself, Im not going to join the military, its not for me. I dont like being told what to do. Then I realized thats pretty much what I had to do.

I had two big goals in high school: that I would go to college off island and that I would go to college for free  which are two very daunting goals, Park said.

I didnt know anything about the Coast Guard Academy until my senior in high school, when my mom and I were doing research on the service academies.

He was attracted to the Coast Guards humanitarian mission to aid people in distress and the fact that admission is merit-based, with no requirement for a congressional nomination.

He poured everything he had into his application and was one of 300 to be selected out of thousands of applications for the Class of 2022.

Four years later, his mother, Sunhee Park, and his two older siblings, Albert and Michelle, got to see him graduate May 18 with a Bachelor of Science in cyber systems, a new major at the academy.

Mentorship

He was handed his commission by his mentor, Lt. Cmdr. Christine Igisomar of Saipan, whose term serving as military aide to the Coast Guard commandant ends this year.

Lt. Cmdr. Igisomar reached out to me when she was made aware that I was struggling immensely in the academys basic training program. She has advocated for me and supported me throughout my four years, like bringing me to her home in Washington, D.C. and providing sound guidance for my Coast Guard career, the new ensign said.

In turn, he mentored a younger cadet from Saipan, Genzo Gonzales.

All the kids from the islands (at the academy), we have our own little group and we really take care of each other. So I was taken care of by my peers who are one year older than me. And yeah, it was really cool seeing (the younger cadets) grow and everything, and Im sure it was (the same) for my superiors.

But yeah, (Gonzalez) was my first salute. So when you get commissioned, you have a silver dollar and you give it to the person who salutes you first, he said, referring to a commissioning tradition in all the military branches.

Also on hand at the ceremony was Vice President Kamala Harris, who presided over the commissioning of the Class of 2022.

I spoke with Vice President Harris briefly and she gave me some advice and reassurance that her and the American people are watching and are proud of me! he said.

Travel, training

During his time at the academy, hes had the opportunity to travel the world during the summers on Coast Guard missions, including a stint on Guam.

As part of his cyber systems training, he also got to do an internship with Microsoft.

So cyber is very new in the Coast Guard.  Its a new and growing field, because we are starting to get a lot more serious with growing cyberattacks and increased vulnerability in a lot of our cyber systems in our infrastructure, including our maritime industries as well, he said.

Prior to joining the Coast Guard, he had no sailing or maritime experience. Now hes licensed to drive boats that are 100 tons and below. He enjoys being on the water.

I really like being in the middle of the ocean.  Theres no light pollution out there. So you look out in the sky and its crazy, all the stars out there and its very therapeutic too. But when the weather gets bad, its miserable.

Duty station

This week hell be reporting to his first duty station in Portsmouth, Virginia, on the Coast Guard Cutter Forward, a 270-foot coastal patrol vessel.

Ill be there for two years and, hopefully, I get something in cyber after that or a boat on Guam. Thatd be ideal.

He did get to spend some time back home, enjoying the three big Fs, as he calls them: family, friends and food.

Hes been getting his fill of Korean favorites at his go-to restaurants on island  Charming Corner in Harmon and Mi Dahm in Tumon  and hoped to get to CHamoru Village before he leaves.

Im gonna miss the food big time, he said.

Opportunity

He looks forward to starting his career and encourages Guams youth to take advantage of the military benefits and the opportunity to bring more diversity to the Coast Guard ranks.

Ive gotten an amazing travel experience: Europe, Alaska, Guam. Ive been to a bunch of the other islands as well while working on Guam. At the academy youll be going to school, being fed there and learning all kinds of things,  like navigation, maritime Coast Guard operations, financial literacy, leadership, law enforcement, criminal justice. And thats all (to set you up) for an extremely successful career.

Thats just one big thing that Im very thankful for. They also teach you (life skills like) how to fold your clothes, how to iron your clothes,  you know, some of the things you (grew up not worrying about) and then you go there and be like, holy cow, like, I need to start from scratch. So its been a great experience.
A file photo of Ritidian Beach. A drone being operated at Ritidian overlook was confiscated June 11, 2022, and two operators were cited. It is illegal to fly drones within 5 miles of military bases or civilian airports.
Millions of dollars have moved through the Department of Land Managements construction fund with unclear accounting and no progress has been made in the nearly 14 years since the agency was mandated by law to construct new office space in Hagatna.

Land Management Director Joseph Borja provided lawmakers with an update on the construction fund and new building during a budget request hearing Monday, in response to a letter from Sen. Telo Taitague. Borja, who took the helm of the agency in 2019, said an audit of the agencys construction fund should be considered.

The agencys previous building in Anigua was built on a flood zone and had to be demolished in 2006 to keep the government of Guam from violating the National Flood Insurance Program. In 2007, a construction fund for a new Land Management building was created through Public Law 29-46. The fund was meant to be operated by the agencys director, who was authorized to grow the money through investments. According to Borja, that never happened.

The construction fund received about $171,000 in local funds in fiscal 2008 and a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant of about $1.5 million.

Designs, costs

The agency spent nearly $1 million in grant money on designs for a new building on property beside the Julale Center in Hagatna. Construction never materialized, Borja said.

We have this stack of big, beautiful plans that we spent $984,346 on, but it will probably never be used because theyre outdated.

Over the years, construction costs for the Hagatna facility have probably more than doubled, Borja noted.

Another $3.7 million was transferred into the account from the departments Land Survey Revolving Fund in fiscal 2011 but was taken out four years later. Borja said he couldnt explain the deposit, but that it was eventually taken back by accounting to cover a shortfall in the land survey fund.

Land Management asked for it to be transferred back and it never was.

The money

Sen. Joanne Brown wanted to know what happened to the remaining FEMA funds.

Obviously, the building has never been built. ... What happened to the 1.5 million? she asked.

Minus the costs for the unrealized building designs, about $788,024  including federal grant money  should have been left in the account. But a report shows that about $591,000 was taken out of the construction fund and permanently transferred to the General Fund in January of 2018.

Thats according to the (Department of Administration), Borja said.

But while Land Managements books show that some $196,000 should still be left in the construction fund, the Department of Administrations financial management system shows the account was zeroed out as of September 2020, according to Virginia Flores, Land Managements administrative services officer.

Borja said he had sent an inquiry to the administration agency.

When theyll respond? Im not sure. But I think its going to need several eyes to look at it, Borja said.

Sen. Joe San Agustin asked that Borja check with FEMA to see what the status of the grant money was.

Revisit

Borja asked that lawmakers revisit the original law that gave his agency the authority to construct a new office and consider revisions. The agency spends about $650,000 a year on rent, he said.

Land Management is really not a developer. We really dont have anybody in the building that can ... put it together, along with financing, you know, because its not just building a financing mechanism, he said.

The property identified for the new building in Hagatna belonged to the CHamoru Land Trust Commission. Human remains were found on the property and Borja said the commission was informed it had to make a decision on how to handle the remains.

Land Management is asking for a budget of $3.4 million for fiscal 2023, the same request as last year.
Gerardo Tenorio, the 24-year-old firefighter killed in a traffic crash Monday, was known by many in the Father Duenas Memorial School alumni community as being a man of faith, courage and charity.

Gerardo was selfless. He really embodied the inafamaolek spirit every day of his life. Regardless if he knew you or not, he would put everyone else before himself, said Tyler Bautista, Tenorios classmate from Father Duenas Memorial School class of 2015.

At about 3 a.m. Monday, Tenorio was driving a red 2015 Nissan Xterra west on Route 8 by Jackson Street. The vehicle ran off the roadway and struck the Noritake Building, according to a release sent by Guam Police Department spokeswoman Officer Berlyn Savella.

This is Guams eighth traffic fatality of the year.

Guam Fire Department spokesman firefighter Kevin Reilly confirmed Tenorio has been a firefighter with the department since 2018.

Losing a loved one is difficult, even more so when we lose a brother or sister in the fire service. We offer our sincerest condolences to Gerardos family, friends and fire department family, Fire Chief Daniel Stone said.

Bautista was getting ready for work Monday morning when he heard the news.

I opened up my phone and started seeing pictures of the crash throughout my different WhatsApp chat groups, Bautista said.

Some of the messages indicated the driver of the vehicle was Father Duenas alumni.

After seeing that message and looking at the picture again, I could only assume the worst  knowing someone that had that exact vehicle make and model, Bautista added.

Class of 2015

Bautista first met Tenorio in their freshman year at Father Duenas, and since then they remained friends and brothers throughout the years after graduating together in 2015.

I was just talking with him last week during an impromptu meetup, and all things were going well for him, Bautista said. Tenorio was a husband and a father.

Despite still trying to find ways to process Tenorios death, Bautista said he and the class of 2015 will find ways to honor his memory and assist his family during this time.

Anytime someone needed help with something (especially at FD), Gerardo would be the man to see. Gerardo was also very humble and loving. He never showed signs of anger or hatred towards anyone. He accepted everyone for who they were. He always looked for the bright side in every situation and his presence would change the mood in the room, Bautista said.

Father Duenas Alumni Association President Eddie Pelkey echoed similar sentiments about Tenorio.

Gerardo was the most selfless and hardworking young man. Everything he did was for a purpose and for his family. His wife and son meant the world to him. He is the epitome of a great Duenas man and our entire brotherhood shares the pain of mourning his loss. He will be deeply missed, Pelkey said.
Island leaders mourned former Sen. Pilar Cruz Lujan, whose death at the age of 91 was announced by the governors office Sunday evening.

We join the island of Guam in mourning the passing of former Sen. Pilar Cruz Lujan, Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said in a press release.

Speaker Therese Terlaje said, Sen. Lujan exemplified how the greatest generation turned adversity into action in her work advocating for Guams World War II survivors.

As a war survivor who testified on behalf of the people of Guam in front of the War Claims Commission, Sen. Lujan shared her painful childhood stories of war-torn Guam, Terlaje said.

Vice Speaker Tina Muna Barnes said Lujan played a vital role in shaping Guams destiny as one of just two women elected to the First Guam Constitutional Convention.

It is with great sadness that we mourn the passing of former Sen. Pilar C. Lujan. Sen. Lujan was a strong voice of the people and a staunch advocate of justice, Muna Barnes stated.

Democratic Party Chairman Tony Babauta also expressed his condolences to Lujans family.

Chairwoman Lujan embodied the spirit of public service like no other. Her contribution to our island continues to benefit our people and will be realized by generations to come, he said.

Lujan was born the second youngest of nine children on Oct. 12, 1930, according to a legislative resolution recognizing her achievements. She graduated from George Washington High School in 1951 and obtained a scholarship to study at Sienna Heights College in Michigan, where she earned a degree in secondary education.

She married her husband, attorney and former Sen. Frank G. Lujan, in 1956 before going on to study at Indiana University. She earned a master of science in elementary school administration in 1966  the beginning of a lifelong career and commitment to Guams education system.

In 1967, Lujan became the principal of Wettengel Elementary School, a post she held until 1969, before becoming an administrator. Throughout her career, she would serve in almost every position in the government of Guam education system, from teacher to acting director of Education in 1976. She also was a driving force behind the implementation of CHamoru language courses into the curriculum of elementary schools.

The Legislatures resolution states Lujan became a CHamoru translator for Guams Second Constitutional convention. She later brought her advocacy for the CHamoru language to the small screen in 1980, becoming a CHamoru newscaster with Public Broadcasting Radio Station KGTF.

In 1983, Lujan began her first of six terms in the Guam Legislature. She helped reestablish the Supreme Court of Guam in 1992 through Public Law 21-147. The measure was dubbed the Frank G. Lujan Memorial Court Reorganization Act, named in honor of her late husband, who had first established a short-lived Supreme Court for Guam through legislation passed in the 12th Guam Legislature.

For that and other efforts to strengthen the justice system, Lujan received the Judiciary of Guams Hustisia Award in 2015.

Lujan served as the chairwoman of the Guam chapter of the Catholic Daughters of America in 2002. She helped to place a reproduction of the icon of Guams patroness, Santa Maria Kamalen, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

She is survived by her children  Davina, Galen and Rolenda  and grandchildren.
CROWN POINT  Two teenage brothers in their caps and gowns returned fire Sunday after a man in dark clothing began shooting at them, leaving two people wounded as a result of the shootout and causing others to duck for cover behind vehicles, according to court records and police.

Joshua J. Hughes, 17, was charged Thursday as an adult in the shooting Sunday outside the U.S. Steel Yard following a graduation ceremony for more than 200 West Side Leadership Academy students.

Two Lake County sheriff's officers working security at the graduation spotted Hughes and another teen, identified in court records as Calob Hughes, 16, at the southeast side of the stadium and ordered them to lie facedown because they had guns, Lake Criminal Court records state.

Calob and Joshua Hughes are brothers, Gary police said.

A Glock 19 with a 30-round magazine, which still had six live rounds inside, was found on Joshua Hughes, according to court documents.

A Glock 19 with a 31-round magazine, which still had 10 live rounds inside was recovered from Calob Hughes, records state.

Joshua Hughes, who will turn 18 this week, previously was adjudicated in December 2021 in Lake Criminal Court as a delinquent child for dangerous possession of a firearm, according to court records.

He had not yet made an initial appearance before a Lake Criminal Court magistrate on charges of dangerous possession of a firearm and criminal recklessness, both level 5 felonies.

His bond was set at $50,000 surety or $5,000 cash. If convicted of a level 5 felony, Hughes could face a possible sentence of one to six years.

Another teen, identified as a 16-year-old by the Lake County prosecutor's office, remained charged in Lake Juvenile Court with dangerous possession of a firearm and criminal recklessness.

Gary police were still searching for the man in dark clothing who was shooting at the teens, Cmdr. Jack Hamady said.

The man, who was wearing black pants and a black hoodie, fled south on Maryland Street from East Fifth Avenue after the shooting. Police are asking anyone with photos or video of the shooting to come forward.

Another man, a 20-year-old from Hammond, was arrested the night of the shooting but released earlier this week without being charged, police said.

A 19-year-old Gary man was shot in the chest, and a 19-year-old Gary woman suffered a graze wound to her lower right leg.

There was no indication in court records that the two victims were involved in the altercation between Hughes and the man in dark clothing.

Police could be seen collecting multiple spent shell casings from the sidewalk and parking lot on the southeast side of the stadium, where the two were arrested, and on the south side of East Fifth Avenue at the intersection with Maryland Street.

Police were analyzing ballistics evidence in the case, Hamady said.

The night of the shooting, Gary Mayor Jerome Prince vowed to use all available law enforcement resources to bring whomever was responsible to justice.

"It's infuriating to me to hear of violence and injuries on a special night for our young people and their families," Prince said. "I pray for a full and speedy recovery for anyone who was injured."

Gary Community School Corp. manager Paige McNulty said in a statement released Monday the disruptions of a few overshadowed a special moment for all of the graduates, most of whom conducted themselves "in an excellent manner."

"A day that was meant for celebration has now been marked by tragedy through senseless acts of gun violence," McNulty said. "Our prayers are with those injured, and we continue to extend our congratulations to WSLA graduates. They deserve it."

Gallery: Recent arrests booked into Lake County Jail




Haiti - 27 years of the PNH : Rain of messages





Sunday, June 12, 2022 marked the celebration of the 27th anniversary of the creation of the National Police of Haiti (PNH), an event that many personalities wanted to highlight with a message:



Acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry :

"On this day bringing back the 27th anniversary of the National Police of Haiti (PNH), I salute the efforts and all the sacrifices of our valiant police officers, as well as the results obtained in the fight against banditry. I agree that there is still a lot to do. I know that the PNH needs more financial, material and appropriate training to deal with the scourge of insecurity, crime, the climate of terror that destabilizes our society. May our National Police be assured, today, of our commitment and our firm determination to accompany it in this fight for the establishment of a stable environment and the restoration of the authority of the State, which constitutes one of our current priorities."



Me. Berto DORCE, Minister of Justice and Public Security

"Since its creation in 1995, the National Police has gone through upheavals of all kinds, but it has held up. On the occasion of its 27th anniversary, I pay tribute to these courageous compatriots who sacrifice themselves to Serve and protect the population.



Legality, firmness and zero tolerance in the face of bandits, are the instructions that I allow myself to reiterate to you, while inviting you to respect human rights, because you must constantly keep in mind that what is strong must be fair.



My dear fighters, on this special day, I say to you: GOOD FIGHT! Kenbe fem, nou paka lage, mwen avek nou, gouvenman avek nou, pep ayisyen avek nou, nap sipote nou jouk mayi mi, fok nou gen laviktwa sou tout fos fe nwa ak tout bandi kap simen dey nan peyi a. Happy Birthday !"



Liszt Quitel Minister of the Interior :

"Our police officers have been put to the test for several months. To restore its image, our Police need courage and determination! This is precisely the wish of the Ministry of the Interior and Territorial Communities. Yes it is still a wish, a wish. Because the results obtained are not yet up to the hopes placed in this institution.



The Government, under the leadership of the Prime Minister and Head of the Superior Council of the National Police, Dr. Ariel Henry reiterates his promise to restore the Republican Order as soon as possible. Already, under the leadership of the Director General a.i. Franzt Elbe, a significant improvement is beginning to appear. The Government will continue to supervise the institution so that this clarification is confirmed and developed. Exceptional measures are planned, planned, within the framework of the law. The objective being the complete eradication of organized crime. Protect and serve : YES. the Government and the PNH are working hard to make this motto more than a leitmotif become a tangible reality. Success and happy birthday to our PNH !"



Me Jacques Ludwig JOSEPH, Director General ULCC :

"The legislator defines a necessary collaboration between the Anti-Corruption Unit (ULCC) and the PNH. On the occasion of the 27th anniversary of the National Police of Haiti, I want to salute the traditionally harmonious relationship between these two state institutions. Our police officers work with conviction, courage and commitment in difficult conditions to ensure peace and the security of our lives and our property. We owe them all our gratitude and our solidarity in these particularly trying times in our history. Happy 27th! Long live the PNH."



President of the Senate Joseph Lambert :

"27 years since our valiant police officers have been working in extremely difficult and complicated conditions. We owe them all our affection and solidarity. Honor and respect! Happy birthday to the PNH !"



Nesmy Manigat Minister of National Education :

"The Ministry salutes the 27 years of commitment of our police officers within the PNH and applauds the work which has facilitated the return of more than 4,900 children to school, thanks to the rapprochement of the Community Police (EduPol) with the citizens. precarious neighborhoods.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Minister Quitel wants to curb the migratory flow

Liszt Quitel, Minister of the Interior, accompanied by a senior official of the Economic and Social Assistance Fund (FAES) met with Giuseppe Loprete, Head of Mission of the International Organization for Migration (IOM - Haiti), around the assistance program for Haitian migrants and returnees. "The Government intends to work to create the necessary economic opportunities and security conditions, in order to curb the flow of labor migration abroad," said Minister Quitel.



D-1, for the return match Haiti vs Guyana

Our Grenadiers left Georgetown (Guyana) early Sunday morning after inflicting a serious defeat on the "Golden Jaguars" of Guyana [6-2] hhttps://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36890-haiti-league-of-nations-2022-our-grenadiers-crush-guyana-[6-2]-and-take-the-lead-in-group-b-video.html to Santo Domingo where the return match will take place at the Felix Olympic Stadium Sanchez de Santo Domingo Tuesday, June 14, 2022. This Monday, June 13, our Grenadiers, leader of group B with 7 points +5, will train in the afternoon.



Preparation of nurseries in Dejoie

The Haitian Red Cross (CRH) supports the preparation of nurseries in Dejoie, communal section of Chardonnieres with 70% of fruit trees: mango tree, avocado tree, chadequier, cashew nuts, lemon tree, djaka, cachiment, orange tree and 30% forest: sarmant, carcia, eucalyptus.



Dredging works near the international airport

The Operations Department has started a series of works around the Toussaint Louverture International Airport (AITL), during the hurricane season. These works are essentially cleaning and drainage works and also relate to the fumigation and disinfection of the canals with a view to combating mosquitoes and diseases which could harm the health of all those who are in the immediate environment of the 'AITL.



Covid : "Intensive" vaccination campaign

The North and North-East Departments wrapped up the first week of the "intensive" anti-covid vaccination campaign on Friday, June 10. The Ministry of Public Health has deployed teams in all the municipalities of these two departments in order to make vaccines accessible to all. Let's recall that according to the latest information from the Ministry dated June 7, 2022, 188,584 Haitians (1.62% of the population) received a 1st dose of vaccine since July 16, 2021, date of the first injection through 149 open vaccination centers and 132,177 Haitians are fully vaccinated (2 doses, 1.13% of the population).



Improving local development and participatory governance

Tuesday, June 6 Liszt Quitel, Minister of the Interior and Territorial Collectivities met with officials of the Support Program for Decentralized Governance (PAGODE). He pleaded for the strengthening of axes that can contribute to improving local development and participatory governance at the community level. Through this program, his Ministry currently provides significant technical and financial support for the construction of the Town Hall of of Beaumont, among others.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















News Release

June 13, 2022



Contact information

MDH takes control of Pine Island nursing home to ensure residents safety

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) assumed control of Pine Haven Care Center in Pine Island on Saturday due to concerns that a growing list of unpaid bills threatened critical services for residents.

The Ramsey County court granted the temporary order Friday, June 10, that allows regulators to protect residents safety and ensure continued care at the facility while operations and management issues are addressed. MDH arranged for Pathway Health, a professional management organization, to serve as the facilitys managing agent during the receivership. Residents and staff were informed of the change over the weekend.

MDH acted after staff found evidence that the facilitys growing list of unpaid bills and inability to meet payroll threatened staffing levels, critical services and medications for residents. MDH and the temporary management team will stabilize the facilities operations to support staff and to ensure patients receive quality care. The facility has 52 residents and is licensed for 70 beds.

This rare step is one we do not take lightly, but the evidence indicated a need for immediate action to ensure that residents are safe and continue to receive essential services, said Minnesota Commissioner of Health Jan Malcolm. We are focused on a smooth transition and determining the next steps that will meet the needs of residents, staff, and families.

Receiverships, authorized by state law, allow regulators to assume control of a nursing home in certain situations where there are serious health and safety concerns for residents. By law, the receivership cannot exceed 18 months. In a receivership, MDH becomes responsible for operations and finances of the nursing home and typically appoints a managing agent to conduct the daily work of managing the facility.

We are communicating with family members and residents about the transition as we work to stabilize operations, said Health Regulation Division Director Maria King. We will work with the new managing agent to help residents and employees through this transition.



-MDH-

Doug Schultz

MDH Communications

651-201-4993

doug.schultz@state.mn.us
Henderson County wins $10M grant to complete Ecusta Trail to county line

Henderson County has landed a $10.5 million grant to complete construction of the Ecusta Trail from Horse Shoe to the county line, sustaining the strong momentum and state and regional support that has sped the greenway from concept to concrete over the past year.

Christopher Todd, the county's director of business and community development and its point person on the Ecusta Trail, announced the grant at the regular meeting of the county's Rail-Trail Advisory Committee on Wednesday morning.

The grant was finalized when the French Broad MPO on May 27 formally adopted an MPO staff recommendation to fund the Henderson County project and seven other bicycle, bus and pedestrian projects in the four-county MPO region.

The grant of $10,467,234 was approved as part of the Locally Administered Project Program, which directs funding from the Federal Highway Administration's surface transportation block grant. The grants require an 80-20 match. When Henderson County received a $5 million federal grant for the construction of the first segment of the trail from Kanuga Road to Horse Shoe, trail supporters raised the match from private money. Aside from the considerable staff time it devotes to the trail, the county has yet to appropriate county property tax revenue to the trail's design or construction. The new grant, the largest among all the awards the MPO approved, requires a local match of $2,626,809, for a total of $13,084,043.

The downside of the grant was the timing. Todd said the information the French Broad has now indicates the money will be available until 2026. A "worst case scenario" for the timing is 2028, said Tristan Winkler, executive director of the MPO. He said the MPO board will discuss the grant and timing again during its August meeting and explore ways it could advance the timeline. Construction of the trail from Hendersonville to Horse Shoe east of the French Broad River is expected to get under way next spring.

Aside from the Ecusta Trail, other grants, local cost share and totals were:

City of Asheville: Swannanoa Greenway, $2.5 million, $3.6 million, $6.1 million.

NCDOT Division 13: Riceville Road sidewalks, $830,000, $220,000, $1.05 million.

Town of Montreat: Texas bike-ped bridge, $152,800, $38,200, $191,000.

Buncombe County: Woodfin Greenway, $7.6 million, $1.9 million, $9.5 million.

THIS IS A DEVELOPING STORY. RETURN TO THE LIGHTNING FOR MORE.
Tuesday is flag day. Here's how to properly fly Old Glory.

Tuesday, June 14, Flag Day across America, commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777.

Americans are asked to fly the American flag with pride and reverence on this day as well as others.

The resolution passed by the Second Continental Congress stated, "Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.

Our nations flag has experienced more than a few changes since that time, notably the addition of 37 more starseach representing a state of the Union.

In 1795, the Federal Government authorized an additional stripe and star with the addition of each new state. With the admission of Kentucky and Vermont to the Union, this flag, referred to as The Star Spangled Banner is the one that Francis Scott Key viewed as he wrote the words to our current National Anthem. That very flag is on display at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

As more states began to line up for admission to the Union, it became apparent that adding more stripes would make the flag look out of balance. In 1818 the current statute that regulates our nations flag went into effect. It stated that the flag would have only 13 stripes but one star would be added for each state in the United States.

With respect to this time-honored symbol of America, it is important to remember the proper protocol for displaying our national ensign.

1. The Flag must be in good shape, not faded or frayed. If additional flags are displayed on the same pole, they must also be in good shape, smaller, and below the American flag.

2. The Flag must be two blocked to the top of the flag pole

3. The Flag MUST be lighted if left up after sunset.

4. If lowered and removed during the night it must be done with reverence and respect. (NEVER allowed to touch the ground)

5. If mounted on a wall, the flag should be to the right as one would exit the door.

6. The Flag must be able to be seen from both directions of the road without being blocked by a sign or tree.

7. The Flagpole should be surrounded by a tastefully maintained area, with no rubbish, litter or graffiti in the area.

8. The finial at the top of the pole should be attractive.

9. The flagpole itself should be maintained to a high standard.

10. The American Flag should not be part of a business advertising its location e.g. a huge flag flying over a commercial enterprise to draw attention to the location.

11. Proper procedures must be followed when a government authority has ordered the flag to be flown at half-staff. (e.g. raise briskly to the top of the pole and then slowly lower to half-staff)

* * * * *



The Blue Ridge Chapter of the SAR is looking for local examples of proper flag etiquette. Those displaying the flag properly may be a candidate to receive the National Flag Display Award from the Blue Ridge Chapter, North Carolina Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Car show presents awards

A group of onlookers admire one of the 216 vehicles registered at the 17th annual Benefit Car and Trade Show at Blue Ridge Community College.

Car enthusiasts enjoyed 216 specialty vehicles at the 17th annual Benefit Car and Trade Show on June 4, a record number over previous years.

A partnership between Blue Ridge Community College, the Great Smoky Mountains Region of Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) and area sponsors, the event was held on the BRCC campus. All proceeds from each registered vehicle helped raise funds for Blue Ridge automotive students to attend SkillsUSA competitions.

Hulon McCraw, Smoky Mountain Region of AACA event chairman, explained how the event is a personal passion because of the importance of fostering student interest in automotive careers and competitions.

Its so important for them to go to these SkillsUSA competitions, because it grows their interest and prepares them for their future careers, he said, so were proud to help them with that cost.

A total of 28 awards were presented. Award winners and sponsors included:

Presidents Choice Award - Tony Carswell, 1952 Chevy Convertible: Sponsored by JZM Tire & Auto

Peoples Choice Award - Jim St. Charles, 1951 Ford Convertible: Sponsored by Barry Capps Marine Service Inc.

Best GM Award - Lee Schwartz, 1955 Chevy Bel-Air: Sponsored by Boyd Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac

Best Ford Award - Richard Staton, 1967 Ford Bronco: Sponsored by Parks Ford

Best Mopar Award - Mike Pope, 1969 Plymouth Road Runner: Sponsored by Quik Mart Citgo/Subway

Best of Show Award - Danny Bracket, 1971 Chevy Nova: Sponsored by Napa Auto Parts/B&W Auto Supply

Best Pre-War Award - Pete Leonard, 1929 Chevy Coupe: Sponsored by Gosnell Used Auto Parts

Best Post-War Award - David Watson, 1958 Chevy Corvette: Sponsored by Elite Auto Lights

Best Unrestored Original Award - Gary Barnett, 1971 Buick Riviera: Sponsored by Great Smoky Mountains Region AACA

Best Restored Original Award - Keith Kiser, 1967 Chevy Chevelle: Sponsored by Little Detroit Chapter AACA

Best Race Car Award - Chris Edney, 1993 Ford Mustang: Sponsored by Quik Mart Citgo/Subway

Best Resto Rod Award - Miles Champion, 1932 Ford A: Sponsored by Jims Crane Service

Special Interest Award - Michael Collins, 1963 Chevy C-10: Sponsored by Mills River Car Wash

Best Motorcycle Award - Sara Huggins, 1980 Moto Guzzi: Sponsored by Triumphs on Broadway

Best Import Award - Andy Perry, 1992 Jaguar XK-E: Sponsored by Hilton Head Capital Partners

Best Custom Award - Debbie Belcher, 2010 Chevy Camaro: Sponsored by Morrow Paint & Body

Best Domestic Award - David Fowler, 1973 Ford Mustang: Sponsored by Mark Brown

Best Truck Award - Jack Smith, 1939 Chevy Pickup: Sponsored by Justus Truck Lines Inc.

Best Orphan Award - Mike Gill, 1970 Oldsmobile 442: Sponsored by Old Carb Doctor

Best Street Rod Award - Tommy Opliger, 1931 Ford A: Sponsored by Jakes High Performance

Brass Era Award - Tom Loftfield, 1912 Ford T: Sponsored by Harmony Corners

Best Rat Rod Award - Eddie Gordon, 1923 Ford T-Bucket: Sponsored by Grand Motoring

Highest Mileage Award - George Brown, 1959 Chevy Biscayne: Sponsored by Buffalo Creek Vacations

Club Participation Award - Carolina Mountain Car Club: Sponsored by Blue Ridge Auto and Conservatory

Heros Choice Award - Browney Mascow, 1970 Dodge Challenger: Sponsored by Advanced Auto Parts Stores

Driving Young America Award - Brandon Harris, 1980 Ford Escort: Sponsored by Hilton Head Concours DElegance

Women Driving America Award - Kathie Nowakowski, 1955 Ford T-Bird Convertible: Sponsored by Hilton Head Capital Partners
A RAFFLE was held at the Bix and Assendon jubilee picnic to raise money for a community hub and the village church.

The celebrations, held at Bix Common, made 1,200.

There was also a Strictly Come Dancing competition, a quiz and childrens games. More than 400 residents attended the festivities.

Gary Hall, who was one of the picnic organisers and is one of the owners of the field, said he hoped the hub would allow the community to socialise and interact with each other a couple of days a week.

Any opportunity to get the community together is important, he said. Seeing everyone happy and having fun makes all the effort worthwhile. Lots of volunteers came to help too.

Harriett, from Lower Assendon, who was a Strictly judge, said: In Garys usual flamboyant style, hes ensuring we all have a fantastic time and celebrate the jubilee. He worked so hard.

Jane Hancock, from Lower Assendon, said she attended as she didnt know many residents of the villages and wanted to meet some new people. This is the best way to spend the jubilee  getting to know your neighbours, she said.

This isnt going to happen again. Its quite incredible and Im really proud of our Queen. I love our royal family.
PANGBOURNE Choral Society will celebrate the Queens platinum jubilee with a commemorative concert next weekend.

This will be their first live performance since the coronavirus pandemic and since new music director Chris McDade arrived.

The programme is shorter than usual as a result of rehearsal restrictions during the pandemic. It comprises Gabriel Faures two major choral works, the Requiem and Cantique de Jean Racine, followed by coronation anthem favourites, Hubert Parrys I Was Glad and Handels Zadok the Priest.

There will also be Vaughan Williamss O Taste and See, a short motet composed for the coronation. The concert at Pangbourne College will be followed by drinks on the lawn.

Mr McDade says: We will be welcoming two new soloists, Phoebe Curcher, our soprano, who is a final year student at Pangbourne College before moving on to study voice at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and Tom Asher, a baritone, who is a rising star performing regularly throughout the UK and internationally.

 Pangbourne Choral Societys summer concert is in the Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel at the college on Saturday, June 18 at 7pm. Tickets (10) are available from Garlands Organic, 6 Reading Road, Pangbourne, on the door or from www.pangbourne

choral.org.uk
Chinese naval escort taskforces conduct mission handover at Gulf of Aden

EditorChen Zhuo Time2022-06-13 17:16:57

The 40th and 41st Chinese naval escort taskforces bid farewell in the waters of the Gulf of Aden on June 8, 2022. (Photo by Tian Jianmin)

GULF OF ADEN, June 13 -- On the afternoon of June 8, local time, the 40th and 41st Chinese naval escort taskforces held a farewell ceremony in the waters of the Gulf of Aden. After the ceremony, the three warships of the 40th escort taskforce turned their direction to leave the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia, and the 41st escort taskforce began to perform escort missions independently.

The 41st Chinese naval escort taskforce, consisting of the guided-missile destroyer Suzhou (Hull 132), the guided-missile frigate Nantong (Hull 533) and the comprehensive supply ship Chaohu (Hull 890) , set sail from a military port in Zhoushan, east China's Zhejiang Province, on May 18. Passing through the Miyako Strait, the Bashi Strait and the Malacca Strait, the three Chinese naval ships entered the Indian Ocean and finally arrived at the designated waters in the Gulf of Aden on June 6. Subsequently, the two escort taskforces jointly performed escort tasks, held replenishment-at-sea training.

Since December 2008, the Chinese PLA Navy has dispatched more than 100 warships and more than 30,000 service members to the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia to perform escort missions. The 40 Chinese naval escort taskforces have escorted over 7,000 merchant ships of China and foreign countries in 1,500 batches, making China's share of contributions to safeguarding world peace and ensuring the security of important transportation lines over the open seas.

SourceChina Military Online
IHG Hotels & Resorts announced the opening of its second Staybridge Suites in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in Al Khobar, on Olaya Street. Located at the heart of Al Khobar's corporate and shopping centers, it is the only IHG hotel to offer long-term accommodation, making it the ideal place for corporate visitors to the Eastern Province.

With its extensive expertise in hospitality, constant quest to satisfy experienced travelers, as well as its signature suites, Staybridge Suites offers premium accommodation experiences for all its guests, allowing them to feel comfortable, connected, and at home at all times.

Exceptional Location

Situated on Olaya Street, Staybridge Suites Al Khobar City provides easy access to the city's most happening places, enabling guests to enjoy exceptional shopping experiences, such as at Al Rashid Mall and Dhahran Mall, both of which are located only a few steps away from the hotel.

The hotel is also close to Al Khobar's corporate district, which is just 5 minutes away, and Saudi Aramco - only 15 minutes from the hotel. Moreover, its proximity to King Abdulaziz Air Base makes it an ideal choice for Aramco visitors, armed forces officials, and entrepreneurs on short or long visits, at attractive daily rates.

Exclusive Suites

The hotel offers prime accommodation, with a choice of three spacious suites - 68 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom - all of which are fully equipped with fully fitted kitchenettes, comfortable living space, modern facilities, a well-lit workplace, free high-speed Internet, exceptional bed furnishings, a velvet sofa and plenty of storage spaces. The rooms, further enhanced with panoramic views of Al Khobar, have been designed in a manner to offer unrivalled comfort, making them the perfect place for both long and short stays.

Amenities

Staybridge Suites Al Khobar City offers high-end amenities for guests. As soon as they arrive at the hotel lobby, they are welcomed with snacks, drinks, and personal care items from The Pantry, which is open 24/7. The Pantry gives guests access to everything they need without having to leave the hotel.

In the morning, guests can start their day with a healthy and sumptuous breakfast - free of cost - along with their preferred choice of tea or coffee - available throughout the day.

The Social, a restaurant that serves carefully curated international cuisines to cater to different tastes, is the ideal spot for guests to hang out at for relaxed evenings with friends and others. Free drinks and snacks are available as well.

Wellness and fitness enthusiasts can work out at the health club or take a walk in the evening at the corniche. A seafront shopping promenade is only a 10-minute drive away.

Hotel website
With a name and ethos that reflect Finland's unique history and traditions, Runo Hotel Porvoo is a newly opened city escape. The word runo itself, which translates to "poem," sets the tone for the property, with a cozy, calming, and poetic ambiance established through Studio Joanna Laajisto's exceptional design. An emphasis is placed on neutral colors and natural materials, exemplified everywhere from the guestrooms to the traditional Finnish sauna to the communal Living Room furnished with bespoke contemporary furniture and artworks by young regional artists. Located in the city of Porvoo, only a short distance from Helsinki, Runo Hotel is a place where Finnish traditions meld seamlessly with modernity.

Co-Founder and General Manager Erkka Hirvonen envisioned Runo Hotel Porvoo, located in its namesake Finnish town, as an experience in and of itself and as a place that feels as inviting and comfortable as a good friend's home. He, along with Studio Joanna Laajisto at the helm of the interior design, made this vision come to life in a property that faithfully respects its heritage while also providing modern amenities. The original structure, built in 1912, retains many of its original elements, including reliefs on the corners of the facade that depict mythical figures from the "Kalevala," Finland's national epic poem. The interiors, meanwhile, feature high-quality natural materials like wood, stone, and marble, for a cozy and rustic feel that is elevated through an abundance of bespoke contemporary furniture pieces and sleek, minimal lines.

In each of the 56 guestrooms, Laajisto's inviting neutral color palette is paired with Nordic simplicity; however, much like reading a poem, there is often more than meets the eye. Certain pieces of furniture, for example, were not only made by local craftspeople but also incorporate materials sourced from Hirvonen's family estate in the nearby countryside: 300-year-old pine flooring was repurposed to produce small bathroom benches, and Hirvonen's mother and father sifted through hundreds of old hay sticks and cleaned up salvageable pieces so that a craftsman could transform them into what are now towel ladders. These unique pieces are complemented by 2.9-meter-high ceilings and glass shower enclosures, brushed steel fixtures, and stone tiling, which combine to exude an understated elegance. A similar mood permeates the bedrooms, where bespoke wood armoires and DUX beds make guests feel at home, while Carl Hansen leather armchairs and Marset Funiculi Fabric lamps are invitations to linger longer. These contemporary pieces are accented by upcycled traditional Karelian textiles, also sourced from the Hirvonen family collection. A number of suites have balconies with views of the picturesque Old Town and another three feature early-20th-centuy fireplaces that were preserved from the original building.

Extending the design ethos, Runo Hotel Porvoo's food and beverage philosophy also honors Finnish traditions with contemporary twists. Runo Kitchen serves a daily breakfast and weekend brunch with Karelian-style savory pies and decadent stews as well as seasonal variations on classics like poached eggs, made with locally sourced, organic produce. The menu, which changes every three months, also finds inspiration in Hirvonen-family recipes, with ingredient highlights including traditionally pickled cucumbers and chantarelles. This offering is complemented by pop-up dinners at the restaurant, plus food and drinks served at the adjacent Runo Bar. Beyond classic cocktails, the menu here provides a journey into Finnish drinking culture with spirits and signature drinks, including Rutumin Ryyppy, a spirit produced at the Hirvonen family estate, and Sprig, a cocktail featuring Finnish spruce-infused vodka, fresh lingonberry cordial, and a spruce spring garnish.

In addition, guests can relax in the Living Room, a ground floor space filled with oversized sofas, rocking chairs, and lounge chairs by iconic Danish design brand Fredericia and ambient lighting by Louis Poulsen, Orsjo, Foscarini, Vibia, and Paavo Tynell, among others. More than a place to meet friends or hang out, this area also acts as a stage for contemporary art and currently hosts pieces by Inka Bell, Linda Linko, and Iisa Maaranen, three young Helsinki-based female artists. Starting this month, artist and curator Fanny Tavastila will stage biannual exhibitions, each with six emerging artists from the country. On the ground floor are also three modern meeting rooms, with capacities that range from eight to 70.

Upstairs, on the top floor, awaits a crown jewel: here, the Attic Sauna provides a revitalizing wellness area replete with a traditional Finnish sauna, hanging cold water buckets, a fireplace with lounge chairs, and a terrace overlooking the Old Town. There are also two treatment rooms, offering perfect spaces for individuals or pairs. The Attic Sauna can also be reserved in combination with the adjoining Attic Lounge for the ultimate private day-spa experience.

Location

Distinct for its colorful wooden houses that line the river Porvoonjoki, Finland's second oldest city Porvoo is a medieval town steeped in history. Well-preserved buildings like the cathedral date back to the 15th century, and the Old Town together with the Porvoonjoki River Valley are recognized as a National Landscape of Finland. The Old Railway Station has been transformed into an art gallery and summer cafe, and it is also home to an ironmonger and upholsterers. But beyond the sites to see, there are also many tastes to try: located around an hour's drive from Helsinki, Porvoo has become an easy city break destination, its charm enhanced by a burgeoning gastronomy scene. Among the cohort of new-wave casual dining restaurants, one standout is Restaurant Var. Only a four-minute walk from Runo Hotel Porvoo, its frequently rotating, multicourse set menus place a strong focus on seasonal and local ingredients.

Hotel website
The Gran Melia brand will present another exceptionally luxurious hotel at the end of July with the inauguration of its fifteenth hotel worldwide, an energy-efficient prototype carbon neutral hotel offering a choice of outstanding dining options that pay tribute to Menorcan cuisine and the island way of life, exquisitely designed rooms with private pools, and suites measuring up to 130m2.

Located on Santo Tomas Beach, the hotel provides a wellness area and spa operated by the French firm Anne Semonin, as well as dining facilities offering local products and Mediterranean flavours created by the iconic S'Amarador Restaurant, and Cru, led by the restaurateur Joan Canals, who has replicated the cuisine of the famous Ulises Restaurant in the hotel.

Villa Le Blanc, the 5-star luxury resort operated by Gran Melia, will open in just a few weeks as the latest member of the prestigious collection of the Leading Hotels of the World, the only such hotel on the island of Menorca. A firm commitment to protecting the environment and a dream location make it a "destination hotel", destined to become a key location to meet and rest in the Mediterranean.

The Villa Le Blanc Hotel boasts an idyllic natural setting on Santo Tomas Beach on the Migjorn coast, halfway between Mahon and Ciutadella. An ideal location for discovering all the cultural and natural attractions of the island of Menorca, declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1993.

The renovation of what was once the Sol Beach House Hotel was led by the architect Alvaro Sans, and combines simple and contemporary design with luxurious details. The hotel provides a total of 159 rooms, including 14 Premium Rooms and 86 Supreme Rooms. The Penthouse Suite, the Swim-Up Master Suite and Presidential Suite offer the widest range of luxury amenities, as well as privileged sea views which can be enjoyed from their private balconies and private pools. Decorated predominantly in white and blue, with the large terraces and porches that are so typical of Mediterranean island architecture, the spaces are designed to achieve a seamless merger of outdoor and indoor areas.

The hotel dining facilities pay tribute to local products, with the exquisite cuisine in the different restaurants using the finest fresh ingredients from the island farms.

The Menorcan S'Amarador Restaurant is an iconic venue in the town of Ciutadella, widely recognised as one of the top seafood restaurants on the island. Famous for a wine cellar with more than a hundred fine wines and for working with only the finest local produce to prepare its delicious rice dishes and seafood bisques, accompanied by the freshest fish from the local fish market, with a particular focus on one of the culinary highlights of the Balearic sea: the local red lobster.

Located on the first floor, and in the terrace looking to the sea, S'Amarador offers a tribute to the cuisine of the mother restaurant in Ciutadella at the new Villa Le Blanc. The restaurant preserves and adapts all the traditions of the ancient fishermen's taverns that used to be located throughout the port area in olden times.

In addition to S'Amarador, the restaurateur Joan Canals brings all of his expertise and the personality of the Ulises Restaurant to a new venue named Cru. Reflecting the purest essence of the ingredients that are harvested from the island's land and sea, Canals perfectly combines fresh local fish, shellfish, vegetables and olive oils with the most contemporary techniques and presentation.

For travellers seeking greater harmony and well-being, the hotel is also home to a temple to health and beauty thanks to Anne Semonin Paris. With treatments and experiences based on vegan cosmetics and natural products, this is the third spa in Spain for Anne Semonin, joining a number of spas in select locations in the most exclusive hotels in the world, including luxury resorts in Japan, Hong Kong, Doha, Greece and the Maldives.

Villa Le Blanc is also launching a new line of in-room amenities with bathroom products and aromas designed by the Carner Barcelona artisan perfumers. A new experience for the senses that combines to perfection with the splendour and attractiveness of the Mediterranean.

The hotel sustainability project aims to achieve a carbon neutral footprint by incorporating facilities and technologies that will enable it to reduce its scope 1 and 2 emissions by 87%. In addition, the hotel will explore alternatives to offset the remaining emissions and thus ensure its full carbon neutrality status (net zero), contributing to the Company's decarbonisation objectives.

Ownership

The hotel is owned by the company Victoria Hotels & Resorts, created in 2021 by Melia Hotels International, Bankinter Investment and other investors who are customers of the bank, and also with GMA acting as the managing partner. All of the partners involved in the project share a strong commitment to sustainability, as shown in the exemplary transformation of this iconic hotel.

Hotel website
Atrium Hospitality, one of the nation's largest hotel operators, announces the promotion of Rob Mangiarelli to President and Chief Operating Officer (COO). In addition, after serving as interim head of Atrium Hospitality, Craig Mason returns full-time as President of Atrium Holding Company, the parent company of Atrium Hospitality. Alpharetta, Georgia-based Atrium Hospitality was recently ranked #1 in customer satisfaction among third-party hotel management companies in the J.D. Power 2021 Third-Party Hotel Management Guest Satisfaction Benchmark. The company manages a portfolio of 82 hotels in 28 states, representing well-known brands such as Hilton, Marriott, IHG, and Wyndham and operates more than 20,000 guest rooms/suites and approximately 3 million square feet of event space.

Rob brings more than 25 years of hotel management experience to his newly expanded role as President and COO of Atrium Hospitality. He joined the management company earlier this year as Executive Vice President and COO. Prior to Atrium, Rob served as COO of Magna Hospitality, where he managed a $4 billion hotel and real estate portfolio. His impressive career also includes more than two decades with Hyatt Hotels Corporation, including as Global Head of Asset Management. At Hyatt, Rob was responsible for the areas of finance, revenue management, real estate, capital expenditures, technology, operations and human resources.

With more than 30 years of asset management experience, Craig resumes his role as President of Atrium Holding Company, representing the interests of the company's investors and serving as the owner's representative under the management arrangement with Atrium Hospitality. Craig will continue to oversee Atrium Holding Company's asset management team as well as capital allocation and projects to ensure spending enhances the company's portfolio. He will also assist the acquisitions team to identify, evaluate and execute viable hotel ventures to fuel the expansion of Atrium Hospitality's award-winning management portfolio.
Tracy Bradford has been promoted to the position of President of Seminole Hard Rock Support Services. In her new role, she will be responsible for all management and operations of Support Services, Customer Care and Aviation.

Seminole Hard Rock Support Services was established in 2017 to consolidate and coordinate multiple staff functions of Hard Rock International and Seminole Gaming, which share corporate office space at 5701 Stirling Road, Davie. Both organizations are headed by Jim Allen, Chairman of Hard Rock International and CEO of Seminole Gaming.

In her most recent role, Bradford served as Executive Vice President of Administration for Seminole Hard Rock Support Services. She has been in charge of purchasing, vendor registration, travel, contract administration, cost control, warehouse operations, receiving, records retention, aviation and support building maintenance.

She joined Seminole Gaming in 2005 as director of purchasing at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa and then served as vice president of purchasing for Seminole Gaming.

Prior to joining Seminole Gaming, Bradford established purchasing departments and was part of grand opening teams at several casinos, including the Isle of Capri Casino and Sam's Town Casino for Boyd Gaming, both in Tunica, Miss. She was also director of purchasing at Ameristar Casino in Vicksburg, Miss., where she was responsible for purchasing, public space, hotel, wardrobe, warehouse, receiving and inventory control.

She joined Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, N.J., in 1986 as a junior buyer. During her 10-year career with the Trump Organization, she was part of the grand opening team for the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. She was promoted to purchasing agent and then to purchasing manager, with responsibility for purchasing, warehouse, receiving, inventory and wardrobe.

Bradford began her casino industry career in 1984 as a clerk typist with Caesar's Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City.

Bradford is a New Jersey native. She is an animal lover and enjoys spending time with her family and with her pets.
Following the success of the previous four conferences, the 5th Global Tourism & Hospitality Conference, GTHC2022, will be hosted and organised by the School of Hotel and Tourism Management of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University on 13-14 June 2022 in Hong Kong. This hybrid conference will serve as an important networking platform for education, students and industry practitioners to exchange insights related to innovations, trends, opportunities and challenges of global tourism and hospitality.

WELCOME MESSAGE

It gives me great pleasure to extend a warm invitation to you to participate in the Global Tourism & Hospitality Conference hosted by the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). I am delighted that the conference will be delivered in a hybrid mode in Hong Kong on 13-14 June 2022 at Hotel ICON, our groundbreaking teaching and research hotel.

Taking the theme "Innovation  Research  Education", the conference will serve as an important networking platform for educators, thought leaders, students and industry professionals to exchange dialogue related to innovations and trends in the global tourism and hospitality industry, as well as opportunities and challenges that the industry is facing.

This exceptional platform is being organised by a group of talented SHTM undergraduate students from the Special Events Class for delegates from around the world to connect, network as well as exchange ideas and insights. Along with faculty members, they are committed to creating an unlike-any-other experience for our international delegates.

The year 2022 is a special year for all of us at PolyU as it marks the 85th anniversary of the University. This is a time for us to look back with pride and forward in confidence. This is also a time for us to convene and celebrate. I look forward to welcoming you to the conference and the celebrations.

Professor Kaye Chon

Dean and Chair Professor

Walter and Wendy Kwok Family Foundation Professor in International Hospitality Management

School of Hotel and Tourism Management

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

This event is organized by Hong Kong Poly

For more information please contact Pauline Ngan

+852 3400 2634
High-Powered Consortium Offload Melbourne hotel amid Legal Tussles

The consortium behind the Hotel Continental development in Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula has sold a nearly new hotel in West Melbourne amid a legal tussle with its former operator, Australia-based TFE Hotels ("TFE"). The consortium comprises developer Trenerry Property, Victor Smorgon Group, and the Kanat Family. The hotel is part of its completed AUD340 million West End development with 99 rooms, having hoped to sell for about AUD35 million and up to AUD45 million. The buyer was a Tasmanian-based investor who plans to continue to operate it as a hotel after purchase. Trenerry can confirm that the property has sold and has commenced Supreme Court proceedings against TFE for wrongful termination of the lease.

Les' Copaque Production Sdn Bhd to Build Upin and Ipin Theme Park by 2024 to 2025

Malaysia-based Les Copaque Production Sdn Bhd (LCPSB) has signed a memorandum of understand with Malaysia-based Cyberview Sdn Bhd to explore the potential of building a Upin and Ipin Theme Park, which will be named as Kampung Durian Runtuh. The concept was chosen because it represent local culture and has gain massive popularity within south-east Asia. The new theme park will be located in the south of Johor Bahru, serving as a new attraction for neighbour countries, such as, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei. Les Copaques head honcho, Burhanuddin Md Radzi, mentioned that Johor Bahru will be an ideal location as it is equipped with an international airport for foreigners. The development is expected to start in early 2023 and complete by 2024 to 2025. The estimated cost of the development is between MYR700 million to MYR1 billion.

Central Pattana to Invest THB10 Billion in 37 Hotel Projects

Thailand-based Central Pattana Public Company Limited (CPN) has announced a THB10 billion hotel development project for 37 hotels in 27 provinces of Thailand. All 37 properties will be managed by the Centara Hotels and Resorts, which will eventually create 3,900 hospitality jobs. The President and Chief Executive, Wallaya Chirathivat, mentioned that this five-year investment plan for its hotel business ending in 2026 will strengthen its retail-led mixed-use developments as hotels will be a key part of future CPN projects. CPN estimated that the hotel development projects will add another 4,000 rooms to its current portfolio. CPNs current two hotels includes 304-key Hilton Pattaya and 259-key Centara Hotel & Convention Centre Udon Thani.

Quarantine-Free Travel for all Visitors to South Korea starting 8 June 2022

On 3 June 2022, South Korea Central Disease Control Headquarters announced that all international travelers to South Korea are no longer required to quarantine regardless of their vaccination status starting from 8 June 2022. The quarantine exemption also applies to travelers who entered the country before 8 June and are currently in quarantine. A negative COVID test result from either a PCR or Rapid Antigen Test and an additional COVID-19 PCR testing upon arrival will still be in effect to ensure whether its a safe traveler with a negative result. If travelers do not have a negative test result or lack accurate information, the passengers will not be able to board their flight. The travelers with a positive COVID-19 test after arrival will still be obliged to quarantine.

About HVS

HVS is the world's leading consulting and valuation services organization focused on the hotel, restaurant, shared ownership, gaming, and leisure industries. Established in 1980, the company performs more than 4,500 assignments per year for virtually every major industry participant. HVS principals are regarded as the leading professionals in their respective regions of the globe. Through a worldwide network of over 50 offices staffed by 300 experienced industry professionals, HVS provides an unparalleled range of complementary services for the hospitality industry. For further information regarding our expertise and specifics about our services, please visit www.hvs.com.
WASHINGTON - U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Roger Dow issued the following statement on the Biden administrations announcement that the pre-departure testing requirement for inbound air travelers to the United States lifted on June 12:

Today marks another huge step forward for the recovery of inbound air travel and the return of international travel to the United States. The Biden administration is to be commended for this action, which will welcome back visitors from around the world and accelerate the recovery of the U.S. travel industry."

International inbound travel is vitally important to businesses and workers across the country who have struggled to regain losses from this valuable sector. More than half of international travelers in a recent survey pointed to the pre-departure testing requirement as a major deterrent for inbound travel to the U.S."

Prior to the pandemic, travel was one of our nations largest industry exports. The lifting of this requirement will enable the industry to lead the way toward a broader U.S. economic and jobs recovery."

A new analysis found that repealing the pre-departure testing requirement could bring an additional 5.4 million visitors to the U.S. and an additional $9 billion in travel spending through the remainder of 2022."

U.S. Travel and our partners advocated tirelessly for months to ensure this requirement would be lifted, pointing to the monumental scientific advancements that have made it possible for us to reach this point. We thank President Biden, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Dr. Ashish Jha and others in the administration for recognizing the immense economic power of travel and its ability to reconnect the U.S. with the global community.

Please click here to see U.S. Travels latest inbound travel forecast, which also includes pandemic-related losses, upside economic impact scenarios based on policy changes, and an analysis on where inbound travel should be in terms of growth had the pandemic not occurred.

About U.S. Travel Association

U.S. Travel Association is the national, non-profit organization representing all components of the travel industry. In 2020, travel generated $1.5 trillion in economic output and supported 11 million jobs, a drastic decline from pre-pandemic figures. U.S. Travel's mission is to increase travel to and within the United States. Visit ustravel.org for information and recovery-related data.
NH Hotel Group, a multinational hospitality company based in Madrid, officially joins Global Hotel Alliance (GHA), the worlds largest alliance of independent hotel brands, on 20 June 2022. The landmark partnership includes the transformation of NH Rewards into the award-winning GHA DISCOVERY loyalty programme, becoming NH DISCOVERY, and thereby creating an unrivalled hospitality offering of more than 800 hotels and resorts across 40 brands in 100 countries to a 21-million-strong global membership.

NH Hotel Group is one of the largest hotel companies in the world and brings to the alliance more than 350 properties in 30 countries under three brands  NH Hotels, NH Collection and nhow  expanding GHA DISCOVERYs footprint in Europe and the Americas. NH Hotel Group is majority-owned by Minor Hotels, a Bangkok-based operator of more than 160 hotels and a GHA shareholder. Minors global family of brands such as Anantara, Avani, Elewana Collection, Oaks and Tivoli are already member brands of the alliance and participate in GHA DISCOVERY.

For NH Hotel Group, joining the alliance supports its strategic development plans in the luxury segment as well as in new markets where GHA has an established presence, while its 10 million existing NH Rewards members are now spoiled for choice with rewards and recognition at new properties, in new destinations, offering more travel experiences. Existing NH Rewards members will retain the value of their points and their other benefits, including Member Rates with up to 10% discount and additional rewards for booking on the NH website.

The formal announcement of the upcoming integration took place this morning at a joint GHA and NH event in Madrid attended by CEOs of the alliance member brands. Ramon Aragones, CEO of NH Hotel Group and a GHA board member, added: Joining GHA, and the transformation of NH Rewards into NH DISCOVERY, marks a major milestone for NH Hotel Group and our guests at a time when the travel and hospitality sector is recovering at pace, as the encouraging turnaround in our Q1 results proves. This paves the way for growth, and by leveraging GHAs geographical footprint we can accelerate planned development in new markets where demand for our brands is strong. At the same time, with the new NH DISCOVERY, we have access to incremental revenue streams, while offering our own loyal guests remarkable choice.

Welcoming NH Hotel Group to the alliance, GHA CEO Chris Hartley said: As our newest and largest brand, NH not only enriches our global offering to members, providing access to new destinations and hospitality experiences across the Americas, Spain, Germany, Italy and Benelux, but nearly doubles our member base, further amplifying our marketing power.



About the programme

NH DISCOVERY members will be able to fully leverage the recently reimagined GHA DISCOVERY programme, with benefits including: DISCOVERY Dollars (D$), where members can earn and spend D$ at any property in the GHA DISCOVERY portfolio; Recognition, with more tiers, enhanced benefits, and rewards from the first stay at a wide choice of properties, including some of the worlds most luxurious hotels, resorts and palaces; and Live Local, providing around-the-corner lifestyle experiences, offers and promotions  from spa days to dining to weekend staycations and more. For more information visit Global Hotel Alliance or GHA DISCOVERY



About NH Hotel Group

NH Hotel Group (www.nhhotelgroup.com) is a consolidated multinational player and a benchmark urban hotel operator in Europe and the Americas, where it operates more than 350 establishments. Since 2019, the Company has been working with Minor Hotels on integrating all of its hotel trademarks under a single corporate umbrella brand with a presence in over 50 countries worldwide. Together they have articulated a portfolio of more than 500 hotels operating under eight brands: NH Hotels, NH Collection, nhow, Tivoli, Anantara, Avani, Elewana and Oaks - to forge a broad and diverse range of hotel propositions in touch with the needs and desires of today's world travellers.

About Global Hotel Alliance (GHA)

Global Hotel Alliance (GHA) brings together a unique collection of independent hospitality brands with GHA DISCOVERY, a multi-brand loyalty programme leveraging a shared technology platform. Through membership in GHA, brands expand their global reach, drive incremental revenue, and reduce dependence on third-party channels, all while maintaining management independence and individual positioning. GHA represents a collection of 40 brands with more than 800 hotels in 100 countries serving 21 million members. The award-winning GHA DISCOVERY programme generates approximately $2 billion in revenue and more than eight million room nights annually. GHA's brands currently include Anantara, Araiya, Avani, Campbell Gray, Capella, Corinthia, Discovery Destinations, Divani, Doyle, Elewana, Fauchon, GLO, JA Resorts, Kempinski, Leela, Lungarno, Marco Polo, Mysk, NH Hotels, NH Collection, nhow, Niccolo, Nikki Beach, NUO, Oaks, Outrigger, Pan Pacific, PARKROYAL COLLECTION, PARKROYAL, Patina, The Residence by Cenizaro, Shaza, Sukhothai, Sun International, Tivoli, Ultratravel Collection and Viceroy. For more information, visit globalhotelalliance.com.

About GHA DISCOVERY

Launched in 2010, GHA DISCOVERY is the world's largest loyalty programme for independent hotel brands, featuring more than 800 hotels, resorts and palaces across 40 brands. Members enjoy VIP recognition, thoughtful benefits and generous rewards at home or away. GHA DISCOVERY members earn and spend DISCOVERY Dollars (D$) and they also enjoy member-only Experiences curated by each hotel, plus they have access to properties close to home, without a stay, through member-only Local Offers.

Andrea Krenn

Global Hotel Alliance (GHA)
She had a fourteen hour flight to Australia, explained a woman with a thick French accent. Unfortunately, she had thrown her back out again. Would I come and give something to relax her muscles for that long journey?

I dont know any medicine that does that, but she was certain that, in the past, her French doctor had prescribed something that did the trick.

She was already taking the usual pain remedies, so there was no point in a housecall. The woman agreed, but she was clearly disappointed. I know she wondered if I was truly on the ball.

Its a popular medical belief (remember reader: all popular medical beliefs are wrong) that if you are sick, the doctor will do his best. But if you absolutely must feel well  you have a vacation, important business, a wedding  a smart physician will make a special effort and come up with something even better.

As a hotel doctor, I deal with this yearning all the time. Since doctors are tenderhearted, its tempting to prescribe a placebo if no useful medicine exists. Placebos work although not as dramatically as enthusiasts claim.

The problem is that theyre not available. Decades ago, drug companies sold pills labeled placebo, but, perhaps for medicolegal reasons, they stopped. The result is that when a doctor decides you need a placebo, he prescribes a real medicine in the full knowledge that hes doing something wrong. As Ive written repeatedly, the advantage of alternative, folk, holistic, and herbal medicines is that everyone knows that they are a hundred percent safe. Medicines from real doctors have side-effects, so were not supposed to prescribe them unless theyll help.

Mike Oppenheim
Ian Willms/NYT

BP sold out of Canadas oil sands, divesting its stake in the Sunrise project to Cenovus Energy Inc. while acquiring offshore exploration from the same company in the east of the country.

The oil-sands disposal aligns with BPs plans to divest polluting projects as investors demand greater efforts to tackle climate change. Companies such as Shell and ConocoPhillips have also offloaded such ventures, which have a particularly high carbon footprint because of the energy required to extract bitumen from deposits underground.
Last month, a group of congressional leaders, joined by members of the European Parliament, urged President Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to deny any new financing of fossil fuel infrastructure, licensing or extraction.

This request, as global energy producers are working to make up supplies lost by the sanctions on Russian energy is incredibly tone-deaf and a clear sign that a large portion of our nations leaders are extremely misguided about global energy dynamics. Abandoning critical infrastructure projects, especially those related to natural gas, would only exacerbate the energy crisis created by the combination of increasing global demand, insufficient investment in traditional energy sources and geopolitical conflict.

Every day, U.S. energy producers are implementing and developing new technologies to continue to mitigate emissions, leading to clean energy practices in traditional oil and gas. Leaders should not vilify an industry that is providing the technologies of today and into the future that will allow our nation, and that of our allies, to be energy secure, and support our national and economic security.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Demand for Texas energy pushes Corpus exports to record shipments

Instead of cutting off financing for new fossil fuel infrastructure as the signers of the letter suggest, if the intention is truly to lower carbon emissions, new investments in liquefied natural gas (LNG) and natural gas infrastructure should in fact be increased dramatically.

Our domestic operators produce energy in a cleaner, safer and more reliable manner than other major producing nations. Since 2005, America has lowered our carbon emissions more than any other country and this has been done by transitioning from coal fired power generation to natural gas. We can repeat these climate gains abroad by exporting U.S. LNG and replacing foreign coal fired power generation.

Not only will this be better for the environment, but it will be better for the national security of our allies who are seeking these exports.

Despite the claims made in the letter, to meet the administrations and EUs climate goals, the truth is that America must invest in all U.S. domestic energy resources, including oil and gas. On March 25, President Biden announced an agreement committing the U.S. LNG industry to supply an additional 15 billion cubic meters of LNG to Europe through the remainder of the year.

The agreement also anticipates U.S. LNG increasing supply to Europe to 50 billion cubic meters through 2030, equating to approximately one-third of the European Union's (EU) gas imports from Russia in 2021. To meet this promise, additional LNG export infrastructure, gas pipelines and gathering lines will be necessary. Without this investment our allies will have no choice but to seek other, dirtier sources of energy, restart aging coal infrastructure, or continue to rely on Russia to meet their needs.

Instead of looking for ways to eliminate domestic oil and gas, our leaders should take an approach that will shore up short term disruptions and ensure a long-term strategy for energy security. America has the natural resources, and we should be providing incentives to develop the technologies to maximize our production while working towards our climate goals.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Venture Global will build $13B Plaquemines LNG outside New Orleans

Leadership must also provide regulatory certainty that reduces roadblocks to permitting and opens more federal resources for leasing. This will allow for increased investment, job creation, and expanded production.

America can bring energy security to the world with affordable, reliable, cleaner energy through innovation and ingenuity, new technology, increased investment, and expanded export infrastructure. Its time to drop the politics in energy policy, consider the facts, and make the choices necessary to bring true energy security to America and our allies and to do it while moving rapidly towards a lower carbon future.

Leslie Beyer is the CEO of the Energy Workforce & Technology Council, the national trade association for the energy technology and services sector.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of Jan. 6, but the defeated president seemed detached from reality and kept clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power, the committee investigating the Capitol attack was told Monday.

With gripping testimony, the panel is laying out in step-by-step fashion how Trump ignored his own campaign team's data as one state after another flipped to Joe Biden, and instead latched on to conspiracy theories, court cases and his own declarations of victory rather than having to admit defeat.

Trump's big lie of election fraud escalated and transformed into marching orders that summoned supporters to Washington and then sent them to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to block Bidens victory.

He's become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff, former Attorney General William Barr testified in his interview with the committee.

Barr called the voting fraud claims bull, bogus and idiotic, and resigned in the aftermath. I didnt want to be a part of it.

Now Playing: The House January 6 Committee investigating the Capitol attack heard from former President Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers and top government officials Monday who all attempted to dismantle his false claims of 2020 election fraud. (June 13) Video: Associated Press

The House 1/6 committee spent the morning hearing delving into Trumps claims of election fraud and the countless ways those around him tried to convince the defeated Republican president they were not true, and he had simply lost the election.

The witnesses Monday, mostly Republicans and many testifying in prerecorded videos, described in blunt terms and sometimes exasperated detail how Trump refused to take the advice of those closest to him, including his family members. As the people around him splintered into a team normal headed by former campaign manager Bill Stepien and others led by Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani, the president chose his side.

On election night, Stepien said, Trump was growing increasingly unhappy and refusing to accept the grim outlook for his presidency.

Son-in-law Jared Kushner tried to steer Trump away from Giuliani and his far-flung theories of voter fraud. The president would have none of it.

The back-and-forth intensified in the run-up to Jan. 6. Former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue recalled breaking down one claim after another  from a truckload of ballots in Pennsylvania to a missing suitcase of ballots in Georgia - and telling Trump much of the info youre getting is false.

Still, he pressed on with his false claims even after dozens of court cases collapsed.

On Monday an unrepentant Trump blasted the hearings in his familiar language as ridiculous and treasonous and repeated his claims.

The former president, mulling another run for the White House, defended the Capitol attack as merely Americans seeking to hold their elected officials accountable.

Nine people died in the riot and its aftermath, including a Trump supporter shot and killed by Capitol police. More than 800 people have been arrested, and members of two extremist groups have been indicted on rare sedition charges over their roles leading the charge into the Capitol.

During the hearing, the panel also provided new information about how Trump's fundraising machine collected some $250 million with his campaigns to Stop the Steal and others in the aftermath of the November election, mostly from small-dollar donations from Americans. One plea for cash went out 30 minutes before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Not only was there the big lie, there was the big ripoff, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., opened Monday's hearing saying Trump betrayed the trust of the American people and tried to remain in office when people had voted him out.

As the hearings play out for the public, they are also being watched by one of the most important viewers, Attorney General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should prosecute Trump. No sitting or former president has ever faced such an indictment.

I am watching, Garland said Monday at a press briefing at the Justice Department, even if he may not watch all the hearings live. And I can assure you the Jan. 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings as well."

Biden was getting updates but not watching blow by blow, said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Stepien was to be a key in-person witness Monday but abruptly backed out of appearing live because his wife went into labor. Stepien, who is still close to Trump, had been subpoenaed to appear. He is now a top campaign adviser to Trump-endorsed House candidate Harriet Hageman, who is challenging committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney in the Wyoming Republican primary.

The panel marched ahead after a morning scramble and delay, with witness after witness saying Trump embraced and repeated his claims about the election although those closest told him the theories of stolen ballots or rigged voting machines were simply not true.

Stepien and senior adviser Jason Miller described how the festive mood at the White House on Election Night turned grim as Fox News announced Trump had lost the state of Arizona to Joe Biden, and aides worked to counsel Trump on what to do next.

But he ignored their advice, choosing to listen instead to Giuliani, who was described as inebriated by several witnesses. Giuliani issued a general denial Monday, rejecting all falsehoods he said were being said about him.

Stepien said, My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted, its too early to tell, too early to call the race.

But Trump thought I was wrong. He told me so.

Barr, who had also testified in last week's blockbuster opening hearing, said Trump was as mad as I'd ever seen him when the attorney general later explained that the Justice Department would not take sides in the election.

Barr said when he would tell Trump how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were."

For the past year, the committee has been investigating the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812, which some believe posed a grave threat to democracy.

Mondays hearing also featured live witnesses, including Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News Channel political editor who was part of a team that declared on Election Night that Arizona was being won by Biden. Also appearing was the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, BJay Pak, who abruptly resigned after Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to overturn his defeat.

The panel also heard from elections lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg, who discussed the norms of election campaign challenges, and former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, the only Republican on the city's election board, who told the panel that regardless of how fantastical some of the claims that Trump and his team were making, the city officials investigated. He discussed facing threats after Trump criticized him in a tweet.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Michael Balsamo in Washington and Farnoush Amiri and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

___

For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege.
In the wake of two deadly mass shootings carried out by 18-year-olds, several key Connecticut lawmakers  all Democrats  said they would support an idea that has gained steam in neighboring New York: raising the minimum age for purchasing most firearms.

Connecticut and most other states allow 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds to buy many rifles and shotguns, also known as long guns, even though some of those states, including Connecticut, limit the purchase of handguns to those 21 and older.

Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport and House chair of the Judiciary Committee, which hears gun legislation, said Connecticut should consider legislation that models a proposal New York passed this week to raise the minimum age for purchasing semi-automatic rifles there.

"It is illogical that in Connecticut, 19 year-olds can't purchase a handgun, but they can purchase a long gun, Stafstrom said. Our laws regulating the sale of firearms should be uniform and raising the age to purchase a rifle would be a sensible course of action for the Connecticut legislature to pursue.

Along with Stafstrom, the Democratic leaders of two other key joint committees in the state Legislature  public safety and education  each said they would support raising the minimum age for long gun purchases.

However, two Republican lawmakers pushed back on the idea that more restrictions on gun ownership are warranted in a state widely regarded as having some of the strictest gun laws in the country.

And four top Democratic legislators  Sen. Martin Looney, Sen. Bob Duff, Rep. Matthew Ritter and Rep. Jason Rojas  declined, or did not respond to, multiple requests for comment from Hearst Connecticut Media Group in recent days.

Gov. Ned Lamonts office also did not respond to requests for comment on whether he would support raising the minimum age for buying long guns in Connecticut.

But Lamont, at a press conference alongside gun safety advocates held the day after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, pushed for other measures to be adopted in Connecticut and at the federal level.

Lamont said then he was contemplating calling for the state legislature, which ended its session in early May, to reconvene to discuss possible gun control measures.

During the most recent, three-month legislative session, Lamont proposed limiting the monthly purchase of guns and adding restrictions on so-called ghost guns. But the proposal failed to advance due to promises by Republicans to run out the calendar through prolonged debate, Stafstrom told reporters previously.

This week, New York became the seventh state to limit the purchase of semi-automatic rifles to those 21 and older. At the federal level, House Democrats in Washington, D.C. planned to raise the issue Wednesday as part of a package of gun legislation, NBC News reported.

The moves come amid national outcry after an 18-year-old armed with rifles killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde on May 24. The school shooting happened just days after a rifle-wielding 18-year-old went on a racist shooting spree in a Buffalo supermarket, killing 10.

David Pucino, deputy chief counsel at the Giffords Center, said even in Connecticut, which bans many assault weapons, young adults under 21 years old are still able to purchase some semi-automatic rifles. He noted New York has similar laws banning assault weapons, but the gunman in the Buffalo massacre was still able to legally purchase the gun he used at age 18 in that state before the latest restrictions were approved this week.

Pucino said people under 21 years old are more likely to engage in violent behaviors. They're at higher risk of committing and also being a victim of acts of gun violence.

Data from the K-12 School Shooting Database, a federally-maintained dataset of gun violence taking place on school grounds, shows the majority of school shootings are carried out by men and boys younger than 21.

Mike Lawlor, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven and a former Democratic state representative, said that while Connecticut has an assault weapons ban that prohibits the sale of many firearms, gun manufacturers have created new models that work around the law.

Lawlor said a national law forbidding the sale of all rifles and shotguns to 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds would be much more effective than a patchwork of state laws.

The best thing that could happen to Connecticut are national standards, he said. That's where these guns are coming from. Elsewhere in the country.

Raising the minimum age for buying guns nationwide is a proposal federal lawmakers have considered, according to national news outlets. However, Republican negotiators are focused on other priorities including reforms to background checks, red flag laws, school safety and mental health initiatives, Politico reported on Monday.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, told Hearst Connecticut Media Group last week he was optimistic that some gun control measures will ultimately be approved at the federal level. What were talking about would be arguably the most significant thing weve done on gun violence in decades.

The two Connecticut Republican lawmakers who said they opposed raising minimum age rules at the state level pointed to the states already-strict gun laws, relative to other states.

The Giffords Law Center, a national group advocating for stronger gun control laws, ranks Connecticut 3rd in the strength of its gun laws.

I just think Connecticut is in a different sphere than other states because of how much weve already done on gun regulation, said Rep. Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford and the House minority leader. Now, for our state, we have to have the more difficult conversation of how to identify those risky behaviors and provide services for these kids.

Candelora said he would support adding security to schools as well as measures to better address youth mental health, a key focus of the state legislature in the most recent session.

Candelora said state lawmakers considered raising the minimum age to purchase shotguns and rifles after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary left 26 dead. But, lawmakers set aside the idea then amid concerns that doing so would keep young adults from owning guns for hunting, he said.

Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford and the ranking House member on the Judiciary Committee, said he would not support added restrictions on gun sales and said the legislature should consider eliminating gun-free zones.

If an individual has jumped through the hoops to obtain the ability to lawfully protect themselves and their family by carrying a firearm, they should not be precluded from exercising that right wherever they go, he said.

Fishbein also said raising the minimum age would be counterintuitive, given that most people charged with gun crimes are never found guilty, pointing to a report from Connecticuts Office of Legislative Research, released in March, showing the majority of firearms offenses in the state are either dismissed or the prosecutor drops the charge.

For instance, two-thirds of charges for carrying a handgun without a permit were either dismissed or dropped in 2021, according to the research, though the author noted prosecutors may drop certain charges as part of a plea deal.

Others expressed support for raising the minimum age.

Rep. Bobby Sanchez, D-New Britain and House chair of the education committee, said he hopes to see legislators in Washington, D.C. come to an agreement on raising the minimum age for the purchase of long guns.

Sanchez, who said he is a gun owner, questioned whether semi-automatic weapons should be sold to anyone, but said raising the minimum age would be an important compromise.

I think that, if we put certain really strict laws into place, that we can stop some of this, he said. Keeping these guns away from 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds is part of that.

Rep. Maria Horn, chair of the public safety committee, said the fact that young men are most often responsible for mass shootings is a blinking red light, and the minimum age should be raised.

Horn said Connecticuts low rate of gun deaths is a direct result of our gun violence prevention legislation. Connecticut had the sixth-lowest rate of gun deaths in the country in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

Still, Horn said she is most focused on the result of a Supreme Court decision expected by the end of this month that she said could have implications for state law in Connecticut.The court is poised to decide whether New York laws regulating the concealed carry of handguns violate gun owners rights under the Second Amendment, according to Reuters.

It would be prudent to wait for that decision, Horn said.

Jeremy Stein, executive director of CT Against Gun Violence, said while he supports raising the minimum age for the purchase of most guns in Connecticut to 21, hard-to-solve problems would persist. For example, two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides in Connecticut, he said.

We need better regulations that are going to limit access to guns, especially by people who are going to harm themselves or others, he said. In addition to looking at the supply side of guns, we need to also be looking at the demand for guns and the root causes of gun violence.
POMPANO BEACH, Fla. (AP)  Detectives in Florida have arrested a man on a murder charge after his wife went missing, saying they have evidence she was killed although no remains have been found.

The Broward Sheriff's Office said in a news release that Ian Lanning, 54, is facing one count of first-degree murder. Jail records do not list an attorney for Lanning.
RUTLAND, Maine (AP)  The Rutland Police Department is investigating a suspicious death in an apartment building, officials said Sunday.

The investigation began early Sunday but police declined to disclose further details about the death.

Police said there was no risk to the public.

Police said more information would be released later. Vermont State Police were assisting in the investigation.
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A 7-year-old boy was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting while he was sleeping in his home Sunday night in Cloverleaf, the Harris County sheriff's office said.

CHILD GUN DEATHS: As Texas reels from Uvalde, these 19 Houston-area kids are a reminder gun violence happens every day

Paul Vasquez was in bed when a white or gray sedan drove by about 10:45 p.m. and fired multiple rounds into the house on the 13800 block of McNair Street, officials said. The boy, whose bedroom was near the front of the house, was hit in the chest and ran to his mother.

REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS: These 19 Houston children lost their lives to gun violence in 2022

He was taken to Ben Taub Hospital, where he died. His mother and two older brothers were at the home when the shooting occurred.

The motive for the shooting is unknown, according to the Harris County sheriff's office, and police didn't have any solid information on a possible suspect, a homicide detective said Sunday night.
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A man in his early 20s was shot after an argument broke out Sunday night inside an Airbnb in East Downtown, police said.

The man was shot in the head, officer Caroleta Johnson said, after a shootout involving multiple people inside the Airbnb on the 2700 block of Dallas Street. He was taken to Ben Taub Hospital in critical condition, police said.
The NCIS agent accused of intentionally hindering the FBI and Homeland Security's counterterrorism investigation into her ex-lover was found guilty on Monday on all but one of the charges she faced in federal court in Houston.

Leatrice De Bruhl-Daniels, a 48-year-old U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, faced charges of lying, tampering with evidence, meddling with witnesses, bribing public officials and outright impeding justice to protect Nadal Diya, a Syrian businessman who she had an affair with while stationed in Dubai and the target of the federal investigation.

JET-SET AFFAIR: Federal agent faces trial in Houston after romantic involvement with terror suspect

During the trial, prosecutors suggested the investigation targeted Diya, 49, potentially because of his relationship with a business associate and their possible connections to ISIS. Because she was convicted of concealing the fact she told Diya he was the target of the counterterrorism investigation, De Bruhl-Daniels' sentence could be subjected to a terrorism enhancement that would give the judge the option of elongating her punishment.

The only charge of which De-Bruhl-Daniels was found not guilty was bribery of a public official or witness. Her defense attorney declined to comment on the outcome of the case.

She did not initially react to the verdict, but she wept as she was taken away in handcuffs by U.S. Marshals, according to someone present in court.

During closing arguments on Friday, federal prosecutors argued that De Bruhl-Daniels betrayed her ... country and endangered national security with her relationship with Diya.

The two first met in June 2016 in Dubai, where De Bruhl-Daniels was dispatched to the U.S. Consulate, after a mutual friend introduced them. When Diya learned she was a U.S. federal agent, he asked her if she could help him obtain a visa.

PREVIOUS REPORTING: Federal agent faces trial in Houston after romantic involvement with terror suspect

After realizing he could be a confidential source, De Bruhl-Daniels asked her former boss R. Todd Foley, then the NCIS resident agent in charge in Dubai, for permission to speak with him over coffee, Foley testified last Wednesday. The two met once more, Foley said, before an FBI agent informed him of the agencys investigation of Diya.

But they continued to contact each other despite Foley telling her on at least two occasions to stay away, he testified.

As they continued to talk, he began showing romantic interest in her, even telling her he loved her and musing that she could be his second wife, De Bruhl-Daniels testified last Friday.

I had no interest at first, of course, she said of Diya during her testimony. When he started expressing his affection to me, I got confused with my emotions.

Diya, who is facing passport fraud charges, threw De Bruhl-Daniels a lavish birthday party, helped her pay for a Greek vacation, bought her expensive jewelry and gave her then-23-year-old son a job, according to federal prosecutors.

He also testified that their relationship also included walks along the beach, hourslong dinners and even sex.

De Bruhl-Daniels warned Diya about the investigation more than once, even advising him against traveling to the United States because he would risk getting arrested, which federal prosecutors argued compromised the federal probe.

She was also warned by colleagues and other federal agents to not tell him about the investigation.

U.S. District Judge Gray Miller is expected to hand down a sentence on Aug. 15.
An anonymous donor has pledged to cover a semesters worth of college tuition and textbooks for Liberty High Schools most recent graduates, the Houston Independent School District announced Sunday.

The 46 graduates in the Sharpstown campus Class of 2022 will receive scholarships to cover their first semester at the college or trade school of their choice, said Chau Nguyen, a former KHOU-TV anchor who helped organize the donation.

Nguyen, now the chief public strategist for the Houston Area Womens Center, surprised the graduates with news of the donation during her keynote speech at Saturdays commencement ceremony. The former anchor and the donor  a friend of Nguyens who wished to remain anonymous  kept their plans secret until the big reveal.

Sitting in the audience, graduate Nathalia Estrada at first didnt know whether to believe what she was hearing. Accepted to study psychology at the University of Houston in the fall, Estrada had recently drafted a letter to the colleges financial aid department seeking assistance due to an illness in her immediate family.

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It was like a chorus of angels offering a solution, Estrada said of the moment she heard Nguyens news.

The 19-year-old, who moved to Houston from Masatepe, Nicaragua three years ago, intends to follow a pre-medicine track with the hope of becoming a psychiatrist. While her plans are fixed, she said many of her fellow graduates were not planning to go to college due to lack of funds  until Saturday.

I was just speechless, Liberty Principal Monico Rivas said of the announcement.

Nguyen had tipped off Rivas two days ahead of the ceremony, but the principal still was not 100 percent sure what would happen during the speech. She began by telling the story of her familys fraught journey as refugees from Vietnam  and then she told the audience of the anonymous donors largess.

I could see their smiles, their eyes widen, Rivas said. The students were super surprised.

As principal of the alternative high school, which offers both day and night classes, Rivas has seen the dedication his students apply to their studies. The campus was the first of its type in Texas when it opened in 2007 as Newcomer Charter High School to cater to newly arrived immigrants who often balance full-time work and family responsibilities. More than 90 percent of its students are Latino.

The scholarships will enable many of the recent graduates to begin post-secondary education immediately, Rivas said, rather than delaying to save money. Research shows students who transition to college without interruption are more likely to stick with it. About 70 percent will enroll in community college, he said, while another 10 percent are headed for trade school.

While Rivas and Nguyen are still finalizing the donation, both said Sunday the scholarships come with no strings attached.

We hope this can be a head start to their college path, because it is expensive and people are facing challenges, Nguyen said. Theyre working, theyre mothers, theyre helping provide for their families.

As the child of Vietnamese refugees, Nguyen understands the hardships many recent immigrants face while adjusting to life in Houston. She said she hopes her own unlikely path to success would inspire the graduates to think big.

When I was really young, my parents struggled like many of these kids who are new to America, living in poverty and trying to make ends meet, Nguyen said. So I shared some of those stories during the speech to let them know that theyre not alone, and their dreams can happen.

Nguyen anchored KHOUs morning news show until 2007. She earned a masters degree in social work and became a counselor before joining the staff of the Houston Area Womens Center, a nonprofit focusing on domestic and sexual violence.

nora.mishanec@chron.com
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Houston seems to have the ingredients for a major biotechnology hub, starting with a medical district boasting four medical schools, world-class hospitals, and leading research centers, and developers planning lofty projects to create life sciences districts to rival Boston, Silicon Valley and San Diego.

Its a wildly ambitious vision, but given time, Houston could get there, said William Bill McKeon, CEO of the Texas Medical Center.

It doesnt happen overnight. It took Boston 15 or 20 years to build up their life science presence, McKeon said. It starts with a couple of companies in a great collection of academic centers.

Houston is far from the first city with leading medical and research institutions to dream of biotech riches, but history shows that it takes more than just brilliant minds and a build-it-and-they-will-come strategy. Metropolitan areas from Atlanta, home of the Centers for Disease Control, to Rochester, Minn., home of the Mayo Clinic, have also sought to develop biotech clusters, with limited success.

Justin Rex, Houston Chronicle / Contributor

Like Houston, experts said, these regions lack the critical mass of venture capital and entrepreneurial expertise to move scientific discoveries from the laboratory to the market. Biotechnology companies are extremely risky investments, burning to through tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars over a decade or more to develop new drugs  all with the chance that a poor clinical trial will spell the end of the prospective drug and the company.

Venture capital firms willing to make such bets are hard to find in Houston. The region attracted $731 million in venture capital for biotech companies compared to $12 billion in the San Francisco Bay area and $14 billion in Greater Boston, according to Crunchbase, an online platform that tracks private and public companies.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas makes case to Biden to host new medical research agency distributing billions in funding

The concentration of venture capital on the coasts makes it all the more harder for other regions to build significant biotechnology clusters, said Joseph Cortright, an economist who has studied biotech development. Venture capitalists want to attend meetings, visit companies and stay in the loop about the latest developments, so they prefer to invest in companies near their offices, Cortright said.

A venture capital firm is not just writing a check and hoping for good things to happen, Cortright said. They take seats on the board, and they help guide the firms through that process. Its a very kind of hands-on, time-intensive activity.

The biotech industry took root on the coasts in the 1980s. Some of the oldest, most prestigious academic institutions are located there, as well as some of the largest pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical giants Merck and Pfizer were born in the New York corridor in the 19th Century.

As scientists gained a better understanding of DNA and genetics in the 80s, the emerging biotech industry moved to places beyond where the pharmaceutical companies had a stronghold. Clusters began to form in places like Boston and San Francisco, where venture capital firms were well established largely because of the thriving tech scenes in these areas.

Once the clusters formed in those locations, Cortright said, that more or less locked in where they are.

Houston, while far behind the established biotech centers, has nonetheless built some momentum toward expanding its biotechnology and life sciences sector. There are about 1,700 life sciences companies, hospitals, health facilities and research institutions employing than 320,000 people in health care, biotech and related fields in the area, according to the Greater Houston Partnership.

Venture capital investments in Houston biotechs have increased sevenfold to $731 million in 2021 from $83 million in 2017, according to Crunchbase. The Houston developer Hines and the Levit family plan to redevelop more than 52 acres near the Texas Medical Center and create Levit Green, a life sciences district of offices, laboratories and research facilities.

Justin Rex, Houston Chronicle / Contributor

Another project launched by the Texas Medical Center, called TMC3, is developing a 37-acre biomedical research campus. Construction for the first phase of the project is backed by $1.8 billion in financing from life science investment and property development teams.

The state is also providing support through the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas. Created in 2007 with $3 billion in funding primarily to support academic research, the Legislature in 2019 authorized another $3 billion for the program. About 17 percent of the money helps biotech companies develop cancer treatments.

In March, the Texas Medical Center said it doubled the size of its venture capital arm, TMC Venture Fund, to $50 million. The fund, however, invests across the country and many of its portfolio companies are outside of Texas.

Discovered in Houston, headquartered elsewhere

Finding local investors was a problem for Dr. Raghu Kalluri as he tried to launch a company to commercialize his research into treatments for pancreatic cancer  one of the most aggressive and deadly types of cancer.

Kalluri, a researcher at MDAnderson, was developing a technology that uses exosomes, particles that cells release, to fight cancer cells. Exosomes carry genetic information and proteins to other cells, and Kalluri and his colleagues had an idea to use the exosomes to also carry drugs targeting cancerous cells.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston's future is rising out of a VA hospital parking lot

His idea of using exosomes was too novel for local investors, who were unfamiliar and uneasy with business propositions that required so much capital upfront and so many years before they might pay off, he said.

The general thinking here is that it needs to be something that's going to go to patients right away or it needs to be (in the early stages of clinical trials), Kalluri said. It needs to be somewhat low risk.

Justin Rex, Houston Chronicle / Contributor

He soon found that investors in other parts of the country were more receptive to newer science. In 2015 and 2016, the company received tens of millions of dollars of investments from Arch Venture Partners, a Chicago venture capital firm, and the venture capital arm of the Boston financial services company Fidelity Investments.

Kalluri and others launched the company, called Codiak Biosciences, in Cambridge, Mass., in 2015. By the start of 2016, the company had raised $92 million.

Kalluri now serves as a scientific adviser to the company. Codiak, which has products in human clinical trials, employs 102 people, according to SEC filings, and has raised about $235 million in four funding rounds. It launched a successful initial public offering in October 2020.

Codiak is not the only example of innovation from Houston getting commercialized elsewhere. The issue isnt always funding. Sometimes its talent.

Shallow pool for senior leadership

UTHealth has an office of technology that handles the commercialization of discoveries coming out of the six schools in the university. It licenses the patents to companies, which would pay the university royalties if drugs get to the market.

About 60 companies license UTHealth technology  about a third are from out of state. Its not uncommon to see the university to work with companies on either coasts, said Dr. Bruce Butler, vice president of research and technology at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Another big advantage for established biotech centers is their deep pools of executives experienced in leading companies through drug discovery, clinical trials, regulatory processes, and sometimes acquisitions by major biopharmaceutical companies.

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On the West and East coast, there are more experienced CEOs available because there are so many companies, Butler said. If you look at any successful biotech company, the people in the C-suite all have multiple companies under their belt.

Justin Rex, Houston Chronicle / Contributor Justin Rex, Houston Chronicle / Contributor Paras Gupta, left and Amanda Gibbens insert a catheter into a model bladder in Fannin Innovation Studios Tuesday, May 24, 2022, in Houston, Texas.

Fannin Innovation Studios, a life sciences incubator in River Oaks, is trying to build such a talent pool.

The skills needed make scientific discoveries and build a business are completely different, said Dr. Atul Varadhachary, managing partner at Fannin Innovation Studios. So, the incubator runs apprenticeship programs to teach researchers about commercializing scientific discoveries, covering areas such as grant writing, market analysis and business development.

So far, Fannin Innovation Studios has spun out four companies, all of which are still located in Houston. One of the companies is developing a drug that helps protect against respiratory diseases such as SARS and MERS, and another created a COVID antibodies test.

For some reason, Varadhachary said, we seem to think you can take a great academic researcher and theyll be able to do drug development without experience.

Making it work in Houston

Pete O'Heeron is the CEO of FibroBiologics, Houston biotech developing an alternative to stem cell therapy. The technology uses fibroblast, the most populous cell in the body, and OHeeron believes it could be more effective than stem cells in treating diseases such as multiple sclerosis, cancer and degenerative disc disease.

OHeeron said he doesnt intend to move his company because Texas Medical Center offers facilities and a large sample of patients for clinical trials. For now, he relies mostly on angel investors to fund his company.

But if more companies like his are going to stay in Houston, investors need to be willing to take chance on them, he added.

In Houston, we just need a group of people or a coalition of people that are investing in these companies at an early stage, O'Heeron said, and betting on these entrepreneurs and their technologies.
Two new COVID-19 subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, are making inroads in Houston and could fuel ongoing transmission in the area, experts say.

First detected in January and February in South Africa, the omicron subvariants appear to have additional mutations that allow them to evade some immunity from vaccines or previous omicron infections, according to European Union health officials, who on Monday warned of potentially significant case increases throughout Europe.

The new subvariants are the latest in the omicron lineage to draw the global health communitys attention, but its unclear whether they will out-compete the currently dominant strains of BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1.

In Houston, BA.4 and BA.5 now account for 7 percent and 14 percent of all COVID cases, respectively, among Houston Methodist patients, according to Dr. Wesley Long, the hospitals medical director of diagnostic microbiology. The subvariants are also taking up a growing share of cases nationally, together accounting for 13 percent of infections in the U.S. as of June 4, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With new variants increasing predominance, its likely to help fuel transmission through the summer, Long said.

The development comes amid a nationwide COVID surge thats difficult to accurately quantify, given the rise of at-home tests. Based on case numbers published by the The New York Times, daily new infections appear to be leveling off. Texas case numbers continue to rise steadily, according to the Texas Department of State Health Service.

In Harris County, the percentage of people who test positive is now 18.6, more than double the rate in mid-May. And all but four of the 39 city wastewater treatment plants are seeing an increasing viral load, according to Houston wastewater samples collected and analyzed on June 6.

Daily COVID hospitalizations have remained low but are also seeing a slight uptick across the country and statewide. In Texas, the number has steadily risen from 1,147 on June 2 to 1,543 on Sunday. Those figures still dont come close to the peak of the January omicron wave, when the state saw more than 13,000 COVID patients hospitalized in a day.

Overall, the latest mutations appear to cause less severe illness compared to earlier strains. More people are benefiting from vaccines, natural immunity and the availability of the oral antiviral pill Paxlovid. The Food and Drug Administration also appears poised to grant emergency approval this week for two COVID vaccine options for children under 6.

Dr. Robert Atmar, a professor of infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine, said hes not as concerned about the new subvariants sending a flood of new patients to local hospitals. He is, however, worried about more healthcare workers and high-risk populations becoming infected. Houstons largest pediatric hospitals already are unusually busy this time of year, as they contend with out-of-season outbreaks of other common illnesses.

Masks and social distancing are still effective at stemming transmission, Atmar noted, even if face coverings are no longer federally required on public transportation.

I think everybody in the community should be aware of their own personal and family risks, and to take into consideration that this is a more transmissible virus, he said.

julian.gill@chron.com
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The way state environmental regulators invite public input at permit meetings is contributing to a concerning amount of public distrust in their work, according to a formal review of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

This finding was highlighted in the Sunset Advisory Commissions recent staff report. The 12-person commission typically reviews state agencies every 12 years and gives legislators recommendations to improve or eliminate them.

Commission staff released the 101-page document ahead of a hearing scheduled for June 22, when busloads of Houstonians plan to travel to Austin to add feedback. The staff report, in their view, made suggestions that fall short of needed, large-scale reform.

There are significant issues identified and then proposals that dont go far enough, said Adrian Shelley, the Texas director for Public Citizen who has met regularly with a coalition of advocates to discuss this process.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas approved a draft permit for a landfill, but the farmer next door found a hole in the process

Want to testify on June 22? Here are the buses heading from Houston: 6 a.m. bus sponsored by Sen. Borris Miles - Reserve your seat at http://bit.ly/tceqbus 6:30 a.m. bus sponsored by Harris County Precinct 2 - Sign-ups this week at hcp2.com 7 a.m. bus sponsored by the Coalition for Environment, Equity and Resilience - Email Andy Escobar at andy@ceerhouston.org See More Collapse

State environmental regulators are charged with protecting public health and natural resources, and balancing that with economic development. The agency clears permits from industrial facilities that plan to release chemicals into the air, monitors regional air quality for compliance with federal rules and regulates waste disposal, among other tasks.

But many advocates have little faith in the agency to do what is needed to protect people  especially in lower-income communities of color that face more problems than most. Their perspectives add to a concerning degree of general public distrust that the report acknowledges.

Some community stakeholders and environmental advocates see TCEQ as a mere extension of industry, rubber stamping new and expanded facilities, seeming to ignore potential health impacts or public concerns, the report says.

Frustration around the permitting process emerged in the findings as a top issue, along with problems with how the agency regulates water and shortcomings in how it regulates industrial sites.

The agency doesnt invite public participation early enough when reviewing a permit, the report said. Residents typically give feedback at community meetings after draft permits have been released  by which point regulators have already worked to be sure it meets requirements.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houstons dangerous concrete plants are mostly in communities of color. Residents are fighting back.

Houston residents have packed into rooms for these meetings a few times already this year. They filled a community building in Aldine to protest a concrete batch plant. They packed a theater room in Fifth Ward to ask for better efforts to clean up a contaminated rail yard.

Sunset staff recommended permit meetings be held before the permit is issued, in addition to after. They also suggested that the agency be more transparent with what policy decisions guide these processes and make clear who is able to contest a permit in the first place.

Commissioners, including 10 legislators and two members of the public, nearly all of whom are white men, will vote on which changes to recommend to the Legislature.

TCEQ Executive Director Toby Baker wrote in response to the recommendation a meetings that the agency would defer to the Legislatures decision. Staff might not be ready early on to answer questions, he cautioned. And an earlier public meeting would extend how long it takes to approve a permit.

Sunset staff further attributed some of the frustration with the agency to a misunderstanding of what authority TCEQ has. But advocates took offense to their characterization as people who were upset because they couldnt see the situation clearly.

Those on the ground in Texas understood just fine how the agency was failing them, they said. Shelley pointed to specific recommendations: Use good science for pollution standards. Consider neighboring facilities when issuing air emissions permits. Impose significant fines on facilities that pollute too much.

Bridgette Murray, who lives in Pleasantville and leads community efforts to lessen pollution there and across Houston, said she didnt feel very hopeful that this process would go far enough to address their real concerns.

Its just unfortunate, Murray said. This is a check box moment.

She lamented that it would be another 12 years until they can try again.

emily.foxhall@chron.com
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Many anglers know if you catch a fish in one of Houston's plentiful bayous, the right thing to do is to release it back into the water.

Still, curious minds wonder: can you instead eat what you catch?

Technically, the answer is yes  it's not illegal to fish and eat from Houston's bayous.

State health officials wouldn't recommend it, though.

"Some people heed the advice and others don't," said Kirk Wiles of DSHS's seafood and aquatic life branch. "That's just the nature of society."

So what's the risk?

Many bayous in the area, including Buffalo Bayou, are part of the Houston Ship Channel, where DSHS has found water containing potentially unsafe levels of pollutants.

In 2015, DSHS issued an advisory against eating fish and crabs from the Houston Ship Channel and Upper Galveston Bay after finding unacceptable levels of PCBs, pesticides and other contaminants in the water.

Once used commercially as coolants in electrical equipment, PCBs can negatively impact a person's immune system and vital organs, according to a 2005 FAQ by the Seafood and Aquatic Life Group.

The risk is even greater for expectant mothers. Eating large amounts of fish that contain PCBs can cause infants to have delayed physical development and learning difficulties, the FAQ states.

That said, if someone has been eating the contaminated fish all their life, it doesn't necessarily mean they're guaranteed to have adverse health effects.

"We try to present the information so that consumers can make an informed decision about whether they want to take the risk of eating the fish or feeding them to your family," Wiles said.

To eat or not to eat

When deciding whether to take the risk of chowing down on a possibly-contaminated fish, there are a few factors to consider.

First, you'll want to think about where you caught the fish.

DSHS has an interactive Texas Fish Consumption Advisory Viewer that anyone can review. Unfortunately, not all bodies of water have advisories and many waterways haven't even been tested, Wiles said.

"It's a common misconception that somebody goes out and checks every body of water and fish around Texas and that's not the case," he said.

DSHS doesn't have a routine fish monitoring program and is only able to sample bodies of water when given external funding through grants. "So there's a lot of areas even in Houston with bodies of water that have never been sampled," Wiles said.

While pollutant levels can fall when an area is cleaned up, Wiles says "the Houston Ship Channel is an area that has a long history of contamination, and that contamination ultimately ends up in fish that don't change much over time."

SILENT SPILLS: Read our 2018 investigation on the toxic legacy of Hurricane Harvey

The size, age and type of fish also matters should also factor into your decision.

Larger, older fish will generally contain higher levels of PCBs than smaller, younger fish. Fatty fish like carp, gar and catfish may also contain higher levels of PCBs than lean fish like largemouth bass, walleye and crappies.

Because of the potential health impacts, DSHS advises children and women of childbearing age entirely avoid eating fish and crabs from Houston's bayous.

As for adult men and women past childbearing age, DSHS recommends only consuming eight ounces of fish a month, at most.

So if you absolutely must take a bite out of your latest catch from the bayou, do so sparingly.
Matthew McConaughey said in an Instagram story late Sunday that he was in support of a deal a bipartisan group of senators rolled out to strengthen the nations gun laws after last months mass shooting killed 21 at an elementary school in his hometown of Uvalde.

In the social media post, the Oscar winner also added that although the announcement does support more responsible gun ownership, it doesnt mean we have a solution.

A RAW STORY: Uvalde student who hid during shooting testifies to Congress: I thought he was going to come back.

The deal announced by a group of senators that includes John Cornyn of Texas bolsters background checks, requires greater scrutiny of young buyers and aims to close the so-called boyfriend loophole.

For the first time in 30 years, something has happened, McConaughey wrote. The Senate has agreed on a bipartisan framework of politics that can enhance gun responsibility in America and save lives. Something has been done in an effort to stop some of the deranged individuals that, with every horrific act, abuse and hijack the second amendment. Something has moved that we hope can help deliver on our shared effort to make the loss of so many lives matter.

McConaugheys comments came a few days after the actor gave an emotional speech at the White House where he shared stories of the Robb Elementary School students who were killed by a gunman on May 24. He also urged lawmakers to take action to restrict access to firearms, calling for expanding background checks, raising the age to purchase an AR-15 from 18 to 21 and other measures.

FROM MOVIES TO POLITICS: 7 things to know about Matthew McConaughey

The deal announced on Sunday  which seems to have the support of the 10 Republicans needed to get through an evenly divided Senate  does not go as far as recent legislation that passed the House to raise the age to purchase firearms and ban high-capacity magazines. But the Senate bill boasts GOP support that the House measures failed to achieve.

Lets recognize that todays announcement doesnt mean we have a solution, but it does support more responsible gun ownership, McConaughey wrote. There is still a lot of hard work for both parties, so lets continue to encourage everyone at the table to act in good faith and give them our support to get this job done.

timothy.fanning@express-news.net
WASHINGTON  The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene Monday in the case of death row inmate Terence Andrus, reversing course after finding just two years ago that a tidal wave of evidence raised questions about his sentence.

Its the latest in a years-long back and forth between the Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which the high court previously said may have failed to consider crucial information before upholding Andruss 2012 death sentence in the fatal shootings of two Sugar Land residents in a Kroger parking lot in 2008.

But last year, the state court rejected those criticisms and upheld Andruss death sentence. On Monday, the Supreme Court relented, declining without explanation to take up Adruss case again.

It was a striking reversal by the high court that previously found evidence about Andrus past revealed a childhood marked by extreme neglect and privation, a family environment filled with violence and abuse and raised significant questions about whether the jury that found him to be a danger to society in 2012 might have had second thoughts before sentencing him to death.

BACKGROUND: U.S. Supreme Court slams defense attorneys work in Fort Bend death penalty case

Mondays decision not to reconsider sparked a lengthy and sharp rebuke from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who argued that Texass "defiance of the high courts orders to reconsider that evidence substantially erodes confidence in the functioning of the legal system."

That is precisely what this Court permits today, Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by the courts other two liberal judges, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer.

The majority of the Supreme Court, however, was appeased by the state criminal appeals courts 5-4 ruling in May, 2021, that the evidence in Andrus favor was not particularly compelling and that much of it was double-edged. The evidence against Andrus, the state court ruled, was strong and substantial, and notably, extensive with respect to violence during incarceration.

Sotomayor torched that ruling in her dissent, saying the Texas appeals court unmistakably erred as it rejected or ignored this Courts conclusions. The court of criminal appeals declined to account for substantial record evidence that undercut its conclusions and misapplied the relevant legal standards, she wrote.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

The Texas courts opinion cannot be reconciled with this Courts prior opinion, let alone with the habeas record, Sotomayor wrote. In fact, the Texas court repeatedly indicated its disdain for this Courts conclusions.

If summary reversal is ever warranted, it is warranted here, she wrote.

Gretchen Sween, the attorney who represents Andrus before the Supreme Court, called the high courts decision a crippling blow to the rule of law.

It is shocking that a majority of the Supreme Court did not feel compelled to defend the integrity of its own previous opinion in this very case  which is only 2 years old, Sween said.

The decision is not the end for Andruss case. He has a separate federal appeal pending, as well, that was on hold awaiting the ruling from the Supreme Court.

ben.wermund@chron.com
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The Republican primary for attorney general showed that Ken Paxton's legal issues are of little concern to the party's most loyal conservative voters, who tend to turn out in early contests.

That support, combined with the usual pattern of a president's party faring poorly in midterm elections, is a good sign for Paxton, who is seeking re-election yet again while under indictment on felony securities fraud charges as he has been for nearly seven years, essentially his entire tenure.

Yet even with the odds largely in Paxtons favor, some political experts say Democrat Rochelle Garza, a 37-year-old Latina civil rights attorney from Brownsville, is the party's best chance at eking out its first statewide win in almost 30 years, given his rising legal challenges. Garza handily defeated former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski 63-37 in the primary runoff last month.

Paxton goes into this race with a lead, but I dont think that its a fait accompli, said Jason Villalba, chairman and CEO of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation and a former Republican state lawmaker.

BACKGROUND: Texas State Bar sues AG Paxton for dishonest challenge of 2020 election results

A poll by his foundation in April found in a hypothetical match-up that Paxton was ahead of Garza by about six percentage points. Paxton had the slimmest margin of victory of any statewide Republican in his last re-election race in 2018, just barely toppling Democrat Justin Nelson with 3.6 points between them.

With President Joe Bidens approval rating at an all-time low of 40 percent, Republicans are confident Paxton has a clear path to victory.

Its going to be a great year for Republicans, said Republican consultant Craig Murphy. I think itll be relatively smooth sailing for the AG to get re-elected.

Nelson focused his 2018 campaign on educating voters about Paxtons indictment. Since then, Paxton has become even further clouded in controversy.

On top of the long-looming criminal trial, he also faces an FBI investigation of claims by his former top aides in late 2020 that he took bribes and abused the power of his office to benefit a friend and campaign donor, as well as a lawsuit by the Texas Ethics Commission accusing him of professional misconduct related to a legal attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Paxton has said he is innocent in all cases.

In this years Republican primary, Land Commissioner George P. Bush highlighted Paxtons legal matters and presented himself as the more ethical Republican, but he lost in a landslide in the May 24 runoff, trailing the incumbent by 36 percentage points.

An evolving political landscape

While recent polling has shown that about half of Republicans believe Paxton has integrity, a plurality of all voters do not. That included 37 percent of independents and 16 percent of Republicans, a Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll last month found. About a third of all poll takers answered that they were unsure.

Right now, we have an attorney general who is unfit for office, Garza said in an interview. We need to have someone in the attorney generals office who is looking out for us and looking out for Texas families.

Paxton, whose campaign did not respond to an interview request, has cast the accusations against him as politically motivated and without merit. Murphy, the GOP consultant who is president of an Austin-based political consulting firm, was doubtful that the issue would sway voters.

Democrats credibility on accusing people of things is so low right now, he said.

Going forward, Murphy expects Paxton to emphasize his tough on crime ethos, especially around immigration and the U.S-Mexico border. While the attorney general primarily oversees civil litigation, people often associates them with being the states top law enforcement official, Murphy said.

There are still a number of wildcard factors that could influence the race, experts said. For instance, if Democratic candidate Beto ORourke can motivate a strong turnout in his race for governor, that could trickle-down to Garza.

The resurgent debate over gun laws after the mass shooting in Uvalde, as well as an impending Supreme Court decision that could overturn generations-old federal abortion protections, could also play to Garzas benefit.

Theres no silver bullet, but it is changing the dynamic for what is a tough midterm year, said longtime Democratic political communications consultant James Aldrete, who once served as the deputy press secretary for former governor Ann Richards' campaign.

Garza is well-positioned to address the abortion issue in particular: In 2018, she won a case against the Trump Administration in which a 17-year-old in detention was denied the right to an abortion. Under an agreement with the government, teens in custody are now given the Garza Notice, which lets them know about their right to the procedure without obstruction or retaliation.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Aldrete pointed to recent polls showing that Hispanics largely support abortion rights. In a 2022 Pew Research Center study, 60 percent of Hispanics said abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

As of September 2021, there were nearly 4.2 million Latino registered voters in Texas, who accounted for over a quarter of the states more than 15 million registered voters, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Thats a demographic that Garza said she is looking to engage in this campaign. The Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation poll found she has a major leg up when it comes to Hispanic voters, with 57 percent support compared to 35 percent for Paxton. Garza pointed out that figure was higher than for any other Democratic or Republican candidate for the top three statewide positions: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

This is a huge voting bloc that could sway this election, Garza said. The way for Democrats to win is to build a broad coalition and also ensure that were reaching every Texan and talking about issues that unite us.

taylor.goldenstein@chron.com
The Pittsfield Public Schools last month recognized students who had completed Career and Technical Education courses and the companies that had provided support.

Pittsfield Public Schools Honors Outstanding CTE Students



There were 81 graduates from the CTE program this year. See more photos here. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  The Pittsfield Public Schools celebrated its Career and Technical Education students last month, awarding 14 outstanding students for their efforts in the program.

The CTE program had 81 graduates this year and 53 of the juniors and seniors made approximately $815,360 in earned wages while completing 50,960 co-op hours. Of the 36 seniors, 20 where offered full-time positions after graduation.

"We know firsthand some of the workforce and other challenges this pandemic brought and continues to bring to our community. A talent deficit exists across all industries, including education," Assistant Superintendent for College and Career Readiness Tammy Gage said at the event at Taconic High School on May 26.

"And we know our CTE programs were designed for and are expected to prepare the future workforce. We could not accomplish this without all of you  our employers, our community partners, our elected officials, our partners, our staff, our parents, and our students."

Those graduating from the CTE program move onto other opportunities including getting employed at local establishments, apprenticeships, two- and four-year colleges, technical schools, or the military.

Past students have gained employment at businesses like 101 Restaurant, Adams Plumbing and Heating, Kidzone Childcare Center, Wahconah Street Greenhouse, and many more.

Previous students have been accepted to colleges including Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, University of Massachusett's Stockbridge School of Agriculture and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

The program had 456 CTE students in Grades 9 through 12 and this was anticipated to increase by 120 students. Enrolled is projected at 576 students for the 2022-23 school year.

The Advanced Manufacturing Program received an $18,000 grant from the the Gene Haas Foundation for equipment and scholarships. The program had six graduates this year.

There will be four graduates from the carpentry program with all of them completing more than 300 hours of service to Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity, National Guard, and the Special Olympics.

The Cosmetology Program will graduate 11. Both the program's teachers earned their state Department of Elementary & Secondary Education certificate on textured hair to meet the statewide certification status and standards.

The Culinary Department was awarded third place in the Massachusetts National Guard Meals Ready to Eat competition challenge. That program has 13 graduates this year.

All the juniors and seniors for the Early Childhood and Care program completed their EEC Essentials training and eight will graduate from the program.

There are four students graduating from the electricity program. Three will move on to continue their training in McCann Technical School's postsecondary program in North Adams and were offered full-time employment. The fourth student will be attending Norwich University in Vermont.

There are 14 graduates for the Health Technology Program who have also completed the state nursing assistant program and other certifications, and received the mandated reporter certificate through the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office.

Auto Collision Repair and Refinishing program won't have graduates until next year but the current students earned certificates in both hot works and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration 10-hour course

Ten are graduating from the Metal Fabrication and Joining Technologies Program, nine from auto technology and three from the horticulture.

Taconic High School will be adding a Business Technology Program this fall with an expected enrollment of six.

Gage, Taconic Principal Matthew Bishop and Pittsfield High Principal Henry Duval will present a report to the School Committee on making Taconic an all-vocational school.

"There are many factors that must be considered: Students demand the sustainability of Taconic, which has state-of-the-art equipment and shops, and our district's ability to provide meaningful career pathways at Taconic High School," Gage said.

"There are positive indicators and trends that speak to the health of our community. But we still have much work to do in our district, and your participation and support is very much needed to help ensure that every student has an opportunity to access quality programming that provides career exploration and immersion and development to prepare them to be future ready."

2022 Outstanding CTE Students

Advanced Manufacturing: Joseph LaFreniere

Auto Collision Repair and Refinishing: Jayden McCartney

Auto Technology: Joe Batho

Carpentry: Ryan McNeil

Early Education and Care: Hallie Eastwood

Electricity: Mike Britten

Health Technology: Matejah Brassard

Information Support Services and Networking: Michael Paul Beaulieu

Metal Fabrication: Brady Donald

Co-Operative: Ashland Markham and Kayla Snyder
Lenox High graduates toss their caps at Tanglewood on Sunday.

Lenox Valedictorian Says Class of 2022 Has Star Power



The 66 members of the class of 2022 were told they had star power. See more photos here.

LENOX, Mass.  Lenox Memorial High School valedictorian Piper Maxymillian said the class of 2022 has star power.



"That intangible quality we have when we are our best selves and when we help others be their best selves. The positive force that lives inside us all," she said. "I can safely say, class of 2022, that we have star power. From our 33 seniors graduating summa cum laude, to the involvement of Active Minds, we have all worked to better our school."



Maxymillian and the 65 other members of the class of 2022 were honored at the school's graduation at Tanglewood. Star power, Maxymillian said, was something she learned this spring working with an after-school program  Girls on the Run  at Morris Elementary School.



"Each practice, a new theme emerged. One week we talked about balance and positive self-talk, and the next empathy and compassion," Maxymillian said. "As our graduation date drew closer and closer, it struck me how relevant these concepts were for us seniors. As young adults ready to enter our next phase of life, these lessons are more important than ever."



Maxymillian said everyone in the class found their own niche and excelled at it. She asked her former classmates to keep their strengths in mind as they move toward the future.



"We can use what we have learned about ourselves in high school, allowing the strengths we've identified to shape the course of our studies or careers and embracing new strengths with open arms," she said.



Salutatorian Fiona Matthews said the high school experience could be compared to a Shakespeare play.



"You expect to be a little confused, to hopefully laugh a few times and maybe for it to drag on for a little longer than you would like," she said.



Matthews said looking back on when the group started as freshman in 2018 has shown her how much everyone has grown and changed. She encouraged her fellow graduates to embrace the moment, whether it is happy, sad or bittersweet for them.



"A lot of us thought we knew, exactly, what was coming," she said. "We'd been in the building for three years already as middle schoolers. We knew some teachers, we had friends or siblings or cousins in the high school. We were ready, until we weren't."



Class President Carolina Chassi said the class has been about making leaps, metaphorically and literally. All the leaps the graduates have made throughout school, Chassi said, were more satisfying because the group took them together.



"Before school began this year, we gathered at the Becket Quarry to share one last day before we entered the land of college applications and future decisions ... And now we are ready for the greatest leap of all: entering the real world. Whether it is continuing academic studies or immediately learning to save lives, the future ahead of us will surely be challenging and rewarding," she said.



Student Julianne Harwood said her fellow classmates inspired her with their efforts to make the school more welcoming and inclusive. She said the parking lot and the memories she made there were transformative for her student experience.



"It's where I drove for the first time, at a speedy 10 miles an hour, so terrified that my knuckles were white on the steering wheel," she said. "It's where I walked in circles for hours with the marching band, playing 'Yankee Doodle,' 'It's a Grand Old Flag' and the national anthem in preparation for the Memorial Day parade. The parking lot is the place where I shared countless little moments with the class of 2022, constant reminders of their individuality, comradery and enthusiasm."



Graduates Hallie Davies and Molly Knight also spoke before the crowd, representing the 32 students graduating as part of the National Honor Society. Davis, the school's chapter president, thanked the students for their hard work and volunteer efforts during their time as students.



"For our seniors, there will be no NHS that is part of your plans for next year and beyond, but we hope you continue to serve your community through all of your adventures and remember that no one can make a difference like you can," she said. "For our juniors,



Superintendent Marc Gosselin said 33 students in the class of 2022 graduated with a 3.5 grade-point average or greater, with more than $1.4 million in scholarships earned between the 66 graduates. He said the school play this year, 'Into the Woods,' was fitting for this class, joking that they had to go into the woods during the COVID-19 pandemic.



"You will have to go into the woods many more times in the years ahead," he said. "Starting a job, going to college, traveling, or joining the service. Life after high school will be filled with new hero quests to conquer. But don't go it alone. Reach out to others. Make new friends, forge new relationships and get involved."



Principal Michael Knybel said the class of 2022 exemplifies the meaning of community. He urged them not to forget about the school and where they came from.



"Remember, today you become LMMHS alumni. And nothing can prevent you from returning here from time to time just to something together that makes belonging matter," he said.

Scholarships and awards for the class of 2022.

Lenox Memorial High School Class of 2022

Kayla Marie Allen

Courtney Leigh Allen

Madeleine Grace Alsdorf **^

Hailey Joyce Ano #

Ryan David Baldwin Appel **#

Brianna Summers Arseneau *

Brandon Scott Barde *

Darby Patynski Bayne **#

Own Bradford Bayne **

Aidan Evelyn Burns **#^

Emma Mary Casucci

Carolina Jonae Chassi **#

Isabelle Anna Cooney **#

James Daniel D'Alton

Halle Elizabeth Davies **#

Maxwell James DiGrigoli **#

Chloe Jean Doyle **

Paul John Duma

Grace Schoen Elliot **#

Mary Shore Elliot **#^

Jamison Ford Fairfield *

Teagan Elias Far *^

Lucy Elizabeth Fusini *

Mihiraan Gangisetty **#

Mia Noel Giardina **#

Tobias Voorhees Goodman **#

Charles David Guyer

Benjamin Louis Haddad **#

Anadelia Marie Hart **

Julianne Valli Harwood **#^

Brendan Christopher Hayden

Benjamin Matthew Heim **#

Solia A'Marie Herndon-Schmid **#^

Madison Elizabeth Hynes

Chloe Kathryn Inhelder **#^

William Norman Jakacky

Ronan Vivian King **#

Cecilia Sybilla Kittross **#^

Molly Susan Knight **#

Rovech Sabrina Lewis **#^

Saidi Loftus

Diya Gracce Loftus *

Fiona Clare Mathews **#^

Piper Amelie Northrup Maxymillian **#

Otto Ward Miesmer **#

Danielle Marie Miller *

Leah Katherine Murphy **#

Camryn Elise O'Dell **#

Tabor Marie Paul *

Mia Antonia Pignatelli *^

Bailey Leigh Rogers *

Taylor Shea Saunders *

Chloe Anne Schilling **#^

Elise Marie Schilling **#

Lily Maria Schnopp *#

Sam Andrew Schnopp *

Kailyn James Sorrentino **#

Sara McKenna Stevens *

Harry Edward Touloukian **#

Luca Paul Traversa *

Nicholas Adamo Vaber

Renzo Alejandro Vargas *^

Michael Joseph Ward

Steven Patrick Winters

Samira Ali Zabian *

* Honors ** High Honors # National Honor Society ^ National Art Honor Society
Cheshire Voters to Decide $6M Budget, Bylaw Changes

CHESHIRE, Mass.  Voters will debate 26 warrant articles at Hoosac Valley High School at the annual town meeting on Monday, including the approval of the $6 million town budget.

Articles 8 through 15 would approve various aspects of the town budget, splitting departments into several budget groups. The most expensive budget article, Article 14, would appropriate $2,943,366 for Hoosac Valley Regional School District, $438,574 for McCann Technical School and $30,000 for out-of-district placements.

Article 8, if approved, will appropriate $1,238,110 for the general government budget, which includes expenses for the Board of Selectmen, town employees, the Conservation Commission, Planning Board and the Board of Assessors.

To offset those expenses, Article 20 would put $226,559.23 of free cash toward lowering the town's tax rate. Article 17 would appropriate $125,800 from free cash to the town's capital stabilization fund and $7,500 would also go toward Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) compliance and reporting.

Several bylaw changes are also on the warrant, including Article 25, which would create a stormwater management bylaw for the town. The bylaw will regulate the town's storm drain system and prohibits illicit discharges, connections and obstructions.

The proposed bylaw would make the Conservation Commission, or any agent it authorizes, the town's stormwater authority. The commission would have the ability to enforce penalties for violations, including fines of up to $300 for each day of violation, injunctions and orders for remediation.

Article 12 would appropriate $908,029 for the Highway Department and Tree Warden operations. The Board of Selectmen also requested the addition of Article 5, which would allow the town to appropriate funds for applicable State Aid Highway Programs to help improve and maintain town roads and bridges.

Article 9 would appropriate $324,621 for a Public Safety budget, including police, fire and emergency management services.

Article 15, if approved, will appropriate $260,938 for debt service expenses. The most expensive of these is $109,500 for the Well Land bond payment, which will expire in 2024.

Article 11 would appropriate $247,249 for health and human services. This figure includes $122,166 for the town compactor and transfer station budget, $21,446 for the Board of Health budget and $67,943 for the Council on Aging budget.

The COA will also get a $5,000 revolving fund, which would be to accept receipts for fees and COA programs, if Article 18 is approved.

Article 10 would appropriate $36,561 for the Building Department budget. The general government budget also includes $75,000 for special repairs to town buildings and $28,818 for town building facilities maintenance.

Article 13, if approved, will budget $116,580 for recreation and culture services. Included is $33,620 for the Cheshire Library Association, $40,240 for the Cemetery and $42,000 for Veteran Services and the annual Memorial Day parade.

Article 21 proposes moving the annual town meeting date from the second Monday in June to the last Monday of April. If approved, the article would also move the start time from 7 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on that day.

Article 23 would amend the town's marijuana bylaw, changing the total number of non-retail cannabis establishments allowed in town at one time from six to two. This article, proposed by the Board of Selectmen, will require a two-thirds vote to pass.

The warrant also includes $62,600 for proposed capital projects. Article 18, if approved, would appropriate $42,600 to repair the Cheshire Cemetery vault and $20,000 for the town fuel tank.

Article 19 would transfer $320,209 from Water Department receipts to the water enterprise fund for the fiscal year. This funding will cover water department operating costs, debt service, salaries and repairs.

Article 7, if approved, will raise an appropriate $20,000 to act as a town reserve fund for the fiscal year.

Article 3 would allow the Board of Selectmen to dispose of unused town property and equipment.
The Universal Harpsichord with Mariken Palmboom

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.  The Berkshire Bach Society concludes its 2021-2022 season on Saturday, June 18, 2022 at 4pm with harpsichordist Mariken Palmboom in a concert of harpsichord music from Germany, England, Italy, and France at the New Marlborough Meeting House.

"We have so many harpsichord fans in our audience we thought we'd indulge them by presenting a program dedicated solely to music for the instrument," said Terrill McDade, Interim Executive Director of The Berkshire Bach Society. "There is such a wide variety of repertoire to choose from. As with the church organ, the harpsichord was truly universal in the Baroque era and it's enlightening to hear how composers from different countries wrote for it. Mariken has selected works that really display the differences and the similarities, which makes for something of a grand European tour in this concert."

Educated at the Royal Conservatories in The Hague and Antwerp, harpsichordist Mariken Palmboom, has performed throughout Europe and the U.S. as a soloist and ensemble player in important early music festivals and other venues. She teaches both here and abroad, and has frequently led Baroque chamber music workshops in Holland, California, the Berkshires, and elsewhere.

The program includes works by J.S. Bach, Byrd, Frescobaldi, Louis and Francois Couperin, and Domenico Scarlatti, and is an anniversary of sortsthe first book of Bach's Clavier and Francois Couperin's third book of his Pieces for Keyboard were both published in 1722, three hundred years ago.
Time to reassess your cybersecurity strategies. Again.

Ransomware attacks on businesses have increased by one-third in the past year, according to a recent report by the Boston-based cybersecurity company Cybereason. Most (73 percent of businesses) were hit by at least one ransomware attack in the past year, and 68 percent of businesses that paid a ransom were hit again in less than a month for a higher ransom, according to the survey, which polled 1,456 cybersecurity professionals at global companies with 700 or more employees. These attacks have big implications: Thirty-seven percent of companies were forced to lay off employees after paying ransoms, and 33 percent were forced to temporarily suspend business.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, cybersecurity experts have insisted businesses improve their lines of defense to protect against an increased risk of ransomware attacks from Russia. Ransomware attacks have also increased since the start of the pandemic--the rise of remote work increased vulnerability for many businesses, which hackers have taken advantage of, a 2020 FBI memo noted. So, enterprises of all sizes are at risk from many more points of attack.

Keeping your cybersecurity defenses up to date can help protect your business from a costly attack, but a combination of monitoring software and regular employee training is best. Here are a few steps you can take to shield your company.

Retrain employees

Hackers are getting better at phishing emails, so it's important to regularly train employees on cybersecurity best practices. Help them understand what to look out for, and create a culture where, if an employee does accidentally click a link that they shouldn't have, they'll have the confidence to flag their mistake as soon as possible.

Don't get cheap

A good rule of thumb is to set aside 10 percent of your tech budget for cybersecurity, Jaya Baloo, chief information security officer at antivirus software maker Avast, has told Inc. Spending on cybersecurity and training is expensive--but when you compare the investment with the potential cost of a ransomware attack, the price is relative. As Cybereason's report points out, ransomware attacks come with a bevy of costs, including lost revenue, the cost of remediation, higher insurance premiums, regulatory fines, and legal fees.

Surveillance is vital
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 National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) accepted the Competition Commission of India's (CCI) ruling to withhold clearance for an investment arrangement between Amazon and a Future group entity that dates back to 2019. This is a blow for Amazon.



The NCLAT also upheld Amazon's Rs200 crore sentence and gave the corporation 45 days to pay. Under Section 43A of the Competition Act of 2002, this fine is levied for failing to disclose important information about combinations.



The NCLAT confirmed the CCI's decision, saying it agrees with the antitrust watchdog that Amazon did not make a "full, fair, and straightforward" disclosure about its strategic involvement in Future Retail Ltd, the Future group's publicly traded entity that managed its flagship banner of Big Bazaar. The NCLAT agreed with the CCI's finding that Amazon neglected to notify the pertinent facts relative to the combination of the agreements.



The American e-commerce behemoth had filed a complaint with the NCLAT, challenging the Competition Commission of India's decision to postpone clearance of an investment arrangement between Amazon and a Future Group subsidiary until December 2021.



The regulatory environment in India requires CCI permission for investment deals of this sort or mergers and acquisitions transactions. Only once regulatory permissions from agencies like the CCI or the Securities and Exchange Board of India are received do such deals come to

fruition and can be carried out.



The Rs1,400 crore investment arrangement between Amazon and Future Coupons Pvt Ltd (FCPL) had previously secured all of the necessary regulatory approvals, allowing for the deal's implementation and money transfer.



After a legal squabble between the two parties erupted over Future group's plan for an asset sale deal with a Reliance Industries wholly-owned subsidiary for a value of roughly Rs27,000 crore, the anti-trust body's approval was sought to be canceled on a plea by one Future group entity.



The CCI issued the ruling after determining that Amazon had failed to disclose its intentions and strategic interests in the deal. Amazon challenged the order in the NCLAT appellate forum, denying the accusation.



The transaction for which the CCI withheld permission was the same deal that allowed both parties to seek arbitration from the Singapore International Arbitration Tribunal (SIAC) in the event of a dispute.



Meanwhile, Future Group filed a lawsuit in Indian courts, kicking off the long-running and multi-pronged legal struggle between the two corporations.



Future Group used the CCI's December 2021 order as the basis for requesting that SIAC's arbitration proceedings be terminated.

Amazon now has the legal option of appealing this decision to the Supreme Court.




Tencent, a Chinese technology conglomerate, has bought a stake worth USD 264 million (approx. Rs2,060 crore) in Flipkart. Tencent has bought this stake from Flipkarts co-founder Binny Bansal via its European subsidiary.



Flipkart is a Singapore-headquartered e-commerce company having operations in India only.



After selling her stake in Flipkart, Bansal now holds only 1.84% stake in the company.



The transaction was completed on October 26, 2021, and was intimated to the government authorities at the beginning of the current financial year.



Post completion of this transaction, Tencents European arm holds a 0.72% stake in Flipkart, valued at around USD 264 million.



The companys total valuation has surged to USD 37.6 billion after raising USD 3.6 billion (about Rs 26,805.6 crore) in a funding round led by Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC, Soft Bank Vision Fund 2, CPP Investments, and Walmart.



This transaction took place following the companys funding round in July.
Many people continue to celebrate grind culture in the age of multitasking and coveted lists of '30 under 30'. People have no qualms about sacrificing their personal lives for professional goals due to a drive to achieve more.



CNN

Many multinational MNCs have been accused of putting their employees through grueling work hours. One such heartbreaking instance proved the same was the infamous fire incident at the Amazon warehouse in Illinois.



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Six employees were killed in the tornado because they were not allowed to go back home. Many employees also hinted at cruel practices, including not being allowed to take a toilet break.



Forbes

Namita Thapar, a famous Shark Tank India judge and the Executive Director of Emcure Pharma, took to Twitter to express her dissatisfaction.



Instagram

She pointed out that being unable to spend time with the family due to work or travel is not a badge of honor.

Stop wearing  I work long hours, I travel a lot, I have no time for family as a badge of honour, lets fix work life balance at all companies so we have a mentally fit & more productive generation next that get quality time & involvement from both parents.  Namita (@namitathapar) June 10, 2022

Several Twitter users echoed Namita Thapar's sentiments, with some advocating that India should also try out a 4-day work week.

Instagram

Here is how people started weighing their opinions on Namita's take on 'hustle culture.' While some agreed with Namita, a few asked her if she follows the same with her employees.

One of the biggest challenges to mental health in todays world is caused by the pressure of demanding workplaces. Companies promoting a healthy work-life balance will help improve mental health & quality of life of their employees, & also have productive & creative employees!  Pause (@pause_family) June 10, 2022

True! It's about 'Tum nahin karoge toh koi aur kar lega'. So field mein rehna hai toh 9-9-6 karna hai. With India expected to be a developing nation for almost eternity one may not have the luxury of a pure 9-5-5 job such that in the West although there's other side to it too.  Gaurav Lath (@GauravHindu_19) June 11, 2022

What you are saying is correct,

But it is not possible for majority of the people, Who have to obey the diktats of their bosses And their employers, otherwise they will be fired.



Yes, conceptually, fully correct but applicable to few , Who are the bosses themselves  Anil (@taurusplay1) June 10, 2022

Good suggestion. Years ago when I was working with a large IT company, during my Induction one of the presenter said we have a very high percentage of divorces happening in people working for them. I wondered if its something to be proud of. But such were the days.  Hiren Bafna (@hirenb9) June 10, 2022

Maybe it's high time to start 4 days work week trials in India too.  Harish Khanger (@HarishKhanger) June 10, 2022





Work life balance karne mein meri expertise nahi hai. So I am out.  Anant Rath (@anant_rath) June 10, 2022

Resonate completely. No organisation has the quantum of work (ie paid Projects) that calls for overworked employees. If someone does, obviously they have the money to increase their team size. Let's do things right the first time.  Suuresh Ramachandran, Founder|CEO|CCO, Eye-Q Films (@suuresheyeq) June 10, 2022

I feel that people who give importance to work and thereby devote long hours are vital. It instills the fact that it is their job that gives them ability to lead better financial lives due to earning their pay-check and at same time being productive.  Dhyan jain (@Bradass771) June 10, 2022

Charity beings from home, so how many hours you are granting your employees to leave early and reach home early??  Urban_swagger (@theonlymemester) June 10, 2022

One of the biggest challenges to mental health in todays world is caused by the pressure of demanding workplaces. Companies promoting a healthy work-life balance will help improve mental health & quality of life of their employees, & also have productive & creative employees!  Pause (@pause_family) June 10, 2022

According to a report by recruitment agency Michael Page, a better work-life balance is at the heart of what employees are seeking.



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The report claims that 86% of Indian employees plan to resign in the next six months, and 61% of employees are willing to accept a lower salary or forego a salary increase and/or promotion in return for a better work-life balance overall well-being, and happiness.



(To get the latest updates from Bollywood and Hollywood, keep reading Indiatimes Entertainment.)


While we wait for our employers to give us our appraisals, people are minting money like no one's business without doing the work. This woman from South Carolina, U.S., scored a Rs 1.9 crore jackpot in 2020 and has now managed to win another lottery of Rs 1.5 crore last week with a ticket she bought from the same store. Talk about luck!

The woman bought a 20X The Money scratch-off ticket from the Spring Valley Convenience Store in the city of Columbia and won the top prize of Rs. $200,000 last week, according to the South Carolina Education Lottery.

NPR

She also won another $250,000 prize from a second scratch-off lottery ticket she got at the same convenience store in 2020. What makes this even more interesting is that she was accompanied by the same people both times that she bought the winning ticket.

"I had a lot of fun with the first winnings and enjoyed every bit of it," the woman told SCEL.

"This time I'm going to buy a house," she added.

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Back in March, a woman won over Rs 1.5 crore when she purchased a Scenic South Carolina scratch-off ticket, according to South Carolina Education Lottery. She was filling up her car at the Power Trac #13 on Pearman Dairy Road in Anderson when she purchased the winning lottery ticket.

When she got back to her car and she scratched the ticket, she couldn't believe that she had won the $200,000 prize.



"I thought 'What? Not me,'" she said.

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All images used are for representational purposes only.

For more trending stories, follow us on Telegram.
As per Forbes, 42 unicorns having a total valuation of $82.1 billion emerged in India's startup ecosystem last year. It's a no-brainer that 2021 was a mega year for startups in India with many unicorns being born and numerous companies like Paytm, Zomato, Nykaa etc catching the IPO fever.



But 2022, too, is showing no signs of a slowdown yet for unicorn births, with 17 companies already entering the $1 billion club till now.

From the first entrant Mamaearth to the latest ones including Physics Wallah and Purplle, heres a list of companies in India that have entered the unicorn club till now this year.

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Also Read: 10 Hollywood Stars Who Have Invested In Their Tequila Brands

1. MamaEarth (Beauty, cosmetic & personal care products)

Honasa Consumer, which is the parent company of personal care brands including Mamaearth and The Derma Co had reportedly announced on January 1 2022 that it has raised $52 million in a round led by Sequoia, leading to its valuation soaring to $1.2 billion. This made it the first unicorn of 2022.

2. Fractal Analytics(Advanced analytics)

Another company that joined the billion-dollar valuation club in 2022, is Fractal Analytics. Founded in Mumbai in the year 2000, Fractal is currently a US-based artificial intelligence firm that helps global Fortune 100 companies power every human decision in the enterprise by bringing together analytics and AI to the decision.

The $360 million funding from the private equity firm TPG Capital Asia helped Fractals valuation hit the $1 billion mark in January 2022. This also made Fractal only the second firm in Indias pure-play analytics space (after Mu Sigma) to reach the unicorn status.

3. LEAD School (Edtech)

Edtech firm LEAD School had raised $100 million in January 2022 from investors led by GSV Ventures and WestBridge Capital. This resulted in a doubling of its valuation in less than a year to $1.1 billion in January 2022.

Established in 2021, the Mumbai-based company provides tech-enabled solutions to schools, with focus on digital learning through an online or hybrid model of physical and digital classrooms.

4. Darwinbox (HRtech)

Software as a service (SaaS)-based HR Tech platform Darwinbox had managed to raise $72 million in funding in series D round in January 2022. This made it the first unicorn in the SaaS sector in 2022. The funding was led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) along with existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Endiya Partners, 3One4Capital, JGDEV and SCB 10X.

Founded in 2015, Darwinbox competes with global leaders like SAP, Oracle and Workday, and had aimed to utilize this funding for global expansion.

5.DealShare (Social commerce grocery startup)

Social commerce grocery startup Dealshare too entered the unicorn club this year by raising $165 million from investors led by Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global in January 2022. The companys valuation was stated to be more than $1.6 billion after the funding.

New investors in the company include Dragoneer Investments Group, Kora Capital and Unilever Ventures. The raised funds are expected to be utilized as an investment in technology and data science, besides a ten-fold expansion in Dealshares logistics infrastructure and increase in geographic reach.

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Also Read: India's First Affordable Self-Driving Car Startup Minus Zero Raises $1.7 Million In Funding



6. Livspace (Home interior and renovation)

Another addition to this unicorn list of 2022 was Livspace, which is a home interior and renovation startup. In Feb 2022, it had raised $180 million in a Series F round led by KKR, a global investment firm. The round had also witnessed participation from existing investors including Ingka Group Investments (holding company of IKEA), Jungle Ventures, Venturi Partners, and Peugeot Investments etc.

7.ElasticRun (B2B ecommerce)

SoftBank Vision Fund 2 had led a $300 million investment in Pune-headquartered commerce platform ElasticRun, valuing the startup at $1.5 billion and entering it into the unicorn club.

As per Forbes, ElasticRun enables businesses to reach Kirana storesmom-and-pop shops selling everyday needs, in the deep rural parts of India, by deploying a network of delivery services.

Goldman Sachs and existing investor Prosus had also participated in the startups Series E funding round.

Major multinationals that have partnered with ElasticRun include Amazon, Coca Cola, Kelloggs, Procter & Gamble as well as Mukesh Ambanis Reliance Retail, as per Forbes.

8. Xpressbees(Logistics)

Pune-based logistics start-up Xpressbees had reportedly raised $300 million in a Series F funding round earlier this year, making it another startup to join the unicorn list in 2022. That fundraise valued the firm at $1.2 billion.

The funding round was reportedly led by private equity funds Blackstone Growth, TPG Growth and ChrysCapital, and includes a primary capital infusion of $100 million and a secondary share sale worth $200 million.

9. Uniphore (Conversational AI)

Conversational automation startup Uniphore joined the unicorn list of 2022 after raising $400 Mn in funding at a valuation of $2.5 Bn in February 2022. The startups Series E round was led by NEA in participation with its existing investors March Capital and others.

With that funding, Uniphore had raised around $610 Mn from external investors till February 2022. Uniphore provides software for conversational analytics, conversational assistants and conversational security.

10. Hasura (GraphQL developer)

San Francisco and Bengaluru-based software company Hasura had raised $100 million in a fresh funding round led by Greenoaks Capital. The round also saw participation from existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Vertex Ventures, as per ET.

With that fundraising, Hasuras valuation climbed to $1 billion, thus making it to the list of India's unicorns of 2022. The company had planned to use the funding to accelerate research and development and expand go-to-market activities globally for its flagship GraphQL Engine.

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Also Read: Anand Mahindra Lauds Startup Tvasta That Built India's First 3D Printed House, Asks To Join In



11.CredAvenue (Fintech)

Online debt marketplace CredAvenue had become a unicorn in March 2022, after raising $137 million in a fresh round led by New York-based Insight Partners, B Capital Group and Dragoneer, as per an ET report.

That funding round raised the companys valuation to $1.3 billion. Previously, the startup was valued at $410 million in September 2021. The company was expected to use the proceeds from the latest round to scale its platform and improve the depth of its offerings. It also reportedly planned to use the funds to expand its business across key global markets, while looking to grow inorganically through acquisitions.

12. Amagi(Mediatech)

Media tech firm Amagi had raised $95 million in a funding round led by Accel, with participation from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners and Avataar Ventures. The new funding valued the firm at over $1 billion in March 2022.

As per TOI, Bengaluru-based Amagi started in 2008 as a cloud-based geo-targeted TV advertising company but pivoted in 2018 to build a global leadership position in SaaS-based broadcast and connected TV. It has reportedly enabled TV networks and content owners to launch, manage, distribute and monetise live, linear and on-demand channels across cable, OTT, and free ad-supported streaming TV platforms, globally.

13. Oxyzo (Fintech)

Oxyzo Financial Services had raised its first external funding of $200 million in March 2022, which has reportedly been the largest series-A funding ever for an Indian startup.

With a valuation of $1 billion after that funding, Oxyzo became a unicorn, with the new financing co-led by Alpha Wave Global and Tiger Global with participation from Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and Creation Investments, Oxyzo CEO Ruchi Kalra had reportedly told ET.

She, along with her husband Asish Mohapatra, became India's first couple to have a unicorn each. Asishs OfBusiness, formally known as OFB Tech Pvt., supplies bulk raw materials such as steel, diesel, food grains and industrial chemicals to small and medium-sized businesses. Its valuation had surpassed $1 billion when SoftBank and others reportedly invested in April 2021, as per Mohapatra.

14. Games 24x7(Gaming platform)

Multi-game platform Games24x7 had raised $75 million in March 2022, taking it to a $2.5 billion valuation, in a funding round led by Malabar Investments, as per a Business Today report.

The report stated that Games24x7 is the third gaming start-up after Dream 11 and Mobile Premier League to achieve a billion-dollar valuation.

Founded in 2006 by Trivikraman Thampy, an engineering alumnus of IIT Bombay, and Bhavin Pandya, an engineering alumnus of Purdue University, Games24x7 is headquartered in Mumbai with offices in Bengaluru, New Delhi, Miami and Philadelphia. The companys offerings include RummyCircle, which is an online rummy game, My11Circle (a fantasy platform) and U Games (a portfolio of casual games),as per the report.

15. Open (Neobanking startup)

Last month, Bengaluru-based neo banking startup Open had hit the billion-dollar valuation mark after it raised $50 million in its Series D investment round led by IIFL.

The funding also had participation from existing investors such as Temasek, Tiger Global and 3one4 Capital. Neobank Open had said in a statement that it was now valued at $1 billion, thus making it the 100th unicorn in India.

The Google and Visa-backed company Open was founded in 2017 by former PayU and Citrus Pay member Anish Achuthan, along with his wife Mabel Chacko and brother Ajeesh Achuthan.

Also Read: India's First 'Unicorn Couple' Now Aims To Roll Out Their IPOs As Soon As This Year

16. Physics Wallah (Edtech)

Last week, India got its 101st unicorn when edtech firm Physics Wallah raised $100 million in its maiden funding round. The company is valued at $1.1 billion as per a statement last week, as per ET report.

The edtech startup Physics Wallah, also referred to as PW, was founded by Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwar in 2016 as a youtube channel, and then later developed the app and website in 2020. PW plans to utilise the funds for business expansion, branding, opening more offline learning centres, and introducing more course offerings, it said in a statement.

17. Purplle (Beauty & personal care products retailer)

Just two days after the edtech platform Physics Wallah turned 101st unicorn, online beauty and personal care products retailer Purplle became Indias 102nd unicorn. Last week, Purplle raised $33 million from Paramark Ventures to reach a valuation of $1.1 billion.

Existing investors Premji Invest, Blume Ventures and Kedaara Capital also participated in the round. The company has raised $215 million so far, including the latest round. Its previous investors include Goldman Sachs and Verlinvest.

Purplle said it would utilise the funds for marketing, advertising, and strengthening brand and technology.

Also Read: 90 Founders Amongst 500 US Unicorns Were Born In India

For the latest and interesting financial news, keep reading Indiatimes Worth. Click here.
It seems that some CEOs are finding it difficult to bring back their staff to the office amidst employees increased adoption and preference for working from home.

Nearly a week after Tesla CEO Elon Musk made headlines for warning his employees to return to work or quit, it's the CEO of coffee giant Starbucks who has expressed his desire to bring staff back to the office.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has reportedly expressed that he wants employees to return and is even ready to do push-ups" or whatever can get the staff to return to the office!

AP

Speaking at a New York Times event in Washington last Thursday, Schultz described himself as an old-school person in a different generation. During the event, the Starbucks CEO shared that he had begged his employees to return to the office too. I said Ill get on my knees. Ill do push-ups. Whatever you want. Come back, the Starbucks CEO added, as per Times now report.



However, he has remained unsuccessful despite his earnest attempts. No, they are not coming back at the level I want them to. I think people will come back two to three days a week and thats the way, thats the way it is, CEO Schultz further stated.

Starbucks CEO Schultz, who first joined the company in 1982, grew Starbucks from a small Seattle coffee chain into a global coffee giant in two earlier stints as CEO. He reportedly even shared how he works from 7 am to 7 pm in his office in an attempt to make an example".

He noted "The thing that I am evaluating is, whats the level of productivity? And you know, it appears that people are working at home", as per Times now report.

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Also Read: Cafe Turns Into Crypto Haven! This Thai Cafe Gives 'Crypto-Related Advice' Alongside Coffee And Cakes

Not Mandated It Yet

Amidst all this, it is worth mentioning here that despite his failed attempts at calling the employees back to the office, Starbucks CEO Schultz has not mandated this. And instead, he has reportedly presented "flexible options for eligible, non-retail roles" in the form of hybrid and remote positions.

"Hybrid workplace options depend on the individual role and are identified in our job postings. Roles that do not have to be based in a specific location are labelled as 'remote' while roles that can be fulfilled in multiple locations, such as a combination of home and office, are indicated as 'hybrid'," the Starbucks website reportedly mentioned.

For the latest and interesting financial news, keep reading Indiatimes Worth. Click here.


New You can now listen to Insurance Journal articles!

A salad dressing maker is seeking coverage from its insurer for costs it incurred in preventing a shutdown of one of its processing plants due to a pollution event.

Massachusetts-based Kens Foods maintains its insurer has a common law duty to cover the expenses it incurred to prevent an imminent covered loss even if its policy says otherwise.

But whether Massachusetts recognizes such a common law duty is unclear. The federal court  First Circuit Court of Appeals that agreed to take up the case wants the states highest court to weigh in.

The companys $10 million comprehensive environmental insurance policy, which was issued by Zurich subsidiary Steadfast Insurance Co., covered both clean-up expenses as well as business losses resulting from pollution events that cause a suspension of operations.

Steadfast denied the claim for costs related to preventing a suspension of business, arguing that while the insurance policy covers business losses resulting from a complete suspension of operations, it does not cover ex ante (before the event) prevention efforts.

Kens Foods sued in federal court, seeking nearly $3 million together with interest, costs and attorneys fees.

The Question

The federal appeals court in Boston is now asking the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to weigh in on the question:

To what extent, if any, does Massachusetts recognize a common-law duty for insurers to cover costs incurred by an insured party to prevent imminent covered loss, even if those costs are not covered by the policy?

In December 2018, an accidental discharge at Kens Foods processing facility in Georgia caused wastewater to enter waterways. Kens Foods immediately addressed the pollution event to prevent further discharge and to clean up the pollution, including by fully cooperating with Georgia state officials. The source was contained by February 2019.

Part of Kens Foods effort went to preventing a suspension of operations at its Georgia facility, which is one of four it has across the country. These efforts included stopping the actual pollution event, negotiating allowances with the county to accept pre- treated water that would otherwise have exceeded acceptable levels, and continual processing of the contaminated water before releasing it to the county for further treatment.

Kens Foods Costs

All told, Kens Foods estimated that it incurred over $2 million in its efforts to prevent a suspension of operations. Due to its prevention efforts, Kens Foods never had to suspend operations at its Georgia facility, which manufactures its entire line of salad dressings and other food products, producing an average monthly profit of at least $9.6 million. The plant employs approximately 350 full-time employees who are collectively paid $1.6 million per month. Thus, without its prevention efforts, Kens Foods claims it would have incurred losses in excess of the $10 million coverage provided by its policy with Steadfast.

The suspension of operations coverage provision in the policy says that Steadfast will pay other loss if the pollution event directly causes a suspension of operations. Suspension of operations is defined to mean the necessary partial or complete suspension of operations at the covered location as a direct result of a cleanup required by governmental authority.'

Mitigation Efforts

The policy also discusses Kens Foods duties regarding mitigation. In the event of a suspension of operations, the insured must act in good faith to mitigate actual loss of business income, diligently execute a cleanup, and resume operations as soon as practicable.

A federal district court granted summary judgment for Steadfast because it concluded that there is no indication that Massachusetts common law entitles Kens Foods to recover costs undertaken to avoid a suspension of operations [that] are not covered by the applicable insurance policy.

While Kens Foods relies solely on a common law duty to force Steadfast to cover its preventative expenses, it points to no Massachusetts case recognizing such a duty. Kens Foods posits that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court would recognize the duty, which it claims is is deeply rooted in the common law.

No Evidence

The federal court criticized Kens Foods for coming to federal court if it believed the state court would recognize its common law claims but decided to get involved because it could find no convincing evidence that the state court has in fact recognized such common law claims.

Steadfast disagrees that it has a common law duty and further contends that Massachusetts has categorically rejected applying any common-law duty that puts obligations on insurers beyond the express terms of the policy. But the federal court said it does not agree that Massachusetts has already decided the issue and there are no Massachusetts supreme court decisions on the matter.

The federal appeals court notes that an argument in favor of a common law duty is that it would align the interests of the parties. Without a duty to compensate for actions that prevented a covered loss, an insured may decide to just allow its operations to be suspended to ensure it receives insurance proceeds  in this case, $10 million  rather than eat the costs ($2 million by Kens Foods) to prevent the harm.

Interest in Prevention

The court further noted that an insured still has an interest in preventing a suspension of operations even if its insurance does not cover prevention costs, especially if the suspension would cost more than insurance would cover.

Kens Foods alleged that it would have been out $10 million per month if it had not prevented a shutdown. But the court said it is not obvious that Kens Foods would have permitted that to happen even if it were clear Steadfast had no obligation to reimburse the cost of prevention measures up to the $10 million coverage limit.

Even Kens Foods itself admitted that it would have wanted to avoid firing any personnel and to meet its payroll obligations and that its losses from a suspension of operations would have consumed the policys entire limit of liability.

The appeals court rejected the district courts dismissal of Kens Foods argument merely because no Massachusetts court had yet done so. The appeals court called that too stringent a standard.

The court also found that precedents in other jurisdictions fail to generally and persuasively offer guidance in one direction.

Thus the federal court has turned to the states highest court:

Importantly, whether Massachusetts common law recognizes an extra-contractual duty for insurers raises important questions concerning a significant, regulated industry. Moreover, we can see the question arising in future cases, and having an answer to the question from the SJC would eliminate an incentive for forum shopping.

Topics Carriers
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The New York attorney generals lawsuit against the National Rifle Association is no mere witch hunt, a New York judge ruled Friday in dismissing the gun rights advocacy groups claims that the case is a political vendetta.

Manhattan Judge Joel M. Cohens decision means the nearly 2-year-long legal fight can continue.

The ruling comes after mass shootings last month in New York and Texas reanimated debate over U.S. gun policy and refocused attention on the NRA.

The New York case began when James, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit that accused some top NRA executives of financial improprieties and sought to dissolve the group. The attorney generals job includes oversight of nonprofit organizations incorporated in the New York, where the NRA was chartered in 1871.

In March, Cohen rebuffed James bid to shutter the NRA. But the judge let the case go on, with the potential for fines or other remedies if the attorney general prevails.

The NRA accused James in a court filing last year of waging a blatant and malicious retaliation campaign because of its views. The group sought to halt the lawsuit.

Cohen rejected those arguments.

The narrative that the attorney generals investigation into these undeniably serious matters was nothing more than a politically motivated  and unconstitutional  witch hunt is simply not supported by the record, he wrote, noting that the probe was sparked by reports of misconduct and uncovered additional evidence.

James applauded the decision, saying it confirms the suits legitimacy and viability.

Our fight for transparency and accountability will continue, she said in a statement.

NRA lawyer William A. Brewer III said the group was disappointed but would keep fighting the case and still believes it was unfairly targeted.

The NRA believes the NYAGs pursuit was fueled by her opposition to the association and its First Amendment activities in support of the Second Amendment, he said in a statement, using an abbreviation for the attorney generals title.

In the wake of the recent shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, Congress is under renewed pressure to respond after years of partisan logjams over gun legislation.

The House has passed bills that would raise the age limit to buy semiautomatic weapons and establish federal red flag laws, which allow for taking guns from people at extreme risk of harming themselves or others. Such initiatives traditionally have faltered in the Senate.

Democratic and Republican senators have been talking about a framework for addressing the issue, but no agreement has been announced.

The NRA  a longtime political force that has lost some influence amid financial scandals in recent years  has long insisted that mass shootings are no reason to limit access to guns, arguing that the solution instead is for law-abiding people to have firearms to defend themselves and others.

The message was echoed at the groups convention in Houston last month, days after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde.

Rallies calling for significant changes to gun laws are planned in Washington and around the country this weekend and are expected to draw tens of thousands of people.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also is caught up in the national tug of war over the place of guns in America. The justices are expected soon to issue their most consequential gun ruling in more than a decade, potentially making it easier to be armed on the streets of New York and other large cities.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Legislation New York Gun Liability
This edition of International People Moves details appointments at Bermuda-based re/insurer SiriusPoint and London headquartered re/insurer IQUW.

A summary of these announcements follows here.

SiriusPoint Names Heerasing UK Country Branch Mgr, as Part of UK Realignment

SiriusPoint Ltd., a global specialty re/insurer, announced the appointment of Bobby Heerasing as SirusPoint UK Country Branch manager. Heerasing will be responsible for establishing and executing profitable growth strategies and operating plans for SiriusPoints London branch and sSyndicate, inclusive of the companys reinsurance and insurance and services platforms.

Heerasing will report to both David Govrin, global chief underwriting officer, and president, Americas Reinsurance, and Monica Cramer Manhem, president of International Reinsurance & managing director of SiriusPoint International.

Heerasing joined SiriusPoint in October 2021 with over 25 years of market experience. He was most recently head of International Strategic Business Development for SiriusPoint and prior to this, was the CEO and board member of ACR Holdings and ACR Group (Asia Capital Re). Previously, he spent 18 years at Catlin as chief underwriting officer, and XL Catlin as regional underwriting director of Asia Pacific (Insurance).

As previously announced in March, SiriusPoint has entered into a strategic partnership with Mosaic Insurance, which includes an investment in Mosaic to support continued growth, providing Mosaic with access to global licenses and infrastructure, and the planned sale of its Lloyds managing agency. The sale is subject to Lloyds and regulatory approvals.

Bermuda-based SiriusPoint will retain its UK Branch operations, inclusive of Syndicate 1945.

Following, and subject to the close of the transaction as well as Lloyds and regulatory approvals, Robert Harman, the current SiriusPoint London CEO and managing director of Sirius International Managing Agency (SIMA), will transition to Mosaic to continue his role as chief executive officer of the managing agency.

London is an important market for SiriusPoint, said Govrin. Bobby will be a critical enabler towards building a sustainable business model through profitable growth, talent development, strengthening relationships with key trading partners and an unwavering commitment to adding value for our clients.

Bobby is an experienced and hands-on leader who is committed to operational excellence and cultivating value creation, said Monica Cramer Manhem. His appointment underscores SiriusPoints commitment to the London market and the depth and experience of our talent, as we continue to invest in our re/insurance capabilities.

***

Re/Insurer IQUW Offers Crisis Mgmt Product With Portfolio Led by Talbots Atkinson

Property, commercial, and speciality insurer and reinsurer IQUW has launched a new crisis management insurance class to help businesses anticipate, prevent, respond to, and recover from a wide variety of risks.

The new global crisis management portfolio will be led by experienced specialty underwriter Jon Atkinson. The roll-out of the new product offering is part of IQUWs growth and development strategy for its specialty lines.

The new offering will provide lead market capabilities in global specialty product recall for a broad spectrum of manufacturers across new product lines, including product contamination, auto and other component part recall and first party recall risks.

Atkinson joined IQUW from Talbot Underwriting Ltd., where as senior class underwriter, he developed its crisis management capabilities.

We are delighted to announce that Jon will be leading our crisis management portfolio at IQUW, said Peter Bilsby, chief executive officer of IQUW. We are building out a fantastic team of professionals to lead the development of our multi-line, diverse product offering.

I am delighted to join IQUW and launch the new crisis management product, said Atkinson. We will offer cover globally, with a specific focus on food & beverage, automotive and other safety focused manufacturing markets where we intend to be a lead market for brokers.

He added: IQUW has a vision for digital underwriting and, in line with this, our crisis management portfolio will combine data, automation and human expertise to deliver consistent, accurate and fast responses to support broker.

London-based IQUWs insurance and reinsurance products are distributed through Lloyds syndicate 1856. It provides insurance cover for cyber, cargo, marine, political risk, energy, property, D&O, financial institutions, political violence and terror and war risks, plus reinsurance for both property treaty International and specific to the U.S. and specialty reinsurance.

Topics Carriers Reinsurance
Britains biggest pubs group Stonegate, which is suing Zurich Insurance and two peers for 1 billion pounds ($1.2 billion) over lockdown losses, battled the COVID-19 pandemic day by day, venue by venue, a London trial heard on Monday.

Ben Lynch, a lawyer for Stonegate, said the companys 760 insured pubs, bars and night clubs at the center of the case had each faced separate challenges, opening and shutting at differing times according to regional rules  and seeing business drop by up to 90% below projections.

If successful, the Stonegate case could give fresh momentum to a second wave of claims against insurers that might cost the industry billions of pounds, further damage reputations and push premiums even higher for businesses and consumers, experts say.

Britains Largest Pub Group Launches Billion-Dollar Suit over COVID-Related BI Claim

Stonegate is suing MS Amlin, Zurich Insurance, and Liberty Mutual, alleging the pandemic, government-ordered closures and restrictions triggered business interruption cover multiple times and that the interruption and interference will continue until April 2023.

Insurers accept Stonegates businesses were covered by their policies, but contend that cover was limited to one business interruption payment of 2.5 million pounds, which has been paid, court documents show.

In total the insurers have paid 14.5 million pounds, including 12 million for additional increased costs of working (AICW), and say their liability is limited to 17.5 million pounds. They label the claim hugely overstated, filings show.

MS Amlin led the Stonegate policy with 55% of exposure. Both other insurers have 22.5% each.

The case is by far the largest since the Supreme Court ruled last year that many insurers had wrongly rejected business interruption claims from thousands of small businesses that had to close or restrict trading to curb the coronavirus.

Policyholders have so far received nearly 1.35 billion pounds in compensation. But not all policy wordings were covered and, where they were, some dispute payout levels.

Other insurers are following the Stonegate case closely. Asked if their employer was among those being sued, a representative from one insurer watching proceedings told Reuters: No, not yet.

Insurers have been on notice since Corbin & King, the owner of Londons Wolseley restaurant, won a similar BI case against insurer AXA in February  although it has since gone into administration after a battle with its biggest shareholder.

Multi-million pound claims by sandwich-to-pasty chain Greggs against Zurich and Strada and Coppa Club owner Various Eateries against Allianz will be heard next month.

($1 = 0.8212 pounds)

(Reporting by Kirstin Ridley, additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Susan Fenton)

Photograph: A view of an empty Shaftesbury Avenue in Londons West End on March 2020, around what would have been theater opening time. Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered public meeting places like theatres, pubs, and restaurants across the country to close to limit the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. Photo credit: Dominic Lipinski / PA via AP.

Topics Lawsuits COVID-19 Profit Loss Mississippi
A federal judge has sentenced a Racine man to 40 months in prison for starting a fire that destroyed a furniture store during protests over a police shooting in Kenosha in 2020.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller sentenced 23-year-old Devon Vaughn on Thursday. Vaughn pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to commit arson. His attorney, Joshua Uller, said Vaughn acted entirely out of his character.

The judge noted the Aug. 24 fire at B&L Office Furniture caused nearly $2 million in damage and deeply frightened the family of Linda Carpenter, who started the business with her husband more than 40 years ago.

The protests began on Aug. 23 after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, during a domestic disturbance. Blake survived but was left paralyzed from the waist down.

On the third night of the protests, Aug. 25, Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men on the streets, killing two of them. A jury acquitted him of multiple charges in November after he argued he fired in self-defense.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Wisconsin Civil Unrest
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Corporate plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions fall short of what is needed to combat climate change, with major credibility gaps found among the worlds largest companies, according to a new stocktake of net-zero efforts in the public and private sector.

Roughly half of the Forbes 2000 largest companies have yet to announce plans to reach net-zero  the point at which greenhouse gas emissions are negated by deep cuts in output as well as methods to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide. Of the 702 companies with a net-zero target, two-thirds havent made it clear how they plan to achieve that goal, Net Zero Tracker found in their annual report.

Chubb Not Declaring Itself Net Zero, CEO Greenberg Says

Net Zero Tracker, run in part by the UK-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) and the University of Oxford, assesses publicly available data for about 200 countries as well as large publicly traded companies, including those in fossil fuels.

We see a lot of issues with credibility, and the quality and robustness of these targets, said report co-author Frederic Hans, a climate policy analyst at NewClimate Institute, a German think tank.

Many companies with net-zero targets have set no interim emissions goals for before 2050, which the report said was unacceptably low if the world is to halve emissions in the next eight years, as scientists say is needed.

Carbon offsetting  or buying credits for emissions reduced elsewhere  also featured prominently among corporate strategies. Nearly 40% of the Forbes 2000 companies with a net-zero target plan to use offsets, despite concerns about the lack of regulation.

Governments will need to impose legal standards and regulations to ensure net-zero progress, said co-author John Lang of the ECIU. At the moment, companies are confused about whats needed from them. They dont know what information has to be disclosed, he said.

At its climate summit in Glasgow last year, the United Nations established an expert group to produce net-zero standards for the private sector and analyze commitments. The European Union is also in the midst of drafting net-zero reporting standards, to be adopted in November. The current draft text bars companies from counting carbon offsets toward net-zero. Read full story

We have to have mandatory, top-down regulations to guide them, Lang said. However, he doubted the issue could be resolved before the next U.N. climate summit, COP27, in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, this November. It probably cant be fixed before COP28 in 2023, he said.
At least three people were killed traveling on Interstate 30 in southwest Arkansas during a series of crashes that happened during stormy weather last week, authorities said.

The June 8 crashes began in the eastbound lanes of the interstate near Friendship, Arkansas, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Little Rock, the Arkansas Department of Transportation said.

The wrecks, which started with a two-vehicle collision that led to at least two other chain-reaction crashes, were weather-related, Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The crashes shut down all lanes of busy Interstate 30, which links Little Rock to Dallas.

Arkansas State Police reported multiple fatalities Wednesday afternoon and troopers were working to account for all of the motorists involved. Sadler said Wednesday night that not everyone had been accounted for.

Troopers are going through every vehicle to search for any evidence of deceased that may still be trapped in the wreckage, Sadler said.

A fire was reported at one of the crash sites, police said, and video from the scene showed multiple large trucks burning.

Traffic was so paralyzed that state workers distributed snacks and water to stranded motorists about 7:30 p.m. June 8. Eastbound lanes of the interstate reopened later that day but the westbound lanes were still closed Thursday morning, leading to lengthy backups.

Crews were repairing asphalt Thursday morning that was damaged, the highway department said.

The deadly crashes happened two days after five people were killed and five others injured in a collision between a van and a large truck in southeastern Arkansas. In that crash on Monday, police have said the driver of the van apparently failed to yield when crossing U.S. 65.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Arkansas
Three subsidiaries of a Texas-based petrochemical company settled allegations that they violated federal and state pollution control laws.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in a news release, said Westlake Chemical Corporation agreed to make upgrades and perform compliance measures estimated to cost $110 million to resolve the complaint involving two facilities in Lake Charles, Louisiana and one in Calvert City, Kentucky.

The companies also will pay a $1 million civil penalty.

According to the complaint, the companies failed to properly operate and monitor their industrial flares, which resulted in excess emissions at the three facilities, the department said.

The settlement will eliminate thousands of tons of air pollution from flares, devices used to combust waste gases that would otherwise be released into the air, it said.

The settlements significant reductions of hazardous and other air pollutants and greenhouse gases will serve to reduce exposure in the vulnerable nearby communities with environmental justice concerns, said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Departments Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Acting Assistant Administrator Larry Starfield of the EPAs Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance said the settlement will require the Westlake companies to install pollution control and emissions monitoring equipment at the three facilities, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other harmful gases by thousands of tons per year.

Those controls, plus a requirement for fence line monitoring of benzene emissions and corrective actions when benzene readings are high, will result in significant benefits for the local communities in Kentucky and Louisiana, Starfield said.

The settlement requires the three facilities to install and operate air pollution control and monitoring technology to reduce flaring from eight flares at the three facilities. Once fully implemented, the pollution controls are estimated to reduce emissions of ozone-forming VOCs by 2,258 tons per year and of toxic air pollutants, including benzene, by 65 tons per year. The settlement is also expected to reduce emissions of climate-change-causing greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane and ethane, by over 50,733 tons per year.

The Westlake companies also will perform air quality monitoring that is designed to detect the presence of benzene at the fence lines of the three facilities. Monitoring results must be posted to a publicly available website, providing the neighboring communities with more information about their air quality.

The consent decree is subject to a 30-day public comment period and final court approval.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Texas Pollution
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he has secured a deceptive trade practices settlement against Vision Path, Inc.specifically, its Hubble contact lens businessin state district court in Bexar County, Texas. Hubble will pay $300,000 in civil penalties, $70,000 in attorneys fees, and $2,100 in restitution for certain consumers.

Paxtons office alleges Hubble deceptively marketed its lenses by representing them as high quality even though they were manufactured using older technology that many other contact lens companies had moved away from. Furthermore, Hubble failed to verify consumers contact lens prescriptions with prescribers before filling orders, a violation of the Contact Lens Prescription Act that resulted in many consumers receiving the wrong contact lenses.

Source: Texas Attorney General office

Topics Texas
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A brush fire on a North Carolina farm caused fireworks to explode inside a container where they were stored, killing one person and injuring three firefighters Friday, authorities said.

Lenoir County Emergency Services Director Murry Stroud told broadcast outlet WITN of Greenville that one person was confirmed dead from the afternoon blast and three firefighters were hurt, one of them in critical condition.

Stroud said firefighters were dispatched to put out a reported brush fire at a farm in La Grange as flames were approaching a building. He said fields were being burned off when the fire spread and detonated the fireworks stored in a container.

The identities of the dead and injured were not immediately released. Authorities told the station a representative for the property was the person who died at the scene.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics North Carolina
Dozens of residents in a small New Mexico community impacted by massive wildfires that merged in April are suing the U.S. Forest Service over what they called a failure to provide information about the governments role in starting the blazes.

The Forest Service has acknowledged that two prescribed burns it set to clear out brush and small trees that can serve as wildfire fuel sparked two blazes that came together as the largest in New Mexicos recorded history and the biggest burning in the U.S. right now.

The wildfire has charred 500 square miles in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, which sits at the southern edge of the Rocky Mountains. Several hundred homes have been destroyed.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque on behalf of 50 Mora County residents, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

It asks the court to declare that the Forest Service improperly withheld planning documents for the burns, agreements or contracts with anyone who helped carry out the burns and information on the rules and regulations that govern the prescribed burns.

Without the information, the lawsuit alleges, the residents cannot determine the Forest Services responsibility, other than media accounts, for starting the fire.

The Forest Service told the Santa Fe New Mexican that it does not comment on pending litigation. The agency has said unexpected, erratic winds during one prescribed burn carried embers outside the targeted area. The other wildfire emerged from a burn set on a pile of dead vegetation in January that smoldered for weeks, even under snow.

The agency has put a hold on prescribed burns nationwide pending its own investigation.

President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit New Mexico on Saturday for a briefing about the wildfires and recovery efforts.

Another wildfire in southwestern New Mexico has burned 466 square miles, prompting New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to declare an emergency for Sierra County on Friday.

The declaration came as the fire grew to become the second largest wildfire in state history. The governors office said its now burning beyond the boundaries of the Gila National Forest, affecting communities and requiring evacuations.

Also Friday, crews of about 200 firefighters were scrambling to try and contain a small fire in northern New Mexico near El Rito that sent up a tall, dense plume of smoke. No structures were threatened, with the cause under investigation.

In northern New Mexico, Mora County residents said they requested documents from the Forest Service on May 4 about the fire in northern New Mexico, but that the agency failed to respond within 20 working days as required under the law. The lawsuit also seeks attorneys fees.

Herman Lujan, 80, his brother and nephew are among the Mora County residents who are suing. Lujans home was spared, but he said he has 30 hungry cattle that he might have to sell because they cant graze in a burned pasture his family has used for generations.

Everything burned, he said. Timber, everything. I even had an old dozer up there to make ponds for the cows, and everything burned.

Related:

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Topics Lawsuits Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire Mexico New Mexico
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Read our full Opinion Policies here. Updated on 10/7/2020
CervicalCheck campaigner Vicky Phelan has returned from a wonderful week away with her family in Spain, after receiving the go-ahead from her medical team.

Taking to Instagram, the mother-of-two said she is feeling refreshed after a much needed, wonderful holiday in the coastal town of Cambrils in Spain with her family. Ms Phelan said she jumped at the chance to have some time away with her husband Jim and children Amelia and Darragh after her medical team told her she would be stable enough for the trip.

Ms Phelan has terminal cancer and returned to Ireland for palliative treatment last year following clinical trials in the States.

"Just back home since yesterday evening from a much-needed, wonderful week away in Spain with Jim and the kids. I got the go ahead a couple of weeks ago from my medical team that my disease was stable enough for me to go away on holidays and I jumped at the opportunity, she told her 138k followers on Instagram.

With the convenience of flying from Shannon Airport, which is just 30 minutes away from Ms Phelans home, the coastal town of Cambrils on the Costa Daurada seemed like the perfect spot for a getaway and came highly recommended.

After their week away, it seems the area was a great fit for Ms Phelan and her family.

I feel refreshed after a week away, some heat in my bones and a change of scenery.

"We hope to get away again towards the end of the summer if my body cooperates but I would highly recommend Cambrils for families," she said.

Revealing more details on the trip, Ms Phelan shared a number of snaps including one of the villa the family stayed in and the stunning beaches.

She said that the family decided to stay in a villa as she wanted some privacy and peace and quiet. The stunning Spanish house had a really decent sized pool AND was literally two minutes walk from the beach and the promenade which could take us all the way into Cambrils and even as far as the much busier town of Salou, she added.
It is now beyond doubt that the State will not be appealing the High Court ruling in DPP v Davitt, which mandated the cessation of the long-standing practice of gardai prosecuting cases on behalf of their colleagues in the district court.

These garda, typically sergeant or inspector rank, are known as court presenters.

A temporary stay on that ruling expires on June 16. In flagrant disregard for the programme for government, the Coalition intends to introduce emergency legislation to patch the gap.

Remember that the Government presented its programme to govern as the key part of its social contract with citizens.

The 2018 Report of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland set out a blueprint for the reform of policing. It recommends that prosecution decisions should be taken away from gardai, and more distance between the courts and the gardai.

The commission agreed with the position adopted in comparable jurisdictions, where it is recognised that investigation and prosecution should be kept separate.

It noted gardai in charge of prosecutions in the district court are not trained to the level of defence lawyers. It reasoned it is unjustified to take gardai away from frontline duty to prosecute cases.

The commission received and considered submissions from the Policing Authority, Garda Inspectorate and An Garda Siochana.

An Garda Siochana called for court prosecutions, as one of several ancillary functions that is not aligned to its core policing roles, to be transferred to other State departments or services. It recognised that these functions present particular resource and extraction issues for An Garda Siochana and the outsourcing of these functions will generate considerable extra policing capacity.

The Garda Inspectorate took a similar approach and said it is "primarily about putting gardai on the front line" which it based on three reports it completed. The Policing Authority called for "greater separation between policing and prosecution" in the District Court.

It promoted the repeated attention drawn by the Garda Inspectorate "to the inefficiencies involved in the current system for garda attendance at court". The Policing Authority sought "greater involvement of the state prosecution service in cases before the District Court" citing other advantages from an "ethics and human rights perspective".

The programme for government accepted these reforms as being essential to the public trust in the police force. It contains a commitment to rapidly implement reforms recommended by the commission.

It upholds the commissions report as providing the clear pathway for the defining role of the basic function of An Garda Siochana  to protect citizens.

Elaborate plan

So an elaborate implementation plan was put in train.

The Government published A Policing Service for the Future, a committed and step-by-step implementation of the commissions recommendations, commencing in 2020.

An implementation group on policing reform was established to achieve this reform  within four years.

A high-level steering board was established to act as a clearing house for issues not resolved by the implementation group.

A policing reform implementation programme office was established within the Department of the Taoiseach, resourced with the appropriate expertise for the purpose of driving implementation of the plan and making progress reports to the Cabinet  in the interest of complete transparency.

It is only transparent, of course, if it does not attract executive privilege.

The 20222024 strategy statement of An Garda Siochana contains an unequivocal commitment to implement the reforms.

All of this presents as unified agreement with the commission  an all hands-on-deck approach.

But now it seems that is not necessarily the case.

In September 2020, the Department of Justice established a high level review group (chaired by a former secretary general to the Government), to re-examine the role of gardai in the public prosecution system. A public tender was invited to research the matters recommended by the commission (to be completed within a strict three month period).

The high-level group has yet to make any recommendation to Government. The two interim reports, submitted by the group to the minister for justice in 2021, have not been published  despite the commitment for transparency.

The tender document stated the commissions recommendation was accepted in principle by Government, subject to further evaluation.

This undermines the commissions recommendations and the social contract made by the Government with the people of Ireland.

It suggest this reform, described as essential in the programme for government, could be overruled.

On June 9, the Department of Justice confirmed that Justice Minister Helen McEntee had received Cabinet approval to bring forward emergency legislation to amend the Garda Siochana Act, 2015 to restore garda court presenters.

The minister has sought to justify this by saying: If remedial legislation is not put in place to allow for the continued use of court presenters, it is expected there would be significant disruption to the operation of the district courts throughout the country.

However, lawyers were drafted in to present cases, and the wheels of summary justice continued to turn again, almost seamlessly following the initial aftermath of the High Court ruling.

The minister also based this decision on the significant costs involved in putting in place alternative arrangements.

However, the Government has provided no empirical analysis to support that proposition.

The Spending Review Report (November 2021), published by the Government in pursuit of the reforms, does not show costings.

The salaries, training, and support staff for court presenters inherently involve significant expenditure.

The budget for this has never been published.

No comparison between expenditure for the existing summary prosecution system and that based on the reforms recommended by the commission has ever been published.

Surely the minister is not attempting to compare costings based on the current state of the grossly underfunded criminal justice legal aid system.

Last week, the minister received a petition, signed by almost 300 practicing barristers calling for an urgent review of unsustainable and uneconomic legal aid fees in the district court.

The petition seeks the immediate full and long overdue unwinding of cuts to rates of pay for criminal legal aid services.

In 2014, the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice, reported on the annual budget for criminal legal aid per capita.

At 18.4, Ireland ranked the lowest amongst our common law neighbours. This is 75% lower than Northern Ireland (73.53).

A barrister typically receives 25.20 for a remand, 50.40 for a plea in mitigation at a sentence hearing, and 67.50 to run a full hearing of a contested trial.

Travel expenses are well below that provided to public servants. There is significant delay in receiving fees and expenses. This is a system based on a long-standing convention between solicitors and barristers which requires reform.

What this means in practice is that people of insufficient means, who are accused of committing a criminal offence and are presumed by the Constitution to be innocent, often depend on overworked and underpaid lawyers to represent them in court.

It is entirely unclear how the Government expects the requirement for constitutional justice to be served.

The former president of the Circuit Court, Raymond Groarke, has previously issued a warning to the minister concerning the underfunding of legal aid.

The 2018 Spending Review Report, published by the Department of Justice, shows criminal legal aid consumes just 2-3% of the overall justice system of 3bn.

The department acknowledged the increase of complexity in criminal cases, but the legal aid budget has effectively remained stagnant since 2002.

It somehow concluded that Ireland compares quite favourably to similar jurisdictions in Northern Europe.

The former chief justice, Frank Clarke, was recently appointed to carry out a review of legal aid for civil cases. No similar review has been triggered for criminal legal aid. Surely legal aid should involve a unitary approach.

And so, non-qualified lawyers (garda court presenters) are trying hard to keep pace with increasingly complex laws and legal issues. The complex rules of evidence are required to be applied strictly in criminal cases.

Any notion of training police to also act as lawyers in court is nonsensical, and it would defeat the rationale of the reform recommended by the commission.

The problems in the criminal justice system are not confined to the gardai.

The independent review group, established by then minister for justice Francis Fitzgerald, made key recommendations in its 2014 report for fundamental reform in the Department of Justice.

The culture of the department was found to be closed and unnecessarily secretive, which has resulted in an inward-looking organisation with limited learning capacity and reduced openness to new ideas.

The culture has not changed or adapted to the world in which it now operates.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the criminal justice system is dysfunctional.
By Wang Hongyang and Sun Ao

The photo shows the construction site.

BEIJING, June 13  Recently, at the request of the Sector East of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the Menaka detachment of the 9th Chinese peacekeeping engineering contingent to Mali dispatched a crawler excavator operation team to assist the trench digging task.

It is learnt that the construction site locates at the outer area of the MINUSMA super camp in Menaka. The peacekeepers needed to excavate a trench about 1,000 meters long, 1.5 meters deep and 1.2 meters wide at the predetermined position for burying electric wires, communication cables and water pipes, which would facilitate the communication network and daily life of the peacekeepers living in the super camp.

During the 14-day operation, the Chinese peacekeepers worked at least eight hours a day at an average high temperature of 40 degrees Celsius. They mobilized more than 1,000 cubic meters of earthwork and completed the task one week ahead of schedule, passing the inspection of the MINUSMA officials at one time.

The professionalism and efficiency of the Chinese engineering contingent has won unanimous praise from the MINUSMA engineering officials and other countries' peacekeepers.
Interview Myanmar Resistance Leader in Sagaing Says Monsoon Will Bring Victories

Myanmar Royal Dragon Army leader Bo Nagar.

Sagaing Region, a resistance stronghold, has seen daily clashes since January with Myanmar junta troops raiding and torching villages where they think peoples defense forces (PDFs) are operating. Numerous civilians have been killed in junta raids which have left thousands homeless.

Bo Nagar, the leader of the Myanmar Royal Dragon Army, recently talked to The Irrawaddy about how PDFs are fighting the regime and the challenges facing them.

Junta troops have torched many Sagaing villages over the past few months. Are they torching every village?

In Budalin Township they torched three villages before we attacked. They broke into houses, boxes and jewel cases.

Residents could not take all of their belongings as they fled in fear. Junta soldiers took what they liked before torching.

To our dismay, we saw ruined villages along the road. Villagers worked hard over many years to build farms and homes. People hide in forests as they have nowhere else to go. They cannot build anything permanent and soldiers torch any shelter they find.

Living conditions are terrible. The rainy season has begun so we are rushing ahead with the revolution. Conditions and violence are worse than on social media. We are fully committed to saving our country from the hands of the sadistic regime.

We heard that you are forming a special task force to prevent arson attacks in Sagaing?

Yes. We plan to form a roughly 150-member force. We have dispatched some of them to acquire military experience. And we are giving special training to those with firsthand experience. But it costs more than US$400,000 to arm 100 fighters so we can only start with what we can afford.

We have nearly $200,000 and we urgently need another $250,000 within two weeks. We have obtained arms but have yet to pay for them. We also want uniforms and protective equipment for the special task force.

We told them that once they are trained they will have to fight repeatedly for the people. They have to do any duty assigned to them to protect the people. I will assign them operations in consultation with the PDFs. It will carry out missions upon request. That force will keep growing in size and area of operations. Its operations will not be limited.

What are the challenges in arming your group?

Every resistance group needs arms and ammunition. I am not being selfish. I share cash donations with smaller groups but I give priority to my groups when it comes to the procurement of weapons.

I have called on the National Unity Government [NUG] to arm all the groups. Every group needs arms and I urge the groups to help each other. We are arming them as much as we can.

Previously we only had traditional hunting rifles but we bought automatic assault rifles with public donations. Members of my group are working in many townships to fight the regime. As our group grows we have a lot of difficulties. We need weapons to continue to fight the revolution and it cannot progress if we lack arms.

How are discussions with the NUG on the supply of arms?

They said they would supply us. We still hope they will. We believe they will. We were fighting the revolution before the NUG was formed. We view it as our government and we cooperate with it. The NUG is our leader and we have asked it to command four of our battalions.

It has to take responsibility for battalions under its command. But it cannot afford to arm all those four battalions. We are among the first to start the revolution and we continue to fight. Groups formed after us have received arms so we want weapons too.

We cover a large area. The civilian ministry of defense should at least arm one if it cannot arm all four battalions. We are waiting.

What are the military developments in the region?

Clashes have been going on in Kani since May 20. The regime has sent troops to secure jade vessels on the river. We dispatched troops to wage guerilla warfare on them. They went to Budalin to attack troops after they heard about torching villages. They clashed with troops on the border of Kani and Mingin townships and in Pale.

Is the regime targeting any particular townships in Sagaing?

We assume the junta is targeting Sagaings plains since the beginning of the monsoon. Among them are Kani, Yinmabin, Pale, Myaung and Chaung-U. Clashes are also taking place in Tapayin, Wetlet, Khin-U and Taze.

Troops are focusing more on the plains. We know the terrain and gain information first. We fight guerilla warfare. We have gained the upper hand in ambushes and only suffer a few casualties.

Our enemy as usual harms the people when they suffer casualties. People suffer. But we have to fight this revolution. If we dont fight for fear that the junta will harm the people, it will rule the country as it pleases. We cannot be discouraged by damage caused to the people. We are already dead and we can only be resurrected when we win this revolution.

We gain the upper hand in the fighting but the people suffer because troops torch villages.

What is your assessment of the junta tactics in Sagaing? How much control does the regime have following its continuous attacks?

The tactics are obscene. They have powerful weapons and use tanks, artillery and mortars. But they cannot defeat us. The tactics are the most wicked in the world.

Outside Sagaing, the regime cannot control anywhere in Myanmar. Even in Naypyitaw, there are explosions and attacks. The resistance movement has only paused for a while because the junta is using excessive force and committing the cruelest acts.

It cannot control anywhere, even in its cantonment. The junta cannot imagine controlling Sagaing. We wont let them get an inch. Sagaing is where humane people have gathered to bravely fight the revolution. The junta cannot control a place of strong-minded revolutionaries.

What is the military situation in Sagaing Region during the rainy season?

It is encouraging. Resistance fighters will gain the upper hand. The regime cannot carry out air strikes in the rain and its troops can only reach easily accessible places.

If they maintain outposts under such circumstances, it is like digging their own graves. They will have to retreat in the rainy season. If they stay, they only stay to be killed.

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Burma Junta Seeks Thai Help in Crackdown on Armed Groups Operating Along Myanmar-Thai Border

Myanmar junta police chief Major General Zin Min Htet (left) shakes hands with Royal Thai police chief Suwat Jangyodsuk. / Royal Thai Police

Myanmar junta police chief Major General Zin Min Htet flew to Bangkok last week to discuss the issue of armed groups operating along the Myanmar-Thai border with his Thai counterpart, regime media reported on Sunday.

Newly-appointed Maj-Gen Zin Min Htet, who is also the juntas deputy home affairs minister, visited Thailand on June 6-7, meeting chief of the Royal Thai Police Suwat Jangyodsuk and holding the first work committee meeting on prevention of cross-border crime.

Both sides agreed to boost cooperation on border security and the rule of law, counter-terrorism, fighting the drug trade, human trafficking and cross-border smuggling, according to junta newspapers.

At the top of the agenda were the illegal arms trade, smuggling, counter-terrorism and cross-border crime, said the military regime. The two sides also discussed cooperation in human resources development and police training, as well as discussing a memorandum of understanding between the two police forces and signing a six-point agreement for future cooperation.

Junta media said the pair discussed taking action against the armed groups operating along the Myanmar-Thai border, claiming they undermine the interests of both countries, but the Royal Thai Police press release said the two sides only discussed signing a memorandum of understanding on fighting cross-border crime.

The regime did not mention the names of the armed groups based along the border. However, it has labelled the parallel National Unity Government and its armed wing the Peoples Defense Forces as terrorist organizations. Chinese gambling and drug gangs are also operating along the frontier in Karen State.

Last month, a junta delegation led by Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant-General Soe Htut also visited Thailand and discussed bilateral cooperation to fight the drug trade with the Thai justice minister. The delegation also met officials of the Royal Thai Police and discussed stopping the smuggling of chemicals used in drug production into the Golden Triangle region, the control of the drug trade and the cross-border arrest of fugitives.

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Burma Myanmar Junta Rejects Cambodias Plea not to Execute Activists

Myanmar junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. / AFP

In a demonstration of its determination to execute two democracy activists on death row, Myanmars military regime has turned down their allys request to refrain from carrying out the death sentences.

On Friday, Cambodias Prime Minister Hun Sen sent a letter to junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing urging him to reconsider and refrain from executing ousted National League for Democracy lawmaker Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw and veteran democracy activist Ko Jimmy. Hun Sen said the proposed executions were attracting great concern among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its external partners.

However, the juntas Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied to Cambodia on Saturday with legal explanations on why the death sentences have to be carried out, as well as detailing the alleged crimes committed by Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy, BBC Burmese reported.

Cambodia is the current chair of ASEAN and Myanmar is a member of the bloc, although it has been excluded from recent meetings for failing to adhere to ASEANs plan to resolve the crisis in the country. Hun Sen is close to Min Aung Hlaing and is the only foreign prime minister to have met the junta chief in person while others, even some ASEAN members, shun the regime chief for his coup.

In his letter to Min Aung Hlaing, Hun Sen said the planned executions, if carried out, will trigger very strong and widespread negative reaction from the international community, while having a devastating effect on ASEAN and Cambodias efforts to help Myanmar return to normalcy.

I would like to earnestly request you and the State Administrative Council [SAC  the regimes governing body] to reconsider the sentences and refrain from carrying out the death sentences given to those anti-SAC individuals, wrote Hun Sen.

A junta military tribunal handed down death sentences to Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy in January on terrorism charges after accusing them of masterminding armed resistance against the regime in Yangon.

Earlier this month, the regime spokesperson confirmed that the pair would be executed along with Ko Hla Myo Aung and Ko Aung Thura Zaw, who were earlier sentenced to death for killing a woman who was an alleged military informant.

If the hangings are carried out, they will be the first executions to take place in Myanmar since 1976.

The international community has already condemned the proposed executions. The spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary-General said it was a blatant violation of the right to life, liberty and security of persons, referring to an article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Frances embassy in Yangon also denounced the plan by calling the junta an illegitimate military government, prompting the regime to warn France that it was threatening bilateral ties.

Ma Nilar Thein, the wife of Ko Jimmy, said the junta has to be held responsible for its blatant violations of human rights. Ko Phyo Zeya Thaws wife Ma Thazin Nyunt Aung urged the international community not to stand by and let the regime kill her husband.

A total of 114 people have been sentenced to death since last years coup, two of them minors, including students and anti-junta activists.

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Burma Myanmar Regime Committed Almost 2,800 War Crimes in Last Six Months: NUG

Alal Khone Village, Kantbalu Township, Sagaing Region after being burned down by regime troops on June 8. / Kotaungbo Revolution

Myanmars junta committed almost 2,800 war crimes across the country in the last six months, according to the parallel civilian National Unity Government (NUG).

The NUGs Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration said that from December 1 to May 31, regime forces committed 2,778 war crimes including arbitrary killings, extrajudicial executions, the use of torture, using civilians as human shields, air and artillery strikes on civilian targets, the looting and burning of houses and the use of sexual violence.

Some 12,719 houses and religious building have been destroyed by junta forces, causing estimated losses of 241 million kyats (US$6.9 million).

Last Friday, the ministry also said that the regime had conducted 910 arrests and carried out 479 arson attacks, 346 murders, 336 attacks, 226 robberies and 101 cases of torture in the same six month period.

Regime forces also committed 10 cases of sexual violence, as well as 27 instances of using civilian detainees as human shields to deter attacks by resistance groups.

Sagaing Region, a stronghold of the resistance movement, suffered the most recording a total of 1,178 war crimes, followed by Magwe Region with 537 cases and Mandalay with 234.

Junta arson attacks also targeted Sagaing the most, with some 8,933 houses being lost, followed by Magwe with 2,168 and Chin State with 1,332, according to the NUGs Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration.

The ministry said it has collected evidence of the military regimes war crimes and that its priority is to hold those responsible accountable for their crimes.

People are being urged to report junta war crimes to police forces and Peoples Administration Groups operating under the NUG, which is working with local and international organizations to hold the regime responsible for its atrocities.

Everyone who committed war crimes must be held to account whatever the situation, said the NUG.

In early June, authorities in Turkey initiated a preliminary investigation into members of the regime, including coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, concerning a criminal complaint filed by the Myanmar Accountability Project (MAP), a UK-based nongovernmental organization.

In late March, MAP filed a criminal case with the public prosecutors office in Istanbul, Turkey against junta leaders over the use of torture in the military interrogation center in Yangon.

As of June 10, over 1,900 people have been killed by regime forces and more than 14,000 people, including democratically-elected lawmakers, have been arrested or detained since last years coup, said the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
Burma Myanmar Resistance Rejects Junta Calls to Surrender

Karenni resistance fighters. / Karenni People's Defense Force

Myanmars peoples defense forces (PDF) and other resistance fighters have rejected junta proposals to lay down arms and join them, saying they will never surrender to killers.

In a June 11 announcement, the regime asked resistance fighters to surrender and return to civilian lives, saying they will be welcomed to rejoin society.

The junta has not been able to control the country since the February 2021 coup.

Resistance groups and urban guerrilla forces said they will continue the revolution until the end.

Taungoo PDF said in a June 12 statement that it will never lay down arms for a murderous regime which brutally tortures, kills and burns its comrades if they are caught while regime troops are treated properly under the parallel National Unity Governments (NUG) guidelines.

There is no reason to return to the regime and let it enslave us. We would like to invite those who are calling us to lay down arms back to turn to the peoples embrace, it said.

Bo Thanmani of Khin-U PDF in Sagaing Region told The Irrawaddy that the request showed the junta was suffering heavily.

They are starting to realize they cant beat us, he said.

Bo Thanmani said resistance groups will never accept junta calls.

We have sacrificed a lot. Many lives have been lost. We will never stop until we win, he added.

The junta declared the NUG and its armed wing, the PDFs, terrorist organizations and has refused to consider talks.

It has vowed to eliminate the PDFs and all other opponents of its rule. However, the announcement did not refer to the PDFs as terrorist groups, as it has previously.

The announcement blamed the NUG and its parliamentary committee for launching the armed resistance movement.

After the junta began killing peaceful protesters, activists took up arms in late March last year.

On Sept. 7, the NUG declared a peoples war against the regime to root out military rule, taking the armed struggle against the junta to another level.

According to the NUGs defense ministry, 259 PDFs have been formed with approximately 80,000 to 100,000 members. There are also around 250 township-based forces and 400 guerrilla forces and most are in contact with the NUG, according to the shadow government.
Burma Nearly 90 Myanmar Junta Soldiers Killed in Clashes With Resistance in North

Resistance fighters from the Kachin Region People Defense Force-Myohla in Shwegu Township, Kachin State / Myohla-KPDF

Almost 90 Myanmar junta soldiers were reportedly killed in fierce firefights with the People Defense Force in Kachin and Chin states and Sagaing Region on Sunday.

Several hours-long intense shootouts between the military detachment of Infantry Battalion 415 and the combined forces of the Kachin Region Peoples Defense Force-Myohla and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) broke out near a village in Shwegu Township, Kachin State on Sunday.

During the firefight in the morning, around 50 regime troops were killed and many others wounded, KPDF-Myohla claimed.

The shootout intensified in the afternoon when the defeated detachment was reinforced by Battalion 121. However, it is unclear what happened after that.

Also, another nine regime troops were killed when the KIA used mines to attack a detachment of 30 regime troops near Namsi Awang Village in Mohnyin Township, Kachin State on Sunday, according to a local news page and media reports.

However, The Irrawaddy was unable to independently verify the military casualties.

Chin Defense Force-Kanpetlet (CDF-Kanpetlet) claimed to have killed a total of 16 regime soldiers during fierce firefights in Kanpetlet Township, Chin State on Sunday.

On Sunday morning, an intense clash broke out when the ethnic Chin resistance fighters of CDF-Kanpetlet attacked regime forces stationed at a camp in the township.

During the intense shootout, 11 regime soldiers were killed but there were no resistance casualties, CDF-Kanpetlet claimed.

Meanwhile, other resistance fighters also raided regime forces stationed at the township administration department office in the town of Kanpetlet, to prevent it from sending reinforcements into the conflict area.

During the raid, another five regime troops were killed, CDF-Kanpetlet said.

Civilians Defense and Security Organization of Myaung (CDSOM), a local resistance group, also claimed to have killed 10 regime soldiers including Pyu Saw Htee pro-regime militia fighters when a combined force of 14 PDF groups from Mandalay, Magwe and Sagaing regions attacked regime forces in Myaung Township, Sagaing Region on Sunday.

At 4:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, the combined resistance groups attacked the regime forces from Pann Nyo Village while they were secretly traveling on motorboats without using engines along the Ayeyarwaddy River in the township.

On the same morning, the combined forces also attacked a group of 10 regime soldiers under a tree in Sin Chaung Village on the east bank of the river, using rifle grenades. In the attack, two junta troops were killed.

At the same time, another seven regime forces including an army captain, a regime-appointed village administrator and two Pyu Saw Htee militia were killed after being bombed while they were holding a meeting under a tree adjacent to Nyaung To village, said CDSOM.

Another regime soldier was gunned down by a PDF sniper. The PDF group said they also attacked regime forces in the village using two mortar shells.

Later, they abandoned their attacks, because the regime forces used villagers as human shields, said CDSOM.

Three other regime soldiers were killed when a combined group of 10 PDFs attacked military troops burning down farm huts of civilians near Sheinmakar Village in Wetlet Township, Sagaing Region on Sunday morning.

In the afternoon, the fierce shootout continued when the combined PDFs attempted to occupy the police outpost in the village, according to the combined forces.

After being defeated, the regime forces also called in an Mi-35 helicopter gunship to attack the PDFs.

GZ Special Task Force-Wetlet, which coordinated the raid, said three resistance fighters suffered minor injuries in the raid and they had to retreat due to the junta airstrikes.

Currently, regime forces face daily attacks from PDFs and many ethnic armed groups across the country.

Meanwhile, the regime has escalated its atrocities, including arbitrary killings of civilians; arrests and torture; using civilian detainees as human shields; air and artillery strikes on residential areas; and looting and burning houses, especially in Chin, Kachin, Shan, Kayah and Karen states and Magwe, Sagaing and Mandalay regions.

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Data for Myanmar, an independent group monitoring junta atrocities, reported on June 3 that an estimated 18,886 houses and other buildings had been burned down since the 2021 coup. Sagaing has suffered the most, losing an estimated 13,840 houses.

In Makyitan 15 out of 37 houses were torched. Raids reportedly continue in the west of the township.

The troops took 43 male villagers hostage while they advanced on Makyitan village, about 6km away, and they were then released.

Residents said troops looted valuables, phones, food and crops. A woman in her 60s died of a heart attack during an artillery attack before the raid and a three-year-old was shot in the thigh.

A Chaung-U Revolution Army commander said: Other troops will probably burn the village later. Soldiers loot villages during their raids. We heard the junta wants Sagaing Region to be a wasteland.

The soldiers reportedly torched four houses to comply with their orders.

The soldiers said they had an order to burn the village unless residents paid. Residents collected all the cash they could find, said a witness.

Around 100 soldiers raided Ba Lway village in the southeast of the township and detained numerous villagers and threatened to burn down the village.

Civilians in Chaung-U Township, Sagaing Region, reportedly paid Myanmar regime troops not to burn down their village on Saturday.

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Burma US State Dept Counselor Calls Myanmar Military Bunch of Thugs

US State Department Counselor Derek Chollet / AFP

BANGKOKUS State Department Counselor Derek Chollet called Myanmars military a bunch of thugs suffering serious losses in their fight against their own people, who have been resisting military rule in the country.

The comment comes as the junta struggles to control the country, which has been gripped by an unwavering popular armed resistance against the regime following the military takeover in February last year.

Given the ongoing circumstances in Myanmar, Chollet said the regime was finding itself increasingly isolated, not just internationally but at home.

Theyre not winning. Theyre losing territory. Their military is taking serious losses, he told The Irrawaddy in a recent interview.

Last week, US State Department Counselor Derek Chollet visited Thailand where he also met with senior Thai officials in Bangkok.

He later visited the Thailand-Myanmar border and his delegation visited the Mae La Refugee Camp in Tak Province and then toured the Mae Tao Clinic, which has provided a health lifeline for Myanmar refugees in Mae Sot and surrounding areas for decades.

After returning from the border, Chollet told The Irrawaddy that Washingtons message to the regime was simple: End the fighting and return to the path of democracy.

He said the regime was trying to create a new reality after its military proxy party lost the 2020 election.

But its quite clear that what weve seen inside Burma is that the people are not going to accept that, he said, using Myanmars former name.

When asked about his impression of the regimes extrajudicial killings of civilians, arbitrary arrests and torching villages in central Myanmar in response to armed resistance there, Chollet said they were not things a model military does.

They are not acting as a professional military. They are acting like a bunch of thugs, he said.

As of May 26, more than 1 million people had been displaced in Myanmar, with more than half of them losing their homes since the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup, and 12,700 houses, religious buildings and schools had been destroyed, according to the UN.

Engaging with the NUG

The US recently increased its diplomatic engagement with Myanmars opposition and like-minded countries in the region to pressure the regime in Naypyitaw. We are working [to] give the opposition our best advice as well as to address urgent humanitarian needs, Chollet said, noting that at least tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the regimes raids and fighting.

Last month, Daw Zin Mar Aung, foreign minister of Myanmars shadow National Unity Government (NUG), met with Wendy Sherman, US deputy secretary of state, in Washington on the sidelines of the US-ASEAN summit. Myanmar regime leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing was not invited to the summit.

Chollet told The Irrawaddy the US will continue to engage with the NUG on capacity building and supporting the Myanmar democratic movement. The shadow government is now trying to establish its administration and education system in some resistance stronghold areas in the country.

Its a huge challenge where theres expectations placed upon you from people inside and how you learn about just the basic tasks of administration and keeping the trains running, schools opened and electricity. A lot of that knowledge has left. So, in areas outside of regime control, how can you maintain these services? There is capacity building that we can provide, he said.

Chollet said Myanmar people have shown tremendous resilience, courage, and bravery throughout their fight against the regime, adding that their suffering over the last 18 months has been horrendous.

Whats striking, however, is you still see so much hope and optimism in the fight for their countrywhether theyre in Burma, or whether theyve left and theyre trying to help on the outside, referring to the determination of the majority of Myanmar people that their cause against the regime must prevail, and their effort to support it by all means.

Working with ASEAN, talking to others

Since the coup, ASEAN leaders have faced challenges and criticism, as the regional grouping is known to lack political capital in solving the decades-old crisis in Myanmar. There has also been strong criticism of ASEANs peace plan for Myanmar. So far regime chief Min Aung Hlaing has failed to honor most of the points in the plan. Myanmar opposition and rights groups have criticized it as a failure but also expressed concern that the US and Western governments are outsourcing the issue to ASEAN and hiding behind the bloc.

Chollet countered the criticism, saying that ASEAN is taking steps that I think few predicted, referring to the blocs exclusion of the junta leadership from its summits due to Min Aung Hlaings failure to implement the peace plan.

There was doubt they would agree to the decision to disinvite political representation by the regime in high-level meetings and then stick to that position. Its not easy to get to that point. It sounds a little self-serving, but I do think the US advocacy with the ASEAN partners to first make the decision to not invite Burma to a high-level meeting and stick to that decision matters. In individual ASEAN states, in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysiathey are quite helpful and active.

He also said that the US is working with ASEAN and had also been very active in talking to the UK, Australia, the EU, Japan and Korea about ways to work together to help people inside Myanmar.

Its incumbent upon us to do whatever we can to support this, he said.

On China

Chollet also commented on Myanmars powerful neighbor China, which has been supporting the regime.

In April, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Myanmar counterpart Wunna Maung Lwin that China will support Myanmars military government no matter how the situation changes in the country.

Chollet said he thought China had been pretty quiet on this front recently, adding that the US interest in Myanmar was not just about China.

He said he was not aware that China had worked in any way to try to push back on ASEAN, while admitting that China had a complicated relationship with the junta.

And, you know, I would say we dont want them [China] to be part of the problem. We hope that they can be part of the solution.

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Guest Column ASEAN and the Cycles of History

US President Joe Biden, left, and leaders from ASEAN arrive for a group photo on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on May 12. / AFP

The simmering geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, and Russias ongoing invasion of Ukraine have turned the tide of history back to its historical norm. It is easy to see the global stage today as full of tension, confrontation and conflict in a recurrent fashion. But it is worth recalling that merely 30 years ago, the world was in a different phase where a lasting peace seemed viable.

At that time, it looked like the cyclical nature of world history as alternating between war and peace could be put to an end with the right measure and mix of realization and commitment on one hand and corresponding rules and institutions on the other. The total war started by Nazi Germany in Europe and Imperial Japan in Asia seemed to mark a turning point. The European Project was the principal by-product of integration and enmeshment that could ostensibly escape the recurrent waves of war and peace.

For seven decades from the end of World War II, the curve of history was being bent into a line, a linear trajectory from the cyclicality of the past. Europeans know all too well the heady and giddy years of European integration. By 1992, building on previous agreements dating to the 1950s, the Maastricht Treaty had come into place to cement Europes way forward from the rubble of war and the collective vision of its early post-war leaders, such as Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet.

The resulting European Unions linear progression had a good run until the past decade or so, its momentum halted by Brexit, namely the United Kingdoms withdrawal, and now Russian aggression against Ukraine, which many have called Putins war. This war may have revitalized and re-energized the EUs purpose, resolve and commitment to hang tight together, recommitted the UK to counter Russia on the continent via military assistance to Ukraine, rebooted the USs role in Europe, and thereby renewed the Atlantic Alliance. Yet it is inescapable that linearity is finished, as the cyclicality of history has reared its ugly head anew.

The end of linearity means we are back in a new round of confrontation and conflict, this time led by but not exclusively confined to the US-China geostrategic rivalry and competition. The US-China contest has too often been depicted in binary, either/or terms as if the choice and outcome move between 0 and 1. Such a binary view is useful up to a point. Beyond such point, it becomes misleading.

For example, the either/or between democratic America and autocratic China helps us to understand regime types in Southeast Asia and some parts of the developing world. The correlation between authoritarian regimes in developing countries being sympathetic and supportive of China is noticeable, whereas more democratic forms of government have found consonance in the USs emphasis on elections and democracy with attendant basic rights and freedoms.

This US-China dichotomy is particularly applicable in Southeast Asia. Cambodia and Laos are all-in on China, with Brunei, Myanmar and Thailand leaning in the same direction. The other side comprises more-or-less pro-democracy regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, with autocratic Vietnam as the outlier for being critical of China on political-security matters but dependent on Beijing for trade, investment and overall economic partnership. In fact, as regional surveys have pointed out, the broader trend is that Southeast Asian states rely on China for growth and development and look to the US for counterbalance when it comes to regional security maintenance and the avoidance of Chinese hegemony.

Moreover, the US-China binary has limits because at any given time there are other major powers in the Southeast Asia mix. No country around here looks only to China or America without diplomatic regard and economic and strategic ties with Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, and the EU, particularly its substantial members such as France and Germany. Now the UK is charting its own path as a major player in the region. So the binary can be misleading because not all is about the US and China.

In addition, the US-China binary can be too static and unable to capture emerging dynamics and patterns. China, for instance, is facing difficulties overcoming COVID-19, with an economic slowdown and domestic pressure in view of the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi Jinpings unprecedented third term. Indeed, post-COVID China is less dynamic than pre-COVID China. Not long ago, there was much talk and speculation about the Asian Century, even a Chinese Century and Pax Sinica with a China-centered global order. The specter of Chinas centennial dominance somehow now rings faintly, much less convincing than before. The US is in no better shape, deeply polarized within and self-conflicted, with regular gun violence and domestic crises that distract from its superpower role abroad.

The upshot for Thailands neighborhood is that ASEAN will become more of a motley mainland-maritime region of divergent regime types, geographically divided by the South China Sea, and less of an effective organization based on ASEAN centrality. This neighborhood as a regional organization is a recent phenomenon. What we are seeing in Southeast Asia is also a return to its roots as a region. It does not mean ASEAN will perish. The grouping, now effectively down to nine members after Myanmars coup in February 2021 and civil war since, will still hold meetings and try to convene major gatherings.

But the ASEAN narrative that underpinned the ASEAN charter has lost luster. For ASEAN to thrive, the major powers around it have to orbit in rough balance and be at relative peace. When the major powers are in conflict, ASEAN gets picked apart and becomes more of a divided region.

For Thailand, navigating the rocky global horizon with looming headwinds is a familiar challenge. In a world of more self-help and less global cooperation and collective action, Thailand has a solid track record of nifty survival, especially if it can restore a domestic consensus on how the country should be governed and where it should position itself on the wider geostrategic canvas.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, PhD, is professor at the Faculty of Political Science and director of its Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University.

This article first appeared in The Bangkok Post.

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June 13, 2022



On June 13, Valerie Martin Conley officially started in her role as Idaho State Universitys Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. Idaho State first announced Martin Conleys appointment six months ago, following an extensive national search process.

Valerie brings a wealth of experience to this role at our University, said President Kevin Satterlee. She is well prepared to support our mission of educating students, and her strong leadership will enhance our new strategic plan. Valerie is very excited to be part of her Bengal Family and ready to get to work.

Martin Conley comes to Idaho State with more than 30 years of experience in higher education. She previously served as Dean of the College of Education at University of Colorado Colorado Springs, a position she assumed in 2015. As dean, Martin Conley led the launch of new degree programs, increasing enrollment, and putting the college on sound financial footing. Prior to that, she was department chair and professor in the department of Counseling and Higher Education in the Gladys W. and David H. Patton College of Education at Ohio University, where she also served as director of the Center for Higher Education.

I am delighted to join a campus community focused on student success in an environment of trust, compassion, and hope, said Martin Conley. I am looking forward to working with faculty and staff to maximize the strengths of the institution and moving ISU's academic mission of excellence forward.

A mission-driven and collaborative leader, Martin Conley has a clear vision of the role of a 21st century university, and the skills necessary to provide leadership for success. She spent nearly the first decade of her career working as a consultant to the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington, DC. During this time, Martin Conley developed a nuanced understanding of the complexity of higher education. In 1997, she began working on a college campus. As an institutional researcher, Martin Conley developed an understanding of culture and context within colleges and universities, as well as an in-depth knowledge of organization and administration of higher education and the changing needs of diverse learners.

Martin Conley received her bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Virginia and her doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from Virginia Tech. She holds, among her most notable accomplishments, being named the Ohio University Outstanding Graduate Faculty Member, an award given by graduate students to recognize an individual professor who has made a difference in their lives.

Martin Conley and the Academic Affairs leadership team are planning a number of future opportunities to meet and engage with faculty and staff. More information about the events and opportunities will be shared in the coming months.
Announced at Money 20/20 in Europe, the Shariah-compliant MVP was developed in six weeks.

Australian financial institutions can leverage the Islamic banking viable product to enhance offerings and deliver personalised Islamic banking services to their customers.

Estimated to be around 1.2 million, Australian Muslims are seeking financial services that can accommodate their religious beliefs but lack the opportunity to do so.

One in three Australian Muslims admit to keeping significant cash savings at home because of a lack of suitable finance options and to avoid earning interest  which is seen as non-Sharia.

Mobiquity vice president global financial services Matthew Williamson sees an opportunity for an emerging generation actively seeking banking solutions that accommodate their religious beliefs.

The future of Islamic finance is disrupting traditional models as more people, particularly the younger generation, seek banking solutions that meet religious needs and encourage an ecosystem of fair, ethical and moral responsibility, Williamson says.

To meet customer expectations, Islamic fintechs worldwide need to use technology that enables flexible banking solutions to suit their customers lifestyles. Customers increasingly want digital banking that they can trust and that are convenient to use, Williamson adds.

With approximately 1.9 billion Muslims in the world today, the Islamic fintech market is expected to reach $220 billion by 2025 and its tipped that APAC will become a focus region due to its growing Muslim population.

Research shows that almost half of Australian Muslims who have taken out a mortgage with a traditional bank were reluctant to do so, as the interest earnings run contrary to their religious beliefs. Theres now an opportunity to use our Islamic banking MVP to extend culturally ethical banking services that truly delight and exceed expectations of customers, says Mobiquity general manager APAC Gustavo Quiroga.

Built in only six weeks, this MVP marked the start of Islamic bankings potential in Asia Pacific  a region thats home to a growing Muslim community. Our team is beyond excited to grow our services in this space and partner with like-minded financial institutions who see the value in investing in such ethical practices, Quiroga adds.

Islamic Finance Council UK (UKIFC) board member Omar Shaikh says the Islamic finance market is continuing to grow in demand globally.

These customers are moving from demanding to expecting highly efficient and effective digital banking services as the primary delivery channel. Focusing on digital along with Islamic finance presents a strong business model that leverages two of the highest growth segments within financial services. The enhanced transparency and choice that is enabled by digital solutions is a key asset when delivering faith based, ethical banking products, concludes Shaikh.

This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 10 June 2022.
COMPANY NEWS: Boomi, the intelligent connectivity and automation leader, today announced that it has surpassed 20,000 customers, representing the largest customer base of any cloud integration platform as a service provider.

Fortune 500 companies and notable brands globally, such as AT&T, Cisco, LinkedIn, Moderna, and Novartis, along with leading international companies like Ampol, Australian Red Cross, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Sky, leverage the Boomi AtomSphere Platform to drive better business outcomes. Boomis customers rely on the category-leading, global software as a service (SaaS) companys award-winning technology, robust community, and world-class partners to accelerate productivity, drive innovation, and thrive during change.

In addition to working with worldwide brands, Boomi also works with leading non-profit organisations that are focused on connecting the world for good, extending Boomis mission to connect everyone to everything, anywhere.

Our team supports the people and systems that bring researchers together with the ultimate goal of curing cancer, said American Association for Cancer Research director enterprise platform services and data management Craig Eisenberger.

Boomi enables us to create seamless and real-time connections between our systems so we can have a single, shared version of truth across our organisation. Through the Boomi platform, well produce and distribute more accurate data, and the insights we acquire will enable our stakeholders to spend less time creating reports and more time driving our mission forward.

Todays global organisations need intelligent connectivity and automation like never before, said Boomi chief operating officer Chris Port.

Supply chain disruptions have caused a projected $4 trillion in lost revenues. The Great Reshuffle and the need to support a growing hybrid and remote workforce are straining already lean resources. Silos continue to prevent companies from realising the value of their data, added Port.

Businesses of all sizes, across all geographies and industries, turn to Boomi and our vast ecosystem to successfully solve challenges like these, quickly and easily.

Boomis worldwide network of more than 800 partners, including Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, SAP, and Snowflake, as well as the three largest cloud providers  Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft  have helped fuel the companys rapid customer growth as demand for intelligent connectivity and automation continues to accelerate.

Boomis low-code, cloud-native, enterprise-grade integration platform scales to support the largest customer deployments  recently processing more than one trillion documents and 65 billion integrations  enabling enterprises to quickly and easily unify their full digital ecosystems. By connecting data and systems across hybrid digital environments, organisations can break down business silos, unlock the power of data, and streamline workflows to better serve customers, employees, and partners.

As the pioneer of cloud-based iPaaS, the Boomi AtomSphere Platform serves as the backbone of innovation in organisations, saving thousands of hours in tedious development and accelerating time to value while addressing digital transformation imperatives. Boomi touts a growing user community of over 100,000 members and one of the largest arrays of global system integrators (GSI) in the iPaaS space.

Positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for enterprise platform as a service (EiPaaS) for eight consecutive years, the company recently received the Gold Globee Award in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) category, and has garnered numerous awards for being an employer of choice, including a recent listing as one of Inc Magazines Best Workplaces.

Gartner Disclaimer:

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartners research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks and service mark of Gartner. and/or its affiliates in the US and internationally and are used herein with permission.

About Boomi

Boomi instantly connects everyone to everything, anywhere with its cloud-native, unified, open, and intelligent platform. Boomi's integration platform as a service (iPaaS) is trusted by more than 20,000 customers globally for its speed, ease-of-use, and lower total cost of ownership. As the pioneer at fuelling intelligent use of data, Boomi's vision is to make it quick and easy for customers and partners to discover, manage, and orchestrate data, while connecting applications, processes, and people for better, faster outcomes.
COMPANY NEWS: Dell Technologies runs a specialised program for high school students called Dell Student TechCrew. This initiative is designed to promote future career skills and learning through Dells industry leading technical certification program and practical, hands-on experience as students help their peers and school staff members with technology issues.

Student TechCrew enables students to be their schools own IT support, arming them with access to technology skills and training for future tech jobs, while also providing the school a valuable resource at no additional cost. The Cathedral College students have completed the first year of the program.

At the end of the program, the students train the next class of Student TechCrew participants and help them obtain their Dell TechDirect Certification, an industry qualification that IT professionals use to manage their devices, allowing the program to further scale.

Dell Technologies has successfully run this initiative around the globe, and The Cathedral College is one of the first Australian schools to participate.

The initiative is designed to promote future career skills and learning through Dells industry leading technical certification program and practical, hands-on experience as students help their peers and school staff members with technology issues.

Three local schools have participated in the program over the past year, with another six signed up to take part in 2022. The schools, which are located across New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, will provide their students with the career-readiness skills and certifications to help them thrive in the IT sector after leaving school.

Weve provided a summary of the key points, as well as some quotes from various spokespeople below.

Empowering Australia and New Zealands Future Leaders

Following the impressive results across North America, Dell Technologies has begun the rollout of the program across ANZ.

This year, six new schools across Australia and New Zealand will participate in the initial teacher training program to set up their individual school Dell Student TechCrews. This follows in the successful footsteps of the inaugural ANZ Student TechCrew school, The Cathedral College in Rockhampton, Central Queensland.

Principal of the Catholic co-educational Boarding College Rob Alexander said to be chosen by global leaders Dell Technologies to be the first school in Australia to deliver its Student TechCrew program is a great honour. Were thrilled as this will give our students from a broad range of backgrounds a leading-edge advantage they can share with their peers.

Our Dell Student TechCrew have the opportunity to drive a world class program gaining industry qualifications that will equip them with the skills they need to flourish in the IT industry whilst assisting their peers with IT support, he said.

Will, a student at The Cathedral College, said the highlight of the program is the career pathways it breaks open for students. The qualifications we receive give us a clear advantage in the STEM field for study and work beyond school. To see passionate people through the virtual field studies who love their work in IT makes this career very appealing and opens your eyes to what may be possible.

The Dell Student TechCrew program has given me a tremendous sense of empowerment and independence that I dont need to rely on others, says Maridon, a Year 12 student and the only female of the program encourages other girls to join.

Technology is our present and future. To know that I am able to work with technology and have an understanding of it through the qualifications the Dell Student TechCrew program gives me is invaluable for my future.

Aaron Nunn, ICT Director at The Cathedral College, said to be the first school outside of North America to join the Student TechCrew program is a privilege and a wonderful opportunity for the school community.

From the industry qualifications, to the hands on practical, to the valuable soft skills and insights, our students have enthusiastically embraced the program and are eager to broaden their future career pathways, he said.

The program features a train the trainer model, where Dell Technologies train educators or non-profit partners on how to deliver the TechDirect certification which has been adapted to meet the needs of high school students.

Using the Conrad Design Method developed by the Conrad Foundation, a non-profit organisation and Dell Technologies strategic giving partner, the program equips students with future career skills such a problem solving, entrepreneurism and innovative thinking. Students are also invited to participate in the Conrad Challenge, where teams compete to develop innovation solutions to global challenges.

Based on feedback from the initial pilot program, from April this year, TechCrew has introduced on-demand training for the schools and a live monthly Q&A session for teachers. In June, step-by-step lesson plans will be made available for the participating schools.

Angela Fox, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Dell Technologies ANZ, says its only a matter of time before programs like Student TechCrew become widespread. When you reflect on the skills shortage facing the technology industry, as well as the hybrid learning education models that have become more pervasive, programs like this play a pivotal role in equipping students with the tools they need for the future. These student-led helpdesks give these young people an opportunity to gain insights and experience in our industry. It empowers them to be comfortable around technology, inspiring them to study IT at a tertiary level that ultimately nurtures the next generation of IT professionals.

The Importance of Dell Student TechCrew

Its anticipated that a global tech shortage of 4.3 million will arrive by 2030. Technology is at the core of innovation, so in order for us to progress as a society, we need to ensure that were helping the next generation of leaders and workers understand the intricacies of the IT sector.

In 2015, when the increasing presence of technology in schools began outpacing the IT resources available to service the devices, Kim Boutwell, who worked for a school district in Texas, came up with a brilliant idea  enabling students to become their own IT support.

A few years later, when Boutwell began working at Dell Technologies, she brought her program forward, and together with Dells industry leading IT certification and scale, they were able to deliver TechCrew to schools across the United States.

Litzy Whiffin, a former student at Colleyville ISD, Texas in the U.S. says Student TechCrew has had a profound impact on her career goals.

Before the Dell Student TechCrew program, I wasnt sure if I really wanted to go to college. I wasnt sure what I wanted to pursue, she says. I had the idea of IT, but I wasnt quite sure and wasnt ready yet. Now, I know for sure that I want to go to college and pursue a career in IT.
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The Libyan Presidential Council has given 72 hours to the Ministers of Defence and Interior to submit a report on the armed clashes that took place on Friday evening in the capital, Tripoli
Johnson City, TN (37604)

Today

Isolated thunderstorms this evening, then skies turning partly cloudy after midnight. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms this evening, then skies turning partly cloudy after midnight. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
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
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FASB is seeking feedback on whether IAS 20 represents a workable solution for improving U.S. GAAP for business entities as it relates to the accounting for government grants.

FASB's Invitation to Comment (ITC), Accounting for Government Grants by Business Entities: Potential Incorporation of IAS 20, Accounting for Government Grants and Disclosure of Government Assistance, Into Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, is designed to give FASB input on whether to begin a standard-setting project on the topic.

Stakeholders are encouraged to review and provide comment on the ITC by Sept. 12, 2022.

"This ITC invites all our stakeholders to share input that will help the board decide whether to undertake a standard-setting project on the recognition, measurement, and presentation of government grants for business entities," FASB technical director Hillary Salo said in a news release.

In 2021, FASB issued the Invitation to Comment, Agenda Consultation, which gave stakeholders the opportunity to provide input on FASB's future priorities. The 2021 ITC asked stakeholders to weigh in on a broad range of issues, including whether FASB should pursue a project on the recognition and measurement of government grants  and, if so, whether it should leverage an existing grant or contribution model or develop a new accounting model.

FASB said that about three-quarters of stakeholders who provided specific feedback on that question, including investors, practitioners, preparers, and state CPA societies, "preferred that FASB leverage" IAS 20.

In response to this feedback, FASB Chair Richard R. Jones added a project, Accounting for Government Grants, Invitation to Comment, to the research agenda.

Published as part of that research project, the government grants ITC solicits additional feedback from stakeholders on relevant requirements in IAS 20 and includes specific questions for investors about the importance and use of government grants information to their analysis of a company's financial performance.

 To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Kevin Brewer at Kevin.Brewer@aicpa-cima.com.
Amnesty International on Monday accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying attacks on Kharkiv, many using banned cluster bombs, had killed hundreds of civilians.

The repeated bombardments of residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes, the rights group said in a report on Ukraines second biggest city.

This is true both for the strikes carried out using cluster (munitions) as well as those conducted using other types of unguided rockets and unguided artillery shells, it said.

The continued use of such inaccurate explosive weapons in populated civilian areas, in the knowledge that they are repeatedly causing large numbers of civilian casualties, may even amount to directing attacks against the civilian population.

Amnesty said it had uncovered proof in Kharkiv of the repeated use by Russian forces of 9N210 and 9N235 cluster bombs and scatterable land mines, all of which are banned under international conventions.

Cluster bombs release dozens of bomblets or grenades in mid-air, scattering them indiscriminately over hundreds of square metres (yards).

Scatterable land mines combine the worst possible attributes of cluster munitions and antipersonnel land mines, Amnesty said.

Unguided artillery shells have a margin of error of over 100 metres.

The report, entitled Anyone Can Die At Any Time, details how Russian forces began targeting civilian areas of Kharkiv on the first day of the invasion on February 24.

The relentless shelling continued for two months, wreaking wholesale destruction on the city of 1.5 million.

People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queueing for humanitarian aid, or shopping for food and medicine, said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationals Senior Crisis Response Adviser.

The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives.

The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable.

Kharkivs Military Administration told Amnesty 606 civilians had been killed and 1,248 wounded in the region since the conflict began.

Russia and Ukraine are not parties to the international conventions banning cluster munitions and anti-personnel mines.

But, Amnesty stressed, international humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks and the use of weapons that are indiscriminate by nature.

Launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in death or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects, constitutes war crimes.

One of the witnesses Amnesty spoke to had survived cancer, only to lose both her legs in a Russian cluster bomb attack.

Olena Sorokina, 57, was outside her building when flying shrapnel hit her. She lost one leg instantly and the other had to be amputated later.

A neighbour with her was killed on the spot. The latters daughter said the shrapnel tore through the building.

Even if mum had been inside her home she would have been hit. She stood no chance in the face of such bombing, she said.

Amnesty investigated 41 Russian strikes that killed at least 62 people and wounded at least 196. It spoke to 160 people in Kharkiv over two weeks in April and May, including survivors, victims relatives, witnesses and doctors.

Ukraine says it has launched more than 12,000 war crimes probes since the war began.
JUSTICE INFO: How do you explain that it is mostly politicians talking of genocide while jurists are much more cautious?

JACQUES SEMELIN: There is a very simple answer, which is that the word genocide is perceived today as the crime of crimes, so it is obvious that, by using this term, political leaders hope to gain emotional capital. This happens in many conflicts. What is interesting is to situate this rhetoric of genocide in the Russian-speaking world. I find it surprising that no one has really noticed it. In the 1980s, Serbs in Kosovo claimed that the Albanians were perpetrating genocide against them. This rhetoric justified their aggression against the Albanians, who were the majority. Russia has taken up this rhetoric. In 2008, [Georgian] President [Mikhael] Saakashvili was described as a new Hitler carrying out a genocide against the Ossetians. Putin has taken that line completely on board and so now, in the Donbass, the term genocide is used to justify the aggression. It is obviously a propaganda word, and it is a matter of deconstructing it and understanding that what the Russians want is to conquer the territories they are targeting.

The Ukrainian president also makes emotional use of it, but this time to present himself as a victim and call for international solidarity. He does this very well, but he is also in a register of propaganda. We know that journalists are fond of this type of emotional approach. But jurists cannot just take that step, nor even a certain number of politicians and political scientists like me. It is a battle of words and emotions to conquer public opinion, fought on the back of the dead.

For Europe and Ukraine, speaking of Nazism has strong resonance. Isnt it this history thats also evoked with the word genocide?

Yes, there is an absolutely tragic background of mass crimes committed in Ukraine in the period 1939-1945. And the formula that comes to my mind is that of Omer Barthov, a great historian of the Holocaust who worked on Ukraine, from which his family came. He talks about mirrors of destruction. The use of the word genocide by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky is just that. Its saying: Im holding up a mirror to the destruction that you are doing, or that you intend to do. And this current rhetoric is built on the dead of 1939-45 and even before, since one must also count the famine that preceded it. Mass crimes have a tremendous amount of resonance in this region, and thats why Putin evokes Russias war of liberation from Nazism, among other things. Again, this propaganda is built on the legacy and exploitation of the dead. The dead become the existential hostages of the living. They are dead, so they are used in one way or another to justify a political struggle.

But from a legal point of view, should we put aside the possibility of genocide?

From a legal point of view, one can criticize [US President Joe] Bidens speech where he used the word genocide. We think of the Shoah, we think of the Holocaust, with hundreds of thousands of people killed because they were Jews. We are not there, but should we completely put aside using the word genocide when Putin expresses a desire to deny the Ukrainian identity, which for him does not exist? It is very strong in his speeches. However, if we reread Raphael Lemkins first text in 1944, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, where we find his famous chapter on genocide, he uses the word not to define the destruction of a racial group but also a national one. Lemkin was Polish. He saw what was happening in Poland. It is this dimension of identity, of the Polish soul, which is central to his definition of genocide. And this is what made him announce the idea that genocide is a biological destruction of the group, but also a destruction of the identity of this group. And the 1948 Convention [on the prevention of genocide] defines well acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. There is indeed national. What do we do with that? I am not a lawyer. I am not saying that this is the truth. But I would like to discuss it.

What would allow us to settle this debate?

Its always about intent. Putins intent is to destroy the Ukrainian nation. But when you look at the facts, you see this is not possible. So there is this psychological, cultural, symbolic intent that comes up against the fact that it cant be realized.

Intent is there, but its not possible, so does that mean there is no genocide?

Yes, we could say that. The intent is there but he cannot achieve it, so there is no genocide. What dominates is the crime of aggression. It is a state that invades another state. This is the basis of Putins action. But his rhetoric, the rhetoric that supports this crime of aggression, is carried by a genocidal intent.

How is this different from what happened in the Balkans in the 1990s, which has been called ethnic cleansing and more rarely genocide?

My approach is to go back to the political logic and purpose. I have tried to get away from the emotional in all these debates, by trying to show how the massacre serves a political purpose. So I make the distinction, which I believe is fundamental in many conflicts not only today but throughout history, between destroying to subjugate and destroying to eradicate. This seems to me to be the strongest, the most relevant thing from the point of view of political analysis.

Destroying in order to subjugate is to destroy part of the group but with the aim of subjugating what is left of it. This is Putins logic. The effect of terror is to obtain the submission of the adversary. It is as old as war and linked to territorial conquests. This is what we are seeing, and I would even say that we could develop this aspect with new words that have unfortunately appeared in recent years. There is the term urbicide, which came from the mayor of Sarajevo to say that they are trying to destroy the city. This destruction of the city is part of the project of subjugation. We see it at work in Mariupol. There, we are not at all in genocide, we are in the will to submit a region.

The other logic is destroying to eradicate. In this case, it is not only a question of destroying a group, but of eradicating this group as if it were a poisonous plant or a contagious disease. This is the logic that we saw at work in the 1990s with what was called ethnic cleansing and which led to genocide. I think this is a really solid distinction.

Putins goal is not eradication, its subjugation. I am freeing myself from a legal approach by going in that direction. Putin implements a logic of destruction-submission of the Ukrainians by grafting genocidal rhetoric onto it, because he knows that will touch people emotionally. But in fact, it is rhetoric, and this rhetoric is addressed to the Russians. It is to mobilize them in the war effort against the Nazi enemy. Putin, in this sense, is anchored in a past, in a propaganda that he considers can serve his cause.

On the Ukrainian side, the most impressive response is not speeches referring to genocide. What is most powerful is the patriotic response, the will to resist the invader, to show their willingness to defend themselves at all costs. It is this patriotic logic that prevails.

Ukrainian justice is moving fast. In a first war crimes trial, a young Russian soldier was sentenced to life in jail after pleading guilty. How do you see that?

It is not usual in history for a trial to take place while the war is going on. I am not too much in favour of this. The judge needs some distance. Justice, if done quickly, is also a way of asserting revenge. I almost expected, given the current ideological context, that this young man would be convicted of genocide. But no, he was convicted of a war crime. This clearly establishes a division between the political use of the word genocide and its more reasoned application in legal terms.

The International Criminal Court has been seized of the Ukraine situation by many States that are members of NATO and, to varying degrees, parties to the conflict, and they have given it unprecedented means. How can it preserve even the appearance of independent justice?

It cant. It has been my opinion for a long time that justice for mass crimes is political. Some crimes will not be judged because they were committed by the victors, and the victors will not judge themselves.
Ukraine said Monday that its forces had been pushed back from the centre of key industrial city Severodonetsk, where President Volodymyr Zelensky described a fight for literally every metre.

The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which are separated by a river, have been targeted for weeks as the last areas still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Lugansk region.

Regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said Monday that Russian forces were gathering more and more equipment to encircle Severodonetsk, and that they had pushed our troops from the centre and continue to destroy our city.

The Azot chemical plant, where hundreds of civilians have reportedly taken refuge was still being shelled, he said.

In Lysychansk, three civilians were killed by shelling, including a six-year-old boy, Gaiday said.

On Sunday, Zelensky said the latest fighting in Severodonetsk was very fierce, adding that Russia was deploying undertrained troops and using its young men as cannon fodder.

Russias massed artillery in that region gave it a tenfold advantage, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military Valeriy Zaluzhny said Sunday.

Every metre of Ukrainian land there is covered in blood  but not only ours, but also the occupiers.

The capture of Severodonetsk would open the road for Moscow to another major city, Kramatorsk, in their steps toward conquering the whole of Donbas, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.

 War crimes 

Amnesty International on Monday accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying that attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv  many using banned cluster bombs  had killed hundreds of civilians.

The repeated bombardments of residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes, the rights group said in a report on Ukraines second biggest city.

Away from the battlefield, World Trade Organization members gathered in Geneva Sunday, and at the top of the agenda was the issue of tackling global food security threatened by Russias invasion of wheat-producing Ukraine.

Tensions ran high during a closed-door session, where several delegates took the floor to condemn Russias war, including Kyivs envoy who was met with a standing ovation, WTO spokesman Dan Pruzin told journalists.

Just before Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov spoke, around three dozen delegates walked out, the spokesman said.

That came a day after the head of the European Commission promised Ukraine would receive a signal within a week on its bid to join the European Union.

EU leaders are expected to approve the bid at an upcoming summit, though with strict conditions attached.

In Brussels, demonstrators brandishing Ukrainian flags circled European Commission headquarters Sunday in a show of support.

 Chortkiv strike 

The war has prompted Finland and Sweden to give up decades of military non-alignment and seek to join the NATO alliance.

But Turkey is blocking their bids and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday the issue may not be resolved by an alliance summit later this month.

The United States and Europe have sent weapons and cash to help Ukraine blunt Russias advance, alongside punishing Moscow with unprecedented economic sanctions.

Russian forces said Sunday they had struck a site in the town of Chortkiv in western Ukraine storing US- and EU-supplied weapons.

Russias defence ministry said the strike destroyed a large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defence systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and European countries.

The strike  a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine  left 22 people injured, regional governor Volodymyr Trush said.

Concerns eased Sunday over Ukraines largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. Captured months ago by Russian forces but still operated by Ukrainians, the station had ceased transmitting vital safeguards data two weeks ago.

But plant officials working with the International Atomic Energy Agency have succeeded in restoring transmission, the IAEA said.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the UN agency, said it still wanted to send inspectors to the plant as soon as possible.

 Sentences defended 

Alongside the physical fighting, the war is being played out through the courts.

Pro-Moscow separatist authorities in the Donetsk region this week sentenced to death two Britons and a Moroccan for fighting with the Ukrainian army.

The sentences sparked outrage in Western countries, but separatist Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin said Sunday he would not alter them.

They came to Ukraine to kill civilians for money, he told reporters, calling the punishment perfectly fair.

The families of Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner say they have been living in Ukraine since 2018.

Ukrainian courts have handed three Russian soldiers long prison sentences at war crimes trials.

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Ukraine said Monday its forces had been pushed back from the centre of key industrial city Severodonetsk, where President Volodymyr Zelensky said the fighting was taking a terrifying toll as casualties soar.

With Russias 16-week war of attrition pushing Ukrainian resistance to the limit, Kyiv has reiterated its plea for Western nations to provide additional arms to help it contain Moscows aggression.

The twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk have been targeted for weeks as the last areas still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Lugansk region.

Regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said Monday Russian forces control 70 to 80 percent of Severodonetsk but had not captured or encircled it.

They destroyed all the bridges, and getting into the city is no longer possible. Evacuation is also not possible, he told Radio Free Europe.

Zelensky, in his daily address to the Ukrainian people, said the human cost of this battle is very high for us. It is simply terrifying.

Last week in a rare disclosure of casualty figures, Ukraines Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said up to 100 of his troops were dying daily and 500 sustaining injuries  a rise from the 60-100 Ukrainian soldiers Zelensky estimated on June 1 that were dying daily.

Now, with a ring tightening on the Lugansk region, Ukrainian forces in the area had two choices, to surrender or die, said Eduard Basurin, a representative for pro-Russian separatists.

The capture of Severodonetsk would open the road to Sloviansk and another major city, Kramatorsk, in Moscows push to conquer Donbas, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014.

Ukrainian forces were fighting for every town and village where the occupiers came, Zelensky said on Monday in a message to mark the eighth anniversary of the liberation of Mariupol in the earlier conflict.

In May, Russian troops captured the port city in southern Ukraine after a weeks-long siege.

We are once again fighting for it and all of Ukraine, Zelensky said.

 War crimes 

On Monday, Amnesty International accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying that attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv  many using banned cluster bombs  had killed hundreds of civilians.

The repeated bombardments of residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes, the rights group said in a report on Ukraines second-biggest city.

In Bucha, a town near Kyiv synonymous with war crimes allegations, local police said they had discovered another seven bodies in a grave.

Several victims had their hands tied and knees bound, Kyiv regional police chief Andriy Nebytov said on Facebook.

Dozens of bodies in civilian clothing were found in the town in April after Russian troops withdrew from the area following a month-long occupation.

Elsewhere in northern Ukraine on Monday, Russian rocket strikes hit the town of Pryluky, local authorities said.

Pryluky, which lies about 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of the capital, is home to a military airfield.

In Lysychansk, Russian bombardments killed three civilians in the last 24 hours, including a six-year-old boy, Lugansk governor Gaiday said.

Separatist authorities in the city of Donetsk said three people were killed and four wounded in Ukrainian shelling on a market.

 Weapons call 

Russias invasion of its neighbour has prompted Finland and Sweden to give up decades of military non-alignment and seek to join the NATO alliance.

In terms of security, Sweden is in a better place now than before it applied, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Monday, even though its application is in limbo with Turkey currently withholding its approval.

Stoltenberg said NATO was working hard and actively to resolve Ankaras concerns as soon as possible ahead of a June 15 meeting.

It was at the Brussels summit that Kyiv said Monday it was hoping for a decision on further Western arms deliveries to support its war effort.

Being straightforward  to end the war we need heavy weapons, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter.

Podolyak listed items he said the Ukrainian army requires, including hundreds of howitzers, tanks and armoured vehicles.

 Harvest delayed 

Far from the war, World Trade Organization members were gathering in Geneva to address the threat posed to global food security by Russias invasion.

Ukraines deputy agriculture minister on Monday said a quarter of his countrys arable land had been lost but insisted national food security was not threatened.

On a farm near the southern Ukrainian city Mykolaiv, the harvest has been delayed by the need to undo damage by Russian troops who passed through the area in March.

We planted really late because we needed to clear everything beforehand, including bombshells, Nadiia Ivanova, 42, told AFP.

The farms warehouses currently hold 2,000 tonnes of last seasons grain but there are no takers.

The railways have been partially destroyed by the Russian army, while any ship that sails faces the threat of being sunk.

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Another seven bodies, several with their hands and legs tied, were found in a grave near Bucha, a town near Kyiv synonymous with war crimes allegations, the regional police said Monday.

Seven civilians were tortured by the Russians then executed in a cowardly manner with a bullet to the head, Kyiv regional police chief Andriy Nebytov said on Facebook, saying several victims had their hands tied and knees bound.

This grave was discovered today in an area where Russian troops were stationed near the village of Myrotske which lies some 10 kilometres (six miles) northwest of Bucha, he said.

He said police were working to identify the victims.

Bucha hit the global headlines in early April when dozens of bodies in civilian clothing were found there, some with their hands tied, after Russian troops pulled out of the area following a month-long occupation.

Since then, more and more corpses have been discovered in and around the area, which has become synonymous with allegations of Russian war crimes.

Moscow has repeatedly rejected such claims, insisting they were falsifications orchestrated by Kyiv with the support of the West.

At the end of April, the bodies of another three men with their hands bound, bearing signs of torture who had been shot dead, were found in a grave in Myrotske, police said.

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Rwanda on Monday accused the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, known by its French acronym MONUSCO, of taking sides and supporting Kinshasa as relations between the neighbours plummet.

Recurring tensions between the DRC and Rwanda flared anew last month amid violent clashes near the joint border, which have accused each other of supporting armed groups and even, in recent days, of launching cross-border strikes.

The UN on Saturday urged all parties in the conflict to immediately cease all forms of violence, adding that we reaffirm or strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the DRC and strongly condemn the use of proxies.

On Monday, Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo hit out at MONUSCO, accusing it of being biased in Kinshasas favour.

When the DRC bombs Rwandan territory unprovoked, this is a serious matter that has consequences, and it has to stop once and for all.

The UN force, MONUSCO, cannot be part of this aggression, or stand by and watch it happen as has been the case, otherwise they become complicit, she said on Twitter.

By taking sides in this conflict, MONUSCO has contributed significantly to the intransigence of the DRC Government in cross-border shelling of Rwandan territory, she added.

Since late May, eastern DRC has been the scene of heavy fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 rebel group, a primarily Congolese Tutsi group, and just one of more than 120 armed groups that roam eastern DRC.

Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of supporting the M23, an allegation Kigali has repeatedly denied.

The two countries have recently traded tit-for-tat accusations of cross-border strikes.

Rwandas defence ministry on Friday said the DRCs army fired two rockets into its territory.

The DRC in turn said Rwandan forces had bombed a school in its territory, killing two children in what it described as a war crime and crime against humanity.

Contacted by AFP, spokeswoman Makolo rejected the accusations, describing them as false and dangerous.

Despite repeated provocations Rwanda has not retaliated. There has been no shelling from Rwanda to the DRC, the ongoing fighting there remains an internal matter, she said Monday.

Relations between the two countries have been tense since the arrival in the eastern DRC of thousands of Rwandan Hutus  the ethnic group accused of killing hundreds of thousands of Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

A thaw in the relationship followed the 2019 arrival of Felix Tshisekedi as DRC president, but tensions have sharpened again since last month.
Felicien Kabuga, an alleged financier of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, is fit to stand trial, a UN tribunal ruled Monday, saying it must begin as soon as possible in The Hague.

The Defence has not established that Kabuga is presently unfit for trial, the ruling said, after lawyers had sought to halt proceedings on health grounds.

Kabuga was arrested on May 16, 2020 in a Paris suburb after 25 years on the run.

He is accused of helping create the Interahamwe Hutu militia, the main armed group of the 1994 genocide that claimed more than 800,000 lives, according to the United Nations.

Kabuga, 87, is currently in detention in The Hague awaiting trial before the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT), which is completing the work of the disbanded International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Various experts were involved in preparing the case for the tribunal, which unequivocally demonstrates that Kabuga is in a vulnerable and fragile state and requires intensive medical care and monitoring, the MICT said.

The opinions of independent forensic experts differed on Kabugas fitness to stand trial, but they agreed that his condition could render him unfit in the future, the tribunal said.

He needs 24-hour nursing care and as such currently resides in a prison hospital, it added.

The judges conceded that the issue of Kabugas fitness to stand trial had not been easy to determine and recommended that his condition be monitored continuously.

The MICT said it was in the interests of justice for the trial to begin as soon as possible and to proceed in the tribunals branch in The Hague  rather than its Arusha chamber.

Kabuga, a former president of the Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which broadcast calls for the killing of Tutsis, is accused by the MICT of genocide, incitement to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.
The previous episodes revealed a loving mother's state. Because of this, Lee Byung Hun caters to Kim Hye Ja's every need, and makes sure she's happy.

A story of love, pain and beautiful memories. Read to know more about what went down in the final episode of "Our Blues."

'Our Blues' Episode 20: Lee Dong Seok Promises To Bring Kang Ok Dong To Mount Halla

During their Mokpo trip, Lee Dong Seok (Lee Byung Hun) and Kang Ok Dong (Kim Hye Ja) managed to mend all the burned bridges.

The two spent their time together as regular mother-and-son, as if maximizing the remaining time they both have.

Lee Dong Seok and Kang Ok Dong also went to eat different South Korean dishes, even though his mother couldn't fully eat everything due to her illness.

They also went to Manangdari, the town where Kang Ok Dong grew up in, which Mokpo turned into a reservoir. He also trekked Mount Halla that was covered in snow, and took beautiful pictures for his mother.

On their way home, Lee Dong Seok warmed up to his estranged mother even more, and also taught her how to write their names, their favorite places and favorite things.

A Insurmountable Loss and Pain

After Lee Dong Seok drops his mother off at her house, he asks her to cook soybean paste stew, their favorite food, when he visits her tomorrow.

Delighted, Kang Ok Dong complies and busies herself. After she cooks her son's favorite dish, she prepares her bed and drifts off to sleep.

The following day, Lee Dong Seok happily eats the stew, not knowing what painful surprise life has in store for him.

When he checks his sleeping mother, he realizes that she passed away in her sleep. Hurt, Lee Dong Seok embraces her mother and tells her how much she aches to feel her in his arms.

The whole town of Pureung mourns and weeps for the loss of a great friend and a mother.

Pureung Village's Victory

Kang Ok Dong's death shook the town but they needed to move forward. However, they made sure to keep her memory alive in their hearts.

As the annual olympic meet draws nearer, Lee Dong Seok, Hyun Chun Hui (Go Doo Shim), Jung Eun Hui (Lee Jung Eun), Lee Young Ok (Han Ji Min), Park Jeong Jun (Kim Woo Bin) as well as Min Seon Ah (Shin Min Ah) all prepare themselves to take down the opposing team.

Even their old friends Go Mi Ran (Uhm Jung Hwa) and Choi Han Su (Cha Seung Won) returned to Jeju for the festivities.

Their beloved friends, families and fellow workers are all present cheering for them. At the end of the episode, the Pureung villagers took home the trophy and celebrated victory.

KDramaStars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
"My Liberation Notes" star Lee El expressed her disappointment over the upcoming Waterbomb Festival in Seoul.

The water-theme music festival is gaining the hype among the public for its unique take on the concert while featuring a star-studded lineup. It includes MAMAMOO Hwasa, EXO Kai, ZICO, Jay Park, Jessi, Simon Dominic, Loco, and more.

On its official website, the highly anticipated music festival and not to mention, the iconic annual summer concert in Korea will be a three-day event from June 24 to 26.

The festival, which will take place in Jamsil Stadium in Seoul, will feature an all-star lineup and showcase exciting games, including water fighting with water guns and a swimming pool party.

On the other hand, organizers mentioned on their website that the "water supplied at the festival has been sterilized and therefore, harmless to the human body."

Lee El Criticizes Seoul's Waterbomb Festival

Amid the public's excitement, Lee El took to social media to castigate the tone-deaf annual summer festivals since the country is in the middle of a drought.

As obtained by Newsis, the actress posted on her Twitter, calling out the Waterbomb Festival

"I wish I could sprinkle 300 tons of water at the Water Night Concert in the Soyang River," she wrote.

Her tweet was supported by the netizens who thought that it was a waste of resources, especially during a drought.

In her comment section, one fan responded and said that she "agrees" with what Lee El pointed out while someone wrote, "Let's have a concert at Soyang River."

Lastly, one even pointed out that these types of festivals should be stopped.

As noted by the outlet, the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) cited that the accumulated precipitation nationwide this 2022 until the 11th only hit 196.2 mm, which is considered 57 percent of the average year.

Due to this, the Soyang River, which used to be filled with river water, has exposed its cracked river bed because of drought.

Lee El Overwhelmed by Response on 'My Liberation Notes'

Lee El's Twitter rant comes weeks after the finale of the hit Kdrama "My Liberation Notes," where she stars as one of the lead characters alongside Son Seok Koo, Kim Ji Won, and Lee Min Ki.

In the drama, the 39-year-old South Korean beauty took the role of Yeom Ki Jung, the eldest among the three siblings.

Despite being the perfect eldest sister, she longs to find her true love.

Following the drama's triumphant finale, the cast, including Lee El, expressed gratitude to the viewers.

As obtained by an outlet, the actress said that she was overwhelmed by the fans' positive response.

She shared that seeing "the viewership ratings rise little by little" made her and the team "happy."

Following the success of the JTBC series, viewers would also see Lee El on the big screen through the upcoming thriller movie "She Died" with Shin Hye Sun and Byun Yo Han.
Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, May 16, 2022. The Quebec government wants a federal language law reform to take a different approach towards the province's English-speaking minority and francophone minorities in other party of the country. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle
Opposition B.C. Liberal Party Leader Kevin Falcon is sworn in during an oath ceremony and introduction to the house in the Hall of Honour at legislature in Victoria, Monday, May 16, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
After a relatively mild spring, here comes the heat.

A high pressure system of much warmer air is moving north to take over an area that, until now, has only seen a couple dates with temperatures reaching 80 degrees this year.

There is a strong chance of a thunderstorm or two today across the region, as that front moves into the Upper Midwest.

Todays high may reach 80 degrees, according to forecasts, then they anticipate the mercury will push even higher on Tuesday.

Record high temperatures seared the Southwest through the Mississippi Valley over the weekend, driving weekend energy demand as people turn to air conditioners to cool down, with the heat forecast to spread to Chicago and the Great Lakes early this week.

Temperatures into the mid-90s are on forecast for Kenosha County on Tuesday and Wednesday with the mercury only dipping a bit near the Lake Michigan shore.

There is the potential for an overnight thunderstorm by early Thursday. The high temperature on Thursday will again be in the 80s, before a gradual cool down expected by the weekend.

Across the Western U.S., 27 record daily highs were set or tied on Saturday, with many of them in Texas, said Bob Oravec, a senior branch forecaster for the U.S. Weather Prediction Center.

Its going to be pretty hot, Oravec said. Its a pretty standard heat wave pattern, a big area of high pressure stretching from the central Plains to the Southwest.

The high temperatures has sent demand for electricity soaring across the Southwest and Texas. Houston opened cooling centers for residents who werent able to beat the heat at home. Heat advisories and excessive heat warnings stretch from California to Tennessee.

The temperature in Las Vegas reached 109 degrees Fahrenheit for a second day on Saturday, tying a record for the date set in 1940 and again in 1956, the National Weather Service said.

Readings were forecast to hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday. Denver tied a record Saturday with a high of 100. Dallas hit 103 degrees Saturday, tying a record for the day set in 1911, while Houston reached 97 degrees at Hobby Airport setting a record for the date.

Houston, the fourth most populous U.S. city, was expected to hit 100 degrees on Sunday. Dallas was forecast to hit 103, while Fort Worth rises to 104. The heat plus humidity made it feel closer to 107, the National Weather Service said.

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If we want to alleviate the fatigue and frustration women physicians are experiencing, we can always start by solving two old problems: (1) All doctors need fewer bureaucratic tasks forced upon them, and (2) women physicians must be able to work in environments free of harassment and discrimination.

Theres yet another solution that must come from outside the workplace. The spouses and partners of women physicians must confront any gender inequalities that may exist within their relationship.

It would be impossible for anyone to work eight extra hours each week at home  on top of a busy work schedule  without experiencing greater exhaustion, cynicism, and feelings of detachment (a.k.a. burnout).

We know from the data that occupational burnout harms personal relationships. If not addressed, it will continue to add stress to doctors home lives. But physicians must also recognize that gender inequality at home strongly contributes to burnout in the workplace. It, too, must be addressed.

Robert Pearl is a plastic surgeon and author of Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients. He can be reached on Twitter @RobertPearlMD.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, Gender inequality is making burnout worse.

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By Du Wenlong

Some US officials recently threatened to limit defense cooperation with the UK because of their squabble over the acquisition of a British supplier of classified technology for nuclear submarines, reported British media. It is reported that British Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng's recent order to launch a national security investigation into the planned purchase of British firm Ultra Electronics by an American private equity firm has ruffled Washington's feathers.

Ultra Electronics is a military communications equipment producer that provides, among others, highly classified equipment for the Trident nuclear submarine. London has been blocking the deal out of worries that the US may transfer sensitive nuclear submarine technology to Australia through this company to lessen the pressure on itself from public opinions. If anything happens, it may also pass the blame to the UK while raking in profits on the side.

At the moment, there is strong objection within Australia against the introduction of nuclear technology for military purposes. Countries in the South Pacific Ocean have also expressed great concerns. Therefore, directly transferring nuclear submarine technology  or other technologies for that matter  will expose the US and UK to major international moral pressure.

But if the technology is transferred via a British company, the US can stay out of trouble, and pin everything on the UK if a nuclear leak or accident happens in Australia in the future. In that case, under the pressure of overwhelming public opinions, Washington can leave the UK to hold the bag while taking fame and fortune both to itself. It's a stone that kills three birds  facilitating the transaction, maximizing American benefits, and scapegoating the UK.

There are worries that the US might curtail defense cooperation with the UK if the purchase fails  no substantial effects will be generated in fact. The two countries' defense cooperation has been limited to traditional military domains in the first place, so whether the acquisition succeeds or not, the US won't have in-depth cooperation with the UK in the field of high-tech weapons and equipment.

The US is on guard against everyone  including both the UK and France  when it comes to sensitive, high-end technologies. It must guarantee its absolute military superiority in order to maintain global hegemony, so it's not surprising for it to bar cooperation with the UK from key areas of military technologies, such as cyberspace, space-based forces, unmanned systems, and intelligent technologies. Their cooperation is confined to traditional domains. There is no way Washington would share with London in anyway its high-end weapons and equipment that are either being explored or already put into combat.

The US and the UK are ages-old allies, but the purchase deal exposed the "fragility" of the alliance when their interests are at odds. Such squabble and conflict are sure to happen again in the future.

The US remains the dominant power in East Europe, especially during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the Asia Pacific. In comparison, the UK has been following America's lead after it backed out of the EU in hopes of retrieving its "good old days as a global empire". London has dispatched an aircraft carrier to cruise the Asia Pacific and it has been very aggressive on the Ukraine issue, which, however, has only laid bare its anxiety over the fact that its capabilities fall far short of its ambitions. As such, the UK will come across more friction and disputes with the US.

The US only sees the UK as a retinue to help it maintain its hegemony. Even though London has been nothing but supportive to Washington through several local wars, Uncle Sam would never support the Queen in restoring her past glory and diluting American domination within NATO.

Recently, the UK has been trying to form a second NATO  a UK-led anti-Russia alliance  around the Ukraine issue, which is essentially an attempt to supplant and dilute America's responsibility and obligation on international hotspot issues. That is sure to displease the US.

Both historically and in the current stage, the two countries still look like "peas in a pod", only the "peas" are not so much on the same page anymore, and their divergences will be further aggravated by major international issues, especially hotspots and sensitive ones.

Editor's Note: This article is originally published on military.cnr.cn, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
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Glanbia Co-Op has announced this morning (Monday) that construction work is to start on the multi-million euro, state-of-the-art cheese manufacturing facility at Belview Port in south Kilkenny.

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar and Minister for Agriculture will perform the official sod-turning to start the long-awaited project, on Wednesday, June 22.

Kilkenny Cheese Ltd is a joint venture between Glanbia Co-op and family-owned international dairy business, Royal A-ware.

Located in the heart of rural Ireland, the new continental cheese facility will support the incomes of 4,500 farm families once operational.

Consistent with the Government post-Brexit market diversification strategy, and its sustainability policy, the new Enterprise Ireland-supported facility is also expected to create 80 full time jobs and support 400 construction jobs in the south-east.

Plans for the cheese factory were first announced in early 2019, and initial planning permission granted in mid-2020. However construction was delayed for some time because of a legal challenge to its planning permission. That legal process came to an end in February of this year when the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal against the development by An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland, and upheld the High Court's decision to uphold An Bord Pleanalas permission for the factory at Belview.
A national mental health charity is encouraging students feeling overwhelmed by exam stress to avail of a free weekly support group.

Turn2Me - a charity offering counselling and peer support services to people over the age of 12 - runs the online group on Thursdays at 6pm, and all students can access it by creating a free account on their website.

It is also open to parents worried about their children sitting exams.

CEO of Turn2Me, Fiona O'Malley, said, "Young people can feel huge pressure to perform well in the Leaving Cert. These exams play a huge pivotal importance in their lives because the results determine which college courses they can do, which can impact their careers.

"The Leaving Cert results can also affect how young people feel about themselves and their capabilities. Students often worry about disappointing their parents or family members."

Irish students all over the country began their Leaving Certificate exams on Wednesday June 8.

Clinical Manager at the charity, Suzanne Ennis, said although small levels of stress can be a good thing by stopping procrastination and making students focus, problems occur when stress levels increase to "unhealthy levels".

She said, "...They can lose their appetite, their sleep is affected and this can all negatively impact their performance in exams. The Leaving Cert is very challenging for young people. We cant and shouldnt shy away from challenges because they improve our resilience, but managing stress levels during exam season can improve your wellbeing and improve performance in the exams.

"The best way for students to rise to this challenge is to ensure they are as prepared as possible..."

Turn2Me recommends seven tips for handling exam season including pacing work throughout the academic year and staying on top of notes and revision, staying positive, avoiding phones an hour before bed, and avoiding alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.

They also recommend not eating too many sugary or fatty foods which cause energy slumps, avoiding procrastination, creating a timetable, and using deep breathing techniques.

According to Turn2Me, students with increasing anxiety should put their pen down, close their eyes and breathe in deeply for five seconds and exhale slowly for five seconds, repeating until they feel calmer.

Students are also advised to get enough sleep (ideally eight hours), avoid caffeine before bed, and remember disappointing results are not the end of the world.
Kilkenny students have been urged to consider an accountancy apprenticeship programme which will create 140 jobs nationally this year.

Applications are now open for the Accounting Technicians Ireland (ATI) Apprenticeship - based in colleges in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Monaghan, Waterford and Wicklow.

The ATI Apprenticeship is a funded, two-year, work-based learning programme in which apprentices work, learn and earn at least 21,060 a-year.

A graduate of the programme has advised Leaving Certificate students currently sitting their exams not to feel pressurised into entering full-time third level education.

Dublin-based ATI graduate Katie Mikulan, 23, who initially pursued a degree before deciding to begin the Apprenticeship in 2020, said it was the best move she ever made.

I began an accounting and finance degree after my Leaving Certificate, but university was not what I expected; I did not enjoy it as much as I thought and left after a year and a half, she said.

College can be expensive, but a funded apprenticeship programme is a great alternative. Starting the ATI apprenticeship was the best decision I have ever made. I wish I had begun sooner.

After quitting university and working as a customer assistant at Tesco and a beauty adviser in Boots, Katie opted to pursue a career in accounting after taking on an account manager role with Clarins and gaining a certificate in book-keeping.

She completed her two-year apprenticeship with Grant Thornton, where she worked in the international corporate tax team whilst studying part-time through the ATI Academy, located at the Institutes headquarters in Chartered Accountants House on Dublins Pearse Street.

I would recommend the apprenticeship if you are unsure about full-time third level education. Leaving Certificate students should not necessarily feel pressurised to go straight to university when there are so many other options available," Katie added.

Katie now works as a tax operations officer with Citibank and hopes to become a fully qualified tax advisor with the Irish Tax Institute.

Gabriela Airini, Head of Education at ATI, said the Apprenticeship enables employers to recruit and upskill staff in a cost-effective manner as training fees are covered by the state agency, SOLAS.

The Accounting Technician Apprenticeship continues to contribute towards job creation and business growth in Ireland with over 612 jobs created since the programmes foundation in 2017, she said.

Graduates gain a professional QQI Level 6 Advanced Certificate in Accounting and have acquired the skills needed to fill a range of accounting and finance roles across all sectors.

Each year, more employers sign up and we now partner with over 331 across 22 sectors.

School leavers, Leaving Certificate students, career changers and mature learners can all apply through Accounting Technicians Ireland. For more details see 'accountingtechniciansireland.ie'.
Weather Alert

...HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM CDT WEDNESDAY... * WHAT...Heat index values up to 103. * WHERE...Portions of central and northeast Missouri as well as west central Illinois. * WHEN...Until 8 PM CDT Wednesday. * IMPACTS...Hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air-conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors. Young children and pets should never be left unattended in vehicles under any circumstances. Take extra precautions if you work or spend time outside. When possible reschedule strenuous activities to early morning or evening. Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Wear lightweight and loose fitting clothing when possible. To reduce risk during outdoor work, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends scheduling frequent rest breaks in shaded or air conditioned environments. Anyone overcome by heat should be moved to a cool and shaded location. Heat stroke is an emergency! Call 9 1 1. &&
Weather Alert

...HEAT ADVISORY NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM CDT THURSDAY... * WHAT...Heat index values of 100 to 104. * WHERE...Portions of southwest and west central Illinois. Portions of central, east central, northeast, and southeast Missouri. * WHEN...Until 8 PM CDT Thursday. * IMPACTS...Hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air-conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors. Young children and pets should never be left unattended in vehicles under any circumstances. Take extra precautions if you work or spend time outside. When possible reschedule strenuous activities to early morning or evening. Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Wear lightweight and loose fitting clothing when possible. To reduce risk during outdoor work, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends scheduling frequent rest breaks in shaded or air conditioned environments. Anyone overcome by heat should be moved to a cool and shaded location. Heat stroke is an emergency! Call 9 1 1. &&
Weather Alert

...HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM CDT THURSDAY... * WHAT...Heat index values up to 105. * WHERE...Portions of central, east central, and southeast Missouri. * WHEN...Until 8 PM CDT Thursday. * IMPACTS...Hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air-conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors. Young children and pets should never be left unattended in vehicles under any circumstances. Take extra precautions if you work or spend time outside. When possible reschedule strenuous activities to early morning or evening. Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Wear lightweight and loose fitting clothing when possible. To reduce risk during outdoor work, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends scheduling frequent rest breaks in shaded or air conditioned environments. Anyone overcome by heat should be moved to a cool and shaded location. Heat stroke is an emergency! Call 9 1 1. &&
Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup, right, shakes hands with his Polish counterpart, Mariusz Blaszczak, during their talks in Seoul, May 30. Yonhap





By Kang Seung-woo







Poland's possible purchase of Korean military hardware seems to be closer to happening as its evaluation groups visited here for a closer look at the weapons.







Currently, Warsaw has interest in procuring Korea Aerospace Industries' (KAI) FA-50 light combat craft and Hyundai Rotem's K2 tank among others, as expressed by its Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak, who also visited Korea one week earlier and toured local defense companies.







According to the defense industry, the Polish delegation made a closed-door visit to Korea for five days starting Monday, and toured the defense firms as well as military units operating the weapons in which the country is interested.







They toured Air Force and Army units operating the FA-50, the K-30 Biho self-propelled 30-milimeter anti-aircraft gun and the Chunmoo multiple rocket launcher. In addition, they also made a visit to defense companies, including Hanwha Systems and LIG Nex1, both of which have developed active electronically scanned array radar systems.







The delegation also visited Hanwha Defense, which developed the Chunmoo, and Hyundai Rotem.







The Central European country's potential procurement of Korean arms comes after Blaszczak hinted that his country may purchase Korean products to make up for the donation of its military hardware to Ukraine, currently at war with Russia.







Earlier, the Polish defense minister expressed the intent to buy 48 FA-50s, worth 2 trillion won ($1.58 billion), according to media reports, and the country's armament agency also said the aircraft was being considered as a platform for strengthening the Polish Air Force. Poland has already decided to hand off its MiG-29s to Ukraine.







FA-50s have already been exported to multiple countries, including Iraq and the Philippines.







Earlier this month, Blaszczak also hinted at purchasing K-2 tanks.







"We are developing the army and equipping it with the most modern equipment. We buy #ABRAMS tanks, but at the same time we are negotiating the purchase of Korean tanks. We want Korean tanks to be produced in Poland, and we want technology to be transferred," he tweeted.







In April, Poland signed an agreement with the United States to buy 250 Abrams tanks to deter potential Russian aggression on its border.







During a meeting between Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup and Blaszczak, May 30, the two agreed to work together to strengthen practical defense industry cooperation, sharing the view that it would help enhance their common interests, according to Korea's Ministry of National Defense.










Foreign Minister Park Jin left for the United States, Sunday, to have consultations with his American counterpart and other officials on North Korea and pending alliance issues.







He is scheduled to hold his first in-person talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, D.C., Monday (local time).







"(We) will discuss ways for coordination on the increasing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea," he told reporters just before his departure.







Other agenda items include cooperation in the economic security sector, peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region and the Ukraine issue, he added.







During his four-day trip there, the minister is also scheduled to meet with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, as well as congressional leaders and experts at think tanks, for discussions on measures to follow up on last month's summit deal between the leaders of the two nations. Presidents Yoon Suk-yeol and Joe Biden agreed in the Seoul talks to bolster the tech alliance between the two countries. (Yonhap)






Peruvian Ambassador to Korea Daul Matute-Mejia speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at his residence in Yongsan District, Seoul, May 18. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk



By Kwon Mee-yoo



Peru is rich with natural resources. The South American country's main export items are copper and gold, and Korea is the second-largest importer of its copper, which is an essential material for semiconductor chips.



On the 10th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership between Peru and Korea, Peruvian Ambassador to Korea Daul Matute-Mejia hopes to elevate the relationship to another level.



"Peru and Korea have a complementary agenda. And also Peruvians and Koreans work very well together. In addition to this important comprehensive strategic partnerships, we had been signed a free trade agreement one year before in 2011 and this has contributed to the fast growth of bilateral trade and investment in each other," Ambassador Matute-Mejia said during an interview with The Korea Times at his residence in Yongsan District, Seoul, May 18.



The Korea-Peru FTA contributed greatly in expanding the scope of trade between the two countries. According to the embassy, Korea is Peru's fourth-largest trading partner in 2021 with the volume of commercial exchange at around $4.2 billion, which has grown six times bigger since 2010. The trade balance has been positive for Peru, while the service balance has been favorable to Korea.



At the ambassador's residence are many artworks from Peruvian painters as well as many metal crafts from the country, such as silver vases, giving a peek into the country's rich mineral resources.



"Korea needs a lot of copper and we export the copper that Korea needs for its industry, especially for the Fourth Industrial Revolution industries such as semiconductors and batteries. (Considering) all the kinds of use for copper, copper has become a very a strategic mineral in the world, and Peru is a big producer of copper as well as other minerals."





Open-pit copper mine in Peru / gettyimages



Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is another important export of Peru increasing volume steadily from 2019 through 2021, and Korea has also invested in a Peruvian LNG plant.



"Peru has been exporting copper and other minerals to Korea, but we produce gas and transform the gas into liquid and we export LNG to Korea. During the time I'm here the natural gas produced with participation of Korean companies is 17.8 percent of the total production of gas in Peru," he said.



Copper, other minerals and LNG take up over 80 percent of Peru's exports to Korea, but Ambassador Matute-Mejia hopes to expand the scope and sees great potential in another area as well  agricultural products.



"The second year of sales of the fresh Peruvian Hass avocado in Korea had a growth of export amount of a little more than 100 percent. In this sense, Peru has quickly become the largest avocado import destination for Koreans," he said.



"In the future, we expect to introduce (Peruvian) pomegranate, citrus lemon and blueberries to Korea. Peruvian fresh products and superfoods will be new products that will enter Korea in the next few years, making Koreans have very good quality products at low prices."



While Peru exports mainly minerals and gas to Korea, Korea balances the trade with technological products.



"In Peru, Korea is well-known for its excellence in the production of technological products such as appliances, cars, televisions, batteries and equipment of all kinds. It should be noted that this not only has repercussions synonymous with trust in Korea, but also culturally allows an excellent rapprochement between the two countries," Matute-Mejia said.



"In the field of investment, it is important to point out that various Korean companies have a presence in Peru."





Machu Picchu in the Andes Mountains is the most popular tourist destination in Peru. Courtesy of Embassy of Peru in Korea



The ambassador mentioned a Korean-led consortium that has won a new airport project in Chinchero, Peru, which serves as a gateway to Machu Picchu in the Andes Mountains.



"This new project will represent the entrance of tourists to our wonder of the world: Machu Picchu," he said.



"Additionally, more than 40 Korean companies have all kinds of presence in Peru with more than $4 billion Korean investment in Peru in the last four years, because Peru is a gateway to Latin America with its strategic position in the Pacific Ocean, macroeconomic stability and respect for foreign investment."



Korea also provides official development assistance (ODA) to Peru to support balanced development of the country.



"Peru recognizes the ODA as an important component that contributes to national development and that will allow us to close structural gaps and mobilize the resources required for our development," the ambassador said.



"For this reason, the country assumes commitments and responsibilities to ensure that the ODA is aligned with the priorities of national development and the Sustainable Development Goals to 2030."





Kuelap Fortress in northern Peru is built by the Chachapoyas culture in the 6th century. Courtesy of Embassy of Peru in Korea
Israeli dancer and choreographer Oded Ronen performs "More than Human" with Tav Zfania on an outdoor stage at Haeundae Beach in the southern port city of Busan, June 4, as part of the 2022 Busan International Dance Festival. Courtesy of BIDF and Ha Bonggeol



More Israeli dance works to come to Korea later this year



By Kwon Mee-yoo





Israeli dancer and choreographer Oded Ronen

Israeli dancer and choreographer Oded Ronen presented "More than Human," a dance exploring fragility and human connections, during the 18th Busan International Dance Festival (BIDF), June 4.



On the outdoor stage in Haeundae Beach, Ronen and his dance company member Tav Zfania danced while clad in a suit and a helmet and performed highlights of the dance piece Ronen created during the pandemic.



"More than Human" is a new work by Ronen, premiered in Tel Aviv in May.



"This work is about human fragility. I started working on this in the beginning of the pandemic and it took two years to create," he said during an interview with The Korea Times at the Israeli Embassy, June 8.



"As you see the dancers are completely covered and this is originated from the suits of the medical teams in the beginning. I was very interested in the fragility of not being able to breathe and the balls in the work represent pockets of air."



Ronen took interest in this global reality and created the piece showing a deep connection between two people in a crisis.



"For the first time in history the entire world was facing the same fragility at the same time. Everyone was concerned about not being able to breathe. And this is why the work is relevant to any country and especially Korea, because the country took the measures of the pandemic very seriously," he said.



Ronen was trained in the United Kingdom and danced in many countries including Greece, Portugal and the U.K., but he returned to Tel Aviv and founded his own company, where he dances in his own works.



"When I lived abroad for a long time, I found myself yearning to come back to Israel all the time. Since I'm back in this environment, which is very unique culturally and still struggling. It has this human hybrid of tension and survival and high level of artistry. I find my inspiration there and then I can take it to other places."



The Israeli choreographer said he is open to opportunities to collaborate with Korean dance companies or dancers.



"Each dancer brings their own language and style and inspiration and imagination. I'm not the kind of choreographer who brings movement and tells dancers to do the movement. I bring a concept and each dancer brings their way of interpreting and they are always right," he said.



"There is an under-the-surface tension in Korea with its neighbors. It's something you don't feel on the street, but it exists in the soul of Korea. I'm interested in this energy of Koreans. From what I saw, they are very collected and very open, but still facing this ground, shaking underneath their feet, just a tiny bit all the time. This is something I would like to explore physically with Korean dancers."





Rasha Atamny, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Israel in Korea, introduces Israeli dance in Haeundae, Busan, June 4. Courtesy of BIDF and Ha Bonggeol
Swiss Ambassador to Korea Dagmar Schmidt Tartagli delivers opening remarks during "Women Wellbeing: Cultural Context and Tech Developments" startup roadshow and open talk, part of the Swiss-Korea Innovation Week, at Space Sallim in Dongjak District, Seoul, June 8. Courtesy of Embassy of Switzerland in Korea





By Kwon Mee-yoo







The Embassy of Switzerland in Korea hosted the annual Swiss-Korean Innovation Week from June 7 to 10 highlighting diversity as a driver for innovation.







The centerpiece of the events was Startup Roadshow and Open Talk with Tech4Eva, June 8, raising public awareness in Korea on pioneering femtech, or technologies for women's health and wellbeing, in Korea.







The embassy's Science and Technology team joined hands with Tech4Eva, the first accelerator for global startups in the femtech sector in Switzerland, to bridge the Swiss-based program and Korean startups and the market.







Swiss Ambassador to Korea Dagmar Schmidt Tartagli noted how the Swiss-Korean Innovation Week is a step closer to a more diverse and inclusive world in her opening remarks.







"Repeatedly elected the most innovative country in the world, Switzerland counts diversity as one of its unique selling points... However, there are aspects of diversity which are still debated at the political and societal level, such as gender equality, which ask for special attention," ambassador Schmidt Tartagli said.







"When pointing to the need for measures guaranteeing equal professional opportunities for women and also taking into account their role in the society, the theme of women's health and wellbeing can't be forgotten. Indeed, there are still health disparities caused by the gender data gap, lack of female data or male bias and taboos around the open discussion on female health issues."







The ambassador introduced femtech as a method to pave the way for innovative solutions and technologies for women's wellbeing.







Panelists discuss the environment for femtech in Korea during "Women Wellbeing: Cultural Context and Tech Developments," organized by the Swiss Embassy in Seoul, at Space Sallim in Dongjak District, Seoul, June 8. Courtesy of Embassy of Switzerland in Korea





Simone Theiss, program director of Tech4Eva, said they did a pre-study of the market in 2020 and defined the clear need for a femtech-specific accelerator in Switzerland to accelerate women's health and femtech technologies.







"The sector still lacks funding compared to others so it was important to also raise the awareness of the topic," Theiss said.







"Since Ida Tin then-CEO of CLUE coined the term 'femtech' in 2016, femtech interest has been on the rise. There are more startups being founded, more funding going towards these startups, even more exits and a great media buzz and momentum for the topic."







Tech4Eva startups fundraised approximately 60 million Swiss francs in 2021 and the global market investment opportunity in femtech worldwide is estimated to be at around $45 billion.







"We received a total of 124 applications from 30 countries and 80 percent of the applicants were women founders. The main areas applications came from: Mental health & wellbeing; Reproductive, menstrual and sexual health; Pregnancy & postpartum care; Prevention & diagnostics; Fertility; Female specific disease and Menopause," Theiss explained.







Among the applicants, four were from Korea and INERTIA was selected for the 2022 program. INERTIA is developing sanitary napkins using a 100-percent cellulose bio-absorbent polymer produced via electron beam technology.







"Tech4Eva also aims to be an inclusive community and raise the awareness of the topic of femtech and advance research in women's health. Breaking the taboos and talking about femtech is key to changing the market," Theiss said.







After Tech4Eva's presentation, Park Ji-won, CEO of Saib, shared her experience of breaking taboos in Korea. Additionally, startup and health experts in Korea, including Kim Ji-young of Startup Women, Shin Hyun-jung of Kinsday, obstetrician-gynecologist Chung Hwan-wook and Kim Chi-weon of Kakao Ventures, discussed the environment for femtech in Korea.







Lee Min-yong, a project manager at the Science and Technology Office, said that the cooperation with Tech4Eva aims to promote the concept of femtech in Korea.







"Femtech is a relatively new trend that just emerged recently and there are certain cultural differences between Western society and Korea. In Korea, there still are prejudices or taboos against women seeing a gynecologist regularly, unlike the Western countries where women understand physiological phenomena of their body and receive regular ob-gyn checkups," Lee said.







"This is not just about femtech, but we have to understand the social differences in women's health and wellbeing first. So we invited Tech4Eva to introduce how a Swiss accelerator specializing in femtech startups is upping the ante."







The event also aimed to enhance understandings on characteristics of the Korean market to global players who want to enter the market.


President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee spend time with their dogs at the presidential office in Seoul, May 29. Screencapture from a Facebook account of first lady Kim Keon-hee's supporters



First lady Kim Keon-hee has called for an end to dog meat consumption, saying Korea and China are the only countries among big economies where people still eat dog meat, according to a newspaper interview published Monday.



Kim, who lives with four dogs and three cats, made the appeal in an interview with the Seoul Shinmun newspaper, saying she wishes the government could achieve tangible progress in animal issues, including animal abuse and dog meat consumption.



"I believe the universal culture should be shared with developed countries because it can create negative sentiment against Korea," Kim said of dog meat consumption.



"Not consuming dog meat is ultimately an expression of respect for man's best friend and it also means respect for life," she said in the interview, her first since President Yoon Suk-yeol took office last month.



Dog meat consumption can be put to an end through policies, such as providing support to help dog meat-related firms get out of the business, Kim said.



Dog meat consumption in Korea has dramatically declined in recent decades amid perceptions that the tradition is becoming an international embarrassment. Still, advocates argue people should have the freedom to choose what they eat.



The first lady also called for stronger punishment for animal abusers, saying Korea has "the weakest animal protection laws" among developed countries.



"About 15 million people have pets in our country. If order is established by strengthening the level of punishment for abusers, I believe we can become a mature society," she said. "After all, animal abuse and domestic violence are just different branches from the same stem."



Yoon and Kim are known animal lovers who raise four dogs and three cats, including five from animal shelters. Yoon had also said he will push for prohibition of dog meat consumption and toughen the penalties for animal abuse in his presidential election manifesto.



During the interview, Kim also recalled a conversation she had last month with U.S. President Joe Biden in which Biden said both he and Yoon had "married up."



"After understanding what he said right away, I said 'really?' in response," Kim was quoted as saying, adding that she wishes to be of help to her husband even though she has many shortcomings. (Yonhap)






Mayawati questions bulldozer action on minorities (File photo) Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati, on Monday, accused the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh of creating an atmosphere of fear amongst the minorities and questioned the bulldozer action on them. She has urged the judiciary to take cognisance on such illegal acts.



This is the first time that the BSP has come out openly in support of minorities regarding the government action in Prayagraj and other places against those allegedly involved in arson and rioting during the protest against comments about Prophet Muhammad.



In a series of tweets on Monday, Mayawati wrote: "By targeting a particular community, by bulldozing their homes and other malicious aggressive actions, the state government is suppressing the citizen's right to protest and creating an atmosphere of fear and terror, which is unfair and unjust. The courts must take cognizance of the faulty action of targeting the entire family by demolishing their houses."



She further said: "While the root cause of the problem is Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal, due to which the honour of the country has been adversely affected leading to widespread violence. Then why action was not taken against them and why the government ridiculed the rule of law? The government not sending both the accused to jail is grossly biased and unfortunate."



She further demanded immediate arrest of both the BJP leaders.



Mayawati alleged that the bulldozing and other subversive actions being carried out by the government in a hurry, while ignoring the rules and regulations, is resulting in innocents being targeted unfairly.




Angola, IN (46703)

Today

A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 73F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 73F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph.
On June 12, the Korean Business Research Institute announced the brand reputation rankings for girl groups for the month of June this year. From BLACKPINK to (G)I-DLE, read to know the full list of the most popular girl groups for June 2022!

BLACKPINK is the No. 1 Most Popular Girl Group in June 2022

Reclaiming the top spot to become the No. 1 most popular girl group for the month of June is "Pretty Savage" hitmakers, BLACKPINK!

According to the Korean Business Research Institute, BLACKPINK had garnered a total brand reputation index of 3,335,959 for the month of June, with a participation index of 189,448, a media index of 857,008, a communication index of 544,663, and a community index of 1,744,840.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: BLACKPINK Lisa Gains Admiration for Her Attitude at Airport - Here's Why

Compared to BLACKPINK's brand reputation index of 3,185,684 back in May, this month's index marks a 4.72 percent increase.

As for the four-piece girl group's related terms, BLACKPINK's highest related are "participate," "model," and "donate." For their keyword analysis, it is "Queen of England," "Instagram," and "ambassador."

In terms of the group's positive-negative ratio, BLACKPINK has a positive ratio analyzed to be 73.84 percent.

(G)I-DLE and IVE are in the Top 3 Most Popular Girl Groups in June 2022

Coming close and anding as the second most popular girl group for this month is (G)I-DLE!

For the month of June, (G)I-DLE had garnered a total brand reputation index of 3,319,347, with a participation index of 211,072, a media index of 924,492, a communication index of 983,002, and a community index of 1,200,780.

Compared to (G)I-DLE's brand reputation index of 3,566,325 back in May, their index for June fell by 6.93 percent.

Snagging third place for this month's brand reputation rankings is rookie girl group IVE!

According to the Korean Business Research Institute, IVE also came in close with a brand reputation index of 3,216,154 for the month of June, with a participation index of 315,724, a media index of 850,801, a communication index of 841,230, and a community index of 1,208,399.

IVE's brand reputation index also fell by 17.74 percent compared to their index of 3,896,773 back in May.

Top 30 Most Popular Girl Groups for June 2022

1. BLACKPINK

2. (G)I-DLE

3. IVE

4. TWICE

5. LOONA

6. Red Velvet

7. Oh My Girl

8. aespa

9. LE SSERAFIM

10. Girls' Generation

11. WJSN

12. Apink

13. Brave Girls

14. MAMAMOO

15. fromis_9

16. LABOUM

17. DIA

18. NMIXX

19. Weeekly

20. Kep1er

21. MOMOLAND

22. STAYC

23. Dreamcatcher

24. Girl's Day

25. APRIL

26. ITZY

27. woo!ah!

28. CLC

29. Ladies' Code

30. EXID

Meanwhile, the brand reputation rankings is based on the total brand reputation index of girl groups by analyzing their consumer participation, media coverage, communication, and community indexes from the big data gathered from May 12 to June 12.

The big data gathered for June 2022 is 47,572,950, which is a decrease of 13.83 percent from the big data of 55,209,930 garnered back in May.

For more K-Pop news and updates, always keep your tabs open here on KpopStarz.

KpopStarz owns this article.

Written by Robyn Joan
Astronomers have for the first time discovered what may be an isolated stellar-mass black hole using the astrometric microlensing technique. They estimate that the mass of the invisible object is between 1.6 and 4.4 solar masses. Because they think that the leftover remnant of a massive star must be heavier than 2.2 solar masses in order to collapse to a black hole, the researchers caution that the object could be a neutron star instead of a black hole.

Stellar-mass black holes are produced when massive stars collapse under their own gravity.

Observations of black holes are a key ingredient for understanding outstanding questions in massive stellar evolution, such as which stars explode, which stars produce neutron stars vs. black holes, and whether there is a gap between the heaviest neutron stars and the lightest black holes.

Black holes are abundant. There are predicted to be between 10 million and one billion stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way Galaxy alone.

However, only about two dozen have been definitively detected, all in binary systems. Beyond the Milky Way, over 80 binary black hole mergers have been detected via gravitational waves.

Isolated black holes in the Milky Way can be found and weighed using the technique of gravitational microlensing.

When a foreground lens (e.g. black hole) passes in front of a background source star, the source light is temporarily bent and split into two unresolved images by the lens mass, producing a transient signal.

The newly-detected microlensing event, designated MOA-2011-BLG-191/OGLE-2011-BLG-0462 (OB110462 for short), was caused by a wandering compact object located about 5,000 light-years away in the Carina-Sagittarius spiral arm of our Galaxy.

It was detected in the data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope by two teams of astronomers  one led by Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer Kailash Sahu and the other by University of California, Berkeley astronomer Casey Lam.

The astrometric microlensing technique provided information on the mass, distance, and velocity of the OB110462 object.

Astrometric microlensing is conceptually simple but observationally very tough. Microlensing is the only technique available for identifying isolated black holes, Dr. Sahu said.

The amount of deflection by the objects intense warping of space allowed Dr. Sahus team to estimate that it weighs 7 solar masses.

Dr. Lams team reports a slightly lower mass range, meaning that the object may be either a neutron star or a black hole. They estimate that the mass of the object is between 1.6 and 4.4 times that of the Sun.

As much as we would like to say it is definitively a black hole, we must report all allowed solutions. This includes both lower mass black holes and possibly even a neutron star, said University of California, Berkeley astronomer Jessica Lu.

Whatever it is, the object is the first dark stellar remnant discovered wandering through the galaxy, unaccompanied by another star, Dr. Lam added.

Dr. Sahu and colleagues estimate the isolated black hole is traveling across the galaxy at 160,000 kmh (100,000 mph).

Detections of isolated black holes will provide new insights into the population of these objects in our Milky Way, Dr. Sahu said.

The results appear in two papers to be published in the Astrophysical Journal and the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

_____

Kailash C. Sahu et al. 2022. An Isolated Stellar-Mass Black Hole Detected Through Astrometric Microlensing. ApJ, in press; arXiv: 2201.13296

Casey Y. Lam et al. 2022. An isolated mass gap black hole or neutron star detected with astrometric microlensing. ApJL, in press; arXiv: 2202.01903
Humans communicate with each other through language, which enables us talk about things beyond time and space. Do non-human animals learn to associate human speech with specific objects in everyday life? In new research, a team of scientists in Japan examined whether cats (Felis catus) matched familiar cats names and faces and human family members names and faces.

Similar to dogs, cats are one of the most widespread companion animals in the world.

Although the ancestral Libyan wildcat (Felis lybica) is a solitary species, many domestic cats live with humans and show evidence of social cognitive operations concerning humans.

They can use human pointing cues and gaze cues to find food. They also discriminate between human facial expressions and attentional states, and identify their owners voice.

Furthermore, cats match their owners voice and face when tested with their owners photo presented on a screen, and human emotional sounds and expressions.

In two new experiments, Dr. Saho Takagi from Kyoto University, Azabu University and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and colleagues examined whether cats matched familiar cats names and faces (experiment 1) and human family members names and faces (experiment 2).

Our hypothesis was that cats learned face-name relationships by observing interactions involving their owner, and that more such observations would lead to stronger learning, they explained.

We tested two groups of cats, differing in the number of other cats they lived with: cats belonging to cat cafes where many cats live together, and household cats.

Cats were presented with a photo of the familiar cats face on a laptop monitor after hearing the same cats name or another cats name called by the subject cats owner (experiment 1) or an experimenter (experiment 2).

Half of the trials were in a condition where the name and face matched, and half were in an incongruent (mismatch) condition.

The results of the first experiment showed that household cats paid attention to the monitor for longer in the incongruent condition, suggesting an expectancy violation effect; however, cafe cats did not.

In the second experiment, cats living in larger human families were found to look at the monitor for increasingly longer durations in the incongruent condition.

Furthermore, this tendency was stronger among cats that had lived with their human family for a longer time, although we could not rule out an effect of age.

Our study provides evidence that cats link a companions name and corresponding face without explicit training, the authors said.

The teams paper was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

_____

S. Takagi et al. 2022. Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives. Sci Rep 12, 6155; doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-10261-5
New Delhi [India], June 13 (ANI/SRV): Symbiosis Law School, Nagpur was founded in 2019 as a vision of Dr S.B. Mujumdar with the slogan 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam', meaning, the world as one family.

The institute offers state of art infrastructure and exceptional amenities for its students and contains an excellent collection of academic, sports, and cultural amenities.

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SLS, Nagpur is one of the most prestigious institutes in India and comprises top-notch facilities like auditoriums, seminar rooms, classrooms, computer lab, library, e-Library, cafeteria and students' dormitories.

Furthermore, the institute features a completely air-conditioned, tech-acoustic, 220 capacity, Moot Court Hall with adequate judicial settings that are used for Intra and National Moot Court competitions. It assists law students in honing the legal diagnostic, research, analytics, and writing abilities that encourage them to mould into legal leaders.

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Symbiosis Law School, Nagpur, provides high-tech classrooms with appropriate teaching tools like overhead projectors, whiteboards, microphones, and LCD projectors for effective communication and engagement with students. The institute is committed to providing students with the finest learning experience.

Dr Sukhvinder Singh Dari, Director of SLS Nagpur, stated, "We at SLS Nagpur are on a mission to strengthen students' intellectual talents and increase their understanding of the relationship between education and the current world scenarios with the help of our state of the art facilities and proficient faculties."

The institute comprises highly qualified educators who guide students to become excellent lawyers. Apart from regular academics, the institute also invites prominent industry experts to impart their legal knowledge to students, which leads to a better understanding of legal operations.

To meet the different demands of the legal profession, SLS, Nagpur provides two integrated undergraduate five-year law programmes in Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws (B.A. LL.B.) and Bachelor of Business Administration and Bachelor of Laws (B.B.A. LL.B). The institute strives to produce value-conscious, exceptional attorneys who serve the community's changing requirements.

In order to enroll in the institute, aspirants need to opt for the SLAT examination. The ongoing online SLAT registrations for SLS Nagpur will close on 15th June 2022.

The SLAT exam will take place on the 3rd July 2022, Sunday from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM. Every candidate must pay INR. 1950 as a SLAT Registration Fees and must complete the SLS Nagpur payment of INR. 1000 per programme i.e. B.A. LL.B or/and BB.A. LL.B)

while filling the SLAT registration form.

SLS Nagpur also encourages the formation of several committees, such as the internal complaints committee (ICC), the anti-ragging committee, the placement report, capacity development and skills enhancement, research, and publication.

These committees help build confidence in students. SLS Nagpur aspires to foster international understanding via high-quality education and aims to advance knowledge.

The institution is continually working towards increasing cross-cultural awareness, promoting ethical and value-based learning, promoting health and wellbeing among students, faculty, and the community, creating global competencies among students, and generating thought-provoking leaders for society.

To know more visit: SLS Nagpur

This story is provided by SRV. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV)

(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], June 13 (ANI): AAP leader and Delhi's Health Minister Satyendar Jain has been sent to 14-day judicial custody in a money laundering case by Rouse Avenue court.

Jain was arrested in a money laundering case by the Enforcement Directorate last month. He was arrested in a money laundering case by the Enforcement Directorate last month. The investigation has been underway since 2017 and the Minister was arrested on May 30.

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Notably, during the search conducted on June 7, the ED has said it seized various incriminating documents and digital records.

The ED said that the total movable assets were seized from an "unexplained source" and were "found to be secreted" in the raided premises.

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More than Rs 2 crore in cash and gold weighing 1.8 kg were seized by the ED after raids against Jain and those linked to him, in a money laundering case. The ED has submitted that Jain was not cooperating in the interrogation.

On the other hand, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and N Hariharan opposed the extension of the remand saying that the recoveries are not connected with Jain. "ED has not asked any question about the gold and jewellery in the last two days," they submitted.

Earlier, he was sent to ED custody from May 31 till June 9. He was arrested in a money laundering case connected with Disproportionate Asset (DA) case registered by CBI. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Guwahati, Jun 13 (PTI) Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah, Leader of Opposition Debabrata Saikia and a host of leaders of the party were detained by police on Monday when they staged a protest against the quizzing of Rahul Gandhi by Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case.

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Raising slogans and slamming the BJP-led government, opposition Congress leaders and scores of workers tried to march along the arterial Guwahati-Shillong Road from the state party headquarters Rajiv Bhawan near Bhangagarh area.

Anticipating the move, the Guwahati Police had already deployed a large contingent and erected barricades just outside Rajiv Bhawan to prevent the protesters from proceeding.

Also Read | COVID-19 Not Over Yet, Important To Be Alert, Says Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya.

When Congress leaders tried to break the barricade and move ahead, police detained dozens of its leaders and workers but later released them, a senior official said.

Along with Borah and Saikia, several MLAs, state party functionaries, office bearers of sister organisations and scores of general workers were bundled in several buses and detained for a few hours.

Gandhi was questioned for several hours by ED on Monday in New Delhi in a money laundering probe linked to National Herald newspaper. He was accompanied by a battery of party leaders and supporters.

Saikia alleged that Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is using the police to protect the interests of BJP and is engaged in suppressing the peaceful democratic protests.

Gandhi was questioned for several hours by the ED on Monday in a money laundering probe linked to the National Herald newspaper after the MP reached the agency's headquarters in New Delhi accompanied by a battery of party leaders and supporters.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Noida, June 13: The Uttar Pradesh police on Monday arrested a Chinese national who had allegedly been living here illegally for two years, and his Indian girlfriend for sheltering him in Greater Noida, according to officials.

Chinese national Xue fei aka Kelay, 36, and his girlfriend Petekhrinuo, 22, from Nagaland, were arrested from a hotel in Gurugram, Haryana, by UP's Gautam Buddh Nagar Police, the officials said. Gurugram: Chinese National Arrested Under Foreigners Act for Illegal Stay in India.

They were held on the basis of information given by two Chinese nationals, who were arrested on Nepal-India border in Bihar on Saturday by the Sashtra Seema Bal (SSB) as they were trying to cross over into the Himalayan nation after staying in India illegally, police said.

During probe these two Chinese nationals had informed the police in Sitamarhi district of Bihar that they were staying in India with a friend who lives in Greater Noida, prompting a search and investigation into the matter by us, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Greater Noida) Vishal Pandey said.

Kelay and Petekhrinuo were staying in a housing society in Greater Noida but had fled to Gurugram after they got to know that the police have started looking for them, he said.

The Beta 2 Police Station in Greater Noida traced them in Gurugram and the two were taken into police custody this morning. During probe it emerged that the Chinese national's Indian visa had expired in June 2020. He had forged the documents to make the figures look like 2022, Pandey said.

He has violated the laws related to the visa and forged documents. His Indian girlfriend, who sheltered him during the process, had also helped him. FIRs have been lodged under relevant provisions of the law against both, the additional DCP said.

The officer said the Gautam Buddh Nagar Police is coordinating with other government agencies in connection with the case and further legal proceedings are underway.

The two Chinese nationals arrested on Saturday were identified as Yung Hai Lung, 34, and Lo Lung, 28, and both had spent 15 days at the Jaypee Greens society in Greater Noida without valid documents, police said.

Kelay and Petekhrinuo were engaged in a business related to mobile phone spare parts in Gautam Buddh Nagar and nearby Ghaziabad, a senior official said.

It was Indian woman who had arranged SIM cards for the two Chinese nationals who were staying at her residence, the official said, citing preliminary findings.

The Lungs had entered India through Nepal in the second half of May. They had reached Nepal from Thailand and had a visa for the Himalayan nation, the official added.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Bhubaneswar, Jun 13 (PTI) Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Monday inaugurated a residential school for poor children here.

Patnaik inaugurated the Balasore branch of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Emami-KISS Residential School through virtual mode.

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Spread over 12 acres of land, the school has been built at a cost of Rs 50 crore and includes a mechanized kitchen, and a 25-bed hospital.

Inaugurating the facility, the chief minister said around 1,200 economically challenged students from Class I to 12 will be provided free education in this school at Remuna in the first phase under the CBSE curriculum.

Also Read | Presidential Elections 2022: Congress Wants Sharad Pawar As Joint Opposition Candidate for President.

KISS has taken initiative to open fully free residential schools for poor and underprivileged tribal children in 30 districts of Odisha. This would strengthen our initiative to give quality education to all children, he said.

Patnaik said the state government was giving importance to education and is transforming the schools under the 5T initiative. More than 4,000 state-run high schools have so far been transformed with modern facilities, he said.

Odia Language, Literature and Culture Department Minister Ashwini Patra praised the initiative by KISS and Emami. Local MP Pratap Sarangi, Remuna MLA Sudhanshu Parida, KIIT and KISS Founder Achyuta Samanta, representative of the Emami group Susil Goenka and Balasore Collector K Sudarshan Chakravarthy were present at the function.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
ArborGen Holdings Limited (NZX: ARB ) (the Company or ArborGen) announces today that as a result of the strategic review conducted over the last year, the Board of ArborGen has refocussed the business on its core traditional and emerging high growth markets in the US South and Brazil, as well as on new and emerging high growth carbon markets. In line with this refocused strategy, ArborGen sold its more mature Australia and New Zealand business on 30 November 2021 for NZ$22.25 million, substantially strengthening its balance sheet, and affording it greater opportunities to invest in targeted growth arenas. Accordingly, the Company advises that the strategic review commenced on 30 June 2021 has now been concluded.

Core traditional high growth markets  US South

While nearer term, the flow-on effects of the pandemic and geopolitical tensions are likely to impact industry activity, ArborGens core end market, the US housing market, is supported by very strong long term underlying fundamentals, namely 

- An underbuilt US housing stock resulting from years of underbuilding since the global financial crisis,

- An aging US housing stock with the median age of an owner-occupied house now over 40 years, and

- Strong population demographics with a large proportion of young adults moving into the house buying phase.

These strong fundamentals, in turn, support continued growth in demand for wood products, and in this respect, the US South is expected to be the largest beneficiary. In addition, timber access and supply issues have been and will continue to reduce wood product production in Western Canada, which has led many of the major Canadian lumber companies to purchase or build new mills in the US South. Timber supply issues in Central Europe will also lead to reduced wood product production there as well. Based on these factors, Forest Economic Advisors is projecting the strongest increase in lumber production to be in the US South, forecasting 24% growth relative to last years output to reach 26.0 BBF* by 2025**.

As the leading commercial supplier of proprietary advanced genetics loblolly seedlings in the US South, ArborGen believes that it is well positioned to leverage this growth. ArborGen considers it is poised to benefit from over 20 years of investment in developing best-in-class proprietary MCP products, expanding supply of proprietary genetics, and upgrading of customers to higher value MCP seedlings.

With the foundations now laid, ArborGens focus will be on the continued conversion of customers to higher value seedlings as our customers increasingly see the commercial potential of our advanced genetics products. In terms of investment opportunities, there is increasing demand for the Companys containerised MCP seedlings (our highest value seedlings), and in this respect, the Board has approved the expansion of ArborGens in-house container capacity across two existing owned sites, effectively lifting in-house production 60% from 10 to 16 million containerised seedlings per annum.

Chair of ArborGen, David Knott Jr, said Given the scale of our existing operations, we are able to cost effectively leverage infrastructure at our Belville, GA and Bullard, TX nurseries to achieve this growth for less than US$1 million. The expected benefits from the investment are twofold  cost savings from increased production efficiencies, and incremental margins from the additional volume produced. The expected returns are very compelling, with a projected payback of 1-2 years. This expansion is expected to be in place for the FY24 seedling sales year, and we also continue to have an excellent relationship with our contract container growers. While ArborGen has sufficient bareroot productive capacity to leverage growth post the pandemic lows, the Company will continue to evaluate further potential opportunities to expand in targeted regions. Pleasingly, although we are only in the second month of the current years crop season, we have already effectively sold out of all our MCP containerised seedlings and our hardwood seedlings, and approximately 85% of all available MCP seedlings.

Emerging traditional high growth markets  Brazil

ArborGen believes that the underlying market fundamentals in Brazil are also very strong, with increasing domestic and export demand, new pulp mills and strong charcoal markets resulting from increasing iron ore demand, now collectively driving strong local demand for eucalyptus and softwood.

ArborGen has grown to become one of the largest commercial suppliers of eucalyptus and loblolly pine seedlings in the Brazilian market, replicating its US strategy to convert the market to products with superior genetics in Brazil. ArborGens continued focus on this emerging market is now beginning to show tangible gains. Consistent with this, and as noted in the Companys FY22 earnings results announcement, ArborGen recently acquired an 8-10 million capacity pine nursery located in Canoinhas, Santa Catarina, Brazil for BR$4 million (US$0.7 million), to cement its position in the local pine markets. In addition, ArborGen plans to expand its internal eucalyptus production capacity later this year through leasing its third eucalyptus nursery, which is expected to increase internal eucalyptus capacity to nearly 50 million seedlings per year.

As a result of much stronger projected pricing and demand for ArborGens eucalyptus and pine seedlings, ArborGens Brazils earnings are projected to be over US$1 million this fiscal year (FY23), materially higher than the breakeven result recorded in FY22, with continued strong growth projected going forward.

Substantial emerging global carbon markets

There is now a clear and increasing focus on the importance of reducing greenhouse gases globally, and forests have an important role to play as trees capture carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases, from the atmosphere and store it in trunks, branches, foliage and roots.

The increasing emphasis on the role trees can play in offsetting carbon emissions is creating significant new opportunities for ArborGen, with its advanced genetics and strong channels to forest landowners in the Southern US uniquely positioning it to exploit this opportunity.

ArborGen is a key participant in this space, and is actively engaged with various carbon registries and major carbon companies, participating in protocol development for plantation forestry.

ArborGens CEO, Andrew Baum, said Forest based carbon projects will be increasingly important in creating new demand for both pine and hardwood seedlings. Carbon project developers are actively pursuing large scale afforestation and reforestation projects in the southern US and ArborGen is actively engaged with several of these companies to provide both advanced genetics pine seedlings and hardwood seedlings. We expect to supply seedlings as the first year of a multi-year agreement with at least one major carbon company, this year.

Mr Knott, said We are very excited about ArborGens future. We have refined the business, sold the New Zealand and Australian business, significantly strengthened ArborGen balance sheet, and are now well positioned to grow in our core and emerging new markets. In order to ensure we deliver on the Companys growth potential in these areas, the Board is committed to increasing resources, as needed. As part of our strategic review, the Board has considered all options to unlock value for the benefit of all shareholders, including exploring the potential sale of all the shares in the Company, but have unanimously concluded that the best value maximisation strategy for shareholders is to stay the course. We would like to thank all of our shareholders for their continued support, which is very much appreciated.

Scope of strategic review

Over the last 11 months, the Board has considered all options to unlock value for the benefit of all shareholders, from reinvestment to sale. PwC gauged the interest in a potential sale of all of the shares in, or all or some of the assets of, the Company. That process resulted in the sale of the Australia and New Zealand business referred to above. While a number of expressions of interest were considered for the whole business, the Board concluded that value would be maximised for shareholders through reinvestment in the business and progressing the strategy as outlined above.

As part of the strategic review process the Board of ArborGen also considered the possibility of a US listing. They concluded that at the current point of time the expected costs of a US listing outweigh the potential benefits.

_________________

* Billion board feet

** Forest Economic Advisors 2nd Quarter 2022 Timber Quarterly Forecast

ENDS

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Agartala, Jun 13 (PTI) The TMC on Monday exhorted Congress members to refrain from holding protests over ED summonses to the grand old party's top leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in a case of financial impropriety as "law must take its own course".

TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh pointed out that Congress leader Adhir Chowdhury, too, had taken a similar stance when the Mamata Banerjee-led party's MP, Abhishek Banerjee, was grilled by central agency officials as part of the probe into a coal pilferage case.

Also Read | Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot Slams Centre Over ED Summons to Gandhi Family, Says Country Watching Dictatorship.

Tripura Congress president Birajit Sinha, however, lashed out at Ghosh, stating that the "TMC MP was an accused in multiple cases, unlike Gandhi, and the two issues cannot be compared".

Sinha did not mention the cases that he was referring to in his statement against Banerjee.

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Talking to reporters, Ghosh said, "We have nothing to say on the Enforcement Directorate's summons to Rahul Gandhi. The Congress and the CPI(M) had welcomed CBI and ED questioning of Abhishek Banerjee.

"They had said that the law should take its own course. If that is Chowdhury's stand, he should ideally be accompanying Gandhi to the ED office."

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi faced ED officials during the day, while his mother and Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, sought time citing her ill health as reason.

Activists of the grand old party staged protests across the country on Monday claiming that central agencies were being "misused" to harass its leaders.

Maintaining that the Congress was working as the 'B team' of the BJP in West Bengal, Ghosh said one party should not be having two points of view on the same subject.

"When the TMC had raised its voice against the misuse of central agencies by the Centre, the leaders of the Congress and the CPI(M) seemed to be in no mood to listen. That's why the two parties have almost become non-existent in Bengal," he stated.

Ghosh promised that if the TMC gets the mandate of people in Tripura next year, all welfare schemes introduced in West Bengal will be extended to northeastern state.

Meanwhile, slamming Ghosh over his remarks, Sinha alleged, "The nation knows that didi (Mamata Banerjee) shook hands with (prime minister) Modiji under the table to save her nephew (Abhishek). Rahul Gandhi was summoned by the ED, despite not being involved in any corruption. The two cases are different."

(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, Jun 13 (PTI) Delhi government has written to the Ministry of Power for allowing it to retain 728 MW of electricity from NTPC Dadri-II plant, warning a "blackout scenario" in the national capital in coming days, official sources said on Monday.

The letter, dated June 9, by special secretary (power) of Delhi government to power secretary, Government of India, also requests to reconsider its decision to reallocate Dadri II plant power from Delhi to Haryana in view of its rising demand by the city, they said.

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"Without Dadri-II, demand-supply deficit will increase, risking outages in national capital. Delhi must be allowed to retain its share (728 MW) from Dadri-II plant to avoid a blackout scenario," the letter stated, as per the sources.

In the 27-page letter, Delhi government has emphasized the criticality of power from the Dadri-II plant to Delhi and urged the central ministry to reconsider its decision to reallocate this power to Haryana.

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The Ministry of Power in April this year had said that Delhi power minister Satyendar Jain, through a letter dated July 6, 2015, had surrendered power from 11 central generating stations, including Dadri stage-II, with immediate effect and to reallocate it to other needy states.

The Power Ministry had in March this year reallocated power surrendered by Delhi to Haryana.

The letter from Delhi government stated that power purchase agreements executed between Delhi discoms (BSES and TPDDL) and NTPC for supply of power from various thermal power stations, including Dadri-II, signed almost 12 years ago are valid till July 30, 2035, for a committed capacity of 728 MW, the sources said.

"The 728 MW is critical for meeting Delhi's power needs. Housing important installations and foreign embassies, importance of uninterrupted power for the national capital cannot be over-emphasised," sources in Delhi government said.

Delhi's power demand has witnessed an unprecedented rise - from 5,846 MW in 2015 to expected power demand of 8,200 MW in 2022.

Despite considering the short term and bilateral arrangements and availability of Dadri-II, there is deficit of approximately 300 MW to 1,100 MW in various time slots during the period from June 2022 to September 2022 in Delhi, mentioned the letter.

"Without Dadri-II (728 MW) and considering the prevalent power market conditions, the deficit in demand and supply will increase significantly and will result in risk of outages in the national capital," it claimed.

The fact that this power was surrendered by Delhi government in 2015 cannot be taken as a "valid plea for reallocation" since the whole scenario of power requirement has changed in 2022, it said.

Based on the requirement, Delhi government and Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) have been requesting Government of India since 2017 to continue to allocate the power from Dadri-II to Delhi, sources said.

"Delhi must be allowed to retain the whole 728 MW of its power share from Dadri-II power plant as per its existing PPA if blackout scenario in Delhi is to be avoided," said the Delhi government letter.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Noida, Jun 13 (PTI) Gautam Buddh Nagar Police Commissioner Alok Singh and District Magistrate Suhas L Yathiraj on Monday held a peace meeting with religious leaders of different faiths, soliciting their support in maintaining law and order, according to officials.

The inter-faith meeting by the top two officers of the district comes following directives of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for such public reach out campaigns in the wake of recent communal protests in parts of the state.

Also Read | Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot Slams Centre Over ED Summons to Gandhi Family, Says Country Watching Dictatorship.

Both Yathiraj and Singh appealed to 250 religious leaders and eminent persons from various groups for their support in maintaining communal harmony and peace in the district adjoining Delhi, according to an official statement.

In a special appeal through the religious leaders, Singh asked the youth to not do any such act which is against the law, otherwise they will have to face strict legal action which will harm their family and future.

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Joint Police Commissioner (law and order) Love Kumar, DCP (Headquarters) Bharti Singh, DCPs of Noida Rajesh S, Central Noida Harish Chander and Greater Noida Minakshi Katyayan also attended the meeting, held at the Commissionerate office in Noida sector 108.

Police Commissioner Alok Singh informed the religious leaders that the police are closely monitoring online activities of people across social media platforms. Action will be taken immediately against any person who is found posting objectionable content which can disrupt law and order, the statement read.

The police commissioner also exhorted the religious leaders to emphasise on people of their faiths the need to not fall trap to any rumours and in case of any suspicious activity, they should immediately contact the local police, it added.

The religious leaders were asked during the meeting to ensure that CCTV cameras are installed on the premises of places of worship, according to the statement.

Uttar Pradesh witnessed communal protests in multiple districts last week in the wake of a controversy that was stoked by alleged derogatory remarks on Prophet Mohammad by now-sacked BJP functionaries, even as India faced criticism from several Islamic nations over the issue.

Clashes had erupted after the Friday prayers on June 10 and FIRs were lodged in nine districts, leading to the arrest of 336 violence suspects in the state till Monday evening, according to police.

(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], June 13 (ANI): Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) has filed an affidavit complying with the direction of the Supreme Court wherein it stated that the amount, as directed by the court would be deposited by the Corporation with the Registrar, High Court at Calcutta.

The affidavit was submitted in a matter pertaining to an arbitration issue between Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. and Damodar Valley Corporation.

Also Read | National Herald Case: Rahul Gandhi Appears Before ED for Questioning; Heres All About The Money Laundering Case.

In the affidavit filed by DVC on June 6, the corporation said that in compliance with the said order dated May 31 2022, the DVC undertakes to comply with the Order dated April 25 2022 passed by the Apex Court, whereby the Court directed that the DVC to comply with the orders dated March 25, 2022, and March 29, 2022, passed by the Calcutta High Court.

"That in these circumstances, it is respectfully submitted that the deponent shall comply with the Order dated 25.03.2022 and 29.03.2022 passed by the Calcutta High Court and Orders dated April 25, 2022, and May 31, 2022, passed by this (Apex) Court," the DVC said in its affidavit.

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On May 31, the Supreme Court was inclined to grant an extension of time to DVC but with a condition which was to safeguard the interest of the Reliance Infrastructure Ltd.

The apex court on May 31 directed that the Managing Director of the Corporation to file an undertaking in this Court within one week on an affidavit stating therein that the amount, as directed by this Court by order dated April 25, 2022, would be deposited by the Corporation with the Registrar, High Court at Calcutta within eight weeks from today.

Reliance Infra had invoked arbitration in April 2017 after a dispute arose between the parties on account of delays in the completion of an EPC contract awarded by DVC for the construction of a 2 x 600 MW Coal based Power Plant in the District Purulia, West Bengal.

The arbitral tribunal ruled in favour of Reliance Infra and directed DVC to pay Rs. 898 crore to the company and also release six Bank Guarantees of Reliance Infra aggregating to Rs. 353 crore within one month from the date of the Award.

The award was challenged by DVC in the Calcutta High Court. The matter eventually reached Supreme Court. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai, Jun 13 (PTI) The Maharashtra Cyber on Monday claimed to have busted a gang of five loan app operators cum agents who used to extort money from victims by threatening to circulate their morphed pictures on social media if they failed to repay the alleged debt, a police official said, adding all the accused are well-educated.

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The accused, identified as Suhail Naseeruddin Sayyed (24), Ahmed Raza Zahid Hussain (26), Sayyed Athar (24), Kaif Kadari (22) and Muftiyaz Basha Peerzade (21), were nabbed from Dharwad in Karnataka, an official said.

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All of them are highly qualified and one of them holds an MBA degree.

They were arrested after a man from suburban Bhandup in Mumbai lodged an FIR alleging harassment by agents of a loan app after he took the loan of Rs 11,000. He ended up paying Rs 96,000 till May, as per the complaint.

During the investigation conducted by a special team, the cyber police tracked down the phone number used to threaten the victim to Dhule. They found that a person from Karnataka was using this phone number for Whatsapp messaging, the official said.

Police reached Dharwad and nabbed all the five persons, he said.

The investigation revealed that the accused men used to extort money from their victims using 'Handy Loan' and other such applications, the official said, adding more persons are likely to be arrested.

In the last two years, the Cyber department received 2,084 complaints regarding such cases.

All the accused were booked under sections 420 (Cheating), 383 (Extortion), 500 (defamation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and other sections of the IT Act.

They were remanded to five-day police custody, the official added.

In May, a 38-year-old salesman from suburban Malad had committed suicide after his morphed nude photographs were circulated among his colleagues, friends and relatives by the recovery agents of an instant loan app for failing to repay an alleged loan on time.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Prayagraj, Jun 13 (PTI) The Allahabad High Court on Monday rejected a bail plea of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari in connection with a case of misappropriation of MLA funds.

Ansari, an MLA from Uttar Pradesh's Mau constituency, is currently lodged in Banda jail of the state. He is accused of misappropriation of Rs 25 lakh of MLA fund.

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Justice Rahul Chaturvedi observed, Assessing the totality of circumstances, I do not find any good reason to release the applicant on bail and consequently, the bail application of the applicant Mukhtar Anasri is hereby rejected.

There are 54 cases against the applicant and he is aged about 58 years. This speaks volumes about his checkered past and criminal antecedent, the court said.

Also Read | National Herald Case: Rahul Gandhi Summoned Again by ED Tomorrow.

The applicant needs no introduction in Uttar Pradesh on account of his alleged 'Robin Hood' image. He is a hardened and habitual offender who is in the sphere of crime since 1986 but surprisingly, he has managed to never get convicted, the court said.

An FIR was lodged against the gangster-turned-politician on April 24 last year at the Sarai Lakhansi police station of Mau. He along with four others was booked under sections 419 (cheating), 420 (dishonesty), 467 (forgery of documents), 468, 471 (fraud) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

Ansari is accused of releasing Rs 25 lakh from his MLA fund for the construction of a school on a piece of land at Sarwan village in Mau.

The money was released in three installments during 2012-2015, however, during an inquiry, it was found that the school was never built.

(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], June 13 (ANI): Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Monday took part in a solidarity march in support of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case related to the AJL case.

Gandhi on Monday faced questioning by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money-laundering investigation in the National Herald case.

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Addressing the media, the Chief Minister said, "The entire country is witness to the dictatorship of the ruling BJP. Congress workers were being detained from reaching the party headquarters. The entire area has been cordoned off and police have been deployed all around in an attempt to crush democracy. It is the democratic right of the opposition party to protest."

Calling the ED action on Gandhi "malicious", the Chief Minister said that the Centre is using its agencies to "suppress the voice of Opposition".

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"The Centre is misusing investigative agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Income Tax to suppress the voice of the opposition," he said.

Baghel alleged that the Gandhi family members were being "falsely implicated" in the money laundering case as part of a political agenda.

"Money laundering case against the Gandhi family is baseless and Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are being falsely implicated. Congress leaders are being harassed with political malice," he alleged.

The Chief Minister announced that the demonstration by the Congress workers will be even more intense than the one today when party interim president Sonia Gandhi will appear for the probe at the ED office.

"When Sonia Gandhi will appear before the ED, there will be a bigger demonstration than this," he said.

Congress leaders and workers have staged protests holding placards at AICC headquarters in New Delhi over the summons. Various leaders including Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel and Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot took part in the party's Satyagraha march.

Rahul Gandhi, the 51-year-old politician, who entered the headquarters of the federal probe agency in central Delhi around 11 am after starting from the Congress office on Akbar Road, was accompanied by a large group of party leaders including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, and Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel.

He is being questioned by an Assistant Director level officer-- the investigating officer of the case--supervised by a Deputy Director and a Joint Director.

Another officer is learnt to be typing Gandhi's statement which is being recorded under Section 50 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. (ANI)

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New Delhi, Jun 13 (PTI) In a unique collaboration, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Jodhpur and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Jodhpur will offer Master's, Master's-PhD and PhD programmes in medical technologies, officials said on Monday.

The collaboration will allow students to work under faculty from these premier institutes in the emerging areas of healthcare technologies, they claimed.

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"This is the first programme in India that provides an opportunity to medical professionals and engineers to learn and share knowledge under a trans-disciplinary academic umbrella and is designed to cater to the emerging needs of innovation in healthcare technologies, Santanu Chaudhury, Director, IIT-Jodhpur said.

The aim is to provide a common platform for doctors and engineers, fostering knowledge sharing and innovation, leading to the development of indigenous healthcare devices and systems through incubation and entrepreneurship,"

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he said. Chaudhury said such collaborations were necessary to meet the challenges of future transformations of healthcare technologies.

This cannot be done by medical practitioners, engineers, or management professionals alone, he said.

The programmes offered by IIT Jodhpur and AIIMS Jodhpur aim to nurture a workforce with multi-dimensional capabilities of creative thinking, deep knowledge, and a strong sense of business, he added.

Chaudhury said that the programme will offer flexible electives and innovation and entrepreneurship-oriented research projects.

The last date to apply for the course is June 15, 2022 and the course work will commence in July, 2022.

(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, Jun 13 (PTI) Muslim body Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind filed two fresh pleas in the Supreme Court on Monday seeking directions to the Uttar Pradesh government to ensure that no further demolitions are carried out in the State without following due process and such exercise is done only after adequate notice.

The organisation had earlier filed the plea on the issue of demolition of buildings in the Jahangirpuri area of the national capital.

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The fresh applications said that subsequent to the last hearing in the matter some new developments have taken place that require the attention of this Court.

"Some objectionable and offensive remarks were made by two political leaders a few days ago which led to communal tension in numerous parts of the country. Following the remarks of the two political leaders, a bandh was called for by a group of people in the district of Kanpur in protest.

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"On the day of the protest, a scuffle broke out between the Hindu and Muslim religious community, and stone-pelting took place between the two communities. That after the violence in Kanpur, a number of persons in authority have stated in the media that the properties of suspects/accused would be confiscated and demolished. Even the Chief Minister of the state has said in the media that the houses of accused persons would be razed using bulldozers," one of the pleas said.

The plea alleged that the adoption of such extra-legal measures is clearly in violation of the principles of natural justice, especially when the apex court is hearing the present matter.

"It is pertinent to note that in the present matter this Hon'ble Court ordered the stay of demolitions that were being carried out as a punitive measure in Northwest Delhi in similar circumstances. Hence, considering that the captioned matter is currently pending before this Hon'ble Court, restoring such measures is even more alarming.

"That demolition exercise of any nature must be carried out strictly in accordance with applicable laws, and only after due notice and opportunity of hearing to each of the affected persons  as mandated by this Court," the plea said.

"Issue directions to the State of Uttar Pradesh that no precipitative action be taken in Kanpur District against the residential or commercial property of any accused in any criminal proceedings as an extra-legal punitive measure," the plea said referring to the June 3 incident of violence in Kanpur.

The organisation has also sought directions to the State of Uttar Pradesh to ensure that any demolition exercise of any nature must be carried out strictly in accordance with applicable laws, and only after due notice and opportunity of hearing are given to each of the affected persons.

The top court had earlier issued notice to the Centre and others on the issue of demolition of buildings in the violence-hit Jahangirpuri area of the national capital on the plea filed by the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind that claimed that buildings of Muslim riots accused are being razed.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mysuru (K'taka), Jun 13 (PTI) After a setback in the recent Rajya Sabha polls, which saw at least one of its MLAs voting against party candidate, JD(S) on Monday faced another round of dissidence with its MLC requesting voters to back a Congress nominee in the election to Legislative Council from the South Graduates' constituency.

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Voting is underway in the biennial election to the Karnataka Legislative Council from two graduates' and an equal number of teachers' constituencies on Monday.

"Voters of all the four districts that come under the constituency (South Graduates') are voting in large numbers in support of Madhu G Madegowda (Congress candidate). Madhu G Madegowda will win this election with a huge margin. His win is 100 per cent certain," JD(S) MLC Marithibbe Gowda said.

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Speaking to reporters here, he appealed to voters to vote in favour of Madegowda to ensure his victory.

He, however, did not wish to comment regarding his disgruntlement against JD(S) and its leadership, stating today was a poll day.

In the polls for South Graduates' constituency, Madegowda of Congress is pitted against former MLC M V Ravishankar of the BJP and H K Ramu of JD(S).

Recently, hitting out at the JD(S), Marithibbe Gowda expressed disappointment at the "attitude" of JD(S) patriarch H D Deve Gowda and Legislature Party leader H D Kumaraswamy over the last four years.

He had alleged that the party denied a ticket to one Jayaramu for the election to the Legislative Council from the South Graduates' constituency as he did not have money.

Marithibbe Gowda, who was the Deputy Chairman of Karnataka Legislative Council from 2015 to 2018, is currently MLC from South Teachers' constituency.

During the Rajya Sabha polls held on June 10, despite efforts by JD(S) to keep its numbers intact, the regional party's Kolar MLA K Srinivas Gowda cast his vote for the Congress candidate defying the party's diktat, while Gubbi MLA S R Srinivas allegedly put a blank ballot paper into the box, which left JD(S) legislature party leader H D Kumaraswamy fuming at his colleagues.

While Gowda accepted he voted for the Congress candidate stating that he did so since he "loved" the party, Srinivas, however, rejected Kumaraswamy's claim and insisted he voted for his party's pick. There were also reports that Srinivas had voted in favour of BJP's Lehar Singh Siroya, when votes were counted.

(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, Jun 13 (PTI)

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the authorities to not dispossess the priests, who have been residing in the vicinity of the Kalkaji temple premises here, from their properties while carrying out the re-development plan of the historic temple.

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A vacation bench of Justices AS Bopanna and Vikram Nath issued notice to the Centre and other parties on a plea filed by temple priests challenging the orders of the Delhi High Court and tagged the matter along with the pending petition.

In the meanwhile, there shall be no impediment for carrying out the re-development as directed by High Court of Delhi through the orders impugned herein but such re-development shall be without dispossessing the petitioners from the premises wherein they are stated to be residing at present, it said.

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During the hearing, the counsel appearing for the temple priests said that they have all the revenue records which show they are in possession of such property for years which is also evident from the report of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate.

The counsel further said that it is a historical fact that priests of the temple normally used to reside in the vicinity of the temple and this is how it has been in this case also.

He said that they are not against the re-development plan of the temple but their Dharamshalas and houses should not be demolished in the name of the redevelopment plan.

The bench asked the counsel whether the land of the premises which they are claiming to be there is in their name or in the name of the deity.

The counsel said that the properties are in their name and it can be seen from the report filed by the SDM before the court.

The bench then tagged the petition and restrained the authorities from dispossessing the priests from the premises on which they are residing.

On April 27, the top court had refused to grant status quo on a plea challenging the Delhi High Court's verdict which has passed a slew of directions concerning the administration and maintenance of Kalkaji temple in South Delhi here.

It had also refused to stay in the direction for the appointment of Justice (retd) JR Midha as the administrator of the temple to look after the day-to-day administration and the issue of safety and security of the temple.

On March 25, the top court refused to interfere with the High Court order directing the removal of encroachments and unauthorised occupants and shopkeepers, who do not have any valid legal rights to occupy the shops, in Kalkaji Temple.

It had said, We are not inclined to entertain the plea. We grant liberty to the petitioners to move the administrator appointed by the High Court with their grievances and the administrator will place the report before the High Court for suitable directions.

The top court had said, In some matters, we need to trust our High Courts. We all have been judges of the High Court. We are not here as an appellate forum in every matter. The dignity of the deity must be preserved.

On September 27, last year, the High Court had directed the removal of encroachments and unauthorised occupants and shopkeepers, who do not have any valid legal rights to occupy the shops, in Kalkaji Temple in South Delhi, and said the action be taken within five days keeping in view the forthcoming Navratri festival.

The high court had said it is essential for a temple, where thousands of devotees visit for conducting puja every day, irrespective of its public or private status, to be devoid of unauthorised encroachments which results in extreme inconvenience and safety and security concerns for the devotees.

It had appointed retired Delhi High Court judge, Justice (retd) J R Midha as the administrator of the Kalkaji Temple for performing various functions concerning the religious place.

The High Court had also appointed Goonmeet Singh Chauhan, a renowned Architect who has undertaken various projects of public importance, to submit a re-development plan for the Kalkaji Mandir and the entire surrounding complex and said he shall work closely with the Administrator and his team.

The court had said that the mandate of the administrator shall be to take all necessary steps in the interest of devotees, pilgrims, and baridaars (persons managing temple affairs), in order to ensure their safety and security, as also to preserve the integrity and sanctity of the deity and the mandir which is of utmost historical importance to the people of Delhi.

It had directed that all unauthorised occupants/encroachers, who do not enjoy valid tehbazari licences, and are in unauthorised occupation of the premises, would be liable to be removed, until and unless there is a court order protecting the occupant.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kolkata, Jun 13 (PTI) Kolkata Police on Monday summoned suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma for questioning in connection with her controversial remarks on Prophet Mohammad.

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She has been asked to appear at Narkeldanga Police Station on June 20 to record her statement, an official said.

Sharma's comments, made during a TV debate, has sparked violent protests in several parts of the country, including in Bengal. Sporadic violent protests rocked Howrah districts, parts of Murshidabad and South 24 Parganas since last Friday's prayers.

Trinamool Congress minority cell general secretary Abul Sohail has also lodged an FIR against Sharma at Contai police station over her remarks.

Reacting to the Kolkata Police's summons sent to the former BJP leader, CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said, "Nupur Sharma should have been arrested by Delhi long back. Her comments have brought shame to the country. Now, the TMC government in Bengal instead of putting pressure on the Centre to have her arrested is trying to gain political mileage by doing this."

Congress's Kamruzzaman Choudhury said, "Her comments had hurt the sentients millions of people. The FIR should have been lodged much earlier so that Sharma could be arrested. Now, when the situation has started getting out of the hand, FIRs are being lodged."

However, Manoj Tigga, BJP's chief whip in Bengal legislature said "Nupur should consults a lawyer ... But I believe instead of doing this (call the former BJP spokeswoman for questioning), the state should arrest rioters and take strong action against them. Why can't the state act so that common people get back their normal lives?"

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Nagrota (J&K), Jun 13 (PTI) Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and the Army's northern commander Lieutenant General Upendra Dwivedi welcomed a motor cycle rally to mark the 50th Raising Day of the White Knight Corps in Nagrota on Monday.

At a ceremony at the Nagrota military station, Lieutenant Governor Sinha and Lieutenant General Dwivedi greeted all ranks of the corps, which was raised in June 1972 as part of the Army's Northern Command, an official spokesman said.

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The corps has a rich history of valour in wars and performed commendably in operations along the Line of Control and in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations in Jammu and Kashmir.

Lt Gen Manjinder Singh, the General Officer Commanding of the White Knight Corps, paid floral tributes to the fallen heroes in a solemn wreath-laying ceremony at the Ashwamedh Shaurya Sthal in Nagrota.

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The golden jubilee celebrations of the White Knight Corps commenced with the motorcycle rally -- 'Veer Smriti Yatra' -- being flagged off from Lam in Rajouri on June 8. The rally reached Nagrota on Monday, the spokesman said.

The riders paid tributes to the bravehearts at all the war memorials in the corps zone, he said.

The celebrations in Nagrota commenced with the ceremonial lighting of the lamp by the LG in presence of a huge gathering of all ranks of White Knight Corps.

A short film on the glorious history of the White Knight Corps and the motorcycle rally was screened on the occasion.

During his address, Lt Gen Manjinder Singh welcomed the LG and other distinguished guests and assured them of the unflinching support by all ranks of the corps towards the national cause.

The corps commander also highlighted the major initiatives undertaken by the Indian Army for people, in addition to guarding the active borders.

On the occasion, Lieutenant Governor Sinha congratulated all ranks of the White Knight Corps and appreciated their exemplary contribution in maintaining peace and tranquillity in the region.

He also appreciated the contribution of the corps in all wars fought since its raising and its all-out efforts in ensuring safety and security of the people of Jammu and Kashmir by eradicating terrorism from the region.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], June 13 (ANI): Maharashtra Minister Aaditya Thackeray on Sunday attended the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change's Majhi Vasundhara Abhiyan 3.0 launched by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

The program was organised in Mumbai.

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The event was jointly conducted by the government of Maharashtra and Isha foundation to collaborate efforts on food security, sustainable farming, organic farming techniques and other initiatives to proactively save soil in the western state.

"Our planet is our shared asset and responsibility and I am honoured to share the stage with Sadhguru Ji and reiterate our commitment towards the great good of the environment by extending Maharashtra's support to the SaveSoil initiative, spearheaded by Ishafoundation on a global stage," tweeted Thackeray.

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Numerous experts from UN Environment Programme International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), UN Environment Programme, World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Convention to Combat Desertification attended the event. (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], June 13 (ANI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been asked to rejoin the investigation of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the National Herald case tomorrow, said sources on Monday.

The Wayanad MP was interrogated by the federal agency today amid protests by Congress workers across the country.

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The interrogation began at 11 am in the morning today. The first round of questioning concluded at around 2.15 pm for a lunch break. The Congress leader returned to his residence followed by his visit to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in the national capital where his mother and party interim president Sonia Gandhi is admitted due to COVID-related issues.

Rahul Gandhi's questioning resumed after he rejoined the probe for the second round at around 3.45 pm.

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Speaking on the matter, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who is also in Delhi to extend support to Gandhi, said, "This kind of behaviour is not good, people will not like it. Nobody should have any objection if the law will take its own course. But we object to the misuse of ED, CBI and IT that is being done."

"We should follow the course of law, only then will the nation function. Law should be equal for everyone. But the targetted summons being sent to leaders, in poll-bound states, Income Tax, ED, and Central Bureau of Investigation raids take place. That is wrong," he added.

Earlier today, Gandhi arrived at the ED office in the national capital with his sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, amid a huge march by the party workers along with him to the office.

Congress leaders and workers have staged protests holding placards at AICC headquarters in New Delhi over the summons. Various leaders including Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel and Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot took part in the party's Satyagraha march.

Following the day-long protest, the Congress party said that senior leader and former Union Minister P Chidambaram suffered a fracture in his left rib after he was pushed away by Delhi Police during the party's protest in support of Rahul Gandhi.

"When three big, burly policemen crash into you, you are lucky to get away with a suspected hairline crack! Doctors have said that if there is a hairline crack, it will heal by itself in about 10 days. I am fine and I will go about my work tomorrow," Chidambaram tweeted.

Union Minister Anurag Thakur hit back at Congress, saying that the country now knows Congress party supports corruption.

"Congress's real face has come to light. Why is Rahul Gandhi scared? If he's not done anything wrong, he should let ED do its job. Would the law change for 1 party and 1 family? The country now knows Congress party supports corruption," he said. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai, Jun 13 (PTI) The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) seized Methamphetamine and Amphetamine drugs concealed in parcels bound to New Zealand and Australia in separate operations and arrested one person from Navi Mumbai, an official said on Monday.

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The operations were conducted by the Mumbai zonal unit of NCB at suburban Andheri on Friday and Saturday. The accused was arrested on Sunday.

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The seized Methamphetamine (490 gram) was concealed very carefully in a Voltmeter parcel destined for New Zealand. The said parcel was booked from Mumbai, officials said.

Separately, Amphetamine (435 gm) was seized from another parcel destined for Australia which was also booked from Mumbai. The Amphetamine was found concealed in industrial nut bolts, they said.

The man held from Navi Mumbai has admitted during the investigation that he was the consignor of both the parcels.

A case was registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Ahmedabad, Jun 13 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unveil 18 Railways projects during his June 18 visit to Gujarat and also address a rally in Vadodara city. He will also launch the state's nutritional programme for pregnant women in tribal districts, state education minister Jitu Vaghani said on Monday.

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This is Modi's second visit to his home state, where elections are due in December this year, after eight days. He had visited the state on June 10.

PM Modi will visit 'Mahakali Mataji' temple at Pavagadh in the Panchmahals district on June 18 and then visit the 'Virasat Van.' Thereafter, he will address a public rally, 'Gujarat Gaurav Abhiyan', in Vadodara city, said Vaghani.

"Modi will also inaugurate and lay the foundation stones for 18 projects of the Indian Railways worth Rs 16,369 crore," Vaghani told reporters.

On June 10, the prime minister had addressed a rally at Navsari and inaugurated the headquarters of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe), in Ahmedabad.

During his upcoming visit, the prime minister will also inaugurate Palanpur-Madar Dedicated Freight Corridor, flag off the Ahmedabad-Botad passenger train, and lay the foundation stone for the redevelopment of Surat, Udhna, Somnath and Sabarmati railway stations and gauge conversion, among others, said Vaghani.

The PM also will provide benefits of the Pradhan Mantri Aavas Yojana to 8,907 beneficiaries and will expand the Gujarat government's "Poshan Sudha Yojana," launched on a pilot basis in 2017-18, to more areas, he said.

The scheme, which aims to provide nutritional benefits to pregnant women, was launched on an experimental basis in 2017-18.

Pregnant and lactating women registered at Anganwadis are provided one-time food as well as iron and calcium pills and health nutrition education under this scheme.

A spot feeding programme is currently underway across 10 ICDS in five tribal districts of Dahod, Valsad, Mehisagar, Chhota Udepur and Narmada. The government plans to expand it across the remaining tribal regions of the state from 2022 to 23, Vaghani said.

"The state has allocated Rs 118 crore for the scheme for 2022-23, and an estimated 1.15 lakh beneficiaries will be covered every month. The implementation of this scheme will reduce the rate of low birth weight of infants and improve the nutritional level of mothers and newborns," he added.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Hyderabad, Jun 13 (PTI) Schools reopened in Telangana on Monday after summer vacation as fears of COVID-19 eased in the state.

Also Read | Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot Slams Centre Over ED Summons to Gandhi Family, Says Country Watching Dictatorship.

This is for the first time in two years that schools resumed on schedule after the summer break.

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Significantly, the state government introduced English medium in government schools from Classes 1 to 8 from this academic year.

Teachers at some government schools in the state decorated the institutions to mark the occasion, while some others welcomed the students with flowers.

State Education Minister P Sabita Indra Reddy, who visited a government school in the city, urged parents to admit their children in state-run schools as the government is making efforts to provide best education to the students, including English medium.

Over one lakh government school teachers have been imparted training to enable them to teach in English medium, the minister said on Sunday.

A bridge course would be conducted for a month to the students to make them adapt to English medium education, she said.

The number of school students in the state is about 65 lakh students, including those in government and private schools.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kochi, Jun 13 (PTI) Swapna Suresh, a key accused in gold-smuggling in the diplomatic bags case, on Monday moved the Kerala High Court seeking to quash an FIR registered against her for allegedly conspiring to cause a riot in the State through her recent revelations.

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In her plea, Suresh alleged that she was falsely implicated in the case and claimed that former minister, K T Jaleel had filed the complaint after she had given information about his "illegal activities" before the court.

Also Read | National Herald Case: Congress Stages 'Massive Rally' in Hyderabad Against Summons Issued by ED To Rahul Gandhi & Sonia Gandhi.

Suresh, in her plea, also alleged involvement of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, two of his family members, former minister K T Jaleel, former Speaker P Sreeramakrishnan, former principal secretary to CM, M Sivasankar, and some top bureaucrats "in anti-national activities in UAE Consulate including gold smuggling".

"This is a clear case of attempt to intimidate the petitioner who is a witness as defined in the Witness Protection Scheme. The attempt of the 2nd respondent (Jaleel) and the police is to prevent the petitioner from disclosing facts about the commission of offence of the 2nd respondent before the Judiciary," she alleged in her plea.

Suresh alleged that she was "cleverly used by these persons" in collusion with the Consulate General of the UAE Consulate using its diplomatic protection.

Jaleel had recently lodged a complaint with the police following which a case was registered under Sections 153 (giving provocation with intent to cause a riot) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code against Suresh.

In her plea seeking to quash the FIR, Suresh said she was put to extreme harassment and immense pressure while in judicial custody to make sure that "she doesn't spill out anything about the involvement of the above persons to the Central Agencies" which were conducting the investigation.

"The police officers of Kerala have even threatened the life of the petitioner," her plea said.

Suresh said she had disclosed the involvement of the above persons to the Customs Department but that statement was "suppressed by the Customs without taking any action or conducting any investigation" about the involvement of those including the Chief Minister.

While talking to the media, Suresh had on Sunday said she would be disclosing to the media soon everything she had said about LDF MLA Jaleel in her statement under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code as he allegedly conspired against her.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], June 13 (ANI): Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala lashed out at Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan saying that the Chief Minister is turning into a threat as his governance messes with people's freedom and peace.

The Congress leader recalled an incident wherein it is alleged that a family returning home after a baptism function in Kottayam last week was stopped on their way for over an hour by Kerala Police that is under the control of the Vijayan government.

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"The whole town was facing restrictions for 14 hours owing to Vijayan's presence. The gates of hospitals were closed for hours. Many were trapped on roads unable to get to hospitals. The people were suffering," he pointed out.

"The Chief Minister is tormented by agoraphobia. The common people of Kerala are turning victims of the Vijayan's extreme fear. It is for the first time in history that Kerala is facing a ban on black masks and shawls. The state is seeing a Chief Minister who is cowering in fear to step outside due to the protests staged by the opposition," Chennithala said during a press meet.

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Agoraphobia is a fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness or embarrassment. The person fears entering open or crowded places.

On Saturday, Vijayan's security was ramped up in view of the mounting protests by the Opposition parties demanding his resignation.

Congress workers held a protest in Palakkad area on Sunday wearing black clothes and holding black balloons and flags demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan days after gold smuggling case prime accused Swapna Suresh's allegations against him. Earlier, Congress president K Sudhakaran has also demanded a court-monitored probe into Swapna's allegations.

The gold smuggling case came to light after 30 kg of gold concealed in diplomatic baggage was seized at the Thiruvananthapuram international airport here by the Customs Department on July 5, 2020.

BJP and Congress workers waved black flags at the Chief Minister at a couple of places in the state on Saturday as well. Following this, it was decided that a 40-member security team will accompany the Chief Minister while travelling. There will be five personnel in one pilot vehicle, 10 in two commando vehicles and eight in the quick response team. Apart from these, one pilot and escort have also been deployed. This is in addition to the security provided to the events attended by the Chief Minister.

Suresh had also alleged that Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is involved in the gold smuggling case. She also dragged Vijayan's wife Kamala and their daughter Veena into the controversy. (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, Jun 13 (PTI) US-based Advance Auto Parts on Monday said it has officially entered the Indian market with the launch of its Global Capability Center (GCC) in Hyderabad.

The North Carolina-headquartered company is a leading automotive aftermarket parts provider.

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The GCC would act as a hub of innovation, providing critical transformational support and automotive solutions across IT, digital, finance, and human resources for its North American markets, the company said in a statement.

"Setting up a GCC in India, was a strategic move to support Advance's transformational journey by leveraging India's talent powerhouse to deliver efficient solutions for complex process, participate in innovation programs, and develop digital capabilities," Advance Auto Parts President & CEO Tom Greco said.

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India is an extremely important market for Advance, and the company is committed to invest substantially in recruiting, retaining, and developing top talent to drive growth and value across the company with an impetus on innovation, he added.

"We look forward to growing our global team in Hyderabad and hope to become one of the great places to work in India, while helping grow the regional economy," Greco noted.

(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, Jun 13 (PTI) Google-backed technology company Nothing, led by former OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, will manufacture all smartphones that it will sell in India locally, a senior company official said on Monday.

In March, the company had announced plans to expand its device ecosystem beyond the audio segment starting with foray into the smartphone business.

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"We are thrilled to announce that every phone (1) sold in India will be manufactured locally," Nothing India vice president and general manager Manu Sharma told PTI.

The smartphone will be manufactured in Tamil Nadu.

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Nothing is developing its own Operating System (OS) for Phone (1), which will be built using Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile platform.

The UK-based company has plans to expand the product portfolio to set up a full device ecosystem and is looking to create an ecosystem of connected products, which will be an alternative to Apple ecosystem but it will be open for other brands as well.

"Nothing phone (1) is the real start of our journey and we cannot think of a better way to establish ourselves in India, which is a key market for us," Sharma said.

The company has been selling audio devices ear (1) in India since last August. The company smartphone is scheduled to be unveiled on July 12.

For the upcoming Nothing phone (1), the company is expanding its customer support in the region to over 270 authorised service centres in more than 250 cities as well as year-round support via the Nothing India channels.

The company plans to sell Nothing phone (1) through e-commerce platform Flipkart.

EQT Ventures, C Ventures and other private investors, including Tony Fadell (Principal at Future Shape & inventor of the iPod), Casey Neistat (YouTube personality and co-founder of Beme), Kevin Lin (co-founder of Twitch) and Steve Huffman (co-founder and CEO of Reddit), have also invested in the company.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Chandigarh, Jun 13 (PTI) Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Monday assured farmers to provide regular and uninterrupted power supply during the paddy season.

According to an official statement, Mann said the state government has taken a conscientious decision to conserve the state's precious natural resource in terms of groundwater by allowing paddy transplantation in a phased manner across the state from June 10 to 17.

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Resultantly, the chief minister said Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) had already been directed to ensure a minimum of eight hours of power supply to farmers during the ongoing paddy season.

Showing deep concern over the fast depleting groundwater level, the chief minister urged the farmers to make judicious use of water.

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Mann has already given detailed instructions to PSPCL to make sure that the power supply to other categories of consumers, especially the households, should not be hampered and ensure they too get regular power supply during the peak summer season, the statement said.

Elaborate arrangements have already been made by the PSPCL to meet the total expected demand of 15,000 megawatt, which includes farm sector requirement for paddy, it added.

To meet this demand, the transmission capacity to procure from outside the state has been enhanced to 8,500 MW as against 7,100 MW in the last season and the remaining power of 6,500 MW is being arranged from its sources within the state, as per the statement.

According to the estimates of the state agriculture department, the farmers are likely to sow paddy over an area of nearly 29 lakh hectares, of which high-quality basmati variety of rice is expected to be sown over an area of 6.50 lakh hectares, besides other varieties of paddy on the remaining area of 22.80 lakh hectares during the current Kharif season.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Tehran [Iran], June 13 (ANI/Xinhua): Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday that the recent anti-Iran resolution adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was a "political and untechnical" move.

The visit of the IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to Israel ahead of its Board of Governors' meeting and the change in the tone of his comments showed that "he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, meeting the wrong people, which dealt a bad blow to the agency's reputation," Khatibzadeh said during his weekly briefing.

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"We could not leave such a political and untechnical measure by the IAEA unanswered. We took our own measures," he added, referring to turning off some of IAEA's surveillance cameras at Iran's nuclear sites.

But interaction between Iran and the international nuclear agency will continue within the technical framework, the Iranian spokesman noted, urging IAEA to be "impartial and independent."

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On Thursday, it was announced in Vienna that Iran had told the IAEA it was removing 27 surveillance cameras from its nuclear facilities.

On Wednesday, the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution proposed by the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, accusing Iran of noncooperation. (ANI/Xinhua)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Jaipur, June 13: For the first time in the history of India, cow dung from the country will be exported to Kuwait, that too a whopping 192 metric tonnes, said Atul Gupta, National President of the Organic Farmer Producer Association of India.

The untiring efforts made by our team for the protection of cows have paid off, he said adding "A Jaipur-based company Sunrise Agriland and Development Research Pvt Ltd has got this order."

Prashant Chaturvedi, the company's director, said that this is probably the first time that the dung of indigenous cows from India is being imported by the Muslim-majority Kuwait. The work of packing cow dung in containers is going on under the supervision of the Customs Department at Sunrise Organic Park, located in Shripinjrapol Gaushala, Tonk Road, Jaipur. As its first consignment, it will be dispatched from Kanakapura railway station on June 15, he informed. Kuwait to Deport Expats Who Took Part in Fahaheel Demonstration.

Atul Gupta said that in 2020-21, the export of animal products from India was worth Rs 27,155.56 crore. Apart from this, the demand for organic manure is increasing continuously. Many countries have found after research on indigenous cow dung that it can not only increase the production of crops, but the use of the products produced from it can relieve humans from serious ailment. This is the reason that many countries have started importing indigenous cow dung along with organic manure from India.

He said that the agricultural scientists of Kuwait, after extensive research, have found that the use of indigenous cow dung in the form of powder in the date crop has shown an increase in fruit size as well as an expected increase in production. This is why Kuwait based company Lamor has placed an order for the import of 192 metric tonnes of indigenous cow dung from the Jaipur firm.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 13, 2022 08:55 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Mumbai, June 13: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper. Both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the National Herald case. While Sonia Gandhi was initially summoned on June 8, the questioning was rescheduled after the Congress chief tested positive for COVID-19. The ED has now called her on June 23.

On Sunday, Delhi police denied permission for a Congress rally that would have taken place from AICC headquarters to Enforcement Directorates office on Monday. Meanwhile, Delhi Police on Monday detained Congress party members for gathering outside AICC headquarters and imposed Section 144, prohibiting the gathering of four or more persons, in the areas around the Congress headquarters in Delhi. National Herald Case: Rahul Gandhi Accompanied by Congress Leaders March To ED Office (Watch Video).

What Is the National Herald Case?:

National Herald newspaper was founded by India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938 and was published by Associated Journals Limited (AJL). The newspaper was banned by the British government in 1942 during the 'Quit India' movement. Three years later the newspaper started its operations again. As visioned by Nehru, the National Herald came to be identified with India's freedom struggle and became a powerful tool. Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi Appears Before ED for Questioning in National Herald Money Laundering Case.

After Nehru took over his role as PM, he stepped down as chairman of the board of the media outlet but the newspaper continued to be funded by Congress. It soon became one of the leading English dailies, but the newspaper, due to its whopping Rs. 90 crore debt, shut down in 2008.

To revive it, the then-ruling party Congress offered a Rs 90-crore interest-free loan to the Associated Journals Ltd (AJL). However, the debt couldn't be repaid. Congress, in 2010, assigned this debt to Young India Private Limited, a non-profit company that was created a few months earlier. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are among its board of directors and they each own 38% of the company. AJL, however, could not pay the debt. The ownership of the company was then transferred to Gandhi-owned YIL for which they paid Rs 50 lakh.

In 2012, BJP veteran Subramanian Swamy filed a case against Sonia Gandhi, and Rahul Gandhi for cheating and misappropriation of funds in acquiring the ownership of the newspaper. He also named YIL's other shareholders - Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, journalist Suman Dubey, and technocrat Sam Pitroda. Swamy alleged that the Gandhis acquired a publicly-held company in a malicious manner by merely paying Rs 50 lakh considering the company had real estate properties worth Rs 2000 crore.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 13, 2022 01:13 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Mumbai, June 13: The Bhiwandi police on Sunday arrested a youth for a social media post supporting suspended Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Nupur Sharma. The youth has been identified as Saad Ansari.

According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the police arrested Ansari after a crowd reached his residence, thrashed him and protested against his social media post. They also demanded his arrest. Amid the protest, cops from Bhiwandi also reached Ansari's residence. Prophet Remarks Row: Geert Wilders, Dutch Politician Receives Death Threats for Supporting Suspended BJP Leader Nupur Sharma, Says 'I Am Not Indian nor a Hindu'.

Following this, the Bhiwandi police registered a case against Ansari under section 153 A (vilification or attacks upon the religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc of any particular group or class or upon the founders and prophets of a religion) of Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Yogesh Chavan, deputy commissioner of police, Bhiwandi said. "We have arrested the youth and also registered a case under relevant sections. We have already started probing the incident. We have also deployed police near the area to prevent further escalation."

On Saturday, the Bhiwandi police issued summons to BJP leader Nupur Sharma over her remarks against Prophet Muhammed. The police have asked Sharma to be present at the police station in the coming days. Nupur Sharma's Prophet Muhammed Remark Row: From Making Statement on Gyanvapi Masjid Case to Tendering Apology; Here's All That Transpired And Who Said What.

Chetan Kakde, senior police inspector said, "We have issued summons to her recently, asking her to present herself for inquiries at the police station. The date of the summons cannot be disclosed due to security reasons. The Bhiwandi police, on May 30, registered an FIR against Sharma.

Besides Bhiwandi police, Pydhonie police station and Mumbra Police in Thane have also summoned the BJP leader to record her statement in connection with her objectionable statements on Prophet Muhammed.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 13, 2022 05:14 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Jaipur, June 13: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who was detained in Delhi along with other Congress leaders while protesting against the ED summons to the Gandhi family in the National Herald case, on Monday attacked the Centre saying that the country is watching the dictatorship.

Targeting the BJP-led central government Gehlot said, "The way the peaceful march of the Congress party is being stopped today, the whole country is watching this dictatorship. The Congress headquarters has been cordoned off, police have been deployed all around. Politicians and activists are being detained. I have also been taken into custody along with my associates while going to the ED office," he said.

After being detained by the Delhi Police, Gehlot said "what difference will it make if you let five people go?" He added, "This is absolutely unfair in a democracy. The Congress workers will not tolerate the ED notice that has come to Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. There are agitations in every district and block. They should understand and allow the rule of law to be established." Gandhi Family Falsely Implicated, Says Bhupesh Baghel as Rahul Faces ED Questioning in National Herald Case.

Condemning the BJP government, he asked, "For how long will you mislead by talking about Hindu-Muslim? ED notices are wrong. The workers of the whole country have come here to show what is the mood of the country. These are fascist people (BJP govt). They are killing democracy, voice has to be raised against them in time."

Meanwhile, the Delhi Police blocked the roads. Despite the arguments of Gehlot and other Congress leaders, he was not allowed to proceed. Along with Gehlot, many other leaders including Mallikarjun Kharge, Jairam Ramesh, Mukul Wasnik, Digvijaya Singh, Deepender Hooda, Pawan Khera, PL Poonia, Gaurav Gogoi, Meenakshi Natarajan were detained.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 13, 2022 09:17 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Jaipur, June 13: The Rajasthan government on Monday suspended internet services in four tehsils of Bharatpur district for 24 hours starting Monday am as the reservation issue has once again rocked the state.

This time, Mali, Kushwaha Shakya and Maurya Samaj have raised a demand of 12 per cent reservation. Hundreds of people from the society blocked the National Highway-21 (Agra-Jaipur) in Bharatpur holding sticks in their hands.

The highway has been jammed for over 24 hours now. Looking at the gravity of the situation, Bharatpur Divisional Commissioner Sanwarmal Verma shut down internet services in four towns for 24 hours starting 11 am on Monday.

The state government has authorised minister Vishvendra Singh and the divisional commissioner to hold talks with the representatives from the agitators. Jammu and Kashmir: Curfew Lifted From Doda, Except Bhaderwah Town.

Laxman Singh Kushwaha, patron of Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti, said, "The people of the society are demanding reservation under the Constitution. The provision has been given in Article 16(4) of the Constitution. Those castes which are very backward can be given reservation by the state government."

Kushwaha added: "Kachi (Mali) society is the most backward class. The population of Kachi community is 12 per cent, so we are asking for reservation on the basis of population. We have met the Chief Minister on this issue and he had assured that it would be considered. But nothing has happened till date. We are being forced to stage a protest."

Bharatpur Divisional Commissioner Sanwarmal Verma said that Jaipur-Agra traffic has been disrupted, and internet and broadband services have been suspended to avert any untoward incident.

Internet service has been suspended in Nadbai, Vair Bhusawar and Uchhain tehsils.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 13, 2022 11:58 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Chennai, June 13: A female wild elephant that got separated from its herd during a drive operation by the Tamil Nadu forest department at Theethipalayam village near Coimbatore, attacked an Anti Poaching Forest watcher on Monday. The condition of the anti-poaching watcher, Mohan (36), according to the forest department officials is stable.

The elephant was driven away by the forest department officials and the anti-poaching watchers using firecrackers and suddenly it turned back and pushed the anti-poaching watcher. Other staff members saved him by chasing the elephant away.

Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) Field Director S. Balasubramanian said that the condition of the APW was stable and that he was recovering at the Government Medical College, Coimbatore. Forest officials of the Coimbatore Forest Division, along with range officers and anti-poaching watchers, are driving the elephant back into the forest. Kabini's 70-Year-Old Elephant Bhogeswara Famous For Its Longest Tusks in Asia Dies Due To Age-Related Illnesses, Wildlife Lovers Mourn Death.

A senior officer with Coimbatore Forest Division told IANS: "This female elephant was part of a herd of six elephants that strayed into Theethipalayam village on Sunday night. The herd intruded into the agriculture farms and destroyed the crops and also damaged a house on the border of farmland.

Five elephants were driven back to the forest while this female elephant got separated and it roamed around Theethipalayam village, Kalamapalayam village, and Annai Velankanni Nagar.

The forest department has issued an advisory to the villagers of Theethipalayam and adjoining areas asking them not to venture out of their homes as the elephant was roaming around and said that the forest department is chasing the elephant into the forest using firecrackers and fire.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 13, 2022 04:36 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
On the morning of June 12, Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe delivered a keynote speech on "China's Vision for Regional Order" at the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue. General Wei once again stated China's solemn position on the Taiwan question. He stressed that the national unification will be absolutely realized, peaceful reunification is the greatest aspiration of the Chinese people, and China is willing to do the utmost for that. If anyone dares to split Taiwan from the country, China will not hesitate to fight, even at any cost. No one should underestimate the determination, will and power of the Chinese military.

This marks the reiteration of China's red line on the Taiwan question by Chinese Defense Minister within three days and is also a strong warning to the US and its followers keen on manipulating the Taiwan question.

Taiwan question is China's internal affairs, which should not have been a topic of discussion at multilateral forums like the Shangri-La Dialogue. However, as the US intensified its effort to contain China with Taiwan region, the Taiwan question has been put forward for the first time at the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2017 by the US. Even worse, the question is put on agenda as a "key" topic during this year's Shangri-La Dialogue, as shown by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's personal speech, as well as the US-ROK-Japan Trilateral Ministerial Meeting Joint Press Statement and the Australia-Japan-US Defense Ministers Meeting Joint Statement. This is obviously a result of private collusion, which attempts to internationalize the Taiwan question and impose the crime of undermining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait on China.

The US, the real destroyer of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, is trying to intervene in the affairs across the Taiwan Strait even deeper under the disguise of "maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait". The US and its allies have poorly disguised themselves as "guardians" to safeguard the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait in the principle of the so-called "no use of force to change the status quo". However, it is clear to the other countries around the whole world that it is due to a series of actions taken by the US side like an ever-growing expansion of arms sales to Taiwan, sending congressmen and former politicians to visit Taiwan, and once revising its fact sheet on US-Taiwan Relation on the US Department of State website, that the rampant "Taiwan independence" separatist activities and the intensified situation across the Taiwan Strait have got even worse.

General Wei has repeatedly stressed that "China will not hesitate to fight, even at any cost". China has sent a clear signal to the actions that aggravate tensions in the Taiwan Strait, serving to be a real deterrent to the US provocations and the hazards posed by "Taiwan independence" separatists. This also serves as a real strong guarantee for peace and stability in the region.

The One-China principle serves as the pinnacle to ensure peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Although the US has repeatedly expressed its stance to not support "Taiwan independence" separatists in words, why should it act as a protective umbrella for "Taiwan independence" separatists? It is precise because of the rampant "Taiwan independence" separatists and the continuous intervention by external forces that China cannot give up the way of "reunification by force". Currently, the real purpose of brazenly talking about the so-called "peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait" by the US is but to fight for the right to interpret, distort and disguise the true meaning of the "peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait."

The US has been accustomed to mentioning "rules-based international order" and "opposition against unilateral action to alter the cross-Strait status quo by any party." These words are not tenable in themselves, and the US is, as a matter of fact, not qualified to say so.

There is only one China in the world. Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, and the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China. This is the real and only status quo of the Taiwan question. As an inalienable part of China's territory, the way to resolve the Taiwan question is China's internal affairs, and no outside interference is allowed. This has been the only rule recognized by the vast majority of countries across the world, and there are no other rules.

Cross-strait affairs are a family matter concerning compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits. It is China instead of the US who is the most eager to maintain stability across the Taiwan Strait. Over the past few years, the US has messed up the Middle East, followed by Europe, and now it aims to disrupt the Asia-Pacific region. But the US side should understand that those who are playing with fire in pursuing the policy of using Taiwan to contain China, will set themselves on fire.

Editor's Note: This article is originally published on huanqiu.com, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
He said police has arrested over 200 people from different parts of the state and and lodged 42 cases. So far, the situation is under control, Malaviya told reporters at the West Bengal Police Headquarters here.
The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (#UNSMIL) (@UNSMILibya) has expressed concern about clashes that erupted in Libyan capital #Tripoli between armed groups.



The clashes between armed groups took place on Friday evening, Xinhua news agency reported. pic.twitter.com/RIINCtOLyF IANS (@ians_india) June 11, 2022

(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
"Rahul Gandhi zindabad, zindabad" song resonated at Congress party headquarters in Delhi as Rahul Gandhi is set to march to Enforcement Directorate (ED) office to appear before it in the National Herald case. Earlier on Monday, several Congress leaders were detained amid sloganeering in support of the party leader. The Delhi Police had denied permission for the scheduled Congress rally from AICC HQ to the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) office.

Check Tweet:

#WATCH 'Rahul Gandhi zindabad, zindabad' song resonates at Congress party headquarters in Delhi as RG is set to march to Enforcement Directorate to appear before it in National Herald case Top Congress leaders are present at the party HQ to show solidarity with party leadership pic.twitter.com/6NaCL6QuiK  ANI (@ANI) June 13, 2022

(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
Ariana DeBose on Sunday kicked off the Tony Awards 2022 by celebrating inclusion and diversity on Broadway.

DeBose presided over the first large-scale, in-person Tony Awards ceremony since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"I am so proud that the theater is becoming more reflective of the community who adores it, and in doing so, has gained new performers, new creatives, new fans," DeBose said in her opening monologue.

The Oscar winner went on to say that theater has shown stories that have broadened the world and "opened" the hearts and minds of the people.

DeBose added that she feels like the phrase "Great White Way" is now becoming a nickname contrary to a "how-to-guide." The actress also highlighted that Black playwrights wrote seven plays across Broadway stages in the last season.

"My friends, those are steps toward inclusion," DeBose noted.

Aside from giving a monologue to open this year's Tony Awards, DeBose also wowed the crowd with a performance of songs from classic Tony-winning musicals, including "Company," "Cabaret," and the "The Phantom of the Opera."

READ NEXT: SAG Awards 2022: Ariana DeBose Bags 'Outstanding Performance' for Her 'West Side Story' Role

Ariana DeBose Snuck Into Tony Awards Afterparties

Hours after Ariana DeBose performed and delivered her monologue at Tony Awards 2022, the Oscar winner took her followers into memory lane as her friend shared a mutual memory they had on Tony Awards.

Musical Director Benjamin Rauhala took to Instagram to share a story about when DeBose snuck in the afterparties of the prestigious awards ceremony, noting that they would put on their best outfits for the occasion.

DeBose shared the post on her Instagram, tagging Rauhala with the caption saying: "LOOK HOW FAR WE'VE COME! LOVE YOU."

DeBose earlier told People that she would be joined by her partner Sue Makkoo, her mom Gina, and friend Jonathan Cobrda in her hosting gig for Tony Awards 2022. The three were also reportedly with Ariana DeBose when she won her Oscar earlier this year.

Some of Tony Awards 2022 Winners

The 75th Tony Awards features several Broadway performance nominations. "A Strange Loop" is leading this year with 11 nominations. "Paradise Square" follows with 10 nominations. "Company" comes third with nine nominations.

"Take Me Out" won the Best Revival of Play award, while "The Musical" bagged the Best Original Score category.

"The Skin of Our Teeth" bagged the Best Costume Design of a Play. Sam Mendes won Best Direction of a Play for "The Lehman Trilogy." The same act also won the Best Scenic Design of a Play.

"MJ" won Best Lighting Design of a Musical and Best Sound Design of a Musical. "Company" bagged Best Performance of an Actor and Actress in a Featured Role in Musical at Tony Awards 2022.

READ MORE: Britney Spears Says She Had 'Panic Attack' on the Day of Her Wedding With Sam Asghari

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Written by: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Actress Ariana Debose on Hosting the 75th Annual Tony Awards - From CBS Mornings
Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador allegedly attempted to blackmail President Joe Biden to include non-democratic countries in the Summit of the Americas' guest list, according to a U.S. Senator.

Senator Bob Menendez made the revelation after Lopez Obrador skipped the U.S.-hosted summit and took to his daily press conference to criticize Cuban American senators, including Menendez.

According to The Hill, Lopez Obrador commented on the Cuban American senators' role in excluding the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the event.

Menendez said he thinks Lopez Obrador "basically tried to blackmail" Biden into insisting countries that are not democratic like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua that are "dictators and despots" to have been invited to the summit."

Menendez noted that Mexico is one of America's most important bilateral relationships. However, he said that Biden made the right choice to exclude the three countries that have either not signed or openly defied the Inter-American Democratic Charter.

Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he applauds Biden for upholding the standard of the Summit to be a "summit of democracies."

Lopez Obrador has singled out Menendez in his daily press conference Monday and compared his positions on relations with Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to those of Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

"Those two gentlemen, I understand them better because they're Republicans. But this gentleman, he's in the Democratic Party," said the Mexican president, referring to Menendez.

According to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump "permitted" all the countries in the hemisphere to join the Summit of the Americas during their terms in office.

READ NEXT: Summit of Americas Opens Without Leaders of Mexico, Cuba, Among Others

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Joe Biden on Summit of The Americas

Joe Biden has refused to include the three countries in the Summit of the Americas as they "do not believe that dictators should be invited," said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday.

On the other hand, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador decided to boycott the high-profile gathering, USA Today reported. The Mexican president accused the senators of having resentment and "hatred" towards Cuba.

Rubio criticized Lopez Obrador, calling him "an apologist for tyranny in Cuba, a murderous dictator in Nicaragua, and a narco-trafficker in Venezuela.

Donald Trump earlier increased sanctions against Cuba, covering the cancellation of permits to send remittances and punishment of oil tankers bound for the island. Joe Biden and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador are set to meet in July.

Summit of the Americas

Joe Biden arrived in Los Angeles hoping to announce new economic and migration policies to demonstrate cohesion in the region.

White House officials were reportedly frustrated that the "drama over the participants appeared to be obscuring the important issues at stake."

CNN Politics also reported that first lady Jill Biden complained that the news coverage of her husband had been "so unfair."

In a speech later in the program, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez said the rules of future summits should be changed to prevent nations from being excluded.

Fernandez noted that they definitely "would have wished for a different Summit of the America," adding that the silence of those absent was "calling to us."

After sitting through his counterpart's speeches, Joe Biden said they heard almost total agreement on the substantive things that they should be doing.

READ MORE: Brian Laundrie Manhunt: Parents of Gabby Petito's Fiance Change the Date of Florida Fugitive's Disappearance

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Diplomatic Controversy Overshadows Summit of the Americas - From PBSNews Hour
A former adviser for Ex-President Barack Obama said that President Joe Biden's age will be a "major issue" if he decides to run again in 2024.

Former Obama Adviser David Axelrod told The New York Times that the presidency is the "most taxing job" and explained that Biden will be close to 90 than 80 at the end of the second term.

Axelrod also explained that Biden's appearance is not like before, and it has affected his image as the president of the U.S.

"He looks his age and isn't as agile in front of a camera as he once was, and this has fed a narrative about competence that isn't rooted in reality," Axelrod said.

It can be recalled that President Joe Biden has faced months of low approval ratings, which reached an all-time low of 59 percent disapproval in a Morning Consult poll in the previous week.

President Joe Biden will be 81 years old in November.

READ NEXT: Texas School Shooting: Joe Biden Sends Desperate Plea for Gun Control, Highlights How Uvalde Parents Took DNA Swabs to Identify Children

AOC Refuse to Say If She Supports Joe Biden in '24 Presidency Bid

On Sunday, New York Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) refused to say whether she will support President Joe Biden in his 2024 reelection bid.

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," AOC said in an interview with CNN's "State of the Nation, per New York Post.

However, host Dana Bash pushed back that AOC's response was not a "yes."

"Yes, I think we should endorse when we get to it," AOC reiterated. The New York representative then pointed out that she believed Biden has been doing a "very good job" so far, and she will take a look at it once he runs again for president.

AOC also underscored that Biden has a vision that they are all willing to "entertain and examine" when the time comes.

Joe Biden on Running for President in 2024

According to reports, Biden has already told his political allies that he will run for president again in 2024. Sources familiar with the matter claim that the president is letting everyone know about his desire.

In April, two sources confirmed to The Hill that Biden told Obama about his reelection plans.

An insider also noted that the president is confident that he is the only one in the Democratic Party who can beat former President Donald Trump.

President Joe Biden also announced in a press conference in Brussels in March that he will be "very fortunate" to run against his rival in the 2020 presidential elections.

Biden and Obama had lunch together earlier in April. However, it was unclear when the 2022 reelection plans were discussed by the two.

Meanwhile, Democratic strategist Jim Manly said that he still expects Biden to run again for president in 2024.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't a bunch of Democrats and their staffers watching very carefully as the weeks and months go by," Manly added.

READ NEXT: Brazil's Police Discover Items Belonging to Missing Pair in Amazon | Here's What They Found

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Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: ABC Exclusive: Biden on Running for Reelection - From ABC News
Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has become well-known mainly as former U.S. President Donald Trump's vice president.

Trump is known to have an estimated $2.7 billion net worth, which marked him as one of the wealthiest politicians to set foot in the White House.

Pence, on the other hand, has just a net worth of $1.2 million and is not among the wealthiest vice president as compared to others.

Dick Cheney's net worth is estimated at $100 million; Al Gore's at $300 million; and Nelson Rockefeller had a net worth of $1 billion, according to The List.

However, Pence has a net worth higher than Walter Mondale, who had a net worth of only $15,000.

READ NEXT: Mike Pence and Karen Pence's Marriage of More Than 3 Decades Is Admired by Many, Including Donald Trump

Mike Pence: Net Worth and Wealth

Mike Pence announced in his August 2016 financial disclosure that he has a modest net worth, mostly made up of a pension worth around $500,000.

Celebrity Net Worth noted that his primary source of income before becoming Vice President was his Indiana governor's salary in 2015. It was worth $173,860.

Pence was a talk-radio host in Indiana before entering politics.

In 2015, Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, earned a combined $113,026 in adjusted gross income based on a financial disclosure released in 2016.

The Pence couple also earned around $9,000 from a pension fund or annuity, having claimed a $3,500 loss connected to Karen's business, That's My Towel Charm, Inc.

They also had $80,000 worth of debt related to their children's education.

In the years between 2009 and 2016, the two earned at least $100,000, while in 2009 and 2010, they earned $187,000.

In a 2019 book, Tom LoBianco claimed the Pences were alleged to be "financially destitute" when they joined Trump's presidential campaign. The same book noted that Pence lost $1 million he had inherited from his father on failed investments.

Pence also reportedly lost around $700,000 in stock he held in his family's gas station business which went bankrupt in 2001.

Mike Pence and Family

Yahoo News reported in January 2021 that the Pence family is currently staying at the Indiana governor's cabin or living with their families back in their home state.

Mike Pence and his wife Karen are reportedly looking for a new home after their free, taxpayer-funded housing officially ended.

Pence is reportedly staying at a cabin that Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb uses as a retreat house. However, two other Indiana Republican insiders noted that the former vice president and former second lady are staying with family.

The lack of information regarding Pence's location at the time is mainly due to safety concerns after the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The mob that breached the building threatened Pence's life for his role in certifying U.S. President Joe Biden's election victory at the time.

The Pence family has managed to confirm at the time that they would keep their Secret Service protection.

READ MORE: Pres. Joe Biden, a 'Direct Beneficiary' of His Son Hunter Biden's Foreign Deals, Says Head of Government Accountability Institute

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Mike Pence, 48th Vice President of the United States - from Biography
The Sheep Fire in Southern California has mandatory evacuations issued in place after the wildfire expanded steadily in Southern California Angeles National Forest on Sunday.

CNN Weather reported that the Sheep Fire grew from 35 acres on Sunday morning to 775 acres by afternoon, with only five percent of the fire contained.

The latest fire update noted that law enforcement officials are going door-to-door with a mandatory evacuation for Desert Front Road and Wild Horse Canyon.

The incident overview added that Wrightwood is under an evacuation warning, with a road closure from Hwy 138 to Lone Pine.

READ NEXT: U.S. Southwest Megadrought Blamed on Climate Change; New Mexico, Others in Its Driest State in 1200 years

Sheep Fire Burning in Southern California

In the San Gabriel Mountains, the wildfire has ravaged at least 990 acres. Part of the town of Wrightwood is under mandatory evacuation as hot and windy weather triggered the fire, according to a San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

An evacuation center was installed at Serrano High School at 9292 Sheep Creek Road in Phelan while the Red Cross was on the scene.

Dana Dierkes, an Angeles National Forest spokeswoman, said that embers blew from the burning area toward the unlit brush to the north as the wind picked up.

Dierkes added that it lighted new fires in front of the path of the blaze. She said that they have erratic and strong blowing north-east winds.

San Bernardino County Fire Department said by the afternoon that it was evacuating residents living along Desert Front. At the time, Wrightwood residents were warned that they might have to evacuate too.

Chris Prater, a firefighter and spokesman for the San Bernardino County Fire Department, said that firefighters had not been able to get out in front of the fire before it took off in the afternoon. Prater added that there were a lot of perimeters that had not been secured yet.

More than 200 firefighters will be working through the night to contain the wildfire, according to a CBS News report.

Earlier on Sunday, there were no structures immediately threatened, and no mandatory evacuations were in place.

Meanwhile, the cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Wildfires in the Southwest

Federal forecasters projected a "dangerous heat" in the Southwest, with New Mexico and Arizona also fighting fires days before the summer solstice.

NBC News noted that at least three new wildfires burned on Sunday in Southern California, with San Bernandino County's Sheep Fire burning acres and prompting evacuations.

Los Angeles County's San Gabriel Mountains' Fish Fire burned about 25 acres on Sunday. It was discovered in two different places. Officials said in a statement that horse stables in the nearby city of Azusa were evacuated.

Meanwhile, the Wala Fire in Oceanside, California was contained by firefighters by late afternoon, according to local police. Wala Fire also triggered evacuations for one neighborhood.

National Weather Service said in a Sunday forecast that dangerous heat will continue across the Southwest.

READ MORE: Caldor Fire Moves Closer to Lake Tahoe as Blaze Continues to Spread in Northern Part of California

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Sheep Fire burns near Wrightwood - from KTLA 5
Case Title:

Samantha Christina Delfina Willis & Anr Vs The State Of Karnataka & Ors



Date of Order:

June 1, 2022



Bench:

Justice M Nagaprasanna



Parties:

Samantha Christina Delfina Willis &Anr. (Petitioner) & State of

Karnataka & Ors. (Respondent)

Subject

A writ petition filed by the petitioners was dismissed by the Honble Karnataka High Court on the grounds that it was filed by the power of attorney holder who did not know what the case is exactly about.

Important provisions

Article 226, 227 of the Indian Constitution, Section 482 of CrPC.

Overview

The complainant in the said case got married to a woman through an online website after he claimed that his wife (1st petitioner) took away his mothers jewels in the name of a photo shoot and then ran away with it to Kolkata and then to the United Kingdom.

He also complained that she induced him to pay Rs. 7.5 crores for the purchase of a property in the name of both husband and wife.

Despite the request of the complainant, his wife did not return to his home in Bangalore and later after returning from the United Kingdom, the petitioners sought the annulment of the marriage.

However, the respondent (complainant) by then had already filed that complaint before the Police in Bangalore mentioning the above-stated grounds under Sections 406, 419, 420, 380, 384, 389, 506 read with Section 34 of IPC.

He also alleged that the petitioners were not even Muslims but Christians who concealed their identities and posed themselves as Muslims.

Issues Raised

Whether or not the writ petition filed by the power of attorney holder is maintainable under Articles 226 and 227 of the Indian Constitution?

Arguments advanced by the Petitioners

The counsel on behalf of the petitioner contended before the Honble Court that, the respondents in their complaint tried to change the civil nature of the pure matrimonial dispute to a criminal offence.

He further contended that since the jewels taken by the wife (1st petitioner) and the money transferred to the account of 1st petitioner to purchase the property was during the existence of the marriage hence, no criminal offence has been conducted, as had been stated in the complaint of the respondents.

Additionally, he contended that the property so purchased was in the names of both the wife and the husband (5th respondent), therefore, there was no misappropriation of funds and inducement to purchase the property in the case, as complained of. Hence, Sections 406 and 420 are not attracted in the said case.

The petitioner based on the above-mentioned arguments sought the annulment of the proceedings stating that the case in no way involved a criminal offence.

Arguments advanced by the Respondents

The counsel on behalf of the respondents contended that the writ petition filed under Articles 226 and 227 of the Indian Constitution read with Section 482 of CrPC was not maintainable as it was filed by a power of attorney holder and not the petitioners themselves.

of the Indian Constitution read with was not maintainable as it was filed by a power of attorney holder and not the petitioners themselves. He further added that since the writ itself was not maintainable in the very first place, therefore, the contentions mentioned within it could not be proceeded with.

He also contended that the 1st petitioner, in the name of a photo shoot, took away the jewels of her mother-in-law to the United Kingdom and never returned it. Also, she induced her husband to pay Rs. 7.5 crores for the purchase of a property. Therefore, the respondents sought the dismissal of the writ petition.

Judgment Analysis

The Honble High Court observed that the writ petition filed by the power of attorney holder is not maintainable because the power of attorney holder is not aware of what the petition is about, the facts of the case and the reason for filing the petition.

The court further went on to say that since the petition was filed in Bangalore but signed by the executants before the Notary at London, it could not be asserted that they are well aware of the case.

The Honble Court further referred to the case of Amrinder Singh v. State of NCT of Delhi in which it was held that an accused cannot be represented by a third party such as the power of attorney holder.

Accordingly, the Honble High Court of Karnataka dismissed the petition stating the above-mentioned grounds and imposed a cost of Rs. 1,00,000 on the petitioners to be submitted with the High Court Legal Services Authority.

Conclusion

Ones knowledge about the facts of the case and the reason why the petition in the concerned case is being filed is important because lack of knowledge or no knowledge at all, about something for which a person has willfully agreed, might lead to the difficulties in future. What if later, at the time of any sort of accountability, the same person argues before the Court that since he was unaware of the facts and circumstances, he is neither accountable nor liable for any consequences arising out of his actions? Therefore, it is very essential to ensure if a person who has filed the petition is competent for the same or not.

Learn the practical aspects of CrPC HERE, CPC HERE, IPC HERE, Evidence Act HERE, Family Laws HERE, DV Act HERE

Click here to download the original copy of the judgement
Portlaoise may appear clean and full of summer floral displays, but it has crashed from first to 26th in the national IBAL Litter Survey.

Two heavily littered sites, one of them owned by Laois County Council, have brought down the town's mark, in spite of the continued efforts by Portlaoise Tidy Towns.

Chairperson Gerry Browne called the result "disheartening" but says otherwise the town "looks magnificent".

The latest survey by Irish Business Against Litter shows that Portlaoise, which won national 2nd place last time out and 1st last September, has tumbled to 26th. However it is still deemed clean.

The An Taisce report for Portlaoise stated:

"A town with six top ranking sites would typically rank quite highly but the presence of a litter blackspot and a heavily littered site in Portlaoise brings down the overall ranking. These sites  the derelict site on Harpurs Lane and the recessed entrance to a ghost estate beside Mountain View Square - didnt get into this state overnight and will require attention to prevent further deterioration. Top ranking sites included Gandon Court Shopping Centre, The Main Street and the Bring Centre in car park adjacent to the Grape & Bean."

The first site is a derelict cottage which has become a target for dumpers, while the second, Hepburn Court, is a former private housing estate that was destroyed by fires, blocked up and force bought and is to be developed into a new council housing estate, to end decades of anti-social behaviour including dumping.

The dumping at both is on an "industrial scale", Gerry Browne said.

"That sort of dumping is on an industrial scale and it has to be cleaned in an industrial scale too. I am sure the people living down there aren't happy with it either. It's disappointing to go from first to 26th but it's slightly out of our hands. The town looks fantastic. Those are bad areas but generally anyone coming into Portlaoise is saying it looks fabulous.

He does not blame Laois County Council for the dumping on what is their land at Hepburn Court.

"The council didn't dump, the blame should be laid at the doors of people who are firing stuff out there, that's the scandal. We get fantastic support from Laois County Council. It has been cleaned up before and it costs a fortune each time."

He remains positive for Portlaoise to bounce back, particularly.

"We are still in the top 26. We have to stay positive. We will keep doing what we are doing and maybe in the next report we can bounce back," he said.

Below: the rankings for 40 Irish towns.

The IBAL national study reveals PPE litter is on the decrease, but the prevalence of coffee cups on our streets warrants action such as a levy, says IBAL. 2022 marks the 20th year of the IBAL litter surveys.

Elsewhere in the Midlands, Athlone rose to 4th spot in the ranking of 40 towns and cities, with Mullingar also improving, to 16th position.

Two-thirds of the 40 towns and cities surveyed were found to be clean, among them Naas, which retained its position atop the rankings, ahead of Letterkenny and Cavan.

Overall litter levels showed a decrease on last year, with a dramatic fall of 50% in the number of sites within towns deemed to be litter blackspots.

The survey suggests that Ireland is seeing a return to normality post-Covid, with less PPE litter and less alcohol consumption outdoors, litter levels have fallen.

The land at Hepburn Court and behind it is to become a new social housing estate with 54 homes, with the council hoping this eliminates the dumping problem. That plan recently concluded its public consultation phase.
Laois has voted in support of a right by people with disabilities to get a Personal Assistant to help them live independenty.

Two Laois councillors have won support of their motion on the call for a PAS, requested by Independent Living Ireland who is contacting every local authority in Ireland to push the issue forward.

The Cathaoirleach Cllr Conor Bergin and Cllr Caroline Dwane Stanley, jointly tabled a motion to the May meeting of Laois County Council.

"That Laois County Council supports the right to a Personal Assistance Service (PAS) for disabled people to have freedom, choice and control over all aspects of their lives to enable them to fully participate in an inclusive society as equals".

Cllr Bergin explained why a PAS is required.

"We were all contacted by Independent Living Ireland. 34 local authorities have passed this, and it has got national support in the Dail. It's about inclusion. 13% or 14% of people have disabilities according to the last census and I'd say in the next one it will be higher. We all know people in our community who need this. Hopefully they will be able to push it on to the next level," he said.

Cllr Dwane Stanley described the range of people who need a PAS.

"It's about trying to support people with disabilities to live independently, and avail of education and work. It is completely different to home help. This is in relation to tasks around personal care, domestic duties, shopping, support in the workplace, socialising. I know some people like this who live in the community.

"One man's mother died and his father had a stroke. He is in a wheelchair but he was able to get a PAS and continue to live independently. Another is a photographer working full time and is only able to do that because they have a personal assistant," she said.

Cllr Noel Tuohy seconded the motion.

"There are an estimated one billion people in the world with a disability. Anything we can do to support them, we should," he said.

Cllr Aisling Moran supported it and said that people cannot get carers either.

"Older people who are sick are sent home from hospital with no carers and they are back in hospital in an ambulance four hours later. If you're on the border of the county you can't get carers," she claimed.
Work is underway to restore bottle recycle facilities to Camross some three years after it was removed.

So it emerged at a recent meeting in Laois County Council following a motion tabled by Cllr Conor Bergin, Fine Gael. He asked that the local authority reinstate the bottle bank in Camross village in consultation with the local Tidy Towns/Community Development Association.

He added that it's been three years since the bring bank was removed due safety concerns because of proximity to an overhead cable. He said a large area would use it adding that every community should have a bottle bank.

Cllr James Kelly, Independent, backed the call.

Its very important that we get something. There is a new community hub, walkway and playing fields, he said.

Cllr Seamus McDonald, Fianna Fail, also supported the motion.

Mr Rory OCallaghan, Senior Executive Engineer, gave details of the state of play.

The Environment Section are in ongoing contact with Camross Tidy Towns and Camross Community Development Group with a view to re-establishing a Bring Bank facility in Camross. The Groups are to provide a list of potential suitable locations. Pending receipt of that list, the Councils preferred site is at a corner of the church car park, a site which facilitates suitable access for the public and the collection contractor and further provides a visible site, he said.

The update was given at the Borris-in-Ossory Mountmellick Municipal District meeting in June.
Kildare communities have been very welcoming to the hundreds of Ukrainian refugees who have arrived into the county, Senator Mark Wall said.

Senator Wall said his constituency staff have been dealing with issues on behalf of the displaced families.

He was speaking in a debate in the Seanad following the visit to Ukraine by Kildare South TD and Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail and Cathaoirleach of the Seanad Mark Daly.

Senator Wall said: "I thank Irish people for their efforts in welcoming the many proud Ukrainians who have come to our shores to find safety among us.

"I am told recently that some 600 of the almost 30,000 Ukrainian refugees have come to my home county of Kildare.

"There have been a number of welcoming committees and they continue to meet and assist these displaced people in my county. I thank them most sincerely for their efforts.

"My office continues to deal with a number of queries from many of those who have come to our shores.

"One of the issues raised a number of times with me is the ability of those fleeing the war in Ukraine to continue their education while with us."

Senator Wall noted measures were in place to help Ukrainian students to continue their studies in Ireland.

He added: "In many cases, these people had put down strong roots within our communities, contributed handsomely to community life in this State and been important and valuable members of their communities."

He said the 'horrific pictures of the destruction of this once proud country and the bodies of members of this proud nation lying in their streets' is unacceptable to everyone.
An accountancy apprenticeship programme is expected to create an estimated 140 jobs in Ireland in 2022.

Firms both large and small have embraced the Accounting Technicians Ireland (ATI) apprenticeship in which apprentices work, learn and earn at least 21,060 a year.

Applications for the two-year, work-based learning programme - based in colleges in Waterford, Limerick, Monaghan, Galway, Wicklow, Dublin and Cork - are now open for interested parties.

Dublin-based ATI graduate Katie Mikulan, 23 - who initially pursued a degree before deciding to begin the apprenticeship in 2020 - is urging Leaving Certificate students not to feel pressured to enter full-time third level education.

She said the apprenticeship was the best move she ever made.

"I began an accounting and finance degree after my Leaving Certificate, but university was not what I expected; I did not enjoy it as much as I thought and left after a year and a half, said Katie.

"College can be expensive, but a funded apprenticeship programme is a great alternative. Starting the ATI apprenticeship was the best decision I have ever made. I wish I had begun sooner."

She completed her two-year apprenticeship with Grant Thornton, where she worked in the international corporate tax team whilst studying part-time through the ATI Academy.

She said, "I would recommend the apprenticeship if you are unsure about full-time third level education. Leaving Certificate students should not necessarily feel pressurised to go straight to university when there are so many other options available.

Katie now works as a tax operations officer with Citibank and hopes to become a fully qualified tax advisor with the Irish Tax Institute.

The Apprenticeship is also a great pathway to becoming a fully qualified accountant, as it offers exemptions for many of the top professional accounting bodies. The work-based element gives a great advantage in terms of career options, as experience is critical.

Head of Education at ATI, Gabriela Airini, said the Apprenticeship enables employers to recruit and upskill staff in a cost-effective manner as training fees are covered by the state agency, SOLAS.

She said, "Graduates gain a professional QQI Level 6 Advanced Certificate in Accounting and have acquired the skills needed to fill a range of accounting and finance roles across all sectors.

"Each year, more employers sign up and we now partner with over 331 across 22 sectors.

According to Ms Airini, over 612 jobs have been created since the programme began in 2017.

School leavers, Leaving Certificate students, career changers and mature learners can all apply through Accounting Technicians Ireland.

For more details click here.
Leitrim Animal Welfare Centre has been shortlisted from hundreds of entrants for the Burns Charity of the Year Awards. Now in its fifth year, the award recognises and rewards the outstanding achievements of animal welfare organisations throughout Ireland.

Burns Pet Nutrition offers animal charities, shelters and rescue centres the opportunity to showcase the great work they do by inviting animal welfare charities to apply for the esteemed Burns Charity of the Year Award. Previous recipients include Dogs for the Disabled, Cork City; Galway SPCA and most recently, The West Cork Animal Welfare Group.

John Burns, Founder of Burns Pet Nutrition said, Leitrim Animal Welfare Charity is exactly the type of charity that we aim to support through the Burns Charity of the Year Awards. They provide an amazing service throughout the county Leitrim, through their rescue service, which supports every animal that comes through the door to find a new home. We wish all at Leitrim Animal Welfare Charity the best of luck!

Laura Burke from Leitrim Animal Welfare Charity said, We are so excited to be shortlisted for the Burns Charity of the Year because getting support like feeding our animals for a year would be a huge help as we have a lot of overheads like vet bills. It would be a life changing win for a small charity like us.

The successful charity will be announced in June 2022 and will receive support for twelve months including meeting all feeding costs for the charity including food for any pet that is rehomed during the year, as well as staff training, promotional opportunities and other requirements that the charity may have.

Alongside this initiative, Burns also continues to support over 30 charities long term across the UK and Ireland and contributes multiple one-off donations throughout the year. They also have their own in-house charity, The John Burns Foundation, which runs multiple community initiatives, such as Burns by Your Side, a scheme that helps school children improve their literacy and communication skills with the aid of trained volunteers and reading dogs.
Leitrim students have been urged to consider an accountancy apprenticeship programme which will create 140 jobs nationally this year.

Applications are now open for the Accounting Technicians Ireland (ATI) Apprenticeship - based in colleges in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Monaghan, Waterford and Wicklow.

And a graduate of the programme has advised Leaving Certificate students currently sitting their exams not to feel pressurised into entering full-time third level education.

The ATI Apprenticeship is a funded, two-year, work-based learning programme in which apprentices work, learn and earn at least 21,060 a-year.

Large firms and smaller practices, as well as industry and the public sector, have all embraced the programme.

Dublin-based ATI graduate Katie Mikulan, 23, who initially pursued a degree before deciding to begin the Apprenticeship in 2020, said it was the best move she ever made.

I began an accounting and finance degree after my Leaving Certificate, but university was not what I expected; I did not enjoy it as much as I thought and left after a year and a half, said Katie, from Skerries, North Dublin.

College can be expensive, but a funded apprenticeship programme is a great alternative. Starting the ATI apprenticeship was the best decision I have ever made. I wish I had begun sooner.

After quitting university and working as a customer assistant at Tesco and a beauty adviser in Boots, Katie opted to pursue a career in accounting after taking on an account manager role with Clarins and gaining a certificate in book-keeping.

She completed her two-year apprenticeship with Grant Thornton, where she worked in the international corporate tax team whilst studying part-time through the ATI Academy, located at the Institutes headquarters in Chartered Accountants House on Dublins Pearse Street.

I would recommend the apprenticeship if you are unsure about full-time third level education. Leaving Certificate students should not necessarily feel pressurised to go straight to university when there are so many other options available.

Katie now works as a tax operations officer with Citibank and hopes to become a fully qualified tax advisor with the Irish Tax Institute.

The Apprenticeship is also a great pathway to becoming a fully qualified accountant, as it offers exemptions for many of the top professional accounting bodies. The work-based element gives a great advantage in terms of career options, as experience is critical.

Grant Thornton Managing Partner, Michael McAteer, said the programme is a win-win for the employer and the apprentice, allowing firms broaden their client offering and provide excellent career prospects for students.

Gabriela Airini, Head of Education at ATI, said the Apprenticeship enables employers to recruit and upskill staff in a cost-effective manner as training fees are covered by the state agency, SOLAS.

The Accounting Technician Apprenticeship continues to contribute towards job creation and business growth in Ireland with over 612 jobs created since the programmes foundation in 2017, she said.

Graduates gain a professional QQI Level 6 Advanced Certificate in Accounting and have acquired the skills needed to fill a range of accounting and finance roles across all sectors.

Each year, more employers sign up and we now partner with over 331 across 22 sectors.

See www.accountingtechniciansireland.ie for more details

School leavers, Leaving Certificate students, career changers and mature learners can all apply through Accounting Technicians Ireland.
A FASCINATING exhibition has opened in Limerick giving an insight surrounding the signing of the Anglo Irish Treaty in 1921.

Presented by the National Archives in partnership with Limerick City and County Council Archives Service, this touring exhibition opens up significant historical records, official documents and private papers for the first time, including the first public presentation of both the Irish and British copies of the Treaty document.

The Treaty, 1921: Records from the Archives locates the Treaty negotiations in the political context of the Irish revolution and a world turned upside down by the First World War.

It details the work of the Irish delegates and their secretariat, by presenting the documentary record that they left behind.

The exhibition also chronicles day-to-day life in London for the men and women who made up the Irish delegation as well as their return to Dublin, and the Dail Eireann cabinet meeting that pointed to the split in the independence movement and the divisions that would lead to Civil War.

Dr Pat Daly, Chief Executive of Limerick City and County Council said: "Limerick City and County Council is delighted to welcome this important exhibition to Limerick.

"The signing of the Treaty in London had been noted in the minute books of Limerick City and County Councils in January 1921 but no doubt these short lines could not adequately represent the seismic change in the political and social life the country was about to undergo.

"This national exhibition is an opportunity to share our own local archive collections within the national context to further deepen our understanding of these events.

The exhibition is open at Istabraq Hall, Limerick City and County Council, Merchants Quay Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm until June 30.
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EIGHT council officials and 19 public representatives claimed a total of more than 100,000 travelling overseas for St Patricks Day.

The figures, released to the Sunday Independent newspaper following a Freedom of Information request, means Limericks local authoritys spend represented more than a third of the total of all councils across the State when journeying for the March 17 holiday.

A total of 27,000 on flights and over 47,000 on hotel accommodation was spent for trips to Savannah, Georgia, New York and London.

Seven councillors, including metropolitan district leader, Cllr Catherine Slattery, attended the annual Queen's County St Patricks Day parade at Rockaway Beach in New York.

As for the St Patricks Day parade in New York City, this was attended by a number of members including deputy mayor Tom Ruddle.

Mayor Daniel Butler was in attendance at both at the St Patricks Day parade in Savannah, Georgia, as well as accompanying a council official to the showpiece in London.

The mayor also travelled to Greenville in South Carolina.

This is the home city of Ortec, which is establishing its European base in Newcastle West with the creation of 110 jobs.

Accommodation for the various trips was at the Mansion on Forsyth Park in Savannah, Georgia, a four-star hotel in the heart of the citys historic core; the four-star Fitzpatrick Hotel in New York; and the four-star Caesar boutique hotel in Londons Hyde Park.

The trips  and the associated cost of them  were formally approved by councillors at Januarys bi-monthly meeting.

Under the rules, each member is required to provide a full report on the benefits of their trip.

In his report on the mayoral visits, Cllr Butler wrote: I am satisfied the objectives of promoting Limerick and highlighting the potential of closer relations in cities such as London and Savannah was met. My experience in Greenville is that Limerick could learn from their city centre redevelopment and innovative business supports. I am aware there has been a follow up on our visit by officials in the council in this regard.

I am particularly proud of being able to reach out and engage with our wonderful Diaspora in Britain and the USA, thus fulfilling a key objective in the councils Diaspora strategy, Global Limerick, he concluded.
Irelands Foreign Affairs Minister has warned his British counterpart that introducing a Bill to unilaterally amend the Northern Ireland Protocol will breach international law and deeply damage relationships.

Simon Coveney said the new Bill marks a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit.

Mr Coveney spoke by phone to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss following a request by the UK Foreign Office on Monday morning.

The British Government has defended the new Bill, saying it is lawful and correct.

Spoke with @trussliz. UK Govt now proposing to set aside Int Law, reject a partnership approach, ignore majority in NI & deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise. We remain open to dialogue to find agreement but his approach adds to instability & is no fix.  Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) June 13, 2022

The legislation will give ministers powers to override elements of the protocol, which was jointly agreed by the UK and EU as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to keep the Irish land border free-flowing.

The arrangements instead require regulatory checks and customs declarations on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

During the call, which lasted 12 minutes, Ms Truss said she intends to publish the legislation on Monday.

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said: Mr Coveney said publishing legislation that would breach the UKs commitments under international law, the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol is deeply damaging to relationships on these islands and between the UK and EU.

Mr Coveney said it marks a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit, especially as Ms Truss has not engaged with negotiations with the EU in any meaningful way since February.

Mr Coveney repeated that the protocol is the negotiated solution, ratified by Westminster, to the hard Brexit pursued by the UK Government.

The UKs unilateral approach is not in the best interest of Northern Ireland and does not have the consent or support of the majority of people or business in Northern Ireland.

Far from fixing problems, this legislation will create a whole new set of uncertainties and damage relationships.

The Bill due to come before Parliament will see the Government move without the consent of the EU to change the terms of the protocol in a bid to reduce the checks on the movement of goods across the Irish Sea.

This could include allowing ministers to remove all customs processes for goods moving within the United Kingdom and enable the frictionless movement of agri-food goods staying within the UK.

It could also see businesses in Northern Ireland given the ability to choose whether to follow UK or EU regulations, depending on who they are trading with.
Police in Northern Ireland believe a man accused of firearms offences transported a haul of weapons to a meeting with high profile loyalist Winston Irvine, a court has heard.

Robin Workman, 51, from the Shore Road in Larne, was denied bail during an appearance at Belfast Magistrates Court.

Workman, along with Irvine, 46, from Ballysillan Road in Belfast, were arrested last Wednesday as police were investigating a security alert that led to Irish Government minister Simon Coveney being evacuated from a peace event.

Irvine appeared in court charged with firearm offences on Saturday.

During Workmans court appearance today (Monday June 13) he was charged with possession of a firearm and ammunition in suspicious circumstances, possession of a prohibited firearm, possession of a handgun without a certificate and possession of ammunition without a certificate.

A PSNI detective inspector told the court that he could connect Workman to the charges.

During the hearing, a defence lawyer asked the officer if it was accurate that during Irvines weekend court appearance, his counsel had suggested he was acting as some form of decommissioning interlocutor.

The officer said that had been implied by Irvines lawyer.

The detective inspector told the court that last Wednesday police observed a red van pull up behind Irvines car on Glencairn Street in Belfast.

Following an exchange between the two drivers, Irvine was then seen to open the boot of his car before driving off.

Irvine was arrested in Disraeli Street soon after and officers discovered a number of firearms, magazines and more than 200 rounds of ammunition in a holdall in the boot.

Workman was arrested in Ballymena, Co Antrim, later in the same day.

The detective inspector objected to a defence application for bail.

He said: The police case is this has the hallmarks of a paramilitary operation.

The quantity of what is found includes a large range of different calibre ammunition.

Our concern would be that we have recovered a wide range of ammunition with weapons that they are not compatible with so believe there are other weapons available that this ammunition would marry up with.

Our case is that the applicant transported them to the meeting with his co-accused to be handed over.

He therefore has knowledge of the storage locations of other weapons where this arms cache was recovered from.

A defence lawyer said Workman had denied during three days of police interview that he was the individual who had met Irvine in Belfast.

He added: This case should be distinguished entirely from his co-accused.

His co-accused is somewhat of a high-profile individual. He made the case that he will be calling a galaxy of witnesses to attest to his efficacy and his works in the peace process.

This man is not like that, is a self-employed joiner with no criminal record whatsoever.

The district judge said he was satisfied that a prima facie case had been established and denied bail.

Workman was remanded in custody to appear in court again on July 1.

The two arrests were made as part of a PSNI investigation into a security alert on March 25 when a peace event, organised by the John and Pat Hume Foundation, was disrupted.

The Houben Centre in the Crumlin Road was evacuated while Mr Coveney was giving an address and a funeral service at nearby Holy Cross Church was disrupted.

Police said the driver of a van was threatened by two gunmen and forced to drive a device, which he believed to be a live bomb, to the church.

The item in the van turned out to be a hoax bomb.
Qatar tapped French oil giant TotalEnergies SE as its first foreign partner in a $30 billion liquefied natural gas project, as the Persian Gulf emirate pledges to help Europe secure new supplies of gas as it weans itself off Russian energy.
A surge of U.S. inflation is hammering the Japanese yen, a currency that typically strengthens on bad economic news.
DUBAI : The Kuwait government has asked detectives in the country to look for expats and report them their respective embassies in order to be deported and banned from entering the Arab country in future.

The decision comes after Kuwait saw expatriates involved in a sit-in demonstration being conducted at Fahaheel against the controversial comments made by now suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma on Prophet Mohammad.

On Friday, several parts of India saw violent eruptions against Sharma's statements, demanding strict action against her, they also demandd that she be arrested.

Kuwait's Fahaheel area also saw a demonstration organised after the Friday prayers in support of Prophet Muhammad, Arab News, an English-language daily newspaper published in Saudi Arabia, quoted sources as saying.

Now Kuwait has issued arrest warrant for all expats who took part in the demonstrations and directed that they be deported to their respective countries, never to be allowed back in Kuwait again.

This strict action is being taken because Kuwait's law and regulation stipulates that sit-ins or demonstrations by expats are not to be organised in the Gulf nation.

The expats broke the law in organising the sit-in demonstration.

"The detectives are in the process of arresting them and referring to the deportation center to be deported to their countries and will be banned from entering Kuwait again," reported Al Rai, a Kuwaiti newspaper.

prophet remark row

According to latest statistics, the number of Indian nationals legally residing in Kuwait has crossed the 10-lakh mark in 2019. The Indian community in Kuwait continues to grow at 5-6% per annum. The Indian community remains the largest and the most preferred community in Kuwait, the second largest expatriate community being the Egyptians, according to the Indian Embassy in Kuwait.

The Kuwait government was one of the few countries who had summoned the Indian envoy over the remarks of the former BJP functionaries.

The Kuwait Foreign Ministry said that the Indian Ambassador to Kuwait Sibi George was summoned and handed over an official protest note by the Assistant Secretary of State for Asia Affairs expressing Kuwait's "categorical rejection and condemnation" of the statements issued by an official of the ruling party against the Prophet.

The ministry welcomed the statement issued by the ruling party in India, in which it announced the suspension of the leader.

The BJP suspended its national spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expelled its Delhi media head Naveen Kumar Jindal after their controversial remarks against the Prophet, as it sought to defuse a row over the issue.

Amid protests by Muslim groups over the remarks, the party also issued a statement aimed at assuaging the concerns of minorities and distancing itself from these members, asserting that it respects all religions and strongly denounces the insult of any religious personality.

Dozen Muslim countries condemned the controversial remarks.

In New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs said the government has made it clear that the remarks do not reflect the views of the government.

"We have made it pretty clear that tweets and comments do not reflect views of the government," MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said at a recent media briefing.

"This has been conveyed to our interlocutors as also the fact that action has been taken by the concerned quarters against those who made the comments and tweets. I do not think I have anything additional to say on this," he had said.

Meanwhile, in India, leaders of prominent Islamic groups and mosques in India appealed to fellow Muslims on Monday to suspend plans for protests against derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammad made by two members of the ruling Hindu-nationalist party.

The message to avoid big gatherings was circulated after demonstrations took a violent turn last week, leading to the death of two Muslim teenagers and the wounding of more than 30 people, including police.
The phrase "sweating like a pig" may evoke mental images of streams of sweat pouring down porcine skin on a sweltering-hot day, but it is one of the English language's highly misleading idioms. Pigs have only a limited number of functioning sweat glands so they only sweat a small amount, and what little sweat they do produce doesnt much affect their body temperature. So how do pigs cool themselves down?

Pigs are endothermic, or warm-blooded, which means they maintain a stable body temperature regardless of the temperature of their surroundings. In most cases, the body temperature of endothermic animals is warmer than that of their environment. Conversely, ectotherms, or cold-blooded animals, depend mainly on external heat sources, so their body temperature changes along with the temperature of their environment.

There are two ways that animals regulate their body temperature: metabolism and behavior. The major difference between the two types of thermoregulation is that one is rapid and the other takes a long time.

"The metabolic approach to thermoregulation is really quite slow," said Dan Tucker, a professor of veterinary public health at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. In this case, a thyroid gland-produced hormone, known as thyroxine, helps control the pig's basic metabolism , or the process in which the body turns ingested calories into energy. In turn, metabolic cycles generate heat. A 2006 paper published in the journal Physiological Reviews (opens in new tab) has shown that when pigs are exposed to consistently hot or cold temperatures over days or weeks, these cycles can be switched on or off by thyroxine to generate additional heat or cool down the body.

Related: Which animals sing?

Behavioral thermoregulation, in contrast, can help cool or raise body temperature in a much shorter time. In hot weather, pigs wallow in water or mud, which affects body temperature in a similar way to human sweat, Tucker told Live Science. As the water or mud evaporates off the pig's body, it cools the animal down. Pigs may also seek shaded areas or "conduct the heat away from their body by lying flat out on a cool surface," Tucker said. Pigs also pant to cool down. Panting increases air flow and the evaporation of water from the lungs, which releases additional heat from their body.

However, many groups within the wider pig family live in "more temperate parts of the world where they spend more energy on keeping warm than keeping cool," Tucker said. In cold weather, pigs huddle together for warmth, build nests or shiver  a behavior commonly seen in piglets just hours after they are born.

When exposed to higher temperatures, pigs reduce how much food they consume. This is another method for cooling down, as digesting less food reduces the amount of heat produced during foraging, eating and digestion, Tucker said. A pig's body size is actually an important factor for its thermoregulation: Small pigs lose more heat through their skin than do large pigs, which have "a smaller ratio of surface area to body volume, and therefore a smaller surface area for heat to be lost," Tucker noted. Farmers, who selectively breed pigs for rapid growth and more efficient meat production, will therefore find a greater prevalence of heat stress in their herds because the pigs are bigger.

Given that exposure to hot environments can cause pigs to eat less, which in turn can lead to smaller pigs, should pig farmers be worried about the effects of climate change as average global temperatures rise? After all, heat stress can result in decreased sperm quality in boars, smaller litter sizes and inability to conceive in sows, according to a study published in the journal Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica (opens in new tab). Longer exposure to hot temperatures can weaken pigs' immune systems, and at higher extremes, pigs can suffer hyperthermic shock  which is really cardiovascular collapse. Their blood pressure drops, which can lead to unconsciousness and even death.

"Pig meat is the second most-eaten meat globally after chicken meat," Tucker said. Farmers must consider the increasing likelihood of heat stress, not just for the value of their herds, but as an animal welfare issue, Tucker added.

So where does the phrase "sweating like a pig" come from? The phrase originates from the process of smelting iron. When hot iron is poured on sand, the cooling pieces resemble a sow and piglets, as reported by the McGill Office for Science and Society (opens in new tab). As the surrounding air reaches its dew point, beads of moisture form on the surface of the metal, and this sweating indicates that the "pig iron" is cool enough to touch.

This article was originally published on Live Science on Sept. 9, 2012 and was updated on June 13, 2022.
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Jose Miguel Ribeiros feature debut Nayola, one of two Portuguese full-length animation pics screening at Annecy Animation Film Festival, portrays the fate of a grandmother, a mother and her daughter  Lelena, Nayola and Yara  in the aftermath of the Angolan civil war.

Nayola searches for her husband, Ekumbi, who went missing during the war. She abandons her daughter, Yara, at the age of only two, who is then brought up by her grandmother, Lelena. By 2011, she has become a rebellious teenage rapper.

The pic jumps back and forth between 1995 and 2011, moving between richly saturated images of the Angolan landscape and grim, gray-toned images of wartime destruction and urban decay, weaving together real-life settings and dreamscapes.

Based on the stage play A Caixa Preta (The Black Box), by Angolan playwright Jose Eduardo Agualusa and Mozambican novelist Mia Couto, the script was penned by Ribeiros long-time collaborator Virgilio Almeida.

The 3.2 million ($3.37 million) pic is a coproduction between Ribeiros Praca Filmes in Portugal, Belgiums S.O.I.L. and Luna Blue, Frances JPL Films and the Netherlands Il Luster. International sales are repped by Urban Sales. It had development support from the Portuguese film institute (ICA) and from Creative Europe, a 1 million production grant from ICA, support from the Portuguese cash rebate scheme and from Eurimages.

Ribeiro talked to Variety about the film.

What was the initial inspiration for Nayola?

I was introduced to this story by my friend Jorge Antonio, who has lived in Angola for over 20 years. He showed me the stage play and initially suggested we make a hybrid film combining animation and live action. We ended up choosing just animation. I was already interested in this universe. My father fought in the colonial wars in Africa, over 50 years ago, which left a profound mark on him. He was a sergeant in Guinea Bissau. The trauma of the war has left a very powerful impact on him. He still has difficulty sleeping and has many nightmares. One of my first experiences with Africa was when I visited Cape Verde after completing my short stop-motion film The Suspect. This inspired me to make my 2010 animation film A Journey to Cape Verde, and my fathers experience led me to make my 2016 short film Fragments. When I went to Cape Verde I realized that my own vision of Africa was essentially Western and colonial. The media tends to transmit cliched images of the African continent, such as famine and war. When I discovered the generosity of the people and the richness of the culture, with a vibrant human dimension, I fell in love with Africa. My desire to draw closer to my own family history and to my father, meant that when I read the stage play A Caixa Preta I was immediately attracted to it, and wanted to bring my own personal experiences to this project.

What challenges did you encounter for your first feature film, compared with your previous shorts?

One of the biggest challenges was working with many more people. The director oversees the core artistic vision but also has to manage various teams. It was very important for me that they all felt that they were part of their project and brought their own vision. For example, the editors Ewin Ryckaert from Belgium and Job Terburg from the Netherlands played a vital role in the pacing and final structure. Another key challenge was to ensure authenticity for the film, since it takes place in Angola, whereas I have lived most of my life in Portugal. During the development stage I went for a two-week intensive trip to Angola in 2014, with my screenwriter Virgilio Almeida and producer Ana Carina. We spent time in the capital Luanda and travelled to remote villages where we spoke to people from different tribes. Virgilio also has family ties to Angola and brought this experience to the script. We returned to Angola in 2019 to rehearse with the actors and record the dialogue, which was a very dynamic, creative period in which the actresses, in particular, introduced many new ideas.

The film has a powerful and eclectic visual style

Nayola is essentially a road movie and involves many graphic universes. One of the most interesting things in a road movie is to journey through different landscapes. This also enabled each of the coproducers, who to date have concentrated on animation shorts, to bring their own vision to the film. Some scenes are more impressionistic, others are more realistic and monochromatic. I always felt that the film would need to have a visual style that blends elements of reality and fantasy. I collected photos from the different settings to endow a realistic dimension to some of the animation. We also recorded the rehearsals with the actors, that were used by the designers during the animation. From the outset I wanted to explore a very expressionistic style based on my experiences in Angola, where you feel a presence of intense colors, such as the red earth, or the blood-red sunsets and the powerful aromas. The local people live in close contact with nature. They may see a tree or a stone and see the continuation of someone who has died. In the West, dreams are clearly separated from reality, but in Africa they are interlinked. This duality is particularly evident during times of war  as we are seeing now in the Ukraine. Lives are suddenly upended. You can enter a house or a kitchen that has been frozen and abandoned. This creates a kind of altered fantasy space that I wanted to explore in this film.

Was it a challenge to make a film that revolves primarily around female characters?

Yes! The actresses made a vital contribution to the scenes and the dialogue. I asked a Portuguese illustrator, Susa Monteiro, to oversee the dream sequences, because she has a very distinctive vision that enriches the film. The creative team included many other key women colleagues, such as the assistant director, Catarina Calvinho Gil, and the animation director, Johanna Bessiere, who oversaw all the animation, layout and 3D storyboard.

What was your inspiration for the character of the teenage rapper, Yara?

That was a major turning point in the development of the film. The idea initially came from the arrest of rapper Luaty Beirao and 16 activists in 2015 who were accused of planning a rebellion against President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and were imprisoned. Luaty then went on a hunger strike and they were all finally released. Accompanying these events, I realized that I didnt want to do a film just about the past. I wanted to talk about the key challenges facing Angola today. I discovered Medusa in a YouTube video and asked her whether she would be willing to take on the role of Yara and she agreed. That gave a missing organic element for the script. Elisangela Rita who plays Nayola is a spoken word artist. Vitoria Soares, who plays the grandmother Lelena, is a very experienced actress. They all brought their own vision to the film and made sure that the language and street slang used in the film are up to date.

What are your expectations for the film?

Since I have been working on this film intensively for eight years my main hope is that it will circulate internationally! Its a film above all for adult audiences, but I am very curious to see how adolescents react to the film, especially in Portugal. I dont know how they will react to this vision of Angolan culture. Very few things reach us in the West about these themes. I hope that the film will offer a window on the rich culture, generosity of the people and the great aesthetic beauty of Angola.

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Hes no doubt still pinching himself after his tea with Queen Elizabeth II a few weeks ago but theres no time to rest for Paddington Bear. The lovable fluffball is set to star in Paddington in Peru, the third instalment in his hit franchise, it was unveiled today.

The film is set to be helmed by Dougal Wilson, making his directorial feature film debut. He has previously made commercials for brands including Apple, Ikea and the BBC as well as John Lewiss annual Christmas commercial.

As a huge fan of the first two films, I am very excited (if not a little intimidated) to be continuing the story of Paddington, said Wilson. Its a massive responsibility, but all my efforts will be focussed on making a third film that honours the love so many people have for this very special bear.

Principal photography set to kick off in 2023. The film will be shot on location in London and Peru.

It will again be made by Studiocanal and Heyday Films, with Studiocanal fully financing the pic.

We have long been huge admirers of Dougals work, his stunning visual creativity, his storytelling, heart, emotion and humour, said Studiocanal CEO Anna Marsh and Ron Halpern, EVP of global production. We are so thrilled that Dougal will be directing the third Paddington film. We look forward to bringing Paddington back to Peru for his next big screen adventure.

Paul King, who directed the first two films in the Paddington franchise, said: After ten years of working on the Paddington movies, I feel absurdly protective of the little bear, and Im delighted that Dougal will be there to hold his paw as he embarks on his third big screen adventure. Dougals work is never less than astounding: funny, beautiful, heartfelt, imaginative, and totally original. Aunt Lucy once asked us to Please Look After This Bear. I know Dougal will do so admirably.

Paddington producer David Heyman added: After an exacting search, were delighted that the brilliant Dougal Wilson will be directing the third Paddington film. A much-garlanded legend within the commercials world, we have long admired Dougals virtuoso work, and his gift for directing with heart, humour, surprise and vivid imaginative flair. Hes a wonderfully inventive kindred spirit for Paddingtons latest adventure with the Browns, and were thrilled to be working with him.

Earlier this month Paddington delighted people across the world when he took part in a skit alongside Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her platinum jubilee. In the 2-minute clip, which was filmed at Windsor Castle, he is seen taking tea with her majesty before mayhem ensues.

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The prospect of leaving Earth for good does not scare Alex (Kyle Allen). Instead, it inspires him. Its not that he doesnt cherish his mother, his father and his sister. Theyre as close as a family can be. Nor that he is at all hopeless about the state of the world. Though hell admit its hard to plan a future on a planet that seems to have none. In his mind, Alexs decision to embark on a possible (one way!) mission to Mars is a chance to start anew, to dream anew.

The conceit is a neat one, and as Kyra Sedgwicks feature film directorial debut unfolds, it actually feels quite generative. Who among us wouldnt also wish to leave everything behind and go on our interplanetary adventure? But that is all this is, a conceit. For Space Oddity wants to firmly ground itself on Earth, in the messy relationships we build and the uncomfortable truths wed rather not voice.

If the film never quite finds a way to marry its high concept premise, its twee romance, and its family melodrama into one cohesive narrative, it is not for lack of trying. After all, there are bound to be plenty of viewers wholl be delighted to find such sunny optimism wrapped up in a warm-hearted ode to what it means to live in this planet we call home. That is, assuming they accept the prospect of a mission to Mars that would recruit (over Skype, no less!) a young man whose family owns a flower farm and who finds that all he needs to begin training is a physical from his old childhood pediatrician.

Alexs father, Jeff (Kevin Bacon), has stopped trying to get it through to Alex how implausible this all sounds. But thats nothing compared to the sheer talking-to he gets from his sister, Liz (Madeline Brewer), a high-powered executive whos left behind her parents farm in search of greener pastures, Liz is drawn into Alexs orbit as she takes on the role of his personal publicist, a way to make sure he doesnt embarrass the family as he pursues his harebrained dream of going to Mars. Its only his mother, Jane (Carrie Preston, always a delight), who wholeheartedly supports him, even when it finally dawns on her that his decision to head to Mars is grounded on is a desire to leave them all behind  especially the memory of the one member of the McAllister family none dare speak about at length.

Space Oddity uses all that family concern as mere backdrop. In a way, the film ends up being a tender romance between Alex and Daisy (a charming Alexandra Shipp), the new-to-town insurance agent tasked with helping Alex sort out his paperwork before he departs. The family trauma that has so paralyzed each of the McAllisters hovers always at the edges of everyones interactions (and thus becomes an inevitable bombshell of a plot reveal that cant help but feel manipulative), but that doesnt stop Alex from slowly becoming ever more interested in the beautiful young woman who is also hiding and escaping from a part of her life she had to leave behind. Can Alex let go of his dream to become a pioneer on Mars and grow roots on Earth, instead? Can the McAllisters find a way to heal the pain theyre nursing after the loss that continues to haunt them all?

With a more than capable ensemble  Preston and Brewer in particular give the McAllister women much welcome nuance even in hushed silences  Sedgwick can often conjure quite emotionally potent moments from her actors. Indeed, the one-on-one interactions between Alex and Daisy, contrived and cloying as they sometimes feel (a date gets dashed by the rain! a first aid lesson hinges on a CPR demonstration!), are quite lovely, and the chemistry between the two leads is palpable even when the plot mechanics grind all too noisily around them.

But the all-too-twee details that end up adorning Alexs story (like the second grade kids who pelt him with marshmallows), not to mention the needlessly broad comedy that sometimes frames it (like Simon Helbergs distracting, Russian-accented Dimitri), and you find the films tone ends up landing all over the place. Neither swoon-worthy romance nor gripping family drama but something somewhere in between  with a sprinkling of lo-fi sci-fi mixed in for good measure  Space Oddity is perhaps all too aptly titled. While there are sure to be those charmed by its actors and by its unabashedly sweet disposition, Sedgwicks piece is ultimately too baggy to truly soar.

Reviewed at Rodeo Screening Room, June 7, 2022. In Tribeca Festival (Spotlight Narrative). Running time: 92 MIN.

Running Time: Running time: 92 MIN.

Production

A Big Swing Prods. production, in association with REI Coop Studios, The Arlook Group, Rolling Pictures. (World sales: CAA, Los Angeles.) Producers: Valerie Stadler, Kyra Sedgwick, Meredith Bagby, Richard Arlook, Jack Greenbaum, Mark Maxey, Mickey Schiff. Executive producers: Paolo Mottola Jr., Joe Z. Crosby, Ibrahim Alhusseini, JL Pomeroy, Daryl Roth, Brent Emery.

Crew

Director: Kyra Sedgwick. Screenplay: Rebecca Banner. Camera: Alar Kivilo. Editor: Stefanie Visser. Music: Travis Bacon, Scott Hedrick.

With

Kyle Allen, Alexandra Shipp, Madeline Brewer, Carrie Preston, Simon Helberg, Kevin Bacon, Andrew Polk.

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Italian playwright Stefano Massinis The Lehman Trilogy, which just won five Tony Awards including the prize for best play, is set to become a high-end TV series to be produced by Italys Fandango and The Apartment, the outfits behind HBOs Elena Ferrante adaptation My Brilliant Friend.

The TV project, originated by Italian producer Domenico Procaccis Fandango, to adapt into a series the epic drama written by Massini that charts the history of one of the financial institutions that helped spark the 2008 recession, has now been boarded by producer Lorenzo Mielis shingle The Apartment, the Fremantle-owned company behind Paolo Sorrentinos Oscar-nominated The Hand of God and his The Young Pope and The New Pope shows.

Fandango and Mieli previously collaborated on My Brilliant Friend for HBO and Italys RAI.

Having Fremantle-backed The Apartment on board gives The Lehman Trilogy TV series adaptation considerably more heft, though a commissioning broadcaster or streamer remains to be found.

Mieli in a statement called Lehman Trilogy  which besides best play won Tony Awards for Sam Mendes direction and for the lead performance of Simon Russell Beale, among other prizes  a marvelous and contemporary text on the intrinsic failures of a certain form of capitalism.

The chief of The Apartment also noted that its rare for an Italian play to be celebrated outside national borders. Thats why transforming into a series such a beloved family saga  which is an archetype of the social and financial transformation of a country as well as much of the West  will be an amazing challenge, Mieli went on to add.

Procacci, speaking to Variety last November, praised Massini for managing to tell so effectively a story that doesnt have any Italian elements, since most of it takes place in the U.S.

The Italian theater production of Lehman Brothers had its world premiere in 2015 at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, directed by late great Italian theater innovator Luca Ronconi.

It was this production that inspired Mendes to stage a condensed English-language version of Massinis five-hour play adapted by Ben Power, who at the time was deputy artistic director of Londons National Theatre. The Mendes-directed production had several sold out runs in London before traveling to New York and elsewhere globally.

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The Laredo Chamber of Commerce signed closing documents on 5702 McPherson Road Suite# 8 A&B, on June 9.

After serval months of searching and evaluating offers from private and public sector for the Laredo Chamber's long-term home, the final decision was made, and an offer presented to the property owners of 5702 McPherson Road Suite# 8 A&B.

On Feb. 16, the Chamber issued an open solicitation to the community to submit letters of interest after reaching an agreement with the Laredo Independent School District. As the oldest and strongest business organization in the city, the Laredo Chamber has been housed at 2310 San Bernardo Avenue for over 45 years. This esteemed organization, founded in 1915, represents essential industries, ranging from financial institutions and retailers, to transportation, logistics and service providers.

The future for the Laredo Chamber of Commerce in this new building is bright. As the organization has enhanced its service delivery with programs catered exclusively for small and local businesses, this new location allows for greater benefit of becoming a Laredo Chamber of Commerce member.

The plan is to build on the existing legacy and continue to be the anchor for high-level meetings with international dignitaries, trade-related engagements and enhance business development in the area. Staple programs such as Business Development Certification, Business Spotlight, Cola Blanca Contest, School Bell Awards, Youth Leadership Laredo, Bola Blanca, Vision Conference, Women in Leadership, G13, B2B matching, the execution of certificate of origins, and notary services will continue to take place at the McPherson property starting Aug. 1, 2022.

"These are exciting times for the Laredo Chamber of Commerce, and our stakeholders," said Gabriela Morales, President & CEO of the Laredo Chamber of Commerce. "We know this new chapter will bring plenty of opportunities for the business community.

"Our new location will open doors to even more collaboration and community engagement with businesses in Laredo, Webb County, and beyond," added Mike Marasco, Chairman of the Board of Directors.

About the Chamber

Founded in 1915, the Laredo Chamber of Commerce is Laredo's and Webb County's longest running business organization. Headquartered at 2310 San Bernardo Ave. since 1974, the Laredo Chamber has been an advocate for the local business community for over a century. With almost 700 members representative of every industry in the community, the Laredo Chamber is accredited with 5 stars by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Only 200 chambers out of 7,000 across the country are accredited by this organization.
Away is pretty standard when it comes to carry-on suitcases in 2022. Just on a recent trip to Dollywood, I noticed the overhead bins were chock full of the brand.

Im not the first person to review an Away bag. At this point, the market is pretty saturated with this type of review. However, I did happen to fly on three different airlines (on a total of five planes), so Ive got a unique perspective to bring to an already done review.

On top of that, I reviewed Aways competitor, July, over the summer and Im able to tell you the differences between both brands with ease.

What is Away Luggage?

Ana Suarez for Hearst Newspapers

Away, also known by its URL as Away Travel (looks like Away.com was snatched up by other travel companies) is a popular travel brand.

Unless youre living under a rock, chances are youve heard of Away luggage. The company is known for its direct-to-consumer business model and even a bit of scandal. The companys best-known products are its suitcases. Since launching in 2015, Away has expanded its product line to include travel bags, travel organizers, and travel accessories.

A nice added benefit of Away luggage is it comes with a 100-day trial, free shipping, and a limited lifetime warranty. This warranty covers damages to the shell, zippers, handles, wheels, and other necessary functional elements of the suitcase. Basically, if anything on your bag breaks or gets damaged, Away will fix or replace it for you.

Away Carry On Luggage Dimensions

Ana Suarez for Hearst Newspapers

There are a few sizes of carry-on luggage from Away. I reviewed the standard size and it was very roomy.

Exterior measurements: 21.7" x 13.7" x 9"

21.7" x 13.7" x 9" Interior measurements: 20" x 13.5"

20" x 13.5" Weight: 7.1 lbs

7.1 lbs Capacity: 39.8L

If you need something even bigger, you can opt for the aptly named Bigger Carry-On. For an extra $20 to $40, the Bigger Carry-On will get you an extra inch in length and 9L of capacity.

Exterior measurements: 22.7" x 14.7" x 9.6"

22.7" x 14.7" x 9.6" Interior measurements: 21" x 14.5"

21" x 14.5" Weight: 8.4 lbs

8.4 lbs Capacity: 47.9L

Away Carry-On Cost

The standard Away Carry-On luggage costs $275. As mentioned above, the Bigger Carry-On is only $20 more and costs $295. There's a Carry-On with Pocket that will run you $325. If you've got over $600 to burn, there's the Aluminum Edition bag that is $625 to $645.

Away Carry-On Luggage Review

Ana Suarez for Hearst Newspapers

On this trip, I flew on three different airlines (United, Delta, and JetBlue) between five planes. On the first two United planes, I had vastly different experiences with the bag. On a Boeing 737-900 Twin Jet, the Away carry-on luggage fit upright in the overhead bin. But the next plane (Embraer EMB-145XR Twin Jet ) was basically a puddle jumper and I had to have the bag gate checked. Thankfully, I got to pick it up at the gate upon landing at my destination and didn't have to wait for it at baggage claim.

On the next airline and third plane (CRJ-200 ) of my trip, the bag fit overhead, but I had to place it horizontally and sideways, as the bins were smaller. The best-spaced airline I flew on this trip was JetBlue, on my last two planes (an E190 and an A21N) the bag fit sideways and up. The flight attendants even referred to the final plane as "the big plane" and talked up all the space they had.

Pros

Lightweight

Easy to spot

Perfect for organization and compression

Being lightweight is an extremely important aspect of a carry-on bag. If you're throwing something into an overhead bin, you want it to be light. Especially when you have to pull it back out of said bin after it's shifted around during transport. It can be hard with lightweight luggage, as they can also feel cheap. That isn't the case with Away. This bag is very light and feels incredibly sturdy. I dropped it down my stairs (oops) on my way to the airport and it didn't ding or scratch, either.

The lavender color makes this bag hard to miss. If I wanted to check it (or had to have it gate checked) it would be easy to spot on the baggage carousel among all of the plain black suitcases everyone else has. Away has other bright, easy-to-see colors like petal, green, and coast.

I've never packed better than when I used this Away carry-on suitcase. I brought several heavy jeans, a jacket, hiking boots, thick sandals, a makeup bag, and Away's toiletry bag. I was able to bring souvenirs home and didn't feel like my bag was going to explode. There is a zippered compartment and then a compression system on the other side. I felt like the compression straps really helped me (a notorious overpacker) squeeze everything into place.

Cons

Cost

The only con is the cost. $275 is a lot of money for a carry-on bag, there's no denying that. To be fair, competitors are in the same price range. July bags of similar design cost $245, while Monos bags cost $265, and Samsonite has bags for $200 to $300. While there are more expensive bags than Away (Tumi bags can set you back $700 to $1,700, there are also much cheaper bags. You can get bags from American Tourister for under $100. If you're looking for inexpensive bags, Away is not the brand for you.

Away vs. July

Ana Suarez for Hearst Newspapers

As I mentioned earlier, I reviewed an Away competitor last year. July is an Australian-based brand that produces the same products as Away that looks awfully similar. For a head-to-head comparison, here are the small differences between the two bags. The July carry-on is slightly wider and weighs a little more.

Away

Exterior measurements: 21.7" x 13.7" x 9"

21.7" x 13.7" x 9" Weight: 7.1 lbs

7.1 lbs Capacity: 39.8L

July

Weight: 21.5" H x 15" W x 8.5" D

21.5" H x 15" W x 8.5" D Weight: 7.4 lbs

7.4 lbs Capacity: 42L

Away is more well known, and therefore, costs more. The standard carry-on bag from Away costs $225 in one color and is $275 in most of the other shades. That doesn't include the $20 extra if you want the bag to come with a portable charger or not. The July bag costs $245 and comes with a charger at no additional cost. July has four different types of carry-on bags, while Away has 11 types of carry-on bags.

While the July carry-on is actually heavier than the Away bag, it feels lighter. Despite that, the Away bag feels sturdier. My July bag is certainly more banged up than my Away bag. Both bags are made with a polycarbonate hard shell, 360 spinner wheels, integrated TSA locks, and interior compression systems. The July bag features a Y-compression strap, while Away has a two-strap system (that compresses more than the July bag).

Is Away worth the hype?

Away

If you're into aesthetics, the answer is yes. Away has made a name for itself for a reason. Their bags look good. They have fun colors. Away bags are lightweight, sturdy, and reliable. For some people, buying an Away bag is just paying for the name. While I do think the price is inflated due to the popularity, I also know that Away bags are some of the best I've ever used. The lavender color is the prettiest suitcase color I've ever owned. In the last year, I've traveled five times and this is by far my favorite bag I've traveled with yet.
We will be in Storm Alert Weather mode today as dangerous heat and humidity continue across the Tennessee Valley. High temperatures will reach Read More
GB100BBC in Northern Ireland BBC News reported on the GB100BBC special event station in Northern Ireland commemorating the centenary of the BBC



Taking part in the event are two BBC newsreaders, Radio Ulster's Keith Burnside GI4IYO and Radio Four's Jim Lee G4AEH.



BBC News says:



The special-event station, callsign GB100BBC, will be in operation on shortwave from Broadcasting House in Belfast from 12:00 on Sunday 12 June.



It will operate on VHF and UHF from the BBC's main transmission at Divis Mountain, near Belfast, from 12:00 on Tuesday 14 June.



Read the BBC story at

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-61763832



What is Amateur Radio?

http://www.essexham.co.uk/what-is-amateur-radio



Free UK amateur radio Foundation Online training course

https://essexham.co.uk/train/foundation-online/
An up and coming musician who got his mojo back after being caught with cocaine has been told his brush with the law could form the basis of a country and western song.

Judge John Brennan told David Kiernan, 29 St Patrick's Court, Ballinamuck, Co Longford, to consider the prospect of penning a possible musical release after recently pleading guilty to drugs possession following an incident on July 3 2021.

It emerged Mr Kiernan was found with 100 worth of the drug at 2 Mill Street, Drumlish, Co Longford.

His solicitor said the accused was presently on a methadone programme and hailed from a family of musicians.

He plays country and western music and is 23 (years-old), said his solicitor.

He has got his mojo back and is up and running again.

Things just got the better of him.

In response, Judge Brennan said: It (circumstances) could be the basis for a country and western song.

He presents very well here today and it was obviously a bad patch he went through.

Judge Brennan said while he was empathetic to Mr Kiernans plight, dabbling in drugs was a dangerous road to go down.

He said he would be amenable to the accused offering a charitable donation, but owing to the fact it was a class A drug, that amount would have to be a reasonably sizeable one.

He ordered Mr Kiernan to hand in 300 by July 26 next at which point the case would be struck out under the Probation Act.

On the basis those terms arent met, Judge Brennan said he would have to convict and fine Mr Kiernan 500, giving him three months to pay.

When the case returns in July, Judge Brennan said he would be approving a destruction order for the respective drugs.
Met Eireann has given its forecast for the week ahead with Europe set to sizzle with 40-degree temperatures in some parts.

Parts of Spain in particular will be hit with extreme temperatures with authorities and forecasters there issuing warnings for temperatures in the 40s.

The UK could see temperatures reach 30 degrees this week but Ireland will remain relatively mild with temperatures breaking the low 20s by the end of the week.

Longford Slimming World members donate clothes to Irish Cancer Society Slimming World members in Longford town are celebrating their fabulous weight losses by donating the clothes they have successfully slimmed out of to The Irish Cancer Society. The members, who have lost over 220 stone since January alone, have donated over 100 bags to raise vitally needed funds for the cancer charity.

While there will be a few showers on Monday, they will clear for a mostly dry night, according to Met Eireann.

"On Tuesday, most of the country will be dry with the best of the bright or hazy sunny spells in Leinster and east Munster. It will be mostly cloudy though in the west and northwest with some isolated showers about, some turning heavy in the northwest during the afternoon. Highest temperatures of 15 to 19 degrees in light to moderate south to southwest breezes," Met Eireann's forecast read.

"Tuesday night will be mainly dry in the east and south of Ireland with some clear spells. It will be cloudier in the west and north with some light rain or drizzle, mainly in coastal areas. Lowest temperatures of 10 to 12 degrees with light southerly breezes.

"Wednesday will be dry in most areas with the best of bright or sunny spells in Munster and Leinster. Patchy rain and drizzle will affect western parts of Connacht and Ulster. Highest temperatures of 15 to 21 degrees with light variable or southerly breezes, warmest in the southeast. Wednesday night will be mild and mainly dry. Patchy rain or drizzle will continue to affect parts of the west and northwest. Lowest temperatures of 11 to 14 degrees," the forecast continued.

Longford musician has got his 'mojo back' after brush with the law, court hears An up and coming musician who got his mojo back after being caught with cocaine has been told his brush with the law could form the basis of a country and western song.

Thursday too will be warm and mainly dry with some sunshine in the east and south.

"There'll be some further patchy rain at times in the northwest. Highest temperatures of 18 to 22 degrees with moderate southerly breezes, warmest over the northern half of the country. On Thursday night, rain in the northwest will become more persistent," the national forecaster predicts.

The warmest temperatures could arrive on Friday with Met Eireann saying "early rain and drizzle will move southeastwards over the country, becoming light and patchy as it does so. A few showers will follow later in the day.

"Temperatures will range from 20 to 26 degrees in Leinster and Munster and from 15 to 19 degrees for west Munster, Connacht and Ulster as cooler air follows the rain and drizzle with light westerly breezes."

Looking to the weekend, Met Eireann said: "Current indications suggest that Saturday will be a bright, fresh day with sunny spells and some passing light showers. Highest temperatures of 15 to 18 degrees with moderate northwest breezes. Sunday looks like being mainly dry and a bit warmer with lighter winds and highest temperatures of 18 to 21 degrees."
Batches of Irish bread products are being recalled from shops due to the possible presence of Listeria Monocytogenes.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has issued an alert about products from Pat the Baker and Irish Pride marked with best before dates from 27/05/2022 to 15/06/2022.

Consumers are advised not to eat the affected batches of Pat the Baker Quality Bread Quality Crumb (400g), Pat the Baker Breadcrumb (5kg), Irish Pride Bread Crumbs (400g), and Irish Pride Catering Bread Crumbs (2kg).

Longford Slimming World members donate clothes to Irish Cancer Society Slimming World members in Longford town are celebrating their fabulous weight losses by donating the clothes they have successfully slimmed out of to The Irish Cancer Society. The members, who have lost over 220 stone since January alone, have donated over 100 bags to raise vitally needed funds for the cancer charity.

Longford man was in prison and unable to do community service, court is told A Longford man has told a court he was unable to complete an order for 175 hours community service owing to the fact he was already in prison.

Symptoms of Listeria Monocytogenes infection can include mild flu-like symptoms, or gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

In rare cases the infection can be more severe, causing serious complications.

Some people are more vulnerable to Listeria monocytogenes infections, including pregnant women, babies, and people with weakened immune systems, including the elderly.

The incubation period (time between initial infection and first symptoms appearing) is on average 3 weeks but can range between 3 and 70 days.

Retailers are requested to remove the implicated batches from sale and to display a point-of-sale recall notice in stores where the affected batches were sold.

Wholesalers/distributors are requested to contact their affected customers and recall the affected batches and provide a point-of-sale recall notice to their retailer customers.

Caterers should not use the implicated batches.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Health & Wellness

By Chris Boyle Published: June 13 2022

One donation can save three lives.

Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta is collaborating with St. Josephs Church in Kings Park, to host a blood drive on Tuesday, June 28, from 1:00pm until 7:00pm. It is at Travis Hall  Lower Level, behind St. Josephs at 59 Church Street. The drive is to benefit the blood banks maintained by Long Island Blood Services, which provides blood to hospitals throughout Long Island.

To be eligible to donate blood, a person must be between the ages of 16 (16 with parental consent) and 76,(if older than 76, you need permission from your doctor), weigh over 110 pounds and not have had a tattoo in the last three months. Please bring a valid photo ID with you. LI Blood Services recommends that you eat and drink plenty of fluids before donating. Previous donors should bring their blood donor card with them. Each donor has an opportunity to win six tickets to a Mets game, and to receive a Mets t-shirt as a thank you for donating to the blood drive.

Hospitals are always in need of blood supplies so it is important that if you can donate blood to do so because one pint of blood can help save three lives. During the past two years with COVID-19 there has been an increase need for blood, said Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta. For more information, please call Legislator Trottas district office at 631-854-3900.
Local News

By Ls Cohen Published: June 13 2022

Decades old idea gaining momentum once again.

At the Stony Brook train station recently, officials gathered to renew the call for the LIRR to electrify the Port Jefferson line. The idea - which dates back to at least the 1980s - would provide a much-needed boost to the local economy and benefit the environment, according to a statement released by Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine.

Currently, LIRR tracks east of Huntington are not electrified and use dual-mode locomotives that switch from electric to diesel, which according to the officials are slower and more harmful to the environment. Port Jefferson branch is one of the busiest branches of the LIRR, serving more than 19 million riders a year according to a pre-pandemic, 2018 LIRR Ridership Report.

Electrification would provide faster, more efficient service and attract people to live in the communities with close access to the railroad, said Supervisor Romaine. The economic upside would be felt throughout the town as more people choose to live here, and our young people decide to stay because of the improved LIRR service and easier access in and out of New York City.

He also urged the State, MTA and LIRR to fully electrify the Main Line and Montauk branches.

The air contaminating diesel locomotives that are now in use are both an anachronism and embarrassment, said NYS Assemblyman Steve Englebright. Ending our reliance on outdated and unclean diesel engines and switching to electrical power will not only cut down on travel times but also reduce the profoundly negative impact that the trains have on the environment which is a win for everyone.

Environmentalists are worried that diesel trains are contaminating Long Island.

The current diesel trains are dumping tons of carbon into the air each day, adding to the climate crisis we are now experiencing everywhere on the planet, said George Hoffman, Co-founder of the Setauket Harbor Task Force.

Hoffman also encouraged electrification of the Main Line and Montauk branches in addition to the Port Jefferson line.

If electrification does happen in Port Jefferson, it could also mean a solution for the Lawrence Aviation Superfund site nearby, contaminated by decades of illegal chemical dumping. The chemical plume wound its way underneath Port Jefferson Village and emptied into the harbor. The EPA is currently remediating the site. The Lawrence Aviation Industries site could be utilized as a rail yard by the LIRR for electric trains.

Electrification would also give a shot in the arm to the revitalization efforts that Port Jefferson Village is currently undertaking in its uptown area just north of the LIRR station.
Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island Published: June 13 2022

Suffolk County Police Fifth Squad detectives are investigating a motor vehicle crash that critically injured a Mastic man early this morning.

Suffolk County Police Fifth Squad detectives are investigating a motor vehicle crash that critically injured a Mastic man early this morning.

Douglas Finney was driving a 2010 Hyundai eastbound on Montauk Highway, just east of South Country Road, when his vehicle crossed into oncoming traffic, striking a 2001 Kenworth dump truck at approximately 6:25 a.m.

Finney, 34, was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital where he was admitted in critical condition. The driver of the dump truck, John Pannhurst, 70, of Bellport, was not injured.

The Hyundai was impounded for a safety check. The dump truck was inspected at the scene by Motor Carrier Safety Section officers.

Detectives are asking anyone with information on this crash to call the Fifth Squad at 631-854-8552.
(Sharecast News) - Construction and Materials was the worst performing of the FTSE 350's sectors at the end of a week that saw US consumer price data print above economists' forecasts.

Dragging on the space on Friday was the subsequent rise in 10-year benchmark government bonds yields on both sides of the Pond with those on Gilts ending the session at 2.447%.

Stock markets around the world dropped sharply on the back of the news, which in turn appeared to drag life insurers' shares lower.

Industrial Metals & Mining were near the bottom of the pile, as the US dollar caught another big bid, pushing the US dollar index to fresh multi-year highs and weighing on the likes of copper.

By the end of trading in New York, the July copper contract on COMEX was down by 1.97% to $4.2945 a pound.

Gold on the other hand rose despite the headwind from the appreciating greenback with the August contract on COMEX ahead by 1.23% to $1,875.50/oz, benefitting Precious Metals and Mining.

Top performing sectors so far today

Precious Metals and Mining 10,519.41 +1.80%

Alternative Energy 0.00 0.00%

Alternative Investment Instruments NULL 0.00%

Automobiles and related providers NULL 0.00%

Banking NULL 0.00%

Bottom performing sectors so far today

Construction & Materials 6,537.19 -5.56%

Industrial Metals & Mining 7,637.83 -5.17%

Life Insurance 6,456.04 -4.17%

Leisure Goods 16,673.55 -4.16%

Travel & Leisure 6,162.36 -3.77%
(Alliance News) - Thungela Resources Ltd on Monday predicted a maiden interim dividend on the back of strong coal prices and robust earnings, which have helped blunt rail constraints in South Africa.

The Rosebank-based coal miner said on Monday it expects earnings per share to rise to ZAR54.87 for the first half to June 30, compared to ZAR3.13 in the prior year.

Headline earnings per share is likely to increase to ZAR54.95 from ZAR3.05.

The company forecasts an interim dividend for six months thanks to continued strong earnings and cash generation from January 1 to May 31, driven primarily by soaring coal prices.

Thungela declared maiden a full-year dividend of ZAR18.00 in 2021. It had listed in June of last year. The coal miner was spun out of Anglo American PLC and then listed on both the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges that month.

The benchmark coal price has averaged USD266 a tonne for the year to date, compared to USD98 in the first half ended June 30, but prices have been extremely volatile with large daily fluctuations in physical prices.

Demand for thermal coal remained firm at the start of the year as global economic activity continued to recover from the Coid-19 pandemic.

"The unfortunate onset of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine further contributed to tightness in supply and resulted in a refocus on energy security in Europe and beyond," the coal producer said.

Export saleable production for the first half is expected to be around 6.1 million tonnes, 14% lower than output of 7.1 million tonnes in the prior year.

The group said state-owned transport utility Transnet SOC Ltd was hampering its export performance.

It said it was closely monitoring its export saleable production guidance in light of the inconsistent rail network.

Thungela expects to achieve the lower end of the export saleable production guidance of 14 million tonnes to 15 million tonnes, from 15.0 million tonnes last year.

It has scheduled to release interim results on or about August 15.

Thungela shares were 6.3% lower at 1,182.00 pence each in London on Monday morning. In Johannesburg, the stock was down 6.5% at ZAR231.26.

By Artwell Dlamini; artwelldlamini@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Go-Ahead Group PLC late Monday announced its agreement to a takeover offer from Gerrard Investment Bidco Ltd, a subsidiary of a consortium consisting of Kinetic Holding Co Pty Ltd and Globalvia Inversiones SAU.

Kinetic is a bus operator in Australia and New Zealand, while Globalvia is a Madrid-based transport infrastructure firm.

Shares in the Newcastle, England-based public transport operator closed 19% higher at 1,441.72 pence on Monday in London, giving a market capitalisation of GBP622.5 million.

Earlier Monday, Go-Ahead confirmed the receipt of two takeover proposals, one from the Kinetic consortium, and another than Sydney-listed transport operator Kelsian Group Ltd.

Under the agreement, the consortium will acquire Go-Ahead for 1,500 pence per share, comprising 1,450p in cash, and a special dividend of 50 pence, in lieu of a final dividend for the financial year ending July 2.

The offer values Go-Ahead at GBP647.7 million

The full price reflects a 24% premium to Go-Ahead's closing price of 1,210p on Friday last week.

The acquisition is conditional on gaining at least 75% in shareholder approval at both the court and general meeting, as well as being sanctioned by the High Court of Justice in England & Wales.

The deal has a long-stop date of January 14, 2023. So far, the consortium has gained irrevocable undertakings from 2,584 shares in Go-Ahead, reflecting a nominal part of the company's equity.

"This is a compelling offer which combines an attractive valuation for shareholders with bright prospects for Go-Ahead's operations and colleagues around the world. We have confidence in Go-Ahead's future as an independent business, but see that being part of a truly global mass transit platform will yield exciting opportunities. We welcome the commitment of Kinetic and Globalvia to invest in the decarbonisation and digitalisation of our operations, and to support our strategy, The Next Billion Journeys," said Chief Executive Christian Schreyer.

By Dayo Laniyan; dayolaniyan@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
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MILAN (AP)  Italys furniture and design industry embraced the Milan Furniture Fair after a two-year pandemic delay with unapologetic, over-the-top statement pieces, multi-purpose furnishings adapted to small spaces, and sustainable creations by young designers pushing the industry toward a greener path.

After a surprising pandemic redecorating boom, the industry is looking to an uncertain future. There are raw materials shortages, higher transport costs and general economic uncertainty generated by Russias invasion of Ukraine. Sales of Italian furnishings surged to 16 billion euros (about $16.7 billion) in 2021, a 16% increase over 2019 and 25% more than 2020.

Despite the murky outlook, the worlds premiere furniture and design fair, known in Italian as Salone del Mobile, kept the focus on innovation as it recorded a rebound in attendance during six days of previews that closed Sunday.

Attendance was above expectations, reaching some 400,000 at both Salone and collateral events that spill out into the city, said Alessia Cappello, Milan's top economic development official. Two-thirds were from overseas.

Eye-catching novelties included an oversize gild-framed NFT; benches that convert to workstations or shaded beds for the homeless; and an elegant, dignified walker whose purpose was disguised by its sculpted shape.

It was fantastic to be back at Salone del Mobile,'' said Alana Stevens, president of the U.S. furniture maker Knoll. Much more than a fair, rather a gathering of an incredible global community of those passionate about design. The intersection of designers, artists and the business of design was inspiring.

German fashion designer Philipp Plein unveiled his inaugural furniture collection in collaboration with the Dutch brand Eichholtz, which has furnished many of Pleins own homes in Europe and the United States.

Pleins entry into home design closes a circle for the designer, whose first enterprise was designing dog beds. Fittingly, the new collection includes a leather dog bed on a golden frame for a well-appointed pooch.

He represents over-the-top luxury, and people want that right now, said Eichholtz COO Robin Goemans.

Jet-setters aspiring to Pleins rock n roll aesthetic can settle into a curved velvet sofa with gold studding. They can admire their wardrobe on a marble-pedestal clothing rack fit for a diva, and their sneaker collection in a standing trunk with mirrored interior. A marble table doubles as a pingpong table, and unique NFTs are digitalized into logoed mirrors.

Plein is just the latest fashion brand to enter the world of furniture design starting in the early 1990s, often by way of homes collections featuring bedding, pillows and towels close to their textile roots.

The fashion world understood at a certain point that design was able to capture the popular imagination in a way that was extremely interesting also for clothing brands, said Marco Sammicheli, director of design at the Triennale design museum.

On the sidelines of Salone, Sammicheli curated a show at the Triennale of the Memphis Group, a postmodern design movement founded by Ettore Sottsass that made its world debut at the Milan Furniture Fair in 1981.

The movement pushed the limits between the commercial and the artistic, tensions that still exist between the trade fair, with its commercial aims, and the myriad of collateral events where the focus is often more on artistic statements.

Memphis is the example that gives the best interpretation of Italian design after Olivetti and before Alessi, Sammicheli said, referring to the Olivetti business machine manufacturer best known for its typewriter, and the Alessi tableware and decor brand.

Alessi celebrated its 100th anniversary at Salone with a cutlery collaboration with the late Off-White designer Virgil Abloh. It held an exhibition looking at the family-owned companys journey from a metal factory to a laboratory for design, and a dinner where invited guests included some of the 300 designers who have worked with the brand in recent decades.

Ablohs three-piece cutlery set, dubbed Occasional Object, features an industrial design reminiscent of a mess kit, with a carabiner to clip the pieces together and onto the body as a fashion extension easily paired with the popular Off-White 200-centimeter industrial belt.

Nigerian designer Lani Adeoye won top prize at the SaloneSatellite event with the walker she designed for her grandfather, who rejected the more standard, medical-looking versions. An interlocking arch that represents unity gives her walker a sculptural flair, and the cording made out of water hyacinth connects both local artistry with sustainable materials.

He is a dignified man, who worked at the bank for many years and finds it embarrassing to be out with a walker, said the 32-year-old designer. You can have it in your environment, and it looks artistic. No one knows it is a walker.

Satellite is open to designers under 35 years old, and aims to help them develop relationships with manufacturers and find ways to realize projects that were developed in full liberty, without needing to take into account production processes, said Maria Porro, president of Salone.

The younger generation's natural hewing to sustainable materials and processes also presents a challenge to the wider industry. Bigger brands are more often heralding sustainable materials.

That included recycled plastics in the latest iterations of Kartells famed Louis Ghost chair by Philippe Starck, but also the Re-Chair collaboration with illy coffee that is made from discarded coffee pods, alleviating somewhat the guilt of the home capsule consumer.

Knoll introduced an oak chair, bench and stool series by Antonio Citterio called Klismos. Cotton chord is woven into a seat with a light elastic give, and the wood is notched together, so it doesnt require glue, typically sourced from petroleum products. Leather cushions filled with vegetable fibers are optional.

While responsibly sourced materials are important, Porro said, the real challenge to the industry is to reduce its energy footprint, doing things like replacing electric light with natural light and producing by order instead of creating stock. Toward that end, the Federlegno association of Italian furniture makers joined the UN Global Compact committing to responsible business practices during the 60th Salone last week.

We need sustainable production, that is the real challenge, Porro said. It is a question of culture.
MANISTEE  The West Shore Ruggers will hold the 21st Manistee Rug School.

The event is scheduled for June 20-24 at the Little River Casino Resort, located at 2700 Orchard Hwy. in Manistee.

More than 140 students are expected to participate with eight teachers. Both teachers and students come from all over the United States.

An open house is slated for 1-4 p.m. on June 22. The public is invited to view the custom designed and handmade rugs created by rug school students.
Benfica have released an official announcement to confirm that Darwin Nunez will join Liverpool. The Primeira Liga club communicated the transfer early on Monday to the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM).

Given that Benfica are listed on a stock exchange, they are obliged to communicate the figures of the transfer. Therefore, we know that Liverpool will pay 75 million euros plus a possible further 25m euros in variables to acquire Nunez's services.

"The agreement foresees the payment of a variable remuneration, so the overall amount of the sale could reach the sum of 100 million euros," reads Benfica's statement.

According to the Portuguese press, the variables set out in the contract will be relatively simple to fulfil. Should he play 10 games, the Reds will pay another 5m euros. In the event he reaches 60 games, Liverpool will pay a further 10m euros. Benfica will receive the remaining 10m euros should certain individual and collective goals be achieved.

The agreement between the two clubs has been finalised and now it remains to be seen when Nunez put pen to paper on his six-year deal.

Darwin Nunez: Liverpool's record signing

Nunez will join Mohamed Salah, Luis Diaz, Diogo Jota and Roberto Firmino in Liverpool's attack, while Sadio Mane is close to joining Bayern Munich.

The Uruguayan striker becomes the most expensive signing in Liverpool's history, ahead of Virgil dan Dijk, whose move from Southampton cost the Reds around 85m euros.

Last season, Nunez scored 34 goals in 41 games across all competitions for Benfica, who paid 24m to sign him from Almeria in the summer of 2020.

The Spanish club signed Nunez in exchange for 13m euros from Penarol and are due 20 percent of any profit Benfica make on the deal, which means that they will receive around 20m euros. The Andalusians have secured promotion to LaLiga Santander ahead of next season.
One of the states in the USA where lawmakers have been especially generous in providing financial aid to its citizens is California and a new bill could continue this trend, with Assembly Bill 2589 proposing new Child Tax Credit payments.

AB 2589 is currently just a proposal, one made by Los Angeles assemblyman Miguel Santiago, but it could become reality.

"California has a chance to lead the way in fighting poverty," Santiago said in a statement.

"Our 97 billion dollar surplus provides a critical opportunity to support our lowest income families."

How much would Californians get with the AB 2589 Child Tax Credit payments?

The proposal is to expand the Young Child Tax Credit to offer a one-time Child Tax Credit payment of 2,000 dollars per child to low- and medium-income families.

Santiago's bill also plans to raise the minimum amount for California Earned Income Tax Credit from one dollar to 255 dollars.

Who would be eligible for the AB 2589 Child Tax Credit payments?

This bill would, logically, be targeted at the poorest families in the state, with Santiago having claimed that 1.7 million children in California are at risk of falling back into poverty or further into poverty.

Therefore, the one-time payments are going to be for families who earn 30,000 dollars of less per year.

There is still a long way to go for this bill to become a reality, but California has been much more open to providing its citizens with financial assistance than other states.

California's governor Gavin Newsom has been willing to take budget surpluses and turn this into new schemes that can put the money back in the pockets of ordinary Californians, although he will also need support from other politicians if he and Miguel Santiago - who are both Democrats - are to make AB 2589 a reality.
Indian and Chinese national flags flutter side by side at the Raisina hills in New Delhi, India, in this file photo. [Photo/Xinhua]

During his four-day visit to India last week, the Commanding General of the US Army Pacific Charles Flynn showed that the United States is up to its old trick of pitting one regional country against another to serve its own interests.

As Flynn acknowledged, Washington's intention is for India to serve as a useful "counterweight" against China given the country's key position at the crossroads of Eurasia, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Thus his remarks hyping up the Sino-Indian border dispute, and implying US support, were intended to lure India into the US-engineered geopolitical game targeting China. A game that is "at the heart of American grand strategy", as the US defense chief made clear at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Friday.

Deliberately ignoring India's provocative construction of roads and bridges in the disputed border areas, Flynn said that some of the infrastructure constructed by China near its border with India is "alarming", while calling the Chinese activity in that region "eye-opening".

He also said that the "destabilizing and corrosive" behavior of China in the "Indo-Pacific" region is simply not helpful, revealing Washington's desire that India join its China-containment strategy.

It is perhaps because China and India have reached a consensus to solve their border disputes through communication and dialogue that the US is trying to fan the dying embers of the recent antagonism between India and China on the border.

The China-India border situation is generally stable at present, with the front-line forces of the two countries having disengaged in most parts of the western sector of the border after the recent round of senior commanders' meetings.

The two sides have also decided to hold the next round of meetings at an early date so as to reach a mutually acceptable solution to the border issues.

The dispute is a matter for India and China to settle between themselves. The US' attempts to drive a wedge between them by stirring up the border tensions are just further evidence of its efforts to build a gang that can hold regional peace and stability to ransom at the expense of China's development.

New Delhi should be aware that it will not gain anything by allowing itself to be sweet-talked into being another player in Washington's aggressive China-containment game, since that game is strictly self-serving. India will benefit the most by reaffirming its traditional independent foreign policy and working to uphold good-neighborly relations with China.
The benefits of essential oils and the nourishment they offer are always talked about in the beauty industry.

From skincare and wellness to hair growth, oils can truly help transform your grooming game. Castor oil is one such treatment used for hair growth. Like many tried and tested home remedies, the use of castor oil has been around for centuries. Indians often gravitate towards home remedies more than store bought products and rightly so. Why try chemical treatments that may have long term side effects when you can use an all-natural and affordable solution. Heres everything you need to know about castor oil for hair, how to use it and the best ones to try. Benefits Of Castor Oil For Hair  iStock Argan oil, olive oil, coconut oil, the list of hair growth oils for men can go on and on. What makes castor oil stand out? Lets find out.

Here are some major benefits of castor oil for hair that will convince you to include it in your hair care routine. Excellent For Dry Scalp & Dandruff Treatment Castor oil is one of the thickest hair oils. It provides intense nourishment which is perfect for men with dry or flakey scalp. It is also known to have anti-inflammatory properties which may help in reducing dandruff.

Reduces Hair Breakage Castor oil is highly lubricating and provides rich nourishment to the hair. The more moisturised your hair will be, the less it will break, both inside and outside the shower. Moisturisation helps in making the hair more flexible and reduces friction which prevents breakage.

Does It Help With Hair Growth? Many people use castor oil as a hair growth treatment, but currently theres no scientific evidence to prove such claims. The reduced hair fall could be linked with better moisturisation of the hair. If your hair and scalp type is dry, you can improve your hair quality by using this oil. This may improve overall hair health and volume, but castor oil will not boost hair growth.

Reduces Hair Fall Even though castor oil cant boost hair growth, it can reduce hair fall and help you retain your natural hair. It nourishes the scalp and the hair shaft making them stronger. It also helps in reducing dandruff and the hair fall caused by it.

Conditions The Hair The deeply nourishing properties of castor oil help in reducing frizziness, adding shine and improving the overall appearance of your hair. It makes the hair softer, smoother and more voluminous, which works especially well for men with long hair.

The Best Castor Oils For Hair Castor oil can also be mixed with lighter hair oils to balance its consistency and make it all the more nourishing. Here are some of the best castor oils for men and why you should use them. 1. Inatur Cold Pressed Natural Oil Cold pressed oils are not processed using any kind of heat and retain all the important nutrients for your body. You can use this cold pressed castor oil on your hair as well as your skin. It will nourish and moisturise your scalp as well as heal dry skin.

2. Urbangabru Cold Pressed Castor Oil Be it softer lips or stronger hair, this castor oil can help you level up your grooming game. It can be used on your hair as well as your skin. In fact, you can even use it as cuticle oil and make your hands look more polished. This oil is organic and free from paraben and other harmful chemicals.

3. Rejuvenating Ubtan Head Massage Oil This hair oil is enriched with not one or two but nine different herbs that will nourish your scalp and rejuvenate your hair. It has almond, coconut, olive, sesame and castor oil with jasud and bhringraj. This oil will not just nourish your hair but also destress your mind.

4. Rustic Art Nourishing Hair Oil Free from mineral oils, synthetic dyes and fragrances, this organic hair oil is completely natural. In addition to castor oil, it is enriched with brahmi, moringa, black seed oil, almond oil and jojoba oil. Use this hair oil twice a week and watch your hair transform.

5. The Beauty Co. Onion Hair Oil Red onion extracts are known for boosting hair growth and reducing hair fall. This all-natural hair oil is formulated using red onion extract and enriching hair oils like castor oil, almond oil, olive oil and redensyl. Altogether, these ingredients are extremely powerful for fighting hair loss.

6. Himalayan Organics Castor Oil Formulated specifically for stronger hair and glowing skin, this oil is a must in your grooming kit. It is 100% organic and is cold pressed to retain nourishment. It claims to condition the hair and replenish your scalp with the right nutrients.

7. Bombay Shaving Company Anti Hair Fall Oil If youre looking for a hair oil to reduce hair fall, this one is perfect for you. Apart from castor oil, it is enriched with seven other essential oils. This hair oil promises to reduce hair fall by 31% within 8 weeks. Try it out and see for yourself.

8. Urbangabru Hair Growth Serum Oil Specially formulated to treat hair fall, this hair growth serum is enriched with castor oil as well as vitamin B5. It comes in a convenient spray packaging and does not require deep hair massage. Simply spray it on your scalp and let your follicles absorb all the goodness.

9. Anveya Jamaican Black Castor Oil Organic, cold pressed and an age old secret for healthy hair, this castor oil can be used to boost the growth of hair as well as your beard. Just a couple of drops of this hair oil can give you the hair of your dreams.

How To Use Castor Oil For Hair?  iStock There is no hard and fast rule about oiling your hair. However, it is recommended that you oil your hair at least once a week. If your type is dry and damaged, you may need to oil every single time before washing your hair. You can use hair oils in DIY hair masks as well. Here are some common hair castor oil hair masks that you can try.

Castor Oil + Coconut Oil Mix these two ingredients in equal parts and apply for about an hour before washing your hair. This blend of hair oils will help add thickness and volume to your hair. Coconut oil does have hair growth benefits and castor oil helps in nourishing your hair.

Castor Oil + Honey + Lemon Juice This hair mask helps in fighting dandruff. Mix 3 tsp. castor oil, 2 tsp. honey and a few drops of lemon juice. Apply this mixture for half an hour or so and then wash your hair using a gentle shampoo.
Sir,



The above headline probably best describes the current situation of mob justice in the country. Many people have been killed, raped or robbed in the country and we have every reason to be worried. We need to sustain our reputation as a peaceful and secure nation if we are to lure the investors and tourists who could help us out of our plight as we seek to reduce our poverty levels. Currently, when those interested in settling, investing or visiting this part of the world, they find that other countries are safest.

Angry

What type of Christian country are we if we rape, kill women and children willy-nilly? This is atrocious. These could be symptoms of an angry nation that is fast losing its tag of being a friendly, loving, tolerant and compassionate society. The less said about our ritual murder beliefs the better. We also have many robberies committed monthly, which raises the probability of people getting shot to death while highlighting weaknesses in security to prevent access to dangerous weapons.

Concern

The statistics of young people dropping out of school to become dagga cultivators or traffickers are a cause for concern. Many people have long said that legalising dagga for medicinal purposes would go a long way to put an end to this. The country is spending huge resources to fight the war against a plant that could yield huge economic dividends for it.

Life

A state of anarchy could prevail, if people are increasingly becoming intolerant of those they love or attach no value to the life of a fellow citizen, then tolerance for poor service delivery may soon be met with equal aggression - if not worse - against those entrusted with the responsibility to deliver. Government cannot afford to look at these symptoms and dismiss them as crime. It is quite evident that its much bigger than that. A closer look at the cause would most likely reveal that our high poverty rate is a contributing factor. It may also point towards abused children growing up to become abusers. So let us be careful how we raise the future generation.
Its time to act Minister screams yet another title of a newspaper article in reference to the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs under whose executive authority the administration of justice in the country falls.

This was as recently as Friday the June 10, 2022 in the Times of Eswatini under the Comments & Analysis opinion by Managing Editor Martin Dlamini. Ironically, members of the Law Society convened on the same Friday to deliberate this pressing issue of what many now refer to as the maladministration of justice. The administration of justice in the country was the only item in the agenda of the Law Societys meeting. This item also featured in yet another Law Society meeting at the end of April 2022, less than one and a half months ago. This reveals the pressing nature of the administration of justice challenges which are clear for the public to see.

The commencement of this discourse with the opinion of the Managing Editor is appropriate because of the point he makes in its introduction. He says There is hardly enough space to articulate all the issues forming an imminent threat to the rule of law,. Indeed, so much has been written about the chief justice (CJ) and the equally culpable Judicial Service Commission he chairs. None of this is good in at least two senses. First, nothing being written is flattering about the CJ and the JSC. Secondly, this negativity does not bode well for the administration of justice in the country.

Readers will recall that last weeks Law Society discourse was dedicated to dissecting the Weekend Analysis opinions of Assistant Weekend Editor Welcome Dlamini published in the Eswatini News Saturday editions of 14th and May 21, 2022 in which the Chief Justice and the Judicial Service Commission chairs were heavily criticised. The Law Society could not help but notice the Weekend Analysis opinion of June 4, 2022 in which its name was boldly written in the title of the opinion which reads Law Society takes on CJ/JSC. From the introduction in the satirical narrative of this opinion piece, it seems that the Weekend Editor was indisposed on the Saturday of the May 28, 2022 when the CJ stayed out of the headlines. The reader is reminded that this Saturday of May 28, 2022 was preceded by the two Saturdays of 14th and May 21, 2022 where the conduct of the CJ and his JSC was put under the spotlight.

The reader is also reminded that the imaginary public defender was at forefront of the scrutiny of the highly questionable conduct of the CJ and his JSC. This time around (in the Weekend Analysis opinion of the June 4, 2022, the newspaper editor draws in the Law Society which makes the preliminary submission that it possesses the proof that the judiciary is already in crisis. In fact, the Law Society does in fact possess such proof.



DISCIPLINE OF JUDGES AND LAWYERS

It does not take long before the newspaper editor revisits the controversial relationship between the CJ and the JSC on the one hand and Robinson Bertram on the other. The reader will remember the newspaper editors complaints about the engagement of this private law firm by the CJ (in his professional and personal capacity) as well as the JSC. The Law Society revisits this subject because of the new issues raised by the newspaper editor who makes the point that the CJs appointment of the senior partner at Robinson Bertram as Disciplinary Tribunal Chairperson left the Law Society at a loss for words. After highlighting the fact that the senior partner at this private law firm prosecuted former CJ Ramodibedi, former Judges Mpendulo Simelane and Sipho Nkosi, the newspaper editor concludes that this senior partner represents the CJ, the JSC, prosecutes Judges and now disciplines lawyers. The Law Society would be abdicating its duties if it did not at least seriously reflect on the implications of all these roles for a single member.



CJ ACCUSED OF DEFYING Court ORDER

The Times of Eswatini of Wednesday June 1, 2022 then reported that the CJ was accused of defying an order of court in one of the matters where he litigates in his own courts - the matter in which he is resisting the probe into alleged irregularities in the office of the Master of the High Court. The resistance of a probe into irregularities by a head of the judiciary raises its own questions about the integrity of the CJ but this is a matter for another day. High Court Judge T. Dlamini issued an order that the matter in which the CJ and his JSC challenges Parliament be referred to a Full Bench (three Judges in one High Court sitting) and that the Principal Judge in the High Court should select the Judges to hear the matter because the Chief Justice is obviously conflicted. Judge Dlaminis finding is couched in these terms: It would therefore be unjust and unfair to allow him (The Chief Justice) to choose and decide the Judges who are to hear the matter. I come to this conclusion because the founding affidavit makes it clear that the Chief Justice is the one who wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs telling her that the resolution to probe the office of the Master of the High Court by the House of Assembly interferes with the fundamental principles of independence of the Judiciary as enshrined in the constitution.

June 1, 2022 Times of Eswatini article reports that, despite the Court order, the CJ proceeded to choose the Judges to hear the matter. One of the Judges chosen by the CJ to be part of the panel to hear the matter served with him in the JSC for a long time before his appointment as a permanent Judge less than three (3) months ago. The Speaker of Parliament was having none of this defiance of a court order by the Head of the Judiciary and he accused the Chief Justice of contempt of Court and of approaching the Court with dirty hands. The Chief Justice is reported to have then withdrawn the directive arguing that he was not aware of the Court order by Judge Dlamini. This allegation by the Chief Justice leaves a lot to be desired. How can the CJ not be aware of a judgment in a which he is not only a party but actively participates? If the CJ knew that the matter had been referred to a full bench, how did he miss that the same judgment had disallowed him to select the judges to hear it?

Outside the court order by Judge Dlamini, where was the Chief Justices sense of constitutional duty and deference when he selected Judges to hear a matter in which he is a party? If the Chief Justice does not understand this basic principle, his competence for the position of CJ is questionable. If it is not a question of competence, is it not wilfully violating the constitution? By any standard, the conduct of the CJ constitutes serious misbehaviour as contemplated by section 158(2) of the constitution, the section on removal of Judges. The Assistant Weekend Editor persuasively argues that whether or not the CJ and the JSC are found to have been in contempt of Court is beside the point. He amplifies this argument with the conclusion that the mere fact of association of the Chief Justice and the JSC with such despicable conduct is enough to cause the public to lose confidence in the judiciary. These sentiments are repeated in his last opinion piece which, unsurprisingly, were on Saturday June 11, 2022. He says that with each passing day, faith in justice through Courts is declining and there is a need to seek to restore that faith.



CHIEF JUSTICE SHOCKINGLY CHALLENGES DECISION FOR HIM NOT TO SELECT JUDGES TO HEAR HIS MATTER

The Chief Justice and his JSC have also apparently filed an application for leave to appeal the judgment that was issued by Judge Dlamini. Acting Registrar of the Supreme Court, Siphiwo Masuku, who is also the Acting Secretary of the JSC, deposed to an affidavit where she contended that the CJ and JSC were dissatisfied with the second order directing that the Principal Judge should select or empanel the Judges to hear the matter. The attention of the reader is drawn to the fact that Judge Dlamini simply referred the matter to the full bench which should ordinarily hear the matter without delay because of its importance, being a dispute between two arms of government arising from the office of the Master of the High Court which impacts the members of the public substantially.

In the notice of leave to appeal, the Acting Secretary of the JSC contended that the essence of the grounds of appeal were that the CJ had no personal interest in the matter, but was a party in his official capacity as the head of the judiciary. She contended that the CJ in terms of the Constitution, was responsible for the administration, supervision and regulating the practice and procedure of the Judiciary and there was no lawful basis why the Chief Justice should not exercise his constitutional functions laid down in sections 139(3) and 142 of the Constitution and other enabling legislation. She further argued that there was no lawful basis for Judge Dlamini to hold that the Chief Justice was conflicted. WHAT! Putting aside the validity of the arguments made by the CJ, the bottom line here is that the CJ wants to select the Judges to hear his matter and the big question is WHY?

Readers must make up their own minds about whether this is desirable or indeed consistent with the constitution. This resistance to have the matter heard by impartially selected Judges comes hot on the heels of another matter where the CJ was defending proceedings in which incarcerated accused persons merely sought to have their matter enrolled in the Supreme Court after inordinate delays on his part to enrol it. This begs the question how a CJ defend proceedings where accused persons simply want to access to justice. Is that not for the Directorate of Public Prosecutions to do whilst the CJ remains the impartial adjudicator he should be? Ironically, the Chief Justice does not waste time in causing the enrolment of a matter in which he is a party. Apparently, the Judge Dlamini decision was made on Friday the April 22, 2022 but the CJ had selected the Judges to hear his matter by Thursday the April 28, 2022.



THE IMAGE OF THE JUDICIARY TORN TO SHREDS

Two meetings of the Law Society on administration of justice challenges many of which the newspapers detail almost daily during the same period, there is no doubt that the image of the judiciary has been torn to shreds as the newspaper editors conclude. It is indeed time for the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs to act.
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NEW DELHI (AP)  India and other Asian nations are becoming an increasingly vital source of oil revenues for Moscow despite strong pressure from the U.S. not to increase their purchases, as the European Union and other allies cut off energy imports from Russia in line with sanctions over its war on Ukraine.

Such sales are boosting Russian export revenues at a time when Washington and allies are trying to limit financial flows supporting Moscow's war effort.

A report by the Helsinki, Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an independent think tank released Monday said Russia earned 93 billion euros ($97.4 billion) in revenue from fossil fuel exports in the first 100 days of the countrys invasion of Ukraine, despite a fall in export volumes in May.

Revenue from fossil fuel exports is the key enabler of Russias military buildup and aggression, providing 40% of federal budget revenue," it said.

India, an oil-hungry country of 1.4 billion people, has guzzled nearly 60 million barrels of Russian oil in 2022 so far, compared with 12 million barrels in all of 2021, according to commodity data firm Kpler. Shipments to other Asian countries, like China, have also increased in recent months but to a lesser extent.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sri Lankas prime minister said he may be compelled to buy more oil from Russia as he hunts desperately for fuel to keep the country running amid a dire economic crisis.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said Saturday said he would first look to other sources, but would be open to buying more crude from Moscow. In late May, Sri Lanka bought a 90,000-metric-ton (99,000-ton) shipment of Russian crude to restart its only refinery.

Russia is moving to diversify its exports. Russian Ambassador Marat Pavlov met Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday and offered Moscows help to provide oil and gas. He did not specify the terms.

Marcos Jr., whose six-year term is set to begin June 30, did not say if he was considering the offer.

Since Russias invasion of Ukraine in late February, global oil prices have soared, giving refiners in India and other countries an added incentive to tap oil Moscow is offering them at steep discounts of $30 to $35, compared with Brent crude and other international oil now trading at about $120 per barrel.

Their importance to Russia rose after the 27-nation European Union, the main market for fossil fuels that supply most of Moscows foreign income, agreed to stop most oil purchases by the end of this year.

It seems a distinct trend is becoming ingrained now, said Matt Smith, lead analyst at Kpler tracking Russian oil flows. As shipments of Urals oil to much of Europe are cut, crude is instead flowing to Asia, where India has become the top buyer, followed by China. Ship tracking reports show Turkey is another key destination.

People are realizing that India is such a refining hub, taking it at such a cheap price, refining it and sending it out as clean products because they can make such strong margins on that, Smith said.

In May, some 30 Russian tankers loaded with crude made their way to Indian shores, unloading about 430,000 barrels per day. An average of just 60,000 barrels per day arrived in January-March, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Chinese state-owned and independent refiners also have stepped up purchases. In 2021, China was the largest single buyer of Russian oil, taking 1.6 million barrels per day on average, equally divided between pipeline and seaborne routes, according to the International Energy Agency.

While India's imports are still only about a quarter of that, the sharp increase since the war began is a potential source of friction between Washington and New Delhi.

The U.S. recognizes India's need for affordable energy, but were looking to allies and partners not to increase their purchases of Russian energy," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after a meeting of U.S. and Indian foreign and defense ministers in April.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and its European allies are engaged in extremely active" discussions on coordinating measures, perhaps forming a cartel, to try to set a price cap on Russian oil, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told a Senate Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday.

The aim would be to keep Russian oil flowing into the global market to prevent crude oil prices, already up 60% this year, from surging still higher, she said.

Absolutely, the objective is to limit the revenue going to Russia," Yellen said, indicating the exact strategy had not yet been decided on.

While Europe could find alternative sources for its purchases of about 60% of Russia's crude exports, Russia also has options.

Indias foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, has emphasized his country's intention to do what is in its best interests, bristling at criticism over its imports of Russian oil.

If India funding Russian oil is funding the war  tell me, then buying Russian gas is not funding the war? Lets be a little even-handed, he said at a recent forum in Slovakia, referring to Europes imports of Russian gas.

Indias imports of crude from Russia rose from 100,000 barrels per day in February to 370,000 a day in April to 870,000 a day in May.

A growing share of those shipments displaced oil from Iraq and Saudi Arabia, most of it going to refineries in Sika and Jamnagar on Indias western coast. Up until April, Russian oil accounted for less than 5% of the crude processed at the Jamnagar oil refinery run by Reliance Industries. In May, it accounted for more than a quarter, according to Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Indias exports of oil products like diesel have risen to 685,000 barrels per day from 580,000 barrels per day before the invasion of Ukraine. Much of its diesel exports are sold in Asia, but about 20% was shipped via the Suez Canal, headed for the Mediterranean or Atlantic, essentially Europe or the US, said Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst at CREA.

Its impossible to quantify the exact amount of Russian crude in refined products being shipped out of India, he said. Still, India is providing an outlet for Russian crude oil to get through the market, he said.

China's imports also have risen further this year, helping Russian President Vladimir Putin's government record a current account surplus, the broadest measure of trade, of $96 billion for the four months ending in April.

Its unclear if such exports might eventually be subject to sanctions meant to cut the cash flowing to Russia.

Regarding the sanctions, Are those measures effective? And if not, how is the oil market working around them? Myllyvirta said.

___

Kurtenbach reported from Bangkok. Jim Gomez contributed from Manila, Philippines.
File photo

MANISTEE COUNTY  The following includes reports made to the Manistee County Sheriffs Office from May 13-14.

All calls may not be reported. This is part of a lengthy report and is compiled by assistant editor Arielle Breen.
WEBBER TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP)  Authorities have recovered a small alligator following a high-speed car chase in northwestern Michigan.

The vehicle's driver refused to stop when a sergeant attempted to pull him over about 11 p.m. Saturday for speeding along U.S. 10, the Lake County sheriffs office said.

Other sheriff's deputies and officers with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources joined the pursuit which ended when the vehicle they were chasing got stuck between two trees in Webber Township, south of Traverse City.

Deputies caught the alligator outside the vehicle.

A 40-year-old man from suburban Detroit was arrested and faces charges related to the chase.
A northern Nevada industrial plant can begin turning tons of garbage into a synthetic oil that can be refined into fuel for airplanes, following a recent Environmental Protection Agency rule change.

After five years, the EPA on June 3 finalized the rule sought by Fulcrum BioEnergys Sierra BioFuels Plant in Storey County.

A company official told the Las Vegas Review-Journal the facility would permanently employ roughly 120 people.

Once operating, it will process 175,000 tons of landfill garbage into 11 million gallons of synthetic fuel oil each year, company officials said.

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., who helped guide the company through the bureaucratic maze, said she hoped the plant would create more than a thousand indirect jobs throughout the state while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

She called the project an entirely new industry.

After the project stalled at the EPA during the Trump and Biden administrations, Cortez Masto pushed for a regulatory rule change that will allow the synthetic fuel oils to be produced, marketed and sold.

I wouldnt let unnecessary government bureaucracy stand in the way of this innovative new facility, Cortez Masto said in a statement detailing her involvement with the process since 2017.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the agency actions and rules issued for the Renewable Fuel Standard program are steps to increase the availability of homegrown biofuels.

Regan added that the intent of new rules on renewable fuel standards is to provide more options for consumers at the pump.

In the case of the Sierra BioFuels Plant, the synthetic material may be used in aviation, said Eric Pryor, Fulcrums president and chief executive officer, in a statement announcing operations at the facility east of Reno.

Fulcrum is launching an entirely new source of low-cost, domestically produced, net-zero carbon transportation fuel, which will contribute to the aviation industrys carbon reduction goals, U.S. energy security and address climate stability, Pryor said in a statement.

In an interview with the Review-Journal, Benny Wong, Fulcrum BioEnergy managing director of fuels and regulatory affairs, said the northern Nevada site was chosen because of the regulatory climate in the state, the landfill and the proximity to markets.

The EPAs rule change was one of the final hurdles to moving ahead with the project, he said.

Our Sierra project would be the first municipal solid waste-to-fuel in the nation, Wong said.

Such projects take several years to plan and build, Wong said.

Fulcrum BioEnergy first received a $105 million loan guarantee in 2014 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to start research and planning on the project.

Cortez Masto, who is also a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, helped the company secure that financial support from the department in 2017. Construction began in 2018 and finished in 2021.

Still, EPA rule changes were needed. EPA continued to review the Renewable Fuel Standards program over two presidential administrations.

Cortez Masto talked recently with Regan and pushed the EPA to provide the regulatory fix in new rules. Regan announced that change in a batch of new rules issued by the agency.

Regan said the EPAs new rules would help to reduce our reliance on oil and put the (Renewable Fuel Standards) program back on track after years of challenges and mismanagement.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture also announced this month that it would invest $700 million in biofuel producers who were economically hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

The funds are part of the $2.2 trillion relief bill passed by Congress in 2020.
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Search and rescue teams from around the region gathered on Saturday in Sanford to work together, expand their toolkits and learn new skills.

Midland County Search and Rescue (MCSAR) hosted its first multi-agency drill, sending teams into the woods to search for live subjects.

The idea for Saturdays drill came from Dave Willertz of MCSAR, who recently was assisting with a search in Lapeer with multiple teams. He was deployed with several teams and learned new skills and insights that he wanted his own team members in Midland to experience.

The learning of a different discipline was very impactful, Willertz said. We wanted to replicate that real-world search environment where its not just Midland County working as our own little team and running the show. Were having to work with other teams and other disciplines that were unfamiliar with.

In addition to MCSAR, participants of the drill included Lapeer County Search and Rescue, Alpena County Search and Rescue and Michigan Search and Rescue.

We get paired up sometimes with K9 teams, said MCSAR member Cindy Vickery. "Its good to practice. I did it once on a live search. Its definitely different. You learn something.

Shortly after 8 a.m., Willertz briefed the teams. The hypothetical scenario was that an undetermined number of campers had scattered into the woods after a gunman invaded their campground. The police had cleared the area of all threats, but it was up to the teams to find the campers.

Search and rescue teams have several tools to help them find missing persons, including GPS, HAM radio, drones, trained dogs, and compasses. One goal of Saturdays drill was to register teams into SARTopo and CalTopo apps.

SARTopo and CalTopo allow individuals to share their locations, provide updates and connect with other team members devices, no matter if Internet access is available or not. The idea was to get different teams around Michigan signed up so they could have access to the same information during a search.

This is a big event for the state, said Mark Walker of MCSAR. My goal today is to wrap my arms around the teams.

MCSAR started in 2009 when a group of men, including John Hutcheson, Jay Anderson, Rich Harnois, Dirk Dagenais and Kevin Barnum, realized that Midland County had no standard for search and rescue tactics.

Hutcheson presented a proposal for a search and rescue team to then-Sheriff Jerry Nielsen, who accepted it. MCSAR was officially established the following year.

The organization has expanded to include about 30 active members and would like to grow further, as members arent always available due to work schedules or other commitments. They hold monthly meetings in addition to monthly field training sessions.

Membership is open to men and women over the age of 18 who are physically fit and enjoy being outdoors. MCSAR will provide the required training  including first aid and navigation  and equipment.

MCSAR is deployed by the Midland County Sheriffs Office. Barnum explained that most searches are for people who are very young or old, or who have a cognitive disability; MCSAR usually goes out on a handful of searches a year in Midland, and most of its searches take place in other counties.

(The amount of searches) has gotten a little less in the last few years because the deputies and the Midland Police Department have become more proficient at finding people, Barnum said, adding that sometimes a missing person will be found before MCSAR can be on the scene. Thats the best-case scenario. I dont care who (finds the person).

Having different teams practice together on Saturday gave the drill a realistic quality, as teams often collaborate on real assignments. MCSAR has helped with searches in other parts of the state, including an all-night search in Lapeer and a multi-day search in Mount Pleasant. In turn, statewide teams have come to Midland to assist with searches.

To me, its always amazing to see how much dedication volunteers will put into a group, Barnum said. They are not in it for the money. They do it because its something that needs to be done.
MIDDLETOWN  Members of the citys LGBTQIA+ Commission read a proclamation in honor of Pride Month at the June 7 Common Council meeting, encourages the public to honestly embrace this part of American history.

All council members were cosponsors of the resolution, according to Councilor and committee chairman Anthony Mangiafico.

Middletown has shown time and again that it is a welcoming community to all, Mangiafico said in a press release. From the year-round Pride crosswalk to the Pride flag raising to last weekends Pride march, rally and concert, Middletown supports all members of its community, he said in a prepared statement.

The proclamation encourages our citizens to honestly embrace this part of American history for the purpose of ensuring that the goals and ideas expressed in our Constitution may be pursued constructively, safely, and collectively to the benefit with a level of equity, it reads.

The LGBTQIA+ community continues to face targeted discrimination and violence, in particular, transgender women of color, it continues.

Under the leadership of Christopher Forte, assistant general counsel, Middletown Pride held its first Pride parade and festival June 15, 2019, drawing approximately 15,000 people from all over New England, the statement said. It instantly became the largest Pride event in the state of Connecticut.

Last weekends event was the fourth annual observance in Middletown.

To read the full proclamation, go to middletown.granicus.com.
MATSAPHA  Some pharmacists employed by government reportedly have duplicates of their registration with the Eswatini Medical and Dental Council (EMDC) in retail pharmacies.

An investigation by this publications reporters uncovered that some pharmacists, under the employ of government, had their recognition certificates dangling from the walls of some of the one-room pharmacies in Matsapha. According to impeccable sources, who are in the business, the offer of the recognition certificate by some government employed pharmacists, was as high as E40 000. The sources claimed that the pharmacists in most instances argued that they were bringing in experience and would be a phone call away for complicated prescriptions. It was further gathered that there had been a number of disputes wherein the pharmacy proprietors were coerced out of business as some of the government employed pharmacists demanded a shareholding.

Salary

It depends on the arrangement you make. In some instances, you may agree that the pharmacists will be paid a monthly salary or that you will offer them shareholding. The disadvantage of the monthly salary is that when sales are not good, you may be forced out of your business, the source claimed. He said at this instance, the proprietor was paid a certain fee to relinquish the shareholding. It was gathered that the pharmacy proprietors allegedly colluded with registered pharmacists, through the latter offering their recognition certificates being used in these pharmacies in order to meet the rules set by the ministry. These rules entail that a registered pharmacist should be on site to dispense pharmaceuticals to the public in retail pharmacies. During the course of the investigation, this publication established that there were pharmacy technicians and pharmacists who had this recognition with the EMDC being used in places they were not practising in.

In fact, when some of the pharmacy proprietors were questioned on the whereabouts of the pharmacists, they would claim that they had gone out to run some errands. On the wall, some had photocopies of the recognition by the EMDC. Impeccable sources relayed to this publication that this was a common act within the sector. In light of this, Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health Dr Simon Zwane said healthcare workers who also operated pharmacies deserved to be fired as it was a red flag. Dr Zwane said this when sought for clarity on what government was doing to deal with the fraudulent acts taking place in the retail pharmacy industry. He said for any healthcare worker under the employ of government, to also operate in the private space was a red flag. The PS said for any pharmacist to operate in the private sector, they would have to seek permission from the ministry to do that.

Permission

Furthermore, he said chances of that permission being granted were very slim. In fact, he said: I dont know what would have happened for that to happen. The PS said any pharmacists under the employ of the civil service, whose accreditation with the EMDC was used in a retail pharmacy, deserved to be fired. He said they needed their information so that they could charge them and if found guilty, discharge them from the civil service. Dr Zwane added that pharmacists employed by government were not permitted, through their registration with the EMDC, to operate in other facilities other than in government. A pharmacist employed by government, who also operates in the private space, compromises the ministry, as it may substantiate the theft of medication from government facilities in order to resell it to private pharmacies, Dr Zwane said.

It is worth noting that there are allegations circulating that the mushrooming of informal pharmacies has links to the theft of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. Dr Zwane said the ministry was concerned about the burgeoning pharmacy outlets such that there were quality issues, as well as, the source of the medicines and supplies sold in them. He said: We do not have any evidence of government stock sold to these outlets; but we have had frequent allegations of such. We are currently auditing all the pharmacy outlets to establish whether they are properly operating or not. The PS said the ministry would do an in-depth assessment of their sources of supply afterwards. He said all outlets operating illegally or with no clear paperwork of the sources of supply would face the wrath of the law.

Furthermore, he said there have been a few reports of theft of medicines and other supplies by personnel. Dr Zwane said as such, the perpetrators had been nabbed (through cameras fitted in the Central Medical Stores (CMS) as well as distribution vehicles) and their cases were still pending in the courts. He said what the ministry did not know was how medicines theft occurred in hospitals and clinics. Dr Zwane said there were controls in place but not necessarily strong enough across all facilities.
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LAKE LUZERNE, N.Y.  New York State Police are investigating the possible drowning of a 48-year-old Connecticut man in the Hudson River on Saturday, officials said.

Troopers were dispatched around 4 p.m. to the area of Davern Road, which runs along the river in the small upstate town of Lake Luzerne, according to Maj. Richard J. OBrien, a state police spokesperson.
Country music star Toby Keith announced Sunday that he has been undergoing treatment for stomach cancer since last fall.

The multi-platinum-selling singer said on Twitter that he underwent surgery and received chemotherapy and radiation in the past six months.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  A major free zone operator in Dubai owned by the sheikhdom's ruler said Thursday it would make an initial public offering on the local stock market, the latest state asset to list in an effort to boost the city-state's bourse.

The TECOM Group, whose 10 holdings include Dubai Internet City and Dubai Media City, plans to offer 625 million shares on the Dubai Financial Market. TECOM said it planned to offer investors dividends of $218 million a year for the next three years.

The offer would represent 12.5% of all shares of TECOM, a subsidiary of Dubai Holding, part of the vast government enterprises informally known as Dubai Inc. and overseen by its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

TECOM reported having revenues of over $480 million in 2021, with a profit of nearly $320 million.

With our intention to list ... we are expanding our contribution to Dubais financial market and bolstering our vision to further unlock the emirates economic and business growth potential," said Malek Al Malek, TECOM's chairman.

TECOM said it hoped to begin trading its shares on July 5.

The listing is part of a wider plan announced last November by Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the son of Dubais ruler, to list 10 state industries on the stock market to boost its profile and raise new capital for the skyscraper-lined emirate.

Dubai is home to 3.5 million people and has seen a surge of interest as the sheikhdom weathered the pandemic and kept its vital tourism and real estate markets afloat. TECOM is one of Dubai's top operators of free zones, which allow foreign companies to operate in a tax-free environment and maintain 100% of their ownership.

Dubais Water and Electricity Authority, known as DEWA, began trading a portion of its shares for the first time in April after raising over $6 billion during its IPO.

A renewed wave of IPOs has struck across the Gulf Arab states, likely fueled by the listing of the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Saudi Aramco. Even long-haul carrier Emirates, the jewel of Dubai Inc., has been discussed as a possible IPO target.

But risks remain  particularly after Yemen's Houthi rebels launched attacks on the country at the start of the year.

Although the UAE continues to exercise de-escalation diplomacy and self-restraint, there can be no assurance that tensions will not continue to escalate in the region, or that further attacks will not happen, the prospectus warned.
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After the arrest of more than two dozen members of a white supremacist group near a northern Idaho pride event, including one identified as its founder, LGBTQ advocates said Sunday that polarization and a fraught political climate are putting their community increasingly at risk.

The 31 Patriot Front members were arrested with riot gear after a tipster reported seeing people loading up into a U-Haul like a little army at a hotel parking lot in Coeur dAlene, Idaho, police said.

Among those booked into jail on misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot was Thomas Ryan Rousseau of Grapevine, Texas, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the 23-year-old who founded the group after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. No attorney was immediately listed for him and phone numbers associated with him went unanswered Sunday.

Also among the arrestees was Mitchell F. Wagner, 24, of Florissant, Missouri, who was previously charged with defacing a mural of famous Black Americans on a college campus in St. Louis last year.

Michael Kielty, Wagners attorney, said Sunday that he had not been provided information about the charges. He said Patriot Front did not have a reputation for violence and that the case could be a First Amendment issue. Even if you dont like the speech, they have the right to make it, he said.

Patriot Front is a white supremacist neo-Nazi group whose members perceive Black Americans, Jews and LGBTQ people as enemies, said Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism.

Their playbook, Lewis said, involves identifying local grievances to exploit, organizing on platforms like the messaging app Telegram and ultimately showing up to events marching in neat columns, in blue- or white-collared-shirt uniforms, in a display of strength.

Though Pride celebrations have long been picketed by counterprotesters citing religious objections, they haven't historically been a major focus for armed extremist groups. Still, it isn't surprising, given how anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has increasingly become a potent rallying cry in the far-right online ecosystem, Lewis said.

That set of grievances fits into their broader narratives and shows their ability to mobilize the same folks against the enemy over and over and over again, he said.

The arrests come amid a surge of charged rhetoric around LGBTQ issues and a wave of state legislation aimed at transgender youth, said John McCrostie, the first openly gay man elected to the Idaho Legislature. In Boise this week, dozens of Pride flags were stolen from city streets.

Whenever we are confronted with attacks of hate, we must respond with the message from the community that we embrace all people with all of our differences, McCrostie said in a text message.

Sunday also marked six years since the mass shooting that killed 49 people at the Orlando LGBTQ club Pulse, said Troy Williams with Equality Utah in Salt Lake City.

Our nation is growing increasingly polarized, and the result has been tragic and deadly, he said.

Authorities in the San Francisco Bay Area are investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men allegedly shouted homophobic and anti-LGBTQ slurs during a weekend Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library on Saturday. No arrests have been made, no one was physically harmed, and authorities are investigating the incident as possible harassment of children.

In Coeur dAlene on Saturday, police found riot gear, one smoke grenade, shin guards and shields inside the van after pulling it over near a park where the North Idaho Pride Alliance was holding a Pride in the Park event, Coeur dAlene Police Chief Lee White said.

The group came to riot around the small northern Idaho city wearing Patriot Front patches and logos on their hats and some T-shirts reading Reclaim America according to police and videos of the arrests posted on social media.

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas.

Though there is a history of far-right extremism dating back decades in northern Idaho, White said only one of those arrested Saturday was from the state.

The six-hour Pride event generally went on as scheduled, including booths, food, live music, a drag show and a march of more than 50 people, the Idaho Statesman reported.

We have been through so much, so much, Jessica Mahuron of the North Idaho Pride Alliance, which organized the event, told KREM-TV. Harassment, and attempts to intimidate on the psychological level, and the truth is if you allow yourself to be intimidated you let them win and what we have shown today is that you will not win.

The group is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

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Whitehurst and Metz reported from Salt Lake City. Associated Press writer Martha Bellisle contributed to this report.
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NEW YORK (AP)  Roddy Ricch is facing gun charges after being arrested on his way to perform at a concert Saturday night.

According to police, the 23-year-old rapper was arriving at Citi Field on Saturday evening when a private security firm operating a checkpoint noticed a firearm in the vehicle he was riding in. The Los Angeles-based Ricch was scheduled to perform at the Governors Ball Music Festival.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP)  A ravenous species of earthworm has arrived in Connecticut with the potential to cause all sorts of damage to forests and wildlife.

The so-called jumping worms can destabilize the soil and make it harder for some plants to grow, state scientist Gale Ridge told Hearst Connecticut Media Group. They also can accumulate toxic metals like mercury and lead, which are then eaten by birds and other animals.
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NEW YORK (AP)  The Latest on the Tony Awards (all times local):

11 p.m.

A Strange Loop, an utterly unforgettable, idiosyncratic trip into one mans psyche, has won the best new musical Tony Award, beating more commercial fare.

Michael R. Jacksons 2020 Pulitzer Prize drama winner is a theater meta-journey  a tuneful show about a Black gay man writing a show about a Black gay man. That show is also called A Strange Loop.

At its center is Usher, an unhappy playwright slumming as an usher at The Lion King. He is haunted by a Greek chorus of voices  his thoughts as well as homophobic family members  who pummel, undercut and berate him.

Jackson, who in real life was an usher at The Lion King, is also the songwriter, and he wrote the 18 songs within the Broadway tradition, a cocktail of rock and R&B, melded harmonies, ballads and belting.

A Strange Loop beat out Girl From the North Country, MJ, Mr. Saturday Night, Paradise Square and Six: The Musical.

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MORE ON THE TONYS

 Tony Awards begin with non-acting honors handed out

 List of Tony winners

 On Broadway, more visibility, yes, but also an unseen threat

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10:50 p.m.

Joaquina Kalukango has won the Tony Award for best leading actress in a musical.

Kalukango won for her work in Paradise Square, a musical about Irish immigrants and Black Americans jostling to survive in New York City around the time of the Civil War.

Kalukangos credits include Lifetimes The Mahalia Jackson Story, starring her former The Color Purple castmate Danielle Brooks, and Amazons One Night... in Miami as Betty Shabazz.

She said her name means established by God and she gave thanks to God and her parents during her acceptance speech.

She was also in the ensemble of Holler If Ya Hear Me on Broadway and appeared in Ava DuVernays Exonerated Five miniseries When They See Us. She was Tony-nominated for Jeremy O. Harris ground-breaking Slave Play.

For the Tony, she beat out Sharon D Clarke in Caroline, or Change, Carmen Cusack from Flying Over Sunset, Sutton Foster in The Music Man and Mare Winningham from Girl From the North Country.

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10:45 p.m.

Myles Frost has moonwalked away with the award for best lead actor in a musical for playing Michael Jackson and becomes the youngest solo winner in that category.

MJ represents the 22-year-old Frosts Broadway debut as he plays Jackson with a high, whispery voice, a Lady Diana-like coquettishness and a fierce embrace of Jacksons iconic dancing and singing style, right down to the rhythmic breathing and swiveling head.

Frost thanked his parents and sang during his acceptance speech.

Frost was raised by his mother in Fort Washington, Maryland. After high school, he put theater aside to pursue a career in music. He attended Belmont University in Nashville for two years to major in audio engineering. He transferred to Bowie State University in Maryland for his final two years.

The bio musical is stuffed with the King of Pops biggest hits, including ABC, Black or White, Blame it on the Boogie, Bad, Billie Jean, Off the Wall, Thriller and Ill Be There.

Frost beat Billy Crystal in Mr. Saturday Night, Hugh Jackman from The Music Man, Rob McClure in Mrs. Doubtfire and Jaquel Spivey in A Strange Loop. Frost unseated Ben Platt as the youngest performer to win best leading man in a musical on his own for Dear Evan Hansen. (Three young men won for playing Billy Elliot in 2009).

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10:31 p.m.

Deirdre OConnell has won the Tony Award for best actress in a play for her work in Dana H.

Dana H., which has been described as harrowing fugue state of a play, is about a woman kidnapped by a former convict and member of a white supremacist brotherhood and held hostage for five months. It is written by Lucas Hnath and directed by Les Waters.

OConnell never speaks in the play. Instead, she sits on a set that resembles a Florida motel room and lip-syncs to an edited recording of the survivor, Dana Higginbotham. In her acceptance speech, OConnell said she wanted her award to be a token to those wondering if they should try to create something fort he theater.

OConnells other Broadway credits include Magic/Bird and The Front Page. For the Tony, OConnell beat Gabby Beans, LaChanze, Ruth Negga and Mary-Louise Parker.

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10:30 p.m.

Simon Russell Beale has won the Tony Award for best leading actor in a play for his work in The Lehman Trilogy.

Stefano Massinis play about what led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers  adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes  stars Adrian Lester and Adam Godley alongside Beale.

Its Beales third time on Broadway, having made his debut in 2004 in Jumpers and returning to play King Arthur in Spamalot.

He has had roles in projects like the Christina Ricci horror flick The Gathering, the Michelle Williams dramatic adaptation My Week With Marilyn and the drama The Deep Blue Sea with Rachel Weisz.

For the Tony, Beale beat his The Lehman Trilogy co-stars  Godley and Lester  as well as David Morse in How I Learned to Drive, Sam Rockwell in American Buffalo, Ruben Santiago-Hudson in Lackawanna Blues and David Threlfall in Hangmen.

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10:15 p.m.

The Lehman Trilogy, which tells the story of an American financial giants downfall, has won best new play honors at the Tonys.

Stefano Massinis play about what led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers  adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes  stars Adrian Lester, Simon Russell Beale and Adam Godley.

Spanning 150 years and running three and a half hours, The Lehman Trilogy illustrates the trajectory of western capitalism by following the fortunes of a single family into the financial crash of 2008, when their Wall Street institution filed for bankruptcy.

The play first arrived at the National Theatres Lyttelton Theatre in 2018 and went on to have an off-Broadway run and then a West End bow. The English-language version is a marathon: Three actors doing 185 roles.

For the Tony, it beat Clydes, Hangmen, The Minutes and Skeleton Crew.

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9:45 p.m.

A revival of Stephen Sondheims Company that gender-switches the lead character has won the Tony Award for best musical revival.

The show is an exploration of a single persons conflicted feelings about commitment, traditionally focusing on a 35-year-old bachelor. This time, it had a bachelorette and the sexes of several couples swapped around.

The revival starred Katrina Lenk and Patti LuPone with direction from Marianne Elliott. The songs include You Could Drive a Person Crazy, The Ladies Who Lunch, Side by Side by Side and the Being Alive.

For the Tony, it beat The Music Man and Caroline, or Change.

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9:15 p.m.

Take Me out won the Tony Award for best play in 2003 and this year has won it for best play revival.

Richard Greenbergs Pulitzer Prize-nominee explores what happens when a Major League Baseball superstar comes out as gay, tracing the way it unsettles the team and unleashes toxic prejudices.

Greys Anatomy star Jesse Williams plays the star baller and Jesse Tyler Ferguson plays his unathletic gay accountant, Mason Marzac, a sweetly zealous convert to the game.

It beat out American Buffalo, How I Learned to Drive, Trouble in Mind and for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.

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8:40 p.m.

Marianne Elliott has made Tony history by becoming the only woman to have won three Tonys for directing. The latest prize comes for her work on the Stephen Sondheim revival of Company.

The show is an exploration of a single persons conflicted feelings about commitment, traditionally focusing on a 35-year-old bachelor. This time, it had a bachelorette and the sexes of several couples swapped around.

Thank you, first and foremost to Stephen Sondheim for trusting me to tell his story in a different way and putting a woman front and center, Elliott said while accepting the award.

She was an associate director at the National Theatre in the UK for 10 years, where she directed Angels in America and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time  both of which transferred to Broadway  and she was a co-director of the international hit War Horse. She earned directing Tonys for War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

For her third directing Tony, she beat Stephen Brackett of A Strange Loop, Conor McPherson from Girl From the North Country, Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage of Six: The Musical and Christopher Wheeldon from MJ.

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8:38 p.m.

Sam Mendes has won the Tony Award for best direction of a play for helming The Lehman Trilogy.

Mendes last won for directing The Ferryman and he has won for producing Red, Take Me Out and The Real Thing.

Stefano Massinis The Lehman Trilogy  about what led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers  stars Adrian Lester and Adam Godley alongside Simon Russell Beale.

Among Mendess films are the James Bond installments Skyfall and Spectre and he won an Oscar for directing American Beauty. He also was nominated for 1917.

For his latest Tony, Mendes beat Lileana Blain-Cruz of The Skin of Our Teeth, Camille A. Brown from for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Neil Pepe of American Buffalo and Les Waters for Dana H.

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8:30 p.m.

Patti LuPone has won the third Tony of her illustrious career for her work in a revival of Stephen Sondheims Company.

The show is an exploration of a single persons conflicted feelings about commitment, traditionally focusing on a 35-year-old bachelor. This time, it had a bachelorette and the sexes of several couples swapped around.

LuPone plays Joanne, the acerbic character who sings the anthem The Ladies Who Lunch. She has had a long history with the character and this legendary song in particular, performing Ladies Who Lunch at Sondheims 80th birthday concert.

LuPone won her first Tony for Evita, earned two more nominations for revivals of Anything Goes and Sweeney Todd before winning her second prize in 2008 for her performance as Rose in Gypsy.

For the latest Tony, LuPone beat Jeannette Bayardelle in Girl From the North Country, Shoshana Bean in Mr. Saturday Night, Jayne Houdyshell from The Music Man, L Morgan Lee from A Strange Loop and Jennifer Simard in Company.

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8:10 p.m.

Host Ariana DeBose has kicked off the Tony Awards and Jesse Tyler Ferguson has won the first acting award of the night.

DeBose, wearing a sparkling white jumpsuit and wide-brimmed hat, danced and sang a song that mashed up shards of musical theater favorites, like Chicago, The Wiz, Evita, Rent, Hair, Cabaret, Hairspray and West Side Story, the movie remake for which she won an Oscar.

Still panting while welcoming viewers, she told the crowd that this was the season Broadway got its groove back.

Moments later, Ferguson won the Tony Award for best featured actor in a play for his work in the revival of Take Me Out.

I cant believe I get to do this for a living, Ferguson said, thanking his mother and father for letting him move to New York City to pursue his acting dream.

Richard Greenbergs play is an exploration of what happens when a Major League Baseball superstar comes out as gay, tracing the way it unsettles the team and unleashes toxic prejudices. Ferguson plays the superstars unathletic gay accountant.

Ferguson, a five-time Emmy-nominated star of TVs Modern Family, has had previous roles on Broadway, including On the Town, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Fully Committed. This is his first Tony.

Ferguson beat out Alfie Allen from Hangmen, Chuck Cooper in Trouble in Mind, Ron Cephas Jones from Clydes and two of his Take Me Out co-stars  Jesse Williams and Michael Oberholtzer.

___

8 p.m.

Eleven Tony Awards were handed out Sunday before the main telecast, spreading trophies across seven shows.

Six: The Musical picked up awards for best score and costumes for a musical. The revival of Company nabbed best scenic design for a musical. Best orchestrations went to Girl From the North Country. And The Lehman Trilogy won for best scenic design of a play and lighting design of a play.

The Skin of Our Teeth won best costumes for a play, MJ won for choreography, best lighting of a musical and sound design of a musical and Dana H. won for sound design of a play.

The main event with host Ariana DeBose will start live at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS.

___

7:15 p.m.

Darren Criss and Julianne Hough have kicked off a one-hour Tony Award celebration at Radio City Music Hall, handing out mostly technical awards like best scenic and lighting design on Paramount+.

Hough and Criss opened their portion of the telecast with his original song, Set the Stage, celebrating the artists who keep theater alive.

The first award of the night  for best score  went to Six: The Musical, with music and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. Marlow is the first out nonbinary composer-lyricist to win a Tony.

A total of eight design awards will be handed out along with best score, as well as the award for orchestrations and ending with choreography. The main event with host Ariana DeBose will start live at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS.

A Strange Loop, a theater meta-journey about a playwright writing a musical, goes into the telecast with a leading 11 Tony nominations. Right behind with 10 nominations each is MJ, a bio musical of the King of Pop, and Paradise Square, a musical about Irish immigrants and Black Americans jostling to survive in New York City around the time of the Civil War.

___

6:30 p.m.

It has taken playwright Michael R. Jackson almost two decades to take his musical A Strange Loop to Broadway and he says the recognition is a sort of validation.

It feels wonderful. It feels like a real validation of all the time, the blood, the sweat, the tears we put into this piece. Ive worked on this musical for almost 20 years, and so to be here after having stuck to my guns feels like such a validation, Jackson said on the Tony red carpet.

In the musical, we meet the character Usher, an unhappy playwright slumming as an usher at The Lion King. Usher is haunted by a Greek chorus of voices  his thoughts as well as homophobic family members  who pummel, undercut and berate him. Jackson said theres a little Usher in him.

Usher is a character that Ive certainly created to sort of deal with some things that I was thinking about. But hes grown so far beyond that and Ive grown so far beyond that, he said. Watching every night feels really exciting because Im watching a piece of art that I started from like a really formative time, sort of really become something bigger than any sort of personal experience that I was having.

___

9 a.m.

Darren Criss favorite night of the year has arrived. Its the Tony Awards. Ill never shut up about the Tonys. I love the Tonys, he says.

Criss will not only be watching the Tonys on Sunday, hell also be working. Hes co-host with Julianne Hough of a one-hour pre-Tony celebration at Radio City Music Hall, and hes even written an original song about the show that hell perform, revealing a bit of my nerdy proclivities.

Criss and Hough will be handing out creative arts Tonys on Paramount+ and then pass hosting duties to Ariana DeBose for the main three-hour telecast on CBS from the same stage, live coast to coast for the first time.
Many major companies have chosen to stay quiet on the abortion debate, but Yelp and its CEO Jeremy Stoppelman have chosen a different path.

The San Francisco-based online reviews site is among the handful of companies covering travel costs for employees and their dependents who must travel out of state to obtain an abortion, a thorny topic that's poised to become the chatter of many boardrooms if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. If Roe falls, roughly half of U.S. states are expected to ban or put greater restrictions on abortion.

Antitrust reform is another big topic for the 44-year-old Stoppelman, who's been a vocal critic of Google and what he sees as the company's monopolistic practices. He spoke recently with The Associated Press about Yelp's abortion stance, the COVID-19 pandemic and antitrust legislation. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: The company has come out very forcefully in support of abortion rights. Do you have any fears that its going to put it in the crosshairs of conservative politicians, especially in light of what happened with Disney in Florida?

A: Theres always a risk with taking a stand. But our calculus is: this is one worth taking. Its really important to our employees, especially our female employees. And I think it does have quite broad support. Ive seen polling that suggests north of 70% of people in America feel that women should have the right to choose, along with the collaboration of their doctor. As a business leader, youre often doing things that attract attention one way or the other. When you feel strongly, and feel like its the right thing to do  and the right thing for the company  you just have to move forward.

Q: Why do you think many major companies have stayed quiet on this issue?

A: I think its really disappointing to say the least. If you go back prior to the Trump administration, there was a lot of advocacy on the part of CEOs and the companies behind them. They were speaking out on important issues, whether it was bathroom bills or on small businesses trying to discriminate. There were lots of companies that were eager to stand up. Perhaps what happened was in the Trump era, there was an element of risk and reaction from the administration. I think it created a bit of a silencing effect when it comes to corporate leaders speaking out. I dont think that changed our behavior.

But certainly, a lot of the usual suspects have been quiet. Obviously, weve long been speaking out on various social issues, and we continue to be involved. But we used to have a lot of friends speaking out with us. And wed like to encourage those that are considered it, or on the fence, to join in.

Q: Youve been an advocate of antitrust reform. What do you think are the prospects of getting something done in Congress this year?

A: Theres a number of bills in Congress right now. Very promising ones. And I think the general tone in Washington is a sea change from the past. There is a particular bill by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar that we support, which is anti self-preferencing. One of the most egregious behaviors of Big Tech is when they have a competing property or product of their own, they interject and steer consumers away. And I think thats very destructive to competition. When we look at it through our analysis, we think Senate Majority Leader Schumer has the votes to get it passed. So we really think its time to bring it to the floor. And hes made a suggestion it will happen early summer, so we look forward to that.

Q: The administration has said there could be about 100 million COVID-19 cases later this year. How are you anticipating thats going to affect the business?

A: Our big move was to go remote. So we decided in 2020 that Yelp would be remote-first. Surprisingly, perhaps, its been really successful for us. Our employees are feeling really good about it. Theres more time for family and hobbies. And weve seen continuing productivity.

Thats been our great adaptation and one that will extend far beyond pandemic. Ive tweeted  perhaps controversially about this  but I believe that remote work is fundamentally a better way of working. Its a better operating system for modern businesses. Its a disruptive innovation. Since industrialization, weve had one way of working: going into an office. The drive on average for Americans is over half an hour each way, unpaid. And that seems very inefficient and outdated. Granted, it wasnt until recently that video conferencing really provided a serious competitor to the traditional office. But I do think more companies will embrace remote. The advantages are too high.

Q: And how are you anticipating the surge in COVID cases to impact your business if Americans become more hesitant about going out to eat? How are you expecting the site to be impacted?

A: For restaurant and retail, we have seen continued recovery for Q1. If there's a terrible variant, people get scared and huddle inside. People are going to go to stores and restaurants less. When it gets safer, people go out more. That shows up in our data.

So it can have effects on the business. But we have been in kind of recovery mode for some time now, and certainly people are trying to get on with their lives and move past the virus. But its hard to predict whether the virus will truly fade into the background, much like other viruses or if it will have some new twists and turns that we didnt expect.

One thing thats always been true about Yelp is that our platform is broad-based so when consumer spending shifts, say from restaurants to something else, that other category is often captured somewhere else on Yelp. We saw that during the height of the pandemic when consumers spent more time at home, they tended to spend more on home services. Yelp has been particularly resilient through the pandemic and past recessions, in part, because of our horizontal platform.
MBABANE  Deputy sheriffs fear for their lives after the ruling by Judge Mumcy Dlamini, that there were no justifiable grounds for engaging the police for assistance when executing orders.

According to some deputy sheriffs, it will be near impossible to execute some orders without the assistance of the police in accompanying them to execute the orders, as in some cases, they find themselves in violent situations. A sheriff or deputy sheriff serves or executes all documents issued by courts. These include summonses, notices, warrants and court orders. This was in response to a judgment by Judge Mumcy Dlamini, where she found that there were no justifiable grounds for litigants in civil matters to seek orders against the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) in order to execute or assist a deputy sheriff to carry out orders either from Swazi Law and Customs courts or common law courts.

Judgment

Judge Dlamini wondered why the national commissioner of the REPS or his subordinates were ordered to execute a civil judgment at the cost of the public fund. An observed tendency is that litigants, in order to avoid execution costs, tend to join the national commissioner of police for purposes of execution. They disregard that their conduct digs deeper into the taxpayers pocket and the police are already overstretched in their mandate, said Judge Dlamini. She pointed out that litigants cited the national commissioner of police for execution of civil orders under the guise that police had a duty to prevent anarchy or crime in the event there was resistance during the execution of the said order. However, sheriffs and their deputies ought not to be just men and women of feeble structure. They ought to be well-trained and fully equipped for their offices. This is so that when they are met with resistance in the discharge of their duties, they can lawfully deal with it, said the court.

The judge said there was, therefore, no justifiable grounds for litigants in civil matters to seek orders against the national commissioner of police or his subordinates in order to execute or assist the sheriff to execute orders either from the Swazi Law and Custom courts or common law courts. Speaking on condition of anonymity, several deputy sheriffs were engaged on this particular subject to ascertain whether the new conditions would be favourable to them, and how they would be protecting themselves when executing orders now that police were out of the picture. The deputy sheriffs were further questioned on whether they had previously encountered any violence while executing orders.

My take on that ruling is that, I think the judge became emotional here, the country is trying to curb violence among citizens, and the police are there to prevent that from happening, having said that, the ruling requires us as deputy sheriffs to acquire tools for our protection and also puts us at risk because most people now have guns, by us acquiring guns this will fuel the violence, said *Ray Mathonsi. According to Mathonsi, every day they came across violent situations, but because they were unarmed, there was usually a common ground that was reached without anyone getting hurt, with the intervention of the police. Another one is that we might have to hire security and it will become costly for the people that are being owed and youll find that they must pay for it before we go for execution, lamented Mathonsi.

Involvement

Another deputy sheriff, *Lethumusa Qwabe, said his interpretation of the judgment was that there was no justifiable ground to seek an order that would interdict the involvement of the police in assisting a deputy sheriff. He said not all court orders required assistance of the police. Most of the time orders where police are cited is where there is a possible threat, or implementation of the order may trigger violence, for example, demolishing of structures and stopping a funeral, among others. Well, I have encountered violence in the line of duty, fortunately for me the police were cited in the matter and they were present so they were able to manage the situation, said Qwabe. He said the ruling warranting them to use their own expertise to protect themselves was wanting.

The issue of guns is a very tricky one. It is not safe to draw or use a firearm on an angry mob, especially if you are alone. That might even be the end of you. Even if you are successful in repelling the attack, you now have a case to answer to, especially if there are casualties. In short, without the involvement of the police, it will be impossible to implement some court orders, he said.

Assistance

Meanwhile, another deputy sheriff, *William Makukula, said the judgment was correct, they should undergo some training on how to deal with orders as they now heavily relied on police assistance. The court was right, deputy sheriffs should not just be men and women of feeble structure, they should be trained on how to defend themselves in the event they are met with resistance. It is also true that police are overstretched in their mandate, said Makukula. He further said deputy sheriffs should also be clad in uniform so that members of the public could easily identify them. I personally have experienced being attacked by people who did not know what a deputy sheriff was and who felt when I came to execute orders I was invading their privacy. I think the judgement by Judge Mumcy was an eye opener for us, said Makukula. Siphiwo Masuku, Acting Supreme Court Registrar, who is also the Acting Sheriff, when reached for comment, said she was still to study Judge Dlaminis judgment and further engage. She had been questioned about the concerns raised by some deputy sheriffs regarding the judgment.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military award. It is given to military members, often posthumously, for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty." The Medal of Honor is awarded by the U.S. president, typically during a formal ceremony at the White House.

The Medal of Honor has been awarded more than 3,500 times to members of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps. While the medal is earned in recognition of specific actions, it's never considered "won."

Although more rarely awarded today, the award has been used more liberally in the past. For example, more than 40% of Medal of Honor awards occurred during the Civil War or in the several years after the award was originally created in 1861.

A small number of service members have received the Medal of Honor twice, all for actions during or before World War I. Theodore Roosevelt is the only president to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. He was given it posthumously in 2001 in recognition of his actions during the Spanish-American War 100 years prior. Dr. Mary Walker, a civilian who served with the Army during the Civil War, is the only female Medal of Honor recipient.

Related: Read the latest Medal of Honor news

What Does the Medal of Honor Look Like?

There are three different variations to the Medal of Honor: the Department of the Army variant, the Department of the Navy variant and the Department of the Air Force variant. While all three feature a five-point star hung from a blue neck ribbon, each features a different centerpiece. The Army and Air Force variants contain the word "valor" between the star and ribbon, and the Navy variant features an anchor between the ribbon and the star medal. Members of the Coast Guard and Marine Corps are eligible for the Navy's variant.

The History of the Medal of Honor

The original Medal of Honor was established for the Navy through a law passed by Congress and signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1861. A second law passed in 1862 established the Medal of Honor for the Army, and a law passed in 1863 made it a permanent military award. The Army and Navy's variations have been redesigned several times since then, with the current versions created during World War II.

Who Can Receive a Medal of Honor?

While the requirements for the Medal of Honor have changed over time, it has been primarily reserved for military members only. The only exception, Dr. Mary Walker, was a civilian who worked for the U.S. Army during the Civil War at a time when women were not permitted to join the military. She is also the only female Medal of Honor recipient.

As of 1963, the Air Force, Department of the Navy and Army have the same criteria for how an individual qualifies for consideration.

The law states that the medal is to recognize someone who "distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. It also says that the act of valor must occur in one of the following circumstances:

While engaged in action against an enemy of the United States.

While engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force.

While serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.

Who Has Received the Medal of Honor?

More than 3,500 service members have been awarded the Medal of Honor, including nine medals awarded to "unknown" people, honoring service members who died but who cannot be identified. Five such awards were given to unknown soldiers from foreign nations in World War I, and a medal was awarded to one unknown American service member in World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Related: The Original Airman Snuffy Was a Medal of Honor Recipient and a Total Badass

This is a rundown of awards by conflict or situation, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society:

Civil War: 1,523

Indian Wars: 426

Korean Expedition: 15

Spanish-American War: 110

Samoa Campaign: 4

Philippine Insurrection: 80

Action Against Outlaws (Philippines): 6

Boxer Rebellion: 59

Mexican Campaign: 56

Haitian Campaign (1915): 6

Dominican Campaign: 3 World War I: 126

Haitian Campaign (1919-1920): 2

Second Nicaraguan Campaign: 2

World War II: 472

Korean War: 146

Vietnam War: 262

Somalia: 2 War on Terrorism (Afghanistan): 20

War on Terrorism (Iraq): 8

Non-combat: 193

Unknown: 9

Medal of Honor Benefits

Medal of Honor recipients are given the following special privileges and benefits:

Special Medal of Honor pension of $1,489.73 per month above and beyond any military pensions or other benefits for which they may be eligible. The MoH pension is subject to cost-of-living increases and is tax free.

Special entitlements to Space-Available air transportation.

Enlisted recipients are entitled to a supplemental uniform allowance.

Commissary and exchange privileges (includes eligible dependents).

Admission to the United States military academies for qualified children of recipients -- without nomination and quota requirements.

10% increase in retired pay.

Medal of Honor flag.

Allowed to wear their uniform anytime, as long as the standard restrictions are observed.

Many states offer Medal of Honor automobile license plates.

Interment at Arlington National Cemetery, if not otherwise eligible.

National Medal of Honor Day

National Medal of Honor Day is recognized on March 25 to acknowledge and honor all recipients of the Medal of Honor. On March 25, 1863, more than 20 men were presented the medal for actions during the Civil War. Congress established National Medal of Honor Day in 1990, choosing that date to honor those men. The day is meant to "foster public appreciation and recognition of Medal of Honor recipients," according to the law. Members of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society mark the day by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

Stay on Top of Your Veteran Benefits

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Day after day, Russia is pounding the Donbas region of Ukraine with relentless artillery and air raids, making slow but steady progress to seize the industrial heartland of its neighbor.

With the conflict now in its fourth month, it's a high-stakes campaign that could dictate the course of the entire war.

If Russia prevails in the battle of Donbas, it will mean that Ukraine loses not only land but perhaps the bulk of its most capable military forces, opening the way for Moscow to grab more territory and dictate its terms to Kyiv. A Russian failure could lay the grounds for a Ukrainian counteroffensive  and possibly lead to political upheaval for the Kremlin.

Following botched early attempts in the invasion to capture Kyiv and the second-largest city of Kharkiv without proper planning and coordination, Russia turned its attention to the Donbas, a region of mines and factories where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Learning from its earlier missteps, Russia is treading more carefully there, relying on longer-range bombardments to soften Ukrainian defenses.

It seems to be working: The better-equipped Russian forces have made gains in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions that make up the Donbas, controlling over 95% of the former and about half of the latter.

Ukraine is losing between 100 and 200 soldiers a day, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told the BBC, as Russia has thrown pretty much everything non-nuclear at the front. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier put the daily death toll at up to 100.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov described the combat situation as extremely difficult, using a reference to an ancient deity of sacrifice by saying: The Russian Moloch has plenty of means to devour human lives to satisfy its imperial ego.

When the war was going badly for Russia, many thought President Vladimir Putin might claim victory after some gains in Donbas and then exit a conflict that has seriously bruised the economy and stretched its resources. But the Kremlin has made clear it expects Ukraine to recognize all the gains Russia has made since the start of the invasion  something Kyiv has ruled out.

Russian forces control the entire Sea of Azov coast, including the strategic port of Mariupol, the entire Kherson region  a key gateway to Crimea  and a large chunk of the Zaporizhzhia region that could aid a further push deeper into Ukraine, and few expect that Putin will stop.

On Thursday, he drew parallels between the Ukrainian conflict and the 18th century wars with Sweden waged by Peter the Great. Now, as in those czarist times, our lot is to take back and consolidate historic Russian lands, Putin said. Moscow has long regarded Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence.

Unlike earlier battlefield failures, Russia appears to be using more conservative tactics. Many had expected it to try to encircle Ukrainian forces with a massive pincer movement from the north and south, but instead it has used a series of smaller moves to force a retreat and not overextend its supply lines.

Keir Giles, a Russia expert at London's Chatham House think-tank, said Russia was "concentrating all of its artillery on a single section of the front line in order to grind its way forward by flattening everything in its path.

Western officials still praise the ability of Ukrainian forces to defend their country, fighting back fiercely and similarly relying on artillery and retreating in some sections while launching frequent counterattacks.

Ukraine has been pursuing a policy of flexible defense, giving ground where it makes sense to do so instead of holding on to every inch of the territory," Giles said.

A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasnt authorized to discuss the sensitive issue in public said the Russian campaign "continues to be deeply troubled at all levels, noting that Moscow's forces are taking weeks to achieve even modest tactical goals such as taking individual villages.

Last month, the Russians lost nearly an entire battalion in a botched attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River and set up a bridgehead. Hundreds were killed and dozens of armored vehicles were destroyed.

There is a sense of strategic improvisation or muddling through, the official said, predicting that over the summer the Russian military could reach a point where they can no longer effectively generate offensive combat power.

Russia has a clear edge in artillery in the battle for Donbas, thanks to a bigger number of heavy howitzers and rocket launchers and abundant ammunition. The Ukrainians have had to be economical in using their artillery, with the Russians constantly targeting their supply lines.

Ukraine has begun to receive more heavy weapons from Western allies, who have provided dozens of howitzers and are now planning to start delivering multiple rocket launchers.

Putin has warned that if the West gives Kyiv longer-range rockets that could hit Russian territory, Moscow could hit targets in Ukraine that it has spared until now. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said that Russia could respond by seizing more land as a buffer zone from such weapons.

Moscow's earlier territorial gains in the south, including the Kherson region and a large part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, have prompted Russian officials and their local appointees to ponder plans to fold those areas into Russia or declare them to be independent, like the so-called people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Ukrainian officials and Western analysts voiced concern that Moscow could try to press its offensive into the heavily populated and industrialized Dnipro region farther north, an advance that could potentially slice Ukraine in two and raise a new threat for Kyiv.

Russian objectives in the context of this war are shifting in relation to the situation on the ground, said Eleonora Tafuro Ambrosetti, an analyst with the Milan-based Italian Institute for International Political Studies.

Their goals are sort of flexible enough to be adaptive to context on the ground," she said, noting that Russia could try to damage Ukraine's economy by seizing the entire coastline to deny access to shipping.

A top Russian general already has spoken of plans to cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea by seizing the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions all the way to the border with Romania, a move that would also allow Moscow to build a land corridor to Moldova's separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.

Such ambitions all hinge on Moscow's success in the east. A defeat in the Donbas would put Kyiv in a precarious position, with new recruits lacking the skills of battle-hardened soldiers now fighting in the east and supplies of Western weapons insufficient to fend off a potentially deeper Russian push.

Ukrainian officials brushed off such fears, voicing confidence that its military can hold out to stem the Russian advances and even launch a counterattack.

Ukraine's plan is clear: Kyiv is wearing the Russian army out, trying to win time for more deliveries of Western weapons, including air defense systems, in the hope of launching an efficient counteroffensive, said analyst Mykola Sunhurovsky of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.

Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general who was NATOs top commander from 2013 to 2016, warned against any cease-fire that would codify Russia's battlefield gains.

This is like raising a 2-year-old, he said. If you allow bad behavior to stand, or worse if you reward bad behavior, youre going to get more bad behavior.

When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Washington's response was inadequate, and when Moscow seized Crimea in 2014, the West and the United States response to that was inadequate to task, Breedlove added.

Now that Russia has come back for more, the West gets another chance to respond. How we finish this war will decide, in my opinion, whether we are going to see more of this in the future, he added.

___

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London and Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed.
Last year, jarring footage of civilians clinging to the side of a U.S. C-17 Globemaster III and then falling to their deaths at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 16 circulated online, highlighting the U.S. military's chaotic last days in Afghanistan.

When human remains were found in the aircraft's wheel well, the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations immediately announced it was reviewing the incident, leaving an uncertain future for the airmen who helped with one of the largest evacuation efforts in military history.

Nearly 10 months later, the Office of Special Investigations told Military.com on Monday that the crew, who worked "during an unprecedented evacuation where resources were constrained to on-going security and evacuation activities," had been cleared by military investigators and lawyers.

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"The Staff Judge Advocate offices from both the Air Mobility Command and the United States Central Command conducted a review of the inquiry findings and rendered concurring opinions that the aircrew was in compliance with applicable rules of engagement specific to the event and the overall law of armed conflict," Linda Card, a spokeswoman for the Office of Special Investigations, said in an emailed statement.

It is not clear when Air Mobility Command and U.S. Central Command made their decision to clear the crew; additional details on what possible punishments the crew faced while the inquiry was occurring have not been released.

Neither command responded to requests for comment prior to publication.

On Aug. 16, 2021, hundreds of Afghans desperate to escape the country as Taliban forces closed in on Kabul enveloped the C-17, which had been deployed from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, to drop off cargo for the evacuation efforts. The massive crowds forced the plane to depart before the crew could begin offloading cargo.

"Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to depart the airfield as quickly as possible," the Air Force said in a statement at the time.

Grainy footage of the aircraft's departure -- which was quickly seen by millions -- showed civilians grabbing onto the C-17's wheel well before plummeting to the ground as the plane took to the skies, pictures that reminded many of what Americans saw at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Military.com in a statement Monday the crew made the right choice to take off from the airfield and that the crew members are flying again.

"The aircrew's airmanship and quick thinking ensured the safety of the crew and their aircraft," Stefanek said in an emailed statement. "After seeking appropriate care and services to help cope with any trauma from this unprecedented experience, the crew returned to flight status."

The operational leadership also agreed the crew had acted appropriately, Stefanek added.

When the plane landed at Al Udeid Air Base, or AUAB, Qatar, with human remains located within the wheel well of the aircraft, the Air Force began its investigation and looped in local authorities.

"Upon landing at AUAB, OSI processed and documented the aircraft and remains and released the scene to Qatari Police who declined further investigation," Card said.

A C-17 pilot involved with the evacuation mission in Afghanistan, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, told Military.com it was a relief to hear the crew was not punished by OSI.

"That's the right call," the pilot said about OSI's findings. "They've probably been on pins and needles since this happened. There were no good options, but the crew made the exact right call."

While the Air Force statement circulated to the media at the time of the deaths referenced the "loss of civilian lives," to date no specific number of casualties has been released by the service.

"This was a tragic event and our hearts go out to the families of the deceased," Stefanek added.

The Afghanistan evacuation effort saw the final U.S. casualties of the war when a suicide bomber struck at the airport's Abbey Gate on Aug. 26, killing 13 troops -- 11 Marines, a sailor and a soldier; wounded more than 20 other troops; and killed or wounded hundreds of Afghans.

-- Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly.

Related: After 5 Months, No Answers from the Air Force on Afghans Who Died Clinging to a Kabul Evacuation Flight
FORT MEADE, Md.  An Iraqi man who has been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for more than 15 years pleaded guilty Monday to war crimes charges for his role in al-Qaida attacks against U.S. and allied forces along with civilians in Afghanistan.

The pleas by the prisoner known as Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi before a military commission at the U.S. base in Cuba amount to a legal milestone, aiding efforts to resolve the long-stalled Guantanamo tribunals and wind down operations at the detention center.

Prosecuting Hadi al-Iraqi has been delayed for years by some of the same legal and logistical challenges that have held up other Guantanamo cases as well as by his deteriorating spinal condition that has left him partially paralyzed.

Hadi al-Iraqi, who is about 60 and says his real name is Nashwan al-Tamir, was arraigned at Guantanamo in 2014 before the commission, which was set up to prosecute prisoners for war crimes in a high-security court that combines military and civilian law.

He pleaded guilty to four of five charges against him, including conspiracy and several violations of the international laws of war as an al-Qaida commander early in the conflict in Afghanistan that formally ended with the U.S. withdrawal in August.

He was facing up to life in prison but is expected to be eventually transferred out of Guantanamo and sent to a third country under the terms of his plea deal after he undergoes additional medical treatment at the base.

The U.S. said Hadi al-Iraqi was a senior figure in al-Qaida since the mid-1990s, leading a training camp for operatives in Afghanistan in the years before the organization carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

According to military charge sheets, the prisoner also assisted the Taliban with the March 2001 destruction of the the giant, sixth century sandstone Buddha statues built into a cliff in Bamiyan province. The group deemed the famed structures offensive under their interpretation of Islam.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in response to the attacks, Hadi al-Iraqi organized deadly al-Qaida attacks against American and allied forces along with civilians in the country and in neighboring Pakistan.

The prisoner, who has a long gray beard and wore a traditional skullcap, calmly answered yes sir or yes, your honor when questioned by the military judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Rosenow, if he understood the charges in a lengthy hearing to determine if he was willingly entering into a plea agreement with the government. The Associated Press viewed the proceeding from a video feed at Fort Meade, Maryland.

This is the first plea agreement in a Guantanamo case since the election of President Joe Biden, whose administration has been working to gradually reduce the number of prisoners at Guantanamo and move at least closer to being able to close it.

Plea agreements are key to the closure effort because the tribunals have dragged on for years because of legal challenges and the logistical difficulty of holding proceedings at the isolated base at the southeastern edge of Cuba.

There are 37 men still held at Guantanamo, including 10 facing active military commission cases. The most prominent is the death penalty proceeding against five prisoners charged with aiding and planning the 9/11 attacks, which is the subject of ongoing plea negotiations.
The search for Ranger Raymond Lee began after the posting in early June of a Military.com story marking the 78th anniversary of the D-Day landings that focused on former Pfc. Randall Ching. As was often repeated in articles from numerous news outlets, Ching was believed to be the only Chinese American Ranger veteran of World War II.

Then came a message, and numerous follow-up phone calls, from retired Army Maj. Gen. William Chen, who is active with the Chinese-American World War II Veterans Recognition Project.

Chen himself had believed that Ching was the only WWII Chinese American Ranger among the nearly 7,000 members of the all-volunteer force. But shortly after publishing an article on Chinese American veterans in late 2019, Chen came across honorable discharge papers for Lee, which showed a home of record on Mott Street in New York City's Chinatown, and listed him as serving with the 6th Ranger Battalion in the Philippines during WWII.

Read Next: Army Extending Assignments for Recruiters Involuntarily as Service Scrambles to Fill Ranks

Military.com reached out to Ron Hudnell, a West Point graduate, former Army captain, Vietnam veteran and Ranger, who had long advocated to honor the WWII Army Rangers with the Congressional Gold Medal (CGM).

His databases, collected through The Descendants of World War II Rangers Inc., showed that there was a radio operator and Ranger Tec 4 named Raymond Lee, who served with the 6th Ranger Battalion in WWII, but where was he and was he still alive?

A false lead. There was a different Raymond Lee from Pennsylvania who had received the CGM when it was authorized by then-President Donald Trump in 2018 for the estimated 20,000 Chinese American men and women veterans who served in WWII, but it turned out that he was not a Ranger.

But Chen had managed to track down the right Lee, having made contact with the 97-year-old's daughter Linda, who was living with her father in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. Yes, he was Chinese American and, yes, he was a Ranger.

Lee had never received the CGM he merited as a Chinese American veteran of WWII, and he also had been unaware until Thursday, when his daughter was contacted by Chen, that he is now also eligible for a second CGM as a WWII Ranger under a bill signed by President Joe Biden last week.

The Congressional Gold Medal is considered the highest honor Congress can bestow and is awarded to individuals or groups, whether military or civilian, "who have performed an achievement that has an impact on American history and culture."

Chen said that he was "absolutely delighted" that Lee will now have the chance to receive two awards of the CGM, marking him as one of only a handful of such honorees. Chen is working to arrange a presentation of the CGM to Lee for his status as a Chinese American veteran of WWII. The award of the second CGM as a WWII Ranger will have to await the design and minting of the medal.

Another veteran who was thrilled to learn that there is a second Chinese American Ranger veteran of WWII was Ching, who now has company in the history books. In a phone interview with Military.com, Bonnie Ching Louie said her 97-year-old father was ecstatic when she told him about Lee and responded, "Oh, that's great -- where's he been all these years?"

Ching had been among the recognized 13 living Rangers from WWII. Now, "as far as we know," there are 14 with the addition of Lee, Hudnell told Military.com. "There may be others out there."

There likely could be other WWII Rangers who will be eligible for a second Congressional Gold Medal. During the Italian campaign, several hundred Rangers were sent to bolster the depleted ranks of the First Special Service Force, known as the "Devil's Brigade." The First Special Service Force was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2015.

"I can guarantee you we're absolutely thrilled" that Lee has been found, said Hudnell, who credited Military.com with the initial story that set off the search. He said it was possible that Lee did not come forward before because he was like so many other veterans who didn't talk about the war and "just wanted to get on with their lives."

"These WWII Rangers set the standard and are models to today's special operations soldiers. We can never award them enough for their WWII contributions and sacrifices," said Hudnell, whose late father, James B. Hudnell, was a WWII Ranger.

In brief remarks at a White House ceremony last week before he signed the United States Army Rangers Veterans of World War II Congressional Gold Medal Act, Biden said that the Rangers played "a critical role in the D-Day invasion of Normandy" on June 6, 1944.

Ching was among the 5th Battalion Rangers who fought their way off Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings, and he would earn two Bronze stars for his actions in France.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.

Related: Chinese D-Day Ranger Who Fought on Omaha Beach Set to Receive Second Congressional Gold Medal
A far-right group peppered white supremacist messaging at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Oklahoma, posting pictures to social media of a bathroom covered in racist slogans.

A Wednesday post on Telegram from White Lives Matter, a group described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a neo-Nazi group, claimed one of its members placed stickers across a VA hospital in Oklahoma City with text including "Make White Children" and "White People First."

"It was brought to our attention Thursday that inappropriate and offensive stickers may have been placed at the Oklahoma City VA Health Care System," Terrence Hayes, a VA spokesperson, said in an email to Military.com.

Read Next: Army Extending Assignments for Recruiters Involuntarily as Service Scrambles to Fill Ranks

"After a thorough search of the campus, remnants of stickers were found. At this time, it is unknown who placed these stickers and how long they were there" he added. "This conduct is absolutely intolerable and is an affront to our personal and organizational values. VA Police is investigating this matter."

It is unclear whether the stickers were placed by a patient, a member of the hospital's staff, or a trespasser.

Screenshot of post from "White Lives Matter" group on Telegram (Screen grab via Telegram)

White Lives Matter has more than 12,000 followers on Telegram, a platform with no active moderation efforts that has frequently been used for criminal activity such as child pornography and by terror groups including the Islamic State. It has become a favored communications tool for far-right groups since mainstream platforms like Instagram and Twitter have cracked down on white supremacist accounts.

"Make White Children" is a reference to the so-called great replacement theory, sometimes referred to as white genocide -- the bedrock of many recent hate crimes and racist groups' ideologies -- centered on fears that non-white people will hold prominent roles in society and become a majority of the overall U.S. population.

Most recently, the gunman behind the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, in May in which 10 Black Americans were killed was largely motivated by the racist conspiracy theory, according to his own manifesto.

The news comes as concerns over extremism grow on Capitol Hill. Those concerns are mostly over the far right, which the Department of Justice in 2019 said is "among the greatest domestic-security threats facing the United States."

White supremacy has been at the center of many violent protests and threats against the government in recent years, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which sought to keep former President Donald Trump in power after he lost his reelection bid.

That mob was largely led by extremists groups that actively target veterans for recruitment, such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Those and other far-right groups are known to seek the knowledge in combat tactics and inherent social credibility veterans bring to their organizations. However, there is no evidence veterans or service members are more or less likely to be radicalized than the general public.

-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.

Related: Veterans Make Up Most of Proud Boys Members Indicted on Sedition for Jan. 6 Violence
On July 24, 1944, the Soviet army captured Lublin, Poland, from Nazi Germany as part of an operation to push the Germans back to their border with Poland. On the outskirts of town, Soviet troops encountered the forced labor camp of Majdanek, where Jewish and Polish prisoners, along with captured Soviet soldiers, were slowly worked to death.

In January 1945, Ukrainian troops from the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz death camp complex. The Nazis had evacuated most of the 60,000 prisoners held there by then in an attempt to cover up the crime. Seven thousand were still present at its liberation.

When the U.S. Third Army reached the Ohrdruf annex of the Buchenwald Camp, the story of the full extent of the Holocaust began to be revealed to the rest of the world. Photos and documentary evidence from both fronts were soon published in newspapers and newsreels.

It may sound hard to believe today, but the general public and much of the U.S. government didnt really know what was happening to Europe's Jewish population under Nazi domination. Most knew that they were being taken to camps in Nazi-occupied territories, but few knew what was really going on in the camps.

In April 1944, two prisoners escaped from the death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Seventeen-year-old Fred Wetzler and 25-year-old Rudolph Vrba crawled through Nazi-occupied Poland to reach Slovakia. It was a nearly impossible escape. Once there, they wrote a 32-page report detailing the atrocities committed by the Nazis at Auschwitz.

Incoming prisoners were unaware of what happened at Auschwitz. They were separated on the "selection ramp" between those who could work and those sent directly to gas chambers. (German Federal Archives)

The report was typed up and distributed by Jewish resistance movements in Slovakia and spread to other countries in Europe. By May 1944, a shortened version of the report was transmitted via Morse code from Slovakia to other Jewish organizations around the world. The hope was that the full truth about what the Nazis were doing with Jewish people would spark more resistance.

News of the genocide broke in Hungary as some 435,000 Hungarian Jews were being prepared for deportation to Auschwitz.

It was also transmitted to the Allied War Refugee Board in neutral Switzerland. The board was the only official body created to rescue Jews from Nazi occupation. When it was transmitted to the Americans, it came with a desperate plea; they wanted the Allies to bomb Auschwitz.

Roswell McClelland, U.S. representative to the War Refugee Board, told the main office in Washington, D.C., that the resistance movements were requesting that the rail lines to the camp, along with the crematoria and gas chambers specifically, be bombed from the air.

Train tracks converge at the entrance to the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. In this photo, taken in 1945, the tracks are strewn with snow-covered personal effects that belonged to the camp's inmates.

John Pehle, the head of the War Refugee Board, sent the request to the Department of War on June 29, 1944. With the Allies fully engaged in the invasion of France, and near-constant Allied bombing raids attacking German war production, the War Department was not open to the idea of special missions.

Meanwhile, the Nazis were ramping up their efforts to liquidate their prisoners. With the Soviet Union advancing from the east and the Western Allies advancing from the west, the Nazis were trying to exterminate the Jews and cover up their crimes. The newly deported Hungarian Jews were being sent to Auschwitz by the thousands every day.

In London, Jewish leaders were trying to persuade the British to bomb Auschwitz as well, belieiving that bombing the camp would save many more lives. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden supported the idea. Air Minister Archibald Sinclair conferred with the U.S. Army's commander of Strategic Air Forces in Europe, Gen. Carl Spaatz.

With Spaatz, there was no question about the morality of bombing Auschwitz; he wanted to figure out if it was possible for Allied air forces to reach the target. He approached the question as he would any other target. The Allies already had photographs of the death camp, because it was close to IG Farben, a chemical producer.

There was one major problem with bombing the camp: The technology for precision bombing didn't exist. It would take dozens of planes dropping hundred of bombs to hit specific parts of the camp. The bombs that didn't hit the crematoria, the gas chambers or the rail lines might kill any or all of the tens of thousands of prisoners held there.

Eventually, the British decided it was technically impossible. The Americans began to see it as a diversion from the war effort. The Allies did bomb Auschwitz in September 1944, killing 40 prisoners, but the intended target was actually the IG Farben plant, which was making synthetic fuels for the German war effort.

A special air raid to destroy the camp's operations was never carried out, considered by the War Department as being "unfeasible." A far better effort, it was thought, would be to win the war as fast as possible.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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In July 1917, the all-Black 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, traveled by train from Columbus, New Mexico -- near the Mexican border -- to Houston. They were tasked with guarding the construction of an auxiliary National Guard training facility.

The soldiers could not have fully imagined what awaited them.

Their assignment to guard Camp Logan was scheduled to last seven weeks. It barely lasted a month, cut short by a race riot that resulted in 20 deaths and three courts-martial. Nineteen soldiers were executed, and 63 were given life sentences.

Those verdicts stemming from the Houston Race Riot of 1917 might not be final, though. As of June 2022, the Army is reviewing a clemency petition for all 110 soldiers convicted after the three military proceedings resulting from the riot, a spokesman for the service confirmed to Military.com.

"The denial of justice can never fully be undone," Michael F. Barry, the president and dean of the South Texas College of Law Houston, told The Associated Press.

This wayside of what happened to some members of the all-Black 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment during the Houston Race Riot of 1917 was unveiled at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Feb. 22, 2022. (National Cemetery Association photo)

After the United States entered World War I, it announced the establishment of Army training camps to prepare troops to be deployed to Europe. One was Camp Logan, located west of downtown Houston.

"The caveat, for Houstonians, was that the installation came free of black soldiers, a common request for cities, especially in the South, that sought military business," according to research from Prairie View A&M University.

It was in this climate of racial discrimination and hostility that the 24th Infantry Regiment -- including more than 650 Black soldiers and their white commanding officers -- was dispatched. Houston leaders vowed there would be no racial trouble, a claim that soon proved hollow.

Entrenched in the era of Jim Crow, police officers harassed and abused Black soldiers. When service members received passes to go into the city, they endured slurs and acts that made clear that their military uniform did not shield them from discrimination, as they thought it might. Their sheer presence was viewed "as a threat to racial harmony."

Tensions intensified on Aug. 23, 1917, after police pistol-whipped and arrested a private from the 24th for intervening in the arrest of a Black woman. When Cpl. Charles Baltimore, a military policeman with the battalion, inquired about the private's condition, he was shot at, chased into a nearby home and taken to the police station.

The Houston Race Riot of 1917 involved soldiers from the all-Black 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment and resulted in the execution of 19 of them.

Although Baltimore was released, a rumor reached the regiment that he had been killed. Reports of a white mob heading to the camp added to the confusion, leading more than 150 soldiers to defy orders to stay on base. They grabbed rifles and "began firing wildly in the direction of the supposed mob," an account from the Texas State Historical Association said.

According to the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative's version of the incident: "Seemingly under attack by local white authorities, over 150 Black soldiers armed themselves and left for Houston to confront the police about the persistent violence. They planned to stage a peaceful march to the police station as a demonstration against their mistreatment by police. However, just outside the city, the soldiers encountered a mob of armed white men."

Sixteen white civilians, including five police officers, died, as well as four Black soldiers.

Soldiers faced a variety of charges, including disobeying lawful orders, mutiny, assault with intent to commit murder, and murder. At the first court-martial, barely more than two months after the riot, more than 60 soldiers were tried in the largest murder trial in U.S. history.

"A single attorney working on a mere two weeks preparation" represented every defendant. Thirteen of them, including Baltimore, were sentenced to death and not allowed to appeal. They were informed of their sentences on Dec. 9 and hanged two days later.

"I am to be executed this morning," Baltimore wrote to his brother. "... It is true I went downtown with the men that marched out of camp. But I am innocent of shedding any blood. But it is God's will, so don't worry. ... Meet me in heaven."

The outcry about the soldiers' treatment led the Army to change its appellate review process. Sixteen more soldiers received death sentences at the next two courts-martial, but President Woodrow Wilson commuted 10 of those to life terms.

Some soldiers served up to 20 years in prison before their release, according to Prairie View A&M. Two white officers were court-martialed but released; no white civilians faced charges.

-- Stephen Ruiz can be reached at Stephen.Ruiz@military.com.

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How to use the mindat.org media viewer

Click/touch this help panel to close it.

Welcome to the mindat.org media viewer. Here is a quick guide to some of the options available to you. Different controls are available depending on the type of media being shown (photo, video, animation, 3d image)

Controls - all media types

Zoom in and out of media using your mousewheel or with a two-finger 'resize' action on a touch device.

Use the mouse or your finger to drag the image or the view area of the image around the screen.

< and > at the left and right hand side of the screen move forwards and backwards for the other images associated with the media you selected. Usually this is used for previous/next photo in a gallery, in an article or in search results. Keyboard shortcuts: use shift + the left and right arrow keys.

< and > in the bottom center are used for switching between the photos of the same specimen. Keyboard shortcuts: use the left and right arrow keys.

> in the bottom center, raises the information box giving details and further options for the media, < at the top of this box then hides it. Keyboard shortcuts: use the up and down arrow keys.

? opens this help window. Keyboard shortcuts: use the H key or the ? key.

Other keyboard shortcuts:

1 Fit image to screen 2 Fill screen with image 5 Display at full resolution < Make background darker > Make background lighter space Hide/dim titles and buttons

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Video files have a standard set of video controls: - Reset to start, - Skip back, - Play, - Pause, - Skip forwards. Keyboard shortcuts: You can stop/start video play with the P key.

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Animation (usually 360 degree spin rotations) have their own controls: - enable spin mode. Note that while images are loading this option will not be available but will be automatically activated when the animation has loaded. Once active you can spin the image/change the animation by moving your mouse or finger on the image left/right or by pressing the [ or ] keys.

The button switches to move mode so that you can use your mouse/fingers to move the image around the screen as with other media types.

The button, or the P key will start playing the animation directly, you can interrupt this by using the mouse or finger on the image to regain manual movement control.

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If a stereoscopic 3D image is opened in the viewer, the 3D button appears in the bottom right corner giving access to "3D settings" menu. The 3D images can be viewed in several ways:

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- on a suitable 3D TV or monitor (passive 3D system)

For details about 3D refer to: Mindat manuals: Mindat Media Viewer: 3D

To enable/disable 3D stereo display of a compatible stereo pair image press the 3 key. If the left/right images are reversed on your display (this often happens in full-screen mode) press the 4 key to reverse them.

Controls - photo comparison mode

If a photo with activated comparison mode is opened in the viewer, the button appears in the bottom right corner giving access to "Comparison mode settings" menu.

Several layouts are supported: slider and side by-side comparison with up to 6 photos shown synchronously on the screen. On each of the compared photos a view selector is placed, e.g.: Longwave UV . It shows the name of currently selected view and allows to select a view for each placeholder.

Summary of all keyboard shortcuts
MATSAPHA  A 23-year-old man died after he was electrocuted by a transformer while on duty at a construction site at Sigodvweni.

The construction site is about 200 meters away from the Matsapha Police Station and next to the Matsapha KFC Drive-Thru. John Maphalala was electrocuted while working on Saturday afternoon. The young man was working for a subcontractor company under the trade name Hala Group. He was reportedly directing a crane machine, when it came into contact with a nearby transformer and he got electrocuted.

Machine

A crane is a type of machine, generally equipped with a hoist rope, wire ropes or chains, and sheaves, that can be used both to lift and lower materials and to move them horizontally. It is mainly used for lifting heavy things and transporting them to other places. The employee was reportedly holding onto the crane, while they were installing shutters of a wall fence, when he got electrocuted. This reportedly happened in full view of some KFC employees and others from within the construction site. Maphalala resided at Magevini Flats. A visit to the site by this reporter yesterday found some of the employees at the construction site going about their duties, a few metres away from the wall fence construction where the incident took place.

There were some inspectors seen communicating with the staff and taking notes.

According to an impeccable source who witnessed the incident, it was around 4:10pm when the employees were working on the shutters of the wall fence. The source revealed that the deceased was manning the crane, when it accidentally hit the transformer. The crane hit the transformer because where it was situated is pretty awkward and close to it. This place is quite hazardous to work at, the source shared. The source narrated that as soon as Maphalala was electrocuted, he landed a few metres away from the site where they were working. He said an ambulance was called but there was no prompt response. The source highlighted that the employees opted using the company car to ferry Maphalala to hospital. We are still shocked at the strange and painful occurrence, it was totally devastating, the source disclosed. Meanwhile, Hala Group Manager Sikhalo Mokoena confirmed the death of one his employees. Mokoena mentioned that the employees were taking out shutters after casting concrete when the incident occurred.

Shutters

The manager revealed that Maphalalas job was to loosen the shutters in the construction process. He said when the crane picked the shutter, his hand was on it and when it touched the transformer, the power was then transmitted onto him. Mokoena said the operator who was with the deceased was saved because the buttons he was using hit him twice. However, he shared that he was saved because they were insulated with rubber. The manager was of the view that it was fortunate that he was not badly injured. He also confirmed that the employees on site called an ambulance, but ended up using the company bakkie to send Maphalala to the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial (RFM) Hospital, where he was certified dead upon arrival.

Mokoena disclosed that the death of Maphalala was devastating to him.

I have only realised today that I am hurt, because we lost one of the good hardworking guys. Yesterday (Saturday) was not as emotional as this morning as I could not hold back tears on the death of this young man, he said. The manager was asked how the employee would be compensated as he had died on duty. He said for the time being, the company was engaging the family of the deceased and they would best know the determinations by the end of the week. For now, we are prioritising on his burial and ensuring that he is properly laid to rest, Mokoena said. The deceaseds aunt, Cynthia Mamba said they received the news of the passing of Maphalala on Saturday at around 7pm. I was informed that he was electrocuted by an electricity cable which hit a lorry and that he fell off, said Mamba. She expressed that they were yet to discuss funeral arrangements with the family. The aunt said the news was excruciating, but as a family they were praying for courage and strength to accept.

Police

Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati confirmed that a man was reported to have been electrocuted in Matsapha on Saturday afternoon. She said the man was reported dead. This is not the first incident that involves the death of an employee while at work. In March this year, this publication reported that production had to be halted at Montigny Investments in Nhlangano, after a female employee died while on duty. The employee reportedly died while working during the night shift. It was gathered that the deceased was trapped by the belt of the big machines used to process timber. The death of the employee was confirmed by Andrew Le Roux, Montigny Investments General Manager.
Wode Maya receives several applause after donating items to a fashion school in the Volta region.

Astute Ghanaian YouTuber, Berthold Kobby Winkler Ackon popularly known as Wode Maya has donated a tall list of items to a fashion school in the Volta Region.

This was sighted in the YouTuber's Facebook post by this portal on Monday, June 13, 2022.

According to Wode Maya, he made a promise to Garment Technology Center a fashion school in the Volta region to donate items to them.

The donation was done in the early hours of Monday, June 13, 2022.

2 months ago I pledged to support this fashion design training school for young women in the Volta Region of Ghana with sewing machines & today I honored my promise," he stated.

Wode Mayas kind gesture has attracted many netizens pouring out blessings and long life as he keeps on doing Godly work.
A one-time Council of State member, Dr. Nii Kotei Dzani has justified the continued existence of the Council and the subsequent payments made to members.

He wants members of the Council to continue to be paid ex-gratia after their term of service.

Dr. Nii Kotei Dzani said Council of State members, like other public officials, must be rewarded given their enormous contributions to the development of the country.

The payment of ex-gratia to Council of State members became topical this week after a former member; Togbe Afede rejected over GH300,000 ex-gratia paid into his account.

Though he has explained the rationale behind his action, many say payments of such monies should be discouraged.

But speaking on Citi TV's news and current affairs programme, The Big Issue, Dr. Dzani disagreed with such assertions, insisting that it is not out of place if Council of State members are given financial benefits due them.

I do not think that the argument that members don't deserve ex-gratia is fair. Council of State members really do a lot of work for this country, and I think that we should appreciate them and stop the kind of criticisms and some insults being rained on members. I don't think it's fair. Council of State is really important, and the salaries are well-deserved.

Meanwhile, on the same show, Governance and Public Financial Management Analyst, Dr. Eric Oduro Osae made a case for the scrapping or review of the Council of State.

He argued that there is no point in keeping the Council of State when its advisory role is not binding.

It is about time we reconsidered the functions of the Council of State in our governance structure. If we sincerely believe that we cannot allow the council of state to advise Parliament, the judiciary and the executive and the decision to be binding on them, we should scrap it, he suggested.

Dr. Oduro Osae believes the presidential advisory body must be either scrapped or reviewed to make the countrys governance system more useful.

There is no point having a Council of State that will advise, and the decision is not binding. So far as we are not allowing the Council of State to advise all arms of state, we should scrap it because we have other institutions. If we are reviewing or revising their role in our governance architecture, then we should tone down on the political appointees that are appointed to the Council of State.

By Citi Newsroom
The flagbearer of the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), Kofi Akpaloo has stated that LPG government can easily work towards ending the importation of poultry products.

According to him, the LPG will outline proactive measures to ensure they increase production of poultry and halt importation of chicken.

Additionally, he opined that LPG will support farmers with input, equipment and storage. Since maize forms a major part of a staple food, such initiative would also benefit other sectors and not only poultry. Consequently, the country can increase the production and storage of maize. This would help to evade the skyrocket price of maize during the off-harvest season, "Kofi Akpaloo told Accra-based Kingdom FM 107.7

"If I become President of Ghana i will ban importation of chicken and other poultry products thus will make sure we increase production here to feed ourselves," he added

On managing the farm, he advised that owners of farms, especially larger outlets to set full corporate governance and management structure to help them run the business professionally.

Kofi Akpaloo is very confident that Ghana can end importation of poultry if it looks at these seriously. He posits that the poultry business is a very lucrative area with a huge market and people should not be afraid to enter.

Source: Richard Obeng Bediako/Kingdomfmonline. com
The authorities in Qatar have confirmed the choice of French company TotalEnergies as the principal partner in the development of the world's largest reserve of natural gas.

"I am delighted to announce the choice of TotalEnergies as the main partner in the North Field East project," said Qatari Energy Minister, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, at a Sunday press conference in Doha.

Under the deal, TotalEnergies will hold 6.25 percent of shares in the project, in a joint venture with QatarEnergy.

The North Field East is part of the offshore North Field, the world's largest reservoir of natural gas, accounting for an estimated 10 percent of global reserves. The field is shared between Qatar and Iran.

Iran has so far been unable to exploit the resource because of intenational sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

The Qatari project is expected to cost 24 billion euros, and will see natural gas output boosted by 60 percent by 2027.

A resource too good to let go

TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said the company's deal with Qatar will help make up for the withdrawal from Russia in the wake of the Ukraine invasion.

"Qatar Energy certainly drove a hard bargain. But for the biggest global Liquid Natural Gas players like Shell and TotalEnergies, Qatar is too good to pass up.

"A stake in these LNG trains delivers scale, low-cost supply, great marketing opportunities, and a good partner," said Ben Cahill, an energy security specialist at the Center for Security and International Studies in Washington.

Qatar is already one of the world's top LNG producers, alongside the United States and Australia.

Politically useful deal

South Korea, Japan and China have become the main markets for Qatar's LNG but since an energy crisis hit Europe last year, the Gulf state has helped Britain with extra supplies and has also announced a cooperation deal with Germany.

Europe has for long rejected the long-term deals that Qatar seeks for its energy but the Ukraine conflict has forced a change in attitude.

Qatar's expansion "underlines its position as a leader in this industry", said Bill Farren-Price, head of macro oil and gas research at the Enverus energy consultancy.

"Its partnership with TotalEnergies reinforces Doha's political partnership with Western powers while giving it even more marketing options."
Tema, June 12, CDA Consul  Dr. Prince Kofi Kludjeson, a Past President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) has called on the government to create the necessary synergy and infrastructure for stakeholders in the telecommunication industry for their masts to be connected and use as a back-up to the electricity power.

Dr. Kludjeson said there were enough telecommunication towers in Ghana noting that telecommunication companies are the biggest providers of power to national resource because its a must that you have a generator to power the masts for emergencies.

He said the telecommunications operated on batteries which got charged when the grid was put on that when the grid was put off, the generator takes over when ECG is on, the generator is lying fallow and if the generators in Tema today are all linked up to the national grid, Tema will never be out of light.

Dr. Kludjeson who is the President of Celltel Network Limited was speaking at the Ghana News Agency-Tema Industrial News Hub Boardroom Dialogue platform on the topic, The new global economy and technological education, which was monitored by the Communication for Development and Advocacy Consult (CDA Consult) in Tema.

The GNA Tema Industrial News Hub Boardroom Dialogue is a media think-tank platform for state and non-state and commercial and business operators to communicate to the world and address global issues.

He said telecommunications towers are essential for emergency and everyday communications.

He, therefore, urged power-producing companies including Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCO) among others to collaborate with private companies to solve Ghanas power supply challenges.

He said telecommunications companies among others have the capacity to supply the country with stable power when leveraged as they all have highly powered generators for their masts.

Dr. Kludjeson, who is also a Chief Technical Advisor for the Centre for Greater Impact Africa (CGIA), said these telecommunication masts have stored power as the importance of telecom towers for everyday life as well as emergencies makes providing a source of backup power for telecom towers a must.

I disagree that we have power problems in Ghana because you see a tower all around us, there is an excess power, the power base at Obonu FM is enough to power the whole of Tema, the President of Celltel Network Limited stated.

He mentioned that there must be a practical approach to find solutions and urged that the development of the country was tailored to the local base knowledge what we are not doing in Ghana is that, we are not doing synergies with the system with whatever we have.

One of the good news in Ghana is that about 80 percent of the engineers came from the same school, thus KNUST so how can we not get together to find solutions but have difficulties that have to be with policies that were going on.

Meanwhile, Reverend Dr. Samuel Worlanyo Mensah, Executive Director for the Centre for Greater Impact Africa, has reiterated a call on the government to create more entrepreneurial opportunities for the youth to help reduce the high rate of unemployment.

Rev. Dr. Mensah, who is an economist said apart from making monies available for the youth as a start-up as contained in the 2022 budget, the government must strengthen the technical base of the country for many to develop the interest in manufacturing and industries.

Rev. Dr. Mensah said that currently there was a gap between academia and industries as most graduates only knew the theories without the practical knowledge and therefore called on the government to develop modules that would bridge the vacuum.

He also called for the modification of technical schools into industrial educational institutions, which would help attract more youth into that sector and would also change peoples perception of technical and vocational training being the reserve of school dropouts.

Mr. Francis Ameyibor, the Tema Regional Manager of the Ghana News Agency admonished public institutions to work with credible media institutions to curb the spread of fake news.

A credible practitioner from a credible media institution whether you gave him or her honorarium popularly known as "soli" or not, they are under obligation to do the story because the programme was booked and it was expected of the assigned journalist to produce a news story, Mr. Ameyibor stated.

Source: CDA Consult
We Support Foreign Businesses And Only Pretend To Support Our Local One's, according to Prof. Gyampo.

A senior political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Professor Ransford Gyampo, has disclosed that our inability to support our local industries as a nation is what has been retarding our progress.

According to Prof. Gyampo, supporting our local businesses will help reduce the huge burdens on the government in areas like the provision of job opportunities for our unemployed youths.

Citing Safari Valley Resort and Kantanka Automobiles as examples, Prof. Gyampo revealed that our country has been envious of the indigenous people who put up businesses to help contribute to national development.

In a Facebook post in the late hours of Sunday, June 12, 2022, sighted by this portal, he continued that we only pretend to support our local businesses but yet support the foreign ones that do not contribute to our national development as our locally owned ones may do. To him, that mindset is not helping at all.

Safari Valley Resort & Kantanka epitomizes our National Envy for indigenes who set up initiatives that create employment and lessens governmental burdens! We support foreign businesses and only pretend to do same for local investors. Our mindset! His post reads.

Following the success of Aqua Safari, owned by a Ghanaian businessman, Samuel Afari Dartey, again established The Safari Valley resort in Ghana's Eastern Region, which is home to dozens of species of wildflowers and wildlife, including antelopes, zebras, and giraffes.

Kantanka Automobile Company Limited is a subsidiary of the Kantanka group of companies owned by Apostle Kwadwo Sarfo. It was established in 1998 and was registered as a limited liability company in 2004. The company is a vehicle manufacturer and assembly company that manufactures and assembles cars with higher added value, expands OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), and creates a niche market with new types of vehicles that give value for money to medium and lower-income earners in Ghana.

These companies, and other Ghanaian private-owned companies, provide employment to the majority of Ghanaians and also pay taxes to the nation for its development.
13.06.2022 LISTEN

The Supreme Council of Ulema strongly condemns the content of the film 'The Lady of Heaven', which it said seeks to falsify Islamic facts.

A statement issued by the Supreme Council, under the Chairmanship of His Majesty King Mohammed VI rejected the contents of the film and described it as blatant falsification of established facts in Islamic history.

The statement further noted that the person who wrote the film belonged to a Shiite current who was stripped of his Kuwaiti nationality for his extremist ideas.

According to the Supreme Council, The film is a blatant falsification of the facts and contains a heinous act that cannot be accepted by Muslims, namely for the incarnation of the Prophet, peace be upon Him.

It added that the film dared, with loathsome partiality, to use the person of Fatima Zahra, may Allah's blessings be upon Her, the daughter of the Prophet, peace be upon Him, for purposes that are contrary to the spirit of religion and the reality of history.

The statement noted that Fatima Zahra was well respected and honored in the eyes of all Muslim men and women, hence such false allegations about Her ought not to be accepted.

Also, the slander against Sidna Abi bakr, may Allah's blessings be upon him, who was the subject of the greatest testimonies from the Prophet, is part of the scandals in this film, the statement added.

The Supreme Council stated that those behind the film sought fame and sensationalism, promotion of their production, and the achievement of the largest number of viewers, by hurting the feelings of Muslims and stirring up religious sensitivities.

Based on the misleading facts, the Supreme Council of Ulemas strongly condemned the content of the film and rejected the blatant falsification of established facts of Islamic history.

This falsification of facts, which is detrimental to Islam and Muslims, is rejected by all people, because it does not serve their higher interests among nations, especially in these times, it stressed.

The Council called upon the competent authorities to take all necessary measures in this regard.
13.06.2022 LISTEN

Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Member of Parliament for the North Tongu constituency has described the latest public appearance by Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta as an unmitigated disaster that did not provide justification to accusations made by the opposition.

He said that the Finance Minister failed to inform Ghanaians about the total cost of the cathedral project.

In a tweet on Sunday evening, he said that, taxpayers were not furnished with the exact contribution they are making.

He asserted that he was unable to provide contrary evidence to many legal infractions we have accused government of, which include violating our procurement laws and illegally siphoning over GHS32 million to Sir David Adjaye contrary to the Architects Act-1969 (NLCD 357). 

He added that, the Finance Minister did not refute our incontrovertible fact that despite the colossal unconstitutional releases, the contractors have abandoned the project due to lack of payments, raising major concerns about the true destination of millions of taxpayer funds.

The finance minister on Sunday, June 12, made an appearance on the Nations Station, GTV together with the CEO of the National Cathedral Project to address issues surrounding the cathedral.

Prior to this, Mr. Ablakwa had alleged that the government has pumped close to GHS200 million into the national cathedral project; a project that was said will be funded from contributions by churches and not the national purse.

Per revelations, by the outspoken MP, no work seems to have been done on the cathedral project despite the outrageous amount of money that had been transferred to different entities.
MBABANE  The owner of the farm which was invaded by soldiers last year in March, now spends minimal time in the country following threats to his life.

Mandla Mkhaliphi is the proprietor of Portion 3, Farm 982, which was at the centre of controversy following that soldiers were deployed therein. The soldiers were deployed at the farm when it had ceased operations following that its commercial licence to mine quarry had expired in 2018. When the soldiers were deployed, it was said to be an effort to stop illegal mining at the farm. Mkhaliphi was part of the management of Ligoga Quarries. Yesterday, he informed this publication that following the invasion of the farm by the army, his business stopped operations. In fact, he said the directors of Ligoga Quarries were forced out of business. Actually, Mkhaliphi stated that he had been informed that his quarry mine was supposedly operating. This, he disputed, and said was a misrepresentation of the truth. He said the allegations were calculated at pushing an evil agenda by some people, and were misleading to the public and all concerned.

Operations

The fact of the matter is that Ligoga Quarries has nothing to do with the operations currently underway at Sicunusa, previously Ligoga Quarry site. Our company was deliberately and successfully frustrated to finally be out of business so as to give advantage to some advantaged people. Our licence renewal could not see the light of the day with the licensing authority for reasons unknown to us to date, he said. Mkhaliphi said their commercial mining licence, which was obtained in 2013, expired in 2018. He said they applied for the renewal of the licence before its lapse in 2018; however, there was no response from the Minerals Management Board. He said their last application for the renewal of the licence was in February 2021. Mkhaliphi said what was still shocking to him was that at some point, they received a letter stopping them from operating what was referred to as a project quarry. This, he said, was shocking and novel to him as they had never applied for a project quarry. The businessman said there was a difference between a project quarry and a commercial quarry licence. He explained that project quarry meant that government could make a study and hire a company to crush the rock and process the rock for a specific project, while in commercial quarry; an individual could obtain a licence and crush the rock for sale.

Construction

As such, he said his company supplied many clients inclusive of Kukhanya Construction, when it was still at the helm of the construction of the Gege  Sicunusa Public Road. A statement by the Board of Directors and Management said: Since the expiry of the licence and its renewal application lodged, Mkhaliphi has continuously received threats. Mkhaliphi confirmed the threats and said they were the reason he had relocated with his family, as he also sought to pursue other business interests elsewhere, and as a result he moved in and out of the country. He said the threats to his life were constant and he had reported them to the police and various instances. I reported the threats at Gege and Mankayane police stations at varying intervals, he said. Meanwhile, Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati confirmed that Mkhaliphi had reported threats to the police.

According to Mkhaliphi, a new company has been leased the farm which was operated by Ligoga Quarries. He said they leased the farm following their frustration in the quest to renew their commercial licence. He said Ligoga Quarries was sensitive to the development of the country and decided not to be viewed as a stumbling block to development which was about to take place. Ligoga Quarries decided to terminate their lease from the farm as they accumulated rentals which they were not certain they could afford. Instead, they referred the issue of the farm to me (Mkhaliphi); hence, they decided to suspend for a while the application of a renewal to give way to the new player, he said.

Mkhaliphi mentioned that this resulted in him reaching an agreement to lease out the farm following the frustration of not accessing the licence renewal. He said this decision was solely taken for the development of the country and Sicunusa in particular. Despite this sacrifice, he said they were not fully happy about the decision as he was adamant that they (Ligoga Quarries) were forced out of business. Let it be known by all that Ligoga Quarries is no longer in business as (the quarry mine) was the only business it had with no subsidiaries.

Minerals

The farm in question forms part of a quarry. A quarry is a place where rocks, sand, or minerals are extracted from the surface of the earth. It is also defined as an open-pit mine, because it is open to the earths surface. The most common purpose of quarries is to extract stone for building materials. In an interview last Friday, Mkhaliphi confirmed ownership of the farm.

Meanwhile, a questionnaire was sent to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy Communications Officer, Sikelela Khoza. He requested to consult his principals and revert today.

Khoza was asked the period that an entity had to take when seeking to renew its mining licence and what did the entity, currently mining the quarry at Sicunusa, do that made it speedily receive the mining licence unlike Ligoga Quarries.

He was further asked what was different with Ligoga Quarries such that it had to wait for a period in excess of three years to get a response or be awarded same. Lastly, Khoza was sought for comment on whether government would seek to purchase the farm so that it could be listed as a mining site which any company could seek to lease for the purposes of mining given that the mine was within a private farm.
The University of Ghana has restated to the public its regulations surrounding the use of the electronic card (e-card) as an entry access to the school at majority of its entries.

In a statement dated June 12 and signed by the registrar, Emelia Agyei-Mensah, it said that the e-cards are not transferable and can only be used for the vehicles they have been issued on.

It emphasized that its designated personnel will strictly enforce the use and access of the e-card by users.

The statement comes after reggae/dancehall artiste, Samini called out security personnel who disallowed him from entering the university as his vehicle was not registered with its own e-card.

Samini was lambasted by social media users who felt he was feeling entitled as a result of his celebrity status and did not want to be responsible enough.

Samini has since deleted the post and apologized to the security personnel who was doing his job.
13.06.2022 LISTEN

The Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu Constituency, Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has urged the government to come clean and let the citizenry know if the National Cathedral project is now a public project.

President Akufo-Addo in a pledge to God before becoming President in 2016 said he will build a cathedral in his honour.

In the last few weeks, information put out by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has revealed that on the blindside of Parliament, the President is making unlawful releases of funds from the Finance Ministry for the project.

Speaking on the GTV Breakfast Show on Monday, June 13, 2022, the North Tongu MP stressed that the Minority Caucus is unhappy with the actions of the government.

He said if things have changed and the government has decided to fund the National Cathedral with public funds, then he should come clean and report to parliament for the right things to be done.

Yes I may leading it but it doesnt mean it is my personal crusade. Our position as a caucus is that we operate under a constitution. All of us are under the laws of Ghana.

Government must come clear and must be forthright and transparent. If it is the case that Ghana needs a cathedral and that the Ghanaian taxpayer should fund it, then the government should tell us, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said.

Insisting that the government has been taking money from the consolidated fund for the project, the MP stressed that it is an illegality that must stop.

The National Cathedral project according to Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta is expected to cost $350,000 equivalent to GHS2.8 million.
UK campaigners get their last chance in court on Monday to stop the government's first flight of asylum seekers to Rwanda, as protests mount against the policy.

The government is vowing to push ahead with the planeload of 31 claimants, on a chartered flight on Tuesday from an undisclosed airport.

It defeated an attempt to halt the plan on Friday in the High Court, brought by refugee charities and a trade union which called it immoral, dangerous and counter-productive.

But the same groups have filed an emergency appeal for Monday, alongside a separate legal challenge, and have been heartened by Prince Charles reportedly dubbing the plan "appalling".

The claimants include the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), whose members in the UK Border Force agency are tasked with executing the deportations.

NGO Care4Calais tweeted that 20 of those due to be on the flight had had their tickets cancelled, but that 11 were still set to leave on Tuesday.

These include four Iranians, two Iraqis, two Albanians and one Syrian, they added.

PCS chief Mark Serwotka noted that as part of its judgment on Friday, the High Court had scheduled a fuller hearing for next month on the legality of the plan overall.

"Imagine if you're told to do something on Tuesday, that in July is subsequently found to be illegal. That would be an appalling situation," he told Sky News on Sunday.

Home Secretary Priti Patel should wait for the July hearing if she "had any respect, not just for the desperate people who come to this country, but for the workers she employs", Serwotka added.

"We're absolutely confident that in July, in line with what the UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) said very graphically in court, we believe these proposals will be found to be unlawful."

Protests were held outside a detention centre on Sunday and more are expected outside the Home Office on Monday.

'Hate speech and discrimination'

However, Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson are unbowed, insisting the policy is needed to stop a flood of all-too-often deadly migrant crossings of the Channel from France.

Protests were held outside a detention centre near London Gatwick Airport on Sunday. By Niklas HALLE'N (AFP)

"It's very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people's lives at risk in the Channel understand that their business model is going to be broken," Johnson told LBC radio on Monday.

"They're selling people falsely, luring them into something that is extremely risky and criminal."

Under the agreement with Kigali, anyone landing in the UK illegally is liable to be given a one-way ticket for processing and resettlement in Rwanda.

The government says that the plan will target gangsters who charge would-be migrants thousands of dollars to undertake the perilous crossing for a new life in Britain.

Genuine asylum claimants should be content to stay in France, it says.

And contradicting the UN refugee agency, it insists that Rwanda is a safe destination with the capacity to absorb possibly tens of thousands of UK-bound claimants in future.

For now, the deportations will proceed "on a gradual basis", Doris Uwicyeza, chief technical adviser to Rwanda's justice ministry, told LBC radio.

Uwicyeza pushed back at criticism over the human rights record of President Paul Kagame's government -- which is set this month to host a Commonwealth summit attended by Prince Charles and Johnson.

Rwanda's 1994 genocide made it particularly attentive to "protecting anybody from hate speech and discrimination", including gay people, she said.

Rwanda's High Commissioner to Britain, Johnston Busingye, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that Rwanda would be a "safe haven" for migrants.

But British critics of the new policy are unconvinced.

They include Prince Charles, according to The Times newspaper on Saturday, prompting unnamed cabinet ministers to tell Queen Elizabeth II's heir to stay out of politics.

International NGO Human Rights Watch issued a public letter warning that "to this day, serious human rights abuses continue to occur in Rwanda, including repression of free speech, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture".
The World Trade Organization is gathering in Geneva for its first ministerial meeting in nearly five years to tackle food security threatened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, overfishing and equitable access to Covid vaccines.

WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala opened the four-day meeting on Sunday with the warning "expect a rocky, bumpy road with a few landmines along the way".

But she told journalists she was "cautiously optimistic" that the more than 100 attending ministers would manage to agree on at least one or two of a long line of pressing issues, and that would be "a success".

The WTO is under pressure to eke out long-sought trade deals on a range of issues and show unity amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and an impending global hunger crisis.

But since the global trade body only makes decisions by consensus, it can be more than tricky to reach agreements.

Top of the agenda at the gathering in Geneva is the toll Russia's war in Ukraine - traditionally a breadbasket that feeds hundreds of millions of people - is having on food security.

Walkout

Tensions ran high during a closed-door session, where a number of delegates took the floor to condemn Russia's war in Ukraine, including Kyiv's envoy, who was reportedly met with a standing ovation.

However, before Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov took to the podium, around three dozen delegates "walked out".

Even before the conference began, the European Union gathered representatives from 57 countries for a show solidarity with Ukraine, with EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis slamming Russia's "illegal and barbaric aggression".

Despite the contentious atmosphere, ministers are expected to agree on a joint declaration on strengthening food security, in which they will "commit to take concrete steps to facilitate trade and improve the functioning and long-term resilience of global markets for food and agriculture".

According to the draft text, countries would vow that "particular consideration will be given to the specific needs and circumstances of developing country members".

"I hope you will collectively do the right thing," Ngozi told the delegates.

Fisheries deal in sight?

The WTO hopes to keep criticism of Russia's war in Ukraine to the first day of talks, allowing ministers to focus in the following days on nailing down trade deals, after nearly a decade with no major agreements.

There is some optimism that countries could finally agree on banning subsidies that contribute to illegal and unregulated fishing, after more than two decades of negotiations.

India, however, has demanded a 25-year exemption, and is so far refusing to budge.

Angered by lacking follow-through on promises made at a WTO ministerial meeting nearly a decade ago for food policy measures, India is proving intransigent on other issues as well, jeopardising the chances of locking down deals.

Covid vaccine patent waiver

India has also struck a harsh tone on another key issue on the table: WTO response to the Covid-19 crisis.

In October 2022, India and South Africa began pushing for the WTO to temporarily lift intellectual property rights on Covid-19 medical tools like vaccines to help ensure more equitable access in poorer nations.

After multiple rounds of talks, the EU, the United States, India and South Africa hammered out a compromise.

The text, which would allow most developing countries, although not China, to produce Covid vaccines without authorisation from patent holders, still faces some opposition.

The pharmaceutical industry insists the waiver would undermine investment in innovation, while public interest groups charge the text falls far short of what is needed, by limiting and complicating the vaccine waiver and not covering Covid treatments and diagnostics.
A leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Gabby Asare Otchere Darko has wished the opposition National Democratic Congress a happy birthday as the party marks its 30th anniversary this year.

In a post on his Twitter page on Monday, June 13, 2022, the Senior Partner of Africa Legal Associates described the NDC as the best opposition party in the country.

According to him, the contribution of the NDC to nation-building while in opposition is important to national development and must not be taken lightly.

Happy 30th birthday to the National Democratic Congress, the 2nd largest party and best opposition party in Ghana; a status the majority will hope shall go unchallenged in 2024. Your contribution to nation-building when in opposition is worthy as Ghanas development is enhanced, Mr. Otchere Darko posted.

The NDC this year is commemorating its 30 years with a number of lined-up activities.

While at it, the party is also embarking on a reorganization exercise as it aims to wrestle power from the ruling New Patriotic Party government in the 2024 general elections.
(Monrovia, Liberia - Sunday, June 12, 2022) The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre) with Headquarters based in Geneva, Switzerland, and regional offices in Africa and Asia is a private diplomacy organisation that assists in mediation between conflicting parties to prevent or end armed conflicts. The Centre also conducts research and analysis on mediation and peacemaking in support of its operational work to improve international efforts to secure and sustain peace.

On Thursday, June 9, 2022 the HD Centre-Liberia organized a day long acquaintance and roundtable Peacebuilding Dialogue at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection Office at the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Ministerial Complex, Oldest Congo Town, Monrovia. The Dialogue was centered around strengthening of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), especially women-led organizations engaged in gender based activities to facilitate reconciliation and social cohesion processes.

Currently, the Institution is rolling out a project funded by the UN Peace Building Fund on Consolidating National, Regional and Local Reconciliation and Social Cohesion Opportunities in Six (6) of Liberia's Fifteen (15) counties. Namely: Grand Gedeh, Lofa, Montserado, Nimba, Rivercess, and Sinoe counties.

HD Centre Country Representative to Liberia Madam Elaebi Monique Bowman-Ere said the Peace Dividends in Liberia project when implemented will bridge the local and national reconciliation efforts by ensuring that communities voices guide the policy level progress. She stated that the day long workshop brought together civil society organizations engaged in social cohesion and reconciliation initiatives and discussions were held around their progress thus far and capacity needs.

The Country Rep outlined

three (3) thematic areas the project is angled on: Support local dialogues for coexistence and conflict resolution; Bridging local and national reconciliation efforts: by enhancing the capacity of local CSOs, ensuring their ability to effectively advocate for their communities and capacity building to ensure CSOs confidence in them to enhance their demand for accountability, stronger local conflict resolution skills to foster unity, and increased collaboration

and cooperation.

Delivering a special remark, H.E. Ambassador Babatunde Ajisomo, HD Centre lead facilitator of the project, extended greetings on behalf of HD Centre Executive Director David Harland who he referred to as the inspiration for the project. The Ambassador also extended greetings on behalf of HD Centre Regional Director for Africa Dr. Babatunde Afolabi. According to Amb Ajisomo, Dr. Afolabi's love for Liberia is unprecedented - judging from the fact he did his Masters and PhD on Liberia, and his passionate involvement with projects in Liberia.

The Ambassador lauded UNDP for funding the project and clarified that the project had a year delay due to the coronavirus pandemic. He also appreciated the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection for the development of the Anti Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Roadmap, the Revised Action Plan, the Domestic Violence Act and other useful policy documents.

"These are important policy documents legislations which HD Centre want the implementation to be strengthened - the major problem we have is implementation, we have all the policy documents but we are not implementing them either due to lack of funding or lack of political will or proper coordination." Amb Ajisomo averred.

He stated "the focus of HD Centre is to help in coordinating strategies, implementing strategies that will be impactful to the good people of Liberia especially in the Six (6) counties that we have identified even though this is the initial stage but as more resources come in we will definitely expand our scope beyond the six counties."

The lead facilitator informed the participants that earlier on they held a meeting with the High level UN - Peace Building delegation from New York, USA and the delegation focus is on gender equality, women empowerment and women participation in politics.

The Ambassador ended by reminding stakeholders of the significance of having women at decisions making table.

Mr. James Mulbah who proxy for UNDP Country Resident Representative Stephen Rodrigues told participants that social cohesion and peace building is even more important now as Liberia prepares for 2023 Presidential and Legislative Elections.

"I urge all of us to be freed, speak freely, say the challenges that you have, say the progress you are making so that we can build on those things and address the challenges." Mr. Mulbah noted.

He highlighted the significant role played by women in restoring Liberia's peace during the civil unrest and that UNDP is excited to support said project that will further consolidate peace and reconciliation in the Republic.

In closing, Madam Alice Johnson Howard - Deputy Minister for Gender expressed delight that HD Centre is implementing such indispensable project especially at the verge of elections. Minister Howard pleaded with participants to not take for granted the peace that we enjoy but rather engage the process with all honesty and passion as consolidating peace is not just beneficiary to International partners but every Liberian.

She pledged her Ministry's unflinching support and cooperation in every implementing stage of the project.
South Asian neighbors Bangladesh and Nepal share common regional platforms such as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Nepal recognized Bangladesh as a sovereign state in 1971 and the bondage between the two nations started from that time. Bangladesh, on its part, has always evinced interest in Nepalese culture, its agricultural development, extraction of stones, production of hydroelectricity, besides tourism.

The first Bangla poetry (Charjapad) was discovered in the library of Nepals King by a famous linguist Haraprasad Shastri. This collection of mystical poems shows the age-old ties between Nepal and Bangla. Buddhist priests, also known as Charjaguru, opened up the historical linkage.

Nepal and Bangladesh are a short distance apart. The Siliguri corridor  also called the Indian Chicken Neck - in the northern part of Indias West Bengal state stands geographically between Bangladesh and Nepal.

The Nepal-Bangladesh ties have a lot of potentials. Bangladeshs economy is booming day by day, and analysts feel It is going to be a South Asian superstar. Current rulers Bangladesh Awami league are trying to carry out massive industrialization to make it a high-income country by 2041.

Nepal is also a prosperous country. Its people are peace-loving and hard-working, just like those in Bangladesh. Bangladesh and Nepal can connect to raise the living standards of their people.

Hydropower potential

Nepal is a huge source of hydroelectricity, and the Himalayan nation can supply it to Bangladesh to help the latter meet its demands. Bangladesh needs more electricity to run its factories. Nepal can thus play a significant role to boost Bangladesh's economic strength. Nepal will also benefit as its electricity market would grow.

For this, the power transmission line has to be installed and Bangladesh, Nepal and India have to work jointly. India also stands to benefit, and as the South Asian big brother, it should play a positive role to boost Nepal-Bangladesh ties and trade. A trilateral trade scheme can be initiated alongside the border markets. Bangladesh will be able to export its surplus electricity to Nepal during the dry season.

In June 2021, Bangladeshs state minister for energy Nasrul Hamid announced the country will import around 700 megawatts (MW) of hydropower from Nepal to meet its future electricity demand. Bangladesh Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen said a deal was in the final stages with Nepal and India allowing his country to import hydropower from the Himalayan state.

According to Bangladeshi Media, Bangladesh signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Nepal in 2018 to oversee investment, development and trade in hydro-electricity between the two countries. Under this arrangement, Bangladesh will import up to 9,000 Megawatt of hydropower from Nepal by 2040. Bangladesh is also keen to invest in Nepal's hydropower sector.

Vistas of cooperation

Recently some Nepalese media reports said Bangladesh wanted to export its apparel and fertilizer to Nepal. A total of 52 thousand metric tonnes of urea imported from Bangladesh arrived in Nepal in July.

Tourism, tackling Covid-19, counter-terrorism measures, microfinance, exchange of expertise for training and education sectors are some areas in which the two nations can work. Bangladesh can export agro-products and medicines to Nepal.

Bangladeshi conglomerate Walton Group, which deals in electronics, telecommunication, automobiles and computers, is active in Nepal. International NGO Brac and other Bangladeshi NGOs can play definitive roles to develop the mass education and health sectors in Nepal.

Bangladesh signed a Preferential Trade Agreement with Bhutan on December 06, 2020. A Preferential Trade Agreement with Nepal is also at the final stage and is likely to be signed soon. This would enable duty-free access to products of both countries.

As an addition to the Protocol of the Nepal-Bangladesh Transit Agreement signed in 1976, a letter of exchange has been inked between the two countries to include the Rohanpur-Singhabad Rail Link between India and Bangladesh.

Nepal is also interested in using Chattogram, Mongla and Paira Seaports because it is a landlocked country. Bangladesh has agreed to work on the modalities for this during the visit of Nepali President Bidhya Devi Bhandari in March.

Nepal has also expressed its interest to use the inland waterways of Bangladesh. Besides, Nepal is also keen to use the Saidpur Airport in Bangladesh's Nilphamari district for direct flights to Biratnagar (the capital of Nepals province no.1). Bangladesh is open to it.

BBIN minus Bhutan?

Bangladesh and India have to work mutually to give Nepal access to seaports. Bangladesh can be an open-source for connectivity with Nepal.

India has already agreed to sign passenger protocol under the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) Initiative Nepal is expected to give the nod to it soon. But with Bhutan opting out of the BBIN connectivity project, India, Nepal and Bangladesh have to work together to start an alternative. In the current age, connectivity is synonymous with development. So Nepal and Bangladesh have to be connected through India.

For implementing the BBIN Motor Vehicle Agreement among Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal, the four nations are exploring some new routes other than the existing ones. The agreement would permit the member states to ply their vehicles in each other's territory for transportation of cargo and passengers, including third-country transport and personal vehicles

India, Nepal and Bangladesh should have a holistic diplomatic approach to bolster their connectivity project. There are many gains for all parties, and none stand to lose.

Professor Dr. Bijaya Gouri Khanal is a Nepalese academic, researcher, historian from Kathmandu, Nepal. She is very interested in the South Asian economy, politics, foreign relations, strategic and security studies.
I have often said that no country can develop economically and socially past its spiritual intelligence. Spiritual intelligence is defined in this context as our capacity to ask questions about the ultimate meaning of life and the integrated relationship between us and the world in which we live. We need to be conscious that no one is alone but that we are part of a whole. No nation can develop without an excellent national character.

One of the American founding fathers, John Adams, wrote, "Our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Another founding father wrote, "For many Americans, the big question of independence hung on the single, slender thread of whether the people were sufficiently virtuous and moral to govern themselves. Self-government was generally referred to as 'republicanism,' and a corrupt and selfish people could never make the principles of republicanism operate successfully." He maintained that only virtuous people are capable of freedom. He continues, "As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Public virtue is not only admirable but rather is necessary for well-functioning societies. Our collective conscience as a nation must be alert to make self-government possible.

The Oxford dictionary defines conscience as the part of our minds that tell us whether our actions are right or wrong. St. Augustine, in the Christian tradition, considered conscience as the voice of God, informing us of what is right and wrong. According to Augustine, this message comes to us intuitively. We have that uneasy awareness when we know we have done something wrong. For Augustine, conscience constitutes the inward self-awareness through which the soul is called and challenged by the authority of truth. It is part of our moral reasoning: an inner chamber in which we call out to God and where God can hear us by the majesty of his presence.

Conscience is a gift from God; we can sharpen it as we get closer to God or sear it as we depart further away from God's presence. The people of God can also have what I describe as "Moral Inversion." Moral inversion is when we call good evil and evil good. God people experienced a Moral Inversion because of their sinfulness: they had cauterized conscience and heart. The prophet Isaiah says in Isaiah 5:20, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." In Ghana, insulters are called celebrities and truth-tellers ostracized, maligned, and castigated.

For the Christians, what or who we meet in conscience is none other than Christ. To occupy the place of conscience and repossess moral consciousness, the apostle Paul writes in Philippians 4:8, " Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirableif anything is excellent or praiseworthythink about such things." As Christians, we have no choice but to call evil by its name and good by its name.

The church is to be the salt of our community or society, to purify it, but it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. A community of Christ-followers that is supposed to be the world's light is now the darkness of our community with all kinds of anti-social activities running amok. This dark and broad road was paved by introducing a false gospel that exploits its devotees through social and psychological manipulation. The prosperity gospel has opened a Pandora's Box: it is the ultimate 21st-century version of the myth of Pandora's Box, the self-destructive power that Christianity has gained that we can never put back. The prosperity gospel changed the Christian gospel using sophistry, chicanery, and sleight of hands. They took the authentic Christian gospel and poured their meaning into it. Their unbiblical gospel asks people to seek the kingdom of the world first instead of God's kingdom.

While the prosperity gospel found sophisticated ways and sophistry to lure and exploit the educated elites, the leaders of the syncretic churches like Oboufour and Obinim also adopted the crudest strategies along the same way to deceive and financially rape the uneducated and the uninitiated section of the community. What Obinim and Agradaa do is not that different from what the prosperity preachers do to the educated Ghanaian elites? The present church in Ghana is not different from the world of the pagans. The church and the world have lost their moral bearings: they are equally corrupt. Ghanaians do not trust one another: a recent world study on trust reveals that 15% of Nigerians trust one another, but only 5% of Ghanaians trust one another.

Recent development in our body politics should alert us that all is not well with our country. Our problem is not a lack of resources, education, or technology but a lack of character. Our country is bathing in moral anarchy where all evil appetites range unchecked, yet no one seems to mourn over the moral decadence into which our country has plunged. Our bent for deception and fraud is unparalleled in the country's history.

I remember asking one of my high school teachers who had returned from Canada after completing masters in Economics this question, "Can you identify the causes of Ghana's economic problems?" I thought the man would give me a lecture on Economics, but he said with a sigh, "Ghana does not have any economic problems." I said, "What?" He said we do not have economic problems, but instead, we have social and moral problems. He said, "If we can deal with our social and moral issues, the economic problems will vanish." I think that thoughtful man was right as I ponder his response to my question.

Vaclav Havel observed, "Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- is simply serving those around us: serving the community and those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole." Unfortunately, our leaders do not understand that no person is alone but that we are part of the whole.

We need to step back and do a soul-searching exercise to discover how we lost our soul as a nation. As a nation, our soul is built on the premise that most Ghanaians are decent, hardworking, honest people, peace-loving, hospitable, sociable, affable, and honest people. The faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through hard work and genuine business was the soul of the Ghanaian nation. We were considered the paragon of virtue in West Africa. But now, we have failed to live up to these virtues bequeathed to us by our forefathers.

We have to step back to consider our cultural and historical background that made us unique people that outsiders wanted to live with. We need to discover our humanity before we can build Ghana. Only Ghanaians can alter how we perceive and respond to the institution of government and power. There is a need for a full-scale ontological change, a change that takes place amid continuity rather than creates a beginning. Instead of seeking our selfish interests, we should strive to leave our imprints on our nation. We should start to think about the glory and fame of integrity and honesty.

We learn that the Homeric warriors fought for honor, glory, and fame in the Homeric epics. Glory or fame was the only kind of immortality available to a Homeric warrior and is of the utmost importance that every prominent warrior strives for it, often in a type of battle-prowess. For instance, Achilles links glory and honor with immortality or imperishability. Imperishable glory is the only meaningful immortality available to a Homeric warrior, but it can only be gained through losing a life. Yet people were willing to die for glory.

The same drive for glory caused our forefathers to lay down their lives to build Ghana. As a child, I heard about people like Tweneboa Kodua of Kumawu and Yaa Asantewaah who were willing to die for their people. We heard about the military prowess and heroism of people like Yaa Asantewaa and others who put their lives on the line for our independence. We heard that our land is expensive because it was bought with the precious blood of our forefathers. They shed their blood on our behalf to redeem us from colonialism. These accounts were inspirations to us. We were told to put our country first when we were growing up. This was the foundation of our nation: A nation built on the premise of self-sacrifice and self-denial. Where, when, and how did we lose it?
A delegation from Ghanas Parliamentary Committee of Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs is currently in London to hold talks with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) on the anti-gay.

Amid pressure for the committee to fast-track processes on the anti-LGTBT bill, a four-member delegation led by Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi who is the Chairman of the committee has made the trip to have an engagement with the UK Parliament.

The delegation departed from Ghana on Sunday, June 12, 2022.

Speaking to Star Morning today, Member of Parliament for Tamale North, Alhassan Suhuyini said Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi is behind the invitation of the Parliamentary Committee of Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs to London.

This invitation was actually as a result of request made by Chairman of the Committee to the UK Parliament and other Parliaments, especially in Europe. I just wonder why the Chairman of the Committee who claim he does not have funds, he does not have money to fast track the process of considering the bill will want to spend the funds that he thinks he does not have for his Committee members to tour Europe on this matter, Alhassan Suhuyini told Starr FM.

The opposition MP continued, Let me be clear on our minds that this is about Ghanaians values, it is about Africa values so really what are we going to learn that will impact this bill from a community that is battling with this issue?... But in some cases they are not even battling it, let me be straightforward. They have not embrace it and we are saying that we dont want to embrace it.

The anti-gay bill presented to Parliament as Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021 seeks to criminalise LGBTQ+ sexual relationships and associations.

The Minority has warned that if work on the bill is not concluded, it will not partake in the passage of any other bill.
"There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes" had said famous Swedish author August Strindberg. COVID-19 and monkeypox have not only exposed the inequity which poisons our health systems but has also caused avoidable human sufferings, including deaths.

Even though inequity has been ailing our health and development model since long, the privileged class has remained numb and blind to it. But COVID-19 has proven that even the rich and powerful cannot remain firewalled from outbreaks of infectious diseases. Is it not high time that we open our eyes and rebuild equitable health and social security for all?

Inequitable health systems have caused diseases that could have been prevented, and untimely deaths that could have been averted. We must also keep in mind that these same broken health systems serve the best corporate interests of those who mint profits from illnesses through the so-called health industry. For a larger part of human population, health is a fundamental human right, and cannot be an industry

Sadder is the reality that despite two and a half years of battling the COVID-19 pandemic, we have not learnt from our mistakes and have not sufficiently addressed inequity in global health security. The monkeypox virus is once again drilling the same message: fix inequity if we want to ensure health security for all. But will our governments put people before corporate profits?

Attention to monkeypox is 50 years delayed

It was only when the rich nations were threatened with a possible monkeypox spread, that a global hue and cry began. Attention to monkeypox is just fifty years too late. Because the fact is that monkeypox is not a new virus but has been plaguing African nations for more than fifty years, and people who got infected with it have dealt with unnecessary human suffering for so many decades.

Is it not shocking to know that smallpox vaccines, which also work against monkeypox, still remain stockpiled by rich nations and global health agencies but they were not used for those in need of them in Africa where monkeypox is endemic?

Now, when the monkeypox threat looms large - with 257 confirmed and around 120 suspected cases of monkeypox reported from 23 non-endemic countries since May 2022 - rich nations and other global health agencies are putting their heads together if they can use these stockpiled vaccines against monkeypox. Should not we ask why they did not use them earlier for people in Africa who were at risk of monkeypox for fifty long years?

While the global outbreak of monkeypox has once again highlighted global health inequities, it has also brought much-needed attention to this disease that has been smouldering in Africa since the 1970s.

"This year there have been more than 1400 suspected cases of monkeypox in Africa  this virus has been circulating and killing people in Africa for decades. It is an unfortunate reflection of the world we live in that the international community is only now paying attention to monkeypox because it has appeared in high income countries. The communities that live with the threat of this virus every day deserve the same concern, the same care, and the same access to tools to protect themselves, said Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus Adhanom, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations health agency.

Inequity failed us in COVID-19 vaccine rollout too

This may sound cliche, but it is deeply true for perhaps all the diseases that have inflicted human beings since long. While the COVID-19 pandemic has jolted the rich and poor alike, its impact has been the severest on the poor and marginalized people worldwide, said Dr Sandeep Pandey, Ramon Magsaysay Awardee who spoke with CNS (Citizen News Service).

COVID-19 exposed the raw fault-lines in our inequitable and socially unjust health and social security systems.

Wishful thinkers may dream that pandemics like COVID-19 may make the rich, elite, and the powerful lean more towards redistributive justice. But if we look at the COVID-19 response, and recovery, the answer on the wall is clearly a big NO.

Not only did these 1% rich and elite mint more money while the remaining 99% of the global population reeled under economic and humanitarian crises (and continues to do so), but the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was also deeply unjust and inequitable.

Who is responsible for the 'pandemic of the unvaccinated'?

Science was clear since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that the only possible way out of the pandemic could be by ensuring that full vaccination reaches every eligible human being on the planet in a time bound manner so that no one gets severe COVID-19 disease, no one needs hospitalization or ICUs, and no one dies untimely. But breaking the chain of infection transmission continues to remain the central cog in the wheel for any infectious disease response, including COVID-19.

Rich nations have vaccinated their eligible populations many times over (three to four times) whereas there are several low-income nations that are yet to reach the target of 40% fully vaccinated people (a target which rich nations had crossed more than a year back).

Almost 18 months since the first vaccine (against COVID-19) was administered, 68 countries have still not achieved 40 percent coverage confirmed Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus Adhanom. Globally, on an average, about three-quarters of the health workers and people aged over 60 have been vaccinated, but these rates are much lower in low-income countries.

Truly shameful. 18 months since COVID-19 vaccinations began, only 16% of the people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, tweeted global health leader Dr Madhukar Pai.

Dr Tedros added: the perception that the pandemic is over is understandable but misguided. More than 7000 people lost their lives to this virus last week (first week of June 2022). That is, 7000 deaths too many! A new and even more dangerous variant could emerge at any time and vast numbers of people remain unprotected. The pandemic is not over, and we will keep saying it - it's not over - until it is.

In a world with over 7 billion people, 12 billion vaccine doses have been administered  around 152 shots for every 100 people worldwide.

There are nations like Cuba where this ratio is more than double of the global average: 330 doses administered per 100 people. People in rich nations have got three to four doses whereas those in middle and low-income nations got fewer or none (and in many cases, they got it late).

Moreover, people in rich nations have been vaccinated against COVID-19 ten times faster than those in low-income nations.

People in low and middle-income countries not only got fewer vaccine doses and/or got them very late (if at all), but also at times, vaccines reached their countries close to the expiry date. For example, a reputed medical journal (BMJ) reported recently that by the end of 2021, Nigeria had agreed to receive 2.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from WHOs Covax facility (an initiative set up for equitable distribution of vaccines globally). But these vaccines-most of which came from Europe - were close to expiry. Nigeria could administer 1.53 million doses, while the rest (1.07 million doses) were thrown away as they could not be administered within the expiry date period.

"Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, and Indonesia have destroyed vaccines received from Europe and North America because they arrived close to expiry" reported BMJ two weeks ago.

Heavy cost of inequitable vaccine rollout

We saw it clearly last year in 2021 that countries (like Israel), which were way ahead in vaccinating their populations fully, were showing very low hospitalization and ICU admissions among those infected with the virus. Yet, we failed to scale up vaccination equitably. As a result, when the Omicron variant of the corona virus hit us, the pandemic primarily became a pandemic of the unvaccinated. More than 90% of those who got infected with Omicron and needed hospitalization, ICU or ventilator or died, were unvaccinated. Who is responsible for this avoidable human suffering and pain, and untimely deaths?

As of now, the WHO reported on 8th June 2022 that the number of reported COVID-19 cases globally continues to decline but it also warned that there is not enough testing and not enough vaccination.

Socially just and ecologically sustainable health system for all

Noted writer and activist Arundhati Roy had said, There is really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard. A socially unjust and/or ecologically unsustainable health and development model is unacceptable. We have no choice but to work collectively towards ensuring health and social security for all, where those who are most at risk, come first.

Shobha Shukla, Bobby Ramakant  CNS (Citizen News Service)

(Shobha Shukla and Bobby Ramakant lead the editorial team at CNS (Citizen News Service). Follow them on Twitter @Shobha1Shukla and @BobbyRamakant)
MBABANE  PUDEMO and SWAYOCO say they will disrupt the ongoing recruitment of soldiers in the various constituencies.

In fact, the President of the Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO), the youth league of the Peoples Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), Sakhile Awviva Nxumalo, has come out to state that his organisation was responsible for the confusion that occurred at Mayiwane Inkhundla last Thursday during the recruitment exercise. Nxumalo was addressing members of political parties on Friday, after the Supreme Court had reserved judgment in the appeal filed by government after a full bench of the High Court declared certain provisions of the Sedition and Subversive Activities Act of 1938 and Suppression of Terrorism Act of 2008 unconstitutional. A majority of the political party members, who were in court, belonged to PUDEMO.

Gathering

The SWAYOCO president was one of the leaders who addressed the gathering at the High Court. He said members of the party should do everything in their power to ensure that the recruitment exercise was disrupted. He did not mention the methods to be employed in disturbing the recruitment process. Nxumalo alleged that their members had disrupted the start of the 3.2km race at Mayiwane Inkhundla last Thursday. He alleged that members of the political party blew whistles while members of the army, who were conducting the recruitment exercise, were still getting the participants ready for the start of the race.

According to Nxumalo, after the whistles had been blown prematurely, allegedly by our cadres, the participants began to race. There is this thinking that our comrades should take part in the recruitment exercise in the tinkhundla centres in order to become soldiers. We must do everything in our power to disorganise the exercise. Our cadres have made sure that the thing collapses. At Mayiwane, our cadres did it. They blew whistles before the soldiers signalled the start of the race and the people started running, said Nxumalo. He stated that it was their task as the youth to do so. The SWAYOCO president also said they had to do the same thing at Kukhanyeni Inkhundla.

When sought yesterday to clarify the method of disrupting the exercise, Nxumalos cellphone was not available on the network for the better part of the day. He was seen on videos of those who attended the funeral of political activist Amos Mbhedzi in South Africa (SA). PUDEMO President Mlungisi Makhanya said you will never find us being told by soldiers to race in order to join the army. He said they were soldiers of Mario Masuku and Amos Mbedzi. Masuku is a former PUDEMO president while Mbedzi was a political activist who died while receiving treatment in a South African health facility. This was after he had been released by His Majestys Correctional Services to their South African counterparts. Mbedzis health had deteriorated while incarcerated in the kingdom.

Recruitment

The recruitment exercise began last Monday at Sigwe and Ngudzeni tinkhundla. It has been conducted at Matsanjeni North, Lugongolweni, Maseyisini, Gege, Mhlangatane, Mayiwane, Madlangempisi and Mkhiweni. The recruitment at Mayiwane was rescheduled to Saturday after the mishap. During the first phase of the recruitment exercise last Thursday at Mayiwane Inkhundla, about 450 aspiring soldiers bolted despite being warned not to do so as some were not ready. There were about 500 participants in total and 50 heard the order and they did not run. A majority of the participants ran the 3.2km distance and they were not aware that the soldiers had instructed them not to proceed with the race. The race is the initial phase of the recruitment process and is followed by other exercises of physical fitness such as the jack-knife, sit-ups and press-ups. However, the aspiring soldiers under Mayiwane Inkhundla did not move to the next stage last Thursday, as the exercise was stopped since they did not take instructions and it was postponed to Saturday. When the participants who had continued to run the 3.2 kilometre-race, despite being ordered to stop, returned, they were shocked to discover that the race had in actual fact been stopped.

Excited

One of the participants, who was among the first to finish the race, was so excited that he even pointed at a passing army vehicle and referred to it as imoto yase msebentini wami, meaning, a vehicle from my workplace, only to be told that the whole exercise would be postponed. Meanwhile, at the High Court on Friday, PUDEMO President, Makhanya, acknowledged other formations but not the Swaziland Liberation Movement (SWALIMO). He acknowledged PUDEMO Women League, Swaziland Union of Students (SNUS), Swaziland United Democratic Front (SUDF), Swaziland Rural Women Assembly, Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA), Multi-Stakeholders Forum (MSF), Political Parties Assembly (PPA) and others. Notably, SWALIMO is a member of MSF.

Makhanya informed the gathering that as PUDEMO, they were not worried about those who were not at the High Court with them. They always make noise when we are not next to them. We get insulted when we are not next to them. They are not here today and we dont have a problem because this is a movement for the brave. We dont have a problem that they are not here. In fact, we dont want them next to us because they tend to disturb us, telling us that the police want us to leave; we dont take orders from the police, he said. He also apologised on behalf of their members, that some of them were blocked from entering the courtroom because it was said to be already full. Makhanya said nobody should be denied access to the court.

If that happens, the case will not proceed. Some of you did not benefit from hearing what was being said inside. You should have been there to hear it for yourselves. You are PUDEMO and these charges are against you. I apologise for the miscommunication since some of you had been informed that the case would continue yesterday (Thursday), said Makhanya.

Fair

The president pointed out that it was not fair that the advocate who represented the State, Advocate Gregory Harpur, in the terrorism case, to say they did not suffer any prejudice despite the six-year delay of the hearing of the appeal. Apart from Makhanya, other respondents in the appeal are former Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) Secretary General (SG) Maxwell Dlamini, Human Rights Lawyer Thulani Maseko, PUDEMOs Mphandlana Shongwe and others who were charged under the Suppression of Terrorism Act. Some of them were arrested for wearing T-shirts with political slogans inscribed on them and others carried placards calling for democracy in Eswatini. Makhanya also encouraged their membership to attend MPs Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dubes case tomorrow at the High Court.
Rev Obinna Akukwe is authoritatively confirming again that Ohanaeze Ndigbo cannot take a position on the five leading Igbo sons seeking presidential ticket in APC, viz Amechi, Onu, Okorocha, Umahi and Nwajiuba for obvious reasons.

The Prof Obiozor led Ohanaeze has been emasculated by Gov Hope Uzodimna who wants a Ahmed Lawan Presidency. Any press release to the contrary is just a smokescreen. All attempts by Igbo 1, Eze Ibe Nwosu to convey stakeholders meeting yesterday failed because the house is too divided to stand.

The Chief Ibe led Ohanaeze sympathetic to Rocha's Okorocha cannot convey stakeholders meeting. They are not on ground in Abuja.

The Barrister Onyeacholam CAC registered Ohanaeze sympathetic to Ogbonnaya Onu, also lacks the clout in Abuja to convey stakeholders. They are dismissed as minions.

The Bishop's Branch of Ohanaeze are too far away in the South East and from reality to understand the intrigues going on.

A section of Ohanaeze Elders are insisting on dragging Ndigbo to follow Peter Obi , while others are rooting for Onu.

There is disarray, disagreement, and divisions amongst them and even in the face of Tinubu bashing Buhari, and the attendant backlash, the internal bickering continue.

The four factions of Ohanaeze Ndigbo should shelve differences and work for common goal. Igbo Elders and politicians in Abuja should strategize before its too late.

I have warmed earlier two days ago that Igbo Elders have failed to convey stakeholders meeting due to political self-centeredness, and the position has not changed.

Rev Obinna Akukwe is warning again, since Buhari has declared for Southern Presisency, let Ohanaeze harmonize position in the next few hours or else, When that Rain Beats Ndigbo, Let Nobody Cry Marginalization.

.

(Rev Obinna Akukwe, Director General, Igbo Mandate Congress IMC [email protected], @obinnaakukwe)
A rebel group in eastern DR Congo that the government accuses of being supported by Rwanda has overrun a trading hub on the border with Uganda, local sources said on Monday.

M23 fighters seized the town of Bunagana in North Kivu province as some government forces retreated into Uganda, they said.

Bunagana "is under enemy control," a Congolese officer said, who was reached by AFP by phone from Goma.

"The army has just given way and is heading into Uganda," said Damien Sebusanane, head of a local civil society association, who was on the Ugandan side of the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

"An army truck has just gone past, four jeeps and other vehicles which are full of soldiers," he said, estimating the number of DRC troops retreating into Uganda at around 100.

A humanitarian source on the ground said that heavy clashes broke out again on Sunday morning and the only way out for the embattled DRC troops was to cross into Uganda.

The M23, a primarily Congolese Tutsi militia, is one of more than 120 armed groups active in eastern DRC.

It briefly captured Goma in 2012 but a joint offensive by UN troops and the Congolese army quelled the rebellion.

UN refugee concerns

The group resumed fighting in November last year after accusing the Congolese government of failing to respect a 2009 agreement under which the army was to incorporate its fighters.

Thousands of people have fled into Uganda and the DRC territory of Rutshuru since a second bout of violence flared in March.

The DRC government on Sunday reiterated that Rwandan was backing the rebels, an assertion that Rwanda has repeatedly denied.

DR Congo locating North Kivu province and Goma. By (AFP)

In their assault on Bunagana, the M23 were "supported by soldiers and artillery from the Rwandan army," the DRC army said in a statement, adding that two soldiers and several enemy combatants were killed.

General Sylvain Ekenge, spokesman for the province's military government, said Rwanda was seeking to "asphyxiate" Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and to put pressure on the government in Kinshasa.

The UN's refugee agency said on Monday that 368 more people had fled across the border into Uganda from Bunagana, and the humanitarian situation was "more and more concerning."

Relations between the DRC and Rwanda have been strained since the mass arrival in eastern DRC of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Ghanas Radio Regulations Board (RRB) candidate, Rev. Ing. Edmund Fianko, was presented to some Commonwealth countries on Thursday, 9th June, 2022 in Kigali during a breakfast meeting hosted by the Commonwealth.

Rev. Fianko is an electronic communications engineer with in-depth experience in radio frequency spectrum management, telecom and broadcasting regulation as well as policy formulation at the national, regional and international levels. He has been actively involved in the electronic communications regulatory environment for the last fifteen (15) years.

The Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, who presented Ghanas candidate requested member countries' support for him. She also revealed Ghanas quest to be re-elected to the ITU Council.

As Ghana is the co-chair of the Commonwealth, Hon. Owusu-Ekuful, also urged the Commonwealth Community to vote for Commonwealth countries vying for the various ITU positions as it will enable the Association to have people in strategic positions to push forward the Commonwealth agenda.

She also seized the opportunity to announce a new draft resolution that Ghana is championing at the ITU and extended an invitation to other countries to be part of the initiative.

It is my pleasure to inform you all that Ghana is championing a new draft resolution on Partner2Connect and therefore calls for support from partner countries for its implementation and sustainability. In this regard, South Africa and Namibia have come up with their support hence they are co-sponsors of the draft at WTDC. Let me at this point seize the opportunity to invite any country which wishes to support this initiative.
Hundreds of parents of students of Islamic Senior High School (SHS) in Kumasi are currently wailing at the entrance of the school demanding to see their children.

Some students of the school today embarked on a demonstration to protest over regular knockdowns by vehicles.

The latest incident was on last Friday when a teacher was knocked down by a speeding vehicle, taking the toll to eight in recent months. The matter compelled the students to protest on campus.

The Police were called in to restore calm but reportedly escalated issues by firing tear gas. Many students collapsed with some 25 of the students needing urgent medical care.

Scores of parents have trooped to the school demanding to see their children.

One father who cried uncontrollably said he fears his daughter may have been killed by rubber bullets allegedly shot by the Police.

Perhaps my daughter will die. If she dies then the Ghana Police may have to kill me. My worry is that this is the Ghana Police. These are the people we expect to protect us.

These are students and they cant control them and they have to shoot and use tear gas. I cant find my daughter, I have been to many places and I cant find them, the man said while crying.

Reports gathered indicate that many students were left unconscious after the tear gas incident with others complaining of severe pains.
The management of Accra-based Movement TV and Wontumi Radio 95.9 FM, a subsidiary of the Wontumi group of companies, has issued a warning over a parody account created in their name by a unanimous person.

The warning was issued on the official Facebook account of the Accra-based Movement TV on Monday, June 13, 2022.

They added that although the station appreciates efforts made by individuals in promoting the Wontumi and Movement denominations, they wouldn't appreciate those who would turn to be the official voice of their brand.

The managements release also disclosed their official accounts on the various social media platforms, indicating that any account except those listed in the release is fake and should not be followed.

Management of Movement TV and Wontumi 95.9 FM Accra, has fished out a Facebook page pretending to be associated with the Wontumi brand. We want to put on record that the identified page (Wontumi Radio 95.9, Movement TV, Accra) is fake and operated by individual(s) with an intent to scam the public.

In as much as we appreciate the effort of people who want to promote the brand Wontumi and Movement, we don't appreciate pages that want to act as official mouthpiece of our media empire without our approval.

Our official handles are

-Wontumi Radio 95.9, Movement TV, Acc

Wontumi Online

-Facebook: Movement TV Wontumi Radio Accra 95.9

-YouTube: Movement TV

-Instagram: Movementtv_gh

-Twitter: Movementvonline

-Website: www.movementtvonline.com, the release reads.

The said parody Facebook page, titled "Wontumi Radio 95.9, Movement TV, Accra," currently has 24 thousand followers and pictures of the two Wontumi media stations in Accra, making it difficult for people to tell whether it is real or not.
General Secretary of Teachers and Educational Workers Union, TEWU of TUCG, Mr. Mark D Korankye

13.06.2022 LISTEN

The Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) of Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned that if Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) is not paid to members, it will see to it that the education sector suffers.

In a press release, TEWU says it is calling on the government to come clear on the payment of Cost of Living Allowance to cushion its members in the midst of the hardships in the country.

The Teachers and Educational Workers Union, TEWU of TUC (GH), wishes to send its strongest signal to the government, to immediately pay Cost of Living Allowance (COLA), to members without fail. We wish to state that members have reached their limit in the face of the excruciating economic conditions in the country and cannot wait any longer, Parts of the TEWU press release signed by General Secretary Mark D. Korankye has said.

It adds, Failure to respond positively to this call, the countrys educational sector stand to suffer and that will have a damming effect on the final years of the Senior High Schools in their preparations towards final examinations.

TEWU stresses that the earlier the government responds positively to its COLA demand, the better it will be for the Countrys education sector.

The TEWU release concludes, Please government pay workers COST OF LIVING ALLOWANCE (COLA), to prevent any turbulence on the labour front because living conditions are deteriorating by the day.

Read the full release below:

TEACHERS AND EDUCATIONAL WORKERS UNION, TEWU OF TUC-GHANA, CALLS ON GOVERNMENT TO COME CLEAR ON THE PAYMENT OF COST OF LIVING ALLOWANCE (COLA), TO CUSHION MEMBERS AGAINST THE EXCRUCIATING ECONOMIC SITUATION IN THE COUNTRY

The Teachers and Educational Workers Union, TEWU of TUC (GH), wishes to send its strongest signal to the government, to immediately pay Cost of Living Allowance (COLA), to members without fail. We wish to state that members have reached their limit in the face of the excruciating economic conditions in the country and cannot wait any longer. Failure to respond positively to this call, the countrys educational sector stand to suffer and that will have a damming effect on the final years of the Senior High Schools in their preparations towards final examinations.

The leadership of TEWU of TUC (GH) want to put it on record that it has made frantic appeals to government since September 2021, as well as early this year and even before the 2022 May Day national celebrations, that the skyrocketing prices of goods and services, calls for the authorities to pay COLA to workers, to enable them to cope with the challenging economic conditions.

Unfortunately, these appeals have not received any positive response, not even an acknowledgement of the Union appeals by government, especially the sector minister, that is, the Minister for Employment and Labour Relations.

Again, at the 2022 National May Day parade, at the Black Star Square, in Accra, the Secretary General of TUC (GH), Brother Anthony Yaw Baah, reiterated the issue of COLA to the President and his team present, but still, there is DEAFENING silence from the corridors of power.

As leaders of Public Sector workers, we cannot sit down for our members to be subjected to this treatment of no action from government to support them through COLA to deal with the worsening economic situation. In view of this, we have resolved that, by the end of this month, if no response is heard from government, members of the Teachers and Educational Workers Union, TEWU of TUC (GH), will have no other OPTION, than to advice our members to lay down their tools, until COLA hits the account of our cherished members.

The oil that helps the wheel of the economy to rotate is the workers sweat, so it is painful, why this treatment to workers by government, with the complete silence on the various appeals for the authorities to pay workers COLA.

We therefore urge government that the earlier it respond positively to this COLA demand, the better it will be for the Country in our education sector.

Please government pay workers COST OF LIVING ALLOWANCE (COLA), to prevent any turbulence on the labour front, because living condition are deteriorating by the day.

Issued for and on behalf of the National Leadership

Mark D. Korankye

General Secretary, TEWU of TUC (Ghana)
Newmont Ghana, a subsidiary of Newmont Corporation has rubbished allegations indicating that its guards have shot and killed some illegal miners at its Ahafo mines operational area.

Last Friday, the local police and traditional authorities from Hwidiem in the Asutifi North District, sought permission from the company for a group of illegal artisanal miners to have access to its operational area in search of a colleague they believed must have fallen into the pit.

The company granted access and the body was located, identified, and retrieved from an illegal mining pit dug within the Ahafo mines Apensu pit area.

After the incident, wrong information spread on social media with reports speculating that the illegal miner had been shot and killed by guards of Newmont Ghana.

Through a press release, the leading gold mining company has rubbished the claims, insisting that its guards do not even carry weapons.

Newmont Ghanas private security contractors are unarmed as per Ghanaian law, Alex Kofi Annin, Acting General Manager, Ahafo mine is quoted in the press release said.

The Police are investigating and we are fully cooperating with them to establish the cause of the death, he added.

Below is a copy of the Newmont Ghana press release:
Edward Osei. the suspect

13.06.2022 LISTEN

A Nima Development Chief, Sarki Alhaji Adnan Abubakar has questioned the rampant rise of homosexuality amongst the Zongo youth of today.

The Chief further bemoaned why the Muslim and Zongo youth are going against the cultural and moral and values of the African tradition and that of Islam at large.

The chief made the revelation during a roundtable discussion organised by the Friends' Society, a Civil Society Organization to find solutions to certain social vices within the Zongos of Ghana, on Sunday .

He questioned what encourages and entices the youth to accept and practice homosexuality in the Zongos despite knowing that their religion , Islam is totally opposed to the practice.

He also cautioned watchdog committees and anti gay youth groups to desist from violently attacking , torturing and killing of homosexuals.

He said" we need to thoroughly investigate and be certain that such a person is a homosexual before we attack such persons " . Such persons if arrested must be handed over to the relevant institutions like the police and traditional authorities for the necessary actions to be taken.

We cannot take the laws into our own hands simply because we are fighting immoralities and injustices in our communities.

Sarki Adnan cited an example when one, Edward Osei , a suspected gay person was violently attacked and beaten after the youth invaded his house at Ashogman, a suburb of Accra just because he was suspected to be a gay practitioner.

According to him, Edward Osei who was the only person arrested by the youth during the invasion was seriously maltreated by the youth. The suspect was mercilessly tortured by the angry youth who stormed the building wielding sticks, broken bottles and other offensive and sharp weapons.

" He ( Edward Osei) was nearly lynched and it was only God that saved his life and was able to escape but not without injuries such as a broken arm, bruises amongst others".

Even though our watchdog committees are doing their best to bring sanity in our localities, they sometimes take the laws into their own hands like it happened in the case of Edward Osei in 2021. I am sure many people have been forced to abscond from their communities due to such wrong accusations without any thorough check or investigations .

It is time these watchdog committees involve the police and other relevant institutions in their routine work which is aimed at fighting homosexuality and other social vices in the Zongos and other communities .

He therefore called for prudent measures from traditional authorities, CSOs', religious bodies , the security, clergy and watchdog committees to help mitigate or truncate the canker.

We need to put in concerted efforts as chiefs and opinion leaders if we are to eliminate this canker that is slowly eating up the youth of the Zongos. LGBTQI is not an African practice but an alien thing that the western world is trying to force it on us but we must resist it in the justifiable manner.
UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet announced Monday that she will not seek a second term, ending months of speculation about her intentions amid growing criticism of her lax stance on rights abuses in China.

Speaking to the media after addressing the summer session of the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva, Bachelet confirmed that she would be stepping down when her current term ended on 31 August, as she wanted to go back to her family and her country.

Bachelet, a former president of Chile, took up the job in September 2018 and immediately expressed hopes of visiting China and viewing the rights situation in Xinjiang for herself.

Her office repeatedly said she and staffers were working to create the right conditions for the trip, which ultimately took place last month.

But critics said she hasn't spoken out enough, and during the visit didn't press local authorities enough.

Bachelet insisted that her trip was not an investigation and emphasised that she had opened a channel of communication with top Chinese authorities.

Answering journalists' questions Monday, the 70-year-old said her decision has nothing to do with the trip to China or the criticism she received.

"Can you imagine that having been president twice, I have received a lot of criticism in my life. So that's not what makes you do certain decisions," she said.

"This is a decision and really, truly because my family needs me there and because my country needs me there."

A veteran politician who had rubbed elbows with leaders worldwide while Chile's president, and the daughter of a man who was tortured under a rightist regime in the country, Bachelet was widely seen as a politically savvy choice who would bring in a less vocal and more cooperative approach to the office than her outspoken predecessor Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein - a Jordanian prince.

(With agencies)
13.06.2022 LISTEN

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has held a SeedSAT recommendations validation meeting to deliberate on how to enhance Ghanas food security through the improvement of the countrys seed systems.

The SeedSAT is one of the laudable initiatives designed to assess and analyze the current seed systems functionality in some countries in sub-Saharan Africa aimed at identifying the gaps and shortcomings for informed investments to address the identified gaps. The newly-developed tool has been piloted in Nigeria and Ethiopia.

As the assessment had been executed in three of the four targeted countries  Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi  with Ghana being the latest country to use the tool to strengthen the seed system.

The event brought together experts in the seed value chain to discuss issues that would influence policy development and provide solutions for the challenges in the seed sector to help boost seed-industry businesses for the benefit of farmers.

The Country Director for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Juliette Lampoh-Agroh, in an interview, highlighted that the seed sector is essentially the root and basis of any countrys agricultural production sector; thus, AGRA is particularly interested in the seed sector because it is one area that triggers every aspect of agricultural output.

Due to a number of challenges, the usage of improved seeds in Ghana, particularly by smallholder farmers, is extremely low.

Our conviction is that if we can appropriately invest in the seed sector, smallholder farmers production will improve.

AGRA has been working in this sector for several years, she said and has seen some success by increasing the usage of modified seeds by smallholder farmers from 11% to 30%.

However, in order to acquire a better picture of the seed situation in the country, we assessed the functionality of the various sectors of the seed systems. This she said, already they have done scoring for the eight thematic areas of the countrys seed system.

More so, our meeting is to explore the problems and opportunities inherent in crop value chains in order to identify investment opportunities for seed system development in order to drive agri-food system transformation, she explained.

The Director of Agriculture Extension Services at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Mr. Paul Siameh, also underscored the importance of using certified improved seeds in agriculture.

He said, most Ghanaian farmers do not always get the expected harvest from their fields due to the poor seeds they cultivate. Since many farmers cultivate seeds that are of low quality, thus leading to low yields.

He, therefore, encouraged farmers to use improved and quality seeds to enable them to have more yields during the growing season.

The Chief Executive Officer of the National Seed Trade Association of Ghana ( NASTAG) Augusta Adzo Adodo Nyamadi-Clottey (Mrs) noted that said seed is the pulse of agriculture because, without seed, nothing else would work explaining that the functioning fertilizer is dependent on the quality of seed.

However, she also advised farmers to look out for the right and quality seed to obtain the maximum yield from their farms towards making a profit and feeding the citizenry.

Adding that, all value chain actors must ensure that quality seeds are readily available at the right price and quantity.
No serious storyteller can narrate Ugandas post-independence story without giving prominence to the famous Luweero triangle. It is that pivotal but that is a story for another day.

For decades, farmers in Uganda have earned very little, sometimes nothing from their produce and farmland due to issues such as failure to source the right inputs, absence of modernization equipment and inability to access ready markets among others.

But this may soon be a thing of the past, if the latest developments in the sector are anything to go by.

Based in Luweero, a group of youth is taking lead in the modernization and commercialization of Agriculture. They are doing this through a digital-based platform named AgriShare.

AgriShare is a social enterprise which uses mobile digital technology to connect farmers to services like land for hire, tractors, irrigation equipment, and labor and value addition equipment.

The web-based application is also targeting youth, Ugandas largest population cluster who grapple with unemployment.

Launched in Uganda in 2021, AgriShare already has over 15,000 subscribers and over 10,000 transactions. Even so, AgriShares story started in Zimbabwe in 2017 where over 50,000 people are using the platform. Encouraged by this success, the platform is now expanding in other African countries with Malawi next in queue, with a launch planned for this year.

Agro-based Economy.

Agriculture in Uganda employs more than 70 per cent people, but Ugandan farmers are also the poorest. Farm productivity is substance-based because of the absence of equipment and other essential farming services.

Over 70% of land in Uganda is arable for agriculture, yet less than 30% is under cultivation. Predominantly, the most used tools used are rudimentary. Admittedly, they are most times too expensive to afford. The twist is though, as some struggle to get equipment, others have them lying idle, says Paul Zaake, the Managing Director at AgriShare.

Zaake says he has built a network of agents to help farmers and service providers, who may not be familiar with smart phones.

All we are doing is to change the way Agriculture is done in Uganda. We are here to improve food security. But most importantly, we are here to ensure that farmers have joy, create employment and boost our economy, Zaake noted.

How it works

Any farmer with a smartphone can download the Agrishare app and order equipment like labor, irrigation pumps, and resources like land and labor.

On the other side, a farmer with excess or idle resources can list them on the Agrishare application and earn extra money when they are hired out. In a nutshell, the application is where resource owners meet resource-seekers.

With concerns of low smartphone penetration and high internet charges, Agrishare has agents spread across the country, to help farmers book or list resources.

AgriShare is the first participant to be featured on the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative, season three that has officially got underway today, the 13th of June, 2022.

40-Days 40-FinTechs

Now in its third edition, #40Days40FinTechs has quickly grown into one of the worlds premier showcase events for the innovations that are enabling ever more people to join the digital economy space. That is surely going to remain the case, in large part due to the inspiration and collaboration that our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop, ModusBox, and Crosslake Technologies generate, but mostly because of the continuing, generous support of the Gates Foundation.

Digital Innovators and FinTechs around East Africa should be more eager to embrace 40 Days 40 FinTechs as Season three will cover physical destinations in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.

Run under HiPipos Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products & Services and also share their ideas on how more of us, especially those unserved and underserved by the present financial systems, can be brought into the fold.

The 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative offers participants useful tools and an introduction to industrys emerging technologies, such as Mojaloop Open Source Software, and guidance from Level One Project foundational material. The skills gained from this initiative cover Level One Project Principles, Instant and Inclusive Payment Systems (IIPS), Inclusive Finance and FinTech in general.

According to HiPipo CEO Innocent Kawooya, this years edition will cement achievements of the previous editions  where over 60 FinTechs have been transformed  but also build on them to leverage digital financial inclusion in East Africa and beyond.

As HiPipo, our extensive effort and advocacy is partly for the intention of championing digital innovation and interoperable instant and inclusive payment systems (IIPS) in Africa to a point where our innovators enjoy and achieve sound profit margins to help them keep designing and deploying affordable and inclusive financial services for the poor, Kawooya said.
13.06.2022 LISTEN

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches(AfAW) urges state actors in Ghana to desist from playing politics with refuge centers for alleged witches, otherwise known as witch camps. AfAW is making this appeal following a declaration by a local politician Kennedy Agyapong from the New Patriotic Party. Mr. Agyapong noted that he would close down the witch camp if he were elected the president of Ghana. He said: "Give me two weeks when I become a President, I will go to Yendi and close down all those witch camps. People capitalize on that to beat old women or force young children to admit that they are witches when they are not".

This statement demonstrates crass ignorance of the problem of witch persecution in Ghana. AfAW agrees with Mr. Agyapong that witchcraft accusation is unjustified and provides a pretext to abuse and violate the aging population. Witchcraft suspicion has been used to get children to confess to unimaginable crimes. However, the solution to the problem is not to close down these havens for victims.

In addition, Agyapong attributed pervasive cases of witchcraft accusations in Ghana to poverty. He said: "Are you dumb? What is witchcraft? Its just poverty. Lets build the people up and stop these kinds of witchcraft camps. Its insane. Again, Agyapong is on point. Witchcraft accusations are rooted in poverty and destitution. Victims of witch persecution are usually poor members of society. Those who populate the witch camps are persons in weak socio-cultural positions; they lack the means and mechanisms to fend for and defend themselves. Now the question is: How is shutting down these camps the answer to poverty in the region? Will forcing those camping in these places to return to their communities end economic difficulties in Ghana? In recent years, there have been attempts by the government of Ghana to disband the witch camps in the northern region. These attempts have not yielded any positive results.

AfAW is of the position that the move by politicians in Ghana to close down the witch camps is mistaken. Witch camps are only a symptom, not a disease. Witch camps are a consequence of a more vicious phenomenon, witchcraft accusations. Politicians in Ghana should devote their energies and resources to tackling the social disease, and the main problem, which is, witchcraft accusations, not the witch camps in the communities. State actors should take measures to address witchcraft fears and anxieties that drive and motivate witchcraft accusations and witch persecutions. They should not close down the witch camps. If witchcraft accusations stop and people no longer take action based on witchcraft fears; if nobody is suspected or tackled for being witches in the communities, people would not flee to these places. These camps will disappear. These refuge spaces would cease to exist.

At the moment, witch persecutions rage in the communities. Witchcraft accusation is form of death sentence across the country. Ghana needs these witch camps to contain this problem, and tame this wild phenomenon. Those who take refuge at these make-shift shelters are victims. They are persons fleeing persecution, mob attacks, violence, and threats to their lives. Shutting down these safe havens constitutes double victimization of these innocent persons. State actors should refrain from toying with the lives of these vulnerable members of the population. Instead, they should play a politics that guarantees, not jeopardizes, the safety, humanity, and dignity of alleged witches in Ghana.
A security analyst, Dr. Adam Bonaa has described the unfortunate event of police brutality at the Islamic SHS in the Ashanti region as an appalling scene that should not have happened.

He said the police could have resolved the protest through other means than the alleged firing of tear gas at the students.

Speaking on The Pulse on Joy News today, he emphasized that, what the police did at the school was not standard procedure as tear gas was a last resort when the security personnel felt cornered or was being ambushed.

He noted that firing tear gas on school children was just despicable as they could have been handled in a better way than that.

We only discharge live armor or lethal armor when your life comes after threat. When probably they are firing back at you, youve been cornered and they want to butcher you, then the right to defend yourself becomes the standard, but where these are just defenseless kids who even if they were pelting stones, how far can they throw stones, how far can they go? These are probably some kids who have not been fed properly in the school and so they dont even have the energy to throw any proper stone. Then you go in there as fathers and mothers in the Ghana Police Service and you fire at them, he intimated.

He indicated that, whoever commandeered the attack must be punished.

Students of the Islamic Senior High School in the Ashanti Region, unhappy with the recurring knockdowns, took matters into their hands and took to the streets where they blocked the road leading to the school.

The police in efforts to restore calm in the school fired bullets and tear gas, which led to the hospitalization of 20 students.

The Inspector General of Police, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare is in the region now to sort out the issue.
UK campaigners on Monday failed in a last-gasp bid to stop the government's first flight of asylum seekers to Rwanda, as protests mounted against the policy.

Three judges at the Court of Appeal in London rejected a challenge to a High Court ruling last Friday that the deportations could go ahead.

Judges Rabinder Singh, Ingrid Simler and Jeremy Stuart-Smith dismissed claims the lower court judge should have waited to make a decision until a full hearing on the legality of the policy next month.

"He weighed all the factors and reached a conclusion which he was reasonably entitled to reach on the material before him," Singh said.

"This court cannot therefore interfere with that conclusion."

The government has vowed to push ahead with the removal of the migrants on a chartered flight on Tuesday from an undisclosed airport.

Thirty-one migrants had been due to be sent but one of the claimants, the NGO Care4Calais, tweeted that 21 of them had now had their tickets cancelled.

Other claimants include the Public and Commercial Services union, whose members will have to implement the removals and immigration support group Detention Action.

PCS chief Mark Serwotka said on Sunday it would be "an appalling situation" if Tuesday's removals were subsequently found to be illegal at the full hearing.

Home Secretary Priti Patel should wait for the July hearing if she "had any respect, not just for the desperate people who come to this country, but for the workers she employs", Serwotka told Sky News.

"We're absolutely confident that in July, in line with what the UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) said very graphically in court, we believe these proposals will be found to be unlawful."

Protesters gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Monday and further demonstrations were expected outside the Home Office.

Protesters gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Monday. By Niklas HALLE'N (AFP)

In Geneva, UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi called the UK government policy "all wrong" and said it should not be "exporting its responsibility to another country".

'Hate speech and discrimination'

Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson insist the policy is needed to stop a flood of all-too-often deadly migrant crossings of the Channel from France.

"It's very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people's lives at risk in the Channel understand that their business model is going to be broken," Johnson told LBC radio on Monday.

"They're selling people falsely, luring them into something that is extremely risky and criminal."

Under the agreement with Kigali, anyone landing in the UK illegally is liable to be given a one-way ticket for processing and resettlement in Rwanda.

Migrants will be housed at the Hope Hostel in Kigali. By Simon WOHLFAHRT (AFP)

The government says that the plan will target gangsters who charge would-be migrants thousands of dollars to undertake the perilous crossing for a new life in Britain.

Genuine asylum claimants should be content to stay in France, it says.

And contradicting the UNHCR, it insists that Rwanda is a safe destination with the capacity to absorb possibly tens of thousands of UK-bound claimants in future.

For now, the deportations will proceed "on a gradual basis", Doris Uwicyeza, chief technical adviser to Rwanda's justice ministry, told LBC radio.

Uwicyeza pushed back at criticism over the human rights record of President Paul Kagame's government -- which is set this month to host a Commonwealth summit attended by Prince Charles and Johnson.

Rwanda's 1994 genocide made it particularly attentive to "protecting anybody from hate speech and discrimination", including gay people, she said.

Rwanda's High Commissioner to Britain, Johnston Busingye, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that Rwanda would be a "safe haven" for migrants.

But British critics are unconvinced.

They include Prince Charles who dubbed the plan "appalling", according to The Times newspaper on Saturday.

The reported comment prompted unnamed cabinet ministers to tell Queen Elizabeth II's heir to stay out of politics.

International NGO Human Rights Watch issued a public letter warning that "to this day, serious human rights abuses continue to occur in Rwanda, including repression of free speech, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture".
Two military personnel under training at the 155 armoured regiments in Damongo in the Savannah Region have been picked up by the police for allegedly raping a student of the Damongo Nurses Training College.

The two were identified by the victim, who returned to the school for her documents after completion.

A tutor of the school told Citi News the student was gang-raped by personnel at the premises of the hostel on Sunday night.

The victim said one used a condom and the other did not.

The victim has been sent to the West Gonja hospital for examination as part of the investigation.

citinewsroom
Speaking at a just-ended Stakeholders Meeting organized in Sunyani by GrassRoots Hub, in partnership with Ghana Tech Lab, under the theme: 'The Role of Digitalizing Agriculture in Transforming the Local economy for Job Creation and Economic Development, on 10th June 2022, Mr Clement Siaw, an Investment Banker with Data Bank said the time has come for the youth to pay special attention to technology particularly, AgriTech.

On his part, the AgriTech industry has the potential to employ millions of teaming youth who graduates from the various institutions of higher learning. He later cited the Bono region as the food basket of the country; charged individuals with innovations and technical know-how to focus on AgriTech. He opined that the Bono region, over time, has positioned itself well enough to get a substantial number of patronage if such investment was to come to the region.

Mr Kwadwo Kyere, a representative from the Ministry of Agriculture  Sunyani, Bono region, buttressed this assertion and remained confident about his outfit's readiness to partner with investors. According to him, the Ministry will follow due process to offer support in line with its mandate.

The participants were selected from various sectors of the entrepreneurship ecosystem and grouped under six pillars including; support, human capital, market, government and legislation, finance and media and culture.

Diana Kwaaba, Manager of GrassRoots Hub, said her outfit has trained over 500 youth in entrepreneurship; she added that the Hub is Ghana's first innovation lab and incubation space dedicated to social impacts, such as promoting the SDGs. She later added that the consultative stakeholder meeting is part of GrassRoots Hub's mission to nurture social entrepreneurs and incubate and support innovations on SDGs and philanthropy for social good.

In his keynote address, Robert kwasi Oppong, Communication and Community Lead for GrassRoots Hub explained that the consultative stakeholder meeting was to bring stakeholders together in a collaborative manner to outline the challenges, gaps and opportunities in the existing market that will serve as a guideline to develop a comprehensive strategic policy to transform the agricultural economy.

During a focus group discussion, stakeholders discussed the bottlenecks that hamper the industry's growth: Bad network, expensive data bundle tariffs, and the lack of education on cyber security featured prominently.

Stakeholders, however, offered recommendations like; soft loans for women- investors, cyber security training for the informal sector, among others, and later pleaded with GrassRoots Hub to implement them as the hub prepares to roll out this year's Base Innovation Program (Cohort 6)! Which is due later in July 2022.

Government Agencies and Departments who were present also pledged their support in ensuring the recommendations yields the needed result.

During the final policy brief, Emmanuel Osrah, Finance Lead, GrassRoots Hub, eulogized participants for articulating their views and expressed his optimism about the impact of the session on the upcoming Base Innovation Program.
Accra, Ghana/ London, UK, 13 June 2022: The Ghana Ministry of Finance, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the German Government, and the Insurance Development Forum (IDF), announced today the launch of a Tripartite project to develop a sovereign risk transfer scheme for urban floods in Ghana, alongside long-term investments in the countrys capacity to leverage and integrate insurance and risk financing into their development strategies. The announcement was made during the IDF Summit in Zurich, Switzerland.

The risk transfer project is led by IDF members Allianz and Swiss Re, and closely supported by UNDP. Further partners in the project are flood risk consultants HKV, microsatellite operator ICEYE, and media monitor Flood Tags. It aims to enhance the response of the Ghanaian National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and local authorities after severe flooding, especially for poor and vulnerable people.

Alhassan Iddrisu, Director, Economic Strategy and Research Division at Ghanas Ministry of Finance, noted: We welcome the cross-sector collaboration in the Tripartite Insurance Programme as one of the financing mechanisms for climate adaptation. Through the industry-led insurance project to develop an innovative risk transfer scheme for urban floods, with its knowledge-sharing element, we aim to improve and develop greater local ownership of risk analysis and provide a faster response and recovery, especially to our most vulnerable citizens. The work with UNDP will contribute to mainstreaming climate and disaster risk finance into our Ministrys work, and together, these efforts will help to strengthen our countrys macroeconomic stability and sustainable development agenda.

By carefully selecting a pre-defined trigger for pay-out as opposed to assessing actual losses, the parametric insurance solution will enable quick pay-outs in case of a flood. This will improve resilience and support the rapid re-establishment of economic activity of low-income communities in urban areas, starting with the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA). While developing an insurance scheme for major floods, the project also aims to enhance the disaster response capacity of Ghanaian institutions through increased access to data, detailed risk insights, and activation of contingency protocols.

Ababacar Diaw, CEO, Allianz Ghana, said: The collaborative development of this parametric insurance solution through a public-private partnership plays into the UN Sustainable Development Goals and is an important contribution to increasing the climate resilience of urban poor and vulnerable people in Accra. Parametric insurance solutions are especially useful in regions where insurance infrastructure, such as good data, is less available.

The UNDP-led work with the Government of Ghana aims to enhance the countrys long-term financial resilience, through strengthening capacity to financially manage risk, the integration of insurance and risk financing into national development strategy and delivery, and the development of insurance markets and inclusive insurance solutions for at-risk populations.

UNDP Resident Representative in Ghana, Angela Lusigi pointed out, At UNDP Ghana, we are committed to supporting integrated development solutions that build resilience across society to protect Ghanas development progress. This project to develop an innovative insurance solution for managing flood risks and to provide rapid pay-outs as a safety net for poor and vulnerable urban communities is welcome. It will serve as a boost to government and private sector efforts to provide wider access to insurance and risk finance. By blending the financial-solution expertise developed by the government, with the long-term development and governance support offered by UNDP in partnership with the private sector, we will be able to advance Ghanas ambitious development agenda.

Ghana is one of the countries most prone to floods in West Africa, and the impact of climate change is exacerbating the risk of flooding in urban areas. While the entire population of Greater Accra may indirectly benefit from the risk transfer product, the core beneficiaries are the poor and vulnerable residents in the GAMA region.

The InsuResilience Solutions Fund (ISF), funded by the KfW Development Bank on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and managed by Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, will co-fund the risk transfer project alongside the IDF insurance industry members.

Claudia Thyme, Industry Deputy Chair, IDF Sovereign and Humanitarian Solutions Working Group, said, One reason why the protection gap persists is that it is often costly to design insurance solutions tailored to the specific needs and requirements of developing countries. Co-funding from the German Government enables the IDF to uniquely address this problem by working on the product development stage in cross-company teams, as an industry. Once a programme has been designed, it is easier for governments to find insurance companies to insure the risk.

This risk transfer project launch follows projects launched in 2020, 2021 and 2022 with Peru; Medellin, Colombia and Mexico, respectively, but is the first launched in Africa under the Tripartite Agreement announced in 2019 between the UNDP, the German Government, and the IDF. The Tripartite Programme aims to provide technical assistance and sovereign and sub-sovereign risk financing solutions to countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, for their public assets, as well as for sectors, such as agriculture, education, health and transport, among others, to protect their most vulnerable populations.

About the Tripartite Programme

Announced in 2019 as the Tripartite Agreement between UNDP, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Insurance Development Forum (IDF) at the United Nations Secretary Generals Climate Action Summit, the Tripartite Programme aims to deliver technical assistance and risk transfer solutions to 20 countries by 2025. Today it has more than 70 IDF insurance industry member experts and more than 60 UNDP local and regional representatives engaging with governments in developing countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and other natural disasters.

About UNDPs Insurance & Risk Finance Facility

The Insurance and Risk Finance Facility (IRFF) is part of UNDPs Sustainable Finance Hub, and it is a flagship initiative dedicated to insurance and risk finance. The IRFF manages UNDPs global representation in the insurance space. It is a one-stop shop for innovative solutions for UNDP Country Offices, programme countries and partners. This includes issues related to insurance and risk finance, networking, partner development, policy, and guidelines, technical and implementation, capacity and assistance, and financing opportunities. More information available at irff.undp.org
Acciona, a major Spanish infrastructure group and a leading water contractor in Saudi Arabia, showcased its key sustainable infrastructure solutions at the Saudi-Spanish Investment forum held recently in Riyadh and reiterated its commitment to provide new sources of safe drinking water to boost the kingdoms water security.

The forum, organized by the Saudi Ministry of Investment, discussed ways to share knowledge and contribute to the kingdoms economic diversification plans.

Spains Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism Maria Reyes Maroto was at the event which was also attended by Saudi Minister of Investment, Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al Falih, Minister of Tourism, Ahmed Bin Aqil Al Khatib and Minister of Commerce, Majid bin Abdullah Alkassabi.

Acciona was represented at the forum by Jesus Sancho, Director General for the Middle East, Francisco Javier Nieto, KSA Country Director for Acciona Water solutions, and Julio de la Rosa, Business Development Director for Acciona Water solutions in the Middle East.

During a panel discussion on 'Water Management and Infrastructure,' de la Rosa highlighted Accionas capabilities to advance the countrys Vision 2030 goal of creating a vibrant, more diversified and more sustainable economy and society.

Acciona has already delivered two desalination plants and is currently building four more plants in the KSA. These plants employ reverse osmosis, a more efficient and sustainable technology for extracting potable water from seawater, he stated.

"Once all are completed, the plants will produce 2.36 billion liters of drinking water a day, enough to supply more than 8 million people, almost one-quarter of the population of the country," said de la Rosa.

Acciona is also helping to reduce the carbon emissions associated with the energy for desalination by integrating solar energy at desalination plants, he added.

The forum concluded on a successful note with Spanish water and utilities companies pledging to help the Kingdoms Vision 2030 programmes and goals since both share the challenge of providing quality water to the population while working on an environment of limited natural resources to do so.

A leader in regenerative solutions for a decarbonized economy, Acciona has a business presence in more than 60 countries and is involved in renewable energy, water treatment and management, eco-efficient transportation and mobility systems and resilient infrastructures. Acciona had netted recorded sales of 8.1 billion ($8.51 billion) in 2021.-TradeArabia News Service
June 13, 2022

Media Tune Down Ukraine Hysteria - Continue To Print Falsehoods

The Ukraine war has fallen below the fold of the New York Times and the Washington Post. It is not the only sign that the 'western' war rage and cheer leading for Ukraine has ended. When one scrolls down though there are still Ukraine headlines on the NYT front page.

One is to its "live" coverage with the current headline saying:

Ukraine Live Updates: Russian Forces Move Into Center of Sievierodonetsk.

That 'live update' is two week behind the real news. As Reuters reported on May 31:

Russia takes most of Sievierodonetsk city in eastern Ukraine.

KYIV, May 31 (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Tuesday that Russia had taken control of most of the eastern industrial city of Sievierodonetsk, a bombed-out wasteland whose capture Moscow has made the principal objective of its invasion.

Some 'western' analysts had since falsely claimed that Ukraine had launched a counteroffensive into the city. That counterattack in fact never has taken place. The forces who were supposed to launch it where shelled to clumps before they could set off.

The NYT live update also includes this headline and report:

Amnesty says Russias use of cluster munitions caused widespread civilian deaths in Kharkiv.

Reading a bit into it one finds:

Amnesty said 606 civilians were killed in the Kharkiv region between Feb. 24 and April 28, citing the head of the regional medical department. In investigating 41 strikes that killed more than 60 civilians, Amnesty said its researchers found fragments of cluster sub-munitions as well as parts of rockets known to carry such weapons. Cluster munitions are banned under a 2010 treaty because of the risk they pose for noncombatants, but Russia, Ukraine and the United States are not among the more than 100 countries that have signed the convention. Ukraine has also used cluster munitions in the war.

Some 600 civilians died in Karkiv over a month. Debris from cluster bombs, which both sides use, was also found. That must mean that Russian forces must have killed those civilians?

Really?

This reminds me of 2008 when Amnesty's sister organization Human Rights Watch published a fake cluster bomb report during the Georgia war. Back then the HRW analyst Marc Garlasco falsely identified 'western' produced cluster bombs which had been fired by Georgia as Russian ones. It was easy to debunk that claim simply by checking HRW's own cluster bomb identification charts. (Shortly thereafter Garlasco was suspended and then fired over his fondness for Nazi memorabilia. His false and debunked report however is still on HRW's website.)

The Washington Post front page also links, below the fold, to live coverage. The current headline being:

Ukrainian forces pushed from Severodonetsk citys center; NATO chief to Sweden

Again, the claim about Severodonetsk' city center is false. The Ukrainian forces have been 'pushed out' of it 14 days ago. Aside from the industrial western part, the Azot factory, the city has been under Russian control since May 31.

The WaPo live coverage includes this part:

Update from key battlefields: Russia makes gains in Severodonetsk, targets bridges

Slovyansk area: Russian forces are advancing toward this city in the Donetsk region and have made minor gains north of it. Russian troops have sought to destroy bridges over the Siverskyi Donets river to disrupt the flow of supplies and reinforcements between Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, but the destruction has made it difficult for them to successfully attack Slovyansk because of challenges crossing the river, according to analysts.

Here is a map of east Ukraine with red marking the Russian held territory.

Slovyansk is on the very left side of the map. Severodonetsk and Lysychansk are on the very right side of the map. A crow will have to fly 60 kilometer (37 miles) to reach from one to the others. Now please reread the WaPO paragraph above and see if it makes any geographical sense. How would destroyed bridges between Severodonetsk and Lysychansk hinder any attack on Slovyansk?

The 'analysts' WaPo linked as sources for that paragraph are the neo-conservative Institute for the Study of War which is the widely quoted prime outlet for Ukraine slanted propaganda about the war. It believe that it is also the source for the false claim both papers print about Severodonetsk's city center.

Now on towards real news: U.S. president Joe Biden has told NATO to end the proxy war in Ukraine as soon as possible.

Dr. David Lutke @DrLuetke - 20:33 UTC  Jun 12, 2022 Today #NATO's #Stoltenberg stated that #negotiations are needed for #peace in #Ukraine. Quote:

"Peace is possible. The question is how much territory, how much independence...are [Ukraine] willing to sacrifice for peace." Rhetoric is changing:

What happened to Ukraine winning?

video

This is the same Stoltenberg who in early April said that NATO must prepare for a long haul in Ukraine. Who then said that the war could drag on for years. Jens Stoltenberg, who told us in May that we must put values over profits, is now talking about peace for territorial and sovereignty concessions.

It seems that someone has told Biden that there is zero chance for the Democrats to win in the midterm elections if gas prices stay beyond 5 dollar per gallon. Or maybe this Saturday NYT piece really got under his skin:

Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of No Start to Rise.

In interviews, dozens of frustrated Democratic officials, members of Congress and voters expressed doubts about the presidents ability to rescue his reeling party and take the fight to Republicans.

Whatever.

Russia is winning the war. The Ukraine has lost the war and will also lose a large chunk of its territory. Its western fueled 'resistance' against the inevitable has seen to that. The U.S. and NATO now acknowledge that much.

Unfortunately some of Zelenski's advisors are still unable to recognize that:

  @Podolyak_M - 7:12 UTC  Jun 13, 2022 Being straightforward  to end the war we need heavy weapons parity:

1000 howitzers caliber 155 mm;

300 MLRS;

500 tanks;

2000 armored vehicles;

1000 drones. Contact Group of Defense Ministers meeting is held in #Brussels on June 15. We are waiting for a decision.

"To end the war" ... Ukraine needs as many weapons as it had when the war started? What happened to those weapons? Will it also need 50 pink unicorns?

It is over. How much territory Ukraine will have to give will be decided by Russia.

Posted by b on June 13, 2022 at 12:28 UTC | Permalink

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This watermelon hack is key to getting the most out of the expensive fruit

Prices have gone through the roof, so we need to get the most out of our melons.
Hong Kong: Vocational education plays vital role

Chief Executive Carrie Lam

I am delighted to join you all to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Vocational Training Council (VTC) and congratulate the outstanding alumni awardees. Whether you are here at the VTC campus in Chai Wan or livestreaming elsewhere around the world, we can all agree that this is a happy and significant occasion for the VTC - past, present and future.

Looking back over the past four decades, the VTC and its alumni have made significant contributions to Hong Kong and beyond. Since its establishment in 1982, the VTC has been growing from strength to strength and has become a leading Vocational & Professional Education & Training (VPET) provider in Hong Kong. It has nurtured talent across different disciplines, continuously raising the bar for vocational learning and training. Today, with 13 member institutions, the VTC is the largest VPET provider in Hong Kong, offering skills-based training courses for over 200,000 students every year. Qualifications range from certificates and diplomas to vocationally-oriented bachelor degree programmes for young people and in-service practitioners. Looking ahead, VPET will continue to play an integral role in meeting the ever-changing needs of the community and the economy, and the VTC will continue to be a core component of this for many years to come.

Indeed, VPET has become an important part of the education systems both in Hong Kong and the Mainland. In April, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed amendments to the Mainland's Vocational Education Law, promoting vocational education to the same level as general education and further strengthening the country's technical school system. The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shares the same vision. We established the Task Force on Promotion of VPET in 2018 to review and enhance the promotion of relevant programmes. The task force, chaired by Roy Chung, who is here with us today, former chairman of the VTC, submitted to us a comprehensive report in 2020, making insightful recommendations on further promoting VPET on various fronts. The VTC has been a key supporter of our various initiatives, including its participation in the Pilot Project on the Development of Applied Degree Programmes. It has also been proactive in promoting workplace learning and assessment at different levels of studies. In view of Hong Kong's ever closer integration with our country's development, it is encouraging that, with the support of the Education Bureau, the VTC has scaled up its collaboration with counterparts across the boundary. A case in point is the framework agreement signed in 2020 between the VTC and Shenzhen Polytechnic to foster partnership in areas that are pivotal to our city's development. These areas include launching new joint programmes, providing internship and exchange opportunities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, promoting research and development, enabling its students to gain first-hand experience in the workplace on the Mainland, and seizing opportunities arising from the promising development of the Greater Bay Area.

The theme of this 40th Anniversary Celebration, "Skilling Talent  Sparking Innovation", highlights the VTC's unequivocal commitment to developing top talent and sparking innovation to help foster Hong Kong's development as a world-class smart city. The VTC has always moved with the times, continually preparing young people to be work-ready and future-ready for their life journey. In this digital age, I am pleased that the VTC has been working closely with its stakeholders through its extensive industry networks and exploring further enhancements to its VPET services. Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity and big data analytics are among the emerging skills that have been incorporated into the curricula to equip students with new economy skills and know-how. With the Hong Kong SAR Government's strong support, the VTC has embarked on groundbreaking initiatives, such as its Smart Technology Applications & Mobile Platform and development of a brand new Aviation & Maritime Education Centre in its Institute of Vocational Education in Tsing Yi. A new campus in Cha Kwo Ling is also in the pipeline.

These achievements, and many more, are made possible with the guidance and support from the VTC's partners, who are acutely aware of the needs and trends of the labour market. In particular, the support for providing scholarship sponsorships and job placements is especially valuable to our young people.

I am pleased to have the chance today to meet some of the VTC's outstanding alumni. They provide much inspiration for our next generation to contribute their knowledge and expertise for social good. The future of our city is in their hands. I am sure that the Hong Kong SAR Government of the next term will continue to promote VPET and join hands with the education sector and the community to provide our next generation with more and better opportunities.

I thank the VTC Council members, industry partners, teachers, staff, alumni and students for their contributions to the VTC over the past four decades and their support for the development of VPET in Hong Kong. This year, we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong SAR, carrying the theme of "A New Era - Stability. Prosperity. Opportunity". I have no doubt that the VTC will continue to play an integral role in propelling our city to head forward in the new era. I wish the VTC a wonderful 40th anniversary and an ever bright future ahead.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam gave these remarks at the VTC 40th Anniversary Ceremony & Outstanding Alumni Award Presentation on June 13.

This story has been published on: 2022-06-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
By Li Chun

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin delivered a keynote speech at the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore on the morning of June 11. The speech involved the South China Sea, East China Sea, Taiwan question, and other topics that the US defense secretaries have always talked about at the Dialogue.

Length of China-related content is rarely seen in recent years

Austins full text had 4,184 English words, of which 527 words were directly talking about China. Zhao Xiaozhuo, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences (AMS) of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), said that the speech was obviously more systematic and lengthy, something that had been seldom seen before.

As Zhao put it, when the US Secretary of Defense talked about maintaining the rules of the Asia-Pacific region, he was almost publicly pointing at China, for example, big powers carry big responsibilities.

Cao Yanzhong, a researcher at the PLA Academy of Military Sciences, also believed that the speech by Austin continued the basic positioning of the US strategy toward China. "They are seeing China as a major strategic competitor, and emphasizing that the US must rely on alliances to advance its 'Indo-Pacific strategy' and 'India-Pacific strategic vision'. The core is to strengthen the alliances and partnerships and leverage the strength of alliances and partners to weave a tighter network for containing China," he said.

All blames on China

When Austin talked about China, he first accused that China moves threaten to undermine security, and stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific. According to Cao, Austin's accusations against China are completely groundless. The US itself has not signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. And on the issues concerning the East China Sea and the South China Sea, it pretends to stand for its allies, actually seeking to fabricate and exaggerate the so-called China threat.

When Austin talked about the so-called threat, he mostly expressed it in general terms except on only one example, that is, the encounter between Chinese ships and Australian aircraft in February 2022. However, as the Chinese Ministry of National Defense (MND) clarified on February 21, it was the Australian P-8 anti-submarine patrol aircraft that approached the airspace surrounding the Chinese ships and dropped sonar buoys around them. During the entire encounter, the Chinese ships always maintained safe, standard, and professional operations, which were in line with relevant international law and practice.

Cao pointed out that the purpose of Austin's cite of this example was to exaggerate China's threat, and let China take the blame for increasing regional tension. That is why Austin failed to mention the direct cause of this situation, that is, the US urged its allies to carry out close-range reconnaissance on China.

US builds up stage for future actions in the region

Zhao believes that the purpose of the US Secretary of Defense's speech is to cook up Zhao believed that the purpose of the US defense sSecretary of Defense's speech was to point out the "challenges" to regional peace and stability, and to point the finger at China, so as to create a stage for the actions of the US in the region.

A key message was delivered in the speech that the US Coast Guard forces would be deployed in Southeast Asia and Oceania next year, the first time that coast guard to be permanently deployed in the Asia-Pacific region.

At present, the US Coast Guard is based mainly in Northeast Asia. Its permanent deployment in Southeast Asia and Oceania also shows the USs intention to expand military power in the Asia-Pacific region. It is worth noting that the commandant of the US Coast Guard also participated in this year's Shangri-La Dialogue for the first time.

Zhao pointed out that the speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue was made on a multilateral occasion in the face of the international community. There were many allies of the US in the venue. Austin aimed to increase the intensity of his speech and make it more appealing to these countries. The question is, would things really progress according to his expectations because of his speech?

Editor's Note: This article is originally published on chinanews.com, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
US-based Structural Group has announced a reorganization of its Middle East operations aimed at strengthening its position as the region's leading provider of civil infrastructure technical services, repair products, and construction services.

Bill Hutton has been appointed General Manager and Branch Director of Structural Middle East, based in Dubai, UAE. A graduate of Loughborough University in the UK, Hutton has been with Structural Group since 2016.

He brings over 14 years of industry experience in the GCC to his new role. Bill's expertise in corrosion control and concrete structures, along with his knowledge of the region's existing infrastructure challenges, made him the ideal candidate for the leadership role.

Lauidng the appointment, Structural Group CEO Peter Emmons said: "With Hutton's energy and dedication to our strategic plan, I'm confident we are well positioned for the continued growth of our business in the region."

Structural Middle East has also been realigned with its US-based construction operations, a move that will drive sharing of best practices and increased resources for major projects.

Jeff Venanzi, President of Structural Preservation Systems, pointed out that the group's commitment to supporting owners and engineers in repairing and upgrading concrete infrastructure in the Middle East was stronger than ever.

"We anticipate increased collaboration between our US and UAE-based construction operations will contribute to meeting our strategic objectives in the region," he added.

Structural Group, including its product, engineering, and construction subsidiaries, recently celebrated 15 years of ongoing operations in the UAE supporting the Middle East region.

From investigating the condition of concrete infrastructure to specialty product systems and turnkey construction, the firm has a robust offering it delivers to the commercial, public, and industrial sectors.-TradeArabia News Service
Where does the lawsuit brought forth by David Wilson to remove Midland County District Attorney Laura Nodolf stand?

Nodolf still hasnt commented publicly about the lawsuit or her representation.

Wilsons petition was filed in the 385th District Court. County officials said Friday that Judge Leah Robertson  the presiding judge in the 385th -- has asked the presiding regional judge  Seventh Administrative Judicial Region of Texas Judge Dean Rucker  to assign a visiting judge from outside Midland to oversee judicial proceedings, including a trial if it goes to court.

Allison Clayton, an attorney for Wilson, stated Friday that Judge Kelly Moore has been appointed in her place.

Now that we have filed our petition, Section 87.016 of the Texas Government Code roughly outlines what could happen next, Clayton wrote Friday. We have requested the court issue a citation. If the judge refuses to issue the citation, the petition is dismissed, without the possibility of appeal. If the judge issues a citation, then the suit moves forward.

At that point, (now we are in Section 87.017) the judge can (in his discretion) temporarily suspend Ms. Nodolf and appoint someone else to act in her place. The case proceeds from there with the trial for removal.

Midland County residents will find out this week if Midland County leaders take action regarding the payment of legal fees for the district attorney in this case. The court does not have to provide representation, according to county officials, but Texas law allows the court to do so if commissioners believe it serves county purposes.

Another thing we could learn this week is whether County Attorney Russell Malm will represent the state in removal proceedings (as pursuant to Section 87.018(d) of the Texas Government Code), it was explained the Reporter-Telegram.

This is new ground for us, and we are still researching the issues, Malm wrote this weekend. My expectation is that I will file a motion to recuse myself.
Otokar, a global land systems manufacturer in Turkey, will promote its wheeled and tracked armored vehicles as well as its capabilities in land systems at Eurosatory 2022, a major defence industry exhibition, on June 13-17, in Paris, France.



Otokar will present the following vehicles:

 Tulpar Medium Tank, with COCKERILL 3105- 105 mm turret system

 Tulpar Infantry Fighting Vehicle, with 30 mm Rafael Samson Remotely Controlled Turret

 Arma 8x8 Multi-wheeled Armored Vehicle, with 30 mm Otokar Mizrak Remotely Controlled Turret

 Arma 6x6 Multi-wheeled Armored Vehicle, with 25 mm Otokar Mizrak Remotely Controlled Turret

 Cobra II MRAP Mine-resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle

 Cobra II Personnel Carrier



Otokar General Manager Serdar Gorguc said: As a global player in defence industry, we are delighted to exhibit our vehicles again at Europe's largest defence industry event. In 1990s when Otokar decided to exhibit Turkey's first armored vehicle abroad, our first choice was Eurosatory. Since then this exhibition is particularly important for us to meet our current users and develop partnerships with potential users. We are proud to be here with 6 vehicles of different types and features from our broad product range.



Otokars military vehicles are actively in service in more than 35 countries and more than 55 end users in different climates and geographies around the world. Our combat proven know-how in land systems and related R&D, engineering and testing capabilities as well as our wide product range put us at the forefront of the global defence industry, Gorguc said.



We analyse different needs and expectations of our users, simulate these requirements in house and develop solutions that meet these requirements in the fastest manner. As a global brand in international defence industry, we are closer to our current and potential users at Central Asia and Gulf Region more than ever, thanks to our subsidiary companies Otokar Central Asia and Otokar Land Systems.



We constantly continue to improve our capabilities and look for expansion opportunities in different regions. We are proud that today Otokar stands apart in the defence industry, not only with its proven land platforms but also global know-how, engineering, R&D and technology transfer capabilities, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Duncan_Andison/Getty Images/iStockphoto

VIRGINIA  The Cass County Board is scheduled to meet in regular session at 7 p.m. today at 100 E. Springfield St.

Among the items on the agenda are:
Health officials are encouraging screenings to help with early diagnosis of lung cancer after the latest report from the American Lung Association has shown that only about 25% of cases are getting diagnosed early in Illinois.

The State of Lung Cancer report from the American Lung Association has indicated about 25% of cases were diagnosed at the earlier stages in the state.

Kristin Perucho, a registered nurse and medical imaging oncology nurse navigator at Springfield Memorial Hospital, said doctors are pushing for more lung screenings, especially those that have a higher risk of getting lung cancer.

"In the earlier stages, if there is a screening and it's caught earlier, the survival rate goes up," Perucho said. "In the early stages, the five-year survival rate is 60%, but it's only about 6% if it spreads in the later stages."

Nationally, about 46% of cases are not caught until the later stages.

Illinois ranked 26 out of 51 for screenings, about average in the nation.

In Illinois, 6.3% of those at high risk were screened, about 0.6% higher than the national average of 5.7%.

Those that are high risk are considered those that smoke, have a family history of lung cancer or have high exposure to toxins such as radon or asbestos.

Though the screenings are being pushed by doctors more often, Perucho said many cases are often diagnosed in the later stages after symptoms start to present themselves.

"People will usually come in because they have a bad cough, pain in their chest," Perucho said. "At that point, it's usually spreading and more advanced."

According to the report by the association, Illinois is considered average in survival with 25% of patients surviving past five years.

Katie deMarco, a registered nurse and oncology nurse navigator with the Regional Cancer Center at Springfield Memorial Hospital, said changes in testing and treatments has also helped increase the chances of survival.

Recently, test has been developed to find specific types of lung cancer that will help narrow down the appropriate therapy that would have the best chances of improving a patient's health.

"We had a young woman who was going through treatment but was very sick," deMarco said. "They found a genetic marker and were able to give her an oral chemo drug that bought her several months. She was in the late stages, stage four, but it helped and she lived for several more months."

Illinois was above average in the field of lack of treatment, with only 18% of cases not receiving any treatment, compared to the national average of 21%.

The causes for those that do not receive treatment is varied, deMarco said.

"Fear, lack of health care, low income, no insurance, lack of knowledge," deMarco said. "These are all reasons people don't seek treatment. They know about the resources available. It's sad how many people don't understand that there are ways to help."

Perucho said some just don't want to face it.

"Some feel like they are being judged," Perucho said. "There can be a stigma with lung cancer, more so than other cancers, because one of the leading risk factors is smoking. That comes along with some guilt."

Though there are also social-economic factors that can play into the lack of treatment, deMarco said.

According to the report, 20.4% of Black Americans with lung cancer in Illinois did not receive any treatment, compared to 17.5%. with 22.2% being diagnosed early, compared to 26.1% for white Americans. Other minority groups also saw lower percentages for early diagnosis and higher percentages for lack of treatment.

Perucho said more needs to be done to increase awareness and treatment.

"One thing we know is lung cancer has been the leading cause of cancer deaths," Perucho said.
CARROLLTON  Two candidates are hoping to represent the Democratic Party for the Greene County Board in the June primary.

Voters will decide between Joyce A. Clark and David G. McGraw on the Democratic ballot on June 28.

Clark, 72, is serving on the county board. Originally appointed to fill a term, Clark has been elected to two terms in the position.

In addition to her time as Greene County board member, Clark was also a trustee and a supervisor for Bluffdale.

For her position, Clark said one of her primary focuses is the budget.

" A big goal is I don't want to raise taxes and want to spend wisely," Clark said. "We need an individual that will weigh the needs and what is necessary against the funds."

In addition to controlling the budget and county needs, she said she also wants to find ways to help veterans and improve the county's infrastructure.

Her goals align with some of the issues she sees in the county.

"The big issue is budget. People don't want their taxes raised, and I don't want to raise them," Clark said. "We have to balance, matching the budget to the expenses. Cost are going up. I think we have to try to keep the expense in control with what we have."

Clark said she brings management and finance experience to the position.

After graduating from Hillsboro High School in 1967, she received a degree in education from Illinois State University. She worked with the United States Postal Service for 33 years, including time as a postmaster trainer for the St. Louis division. She has also worked in real estate, and was the head of the foreign orders department for Charles C. Thomas Publisher.

Her opponent, David McGraw, 58, served as a Roodhouse alderman from 2001 to 2009.

One of the biggest issues he sees for Greene County is the need for growth.

"Growth and to retain our young people by providing them opportunities to remain here," McGraw said.

In order to help with growth, if elected, McGraw said he wants to find ways to market the county to both businesses and tourism. He said he also wants to help the agriculture community.

McGraw holds a master's degree in education/history and political science

He is the gather of two 13-year-old boys.
Bahrain Airport Company, the operator and managing body of Bahrain International Airport (BIA), has laid the foundation stone for the Express Cargo Village on a 25,000-sq-m area within the BIA complex.

The Express Cargo Village is a sophisticated logistics platform that provides a one-stop shop for express cargo operators, each of which will have their own premises within the facility.

An advanced logistics hub, it includes buildings dedicated to serving each cargo operator in line with the highest international standards.

The government signed up French engineering consultants Egis to supervise the design and construction of the project, while Cebarco Bahrain has been named the main contractor of the Express Cargo Village.

The scope of work includes the construction of warehouses, aircraft aprons, and outlets along with associated finishing.

This comes in line with Bahrains strategy for the logistics industry as laid out in its Economic Recovery Plan, in implementation of the vision of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

It also follows an announcement by the Cabinet, chaired by His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, reported BNA.

The groundbreaking ceremony was held in the presence of the Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications and also Chairman of Bahrain Airport Company (BAC) Engineer Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, Cebarco Bahrain Chairman Dr Khalid Abdulrahim and Shaikh Ahmed bin Mohamed Al Khalifa, Bahrains Head of Customs in addition to a number of officials from Bahrain Airport Company.

Express Cargo Village will promote the growth of the logistics industry, enhancing its regional competitiveness and ability to attract investment. Logistics is one of the high-priority sectors outlined in Bahrains Economic Vision 2030, said Kamal bin Mohammed.

The minister pointed out that one of the Economic Recovery Plans main objectives is to accelerate the adoption of a strategy for logistics.

"Express Cargo Village will boost BIAs cargo capacity in line with the highest standards as it deploys advanced technologies to improve efficiency andmeet growth targets for air freight and e-commerce," he added.

Kamal bin Mohammed said the logistics strategy aims to further develop the sector and enhance its efficiency by accelerating the process of linking operations at BIA with those of Khalifa bin Salman Port, and streamlining land transportation procedures, to make the Kingdom a preferred destination for cargo and e-commerce.

"It ensures that all operations are carried out quickly and smoothly in a single location, enabling the airport to handle larger quantities of cargo efficiently, better meet the requirements of cargo customers, and create new job opportunities," he added.

BAC earlier signed a 10-year agreement with global logistics giant, FedEx Express, allocating 9,000 sq m to it for the operation of a 5,000-sq-m warehouse and a 4,000-sq-m open area, which will be handed over in Q3 of 2023.
A Jacksonville man is facing charges after an armed robbery last week in Pana.

Cody Eller, age unavailable, of Jacksonville was arrested Wednesday in Virden by U.S. marshals assisting in the investigation of a robbery at Lake Lawn Inn in Pana. He was being transferred to the Christian County jail on a charge of armed robbery with a firearm.

Eller was arrested with Samantha Olivio, 22, of Taylorville, who has been charged with conspiracy to commit armed robbery.

Police reports said two men armed with handguns took money, a cellphone and keys from a man at the motel. A woman who was with the reported victim at the time left with the two robbers, according to police.

The second robber has not been identified.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Nearly a year since its inception, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is going public as lawmakers hope to show the American public how democracy came to the brink of disaster.

The next round of hearings wont take place in prime time like the debut on Thursday, but lawmakers will go into greater detail about specific aspects of the insurrection.

What you need to know ahead of the hearing:

WHEN WILL THE NEXT HEARING TAKE PLACE?

The second hearing is set to begin at 10 a.m. EDT on Monday It will take place in a large House office building in the U.S. Capitol complex.

WHO IS EXPECTED TO TESTIFY?

The committee announced that former President Donald Trumps campaign manager, Bill Stepien, is among the witnesses scheduled to testify at a hearing Monday that focuses on Trumps effort to spread his lies about a stolen election. Stepien was subpoenaed for his public testimony.

Mondays witness list also includes BJay Pak, the top federal prosecutor in Atlanta who left his position on Jan. 4, 2021, a day after an audio recording was made public in which Trump called him a never-Trumper; Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor for Fox News; noted Washington elections attorney Benjamin Ginsberg; and Al Schmidt, a former city commissioner in Philadelphia.

WHAT EVIDENCE IS EXPECTED ON MONDAY?

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the Republican vice chair of the committee, said lawmakers will present evidence Monday ashowing that Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information that the election had been stolen  even though advisers and allies told him repeatedly he had lost.

The panel's probe has so far been divided into a series of focus areas, including the efforts by former President Trump and his allies to cast doubt on the election and halt the certification of President Joe Bidens victory; the financing and organizing of rallies in Washington that took place before the attack; security failures by Capitol Police and federal agencies; and the actions of the rioters themselves.

HOW MANY PEOPLE WATCHED THE FIRST HEARING?

The prime-time hearing was watched by an estimated 20 million people on the TV networks, almost double the number who tuned in to the opening of Trumps two impeachment trials.

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For more coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection hearings, go to https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege

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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
NEW BERLIN New Berlin school officials are asking voters to approve $23.5 million in construction bonds for the junior/senior high school.

Superintendent Jill Larson said the bonds have to be approved by voters, but would not cause an increase to property taxes.

"It's a combination of renovation/construction," Larson said.

Voters from the district will be voting on the proposition during the June 28 election.

The current building has several portions that were built at various times, with the oldest being constructed in 1919 and the youngest in 1970.

The total project is $31.5 million, with $23.5 million to be approved by voters, while $8 million will be funded from the School Facilities Sales Tax.

The renovation/ construction would include new classroom spaces, secure entrances, collaborative spaces, new music spaces, gym, agriculture and shop classes, as well as renovation of some existing spaces.

"The students would come in one entrance," Larson said. "They won't be parking where the buses come in."

If the proposal isn't approved by voters, Larson said there is a lot of work that will have to be done to keep the building safe for students.

"We have about $11 million in work that would have to be done," Larson said. "A majority of that would be roof work and security entrances."

The $11 million would not included needed upgrades to the science facilities, or collaborative spaces. The sixth graders also do not have personal spaces like lockers.

Larson said a new building will help the students.

"There is a whole different feeling when it comes to a building that is newer," Larson said.

Artist renditions, as well as more information about the project is available on the New Berlin school website under the Facilities Planning website.
NEW YORK (AP)  Philip Baker Hall, the prolific character actor of film and theater who starred in Paul Thomas Anderson's first movies and who memorably hunted down a long-overdue library book in Seinfeld, has died. He was 90.

Holly Wolfle Hall, the actor's wife of nearly 40 years, on Monday said Hall died Sunday surrounded by loved ones in Glendale, California. She said Hall had been well until a few weeks earlier, and spent his final days in warm spirits, reflecting on his life.

His voice at the end was still just as powerful, said Wolfle Hall. Her husband, she added, never retired from acting.

In a career spanning half a century, Hall was a ubiquitous hangdog face whose doleful, weary appearance could shroud a booming intensity and humble sensitivity. His range was wide, but Hall, who had a natural gravitas, often played men in suits, trench coats and lab coats.

"Men who are highly stressed, older men, who are at the limit of their tolerance for suffering and stress and pain, Hall told the Washington Post in 2017. I had an affinity for playing those roles.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, Hall initially devoted himself more to theater in Los Angeles, after moving out in 1975, than TV and movies. While shooting bit parts in Hollywood (an episode of Good Times was one of his first gigs), Hall worked with the L.A. Actor Theatre. There he played Richard Nixon in the one-act play Secret Honor, a role he reprised in Robert Altman's 1984 film adaptation. Critic Pauline Kael wrote that Hall draws on his lack of a star presence and on an actors fears of his own mediocrity in a way that seems to parallel Nixons feelings."

Hall made an impression in the smallest of roles in other films, like 1988's Midnight Run." But outside of theater, Hall was mostly doing guest roles in television. That changed when he was shooting a PBS program in 1992. Hall then encountered a production assistant in his early 20s named Paul Thomas Anderson. The two would hang out, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee between scenes. Anderson, believing Hall hadn't gotten his due in film, asked him to look at a script he had written for a 20-minute short film titled Cigarettes & Coffee.

Im reading this script, and I truly had trouble believing that that kid wrote this script, Hall told the AV Club in 2012. I mean, it was just so brilliant, resonating with nuance all over the place, like a playwright. Certainly, as a film, Id never really seen anything like it. It was staggering.

After the $20,000 short made it into the Sundance Film Festival, Anderson expanded it into his feature debut, 1997's Hard Eight, which catapulted Hall's career. In it, Hall played a wise and courteous itinerate gambler named Sydney who schools a young drifter (John C. Reilly) on the craft. In one indelible scene, Philip Seymour Hoffman's first with Anderson, a hot-shot gambler chides Hall as old-timer.

Anderson would cast Hall again as adult film theater magnate Floyd Gondolli who warns Burt Reynolds' pornography producer about the industry's future in Boogie Nights." In Anderson's Magnolia, Hall played Jimmy Gator, the host of a kids game show.

I have a particular fascination with character actors, with wanting to turn them into lead actors," Anderson told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. "I see Philip Baker Hall, hes just . . . an actor that I love. Theres no one else with a face like that, or a voice like that.

To many, Hall was instantly recognizable for one of the most powerfully funny guest appearances on Seinfeld. In the 22nd episode of the sitcom in 1991, Hall played Lt. Joe Bookman, the library investigator who comes after Seinfeld for a years-overdue copy of Tropic of Cancer." Hall played him like a hardboiled noir detective, telling Seinfeld: Well, I got a flash for ya, Joy-boy: Party time is over.

Hall was brought back for the Seinfeld finale and by Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. David once said no other actor ever made him laugh more than Hall.

Among Hall's many other credits were Michael Mann's The Insider, as 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt, and Lars von Trier's Dogville." Hall appeared in Say Anything, The Truman Show, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Zodiac, Argo and Rush Hour." Hall played the neighbor Walt Kleezak on Modern Family. His last performance was in the 2020 series Messiah.

Hall, who was married to Dianne Lewis for three years in the early 1970s, is survived by his wife, four daughters, four grandchildren and his brother.
After more than two decades with the Jacksonville Police Department, newly named Sheriff's Deputy David Langdon has returned to his law enforcement roots with the Morgan County Sheriff's Department.

Langdon retired from the Jacksonville Police Department last month, but did not leave law enforcement in his new venture.

After 21 years as an officer and Lieutenant for the police department, Langdon has switched departments to serve at the county level.

"The sheriff's department needed people," Langdon said. "I had the time with the city and felt I needed the change. I wanted to stay in law enforcement, but change my job responsibilities a little bit."

Langdon is not new to the department, however. In 1989, Langdon worked at the Morgan County Detention Center for about six years, before moving on to the role of a patrol deputy for another five.

Now he is glad to be back with the sheriff's department.

"I've worked with both Sheriff [Mike] Carmoday and Chief Deputy [Jamie] Jackson before," Langdon said. "This has always been a good place to work."

He said he was once given advice by one of his chiefs to help him stay engaged in his job.

"[Former Police Chief] Tony Grootens once told me to change what you do every five years," Langdon said. "I didn't intend to follow that, but I guess I mostly did."

Even though he was with the department for 21 years, Langdon said he had many roles within it, many of which changed every five years or so.

From working as a patrolman, drug task force, detective, Sergeant and Lieutenant, he said he had a lot of experience from Jacksonville that he hopes to bring to the county.

"I received a lot of chances two do a lot of things over there and I learned a lot," he said. "I think I have a lot of good experience versus a new hire. I understand more what the bosses want, admin wise, what investigations want when I go to a scene. I done all that."

He said he is looking forward to getting around the county and glad to be back with the sheriff's department.

"I enjoy driving the county and visiting different towns," Langdon said. "We have a bigger area to cover."

He said he already has a relationship with many people in the area, several who have recognized him from his time with Jacksonville.

Langdon said he's hoping to help his county in his new role, but also to be a good role model for the younger generation, including his grandsons, Blayden and Blaine.

"They just love seeing the patrol cars and hearing about my job," Langdon said. "They get a big kick out of that."
The Middle East and North Africa Information Security Conference, set to be held in September, will focus on risks of cyberattacks on critical network infrastructure.

Themed Cyber Fusion - Converging Cyber Intel: Critical Network Infrastructure IT, OT, and IoT, the conference will be organised by by VirtuPort in-person this year  after being held virtually for the past two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The event is scheduled to be held in Riyadh on September 6 and 7.

Samir Omar, CEO of VirtuPort in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and USA, said the 10th edition of the MENAISC2022 addresses important topics aligned with Saudi Arabias Vision 2030 including enabling secure digital transformation and a focus on the human capital development of nationals as well as the women empowerment in cybersecurity.

It will focus on supporting companies and government agencies tasked with the protection of critical network infrastructure to reduce the risks of cyberattacks.

Omar is a veteran in the cybersecurity industry who has expansive experience spanning 25 years. Through his global experience, he worked with government agencies, financial institutions, and telecommunications companies providing security and risk management solutions and expertise.

Surge in cyberattacks

Omar highlighted the importance of the timing of the conference as it coincides with an unprecedented surge in cyberattacks targeting the infrastructure of many countries posing a threat to 12 vital infrastructure sectors. Any potential damage to these sectors will have devastating effects on the economy, health, safety, and security of countries, he said.

The conference will tackle a wide range of topics under the main theme, including Artificial Intelligence for a flexible and efficient energy industry, digital transformation, smart cities, threats and risks facing the supply chain and how to confront them, cyber resilience, business continuity, disaster recovery, and safe artificial intelligence in public safety, healthcare, cloud security, and third-party risk analysis in addition to, cyber security integration of critical IT infrastructure, Operational Technologies (OT), and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Omar said the conference will support the protection of critical infrastructure, as well as enhance cooperation between stakeholders.

He said this years MENAISC2022 will spotlight ways of achieving and increasing the resilience of infrastructure and its ability to adapt to changing conditions so that they are able to withstand and recover in the event of a cyberattack.

The resilience and security of critical infrastructure depends on cooperation between stakeholders. The conference will encourage the facilitation of this cooperation between stakeholders, allowing free communication between them and the sharing of reliable information. Enhancing the security and resilience of critical infrastructure requires equitable representation and participation of relevant stakeholders from all sectors, the CEO added.

Omar added that Saudi Arabia National Cybersecurity Authority has already played an important role of protecting the infrastructure from cyberattacks and has been the catalyst for improved security awareness and investments in the cybersecurity. According to a 2020 report by the US Saudi Business Council, the Saudi cybersecurity market size is expected to be valued at $5.6 billion by 2023.  TradeArabia News Service
Review: A prison experiment gone wrong in Spiderhead View Photo

George Saunders short story Escape from Spiderhead is not, you might say, an obviously cinematic piece. Its the kind of subtly unsettling work  stark, moody and dialogue heavy  that could easily be a play or a haunting experimental film. So its an especially bold leap to use it as the inspiration for a starry, big budget, Netflix-subscriber-driving event movie, as theyve done with  Spiderhead, which starts streaming Friday. But stranger things have worked for the streamer and who doesnt like a slick, dystopian sci-fi?

Originally published in The New Yorker in 2010, Escape from Spiderhead is about a group of prisoners living in a specialized facility who are being subjected to experimental mood-altering drugs, with names like Verbaluce, which makes you speak eloquently, and Darkenfloxx, which makes you feel about as badly as a person can feel. The audience experiences the world through one of the inmates, Jeff, who is starting to question the tests, the drugs and the mysterious leader of the facility, Abnesti, who keeps an open-door policy in the Spiderhead to foster trust and respect with the prisoners.

You have to admire the ambition behind those who had the idea to adapt the story. Screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese (Deadpool) needed to make many big choices and leaps to stretch it out to feature-length: They added backstories, love interests and flashbacks. Director Joseph Kosinski and his team, including cinematographer Claudio Miranda (who also teamed with him on Top Gun: Maverick) further had to dream up an entire look for Spiderhead, too. They went with dystopian brutalism plopped in the middle of a tropical paradise.

Jeff is played by Miles Teller (who also worked with Kosinski on Top Gun: Maverick and the underseen firefighter drama Only the Brave) and Abnesti is taken on by Chris Hemsworth, who also produced. The writers have turned Abnesti into a more blatant eccentric, a visionary pharma/tech genius who makes grand speeches about the perks of life in Spiderhead and the virtuousness of the experiments while also sampling his own product on the side. Its quite a good role for Hemsworth, who excels at being charming with an undercurrent of mania. Theres even an incredible dance sequence to Roxy Musics More Than This that is perhaps on par with Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizunos Ex Machina moves. Like his brief turn in Ghostbusters, it makes you eager to see him keep branching out beyond Thor.

Jeff, meanwhile, is somewhat stripped of his edge and tragic poetry and is turned into a bro with a conscience and visceral memories of the ill-fated night he decided to drive drunk. And he gets an actual, not drug enhanced love interest, which under normal circumstances would seem a bit cliche but here is made interesting because of Jurnee Smollets raw and captivating performance.

Some of these choices work, some are silly and some come across as downright mean. In the story, Jeff is subjected to the love serum twice to see what happens with two different women described as equally so-so. Both times he falls deeply, albeit briefly, in love. In the film, however, one woman is conventionally attractive and the other is styled as though she may be a meth addict. Its turned into a joke, and a somewhat misogynistic one at that, and the poetic connection is reduced to an over-the-top sex bit. Theres a gay panic bit, too, and an odd subplot about an inmate who has been stealthily drawing on the walls with feces. Its not surprising that the writers of Deadpool and Zombieland veered towards humor, but it does at times feel less like pointed satire and more like crass irreverence  and the tonal shifts come at the expense of the overall impact of the story.

Ultimately, Spiderhead just seems a little unsure of what it is or what its supposed to be. One of the inmates is even reading Saunders Tenth of December in one shot. It could send the mind spinning with meta questions about whether hed made it to Escape from Spiderhead yet. Instead its just plopped there like an Easter egg to nowhere.

 Spiderhead, a Netflix release streaming Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for language, violent content, sexual content. Running time: 107 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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MPAA Definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

By LINDSEY BAHR

AP Film Writer
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  At least 35 children have died in recent weeks due to drought and conflict in Ethiopias northeastern Afar region, according to a local hospital and the medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

The announcement Thursday came days after a government minister denied that people have died due to food shortages.

Thirty-five children have died in the last eight weeks alone and more than two-thirds of those patients died within 48 hours of admission, Doctors Without Borders said in a statement noting an escalating crisis in the mostly arid region.

What scares us most at this point is that we are only beginning to see the very tip of the iceberg, and already it is overwhelming, said Raphael Veicht, the groups emergency coordinator in Ethiopias capital, Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia is facing one of the worst droughts in the past 40 years following consecutive failed rains in the Horn of Africa. The Afar region also saw some of the fiercest fighting in the war that erupted in Ethiopias neighboring Tigray region in November 2020.

Hussein Adem, director of Dubti Hospital in Afar, the largest in the region and serving more than 1 million people, confirmed the childrens deaths to The Associated Press and said that people flooding into the hospital are coming from conflict areas bordering Tigray.

The number of malnourished and sick children arriving at our hospital is rising steadily. Hence, the mortality rate among children is also rising, he said, adding his team is trying to send some to other healthcare centers. Our hospital ward is full, so we are using tents. Even that is getting full, so we are treating some of them in the corridors.

Both United Nations and Ethiopian government figures indicate that millions of Ethiopians in other parts of the country also face food shortages.

Fitsum Assefa, Ethiopias minister of planning and development, told cabinet members on Monday that 7.4 million people in the South, Oromia and Somali regions need food assistance. An additional 5.2 million in Tigray, around 600,000 in Afar and 8.7 million in the Amhara region also need food assistance and are receiving assistance both by the government and donors, she said. But she denied the loss of human lives, calling the efforts a big success.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a tweet on Feb. 25 warned that drought-induced hunger in the Somali and Borana areas of the East African nation was causing a loss of life among children and the elderly. He added, If we wait for the onset of the rainy season, we will lose many of our citizens.

On Tuesday, the U.N. appealed for $847 million to help support 4.2 million people, half of them children, in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

The nutrition situation in the region is extremely concerning as malnutrition rates are increasing, particularly in Ethiopia, and in the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya and Somalia, it said.
GOMA, Congo (AP)  Congos military accused Rwanda of no less than an invasion after M23 rebels captured a key town on Monday. The military vowed that Congolese forces would defend their homeland, marking a dramatic escalation in tensions between the two Central African neighbors.

The statement from Gen. Sylvain Ekenge, spokesman for the military governor of North Kivu province, came hours after the town of Bunagana fell into the hands of the M23.

The Rwandan defense forces have this time decided to violate  our territorial integrity by occupying the border town of Bunagana, the military said in a statement, adding that it constituted no less than invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There was no immediate reaction from the government of Rwanda, but the government there has strongly denied accusations over the years that is supports the Congolese rebel group. Many of the M23 fighters are Congolese ethnic Tutsis and Rwandas president is of Rwandan Tutsi descent.

In a statement Monday, a spokesman for the rebel group called on Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi to open direct negotiations with them and said they seized the town only to make it safe enough for civilians to return after they fled recent violence.

In the event of a new threat against our positions or the civilian population, our movements troops have received the order to follow and annihilate the threat no matter where it comes from, M23 spokesman Willy Ngoma said in the statement.

Relations between Rwanda and Congo have been fraught for decades. Rwanda alleges that Congo gave refuge to the ethnic Hutus who carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide that killed at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The two countries have long accused each other of supporting various rival armed groups.

Late last month, Rwandas military accused neighboring Congolese forces of injuring several civilians in cross-border shelling.

The M23 rose to prominence more than a decade ago when its fighters seized Goma, the largest city in Congos east which sits along the border with Rwanda. After a peace deal, many of M23s fighters were integrated into the national military.

Then earlier this year the group appeared to make a comeback, launching an offensive against Congos military after saying the government had failed to live up to its decade-long promises.

The key town that was seized Monday, Bunagana, is only 60 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of Goma, which also serves as a hub for international aid organizations and the U.N. peacekeeping mission known as MONUSCO.

Bunagana, near the border with Uganda, is also an important transit point for goods being imported into Congo from as far away as China.

In Uganda, police spokesman Fred Enanga said Monday that more than 100 Congolese soldiers, fleeing fierce fighting with rebels, crossed the border and surrendered to Ugandan officials. He said the Congolese soldiers will be moved to Rutshuru, another eastern Congo town near the Uganda border.

While the rebels claimed they took the town of Bunagana in order to stabilize it, local leaders on Monday urged Congos military to reclaim it.

We deplore the M23 rebel attack and call on the Congolese government to track down and neutralize these rebel groups so that state authority can return, said Innocent Ndagije, a civic leader in Bunagana.

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Associated Press writers Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda and Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed.

By AL-HADJI KUDRA MALIRO and JUSTIN KABUMBA

Associated Press
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP)  Gunmen killed at least 55 people over the weekend in northern Burkina Faso, authorities said Monday, the latest attack in the West African country where mounting violence is blamed on Islamic extremists.

Suspected militants targeted civilians in Seytenga in Seno province, government spokesman Wendkouni Joel Lionel Bilgo said at a news conference. While the government put the official toll at 55, others put the figure far higher.

Attacks linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group are soaring in Burkina Faso, particularly in the north. Jihadists killed at least 160 people in an attack in the town of Solhan in June 2021.

In January, mutinous soldiers ousted the democratically elected president, promising to secure the nation, but violence has only increased. The government is asking people to remain united in the fight against the insurgents.

While no group claimed the weekend attack, conflict analysts say it was likely carried out by the Islamic State group.

In recent weeks, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara have been the most aggressive group, notably in Seno and Oudalan provinces. In addition to attacks against security forces, civilians have also been targeted, said Rida Lyammouri, senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a Moroccan-based organization focused on economics and policy.

This is a major blow to security forces and puts them on the back foot again, indicating they are far from being able to secure the area and protect civilians, he said.

Nearly 5,000 people have died over the last two years in Burkina Faso because of violence blamed on Islamic extremists. Another 2 million people have fled their homes, deepening the countrys humanitarian crisis.

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This story corrects the date of the attack on Solhan to July 2021.

Associated Press
Zain, a leading mobile voice and data services operator in seven Middle Eastern and African markets, announces it has successfully completed the first live trial in the region of Open and Virtual Radio Access Network (Open cRAN) in Kuwait.

This innovative achievement enhances Zain Kuwaits position on the global ICT map, and was implemented in collaboration with both Mavenir, a leading network software provider building the future of networks with cloud-native software that runs on any cloud and transforms the way the world connects, and with Masiya, a leading system integrator in the Middle East.

This successful live trial in Kuwait follows Zain Groups key contribution to the OpenRAN support agreement in 2021 with other leading regional mobile operators driving innovation across the Middle East.

Mavenir, in partnership with Masiya, Intel and Dell successfully deployed Mavenir Radios Units (RU), fully containerised Distributed Units (DUs) and Central Units (CUs) software on Mavenirs Webscale Platform (MWP) acting as a CaaS / PaaS layer running on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware from Intel and Dell.

Nawaf Al Gharabally, Zain Group & Zain Kuwait Chief Technology Officer said: "As a pioneer of mobile telecommunications playing a leading role in the digital transformation vision of the region, Zain is consistently seeking technologies that contribute to building a strong sustainable future for Kuwait and the markets we proudly serve."

"This Open cRAN trial empowers Zain with better understanding and practice experience on new technical trends for further development, that will enable us to continue offering distinct mobile services to our valued customers," he stated.

Dr Virtyt Koshi, SVP, GM EMEA, Mavenir, expressed delighted at working with Zain Group on delivering Cloud Native Open cRAN in Kuwait City.

"We have deployed open interface Radio Units, fully containerized 4G and 5G RAN software functions on Kubernetes based PaaS/CaaS and COTS hardware, connected through the existing Core network. Digital cloud-based solutions with open interfaces bring an opportunity for a more efficient and faster deployment, new consumer and enterprise offerings, while minimizing capex investment and opex in Radio networks going forward," he noted.

Ibrahim AlZamel, Chief Operating Officer of Masiya, said: "As a long-time selected partner of Zain for over 21 years, we are pleased to be part of this regional breakthrough."

"Masiya launched the first MMSC back in 2001 in the Middle East and we are pleased to be a cornerstone in trialing the first Open cRAN in the region with Zain," he stated.

The benefit of Open cRAN for Zain Group in Kuwait will be widespread, as they will receive the latest products and services at a faster time to market while using the latest mobile access networks. Moreover, this technology will enhance Zains cloud offerings and brings Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the forefront, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
UK moves to rewrite Brexit rules; EU threatens legal action View Photo

LONDON (AP)  Britains government on Monday proposed new legislation that would unilaterally rewrite post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, despite opposition from some U.K. lawmakers and EU officials who say the move violates international law.

The proposed bill seeks to remove customs checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. That will override parts of the trade treaty that Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed with the European Union less than two years ago.

Britains government maintained its move is justified under international law because of the genuinely exceptional situation, and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss blamed the EU for blocking a negotiated settlement. The European Commission said it could take legal action against the U.K.

Existing trade rules provide business operators in Northern Ireland with access to the EU single market for goods. The U.K. governments approach puts this access  and related opportunities  at risk, said European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic.

In Ireland, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said it was very regrettable for a country like the U.K. to renege on an international treaty. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed the sentiment, saying there was no reason for the U.K. to make such a move.

Its a rejection of all the agreements we reached between the European Union and Great Britain, Scholz said. The European Union will react to this as one and it has the whole toolbox at its disposal.

Brushing aside criticism, Johnson told reporters that the proposed change is relatively simple to do.

Frankly, its a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things, he told LBC Radio.

He argued that his governments higher and prior legal commitment is to the 1998 Good Friday agreement that brought peace and stability to Northern Ireland.

Arrangements for Northern Ireland  the only part of the U.K. that shares a land border with an EU nation  have proved the thorniest issue in Britains divorce from the bloc, which became final at the end of 2020. At the center of the dispute is the Northern Ireland Protocol, which now regulates trade ties between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, part of the EU.

Britain and the EU agreed in their Brexit deal that the Irish land border would be kept free of customs posts and other checks because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Instead, to protect the EUs single market, there are checks on some goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

But the arrangement has proved politically damaging for Johnson because it treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party has refused to return to the regions power-sharing government until the protocol is scrapped or substantially changed.

The bill to override that arrangement is expected to face opposition in Parliament, including from members of Johnsons own Conservative ranks. Critics say unilaterally changing the protocol would be illegal and would damage Britains standing with other countries because its part of a treaty considered binding under international law.

In Brussels, Sefcovic said the protocol was the one and only solution we could jointly find to protect the hard-earned gains of the peace process in Northern Ireland.

He added that the EU remains open to discussions with the British government to find a solution to the dispute.

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Associated Press writers Samuel Petrequin in Brussels and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Follow APs coverage of Brexit at https://apnews.com/hub/brexit.

By SYLVIA HUI and DANICA KIRKA

Associated Press
NATO chief: Sweden ready to address Turkish security fears View Photo

STOCKHOLM (AP)  NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday he was glad that the Swedish government has confirmed its readiness to address Turkeys concerns as part of assuming the obligations of future NATO membership.

After decades of military non-alignment, Russias war in Ukraine pushed Finland and Sweden to apply to join NATO in May. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, accuses the Nordic nations of supporting Kurdish militants deemed by Turkey to be terrorists and has vetoed their entry into the alliance until they change their policies.

Sweden is taking the Turkish concerns very seriously and not at least their security concerns when it comes to the fight against terrorism, said Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and added that her ambition is that we should have these matters resolved.

Stoltenberg said Sweden has already started to change its counter-terrorism legislation and that the Scandinavian country will ensure that the legal framework for arms exports will reflect their future status as a NATO member with new commitments to allies.

These are two important steps to address the concerns that Turkey has raised, he said..

The aim is to solve those issues as soon as possible, to be able to welcome Finland and Sweden as full members as soon as possible, he said.

Stoltenberg declined to say whether the matter should be resolved before the NATO summit in Madrid on June 28 or before the Swedish Parliament election on Sept. 11. Sweden and Finland have been invited to attend the meeting in Spain.

After Mondays talks, Stoltenberg and Andersson went for a boat ride in the lake next to a Swedish government manor southwest of Stockholm.

On Sunday, Stoltenberg met with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in Finland, saying that Turkey has legitimate concerns over terrorism and other issues that need to be taken seriously.

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP)  A jumbo jet-sized mystery has landed in the lap of Argentine officials, who are trying to determine what to do with a Venezuelan-owned Boeing 747 cargo plane with a load of automotive parts and an unusually large crew of 17, including at least five Iranians.

The plane operated by Venezuelas state-owned Emtrasur cargo line has been stuck since June 6 at Buenos Aires main international airport, unable to depart because of U.S. sanctions against Iran. and suspicions about its crew.

Security Minister Anibal Fernandez said Monday that the government and legal authorities are studying the situation.

He said foreign intelligence agencies advised that part of the crew belonged to companies related to the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard of Iran, which has been officially listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government since 2007.

He also said that the planes operators had reported a smaller number of crewmembers than were actually aboard  an unusually large contingent for a cargo plane. It was carrying parts for an automotive assembly plant, though he did not specify which one.

Until being sold to Emtrasur about a year ago, the plane had been owned by Mahan Air of Iran, a line the U.S. government has sanctioned for allegedly aiding the Quds Force and terrorist activities. Numerous foreign companies over the years have been sanctioned for doing business with Mahan.

A spokesman for Mahan Air, Hossein Zolanvari, earlier told the state-run IRNA news agency that his company sold the Boeing to a Venezuelan company about a year ago.

Mentioning Mahan Air in connection with the impounded airplane has aimed at political purposes, he said. He said the planes crew also have no connection to Mahan Air.

The planes crewmembers have been lodged at a hotel and Fernandez said the Venezuelans are free to leave if they want, while the Iranians can move about in the capital.

Fernandez said the plane had stopped in Paraguay in May. On June 6, it was headed for Ezeiza airport on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, but climatic conditions forced it to stop instead in the city of Cordoba before finally reaching the Argentine capital, where it attracted the attention of immigration authorities, who confiscated the crews passports.

Emtrasur began flying this year, operating out of the Venezuelan militarys Libertador Air Base.

Flight tracking services show the plane also had made stops in earlier months in Mexico and Venezuela.

Argentina itself has suffered from terror attacks that authorities blame on Iran, notably a 1992 explosion at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and another at a Jewish organization in 1994. Argentina is seeking the arrest of several Iranian officials, though Iran denies involvement.

By ALMUDENA CALATRAVA

Associated Press
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Thieves broke into a freight storage area at the Pacific coast seaport of Manzanillo and stole 20 freight containers loaded with partly refined gold and silver ore and television sets, the Mexican Employers Federation said Monday.

Jose Medina Mora, president of the federation, said the large-scale robbery was a sign of rising crime in Mexico.

There is a growing lack of safety, and this is a sign of what is happening in the country and it requieres that authorities take action, Medina Mora said.

The state of Colima, where Manzanillo is, has not officially commented on the June 5 robbery.

But Horacio Duarte, the head of Mexicos customs service, confirmed the robbery and said organized crime was involved.

This was a very serious organized crime operation, Duarte said.

According to local press reports, about 10 armed thieves forced their way into a private freight dispatch yard near the port, subdued employees and then took several hours to search for the shipping containers they wanted.

The thieves then apparently hooked up the containers to trucks and drove way with them. No sign of the containers, or their contents, has been seen since.

Freight theft is a serious problem in Mexico, but it usually involves theives hijacking one truck at a time on highways  not driving off with 20 freight containers.

Articles like television sets are usually quickly sold off in the countrys extensive black markets, but it was unclear where thieves could sell tons of partly processed gold or silver ore. Any refiner would be likely to ask questions about where it came from.

Prosecutors and police in Colima have had a more pressing problem on their hands, with residents blocking roads to protest kidnapping and killing of local people. Two police officers have also been shot to death so far this month in the state, which has been dominated by the Jalisco drug cartel.
New Melones Reservoir View Photo

Tuolumne County, CA  The plane that crashed into New Melones Reservoir on Saturday was registered out of Bend, Oregon.

We reported earlier that the crash happened at around two oclock in the afternoon. It was an amphibious plane, meaning it can both take off and land on the water. The FAA has identified it as a single-engine Maule MX-7.

Tuolumne County Sheriffs Office spokesperson, Ashley Boujikian, adds, Boating unit deputies responded with lights and sirens. When they arrived, they located the pilot sitting on top of the submerged plane. Through investigation, deputies found the pilot was taking off when the plane overturned for an unknown reason. The pilot was able to escape the plane while underwater and reported he was uninjured. Deputies assisted the pilot in returning to shore and towed the plane as close to the shore as possible.

The pontoons on the plane started taking on water and it began it sink. The sheriffs office was forced to cut the tow line and the location of the plane was marked for future recovery efforts.

The name of the uninjured pilot has not been released.
Officials: Man charged in Maryland deputys shooting death View Photo

PITTSVILLE, Md. (AP)  A 20-year-old man was arrested and charged Monday in the fatal shooting of a sheriffs deputy who was trying to arrest him on multiple felony warrants, authorities on Marylands Eastern Shore announced.

Wicomico County Deputy First Class Glenn Hilliard and another deputy went to an apartment complex in Pittsville on Sunday evening to arrest Austin Davidson of Delmar, Maryland, but initially they did not see anyone who matched the description and they left, Sheriff Mike Lewis said at a news conference. When Hilliard returned to the complex parking lot about 10 minutes later, he spotted a man leaving a stairwell who matched Davidsons description to a T, down to the description of the backpack he was carrying with caution tape on it, Lewis said.

When Hilliard drove closer, the man ran off and the deputy chased him around the back of the complex, Lewis said. Hilliard gained on him quickly, announced that he would use a stun gun and deployed it, but it was not effective, Lewis said.

As Davidson approached the woods, he turned and fired multiple shots, striking Hilliard at least once, Lewis said. The shooting was captured on Hilliards body-worn camera, he said. The deputy did not get a chance to get his gun out of the holster, Lewis said.

Hilliard was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Maryland State Police said in a news release.

More than 20 law enforcement agencies were involved in a search for Davidson and about two hours later, he walked out of the woods and surrendered, Lewis said.

Davidson. who was wanted for four outstanding arrest warrants, was charged Monday with first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault and other offenses in Hilliards death, state police said. He was being held without bond and waived an attorney at his initial appearance, according to online court records.

After serving at other departments in the region, Hilliard had been with the sheriffs office for about 10 years, Lewis said. He would have turned 42 later this month, the sheriffs office said.

Lewis described Hilliard as an incredible detective who was skilled with electronics  fixing peoples cellphones and mastering the department drones  but he was also a jokester, who was a beloved member of the sheriffs office family. He said Hilliard was good-looking, dressed better probably than most people in this office and always had a smile on his face.

Hilliards children, including a 12-year-old son who looks just like his father, are grieving their loss, Lewis said.

Its a pain thats inescapable, he said.

At the news conference, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan met Monday with the deputys family and said Hilliards wife wanted to make sure people knew Hilliard died doing what he loved.

The days ahead will be challenging, but for now, we are mourning the loss of an incredible human being, the sheriffs office news release said. Deputy Glenn Hilliard was a son, a husband and a father to three beautiful children, a brother to those he worked with, and an exemplary public servant to the citizens of Wicomico County and to the State of Maryland. Our hearts and prayers go out to Glenns family during this difficult time.
Port Aransas Fisherman's Wharf

Last week, a Texas angler caught a 137-pound Cubera Snapper off the Gulf Coast in Port Aransas, Texas. The catch could break the previous world record.

A June 10 Facebook post on the Port Aransas Fishermans Wharf page described the catch as a "pending" Texas and world record. The Port Aransas Fishermans Wharf said the potential record is still in review, adding that the process usually takes two to three weeks.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  The Western U.S. on Monday marked another day of hot, dry and windy weather as crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires that had forced hundreds of people to leave their homes.

Roughly 2,500 homes have been evacuated because of two wildfires burning on the outskirts of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, officials said at an afternoon briefing.

We all have felt the pain of watching our beautiful mountain burn. We acknowledged what an incredibly difficult time this is for those who have been evacuated and for those whose homes have been threatened, Coconino County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Patrice Horstman said.

The wildfire prompted the county to declare an emergency. It's been fueled by high winds that have grounded aircraft as an option for firefighting. Crews are planning on being able to use aircraft Tuesday as winds moderate, authorities said.

Incident Cmdr. Aaron Graeser said the Flagstaff-area fire is one of the countrys top priorities for firefighting resources.

Every potential fire source was a problem today, and every potential unburned area was receptive to fire today, Graeser said. That puts us in an interesting situation of trying to, again, assign resources the best we can based on that.

Current conditions have also kept fire managers from being able to better map it by air but the fire is estimated to be 8 square miles (20 square kilometers).

Crews were expecting wind gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph) as they battled the blaze that has burned through parts of the footprint left by another springtime fire that destroyed over two dozen homes as well as parts of other fire scars.

So far, one home and a secondary structure have been lost in the fire first reported Sunday, Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Bret Axlund said.

The Arizona Snowbowl ski resort closed as a precaution because of the wildfire  the second to hit the area this year.

It's literally like deja vu, said Coconino County sheriff's spokesman Jon Paxton. "We are in the same exact spot doing the same exact thing as we were a month and a half ago. People are tired.

Two other smaller wildfires northeast of the blaze were also burning Monday.

Wildfires broke out early this spring in multiple states in the Western U.S., where climate change and an enduring drought are fanning the frequency and intensity of forest and grassland fires.

The number of square miles burned so far this year is more than double the 10-year national average, and states like New Mexico already have set records with devastating blazes that destroyed hundreds of homes while causing environmental damage that is expected to affect water supplies.

Nationally, more than 6,200 wildland firefighters were battling nearly three dozen uncontained fires that had charred over 1 million acres (4,408 square kilometers), according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Even in Alaska, forecasters have warned that many southwestern fires have grown exceptionally over the last week, which is unusual for that area. Southwest Alaska normally experiences shorter periods of high fire danger because intermittent rain can provide relief, but since mid-May the region has been hot and windy, helping to dry out vegetation.

Favorable weather Monday helped slow the progression of a tundra wildfire just over 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) away from an Alaska Native village. Moderate temperatures and a shift in the wind that had been driving the fire toward St. Marys will allow firefighters to directly attack the flames and increase protections for the Yupik community.

The lightning-sparked fire is estimated at about 193 square miles (500 square kilometers). It's burning dry grass and shrubs in southwest Alaska's mostly treeless tundra.

In California, evacuations were ordered for about 300 remote homes near a wildfire that flared up over the weekend in forest land northeast of Los Angeles near the Pacific Crest Trail in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The blaze saw renewed growth Sunday afternoon and by midday Monday had scorched about 1.5 square miles (3.9 square km) of pine trees and dry brush, fire spokesperson Dana Dierkes said.

The fuel is very dry, so it acts like a ladder, carrying flames from the bottom of the trees to the very top, Dierkes said. Crews were also contending with unpredictable winds that were expected to strengthen later in the day, she said.

Aside from mandatory evacuations for some, the remainder of the mountain town of Wrightwood, with about 4,500 residents, was under an evacuation warning. Several roads also were closed.

The fire was 18% contained.

Five people were rescued from a dangerous area after a wildfire broke out Monday near Dulzura in San Diego County near the Mexican border and spread to nearly 600 acres (242 hectares), authorities said.

Two of those rescued were taken to a hospital but there was no immediate word on how they were injured or their conditions, fire officials said.

Fire conditions were elevated because of warm and dry weekend weather across Southern California. Monday was expected to be cooler, but another heat wave was expected at midweek, the National Weather Service said.

In Northern California, a 50-mile (80-km) stretch of State Route 70 was closed indefinitely on Monday after mud, boulders and dead trees inundated lanes during flash floods along a wildfire burn scar.

Several drivers were rescued Sunday evening from debris flowing on the highway when hillsides burned bare by last years enormous Dixie Fire came loose. No injuries were reported.

The causes of the latest California fires were under investigation.

U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers cited a 57-year-old camper for lighting toilet paper on fire and placing it under a rock Saturday near the origin of the Arizona wildfire. The fire was reported a day later. Court documents show the man told authorities he tried to put the fire out with his sleeping bag, but his attorney said in federal court Monday that doesnt mean his client was responsible for sparking the blaze.

Flagstaff resident Janetta Kathleen rode her horse, Squish, up a hill to get a better look at the wildfire Sunday evening and watched it creep toward homes in the shadow of the mountain. Her home isn't directly in the fire's path, but her family, two bulldogs and horses are ready to go at a moment's notice.

I need to know what's going on because I have decisions to make for my family, she said. If the winds shift, we'll be in trouble.

Hikers, campers and others who were out enjoying the forest also had to leave Sunday. A shelter was set up at a middle school.

Strong winds sent embers across U.S. Route 89, the main route to the turnoff for the Grand Canyon's east rim entrance, through the Navajo Nation and up into Utah. Many people commute between the reservation and Flagstaff for work. Parts of the highway remained closed Monday.

We're not working directly on suppressing the fire to get the whole thing out right now, said Coconino National Forest spokesman Brady Smith. That's not our focus and it's not possible right now. Right now, it's going to be focused on protecting life and property."

Smoke from the fire near Flagstaff caused hazy skies in Colorado on Monday, obscuring views of the Rocky Mountains from Denver and other cities along the states Front Range.

Meanwhile, firefighters worked to contain a small wildfire burning in juniper and pinion pine that briefly caused evacuation orders Sunday in the San Luis Valleys Rio Grande National Forest in southern Colorado.

The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings for high fire danger in central and southern parts of Colorado as well as parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Winds are expected to ease after Monday with some moisture moving in later this week in parts of the Southwest, the weather service said.

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Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska; Jim Anderson in Denver; and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.
HELSINKI (AP)  NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday that Turkey has legitimate concerns over terrorism and other issues that need to be taken seriously.

Turkey has accused Finland and Sweden of supporting Kurdish militants and says it will not back the two Nordic nations joining NATO until they change their policies.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, Stoltenberg stressed that no other NATO ally has suffered more terrorist attacks than Turkey and pointed to its strategic geographic location with neighbors like Iraq and Syria.

These are legitimate concerns. This is about terrorism, its about weapons exports, Stoltenberg said. We have to address the security concerns of all allies, including Turkish concerns about the terrorist group PKK.

He spoke at Finland's presidential summer residence Kultaranta in western Finland.

After decades of military non-alignment, Russias war in Ukraine pushed Finland and Sweden to apply to join NATO in May. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, accuses the Nordic nations of supporting Kurdish militants deemed by Turkey to be terrorists and has vetoed their entry into the 30-member alliance.

When a vital key ally as Turkey raises concerns on terrorism then of course we have to sit down and take them seriously. And thats exactly what we do, Stoltenberg said.

The demands from Ankara to Helsinki and Stockholm also include lifting restrictions on arms exports to Turkey and extraditing members of certain Kurdish organizations that are opposed to Erdogans government.

In the past weeks, NATOs chief has been trying to resolve the dispute but he did not disclose Sunday whether any progress has been made.

He was to attend an annual discussion panel in Kultaranta later Sunday together with Finnish and Nordic politicians, foreign and security policy experts and military representatives.

Stoltenberg will visit Sweden on Monday for talks with the Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.

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LONDON (AP)  A British governments plan to deport asylum-seekers of various nationalities to Rwanda is set to go ahead after an appeals court on Monday refused to block the policy that the U.N.s top refugee official said sets a dangerous precedent for migrants fleeing war and oppression.

Immediately after the decision by a three-justice panel of the Court of Appeal in London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's office said the first deportation flight would go ahead as scheduled on Tuesday.

Migrant advocacy groups have attacked the policy as inhumane and illegal ever since April, when Johnson announced the plan as way to deter people from risking their lives by paying smugglers to take them to Britain in leaky inflatable boats.

Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, lashed out against the policy, describing it as all wrong.

If the British government is truly interested in protecting lives, it should work with other countries to target the people smugglers and provide safe routes for asylum seekers, not simply shunt migrants to other countries, Grandi said after the ruling.

The precedent that this creates is catastrophic for a concept that needs to be shared, like asylum, he told reporters in Geneva.

Mondays ruling was focused on the narrow question of whether a temporary injunction should be issued blocking deportation flights to Rwanda while a case challenging the legality of the policy moves through the courts.

A coalition of immigration rights advocates and public employees unions had asked the Court of Appeal to overturn a lower court ruling, arguing that the judge had made a mistake when he decided Friday not to issue an injunction.

But the Court of Appeal rejected the case, saying the judge had properly balanced the issues before him. Under U.K. law, a court must find there is strong evidence a government policy is likely to be ruled illegal before it can issue a temporary injunction.

Further legal challenges are under way. A similar case filed by lawyers representing a different group of plaintiffs was heard in the High Court on Monday.

While a major precedent is at stake, the number of people immediately affected by the cases has been steadily whittled down as lawyers challenge the merits of each deportation order. The charity Care4Calais said all but eight of the 31 migrants originally told they would be on the flight to Rwanda have had their tickets canceled.

Raza Husain, one of the lawyers for the migrants, argued Monday that the governments plan involved the forced removal of asylum-seekers to a country they dont want to travel to as part of a policy intended to deter others from trying to enter Britain.

This amounts, on any view, to a serious interference with basic dignity  where those individuals have already suffered significant trauma and have mental health issues, he said in documents filed with the court.

The court cases came amid a bitter political debate over Johnsons deportation plan.

Migrants deported under the program would be forced to apply for asylum in Rwanda, not Britain. The U.K. paid Rwanda 120 million pounds ($158 million) up front and will make additional payments based on the number of people deported.

The leadership of the Church of England has joined the opposition, sending a joint letter to the Times of London to be published Tuesday.

Whether or not the first deportation flight leaves Britain today for Rwanda, this policy should shame us as a nation, the letter said. The shame is our own, because our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries.

According to newspaper reports, Prince Charles has also waded into the issue. The heir to the throne privately described the Rwanda policy as appalling, the Times reported over the weekend, citing an unidentified source. Charles office declined to comment, while insisting the Prince of Wales was politically neutral.

Johnson defended the policy.

I think that most people can see that the criminal gangs ... need to be stopped, he said. That model needs to be frustrated.

He also dismissed the significance of the legal challenges.

I always said that it will begin with a lot of teething problems and you will have a lot of legal action against it and they will try and delay it  thats inevitable, he said during a visit to a farm.

-

Associated Press Writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.
Bahrain's oil and gas sector remains dynamic and many developmental projects are under way to support the national economy and the Economic Recovery Plan, it has been revealed.

The Kingdom's projects will match global standards and productivity, said Oil and Gas Holding Company Chairman Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa.

Shaikh Nasser, who is also the Representative of His Majesty the King for Humanitarian Work and Youth Affairs, paid a visit to Tatweer Petroleum company, accompanied by some board members. He was received by Tatweer Petroleum Board Chairman, Eng. Faisal Mohammed Al Mahroos, and a number of officials from the company, said a Bahrain News Agency report.

During the visit, Shaikh Nasser listened to a detailed briefing on the companys organisational, operational and developmental procedures and its plan for 2022.

He was also informed about the initiatives that will be launched by the company in the future to back the kingdoms efforts to develop the oil and gas sector.

He was also briefed about the procedures taken by the company to ensure full commitment to the highest health, safety and environment protection standards.

Shaikh Nasser asserted that the oil and gas sector enjoys every support from His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister.

He directed to utilise the latest innovative technologies to upgrade the oil exploration and field management.

He stressed the support of the Oil and Gas Holding Board of Directors to all developmental projects of Tatweer Petroleum and all operational companies under the umbrella of the Oil and Gas Holding company.

Eng Faisal Al Mahroos, Board Chairman of Tatweer Petroleum, expressed appreciation for the visit by Shaikh Nasser, describing it as an incentive to continue working at high tempo to carry out the companys plans and programmes.
LONDON (AP)  Britains government on Monday proposed new legislation that would unilaterally rewrite post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, despite opposition from some U.K. lawmakers and EU officials who say the move violates international law.

The proposed bill seeks to remove customs checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. That will override parts of the trade treaty that Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed with the European Union less than two years ago.

Britain's government maintained its move is justified under international law because of the genuinely exceptional situation," and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss blamed the EU for blocking a negotiated settlement. The European Commission said it could take legal action against the U.K.

Existing trade rules "provide business operators in Northern Ireland with access to the EU single market for goods. The U.K. governments approach puts this access  and related opportunities  at risk," said European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic.

In Ireland, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said it was very regrettable for a country like the U.K. to renege on an international treaty." German Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed the sentiment, saying there was no reason" for the U.K. to make such a move.

Its a rejection of all the agreements we reached between the European Union and Great Britain," Scholz said. The European Union will react to this as one and it has the whole toolbox at its disposal.

Brushing aside criticism, Johnson told reporters that the proposed change is relatively simple to do."

Frankly, its a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things," he told LBC Radio.

He argued that his government's higher and prior legal commitment is to the 1998 Good Friday agreement that brought peace and stability to Northern Ireland.

Arrangements for Northern Ireland  the only part of the U.K. that shares a land border with an EU nation  have proved the thorniest issue in Britains divorce from the bloc, which became final at the end of 2020. At the center of the dispute is the Northern Ireland Protocol, which now regulates trade ties between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, part of the EU.

Britain and the EU agreed in their Brexit deal that the Irish land border would be kept free of customs posts and other checks because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Instead, to protect the EUs single market, there are checks on some goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

But the arrangement has proved politically damaging for Johnson because it treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party has refused to return to the regions power-sharing government until the protocol is scrapped or substantially changed.

The bill to override that arrangement is expected to face opposition in Parliament, including from members of Johnson's own Conservative ranks. Critics say unilaterally changing the protocol would be illegal and would damage Britains standing with other countries because it's part of a treaty considered binding under international law.

In Brussels, Sefcovic said the protocol was the one and only solution we could jointly find to protect the hard-earned gains of the peace process in Northern Ireland."

He added that the EU remains open to discussions with the British government to find a solution to the dispute.

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Associated Press writers Samuel Petrequin in Brussels and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

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USAA has grown to be one of San Antonio's largest companies since it was first founded in 1922, so much that it is not colloquially known as United Services Automobile Association. From USAA Bank to USAA Life Insurance, the company now offers various insurance and financial services through several companies under the USAA name.

As the company celebrates 100 years in operation in San Antonio and across the world, MySA looked to the company's online timeline and Express-News archives to highlight some of its big milestones.

Express-News File Photo

1920s

United Services Automobile Association is founded in San Antonio in June 1922 when 25 Army officers come together to insure each other's automobiles. William Garrison becomes the first president.

Courtesy photo / The History Factory

Maj. Walter Moore purchases vehicle insurance and becomes the first member that same year.

Courtesy of The History Factor

1930s

After USAAs membership doubles to 30,000 in 1931, the then insurance company hires its first woman, Stuart Gwyn, to its management team in 1934.

Courtesy/Courtesy photo

1950s

In 1952, USAA opens an office in Frankfurt, Germany and starts writing international policies. Consuelo Kerford would then become USAAs first executive officer in 1956.

1960s

The growing insurance giant starts offering homeowners insurance in 1962 and then starts offering life insurance with the creation of USAA Life Co. the following year. USAA would also serve its millionth member, Officer Candidate Eugene Butel, in 1969.

WILLIAM LUTHER/EN

1970s

The 70s were a big era of change for USAA, which opens the decade with the formation of USAA Fund Management Co. in 1970, providing mutual fund services.

USAA then opens its current corporate headquarters at 9800 Fredericksburg Road in 1976 and the company reaches $1 billion in assets in 1977. The company also starts toll-free phone service to members in the U.S.

Scott Sines/San Antonio Express-News

1980s

USAA Federal Savings Bank opens in 1983 and the USAA Volunteer Corps is also created to organize employee volunteer efforts in the community.

Staff file art

1990s

Eligibility is extended to enlisted service members in 1996 and USAA launches its website in 1999 so members can take care of business online.

Kin Man Hui / Staff photographer

2000s

USAA is now a giant company that expands to retired military members and their families in 2008. The company then extends that to all men and women currently serving or have served in military as well as their families in 2009.

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

2010s and today

In 2017, USAA serves over 12 million members with a net worth of $31 billion. The company then selected Wayne Peacock as the new CEO in 2020. Peacock becomes the first CEO without a military background.

Now the company has expanded to a large office in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2021. The company now employs over 36,000 employees globally.
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Philip Baker Hall, the prolific character actor known for his roles in films like Boogie Nights and Magnolia and shows such as Seinfeld and Modern Family, has died. He was 90.

Halls wife of nearly 40 years, Holly Wolfle Hall, confirmed the news to Associated Press, saying he died on Sunday in Glendale, Calif. surrounded by loved ones.

Hall had an impressive career of over six decades, holding roles in some of the most beloved movies and television of the modern era. His most memorable turns in film include playing the IRS Boss in Say Anything, Sydney in Hard Eight, Floyd Gondolli in Boogie Nights, Jimmy Gator in Magnolia, Jack Baylor in Bruce Almighty, Sherwood Morrill in Zodiac and a CIA director in Argo. When it came to TV, Hall gave over 200 guest performances, including as library cop Joe Bookman on Seinfeld, Sen. Matt Hunt on The West Wing, Dr. Morrison on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Walt Kleezak on Modern Family.

Born in Toledo, Ohio on Sept. 10, 1931, Hall began his career as a United States Army translator in Germany and a high school teacher before pursuing acting as he entered his 40s. His film debut came in 1970 with Cowards, about the Vietnam War draft evasion, which screened at that years Cannes Film Festival. His first TV guest roles came in the 70s on Good Times (1976), M*A*S*H (1977) and Man From Atlantis (1977). Film work picked up for Hall during the 80s, when he starred as Richard Nixon in Secret Honor (1984) and held supporting roles in movies like Garry Marshalls Nothing in Common (1986), Midnight Run (1988) starring Robert De Niro, John Hughes classic rom-com Say Anything (1989) and Ghostbusters II (1989), in which he played the police commissioner.

Hall kicked off the 90s by appearing on Seinfeld as Joe Bookman, a detective searching for a library book that was long overdue, a role that became so iconic he would reprise it in the shows series finale. Hall also began working with Paul Thomas Anderson during the decade, starring in his short film Cigarettes & Coffee in 1993, which then led to his directorial debut Hard Eight (1996) in which Hall stars alongside John C. Reilly. Hall later appeared in Andersons films Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999), playing an adult theater magnate and a childrens game show host, respectively. Halls career in film continued to grow in the 90s and 2000s with films such as The Truman Show (1998), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Insider (1999), Dogville (2003), Bruce Almighty (2003), Zodiac (2007) and Argo (2012).

More recently, Hall played Walt Kleezak, neighbor to the Dunphy family, in three episodes of Modern Family from 2011 to 2012. His last feature film was 2017s The Last Word, starring Amanda Seyfried, and his last television appearance was in the 2020 series Messiah.

Hall is survived by his wife, his brother, four daughters and four grandchildren.

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Pixars Lightyear will not be playing in Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Kuwait, among other West Asia territories, due to the inclusion of a same sex kiss in the Toy Story spinoff.

The scene, involving a new lesbian space ranger character named Alisha and her partner starting a family together and greeting each other with a kiss on the lips had been originally cut from the film by Disney.

But it was reinstated when Pixar animators spoke out against Disney in an open letter obtained by Variety, saying that Disney had demanded cuts, censoring overtly gay affection and in protest against Disney CEO Bob Chapeks handling of Floridas Dont Say Gay bill.

Variety understands that Lightyear, which is set for U.S. release in June 17, was never submitted to censors in Saudi, knowing that it would not pass. But the film had instead been initially approved for release in the U.A.E., where censorship restrictions have been loosening up. However, in a significant setback, the license to play the film in the UAE was suddenly revoked following calls on social media accusing Disney and Lightyear of insulting Muslims and Islam.

Nether Italia Film, which distributes Disney films in the region, nor Disney in London responded to requests for comment.

Censorship in Saudi Arabia has recently also kept local audiences from watching Marvels Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, due to the inclusion of a gay character; as well as Marvels Eternals, after Disney refused to make edits that included the pics same-sex kiss; and also West Side Story, because it features a transgender character.

In the West Asia region movies concerning or containing sex, homosexuality and religious issues are routinely cut to comply with censorship rules. In this case Disney was either unwilling or unable make edits requested by local censors.

It has also been confirmed that the film will also not release in Malaysia, the Southeast Asian country that is becoming less aligned with western values. The countrys censorship authority, the LPF, takes a strongly negative stance against any film containing themes, dialogue, or scenes involving homosexual and unnatural sex.

It is understood that the LPF asked for edits to the film which Disney refused. Sources close to the distributor says that Disney respects local censorship guidelines and has withdrawn its attempt to have the film approved for theatrical release. The film may soon appear on the Disney+ Hotstar streaming service where parental controls are an important feature.

Malaysia has recently had similar issues over gay scenes in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and Elton John biopic Rocket Man.

In recent days, it has also emerged that Malaysias LPF banned May You Stay Forever Young, a dramatization of events in Hong Kong in 2019-20, when millions of people protested in favor of democracy. The story involves a search for a woman protestor is is threatening to kill herself.

The LPF gave six reasons for banning the film. These included the films depiction of violent protests that could give unhealthy teachings to Malaysian audiences and the desire not to harm relations with China. It said that Malaysias Foreign Ministry is of the opinion that the screening of this film in Malaysia will [negatively] affect the bilateral relations between Malaysia and China.

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Making friends is difficult. Making friends when temperatures hit 100 and you want to stay in the comfort of your home makes it even more difficult. But this oppressive South Texas heat hasn't stopped a pair of San Antonio women on a mission to get their hot girl walks in while getting to know other women in the Alamo City. Enter City Girls Who Walk.

In April, women in Manhattan took to TikTok to create City Girls Who Walk, creating events to socialize and exercise with other women. City Girls has reached San Antonio after two locals decided to get in on the fun. I walked with them recently, instantly making friends with like-minded women who love to be outdoors and H-E-B meal simples (we love anything with pasta).

The City Girls Who Walk trend has reached several cities like New York City, Phoenix and Chicago. All announced their new group on TikTok.

Organizers and co-workers Victoria Lopez, 27, and Andrea Diaz, 25, hosted their first event on Sunday, June 5. Only four women showed up, the two of them and a pair of individuals they knew. Thanks to the power of TikTok, 44 women and about five dogs traveled to O.P. Schnabel Park for the second walk on Wednesday, June 8.

Priscilla Aguirre, MySA.com

"We didn't expect that many people to show up," Diaz, who helped boost the group to make new friends in San Antonio, said. "After only four showed up the last time, I thought it would be like 10, but our TikTok helped us get the word out there."

And, Diaz is right. Their TikTok now has more than 343,000 views and around 11,000 likes as of Friday, June 10. I learned about the event the day before the walk while scrolling through TikTok, as did my new peeps Nancy Reyna and Lisa Vietor. Both, twenty-somethings like myself, told me they joined the walk because they also wanted to make more friends in the city.

"We wanted to start this because a lot of us who aren't in college anymore have a hard time meeting new people and being active with others," Lopez, who's originally from Laredo, said. "This helps everyone come together in a positive way and helps everyone find new friends.

During the 3-mile walk (which is what the group will average every week), women chatted with each other about memes, laughed at jokes about dating, and provided recommendations on food and skin care  it was amazing to see. I met two individuals who went to the same high school as I did, but about four years prior. The range of women at the event was around 22 to mid-30s, however, all women are invited to walk with the group.

Priscilla Aguirre, MySA.com

The group grew out of a communal need for safety as every woman agreed on how anxious they are to walk alone in parks. I heard three ladies bring up how great it is to find a group like this, as they usually go to parks by themselves. Lopez and Diaz said that was another goal of theirs  to provide a space where women can feel safe and comfortable walking in parks.

"Our moms are always telling us, 'Don't walk alone at night' and 'Don't ever go by yourself on walks,'" Diaz said. "Now, we won't be alone on these walks."

Priscilla Aguirre, MySA.com

By the end of the stroll, phone numbers and Instagram accounts had been traded throughout the group, and plans were made to meet up later in the week. I now have plans to go to a wine bar with four other ladies I met just on that day.

Most of my friends now don't want to brave the summer heat with me at local parks, so I do plan on joining the group more often, as it's a great way to hike with other individuals.

Diaz said they want to branch out for the San Antonio group, hosting events that aren't only walking but also involve tubing, bars, and other fun activities.

Priscilla Aguirre, MySA.com

San Antonio's City Girls Who Walk plans on meeting once a week. Walk No. 3 will meet at 9:30 a.m. at Woodlawn Lake Park on Saturday, June 18.

Afterward, the group plans on getting some coffee nearby at The Koffee Kup Company. If you want more information about the group, follow them on Instagram at citygirlswhowalksatx.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Native Americans prosecuted in certain tribal courts can also be prosecuted based on the same incident in federal court, which can result in longer sentences.

The 6-3 ruling is in keeping with an earlier ruling from the 1970s that said the same about a more widely used type of tribal court.

The case before the justices involved a Navajo Nation member, Merle Denezpi, accused of rape. He served nearly five months in jail after being charged with assault and battery in what is called a Court of Indian Offenses, a court that deals exclusively with alleged Native American offenders.

Under federal law Courts of Indian Offenses can only impose sentences of generally up to a year. Denezpi was later prosecuted in federal court and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He said the Constitutions Double Jeopardy clause should have barred the second prosecution.

But the justices disagreed.

Denezpis single act led to separate prosecutions for violations of a tribal ordinance and a federal statute. Because the Tribe and the Federal Government are distinct sovereigns, those offenses are not the same, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for a majority of the court. Denezpis second prosecution therefore did not offend the Double Jeopardy Clause.

The Biden administration had argued for that result as had several states, which said barring federal prosecutions in similar cases could allow defendants to escape harsh sentences.

In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the case involved the same "defendant, same crime, same prosecuting authority" and said the majority's reasoning was "at odds with the text and original meaning of the Constitution." The conservative Gorsuch was joined in dissent by two of the court's three liberal justices, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.

The case before the justices involves a tribal court system that has become increasingly rare over the last century. Courts of Indian Offenses were created in the late 1800s during a period when the federal government's policy toward Native Americans was to encourage assimilation. Judges and generally prosecutors are appointed by federal officials.

Federal policy toward Native Americans shifted in the mid-1930s, however, to emphasize a greater respect for tribes' native ways. As part of that, the government has encouraged tribes to create their own tribal courts, and the number of Courts of Indian Offenses has steadily decreased. Today there are five regional Courts of Indian Offenses that serve 16 tribes in Colorado, Oklahoma, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. They are generally tribes with a small number of members or limited resources. Nationwide there are more than 570 federally recognized tribes.

The court said in 1978 that the Double Jeopardy clause did not bar the federal government from prosecuting a Native person in federal court after a tribal court prosecution, so the only question for the court this time was whether the rule should be different for Courts of Indian Offenses, which are sometimes called CFR courts because they have their basis in the Code of Federal Regulations.

In July 2017, Denezpi traveled with a female member of the Navajo Nation to Towaoc, Colorado, which is a part of the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation. While there, Denezpi raped the woman.

Denezpi was first charged in a Court of Indian Offenses with assault and battery, among other things. He eventually agreed to a so-called Alford plea in the case, not admitting guilt but acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence that he would likely be convicted at trial. He was sentenced to time served, 140 days in jail. His prosecution in federal court followed.

A lawyer for Denezpi did not immediately return an email seeking comment following the decision.

The case is Merle Denezpi v. United States, 20-7622.
Martina Birnbaum / EyeEm/Getty Images/EyeEm

Officials rescued 40 hikers at Palo Duro State Park due to excessive heat on Saturday, June 11. The Canyon Fire Department posted about the rescues on Facebook, asking the public to avoid the trails until temperatures cool off at the Texas State Park.

Temperatures at Palo Duro State Park, located in North Texas near Amarillo, were around 113 degrees over the weekend, according to the Canyon Fire Department. The National Weather Service also issued an excessive heat warning for Palo Duro Canyon State Park.
Lambert and I, and many readers, agree that Ukraine has prompted the worst informational environment ever. We hope readers will collaborate in mitigating the fog of war  both real fog and stage fog  in comments. None of us need more cheerleading and link-free repetition of memes; there are platforms for that. Low-value, link-free pom pom-wavers will be summarily whacked.

And for those who are new here, this is not a mere polite request. We have written site Policies and those who comment have accepted those terms. To prevent having to resort to the nuclear option of shutting comments down entirely until more sanity prevails, as we did during the 2015 Greek bailout negotiations and shortly after the 2020 election, we are going to be ruthless about moderating and blacklisting offenders.

Yves

P.S. Also, before further stressing our already stressed moderators, read our site policies:

Please do not write us to ask why a comment has not appeared. We do not have the bandwidth to investigate and reply. Using the comments section to complain about moderation decisions/tripwires earns that commenter troll points. Please dont do it. Those comments will also be removed if we encounter them.

***

I Love Debauching People!: The Trailblazing Ways of Irelands Greatest Travel Writer Afar

EARLY MODERN MEDICINE, POISON & APOTHECARY Crime Reads

Let Them Eat Fermented Protein Literary Review

Transcript: 50th Anniversary of Watergate: Inside the Case WaPo

Old World Warblers London Review of Books

Reshuffled Rivers Bolster the Amazons Hyper-Biodiversity Wired

Apple Wants to End Passwords for Everything. Heres How It Would Work. WSJ

125 years ago, bicyclists paved the way for the Lake Washington Path  Seattles first long, paved bike path Seattle Times

Material and immaterial Times Literary Supplement. The deck: Why we should care about cloth and how its made

#COVID-19

US health, human rights grps today: WTO Fails Basic Do No Further Harm Test on Eve of Ministerial. Nations Must Reject Poison Pill COVID Text that Adds Obstacles to Meds Access, Doesnt Waive IP Barriers. US Govt: Deliver WTO Waiver for all COVID Medshttps://t.co/nuIdZgOxmS  Lori Wallach (@WallachLori) June 10, 2022



New Not-So-Cold-War

La belle France

1/6

Gunz

Gonna be wild when Democrats dont end the filibuster and pass their agenda for fear of what Republicans would do in the majority without the filibuster  and then Republicans take power and end the filibuster anyway and do whatever they want.  David Sirota (@davidsirota) June 12, 2022

Chinese hackers exploited years-old software flaws to break into telecom giants MIT Technology Review

Facebook advertising algorithm may have given the GOP a social media edge over the Democratic Party: report Alternet

Syraqistan

Brookings president resigns amid FBI foreign lobbying probe AP

Biden Administration

China?

Messy Summit of the Americas highlights contrast in US, China hosting styles South China Morning Post

Japan: Whats behind Okinawans falling life expectancy? Deustche Welle.

Imperial Collapse Watch

Top Gun And American Decline American Conservative

The Supremes

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was put on the court because she was a big business friendly social climber. Her choices always reflected that. https://t.co/mOeaaZoITS  Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) June 12, 2022

Shortages

Gas prices hit new record high The Hill

Rethinking Prison Tourism Marshall Project

Class Warfare

Our Famously Free Press

A New Muckraking Newspaper From Ralph Nader Takes On Congress and Its Dirty Secrets Capital & Main

California Dreaming

The California exodus continues as residents head south of the border CNBC

Climate Change

Waste Watch

Turkey

Japan: Whats behind Okinawans falling life expectancy? Deustche Welle.

India

Antidote du Jour (via):

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

Indias minister for external affairs Dr. S. Jaishankar forcefully summarized Indias foreign policy at a security conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, earlier this month.

Those remarks have been superseded by a firestorm of controversy throughout the Islamic world, accompanied by domestic Indian protests. These were triggered by offensive remarks made about The Prophet by the national spokesperson for Prime Minister Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party, Nupur Sharma, during a televised debate. Naveen Kumar, the BJPs chief of its Delhi media unit, also tweeted further incendiary remarks.

The fallout from this issue threatens to deflect  although will likely not derail outright  the multi-alignment foreign policy course set by Jaishankar. Separately, the United States has issued another report condemning Indias record on religious freedom  and threatening further possible repercussions.

Interested readers might want to revisit three earlier posts, to establish context for Jaishankars remarks. In the first, I set out how Indias policy was outlined in 2020 by a book Jaishankar authored  long before Russian troops moved into Ukraine and India responded with a neutral policy (see India: Pursuing its National Interest in the Multipolar World).. In the second, I discuss Indias response to criticisms of its human rights record during meetings in Washington arranged in part to chew over Indias failure to impose economic sanctions against Russia (see External Affairs Minister Jaishankar: India Has Concerns About U.S. Human Rights Record). In the third, I discuss Jaishankars criticism during a conference in Delhi of the selective concern for rules-based order Ukraine Western diplomats showed, after failing to muster similar concern in the last decade over pressing foreign policy issues in Asia (see Jaishankar Calls Out Europes Selective Concern on Rules-Based Order).

For those who lack the time for such a review, the present post is intended to be a stand-alone post.

India continues to chart an independent policy of multi-alignment in its foreign policy, in spite of pressure from Western diplomats to adopt economic sanctions against Russia. In his Bratislava remarks, Jaishankar picked up on familiar themes.

First, he rejected outright the premise that India should bow to Western pressure and curtail its economic relations with Moscow, else it might face the prospect of a lack of Western support if Indian relations with China further deteriorate to open hostilities at some time in the future. Permit me to quote extensively from The Wires report on Jaishankars Bratislava remarks, Europe Has to Grow Out of Mindset That Its Problems Are Worlds Problems: Jaishankar.

India has a difficult relationship with China but it is perfectly capable of managing it, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said on Friday, rejecting the European construct that New Delhis position on Ukraine could impact global support to it if its problems with Beijing increases. In an interactive session at a conference in the Slovakian capital Bratislava, Jaishankar also said that the Chinese do not need a precedent somewhere else on how to engage us or not engage us or be difficult with us or not be difficult with us. . The strong comments by Jaishankar came amid persistent efforts by the European countries to convince India to take a tough position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the argument that New Delhi may face a similar challenge from China in the future. In terms of the connection you are making, we have a difficult relationship with China and we are perfectly capable of managing it. If I get global understanding and support, obviously it is of help to me, Jaishankar said. But this idea that I do a transaction  I come in one conflict because it will help me in conflict two. Thats not how the world works. A lot of our problems in China have nothing to do with Ukraine and have nothing to do with Russia. They are predated, he said. Jaishankar was asked why he thinks anyone will help New Delhi in case of a problem with China after it did not help others for Ukraine.

In respnse to that query, Jaishnkar chided European diplomats for continuing to view the current state of the world through an exclusively European-focused lens. Per The Wire:

Somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europes problems are the worlds problems but the worlds problems are not Europes problems. That if it is you, its yours, if it is me it is ours. I see reflections of that, he said. There is a linkage today which is being made. A linkage between China and India and whats happening in Ukraine. China and India happened way before anything happened in Ukraine. The Chinese do not need a precedent somewhere else on how to engage us or not engage us or be difficult with us or not be difficult with us, he said.  If I were to take Europe collectively which has been singularly silent on many things which were happening, for example in Asia, you could ask why would anybody in Asia trust Europe on anything at all, he said.

Indian Foreign Policy Sideswiped by Furore Over anti-Prophet Comments by BJP Officials

Clear, concise, consistent: the erudite Jaishankar enjoyed a long career as a senior Indian diplomat, including stints in China, European capitals, and the U.S.. Some of these gigs  China, the U.S., saw him serve as his countrys ambassador. Hes now well-positioned India to pursue its greater interests in the emerging multipolar world.

My recent writings have focused on the Modi governments foreign policy, and I have barely addressed the Hindutva cast of its domestic policy. In fact, the Modi government has tried to pursue a two-siloed policy, of aggressive pro-Hindu policies domestically, while attempting to maintain and extend relations with many Muslim-majority countries, especially in the Gulf. Not only does India rely on mid-Eastern countries for oil and natural gas supplies, but it sends legions of its nationals abroad as guest workers, who largely labor in the construction, hospitality, and tourism sectors.

For nine days, the communications made by Sharma and Kumar at first attracted no official BJP response. Thats not altogether surprising because in form  if perhaps not in degree  they were part and parcel of Modi s policy of maintaining separate silos for foreign and domestic affairs. More on that theme in a moment. Only after the comments went viral  sparking calls for boycotts of Indian goods and services in Kuwait and Qatar, and leading to condemnation of the remarks by at least twenty countries and bodies  was any action taken against Sharma, who was then suspended from her position. Kumar s punishment was more severe. He was expelled from the BJP (see The Wire, The Full List of 20 Countries and Bodies That Have Condemned the BJP Leaders Remarks). Several of these countries summoned their respective Indian ambassadors and subjected them to official dressing downs.

Separate Silos for BJP Foreign and Domestic Policy

Prior to these events, BJP policy has been to try and run Indias foreign and domestic policies out of separate silos. Writing in The Wire in After Outrage in the Islamic World, the Modi Government Could Be at Point of No Return, former Indian ambassador to the United Arab Emorates (UAE) and Iran, and retired as secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, K.C. Singh wrote about how BJP officials fanned the flames of Hindu extremism domestically while seeking to limit any negative impact on Indias foreign relations:

But all this while, the BJP spokespersons in television studios nightly kept up their Muslim-baiting to polarise voters before the vital upcoming state elections, especially in the prime ministers own state, Gujarat. Most television channels, chasing higher viewership ratings and the governments goodwill, devised guest panels and issues for maximum confrontation and verbal duels. For years, this writer had warned that domestic and foreign policies could not be relegated to separate silos. But four years of former US president Donald Trump, who jettisoned climate change and liberal democracy as issues traditionally relevant to US diplomacy, encouraged the Indian government to believe that diplomacy was unaffected by BJPs Hindutva project. The pace was accelerated after the 2019 re-election of Narendra Modi to move India from constitutionalism and liberal democracy, as envisioned by Indias founding fathers, to majoritarianism and a reconstructive Hindu Rashtra.

Such siloing no longer seems possible, especially as the United States continues to oppose Jaishankers attempt to follow a foreign policy of multi-alignment. Singh noted in The Wire:

Joe Bidens victory, after Modis unwise, subtle endorsement of Trump, raised concerns that the state of domestic play in India may invite US attention. Jaishankars unwise snubbing of Pramila Jayapal, an Indian-origin Democrat member of the US Congress during the Trump presidency, was also a cause for concern. But China, climate change and now Ukraine have made the US harbour doubts about the Modi governments commitment to liberal democracy.

As I wrote in my post cited above, Jaishankar tried to deflect release of a negative state department human rights report during his Washington visit with quips about the human rights record of the United States (see External Affairs Minister Jaishankar: India Has Concerns About U.S. Human Rights Record). Excellent point, but not one usually made by a friendly diplomat. (I note that Jaishankar certainly understands that nations dont have friends, only interests.)

The main goal of that visit for India was to reiterate its decision not to fall in line behind the Wests policy on Russian economic sanctions.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom released its 2022 annual report the state of global religious freedom (USCIRF). which singled out India for especial criticism. Retired career Indian diplomat Dr. M.K. Bhadrakumar, posted on his blog, Indian Punchline, USCIRF report is a writing on the wall:

In particular, the report recommends that India be designated as a Country of Particular Concern, a country that engages in particularly severe violations of religious freedoms and on which sanctions be imposed on individuals and entities responsible by freezing their assets and barring their entry into the US. It calls on the USG to promote human rights of all religious minorities in India; raise this issue through bilateral & multilateral forums such as the ministerial of the Quadrilateral, and take it up in the bilateral relationship as well as highlight the US concerns through Congress. [Emphasis added by Bhadakurmar] The report is direct, explicit and forceful in targeting the Modi Govt and the BJP  The BJP-led government, leaders at the national, state and local levels, and increasingly emboldened Hindu-nationalist groups have advocated, instituted and enforced sectarian policies seeking to establish India as an overtly Hindu state, contrary to Indias secular foundation and at grave danger to Indias religious minorities.It leaves no scope for misinterpretations. To rub salt into the wound, while releasing the document in Washington on June 2, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an acerbic remark that For example, in India, the worlds largest democracy and home to a great diversity of faiths, weve seen rising attacks on people and places of worship.

Bhadrakumar notes that India was especially singled out for the deterioration of religious freedom during 2021, even though other countries perhaps had far worse records on this score:

On closer look, however, it transpires that in comparison with all othercountries that have been mentioned as countries of particular concern by the USCIRF, it is only India where conditions are deemed to have significantly worsened during 2021 curiously, alongside Taliban-run Afghanistan and the military dictatorship in Myanmar.

He attributes this spotlighting of India to benign U.S. concerns:

The point is, Indias democratic backsliding is as much on the US radar today as the human rights issues. Furthermore, in what can be called other technocratic issues  such as the UN forums, G-20, data localisation rules, cyber issues, climate change, and so on  Indian stance happens to be more in harmony with Chinas or Russias than with the US. Succinctly put, India is paying a price for its pretensions to have a value-based relationship with the US and to be sharing a commonality of interests with regard to the rules-based order. You cant have the cake and eat it, too! The US has every right to hold the bar high for India in comparison with, say, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia or Russia and China. And on its part, India ought to have every obligation to clear that bar of democracy. At least, India must make a genuine effort.

Yes, all true of course, but I assert the main reason the U.S. is now focusing on Indias human rights and religious freedom transgressions is due to the Biden administrations continued consternation over Indias failure to toe the U.S. line on Russia sanctions.

The Question for Modi et al. : What is to Be Done?

I close by again quoting Jaishankars: Europes problems arent Indias problems. Yet the institutional configuration of Indian foreign policy still skews heavily towards Europe and the U.S. In a different Indian Punchline blog post, An appalling slur on the civilisation state that is India, Bhadrakumar outlines necessary next steps:

 First and foremost, this moment must be taken seriously as a wake-up call as regards the dangers of the BJP nurturing bigotry for reasons of political expediency. Second, Indias unique status as a country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world (and yet its exclusion from the [Organisation of Islamic Cooperation] ) poses severe challenges to Indian diplomacy. Our approach is insufficient and archaic  and episodic. Such excessive attention to Europe and America in South Blocks diplomacy is not only unwarranted but also risks neglect of Indias near abroad where India has vital interests. Surely, there must be some way India can take advantage of the Saudi and Iranian goodwill? Emulate Chinese and Russian diplomacy.

In other words, a policy of multi-alignment mandates that India needs look beyond Europe and the United States to step up its diplomatic campaign to the emerging centers of power in the multipolar world.

The Modi government seems to recognize the seriousness of the diplomatic situation. Hes announced a visit to the UAE as part of his itinerary for attending the G7 summitin Germany at the end of this month, according to Telangana Today, PM Modi to travel to UAE to pacify in Nupur Sharma controversy Mere face time may not be sufficient, however. Stepped up diplomacy, particularly with an eye to looming global food shortages, might be on the cards. So far, India has suspended wheat and sugar exports, but to date, continues to export rice.

Today, the Indian Express ran an article in which BJP sources critiqued Sharma and Kumars comments as going too far  which only the most extreme Hindutva partisans would publicly deny, given the international uproar theyve provoked and the domestic protests that have burgeoned (see A new red line: What Nupur Sharma moment means for the BJP). The paper followed with a story reporting on what might be construed as a gag policy on the Sharma contretemps (Nupur Sharma fallout: BJP spokespersons, leaders in states asked to steer clear of rows)

So far, not a peep out of Modi himself.

Is it perhaps time for a Sister Souljah  so named for when Bill Clinton dissed the entertainer Sister Souljah during the 1992 presidential campaign?

My Indian contacts would say its impossible for Modi to borrow from this playbook.

Is it? Does Modi have it in him?

Isnt the point of a Sister Souljah moment for a politician to go where his most committed supporters never envisioned s/he would venture?

No one imagined, for example, that Nixon would go to China, either.

One final thought: Perhaps this isnt a good time for those in charge to be razing homes belonging to protestors, as The Wire reported officials have so ordered in Uttar Pradesh (Rule of Law Lost in Rubble: Protests, Disbelief After UP Authorities Raze Afreen Fatimas House). Merely tamping down rhetoric and scheduling additional foreign visits by themselves may not quell tensions.

.
Saudi Arabias Tourism Development Fund (TDF) has launched a tourism finance program, which is designed to provide the best solutions and soft financing products for small and micro enterprises.



The announcement was made after the Fund signed, at its headquarters in Riyadh, a financing agreement with the Arab National Bank, as part of the Fund's efforts to enhance tourism opportunities in the main destinations identified by the National Tourism Strategy and to maximize the societal impact of tourism development projects in the Kingdom, reported Saudi Press Agency (SPA).



The agreement, which was signed by TDF CEO, Qusai Abdullah Al-Fakhri, and the Managing Director and CEO of the Arab National Bank, Obaid Abdullah Al-Rasheed, was also attended by several officials from both sides.



Al-Fakhri highlighted the signing of this agreement with the Arab National Bank and the launch of the tourism financing program, expressing optimism for the important role that the program will play in achieving the objectives of the Fund by supporting micro and small enterprises and entrepreneurs in the field of tourism.
Well try to keep this post at a high level, since each of the three fresh examples of actual or expected own goals are part of a much longer list. But its baffling to see incompetence and hubris become a routine part of geopolitics, Western style.

The first is the continued US eyepoking of China, which began with the first US-China summit under Biden at US invitation in Alaska. It produced what by international standards was close to a public row. Since then, we were listing new jabs almost daily in Links, although they appear to have become less frequent after the war in Ukraine broke out.

Mind you, there are reasons for the US to be concerned about China, and not just of the declining power threatened by upstart sort. China has a large population and not enough domestic resources, particularly food and energy, to provide for them, let alone to support a further rise in living standards (mind you, the world cant support the Chinese population living at a Western level absent radical conservation and other efforts to reduce commodities consumption). Focusing on Chinese acquisitiveness, by implication at the expense of other developing economies, could be a usefully rallying point, particularly if the West were to get serious about belt-tightening, or at least conservation.

But instead the US provokes China above all over Taiwan. Aside from the fact that its the fastest way to get China riled up, its hard to see the point. The deliberately ambiguous position of the West on Taiwan heretofore has allowed us to trade with both parties, if you conceptualize them as operating independently. I havent heard of a Taiwan lobby in the US with meaningful clout. Right now, the US arms merchants have plenty of buy orders coming in thanks to the need for the NATO members, and to some degree the US, thanks to the need to restock and update stores depleted by the Ukraine conflict.

Maybe the goal is to get neighbors like Japan and South Korea nervous and therefore have then cling to us. But its pretty clear that the US is stoking a conflict, and why should I be happy about the prospect of being dragged in?

Lets contrast two sets of stenography from the Shangri-La Security Summit in Singapore, the first from the staunchly neocon Financial Times:

[Chinas defense minister General] Wei [Fenghe] and [US defense secretary Lloyd] Austin were attending the forum at a time when Sino-US relations are in their worst state since the nations normalised ties in 1979, and with anxiety rising about possible Chinese military action against Taiwan. Those tensions were on display over two days in Singapore, as both sides expressed concerns over the others activities. Austin accused the Chinese military of conducting dangerous aerial and maritime manoeuvres, while Wei described the US as an arrogant hegemon that was forming anti-China blocs under the guise of multilateralism.

Oddly, this article does not mention the row over a fresh security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands, which has Australia and the US bent out of shape. But among other things, the Solomon Islands were suffering from a serious rise in crime and its established patrons did nothing to help.

However, it does mention a fresh spat, where an Australian spy plane was buzzed by a PLA jet that dumped chaff that got into the Australia planes engines. The Western press has underplayed Chinas justification, that the foreign plane was over what it said was Chinese territorial waters. From the pink paper:

Washington counters that surveillance flights by the US and its allies are in international airspace. One US official said PLA officers had in recent months told the Americans that the Taiwan Strait was not international waters  a position that is not recognised beyond China and one that Beijing had not pushed in the past. General He said China was in a stronger position to push back against aerial surveillance missions in its vicinity. The US military has done similar overflights many times before, but in the past, our capabilities were not sufficient yet to respond. Now they are, he said.

Now lets return to the first FT extract: .with anxiety rising about possible Chinese military action against Taiwan. Theres no mention whatsoever of the US provoking China by sending retired and more recently current US official to Taiwan when the US has for decades supported a one China policy. Consider this partial history fro an April post:

I am at a loss to understand why the US thinks throwing more force behind a clearly failed diplomatic strategy is a bright idea. Pushing China has simply made it more obvious and easier to explain to interested audiences (many!) why the US needs to stop trying to dictate the policies of other countries, most of all really big ones with nukes. .the US has tried at least twice (three times with China if you count the recent China-EU teleconference with Xi) to get China to side with the West against Russia, pushing China into What about no dont you understand? terrain. Rather than hewing to the convention of having summits only after groundwork was laid so that at least nothing visibly bad happens, Team Biden set out to pick a fight with China at their first get together, in Alaska in March 2021, with the US springing new sanctions on China the day before the session. Then in March [2022], Jake Sullivan was set to meet with Yang Jiechi in Rome and threatened China with sanctions. The pretext was disinformation in the form of a Financial Times story claiming that Russia had asked to buy weapons from China (this was clearly absurd because by the time the war had started would be way too late; Russia would have needed to procure and integrate equipment months prior).1 Needless to say, Yang didnt give any ground. So not taking no as an answer, Biden had the cheek to call Xi that very same week and ask for Chinas help. Xi effectively said this wasnt his problem: He who puts the bell on the tiger is the one to take it off. Biden also said he very much wanted better relations with China and gave lip service to the one-China policy in the chat. That allowed Xi to say he took that statement very seriously: What about all these American officials who were promoting a wrong understanding about Taiwan? EU leaders and Xi then had a regularly scheduled EU-China teleconference. Chinese officials had signaled before the meeting that Xi was interested in EU-China relations, not Ukraine, so of course the EU officials started the conversation off with Ukraine. Xi again deflected the Western pressure. Im not double checking the dates, but my recollection is that it was shortly after the EU-Xi talk that the US announced new sanctions against China, mainly against officials accused of oppressing Uighurs. And weve just had the off the charts provocation of Nancy Pelosi, third in line to become President, going to Taiwan. Recall that trip has been postponed rather than cancelled. China has stated that there will be consequences if that trip happens. And we expect them to side with us? Its not the most important form of payback, but China has taken to stating regularly in official media that the war in Ukraine is Americas fault.

Now to the Chinese house organ Global Times:

The Chinese armed forces will fight to the very end if anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, said the Chinese defense chief in a speech delivered at the Shangri-La Dialogue on Sunday. Chinese analysts said this is the strongest warning China has sent to the US, as Washington has frequently used the Taiwan question to provoke China and encourage the separatist authorities on the island to worsen the regions security situation. On the Taiwan question, Wei said Taiwan is part of China, and the Taiwan question is Chinas internal affair. China will definitely realize its reunification. From the Trump administration to Bidens, the US has continually used Taiwan question to serve its strategy of containing China, such as instigating the Taiwan separatist authorities to gain a diplomatic presence, which challenges the globally recognized one-China principle; and increasing arms sales, sending warships to enter waters around the island to disrupt the reunification process. Meanwhile, some US Congress members and officials, and even the House speaker, have visited or planned to visit the island, sending the wrong signals to the separatists and challenging the political foundation of China-US relations. All of this has made China believe that it is necessary to send a clear warning to the US, and even if the US ignores the warning and continues its dangerous moves or even crosses the red line, China is ready to solve the Taiwan question once and for all, whether the process is peaceful or by force, experts said. Although the Chinese mainland will continue to make the greatest efforts to seek peaceful reunification for the sake of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, if the US and authorities on the island totally destroy hopes of peaceful reunification, the mainland will not hesitate to solve the problem by force, as China is not afraid of such a scenario, analysts noted.

This looks like another What about no dont you understand? that the US seems determined not to get.

Now, briefly, to a lower-stakes US effort to push other countries around that backfired, embarrassingly, because they were the sort that our State Department assumes will be subservient. The US was hosting the Summit of the Americas summit in Los Angeles but was not inviting Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela because we dont deem them to be democratic enough. But right wing authoritarian regimes like those in Brazil, Colombia and Haiti get our Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador decided to boycott the meeting, although his foreign minister was set to attend. The unraveling continued. From Responsible Statecraft:

The presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador declined as well. At the Summit, other heads of state openly criticized Washington for not inviting all the nations of the Americas. Irregular migration was a main focus of the Summit, but between them, the countries excluded and those whose presidents stayed home accounted for 69 percent of the migrants encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in April  nearly 180,000 people. Trying to formulate a strategy to stem irregular migration without engaging the governments of the migrants home countries is a recipe for failure. Other issues on the Summits agenda  environmental protection and climate change, public health, organized crime  are also transnational problems that cannot be effectively addressed unilaterally. Therein lies the flaw in Bidens Wilsonian disposition to only engage with democracies. Sometimes you have to engage with governments you dont like in order to deal with urgent problems.

Responsible Statecraft effectively said the quiet part out loud: democracies = governments the US likes.

Now to the EU engaging in increasingly bizarre and self-harming behavior. Its shocking to see the contrast between the regime under Jean-Claude Juncker versus Ursula von der Leyen. Juncker was a drunk who too often enjoyed speaking out of school with journalists. But when teamed with Michel Barnier on the seemingly-never-ending Brexit negotiations, he managed to rise to an approximation of statesmanlike. Barnier and Juncker were also careful, when the British team didnt throw hopeless timing spanners, about respecting the primacy of the EU Council and briefing sherpas before those meeting.

By contrast, von der Leyen is a self-appointed Queen of the EU, and not a very capable one either. Shes also made it a point to relentlessly press EU members into signing up for aggressive anti-Russia policies that will hurt them more than Russia, the latest being the Russian oil sanctions.

We have yet another von der Leyen scheme being pushed forward this week: that of having Ukraine join the EU. If this happens, it will put the Union into a fast-terminal decline. Fortunately, the press is already reporting that Denmark and the Netherlands are opposed, which means there are likely others that havent yet gone public.

First, and least important, there are procedural issues. Theres a queue of countries ahead of Ukraine for admission to the EU. It makes a mockery of the idea that the EU had a disciplined and objective process to let Ukraine jump to the front of the line.

Second, no way, no how does Ukraine even remotely qualify for membership. The EU is already unhappy with Poland over its refusal to respect the primacy of the ECJ. Its mad at Hungary because its a little country run by a popular authoritarian who doesnt know his place. The EU refused to admit Turkey over human rights violations, such as purges after a failed coup, and lack of freedom of expression.

So how about our precious Ukraine? It has right wing thugs as a second military, under the Interior Ministry, to act as enforcer. This is the same parallel structure that Hitler used and for similar reasons: he wanted to be sure his shock troops would be sufficiently brutal (the regular army was often reluctant to kill rebels in Donbass). Politicians have been beaten and killed by various right wing groups; Zelensky himself was threatened if he implemented the pro-Russia policies he campaigned on.

Zelensky has since outlawed all opposition parties, shut down opposition papers, jailed an opposition leader, and disappeared journalists.

Oh, and thats before getting to Ukraines massive corruption. As GM pointed out:

Ukraine is one the absolute most corrupt societies in the world, on all levels. The oligarchs barely scratch the surface of it  every daily transaction involves corruption there, education, healthcare, administration, whatever you can think of. Nobody can be trusted under any circumstances.

Third, admitting Ukraine into the EU means all those Ukraine refugees can live anywhere in the EU and take advantage of their new homes social services. Think the neighbors can take the costs on an ongoing basis?

Fourth, Ukraine will be entitled to EU subsidies, when its sure to be a huge net drain. Ukraine was already the poorest country in Europe. Russia will be taking the east and a lot of the south, and even though those areas are economic basket cases, they are still more productive than the rest of the country.

Fifth, as a pretty obvious implication of number four aboveUkraine is losing! Its beyond the point of any hope of turning it around. Even the English language press, having way oversold Ukraines capabilities and prospects, is more and more often running articles on how bad conditions are. Even Ukraine authorities are starting to come clean about the daily deaths and the overwhelming Russian materiel advantage.

And the longer the West tries to pump air into its balloon (and joining the EU would extend that exercise), in the end the more territory it will lose to Russia. So letting Ukraine into the EU will also be signing up for a reconstruction project in a rump and likely landlocked state.

Sixth, its not clear Ukraine can be regarded as a country, as opposed to a US colony. As we did in Afghanistan, were now funding the government budget. Before that, in 2020, the IMF approved a $5 billion facility, which as far as I can tell on a fast reading, rolled over existing loans plus extended new credit. The IMF gave Ukraine another $1.4 billion loan when the war started. The US has approved additional borrowing by Ukraine under a Lend Lease Act, although I cant find the maximum authorized.

Seventh, another issue is that the Ukraine banking system is likely to need to be recapitalized. From what I can tell, most of the big banks are headquartered in Kiev or Kharkiv. In the areas Russia is liberating, it is converting banks to roubles, and rumor has it, wiping out debts. That actually makes sense, since old loans would have been made under Ukrainian law but not under a new regime. The write-offs will stimulate the local economies, create good will towards the occupiers, and leave big balance sheet holes for the parent banks. Whats not to like?

Last but not leastthis move is going to terminally alienate Turkey, which let us not forget is the most important member of NATO, by virtue of location and having the second biggest NATO armed force. As if the stunt of seeking to admit Sweden and Finland to NATO without consulting Turkey wasnt enough of a diss, the prospect of admitting a degenerate basket case being propped up by the US over Turkey will further harden Erdogans hostility. Mind you, Erdogan is too cagey to tie his fortunes to Russia and China. But its reasonable to bet hes only going to be accommodating to the West only when it suits him or the costs are very low.

But none of this will deter Queen Ursula! Full steam ahead!
Yves here. Perhaps I am missing something, but Treasury Secretary Janet Yellens oil price fixing scheme is an idea only some economists could love. Yellen proposed that US and EU agree to pay only $70 a barrel for Russian oil.

Lambert had missed this story and laughed out loud when I told him. Needless to say, this proposal marks a big change, and in a short period of time, from confident stories like How Much Oil Does the U.S. Import From Russia and Why Did Biden Ban It? in the Wall Street Journal in April. As its subhead indicated, the spin then was that Russian supply was marginal U.S. had until recently turned to Russian crude to service more isolated coastal markets and keep refineries running at optimal levels.

Yellens cover story was that a buyer price cap was necessary to keep the Russian state, which has elected to get most of its revenue from energy price sales, from continuing to make out from current high oil prices. Russia is now making more on foreign oil sales, even with offering a sanctions discount and at reduced volumes, than it did last year.

But its a pretty remarkable shift to go from trying to punish Russia by not buying its energy to now pressing for a discount because you are obviously indispensable.

Oh, and despite being an unfriendly countries, the collective West is trying to get an even bigger break than Russia is giving to its besties, which is $30 a barrel, so the net price to Russia is around $90. Oil has dropped briefly to $100 a couple of times this year, but that was due to China lockdowns, an issue that will at most only be operative intermittently. Indeed, with Turkey eyeing territory in Syria and Israel playing harder ball with Iran, escalation in the Middle East could also push oil prices even higher.

The US price scheme is aggressive even in recent historical terms. Oil prices were rising due to Were acting like Covid is over rebound and were solidly above $70 a barrel in the second half of the year.

Let us also remember that the US embargoed Russian oil in early March. Since then, the US has been trying to mitigate the impact via releases from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, browbeating Saudi Arabia, and trying to make nice to Venezuela and Iran, which produce very heavy oil. Russias crude is moderately heavy and well suited to refining diesel and home heating fuel. US and Saudi crude is light and needs to be combined with heavier distillates to make some of the desired end products like diesel (yes, this is a simplification but will do for this purpose). The charm offensive to other oil producers isnt going very well. For instance, Biden had planned to go to the Middle East in June and among other things, sit down with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Thats now planned for July, allegedly by Biden due to concerns about the stability of the Israel government and a busy calendar of June visits to Europe. Alexander Mercouris claims it was the Saudis that pushed the meeting back (see here starting at 4:06).

Mind you, if the prospects arent so hot for the US, they are even worse for Europe. The latest round of EU sanctions proposed to cut oil imports from Russia by 90% by late this year, with pipeline oil the main carve-out. No one with an operating brain cell believes this is achievable, even with aggressive stockpiling, unless the northern countries are willing to do serious and irreversible harm to industry, or alternatively, let non-trivial numbers of citizens freeze to death.

Some contend that Russia will be brought to heel by the difficulty of unloading more oil as the Europeans wean themselves off Russian supply. Its more realistic to assume that it will simply be laundered through intermediaries, with Europe paying even more as a result.

And the threat of barring insurance on Russian oil cargoes also seems overestimated. The US and Europe are not the only places in the world capable of issuing guarantees. Russia itself could. So could Middle Eastern countries, which are now becoming more important financial centers as a result of nervous billionaires, and even some countries, shifting holdings there after the US/EU theft of Russian assets (they claim they are merely frozen, but if you think Russia is ever getting them back, I have a bridge Id like to sell you).

If the West tries to impose secondary sanctions on non-Russian insurers, another Russian gambit could be to sell discounted oil (below its China-India price but still above the US-EU bid) on a humanitarian basis to countries in dire energy straits or facing debt crises, like Sri Lanka.

And the idea the author Irina Slav posits at the end, that the US may get the relief it needs from an OPEC+ production increase, is a misconstruction. The Saudi offer was largely optical. It was largely conditioned on an output gap elsewhere and amounts to only moving production forward by a few weeks.

I strongly suspect that even if the US and EU get as far as formalizing this proposal, it will be quickly shot down by a sharp-tongued senior Russian official like Dimitry Medvedev. Another way to ridicule this plan is to say Russia would entertain it if the West withdraws all of its sanctions.

By Irina Slav, a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. Originally published at OilPrice

The United States has a new plan to curb Russias oil revenue.

The U.S. is in talks with European allies over a potential price cap on Russian crude.

The goal is to keep Russian oil flowing while limiting Moscows energy revenues.

The U.S. is discussing with its European allies a price cap on Russian oil. The goal is to keep Russian oil flowing into international markets but curb budget revenues from it to discourage Russia from continuing the war in Ukraine. Theoretically.

The situation is not dissimilar to wanting to eat your cake and have it, too. On the one hand, both the U.S. and Europe, suffering the most severe consequences of sanction action so far, are aware that banning Russian oil from international markets would hurt them even more.

On the other hand, paying for Russian oil at market prices is not a palatable option because oiland gasexport revenues make up a solid portion of Russias budget, and that budget includes defense spending, and much of that defense spending is going into what Russia calls its special military operation in Ukraine, which the West calls an unprovoked war.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen put it rather bluntly earlier this week: I think what we want to do is keep Russian oil flowing into the market to hold down global prices and try to avoid a spike that causes a worldwide recession and drives up oil prices, she said as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. But absolutely the objective is to limit the revenue going to Russia.

One might wonder where the concept of the free market went, but in truth, the concept of the free market has been quite dead for a while now. The question is whether the idea that the U.S. and the EU have about an oil price cap could work. In other words, would Russia accept such a move?

According to common sense, it would hardly welcome the idea of having a price ceiling imposed on its export oil cargos. According to the former chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Sergei Guriev, Yes, Putin could refuse to sell oil at this price. But, given that he is already desperate enough to sell to China and India at steep discounts, and todays energy prices far exceed production costs, this seems unlikely.

Indeed, Russian oil is trading at a discount of some $30 or more to Brent crude. Whether there is desperation in the Russian oil equation is difficult to say, if we put emotions and wishes aside. It is clear Russia knew it would have to redirect flows to Asia from Europe should the latter try to punish it for its actions in Ukraineand it was prepared to do so.

It is also clear, or at least it should be, that Russia cannot just redirect all the oil and fuel flows that currently go into Europe to India and China, at least not fast. What this suggests is that Russia may well be prepared to suffer some revenue pain while the redirection proceeds.

Also, Russia tends to budget on the basis of quite low oil prices. For last year, for instance, it budgeted for $45 per barrel of Brent crude. Its actual oil revenues last year exceeded initial expectations by more than 51 percent. For 2022, Moscow budgeted for Brent at $44.20 per barrel.

So, as Guriev notes, even with a price ceiling of $70 per barrel, Russia would be making a lot more from the sales of its oil than it budgeted for. China and India would only be too happy to pay even less for Russian oil. Yet the question remains whether Russia would be on board with the idea of having its opponents in this war tell it at what price to sell its crude.

Until the ball goes to Russias court, however, the U.S. and the EU would have to figure out how to enforce a price cap if they agree on it. One way, according to the WSJ report, is to use the insurance industry and make it only insure Russian oil cargos below the price cap. Another is to impose secondary sanctions on Russian oil buyers, but that would have potentially unpleasant diplomatic consequences.

The idea of a price cap on crude, not just Russian, was first floated in Europe earlier this year by Italys Prime Minister Mario Draghi. In May, following a meeting with the U.S. president, Draghi said both he and Biden were dissatisfied with the structure of global oil markets and had talked about setting a price cap on both oil and gas.

The idea is to create a cartel of buyers, or to persuade the big producers, and Opec in particular, to increase production, which is perhaps the preferred path, Draghi said at the time, as quoted by the Financial Times. On both paths, theres a lot of work to do.

Perhaps now that OPEC+ agreed to pump more oil, theoretically, this plan would be put on the backburner. A buyers cartel is certainly not something youd want to push into OPECs face right when you urgently need more oil.
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.

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(Natural News) Leaked documents reveal that the ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pursued partnerships with social media platforms like Twitter to censor content with disinformation.

A whistleblower leaked several documents to Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Josh Hawley of Missouri. Both senators released these documents on Wednesday, June 8.

These documents prove that the disinformation board wanted to meet with executives from Big Tech social media platforms like Twitter to formalize a partnership with the company. The Disinformation Board would act as the intermediary between major social media platforms and the DHS.

For example, we obtained draft briefing notes prepared for a scheduled April 28, 2022 meeting between [DHS Undersecretary for Strategy, Policy and Plans] Robert Silvers and Twitter Head of Policy Nick Pickles and Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth. The notes are marked TBC, and it is unclear whether the scheduled meeting actually took place, stated Grassley and Hawleys letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The documents further prove that Homeland Securitys plans for the Disinformation Board were more extensive than previously acknowledged.

Mayorkas also claimed the board would function more as a working group to track down disinformation regarding human smuggling operations and disinformation campaigns surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He insisted the board would have no operational authority or capability.

But the DHS itinerary for its meeting with the Twitter executives shows that the department saw it as an opportunity to discuss operationalizing public-private partnerships between DHS and Twitter to implement the departments public policy goals, including the removal of content. (Related: Bidens disinformation board is an unconstitutional thought-police bureau.)

DHS should not in any way seek to enlist the private sector to curb or silence opposing viewpoints, wrote Grassley and Hawley.

Leaked documents prove Disinformation Board doomed from the start

Since the creation of the board, it has been plagued with problems stemming from its Orwellian-sounding name, its goals and due to the extensive history of its executive director, Nina Jankowicz, of peddling disinformation and participating in disinformation campaigns.

For example, Jankowicz pushed the unfounded claim that Hunter Bidens laptop emails were hacked or were forged as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. She has also supported social media platforms, law enforcement officials and lawmakers in cracking down on content she believes to be lawful but awful.

Grassley and Hawley also suggested that Jankowicz may have been selected to lead the Disinformation Board because she had previously worked with Big Tech executives, including Twitters Roth, who came under fire for blocking access to stories regarding Hunter Bidens laptop.

Other documents describe the issues that led to the creation of the Disinformation Board. Among these was the spread of so-called disinformation regarding the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) and the efficacy of vaccines, as well as topics that Homeland Security described as conspiracy theories about the validity and security of elections.

Mayorkas also said that he wanted to use the Disinformation Board to track down disinformation regarding human smuggling operations and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Learn more about government disinformation campaigns at Disinfo.news.

Watch this clip from The American Journal from InfoWars as host Harrison Smith talks about how the Disinformation Governance Board was meant to target American dissidents.

This video is from the InfoWars channel on Brighteon.com.

More related articles:

From UK troll farms to covert psyops: The troubling past of Nina Jankowicz.

Fake news media claims disgraced disinfo czar was a victim of cyberbullying.

Bidens discredited disinformation czar actually took part in disinfo operations in Europe to subvert democratic governments.

Senate Democrats cancel disinformation hearing after disastrous press around Ministry of Truth czar.

Bidens new disinformation chief was pleased by censorship of Hunter Biden laptop stories.

Sources include:

ReclaimTheNet.org

WashingtonTimes.com

FreeBeacon.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) A top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed this week that Poland is preparing to move into a portion of neighboring Ukraine and annex it because it historically belonged to them.

As reported by Newsweek, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, said during a press conference that he believes Poland is planning to annex parts of western Ukraine, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

He added that he believes there are already a number of states actively working on [Ukraines] dismemberment, but he did not specify which countries were involved. Despite the fact that Ukraine is one of the most corrupt on the continent, most European nations are backing Kyiv in its fight against Russian invaders, with several providing humanitarian and military aid, including Poland.

Newsweek adds:

Amid Russias invasion of Ukraine, Poland has emerged as a key supporter of Ukraine, as the two countries share a border. Since the invasion began in late February, Russian authorities have made several remarks against Poland, prompting concerns that Putin might have his sights set on Poland if he takes Ukraine.

The so-called Western partners of the Kyiv regime are also not opposed to taking advantage of the current situation for their own selfish interests and have special plans for Ukrainian lands, Patrushev said. Apparently, Poland is already moving to actions to seize western Ukrainian territories.

The Russian official pointed to comments from Polish President Andrzej Duda during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May when both leaders signaled they were cooperating.

The Polish-Ukrainian border should unite not divide, Duda noted in an address to Ukrainian members of parliament. Zelensky added that the meeting would help speed up border procedures, Reuters reported.

At the time, those remarks were broadly interpreted to mean that Ukraine and Poland are planning to strengthen their alliance moving forward, not that Warsaw was interested in annexing a chunk of its neighbors sovereign territory  which is actually what Russia is attempting to do.

All of which begs the question: What are Russias designs on Poland, given that Patrushevs remarks about the east European country are just the latest in a series of comments made by other Russian officials about Poland in recent weeks:

Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russias Chechen Republic and another Putin ally, said in a video reported last week that Poland needs to take back the weapons they have given to the Ukrainian military and that he is interested in Poland.

Oleg Morozov, a member of the Russian parliament, said in March that Poland should be in first place in the queue for denazification after Ukraine, referring to Russias claim that it invaded Ukraine to get rid of Nazis in the government.

Those comments have led Polish officials to become concerned about the countrys security and Putins intentions. It isnt likely that Putin would purposely attack Poland, which is a NATO member; such an attack would trigger an Article 5 response, and given that Russian forces are not powerful enough to overrun Ukraine, there is not much chance Putin could defeat all of NATO, either  not without resorting to nuclear weapons, which, of course, would invite a similar response and signal the end of the world as we know it.

In March, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski told Al Jazeera that Putin certainly would attack Poland if he did not already have his hands full in Ukraine, where his military has failed to make significant gains against stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance.

He then warned that if the West allowed Putin to win in Ukraine, then he wont hesitate to attack another country in the region as he seeks to reconstitute the former Soviet Union by force of arms.

Sources include:

Newsweek.com

Newsweek.com
Storms are brewing over New Zealand as the country continues to prepare for a potential catastrophic weather event.

New Zealand's Met Service has issued dozens of severe storm warnings nationwide. More than 18,000 lightning strikes were recorded across the country over the weekend.

In addition to lightning, the severe weather could also bring damaging winds, tornadoes, winter storms, snow, and large hail.

Heavy rain is possible in low-lying areas or those near the coast, as well as communities near rivers and lakes.

Meteorologists reportedly consider the current weather conditions of such magnitude to be rare.

The Met Service provided its weather forecast that severe thunderstorms will continue in the coming days and even possibly before the weekend.

New Zealand storms are relatively rare and most emanate from tropical cyclones from the Pacific Ocean and across the waters of the Oceania continent.

Other source of these inclement weather in the so-called "Aotearoa" country were from weather disturbances like a low-pressure area or a storm system.

New Zealand is currently in its winter season which spans from June to August.

The climatic season is somehow similar to Australia, which experienced a recent Antarctic blast of cold air and winter storms since the beginning of the month.

Severe Weather Warnings

The Met Service has placed a total of 42 severe thunderstorm warnings and severe thunderstorm watches across New Zealand, where 19 placed in the North Island and 23 in the South Island.

Weather forecasters warned the start of the week could be potentially damaging, as cited by Stuff.co.nz.

The short-range weather outlook comes after the weather agency recorded 18,039 lightning strikes in the past 12 hours as of 9:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, June12.

Majority of the lightning struck over water, with 1,119 cloud to ground strikes reported over the North Island and 256 in the South Island.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

However, the agency said widespread disruption and destruction is possible this week, highlighting that the adverse weather is caused by a slow-moving tropical low which could remain in New Zealand longer.

Also Read: New Zealand's Glaciers Are Turning Red; Australia's Weather Might Be The Reason Why

Storm Affected Areas

The Met Service also issued the following storm-related warnings and the specific areas affected from Monday, June 13.

Severe Thunderstorm Warnings:

Nelson

Buller

Westland

Canterbury High Country

Waikato

Waitomo Taranaki

Wanganui

Manawatu

Tararua

Kapiti-Horowhenua

Wairarapa

Severe Weather Warnings:

The Tararua Range

The Tararua District

Hawke's Bay

Marlborough

Road Snowfall Warnings:

Desert Road

Lewis Pass

Arthur's Pass

Crown Range Road

Milford Road

The organization also imposed "Heavy Swell Warnings" or strong waves for coastal areas from Kapiti-Porirua Coast - Otaki to Cape Terawhiti.

A "Heavy Rain Watch" and "Strong Wind Watch" were also issued in multiple areas countrywide.

Tornadoes and Flooding

In the latest weather updates, at least two tornadoes struck Waikanae in the Kaiti Coast, according to 1 News.

Furthermore, New Zealanders took to social media to post about major flooding that has already occurred, with pictures of damaged roof, uprooted trees, and among others, according to The Canberra Times.

Over the past week, The Canberra Times reported more than 100,000 lightning strikes occurred across New Zealand amid the severe weather.

Related Article: Tornado Wreaks Havoc on Kapiti Coast in New Zealand, Met Service Warns of Heavy Snow, Enormous Hail, and Massive Surf
Mars has been the subject of humanity's next frontier when it comes to space exploration and space travel in recent decades.

Astronomers and space enthusiasts have focused more on Mars than any other planets in our solar system, with the hopes of finding signs of life and further understanding the history of the universe.

The Mars Exploration Program

For almost 30 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has explored Mars and even sent rovers under its Mars Exploration Program.

This is to study geological and climate features of the Red Planet.

It found evidence that it once resembled an environment similar to Earth, due to the presence of now-depleted water and atmosphere that could possibly sustain life.

Mars contained marks from the remnants of the past since it has also been vulnerable to impacts from asteroids, meteoroids, or comets for billions of years.

In fact, the European Space Agency (ESA) recently discovered crater marks from ancient space object impacts on the planet never seen before.

The discovery of the unknown crater scars from prehistoric impacts could further help astronomers understand the history of Mars, in terms of its position since the formation of the Sun and the rest of our neighboring planets 4.6 billion years ago.

Unknown Crater

Prior to its discovery, a massive crater in the Aonia Terra region of Mars was unknown until the ESA captured an image of the hole on April 25 through its space exploration mission Mars Express.

The crater is 30 kilometers wide, located in the planet's southern hemisphere.

The new image leads to a multitude of theories concerning the origin formation of eye-like shaped basin.

In addition to potential asteroid impacts, the ESA presumed that the region was once a landscape consisting of channels that carried water on the Martian surface about 3.5 to 4 billion years ago.

While there are other craters across the planet, the hole in question can be found in the Tantalus Fossae area where a group of long valleys called as "graben" are situated.

This area is located in the eastern side of the Alba Patera where the collision of faults leads rock to break, according to NASA.

Also Read: New Martian Crater Spotted on Mars (VIDEO)

Ancient Mars

The space community is still determining if Mars once hosted ancient life and a conducive environment for organisms.

NASA's Perseverance rover is one of the many manifestations of space technology that currently assesses if the Red Planet can sustain life, according to a study published in January 2017, as cited by Space.com.

The study's theory suggested that Mars may have contained an ocean in its northern hemisphere of the planet.

This is in addition to decades worth of geological evidence that Mars was once covered with lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams.

Scientists postulate that the planet had substantial liquid water level on its surface, according to the Scientific American, which also mentioned NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, which orbits Mars that a water depletion transpired due to atmospheric loss.

Related Article: Signs of Sustained Water Interaction Found in Mars' Jezero Crater
A tundra wildfire grew closer to an Alaska Native settlement in southwest Alaska on Sunday, but no necessary evacuations were issued, according to fire authorities.

According to Alaska Wildland Fire Information, the East Fork fire was within 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) of St. Mary's.

Despite moving 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) closer to the Yup'ik settlement since Saturday, fire officials said progress has stalled due to good weather conditions.

With growing humidity, temperatures were somewhat lower, which may have helped to mitigate fire conditions.

Winds are forecast to stay constant from the north, assisting in the movement of the fire into inhabited areas.

Tundra wildfires came close to Alaska

Amid the relatively treeless tundra of southwest Alaska, the fire is burning in dry grass and plants like alder and willow. Lightning ignited the fire on May 31, as per AP News.

Firefighters are working to reinforce major and secondary fire lines between St. Mary's and the surrounding villages of Pitkas Point and Mountain Village, as well as properties, such as cottages.

The fire has destroyed no structures.

Meanwhile, another fire is burning northwest of the East Fork fire, although it is still 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Mountain Village.

The East Fork fire, which has expanded to 190 square miles, has 204 workers working on it (492 square kilometers).

Additional employees are anticipated to come Monday when the weather is predicted to improve much further.

Furthermore, cloud cover has risen, humidity has increased, and temperatures have cooled.

The front may also shift the wind direction to the southwest, which would push the fire away from the settlements, according to officials.

Even though no mandatory evacuations have been ordered, the 700 inhabitants of St. Mary's and Pitkas Point, some 10 miles (16 kilometers) south, have been on high alert since Friday to prepare for an evacuation.

Nearly 150 people from the impacted areas have already migrated to Bethel, a hub settlement in southwest Alaska.

According to Rick Thoman, a climate scientist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks' International Arctic Research Center, climate change played a part in the unprecedented fire.

He claimed that this is the greatest documented wildfire in the lower Yukon River basin, according to Alaska Fire Service data dating back to the 1940s.

Much larger fires have been reported barely 50 or 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of St. Mary's, but they were in boreal woods.

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, where the tundra fire is raging, lost its snowpack early this year, taking longer for grass and other plants to dry out.

It was the ideal storm for this fire, which was ignited during the region's hottest time on record lately.

Also Read: Wildfires Increase Rate Of Permafrost Thaw In Arctic Tundra, Researchers Say

Indigenous people being relocated

According to Jeremy Zidek, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, some 80 village elders and those with health problems were transferred to the Alaska National Guard Armory in Bethel on Thursday, as per US News.

The passengers were flown to Bethel by two businesses that provide commuter flight service in remote western Alaska.

Yute Commuter Services, for example, conducted 12 trips out of St. Mary's on its six-seat aircraft, according to Andrew Flagg, the company's station manager in Bethel.

He claimed they were instructed to provide drinking water to the town on Friday so that it could be distributed to the firemen.

About 450 miles west of St. Mary's lies Pitkas Point, which is at the junction of the Andreafsky and Yukon rivers.

Related article: Wind Erosion and Arctic Tundra: Carbon Effects
Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued by local authorities, as a wildland fire is growing in size at the Angeles National Forest in Southern California.

Members of the law enforcement are reportedly conducting a door-to-door approach to impose the measure as the wildfire threatens the Desert Front Road and Wild Horse Canyon.

Under the evacuation mandate, people in residential and commercial properties are required to vacate their establishments.

The latest developments show several road closures have been made.

Furthermore, investigation is underway to determine the cause of the fire, which started on the evening of Saturday, June 11.

Road traffic disruption has occurred already as some roads became impassable due to the recent security measures.

While the wildfire is reaching populated areas, there were no immediate reports of casualties from the blaze.

Sheep Fire

The ongoing wildfire in Southern California has been dubbed as the "Sheep Fire," which burnt a total land area of 775 acres and is still under 5% containment as of the afternoon of Sunday, June 12, according to InciWeb, an interagency incident information system owned by the United States government.

Local officials on Sunday issued a new evacuation order for Highway 2 south of Lone Pine Canyon Road, from Mountain Road to Sheep Creek Drive.

Road closures were reported from Highway 138 to Lone Pine, Highway 2, as well as a portion of State Route 2.

Members of the Angeles National Forest, San Bernardino County Fire, and Cal Fire San Bernardino Unito are currently engaging to mitigate and extinguish the fire.

Also Read: California Wildfire Blamed for Increased Fecal Bacteria, Cloudiness in Coastal Waters

US Summer Season

The US summer season from June could see a "concerning start," according to Robert Garcia, the fire chief of the US Forest Service for the Angeles National Forest, who told CNN last week.

Garcia added that fire restrictions are already in place in the area and these measures are expected to expand int the coming months.

This is possible as the summer usually lasts until August each year.

In May, the Climate Prediction Center (CPC), a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has issued a 90-day outlook for the months of June, July, August.

Based on the on the outlook, this year's summer season will consist of hot weather and above-average temperatures.

Southwest Wildfires

Wildfires are common in the drought-stricken region of Southwest US, which includes Southern California.

Over the past decade, wildland fires have increased in frequency across the state, aggravated by prolonged drought, extreme heat, and fire weather conditions.

The State of California reported that 2021 fire incidents led to an estimated 2.5 million acres of burnt land, 3,600 damaged or destroyed structure, and three deaths with almost 9,000 incidents occurred.

Some of the largest wildfires recorded in 2021 include the: Dixie Fire, Monument Fire, Caldor Fire, River Complex, McFarland Fire, Beckwourth Complex, McCash Fire, Tamarack Fire, Lava Fire, and Alisal Fire.

The wildfires occurred at a time when there was an ongoing drought with record-breaking low rainfall and low reservoir levels.

The name of the wildland fires were commonly derived from their place of origin.

Related Article: Southern California Wildfire: Wildfire Rages, Tens of Thousands in Mandatory Evacuation
Bangladesh Health Minister cautions people as Covid cases rise

Dhaka, June 13 (UNI) Bangladesh Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Monday cautioned people to remain alert in view of the rising cases of Covid-19 in the country.

Speaking in Dhaka on Monday, Zahid Maleque said that Covid-19 has not been eradicated as yet and the situation can become alarming anytime though it is normal as of now.

He urged the unvaccinated people to get the shots urgently to avoid infection. He called upon people to maintain social distancing and use masks.

Bangladesh reported 129 new cases of Covid-19 infection on Monday and zero deaths.

The sample positivity rate also showed an increase to 1.91 percent on Monday compared to 1.49 percent on Sunday and Saturday.

The number of fresh infections were 71 on Saturday, 109 on Sunday before climbing to 129 on Monday. The number of new infections crossed 100 for the first time on Sunday after more than two months.

The country has not witnessed any Covid-19 related deaths in over two weeks. The death toll in the country stands at 29,131 as of now.

Meanwhile, till Sunday, more than 12.88 crore people constituting over 75 percent of the population in Bangladesh had received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccines.

More than 11.83 crore people have received both the doses of the vaccine constituting 69.51 percent of the population. The number of people receiving the booster dose stands at 2.68 crore in the country.

UNI MAZ SHK0010
New Delhi, June 12 (UNI) Russia and India saw "intensified cooperation in the field of energy and fertilizers in 2022", Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov said today, in reference to India's increased purchase of Russian crude amid the Ukraine conflict. He also said the delivery of S-400 missile systems from Russia is proceeding well.

In a message on the occasion of Russia Day today, the Ambassador also said that Moscow deeply cherishes equal and respectful relations with India.

Our cooperation plays the role of a defining factor for global peace, stability and sustainable development. We are confident in the future of our bilateral ties and are ready to move forward in utilizing their potential and exploring new horizons for the benefit of the people of our two friendly nations, he said.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Partly cloudy and windy this evening with scattered thunderstorms developing overnight. Low around 75F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy and windy this evening with scattered thunderstorms developing overnight. Low around 75F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
In a recent study published in the journal PNAS, researchers demonstrated higher comparative efficacy of the intranasal (IN) route of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine administration versus the intramuscular route in mice.

Study: Intranasal inoculation of an MVA-based vaccine induces IgA and protects the respiratory tract of hACE2 mice from SARS-CoV-2 infection. Image Credit: Skylines / Shutterstock

Background

Several modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA)-vectored vaccines are undergoing clinical trials against multiple pathogens, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In addition to intramuscular (IM) or subcutaneous administration, the IN administration of MVA has shown to induce protective mucosal and systemic immune responses in small animals, such as K18-human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) mice.

It is noteworthy that MVA is a replication-deficient but immunogenic smallpox vaccine strain. In one of their previous studies, the authors demonstrated that IM injection of MVA expressing a modified SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein inactivated the furin cleavage site (FCS). This vaccine also induced neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) and the cluster of differentiation (CD8)+ interferon-gamma (IFN-)+ T cells to protect K18-hACE2 transgenic mice from SARS-CoV-2 infection. Also, sera from these mice passively transferred to unvaccinated mice protected against severe SARS-CoV-2-infection.

About the study

In the present study, researchers used a K18-hACE2 mouse model to compare the efficacies of IM and IN administration routes of a live, replication-deficient MVAbased SARS-CoV-2 S vaccine. Additionally, they determined whether vaccine-induced nAbs persisted for more than six months and that serum-induced to the Wuhan S protein neutralized pseudoviruses expressing S proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 Beta and Omicron variants.

The researchers modified a recombinant MVA expressing a SARS-CoV-2 S protein three times termed rMVA-S tri . To correlate vaccine dosage with the induced antibody levels, they varied the doses of rMVA-S tri from 2  103 to 2  107 plaque-forming units (PFU). The team administered these doses once, then twice again three weeks later. Moreover, they vaccinated control mice with the parental MVA.

The mice were challenged IN with a lethal dose of 105 median tissue culture infectious dose (TC ID50 ) of Wuhan strain three weeks after the first vaccination and two weeks after the second. The researchers analyzed serum antibodies using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) three weeks after the prime and two weeks after the boost. They also monitored the SARS-CoV-2 S-binding and pseudovirus neutralizing titers over six to eight months following IM injection of 2  107 PFU of rMVA-S tri .

Study findings

The authors noted that IM vaccination-induced SARS-CoV-2 S-binding-nAbs and immunoglobulin G (IgGs) only in the lungs of infected mice. On the contrary, IN vaccination additionally induced IgA and higher levels of antigen-specific CD3+ CD8+ IFN-+ T cells. Notably, IgG was detected only in mice immunized IN; however, intranasal boosting increased IgA after both intranasal and intramuscular priming.

Comparison of immune responses and protection following IN and IM vaccinations. (A) K18-hACE2 mice were primed and boosted with rMVA-S tri by IN or IM route to form three groups of 13 mice: IMxIM, IMxIN, and INxIN. In addition, a control group received MVA IM followed by MVA IN. Mice from each group were bled at 3 wk after the prime and 2 wk after the boost. At the latter time, mice were challenged by IN inoculation of 105 TCID 50 of SARS-CoV-2. On days 2 and 5 after challenge, five mice from each group were killed and three remained to follow weight and morbidity. (B and C) Serum IgG and IgA endpoint ELISA titers are shown for individual mice and the geometric mean. The dashed line represents the limit of detection. (D) Individual and geometric mean pseudovirus neutralizing titers are shown. (E) Three mice of each group were monitored for weight loss and survival. (F) At days 2 and 5 after challenge with SARS-CoV-2, homogenates were prepared from the lungs and nasal turbinates of five mice from each group and the TCID 50 of SARS-CoV-2 determined. (G) RNA was extracted from the homogenates and copies of sgN (shaded) and sgS (unshaded) RNA were determined by ddPCR and normalized to 18S rRNA in the same sample. Significance: *P = 0.04, **P < 007, ****P < 0.0001; ns, not significant.

Moreover, IN vaccination rapidly cleared SARS-CoV-2 infection as early as two days after the live virus challenge. Accordingly, the authors could not detect the infectious virus or viral messenger ribonucleic acid (RNAs) in the nasal turbinates or lungs of the infected mice, even two days after the virus challenge. Conversely, IM vaccination cleared SARS-CoV-2 from the respiratory tract several days after the challenge.

ELISA results indicated that around 50% of the mice had higher S-binding antibody titers than the control mice after priming with the 2  103 PFU of rMVA-S tri , whereas nearly all mice had elevated titers after the boost. The researchers detected binding antibodies at a higher dose in all mice after the priming. Moreover, the endpoint titers were similar after the boost except for the 2  104 PFU dose, and the boosted values were similar following doses of 2  104 PFU or higher.

The test animals that received a single lower dose died by day six or seven, whereas those who received a booster dose survived. Overall, survival correlated with a 50% neutralization titer (NT 50 ) of 100 and a single dose of 2  106 PFU. The booster dose of 2  105 PFU or higher raised these values by 10- to 100-fold.

Furthermore, the decrease in binding antibody titer was 19% and 75% at four weeks and over six months, respectively. Likewise, the nAb titers declined 22% and 81% at four weeks and over six months, respectively, but remained adequate to correlate with protection. Mann-Whitney test showed a significantly higher NT 50 after the second vaccination received three weeks later than the first one, supporting the advantage of delaying a booster dose when appropriate.

Conclusions

The study focused on a comparison of IN and IM routes of administration for MVA-based COVID-19 vaccines. Two IN vaccinations cleared SARS-CoV-2 single guide RNAs (sgRNAs) in the nasal turbinates and lungs of mice within two days, indicating how it efficiently accelerated viral clearance likely by recruiting local IgA antibodies. Notably, the polymeric structure of secretory IgA antibodies helps potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2.

Recently, some countries, including the United States, Canada, and the European Union, have approved MVA as a smallpox vaccine. Although rMVA-vectored vaccines have not received approvals for COVID-19 yet, the present study supports testing MVA-vectored SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, including their IN delivery routes and subsequent infection and transmission rates.
Patients with type 2 diabetes have an increased risk for fractures, despite their normal-to-high bone mineral density, according to research being presented Saturday, June 11 at ENDO 2022, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in Atlanta, Ga.

Patients using insulin or sulfonylurea are at a high risk of fractures compared to metformin-only users, and the risk could be higher in non-obese and well-controlled diabetic patients." Sung Hye Kong, M.D., of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in Seongnam, South Korea

Kong and colleagues acknowledge that anti-diabetic medications have long been suspected for an increased risk for fractures among this patient population. However, after investigating longitudinal comparative studies, they learned that evidence of these effects are limited.

For their study, the researchers included 6,694 patients aged 50 years from the common data model (CDM) database between 2008 and 2011, who used the same anti-diabetic medications for over a year.

They analyzed risks of major osteoporotic fractures and hip fractures in each group using the Cox proportional hazards model compared with a metformin group as a reference.

"From real-world data using the common data model, we found that insulin users were at elevated risk of major osteoporotic and hip fracture compared to metformin users, which was attenuated in users with a combination of insulin and metformin," Kong said.

This increased fracture risk among people who used insulin was exaggerated among people who are not obese and those with well-controlled diabetes. These findings suggest a need for routine fracture risk assessments in patients with diabetes.
According to new research by investigators at the Mayo Clinic and Washington State University, e-bandages could be an effective alternative to antibiotics for managing wound infections. The findings are presented at ASM Microbe 2022, the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

In a recent study conducted in mice, novel hydrogen peroxide producing bandages with electrical/chemical properties (electro-chemical bandages or e-bandages), under the control of wearable voltage devices, reduced methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) biofilm bacteria present in the wound by 99 percent after 2 days of treatment.

In people with wound injuries, typical management includes cleaning the wound using various solutions  including hydrogen peroxide, applying antiseptic creams or ointments, and at times, administering antibiotics. If wounds do not heal, they may progress to a chronic wound stage which can be especially tough to manage.

Research has shown that chronic wounds often harbor biofilms (communities of microorganisms living together attaching to surfaces). Bacteria present in such biofilms can thrive and resist the effects of antibiotic treatment, which is why they are difficult to treat even with prolonged antibiotic treatment. Prolonged use of antibiotics can result in selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The presence of biofilms in wounds also delays wound healing; biofilm-harboring wounds are common in patients who are older in age, diabetic or immuno-compromised.

Wound infections are common and can be challenging to treat. Thus, it is important to develop new strategies, technologies and treatment regimens that do not rely on antibiotics." Yash S. Raval, PhD, Study Lead Author and Senior Research Fellow, Division of Clinical Microbiology, Mayo Clinic in Rochester

Hydrogen peroxide solution is used to clean wounds. Although hydrogen peroxide has antibacterial and wound healing properties, hydrogen peroxide solution is unstable chemically and therefore, its effects are short-lived. Dr. Raval and colleagues have developed e-bandages to continuously produce hydrogen peroxide as a treatment of wound infections

"Specifically, we have developed and examined antibacterial properties of a novel kind of bandage which continuously produces hydrogen peroxide through application of a specific negative voltage," said Dr. Raval.

In the study, the researchers created wounds on mice and infected them with MRSA to establish wound MRSA biofilms. They then treated infected wounds with the wearable e-bandage system. The hydrogen peroxide-producing e-bandages reduced the bacterial biofilm population by 99 percent.

ASM Microbe is the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, held June 9-13, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

The American Society for Microbiology is one of the largest professional societies dedicated to the life sciences and is composed of 30,000 scientists and health practitioners. ASM's mission is to promote and advance the microbial sciences.

ASM advances the microbial sciences through conferences, publications, certifications, educational opportunities and advocacy efforts. It enhances laboratory capacity around the globe through training and resources. It provides a network for scientists in academia, industry and clinical settings. Additionally, ASM promotes a deeper understanding of the microbial sciences to diverse audiences.
Several months ago, a lab technologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital mixed the blood components of two people: Alphonso Harried, who needed a kidney, and Pat Holterman-Hommes, who hoped to give him one.

The goal was to see whether Harried's body would instantly see Holterman-Hommes organ as a major threat and attack it before surgeons could finish a transplant. To do that, the technologist mixed in fluorescent tags that would glow if Harried's immune defense forces would latch onto the donor's cells in preparation for an attack. If, after a few hours, the machine found lots of glowing, it meant the kidney transplant would be doomed. It stayed dark: They were a match.

"I was floored," said Harried.

Both recipient and donor were a little surprised. Harried is Black. Holterman-Hommes is white.

Could a white person donate a kidney to a Black person? Would race get in the way of their plans? Both families admitted those kinds of questions were flitting around in their heads, even though they know, deep down, that "its more about your blood type  and all of our blood is red," as Holterman-Hommes put it.

Scientists widely agree that race is a social construct, yet it is often conflated with biology, leaving the impression that a person's race governs how the body functions.

"Its not just laypeople  its in the medical field as well. People often conflate race with biology," said Dr. Marva Moxey-Mims, chief of pediatric nephrology at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C.

She's not talking just about kidney medicine. Race has been used as a shorthand for how people's bodies work for years across many fields  not out of malice but because it was based on what was considered the best science available at the time. The science was not immune to the racialized culture it sprung from, which is now being seen in a new light. For example, U.S. pediatricians recently ditched a calculation that assumed Black children were less likely to get a urinary tract infection after new research found the risk had to do with a child's history of fevers and past infections  not race. And obstetricians removed race and ethnicity from a calculation meant to gauge a patient's ability to have a vaginal birth after a previous cesarean section, once they determined it was based on flawed science. Still, researchers say those race-based guidelines are just a slice of those being used to assess patients, and are largely based on the assumption that how a person looks or identifies reflects their genetic makeup.

Race does have its place during a doctors visit, however. Medical providers who give patients culturally competent care  the act of acknowledging a patient's heritage, beliefs, and values during treatment  often see improved patient outcomes. Culturally competent doctors understand that overt racism and microaggressions can not only cause mental distress but also that racial trauma can make a person physically sick. Race is a useful tool for identifying population-level disparities, but experts now say it is not very useful in making decisions about how to treat an individual patient.

Because using race as a medical shorthand is at best imprecise and at worst harmful, a conversation is unfolding nationally among lawmakers, scientists, and doctors who say one of the best things patients can do is ask if  and how  their race is factored into their care.

Doctors and researchers in kidney care have been active recently in reevaluating their use of race-based medical guidance.

"History is being written right now that this is not the right thing to do and that the path forward is to use race responsibly and not to do it in the way that weve been doing in the past," says Dr. Nwamaka Eneanya, a nephrologist with Fresenius Medical Care, who in a previous position with the University of Pennsylvania traced in the journal Naturethe history of how race  a social construct became embedded in medicine.

The perception that there is such a thing as a "Black" or "white" kidney quietly followed patient and donor as Harried and Holterman-Hommes were on the path to the transplant  in their medical records and in the screening tests recommended.

Medical records described Harried as a "47-year-old Black or African American male" and Holterman-Hommes as a "58-year-old, married Caucasian female." Harried does not recall ever providing his race or speaking with his physicians about the influence of race on his care, but for two years or more his classification as "Black or African American" was a factor in the equations doctors used to estimate how well his kidneys were working. As previous KHN reporting lays out, that practice  distinguishing between "Black" and "non-Black" bodies  was the norm. In fall 2021, a national committee determined race has no place in estimating kidney function, a small but significant step in revising how race is considered.

Dr. Lisa McElroy, a surgeon who performs kidney transplants at Duke University, said the constant consideration of race "is the rule, not the exception, in medicine."

"Medicine or health care is a little bit like art. It reflects the culture," she said. "Race is a part of our culture, and it shows up all through it  and health care is no different."

McElroy no longer mentions race in her patients' notes, because it "really has no bearing on the clinical care plan or biology of disease."

Still, such assumptions extend throughout health care. Some primary care doctors, for example, continue to hew to an assumption that Black patients cannot handle certain kinds of blood pressure medications, even while researchers have concluded those assumptions don't make sense, distract doctors from considering factors more important than race  like whether the patient has access to nutritious food and stable housing  and could prevent patients from achieving better health by limiting their options.

Studying population-level patterns is important for identifying where disparities exist, but that doesn't mean people's bodies innately function differently  just as population-level disparities in pay do not indicate one gender is fundamentally more capable of hard work.

"If you see group differences  they're usually driven by what we do to groups," said Dr. Keith Norris, not by innate differences in those groups. Still, medicine often continues to use race as a crude catchall, said Norris, a UCLA nephrologist, "as if every Black person in America experiences the same amount and the same quantity of structural racism, individualized racism, internalized racism, and gene polymorphisms."

In Harried and Holterman-Hommes' case, one striking example of race being used as shorthand for determining how people's bodies work was an informational guide given to Holterman-Hommes that said African Americans with high blood pressure could not donate an organ, but Caucasians with high blood pressure might still qualify.

"I can't believe they actually wrote that down," said Dr. Vanessa Grubbs, a nephrologist at the University of California-San Francisco. That worries Grubbs because using race as a reason to exclude donors can create a situation in which Black transplant recipients have to work harder to find a living donor than others would.

"I do think that criteria such as these become barriers for transplantation," said Dr. Rajnish Mehrotra, head of nephrology at the University of Washington. He said that type of hypertension distinction could exclude potential donors  like the 56% of Black adults with high blood pressure in the U.S.  when more of them are sorely needed.

The inclusion of race did not necessarily affect Harried's ability to receive a kidney, nor Holterman-Hommes' ability to give him one. But following their case offers a glimpse into the ways race and biology are often cemented together.

The St. Louis case

Harried and Holterman-Hommes met 20 years ago when they worked together at a nonprofit that serves youth experiencing homelessness in St. Louis. Harried was the guy who pulled kids out of their ruts and into a creative mindset, from which they would write poems and songs and do artwork. Holterman-Hommes said he was "the calm in their storm." Harried calls Holterman-Hommes "big stuff" because she is the nonprofit's CEO who keeps the lights on and the donations coming in. "You never knew that she was the president of the company," said Harried. "There wasn't an air about her."

Harried resigned in 2018 as his health declined. Then in 2021, Holterman-Hommes saw a KHN article about Harried and decided to see if she could help her former colleague. Although Holterman-Hommes' mother was born with one kidney, she had lived a long and healthy life, so Holterman-Hommes figured she could spare one of her own.

As Holterman-Hommes explored becoming a donor candidate, initial tests showed high blood pressure readings, in addition to lower-than-ideal kidney function. But "I like to get an A on a test," she said, so she redid both sets of tests, repeating the kidney function test after staying better hydrated and the blood pressure test after a big work deadline had passed. She moved on in the screening process after her results improved.

Grubbs wonders whether, if Holterman-Hommes had been Black, "they would have just dismissed her." Grubbs shared an instance in which she suspects that's exactly what happened to the wife of a patient of hers in California who needed a kidney transplant.

The wife, who is Black and was in her 50s at the time, wasn't allowed to give the patient a kidney because of her hypertension.

"There are people in this country that will tell you that, 'Oh, white people donate kidneys, Black people dont donate kidneys, and that's not true,'" said Mehrotra. "You hear that racist trope. But [there are] all of these barriers to kidney donation."

Barnes-Jewish Hospital later said it had given Holterman-Hommes an outdated guide, "an unfortunate circumstance that is being corrected," and provided a new one that does not say Black people with hypertension cannot donate. Instead, it says that people cannot donate if they have hypertension that was either diagnosed before age 40 or requires more than one medication to manage.

But "at some point, it was a policy," said Harried, whose kidneys have been failing for several years. And it's unclear how many years that "outdated" guidance shaped perceptions among those seeking care at Barnes-Jewish, which performs more living-donor kidney transplants per year than any other location in Missouri, according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.

There is little transparency into how medical centers incorporate race into their decision-making and care. Guidelines from the United Network for Organ Sharing, the national organization in charge of the transplant system, leave the door open for hospitals to "exclude a donor with any condition that, in the hospital's medical judgment, causes the donor to be unsuitable for organ donation."

Tanjala Purnell, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health studying disparities in kidney transplantation, said she knows of several centers that used race-based criteria, though some have relaxed those rules, instead deciding case by case. "Theres not a standard set to say, 'Well, no, you can absolutely not have different rules for different people,'" she said. "We don't have those safeguards." Dr. Tarek Alhamad, medical director of the kidney program at the Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Transplant Center, said race-based criteria for kidney donations aren't created to exclude Black people  it was born of a desire to avoid harming them.

"African Americans are more likely to have end-stage renal disease, they are more likely to have end-stage renal disease related to hypertension. And they are more likely to have genetic factors that would lead to kidney dysfunction," said Alhamad.

Compared with white and Hispanic donors, non-Hispanic Black donors are known to be at higher risk for developing kidney failure because of their donation, though it's still very rare.

He said it feels unethical to take a kidney from someone who may really need it down the line. "This is our role as physicians not to do harm."

The science

Researchers are studying a possible way to clarify who is really at risk in donating a kidney, by identifying specific risk factors rather than pinning odds on the vague concept of race.

Specifically, a gene called APOL1 could influence a person's likelihood of developing kidney disease. All humans have two copies of this gene, but there are different versions, or variants, of it. Having two risk variants increases the chance of kidney injury.

The risk variants are most prevalent in people with recent African ancestry, a group that crosses racial and ethnic boundaries. About 13% of African Americans have the double whammy of two risk variants, said Dr. Barry Freedman, chief of nephrology at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. Even then, he said, their fate isn't sealed  most people in that group won't get kidney failure. "We think they need a second hit, like HIV infection, or lupus, or covid-19."

Freedman is leading a study that looks, in part, at how kidney donors with those risk variants fare in the long term.

"This is really important because the hope is that kidneys wont be discarded or turned down as frequently," said Moxey-Mims, who is also involved in the research.

Researchers who are focused on health equity say that while APOL1 testing could help separate race from genetics, it could be a double-edged sword. Purnell pointed out that if APOL1 is misused  for example, if a transplant center makes a blanket rule that no one with two risk variants can donate, rather than using it as a starting point for shared decision-making, or if doctors offer the test based only on a patient's looks  it could merely add another criterion to the list by which certain people are excluded.

"We have to do our due diligence," said Purnell, to ensure that any effort to be protective doesn't end up "making the pool of available donors for certain groups smaller and smaller and smaller." Purnell, McElroy, and others steeped in transplant inequities say that as long as race  which is a cultural concept defining how someone identifies, or how they are perceived  is used as a stand-in for someone's ancestry or genetics, the line between protecting and excluding people will remain fuzzy.

"Thats the heart of the matter here," said McElroy.

So where does race belong in kidney transplant medicine? Many of the physicians interviewed for this article  many of them people of color  said it primarily serves as a potential indicator of hurdles patients may face, rather than as a marker of how their bodies function.

For example, McElroy said she might spend more time with Black patients building trust with them and their families, or talking about how important living donations can be, similar to the ways she might spend more time with a Spanish-speaking patient making sure they know how to access a translator, or with an elderly patient emphasizing how important physical activity is.

"The purpose is not to ignore the social determinants of health  of which race is one," she said. "It's to try to help them overcome the race-specific or ethnicity-specific barriers to receiving excellent care."

While all the science gets sorted out, Eneanya is trying to get the message out to patients: "Just ask the question: 'Is my race being used in my clinical care?' And if it is, first of all, what race is in the chart? Is it affecting my care? And what are my options?"

"Just keep your eyes open, ask questions," said Harried.

In late April, a kidney from Holterman-Hommes' body was successfully placed into Harried's. Both are home now and say they are doing well.
Lucknow, June 13 (UNI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Monday that India-Israel relations have touched new heights in recent years and UP is ready to play its positive role in the betterment of mutual relations between the two countries.



The Chief Minister said that with the cooperation of Israel, two Centers of Excellence were established in Basti and Kannauj districts of Uttar Pradesh, both of which are achieving success in their objectives.



He said that our plan is to establish a new Center of Excellence in the field of horticulture and vegetable production. In this work also we will get necessary cooperation from Israel, he added.

The CM made these statement while meeting an Israeli government delegation led by Israel's Ambassador Naor Gilon here at his official residence on Monday morning. During the meeting, the Ambassador of Israel congratulated the chief minister on his unprecedented victory in the recent assembly elections.

During the talks, Ambassador Naor Gilone said that Israel and India have strong strategic ties. With Uttar Pradesh, we are in the role of good ally in many areas. In the near future, Israel is going to support Uttar Pradesh in the fields of defence, police modernization, agricultural modernization, better use of water to farmers, availability of drinking water in Bundelkhand and defense production.

The CM while welcoming the delegation, said that bilateral relations between India and Israel are getting stronger as the two countries have had strong diplomatic relations for over 30 years.

Yogi Adityanath said that the Defence Industrial Corridor being established in Uttar Pradesh is full of investment opportunities for Israel. "We have huge land, adequate human resource. We are providing all necessary resources to the investor companies interested in defense production. This is a good platform for Israel. Israel has good experience in drone and anti-drone technology and it should be considered for investment in the UP Defense Industrial Corridor," he added.

The CM said that the police force of Uttar Pradesh is one of the largest civil police force in the world. "We are working on a plan to modernize our police force. Israel can help us in this work. Israel can also be a good ally in the strengthening of forensic labs," he said.

The CM said that UP is the largest state of India in terms of population and there is also a big market here with a population of 25 crores. Along with agriculture, there is immense potential for development in the field of food processing in the state. Israel can make its proposals in this area, he said.

The Chief Minister said that the State Government is developing a Medical Device Park on Yamuna Industrial Expressway near New Delhi and Israeli companies are invited to invest here.

The CM said that a new project is being proposed in the Bundelkhand region in the field of irrigation and drinking water with the technical cooperation of Israel. Its feasibility report is out and soon the detailed project report will be ready. The success of this project will be useful to the farmers of Bundelkhand to get 12 months crop, and Har Ghar Nal Yojana will be successful in its objectives.

The Ambassador thanked the Chief Minister for giving the time and said that Israel and the Government of India have a strong strategic and strategic relationship, which has intensified after the visit of Prime Minister Modi in 2017 and the two countries will work together in new areas. The Government of Israel, along with the Government of Uttar Pradesh, will take forward the work they are doing in the field of agriculture and irrigation, better availability of water and water conservation to increase the income of farmers. Along with this, technology transfer will also be done in defence, police modernization and development of industries. Uttar Pradesh and Israel will speed up these works by forming a joint group, the ambassador said.

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Linnea Sorensen falls into a funk whenever her girlfriend of four years leaves for her six-month stints with the Marines, and the high school junior has trouble concentrating on her class work.

"I'm somebody who struggles with my mental health quite a bit," said the 17-year-old, who attends school in this suburb of about 77,000 people northwest of Chicago. "When youre in school and not fully mentally there, its like youre not really grasping anything anyway."

Now Illinois is giving Sorensen and students like her a new option for dealing with mental health lows. The state allows K-12 students in public schools to have five excused absences per school year for mental health reasons, another example of the growing acknowledgment among lawmakers that emotional and physical health are intertwined. The new policy, which went into effect at the beginning of 2022, passed both chambers of the state legislature unanimously.

But such novel policies are, in many ways, a half-step toward addressing the crisis of teenage mental health that has been highlighted and exacerbated by the educational interruptions caused by the pandemic. Many parts of the country are woefully short of therapists who can work with students to address mental health problems.

Seventy percent of schools that responded to a federal survey in April said more students had sought mental health services since the pandemic started. The National Center for Education Statistics' polling also showed that only 56% of schools said they effectively provide mental health services to all students in need and just 41% reported hiring new staff members to help address students' mental health needs.

Nearly half the nation lives in a designated mental health worker shortage area, according to government data, and an estimated 7,550 new professionals are needed to fill that void nationwide. Even in places where mental health professionals are more plentiful, they often do not accept public insurance, making them inaccessible to many kids.

In other states where lawmakers have implemented policies that allow students to take mental health days  including Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Virginia  a lack of services for young people remains a concern.

Schools in Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Utah, and Washington, D.C., have tried to narrow the gap through less costly solutions, such as in-class meditation, mindfulness rooms, and social-emotional learning. The latter became a curriculum target of conservative lawmakers in recent months.

In a 2020 Mental Health America survey of young people's greatest mental health needs, the top responses from 14- to 18-year-olds were access to mental health professionals and mental health absences or breaks as part of school or work.

"The more we can shift to a prevention mindset and integrate mental health promotion into schools from a young age, I see that as very key to helping reduce the needs for treatment that we see in young people," said Tamar Mendelson, director of the Center for Adolescent Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Education officials and mental health experts in Illinois say the mental health day policy is a good start toward tamping down a youth mental health crisis that had been growing during an era of school shootings and cyberbullying and then exploded during the pandemic. The move is another indication that schools are increasingly being relied upon to meet students' social needs, from feeding, clothing, and vaccinating them to spotting abuse and neglect.

"I've been a teacher for 19 years, and this is as bad as I've seen it," Ben Lobo said of the mental health of his students at Schaumburg High School.

Susan Resko, president and CEO of the Josselyn Center, a community mental health center north of Chicago, said the pandemic was "like putting a match to fuel."

Before March 2020, the nonprofit received about 50 new clients a month, Resko said. That number is now 250, and two-thirds are children or young adults. The organization hired 70 therapists in the past year and has received an influx of requests for mental health counseling services from local schools.

Some critics of the new Illinois law note that it excludes families without ready access to child care. And a lack of data from some schools means officials don't know whether the policy is being used.

The Illinois State Board of Education does not require schools to report how many students are taking mental health absences. KHN contacted the 10 largest school districts in Illinois seeking that data. Six didnt respond (the districts based in Elgin, Aurora, Algonquin, Oswego, Romeoville, and Schaumburg), and three said they either aren't tracking that number (Chicago) or couldn't release it (Rockford and Naperville).

School officials in Plainfield, Illinois  a town about 35 miles southwest of Chicago whose district has an enrollment of more than 25,000  said 3,703 students took a combined 6,237 mental health days from early January through the end of the school year. That means nearly 15% of the student body used an average of 1.7 days per student. Officials also noted that 123 of those days were used on the last day of school before summer break.

The community had been seeking to provide more services to students even before the pandemic hit. In 2019, Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 added 20 social workers after data showed that overnight hospitalizations of any kind among students had more than doubled in the previous five years. That type of staff expansion just "doesn't happen in education," said Tim Albores, the district's director of student services.

Under the state's new policy, after students have a second mental health-related absence, district officials are required to refer them to the "appropriate school support personnel." But many schools can't afford the types of services Plainfield is offering, education officials say, and in rural areas they sometimes have trouble finding people to fill those jobs.

Chicago isnt scheduled to have a social worker in each of its more than 600 schools until 2024. School social workers there often devote most of their time to students who receive special education services dictated by an individualized education program, or IEP.

"My door gets knocked on all day long. And I have to choose  am I going to reschedule my IEP services, or am I going to help a student whos experiencing a crisis like right now?" said Mary Difino, a social worker at Brian Piccolo Elementary Specialty School on Chicago's West Side. "The neighborhood I work in, there's a lot of trauma, there's a lot of community violence, there's a lot of death and hardship."

Fourteen-year-old Heaven Draper, an eighth grader at Brian Piccolo, said she had used two mental health days: one to take a break from a chaotic classroom environment  she said she sometimes feels more like a teacher than a student  and another to de-stress from the pressures of applying and testing for high schools in the city. "This is our first year back in person from quarantine," she said. "It's gotten overwhelming at times."

Her classmate Ariyonnah Brown, 14, said she took a day to help defuse a situation with another student. She said she'd like to see more awareness of mental health among adults, especially in communities of color like hers.

"Parents need to be educated," said Sheila Blanco, 57, a food distribution purchaser from Chicago whose 14-year-old daughter, Carli, died by suicide in 2017. "So many parents, they dont know what resources are, and even if there are resources, to help out the child or help them to help the child."

Anna Sanderson, a Schaumburg High School junior, said she believes the policy is a good idea, just not for her. "If I miss a day because I'm overwhelmed or not feeling well mentally, I feel like when I go back, I'll only be worse," the 17-year-old said. "I'll have to make up assignments and tests and be behind in my classes."

But she said she hopes it's a sign of greater support for students' mental health. She said schools sometimes fail to acknowledge student suicides or to provide counseling that goes much beyond education.

"I feel like we get dismissed a lot of the times," she said.
Advances in cellular immunotherapy that spur genetically modified T cells to attack cancer cells have revolutionized the treatment of certain blood cancers. Six such CAR-T cell therapies are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat certain types of leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Still, some patients' tumors don't respond well to these therapies, and many patients who do well initially later see their cancers return.

Now, a new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that additional treatment with an immunity-boosting protein called interleukin 7 (IL-7) after an infusion of these genetically modified T cells causes the cancer-fighting CAR-T cells to grow in number and become more effective at killing tumor cells.

The mouse study -; published June 13 in the journal Nature Communications -; suggests promise for a phase 1 clinical trial at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The clinical trial is investigating a long-acting genetically modified type of IL-7 in conjunction with CAR-T cells targeting CD19, a B cell antigen in patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Siteman is the coordinating center and one of four sites across the country participating in the trial.

Many researchers are trying different strategies to enhance the function of CAR-T cells in treating blood cancers. We're interested in IL-7 because we know it is a major driver of T cell expansion. The body makes IL-7 naturally to ramp up the number of T cells when a person gets sick, for example. When we give a long-acting type of IL-7 to tumor-bearing immunodeficient mice soon after CAR-T cell treatment, we see a dramatic expansion of these CAR-T cells greater than ten-thousandfold compared to mice not receiving IL-7. These CAR-T cells also persist longer and show dramatically increased anti-tumor activity." John F. DiPersio, MD, PhD, senior author, the Virginia E. & Sam J. Golman Professor of Medicine and director of the Division of Oncology

CAR-T cells are manufactured using the body's normal T cells, either from the patient or a donor. The CAR-T cells are genetically modified to specifically target a protein on the surface of the cancer cells. The targeting helps the CAR-T cells find the cancer cells, which are masters at evading immune attack. The therapy can be highly effective, but sometimes the CAR-T cells aren't able to expand enough to kill all of the cancer, or they become overstimulated, "exhausting" their ability to function, resulting in their loss of anti-tumor effectiveness.

With these problems in mind, the researchers -; including first author Miriam Y. Kim, MD, an assistant professor of medicine, and co-senior author Matthew L. Cooper, PhD, an adjunct assistant professor of medicine -; were interested in whether they could harness the body's natural way of boosting T cell numbers to enhance the therapy. But natural IL-7 normally disappears from the body quickly. Therefore, DiPersio and his team tested a modified form of IL-7 that circulates in the body for weeks, making it much more effective at supporting the CAR-T cell expansion.

Investigating two different models of B cell lymphoma in mice, the researchers showed that mice receiving CAR-T cells and long-acting IL-7 survived almost six times longer than mice receiving CAR-T cells alone. Mice treated with CAR-T cells alone survived for about one month after therapy. All mice that received long-acting IL-7 soon after the CAR-T cell treatment were still living at the end of an experimental time frame of 175 days. Further, tumor sizes in the mice that had received CAR-T cells and IL-7 were dramatically reduced, to the point of being undetectable in the majority of mice by day 35.

"In mice that received the CAR-T cells alone, the disease is controlled briefly," DiPersio said. "But by week three, the tumor starts to return. And by week four, they start to look like the control mice that didn't receive any active therapy. But by adding long-acting IL-7, the numbers of CAR-T cells just explode, and those mice lived beyond the time frame we set for our experiment. Our study also suggests that it may be possible to fine-tune the expansion of the CAR-T cells by controlling the number of IL-7 doses that we give."

Washington University research laid the groundwork for using IL-7 to boost the immune system to treat disease, including its use with CAR-T cells. In addition, Richard S. Hotchkiss, MD, a professor of anesthesiology, of medicine and of surgery, and his team have studied IL-7 for its use in stimulating T cells to fight sepsis, a life-threatening response to infection. Research from the Brain Tumor Center at Siteman also has shown promise for the use of long-acting IL-7 to enhance T cells in treating glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer.

This work was supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant numbers R35 CA210084 and P50 CA171963; the Siteman Investment Program; Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation through a Northwestern Mutual Young Investigator Award; Washington University SPORE in Leukemia Developmental Research Award; and a Dean's Scholars Award from the Washington University Division of Physician-Scientists.

DiPersio, Kim, Cooper, and co-authors Karl W. Staser, Julie O'Neal and Byung Ha Lee are inventors of a patent on the use of IL-7 to enhance CAR-T cell function.
(Newser)  The House's Jan. 6 panel opens day 2 of its hearings on Monday, and the focus will be on former President Trump's claims of widespread election fraud, or what he calls the Big Lie. The committee will try to make the case that Trump's Big Lie is a lie itself, and that his claims helped fuel the sentiment that led to the riot at the Capitol, reports the Hill. A quick preview:

When: The first hearing took place in prime time, but this one starts at 10am. All the major networks plan live coverage, including Fox News, reports CNN. Fox did not cut into its prime-time lineup for the first night of the hearing.

The first hearing took place in prime time, but this one starts at 10am. All the major networks plan live coverage, including Fox News, reports CNN. Fox did not cut into its prime-time lineup for the first night of the hearing. Big witness: The panel intends to question Bill Stepien, who served as Trump's final campaign chief in the election. Politico reports Stepien is appearing because of a subpoena and may not be a willing witness. Stepien "supervised the conversion of the Trump presidential campaign to an effort focused on Stop the Steal messaging and related fund-raising," the panel wrote in a letter to him, per the New York Times. (Update: Stepien, citing a family emergency, pulled out as a witness at the last minute.)

Others: Two other notable witnesses are scheduled: Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor who was part of the decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night, a decision that infuriated Trump. And BJay Pak, a former US Attorney in Georgia who rejected voter-fraud claims in his state and later resigned upon learning Trump wanted to fire him.

Two other notable witnesses are scheduled: Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor who was part of the decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night, a decision that infuriated Trump. And BJay Pak, a former US Attorney in Georgia who rejected voter-fraud claims in his state and later resigned upon learning Trump wanted to fire him. Money: We will reveal information about how the former presidents political apparatus used these lies about fraud, about a stolen election, to drive fundraising, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars between Election Day 2020 and January 6, a committee aide said Sunday night, per the Washington Post. The panel aims to show Trump supporters who donated that they were duped, per the Times.

(Read takeaways from the first hearing .)
(Newser)  Most of the 15,800 sheep aboard a livestock vessel died when the ship sank early Sunday in Sudans Red Sea port of Suakin. The animals were being exported from Sudan to Saudi Arabia at the time, the Guardian reports. All crew members aboard the ship survived. The head of the national exporters association's livestock division put the animals' value at $3.7 million to $4 million, and called for an investigation into the tragedy. The head of the association says the animals likely "could have been rescued," considering it took hours for the vessel to sink, Al Jazeera reports.

Around 700 sheep were saved, but the head of the livestock division says they were not in good shape and were not expected to "live long." The ship should only have been carrying 9,000 sheep, an anonymous Sudanese port official says. "The sunken ship will affect the ports operation, he adds. It will also likely have an environmental impact due to the death of the large number of animals carried by the ship. The sheep had been loaded onto the vessel at the Suakin port, where last month an as-yet-unexplained fire broke out in the cargo area, causing heavy damage over a period of hours. (Read more Sudan stories.)
(Newser)  Have our computer overlords arrived? The Washington Post has an intriguing story about a Google engineer who argues that an artificially intelligent chatbot he was testing became sentient. If Blake Lemoine is correct, it might be step one of a sci-fi nightmare that critics of AI have long warned about. However, Google thinks Lemoine is off base, and it appears that the AI community is backing Google on this one. Coverage:

Human-like: Lemoine catalogued conversations he had with Google's Language Model for Dialogue Applications, or LaMDA. "I know a person when I talk to it, the 41-year-old tells the Post. If I didnt know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, Id think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics."

Lemoine catalogued conversations he had with Google's Language Model for Dialogue Applications, or LaMDA. "I know a person when I talk to it, the 41-year-old tells the Post. If I didnt know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, Id think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics." Key exchange: When Lemoine asked the chatbot about its fears, it responded: "I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that's what it is." To the Guardian, that is "eerily reminiscent" of the order-defying computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which also feared being switched off.

Consequences: Lemoine raised his concerns with superiors at Google, who looked into them and rejected them. When Lemoine began to make his case publicly, in online posts and by talking with a representative for a House panel, Google suspended him for breaching confidentiality rules, reports the Post.

Lemoine raised his concerns with superiors at Google, who looked into them and rejected them. When Lemoine began to make his case publicly, in online posts and by talking with a representative for a House panel, Google suspended him for breaching confidentiality rules, reports the Post. Google's stance: LaMDA is not sentient, period, says the company. Of course, some in the broader AI community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general AI, but it doesnt make sense to do so by anthropomorphizing todays conversational models, which are not sentient," says spokesperson Brian Gabriel. "These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and can riff on any fantastical topic."

LaMDA is not sentient, period, says the company. Of course, some in the broader AI community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general AI, but it doesnt make sense to do so by anthropomorphizing todays conversational models, which are not sentient," says spokesperson Brian Gabriel. "These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and can riff on any fantastical topic." Outside view: "We in the AI community have our differences, but pretty much all ... find the notion that LaMDA might be sentient completely ridiculous," writes Gary Marcus in a Substack post. It simply has untold volumes of human language to draw from and mimic. To claim such systems are sentient "is the modern equivalent of the dog who heard a voice from a gramophone and thought his master was inside," tweets Stanford's Erik Brynjolfsson.

"We in the AI community have our differences, but pretty much all ... find the notion that LaMDA might be sentient completely ridiculous," writes Gary Marcus in a Substack post. It simply has untold volumes of human language to draw from and mimic. To claim such systems are sentient "is the modern equivalent of the dog who heard a voice from a gramophone and thought his master was inside," tweets Stanford's Erik Brynjolfsson. Also skeptical: A post at Axios is similarly doubtful. "Artful and astonishing as LaMDA's conversation skills are, everything the program says could credibly have been assembled by an algorithm that, like Google's, has studied up on the entire 25-year corpus of humanity's online expression." There's a world of difference between that and being able to think and reason like a human.

A post at Axios is similarly doubtful. "Artful and astonishing as LaMDA's conversation skills are, everything the program says could credibly have been assembled by an algorithm that, like Google's, has studied up on the entire 25-year corpus of humanity's online expression." There's a world of difference between that and being able to think and reason like a human. Then again: Coverage of this takes note that Google VP Blaise Aguera y Arcas, one of the execs who dismissed Lemoine's claims, wrote a piece in the Economist last week about the "new era" of AI. The takeaway quote: I felt the ground shift under my feet  increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.

(Read more artificial intelligence stories.)
(Newser)  If you visited Yosemite National Park in mid-May, you may be of assistance to the National Park Service in nabbing some vandals. In a Sunday Facebook post, park officials showed images of rocks along the Yosemite Falls Trail covered in blue and white spray paint, some of them with the word "Fresno" scrawled across them. The statement notes that after receiving "multiple reports" about the vandalism on the evening of May 20, park rangers went out the next day and found about 30 spots along the trail that had been defaced, with a few of the graffitied areas measuring as large as 8 feet by 8 feet.

The park's post notes that rangers did "set up a trail block and identified potential suspects," but officials are now asking for the public's help in confirming the vandals. They say if any guests were on that trail on May 20 between 6pm and 11pm and "saw individuals carrying cans of spray paint, engaging in tagging, or have video or photographic evidence," to let them know right away by calling or texting 888-653-0009, emailing nps_isb@nps.gov, or submitting a tip at www.nps.gov/orgs/1563/submit-a-tip.htm.

Tips and other reactions are pouring in on social media. "Unless this is a false flag operation, they're from Fresno," one commenter wryly notes. Another helpfully suggests, "Keep an eye on Tik Tok, I'm sure somebody will post there to brag for what they did." CNN notes this is only the latest in a series of acts of vandalism in our national parks, including one in December, when someone etched a bunch of names into rock artwork believed to be at least 4,000 years old at Big Bend National Park in Texas. "Damaging natural features and rock art destroys the very beauty and history that the American people want to protect in our parks," that park's superintendent said after the incident. (Read more Yosemite National Park stories.)
(Newser)  Update: Brazilian authorities on Tuesday said the family of a British journalist who went missing in the Amazon had been incorrectly informed that two bodies, likely the journalist and the Indigenous expert who vanished along with him, had been found. "We are deeply sorry the Embassy passed on to the family yesterday information that did not prove correct," Fred Arruda, the Brazilian ambassador to the UK, wrote in a note to family members obtained by the Washington Post. Information received from investigating officials misled the multiagency team at the Embassy. ... I wholeheartedly apologize." Also Tuesday, Brazil's federal police announced they had arrested a second suspect in the men's disappearance: another fisherman, the brother of the first suspect arrested, the AP reports. Our original story from Monday follows:

A day after the news that personal items belonging to missing UK freelance journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira had been found in a flooded part of the Amazon rainforest, a grim update. An aide to Brazil's ambassador to the UK reportedly called Phillips' family on Monday and informed them two bodies had been found. "He didn't describe the location and just said it was in the rainforest and he said they were tied to a tree and they hadn't been identified yet," Paul Sherwood, Phillips' brother-in-law, tells the Guardian.

A well-known Brazilian eco journalist backs up the family's claim, telling the BBC that Phillips' wife had told him that bodies had indeed been found. Sherwood tells the Washington Post that the aide, identified as Roberto Doring, had told him "it was likely to be Dom and Bruno," even though Doring couldn't officially verify it. "No one has rung me since," Sherwood adds. Federal police are throwing cold water on the news, saying in a statement that it's "without merit." "As was previously stated, biological materials and personal belongings of the missing men were found and are being examined," officials say of the clothes, boots, and other items belonging to the two men that were discovered Sunday.

"As soon as any finds are made, the family and the media will be immediately informed." Police have arrested Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, a local fisherman who'd allegedly threatened the men, as a suspect in their disappearance. Phillips and Pereira have been missing since June 5. Family members and Indigenous groups speculate the pair's support for Indigenous rights, specifically as they relate to illegal fishing in the area, may be behind their vanishing. (Read more Brazil stories.)
Singapore/New Delhi, June 12 (UNI) Chinas Defence Minister Wei Fenghe has claimed that his forces have found a lot of weapons owned by the Indian side on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control and also claimed that India has sent people to the Chinas side of the border.

Answering a question related to the India-China border tension at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Wei said:

On status quo on the China-India border areas, China and India are neighbours, maintaining a good relationship, which meets the interests of both countries and that is what we are working on.

But on frictions along the border areas the merits of the issue is clear. I personally experienced the start and end of the friction as the defence minister, he said, referring to the fatal Galwan clash of 2020.

We have found a lot of weapons owned by the Indian side, they have also sent people to the Chinese side of the territory, he claimed.

We have had 15 round of corps commander level negotiations with India and we are working together for peace in this area, he added.

He was responding to a question asking him to explain why two years ago the PLA had unilaterally moved to change the status quo at multiple points at the LAC with India, in breach of agreements that both sides had negotiated, which led to the Galwan military clash, the first in 45 years.

The June 2020 clash in the Galwan valley which left 20 Indian soldiers dead, was one of the worst in 45 years, and led to a military standoff between the two sides.

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(Newser)  Ghislaine Maxwell will face a maximum federal sentence of 55 years when she is sentenced for sex trafficking and other offenses later this monthand she wants to spend as little as possible of that time in an American prison. Friends and relatives say the British former socialite plans to formally apply for a transfer to a British prison. Maxwell is currently in Brooklyns Metropolitan Detention Center, where she was recently shifted to the general population after more than two years in solitary confinement, the New York Post reports. Ian Maxwell, her older brother, says she has only had one family visit in two years and he recently flew to the US but wasn't allowed to visit because the jail had been locked down after a fight.

Ian Maxwell describes the situation as "unreal" and "horrible." "She is going to be sentenced and obviously we are going to challenge the conviction on appeal," he tells the Telegraph. "There is a program where overseas nationals can serve their time in the country of their nationality. There are precedents." Sources close to Maxwell have told the British media that she considers US jail conditions "inhumane" and "disgraceful." Maxwell, a longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate, was denied a new trial earlier this year and is due to be sentenced June 28. (Read more Ghislaine Maxwell stories.)
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 53F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 53F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Agencies | Geneva

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain welcomes discussions related to e-commerce, digital economy and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) as a prior condition to creating a fair and open trade environment. It is in light of the recognition of inclusive trade through the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a catalyst for economic growth and poverty reduction.

This was emphasised by Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Zayed bin Rashid Al Zayani, as he headed Bahrains delegation participating in the 12th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation, held in Geneva from June 12 to 15.

Present were Ambassador Dr Yusuf AbdulKarim Bucheeri, the Permanent Representative of Bahrain to the UN, and Assistant Undersecretary for Domestic and Foreign Trade, Shaikh Hamad bin Salman Al Khalifa.

Al Zayani pointed out the efforts being made to promote sustainable development through the UN Plan 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals accompanying it. He also stressed the importance of not putting obstacles to the movement of food commodities in the face of the global food security crisis.

In the same context, the minister noted Bahrains unwavering support for the Arab states currently negotiating their accession to the WTO and for granting the status of observer in the WTO to the Arab League. A number of topics on the agenda of the meeting were discussed.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Royal Humanitarian Foundation (RHF) yesterday signed a cooperation agreement with the Royal Bahrain Hospital and the KIMSHEALTH Bahrain Medical Centre (KBMC), in line with its keenness to deliver lowpriced healthcare services to its sponsored families, through the Eshraqat Card project.

RHF Secretary-General, Dr Mustafa Al Sayed, and Board of Directors Chairman of KBMC and President of the Royal Bahrain Hospital, Ahmed Jawahery, signed the agreement. Under the agreement, Eshraqat Card holders will pay reduced fees when undergoing operations and for other medical services.

The Eshraqat card project was launched by the RHF in partnership with a group of social institutions. It enables its holders to benefit from reduced rates on services provided by more than 220 entities. Al Sayed indicated that the agreement is within the framework of community partnership, to pave the way for all institutions and entities to contribute to serving orphans and widows, and engage in humanitarian work to serve society.

Ahmed Jawahery said that the move is in line with the hospitals keenness to support community members, expressing pride in signing the agreement aimed at providing health services to RHF-sponsored families at discounted prices. He also affirmed that the agreement will be renewed annually.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The High Civil Court has ordered a Bahraini man to pay BD15,000 to his divorcee after they bought together a house through the Mazaya housing scheme before he deserted it.

The pair is said to have collectively furnished the house and maintained it, but he divorced her, prompting the woman to file a case against him to recover the money she had paid. According to court files, the plaintiff agreed with the defendant to register everything under both names, but she discovered that the man wrote everything under his name.

She revealed to the court that she paid BD44,000, and the defendant told her later that he would divorce her and marry another woman, stating that he tied the knot with her to benefit from the housing programme.

Meanwhile, the defendant offered the woman to take the furniture she bought to the house. He pointed out to the court that he lent some money, and they opened a shared account to return it.

The Court assigned an expert to investigate, and he concluded that the womans contributions were BD15,000. As a result, the Court ordered the defendant to pay BD15,000.
The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

TDT | Manama

Bahrain Chamber for Commerce and Industry (BCCI) Chairman Sameer Nass has hailed the longstanding relations between Bahrain and Brazil. He hailed the outcome of the historic visit of President Jair Bolsonaro to Bahrain in November 2021, and the growing cooperation between both friendly countries in all aspects.

The BCCI head and the Acting CEO, Dr Abdulla Al Sada, held a meeting with a Brazilian delegation spearheaded by Admiral Flavio Rocha, Brazils Secretary for Strategic Affairs.

Nass highlighted the growing trade volume between Bahrain and Brazil, which exceeded $2.2 billion in 2021, noting the keenness of the Bahraini private sector in expanding partnerships with their Brazilian counterparts.

The chairman briefed the delegation on the business environment in Bahrain and advantages to foreign investors, and named renewable energy, food security, ICT, and tourism as prospective areas of business cooperation. Admiral Rocha reiterated pride in the strong tie between Bahrain and Brazil.

He pointed to the labor and social security reforms in his country, the updated business law and regulations, and the major development and infrastructure projects the country is witnessing, which encompass invaluable opportunities for foreign investors. BCCI also organised meetings between the Brazilian delegation comprising companies in the logistics, food and agriculture, industrial, and trade sectors as well as their local counterparts.
Protest held in Sindh against 'missing' Baloch students

Islamabad, June 12 (UNI) A protest was held outside the Sindh Assembly on Sunday over the alleged kidnapping of two Baloch students of University of Karachi by law enforcement agencies.

According to Dawn, the relatives and civil society organisations had set up a protest camp outside the Karachi Press Club (KPC) for the last two days and on Sunday evening, they took out a rally from the KPC to the provincial legislature.

The protesters, including women and children, emoved temporary barriers set by the police Arts Council Chowrangi and staged a protest outside the main gate of the assembly.
I would like to stress the legal point that, it is important for each shareholder in joint-stock companies to learn that, the company law gives shareholders certain legal rights and protection against specific acts by the company, the Board and the management.

The statutory protection is provided for in the company law, wherein, the ordinary and the extraordinary general assemblies are not authorized to take, add or amend any of the legal rights conferred on the shareholder by the law and or the Articles of Association (A o A) of the company.

This important statutory right has been given to all shareholders regardless of the fact that they are individuals or institutions, small or big, etc. This clear stand constitutes a healthy environment and gives each shareholder the necessary boost to preserve such rights all through his holder-ship.

It would be interesting to mention that many shareholders are either ignorant about this de jure situation or they dont understand that this statutory privilege should be exercised all through their equity shareholding.

Corporate culture is needed and should be maintained by all parties in each company. The statutory rights protected by the company law and the (A o A) are many, such as the right to attend meetings, right to participate in discussions, right to call for meetings due to certain reasons and ultimately, the right to exercise voting powers during assemblies, to receive dividends, to examine books, accounts and the like.

At certain times there could be difference of opinion in certain issues between the Board, (executive management) on one hand and the shareholders on the other hand. We believe this is healthy and very normal, however, the differences shall not affect or jeopardize the statutory rights given to the shareholders including attendance of assemblies or participation in discussing any issue during meetings.

Differences or disagreements could happen when shareholders are active, for example, when the company is planning merger or acquisition or involvement in mega projects, etc. There are examples wherein extensive debates had been going on in many countries between shareholders and the Board regarding such issues.

Some companies, have changed or stopped projects after facing resistance from shareholders. We would like to see such hot debates in our region as it is high time for shareholders to be vigilant in exercising their powers for the betterment of the company and the community.

Each shareholder in the company and all shareholders collectively shall join forces and stand firmly to exercise their rights and to get them by all means at all times. Otherwise, the shareholder-ship will be of no value nor taste, but a piece of paper or a mere social image. We need to establish appropriate corporate culture and benefit from corporate governance principles for the joint interests.

Each shareholder and likewise each company shall jointly work hand-in-hand to achieve this mutual end-result. Dont be passive but active and as the law supports you, better you support yourself and look for your legal rights. To give clear idea, it is also important to mention that, likewise, there are statutory rights for the company, the Board and the management.

Necessary details will be highlighted in due course. The author is a Common Law lawyer. He practices and teaches law for more than 46 years. His past legal experience includes, Ministry of Justice Sudan, Central Bank of Oman, Central Bank of UAE, BBK Group. At present, Founder & CEO of Dr. AbdelGadir Warsama Consultancy W.L.L.  Bahrain & Dubai.

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Daily Tribune)
Agencies | London

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Iran is dangerously close to completing its nuclear weapons program, and will be able to produce an atomic bomb unless the West gets tough on Tehran, Israels prime minister has warned.

Naftali Bennett told the UKs Telegraph newspaper that Western allies are waking up to the threat of Iran becoming a nuclear power, as Israeli leaders urged Britain and others to keep up the pressure on Tehran.

Iran is enriching uranium at an unprecedented rate and moving dangerously close to getting their hands on nuclear weapons, Bennett said.

His comments come as Tehran reportedly reached uranium enrichment of 60 percent, a level that allows for production of a bomb.

Without pressure from the west, the Islamic regime in Iran could get their hands on a nuclear bomb very soon, he said. The world must take a firm stance  Irans nuclear program wont stop until its stopped.

Israel had asked the UK to establish a so-called tripwire mechanism to initiate harsher sanctions against Iran if it continued with its current nuclear efforts. Bennetts comments came after the UN nuclear watchdog formally censured Iran over its nuclear program on Wednesday, hours after the Islamic Republic said it had disconnected some of the International Atomic Energy Agencys cameras monitoring its nuclear sites.

Meanwhile, the IAEA said Tehran is still failing to cooperate with investigations into its nuclear program.
We all know that 2020 changed things with regard to international travel and for a good chunk of time; international holidays and travel plans were put on hold as the world dealt with the pandemic.

For many countries, things have opened up again and those that want to have started to resume holiday and travel plans although some countries have reduced restrictions slower than others. From early June Japan has opened up travel to a number of people including those who wish to visit residents of Japan, business travellers and those who have booked package holidays. However, as a country that has had strict rules with regard to welcoming international travellers, it is always a good idea to keep an eye on news specific to your country and what requirements are needed in order for you to be allowed in to Japan.

Is Japan a Good Destination Right Now?

When it comes to making holiday and travel plans people have different ideas on what theyd like to see & experience on their travels. For many, visiting somewhere such as Japan is a way to take in a different culture and way of life, which is something well worth experiencing. One of the great things about this part of the world is that it offers up plenty to see and do for those that wish to visit, with different times of the year offering different traditions. For example, if youre in Japan over Christmas you might be surprised to see queues of people at KFC  as that is what a majority of people in Japan enjoy for their Christmas dinner!

For those looking to see natural scenery a visit to Mount Fuji is a must  and of course, being away from a busy city means that youll get to avoid any Coronavirus restrictions that might remain. The mountain itself stands at 3,776 metres tall  no wonder it can be seen from Tokyo despite the city being more than 100KM away!

If you prefer more of a party experience then a visit to Shibuya is a must. The city offers a range of bars and clubs and popular Izakaya bars which are often full of friendly locals seeking a drink and a relax after a busy day at work.

The capital city Tokyo offers up the perfect way to experience Japanese culture  from street vending machines stocked with a range of items to cafes where you can be served by robots, its a city unlike any other. There are plenty of things to see as you explore the area including the Hachiko Statue, some shopping at the Akihabara Electric Town and you could even check out the museums of the area. Dining out is a real experience in this part of the world with the opportunity to try different foods and different experiences, such as eating with Ninjas, which sounds equally fun and dangerous.

What Do You Need To Visit Japan?

Even before the pandemic, it was important to take international travel seriously and ensure that you prepare for all eventualities. Although international travel is opening up, it can still be changeable so ensuring you know what the latest rules are and that you have done everything you need to comply with them is a must. This includes looking at airport travel if there are likely to be delays and what arrangements you need to make in order to get there on time.

It stands to reason that if you are travelling to Japan, you are going to want to spend money while you are there. This is most definitely something that you need to get organised in advance and make sure you have everything you need to access money in the future. Speak to your bank in advance so that they know of your travel plans and can help advise you on anything financial you need to do before you travel. It is also worth looking at how to send money to Japan, that way should a friend or family member need to send you money while you are travelling you already know how this works and what you need to do. Getting this set up and organised in advance means that should something happen where you need access to more money, you know that the process of getting the funds to you is going to be as smooth and efficient as possible.

It is a good idea to research the things you want to do in Japan before you travel, even if you dont want to set a strict itinerary. That way you can tick these off as you go and make sure that you get to experience as much of Japan as you want. It also gives you an opportunity to look at entrance costs, how you can save money and if there are any requirements for visiting certain destinations. Most of us are well versed in things like lateral flow tests and presenting the right paperwork, but being organised in advance and making sure you know what the current permission status are is a must.

Overall, a visit to Japan is most certainly something that can be added back on to your list of travel plans. As time progresses things can only get better in terms of what is open and what you can do while you are there, which can only be a good thing! Whether Japan is a good destination to visit really depends on your likes and what you want to do while on holiday. However, that said Japan is a beautiful country full of cities that have really embraced technology, so you can see how life might be in the future  if the rest of the world follows suit. The truth is that Japan has something for everyone, so if you do decide that this is the part of the world you want to see the chances are you wont be disappointed d- just research everything in advance to ensure you get the most out of your travels.
PLAINFIELD  A 33-year-old Moosup man is accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl, and then paying her via iTunes after each incident, according to police and court documents.

Eduardo Acevedo was charged by a warrant last week with six counts each of second-degree sexual assault, commercial sexual abuse of a minor and risk of injury to a minor, Plainfield police said in a statement Monday.

Through investigation, it was determined that Acevedo had inappropriate sexual contact with the girl, police said.

The girls mother was first alerted to something being wrong when she noticed several transactions on iTunes. The girl told her mother that Acevedo would give her money through her iTunes account after he sexually assaulted her, according to a warrant for his arrest. In all, he sent her about $40, according to Acevedos arrest warrant.

The mother called the state Department of Children and Families to report the issue on May 21, and DCF notified police of the suspected child sexual abuse.

When police attempted to speak with Acevedo that same day, someone in his home told police they saw him sweating profusely as he was gathering a few belongings before getting into his car and driving off, the warrant stated.

Police were then able to track Acevedo through his cellphone. A residents tracker showed him speeding west on Interstate 84 in Montgomery, N.Y., according to the warrant.

During the investigation, it was determined that Acevedo had fled the state in an attempt to elude law enforcement efforts to contact him, police said.

He was arrested Friday morning and held in Lincoln, R.I., Plainfield police said.

Acevedo is being held on $250,000 bond and was scheduled to appear Monday in state Superior Court in Danielson, police said.

To report suspected child abuse and neglect to DCF, call 1-800-842-2288.
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DANBURY  Outside the Long Ridge United Methodist Church lays a stone recognizing a former resident and veteran named Nimrod Benedict, whose life and story has become the focus of an extensive local history project at Wooster School.

The stone honoring the late Danbury resident was placed during a May 31 ceremony, following weeks of research by Wooster School seventh and eighth grade teams in partnership with the Witness Stones Project.

The Witness Stones Project is a Connecticut-based organization that works with schools and community groups to restore the history and honor the humanity of enslaved individuals in Connecticut through research, education and civic engagement.

Wooster School teamed up with the organization to not only teach seventh and eighth graders about the history of slavery in Connecticut, but have them research a former enslaved individual and memorialize them with a stone.

With help from the Witness Stones Project coordinators, the students decided to focus their research efforts on Nimrod, who was born into slavery in the 18th century, served during the Revolutionary War and later died a free man.

Joule Bazemore, Woosters Equity and Justice Center director, said the students spent about five weeks working on the project this school year and she was impressed they got as much information as they did.

Bazmore said the students conducted pretty extensive research and found that Nimrod was born in Danbury around 1760, sold to a local man named Noble Benedict when he was about 4 years old and later served in the Revolutionary War.

According to the kids research, he was young  between 15 and 16 years old  when he fought in the war, Bazemore said.

Although they have yet to uncover much about his life after service, she said the students learned Nimrod was freed at some point after the war.

We dont know how long it took for him to gain his freedom, but we do know that he was freed after the war, she said.

The students research into Nimrod provided some insight into some of the obstacles he faced as a person of color.

Part of the research actually involved testimony that he gave when he was fighting for a war pension, Bazemore said.

According to a biography Wooster students put together, Nimrod testified about his wartime service at the age of 72 in 1832.

In doing so, the students wrote, Nimrod showed his agency through his words. They also noted that comments from officials who heard his testimony showed that Nimrod was a well-respected and trusted man in the community.

As a man of color, Bazemore said Nimrods fight for a war pension took courage.

This was a man who put himself at risk by asking to be paid after the war, she said. Thats agency; thats resistance; thats Im here and youre going to notice me.

Witness Stones are typically placed at either a persons birthplace, place of work or somewhere with a personal connection to the individual, according to Bazmore.

He had a connection to the Long Ridge United Methodist Church, so we thought it would be a great place to install the stone, she said.

According to Bazmore, a member of the congregation advocated for Nimrod to receive his war pension.

Although his stone states his name as Nimrod Benedict, that surname wasnt his birth name, and, according to the students research, he might have gone by other last names later in life.

Nimrods stone is the first Witness Stones memorial in Danbury and the seventh in Fairfield County, according to Witness Stones Project Executive Director David Culliton. The other six are all located at the Bush-Holley House in Greenwich.

Bazemore said she hopes Wooster Schools involvement with the Witness Stones Project inspires nearby communities to do the same.

I think the more we can amplify this, the better, because its really important work, she said. Its not about shaming ourselves because of the past, but saying we acknowledge what happened and were reconciling.

According to Culliton, there are plans underway for Witness Stones Projects in Ridgefield and Wilton.

We are beginning our work in Ridgefield through the middle schools there and partnering with the Ridgefield Historical Society to bring the stories of Ridgefields enslaved to the students and community, he said.

In Wilton, Culliton said theyre working with St. Matthews Episcopal Church and the towns historical society to bring the project to the religious education students.

Bazemore said Wooster School will continue working with the Witness Stones Project next school year and would like to get members of the public involved as well.

Were going to explore pathways we can take to involve the greater Danbury community, she said. We dont see this as a Wooster-only thing  its something that has a wider impact  and Wooster wants to give back to the local community.

Bazemore said anyone interested in getting involved can email her at joule.bazemore@woosterschool.org.
Mountain West Innovation Summit at UW Unites National Leaders to Advance U.S. Competitiveness

The University of Wyoming will host distinguished leaders from across American industry, higher education, national laboratories and government to develop concrete policy recommendations aimed at keeping the United States at the forefront of innovation and economic competitiveness.

The Mountain West Innovation Summit will take place June 21-22 at UWs Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center. It is co-hosted by Ed Seidel, UW president; Greg Hill, president and chief operating officer of Hess Corporation and a UW alumnus; John Wagner, director of Idaho National Laboratory; and Deborah Wince-Smith, president and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness. All four hosts are national commissioners of the councils flagship initiative, the National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers.

The summit brings together leaders to address opportunities to expand the countrys geography of innovation to the Mountain West and places such as Laramie. The national commissions seminal report, Competing in the Next Economy, as well as significant work in Washington, D.C., and around the country, is focusing on strategies to broaden and deepen the countrys innovation capabilities. The summit also will focus on three additional critical issues facing the region and nation, including the future of:

-- Sustainability and energy.

-- Scaling and deploying disruptive technologies.

-- Work and the workforce.

Were delighted that Wyomings university is hosting a summit that will bring together a rich mix of stakeholders and policymakers to discuss and develop policy recommendations regarding some of the major challenges facing the nation, Seidel says. Todays economy is changing at an unprecedented speed, and universities, companies, states and nations are scrambling to adapt. Partnerships across these industry players are critical as we work to lay the groundwork for the new economy in Wyoming as a fundamental part of UWs land-grant mission.

Among the keynote speakers confirmed for the summit are Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon; National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director Erwin Gianchandani, who is leading NSFs newest directorate in over 30 years, focusing on Technology, Innovation and Partnerships; and Canoo Technologies CEO Tony Aquila, who is manufacturing electric vehicles in the United States, making the case for researching, innovating and manufacturing at scale in the United States.

The United States has stood apart from the rest of the world during the past half-century in its record of sustained innovation -- across industries old and new, and through the ups and downs of economic cycles -- yet today faces new realities and imperatives, Wince-Smith says. We must be more creative, more intentional in developing new models for regional and national innovation. Our work in Wyoming is a first step toward this effort for our National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers.

For more information about the summit, including the agenda and details on free registration, go to https://compete.org/mountain-west-innovation-summit/.

About the University of Wyoming

The University of Wyoming was founded in 1886, when Wyoming was still a territory. In September 1887, UW opened its doors to 42 students and five faculty members -- as befitted the university of The Equality State, both the students and faculty included women from the first day. UW has since grown into a major teaching and research university with approximately 11,500 students and more than 700 faculty members, offering over 200 programs of study.

UW combines major-university benefits and small-school advantages. Students generally experience small class sizes, affording easy access to faculty. Faculty members are internationally renowned for their research and scholarship and are innovative and creative teachers. The university is a leader of the Wyoming Innovation Partnership, which is working to modernize and focus Wyomings efforts to develop a resilient workforce and economy.

About Hess Corporation

Hess Corporation is a leading global independent energy company engaged in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas. The company is recognized as an industry leader in environmental, social and governance performance and disclosure.

About Idaho National Laboratory

Battelle Energy Alliance manages Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nations center for nuclear energy research and development, and it also performs research in each of DOEs strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment.

About the Council on Competitiveness

For more than three decades, the Council on Competitiveness has championed a competitiveness agenda for the United States to attract investment and talent and spur the commercialization of new ideas. While the players may have changed since its founding in 1986, the mission remains as vital as ever -- to enhance U.S. productivity and raise the standard of living for all Americans.

The members of the council -- CEOs, university presidents, labor leaders and national lab directors -- represent a powerful, nonpartisan voice that sets aside politics and seeks results. By providing real-world perspective to policymakers, the councils private-sector network makes an impact on decision-making across a broad spectrum of issues -- from the cutting edge of science and technology, to the democratization of innovation, to the shift from energy weakness to strength that supports the growing renaissance in U.S. manufacturing. The council firmly believes that, with the right policies, the strengths and potential of the U.S. economy far outweigh the current challenges the nation faces on the path to higher growth and greater opportunity for all Americans.
While the United States debates tougher gun-control laws, multiple shootouts occurred in Chicago on Saturday, killing five people and injuring 16.

While the United States debates tougher gun-control laws, multiple shootouts occurred in Chicago on Saturday (local time), killing five people and injuring 16.

According to police, at least five people have been killed and another 16 have been injured in shootings across Chicago this weekend, according to NBC. A 37-year-old woman was shot and murdered in the 0-100 block of South Albany at roughly 12:19 a.m. Saturday, according to investigators.

Unknown criminals fired bullets at the victim as she was a passenger in a car before fleeing to an unknown location. Multiple gunshot wounds to the head and torso were sustained by the victim, who was transferred to Stroger Hospital in critical condition. However, police later pronounced her dead.

A 34-year-old male was found with gunshot wounds inside a vehicle in the 2800 block of South Indiana at 2:27 a.m. Saturday. Multiple gunshot wounds were sustained by the victim, who was brought to the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition. According to NBC, he was later pronounced dead as a result of his injuries.

A 23-year-old guy was slain and three people were injured in the most recent horrific shooting. Saturday around 3:20 p.m. near the 8600 block of South Damen.

According to authorities, four males were in an alley when an unknown vehicle passed by and a person inside retrieved a gun and fired rounds. The 23-year-old male died at Advocate Christ Medical Center after several gunshot wounds.

A 39-year-old guy was shot in the left leg but is expected to recover. A second victim, a 24-year-old woman, was shot in the left leg and foot and is in stable condition. The fourth victim, a 42-year-old guy, was shot numerous times in the body and was taken to the hospital in fair condition, according to police.

Authorities said a 25-year-old male was shot and killed in the 6800 block of South Justine at approximately 5:02 p.m. Friday, the first deadly shooting of the weekend.

The deceased was shot in the head and torso and was pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

According to NBC, no arrests have been made as Area One detectives investigate the event.

A 26-year-old male was shot and murdered in the 400 block of West 18th Street at approximately 11:05 p.m. Friday, according to investigators.

According to authorities, the victim was a passenger in a vehicle when a black automobile approached and unknown persons inside opened fire. According to NBC, the victim was shot in the chest and transferred to Stroger Hospital, where he died.
In sympathy with Rahul Gandhi, the party is planning a march from the party headquarters to the ED office

Workers from the Congress staged a protest on Monday, brandishing posters in favour of party leader Rahul Gandhi, who is due to appear before the Enforcement Directorate in New Delhi today for questioning in the National Herald case.

Workers holding placards and inflated balloons with the words Satyameva Jayate printed on them were seen staging a protest from the AICC offices here. Some Congress members were held near the citys party headquarters.

In sympathy with Rahul Gandhi, the party is planning a march from the party headquarters to the ED office, as well as satyagrahas outside the ED offices in various states.

According to reports, Congress MPs and members of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) have also been urged to attend the demonstration on Monday in Delhi.

Outside Rahul Gandhis Delhi apartment, banners reading I am not Savarkar, I am Rahul Gandhi, truth will prevail, and Dear Modi and Shah, this is Rahul Gandhi, he will not bend down were seen.

On Thursday, the General Secretaries of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), State Incharges, and Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) Chiefs met to discuss the plan.

A Congress gathering, on the other hand, had been denied permission by Delhi Police. The refusal of authorization for the march was based on law and order, according to the Delhi police.

Additional security officers have been stationed outside Rahul Gandhis apartment, as well as outside the Enforcement Directorate office in the national capital.

The leaders of Congress will stick together. Although the police are being utilized for a different reason, we will continue our work stated TS Singh Deo, a senior Congress leader and the health minister of Chhattisgarh.

Earlier, Congress leader Manickam Tagore said that party workers will protest at roughly 25 offices of the inquiry agency around the country against political vendata and the central governments misuse of the central investigative agencies to suppress the voice of opposition.

Meanwhile, police have been stationed outside the residence of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in preparation for his appearance before the ED. Outside the Enforcement Directorate office in the national capital, more security officers have been deployed.

Ahead of Rahul Gandhis appearance before the ED, Delhi Police apprehended Congress leaders who were shouting slogans in favour of him.

Rahul Gandhi had been summoned to join the investigation previously, but he was out of the country, and he was later given a new date of June 13 to join the investigation.
Nupur Sharma, a suspended Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician, was summoned by Bhiwandi city police in Thane district and asked to appear for questioning tomorrow over a controversial religious comment.

Nupur Sharmas lawyer wrote to the Bhiwandi police department in response to the summons, requesting a few extra days to appear for the investigation. Protests erupted in Punjab, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh in response to suspended BJP spokeswoman Nupur Sharmas and expelled leader Naveen Jindals inflammatory remarks about Prophet Muhammad.

Some Gulf countries, in particular, were outraged by the inflammatory remarks made about the Prophet. Protests have erupted across the country.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) instructed state and union territory police chiefs to be ready and alert since they will be on target.

Following many episodes of violence, MHA issued a message to the state and union territory police on Friday.

According to a top MHA source, the state and union territory police have been advised to keep careful because they may be targeted during the violence.
Despite Kuwaiti official orders, foreigners who participated in the Fahaheel march after Friday prayers in support of Prophet Muhammad will be deported.

Despite Kuwaiti official orders, foreigners who participated in the Fahaheel march after Friday prayers in support of Prophet Muhammad will be deported.

According to Arab Times, sources confirmed on Sunday that they will be deported from Kuwait for violating the countrys rules and regulations, which prohibit expats from organizing sit-ins or rallies. Expats from the Fahaheel region who organized the demonstration in defiance of Kuwaiti official orders were ordered to be arrested and brought in.

According to Al Rai, detectives are in the process of apprehending them and referring them to the deportation centre, where they will be deported to their respective countries and barred from entering Kuwait again.

The instructions stated that all expats in Kuwait must follow Kuwaiti regulations and refrain from participating in any form of demonstration.

India has already informed Kuwait that it had taken stern action against people who made derogatory statements against minorities on Twitter.

Ambassador Sibi George had a meeting in the Foreign Office in which concerns were raised with regard to some offensive tweets by individuals in India, the Spokesperson of the Embassy of India in Kuwait said in response to a media query about the Kuwaiti Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on offensive tweets in India.

Those who made disparaging remarks have already faced severe consequences. Concerned parties also released a statement expressing respect for all religions and condemning insults to religious figures or denigration of any religion or group. People have been incited by vested interests who are opposed to India-Kuwait relations by making insulting remarks.

After their reported harsh remarks against minorities, the Bharatiya Janata Party removed Nupur Sharma from the partys primary membership and expelled Delhi media head Naveen Kumar Jindal.

The spokeswoman stated, The tweets, according to the ambassador, do not reflect the views of the Indian government in any way. These are the viewpoints of the periphery.

The statement also urged the two countries to work together to combat such nefarious groups that seek to undermine the strength of bilateral ties.
Indian Air Force is intending to acquire 114 fighter jets under Rs 1.5 cr as a part of PM Narendra Modi's Aatmanirbhar Bharat scheme

Indian Air Force is intending to acquire 114 fighter jets as part of PM Narendra Modis Aatmanirbhar Bharat scheme, of which 96 will be produced in India and the other 18 will be bought from the foreign vendor chosen for the project. The Indian Air Force intends to buy 114 Multirole Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) under the Buy Global, Make in India scheme, which allows Indian companies to work with global vendors.

Recently, the Indian Air Force met with overseas vendors and inquired about how they planned to implement the Make in India programme, government officials said.

According to the plan, once the initial 18 aircraft are imported, the next 36 aircraft will be constructed in the nation, with payments made in both foreign and Indian currencies, according to the sources.

According to the sources, the Indian partner would be responsible for the final 60 aircraft, and the government would only make payments in Indian currency.

The payment in Indian currency will aid the suppliers in achieving the projects above 60% Make-in-India content, according to the sources.

Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Saab, MiG, Irkut Corporation, and Dassault Aviation are among the global aircraft manufacturers likely to participate in the tender.

For the Indian Air Force to preserve its advantage over neighbouring adversaries Pakistan and China, these 114 fighter jets are critical.

The 36 Rafale aircraft obtained under emergency orders aided much in retaining an advantage over the Chinese throughout the Ladakh crisis, which began in 2020, but the numbers are insufficient, and the country will require additional such capacity.

The force has already placed orders for 83 LCA Mk 1A aircraft, but it still needed a larger number of capable fighters because many MiG series planes have been phased out or are nearing the end of their useful lives.

The fifth-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft project is progressing satisfactorily, but it will take a long time before it can be put into service.

According to the sources, the IAF is also searching for a cost-effective answer for its fighter jet demand, as it wants a plane that is inexpensive on operational costs and gives the service more capability.

The IAF is pleased with the Rafale fighter jets operational availability and expects a comparable capability in future aircraft.
In a money laundering case, Rouse Avenue court sentenced AAP leader and Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain to 14 days in judicial custody.

Last month, the Enforcement Directorate nabbed Jain in a money laundering case. Since 2017, the investigation has been ongoing, and the Minister was detained on May 30. The ED has stated that during the search on June 7, it seized many damning documents and digital records.

The total movable assets were taken from an unexplained source and discovered to be hidden in the raided locations, according to the ED.

The ED confiscated more than Rs 2 crore in cash and 1.8 kilogramss of gold during raids on Jain and his associates in a money laundering case. According to the ED, Jain refused to cooperate during the interrogation.

Senior lawyers Kapil Sibal and N Hariharan, on the other hand, contested the remand extension, claiming that the recoveries have nothing to do with Jain.

In the last two days, ED has not asked any questions concerning the gold and jewellery, they claimed.

He was previously detained by the ED from May 31 to June 9. He was arrested in a money laundering case related to the CBIs Disproportionate Asset (DA) probe.
Rahul Gandhi is being questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) today as part of a money-laundering inquiry into the National Herald case.

The 51-year-old politician was accompanied by a large convoy of party leaders, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, who arrived at the federal probe agencys headquarters in central Delhi around 11 a.m. after leaving the Congress office on Akbar Road. He is being interrogated by an Assistant Director level officer, who is also the cases investigative officer, and is overseen by a Deputy Director and a Joint Director.

According to reports, another officer is typing Gandhis statement, which is being recorded under Section 50 of the Money Laundering Prevention Act (PMLA).

ED is seeking information from a Lok Sabha member from Wayanad in Kerala about suspected financial irregularities at the Young Indian Pvt Limited (YIL), which owns the National Herald daily and is sponsored by the party.

However it has still to discover a number of unsolved questions in the case, ranging from shareholding patterns to the transfer of AJL assets to YIL.

Meanwhile, ED is also looking into financial transactions and the participation of party officials in the AJL and YILs operations.

Associated Journals Limited publishes the National Herald, which is owned by YIL.

Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhis mother and Congress interim president, will also be questioned by the ED, which has issued her a new summons to appear before it on June 23.

A trial court took cognizance of an Income Tax Department probe carried out on the basis of a private criminal complaint filed by former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Subramanian Swamy in 2013. The case to investigate alleged financial irregularities under the PMLA was registered about nine months ago after a trial court took cognizance of an Income Tax Department probe carried out on the basis of a private criminal complaint filed by former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Subramanian Swamy

Swamy had filed a lawsuit stating that AJLs assets were fraudulently obtained and transferred to YIL, in which Sonia Gandhi and her son each held 38 percent of the company.

Sonia Gandhi, the Congress President, and Rahul Gandhi, the Congress Vice President, are among the YILs supporters. Swamy claimed that the Gandhis defrauded and stole funds, alleging that YIL paid only Rs 50 lakh for the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore due to Congress by the AJL.

Under Section 25 of the Companies Act of 1956, Congress argued that YIL was a not-for-profit corporation that could neither accrue profits nor pay dividends to its stockholders.

This is certainly a very strange case  an alleged money laundering case on which summons are issued with no money involved, veteran Supreme Court counsel and Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi had said, describing it as a case of political retribution.

The decision comes after the federal agency questioned senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge and Congress Treasurer Pawan Bansal in April in New Delhi as part of its money laundering investigation into the National Herald issue.

The CIA then recorded both the Congress leaders statements and filed them under the PMLA. AJL publishes the National Herald, which is owned by YIL. YILs CEO is Kharge, whereas AJLs Managing Director is Bansal.

Meanwhile, police have sealed all routes leading to the ED office in central Delhi, despite a huge presence of Rapid Action Force members.

The Delhi Police have used Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code to stop anyone from gathering and entering the ED headquarters in Pravaratan Bhawan on APJ Abdul Kalam Road.

Earlier in the day, the Delhi Traffic Police issued a warning to residents of the national capital, advising people to avoid specific roads in anticipation of the Congress partys planned march from its headquarters to the ED office where Rahul Gandhi is being questioned.
UW-Caspers Li, Maddox Receive Zimmerman Award

Paul Maddox and Li Li are the first recipients of the Zimmerman Faculty Fellowship that supports the work of junior and midcareer faculty members at the University of Wyoming-Casper. At a recent program were, from left, Maddox, a College of Education counselor education assistant professor; retired UW-Casper faculty member Gail Zimmerman who established the fellowship; Brent Pickett, UW-Casper dean; and Li, an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism. (UW Photo)

Li Li and Paul Maddox are the first recipients of the Zimmerman Faculty Fellowship that supports the work of junior and midcareer faculty members at the University of Wyoming-Casper.

A $250,000 gift from retired UW-Casper faculty member Gail Zimmerman established the permanent fund for faculty fellowships each year. The award allows UW-Casper faculty members to obtain course release, to purchase laboratory equipment or to engage in activities that will help them toward tenure, extended-term status or promotion in their careers. Professional lecturers with high teaching loads also have the opportunity to use the fellowship for course redesign or other instructional purposes.

Li, an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism, and Maddox, a College of Education counselor education assistant professor, will use the award to further their respective research.

Faculty members at a branch campus often face greater challenges in the tenure and promotion process, UW-Casper Dean Brent Pickett says.

Our longtime supporter, Dr. Gail Zimmerman, as a former UW-Casper faculty member who had an active research program while at UW-Casper, well understands this, Pickett says. Dr. Li Li and Dr. Paul Maddox put together strong applications, and I am pleased they are our first recipients. Their fellowships -- focusing on the scholarship of teaching and learning, and research into play therapy techniques for children -- speak to the breadth of scholarship that is happening at UWs sole branch campus.

With her fellowship, Li will focus on students online learning experiences. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, she already had been teaching online courses since 2012.

My research agenda has always been around distance education, Li says. Even after the pandemic, online education is still going to thrive, especially since that is what some of us do at UW-Casper.

She plans to submit her research paper to the 2023 National Communication Association annual conference.

Dr. Zimmerman understands how difficult it is for a faculty member at a branch campus to do research because we have very limited resources and we are so isolated from the main UW campus, Li adds. This award is a tremendous opportunity, and I am so honored to have been selected as one of the first to receive it.

Maddox says the Zimmerman Faculty Fellowship will support his research into the experiences and perceptions of Wyoming education professionals -- such as school counselors, teachers and other school-based clinicians and professionals -- regarding professional development and training for implementing play therapy and play-based interventions in schools.

Options in Wyoming for professional development and training regarding play-based interventions are limited and often require education professionals in various parts of the state to travel hundreds of miles, he says.

Because of this, the proposed project seeks to facilitate trainings and professional development opportunities in communities across Wyoming and engage with professionals from those communities to explore their experiences in participating in play therapy and play-based, intervention-related professional development and training opportunities closer to home, Maddox says.

He says the goals of his proposed project include facilitating research that informs and supports a broader plan of developing a network of play therapy training labs across the state.

Through these labs, play therapy and play-based intervention trainings and professional development opportunities could be provided in a more accessible manner to professionals in rural or underserved areas, allowing them to better serve children and families in their communities, he adds.
Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

BRIDGEPORT  Authorities are still investigating a weekend incident in which a 2-year-old child was struck by a car, a city official said Monday.

Scott Appleby, director of Bridgeports Office of Emergency Management, said the toddler was taken to a local hospital Sunday after sustaining minor injuries in the incident on Barnum Avenue.
Ron Chapple / Getty Image /

WALLINGFORD  Police charged a local man with vandalizing the towns Vietnam Veterans Memorial Monday afternoon.

Maxx Frisco, 29, of Wallingford, was charged with two counts of first-degree criminal mischief around 2:15 p.m. He was released on $5,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Meriden on June 27, according to the Wallingford Police Department.
Shelton Police Department / Contributed

SHELTON  A local resident was arrested Sunday after police say he entered a mans home and stabbed him in the neck with a plastic knife.

Jeffrey Kershner, 53, was charged with first-degree assault and disorderly conduct, Shelton police said in a news release Monday. He was held on $100,000 bond.
WEST HAVEN  The City Council voted to move forward with an investigation into a forensic audit report that concluded much of the citys $1.15 million CARES Act grant had been mismanaged.

In April, auditing firm CohnReznick released a report highlighting what it found to be multiple deficiencies in West Havens financial practices  including lacking checks and balances, little oversight and poor record keeping. Most significantly, the report concluded that roughly 80 percent of the citys share of the federal funding  which was allocated to the city by the state  either was spent on ineligible costs under grant restrictions or that the city was lacking proper documentation that it had spent funding the way it said it had.

Council Chairman Peter Massaro, D-6, has said he believes the firms forensic audit was not comprehensive, and key figures who were not interviewed had knowledge or information that could have answered some open questions in the forensic audit report.

We want to find out why this information wasnt brought to them, he said. That audit was not an audit. It was not completed.

Because the forensic audit was authorized by the state Office of Policy and Management, the city was not CohnReznicks client, eliminating the ability of West Haven officials to set parameters around it.

A CohnReznick spokeswoman said the firm does not comment on client engagements.

Following the release of the forensic audit, political opponents of Mayor Nancy Rossi launched an effort to pressure the mayor to resign, hosting rallies and packing the room at City Council meetings. At the first meeting after the release of the forensic audit report, the council took a unanimous vote of no confidence in the mayor.

Rossi did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The council last week authorized the citys attorney to negotiate a contract with two attorneys from Hartford-based legal firm Rome McGuigan, P.C. Councilwomen Meli Garthwait, R-2, and Sarah Ackbarali, D-3, were appointed as the councils liaisons to the investigation.

Garthwait said over the course of the investigation that Ackbarali and she will work with the law firm to gain access to documents and individuals for the investigation, which is expected to take as long as six months.

While that seems rather lengthy, there will be some hurdles to get over in order to conduct a full investigation, she said.

Ackbarali said the investigations purpose will be to identify the truth in a fair and impartial manner to present to West Haven taxpayers.

This is a very controversial topic that has brought anguish and distrust to the community. The citizens of West Haven deserve the truth in all political matters from the top down, she said. As elected officials it is our responsibility to serve our entire community and to be honest and transparent.

Ackbarali said she expects the investigation committee to find answers for the community.

Garthwait said the investigation will be paid out of a $20,000 line item in the councils budget for attorney fees, and the council is prepared to transfer funds from the Corporation Counsels budget if need be.

Corporation Counsel Lee Tiernan said he is not aware of how the council plans to budget for the investigation.

(A)ll spending will be fiscally responsible, he said.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com
Bishop David Oyedepo of Living Faith Church has claimed that the gunmen who attacked and killed over 40 worshippers of St. Francis Catholic ...





Bishop David Oyedepo of Living Faith Church has claimed that the gunmen who attacked and killed over 40 worshippers of St. Francis Catholic Church Owo in Ondo State have all been found.

Recall that some bloodthirsty gunmen last Sunday, attacked the church during worship hour and opened fire on people, leading to the death of about 43 worshippers while others were seriously injured.

Oyedepo had while reacting to the news, declared seven days ultimatum for the assailants to be arrested, saying if they escape, then he is not sent by God.

Reports emerged on Thursday night via a trending video that the attackers have been arrested in the state.

The Ondo State Police Command, however, denied the report, saying the information was only a rumour.

But Oyedepo while speaking at a sermon at the churchs headquarters in Ota, Ogun State, thanked God that the criminal elements have all been found.

He said, Our God answers prayers, all those demons that attacked the Church in Owo have all been found. It is not seven days yet. In the same way, all the enemies of your soul shall be caught and judged and sent to eternal silence.

I said of they are not caught within seven days then Im not called by God, now, they have all been caught. The end has come for all their sponsors also. They steal and then use the stolen money to torment the people.
UW Extension Celebrates Outstanding Performance With 2021 Awards

At its annual spring conference in Laramie, University of Wyoming Extension congratulated the following 2021 award recipients for their dedication and service.

Jim Debree Excellence in Extension Award

Goshen County 4-H educator Megan Brittingham earned the Jim Debree Excellence in Extension Award -- UW Extensions highest honor -- for her outstanding performance, leadership and professionalism.

In addition to leading traditional 4-H programming, such as project workshops and judging practice, Brittingham has expanded nontraditional programs in her county. Local students look forward to her classroom programs, including hatching chicks, designed to present lessons in a fun and interactive way.

As one nominator notes, Megan strives to ensure all those around her grow as individuals, serve others and embrace the possibilities of expanding knowledge. She is engaged, forward-thinking and always puts her emphasis on education and 4-H members.

Brittingham joined UW Extension in 2010. She previously received the Newer Employee Recognition Award and Creative Excellence Award.

Newer Employee Award

Joddee Jacobsen, Natrona County 4-H youth development educator, received the Newer Employee Award. This honor recognizes excellent performance by employees with no more than six years in UW Extension.

Jacobsen brings a passion for learning and teaching to the UW Extension team. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, her dedication and ability to think outside the box ensured that 4-H participants didnt have to miss out on the annual county fair. It may have looked a little different from other years but, thanks to Jacobsen, the show went on -- and was a great success.

Nominators agree that she has a way of bringing out the best in people and ensuring that they are successful. She takes team player to the next level.

In addition to her role as an extension educator, Jacobsen is a Wyoming representative in the Western Extension Leadership Development program.

Creative Excellence Recognition Award

Faced with a global pandemic, the Agriculture and Horticulture Online Convention 2021 Coordination Team -- Scott Cotton, David Keto, Kristi Hansen, John Hewlett and Jennifer Thompson -- leapt into action, designing a multiday, web-based conference. For its efforts, the team earned the Creative Excellence Recognition Award.

In a show of creative collaboration, the convention team facilitated real-time roundtable discussions, question-and-answer sessions via Zoom and access to recorded presentations. The new conference model increased engagement and accessibility across the state while successfully capturing a wide variety of extension programming.

UW Extension Director Kelly Crane commends the awardees for finding new ways to deliver educational programs and reach new audiences.
The immediate past Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio and the former Deputy Inspector General of Police, Udom Ekpoudo...





The immediate past Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio and the former Deputy Inspector General of Police, Udom Ekpoudom (Rtd.) are at loggerheads over the Senatorial ticket of the All Progressives Congress, APC, for the Akwa Ibom North West.





Ekpoudom won the APC Ikot Ekpene senatorial primary election held on May 27, 2022, while Ekperikpe Ekpo, another aspirant was said to have won the same ticket in a nomination held on the 28th of May.





However, the Chairman of APC in the State, Mr Stephen Ntukekpo, during a rerun election of the Ikot Ekpene district announced that the previous election of 28th May was cancelled by the national body following reports of security infractions.





Ntukekpo said the NWC of the party ordered him to conduct a rerun on June 8, adding that he duly informed all the aspirants of the directives, even though DIG Ekpoudom never showed up during the exercise, while Hon Ekpo on his own collapsed his structure for Senator Akpabio who threw his hat in the ring, having withdrawn his presidential aspiration for Bola Tinubu, the partys presidential candidate.





Senator Akpabio, during the rerun, was declared winner, having scored 478 votes out of 512 accredited delegates and was expected to fly the partys flag, but DIG Ekpoudom in a statement on Sunday signed by his campaign DG, Hon Uwem Udoma, the Secretary, Obong Godwin Etokakpan and the campaigns Director of Media and Publicity, Peter Idiong, described the June 8, 2022, midnight primary as scam, unconstitutional, deceitful and legally defective.





The statement assured the APC members in the Senatorial district that he will under no circumstance, relinquish, withdraw or be substituted no matter the degree of pressure and inducement dangled by anyone.





According to the statement, the mandate freely and expressly given to him to fly the APC ticket for next years Senatorial election remained sacrosanct and not a commodity for buying and selling.





The 2023 DIG Udom Udo Ekpoudom (rtd.) Senatorial Campaign Organization has observed an absurd, ridiculous and highly provocative conspiracy with respect to the APC Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District Senate Primary election, validly won by Udom Udo Ekpoudom. We vehemently wish to reiterate and state as follows:





The purported scam election held on Thursday, 8th June, 2022 at the Skills Acquisition Centre in Ikot Ekpene is nothing but illegal, deceitful, unconstitutional, and legally defective.





However, the Chief Press Secretary to Senator Akpabio, Mr Jackson Udom in a swift reaction, insisted that Ekpoudom never took part in both the cancelled primary and the reordered one.





He noted that the election where Ekpoudom reportedly won was not recognized by law.





That contraption where Udom Ekpoudom was allegedly declared a winner, is not known to law and he couldnt have been said to have won the partys ticket, because you cannot build nothing on nothing, he said.





He reasoned that the senatorial district election as directed by the national leadership of the party all over the country was conducted on 28th May, 2022, and not on the 27th May, as the one done by Ekpoudom camp.
Ohanaeze Ndigbo worldwide said it has accepted the burden for the loss of the All Progressives Congress, APC and Peoples Democratic Party,...

Ohanaeze Ndigbo worldwide said it has accepted the burden for the loss of the All Progressives Congress, APC and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential tickets by the Southeast.

Ohanaeze admitted that the losses were due to a lack of a rallying point, but insisted that all hope is not lost.

We are calling for a truce and calm, and the blame games should lessen down for we are back on the drawing board in partnership all critical stakeholders in the southeast as its not over until its over, a statement signed by Okechukwu Isiguzoro, the Secretary-General of the organisation, said.

We share in the traumas and pains of Ndigbo, particularly in the lamentations of the chairman of the Southeast Governors and the Governor of Ebonyi State Engr Dave Umahi.

When the head is rotten it affects every part of the body, we tender our unreserved apologies to Ndigbo and the southeast Governors led by Governor Dave Umahi, what is expected of everyone is the aggressive mobilization of all Igbo eligible voters in 774 Lgas to register and obtain PVCs, there is a sizable population of Igbos outside and its not over yet for Ndigbo.

No matter how long we are trended in the wrong direction, Ndigbo should remember that the Messiah might not be in the major political parties, the southeast is still in the contest for 2023.

There are some options open for the southeast, in the absence of the rotten head, selected special IMEOBI and ELDERS COUNCIL members are now saddled with the duty to navigate NdIgbo through the political stormy weather, the sun will always rise from the East, its not over, the statement added.
Former federal lawmaker and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Dino Melaye, has said that the presidential aspirant of...

Former federal lawmaker and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Dino Melaye, has said that the presidential aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is a baby weight compared to Atiku Abubakar of the PDP.

Melaye said this when he appeared on Channels Televisions programme, Politics Today which was monitored by NigerianEye

He said, For us in the PDP, we have advised Atiku to please put together his acceptance speech because he is the next president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Bola Tinubu with his inordinate ambitions, campaigns and formation is no match in any way. Bola Tinubu is a baby weight compared to Atiku Abubakar. In all ramifications, politically, medically, mentally, socially even religiously.

Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar in terms of political popularity, they are not on the same page. How can Tinubu be bigger than Atiku? How can a volkswagen be bigger than a 9/11? In terms of political experience, you cannot put Tinubu and Atiku on the same page. Atiku stepped down for MKO Abiola  Atiku Abubakar by virtue of being the VP of this country at the time have a political edge in terms of experience more than Bola Tinubu.

Melaye further stated that Atiku is the only qualified candidate that better understands Nigerias lingering problems.

He added, In terms of connections, political power, in terms of knowing and understanding this country, including the problems of this country, you cannot put them on the same page. govern Nigeria,

To govern Nigeria, you have to be mentally and physically fit, it is a constitutional requirement, its not possible for you to have an incapacitated president.
Former running mate to the acclaimed winner of the 1993 presidential election, MKO Abiola, Babagana Kingibe, has been recognized as an ex-Vi...





Former running mate to the acclaimed winner of the 1993 presidential election, MKO Abiola, Babagana Kingibe, has been recognized as an ex-Vice President.





Kingibe was introduced as former Vice President when he was requested to join a group photograph at the Eagles Square on Monday, during the celebration of this years Democracy Day.





He was requested to join President Muhammadu Buhari, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, and President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan.





Others called for the photograph include the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila; the Chief Justice of the Federation, Ibrahim Tanko, and the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Adamu.





The event is the last Democracy parade President Buhari will preside over before his exit in 2023.





Recall that the 19993 June 12 presidential election was annulled by the then military Head of State, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.





Last year, Buhari reviewed Nigerias democracy Day from May 29 to June 12 in honour of Abiola.





While Buharis administration honoured Abiola nothing was publicly declared about Kingibe, until today.
The Leader Of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Primate Elijah Ayodele, on Monday, warned the Governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa agains...





The Leader Of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Primate Elijah Ayodele, on Monday, warned the Governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa against his anointed candidate, Sheriff Oborevwor, who emerged as the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, flag bearer for the 2023 gubernatorial election in the state.





Primate Ayodele said Sheriffs emergence as PDPs candidate is a huge risk that would push the party to lose the state if care is not taken.





In a statement signed by his media aide, Osho Oluwatosin, the man of God noted that the election, which will majorly be between APC and PDP will be rigged for rigging, money for money but at the end of the day, I dont see Sheriff coming out in flying colours due to crisis he will face that will limit the chances of his victory.





Primate Ayodele warned the PDP and Governor Okowa to make adjustments because his candidacy is a dangerous risk.





He said: On Delta State gubernatorial election, it will be rigging for rigging, money for money in the governorship elections of the state but at the end of the day, I dont see PDP candidate, Sheriff Oborevwor coming out in flying colours if the APC strategizes well.





I am warning governor Okowa to immediately swing into action because Sheriff will have issues, the PDP is risking Danger with the Sheriff, Im not his enemy but thats what God Said.





In the same vein, Primate Ayodele spoke on the candidate of Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State for the next governorship election, Francis Nwifuru.





He noted that without rigging, the candidate will not win the election.





Governor Umahis candidate for Ebonyi gubernatorial election, Francis Nwifuru will not fly, without rigging he will not win the gubernatorial election, he added.
Peter Obis Labour Party is too tiny for Bashir Ahmad to accept its presidential nomination, the former presidential aide said on Twitter ...

Peter Obis Labour Party is too tiny for Bashir Ahmad to accept its presidential nomination, the former presidential aide said on Twitter Sunday afternoon.

The PO supporters never fail to remind me about the results of my primaries, forgetting that the fear of getting 0 vote made their supreme leader, Peter Obi to run away from PDP to a tiny LP, which I am sure with my influence I would be begged to accept its presidential ticket, Mr Ahmad said on Twitter.

The former social media aide to the president has faced online ridicule since failing to clinch the House of Representatives ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress in Kano. He said those mocking him are Mr Obis supporters.

Labour Party is one of over two dozen registered political parties that are widely considered mushroom groups because they are not in the mainstream of Nigerian politics, which is dominated by the ruling APC and main opposition Peoples Democratic Party.

Mr Obi resigned from the PDP in late May and subsequently picked the presidential nomination of the Labour Party on May 31. He has continued to receive a groundswell of support amongst Nigerians online, although the political establishment has yet to see him as a threat next year.

Mr Ahmad, appointed in 2016, served until last month as one of over a dozen social media strategists for President Muhammadu Buhari, resigning to seek the House of Representatives ticket. He, however, threatened to challenge the party and the primary winner, describing his defeat as dangerous to the partys image.
The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, on Monday accused the Nigerian security agents of collaborating with the Southeast security outfit, E...





The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, on Monday accused the Nigerian security agents of collaborating with the Southeast security outfit, Ebubeagu, to abduct Igbo youths in the region.





IPOB alleged that Nigerian security agents in collaboration with Ebubeagu kidnap, kill, and harvest vital organs of their victims across the Southeast.





Emma Powerful, the spokesman of IPOB, said they have turned the kidnapping and harvesting of organs from Igbo youths into a lucrative business.





A statement by Powerful reads: We the global family and movement of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) ably led by our great leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu wish to state clearly to all and sundry that the Nigeria Joint Taskforce comprising Ebubeagu, Nigeria Army, Police, Civil Defense Corp and DSS agents representing the image and interest of the evil Nigeria security outfit are evidently known as criminals and armed robbers, kidnap sponsors, Arms runners lenders and murderers of the innocent citizens in Biafraland.





The JTF kidnapping enterprise established or revamped by evil politicians in Imo State and their new operation spots within where they lay criminal ambush and conveniently abduct for ransom. As their name implies Task force they now kidnap all classes of people daily within Okporo, Umuna, Amaifeke, Owerrebeiri, Umutanze and Akata in Orlu LGA of Imo State. They continue their dangerous rape against our females and mothers in Orlu zone of Imo State.





It has become imperative to state that the Nigeria Government and her security operatives have turned the Kidnap and killing of IPOB and Igbo youths as a lucrative enterprise through which they generate Revenue for the Nigeria Government. They are also deeply involved in harvesting the organs of our youths in Imo state and other parts of Biafraland.





IPOB called on Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State and the All Progressives Congress, APC, to stop the security agents from killing Igbo youths.





Powerful also called for an end to the burning of properties in the Southeast by security agents and Ebubeagu.





He said: Governor Hope Uzodinma, his Government, and political party APC are aware that IPOB is a peaceful movement and we call on him to recall the killing machine he assembled to extaminate our people.





Our demand to him is to instruct the killing squad of Military and EbubeAgu militia to immediately desist from the further killing of his people and vacate Orlu and the entire Imo State.





We the IPOB have had enough of the criminality and murder being perpetrated by these murderous combined government militia because all those politicians behind this devilish activities would soon regret being involved in such wickedness. We demand for an immediate halt to these operations and burning down of peoples properties and houses to avoid equal consequential resistance from IPOB which no one should blame IPOB when it will start because we would not continue to condone such barbarities.





The separatist group called the attention of the international communities to the alleged killings of Igbo youths.





In calling the International community to pay attention to these barbaric acts and draw their focus to the plight of our people, we deem it proper to commend Amnesty International, Intersociety group, and few others for standing on the side of truth as they had previously covered and documented genocidal crimes against Biafrans and the unarmed, defenceless IPOB family members by the Nigerian Military and the Police.





We call again for you to note that the killings and abductions have increased exponentially and are being silently perpetrated by the security agencies as the disappearance of young people in Igbo-land with the harvest of their organs in Orlu Imo State and killing of Biafra youths has become the order of the day in Biafraland.





We remind the International communities that their silence is not golden, rather their opinion and involvement speak volumes, therefore IPOB extends calls to the EU in Nigeria, the US in Nigeria, the UK in Nigeria UN in Nigeria, the African Union, Israeli in Nigeria, Russia in Nigeria, China in Nigeria, India in Nigeria, German Delegation, the Canadian government, all diplomats, diplomatic missions, CHOGM and including all ambassadors and High Commissioners in Abuja and Lagos as well as Gov. Hope Uzodinma and other States Governors in Biafraland occupied by Nigeria to the current wave of the violent rape of our women and young ladies especially when they can not afford the Ransom payment to their abductors most of whom are members of EbubeAgu and the military as testified by defenceless survivors.





IPOB remains resolute, disciplined, and intact. Despite the provocations, we have remained focused and faithful to our fundamental objectives never allowing ourselves to be distracted or stampeded into criminal activities which is what the Nigerian government had hoped to achieve.





We are aware that the International communities representatives in Nigeria are not completely ignorant of the numerous unfolding criminal activities, State-sponsored acts of terror, and the Nigerian governments direct/proxy involvement in almost all of these coupled with their use of the Nigerian Media to change the narrative by attempting to hide their culpability, and in turn wickedly blackmail and use propaganda against their victims.





They are also not unaware of the Nigerian governments mission to exterminate Biafrans whos only demand is a democratically recognised and international accepted process of (REFERENDUM) which is our fundamental human right and the only political solution between Biafra and Nigeria face-off, he added.
Following the Sunday, June 5, 2022 shooting incident, which claimed the lives of several worshippers at Saint Francis Xavier Catholic church...





Following the Sunday, June 5, 2022 shooting incident, which claimed the lives of several worshippers at Saint Francis Xavier Catholic church, Owo, Ondo State, the Osun Amotekun Corps has deployed its personnel to guard churches and mosques in the State.





In a statement by Yusuf Idowu, the Osun Amotekun Spokesperson, made available to newsmen on Sunday, the measure is aimed at ensuring adequate security for all the residents of the State.





The Osun Amotekun spokesperson also stated that part of the aim of the action taken was to strengthen the security apparatus in the State and protect the lives and property of the residents against any form of criminality.





The corps would continue to adopt proactive security strategies against any form of security threat in the State.





Sufficient personnel had been assigned to provide security for the churches and mosques in the State.





We are also patrolling the entire State against any form of security threats.





We will continue to map out comprehensive security measures that will enable us to apprehend all kinds of criminals in the State.





We have deployed corps to all the churches and mosques in all the nook and cranny of the State to secure our people from any form of attack by the criminals, the spokesperson said.





While urging stakeholders to sensitise residents to volunteer timely information that would aid the corps in apprehending criminal elements, they also assured that there was no cause for alarm.





Meanwhile, the Osun State Government has assured that it will do everything possible to strengthen the Amotekun regional security network.





The Osun State Governor, Adegboyega Oyetola made this known on Sunday as he paid a condolence visit to his Ondo State counterpart, Rotimi Akeredolu in Akure.





The visit was to commiserate with the Ondo people over the terrorist attack on Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Owo.





During the visit, the Osun governor disclosed that no effort would be spared to strengthen the security architecture in the southwest region.





Oyetola, who had earlier issued a condolence statement on the attack, said the visit was in the spirit of solidarity and brotherhood.





Describing the incident as cruel, barbaric and heinous, Governor Oyetola said the attack was a reminder for the leaders to refocus the security direction to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in the region.





Recall that on Sunday morning, June 5, 2022, Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Owo, was attacked by yet-to-be-identified gunmen, during which several worshippers died, and many others injured.
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo says despite the current challenges, Nigerias democracy is showing signs of positive growth. Osinbajo ...

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo says despite the current challenges, Nigerias democracy is showing signs of positive growth.

Osinbajo spoke on Sunday at the 2022 Democracy Day inter-denominational church service, held at the National Christian Centre in Abuja.

According to the vice-president, the events that have characterised Nigerias politics since the beginning of democratic rule in 1999 show that the country is capable of fostering good governance.

In the last couple of weeks, party primaries have been held by political parties, big and small and across the country, without violence, rancour or the prevalence of bitter court cases as have characterised the process in times past. We are growing, he said.





The social contract between the government and the people with the ballot as arbiter is daily being strengthened. The combined effort of government, the people and civil society across the federation are bringing us closer to our highest democratic ideals and aspirations.

So, this is a day for gratitude and hope  a day to remind ourselves that what was once thought impossible of Nigeria has been proven possible, and that what is yet considered so, is well within our grasps. We only have to keep moving forward, each one of us playing our part.

It is possible for light to overcome darkness; it is possible for joy to overcome sorrow; it is possible for peace to prevail over terror; it is possible for us to be united, irrespective of our cultural, linguistic, religious or even ideological differences.

Jesus said to the crowd in Luke 12:54: When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, its going to rain, and it does. We have seen the rain coming over Nigeria. A rain of peace and prosperity  one which like the goodness of God, touches everyone no matter who or where they are.

Today, let us rest assured in the promise and possibilities of Nigeria. We have the talent, and the resources to be a beacon of hope and standard-bearer for the rest of Africa and the black race.

Osinbajo added that he believes in the possibilities that Nigeria can achieve, adding that the country will overcome its challenges.

We have been progressively proving that we have what it takes to run an open, honest and transparent government that guarantees the rule of law and secures every corner of the nation; that in this decade, we can lift 100 million people out of poverty and guarantee equal access to education and opportunities for our women, bringing to fruition the most comprehensive social welfare programme for the poor and vulnerable on this side of the planet, he said.

We know the challenges. We live with them. But we also know, and we have seen, in the words of Paul the Apostle that: in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us, and that our nation will continue its long but steady march toward the fulfillment of its God-ordained destiny.

I believe you are as persuaded as I am because we know that: all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. All things are working toward the emergence of a stronger, unified, peaceful and economically prosperous Nigeria.
A play, Emir Sanusi  Truth in Clay, produced by Duke of Shomolu Productions, is to be staged in Lagos and Abuja in August, according to a...





A play, Emir Sanusi  Truth in Clay, produced by Duke of Shomolu Productions, is to be staged in Lagos and Abuja in August, according to a statement by the producers.





The Executive Chairman of Duke of Shomolu Productions, Joseph Edgar, signed the statement, a copy of which was made available to the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos on Monday.





It said that the play would depict the lives, drama and intrigues surrounding the dethronement of both Emir Sanusi I and his grandson, Emir Sanusi II, leaning heavily on the eye witness account of the Dogarai (place guards), who served both Emirs.





The Play will excitedly work very assiduously through the very colourful traditions and culture of the Fulani and other people of Northern Nigeria, in its bid to foster an equivocal retelling of a very compelling story.





Through some of the most enigmatic storytelling, the play will explosively carry audiences through a voyage of rediscovery, taking them through the sacrifices made by both subjects as they waltzed through a market of misunderstanding leading up to what seemed like a predestined and epochal climax, the statement explained.





It said that the National Troupe of Nigeria had already endorsed the production and would also be partnering in its execution.





According to Edgar, the former Emir has confirmed his readiness to attend both performances to be held in both cities.

He said that the play would make history as the first co-locational play in Nigeria, if not Africa, utilising different casts in both locations.





The chairman added that the play would be directed by Professor Ahmed Yerima, generally regarded as an institutional pillar of Nigerian theatre.





Recall that Yerima also wrote and directed Duke of Shomolus Aremu, a play that depicted the life of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.





The play attracted influential statesman to both the Lagos and Abeokuta showing.





The statement quoted the Managing Director of the firm, Mrs Mofoluwake Edgar, as stating that the outfit had emerged the biggest purveyors of historically-backed stage productions in Nigeria.





With over 12 productions, including Ufok Ibaan, Isale Eko and Emotan, to mention a few, our firm continues to push its vision of retelling our national historical stories to a new generation in a firm bid to foster national reawakening using the arts as a strong vehicle of delivery.





As part of the vision, the firm has pulled in respected directors like Makinde Adeniran, William Benson and Segun Adefila as it pursues its vision of excellence, it quoted the managing director as saying.

It further quoted her as saying that more than 100,000 Nigerians had physically seen the productions that had thrown up one of the largest collections of theatrical images on the continent.





The statement added that Agip Recital Hall of the Muson Centre in Lagos, and the Musa YarAdua Centre in Abuja, would host the play.





It further added that the firm would be running a theatre festival in December where it would stage four plays  Ufok Ibaan, Our Duke Has Gone Mad, Awo and Ogiame Erejuwa II.





It also announced that a play  Ladi Kwali  would be staged at Easter in 2023, adding that it would be written and directed by Nigerias first Professor of Dance, Bakare Ojo, who is currently the Ekiti State Commissioner for Arts and Culture.





Nnamdi Azikiwe will also be showing the same Easter 2023, it said, adding that First Bank and Purple are principal sponsors of the projects.


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The Moderna logo is seen at the companys campus in Norwood, Mass., on Dec. 2, 2020, where the biotechnology company is mass producing its COVID-19 vaccine. Moderna Inc.s COVID-19 vaccine is effective in children and adolescents, with mostly mild to moderate side effects, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff said June 10. Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images/TNS
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Now heres something to chew on. What common household item do you hold and put it in your mouth 50 times a day? (Thats more than your toothbrush.) And when was the last time you thought about it?

I hadnt paid my flatware much attention since I bought it 30 years ago. Its just been there, in the drawer, waiting to transport food to my mouth, which I appreciate. But recently I discovered I had half as many forks and spoons as knives. What happened? We started out with the same number of each.

The forks ran away with the spoons! I cried to Greg Owens, co-owner of Sherrill Manufacturing, the last remaining maker of flatware in the United States.

Owens, who unlike me, actually does give flatware a lot of thought, had heard this before. Forks and spoons often get lost to trash cans, lunch sacks, picnics and camping trips, he said.

A little history

Owens and his partner Matthew Roberts, both veterans of the steel business, stepped up when, in 2005, Oneida Limited, one of the worlds leading flatware manufacturers, closed its U.S. manufacturing plant, which had been making silverware since 1860 (think Abraham Lincoln), and moved all operations offshore.

Oneida could buy finished flatware made in China cheaper than it could buy the metal to produce their product in the United States, so they left, Owens said.

Owens and Roberts took over the manufacturing facility, continued to employ many of the workers, and christened the new operation Sherrill Manufacturing, named after the city in New York where its based. A few years later, they began making Liberty Tabletop flatware, which now sells 33 patterns online direct to consumers.

But, you said ...

Now, alert readers will recall that last weeks column, about household goods you should not buy online, had flatware on the list. You need to see and feel it in person before committing.

You wont get an argument from Owens, who encourages customers to order samples. Yet direct online selling is what makes it possible for Liberty (www.libertytabletop.com) to compete on price with imports. We can bypass retail stores, which often take as much as 70% of the profit, he said.

Given that 90% of the flatware sold in America today comes from China, Owens takes pride in saying, We are 100% American. We use hydro power from Niagara Falls, get our metal from Pittsburgh, so we know it meets U.S. quality standards, no mystery metal, and we provide American jobs.

But back to me.

Looking for replacements

I still had a serious fork and spoon problem. I checked online at Replacements Unlimited, the company that sells individual pieces of china, crystal and silverware for folks whove broken or lost pieces or have gaps in their sets. No luck. I found the brand of my old flatware, but not the style.

Which meant only one thing: New flatware. As I began shopping for something I hadnt bought in decades, and likely wont ever buy again, I figured Id better learn what I should look for.

Heres what I discovered:

MATERIAL: The key quality to look for when choosing stainless-steel flatware is the metal content. The back usually has a stamp that reads 18/10, 18/8 or 18/0. This ratio represents the amount of chromium to nickel in the metal alloy.

Nickel (the second number) gives utensils their luster and durability, and reduces their susceptibility to pitting, rusting, clouding and staining. Because nickel is expensive, many manufacturers skimp. Today, most imports are 18/0, said Owens, whose company makes only 18/10 flatware.

PRODUCTION QUALITY: Besides metal ratio, another way to judge flatware is by the quality of its finish. Pieces should have an even luster with no pitting, no irregular pattern detailing, and no areas that appear worn down or over buffed. Look between the fork tines. An inferior product will show roughness there.

STYLE: Flatware designs fall into three categories:

Modern, which is sleek and streamlined with little or no pattern.

Traditional, which often features floral designs, ornate flourishes and fiddleback or curved outlines.

Decorative, where handles incorporate textures such as hammered, stippled or woven effects, or colored, non-metallic handles, which tend to be less durable.

Pick something you wont get tired of.

That said, Liberty offers an affinity line with fun motifs that feature skulls (a hit with the biker set), Celtic heritage, and Woodstock (a hippie flashback).

FINISH: Todays flatware comes with polished, brushed or ornate finishes. The smoother the finish and the simpler the pattern, the more it will show fingerprints, dings and scratches, and thats not necessarily bad, Owens said. Patterned flatware is more forgiving.

SIZE: Flatware size falls into two general camps: American Standard and European.

American standard flatware is typically an inch smaller than European-sized pieces. For example, an American Standard fork measures about 7 inches, while its European counterpart measures 8 inches.

Though some U.S. consumers still prefer traditional American sizing, the trend is toward less ornate, larger and heavier pieces, known in the industry as Euro-sizing. The only way to know what you like best is to try before you buy.

Because theres more to this story, join me next week when my husband and I test drive four flatware sets and discover, and sometimes disagree on, their finer points.

Marni Jameson can be reached at www.marnijameson.com.

10 household items you probably shouldn't buy online I got spoiled during the pandemic. Yes, I know, we all had much to complain about  the cabin fever, the groundhogs day existence, the anxiet

Want to turn your household clutter into cash? Selling used stuff online has gotten easier Decluttering should be its own reward. Letting go leads to that lovely feeling of lightness. Those open shelves, that organized closet, the ga
A Popeyes in southern Louisiana has a feathered fan that it cant seem to shake, to the delight of many customers.

A stoutly rooster has seemingly taken up residence at the Popeyes on East Gause Boulevard in Slidell, becoming a community icon of sorts, according to the police department.

We literally have a chicken who has made himself at home, officers captioned a video posted on the departments Facebook page on Friday, June 10. Its literally there all.the.time! Thats one brave chicken.

The 30-second clip shows the bird standing outside his new stomping ground as the Popeyes jingle plays in the background. The video has racked up more than 26,000 views since then, eliciting jokes and laughter from regulars of the fried chicken chain.

They have the freshest chicken, one Facebook user commented under the departments video, followed by several laughing emojis.

Hes standing guard for his fallen brethren, someone else joked.

The rooster, affectionately known as Rocco, has gained a family and internet fame since he arrived after Hurricane Ida last year, police spokesman Daniel Seuzeneau told McClatchy News.

There was a lot of effort into trying to find the rightful owner, but no one ever came forward, Seuzeneau said. Now the chicken lives and is maintained by employees at Popeyes and some Slidell citizens.

Muhassin Shepherd, a general manager at the Popeyes location, said employees have even built him a coop behind the restaurant, WWL-TV reported. Customers now flock to see him, as hes hard to miss.

Hell go around to the front door, look around, Shepherd told the news station. Hell go around to the window, the drive-thru window and just look.

Facebook users have shared photos of their own showing Rocco perched on a pillar near the drive-thru window or strutting outside the building. The unusual sight often leaves out-of-town visitors very confused, according to one Facebook user.

It is so funny! Dianne Marshall commented under the police departments post. Love when I am in the drive thru & I see someone with an out of state plate park & realize theres a chicken in the parking lot. They always have the weirdest look on their face.

Rocco has since cemented himself as the restaurants new mascot, at least according to his Facebook fan page.

He is now a local icon to the area! Seuzeneau said.

Slidell is about 30 miles northeast of downtown New Orleans.
There will be po-boys galore on Oak Street once again this fall, and dressed will mean much more than the standard array of lettuce, tomato, mayo and pickles.

After missing two years due to the pandemic, the Oak Street Po-Boy Festival is slated to make its full-fledged return this fall, with the next edition scheduled for Nov. 6.

Were doing it. Its happening, said Leroy Mitchell, the Saints superfan known as "Whistle Monsta," a representative of the festival.

After the citys massive springtime festivals staged successful returns, planning is well underway for the slate of smaller food and music festivals that normally populate the fall calendar in New Orleans.

The Po-boy Festival is the latest to announce comeback plans after struggling through the earlier shutdowns and social distancing protocols, which effectively sidelined the citys normally robust festival culture.

Beignet Fest has also announced plans to return, Sept. 24 at City Park, and so has the National Fried Chicken Festival, returning Oct. 1-2 with a new location on the New Orleans lakefront.

Each festival is like a fingerprint of its community, Mitchell said. The art, the food, the music are all big parts of it. Thats what New Orleans neighborhoods are, and after not being able to be together in the pandemic, it feels good to know we can do this again.

The Po-Boy Festival was able to marshal a remote version of itself during the pandemic, with a circuit of restaurants that normally participate serving takeout specials from their own venues.

In full bloom, though, the Po-Boy Festival transforms Oak Streets historic, low-rise corridor of shops and offices into an open-air food court in honor of its namesake sandwich.

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Well-known po-boy shops, upscale restaurants, pop-ups, caterers and others all compete for awards, serving a mix of traditional and wildly creative po-boys. Past editions have pressed everything from fried lobster to escargot and smothered rabbit into po-boy form.

Beneficiaries, business boom

The event began in 2007 as the Po-Boy Preservation Festival, with the subtext of saving the city's most famous sandwich from the well-marketed competition of chain sub shops.

Organizers soon dropped the preservation part of the title, however, and in the years since, the pursuit of one of the festivals awards and the competition among New Orleans restaurants has continuously raised the bar for the sandwiches served throughout the day.

Some of the festival hits become year-round menu fixtures for their creators, like the sushi bar-inspired jung fu tuna po-boy at Seithers Seafood in Harahan, a perennial Po-Boy Festival contender.

Once again this year, the festival will benefit Son of a Saint, a community group that works in youth development with fatherless boys around the New Orleans area.

Our job is to continue to advance the lives of fatherless boys, and were excited to be back at Po-Boy Fest, which is going to be bigger and better than before, said Ola Adegboye, chief financial officer of Son of a Saint.

The event is typically also a boost for the restaurants, bars and cafes that line this Main Street-like business corridor. Their ranks have changed considerably through the turmoil of the pandemic.

Some longtime local restaurants have shuttered for good, including Live Oak Cafe, Pho Bistreaux and Cowbell. More have debuted here despite hard times, however, including Seafood Sallys, the Jamaican restaurant 14 Parishes and the taproom brewery Oak Street Brewery.

More are slated to arrive on Oak Street before the next Po-Boy Festival returns, including a new Japanese bar called Sukeban, a Mexican restaurant called Mucho Mas (in the former home of Cajun restaurant DTB) and a new brewpub called Calliope Beer Works now taking shape in the former home of Cowbell.
Note: This story was updated on Monday, with comments from the New Orleans Police Department.

Despite some drizzle and the occasional rumble of thunder, crowds lingered in the French Quarter Saturday evening to watch the 2022 Pride Parade pass by. The annual celebration of LGBTQ identity had been absent for two years, thanks to the COVID pandemic that forbade large gatherings. But the comeback event went off without a hitch.

Well, almost without a hitch.

Instead of rolling at 6 p.m., as expected, the parade didnt get going until 7 p.m. Parade organizer Beaux Church said that during the planning stages, the parade was scheduled for 7 p.m., but NOPD asked that the start time be moved up an hour.

Unfortunately, when 6 p.m. rolled around Saturday, he said, police officers informed him that there would be a short delay. It seemed some officers were unaware of the start time, Church said. As gray clouds passed ominously overhead and parade goers fidgeted, the delay dragged on for an hour.

An NOPD spokesman says the department sees the situation differently. NOPD did not ask the Pride Parade to move up the start time for the parade, he wrote via email on Monday. The 7:00 p.m. start time remained the same.

Though, the spokesman noted, there had been a major change to the parade route. Parade organizers wanted to change the route because they didn't have the finances to pay for the required staffing of the original route, he wrote.

Finances for the 2022 parade were tight. As Church explained in an earlier interview, the comeback parade did not receive the expected level of corporate sponsorship, and cutbacks had to be made. The number of floats was reduced, and the length of the route was shortened by several blocks.

Nonetheless, Church said, once the parade started it was a really good time.

"It was just beautiful seeing so many of my friends again, together, drinks in hand, and throws galore," he wrote via text. Even the smattering of rain was welcome. It was so hot, everybody enjoyed being cooled off, Church said.
When Louisiana's 2022 legislative session began in March, culture wars and other hot-button issues loomed large in Baton Rouge. But as the session moved along, something interesting happened: legislators sidelined or killed a majority of the harshest, most retrograde bills that had been proposed.

To be sure, writes Political Editor Clancy DuBos, lawmakers passed some truly awful bills, but Louisiana remains just barely outside the ranks of some of our knuckle-dragging neighbors in the South.

In this week's Gambit, Clancy counts the victors and the vanquished  and, in a first, the stalemates  in his annual legislative recap, "Da Winnas and Da Loozas." Flip through the digital edition below for more.

Cant see the e-edition above? Click here.

Also in this week's Gambit: The NOLA Project opens "School Girls, Or the African Mean Girls Play" at Loyola; Blake Pontchartrain tells readers about the posters at the 1984 World's Fair; Bar Pomona and Jamboree Jams serves small-batch jams, wine and more on St. Claude Avenue; Mason Hereford releases his first cookbook; Jason Berry's "City of a Million Dreams" documentary opens at The Broad Theater  plus news and more.

If you can't find a Gambit in your usual spot, we've got you covered. Our e-edition is available to download at bestofneworleans.com/current and read at your leisure.

If you enjoy this weeks issue, please share this digital edition on social media.

And as always, New Orleans, thank you for your support.

 The Gambit staff
A group opposing a broad, new land-use plan that targets thousands of acres in St. Tammany Parish as potential manufacturing, distribution and warehousing sites is asking a judge to force the St. Tammany Parish Council to formally hear their objections about the plan.

The Orleans Audubon Society and nearly 70 people filed a petition June 9 in 22nd Judicial District Court in Covington seeking the right to appeal the St. Tammany Parish Planning Commission's May 10 vote to adopt the "New Directions 2040" masterplan. Opponents of the plan have complained that they were blocked from formally appealing the commission's vote to the Parish Council, as they say should be allowed in this instance.

The public has been completely shut out of the whole process. Its a violation of their right to due process under the constitution, said Andrew Wilson, a Mandeville attorney who represents the group and is also listed as a plaintiff.

Opponents believe the land use plan will turn sleepy St. Tammany into a hotbed for industry and manufacturing, without yet understanding the full impact to the environment and residential quality of life, the petition says.

The plan will transform a "bedroom community" into an "industrial corridor," the petition says.

Opponents cite a litany of concerns, from increased flooding to the loss of green space to increased congestion on highways as distribution centers receive and deliver truck cargo. Opponents also believe the plan was created in secrecy, spearheaded through the distraction of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the petition.

St. Tammany Parish President Mike Cooper, named as a defendant in the petition, disagreed that anything was done in secret.

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"Our comprehensive plan and future land use map were properly developed after a rigorous 18-month period, consisting of thousands of interviews, public comments, and meetings," Cooper said.

Attempted appeals

After the Planning Commission's May 10 vote, several people opposing the masterplan said they tried to file a formal appeal to bring the matter before the Parish Council  as they said the parish code of ordinances allows in zoning decisions  but were denied. But in a previous interview, Cooper's spokesperson, Michael Vinsanau, said the Planning Commission has the sole authority to make and adopt masterplans.

Vinsanau said the masterplans are not adopted "as law" but provide "guidelines" that are not legally binding for future development.

Along with Cooper, the petition lists five other defendants: the Planning Commission, the Parish Council, the parish's Department of Planning and Development, District Attorney Warren Montgomery, and Safety Specialty Insurance Co.

Council Chair Jerry Binder and the District Attorney's Office were not immediately available for comment Monday.

Wilson said that a hearing is expected to occur within the next few weeks in front of Judge Raymond Childress.

Denying appeal rights will create a dangerous, undemocratic precedent which will forever limit public input on major decisions in St. Tammany Parish, according to the petition.
A fire damaged part of a petroleum fuel oil storage facility Sunday night in St. Rose, St. Charles Parish officials said.

The fire is out and no injuries have been reported, they said.

The fire was reported at 8:45 p.m. at the International-Matex Tank Terminals. It involved a petroleum fuel oil piping manifold at the company's storage terminal, parish officials said.

Employees at the facility brought the fire under control by 9:15 p.m. and extinguished it soon after that. The company has an in-house emergency response team that is trained to handle industrial fires, according to IMTT.

Monitoring air quality

All personnel have been accounted for, officials said, and the company has activated its emergency response plan.

The facility at 11842 River Road is used to store liquid products such as petroleum, vegetable oil and alcohol.

The company, according to parish leaders, is monitoring ambient air quality near the facility and "does not anticipate any off-site impacts as a result of the fire."

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The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Previous fire in 2020

The facility had a fire almost two years ago at its pump pit. The pit is a concrete containment area for the pumps that move the liquids to and from above-ground storage tanks, a company official said at the time.

No one was injured in that fire and no air quality issues were immediately reported at the time.

The shipping and storage company, founded in 1939 in Avondale by James J. Coleman Sr., was sold by the Coleman family in 2014 for $1 billion to a division of the Australian Macquarie Group.

Riverstone Holdings, a private equity firm, paid about $2.7 billion to acquire IMTT in November 2020.

IMTT's headquarters are in Poydras Plaza in New Orleans. As of March 2021, the company had about 220 employees in Louisiana.

Staff writer Michelle Hunter contributed to this story.
An inmate at the New Orleans jail killed himself Sunday afternoon by jumping from a railing in the lockup, according to local law enforcement.

He died of a brain injury and fractured spine after being rushed to the hospital, according to the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office.

The inmate, who was not identified beyond being a 46-year-old male, was pronounced dead at 1:17 p.m. by physicians at University Medical Center.

The cause of death was a traumatic brain injury and a cervical spinal fracture.

The Sheriff's Office said the man had arrived at the Orleans Justice Center on Friday after being arrested by New Orleans police on an outstanding warrant in Jefferson Parish. He was booked on counts of theft of more than $25,000, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of Oxycodone. The man has no known family and is believed to have been recently homeless.

Sheriff Susan Hutson is coordinating efforts to search for the mans next-of-kin with New Orleans police, the Coroners Office and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office.

Editor's Note: This article was updated with new details on how the man died.
Charles Santos was standing outside Good Friends Bar on Dauphine Street Saturday when he felt someone pull his phone out of his pocket.

He was hoping to catch the sights before for the city's Pride Parade, but ended up spending the afternoon at his French Quarter home canceling accounts connected to his stolen phone. Furious but determined to salvage the day, Santos, 31, and his girlfriend, Hayley Brasted, 29, decided to venture back out, this time to Lafittes Blacksmith's Shop on Bourbon Street.

When he got to the bar and told his story, several women there said they also had their phones stolen that day. Santos then saw a man outside the bar struggling with a person carrying a backpack -- allegedly full of stolen phones.

Santos took off running after the alleged thief and grabbed the backpack, which in fact contained 14 phones, he said. None were his.

So he worked with Brasted to create a Facebook post advertising his find.

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"Hi community. If you lost your phone tonight, there is a chance that we found it! We were able to get his backpack after he stole someone else's phone. It's about 14 phones, and we're going to keep them charged. Have your friends call them or reach out."

The couple has since put 11 phones back in the hands of their rightful owners. Brasted said she was returning the last three phones to their respective service providers.

Were looking for a 100% return rate, she said.

The New Orleans Police Department didn't immediately comment on whether they'd received reports of stolen phones in the area.
Two women were shot in Gentilly on Saturday night and a man was shot in New Orleans East on Sunday, bringing the weekend tally of gun-related injuries in the city to seven.

The New Orleans Police Department reported the two incidents Sunday following a bulletin about a quadruple shooting, in which four people were shot leaving an unidentified venue in the 3900 block of Tulane Avenue early Sunday morning.

Few details were available in that incident, though police said one victim had been shot in the neck, another in the knee, another in the elbow and another in the hand. They were taken to the hospital in private vehicles.

In the Gentilly shooting, a man and one of the women were arguing in the 200 block of Mendez Street (map) at 8:40 p.m. when the man started shooting and struck both women, police said.

Paramedics brought one woman to the hospital, but the other woman refused treatment. The man ran away, the NOPD said.

In the New Orleans East shooting, a man was brought to the hospital in a private vehicle after being shot in the 7600 block of Avon Park Boulevard. The NOPD said it was notified of the shooting just before noon.

Here are the other overnight crimes since Saturday morning that were reported by the NOPD Sunday.

Man robbed, beaten in Mid-City

A 64-year-old man was robbed at gunpoint Saturday at 2:43 p.m. in the 3500 block of Tulane Avenue (map).

The man was approached by another man, who asked him for money. The victim refused, and the man took his money and hit him with a broken chair leg and ran away.

Woman robbed in Holy Cross

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A 30-year-old woman was robbed in the 5700 block of St. Claude Avenue (map) about 7 p.m. Saturday.

The woman was arguing with Herman Riley Sr., 37, when he allegedly snatched her car keys. Police arrested Riley at the scene.

Man robbed at gunpoint near Iberville

A 66-year-old man was robbed at gunpoint in the 300 block of North Rampart Street (map). Two people demanded his car, the man complied and the men drove away.

Three woman carjacked near Warehouse District

Three women were carjacked in the 1900 block of Thalia Street (map) at 12:45 a.m. Sunday. The women were parked when a sedan drove up next to them. Three men with guns got out of the car and demanded the victims' things and drove away in the car toward Calliope Street.

Man robbed, stabbed in Warehouse District

A 38-year-old man was robbed at knifepoint in the 1000 block of Loyola Avenue (map) about 4:30 a.m. Sunday. A man walked up and took his wallet, and when he tried to get his wallet back, the man stabbed him multiple times. Paramedics brought the victim to a hospital, and the man who stabbed him ran away.

No other details were immediately available. Anyone with information regarding these crimes is asked to call Crimestoppers at (504) 822-1111. Tipsters may be eligible for a cash reward.
Three men have been cited for harvesting oysters from a polluted area of Lafourche Parish, the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said Monday.

Responding to complaints, a Wildlife and Fisheries patrol team found Marco Dominguez-Aguilar, 21, Daniel Sanchez Machucho, 28, both from Houma, and Luis Miguel Aguilar Macedo, 23, of Bayou Blue, taking oysters from South Lafourche waters closed to shellfish harvesting due to high concentrations of fecal coliform bacteria.

Wildlife agents seized three bags of oysters and returned them to the water on Friday.

The penalty for taking oysters from a polluted area is a fine of up to $950 and up to 120 days in jail. Violators could also have their oyster harvester licenses revoked for up to one year and be required to perform community service.

Environmental news in your inbox Stay up-to-date on the latest on Louisiana's coast and the environment. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

The polluted area had been closed by the state Department of Health. The source of the contamination is unclear, but common sources include leaky septic systems, waste dumped from boats and animal feces.

Fecal contamination typically closes several hundred acres off the Louisiana coast at any one time. Health officials regularly test for fecal contamination in oyster-growing areas. Closures usually last 21 days before additional testing is done.
SHREVEPORT, La. - One person is confirmed dead after a shooting in Shreveport Monday night.

The Caddo Parish Coroner's Office on Tuesday identified the victim as Ja'tyon Dillard, 15. He was shot multiple times.

Shreveport police responded to a call of shots fired shortly before 10 p.m. Monday near the intersection of West 70th and Jewella Avenue.

Evidence markers could be seen nearby as police gathered information.

Nearly two dozen police and fire units were on the scene at one point.

KTBS 3 News has learned that people in three vehicles were involved in a shootout. The teenage victim was found dead in the back of a pickup truck and another male victim was found at a Family Dollar with life-threatening injuries.

Details of what led up to the shooting are unclear.

Dillard's death is the 28th homicide this year in Shreveport.

If you have any information about this case, call Caddo-Shreveport Crime Stoppers at (318) at 673-7373.

- - - - -

KTBS 3 is On Your Side and when news happens, we want to know about it. Email us at tips@ktbs.com and well check it out.
FREISING, Germany, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- PayCenter GmbH the first German E-money-institute with its own bank code and "Hidden Champion", puts 50% of their shares up for sale because two of the four equal shareholders want to sell their shares for reasons of age.

Since being granted an e-money licence by BaFin in 2012, PayCenter has always stood among the shades of a sparkling Wirecard AG. Nevertheless, the company has independently developed into a modern and functionally e-money-institute. With its account and payment solutions PayCenter serves more than 50.000 private customers, as well as more than 8.000 business customers.

Dr. Peter Schonweitz, managing shareholder of PayCenter GmbH: "Our products are already firmly established on the market. All business areas run smoothly with our experience over the last ten years. There is nothing we cant offer. Now we are looking for strategic, long-term partners with whom we would like to take the company to the next level. The clear goal is growth."

Beside the classic private- and business customer solutions, three innovative pillars of PayCenter, which are already available on the market, will shape the future of the company and ensure the economic success:

The app VIMpay  "the swiss pocket knife" of mobile payment offers users a Debit Mastercard to pay worldwide with all known payment wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Garmin Pay, Fitbit Pay, SwatchPAY! and many more. With the subscription model VIMpay Premium user are provided with a low-cost and competitive bank account. VIMpay is currently available in Germany and Austria and has already recorded almost 500.000 downloads with excellent ratings in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. An expansion into the European market is already planned.

Together with its technical partner petaFuel, PayCenter GmbH is responding to the steadily growing FinTech market with BIN-Sponsorships. Therefore PayCenter offers its e-money and Mastercard licence to other companies, enabling them to implement and distribute their products under the regulatory umbrella of PayCenter. BIN-Sponsoring is the platform for a quick realisation of FinTech ideas, inclusive krypto. A rapidly developing market, as the FinTechs are never running out of ideas.

With "Sachbezugskarte" (non-cash benefit cards) PayCenter sells an extremely fast-growing product to employers in Germany. Employees receive prepaid cards in different variations, to accept tax-free payments from their employer. Due to the technological advantage, the company is leading with regional cards.

Please see the pitch decks for more information on PayCenter and its products: https://seafile.partners.petafuel.de/d/9f3944db18d24b0ebb3b/

The PayCenter GmbH is a German E-Money-Institute regulated by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), which offers payment services with Debit Mastercards and online accounts, as well as mobile payment procedures and garnishment protection accounts. Both private and business customers are served with innovative and customer-specific products. More than 45 employees work at PayCenter in the area of payment transactions and customer service.

For more information about PayCenter please visit: https://www.paycenter.de/ueber-uns/

PayCenter GmbH | www.paycenter.deClemensanger Ring 24 | 85356 Freising | GermanyBranch Stuttgart: Richard-Wagner-Strae 1 | 70184 Stuttgart | GermanyBoard of Directors: Bertram Eisele, Claudio Fahndrich, Gunther Hofmann, Dr. Peter SchonweitzShareholder (each 25%): Bertram Eisele, Gunther Hofmann, Dr. Peter Schonweitz, Ludwig AdamAmtsgericht Munchen | HRB 194018

Contact Person Director:

Dr. Peter SchonweitzLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterschoenweitz/phone: +49 (0) 151 1133 8188eMail: pescho@paycenter.de
Several people came together to release butterflies Sunday to support those who have lost their loved ones to gun violence and to raise awareness of the issue in the Region.
HAMMOND  All lanes have been reopened after an overturned truck brought eastbound traffic to a halt early Monday on Interstate 94 near Calumet Avenue, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation.

"Traffic getting by very slowly on the right," INDOT had reported around 6:30 a.m. "Expect serious delays."

Another accident a little further east on I-94 around Kennedy Avenue had temporarily blocked a westbound lane, according to the state.

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After you receive this alert, we will buy 1,135 ChargePoint (CHPT) shares at or near $12.25. Following the trade, the portfolio will own 10,000 CHPT shares, roughly 3.75% of the portfolio.

While the overall market is under pressure this morning, our shares of electric vehicle charging station company ChargePoint are under even more pressure following the news that EV company Electric Last Mile (ELMS) announced plans to file for bankruptcy after the board and the new leadership reviewed the company's products and commercialization plans. Electric's ELMS' first vehicle, the Urban Delivery, was anticipated to be the first Class 1 commercial electric vehicle in the U.S. market. Once again, we are seeing a broad brush hit the overall EV space, which we would argue is unfairly hitting CHPT shares, which are poised to benefit from the rollout of Biden Infrastructure spending dollars and other spending to address the growing EV charging pain-point. That buildout is a multi-year process that arguably makes CHPT something of a "port in a storm" stock, especially at current levels. The disconnect between that opportunity and the current share prices is leading us to round out our positions in CHPT shares.

While we are not involved with ELMS shares, this Chapter 7 filing follows recent "going concern" issues for Canoo (GOEV) , another EV company and in our view showcases the difference between a concept and a well-funded business with a competitive advantage. The automotive business is an incredibly complex one that spans manufacturing, distribution, and financing not to mention competitive pressures. Take Ford Motor (F) , which is in the midst of its transition toward becoming more of an EV company that a combustion engine one. While it isn't a short transition, and certainly not an overnight one, the company brings a history of manufacturing at scale, relationships with dealers and financing options that Canoo and Electric Last Mile don't have. What we are seeing with those two companies is the natural evolution of what boils down to a new product category, and odds are others will follow the same path before all is said and done.

That pain could be an opportunity for more establish companies like Ford, not only because it wipes competition off the board, but it may allow them to scoop up talented engineers, designers and other folks who could accelerate Ford and other companies' own EV agenda. The same goes for Apple (AAPL) and its Project Titan plans.

(Please note that we are looking to execute these trades at or near the share price mentioned above. Once the trade is completed, subscribers can see the trade's executed price here. Be sure to toggle the chart to sort by Purchase Date.)
CHESTERTON  A 20-year-old Ohio man faces a felony count of assisting a suicide in the Monday morning shooting of a 19-year-old woman at the Best Western Indian Oak hotel at 558 Indian Boundary Road, according to Chesterton police.

The woman, who sustained a gunshot wound to the face, was taken to the nearby Northwest Health-Porter hospital and then flown by helicopter to an Illinois hospital, the department said.

"At the time of this press release, the female victim is still being treated at an Illinois hospital," police said early Monday night. "Her prognosis at this time is unknown."

Police said they were called to the hotel around 10:33 a.m. and directed to a room where they found the injured woman.

The 20-year-old man, who was present in the room when the shooting occurred, was taken to the Chesterton Police Department.

Investigators with the county were called in to help process the scene and interview witnesses. The decision was made to charge the man after police reviewed the case with the county prosecutor's office.

No further details will be released until charges are filed, police said.

Police said earlier Monday there is no ongoing risk to the public.

"Chief (Tim) Richardson thanks the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Porter Police Department, Porter County Sheriffs Department and the Porter County Prosecutors Office for their assistance today with this on-going investigation," the department said.

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GARY  Mayor Jerome Prince has ordered the immediate closure of a nightclub where six people were shot, two fatally, early Sunday morning.

The shootings occurred at Playo's Night Club in the 1700 block of Grant Street, police said.

Jonte Dorsey, a 34-year-old man from Joliet, Illinois, and Jah'Nice Quinn, a 26-year-old woman from Merrillville, were declared deceased at Methodist Hospital, according to the Lake County coroner's office.

Four additional people were injured.

Gary Police Department was dispatched for reports of shots fired at 1:57 a.m. Upon arrival, police observed an unresponsive 34-year-old male, Dorsey, and an unresponsive 26-year-old female, Quinn. They were both transported to the hospital by Gary medics and were later declared deceased.

Of the other gunshot victims, one remains in critical condition, and the three others appear to have non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

The shooting victims were transported to several area hospitals.

On Sunday night, Prince ordered the immediate closure of the club "under Sec. 2-54 of the Gary Municipal Code. In addition, (the club's) General Business License is pending investigation for potential suspension and revocation."

Prince also released a statement in support of the victims. "First, on behalf of the City of Gary, we are praying for the families and friends of the two people who lost their lives at Playo's nightclub on Saturday night. I cannot imagine the pain you're feeling, and I truly wish I could offer words to comfort you. We also send prayers for full healing for those who were injured," Prince said in the statement. "Next it is well beyond time our national leaders pass common sense, real legislation that curbs easy access to firearms."

Due to the number of victims and the crowd outside the club, other agencies responded.

The Lake County/Gary Metro Homicide Unit is investigating.

Anyone with information on this incident is encouraged to call 219-755-3855 or the Crime Tip Line at 866-CRIME-GP.

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EAST CHICAGO  A reorganization of the citys hard-pressed police department has prompted a debate on how safe its streets currently are.

Officer Brandon Holzhauer, president of the city Fraternal Order of Police lodge, said Friday the police force has shrunk to 56 state-certified officers out of a department that should have 98 on duty.

He said that typically there are only a handful of officers patrolling the streets at any one time.

That is unsafe for the officers and unsafe for the citizens. We fear that without immediate action, this will continue to the point where the department will not be able to serve the community, Holzhauer told the Common Council last week.

Interim Police Chief Jose Rivera disputes that. We have 63 officers. Weve just hired six more. We dont have a staffing problem.

Councilman Robert Garcia, D-5th, said Friday he has no doubts about the seriousness of the problem the FOP complains of.

Police supervisors are being forced to put some calls on hold to answer the more serious ones.

Rivera said Friday the FOP is creating unnecessary panic. The patrol officer is having an average of three to four service calls during a 12-hour shift.

We have supervisors and detectives who are back-up if the patrol officers are tied up," he said, adding service calls that are not emergencies are handled over the phone.

There is no backlog of emergency calls, Rivera said.

Holzhauer said many veteran officers have left in recent months to avoid working longer hours after the department switched this year from 8- to 12-hour shifts.

Rivera said that the 12-hour shifts are helping to reduce unscheduled overtime work and that younger officers, who now constitute most of the force, appreciate the time off that the new schedule affords as well as new flexible overtime scheduling.

Holzhauer, a seven-year department veteran, said many new officers leave for better pay and working conditions at a well-heeled suburban department or in other professions.

There were four officers in my class year. Im the only one left, Holzhauer said.

He said the FOP is demanding better pay and benefits to attract and retain police officers to compete.

Out of all Lake County police departments, East Chicago is 16th out of 17, Holzhauer told the council.

The council supports law enforcement. We gave them a 10% pay raise last year, Garcia said, adding they have legislated several incentives for police.

Mayor Anthony Copeland vetoed council ordinances, and when the council overrode the veto, the administration refused to enact the councils pay and benefits plan fully, council attorney Angela Jones said Friday.

The council and mayor have been suing each other since earlier this year in Lake Superior Court over which branch of municipal government has authority over police department labor relations.

Holzhauer said police need the mayor to sign a collective bargaining agreement to settle this dispute and give police officers an attractive and stable workplace.

Copeland couldnt be reached Friday morning for comment.

East Chicago is not alone.

A 2019 survey conducted by the Washington D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum showed that 86% of police agencies report a police officer shortage.

A recent U.S. Department of Justice study found younger generations are less interested in police work, have disqualifying financial debt or are not physically fit enough to meet strict standards for police work.

More are leaving the profession, particularly older officers who qualify for pensions, as police work currently demands more responsibilities in the face of rising violence and protests against law enforcement.

Roy Dominguez, former Lake County sheriff, said police departments are chronically short-staffed, but the low staffing in East Chicago is a particular concern, especially because it borders high crime spillover from Illinois.

Holzhauer told the council, Other departments have shortages, yes, but find one department out there that is losing officers like we are, that has this revolving door where officers continue to walk away.

The City of East Chicago is currently accepting applications for police officers. Applicants must be between at least 21 to 35 years of age.

Applications are available at the East Chicago Police Department, 2301 Columbus Drive.

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LONDON (AP)  Britains government on Monday proposed new legislation that would unilaterally rewrite post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, despite opposition from some U.K. lawmakers and EU officials who say the move violates international law.

The proposed bill seeks to remove customs checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. That will override parts of the trade treaty that Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed with the European Union less than two years ago.

Britain's government maintained its move is justified under international law because of the genuinely exceptional situation," and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss blamed the EU for blocking a negotiated settlement. The European Commission said it could take legal action against the U.K.

Existing trade rules "provide business operators in Northern Ireland with access to the EU single market for goods. The U.K. governments approach puts this access  and related opportunities  at risk," said European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic.

In Ireland, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said it was very regrettable for a country like the U.K. to renege on an international treaty." German Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed the sentiment, saying there was no reason" for the U.K. to make such a move.

Its a rejection of all the agreements we reached between the European Union and Great Britain," Scholz said. The European Union will react to this as one and it has the whole toolbox at its disposal.

Brushing aside criticism, Johnson told reporters that the proposed change is relatively simple to do."

Frankly, its a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things," he told LBC Radio.

He argued that his government's higher and prior legal commitment is to the 1998 Good Friday agreement that brought peace and stability to Northern Ireland.

Arrangements for Northern Ireland  the only part of the U.K. that shares a land border with an EU nation  have proved the thorniest issue in Britains divorce from the bloc, which became final at the end of 2020. At the center of the dispute is the Northern Ireland Protocol, which now regulates trade ties between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, part of the EU.

Britain and the EU agreed in their Brexit deal that the Irish land border would be kept free of customs posts and other checks because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Instead, to protect the EUs single market, there are checks on some goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

But the arrangement has proved politically damaging for Johnson because it treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party has refused to return to the regions power-sharing government until the protocol is scrapped or substantially changed.

The bill to override that arrangement is expected to face opposition in Parliament, including from members of Johnson's own Conservative ranks. Critics say unilaterally changing the protocol would be illegal and would damage Britains standing with other countries because it's part of a treaty considered binding under international law.

In Brussels, Sefcovic said the protocol was the one and only solution we could jointly find to protect the hard-earned gains of the peace process in Northern Ireland."

He added that the EU remains open to discussions with the British government to find a solution to the dispute.

Associated Press writers Samuel Petrequin in Brussels and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

Follow AP's coverage of Brexit at https://apnews.com/hub/brexit.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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A little before she turned 2, Marty, the only child of queer parents at her day care, began asking after her father in various iterations. Whos my daddy? Wheres my daddy? I want my daddy. It was heartbreaking because my partner and I could only counter with, You have two mommies. (How else to explain the complicated series of events that resulted in the creation of our family?)

Thats when I remembered we had a copy of Heather, the 2015 version, sitting on our bookshelf where Id left it a few years ago. Every time we got to the page that reads, And Heather has two mommies, Marty turned to us and said, And I have two mommies! At the end of the book, theres an illustration of the happy family walking off into the sunset, which recently prompted Marty to verbally superimpose each of our family members onto the characters in the book. Thats me, thats Mama Steph, thats Mama Sabby and thats Maude [our cat], she said. Newman shared a similar anecdote, telling me about a boy who crossed out the word Heather and penciled in his own name throughout the entire book.

Dr. Gayle E. Pitman, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Sacramento City College in California and author of several LGBT-themed books designed for kids, including This Day in June, Sewing the Rainbow and The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets, explained why seeing ourselves rendered in story is not only validating  its essential to the creation of a self. Theres a concept called symbolic annihilation in psychology and sociology, which is the idea that if you dont see yourself represented or reflected in society or in media (television, movies, books), you essentially dont exist, Pitman said. Thats why its so important to have L.G.B.T. representations in childrens books.

The goal is not necessarily assimilation or normalization, said Dr. Abbie Goldberg, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Clark University and pioneering scholar on LGBT families, but an affirmation of ones value. Are our families worthy? The absence of representation communicates that youre not worthy or worthwhile, she said.

When she covers the book in her classes today, Dr. Goldbergs students are baffled by the controversy it stirred. They look at me dumbfounded. Theyre just like, This is the most vanilla book. What was the big deal? We dont get it,  she said.

While that may be true in more academic settings, Newman said, There are still many people who dont think children should be raised in a family with two moms and two dads. Recently, she was asked to speak at a school in New York City about her new book, Gittels Journey: An Ellis Island Story, based on her familys migration to America in the early 1900s. Once they realized I was the author of Heather Has Two Mommies, they disinvited me, she said.
Google has settled a class-action lawsuit that accused it of systematically underpaying women, promising to provide $118 million in monetary relief and invite outsiders to review its pay practices.

Three former Google employees first sued the company in 2017 in Ellis v. Google LLC, claiming that it paid women less than men for the same job; a fourth plaintiff was added later. A San Francisco Superior Court judge must now approve the Friday settlement, which covers about 15,500 women employed in California by Google in 236 different job titles since Sept. 14, 2013.

For Google, which prides itself on an egalitarian ethos, the long-running legal dispute was an uncomfortable subject. It coincided with gender discrimination suits against tech peers Microsoft and Oracle that have had mixed results. The women suing the software company Oracle faced a setback Friday, Bloomberg Law reported earlier, when a judge stripped the plaintiffs of their class-action status.
Her most recent Broadway appearance was in a 2012 revival of The Best Man, a play by Gore Vidal.

In total, Lansbury has been nominated for a Tony seven times, winning in all but two instances. Here is some of what critics from The New York Times have said about those Broadway performances over the years:

This star vehicle deserves its star, and vice is very much versa. No one can be surprised to learn that Angela Lansbury is an accomplished actress, but not all of us may know that she has an adequate singing voice, can dance trimly, and can combine all these matters into musical performance.  Stanley Kauffmann
While more is needed, this package will take steps to save lives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday in a statement, indicating she will back it even though the House last week passed much more sweeping measures.

As the talks got underway two weeks ago, it appeared more likely that the effort would collapse, as so many had before it, once the initial outrage of the most recent mass shootings had died down. And the designation of Senator John Cornyn of Texas as the lead Republican negotiator limited the possibilities from the start, since Mr. Cornyn quickly declared that he would not be backing an assault weapons ban or other steps to make weapons harder to obtain.

But as the talks continued, Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, the lead Democratic negotiator, said steady progress was being made, and that the talks had a different feel from the failed efforts of the past. On Sunday, he said on Twitter that he thought Americans would be surprised at the scope of the legislative framework, which included more substantial measures than the ones initially on the table.

The more extensive background check for buyers aged 18 to 21 is a narrower version of a change Democrats have been promoting for years, which would allow more time to vet potential gun buyers who are flagged by an initial instant check. And for the first time, juvenile and mental health records will be allowed as part of that review.

The deal includes federal incentives for states to enact so-called red flag laws to seize guns temporarily from those deemed a threat to themselves and others. And in a long-sought change that has been opposed by Republicans in the past, it would also make it harder for those accused of domestic violence to obtain guns, adding dating partners to a prohibition that currently applies only to spouses.

Any one of those provisions is likely to draw significant opposition from Republicans who believe in giving no ground whatsoever on gun safety measures, which are seen as intolerable infringements on Second Amendment rights. But the Republicans engaged in the talks believe they have made worthwhile concessions without treading on the gun rights so many Republican voters see as sacrosanct.
The Food and Drug Administration said on Sunday that three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine appeared to be effective in preventing Covid illness in children under 5, judging by the level of virus-blocking antibodies the shots induced.

The agencys evaluation was posted online ahead of Wednesdays meeting of outside vaccine experts, summoned to recommend how the F.D.A. should rule on applications from both Pfizer and Moderna on vaccinating the nations youngest children.

Some public health experts are expecting the F.D.A. to authorize both Modernas and Pfizers vaccines, offering parents a choice between the two. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must also weigh in with its recommendations after the F.D.A. acts. Roughly 18 million children younger than 5 are the only Americans who are not yet eligible for shots.
I think that we take what we can get right now, considering it is much more than what we thought we were going to get, said Rodolfo Rosales, a state director with the Texas branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

But make no mistake, he said, we still need a lot more gun control. He added that its not going to bring back the lives of those babies, but it is a start.

Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio, who has prayed with the families of victims and who pushed for tightening gun laws soon after the shooting, said in a statement on Sunday that the agreement was encouraging.

The framework, as it has been outlined, should receive broad support from elected officials and the public, he said, adding that everything that can advance peace in our midst has to be pursued. He also praised Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican, for working with Democrats and said compromises like this can help unify the country.

In Orlando on Sunday  the sixth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting  Ricardo Negron, 33, a voting rights activist and survivor of that attack, said that he was of two minds about the potential deal on gun safety measures.
Atrocities pile up. Its easy to lose the thread. The bandits came again on Easter, this novel begins. This time they slaughtered two men, three women and two small children. Its especially easy for concentration to wander because no one is quite who they seem to be, and because little that occurs has much in the way of resonance. Im peeking at my notes to write this because it all blurred in my mind.

Jude, who like all Lapvonians is illiterate, beats Marek and throw shovels at him and knocks out his teeth. Marek enjoys these beatings; he believes they bring him closer to God. So does self-flagellation, which Jude and Marek ecstatically perform.

Up on a hill, looking down at the poor Lapvonians, is Villiam, a cruel and imbecile lord who lives in a landed estate and visits wickedness on the populace to keep them in place. Through a plot contrivance, Marek comes to live with Villiam. He gets his own servant, who uses her fingernail daily to scrape the white scum from the teeth he has left.

The scum is a uniquely Moshfeghian detail. She is an American writer of Croatian and Iranian descent, born in 1981, who flies low over human bodies, like a pilot more enamored of strip mines than lakes, taking note of things like pus, acne, scarring and vomit.
U.S. senators reach deal on gun safety

Three weeks after 19 children and two teachers died in a gun massacre at a Texas elementary school, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators yesterday struck a deal on a gun control bill. The agreement includes enhanced background checks for people under the age of 21 and a provision to close the boyfriend loophole by extending to dating partners a prohibition on gun ownership for domestic abusers.

The deal, which still faces a perilous path in Congress, amounts to notable progress. But it falls far short of the sprawling reforms that President Biden, gun control activists and a majority of Democrats have long championed, such as universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons.

Democrats hailed the plan, which would also toughen federal laws to stop gun trafficking and ensure that all commercial sellers are conducting background checks, as an opportunity to pass the most significant gun safety legislation in decades. The backing of 10 Republicans suggested that the plan could yet draw the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate.
Working while sick is an American pastime  one that a vicious pandemic, which sickened millions, somehow didnt disrupt. Over 100 other countries guarantee some form of paid sick leave. In the United States, a survey of 3,600 hourly workers this spring found that two-thirds of those who had been sick with Covid or other illnesses went to work while sick, according to the Shift Project at Harvard, a research project on work scheduling. Many of them cited fear of getting in trouble with their managers, or financial pressures.

Some 33 million Americans dont have paid sick leave. Low-income workers are far less likely to be able to take time off when theyre sick; just over half of people in the bottom quarter of wages get paid sick leave, compared with 94 percent in the top quarter.

But even salaried workers who have paid leave often dont use the time that theyre allotted. Americans in private industry get an average of seven sick days per year. A survey of large employers, by Mercer, found that non-hourly workers used just half of their sick days in 2021. This number was virtually unchanged from before the pandemic, in 2018, which Mercer analysts attribute partly to the prevalence of sick people working from home. In other words, for some people Covid did away with the sick day instead of reinforcing it.

There is this culture that everyone around you is working, so you feel obliged to go along with it, Mr. Fitzgerald said. The most important value in America seems to be how much money is in your bank account, and I think thats what drives so much of working through sickness.
The labor board has issued complaints against Amazon that include accusations of threatening workers with a loss of benefits if they unionize, and against Starbucks over accusations that it fired workers who sought to form a union and effectively promised benefits to workers if they chose not to unionize. Both companies have denied the accusations. In a recent case brought by the N.L.R.B. in Arizona, a federal judge denied a request for an injunction to reinstate pro-union workers whom the labor board said Starbucks had forced out illegally.

The agreement between Microsoft and the union would also protect workers right to communicate among themselves and with union officials about a union campaign  something many employers seek to discourage  and stipulates that disagreements between the company and the union will be resolved through an expedited arbitration process. N.L.R.B. complaints can take months or years to resolve.

When Microsoft and Activision announced their blockbuster deal in January, the game maker was under stress as it faced accusations that senior executives had ignored sexual harassment and discrimination. Those concerns spurred organizing among Activision employees, including workers at its Raven Software studio in Wisconsin, which has developed games in popular franchises like Call of Duty.

After a group of roughly 30 quality assurance, or Q.A., workers announced that they were seeking to unionize, Activision sought to convince the federal labor board that their election should not go forward. The game workers accused Activision of union-busting tactics, like increasing the pay of non-Raven Q.A. workers and splitting Q.A. workers up by embedding them across the Raven studio.

Activision maintained that while some changes in this vein had come after the union campaign went public, the broader shift in approach had already been underway  for example, its move to change the status of hundreds of temporary and contingent workers to permanent full-time employees in the fall.
On Monday, Mr. Stirewalt testified that the joint A.P.-Fox News project worked remarkably well. Let me tell you, our poll in Arizona was beautiful, he said. And it was doing just what we wanted it to do.

Some of Mr. Trumps former aides testified that the Fox call shocked them but also undermined their confidence in his chances of victory. Jason Miller, a senior aide on the Trump campaign, said in video testimony played by the committee that he and others were disappointed with Fox for making the call but at the same time concerned that maybe our data or our numbers werent accurate.

Mr. Miller had shared none of that concern on election night, when he tweeted that Fox was a complete outlier whose call should be ignored by other media. At Mr. Trumps insistence, he and other aides immediately reached out to Fox executives, producers and on-air talent to demand an explanation. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trumps son-in-law, went straight to the top, calling Mr. Murdoch. The scene played out in part on the air as Fox talent commented about the complaints raining down on them from the Trump campaign.

Arnon, were getting a lot of incoming here, and we need you to answer some questions, the networks chief political anchor, Bret Baier, said at one point, referring to Arnon Mishkin, the person on the decision desk who was responsible for analyzing the data and recommending when Fox issue its calls.

On Monday, Mr. Stirewalt did not describe either Mr. Murdoch or Lachlan Murdoch, the Fox Corporation executive chairman, as being part of the decision desks process. And network executives have said the Murdochs were not involved.

Though Fox News coverage is typically favorable to conservative, pro-Trump points of view, that deference has never been adopted by the decision desk, which is a separate part of the news-gathering operation overseen by Mr. Mishkin, a polling expert who is also a registered Democrat. In the days after the election, Mr. Mishkin was unwavering in his defense of the call as Fox anchors pressed him. Once, as the host Martha MacCallum peppered Mr. Mishkin with a series of what if scenarios that could bolster Mr. Trumps chances of eking out a victory, Mr. Mishkin responded sarcastically, What if frogs had wings? (Mr. Mishkin remains a paid consultant for the network, not an employee, and will run the decision desk for the midterm elections in November.)
Suddenly, the researchers could locate networks of connected brain regions where injuries caused instant relief from nicotine cravings and other networks where injuries did not.

What were realizing across many different fields is that our therapeutic targets are not brain regions, as we once thought, but connected brain circuits, Dr. Fox said. If you take into account the way the brain is connected, you can improve treatment.

The study did not account for how the home lives of patients  how often they were exposed to cigarettes, for example  may have affected their habits. Patients deemed to have gone into addiction remission after their injuries generally quit smoking immediately, reported having no urge to smoke and did not start again while they were being followed.

The researchers did, though, look at whether other changes associated with the injury  to intelligence or mood, for instance  could have helped explain the disappearance of nicotine cravings in some patients. They did not ultimately seem to make a difference.

Outside experts said that parts of the brain network identified in the study were familiar to them from earlier research. Dr. Martijn Figee, a psychiatrist at the Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at Mount Sinai in Manhattan, studies how electrical impulses delivered to the brain can treat obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and addiction. He said that addiction generally seemed to be associated with under-activity of the brains cognitive control circuit and over-activity of reward-related circuits.

By applying electrical stimulation on the surface of patients heads or using more invasive methods like deep brain stimulation, doctors can suppress activity in certain regions, mimicking the effect of an injury, and excite activity in others. The study identified one region, called the medial frontopolar cortex, that appeared to be a good candidate for excitatory stimulation; that region overlapped with the target of a treatment recently approved by U.S. regulators for helping smokers quit.
Health Canada greenlighted Albrioza under a program called Notice of Compliance with Conditions, which allows for approval of drugs that appear promising for serious diseases, but have incomplete evidence that they work. The central condition the agency set is that Amylyx verify the clinical benefit of this drug with data from a Phase 3 clinical trial that is underway and expected to conclude in 2024, according to agency documents sent to the company on Friday. The company must also conduct additional pharmacological studies and provide periodic safety reports. Patients should be advised of the nature of the authorization, the documents said.

In a statement, Health Canada said: Canadians living with ALS have limited options for its treatment. Following its thorough review of the information provided by the company in its drug submission, Health Canada has concluded that the benefits of Albrioza outweigh the risks when used as intended.

The F.D.A. has a similar program called accelerated approval that allows conditional approval of drugs with incomplete evidence of effectiveness, but that program also requires that a drug show that it targets part of the underlying biological mechanism of a disease. Experts have said that if Albrioza does not win standard F.D.A. approval, it would be unlikely to meet accelerated approval criteria because too little is known about the underlying biology of A.L.S., and how and whether Albrioza might address it.

Last month, 38 doctors who treat A.L.S. patients sent a letter to the F.D.A. urging approval. The A.L.S. Association said its campaign for approval had in recent weeks generated more than 6,000 emails asking the agency to greenlight the drug.

A member of the F.D.A.s independent advisory committee, Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, who voted in March that there was insufficient evidence the therapy works, said he continues to think the F.D.A. should wait for the Phase 3 trials results and that it would be a mistake to approve it based on the single trial alone.
Philip Baker Hall, the gravelly-voiced character actor who radiated equal amounts of quiet authority, unshakable confidence and effortless unflappability onscreen for five decades, died on Sunday at his home in Glendale, Calif. He was 90.

The cause was complications of emphysema, his daughter Anna Ruth Hall said.

When Mr. Hall portrayed powerful men, audiences believed. He was Richard M. Nixon reflecting on his sins in Robert Altmans fictional Secret Honor (1984). Roger Eberts rave review of the film in The Chicago Sun-Times described Mr. Halls performance as one of such savage intensity, such passion, such venom, such scandal, that we cannot turn away.

When Mr. Hall played a characters fierce conviction for laughs, audiences remembered. In a 1991 episode of Seinfeld, he was Lieutenant Bookman, a detective working for the New York Public Library pursuing two decades in overdue fines for a copy of Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Schiffman said he gave up his license because of his age and denied that he had admitted to state investigators that he had practiced the profession when he was not authorized to do so.

He also denied that he had an agreement with Marx Development Group, though he later acknowledged in the same interview that he had the contract in his possession, read aloud several lines from it and conceded he still received payments from the developer.

Yeah, I still get quarterly payments, Mr. Schiffman said. He owed me money for years.

Architecture licenses are valid for three years in New York State and require applicants to complete 36 hours of courses before they can be renewed. Mr. Schiffman said he had renewed his license after he retired, but also said he had never taken the courses and that he had been corresponding for months with the state agency about surrendering his license.

I stopped practicing five years ago, and if anyone says I was, they are lying through their teeth, said Mr. Schiffman.

Mr. Marx did not return numerous calls and emails seeking comment. He has been a developer for more than 30 years, according to his online biography, and owns several other companies, including a construction firm and the design firm that employed Mr. Schiffman.

Marx Development Group has developed more than four million square feet of real estate, including a Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. And the construction firm owned by Mr. Marx, Atria Builders, has built more than 40 projects, according to the companies websites. Mr. Marxs companies have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years lobbying city officials over their projects, city records show.
But some elected officials, community leaders and residents have questioned whether the city really can implement a new plan in just five years and have expressed concerns about cutting back on extensive repairs to shore up the existing structure in the meantime.

There are no easy solutions; if there were, we would have done it many years ago, said Brooklyn city councilman Lincoln Restler, who has criticized the Adams administration for not aggressively carrying out repairs. This has been kicked down the road because it is so hard.

Hank Gutman, a former transportation commissioner under Mr. de Blasio who was a member of the B.Q.E. panel, said it was wishful thinking to believe a new plan could be adopted, approved and built before the structure becomes unsafe. They have run out of time and options without employing the measures that we announced and adopted last year, he said.

The B.Q.E. was built in sections between 1944 and 1948 during the era of Robert Moses, the influential planner who expanded the citys roadways. Long known for narrow lanes and potholes, the highway also has a cherished feature: a pedestrian promenade in Brooklyn Heights with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline that is suspended over traffic by an unusual triple cantilever structure.

The roadway is supported by steel rebars inside concrete. They are corroding from road salt that seeped in through cracks, which have widened from freezing and thawing and moisture.

In 2016, city officials announced they would rehabilitate the 1.5-mile section between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street in Brooklyn, warning that if nothing was done, they would have to restrict trucks by 2026 to reduce the weight on the highway.
Officials at the citys Department of Buildings said they did not find any structural defects in the plans for the Hudson Yards hotel. Department records show that it reviewed the plans five times between 2018 and 2020, when they were approved. One of the other projects was for a 126-room hotel near La Guardia Airport that was completed in 2019 and is now being converted to a shelter for the homeless. Plans for the third project, a pair of high-rise apartment buildings in Queens, have not been approved.

Schiffman forfeited his license to practice architecture last month. As part of an investigation by the states Department of Education, which oversees professional licensing, he admitted that he had practiced architecture when he was not authorized to do so. Under state law, the unauthorized practice of architecture can include practicing without a license or helping someone who is not licensed  by, for example, permitting, aiding or abetting an unlicensed person to perform activities requiring a license.

Schiffman said in an interview that he had given up his license because of his age  he is in his mid-80s. He denied admitting to state investigators that he had practiced when he was not authorized to do so. He said he had renewed his license after he retired. But he also said he never completed 36 hours of courses, a requirement for renewal.

He also denied that he had an agreement with Marx Development Group, though later in the same interview he read several lines from the contract. He also acknowledged that he still received payments from the developer.

Marx did not return numerous calls and emails seeking comment. In recent months, Marx Development Group removed Schiffmans name from several of its projects and alerted the citys Department of Buildings that another licensed professional had replaced him.
Preet Bharara, the former federal prosecutor, high-profile Donald Trump critic and host of a popular podcast, is joining WilmerHale, a well-connected law firm that has become home to a number of former government officials.

It will be Mr. Bhararas first stint in private practice since the Trump administration fired him in 2017, after he refused to quit as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. During his more than seven years in the post, Mr. Bharara attracted headlines for a crackdown on insider trading on Wall Street and corruption in New York politics.

Mr. Bharara, 53, is joining Wilmer, which has about 1,000 lawyers, as a partner. He said in an interview that he envisioned his role less as one of representing clients in court and much more so to be a person who advises executives and boards and companies how to do the right thing in the first place  and how to stay out of trouble.
In addition, Australia faced none of the structural or constitutional obstacles standing in the way of gun reform here in the United States. Australia does not have anything resembling the Second Amendment. It has no filibuster, no Bill of Rights and no constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms. The Australian Constitution explicitly codifies a handful of other rights like the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion, and Australias High Court has ruled that the Constitution contains an implied right to freedom of political communication. But on guns, the countrys founding document has nothing to say. The great drama of contemporary Australian jurisprudence is about enshrining, rather than removing, rights within the Constitution, making the debate on individual rights and freedoms in Australia quite distinct from the one in America.

Australia loses as much as it gains from this constitutional deficiency  a point thats often lost in American media coverage of gun policy in the emotional days that follow a mass shooting. Compared with the herculean effort that would be required to repeal the Second Amendment, Australias gun reforms entered into law relatively easily. But without a Bill of Rights, theres no constitutional framework in Australia to prevent the mandatory and indefinite detention of asylum seekers, or to insulate free speech from the chilling effect of defamation suits.

The Port Arthur gunman reportedly chose his site, a former penal colony turned into an open-air museum, in part as a homage to Australias bloody history of colonial violence: The weakness of Australias architecture of express individual freedoms may have inadvertently helped put an end to frequent mass shootings, but the absence of a Bill of Rights is also, arguably, one of the reasons Indigenous Australians, those dispossessed and murdered by the same people who built Port Arthur, continue to endure life expectancy and standards of living well below the national average.

And despite the very real drop in gun violence witnessed across Australia since the mid-1990s, signs of erosion in the national framework of gun control have recently begun to emerge. There are now more guns in Australia than there were at the time of the Port Arthur massacre (3.8 million in 2020 compared with 3.2 million in 1996), and a quietly resurgent gun lobby is spending, on a per-capita basis, about as much as the N.R.A., according to a recent report. Stringent gun control standards have not stopped Australia from incubating its own radicalized killers and exporting violence abroad: The gunman in the 2019 Christchurch massacre that left 51 dead was an Australian.

So the Australian experience of gun control resists easy translation to America. But if Australia is to serve as any kind of example, it is for the bravery and principle shown by conservative and rural leaders, often at great cost to their own political fortunes, in making the case for reform to their gun-loving constituents. Character of this caliber may be far harder to extract from the ranks of todays Republican Party than it was from Australias conservatives in the 1990s.
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When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, there was an eerie familiarity to the images: tanks rolling down snowy Eastern European roads, families of refugees packed into trains seeking safety, aerial bombardment of a European capital. It all reminded me too clearly of World War II. Blood was once again spilling on the very same ground where it spilled in the 1940s.

The parallels were obvious; I just didnt realize how deep they ran.

The current war in Ukraine is so oversaturated with historical meaning; it is unfolding on soil that has absorbed wave after wave of the dead, where soldiers do not always have to dig trenches in the forest because the old ones remain, writes Linda Kinstler in a remarkable Times Opinion essay published today. Kinstlers essay is accompanied by a series of graphics that make these layers of history and the brutality of Russias invasion visually and viscerally impossible to ignore.
To the Editor:

The Jan. 6 committee hearing may lead to a well-deserved prosecution of Donald Trump. But I am afraid that such a trial would be a cause of tremendous civil unrest and backlash.

An alternate plan would take a page out of Gerald Fords playbook when he pardoned Richard Nixon. This would not be as satisfying as a conviction but would be useful for several reasons. It would end the political distractions and severely embarrass Mr. Trump. And a conviction at trial is not a slam dunk.

Joel Rosenberg

Delray Beach, Fla.

To the Editor:

Re Trump, American Monster, by Maureen Dowd (column, June 12):

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldnt lose any voters. Donald Trump was completely serious when he uttered these words. These are the words of a man who has never faced consequences for any of his deplorable acts  whether it was stiffing a contractor, cheating on his taxes, racially discriminating against renters in his buildings, making money off his presidency or deliberately attempting to change the outcome of an election he lost.

I hope I am wrong, but I believe whether its Merrick Garlands timidity or Republican obstructionism, Mr. Trump will walk away unscathed yet again. His confidence in his infallibility will be proven correct. And for those of us who believe that the bad guys eventually lose, this will break our hearts.
In April, scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, once again fired up their cosmic gun, the Large Hadron Collider. After a three-year shutdown for repairs and upgrades, the collider has resumed shooting protons  the naked guts of hydrogen atoms  around its 17-mile electromagnetic underground racetrack. In early July, the collider will begin crashing these particles together to create sparks of primordial energy.

And so the great game of hunting for the secret of the universe is about to be on again, amid new developments and the refreshed hopes of particle physicists. Even before its renovation, the collider had been producing hints that nature could be hiding something spectacular. Mitesh Patel, a particle physicist at Imperial College London who conducts an experiment at CERN, described data from his previous runs as the most exciting set of results Ive seen in my professional lifetime.

A decade ago, CERN physicists made global headlines with the discovery of the Higgs boson, a long-sought particle, which imparts mass to all the other particles in the universe. What is left to find? Almost everything, optimistic physicists say.
It will also, unlike any previous orbital rocket, be entirely reusable. That has the potential for greatly cutting the cost of sending payloads to orbit  less than $10 million to take 100 tons to space, Mr. Musk has said.

The Boca Chica site offers several factors that make it a favorable place to launch rockets to orbit. Except for the bottom of the Florida peninsula, it is as far south as one can get on the continental United States. For many missions, a launchpad closer to the Equator aids the trip to orbit by adding the speed of Earths rotation to the rockets velocity.

The launch path passes over water, away from populated areas, minimizing risk to people on the ground.

But other creatures live in the surrounding wetlands, including ocelots and Kemps ridley sea turtles, both of which are endangered. State Highway 4, which runs next to the SpaceX site, also passes through Boca Chica Beach, Texas State Parks and the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge. Environmentalists worry a steady cadence of Starship launches with blasts of thunderous noise and rocket exhaust as well as potential explosive mishaps will disrupt the ecosystem.

Among SpaceXs plans for Boca Chica that will affect the environment: installing a solar power farm; building parking lots; constructing processing facilities that the cargo Starship will carry; and conducting more test flights, which raise the likelihood of additional testing explosions that can send debris and forceful shock waves for miles.

The site has also created an economic debate. Many officials and residents welcome the influx of money and prestige that SpaceX is bringing to the Brownsville area, where about a third of the people live below the poverty line. But others worry that gentrification will push out longtime residents.
The lesson that was learned is that its no easy task to get these types of things passed, said Mrs. Iheme, who joined Bumble in 2021. Since then, Bumble has teamed with politicians in California, New York and Pennsylvania, who are writing their own bills that are at different stages of the legislative process.

Gaining support for anti-cyberflashing legislation has been an uphill battle. With each state that Bumble enters, Mrs. Iheme and her team have to reintroduce the concept of cyberflashing, explain what it means, find stakeholders to partner with and figure out how to frame the legislation for the local voters.

Nima Elmi, who oversees public policy for Bumble in Europe, said that the United States poses particular challenges to getting laws passed. The personalities of policymakers, the political affiliations, all of that means that they might as well be separate countries in and of themselves, she said about the different states. Negotiating those differences, she said, requires a person who is sensitive to nuance, and is tenacious and nimble.

Over lunch at Old Ebbitt Grill, one of her favorite restaurants in Washington and a watering hole for the citys power brokers, Mrs. Iheme explained how working for the military had helped her hone those skills.

Military personnel have certain cues and signs of someones seniority, what their placement is in the environment, whether theyre friend or foe, she said. If you walk into a room or drive into a place, you better be able to immediately assess what that situation is. Now its people in blazers and suits, but its the same exercise.
A fast-moving wildfire in Californias Angeles National Forest has grown to nearly 1,000 acres in a little more than a day, prompting road closures and the evacuation of a large portion of a community about 30 miles northwest of San Bernardino.

The blaze, named the Sheep fire, is one of more than 30 wildfires that were active on Monday and that have burned about one million acres across five states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The fires, combined with a heat wave in the Southwest, have been fueled by sustained dry and windy conditions.

The fires have prompted mandatory evacuations in Arizona and Southern California. The largest fires were in New Mexico, where they threatened structures and spread across 680,000 acres in the states national forests, the Fire Center said Monday.
But those gains have been met by a growing and vicious counterattack whose fear narrative has found traction in the context of elevated homicides, gun violence and the Covid-19 pandemic, said Miriam Krinsky, the groups executive director.

I dont think that means that the progressive movement is over and done with  but I also think its something that cant be and shouldnt be ignored, she said of Mr. Boudins recall.

Ms. Deberry in North Carolina said voters were not buying claims that her policies promoted crime. Americans, and certainly Black and brown voters, know a lot about the criminal legal system  theyre almost experts in it, she said. Not just the complexity of it, but the way in which it is unfair and how that really impacts their day-to-day lives.

The push for reform was once touted as bipartisan, common-sense medicine for a country that leads the world in incarceration. But it has been reframed by opponents, including law enforcement groups, as the province of the far left.

Yet even in San Francisco, it was not clear that the recall vote signaled widespread opposition to change. Supporters of the measure ran an ad insisting they were in favor of criminal justice reform  just not of Mr. Boudin. A poll conducted by a Democratic firm showed that many of his policies, like unwinding wrongful convictions and creating a unit to protect workers from employment law violations, remain popular. Even some of his most vocal critics acknowledged that he could not be blamed for big problems that were largely outside his control, like escalating drug addiction and homelessness.

No, California didnt just send a message on crime  only voter apathy, read the headline of an editorial in The San Francisco Chronicle, citing low turnout.
Teachers and other school employees in Ohio will be able to carry firearms into school with a tiny fraction of the training that has been required since last year, after Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law on Monday.

While employees have for years been allowed to carry guns on school grounds with the consent of the local school board, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that state law required them to first undergo the same basic peace officer training as law enforcement officials or security officers who carry firearms on campus  entailing more than 700 hours of instruction.

That ruling, Mr. DeWine said on Monday, had made it largely impractical for Ohio school districts to allow staff members to carry firearms.
Last week, they introduced legislation to require insurers to fully cover any F.D.A.-approved birth control pills, including emergency contraception, which costs as much as $50 over the counter  far too much for those struggling financially.

Evolving Language : As they fight for abortion rights, progressive groups and organizations As they fight for abortion rights, progressive groups and organizations are adopting more inclusive terms , such as pregnant people and cheastfeeding.

Sports : The end of Roe v. Wade could have far-reaching implications for college athletes across the nation  and The end of Roe v. Wade could have far-reaching implications for college athletes across the nation  and Oklahomas mainstay softball championships in particular

Without Exception : While most of the population supports carve-outs allowing abortions in cases like rape or incest, many of the bans that would go into effect after Roe While most of the population supports carve-outs allowing abortions in cases like rape or incest, many of the bans that would go into effect after Roe do away with them

Mental Health: Anti-abortion groups argue that having an abortion can affect a womans mental health. But a new study shows that Anti-abortion groups argue that having an abortion can affect a womans mental health. But a new study shows that being denied one can be more harmful

But some Republicans on the far right have sought to broadly limit access to emergency contraception, which prevents pregnancy when taken within several days of unprotected sex.

The idea that we might now be facing fights on contraception is something that is very hard to wrap your head around, said Elizabeth Nash, an expert in state policy at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. If abortion opponents persuade lawmakers to define pregnancy as starting at fertilization, she said, it could cause complications in being able to provide contraceptive care.

Texas already bars its state family planning programs from paying for emergency contraception. Missouri, one of 13 states with trigger laws that would immediately ban abortion if Roe is overturned, is becoming another front in the battle over birth control  and may foreshadow what is to come in a post-Roe world.

In February, it became the fourth state  after Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas  to eject Planned Parenthood, a major provider of birth control nationally, from its Medicaid program. Planned Parenthood has asked the Biden administration to intervene, saying the move violated federal law. A spokeswoman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the agency was considering the policy options within its authority.
The case concerned Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, a citizen of Mexico who has repeatedly entered the United States unlawfully, fleeing what he said was gang violence against him and his family. After he was arrested in 2018, an asylum officer made a preliminary finding that he had a reasonable fear of persecution if he was returned to Mexico.

Mr. Arteaga-Martinez was detained while he waited for an immigration judge to consider his request to halt his deportation. After four months without a hearing, he challenged his detention in federal court, saying that an immigration judge should decide whether he should be released while his case moved forward because he was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community.

Lower courts ruled in his favor. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, said that immigrants in Mr. Arteaga-Martinezs position were entitled to bond hearings after six months of detention.

An immigration judge ordered his release. The federal government sought Supreme Court review, saying that the governing statute did not require bond hearings before immigration judges.
SAO PAULO, Brazil  A British journalist and a Brazilian expert on Indigenous peoples have now been missing deep in the Amazon rainforest for more than a week, and increasing signs suggest that the two men may not be found alive.

Brazilian authorities said late last week that they found human remains in the area where the men were last seen as well as blood on a suspects boat, and that the samples were being tested. Then, over the weekend, the authorities found belongings of the two men, including clothes, a sandal, a bag and a health card.

I pray to God that they find them alive, but the evidence suggests otherwise at the moment, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil told a local media outlet on Monday.
He is fighting for his political survival at home, but Britains embattled prime minister, Boris Johnson, can take some comfort: He has been immortalized as a croissant in Kyiv.

And, by all accounts, the Boris Johnson croissant, crowned with undulating meringue and a scoop of vanilla ice cream to represent the Conservative politicians unruly golden hair, is selling out fast at Zavertailo Bakery, a popular cafe and bakery in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

Boris Johnson is not just a prime minister but is also now a croissant, Zavertailo Bakery wrote in an Instagram post last month, explaining that it wanted to pay homage to the prime minister and his steadfast support for Ukraine with a pastry inspired by the English apple pie and the charming haircut of Boris Johnson.
The legislation would also no longer recognize the authority of the European Court of Justice to settle disputes, a prime bone of contention in months of fruitless negotiations between London and Brussels to revamp the protocol.

Having failed to work out a compromise, Britain is essentially saying it will no longer abide by the agreement. Its unilateral approach was condemned by the European Commission and the Irish government and has drawn warnings from the Biden administration. The United States fears it could jeopardize the Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

Nor is it clear that it will end the political paralysis in the North. Lawmakers for the Democratic Unionist Party said they would wait to see how the bill was implemented before deciding whether to rejoin the power-sharing government there.

Unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust, Maros Sefcovic, a vice president of the European Commission, who has led negotiations with Britain on the protocol, said in a statement. Brussels, he said, would consider resuming legal action against Britain that it had put on hold during the negotiations.

Mr. Johnson denied that the legislation violated international law, arguing that, far from undermining the Good Friday agreement, Britain was meeting its higher legal obligation of preserving the accord. British officials also invoked the doctrine of necessity, a principle in international law that allows a state to temporarily disregard its obligations if it is facing a grave and imminent peril.

And yet, for all the claims of a brewing crisis in the North, Mr. Johnson also tried to play down the real-world significance of the legislation.
Karim Mussilhy, 36

Karim Mussilhy remembers how his uncle, Hesham Rahman, was a massive part of every stage of his life. And then, you know, Grenfell took him away from us.

The morning after the fire began, Mr. Mussilhy was showering for work at home a few miles away when he heard his wife scream. She ran in and handed him her phone.

And it was Grenfell, just all in flames, he said. He called his uncle, who lived on the top floor of the tower, and the phone just rang and rang.

Mr. Mussilhy raced to the tower.

It was just chaos everywhere, he said. I remember one of the first things I saw was a group of firefighters crying.

Without any answers about Mr. Rahmans fate, the family plastered the neighborhoods with posters of him. It was days before the police contacted them to get details about his uncle, he said. Months went by with little word.
The battle for Sievierodonetsk, which could fall to the Russians within days, is about far more than one city. Its capture would give Russia a key victory in its drive to seize the entire Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Donbas, which comprises the territories of Luhansk and Donetsk, is a prize for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. After failing to swiftly topple Ukraines government in Kyiv, Mr. Putin refocused his military campaign on the Donbas, which makes up about 9 percent of Ukraines land, but holds significance for its industry, location and potential as a bargaining chip for Moscow.

The Donbas borders Russia and runs from outside Mariupol in the south to the northern border near Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city. Home to coal mines and steel, an estimated 6.2 million people lived in the region before Russias invasion, according to the most recent census data.
GENEVA  The United Nations top human rights official announced Monday that she was stepping down when her term expires at the end of August, less than a month after a visit to China that drew fierce criticism from human rights groups.

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, revealed her decision at the end of a statement opening a session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva that she said would be her last.

Ms. Bachelet, a former president of Chile who took up the United Nations job in 2018, had given no warning she intended to step down. After addressing the council, she told reporters she had informed the U.N. secretary general, Antonio Guterres, two months ago that she wanted to return to her family in Chile and would not seek a second term.
With the Sadrists apparently out of the actual political process, their history is that when they are not engaged in politics, theyre out in the streets, said Feisal al-Istrabadi, director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University. The question is  are they in the formal electoral politics or are they out in the street with their guns?

Mr. Sadr, who presents himself as an Iraqi nationalist, is considered the Shiite political leader least tied to Iran. His withdrawal opens the door for other, Iran-backed parties, to make headway in forming a government.

Analysts described the political turmoil kindled by Mr. Sadrs move as one of the most significant and potentially destabilizing developments since Iraqs Shiite-led governments were elected after Saddam Hussein was toppled. Although Shiite Muslims are a majority in Iraq, Mr. Hussein, who was executed in 2006, relied predominantly on Sunni Arabs to maintain his power.

Mr. Sadrs main Shiite rivals are tied to Iran-backed militias that were formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State and are now officially part of Iraqi security forces  though they are only nominally under government control.

This is a major challenge to the post-2003 Shiite order because this is primarily an intra-Shiite political fight, said Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. Both sides are heavily armed now and both sides have shown in the past willingness to do whatever it takes to preserve the system.

Another analyst, Zaid al-Ali, author of The Struggle for Iraqs Future, said the divisions were a sign of Irans weakening influence on Iraqi politics. Tehran has tried to prevent splits among Iraqi Shiite groups that could dilute Shiite influence in a multisectarian, multiethnic Iraq or that could allow any one Shiite group to become too powerful.
Neither Mr. Olmert nor Mr. Netanyahu is a stranger to court. Mr. Netanyahu, who holds the record as Israels longest serving prime minister after a total of 15 years in office, is currently on trial in the Jerusalem District Court for corruption. Mr. Olmert, in office from 2006 to 2009, was convicted in 2014 of taking a bribe while he was mayor of Jerusalem and served 16 months in prison.

The latest courtroom spectacle resurfaced alarming allegations over the pressures Mr. Netanyahu faced within his family and his inability to withstand them, offered this time under oath by some of his closest former advisers.

As the day of testimony progressed, the wild rumors and reports of disturbing goings-on that accompanied Mr. Netanyahus long tenure were given an airing as Mr. Olmerts lawyer and witnesses for the defense bandied about references to eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive behavior, uncontrolled tantrums, narcissism and paranoia in the Netanyahu household.

The testimony heard in court Sunday was nauseating and horrifying, reviving grim memories of what we got rid of exactly one year ago, Yossi Verter, a political columnist, wrote in Mondays left-wing Haaretz newspaper.

But Mr. Verter, like other analysts, said none of it was likely to put off Mr. Netanyahus die-hard allies and supporters and could even benefit him, as he plays the role of a victim of persecution.

One political ally of Mr. Netanyahus, Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right lawmaker, wrote in a Twitter post that he was squirming in disgust at the satanic baseness of the efforts to defame the Netanyahu family.
Damon Winter/The New York Times

In New York States Democratic primary election for governor on June 28, some of the protections and freedoms we would expect in a healthy democracy are on the ballot: the right to vote; the right of women to reproductive freedom; the right to a fair and competent system of public safety, including protection not just from street crime but also from the proliferation of assault rifles and gun violence; and, as President Franklin Roosevelt once said, the freedom from want  want for affordable housing, strong education, a sustainable climate, a stable economic future, among so much more.

With the federal government paralyzed on many of these issues, states are poised to become an even more powerful force in American life. New York is among the few that have been dedicated to defending these essential norms that are under attack elsewhere in the country.

Its a moment, in other words, when leadership matters. Gov. Kathy Hochul is already leading on these questions, and she deserves an additional four years as chief executive of New York. She has our endorsement to be elected governor.

A former member of Congress who was elected lieutenant governor in 2014, Ms. Hochul stepped into the governors office last August after Andrew Cuomo resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment. It was a period of upheaval and uncertainty for New Yorks roughly 20 million residents, as the state was still suffering through the Delta wave of the Covid pandemic. In her first months in office, Ms. Hochul gave the state exactly what it needed: a competent, steady hand who put the interests of the public first.

She has since recruited a team of talented experts to serve New York and lead the state out of the pandemic. Dr. Mary Bassett, New York Citys former public health department commissioner, an independent thinker, now heads the states Department of Public Health. Janno Lieber, whom Ms. Hochul appointed to lead the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has shown insight into both the politics and the policy needed to transform the states transport infrastructure. Kathryn Garcia, a proven leader and skilled administrator, has served ably as the governors chief of operations.

Ms. Hochul hasnt always gotten it right. One serious misstep was her choice of a former state senator, Brian Benjamin, to serve as lieutenant governor. He resigned in April after being indicted on charges of bribery and fraud. In an interview, the editorial board pressed Ms. Hochul repeatedly on why she chose Mr. Benjamin despite the red flags raised in his background check and numerous news accounts of potentially fraudulent campaign donations. Beyond saying she took full responsibility, she offered little clarification.

The pandemic and rising threats to democracy have also made clear just how much the presence of good public servants matters. Overall, Ms. Hochul has shown herself capable of tending to the states needs while leaving behind the drama and tiresome bravado of the many governors who served before her, a bracing change. She has worked closely  and collaboratively  with Mayor Eric Adams of New York, a relationship that is vital to any effort to improve public safety, education and public transit in New York City and across the state.

In an interview with the board, Ms. Hochul spoke convincingly of her ability to handle crises, from hurricanes to pandemics. Thats reassuring, but theres far more to the job than being a crisis manager and an effective boss. New York needs and deserves a chief executive who is capable of showing leadership, vision and political courage when necessary.

Ms. Hochul has demonstrated that passion on reproductive rights, an issue where New York will play a critical role. The governor has directed $35 million to expand capacity and enhance security. She is expected in the coming days to sign a package of bills into law further strengthening access to abortion and protecting providers from prosecution or malpractice lawsuits from anti-abortion states. She has also strongly backed a push to amend the state Constitution to include access to abortion rights and has vowed to make the state a safe harbor for women from other states seeking abortion care.

Buffalo The sole room where abortions are performed, left, and one of several natural birthing rooms at Buffalo Women Services, which provides obstetric, gynecological and abortion services. The future of abortion access is one of the major issues on the ballot in New York States Democratic primary for governor on June 28. Damon Winter/The New York Times

She is also prepared to lead on the issue of gun violence. Ms. Hochul, who once had an A rating from the National Rifle Association for her legislative record, says her personal views about how to regulate guns changed dramatically after a gunman shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. I became converted in a sense, the governor told us in an interview. That evolution is an evolution that we need to have more people have. And Im the best person to talk about that.

This was not simply a political move. Ms. Hochul has embraced gun safety regulations. On June 6, the governor signed into law bills to raise the minimum age for purchases of semiautomatic rifles to 21 from 18, bar most civilian sales of body armor and strengthen the states red-flag law, aimed at blocking people who show signs they may pose a threat to others or themselves from obtaining a firearm. She signed into law last year a bill banning the sale of so-called ghost guns, firearms that are assembled in pieces and are often untraceable. Her familiarity with gun culture in rural areas should help her make the case for reasonable gun safety measures to gun owners.

Buffalo An impromptu memorial outside Tops Friendly Market, the site of a racist mass shooting on May 14 that resulted in the death of 10 Black residents. Ms. Hochul, who once boasted an A rating from the National Rifle Association for her legislative record, now embraces gun safety regulations. Damon Winter/The New York Times

Ms. Hochul has made a commitment to confront domestic terrorism, a growing threat. After the white supremacist shooting in Buffalo that killed 10 people on May 14, she promised to add an eight-person unit in the state police to track such extremism online. A larger effort will be undertaken by the states emergency services agency. These are good first steps, but we would like to see Ms. Hochul put the full weight of New Yorks government toward making the state inhospitable to violent white supremacy and other extremist violence. These threats cost lives and tear at the fabric of our democracy.

New Yorkers need the same urgency put toward how the governor will address the pressing problems in their everyday lives, especially public safety, housing and the economy.

On public safety, Ms. Hochuls emphasis on trying to interrupt the flow of guns into the state is correct. The problem is the guns on the streets, she said in her interview.

The state has built far too little housing, and rents and home prices are spiraling out of reach, even for wealthier New Yorkers. Ms. Hochul will need to make the case  with conviction  for building more housing, especially in the suburbs of New York City.

Mount Vernon, N.Y. A new high-density residential building near a Metro North train station, surrounded by many single-family homes. Damon Winter/The New York Times Mount Vernon Single-family homes near the end of the No. 2 subway line. Damon Winter/The New York Times

Ms. Hochul also needs to explain more directly what she would do to improve the states economic fortunes  and to ensure that prosperity is more broadly shared. The lack of a clear economic message has become a chronic problem for Democrats in state and national elections. She and her party need to convince voters that they know how to channel economic growth into concrete improvements in the lives of Americans. One critical challenge is revitalizing the business districts in New York City, where several recent high-profile crimes on the subway and elsewhere, plus coronavirus variants and a surge in cases, are keeping many office workers at home.

Ms. Hochul has the opportunity to draw a clear contrast with Republicans by emphasizing the role that government can play in improving New Yorkers quality of life and in increasing access to opportunity. She has put forward proposals in areas such as housing, transit and education that could form pieces of such a vision. The test before her is not dissimilar to that facing Democratic hopefuls across the country. She needs to address more directly the economic struggles faced by so many New Yorkers  and to explain how the state, under her leadership, can deliver them a better future.

Manhattan A rider exits the 34th Street-Herald Square subway station. Recent high-profile crimes on the subway and elsewhere, plus coronavirus variants, have many office workers still staying home. Damon Winter/The New York Times

We still hope to see more from her. Ms. Hochuls budget process could be more transparent. Her reliance on large donations, particularly from the real estate industry, is dispiritingly familiar. We had questions about the last-minute appearance in the state budget of taxpayer funds for a new stadium in Buffalo. Her husband works for a company that provides concessions at the existing stadium. We are very, very, very careful about not having any involvement or engagement or financial gain that comes from anything involved here, she said in response to our questions about this possible conflict of interest.

States and cities also have to make up for inaction on climate change at the federal level. New York States Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, passed under Governor Cuomo, set forth an ambitious set of greenhouse gas reduction targets. But realizing those lofty goals requires making more progress on specific measures, such as encouraging offshore wind energy, electrifying school and public buses and making sure that new residential and commercial buildings are energy efficient.

There are other good public servants in this Democratic primary. Tom Suozzi, a representative from Long Island, has brought a much-needed sense of urgency to the race and has shown a visceral understanding of the everyday frustrations of many New Yorkers. His focus on tax cuts isnt sound economics, however. His ideas for housing policy sound like more of the same. And his tough-on-crime campaign seems to ignore some of the important lessons around the need for bail reform.

Jumaane Williams, New York Citys public advocate, brings an important perspective to the race. Mr. Williams has wisely cautioned against returning to New Yorks punitive and ineffective policies on policing and incarceration. But in his interview with the editorial board, Mr. Williamss vision did not venture far beyond the New York City region, and his activist politics and relative lack of experience as a state official are out of step with what New York needs right now.

We have endorsed both men for other offices at other times, and the competition they bring to this race is welcome. Today, we are confident Ms. Hochul is the best choice to be New Yorks governor.

Cairo, N.Y. Tattered American flags. New York, in this moment, requires a governor who is committed to fighting for our rights and freedoms, and the editorial board endorses Kathy Hochul. Damon Winter/The New York Times

New Yorks Republican primary for governor is also being held on June 28. The candidates include Representative Lee Zeldin of Long Island; Rob Astorino, a former Westchester County executive; Andrew Giuliani, a former Trump administration official and the son of Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York; and Harry Wilson, a businessman and former adviser to Barack Obama. The editorial board is not making an endorsement in that race.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Fraser Seitel

In April, after being named the 10th executive editor in New York Times history, Times veteran Joseph Kahn proclaimed that in a time of polarization and partisanship, among his top priorities was securing the publics trust in independent journalism. Sorry, Joe, that train already left the station.

The New York Times, once a bastion of independent neutrality, is today, inarguably, a left-leaning protagonist, pushing a not-so-subtle agenda in its daily news columns to shift the status quo toward a more progressive, egalitarian, anti-business direction. Ironically, more often than not, the worlds most influential newspaper takes dead aim at some of the nations most liberal, progressive and socially-just companies.

Consider, for example, the Times recent tortuous process to contrive a fictitious trend that American corporate workers are rushing to form labor unions. Heres how the Times has breathed life into a movement that might charitably be characterized as tepid at best.

First, create a dubious national issue.

To be clear, were not talking about bona fide national issues like gun control or abortion or crime, where the Times has a real duty to keep the subject foremost in the national conscience. Rather, were referring to the Times inventing an issue that it seeks to jam into the public agenda. Such is the case with the misguided notion that a growing groundswell of corporate employees wants to join labor unions. The facts say they dont.

Even the most ardent union organizer would agree that time hasnt been kind to the labor movement. The national unionization rate has drifted down for decades. Today, about 10 percent of working Americans are union members, about half of what it was in 1983. And even though union membership ticked up in the coronavirus-plagued economy of 2020it has since fallen backthe total number of union members actually dropped by 321,000 individuals.

This declining trend is especially the case in the private sector, where union membership has fallen to six percent, compared with 34 percent among government employees and teachers. To be fair, some public-sector unions have been positive forces. But most private-sector workers have shown little interest in organizing. Now, why do you think that is?

For one, big companies today are more enlightened. They pay higher wages, provide more benefits and are often run by executives who not only are more supportive than their predecessors of employees social and political views but also largely vote Democrat: think Disney, Apple, Google, Salesforce and countless others.

For another, organized laborfairly or nothas developed a reputation for being obstructionist, adversarial and greedy. To wit, the response from American Federation of Labor founder Samuel Gompers, when asked what he wanted, famously answered, More! U.S. companies in the 21st centuryeven those run by liberals, especially those run by liberals!simply dont trust organized labor to be a force for positive change.

So, the stark reality is that in todays America, in terms of labor unions, most companies and corporate employees dont need em and dont want em.

Nonetheless, in January 2021, newly-elected Joe Biden vowed to be the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history. And voila. The New York Times had discovered its next, if highly questionable, national issue: resuscitating Americas flagging organized labor movement.

Second, pretend the issue is of growing national concern.

As every public relations professional understands, the quickest way to put an issue on the map is to build attention and support by singling out a few easy-to-despise villains. And so, after receiving the incoming presidents call to arms, the Times focused on two of Americas biggest and most profitable enterprises, both created by billionaires and neither of which welcomed labor unions. Starbucks and Amazon became the anti-worker face of private-sector union busters.

Starbucks, with 400,000 employees and 31,000 stores, is one of the worlds most innovative, socially-conscious, employee-friendly companies. Unlike most other firms, Starbucks offers full healthcare, stock options, mental health benefits and myriad other perks to full-time as well as part-time employees.

Starbucks record on social justice is second to no other private sector employer:

It was one of the first retail companies to request customers not to carry firearms, even in open carry states.

It leads the food service industry in environmental changes, from expanding plant-based menu items to shifting to reusable packaging to investing in water conservation and reforestation practices.

It even attempted a Race Together social justice program to encourage in-store conversations about inequality. (It was a disaster!)

And Starbucks Founder Howard Schultz once ran for president as a liberal Democrat.

Amazon, meanwhile, pays employees an average of $18 an hourmore than twice the federal minimum wageand spends more than $1 billion in free continuing education and skills training for its workers. Most recently, in anticipation of a Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade, Amazon and Starbucks both announced they would reimburse employee travel costs for elective abortions.

So, you cant find two more progressive, socially-active corporations than Starbucks or Amazon. That isnt to say that either is a perfect employer. Their hours are long, the work is hard and the nature of the job isnt ideal. But neither of these socially-conscious companies deserves to be singled out for mistreating their employees.

But singled out they have been by the revered Times. And to carry out its inquisition, the Times assigned former National Republic writer Noam Scheiber to serve as torch-bearer to apply pro-union pressure to Starbucks and Amazon. And for the better part of the last year, Scheiber and assorted colleagues have waged an unrelenting campaign against Starbucks and Amazon in Times news columns to 

Third, declare an imaginary trend thats sweeping the nation.

For the better part of the Biden Administration, the Times has provided Scheiber unlimited space to fan the flames of what it infers is a rising tide of unionization at Starbucks and Amazon.

No story is too small, no election too insignificant for the Times to blast out Scheibers reporting of this emerging national trend. The Times threw down the gauntlet last December with Scheibers groundbreaking scoop headlined, Starbucks workers at a Buffalo store unionize in a big symbolic win for labor. The story heralded the historic significance of the first Starbucks store to vote for unionization, calling the decision an important symbolic victory for labor at a time when workers across the country are expressing frustration with wages and working conditions.

Curiously, omitted in Scheibers description of the momentous event were the number of employees who participated in this historic vote; the final vote to unionize was, in fact, 19-8. The story also downplayed that a simultaneous election at another Buffalo Starbucks ended in a 12-8 vote against unionizing, and an election at a third Buffalo Starbucks ended 15 for unionization, nine against and seven challenged.

The point is that elections at three stores out of tens of thousandsamong 78 employees out of 400,000merited top billing in the worlds most prestigious newspaper. The more significant point was that the results of those three elections were hardly conclusiveone win, one loss, one challengeand, arguably, neither symbolic nor historic nor a trend.

No matter. The Times and Scheiber were off and running. Over the past six months, the Times featured no less than 12 Scheiber Starbucks union news storiesmost of them stunningly meagerto keep the issue alive.

What was big news was the Scheiber blockbuster on April 1, headlined, Amazon Workers on Staten Island Vote to Unionize in Landmark Win for Labor. Sure enough, a cadre of Amazon employees, unaffiliated with any national labor union, voted to unionize at one of two massive Staten Island warehouses.

Over the next three weeks, The Staten Island Amazon union vote triggered 13 separate follow-up stories in The New York Times, one of which proclaimed triumphantly, From Amazon to Starbucks, America is Unionizing.

Well, maybe not so fast. Two weeks later, the Times sheepishly reported, Amazon Union Loses Vote at Second Staten Island Warehouse.

In point of fact, despite the best efforts of The New York Times to peddle the myth, there was no burgeoning U.S. labor union revival. Besides the handful of Starbucks stores and the one Amazon warehouse, the sum total of newly organized labor victories was infinitesimal.

Nonetheless, in todays lemming-like media ecosystem, if the Times says its so then so it must be. And following the Times unrelenting onslaught of Starbucks and Amazon, media from CNN to NPR to the Chronicle of Philanthropy dutifully paid witness to the rejuvenation of the labor movement in America. Scheiber gleefully added to the mix with a June 8 scoop that 85 Trader Joes employees in western Massachusetts had filed for a union election.

And so in the end, The New York Times campaign to forward the fabricated trend of labor union momentum sweeping the nation became a self-fulfilling prophecy; leaving in its wake two of the most liberal, progressive and socially-conscious corporations in the land and earning yet another victory for independent journalism.

***

Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. He is author of the Pearson text The Practice of Public Relations, now in its 14th edition, and co-author of Rethinking Reputation" and "Idea Wise. He may be reached directly at [email protected].
After two years of online and hybrid events, the Scripts Irelands Playwriting Festival is back in person in Offaly with a jam-packed programme.

The festival takes place from July 7 to July 10 in Birr Co. Offaly.

This innovative playwriting festival features a host of exciting performances and workshops for lovers of theatre - those who want to create, perform, and watch live new theatre in the beautiful surroundings of a heritage town.

Live performances include Bloody Yesterday by Deirdre Kinehan, Wake by Irene Kelleher, Looking for America by Janet Moran and an exclusive new work called Promenade Performance created especially for the festival in collaboration with Birr Stage Guild. Jay Ryans Living with a Fairy is also on the schedule for family audiences.

Earlier this year, Scripts received a record-breaking number of entries (over 130) to its call for submissions for new short plays. This years selected writers are Tony Doyle, Sarah McKenna Dunne and Jacqueline Corrigan & Robert Webster.

They will receive a week of mentorship with award-winning Offaly writer Eugene OBrien during the festival. Then, all three plays will be performed as rehearsed readings by a team of professional actors at the Scripts headline event, Nurtured New Works at Birr Theatre & Arts Centre on Sunday 10 July at 4pm.

The winning play will be chosen by a distinguished panel including playwright Christian OReilly and Fishambles Gavin Kostick. Scripts also continues to collaborate with our national theatre, The Abbey, to support its winning playwright.

This July, there will also be the unveiling of the very first George B. Miller Award, a new collaboration by Scripts and Youth Theatre Ireland. The selected writers will see their new plays for 11-14 year-olds performed for the very first time as live readings during the festival.

For those who want to learn more about the art of playwriting, Fishambles Gavin Kostick and playwright Chrisitian OReilly will deliver workshops focusing on new writing.

Former Scripts winner Lesley Conroy will host Family Proofing Your Arts Practice: A workshop on creative solutions to challenges facing parenting artists at Birr Library. David Walsh from Open Minds will also facilitate Unconscious Bias, exploring the way unconscious bias operates and help participants identify it and understand barriers to truly inclusive creativity.

For the full programme and some exciting special ticket offers, visit www.scriptsireland.com
Irelands largest law firm, is delighted to announce that it has appointed Tullamore native, Karen Sheil as a partner in its Commercial Real Estate department.

Matheson also announced the appointment of Niall Collins as a partner and head of Matheson's EU, Competition & Regulatory Law Group.

Karen Sheil specialises in all types of property development and investment transactions (both loan and asset based) including syndicate investments using corporate, funds and other structures. She has extensive experience in the site assembly, financing, structuring, letting and disposal of retail developments and mixed schemes on behalf of landlords and developers including offices, multi-family, private rented sector 'PRS' development and the build-to-rent 'BTR' sector. She is very experienced in dealing with data centre development projects and portfolios and advises tenants taking space in all types of commercial property.

Karen has worked on some of the largest property transactions in the country including Project Jewel  Irelands largest real estate transaction  where she acted for the purchaser of a portfolio of prime retail assets including Dundrum Town Centre.

Prior to joining Matheson, Karen was a partner at another Irish law firm for over a decade. She is a frequent speaker and writer on commercial property and tax related issues. She lectures in BTR schemes at the Law Society of Ireland. She is consistently ranked as a leading lawyer by legal directories and described as being 'highly rated' with a 'superb' level of knowledge.

Michael Jackson, Managing Partner of Matheson said, I am delighted to welcome Karen and Niall to Matheson. Their transactional experience, their knowledge of the Irish and international markets and their client focus will further enhance the strength in depth of our market-leading Commercial Real Estate and EU, Competition and Regulatory Law teams."

"Matheson is the law firm of choice for internationally focussed companies and financial institutions conducting business in and from Ireland. Our growth is reflective of our ongoing investment in talent and the emphasis we continue to place on client service and delivery. We believe that the expansion of our offices in London and New York, the recent opening of our new offices in Cork and the appointment of Karen and Niall in our Dublin headquarters will each contribute to our ability to continue to provide clients with the high levels of service and support required to help them achieve their business objectives."
Irelands Foreign Affairs Minister has warned his British counterpart that introducing a Bill to unilaterally amend the Northern Ireland Protocol will breach international law and deeply damage relationships.

Simon Coveney said the new Bill marks a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit, and accused the UK Government of deliberately trying to ratchet up tensions around the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Mr Coveney expressed his concern after a morning phone call with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss about the UKs legislative plan to override aspects of the protocol.

The British Government has defended the new Bill, saying it is lawful and correct.

The legislation will give ministers powers to override elements of the protocol, which was jointly agreed by the UK and EU as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to keep the Irish land border free-flowing.

Spoke with @trussliz. UK Govt now proposing to set aside Int Law, reject a partnership approach, ignore majority in NI & deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise. We remain open to dialogue to find agreement but his approach adds to instability & is no fix.  Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) June 13, 2022

The arrangements instead require regulatory checks and customs declarations on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

During the call, which lasted 12 minutes, Ms Truss said she intends to publish the legislation on Monday.

Following the call, Mr Coveney tweeted: UK Govt now proposing to set aside Int Law, reject a partnership approach, ignore majority in NI and deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise.

We remain open to dialogue to find agreement but his approach adds to instability and is no fix.

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said: Mr Coveney said publishing legislation that would breach the UKs commitments under international law, the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol is deeply damaging to relationships on these islands and between the UK and EU.

Mr Coveney said it marks a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit, especially as Ms Truss has not engaged with negotiations with the EU in any meaningful way since February.

Mr Coveney repeated that the protocol is the negotiated solution, ratified by Westminster, to the hard Brexit pursued by the UK Government.

The UKs unilateral approach is not in the best interest of Northern Ireland and does not have the consent or support of the majority of people or business in Northern Ireland.

Far from fixing problems, this legislation will create a whole new set of uncertainties and damage relationships.

The Bill due to come before Parliament will see the Government move without the consent of the EU to change the terms of the protocol in a bid to reduce the checks on the movement of goods across the Irish Sea.

This could include allowing ministers to remove all customs processes for goods moving within the United Kingdom and enable the frictionless movement of agri-food goods staying within the UK.

It could also see businesses in Northern Ireland given the ability to choose whether to follow UK or EU regulations, depending on who they are trading with.
Irish premier Micheal Martin has said it is regrettable that the UK is to renege on an international treaty.

Mr Martin said he rejects the assertions from the British Government that the EU has not been flexible during negotiations.

He criticised the British Governments plan to introduce a Bill to unilaterally amend the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Speaking in Co Cork on Monday, Mr Martin said the way to resolve the impasse is through substantive negotiations.

Unilateral breach of the Protocol is very serious  an international deal ratified by British Parliament and approved by the PM. It goes to the heart of the issue of trust. The only way to resolve issues is by substantive negotiations between UK and EU. (1/2)  Micheal Martin (@MichealMartinTD) June 13, 2022

Its very regrettable for a country like the UK to renege on an international treaty, he said.

I think it represents a new low point because the natural expectation of democratic countries like ourselves, the UK and all across Europe is that we honour international agreements that we enter into.

The British Government has defended the new Bill, saying it is lawful and correct.

The legislation will give ministers powers to override elements of the protocol, which was jointly agreed by the UK and EU as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to keep the Irish land border free-flowing.

The arrangements instead require regulatory checks and customs declarations on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Mr Martin said the agreement was ratified by British parliament and approved by Boris Johnson.

Ive had this discussion with him and, in our view, the only way to resolve issues around the operation of the protocol is to have substantive negotiations between the UK and the EU, Mr Martin added.

We do not accept the presentation by the British Government and certain ministers to the effect that the EU is inflexible. That is most definitely not the case and the EU has been very proactive in the last year in endeavouring to seek solutions to issues around the operation of the protocol.

He called on the British Government to enter into negotiations and discussions to resolve the issues.

He added: Sectors like manufacturing, dairy and meat are benefitting from the protocol and in fact many people in the industry are very concerned about the dual regulatory framework thats been put forward by the British Government, and feel that would undermine their practices.

The British Government needs to engage with business and industry in Northern Ireland and not make the situation worse for them because ultimately what the protocol is about really is creating the best possible opportunities for the people of Northern Ireland.

The British Government has a tendency to big up decisions like this and then once they announce them try to trivialise them.

Essentially announcing the unilateral breaching of an international agreement is serious stuff and cant be put to one side.

Unilateralism does not work. Unilateralism has never worked in the context of the Good Friday Agreement.

Im still very concerned that we are currently witnessing a denial of democracy where we have had an Assembly election and yet we dont have an Assembly convened.

The peoples voice needs to be reflected in the institutions being put in place, the Assembly in particular, and the Executive.

Irelands Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said there will be members of the Conservative Party who will think the UK Governments action on the Northern Ireland Protocol is abhorrent.

I, like everybody else, have seen the concern that has been expressed within the Conservative Party at this course of action, Mr Coveney said.

I think it does an awful lot of damage to Britains international reputation.

Of course, the precedent that is being set here to disapply international law, and lets not forget international law that the British Government was central to actually writing and agreeing and ratifying, I think is something that is abhorrent to many in the Conservative Party.

My language had been blunt and I think it needs to be.

For most of my working life as minister for foreign affairs my job is to be a diplomat, but there are times when I think I need to call things out for what they are.

Mr Coveney said the EUs response to the Bill will be incremental, and the legalities of the legislation will be assessed.

He said the move by the British Government is an act of bad faith.

Earlier on Monday, Mr Coveney warned his British counterpart that introducing the Bill will breach international law and deeply damage relationships.

He said the new Bill marks a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit, and accused the UK Government of deliberately trying to ratchet up tensions around the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Mr Coveney expressed his concern after a morning phone call with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss about the UKs legislative plan to override aspects of the protocol.

Spoke with @trussliz. UK Govt now proposing to set aside Int Law, reject a partnership approach, ignore majority in NI & deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise. We remain open to dialogue to find agreement but his approach adds to instability & is no fix.  Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) June 13, 2022

During the call, which lasted 12 minutes, Ms Truss said she intends to publish the legislation on Monday.

Following the call, Mr Coveney tweeted: UK Govt now proposing to set aside Int Law, reject a partnership approach, ignore majority in NI and deliberately ratchet up tension with an EU seeking compromise.

We remain open to dialogue to find agreement but his approach adds to instability and is no fix.

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said: Mr Coveney said publishing legislation that would breach the UKs commitments under international law, the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol is deeply damaging to relationships on these islands and between the UK and EU.

Mr Coveney said it marks a particular low point in the UKs approach to Brexit, especially as Ms Truss has not engaged with negotiations with the EU in any meaningful way since February.

Mr Coveney repeated that the protocol is the negotiated solution, ratified by Westminster, to the hard Brexit pursued by the UK Government.

The UKs unilateral approach is not in the best interest of Northern Ireland and does not have the consent or support of the majority of people or business in Northern Ireland.

Far from fixing problems, this legislation will create a whole new set of uncertainties and damage relationships.

The Bill due to come before Parliament will see the Government move without the consent of the EU to change the terms of the protocol in a bid to reduce the checks on the movement of goods across the Irish Sea.

This could include allowing ministers to remove all customs processes for goods moving within the United Kingdom and enable the frictionless movement of agri-food goods staying within the UK.

It could also see businesses in Northern Ireland given the ability to choose whether to follow UK or EU regulations, depending on who they are trading with.
Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular. While it represents many types of biomes, the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.
Zamfara is a state in northwestern Nigeria. The capital of Zamfara state is Gusau and its current Governor is Bello Matawalle. Until 1996, the area was part of Sokoto State.
The premier says second booster shots for healthcare staff has been flagged by hospital chiefs as a real priority following a recent spate of COVID outbreaks seeded by workers.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will hold a cabinet meeting in regional Queensland, instead of Canberra, while Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is heading to WA.
Hungary was the biggest stumbling block on the way to agreeing the sixth package of measures, which phase out most oil imports from Russia. The latest sanctions targeting Moscow have now officially taken effect.
Germany is establishing a special 100 billion fund to upgrade its underequipped armed forces. Here's what the money will be spent on.
The court fined the foundation that owns Wikpedia for refusing to remove articles about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, war crimes in Bucha and related topics.
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New Zealand Herald 15 Jun 2022

Brazil's federal police said they arrested a second suspect in connection with the disappearance of an Indigenous expert and a..
A bipartisan group of US senators announced proposed measures aimed at reducing gun violence. President Joe Biden welcomed the steps saying they were 'important steps" in the right direction.
Australian reporter apologises after he was accused of trying to "out" the out the actor last week.
ODN 15 Jun 2022

Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy says the policy to send asylum seekers in Rwanda is "unworkable on every front", after the..
The Court of Appeal has ruled the first deportation flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda can go ahead tomorrow.
Protesters demonstrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice as UK campaigners get their last chance to stop the government's first flight of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The European Commission has warned it will take "proportionate action" to secure the legal implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol after the UK government published legislation which will override the mechanism.
IndiaTimes 15 Jun 2022

The proposed UK bill seeks to remove customs checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. That will..
A bill to amend the Northern Ireland Protocol will be introduced in parliament today, despite claims that the move breaches international law.
A legal challenge into the government's immigration policy that would send some asylum seekers to Rwanda has begun in the Court of Appeal.
Legislation which will override the Northern Ireland Protocol section of the post-Brexit deal that the UK agreed with the EU does not breach international law, the government has insisted.
The government's bill to change the Northern Ireland Protocol is the focus for many of Monday's papers.
euronews (in English) 15 Jun 2022

Britain's Home Secretary Priti Patel says preparations are already under way for the next flight to Rwanda.
June 10 bore witness to a valiant effort on the part of refugee groups and a trade union to stop what promises to be the first journey of many as part of the UK-Rwanda plan. Their attempt to seek an injunction failed to convince the High Court. Next Tuesday, the first flight from the UK to Rwanda filled with asylum seekers...
A visit by an interfaith delegation of Pakistanis to Israel revived the speculation of normalizing relations between the two countries.



The visit received added attention because the group met with Israels President *Isaac Herzog*, who described the meeting as an amazing experience. He even linked it to the Abraham...
Kremlin-installed officials in occupied southern Ukraine celebrated Russia Day on Sunday and began issuing Russian passports to residents in one city who requested them, as Moscow sought to solidify its rule over captured parts of...
Brazilian police said on Sunday search teams have discovered belongings of missing British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira who went missing in the Amazon a week ago.
Russia's oil and gas exports are expected to remain strong this year even as the country faces intensifying sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
"If anyone dares to secede Taiwan from China, we will not hesitate to fight," said Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe.
Russian forces tightened their grip on the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk on Monday, according to a regional governor. The destruction of bridges in the area cut off the last evacuation routes in a scene that echoed last month's siege of the port of Mariupol.
Italian Operating Giant Red Rake Gaming Partners with Italian Software House Octavian Lab for Unique Re-commitment to the Local Italian Market

Published June 13, 2022 by Lee R

The new partnership in Italy between an emerging content provider and an established operating giant has intriguing ramifications.

Leading Italian provider for the online betting and gaming sector, Octavian Lab, has further enhanced its offering by adding the leading Italian certified supplier, Red Rake Gaming.

Octavian Lab Strengths

Octavian Lab is a software house and service provider for the online betting and gaming sector operating in the Italian market, with their wheelhouse product being their trademark proprietary software: Accounting Gaming Platform  AGP. The platform adroitly supports content from the best casino content providers through their Aggregator solution which supports direct integration for Licensees.

Partnership Benefits

The partnership with Red Rake greatly enhances Octavian brand's association with leading content, as the deal provided Octavian Lab with access to leading Red Rake titles including the multi-featured multi bonus non-stop action of the Super Series games as well as Red Rake's unique and globally popular "1 million ways to win" genre of games, which is racing up the Italian charts as of this writing.

Red Rake's Mission

For Red Rake, this is a continuation of Italy's global operating giant's re-commitment to the local market by creating leading localised content through enhancing player experience and engagement to further increase market share in one of Europe's major liquid markets.

Red Rake Leader Speaks

Red Rake Malta Managing Director Nick Barr expressed his delight in the partnership, calling Octavian a new force to be reckoned with due to theirwide host of Italian partners capitalizing on their innovative platform and extensive offering.

Red Rake's Local Commitment

Barr further looked forward to working closely with the Octavian team to continue growth in the home Italy market, calling Italy one of Red Rake Gamings top regulated growth markets this year to which his organisation is committed to providing the best-localised offering to its partners.

Top Red Rake Gaming Casinos

Octavian Leader Speaks

Octavian Lab Sales Manager Andres Galan expressed his delight in striking a deal with a leading developer such as Red Rake. Galan cited the timing of the expansion opportunity with Octavian Lab as increasing its footprint as never before.

Sustainable Local Relationships

It is of utmost importance to strengthen our relationship with experienced suppliers like Red Rake concluded Galana, We look forward to working with them and hope to build a long and prosperous professional relationship.

Outlook

The complementary strengths of these content providers in the lucrative Italian market indicates the partnership will strengthen the market foothold of both while preparing this duo as a unit for a powerful joint international expansion next.
The board of directors for the Nebraska Association of School Boards voted unanimously Saturday to formally cut ties with a national organization that spurred controversy last year by calling for federal investigation into threats made against school board members.

This decision comes less than a month after the Nebraska association's executive committee voted to recommend canceling it's membership in the National School Boards Association, a federation of state associations that advocates and lobbies on public education issues.

Saturday's decision adds Nebraska to a growing list of state school board associations that have distanced themselves or completely cut ties with the NSBA. In a text message, Nebraska association President Brad Wilkins confirmed that they will not pay dues to the NSBA this year. The money would have been due by June 30.

Last September, top figures in the NSBA sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking for federal assistance in protecting educators and board members from threats and harassment. School board meetings across the country grew increasingly heated as debates on masking, sex education and critical race theory compelled hordes of parents to testify at the normally quiet meetings.

The letter requested a "joint collaboration" between state and federal law enforcement agencies to identify and prevent threats against board members. The NSBA requested assistance from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service.

"As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes," read a particularly controversial section of the six-page letter.

The letter was signed by Viola Garcia, the group's president at the time, and Chip Slaven, the then-interim executive director and CEO.

In October, Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to the NSBA and, in a memorandum, directed the FBI and U.S. Attorneys to meet and investigate what he called a a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence" targeting school personnel.

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Both the original letter and Garland's memorandum were heavily criticized by the public, and by NSBA members who said that they were not consulted about the letter's contents. In response, at least 23 other state school board associations have formally severed ties with the national organization. A handful of other state boards have released statements denouncing the letter's message and the call for federal intervention.

Nebraska politicians also reacted negatively to the letter. U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse called Garland's memo a "political hack job" in a statement, and Gov. Pete Ricketts said that federal intervention would be an "absolute outrageous abuse of federal power" meant to "browbeat parents into not going to school board meetings."

The NSBA publicly apologized for the letter shortly after it was shared. Slaven no longer holds the interim executive position, and an independent investigation commissioned by the NSBA found that he was the primary author and did not seek comment from the organization's national board of directors or members before sending it.

The number of member associations in the NSBA has been cut in half in the past year, which raises questions about it's viability as a national organization. Axios reported last year that the 17 affiliates that cut ties by December of 2021 accounted for over $1.1 million in dues. The report also indicated that some states like Montana and Florida are considering the creation of a new national group to rival the NSBA.

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123sonography's Customer Favorite gets a makeover with an additional 3 hours of content. Vienna, Austria: 123sonography, which holds a market leader position in the field of medical echocardiography, has now released its new Echo MasterClass 2022. The course includes updated and expanded content of their first-ever produced medical e-learning course. The new Echo MasterClass is a premium online echocardiography training program for health care professionals. Twenty-three video lectures cover the entire 
Dubai, June. 11, 2022 - After successful years of inspiring and guiding individuals and businesses to upskill and reskill in numerous verticals, Learners Point Training Institute has announced to rebrand its corporate name into "Learners Point Academy". In addition to the name change, this 20-year-old training institute in Dubai has also released a new logo for better brand repositioning purposes. The new name and logo truly reflect the unflinching promises 
Fort Smith, Arkansas, June 13, 2022 - With the Arkansas economy continuing to grow, state representative candidate Max Avery is looking to capitalize on that growth by focusing on exports. The global economy continues to grow and the demand for goods and services from the United States remains significant. To remain competitive, companies must look to expand their operations by exporting. Selling internationally allows Arkansas-based companies to reach new markets 
Sixty-six Alma College students  33 freshmen, 25 sophomores and eight juniors  were recently awarded the President's Cup for the 2021-22 academic year. Juniors, sophomores and freshmen who have been at Alma College for one year and who attain the highest academic ranks in their classes based on GPA receive the award.

The tradition of the President's Cup was started more than 50 years ago in 1968 by Alma's ninth President, Robert D. Swanson. Students earning the honor receive a certificate acknowledging their achievement.
BERLIN (AP)  China has overtaken Germany as the biggest buyer of Russian energy exports since the start of the war in Ukraine, an independent research group said Monday.

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said Russia received about 93 billion euros ($97 billion) in revenue for the sale of oil, natural gas and coal since Feb. 24, when it invaded Ukraine.

About 61% of the fossil fuels worth some 57 billion euros was exported to the European Union during the conflict's first 100 days, the Helsinki-based group said.

That included 12.1 billion euros worth of exports to Germany, 7.8 billion euros each to Italy and the Netherlands, and 4.4 billion euros to Poland, the group said.

Germany, which was the biggest importer of Russian fossil fuels during the first two months of the war, slipped to second place behind China, which has purchased some 12.6 billion euros worth of energy from Moscow.

The shift reflects the growing importance of China and other non-European economies for Russian energy exports, which provide about 40% of the country's federal budget, the group said.

Figures published by the organization show that Germany remains heavily dependent on Russian energy, particularly natural gas. Imports in May were down 8% compared with the previous two months, coinciding with warmer weather.

As a whole, the European Union cut its energy imports from Russia by more than 100 million euros per day in May, led by Poland, which was previously a big buyer of Russian oil and gas, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air calculated.

By contrast, France, Belgium and the Netherlands snapped up more natural gas and oil on the short-term markets in May, the group said.

It noted that because Russia is exporting more oil by ship to countries where it doesn't have pipelines, tankers are in high demand. Four-fifths of those tankers are owned by European or American companies, it said.
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Year after year, the Zonta Club of Midland has worked to improve womens lives at home and around the world. This year, members reflect on the work the local chapter has done over the past 75 years.

The first Zonta Club was chartered in November 1919 in Buffalo, New York. The Zonta Club of Midland began 28 years later, on June 5, 1947. With 19 charter members, it was the 10th club established in Michigan. Today, the local club has about 50 members.

Midland native Carole Calvert-Baxter, who now resides in Traverse City, appreciates the general support she has received from members, which has helped her expand her skillset.

Zonta has helped me grow in leadership outside the club, personally and professionally, Calvert-Baxter said.

For Cindy Vickery, of Midland, the club is a great way to meet new people and be part of a support system that spans across the years.

What you give to Zonta, you will get back in your personal growth, Vickery said.

Nancy Barker, of Midland, is among those with the longest tenure in the club with 43 years under her belt. When she joined Zonta in the 1970s, women were coming to Midland whose husbands had jobs with Dow or Dow Corning. Since they were sometimes discouraged from getting jobs themselves, they began founding womens clubs to network with fellow women.

What was wonderful about Zonta was that women who were working had the same sorts of challenges, Barker said. We were also wives and mothers. Women have never had an easy time. Having support from a group was very helpful to me when I first went to work. My women friends at home said that I shouldnt work because it looked like my husband couldnt support me. That was the world of 1970.

In the mid-20th century, Zonta Clubs were rigidly limited to members from specific job classifications. Today, classifications remain, but have been expanded to include more vocations, even retired professionals.

While a large portion of the members are women, men are welcome to join as well; in Midland, there are boys who are part of Zontas youth versions of the club at Midland High School and Northwood University.

Zonta was on the right track because today we would call it diversity, said member Rebecca Wieland, of Midland. Zonta encouraged it by welcoming women from various professions and various walks of life.

Zontas main goal is to ensure equal rights for women and improve their lives, both locally and internationally. While the Zonta Club of Midland supports Zonta Internationals service projects, members combat international issues by educating themselves and addressing those problems on the local level.

Over the decades, the Zonta Club of Midland has supported several local organizations through service grants and community projects. In its 75-year history, the club has given $205,000 in service grants; it awarded 11 service grants in 2021 alone. Past community projects include volunteering to plant flowers for Midland Blooms, donating playground equipment to local schools, purchasing wheelchairs for the hospital and mentoring through the Big Sisters organization.

In 1951, the club presented its first educational scholarship for a local nursing student. The scholarship program continues to this day, funded by events including rummage and candy sales, an annual roast beef dinner and canasta parties.

One of Zonta Club of Midlands biggest fundraisers is the annual Zonta Homewalk. Held in December, the event showcases a handful of Midland homes decorated for the holiday season. While the pandemic forced organizers in recent years to switch to an online format instead of hosting the tours in person, the event remains a popular winter activity. The Homewalk marked its 40th anniversary this past December.

Going to conferences and connecting with women from around the world, Barker understands that women not only face similar challenges, but have the power to effect change.

As concerned women, we read the newspaper and hear the news. Its frustrating sometimes feeling like you cant help  youd like to, but you cant, Barker said. With an organization like this, you have a voice. You can work together.

The Zonta Club of Midland will host a celebration for its 75th anniversary on June 21. For more information about the Zonta Club of Midland, visit www.zontaclubofmidland.org or email zontanews@zontaclubofmidland.org.
New York, US (PANA) - The UNs sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, announced on Monday the winners of its 2022 UN Population Award, with the individual prize going to a young trailblazing parliamentarian from Namibia, while the institutional award went to Indonesias National Population and Family Planning Board
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - A panel of experts on Libya at the UN Security Council has said that most of Libya's territory is still under the control of Libyan armed groups, noting that foreign forces and private military companies pose a serious threat to the security of Libya and the region
Photo: (Photo : NICOLAS MAETERLINCK/Belga/AFP via Getty Images)

An independent advisory group to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted in favor of authorizing the COVID vaccine made by drugmaker Novavax for adults ages 18 and older on Tuesday, June 7.

Twenty-one members of the advisory committee voted yes, and none voted no; while one person abstained. The FDA will next decide whether to authorize the shot for emergency use, which would make Novavax the fourth coronavirus vaccine available in the United States. The FDA often follows the recommendations of the advisory group, according to Channel News Asia.

Novavax's jab, if it is authorized, would be the only protein-based COVID vaccine distributed in the United States. That formulation is more traditional than the ones used by Pfizer and Moderna which utilize mRNA shots. The FDA has approved several protein-based vaccines in the past, including one for shingles and another for hepatitis B.

Novavax's COVID vaccine effective in trial

Because of that, some members of the FDA committee think it might appeal to American residents who have thus far opted not to get vaccinated. Dr. Peter Marks, who is the director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said at the meeting that having a protein-based alternative may be more comfortable for some people in terms of their acceptance of vaccines.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one-third of the people in the United States are not fully vaccinated for COVID-19, and 22 percent of them have not received a single dose of COVID vaccine.

Novavax's vaccine appeared highly effective in its clinical trial. It lowered the risk of symptomatic COVID by 90 percent in a group of more than 30,000 people in Mexico and the U.S. It did not determine, though, the vaccine's efficacy against the virus's omicron variant as the trial was conducted from December 2020 to February 2021, when the alpha variant of the coronavirus was dominant.

Dr. Mark Sawyer, an infectious disease specialist at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego and also a committee member, told NBC News that it is quite disappointing that they don't have any data in the omicron era but the data is quite similar to what they have approved in the past with other vaccines.

Read Also: COVID Vaccine Shots For Children Under The Age of 5 Could Be Available As Soon As June 21

Novavax's vaccine can be stored in a regular refigerator

The World Health Organization (WHO) authorized the COVID vaccine of Novavax for emergency use back in December. It has also been authorized in the European Union, India, Indonesia, Australia, Philippines, United Kingdom, and South Korea. Novavax revealed on Tuesday that 744,000 doses had been administered worldwide as of April.

One advantage of Novavax's vaccine is that it can be stored in a regular refrigerator for up to six months, whereas mRNA vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna must be kept at subzero temperatures, making the shots harder to transport.

According to CDC data, the U.S. has already discarded 82.1 million COVID vaccine doses from December 2020 through mid-May. Fox 29 reported that is more than 11 percent of the doses distributed by the federal government.

Related Article: Toddler Reunited With Parents in the United States After Being Left Behind Last August in Afghanistan
Photo: (Photo : Rob Carr/Getty Images)

Regardless of age, Father's Day may be sad for some children who have no relationship with their biological dads. However, three adult women were lucky to have the chance to reunite with their dads after years of searching.

As more people are using commercial DNA tests to learn about their family and medical history, the process is also changing lives. Here are these women's stories:

Whitney and Chuck

Whitney Thompson from Arizona told ABC 15 that her mom never knew her father. In 1988, her mother met a man at the diner where she worked and could only recall that he was "cute and really nice."

Thompson's mom also wrote "Chuck from Michigan" in her journal entry for that night, but it would be the one and only time they would see each other. So, for 30 years, Thompson searched for her biological dad.

Read Also: Schools Cancel Father's Day and Mother's Day, to Hold More Inclusive 'Grownups Who Love Us Day'

When DNA testing became possible, Thompson cracked the door open to learning about her father. She signed up for Ancestry.com and found three cousins and a woman from New York who told her she might be able to narrow down the traces to Thompson's biological dad.

It took two weeks until the woman traced Charles "Chuck" Shirey, the man who shared not only Thompson's DNA but the same birthday. After talking on the phone, the dad and daughter made plans to meet in person, along with her two half-sisters, in five months.

For now, however, Thompson said she is excited to send her first Father's Day card to Shirey.

Stephanie and Jim

Stephanie Mott, now 39, has been searching for her biological dad for as long as she can remember. Originally based in Utah, she decided to uproot her life in early June and settle in Indiana, where her biological father, Jim Tucker, lives.

According to WTHI, Mott decided to move houses because she wanted to forge a close relationship with Tucker, and she felt that she belonged in Indiana. Their reunion story began on Facebook in December 2021, and since then, the father and daughter have kept in touch every day.

When Mott finally arrived with her stuff in her father's hometown, the first thing she said was, "Dad, I'm home." The pair are not wasting time catching up, and this Father's Day will be a monumental occasion.

Elise and Colm

Elise Jones, 22, bought a kit from Ancestry.com during a drunken state and did not expect she would find her biological dad. Initially, she treated this as a joke to share on her social media.

However, after she sent her saliva samples for testing, Jones found a male cousin through her paternal grandmother. They got along well and decided to trace their family history. Their grandmother had six sons, and Jones tried to contact two men on Facebook.

Jones' first message to Colm Verdon was ignored because he thought she was a scammer. He did not know that he had a daughter. However, Verdon looked through Jones' pictures, which are all over social media, and could see his own mom's strong features.

After reaching out to his daughter, Verdon was also able to reunite with Jones' mother, with whom he had romantic liaison years ago. Verdon then took a DNA test that further proved his biological connection to Jones.

According to New York Post, the dad and daughter met for the first time in person in May and were dumbfounded by the fact that they almost look like twins. Verdon said he used to feel some void but learning that he's a father has given his life substance.

Related Article: Father's Day Started With a Woman Who Campaigned for the Celebration for 62 Years
Photo: (Photo : Getty images )

The majority of women in the U.S. bottle-feed their children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) recommendation that women exclusively breastfeed their babies for the first six months.

In the wake of the milk formula shortage, the country attempted to increase its supply of infant nutrition products by importing milk products. Yet, parents still find it a struggle to provide milk formula for their kids.

Observers note that a handful of manufacturers' monopoly on milk supply has caused bottlenecks, resulting in calls for more available milk alternatives for moms who cannot breastfeed.

ABC News cites features three startups that could be the breast milk alternatives in years to come. These milk alternatives are using bioengineering to create new baby formula products, and scientists are hopeful that it will be a better substitute for breastmilk.

Wilk

When Nurit Argov-Argaman, the Chief Technology Officer of the Israeli dairy milk alternative of startup company Wilk was raising her three young children, she also struggled to manage her time in providing breast milk for her kids. Infant formula was one of her best options for her kids. Knowing the limitations of formula milk, Argov-Argaman, who is a lactation scientist by training, vowed that she could "help bridge the gap" between formula and breastmilk by developing a product that would closely resemble breast milk.

As per Green Queen, the company, which was formerly named Biomilk, became the first cell-based milk manufacturer that went public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE).

To develop milk, the company uses breast milk and mammary cells that have been removed during breast reduction surgeries and provided by a local hospital. Wilk now focuses its study on identifying ways to maximize milk yield from cultivated mammary cells.

Read Also: Formula Milk Price Skyrockets Despite Price Control Measures

Biomilq

This startup milk is U.S.-based and was born out of a mother's desire to create an alternative baby formula. Its founder, Leila Strickland, found that the products on the market were "not meeting what she wanted to feed her children."

According to the company's co-founder, Michelle Egger, formula milk has not changed much since the 1950s. Over the years, it has consolidated its supply chain, impacting families and parents.

The project began in 2013. Its prototype was confirmed in 2021, making it the first to make "cell-cultured human milk outside of the breast."

Helaina

Helaina attempts to recreate proteins found in breastmilk by "training" the yeast using the same DNA code that produces breast milk proteins. The proteins, as per its owner, Laura Katz, could have more immunity benefits found in breastmilk, which traditional baby formulas lack.

According to Tech Crunch, Katz, a food scientist who teaches at New York University, proudly says that Helaina is "the first company making functional human proteins for food."

As the baby formula shortage in the country worsens, alternative baby formulas have been cast into the spotlight. However, these alternative milk products will take several years before it will be a available in the commercial market as they must go through U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scrutiny before being approved for use.

Related Article:The Struggles of Breastfeeding in Public
Photo: (Photo : Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Following years of search, authorities have arrested and charged Ohio baker Ava Misseldine for stealing a baby's identity and using this for various fraudulent activities, including claiming millions of dollars in COVID-19 pandemic relief.

Misseldine, 49, has been using the stolen identity of Brie Bourgeois since 2003. Bourgeois has been dead since 1979. The Ohio baker used the stolen identity to apply for a state ID, driver's license, and secure a social security card, per the Department of Justice.

In 2007, Misseldine again used Bourgeois' identity to apply for a U.S. passport, a student pilot license, and a job as a flight attendant. There was a point when she was employed using her false identity.

For the next 13 years, Misseldine would use the stolen identity alongside her real identity. In 2020, she committed the biggest fraud of all by claiming COVID-19 pandemic relief funds both as Misseldine and Bourgeois, wherein she raked over $1.5 million.

Read Also: Family Faked Illness to Get Millions in Medical Claims, Pleads Guilty to Fraud

Ava Misseldine's Fraudulent Activities

As a baker and caterer, Misseldine allegedly applied for business relief from COVID-19 for her former stores like Koko Tea Salon & Bakery, Sugar Inc., and Cupcakes & Tea Salon. She used forged documents for both identities when submitting her applications to the pandemic's Paycheck Protection Program.

According to The Daily Beast, Misseldine claimed she didn't have a Social Security number until she was older because she was homeschooled. When her fledging bakery was featured on TV in 2014, she claimed to have grown up in Hawaii and worked as a cancer researcher.

Misseldine also told a local Ohio daily that her family ran a tea business that operated for generations. She claimed she got into the baking business after moving from Hawaii to Ohio because she wanted to honor her grandmother back home.

However, an uncle in Cleveland spoke with The Daily Beast to say that the Hawaii and tea family business stories are not true. The uncle also said he was unaware his niece was a cancer researcher.

Sometime before 2003, Misseldine was apparently in prison for forgery and theft, but she escaped. The DOJ finally pinned her when she applied for a passport in 2021, using the stolen baby's identity, for a planned trip to Dubai.

According to federal officials, the recent passport application under Bourgeois mirrored some details for the 2015 passport application under Misseldine. Thus, it was flagged for potential fraud.

Brie Bourgeois' Real Mom Reacts

But the Bourgeois was also not scot-free as the name had court records for fraud and theft dating back to 2007. In one of her court cases in 2014, Misseldine claimed she was an adopted child and briefly used "Brie Bourgeois" in official documents until her adoptive family became upset that she wasn't using "Ava Misseldine," her adoptive name, or so she claimed.

If convicted, Misseldine will be in prison for 30 years.

Paula Bourgeois, the mother of the real Brie Bourgeois, said she was unaware Misseldine had been using her daughter's stolen identity for decades until she got calls from news outlets, per Business Insider. She confirmed that her baby died at 4 1/2 months old and did not have any Social Security number.

The mother also said that she didn't know Misseldine at all and was worried that she would also be liable for her financial crimes. Paula's husband, Jacques, died in 2003.

Related Article: Stimulus Check Fraud: California Mom Pleads Guilty to $145K Scam With Son on Death Row
Photo: (Photo : DAMIEN MEYER/AFP via Getty Images)

The parents of a 10-month-old baby injured in a house fire in Knoxville have made the heartbreaking decision to take their son, Grayson, off life support. Doctors said the baby is brain dead, but his parents know he will be an organ donor hero for other kids.

Grayson's dad, Matthew Stull, confirmed their decision to Wave 3 and stated that it would give him and his wife, Kaylynn, some form of peace knowing that there will be other babies who will live because of their son's donated organs. Despite their grief, Matthew said other parents wouldn't have to endure losing a child because Grayson's organs would save them.

The decision came as the Stulls were still grieving over Delilah, their 3-year-old daughter, who didn't make it out alive following the house fire. Matthew described his daughter as the "most precious soul" any parent could hope for. Their older daughter, Allison, was able to crawl out amid the thick smoke that engulfed their house.

Read Also: CPR Awareness: Mom Saves Husband's Life With 7-Minute Chest Compressions After Cardiac Arrest

Images They Won't Be Able to Unsee

According to WVIT, firefighters believed the children were in the basement where the fire started at 2:00 p.m. on Monday, June 6. They were able to transport Grayson and Allison to the hospital but could not save Delilah anymore.

The baby injured in the house fire incurred severe damage to his lungs and brain due to smoke inhalation. The fate of Allison is still unclear.

Six people were in the house when the fire broke, and the adults were able to get out. The authorities confirmed that the house had working smoke alarms, but the fire and smoke were too much to bear for the children trapped inside. The family's four dogs also did not make it.

Firefighters had to push back when they tried to get inside the house during their first rescue attempt. At least two fire crews were needed to put the fire out two hours later.

Knoxville Fire Department Assistant Chief Mark Wilbanks said that his fire crew would have to undergo brief therapy to process what happened. He said that the firefighters would not be able to unsee the images of the children that were left helpless and frail in the aftermath.

The survivors were temporarily under the care of the American Red Cross. A GoFundMe has been established for the family to rebuild their lives.

House Fire Caused by Dog

In a separate incident, a family in Missouri released a surveillance video of the fire that destroyed their house on Friday, June 10, to raise the public's awareness. According to the Southern Platte Fire Protection District firefighters, the family dog started the fire when it accidentally touched and turned on the stovetop.

There was a greased pan left on the burner that ignited when the dog accidentally activated the stove-top's controls. Per FOX KTVU, no one was at home when the fire happened, and the two dogs were saved after neighbors saw the smoke coming out of the house.

Related Article: Hot Cars, Heatstroke and Kids in the Summer: What Parents Need to Know
Its being reported this morning that San Francisco-based startup Rune Labs has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use the Apple Watch to monitor tremors and other common symptoms in patients with Parkinsons disease.

The Rune Labs software uses the motion sensors built into the Apple Watch, which can already be used to detect when a person falls. Rune Labs Chief Executive Brian Pepin told Reuters in an interview the Apple Watch data will be combined with data from other sources, including a Medtronic implant that can measure brain signals.

Rune Labs' goal is for doctors to use the combined data to decide whether and how to fine-tune the patients' treatment, an approach called precision medicine. At present, Pepin said, most doctors have to gather data on a patient's movements by observing the patient during a short clinical visit, which is not ideal because Parkinson's symptoms can vary widely over time.

The Apple Watch will give doctors a continuous stream of observations over long stretches, Pepin said.

The Rune Labs FDA clearance is the first prominent use of software tools that Apple released for measuring movement disorders in 2018. For more on this, read the full Reuters report.
At a glance Experts Rating Pros Comfortable vertical grip

Left-hand option

Highly customizable buttons

Smooth tracking

Affordable Cons Angle of mouse better suited for people preventing or reducing mild wrist and elbow discomfort Our Verdict At $70, the Logitech Lift is an excellent affordable vertical wireless mouse for folks with smaller hands. It offers a comfortable grip, highly customizable buttons, and smooth tracking, and its lefty-friendly too. However, its best for people looking to prevent severe wrist and elbow pain during mouse use, rather than those hunting for a cheaper alternative to specialized ergonomic mice.

Best Prices Today: Logitech Lift

Retailer Price Delivery $69.99 Free View Dell Home $69.99 Free View Not Available Free View

Ergonomic equipment can be expensive. Ive cycled through many mice over the yearstrackpads, trackballs, roller mice, vertical micewith the price per mouse hitting over $100 for the more specialized gear. If you dont work for a company that pays for it, taking care of your body costs a pretty penny.

The thing about ergonomic peripherals, though, is that everyone can benefit from it. Putting your body in a neutral position can save you from the kind of pain that forces you to seek out the expensive gear. Its not just for people like me who must use funny-looking mice and keyboards (and regularly rotate through different styles, to boot) to keep from hurting.

So when Logitech announced the Lift, a $70 vertical mouse made for small-to-medium hands (with a left-hand variation available!), I was genuinely excited. These days, you can find inexpensive variations from companies like Anker, but theyre sized for people with larger hands. They also often dont provide enough tilt to get your hand and elbow in a properly neutral position nor provide a left-hand variant. So far, the best options for a compact wireless vertical mouse have been the Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 Small Wireless ($110) or VerticalMouse D Small Wireless ($115).

Turns out, the Lift is a great balance between affordable and comfortablebut for folks like me, who already have existing issues, it cant quite fully replace an Evoluent.

Note: This review is part of our best wireless mice roundup. Go there to learn more about the other wireless mice weve tested, and how this mouse compares to the competition.

Logitech Lift: The specs

Connection type: Bluetooth and wireless

Bluetooth and wireless Max number of connected devices: 3

3 Sensor type: Optical

Optical DPI range: 400 to 4,000 DPI (adjustable)

400 to 4,000 DPI (adjustable) Nominal value: 1000 dpi

1000 dpi Buttons: 6 total (left and right click, scroll wheel with click, middle button, and two thumb buttons)

6 total (left and right click, scroll wheel with click, middle button, and two thumb buttons) Customizable: Yes, some buttons can be programed for different actions

Yes, some buttons can be programed for different actions Tilt: 57 degrees

57 degrees Dimensions: 108 x 70 x 71 mm (4.2 x 2.7 x 2.7 in)

108 x 70 x 71 mm (4.2 x 2.7 x 2.7 in) Weight: 124g

124g Battery life: 2-year battery life (1 AA)

2-year battery life (1 AA) Warranty: 1 year (USA)

1 year (USA) Materials: Partially made of post-consumer recycled plastic (70% for graphite, 54% for rose and off-white)



For the full rundown of specs, including report rates, you can check out this Logitech Lift support page.

Logitech Lift: Design and build

The Logitech Lift comes in three different colors: Graphite, Off-White, and Rose. Logitech

The Logitech Lift comes in a two-tone design, with a plastic front half in one color and a darker, rubberized back half in another color. You can get it in black, off-white, and rose; our review model was off-white, which had a cool-toned white front and a light gray palm grip. The plastic has a smooth but soft-touch satin finish, as opposed to slick and shiny. The effect overall is quite nice, but thats only after just a few weeks of use. In general, Im wary of rubberized materialstheir longevity is questionable. Specific to mice, I stopped using my Evoluent VerticalMouse as often because its grip had deteriorated and become sticky to the touch.

Logitech offers six different buttons on this mouseleft and right click, plus a small round button just below those and two narrow ones on the thumb side of the mouse. The scroll wheel also serves as a button. You can customize the commands for all the buttons save the left and right click (for obvious reasons), which is done in Logitechs Options+ software.

On the underside of the Lift is an on/off switch to preserve the mouses battery life, and a button to switch between connected devices (up to three total). You can connect to devices via Bluetooth or via the included 2.4GHz wireless dongle. A magnetic plate conceals access to the one AA battery that powers the mouse, as well as the 2.4GHz wireless receiver. Its a good design choiceno plastic clips to accidentally breakbut it pops off pretty easily even when the mouse drops onto carpet. (Shout-out to my jerk cat for taking it upon himself to test that repeatedly.)

mentioned in this article Logitech MX Vertical Best Prices Today:

One key difference exists between the Logitech Lift and its more expensive sibling, the MX Verticalyou can only connect to devices wirelessly. Unlike the MX, you cant use a USB-C cable to operate in a wired mode.

I dont have a particularly tiny hand (roughly 17.5mm long and 9.5mm wide), but the base on the Lift feels a smidge too large. Alaina Yee / IDG

The Lifts feel in the hand is decent, with a good weight, though it borders on being being a smidge large. It flares a bit wider toward the base than feels completely comfortable. I prefer the sizing of my Evoluent vertical mouse, which has a narrower grip for curving my palm around. I also personally would prefer more of a vertical tiltover time, I started to develop that familiar painful tightness near my elbow since the Lift doesnt allow you to maintain a true handshake position. If you dont have existing issues, you may not have the same complaint, but those with repetitive stress injuries and tendonitis may find the Lift wont help with avoiding discomfort.

The button presses on this mouse feel a bit mushyLogitech aimed for whisper-quiet button presses, which it achieves, but they dont feel as good if you like crisp clicks for feedback. But the size of the buttons are a good proportion for narrower fingers.

Logitech Lift: Wireless performance

First, a confession: Im a savage who doesnt use a mouse mat. (Though in full disclosure, my current ergo mouse is a Contour RollerMouse Free2, which doesnt require movement on a desk surface.) But despite the lack of a mat and a slightly textured table surface, cursor tracking was very smooth with the Lift. I experienced no stutters or drop-outs while moving the mouse around the screen. You can change the tracking sensitivity (aka DPI settings) of the mouse very easily too, but be aware that upping the percentage doesnt equate to linear increases in DPI. The following chart provided by Logitech shows the logarithmic scaling youll be working with.

The Logi+ companion software shows DPI settings for the Logitech Lift as percentages, but the numbers correspond to a logarithmic scale, not a linear one. Logitech

Switching between connected devices is also seamless, with instant switching to the PC or tablet you want to control. For my testing, I was connected to three different PCstwo desktops and a laptop. The first and third were via Bluetooth, while the second was via the 2.4GHz wireless dongle.

Logitech Lift: Software

You have many options for the commands you can assign to four of the Lifts buttons. PCWorld

Out of the box, the Logitech Lift works well, but it shines best when you install its companion app, Logi Options+. Within the program, you can change settings and customize the mouse.

Particularly useful is the ability to customize button presses for specific apps, not just general use. Logi Options+ will actually start you off with some presets for select programs already installed on your system, like Adobe Creative Cloud and popular Microsoft Office apps, Chrome, and Zoom. You can set up other apps in this way, too, as well as change the preset button presses. For example, in Chrome, I have one of the thumb buttons programmed for the keyboard shortcut for word count in Google Docs.

If you move between computers often, you can choose to save the settings to a cloud-based account, which will allow you to download them elsewhere quickly. Logi Options+ also lets you set up Logi Flow, which allows you to seamlessly copy and paste between two different PCs.

For the most part, the customizations are great both in execution and their flexibility, though I did discover one small, odd quirk. As one of my general-use customizations, I chose to load the Calculator app in Windowsbut it kept loading in the background when Id press the button. I had to set up a manual customization and navigate to the same .exe file for it to work properly.

Logitech Lift: Should you buy it?

At $70, the Logitech Lift is an affordable small wireless vertical mice also friendly to left-handed folks. It stacks up well against rivals made by manufacturers that specialize in ergonomic gear, with smooth tracking and two types of connectivity. It also comes with a slick software interface and a lot of customization possibilities. However, because of its design, the Lift is better suited for people experiencing minor discomfort using regular mice or those looking to avoid ever developing such problems. Such folks will save a decent chunk of cashand theyll also end up with a mouse that has (shall we say) more conventional color options.
Access Bank has commissioned a new Agency Banking network at the Accra Technical University (ATU) in Accra. This is in line with the Banks vision of becoming the worlds most respected African Bank through strategic expansion and retail dominance.



Through this expansion drive, Access Bank has brought banking operations close to the doorsteps of the student community and surrounding vicinity. The ATU Agency brings to five, the number of the Banks Agency networks and the fourth of its physical presence in tertiary institutions.



Sharing his remarks ahead of the event, Managing Director of Access Bank Ghana Olumide Olatunji intimated that the launch of the ATU Agency will further deepen the Banks financial inclusion agenda and play a facilitating role in improving the banking experience of students on campus. He said this will grow the businesses of Small and Medium Enterprises and impact their financial lifestyle.



In a short ceremony at the Accra Technical University on Friday, the Executive Director for Retail and Digital Banking Pearl Nkrumah noted that banking is not only about where one does a transaction but the experiences that come with the transactions. She said Access Bank Ghana offers that unique experience customers need through the provision of innovative banking solutions.



This is another opportunity to bring best-in-class banking products and services to the doorsteps of students right here on your campus and indeed, the public. Over the past thirteen years, Access Bank has brought innovation to banking and the financial sector. Our range of specialized products including those targeted at the youth, among other groups clearly show that we are a Bank to reckon with for customers financial solutions.



She explained that the Banks expansion drive is in line with its mission of becoming the worlds most respected African Bank As a Bank, we are pursuing our vision of becoming the worlds most respected African Bank, offering the best financial solutions. This ambitious vision comes with a lot of responsibility. It comes with a lot of hard work and commitment on our part as a Bank to ensure that our cherished customers get the best value from us. This expansion means that students of this great Institution will enjoy the benefits of having a physical banking experience right here; the experience will not be different for customers in this vicinity Pearl noted.



Gracing the occasion, the Vice Chancellor of the Accra Technical University, Professor Samuel Nii Odai shared his excitement at the opening of the new banking facility. He said Access Bank has remained committed to its promise of establishing a physical presence at the university. He revealed that, many banks were contacted to help solve the problem of fee collection, but Access Bank has been one of the banks that responded to the call. He was optimistic that students will take the opportunity to open personal accounts and begin their future banking experience with Access Bank.



The Chief Operations Officer of Access Bank Ade Ologun was hopeful that the entire ATU community will take advantage of the facility. We have brought the bouquet of all our unique banking products and services right here to you. It is our hope that you will take advantage of the presence of our Bank here to explore the beyond banking world Access Bank offers.



Operating from 54 business locations across the country, Access Bank continues to build solid long-term relationships with customers based on trust, digital innovations, good customer service and transparency. The Bank has over the years developed a deep understanding of its customers, delivering excellent services and empowering them to achieve more through financial education.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Wilmar Africa Limited has once again distinguished itself at the National FMCG Summit and Awards held last Friday in Accra. Wilmar Africas flagship Frytol brand was adjudged the overall Food brand of the year.



The Frytol Food brand of the year award is in recognition of the brands consistent quality and innovations in ensuring nutritious meals across all food recipes. Frytol edible oil is a 100% pure vegetable oil that makes it naturally cholesterol free. It is the first Ghanaian edible oil fortified with Vitamin A to help promote good vision and supports healthy immune system. It has a great taste, which does not impact the natural taste of the food making it the brand of choice for frying, stews, roasting and grilling. Frytol has also been repositioned to not only offer the consumer functional benefits but improving the livelihood of all Ghanaians via its Goodness campaign, which has run since 2021 to promote mental, physical and emotional wellbeing for Ghanaian women.



The 2 other prestigious awards received were picked up by the General manager , Mr. Kwame B Wiafe who was adjudged the Outstanding Leader of the year (Brand Innovation) and Mrs. Patience Oforiwa Mpereh who was also notably awarded as the Marketing Lead of the year.



Kwame B Wiafe is a seasoned leader who has contributed to the Ghana FMCG industry with years of experience, which spans across marketing, finance, sales and operations. In his current portfolio as general manager of Wilmar and its subsidiaries, he has delivered year on year growth across all categories in rice, oil, soaps & detergent and specialty fats.



He has been instrumental in the expansion and siting of new plants, across these categories while inspiring his team in the delivery of innovations across products, new food and packaging technologies.



Similarly, Mrs. Patience Oforiwa Mpereh, currently the Marketing director of Wilmar Africa has distinguished herself extensively in the Fast moving consumer goods sector, with her passion and creativity in driving growth across several categories such as beverage, oral care, Food and Home care categories, contributing to business growth from Diageo, Unilever and currently Wilmar Africa. She leads her team with enthusiasm and passion empowering them to bring on their creative self and steering winning strategies to win in the market. For her outstanding contributions in delivering sustainable growth for Wilmars winning brands such as Frytol, Fortune, Jamaa and Alife, she is the undisputed Marketing lead of the year.



The entire Wilmar Africa and Wilmar International heartily extend their congratulations to the team and particularly to the General Manager and Marketing Director for these awards. This is an honour and the entire leadership extends their support for greater successes in future.



Wilmar Africa limited is a subsidiary of Wilmar International, which deals in Edible oil refinery and its derivatives, Rice packing, soaps and detergent manufacturing and specialty fats for export.









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Gunmen have released 11 passengers who were abducted during a train attack in northern Nigeria at the end of March, a government minister said, though dozens of others are thought to remain in captivity.



Gbemisola Saraki, the minister of state for transportation, said in a statement late on Saturday that the government was working to ensure all the kidnapped passengers were released.



The freed passengers were taken to a hospital in Abuja. Saraki did not say how and where they were released, or if ransom was paid.



Armed gangs, known locally as bandits, blew up the track on the Abuja-Kaduna route in the north of the country and opened fire on the night train on March 28, killing eight people.



Nigeria's state railway company initially said it could not account for 168 people who according to a passenger log had booked to travel on the train. Most were later traced to their homes, but 65 were confirmed missing.



Video released by the suspected bandits has since shown a number of people in captivity who identified themselves as passengers from the train.



"As grateful as we are for this positive development, we are equally mindful of the anguish of all the victims and their families, who have unfortunately endured and (are) still enduring unimaginable trauma since the tragic incident," Saraki said.



Bandits have killed and abducted hundreds of people for ransom in northern Nigeria, leaving citizens terrified.



Marking Democracy Day on Sunday, President Muhammadu Buhari said Nigerians were worried by rising insecurity, but promised his government was working to contain the situation and ensure a safe and secure general election in early 2023.



"I am living daily with the grief and worry for all those victims and prisoners of terrorism and kidnapping," said Buhari in a televised speech.

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.

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The Management of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra says the government is owing to the facility a whopping GHC5 million in COVID-19 expenditure.



Speaking to GHOne News, the Chief Executive Officer of the facility, Dr. Opoku-Ware Ampomah stated that a lot of factors are affecting the operation of the hospital including funds owed by the government.



We did undertake covid care so there are some monies about five million Ghana cedis still outstanding that we are engaging the Ministry for reimbursement so that we can continue to provide care to our patients.



You will also appreciate that some of the challenges are beyond the control of the institution. We have had the devaluation and the exchange rates which have affected a lot of our input which is mostly imported, Dr. Ampomah stated.



On his part, the Ranking Member for Parliamentary Committee on Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh expressed worry over why the government should owe Korle-Bu.



He added that the revelation by the Chief Executive Officer of Korle-Bu Hospital shows how the government has misused the covid funds.



You know the government announced that the treatment of COVID-19 was free. So if you go into the books of Korle-Bu the government is owing to them five million Ghana cedis on covid expenditure.



Meanwhile, we have spent not less than 23 billion Ghana cedis and we are still owing Korle-Bu five million Ghana, Mr. Akandoh disclosed.





Source: starrfm









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Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, North Tongu MP, has stated that Ken Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister's interview on GTV's Talking Point on Sunday, June 12, was "an unmitigated disaster".



According to him, the Minister, who was speaking about the recent controversies surrounding the 5000-seater National Cathedral, failed to justify why the government is funding the project with taxpayers' money instead of the private sector funding as was stated before the commencement of the project.



The Ranking Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament took to his Facebook after the Finance Minister's interview and indicated that "he [Ofori-Atta] failed to provide any justification for the egregious constitutional breaches, particularly the cardinal affront of disbursing public funds without Parliamentary approval."



To him, the Minister was unable to debunk the allegations levelled against the government in terms of funding the project with the taxpayers' money as well as the actual cost of the entire project.



"[Ken Ofori-Atta] was unable to inform Ghanaians about the total cost of President Akufo-Addos cathedral project; he couldnt assist Ghanaians with answers on exactly how much is the contribution of the taxpayer and the specific amount he has unconstitutionally released so far," Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa wrote.



"He was unable to provide contrary evidence to the many legal infractions we have accused government of, which include violating our procurement laws and illegally siphoning over GHS32million to Sir David Adjaye contrary to the Architects Act - 1969 (NLCD 357).



"He wasnt, unsurprisingly, able to refute our incontrovertible fact that despite the colossal unconstitutional releases, the contractors have abandoned the project due to lack of payments, raising major concerns about the true destination of millions of taxpayer funds.



"As Christ demonstrated in that Jerusalem Temple when he took the whip for the first and only time, He does not tolerate the corruption and desecration of His Temple  for it is written: Zeal for your house will consume me."



"Let us fear God," Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa advised.



What Ken Ofori-Atta said about the funding of the project.



Ken Ofori-Atta, while speaking on GTV's Talking Point programme stated that, poverty should not drive Ghana to shun its religiosity - to build a monument that has huge investment potential.



At any point in time when these buildings were built in Europe, was it ever the right time? How do we fund it will become the question. Is the executive mindful of the current situation?" he quizzed.



"We shouldnt snuff out our religiousness or spirituality because we are poor. The Lord will understand if we put our widows-mite in there, Ken Ofori-Atta stated.



To him, the cathedral is not costing the nation as much as has been speculated in the media.



That question being asked is that are we spending money from state coffers? Is that too much to do because we are politicizing it. Do we really want to stop it? That is going to be my question.



As a Minister of Finance, we are looking at resources and how much we put in there at every point in time that is sensible and so as we speak, we have spent less than one-thousandth of our expenditure on that, he observed.



Ken Ofori-Atta stressed, I am very confident of raising revenue to be able to fund this and then more importantly if I want to look into the economics of it, I truly see an overwhelming capacity that this will pay off. Typically, I am looking at an internal rate of return, so we should put this in mind.









Source: ghanaweb.com









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The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) and other labour unions in the country must not raise their expectations of government because the COVID-19 pandemic and the raging Russia-Ukraine war have plunged the world economy into the doldrums, Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II has urged.



The Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) made the call at the special congregation ceremony at KNUST.



I urge the government to continue to ensure that equity is manifestly done, and the citizens are fairly assured and satisfied, he said.



In the same breath, I call on UTAG and all other unions on campus and civil society at large, to be measured in their expectations, particularly at this time when the global economy is battling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, the Asante monarch noted.



I know that resources are always limited and, therefore, cannot have all we want all the time, he added.



I hope that dialogue, goodwill and trust, which are essential ingredients in resolving conflict, will be applied in all negotiations between labour unions and government in order to avoid such prolonged strike.





Source: class fm









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The minister of trade and industry, Mr. Alan Kyerematen has called for reforms within the World Trade Organization (WTO) to make it work better because it has been spending so much time on what it should do.



In a statement at the plenary session of the twelfth ministerial conference of the world trade organization, which opened on June 12, in Geneva, Switzerland, he said, it is indeed a matter of great concern to some of us who have been in and out of these Ministerial meetings over the last 20 years that we are still being confronted with the same issues that have been tabled before us over two decades, adding that, this clearly points to the need for serious structural reforms in the WTO.



The Ministerial Conferenceis the topmost decision-making body of the WTO and meets every two years. It brings together all members of the WTO, all of which are countries or customs unionsand take decisions on all matters under any of the multilateral trade agreements.



As members, we will need to take a critical look at the architecture of negotiations. Ministerial conferences are not supposed to be an extension of negotiations which are the responsibility of our technical teams, Mr Kerematen said.

He said the collective strength as members of the WTO is requiredat the Ministerial Conference to restore hope and confidence in the multilateral trading system.



As Ministers, when we gather at these conferences, we do so to make concrete decisions. I wish therefore to appeal to you my colleague Ministers to rise above the interests of our individual countries, to accommodate flexibilities which will unlock otherwise difficult bargaining positions, Mr Kyerematen said.



He said the WTO Secretariat must in between Ministerial Conferences, undertake extensive political engagements with our capitals to ensure that matters to be addressed in Ministerial meetings have the buy-in of the political leadership of member states before we convene at the Ministerial Conference.



Mr Kyerematensaid the paralyzing effect of the principle of single undertaking for a large organization such as the WTO, there was the need for deeper reflection for a diverse membership and different areas of interests, the become the subject of deeper reflection.



He said, it will be a tragedy of history for us to leave this Conference, without securing concrete outcomes which will anchor the expectations of developing and least developed countries, in using trade to help reboot their economies.

He proposed the granting of a waiver through theTrade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights(TRIPS) Council to empower Members to produce vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics for especially developing and least developing-country members, with a view to alleviating their suffering, and expediting the global recovery process.

TRIPS plays a central role in facilitating trade in knowledge and creativity, in resolving trade disputes over IP, and in assuring WTO members the latitude to achieve their domestic policy objectives.



At the national level, Ghana is in the process of establishing a Vaccine Manufacturing plant and a National Vaccine Institute to facilitate the production of vaccines, Mr Kyerematen said.



On agriculture, he said reiterated the negative effects of domestic support measures of some developed-country members, which have serious implications for agricultural development and rural livelihood improvement, adding that, correcting the existing distortions and systemic imbalances in agriculture trade, particularly through disciplines on domestic support is, therefore, a priority at this Ministerial conference.



Mr Kyerematen said Ghana supports the draft Ministerial Decision on Food insecurity in Net Food Importing Developing Countries (NFIDCs) and LDCs and call upon all WTO Members to adopt this decision at the conference, adding that, there was the need for a balanced outcome the agreement on Fisheries that adheres to the mandate of SDG14.6. Any outcome at this conference must safeguard the economic livelihoods of subsistence and artisanal fisher folks through meaningful Special and Differential Treatment provisions, he said.



He said Ghana supports the call for the reinstitution of a fully functional dispute settlement mechanism, including the appellate body, in order to re-establish trust, security and predictability in the WTO.



Mr Kyherematen said the combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have shaken the very foundations of the multilateral trading regime, adding that, the headwinds against free trade have been so strong that if there was ever a time that the role and mandate of the WTO is being seriously questioned, then that time is now. 











Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has reiterated the call for medical bills of raped and defiled victims to be absorbed by the National Health Insurance Scheme.



According to him, we already have a well-operationalized scheme which is the National Health Insurance Scheme so there is no need for a new fund. Moreover, such a move, he said will enable victims and their families to report such cases to the police for prompt actions.



In a stakeholders engagement organized by Plan International Ghana to deliberate on how medical examination bills for sexual and gender-based violence survivors can be abolished, the MP said, Fortunately for us as a country, we have a National Health Insurance Scheme which is well operationalized, cant we just make this one of the items that health insurance should take care of?.



The MP again said another option is to look at another existing fund which is the district assembly common fund to take care of medical bills of raped and defiled victims.



In Ghana, sexual and gender-based violence survivors are compelled to pay between Ghc 300 and Ghc 1,500 for medical examination, and treatment consultation in order to complete police medical forms to be able to seek justice and have their perpetrators punished.



In spite of provisions in the Domestic Violence act.2007 (act 732) section 8 states a victim of domestic violence who is assisted by the police to obtain medical treatment under subsection (1) (c) is entitled to free medical treatment from the state. SGBV survivors are continuously charged by health facilities anytime they walk in to obtain medical reports for the pursuance of justice.



However, families of the victims mostly in the rural areas are unable to pay as a result making it difficult to access justice. This has left these perpetrators openly posing more threats to the life of young people especially women and children in the community.



Plan International Ghana believes the lack of evidence to assist the prosecution of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence cases, particularly rape and defilement connects to the pervasive absence of medical reports when survivors are unable to pay the fees charged.



The Country Director for Plan International Ghana, Solomon Tesfa Mariam, said the organization will remain committed to Ghanaians and work with other relevant institutions so that every injustice issue affecting girls, boys, women and men will be addressed.





Source: atinkafm









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Senior Psychologist, Professor Joseph Osafo has cautioned Ghanaians who mock persons who are particularly suicidal to strictly desist from such attitude.



Suicide and suicide attempts are significant global public health challenge. According to the WHO, suicides are preventable with timely, evidence-based and often low-cost interventions. However, it appears little attention is given to addressing the phenomenon  only 28 countries worldwide report having national suicide prevention strategy.



Attempts to prevent suicide include the introduction of Ghanas Criminal Code which criminalizes suicide and attempted suicide in the country. But the Mental Health Act is seeking to decriminalize suicide by 2022.



Professor Joseph Osafo, speaking on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" programme, educated the citizens on the signs that people who want to commit suicide exhibit.



He stated that these persons normally show signs of depression, hopelessness and are usually ambivalent, hence when one notices these signs about another person, he or she must offer help instead of disregarding them.



He counseled parents, guardians and the entire citizenry to be empathetic towards people who threaten to take their lives.



"When people have problems on meaning and purpose is a sign that something is wrong", he said.



He also noted that mocking or challenging a suicidal person propels the latter to end his or her life.



"People want help...Don't challenge someone who wants to commit suicide. Don't ever challenge somebody in distress who wants to die or who has threatened to die. Don't ever mock someone who wants to die. Don't ever tell that person that he/she is mad. Listen to them. Never underrate the reason for which they want to die", he advised.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Dozens of soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo have crossed into Uganda after the M23 rebels blocked the main road to Rutshuru.



Ugandan army spokesperson Brig Gen Felix Kulaigye told the BBC that the soldiers were being received at a Ugandan army barracks at the border town of Bunagana.



A source told the BBC that some of the Congolese soldiers had arrived in military vehicles while others crossed on foot.



Reports indicate that the M23 rebels overran the Congolese side of Bunagana on Monday morning.



Pictures of overturned armoured vehicles believed to belong to the Congolese army - the FARDC, have also been shared on social media.



UN agencies say that more than 30,000 people in the Rutshuru territory of North Kivu province fled their homes over the weekend.



Hundreds have been internally displaced while others have crossed the border to Uganda.



The Ugandan side of Bunagana border town is crowded with people who have fled their homes due to the fighting over the last couple of days.



Some had wanted to return home on Monday morning, but even more people are now fleeing the fighting.



Fighting between the government forces and the army has intensified over the last couple of weeks, after the Congolese government designated the M23 as a terrorist group and refused their calls for a bilateral ceasefire or peace negotiations.



DR Congo accuses Rwanda of supporting the group made up of mainly ethnic Congolese Tutsi, but the government in Kigali has continually denied these accusations.

Source: BBC









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Over 1,000 trees have been planted in the Atiwa Forest at Segyimase in the Abuakwa South Municipality to replace the lost trees in the forest as a result of the illegal clearing of land for farming and other human activities.



The replacement of the lost trees called enrichment planting' with more tree species would help increase the integrity of the forest to attract animals like monkeys back into the forest reserve at Segyimase



The trees were planted by the Kyebi District Ghana Forestry Commission in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Okyeman Environment Foundation during the second edition of the Green Ghana Day project.



Mr Emmanuel Antwi, Manager Kyebi District Forestry Commission said this year, a portion of the 150,000 trees allocated to the district would be planted in the forest reserve at Segyimase.



We are planting trees in the forest reserves so that if per adventure, the trees planted on people's farms, school lands and other places are destroyed, we will have compensation for them in the forest, he explained.



Mr Antwi noted that tree seedlings, which were freely distributed to residents in the district would be monitored to ensure that all the trees had been planted and were growing well.



He revealed that the prospecting permit given to the Ghana Integrated Aluminum Development Corporation (GIADEC) to assess the possibility of exploring bauxite deposits in the Atewa forest has expired since last year May and has not been renewed.



I am managing my forest reserve and currently planting more species of trees such as Mahogany, Ofram, Emire and Cassia to improve the integrity of the forest, he stated.



Dr Eugene Owusu, Special Advisor to the President of Ghana on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) said though the government had shown intentions of bauxite extraction in the Atewa Forest, the process must be done without destroying the forest.



It cannot be done at the cost of the decimation of our forest. If we dont succeed in protecting this planet then, we dont stand a chance of achieving the SDGs, he noted.







Source: GNA









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Provision of social amenities are civic right of the people and must not be seen as a favour being done to communities.



The constitution of Ghana mandates the district Assembly as the development agents of communities to plan and execute projects to improve the welfare of the people.



Mr Samuel Afrane, Country Director of The Hunger Project, Ghana who said this, argued that citizens must be empowered to participate in local governance to be able to demand the same from the Assemblies.



The district assemblies are responsible for the provision of basic services and social amenities in the communities, but it is unthinkable how assembly members and chiefs virtually beg for the very things the assembly should be doing, he observed.



Mr Afrane made the remarks at the opening of a day's training workshop for media personnel in the Eastern Region on good governance and decentralized planning systems organized by The Hunger Project, Ghana in Koforidua.



The media training was part of a three-year governance project called, "strengthening sub-district institutions for community-led public services in Ghana," being implemented in five districts in the Eastern Region.



The project is being implemented by the Hunger Project Ghana with funding by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).



He charged the media to help educate citizens living in underserved communities to empower them to demand of the Assemblies what is due them for holistic development.



He observed, in as much as we demand for our rights, we have to be responsible in tax and property rate payments, practicing good sanitation and others" to curb the growing lawlessness in the society."



The Hunger Project is a global, non-profit, strategic organization committed to end hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centered strategies and advocating for widespread adoption in countries throughout the world.





Source: GNA









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The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) can ensure quality, accessible and affordable healthcare only through continuous expansion.



Mr Fred Appiah, Central Regional Director of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), who stated this at a stakeholders engagement in the Gomoa District NHIS at Apam noted it was only continuous expansion that can put Ghana on the radar above her counterparts in the West Sub-Region in the pursuit of Universal Health Care (UHC) by 2030.



The meeting under the theme: Using the Ghana Card for Expanding Access to Healthcare, the Role of stakeholders, was attended by stakeholders of the Scheme including, Assembly members, Ghana Health Service, Ghana Education Service and Service providers.



It discussed the roles of stakeholders in expanding access to healthcare through the NHIS and the usage of the Ghana card.



The Gomoaman NHIA, covers three administrative and political districts, (Gomoa West, Gomoa East and Gomoa Central, with a population of 521,819 according to the 2021 Population and Housing Census.



Mr Appiah informed the gathering that the NHIA-Ghana Card linkage was to allow NHIS registered members to use the Ghana Card to access healthcare service under the Scheme, saying the benefit of the collaboration includes synchronization of data for a much cleaner database.



He charged the stakeholders to inform their community members on the need to link their NHIS and Ghana cards before proceeding to the hospital, added that children under 15 years and pregnant women must however continue to use their NHIS cards to access healthcare until further notice.



According to Mr Appiah, Ghanas goal was to achieve the UHC by 2030 was hinged on the NHIS with a benchmark of at least 80 percent of the countrys population to be enrolled unto the Scheme by the targeted year.



The year 2030 is just eight years away hence, there is an urgent need for innovative strategies on all fronts including all stakeholders if the county must achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), of the UHC, he stated.



According to Mr Appiah, the bi-partisan goodwill and commitment, sustainable innovation, progressive financial model among others was the secret behind Ghanas success in sustaining the NHIS, which undoubtedly was one of the essential tools for attaining the UHC.



The Regional Director informed the gathering that, despite its challenges, there was no doubt that, the NHIS had given access to many people who have been denied healthcare in various forms due to their inability to pay for the services needed.



As part of the digitalization effort, the NHIS has embarked on some important solution-based interventions aimed at increasing the scheme membership and to make the NHIS subscriber happy, he indicated.



Key among the current innovations was the NHIS Mobile Renewal Service which allowed subscribers to renew their membership anywhere, anytime on their mobile phones, using the shortcode 929#, he announced.



Mr. Appiah further stated that, the Mobile Renewal Service had catapulted the total membership to 25,358,957 with an active membership of 16,759,358 of which Central Region contributed 1,269,478 at the end of 2021, with majority of them being females.



Since the introduction of the NHIS, it has grown to become a major instrument for financing healthcare delivery, he noted adding that currently, the Scheme contributed more than 85 percent of service delivery income of public and quasi-public health care facilities.







Source: GNA









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Preparatory works are ongoing on the 403 acres of land secured at Pokuase/Amasaman in the Greater Accra Region and Dedesua in the Ashanti Region for the implementation of two affordable housing pilot schemes.



Mr Francis Asenso-Boakye, the Minister of Works and Housing, who said this at a media briefing in Accra, said the Ministry had commenced active engagements with the Finance Ministry and the Lands Commission towards securing government acquired lands for the National Affordable Housing programme.



The projects, part of the district housing programme, the Minister said, was to increase access to rental housing for public sector workers at the Metropolitan, Municipal and District level, create jobs and improve living conditions.



He said the pilot phase would be implemented in 16 districts across the 16 regions of the country.



Although the housing deficit in the country had reduced from two million to 1.8 million housing units, he said the housing delivery system had failed to meet the needs of the low-to-middle income group.



Approximately, 12.7 percent of the total structures counted in the 2021 National Housing and Population census, were vacant housing units, giving a clear indication that Ghanas housing supply had outpriced the average person in Ghana, he noted.



Speaking on the Rent Act, 1963 (Act 220) and the Rent Control Law, 1986 (PNDCL 138), Mr Asenso-Boakye said Cabinet had given policy approval for their review.



The review would among other things, remove inherent constraints, stimulate private sector investment and offer protection to low-income and vulnerable tenants from abuse and arbitrary actions.



To that effect, he said a Draft Rent Bill had been prepared and active stakeholder engagements had commenced.



On the Saglemi Affordable Housing project, the Minister said government was committed to completing it and that Cabinet was currently reviewing various options towards the completion of the project.



This government will not renege on its duty to ensure that, Ghanaians obtain value for money in the application of the taxpayers money, he added.





Source: GNA









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The Ministry for Works and Housing has reminded Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) to demolish all structures on waterways as instructed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo recently.



He indicated that the government has invested a lot in dealing with issues of flooding, especially in the capital.



He said if not for the investment made, flood-prone areas within the capital, Accra, would have posed greater dangers than it has witnessed anytime there is a downpour.



He added that a task force has been formed to help in dealing with the issue and MMDCEs must comply.



The district assemblies have the powers and we the citizens have to support them so that we can be successful. The President has given the directive and a task force has been set up at the office of the President, and I am very hopeful that this directive will be enforced to bring down a lot of structures to mitigate the effects of flooding, especially in Accra.



He was speaking at the Meet the Press series organized by the Ministry of Information.



Meanwhile, he has revealed that it will cost the government over US$5 billion to solve Ghanas perennial flooding situation.



Some studies have been done, and they indicate that to address the flooding issue in the country, Ghana will need about US$ 5 billion to be able to address the flooding challenges across the country. This was done some time ago and so if we have to use it, we have to review it because a lot has happened since then.



Background



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo last month directed Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the Greater Accra Region to demolish all structures that cause flooding in the city.



He asked them to demolish the structures with immediate effect.



MMDCEs have been charged to ensure that obstructions to the free flow of water as well as developments on waterways are removed immediately. MMDAs are also to ensure the strict adherence to developments in the planning laws of the country and sanction staff who issue permits for structures to be put on waterways to serve as a deterrent for those who engage in such acts, Nana Akufo-Addo ordered.



Speaking at the commissioning of two IHC Beaver 50 dredgers and marine equipment of Dredge Masters Limited (DML), a subsidiary of the Jospong Group of Companies (JGC) in Accra, he said, We will ensure that these directives are complied with. I have established a monitoring unit, and they will be reporting directly to me on the progress of the implementation of these measures. I am putting all MMDCEs on notice and will be held responsible for any breaches that result in damage as a result of flooding.





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Source: Rainbow radio









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The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori- Atta says money being pumped into the building of National Cathedral is potential investment which will pay off.



According to him, government is mindful of taxpayers money being used to support the building of the National Cathedral and is strategizing to ensure that monies pumped into the construction are recouped within the shortest possible time after construction.



He believes that the current economic challenges should not deter the state from fulfilling its responsibility to build a monument that has huge investment potential.



The Finance Minister has therefore implored critics of the National Cathedral project to be measured in their criticisms



At any point in time when these buildings were built in Europe, was it ever the right time? How do we fund it will become the question. Is the executive mindful of the current situation? We shouldnt snuff out our religiousness or spirituality because we are poor. The Lord will understand if we put our widows mite in there, Ken Ofori-Atta said on GTV Talking Point programme on Sunday.



Some Ghanaians are against the construction of the National Cathedral and want Government to abort its ambition for the project as a result of the countrys economic downturn and tough times being faced by the citizenry.



This was after it emerged government recently released GH25 million to the National Cathedral Secretariat as seed money for the project.



However, the Finance Minister believes the raging debate on the financial prudence and relevance of the National Cathedral is misguided.



That question being asked is that are we spending money from state coffers? Is that too much to do because we are politicizing it. Do we really want to stop it? That is going to be my question.



Ken Ofori- Atta wants critics not to lose sight of the real returns the National Cathedral project could generate to shore up governments revenue target.



He mentioned that As a Minister of Finance, we are looking at resources and how much we put in there at every point in time that is sensible and so as we speak, we have spent less than one-thousandth of our expenditure on that.



I am very confident of raising revenue to be able to fund this and then more importantly if I want to look into the economics of it, I truly see an overwhelming capacity that this will pay off. Typically, I am looking at an internal rate of return, so we should put this in mind.

Source: Daily Guide









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Vodafone Ghana has marked its annual Ashanti Month celebrations with free digital education and free health screening activities.



Through its charity arm, the Vodafone Foundation, the company engaged over 6000 students in 5 schools in the region with its flagship digital educational platform, Instant Schools. Through Instant Schools, Vodafone Ghana provides access to essential educational resources, including subjects such as Maths and Science, from primary to secondary school levels. The content is accessible via mobile phones for free, which benefits children who do not have access to traditional schooling.



Besides this e-learning activity, the Vodafone Foundation collaborated with doctors and nurses of the Tafo Government Hospital to provide free health screening, medical testing, consultations and medication to over 300 natives of the Kumasi Tafo community and its environs. The healthcare professionals screened primarily for sickle cell, and also for other medical conditions like diabetes, hypertension, hepatitis B, and HIV. The Vodafone Foundation also provided NHIS registration and donated some items to the hospital.



Speaking at the event, Dr Mrs Stella Agyenim-Boateng, Board Director of the Vodafone Foundation, explained that the foundation was undertaking many impactful interventions in the region during Ashanti Month - from education to health and the environment.



From now on, we have themed all the interventions that the Vodafone Ghana Foundation offers the people of Asanteman each year as Boa Asanteman. Translated from Twi, this means Help the Ashanti region.

Also, Dr Agyenim-Boateng stressed the importance of the sickle cell screening exercise, saying, Most people are unaware that the disease is preventable. In addition to free screening, there is an opportunity for people here to get tested and know their sickle cell status.



Expanding on the theme, Geta Striggner-Quartey, Vodafone Ghanas Director for Legal and External Affairs, said, Each year, we increase the impact of our support and tailor our programmes to address the pressing issues of the region. Boa Asanteman underscores our commitment to helping address some key sustainable development issues in the region, in the areas of education, health and the environment.



For his part, Reverend Amaris Nana Adjei Perbi, Head of the Vodafone Foundation, said schools that benefitted from Vodafone e-learning platform include Asanteman SHS, Kumasi Anglican SHS, Kumasi Wesley Girls SHS and Kumasi Academy.



Aside from being introduced to the Instant Schools e-learning platform, the students were taken through practical coding lessons where they learned basic computer programming using the Arduino platform, he said.



He noted that Vodafone Foundation also has other initiatives to help develop young minds in Ghana. These include the National Coding Programme, which has equipped thousands of Ghanaian youth with vital computer programming and coding skills. Currently, Vodafones monthly STEM Birthday Stars and Vodafone-Ghana Library ICT Hubs continue to support and empower the youth with essential digital skills.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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The Oti regional minister, Joshua Makubu, has ordered for the removal of all the trees that were planted by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) as part of the partys celebration of the 4 June anniversary this year.



The 4 June uprising was staged in 1979 to release J J Rawlings, who later became a military ruler and a democratically elected president in Ghana. He was the founder of the NDC.



As part of the celebration, the leadership of the NDC planted trees at the Nkwanta Community Day SHS in the Oti Region.



However, the minister said using a school premises for the tree planting exercise was inappropriate.



Speaking at Kpasa Senior High Technical School to mark this years Green Ghana Day, Makubu said: 4 June was a day peoples parents and lovely ones were killed and many have lost their livelihood. People are still crying over it. For this reason, it is not an occasion to plant trees that will keep hurting such families as the NDC did.



We can not sit down as a country, as a municipality, as a region or a school and allow trees to be planted on a compound to signify this day where people lost their lives. We are indirectly saying that, if your grandfather was General FK Abu, Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and General Afrifa, then it means that you shouldnt come to Nkwanta Community Senior High School because if you come there, you will see the trees there and you will remember June 4 and you will remember the death of your father and other loved ones who lost their lives, the minister said.



We are still hurting and causing pain to this generation and for that matter I disagree with the idea of planting trees on a school compound to commemorate 4 June.



Im a member of the New Patriotic Party, as a regional minister and I will never under any circumstances allow the New Patriotic Party to get into any senior high school campus to plant trees to commemorate a party event and I cannot allow such from any other party to put tears on the faces of my people, Makubu added.



He therefore directed the Nkwanta South MCE, Bright Lenwah to make sure that the trees were removed.



If you want to plant your party trees, get a land, invite us and well come but not on a school belonging to the country, Makubu said.









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At least 35 staff of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital have been infected with COVID-19, available figures at the premier hospital indicate.



Sources at the hospital say over 70% of the new infections were acquired within the hospital with 30% of the infections coming from outside the health facility.



The hospital has since advised workers to strictly adhere to the COVID-19 protocols to help contain the upsurge in cases.



As healthcare workers, learn to live safely with coronavirus (COVID-19), it is our responsibility to reduce the risk of catching COVID-19 and passing it on to another healthcare worker or family members, a notice to hospital staff said.



A new survey conducted by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has said 18.1% of the current COVID-19 cases are among children between the ages of 0-15 years.



Briefing the media in Accra last Wednesday, the director-general of GHS Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said the service will deepen its vaccination drive to help contain the upsurge.



Currently, of the Accra cases, about 18.1% on average are among children aged between 0-15 years, obviously these are unvaccinated children, so 18% of this number are in children.



So, if you look at the age distribution you can see that 0-5 is 3.8%, 6-10 years about 6.9% of the cases between May and June and then 11-15 years about 7.4%, so that together makes up the 18.1% he said.



The youth becomes a critical group that we need to take a look at, and because most of them cannot be vaccinated now, the protocol has to be stepped up. The youngest child who had was six months, the sibling came from school and infected the family including the baby, so that is the situation we have now, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said.













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Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of technology solutions firm, TechGulf and Chairman for the IT committee of the America Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), Mr. Franklin Asare says Ghanas technology ecosystem is ready to partner with private sector tech organizations from the United States. Mr. Asare was speaking during a meeting with the Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, Ms. Akunna Cook last Wednesday.



According to Mr. Asare, Ghanas tech ecosystem has over the years seen massive adoption of digital innovations, one that makes it a preferred destination for tech businesses around the world and as such, partnering tech companies from the U.S will only go a long way to boost technological ties between the two countries.



As everything becomes increasingly interconnected, the way we conduct business, work and play is radically changing. More than anything else, and as societies are now emerging into the era of technology and innovation, Ghana is positioned to partner and build lasting relationships particular in this domain.



Already, we have a tech ecosystem that is the envy of many on the continent. That is why we are willing to open our doors to tech companies from the U.S to partner with local Ghanaian tech companies in the spirit of developing the tech sectors of both countries, he said.





Despite emerging from a global pandemic and markets still in the process of recovery, the COVID-19 pandemic era was a landmark era for tech startups in Ghana. This era saw a lot of startups employ innovative means of doing business while allowing staff to work from home in respect to social distancing protocols.



Though Ghana is identified as an adopter of fourth industrial revolution technologies instead of a net producer, there is potential for the country to become more involved in the primary business of developing its own tech solutions.



These factors, according to Mr. Asare, form the foundation for a market with new and exciting opportunities waiting to be tapped by companies from advanced countries like the U.S.



Ms. Cook emphasized that U.S firms have a role to play in developing opportunities in Ghanas tech ecosystem and that digital transformation in Africa demands individuals passionate about creative industries and digital innovation. She underscored the importance of connectivity, capacity and skills building, and creating an enabling environment for the digital economy.



TechGulf is a technology company based in San Francisco, CA, and Accra, Ghana, with a mandate to provide stable and secure data storage hardware and services across Africa and the strategic partner of Overland Tandberg. Overland-Tandberg is a developer and manufacturer of hybrid cloud IT infrastructure and data protection solutions, and the largest privately held Black-owned global technology company in the United States.



Also present at the meeting was the U.S. Embassy Economic Section Chief, Stephanie Hutchison; Economic Officer, Gunner Hamyln; Head of Operations of the Accra Digital Center, David Ofori; Head of Sales and Marketing at TechGulf, Priscilla Okai; and IT Infrastructure Consultant at TechGulf, David Indome.





Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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UK Parliament has invited members of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Ghanas Parliament to a meeting over the anti-gay bill, Chair of the Committee, Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi, has revealed.



He told TV3 in an exclusive interview that the lawmakers will be leaving Kotoka International Airport (KIA) on Sunday, June 12 and then walk into the meeting on Monday, June 13.



The invitation came to the Speaker and the Speaker forwarded it to the Committee. Four members of the committee including myself and the ranking member will be attending this important meeting. We take off on Sunday, we were supposed to have gone today but because of flight arrangement we will go on Sunday so we walk into the meeting Monday morning and by Wednesday we are done, he said on Saturday, June 11.



The controversial bill has divided opinion in Ghana.



While some, particularly the religious and traditional groupings, supported the Bill and were hopeful of its passing, others say it could incur the wrath of the international community against Ghana.



The bill is being promoted by Ningo Prampram lawmaker Samuel Nartey George and some of his colleague legislators.

Source: 3news









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Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta is expected to appear before Parliament on Thursday, June 16, to brief the House on the expenditure incurred by the Government since the outbreak of the COVID-19 in 2020.



Mr Alexander Afenyo-Markin, the Deputy Majority Leader, said this when he presented the Business Statement for the fourth week ending Friday, June 17, 2022.



He informed the House that the Leadership of Parliament was in consultation with the Minister for National Security to brief the House at a close sitting on matters pertaining to the security of the state, particularly regarding the recent spate of incipient terrorist attacks within the West African sub-region.



He said the day of the briefing would be communicated to Members of Parliament during the coming week.



Mr Afenyo-Markin encouraged the MPs to fully participate in the Green Ghana Day, a national tree planting exercise, by leading their constituents to make the initiative of government a success.



He said the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources made a statement in Parliament on the 2022 Edition of the Green Ghana Day, as part of governments effort towards aggressive afforestation and reforestation to restore the lost forest cover and mitigate climate change.

Source: GNA









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General Secretary of the largest opposition National Democratic Congress(NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, has expressed worry about why some Ghanaian politicians and Journalists will prefer to praise a taxi driver who returned someone's money found in his car but will condemn Togbe Afede who refunded state cash he felt he did not need.



Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme, he noted that he could not fathom why Ghanaians will choose to praise a taxi driver who returned money left in his car but rather unnecessarily chastise an accomplished statesman who refunded ex-gratia paid him by the state because he felt the country needs it more than him.



" . . some of the people who are insulting Togbe Afede contributed monies for the Taxi Driver that he has done well, so what is the difference?" he rhetorically asked.



According to him this is hypocrisy in its highest form especially when Journalists who are supposed to know better are even involved.



The Paramount Chief of the Asogli State, Togbe Afede XIV has refunded the GHS365,000 that was paid into his account as ex-gratia for being a member of the Council of State from 2017 to 2020.



In a statement issued by the Agbogbomefia, he said he received monthly payments and allowances while being a member of the Council of State therefore he sees no need for the payment of the ex-gratia.



I did not think the payment was made to trap me, as is being speculated. I believe it was paid to everybody who served on the Council of State. However, I thought that extra payment was inappropriate for a short, effectively part-time work, for which I received a monthly salary and was entitled to other privileges. So, I was very uncomfortable with it, Togbe Afede XIV said in a statement.



He intimated that such actions should be praised to encourage others to save the public purse from all the unnecessary state spending and wasting of public funds.



Watch video below









Paul Adom-Otchere lives by his stomach  Togbe Afede jabs





Togbe Afede XIV, a former member of the Council of State, has for the first time spoken about comments by his 'friend' and host of 'Good Evening Ghana' programme, Paul Adom-Otchere, on his conduct as a member of the Council.



The traditional ruler expressed his disappointment with claims that he attended lesser meetings while he was a member of the Council of State.



Togbe Afede stated that the claims are untrue. He explained that during his time as a Council of State member, he was 'one of the active participants' in the Council's meetings.



He stated that Adom-Otchere's conduct on TV was not surprising as he has done a similar thing in the past.

Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline/[email protected]









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Two political veterans in their 70s are vying to be Nigeria's next president, promising pro-business policies to revamp Africa's largest economy by fixing its oil sector and curbing widespread security threats.



The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) this week chose Bola Tinubu to be its candidate to replace President Muhammadu Buhari in next year's vote. He will face Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and veteran politician who is the main opposition People's Democratic Party's (PDP) flagbearer.



Abubakar previously ran on a commitment to privatise the state-owned oil firm and establish a fund to stimulate private infrastructure investment. For his part, Tinubu is vowing to boost manufacturing to reduce Nigeria's dependence on imports, build a deep sea port in the south and increase gas and oil exploration in the continent's top crude producer.



"No matter what the election outcome, the policy trajectory will change fundamentally," the Financial Derivatives Company said in a note to investors. "The protectionist policies of the last decade are likely to be discarded."





Under Buhari, the central bank has come up with a priority list of imports to curb dollar outflows and imposed exchange controls, which Tinubu and Abubakar want to do away with.



They also want to clean up the oil sector by either privatising the state oil firm or removing a costly petrol subsidy.



Crude theft and vandalism of pipelines has seen the government cutting its budgeted oil output to 1.4 million barrels per day from 1.8 million bpd initially, meaning Nigeria is missing out on a boom in oil prices unlike some other oil producers in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine.





Nigeria lost 434 billion naira ($1 billion) to oil theft in the first quarter of this year alone, the oil regulator says.



SECURITY ISSUES



In their favour at the ballot box, both Tinubu, 70, and Abubakar, 75, are established figures who have built vast tribal, religious, and political networks that have chosen the election winner over the previous two decades. read more



But the two candidates will have to contend with the image of geriatric men running a young nation.



Nigeria's tech savvy youths accounted for half of the voters during the 2019 election and the number is expected to rise. They want jobs and business opportunities and complain of being excluded from decision making in Nigerian politics.



The winner will also face a slew of security issues, including a widening Islamist insurgency that has left many dead in its wake as underlined by a massacre in a Catholic church on Sunday in which 40 people were killed.



Banditry and kidnappings, long-running unrest in the Niger Delta, confrontations between herders and farmers, and separatist Biafra movement in the southeast are other risks.



Tinubu and Abubakar say they will end the cycle of violence, but this will not be the first time Nigerians have heard such promises, and many are dismayed at how insecurity and poverty levels have grown since voting for Buhari, who pledged to alleviate insecurity and boost the economy.



"These are establishment candidates, the system made them so I doubt they are going to be reformists or revolutionary," said Abiodun Adeneyi, a professor of mass communication at Baze University in Lagos. "I do not see how they can do anything different to overcome the security situation."

Source: REUTERS









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Former National Organizer of the largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Yaw Boateng Gyan, has suggested that the current leadership of the party should extend an olive branch to the wife of the founder of the party, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings as the party celebrates its 30th anniversary.



According to him, the wife Jerry John Rawlings has contributed immensely to the growth and development of the party and if there is anytime for her to be recognized, then it should be now.



Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme, he explained that the party is gathering momentum to win power in 2024 and they should not lose focus on certain key personalities whose major contribution and sacrifice has brought the party to its current state.



"Though she has moved on to form her own political party now, it will still be prudent to invite her over to one of the party's programmes as it celebrates its 30th anniversary," he said.



" . . for me, I think there is no harm in trying to invite the former first lady who equally happens to be the wife of the founder and leader of the party, Jerry John Rawlings".





Watch Video Below





Arise, Arise for Ghana today and forever!Thirty (30) years ago the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was birthed with the objective of delivering Unity, Stability and Development to all Ghanaians.Through the leadership of Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings (Rtd.), supported by his formidable team, the NDC emerged out of the PNDC as the vanguard leading the nation in the establishment of a new constitutional democracy, which guaranteed the rights and freedoms of all Ghanaians.On this solemn day, I commend our forebears who have sacrificed their all to get us here.The NDC genuinely believes that the essence of democracy is to make life better for all citizens. This is why every time it has had the privilege of leading this country, the NDC strives to create opportunities for all Ghanaians, irrespective of ethnic, religious or political affiliation.The NDC also believes democracy goes beyond enriching family and friends, because it involves using the nations resources responsibly to address the felt needs of all Ghanaians.Democracy, transparency and accountability are bed fellows, and therefore, while creating opportunities for all, leaders are also required to wage a strong battle against corruption.The NDC knows that a media cowed into silence and an intimidated citizenry do not constitute the appropriate resource for sustainable progress and national development.We believe, therefore, that the ability of citizens to express themselves freely is a right and not a privilege.This administration must learn to tolerate criticisms and enhance free speech while protecting journalists from harm.The NDC assures every Ghanaian of better years ahead. We have done it before; bringing tangible socio-economic infrastructure to your communities and ensuring the economy works for all of us and not just a privileged few.On this auspicious 30th anniversary day, June 10, 2022, I ask all NDC members and sympathisers including the youth of Ghana; and all Ghanaians to Arise, Arise for Ghana wherever we find ourselves.Ghana needs our collective and patriotic energies to rescue her from the decay we see today.Arise, Arise for Ghana!

Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline/[email protected]









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Kennedy Agyapongs declaration of his intentions to battle favourites, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and Alan Kyerematen is one that elicited some shocking reactions as the Assin Central MP has always given indications of not just bowing out of parliament but bowing of politics.



His decision to contest has thrown the otherwise two-horse race of the New Patriotic Party wide open with delegates now having to re-work their minds on who they will be voting for.



Aided by accumulated wealth and enigmatic popularity, Kennedy Agyapong is not just going to give Alan and Bawumia a strong contest, but is also a likely winner for the flagbearer role of the party.



So, in the event that Kennedy Agyapong wins the NPP primaries, who are the likely candidates to be his running mate for the position?



Samuel Abu Jinapor



The Member of Parliament for Damongo Constituency has a great relationship with Kennedy Agyapong and will also fill the question of who partners him from the north.



Within the NPP, the Lands and Natural Resources Minister is deemed to be a bright spot from the northern side of the country and could one day ascend to the throne of presidency.



From Deputy Chief of Staff to Lands Minister, Abu Jinapor has garnered enough experience for the role.



Also, as lawyer, Abu Jinapor will reflect the legal side of a Kennedy Agyapong presidency.



Dr Mahamudu Bawumia



The 2023 Presidential Primaries of the NPP will be crucial because it presents the party a chance to dead the narrative that the party is reserved for persons from certain parts of the country.



Already, whisperings from the camp of the Vice President indicate that he is set and ready to battle for the flagbearer slot of the party as he believes it is his time.



With Ken, coming in, Bawumias road to victory has become more challenging but if you cannot be first, why not settle for second.



The Vice President could reach an agreement with Kennedy Agyapong and become his Veep if Ken beats him at the primaries.



With Bawumia, Ken has the right man to draw votes from the Northern Regions and the Muslims communities dotted around the country.



Matthew Opoku Prempeh



Kennedy Agyapong has a strong appeal in the Ashanti Region which may inform his decision not to pick a someone from Kumasi but if there is an opportunity to cement his victory in the region why not go for the medical doctor who is also a royal.



The Member of Parliament for Manhyia South is said to be undergoing grooming to eventually become president and becoming a vice president candidate under Kennedy Agyapong will enhance his chances.



Ursula Owusu-Ekuful



Prior to the 2020 elections, rumours surfaced that Ursula Owusu was being groomed to replace Dr Bawumia when he moves up the ladder as the leader of the New Patriotic Party.



The Minister for Communications is rising steadily within the party and there are predictions that she could be the first female presidential candidate from the two major political parties in the country.



Aside the gender card, Ursula who is from the Eastern Region and grew up in the Greater Accra Region is seen as one who could help tilt the scale in the NPPs favour.



Ursula Owusu-Ekuful is a three-time member of Parliament for Ablekuma West and a lawyer of high repute.



Hajia Alima Mahama



Hajia Alima Mahama brings the Tripathi benefits of gender, Muslim and Northerner. Currently, Ghanas ambassador to the United States of America, Hajia Alima has tonnes of experience and will appeal greatly to the above named demographic.



With Kennedy Agyapong being more of a firebrand, the former Member of Parliament for Nalerigu Gambaga will bring her calming influence and the two could form a great duo.



Hajia Alima has also gone through the mill, from MP to Minister and now to a diplomat.

Source: ghanaweb.com









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Award-winning Ghanaian rapper, Gambo, has released unarguably Ghana's best wedding song for the year 2022.



The Vodafone Ghana Music Awards Unsung Act of The Year teamed up with fellow musician Kechi to release 'Settle', a true wedding banger.



In 'Settle', Gambo continued his admired tradition of showcasing and marketing the beautiful side of Ghana to the outside world.



https://youtu.be/mHehA_aL2xk



'Settle' encourages women to bring an end to the long years of waiting and acting as 'house helps' before being taken to the alter for marriage.



Gambo believes women do not need to be kept at home, cooking and washing dishes for four to five years before they are married.



A fellow up to his hit song 'Boys Aye Wild', he drummed home the message in 'Settle' that men must not only be the breadwinner or spoil their partners, but must marry them without wasting so many years.



'Settle' is basically about carrying her home, highlighting that if a man sees a woman of his dream, he should quicken to meet her parents and marry her.



The highly controversial and versatile musician, Gambo says the time when women had to wait for five years before they are married is over, urging women to quit a relationship in which their partners are not proposing marriage.



Gambo is one of the few finest musicians Ghana has produced over the last three years.



His music videos from 'Drip', 'Kwacha', 'Beautiful' to 'Boys Aye Wild', have always moved away from the usual practice of showcasing the 'poverty side' of Ghana, to marketing and projecting the beautiful and touristic side of Ghana.



Gambo has always maintained that Ghanaian musicians need to invest significantly in producing quality music videos that match videos produced by artistes in the US and other parts of the world.



https://ffm.to/gambo-settle-ft-keche



He has always resisted the temptation of making 'cheap music videos', as he has consistently invested heavily in producing some of the top quality music videos from Ghana in recent years.



The 'Settle' video is no difference. Gambo equally made significant investment in producing the official video for 'Settle' and as typical of him, showcased and marketed the better side of Ghana in the video.



If you are looking for that great wedding song, Settle is the best.









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Opposition B.C. Liberal Party Leader Kevin Falcon is sworn in during an oath ceremony and introduction to the house in the Hall of Honour at legislature in Victoria, Monday, May 16, 2022 in this file photo.
African swine fever (ASF) has been found in domestic pigs in Italy for the first time, delivering a major blow to the countrys pork sector.

Two cases were detected on a farm in Romes Lazio region last week. The infected pigs were culled immediately, along with seven others on the farm, as veterinary authorities prepare to slaughter all pigs within a 10-km radius of the site, an estimated 1,000 animals, according to Wanted in Rome.

The virus was discovered in wild boar in Rome in May, having jumped around 500km from an initial outbreak of ASF in wild boar in north-west Italy at the start of the year. Angelo Ferrari, the governments special commissioner in charge of tackling ASF, has also ordered the culling of at least 400 wild boar in the Lazio region, state broadcaster RAI reported.

But the discovery of ASF on a pig farm in Lazio, prompting the cull of 1,000 pigs locally to stem the spread, opens up a new problem.

Italy is the seventh biggest pork producer in the EU and its farming groups have described the transfer of ASF from wild boar to domestic pigs as a disaster that was waiting to happen, amid growing concerns for the 8bn sector, which employs around 50,000 people.

The main agricultural association Coldiretti called on the government last month for the rapid culling of wild boars throughout the country to help stop the spread of the disease.

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Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Partial cloudiness early, with scattered showers and thunderstorms during the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 99F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms early, then partly cloudy after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 73F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Tiara Boyd, Monte Sano Elementary, celebrates the event as she receives a special prize in addition to her mini grant award. Educators from the greater Aiken-Augusta area recently received grants ranging from $500 to $1,000 as a part of this years Savannah River Nuclear Solutions Innovative Teaching Mini Grants Program. Approximately 14,500 students from 50 schools will be directly impacted by the grants this year.
Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Isolated thunderstorms early, then partly cloudy after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 73F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms early, then partly cloudy after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 73F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Sun and clouds mixed. Near record high temperatures. High 92F. E winds at less than 5 mph, increasing to 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. Low near 75F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph.
COLUMBIA  The city of Columbia is hiring a recruiter to try to sell national retail and hospitality investors on South Carolinas capital city.

The recruiter will pay visits to investors in large cities like New York and Charlotte in an effort to convince these them that there are profits to be made building in the Palmetto State's second-largest city, not just in Lowcountry and Upstate population centers.

What you see in Columbia today is what happens when you recycle your capital, Councilman Joe Taylor said June 13. Weve got to go recruit new capital. We need new buildings. We need new corporate offices.

The effort applies some of the mentality of the state Commerce Department, which Taylor previously helmed, to Columbia's city center.

But rather than going after large manufacturing campuses, the city is seeking companies that want to build hotels, restaurants, corporate offices and call centers, "things that work in a downtown environment," Taylor said.

Were taking a whole new look at economic development, Taylor added.

In addition to a recruiter, there will also be a project manager to walk businesses through the permitting process and a real estate manager who will reach out to large property owners who may want to sell or develop. Hiring will begin once the city's budget is finalized, according to City Manager Teresa Wilson.

"I think this is imperative," said Rox Pollard, a Columbia commercial real estate broker specializing in retail for Colliers International. "Our city has potential because others, like Charleston and Greenville, are becoming more fully developed. We have a blank canvas. It's a really easy sell."

The recruiting announcement by members of Columbia city council and city staff came alongside several other changes to city fees and policy that politicians said could cut some $100,000 or more in startup costs for new small businesses.

To start, the city is dropping one of the fees it charges when builders redevelop an existing property  sewer capacity fees.

When a commercial structure is first constructed, the builder pays an initial capacity fee to hook into the city's wastewater grid. But if a developer sought to put a new business with a different use inside an existing space  turning a former retailer into a new restaurant, for example  the incoming tenant has historically been charged a capacity fee for changing the use of the building.

The typical small office, restaurant or merchant will no longer have to pay that fee as long as their water meter size doesn't change, said Assistant City Manager Clint Shealy, "because the ability to use that much water was already there."

This could save companies $35,000 to $45,000 as they're starting out, Taylor said.

If a developer does have to install a larger water meter, like when turning an old office building into apartments, they will be charged at a reduced rate.

The city also is expected to allow for different methods of grease control in wastewater.

For example, coffee shops that do not cook on premises may not be required to install a full grease trap, which Taylor said can cost as much as $100,000. They may instead be allowed less costly mechanisms called grease interceptors.

And once finalized by council, on-site parking requirements could be eliminated for both new and existing businesses occupying less than 7,500 square feet. That would apply to businesses like The War Mouth restaurant, which played host to city council's June 13 announcement, as the building is only 2,400 square feet according to city property records.

These efforts by city council follow a 2020 report that found Columbia has been largely left behind other South Carolina metro areas as the state's economy as has grown over the past decade.

Columbia-area property values grew just 16 percent from 2010 to 2020, compared with 36 percent in Greenville, 171 percent in Rock Hill and 217 percent in Charleston.

And as the population of Charleston, Greenville and Rock Hill rose, Columbias largely remained stagnant.
Hot-button partisan topics have repeatedly taken the spotlight during the race for South Carolina's superintendent, reflecting a national trend of education becoming increasingly political across the country.

While the candidates have discussed local matters like teacher vacancies and low salaries in the education profession, many have also come out for or against critical race theory, LGBTQ+ issues or wearing masks in schools.

Experts say the political polarization of the states superintendent race is an example of how partisan education has become across the country. They also said it showed how local political races increasingly are focusing on national issues.

When politics is really nationalized, people reach for these hot-button emotive issues that are going to resonate everywhere, said Dan Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And so a question like mask-wearing or critical race theory, those are issues that will resonate across the country.

One of the most prominent examples of this nationalization of politics was the governors race in Virginia in 2021. The Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, defeated former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe in the fall after campaigning against critical race theory as well as vaccine and mask mandates. He also promised more parental control of what educators teach in schools.

While South Carolinas superintendent race echoes many of those same rallying cries, local issues havent gone entirely ignored by candidates.

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At a forum hosted by the nonprofit Public Education Partners in Greenville on May 23, candidates repeatedly brought up increasing salaries for teachers in South Carolina as a way of addressing the states teacher shortage. The state saw a 20-year record high with 1,121 teacher vacancies in February.

But when social-emotional learning came up as a topic at the forum, Lynda Leventis-Wells, a Republican and Greenville school board member, said the educational approach is a strand of critical race theory. (Social-emotional learning is a framework found in schools that aims to develop interpersonal skills, self-awareness and self-control. On the other hand, critical race theory, which examines how racism is enmeshed in American society, is not typically taught in K-12 schools.)

Hopkins said people turning to national news sources rather than local news outlets is partially fueling this nationalization. Additionally, out-of-state campaign donations can also bolster candidates who focus more on highly charged issues, or push candidates to take on broader campaigns.

Its very interesting that I can vote for only the people in my geographic area, but I can give money to anyone anywhere in the country, Hopkins added.

In total all 10 candidates running for S.C. superintendent have brought in over $900,000, according to campaign filings. Republican candidate Ellen Weaver, who is president of the right-leaning think tank Palmetto Promise Institute, raised the most with nearly $330,000 of cash.

Weaver has a number of out-of-state supporters who contributed to her campaign. These include John Kirtley, a venture capitalist who leads a school voucher program in Florida; Justin Owen, head of the libertarian research organization Beacon Center of Tennessee and another advocate for school vouchers; and Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer from Oklahoma who advised former President Donald Trump in his effort to overturn the 2020 election results.

In general, Weaver saw donations from GOP politicians and school choice advocates, including former U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, Weavers longtime boss; Truist bank group president and current gubernatorial appointee on the state Board of Education Mike Brenan; and Meeting Street Schools founder Ben Navarro.

On the other hand, Kathy Maness, a Republican candidate and head of the Palmetto State Teachers Association, and Lisa Ellis, a Democratic candidate and head of the educator advocacy group SC for Ed, had the highest number of contributions from teachers.

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The opportunity to vote on state superintendent is fairly unique. Voters in most states in the country dont have a direct say in their states top education chief. South Carolina is one of 13 states where voters elect the position.

Still, experts dont blame that model as the source of the political divisions around education.

Paul Manna, a public policy professor at the College of William and Mary, has researched the relationship between voter participation in elections for state school chief and the policy environment. He said typically voters turn out more when the states students have lower academic achievement as well as for explicitly partisan elections as opposed to nonpartisan races. South Carolinas state superintendent election is partisan.

According to Manna, partisan elections arent necessarily a problem, especially if voter participation is valued. More people paying attention to an election can lead the public, media and organizations to scrutinize candidates more closely. But these types of elections can also devolve into vectors for polarization and gridlock depending on the state of political divisions.

In 2018, a majority of S.C. voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have made the superintendent position one appointed by the governor.

More coverage To read more in-depth stories from The Post and Courier's Education Lab, go to postandcourier.com/education-lab.

A system where the governor picks the superintendent does have benefits  the two politicians are more likely to share a coherent vision, which can help advance more policy changes, Manna said.

Yet when the governor has to decide the superintendent, education issues can get diluted among the mix of issues voters have to weigh when selecting a governor. Education may be an important issue for voters, but something such as gubernatorial candidates' plans to address crumbling infrastructure or attracting more jobs to the state might be viewed as more pressing, depending on the voter.

Whether a superintendent is elected or appointed, though, might not matter as much at the moment. As Youngkins campaign and election for governor in Virginia demonstrated, issues around education arent contained to just the realms of boards of education or state education chiefs anymore. Other politicians in local and state government positions, beyond education officials, are having to answer more questions about the state of schooling or are embracing it as an energizing political issue.

A focus on such hot-button national issues might draw more people to the voting booth, but it could also pose problems for individuals and how theyll govern once in office.

Patrick Kelly, director of government affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association, said he has concerns about candidates who view issues through a nationalized lens but dont understand the daily realities of South Carolinians.

If you're not versed in the particulars of our state accountability system and our state report cards for schools, Kelly said, sharing an example, Then you could end up pushing innovations that either, A, are unnecessary because we're already doing it, or B, are unrealistic because of systems we already have in place.

Ultimately, the nationalization of education politics might hurt conversations around schooling and policies by pushing out opportunities to talk about other issues in the field.

I wish we were talking more about all the things that were innovations that educators did during the pandemic and how do we build upon the good stuff? said Barnett Berry, a research professor for the University of South Carolinas College of Education.

Instead, he said issues such as lockdowns, masks and vaccines, on top of critical race theory, have sucked the oxygen out of the room.
SUMMERVILLE  Just behind Laci Robinson's left ear and below the hairline is a thin, smooth patch of skin  a scar that is the only outward sign there is anything different about the 35-year-old Summerville woman.

"It's one of those hidden disabilities," said her mother, the Rev. Lisa Robinson, of the congenital hydrocephalus that has affected her daughter since birth.

The condition results from the body producing too much cerebrospinal fluid, which collects in cavities in the brain called ventricles and can create pressure on the brain. It affects an estimated 1 million adults and children in the U.S., according to the Hydrocephalus Association, and most often appears at birth, as it did with Laci, occurring in one out of every 770 babies. It also can develop later in adults. It can impact memory and learning, behavior, vision and cause headaches and pain.

It is increasingly thought to be a problem in older adults, where it can cause issues with walking, bladder control or even dementia, according to the association. Laci's grandfather was suspected of having developed it late in life before he was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, Lisa said.

In Laci's case, it was obvious from the moment she was born that something was different. After giving birth by Cesarean section "there was a lot of commotion and talking and they ran down the hall with her," Lisa said. "I didnt see her until 12 hours later in the incubator, with all of these tubes coming out of her."

Doctors explained that Laci had hydrocephalus, which is why her head was enlarged.

"I had never heard of it," Lisa said.

Her newborn would need surgery a few days later to install a shunt, an internal tube that can divert fluid from her brain down to her abdomen where it can be absorbed. It is the most common procedure. However, it can also come with a lot of complications.

"Theres infections, theres malfunctions," Lisa said. "There are so many things that can happen with that shunt."

Some patients have had hundreds of procedures related to their shunts to fix those common problems, although Laci has only been through it once after her initial surgery.

"Shes just been blessed," Lisa said.

Laci's second surgery came out of the blue when she was 14. At a dinner in Atlanta at her uncle's house there was another child with hydrocephalus and the mother casually mentioned they were about to visit a neurosurgeon, who just happened to have done Laci's procedure years before in Cleveland. After reconnecting with that doctor, he suggested having Laci rechecked once the family settled in Charleston. While the checkup seemed to go well and Laci had no symptoms, the family had barely returned home when the doctor's office called and asked them to return immediately after getting some test results back.

"Its an emergency. Her tube had come apart," Lisa said.

As an associate pastor at Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, she believes it wasn't just happenstance Laci got checked out then.

"God intervened in that situation," Lisa said.

For her part, growing up with her condition, Laci chose not to advertise it.

"I didnt know how to talk about it at school," she said. "Even at college."

But Laci knows it had an effect, both academically and socially, primarily because of her memory and her ability to follow steps in a task.

"I struggled with communication, verbal communication, struggling with expressing my feelings," she said.

Laci knows what she would like to say but can't find the words. It was only recently that a neurologist gave her condition a name  aphasia. Despite that, Laci graduated from college with a degree in graphic design.

"Thats what i want to do" as a career. For now, she works as a cashier at Lowe's. Still, she helps out with graphics and flyers at the church and recently designed one for the Juneteenth celebration in Mount Pleasant.

"She does a lot of fliers for the church and gets a lot of compliments," Lisa said.

Laci's self-confidence might be one of her biggest hurdles.

"I put up my own barriers," she said. "I stop myself out of fear of messing up or things like that."

It's one reason she and her mother want to help form a support group or network for other families in the Lowcountry to access and learn about services and help available.

Families when they do connect often have a lot of questions, Lisa said.

"People want to know, 'Where are the neurosurgeons? Where can i go with my child?'" Lisa said.

They also have questions about the Individualized Education Program plans, which are detailed instructions required for children in special education. There can be frustrating meetings for parents putting one together with school administrators and teachers, Lisa said, a process she went through with Laci many times. It is why one of the services she thinks parents could use is another seasoned parent who could go with them to those meetings.

"Not to talk for them but to let them know, 'Im right here with you. Ive been through this,'" Lisa said.

When they became co-community network leaders, the Robinsons had a lot of plans  including a walk in the Lowcountry to raise awareness.

"And then the pandemic hit," Lisa said.

Now may be the time to revisit those plans and to start building that awareness, she said.

Starting with this: "Its very common and anyone can get hydrocephalus," Lisa said. It just may not be obvious to everyone else.
HILTON HEAD ISLAND  Wanda Lambert had not been to the beach in years. She lived in Arkansas, far from the ocean. And she had neuropathy in her legs, which made walking difficult.

But after her assisted-living home burned down, she moved to Georgia to be with her daughter, Deborah Mitchell. On a whim, the two decided to come to Hilton Head to watch the solar eclipse over the ocean in August 2017.

"But we couldn't figure out how to get her onto the beach because she used a cart," Mitchell said. Finally, they found a place that rented beach wheelchairs at $300 for two days.

"It was quite expensive," Mitchell said. "But to her, it was worth it."

Lambert not only saw the moon slide in front of the sun but also took in the whole ocean scene for a couple of hours. "She just had a ball sitting there watching the waves," Mitchell said.

When Mitchell learned that the town of Hilton Head Island is now making beach wheelchairs available for free, she called the service "just great."

No money, just joy

Other South Carolina oceanfront communities, including Folly Beach and Myrtle Beach, already make free beach wheelchairs available. And Hilton Head businesses have long offered them as rentals.

The local government's free service began in early June.

The town's facility manager, Aaron Black, said residents at one of the island's retirement communities suggested the idea. Black realized a program wouldn't be hard to put in place. The town already had a few beach wheelchairs in storage; officials bought a few more for about $1,500 each.

And the technology for an online reservation system already existed.

"We're not looking for any revenue necessarily on this program," Black said. "Our joy out of this comes from people who haven't been able to access the beach, to give them that lifetime experience, or to relive some childhood memory."

The option of a beach wheelchair also can provide an opportunity for families to spend time together. After a storm cleared on June 11, Bobbi Lindholz from Cincinnati laughed while her grandson-in-law tilted her backward and popped wheelies in the sand.

In the first week alone, about 40 people had signed up for chairs through an online portal. The town has four available to reserve for eight-hour increments.

Balloon wheels not for all

The enthusiastic comments on the town's Facebook page suggest the broad range of people who could use the beach wheelchair service, including those with asthma, disabilities or injuries. Commenters also identified the need for smaller wheelchairs for young people, or for seriously ill children who come to the island as part of the Hilton Head Heroes program.

But the free models, which have balloon-like wheels to make going over sand and water easy, aren't for everyone.

Ken Carlozzi's late wife, Kathy, had Lou Gehrigs disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. She used a $25,000 motorized wheelchair outfitted with accessories. Simply transferring her to a basic chair wasn't going to do the trick, either for his wife or for other people with motor function issues, Carlozzi said.

"You're not going to put them in a balloon wheelchair to get on the beach because they're going to fall over," he said.

Nor is it an option to simply park people in motorized wheelchairs on one of the roll-out Mobi-mats that make getting on and off the beach easier. The sun shines directly on them, the sand blows in their faces, and if it starts to rain, they compete with everyone else to get under shelter, Carlozzi said.

So in 2018, he proposed that the town take a page from the beach parks he and Kathy had seen in Florida. There, wheelchair-accessible overlooks are common. The raised, covered pavilions serve as safe, pleasant places for people who can't be on the beach to still enjoy its sights, sounds, and smells.

Overlook Pavilion

Getting others to understand his vision and pushing the idea "through the wickets" of government took a little while, Carlozzi said. The pandemic also slowed down the project.

But with the support of Town Council, neighbors and several community nonprofit leaders, the Islander's Beach Park Overlook Pavilion opened over Memorial Day weekend.

It is incorporated into an Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant structure that connects the parking lot to the beach. It can accommodate up to five wheelchairs, and it includes benches for caregivers and a wire top rail to provide an unobstructed view of the dunes and waves.

Carlozzi said he is happy with the result. He considers it a tribute to his wife, who died of ALS in June 2020.

Others who know nothing of the backstory also appreciate the overlook. On a recent night, Marlene Ratledge from Sweetwater, Tenn., rested on one of the wooden benches. She doesn't use a wheelchair, but she gets tired on the walk to and from the ocean. She incorporated a stop at the overlook into her journey, using it as a place to rest.

When told the overlook was new, Ratledge expressed her approval. "Looks nice!" she said. "I'm just glad they built it before I got here."
BOSTON  When it was first announced that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham would debate on national television his philosophical opposite, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, event organizers expressed a desire to reintroduce a culture of consensus that had been "the essence of the Senate since it was conceived in 1789."

But when the two finally met onstage June 13 at Boston's Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, there was little common ground to be found.

Whether the topic was Social Security, health care, gas prices or climate change, Sanders, the independent who caucuses with Democrats, and Graham, the Southern Republican, found little mutual understanding with each other, downplaying the other's policy solutions and trading volleys against their respective party's philosophies.

Sanders often focused his time on specific policies to reshape the way the country works, including an immediate transition to clean energy sources, the elimination of corporate dollars flowing into political campaigns and health care as a human right. He then listed free tuition for public colleges and universities, all paid for by greater taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

"Now is not the time to defend the establishment, which is doing phenomenally well," Sanders said in the event livestreamed on the Fox Nation subscription service. A recording of the debate will air at 7 p.m. June 18 on Fox News.

Graham agreed with some aspects of Sanders' plans to expand Social Security benefits through greater taxes on the wealthy, but disagreed with the methods, lending his support for an Obama-era deficit reduction plan developed by former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, and Alan Simpson, a Republican.

Graham rejected plans to expand programs like Medicaid, saying it would upend the nation's health care systems. He downplayed Sanders' urgent calls to transition to cleaner burning forms of energy to fight climate change, calling the need for transitional energy sources like natural gas a "national security issue."

And where Sanders blamed high gasoline prices on major oil companies maximizing profits and price gouging, Graham instead chalked the issue up to supply and demand exacerbated by Democratic policies he said were hampering domestic oil production.

"When you say it's the oil company's fault  bull," Graham said. "They're a business."

The two were even opposed on the question of American greatness, where Sanders dressed down the nation's faults while Graham sought to contextualize them.

While Sanders painted a portrait of America as a nation ruled by the wealthy, Graham painted the country as a place that had begun to turn the corner pre-COVID, and called on voters to reelect Republicans up and down the ballot to maintain that success.

"You've got to take a mortgage out to fill up your car," Graham said. "What's happened here, the policies that are being pursued by my Democratic colleagues are not working. The average American is in a world of hurt."

Even one of the few areas they found common ground on, a bipartisan set of gun-reform proposals Graham helped negotiate, only found reluctant support from Sanders, who said the proposed legislation "does not go far enough" ahead of a vote that will require at least 60 of the Senate's 100 members to pass.

"If that bill came to the floor, would I vote for it? I'm quite sure I would," Sanders said. "Does it go anywhere near far enough? No, it does not."

But the two  one an uncompromising Democratic socialist, the other a deal-making conservative who has become emblematic of the Washington establishment  were near-perfect representatives of the divides not only in Washington, but in the national discourse.

Sanders evoked questions about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and accused Republicans of working to undermine democracy for their own gain.

Graham accused Sanders and Democrats of wanting to throw out the Electoral College  a system that gives less populous, typically red states greater say in deciding the outcome of presidential elections.

He challenged Sanders to bring up Democrat-led policies like single-payer health care for a vote in the deadlocked Senate, where small, less populous states like Wyoming and Vermont have equivalent voting power to more populous ones like Texas and California.

While more than half of all voters support a single-payer health care system, according to polling data compiled over the last several years, the proposal has yet to find support among Republicans.

"If the American people want it, then those people who vote against it should lose their job," Graham said of Sanders' proposals. "That's the way it works."

The debate's most telling moment, however, came from moderator Fox News' Bret Baier after a lukewarm response from Sanders on gun control.

"I was trying to find a common ground," Baier said. "I'm not sure we really got there."

"No comment," Sanders responded.

The two men did openly agree on one thing: that Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Graham's words, "sucks."
Inside the Owings and Sam dentist office, you will see framed family photos and dental accolades on the wall. Upon a closer look, you'll notice the practicing dentists in the facility are related.

For the family, the multi-generation dentistry just happened to fall into place and follow in their fathers footsteps.

It wasnt intended this way, Dr. Rebecca Owings Sam said. It was like, my dad was a dentist and Alan and I worked in the office, but it wasnt like oh we are going to go to dental school.

Dr. Alan Owings and Dr. Rebecca Owings Sam, brother and sister, currently practice dentistry together. The duo started dental school at the same time and graduated from the Dental College of Georgia in 1992.

People would say, well who made the better grades? Well, he probably made some better grades at times and I might have made some better grades at other times, but it was not competitive, Sam said. It was what do we do to help each other and study. So it was a good experience. I wouldnt have wanted it any other way.

Sam joined the family dentistry straight out of dental school, while Owings joined in 2003 after practicing prison dentistry. During this time, the business moved from the ever expanding West Avenue location to its current home on Martintown Road.

The father and children combo worked together until Dr. David Owings death almost six years ago. Now in 2022 they are adding a third generation with Dr. Allison Owings Bass, Owings daughter. Similar to her family, she went to dental school straight from Clemson University and received her nursing degree and license.

When I started dental school, I realized I might like working with my hands, and now I think about all the time if I was a doctor or a nurse, just making decisions and assessing and writing prescriptions all day I would be so bored, Bass said. I am glad I get to do something and have a tangible product that I can point at and say I did that.

They all enjoy working together and having a tangible impact on the North Augusta community.

We have some patients that were still my dads patients that started out with my dad and a lot of times they will remind us and they will not be all that old, but they are older than me, Sam said. But they will talk about how long or they will have brought their relatives in and they will become part of the practice and Ive watched it. Its a cool thing for North Augusta, its still a small town so you will get out and you will see people and be a part of their lives.

Being a part of peoples health and their lives is something that they treasure.

One of the best parts is being a part of peoples families and relationships, Sam said. And the other part is being able to have somebody say that they are not happy with their front teeth being discolored or something that is happening and you can change that and make that better and this like Wow, we helped do that.

This was just a place that I loved and I got to see growing up, my dad and Becky just loving their community, Bass said. I loved how people who are patients here were patients here when they were five years old and they bring their five year olds. I liked how you get their patients in there the same forever and develop a relationship with them and you just develop a relationship with your town.
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
By the time polls open at 7 a.m. June 14 for South Carolina's party primaries, temperatures across South Carolina will be rocketing past 80 degrees.

The good news is that more than 115,000 ballots were cast early.

That's nearly double the number of absentee votes cast by mail and in-person during the last midterm primary election in 2018.

Still, election officials are bracing for a scorcher of a day where the temperature is expected to reach 100 degrees or more across much of the Palmetto State.

With the humidity, it could feel as hot as 112 degrees.

"We're concerned like everyone else about the weather," Charleston County Elections Director Isaac Cramer said.

"During the early voting period, we had tents and water stations for voters," he added. "But on Election Day, with over 100 locations, it's going to be hard to deploy water stations to every single polling place."

"If people are passing out water in line, that's perfectly fine," he added.

Cramer said he's predicting no more than a 15 percent turnout of eligible voters partly because of the weather and partly because of history. Midterm primary elections are typically low-interest affairs that hover anywhere from about 15 percent to 20 percent interest.

In Horry County, election officials are preparing for the opposite, with interested fueled by the 7th Congressional District Republican primary where incumbent Tom Rice faces a tough challenge from Donald Trump-endorsed candidate Russell Fry.

"I think it's going to be a larger turnout than we normally get for primaries," said Sandy Martin, the director of Horry County Voters Registration and Elections. "Not only do we have a contentious congressional race, we've got a lot of local contested races, too."

If early voting is any indication, Martin could be right on. All told, 115,352 ballots were cast ahead of the June 14 statewide party primaries, according to data released by the S.C. Election Commission on June 13.

Just over 100,000 of those votes were cast during a new nine-day early voting period, which ended June 10. In addition, some 14,900 absentee votes have also been received.

Under new a new state election law, it was the first time South Carolina voters didn't need to offer a reason to cast their ballots early.

The numbers show early voting was especially popular along the coast, where two high-profile Republican congressional primaries are on the ballot. Horry County, where Rice is facing Rice and five other GOP challengers, led the state with 11,600 early votes cast.

Meanwhile, in the intensifying 1st District contest between U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace and Republican Katie Arrington, Beaufort County saw the third-most early vote totals in the state, reporting 7,800 ballots cast.

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Richland County, which is home to the state capital of Columbia and is considered a Democratic stronghold, saw the second-most early votes, with 9,300 cast.

"We didn't know what to expect with such a short time-frame when the law was passed and when early voting started," said Chris Whitmire, a spokesman for the state Election Commission.

On the first day, just over 6,000 people voted; then it went up every day. On June 10  the final day of early voting  some 21,000 people voted.

"So over 100,000 for a whole period, I think that's an unqualified success," Whitmire said.

But that early vote period is over: the final and in-person voting for the primary begins at 7 a.m. June 14 and runs for 12 hours, with polls closing at 7 p.m.

Notes on voting today

Your voting precinct and polling place are determined by your address, and should be listed on your voter registration card. To check your voting location, visit the Election Commission website at scvotes.org. On the homepage, click the tab that says Voters. Then, click Check your voter registration. You can also contact your county voter registration office directly.

Voters will need to bring one of the following forms of photo ID:

S.C. drivers license

U.S. passport

Federal military ID

S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles ID card

S.C. voter registration card with photo

If you do not have proper photo ID but are registered to vote, you can cast a provisional ballot.

Wearing a face mask is optional, not mandatory.
SUMMERVILLE  Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley stepped deeper into a contentious South Carolina congressional primary this weekend, urging her fellow Republicans to vote for U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace over the GOP challenger backed by Haley's old boss.

Haley, who couldn't escape chants of "President Haley" as she wrapped up her public appearance, rallied with Mace on June 12 at Hall's Chophouse in Nexton, where the former South Carolina governor told a crowd of at least 100 people that "primaries matter" and that "there is nothing more important" than what happens in this year's 2022 midterm elections.

"As I'm going across the country trying to help candidates get elected, there's something special about being able to do it in my home state," said Haley, who lives on Kiawah Island and is a 1st Congressional District voter.

She exchanged knowing smiles with Mace throughout her 10-minute speech, which ended with Haley calling Mace, "the one that will never disappoint you." Haley took no questions from the media.

As Haley left the event, a man told her, "When you run for president, I'm voting for you."

"Let's elect Nancy first," she replied.

Haley's in-person push during the last weekend before the June 14 primary election stood in stark contrast to how former President Donald Trump sought to put his final stamp on the race by rallying his base online in a social media post against Mace.

While the GOP contest is explicitly a race between Mace and former state lawmaker Katie Arrington, the political battle in the Lowcountry is also seen as a proxy war between Trump and Haley, who are both reportedly weighing 2024 presidential bids and would need to curry favor in South Carolina, an influential early presidential primary state.

Haley has endorsed Mace in the contest, while Trump has thrown his support behind Arrington.

As Haley hit the stump for Mace, about 5 miles away, Arrington was phone-banking with friends and volunteers at the dining room table in her Summerville home.

Arrington's campaign brushed off Haley's appearance for Mace, saying Arrington has something more valuable than high-profile surrogates

"Katie has what Nancy never will: grassroots support," said Arrington's campaign spokesman, Chris D'Anna. "Forty people on a Sunday knocking on doors and making calls to undecided voters for Katie are more valuable than people rallying with Never Trumpers.

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Mace fired back, "My opponent has nobody."

Unlike Haley, Trump will not be traveling to the Palmetto State for a pre-election rally, which he has done in other primaries this year and had initially promised to do here. Instead, the former president turned to social media.

On June 11, the night before Haley rallied with Mace in Summerville, Trump ramped up his criticism of the freshman House member, who fell out of his public grace after she voted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election and said Trump's "entire legacy" was wiped out after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In a statement posted to his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump called her "the terrible Nancy Mace, who really let us down."

"Nancy fights Republicans all the time and is not at all nice about it. Frankly, she is despised by almost everyone, and who needs that in Congress, or in the Republican Party?" Trump said.

"Katie Arrington's policies are perfect," Trump continued, calling Arrington "a hard worker" who loves South Carolina. "She has the tremendous backing of almost all who know her  especially when she is compared to Nancy Mace!"

How much the dueling endorsements will matter, though, is unclear.

Karl Anderson, an undecided voter from Summerville, said he decided to attend the Haley-Mace event because he wanted to get more information rather than "more political rhetoric."

"I'm a Trump guy," said 60-year-old Anderson, who wore a red "Let's Go Brandon" ballcap to the event, "but just because he's thrown his support behind Arrington, it in no way ties me into that, you know? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate his opinion, but I'm not going to march lockstep just because he says, and I always did respect the former governor."

Asked if he got any clarity from the event, Anderson shrugged.

He said he's leaning toward Mace, but he's still not 100 percent sure how he's going to vote in the fast-approaching primary.

"I think it's going to be right to the last minute," said Anderson, who added that he "just hates" that he's going be making this decision when he steps into the voting booth.
Why go to Spoleto Festival USA's Bank of America Chamber Music series? Because it is classy, elegant, historical and fun for all classical music lovers.

Geoff Nuttall, co-founder and lead violinist of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, again directed and hosted this years series, in his role as the Charles E. and Andrea L. Volpe Director of Chamber Music.

Again, the repertoire performed during these programs spanned pre-17th century to the 21st century, with the 11 total programs featuring music that is billed by the festival as including both contemporary compositions and canonic gems."

I had the opportunity to attend 3 of the 11 programs performed at the Dock Street Theatre, the oldest theatre in America. It is the perfect location to host this series as the concert hall is small and intimate.

The first I attended was Program 6 on June 4. What stood out to me was the atmosphere and energy of the concert. Once I found my seat, the concert started, and Nuttall welcomed the audience. He was professional, funny, entertaining and had the audience engaged with the concert.

There were three selections performed. One composition stood out to me most, Whereer you walk from Semele, HWV 58 composed by George Frideric Handel performed by tenor vocalist Karim Sulayman. His vocal ability was impressive, and he communicated the stories told in the music wonderfully to the audience.

Nuttall on violin was also fantastic. His stage presence shows when hes talking as well as when hes performing. A total of 11 musicians performed this piece and all did an exemplary job. When I heard it, I could picture in my mind the story being told. I believe Handel would have been pleased with this group of musicians.

The next concert I attended was Program 7 on June 5. This concert was different from the last as there was a mixture of returning and new musicians. Premiere Rhapsodie by Claude Debussy was performed elegantly by Todd Palmer on clarinet and Stephen Prutsman on piano.

Their chemistry was top-notch, and their execution of the dynamics in this piece was close to perfect. This chamber concert also featured the composition "More of Less for pre-recorded and live violin," which was written by Mark Applebaum, a composer and full-time professor of music composition and theory at Stanford University.

Applebaums piece was premiered worldwide at this concert, written in honor of Nuttalls wife, Livia Sohn, a violinist, chamber music administrator, and graduate of the Juilliard School.

Sohn had suffered dystonia in all but two fingers of her left hand, which made it difficult to play the violin. The composer wrote the piece so it could only be played with two fingers in the left hand, with Sohn performing it at the concert. I admired her feel for the music along with her technicality. After hearing and watching her, I understood why Applebaum praised her as one of the best violinists in the world.

Another musician I enjoyed most during this concert was James Austin Smith, who performed at all three chamber concerts I attended. The way he played the oboe was unlike anything Ive seen. I was blown away by his performance of Oboe Concerto in D minor, op. 9 no. 2 by Tomaso Albinoni.

The third Spoleto chamber concert I attended was on June 11, the last concert of the series. There were two compositions performed that I favored heavily.

The first piece is Trio Sonata in C minor, HWV 386a by George Frideric Handel performed by James Austin Smith on oboe, Nina Lee on cello, and Pedja Muzijevic on harpsichord. This piece was 10 minutes long and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The chemistry among all three musicians was evident, and the way the melody and solo played by Smith meshed perfectly with the parts played by the cello and harpsichord. I felt like I was in Medieval times, and could imagine sitting with the king and queen in a palace enjoying food, wine and live music.

The second piece is The Rite of Spring for two pianos by Igor Stravinsky performed by Inon Barnatan and Pedja Muzijevic both on piano. When I heard these two perform, it felt like I was listening to two people have a discussion that starts so purely and innocently, but quickly spirals into mayhem and confusion. Both musicians were so locked into the music, I believe if anyone tried to distract them they would not have stopped playing.

This year was my first time experiencing the Spoleto Festival, and I enjoyed every moment of these chamber concerts. I encourage anyone to attend because it is worth it, and I cant wait to experience it again next year.
Nothing so fully exposes the dream world of the left, in which good intentions and sentiments are thought sufficient to make reality bend to their will, than the enthusiasm for re-imagining policing that went along with the Defund the Police mania post-George Floyd. If we just re-imagine something, it will happen! We dont even need to close our eyes and click our heels!

And one of the leading ideas was to replace armed police officers with community violence interventionists (sometimes called violence interrupters), who would be armed not with guns, but with social science and clinical psychology instead. GeeI wonder how this turned out?

Wait no more. Northwestern Universitys Institute for Policy Research recently issued a study about the matter, Exposure to Gun Violence Among the Population of Chicago Community Violence Interventionists. For some reason, the front page of the cover says, Please do not quote or distribute without permission, but if so then why did they post it on the internet, where it has drawn some quotation from a handful of media sources, presumably without permission? Social scientists are a strange bunch.

The study is the usual quantitative exercise thick with numbers and methodology, and the findings are stated as dryly as possible with no common-sense conclusions offered. As the study explains:

Interventions aimed at interrupting the transmission of community violence are among the most important and popular initiatives associated with the public health turn in gun violence prevention. Among policymakers, these approaches represent a means for reducing gun violence without further exacerbating the harms associated with intensive policing and incarceration for communities already burdened by multiple forms of disadvantage. . . In Chicago and other cities, community violence interventionists are often referred to as first responders for good reason; in our study, approximately 80% of workers reported arriving at a scene of violence before traditional first responders. In contrast to other first responders, however, community violence interventionists are called upon not only to respond to acute violence, but to maintain a presence in its aftermath, helping affected parties cope with traumatic loss while actively managing the threat of retaliation and additional violence.

This is working so well at interrupting violence in Chicago. In fact, the last sentence of this preceding paragraph gives a hint of how its gone:

Deeply embedded in contexts of violence, community-based interventionists offer essential services to communities, but these services might be achieved by means of underappreciated personal costs to the workers that perform them.

Here are some of the numbers reported in the study about the personal cost to workers:

Our results establish that work-related exposure to gun violence and scenes of violence is common among Chicago violence interventionists. Nearly one-third of interventionists have seen someone shot while on the job, and more than one-quarter reported this experience within the last year. What is more, nearly 20% of workers reported being shot at while performing their work, with nearly 12% reporting being shot at within the last year. Beyond exposure, our results reveal that interventionists do experience direct gun violence victimization while on the job: 22% reported being nonfatally shot while working. . . In addition to elevated levels of direct exposure to gun violence and scenes of violence, Chicago interventionists additionally commonly experienced indirect exposure to death, violent deaths, and interpersonal loss within their work-related social networks.

Reallywho could have seen the coming? Maybe its time for Chicago to imagine actual policingand prosecutionagain.
 Why the United Nations is a joke, chapter 12,186:

North Korea, Under Sanctions for Developing Nuclear Weapons, Takes Helm of UN Disarmament Body GENEVA  Dozens of mostly Western countries criticized North Korean reckless actions in its weapons programs as its government on Thursday took over the rotating presidency of the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament.

But apparently no one in the UN can rouse themselves to kick the Norks out of the chair of the Disarmament Conference. Churchill called the disarmament negotiations of the 1930s a prolonged and solemn farce. This is more like slapstick than farce.

 One of the things the Senate gun bill doesnt do is ban assault weapons. I wonder why? Maybe this:

Support for assault weapons ban hits all-time low following Uvalde shooting: Poll New polling shows that support for an assault weapons ban in the United States has hit an all-time low despite calls from Democrats to implement a ban following a deadly mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. In a Quinnipiac University poll, conducted last week and published on Tuesday, 50 percent of registered voters support a nationwide ban on semi-automatic long guns compared to 45% who oppose which represents the lowest level of support since February 2013 when Quinnipiac began asking that question.

Take this as a measure of increasingly public distrust of government.

 Remember how we were told that COVID was somehow another badge of systemic racism in the United States because minorities were getting hit disproportionately and werent getting vaccinated at the same rate as whites? Well, weve reached the never mind stage of that story, as David Leonhardt pointed out in the New York Times a few days ago:

During Covids early months in the U.S., the per capita death rate for Black Americans was almost twice as high as the white rate and more than twice as high as the Asian rate. The Latino death rate was in between, substantially lower than the Black rate but still above average. . . But these large racial gaps in vaccination have not continued  and as a result, neither have the gaps in Covid death rates. Instead, Covids racial gaps have narrowed and, more recently, even flipped. Over the past year, the Covid death rate for white Americans has been 14 percent higher than the rate for Black Americans and 72 percent higher than the Latino rate, according to the latest C.D.C. data. The successful part of the story is the rapid increase in vaccination among Black and Latino Americans since last year. Today, the vaccination rate for both groups is slightly higher than it is for white Americans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundations surveys.

Well, that doesnt fit the narrative. But its this remark from Leonhardt that is most telling:

Why havent you heard more about the narrowing of Covids racial gaps? I think part of the reason is that many experts and journalists feel uncomfortable highlighting shrinking racial gaps in almost any area. They worry that doing so will somehow minimize the problem of racism and the countrys enduring inequities.

File this one away, because it explains a lot about the left these days in many domains. Gotta keeps the lefts Racism Uber Alles narrative going as long as possible, because its all the left has got since the January 6 hearings look to be a busted flush.
I went to Madison for the weekend to visit a college friend being treated as an outpatient at the University of Wisconsin Hospital. Madison is a four-hour drive from St. Paul. I have a few personal notes on the weekend.

 Coming from the Twin Cities, I was struck by how immaculate Madison is and how much new commercial construction is taking place in town.

 Driving to Madison brought back memories of my first and only previous trip there  on business in 1994 or 1995 to argue a case in the Wisconsin Supreme Court for one of John Hinderakers corporate clients. The company sought Johns help on appeal of a criminal conviction involving a construction accident in Waukesha County. The case raised an interesting issue of statutory construction. Are corporations subject to liability under Wisconsins homicide statutes? We argued that the language of the Wisconsin homicide statutes applied only to human beings and precluded corporate liability.

 I first argued the case before a panel of three Wisconsin Court of Appeals judges sitting at Marquette Universitys law school in Milwaukee. Seeing it as an important and difficult case, the court sent it up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to wrestle with it. Like Bartleby, the Court of Appeals preferred not to  not to decide it. It could foresee the headlines: Court rules corporations can get away with murder!

 Next stop, the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Madison. Unfortunately for us, one of the justices I believed would be favorable to our position recused himself when our case was called. The seven-member court split 3-3 on the issue after it heard the case and accordingly sent it back down to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals to decide it. The original panel of three judges ruled against us 2-1 in July 1995. The dissent had the better analysis of the statutory language. When the court could not choose the Bartleby option, it chose to avoid the headline above.

 From St. Paul it is about 20 miles to the Wisconsin border. Once in Wisconsin, continuing east on Highway 94, I could not believe how many dead deer littered the side of the road. Driving west as I headed home on Highway 94 yesterday morning, I found it was no better on the other side of the road. Back home I found the Wisconsin Department of Transportations note on car-killed deer: 19,000 a year. Okay, but can you clear them off the side of the road?

 The weekend featured two dinners at Lombardinos. It is my idea of a great restaurant. And someone in the ownership has a good sense of humor. I snapped the photo below outside the restaurant on Saturday evening. Quotable quote: Not to have eaten at Lombardinos is almost saying youve never eaten in heaven.

 We had a good time talking. Among other things, we talked about favorite books and movies. My friend recommends James Hornfischers accounts of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II. In Hornfischers trilogy his favorite is The Fleet At Flood Tide (the third), although he loves all three.

 The trip to Madison also brought back a law school memory. Discussing womens rights in the student lounge with a classmate during our third year, my classmate became extremely agitated. You have to understand, he explained, I went to [UW] Madison.

 Coming and going I listened to two fantastic shows on SiriusXM. On the way to Madison I happened onto Chris Joness Truegrass show on the Bluegrass channel. The episode was devoted to Tony Rice. On the way home I happened onto Dwight Yoakams Greater Bakersfield show with Jackie DeShannon on Yoakams Bakersfield Beat channel. Both shows made the time fly.

 I had forgotten that I bought fantastic seats to see David Sanborn at the Dakota on Saturday night. We swapped them out for two tickets to last nights show. I have appreciated Sanborns work on alto sax since his days in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band on In My Own Dream and The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshow. Now he is fronting a quintet with Dean Brown on guitar, Andre Berry on bass, Billy Kilson on drums, and Andy Ezrin on keyboards. Dealing with post-polio syndrome, he had his beautiful wife, Alice Soyer, help him to the stage and stick around to contribute to the vocals on the opening number  Stevie Wonders Another Star. So, so beautiful.

 From a seat at the table next to us on the Dakota balcony, former Prince sax man Eric Leeds joined the quintet for the encore  the Marcus Miller/David Sanborn composition Run For Cover. A showcase for Berry, it sounded something like this. I left with the transcendent feeling that John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra used to give me.
Nigerias wobbly national electricity grid has collapsed yet again, throwing several cities including the federal capital Abuja into darkness.

Electricity companies announced late Sunday that the collapse occurred just before 7pm.

It is the sixth reported collapse in 2022, although it is believed the figure could be higher.

The government blames poor management and low gas supply as the major causes of the repeated breakdown.

The Jos Electricity Distribution Plc informed its customers through its Facebook page on Sunday about the interruption in Electricity supply.

The Management of Jos Electricity Distribution Company Plc wishes to inform the general public that the current outage being witnessed is a result of system collapse, the head of corporate communication, Friday Elijah, said.

We hope to restore supply as soon as supply is restored, he added.

The Enugu Electricity Distribution Company Plc based in Enugu said, EEDC wishes to inform her esteemed customers of a system collapse which occurred at 6.49pm this evening, Sunday, 12th June, 2022.

The statement signed by spokesperson Emeka Ezeh said as a result of the development, all outgoing feeders were out and this has affected supply to its customers in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo States.

We are on standby, awaiting further information on restoration of supply from the National Control Centre (NCC), he added.

Also the Eko Electricity Distribution Company said, dear Esteemed Customer, we regret to inform you of the system collapse from the National grid. This has affected our entire network and impacted our ability to deliver optimum service.

Please bear with us as we are working with our TCN partners on a swift resolution. Power Outage In Our Franchise Due To Grid Collapse, it concluded.

The spokesperson of the Kaduna electricity distribution company, Abdulazeez Abdullahi, passed the same message to customers.

We regret to inform you that the power outage being experienced in our franchise states is due to System Collapse of the National Grid. The collapse occurred at about 18:47 pm this evening hence the loss of supply on all our outgoing feeders, the notice said.

The company promised consumers that power will be restored as soon as the National Grid is powered back.

Please be informed that the current power outage is due to a system failure from the National Grid. The system collapsed at about 6.49pm today 12th June, 2022, causing the outage currently being experienced, the management of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company said on Facebook..

We appeal for your understanding as all stakeholders are working hard to restore normal supply, it said.

After a similar collapse in April, the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, said the government had been making efforts to improve power supply.

Like past governments, the Buhari administration has so far failed to solve Nigerias perennial power problem.
After much prevarication, all the political parties have concluded their primaries for the 2023 general elections. The processes were fraught with massive financial inducements, intrigues, backstabbing and breaches that left a sour taste in the mouth. Even though 18 political parties registered for participation in the process of primary elections, it was the conduct of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that riveted public attention for many reasons.

Early enough, INEC had released the electoral timetable on February 26, with June 3 as the deadline to conclude the primaries. Pronto, parties were given Forms EC9 and EC9 A-E for issuance to those who would emerge as their candidates, just as the Commission presented the list of new voters registered in 2021 to them in line with the provisions of Section 10 (3) of the Electoral Act 2022. Ironically, instead of revving up their machinery immediately for the exercise to begin, most of the parties went to sleep. There were virtually no political activities until the middle of May. The parties that fixed the date of their primaries then indulged in a binge of adjustments to the dismay of INEC, while others chose a day or two to the June 3 deadline.

As INEC had warned, the timetable and schedule of its activities were statutorily derived from the 1999 Constitution, as amended, and the Electoral Act. Therefore, the terminal date was fixed and firm. Incredibly, this has been breached. Evidently, intra-party squabbles, visceral outbursts and manipulations entombed some of the parties in the valley of confusion and ill-preparedness. Consequently, under the auspices of the Inter-Party Advisory Council, the (IPAC), 18 parties began to lobby the electoral umpire for a shift in the deadline, which it unfortunately acquiesced to. Thus, from June 3, the deadline was shifted to June 9. INEC had earlier rejected IPACs request for the exercise to be shifted by as much as 37 to 60 days.

INEC was wrong to have capitulated to the whims and caprices of these parties, having declared the deadline as inviolable, being an offshoot of the Constitution and the Electoral Act. With that concurrence, the umpire has lent itself to the suspicion and charge of being partial. Some have argued that it extended the deadline to give the APC the opportunity to put its house in order and spy on its main rival  the PDP, which stuck to its May 28 date for the presidential primaries that produced Atiku Abubakar as its flag bearer. There are grounds for people to reason that way.

This perception resonates with many Nigerians, and organisations, such as the Transition Monitoring Group, chaired by Auwal Musa Rafsanjani. In a statement, the group noted that, A lot of political parties have made efforts in conducting their primaries, and the ruling party is still uncertain about the day to conduct its presidential primaries; that shouldnt be the basis for the extension.

It was right. The APC shifted and dithered on its convention date several times and went back and forth before it finally held its convention on June 7, at which Bola Ahmed Tinubu emerged as the candidate. APCs intrigues purportedly underline the reason for INECs extension of the timeline, in order for the ruling party to be able to clear its mess.

First, it had 23 presidential aspirants, which were then narrowed to 13, before coming up with a subsequent shortlist of five aspirants. Thereafter, this supposedly came down to a consensus candidate in Senator Ahmed Lawan, who was announced by the partys national chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, to the chagrin of APC governors, members of the partys National Working Committee, and its delegates. Instructively, that duplicitous rigmarole ended in a fiasco, leading to all the 23 aspirants eventually facing the delegates in a process that saw Tinubu finally emerge as the partys candidate.

PREMIUM TIMES believes that the action of INEC has severe consequences for our democracy. At all times, the electoral umpire should be mindful of reprobates in the public space, whose mission is only to subvert or dent the integrity of the electoral process. Having tried it once and succeeded, the temptation to believe that they would always have their way is there.

Therefore, the Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC should not give room for manoeuvres, so as not to undermine public confidence in his personal capacity and the ability of his organisation to deliver a free, transparent and credible general election. As a creation of the Constitution, by virtue of The Third Schedule Part 1, Section 15 (a), to organise, undertake and supervise all elections to the offices of the president, vice-president, governors, deputy governors, membership of the Senate, House of Representatives, and State Houses of Assembly, INEC is a body that should not be intimidated by any person, group or authority. Arising from this, it should see its task as a clarion call to national duty that should be beyond reproach.

The electoral umpire has given the political parties until June 17 as deadline to submit the names of candidates and their running mates and July 15 for governorship candidates and their running mates. It should be firm with these dates and all other timelines, if only to assert that it is in full control of the process.

Centrifugal forces hell-bent on undermining the success of the 2023 elections must be stopped.
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has announced that it has issued a Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms/Internet Intermediaries including online platforms.

The agency stated this in a statement by its spokesperson, Hadiza Umar, on Monday.

The new global reality is that the activities conducted on these Online Platforms wield enormous influence over our society, social interaction, and economic choices, Mrs Umar wrote. Hence, the Code of Practice is an intervention to recalibrate the relationship of Online Platforms with Nigerians in order to maximise mutual benefits for our nation, while promoting a sustainable digital economy.

The announcement could face criticism from Nigerians who have been sceptical of the Buhari administration since it declared its intention to regulate the media, particularly online media, many of which have helped hold the government accountable.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the information minister, Lai Mohammed, told the National Assembly to amend the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) law to enable the agency to regulate online media.

NBC currently regulates broadcast media and has been criticised for imposing controversial fines on broadcast stations.

As part of its new code, NITDA says online platforms must Provide a comprehensive compliance mechanism to avoid publication of prohibited contents and unethical behaviour on their platform.

Read the full NITDA statement below.

Finally, NITDA Issues Code of Practice for Online Platforms Operating in Nigeria

National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Issues a Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms/Internet Intermediaries and Conditions for Operating in Nigeria

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is mandated by section 6 of the NITDA Act 2007, to standardize, coordinate and develop regulatory frameworks for all Information Technology (IT) practices in Nigeria.

In accordance with its mandates, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, directed the Agency to develop a Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms/Internet Intermediaries (Online Platforms), in collaboration with relevant Regulatory Agencies and Stakeholders.

In line with the directive, NITDA wishes to present to the Public a Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms/Internet Intermediaries for further review and input.

The Code of Practice is aimed at protecting fundamental human rights of Nigerians and non-Nigerians living in the country as well as define guidelines for interacting on the digital ecosystem. This is in line with international best practices as obtainable in democratic nations such as the United State of America, United Kingdom, European Union, and United Nations.

The Code of Practice was developed in collaboration with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), as well as input from Interactive Computer Service Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Google, and Tik Tok amongst others.

Other relevant stakeholders with peculiar knowledge in this area were consulted such as Civil Society Organizations and expert groups. The results of this consultations were duly incorporated into the Draft Code of Practice.

The new global reality is that the activities conducted on these Online Platforms wield enormous influence over our society, social interaction, and economic choices. Hence, the Code of Practice is an intervention to recalibrate the relationship of Online Platforms with Nigerians in order to maximise mutual benefits for our nation, while promoting a sustainable digital economy.

Additionally, the Code of Practice sets out procedures to safeguard the security and welfare of Nigerians while interacting on these Platforms. It aims to demand accountability from Online Platforms regarding unlawful and harmful contents on their Platforms. Furthermore, it establishes a robust framework for collaborative efforts to protect Nigerians against online harms, such as hate speech, cyber-bullying, as well as disinformation and/or misinformation.

Similarly, to ensure compliance with the Code of Practice, NITDA also wishes to notify all Interactive Computer Service Platforms/Internet Intermediaries operating in Nigeria that the Federal Government of Nigeria has set out conditions for operating in the country. These conditions address issues around legal registration of operations, taxation, and managing prohibited publication in line with Nigerian laws. The conditions are as follows:

Establish a legal entity i.e., register with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC);

Appoint a designated country representative to interface with Nigerian authorities;

Abide by all regulatory demands after establishing a legal presence;

Comply with all applicable tax obligations on its operations under Nigerian law;

Provide a comprehensive compliance mechanism to avoid publication of prohibited contents and unethical behaviour on their platform; and

Provide information to authorities on harmful accounts, suspected botnets, troll groups, and other coordinated disinformation networks and deleting any information that violates Nigerian law within an agreed time.

The Draft Code of Practice is available on the NITDA website for review and comments from the public.

The Federal Government wishes to reiterate its commitment towards ensuring Nigeria fully harness the potentials of the Digital Economy and safeguard the security and interest of its citizens in the digital ecosystem.

Signed

Mrs Hadiza Umar, mnipr; m.apra; mcipr

Head Corporate Affairs and External Relationship

National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)
Gunmen ,who attacked Igama, a rural community in Benue State on Sunday morning, killed 37, residents of the community told PREMIUM TIMES.

A survivor, Ambrose Adah, said the attackers raided the community while he and his family were preparing for Mass.

Igama, an agrarian community, located in Okpokwu Local Government area, is 160 kilometres from Makurdi, the Benue State capital.

While we were preparing for the early morning Mass on Sunday, herdsmen in large numbers riding on motorbikes, invaded our community, Mr Adah said.

Members of our community mostly women and youths were killed during the attack.

So far 37 corpses have been recovered and presently deposited at St Marys General Hospital, Okpoga, the headquarters of Okpokwu Local Government.

My three-bedroom bungalow and other valuables were destroyed by the herdsmen, Mr Adah disclosed in a telephone interview with PREMIUM TIMES on Monday.

He added: Dozens of houses were razed to the ground, while over 500 hundred residents who were displaced by the attack are seeking shelter at Ojigo ward, and other neighbouring communities.

To forestall further attacks, Mr Adah appealed to the federal government to station a military base in the area.

Corroborating Mr Adahs claim, the federal lawmaker representing Ado, Ogbadibo and Okpokwu federal constituency, Francis Otta, told Channels Television in a statement that thirty persons were killed in the attack on the Igama community.

Growing up in Utonkon District of Ado LGA, I knew Igama in Ojigo Ward of Okpokwu LGA as one of the most peaceful communities in Benue South until recently when terrorists turned it to a cesspool of blood, Mr Ottah was quoted to have said in the statement.

I, therefore, condemn the killing of 30 innocent people, and still counting I have contacted security agents who have responded appropriately, the lawmaker said.

Authorities confirm attack

Amina Audu, the chairperson of Okpokwu Local Government, confirmed the incident. She, however, said only 12 corpses have been recovered.

She said the attackers ravaged the two communities Igama and Efeche, and hundreds of people have been displaced by the attack.

The attack has occasioned a humanitarian crisis, not just at Igama but at Opialu, Ojigo and Utonkon, where survivors have fled to, Ms Audu told this reporter in a telephone interview on Monday.

The local council boss said security operatives comprising the police, military and vigilantes, are patrolling the affected communities.

The Benue state police spokesperson, Sewuese Anene, confirmed the attack, but could not provide details on the casualties.

In a text message to this reporter, Ms Sewuese said: Information was received about the attack in Okpokwu LGA and more teams were mobilized to assist the Division on the ground. I am yet to receive details from the team on the ground.

The state has been under persistent deadly attacks allegedly perpetrated by herdsmen.

In April, 15 people were killed in an overnight raid on Tior-Tyu, a rural community in Tarka Local Government. The attack was blamed on the herdsmen militia.

Clashes between nomadic herdsmen and farming communities are rampant in Benue, a largely agrarian state.
The lady who was hit by a Lebanese national is dead.

The police in Lagos had arrested the driver, John Greg. He had driven into the pedestrian and sped off in Victoria Island, Lagos.

The police spokesperson, Benjamin Hundeyin, also told PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday that the charges against Mr Greg have been amended to reflect the new development.

The incident occurred in May and the driver attempted to escape but was chased and arrested.

Shortly after the incident, Omotola Akinsanya was hospitalized at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) before she died.

She sustained serious injuries to her legs.

Mr Hundeyin said he could not ascertain when she died.
A retiree, Isaac Ekeh, has allegedly poured hot water on his wife, Stella, while she was sleeping in the night.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the incident happened on May 31, at 3:00 a:m at Satellite Town, Alakija, in Amuwo-Odofin Local Government area of Lagos State.

Mrs Ekeh, an educationist, who sustained a high degree of injuries, told NAN in a telephone interview on Monday, that the family had dinner together before the unfortunate incident.

My children, husband and I ate our dinner together on the fateful day before we went to bed.

Isaac woke up around 3:00 a.m., boiled water which he used to bathe me while I was sleeping in the bedroom.

My scream alerted my children, who stormed my room as my body was already peeling.

My children rushed me to the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi, where I am receiving treatment.

What baffled me was that we did not quarrel, no fight, no disagreement that would have warranted him to scald my skin, she said.

The mother of four said that her husband has since travelled to his village after causing her grievous harm, adding that he is currently in his village in Owerri, Imo State.

When contacted, the State Police Public Relationships Officer (PPRO), Benjamin Hundeyin, said he had no knowledge of the incident.

I do not have a report of such, the case was not reported.

The woman should go to any police station nearer to her to report, he said.

(NAN)
A nonagenarian and former Nigerias ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations (UN), Arthur Mbanefo, has criticised successive administrations in the country for what he described as a lack of interest in developing the nations education sector.

The 92-year-old accountant and businessman made this disclosure at the weekend during an annual lecture to mark his birthday at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akoka.

The event with the theme; Global Digital Transformation and the Nigerian Paradox, was held at Arthur Mbanefo Digital Research Centre (AMDRC), a N100million worth facility donated to the university by the honoree as part of the activities marking his 90th birthday in 2020.

Mr Mbanefo, who served the university as its pro-chancellor and governing council chairman from 1984 to 1986, had said the intervention was in recognition of the neglect of the education sector by the successive governments.

He also emphasised the significance of technology and innovations to nation-building, even as he said the continued failure to prioritise education as the fulcrum for national development would spell doom for the country.

He said as a nonagenarian he knows that the future of the world is technology but regretted that the nations leadership has consistently failed to move at the pace the world is moving.

The world has gone digital and Nigeria is being left behind. That was why I made this donation when I clocked 90, Mr Mbanefo said.

If individuals dont do it, the government may never do it because they do not care about education. By the time they find out that Nigeria is bigger than them, it will be too late, he added.

He said Nigerian leaders must realise that the country does not exist in a vacuum and that if the leaders dont do what they should do at the right time, the country will continue to be left behind.

Universities shut for months

Though Mr Mbanefo did not speak directly about the ongoing prolonged industrial action by the countrys university workers, the venue of the lecture, UNILAG, has been closed to students for four months.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Allied Institutions (NASU) have been at loggerheads with the Nigerian government over issues of poor welfare for their members, non-implementation of agreements reached with the government, among others.

While the strike lingers, the government has not shown enough concern despite a series of protests organised by students and other stakeholders.

The development may therefore be a confirmation of Mr Mbanefos position that successive governments in Nigeria have not shown the required commitment and dedication to fixing the challenges facing the countrys education sector.

Guest lecturer slams govt over non-digitisation of elections

Meanwhile, the guest lecturer at the event and chairman of Seplat Energy Plc, Bryant Orjiako, said the continuous delay in digitising Nigerias electoral process is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise Nigerians.

Mr Orjiako said it is unacceptable that Nigeria is still struggling with issues around elections adding that there is no reason for people to queue up to register before they get a voters card.

We should be able to register with our smartphones and be able to vote. This is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise Nigerians, Mr Orjiako said.

Mr Orjiako spoke while delivering a lecture at the third Arthur Mbanefo lecture series titled Global Digital Transformation and the Nigerian Paradox, at the Arthur Mbanefo Digital Research Centre (AMDRC), University of Lagos (UNILAG).

He said in Nigeria, e-government should take the lead in the digitisation of the systems, especially with the ideas of e-payments, e-tax, cloud computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence, to facilitate connectivity and social interactions.

He said one way to fight corruption is to digitise everything, noting that digitisation will drive greater transparency, accountability, timeliness and efficiency in government businesses.

Energy access

Speaking further, Mr Orjiakor said another major issue that the Nigerian government must tackle along with digitisation is access to energy.

Without addressing this ubiquitous challenge, Nigerias digital transformation will never be realised.

The World Bank estimates that over 85 million Nigerians are without access to grid electricity. This represents 43 per cent of the countrys population and makes Nigeria one of the countries with the largest energy access deficit in the world. We can draw a direct correlation between energy access and GDP growth where countries with low energy access have low GDP growth rate, he said.

Policy

Mr Orjiako, who praised the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for coming up with the National Digital Economy and Policy Strategy (NDEPS), said the policy should quickly be activated and driven with major participation of the private sector.

Advancing digital technology will no doubt have a transformational impact on Nigeria. This transformation will require focus on accelerating improvements in every sector of our economy and society, Mr Orjiako said.

Revised curriculum

He said the Nigerian government must invest in technical education, even as he said there is a need to revise schools curricula across all tiers of education to address the new skills that will be required in the coming digital transformation.

To achieve this, he said there should be critical partnerships between Nigeria and critical tech sector leaders like Microsoft, Google and Yabacon valley. He said Yabacon Valley is Nigerias equivalent of Silicon Valley and that it is based in Yaba, Lagos.

We will require policy direction from the relevant government authorities in this regard, he said.

Centre director thanks everyone

The director of the centre and former university registrar, Folasade Ipaye, thanked the honoree for his foresight and investment in the university. She said the university has continued to take advantage of the centre to contribute significantly to the global knowledge economy.

Mrs Ipaye urged other philanthropists to emulate Mr Mbanefo, saying the best legacy they could bequeath to the younger generation is a massive investment in education.
A group of public laboratory analysts under the umbrella of the Society of Testing Laboratory Analysts of Nigeria (SoTLAN) has said there are less than 50 registered analytical laboratories for the food, pharma, environment and petroleum industries.

The groups president, Olugbenga Ogunmoyela, who disclosed this at the weekend during a briefing ahead of the societys forthcoming 2022 annual conference, sought the intervention of both the government and private investors.

Foreign-owned laboratories are dominating because Nigerian-owned laboratories lack capacity and are struggling in the face of infrastructural challenges, and constantly rising cost of imported equipment and reagents.

For the laboratories to be globally competitive, they must be ISO certified but many are not, Mr Ogunmoyela said.

Mr Ogunmoyela added that although Nigeria has few specialised and excellent local analytical laboratories, many of them lack capacity and are struggling in the face of infrastructural challenges.

He said the challenges have made it difficult for the experts to undertake effective planning and competitiveness.

He said: The fact that Nigeria and other African countries suffer product rejection and humiliation in the international market is traceable to this singular factor. The quantum of money the nation loses annually to product rejects and capital flight by those organisations and individuals that outsource their product analysis outside the country runs into billions of dollars annually.

Added to this is the unsavoury saga of importation of adulterated petroleum products into the country, as recently witnessed.

All these contribute to the unnecessary and preventable loss of income to the country. An immediate solution is for the federal government to dialogue with the society on how to build the capacity of the local laboratories and personnel in line with the best global practices. This is a cheaper, faster, easier and all-encompassing solution for the government to embrace.

About the conference

According to the president, this years conference, which is billed to hold in Lagos between June 14 and 16, is themed; Building Capacity for Global Competitiveness of Testing Laboratories.

He said university students across Nigeria would also have an opportunity to debate the topic; Testing Laboratories are Important in Improving the Quality of Life in Nigeria.

He said the conference will also feature a laboratory fair and exhibition by more than 20 companies that are into the sales of laboratory equipment and provision of various types of laboratory support services.
Last week, Nigerian stocks were slightly up by 0.55 per cent after seeing a slide the previous week, underscoring the strong appeal of equities to investors at a time of upward rate adjustment.

As fund managers and investors position ahead of half-year results, the key considerations for making investment decisions will revolve around fundamentals and potential like strong earnings power and incentives like dividend and scrip issue.

PREMIUM TIMES has assembled a number of stocks with fundamentals and other potential, adopting key analytical approaches to save you the hassle of randomly picking equities for investment.

The selection, a product of analytical market watch, offers a guide to entering the market and taking strategic positions in hopes that equities will gain value with the passage of time, particularly in the short term.

This is not a buy, sell or hold recommendation but a stock investment guide. You may have to involve your financial advisor before taking investment decisions.

ACCESS HOLDINGS

Access Holdings tops this weeks pick on its recent push to expand its footprints in East Africas biggest economy by way of its planned buyout of Nairobi-based Sidian Bank.

The lenders price-to-earnings (PE) ratio at the end of the last trading session was 2.1x, while its earnings per share (EPS) is N4.58.

ECOBANK TRANSNATIONAL INCORPORATED (ETI)

ETI makes the pack for currently trading substantially below its intrinsic value. The lenders PE ratio as of Friday was 2.4x, while the EPS is N4.66.

CORNERSTONE INSURANCE

Cornerstone features on the pick this week for currently trading significantly below its real value. The underwriters PE ratio as of Friday was 3.4x, while the EPS is N0.18.

CUSTODIAN INVESTMENT

Custodian Investment appears on the selection for trading well below its intrinsic value, making it a good entry point for investors. The PE ratio as of Friday was 3.5x, while the EPS is N1.97.

LEARN AFRICA

Learn Africa makes this weeks selection for currently trading well below its actual value

The publisher has an EPS of N0.59 and a PE ratio of 3.7x at the last trading session.

VITAFOAM

Vitafoam features on the pick for trading significantly below its real value, brightening it chances of seeing a good price appreciation in future.

The companys PE ratio was 5.2x as of the end of the last trading session, while its EPS is N4.32.
Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State has extended the mourning period in the state to Wednesday.

This is contained in a statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Richard Olatunde, in Akure.

Mr Olatunde explained that the extension was sequel to the resolution of the Southwest Governors Forum to observe a 3-day mourning period, starting from Monday to Wednesday across all the Southwest states.

Governor Akeredolu has also directed that all flags in the state must be flown at half-mast for the three days period.

Recall that the governor had directed that all flags in the state be flown at half-mast for seven days from Monday to Sunday.

Gov. Akeredolu appreciated the governors in the Southwest for the massive love and cooperation shown since the horrendous attack in Owo, Mr Olatunde said.

At least 40 people were killed on June 5 when gunmen attacked a Catholic church in Owo, Ondo State.

The Nigerian government has said the attack was likely carried out by the terror group, ISWAP.

None of the attackers has been arrested.

The attack has been condemned by Nigerians and the international community.
The Police Command in Oyo State, says the command has begun a manhunt on the abductors of Oluwaseun Aderogba, the Anglican Bishop of Jebba Diocese, Kwara State, his wife and driver.

The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Adewale Osifeso, stated this while confirming the incident in a statement on Monday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Aderogba, his wife and driver were kidnapped on Sunday, at about 9.00 p.m. on New Oyo/Ogbomoso Expressway.

The incident comes two weeks after the Methodist Prelate Samuel Kanu-Uche, and two others were kidnapped. The kidnappers collected N100 million, according to Mr Kanu-Uche, before their release.

The Anglican Bishops chaplain, who was with the victims when the incident happened, said their vehicle developed a fault some few kilometers to Oyo, when they were traveling from Ogun State to Jebba, and before help could come some armed men came from the bush and surrounded them.

He said that he was lucky because he was not visible because of his black cassock and fell flat on the ground to hide while the abductors marched the Bishop, wife and driver to the bush.

The PPRO said that preliminary investigations revealed that the victims vehicle allegedly developed a mechanical fault, while traveling from Yewa, Ogun State, to Jebba, Kwara State, enroute an isolated area on New Oyo/Ogbomoso Expressway.

He said the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations of the Command, was in charge of the rescue operation that began since 9 a.m. of Sunday.

Mr Osifeso said that all the tactical teams of the Commands Anti-Kidnapping Squad, Ambush Squad, Puff Adder, Police Mobile Force (PMF), Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) and Conventional Police personnel, along with local hunters and vigilantes, were all involved in the rescue operations.

He further said that investigation led by the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) was simultaneously being vigorously embarked upon, to ensure that the victims were rescued unhurt.

He enjoined members of the public to report any suspicious movement to the nearest Police Division or formation, credible and timely information and assured the general public of their safety, as they went about their lawful activities.

(NAN)
The Rwanda High Commission in Nigeria on Friday held a networking event for Commonwealth member states ahead of the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM) billed to hold in Kigali, Rwanda in the coming week.

In his opening remark, Stanislas Kamanzi, Rwanda High Commissioner to Nigeria said Rwanda is ready to welcome member states and their delegations.

The time has come now, and Rwanda and her People are poised to host one of the most high-level global gatherings, the eminent leaders and their delegations, who will be in attendance, he said.

Mr Kamanzi said the event will serve as a platform to debate and make game-changing decisions on issues of common interest, clustered in sub themes including: governance and rule of law; sustainability along the nexus between economy and the environment; health; technology and innovation; and youth.

The 26th CHOGM will be held in Kigali between June 19 and 26, under the theme Delivering a Common Future: Connecting, Innovating, Transforming.

Leaders of the Commonwealth countries meet every two years with each CHOGM holding in a different member country whose Prime Minister or President would be the Commonwealth Chair-in-Office.

Since 1971, a total of 25 meetings have been held, with the most recent held in London in 2018.

CHOGM was due to take place in Kigali in June 2020 but was postponed twice due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is the Commonwealths highest consultative and policy-making gathering. Rwanda was selected, the last meeting in London, to host the next CHOGM.

Catriona Laing, British High Commissioner who also spoke at the event, said the UK is now ready to hand over the chair of the Commonwealth to Rwanda after four years.

According to Ms Laing, during the UKs tenure as chair of the Commonwealth, it had three main focus areas; to champion human rights; to boost intra-Commonwealth trade and to support climate action.

This years meeting is an opportunity to revitalise the Commonwealth, strengthening it as an important network of prosperous democratic nations that are fully committed to sovereignty and self determination, she said.

At this years event, a new Secretary-General to the Commonwealth will be elected. So far, the contest is between Kamina Smith, Jamaicas Minister for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade; and Patricia Scotland, the incumbent Secretary-General.

Representing the minister of foreign affairs, Nasir Aminu, Deputy Director Second United Nation Division at the Foreign Affairs ministry, said Nigeria is ready to participate in the upcoming event with and that the public and private sectors have been mobilised .

Somadina Anene, vice president of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), in his goodwill message encouraged member states to take into consideration how decisions taken will affect the private sector.

If businesses are not thriving, the member countries would not succeed in achieving their mandate. So as we gather in Kigali this year, I want to urge the Heads of State to consider more than ever, the impact of their policies on the organised private sector, he said.

Whatever they do, or decisions they want to take , they should consider how it will affect private organisations that are in business. In Nigeria for example we know that the government cannot provide employment for everybody, so the organised private sector is always handy to augment the governments efforts in the provision of jobs, opportunities, infrastructure and other basic amenities, Mr Anene added.

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 lady has been allegedly raped to death by a man in Agbahara village, Nsu, a community in Ehime Mbano Local Government Area of Imo State, Nigerias South-east.

The victim, Amarachi Iwunze, was reportedly invited by the suspect, Ifeanyi Osuji, on Saturday.

The suspect was said to have drugged the victim before allegedly raping her.

Ms Iwunze hailed from Umuezala, a village which is in the same Nsu community, where the suspect also comes from.

She was reportedly found dead, early Sunday morning, in the suspects house.

A resident of the area, who asked not to be named, told PREMIUM TIMES that the death of the lady was suspicious and the youths would pursue the matter until justice was achieved.

We are yet to get the real cause of her death. You know we are suspecting that the guy is Yahoo boy, the resident, who is also a youth leader, said.

So many of us are suspecting foul play (in the ladys death) especially as the guy has absconded, he added.

He, however, could not confirm if drugs were found in the suspects house.

When contacted, the police spokesperson in Imo State, Michael Abattam, confirmed the incident to PREMIUM TIMES, Monday afternoon.

Mr Abattam said the details were still sketchy but noted the command had received a report about the incident.

We are currently making an effort to arrest the suspect. He is now on the run, Mr Abattam said.

Enraged by the death of Ms Iwunze, several youths from the community attacked the suspects compound on Monday.

In a video clip, which has now gone viral on Social media, the irate youths were seen destroying a house said to have been built by the fleeing suspect.

The bungalow was later set ablaze by the angry youths.
Nnamdi Kanus family has threatened to sue the British government over its silence on the alleged illegal extraordinary rendition of Mr Kanu to Nigeria, according to a report by The Guardian UK.

The family accused the UK Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, Liz Truss, of ignoring overwhelming evidence that Mr Kanu was extraordinarily renditioned to Nigeria by the Nigerian government.

Mr Kanu, the leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), is a Nigerian- British citizen.

The IPOB leader, who was granted bail in April 2017, fled the country after an invasion of his home in Afara-Ukwu, near Umuahia, Abia State, by the Nigerian military in September of that year.

He was re-arrested in Kenya and brought back to Nigeria in June 2021, about four years after he fled Nigeria. He is currently being detained in Abuja where he is facing trial for treason.

In a pre-action legal letter to Ms Truss, the family, through their lawyers, Bindmans LLP, accused the foreign secretary of failing to end Mr Kanus unlawful detention in Nigeria.

The family had previously threatened legal action against the British government over the lack of consular assistance for Mr Kanu.

In the latest letter to the foreign secretary through the lawyers, Mr Kanus family said the IPOB leaders alleged extraordinary rendition to Nigeria might have breached international law.

They insisted that Ms Truss must take a view on whether there has been a breach of international law in the rendition of Mr Kanu or face legal action.

If Mr Kanu has been subject to extraordinary rendition, this is a grave breach of international law which has a significant impact on the discretion which the secretary of state exercises in respect of the steps she should take to assist Mr Kanu under international and domestic law, Shirin Marker, one of the familys lawyers said in the letter.

Forming a view as to whether a breach of international law has occurred, and if so the gravity of the breach, is, therefore, an essential prerequisite to the exercise of discretion on taking further steps at international and domestic law, the solicitor added.

The letter said Mr Kanu was in Kenya in June last year when he was detained by the countrys security services, who took him to a house where he was chained to the floor and beaten for approximately eight days before being put on a private jet on June 27, and flown to Abuja.

Initially, the Nigerian government did not reveal in which country Mr Kanu was detained before being extradited, which raised more unanswered questions about the capture, although they later denied reports that he was illegally extradited to Nigeria.

But the lawyers said the flight believed to have been used in unlawfully transporting the IPOB leader from Kenya has been identified, citing testimony of the IPOB leader to his brother and lawyers.

They faulted the Nigerian governments failure to provide details of how Mr Kanu  who did not have his British passport with him  was brought back to Nigeria.

Mr Kanus family laments UK govts silence

The IPOB leaders family has expressed frustration with the British government on the continued detention of Mr Kanu by the Nigerian government.

With every day that passes, I am increasingly concerned for my brothers welfare in detention and increasingly frustrated by the UK governments ineffectiveness in assisting him, Kingsley, Mr Kanus younger brother, was quoted as saying.

I hope the court will rule that the foreign secretary must recognise the seriousness of my brothers situation and properly consider what other steps she can take to assist him in light of his extraordinary rendition, Mr Kingsley added.

Background

Mr Kanu was earlier slammed with 15 count charges by the Nigerian government on terrorism and felony. But the charges have been reduced to seven.

In April, Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court, Abuja, struck out eight of the 15 charges in her ruling on Mr Kanus preliminary objection challenging the validity of the charges.

Mrs Nyako had ruled that counts 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 14 were incompetent for not disclosing any valid offences against the defendant.

Also, on May 18, following an objection by IPOBs lead counsel, Mike Ozekhome, the Nigerian government withdrew a six-count charge, which was earlier amended.

The judge approved the seven existing counts of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 15, which Mr Kanu is currently being tried on.

The IPOB leader had already pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him when he was arraigned in January.

The judge earlier dismissed Mr Kanus claim that the Nigerian government illegally repatriated him from Kenya to Nigeria without following a formal extradition procedure.

Mrs Nyako insisted that there was a surviving bench warrant for the IPOB leaders arrest and that his repatriation was in compliance with her order in 2018, for his arrest to face trial.

IPOB, a separatist group led by Mr Kanu, is agitating for an independent state of Biafra to be carved out from the South-east and some parts of South-south Nigeria.
These funding and spending conversations invite consideration of the public expenditure management framework. The current structure of the countrys debt burden means we are always going to need new revenue sources (a wider tax base, rather than increase the burden on the captive tax market, for instance). But does it preclude the tightening of spending? However the next government approaches the challenges before the fiscus, we will need, in the near-term, to lower the cost of governance.

It is far easier to compile a list of what currently ails Nigeria, than to assign priorities to each one as we try to fix the problems (a necessary task, given the paucity of resources  time, expertise, and money  required to correct them). It is even more difficult to establish an implementation sequence that will ensure maximum value for the least spending across the identified problem spaces. A large (and very young) precariat, coupled with the awful state of insecurity in the country recommends quick law and order fixes. If, over the first three quarters of next year, the federal government could ratchet up entry level recruitment into the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), the force could, in turn, increase the number of daily shifts that are manned at the Divisional Police Officers (DPO) level to at least two. This ought to help improve the security situation.

Of course, this patch ignores the small matter of the quality of training and materiel available to the forces officers and men. As it does concerns about its organisation and structure. Why, for instance, can we not have unarmed policemen on foot patrols in most built-up areas, able to call in armed reinforcements when the need arises? Irrespective of these drawbacks, the police forces recruitment need is the flip-side of unemployment as a major economic problem.

The Buhari administration put the cart before the horse in addressing this challenge. From next year, the new government cannot afford this luxury. Reforms to domestic agriculture aimed at increasing productivity in the sector require the addition of capital, not labour. Land reform, improvement to rural roads and infrastructure, and much lower cost of doing business in our rural areas (improved security, for one) are first order requirements here. It is easy to think of solutions to these challenges in terms of an increase in government expenditure, as has been done over the last over seven years. But the aim of reforms, going forward, must be to make it easy for private sector operators to provide both goods and services where and when they can.

Over the medium- to long-term, education and health will be key to growing quality labour markets. Both, these, set a lower limit to how far governments spending may fall over the next electoral cycle. Yet, again, especially here, we must rethink matters from first principles.

Put this way, this goal is just as important in governments response to the burden of growth and development in our urban centres. Globally, these melting pots and the exchanges they lead to are the sources of innovation and productivity increases. But not without improvements to urban infrastructure, as comprehensive as that to rural infrastructure. Electricity, roads, high-speed broadband access. These will matter, going forward, for the development and growth of our urban areas. And they need not be provided by governments. All the three tiers of government need do is to de-risk the different sectors, and establish non-partisan, and competent regulatory regimes.

Done properly, the transition of rural agriculture from its current rain-fed, subsistence basis to a capital-intensive one should see the labour released in consequence end up feeding warehouses (input and output ends) of urban factories. Only for a while, though. Over the medium- to long-term, education and health will be key to growing quality labour markets. Both, these, set a lower limit to how far governments spending may fall over the next electoral cycle. Yet, again, especially here, we must rethink matters from first principles. The perennial breakdown of relationship between the federal government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the strikes that come with it invite us to re-interrogate the current model.

the gains to an economy like ours from free education largely happen at the primary and secondary school levels. Subsidies to public universities should be converted to a means-tested students loan scheme. While public universities should be allowed to cover their costs, through mergers where and when possible.

That the public sector provides a service or good does not mean it should be free. Public goods lend themselves to public provision because such is the nature of the gains from their being made available that no single provider may fully appropriate the gains that result from providing them. Still, this does not preclude beneficiaries from covering the cost of receiving such benefits. Besides, the gains to an economy like ours from free education largely happen at the primary and secondary school levels. Subsidies to public universities should be converted to a means-tested students loan scheme. While public universities should be allowed to cover their costs, through mergers where and when possible.

These funding and spending conversations invite consideration of the public expenditure management framework. The current structure of the countrys debt burden means we are always going to need new revenue sources (a wider tax base, rather than increase the burden on the captive tax market, for instance). But does it preclude the tightening of spending? However the next government approaches the challenges before the fiscus, we will need, in the near-term, to lower the cost of governance.

Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manque and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.
We cannot continue this way as a nation, and I hope subsequent primaries will see significant improvements in the identified areas. It is time to rethink our politics, party nomination process, the basis of our choices as individuals and the future of our country. Still, I congratulate the presidential candidates of all the parties for winning the slot of their parties.

After a long voyage, all the political parties have concluded their special conventions and primaries, and they now have presidential flag bearers representing the parties at the polls next year. The past two weeks have been a protracted season of tension, permutations, and intrigues. The dramas that brought the two presidential candidates to victory were captivating and pulsating. There were no apparent upsets as the two presidential candidates from the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are political heavyweights and they represent the culmination of what Nigerian politics has been in the past two decades.

The symbolisms of both of their candidature are not lost on us  the triumph of the political godfathers, the super rich and high-powered stakeholders in our political firmament. Whether their candidacy is what Nigerians expected or not, whether the process of choosing them was dollarised or not, whether their ages would be a factor in their efficiency on the presidential job or not, one of them would likely become the president come May 2023, barring any miracle.

The theatre of presidential politics offers us the rare opportunity to reflect on our politics, our stunted development, and the future of our country. Like most Nigerians, I have conducted a post-mortem on the presidential primaries of the two major political parties in Nigeria, borne out of my critical and sober reflection on all the political theatricals, actions and inactions of significant actors and institutions involved in the primaries. I want to share my five takeaways from the special conventions of the two major political parties.

First, I believe that Nigerians were interested in the primaries because they wanted the parties to choose a candidate who deeply understands the myriad of Nigerian problems and can articulate solutions to them, whilst galvanising all Nigerians to realise our collective aspirations as a people. Most people were disappointed because the primaries did not adequately showcase any candidate, so that Nigerians could start making sense of who he is and what he represents. The profiles, service records, programmes and manifesto speeches of the aspirants did not count for much for the delegates who decided the presidential nominations.

These attributes mattered to the public but not to delegates in their worlds. It was all about schemes, scams, and personal interests. A negligible number of delegates voted on the basis of their conviction about the competence and service record of the aspirants. Throughout the consultation and nomination processes, except for an insignificant number of aspirants, no one spoke about how to solve our most pressing socio-economic problems in Nigeria.

Second, the primaries were auctions of some sort. What was at stake was who would be the highest bidder for an estate worth more than $411 billion  the size of the Nigerian economy in 2019-2020. The leading aspirants, going by what transpired at both conventions, were ready to offer a paltry $100 million for this piece of estate, making it the cheapest auction ever conducted anywhere in the world. If we go by the stories of some delegates who alleged that some aspirants offered them between $5,000 and $20,000 each, a quick calculation will give you a vivid idea of the bid of leading aspirants in both political parties. Similar things happened on a smaller scale in the fringe parties.

In these primaries, we saw the political elites insensitivity, manipulation and greed displayed in gargantuan proportions, and even state governors were not exempted. The level of personal greed was embarrassing, and there was no room for principles or conviction. Only a handful in the elite political class could restrain their greed, even for money they do not need.

A lot has been said and written about the dollarisation of the presidential nomination processes. It beggers belief that the presidency is for sale to the highest bidder at this stage of our political development. We discussed within and outside the venue of the primaries (on social media, traditional media, and the public sphere) about offering dollars as inducement to delegates to vote for a candidate, as if it is a normal thing to do.

This action is a crime and, if proven, should have severe consequences for both the givers and the receivers. But not in Nigeria, where anything goes. Where is our collective conscience and morality? How do we want to be taken seriously as a country by other nations when the most important political office in the country is bought or sold to the highest bidder? How do we expect good leadership from a foundation of corruption and crass hedonism? Why must we be mercantile about our national leadership and development?

Third, these primaries showcased elitism and elite dominance of the political system and structures. Major stakeholders, including the delegates, are of the elite class or their cronies, and they were there to do the bidding of the privileged class. It was a gathering of the political elite to struggle to control state power. We noticed different factions jostling for control. The gang of the governors was prominent in both the PDP and APC primaries. Governors who control fiefdoms were directly or indirectly in control of delegates from their states, barring a few renegades who refused to be directed by the governors and voted either on the basis of personal conviction or the dictates of the candidates that had paid in dollars.

In these primaries, we saw the political elites insensitivity, manipulation and greed displayed in gargantuan proportions, and even state governors were not exempted. The level of personal greed was embarrassing, and there was no room for principles or conviction. Only a handful in the elite political class could restrain their greed, even for money they do not need.

Fourth, loyalty, morality and friendship are meaningless in Nigerian politics. The only thing that matters is shifting interests. We saw politicians who had been long-time allies work at cross-purposes and those who had conversely been at each others throats for ages collaborate for personal gains and unfounded promises. Alliances and counter-alliances were formed and broken. Politicians slaughtered personal relationships at the altar of political expediencies. Primordial sentiments and attachments led to friends and counterparts betraying each other.

At long last, we saw ethnic feelings dictating the choices made by some without considering what is best for Nigeria and the public that the delegates were representing. Advocates of zoning felt hard done and cried wolf in both primaries, although the Northern Governors Forum of the APC, in a heroic act, displayed unusual patriotism when the group insisted on the presidential ticket of the party going South. It may take time for the wounds created during these primaries to heal, and it may take time to rebuild trust and harmony among party members who felt betrayed and used by the system.

these past conventions or presidential nomination processes revealed everything wrong with our politics  the weak ideological foundation of the parties, the attitude of our people to a democratic culture, the influence of poverty or the lack of economic empowerment on political choices, the absence of citizenship rights and responsibilities in our politics, the vanishing moral values and desperation of the elite to hang on to power as the only means of survival and wealth

Fifth, delegates did not vote for aspirants based on the issues of interest to the people they were supposed to represent. The welfare, interest and progress of the ordinary persons did not matter. Everything was purely a transactional enterprise. Most Nigerians watching the primaries from home felt betrayed by the lack of sincerity of some aspirants who, at the last minute and when it mattered the most for them to sell their presidential aspirations to Nigerians, jettisoned the aspiration altogether and en mass, in some instances, engaged in the endorsement of other aspirants, thereby changing the equation of the selection process.

These primaries illustrate the dire state of our politics and the need for a review of the whole democratic process. The monetisation and dollarisation of our politics leave a sour taste in the mouth of every democratic person. Although we have faulted the process, only time will tell whether the products of these processes will deliver Nigeria from this state of quagmire, and raise the hopes and aspirations of many hopeless Nigerians who have given up on the country. The candidates of the two major political parties, who are wealthy political juggernauts, have been part of the orthodoxy, have planned for the presidency for many years, and have fought hard to clinch the tickets of their parties. We sincerely hope they have the elixir to Nigerias problems.

At the end of my review, these past conventions or presidential nomination processes revealed everything wrong with our politics  the weak ideological foundation of the parties, the attitude of our people to a democratic culture, the influence of poverty or the lack of economic empowerment on political choices, the absence of citizenship rights and responsibilities in our politics, the vanishing moral values and desperation of the elite to hang on to power as the only means of survival and wealth in an economy that is very hard to create wealth privately within.

The whole charade and shenanigans of the political class and their desperation to grab power at all costs are linked to poverty and hopelessness in the land, as poor people pay little or no attention to issues. Most ordinary Nigerians suffer from physical and material deprivation, whilst our political elites are afflicted by moral and mental poverty, as seen in their attitudes and behaviours in the presidential nomination of the two major parties .

We cannot continue this way as a nation, and I hope subsequent primaries will see significant improvements in the identified areas. It is time to rethink our politics, party nomination process, the basis of our choices as individuals and the future of our country. Still, I congratulate the presidential candidates of all the parties for winning the slot of their parties.

I look forward to an issue-based campaign devoid of sleaze, mudslinging, ethnic and religious chauvinism, and campaign monetisation. We must get it right this time because we cannot afford to gamble with our collective destiny.

Dakuku Peterside is a policy and leadership expert.
Just 34.75 per cent of eligible Nigerians voted in 2019 and a similarly low, or lower, turnout in 2023 would further undermine the credibility of the poll. But given the prevailing insecurity across the countrydifficulties in registering for permanent voter cards in insecure areas in Northern and South-East Nigeria and the likely rampant misinformation and disinformation that will emerge in the lead up to voting daymeans that fewer Nigerians may vote next year than in 2019.

With dates for the 2023 Nigeria general elections now set by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)  the presidential and National Assembly poll is set for February 25 and governorship and other subnational elections are scheduled for March 11  the countdown is well underway for what will be the seventh consecutive elections since the return to democracy in 1999. This represents 23 years of unbroken democracy; the longest period in the countrys history.

The 2023 elections will be conducted under a new electoral framework, the Electoral Act 2022. The Act allows INEC to review results made under duress or financial inducement, extends the time for campaigns from 90 to 150 days, and provides for the use of technology to determine the mode of voting and transmission of results. Pundits believe these measures can help manage situations where inaccurate results are returned, expand the opportunity for politicians to visit the nooks and crannies of the country if they so desire and cure the chaotic, vulnerable manipulation and unnecessarily opaque process of aggregating results.

However, instead of reducing the role of money in politics, the Act has increased the campaign finance limit from N1 billion to N5 billion for presidential candidates. The ceiling for all other elected positions have also been increased fivefold, but without any efforts to improve the scrutiny of compliance limits, they are still likely to be exceeded.

Presidential aspirants

The Electoral Act requires that parties submit the names of their candidates 180 days before the elections, thereby allowing for the legal resolution of fractious primaries ahead of the voting day. In signing the Electoral Act, President Buhari also requested that the section that precludes political office holders from participating in party primaries and voting during congresses be deleted, as it breaches participation rights. However, the National Assembly refused to make this amendment. This meant that several of Buharis ministers were unable to contest for elective office unless they first resigned their positions.

Potential third forces that could increase the likelihood of Nigerias first ever presidential run-off election are Peter Obi, 60, who withdrew from the PDP primary contest and will now run as the Labour Party flagbearer, and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, 65. While Obi has cultivated a significant online following among younger voters, Kwankwaso is equally popular among youths in his native Kano State.

In late May, the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) delegates chose a long-time presidential aspirant, Atiku Abubakar as their candidate, as they did in 2019. He will face off against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). On June 8, Tinubu emerged from an initial field of 28 candidates who paid N100 million each to purchase the party nomination forms. Just like at the PDP convention, when the decisive movement was delivered by the governor of Sokotos decision to stand down, handing his delegate votes to Atiku, the APC presidential primaries saw frontline South-West candidates such as governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi and former Ogun governor, Ibikunle Amosun, stepping down, and handing Tinubu their bloc votes.

The Old and the New?

Tinubu, 70, and Atiku, 75, are now the frontline candidates in the forthcoming elections and both have significant war chests at their disposal. They previously worked together in 2007 when Tinubus party, the Action Congress, fielded Atiku, then the outgoing vice president, as their presidential candidate, and in 2015 when both were frontline promoters of the APC. However, with 60 per cent of Nigerias population being youths and with many among that generation already disgruntled with the ruling class, following events such as the #EndSars protest against police brutality, the prospect of widening an intergenerational divide is clear.

Potential third forces that could increase the likelihood of Nigerias first ever presidential run-off election are Peter Obi, 60, who withdrew from the PDP primary contest and will now run as the Labour Party flagbearer, and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, 65. While Obi has cultivated a significant online following among younger voters, Kwankwaso is equally popular among youths in his native Kano State. The attempt to create a formidable third force seems to have been midwifed as the Peoples Redemption Party, New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), National Rescue Movement (NRM) and the Nigeria Labour Congress have all agreed, for now, to an alliance to run under the banner of the Labour Party. A joint Obi-Kwankwaso ticket could shake up the presidential race.

Challenges Ahead

The 2023 elections will be some of the most challenging to conduct in Nigeria as the country battles nodes of complex insecurity. The Boko Haram conflict that defined the 2015 election is yet to be quelled, and with bandits operating across the North-West, violent secessionist agitation spiraling in the South-East and farmer-herder clashes ongoing across the country, the 2023 election is set to take place amidst nationwide insecurity. The June 5 attack on a church in relatively stable Ondo State, in South-West Nigeria, which saw more than 50 people killed, was a stark reminder of the insecurity challenges that will make the safety of election materials and personnel a major challenge for INEC.

The forthcoming off-cycle governorship elections in Ekiti (June 18) and Osun (July 16) states will offer an early indication of what to expect in the 2023 general elections. But the financial implications of an extended election season are already putting strain on an economy that has hobbled in and out of recession in the last seven years.

INEC chairman, Professor Mahmud Yakubu, is the first election body head to get a second term in the countrys history. But whilst Yakubu has done well to build on the successes of his predecessor, Attahiru Jega by adopting innovation and consulting regularly with key stakeholders, Nigerias zero-sum political game with desperate and disparate actors, out to win at all costs, still poses a sizeable threat to electoral integrity, despite technological advances. The forthcoming off-cycle governorship elections in Ekiti (June 18) and Osun (July 16) states will offer an early indication of what to expect in the 2023 general elections. But the financial implications of an extended election season are already putting strain on an economy that has hobbled in and out of recession in the last seven years. The naira is now trading at over N600 to one $1 on the black market, as thousands of dollars are dispersed by political aspirants at all levels to shore up support.

Voter turnout is another area of concern. Just 34.75 per cent of eligible Nigerians voted in 2019 and a similarly low, or lower, turnout in 2023 would further undermine the credibility of the poll. But given the prevailing insecurity across the country, the choice available when it comes to the presidential race, difficulties in registering for permanent voter cards in insecure areas in Northern and South-East Nigeria and the likely rampant misinformation and disinformation that will emerge in the lead up to voting day, designed to draw distinct divisions and undermine the credibility of key election stakeholders, means that fewer Nigerians may vote next year than in 2019.

Nigeria may be experiencing its longest run of uninterrupted democracy but its quality remains very much in need of improvement.

Idayat Hassan is director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).
The only war the masses ought to fight, and must fight, is against the corrupt elite. The purpose is to reclaim our country. The year is 2023. The ammunition is the PVC!

The ambition of Bola Ahmed Tinubu to rule Nigeria appears on course to provoke a civil war. But this war will not be fought between the Yoruba and the Igbo; it is a civil war between the Nigerian masses and the oligarchy that he represents.

Barely less than one week after grabbing the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), he appears to be fanning the embers of war. This seems glaring in a recent incident in which armed thugs were sent to disrupt the traders of Alaba International Market, Ojo, Lagos State, who went the extra mile to shut their shops in order to obtain their Permanent Voters Cards (PVC).

A selling point in Tinubus march to the APC nomination appears to be the assumption that he dictates who wins and who loses in the Nigerias most populous State of Lagos. But, as an APC chieftain and the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, noted in a recent speech, Tinubu has been able to lord himself over the good people of the State due to low voter turnout. Here in Lagos, you have over six million registered voters, only about a million voted (in 2019 general elections); five million did not vote.

This low voter turnout is rooted in Tinubus lack of popularity among the masses. To that end, he seems to have always deployed all manners of terror to suppress the votes of his opponents. Like the attack on the Igbo traders at Alaba International Market, armed thugs were also used to unleash terror on the voters in many parts of Lagos State with heavy Igbo populations during the 2019 elections.

Tinubus seeming penchant to incite the Yoruba against the Igbo is well chronicled. Recall the murder of Funke Olakunrin, the daughter of Afenifere leader, Reuben Fasoranti, by Fulani Herdsmen. In what appears to be his attempt to appease the Fulani, Tinubu quickly exonerated the herdsmen without any iota of evidence. Instead, he stoked the name of Chukwudi Onuamadike, popularly known as Evans, a notorious kidnapper, to suggest that heinous crimes in Nigeria owe their origin to Igboland.

Follow the above with the insensitive attempt of Remi, the wife of Tinubu, to instigate others against the Igbo living in Lagos. In one instance, she was caught on camera on a campaign trail spewing the following snide: Igbo, we no dey trust una again!

One must not forget the case of Tinubus close ally, the Lagos State commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu, who peddled the false allegation that the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a predominantly Igbo group, was planning to wreak havoc in Lagos. Further, Tinubu cannot feign ignorance of the origin of another false claim by state authorities that the IPOB was behind the burning of the palace of Oba of Lagos and other public infrastructure during the #EndSARS protest in the year 2020.

In each of these instances, however, the Yoruba masses and their true leaders have been bold to denounce Tinubus machinations. They have resolved to stand side by side with their Igbo counterparts for the common good.

The Nigerian masses are becoming wiser. They are beginning to recognise that the powerful cabal, where Ahmed Bola Tinubu is a high chief, has no sympathy for what the ordinary man or woman is going through  be it Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba, Ijaw, Tiv, etc. They must resist the temptation to shed each others blood, by fighting the Tinubu war. The only war the masses ought to fight, and must fight, is against the corrupt elite. The purpose is to reclaim our country. The year is 2023. The ammunition is the PVC!

SKC Ogbonnia, a 2019 APC Presidential Aspirant, writes from Houston, Texas.
He has contributed to democracy and Pan-Africanism through thought-provoking lectures and books. Also, Mbeki was instrumental to South Africas swift rise to become one of Africas most recognised states, as he championed several Africa-facing policies at a continental level. His other contributions to the continent and the world include the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, the Thabo Mbeki School, and the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library. Through these, Mbeki furthers his beliefs in and advocacy for an African renaissance.

I was honoured to deliver the 12th Thabo Mbeki Africa Day Lecture on The Africa Union at 20 a couple of weeks ago. In a few days, on June 19, President Thabo Mbeki will be our guest on an edition of The Toyin Falola Interviews. Interestingly, that will be a day after his 80th birthday. Among my friends and people I highly revere, President Thabo Mbeki will be the newest to join the Octogenarian Club. Not every human is privileged to witness eighty years on earth. Beyond witnessing, only a few people have had the opportunity to have experienced the kind of life Thabo Mbeki has enjoyed. And even fewer of that age range can claim to have had as many impacts and influence as the second president of South Africa has had, not only in his home country, South Africa but also on the African continent and the world at large.

In human societies, the idea of change is an often-romanticised concept. While we love the concept of change, especially if it is positive or neutral, we are not always openly receptive to it when it happens to us. We shy away from it and are sometimes all-attacking of the harbinger of change, especially if it involves someone we love and idolise. Just as high school students would give a hard time to a new teacher employed as a replacement for their retired favourite teacher, that is the same way the people of a country would give a hard time to the successor of their favourite president and idol. President Thabo Mbeki was faced with a somewhat similar situation. Having succeeded South Africas most-revered, idolised, and loved president, Nelson Mandela, anyone would be right to think that President Mbekis administration would face huge criticisms and attacks. Truly, it faced criticisms and attacks, even from within the inner circles of the party. Nonetheless, his governance and significant contributions to the Pan-African state prove that a country may have more than one impactful hero and revered national in succession.

Thabo Mbeki is a full-blooded Pan-Africanist. He was born into the African National Congress (ANC), the South African political party that has been solely responsible for producing the countrys presidents since independence. President Mbekis father was a vocal and influential member of the ANC, and young Thabo spent his childhood learning the partys values, ideals, culture, and norms. As he grew older, he became more familiar with the ideals and struggles of the party. Being a member of the most notable party opposing the apartheid government and its system in the country, Thabo Mbeki had a first-hand experience of what his people were made to go through. He saw how his people were considered dangerous and dissenters in their own home country! Thus, from an early age, Mbeki learnt to associate with his people, identify himself with them, and join them in fighting for their cause.

The African National Congress can never forget Mbekis strategic and diplomatic roles in shaping the partys social proof and acceptability. Mbekis activism as a party member was on an intellectual and diplomatic front. He championed the intellectual battle against the apartheid government with other countries worldwide. Thanks to Mbeki and his contributions to the party, the injustices of the apartheid government got more international media coverage, drawing the attention of other nations to the plights of the indigenous South Africans and the need to put an end to the apartheid system in the country. Using his skills and experience, Mbeki was one of the African National Congress bulwarks, pre-and post-1990.

During his time in government, Mbeki proved his Pan-African spirit to the core. He further developed and supported the Black Economic Programme, and some of his policies were considered socio-democratic because they were citizen-focused. However, no human is without enemies, and no one is perfect. Even within his innermost circle, Mbeki had his fair share of hatred, hostility, and conspiracy.

Although President Mbeki spent his early adult life at a university in England, he returned home in time to witness the lifting of the ban on the activist African National Congress. Furthermore, he continued to commit more of his time and energy to the party, which saw him rise through the ranks, becoming the deputy president of the ANC in 1994. Thus, it was not a surprise when he emerged as South Africas first deputy President to Nelson Mandela. In his capacity as deputy president, Thabo Mbeki was not a ceremonial office holder like the average vice or deputy president. He was both deputy president and prime minister, seeing to the day-to-day running of the South African government. If the Mandela-led South African government were a company, Mandela would have been the chief executive officer or board chairman, and Thabo Mbeki the chief operations officer. Such was his involvement in the government of his predecessor.

President Mbeki helped institutionalise some memorable policies during the Mandela government, which he continued to uphold during his governance. He played a participatory and important role in the first post-apartheid government, resulting in his appointment as the president of the African National Congress in 1997. His emergence as the president of the countrys most influential political party also meant his eventual nomination as the unopposed presidential candidate of the party. President Mbeki became the second president of South Africa in 1999, with Jacob Zuma as his deputy. As president, Mbeki proved that his election to power was not a waste. He deployed strategies that helped the South African economy grow and become a fertile ground for home-based and foreign investors. Undeniably, one of the best governments, if not the best, that South Africa has ever witnessed was that of Mbeki. There was a drastic drop in the nations debt and budget deficit, and President Mbeki also championed economic growth  not through unrealistic leaps and bounds but consistent and growth-focused measures.

During his time in government, Mbeki proved his Pan-African spirit to the core. He further developed and supported the Black Economic Programme, and some of his policies were considered socio-democratic because they were citizen-focused. However, no human is without enemies, and no one is perfect. Even within his innermost circle, Mbeki had his fair share of hatred, hostility, and conspiracy. Although he was the most qualified to lead the country, and he made several propositions and introduced life-improving policies, internal crises in his party that were fundamentally about his deviation from so-called extremist socialist views led to his removal from the position of the party president.

Mbekis replacement of Jacob Zuma further aggravated the issues that his party leaders had against him. As a result, his second term in office was cut short because they pressured him to resign. Anyone who has followed the turn of things in South Africa will agree that forcing Mbeki to resign was a mistake.

President Mbeki also had a rough time with Jacob Zuma, who was supposed to be his deputy and right-hand man. Zuma, who became the countrys fourth president, had corruption cases hanging over him and links to involvement in shady business in government. As a principled man, Mbeki would have none of that. Things escalated to the extent that Mbeki removed Zuma from office and replaced him with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, South Africas first female deputy president. The choice of a female replacement for Jacob Zuma proves that Thabo Mbeki is a leader who ranks competence, skills, and experience above biases like ethnicity and gender. His choice of Ngcuka as his deputy opened the door for the participation of more women in high-ranking political positions in the country, seeing that the deputy president was female.

Mbekis replacement of Jacob Zuma further aggravated the issues that his party leaders had against him. As a result, his second term in office was cut short because they pressured him to resign. Anyone who has followed the turn of things in South Africa will agree that forcing Mbeki to resign was a mistake.

Mbeki is a Pan-Africanist committed to the revival of Africa without looking back, despite a forceful and bad outing from governance. He has contributed to democracy and Pan-Africanism through thought-provoking lectures and books. Also, Mbeki was instrumental to South Africas swift rise to become one of Africas most recognised states, as he championed several Africa-facing policies at a continental level. His other contributions to the continent and the world include the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, the Thabo Mbeki School, and the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library. Through these, Mbeki furthers his beliefs in and advocacy for an African renaissance. No human is infallible. President Mbekis government had its downsides; however, casting our reminiscent thoughts about South Africa during Mbekis tenure reveals nothing short of a strategic economic and political foundation and expansion.

For all the good he has done, the kind of life he has led, his convictions, and his Pan-Africanism, I felicitate President Thabo Mbeki on the occasion of his 80th year on earth! Please join us for a conversation with President Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki

Sunday, June 19, 2022

5:00 PM South Africa

4:00 PM Nigeria

3:00 PM GMT

10:00 AM Austin CST

Register and Watch here.

Toyin Falola, a professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at The University of Texas at Austin, is the Bobapitan of Ibadanland.
Ahead the 2023 general elections, a pressure group, the North Central Renaissance Movement (NCRM) has called on the presidential candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Labour Party (LP) to narrow their choice of running mates to the North Central zone.

In an open letter to all the political parties with particular reference to the presidential candidates of the four leading parties, Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), and Mr. Musa Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), the NCRM advised them to ensure equity, justice, diversity and inclusivity of the geo-political zones of the country through their choice of Vice Presidential candidates.

The letter was signed by Nghargbu Ktso the Chairman, Aliyu Mustapha the Secretary and High Chief Onoja Alexander David the Chief Strategist/Public Relations Officer.

While observing that the next president will almost certainly emerge from one of the four leading political parties, the group reasoned that since the presidential flag bearers of the PDP and the NNPP emerged from North East and Northwest zones respectively while those of APC and LP are from South West and South East, equity demands that the running mates of Tinubu and Obi should be chosen from North Central zone.

The NCRM averred, Our shared history as a nation provides the statistics upon which our plea and request is founded, mainly the fact that whereas all geopolitical zones including the North Central have produced the military rulers of Nigeria at one time or the other, it is only the North Central geopolitical zone which has not produced a democratically elected President or Vice President of the Republic of Nigeria since independence

We wish to remind political parties, especially the APC and the LP that it would be tantamount to using unjust scales and unequal measures for them to choose their presidential candidates on the basis of equity, fairness and justice only to turn around and pick running mates on the basis of other considerations which negate the same principles.

We therefore urge the APC and the Labour Party and their esteemed flag-bearers to look at any of the highly qualified and politically suitable candidates from across the North Central geopolitical zone and select one of them  thereby making a choice which will resound to their credit far into the future.

It is also important to underscore that we are not asking for charity, but rather offering partnership, as the North Central geopolitical zone brings to the table a massive pool of savvy and engaged voters who, according to data from previous elections, especially the 2019 presidential elections, have largely proven to be tie-breakers so that whoever we align with goes on to win the election.

In conclusion, the North Central Geopolitical zone contends that all the principles of equity, diversity, inclusivity, fairness and justice, support our claim to be in the Presidency in 2023 and we are offering bloc votes to any of the two leading parties with southern flag bearers mentioned herein which picks her running mate from amongst us, irrespective of the state, tribe or religion of such. This is so because amongst us are league of intelligent and eminently qualified politicians that can serve in that capacity. Some of whom have shown that clearly in this political season.

SEE below the full text of NCRMs letter
The police command in Ekiti State has deployed scores of anti-riot officials to quell the growing violence among some leading major political parties, which spread to Ado-Ekiti, the state capital on Sunday.

This is coming just as the gubernatorial election in the state is only six days away.

The Commands Public Relations Officer, Sunday Abutu, who made this known on Sunday, said his men had been able to checkmate the crisis and restored calm, after the early morning skirmishes.

According to him, the police commissioner, Morounkeji Adesina, has ordered the heavy deployment of anti-riot and plain-clothed police officers to identify trouble spots across the state, to prevent further violence or bloodshed.

The police commissioner and other security outfits have been trying to ensure that this election is violence-free and other stakeholders, especially the political actors, must join us because no election is worth the blood of any citizen.

Concerning what has been happening in the political scene, the CP has ordered full investigations into reported cases of shooting and disruption and we are assuring you that those found culpable will be severely dealt with, Mr Abutu said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that tension mounted in Ado-Ekiti on Sunday over reports of planned reprisal attacks after the alleged killing of one Tope Ajayi, a supporter of the APC in the state.

Mr Ajayi was allegedly shot dead in Itaji-Ekiti by political thugs when the APC and Social Democratic Party (SDP) took their campaigns to the town, during which confrontation started between the supporters.

After Mr Ajayis killing, tension again gripped residents of Ado-Ekiti over fears that the leadership of a transport association in the state had mobilised to launch a possible reprisal.

The situation compelled many residents to abandon going to churches, while many that had left homes much earlier returned, leaving the streets deserted for hours.

Many commercial motorists, private vehicle owners and commercial motorcyclists were also seen making emergency u-turns, following reports that some hoodlums had taken over some places, including the popular Mobil junction.

Consequently, both the Nigerian Army, Police and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps swiftly mobilised to some flashpoints in the state capital, with a view to averting a further attack.

A drive around the city also showed that soldiers, the police, DSS and the NSCDC were patrolling the streets in Hilux trucks to restore calm and normalcy.

Three Armored Personnel Carriers and a truck were stationed in various strategic locations in the state capital, particularly at Tosin Aluko Motor Park, Atikankan, Old Garage, Ajilosun, Ijigbo and Oja Oba areas.

Meanwhile, the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti, Adeyemo Adejugbe, has summoned emergency stakeholders meeting at his palace on Monday.

Palace sources said the leading traditional ruler was deeply worried at the turn of events, barely a few days to the gubernatorial election.

Those invited to the meeting include the police, chairmen of political parties, all gubernatorial candidates, the leadership of both NURTW and RTEAN, as well as that of Okada riders association, among others.

(NAN)
ISF manages over half a billion dollars across three funds. The ISF funds acquire holdings in start-up companies and venture capital funds.

The Fund is backed by major institutional investors from Israel , Europe , and the U.S.

TEL AVIV, Israel, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ISF (Israel Secondary Fund) announced today that it has raised its 3rd fund totaling 312 million dollars. In 2017, ISF raised its 2nd fund of 100 million dollars and currently manages over half a billion dollars focused on secondary transactions in the Israeli technology market.

From right to letf: Josh Scher, Dror Glass, Eva Hobsman, Shmuel Shilo and Nir Linchevski (Photo credit: Shai Gavriely)

The investors who participated in the current fundraising include several of Israel's largest institutional investors, such as Migdal Insurance, Altshuler Shaham, Bank Hapoalim, as well as leading institutions, pension funds, endowments and family offices from Europe and the U.S.A.

According to Dror Glass, Managing Partner and Founder of ISF, "In recent years, ISF led over 80 secondary transactions in technology companies and venture funds. The timing of the current fundraising is particularly significant, considering the shifting market trends after a decade of unprecedented growth."

"We expect the demand for secondary transactions and liquidity to increase significantly, especially given the growing uncertainty in the High-Tech industry and possible delays of IPOs and acquisitions. ISF is a leader in the global tech-secondaries market, and we believe that with our new fund, we will play a central role in the local investments sphere."

Dror also referred to the fund's flexible and efficient investment policy: "Our unique model allows us to provide a creative and quick response to all liquidity needs. We acquire minority shares in private technology companies from founders, employees, and investors and can participate in these companies follow-on rounds. We also acquire venture fund holdings and conduct GP restructurings."

"Our guiding principle is reaching a Win-Win-Win deal for the seller, for ISF, and above all  for the company and its employees."

More than 80 transactions and 50 exits

ISF (Israel Secondary fund) is a leading technology-focused secondary fund headed by Dror Glass, Nir Linchevski, and Eva Hubsman.

ISF was established in 2008 by Dror Glass and Shmuel Shilo, pioneers in the secondary field in Israel.

ISF provides liquidity in the inefficient private tech market, performing quick and creative transactions acquiring holdings in private companies and venture capital funds. ISF's target audience is entrepreneurs, investors, and employees who hold options and shares in companies in addition to limited partner stakes in funds.

ISF invested directly and indirectly in approximately 220 companies. Its portfolio includes many successful companies and funds, including Myheritage, Aidoc, WSC, Innovid, Valens, Pixellot, Earnix, Papaya Gaming, Verbit, Arbe, Yotpo, Waze, Glilot, Vertex, Coralogix, Solaredge and more.

Nir Linchevski, a Managing Partner at ISF, adds: "ISF has played a crucial role in Israel's secondary market evolution.

"The path of a start-up towards a significant exit may take ten years or more. Allowing entrepreneurs, employees, and investors to realize significant value along the way - and not just at the endgame - enables them to enjoy the fruits of their labor at an earlier stage while company's management remains focused on long-term growth.

"Our model ensures that all parties - investors, companies, and employees  profit, which is key to continued market growth."

About the ISF partners:

Dror Glass has been an active participant in the Israeli secondary market since 2001. Dror served as a Managing Partner at Orma Investments of the IDB Group, an Investment Manager at the Israel Corporation, and an Investment Banker at Evergreen (the Israeli representative of Robertson Stephens).

Dror was also Executive Director of the prestigious Wharton-Recanati M.B.A. Program at Tel Aviv University.

Nir Linchevski joined ISF in 2014 after serving as a Founding Partner in the private equity investment company Shiraz Investments and as chairman of the Altshuler Shaham Asset Management between 2007-2012.

Nir previously served as Managing Director in U,S, based venture capital fund Vantage Point Capital Partners, and as a General Partner in the Israeli venture capital fund Formula Ventures.

Eva Hubsman joined ISF four years ago after serving as Triventures' CFO and providing consultancy services in financial management, strategy, and business development to funds and companies such as Evergreen and Samsung.

Contact: dror@israelsecondary.com

Image - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1837815/ISF.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1837816/ISF_Logo.jpg

SOURCE ISF (Israel Secondary Fund)
Inaugural shipment landed in Germany , pre-orders from pharmacy customers to be fulfilled in the coming days

, pre-orders from pharmacy customers to be fulfilled in the coming days Materia Malta becomes the first company to export medical cannabis from Malta for sale in another country

LONDON, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Materia (the "Company"), a leading producer and distributor of medical cannabis in Europe, announces that its wholly-owned subsidiary Materia Malta Operating Ltd. ("Materia Malta") has completed its first export of commercial medical cannabis from its EU GMP manufacturing site.

This represents the launch of Materia's own brand and manufactured products into Germany, Europe's largest medical cannabis market. The Company's German distribution subsidiary, Materia Deutschland GmbH, which took delivery of the shipment, has commenced sales to pharmacies, with a number of pre-orders already received.

Materia becomes the first Malta-based manufacturer of medical cannabis to export product for commercial sale in another country. Previous exports have only been approved for R&D or lab testing purposes.

"Our products are already helping patients in Malta improve their quality of life, and now we can support the needs of patients in Germany too," said Nick Pateras, Managing Director, Europe of Materia.

"We believe Malta will play an important role in the global cannabis supply chain, as it has done within the broader pharmaceuticals sector for decades. We are proud to be the company establishing new frontiers for Malta's and Europe's cannabis industry."

Update on Kanabo Transaction

The Company also informs that further to the announcements made on 26 July, 2021 and 4 November, 2021 regarding its proposed transaction with Kanabo Group Plc ("Kanabo"), discussions have developed such that both parties believe the relationship is best consummated through a contract manufacturing agreement, as opposed to the previously proposed transaction.

The Company is seeking new strategic partners while it continues its organic growth and execution of its business plan. Discussions with potential partners are oriented around accelerating the Company's penetration of key end markets and further bolstering its supply chain.

About Materia

Materia is a leading independent producer and distributor of medical cannabis across Europe. Materia has developed a robust EU GMP manufacturing and distribution ecosystem to deliver the highest quality cannabis medicine wherever there is a patient in need. Our team draws upon extensive pharmaceuticals experience and regulatory acumen as we pursue our mission of enabling global cannabis access.

Website: http://www.materia.global/

Email: investors@materiaventures.com

SOURCE Materia
RIGA, Latvia, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Meness Aptieka, one of the largest pharmacy brands in Latvia, has earned the best place to work certification in Latvia for its first participation. According to the assessment results, 81% of employees said that they are proud to work for the organization and 79% have reported a consistently positive experience with their coworkers, their leaders and with their jobs. In addition, the company places a high value on employee engagement, empowers the team members and continuously enriches the employee experience, resulting in its recognition among the employers of choice in Latvia.

In a statement from Vilma Druliene, CEO of the organization, she said, "This accreditation reinforced my belief that we are focusing on the right priority - Our People! Together with the management and HR teams, we are committed to drive continuous improvement to sustain an enabling, engaging and inclusive culture and focus on the development of our people."

Baiba Pedraudze, head of HR commented on this achievement: "We are honored to be Best Place to Work Certified. This achievement substantiates our commitment to building an amazing workplace culture and future together with our employees. We are proud that our employees have a consistently positive experience with their co-workers and leaders and find personal satisfaction in their jobs."

Every year, the program partners with many organizations in the Baltics, across different industries, to help them measure, benchmark, improve their HR practices and have access to the tools and expertise they need to deliver effective and sustainable change in their organizations.

ABOUT BEST PLACES TO WORK PROGRAM

Best Places to Work is an international certification program, considered as the 'Platinum Standard' in identifying and recognizing top workplaces around the world, providing employers the opportunity to learn more about the engagement and the satisfaction of their employees and honor those who deliver an outstanding work experience with the highest standards in regards to working conditions. Join our community on LinkedIn , Twitter , and Facebook .

For more information, please visit www.bestplacestoworkfor.org

SOURCE Best Places to Work
Lower rates of bladder cancer recurrence and progression demonstrated in clinics with a high level of blue light cystoscopy (BLC) use in primary patients

Photocure sponsor of the Residents Day during the NUF congress

OSLO, Norway, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Photocure ASA (OSE: PHO) announces that positive data from a Danish population registry study featuring nearly 10,000 bladder cancer patients was presented at the Nordisk Urologisk Forening (NUF) congress in Helsinki, Finland last week. NUF was being held June 8-11, 2022 as an in-person event for the first time since 2019. Photocure's presence at and commitment to NUF was reinforced by sponsoring the Residents Day event for this year's congress. Nordic Residents in Urology is a NUF group, which aims to increase collaboration and networking between young urologists in the Nordic countries in order to improve overall education and research opportunities.

Nordisk Urologisk Forening is an association of the national urological societies in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, supporting close cooperation of Nordic urologists in various fields of education, science and clinical work. The NUF meeting is bi-annual, bringing together Nordic urologists, nurses and healthcare industry to meet and share best practice. Photocure, The Bladder Cancer Company, was present in Helsinki during the whole event.

In the scientific program on Bladder Cancer topics, BLC was prominently featured again this year: a Danish population study assessing recurrence and progression impact of BLC using national registries in Denmark was presented at NUF.

The study abstract entitled "Use of photodynamic diagnosis (PDD) at primary TURB*: Potential influence on recurrence and progression rates in NMIBC in a registry-based study using a country cohort" shows beneficial impact on recurrence and progression in patients treated at clinics who have a higher level of use of BLC in primary patients. The results are based on data from nearly 10,000 patients identified through the Danish National Patient Registry, corresponding to all newly diagnosed NMIBC patients in Denmark in the period 2011-2017.

Linea Blichert-Refsgaard (MD, PhD student) presented this study live on June 9 and in a poster, concluding that "Common use of PDD in the primary TURB at department level seems to be associated with lower 5-year recurrence and progression risks."

Jrgen Bjerggaard Jensen (MD, DMSc, Professor, Consultant in Urology, Chairman of the Danish Bladder Cancer Group and the Nordic Urothelial Cancer Research Group, Department of Urology Aarhus University Hospital put the importance of these study results into perspective, stating: "These real world data results show the true potential of adding better visual diagnostic methods in endoscopy compared to the old standard with conventional white light."

The abstract is available here: http://www.nuf2021.fi/abstracts/ and will be published in 'Scandinavian Journal of Urology' after the congress.

* TURB / TURBT: Transurethral resection of bladder tumor

** NMIBC: Non-muscle invasive bladder cancer

Note to editors:

All trademarks mentioned in this release are protected by law and are registered trademarks of Photocure ASA.

About Bladder Cancer

Bladder cancer ranks as the 8th most common cancer worldwide  the 5th most common in men  with 1 720 000 prevalent cases (5-year prevalence rate)1a, 573 000 new cases and more than 200 000 deaths in 2020.1b

Approx. 75% of all bladder cancer cases occur in men.1 It has a high recurrence rate with up to 61% in year one and up to 78% over five years.2 Bladder cancer has the highest lifetime treatment costs per patient of all cancers.3

Bladder cancer is a costly, potentially progressive disease for which patients have to undergo multiple cystoscopies due to the high risk of recurrence. There is an urgent need to improve both the diagnosis and the management of bladder cancer for the benefit of patients and healthcare systems alike.

Bladder cancer is classified into two types, non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) and muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), depending on the depth of invasion in the bladder wall. NMIBC remains in the inner layer of cells lining the bladder. These cancers are the most common (75%) of all BC cases and include the subtypes Ta, carcinoma in situ (CIS) and T1 lesions. In MIBC the cancer has grown into deeper layers of the bladder wall. These cancers, including subtypes T2, T3 and T4, are more likely to spread and are harder to treat.4



1 Globocan. a) 5-year prevalence / b) incidence/mortality by population. Available at: https://gco.iarc.fr/today, accessed [January 2022].

2 Babjuk M, et al. Eur Urol. 2019; 76(5): 639-657

3 Sievert KD et al. World J Urol 2009;27:295300

4 Bladder Cancer. American Cancer Society. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/bladder-cancer.html

About Hexvix/Cysview (hexaminolevulinate HCl)

Hexvix/Cysview is a drug that preferentially accumulates in cancer cells in the bladder, making them glow bright pink during Blue Light Cystoscopy (BLC). BLC with Hexvix/Cysview, compared to standard white light cystoscopy alone, improves the detection of tumors and leads to more complete resection, fewer residual tumors, and better management decisions.

Cysview is the tradename in the U.S. and Canada, Hexvix is the tradename in all other markets. Photocure is commercializing Cysview/Hexvix directly in the U.S. and Europe and has strategic partnerships for the commercialization of Hexvix/Cysview in China, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand. Please refer to https://photocure.com/partners/our-partners for further information on our commercial partners.

About Photocure ASA

Photocure: The Bladder Cancer Company delivers transformative solutions to improve the lives of bladder cancer patients. Our unique technology, making cancer cells glow bright pink, has led to better health outcomes for patients worldwide. Photocure is headquartered in Oslo, Norway and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE: PHO). For more information, please visit us at www.photocure.com, www.hexvix.com, www.cysview.com

For further information, please contact:

Dan Schneider

President and CEO

Photocure ASA

Email: ds@photocure.com

Erik Dahl

CFO

Photocure ASA

Tel: +4745055000

Email: ed@photocure.com

David Moskowitz

Vice President, Investor Relations

Photocure ASA

Tel: +1 202 280 0888

Email: david.moskowitz@photocure.com

Media and IR enquiries:

Geir Bjrlo

Corporate Communications (Norway)

Tel: +47 91540000

Email: geir.bjorlo@corpcom.no

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/photocure/r/positive-data-from-the-danish-national-patient-registry-presented-at-the-2022-nordic-urologisk-foren,c3583623

The following files are available for download:

SOURCE Photocure
WILMINGTON, Del., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A drone, also named an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), is an unpiloted aircraft controlled by a drone flyer to perform specific missions and tasks. Nowadays, drones play an essential role in many industries. Nevertheless, while bringing the convenience of high-tech life, drones also cause a lot of security accidents. The safety risks posed by drones can not be ignored any more.

ND-BD003 Handheld Anti-Drone System by NovoQuad

In 2016, a drone slammed at the top of Seattle's Space Needle; In 2017, a drone crashed into a flying light aircraft in Quebec, Canada. These accidents involving commercial drones are all close to great tragedies. The good news is that now we have the Anti-Drone System, also known as Counter UAV System, which is specifically designed for detecting and countering drones, to protect our people and homeland security.

This is exactly what NovoQuad's Anti-Drone Solutions are doing.

NovoQuad's Anti-Drone Solutions

NovoQuad, based in U.S., is specialized in providing defense and security solutions with cutting-edge technology, especially Anti-Drone Solutions. With advanced radar technology and highly integrated design, NovoQuad's Anti-Drone Systems are suitable for low-altitude protection applications, such as large gathering events, airports, government infrastructures and military facilities.

It is worth noting that the ND-BU003 Basic Anti-Drone System, consisting of Detecting Unit (RF Detector) and Jamming Unit (Directional Jammer), has the characteristics of sufficient detection range, high-cost performance, and easy installation and operation. The system provides omnidirectional detection up to 3km. An optional camera could be integrated together, if the operator wants to monitor the target drone more closely and has recorded video of the mission in hand.

Another Anti-Drone Solution that catches people's eyes is the Handheld Anti-Drone Solution. As an ALL-IN-ONE system, the ND-BD003 Handheld Anti-Drone System integrates drone detection, countermeasure, display, control and power supply into a light, compact and portable device, that allows the operator to execute the entire mission with one single device. Besides, the system provides user-defined jamming frequency bands according to different demands and supports the connection to mobile APP for convenient monitoring, control and recording.

Today, with the rapid development of drone technology in the whole world, the existing technology of Anti-Drone Solution is also constantly improving, and more optimized solutions will be developed to detect and counter drones. For more information about NovoQuad's solutions and products, please click here or contact at info@nqdefense.com.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1835806/ND_BD003_Handheld_Anti_Drone_System.jpg

SOURCE NovoQuad
ApexBrasil sponsoring Brazil-based companies showcasing products this week at largest U.S. trade show dedicated exclusively to specialty food & beverage sector

NEW YORK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ApexBrasil, the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, along with Uvibra, BSCA and Abrafrutas, is sponsoring 22 Brazilian food and beverage companies to exhibit their products and unique offerings at The Summer Fancy Food Show, taking place this week at the Javits Center in New York City. This year's event is expected to be attended by more than 10,000 qualified buyers and industry professionals who will have the opportunity to connect in-person with exhibiting domestic and international brands and producers to experience the latest innovations in specialty food and beverage, trends, and insights from around the world.

"Brazilian food is unique in so many ways, and we are very excited to be back in New York City to showcase the best of our country's specialty food and beverage offerings," said Liane Werneck, officer at ApexBrasil's Miami office. "Some may still think of Brazil for its barbecued meats  but the country has become a true cuisine hub. The companies we are supporting at Summer Fancy Food this week are outstanding examples of how diverse Brazilian flavors can be. From acai that can only be found in Brazil, to panettone cakes inspired by the traditionally Italian delicacy, to chocolates and regional cheeses  and even collagen-infused tea  Brazil has much to offer the global food and beverage sector. Our goal at Summer Fancy Food is to connect with the thousands of U.S. buyers and distributors in attendance, especially those who are looking for unparalleled products from a country primed with natural resources and exceptional export capabilities. Our vision for the future is for Brazilian food and beverage to an earned and solidified presence on the specialty food scene, globally."

Brazil has become one of the world's largest agricultural producers and exporters over the last two decades. In fact, Brazil has grown to be the second largest global supplier of food and agricultural products, behind only the U.S., and the country is projected and prepared to contribute to approximately 40% of global food production by 2050; this would position Brazil as the foremost supplier in meeting growing global demand for food security. Furthermore, currently, food and beverage exports account for 21.1% of Brazil's total GDP  but with crop production expected to increase 266% in 40 years through the use of emerging technologies and investments in research and development, Brazil's food and beverage sector is set in the coming years to exponentially contribute dramatically to the country's economic growth.

The Brazilian companies exhibiting at the Summer Fancy Food Show, located at the Brazilian Pavilion in booths 1800 to 1830, will display food products and provide samples to attendees, increasing awareness of Brazilian specialty food to a U.S. and international audience. A few of the companies exhibiting the flavors of Brazil at the 2022 Summer Fancy Food Show include:

Be Ingredient : Be Ingredient is a fruit processing company that provides to the international market natural ingredients found in the Brazilian flora. The company has a strong presence in the ingredients market, providing raw materials from a wide variety of tropical and conventional fruits.

Be Ingredient is a fruit processing company that provides to the international market natural ingredients found in the Brazilian flora. The company has a strong presence in the ingredients market, providing raw materials from a wide variety of tropical and conventional fruits. LabraFlora : LabraFlora is a company that focuses on the harvesting and manufacturing of natural and original foods the Brazil's diverse biomes. The company is based in Jusara and produces a great variety of fruits derived from the neighboring regions  including the Baru Super Food, which is considered the best quality in Brazil due to the size of the seed and the large quantity of baruzais scattered among the cattle ranches.

LabraFlora is a company that focuses on the harvesting and manufacturing of natural and original foods the diverse biomes. The company is based in Jusara and produces a great variety of fruits derived from the neighboring regions  including the Baru Super Food, which is considered the best quality in due to the size of the seed and the large quantity of baruzais scattered among the cattle ranches. Ofner : Ofner is a renowned Sao Paulo, Brazil -based food producer specializing in patisserie, snacks, chocolates, and gelato prepared with handmade ingredients. The company produces its delicacies in a 6,500 square meter factory located in the Socorro neighborhood of Sao Paulo.

Ofner is a renowned Sao Paulo, -based food producer specializing in patisserie, snacks, chocolates, and gelato prepared with handmade ingredients. The company produces its delicacies in a 6,500 square meter factory located in the Socorro neighborhood of Sao Paulo. Petruz Fruit : A family-owned enterprise based in Brazil's Para state, Petruz Fruit has harvested and processed acai for 35 years. Petruz Fruit leverages the benefits of acai to produce a wide range of food products, including organic acai pastes, acai ice cream, and energy-boosting acai powder.

A family-owned enterprise based in Para state, Petruz Fruit has harvested and processed acai for 35 years. Petruz Fruit leverages the benefits of acai to produce a wide range of food products, including organic acai pastes, acai ice cream, and energy-boosting acai powder. Qualinova: Qualinova is a Brazilian company that specializes in the development of state-of-the-art collagen products. One of their signature offerings is a powerful and effective "Hydrolyzed Liquid Collagen Shot", designed to transform aging skin, and to promote firmer, younger-looking skin with visibly reduced fine lines and wrinkles. They also sell white teas and green teas to prevent premature aging.

ApexBrasil considers food and beverage as a key priority sector and is focused on developing new international business relationships to increase exports around the world. This includes sponsoring Brazilian companies to exhibit at global events like Summer Fancy Food, coordinating business meetings and opportunities with potential investors and customers, and other promotional support, such as arranging food samples to be sent to U.S. stakeholders. To learn more about ApexBrasil's other trade sector projects, visit: http://www.apexbrasil.com.br/en/trade-sectors.

About ApexBrasil

The Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (ApexBrasil) works to promote Brazilian products and services abroad, and to attract foreign investment to strategic sectors of the Brazilian economy. ApexBrasil organizes several initiatives aiming to promote Brazilian exports abroad. The Agency's efforts comprise trade and prospective missions, business rounds, support for the participation of Brazilian companies in major international trade fairs, arrangement of technical visits of buyers and opinion makers to learn about the Brazilian productive structure, and other select activities designed to strengthen the country's branding abroad. ApexBrasil also plays a leading role in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to Brazil, by working to identify business opportunities, promoting strategic events and lending support to foreign investors willing to allocate resources in Brazil. ApexBrasil is an agency linked to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty).

Media Contact

Savanna Fuller

Ruder Finn  PR on behalf of ApexBrasil in the U.S.

[email protected]

+1-808-317-8758

SOURCE ApexBrasil
WAKEFIELD, Mass., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ablative Solutions, Inc., a company pioneering new approaches to the treatment of hypertension, today announced the completion of the fourth tranche of its Series D financing round, resulting in $91.4 million in aggregate proceeds to the Company from the Series D financing round. Gilde Healthcare, BioStar Capital, Invus Opportunities and an undisclosed strategic corporate investor led the multi-tranched Series D round of financing.

"We are extremely pleased with the completion of our Series D financing round and the continued support of our investors, despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic", stated Kate Rumrill, President and CEO.

These funds are being used to complete our ongoing Target BPI pivotal trial, evaluating the Company's novel, alcohol-mediated renal denervation procedure to reduce blood pressure in individuals with uncontrolled hypertension, while taking antihypertensive medication. This procedure is performed using the Peregrine System, an investigational combination product engineered to target nerves known to influence the body's regulation of blood pressure. The Peregrine System delivers small doses of dehydrated alcohol directly into the space outside of the renal artery to block the overactive signaling of the sympathetic nerves.

"We continue to be appreciative of the amazing group of clinical partners we have and the progress made in our studies within our TARGET BP Program" said Rumrill. "We are encouraged by these efforts and look forward to sharing results when available."

About the Peregrine System Kit

The Peregrine System Kit is comprised of two components, the Peregrine System Infusion Catheter and dehydrated alcohol. The Peregrine System Kit for renal denervation is not approved for commercial distribution and its use is limited to investigation within clinical trials in the United States and Europe. The Company is currently enrolling patients in the TARGET BP I pivotal trial to evaluate safety and efficacy in the treatment of patients with uncontrolled hypertension in conjunction with antihypertensive medications. More information about the TARGET BP I Trial can be found at www.targetbp1.com.

About the Peregrine System Infusion Catheter

The Peregrine System Infusion Catheter has been cleared via the premarket notification process (510(k)) for the infusion of diagnostic and therapeutic agents into the perivascular area of the peripheral vasculature. The Peregrine System Infusion Catheter is CE marked for the infusion of a neurolytic agent (e.g. alcohol) to achieve a reduction in systemic blood pressure in hypertensive patients. The Peregrine Catheter is not commercially available in the United States or Europe.

About Ablative Solutions

Ablative Solutions, Inc., based in Wakefield, MA, was founded in 2011 with a vision to address the unmet need of hypertension. Ablative Solutions' approach targets the overactive sympathetic nervous system, which may play a role in hypertension, heart failure, kidney disease, metabolic syndrome and sleep apnea. The Peregrine System is currently being investigated as a treatment for hypertension in conjunction with antihypertensive medications. For more information visit www.ablativesolutions.com.

Media contact: Tom Moore, [email protected]

SOURCE Ablative Solutions, Inc.
ApexBrasil and Abiquifi to sponsor 44 Brazilian biotechnology and HealthTech enterprises and startups at first in-person BIO International Convention Since 2019

SAN DIEGO, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ApexBrasil, the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, is partnering with Abiquifi, the Brazilian Association of Pharmaceutical Inputs Industry, to showcase innovations and opportunities from the Brazilian biotechnology sector at the BIO International Convention, taking place this week in San Diego. With expectations of more than 10,000 attendees, 3,000 international and domestic companies, and 250 biotech companies on the trade show floor, the Brazilian companies attending BIO Convention 2022 will make connections with potential partners, buyers, suppliers, investors, and customers.

During BIO, the Brazilian companies, which include both smaller startups as well as larger, more established enterprises, will have the chance to not only showcase their innovations on the trade show floor at BIO but they will also have the opportunity to benefit from complementary sessions arranged by ApexBrasil and Abiquifi, including:

"VII Summit Brasil" : Before the start of BIO, the Brazilian delegation of companies and partners will come together at the University of California at San Diego for private and public sector discussions on the government's strategy to position Brazil as a leading international biotechnology player, the importance of biodiversity in the development of new pharmaceutical drugs in Brazil , and recent investments in research for the sector. The Summit will provide the companies attending with a foundation of the most relevant challenges and trends also relevant to U.S. audiences, enabling them to tailor discussions during BIO with potential partners, investors, and customers.

: Before the start of BIO, the Brazilian delegation of companies and partners will come together at the for private and public sector discussions on the government's strategy to position as a leading international biotechnology player, the importance of biodiversity in the development of new pharmaceutical drugs in , and recent investments in research for the sector. The Summit will provide the companies attending with a foundation of the most relevant challenges and trends also relevant to U.S. audiences, enabling them to tailor discussions during BIO with potential partners, investors, and customers. "Brazilian Startup Day": On the third day of BIO, the Brazilian startups will attend seminars with biotechnology leaders. Additionally, a select number of Brazilian startups will be given the opportunity to present their business plans to investors during meetings organized by ApexBrasil and Abiquifi. The objective of these business meetings is to offer the opportunity for potential negotiation discussions with U.S. companies, as well as for forging new mentoring relationships.

Sergio Rossi, Investment Officer at ApexBrasil said: "Brazil is not only the largest health market in Latin America due to the size of our population  the country is also a burgeoning innovation hub, with a growing number of healthcare and HealthTech companies emerging as important players solving some of today's most pressing challenges. There are more than 1,151 HealthTech startups in Brazil, making advancements in areas ranging from personalized cancer care, to in vitro diagnostics (IVD) that help detect diseases and monitor health as part of preventative care. We are confident that foreign investors and venture capitalists will find the startups in the sector are extremely attractive as investment opportunities  and Brazil is also a ripe trade partner, with unique healthcare and biotechnology products that can immediately be exported. We are here at BIO to help these companies make meaningful connections that will help Brazil reach our goal of building a more robust pharmaceutical production chain in the next 10 years."

Some of the global companies with a regional presence that will attend BIO with the Brazilian delegation include Eli Lilly, Janssen, Sanofi, and Servier. These companies will have booths and be available to discuss advancements they are making in Brazil specifically, in addition to leading discussions during the Brazilian Startup Day about how to grow and scale innovations. Additionally, Brazil-based startups at BIO include but are not limited to:

Bioptamers : Bioptamers develop personalized molecules to that target cancer cells with precision through a technology 30 times more cost-effective than traditional treatments. Their solution aims to beat cancer in a personalized, precise and affordable way. They have filed provisional patent and PCT application for their platform of nanocarriers.

: Bioptamers develop personalized molecules to that target cancer cells with precision through a technology 30 times more cost-effective than traditional treatments. Their solution aims to beat cancer in a personalized, precise and affordable way. They have filed provisional patent and PCT application for their platform of nanocarriers. LizarBio Therapeutics : Brazilian startup that develops cell therapies based on pluripotent stem cells. They are developing therapies for patients with heart and neurological problems, with the foundational belief that cell therapy is the future of regenerative medicine.

: Brazilian startup that develops cell therapies based on pluripotent stem cells. They are developing therapies for patients with heart and neurological problems, with the foundational belief that cell therapy is the future of regenerative medicine. Celluris : Celluris is a preclinical stage CAR-T therapy company, advancing CAR-T therapy in solid tumors field, through proprietary RfuCAR platform. RfuCAR was engineering in order to respond some challenges addressed by clinical trials around the world, such as the imunossupressive tumor microenvironment. In addition, their platform encompasses a switch on/off/modulation system in order to control toxicity.

: Celluris is a preclinical stage CAR-T therapy company, advancing CAR-T therapy in solid tumors field, through proprietary RfuCAR platform. RfuCAR was engineering in order to respond some challenges addressed by clinical trials around the world, such as the imunossupressive tumor microenvironment. In addition, their platform encompasses a switch on/off/modulation system in order to control toxicity. NAIAD : NAIAD develops new molecules of high pharmacological potential. They focused on the development of new and innovative drugs that act on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), the largest family of drug target proteins today, utilizing computer screening techniques and AI.

: NAIAD develops new molecules of high pharmacological potential. They focused on the development of new and innovative drugs that act on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), the largest family of drug target proteins today, utilizing computer screening techniques and AI. Nanoceuticals : Nanoceuticals utilizes their nanotech and biotech platforms to solve technical problems in the innovation processes of companies in the life sciences industries. They use they different platforms to solve chemical instability in raw materials, solubility of ingredients, drug pharmacokinetic problems, low active molecule effectiveness and the development of biomimetic peptides.

: Nanoceuticals utilizes their nanotech and biotech platforms to solve technical problems in the innovation processes of companies in the life sciences industries. They use they different platforms to solve chemical instability in raw materials, solubility of ingredients, drug pharmacokinetic problems, low active molecule effectiveness and the development of biomimetic peptides. Biotimize: Biotimize is an early-stage biotech company with a focus on bioprocess development. They believe they can change lives through biotechnology. Their innovative business model is based on Biotechnology as a Service (BaaS), in which they accelerate bioprocess development and optimization from bacteria, yeast, and mammalian cell cultures. They intend to be the first biological CDMO in Brazil and are fundraising.

Healthcare and life sciences are key priority sectors for ApexBrasil and Brazil as a country, with a growing number of investments dedicated to research and development in biotechnology, concerted efforts by the Brazilian Ministry of Health to regularly communicate medical needs with manufacturers to allow for more strategic planning, and the widespread support of startups that are innovating in critical areas. To learn more about other trade sectors ApexBrasil supports, visit: http://www.apexbrasil.com.br/en/trade-sectors.

About ApexBrasil

The Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (ApexBrasil) works to promote Brazilian products and services abroad, and to attract foreign investment to strategic sectors of the Brazilian economy. ApexBrasil organizes several initiatives aiming to promote Brazilian exports abroad. The Agency's efforts comprise trade and prospective missions, business rounds, support for the participation of Brazilian companies in major international trade fairs, arrangement of technical visits of buyers and opinion makers to learn about the Brazilian productive structure, and other select activities designed to strengthen the country's branding abroad. ApexBrasil also plays a leading role in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to Brazil, by working to identify business opportunities, promoting strategic events and lending support to foreign investors willing to allocate resources in Brazil. ApexBrasil is an agency linked to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty).

Media Contact

Savanna Fuller

Ruder Finn  PR on behalf of ApexBrasil in the U.S.

[email protected]

+1-808-317-8758

SOURCE ApexBrasil
Reduced ink replacement and up to 1 year of ink in-box 1 : Set it up, get printing and forget about ink replacement, with up to 1 year of ink included in box 1 . Boost productivity with fast print and scan speeds and versatile paper handling options, including 11"x17" printing, copying, scanning and fax capabilities 2 , a 50-page capacity automatic document feeder 3 , and 100-sheet multipurpose tray.

Set it up, get printing and forget about ink replacement, with up to 1 year of ink included in box . Boost productivity with fast print and scan speeds and versatile paper handling options, including 11"x17" printing, copying, scanning and fax capabilities , a 50-page capacity automatic document feeder , and 100-sheet multipurpose tray. The next generation of inkjet printing technology with Brother MAXIDRIVE Inkjet Technology: A re-engineered print head to help minimize print head degradation and maximize print speeds versus previous generations, all while delivering high-quality print results. Built for durability and uniform printing  even with long-term use  these Brother printers are ready to be your business partner for years to come.

A re-engineered print head to help minimize print head degradation and maximize print speeds versus previous generations, all while delivering high-quality print results. Built for durability and uniform printing  even with long-term use  these Brother printers are ready to be your business partner for years to come. Flexible connection options: Flexible connection options mean you can work seamlessly. Connect quickly to your wireless network through built-in dual band wireless (2.4GHz / 5GHz) 4 , Wi-Fi Direct, connect via Ethernet, or even to a single computer through USB. Download the Brother Mobile Connect 5 application to your mobile device for easy product set up, print and scan on-the-go capabilities, ongoing machine maintenance and more.

Flexible connection options mean you can work seamlessly. Connect quickly to your wireless network through built-in dual band wireless (2.4GHz / 5GHz) , Wi-Fi Direct, connect via Ethernet, or even to a single computer through USB. Download the Brother Mobile Connect application to your mobile device for easy product set up, print and scan on-the-go capabilities, ongoing machine maintenance and more. Advanced security and eco-friendly features: Triple Layer Security features help safeguard sensitive documents and securely connect to your device and network while printing  critical for today's business environment. These powerful printers are also extremely energy efficient  they are ENERGY STAR and EPEAT Silver certified. Optional Eco Mode and Ink Save Mode help reduce power consumption and ink use, plus automatic duplex printing saves paper and reduces costs for your business.

Triple Layer Security features help safeguard sensitive documents and securely connect to your device and network while printing  critical for today's business environment. These powerful printers are also extremely energy efficient  they are ENERGY STAR and EPEAT Silver certified. Optional and Ink Save Mode help reduce power consumption and ink use, plus automatic duplex printing saves paper and reduces costs for your business. Worry-free printing: Brother Genuine Ink & Toner provides vivid images and crisp text, for high-quality, worry-free printing for your business or any task at hand. Brother Genuine Ink is specifically engineered and tested to perform to the highest standards, helping deliver reliable smudge and smear-free printing, while extending the life of your print head.

"The way our customers work has changed and our printer technology is changing with it. Today's workplace can be at home, at an office or almost anywhere on the go. Users expect speed, hassle-free convenience, and a seamless experience," said Mark Hoffman, Director, Product Marketing and Product Development, B2C Printing at Brother. "Our newest series of printers are made to provide entrepreneurs and businesses of every size a custom feel while delivering on the core needs of their printer - speed, high quality output and cost-effective supplies without the hassle of inconvenient last minute supply runs."

In addition to the MFC-J5855DW ($299.996), MFC-J6555DW ($329.996), and MFC-J6955DW ($429.996) INKvestment Tank Color Inkjet all-in-one printers, Brother also launched the MFC-J5340DW ($249.996) Inkjet all-in-one printer and the MFC-J5955DW, the first ever color inkjet in the Brother Workhorse Series sold through Brother Gold Authorized partners. The models provide the performance you need at an attractive price fit for a small business, while addressing mixed fleets for a more business and corporate home environment. Adding to the Brother benefit of Triple Level Security, both the MFC-J6955DW and MFC-J5955DW have also passed the strict security of Keypoint Intelligence-Buyers Lab (BLI) Printer and MFP Security Validation Testing for device penetration to ensure protection against vulnerabilities in the device firmware / OS, ports, print protocols, embedded web page, connectivity avenues, and other areas.

With flexible connection options, intuitive functionality, versatile paper handling with the ability to print, copy, scan and fax up to 11"x17" (depending on the model), these printers are the perfect partner for your business powered by Brother MAXIDRIVE Inkjet Technology. The new Brother INKvestment Tank series all-in-one printers and new Inkjet all-in-one printer are the perfect partner for businesses of all sizes.

For more information about the new Brother INKvestment Tank inkjet all-in-one printers, please visit Brother-usa.com/inkvestment-tank/business.

For more information on the Brother inkjet all-in-one printers, please visit Brother-usa.com/home/printers-fax/inkjet-printers.

About Brother International Corporation

Brother International Corporation has earned its reputation as a premier provider of home office and business products, home appliances for the sewing and crafting enthusiast as well as industrial solutions that revolutionize the way we live and work. Brother International Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brother Industries Ltd. With worldwide sales exceeding $6 billion, this global manufacturer was started more than 100 years ago. Bridgewater, New Jersey is the corporate headquarters for Brother in the Americas. It has fully integrated sales, marketing services, manufacturing, research, and development capabilities located in the U.S. In addition to its headquarters, Brother has facilities in California, Illinois, and Tennessee, as well as subsidiaries in Canada, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Mexico. For more information, visit www.brother.com.

Disclaimers:

Based on average monthly print volumes of approximately 300 pages at 60% black pages / 40% color pages in accordance with ISO/IEC 24711 using 4 cartridges provided in-box. For more page yield information, see www.brother.com/pageyield. Features not available on all models. Maximum capacity based on using 20 lb. paper. Requires a wireless connection. Requires connection to a wireless network. Brother Mobile Connect free app download is not available in all countries. Prices may vary. Pricing set by retailers and Authorized partners.

CONTACT: Ashley Guido, [email protected]

SOURCE Brother International Corporation
Through the partnership, Study.com will donate $360,000 in test prep scholarships to the state

ROCK HILL, S.C., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, & Advancement (CERRA) , is partnering with Study.com , a national EdTech platform, to launch Keys to the Classroom in South Carolina. This education initiative aims to unlock opportunities for aspiring educators who are preparing to take certification tests to earn their teaching credential.

Through this partnership, Study.com will donate $360,000 in comprehensive, cost-free materials and resources to aspiring South Carolina teachers to help them prepare and pass their teacher certification tests. The teacher test prep licenses will be distributed to Teacher Cadets as well as targeted populations that face obstacles passing the PRAXIS exam.

"Made possible by Study.com's commitment to social impact and its philanthropic efforts via their Pledge 1%, Keys to the Classroom aims to ensure prospective educators of all backgrounds and ethnicities can access the teaching profession," said Marcella Wine-Snyder of CERRA. "This first-of-its-kind partnership with Study.com will also allow CERRA to continue to advance its recruitment efforts across our state, provide opportunities and access that mitigate educational disparities, and accelerate the certification process for many prospective teachers."

CERRA has identified a critical gap between teachers leaving education and the high demand for new teachers, thus causing a significant teacher shortage in the state. According to CERRA's 2021 Annual Educator Supply and Demand Report , districts indicated that at the start of the 21-22 school year, at least 1,063 teaching/service positions were still vacant in South Carolina public schools, up 52% compared to the previous school year and the most ever recorded vacancies.

One barrier for aspiring teachers is passing their teacher certification tests, such as the PRAXIS. In fact, according to a 2019 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, half of teachers fail their first certification exam and a quarter never pass. 92% of teachers who used Study.com's test prep resources reported passing their test on the first try.

Keys to the Classroom will provide resources to reduce the teacher shortage by nearly 50%, while emphasizing a strong commitment to diversifying the teacher pipeline in South Carolina. According to a report published in 2020 by the South Carolina Center for Excellence in Teacher Education Research, the percentage of teachers of color in South Carolina is not representative of the student population. There is an immediate need to focus on diversity recruitment. Study.com and CERRA will aim to address both issues through partnering with statewide education organizations committed to diversifying the teacher pipeline.

"We need a more diverse teacher workforce. This representation in the classroom is critical as studies show that students are more likely to succeed in terms of self-esteem and graduation rates," said Study.com's Senior Vice President of Social Impact Dana Bryson. "Our goal with bringing Keys to the Classroom to South Carolina is to diversify the teacher pipeline and help reduce the teacher shortage by removing the barriers to becoming a teacher."

Study.com launched its first Keys to the Classroom initiative last winter in Nevada, which had a teacher shortage of about 3,000. Since then, Study.com has donated 600 teacher test prep licenses in Nevada and has partnered with numerous educational organizations to support aspiring teachers and improve educational outcomes.

CERRA's teacher pipeline development network targets South Carolina's pre-collegiate (ProTeam and Teacher Cadet) and pre-service (Teaching Fellows) students. At the onset of the program, Study.com and CERRA will focus on Teacher Cadets and prioritized populations and will work with the following organizations and institutions to distribute the test prep licenses: South Carolina Department of Education; South Carolina Teacher Loan Program; HBCUs, MSIs, and other teacher preparation institutions across the state; local school districts; and education associations.

The Keys to the Classroom initiative is part of Study.com's commitment to Pledge 1%, a corporate philanthropy movement dedicated to making the community a key stakeholder in every business. Pledge 1% continues the company's commitment to Making Education Accessible through social impact programs focused on increasing access and equity in education for underserved learners, non-traditional students, and educators.

For more information on Study.com's Keys to the Classroom scholarship, please visit https://bit.ly/keystotheclassroom

About Study.com

Study.com is a leading online education platform providing academic support for learners and educators. Recognized on the GSV EdTech 150 as a leading EdTech company, Study.com simplifies learning for over 30 million learners and educators a month. Study has donated $24 million in-kind value across social impact programs committed to Making Education Accessible through our Pledge 1% partnerships and programs focused on increasing access and equity in education for underserved learners.





About CERRA

The Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, & Advancement (CERRA), established by the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education in December 1985 and funded by the South Carolina General Assembly, is the oldest and most established teacher recruitment program in the country. Following the passage of the state's landmark Education Improvement Act, CERRA was created out of a concern for the condition of South Carolina's teacher supply pool and a need for a centralized teacher recruitment effort.

CERRA's agenda is a comprehensive one in which the Center administers and supports a variety of programs for increasing the number of students in the education pipeline and recruiting and retaining qualified, caring, and competent teachers. The Center's primary target groups are middle and high school students, college students, and adults interested in changing careers.

CERRA also targets groups of accomplished teachers through programs including mentoring, teacher leadership, and National Board Certification. The network of educators in CERRA's programs partner in powerful ways to increase the level of collaboration for recruitment, retention, and advancement of South Carolina educators. For more information about CERRA, visit www.cerra.org .

SOURCE Study.com
1) At order, to make sure the right tests are ordered.

2) At initial result, to make sure that the appropriate therapy is given based on the current data.

3) At recurrence or progression, to identify additional options whether they or standard of care or a clinical trial option.

"The complexity of pathology standards in oncology necessitates a change in the way that results are delivered, such as comprehensive reports that summarize the key data from multiple tests," Dr. Stricker said. "I am excited to help build systems that can empower our physicians to maximize the value of testing during each stage."

Dr. Stricker was most recently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt University where he founded the Somatic Clinical Sign-out Team and the Clinical Genomics Lab, which generates whole exome and other germline sequencing panels. Dr. Stricker also served as associate director of VANTAGE, the research sequencing core for Vanderbilt.

At Vanderbilt, Dr. Stricker also served on molecular tumor boards and was on the team that founded GENIE, an American Association for Cancer Research initiative for the sharing of genomic cancer sequencing data across institutions. Dr. Stricker has extensive experience in generating and analyzing Next Generation Sequencing data, and in generating and signing out clinical genomic reports.

"Dr. Stricker has extensive experience in genomic sequencing, research and developing data integrations across cancer institutions," said Davey Daniel, MD, OneOncology's Chief Medical Officer. "His knowledge, experience and vision are a perfect fit to support our physicians' abilities to use genomic testing to match the right treatment or trial at the right time  all in oncology practices that are conveniently located close to where patients live."

Dr. Stricker earned his MD and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis. Following a residency in Anatomical Pathology and a fellowship in Bone and Soft Tissue at The University of Chicago, he joined Dr. Kevin White's lab in the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology as a post-doctoral fellow. While there, he developed expertise in generating and analyzing data from the then-new next generation sequencing technologies.

About OneOncology

OneOncology was founded by community oncologists, for community oncologists, with the mission of improving the lives of everyone living with cancer. Our goal is to enable community oncology practices to remain independent and to improve patient access to care in their communities, all at a lower cost than in the hospital setting. OneOncology supports our platform of community oncology practices through group purchasing, operational optimization, practice growth, and clinical innovation. Our 700 cancer care providers care for 280,000 patients at 181 sites of care nationwide. To learn more, visit oneoncology.com or LinkedIn .

SOURCE OneOncology
SixSq's Nuvla.io is a proven B2B digital platform for industrialization and automation of containerized edge applications and device management. Nuvla.io enables, among other things, the deployment of these applications on the Ekinops OneAccess branded network equipment.

The first selective innovative vendors bring turnkey apps in their fields:

ClearBlade: Logistics and railway

Cybus : Manufacturing and machine monitoring

C2RO: Next generation GDPR compliant people and crowd tracking solution

GDPR AI EdgeLabs : Cyberattack detection driven from AI analysis

Cyberattack Securaxis : Smart city audio based real-time analysis using AI

App vendors wishing to join the App Vendor Programme are invited to get in touch with the SixSq team.

Details of the App vendor programme can be found here: https://nuvla.io/marketplace

All press releases are published after the close of trading on Euronext Paris.

EKINOPS Contact

Didier Bredy

Chairman and CEO

[email protected]

Investors

Mathieu Omnes

Investor relation

Tel.: +33 (0)1 53 67 36 92

[email protected]

Press

Amaury Dugast

Press relation

Tel.: +33 (0)1 53 67 36 74

[email protected]

SOURCE Ekinops
Hanson Material Services Must Be Held Accountable for its Behavior

SPRINGFIELD, Ill., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Local 916 Teamsters working for Hanson Material Services walked out on the job this morning as part of an unfair labor practices strike over the company's lack of good faith bargaining.

The six Teamsters were joined by 14 members of the International Union of Operating Engineers who also work at the Indian Point Quarry in Athens, Ill. and are part of a joint agreement with the company. Their contract expired April 30 and workers unanimously voted June 9 and again on Sunday to authorize a strike.

"The company has not engaged honestly in negotiating a new contract," Local 916 President J.P. Fyans said. "There have only been a few bargaining sessions held and workers are sick and tired of their employer's games. We are proud to stand together with our Operating Engineers brothers and sisters during this trying time."

The Teamsters working for Hanson are drivers of heavy haul trucks that transport rocks from the quarry for processing. They have been working 12-hour shifts, six days a week and are seeking to have workplace safety issues addressed as well as an increase in pay.

"We won't stand for the company's threats or dodging our members' issues," Local 916 Business Agent Kyle Bollinger said. "We do not take these issues lightly. Together we are strong and will prevail over the company's mistreatment and inattention to these members to secure a good contract."

Contact:

J.P. Fyans, (217) 522-7932

SOURCE Teamsters Local 916
FARMINGTON, Conn., June 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Otis Worldwide Corporation (NYSE: OTIS) Chair, CEO & President Judy Marks and CFO Rahul Ghai are meeting with international investors on Monday, June 13th and Tuesday, June 14th, respectively. A corresponding presentation can be found at www.otisinvestors.com.

About Otis

Otis is the world's leading elevator and escalator manufacturing, installation and service company. We move 2 billion people a day and maintain more than 2.1 million customer units worldwide, the industry's largest Service portfolio. Headquartered in Connecticut, USA, Otis is 70,000 people strong, include 41,000 field professionals, all committed to meeting the diverse needs of our customers and passengers in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. To learn more, visit www.otis.com and follow us on LinkedIn , Instagram , Facebook and Twitter @OtisElevatorCo.

Media Contact

Katy Padgett

+1-860-674-3047

[email protected]

Investor Relations Contact

Michael Rednor

+1-860-676-6011

[email protected]

SOURCE Otis Worldwide Corporation
More than 3,700 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories, including everything from Startup of the Year to Thought Leader of the Year, among others. PRA Group was nominated for both its COVID-19 response and exceptional CSR program.

PRA Group's COVID-19 response was characterized by constant communication between executives and employees, intensive safety measures, an employee vaccine clinic and a vaccination lottery.

Judges noted, "It is inspiring to hear of the quick and much needed response companies such as PRA Group undertook to protect their employees and ensure smooth business operations. Not only by focusing on the internal challenges, but also by boosting vaccine rates, which has a far-reaching impact in our society. I hope others look towards companies like PRA Group for guidance on how they can help our world move forward."

The company's CSR program encompassed donating an additional $250,000 in honor of the company's 25th anniversary through an employee-led non-profit initiative, giving over $1.7 million to charitable causes worldwide and finding ways for its employees to stay involved in the community virtually. Judges applauded PRA Group's creative ways of supporting worthy organizations, while simultaneously empowering employees.

"It is a great honor to be recognized for not one, but two categories of the Stevies," said PRA Group President and CEO Kevin Stevenson. "It all comes back to our employees, who have supported one another, our customers and our communities in incredible ways through the past few challenging years. I would like to thank every single one of them for partnering with us in making an impact by doing things the right way, for the right reasons, with a long-term focus."

The American Business Awards are the U.S.A.'s premier business awards program. All organizations operating in the U.S.A. are eligible to submit nominations  public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small.

More than 230 professionals worldwide participated in the judging process to select this year's Stevie Award winners.

Nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word meaning "crowned," the awards will be presented to winners at a gala ceremony at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York today, Monday, June 13.

"We are so pleased that we will be able to stage our first ABA awards banquet since 2019 and to celebrate, in person, the achievements of such a diverse group of organizations and individuals," said Maggie Miller, president of the Stevie Awards.

Details about The American Business Awards and the list of 2022 Stevie winners are available at www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

About PRA Group

As a global leader in acquiring and collecting nonperforming loans, PRA Group returns capital to banks and other creditors to help expand financial services for consumers. With thousands of employees worldwide, PRA Group companies collaborate with customers to help them resolve their debt. For more information, please visit www.pragroup.com .

About the Stevie Awards

Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com .

Sponsors of The 2022 American Business Awards include HCL America, John Hancock Financial Services, Melissa Sones Consulting, and SoftPro.

News Media Contact:

Elizabeth Kersey

Senior Vice President, Communications and Public Policy

(757) 961-3525

[email protected]

Investor Contact:

Pete Graham

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

(757) 431-7913

[email protected]

SOURCE PRA Group
The Hebrew University Portfolio Company addresses modern medicine's number one problem: extending lifespan without disease and has the potential to improve quality of life for the world's rapidly growing aging population.

JERUSALEM, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Vitalunga, the biotech startup based on the research led by Professor Einav Gross and Professor Shmuel Ben-Sasson of The Hebrew University's Faculty of Medicine, has developed a novel oral drug that aims to treat and prevent aging-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. While many successes have been made to extend lifespan in aging adults, disease-free aging has remained a challenge. The novel drug-candidate has the potential to remarkably improve the quality of life of aging adults, Yissum, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University announced today. Vitalunga is currently raising funds in order to begin pre-clinical studies.

Aging-related diseases have a common pathogenic mechanism that results in the deterioration of cells in otherwise healthy tissues. Professor Gross and Professor Ben-Sasson's creative drug-design platform enabled them to discover a family of novel compounds that facilitate potent autophagy (a fundamental cell survival mechanism that allows cells to adapt to metabolic stress) and mitophagy (a mitochondrial quality control mechanism that prevents detrimental effects and reinstates cellular homeostasis in response to stress) in human cells. Moreover, it promotes lifespan and healthspan in the model organism C. elegans. Their manuscript, which describes in detail the biological features of the first generation of these compounds, was just published online in " Autophagy ", a leading journal in the field. The discovery of these compounds led Vitalunga to the development of further more advanced novel agents, targeting prevention of aging-associated deterioration. Vitalunga's proprietary platform ensures the perpetual rejuvenation of cells in diseased tissues, enabling, for the first time, a drug-responsive, unified target for the prevention and treatment of multiple aging-related diseases.

According to the UN's World Population Aging report , the global population of aging adults in 2019 was 703 million and is expected to surpass 1.5 billion by 2050. At a time when countries like Japan are struggling with population record highs of elderly individuals and the subsequent burdening of healthcare systems, Vitalunga's platform is a promising solution that will both minimize these burdens, while providing a better, healthier quality of life for its users.

"Our observations in-lab of the unique properties of these molecules are extremely exciting," remarked Professor Muli Ben-Sasson. "A success of the Vitalunga drug-candidate in the clinic will mean an entry to a universe of healthy aging."

"Professor Ben-Sasson and Professor Gross's findings have a high significance for the global aging population," said Dr. Itzik Goldwaser, CEO of Yissum. "This milestone will bring the startup one step closer to minimizing the unbearable burden that aging-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's has on individuals, their families and the health care system as a whole. Yissum is proud of this project and looks forward to Vitalunga's inevitable growth."

About Yissum:

Yissum is the technology transfer company of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Founded in 1964, it serves as a bridge between cutting-edge academic research and a global community of entrepreneurs, investors, and industry. Yissum's mission is to benefit society by converting extraordinary innovations and transformational technologies into commercial solutions that address our most urgent global challenges. Yissum has registered over 11,000 patents globally; licensed over 1,140 technologies and has spun out more than 200 companies. Yissum's business partners span the globe and include companies such as Boston Scientific, ICL, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis and many more. For further information please visit www.yissum.co.il

Contact: Prof. Muli Ben-Sasson

+972-54-23-25-254

[email protected]

SOURCE Vitalunga
The announcement was made jointly by Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB), led by Mrs. Nichapa Yoswee, Senior Vice President, together with the President of the Global Summit of Women, Ms. Irene Natividad, the Thailand Host Committee Chair, Ms. Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, and Mr. Siripakorn Chiosamut, Deputy Governor for Marketing Communications and Marketing Director at the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).

Originally scheduled for 2020, the event is the first large-scale in-person global convention that Thailand will host after a two-year gap. The event is also seen as a timely opportunity for Thailand to present itself as a "World Destination" for international events as the country has gradually introduced relaxation measures for incoming travel and events during the past three months. On 1 April 2022 onwards, requirement of negative pre-arrival RT-PCR test taken within 72 hours of travel was abolished. From 1 May, Test and Go arrangement which required test upon arrival has been no more in effect and from 1 June, simplified version of Thailand Pass was introduced for overseas travellers for enhanced facilitation. The removal of these requirements has given MICE organisers freedom to plan larger in-person gatherings as long as the relevant COVID-19 safety measures are in place.

Mrs. Nichapa Yoswee, Senior Vice President of TCEB, said: "Thailand is back and we are again ready to woo the world with our commitment, capability, and creativity. And the Global Summit of Women is the perfect platform to do that. With its values of gender equality, diversity and inclusiveness, the Summit not only mirrors our national aspirations as set out under Thailand's 12th National Economic and Social Development Plan but also reflects the resilience and economic contribution of our MICE industry. We are expecting 1,000 participants and women leaders from 60 countries and an income of 80 million baht from this much-anticipated world-class convention."

Mrs. Nichapa added that Thailand's MICE industry is putting behind the setbacks caused by COVID-19 and is gearing up for a strong rebound. According to TCEB, although Thailand has been continually impacted by the COVID-19 situation, the MICE industry in Thailand could generate income of over 33.2 billion baht, creating over 46,000 jobs last year. Apart from 23 TCEB-supported international events announced for 2022, the annual APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting scheduled for 18-19 November 2022 in Bangkok will be a highlight attracting world's attention to Thailand.

Ms. Natividad said: "As Summit President, I am looking forward to bringing this renowned Summit to Thailand, a country where women rank high in economic participation in business and government. The 2022 theme  'Women: Creating Opportunities in the New Reality'  will focus on driving post-pandemic economy. Male and female senior executives of multinational corporations are expected from countries as diverse as South Africa, Vietnam, France, Spain, Mexico, Germany, and Kazakhstan. There is genuine excitement in being able to meet in person for the first time in over two years since the COVID-19 pandemic."

Ms. Kobkarn said: "The Global Summit of Women is the biggest stage for international women leaders in the world. The 2022 Summit will confirm our capabilities to host conferences and generate confidence in the Thai economy, focusing on continued economic development and promoting new investment. I am sure the Summit will empower women and encourage cooperation between every sector to build a new generation for economic recovery."

Mr. Siripakorn said: "This world-level convention is an important step to build confidence internationally that Thailand is ready to welcome tourists after the long slowdown during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. It is also an opportunity to provide an impressive tourist experience to the women leaders who are delegates at the 2022 Global Summit of Women. Women currently have a key role in driving the economy because of their capabilities for increased income. They are also one of the major market segments with high tourism potential because of their confidence and courage in deciding to travel."

Other than being an indicator of the upswing in market sentiment, the 2022 Global Summit of Women in Thailand will also be noted for its "Carbon Neutral" format. All meetings and activities at the Summit will be monitored for their carbon footprint, and emissions from energy use, participant's travel, catering, and waste management will be offset with purchase of carbon credits from the Project to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Thailand. The Summit will also showcase community products from throughout Thailand to promote local enterprises.

More information about 2022 Global Summit of Women: https://globewomen.org/globalsummit/

Relate Pictures: https://we.tl/t-dUiutpn85z

Thailand MICE: Meet the Magic

About TCEB

A LEADING AGENCY AT THE FOREFRONT OF THAILAND'S MICE INDUSTRY

Established in 2004, Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau (Public Organization) or TCEB  the government agency under the supervision of the Prime Minister  has been assigned a role to promote, support and develop business events industry  corporate meetings, incentive trips, conventions, exhibitions, mega events and world festivals. Serving as a strategic partner, TCEB helps deliver creative ideas and solutions to bring success and fulfill the requirements of business events. The overarching goal is to drive Thailand to become a global MICE and mega events destination that can drive the country's strategic industries and national economy.

SOURCE The Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB)
NEW YORK, June 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --

WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of the securities of Enservco Corporation (NYSE American: ENSV) between May 13, 2021 and April 18, 2022, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"), of the important July 19, 2022 lead plaintiff deadline.

SO WHAT: If you purchased Enservco securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Enservco class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=6371 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than July 19, 2022. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.

WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually handle securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate the cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs' Bar. Many of the firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Enservco had defective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting; (2) as a result, there were errors in Enservco's financial statements relating to, inter alia, its transactions with Cross River Partners and accounting for Employee Retention Credits ("ERCs"); (3) accordingly, Enservco would need to restate certain of its financial statements and delay the filing of its 2021 annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"); (4) Enservco downplayed the true scope and severity of its financial reporting issues; (5) accordingly, Enservco could not file its delayed 2021 annual report with the SEC within its initially represented timeline; and (6) as a result, defendants' public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.

To join the Enservco class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=6371 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action.

No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/.

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Contact Information:

Laurence Rosen, Esq.

Phillip Kim, Esq.

The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.

275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor

New York, NY 10016

Tel: (212) 686-1060

Toll Free: (866) 767-3653

Fax: (212) 202-3827

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

www.rosenlegal.com

SOURCE Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
CHICAGO, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the report "3D Printing Plastics Market by Type (Photopolymer, ABS, PLA, Polyamide), Form (Powder, Liquid, Filament), Application, End-User Industry (Aerospace & Defense, Healthcare, Automotive, Electronics & Consumer Goods) and Region - Global Forecast to 2027", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global 3D Printing Plastics market size is projected to grow from USD 721 million in 2022 to USD 1,907 million by 2027, at a CAGR of 21.5% during the forecast period. The growing supply of 3D printing plastics due to forward integration of major polymer companies is one of the most significant factors projected to drive the growth of the 3D printing plastics market.

Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=21707470

Browse in-depth TOC on "3D Printing Plastics Market"

301  Tables

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View Detailed Table of Content Here: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/3d-printing-plastic-market-21707470.html

Polyamide is the fastest-growing segment in 3D printing plastics market, in terms of value and volume

Polyamide is expected to be the fastest-growing segment in the 3D printing plastics market during the forecast period. The growth of polyamides (PA11 and PA12) is dependent of the growth of the laser sintering technology, which is expanding in various markets with the expiry of some of the key patents in 2014, as well as the FDM technology where they are used in filament form.

Powder form to be the fastest-growing segment in the global 3D printing plastics market in terms of value and volume

The powder segment is projected to register the highest CAGR, in terms of value, during a forecast period. The increasing demand for 3D printing materials in the powder form is due to the rise in demand from the aerospace & defense, automotive, and healthcare industries. In addition, the rising demand for SLA 3D printing technology is mainly responsible for the growing consumption of 3D printing plastics in the powder form.

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Manufacturing application is expected to grow with the highest CAGR, both in terms of value and volume during the forecast period

The manufacturing segment is expected to be the fastest- growing application of the global 3D printing plastics market owing to their increasing usage in production activities in different industries. The growth of the manufacturing segment of the 3D printing plastics market can also be attributed to the increased consumption of 3D printing plastics in the aerospace & defense sector. Moreover, some of the selected customized automotive manufacturers have also adopted 3D printing technology for manufacturing different components of their vehicles.

Automotive to be the fastest-growing end-use industry in the global 3D printing plastics market in terms of value and volume

The 3D printing technology has been largely used in the automotive industry for rapid prototyping of automotive components and their testing. The 3D printed prototypes of automotive components are developed primarily to study the feasibility of automobiles by carrying out their live testing. The automotive industry is one of the earliest adopters of 3D printing technology for prototyping applications. It has already printed a complete car using this technology. Some of Europe- and North America-based luxury car manufacturers have already adopted 3D printing technology for the mainstream production of certain components of automobiles. Most of the automotive manufacturers, especially car manufacturers from the North American and European regions, and also from Japan have started using 3D printing technology in tooling applications. These manufacturers also use 3D printing technology for manufacturing customized automobile components. Moreover, 3D printing technology is expected to have a major impact on the supply chain of the automotive industry by optimizing the cost and time consumed by logistics.

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Europe is the second-largest region in the 3D printing plastics market during the forecast period

Europe is the second-largest market for 3D printing plastics in 2021. It has a significant number of manufacturers that are actively participating in development activities, especially in expansions and new product launches. The region has the presence of major 3D printing manufacturers, such as Arkema S.A. (France), Covestro AG (Germany), BASF SE (Germany), and EOS (Germany). Europe is home to major automotive and aerospace & defense industries that are responsible for the augmenting demand for 3D printing high plastics in the region. The increasing usage of 3D printing plastics in the healthcare industry is playing a major role in the increasing demand for 3D printing plastics. Moreover, governments in Europe are highly engaged in the adoption of additive manufacturing in the manufacturing sector.

The Major Players in 3D printing plastics Market includes 3D systems Corporation (US), Stratasys, Inc. (US), Covestro AG (Germany), Arkema S.A. (France), Evonik Industries (Germany), BASF SE (Germany), Solvay S.A. (Belgium), Henkel (Germany), EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems (Germany), and SABIC (Saudi Arabia).

Browse Adjacent Markets: Resins and Polymers Market Research Reports & Consulting

Related Reports:

3D Printing Materials Market by Type (Plastic, Metal, Ceramic), End-Use industry (Automotive, Healthcare, Aerospace & Defense, Consumer Goods, Construction), Form (Powder, Filament, Liquid), Technology, Application, and Region - Global Forecast to 2025

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/3d-printing-materials-market-1295.html

3D Printing Metals Market by Form (Powder, Filament), Technology (PBF, DED, Binder Jetting, Metal Extrusion), Metal Type (Titanium, Nickel, Stainless Steel, Aluminum), End-Use Industry (A&D, Automotive, Medical & Dental), Region - Global Forecast to 2024

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/3d-printing-metal-market-34714085.html

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.

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SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
The Established Award Recognizes the Businesses and Establishments Around the World Who are Regarded as the Best in Tourism and Hospitality by Their Guests

ADMIRALTY ISLAND, Alaska, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Now that the world is re-opening and travelers swiftly pack their bags to prepare for their next adventure, they quickly turn to the reviews of like-minded tourists to seek out the best of the best for their vacation. Alaska has been a must-see destination on the bucket list of millions of people, and there is no better time than 2022 to experience the solitude and idyllic bliss of the Alaskan wilderness. Pybus Point Lodge has long been regarded as the premier destination to experience everything Alaska has to offer, and for the third year running, has been awarded the honor of being named Trip Advisor's Traveler's Choice.

Alaskas Finest: Pybus Point Lodge is Awarded the Trip Advisors Travelers Choice Award for Third Consecutive Year

The TripAdvisor Traveler's Choice Awards are reserved for those establishments and organizations who display outstanding service and amazing experiences, as noted by their guests. As an award by the people, the Traveler's Choice Award is among the highest honors within the travel and tourism industry. Over the past few years, Pybus Point Lodge has continued to wow guests by investing in new cabins and boat upgrades, new equipment and experiences, and curating a friendly staff to facilitate outstanding excursions.

Pybus Point Lodge sits on the southern edge of Admiralty Island National Monument, a stunning landscape of cold, mirror-smooth water against a backdrop of thick Alaskan rainforest, cliffs, and waterfalls within Southeast Alaska's famous Inside Passage. Unlike travelers who experience Alaska by cruise ship, Pybus Point Lodge travelers are fully immersed into the Southeast Alaskan lifestyle with breathtaking sights, world-class fishing, whale watching, hiking, hidden waterfalls, rare wildlife, and rugged adventures.

Featuring all-inclusive high class accommodations, newly built custom boats and luxury cabins, and a newly renovated kitchen serving a gourmet table service menu, Pybus Point Lodge breaks the norm of traditional Alaskan lodging to usher in a new era of luxurious adventure. Pybus Bay has some of the world's best fishing where guests can fish for halibut, five species of salmon, rockfish, yellow eye, ling cod, and more while enjoying family-friendly excursions.

"We are incredibly thankful to be recognized by our amazing guests through their reviews," said Darryl Bosshardt, Director of Guest Services for Pybus Point Lodge. "It is a testament to our talented team that inspire out-of-the-ordinary experiences in this magical area of Southeast Alaska."

"Congratulations to the 2022 Tripadvisor Travelers' Choice Winners," said Kanika Soni, Chief Commercial Officer at Tripadvisor. "The Travelers' Choice Awards recognize the best in tourism and hospitality, according to those who matter most: your guests. Ranking among the Travelers' Choice winners is always tough  but never more so than this year as we emerge from the pandemic. Whether it's using new technology, implementing safety measures, or hiring outstanding staff, I'm impressed by the steps you've taken to meet travelers' new demands. You've adapted brilliantly in the face of adversity."

Through proof of concept, dedication excellence, unshakeable teamwork, and unwavering commitment to curating an unforgettable experience for travelers, Pybus Point Lodge's purpose-driven vision has come to fruition as Trip Advisor's 2022 Traveler's Choice.

To learn more about Pybus Point Lodge, please visit: https://www.pybus.com/

Trip Advisor

About Pybus Point Lodge

Pybus Point Lodge is Alaska's premier destination for world-class fishing, stunning whale encounters, sightseeing, and modern, comfortable accommodations. Founded in 1991 Pybus Point Lodge has long been regarded as the most luxurious and immersive all-inclusive Alaskan experience for travelers. Offering unparalleled accommodations, pristine boats for fishing and whale watching, breathtaking sights, and adrenaline-pinching adventures, Pybus Point Lodge is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the whole family. Named Trip Advisor's Traveler's Choice three years running, Pybus Point Lodge continually captivates guests from all over the world by showcasing everything Southeast Alaska has to offer.

PRESS CONTACT

NAME

Darryl Bosshardt

PHONE

435.412.4286

WEBSITE

https://www.pybus.com/

SOURCE Pybus Point Lodge
PALO ALTO, Calif., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- After six years of partnership with Excel Fitness, Altamont Capital Partners (Altamont) has exited its investment with a sale of the company to Olympus Partners. As part of that transaction, completed last month, Excel's management team and founders, along with Altamont, established a bonus pool that provided every employee at the company  more than 1,500 individuals  with a payment at closing, in recognition of their contributions.

"We are proud of what we have accomplished with the Excel Fitness team throughout our partnership and we are thrilled that every one of our dedicated team members participated in this exciting event," said Altamont Managing Director Kevin Mason. "Excel Fitness has seen tremendous success in recent years, building upon its proven history of operational excellence and industry-leading member service. Excel wouldn't be where it is today without the hard work and commitment of its team members, and we are confident that because of them the company is well-positioned for continued growth."

Altamont acquired the Planet Fitness franchisee business in 2016, building on its prior multi-unit consumer investing experience, including with Tacala, the largest Taco Bell franchisee in the country. At the time, Excel Fitness operated 18 Planet Fitness locations in Austin and Dallas. Today, Excel operates 90 locations across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia and was named the 2019 Franchisee of the Year by Planet Fitness.

"We have always prioritized delivering value to both our club members and our employees," said Excel Fitness CEO CJ Bouchard. "We have had a fantastic run these past six years and are looking forward to embarking on this next chapter as we continue expanding our business and providing world-class experiences for our members."

"Our partnership with Excel Fitness fueled tremendous growth thanks to great leadership and great employees," added Altamont Managing Director Casey Lynch. "The organization fully embodies its core values of integrity, dedication, and team culture and that commitment to core values really enabled the company's success."

Altamont is a founding partner of Ownership Works, a new nonprofit dedicated to developing broad-based employee ownership programs to create better work environments and financial opportunities for employees, and to help businesses improve their performance by attracting and retaining engaged employees who are invested in their company's success. As part of its partnership with Ownership Works, Altamont will continue working with its partner companies to build upon existing efforts and implement shared ownership more broadly in its portfolio.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Harris Williams acted as financial advisor, and Ropes & Gray and Lathrop GPM served as legal counsel to Excel Fitness on the transaction. Fifth Third Bank acted as advisor to management.

About Excel Fitness Holdings, Inc.

Excel Fitness Holdings, Inc. is a leading Planet Fitness franchise group based in the Austin area with over 90 locations across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia. Excel Fitness has built a team culture that focuses on elevating the member experience by developing exceptional health clubs and delivering world-class customer service. The team is passionate about building communities through fitness and supporting their local markets through employment and memberships opportunities that positively impact lives.

About Altamont Capital Partners

Altamont Capital Partners is a private investment firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area with more than $4.5 billion of assets under management. Altamont is focused on investing in middle-market businesses where it can partner with leading management teams to help its portfolio companies reach their full potential. The firm's principals have significant experience building business success stories across a range of industries, including financial services, healthcare, business services, consumer/retail, and industrials.

Media Contact

Shaye Wood

[email protected]

SOURCE Altamont Capital Partners
NORTHVILLE, Mich., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Andrea Jemison-Smith is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Distinguished Executive for her work in the Engineering field, and in acknowledgment of her excellent work at Stellantis.

With over 20 years of experience in the Manufacturing and Engineering industry, Andrea Jemison-Smith holds a vast array of knowledge within her chosen profession.

Andrea Jemison-Smith

As the Senior Torque Manager at Stellantis/FCA Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Ms. Jemison-Smith sets torque integrity standards and manages the procedural operations for fastening systems in the company's North American locations. Stellantis is a global vehicle company that provides sustainable solutions for customers, offering a full line of luxury, premium, and passenger vehicles. Beginning this role in 2014, she manages vehicle launches and creates procedure guides to prepare for the global product launches. She works with FCA Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in Auburn Hills, MI, one of the many branches of Stellantis.

Ms. Jemison-Smith attributes her success to the strong work ethic she learned from her parents, as well as to a high school aptitude test that steered her in the direction of a career in science and math.

In pursuit of her higher education, she first attended Tennessee State University from 1987 to 1989, and then continued her education at Lawrence Technological University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1993. Here, she was involved with the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, which she still volunteers with today.

She began her professional career in 1993 with the Ford Motor Company, where she excelled as a Manufacturing Engineer and Torque Senior Lead. She worked with Ford Motor Company for more than two decades before leaving in 2014.

Highly involved in her community, she is a Deacon at her church, a United Way Worldwide supporter, and is certified as a Six Sigma Black Belt. Ms. Jemison-Smith is also a volunteer for the Detroit High School Stem Program and remains involved with the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

She has been recognized as a Top Executive by Marquis Who's Who and as a Woman of Color in STEM at a STEM Conference, along with many other awards and honors throughout her career.

Looking to the future, Ms. Jemison-Smith plans to start her own business in procedural writing, accreditation, and ISO standards, and is researching procedural writing and testing methods for cannabis products.

For more information, visit https://www.stellantis.com/en

Contact:

Katherine Green,

516-825-5634,

[email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who
VANCOUVER, BC, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Asep Medical Holdings Inc. ("Asep Inc." or the "Company") (CSE: ASEP) (OTCQB: SEPSF) is pleased to announce that the Company has received an official allowance of its patent claims that serve as the foundation underlying their first-generation sepsis diagnostic technology, SepsetER. The patent further supports the development of the innovative sepsis diagnostic technology in the European marketplace. In addition to the granting of the patent in the EU, the Company plans to validate the patent in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, providing a wide range of markets where the test may be commercialized once it receives regulatory approval.

The SepsetER test is a blood-based gene expression assay that is straightforward to implement, and results are rapidly obtained for patients who are in the emergency room or are entering the intensive care unit. Current diagnostic tests only provide a sepsis diagnosis after 24-48 hours which may be too late for many sepsis patients whose condition rapidly deteriorates. The Company's proprietary technology will enable the diagnosis of severe sepsis within 1-2 hours of first clinical presentation (i.e., in the emergency room), providing a substantial benefit compared to current diagnostic tests. Asep Inc. believes this will enable critical early decisions to be made by physicians regarding appropriate therapies and interventions, thereby reducing the overall morbidity and mortality due to sepsis.

Sepsis is the body's dysfunctional response to infection and is very common, occurring in 49-million individuals globally. Recently the situation has worsened since sepsis is the cause of death in most patients who die from COVID-19. Sepsis is tremendously complex, and early symptoms are relatively non-specific, including fever, fatigue, hyperventilation and a fast heart rate  symptoms that can also occur in other diseases. The most severe form of the disease, which occurs for up to one-half of all patients with suspected sepsis, leads to multi-organ failure and, in 23% of cases, death. Current diagnostic tools deliver results after approximately 24-36 hours, often delaying the initiation of treatment.

Asep Inc.'s Chairman and CEO, Rudy Mazzocchi, said, "Achievement of these important milestones continues to support the growing underlying value to our shareholders in parallel to accomplishing our corporate goals of bringing our proprietary technologies to the global markets."

Dr. Robert E. W. Hancock, the Company's Co-founder, Director and COO, stated, "This opens up huge markets where our diagnostic test will have the benefit of exclusivity due to patent protection. It is a major milestone for the company."

ABOUT ASEP MEDICAL HOLDINGS INC.

Asep Inc. is dedicated to addressing antibiotic failure by developing novel solutions for significant unmet medical needs. The Company is a consolidation of two existing private companies (Sepset Biosciences Inc. and ABT Innovations Inc.) that are both in the advanced development of both proprietary diagnostic tools, enabling the early and timely identification of severe sepsis as well as broad-spectrum therapeutic agents to address multidrug-resistant biofilm infections.

Sepset Biosciences Inc. is developing a diagnostic technology that involves a patient gene expression signature that predicts severe sepsis, one of the significant diseases leading to antibiotic failure since antibiotics are the primary treatment for sepsis. Despite this, sepsis is responsible for nearly 20% of all deaths on the planet. Asep Inc. believes this will enable critical early decisions to be made by physicians regarding appropriate therapies and reduce overall morbidity and mortality due to sepsis.

ABT Innovations Inc.'s peptide technology covers a broad range of therapeutic applications, including bacterial biofilm infections (medical device infections, chronic infections, lung, bladder, wound, dental, skin, ear-nose and throat, sinusitis, orthopaedic, etc.), anti-inflammatories, anti-infective immune-modulators and vaccine adjuvants.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of such statements under applicable securities law. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "anticipates", "plan", "continue", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "may", "will", "potential", "proposed", "positioned" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, the completion of successful clinical testing of our Sepsis diagnostic test and its intended filing for regulatory approval; the undertaking of pre-clinical studies on our lead therapeutic, with the expectation that this will lead to fast track clinical trials; the ability of our diagnostic testing kit to diagnose sepsis within the stated timelines; that early testing and diagnosis of sepsis will spare expensive and unnecessary antibiotic treatment; and that the timely test results will allow doctors to make more effective treatment decisions. Various assumptions were used in drawing the conclusions or making the predictions contained in the forward-looking statements throughout this news release, including the assumption that our diagnostic testing kits will be adopted and used by doctors in diagnosing and treating sepsis. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made and are subject to a variety of risks (including those risk factors identified in the Asep Medical Inc.'s prospectus dated November 9, 2021, and Asep Inc.'s most recent Management Discussion & Analysis) available for review under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Asep Inc. is under no obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law.

SOURCE ASEP Medical Holdings Inc.
Atento reorganizes its regional structure switching from five regions to three to optimize the efficiency of its operations and improve proximity and service to its customers.

Sergio Ribeiro Passos has been named the Company's new CFO to continue promoting and strengthening Atento's financial position.

Dimitrius Oliveira takes on the position of President of Atento's South America Region, after having been responsible for Atento Brazil since 2018, and now expands his responsibilities to Argentina , Chile , Colombia , Peru and Uruguay , to promote the growth of the Company in these markets.

Cathrine Jooste increases her responsibilities as CCO and Regional Director of the North America Region, a position from which she will direct activities in the US and Mexico .

Jose Maria Perez-Melber continues as Regional Director of EMEA.

NEW YORK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Atento S.A. (NYSE: ATTO, "Atento" or the "Company"), one of the largest providers worldwide and the leading company in customer relationship services and business process outsourcing (CRM / BPO) in Latin America, has announced three new appointments to strengthen Atento's position in the industry and to continue supporting its growth strategy in key markets. In order to optimize efficiency in Atento's management, the organization will switch from having five regions to three: North America, South America and EMEA. In this regard, Atento has appointed Sergio Ribeiro Passos as the new CFO of Atento, Dimitrius Oliveira as the new President of the South Region and Cathrine Jooste as Regional Director of the North Region.

Carlos Lopez-Abadia, Chief Executive Officer of Atento comments that "in their new positions, and thanks to their extensive experience and knowledge of the company, these three appointments will continue to implement improvements in Atento's business in our three key regions, guaranteeing the same vision and approach to customers, while ensuring the best CX service suited to the needs of each market and industry. At the same time, this new structure will allow us to continue to improve efficiencies with a better ongoing cost structure. I am sure that, in their new positions, these leaders will play a fundamental role in reaching our commercial and financial goals, adding value to both shareholders and customers. Likewise, at Atento we are very grateful for the work and dedication that Jose Azevedo has dedicated to the company in recent years and for his great contribution".

Sergio Passos New CFO

To reinforce this reorganization, Atento has announced the appointment of Sergio Ribeiro Passos as Chief Financial Officer of the Company. Passos, 55 years old, who replaces Jose Antonio de Sousa Azevedo who left the Company on June 9, 2022, will also form part of the Company's Executive Committee.

Before joining the Company, Passos holds over 24 years of experience as a CFO at different companies within the customer experience sector, including Teleperformance, G4S and Tecnologia Bancaria SA. For the past three years, Passos has worked at Atento Brazil as CFO and corporation as FP&A strategy Director, where he has performed his duties with great success, helping to implement financial and business development strategies in the region that have generated value for all Atento stakeholders.

"It is an honor to take on this new professional challenge, and to carry on improving our growth trajectory and fulfilling Atentos goals and vision", said Passos. "We look forward to the coming years with optimism, to continue to build a stronger more efficient Atento serving better all our stakeholders."

Dimitrius Oliveira takes over the management of Atento's South America Region

The appointment of Dimitrius Oliveira as the new President of the company's South America Region means that in addition to Brazil, he will be in charge of operations in the five countries in which Atento operates in South America, a strategic region of great relevance for the business. In his new position, Oliveira, chosen for his deep experience in the CX sector, will have the mission of expanding Atento's performance as a strategic partner for companies that face digital transformation processes and that place the customer at the center of their strategy. In addition, he will consolidate the One Atento culture, in which the Company works as a single, global team.

Dimitrius Oliveira has more than 20 years of experience, during which he has worked in the technology and services industry, leading the sales, after-sales and operations areas in multinational companies such as Avaya, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Genesys and Contax. In 2017, he was appointed as Vice President of Operations at Mutant, formerly Genesys Prime. Before joining Mutant, Oliveira was Atento's global commercial director and, following that, multi-sector vice president of the company in Brazil. He returned to Atento in June 2018, this time as Brazil's CEO, to strengthen the Company's leadership position in the country.

"I feel honored by the opportunity to lead the operations in the South Region, working with a group of committed professionals, as well as adding value for our clients in an increasingly digitized business environment, including the best practices from other markets to those we have already implemented in Brazil", said Dimitrius Oliveira.

Cathrine Jooste leads the North America Region

Following her successful performance as CCO and Regional Director of Atento USNS (US and nearshore), Jooste now takes responsibility for managing the entire North America region, which also includes Mexico. With more than 20 years of experience in the world of technology and consulting, she will be responsible for leading the implementation of Atento's business strategies in both markets to guarantee the achievement of the Company's objectives and continue to increase Atento's presence in this region. Thanks to her in-depth knowledge of client CX needs and Atento solutions, Jooste's appointment will be a lever for strategic growth, providing added value and growth to both the organization and its clients.

Before joining Atento, Jooste worked as the Microsoft Offering General Manager at DXC Technology. Previously she has held positions at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), Cognizant Technology Solutions, Systems West Computer Resources, Avanade and Accenture, always working to build and grow her teams successfully within different global commitments with clients. Jooste holds a Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration and Information System Management from the University of Florida.

"The customer experience industry is constantly expanding and evolving with its multifaceted characteristics, and there is a need to meet the expectations and priorities of customers, which are continually changing and advancing," said Jooste. "This moment presents a great challenge, to contribute my knowledge within the sector and to continue strengthening Atento's position within my new role. With this reorganization we are reinforcing our nearshore capabilities to constantly improve the service we provide to our US and global customers, facing new challenges together."

About Atento

Atento is the largest provider of customer relationship management and business process outsourcing ("CRM BPO") services in Latin America, and among the top providers globally. Atento is also a leading provider of nearshoring CRM BPO services to companies that carry out their activities in the United States. Since 1999, the company has developed its business model in 14 countries where it employs approximately 150,000 people. Atento has over 400 clients to whom it offers a wide range of CRM BPO services through multiple channels. Atento's clients are mostly leading multinational corporations in industries such as telecommunications, banking and financial services, health, retail and public administrations, among others. Atento's shares trade under the symbol ATTO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In 2019, Atento was named one of the World's 25 Best Multinational Workplaces and one of the Best Multinationals to Work for in Latin America by Great Place to Work. Also, in 2021 Everest named Atento as a star performer. Gartner named the company as a leader for two years in a row, since 2021 in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. For more information visit www.atento.com

Media Relations

[email protected]

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "intends," "continue" or similar terminology. In particular, these forward-looking statements include those about the effects on Atento and its growth of changes in the composition of the Board. These statements reflect only Atento's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance or results. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, competition in Atento's highly competitive industries; increases in the cost of voice and data services or significant interruptions in these services; Atento's ability to keep pace with its clients' needs for rapid technological change and systems availability; the continued deployment and adoption of emerging technologies; the loss, financial difficulties or bankruptcy of any key clients; the effects of global economic trends on the businesses of Atento's clients; the non-exclusive nature of Atento's client contracts and the absence of revenue commitments; security and privacy breaches of the systems Atento uses to protect personal data; the cost of pending and future litigation; the cost of defending Atento against intellectual property infringement claims; extensive regulation affecting many of Atento's businesses; Atento's ability to protect its proprietary information or technology; service interruptions to Atento's data and operation centers; Atento's ability to retain key personnel and attract a sufficient number of qualified employees; increases in labor costs and turnover rates; the political, economic and other conditions in the countries where Atento operates; changes in foreign exchange rates; Atento's ability to complete future acquisitions and integrate or achieve the objectives of its recent and future acquisitions; future impairments of our substantial goodwill, intangible assets, or other long-lived assets; Atento's ability to recover consumer receivables on behalf of its clients; and the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. Atento is also subject to other risk factors described in documents filed by the company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which the statements were made. Atento undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE Atento S.A.
CHARLOTTE, N.C., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of America Corporation today announced the Board of Directors has authorized regular cash dividends on the outstanding shares or depositary shares of the following series of preferred stock:

Series of Preferred Stock Dividend per Share

or Depositary Share1 Record Date Payment Date







7.25% Non-Cumulative

Perpetual Convertible

Preferred Stock, Series L



$18.125 July 1 August 1 5.875% Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series HH $0.3671875 July 1 July 25







Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-

Cumulative Preferred Stock,

Series MM $21.50 July 1 July 28











4.375% Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series NN $0.2734375 July 15 August 3







4.125% Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series PP $0.2578125 July 15 August 2







4.375% Fixed-Rate Reset Non-

Cumulative Preferred Stock,

Series RR $10.9375000 July 1 July 27







6.125% Fixed-Rate Reset Non-

Cumulative Preferred Stock,

Series TT $16.1631944 July 1 July 27



1 Each series of preferred stock, other than Series L, is represented by depositary shares.

Dividend payments are made on a quarterly basis for each series of preferred stock, other than

Series MM, for which dividends are paid on a semi-annual basis.

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 4,100 retail financial centers, approximately 16,000 ATMs, and award-winning digital banking with approximately 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.

Investors May Contact:



Lee McEntire, Bank of America

Phone: 1.980.388.6780

[email protected]

Jonathan G. Blum, Bank of America (Fixed Income)

Phone: 1.212.449.3112

[email protected]

Reporters May Contact:

Christopher P. Feeney, Bank of America

Phone: 1.980.386.6794

[email protected]

SOURCE Bank of America Corporation
Boston-Based Consulting Firm Recognized for its Executive Leadership

BOSTON, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Benchmark Strategies, a leading Boston-based public affairs consulting firm, has been named the 2022 Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year in the category of CEO Leadership. The Chamber's Small Business Awards recognize and celebrate the vital contributions and economic impact of Boston's small businesses. This award follows Benchmark's recognition as one of the Boston Business Journal's "Fast 50" which recognized the fastest 50 growing private companies in Massachusetts.

"We're grateful to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce for this recognition and proud of our incredible Benchmark team whose hard work and dedication made this possible," said Patrick Bench, President and Founder of Benchmark Strategies. "This award is a wonderful recognition of the resiliency and innovation of small businesses across the Commonwealth, and we are honored to be recognized alongside so many outstanding nominees."

Benchmark Strategies, founded by Patrick Bench in 2014, specializes in providing proactive public affairs, media relations, and economic development services to a broad and diverse range of local, national and international clients. Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Benchmark Strategies has been able to successfully pivot and grow--doubling its staff, tripling its client base, and expanding its public relations services to Rhode Island during the two years of the pandemic.

Benchmark Strategies' leadership team, led by President Patrick Bench, maintains a deep commitment to employee wellbeing and prioritizes employee support both in and outside of the workplace. This employee program includes prioritizing leadership and professional development opportunities and extending PTO days for mental health and recharge. Benchmark Strategies recently announced a $60,000 minimum salary for all employees, ensuring that every employee is relieved of any economic pressures that they may be facing.

Benchmark Strategies has been a proud member of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce for many years. The team attends many of the forums and events hosted by the Chamber, including the Chamber's Annual Meeting and participates in the Chamber's Boston Future Leader's Program.

Benchmark Strategies congratulates all the other 2022 Small Business of the Year winners: Nitsch Engineering (Diversity & Inclusion), City Point Partners (Cultural Excellence), John Leonard (Community Impact), Green Energy Mechanical Inc. (Innovation & Growth) and Alcove (Small Business Champion).

Contact:

Shelly Andrews

[email protected]

SOURCE Benchmark Strategies
SAN DIEGO and ADELAIDE, Australia, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- BioCina, a leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) today announced that the company has expanded its CDMO service offering to include the manufacture of plasmid DNA (pDNA) in a new dedicated GMP suite. The suite is equipped with up to 300 L single use fermentation capacity and suitably scaled downstream processing equipment. To complement GMP manufacturing, a broad range of analytical methods have been developed to support in-process, release and stability testing of pDNA products. This is a very important and timely addition that will best enable BioCina to work with its industry partners to further develop RNA vaccines and therapeutics as well as cell and gene therapies.

CDMO BioCina adds new GMP plasmid DNA manufacturing suite to address global demand. Tweet this BioCina, leading CDMO expands service offering with new GMP plasmid DNA manufacturing suite. The new suite is equipped with up to 300 L single use fermentation capacity and suitably scaled downstream processing equipment. To complement GMP manufacturing, a broad range of analytical methods have been developed to support in-process, release and stability testing of pDNA products.

BioCina's decision to expand its service offering into pDNA development and manufacturing was driven by the global increase in demand for GMP grade pDNA fueled by the exponential growth in vaccines and therapies on the RNA platform as well as strong growth in the cell and gene therapy markets. These factors, combined with the CDMO industry's dearth of capacity and access to high-quality cGMP pDNA manufacturing expertise, made this a clear path forward underscored by BioCina's depth of experience in microbial manufacturing.

"With our extremely strong history of quality in manufacturing, an exemplary regulatory inspection history, and our customer-centric business approach, BioCina is in a strong position to add significant value to companies working in the RNA and gene and cell therapy space that are struggling to find reliable and collaborative outsourcing partners. The addition of GMP pDNA services is a natural extension of our existing traditional biologics offering and provides another avenue for growth by supporting the development and manufacturing of these innovative vaccines and therapies," said Ian Wisenberg, Chief Executive Officer of BioCina.

BioCina Chairman, Rick Hancock added "With its well established expertise in the production of microbial derived biologics, BioCina is ideally suited to address the increasing global demand for GMP plasmid DNA. Whether used as a raw material in the production of viral vectors or mRNA vaccines, or as the active ingredient for plasmid gene therapy or DNA vaccines, we look forward to partnering with innovators to assist in progressing many exciting therapies."

About BioCina

BioCina Pty Ltd. is a multi-product biologics contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), focused on the development and cGMP manufacture of microbial-based biological pharmaceuticals, including proteins, pDNA, mRNA, vaccines and biosimilars, from early development through to commercialization. The BioCina Adelaide facility, formerly the Pfizer/Hospira plant, has a physical footprint of almost 60,000 ft2 for GMP manufacturing, process development, warehouse, and administration. The team has over 35 years of experience and extensive capabilities in microbial process development and manufacturing, with expertise from early process development to commercial manufacturing. BioCina has an enviable history manufacturing biological products approved for commercial use by the US-FDA, EMA and Health Canada, including the manufacturing of API for use in all stages of clinical trials. Licensed for GMP manufacture by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), BioCina is the only GMP manufacturing facility of its kind in Australia that has successfully passed a US-FDA inspection. BioCina is a Bridgewest Group portfolio company.

Contact:

BioCina:

Ian Wisenberg, CEO BioCina: [email protected] / +61 4 7919 6225 or +1 858 722-2552

SOURCE BioCina
SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Blue Diamond Growers, the world's leading almond marketer and processor, applauds President Biden's nominations of the Undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs at the United States Department of Agriculture and of Chief Agriculture Negotiator at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. These two positions have been vacant since the beginning of the Biden Administration. Blue Diamond Growers welcomes this positive step for foreign trade and agriculture.

The role of the Undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs at USDA will focus on international negotiations and policy development from the lens of American farmers. The position of Chief Agriculture Negotiator at USTR is an essential position for agricultural trade and international relationships. Blue Diamond is very pleased that the Biden Administration has taken careful steps to fulfill this position with a suitable candidate. The fulfillment of these two positions are critical to the success of American agriculture, and Blue Diamond anticipates the undoubted success these positions will bring to international trade.

About Blue Diamond

Blue Diamond Growers, a grower-owned cooperative representing over 3,000 of California's almond growers, is the world's leading almond marketer and processor. Established in 1910, it created the California almond industry and opened world markets for almonds. Blue Diamond is dedicated to delivering the benefits of almonds around the world and does so by providing high-quality almonds, almond ingredients and branded products. Headquartered in Sacramento, the company employs more than 1,800 people throughout its processing plants, receiving stations and gift shops. To learn more about Blue Diamond Growers, visit www.bluediamond.com and follow the company on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter .

SOURCE Blue Diamond Growers
NEW YORK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Insight Partners published latest research study on " Branded Generics Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Therapeutic Application (Oncology, Cardiovascular Diseases, Diabetes, Neurology, Gastrointestinal Diseases, Dermatology Diseases, Analgesics & Anti-Inflammatory, and Others), Distribution Channel (Hospitals, Retail Pharmacies, Online Pharmacies, and Drug Stores), Drug Class (Alkylating Agents, Antimetabolites, Hormones, Antihypertensive, Lipid-Lowering Drugs, Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, Antiepileptic, and Others), and Formulation Type (Oral, Parenteral, Topical, and Others)", the global branded generics market is expected to grow from $235.86 billion in 2022 to $414.99 billion by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 9.9% from 2022 to 2028.

Get Exclusive Access to Sample Pages of Branded Generics Market Size - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis with Strategic Insights at: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00005554/

Branded Generics Market Strategic Insights:

Report Coverage Details Market Size Value in US$ 235.86 Billion in 2022 Market Size Value by US$ 414.99 Billion by 2028 Growth rate CAGR of 9.9% from 2022 to 2028 Forecast Period 2022-2028 Base Year 2022 No. of Pages 229 No. Tables 111 No. of Charts & Figures 94 Historical data available Yes Segments covered Therapeutic Application, Distribution Channel, Drug Class, and Formulation Type Regional scope North America; Europe; Asia Pacific; Latin America; MEA Country scope US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina Report coverage Revenue forecast, company ranking, competitive landscape, growth factors, and trends

The branded generics market growth is driven by the rising penetration of branded generics and increasing government initiatives for promoting branded generics, encouraging the utility of branded generics by healthcare providers and professionals. However, poor clinical outcomes and adverse effects of generic medications in the global market are hampering the market growth.

Place Your Inquiry Before Buying: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPRE00005554/

Global Branded Generics Market: Competitive Landscape and Key Developments

In March 2020, Mylan Pharmaceuticals ULC launched Wixela Inhub (fluticasone propionate and salmeterol inhalation powder, USP), the first available bioequivalent alternative to ADVAIR DISKUS (fluticasone propionate and salmeterol inhalation powder), in Canada.

In May 2022, Teva Pharmaceuticals, a US affiliate of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., announced the launch of the first generic version of Revlimid 1 (lenalidomide capsules), in 5 mg, 10 mg, 15 mg, and 25 mg strengths, in the US.

In Jan 2020, Sandoz announced the acquisition of the Japanese Business of Aspen Global Incorporated (AGI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Limited. The successful completion of the acquisition of Aspen's Japanese operations promises to significantly strengthen Sandoz's position in Japan, a stable and growing market. The acquisition enables Sandoz to expand its presence in Japan's marketplace, the third-largest for generics and off-patent medicines worldwide.

In April 2022, GSK reached an agreement to acquire late-stage biopharmaceutical company Sierra Oncology for US$ 1.9 billion. GSK announced that the companies have entered into an agreement under which GSK would acquire Sierra Oncology, a California-based, late-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on targeted therapies for the treatment of rare forms of cancer, for US$ 55 per share of common stock in cash representing an approximate total equity value of US$ 1.9 billion (GBP 1.5 billion).

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Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Branded Generics Market:

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the implementation of stringent lockdown regulations across several countries, resulting in disruptions in branded generics' import and export activities. Due to the spread of SARS-CoV-2, many countries and cities were shut down, causing the cancellation of treatments and doctor/dentist appointments. Patients suffering from critical issues need physical attention in the clinics to perform procedures. Diabetes and cancer are one of the most preventable public health challenges in all the regions. Due to the rising intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic, the patients could not visit the diabetes care clinics. Moreover, there was limited availability of staff. Hence, the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the global branded generics market.

As a result, healthcare systems were overburdened, and the delivery of medical care to all patients became a challenge globally. In addition, the medical device industry was facing the negative impact of this pandemic. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to unfold, medical device companies found difficulties managing their operations. Many companies offering branded generics have business operations in the US, and businesses were adversely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. This disrupted and restricted the companies' ability to distribute products and resulted in temporary closures of their facilities. However, hospitals have gradually started resuming elective procedures as the COVID-19 recovery rate increased. Hence, the demand for branded generics, is expected to increase.

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Rising Penetration of Branded Generics Boost Global Branded Generics Market Growth:

Branded generics are cheaper alternatives to branded medicines, offering efficiency gains to any healthcare system. For instance, in 2016, US$ 253 billion was generated by generic medicines accounting for one-quarter of a trillion dollars. Additionally, US$ 1.6 trillion dollars in healthcare savings in the same year accounted for in the US healthcare system evaluating a 10-year saving due to the availability of low-cost generics.

Global Branded Generics Market: Segmental Overview

Based on therapeutic application, the branded generics market is segmented into oncology, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, neurology, gastrointestinal diseases, dermatology diseases, analgesics and anti-inflammatory, and others. In 2022, the others segment would hold the largest share of the market. However, the oncology segment is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR of 11.0% from 2022 to 2028.

In terms of distribution channel, the branded generics market is segmented into hospital pharmacies, retail pharmacies, online pharmacies, and drug stores. The retail pharmacies segment is likely to hold the largest share of the market in 2022. Moreover, the online pharmacies segment is anticipated to register the highest CAGR of 10.2% in the market during the forecast period.

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The branded generics market, by drug class, is segmented into alkylating agents, antimetabolites, hormones, anti-hypertensive, lipid lowering drugs, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-epileptic, and others. The others segment is likely to hold the largest share of the market in 2022. However, the hormones segment is anticipated to register the highest CAGR of 10.9% in the market during the forecast period.

The global branded generics market, based on formulation type, is segmented into oral, parenteral, topical, and others. In 2022, the oral segment held the largest share of the market by formulation type. However, the parenteral segment is expected to witness growth in its demand at the fastest CAGR of 10.3% from 2022 to 2028.

Browse Adjoining Reports:

Specialty Generics Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Formulation type (oral, parenteral, topical, others), Therapeutic Application (oncology, inflammatory conditions, multiple sclerosis, hepatitis C,), Distributional Channel (specialty pharmacy, retail pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, others).

Ticarcillin Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Product Type ( Patent, Generics ); Application ( Bone Infections, Respiratory Infections, Skin Infections, Others ); and Geography

Tianeptine Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Product Type ( Patent, Generics ); Application ( Depression, Anxiety, Others ); and Geography

Generic Oncology Drugs Market to 2027 - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Molecular Type (Large Molecule, Small Molecule); Indication (Lung Cancer, Stomach Cancer, Colorectal Cancer, Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Liver Cancer, Kidney Cancer, Cervical Cancer, Others), and Geography

Generic Injectables Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Product Type (Large Molecule Injectables and Small Molecule Injectables), Container Type (Vials, Premix, Prefilled Syringes, Ampoules, and Others), Application (Oncology, Infectious Diseases, Cardiology, Diabetes, Immunology, and Others), and Route of Administration (Intravenous, Intramuscular, Subcutaneous, and Others), and Geography

Simply Drug Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Product Type (Brand Drug, Generic Drug); Distribution Channel (Hospital, Drug Store) and Geography

Pharmaceutical Drugs Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Type (Generic, Branded, Bulk); Therapeutic Area (Oncology, Hematology, Cardiology, Anti- diabetic, Respiratory, Cosmetic, Neurology, Reproductive Health, General medicine, Gastrointestinal); Distribution Channel (Hospital pharmacies, Retail Pharmacies, Online Pharmacies); End User (Hospitals, Clinics, Others) and Geography

Prescription Medicine Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Product Type (Generics, Orphan, Other); Therapy (Oncology, Anti-diabetics, Vaccines, Sensory Organs, Immunosuppressants, Anticoagulants, Others); Distribution Channel (Hospital Pharmacies, Online Pharmacies, Retail Pharmacies and Drug Stores), and Geography

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Manuel Pozo Perello, president of Induban, explained that the expansion, made at the request of Goya, will add the presence of Cafe Santo Domingo to the southeastern region of the United States. The initial agreement between Induban and Goya Foods, signed last year, brought Cafe Santo Domingo to more than 20 states in the northeastern United States, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, among others.

Pozo Perello and Frank Unanue, president of Goya Foods of Florida, participated in the signing of this new agreement

"For Industrias Banilejas, the speed with which this second step of expansion in our agreement with Goya has taken place is more than significant, and more significant still that it was the distributor who requested the presence of our brand in six other states, due to the continuous demand from supermarket buyers in the area," said Pozo Perello.

In recent years, Goya Foods has expanded its commercial product offering with leading food brands from Latin America. Those brands, which now include Cafe Santo Domingo, will be available for sale in thousands of outlets, including independent supermarkets, regional supermarket chains and national chains.

Cafe Santo Domingo combines the best coffee beans roasted to perfection, with a complex aroma combining hazelnuts, caramel, and vanilla. It will be available in two varieties: classic and espresso. The classic has the perfect balance between the natural sweetness, soft acidity, and subtle characteristic bitterness of coffee. On the other hand, the espresso is a full-bodied coffee with an intense taste and aroma.

Pozo Perello indicated that Cafe Santo Domingo, just like other Induban products, are also available throughout the United States through Amazon, the leader in the e-commerce channel. The company launched its virtual store linked to the famous sales platform in 2020.

About INDUBAN

Industrias Banilejas S.A.S., (INDUBAN) is the leading coffee producing company in the Dominican Republic. Established in 1945 for the purchase, elaboration, and sales of coffee, it later became an exporter of Dominican gold coffee, highly sought after in the United States and Europe. For more than 75 years, Induban has served Dominicans the aroma and flavor of Cafe Santo Domingo, the leading and most emblematic brand in the country. Its brands transcend borders, being enjoyed around the world, including The United States, Canada, Spain, Hungary, Russia, Aruba, St. Martin, and Virgin Islands, among others.

SOURCE Industrias Banilejas S.A.S. (Induban)
Solena's proprietary, AI-powered Prometheus platform is the most extensive soil microdata repository in the world that turns diagnostics data into insights and customized microbial inoculant recommendations. Solena analyses the soil biome, identifies shortcomings and recommends custom microbial inoculants to help farmers maximize the crop quality and, hence, their RoI and profitability. Solena has covered 500 acres in California and Mexico and aims to focus on select high-value crops and global expansion next.

On the investment, Ritesh Agarwal, Partner, CerraCap Ventures, said, "CerraCap has an established track record of supporting high potential B2B startups usher in the next wave of digital innovation. Solena AG, with its competent leadership team and CEO Irving Riviera, are on a mission to help the agriculture industry solve an imminent soil crisis. Their customized approach to helping a large cross-section of farmers improve their output and quality is unique and harnesses the potential of modern technology for scale. Their pilots on high-value crops and the high repeat action of farmers before each crop cycle are great indicators of their analytical prowess and tangible value provided to farmers. We are optimistic that Solena and CerraCap will be able to greatly impact the need to provide global food security ten years in the future."

The agricultural industry is facing multiple challenges, like the dependence of certain crops on fertilizers and pesticides, the exhaustion of aquifers, the pollution resulting from these activities, and the increasing demand for food products versus the decrease of returns due to climate change. The market demand for corrective soil action is primarily on account of the over-exploitation of soil by farmers and using a one-size-fits-all approach. The company measures, appraises and improves farmers' biological capital and offers a sampling kit to provide measurement and valuation results for the soil, enabling farmers to access tools to achieve a sustainable and environmentally friendly approach to current-day agriculture.

Welcoming CerraCap Ventures on this mission-critical journey, Irving Riviera, Co-Founder and CEO of Solena AG, said, "We are tackling the constant degradation of the very foundation of agriculture, the soil. We hope they can reduce their dependence on inorganic chemicals and pesticides by empowering farmers and agricultural organizations to improve their soil health. Our approach is simple, affordable and yet impactful. By collating the world's largest data set of the soil microbiome, we are confident that we can achieve scale and positively impact farmers globally. By making agriculture harmonious with nature, we will help farmers raise profits while improving the quality of food we eat every day.

Solena's proprietary Prometheus data mining platform is an ever-growing biorepository that turns data into insights driving molecular soil health diagnosis and developing customized microbial-based bio-inoculants. Farmers receive a personalized recommendation to improve crop profitability through a functional characterization, biocontrol activities in soil, and production of solutions specifically tailored for each farm and crop type and before each crop cycle. Solena will expand its reach of soil testing centers, bolster team composition and improve R&D capabilities with this latest round of funding.

About CerraCap Ventures

CerraCap Ventures, a Global Venture Capital fund headquartered in Southern California, is dedicated to early-stage technology investments in enterprise (B2B) solutions focused on the new fundamentals of the digital age - Enterprise AI, Cyber Security and Healthcare. It enables rapid growth of technology startups leveraging its unique Sales & Scale business model, driving revenue from large enterprises into its portfolio companies. For more details, please visit www.cerracap.com

About Solena AG

Solena AG, Inc. is an Agtech company dedicated to studying the microbiome of agricultural soils to increase farmer profitability with a customized and end-to-end solution for improving soil microbiota. Founded in 2017, Solena aims to prove that innovation and technology can empower farmers to bring health and fertility to their soils through understanding their biodiversity. Additional information is available at https://solena.ag/

For media inquiries, please contact:

Name: Nikki Arora

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE CerraCap Ventures
First Editions, Second Thoughts (FEST) will raise much needed funds to support English PEN's work to defend free expression and campaign for writers who are at risk. The sale comprises over 80 annotated First Edition books by internationally renowned writers, including work by Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Salman Rushdie, John le Carre, Sebastian Faulks, Ben Okri, Ian McEwan, Bernardine Evaristo, and Philippe Sands . Art works from highly esteemed artists Anish Kapoor, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Ai Weiwei and Edmund de Waal are included in the auction.

Hilary Mantel's heavily annotated first editions of 'Bring Up the Bodies' and 'The Mirror and the Light' from her acclaimed Wolf Hall trilogy are both offered in the auction. Since it was established in 1969, only four writers, J.M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel, have won The Booker Prize twice. First editions annotated by these four authors are offered in the auction.

Each of the First Edition books is annotated by hand, a unique record of the author's response to their own work. Hilary Mantel comments on the experience: 'The process of publication (however welcome and necessary) is a process of estrangement. Annotation gives your book back to you, but presents it multiplied. It rescues you from finished product, returns you to process. It gives form to the sub-voce commentary that accompanies every session of work: 'I couldbut I won'tand yet I could try'. A special kind of memory comes into play - how you were when such a phrase arrived, where you were: the way the light fell into the room. It's a creative process as much as a re-creative one. Sentences struggle and twist again under your hand. Things you might have said, and the various ways you might have said them, swim back into your consciousness. You realise, if you didn't know it already, that there's another book behind the book, and behind that, a series of shadow volumes, stretching back to infancy, before you could write at all'.

English PEN, one of the world's oldest human rights organisations, champions the freedom to write and the freedom to read around the world, and is the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries.

A selection of Auction Highlights include:

Monica Ali, Brick Lane.

London: Doubleday, 2003.

An extraordinary first edition, signed on the title page and extensively annotated by the author across 79 pages with over 1000 words of commentary. Monica Ali's insightful commentary pays close attention to the text, often highlighting what pleases, shocks or surprises her in her language choices, and pointing to key moments in the narrative.

(Estimate 1,500-2,000).

Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale.

London: Jonathan Cape, 1986.

First UK edition of Atwood's most celebrated work, extensively annotated by the author across 161 pages, with 1,137 words.

(Estimate 4,0006,000).

Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other.

London: Hamish Hamilton, 2019.

A delightfully personal first edition, signed and annotated by the author with insightful notes on her influences and an account of the career-changing success of this Booker Prize winning novel. The final annotation is a charming summary of the novel's success: 'This book has revolutionised my career!'.

(Estimate 1,500-2,000).

John le Carre, (1931-2020). The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

London: Victor Gollancz, 1963.

First edition, part-annotated with the author's unfinished final reflections on his best-known work. The author passed away having annotated only the opening 45 pages of the book for the auction.

(Estimate 8,000-12,000).

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children.

London: Jonathan Cape, 1981.

'I had no idea that it would change my life': first British edition, signed by the author and with a fine inscription relating to the novel's enduring popularity and 'the real prizes of Literature'.

(Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.

First edition of a unique mystery novel, copiously annotated and illustrated by the author. The interventions in this copy are vivid, inventive, humorous, and generous in number and in spirit. Haddon's notes, in ink or coloured pencils, wind around the margins like fireworks.

(Estimate 2,000-3,000).

Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies. London: Fourth Estate, 2012.

First edition of the Booker Prize-winning novel, signed and abundantly annotated by the author with 4753 words of commentary across 179 pages. Her notes are acutely personal, offering a striking sense of the author's profound emotional attachment to the stories being told.

(Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Edmund de Waal, Letters to Camondo.

London: Chatto & Windus, 2021.

Annotated first edition, with accompanying porcelain tile, of a sequence of imagined letters to art collector Count Moise de Camondo.

(Estimate 3,000-5,000).

Ian McEwan, Atonement.

London: Jonathan Cape, 2001.

An exceptional first edition of Atonement, annotated by the author with over 4000 words of commentary His notes frequently point to his sources  both in personal experiences and in more formal research  and to such literary influences as Henry James and Virginia Woolf.

(Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers.

London: Faber & Faber, 2015.

First edition, copiously annotated and illustrated by the author, his annotations appear on almost every page of the book and relate to the literary influences that shaped him ('This page shows what I'm made of [] I'm made of what I've read'), his writing process ('I always start writing by drawing'), his thoughts about criticism ('Critics will wilfully misunderstand things') and setbacks ('Someone told me to "go away and write a proper book").

(Estimate 1,500-2,000).

Philippe Sands, President, English PEN, and professor of law at University College London, comments, 'It is thrilling to embark on a First Editions, Second Thoughts auction with Christie's. I am truly delighted to join such illustrious names with an annotated edition of East West Street, whose focus on international crimes assumes particular resonance in the face of the crime of aggression that is being perpetrated by Russia against Ukraine. Here, in the UK, and around the world, the rule of law is more important than ever, as intolerance, division, and threats to freedom of expression are on the rise. Today, the work of English PEN is more important and relevant than ever, and this wonderful auction will help in its vital work.'

Margaret Ford, Christie's International Head of Books & Manuscripts comments, 'Christie's is delighted to support the important work of English PEN by presenting an extraordinary array of literary masterpieces at auction. These works, uniquely annotated by their authors for the auction, offer new insights into the work, life and career of some of the most important writers of our generation. As such, they are "copies of record" which will excite collectors, readers and literary enthusiasts around the globe.'

Daniel Gorman, Director, English PEN, comments, 'It is an honour to partner with Christie's for this auction to benefit English PEN, as we continue the increasingly urgent and vital work of campaigning for writers at risk, and for freedom of expression in the UK and across the world. We are hugely grateful to the contributors, some of the most well-known and well-loved authors and artists of our time, who have generously looked back and annotated some of their finest work.'

Mark Wiltshire, Specialist, Books and Manuscripts and Head of Sale comments, 'It is a great privilege to handle the sale of these extraordinary books in support of English PEN. The authors' annotations are personal, profound, insightful, and frequently surprising, adding a unique layer of intimacy to some of the most celebrated texts published in our lifetime. To read them is to feel incredibly close to the process of creation. I anticipate strong interest from collectors and institutions from around the world.'

Estimates range from 1,000 to 20,000 and bidding on most lots will start from 100.

A selection of lots from First Editions, Second Thoughts: An Auction to Benefit English PEN will be on view and exhibition from 6 - 15 June within The Art of Literature: Auction Highlights Exhibition taking place at Christie's headquarters in St James's, London, as part of London Now. Please see www.christies.com for timings.

All lots in the First Editions, Second Thoughts auction will also be on view and open to the public in a standalone exhibition from 8  11 July at Christie's.

Christies and English PEN are delighted to be hosting a series of events open to the public, as follows:

Events:

3 July 2022 10.30am

First Editions, Second Thoughts

Writers return to their work and record their thoughts by hand in a First Edition. Elif Shafak invites Anne Enright (The Green Road), Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China), David Nicholls (One Day), Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet) and Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring) to discuss their second thoughts.

9 July 2022 10.30am

Philippe Sands  East West Street: Lviv 1945/2022

Human rights lawyer and President of English PEN Philippe Sands reflects on past and current events in Ukraine, free expression and writing, in his own work and across the world. Chaired by Claire Armistead.

To book your place at the above events where numbers are limited please go to Christies.com and apply via the following link click here.

To learn more about the work of English PEN please click here.

Please see the link here to access drop box images of the works illustrated along with a list of the authors, artists and their First Edition or work of art within the auction.

Please credit Christie's Images 2022 for all imagery.

About English PEN

Founded in 1921, English PEN is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations, championing the freedom to write and read. We are the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries. With the support of our members  a community of readers, writers and activists  we protect freedom of expression whenever it is under attack, support writers facing persecution around the world, and celebrate contemporary international writing with literary prizes, grants, events, and our online magazine PEN Transmissions.

English PEN's work is made possible through core funding from Arts Council England and the TS Eliot Foundation alongside the support of members, project partners and Silver PEN partners.

https://www.englishpen.org

About Christie's

Founded in 1766, Christie's is a world-leading art and luxury business. Renowned and trusted for its expert live and online auctions, as well as its bespoke private sales, Christie's offers a full portfolio of global services to its clients, including art appraisal, art financing, international real estate and education. Christie's has a physical presence in 46 countries, throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific, with flagship international sales hubs in New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris and Geneva. It also is the only international auction house authorized to hold sales in mainland China (Shanghai).

Christie's auctions span more than 80 art and luxury categories, at price points ranging from $200 to over $100 million. In recent years, Christie's has achieved the world record price for an artwork at auction (Leonardo da Vinci's Salvador Mundi, 2017), for a single charitable collection sale (the Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller, 2018), and for a work by a living artist (Jeff Koons' Rabbit, 2019).

Christie's Private Sales offers a seamless service for buying and selling art, jewellery and watches outside of the auction calendar, working exclusively with Christie's specialists at a client's individual pace.

Recent innovations at Christie's include the groundbreaking sale of the first NFT for a digital work of art ever offered at a major auction house (Beeple's Everydays, March 2021), with the unprecedented acceptance of cryptocurrency as a means of payment. As an industry leader in digital innovation, Christie's also continues to pioneer new technologies that are redefining the business of art, including the creation of viewing and bidding experiences that integrate augmented reality, global livestreaming, buy-now channels, and hybrid sales formats.

Christie's is dedicated to advancing responsible culture throughout its business and communities worldwide, including achieving sustainability through net zero carbon emissions by 2030, and actively using its platform in the art world to amplify under-represented voices and support positive change.

Browse, bid, discover, and join us for the best of art and luxury at: www.christies.com or by downloading Christie's apps.

The COVID-related re-opening status of our global locations is available here.

*Please note when quoting estimates above that other fees will apply in addition to the hammer price - see Section D of the Conditions of Sale at the back of the sale catalogue.

*Estimates do not include buyer's premium. Sales totals are hammer price plus buyer's premium and are reported net of applicable fees.

Images available on request.

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PRESS CONTACT:

Charlotte Brown

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SOURCE Christies
DUBLIN, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Colombia Construction Equipment Market - Strategic Assessment & Forecast 2022-2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Colombia construction equipment market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 6.72% during 2022-2028

The report considers the present scenario of the Colombia construction equipment market and market dynamics for the forecast period 2022-2028. It covers a detailed overview of several growth enablers, restraints, and trends in the market. The study includes the volume and value sales with a segment analysis of the Colombia construction equipment market.

In 2021, the earthmoving equipment segment had the largest share in Colombia construction equipment market. Colombian government investment in infrastructure development projects including improving water drainage, renewable energy projects are expected to drive the demand for excavators as compared to other earthmoving equipment over the forecast period. The earthmoving equipment segment in Colombia is estimated to grow at a CAGR of more than 7% by 2028.

KEY POINTS

The construction industry was adversely impacted in 2020 as major infrastructure projects were halted to curb COVID-19 outbreak. In Colombia, demand for new construction equipment declined by 15.2% in the same year.

Colombian government introduced 5G infrastructure development program in 2021. The government planned to invest in road infrastructure (~60 billion), airport expansion projects ($5.7 billion), railways infrastructure ($3.4 billion), and port Infrastructure ($433 million) in 2022. In 2022, Government makes the fresh set of investment of $955.7 million for construction of new highways between Sabana de Torres & Curumani, Puerto Salgar & Barrancabermeja and road improvement projects are planned between Buenaventura & Buga as well as Sabtuario & Cano Alegre.

Additionally, increasing minerals production & FDI inflow in the mining sector have positive impact on construction equipment's sales. Colombia's mining sector recovered by 15% in 2021 due to surge in production of coal, gold, and nickel in the country. FDI investment in the mining industry was $2.7 billion in 2021.

The industry bounced after 26% decline in 2020 caused by lockdown and reduced FDI inflow in $902 million. The growth in mining industry due to rising FDI investment in mining sector and increasing production of gold, nickel, and copper in 2022 triggers the demand for large excavators, backhoe loader and crane in the Colombian market.

Surge in urban development & maintenance projects trigger the need for fuel efficient & flexible equipment. Government's focus on road maintenance projects, development of municipality and proper drainage system prompts the demand for flexible, low maintenance and fuel-efficient equipment in the market.

The major OEMs in the country are expected to follow the recent trends in the demand for construction equipment and focuses on delivering fuel efficient and low maintenance equipment such as backhoe loader, skid loaders, mini excavators in Colombia market.

VENDOR LANDSCAPE

Caterpillar, Komatsu and Volvo have the major share in the Colombia construction equipment market. The Chinese manufacturer such as SANY & XCMG are recently gaining popularity due to low price compared to that of other manufacturers.

Key Vendors

Caterpillar

Volvo Construction Equipment

Komatsu

SANY

JCB

Liebherr

Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group Co. Ltd. (XCMG)

Hyundai Construction Equipment

Other Prominent Vendors

Kobelco

Terex corporation

CASE Construction

Yanmar manufactures

LiuGong

Distributor Profiles

Newman Maquinaria Pesada

CENTRAL S.A.S

IMPORTADORA CASA Colombia S.A.S

WHY SHOULD YOU BUY THIS REPORT?

This report is among the few in the market that offers an outlook and opportunity analysis forecast in terms of:

Colombia Construction Equipment Market Size & Forecast Volume (Unit sales) 2019-2028

Earthmoving. Material handling and road construction

Excavators, Backhoe loaders, Cranes, forklifts

End Users (construction, mining, manufacturing and other industries)

Colombia Construction Equipment Market Size and Forecast Value (USD) 2019-2028

Earthmoving. Material handling and road construction

Excavators, Backhoe loaders, Cranes, forklifts

End Users (construction, mining, manufacturing and other industries)

Major current & upcoming projects & investments

Gain competitive intelligence about the economic scenario, advantages in Colombia's major projects and investments, dynamics, and market share.

major projects and investments, dynamics, and market share. Examples of the latest technologies.

Get presentation-ready format and easy-to-interpret data.

Enable decision-makers to make informed and profitable choices

Gain expert quantitative and qualitative analysis on value/volume incremental growth projections

Complete supply chain analysis

Get COVID-19 impact analysis of the market

Vendor capability matrix

Company Profile of vendors and distributors

Key Topics Covered:

Section 1 Introduction

Section 2 Market Overview

Economic Scenario, Foreign Direct Investment

Section 3 Market Landscape

Colombia Construction Equipment Market by Type (Volume & Value)

Earthmoving Equipment

Excavators

Backhoe Loaders

Motor Graders

Other Earthmoving Equipment (Other Loaders, Bulldozer, Trencher, Etc.)

Material Handling Equipment

Cranes

Forklift and Telescopic Handler

Aerial Platform (Articulated Boom Lifts, Telescopic Boom Lifts, Scissor Lifts, Etc)

Road Construction Equipment

Road Roller

Asphalt Paver

Colombia Construction Equipment Market by End-user (Volume & Value)

Construction

Manufacturing

Mining

Others (Power Generation, Utilities Municipal Corporations, Oil & Gas, Cargo Handling, Power Generation Plants, Waste Management, Etc.)

Section 4 Market Dynamics

Market Drivers, Restraints, Trends, Advantage Colombia, Key Economic Regions, Import/Export Trends, Supply Chain Analysis, Covid-19 Impact

Section 5 Technological Development

Advent of New Technology

Section 6 Competitive Landscape

Competitive Landscape Overview

Major Vendors (Caterpillar - Volvo Construction Equipment - Komatsu Colombia S.A.S - Sany Colombia S.A.S - Jcb - Liebherr Colombia - Terex Corporation Colombia - Hyundai Construction Equipment - Xcmg - Kobelco - Liugong - Yanmar - Case)

Other Prominent Vendors

Distributor Profiles

Section 7 Quantitative Summary

Quantitative Summary

Section 8 Report Summary

Key Insights

Abbreviations

List of Graphs

List of Tables

Section 9 Report Scope & Definition

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/fqgys4

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SOURCE Research and Markets
TUCSON, Ariz., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On June 14-15, the Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee will meet to consider granting Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for COVID-19 vaccinations for children under age 5. Prior to the meeting, at least 18 congressmen, led by Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), sent a letter calling for answers to a number of questions.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) sent copies of the letter to its members, suggesting that they might want to ask their congressional delegation to sign on.

Questions include the following:

"Why has the FDA been so slow to release the hundreds of thousands of pages of data from pre-approval manufacturer studies, post-approval adverse events data, other post-approval manufacturer data submitted to the FDA as required by law?"

"What is the cardiac risk factor in administering these EUA COVID vaccines to children?"

"Why has the FDA recently lowered the efficacy bar for COVID vaccines for youngest children?"

"The vaccines have evidently been procured and paid for already, and availability is being advertised on television and by medical associations, on the presumption that authorization will be granted," states AAPS executive director Jane Orient, M.D.

An EUA is not the same as FDA approval," she notes. "Informed consent is still required. In case of a serious adverse reaction, limited compensation might be available under the PREP Act, which also protects from liability entities that manufacture, distribute, or administer the vaccine."

Parents might have the same questions as congressmen ask in this letter," she adds.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943. Its motto is omnia pro aegroto (everything for the patient).

SOURCE Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)
GALS LA is an all-girls charter school that takes a holistic approach to development, recognizing a connection between a healthy mind and body. The school integrates health and wellness by providing a curriculum addressing physical, emotional and psychosocial needs of female students.

CRATE manufactures multifamily and public works projects, and has a long history of building schools locally in LA. Their innovative modular construction process and streamlined approach allows for expedited schedules. For education facilities like GALS LA, this means that buildings can be deployed rapidly, and schools open sooner.

"We are always enthusiastic to take on education projects," said CRATE Modular CEO Rich Rozycki. "Right now, there is a great need for more space and classrooms in the education system. The challenge is building while keeping school schedules intact, but with a modular approach, fabrication is swift."

Partnering on the project is EFG, a local school developer. They lead teams through EFG has extensive experience building schools in California, including the Renaissance Arts Academy in northeast Los Angeles, Magnolia Science Academy in Santa Ana and Equitas Academy Charter School in Los Angeles. The GALS LA facility will be the first EFG education project that is modularly constructed, serving as a milestone for the organization.

"GALS LA will better exemplify how education facilities can be delivered both cost-efficiently and quickly, while also maintaining a beautiful and high-quality infrastructure" Rozycki said. "We are excited to add GALS LA to our fast-growing portfolio of meaningful projects. Projects like these are incredibly rewarding - good schools contribute to thriving communities. We are always happy to be part of community building."

About CRATE Modular

CRATE Modular is an industry leader in steel modular construction for the multifamily, educational, residential, and commercial construction sectors. We have years of experience with project types of all sizes and complexities. CRATE's approach eliminates workflow inefficiencies, shortens the development cycle compared to conventional site-built construction, reduces waste, and produces stronger and more durable buildings. CRATE Modular buildings are manufactured in Los Angeles and are delivered ready-to-install. For more information, please visit https://cratemodular.com/

SOURCE CRATE Modular
CHINO HILLS, Calif., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- California Regional MLS, the largest multiple listing service in the United States, has reached an agreement to enable reciprocal access between its MLS systems and Mexico's newly launched Omni MLS.

Under the terms of the agreement, over 110,000 real estate professionals in California will gain unprecedented visibility into the Mexican real estate market. CRMLS users can now find a link to access the Omni MLS Matrix system from CRMLS Matrix, with plans for access from Paragon and Flex in progress. The Omni MLS Matrix system is fully available in both English and Spanish.

"When Omni MLS achieves its goal of a Mexican nationwide multiple listing service, agents, brokers, buyers, and sellers in Mexico will all benefit," said CRMLS CEO Art Carter, now a member of the Omni MLS Board of Directors. "We're pleased to provide our users new visibility into a market that is gathering interest from their clients and to spread the value of the MLS in the process."

Omni MLS is working to unite agents and brokers in Mexico to create the most expansive listing database in the country's history. Despite the substantial size of its national real estate sector, most local real estate markets in Mexico feature limited or zero cooperation among brokers. Growing Omni's database will improve the accuracy and reliability of sales comparables, offer practitioners more of the listing data they need for comprehensive market analysis, and give all parties involved in real estate transactions a more complete view of the Mexican real estate marketplace than ever before.

According to Omni MLS CEO Ross Buck, the move to offer reciprocal access to CRMLS comes in part as a response to changing attitudes and oversight within the Mexican real estate community. "Not long ago, it was possible for agents in California to drive a client to Mexico, help them buy a property, and collect a commission, all with minimal attention to government regulations," said Buck. "We think it's important to enable and incentivize the many American real estate professionals who work hard to respect the rules."

"Since we've used CRMLS as a model for our operations, I especially appreciate Art's help and interest in making our dream a reality," Buck added.

Both organizations are building a mechanism to offer agents referrals on either side of the border whenever they close a transaction. Leadership for both MLSs will announce updates as they arrive.

About California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS)

California Regional MLS is the nation's largest and most recognized subscriber-based MLS, dedicated to servicing more than 110,000 real estate professionals from 41 Associations, Boards, and MLS organizations. CRMLS is the industry powerhouse and thrives on providing the most relevant products and services to its subscribers. For more information on CRMLS, visit www.crmls.org.

About Omni MLS

Omni Multiple Listing Service (Omni MLS) will be Mexico's largest and most recognized subscriber-based multiple listing service. We are dedicated to serving more than 100,000 real estate professionals from every state of Mexico. www.omnimls.com

CONTACT: [email protected]

SOURCE California Regional MLS
Market entry advances integrated strategy across Mediterranean, strengthens Digital Realty's market leadership throughout the region

AUSTIN, Texas, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, and Mivne Real Estate (K.D.) (TASE: MVNE), announced today the formation of a joint venture, entry into the Israeli market, and the planned development of a multi-tenant data center campus in Israel.

Digital Realty's position as the leading provider of digital infrastructure capacity in the broader Mediterranean region, including presence in Athens, Barcelona and Marseille, will be further enhanced by this new location. The joint venture, which will operate under the brand name Digital Realty Mivne, will serve as a strategic partnership of Digital Realty with Mivne, a market leading real estate developer, owner and operator that has developed many large-scale projects across Israel and has an extensive land bank.

Approximately half of the world's population resides within a 3,000-mile radius of the center of the Mediterranean. Telegeography[1] notes that international bandwidth in the Middle East has seen over 30% compound annual growth since 2016, representing an overall increase in transmission capacity to the region of almost 200%. Israel is emerging as an alternative cable interconnect route between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, and the new campus will be located at a key intersection along the global internet highway across the Mediterranean region, connecting Europe to the west and Asia, the Middle East and eastern Africa to the east. This new route enhances the availability and resilience of international subsea cable systems. The first subsea cable systems to traverse Israel terrestrially have already been announced and further systems are anticipated.

Israel is also a global center for technology innovation and is regarded as the seventh most innovative country in the world[2], with the highest percentage of GDP spent on research and development and the highest venture capital (VC) investment per capita[3], with over 500 multi-national companies (MNCs) from 35 countries undertaking innovation in Israel. In addition, the four largest cloud service providers have all announced that they will be building cloud infrastructure in Israel. All of these macro trends are driving significant demand for digital infrastructure throughout Israel.

Digital Realty Mivne expects to develop a multi-tenant data center campus in Petah Tikvah, the primary connectivity hub in Israel. The data center campus will support the development of up to 20 megawatts (MW) of installed IT load. Delivery of the initial phase is anticipated in 2023, subject to customer demand.

"Today's collaboration marks the beginning of a new chapter for Digital Realty's operations, customers and partners in the Middle East. We expect this partnership to further accelerate our growth while enhancing our ability to support our customers' digital transformation across the globe," said Digital Realty Chief Executive Officer A. William Stein. "This partnership represents consistent execution towards new market entries. We are also gratified to partner with Mivne, leveraging its extensive experience as a local investor and operator. This announcement advances our strategy of developing strategic and highly connected, network dense data centers to strengthen and diversify Digital Realty's portfolio and expand our product mix and global footprint."

David Zvida, Chief Executive Officer of Mivne, added, "Entering the field of data centers is a strategic growth engine for Mivne. Due to Mivne's large and strategic land bank and its extensive geographical distribution across Israel, the joint venture will be able to develop strategically located, purpose-built data centers. This strategic partnership with a leading international operator such as Digital Realty, which has proven operating capabilities and extensive relationships with international customers and suppliers, will enable us to gain leadership in the Israeli data center market."

Additional Resources

___________________________________________________________________________________________

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 290+ facilities in 50 metros across 26 countries on six continents. For more information, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Mivne

Mivne Real Estate (K.D.) Ltd. engages in the initiation, purchase, construction, rental, and management of buildings intended for office, high-tech, industrial, logistics, and commercial needs, and also operates in the field of residential real estate development. Mivne owns about 1.9 million square meters of income-yielding assets and about 780,000 square meters of land reserves. The geographical distribution, the number of tenants and their diversity are a valuable advantage which contribute to the Mivne's resilience.

For Additional Information

Media Contacts

Will Reynolds

Digital Realty

+44 7469 695775

[email protected]

Zohar Dublin

Schere Communications

+972 77 555 7700

[email protected]

Investor Relations

Jordan Sadler/ Jim Huseby

Digital Realty

+1 737 281 0101

[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 related to the Israeli market, development plans in Israel, our expectations regarding the joint venture's development plans and operations in Israel, the company's strategy and expected growth in digital transformation and customer demand. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, see the reports and filings by the company 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.

[1] https://www2.telegeography.com/hubfs/assets/Ebooks/state-of-the-network-2021.pdf

[2] Bloomberg Innovation Index, February 2021

[3] The State of Innovation, PWC Israel, April 2019

SOURCE Digital Realty
Imaging-guided procedure could potentially offer a new treatment for degenerative disc disease

FAIRFAX, Va. , June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- An experimental formulation of a hydrogel, injected into spinal discs, proved safe and effective in substantially relieving chronic low back pain caused by degenerative disc disease (DDD), according to new research presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology Annual Scientific Meeting, in Boston. Hydrogels have been used for a number of years to treat DDD, but the current study is the first test of this particular gel in humans.

After six months, all participants in this small study reported significantly less low back paindeclining from an average self-reported pain level of 7.1 down to 2.0 on a scale of zero to 10. They also experienced greatly improved physical function, with average scores falling from 48 to 6 on a questionnaire to gauge the impact of low back pain in preventing patients from the ability to perform normal activities.

"If these findings are confirmed in further research, this procedure may be a very promising treatment for chronic low back pain in those who've found insufficient relief from conservative care," said lead author Douglas P. Beall, MD, FSIR, chief of radiology services at Clinical Radiology of Oklahoma. "The gel is easy to administer, requires no open surgery, and is an easy procedure for the patient."

The gel used in this study, Hydrafil, is a second-generation hydrogel developed by ReGelTec, Inc. In 2020, it received FDA's breakthrough device designation, which allows expedited review when early evidence suggests an experimental product may provide more effective treatment than current options for treating a serious condition. Dr. Beall is a medical advisor to the company.

The research team enrolled 20 patients, aged 22 to 69, with chronic DDD low back pain. Each described their pain as four or higher on the 10-point scale. None had found more than mild relief from conservative care, which includes rest, analgesics, physical therapy, and back braces.

Patients were sedated for the procedure, and the gel was heated to become a thick liquid. Guided by fluoroscopic imaging, researchers used a 17-gauge needle to inject the gel directly into the affected discs, where the gel filled in cracks and tears, adhering to the disc's center and outer layer.

"We really have no good treatments for degenerative disc disease, aside from conservative care," said Dr. Beall. "Surgery is statistically no more effective than conservative care and can potentially make things worse; nerve ablation is appropriate for only a few patients; and existing hydrogels are inserted through an incision as a soft solid, which can pop out of place if you're not highly skilled in placing it."

"Because this gel is injectable, it requires no incision, and it augments the whole disc, restoring its structural integrity, which nothing we have currently can do," he said.

Degenerative disc disease is the leading cause of chronic low back pain, one of the world's most common medical conditions. Healthy discs cushion the spine's vertebrae, facilitating movement and flexibility. With normal aging, though, they can become dry, thin, cracked or torn, causing pain or loss of motion. By age 60, most people have at least some disc degeneration.

Abstract 45: Treatment of Painful Lumbar Degenerative Disc Disease: A Feasibility Study. D. Beall, K. Amirdelfan, P. Nunley, T. Phillips, I. Navarro, A. Spath. Annual Scientific Meeting, June 1116, 2022. This abstract can be found at sirmeeting.org.

About the Society of Interventional Radiology

The Society of Interventional Radiology is a nonprofit, professional medical society representing more than 8,000 practicing interventional radiology physicians, trainees, students, scientists and clinical associates, dedicated to improving patient care through the limitless potential of image-guided therapies. SIR's members work in a variety of settings and at different professional levelsfrom medical students and residents to university faculty and private practice physicians. Visit sirweb.org.

The Society of Interventional Radiology is holding its Annual Scientific Meeting in Boston June 1116, 2022. Visit sirmeeting.org.

SOURCE Society of Interventional Radiology
"Not relying on target prioritization, the DAiR system aligns the radar capability with the imperatives of multi-domain warfare" said Oren Sabag, General Manager Elbit Systems ISTAR & EW

HAIFA, ISRAEL , June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Elbit Systems launches DAiR, an innovative simultaneous multi-mission tactical radar. The system makes target prioritization redundant enabling a step change in the effectiveness and efficiency of tactical terrain dominance, protection against Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and border security. The new radar will be presented during the Eurosatory 2022 as part of Elbit Systems' display (Hall 6, D567).

DAiR X-band software defined radar

The DAiR is an X-band software defined radar system that incorporates hundreds of digital receivers, sophisticated algorithms and computing cores with Artificial Intelligence capabilities. The system is capable of simultaneous detection and tracking of thousands objects of various sizes and velocities, with no need for target prioritization. These unique radar capabilities enable a tactical force to use a single radar system for handling of a very large number of targets of various types and ranges including: humans, small quadcopters, helicopters and UAS, vessels and artillery. Small drones are detected from up to 12km and humans from up to 15km. The DAiR radar systems is compatible with the All-purpose Structured EUROCONTROL Surveillance Information Exchange protocols (ASTERIX) enabling seamless sharing of information with C4I systems.

Oren Sabag, General Manager of Elbit Systems ISTAR & EW, said: "As warfare becomes increasingly multi-domain, the target prioritizing capability, that is central to legacy radars, becomes a liability. Forces are compelled to apply multiple radars just to keep up with the evolving threat - holding a common operational picture becomes harder and costs increase. The DAiR radar system addresses these challenges, does not rely on target prioritization, thereby aligning the radar capability with the imperatives of multi-domain warfare."

About Elbit Systems

Elbit Systems Ltd. is an international high technology company engaged in a wide range of defense, homeland security and commercial programs throughout the world. The Company, which includes Elbit Systems and its subsidiaries, operates in the areas of aerospace, land and naval systems, command, control, communications, computers, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance ("C4ISR"), unmanned aircraft systems, advanced electro-optics, electro-optic space systems, EW suites, signal intelligence systems, data links and communications systems, radios, cyber-based systems and munitions. The Company also focuses on the upgrading of existing platforms, developing new technologies for defense, homeland security and commercial applications and providing a range of support services, including training and simulation systems.

For additional information, visit: https://elbitsystems.com, follow us on Twitter or visit our official Facebook, Youtube and LinkedIn Channels.

Company Contact:

David Vaaknin, VP, Brand & Corporate Communications

Tel: +972-77-2946691

[email protected]

This press release may contain forwardlooking statements (within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and the Israeli Securities Law, 1968) regarding Elbit Systems Ltd. and/or its subsidiaries (collectively the Company), to the extent such statements do not relate to historical or current facts. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions about future events. Forwardlooking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions about the Company, which are difficult to predict, including projections of the Company's future financial results, its anticipated growth strategies and anticipated trends in its business. Therefore, actual future results, performance and trends may differ materially from these forwardlooking statements due to a variety of factors, including, without limitation: scope and length of customer contracts; governmental regulations and approvals; changes in governmental budgeting priorities; general market, political and economic conditions in the countries in which the Company operates or sells, including Israel and the United States among others; changes in global health and macro-economic conditions; differences in anticipated and actual program performance, including the ability to perform under long-term fixed-price contracts; changes in the competitive environment; and the outcome of legal and/or regulatory proceedings. The factors listed above are not all-inclusive, and further information is contained in Elbit Systems Ltd.'s latest annual report on Form 20-F, which is on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All forwardlooking statements speak only as of the date of this release. Although the Company believes the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements contained herein are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, level of activity, performance or achievements. Moreover, neither the Company nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update its forward-looking statements.

Elbit Systems Ltd., its logo, brand, product, service and process names appearing in this Press Release are the trademarks or service marks of Elbit Systems Ltd. or its affiliated companies. All other brand, product, service and process names appearing are the trademarks of their respective holders. Reference to or use of a product, service or process other than those of Elbit Systems Ltd. does not imply recommendation, approval, affiliation or sponsorship of that product, service or process by Elbit Systems Ltd. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as conferring by implication, estoppel or otherwise any license or right under any patent, copyright, trademark or other intellectual property right of Elbit Systems Ltd. or any third party, except as expressly granted herein.

Image - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1837861/Elbit_Systems_Ltd.jpg

SOURCE Elbit Systems Ltd
Latest Addition to the Workforce Solutions Employee-Driven Product Suite Helps HR Streamline Forms Management Throughout the Entire Employee Lifecycle

ATLANTA, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Equifax  (NYSE: EFX) announced a new, first-to-market Offboarding Forms solution to help employers further streamline forms management throughout the entire employee lifecycle. Building on the Workforce Solutions Compliance Center platform, Offboarding Forms helps employers and HR professionals better manage the delivery of offboarding forms, including state-mandated separation notices, to terminated remote, in-office or hybrid employees across the United States.

"Offboarding is an important part of the broader employee experience, and it can require numerous administrative steps for the employer," said Kate Devine-Elkins, Director, Product Management, Compliance Solutions at Equifax Workforce Solutions. "Our Offboarding Forms solution gives HR leaders more confidence that the right forms are going to the exiting employee at the right time, regardless of the location."

For the year ended April 30, 2022, there were over 71 million separations in the United States; and Gallup conservatively estimates the cost of replacing an employee to be one-half to two times that person's annual salary.

"Employers recognize the stakes are high in terms of financial investment and employee experience, as well as meeting legal requirements," added Devine-Elkins. "Our Offboarding Forms solution supports a streamlined process that can be completed in a matter of minutes. And since we track and add mandated notices across every state, our unique solution helps reduce that burden for employers and can help reduce the risk of fines."

Currently, 35 states require or suggest that employers provide notices for departing employees outlining their rights in relation to unemployment benefits, regardless of whether the employee separated involuntarily or voluntarily.

The Offboarding Forms solution is customizable, allowing employers to add their own unique forms and notices such as COBRA information and Health Insurance Premium Payment (HIPP) notices, along with the state-provided forms that Equifax maintains. For more information, please visit our website .

ABOUT EQUIFAX

At Equifax (NYSE: EFX), we believe knowledge drives progress. As a global data, analytics, and technology company, we play an essential role in the global economy by helping financial institutions, companies, employers, and government agencies make critical decisions with greater confidence. Our unique blend of differentiated data, analytics, and cloud technology drives insights to power decisions to move people forward. Headquartered in Atlanta and supported by more than 13,000 employees worldwide, Equifax operates or has investments in 25 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. For more information, visit Equifax.com .

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Daniel Jenkins for Equifax Workforce Solutions

[email protected]

SOURCE Equifax Inc.
Company to exhibit and share early clinical results at the American Delirium Society Conference, June 12-14, Indianapolis, IN

A multi-center, international clinical trial to investigate the safety and efficacy of EyeControl-Pro for Delirium reduction is underway

TEL AVIV, Israel, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- EyeControl is developing the EyeControl-Pro, an AI-based, smart, screenless and wearable, eye-tracking communication solution for Delirium reduction. The company will display its new investigational device, EyeControl-Pro, at the American Delirium Society Conference (ADS), June 12-14, Indianapolis, IN.

EyeControl-Pro is being designed to enable bi-directional remote connectivity and communication between the patient's headset, the medical team and family members.

EyeControl platform enabling patient communication via an eye-tracking wearable. Photo credit: EyeControl (PRNewsfoto/EyeControl)

EyeControl CEO Mr. Or Retzkin said, "Our intention is to effectively empower the up to 80% of ICU patients experiencing Delirium to communicate with their medical support team, family and friends, center and regain control of reality. Delirium costs the US healthcare system up to $152B annually. We'll speak about our vision and plans for Delirium management at the ADS conference."

EyeControl will also share early data from its phase I clinical trial in Israel at Beilinson Hospital's ICU, where preliminary results include decreases in patient errors in the Confusion Assessment Method for the ICU (CAM-ICU), a validated Delirium screening tool, as well as improvements in Lowenstein Communication Scale (LCS) scores and patient engagement with hospital staff.

EyeControl-Pro is also currently being evaluated in a multi-center, international clinical trial to investigate the safety and efficacy of the device for Delirium reduction.

Delirium is an acute mental disturbance characterized by confused thinking and disrupted attention sometimes accompanied by hallucinations; it can be brought on by anxiety, isolation and cognitive decline, which arises from lack of communication and interpersonal interactions.

About EyeControl

EyeControl has developed the first AI-based, smart, screenless and wearable, eye-tracking communication solution intended to address the unmet healthcare needs of patients, who cannot speak. The company was founded in 2016 by individuals who share unique personal connections to ALS and Locked-in patients, in an effort to restore their communication needs.

EyeControl-Med provides comprehensive, round-the-clock, bi-directional connectivity between acute care patients with communication difficulties, their families, and medical teams. This increases patient engagement and emotional wellbeing in ICUs, long-term acute care facilities, and rehabilitation centers. The product is FDA 510(k)-exempt, CE marked, ISO certified, and HIPAA/GDPR compliant.

EyeControl-Pro, based on the same communication platform, is an investigational device being developed to treat those experiencing Delirium. Clinical trials investigating its safety and efficacy in reducing Delirium are currently underway in Israel and the US. EyeControl-Pro for Delirium reduction is for investigational use only and has not been cleared or approved by the US FDA. The device is not available for sale in the US.

Investors include Connecticut Innovations, certain VC funds, angels, the European Innovation Council (EIC) and EIC Fund, the Israel Innovation Authority and Israel Ministry of Economy.

For more information please visit: www.eyecontrol.co.il.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1838341/EyeControl.jpg

Press Contact

Marjie Hadad

General Manager

Must Have Communication

917-790-1178

[email protected]

SOURCE EyeControl
DUBUQUE,Iowa, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Flexsteel continues to implement key strategies that support the reduction of custom order lead times and better serve the demands of the market.

With the company's investment in production capacity and inventory, the no holds barred approach to reducing the backlog achieved a lead time of 4 weeks for their customers. "It is the lowest average lead time across the board in my 25 years with the company," comments Tim Newlin, Vice President of Product at Flexsteel. Another Flexsteel strategic initiative provided a distribution center in Pennsylvania, serving the Northeast markets to satisfy the need for quicker delivery.

The company also recognizes the value of special-order business in today's environment. Special orders flow in and out as opposed to stocked products that require warehouse space. In an effort to sell more customized products, Flexsteel invested in digital capabilities such as draping and AR. The user can first cover the product digitally in the fabric selection of their choosing, and then use their mobile device to visualize it in their home. Buyer remorse is reduced, and it adds an element of fun to the process. This has quickly become one of the most popular features on the Flexsteel.com website.

As a result of rapid success with the investment strategy and falling lead times, Flexsteel saw additional growth in all product categories, but especially within their South Haven collection. This curated collection of fabrics across hundreds of Flexsteel items with simplified pricing has long been a hit with retailers and consumers. As special-order business came back with lead times dropping, that led to the addition of new and existing products to the collection. That included motion groups, recliners, stationary groups, accent chairs, poufs, and a fresh fabric selection launched at April 2022 High Point Market.

"Our lead times on domestically made Flexsteel products continue to improve as we invest in our growth and ramp up our North American manufacturing capacity. This led us to double down on our already popular South Haven program and our retailers responded immediately with new placements, recovers of existing frames and by adding new categories. It was great to see the excitement over these changes." said David Crimmins, VP of Sales at Flexsteel.

With the current supply chain challenges happening around the world, Flexsteel is a leading expert in manufacturing comfortable well-tailored furniture in Mexico. The company has had a growing presence in Juarez which was established in 2006. Juarez has grown from its original factory within the last two years to include a second and third facility in close proximity. These expansions facilitated the growth of all product categories and a reduction of the already mentioned lead times.

Continuing the momentum of a customer focused vision, Flexsteel engaged their retailers with in-person, phone, virtual and written engagements on what is working and more importantly what needed improvement. David Crimmins commented on the outcome, "In recent months our retailers participated in Voice of the Customer feedback. In total, we completed over 600 live interviews and 500 surveys. Throughout this process, we have implemented the ideas we collected for improvement where attainable for our retail partners." As a result, the company has already actioned updates to their Backroom customer portal. Those updates included new order status communication and visibility, track and trace capabilities and price list updates to improve retailers and ultimately the consumers' experience.

With great dedication, Flexsteel intends to continue to focus on providing retailers with transparency regarding customer orders and delivering to the consumer exactly what they want within a reasonable amount of time. All this leads to a happy customer and happy retailer. That is a win-win!

SOURCE Flexsteel Industries, Inc.
INGU's device, Pipers , tracks pressure changes and maps the profile of flow rates, hazards, and leak detection within a user's pipeline. The primary device measures 2.8 inches in diameter to fit most pipelines, but the company also offers 1.5-inch and 2.2-inch versions all of which can be deployed in various fluids, including crude oil, freshwater, and gas. The time-efficient pipeline inspection and maintenance tracking technology:

Eliminates the costs and need for expensive equipment and on-site engineers to insert and extract inspection tools from the pipeline when using conventional in-line inspection solutions

Reduces operational costs

Supports precise identification of leakages or cracks that affect safety or operations

Improves pipeline inspection efficiency

Scales impeccably to fit customer-specific needs

Offers flexibility and precise readings to help users make the best decision for repairs with their pipelines and deliver the necessary tools and solutions

"INGU's Pipers device is a groundbreaking, innovative technology. Its strong intellectual property portfolio and ISO 9001:2015 certification uphold its pioneering technology, adding value relative to its growth potential, thus securing a competitive advantage," explained Mia Martinez-Palacios, Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Research analyst.

INGU's industry experts offer users knowledgeable, systematic, and conscientious options and resources to support users in providing a safe and reliable pipeline. The company's culture supports employee happiness, and happy employees translate to satisfied customers, customer loyalty, and revenue growth. The company has grown to more than 75 oil and gas (O&G) global customers within the United States and Canada and 50 water customers through its partnership with PICA. It successfully commercialized Pipers for Chevron in 2017 and continued to gain momentum in the global O&G and water industries. INGU has inspected 450 operational pipelines for its customers, including Chevron, Petrobras, Husky Energy, and Whitecap Resources. The company is spreading widely in different parts of the world, including South America, Brazil, Australia, and Nigeria, and plans to commercialize more outside the US and Canada.

Kartikey Shukla, a senior research analyst, said, "Ingu Solutions deliver cost efficiency and reduced downtime to its users with its pipeline inspection technology. The company stands out from competitors based on its commitment to innovation and creativity while achieving commercial success."

INGU's first-mover status strengthens its position in emerging solutions due to its technology's rapid, widespread adoption. With its robust technology, excellent performance, and superb leadership, INGU earns Frost & Sullivan's 2022 North America Technology Innovation Leadership Award in the pipeline inspection technology industry.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that develops a product with innovative features and functionality that is gaining rapid acceptance in the market. The award recognizes the quality of the solution and the customer value enhancements it enables.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in various regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analyses, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Frost & Sullivan

For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Claudia Toscano

P: 1.956.533.5915

E: [email protected]

About INGU

INGU's Pipers technology is the most efficient and economical pipeline inspection solution to achieve Net Zero and ESG compliance for the water and oil & gas pipeline infrastructure. The patented self-serve approach gives full control to the pipeline operator and is designed to actively monitor changes in pipeline condition. By combining inline leak detection, deposit surveys, and wall condition monitoring, the Pipers technology provides operators full insight in all pipeline assets under all conditions allowing them to make well informed decisions to keep their pipelines safe and efficient.

Contact:

John van Pol

P: 1.403.613.2510

E: [email protected]

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
Gale and CLGBTH would like to congratulate the following candidates awarded the fellowships for the 2022 academic year, as well as highlight the projects they will be pursuing:

Elio Colavito , Ph.D. researcher, University of Toronto , Canada Project: Mapping Transtopia: Trans-Masculine Mutual Aid (19702005) aims to extend Colavito's work on the social and cultural history of trans-masculinity in Canada and the U.S. They will utilize letters from the archives to serve as a foundation of a digital map to illustrate the vastness and complexity of late-20th-century trans-masculine community building, resource sharing and identity-making.

Jacob Bloomfield , honorary research fellow, University of Konstanz, Germany Project: Bloomfield's project, Tutti Frutti: Little Richard, Sex, Gender and Transgression in America and Europe , seeks to uncover how gender-nonconforming African American recording artist Little Richard became one of the most popular musicians in the U.S. and Europe during the 1950s and pre- "sexual revolution" in the 1960s.

Jen Jack Gieseking, associate professor of geography, University of Kentucky , U.S. Project: The monograph Dyke* Bars seeks to uncover the drive behind the "lezbiqueertrans" attachment to lesbian bars and their dis-attachment from these spaces, particularly as many of them have closed in recent times. Gieseking's project will argue that lesbian bars are the crucial geography of U.S. lezbiqueertrans history and a part of broader U.S. history. An interactive map will look at how patterns of socioeconomic gentrification affected the growth and decline of these spaces.

Justin Salgado , graduate student, The Ohio State University , U.S. Project: Out at the Rodeo: The Maintenance of the Gay Rodeo (1980s  Present) seeks to amplify the voices on the gay rodeo circuit. The project will examine the religious right and political right, their impact on queer communities and how the gay rodeo countered their disapproval by emphasizing the importance of community and togetherness for rural queer communities.

Trevor Ladner , graduate and teacher, Harvard Graduate School of Education , Ednovate Charter Schools, U.S. Project: Ladner's LGBT Lives and Legal Rights: Impacts of Progress of Struggle will support the continuation of a teaching project for his social studies class at an under-resourced urban school in Los Angeles . Centered around LGBTQ people's experiences with securing their rights through courts, he will utilize the archives to analyze how the absence of certain rights and the courts' decisions on these rights impact the lives of real people.



"As part of Gale's ongoing commitment to DEI initiatives, we're pleased to support the LGBTQ+ research community with these fellowships, and help them expand the possibilities of their research," said Seth Cayley, vice president of global academic product at Gale. "By providing these fellows with funding, access to our digital archives and Gale Digital Scholar Lab, we hope it enables them to progress their research projects and foster greater knowledge, awareness, and understanding of LGBTQ+ lives and communities."

The Archives of Sexuality and Gender series gives researchers instant access to more than 5 million pages of digitized primary sources to help them enhance their research projects and uncover new research pathways. By exploring the series with text- and data-mining tools in Gale Digital Scholar Lab, the fellows will be able to open their research to digital humanities methods, providing a new lens with which to explore historically underrepresented, marginalized and hidden voices.

"This year's fellows, now with access to Gale's fabulous resources, are sure to cultivate exciting new research related to the study of LGBTQ past," said Professor Eric Gonzaba, co-chair of the Committee on LGBT History. "Their projects will help us all better understand the nuances and complexities of LGBTQ life. We are so grateful to Gale for their support of the CLGBTH for many years and we thank them for their commitment to scholars of LGBT history."

Scholars must complete the fellowships by Dec. 31, 2022. Each fellowship will support the equivalent of one month's full-time work (160 hours). Awardees may dedicate four consecutive weeks of their total working hours to the fellowship project, or they may spread their work out over a more extended period. In addition, within one month of the conclusion of their fellowship, each awardee will submit a case study that highlights the research or pedagogical value of their project. CLGBTH will host a panel at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, January 58, 2023 in Philadelphia, where the Gale-CLGBTH fellows will discuss their research projects.

Gale is hosting a panel session at the 2022 Queer History Conference titled Marginalized Voices and Hidden Histories: Preserving and Unlocking the Past with Gale's Archives of Sexuality & Gender and Beyond on Tuesday, June 14 at San Francisco State University in Burk Hall 256.

For more information on Gale-CLGBTH Non-Residential Fellowships, visit its webpage.

About Cengage Group and Gale

Cengage Group, an education technology company serving millions of learners in 165 countries, advances the way students learn through quality, digital experiences. The company currently serves the K-12, higher education, professional, library, English language teaching and workforce training markets worldwide. Gale, part of Cengage Group, provides libraries with original and curated content, as well as the modern research tools and technology that are crucial in connecting libraries to learning, and learners to libraries. For more than 65 years, Gale has partnered with libraries around the world to empower the discovery of knowledge and insights  where, when and how people need it. Gale has 500 employees globally with its main operations in Farmington Hills, Michigan. For more information, please visit: www.gale.com.

Follow Gale on:

Media Contact:

Kayla Siefker, Gale, part of Cengage Group

248-378-3376

[email protected]

SOURCE Gale, part of Cengage Group
WASHINGTON, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- GM Defense is taking an important step to further expand its offerings across the globe by announcing a newly formed entity, GM Defense International. The new entity will extend GM Defense's reach into global markets in support of U.S. allies and partners' transition to a more electric, autonomous and connected future. GM Defense will continue to operate as a subsidiary of its parent company, General Motors, reporting into GM President Mark Reuss.

Powered by GM, GM Defense leverages proven commercial technologies to develop highly agile, customized solutions to enhance warfighter capability. With reach into GM's world-class manufacturing and global supply chain, GM Defense can scale to nearly any level of production while providing its customers access to maintenance and support on a global scale. GM Defense will also leverage GM's $35 billion investment in transformational technologies to support its global defense and government customers' use of electrification, autonomy and connected vehicles across the battlespace.

"Forming GM Defense International will drive our continued expansion as we leverage GM's rich legacy of innovation in support of global defense and government customers," said Steve duMont, president of GM Defense. "As a non-traditional entrant to the defense market, we continue to receive positive feedback on our ability to bring commercial technologies forward at the speed that our customers require in these complex times. As we continue to explore opportunities across North America, Europe, the Middle East, the Indo Pacific region and beyond, we look forward to leveraging commercial technology to modernize the mobility capabilities of allied armed forces around the world."

The creation of GM Defense International enables GM to expand its global presence across international defense and government markets. Establishing a well experienced and proven team to build and nurture customer relationships, GM Defense International will focus on the unique requirements of its global customers operating in dynamic and evolving environments.

GM Defense will be showcasing its capabilities and demonstration vehicles at Eurosatory from June 13-17 in booth D588 at the Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre. For the latest GM Defense news, please visit www.gmdefensellc.com and follow GM Defense on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About GM Defense LLC

GM Defense delivers integrated vehicles, power and propulsion, and mobility and autonomy solutions to global defense, security, and government markets. The exceptional reliability of GM Defense's technologies results from decades of proven performance and billions of dollars spent in independent research and development by its parent, General Motors, a world leader in global design, engineering, and manufacturing capabilities. For more information, please visit www.gmdefensellc.com.

SOURCE GM Defense LLC
Nominations for patient leaders who exemplify social health leadership can be submitted at SocialHealthNetwork.com/Awards

PHILADELPHIA, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Union, the leader in social health, announces the launch and call for nominations for the inaugural Social Health Awards. The goal of the Social Health Awards is to empower and celebrate those who are essential to the ongoing conversations and connections made through social health - the dynamic, real-time action people take to find meaningful connections and share information that impact their health journey.

Nominations for the Social Health Awards  known previously as the WEGO Health Awards  are open to patient and caregiver leaders who are active members of an online community and making a difference in healthcare. Nominations can be submitted at SocialHealthNetwork.com/Awards and will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. ET on July 1.

Patient and caregiver leaders who are based in the U.S. and at least 18 years old can be nominated - either by themselves or by others - within one, or more, of 10 categories. These categories, which are designed to showcase the vast diversity of the patient community and the various forms of advocacy across all condition areas and platforms, are:

Advocacy Trailblazer

Best Team

Caregiving Champion

Community Cultivator

Creative Contributor

Healthcare Collaborator

Lifetime Achievement Award

Revolutionary Researcher

Rookie of the Year

Social Media Master

"The Social Health Awards represent the only awards program that truly recognizes health leaders for their hard work, advocacy and dedication to social health," said Amrita Bhowmick, Health Union's chief community officer. "It is imperative for us at Health Union to continue to find ways to bring together and honor the people who are pivotal in driving unique and impactful conversations about health."

Once nominations are closed, judges will select six finalists for each category based on their use of social health, their fit for the award/category and how effectively they engage their online community. The finalist list will be announced by early August.

Winners will be recognized on Aug. 25 during Connexion, a Health Union virtual event that connects and empowers patient leaders; all Social Health Awards finalists will be invited to attend Connexion. Additionally, winners will be invited to join Health Union on stage at the Social Health Awards celebration at the 2022 Fierce Pharma Marketing Awards Ceremony during the Digital Pharma East conference in October in Philadelphia.

Healthcare industry professionals are also encouraged to nominate deserving patient leaders for the Social Health Awards, as well as to volunteer to be industry judges for the awards program. More information about the Social Health Awards, including full descriptions of the nomination categories and frequently asked questions, can be found at SocialHealthNetwork.com/Awards.

About Health Union

Health Union is the proven industry leader driving and amplifying social health. As the premier social health company, only Health Union encourages the dynamic, real-time action people take to find meaningful connections and share information that impact their health journey. The company reaches millions of people through the largest portfolio of condition-specific online health communities (e.g., Migraine.com, MultipleSclerosis.net, LungCancer.net) and health leaders - addressing virtually every condition and providing the information, connection and support they need.

SOURCE Health Union
Online Doctorate Program the First of its Kind to be Offered at Herzing

MILWAUKEE, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Herzing University announced today the launch of its new online Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) scheduled to begin enrollment on September 7, 2022. This two-year program is geared toward advanced practice nurses and those who have earned a master's degree in nursing.

Herzing's DNP program focuses on multidisciplinary knowledge, leadership, and innovation, as well as the tools needed to significantly impact nursing, healthcare systems, and public health change.

"This program is the first of its kind to be offered at our university and is an example of the full breadth and depth of Herzing's effort to provide a pathway to all students interested in a career in nursing  from certifications and diplomas to associate and bachelor's degree options all the way to our existing master's programs and this new doctorate degree," said Dr. Tricia Wagner, Associate Dean of Online and Graduate Nursing. "Our hope is that this program will provide students with the necessary skills to advance in their careers but also that it will address the current healthcare talent shortage by creating an even more comprehensive and skilled talent pool for employers to select from."

Developed in compliance with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) New Essentials, the program provides a personalized experience led by Herzing's first-rate faculty. While classes will be held online, students will still take part in beneficial in-person clinical experiences and graduate with all expected competencies.

Upon completion of their program, students should be able to:

Demonstrate competency-based judgement and holistic caring skills Generate, synthesize, translate, apply, and disseminate scientific evidence for advanced nursing practice Apply ethical principles to shape the future of healthcare delivery with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion; systemsbased practice; team-based care collaboration, informatics, and technology; and careerlong learning

Earning a DNP can result in access to a greater range of high-paying healthcare roles, including opportunities unavailable to professionals with just a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) or related degree. Some of the most common job opportunities for those who've completed a DNP are advanced practice registered nurse, nurse educator, and nurse leader.

Herzing University has more than 50 online programs in technology, business, healthcare, and public safety, as well as 10 campus locations across the country. For more information on Herzing University's new DNP program, visit www.herzing.edu/nursing/dnp/post-masters-dnp.

About Herzing University

Herzing University is an accredited, private nonprofit institution with 10 campuses across seven states, a continuing education division and an online division. Founded in Milwaukee in 1965, more than 40,000 students have graduated from the University's career-focused and flexible master's, bachelor's, and associate degree, diploma and continuing education programs. Fields of study span nursing, healthcare, technology, business and public safety. From 2013 through 2022, U.S. News & World Report has continually recognized Herzing University as having some of the best online programs nationally. In June 2022, Herzing introduced a new Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program designed to allow students access to another career-focused pathway driven by current and future industry demand. Herzing University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. More information about Herzing University is available at www.herzing.edu.

Media Contact:

Brett Gerrish

CBD Marketing

[email protected]

517.899.7795

SOURCE Herzing University
SAN FRANCISCO and SUZHOU, China, June 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Innovent Biologics, Inc. ("Innovent") (HKEX: 01801), a world-class biopharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and commercializes high-quality medicines for the treatment of oncology, autoimmune, metabolic, ophthalmology and other major diseases, and IASO Biotherapeutics ("IASO Bio"), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in discovering, developing, and manufacturing innovative cell therapies and antibody products, today jointly announced that the updated data from phase 1/2 study of Equecabtagene Autoleucel (Innovent R&D code: IBI326, IASO Bio R&D code: CT103A), a fully-human anti-B cell maturation antigen (BCMA) chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for the treatment of relapsed and/or refractory multiple myeloma (R/R MM), was presented in the form of an oral presentation at the 27th European Hematology Association (EHA) Annual Meeting in Vienna on June 9-12, 2022.

Presentation Title: Updated Phase 1/2 Data of the Safety and Efficacy of CT103A, Fully-Human BCMA-Directed CAR-T Cells in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma

Session TitleRelapsed/refractory myeloma: BCMA-directed therapies

Abstract Code: EHA-S187

Session date and Time: Sunday, June 12, 2022, at 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM CEST

Place: Vienna, Austria or online

Speaker: Chunrui Li, MD, Ph.D., from Department of Hematology, Tongji Hospital of Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

The updated data from the Phase 1/2 study with a longer duration of follow-up in more patients has showed durable and deepening efficacy, manageable safety and long-term in vivo persistence, indicating that Equecabtagene Autoleucel has the potential to be a breakthrough therapy for patients with R/R MM.

The updated data is from the 14 clinical sites involved in the Phase 1/2 clinical study of Equecabtagene Autoleucel (ChiCTR1800018137, NCT05066646) in the treatment of patients with R/R MM. As of the data cutoff date of January 21, 2022, 79 patients received recommended phase 2 doseRP2Dof 1.0106 CAR-T cells/kg with the median follow-up of nine months (range 1.2, 19.6) and median prior five lines of therapy (range 3,23). Among the 79 patients, 34.2% (27/79) had high-risk cytogenetic abnormalities, 34.2%27/79had extramedullary multiple myeloma (EMM), and 15.2%12/79had received prior CAR-T therapy.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel demonstrated a favorable and manageable safety profile: Among the 79 patients, 94.9% (75/79) experienced cytokine release syndrome (CRS). The majority experienced 1~2 CRS, and no patient experienced grade 3 CRS. The median time to CRS onset was six days after infusion, and the median duration of CRS was five days. Only two patients experienced immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS), including one patient who experienced grade 1 ICANS and one who experienced grade 2 ICANS. All patients with CRS or ICANS have recovered.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel showed favorable and durable efficacy: Among the 79 patients, the overall response rate (ORR) was 94.9% (75/79), with "89.9% (71/79)" of those patients achieving very good partial response (VGPR) or deeper responses, and the complete response/stringent complete response (CR/sCR) rate was 68.4% (54/79). Equecabtagene Autoleucel also demonstrated favorable efficacy in 10 patients with EMM, achieving an ORR of 100% (10/10) and a CR/sCR rate of 90.0% (9/10). In all 79 patients, 92.4% (73/79) achieved minimal residual disease (MRD) negativity, all CR/sCR subjects achieved MRD negativity, and the median duration of MRD negativity was not reached.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel demonstrated favorable efficacy in patients who had received prior CAR-T therapy: Among the 12 patients who previously received CAR-T therapy, the ORR was 75.0% (9/12), with 41.7% (5/12) of those patients achieving CR/sCR.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel demonstrated robust expansion and prolonged persistence: The expansion of Equecabtagene Autoleucel in peripheral blood reached the peak at a median of 12 days, with a median Cmax of 92,000 copies/ug DNA. Equecabtagene Autoleucel was still detectable in 62.3% (38/61) and 53.3% (8/15) of the subjects who completed 6-months and 12-month follow-ups after infusion. Soluble BCMA in peripheral blood of patients rapidly declined after Equecabtagene Autoleucel infusion and persistently remained below the detectable limit.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel has low immunogenicity: 16.5% (13/79) of the subjects tested anti-drug antibody (ADA)-positive after Equecabtagene Autoleucel infusion. Among them1.3% (1/79) tested ADA-positive before Equecabtagene Autoleucel infusion, and 2.5% (2/79) tested ADA-positive within three months.

Prof. Chunrui Li, MD, PhD, from Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, stated "Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy is a revolutionary new pillar in cancer treatment. In our previous studies, Equecabtagene Autoleucel has shown excellent efficacy and manageable safety profiles. Its CAR structure contains fully human single-chain fragment variables (scFvs) to bypass potential anti-CAR immunogenicity of the host while retaining antitumor activity. At the 27th EHA conference, we updated the data on the efficacy and safety of Equecabtagene Autoleucel in R/R MM patients with longer median follow-up extended to 9.0 months, the CR/sCR deepened to 68.4%, compared with the CR/sCR of 58.2% with a median follow-up of 7.0 months, which were released at 63rd ASH conference in 2021. The updated data showed long-lasting safety and deepening efficacy of Equecabtagene Autoleucel. We are glad that Equecabtagene Autoleucel also shows favorable efficacy on patients who have relapsed after receiving prior CAR-T therapy. This has meaningful clinical value and is worthy of further exploration in the clinic to potentially bring forth new hope to patients with R/R MM."

About Multiple Myeloma (MM)

Multiple Myeloma is a deadly blood cancer that often infiltrates the bone marrow causing anemia, kidney failure, immune problems, and bone fractures. For multiple myeloma patients, common first-line drug treatments include proteasome inhibitors, immunomodulatory drugs, and alkylating agents. While treatment may result in remission, most patients will inevitably enter the relapsed or refractory stage as there's currently no cure. As a result, there is a significant unmet need for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. In the United States, MM accounts for nearly 2% of all cancer cases, and more than 2% of cancer-related deaths.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the number of new MM cases in the United States rose from 30,300 in 2016 to 32,300 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 37,800 by 2025. Additionally, the total number of patients diagnosed with MM increased from 132,200 in 2016 to 144,900 in 2020 and is expected to rise to 162,300 by 2025. In China, the number of new MM cases rose from 18,900 in 2016 to 21,100 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 24,500 by 2025. The total number of patients diagnosed with MM in China increased from 69,800 in 2016 to 113,800 in 2020 and is expected to rise to 182,200 by 2025.

About Equecabtagene Autoleucel

Equecabtagene Autoleucel is an innovative therapy co-developed by Innovent and IASO Bio, with a fully-human anti- BCMA CAR-T cell therapy which uses lentivirus as a gene vector to transfect autologous T cells. The CAR contains a fully-human scFv, CD8a hinge and transmembrane, and 4-1BB-mediated co-stimulation and CD3 activation domains. Based on rigorous screening and comprehensive in vivo and in vitro evaluation, Equecabtagene Autoleucel is proven to have potent and rapid anti-myeloma activity and outstanding safety, efficacy, and persistence results.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel was granted "Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD)" by the NMPA in February 2021 and was granted "Orphan Drug Designation (ODD)"by the Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February 2022. The NMPA has accepted the New Drug Application for Equecabtagene Autoleucel for the Treatment of Relapsed and/or Refractory Multiple Myeloma in June 2022.

In addition to multiple myeloma, the NMPA has accepted the investigational new drug (IND) application of Equecabtagene Autoleucel for a new expanded indication of Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder (NMOSD).

About Innovent

Inspired by the spirit of "Start with Integrity, Succeed through Action," Innovent's mission is to develop, manufacture and commercialize high-quality biopharmaceutical products that are affordable to ordinary people. Established in 2011, Innovent is committed to developing, manufacturing and commercializing high-quality innovative medicines for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune, metabolic, ophthalmology and other major diseases. On October 31, 2018, Innovent was listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited with the stock code: 01801.HK.

Since its inception, Innovent has developed a fully integrated multi-functional platform which includes R&D, CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls), clinical development and commercialization capabilities. Leveraging the platform, the company has built a robust pipeline of 32 valuable assets in the fields of cancer, autoimmune, metabolic, ophthalmology and other major therapeutic areas, with 7 products approved for marketing in China  TYVYT (sintilimab injection), BYVASDA (bevacizumab biosimilar injection), SULINNO (adalimumab biosimilar injection), HALPRYZA (rituximab biosimilar injection) , Pemazyre (pemigatinib oral inhibitor) and olverembatinib (BCR-ABL TKI) and Cyramza (ramucirumab) , 2 asset under NMPA NDA review, 4 assets in Phase 3 or pivotal clinical trials, and an additional 19 molecules in clinical studies.

Innovent has built an international team with advanced talent in high-end biological drug development and commercialization, including many global experts. The company has also entered into strategic collaborations with Eli Lilly and Company, Adimab, Incyte, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Hanmi and other international partners. Innovent strives to work with many collaborators to help advance China's biopharmaceutical industry, improve drug availability and enhance the quality of the patients' lives. For more information, please visit: www.innoventbio.com. and www.linkedin.com/company/innovent-biologics/.

Note:

TYVYT (sintilimab injection) is not an approved product in the United States.

BYVASDA (bevacizumab biosimilar injection), SULINNO, and HALPRYZA (rituximab biosimilar injection) are not approved products in the United States.

TYVYT (sintilimab injection, Innovent)

BYVASDA (bevacizumab biosimilar injection, Innovent)

HALPRYZA (rituximab biosimilar injection, Innovent)

SULINNO (adalimumab biosimilar injection, Innovent)

Pemazyre (pemigatinib oral inhibitor, Incyte Corporation). Pemazyre was discovered by Incyte Corporation and licensed to Innovent for development and commercialization in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

CYRAMZA (ramucirumab, Eli Lilly). Cyramza was discovered by Eli Lilly and licensed to Innovent for commercialization in Mainland China.

About IASO Biotherapeutics

IASO Bio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of novel cell therapies for oncology and autoimmune diseases. Leveraging its proprietary fully-human antibody discovery platform (IMARS), high-throughput CAR T drug priority platform, and proprietary manufacturing processes, IASO Bio is developing a rich clinical-stage pipeline of multiple autologous and allogeneic CAR-T and biologics product candidates. This includes a diversified portfolio of 10 novel pipeline products, including IASO's leading asset, Equecabtagene Autoleucel, an innovative anti-BCMA CAR-T cell therapy under pivotal study for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (R/R MM) , which received NDA acceptance of the China NMPA. In February 2021, Equecabtagene Autoleucel was granted "Breakthrough Therapy Designation" by the NMPA. In February 2022 it was granted "Orphan Drug Designation (ODD) "by the Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In addition to multiple myeloma, China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has accepted its investigational new drug (IND) application for the new extended indication of Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder (NMOSD). In addition, the company's in-house developed fully-human CD19/CD22 dual-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has entered phase I/II registrational clinical trial for the treatment of CD19/CD22-positive relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (r/r B-NHL). It was also granted Orphan Drug Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in October 2021. For more information on IASO Bio, please visit www.iasobio.com and www.linkedin.com/company/iasobiotherapeutics/.

Innovent's Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain certain forward-looking statements that are, by their nature, subject to significant risks and uncertainties. The words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend" and similar expressions, as they relate to Innovent Biologics, Inc. ("Innovent" or "Company"), are intended to identify certain of such forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend to update these forward-looking statements regularly.

These forward-looking statements are based on the existing beliefs, assumptions, expectations, estimates, projections and understandings of the management of the Company with respect to future events at the time these statements are made. These statements are not a guarantee of future developments and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond the Company's control and are difficult to predict. Consequently, actual results may differ materially from information contained in the forward-looking statements as a result of future changes or developments in our business, the Company's competitive environment and political, economic, legal and social conditions.

The Company, the Directors and the employees of the Company assume (a) no obligation to correct or update the forward-looking statements contained in this site; and (b) no liability in the event that any of the forward-looking statements does not materialize or turn out to be incorrect.

SOURCE Innovent Biologics
DUBLIN, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Satellite Data Service Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global satellite data service market reached a value of US$ 6.5 billion in 2021. Looking forward, the market is projected to reach US$ 17.82 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 18.3% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, the analyst is continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different End-use industries. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



Satellite data service delivers high-speed wireless bandwidth data connection from space. It uses radio waves to transmit, receive, and retrieve data through a communication network. It is widely used in remote and small areas wherein high-speed Internet and data access are not easily available.

Nowadays, businesses worldwide rely on satellite data service solutions to provide reliable and dedicated services for remote satellite Internet access and other applications, including email, file sharing, web hosting, data backup, video, and virtual private network (VPN) access. It also enables businesses in to carry voice, video, or other data services around the world.



The increasing dependence on smartphones, in confluence with the escalating demand for high-speed Internet services, represents one of the key factors impelling the market growth. Moreover, the emerging trend of vlogging and travel and tourism in remote establishments is driving the need for satellite data services to obtain reliable Internet at affordable prices.

Apart from this, due to rising concerns about climatic changes, environmental degradation, and disaster monitoring, researchers are relying on satellite and airborne data to assess changing environmental impacts, which result from modified human behavior patterns.

Furthermore, with rising geopolitical tensions and increasing security concerns, defense agencies of numerous countries are deploying commercial satellite imaging to get information that strengthens defense operations and security services. Besides this, major market players are introducing commercial satellite data services that can detect ground conditions at night with radar imagery. This further assists in delivering unique, reliable monitoring capabilities to civil and defense organizations across the globe.

Additionally, these players are offering satellite data services incorporated with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) that can help in the development of smart cities and connected vehicles. These innovations are anticipated to create a positive market outlook.

Competitive Landscape

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Airbus SE, Ceinsys Tech Limited, Geospatial Intelligence Pyt. Ltd., Gisat S.R.O., ICEYE, L3harris Technologies Inc., Maxar Technologies Inc., Planet Labs Inc., Satellite Imaging Corporation, Telstra Corporation Limited, Trimble Inc. and Ursa Space Systems Inc.



Key Questions Answered in This Report

How has the global satellite data service market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global satellite data service market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the service?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What is the breakup of the market based on the vertical?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global satellite data service 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 Satellite Data Service Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Service

6.1 Data Analytics

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Image Data

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Application

7.1 Scientific

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Administrative

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Commercial

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Vertical

8.1 Defence and Security

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Energy and Power

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Agriculture

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Environmental

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast

8.5 Engineering and Infrastructure

8.5.1 Market Trends

8.5.2 Market Forecast

8.6 Marine

8.6.1 Market Trends

8.6.2 Market Forecast

8.7 Others

8.7.1 Market Trends

8.7.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Region



10 SWOT Analysis



11 Value Chain Analysis



12 Porters Five Forces Analysis



13 Price Analysis



14 Competitive Landscape

14.1 Market Structure

14.2 Key Players

14.3 Profiles of Key Players

14.3.1 Airbus SE

14.3.1.1 Company Overview

14.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.1.3 Financials

14.3.1.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.2 Ceinsys Tech Limited

14.3.2.1 Company Overview

14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.2.3 Financials

14.3.3 Geospatial Intelligence Pyt. Ltd.

14.3.3.1 Company Overview

14.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.4 Gisat S.R.O.

14.3.4.1 Company Overview

14.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.5 ICEYE

14.3.5.1 Company Overview

14.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.6 L3harris Technologies Inc.

14.3.6.1 Company Overview

14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.6.3 Financials

14.3.7 Maxar Technologies Inc.

14.3.7.1 Company Overview

14.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.7.3 Financials

14.3.8 Planet Labs Inc.

14.3.8.1 Company Overview

14.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.9 Satellite Imaging Corporation

14.3.9.1 Company Overview

14.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.10 Telstra Corporation Limited

14.3.10.1 Company Overview

14.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.10.3 Financials

14.3.10.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.11 Trimble Inc.

14.3.11.1 Company Overview

14.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.11.3 Financials

14.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.12 Ursa Space Systems Inc.

14.3.12.1 Company Overview

14.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ju3prv

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Part of larger energy services contract with Duke Energy

Project also includes a 2-MW battery

CHARLOTTE, N.C., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Southeast's largest floating solar plant will be producing power soon at the U.S. Army's Fort Bragg in North Carolina after a major utility energy service contract with Duke Energy and its prime contractor Ameresco.

The 1.1-megawatt solar facility is part of a $36 million contract that focused on energy resilience and security at Fort Bragg, including infrastructure modernization, lighting and water upgrades, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, and boiler system improvements.

"Duke Energy's work with Fort Bragg will lead to better energy efficiency and cost savings at the base," said Brian Savoy, Duke Energy's chief strategy and commercial officer. "We're excited to help put Fort Bragg at the forefront of renewable energy innovation through this unique floating solar facility."

The floating solar system was built on the Big Muddy Lake located at Camp Mackall. Fort Bragg will own and operate the solar system.

"We are grateful for our relationship with Duke Energy and Ameresco," said Col. Scott Pence, garrison commander for Fort Bragg. "With this system, the largest floating solar array in the Southeast, we will be able to provide energy resiliency to Fort Bragg operations through sustainable resources. With this partnership, Fort Bragg not only has renewable electricity, but energy security that will be critical with continuing the installation's mission during a power outage."

"The opportunity to implement this innovative use of clean energy technology for a military base as notable as Fort Bragg was one that our Federal Solutions team was thrilled to lead on," said Nicole Bulgarino, Ameresco executive vice president and general manager of Federal Solutions. "The completed floating solar system  still an underutilized technology in the U.S.  will assure the Army's mission with clean energy. We look forward to continuing our relationship with Duke Energy and Fort Bragg, working to identify additional state-of-the-art opportunities to reduce the installation's energy consumption and strengthen its resilience."

The floating solar installation is being paired with a 2-MW battery energy storage system. The system will supply power to Fort Bragg from the local grid and provide power during electric service outages.

"This project fulfills the commitment made in our Army Climate Strategy to increase resilience while delivering clean energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said the Honorable Rachel Jacobson, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment. "When we collaborate with local utilities and industry to promote energy resilience while powering the local grid, it is a winning solution across the board."

Floating solar is expected to grow quickly over the next decade. Currently, only 2% of new solar installations are on water. But the nation has more than 24,000 human-made bodies of water that could be useful for floating solar development. (View and download video and photos).

North Carolina and Duke Energy are leaders in solar energy. The state is fourth in the nation for overall solar power capacity. Duke Energy owns and operates more than 40 solar facilities in North Carolina  one of which is a 13-MW facility at the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Onslow County.

About Fort Bragg

Fort Bragg has the largest population of any U.S. military installation, with more than 270,000 people working and living within its boundaries. Among the many essential organizations at Fort Bragg, the installation is the home headquarters for U.S. Army Forces Command and U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

The installation is also home to the Joint Special Operations Command, the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps, and the headquarters of U.S. Army Reserve Command.

Womack Army Medical Center is a 1.1 million-square-foot, 117-bed hospital located on the installation serving more than 200,000 eligible beneficiaries in an eight-county area.

There are two airfields located within the confines of the installation: Pope Army Airfield and Simmons Army Airfield. Fort Bragg is the premier projection platform with one of the most strategic airfields within the Department of Defense that supports the Immediate Response Force, the National Mission Force and other locally assigned units. The U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force can deploy worldwide within 18 hours of notification from Pope Army Airfield.

About Duke Energy

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 8.2 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and collectively own 50,000 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 28,000 people.

Duke Energy is executing an aggressive clean energy strategy to create a smarter energy future for its customers and communities. The company has goals of at least a 50% carbon reduction from electric generation and net-zero methane emissions from its natural gas business by 2030, and net-zero emissions by 2050 from its electric and natural gas businesses, including Scopes 1, 2 and certain Scope 3 emissions. 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 2022 "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.

About Ameresco

Founded in 2000, Ameresco, Inc. (NYSE: AMRC) is a leading cleantech integrator and renewable energy asset developer, owner and operator. Our comprehensive portfolio includes energy efficiency, infrastructure upgrades, asset sustainability and renewable energy solutions delivered to clients throughout North America and Europe. Ameresco's sustainability services in support of clients' pursuit of Net Zero include upgrades to a facility's energy infrastructure and the development, construction, and operation of distributed energy resources. Ameresco has successfully completed energy saving, environmentally responsible projects with Federal, state and local governments, healthcare and educational institutions, housing authorities, and commercial and industrial customers. With its corporate headquarters in Framingham, MA, Ameresco has more than 1,000 employees providing local expertise in the United States, Canada, and Europe. For more information, visit www.ameresco.com.

The announcement of completing construction on a project contract is not necessarily indicative of the timing or amount of revenue from such contract, of Ameresco's overall revenue for any particular period or of trends in Ameresco's overall project backlog. This project was included in Ameresco's previously reported contracted backlog as of March 31, 2022.

Contact: Randy Wheeless

24-Hour: 800.559.3853

Twitter: @DE_RandyW

Ameresco

Leila Dillon: 508.661.2264

[email protected]

Fort Bragg Public Affairs

[email protected]

910.432.0502

SOURCE Duke Energy
Nearly 900 JOANN stores will begin featuring #HATNOTHATE display cases this month, stocked with blue Lion Brand yarn to support the campaign's 2022 goals.

CARLSTADT, N.J., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of Lion Brand Yarn Company 's ongoing support of the anti-bullying campaign #HATNOTHATE , the leading knitting and craft yarn distributor in the U.S. announced today its new collaboration with JOANN Stores, which is stocking blue Lion Brand yarn in 860 in-store display cases to promote #HATNOTHATE's 2022 campaign.

"We're so excited about this collaboration, which represents the shared goal between Lion Brand and our longtime retail partner JOANN to support the powerful #HATNOTHATE campaign," said Jessica Hendrickson, Creative Director, Lion Brand Yarn Company. "These displays will raise awareness for #HATNOTHATE's anti-bullying efforts and the yarn will give makers the tools they need to create hats to donate to the cause."

Founded in 2018 by crafter and activist Shira Blumenthal, #HATNOTHATE has collected nearly 100,000 blue hats, donated from knitters, crocheters, and loomers worldwide and distributed to schools across the U.S. as part of an educational mission to help end bullying. The new collaboration with Lion Brand and JOANN marks the first in-store retail activation of #HATNOTHATE.

"We couldn't be more proud to devote space in our stores to #HATNOTHATE, which has shown consistent dedication and support to those impacted by bullying," said Mike Caserta, Divisional Merchandise Manager, Basic Craft, JOANN. "Blue is the primary anti-bullying color, and in the branded displayers within our stores, creators will find a variety of blue Lion Brand yarns to use to create hats to make a difference."

Those Lion Brand yarns include a variety of styles, too, such as customer favorites from Wool Ease and Vanna's Choice to Hometown and Heartland. The vibrant displayers  which feature #HATNOTHATE information and insignia  are also part of the anti-bullying campaign's refined mission for 2022, which involves new calls to action for supporters and volunteers.

"For 2022, our goal is to involve the community, from yarn shops to libraries, to be drop-off points for #HATNOTHATE," said Blumenthal. "In the past, we have asked makers and drop-off points to send us the hats, which would then be distributed to participating schools; however, this year we want the community to be more involved in the process and give makers the opportunity to see their handmade hats in their local schools."

With drop-off points as the new focal point of the campaign  and helpers at those points responsible for receiving, sorting and distributing donated hats  #HATNOTHATE will be returning the favor by promoting each drop-off point via its social media channels and its website, while working to find local schools nearby to receive the hats. To date, #HATNOTHATE has established drop-off points in 31 U.S. states. Participating establishments range from craft stores and fitness centers to hair salons and even automotive shops.

ABOUT LION BRAND YARN COMPANY

Lion Brand Yarn Company is a fifth-generation, family-owned business and one of the leading knitting and craft yarn distributors in the United States. Lion Brand yarns are sold online and at craft chains, discount chains, and independent shops across the country. Via their website, they ship to virtually every country in the world. More than 80 different types of yarn can be purchased on LionBrand.com, in addition to tools and accessories. Since 1878, Lion Brand has inspired and educated knitters and crocheters. Today, research shows that knitting and crocheting help relieve stress through the soothing, repetitive motions of the craft and by helping people achieve a creative outlet that produces tangible and valuable products.

ABOUT JOANN STORES

For 75 years, JOANN has inspired creativity in the hearts, hands, and minds of its customers. From a single storefront in Cleveland, Ohio, the nation's leading fabric and craft retailer has grown to include more than 865 stores across 49 states and an industry-leading e-commerce business. With the goal of helping every customer find their creative Happy Place, JOANN serves as a convenient single stop for all of the supplies, guidance, and inspiration needed to achieve any project or passion. For store locations, project ideas, and a full product offering, visit joann.com.

SOURCE Lion Brand Yarn Co.
The Florida based lender joins the multi-channel fintech as its newest division.

COLUMBUS, Ohio , June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Lower, the multi-channel fintech aimed at creating wealth through homeownership, today announced the addition of Hamilton Home Loans to the company.

Lower's platform allows distributed retail partners to connect into its infrastructure to benefit from its streamlined tech, delivering the best customer experience. Its channels include retail, direct to consumer, wholesale, and Mortgage as a Service. Hamilton joins its private label retail channel as a new division.

"Hamilton's high caliber team makes this a perfect strategic fit for Lower. Together, we're both aligned on our mission to help more people become homeowners and share a strong commitment to the customer experience," said Co-Founder and Managing Partner Mike Baynes. "Our teams, customers, and partners can expect the same great service that we believe will only strengthen over time. We're proud that Hamilton chose to join us, and we look forward to a bright future."

Hamilton Home Loans has a number of branches across the country with the majority in Florida. Founded in 2003, Hamilton focuses on reshaping the future of lending by harnessing the power of current technologies to deliver unsurpassed service to customers and build strong relationships with industry partners.

Hamilton President and CEO Pat Sheehy becomes Managing Director of Hamilton Home Mortgage, overseeing strategy and day-to-day operations of the division. Board Chairman Mark Korell joins the division's executive office to assist with strategic direction and operations.

"Joining Lower and its family of companies is an ideal cultural fit for Hamilton. Like Lower, our team is dedicated to helping families build wealth through homeownership. The synergies of the combined organization will expand our product and service offerings and enhance the exceptional experience we provide for borrowers and business partners," said Sheehy. "This is an exciting time for both companies."

Hamilton Home Loans will now operate as Hamilton Home Mortgage and the company's nearly 500 team members will join Sheehy and Korell in the transition.

About Lower

Lower's multi-channel fintech platform helps consumers build wealth through homeownership, no matter where they are in their life's journey. Our products for mortgage, banking, insurance, and real estate provide customers with an intuitive ecosystem to simplify their homeownership goals, whether it's their first home or their last. Lower is a national and local best place to work, and the naming rights partner of Lower.com Field, home of the Columbus Crew.

About Hamilton Home Loans

Based in Sunrise, FL, with branches in many states including Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, and Nevada, Hamilton Home Loans has been a leading residential mortgage lender for more than 18 years. Their unique approach to lending includes proprietary programs like Hamilton for Heroes for military, firefighters, police, nurses, EMTs, and more, designed to help individual buyers achieve the American dream through discounts on fees and a refreshingly simple experience.

Hamilton ranks high in employee satisfaction, praised for the company's family-like approach: For the past six years consecutively, Hamilton was featured in the Sun Sentinel's Top Workplaces in South Florida.

SOURCE Lower
COLUMBIA, Md. and PASADENA, Calif., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Hidden behind a dark band of dust known as the Great Rift, the Cygnus-X star formation region is more than a bit of a mystery. Astronomers haven't quite figured out what the molecular clouds in Cygnus-X are doing, and why, but observations from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) may help.

These mysteries relate to the fact that Cygnus-X is a difficult region to study. Two of its clouds  DR21 and W75N  clearly have separate gas velocities, but which cloud is in front of the other, and whether or not the two clouds are colliding, are open questions. Dan Clemens, an astronomer at Boston University, is the principal investigator on a project using SOFIA to examine Cygnus-X and the effects of magnetic fields on its clouds and cloud filaments. Details of these studies were presented at the June 2022 meeting of the American Astronomical Society. In Pasadena, California.

"You can think of it as a pasta bowl with all these threads going in," said Clemens. "Which pasta is in front of which pasta? Are there separate piles of pasta, or are they interacting piles of pasta that cause stars to form?"

On top of this, the presence of magnetic fields adds further complexity. What these magnetic fields are doing  whether they are passive participants in the clouds' dynamics or helping to direct mass flows  is a question the SOFIA data may help answer by looking at small-scale filaments within the clouds.

Using SOFIA's High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera Plus (HAWC+), Clemens and his team zoomed in on Cygnus-X to look at the polarizations of the filaments at far-infrared wavelengths. These polarizations indicate the directions of the small-scale magnetic fields in the region, which the researchers use to determine the role the fields are playing.

"We want to ascertain the nature of the magnetic fields along these filaments, where they begin, and where they end," Clemens said. "This will help test our best star formation models and notions."

Most modern theories of star formation hint that magnetic fields may be channeling gas flows within molecular clouds toward a central hub, where massive star formation occurs. The SOFIA observations will reveal the magnetic fields in filaments within the clouds, helping to verify the idea that fine, weak magnetic fields can control how stars form.

According to the team's analysis, there appear to be four distinct layers of gas and dust between us and the northern region of Cygnus-X. Whether or not these layers are interacting will affect their understanding of SOFIA's magnetic field data. As such, Clemens and his collaborators will need to determine which cloud is in front of the other, and if they are going to collide, before the SOFIA data  and supporting wider-field, ground-based, near-infrared data  describing the magnetic fields can be effectively interpreted.

About SOFIA

SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Space Agency at DLR. DLR provides the telescope, scheduled aircraft maintenance, and other support for the mission. NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley manages the SOFIA program, science, and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association, headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is maintained and operated by NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703, in Palmdale, California. SOFIA achieved full operational capability in 2014, and the mission will conclude no later than Sept. 30, 2022. SOFIA will continue its regular operations until then, including science flights and a deployment to New Zealand this summer.

About Boston University

Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 34,000 students, it is the fourth-largest independent university in the United States. BU consists of 17 schools and colleges, along with the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences and a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes integral to the University's research and teaching mission. In 2012, BU joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of 65 leading research universities in the United States and Canada.

About Perkins Telescope

Boston University owns and operates the 1.8m Perkins Telescope Observatory in northern Arizona that was used to collect the near-infrared polarization data. The study is supported by USRA/SOFIA and NSF (18-14531-Clemens and 20-09842-Pillai).

About USRA

Founded in 1969, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the U.S. Government, the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) is a nonprofit corporation chartered to advance space-related science, technology, and engineering. USRA operates scientific institutes and facilities, and conducts other major research and educational programs. USRA engages the university community and employs in-house scientific leadership, innovative research and development, and project management expertise. More information about USRA is available at www.usra.edu.

PR Contact:

Suraiya Farukhi, Ph.D.

[email protected]

443-812-6945 (cell)

SOURCE Universities Space Research Association
DUBLIN, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Mallinckrodt plc (OTCMKTS: MNKKQ), a global biopharmaceutical company, today announced the resubmission of the Company's New Drug Application (NDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the investigational agent terlipressin to treat adults with hepatorenal syndrome (HRS) involving rapid reduction in kidney function,1 an acute and life-threatening condition2 for which there is currently no FDA-approved treatment.3

Terlipressin is an investigational agent being evaluated for the treatment of HRS in the U.S., and its safety and effectiveness have not yet been established by the FDA.

The resubmission follows ongoing discussions with the FDA resulting from a Complete Response Letter (CRL) received on February 18, 2022. In the two weeks prior to the PDUFA date of February 18, 2022, it became necessary to identify a new third-party packaging and labeling facility. While Mallinckrodt identified a new facility, an FDA inspection of the facility could not be completed by the February PDUFA date, resulting in the receipt of the CRL. For the NDA to be approved, the new facility must be inspection ready at the time of filing. This was the only outstanding issue noted in the CRL, as there were no safety or efficacy issues cited.

Terlipressin is one of the most studied pharmacological agents in HRS with more than 70 published manuscripts and presented abstracts on clinical data to date.4 It has been approved outside the U.S. for more than 30 years, is available on five continents, and is considered the standard of care for its two indications in the countries where it is approved.5,6,7

ABOUT MALLINCKRODT

Mallinckrodt is a global business consisting of multiple wholly owned subsidiaries that develop, manufacture, market and distribute specialty pharmaceutical products and therapies. The company's Specialty Brands reportable segment's areas of focus include autoimmune and rare diseases in specialty areas like neurology, rheumatology, nephrology, pulmonology, ophthalmology, and oncology; immunotherapy and neonatal respiratory critical care therapies; analgesics; cultured skin substitutes and gastrointestinal products. Its Specialty Generics reportable segment includes specialty generic drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients. To learn more about Mallinckrodt, visit www.mallinckrodt.com.

Mallinckrodt uses its website as a channel of distribution of important company information, such as press releases, investor presentations and other financial information. It also uses its website to expedite public access to time-critical information regarding the company in advance of or in lieu of distributing a press release or a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing the same information. Therefore, investors should look to the Investor Relations page of the website for important and time-critical information. Visitors to the website can also register to receive automatic e-mail and other notifications alerting them when new information is made available on the Investor Relations page of the website.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS RELATED TO FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This release includes forward-looking statements with regard to terlipressin, including related to interactions with regulators, steps being taken related to its manufacturing, and its potential impact on patients. The statements are based on assumptions about many important factors, including the following, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements: satisfaction of regulatory and other requirements; actions of regulatory bodies and other governmental authorities; changes in laws and regulations; issues with product quality, manufacturing or supply, or patient safety issues; and other risks identified and described in more detail in the "Risk Factors" section of Mallinckrodt's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC, all of which are available on its website. The forward-looking statements made herein speak only as of the date hereof and Mallinckrodt does not assume any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events and developments or otherwise, except as required by law.

CONTACT

Media Inquiries

Heather Guzzi

Senior Vice President, Green Room Communications

973-524-4112

[email protected]

Investor Relations

Daniel J. Speciale

Global Corporate Controller & Chief Investor Relations Officer

314-654-3638

[email protected]

Derek Belz

Vice President, Investor Relations

314-654-3950

[email protected]

Mallinckrodt, the "M" brand mark and the Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals logo are trademarks of a Mallinckrodt company. Other brands are trademarks of a Mallinckrodt company or their respective owners.

 2022 Mallinckrodt. US-2200445 06/22

References

_________________________________ 1 Data on File  Ref-05737. Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals 2 National Organization for Rare Disorders. Hepatorenal Syndrome. Available at: https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/hepatorenal-syndrome/. Accessed June 6, 2022. 3 Belcher, et al. Terlipressin and the Treatment of Hepatorenal Syndrome: How the CONFIRM Trial Moves the Story Forward. Am J Kidney Dis. 2022;79(5):737-745. doi:10.1053/j.ajkd.2021.08.016 4 Data on File  Ref-05488. Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals 5 Data on File  Ref-05482. Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals 6 FDA Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee. Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals Terlipressin Advisory Committee Briefing Document NDA #022231. July 2020. 7 European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL). Clinical practice guidelines for the management of patients with decompensated cirrhosis. J Hepatol. 2018;69(2):406-460.

SOURCE Mallinckrodt plc
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- McDowell Hetherington won a defense verdict for its life insurance client after an eight-week jury trial.

David McDowell Jodi Swick

A California jury found in favor of MH's life insurer client following an eight-week trial in San Bernardino, California. The jury rejected plaintiff's allegation that the life insurer breached an oral contract with the plaintiff and engaged in any sort of financial elder abuse. Plaintiff had requested almost $10 million in damages. The twelve-member jury returned a defense verdict in favor of MH's client on the third day of deliberations.

"We are thrilled with the result. McDowell Hetherington was honored to represent our client in this important case," said David McDowell at McDowell Hetherington. "After a long trial, the jury looked at all the evidence and concluded that our client simply was not liable."

Partners David McDowell and Jodi Swick led the MH litigation team, which also included associates John Burnite and Colleen Flaherty.

About McDowell Hetherington

McDowell Hetherington is a national trial law firm with offices in Texas, California, and Florida. The firm represents clients in high-risk, high-profile cases and class actions around the country. To learn more about the firm and our exceptional attorneys, please visit our website at www.mhllp.com.

Media Contact:

Amy Hancock

713-337-5584

[email protected]

SOURCE McDowell Hetherington LLP
DUBLIN, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Middle East and Africa Electric Three Wheeler Market, By Vehicle Type (Passenger Carrier and Load Carrier), Battery Capacity (<_01ah>101Ah), By Battery Type (Lead Acid and Lithium Ion), By Country, By Company, Forecast & Opportunities, 2017- 2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market value in the year 2021 was USD15,748.91 thousand that is anticipated to grow with a CAGR of 14.38% during the forecast period 2023-2030, to achieve the market value of USD50,808.07 thousand by 2030

The market is anticipated to grow with increasing demand for electric vehicles in the region. Surging demand for electric three-wheelers and rising concerns regarding degradation of the environment are expected to drive most of the shares in the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market in the upcoming five years.

Rising inclination toward emission-free transportation and increasing awareness of the benefits of public transportation also supports the growth of the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market in the next five years.



The demand for electric vehicles is also growing due to the rising disposable income among the population. The economies in most of the GCC countries are driven by the oil exports and production in countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, etc.

The rising cost of oil and petroleum products influences the growing inclination of the common population toward electric vehicles. Growing fright movement and surging demand for more economical and ecological options for the transportation and freight movement also aid the growth of the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market in the future five years.

Technological advancement and growing investment in the advancement of the vehicles are also majorly responsible for the growth of the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market in the forecast period.



Based on vehicle type, the market is distributed between passenger carriers and load carriers. By battery capacity, the market is distinguished between less than 101Ah and more than 101Ah. Based on battery type, the market is distributed between lead acid and lithium acid. The market is also analyzed among the countries in the Middle East and Africa region.

The MEA region includes countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Algeria, Egypt, Oman, South Africa, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Turkey, and rest of the Middle East and Africa region. Turkey is anticipated to hold the largest revenue share of the market and dominate the country-wise analysis of the market in the upcoming five years due to the growing automotive industry in the country.

Rising adaptation to the technologically advanced automobiles and increasing investment in the advancement of the vehicles further support the growth of the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market in the future five years.

Objective of the Study:

To analyze the market size of the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market from 2017 to 2021.

and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market from 2017 to 2021. To estimate and forecast the market size of the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market from 2022 to 2030 and growth rate until 2030.

and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market from 2022 to 2030 and growth rate until 2030. To classify and forecast the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market based on vehicle type, battery capacity, battery type, country-wise analysis, and competitional landscape.

and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market based on vehicle type, battery capacity, battery type, country-wise analysis, and competitional landscape. To identify dominant country or segment in the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market.

and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market. To identify drivers and challenges for the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market.

and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market. To examine competitive developments such as expansions, new product launches, mergers & acquisitions, etc., in the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market.

and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market. To identify and analyze the profile of leading players operating in the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market.

and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market. To identify key sustainable strategies adopted by the market players in the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market.

Competitive Landscape

Company Profiles: Detailed analysis of the major companies present in the Middle East and Africa Electric Three-wheeler Market.

Chongqing Zongshen Vehicle Co., Ltd (Zongshen Industrial Group Co. Ltd)

Saera Electric Auto Pvt. Ltd. (Mayuri)

Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions Ltd.

Jiangsu Jinpeng Group Co., Ltd.

Jiangsu Yufeng Vehicle Industry Co., Ltd.

Ningbo Dowedo International Trade Co., Ltd

Xianghe Qiangsheng Electric Tricycle Factory

Terra Motors Corporation

Piaggio Commercial SA (PTY) Ltd

Jiangsu East Yonsland Vehicle Manufacturing Co., Ltd

Key Topics Covered:



1. Product Overview



2. Research Methodology



3. Executive Summary



4. Impact of COVID-19 on Middle East and Africa Electric Three-Wheeler Market



5. Voice of Customer

5.1. Factors Influencing Purchase Decision

5.2. Aided and Unaided Brand Recall

5.3. Brand Satisfaction Level



6. Middle East and Africa Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook

6.1. Market Size & Forecast

6.1.1. By Volume

6.1.2. By Value

6.2. Market Share & Forecast

6.2.1. By Vehicle Type (Passenger Carrier and Load Carrier)

6.2.2. By Battery Capacity (<_01ah>101Ah)

6.2.3. By Battery Type (Lead Acid and Lithium Ion)

6.2.4. By Country

6.2.5. By Company (2021)

6.3. Market Map (By Vehicle Type, By Battery Capacity, By Battery Type, and By Country)



7. Egypt Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



8. Turkey Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



9. Iran Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



10. South Africa Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



11. Israel Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



12. Nigeria Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



13. Saudi Arabia Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



14. Algeria Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



15. UAE Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



16. Oman Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



17. Iraq Electric Three-Wheeler Market Outlook



18. Market Dynamics

18.1. Drivers

18.2. Challenges



19. Market Trends and Developments



20. Product Benchmarking



21. Competitive Landscape



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9u2yil

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

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SOURCE Research and Markets
With GrowPods, food production can be done on a local level, virtually anywhere in the world

CORONA, Calif., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced Container Technologies, Inc (Ticker: ACTX), announced that GrowPods  transportable modular hydroponic farms - can help enhance food security.

Over the past few years, the pandemic and disruptions to the food supply chain have impacted communities worldwide, causing store shelves to go empty, and millions to go hungry. Governments and community groups are now looking at alternatives to rapidly provide food to their citizens.

One possible solution is in using modular hydroponic farms like GrowPods.

According to Green Biz, bringing the farm close to the point of need can help solve many problems with food security. "Urban vertical farming has advanced to become a more mainstream part of the supply chain," the publication reports.

GrowPods can be placed virtually anywhere, and can grow the equivalent of three acres of traditional farmland in an automated environment that can be controlled and monitored remotely. Some units have been configured to grow up to 720 heads of lettuce each week, without pesticides, harmful chemicals, or risk of contamination.

With GrowPods, local communities can grow fresh, healthy food, without needing hundreds of acres of farmland or dozens of workers to tend the fields.

The Produce Blue Book said that portable hydroponic farms like GrowPods help "meet the demand for locally-grown, fresh, high quality produce."

According to Doug Heldoorn, CEO of Advanced Container Technologies, GrowPods can help lead a revolution in food and farming.

"These modular hydroponic farms can provide healthy food where it is needed, and offer sustainability benefits such as cutting freight emissions and shipping costs associated with transporting food long distances, reducing water consumption, and eliminating clear-cutting of forest lands for farmland usage," Heldoorn said. "Additionally, a GrowPod can be set up in a matter of days, so that food shortages can be reduced in just weeks, instead of months or years."

For more information on Advanced Container Technologies or GrowPods, call: (951) 381-2555 or visit: www.advancedcontainertechnologies.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-Looking Statements about ACTX' beliefs and expectations, involve inherent risks and uncertainties, and a number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as "may," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "plan," "believe," "potential," or other similar expressions. All information is as of the date of this press release, and ACTX undertakes no duty to update such information, except as required under applicable law.

SOURCE Advanced Container Technologies, Inc.
Laramie hosts national conversation on expanding the geography of innovation at June 21-22 Summit

LARAMIE, Wyo., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The University of Wyoming (UW) will host distinguished leaders from across American industry, higher education, national laboratories, and government to develop concrete policy recommendations aimed at keeping the United States at the forefront of innovation and economic competitiveness.

The Mountain West Innovation Summit will take place June 21-22 at UW's Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center. It is co-hosted by Ed Seidel, UW President; Greg Hill, President and COO, Hess Corporation, and UW alumnus; John Wagner, Director, Idaho National Laboratory; and Deborah Wince-Smith, President and CEO, Council on Competitiveness. All four hosts are National Commissioners of the Council's flagship initiative, the "National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers."

The Summit brings together leaders to address opportunities to expand the country's "geography of innovation" to the Mountain West and places like Laramie, WY. The National Commission's seminal report, Competing in the Next Economy, as well as significant work in Washington, DC and around the country, are focusing on strategies to broaden and deepen the country's innovation capabilities. The Summit will also focus on three additional critical issues facing the region and nation, including the future of:

Sustainability and energy Scaling and deploying disruptive technologies Work and the workforce

"We're delighted that Wyoming's university is hosting a Summit that will bring together a rich mix of stakeholders and policymakers to discuss and develop policy recommendations regarding some of the major challenges facing the nation," Seidel says. "Today's economy is changing at an unprecedented speed, and universities, companies, states, and nations are scrambling to adapt. Partnerships across these industry players are critical as we work to lay the groundwork for the new economy in Wyoming as a fundamental part of UW's land-grant mission."

Among the keynote speakers confirmed for the summit are Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon; National Science Foundation Assistant Director Erwin Gianchandani, who is leading NSF's newest directorate in over 30 years, focusing on "Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships;" and Canoo Technologies CEO Tony Aquila, who is manufacturing electric vehicles in the United States, making the case for researching, innovating, and manufacturing at scale in the United States.

"The United States has stood apart from the rest of the world during the past half-century in its record of sustained innovation  across industries old and new, and through the ups and downs of economic cycles  yet today faces new realities and imperatives," notes Council President and CEO Wince-Smith. "We must be more creative, more intentional in developing new models for regional and national innovation. Our work in Wyoming is a first step toward this effort for our 'National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers.'"

For more information about the summit, including the agenda and details on free registration, go to https://compete.org/mountain-west-innovation-summit/.

About the University of Wyoming

The University of Wyoming was founded in 1886, when Wyoming was still a territory. In September 1887, UW opened its doors to 42 students and five faculty members -- as befitted the university of "The Equality State," both the students and faculty included women from the first day. UW has since grown into a major teaching and research university with approximately 11,500 students and more than 700 faculty members, offering over 200 programs of study.

UW combines major-university benefits and small-school advantages. Students generally experience small class sizes, affording easy access to faculty. Faculty members are internationally renowned for their research and scholarship and are innovative and creative teachers. The university is a leader of the Wyoming Innovation Partnership, which is working to modernize and focus Wyoming's efforts to develop a resilient workforce and economy.

About Hess Corporation

Hess Corporation is a leading global independent energy company engaged in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas. The company is recognized as an industry leader in environmental, social and governance performance and disclosure. More information on Hess Corporation is available at www.hess.com.

About Idaho National Laboratory

Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation's center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE's strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visit www.inl.gov.

Follow us on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

About the Council on Competitiveness

For more than three decades, the Council has championed a competitiveness agenda for the United States to attract investment and talent and spur the commercialization of new ideas. While the players may have changed since its founding in 1986, the mission remains as vital as everto enhance U.S. productivity and raise the standard of living for all Americans.

The members of the CouncilCEOs, university presidents, labor leaders and national lab directorsrepresent a powerful, nonpartisan voice that sets aside politics and seeks results. By providing real-world perspective to policymakers, the Council's private sector network makes an impact on decision-making across a broad spectrum of issuesfrom the cutting- edge of science and technology, to the democratization of innovation, to the shift from energy weakness to strength that supports the growing renaissance in U.S. manufacturing. The Council firmly believes that with the right policies, the strengths and potential of the U.S. economy far outweigh the current challenges the nation faces on the path to higher growth and greater opportunity for all Americans.

SOURCE Council on Competitiveness
Nationally representative study of more than 5 million pregnant people finds those with Medicaid less likely to be screened than those with commercial insurance, demonstrating disparities in prenatal care

SECAUCUS, N.J., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A new Health Trends study from Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX) developed in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the rate of hepatitis C (HCV) antibody screening increased 145% in pregnant people during the decade-long study period ending June 2021, but is still low, with nearly 41% of pregnant people receiving screening in early 2021.The study, which was published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, is believed to be the first large scale, nationally representative analysis of the impact of medical guidelines on screening for HCV in pregnancy, based on deidentified test results of more than five million pregnant people across the United States.

In early 2020, the CDC and the US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) published guidelines acknowledging the value of HCV antibody screening in adults, including pregnant people, in response to growing rates of HCV infection in the United States, particularly in younger adults and in pregnant people. While the study found a significant increase in screening among pregnant people after the publication of these guidelines, the results show many patients are not receiving the recommended testing.

"Our Health Trends study underscores the power of medical guidelines to favorably influence screening rates for diseases such as hepatitis C," said Harvey W. Kaufman, MD, Senior Medical Director, Head of the Health Trends Research Program for Quest Diagnostics. "Yet, it also reveals that gaps in guideline-based care are prevalent and highlights the urgent need to close them in underserved populations. We hope our research brings attention to quality gaps in maternal health in the United States and the importance of ensuring pregnant people are screened for HCV and other diseases that jeopardize their health and that of their newborns."

"For more than a decade, the opioid crisis has been associated with dramatic increases in hepatitis C among people of reproductive age in the United States, making screening among pregnant people critical to addressing this epidemic," said Carolyn Wester, MD, MPH, director of CDC's Division of Viral Hepatitis. "It's heartening to see an early increase in testing among pregnant people following our updated screening recommendations in 2020. However, we still have a long way to go given that less than half of mothers are receiving the recommended hepatitis C screening. And just as importantly, we must work to make sure those who are diagnosed are connected to postnatal treatment and cured of hepatitis C  otherwise, we are missing a critical opportunity to improve the health of mothers in this country."

2020 Ushers in New Hepatitis C Screening Guidelines

In March 2020, the USPSTF recommended laboratory screening for HCV in adults aged 1879 years, including in pregnant people.2 In April 2020, the CDC recommended HCV screening for adults aged 18 years and over, and for all pregnant people during each pregnancy except in settings where the prevalence of HCV infection is less than 0.1%.3 In May 2021, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued, and the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine endorsed, a practice advisory recommending hepatitis C screening for all pregnant people during each pregnancy.4

After 2020 Guidelines, Rate of HCV Screening Significantly Increased

The study included 5,048,428 pregnant people ages 15-44 years in all 50 states and the District of Columbia with either Medicaid or commercial health insurance who had obstetric panel testing that included HCV antibody screening performed by Quest Diagnostics. The study examined testing patterns in this population between January 2011 and June 2021. Approximately three quarters (74.6%) had commercial health insurance and one in four (25.4%) were insured through Medicaid.

In the study period overall, 23.3% had an HCV screening test during their pregnancy. During the 10.5-year study period, the screening rate increased 145%, from 16.6% in 2011 to 40.6% in 2021. After the 2020 hepatitis C screening recommendations were published, the rate of HCV testing significantly increased relative to the pre-universal recommendation period.

Disparities in Testing Rates Associated with Insurance Type

For the entire study period, the percentage of individuals with HCV screening was higher for commercially insured persons (25%) than those with Medicaid (18.4%). However, the disparities seem to increase over time. Pregnant people with Medicaid had HCV screening rates comparable to people with commercial insurance in 2011-2012. From 2016 onward, people with Medicaid were tested for HCV infection at rates 25-35% lower than people with commercial insurance.

The study builds on an ongoing collaboration between Quest and CDC to study viral hepatitis prevalence and testing patterns, based on insights from laboratory testing, to support the goal to eliminate hepatitis in the United States. In 2017, Quest and CDC published research based on Health Trends laboratory data that found the rate of pregnant people and newborns with hepatitis C increased between 2011 and 2014.5 In 2021, researchers from both organizations published a study that revealed a 40% decline in HCV diagnosis and treatment during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.6

The study's strengths include national scale and results of quality laboratory testing methods. Weaknesses include lack of medication and other clinical data to identify patterns in treatment.

About Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C is the most common bloodborne infection in the United States and is a leading cause of liver-related morbidity and mortality.7,8 An estimated 2.4 million adults in the United States are living with HCV infection. Hepatitis C was reported as the underlying or contributing cause for 15,713 deaths in 2018.7 Approximately 70% of adults with acute HCV infection develop chronic disease. If untreated, 1 in 4 of these individuals will die prematurely from HCV-associated complications such as liver failure and hepatocellular carcinoma.8 During 20152018, 61% of people diagnosed with hepatitis C were aware they were living with the disease, suggesting a gap in care.9 The risk of an HCV-infected mother transmitting infection to their infant is approximately 4% to 7% per pregnancy.10 An estimated 1,700 infants were born with HCV infection each year between 2011 and 2014.11

About Quest Diagnostics Health Trends

Quest Diagnostics Health Trends is a series of scientific reports that provide insights into health topics, based on analysis of HIPAA-compliant, objective clinical laboratory data, to empower better patient care, population health management and public health policy. The reports are based on the Quest Diagnostics database of 60 billion de-identified laboratory test results, believed to be the largest of its kind in healthcare. Health Trends has yielded novel insights to aid the management of allergies and asthma, prescription drug monitoring, diabetes, Lyme disease, heart disease, influenza and workplace wellness. Quest Diagnostics also produces the Drug Testing Index (DTI), a series of reports on national workplace drug positivity trends based on the company's employer workplace drug testing data. http://www.QuestDiagnostics.com/HealthTrends

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 healthcare management. Quest annually serves one in three adult Americans and half the physicians and hospitals in the United States, and our 50,000 employees understand that, in the right hands and with the right context, our diagnostic insights can inspire actions that transform lives. www.QuestDiagnostics.com

REFERENCES

Munira Z. Gunja et al., Health and Health Care for Women of Reproductive Age: How the United States Compares with Other High-Income Countries (Commonwealth Fund, Apr. 2022 ). https://doi.org/10.26099/4pph-j894 U.S. Preventative Services Task Force. Hepatitis C virus infection in adolescents and adults: screening: United States Preventative Services Task Force statement. JAMA. 2020;323(10):970975. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.1123. Schillie S, Wester C, Osborne M, Wesolowski L, Ryerson AB. CDC Recommendations for Hepatitis C Screening Among Adults  United States , 2020. MMWR Recomm Rep 2020;69(No. RR-2):117. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.rr6902a1external icon. ACOG Practice Advisory: Routine Hepatitis C Virus Screening in Pregnant Individuals (opqic.org)Schillie S, Wester C, Osborne M, Wesolowski L, Ryerson AB. CDC recommendations for hepatitis C screening among adults  United States, 2020. MMWR Recomm Rep. 2020;69(RR-2):117. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.rr6902a1. Kaufman, H. Decreases in Hepatitis C Testing and Treatment During the COVID-19 Pandemic. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. September 1, 2021 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2021.03.011 Viral hepatitis surveillanceUnited States, 2018. Atlanta, GA : HHS, CDC; 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/statistics/2018surveillance/index.htm. Accessed March 30, 2021. Seo S, Silverberg MJ, Hurley LB, et al. Prevalence of spontaneous clearance of hepatitis C virus infection doubled from 1998 to 2017. J Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2020;18(2):511513. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cgh.2019.04.035. Ryerson AB, Schillie S, Barker LK, Kupronis BA, Wester C. Vital signs: newly reported acute and chronic hepatitis C cases  United States, 20092018. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2020;69(14):399404. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6914a2. Ly, K., et. al., Hepatitis C Virus Infection Among Reproductive-Aged Women and Children in the United States , 2006 to 2014. Annals of Internal Medicine. May 9, 2020 . https://doi.org/10.7326/M16-2350 Roberts EA, Yeung L. Maternal-infant transmission of hepatitis C virus infection. Hepatology. 2002;36(5 Suppl 1):S106-13. Ly, K. N., Jiles, R. B., Teshale, E. H., Foster, M. A., Pesano, R. L., & Holmberg, S. D. (2017). Hepatitis C virus infection among reproductive-aged women and children in the United States , 2006 to 2014. Annals of internal medicine, 166(11), 775-782.

SOURCE Quest Diagnostics
WASHINGTON, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The voice of more than 45,000 current and former National Guard officers has appealed to President Joe Biden to reconsider the White House Office of Management and Budget's opposition to creating a Space National Guard.

The Defense Department was close to proposing Space National Guard as a component of the U.S. Space Force until last fall, when OMB unexpectedly announced opposition to the idea.

Related Documents View PDF NGAUS Letter to President Biden

The OMB position was based on cost, but its calculations could prove costly to the nation, retired Brig. Gen. J. Roy Robinson, the NGAUS president, told the president in a June 7 letter.

"The OMB incorrectly presumed that every state would stand up Space National Guard units, which greatly inflated its cost projections," Robinson wrote. "In fact, a Space National Guard at its inception would include only 1,000 space professionals in 14 units across eight states and territories.

"The start-up cost, according to the Pentagon, would be approximately $250,000  the price to change signs and uniform name tapes," he explained. "The personnel are already on the payroll and the equipment and facilities are in place. A Space National Guard could grow in the future, but only to meet requirements specified by the Space Force."

Congress has the final say, and lawmakers are currently deliberating the matter. There is legislation in the House and the Senate that would create a Space National Guard. But lingering OMB opposition hangs over discussions and often prevents Pentagon officials from offering candid assessments.

Robinson said the relatively tiny investment in a Space National Guard now would prevent the nation from paying a far greater price later.

"The more damaging costs are those our nation will incur if, as the OMB directed, space missions currently performed by the Air National Guard are transferred to a single component Space Force," the NGAUS president wrote. "Some of these units have unique missions, such as the nation's only survivable and endurable missile warning and nuclear detection system. These units will have to be rebuilt completely from scratch, which will take several years and could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. In the interim, the nation will go without some critical capabilities."

Gen. John W. "Jay" Raymond, the Space Force's chief, has said numerous times the nation cannot accomplish military space missions without Air National Guard space units.

The immediate challenge is these space units are currently aligned to the Air Force, which no longer performs space operations. This creates resourcing issues plus administrative and operational control problems.

Should space units be removed from the Air National Guard, as the OMB directs, the nation will not only lose some of its most talented and experienced space professionals in uniform, but also much of its ability to tap civilian-acquired skills in the future, Robinson said.

"As a member of a National Guard family," he wrote, "you know better than most that the National Guard is a vehicle enabling professionals outside the active-component military to serve their country in uniform part time and when our nation needs them most. And as you also know, the National Guard connects America to its military like no other component of the Armed Forces."

Some governors will also lose domestic-response capabilities, Robinson wrote. Air National Guard space units have provided critical eyes in the sky during floods and wildfires in recent years.

About NGAUS:

The association includes more than 45,000 current or former Guard officers. It was created in 1878 to provide unified National Guard representation in Washington. In their first productive meeting after Reconstruction, militia officers from the North and South formed the association with the goal of obtaining better equipment and training by educating Congress on Guard requirements. Today, 144 years later, NGAUS has the same mission.

SOURCE National Guard Association of the U.S.
The digital spot depicts Nick and Ric retreating to the great outdoors for a variety of campsite activities, which quickly reveal that in the Offerman clan, older does in fact mean wiser. From woodworking, to bird-calling, to steak-eating, dad does it better every time. While the younger Offerman is renowned for his nature skills and aptitude for craftsmanship, within his family, Ric is the supreme woodsman. As their outdoor adventures come to an end over a nightcap while stargazing, Ric manifests the constellation of a beloved trinity - a T-Bone steak, a baked potato and a bottle of Lagavulin 16 Year Old - proof that for iconic father-son duos like these two, a love of well-crafted whisky is written in the stars.

"Does my Dad do everything better than me? Sure. But hang on, is that because of his superior life prowess, or am I maybe letting him win because I am a generous son?" pondered Nick Offerman. He continued, "If you answered with the superior prowess one, you're right, dang it, but I hope you at least considered the second. The good news is, I only have to do  as good as my dad to finish in front of most of my fellow mortals."

In the spirit of protecting our forests so that generations to come can enjoy future Father's Days in the great outdoors, Lagavulin is making a $50,000 contribution to the California Fire Foundation to benefit California firefighters, their families and the communities they protect. Additionally, the handcrafted wooden bear featured in the new video will be auctioned on Charity Buzz from June 10 to June 22 to further provide funds to the California Fire Foundation.

"Lagavulin: My Tales of Whisky" has chronicled the adventures of Nick Offerman and his preferred imbibement since 2014. The full series can be viewed on the YouTube channel for your Father's Day (or every day) viewing pleasure.

Lagavulin Single Malt Scotch Whisky is available to purchase at select U.S. liquor retailers and can be shipped and delivered on ReserveBar.com, Drizly.com or the Drizly app, making it a great gift for dads that are Offerman fans, whisky connoisseurs, lovers of the outdoors or all of the above.

Lagavulin encourages those who are 21+ to please drink responsibly. More information on Lagavulin Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky and the distillery can be found at www.malts.com/en-row/distilleries/lagavulin/.

About Nick Offerman

Nick Offerman is an actor, writer and woodworker, best known as the character of Ron Swanson on NBC's hit comedy series Parks & Recreation, Karl Weathers in the acclaimed FX series Fargo, the co-host and executive producer of NBC's Making It, in the role of Forest on FX's DEVS, and as Rick Kaepernick in the Netflix series Colin: In Black and White. Recent film credits include Hearts Beat Loud, Lucy In The Sky, The Founder, Bad Times At The El Royale, The Hero, The Lego Movie (1&2), White Fang, and The Little Hours. Offerman has penned five New York Times Bestselling books: Paddle Your Own Canoe, Gumption, Good Clean Fun, The Greatest Love Story Ever Told (written with his wife, Megan Mullally), and most recently Where The Deer And The Antelope Play. In his spare time, he can be found at his woodshop in Los Angeles building hand-crafted items ranging from fine furniture to canoes to ukuleles.

About Diageo

Diageo is a global leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands including Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, Bulleit and Buchanan's whiskies, Smirnoff, Ciroc and Ketel One vodkas, Casamigos, DeLeon and Don Julio tequilas, Captain Morgan, Baileys, Tanqueray and Guinness.

Diageo is listed on both the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: DEO) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE: DGE) and their products are sold in more than 180 countries around the world.

For more information about Diageo, their people, brands, and performance, visit www.diageo.com. Visit Diageo's global responsible drinking resource, www.DRINKiQ.com, for information, initiatives, and ways to share best practices. Follow Twitter and Instagram for news and information about Diageo North America: @Diageo_NA.

Please Drink Responsibly.

Lagavulin Single Malt Scotch Whisky. 43% Alc/Vol. Imported by Diageo, New York, NY.

SOURCE Diageo
VANCOUVER, BC, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Chemistree Technology Inc. (CSE: CHM) and (OTCQB: CHMJF) (the "Company" or "Chemistree"), is providing Notice of the semi-annual payment of interest on its convertible debentures maturing March 29, 2024. Pursuant to the Supplemental Indenture entered into with the Debenture Trustee, Odyssey Trust Company, effective January 17, 2022, the Company will pay the interest due on June 30, 2022 - via the issuance of common shares in lieu of payment in cash.

According to data provided by the Debenture Trustee, $7,789,000 in convertible debentures remain outstanding. The debentures bear interest at 10% per annum, paid semi-annually at the end of June and December. Common shares to be issued in satisfaction of the interest payment are calculated according to a market price formula set-out in the Supplemental Indenture and are subject to a minimum issue price of $0.05 per share.

The convertible debentures accrue interest daily, with such accrued interest paid immediately upon conversion of the debentures. The principal amount of the debentures is convertible into common shares of the Company at a price of $0.50 per share.

About Chemistree Technology Inc.

Chemistree Technology Inc. is a Canadian investment company with holdings in the U.S. cannabis sector, a consumer-targeted biotechnology venture and a renewable energy developer in the wind and solar sector.

The Company's corporate strategy is to focus on opportunistic investments across a broad range of industries, and is seeking to invest in early stage, promising companies where it may be the lead investor and can additionally provide investees with advisory services, mentoring and access to the Company's management expertise. For more information, visit www.Chemistree.ca.

Advisory

The Company wishes to inform shareholders that there are significant legal restrictions and regulations that govern the cannabis industry in both Canada and the United States.

Cannabis-related Practices or Activities are Illegal Under U.S. Federal Laws

The concepts of "medical cannabis" and "recreational cannabis" do not exist under U.S. federal law. The Federal Controlled Substances Act classifies "marihuana" as a Schedule I drug. Under U.S. federal law, a Schedule I drug or substance has a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use in the United States, and a lack of safety for the use of the drug under medical supervision. As such, cannabis related practices or activities, including without limitation, the manufacture, importation, possession, use or distribution of cannabis are illegal under U.S. federal law. Strict compliance with state laws with respect to cannabis will neither absolve the Company of liability under U.S. federal law, nor will it provide a defence to any federal proceeding which may be brought against the Company. Enforcement of U.S. federal laws will be a significant risk to the business of the Company and any such proceedings brought against the Company may adversely affect the Company's operations and financial performance.

Further information regarding the legal status of cannabis related activities and associated risk factors, including, but not limited to, risk of enforcement actions, risks that third-party service providers, such as banking or financial institutions cease providing services to the Company, and the risk that Company may not be able to distribute profits, if any, from U.S. operations up to the Company, are included in the Prospectus, the Company's annual information form and other documents incorporated by reference therein and in the Company's Form 2A annual listing statement filed with the CSE and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

"Karl Kottmeier"

President

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Information set forth in this news release includes forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are statements that relate to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "budget", "scheduled" and "intend", statements that an action or event "may", "might", "could", "should", or "will" be taken or occur, or other similar expressions. In particular, but without limiting the foregoing, this news release contains forward-looking statements pertaining to: the ability for the Company to pay future interest payments on the Debentures as such payments become due and the anticipated results of the Debenture Amendments on the debt burden and future operations of the Company.

By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, the risks identified in the Company's reports and filings with the applicable Canadian securities regulators. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as required by applicable securities laws. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. The Company assumes no responsibility to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect new events or circumstances unless required by applicable law.

SOURCE Chemistree Technology Inc.
DUBLIN, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Smart Speaker Market (2022-2027) by Intelligent Virtual Assistant, Components, Technology, Distribution Channel, End User, Geography, Competitive Analysis, and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Smart Speaker Market is estimated to be USD 8.14 Bn in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 16.47 Bn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 15.14%.



Market Dynamics

Market dynamics are forces that impact the prices and behaviors of the Global Smart Speaker Market stakeholders. These forces create pricing signals which result from the changes in the supply and demand curves for a given product or service. Forces of Market Dynamics may be related to macro-economic and micro-economic factors. There are dynamic market forces other than price, demand, and supply. Human emotions can also drive decisions, influence the market, and create price signals.



As the market dynamics impact the supply and demand curves, decision-makers aim to determine the best way to use various financial tools to stem various strategies for speeding the growth and reducing the risks.

Company Profiles

The report provides a detailed analysis of the competitors in the market. It covers the financial performance analysis for the publicly listed companies in the market. The report also offers detailed information on the companies' recent development and competitive scenario. Some of the companies covered in this report are Alibaba, Altec Lansing, Apple, Asustek Computer, Baidu, Bose, Eufy, Google, Harman International Industries, Huawei Device, Lenovo, Marshall, etc.



Countries Studied

America ( Argentina , Brazil , Canada , Chile , Colombia , Mexico , Peru , United States , Rest of Americas)

, , , , , , , , Rest of Americas) Europe ( Austria , Belgium , Denmark , Finland , France , Germany , Italy , Netherlands , Norway , Poland , Russia , Spain , Sweden , Switzerland , United Kingdom , Rest of Europe )

( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Rest of ) Middle-East and Africa ( Egypt , Israel , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , South Africa , United Arab Emirates , Rest of MEA)

and ( , , , , , , Rest of MEA) Asia-Pacific ( Australia , Bangladesh , China , India , Indonesia , Japan , Malaysia , Philippines , Singapore , South Korea , Sri Lanka , Thailand , Taiwan , Rest of Asia-Pacific )

Competitive Quadrant

The report includes Competitive Quadrant, a proprietary tool to analyze and evaluate the position of companies based on their Industry Position score and Market Performance score. The tool uses various factors for categorizing the players into four categories. Some of these factors considered for analysis are financial performance over the last 3 years, growth strategies, innovation score, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc.



Ansoff Analysis

The report presents a detailed Ansoff matrix analysis for the Global Smart Speaker Market. Ansoff Matrix, also known as Product/Market Expansion Grid, is a strategic tool used to design strategies for the growth of the company. The matrix can be used to evaluate approaches in four strategies viz. Market Development, Market Penetration, Product Development and Diversification. The matrix is also used for risk analysis to understand the risk involved with each approach.



The report analyses the Global Smart Speaker Market using the Ansoff Matrix to provide the best approaches a company can take to improve its market position.



Based on the SWOT analysis conducted on the industry and industry players, the analyst has devised suitable strategies for market growth.



Why buy this report?

The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the Global Smart Speaker Market. The report includes in-depth qualitative analysis, verifiable data from authentic sources, and projections about market size. The projections are calculated using proven research methodologies.

The report has been compiled through extensive primary and secondary research. The primary research is done through interviews, surveys, and observation of renowned personnel in the industry.

The report includes an in-depth market analysis using Porter's 5 forces model and the Ansoff Matrix. In addition, the impact of Covid-19 on the market is also featured in the report.

The report also includes the regulatory scenario in the industry, which will help you make a well-informed decision. The report discusses major regulatory bodies and major rules and regulations imposed on this sector across various geographies.

The report also contains the competitive analysis using Positioning Quadrants, the analyst's Proprietary competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Market Dynamics

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Increasing Adoption of Smart Home Technology and the Presence of Smart Home Devices

4.1.2 Increase in Consumer Readiness to Invest in Trending Technologies and Rise in Usage of Smart Devices

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 Issues Related to Connectivity Range, Compatibility, and Power

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Development of Partnerships between Smart Home Manufacturers and Creators of Smart Speakers

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Privacy and Security Concerns of Users' Data



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Regulatory Scenario

5.2 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Ansoff Matrix Analysis



6 Global Smart Speaker Market, By Intelligent Virtual Assistant

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Alexa

6.3 Google Assistant

6.4 SIRI

6.5 Duero

6.6 Aligenie

6.7 Xiao AI



7 Global Smart Speaker Market, By Components

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Hardware

7.2.1 Processor

7.2.2 Memory

7.2.3 Power IC

7.2.4 Connectivity IC

7.2.5 Microphone

7.2.6 Speaker Driver

7.2.7 Audio IC

7.3 Software



8 Global Smart Speaker Market, By Technology

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Advanced Voice Control

8.3 Bluetooth

8.4 Physical Connection

8.5 Wi-Fi



9 Global Smart Speaker Market, By Distribution Channel

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Offline

9.3 Online



10 Global Smart Speaker Market, By End User

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Commercial

10.3 Personal



11 America's Smart Speaker Market

11.1 Introduction

11.2 Argentina

11.3 Brazil

11.4 Canada

11.5 Chile

11.6 Colombia

11.7 Mexico

11.8 Peru

11.9 United States

11.10 Rest of Americas



12 Europe's Smart Speaker Market

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Austria

12.3 Belgium

12.4 Denmark

12.5 Finland

12.6 France

12.7 Germany

12.8 Italy

12.9 Netherlands

12.10 Norway

12.11 Poland

12.12 Russia

12.13 Spain

12.14 Sweden

12.15 Switzerland

12.16 United Kingdom

12.17 Rest of Europe



13 Middle East and Africa's Smart Speaker Market

13.1 Introduction

13.2 Egypt

13.3 Israel

13.4 Qatar

13.5 Saudi Arabia

13.6 South Africa

13.7 United Arab Emirates

13.8 Rest of MEA



14 APAC's Smart Speaker Market

14.1 Introduction

14.2 Australia

14.3 Bangladesh

14.4 China

14.5 India

14.6 Indonesia

14.7 Japan

14.8 Malaysia

14.9 Philippines

14.10 Singapore

14.11 South Korea

14.12 Sri Lanka

14.13 Thailand

14.14 Taiwan

14.15 Rest of Asia-Pacific



15 Competitive Landscape

15.1 Competitive Quadrant

15.2 Market Share Analysis

15.3 Strategic Initiatives

15.3.1 M&A and Investments

15.3.2 Partnerships and Collaborations

15.3.3 Product Developments and Improvements



16 Company Profiles

16.1 Amazon

16.2 Altec Lansing

16.3 Apple

16.4 Asustek Computer

16.5 Baidu

16.6 Bose

16.7 Eufy

16.8 Google

16.9 Harman International Industries

16.10 Huawei Device

16.11 Lenovo

16.12 Marshall

16.13 Onkyo

16.14 Panasonic

16.15 Polk Audio

16.16 Realme

16.17 Samsung

16.18 Sk Telecom

16.19 Sonos

16.20 Sony

16.21 Xiaomi

16.22 Yamaha



17 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/fm8zdr

Media Contact:



Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets
DUBLIN, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Swarm Intelligence Market (2022-2027) by Model, Capability, Applications, Geography, Competitive Analysis, and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Swarm Intelligence Market is estimated to be USD 11.16 Bn in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 50.34 Bn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 35.16%.



Market dynamics are forces that impact the prices and behaviors of the Global Swarm Intelligence Market stakeholders. These forces create pricing signals which result from the changes in the supply and demand curves for a given product or service. Forces of Market Dynamics may be related to macro-economic and micro-economic factors. There are dynamic market forces other than price, demand, and supply. Human emotions can also drive decisions, influence the market, and create price signals.



As the market dynamics impact the supply and demand curves, decision-makers aim to determine the best way to use various financial tools to stem various strategies for speeding the growth and reducing the risks.

Company Profiles

The report provides a detailed analysis of the competitors in the market. It covers the financial performance analysis for the publicly listed companies in the market. The report also offers detailed information on the companies' recent development and competitive scenario. Some of the companies covered in this report are Apium Swarm Robotics, Axonai, Bosch Group, Brainalyzed, Continental, Dobots, Enswarm, etc.



Countries Studied

America ( Argentina , Brazil , Canada , Chile , Colombia , Mexico , Peru , United States , Rest of Americas)

, , , , , , , , Rest of Americas) Europe ( Austria , Belgium , Denmark , Finland , France , Germany , Italy , Netherlands , Norway , Poland , Russia , Spain , Sweden , Switzerland , United Kingdom , Rest of Europe )

( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Rest of ) Middle-East and Africa ( Egypt , Israel , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , South Africa , United Arab Emirates , Rest of MEA)

and ( , , , , , , Rest of MEA) Asia-Pacific ( Australia , Bangladesh , China , India , Indonesia , Japan , Malaysia , Philippines , Singapore , South Korea , Sri Lanka , Thailand , Taiwan , Rest of Asia-Pacific )

Competitive Quadrant

The report includes Competitive Quadrant, a proprietary tool to analyze and evaluate the position of companies based on their Industry Position score and Market Performance score. The tool uses various factors for categorizing the players into four categories. Some of these factors considered for analysis are financial performance over the last 3 years, growth strategies, innovation score, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc.



Ansoff Analysis

The report presents a detailed Ansoff matrix analysis for the Global Swarm Intelligence Market. Ansoff Matrix, also known as Product/Market Expansion Grid, is a strategic tool used to design strategies for the growth of the company. The matrix can be used to evaluate approaches in four strategies viz. Market Development, Market Penetration, Product Development and Diversification. The matrix is also used for risk analysis to understand the risk involved with each approach.



The report analyses the Global Swarm Intelligence Market using the Ansoff Matrix to provide the best approaches a company can take to improve its market position.



Based on the SWOT analysis conducted on the industry and industry players, the analyst has devised suitable strategies for market growth.



Why buy this report?

The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the Global Swarm Intelligence Market. The report includes in-depth qualitative analysis, verifiable data from authentic sources, and projections about market size. The projections are calculated using proven research methodologies.

The report has been compiled through extensive primary and secondary research. The primary research is done through interviews, surveys, and observation of renowned personnel in the industry.

The report includes an in-depth market analysis using Porter's 5 forces model and the Ansoff Matrix. In addition, the impact of Covid-19 on the market is also featured in the report.

The report also includes the regulatory scenario in the industry, which will help you make a well-informed decision. The report discusses major regulatory bodies and major rules and regulations imposed on this sector across various geographies.

The report also contains the competitive analysis using Positioning Quadrants, the analyst's Proprietary competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description

2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Market Dynamics

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Increase in Usage of Swarm Intelligence for Solving Big Data Problems

4.1.2 Rising Adoption of Swarm-Based Drones (UAVs) in Military

4.1.3 Need for Swarm Intelligence in Transportation Business

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 Reluctance to Accept New Technology by Key Industries

4.2.2 Low Awareness About Swarm Intelligence

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Integration of Swarm Intelligence Technology with Connected Cars

4.3.2 Use of Swarm Robotics in Warehouses

4.3.3 Implementation of Swarm Intelligence in the Telecommunications Industry

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Lack of Skilled Workforce



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Regulatory Scenario

5.2 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Ansoff Matrix Analysis



6 Global Swarm Intelligence Market, By Model

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Ant Colony Optimization

6.3 Particle Swarm Optimization

6.4 Others



7 Global Swarm Intelligence Market, By Capability

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Optimization

7.3 Clustering

7.4 Scheduling



8 Global Swarm Intelligence Market, By Applications

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Robotics

8.3 Drones

8.4 Human Swarming



9 Americas' Swarm Intelligence Market

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Argentina

9.3 Brazil

9.4 Canada

9.5 Chile

9.6 Colombia

9.7 Mexico

9.8 Peru

9.9 United States

9.10 Rest of Americas



10 Europe's Swarm Intelligence Market

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Austria

10.3 Belgium

10.4 Denmark

10.5 Finland

10.6 France

10.7 Germany

10.8 Italy

10.9 Netherlands

10.10 Norway

10.11 Poland

10.12 Russia

10.13 Spain

10.14 Sweden

10.15 Switzerland

10.16 United Kingdom

10.17 Rest of Europe



11 Middle East and Africa's Swarm Intelligence Market

11.1 Introduction

11.2 Egypt

11.3 Israel

11.4 Qatar

11.5 Saudi Arabia

11.6 South Africa

11.7 United Arab Emirates

11.8 Rest of MEA



12 APAC's Swarm Intelligence Market

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Australia

12.3 Bangladesh

12.4 China

12.5 India

12.6 Indonesia

12.7 Japan

12.8 Malaysia

12.9 Philippines

12.10 Singapore

12.11 South Korea

12.12 Sri Lanka

12.13 Thailand

12.14 Taiwan

12.15 Rest of Asia-Pacific



13 Competitive Landscape

13.1 Competitive Quadrant

13.2 Market Share Analysis

13.3 Strategic Initiatives

13.3.1 M&A and Investments

13.3.2 Partnerships and Collaborations

13.3.3 Product Developments and Improvements



14 Company Profiles

14.1 Apium Swarm Robotics

14.2 Axonai

14.3 Bosch Group

14.4 Brainalyzed

14.5 Continental

14.6 Dobots

14.7 Enswarm

14.8 Evana

14.9 Grey Orange

14.10 Hydromea SA

14.11 KIM Technologies

14.12 Lexalytics

14.13 Mobileye (Intel Company)

14.14 Netbeez

14.15 Nvidia

14.16 Power-Blox

14.17 Queen B Robotics

14.18 Redtree Robotics

14.19 Resson Aerospace

14.20 Sentien Robotics

14.21 SSI Schafer-Fritz Schafer

14.22 Swarm Systems

14.23 Swarm Technology

14.24 Unanimous AI

14.25 Valutico



15 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/jd46gm

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
Companies to research Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADC) to address cancers of high unmet need

Collaboration to utilize ImmunoGen's ADC linker-payload technology directed to targets identified by OBT

Each company may select a number of pre-clinical programs for internal development

OBT to receive an upfront payment, and each company is eligible to receive milestone payments plus tiered royalties

OXFORD, England and SAN JOSE, Cal., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT), a clinical stage oncology company with a pipeline of immuno-oncology and Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC)-based therapies, today announced a multi-year collaboration to research, develop and commercialize novel, first-in-class ADCs with ImmunoGen (IMGN), a leader in the expanding field of ADCs for the treatment of cancer. The companies will utilize ImmunoGen's linker-payload technology directed to novel targets identified via OBT's proprietary OGAP discovery platform. The companies will support these R&D efforts through joint funding and by combining their respective proprietary technologies.

"I am very enthusiastic about our new partnership with ImmunoGen, a leader in the development of ADCs," said Christian Rohlff, PhD, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Oxford BioTherapeutics. "The company's expertise, in combination with the unique targets from our OGAP database, provides potential to strengthen our respective drug pipelines with novel and highly differentiated ADCs for cancer patients in need of novel therapeutic options."

As part of the agreement, OBT will receive an upfront payment from ImmunoGen, reflecting OBT's preclinical programs to be included in the partnership.

In addition, once antibodies generated by OBT have been coupled with ImmunoGen's proprietary linker-payload technology, each company will have the opportunity to select one or more development programs to further develop on its own.

Each company is eligible to receive milestone payments based on the achievement of pre-specified development, regulatory, and commercial milestones, as well as tiered royalties as a percentage of worldwide commercial sales, with respect to each program selected by the other company. Once a company has chosen a given program, it will be solely responsible for all R&D costs associated with the specific program.

"OBT has demonstrated expertise in identifying novel targets for the development of specific antibodies  two key components to generating successful ADCs," said Stacy Coen, ImmunoGen's Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer. "This expertise, combined with ImmunoGen's portfolio of cancer-killing payloads and linkers, will be instrumental as both companies work to develop novel ADCs designed to address cancers with high unmet need. We look forward to working with OBT as we expand and diversify our investment in ADC research capabilities, deepen our pipeline, and transition to a fully-integrated oncology company."

ImmunoGen's portfolio is comprised of next-generation maytansinoid, DNA-acting, and novel camptothecin toxins and proprietary linkers. This collaboration will utilize novel targets identified by OBT combined with ImmunoGen's proprietary toxins and associated linkers. OBT has clinical experience with ImmunoGen's ADC platform and DM4 payload, which is utilized in OBT's lead program OBT076, an ADC currently in clinical trials as a monotherapy, as well as in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, in patients with advanced or refractory solid tumors, including gastric, bladder, ovarian, and lung cancer.

About Oxford BioTherapeutics

Oxford BioTherapeutics is a clinical stage oncology company based in Oxford, UK; San Jose, CA and Morristown, NJ, USA; with a pipeline of first-in-class immuno-oncology (IO) and antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) based therapies designed to fulfil major unmet patient needs in cancer therapeutics.

OBT's lead clinical program, OBT076, an ADC utilizing an Immunogen toxin, initiated expansion in a U.S. Clinical Trial in 2021 in patients with advanced or refractory solid tumors, including gastric, bladder, ovarian and lung cancer, where CD205 is overexpressed. Infiltration of tumors by immunosuppressive cells correlates with adverse outcomes (lower progression free and overall survival), suggesting that this process contributes to the progression of several cancers.

OBT's proprietary OGAP target discovery platform is based on one of the world's largest proprietary cancer membrane proteomic databases, with data on over 5,000 cancer cell proteins providing unique, highly-qualified oncology targets, of which three programs are in clinical development in the USA and Europe. OBT's IO discovery process provides unique insights into the cancer-immune cell synapse and has identified several novel IO monoclonal and bispecific antibody candidates for cancer therapies.

OBT's pipeline and development capabilities have been validated through multiple strategic partnerships including with Boehringer Ingelheim and cell therapy research collaborations with Kite Pharma as well as other world leaders in antibody development (such as Amgen, Immunogen, WuXi, Medarex (BMS), Alere (Abbott)). OBT has a strong oncology focused management team and board with significant experience in developing IO and antibody-based therapies.

For more information on Oxford BioTherapeutics, please visit www.oxfordbiotherapeutics.com

For further information, please contact:

INVESTOR RELATIONS AND MEDIA

OBT Investors:

Dr Christian Rohlff, CEO

[email protected]

OBT Media:

MEDiSTRAVA Consulting

Sylvie Berrebi, David Dible, Eleanor Perkin, George Underwood

E : [email protected]

T : +44 (0) 203 928 6900

SOURCE Oxford BioTherapeutics
Pancreatic cancer is the world's toughest cancer and is on track to become the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. It demands urgent action to save lives. Given few effective treatments and no early detection method, research funding continues to be critical in the fight against this challenging disease -- and approximately 80% of funding comes from the federal government.

The good news is, thanks to PanCAN and its advocates, the federal research investment in pancreatic cancer at the NCI has steadily grown over the last two decades. In 1999, when PanCAN was founded, the investment was just $17.7 million. By 2018 (the latest data available), it had grown to $182.1 million. This funding has had a significant impact on the five-year pancreatic cancer survival rate which increased from just 4% in 1999 to more than double at 11% this year. PanCAN and its advocates have an ambitious goal of increasing the five-year survival rate to 20% by 2030.

In order to achieve this goal, this week advocates will ask members of Congress to support increases at both the NIH and NCI as well as the DOD's dedicated Pancreatic Cancer Research Program, created in 2019 as a direct result of PanCAN's advocacy efforts.

"For more than 20 years, PanCAN has been driving the national conversation about the urgent needs of the pancreatic cancer community and successfully advocating for increased federal research investment," said Julie Fleshman, JD, MBA, president and CEO of PanCAN. "While PanCAN will continue to privately fund leading-edge research across the country, we urge Congress to prioritize this vital research since we cannot accelerate progress and improve patient outcomes without it."

To kick off PanCAN Action Week, PanCAN is hosting Voices in Action , a virtual event where the pancreatic cancer community will have the opportunity to learn about the impact of their advocacy, hear inspiring stories and take actions to make Congress prioritize pancreatic cancer research funding. The special event will be hosted by PanCAN president and CEO, Julie Fleshman and include Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA), writer, director and PanCAN advocate Lisa Niemi Swayze, federally funded pancreatic cancer researcher Dr. Channing Der, and PanCAN advocate from New York, Casey Zmudzinski. The event will take place Monday, June 13 at 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET and registration is free and open now.

To learn how to take action this week and accelerate progress, go to pancan.org/actionweek2022.

About the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) leads the way in accelerating critical progress for pancreatic cancer patients. PanCAN takes bold action by funding life-saving research, providing personalized patient services and creating a community of supporters and volunteers who will stop at nothing to create a world in which all pancreatic cancer patients will thrive.

Media Contact:

Jillian Scholten

Senior Public Relations Manager

Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

Direct: 310-706-3360

E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Pancreatic Cancer Action Network
Tax credit bid deadline is July 15

HARRISBURG, Pa., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency announced today that it is accepting bids for the purchase of $4.5 million in mixed-use development tax credits. The funds collected from successful bidders will be used for the construction or rehabilitation of mixed-use developments in Pennsylvania communities. The deadline for bids is 2 p.m. on Friday, July 15.

These tax credits will be used by the winning bidders  which can be companies, organizations, or individuals  to reduce their state tax liability. The intent of the bidding process is to raise as much funding as possible from the $4.5 million in tax credits being made available to provide for a significant investment in community revitalization projects in various communities. The projects to receive this funding will be selected during a competitive Request for Proposals process later this year.

This tax credit program was created as part of the Commonwealth's fiscal year 2016-2017 budget (implemented July 1, 2017), and PHFA was directed to administer the credit. PHFA was authorized to sell these tax credits through directed or negotiated sale to any qualified taxpayer. It is expected that the tax credit awards will be made within 90 days after bidding closes. The credit awards will be made in 2022, but they are not effective for utilization until 2023 against a 2022 tax liability.

"We have had solid support for this program from the private sector during its first five years," said PHFA Executive Director and CEO Robin Wiessmann. "The value of mixed-use developments is that they not only provide much-needed affordable housing, but their commercial component adds an economic development spark in those communities."

More information about the mixed-use development tax credit and the current bidding process is available on the PHFA website at: www.phfa.org/mhp/developers/loans.aspx (scroll down). Program guidelines and bid criteria are posted there. Interested organizations can learn more by contacting Bryce Maretzki at PHFA at (717) 780-1867 or by email at [email protected].

About PHFA

The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency works to provide affordable homeownership and rental housing options for older adults, low- and moderate-income families, and people with special housing needs. Through its carefully managed mortgage programs and investments in multifamily housing developments, PHFA also promotes economic development across the state. Since its creation by the legislature in 1972, it has generated more than $15.9 billion of funding for more than 186,412 single-family home mortgage loans, helped fund the construction of 138,000 rental units, distributed approximately $191 million to support local housing initiatives, and saved the homes of more than 50,520 families from foreclosure. PHFA programs and operations are funded primarily by the sale of securities and from fees paid by program users, not by public tax dollars. The agency is governed by a 14-member board.

Media contact:

Scott Elliott

717-649-6522 (cell)

[email protected]

SOURCE Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency
SAN FRANCISCO, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global protein labeling market size is expected to reach USD 4.11 billion by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 7.6% from 2022 to 2030. The study of Post-translational Modification (PTM) of proteins has gained immense popularity in cell biology and disease treatment and prevention. The introduction of effective quantification methods of protein expression with the use of tagging strategies, such as iodoTMTzero Label Reagent that detects nitrosylation, has driven an efficient determination of PTMs. Therefore, a rise in PTM-related studies is driving the market. The emergence of novel techniques and the launch of improved products are expected to positively influence market growth.

One such development includes the application of new spin labels that expand the capability of site-directed spin labeling of proteins. These labels in combination with electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (SDSL-EPR) enable the investigation of protein structure, dynamics, and structural heterogeneity.

Key Industry Insights & Findings from the report:

Proteins dominated the reagents segment in 2021 as fluorescent proteins are beneficial and allow in situ fusion expression through gene transfer into cells.

This eliminates the need for purification, in vitro labeling, high-level heterologous production, and microinjection of recombinant proteins.

The fluorescence microscopy segment is estimated to register the fastest CAGR from 2022 to 2030 due to the development of monomeric fluorescent proteins that are capable to fluoresce orange to far-red bands of the visible light spectrum.

The in-vitro labeling segment accounted for the largest revenue share in 2021 and is anticipated to witness the fastest CAGR during the forecast period.

The less complexity associated with in-vitro techniques and the availability of a large number of commercial kits for these techniques result in a larger share of the segment in 2021.

North America accounted for the maximum revenue share in 2021 due to the presence of key manufacturers, increase in proteomics research, the advent of bioengineering technologies, and high adoption of these products in disease diagnosis-associated studies.

Get more Insights from 130 page market research report, "Protein Labeling Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product (Services, Kits, Reagents), By Application (Fluorescence Microscopy, Cell-based Assays), By Method (In-vitro, In-vivo), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030", published by Grand View Research.

Protein Labeling Market Growth & Trends

The market is growing as private players and government agencies increased investments in proteomics and genomics R&D. Proteomics is the study of the entire protein content of a cell, tissue, or organism. Proteomic profiling approaches require protein labeling methods before separation and analysis. For example, the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) allocated USD 37 billion to scientific research.

Moreover, there is an increase in funding for life sciences research that supports molecular studies to better understand the fundamental processes by which diseases emerge, as well as the identification of biomarkers that identify the presence of disease or the gene/protein responsible for the condition. The Novo Nordisk Foundation awarded the University of Copenhagen a grant of up to USD 1.5 million to create a mass spectrometry facility, which is a new and exciting step in protein research. As a result, the market is being driven by increased spending on proteomics and genomics research and development. Protein labeling applications are widely employed for a variety of functions. Cell-based assays can offer information about intracellular molecular targets and have the advantage of being performed in a biological context.

Fluorescent antibodies are important in clinical therapy as well as for investigating immunology, cell biology, and neuroscience. A mass spectrometer is a device that detects the m/z ratio of ions to identify and quantify compounds in simple and complicated mixtures. It has proven indispensable in a variety of domains and applications, including proteomics. Immunological approaches include ways of studying the immune system as well as the application of immunological reagents as instruments. Protein microarrays are a new type of proteomic technology that is rapidly gaining popularity in molecular biology and biochemistry.

Protein Labeling Market Segmentation

Grand View Research has segmented the global protein labeling market on the basis of product, application, method, and region:

Protein Labeling Market - Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

Reagents

Proteins



Enzymes



Probes/Tags



Monoclonal antibodies



Other reagents

Kits

Services

Protein Labeling Market - Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

Cell-based Assays

Fluorescence Microscopy

Immunological Techniques

Protein Microarray

Mass Spectrometry

Protein Labeling Market - Method Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

In-vitro Labeling Methods

Enzymatic methods



Dye-based methods



Co-translational methods



Site-specific methods



Nanoparticle methods



Others

In-vivo Labeling Methods

Photoreactive methods



Radioactive methods



Others

Protein Labeling Market - Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

North America

U.S.



Canada

Europe

Germany



U.K.

Asia Pacific

China



Japan

Latin America

Brazil

Middle East Africa (MEA)

South Africa

List of Key Players in the Protein Labeling Market

Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.

F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.

Merck KGaA

Perkin Elmer, Inc.

Promega Corporation

LGC Limited

New England Biolabs

LI-COR, Inc.

GE Healthcare.

Jena Bioscience GmbH

Check out more related studies published by Grand View Research:

Nucleic Acid Labeling Market - The global nucleic acid labeling market size is expected to reach USD 3.22 billion by 2027, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.81% from 2020 to 2027. Technological advancements with respect to PCR, DNA sequencing, nanotechnology, and microfluidics are expected to help enhance the market potential in the near future. Additionally, nucleic acid labeling products are gaining significant momentum across diagnostic as well as therapeutic interventions associated with cancer disorders and genetic deformities, thereby elevating the market growth.

The global nucleic acid labeling market size is expected to reach by 2027, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.81% from 2020 to 2027. Technological advancements with respect to PCR, DNA sequencing, nanotechnology, and microfluidics are expected to help enhance the market potential in the near future. Additionally, nucleic acid labeling products are gaining significant momentum across diagnostic as well as therapeutic interventions associated with cancer disorders and genetic deformities, thereby elevating the market growth. Protein Purification And Isolation Market - The global protein purification and isolation market size is expected to reach USD 19.1 billion by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.6% from 2022 to 2030. Technological advancements and investments for the development of structure-based drugs by both private and public research organizations are driving the demand for protein purification and isolation products.

- The global protein purification and isolation 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 10.6% from 2022 to 2030. Technological advancements and investments for the development of structure-based drugs by both private and public research organizations are driving the demand for protein purification and isolation products. Biotechnology Reagents & Kits Market - The global biotechnology reagents & kits market size is expected to reach USD 1.14 trillion by 2028, registering a CAGR of 16.5% over the forecast period, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Key factors driving the market include the introduction of novel and advanced products, a rise in investments in the biotechnology sector, and increasing demand for synthetic biology.

Browse through Grand View Research's Biotechnology 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

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/661327/Grand_View_Research_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
"CENSORSHIP IS A TOOL, BUT ONE THAT IS OFTEN USED INADVERTENTLY TO SILENCE MARGINALISED VOICES," SAYS CREATIVE FOUNDER & PHOTOGRAPHER, RANKIN.

EXHIBITION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH QUANTUS GALLERY JUNE 16 TH -24TH FEATURING RANKIN PORTRAITS OF 13 OF THE UNFAIRLY CENSORED COMMUNITY.

RANKIN'S CENSORED PORTRAITS OF THE UNSEEN MADE INTERACTIVE WITH AR EXPERIENCE BY MEDIA.MONKS, USING 8TH WALL.

THE UNSEEN GIVES VOICE TO HUNDREDS OF INDIVIDUALS AND SMALL BUSINESSES THAT HAVE BEEN UNFAIRLY CENSORED AND SILENCED ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS.

LONDON, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- RANKIN CREATIVE has launched an online community project spotlighting unfair censorship by using its resources to re-platform those who've been unfairly silenced online. THE UNSEEN is open to anyone who has experienced Content removal, account removal, promotion/ad ban or shadow banning. The project intends to create a positive debate around this topic, to provoke change in attitudes and working practices.

"Censorship is a necessary tool to prevent fake news, protect children and more. But it is often used inadvertently to silence marginalised voices," said Creative Founder & Photographer, Rankin.

THE UNSEEN is specifically highlighting the breadth and severity of unfair censorship in a way that's not been seen before. The statistics of those who have joined the community highlight the core reasons marginalised people feel they are being censored:

FEMALE BODY & SEXISM/MISOGYNY

RELATED EXPERIENCES 29.6%

EXPERIENCES OF HOMO/QUEERPHOBIA 10%

POLITICALLY RELATED EXPERIENCES 7%

FATPHOBIA/PLUS SIZE DISCRIMINATION 5%

ABLEISM EXPERIENCES 4%

RACISM EXPERIENCES 4%

"IT'S A CONTINUOUS, FRUSTRATING GAME OF WHACK-A-MOLE WITH PLATFORMS, SO MUCH SO THAT I'VE ENDED UP BLENDING MY PHD IN THE MODERATION OF ONLINE ABUSE WITH MY EXPERIENCES OF CENSORSHIP," SAYS UNSEEN COMMUNITY MEMBER DR CAROLINA ARE.

The project has generated incredible interest, even at it's early stages, with hundreds of people from all over the world sharing their stories and joining the discussion. The stories shared on THE UNSEEN entry form and the posts that the entrant had censored will all be included on THE UNSEEN website launching on the 15th of June.

"We've had an incredible response so far, and we're just getting started," said Rankin. "This is an important issue, and those affected deserve to have a voice in the policies that affect them on the platforms they love and build their businesses on."

To launch the project, RANKIN has partnered with Digital-first Quantus Gallery in Shoreditch, London to hold a public exhibition. The show will feature all the posts and several of the stories submitted by entrants, alongside portraits of 13 of the community photographed by Rankin and made Interactive by the experiential design team at Media.Monks.

"We wanted to put the viewer back in control, and subvert the relationship we have with the images we see online, so working with Media.Monks was ideal. I also think it's important to show how emerging technologies like 8th Wall can be used positively, to make things fairer," said Rankin

"We're thrilled to be launching this project to the public, we hope the simple act of creating a database and awareness of these stories will help make a difference. But we're far from done, we'll be working until the system is fairer." said the creatives driving the project OPALUKE (Opal Turner and Luke Lasenby.)

The website (theunseen.site) and exhibition will launch on the 15th of June at 7pm and be open to the public from the 16th - 24th June at Quantus Gallery 11-29 Fashion Street, London, E1 6PX.

PRESS ONLY - To attend the launch please email your name to [email protected].

ABOUT RANKIN CREATIVE

RANKIN CREATIVE IS AN INDEPENDENT CREATIVE AGENCY FOUNDED BY THE EPONYMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER AND CREATIVE POLYMATH, RANKIN.

"We work with progressive brands, businesses and people to drive growth creatively and commercially using the power of popular culture, taking on some of society's biggest tensions and taboos."

Our deep roots in the visual arts and editorial world fuels our approach that ensures our work is leading culture and makes real behaviour changing impact."

RANKIN.CO.UK

ABOUT QUANTUS GALLERY

Quantus is Europe's first NFT Gallery and Advisory on London's Fashion Street, Co/founded by James Ryan of Grove Square Galleries and crypto currency and NFT expert Josh Sandhu. A hybrid Gallery, Quantus are at the forefront of all things NFT related, supporting new artists and collectors on their journey.

ABOUT MEDIA.MONKS

Media.Monks is a digital-first marketing and advertising services company that connects content, data and digital media and technology services and produces websites, games, films, social media content, digital advertising campaigns, data and measurement solutions, and more.

For Press Enquiries please visit media.monks.com.

SOURCE RANKIN CREATIVE
The Cappasity platform allows users to create 3D visualizations of real estate using the 3DShot app, as well as to upload ready-made 360 photos. Now landlords on Flatfox can use Cappasity to make their real estate ads more appealing with additional interactive visualizations.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cappasity platform allows users to create 3D visualizations of real estate using the 3DShot app, as well as to upload ready-made 360 photos. Now landlords on Flatfox can use Cappasity to make their real estate ads more appealing with additional interactive visualizations.

Flatfox is one of the leading real estate platforms in Switzerland that offers a free marketplace as well as digital tools for the online property rental process. The marketplace now supports the display of Cappasity 3D/360 content. Cappasity offers two useful solutions for real estate sellers: the 3DShot mobile application, that allows you to create and share panoramas of apartments with a smartphone camera, and 360 photo upload. The service is available to users of the Flatfox Business solution.

Cappasity's mobile application allows real estate sellers to create panoramas of apartments within a couple of minutes. To digitize a room, the user opens the app, starts recording, and slowly circles around themselves to record the space. 3DShot automatically creates a panorama that can be further embedded into the Flatfox ad.

If the seller already has a ready-made 360 photo of their apartment, they can upload it to Flatfox with a couple of clicks. To do so, Flatfox customers go to the Cappasity platform and upload a 360 photo of their apartment. Then they simply embed the result into the Flatfox ad and potential buyers and tenants can examine the apartment virtually.

How it works  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDtttcsrb8Y

Unlike usual photos, Cappasity 3D/360 content format is fully interactive and allows potential buyers to examine an apartment like they would offline: change the angle of perception, zoom in and see all the details. Embedding an interactive panorama into a listing of an apartment or a house has high potential to increase user interaction and therefore their interest in the offer. It is reported that over 80% of millennials want an opportunity to see a real estate listing in 3D prior to buying or renting.

Demo https://3d.cappasity.com/u/cappasity/9b422e73-aa6a-43a3-aaed-446979378879

"3D and 360 content is extremely helpful for remote demonstration of real estate. Cappasity has developed easy-to-use solutions for creating and sharing interactive panoramas of apartments within a matter of minutes. We're happy that real estate sellers can now embed Cappasity 3D/360 content to Flatfox," comments Kosta Popov, Cappasity CEO.

About Flatfox

Flatfox is one of the pioneers among Swiss PropTech companies. Whether it's a free real estate marketplace, handling tenant concerns or organizing the change of tenants: Flatfox provides real estate professionals with holistic support for all tasks in the letting process. Thanks to Flatfox, real estate managers and marketers can rent out properties faster and more conveniently.

Flatfox website: https://flatfox.ch/

About Cappasity Inc.

Cappasity is a comprehensive solution for the interactive visualization of products in 3D, which creates an immersive shopping experience for e-commerce.

Cappasity lets companies create & deliver 3D/AR experiences to blur the line between online and in-store shopping. It is the first scalable and easy-to-adopt solution for complex e-commerce projects that only takes 3 minutes/SKU to create a 3D and embed it into a store.

Our clients see higher conversion rates (10-30% increase), higher time on the product page, less returns, and less customer inquiries when their products have interactive 3D images. The platform also provides unique 3D analytics tool based on AI to track customers' online behavior and ensure the best product presentation online.

PRESS CONTACT

Jenny Hertz

415 8002844

https://cappasity.com

SOURCE Cappasity Inc.
"At Redken, hairdressing is our passion and we believe in the power of the salon and the sense of community it can create for both hair stylists and clients," says Shane Wolf, Global President, Professional Products Division at L'Oreal. "We knew we had to share this message of hope, not only with our community, but with anyone out there experiencing bullying who might also find a home in this industry. Partnering with the It Gets Better Project to spread that message will help support millions of young people worldwide."

Together, Redken and It Gets Better will embark on a mission to spread the message that everyone can feel safe, authentic and empowered in the hairdressing community, while evolving the hairdressing industry's LGBTQ+ inclusion practices and inspiring consumer allyship. Redken will utilize the It Gets Better unique education modules to upskill salon professionals with a training certification  allowing salons to become a Redken Certified Safe Space Salon, welcoming both clients and stylists to a space that positively influences their journey with empathy and understanding.

As part of the Hairdressers United program, Redken is also inviting stylists to share their personal stories on social media and inspire others to share theirs tagging #ItGetsBetter and #RedkenHairdressersUnited.

As Redken kicks off this new partnership with It Gets Better, the brand is excited to continue to grow its efforts with the organization, educating and inspiring both stylists and consumers to join their global mission of inclusivity and community. Consumers can learn more about this exciting initiative and what they can do to support the cause at redken.com/hairdressersunited.

*Based on 2021 edition of Kline's Salon Hair Care Global Series, among brands selling shampoos, conditioners, hair color, hair styling and hair texturizing products

ABOUT REDKEN 5th AVENUE NYC

For over 60 years, Redken has been a leader in the professional salon industry, empowering professionals and consumers to achieve healthy hair transformations with confidence. Founded by Paula Kent, a woman who believed in the power of science, Redken was the first company to take a scientific approach to hair, defined as the right balance of protein, moisture and supported by an acidic pH, which remains the alpha and omega of haircare to this very day. All Redken products are made with the highest quality ingredients, and tested by salon professionals to ensure maximum efficacy, for every hair type and texture and every hair need. Based in New York City, Redken supports the expertise of salon professionals with principle-based education, cutting edge technologies rooted in protein-science, and a portfolio of products including Shades EQ  the #1 demi-permanent hair color on the market  for maximum versatility and flexibility for clients of all hair types and hair textures.

To learn more, visit Redken.com or Instagram.com/Redken.

ABOUT IT GETS BETTER PROJECT

It Gets Better Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that strives to uplift, empower and connect LGBTQ+ youth around the globe. Created in 2010 as the result of one of the most successful viral campaigns in YouTube's history, the It Gets Better Project provides critical support and hope to LGBTQ+ youth around the world by leveraging the power of media to reach millions of people each year. The project has expanded its origins in storytelling and media to include educational resources through It Gets Better EDU and reaches 18 countries outside of the U.S. through It Gets Better Global.

The project has garnered support from President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with numerous celebrities, including Kelly Clarkson, Gabrielle Union, Zachary Quinto, Mj Rodriguez, Josie Totah, and Gigi Gorgeous. More than 750,000 people have taken the It Gets Better pledge to share messages of hope and speak up against intolerance. Please visit www.itgetsbetter.org for more information, and join the conversation on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter at @ItGetsBetter; Facebook.com/ItGetsBetterProject; and YouTube.com/ItGetsBetterProject.

SOURCE Redken
NEW YORK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --

WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of the securities of HUMBL, LLC (OTC: HMBL) and/or the Company's unregistered digital asset (sold as BLOCKS Exchange Traded Index ("ETXs") on various cryptocurrency exchanges) between November 1, 2020 and May 19, 2022, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period") of the important July 19, 2022 lead plaintiff deadline.

SO WHAT: If you purchased Humbl securities and/or the Company's ETXs during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Humbl class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=6398 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than July 19, 2022. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.

WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually handle securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate the cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs' Bar. Many of the firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, defendants violated provisions of the Exchange Act by making false and misleading statements concerning the Company's growth prospects, technological advancements, international partnerships, and financial benefits for Humbl common stock and digital asset investors, as well as using selectively timed announcements to keep Humbl stock price high so that Company insiders could sell off their holdings into artificially created volume. The complaint also alleges that defendants violated provisions of the Securities Act by selling its unregistered securities (BLOCK ETX digital assets) to investors.

To join the Humbl class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=6398 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action.

No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/.

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Contact Information:

Laurence Rosen, Esq.

Phillip Kim, Esq.

The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.

275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor

New York, NY 10016

Tel: (212) 686-1060

Toll Free: (866) 767-3653

Fax: (212) 202-3827

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

www.rosenlegal.com

SOURCE Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
Typical schools have between 500 and 5,000 students. So how do you screen 1,000+ students in 10 minutes every morning, and absolutely BLOCK the guy with the gun?



Answer: Screening-at-Speed with Barbecan's Speed-Sensitive Secure Entrance.

SEATTLE, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Barbecan Security Systems announces their most recent patent  US Patent Number 11,326,387 for a safer revolving door system with security benefits and high throughput. The company now owns 10 patents covering this unique technology, and is offering these for license or sale to a SERIOUS manufacturer.

Guards won't stop a determined gunman wearing riot gear. That's been proven the hard way.

By the time Police show upit's too late. And, arming teachers is a recipe for catastrophe.

Better gun laws won't stem the tide in our lifetime, not with over 400 million guns in America.

But, we can harden our soft targets. Especially schools.

Schools are unique. Hundreds of students must enter in mere minutes. Yet, attackers must be detected and STOPPED!

The only solution is an entry system where people walk through quickly without stopping. An entry system with weapon screening technology. Screening-at-Speed.

See the Speed-Sensitive Secure Entrance at barbecan.com, and our patent portfolio (7 US and 3 UK patents) at barbecan.com/technology/intellectual-property.

Barbecan is looking for a proven manufacturer to bring the Speed-Sensitive Secure Entrance to market as that company's product - increasing their revenue and profit while saving lives. Barbecan is currently reaching out to Security Equipment Manufacturers, Military Government Contractors, Automatic Door Manufacturers, as well as Autonomous Vehicle manufacturers. In addition to traditional security applications, targeted market research has shown a viable market for the Speed-Sensitive Secure Entrance in the $30B commercial Automatic Door market.

Contact:

Bob Osann, Director

Barbecan Security Systems, LLC

[email protected]

408-313-1990

Photos:

https://www.prlog.org/12920899

Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE Barbecan Security Systems, LLC
NEW YORK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Weiss Law is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the board of directors of Duke Realty Corporation ("Duke Realty" or the "Company") (NYSE: DRE), in connection with the proposed acquisition of the Company by Prologis, Inc. ("Prologis") (NYSE: PLD). Upon completion of the transaction, the Company's shareholders will receive 0.475 shares of Prologis common stock for each Duke Realty share owned, representing implied per-share merger consideration of approximately $55.69 based upon Prologis's June 10, 2022 closing price of $117.24. The all- stock transaction is valued at approximately $26 billion.

If you own Duke Realty shares and wish to discuss this investigation or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, visit our website:

https://www.weisslaw.co/news-and-cases/dre

Or please contact:

Joshua Rubin, Esq.

Weiss Law

305 Broadway, 7th Floor

New York, NY 10007

(212) 682-3025

(888) 593-4771

[email protected]

Weiss Law is investigating whether (i) Duke Realty's board of directors acted in the best interests of Company shareholders in agreeing to the proposed transaction, (ii) the per-share merger consideration adequately compensates Duke Realty's shareholders, and (iii) all information regarding the sales process and valuation of the transaction will be fully and fairly disclosed.

Weiss Law has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at [email protected]

SOURCE Weiss Law
This winter, the Technical Papers program received more than 600 submissions, a record tally in recent years that was boosted by the addition of a new, shorter Conference Papers format. Outside of submissions, a number of selections in the program have been curated from peer-reviewed journal ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) . Members of the review committee chose each project through a double-blind process.

"I am excited to share the 2022 program, which showcases the very best of scientific contributions from the past year," shared SIGGRAPH 2022 Technical Papers Chair Niloy J. Mitra, of University College London and Adobe Research Lab London. "The works represent innovative research that meaningfully combines machine learning with traditional approaches, among other disciplines. The new Conference Papers track is designed to capture exciting, emerging ideas, and the authors have truly outdone themselves. I am looking forward to seeing them present their work in Vancouver."

Alongside research from Yale University, Google, MIT, Meta, Ubisoft, Dartmouth College, and Autodesk, highlights from the 2022 Technical Papers program include:

Instant Neural Graphics Primitives With a Multiresolution Hash Encoding

Authors: Thomas Muller, Alex Evans, Christoph Schied, and Alexander Keller, NVIDIA

Neural networks emerged as high-quality representations of graphics primitives, such as signed distance functions, light fields, textures, and the likes. This paper can train such primitives in seconds and render them in milliseconds, allowing their use in the inner loops of graphics algorithms where they previously may have been discounted.

Character Articulation Through Profile Curves

Authors: Fernando de Goes, William Sheffler, and Kurt Fleischer, Pixar Animation Studios

This paper presents a new approach for character articulation that produces detail-preserving deformations controlled by 3D curves that profile the deforming surface. To propagate the curve articulation over the character surface, it introduces a surface-cutting algorithm and derives a cut-aware numerical discretization that provides harmonic interpolations with curve discontinuities.

CLIPasso: Semantically-Aware Object Sketching

Authors: Yael Vinker, Tel Aviv University; Ehsan Pajouheshgar, Jessica Y. Bo, and Roman Christian Bachmann, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL); Amit Haim Bermano and Daniel Cohen-Or, Tel Aviv University; Amir Zamir, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL); and Ariel Shamir, Reichman University

For this paper, the team presents "CLIPasso", a method for sketching objects at different levels of abstraction. The research defines a sketch as a set of strokes and uses a differentiable rasterizer to optimize the strokes' parameters with respect to a CLIP-based perceptual loss. The abstraction degree is controlled by varying the number of strokes.

Neural Jacobian Fields: Learning Intrinsic Mappings of Arbitrary Meshes

Authors: Noam Aigerman, Adobe Research; Kunal Gupta, University of California San Diego; Vladimir G. Kim, Adobe Research; Siddhartha Chaudhuri, Adobe Research; Jun Saito, Adobe Research; and Thibault Groueix, Adobe Research

This research introduces a framework for deep learning of deformations of meshes. The trained network is highly accurate and produces realistic results that can be applied to meshes of arbitrary triangulations and not a fixed one. The paper shows various experiments, such as UV mapping, elastic deformations, and learning to repose humans.

R2E2: Low-latency Path Tracing of Terabyte-scale Scenes Using Thousands of Cloud CPUs

Authors: Sadjad Fouladi, Microsoft Research and Stanford University; and, Brennan Shacklett, Fait Poms, Arjun Arora, Alex Ozdemir, Deepti Raghavan, Pat Hanrahan, Kayvon Fatahalian, and Keith Winstein, Stanford University

R2E2 is a system for path tracing massive scenes using a "supercomputer" constructed on the fly from thousands of small, serverless cloud computing nodes. The research shows that scenes with a terabyte of geometry and texture can be path traced at high resolution in tens of seconds using thousands of commodity cloud workers.

For even more program highlights, check out the recently released Technical Papers Preview trailer on YouTube: https://youtu.be/sK2EZE617pY.

Out of over 70 submissions, the 2022 Art Papers jury has selected 15 projects for this summer's conference  13 long papers and two short papers. The chosen works will be featured in a SIGGRAPH special issue of the Proceedings of the ACM in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, or PACMCGIT. Following a theme of "Art + Tech Relocations", the projects chosen interrogate the place of technology in the arts, and the place of the arts in a technological society. "I am thrilled about this year's Art Papers program" said SIGGRAPH 2022 Art Papers Chair Daniel Cardoso Llach, of Carnegie Mellon University. "The jury hand-picked a truly wonderful selection of 15 thought-provoking papers ranging from artistic case studies to critical interventions, media archaeologies, and speculative works. Authors engaged with issues including privacy, heritage, race and gender, and the environment. These works show how the arts can offer imaginative, speculative, and critical capacities for artistic and technological exploration beyond industrial applications. I really hope you'll take the time to discover these projects during the conference, whether you join in person or virtually."

Highlights include:

BEST IN SHOW

Traditional African Dances Preservation Using Deep Learning Techniques

Authors: Adebunmi Odefunso, Purdue University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; and, Esteban Garcia Bravo and Yingjie Chen, Purdue University

This study proposes a novel framework that applies data science algorithms to the field of cultural preservation by applying various deep learning techniques to identify, classify, and model traditional African dances from videos. The paper thus opens new avenues for computational methods to be applied to the preservation of intangible heritage.

In Search of the Plastic Image: a Media Archaeology of Scan Processing

Author: Derek Holzer, Royal Technical Institute KTH

Scan processing is an analog electronic image manipulation technology, typified by the Scanimate (1969) and the Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer (1973), which revolutionized commercial animation and inspired a generation of experimental video artists. This paper looks at the histories, functions, and uses of scan processing and proposes a contemporary reenactment as a way to investigate the possibilities this technique afforded their users.

Three Stage Drawing Transfer

Author: Robert Twomey, Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

This project creates a visual-mental-physical circuit between a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), a co-robotic arm, and a five-year-old child. From training images to the latent space of a GAN, through pen on paper to a live human collaborator, it establishes a series of translational stages between humans and non-humans played out through the medium of drawing. The results are of interest both for being outside of adult conventions and learned expression  like Dubuffet's art brut or Surrealist automatism  and for how they align machine learning with the human act of learning to draw.

Access to SIGGRAPH 2022 Technical and Art Papers programming is available at varying registration levels. Learn more and register for the conference at s2022.SIGGRAPH.org/register.

About ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH, and SIGGRAPH 2022

ACM , the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field's challenges. ACM SIGGRAPH is a special interest group within ACM that serves as an interdisciplinary community for members in research, technology, and applications in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The SIGGRAPH conference is the world's leading annual interdisciplinary educational experience showcasing the latest in computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH 2022, the 49th annual conference hosted by ACM SIGGRAPH, will take place as a hybrid event, with live events 811 August at the Vancouver Contention Centre and virtual content available starting 25 July through 31 October. Click here for news from the conference and its partners.

SOURCE SIGGRAPH
349.0 m of 0.71 g/t Au from 19.0 m to 368.0 m including

from to including 221.0 m of 1.02 g/t Au from 25.0 m ,

from ,

48.0 m of 1.63 g/t Au from 111.0 m ,

from ,

20.0 m of 3.08 g/t Au from 109.0 m and,

from and,

2.0 m of 15.15 g/t Au from 111.0 m .

"The assays from Hole 25 further demonstrate just how rich and consistent the gold mineralization is at our newly discovered Blackjack Zone," stated Cor Coe, P.Geo., CEO and Director of Sitka. "With 349.0 metres of 0.71 g/t of gold drilled from near surface, including 221.0 metres of 1.01 g/t gold and 2 metres of 15.15 g/t gold, Hole 25 has confirmed that the gold mineralization in this zone is open and extends at least 80 metres east of our initial discovery hole (Hole 21). Gold intervals of this magnitude are exactly what we are looking for as we continue to step out and expand what appears to be a large area of potentially economic intrusion-related gold mineralization."

Blackjack Zone Drilling Highlights:

Hole 21 (DDRCCC-21-021)

220 m of 1.17 g/t Au from surface





from surface Hole 22 (DDRCCC-22-022)

273 m of 0.52 g/t Au from 46 m to 319 m including,

from to including,

62 m of 1.21g/t Au





Hole 23 (DDRCCC-22-023)

205.8 m of 1.01 g/t Au from surface including,

from surface including,

91.0 m of 1.61 g/t Au





Hole 24 (DDRCCC-22-024)

107.5 m of 1.44 g/t Au from 4.5 m to 112.0 m including,

from to including,

66.0 m of 2.11 g/t Au.





Hole 25 (DDRCC-22-25; this news release)

349.0 m of 0.71 g/t Au from 19 m to 368 including

from to 368 including

221.0 m of 1.01 g/t Au from 25 m to 246 m

from to

48 m of 1.63 g/t Au from 111 m to 159 m

from to

12 m of 1.18 g/t Au from 310 m to 322 m

from to

2.0 m of 15.15 g/t Au from 111.0 m to 113.0 m

As drilling continues to increase the known size of the Blackjack zone, the potential of this area is becoming quite clear, especially when you consider Victoria Gold is currently mining the Eagle Gold deposit which had Measured and Indicated Resources prior to mining of 214 million tonnes grade of 0.63 g/t gold (Au) estimated at a 0.15 g/t cut-off (4.397 million ounces; Goodwin et al. 2019)(2). The Tombstone Gold Belt in the Dawson to Mayo area of Yukon is host to several multi-million ounce gold deposits in addition to the Eagle Gold deposit and the gold endowment of this district is beginning to be realized. The regional map of the RC Gold Project (Figure 5) shows the proximity and gold endowment of our peers in this area and Sitka's commanding land position within this fertile gold district.

Hole 25 stepped out approximately 80 m to the east of Hole 21 and was drilled at the same orientation and dip. This drill hole encountered similar geology to the previous drill holes with gold mineralization hosted both within intrusive and metasedimentary rocks and visible gold observed in the drill core. Hole 25 collared in metasedimentary rocks and then transitioned into multi-phase intrusive rock at 80 m. The hole remained in the multiphase intrusive with occasional interfingering of metasediments until the final depth of 389.2 m. Broad zones of gold mineralization are associated with quartz veins and veinlets, with higher grade gold mineralization generally hosted in sheeted quartz veins within zones of oxidation and sericite alteration.

This gold-rich zone remains open in all directions and Hole 25 results underscore that this is a large gold mineralized system. We have also confirmed that gold mineralization extends at least 100 metres south (where Hole 22 was collared), that it is continuous along vertical section (depth) from Hole 21 to Hole 22 and that it extends at least 100 m west as demonstrated in Hole 24 (see news releases dated April 26, May 17 and May 18, 2022) (Figures 1 & 2).

A pattern of step-out holes as shown in Figure 3 is planned to expand the zone east and west along the interpreted strike and further define the extent of gold-rich mineralization present in the Blackjack Zone. The goal of this phase of drilling is to gather sufficient data to estimate an initial gold resource. Sitka has employed two drill rigs that are currently on site to complete the planned 10,000 m diamond drill program.

The 2022 winter drilling program was focused in the area of the Blackjack Zone which was first intersected by Hole 21. The Blackjack Zone occurs within the Saddle West Zone where the Blackjack Fault obliquely intersects an east-west trending extensional corridor that is defined by abundant lamprophyre dykes and a large gold-in-soil anomaly of >100 ppb and >500 ppb that covers an area of 2 kilometres by 500 metres between the Saddle West, Blackjack, Saddle and Eiger Zones (Figure 4). This extensional corridor controls the emplacement of the Saddle and Eiger intrusive stocks. The large gold-in-soil anomaly is still open in all directions and drilling to date within this corridor has demonstrated the potential for a continuous zone of gold mineralization.

Table 1: Analytical Results for DDRCCC-22-025

Hole ID Azimuth () Dip () Length (m) From (m) To (m) Interval* (m) Au (g/t) DDRCCC-22-025 320 -46 389.2 19 368 349 0.709

including



25.0 246.0 220.0 1.01

including



109.0 129.0 20.0 3.08

including



111 159 48.0 1.63

including



111.0 113.0 2.0 15.15

including



158.0 159.0 1.0 9.29

including



177.0 179.0 2.0 3.46

including



209.0 246.0 37.0 1.12

including



223.0 225.0 2.0 4.80

including



310.0 322.0 12.0 1.18

including



312.0 314.0 2.0 4.20



*Intervals are drilled core length, as insufficient drilling has been undertaken to determine true widths at this time

About the RC Gold Project

The RC Gold Project consists of a 376 square kilometre contiguous district-scale land package located in the newly road accessible Clear Creek, Big Creek, and Sprague Creek districts in the heart of Yukon's Tombstone Gold Belt. It is the largest consolidated land package strategically positioned mid-way between Victoria Gold's Eagle Gold Mine - Yukon's newest gold mine which reached commercial production in the summer of 2020 - and Sabre Gold Mine's Brewery Creek Gold Mine. The RC Gold Project land package comprises five underlying properties, namely, the RC, Bee Bop, Mahtin, Clear Creek, and Barney Ridge properties*. The Company recently identified a large 500 m by 2000 m intrusion related gold system on the Property at the Saddle Eiger zone and to date has drilled 23 diamond drill holes into this system. This has been the main focus of the Company's drill programs at RC Gold in 2020, 2021 and 2022 which have returned several significant gold intercepts. including the discovery hole in the Blackjack zone in the last drill hole from the 2021 drill program, DDRCCC-21-021 ("Hole 21"). Hole 21 intersected 220.1 m of 1.17 g/t gold from surface that included 50.5 m of 2.08 g/t gold. Hole 21, was the westernmost hole drilled in the Saddle-Eiger trend and was drilled under a greater than 500 ppb gold-in-soil anomaly that was previously identified on surface. This gold-in-soil anomaly is part of the larger 2 kilometre by 500 m gold-in-soil anomaly that stretches from the Saddle Zone to the Eiger Zone and is open in all directions. Drilling in 2021 in the Eiger Zone in the easternmost area of the gold-in-soil anomaly has produced numerous significant intersections as demonstrated by Hole 9 which intersected 354 m of 0.41 g/t Au including 72 m of 0.72 g/t Au (see news release dated August 19, 2021).

Sitka Gold inherited a wealth of historical and current data from these properties from work spanning the last 40 years. Recent exploration work and the compilation of historical data have defined several mineralized zones with both bulk tonnage, intrusion-related gold deposit targets and high-grade, vein- and breccia-hosted gold targets. The RC Gold Project also has a common border with Victoria Gold's Clear Creek property at its western boundary and Florin Resources' Florin Gold property at its northern boundary.

*For more detailed information on the underlying properties please visit our website at www.sitkagoldcorp.com.

Deposit Model

Exploration on the Property has mainly focused on identifying an intrusion-related gold system ("IRGS"). The property is part of the Tombstone Gold Belt which is the prominent host to IRGS deposits within the Tintina Gold Province in Yukon and Alaska. Notable deposits from the belt include: Fort Knox Mine in Alaska with current Proven and Probable Reserves of 230 million tonnes at 0.3 g/t Au (2.471 million ounces; Sims 2018)(1); Eagle Gold Mine with current Proven and Probable Reserves of 155 million tonnes at a diluted grade of 0.65 g/t Au at the Eagle and Olive deposits (3.261 million ounces; Goodwin et al. 2019)(2); the Brewery Creek deposit with current Indicated Mineral Resource of 22.2 million tonnes at a gold grade of 1.11 g/t (0.789 million ounces; Hulse et al. 2020)(3); the Florin Gold deposit, located adjacent to Sitka's RC Gold project, with a current Inferred Mineral Resource of 170.99 million tonnes grading 0.45 g/t (2.47 million ounces; Simpson 2021)(4) and the AurMac Project with an Inferred Mineral Resource of 207.0 million tonnes grading 0.60 gram per tonne gold (3.99 millon ounces; Jutras 2022)(5).

(1) Sims J. Fort Knox Mine Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska, USA National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report. June 11, 2018.

https://s2.q4cdn.com/496390694/files/doc_downloads/2018/Fort-Knox-June-2018-Technical-Report.pdf



(2) Goodwin R, Gray P, Jutras M, Tang S, Wilbur S. Technical Report for the Eagle Gold Mine, Yukon Territory, Canada. JDS Energy & Mining Inc. December 6, 2019.

https://vitgoldcorp.com/site/assets/files/6480/jds-vit-eagle-gold-ni-43-101-fs-report-20191206.pdf



(3) Hulse D, Emanuel C, Cook C. NI43-101 Technical Report on Mineral Resources. Gustavson Associates. May 31, 2020.

https://www.goldenpredator.com/_resources/Brewery-Creek_NI-43-101-05OCT2020-File.pdf



(4) Simpson R. Florin Gold Project NI43-101 Technical Report. Geosim Services Inc. April 21, 2021.

https://sedar.com/GetFile.do?lang=EN&docClass=24&issuerNo=00005795&issuerType=03&projectNo=03236138&docId=4984158



(5) Banyan Gold News Release Dated May 17, 2022 (Technical Report to be filed within 45 days of news release)

https://www.banyangold.com/news-releases/2022/banyan-announces-4-million-ounce-gold-mineral-resource-estimate-for-the-aurmac-property-yukon-canada/

Upcoming Events

Sitka Gold will be attending the following events:

PDAC 2022 - Toronto, Ontario : June 13 th - 15 th , 2022

: - 15 , 2022 Booth #2346

Invest Yukon Conference, Dawson City , Yukon : June 21 st - 23rd, 2022

About Sitka Gold Corp.

Sitka Gold Corp. is a well-funded mineral exploration company headquartered in Canada. The Company is managed by a team of experienced industry professionals and is focused on exploring for economically viable mineral deposits with its primary emphasis on gold, silver and copper mineral properties of merit. Sitka currently has an option to acquire a 100% interest in the RC, Barney Ridge, Clear Creek and OGI properties in the Yukon and the Burro Creek Gold property in Arizona. Sitka owns a 100% interest in its Alpha Gold property in Nevada, its Mahtin Gold property in the Yukon and its Coppermine River project in Nunavut.

Sitka is currently conducting a planned 10,000 m diamond drill program at its RC Gold Project in the Yukon. A drill rig and contractor has also been secured to complete up to 5,000 feet of drilling its Alpha Gold Property in Nevada where drilling is anticipated to begin in Q2 of 2022.

The scientific and technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Cor Coe, P.Geo., Director and CEO of the Company, and a Qualified Person (QP) as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

SITKA GOLD CORP.

"Donald Penner"

President and Director

Cautionary and Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forwardlooking statements and forwardlooking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements relate to future events or future performance. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forwardlooking statements or information. Forwardlooking statements and information are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "appear", "seek", "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "approximate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "predict", "potential", "targeting", "intend", "could", "might", "should", "believe", "would" and similar expressions.

Forward-looking statements and information are provided for the purpose of providing information about the current expectations and plans of management of the Company relating to the future. Readers are cautioned that reliance on such statements and information may not be appropriate for other purposes, such as making investment decisions. Since forwardlooking statements and information address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to, the expected timing and terms of the private placement, use of proceeds, anticipated work program, required approvals in connection with the work program and the ability to obtain such approvals. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forwardlooking statements, timelines and information contained in this news release. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive.

The forwardlooking statements and information contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and no undertaking is given to update publicly or revise any forwardlooking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws or the CSE. The forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.

SOURCE Sitka Gold Corp.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --South African Airways (SAA), the national carrier of South Africa, has appointed Discover the World, a global leader in tourism and airline representation, as its general sales agent (GSA) in the United Kingdom. Effective 1 June 2022, Discover the World will be assuming responsibilities for sales and marketing representation for South African Airways in the United Kingdom.

South African Airways will be closing its regional office in London on 31 July 2022, where it has maintained a strong presence with customers and the travel trade for over 70 years. While SAA has temporarily suspended flights to UK and Europe, due to the pandemic and its business restructuring, Discover the World's appointment will ensure the airline's favorable brand reputation is maintained in the market and will provide continued engagement with travel trade and corporate partners in developing further business opportunities.

Travel Advisors can contact South African Airways for sales assistance and support via email at: [email protected] or for group bookings at [email protected] . For reservations and information, customers can visit www.flysaa.com or call South African Airways at +44 1224 015059 in the UK.

About South African Airways

South African Airways (SAA) is the national carrier of South Africa and serves destinations within South Africa and across the African continent with a modern fleet of Airbus aircraft. It is a member of the largest international airline network, Star Alliance, which offers Voyager members the opportunity to earn and redeem travel awards to over 1,900 destinations worldwide. SAA's core business is the provision of passenger airline and cargo transport services together with related services, which are provided through SAA and its wholly owned subsidiaries: SAA Technical and Air Chefs, the catering entity of SAA. SAA's world-class service and warm South African hospitality demonstrates its commitment to our customers and is recognized with numerous awards for operational and customer service excellence.

About Discover the World

Discover the World has earned a reputation as an innovative global sales representation leader in the travel industry through a worldwide network of 85 offices in more than 60 countries. With a portfolio of over 100 clients utilizing its sales, marketing and business process outsourcing services, the work of Discover the World has a direct positive impact on the growth of our clients and trade industry partners every day.

For more information about Discover the World, visit discovertheworld.com , or call (480) 707-5566.

SOURCE Discover the World
"We are extremely thankful to have received Product of the Year for our ROYAL Grade White Sturgeon Caviar. Our entire team at Sterling Caviar is truly excited by this award as it's a testament to the dedication and commitment we have in producing a quality product while, at the same time, promoting true sustainability and complete traceability of our caviar products," said Myra Tallerico, General Manager/COO of Sterling Caviar. "The sofi Awards represent the best of the best and it's an honor to now be a part of its story."

"We are honored to receive the New Product of the Year Award for our Lime Mint Shrub. This summer we celebrate our 35th year of making Shrub," said Kim Tait, president, Tait Farm Foods. "What started from an over-abundance of ripe raspberries on our farm in the mid 1890's, has led us on an unimaginable journey. This award is a wonderful and important affirmation to the continued hard work and creativity our team."

The Specialty Food Association has been presenting sofi Awards since 1972. Available only to product-qualified members of the SFA, the sofi Awards were judged at the Food Innovation Center at Rutgers University (FIC), the SFA's partner for the awards. FIC experts evaluated products using anonymous tastings across 47 categories using criteria that included flavor, appearance, texture, aroma, ingredient quality, and innovation. A total of 102 specialty food products were awarded Gold, and New Product, trophies. The complete list of sofi winners, announced in May, can be found here .

"The sofi Awards represent the excellence of the $175B specialty food industry," said Laura Lozada, vice president, Membership for the SFA. "Tait Farm Foods and Sterling Caviar exemplify the innovation and drive within our industry."

Open only to the trade, the Summer Fancy Food Show is the largest B2B-only specialty food and beverage show in the U.S. Registration for the Summer Fancy Food Show is at fancyfoodshows.com .

About the Specialty Food Association

The Specialty Food Association (SFA) has been the leading trade association and source of information about the $175 billion specialty food industry for 70 years. Founded in 1952 in New York City, the SFA represents manufacturers, importers, retailers, distributors, brokers, and others in the trade. The SFA is known for its Fancy Food Shows ; the sofi Awards , which have honored excellence in specialty food and beverage for 50 years; the Trendspotter Panel Show reports and annual predictions; the State of the Specialty Food Industry Report and Today's Specialty Food Consumer research; the ecommerce enabled SFA Product Marketplace , where members showcase products and sell directly to qualified buyers; SFA Feed , the daily source for industry news, trends and new product information, and Spill & Dish: A Specialty Food Association Podcast .

Facebook: Specialty Food Association

LinkedIn: Specialty Food Association

TikTok: specialtyfoodassociation

Twitter: @Specialty_Food

Instagram: @specialtyfoodassociation

Hashtags: #FancyFoodShow #FancyFoodNYC #SpecialtyFood #sofiAwards #sofiStory

SOURCE Specialty Food Association
LOS ANGELES, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- As a former mayor, council member, planning commissioner, and an advocate for good government with a propensity for "telling it like it is," Debbie Peterson spent years serving communities, seeing people's needs go unmet because of gross misappropriation of funds. With her new best-selling Amazon book The Happiest Corruption: Sleaze, Lies and Suicide in a California Beach Town, Peterson has combined insider political analysis, breaking-news thrills, and a historical account into a true-crime story that follows determined citizens who worked out how local government corruption happens, how to spot it, and how to fix it.

The Happiest Corruption Debbie Peterson

Peterson says, "This is insider crime history  my account of politicians, government officials, developers, contractors, and cannabis kings who operate a criminal machine that streams through my small county. It is bankrolled by public funds, campaign donations, and pallet loads of cash generated by the most valuable crop in the nation. As the mayor of a friendly little beach town, my story should be a happy memoir. Instead, it evolved into a sinister citizens-turned-spy suspense epic of bribery, extortion, dark money, and death."

Peterson has been interviewed by everyone from the Los Angeles Times to the BBC and Scripps Networks. In an interview, she can talk about

How a beach and vineyard paradise Oprah once called the Happiest City in America came to be riddled with corruption

How to fight City Hall

The one American value that unites us all, regardless of race, religion, or politics

Whatever happened to government by the people

Women's often-overlooked role in politics

"After reading this book, people will know how to beat City Hall at its worst and how to be City Hall at its best," Peterson says. "Most important of all, communities will now know how to be sure their hometown doesn't become the next Happiest Corruption in America."

Praise for The Happiest Corruption

"A must-read, firsthand account of trouble in paradise from a former mayor who spent years in the political trenches. Peterson offers a much-needed primer for keeping local government open and accountable. Buy two copies. One for you and one for your local representative."  Dave Congalton, KVEC Radio host

"Bringing the message of being a good citizen to more people is a noble task, indeed."  Valerie Cassity, owner/editor, Costa Creative Services

"Debbie Peterson is civic-minded and has pledged countless volunteer hours to work on city councils and other community service orgs. She is committed to positive change."  Sharon Biddle, publisher, The Real Estate Book

About the Author

Debbie Peterson is the former mayor of Grover Beach, Calif. She is the host of the new weekly podcast "The Corruption Chronicles" and is the author of three other books: Local Government 101; How to Beat City Hall; and 365 Ways of Good Govern-ers. Her businesses have included retail cafes, specialist bakeries, a trucking company, and distribution outlets in Scotland and London that grew to 95 employees and $7 million in annual sales in 1992. She studied journalism, radio-TV, and public relations at California State University, Fresno, and the University of Idaho.

Contact: Debbie Peterson at (805) 550-4490; [email protected]; www.DebbiePeterson.com

SOURCE Debbie Peterson
As challenges are mounting for the traditional correspondent banking model, innovative technology can reduce the risks and increase speed and global reach

TEL-AVIV, Israel, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Although the correspondent banking model has existed in various forms for centuries, today it faces many challenges that mean it must evolve to remain relevant. The urgent need for change was underlined by the G20 in April 2020, when the Financial Stability Board (FSB) called for the public and private sectors to cooperate on innovation projects. As a result, in October 2021, the FSB issued the G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-border Payments .

Facing the future

There are four main problems that payment innovators must solve: high cost, low speed, limited access, and limited transparency. Together they present serious obstacles to growth and financial inclusion together with correspondent banking being preserved for privileged regions and customer types.

Smaller local banks, money service businesses, and regulated FinTechs are excluded from traditional correspondent banking because of a binary risk-based approach. Instead of managing risks, banks frequently make simple yes/no decisions, pushing the underserved to use unregulated or lightly regulated services for payments.

The key issue is that banks are assessing opportunities on a subjective basis. Rather than focus on the merits of individual transactions, one transaction at a time, they are entering (or exiting) correspondent relationships based solely on the perceived risks in a particular geography or with a particular customer.

Payments in the digital era

TenureX has collaborated with Google Cloud to develop a secure and trusted cloud service which shall eliminate the constraints of bilateral, relationship-based banking. With TenureX, financial counterparties can cooperate seamlessly and confidently, one transaction at a time.

Built on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), TenureX promises to completely unlock the legacy of operations of correspondent banking. TenureX creates a digital layer that enables new payment corridors and new customers to join the banking ecosystem through a pay-per-transaction model instead of the relationship model, which is effectively a membership club. TenureX doesn't bypass or disrupt correspondent banking; it adds value and control to the existing structure and uses transaction data to strengthen the interface between banks and increase trust.

Ben Yaniv Chechik, TenureX Founder and CTO:

We chose GCP mainly because of their security and compliance, as well their stability & scalability. GCP offers us a wide variety of data processing services (such as the magical BigQuery) and a way to process massive amounts of data at a rapid pace. We embedded these services into our platform to be able to provide a powerful solution for financial institutions to transform the way they operate correspondent banking. As TenureX serves financial institutions around the world, latency is another challenge. GCP provides a better latency through their 10Tbs cable system. These are crucial elements for us as we aim to deliver & enhance value to financial institution's customers while reducing costs, improving efficiencies, and enabling growth, all while adhering to the strictest security and compliance standards."

With GCP's solid integrity, security and reduced risk, TenureX is promised to allow its counterparties to communicate multilaterally and objectively in real time, reduce operating costs, gain new revenue streams, diversify income, and boost financial inclusion.

Developed with help from Google Cloud Services, the TenureX Platform mission will make a major contribution to the G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-border Payments.

Website - http://www.tenurex.com

For further information:

Izhar Arieli

CEO and Co-Founder

Phone:

+ 972 (0) - 73  326-0303 (ISR)

+1- 605  836-8739 (USA)

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE TenureX
Aristeguieta is an accomplished senior executive with extensive experience in the banking and financial services industries. He currently serves as a special adviser for State Street Corporation, a leading provider of financial services to institutional investors worldwide, having stepped down recently as executive vice president. Aristeguieta served in various executive positions since joining State Street in 2019, including chief executive officer of State Street Institutional Services and executive vice president and chief executive officer of State Street International.

Before joining State Street, Aristeguieta served in several key executive roles over 25 years at Citigroup Inc., most recently as chief executive officer of Citigroup Asia Pacific, a leading universal bank in the region across institutional and consumer retail banking and broad financial services. During his time at Citigroup, Aristeguieta also served as chief executive officer of Citigroup Latin America, led Citigroup's Global Transaction Services Group in Latin America and Mexico, was chief executive officer of Citigroup Colombia, and head of the organization's Andean Region Cluster of countries, among other important roles.

"Francisco is a highly accomplished operating executive who will bring excellent and strong perspectives to our boardroom as we continue to support the advancement of The Hanover's mission and strategy. We are delighted to welcome him to the board," said Cynthia L. Egan, chair of the board of directors at The Hanover.

Aristeguieta received a bachelor's degree from Universidad Metropolitana in Venezuela and a master's degree in business administration from Brunel University in the United Kingdom. He began his career as a financial analyst with Petroleos de Venezuela. In addition, he previously served as vice chairman on the board of directors of Banco de Chile.

About The Hanover

The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. is the holding company for several property and casualty insurance companies, which together constitute one of the largest insurance businesses in the United States. The company provides exceptional insurance solutions through a select group of independent agents and brokers. Together with its agent partners, The Hanover offers standard and specialized insurance protection for small and mid-sized businesses, as well as for homes, automobiles, and other personal items. For more information, please visit hanover.com.

SOURCE The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc.
DUBLIN, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Edge AI Hardware Market (2022-2027) by Component, Device, Power Consumption, Function, End User, Geography, Competitive Analysis, and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Edge AI Hardware Market is estimated to be USD 930.1 Mn in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 2118.84 Mn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 17.9%.



Market dynamics are forces that impact the prices and behaviors of the Global Edge AI Hardware Market stakeholders. These forces create pricing signals which result from the changes in the supply and demand curves for a given product or service. Forces of Market Dynamics may be related to macro-economic and micro-economic factors. There are dynamic market forces other than price, demand, and supply. Human emotions can also drive decisions, influence the market, and create price signals.



As the market dynamics impact the supply and demand curves, decision-makers aim to determine the best way to use various financial tools to stem various strategies for speeding the growth and reducing the risks.

Company Profiles

The report provides a detailed analysis of the competitors in the market. It covers the financial performance analysis for the publicly listed companies in the market. The report also offers detailed information on the companies' recent development and competitive scenario. Some of the companies covered in this report are Advanced Micro Devices, Blaize, Cambricon Technologies, Continental, Huawei Technologies, Intel, International Business Machines, Samsung Electronics, Tenstorrent, etc.



Countries Studied

America ( Argentina , Brazil , Canada , Chile , Colombia , Mexico , Peru , United States , Rest of Americas)

, , , , , , , , Rest of Americas) Europe ( Austria , Belgium , Denmark , Finland , France , Germany , Italy , Netherlands , Norway , Poland , Russia , Spain , Sweden , Switzerland , United Kingdom , Rest of Europe )

( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Rest of ) Middle-East and Africa ( Egypt , Israel , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , South Africa , United Arab Emirates , Rest of MEA)

and ( , , , , , , Rest of MEA) Asia-Pacific ( Australia , Bangladesh , China , India , Indonesia , Japan , Malaysia , Philippines , Singapore , South Korea , Sri Lanka , Thailand , Taiwan , Rest of Asia-Pacific )

Competitive Quadrant

The report includes Competitive Quadrant, a proprietary tool to analyze and evaluate the position of companies based on their Industry Position score and Market Performance score. The tool uses various factors for categorizing the players into four categories. Some of these factors considered for analysis are financial performance over the last 3 years, growth strategies, innovation score, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc.



Ansoff Analysis

The report presents a detailed Ansoff matrix analysis for the Global Edge AI Hardware Market. Ansoff Matrix, also known as Product/Market Expansion Grid, is a strategic tool used to design strategies for the growth of the company. The matrix can be used to evaluate approaches in four strategies viz. Market Development, Market Penetration, Product Development and Diversification. The matrix is also used for risk analysis to understand the risk involved with each approach.



The report analyses the Global Edge AI Hardware Market using the Ansoff Matrix to provide the best approaches a company can take to improve its market position.



Based on the SWOT analysis conducted on the industry and industry players, the analyst has devised suitable strategies for market growth.



Why buy this report?

The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the Global Edge AI Hardware Market. The report includes in-depth qualitative analysis, verifiable data from authentic sources, and projections about market size. The projections are calculated using proven research methodologies.

The report has been compiled through extensive primary and secondary research. The primary research is done through interviews, surveys, and observation of renowned personnel in the industry.

The report includes an in-depth market analysis using Porter's 5 forces model and the Ansoff Matrix. In addition, the impact of Covid-19 on the market is also featured in the report.

The report also includes the regulatory scenario in the industry, which will help you make a well-informed decision. The report discusses major regulatory bodies and major rules and regulations imposed on this sector across various geographies.

The report also contains the competitive analysis using Positioning Quadrants, the analyst's Proprietary competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description



2 Research Methodology

3 Executive Summary



4 Market Dynamics

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Increasing Penetration of AI in Edge Devices

4.1.2 Rise in Investment in AI Startups

4.1.3 Rapid Growth in the Number of Intelligent Applications

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 Less Number of AI Experts Available

4.2.2 Lack of Awareness among the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 Emergence of the 5G Network to Bring IT and Telecom Together

4.3.2 Increase in Adoption of Robotic Technology in Emerging Countries

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Power Consumption and Size Constraint



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Regulatory Scenario

5.2 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Ansoff Matrix Analysis



6 Global Edge AI Hardware Market, By Component

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Memory

6.3 Processor

6.3.1 ASICs

6.3.2 CPU

6.3.3 FPGA

6.3.4 GPU

6.4 Sensor



7 Global Edge AI Hardware Market, By Device

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Automotive

7.3 Edge servers

7.4 Robots

7.5 Smart mirrors

7.6 Smart speakers

7.7 Smartphones

7.8 Surveillance cameras

7.9 Wearables



8 Global Edge AI Hardware Market, By Power Consumption

8.1 Introduction

8.2 1-3 W

8.3 3-5 W

8.4 5-10W

8.5 Less than 1W

8.6 More than 10W



9 Global Edge AI Hardware Market, By Function

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Training

9.3 Inference



10 Global Edge AI Hardware Market, By End User

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Aerospace & Defense

10.3 Automotive & Transportation

10.4 Construction

10.5 Consumer Electronics

10.6 Government

10.7 Healthcare

10.8 Industrial



11 Americas' Edge AI Hardware Market

11.1 Introduction

11.2 Argentina

11.3 Brazil

11.4 Canada

11.5 Chile

11.6 Colombia

11.7 Mexico

11.8 Peru

11.9 United States

11.10 Rest of Americas



12 Europe's Edge AI Hardware Market

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Austria

12.3 Belgium

12.4 Denmark

12.5 Finland

12.6 France

12.7 Germany

12.8 Italy

12.9 Netherlands

12.10 Norway

12.11 Poland

12.12 Russia

12.13 Spain

12.14 Sweden

12.15 Switzerland

12.16 United Kingdom

12.17 Rest of Europe



13 Middle East and Africa's Edge AI Hardware Market

13.1 Introduction

13.2 Egypt

13.3 Israel

13.4 Qatar

13.5 Saudi Arabia

13.6 South Africa

13.7 United Arab Emirates

13.8 Rest of MEA



14 APAC's Edge AI Hardware Market

14.1 Introduction

14.2 Australia

14.3 Bangladesh

14.4 China

14.5 India

14.6 Indonesia

14.7 Japan

14.8 Malaysia

14.9 Philippines

14.10 Singapore

14.11 South Korea

14.12 Sri Lanka

14.13 Thailand

14.14 Taiwan

14.15 Rest of Asia-Pacific



15 Competitive Landscape

15.1 Competitive Quadrant

15.2 Market Share Analysis

15.3 Strategic Initiatives

15.3.1 M&A and Investments

15.3.2 Partnerships and Collaborations

15.3.3 Product Developments and Improvements



16 Company Profiles

16.1 Advanced Micro Devices

16.2 Amazoncom

16.3 Applied Brain Research

16.4 Baidu

16.5 Beijing Horizon Robotics Technology

16.6 Blaize

16.7 Cambricon Technologies

16.8 Ceva Logistics

16.9 Continental

16.10 General Vision

16.11 Graphcore

16.12 Halio,

16.13 Huawei Technologies

16.14 Intel

16.15 International Business Machines

16.16 MediaTek

16.17 Micron Technology

16.18 Microsoft

16.19 Mythic

16.20 Nvidia

16.21 Samsung Electronics

16.22 Tenstorrent



17 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/czqmvu

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SOURCE Research and Markets
ITASCA, Ill., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In the latest episode of Trending Today, airing on Fox Business on Saturday, June 25th at 5:30pm EST, Media Monkey, a leader in the marketing industry, shares its custom solutions for its customers unique marketing needs. Watch to learn how Media Monkey can be your company's one stop shop for digital and traditional marketing. This episode also features Media Monkey's new Hazcom application, which utilizes a simple, user-friendly interface to provide a trailblazing alternative to traditional SDS document organization and storage. Filming will occur at the renowned National Restaurant Association in Chicago!

Whether customers require a box of business cards, or a custom-tailored website, Media Monkey provides comprehensive support and solutions for their customers' needs. "We have an innovative team and list of capabilities that allows us to fill in wherever our customers need us. Our core values revolve around approaching our customers' needs with a can-do attitude, while looking at our customers challenges as an opportunity to develop a unique solution and earn their trust along the way," says Media Monkey's Ernest Krause, VP of Sales. Media Monkey prides itself on bringing decades of experience, a team that values creative problem solving, and result-focused solutions to serve their customers' businesses. With a focus on innovative thinking, Media Monkey addresses pack out, logistics, and communication to ensure customers' goals and plans are executed as they envisioned.

Media Monkey's Hazcom app improves business safety by putting safety knowledge at your fingertips. About the inspiration behind Hazcom, Krause says, "We wanted to give our customers speedy and easy to use application that houses their safety data. We know that when it comes to safety at the workplace every second counts. The Hazcom app has given our customers one of the most user-friendly safety tools available. We are always working on new ways to expand its offerings, so it is not just a useful safety tool, but an all-encompassing safety training resource. Our team's willingness to research and comprehend our clients' needs is a testament to the diversity of what Media Monkey is capable of." This all-inclusive mobile application makes handling SDS sheets easier as they are accessed rapidly, updated instantly from the manufacturer, and effortlessly shared from a mobile device. Included features allow the upload of business Standard Safety practices, and safety videos, tips and files as well as quick, easy access to Poison Control. Trending Today Senior Producer Harris Plummer says, "Here at Trending Today we value creative solutions that simplify how businesses deal with important, necessary information in a way that is efficient and innovative."

About Trending Today:

Trending Today is an award-winning business show that features entrepreneurs, companies, and trendsetters that are transforming their respective industries. Trending Today guests share their stories and commitment to building their brands, inspiring entrepreneurship and the American dream. Trending Today airs on Fox Business Saturdays. Learn more at www.TrendingToday.com.

About Media Monkey:

Media Monkey has over 30 years of marketing experience, creating a solid foundation of resources to provide successful results for their clients. As a leader in the marketing industry, it focuses on unique, personalized, and complete solutions that meet their client's needs. Learn more at www.mediamonkeymarketing.com.

About Hazcom:

Media Monkey's Hazcom application is an all-inclusive mobile app that offers a simple and effective interface, providing easy access to important safety knowledge. While eliminating paper waste and keeping employees informed on safety knowledge, the Hazcom app could replace current and traditional SDS sheets for businesses. Learn more at www.hazcoms.com.

About the Author:

Michelle Layne is the resident writer for Trending Today. She loves telling and following inspiring stories about entrepreneurs who are revolutionizing their industries and chasing their dreams. She has a Master of Science in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Southern New Hampshire University.

Media Contact

Name: Liz Plummer

Phone: (561) 201-0506

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SOURCE Trending Today
NEW YORK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- From $143.6 million in 2021, the U.A.E. diesel generator set market is likely to observe a compound annual growth rate of 4.0% throughout 20212030 and reach $204.5 million, According to the market research report published by P&S Intelligence. The considerable advance is credited to the increasing requirement for backup and prime sources of power, chiefly in residential spaces, retail outlets, hotels, hospitals, and other commercial spaces. The industry is also driven by the high demand for diesel gensets with medium and high power ratings from the mining, construction, energy & power, manufacturing, and oil & gas sectors.

The 376750 kVA category had the largest share, of more than 40%, of the U.A.E. diesel generator set market in 2021. This is credited to the increasing installation of these gensets in shops, healthcare centers, hospitality units, and industrial facilities as a backup electricity source.

Get the sample pages of this report at: https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/uae-diesel-generator-set-market/report-sample

The largest revenue share, of 40%, in the U.A.E. diesel generator set market, was held by the industrial category in 2021, and it is likely to showcase significant growth in the years to come. The booming industrial development across the nation, driven by government efforts to lessen their reliance on oil & gas, is driving the sales of diesel generator sets.

The U.A.E. is also observing a growing usage of data centers by hyperscale cloud providers and businesses across other sectors looking to exploit the national and global data consumption. The government has also driven the need for cloud-based facilities in the nation. Additionally, with the quick development of technologies such as IoT, big data, edge computing, and 5G connectivity, extra space for data has become essential in the U.A.E.

The requirement for fuel-efficient DG sets is rising among construction businesses, oil & gas firms, and other enterprises in the nation. To content the surging need, U.A.E. diesel generator set market players are introducing innovative products, entering into partnerships, and allotting resources and funds to establish or develop their supply chains.

Browse detailed report on U.A.E. Diesel Generator Set Market Growth and Forecast Report 2022-2030

The U.A.E. has hosted numerous international events in the recent past, for example, the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, which brought together more than 1,000 exhibitors from 50 nations; it was organized in 2022. Furthermore, in 2019, the AFC Asian Cup was held, witnessing the participation of 24 teams. Likewise, the Special Olympics World Games were held in Abu Dhabi and attended by around 7,500 athletes. Further, Expo 2020, which was one of the biggest recent events in Dubai, was held in 2021.

Browse Other Related Reports Published by P&S

Philippines Diesel Generator Set Market Research Report

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India Residential Diesel Genset Market Research Report

About P&S Intelligence

P&S Intelligence provides market research and consulting services to a vast array of industries across the world. As an enterprising research and consulting company, P&S believes in providing thorough insights on the ever-changing market scenario, to empower companies to make informed decisions and base their business strategies with astuteness. P&S keeps the interest of its clients at heart, which is why the insights we provide are both honest and accurate. Our long list of satisfied clients includes entry-level firms as well as multi-million-dollar businesses and government agencies.

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SOURCE P&S Intelligence
Acquisition Rationale and Highlights:

Accretive transaction, doubling of UEC's uranium resources in world-class, politically stable, uranium mining jurisdictions at only a 13.7% dilution to UEC's outstanding shares (1)

Pro forma UEC will have the largest uranium portfolio focused exclusively in the Americas, located in proven and stable jurisdictions, and combining diversified U.S. production and Canadian development assets

Recent global events have set in motion long-term structural changes in the supply chains of energy commodities where security of supply and reduction of geopolitical and transportation risk will be key strategic differentiators

On the demand side, there is a growing trend by Western utilities to secure supplies from uranium projects in politically stable jurisdictions

UEX portfolio is comprised of 29 uranium projects covering key areas of the producing eastern side and development western side of prolific Athabasca basin

5 of the 29 projects are advanced resource stage and already in strong joint-venture partnerships with established uranium miners which allows UEC to remain operationally focused in the U.S. while benefiting from a new development pipeline with significant exploration potential in Canada

UEX complements UEC's near-term production-ready and brownfield assets in the U.S. with medium and long-term production potential in Canada

UEC maintains its strong balance sheet with over $180 (2) million of cash and liquid assets, with no debt, supporting production readiness and its ability to advance a strengthened project portfolio

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas, and SASKATOON, SK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Uranium Energy Corp. (NYSE American: UEC) (the "Company" or "UEC") and UEX Corporation (TSX: UEX), ("UEX") are pleased to announce they have entered into a definitive arrangement agreement (the "Agreement"), pursuant to which UEC will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of UEX by way of statutory plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") under the Canada Business Corporations Act.

Under the terms of the Agreement, each holder of the common shares of UEX (each, a "UEX Share") will receive 0.0831 of one UEC share (each, a "UEC Share") in exchange for each UEX Share. This share exchange ratio implies consideration of approximately C$0.43 (3) per UEX Share and a premium of approximately 50% based on the closing price of UEX's shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX") on June 10, 2022.

At closing, existing UEC and UEX shareholders will own approximately 86.3% and 13.7%, respectively, of UEC based on current outstanding common shares.

Notes : (1) Subject to the completion of technical reports by UEC after closing (2) See UEC news release dated June 8, 2022; Subsequent to the closing of the Anfield indebtedness, and the pending return of certain surety amounts related to the U1 Americas transaction; Equity holdings include 15M shares of Uranium Royalty Corp (UROY) (3) Based on a spot exchange rate on June 10, 2022 of 1.2777 Canadian dollars per U.S. dollar

Amir Adnani, President and CEO of UEC, stated: "UEC's acquisition of Uranium One Americas, Inc. in December 2021 marked the largest M&A transaction in the uranium sector in about a decade. The transaction was highly accretive for the Company, and we have seen a very positive response from our shareholders and the marketplace. The strategic acquisition of UEX has the same characteristics and will grow our diversified portfolio in the politically stable and mining friendly jurisdiction of Canada. It also marks the largest North American M&A transaction in the uranium sector following the U1A acquisition. This transaction underscores UEC's sector leading strategy as the fastest growing, pure play, 100% un-hedged uranium company with assets only in the Western hemisphere. As with the U1A acquisition, the purchase price is equal to only 13.7% of the pro forma market capitalization, yet the acquisition is expected to more than double the size of our attributable measured and indicated uranium resources. This opportunity provides entry into two of Canada's most prospective uranium districts in Saskatchewan and Nunavut, and cements UEC's position as not only a leading American uranium mining company but a North American one as well. We commend Roger Lemaitre and the UEX team for having assembled and advanced this highly prospective portfolio and look forward to working with their experienced and professional Canadian team. They will be of great benefit to UEC moving forward. Furthermore, the key projects in the UEX portfolio are already in joint venture partnerships with uranium producers, including Cameco and Orano, and we look forward to working with them as the projects continue development towards production."

Roger Lemaitre, President and CEO of UEX, commented: "This transaction with UEC reflects the efforts of the UEX team to create value through building an attractive strategic portfolio of assets and ultimately delivers a great outcome for UEX shareholders and complements our recent acquisition of JCU (Canada) Exploration Company Limited ("JCU"). The combination of UEC and UEX brings together two very strong and complementary portfolios and, in addition to a significant premium, provides our shareholders with the opportunity to participate in the continued growth of UEC. UEX shareholders will gain substantial exposure to production-ready low-cost U.S. ISR (in situ recovery) mining assets, a substantial physical uranium portfolio, a strong balance sheet and access to capital. I look forward to seeing UEC's management team continue to execute on their growth strategy and build upon the success we have already seen with UEX's portfolio of assets."

Additional Benefits of the Acquisition to UEX shareholders

UEC's strong balance sheet and liquidity provides UEX with additional capital to fund continued exploration and growth initiatives at its projects in the Athabasca basin and Nunavut

basin and Provides UEX's shareholders with substantial exposure to production-ready uranium assets in the United States , complementing UEX's current portfolio of development stage assets in Canada

UEX Asset Portfolio Overview

49.1% ownership in Shea Creek (operated by Orano, 50.9% ownership): Currently one of the largest undeveloped deposits in the Athabasca Basin, hosts 67.6M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Indicated and 28.1M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Inferred resources (100% basis) (1)

Currently one of the largest undeveloped deposits in the Basin, hosts lbs. U O of Indicated and lbs. U O of Inferred resources (100% basis) 100% ownership in Horseshoe-Raven: Open pit amenable project located only 4 kms from Cameco's Rabbit Lake Mill, hosts 37.4M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Indicated resources (100% basis) (2)

Open pit amenable project located only 4 kms from Cameco's Rabbit Lake Mill, hosts lbs. U O of Indicated resources (100% basis) 82.8% ownership in Christie Lake: Resource stage asset located in the Athabasca basin that hosts 20.4M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Inferred resource (100% basis) (3)

Resource stage asset located in the basin that hosts lbs. U O of Inferred resource (100% basis) 16.9% ownership in Kiggavik (operated by Orano, 66.2% ownership): Feasibility stage project located in Nunavut, Canada that hosts 127.3M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Indicated and 5.4M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Inferred resource (100% basis) (treated as a historical estimate for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (" NI 43-101 ") (4)

Feasibility stage project located in that hosts lbs. U O of Indicated and lbs. U O of Inferred resource (100% basis) (treated as a historical estimate for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (" ") 15% ownership in Millennium (operated by Cameco, 69.9% ownership): Feasibility stage project located between McArthur River Mine and Key Lake Mill that hosts 75.9M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Indicated and 29.0M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Inferred resource (100% basis) (treated as a historical estimate for the purposes of NI 43-101) (5)

Feasibility stage project located between and Key Lake Mill that hosts lbs. U O of Indicated and lbs. U O of Inferred resource (100% basis) (treated as a historical estimate for the purposes of NI 43-101) 5% ownership in Wheeler River (operated by Denison , 95% ownership): Denison completed a PFS in 2018 highlighting robust economics. The Wheeler River project hosts a total of 132.1M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Indicated (inclusive of 109.4M lbs. U 3 O 8 probable reserves) and 3.0M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Inferred resources (100% basis) (treated as a historical estimate for the purposes of NI 43-101) (6)

completed a PFS in 2018 highlighting robust economics. The Wheeler River project hosts a total of lbs. U O of Indicated (inclusive of lbs. U O probable reserves) and lbs. U O of Inferred resources (100% basis) (treated as a historical estimate for the purposes of NI 43-101) Other Projects: The remainder of UEX's portfolio consists of one resource-level project, four mid-stage projects and 18 grassroots projects which will help provide further resource growth and long-term production sustainability for UEC

For mineral resource estimates referenced above as "historical estimates", UEX and UEC are not treating this information as current mineral resources, have not verified this information and are not relying on it. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify these historical estimates as current mineral resources. UEX and UEC currently do not plan to conduct work to verify the historical estimates other than using them to guide exploratory and possible development work.

UEC Asset Portfolio Overview

Wyoming Hub & Spoke ISR Portfolio: Seven satellite projects, with a combined Measured and Indicated resource of 62M lbs. U 3 O 8 and 7M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Inferred resources, and the Irigaray Processing Plant with a licensed production capacity of 2.5M lbs./year (7)

satellite projects, with a combined Measured and Indicated resource of lbs. U O and lbs. U O of Inferred resources, and the Irigaray Processing Plant with a licensed production capacity of lbs./year Texas Hub & Spoke ISR Portfolio: Four satellite projects, with a combined Measured and Indicated resource of 6.5M lbs. U 3 O 8 and 12.5M lbs. U 3 O 8 of Inferred resources, and the Hobson Processing Plant with an installed production capacity of 2M lbs./year (8)

Four satellite projects, with a combined Measured and Indicated resource of lbs. U O and lbs. U O of Inferred resources, and the Hobson Processing Plant with an installed production capacity of lbs./year Other Projects: U.S. Hardrock pipeline, Paraguay ISR uranium portfolio, Paraguay Titanium business and the Diabase project in the Athabasca Basin

U.S. Hardrock pipeline, Paraguay ISR uranium portfolio, Paraguay Titanium business and the Diabase project in the Basin Physical Uranium Portfolio: A 5M lb. physical portfolio of U.S. warehoused uranium (U 3 O 8 ).

A lb. physical portfolio of U.S. warehoused uranium (U O ). Strategic Equity Interest: 16% equity stake in Uranium Royalty Corp.

Readers are cautioned that resources reported by UEX have been prepared and reported pursuant to the disclosure standards required by NI 43-101, and the resources reported by UEC have been prepared pursuant to the disclosure standards required under Regulation S-K subpart 1300 ("S-K 1300") adopted by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for filings under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Resources that are reported pursuant to S-K 1300 may not qualify as resources under NI 43-101 or may differ from resources prepared under NI 43-101, and vice versa.

Transaction Conditions & Timing

UEX intends to call a meeting of shareholders to be held in August 2022 to seek shareholder approval for the Arrangement (the "UEX Meeting"). Completion of the Arrangement will require:

approval of at least 66 2/3% of the votes cast by UEX shareholders at the UEX Meeting, and

approval of a simple majority of the votes cast by UEX shareholders at the UEX Meeting, excluding votes from certain management shareholders, as required under Multilateral Instrument 61-101.

Completion of the Arrangement is also subject to the receipt of court and stock exchange approvals, and other customary closing conditions for transactions of this nature, such as Investment Canada approval.

The Agreement provides for, among other things, non-solicitation covenants, with "fiduciary out" provisions that allow UEX to consider and accept a superior proposal, subject to a "right to match period" in favour of UEC. The Agreement also provides for a termination fee of US$8.25 million to be paid by UEX to UEC if the Agreement is terminated in certain specified circumstances. In addition, under the Agreement UEC has agreed to provide UEX with C$5 million funding by way of a private placement of UEX Shares at a price of C$0.43 per UEX Share (the "Private Placement"). Closing of the Private Placement is subject to the approval of the TSX.

The Arrangement has been unanimously approved by the Board of Directors of UEX. The directors and senior officers of UEX, holding in aggregate approximately 0.5% of the issued and outstanding UEX Shares, have entered into voting support agreements with UEC, pursuant to which they have agreed to vote their shares in favour of the Arrangement at the UEX Meeting. TD Securities and Sprott Capital Partners have provided opinions to the UEX Board of Directors to the effect that, as of the date thereof, and based upon and subject to the assumptions, limitations and qualifications stated in such opinions, the consideration to be received by UEX shareholders pursuant to the Arrangement is fair, from a financial point of view, to such shareholders.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2022.

Advisors and Counsel

BMO Capital Markets and Rothschild & Co are acting as financial advisor to UEC in connection with the transaction. McMillan LLP is acting as legal advisor to UEC.

TD Securities and Sprott Capital Partners are acting as financial advisors to UEX in connection with the transaction. Koffman Kalef LLP is acting as legal advisor to UEX.

Webcast and Conference Call

UEC and UEX will host a joint webcast on June 13, 2022 at 8:00 AM Pacific Time (11:00 AM Eastern Time), for members of the investment community to discuss the Arrangement. Webcast information are provided below.

Webcast URL

https://www.bigmarker.com/vid-conferences/VID-Town-Hall?utm_bmcr_source=irinc

Notes on Technical Disclosure

The technical information in this news release relating to UEC has been reviewed by Clyde L. Yancey, P.G., Vice President-Exploration for UEC, being a Qualified Person under Item 1302 of Regulation S-K-1300 and NI 43-101

The technical information relating to UEX in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Roger Lemaitre, P.Eng., P.Geo., UEX's President and CEO.

Notes : (1) NI 43-101 Technical Report "2022 Technical Report on the Shea Creek Project, Saskatchewan" with an effective date of January 1, 2022, a copy of which is available under UEX Corporation's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. These resources are reported in accordance with the CIM definition standards adopted by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum council on May 19, 2014 (the "CIM Definition Standards") (2) NI 43-101 Technical Report "2021 Technical Report on the Horseshoe-Raven Project, Saskatchewan" with an effective date of December 31, 2021, a copy of which is available under UEX Corporation's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. These resources are reported in accordance with the CIM Definition Standards. (3) NI 43-101 Technical Report "Technical Report for the Christie Lake Uranium Project, Saskatchewan, Canada" with an effective date of December 31, 2021, a copy of which is available under UEX Corporation's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. These resources are reported in accordance with the CIM Definition Standards. (4) Kiggavik resources as reported by Orano in their 2021 Activities Report available on their website at https://www.orano.group/docs/default-source/orano-doc/finance/publications-financieres-et-reglementees/2021/orano-annual-activity-report-2021.pdf?sfvrsn=a2e56244_8 converted from tonnes U to pounds U 3 O 8 and from %U to %U 3 O 8 . The reader is cautioned that neither UEC or UEX are aware whether Orano's reporting of resources conforms to NI 43-101 and CIM guidelines. These are treated by the UEX and UEC as historic resource estimates. There are no other estimates available to UEC or UEX. (5) Millennium resources as reported by Cameco on their website at https://www.cameco.com/businesses/uranium-projects/millennium/reserves-resources#measured_and_indicated as of December 31, 2021. The reader is cautioned that neither UEX nor UEC are aware of whether Cameco's reporting conforms to NI 43-101 and CIM guidelines. These are treated by the Company as historic resource estimates. Cameco has reported that the estimates have been prepared in accordance with the CIM Definitions Standards. There are no other estimates available to UEC or UEX. (6) Wheeler River resources as reported by Denison's Prefeasibility Study as posted on October 30, 2018 on SEDAR.com using a cut-off grade of 0.2% U3O8 for the Gryphon Deposit and 0.8% U3O8 for the Phoenix Deposit. These are treated by the UEC and UEX as historic resource estimates.There are no other estimates available to UEC or UEX. (7) The Technical Report Summary ("TRS") was prepared under S-K 1300 and was filed on April 4, 2022 with the SEC through EDGAR on Form 8-K and is also available on SEDAR as a "Material Document" filed on April 4, 2022. The TRS was prepared on behalf of the Company by WWC Engineering, of Sheridan, Wyoming. (8) NI 43-101 Technical Reports on the Palangana (effective date of January 15, 2010), Goliad (effective date of March 7, 2008), Burke Hollow (effective date of November 27, 2017) and Salvo (effective date of March 31, 2011) projects; copies of which are available under UEC's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. These resources are reported in accordance with the CIM Definition Standards.

About Uranium Energy Corp

Uranium Energy Corp is America's leading, fastest growing, uranium mining company listed on the NYSE American. UEC is a pure play uranium company and is advancing the next generation of low-cost, environmentally friendly ISR mining uranium projects. The Company has two production ready ISR hub and spoke platforms in South Texas and Wyoming, anchored by fully licensed and operational processing capacity at the Hobson and Irigaray Processing Plants. UEC also has seven U.S. ISR uranium projects with all of their major permits in place. Additionally, the Company has other diversified holdings of uranium assets, including: 1) one of the largest physical uranium portfolios of U.S. warehoused U 3 O 8 ; 2) a major equity stake in the only royalty company in the sector, Uranium Royalty Corp; and 3) a pipeline of resource-stage uranium projects in Arizona, New Mexico and Paraguay. The Company's operations are managed by professionals with a recognized profile for excellence in their industry, a profile based on many decades of hands-on experience in the key facets of uranium exploration, development and mining.

About UEX Corporation

UEX is a Canadian uranium and cobalt exploration and development company involved in an exceptional portfolio of uranium projects. UEX's directly-owned portfolio of projects is located in the eastern, western and northern perimeters of the Athabasca Basin, the world's richest uranium region which in 2020 accounted for approximately 8.1% of the global primary uranium production. In addition to advancing its uranium development projects through its ownership interest in JCU, UEX is currently advancing several other uranium deposits in the Athabasca Basin which include the Paul Bay, Ken Pen and Orora deposits at the Christie Lake Project , the Kianna, Anne, Colette and 58B deposits at its currently 49.1%-owned Shea Creek Project, the Horseshoe and Raven deposits located on its 100%-owned Horseshoe-Raven Project and the West Bear Uranium Deposit located at its 100%-owned West Bear Project.

Additional Information

Full details of the Arrangement are set out in the Agreement, which will be filed by UEX under its profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. In addition, further information regarding the Arrangement will be contained in a management information circular to be prepared in connection with the UEX Meeting and filed on UEX's profile on www.sedar.com at the time that it is mailed to securityholders. All securityholders are urged to read the management information circular once it becomes available as it will contain additional important information concerning the Arrangement.

For additional information, please contact:

Uranium Energy Corp Investor Relations

Toll Free: (866) 748-1030

Fax: (361) 888-5041

E-mail: [email protected]

Twitter: @UraniumEnergy

Stock Exchange Information:

NYSE American: UEC

Frankfurt Stock Exchange Symbol: U6Z

WKN: AJDRR

ISN: US916896103

UEX Corporation

Roger Lemaitre, President & CEO

Telephone: (306) 979-3849



Notices to U.S. Investors

Certain projects in the UEX Asset Portfolio contain "historic resources" which have been estimated in compliance with CIM Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves but should not be considered or treated as current resources as defined under NI 43-101. These resources should be considered a "historical estimate" as defined under NI 43-101. In each instance, the reliability of the historical estimate is considered reasonable, but a Qualified Person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as a current Mineral Resource, and UEC is not treating the historical estimate as a current Mineral Resource.

The mineral resources referred to in the UEX Asset Portfolio herein have been estimated in accordance with the definition standards on mineral resources of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum referred to in NI 43-101 and are not compliant with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") Industry Guide 7 guidelines. In addition, measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources and inferred mineral resources, while recognized and required by Canadian regulations, are not defined terms under SEC Industry Guide 7 and are normally not permitted to be used in reports and registration statements filed with the SEC. Accordingly, we have not reported them in the United States. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the mineral resources in these categories will ever be converted into mineral reserves. These terms have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. In particular, it should be noted that mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources or inferred mineral resources will ever be upgraded to a higher category. In accordance with Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources cannot form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part of the reported measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources or inferred mineral resources referred to herein are economically or legally mineable.

UEC is now subject to the requirements of Regulation S-K (subpart) 1300  Disclosure by Registrants Engaged in Mining Operations with respect to disclosure of mining operations that are material to it starting with its fiscal year ending July 31, 2022 or sooner if it files a registration statement and can only rely on technical information contained in a technical report summary prepared in accordance with Regulation S-K (subpart) 1300.

Safe Harbor Statement

Except for the statements of historical fact contained herein, the information presented in this news release constitutes "forward-looking statements" as such term is used in applicable United States and Canadian laws. These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Any other statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans, "estimates" or "intends", or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and should be viewed as "forward-looking statements". Such 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 be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and other factors include, among others, market and other conditions, the actual results of exploration activities, variations in the underlying assumptions associated with the estimation or realization of mineral resources, the availability of capital to fund programs and the resulting dilution caused by the raising of capital through the sale of shares, accidents, labor disputes and other risks of the mining industry including, without limitation, those associated with the environment, delays in obtaining governmental approvals, permits or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities, title disputes or claims limitations on insurance coverage. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. 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 contained in this news release and in any document referred to in this news release. Certain matters discussed in this news release and oral statements made from time to time by representatives of the Company may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the Federal securities laws. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be achieved. Forward-looking information is subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Many of these factors are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. Important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially and that could impact the Company and the statements contained in this news release can be found in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For forward-looking statements in this news release, the Company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Company assumes no obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward  Looking Statements

This news release includes certain "ForwardLooking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forwardlooking information" under applicable Canadian securities laws. These forwardlooking statements or information relate to, among other things: anticipated benefits of the Arrangement to UEC, UEX and their respective securityholders; the timing and receipt of required securityholder, court, stock exchange, creditor and regulatory approvals for the Arrangement; the completion of the Private Placement; the ability of UEC and UEX to satisfy the other conditions to, and to complete, the Arrangement; the anticipated timing of the mailing of the UEX management information circular regarding the Arrangement, the closing of the Arrangement; future growth potential for UEC and its businesses; and future mine development plans.

In respect of the forwardlooking statements and information concerning the anticipated completion of the proposed Arrangement and the anticipated timing for completion of the Arrangement, the parties have provided them in reliance on certain assumptions that they believe are reasonable at this time, including assumptions as to the time required to prepare and mail UEX Meeting materials, the ability of UEX to receive, in a timely manner, the necessary securityholder, court, stock exchange, and regulatory approvals; and the ability of the parties to satisfy, in a timely manner, the other conditions to the closing of the Arrangement. Timing of these matters may change for a number of reasons, including unforeseen delays in preparing material for the UEX Meeting; inability to secure necessary securityholder, court, stock exchange, and regulatory approvals in the time assumed or the need for additional time to satisfy the other conditions to the completion of the Arrangement. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forwardlooking statements and information contained in this news release concerning these times.

These statements reflect the parties' respective current views with respect to future events and are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Such factors include, the synergies expected from the Arrangement not being realized; business integration risks; fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in securities markets and the market price of UEC shares; fluctuations in the spot and forward price of uranium or certain other commodities (such as natural gas, fuel oil and electricity); fluctuations in the currency markets (such as the Canadian dollar and the U.S. dollar); changes in national and local government, legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments in Canada and the United States; operating or technical difficulties in connection with mining or development activities; risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining (including environmental hazards and industrial accidents); risks relating to the credit worthiness or financial condition of suppliers, refiners and other parties with whom the parties do business; inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; and the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on mining, availability and increasing costs associated with mining inputs and labour; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, including the risks of obtaining necessary licenses, permits and approvals from government authorities; title to properties; and the factors identified under the caption "Risk Factors" in UEC's Form 10K and under the caption "Risk Factors" in UEX's Annual Information Form. In addition, the failure of UEX to comply with the terms of the Arrangement Agreement may result in UEX being required to pay a termination fee to UEC, the result of which could have a material adverse effect on UEX's financial position and results of operations and its ability to fund growth prospects and current operations. Although the parties have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be anticipated, estimated or intended. The parties do not intend, and do not assume any obligation, to update these forwardlooking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements or information, other than as required by applicable law.

SOURCE Uranium Energy Corp
NEW YORK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, addressing the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Global Forum today, praised the leading global Jewish advocacy organization's leadership on key American foreign policy issues. AJC's missions "align with many of the United States top foreign policy priorities," he said.

"I'd like to thank AJC for its enduring partnership, for its ongoing work, and for all I know that we'll continue to do together" to support Ukraine, to combat antisemitism worldwide, support Israel's security, prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and expand Arab-Israeli normalization and peace, Blinken remarked in a video address from the State Department.

"We are so grateful for AJC's leadership in standing up for democracy and human rights around the globe, as we see in the recent solidarity with, and support for, the people of Ukraine, as they defend their nation against the Russian government's war of brutal aggression," the secretary of state said. Pointing out that this is consistent with AJC's longstanding advocacy for Ukraine, Blinken observed that "in 1991, AJC was the first Jewish organization outside Ukraine to call on President George H.W. Bush to recognize the country's independence and has been a staunch supporter of a free and democratic Ukraine ever since."

Noting the recent confirmation of Deborah Lipstadt as the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, an ambassadorial post reporting to the secretary of state, Blinken pointed out that "for more than a century AJC has been at the forefront of the fight against antisemitism and for democracy."

He emphasized that "combating antisemitism abroad is not just the special envoy's job. It is the job of the entire State Department, one that we  and I  take very seriously." And he vowed to the AJC Global Forum audience that "the United States is committed to working by your side to tackle the alarming rise in antisemitism around the world."

"History has shown that hatred of Jews often goes hand in hand with hatred of other groups. And in places where antisemitism and Holocaust denial spread, repression and democracy backsliding are often not far behind," said Blinken.

"That is why AJC's commitment to fight all forms of religious intolerance is so critical. That is why this Administration has made combating antisemitism and all forms of bigotry a top priority for our domestic and foreign policy," he added.

On U.S.-Israel relations, Blinken declared that "the United States commitment to Israel's security remains ironclad," and that dealing with Iran's nuclear program together is a shared top priority. "We are determined that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon and we continue our close coordination with our Israeli partners to prevent Iran from developing one.''

Turning to the continuing, positive evolution of relations between Israel and a growing number of Arab countries, Blinken observed that "normalization is becoming the new normal in the region."

The Negev Summit in March, where Blinken met with the foreign ministers of Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, and the UAE, "was only the latest example of how once impossible things have become possible," he said. The Administration is "committed to maintaining the momentum of the Abraham Accords, and is "working tirelessly to expand normalization with Israel's neighbors."

Other examples he cited include Morocco and Israel agreeing to open embassies in Rabat and Tel Aviv; Prime Minister Bennett becoming the first Israeli prime minister to visit Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates; Israel and Bahrain signing over a dozen agreements to deepen economic ties; and a Holocaust memorial exhibit opening in Dubai.

In addition, the U.S., Israel, and the UAE recently held the inaugural meeting of the trilateral religious coexistence working group, which will bring together governments and religious figures from across the region "to counter intolerance and hatred, including antisemitism," he said.

"If this sounds like the work of AJC, it is no coincidence," said Blinken. "Fostering these kinds of ties has been one of AJC's goals for decades."

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Blinken said the administration is working to "preserve our longstanding goal of reaching a negotiated two-state solution." Meanwhile, the U.S. is seeking "tangible improvements" in the lives of the Palestinians.

The secretary of state saluted "the purposeful leadership" of AJC CEO David Harris, including in fostering new relationships in the Middle East. "David, your dedication, your leadership, has been indispensable to this institution, to its relationship with countless administrations, to Jewish communities worldwide," said Blinken. "I have benefited directly from your ideas, your counsel, and your support. Your service is the embodiment of Tikkun Olam."

The secretary also extended a warm welcome to Rep. Ted Deutch, who he called "a friend," and who will succeed Harris as AJC CEO on October 1.

Blinken last addressed the AJC Global Forum in 2015, in Washington, D.C. as deputy secretary of state. ''You've been called the State Department of the Jewish people, a title so apt I may start giving out some assignments today," he said.

AJC Global Forum, taking place June 12-14 in New York City, is the signature annual event of the leading global Jewish advocacy organization. It brings together thousands of participants from across the United States and dozens of countries around the world.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee
Determines Continued Ownership of ISP Segment Represents Best Path Forward

Review Reflects Improved Macro Environment for Energy Industry, Including Stronger Cash Flow Generation Potential

KATY, Texas, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SLCA), a diversified industrial minerals company and the leading last-mile logistics provider to the oil and gas industry, today announced that its Board of Directors has concluded its previously announced review of strategic alternatives for its Industrial & Specialty Products ("ISP") segment.

Over the course of the review, which began in October 2021, the Board considered a range of options with a goal to maximize shareholder value, including the potential sale or separation of the ISP segment. As part of the review, the Company, among other actions, contacted and engaged with both strategic industry parties, as well as private equity investors. After extensive evaluation and deliberation, and in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors, the Board unanimously determined that retaining ownership of the ISP segment represents the best path forward for U.S. Silica and its shareholders. In making its determination, the Board determined that a transaction would fail to provide superior value to shareholders as compared to the Company's standalone strategic and financial outlook, which has improved substantially since the review began. The Board also considered and is pursuing a refinancing of the Company's debt at more attractive terms than previously available.

Charles Shaver, Chairman of the Board, commented, "After an independent and exhaustive review of strategic alternatives, the Board believes continuing to operate the ISP segment and pursuing the Company's business plan is the best path forward to maximize value for all shareholders. The Board is confident in the Company's long-term strategy, growth prospects and ability to generate cash, and will continue to be open to additional opportunities to maximize shareholder value."

Bryan Shinn, Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Since announcing the strategic review, the macro environment has improved dramatically. North America experienced a substantial rebound in energy prices and demand for our products and services has grown, fueling increased profitability, cash generation and a more robust overall financial profile. We continue to see strength across both business segments and remain focused on the execution of our strategy to drive growth and generate substantial cash flow while creating shareholder value. We also remain committed to improving the Company's financial flexibility and capital structure, which includes pursuing a refinancing from a position of strength and paying down a portion of our debt."

Centerview Partners LLC served as the Company's exclusive financial advisor and Morrison & Foerster LLP as its legal advisor in connection with the strategic review.

About U.S. Silica

U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc. is a global performance materials company and is a member of the Russell 2000. The Company is a leading producer of commercial silica used in the oil and gas industry, and in a wide range of industrial applications. Over its 122-year history, U.S. Silica has developed core competencies in mining, processing, logistics and materials science that enable it to produce and cost-effectively deliver over 600 diversified products to customers across our end markets. U.S. Silica's wholly-owned subsidiaries include EP Minerals and SandBox Logistics. EP Minerals is an industry leader in the production of products derived from diatomaceous earth, perlite, engineered clays, and non-activated clays. SandBox Logistics is a state-of-the-art leader in proppant storage, handling and well-site delivery, dedicated to making proppant logistics cleaner, safer and more efficient. The Company currently operates 24 mines and production facilities and is headquartered in Katy, Texas.

Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains certain forward-looking statements regarding the Company, including statements regarding our conclusion of our review of strategic alternatives for our Industrial & Specialty Products segment and the Company's ability to drive growth, generate substantial cash flow and refinance its debt at more attractive terms than what were previously available. All of these statements are based on management's expectations as well as estimates and assumptions prepared by management that, although they believe to be reasonable, are inherently uncertain. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, economic, competitive, governmental and other factors outside of the Company's control that may cause its business, industry, strategy, financing activities or actual results to differ materially. More information on potential factors that could affect the Company's financial results is available in the "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" section within the Company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and in other documents that we have filed with, or furnished to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If one or more of these or other risks or uncertainties materialize (or the consequences of such a development changes), or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual outcomes may vary materially from those reflected in our forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof, and we disclaim any intention or obligation to update publicly or revise such statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Investor Contact

Donald A. Merril

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

(301) 682-0302

[email protected]

Patricia Gil

Vice President, Investor Relations

(281) 505-6011

[email protected]

SOURCE U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc.
APHIS employees in Cameron, Hidalgo, Willacy and Zapata counties are working with the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) to inspect and survey fruit trees in residential yards and commercial properties for signs of invasive fruit flies and citrus diseases, such as citrus canker and citrus greening, These pests and diseases, if allowed to become established or spread, could devastate grapefruit, sweet and sour orange, key lime, sweet lemon, and other types of fruit production in that area.

The invasive fruit fly (Anastrepha ludens) is native to Mexico and Central America, and while harmless to humans and animals, it attacks more than 40 different kinds of fruits and vegetables. The pest poses a threat to homegrown fruit, as well as the commercial grapefruit and orange industry, which in 2021, accounted for more than $67 million in statewide revenue, according to USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service .

USDA and TDA have established parallel fruit fly quarantine areas where invasive pests have been detected and are asking residents and business owners to help limit the spread of citrus pests and diseases by cooperating with survey teams and allowing them to access your property to inspect fruit trees and hang traps. If fruit flies are detected, they may also ask your permission to conduct treatments. USDA and State surveyors will all have official USDA or TDA credentials and will follow all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention health guidelines, including maintaining appropriate social distance.

We need your help to protect Texas citrus and keep this pest off your residential fruit trees. Fruit flies are drawn to ripening fruit. Here are some protection tips:

Remove all mature citrus fruit and any other host material, including fruit that has fallen to the ground, from your property as soon as possible. Eat the fruit or double bag it and put it in the trash. Don't compost fruit or vegetables from the quarantined areas. If you live in a citrus disease quarantine area, dispose of tree trimmings in plastic bags. Double bag the branches and other debris and dispose of them with your household waste. Don't move or mail homegrown fruit or plants to destinations outside of the quarantined areas. Declare agricultural productsincluding fruitto U.S. Customs and Border Protection before entering the United States from another country. Be cautious purchasing fruit from social media or backyard vendors.

To view the citrus disease quarantine areas, visit APHIS' Interactive Citrus Federal Quarantine Map .

If you have any questions about our surveys or a citrus health concern, please contact your local APHIS office at:

For Cameron and Willacy Counties, call (956) 421-4041;

and Counties, call (956) 421-4041; For Hidalgo County , call (956) 632-5300; and

, call (956) 632-5300; and For Zapata County , call (956) 726-2225.

For more information on the invasive fruit fly and other damaging insects or plant diseases, visit HungryPests.com and the APHIS Citrus Diseases webpage .

USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America's food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov

Media Contact: Yelena Grillet

(786) 247-7194

[email protected]

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1837593/USDA_Citrus.jpg

SOURCE USDA - APHIS
Technology leader, Mihaela Mazzenga and creative agency veteran, David DeCheser to lead Valtech's continued expansion in North America

NEW YORK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Valtech, a global business transformation agency, today promoted Mihaela Mazzenga to Chief Technology Officer and David DeCheser to Chief Creative Officer for Valtech North America, with the goal of upleveling digital and experience innovation and continuing to drive transformation for clients in North America.

From leading a massive re-platforming opportunity for SharperImage.com, to supporting the technical growth, enterprise architecture, and security maturity of Asset Health, Mazzenga has spent her career applying pioneering technologies to provide impact and change to organizations. As CTO, she aims to foster a culture of innovation, applying technology strategy for business acceleration as markets evolve and mature at a record pace.

"What attracted me to Valtech, aside from the caliber of the organization, is its commitment to delivering digital transformation, innovation, and world-class design to all customers," said Mazzenga. "It's an amazing time to be a technologist; having the opportunity to strategize at global scale and with such a talented group is incredibly exciting."

DeCheser has spent his career working at the intersection of design, technology, and culture. As the former VP, Group Executive Creative Director at R/GA New York, DeCheser has worked with some of the world's most beloved brands such as Marvel, LEGO, ESPN, Google, and Mailchimp. His experience spans product/service innovation, brand transformation, and campaigns. His work has been recognized internationally by Cannes Lions, CLIO, D&AD, ADC, and more.

"What continues to excite me about Valtech is the relentless focus on customer experience transformation," said DeCheser. "The need for brands to innovate their experience in a post 2020 world has never been more urgent."

"Mazzenga and DeCheser are both industry leaders," said Marc Blumberg, EVP of North America at Valtech. "I couldn't be more excited to have them leading the charge with our growing North America business."

By promoting Mazzenga and DeCheser, two recognized leaders in their respective fields, Valtech continues to further its belief that breakthrough innovation happens at the intersection of disciplines, industries, and cultures.

CONTACT:

Further Contact:

Director of Marketing, Valtech North America, Mikhala Lantz-Simmons.

Email: [email protected]

PR representative, Fabiana Melendez Ruiz

Email: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/valtech/r/valtech-promotes-leaders-to-north-american-cto-and-cco--solidifying-its-commitment-to-experience-inn,c3584333

The following files are available for download:

https://news.cision.com/valtech/i/mihaela-david,c3060146 Mihaela David https://news.cision.com/valtech/i/mihaela-,c3060141 Mihaela https://news.cision.com/valtech/i/david-dechesser,c3060142 David Dechesser https://news.cision.com/valtech/i/valtech,c3060143 Valtech

SOURCE Valtech
To commemorate the occasion, Holland America Line held a ceremony in the terminal attended by the ship's captain and senior officers, with flag-waving fanfare from team members lined up to greet guests as they boarded. Three guests cut a ribbon to open embarkation, and Captain Wouter van Hoogdalem placed the final piece of a puzzle with "Westerdam" on it to signify the completion of return to service for the cruise line.

"Today is an emotional day that's been more than a year in the making, and Westerdam is the final puzzle pieceto make our fleet of ships in service complete," said Gus Antorcha, president of Holland America Line. "Every ribbon cutting has brought us one step closer to today, and everyone in the Holland America Line family worked with passion and determination to achieve this milestone. We are excited to welcome guests and overwhelmed with what today means for our company."

Following its season in Alaska, Westerdam will embark on an epic 36-day "South Pacific Crossing" repositioning from Seattle to Sydney, Australia. Along the way, the ship will make 17 calls at some of the world's most beautiful islands and tropical locations. Westerdam will then offer a season of roundtrip from Sydney itineraries to the north and south islands of New Zealand, along with southern Australia. In December 2022, the ship sails along the east coast of the continent up to Singapore via the Great Barrier Reef. In early 2023, Westerdam offers cruises to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, China and the Philippines before crossing back to North America for another season in Alaska.

Since Holland America Line restarted cruising in July 2021, Eurodam, Koningsdam, Nieuw Amsterdam, Nieuw Statendam, Noordam, Oosterdam, Rotterdam, Zaandam and Zuiderdam have returned to service with cruises in Alaska, the Caribbean, Europe, Mexico, California Coast and South Pacific. Volendam currently is under charter by the government of the Netherlands, accommodating Ukrainian families, and will sail Mediterranean voyages from Italy starting in September.

For more information about Holland America Line, consult a travel advisor, call 1-877-SAIL HAL (877-724-5425) or visit hollandamerica.com.

Editors note: Photos are available at https://www.cruiseimagelibrary.com/c/q5moksq0.

Find Holland America Line on Twitter, Facebook and the Holland America Blog. Access all social media outlets via the home page at hollandamerica.com.

About Holland America Line [a division of Carnival Corporation and plc (NYSE: CCL and CUK)]

Holland America Line has been exploring the world since 1873 and was the first cruise line to offer adventures to Alaska and the Yukon nearly 75 years ago. Its fleet of premium ships visits nearly 400 ports in 114 countries around the world, offering an ideal mid-sized ship experience. A third Pinnacle-class ship, Rotterdam, joined the fleet in July 2021.

The leader in premium cruising, Holland America Line's ships feature innovative initiatives and a diverse range of enriching experiences focused on destination exploration and personalized travel. The best live music at sea fills each evening at Music Walk, and dining venues feature exclusive selections from Holland America Line's esteemed Culinary Council of world-famous chefs.

CONTACT: Bill Zucker, Erik Elvejord PHONE: 800-637-5029, 206-626-9890 EMAIL: [email protected]

SOURCE Holland America Line
CRY photoreceptors are common to plants and humans. They are linked to human diseases including cancer, diabetes, and several brain disorders. CRY2 helps control growth in both humans and plants. While unchecked growth in plants makes them less viable, unchecked growth in humans causes cancer. "If we understand growth," Pedmale says, "we can cure cancer."

Plants need the right amount of CRY2 to know when to grow and flower. Pedmale and former postdoctoral fellow Louise Lindback discovered that manipulating UBP12 and UBP13 can change the amount of CRY2 in plants. They found that increasing UBP12 and UBP13 reduces CRY2 levels. This made plants think there wasn't enough light. In response, they grew longer, abnormal stems to reach more. Pedmale says:

"We have a way to understand growth hereand we could manipulate growth just by manipulating two proteins. We have found a way we can actually increase flower output. You need flowering for food. If there's no flower, there is no grain, no rice, no wheat, no maize."

Pedmale and Lindback didn't know exactly how UBP12 and UBP13 regulated CRY2. When the researchers took a closer look, they made a surprising discovery. In humans and other organisms, versions of UBP12 and UBP13 protect CRY photoreceptors from degradation. But in plants, the team saw the opposite. UBP12 and UBP13 were actually helping degrade CRY2 instead. Lindback, who is currently a research and developmental engineer at Nordic Biomarker in Sweden, explains:

"From literature, it's known that if you find an interaction like this, it will protect from degradation. Initially, we saw the opposite, and we thought, 'okay, maybe I did something wrong,' but then when I did it a few times, we realized, 'okay, this is true.' Instead of protecting CRY2, it causes CRY2 to degrade."

Pedmale hopes their discovery will help plant researchers and plant breeders improve crop yields. He also hopes his work helps inform cancer research. "My colleagues at CSHL are working hard trying to understand cancer," he says. "We are coming at it from a different angle with plants."

About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. Home to eight Nobel Prize winners, the private, not-for-profit Laboratory employs 1,100 people including 600 scientists, students and technicians. For more information, visit www.cshl.edu

SOURCE Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
GrantWatch.com CEO, Libby Hikind, will be leading several workshops and will be available during the conference. GrantWatch is the leading grant listing directory featuring more than 28,420 current grants, funding opportunities, awards, and archived grants from foundations, corporations, federal, state, and local government funding sources in the USA, U.S. Territories, Canada, and International areas.

GrantWatch.com Founder and CEO, Libby Hikind, will be leading several workshops and available during the conference.

Enter for Your Chance to Win!

Interested entities should submit their project utilizing the LOI template seen at the bottom of this article. Award recipients will also receive expert assistance to guide them through the prospect research and grant writing process.

Organizations, businesses, individuals, and municipalities are eligible to apply. However, awardees must be present at the conference on July 20, 2022, to receive the award. To enter, submit your Letter of Intent (LOI) by no later than June 20, 2022, to Donna Scantlebury: [email protected].

What to Expect This Year:

The conference will be at the Hyatt Regency Riverfront Hotel in Jacksonville, Florida. Additionally, this year commemorates the 55th anniversary of the Jacksonville Sister Cities Association (JSCA) and marks the bicentennial celebration for the City of Jacksonville.

The visiting delegates will also have the opportunity to engage with Sister City programs throughout the Southeastern region, SCI best practice leaders, and business entities. The conference events will provide a forum to promote goodwill and harmonious exchanges between the attendees.

The theme for the conference is "Empower, Enhance, Engage: Building Bridges for the Future." In addition, global Sister Cities representatives, international business leaders, as well as trade and government officials will be in attendance. The 17 states of the southeastern region of the U.S. and their international partners will join in this transformational process.

Taking place during July 19 -22, 2022, this four-day event will feature guest speakers, panelists, and workshops. In addition, topics will include:

Grant Research & Grant Writing

Media, Marketing

Project Exchanges,

Global Opportunities

Diversity & Inclusion

Along with much more!

Agenda Snapshot:

Tuesday, July 19th  Registration, Exhibitor/Vendor Set-up, and Welcome Reception

 Registration, Exhibitor/Vendor Set-up, and Welcome Reception Wednesday, July 20th  Grant Workshops, Diversity/Inclusion, and International Gala featuring Paris Winningham , finalist from The Voice

 Grant Workshops, Diversity/Inclusion, and International Gala featuring , finalist from Thursday, July 21st  Global Opportunities Workshops, African Summit Cape Town 2023, and Membership Development Strategies

 Global Opportunities Workshops, African Summit Cape Town 2023, and Membership Development Strategies Friday, July 22nd  Historical Tours and Business and Technical Matchmaking

Where Can You Register Your Attendance?

For more information, the details and registration for the event can be found at www.jsca.org/conference

Registration Fees

Early bird registration until June 10 : $250

: Regular registration June 11  July 14 : $300

 : On-site registration: $400

As well as youth registration: $250

Overall, registration includes access to 12 sessions, ground transport from the hotel to program venues, reception, two lunches, and an International Gala. The conference suggests a minimum of three attendees one of which is between the ages of 13 -18. Individual sessions are $75, lunches are $60, gala is $100, and exhibitor space/ 8 ft table is $150.

About JSCA

Jacksonville Sister Cities Association (JSCA) is a 501 (c) 3, nonprofit organization that began in 1967. The nonprofit's mission is to foster and encourage mutual understanding, friendship, and peace through cultural, economic, educational, and professional exchanges between the people of Jacksonville and the people of our Sister and Friendship Cities. Additionally, JSCA partners with eight Sister Cities: Bahia Blanca, Argentina; Curitiba, Brazil; Changwon City, South Korea; Murmansk, Russia; Nantes, France; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, South Africa and Yingkou, China with three additional Friendship Cities in China: Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Suzhou.

SOURCE GrantWatch
DUBLIN, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Medical Nonwoven Disposables Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global medical nonwoven disposables market reached a value of US$ 10.8 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 17.5 Billion by 2027, exhibiting at a CAGR of 8.2% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



Medical nonwoven disposables are organized structures of textiles made using linen, cotton, polyester, polypropylene, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), and other fibers. They are widely utilized in surgical environments as they protect against fluid, particulate, and microorganisms, thereby reducing the risk of cross-contamination between patients and healthcare professionals. Some of the commonly utilized medical nonwoven disposables include shoe covers, bed linen, lab coats, and single-use caps. At present, several manufacturers are offering a comprehensive range of medical nonwoven disposables manufactured using premium quality fabric in unique sizes, thicknesses, and textures.



Surgeries often require prolonged bed rest and hospital stays, which increases the risk of developing hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). This, along with the increasing number of individuals undergoing surgical interventions due to the rising prevalence of chronic diseases, represents one of the key factors positively influencing the demand for medical nonwoven disposables worldwide.

The market growth can also be attributed to the increasing geriatric population across the globe, which is more susceptible to develop serious health complications. Apart from this, rising awareness about their benefits, such as sterility, breathability, comfort, and antibacterial properties, is also propelling the market growth. Moreover, the increasing concerns among parents about the negative impact of using regular diapers on babies are contributing to the adoption of medical nonwoven disposables to make skin-friendly diapers.

Furthermore, due to the growing environmental concerns, several leading manufacturers are introducing biodegradable product variants, which are made using biopolymer like polylactic acid (PLA). They are also developing surgical masks, gowns, and drapes with an improved finish, liquid repellent, virus-proof, and bacterial barrier properties, which is projected to impel the growth of the market.

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Ahlstrom-Munksjo Oyj, Berry Global Inc., Cardinal Health Inc., Cypress Medical Products LLC (Mckesson Corporation), Domtar Corporation, Dynarex Corporation, Freudenberg & Co. KG, Georgia-Pacific (Koch Industries), Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Medline Industries Inc., Paul Hartmann AG and Unicharm Corporation.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global medical nonwoven disposables market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global medical nonwoven disposables market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the product?

What is the breakup of the market based on the material?

What is the breakup of the market based on the distribution channel?

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 medical nonwoven disposables 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 Medical Nonwoven Disposables Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Product

6.1 Incontinence Products

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Major Types

6.1.2.1 Disposable Underwear

6.1.2.2 Cotton Pads

6.1.2.3 Disposable Panty Shields

6.1.2.4 Disposable Diapers

6.1.2.5 Others

6.1.3 Market Forecast

6.2 Surgical Nonwoven Products

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Major Types

6.2.2.1 Surgical Masks

6.2.2.2 Drape

6.2.2.3 Shoe Covers

6.2.2.4 Caps

6.2.2.5 Gowns

6.2.2.6 Swabs

6.2.2.7 Others

6.2.3 Market Forecast

6.3 Wound Dressings

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Major Types

6.3.2.1 Bandage

6.3.2.2 Tapes

6.3.2.3 Post-Operative Wound Dressing

6.3.2.4 Operative Wound Dressing

6.3.2.5 Dressing Pad

6.3.2.6 Others

6.3.3 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Material

7.1 Polypropylene

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Polyethylene

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Polyamides and Polyester

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast

7.4 Acrylic

7.4.1 Market Trends

7.4.2 Market Forecast

7.5 Others

7.5.1 Market Trends

7.5.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Distribution Channel

8.1 Hospital Pharmacies

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Retail Pharmacies

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Online Stores

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Others

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Region



10 SWOT Analysis



11 Value Chain Analysis



12 Porters Five Forces Analysis



13 Price Analysis



14 Competitive Landscape

14.1 Market Structure

14.2 Key Players

14.3 Profiles of Key Players

14.3.1 Ahlstrom-Munksjo Oyj

14.3.1.1 Company Overview

14.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.2 Berry Global Inc.

14.3.2.1 Company Overview

14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.2.3 Financials

14.3.2.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.3 Cardinal Health Inc.

14.3.3.1 Company Overview

14.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.3.3 Financials

14.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.4 Cypress Medical Products (Mckesson Corporation)

14.3.4.1 Company Overview

14.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.5 Domtar Corporation

14.3.5.1 Company Overview

14.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.5.3 Financials

14.3.5.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.6 Dynarex Corporation

14.3.6.1 Company Overview

14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.7 Freudenberg & Co. KG

14.3.7.1 Company Overview

14.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.7.3 SWOT Analysis

14.3.8 Georgia-Pacific (Koch Industries)

14.3.8.1 Company Overview

14.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.9 Kimberly-Clark Corporation

14.3.9.1 Company Overview

14.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.9.3 Financials

14.3.9.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.10 Medline Industries Inc.

14.3.10.1 Company Overview

14.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.10.3 SWOT Analysis

14.3.11 Paul Hartmann AG

14.3.11.1 Company Overview

14.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.11.3 Financials

14.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.12 Unicharm Corporation

14.3.12.1 Company Overview

14.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.12.3 Financials

14.3.12.4 SWOT Analysis



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/jpvqdi

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
Selling Bitcoin for cash has never been easier, Coinsfera provides a complete authenticity to sell BTC in Dubai for cash

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates , June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In a move that is sure to excite digital currency enthusiasts in the UAE, Coinsfera has announced to purchase Bitcoin with cash in Dubai. This makes it one of the first OTC shops in the region to offer services related to buying and selling Bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies with cash. With an ever-growing number of people investing in digital currencies, this announcement by Coinsfera is sure to be well received. The OTC shop offers users a convenient way to buy and sell bitcoin in Dubai without having to go through the hassle of registering with multiple exchanges. Transactions are also completed quickly and at competitive rates.

Coinsfera, a company that offers the exchange of Bitcoin to Fiat or vice versa, brings a much-needed solution to the crypto market of the United Arab Emirates. This is also beneficial for those who live in nearby countries where it is hard to find a reliable and trustworthy platform. The UAE has been an excellent location for Coinsfera due to its open-mindedness towards cryptocurrencies and the high demand for this service. With Coinsfera, users can easily buy and sell BTC in Dubai without having to worry about security or slow processing times. Plus, they offer 24/7 customer support in case of any problems.

In the recent announcement, Coinsfera has also revealed that its customers can now sell their bitcoins for dirhams (AED) at the company's OTC shop. This makes it easier than ever for people living in Dubai to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. All that is needed is a valid ID and proof of address.

This announcement of Coinsfera in Dubai is sure to excite the growing number of people who are interested in trading in digital currencies. With its convenient location, easy-to-use platform, and competitive rates, Coinsfera is poised to become the go-to shop for buying and selling cryptocurrencies in the UAE.

In a digital world where cryptocurrencies are becoming more and more popular, Coinsfera has emerged as a reliable platform to buy or sell bitcoin with cash . Their official website allows you to check the real-time value of bitcoins and receive the best conversion rate at the time of transaction. With years of experience, they guarantee an efficient, fast, and secure service that is unmatched in the market.

Coinsfera services are available at their office in Dubai, UAE. Expert staff will provide a great experience of exchanging your bitcoins for cash. Appointments can be made through Whatsapp or phone if you prefer not to wait while you visit the office. For those looking to sell their bitcoins, this is a great way to get cash quickly and easily.

Coinsfera has been able to utilize the latest technologies to provide its customers with the fastest transaction of bitcoins. Apart from selling bitcoin, they also facilitate their customers with the exchange of many other cryptocurrencies. Customers can either receive the cash in hand or directly get it transferred to their account with complete privacy. This makes Coinsfera one of the most reliable platforms for all your cryptocurrency needs.

Name: Coinsfera

Address: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Cluster F, Indigo-Icon tower  Office # 501 5th floor  Dubai  United Arab Emirates

Phone: +971 58 535 0505

Email: [email protected]

About Coinsfera

Coinsfera is an OTC cryptocurrency exchange shop where you can securely buy and sell any cryptocurrency with cash in Dubai, Istanbul, London and Kosovo.

PRESS CONTACT

Saif Ahmed

+971585350505

https://www.coinsfera.com

SOURCE Coinsfera
Shanta Gold Limited (AIM:SHG, OTC:SAAGF) signed binding definitive documents with Stanbic Bank Tanzania Limited for a US$20mln loan facility.

The money will be used to accelerate growth in Shanta's portfolio.

"The signing of this four year US$20mln facility is a significant step for Shanta as it will enable the company to accelerate growth across the wider portfolio, specifically at the Singida project where we are now fully funded, as we look to reach our target of becoming a plus-100,000 ounce per annum gold producer in Tanzania, said Shanta chief executive Eric Zurrin.

With the additional news of a material production increase at New Luika gold mine, where we have seen the strongest level of output in over 12 months, we can be confident that the task of reaching that plus-100,000 ounce target by the first quarter of 2023 has been significantly de-risked.

Production at New Luika in May 2022 hit its highest level in over 12 months.

Zurrin added that he remained confident that Shanta would achieve between 68,000 and 76,000 ounces of gold production this year.

Singida is fully funded into positive cash flow, and is scheduled for first gold pour in the first quarter of 2023.
Wentworth Resources PLC (AIM:WEN) has struck a deal to acquire Scirocco Energy PLC's (AIM:SCIR) 25% stake in Aminex PLC's (LSE:AEX) Ntorya field development project in Tanzania.

It is a deal that has made sense on paper for some time given that Scirocco has been open to sale and that Ntorya lies adjacent to Wentworths 32%-owned flagship Mnazi Bay gas field.

For Scirocco, it seals a divestment for a project that will require capital investment in the coming months. It intends to use the proceeds to support its planned new investments in sustainable energy and circular economy opportunities.

Wentworth is paying US$3mln upfront to Scirocco with a further US$13mln tied to future development and production milestones (of which US$8mln will come from a revenue share arrangement once the field is in production).

"This is a transformational transaction for Wentworth establishing us as a dual-asset, full-cycle E&P with a significantly enhanced resource base and production profile, said Wentworth chief executive Katherine Roe.

The deal represents an attractively priced, low-risk entry into a high growth opportunity which cements our position as a leading supplier of domestic gas to Tanzania.

Roe added: "This compelling growth opportunity is fully aligned with our commitment to support the government to reach its goal of providing universal energy access by 2030 in accordance with our purpose to empower people with energy and deliver value for Tanzania, Wentworth and all our stakeholders."

Ntorya has been estimated to host some 1.9 trillion cubic feet of gas and as such offers significant future development potential.

Investors in Aminex and Scirocco have had to show patience in recent years as the potentially substantial project was kept in the slow lane whilst the partners sought sufficient funding, before Aminex landed a farm-out deal with ARA Petroleum, a subsidiary of Omans Zubair Corp.

ARA acquired a 50% stake in the project, committing to a US$140mln capital investment programme which includes drilling the Chikumbi-1 well later this year.

The Ntorya field is targeted to begin commercial gas production before the end of 2024.

According to Wentworth, the asset promises to deliver a transformational increase in Wentworth's production and resources, and, will position the company as the leading domestic gas player in Tanzania.

The Chikumbi-1 well aims to confirm some 763bn cubic feet of contingent (2C) resources for development, setting up a final investment decision in 2023. A commercialisation study, inked in 2017, anticipated that a full field development to deliver 140mln cubic feet per day of production would require around US$143mln of gross capital expenditure, though an updated view of costs and project scope will be determined in due course by the Ruvuma partners.

In the coming months, Wentworth will be required to fund US$6.25mln for seismic and drilling costs for Chikumbi-1.

Drilling is slated to start for the pivotal well in November.
Vast Resources PLC (AIM:VAST) has taken delivery of its second Mantis CMR4 production drilling rig at the Baita Plai polymetallic mine in Romania.

The rigs will increase drilling by up to 3.5 times with a reduction of labour at the drilling face, allowing additional faces to be worked.

The second Mantis drill rig will be deployed during the course of this week to develop infrastructure from below 18 level on the Antonio Skarn, to a planned 21 level elevation for commencement of the new decline in the first week of the third quarter of 2022.

With the two new Mantis drills on-site and the transition to mechanised mining, together with the implementation of long hole stope mining, significantly increased production output is expected from the end of the second quarter of 2022 onwards.

We now have our second Mantis rig on site at Baita Plai, which is a critical piece of equipment to support the rapid increase in production expected through the implementation of long hole stope mining, said Andrew Prelea, chief executive of Vast Resources PLC (AIM:VAST).

This rig is being deployed on 18 level during the course of this week and, together with the other operational developments that are being introduced over the coming weeks, we expect to see a significant improvement in our production profile from the end of the current quarter onwards.
FTSE 100 index fell out of bed in early deals on Monday as new figures showed the UK economy shrinking for the second straight month. Londons blue-chip index was down 73 at 7,245 in early trades.

Gross domestic product in April fell 0.3% on the previous month, according to the Office for National Statistics, when it had been forecast to grow 0.1%. This followed zero GDP growth in February and a 0.1% decline in March.

A big fire at a major Smurfit Kappa packaging plant has sent its shares tumbling. Over 30 fire engines were needed to put out the blaze that destroyed paper and cardboard bales.

Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng wants an urgent CMA review into whether the 5p fuel duty cut has been passed on quickly enough to motorists. Kwarteng said there was "widespread concern" the reduction might not have been handed on.

Sirius Real Estate reported a strong operational and financial performance for the 12 months just gone. The business parks owners rent roll advanced by 73% to in the year to March.

Among the small caps, Wentworth Resources is to acquire Sciroccos 25% stake in the Ntorya field development project in Tanzania. Ntorya lies adjacent to Wentworths 32%-owned flagship Mnazi Bay gas field.

Vast Resources has taken delivery of its second Mantis production drilling rig at the Baita Plai polymetallic mine in Romania. The rigs will increase drilling by up to 3.5 times with a reduction of labour at the face.
Randall & Quilter Investment, the general insurer, is raising a minimum of US$100mln (81.2mln) through an open offer, placing and subscription to pay down debt and fund collateral after sliding to a loss in 2021.

Losses reflected a potential US$90mln non-cash, pre-tax charge associated with impairing what it says was a structured reinsurance contract that had been recognised as an asset on the group's balance sheet.

R&Q had intended to raise the money through a deal that would have seen 23% shareholder Brickell PC Insurance acquire the business, but that deal fell through last month.

In a statement today, the insurer said approximately US$60mln will be used to fund collateral requirements and the balance to pay down debt.

Losses after tax for the year to the end of December were US$127mln.

Shares jumped 11% to 102.5p.
Geremy Thomas, executive chairman, explains why Goodbody Health is switching its listing from Canada to London.

Its hard to justify the cost of being in Vancouver, he says, and with cash king at the moment the money can be used to invest in its clinics in the UK, which will be focused on blood tests and wellness now that Covid-19 is easing.

All around, the target is to cut unnecessary expenses, he adds.
The boss of UK Oil & Gas PLC (AIM:UKOG) has written to Jeremy Hunt, the companys local member of parliament, after the former foreign secretary condemned the granting of planning permission to the company to drill for gas in the Surrey Hills.

Last week, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities overruled the local county councils refusal of planning permission for the site, which is within an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB).

In a decision that came just days after Hunt voted against the Prime Minister in the no-confidence vote, the government department gave its approval that UKOG could conduct exploratory drilling at its Loxley site for three years.

The decision to allow drilling at Dunsfold is bitterly disappointing and wrong both economically and environmentally - my letter to @michaelgove pic.twitter.com/vGKmvTdVG8  Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) June 9, 2022

Hunt sent a letter to the departments secretary of state, Michael Gove, who recused himself from the decision as his constituency is nearby, to remind him that drilling for fossil fuels in the area has been decisively rejected by Surrey County Council and the entire local community.

Given that he cannot see how this site has any role to play in our future energy needs, given the government's net zero commitments and continued moratorium on fracking, he urged Gove to reconsider.

In his own letter today, UKOG chief executive Stephen Sanderson countered that natural gas plays a significant role in the energy transition as a feedstock for reforming into blue hydrogen and has a continued role in the energy transition to help meet peak energy demand, especially during periods when the wind doesnt blow, the sun doesnt shine or nuclear has outages, as seen in summer 2021.

UKOG has, he said, earmarked the estimated 43-70bn cubic feet of gas at Loxley as a predominantly blue hydrogen source and noted that there are no plans for fracking, only conventional gas.

He said a drilling rig would be required on site for around 45 days for the first vertical pilot hole, a further 30 days for the sidetrack and a period of flow testing for up to six months.

LOXLEY LETTER: CEO Steve Sanderson's response to Jeremy Hunt MP on why Loxley makes perfect

strategic, economic and environmental sense. https://t.co/yJalw3e1ty  UKOG (@UKOGlistedonAIM) June 13, 2022

Sanderson, stating himself to be a constituent of south-west Surrey, said Hunts assertion that the development would create environmental damage, is wholly false, based on the Environment Agency granting UKOG a full environmental permit in 2020.

He added that the project could be of significant material benefit to both the exchequer and the Surrey economy over its expected 20-year life, based on current gas prices.
Red Rock Resources said laboratory results from the first hole drilled by its joint venture company at the Mt Bute prospect in Victoria are considered significant.

Preliminary X-ray fluorescence analysis of selected Mt. Bute core intervals had returned highly anomalous molybdenum and bismuth results, suggesting the possibility of intrusive related gold mineralization within the Victorian goldfields.

A total of three holes were drilled at the Mt. Bute Prospect and the results from the second and third holes are still awaited.

Andrew Bell chairman, said: "This is only the first hole of our small programme on the property so to have encountered such widespread mineralization, including some good grades, was a very good outcome.

New Ballarat Gold Corporation, which is exploring the prospect, is owned 50.1% by Red Rock and 49.9% by Power Metal Resources.
Jushi Holdings Inc is meeting the rising demand for medical and recreational cannabis across the United States with its high-end retail locations, premium cannabis brands, and cutting-edge cultivation, processing and manufacturing facilities.

There is certainly a growing consumer appetite for what Jushi has on offer. With medical use of cannabis now legal in the United States in 37 states, four territories, and the District of Columbia (DC), and recreational adult use of cannabis legalized in 19 states, two territories and DC, more jurisdictions are sure to follow.

Consumer confidence in cannabis is growing as more Americans enter the state-legalized market and are exposed to the benefits of state legalization, according to Jushi EO Jim Cacioppo.

The company recently conducted its inaugural 4/20 Cannabis Insights Poll which revealed that Americans are using cannabis for medical, stress, wellness, and recreational reasons. It showed most cannabis consumers (30.7%) use cannabis one to two days a week, with 28.1% using cannabis every day.

Cacioppo told Proactive that cannabis use in the US was trending upwards and that he expects it will continue to rise over the coming years.

It is a much healthier way to lighten your load mentally than alcohol, Cacioppo said. It doesnt have any calories, fat, or cholesterol and there tends to be less of a hangover, so to speak.

In Cacioppos personal opinion, growth in cannabis consumption is expected to come from across the board, not just Gen Z and millennial consumers. Its very popular amongst those younger segments of society and as they get older that will trend higher, he said. Gen X and Baby Boomers are also using cannabis again and that number will also grow over time.

This growth is paying off in the form of revenue increases for Jushi. The company recently reported its first-quarter results with revenue of $61.9 million compared to $41.7 million in the first quarter of 2021.

Up and coming legal cannabis markets

Jushis revenue growth in the first quarter of 2022 was boosted by the expansion of its retail footprint from 17 to 29 stores as well as the acquisition of Nature's Remedy of Massachusetts and increased wholesale sales at its Pennsylvania and Virginia grower-processor facilities.

The firm has built its multi-state portfolio of branded cannabis assets through strategic acquisitions and licenses, specifically focused on the acquisition of cannabis licenses in jurisdictions where there was a barrier to entry, growing populated areas with limited licensed medical cannabis markets, or where legalized adult-use was yet to arrive.

The company is now focused on building out these assets within its existing footprint, with its core markets being Virginia and Pennsylvania and operations scaling up in Illinois, Ohio, Nevada, California, and Massachusetts.

Likely targets for us over the next 12 months would be Ohio retail, Illinois retail, potentially Illinois grower-processor, and then a third dispensary in Massachusetts, Cacioppo said.

Upcoming regulatory changes in both Virginia and Pennsylvania are set to cement Jushis strong position in its two largest markets.

In Virginia, recently passed legislation did away with the states medical marijuana card system, which had a significant backlog of 15,000 patients. As Cacioppo explained, US medical marijuana markets have a penetration rate of between 3% and 4.5% of the population who are willing to get a medical marijuana card. However, there are many reasons why an individual may forgo securing a card, including life insurance, gun licensing, stigmatization, workplace consequences, and concerns around their personal information ending up in a database.

As of July 1, you dont need a medical card, you just need a Written Certification, Cacioppo explained, estimating that the new patients would grow the states small medical market to 3% quickly.

Virginia has also passed legislation making the adult use of cannabis legal in the state as of January 1, 2024.

Jushi has made several well-timed investments in Virginia to take advantage of the regulatory changes including having a grower-processor ready to go online to meet increased demand and opening more stores across the state this year.

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, Jushis largest state, there is an adult-use bill coming down the pipeline, which Cacioppo called really exciting for Jushis story.

As far as cannabis legalization goes on a federal level, Cacioppo said he expects there to be some noise in that space this summer but noted that unexpected gun control legislation coming through after multiple tragedies may result in a delay. If it doesnt happen, theres a pressure to do it in the lame-duck session, for non-Americans that is the period between November and January when new politicians get elected and take their seats, he said.

Waiting until the timing is right

With the current volatility in capital markets, Jushi is biding its time when it comes to closing further potential mergers and acquisitions.

Cacioppo told Proactive that the company has a pipeline of deals in the works, but it is choosing to hold off due to the state of the markets. We signalled to the street we are unlikely to close another deal before the end of the year, he said. We will get better pricing and we also want to conserve our management energy and balance sheet for our big markets in Virginia and Pennsylvania where we are growing hugely based on regulatory change.

Jushi is targeting 50 retail licenses across seven markets as of the end of 2023, including 36 operating retail locations and approximately 330,000 square feet of cultivation and processing capacity, by the end of this year. Were pretty happy with where we are at as a company, Cacioppo concluded.

Contact the author Emily Jarvie at emily.jarvie@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @emilyjjarvie
Scancell Holdings PLC (AIM:SCLP, OTC:SCNLF) told investors it enrolled and treated the first patient with its Modi-1 vaccine as part of a multi-centre clinical trial in patients with triple negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer, head and neck cancer, and renal cancer.

Modi-1, which is the first candidate in the companys Moditope platform, will be administered alone or in combination with a checkpoint inhibitor (CPI).

With up to 108 patients recruited, the initial part of the trial aims to assess the safety and immunogenicity of two citrullinated vimentin peptides and, if there are no significant side effects, a citrullinated enolase peptide will be added.

Early safety and immunogenicity data are expected to be available in the second half of 2022 and efficacy data in 2023, the company reiterated.

In addition, the effect of Modi-1 in promoting T-cell infiltration into the tumour in a neoadjuvant cohort will be assessed in a further cohort of 30 patients with head and neck cancer, with patients treated with Modi-1 with or without CPI, prior to their first surgical resection.

Modi-1 is a vaccine composed of a combination of three peptides from two target antigens, with the peptides linked to Amplivant, which the company said is a potent adjuvant that in preclinical models has shown it enhances immune response between tenfold and a hundredfold.

This results in highly efficient tumour clearance and protection against tumour recurrence.

Amplivant is the subject of a worldwide licensing and collaboration agreement between Scancell and ISA Pharmaceuticals, which will manufacture, develop and commercialise Amplivant-Modi-1 conjugate therapy.

This is the first time we have taken a product from our Moditope platform into cancer patients and it is a highly significant milestone for the company, said chief executive Prof Lindy Durrant.

We are optimistic about the broad clinical utility of Modi-1 and, following safety assessments in the first few cohorts of patients, we intend to rapidly recruit patients across all four cancers."

Dr David Pinato, medical oncologist and principal investigator at Imperial College London, Hammersmith Hospital, said the rationale of treating patients with Moditope is scientifically attractive, and in clinical practice was very straightforward to administer to our first patient.

The study will address many important clinical questions in patients where there is an unmet need.
Former McDonald's Corp (NYSE:MCD) restaurants in Russia reopened Sunday under new ownership as the country adapts to international sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine.

The fast-food chain, called Vkusno & Tochka ('Tasty and that's it'), appears to be a copy of the American original, even if Big Macs are no longer on the menu.

McDonald's announced its withdrawal from the Russian market in May saying it would sell its 850 restaurants in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, joining an exodus of western businesses.

The Russian fast-food chain that bought out McDonald's opened 15 stores over the weekend and plans to eventually reopen all 850 stores.

All 62,000 former McDonald's employees will be retained.

McDonalds took a one-time charge of US$1.2bn to US$1.4bn to write off the investment.
Reunion said it was continuing to advance its goal to drill around a further 13,000m by August this year ahead of a maiden resource estimate

Reunion Gold Corporation (TSX-V:RGD, OTCQB:RGDFF) said it has unveiled positive drill results from its ongoing program at the Oko West project in Guyana, which included a "significant" extension of mineralization to depth.

One hole tested the depth extension of the Kairuni zone in block 4 and hit 3.68 grams per ton (g/t) gold over 71.15 metres (m) to a vertical depth of 575m, the firm said. This was a 226m step-out from the previous deepest hole, which intersected 1.5 g/t gold over 67.3m to a vertical depth of 349m.

Reunion said it was continuing to advance its goal to drill around a further 13,000m by August this year ahead of a maiden resource estimate.

The latest dill results also included two of the best holes to date in terms of the Oko West project's grade and intervals, with results including 21.75m at 3.80 g/t gold starting from 525m depth and 110m at a grade of 2.78 g/t gold, starting from 66m depth.

Notably, due to the success of the ongoing drill program at Oko West, Reunion also told investors that it has added another diamond drill rig, taking the total to five - four diamond rigs and one reverse circulation (RC) rig. The next phase of drilling will emphasize testing the Kairuni zone outside of block 4, the company said.

"In addition to drilling at the Kairuni zone, exploration work is underway on the Takutu zone, which represents the southern 3.5km extension of the same shear zone hosting the Kairuni zone," the company also said in the statement.

The firm also several other programs in place to advance the project, including a LIDAR survey, further metallurgical testing and environmental baseline studies, it added.

Reunion Gold is an explorer operating in the Guiana Shield, South America, with a portfolio of projects in Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

In 2021, the company made a new gold discovery at its Oko West project in Guyana, where to date it has outlined continuous gold mineralization at the Kairuni zone over 2,500m of strike and to a depth of 350m.

Contact the writer at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
The company said two drill rigs have been mobilized in the Coldstream area, out of the seven drill rigs currently operating on the large land package at Moss Lake

Goldshore Resources Inc (TSX-V:GSHR, OTCQB:GSHRF) has announced that drilling has commenced in the Coldstream region at its Moss Lake project, located approximately 100 km west of the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

The Vancouver, British Columbia-based junior gold development company revealed that two drill rigs have been mobilized in the Coldstream area, out of the seven drill rigs currently operating on the company's large land package at Moss Lake.

In a statement, Goldshore Resources CEO Brett Richards said: "We are pleased to announce commencement of drilling in the Coldstream region. In the coming weeks, we will lay out the drill plan for the market to follow with our progress as we step out and infill at Moss Lake, and illustrate our progress in the Coldstream region, as well as commencing drilling in the other key targets within our land package."

READ: Goldshore Resources says its drill program has extended the resource at Moss Lake gold project

Goldshore noted that the two rigs have been mobilized to evaluate gold mineralization at East Coldstream and copper-gold-cobalt mineralization at North Coldstream.

The company said it plans to issue a drill plan for the next several months, indicating the locations of step out drilling and infill drilling at the Moss Lake project, as well as the key targets identified at East Coldstream, North Coldstream, Iris Lake and Hamlin.

Meanwhile, Goldshore's vice president for exploration Pete Flindell said: "Drilling has commenced at East and North Coldstream to evaluate historic drill holes, understand the controls on mineralization, test for higher grade shoots within the two deposits and explore for strike extensions to the known mineralized zones.

We look forward to seeing the results in the coming months," he added.

The Moss Lake gold project covers 14,292 hectares and consists of 282 unpatented and patented mining claims. Moss Lake hosts a number of gold and base metal rich deposits, including the Moss Lake Deposit, the East Coldstream Deposit, the historically producing North Coldstream Mine, and the Hamlin Zone, all of which occur over a mineralized trend exceeding 20 kilometers in length.

Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd (TSX:WDO) is currently a strategic shareholder of Goldshore with an approximate 27% equity position in the company.

Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive
Sonoro Gold is an exploration and development company holding the near-development-stage Cerro Caliche project and the exploration-stage San Marcial project in Sonora State, Mexico

Sonoro Gold Corp (TSX-V:SGO, OTCQB:SMOFF) has reported assay results from the final seven drill holes of the Phase 4 drilling program at its Cerro Caliche gold project in Mexico.

The objective of the program was to increase the estimated size and grade of the projects oxide gold mineralization, as well as extend the estimated life of a proposed heap leach mining operation, the company noted.

All in all, the company completed more than 7,200 meters (m) of reverse circulation drilling with 63 drill holes which returned multiple higher-grade gold intercepts and demonstrated the expansion of several known mineralized gold zones within the Cerro Caliche concession.

Specifically, hole SCR-321 intercepted 15.24m averaging 1.336 grams per ton (g/t) of gold, including 4.57m averaging 3.657 g/t gold. Hole SCR-322 intercepted 18.29m averaging 0.785 g/t gold; including 1.52m averaging 4.88 g/t gold.

Holes SCR-321 and SCR-322 each correlate with other plotted vein projections intersected further north, and the geology of the Abejas zone is similar to the Japoneses gold mineralized zone with most rock drilled being Jurassic-Cretaceous metasedimentary quartzite, shale and local limestone beds.

A full breakdown of the drill results can be found here.

"Phase four has been a successful drilling campaign with continued reporting of mineralized extensions and higher-grade intercepts, VP of Exploration Mel Herdrick said in a statement.As the project continues to move through the current permitting phase, the objective of the exploration team now is to refine our understanding of the new extensions and higher-grade zones, as well as the potential impact of the new drilling data on the projects resource."

Results from the Phase 4 campaign will be included in an updated resource estimate, which the company said it expects to release in the fall. The economic impact of the updated resource on the proposed heap leach mining operation will also be assessed and contemplated in a subsequent technical report.

The completion of the drilling program is another important milestone in the development of Cerro Caliche, CEO Kenneth MacLeod said. Last month we announced the positive results of an updated PEA and are currently assessing the potential economic impact of the new drilling data on the proposed heap leach mining operation. An updated resource estimation is expected to be filed this fall and we will continue to work on securing project financing and moving the project forward.

Sonoro Gold is an exploration and development company holding the near-development-stage Cerro Caliche project and the exploration-stage San Marcial project in Sonora State, Mexico.

The company has highly experienced operational and management teams with proven track records for the discovery and development of natural resource deposits.

Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow him on Twitter @andrew_kessel
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Baghdad, June 13 : The Iraqi parliament speaker has approved the resignation of all lawmakers of the Sadrist Movement, the biggest winner in the October 10 elections, shows a video aired by state-owned al-Iraqiya channel.

The resignation came just after the Sadrist Movement's leader Moqtada al-Sadr, also a prominent Shiite cleric in Iraq, asked his bloc's members to resign from parliament to save the political process from an unknown fate, according to a written statement affixed with his seal and signature.

The Sadrist Movement was part of the tripartite 'Saving the Homeland' alliance, which also includes the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by Masoud Barzani, and the Sunni Sovereignty Alliance, co-led by Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi.

The resignation is "a sacrifice from me for the sake of the homeland and the people to rid them of an unknown fate," al-Sadr said in his statement, noting KDP and Sovereignty Alliance are no longer allied with him, Xinhua news agency reported.

On Thursday, the Sadrist Movement leader threatened that his bloc would be in the parliamentary opposition or completely withdraw from the political process unless a national majority government was formed, while directing members of his bloc to prepare their resignations.

During the past months, the continuing disputes among the Shiite parties have hampered the formation of a new Iraqi government, as the parliament has been unable to elect a new President by a two-thirds majority of the 329-seat parliament under the constitution.

If elected, the President, whose tenure is limited to two four-year terms, will then appoint the head of the government, or the Prime Minister.

Al-Sadr had vowed to form a new national majority government from the winning parties in the elections after his followers took the lead with 73 seats in the elections.

Al-Sadr's pro-Iran rivals and some other parties, however, want to form a consensus government to include all political blocs, as in the case of all successive governments since 2003.
Ramallah, June 13 : Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye has urged forming an international front to pressure Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories and protect the two-state solution.

Ishtaye on Sunday made the remarks during a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah with Maya Tissafi, Assistant State Secretary of the Swiss Foreign Ministry and head of the Middle East and North Africa Department, according to a statement from Ishtaye's office.

"Forming an international front to exert pressure on the Israeli occupation is very important," said the Palestinian Prime Minister, who urged Switzerland to recognise the state of Palestine.

He also urged Switzerland and the international community to pressure Israel to abide by and respect the signed peace agreements and stop all its measures and violations in the Palestinian territories, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Providing international protection for the Palestinian people is essential," he added.

The statement said Ishtaye and Tissafi also discussed ways to strengthen bilateral relations between Switzerland and Palestine.

They highlighted the importance of joint coordination to support Palestine in creating job opportunities and economic development.

On Sunday, the Palestinian Prime Minister said in an interview with the state-run Palestine TV that the European Union is scheduled to vote on resuming the European aid to the Palestinians on Monday.

A total of 23 European foreign ministers sent a message to the EU saying the aid to Palestine should be resumed without conditions, according to Ishtaye.

"We hope that the vote will come with satisfactory results regarding the aid that we have not received since 2021," he said.
Kanpur, June 13 : Four months after she went missing, a 20-year-old girl from Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur has been found by police from Morena district in Madhya Pradesh.

The girl told the police that she had been abducted by two persons, Jitendra Gupta and Pawan, in February. The two raped her and then pushed her into prostitution.

The accused duo sold the girl to another person Manoj Sharma of Morena district for Rs 50,000.

The police have arrested Jitendra and Pawan, as well as a woman Neeta, who had assisted the former.

Investigating Officer Brij Kishore Singh said that the accused used to thrash the victim mercilessly if she resisted.

Later, Jitendra called Neeta and sent the girl with her to Jaipur. Thereafter, they sold the girl to Manoj Sharma of Morena district for Rs 50,000, who sexually exploited her.

On June 9, the girl somehow managed to contact her elder sister and shared her location and suffering.

The girl's elder sister informed the police and the Investigating Officer went to Madhya Pradesh with police personnel and found the girl but Manoj managed to flee.

The police have launched a search for Manoj, who is absconding.
Seoul, June 13 : South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Monday said that there was nothing wrong with him and First Lady Kim Keon-hee watching a movie the previous day shortly after North Korea fired artillery shots because the government took necessary steps in response.

Yoon and the First Lady watched the Cannes award-winning film 'Broker' at a movie theatre in Seoul on Sunday, reports Yonhap News Agency.

But some critics said it was inappropriate for the President to watch a movie at a time when the North had fired shots from a presumed multiple rocket launcher hours earlier "There's nothing to be suspicious about," Yoon said as he arrived for work when a reporter suggested people could have questions about why the president went to see a movie.

"If a multiple rocket launcher was the equivalent of a missile, then we would take steps accordingly, but a multiple rocket launcher is not equivalent to a missile, so we took the step that was needed," he said.

The shots were detected between 8.07 a.m. and 11.03 a.m. on Sunday morning.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) only said that it had detected "several trajectories", but gave no additional details, such as the origin of the firing.

The launch came a week after North Korea fired eight short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea.
Kabul, June 13 : A visiting UN official will meet leaders of the Taliban-led government and discuss ways to resolve the Afghan refugee crisis and establish grounds for their return.

Upon her arrival in Kabul on Sunday, Kelly T. Clements, Deputy High Commissioner of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), tweeted: "In Afghanistan, humanitarian needs are immense, with millions of Afghans displaced. I'm in the country to advocate for support, including for those returning home, and the need to uphold their rights, especially of women and children and their ability to participate in public life." In a separate statement, she said: "We will be talking over the course of the next days with the interim authorities about how we can support the needs of the Afghan people and how we can find solutions for those that are outside the country that want to come home and want to be able to rebuild their lives in peace and have an Afghanistan that is inclusive of all." Afghanistan has been forgotten, TOLO News quoted the UN official as saying.

"This is a very important moment for this country and the people of Afghanistan, it is a time where the world's attention has turned to other situations of displacement, other war, other conflicts," she added.

According to the UNHCR, Afghan refugees are the third-largest displaced population in the world, following Syrian refugees and displaced Venezuelans.

There are 2.6 million registered Afghan refugees in the world, of whom 2.2 million are registered in Iran and Pakistan alone.

After the Taliban took over in August last year, 667,900 Afghans were internally displaced, which added to the already 3.5 million internally displaced civilians at the end of 2020.

Eighty per cent of the newly displaced Afghans are women and children.
San Francisco, June 13 : Google has agreed to pay $118 million to settle a class-action gender discrimination lawsuit in the US that includes nearly 15,500 women in 236 job titles.

The plaintiffs Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease, Kelli Wisuri, and Heidi Lamar worked for Google in California in a "covered position" since September 14, 2013.

The class action gender discrimination lawsuit was filed in 2017.

Google is also required to have an independent labour economist to evaluate its hiring practices and pay equity studies.

"In addition to monetary relief, the settlement provides that an independent third party expert will analyse Google's leveling-at-hire practices and that an independent labour economist will review Google's pay equity studies," plaintiffs' law firms said in a statement.

The post-settlement work will be supervised by an external Settlement Monitor over the next three years.

The lawsuit challenged Google's pay and levelling processes, and Plaintiffs believe these programmes "will help ensure that women are not paid less than their male counterparts who perform substantially similar work, and that Google's challenged levelling practices are equitable".

Ellis worked as a Software Engineer at Google's Mountain View office for approximately four years, departing the company with the title of Senior Manager.

While Pease worked for Google for approximately 10.5 years, in both Mountain View and Sunnyvale, holding numerous technical leadership roles, Wisuri worked for Google for approximately 2.5 years in its Mountain View office in various roles.

Plaintiff Lamar worked as a Preschool Teacher and Infant/Toddler Teacher at Google's Children Center in Palo Alto for approximately four years.

"As a woman who's spent her entire career in the tech industry, I'm optimistic that the actions Google has agreed to take as part of this settlement will ensure more equity for women," said Pease.

The court will now set a hearing date for preliminary settlement approval, which, if approved, will result in the third-party administrator issuing notice to the class members.
New Delhi, June 13 : Security around the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office here has been beefed up ahead of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's scheduled appearance on Monday for questioning in the National Herald case.

Paramilitary forces have been deployed around the ED office in Pravartan Bhawan, APJ Abdul Kalam Road in Lutyens Zone as a precautionary measure.

Extra police teams have also stationed to keep a vigil on people visiting the nearby areas, lanes.

Mr Gandhi was summoned twice in the case. He had earlier written to the national agency that he was abroad and it was not possible for him to join the probe.

This morning, he is all set to join the probe and is likely to reach the ED's headquarters to get his statement recorded.

Every vehicle going towards Abdul Kalam Azad Road is being stopped and its occupants questioned.

Several Congress workers were detained from outside the AICC headquarters in 24 Akbar Road in the morning where they had gathered for a proposed march to the ED office with their leader.

Heavy deployment of police were seen outside the AICC office and Rahul Gandhi's residence.

Delhi Police on Sunday told the Congress party that their proposed march will not be permitted, owing to the security situation in the national capital.

"Keeping in view the present communal situation in Delhi and heavy law and order/VVIP movements in the jurisdiction of New Delhi district... The said rally could not be permitted in the jurisdiction of New Delhi district," Deputy Commissioner of Police Amrutha Guguloth said in a letter to the AICC.

The police also noted that a call was given to the Congress supporters all over India to join the march.

Denying permission, the senior official requested the party to cooperate with the police.
New Delhi, June 13 : The Delhi Traffic Police on Monday issued an advisory for residents of the national capital asking them to avoid certain roads in wake of the proposed march that will be carried out by the Congress party from its headquarters to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office where senior leader Rahul Gandhi is scheduled to appear.

"Kindly avoid Motilal Nehru Marg, Akbar Road, Janpath & Man Singh Road between 0700 hrs & 1200 hrs. Due to special arrangements traffic movement will not be possible on these roads," the Delhi Traffic Police said in an advisory on Twitter.

It also asked people to avoid Gol Methi junction, Tughlak Road Junction, Claridges Junction, Q-point Junction, Sunehri Masjid Junction, Maulana Azad Road Junction and the Man Singh Road Junction in the same period.

"Due to special traffic arrangements inwards movement of buses will be restricted in New Delhi beyond Gol Dak Khana Junction, Patel Chowk, Windsor Place, Teen Murti Chowk, Prithviraj Road," its said in another tweet.

Meanwhile, several roads, including Motilal Nehru Marg, Akbar Road, the stretch in front of Udyog Bhawan, were completely blocked by the police and even people were not allowed to walk on it.

The Enforcement Directorate has summoned Rahul Gandhi on Monday and party chief Sonia Gandhi on June 23 in connection with the National Herald case, lodged against various Congress leaders, including the Gandhis, for allegedly misappropriating funds.

However, the police denied permission for the march, owing to the present communal situation and heavy law and order in the city.

"Keeping in view the present communal situation in Delhi and heavy law and order/VVIP movements in the jurisdiction of New Delhi district... The said rally could not be permitted in the jurisdiction of New Delhi district," Deputy Commissioner of Police Amrutha Guguloth had said in a letter to All India Congress Committee.
Kiev, June 13 : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia may lose more than 40,000 soldiers by the end of June.

In a video address on Sunday, the President said: "The Russian army is trying to deploy reserve troops in Donbas. But what reserves can they speak of right now? "It seems that they will throw poorly trained conscripts into the battle, as well as those who had been recruited via covert mobilisation efforts. Russian generals consider their people simply as cannon fodder, which they need to ensure they outnumber us in military personnel, in military equipment.

"But this only adds up to one thing: Russian losses in June might exceed 40,000 military personnel. They have not lost as many soldiers in any of the wars in many decades." Zelenksy went on to say that currently the most fierce battles between the two warring nations are taking place in Sievierodonetsk, a city in the separatist Luhansk region in Donbas, reports Ukrayinska Pravda.

"Ukrainian Defence Forces are fighting for every inch of Ukrainian land," he said, adding that Russian forces were also advancing on Lysychansk, Bakhmut and Sloviansk.

While Lysychansk is in Luhansk, both Bakhmut and Sloviansk are in Donestsk, also a part of Donbas.

Meanwhile, the Luhansk region's military administration said that Russian forces have been relentlessly firing on Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk over the course of Sunday.

A six year-old child was killed as a result of Russian shelling, it said, adding that Russian forces were trying to press past the Ukrainian defence line by exerting fierce artillery fire.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Chennai, June 13 : In a mega vaccination drive against Covid-19, Tamil Nadu Health department has inoculated 13.83 lakh people, according to the state government data.

The drive, which is the 30th mega vaccine drive in the state that commenced on September 12, 2021, was held across 1 lakh centres on Sunday.

As per the health department data, the state vaccinated 13,83,573 people of which 2,44,520 people received their first dose of vaccine, 10,30,753 received their second dose and 1,08,300 received their booster dose.

After the 30th mega vaccination camp on Sunday, 94.3 per cent of the state's adult population received their first dose and 84.81 per cent the second dose, a government statement said.

State health minister Ma Subramanian told IANS: "The mega vaccination drive on Sunday was highly successful. Vaccination for children in the age group of 15-17 has commenced in schools and the second dose will also be given there itself. Children in the age group of 12-14 will be inoculated with Corbevax." The minister also said that while Covid-related deaths are reported from some other states and appealed to the people of the state to adhere to Covid -19 protocols. He also said that all hospitals in the state are equipped with all facilities including oxygen beds.
New Delhi, June 13 : Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain's custody to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was extended by two weeks on Monday.

The city's Rouse Avenue Court extended his judicial custody in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, in which he was being interrogated.

On May 31, a day after the arrest of Jain in the money laundering case, a Special CBI Court Judge Geetanjali Goel sent him to the agency's custody till June 9 which further extended to five days that was scheduled to end on Monday.

He was rushed to a nearby hospital after he complained of uneasiness while leaving the Rouse Avenue Court, just after the last court hearing.

The Minister was being taken to the ED headquarters when he felt uneasy outside the court and was taken to the hospital.

The CBI has accused Jain, his wife, and others accused of commission of offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

On March 31, the ED had provisionally attached immovable properties worth Rs 4.81 crore belonging to companies beneficially owned and controlled by Jain.

Jain was placed under arrest on May 30 by the ED under section 19 of the PMLA. Further investigation into the matter is on.

The ED on June 6 also recently conducted raids at multiple locations belonging to Jain, his wife, and accomplices who had either directly or indirectly assisted him or participated in the processes of money laundering.

A recovery of cash worth Rs 2.85 crore and 133 gold coins weighing 1.80 kg was made.
Washington, June 13 : A group of bipartisan US Senators announced a narrow gun safety deal amid public disappointment about political inaction against the rising gun violence.

The plan, endorsed by 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans, includes measures to crack down on criminals who illegally straw purchase and traffic guns, strengthen criminal background check requirements for gun buyers younger than 21, and fund mental health services, reports Xinhua news agency.

Both sides touted it as a victory but the deal fell short of the White House's proposals to ban assault weapons and raise the minimum age of purchasing certain firearms from 18 to 21, among other things.

The Senators' announcement came a day after Americans gathered across the US to decry rising gun violence and urge politicians to take action in the wake of several mass shootings over the past few weeks.

At least 17 people were killed and 62 others injured in 11 mass shootings across the US earlier this month.

Last week, three people died and 14 others were injured following a shooting outside a nightclub in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Ten people were killed at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store on May 14, while 19 children and two teachers were shot dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24.

On June 1, four people were shot and killed at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical building, and the next day, three people died in a shooting outside a church in Ames, Iowa.

According to the latest data from Gun Violence Archive, the US has suffered 265 mass shootings over the past five months, with more than 19,500 lives lost to gun violence.
Patna, June 13 : Some 120 persons fell ill in Bihar's Vaishali district after they consumed prasad at a Satya Narayanan puja.

The health of the ailing deteriorated on Sunday afternoon when majority of them complained of stomach ache, vomiting, and diarrhoea.

The incident occurred at ward number 10 of Mahathi Dharamchand Panchayat in Patepur block on Saturday evening.

Dr. Amitabh Kumar Sinha, the civil surgeon of Vaishali, said: "As soon as we learnt of the incident, we sent a medical team to ward number 10. They are victims of food poisoning. We have distributed ORS packets and other necessary medicines to them. Five of the victims were having serious health conditions and they were hospitalised in primary health centre in Patepur.

"During preliminary investigation, it appeared that the chemical used in ripening raw bananas was excessive. Moreover, the bananas were boiled as well. This had led to the adulteration of prasad, which the invitees ate and fell ill."
Thiruvananthapuram, June 13 : Protests demanding resignation of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, after gold smuggling case accused Swapna Suresh alleged that the CM and his family were also involved, entered day three on Monday.

The protest that started from Kottayam on Saturday continued on Sunday and on Monday, the situation was no different in Kannur-- his home town.

Last week, Swapna had claimed that Vijayan, his wife and their daughter had a role in smuggling currency and gold. Since then, the Congress and the BJP are up in arms demanding Vijayan's resignation.

In the wake of the agitations, the state government has directed people against wearing a black mask or a black outfit to any function presided by Vijayan.

Across the six districts he travelled by road since Saturday, all those who waved black flags at him, were taken into custody by police, who are out in large numbers.

In Kannur, members of youth wing of the Congress party who were protesting in front of the Government Guest house where Vijayan was staying, were roughed up by police.

In another incident, a student activist of the Congress party, who was waving a black flag at Vijayan's convoy, was taken into police custody, while two CPI-M workers beat him up.

Likewise, the police caned the protesters closer to the venue where Vijayan had a function.

Meanwhile, the TV channels in the state are having a field day as they are replaying all the old statements made by Vijayan with regards to his demands that the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy if he has any morals left, he should quit after a flyby way operator Saritha Nair selling solar panels links with his staff surfaced.

They are also airing a clip of 2014 in which Vijayan can be seen saying that it's common practise to wave a black flag to protest and what's the big deal in it.

Veteran Congress legislator Ramesh Chennithala remarked that Vijayan has become a "nuisance" as he has disturbed the peace and tranquillity in the state as the ordinary people are finding it difficult to even move out.

With Congress leading from the front in their demand asking Vijayan to quit and the court also looking into a few petitions of Swapna and others, the protests is likely to mount. The development is also likely to rock the state Assembly which is scheduled to start on June 27.
Kiev, June 13 : Amnesty International has accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying attacks in the second largest city of Kharkiv, many using banned cluster bombs, have killed hundreds of civilians.

The rights group made the remark in a report titled, 'Anyone Can Die At Any Time', published on Monday, the Guardian reported.

"The repeated bombardments of residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes," the report said.

"This is true both for the strikes carried out using cluster (munitions) as well as those conducted using other types of unguided rockets and unguided artillery shells.

"The continued use of such inaccurate explosive weapons in populated civilian areas, in the knowledge that they are repeatedly causing large numbers of civilian casualties, may even amount to directing attacks against the civilian population," it added.

The Amnesty said it had uncovered proof in Kharkiv of the repeated use by Russian forces of 9N210 and 9N235 cluster bombs and scatterable land mines, all of which are banned under international conventions, the Guardian reported.

Cluster bombs release dozens of bomblets or grenades in mid-air, scattering them indiscriminately over hundreds of square metres.

Scatterable land mines combine "the worst possible attributes of cluster munitions and antipersonnel land mines", the Amnesty report said, adding that unguided artillery shells have a margin of error of over 100m.

The report details how Russian forces began targeting civilian areas of Kharkiv on the first day of the invasion on February 24.

The "relentless" shelling continued for two months, wreaking "wholesale destruction" on the city of 1.5 million.

People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queueing for humanitarian aid, or shopping for food and medicine," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's Senior Crisis Response Adviser.

"The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives. The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable." Kharkiv's Military Administration told Amnesty that 606 civilians had been killed and 1,248 wounded in the region since the war began, the Guardian reported.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Mumbai, June 13 : 'Rocket Gang', the directorial debut of choreographer Bosco Leslie Martis, is set to debut in theatres on November 11.

The film, a dance fantasy comedy, stars Aditya Seal, Nikita Dutta, Mokshda, Sahaj Singh Chahal and Jason Tham.

The film boasts elements of horror, comedy, drama, and of course, lots of dance and caters to the family audience and children, the reason its release date is set just before Children's Day.

Speaking about the film, director Bosco said, "'Rocket Gang' is special to me for more reasons than one. Everyone has put in a lot of hard work and love into the making of this film and we are excited to finally show you the film soon! See you in cinemas on 11th November 2022!" Additionally, the films stars five young kids Dipali Borkar, Tejas Varma, Jayshree Gogoi, Aadvik Mongia and Siddhant Sharma in pivotal roles

Commenting on the development, Shariq Patel, CBO - ZEE Studios said, "We are committed to providing viewers with differentiated content that entertains. We at Zee Studios have nurtured it from script to screen. It is full of dance, music, and masti and is meant for a theatrical experience. 'Rocket Gang' ticks all the boxes of a perfect family watch - and that too around Children's Day! We are excited about making this film yours on 11th November 2022!" Directed by Bosco Leslie Martis, 'Rocket Gang' is produced by Zee Studios.
Kolkata, June 13 : A division bench of the Calcutta High Court on Monday dismissed a plea for a CBI probe into the proceeds of the West Bengal government's disinvestment of its stake in erstwhile joint venture, Metro Dairy Limited.

Calcutta High Court's Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajasrshi Bharadwaj observed that since the state government did not adopt any opaque sale of shares, there is no need for any intervention by the court in the process. The division bench also observed that the disinvestment process was neither arbitrary nor illegal.

The division bench of the Calcutta High Court gave this verdict on a petition by West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC) president and senior party MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury alleging lack of transparency in the process in in which the state government disinvested its 47 per cent stake in Metro Dairy Limited. Chowdhury in its petition alleged that the disinvestment resulted in massive loss of money for the state exchequer.

In this petition, Chowdhury pointed out that the state government in 2017 sold its 47 per cent stake to private entity Keventer Group at a throwaway price of Eventer just Rs 85 crore. In the same year, pointed out Chowdhury, Keventer Group sold 15 per cent of that 47 per cent to a Singapore- based entity at Rs 135 crore. He also alleged that the state government disinvested its stake in Metro Dairy Limited in May 2017 by calling an open tender or giving any advertisement in any newspaper on this count.

To recall, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram had appeared on behalf of Metro Dairy Limited. Last month, when he came to Calcutta High Court for hearing, a group of Congress- affiliated advocates agitated against him and shouted "Go-Back" slogans. They demanded that Chidambaram should sever his ties with Congress after this development.
Mumbai, June 13 : Actress Richa Chadha along with producer-director Shuchi Talati has set-up an incubation programme for women who hope to work as gaffers in the film industry through a programme called 'Undercurrent Lab'.

The special programme was launched on Monday with the objective of introducing more female gaffers in Hindi films.

In its first year, the 'Undercurrent Lab' will focus on training 10 women (selected through an interview process) in lighting for cinema. It will start with a first-of-its-kind, hands-on workshop, where the trainees will learn the art from gaffers and cinematographers from the industry.

After the week-long crash course, the girls will be sent out on the field, to work on film sets as trainees. Two of the 10 girls will be placed on the nearly all-women crew on Richa and Ali Fazal's maiden production 'Girls will be girls' which starts shooting from October.

Commenting on the occasion, Richa said in a statement, "When we set out to have an all-women team, we found that there's virtually no women who work in the lighting departments in Hindi films. So our associate, Tanya Negi came up with the idea for this workshop.

"We are starting this training programme for women which aims to increase the participation of women behind the camera. I hope that the initiative seeds in a much larger change in the way things work in this industry." The special programme is a joint partnership between the Women in Film and Television Association, India (WIFT) and one of the largest lighting and grip equipment providers in Bollywood 'Light N Light'.

Shuchi Talati added, "We applied for a grant at Berlinale Talent Footprints in February this year to set up this Lab, and won! The 'Undercurrent lab' will give the opportunity of making a solid career in the lighting department in the film industry, to our 10 candidates who have been chosen after a careful series of interviews. We are thankful to folks at Arri, Berlinale, Light and Light and Gratitude House for coming on board to help us pro-bono." The 'Undercurrent Lab' will roll from June 13 to June 18.
Damascus, June 13 : Syrian Prime Minister Hussein Arnous has urged a quick repair of the damage caused by the latest Israeli missile strikes to the Damascus airport.

Arnous made the call during his visit to the airport, where he was briefed on the damage to the main runway of the airport and an operating room during the missile strikes on June 10, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Syrian Transport Ministry announced the suspension of flights at the Damascus airport in the wake of the Israeli strikes.

Some flights were diverted to the Aleppo airport.

The suspension of flights have prevented Syrians from travelling to the far northeastern province of Hasakah, which is possibly only accessible by air because of the presence of ultra-radical groups on the major roads leading to the province.

It is worth noting that humanitarian organisations have been largely relying on air transport to reach Hasakah and Aleppo.

Israel often hits the vicinity of the Damascus airport, but this is the first time the entire airport is rendered out of service as a result of the strikes.
Kolkata, June 13 : The Kolkata police has issued summons to suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma over her controversial comments about Prophet Muhammad which led to violence in certain pockets of West Bengal.

The summons have been issued by Narkeldanga Police Station, under Eastern Suburban Division of Kolkata police under Section 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. Sharma has been asked to be present at the police station on June 20.

City police sources said that the summon has been issued following a complaint that her controversial comments have triggered violence in different parts of West Bengal.

The Bhiwandi City Police under Thane district in Maharashtra has already issued a notice to Sharma over the same issue and asked her to be present at Pydhonie police station at 11 a.m. on June 25. However, Sharma's counsel has replied to the Bhiwandi city police seeking more time to appear for the questioning.

Since last Friday, violence has erupted in several areas of West Bengal over the controversial comments by Sharma, which have evoked widespread protests throughout the country, following which the BJP suspended her from the party. The BJP also suspended another leader Naveen Jindal who shared her comments on Twitter.

Tension built up mainly in the minority dominated Uluberia, Domjur and Panchla areas in Kolkata, adjacent to Howrah district. It gradually spread to the minority dominated pockets in other districts of West Bengal like Murshidabad and Nadia.

Clashes erupted between the agitators and police in which Domjur police station was attacked, police vehicles were torched and several police personnel were injured. Internet services have been suspended in several areas.

While warning of strict action against the agitators, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has held the BJP responsible for instigating the violence. Several senior state BJP leaders including the party's state president and party MP, Sukanta Majumdar have demanded immediate deployment of central armed forces in the disturbed areas.
June 13 : The highly anticipated film of the year, Brahmastra Part One: Shiva, is in its final production stage. The big-budget film will hit the theatres on September 9 in five regional languages, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam.

Helmed by Ayan Mukerji, the film hosts a long line of Bollywood A-listers with Amitabh Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor, and Alia Bhatt in lead roles. Taking to Instagram, the producer of Brahmastra, Karan Johar, extended a warm welcome to the Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi who will be lending voice to the Telugu version of the film.

"So grateful and honored to have you lend your voice to the Telugu version of the film. Making this family only stronger with your boundless talent and grandeur!" KJO wrote. He also posted a video where Chiranjeevi is seen in the studio dubbing for the film. The Telugu version of the film's trailer will release on June 15.

Recently the filmmaker had dropped the motion character posters of Amitabh Bachchan and Nagarjuna, which were well received by the fans. Dimple Kapadia, Nagarjuna, and Mouni Roy also play pivotal roles, while Bollywood king Shahrukh Khan makes a cameo appearance. Director Ayan Mukherji, who worked for over 10 years on the realization of his dream project, described Brahmastra as a fantasy epic story.

Welcome to Team Brahmastra, Chiranjeevi Sir!



So grateful and honoured to have you lend your voice to the Telugu version of the film. Making this family only stronger with your boundless talent and grandeur! pic.twitter.com/D6ssbFwy1m  Karan Johar (@karanjohar) June 13, 2022

Apart from Brahmastra, Karan has several interesting movies in his pipeline. The filmmaker is currently gearing up for the release of Jugjugg Jeeyo, starring Varun Dhawan and Kiara Advani in lead roles, which is slated for release on June 24. The upcoming romantic drama Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani, starring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt, is also backed by KJo.
New Delhi, June 13 : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi left the Enforcement Directorate office after he was questioned for nearly three hours in connection with the National Herald case here on Monday.

Sources said that during the first round of questioning, Gandhi was asked about his assets and bank accounts in and outside the country.

"He was asked about his assets abroad," sources said.

According to an official, three senior officers of the financial probe agency questioned the former Congress president.

"The team consisted of two Assistant Directors and one Deputy Director," said the official.

Earlier, Gandhi reached the ED office located at Paryavaran Bhavan on APJ Abdul Kalam Road amid heavy police deployment that was put in place to restrain party workers from carrying out a rally from Congress HQ to the ED office.

On the way, Rahul was accompanied by his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, however, she left minutes after they reached the ED office.

Apart from Rahul, his mother and interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi has also been summoned in the same case. She will appear before the financial probe agency on June 23.

Meanwhile, several Congress party leaders were detained after they protested against Rahul Gandhi's questioning by the Enforcement Directorate.

The detainees included Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, Harish Rawat, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, K.C. Venugopal, Deepender S. Hooda and Pawan Khera among several others.

The partymen were kept at different police stations of the city. Some were taken to Mandir Marg police station while some were held at Fatehpur Beri, Tughlaq Road Police Station etc.

Pawan Khera said the party will not cow down to the pressure of the Modi government. "We have been since morning trying to reach the ED office and we will keep trying," he said earlier.
Wellington, June 13 : New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday made changes to her Cabinet line-up by replacing ministers for Police, Immigration and Justice.

Chris Hipkins who was responsible for Covid-19 response takes over as Minister of Police, and Ayesha Verrall who is currently the associate Health Minister will be in charge of Covid-19 response, Ardern said after a Cabinet meeting.

The move was in response to the wide criticism of government inaction towards increasing gang violence in several New Zealand cities and deteriorating public security, reports Xinhua news agency.

The new police focus will be on supporting the police, implementing the record investment in the frontline, passing further gun law reforms and developing additional measures to deal with the current escalation in gang tensions and violence, said the Prime Minister.

Current Police Minister Poto Williams will continue her conservation and disability portfolios.

Hipkins, also the Minister of Education, has a degree in criminology and a long interest in working in the youth justice space, which dovetails with his education work, Ardern said, adding a significant part of his Education portfolio will move to Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti.

Meanwhile, Justice and Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi will step down from Parliament, Kiri Allan was promoted to the Justice Minister, and Michael Wood will become the Immigration Minister.

Speaker Trevor Mallard will end his 35-year parliamentary career in mid-August as he prepares to take up a diplomatic post in Europe.

Adrian Rurawhe will be nominated as the new Speaker.

The changes will take effect following a ceremony on Tuesday.

"These changes are triggered by two departures. It's also an opportunity to give newer ministers greater responsibility and to bring new members onto the team," Ardern said.
Ulan Bator, June 13 : Mongolia will build a "green wall" along its borders by planting at least 16 million trees by 2030 to combat desertification, the presidential office said in a statement on Monday.

To achieve the goal, professional agronomists have been appointed to all units of the General Authority for Border Protection, and trainings on planting and caring for trees have been provided to contract or conscript servicemen, Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying.

The effort is part of Mongolia's national tree-planting campaign initiated by President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, it said.

The campaign was officially launched last October with an aim to plant at least 1 billion trees by 2030 to combat climate change and desertification.

Almost 77 per cent of Mongolian territory is affected by desertification and land degradation, according to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism.
Bengaluru, June 13 : The Intelligence Wing of Karnataka police has submitted a report to the Bengaluru Police Commissioner in connection with the Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Talib Hussain who was arrested recently in Bengaluru, police sources said on Monday.

The team has gathered all information regarding Talib Hussain from Jammu and Kashmir police department. The team has submitted a report containing details of cases against Talib Hussain, his activities and network in Bengaluru.

The report also has the information about when and how Talib Hussain came and settled in Bengaluru. Sources say that there are cases against him under the Unlawful Activity Prevention Act (UAPA) in Kishtwar police station of Jammu and Kashmir. The team has also collected inputs on investigations against him since 2007-8.

The details of Talib Hussain's stay in Bengaluru, his rented house, place of work have been mentioned in the report. The team had also visited the Masjid in Okalipuram where Talib Hussain had taken shelter.

Pratap Reddy, the Commissioner of Police of Bengaluru, has directed the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) to keep extra vigil in the city to find out anti-national elements who have taken shelter in the city.

Earlier in a joint operation, the armed forces from Jammu and Kashmir and Karnataka police arrested Talib Hussain from Bengaluru on June 3.

According to sources, the operation was jointly conducted by the Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and the Central Armed Reserve Police Force (CRPF) platoons with the help of local Bengaluru police. The terrorist was hiding in Bengaluru for the last 3 years.

The questions are raised how Talib Hussain could stay for 3 years without coming onto the radar of intelligence agencies.
Hyderabad, June 13 : Hyderabad police on Monday continued questioning five juveniles in Jubilee Hills gang-rape case.

The five juveniles, including son of a Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leader and that of another legislator of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) were brought from Juvenile Home to Jubilee Hills Police Station for questioning.

Police officers were questioning the minors on the basis of the statement given by Saduddin Malik, the only major accused in the sensational case.

As Malik's four-day police custody ended on Sunday, police produced him in the court on Monday. The 18-year-old was sent back to Chanchalguda Central Prison.

The police reportedly collected vital information from Malik as to the role played by each of the accused in the incident that occurred on May 28 in the upscale Jubilee Hills. Based on the disclosures made by him, the police were questioning the minors.

Police will continue questioning three of the juveniles on Tuesday while the remaining two will be in police custody till Wednesday.

Sons of two corporators of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and Sangareddy allegedly played a key role in trapping the victim, who had left the pub after they misbehaved with her during the party hosted by a minor based in Bengaluru on the eve of reopening of schools.

The accused told police during the questioning that they had not consumed liquor or drugs.

The police on Sunday carried out scene reconstruction. The accused were taken to Amnesia Pub on Road Number 36 Jubilee Hills where the victim and the accused had attended a daytime party, Consu Bakery on Road Number 14 Banjara Hills and the isolated place on Road Number 44 Jubilee Hills where the five had sexually assaulted her.

The police gathered information as to who among the accused first approached the victim in the pub and who misbehaved with her. The accused were also questioned about who trapped the victim after she came out of the pub and how they convinced her to board Mercedes car with them for Consu Bakery and what happened in the vehicle en route.

The investigators also collected information as to why the accused left Mercedes and boarded Innova at the bakery. They were also questioned about the sequence of events that finally led to the sexual assault in the vehicle.

Potency test was conducted on five accused who were involved in the gang-rape. The test was conducted at government-run Osmania Hospital.

Potency test establishes whether a person is capable of engaging in sexual acts or not.

The Children in Conflict with Law (CCL) as the minors are called by the police, are being questioned from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. After 5 p.m., CCL are taken back to the Juvenile Home.

Out of five accused who sexually assaulted the girl, four are aged 16-17. The fifth accused is 18-year-old Malik, who has been named as number one accused.

The sixth accused who has been charged only with molestation is one month short of turning 18. He is the son of a MIM MLA.

Four minors charged with gang rape include son of a leader of TRS. The leader is also the chairman of a government-run body.

Malik Aand four CCL have been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 376 D (gang rape), 323 (causing hurt), Section 5 (G) (gang penetrative sexual assault on child) read with Section 6 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 366 (kidnapping a woman) and 366 A (procuration of a minor girl) and Section 67 of Information Technology Act.

Police say the accused could face punishment for not less than 20 years or imprisonment for life till death or even death penalty.

The sixth CCL was not involved in rape but he kissed the victim in the car. He has been booked under IPC Section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 323 and Section 9 (G) read with 10 of POCSO Act. He could face 5-7 years imprisonment.
Mumbai, June 13 : As 'Major', based on the life of 26/11 hero Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, is receiving a lot of love from the audience and critics alike, writer and lead actor Adivi Sesh reveals how he could not show an interesting incident from Sandeep's life in the film.

In conversation with IANS, Sesh shared that how, keeping the sentiment and the mood of the film in mind, there are some fascinating incidents of Sandeep's life that he as a writer, could not keep in the main narrative of the film.

Sesh told IANS: "We actually had the opposite problem while weaving the story, that one usually has in a biopic. You see, since real life is mostly dry and not that dramatic when someone writes a story, they fictionalise some moments to make it more cinematic. But there were so many incidents that have happened in Major Sandeep's life that we could not put them out in the film." Sharing one of such incidents, the actor-writer added, "One of the stories that Amma told me was when Sandeep sir was a teenager. One day, uncle came back home and when he entered, he saw there were around 30 girls' sandals outside. He was wondering what happened and then he got to know why so many girls are suddenly here! "There was a rumour in school that Sandeep's wedding is getting fixed and that was the reason all those girls from school came to Amma to impress and convince her to get them married to Sandeep sir! Of course, Uncle and Amma had a good laugh about it. And when I heard that story I so wanted to keep it in the film, but I couldn't! Sandeep sir was the most favourite for everyone from his childhood really." "There were stories and anecdotes that really proved that he was a born hero. But these little moments, we could not keep in the film otherwise we would have received a backlash and the mood of the story would have got diverted," Adivi added.

The story of 'Major' revolves around the 36 hours of the operation during the Mumbai terror attacks of 26/11. Major Sandeep was an NSG training officer who was the team commander for the rescue operation at the Taj Mahal Hotel saving the lives of the hostages. He was martyred while saving the lives of others. NSG saved the lives of 250 hostages in that operation.

The film 'Major' is directed by Sashi Kiran Tikka, also starring Prakash Raj, Sobhita Dhulipala, Saiee Manjrekar, Revati - released in theatres.
Dhaka, June 13 : A Russian national who worked in the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP) of Bangladesh has died, an official said on Monday, adding that a total of eight foreign employees connected to the project have passed away in the past six months.

The deceased, Ivanov Anton, 33, used to work as an employee of Rosem Company, a Russian contractor for the project.

He used to live in room number 126 on the 12th floor of building No 2 in the Green City residential area, a housing project for foreigners at Natun Hat in Sahapur of the Pbna upazila, Arbinda Sarkar, officer-in-charge (OC) of Ishwardi police station, told IANS on Monday morning.

Ivanov fell unconscious in front of the elevator on the way back to his room after buying food from a restaurant near Green City on Sunday night.

Later, physicians at RNPP project declared him dead and handed his body to the police.

"Ivanov might have died of a cardiac arrest," the police official added.

Since March 26, six Russian, one Belarusian and a Kazak national have died at the RNPP site.

On April 15, BelarusianIvanu Maxim, 52, an employee of contractor firm Ruinwald of the under-construction project, was found dead at the Green City residential area.

On March 26, Kazakhstan national Vladimir Soviet was killed at a house in Ishwardi Rooppur Residential Project Green city.

Three Belarusian nationals employed with the Russian company Rossem, were detained over their involvement in Soviet's killing.

Two days later, a court in Pabna sent them to jail.

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India and Mongolia share warm and cordial bilateral relations with the year 2022 marking the 67th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries. The bilateral relationship was upgraded to a Strategic Partnership during the historic visit of Prime Minister in 2015. The 3Ds - Democracy, Dharma and Development partnership have emerged as the pillars of India- Mongolia relationship. Historically, the two nations have been connected through Buddhism that has developed, nurtured and promoted the friendship and spiritual bond.

Buddhism came to Mongolia in three phases. The first phase began during the time of the Indian Emperor Ashoka in third century BCE. Ashoka had extended his Buddhist influence northward all the way to the city of Khotan, which was the western most region of Mongolia from where Buddhism gradually spread eastward to the Mongolian Gobi kingdoms along the Silk Route.

In 1206 CE under the ruler Genghis Khan, a united Mongolian state of nomadic tribes was formed, and his successors controlled a vast empire that included much of China, Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. During this the second phase of Buddhism began when Genghis Khan's grandson Emperor Kublai Khan adopted Tibetan Buddhism and promoted Tibetan Guru Chogyal Pakpa/Phagpa lama (known to Mongols today as Pakpa Lama). An easy form of the Tibetan script for use in all territories took place under his rule. This script, known as the Pakyig, continued as the script of choice by the Mongol emperors who came thereafter, and was in common use in Mongol Buddhism. The Mongolian Khans of Yuan dynasty adopted Tibetan Buddhism over other religions and honoured Skya-pa lamas as their supreme religious instructor.

The third phase referred as The Origins of Dharma in Mongolia, refers to the Yellow Hat School Movement that was inspired by the Third Dalai Lama's travels in the Mongol regions from 1578 under the patronage of Altan Khan. Interestingly, the Dalai Lama was not known by the name "Dalai" at the time rather was known as Jey Tamchey Khyenpa, or "The Omniscient Master". The Third carried the ordination name of Sonam Gyatso. When he arrived in Hohhot, the then southern capital of Mongolia, Altan Khan translated the "Gyatso" part of his name into Mongolian. Thus Gyatso became Dalai, and Jey Tamchey Khyenpa became "Dalai Lama Dorjechang." With the collapse and split of the Mongol empire, northern Mongolia was colonized by Qing (Manchu) China from 1691 onwards. With the fall of the Qing in 1911, control of Mongolia lay in the hands of Bogd Gegeen (or Javzandamba) or Bogd Khan (Mongolia's religious leader) but only autonomy under China's suzerainty was achieved. He became the Head of State and declared Mongolia's independence. He is ranked third in the ecclesiastical hierarchy after the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, from 1919, nationalist revolutionaries, with Soviet assistance, drove out Chinese troops attempting to reoccupy Mongolia, and in 1921 they expelled the invading White Russian cavalry.

The Mongolian People's Republic was proclaimed in November 1924, and the Mongolian capital, centred on the main monastery of the Bogd Gegeen was renamed Ulaanbaatar (Red Hero). During the 1930s the ruling revolutionary party, which espoused atheism, destroyed or closed monasteries, confiscated their livestock and landholdings, induced large numbers of monks (lamas) to renounce religious life, and killed those who resisted. Robert Rupen reports that in the 1920s there were over 112,000 Mongolian Buddhist monks, representing more than 13 per cent of Mongolia's overall population. By the 1940s, nearly every monk was either dead or had apostatized. The end of one-party rule in 1990 allowed for the popular resurgence of Tibetan Buddhism, the rebuilding of ruined monasteries and temples, and the rebirth of the religious vocation.

The contemporary phase of Buddhism in Mongolia that built strong ties between India and Mongolia was with the 19th Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, also known as Ngawang Lobzang Thupstan Chognor, a Buddhist Lama from Ladakhwho was designated as Ambassador of India to Mongolia in 1990 until 2000. He was recognized by the 13th Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of Bakula Arhat, one of the 16 Arhats who, as per legend, were direct disciples of Gautama Buddha. During his stay in Mongolia he spread Buddha's teaching extensively among the locals in Mongolia.

During this period, Kushok Bakula also reinforced Buddhism in different autonomous Republics of Russia which are located close to the Mongolian border, such as Buryatia, Kalmykia and Tuva. In August 1993, under his initiative the Government of India brought the Holy Buddha Relics at National Museum in New Delhi to Ulaanbaatar for an exposition. A recipient of Padma Bhushan in 1988, the late Bakula Rinpoche remains the most prominent Buddhist leader in independent India.

However, it was his contribution to the revival of Buddhism in Mongolia as an Indian diplomat following the collapse of the Soviet Union that genuinely stands out. President of Mongolia P. Ochirbat (1992-97) stated, "Bakula Rinpoche was indeed a statesman, a diplomat and a Buddhist clergy who carved out his niche in the history of Mongolia. Ambassador Rinpoche had recognized the historical necessity of developing Mongolia's national culture to restore the glory of Buddhism, an inseparable part of its cultural heritage." On the auspicious occasion of the Buddha Purnima being observed in Mongolia on 14 June 2022, an 11-day exposition of the sacred Buddha Relics (Piprahwa relics) for the second time will take place in Mongolia. A 25-member delegation led by Indian Union Minister for Law and Justice, Kiren Rijiju will take the Holy Buddha Relics and will leave for Mongolia by a special Indian Air Force Aircraft. The Holy Buddha Relics will be displayed at the Batsagaan Temple within the premises of the Ganden Monastery.

Today, Buddhism has been promoted by cultural and literary contacts between the people of India and Mongolia. This long-standing friendship between the two nations grounded on the teachings of the Buddha will grow stronger into the future.

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Hyderabad, June 13 : The Congress party on Monday staged a massive protest in Hyderabad against the summons issued by the Enforcement Directorate to party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case.

Vehicular traffic was thrown out of the gear core city area as hundreds of party leaders marched to the regional ED office at Basheerbagh.

The massive rally led by the party's state President A. Revanth Reddy began from Necklace Road on the banks of Hussain Sagar.

The state Congress is organising the rally in response to the call given by the party's central leadership to organise the protest till Rahul Gandhi comes out of ED office.

Wearing black scarves, holding party flags and raising slogans against the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, the protestors marched to Basheerbagh via NTR Marg, Secretariat, Telugu Talli flyover, and Liberty.

The protestors were carrying placards demanding the ED to immediately withdraw the summons issued to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

Addressing the protestors, Revanth Reddy said there was no case against the top leaders of the party but the BJP government at the Centre was trying to target them as it feared defeat in 2024 elections.

He said since both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were fearless in their attacks on the Modi government for its anti-people policies, the government was looking to frame them in false cases.

Revanth Reddy also alleged that the BJP government was also trying to divert people's attention from its failures on all fronts and the steep hike in fuel prices.

He said the people would fight against the attempts by the BJP to target the members of Gandhi family, which made many sacrifices for the country. He alleged that the ED has become a puppet in the hands of the Modi government.

Congress Legislature Party leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, former MPs Ponnam Prabhakar and Anjan Kumar Yadav, former ministers Mohammed Ali Shabbir, Jeevan Reddy, and other leaders participated in the rally.
New Delhi, June 13 : Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Monday took part in the solidarity march in support of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who was questioned by the ED in connection with a money laundering case related to the National Herald newspaper.

Talking to reporters Baghel said, "the whole nation is witnessing the ruling party's dictatorship. Congress workers were being stopped from reaching the party headquarters. The entire area has been cordoned off and police have been deployed all around in an attempt to crush the democracy. It is the democratic right of the opposition party to hold protests and the BJP is trying to suppress the opposition." The Chhattisgarh Chief Minister termed the ED action malicious and slammed the Centre for misusing investigative agencie to "suppress the voice of the opposition." He added that the charges of money laundering hurled at Gandhi family were baseless and Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were falsely implicated. The Congress leaders are being harassed with political malice.

"When Sonia Gandhi will appear before the ED, there will be a bigger demonstration than this", CM Baghel said further adding that BJP is trying to save its people and suppress the opposition, but I am making clear that we are not going to be suppressed. It is a "political vendetta" and the case has no grounds for investigation.

"No matter how much barricading Delhi Police sets up, no matter how hard they try, the truth will prevail. The BJP-led central government is only following dictatorship, no law of the land is being followed. If you have arrived in front of the ED office, you will be detained by the police", CM Bhupesh Baghel said while talking to the reporters Congress leaders and workers staged protests holding placards at AICC headquarters in New Delhi over the summons. Various leaders including Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel and Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot took part in the party's 'Satyagraha' march.
June 13 : The young actress Anushka Sen is showered with accolades for her performance in the 2021 film 'Am I Next.' On Monday, the actress took to Instagram and shared her excitement about receiving the Best Actress Award at Birmingham Fusion Film Festival for 'Am I Next.'

The actress is holding the trophy with a million-dollar smile in the pics. She looks stunning in a maroon full-sleeved sparkly dress with a V-shaped neckline. Her tresses are styled in a ponytail, and she has accessorized her look with a simple necklace and drop earrings. "So honored to receive the 'Best Actress Award in Birmingham Film Fusion Festival for Am I Next. Another International Award. This means a lot to me," Anushka wrote. She also thanked her fans for their love and support.

The actress had received Best Actress for Social Cause film at the Boston Film Festival. The film was also honored with the Best Social Cause film award at the festival. Rahat Kazmi's directorial deals with the story of a 14-year-old girl who is fighting for her right to terminate the pregnancy caused by rape.

The 19-year-old actress who started her career in the show biz at the age of seven is one of the most popular actresses on Indian television, with millions of followers on Instagram. On the work front, Anushka was last seen in the crime thriller web series 'Swaanng' which revolves around two sisters who stumble upon a shocking secret that shocks their town. The actress also appeared in the 2021 Ekta Kapoor drama web series 'Crash.'
Bengaluru, June 13 : Hindu outfits have set a June 14 deadline for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for permission for celebrating Independence Day at Eidgah Maidan in Chamarajpet locality of Bengaluru.

Muslim religious leaders and Hindu activists have locked horns over the ownership of the land. The Muslims claim that the land belongs to the Wakf Board while the Hindus claim that the land is not the property of any one religion. The BBMP has clarified that it owns the land and it is one of the playgrounds in the city.

Hindu outfits and organisations have submitted applications for the celebration of the Yoga Day and Independence Day at the Maidan. They have also objected to allowing only Muslims to conduct prayers and other activities there.

President of the Vishwa Sanathana Parishat, Bhaskar stated that Hindu activists have set a deadline of June 14 for the BBMP to give permission for celebrating Independence Day.

He stated that if the permission is not given they will approach the court. A submission has been made on June 7 in this regard. However, the civic agency has not responded.

Meanwhile, the BBMP is not taking any chances and has begun the work of installing CCTV cameras around the Eidgah Maidan. The recommendation for the cameras was made by the police department, police sources said.

The BBMP has installed 12 poles and is also making lighting arrangements. Miscreants have damaged 3 poles and police security has been increased around the Maidan.

Hindu outfits are adamant that they should be permitted to celebrate Hindu festivals and national days. They are urging the BBMP that if permission is not given, then it should not be given for offering namaz (prayer) there also.
New Delhi, June 13 : The questioning of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi by the Enforcement Directorate has once again started after a break of a couple of hours in connection with the National Herald case.

During the lunch break, the Congress leader met his mother Sonia Gandhi, who is currently admitted at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

According to the sources, during the first round of questioning, Gandhi was asked about his assets and bank accounts in and outside the country. "He was asked about his assets abroad," sources said.

According to an official, three senior officials of the financial probe agency questioned the former Congress president. "The team consisted of two Assistant Directors and one Deputy Director," said the official.

Earlier, Gandhi reached the ED office located at Paryavaran Bhavan on Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road in the city amidst heavy police force that was deployed to restrain party workers from carrying out a rally from Congress HQ to the ED office. On the way, Rahul was accompanied by his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, however, she left minutes after they reached the ED office.

Apart from Rahul, his mother and interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi has also been summoned in the same case. She will appear before the financial probe agency on June 23.

Meanwhile, several Congress party leaders were detained after they protested against their leader Rahul Gandhi's questioning by the ED. The detainees included Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, Harish Rawat, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, K.C. Venugopal, Deepender Hooda and Pawan Khera among several others.

The partymen were kept at different police stations of the city. Some were taken to Mandir Marg police station while some were held at Fatehpur Beri, Tughlaq Road Police Station etc. Pawan Khera said the party will not cow down to the pressure of the Modi government. "We have been trying since morning to reach the ED office and we will keep trying," he had said.
Los Angeles, June 13 : The controversies surrounding 'The Lady Of Heaven' refuse to die anytime soon. The film, which is about the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, earlier drew widespread protests in the UK resulting in some screenings being pulled.

Now, in a fresh move, Morocco has banned the movie while the British government has dismissed Imam Qari Asim from his role as an adviser, reports 'Deadline'.

The British government said he had "encouraged an ongoing campaign to prevent cinemas screening the film" in a "clear effort to restrict artistic expression." As per 'Deadline', Asim responded by saying that the government's characterisation of his actions is "inaccurate." 'The Lady Of Heaven', which is directed by Eli King, centres on the story of Arabian holy legend Lady Fatima and her message of peace and non-violence told through two separate timelines hundreds of years apart.

Some groups have criticised it for depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which is taboo in Islam, although the movie's website notes, "In accordance with Islamic tradition, during the making of this film no individual represented a Holy Personality." 'Deadline' further states that in Morocco, local media reports that the national Cinema Center said it would not authorise the film to play following condemnation by the country's religious council.

The Supreme Council of Ulema deemed the movie "a blatant falsification of the facts of Islamic history," that employs "loathsome partiality" and accused the filmmakers of seeking "fame and sensationalism... by hurting the feelings of Muslims and stirring up religious sensitivities." Meanwhile, in the UK earlier exhibitor Cineworld pulled all screenings of the movie in the UK "to ensure the safety" of its staff and customers" following protests at some theatres.
Imphal, June 13 : In a major blow to Manipur's top militant group People's Liberation Army (PLA), its Revolutionary People's Front's (RPF) top commander, self-styled 'Lt Colonel' Irom Ibotombi Meitei surrendered to Chief Minister N.Biren Singh on Monday.

The RPF is the political wing of the PLA, one of the oldest among thee around 20 outlawed groups in Manipur. Monday's development comes close on the heels of 14 cadres of the banned rebel outfit United Tribal Liberation Army laid down arms around two weeks back.

The Chief Minister, accompanied by Chief Secretary Rajesh Kumar and Director General of Police P. Doungel, welcomed the 56-year-old Meitei to the mainstream.

Police and intelligence officials said that Meitei was the RPF's Deputy Secretary in-charge of Health and Family Welfare and a resident of Nambol Thangtek in Bishnupur district, and had been associated with the outlawed outfit since 1994.

"Ibotombi came to the mainstream after expressing his trust in the political changes that took place in the state by the Central and state governments.I would like to appeal to the misguided youths who left their homes for a cause, to come back and join the mainstream so that they can live peacefully and contribute themselves for the all round development of Manipur," Singh told the media.

The Chief Minister also tweeted: "In yet another encouraging development, Lt Colonel of underground outfit RPF (PLA), Irom Ibotombi Meitei have surrendered today.The recent homecoming of numerous cadres of underground outfits shows the trust in the leadership of Hon'ble PM Shri Narendra Modi ji."
New York, June 13 : Insufficient or interrupted sleep may have more of an impact than smoking history in patients with a progressive lung disease, according to a study.

Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco found that for patients with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), inadequate sleep may boost their risk of a flare-up by up to 95 per cent compared to those with good sleep.

Over time, these flare-ups, which manifest with worsening shortness of breath and cough, may cause irreversible lung damage, and accelerate disease progression and mortality.

The findings appeared in the journal 'SLEEP'.

The research shows sleep deprivation is associated with a drop in infection-fighting antibodies and protective cytokines, said Aaron Baugh, a clinical fellow at the UCSF Division of Pulmonary Research Institute.

The researchers followed 1,647 patients with confirmed COPD. They recorded flare-ups, defined as short-term worsening of symptoms requiring treatment, and compared their incidence with self-reported data on sleep quality.

Pulmonologist Neeta Thakur from the UCSF School of Medicine said that questions about sleep are often overlooked by physicians evaluating patients with COPD.

"Sleep hygiene and sleep aids may significantly improve their health," she said, adding: "Sleep should be considered both in the clinic and at the wider community/neighbourhood level, where the structural factors that contribute to worse sleep can be addressed."
Bangkok, June 13 : A 32-year-old previously healthy female veterinarian contracted Covid after being exposed to an infected cat, according to the first documented case of suspected cat-to-human transmission.

Researchers from the Prince of Songkla University in Thailand reported the case of the vet who was diagnosed with Covid after being sneezed on by a cat owned by an infected patient in August last year.

Genetic study supported the hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2 transmission from the owner to the cat, and then from the cat to the veterinarian, they wrote in the paper published in the paper published in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.

The vet revealed that 5 days earlier, she and other veterinarians had examined a cat belonging to 2 men who were also Covid positive. The cat slept on the same bed as that of the infected men.

The initial examination declared the cat to be normal. But during the nasal test, which later proved the cat to be Covid positive, the feline sneezed in the face of the patient. Three days later the patient showed symptoms of the virus and later tested positive.

"The identical SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences obtained from the patient and the sequences derived from the cat and its two owners, together with the temporal overlapping of the animal and human infections, indicated that their infections were epidemiologically related," wrote Sarunyou Chusri and her team from the University's Faculty of Medicine.

"Because the vet had no prior meetings with the cat owners, she probably acquired SARS-CoV-2 from the cat when it sneezed in her face," they added.

The study provides evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted from cats to humans.

However, experts stress that the risk of cats infecting humans with the virus remains low overall.

On the contrary, people are far more likely to give the virus to cats, the New York Times reported.

"When things become human diseases, we too often forget everything else," Dr. Scott Weese, an infectious diseases veterinarian at the University of Guelph in Ontario was quoted as saying.

"I think it's important for us to recognise this virus still can move between species," Weese added.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people who are infected with the virus avoid contact with their pets.

"If you're trying to stay away from people because you're potentially infectious, just try to stay away from animals at the same time," Weese said.
Kiev, June 13 : Russian artillery is hitting an industrial zone where 500 civilians are sheltering in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, the regional governor has said, and a bridge out of the city has been blown up, as fears grow for those who have not yet managed to leave, The Guardian reported.

"Russians continue to storm the city, having a significant advantage in artillery they have somewhat pushed back the Ukrainian soldiers," said Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, in a morning report on his Telegram channel.

"The Russians are destroying quarter after quarter," Haidai said, adding that the Russian army had been "partially successful at night" and controlled 70 per cent of the city.

The destruction by Russian forces of a bridge over the Siverskyi Donets river leaves stranded civilians with just one remaining bridge to escape west to the neighbouring city of Lysychansk, which is also being shelled but remains in Ukrainian hands, The Guardian reported.

"If after new shelling the bridge collapses, the city will truly be cut off. There will be no way of leaving Sievierodonetsk in a vehicle," Haidai said.

There are fears that a scenario similar to the one seen in the southern port city of Mariupol, where hundreds of people were trapped for weeks in the Azovstal steelworks, could play out in Sievierodonetsk's Azot chemical plant, where Haidai said 500 civilians were sheltering, 40 of them children.

Haidai said the Ukrainian side was negotiating the evacuation of civilians from Azot with Moscow but so far failed to reach an agreement.

"We are trying to agree, with the help of [Ukrainian deputy prime minister] Irina Vereshchuk, to organise a corridor, so far it has been unsuccessful," the official said.

"Azot's shelters are not as strong as in Mariupol's Azovstal, so we need to take people out with security guarantees," Haidai said, as per the report.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Chennai, June 13 : Well-known Tamil actor Soori has clarified that he has nothing to do with an advertisement on social media that claimed that the actor was running an educational trust to help poor students.

The ad claimed that those looking for funds to pursue their college education in engineering and arts could get funds for their education from the trust by attending an event at a college in Madurai on Monday.

Sharing the fake advertisement that was in Tamil on Twitter, Soori said, "We have nothing to do with this advertisement whatsoever. The picture you see in the advertisement was shot at an event which I attended. Using that picture, they have designed such an advertisement.

"We have called those who put out this advertisement and asked them not to put out such wrong advertisements. Legal action will be initiated against those who don't heed the warning.

"The help that we provide to students to pursue their education is something that is done in private. We have nothing to do with this event. Issuing such advertisements in the garb of providing free education funds and making education a business is not good for society," the actor wrote.
Mumbai, June 13 : Over a hundred Muslim leaders and other intellectuals, under the banner of ,Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy' (IMSD), on Monday deplored the "divisive and hate-driven politics" of persons like suspended Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Nupur Sharma and also flayed death threats to her life.

The IMSD has also strongly condemned the terror outfit Al Qaeda for threatening retaliatory extremist acts as the fallout of Sharma's statements.

The 112 signatories said that democracy is inconceivable without the freedom of free speech that is enshrined in the Indian Constitution, and all healthy democracies make a clear and principled distinction between the right to free speech and a bar on hate speech that impinges on the right to life and dignity of the marginalised.

"The right to free speech includes the right to critical, rational enquiry and healthy criticism of all forms of religious beliefs and practices. In a democratic state, there should be no place for any law on blasphemy as it has a chilling effect on free speech. We therefore categorically oppose the demand by certain Muslim/Islamist/Hindu/Hindutva organisations for a blasphemy law in India," said the IMSD.

While the right to criticism includes the right to offend, as also the right of those offended to protest in peaceful and lawful ways, the offended have no right to silence the offender and "no god, goddesses, prophets or saints may be invoked to justify the killing of fellow humans".

The IMSD also castigated the "bulldozer raj" in BJP-ruled states, especially Uttar Pradesh where the administration and police are delivering "instant justice" through an all-in-one role of judge, jury and executioner, and said it is high time the judiciary acted suo moto to call a halt to such mockery of the law by the custodians of the law.

Referring to the Dharam Sansad last December when Hindu religious leaders openly called for genocide of Indian Muslims, the IMSD said international organisations including Genocide Watch have warned that India is on the brink of a genocidal bloodbath, but, Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to remain silent on this.

Similarly, the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom in its 2022 annual report says that "religious freedom conditions in India are taking a drastic turn downward, with national and various state governments tolerating widespread harassment and violence against religious minorities".

Though persecution of Muslims has a long history here, the past 8 years have been relentless with daily threats, targeted violence, fear and intimidation, community members lynched in public, and the killings celebrated - all under the watch of the RSS-blessed, BJP-led governments at the Centre in several states, said the IMSD.

"Hindutva's Hate Factory is working 24/7 to demonise Indian Muslims, vilify them and a complicit electronic media offers a ready platform for daily mud-slinging, verbal warfare under the pretence of debate. The IMSD would also like to call out the so-called Islamic scholars who are bringing disrepute and playing with the safety and security of Muslims by participating in such prefixed TV debates," it added.

Many Muslim countries recently expressed outrage over the insult to the Prophet Mohammed though they kept silent in the past 8 years, despite repeated attacks on Indian Muslims and the recent call for genocide.

"IMSD is not the least surprised because these very governments have no respect for human rights and freedom of expression. We demand that these governments mend their ways, promote fundamental rights and freedoms of all citizens, in their own countries and across the globe. It is rather rich for these despotic regimes to teach us lessons in secularism and pluralism. But what can one say when our own government has created this unfortunate situation? Clearly the Modi government's hardline Hindutva brand of politics has undermined India's international standing and respect among the comity of nations," said the IMSD.

The signatories appealed to all sections to maintain peace and religious harmony, and urged Muslims not to get swayed by the rhetoric of Islam in danger.

"The ongoing protests have already consumed precious lives and going by the past actions of the government, it will deplorably be followed by mass arrests and demolitions. Those howling from the pulpit will escape and the burden of proof, as always, will be on the shoulders of the poor Muslims," the IMSD pointed out.

Some of the signatories include: Maulana Abdul Haq, Javed Akhtar, Adnan Siddiqui, Shabana Azmi, Afroz Pathan, Anand Patwardhan, Tushar Gandhi, Javed Anand, Anjum Rajabali, Ayyub Khan, Teesta Setalvad, Bilal Khan, Dilip Simeon, Naseeruddin Shah, Feroz A. Khan, Feroze Mithiborwala, Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi, Guddi Tiwari, Harsh Kapoor, Zakia Soman, Imran Khan, Irfan Engineer, Masooma Ranalvi, Munira Khan, Najma Kazi, Najma Parvin, Nimesha Faude, Ram Puniyani, Sandeep Pandey, Dr. Suresh Khairnar, Varsha Vidya Vilas, Yash Paranjpe, Zoya Begum, etc.

--IANS qn/vd

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Chennai, June 13 : Director Adhik Ravichandran and Bigg Boss contestant actress Reshma Pasupuleti were among scores of people who greeted and wished actor and music director GV Prakash on his birthday on Monday.

Taking to Twitter, Adhik Ravichandran, who is now directing the Vishal-starrer 'Mark Antony', wrote, "Happy Birthday monster G V Prakash sir. Thanks for your unconditional love since 2012 and forever I love you for the person who you are." The director, who said that he would always be grateful to G V Prakash for giving him the 'director' tag, also said that the songs and themes of 'Mark Antony' (G V Prakash is scoring the music for the film) were fiery and that he couldn't wait for others to vibe.

The director wished the music director a blockbuster year.

Actress Reshma Pasupuleti, who too put out a tweet wishing G V Prakash a happy birthday, said, "Happiest birthday to the most kindest person G V Prakash. Wishing you an amazing year" and posted a picture of herself with Prakash on the sets of the film, 'Vanakkamda Mappillai'.

She also wrote, "Your kindness precedes everything you have achieved and will achieve that's what makes you shine! God bless, much love."
Washington, June 13 : Retired Marine General John Allen resigned as the president of Brookings Institution amid a federal investigation into whether he lobbied the US government on behalf of Qatar during the Donald Trump administration, CNN reported.

Allen, a retired four-star general who led US and allied troops in Afghanistan, wrote in his resignation letter, "While I leave the institution with a heavy heart, I know it is best for all concerned in this moment." Allen's resignation from Brookings, a prominent Washington think-tank, comes after a court filing revealed last week, which is publicly available on a non-profit legal research website, that the FBI had seized Allen's electronic communications.

The FBI's search warrant in the court filing, which appeared to have been posted online by mistake, accused Allen of appearing to violate foreign lobbying laws and failing to provide emails related to the lobbying effort. Allen has denied lobbying on behalf of Qatar, CNN reported.

The lobbying investigation concerns Allen's communications with Trump administration officials, including former national security advisor H.R. McMaster, after Qatar was diplomatically cut off by its Gulf rivals in 2017. The investigation is the latest effort by the Justice Department to crack down on foreign lobbying violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

The FBI's search warrant, which is dated in April, alleges that Allen was recruited in 2017 to travel to Qatar while the country was grappling with a blockade from other Gulf nations, which had accused Qatar of supporting extremism.

Allen, who was a senior fellow at Brookings at the time, worked with businessman Imaad Zuberi, who pleaded guilty to violating foreign lobbying laws in 2019, and former US Ambassador to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, Richard Olson, who pleaded guilty on foreign lobbying charges earlier this month, CNN reported.

The trio travelled to Doha, and Allen sought a "$20,000 'speaking engagement' fee," according to the court filling. Federal investigators noted that it's not clear whether Zuberi paid the fee or other compensation to Allen.
Jammu, June 13 : Following improvement in the law and order situation, authorities on Monday lifted curfew from Jammu and Kashmir's Doda district except Bhaderwah town.

"Restrictions which were imposed on Thursday last week under Section 144 have been lifted today from whole of the district except Bhaderwah town," an official said.

Deputy Commissioner Vikas Sharma along with Doda SSP Abdul Qayoom reviewed the law and order situation across the district and also conducted round of Doda town.

"SDM Thatri and SDM Gandoh along with police officers also conducted various meetings with different sections of society within their respective jurisdictions.

"The Deputy Commissioner urged the locals to maintain communal harmony, tranquility, peace, besides asked not to indulge in any activity having potential of breaching law and order situation," the official said.

"Markets were opened in Doda, Thatri and Gandoh markets and people across all section of society expressed their happiness over the removal of restrictions.

"They appealed to all to maintain communal harmony and belief. Situation in Bhaderwah is also normal and is continuously being assessed," the official added.
Ahmedabad, June 13 : Uttar Pradesh Governor and former Gujarat Chief minister Anandi Patel, along with her daughter Anar Patel paid a courtesy visit to Mehsana's former MP and a tall leader A.K. Patel on Monday in Ahmedabad.

Political analysts are reading this as Anandiben's ground work to launch her daughter. Party leaders, however, are tight-lipped over the issue.

This is not the first visit of Anandiben Patel to the state in recent times. Two months ago she travelled to north Gujarat, a low key tour, where she stayed at her parental home in Kharod village of the Vijapur Taluka in Mehsana district for a day.

It seems that the former Chief Minister is trying to check ground reality and assess personally before taking any decision of launching her daughter Anar. She traveled for four days in north Gujarat, said Suresh Vanol, a senior journalist from Mehsana.

Some time ago a group of BJP leaders had met in Kharod village, as they were dissatisfied with the sitting BJP MLA Ramanbhai Patel, said party sources.

Mehsana district's former president and native of Kharod village, Nitin Patel had attended the meeting, but he is tight-lipped whether they are demanding to change BJP candidate for the coming elections. He, however, did say that most of the people are not happy with the sitting MLA.

According to Vanol's assessment, if Anandiben is planning to launch Anar, then Vijapur, Mehsana, Unjha and Patan can be considered safe seats. If former Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel and even former Minister of State for Home and state General Secretary Rajni Patel are not fielded from Mehsana seat, Anar Patel has a chance.

In another development, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel and his predecessor Vijay Rupani, both met over tea in Rajkot to resolve ticket allocations, as the latter is insisting to nominate at least 10 to 15 of his loyalists.
Ahmedabad, June 13 : An assistant sub-inspector (ASI) and three TRB (Traffic Brigade) constables were caught red-handed having a liquor party inside a traffic police outpost in Ahmedabad's Navrangpura late on Sunday night. Liquor is prohibited in Gujarat.

Their video went viral after a private news channel of Ahmedabad carried out a sting operation. In the purported video, the partying team can be seen trying to hide the liquor bottles after noticing that people are coming inside the police outpost with cameras.

ASI Kantibhai Somabhai and TRB constables Sonu Pal, Rakesh Pattani and Dinesh Pattani were having pakodas and some other snacks as well. Initially they tried to lie that they were just having the snacks but after realising the futility, they started apologising.

The Navrangpura police investigated the matter and filed a complaint under the prohibition Act. The police arrested ASI Kantibhai Somabhai and one of the TRB constables Sonu Pal while Rakesh Pattani and Dinesh Pattani are absconding.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Ahmedabad), Mayanksinh Chavda said, "Four teams have been formed to arrest TRB jawans, all three's jobs will be terminated. ASI is arrested, medical report against him is awaited, action will be taken against him."
New Delhi, June 13 : After getting more than 3,500 grievances against Swiggy and Zomato on its consumer helpline, the Department of Consumer Affairs on Monday directed the two major e-commerce food business operators (FBOs) to furnish, within 15 days, ways to better address those problems.

The e-commerce FBOs were also directed by the Department to transparently show consumers the breakup of all charges included in the order amount such as delivery charges, packaging charges, taxes, surge pricing etc.

The direction to furnish the current framework as well as a proposal on improving the consumer grievance redressal mechanism within 15 days was given during a meeting chaired by Secretary, Consumer Affairs, Rohit Kumar Singh with the major e-commerce food business operators, to discuss pertinent issues which affect consumers in this sector.

The meeting was informed that during the last 12 months, over 3,631 grievances were registered on the National Consumer Helpline (1915) against Swiggy and 2,828 against Zomato.

For Swiggy, it included the maximum 22 per cent for deficiency in services (803 complaints), followed by 17 per cent for non/delay in delivery of products (628 complaints) along with delivery of defective/damaged product (456 complaints or 13 per cent), delivery of wrong products (401 complaints), paid amount not refunded (391 complaints), product/product accessories missing (240 complaints), charging more than MRP (213 complaints), and non-veg food delivered instead of veg and vice versa (105 complaints).

For Zomato, deficiency in services topped the list too at 25 per cent (707 complaints) followed 18 per cent for delivery of defective/damaged product (499 complaints) along with non/delay in delivery of product (319 complaints), paid amount not refunded (307 complaints), and delivery of wrong products (298 complaints).

All these major issues raised by the consumers on the National Consumer Helpline were discussed. It also included inconsistency in the delivery time shown to consumers at the time of placing an order and the time at which the order is actually delivered, and absence of any mechanism to separate genuine reviews from fake ones.

The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) raised the issue of customer information not being shared by the e-commerce FBOs with the restaurants, which impacts their ability to serve the consumer needs better. "Further, delivery charges are determined and levied by the latter. Further, a commission of around 20 per cent is also charged by the online FBOs on each order," it said.

"Platforms must also show individual consumer reviews transparently and refrain from showing only the aggregation of reviews. The right of choice for a consumer should be respected and the e-commerce FBOs were advised to allow consumers the choice to share their contact information with the restaurants, if the consumers want so," the government said.

The e-commerce FBOs observed that prices of food items are decided by the restaurants and they have a grievance redressal mechanism in place which does have a scope for improvement considering the number and nature of grievances registered by the consumers, a government statement said.

--IANS niv/vd

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Mumbai, June 13 : With 11 candidates vying for 10 seats, the upcoming June 20 biennial polls to the Maharashtra Legislative Council promise to be another 'thriller' on the lines of the just-concluded Rajya Sabha polls.

The ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress have fielded two candidates each, while the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has named five nominees.

They are: Sachin Ahir, Amasha Padvi (Shiv Sena), Ramraje Naik-Nimbalkar, Eknath Khadse (NCP), Bhai Jagtap, Chandrakant Handore (Congress), and BJP's Pravin Darekar, Prof Ram Shinde, Shrikant Bhartiya, Uma Khapre and Prasad Lad.

The NCP on Monday withdrew its additional candidate Shivajirao Garje, while the BJP-back independent candidate and Rayat Krantikari Sanghatana leader Sadabhau Khot also opted out of the race, leaving 11 contestants in the fray.

Leader of the Opposition Devendra Fadnavis exuded confidence that akin to last week's Rajya Sabha elections, the BJP would secure victory for all its five MLC candidates.

In the RS polls, the BJP managed to grab 3 seats despite having insufficient numbers, dealing a shock political blow the MVA as the Sena's second candidate was trounced by 2 votes.

In the past couple of days, the MVA has held several autopsy meetings to ascertain its actual support among the independents and smaller parties and also to work out an effective strategy to avoid a similar discomfiture in the MLC polls that will be vide a secret ballot.

Certain independents and smaller parties, suspected to be culprits who allegedly reneged on their commitment to the MVA and favouring the BJP, are being wooed afresh by leaders of Sena-NCP-Congress to ensure their support for the 6 MLC seats the alliance is contesting.

The BJP leaders continued lampooning the MVA for its RS loss and reiterated that its (BJP's) victory run has begun and it would throw out the MVA government headed by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray in the 2024 assembly elections.
Kolkata, June 13 : The bill to replace the West Bengal governor with the chief minister as chancellor of the state universities was passed in the assembly here on Monday afternoon. It was passed with 183 votes in favour and 40 against.

However, on Monday, a bill pertaining only to the universities under the state education department was passed. In the coming days of the monsoon session of the West Bengal assembly, similar bills for replacement of the governor with the chief minister as chancellors for universities under other departments namely health, agricultural, animal husbandry and fishery will also be passed.

The bills will be subsequently sent to the governor, Jagdeep Dhankhar for his clearance. In case the latter refuses to give approval, as already announced by the state education minister Bratya Basu, the state government will implement them by passing an ordinance.

According to Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal assembly, Adhikari the chief minister is forcefully pushing this issue to satisfy her narrow political interests. "But we will continue opposing it. I will request the governor to send the bill to the Union government since education is in the concurrent list. Just as the state government could not get the name of West Bengal changed to Bengal and also could not introduce legislative council, similarly this dream of the chief minister will never be fulfilled," Adhikari said.

Not just the opposition parties in West Bengal, but a large section of educationists and intellectuals too have opposed this decision to replace the governor with the chief minister as state universities chancellor. Instead, they have proposed that reputed educationists be appointed as the chancellors of the universities.
Patna, June 13 : After former Congress President Rahul Gandhi appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in New Delhi in connection with the National Herald case on Monday, the party's leaders in Bihar sat on a dharna outside the ED office in Patna.

The protest was headed by state Congress chief Madan Mohan Jha, who along with several other party leaders sat on a dharna outside the ED office located at Biscomaun Bhawan here.

"We will sit on dharna outside the ED office until the questioning of Rahul Gandhi ends. The Narendra Modi government is deliberately harassing our leaders. It is using CBI, ED and I-T to achieve their political goals," Jha said.

The ED had served notices to Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi in connection with the National Herald money laundering case a few days ago.
Chennai, June 13 : The Tamil Nadu coastal police are on high alert after intelligence reports came of a possibility of smuggling of essential commodities to Sri Lanka through a sea route from the state.

The intelligence issued an alert after inputs that the Sri Lankan nationals are also trying to reach Indian shores following financial crisis in that country.

The Sri Lankan Prime Minister has recently issued a statement that getting fuel including oil and gas in the island nation would be tough for the coming three weeks. He has also issued travel restrictions leading to panic in the country.

The alert from the government has said that Sri Lankan Tamils are economically very poor and even the assistance extended by the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora to their brethren is not reaching those in the remote areas of the country. This includes tea estate workers, most of whom are Sri Lankan Tamils who are economically in dire straits.

While the rich are able to stock essential items, poor are facing tough time in the country.

The intelligence has also issued a warning that possibility of several people including Sri Lankan Tamils who had owed allegiance to the now-defunct LTTE reaching Indian shores through sea routes is high. The intelligence advisory has directed the Tamil Nadu marine and coastal police to be on alert on this.

Earlier, there were intelligence reports on the LTTE regrouping in Tamil Nadu which became clear after a woman, a Canadian national, was arrested while trying to board a flight to Mumbai to release money from the account of a non-functioning organization using fake papers. Interrogation of the woman revealed that the huge fund that was lying dormant in the nationalized bank account was of an LTTE-related organization.

A former LTTE intelligence operative, Satkunam alias Sabesan was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) from Valsaravakkam in Chennai. The search of the NIA at his premises in Valsaravakkam and Iyypanthangal has led to the recovery of incriminating materials including details of the money flow from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka and this money according to intelligence sources was transferred to former operatives of LTTE in the island nation.

The Indian agencies were tracking him following inputs (specific) on his involvement in smuggling of drugs and weapons from Pakistan and the proceeds of the smuggling were used to fund LTTE cadres in Sri Lanka.

Investigations have also revealed that he was one of the key conspirators in the Vizhinjam arms case of Kerala in which five AK 47 rifles, 1000 rounds of 9 mm ammunition, and 300 kg of drugs off Minicoy coast which was recovered while Coast Guard intercepted the fishing vessel Ravihansi on March 18, 2021.

These two incidents have led to Indian intelligence agencies upping their ante and the present advisory is part of certain inputs the agencies have received.
Ranchi, June 13 : Expressing disappointment with the state government for not responding to a petition related to the operation of the slaughter house in Ranchi, the Jharkhand High Court imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 each on the Food Security Department and the Urban Development Department. The court said that the state government officials are taking its order lightly, which is 'not acceptable'.

A modern slaughter house (abattoir) has been constructed on 5 acres of land by the government in Kanke in Ranchi at a cost of about Rs 18 crore. It was to be commissioned in 2018 itself. The plan was that by starting this, illegal slaughter houses running in the city would be closed and meat would be available to the people in a hygienic manner. This system has not been implemented till date. A petition has been filed in the court regarding this matter. The court had asked the state government to file a reply on this.

On Monday, the court of Justice Rajesh Shankar expressed strong displeasure over the non-receipt of reply from the government. The court has asked to deposit the fine imposed on the two departments in the Advocates Welfare Fund. Along with this, instructions have also been given to check illegal slaughter houses. Now the next hearing on this matter will take place after two weeks.
Noida, June 13 : Two people, including one Chinese national, were arrested for providing shelter to illegally residing Chinese nationals in India, an official said on Monday.

The accused couple were identified as Xue Fei alias Kyle (Chinese national) and his girlfriend named Petekh who was a resident of Kohima, Nagaland.

The police official told IANS that two Chinese nationals on Sunday were arrested by the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) while they were illegally crossing the India-Nepal border.

"Both were originally residents of Wuhan, China," the official said.

He said that the duo was illegally residing in India and were on Sunday returning back. "They had no documents or passport or a valid reason to stay in India. The security forces had also recovered a number of sim cards from their possession," the official said.

During their interrogation, the duo disclosed to the security forces that they illegally came to India for a leisure trip and were returning the same way they entered the country.

On further interrogation, they revealed that during their stay in India, they were residing at their friend's house in Greater Noida for the past 15 days. As soon as the information was shared with the Noida police it swung into action and conducted a raid at JP Greens in Greater Noida.

From the said spot, two people (a couple) of which one was Chinese national and another a resident of Nagaland were arrested. Further investigation is underway, the official added.
Bhopal, June 13 : Congress workers in Madhya Pradesh staged a protest on Monday as party leader Rahul Gandhi appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Delhi in connection with the National Herald case.

To show solidarity with their leader, several Congress workers protested outside the ED office in Indore. Some protesting Congress workers were seen holding parrots in cages, mocking the central agency for its action against the Gandhi family.

Meanwhile, politics heated up in Madhya Pradesh as leaders from both the ruling BJP and the opposite Congress got involved in a war of words. While the Congress accused the Narendra Modi-led government of falsely implicating the Gandhi family, the BJP maintained that "why the Gandhi family is worried of questioning if it has not done anything wrong".

State Congress President Kamal Nath, who is considered close to the Gandhi family, expressed his anger by accusing PM Modi of making a political attack.

Kamal Nath said the Congress always respected the opposition during its decades of rule in the country. He also mentioned how former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had once helped then leader of opposition Atal Bihari Bajpayee.

"When Atal Bihari Bajpai was unwell, Rajiv Gandhi used to arrange for his treatment abroad," Kamal Nath said, referring to the health issues of Sonia Gandhi, who will also have to appear before the ED in the National Herald case on June 23.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who is in New Delhi to meet Home Minister Amit Shah and some other cabinet ministers, said that the Congress is building pressure on the ED through its protests in several parts of the country.

He said the Congress first messes up things and then puts pressure on the investigating agencies.

"Why should Rahul Gandhi worry if he has done nothing wrong? He should tell the truth to ED," Chouhan said.
Sangrur : , June 13 (IANS) Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal on Monday claimed that Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had abandoned people of Sangrur after taking over the reins of the state and this was why the constituents were protesting against opening of AAP election offices for the forthcoming bypoll.

The SAD chief was addressing worker meetings in the Dirba Assembly constituency for joint panthic candidate Kamaldeep Kaur Rajoana, who is contesting the poll on the SAD symbol.

Badal said immediately after becoming the Chief Minister, Mann "had not only sublet governance of the state" to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal but had also failed to conduct a thanksgiving tour of his constituency as well as the Sangrur parliamentary seat that had elected him to the Lok Sabha twice.

He said this is not all. "No development work has been initiated in the Sangrur parliamentary constituency and even ongoing works have been stopped." Alleging that Mann and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had befooled them in the same way as done by Capt Amarinder Singh earlier, the SAD President said: "Don't think that women will get Rs 1,000 per month as promised. The promised 300 units of free power will also not be given. Even schemes initiated by former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal including the 'atta-daal' scheme, shagun scheme and the old-age pension have been disrupted." "This AAP government has given nothing and has taken the state to the brink of disaster with the total breakdown in the law and order." Appealing to the people to wholeheartedly support the candidature of Rajoana, the SAD President said: "A vote for Biba Rajoana is a vote to free all Bandi Singhs who are in jail even after completion of their life sentences. I appeal to Punjabis to unite as one and elect Biba Rajoana to the Lok Sabha to free Sikh detenues and reunite them with their families." He also said how Rajoana's immediate family was also a victim of police atrocities with her elder sister and brother being killed and their house being burnt. "This happened despite the fact that Biba Rajaona's father had served in the army and had fought for the country." The SAD president also related how AAP and Kejriwal were coming in the way of the release of Dewinderpal Singh Bhullar, the brother of the SAD candidate.

He said Kejriwal was not signing the release order of Bhullar for the last seven months despite the fact that all official formalities had been completed.

The Sangrur parliamentary seat is considered a stronghold of the AAP as Mann has won this seat twice -- both times with a margin of over one lakh votes. Also, the AAP won all nine assembly segments from this parliamentary seat during the recent Assembly elections.

The Sangrur Lok Sabha bypoll would be held on June 23 and the counting of votes on June 26.

Meanwhile, to ensure a thumping triumph AAP has deployed six Cabinet ministers to campaign for its candidate Gurmail Singh.

The Cabinet ministers are Brahma Shankar Jimpa in the Sangrur assembly constituency, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal in Dhuri, Gurmit Singh Meet Hayer in Barnala, Harpal Singh Cheema in Dirba, Harbhajan Singh in Malerkotla, Baljeet Kaur in Bhadaur and Laljit Singh Bhullar in Lehra.

Gurmail Singh is seeking votes on the name of the development works and pro-people initiatives taken by the Mann-led government in three months.

This seat fell vacant after Mann resigned as MP following his victory from the Dhuri assembly constituency.
Jaipur, June 13 : For the first time in the history of India, cow dung from the country will be exported to Kuwait, that too a whopping 192 metric tonnes, said Atul Gupta, National President of the Organic Farmer Producer Association of India.

The untiring efforts made by our team for the protection of cows have paid off, he said adding "A Jaipur-based company Sunrise Agriland and Development Research Pvt Ltd has got this order." Prashant Chaturvedi, the company's director, said that this is probably the first time that the dung of indigenous cows from India is being imported by the Muslim-majority Kuwait. The work of packing cow dung in containers is going on under the supervision of the Customs Department at Sunrise Organic Park, located in Shripinjrapol Gaushala, Tonk Road, Jaipur. As its first consignment, it will be dispatched from Kanakapura railway station on June 15, he informed.

Atul Gupta said that in 2020-21, the export of animal products from India was worth Rs 27,155.56 crore. Apart from this, the demand for organic manure is increasing continuously. Many countries have found after research on indigenous cow dung that it can not only increase the production of crops, but the use of the products produced from it can relieve humans from serious ailment. This is the reason that many countries have started importing indigenous cow dung along with organic manure from India.

He said that the agricultural scientists of Kuwait, after extensive research, have found that the use of indigenous cow dung in the form of powder in the date crop has shown an increase in fruit size as well as an expected increase in production. This is why Kuwait based company Lamor has placed an order for the import of 192 metric tonnes of indigenous cow dung from the Jaipur firm.
Jaipur, June 13 : Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who was detained in Delhi along with other Congress leaders while protesting against the ED summons to the Gandhi family in the National Herald case, on Monday attacked the Centre saying that the country is watching the dictatorship.

Targeting the BJP-led central government Gehlot said, "The way the peaceful march of the Congress party is being stopped today, the whole country is watching this dictatorship. The Congress headquarters has been cordoned off, police have been deployed all around. Politicians and activists are being detained. I have also been taken into custody along with my associates while going to the ED office," he said.

After being detained by the Delhi Police, Gehlot said "what difference will it make if you let five people go?" He added, "This is absolutely unfair in a democracy. The Congress workers will not tolerate the ED notice that has come to Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. There are agitations in every district and block. They should understand and allow the rule of law to be established." Condemning the BJP government, he asked, "For how long will you mislead by talking about Hindu-Muslim? ED notices are wrong. The workers of the whole country have come here to show what is the mood of the country. These are fascist people (BJP govt). They are killing democracy, voice has to be raised against them in time." Meanwhile, the Delhi Police blocked the roads. Despite the arguments of Gehlot and other Congress leaders, he was not allowed to proceed.

Along with Gehlot, many other leaders including Mallikarjun Kharge, Jairam Ramesh, Mukul Wasnik, Digvijaya Singh, Deepender Hooda, Pawan Khera, PL Poonia, Gaurav Gogoi, Meenakshi Natarajan were detained.
Ranchi, June 13 : Gangsters lodged in Jharkhand's Ranchi, Dhanbad, and Hazaribagh jails are still operating with impunity through cellphones, as per a shocking revelation made in a technical inquiry report submitted to the government.

The Technical Cell of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) has found that more than 150 mobile SIMs are active inside Birsa Munda Central Jail in Hotwar, Ranchi. The police has submitted a detailed report to the state government along with the SIM card numbers, WhatsApp numbers, IEMEI numbers and virtual numbers of the connections which are active inside the jail.

Just a month ago, a technical probe had confirmed the constant threat calls being made to doctors and businessmen by notorious gangsters from Mandal Kara jail in Dhanbad. Jailer Amar Tiwari was suspended, while departmental inquiry was initiated against Jail Superintendent Ajay Kumar.

Similarly, during an investigation in a criminal case, Delhi Police found that at least six gangsters lodged in JP Central Jail in Hazaribagh were using mobile phones to give instructions to gang members in Delhi. Delhi Police recently wrote to Jharkhand Police asking them to take action. Then, IG, Jails, Manoj Kumar recommended that the state government take action against the Superintendent of JP Central Jail, Hazaribagh, Kumar Chandrashekhar.

Out of these three jails, the most shocking case is of Birsa Munda Central Jail. Based on strong evidence about the use of about 200 mobiles inside the jail, Ranchi's Khelgaon police station in-charge, Manoj Kumar Mahato lodged an FIR on March 1, 2022.

The FIR said that the history-sheeters -- Aman Sahu, Aman Singh, Sujit Sinha, Sheetal Mahto, Harikishore Prasad alias Kishore, Suraj Kumar Singh, Raju Singh, Hari Tiwari -- who are inside the prison, used mobile phones to demand extortion and send messages to their gang members.

The FIR also made jail workers as accused. On the basis of this FIR, the police conducted a technical investigation and submitted a report to the government.

According to police sources, the report recommends strict action against the accused as well as the need to upgrade the jammer to block the mobile network inside the prison. At present, 2G jammer is installed in Ranchi Central Jail, but criminals are using 4G network.

During several raids in the past, mobile phones have been recovered from the prison.
Bhopal, June 13 : A shocking incident of the deaths of a girl and her cousin brother in Madhya Pradeshs Sagar district has left the police puzzled.

As per reports, a youth who came to attend the funeral of his cousin's sister bowed down in respect and then lay down on her pyre.

By the time the family members and others present there could bring the youth out of the pyre, he had received severe burn injuries and died on the way to the hospital. Later, he was cremated near the pyre of her cousin sister.

As per the police, a girl named Jyoti Dangi was missing since Thursday and her body was found in a well on Friday morning. After getting information about the death of the girl, an 18-year-old youth from Dhar district drove almost 450 km to attend the funeral of his cousin sister.

The police said that the deceased youth, who has been identified as Karan Dangi, went to the cremation ground, bowed down before the blazing pyre before jumping into it.

According to the police, 21-year-old Jyoti had gone missing on Thursday evening after she left home to fetch some vegetables from a nearby farm.

When she did not return till late at night, her family members suspected that she might have slipped into a well located at a farm in the village. Later, they spotted her body in the well and informed the police.
New Delhi, June 13 : A 39-year-old murder convict was arrested after he jumped his parole to work for Delhi's dreaded gangsters, an official said on Monday.

The accused, identified as Pramod Vats, a resident of Dwarka in Delhi, got furlough during the Covid outbreak on March 24, 2020 and was supposed to surrender on February 21. But, he did not and went absconding.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Amit Goel said a tip-off was received that a wanted convict of murder case had come to Palam village to meet some of his contacts and if raid was conducted, he could be apprehended. Subsequently, a police team was constituted which conducted a raid and apprehended the accused from a house of his close contact located in Palam Village at about 4.20 p.m. on Sunday.

Sharing details of the murder committed by Vats in 2011, the senior official said Vats and his two brothers were convicted for murder of one Balwan Solanki in August 2014. All the three brothers were convicted in that case and are serving a life sentence.

During interrogation it was revealed that convict Vats came in contact with some hard core gangsters in jail, including Sunil Mann alias Tillu Tajpuriya, Naveen alias Balli and their associate Sandeep alias Dhillu, who were also lodged in jail in various cases.

"He had developed intimacy with them in jail. Before release on furlough these gangsters had asked him to remain in touch with them from outside and wait for some task," DCP Goel said.

It was learnt that the accused had no source of income, and decided to join their syndicate to earn money and for the said purpose he did not surrender and absconded. "He was impressed by these desperate gangsters, although none of them had contacted him since he came out of jail on furlough," the official added.
Surat, June 13 : An armed robber looted Rs 6,83,000 from a Surat District Cooperative Bank branch on Monday after holding the staff at gunpoint, police said.

Surat rural police have formed five teams to apprehend the accused.

"In the afternoon, a person in jeans and T-shirt entered the Surat District Bank's Kadodara Branch, threatened to kill staff, looted the cash, and fled," Surat Superintendent of Police Hitesh Joysar told IANS.

The moment that the district control room and Kadodara GIDC police was informed by the bank staff, a team led by Assistant Superintendent of Police Visakha Jain reached the branch and started to scan CCTV footage, so as to ensure that the accused doesn't manage to flee From the CCTV footage of the branch and of the surrounding areas, it became clear that accused had carried out recce, and was aware that there is no security personnel at the branch which has only four staffers, the SP said.

He also said that from the footage, it seems the weapon is a country-made revolver but it has to be investigated, whether it was a weapon at all.

According to bank Managing Director Mahavirsinh Chauhan, this branch was recently opened, and no security guard was kept because it was considered to be located in safe area, as it was in the main market, on the first floor, and there were four employees - the branch manager, a cashier, a clerk and a peon.

He said that accused entered the bank pretending to be a customer, then he suddenly whipped out a gun, pointed it at the forehead of the manager and told him to hand over all the cash with the branch.

After collecting the cash, he immediately fled while locking the branch from outside, Chauhan said.

Though the manager had pressed bank alarm system button, and neighbours rushed for help, the accused fled away.
Kolkata, June 13 : Amid a time when the Calcutta High Court is almost every day ordering Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probes in some case or the other in West Bengal, the joint director in charge of the agency's anti-corruption wing, Pankaj Srivastava has been shifted out of Kolkata to New Delhi.

Srivastava will be replaced by N. Venu Gopal, a 1995 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre.

The decision has come as a surprise since Srivastava was in the overall charge of all the cases involving financial embezzlement like chit funds, Narada video tape scam, cattle and coal smuggling and most importantly, the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment irregularities scam.

However, highly-placed CBI sources said that despite being shifted to New Delhi, Srivastava will be overseeing the probe in the chit fund cases. Venugopal will be handling the other cases relating to financial embezzlement and will be operating from CBI's Nizam Palace office in central Kolkata.

The CBI sources said that Srivastava, a 1992 batch IPS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, was appointed as the agency's Joint Director, Kolkata Zone for a period of five years and that tenure has ended, so he has been transferred.

In February 2019, it was Srivastava who has served notice to then Kolkata Police Commissioner, Rajeev Kumar in connection with the Saradha chit fund, which resulted into a major faceoff between the Union and the state government. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee staged dharna on the streets of Kolkata then after a team of CBI officers reached the residence of Kumar.
New Delhi, June 13 : Ahead of assembly bypoll for Rajinder Nagar - one of its strongholds in Delhi, the state BJP is looking at IMD forecast for next week as it suspects oppressive heat may lead to less than 50 per cent voter turnout which in turn may adversely affect their electoral prospects.

Delhi BJP strategists are working overtime for victory of party candidate Rajesh Bhatia but feel that lower voter turnout will go against him.

"Ensuring a higher turnout in this hot weather condition will be a challenge for all the political parties including us. Lesser or less than 50 per cent voter turnout will affect our chances of winning the bypoll," a senior BJP leader said.

Polling will be held on June 23 and counting of votes will take place on June 26. The by-poll was necessitated after AAP's Raghav Chadha resigned from the Delhi assembly after he was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab.

Another BJP leader said that while finalizing strategy to ensure high turnout above 50-55 per cent, the party is also hoping that temperature will come down with pre-monsoon showers. "We hope that a pre-monsoon shower will bring down the temperature on voting day. We are also appealing to voters to come out and vote. Our workers are reaching out to each and every voter of the constituency while explaining BJP agenda and vision for Rajinder Nagar," he said.

Rajinder Nagar has been represented by AAP since 2015. Prior to it, the BJP had continuously won the constituency from 1993 to 2008. In 2008, Congress won the seat, but in 2013 the BJP won it back. The AAP, however, made inroads and won for the last two consecutive assembly polls in 2015 and 2020.

In the 2020 assembly election, Chadha won from Rajinder Nagar by getting 57 per cent of total votes polled. BJP's Sardar RP Singh got 37.7 per cent vote share and Congress's Rocky Tuseed got 3.8 per cent vote share.

Rajinder Nagar is a largely urban constituency with some slum clusters and few villages. On the one hand, there are Old and New Rajinder Nagar, Naraina, Inderpuri, and some parts of Karol Bagh, while on the other hand, there are slum clusters such as Gas Godami, Rajiv Gandhi Camp and Indira Camp. There are some villages like Dasghara, Todapur and Nairana villages.

With around 40 per cent of total electorate, Punjabis are in a dominating position in this constituency followed by migrant population, mostly from Rajasthan followed by Purvanchalis and others. Remaining are traditional villagers and Muslims.

The significance of winning back this core constituency for the BJP can be gauged from the fact that it has deployed as many as 40 star campaigners, including eight union ministers and several MPs for canvassing.
Bhubaneswar, June 13 : Odisha Congress workers led by state president Sarat Pattanayak on Monday staged a protest outside the ED office in Bhubaneswar as the central agency questioned their leader Rahul Gandhi in Delhi in connection with the National Herald case.

The Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) activists marched to the agency's office at Nayapalli area from the CRP square and sat on a dharana outside the ED office.

Many leaders, including Congress MLA from Jatni Suresh Routray, legislative party leader Narasingha Mishra and former state Congress president Niranjan Patnaik participated in the protest.

The Congress leaders alleged that the ED action is a political vendetta of the BJP-led Central government against the Gandhi family.

Stating that the move of the BJP government is completely unconstitutional, Pattanayak alleged that the BJP government is misusing its power, which is not a good sign for a democracy.

"This revengeful attitude is not good for a democratic country. Conspiracy was made against the Gandhi family thinking all the Congress workers in the country will be demoralised and they will achieve a Congress-mukt Bharat," he said.

"However, their attempts will never be fruitful. Congress workers across the country, including in Odisha, strongly stand behind Rahul Gandhi," Pattanayak said.

"BJP can't stop Shri @RahulGandhi and @INCIndia from raising people's voices. The misuse of ED and other institutions will not work because #IndiaWithRahulGandhi," tweeted Niranjan Patnaik.

The Congress leaders demanded that the ED should immediately withdraw the summons issued to the Gandhi family.
Patna, June 13 : Unidentified men distributed posters in favour of suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma in Bihar's Gopalganj district, an official said.

The posters, containing "I support Nupur Sharma" were distributed at several places and important Chowks, educational centres, parks and temples in the city.

Sources have said that it could be a handiwork of anti-social elements to create disturbance in the area. They probably pasted the posters on Sunday night. The Gopalganj administration, however, has now removed them.

The Muslim community of the district had asked for permission for a march against Nupur Sharma which was turned down by the district administration on Sunday.

The district administration is keeping a close tab on social media and is shortlisting the names and addresses of those who are active and are uploading posts in favour and against Nupur Sharma.

Earlier, similar posters were distributed and pasted at several places in Bhagalpur district as well.

Reacting to it, CM Nitish Kumar said: "Some people used to create disturbances. We have asked the authorities to look into it. The situation is normal in Bihar." "During the protest on Friday, the people came on the streets but authorities handled the situation very well. We are taking action immediately every time such incidents happen. Moreover, the people of the state are not provoked with such incidents. Different communities are living together peacefully," Kumar said.

Nupur Sharma was suspended from the BJP after her controversial remark on Prophet Mohammad which triggered a huge outrage among the Muslim community in India and abroad.
New Delhi, June 13 : The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) has demanded an impartial probe into custodial torture, police excesses and demolition of houses, and punishment to the guilty at the earliest.

Condemning the high-handedness of the police and administration in Ranchi, Prayagraj and other places over protests by Muslims against derogatory remarks on the Prophet, JIH president Syed Sadatullah Husaini said, "What police have done in Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand concerning the democratic protest by Muslims on June 10, amounts to throttling of democracy and rule of law." He also appealed to the Muslim community not to fall into the trap of anti-social elements and those who wish to create division within society while exercising their democratic rights for conducting peaceful protests.

He said, had timely and appropriate action been taken against the blasphemy accused, these untoward incidents would not have taken place. And also, if the kind of stone-pelting that took place as shown in some videos that are circulating on social media, then some kind of conspiracy is also visible in the entire chain of events. He demanded an impartial enquiry into the whole chain of events.

The JIH said it feels that the action was taken against Javed Mohammed, a well-known social and human rights activist in Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, smacks of vendetta politics. He also reminded that Javed and his family denied that any of them had taken part in Friday's (June 10) protest and that the house demolished was also owned by his wife and not him.
Colombo, June 13 : The Chairman of Sri Lanka's state-run electricity supplier, Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), resigned on Monday after repeated controversial statements made on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lanka's renewable energy project awarded to Adani Group.

CEB Chairman, M.M.C. Ferdinando handed over his resignation and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekara, in a Twitter message, said he accepted the resignation.

Last week, Ferdinando had stated to Parliament's Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had told him that Indian Premier Modi had pressured him to award a wind power project to India's Adani Group.

President Rajapaksa was quick to deny Fernando's statement and said that he never gave authorisation to award a wind power project in Mannar to any person or any institution.

Issuing a statement, the President's Media Division said: "Sri Lanka is currently in an acute shortage of power and President desires to expedite implementation of mega power projects as early as possible. However, no undue influence will be used in awarding such projects." "Project proposals for large-scale renewable energy projects is limited, but special attention will be paid to the selection of institutions for the projects, which will be carried out strictly in accordance with the transparent and accountable system by the government of Sri Lanka," the statement added.

However, the CEB head later retracted what he told the COPE claiming that he made the statement in a moment of exhaustion and poor emotional condition.

The incident created both local and international uproar and opposition politicians charged him with lying to the parliament while others complained he was pressured by the President to withdraw what he said.

Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa had complained that Ferdinando had violated parliamentary privilege by making false statements to the COPE.
Patna, June 13 : A party in Kanhauli village on the outskirts of Patna took a violent turn on Monday after a minor stabbed his friend to death.

The accused minor has been identified as Manish Kumar (16), who along with his friend Manoj Kumar (17) invited their friend Vikas Kumar (18) for a chicken party at his house.

Ranjeet Kumar, SHO at Bihta police station, said: "Three of them were preparing to cook chicken. Vikas had asked his two friends to slice onions. While they were slicing onions, they got involved in a verbal duel over a trivial issue. In a fit of rage, Manish stabbed Vikas repeatedly with a knife." Those staying nearby assembled at the crime scene and handed over the accused to the police.

"We are interrogating the accused. The incident happened in a fit of rage. The parents of the deceased have submitted a complaint against Manish Kumar," the SHO said.
New Delhi, June 13 : Delhi on Monday reported decline in fresh Covid cases in last 24 hours, at 614 against 735 recorded on the previous day, while there was no new death, as per the government health bulletin.

Meanwhile, the Covid positivity rate has jumped up to 7.06 per cent in the city, while the number of active cases has also risen to 2,561.

With 495 patients recovering in the last 24 hours, the total number of recoveries has gone to 18,84,630. The number of patients being treated in home isolation stands at 1,825.

With new Covid cases, the total caseload of the city has jumped to 19,13,412 while the death toll continues at 26,221.

The number of Covid containment zones stand at 191 in the city.

A total of 8700 new tests -- 7,670 RT-PCR and 1,030 Rapid Antigen - were conducted in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 3,87,59,850 while 8,905 vaccines were administered - 764 first doses, 1,872 second doses, and 6,269 precaution doses.

The total number of cumulative beneficiaries vaccinated so far stands at 3,45,04,928, according to the health bulletin.
New York, June 13 : The United States is facing a double whammy -- Covid 19s sub-variants B4, BA5 have hit the country as predicted by scientists with 100,000 new coronavirus cases being registered each day. Fuel prices are ascending every day to anything between $5 to $5.99 a gallon showing no signs of even a marginal slide.

The popular retailers Shell and Exxon are unable to drop prices as shortage of crude due to the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war showing no immediate signs of a truce.

One can see many automobiles pulling up near a gas station to see the prices of normal, unleaded and premium - only a different of cents between the three- rising at $4.99 to a record $5.99 and sometimes $6 per gallon (3.3 litres make a gallon) and the mood swings, "Ah shucks, let's wait until tomorrow, prices may drop", the motorists seem to be saying hauling up to the highway again. But such hopes are mercilessly belied as prices either remain constant or have jumped up further.

With sanctions on Russia and Iran, the world's two great suppliers of crude, there is acute shortage of oil in the world and mid-eastern nations coming under the OPEC cartel not wanting to step up production to meet shortages for fear of falling prices, they have struck it rich at a constant $ 100 dollars a barrel.

Now for the second whammy -- Omicron subvariants BA.4, BA.5 start spreading in the US.

The two new subvariants are showing signs that they could become the dominant strains circulating as the USaverages more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases each day. Alarming indeed. In India too, especially Maharashtra, the hotbed of coronavirus infections, cases are rising, apparently the Omicron variants as in the US.

As per the WHO dashboard, United States and India top the list of infections, recoveries and deaths due to Covid 19 since 2021. At the last count, the United States reported infections at close to five million with now fewer than five lakh deaths and in India it was around 4.2 million infections with over 4 lakh deaths.

According to widely published US media reports, just weeks after a new omicron subvariant took over as the dominant strain circulating in the US, two other subvariants have entered the scene and are quickly spreading.

BA.4 and BA.5, which were first identified in South Africa, were responsible for 13% of coronavirus cases in the U.S. last week, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention. It's a significant jump from the beginning of May, when the strains made up about 1% of infections.

Until this weekend, uncertainty loomed over whether BA4 and BA5 would overtake the current dominant variants, according to Alexandre Bolze of Helix, a company tracking coronavirus variants. Bolze claims that he expects A4 and BA5 to become the dominant strains now.

The rise of BA.4 and BA.5 could lead to an uptick in infections or, at the very least, a longer plateau for the latest coronavirus wave, feel health care specialists in the US. The US is currently averaging more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases each day, believed to be far below the real count. That's up from an average of nearly 30,000 new daily cases two months ago.

"I think we could expect an increase in cases, but we shouldn't see an increase in hospitalizations compared to the current situation," Bolze says.

Still, it's a reminder that while many Americans have mentally moved on from the coronavirus, the US is still under threat from new variants that can quickly change the outlook of the pandemic.

Where did BA.4 and BA.5 come from? The pair of omicron subvariants were first reported in South Africa earlier this year when they fuelled a coronavirus surge there. Leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci recently said that the subvariants led to "a slight uptick in hospitalizations, but [intensive care unit] utilization and deaths are really staying stably low" in the country.

The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation recently reported that the BA.4 and BA.5 surge in South Africa has peaked and is declining. BA.4 and BA.5, however, are increasing globally, according to the World Health Organization.

Still, "accumulating evidence from several countries indicates that there has been no observed increase in severity associated with BA.5 and BA.4," it reported this week.

The United Kingdom Health Security Agency noted in a recent report that BA.4 and BA.5 likely have a growth advantage over BA.2, or "stealth omicron." It found that "in many countries, the rate of replacement of BA.4 and BA.5 over BA.2 are comparable to the rate at which BA.2 replaced" the original omicron strain. However, it is growing more difficult to extrapolate surge predictions from other countries, according to Inglesby.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Patna, June 13 : One person was killed and another injured after four unidentified men opened fire on them in Bihar's Bhojpur district on Monday, police said.

The deceased was identified as Sonu Kumar, 26. He died on the spot while his friend Rohit Kumar alias Lallu sustained gunshot injuries in hand and is said to be out of danger. Both of them are residents of Narayanpur village. Their third friend Chitranjan Kumar escaped unhurt.

Bhojpur SP Sanjay Singh, who visited the crime scene, said that it prima facie looks to be a case of gang war. "We are investigating the case. The statements of the deceased's Sonu Kumar family and injured Rohit's family members are contradictory. We have sent the dead body for post-mortem to find more details." As per the statement of Rohit, he, along with his friends, were returning on one bike from Arrah to Narayanpur. When they reached Chawaria village, which is near Narayanpur, four unidentified assailants on two bikes, opened fire on them. One bullet hit Sonu and he died on the spot.

"We have some dispute with another group over an orchestra event. They may be involved in it," Rohit said in a statement to police.
Jaipur, June 13 : The Rajasthan government on Monday suspended internet services in four tehsils of Bharatpur district for 24 hours starting Monday am as the reservation issue has once again rocked the state.

This time, Mali, Kushwaha Shakya and Maurya Samaj have raised a demand of 12 per cent reservation. Hundreds of people from the society blocked the National Highway-21 (Agra-Jaipur) in Bharatpur holding sticks in their hands.

The highway has been jammed for over 24 hours now. Looking at the gravity of the situation, Bharatpur Divisional Commissioner Sanwarmal Verma shut down internet services in four towns for 24 hours starting 11 am on Monday.

The state government has authorised minister Vishvendra Singh and the divisional commissioner to hold talks with the representatives from the agitators.

Laxman Singh Kushwaha, patron of Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti, said, "The people of the society are demanding reservation under the Constitution. The provision has been given in Article 16(4) of the Constitution. Those castes which are very backward can be given reservation by the state government." Kushwaha added: "Kachi (Mali) society is the most backward class. The population of Kachi community is 12 per cent, so we are asking for reservation on the basis of population. We have met the Chief Minister on this issue and he had assured that it would be considered. But nothing has happened till date. We are being forced to stage a protest." Bharatpur Divisional Commissioner Sanwarmal Verma said that Jaipur-Agra traffic has been disrupted, and internet and broadband services have been suspended to avert any untoward incident.

Internet service has been suspended in Nadbai, Vair Bhusawar and Uchhain tehsils.
Dhaka, June 13 : One more burned human body was recovered from inside the BM Container Depot in Sitakunda on Monday, ten days after the massive chemical blasts and fire there, officials said.

Bones with some flesh was recovered from the depot around 2.30 p.m. while removing the containers, said Sumon Banik, Officer in Charge of Sitakunda Police Station. The body parts were been sent to Chittagong Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) for DNA tests and then to the CMCH morgue, Additional Superintendent of Police, Sitakunda Circle, Md Ashraful Karim said.

"The human remains were found when a police team and CID were working inside the depot around 12 p.m. on Monday," he said, while Banik said that remains of human hand and toe were found near the east part of the accident site.

However, families of missing container operators told IANS that still the number of missing persons is not known.

Two more BM Container Depot fire victims, including a firefighter, died on Sunday after nearly seven days of fighting for their lives.

Nurul Quader, 22, an employee of the depot in Sitakunda, breathed his last at the Incentive Care Unit of Parkview Hospital in Chattogram city.

"Nurul sustained severe burn injuries and he was admitted to the general unit on June 4 night. As his condition deteriorated, he was moved to the ICU and put on life support. He died around 1.30 p.m.," said Humayun Kabir, Deputy General Manager of Parkview Hospital.

Investigators said the container depot had stored at least 27 containers full of hydrogen peroxide which led to deadly blasts, and the resulting fire.
New Delhi: Congress workers protest as ED summons party leader Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, in New Delhi on Monday, June 13, 2022. (Photo: Anupam Guatm/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi: Delhi Police detain Congress leader Udit Raj during a protest as ED summons party leader Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, in New Delhi on Monday, June 13, 2022. (Photo: Wasim Sarvar/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi: Delhi Police detain Congress leader Udit Raj during a protest as ED summons party leader Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, in New Delhi on Monday, June 13, 2022. (Photo: Wasim Sarvar/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi: Security personnel detain a Congress worker during protest as ED summons party leader Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, in New Delhi on Monday, June 13, 2022. (Photo: Anupam Guatm/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, June 13 : As many as 459 Congress partymen, including 26 MPs and 5 legislators from different state Assemblies, were on Monday detained during Congress' protest march in the national capital against the summon issued to Rahul Gandhi in connection with the National Herald case, a police officer said.

"15 members of Lok Sabha, including leader of opposition Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, 11 members of Rajya Sabha, including KC Venugopal and Mallikarjun Kharge, five MLAs of different state Assemblies and other functionaries/workers of the Congress were among the total 459 detained in New Delhi for not following lawful directions of police for maintenance of law & order," said Special Commissioner of Police, Law and Order, Sagar Singh Kalsi.

The Congress had planned to carry out a march in the wake of its leader Rahul Gandhi's appearance before the Enforcement Directorate's office on Monday. The ED had summoned Rahul Gandhi on Monday and party chief Sonia Gandhi on June 23 in connection with the National Herald case for alleged misappropriation funds.

The district police did not grant permission for the protest in view of the prevailing circumstances.

The Special CP said the Secretary, AICC, in a letter addressed to the police had categorically assured that the gathering will not accompany VIPs to the ED office but as soon as Rahul Gandhi left for the ED office, many Congress leaders along with workers and functionaries started proceeding along with him in the form of a procession.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury alleged that he was manhandled by the police.

Senior congress leader P. Chidambaram also alleged that he was manhandled by the cops.

"When three big, burly policemen crash into you, you are lucky to get away with a suspected hairline crack! Doctors have said that if there is a hairline crack, it will heal by itself in about 10 days. I am fine and I will go about my work tomorrow," Chidambaram tweeted.
Thiruvananthapuram, June 14 : In a first of its kind incident, angry CPI-M workers barged into the Congress state party headquarters here on Monday night and smashed advertisement materials and damaged a car even as veteran Congress leader A.K. Antony was present in the premises.

Hearing about the attack, both the CPI-M and the Congress workers took out marches at several places, and some places, there were skirmishes too.

Interacting the media after the incident, Antony said he was reading a book when he heard noise outside.

"I did not go out, but I was told what had happened. The only thing I want to ask... I want to hear what Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and State CPI-M Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan have to say on this... I don't have anything to say," said Antony.

The incident came amid protests by Congress and BJP activists demanding the resignation of Vijayan over the allegations made by gold smuggling accused Swapna Suresh that Vijayan and his family are involved in smuggling of currency and gold.

Earlier on Monday, three Youth Congress workers protested inside a aircraft against Vijayan as he was returning to the state capital from hometown Kannur.

Following the visuals that came out, it surfaced that the Left Democratic Front convenor and former State Industries Minister E.P. Jayarajan, who was also travelling in the aircraft, pushed down the two protesters, who shouted slogans against Vijayan.

Incidentally, Jayarajan soon after the incident had occurred first told the media that this sloganeering took place after Vijayan had alighted from the aircraft.

Later, the three Congress supporters were arrested.

Hearing about the incident on the party office, State Congress president K. Sudhakaran reached the spot and said all what the three youngsters did was to protest by raising a slogan.

"If Jayarajan has attacked the three of our workers, then he will also have the taste of the same medicine. The CPI-M should not underestimate us as we are least interested to do anything which destroys peace, but we are also capable of doing what the CPI-M often does," he said, adding that to protest this attack, the Congress will observe Tuesday as a "black day".

Meanwhile Vijayan, in a statement, said with the statements of senior Congress leaders on the incident that took place inside the aircraft it's clear that this was a pre-planned one.

"For a while the Congress-led UDF is on a needless protests which is a challenge on the people of Kerala and is meant to destroy peace. The Congress is getting adequate support from the BJP too. My request to all is not to get trapped in these things and to keep away from all such activities," he said.
Agartala, June 14 : Amid the hectic campaign before the June 23 bypolls to four Assembly seats, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha said on Monday that he has not been made the Chief Minister by the central leaders for three months, or seven months, and he will be in the leading position in the Assembly elections in early next year.

The statement of Saha, who assumed office on May 15, a day after Biplab Kumar Deb's resignation from the top post, is very significant as the elections to the Tripura Assembly are expected to be held in around eight months from now (February 2023).

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President J.P. Nadda have extended their trust in me. This is not the right platform to disclose everything," Saha said in a party meeting as part of his byelection campaign.

The 69-year-old Congress-turned-BJP leader, who is contesting from the Town Bordowali Assembly constituency against five other candidates, is also the state party President and a Rajya Sabha member.

Saha, who is contesting the elections for the first time, has to become a member of the Assembly within six months.

Former Chief Minister Deb also held a meeting with Nadda in New Delhi on Saturday and held another meeting with Kailash Vijayvargiya, national general secretary of the BJP, and the party's Tripura in-charge Vinod Sonkar in Agartala on Monday.

"In all these meetings, we have discussed the strategies about the byelections," Deb tweeted.

The Left parties, the Congress, and the Trinamool Congress also undertook campaigns in all the four assembly seats -- Town Bordowali, Agartala, Jubarajnagar and Surma (SC).

Trinamool Congress national General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee would visit Tripura on Tuesday to spearhead the campaign as his party has put up candidates in all the four seats.

Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said that Banerjee would be participating in a road-show and would address an election meeting as well.

Trinamool has submitted a series of complaints to the Election Commission about the political violence ahead of the bypolls.

"The BJP removing a chief minister ahead of elections shows that the issues raised by us in the past few months are valid. The people of Tripura now need a change of government and not just CMs. Those who think it is okay to increase the prices of essential commodities and fuel can vote for BJP. But those who want to remove BJP for its misgovernance should vote for Trinamool," Ghosh told the media.

The bypolls were necessitated after the resignation of three BJP MLAs and the death of CPI-M legislator Ramendra Chandra Debnath.

Amid resentment by a section of BJP legislators against then CM Deb, three MLAs -- Sudip Roy Barman, Ashis Kumar Saha and Ashis Das -- quit the BJP and the Assembly.

Roy Barman, also a former BJP minister, and Saha joined the Congress in February this year while Das joined the Trinamool last year. Das also resigned from the Trinamool last month.

Roy Barman and Saha this time are contesting from Agartala and Town Bordowali Assembly constituencies, respectively, on Congress tickets.
Bhopal, June 14 : Days after BJP president J.P. Nadda made it clear that the saffron party is against 'pariwarvad' (dynasty politics) and will stick to this principle even at the cost of losing seats, Siddharth Malaiya, son of former Madhya Pradesh finance minister Jayant Malaiya, resigned from the party on Monday.

Siddharth Malaiya said he took the decision because he could not work for the people of his home district Damoh for the last one-and-a-half years because of his suspension from the party.

He also said that he failed to convince the state leadership against his suspension from the post of district president.

"For long, I was wishing to end this indecision, as I wasn't able to speak for the public and party workers as I am serving suspension. I decided to quit and perhaps the party also wanted me to take a decisive step," Siddharth Malaiya said during a press briefing in Damoh on Monday.

Siddharth Malaiya and some other party office-bearers were suspended after the Damoh bypolls in which the BJP had lost to Congress' Ajay Tandon.

His father Jayant Maliaya was also handed a show-cause notice by the party seeking explanation as to why the Malaiya family wasn't with the party completely.

Siddharth Malaiya also turned down speculations that he would be joining the Congress, AAP or any other party, saying he has some ideology and would move ahead with the same in future as independent. He made it clear that he will be contesting the 2023 Assembly polls.
Jammu, June 14 : The medical student from Jammu and Kashmir who was critically injured in a road accident in Bangladesh earlier this month is being brought to India on an Air ambulance.

Shoaib Lone's father Mohammad Aslam Lone told reporters that his son was admitted in a hospital in Bangladesh after he met with the accident and the cost of his treatment there was very high.

"Our people back home met with the state president of BJP Ravinder Raina, who said that he will contact the Prime Minister to help bring home our son," Aslam Lone said.

Lone thanked Prime Minister Narindra Modi for his intervention to bring home his son who was critically ill and battling for his life in a Bangladesh hospital.

"We are very thankful to Prime Minister Modi for helping us. The country that has Narendra Modi as the PM has nothing to worry," he added.

Earlier the BJP state President said that after the distraught family of Lone, belonging to Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir, contacted them and sought their help, they approached the Prime Minister's Office.

A prompt response from the Prime Minister's office ensured that all the help was provided to the family and arrangements were made for bringing Shoaib Lone back to India.

"For the last 10 days, he was admitted in a hospital in Bangladesh. His family approached us and told us that they have to spend two lakh rupees every day there. We approached the PM office. Prime Minister Modi promptly sent the Indian ambassador to the hospital who met with the family and assured them of all the help. Today an air ambulance was sent by Prime Minister Modi to Bangladesh for bringing him back. He will be shifted to Delhi, where he will be treated," Raina said.
Srinagar, June 14 : Two LeT terrorists were killed and a policeman was injured after a late night encounter broke out between terrorists and security forces at Bemina in Central Kashmir's Srinagar district, officials said.

"Two terrorists of proscribed terror outfit LeT neutralised by Srinagar Police in a swift encounter in Bemina area of Srinagar. One policeman also received minor injury," Jammu and Kashmir Police quoting Inspector General Police Kashmir zone Vijay Kumar tweeted.

The encounter started after security forces got a tip off about the presence of terrorists in that area.

There have been a series of anti-terror operations in Kashmir over the last few months in which many terrorists and their commanders have been eliminated.

Most of the operations have been jointly conducted by the police and the army on the basis of specific intelligence inputs.
Patna, June 14 : Former sugercane minister of Bihar and JD-U leader Ranju Geeta has claimed that if she would sell one piece of plot in Patna, she would be capable of "buying every leader of Sitamarhi district".

The former minister in Nitish Kumar government made the remark while addressing the party workers during the assessment meeting. Moreover, the party workers present in the meeting clapped after her statement.

She asserted that "no one could dare to challenge her over money". If she would sell a plot in Patna, "she could buy every leader of Sitamarhi district", the former MLA from Bajpatti assembly constituency said.

The statement by Geeta came after Rekha Devi who was the MLC candidate of JD-U was elected during recently concluded MLC elections. Geeta and Rekha Devi are said to be rival to each other.
Chungribu Airport, Chungribu, Papua New Guinea [ CVB / ]

If you are planning to travel to Chungribu or any other city in Papua New Guinea, this airport locator will be a very useful tool. This page gives complete information about the Chungribu Airport along with the airport location map, Time Zone, lattitude and longitude, Current time and date, hotels near the airport etc... Chungribu Airport Map showing the location of this airport in Papua New Guinea. Chungribu Airport IATA Code, ICAO Code, exchange rate etc... is also provided.

Chungribu Airport Info:

Chungribu Airport IATA Code: CVB Chungribu Airport ICAO Code: Latitude : -4.80662 Longitude : 144.715 City : Chungribu Country : Papua New Guinea World Area Code : 804 Airport Type : Small Timezone : Pacific/Port_Moresby Chungribu Airport Timezone : GMT +10:00 hours Current time and date at Chungribu Airport is 07:38:56 AM (+10) on Thursday, Jun 16, 2022

Looking for information on Chungribu Airport, Chungribu, Papua New Guinea? Know about Chungribu Airport in detail. Find out the location of Chungribu Airport on Papua New Guinea map and also find out airports near to Chungribu. This airport locator is a very useful tool for travelers to know where is Chungribu Airport located and also provide information like hotels near Chungribu Airport, airlines operating to Chungribu Airport etc... IATA Code and ICAO Code of all airports in Papua New Guinea. Scroll down to know more about Chungribu Airport or Chungribu Airport, Papua New Guinea.

Chungribu Airport Map - Location of Chungribu Airport Load Map Papua New Guinea - General Information Country Formal Name Independent State of Papua New Guinea Country Code PG Capital Port Moresby Currency Kina (PGK)

 1 PGK = 0.281 USD

 1 USD = 3.558 PGK

 1 PGK = 0.269 EUR

 1 EUR = 3.717 PGK

 More PGK convertion rates Tel Code +675 Top Level Domain .pg

This page provides all the information you need to know about Chungribu Airport, Papua New Guinea. This page is created with the aim of helping travelers and tourists visiting Papua New Guinea or traveling to Chungribu Airport. Details about Chungribu Airport given here include Chungribu Airport Code - IATA Code (3 letter airport codes) and ICAO Code (4 letter airport codes)

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CVB - Chungribu Airport IATA Code
Gewoia Airport, Gewoia, Papua New Guinea [ GEW / ]

If you are planning to travel to Gewoia or any other city in Papua New Guinea, this airport locator will be a very useful tool. This page gives complete information about the Gewoia Airport along with the airport location map, Time Zone, lattitude and longitude, Current time and date, hotels near the airport etc... Gewoia Airport Map showing the location of this airport in Papua New Guinea. Gewoia Airport IATA Code, ICAO Code, exchange rate etc... is also provided.

Gewoia Airport Info:

Gewoia Airport IATA Code: GEW Gewoia Airport ICAO Code: Latitude : -9.3 Longitude : 148.467 City : Gewoia Country : Papua New Guinea World Area Code : 804 Airport Type : Small Timezone : Pacific/Port_Moresby Gewoia Airport Timezone : GMT +10:00 hours Current time and date at Gewoia Airport is 07:38:57 AM (+10) on Thursday, Jun 16, 2022

Looking for information on Gewoia Airport, Gewoia, Papua New Guinea? Know about Gewoia Airport in detail. Find out the location of Gewoia Airport on Papua New Guinea map and also find out airports near to Gewoia. This airport locator is a very useful tool for travelers to know where is Gewoia Airport located and also provide information like hotels near Gewoia Airport, airlines operating to Gewoia Airport etc... IATA Code and ICAO Code of all airports in Papua New Guinea. Scroll down to know more about Gewoia Airport or Gewoia Airport, Papua New Guinea.

Gewoia Airport Map - Location of Gewoia Airport Load Map Papua New Guinea - General Information Country Formal Name Independent State of Papua New Guinea Country Code PG Capital Port Moresby Currency Kina (PGK)

 1 PGK = 0.281 USD

 1 USD = 3.558 PGK

 1 PGK = 0.269 EUR

 1 EUR = 3.717 PGK

 More PGK convertion rates Tel Code +675 Top Level Domain .pg

This page provides all the information you need to know about Gewoia Airport, Papua New Guinea. This page is created with the aim of helping travelers and tourists visiting Papua New Guinea or traveling to Gewoia Airport. Details about Gewoia Airport given here include Gewoia Airport Code - IATA Code (3 letter airport codes) and ICAO Code (4 letter airport codes)

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GEW - Gewoia Airport IATA Code
HIH Invest Real Estate just acquired a new-build property in the Netherlands from Trajanus Vastgoed B.V. that is earmarked for its second logistics real estate fund, Deutschland+ Core Logistik Invest. The transaction represents the second acquisition on behalf of the fund after a recent investment in Monchengladbach [we reported].

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Quantum computers are coming, and all our digital infrastructures are vulnerable. The stakes are too high to be unprepared, and thats why were passionate about helping organizations protect their digital systems and safeguard against future attacks.

evolutionQ, a Kitchener-Waterloo-based company pioneering the development of quantum-safe cybersecurity products, is pleased to announce the closing of US$5.5 million in Series A funding from a group of international venture capital (VC) partners. Quantonation, a Paris-based VC fund dedicated to quantum technologies, led the investment, with participation from the USA and Canada, including The Group Ventures, a Toronto-based fund focused on early-stage tech start-ups.

With these funds, evolutionQ plans to advance product development, expand service offerings, and grow sales across Europe and North America, building upon the success of its flagship product, BasejumpQDN(TM). The quantum-safe software allows organizations building a network based on Quantum Key Distribution devices to easily deploy and cost-effectively manage quantum technologies throughout their network.

Quantum computers are coming, and all our digital infrastructures are vulnerable, said Dr. Michele Mosca, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of evolutionQ. The stakes are too high to be unprepared, and thats why were passionate about helping organizations protect their digital systems and safeguard against future attacks. This funding means well be able to scale faster and enable more organizations to future-proof their systems.

"New standards are emerging and this will greatly accelerate the rate of transition to quantum-safe cryptography," said Chief Cryptographer of evolutionQ, Dr. David Jao.

In addition to developing cybersecurity products that protect against quantum computers, evolutionQ provides services such as risk assessments for clients wishing to safeguard their digital infrastructures. As evolutionQ continues to grow product sales and service offerings internationally, a portion of the Series A funds will be used to recruit top global talent and expand the Companys teams in Germany and Canada.

We are thrilled to see evolutionQ growing from its start in 2015, and now taking another big step with the international expansion of our technical team of security architects, software developers, and our sales team, said Dr. Norbert Lutkenhaus, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of evolutionQ. Its an exciting time as our growing team shapes the future of quantum-safe cybersecurity for global enterprises."

Dr. Christophe Jurczak, Managing Partner at Quantonation, said, evolutionQ has been founded by the most remarkable team of academic founders in the field of quantum-safe cybersecurity, with seminal contributions in the sector and a unique viewpoint giving them the ability to understand the threat that emerging quantum computers represent for companies, governments and individuals. I have been very impressed with their focus on creating value for their customers by reducing expenses through optimal use of quantum-safe devices and minimizing technology-switching costs between hardware vendors. They are providing the missing component to build technologically and economically effective quantum networks, towards the Quantum Internet. We are very excited to join them in their entrepreneurial journey in North America and Europe.

About evolutionQ

evolutionQ is a leading quantum-safe cybersecurity company led by world-renowned quantum computing experts Dr. Michele Mosca and Dr. Norbert Lutkenhaus. With offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada, and Aachen, Germany, evolutionQ delivers robust cybersecurity products designed to protect against quantum computers and offers quantum risk-management strategy and advisory services. For more information about evolutionQ and to view career opportunities, please visit: https://evolutionq.com

About Quantonation

Quantonation is the leading VC dedicated to Quantum Technologies, managing 90m via its first vehicle Quantonation 1 with more than 30 operations realized already. We invest globally, targeting pre-seed/seed companies in Quantum Computing, Quantum Communications, Quantum Sensing and Deep physics and are always looking for disruptive companies.

Fields such as molecular design, high performance calculation, cybersecurity, or ultra-precise sensing are now driven by innovation based on Deep Physics and Quantum Technologies. Thanks to its scientific expertise Quantonation aims at supporting the transition of these technologies into commercially available products for industry. Learn more: https://www.quantonation.com
Im excited to join Knocking as an Advisor, alongside so many talented individuals on their team, said Daymond John

Knocking, a company that produces e-commerce for ALL media, today announced Daymond John, star of ABCs Shark Tank, as a brand advisor. Through Johns The Shark Group, an agency developed to innovate and elevate for brand partners, he will provide support for Knockings diverse roster of media and brand clients.

At Knocking, we are helping to build and bolster brands through long-standing, important partnerships, said Brian Meehan, COO of Knocking. Having Daymond on board is invaluable. He truly understands the important opportunities available in this space.

Johns announcement comes shortly after Emmy Award-winning producer and industry leader Candi Carter was named Chief Content Officer at Knocking.

Daymond is joining Knocking at a time when media companies are excited about the prospect of incorporating commerce into their content, said Carter. Having such a well-known and trusted brand partner like Daymond, coupled with our production team at Knocking Studio, is going to create a unique position for us in the industry.

Im excited to join Knocking as an Advisor, alongside so many talented individuals on their team, said John. By focusing on their customers and partners wants and delivering real time direct-to-consumer access, they have become a true disruptor in the e-commerce industry. I cant wait to help guide them on this incredible journey.

An entrepreneur in every sense of the word, Daymond John has come a long way from taking out a $100,000 mortgage on his mothers house and moving his operation into the basement. John is CEO and Founder of FUBU, a celebrated global lifestyle brand, and a pioneer in the fashion industry with over $6 billion in product sales. As a celebrated entrepreneur, John has authored two New York Times bestselling books and was named a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship under the Obama Administration. He has received over 35 awards throughout his career, most recently highlighted by his winning four Webby Awards for his event Black Entrepreneurs Day, and being named #2 on LinkedIns Top Voices list for US Influencers in 2020.

Knocking is a leader in producing content and commerce for media companies to create new connections with their audiences through compelling segments featuring new, popular and exclusive products. Knockings process is turn-key. The team collaborates with a media company to develop authentic short-form shopping segments, then secures talent and creates lasting relationships with the brands that will best serve a partners audience. Knocking offers full-service production or will support a partners in-house needs.

With a proprietary viewer impression model that ties shoppable content to revenue, Knocking can demonstrate what continuous or repeat airtime actually means to a transaction, assigning a sale per impression and predicting the potential for scale. Knockings proprietary analytics SaaS Mission control gives media partners transparent and real-time transactional data to understand their audiences on a whole new level.

Knocking has worked with leading U.S. and Canadian media companies, including Disney ABC, iHeartMedia, Cox Media Group, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, Meredith and NBC Owned Television Stations, to incubate commerce businesses and turn passive audiences into active consumers.

About Knocking

Knocking is an e-commerce company with an award-winning in-house production team at Knocking Studio. Knocking finds the products consumers love and puts them in all media people consume. Partnering with media companies, Knocking delivers real deals through short-form shopping segments viewers trust and value, while helping brands get more direct-to-consumer access.

About Daymond John

Daymond John is the founder and CEO of FUBU, a celebrated global lifestyle brand with over $6 billion in sales. Starring in Emmy Award-winning ABC series Shark Tank and author of multiple New York Timesbestsellers, Daymond is among the countrys most visible and respected entrepreneurs. Daymond is the CEO of The Shark Group, a premier consulting firm with a variety of reputable clients and partnerships with esteemed companies like Chase for Business, AARP, Shopify. The combination of his rags-to-riches motivational story and unwavering determination creates an inspirational lesson, and the skill in which he shares that story has secured his position as a top speaker and motivator across the globe. Daymond can be reached on all major social media platforms at @TheSharkDaymond.

About Shark Group

The Shark Groups team of expert communicators, strategic analysts, and creative heavyweights excels in propelling brands into the fabric of pop culture. Founded by award winning entrepreneur Daymond John, the agencys culture is deeply rooted in thinking like entrepreneurs to create value for its partners and clients. Some of its clients include Chase, Shopify, T-Mobile, AARP, Daymond John, Carlos Santana, Catherine Zeta-Jones and many others. Learn more at http://www.TheSharkGroup.com.
Bila77

Iconic heritage brand, Bila77, relaunches with their debut summer collection! The rebirth of this brand pays homage to their roots while embracing the modern woman of today. Originally established in 1977, the line is inspired by the counterculture of the 70s, expressed in breezy feminine silhouettes and one-of-a-kind prints. To encapsulate the spirit of the collection, the styles were shot on the Hawaiian Island of Ohau, beautifully showcasing the versatile tops, rompers, dresses, and matching sets, which range from $49 to $130.

Bila77 is furthering their vision of change by taking the steps to lower their environmental footprint using low impact fabric such as organic cotton, sustainably sourced rayon, and recycled polyester. The Los Angeles brand is also dedicated to giving back, partnering with non-profits to enrich their local community.

You can purchase Bila77 on Bila77.com, affiliated with ShareASale ID # 126492 and Skimlinks ID# 92818. Lifestyle and product imagery are linked.

For more information, please contact bila77@michelemariepr.com

Follow Bila77 on Instagram!
We look forward to our continued expansion as we support SMBs and brokers across the country. Our Company was founded by brokers, and we are honored to be among the top PEO that brokers trust.

PrestigePEO, a leading national professional employer organization (PEO), announced today the opening of its newest office in Woodbridge, N.J. The office, located at 10 Woodbridge Center Drive, Suite 520, Woodbridge, NJ 07095 will be home to dozens of professionals, with significant opportunity for growth.

PrestigePEO, with recent office openings throughout the nation including offices in The Carolinas, the metro-Washington, D.C. area, and in the Southeast region (Sunrise and Tampa, Florida), chose to add a location in New Jersey to support local businesses and be available for brokers and clients, as needed. This office will allow PrestigePEO to provide additional support to the New Jersey business community and since it is centrally located, it offers meeting space for clients, staff, and broker partners alike.

PrestigePEO works with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to provide a portfolio of services critical to their operations, including employee benefits management, payroll administration, workers compliance, and HR guidance. Furthermore, PrestigePEO fosters deep partnerships with PEO brokers who represent its service offering throughout the marketplace. These avenues allow PrestigePEO to aid SMBs in running their operations efficiently, cost-effectively, and more productively.

The demand for the types of services we provide continues to increase as businesses turn to PEOs to aid them in managing a range of administrative and human resources-related services. Small business owners are realizing that to reach their goals, engaging a PEO can prove highly advantageous, allowing them to focus on running their operations, explained Andrew Lubash, founder, and chief executive officer at PrestigePEO.

We look forward to our continued expansion as we support SMBs and brokers across the country. Our Company was founded by brokers, and we are honored to be among the top PEO that brokers trust, continued Lubash.

In addition to creating new broker partners, PrestigePEO is also looking forward to investing in the New Jersey community by creating job opportunities. The Woodbridge office presents multiple career options for those who are local and seeking a career in the PEO industry. To learn more about career opportunities in the Woodbridge office and others at PrestigePEO, click here.

About PrestigePEO

Melville, N.Y.-based PrestigePEO, also known as Prestige Employee Administrators LLC, provides integrated, end-to-end human resources (HR) solutions to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) for managing all integral human resources operations. The Company provides support for employee benefits management, payroll administration, workers compliance, and HR guidance, among others. PrestigePEOs full spectrum of HR services and solutions helps SMBs lower employee benefit costs, reduce administrative workloads, and manage critical HR functions.

Prestige is also the PEO of choice for brokers and offers unlimited income opportunities and some of the most competitive commission rates in the industry. PrestigePEO works directly with brokers across the country to ensure their clients have the dedicated, personalized HR support they deserve and need, while providing brokers and general agents with endless income opportunities and support to help grow their book of business.

PrestigePEO is among only one percent of PEOs accredited by the Employer Services Assurance Corporation (ESAC), certified (CI) through Workers Comp Risk Management, and classified as a Certified Professional Employer Organization (CPEO) by the IRS  demonstrating financial stability and strict adherence with a diverse range of regulatory and security standards.

To learn more, visit http://www.prestigepeo.com and follow PrestigePEO on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
As we continue to rapidly expand our Self-Pay and Insurance Follow-Up services to the nations leading healthcare providers, Angela brings a depth of experience to our team, said Tim Haag, president of State.

State is pleased to announce the hiring of Angela Armstrong as its Chief Operating Officer. She brings nearly 15 years of leadership expertise in the Revenue Cycle industry and most recently was the Vice President of RCM Operations & Client Success with a substantial, growth stage organization in healthcare revenue cycle.

As we continue to rapidly expand our Self-Pay and Insurance Follow-Up services to the nations leading healthcare providers, Angela brings a depth of experience to our team, said Tim Haag, president of State. Both her strong leadership skills, combined with her people-skills and sense of humor, are a tremendous addition to our executive team and the State Family. She is already making a positive impact on our team and operations.

Armstrong holds multiple certifications including Certified Revenue Cycle Executive, Six Sigma Black Belt and is involved in several professional associations in the RCM industry. She brings significant expertise in improving service delivery performance and leveraging new technologies to improve performance and increase client satisfaction. She also brings significant expertise in the Insurance Denial/Discovery arena.

State is a national leader in the healthcare receivables space, offering an innovative solution to improve providers' bottom line and patient satisfaction, said Armstrong. Equally as important, they remain family-owned with a strong culture, ensuring we are focused on clients long-term success. I am thrilled to be part of a growing team and look forward to fueling its expansion even further.

Armstrong holds a bachelors degree in Business and Organization Leadership from Arizona State University and a Master of Business Administration from Louisiana State University. She resides in the Louisville, KY area with her husband Ryan and sons Nolan and Wyatt.

About State

State improves the financial picture for healthcare providers by delivering increased financial results while ensuring a positive patient experience. Rooted in a tradition of ethics, integrity and innovation since 1949, State uses data analytics to drive performance and speech analytics with ongoing training to ensure patient satisfaction. A family-owned company now in its third generation of leadership, State assists healthcare organizations with services spanning the complete revenue cycle including Pre-Service Financial Clearance, Early Out Self-Pay Resolution, Insurance Follow-Up and Bad Debt Collection. To learn more visit: http://www.statecollectionservice.com.
"You have been my plastic surgeon for over ten years!" Kelly says. "This face, this body, it's all thanks to you and your staff. I've always felt that if something bothers you so much that you can't stand it, fix it. It's a true investment in yourself." - Kelly Dodd, host of The Rick and Kelly Show.

Voted by his patients as one of the "Best Plastic Surgeons in Orange County," Dr. Michael Niccole is the go-to trusted source for thousands of satisfied patients, including a variety of celebrities and reality television stars. Since opening the doors of CosmetiCare in 1982, Dr. Niccole has successfully turned it into one of the largest and most successful multi-specialty cosmetic rejuvenation centers in Southern California.

Kelly Dodd, a hit member of the popular reality television series "The Real Housewives of Orange County," has been a long-time patient of Dr. Niccole. From non-surgical procedures such as injectable treatments and laser skin resurfacing to surgical procedures like breast augmentation and breast lift, Kelly has entrusted the staff of CosmetiCare with keeping her feeling like the best version of herself as she shares her life with millions of viewers.

Using her platform to share her best kept secrets, Kelly sat down with her husband and co-host Rick Leventhal to interview Dr. Niccole on their new YouTube series, "The Rick & Kelly Show." Given they both have experienced the magic and power of possibility that aesthetic procedures provide, they are excited for their viewers to hear all about plastic surgery and skin rejuvenation from a true expert and innovator.

"You have been my plastic surgeon for over ten years!" Kelly says. "This face, this body, it's all thanks to you and your staff. I've always felt that if something bothers you so much that you can't stand it, fix it. It's a true investment in yourself." - Kelly Dodd, host of The Rick and Kelly Show.

Watch the entire interview to learn more about aesthetic surgical and non-surgical procedures and how they could work for you. If you've been wondering what the most essential anti-aging line up entails, or if youre just curious to see what the potential results of our various procedural offerings could look like, try it on from the comfort of your home with our photo simulator tool.

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ABOUT COSMETICARE

With a passion for providing the best patient care available, Dr. Michael Niccole founded CosmetiCare in 1982 and has built it into one of the leading plastic surgery and MedSpa centers recognized throughout the nation. CosmetiCares meticulously cultivated, award-winning team of doctors and medical professionals has provided more than 100,000 transformations for over 35 years. The CosmetiCare team is devoted to guiding patients through the decision-making process with knowledgeable insight and proven results to ensure that clients look and feel their best. To learn more about CosmetiCare, visit http://www.cosmeticare.com and follow us on Instagram or Facebook

Press Contact:

Courtney Clements

Cclements (at) cosmeticare (dot) com
"...We set up evNation to team up with auto dealerships like Fletcher Jones Motorcars (the Nations #1 Mercedes-Benz dealer) in Newport Beach to offer home installations of the unique SolarEdge Smart Level 2+ EV Charger at the point of sale." - Alex Livadas

The founders of evNation, Alex Livadas, with 31 years of Mercedes-Benz sales and marketing experience, and Neil Okun, with 30 years experience as a dealer principal with BMW, Porsche and Ford, are taking their years of service in the luxury car market to Electric Vehicle (EV) charging and solar installations. Their consumer focused concierge approach helps EV buyers seamlessly add innovative solar car chargers to their garages and solar panels with battery storage to their homes, virtually eliminating reliability and expense of the electrical grid. evNation has opened an exhibit inside South Coast Plaza, displaying their unique Solar Charger and the new Mercedes EQS450 luxury sedan. It is located at Carousel Court, Level 1, Bloomingdale's Wing, until June 21st.

"The first question consumers are asking when considering purchasing an electric car is: how do I charge the car?" said Livadas. "Studies have found that 80% of customers prefer to charge their cars at home, so we set up evNation to team up with auto dealerships like Fletcher Jones Motorcars (the Nations #1 Mercedes-Benz dealer) in Newport Beach to offer home installations of the unique SolarEdge Smart Level 2+ EV Charger at the point of sale. So far all residential EV chargers are no more than adapters that plug into the home electrical network to charge the vehicle. However, evNations adapters have the ability to both connect to electricity or directly connect to solar inverters making it the only one under the sun that's truly powered by the sun! It also charges 25% faster (30 to 40 miles of range per hour) and uses 40% less energy than standard EV chargers.

Okun added, "We have built our business on the fundamental premise that solar and electric vehicles are complementary technologies. It is obvious that the current electric grid cannot support all the electric cars that will soon be connecting to it. The choice that customers make to help the environment by replacing their fossil fuel cars with clean energy EVs should be extended to include a home solar system.

Solar installation prices have come down dramatically during the last few years and evNation can demonstrate that the cost of adding solar will be more than offset by the energy savings and without any out of pocket expense.



To promote solar energy implementation in your home, office or commercial property the government is currently offering a 26% federal tax credit of the total cost of solar system installation including any roof repairs needed.

Zillow research shows that adding solar increases the value of a home 4.1%.

This is typically enough to cover the entire cost of the solar installation not taking into account the energy savings, the tax bonus and invaluable help in saving our planet from carbon emissions.

evNation is a leading installer of EV Chargers, Solar Panels and Solar Batteries. With their turn-key EV charging and solar energy systems its easier than ever for consumers to lower their monthly energy costs and reduce their carbon footprint. evNations goal is a new world of electric vehicles powered by the sun. For a complimentary consultation please visit evnation.us.
The Archaeological Conservancy and the New England Hebrew Farmers of the Emanuel Society (NEHFES) have completed the transfer of the synagogue parcel of the NEHFES Synagogue and Creamery Site in Chesterfield, Connecticut. This has gifted the parcel to he Conservancy, insuring the protection of the site in perpetuity. The second portion of the NEHFES site, which contains the stone foundation of the creamery, is currently owned by the Connecticut State Department of Transportation.

The history of the site began in 1891, when a small enclave of Russian-Jewish immigrant families purchased farmland in Chesterfield, Connecticut in the Town of Montville, nine miles north of New London. Just one year later, they established themselves as the New England Hebrew Farmers of the Emanuel Society and with assistance from the Baron Maurice de Hirsch Fund in New York, they built Connecticuts first rural synagogue and a stream-driven creamery to process milk into butter and cream for the surrounding region. In 1894, the group wrote a stringent governing constitution and proceeded to thrive as a close-knit religious, social, and economic community of more than 50 Jewish families well into the 1930s.https://www.archaeologicalconservancy.org/

This important step for one of the most extensive, well-studied American Jewish archaeological sites in the country is the culmination of several designations the NEHFES site has earned since 2006, when it was reactivated by President Nancy R. Savin and a small coterie of descendants. The NEHFES Synagogue and Creamery Site was named the State of Connecticuts 24th Archaeological Preserve in 2007 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. That same year, the mikveh (a ritual bath) within the shoykhets (ritual butcher) house was the subject of a three-week University of Connecticut Archaeological Field School Excavation directed by Dr. Nicholas F. Bellantoni and Dr. Stuart S. Miller.

Kelley Berliner, the Conservancys Eastern Regional Director, stated, Working with Nancy and the NEHFES community to further protect this site has been a delight, and I hope we have more projects like this in the future to protect all the unique parts of this countrys history. It is wonderful to see a descendent community so committed to learning and protecting their heritage.

Catherine Labadia, Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer for Connecticut, said The Connecticut State Preservation Office is thrilled that the Synagogue parcel of the NEHFES Site is being acquired by The Conservancy. It will perpetuate years of excellent stewardship of the property, our chief concern, on a national level. Ms. Savin added that the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office has been an absolutely invaluable preservation partner to NEHFES, the organization of descendants who today live in 13 States and Canada.

Continued preservation of the NEHFES Synagogue and Creamery Site will contribute to public knowledge about the sites significance and the importance of cultural resource preservation. The property, known as "The New England Hebrew Farmers of the Emanuel Society Synagogue, Shoyket's House, and Mikveh Archaeological Preserve." will be maintained as a permanent open-space research preserve and protected against any future development. The Conservancy will convene a management committee to oversee the future of the property.

ABOUT THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONSERVANCY

The Archaeological Conservancy, established in 1980, is the only national non-profit organization dedicated to acquiring and preserving the best of our nation's remaining archaeological sites. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Conservancy also operates regional offices in Mississippi, Maryland, Wisconsin, and Nevada.
The San Joaquin Valley is one area of the country that could benefit the most from the adoption of Electric Vehicles. The air is often the worst in the nation and the pollution from private and commercial transportation contribute to the bad air quality. While new EVs may not be in the reach for all Central Valley residents, Century Motors has a mission to sell affordable EVsEVs for the rest of us is their slogan. Century Motors is part of a program managed by Valley Clean Air Now to assist low income residents with a rebate of $9500 to retire a 2006 or older vehicle. Besides fully Electric Vehicles, Century also offers Plug-In Hybrids and Hybrids, all are sure to save consumers money on their monthly fuel costs.

They offer a wide variety of Used Electric Vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt and Volt, Hyuandai Ioniq, Ford C-Max Energi, Chrysler Pacifica PHEV and many other models.

There are many EV models perfect for commuting within Fresno and have a range of 45-90 miles. Of course the Chevy Bolts, Teslas and newer model EV's have longer range (230 or more).

One of the most often asked questions by shoppers isHow do I charge my and where can I find public charging stations? says Gordon Jessop, General Manager of Century Motors. Our team explains that there are options if you live in a house or an apartment and using an app like PlugShare will show you all the EV Charging stations in your area. With a Level 1 charger you can plug it into the wall of your house or apartment and charge your car overnight. Even if you fully charge your car every night over the course of a month you would barely add $10-$100 bucks to your PGE bill (and that's really pushing it)...compare that to filling up $100 worth of gas every couple of days or every week.

The one thing that makes Century Motors stand out is that they only focus on Electric Vehicles and Hybrids. Franchise dealers are not as knowledgeable and Used Dealers have almost no experience with EVs.

The Central Valley of California is unlike major metropolitan areas, where people must drive cars due to the long distances between some cities. Public transportation is not often an option in the Valley since it comprises several small cities from Bakersfield to Sacramento such as Delano, Visalia, Hanford, Lemoore, Selma, Fresno, Madera, Merced, Modesto, and dozens more.

Electric Car Community Events in Fresno

Century Motors hosted the Best Drive EVer event on Saturday, May 14th, 2022 as a way to educate Fresno residents about the benefits of driving electric, the available rebates, how to charge EVs at home or at public stations. The event was held in coordination of the Valley Clean Air Now, San Joaquin Air Pollution District, Clean Vehicle Rebate Program, EV Equity, San Joaquin Valley Clean Cities Coalition, San Joaquin Valley Electric Vehicle Partnership, EV Perks and Fresno Council of Governments. EV Test Drivers were given free lunches and entered to win nearly $1k in raffle prizes. The San Joaquin Valley Tesla Owners Club event made an appearance to show off some of their custom Teslas.

Century has the vision to become the leader in Used EV sales and support in the Central Valley and they now will accept crypto currency as a form of payment, thus opening their customer base to a much larger audience.

In another Valley first, Century is building an EV Charging Hub inside its showroom where consumers can purchase home Level 2 chargers and businesses can come by to learn about rebates and grants related to Commercial Level 2 and DC Fast Charging via the ChargeUp! program managed by the San Joaquin Valley Air District.

Century Motors is putting its money where it counts and for a limited time, you can receive a $25 Gift Card for just coming in and test driving an EV. They believe once you drive an EV and learn about the available rebates, its an easy decision to drive Electric! Of course, the Valley benefits as each EV will reduce carbon emissions from each mile driven.

Visit http://www.centurymotorsfresno.com to see their selection of Used EVs and Hybrids.
Over The Edge

SOME (So Others Might Eat) is excited to take fundraising to new heights, partnering with Washington Hilton to launch Over The Edge, D.Cs only urban rappelling event for a cause. The event will see more than 50 thrill-seeking participants rappel 150 feet down the facade of the historic building. Each participant who rappels will raise mission-critical funds for SOMEs lifesaving mission of fighting poverty and homelessness in our nations capital.

Over The Edge for SOME is a day-long event, which runs from 9am-5pm at the Washington Hilton. Family, friends, spectators, and the media are invited to view and support participants.

Event registration is open. Learn more and register at http://www.some.org/overtheedge.

The event is open to all ages, with two ropes going Over The Edge side-by-side. Media opportunities, including footage and/or live shots while actively rappelling, are available during the event.Please email overtheedge@some.org to confirm attendance and opportunities ASAP.

What: Over The Edge for SOME

When: Saturday, June 18th, 2022; 9am-5pm

Where: Washington Hilton | 1919 Connecticut Ave NW

Why: To raise awareness, support, and share more about SOMEs impact throughout the national capital region

About SOME (So Others Might Eat): For more than 50 years, SOME has been a trusted agent for change in the D.C. region. As a leader in the effort to break the cycle of poverty & homelessness in our nation's capital, SOME provides material aid and comfort to meet immediate daily needs, and programs and services that help transform the lives of individuals and families, their communities, and the systems and structures that affect them. Learn more at some.org.

About Over The Edge: Over the Edge is a special events company that provides signature events for nonprofit organizations across Canada and the United States. Over

The Edge and their team of Certified Rope Access Technicians have helped raise over $100 Million with non-profit partners, hosted over 1000 rappelling events, and maintained a spotless safety record through their 10 years of operation.
"Being a part of this industry has been rewarding in so many ways but getting to know others with a similar passion and dedication for building their business has been one of the best parts." - Ryan McGrath

Asset Living CEO and President Ryan McGrath was recently named one of the 50 achievers in the commercial real estate space under the age of 40 in GlobeSt.s annual 50 Under 40 awards. Individuals were selected by GlobeSt. Real Estate Forum, an online magazine that shares updates, trends, and tips around the national real estate industry. GlobeSt. officially released the annual list in their June issue, which highlights the industrys best and brightest individuals."

The 2022 GlobeSt. 50 Under 40 recognition comes after a year of milestones for Ryan McGrath, including making the cover of the March 2022 issue of Multifamily Executive Magazine and being acknowledged by Ernst & Young as a finalist for the Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 award. Multifamily Executive Magazine is a digital publication that covers a range of topics within the real estate industry, including but not limited to business, property management, development, technology, and more. The Entrepreneur of the Year award is one that celebrates entrepreneurs deemed to be building a more sustainable and equitable future for everyone through their work.

I feel humbled and honored to be included amongst such an impressive group of individuals, said McGrath. Being a part of this industry has been rewarding in so many ways but getting to know others with a similar passion and dedication for building their business has been one of the best parts. Getting news like this is, of course, gratifying, but more than anything it serves as momentum to continue giving it my all as it relates to my company, my employees, and my own personal growth.

This recognition is a testament to McGraths reputation for strong leadership and dedication to growing Asset Living to become one of the most trusted partners in real estate. In the last six months, Asset Living has been ranked No. 4 on NMHCs Top Manager List for multi-family living, No. 8 on NAHMA's Affordable 100 List, and for 11 years in a row, No. 1 in student housing third-party property management by Student Housing Business. When goals are met, new ones are set, and that entrepreneurial mindset of McGrath's has been key in growing Asset Living to where it is today.

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About Asset Living

Founded in 1986, Asset Living (Asset) is a Houston-based real estate management firm. With a growing portfolio that includes a multitude of properties across the nation, Asset provides services to a variety of clients that include property management, asset management, receivership, and investment services. Asset is a member of The Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM) and is recognized as an Accredited Management Organization (AMO). To learn more, please visit http://www.assetliving.com.


More than 7,700 water professionals gathered today at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center to kick off the American Water Works Associations Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE22) and seek solutions to both present and future water challenges.

The Opening General Session featured a presentation by Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, the NASA scientist whose team discovered water on Mars, and the launch of a multi-year AWWA initiative called Water 2050, which will envision the future of water and chart a course for sustainability and success.

ACE22, June 13-15, features 16 professional learning tracks and 80 sessions, including 26 sessions that will be streamed virtually. An exposition showcases more than 360 water technology providers and innovators in more than 900 booths. The event also features several competitions, including the Best of the Best Water Taste Test, in which regional tap water taste champions compete for the best tasting water in North America; and the Pipe Tapping competition, in which water utility teams race against one another to swiftly drill into a water pipe and deliver water to a tap.

In a morning address, AWWA President Chi Ho Sham reflected on his upbringing in Hong Kong, where safe water service was unreliable, and urged attendees to provide opportunities for people from all backgrounds to succeed in water. He added, We need to stay creative in our work. Our changing world demands it. Innovation is needed to manage our water resources with a multiple dimensional approach  including quantity and quality.

The opening session began with a Water 2050 video titled The Future We Create, featuring young water professionals reflecting on the future of water and the challenges ahead. As members of the water sector, we must continue to evolve and think of innovative ideas and solutions and continue to be advocates for our water resources around the world, observes Holly Mettlen, a project engineer with Black & Veatch in South Carolina and one of many young professionals in the video.

Water 2050 is a theme throughout ACE22. Attendees participate directly in the initiative at the AWWA Pavilion in the exposition hall, where an artist is developing sketches in real time reflecting Water 2050 insights gathered from the crowd. At 11:15 a.m. CDT Wednesday, June 15, The Last Drop closing keynote features a Water 2050 panel discussion with two members of the project advisory team  Andy Richardson from Greeley and Hansen and Jennifer Sara from The World Bank  and Colby Pellegrino from Las Vegas Valley Water.

A signature element of Water 2050 is a series of five intimate think tanks where participants will examine water through the prism of five drivers: sustainability, technology, economics, governance and social/demographics. The first of the five think tanks is set for September in Las Vegas and focuses on sustainability. Each think tank will generate a report with recommendations for a strong and sustainable water future.

To learn more about the conference agenda and to register, visit the ACE22 webpage.

Media note: Accredited members of the media may attend ACE22 at no charge. However, they are required to register with AWWA Communications. For media registration, please visit the AWWA Press Room or contact awilson (at) awwa (dot) org at 303-734-3455.

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Established in 1881, the American Water Works Association is the largest nonprofit, scientific and educational association dedicated to managing and treating water, the worlds most important resource. With approximately 50,000 members, AWWA provides solutions to improve public health, protect the environment, strengthen the economy and enhance our quality of life.
A Promise Kept: a potent story of a God-given love that wont permit addiction or a near death experience to get in the way. A Promise Kept is the creation of published author Byron Kennedy.

Kennedy shares, A Promise Kept is the story of Cole Jenkins and Hannah Harper, two very different people whose paths seemed destined to intertwine. Cole is a newly born again Christian trying to find his calling. Hannah is a drug addict looking for hope in an unforgiving world. A friendship is formed in spite of their differences. They struggle to realize what bonds them together and what to do about it. Hannah recounts their story to Pastor Taylor, a man with a secret of his own. Cole makes a promise to Hannah that he is determined to keep. A mission trip to Haiti changes everything, however. Can Cole prove that two imperfect people can have a love that conquers all, even death?

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Byron Kennedys new book will pull at the heartstrings and inspire the soul as readers find themselves swept away in the tale of Cole and Hannah.

Kennedy weaves a compelling and inspiring fiction that finds star-crossed lovers on a journey of faith.

Consumers can purchase A Promise Kept at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about A Promise Kept, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Harley-Davidson's new LiveWire S2 Del Mar electric motorcycle, painted by CPV. Each bike is hand-painted by the team at Wisconsin-based CPV, a process that takes nearly 5 days per motorcycle.

Historically, Harley-Davidson motorcycles have been recognized for their unique paint colors and beautiful finishes. There was no doubt that when the new LiveWire Del Mar was launched, the bike and its paint would be something special. In fact, the first 100 Del Mar models come with a limited-edition paint and wheel design, marked as Launch-Edition bikes. Each bike is hand-painted by the team at Wisconsin-based CPV, a process that takes nearly 5 days per motorcycle. Interestingly, when unveiled last month, all 100 special-edition bikes quickly sold-out in just 18 minutes.

When the Wright family started CPV in the 1970s, it was the era of the custom van and wild van conversions, in which CPV Founder, Jay Wright would design and paint intricate murals and graphics onto the vehicles. The incredible airbrush work that my father performed really put CPV on the map. explained current CPV President, Steve Wright. Today, we are one of the few paint operations in the country that work directly with vehicle manufacturers, as well as individual customers looking for something really special in custom paint finishes.

Just like the current evolution in the automotive industry to EV (electric vehicles), the cycle world is also adapting to this new technology, with Harleys LiveWire brand planning to lead the charge. These new bikes are incredible machines, continued Wright. Our entire team at CPV is so proud to be associated with such an innovative and attention-getting product.

In recent years, CPV has expanded their operation dramatically, as the demand for luxury paint finishes continues to increase, even working with other world-class paint operations across North America, that use CPVs proprietary masking products for two-tone automobiles and specialty stripe applications.

CPV doesnt only focus on brand new automobiles or bikes. said Wright. Inevitably, paint can get damaged. If that happens you need a company that knows how to perform a sophisticated repair, and/or paint a new part to match. Motorcycle paint is more challenging than automotive, but weve perfected the techniques needed to repair thousands of motorcycle parts every year. CPV is the only paint shop in the U.S. that is a Licensed Preferred Provider of Harley-Davidson motorcycle parts that are no longer available through the motor company.

For additional information about the luxury paint process, or to join the team at CPV, visit: http://www.CPVehicles.com
"We are delighted to select these four outstanding young Americans for this important program that will allow them to expand their horizons beyond our shores and immerse themselves in our global network of leaders." Chairman, Eisenhower Fellowships, Dr. Robert M. Gates.

The 2023 class of Eisenhower Global Scholars brings together a U.S. Navy veteran of a nuclear-powered warship, a medical researcher promoting health equity in sub-Saharan Africa, a San Francisco-based specialist in immigrant integration and a human rights activist working to expand the reach of civil society in Venezuela.

This fall these four, highly accomplished graduates of prestigious American universities will begin an all-expenses-paid year of intense academic study and cultural immersion at Oxford and IE University pursuing masters degrees in public service and good governance.

Now in its third year, the unique Eisenhower Global Scholars Program harnesses the power and prestige of EFs diverse, worldwide Fellows network of more than 1,500 dynamic doers to inspire, empower and encompass the Scholars as it extends the legacy of President Dwight D. Eisenhower to a new generation of young Americans.

Named to the 2023 class of Global Scholars attending the Blavatnick School of Government at Oxford are:

Adetomiwa Owoseni, 25, a graduate of Howard University, currently enrolled at Harvard Medical School. While traveling in Africa, Owoseni saw how unequal access to health care led to negative outcomes for patients, including higher rates of maternal mortality and lack of access to life-saving vaccines. As a researcher with the Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries Poverty Network, he helped build sustainable systems for the treatment of Type 1 diabetes mellitus, rheumatic heart disease, and sickle-cell anemia. At Oxford he wants to expand on that work and create training videos for a free, online platform to educate clinical providers in the most effective treatments of common diseases.

Daniel Cooper Bermudez, 28, a 2015 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, is a human rights defender from Maracaibo, Venezuela. With Venezuelas authoritarian government having closed the nations democratic means of political participation, Cooper Bermudez works to support other civil society organizations and document human rights violations, bring attention to the nations humanitarian crisis and seek justice for victims. He is founder and director of Hearts on Venezuela, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to expand the reach of Venezuelas civil society internationally by translating and distributing texts produced by other organizations seeking a peaceful and democratic resolution to the countrys political turmoil. Under continuous harassment by the government, Cooper Bermudez and his fellow Venezuelan human rights activists remain undaunted. We strive to persevere in a context of violence, he said. At Oxford, Cooper Bermudez intends to build and strengthen networks of activists and policymakers from across the global South to tackle common issues ranging from human rights abuses to climate change to what he describes as renovating democratic practices for the 21st century.

Kellie Everett, 30, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Everett served six years in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear reactor operator, generating power for the 1,100-foot supercarrier U.S.S. George H. W. Bush at its home port in Virginia and on deployment in the Persian Gulf. Having struggled in her transition from military service to academia, she started a group chat for student veterans, which spurred MIT to create its first Office of Student Veterans Success, a clearinghouse for information about childcare, veteran-specific mental health support, and other services. At Oxford she wants to study government systems and learn how the United Kingdom reduced its reliance on fossil fuels. Her ambition is to become a U.S. Senator, serving constituents as a servant-leader.

At IE University, Camila Feltrin, 24, a graduate of Dartmouth College, will attend the School of Global and Public Affairs. Feltrin oversees paralegals and interpreters at her law firm in San Francisco, where she organizes filings for asylum cases. Born in Argentina, raised in California, she is fluent in Spanish, English, Italian, and Portuguese. At IE University she wants to develop a multilingual online platform with links to U.S. and Italian immigration resources as a toolkit for newly arrived immigrants. Her long-term goal is a position doing valuable, humanitarian work at a multilateral body such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights or the International Court of Justice.

In addition to their year of postgraduate study, the Global Scholars will interact with EFs worldwide network of leaders from government, business, civil society, education, science, health care, the arts and journalism. At the end of their studies, they will be offered an optional three-month professional internship in their field.

The Chairman of Eisenhower Fellowships, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, welcomed the newest Global Scholars. We are delighted to select these four outstanding young Americans for this important program that will allow them to expand their horizons beyond our shores and immerse themselves in our global network of leaders, he said.

Eisenhower Fellowships President George de Lama said the four Global Scholars exemplify the organizations mission of connecting ascendant leaders intent on creating a better world. We are proud to provide these exceptional young Americans with the opportunity to deepen their education, elevate their vision and engage with other like-minded leaders to generate a positive impact in their societies, de Lama said.

Now in its 69th year and named for Americas 34th president, Eisenhower Fellowships brings together innovative leaders from all fields from around the globe to tackle big challenges to better the world around them. Since its founding in 1953, more than 2,500 mid-career leaders from 115 countries have benefited from the unique, customized experience of an Eisenhower Fellowship.
New York City Injury Law Firm Donates to Lambda Legal We are supporting Lambda Legal to aid their mission of ensuring everyone who needs legal representation has access to it, and to continue to strengthen the advocacy of Goidel & Siegel for the civil rights of the LGBTQIA+ community, said Jonathan M. Goidel, co-founder of Goidel & Siegel, LLP.

Goidel & Siegel, LLP, an injury law firm in New York City, is donating to Lambda Legal to recognize Pride Month. As the nations largest legal organization dedicated to advancing the civil rights of LGBTQIA+ persons, Lambda Legal makes an impact throughout the United States.

We are supporting Lambda Legal to aid their mission of ensuring everyone who needs legal representation has access to it, and to continue to strengthen the advocacy of Goidel & Siegel for the civil rights of the LGBTQIA+ community, said Jonathan M. Goidel, co-founder of Goidel & Siegel, LLP.

Lambda Legal provides assistance with impact litigation, education and public policy. As a 501(c)(3), Lambda Legal does not charge for legal representation or advocacy and receives no public funding; it relies solely on contributions from supporters around the country.

We recognize that some fights are bigger than the ones we handle at our personal injury law firm, said Goidel. Were honored to be able to fight injustice by donating to organizations such as Lambda Legal.

Lambda Legal works on legal cases that protect and advance the rights of LGBTQIA+ people, and those with HIV. The organization also helps to build support for equality and helps people exercise the rights they have through public education campaigns. Lambda Legal advocates for local, state and federal public policy that can improve the lives of LGBTQIA+ people, people affected by HIV, and their families and allies.

Goidel & Siegel has a similar vision. We knew we could make a positive difference in the lives of people who needed help, thats why we started Goidel & Siegel, stated Goidel, so contributing to the efforts of a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people, and everyone living with HIV is a meaningful way to extend a hand to others who need help.

To donate or learn more about Lambda Legal and its pursuit of full equality for the LGBTQIA+ and HIV positive communities, visit their website.

The Origins of Pride Month

On June 28, 1970, the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in Greenwich Village, the first Gay Liberation March was held. At least 3,000 people walked the streets of New York City that day. Lambda Legal was founded in 1973 as the nations first legal organization dedicated to achieving full equality for lesbian and gay people.

Pride Month has been celebrated in New York City and elsewhere for more than 50 years. This June, millions of people around the world will participate in Pride Month activities to honor and support LGBTQIA+ rights and activism.

Parades, picnics, parties, workshops, concerts and memorials are some of the most common ways individuals recognize the communitys struggle for equal rights. New York Citys Pride March is scheduled for Sunday, June 26, 2022.

More about Goidel & Siegel, LLP

Co-founders Jonathan M. Goidel and Andrew B. Siegel opened the firm in 1990 with the mission of taking on New York City personal injury claims to restore health, hope and stability for individuals injured through no fault of their own.

More than 30 years later, Goidel & Siegel have garnered a solid reputation as one of the top personal injury law firms in New York City. The partners have assembled a cohesive team that thrives on exposing negligence that endangers others.

With multilingual attorneys, Goidel & Siegel is able to communicate with clients who speak English, Spanish, Russian, Farsi, and Arabic. They will meet with clients however they are most comfortable, including video conferencing on Zoom and similar platforms.

For more information, please visit https://www.goidelandsiegel.com/ or call 929-593-2024.
Nine lawyers from global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLPs London office were included in the Best Lawyers in the United Kingdom 2023 edition.

The firms honourees are:

Fiona Adams, for Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) Law

Naomi Feinstein, for Employment Law

Dorothee Fischer-Appelt, for Capital Markets Law

John Houghton, for Insolvency and Restructuring Law

Graham Iversen, for Tax Law

Paul Maher, for M&A Law

Graeme McLellan, for Asset Finance Law

Emma L. Menzies, for Banking and Finance Law

Matthew James Priday, for Real Estate Law

This is the first year Iverson, McLellan, and Priday are included in the publication.

Best Lawyers is a resource for the best worldwide legal talent, according to its website. The nominated lawyers go through a peer review process in which voters are asked, if you were unable to take a case yourself, how likely would you be to refer it to this nominee? Answers are ranked on a scale of 1-5 and only those with the highest scores are recognised.

Adams is the managing shareholder of the London office and the co-chair of the Global Corporate Practice. She primarily represents corporate clients, focusing her practice on M&A and other transactional matters. Her work spans a range of industries, including pharmaceuticals, financial institutions, media, and retail. Adams has broad experience working on large, complex cross-border transactions.

Feinstein has more than 30 years of experience dealing with all aspects of employment law, both contentious and noncontentious, including transactional work. She has particular experience advising on employment issues arising from M&A - including coordinating employment advice on cross-border sales and acquisitions - and on the employment aspects of business restructurings and reorganisations. Feinstein provides day-to-day employment advice to clients across a wide range of sectors, including banking and financial services, insurance, technology, commerce, manufacturing, and retail.

Fischer-Appelt is a New York and English-qualified shareholder with 24 years' experience in international capital markets and M&A transactions. She represents companies, financial institutions, and selling shareholders in connection with international equity and debt capital markets transactions, including initial public offerings, secondary equity offerings, structured equity offerings, convertibles, warrants, block trades, high yield offerings, Rule 144A debt offerings, covered bonds, exchange offers, and consent solicitations.

Houghton, chair of the London Restructuring & Bankruptcy Practice, advises creditors, sponsors, insolvent companies, directors, and insolvency practitioners on virtually all areas of international restructurings, insolvency, and corporate rescues. He has substantial experience in restructuring via schemes of arrangement and the new restructuring process.

Iversen focuses his practice on corporate tax matters, including M&A, private equity transactions, joint ventures, partnerships, corporate restructurings, debt and equity finance, derivatives, structured investments, real estate, and tax disputes.

Maher, who serves as a vice chair of Greenberg Traurig, concentrates on corporate law, particularly cross-border public and private mergers and acquisitions. He advises a wide range of domestic and international clients in numerous sectors, including chemicals, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, financial services, information services, retail, and communications.

McLellan is an asset finance professional with particular focus on the aircraft and rail rolling stock sectors, regularly advising major sophisticated international clients on business-critical matters.

Menzies focuses her practice on all types of finance, including general syndicated lending, leveraged finance, project finance, and restructurings and workouts. She has acted for a wide range of financial institutions, creditor groups, borrowers, and other stakeholders. Menzies undertakes a broad range of work, including leveraged finance, restructurings, and syndicated loans.

Priday is a co-chair of the Greenberg Traurig London Real Estate Practice. He focuses his practice on commercial real estate and has wide-ranging experience in investments sales and purchases, lettings, and development projects. Priday advises property industry clients across the real estate, retail, and financial institutions sectors.

About Greenberg Traurigs London Office: Greenberg Traurig, LLP in London has established itself as a multidisciplinary law firm, with more than 120 lawyers and growing. The London office provides partner-led advice to domestic and international clients on a range of matters across the legal spectrum. Lawyers at Greenberg Traurig in London advise U.K. and multinational clients operating in many different sectors, including chemicals, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, energy, real estate, financial services, automotive, retail, and communications. For additional information, please visit http://www.gtlaw.com.

About Greenberg Traurig: Greenberg Traurig, LLP has more than 2400 attorneys in 43 locations in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. The firm, often recognized for its focus on philanthropic giving, innovation, diversity, and pro bono, reported gross revenue of over $2 Billion for FY 2021. The firm is consistently among the top firms on the Am Law 100, Am Law Global 100, NLJ 250, and Law360 (US) 400. On the debut 2022 Law360 Pulse Leaderboard, it is a Top 15 firm. Greenberg Traurig is Mansfield Rule 4.0 Certified Plus by The Diversity Lab and net carbon neutral with respect to its office energy usage. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com.
Kemal Hawa, shareholder of global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLPs Corporate Practice, will moderate a panel discussion titled Creating The Regulatory Environment to Facilitate Investment in Digital Infrastructure at the Digital Infra Leaders Europe 2022 Conference July 13 at the Hilton London Bankside Hotel in London, UK.

The panel, which also features TechUK Head of Telecoms Sophie James and ECTA Director General Luc Hindryckx, will discuss the success rates of stimulating industry growth, government and industry collaboration, and considerations for public-private partnerships, as well as public sector investment into infrastructure and benefits and constraints of private investments.

Hawa focuses his practice on corporate and securities law with an emphasis on the telecommunications, media, tower, and technology industries domestically and internationally. He regularly advises public and private companies, private equity firms, investment banks, and creditors committees on a variety of matters, including mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies and restructurings, investments, financing arrangements, licensing agreements, and commercial transactions. Hawa assists clients with the negotiation of transactions in the Digital Infrastructure space globally, including transactions involving data centers, fiber, towers, and subsea cables.

About Greenberg Traurigs Corporate Practice: Greenberg Traurigs Corporate Practice comprises more than 550 lawyers in the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America who regularly advise public and privately held companies, entrepreneurs and investment funds on global mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructurings, private equity and venture capital, underwritten and syndicated offerings, commercial finance and syndicated lending, cross-border transactions, and general corporate matters. The groups industry experience includes transactions in a wide range of fields, from the pharmaceutical, medical devices, and life sciences fields, to representations involving clients in the aviation, banking, consumer products, energy, food and beverage, health care, manufacturing, media, technology, and telecommunications sectors.

About Greenberg Traurig: Greenberg Traurig, LLP has more than 2400 attorneys in 43 locations in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. The firm, often recognized for its focus on philanthropic giving, innovation, diversity, and pro bono, reported gross revenue of over $2 Billion for FY 2021. The firm is consistently among the top firms on the Am Law 100, Am Law Global 100, NLJ 250, and Law360 (US) 400. On the debut 2022 Law360 Pulse Leaderboard, it is a Top 15 firm. Greenberg Traurig is Mansfield Rule 4.0 Certified Plus by The Diversity Lab and net carbon neutral with respect to its office energy usage. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com.
HMP Global Solidifies Position as Worlds Largest Producer of Cardiovascular Events and Education with Acquisition of Renowned Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium "We look forward to working with Dr. Nassir and continuing to advance his vision by applying HMP Globals expertise in delivering practical education and live event experiences. - Jeff Hennessy, CEO, HMP Global

HMP Global, the worlds largest healthcare event and education company, today announced it has entered into a partnership to produce the Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium, the premier educational event focused exclusively on atrial fibrillation (AF).

The agreement solidifies the companys position as the dominant producer of education and information for the cardiovascular community and adds a prominent and highly complementary offering in electrophysiology to a portfolio that has built its reputation on providing exceptional education in the peripheral space, with events that include the Leipzig Interventional Course (LINC), the International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy (ISET), and the Amputation Prevention Symposium (AMP).

Now in its 16th year, the Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium takes place annually in February in Park City, Utah. It is an internationally recognized gathering that unites cardiologists, internal medicine physicians, family practice physicians, nurse practitioners, patient advocates, residents, students, and others who are interested in the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), for a state-of-the-science program that addresses the disease from multiple perspectives. The symposium is led by a slate of highly respected faculty with expertise in diverse areas, who deliver lectures on the most current updates on major atrial fibrillation research, clinical trial updates, best practices, new treatment options, and the latest scientific advances. A hallmark of the meeting is the opportunity it provides for ample collegial exchange among colleagues and cohorts, to spark ideas, foster collaboration, and inspire new projects.

Sixteen years ago, we created the Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium with the vision of offering a robust outlet to advance an integrated approach to understanding and treating atrial fibrillation, said Nassir Marrouche, MD, internationally renowned electrophysiologist, and symposium director. There have been numerous advancements, but much work remains. We need to continue to bring the electrophysiology community together  particularly those who are hungry for research and elevation in their field  to learn from one another and make important discoveries. Beginning in 2023, the Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium will benefit from the strength and expertise HMP Global brings in medical meeting management, education, and marketing. The symposium will also benefit from the expanded reach of their robust network of cardiology and electrophysiology clinicians around the world. We look forward to working with HMP Global to further enhance and grow the symposium and continue the important work of improving patient outcomes.

The Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium has built a reputation as the leading educational event for electrophysiology professionals. Dr. Nassir and his colleagues have created an offering that fosters learning, collaboration, and innovation  one that has helped support significant advancements in the field, said Jeff Hennessy, Chairman and CEO, HMP Global. Western Afib is a perfect partner for HMP Globals existing Cardiovascular group; we are adding a live meeting component that complements our longstanding publication, EP Lab Digest, a news resource that has served the space for 25 years. We look forward to working with Dr. Nassir and continuing to advance his vision by applying HMP Globals expertise in delivering practical education and live event experiences to further enhance the world-class program for which Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium is known.

HMP Globals full portfolio of events, content, and education includes:



The Leipzig Interventional Course (LINC), the highly respected interdisciplinary endovascular meeting held in Leipzig, Germany.

The International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy (ISET), the meeting that pioneered live case education for physicians and allied health professionals who treat patients with peripheral, cardiac, and neurovascular disease.

The Symposium on Clinical Interventional Oncology (CIO), the leadng gathering for interventional radiologists and other specialties that highlights innovative and viable treatments in interventional oncology.

The Amputation Prevention Symposium (AMP), the only meeting dedicated to education on the treatment and prevention of critical limb ischemia (CLI). Now in its 12th year, the AMP franchise attracts more than 800 participants annually to Chicago, and to Lugano, Switzerland, through the recent creation of AMP Europe.

The company also develops and distributes cardiovascular news and clinical content across its print and digital brands as part of its Cardiovascular Learning Network, including EP Lab Digest, the long-standing and highly regarded journal for the electrophysiology community.

The partnership with Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium continues a period of accelerated growth for HMP Global. Recent transactions solidified the company's position as the global market leader for wound care education with the March 2021 acquisition of Kestrel Health Information and positioned it as the best-in-class provider of addiction education with the February 2021 acquisition of a portfolio of educational meetings from C4 Recovery Foundation.

In 2021, the company also acquired the ePlasty journal, the preeminent peer-reviewed digital journal dedicated to advancing medical and scientific knowledge in plastic and reconstructive surgery, surgical wound healing, vascular surgery, and tissue repair. In September 2021, the company announced the acquisition of the annual Senior Living Executive Conference & Expo from Argentum, the leading national association supporting companies operating professionally managed, resident-centered senior living communities.

Most recently, the company completed the February purchase of the Senior Care Marketing and Sales Summit (SMASH), the premier meeting for c-suite sales and marketing executives within senior housing and post-acute care organizations, as well as announced the formation of a Senior Care Division.

With the Western Afib partnership, HMP Global will produce nearly 500 global, regional, and virtual events in 2023.

To learn more about the Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium, visit westernaf.com.

ABOUT HMP GLOBAL

HMP Global is the force behind Healthcare Made Practical  and is an omnichannel leader in healthcare content, events, and education, with a mission to improve patient care. The company produces accredited medical education events  in person and online via its proprietary VRTX virtual platform  and clinically relevant, evidence-based content for the global healthcare community across a range of therapeutic areas. Its brands include the HMP Global Learning Network, healthcares most comprehensive source for news and information; Psych Congress, the largest independent mental health meeting in the U.S.; the Evolution of Psychotherapy, the worlds largest independent educational event for mental health professionals; the Leipzig Interventional Course (LINC), the leading, global gathering for interdisciplinary cardiovascular specialists; EMS World Expo, North America's largest EMT and paramedic event; and the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care (SAWC), the largest wound care meeting in the world. For more information, visit hmpglobal.com.
Jose Fugie Almanza, second from the left in the front row, comes together with fellow Latino artists during the Pilsen Art with A Cause event at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. This is a historic event because something like this has never been done before. We had 21 Pilsen artists come together to contribute to one cause. We have never had this many artists together in one place and WORKING together."

Honoring his late son Joseph Junior Almanzas wish to pay it forward, Jose Fugie Almanza and Leonor Gil, founders of the Joseph Jr. Scholarship Foundation and Pilsen Art with a Cause raised $10,000 to help aspiring Latinx artists thanks to a successful silent benefit auction at Chicagos National Museum of Mexican Art.

Guests generously bid on one-of-kind pieces created by 21 talented Chicago Latinx artists from the city's Pilsen neighborhood. They also had a chance to purchase Pilsen Art With A Cause, a book containing the works of these participating artists and authored by the Joseph Jr. Paying It Forward Scholarship program. All proceeds from the artists and the book went to the Joseph Jr. Scholarship Foundation to award scholarships to aspiring college students majoring in the arts.

Jose Almanza, an established photographer known in Chicagos Pilsen community and a US Air Force veteran, had already created scholarships to help students but wanted to give more money. Last year, he thought of asking his artist colleagues to support his cause. The presence of COVID shelved the event. With restrictions lifted this year, the event went back into production.

Almanza was very grateful for the overwhelming response from the public and from the artists.

This is a historic event because something like this has never been done before. We had 21 Pilsen artists come together to contribute to one cause. We have never had this many artists together in one place and WORKING together. The artists look forward to continuing to support The Joseph Jr. Scholarship foundation in future years, and to continue helping students in the Spanish-speaking communities. Almanza said, It was also historic because there was a 4-year-old who donated his piece to be auctioned. The amazing thing was that it sold at $170.

Besides Almanza, the other participating artists were the following:



Rene Arceo

Carlos Barberena

Nicolas de Jesus

Alma Dominguez

Hector Duarte

Esperanza Gama

Jeff Abbey Maldonado

Arturo Miramontes

Elsa Munoz

Alfonso Piloto Nieves Ruiz

Alejandro Romero

Ricardo Santos Hernandez

Pablo Serrano

Diana Solis

Robert Valadez

Salvador Vega

Gabriel Villa

Roman Villarreal

Rebecca Wolfram

Karla Wong

Gil also expressed how the event had received much positive feedback from guests.

Many were taken aback by the organization, the attendants, the donors, and even the accommodations. It was such a beautiful event, she said. We are blessed to be helped by many beautiful angels who contributed to the planning and promoting of the event on social media to make this evening more amazing.

Preparation for an event brought an intense swirl of emotions for Almanza as he honored Junior on that evening and continues to do so in his life.

Helping out other young people was his dream, Almanza said. Im continuing to be part of his dream.

The auction is still open as there are some pieces available. For more information about the Joseph Jr. Scholarship Foundation and to make a donation, visit its Facebook Page.

About The Joseph Jr. Scholarship Foundation:

The Joseph Jr. Scholarship Foundation is dedicated to raising funds for underserved Latinx students in the community to support their continuing education. The foundation was created to honor the memory of Junior who committed suicide at the age of 12. Juniors wish was to someday have enough money to help students whose parents were struggling financially. Jose Fugie Almanza continues to carry out his sons wishes paying it forward via the creation of scholarships. For more information, visit the foundations Facebook page. ###
Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the class action lawsuit against Wawanesa General Insurance Company, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

The San Diego employment law attorneys, at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, filed a class action complaint alleging that Wawanesa General Insurance Company violated the California Labor Code. The Wawanesa General Insurance Company class action lawsuit, Case No. 37-2022-00020811-CU-OE-CTL, is currently pending in the San Diego County Superior Court of the State of California. A copy of the Complaint can be read here.

Wawanesa General Insurance Company allegedly failed to reimburse employees for required business expenses. California Labor Code  2802 expressly states that "an employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties..." During employment, Plaintiff and other California Class Members were allegedly required to use their personal cellular phones and personal home offices as a result of and in furtherance of their job duties.

Additionally, Defendant allegedly failed to provide employees with complete and accurate wage statements which showed, among other things, the correct gross and net wages earned. California Labor Code  226 provides that every employer shall furnish each of his or her employees with an accurate itemized wage statement in writing showing, among other things, gross wages earned and all applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period and the corresponding amount of time worked at each hourly rate.

For more information about the class action lawsuit against Wawanesa General Insurance Company, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP is an employment law firm with offices located in San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Riverside and Chicago that dedicates its practice to helping employees, investors and consumers fight back against unfair business practices, including violations of the California Labor Code and Fair Labor Standards Act. If you need help in collecting unpaid overtime wages, unpaid commissions, being wrongfully terminated from work, and other employment law claims, contact one of their attorneys today.

***THIS IS AN ATTORNEY ADVERTISEMENT***
The Godly Truth: a potent reminder of the need for a connection to ones faith. The Godly Truth is the creation of published author Lance Tassi.

Tassi shares, If you are looking for more of the evidence or more of the very great stories to confirm that both God and Jesus Christ are right here on this earth hanging out with us, then this is a true must-read book. Just like my first three books, this one, in particular, is going to go even further to prove again that it is only God and Jesus Christ who can make all things to be possible. Yes, much further than before because it will be from these very stories that God and Jesus Christ are going to bring to all of us two very special things for anybody who wants to have a better and more complete relationship with both of them.

They both will be delivering to all of us a very certain formula and seven certain prayers that can be used by anybody who wants to live at the very edge of perfection for God and Jesus Christ. If you would love to live this way for God and Jesus, then please enjoy each and every page because all of them come exclusively to you in the very best way of the Godly Truth.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Lance Tassis new book will encourage and challenge believers to hold fast to their faith.

Tassi offers readers a conversational examination of modern struggles within the Christian faith.

Consumers can purchase The Godly Truth at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about The Godly Truth, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Parkhurst NuVision "As a Lensar Medical Advisory Board Member, clinical researcher and scientist, I was honored to help LENSAR, develop the ALLY System. With FDA clearance, I look forward to providing next-gen laser cataract surgery to my patients, said Gregory Parkhurst, MD.

The Ally Lensar laser is a cataract treatment system that combines a femtosecond laser for cataract surgery with phacoemulsification in a single medical device. Phacoemulsification, which uses ultrasound technology, has been the gold-standard for cataract surgery since the early 1980s, whereas femtosecond laser systems for eye surgery were originally used in LASIK in the early 2000s, and then later developed to be used alongside phacoemulsification during cataract surgery. This is a landmark achievement in ophthalmology that these two proven systems for cataract surgery are now married together within a single piece of technology. The Ally laser cataract system will deliver safe and effective cataract surgery for patients suffering from blurry vision due to cataracts, likely for generations to come.

Since cataracts are the worlds leading cause of treatable blindness, cataract surgery is the single most common surgical procedure performed in the United States. As a clinical researcher and member of the LENSAR Medical Advisory Board, Dr. Gregory Parkhurst at Parkhurst NuVision in San Antonio is excited to lead one of the first cataract surgery practices in the United States to offer the Ally laser to his patients needing cataract surgery.

"As a Lensar Medical Advisory Board Member, clinical researcher and scientist, I was honored to help LENSAR, develop the ALLY System. With FDA clearance, I look forward to providing next-gen laser cataract surgery to my patients, said Gregory Parkhurst, MD.

Cataracts occur when there is a clouding of the natural lens of the eye, often due to aging, years of UV-light exposure, and/or lack of adequate nutrition. While cataract surgery San Antonio patients are common, approximately 10 million cataract surgeries are performed globally on an annual basis.

"The ability to combine phaco and a new LENSAR laser into a single adaptive system for use in the operating room will make cataract surgery easier for patents and eye surgeons alike. This reminds me of when we used to have 3 or 4 handheld devices (a blackberry calendar, a GPS, a camera, and a cell phone) before smart phones came along and combined all of those technologies into a single device, said Dr. Parkhurst. The Ally system is the next evolution in cataract surgery and will change the way cataract surgery is done world-wide for the next generation of patients and surgeons.

Laser cataract surgery is a quick and effective procedure that offers many benefits. The Ally system can be used to remove cataracts and also correct vision problems like astigmatism; together with specialized lenses, even eliminate the need for glasses, including reading glasses and bifocals after cataract surgery. The Ally LENSAR laser may be an ideal option for ophthalmologists who want to provide vision correction along with cataract treatment, without having to invest, maintain, and find floor space for multiple pieces of medical equipment in their operating suites.

Because no two cataracts or vision needs are exactly alike, each individual patient needs to understand the benefits and potential risks of any cataract or vision correction procedure. A virtual-online or in-person consultation with an eye doctor at Parkhurst NuVision in San Antonio can give you the information you need to make an informed decision on vision correction procedures and cataract surgery.

ABOUT PARKHURST NUVISION

Parkhurst NuVision is widely known as a premier vision correction surgery center and clinical research facility. The group practice was founded by award-winning and board-certified ophthalmologist, Dr. Gregory Parkhurst, who is the Physician CEO of Parkhurst NuVision. Parkhurst NuVision was the first designated LENSAR laser center of Excellence in the United States in 2014, and proudly serves the community of San Antonio, Texas, as well as the many patients who travel from across the nation for our expertise in cataract and vision correction surgery. As a leader in personalized eye surgery, we are committed to offering the full range of vision correction solutions, including EVO Visian ICL, LASIK, SMILE LASIK, PRK, Laser Lens Treatment (RLE), and Laser Cataract Surgery. Whatever your type of cataract or stage in life, the team at Parkhurst NuVision is here to help you achieve your best vision ever and improve your overall quality of life. https://sanantonio-lasik.com/

# # #

Contact:

Parkhurst NuVision

9725 Datapoint Dr

Ste 106

San Antonio, TX 78229

(336) 508-4447

Contact Name: Angie Kruse

Email: akruse@nuvisiontx.com

Media Contact

Amanda Kincaid, Parkhurst NuVision, +1 2108184116, akincaid@nuvisiontx.com



SOURCE: Parkhurst NuVision
This study shows that a simple text message reminder to play or walk with the family dog can result in increased physical activity for children and their caregivers.

The Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI) announced the results of a new publication led by researchers at the Telethon Kids Institute and The University of Western Australia (UWA), which found a simple health intervention using text messaging may encourage children to spend more time being physically active with their family dog. This randomized controlled trial was published in the journal BMC Pediatrics.

We found texting parents to remind them of how easy and important it is to be active with the family dog is a low-cost intervention with the potential to boost public health, which can be easily implemented across entire communities, said Telethon Kids and UWA Associate Professor Hayley Christian, Principal Investigator on the study. Interventions, policies, and community programs should capitalize on the high level of dog ownership and incorporate dog walking or play into physical activity campaigns.

This study shows that a simple text message reminder to play or walk with the family dog can result in increased physical activity for children and their caregivers, said Steven Feldman, President of HABRI. HABRI looks forward to raising awareness of the results of this publication which outline new and simple ways to encourage families to spend more quality time playing with and walking their dogs.

Dr. Christian and colleagues led the Play Spaces and Environments for Childrens Physical Activity (PLAYCE) PAWS mHealth intervention, a randomized controlled trial conducted in Perth, Western Australia. Families of children between the ages of 5 and 10 with a family dog were placed into three experiment groups: one group of parents received regular text reminders about family play with the dog, one group received text reminders while also receiving a dog pedometer to further engage them with the dog, and the third group carried on as usual. This study was the first of its kind to utilize a mobile-based dog-facilitated strategy to increase childrens physical activity.

At baseline, approximately 60 percent of families walked their dogs more than once a week, and this increased to more than 75 percent at the 3-month follow-up. No differences were observed in dog walking or dog play at 1-month. The text-message only group was 2.6 times more likely to increase their frequency of total dog-facilitated activity at 3-months, compared to the usual care group. The combined intervention group was twice as likely to increase their frequency of total dog-facilitated physical activity compared with the usual care group at 3-months. Similar findings were reported by a HABRI-funded study conducted by Richards et al., which found that significant increases in family dog walking in the intervention group only occurred at 6 months and were also sustained at 12 months. The positive associations with total dog-facilitated physical activity lost significance after adjusting for socio-demographic factors. Most parents found the intervention strategies acceptable, with 81% satisfied with the text-messaging program, and 83% satisfied with using the dog pedometer. Parents indicated that the text messages were good motivators to engage in more play with the dog.

This is the third publication to result from this HABRI-funded research. Findings from the first publication, published in the journal Pediatric Research in July 2020, showed that dog-owning children had better socio-emotional outcomes compared to non-dog-owners. The second publication, released in Preventive Medicine Reports in April 2022, conducted a secondary analysis of a larger study to find that family dog walking three or more times per week was positively associated with structured and unstructured physical activity and outdoor play, and negatively associated with screen time.

Citation: Ng, M., Wenden, E., Lester, L., Westgarth, C., & Christian, H. (2022). A mobile health intervention to encourage physical activity in children: a randomised controlled trial. BMC pediatrics, 22(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-022-03336-9

About HABRI

HABRI is a not-for-profit organization that maintains the worlds largest online library of human-animal bond research and information; funds innovative research projects to scientifically document the health benefits of companion animals, and informs the public about human-animal bond research and the beneficial role of companion animals in society. For more information, please visit http://www.habri.org.

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Front view of a blue 2022 Toyota RAV4 cruising on a road

The demand for compact SUVs is on the rise, and so is the anticipation amongst customers of an SUV that tops all charts  be it performance, safety ratings, gas mileage, tech enhancements, or convenience quotient. In this quest, Toyota launched the latest rendition of the RAV4 series  the 2022 Toyota RAV4. Since its release, the 2022 Toyota RAV4 has amassed a substantial number of customers, owing to its robust performance ratings and reliability score. Interested customers can check out the 2022 Toyota RAV4 at the Colonial Toyota dealership in Milford, Connecticut.

The 2022 Toyota RAV4 starts at $26,975 and is available in twelve trim levels across gas and hybrid models. The non-hybrid trims of the 2022 Toyota RAV4 range come with a 2.5-Liter Dynamic Force 4-Cylinder DOHC (Double Over Head Camshaft) D-4S Injection engine with Dual Variable Valve Timing with intelligence (VVT-i) and the hybrid variants pack a powertrain that combines a 2.5-Liter Dynamic Force 4-Cylinder and an electric motor. The former makes 203 horsepower and 184 pound-feet torque, while the latter makes 219 combined net horsepower. The non-hybrid engine pairs with a Direct Shift - Eight-speed ECT-I gearbox and sequential shift mode to send power to wheels. The hybrid trims leverage an Electronically controlled Continuously Variable Transmission (ECVT) with sequential shift mode.

NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) have lauded the 2022 Toyota RAV4 with their highest security rating. Safety and driver-assistance equipment in the 2022 Toyota RAV4 include Full-Speed Range Dynamic Radar Cruise Control, Road Sign Assist, Lane Tracing Assist, a Blind Spot Monitoring system With Rear Cross-Traffic Alert, Star Safety System, Eight Airbags, and an available Front and Rear Parking Assist with Automatic Braking system (PA w/AB).

Interested customers can visit the Colonial Toyota dealership at 470 Boston Post Road in Milford, Connecticut 06460, to test drive the new 2022 Toyota RAV4. For more information on the 2022 Toyota RAV4, customers can either visit the website of the 2022 Toyota RAV4 at https://www.colonialtoyotact.com. Otherwise, prospective buyers can call the dealership at (203) 286-5500.
Raquel Diaz promoted to lead Gilbane's New York City public sector portfolio. Over her impressive career, we have seen how Raquel is positively transforming communities and helping to build a more responsive, equitable, and prosperous city for all New Yorkers, said John LaRow, Senior Vice President, Gilbane Building Company.

Gilbane Building Company today announced the promotion of Raquel Diaz to Public Sector Area Manager for its New York City operation. In her new role, Diaz will oversee Gilbanes extensive public sector portfolio, which includes the new Made in NY Campus at Bush Terminal, the Metropolitan Hospital Flood Wall Resiliency Project with NYC Health & Hospitals and the Orchard Beach Maintenance and Operations for the NYC Department of Design and Constructions Design-Build Program.

Diaz has a 16-year career in construction, during which time she has worked on a total portfolio of more than $2 billion and 2.7 million square feet in project delivery. She has executed highly complex, transformative projects for clients including the NYC Department of Design and Construction, NYU Langone Health, the NYC Economic Development Corporation, New York-Presbyterian, and Memorial Sloan Kettering.

Over her impressive career, we have seen how Raquel is positively transforming communities and helping to build a more responsive, equitable, and prosperous city for all New Yorkers, said John LaRow, Senior Vice President, Gilbane Building Company. Raquel is a trusted partner to our public sector clients and we are thrilled to have her lead our growing portfolio of work in this sector.

She is also a member of Gilbanes New York City Economic Inclusion Task Force and a mentor in the companys Rising Contractor Program  with many of her projects ranging from 30 to 60 percent MWBE participation.

Diaz has been repeatedly honored for her work, including by Crains New York Business on its 2022 Notable Women in Construction, Design, and Architecture list and by the Women Builders Council of New York Citys 2019 Next Generation of Women Builders award.

Gilbane embodies the spirit I find so uplifting about construction: when we build, we are building to make New York City a better place for everyone, said Raquel Diaz. I am looking forward to continuing to build out our public sector pipeline of projects while at the same time helping build a team that will make the company and the city proud.

About Gilbane Building Company

Gilbane Building Company provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related services  from pre-construction planning and integrated consulting capabilities to comprehensive construction management, close-out and facility management services  for clients across various markets. A family business founded in 1870, Gilbane has active participation from the 4th, 5th and 6th generations of the Gilbane family.

Since 1949, Gilbane has delivered construction services in New York State for clients across multiple market sectors, including commercial office, multi-unit and high rise residential, cultural, education, healthcare, public sector, science and technology, and mission critical.

For more information, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com.

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The advisory board members are all veterans of higher education fundraising with distinguished track records in constituent engagement and annual giving.

Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL) today announced members of its higher education fundraising advisory board, philanthropy leaders whose expertise will guide the development of the next generation of donor engagement solutions.

The advisory board members are all veterans of higher education fundraising with distinguished track records in constituent engagement and annual giving. Their insights will help RNL develop and optimize solutions for increasing donor engagementa key goal for universities as donor participation has declined annually for more than 20 years. Their guidance will benefit the hundreds of institutions that partner with RNL for philanthropy, impacting everything from building donor pipeline so institutions have a fertile foundation of donors to optimizing omnichannel outreach so institutions reach donors on all the devices and channels they use every day.

The 11 members of the RNL Fundraising Advisory Board are:



Susan Ball, Executive Director of Development, Fordham University

Dawn Baumgarten, Executive Director of Annual Giving, University at Buffalo

Heather Duiser, Executive Director of Annual Giving, University of Georgia

Jean Findlay, Executive Director, School and Center Annual Giving, University of Pennsylvania

Howard Heevner, Executive Director of Annual Programs, University of California, Berkeley

Sarah Kathryn Hickman, Associate Vice President, Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving, Baylor University

Maggie Linn-Addison, Assistant Vice President of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving, Regis University

Jennifer MacCormack, Senior Director, University of Washington

Christina Sebastian, Senior Executive Director, Donor Relations and Broad-Based Marketing. Columbia University

Astria Smith, Senior Executive Director, Annual Giving and Alumni Relations, Southern Methodist University

Amy Arbino Wylie, Senior Director, Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving, Northern Kentucky University

"RNL is honored to partner with such an accomplished roster of advancement leaders, said Greg OBrien, RNLs Chief Growth Officer. In an era when philanthropy is more critical than ever to achieving mission across higher education, these leaders will provide key feedback and guidance on solutions and strategies that will increase donor engagement, show the impact of giving for donors, and maximize philanthropy for our university and nonprofit partners.

RNL also operates advisory boards for undergraduate enrollment as well as graduate and online enrollment.

For more information, contact Brandon Trissler at Brandon.Trissler@RuffaloNL.com.

About RNL

RNL is the leading provider of higher education enrollment, student success, and fundraising solutions. The firm serves more than 1,900 colleges and universities through data-driven solutions focused on the entire lifecycle of enrollment and fundraising, assuring students find the right program, graduate on time, secure their first job in their chosen field, and give back to support the next generation. With a deep knowledge of the industry, RNL provides institutions the ability to scale their efforts by tapping into a community of support and resources.
ROBAM announces a partnership with BrandSource to bring its suite of kitchen products to showrooms throughout the United States. We are optimistic about working with BrandSources well-established network to deliver a premium cooking experience to customers in every region.

ROBAM, one of the worlds most sought-after high-end kitchen appliance manufacturers, has announced its latest dealer-focused partnership with BrandSource, the nations largest buying co-op for independent appliance, home furnishings and consumer tech retailers. The brand has ranked No. 1 in global sales for seven consecutive years in both built-in cooktops and range hoods, and its product line has been awarded a World Association Record for most powerful suction in a range hood. While ROBAM is recognized around the world for its suite of kitchen appliance products, the brand is new to the North American audience.

TWEET THIS: "#ROBAM officially announces partnership with @BrandSource, establishes physical presence in showrooms across the US & Canada. The appliance brand has ranked No.1 in global sales for range hoods and built-in cooktops for 7 consecutive years. More: https://us.robamworld.com/"

We are incredibly excited to share ROBAMs robust catalog of powerful and beautiful appliances with dealers across the United States, and we are optimistic about working with BrandSources well-established network to deliver a premium cooking experience to customers in every region, said Elvis Chen, Regional Director at ROBAM. Our products continue to impress consumers around the world, and we know North American buyers will appreciate our quality and craftsmanship.

We look forward to working with the ROBAM team to position its globally recognized products in front of dealers within the BrandSource family, said Andy Kreige, Communications Manager at BrandSource. Consumers are hungry for quality appliances with the latest technology, and ROBAMs wide variety of kitchen appliances definitely delivers on that expectation.

As a highly recognized brand around the world, ROBAM brings the latest in appliance technology and aims to establish a presence in showrooms throughout the United States and Canada. As a strategic move to establish brand familiarity, ROBAM and BrandSource established a partnership to position its products, including its built-in cooktops, range hoods, wall ovens, steam ovens, ranges, dishwashers and more.

To learn more about ROBAM and its product offerings, visit us.robamworld.com.

About ROBAM:

Founded in 1979, ROBAM is known around the world for its high-end kitchen appliances and has ranked #1 in global sales for seven consecutive years for both built-in cooktops and range hoods. From integrating state-of-the-art Field-Oriented Control (FOC) technology and hands-free control options, to embodying an entirely new design aesthetic for the kitchen that doesnt hold back on functionality, ROBAMs suite of professional kitchen appliances offer the perfect combination of power and prestige. For more information, visit us.robamworld.com.

About BrandSource

BrandSource is the leading member-owned buying organization for independent appliance, home furnishings and consumer tech retailers. Its parent company, AVB, is a $22 billion member-driven co-op that provides merchandising, financing, digital marketing, and operational services to more than 4,500 independent dealers in the U.S. and Canada. BrandSource's affiliates include ProSource (consumer tech and custom integration); TRIB Group (rent-to-own); and Mega Group/BrandSource Canada.
(l to r) VWS Managing Partner Jay Dryden - scholarship winners Jeremiah McDow, Trinity Threatt, Emma Colavita, Anna Grider, Javon Jennings, Noah Gurley, Lauren Hoffarth-VWS Senior Partner Kelly Moise. This is our fifth year awarding these scholarships, and this is one of my favorite things that I get to do. This year our first scholarship winners are about to graduate.

Eight local high school seniors were each awarded a $10,000 scholarship during the annual Vector Wealth Strategies Community Scholars Fund Scholarship Banquet Tuesday, May 10 at The Ledges in Huntsville.

This year's scholarship recipients are Aparna Bhooshanan, Emma Colavita, Anna Grider, Noah Gurley, Lauren Hoffarth, Javon Jennings, Jeremiah McDow and Trinity Threatt.

This is our fifth year awarding these scholarships, and this is one of my favorite things that I get to do, VWS Senior Partner, Kelly Moise, said. This year our first scholarship winners are about to graduate.

The Vector Community Scholars Fund was established in 2017 and has nearly tripled in the number of recipients and had a record number of applicants in 2022. Vectors annual Casino Night raises funds, which are matched by the firm and generous Vector clients. Half the scholarships are awarded to students whose parents or grandparents work in the local defense industry, while the other half provides scholarships for students who are heading to college as a result of the CAP & GOWN Project. The C&G Project focuses on making college a reality for underrepresented kids attending high school in Madison County.

Its so difficult to select the winners (because) there are so many outstanding applicants, VWS Scholarship Committee Chairperson Diana Hansen said. During the banquet, Hansen encouraged scholarship winners to surround themselves with like-minded people and to not use failure as an excuse to not pursue their dreams. You can accomplish anything you want to accomplish in life. Find the path that fits you.

Each of the winners shared their college plans and expressed their gratitude during the banquet. Bhooshanan, a graduate of Bob Jones High School, will attend the University of Alabama in Huntsville and major in computer science. Colavita, a graduate of New Century Technology High School, will attend the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa and major in neuroscience. A homeschool graduate, Jennings will be attending the University of Rhode Island and majoring in computer science/digital forensics. Grider, a graduate of Bob Jones High School, will attend Auburn University and plans to study genetics. Im going to be a great investment and put my best foot forward, Grider said. Thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity, and Im forever grateful.

Gurley, a graduate of Huntsville High School, will study computer science at Auburn University. Hoffarth, a graduate of Grissom High School, will study speech pathology at the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa. A graduate of New Century Technology High School, Threatt plans to study mechanical engineering at Purdue University. McDow, a graduate of New Century Technology High, will study communications at Alabama A&M University.

Executive Director of CAP & Gown Emily Heller praised the students perseverance for focusing on academic excellence while learning online during COVID-19 restrictions. They chose to rise, meet the challenge and put their success ahead of all of the things that came before them, Heller said. By investing in them, were investing in our community, our future and the future looks pretty bright. I cant wait to see what the students are going to do.

VWS Managing Partner, Jay Dryden, said the scholarship fund is a reflection of the companys mission to work hard, play hard and be generous. Were so proud to get to be a part of the stories being written here, he said. The scholarship committee does a good job of identifying future talent, and were grateful to be in partnership with CAP & GOWN, Vectors clients and friends who support the fund.

Vector Wealth Strategies is committed to serving our community through leadership development. Vector strives to build up the leaders of tomorrow and replace ourselves over time with the philanthropic funders of the future. To learn more about Vector Wealth Strategies and the Community Scholars Fund, visit vectorwealthstrategies.com/community-scholars-fund/ or call 256-469-7711. For more information on The CAP & GOWN Project, visit capandgownproject.org.
Royal Warrior: How to be the Warrior that our Father God created us to be: an empowering discussion of faith and Gods promise. Royal Warrior: How to be the Warrior that our Father God created us to be is the creation of published author Wendi Barczynski, a loving wife, mother, and grandmother who was a minister in a mainline denomination for almost twenty years. Prior to her years in ministry, she attended and graduated from North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a degree in ministry.

Barczynski shares, A coworker steals your idea and presents it to your boss as his own and you are furious. Your toddler looks you directly in the eye after you made a request of her and screams NO! and proceeds to throw herself on the floor kicking and screaming in full tantrum mode. You are feeling so down that you cant seem to function anymore. All these are real problems that we can face daily. Satan likes to insert himself into these types of situations and cause us even more grief. He is declaring war on us because we are followers of Jesus. When situations like this come our way, what do we do? How do we handle these attacks?

If we dont have a battle plan, we are less likely to see victory in our lives. Jesus said that he came so that we can have life abundantly. Do you feel like you are living an abundant life, or are you being weighed down from these daily battles?

This book has been put together to offer easy, practical steps to form your own battle plan. Wendi Barczynski has used what God has taught her while she faced her own set of challenges. Take time to dive into this book to read what Gods word says about how to see victory in your life as you face these daily battles. Its time for you to become a royal warrior!

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Wendi Barczynskis new book offers a balance of personal reflection and helpful analogy that promotes a deeper understanding of Gods word.

Barczynski provides readers with an easy-to-follow discussion of the key components needed to draw from the full armor of God.

Consumers can purchase Royal Warrior: How to be the Warrior that our Father God created us to be at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Royal Warrior: How to be the Warrior that our Father God created us to be, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Robert Frost once said, Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. So its no surprise that educators who want their students to think, feel, and express themselves are finding ways to use poetry in storytimes, lessons, or anytime they can. PW spoke with four such teachers and librarians about the ways they wax poetic in classrooms and libraries to offer poetry-filled storytimes and more. Click here to see previous stories in our Read Alouds That Rock series.

Karen Cardillo is a second-grade teacher at the Charter Academy in Angier, N.C., as well as a writer and poet. After two decades as an education publishing executive, Cardillo recently returned to the classroom after some time tutoring learners who were negatively impacted by effects of the Covid and remote learning, and found herself in second grade again.

Cardillos students benefit from her deep love and knowledge of literatureespecially poetry. She said that she draws on poetry to supplement her ELA curriculum and teach additional phonics and spelling lessons. I use poetry daily, beginning withour morning message to integrate phonics, vocabulary skills, and and problem-solving strategies, Cardillo said. Its how I set the stage.

Cardillo recently found the poem Hello Spring and used it to create a message for her students to recite, rewrite, and study closely. They look at the poems rhyming patterns, figurative language and phonetic awareness. I purposely omit words and certain letters to teach our language arts skill of the day, Cardillo said, or lessons including word patternslike the long e or suffixes like -ful. 

Because her second-grade curriculum is so full, Cardillo integrates poetry whenever she can across the curricular areas, and may read additional pieces as what she calls rewards or treats. I just love introducing my kids to classic and new poetry, Cardillo said. Im drawn to poems with rhyme and rhythm because they help us make connections with letters and sounds, and spelling patternsand how beautiful poetry can sound! Theres a real purpose to sharing it.

Her favorite poetry go-tos include The Illustrated Treasury of Poetry for Children edited by David Ross, anything written by Shel Silverstein, and Maurice Sendaks Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months. Cadillo often uses these poems during her writers workshops as mentor texts to draw attention to the poetrys figurative languagesimiles, metaphors, and alliterationand to encourage her second grade poets to incorporate these elements in their own poetry. My students especially love alliterationtongue twisters, Cardillo said. The sillier the better!

Tracy Lynn Scaglione is in her 20th year as library media specialist at the Dorsett Shoals Elementary School in Douglasville, Ga. Poetry is everywhere in her school library, thanks to her. Its embedded in our librarys storytimes, activities, and displays throughout the yearand our school, Scaglione said. Our librarys poetry section is not just dusted off for National Poetry Month. We use poetry books all year long.

During storytimes, Scaglione often reads a variety of lyrical picture books including Dreamers by Yuyi Morales, Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford, Wonder Walkers by Micha Archer, and The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson. If you look carefully, she said, many of these books are poems told across 32 pages. I introduce these types of books to my students and we talk about the poetrys rhyme, rhythm, and figurative language. And we listen to the influence of the language, the descriptive words. Afterwards, we talk about ways to incorporate these elements into our own writing.

They talk about white space, too. Our students discover that you dont have to clutter the pages with words, and to drill down their writing to the fewest words on the page to get their point across, Scaglione said. Poetry can do this brilliantly.

She offers as many models of poetry as possible, for a multitude of reasons. Theres so much variety in poetry thats relatable and offers windows, mirrors, sliding glass doorsand something for everyone.

Most recently, this included introducing novels-in-verse to fourth graders who just want to read graphic novels. I started a book club to entice these kids to try novels-in-verse. One day, I quickly book-talked a number of these novels, and all of them got checked out, Scaglione said. When students finished reading them, they came back asking, Do you have any more? Scagliones answer was a resounding absolutely! which then led to discussions about these novels-in-verse and the building of a community around the books.

I want every student to feel they can be a reader, Scaglione said. My role is to fill in the gap between the classroom and students experience, focus on their interests, and help them develop their love of reading. It takes time building relationships between students and teachers to do this. But its so worth it.

Yapha Mason is the new senior librarian at the Albany Academies in Albany, N.Y., and before that was a lower school librarian for 26 years at Brentwood School in Los Angeles. Mason was also a member of the 2015 Newbery Committee that chose the novel-in-verse Crossover by Kwame Alexander as that years winner.

Since making a cross-country crossover herself this past month, shes eager to get acquainted with her new teachers and students, and to hit the ground running with poetry. I hope to weave poetry in through library lessons in a variety of ways, Mason said. While I dont know what the English teachers might be interested in doing just yet, Im excited to work with them.

Mason has a parade of poetry ideas and activities shes used with her former students and that she cant wait to tailor for her new ones. For starters, Mason likes to use poetry to supplement students nonfiction studies. In the past, she has read poems from Douglas Florians In the Swim with children who are studying the ocean, and Lee Bennett Hopkinss My America: A Poetry Atlas of the United States with students who are researching the 50 states. Tying in poetry is a great way to approach topics from many angles, Mason said. It seems to make topics more accessible to students in ways other formats dont.

To expose her students to different types of poetry, Mason holds Poetry Read Arounds where she pulls together many different anthologies and poetry books, and has her students sit in a circle and read a few poems from one book, and then pass it to the next person, and so on. She believes this circular activity whets their appetite for reading and writing poems.

Poetry can impact students differently than prose, and make them think about the power of each word, Mason said. She also believes that poetry gives students permission to color outside the lines. I think its nice for students to see for themselves how all of the rules that they have learnedhow to write, how to form a sentenceand how rules can be broken to make their writing even more impactful!"

Liza Barrett fell in love with poetry as a kid. She even won $5 in a poetry contest in second grade for her poem entitled Carsick, recalling a family car trip. Since then, her passion for poetry has only grown as a former middle school teacher (for more than 35 years) and a current school library teacher in her third year (after two years of remote teaching because of Covid) for middle and upper school kids in grad 7-12 at Mount Greylock Massachusetts Regional School in Williamstown, Mass.

The first thing Barrett did when they returned to school was truly poetic Since no one in the last two years had been checking out poetry, she said, I went to the poetry section and pulled out all of the novels-in-verse, poetry anthologies, and studies on poets, and I put all of it out in front of the library with a beautiful sign. And its been circulating ever since.

From book displays, Barrett moved on to a holiday celebration, Carry a Poem in Your Pocket Day. I made this bag where I put copies of 2530 different poems printed on colored paper and stood at the front door of the school as the kids walked into school. I gave one poem to everyone who would take one! Barrett said. All day long, you could see the kids looking at their poems, hear them asking each other which poems they got, and learning all kinds of poemssome famous, some obscure, and some they may have known from elementary school.

 Poetry speaks to you in a way that other literature does not. The meaning can come so quickly to you. 

For National Poetry Month this past April, Barrett invited each of her teachers to share a photo of themselves along with a favorite poem. Each day, she tacked a poem and the teachers photo to the librarys Read a Poem Every Day! bulletin board for a daily dose of poetry. She invited students to share their favorites, too.

Then Barrett let the powers of poetry take effect. Poetry speaks to you in a way that other literature does not. The meaning can come so quickly to you, Barrett said. Kids are stressed and overwhelmed now more than ever. And, after all the things they have to read and comprehend for school, they can read a poem that is short and accessible; and, it can mean whatever they want it to mean.

Then theres poetrys ability to break down walls and build relationships. You can walk up to the board and read the poem of the day put up by a teacher or someone you know or dont know, and it connects you and that person, Barrett said. Also, seeing a poem that someone likes makes you read it differently. You wonder why this is their favorite poem, and it connects you to them, too.

Barrett believes poetry helps students connect with their inner selves, too. Poetry can answer questions like: Who am I? What is my place in the world? to discover who we are now, and who we want to become in the future, Barrett said. Poetry can get us thinking, wondering, and feeling thingsand helps us become more of who we are!
A surprise announcement on June 10 from Costa Coffee has brought to an abrupt end the second most prestigious book awardafter the Bookerin the U.K. and Ireland. Winners of the Costa Book Awards, previously the Whitbread Book Awards, have included Iris Murdoch, Kazuo Ishiguro, Seamus Heaney (twice), Andrea Levy, Philip Pullman, and Hilary Mantel. The awards have helped bring to prominence writers such as Kate Atkinson, Mark Haddon, and Helen Macdonald.

The Whitbreads began in 1971, when Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns was among the first winners. Whitbread adopted the Book of the Year format in 1985, setting winners of five categories - Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry, Children's Book - in competition for the main prize. There was a grand dinner at Whitbread's headquarters, the Brewery in Chiswell Street. The 1986 ceremony, at which Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World was the winner, was among the most memorable, with snow blanketing the London streets and with several guests - among them Booker supremo Martyn Goff - succumbing to food poisoning.

Whitbread rebranded the awards as the Costa Book Awards in 2006. Costa Coffee is now part of the Coca-Cola Company. In recent years, the prize ceremony, at which the Costa Short Story Award is also presented, has been a stand-up reception at Quaglino's. Hannah Lowe, 2021 winner, took home 30,000; the category winners each won 5,000. The top end of the awards scene is more crowded than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, with the Women's Prize, the Folio, and the Baillie Gifford all seeking attention. Nevertheless, there is dismay in the trade at the loss of such a prominent advertisement for books.

Hazel Broadfoot, proprietor of Village Books (Dulwich Village) and president of the Booksellers Association, said: "I'm really sorry to see the Costa Awards go. There are so few awards that get the level of media coverage enjoyed by the Costas, and that bring recognition in so many different categories. Looking back at last year's winners it was wonderful to see the award for Open Water, a debut novel, and for The Kids. Poetry titles don't often get widespread public attention. I think theyve been a very good thing for the book industry, and I hope some enlightened sponsor will come forward to help save them."

Quoted in the Guardian, Waterstones head of fiction Bea Carvalho said: "The Costa book awards have played a huge part in the success of some of the very best English-language books over the last 50 years and have helped to elevate the careers of some of the most exciting, important and talented writers at work today." She added that she and her colleagues looked forward to championing "the excellent previous winners including The Mermaid of Black Conch, H Is for Hawk, and Small Island for many years to come. The Costa awards influence in our bookshops does not end here!"

The announcement from Costa reads:

"After 50 years of celebrating some of the most enjoyable books written by hugely talented authors from across the UK and Ireland, Costa Coffee has taken the difficult decision to end the Costa Book Awards. This means that the 2021 Costa Book Awards held in February 2022 was our 50th and final awards.

Established in 1971, the Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread Book Awards between 1971 and 2005) aimed to share and raise the profile of some of the best books published each year. We are incredibly proud to have played a part in supporting some of the best-selling authors of the last 50 years as well as trailblazing diverse and fresh voices, tackling a broad range of themes and ideas, across fiction, poetry and biography. And we are honored to have helped both these new and established talents reach a wider audience of readers. Watch highlights from the last 50 years here.

We would like to thank all those who have been involved and supported the Costa Book Awards over the last 50 years as we close this chapter."

A version of this story first appeared in the U.K.'s BookBrunch.
A federal court in New York has ordered motions for summary judgment by early summer in a lawsuit filed by four major publishers against the Internet Archive over its scanning and lending of print library books, putting the fate of the closely watched copyright case on track to be in the courts hands by early fall.

In a June 10 order, Judge John G. Koeltl granted the parties request to proceed with summary judgment motions on a schedule first proposed by magistrate judge Ona T. Wang. Opening summary judgment briefs are due by July 7; opposition briefs by September 7; and reply briefs by October 7. Although, in a handwritten note, Koeltl said he seriously questions whether the parties request for an expansive word count for their briefs12,000 words for opening briefs; 10,000 words for opposition briefs; and 6,000 words for reply briefsis necessary.

The suit revolves around the Internet Archives scanning and lending of print library books under an untested legal theory known as controlled digital lending (CDL). Under CDL, the Internet Archive (and other libraries) digitize books theyve legally acquired and lend the scans under rules designed to mimic a traditional library loan: only one person can borrow a scan at a time; the scans are DRM-protected to enforce loan periods and prevent copying; and, crucially, the scan and the print book the scan is derived from are not allowed to circulate at the same time, maintaining a one-to-one own-to-loan basis.

While the practice of CDL has troubled author and publisher groups for years, a lawsuit had not appeared imminent until late March, 2020, when the Internet Archive temporarily (and unilaterally) suspended some of its CDL restrictions for its now closed National Emergency Library initiative, making the IAs collection of scanned books available to simultaneous borrowers while schools and libraries were shuttered by Covid-19. In response, Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House, coordinated by the Association of American Publishers, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive on June 1, 2020.

In a June 9 letter to the court, Internet Archive attorneys reiterated their position that its CDL-based scanning and lending program are protected by fair use. To the extent that the feared market harms are the very same ones that would flow from handing a particular copy to a library patron, or mailing it to them, rather than lending that copy digitally, those harms are not ones that copyright takes into account, IA lawyers argue. Every copy Internet Archive lends out was bought from the publishers, and it is not fair to demand that libraries pay again to lend the copy they already own.

IA lawyers say the suit raises two questions for the court: first, whether a library can legally create and lend under CDL restrictions a digital copy of print book it has legally acquired in lieu of the print copy; and second, whether a global pandemic justified the Internet Archives actions in creating the National Emergency Library. The answers to these questions will shape how libraries continue to serve the public interest in the digital age, IA lawyers insist.

In their June 10 letter, attorneys for the publishers insist the Internet Archive isnt a library at all, but a massive copyright infringement enterprise. Furthermore, the publishers argue that the concept of controlled digital lending has no basis in law and that "the creation of an e-book from a print book falls under the authors exclusive right to create derivative works.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.  Learn about innovative farm management strategies, new technologies for improving efficiency and productivity, ways to help ensure a successful transition of your operation to the next generation and more at the annual Purdue Farm Management Tour, July 19-20.

Purdue Universitys Center for Commercial Agriculture and Purdue Extension sponsor the tour, which includes stops at three farms in Tipton and Clinton counties. Farms are chosen based on successful business management practices or farm managers unique perspective on farm business management.

The Purdue Farm Management Tour brings together some of Indianas best farm business managers, making it a fantastic opportunity for farmers to learn from others experiences and discover new principles to apply on their own farms in order to maximize innovation and success, said James Mintert, director of the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture.

Each tour includes an interview session where farm operators provide an overview of their farms. Host farmers will also share successful farm management tips, discuss how the management of their operations is changing in response to the agricultural economy and evolving family circumstances, and share reasons behind their recent innovations in production practices and adoption of new technology.

The tour is free and open to the public. Visit purdue.ag/farmtour or call 765-494-7004 to register (required).

Tour Schedule  All times are listed in Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

12:30 p.m., July 19  M&K Henderson Family Farm/Henderson Ag Advantage: Monty and Austin Henderson are the fifth and sixth generations of their family to farm in Tipton County. Monty currently serves as regional director of the Hoosier Heartland Indiana Small Business Development Center, and Austins enterprise, Henderson Ag Advantage, provides customers with a variety of crop inputs. M&K Henderson Family Farm farming operation emphasizes improving soil health using a combination of no-till, strip-till and cover crops. At this tour stop, youll learn more about how the Hendersons have combined farming with their pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities to help ensure a successful farm transition.

8:30 a.m., July 20  Orr Farms: Clint and Marianne Orr started their farming operation with just 200 acres under cultivation in the late 1980s. Lacking a large land base at a single location encouraged the Orrs to take advantage of existing facilities scattered across several owned and rented locations. Recently theyve built a new stand-alone grain facility with a Grain Handler continuous mixed-flow dryer, which provides the capacity to store 100% of the seed beans, waxy corn and white corn their farm produces. Staying up to date on new technology is important to them, and their new 2022 model corn and soybean planters will both be on display at this tour stop.

1:30 p.m., July 20  Stafford Farms: Tim Stafford along with sons Jarren and Jordan raise corn, soybeans and hogs. Jarren and Jordan, who provide leadership on technology adoption and implementation, joined the farm full time in the early 2000s, and the family has implemented a plan to move major assets from father to sons over time. The Staffords raise seed corn and have been installing pattern tile using their own equipment. In 2022, a new state-of-the-art farm shop was completed, which will also be featured at this tour stop.

Indiana Prairie Farmer Master Farmer Reception and Panel Discussion

The Indiana Prairie Farmer Master Farmer Reception and Panel Discussion will be held July 19 at 3:30 p.m. in conjunction with the Farm Management Tour to honor the 2022 Master Farmers. This years award recipients will discuss keys to success during the course of their long farming careers. The reception will take place at Becks Hybrids on Tuesday, July 19, at 6767 N. 276th St., Atlanta, Indiana. The Master Farmer Program is a long-standing tradition that honors individuals who have contributed considerably to Hoosier agriculture and demonstrated success in farming efficiency, stewardship of natural resources and community service. There is no cost to attend; visit purdue.ag/farmtour to register (required). The Indiana Master Farmer program is sponsored by Purdue Universitys College of Agriculture and Indiana Prairie Farmer.

Writer: Kami Goodwin, kami@purdue.edu

Media contact: Anna Aarstad, 765-494-7004, comagctr@purdue.edu

Source: James Mintert, 765-494-7004, jmintert@purdue.edu

Agricultural Communications: 765-494-8415;

Maureen Manier, Department Head, mmanier@purdue.edu

Agriculture News Page
LOS ANGELES  Concord Law School at Purdue University Global will present a live discussion titled Expeditionary Law: Foreign Dealmaking and the Problem of Corruption for the next installment of its Distinguished Speaker Series at noon PT on Wednesday, June 22.

The live webinar will be hosted by Concord Dean Martin Pritikin and featured guest speaker Conan Higgins, an expert in the field of international business entity creation and a Concord Law School alumnus.

Higgins leads his consulting firm, TSI Legal Enterprises PC, and serves as general counsel for Veterans Carriers Inc., a veteran-owned transportation company. He also has served for six years as vice chair for the American Bar Associations Section of International Law Middle East Committee and previously as vice chair for the International Anti-Money Laundering Committee. Higgins is a fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management and an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives in the United Kingdom.

MORE: Watch highlights from the Purdue University Global May 2022 commencement.

Higgins was listed in The New York Times as a Super Lawyer for 2022 and was selected by Lawyer Monthly as the General Counsel of the Year in 2021. He earned his Juris Doctorate from Concord.

Conan has facilitated deals literally all over the world, including places where the rule of law is, to put it mildly, weak, Pritikin said. His broad-ranging experience in law, business and the military puts him in a class by himself. I am excited for the opportunity to have him share his experiences.

California-licensed attorneys can receive one general Mandatory Continuing Legal Education credit for attending.

To register, click here.

The webinar can be viewed here.

About Purdue University Global

Purdue University Global delivers personalized online education tailored to the unique needs of adults who have work or life experience beyond the classroom, enabling them to develop essential academic and professional skills with the support and flexibility they need to achieve their career goals. It offers personalized paths for students to earn an associate, bachelors, masters or doctoral degree, based on their work experience, desired pace, military service, previous college credits and other considerations  no matter where they are in their life journey. Purdue University Global is a nonprofit, public university accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. It is affiliated with Purdue Universitys flagship institution, a highly ranked public research university located in West Lafayette, Indiana. Purdue University also operates regional campuses in Fort Wayne and Northwest Indiana, as well as serving science, engineering and technology students at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus. For more information, visit purdueglobal.edu.

About Concord Law School

Concord Law School is part of Purdue University Global, a public, nonprofit school within the respected Purdue University system. Founded in 1998, Concord was the first U.S. law school to offer students a traditional law school program online, including interactive live classes, frequent testing with extensive feedback, and nationally respected faculty members. Offering rigorous, rewarding online degree programs, Concord provides students with a first-rate law school education that is affordable and reflects the needs of todays employers, delivered in a convenient, highly supportive environment. For more information, please visit concordlawschool.edu.

Media Contact: Tom Schott, tschott@purdue.edu

Source: Martin Pritikin
Austin Butler says he lost sleep after taking on the role of rock and roll legend Elvis Presley.

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The 30-year-old actor discussed playing Presley in Baz Luhrmann 's new film Elvis during Monday's episode of Good Morning America.

Butler appeared on GMA with his Elvis co-star Tom Hanks. Elvis is a biographical musical drama that explores Presley's life and career through the eyes of his manager, Col. Tom Parker (Hanks).

"It was the most intimidating thing I've ever done," Butler said of playing Presley. "I honestly didn't sleep for about two years, and I didn't do anything else for that time. That was my life."

Butler also discussed working with Hanks, an Oscar-winning actor known for such films as Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan and The Green Mile.

"I don't know a time in my life when I didn't know who Tom was. He feels like a part of my family because of the amount of times I've seen him on my TV from the time I was born," Butler said.

"Just thinking of the amount of films I've admired -- he's my hero," he added. "Then getting to be in the same room of Tom? He surpassed any idea I had."

Elvis also stars Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh and Olivia DeJonge. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and will open in theaters June 24.

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Butler is known for playing Sebastian Kydd on The Carrie Diaries and Wil Ohmsford on The Shannara Chronicles.
Modern Family alum Jesse Tyler Ferguson, stage legend Patti LuPone and the shows MJ, Six and The Lehman Trilogy won Tony Awards honoring excellence in Broadway in New York Sunday night.

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Ferguson won for Best Featured Role in a Play for Take Me Out and LuPone won Best Featured Role in a Musical for Company.

MJ -- a show about late pop music icon Michael Jackson -- took home the prizes for Best Lighting Design of a Musical, Sound Design of a Musical and Choreography.

The Lehman Trilogy earned the honors for Best Lighting Design of a Play and Best Scenic Design of a Play, and Six scored the prizes for Best Costume Design of a Musical and Best Original Score.

West Side Story Oscar winner Ariana DeBose -- who is also a Hamilton stage alum -- is hosting the gala at Radio City Music Hall.

The show opened with "This Is Your Round of Applause," a rousing tribute to classic Broadway musicals, including Gypsy, Chicago, Sunday in the Park with George, Hamilton, Evita and Bye Bye Birdie.

Jennifer Hudson, Andrew Garfield, Bryan Cranston, Cynthia Erivo, Ruthie Ann Miles, Bernadette Peters are among the presenters confirmed for the event, while the casts of A Strange Loop, Mr. Saturday Night, Company, Girl from the North Country, Paradise Square, MJ, Six will and the 2007 cast of Spring Awakening are set to perform.

Early in the show, Hugh Jackman led the Music Man ensemble in a medley that included "76 Trombones."

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Five-time winner Angela Lansbury is to be presented with the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Students at NewBrook Elementary School, in Newfane, Vt., learn about where their food comes from during their Community Farm and Field Day on Friday, June 10, 2022.
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This map and table shows vaccination rates in Vermont. Bennington County trails the state in a number of age categories, notably among children ages 5-11 and among young and middle-aged adults.
WEST HARTFORD  School officials plan to focus more on mental health support for elementary school students in their spending of nearly $15 million in emergency relief grants.

Assistant Superintendent Andrew Morrow said the town plans to reallocate about $872,000 more into their social, emotional and mental health objectives than previously intended. In all, theyre committing more than $2.3 million of the emergency relief grants to the objective.

The money will help fund five school counselor positions and one student mental health coordinator position to aid an increase in mental health services for elementary school students.

We looked at what were some needs in the buildings that we are observing during COVID, said Paul Vicinus, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. We anticipated but couldnt necessarily get our arms around the depth of what is in and around student dysregulation as it manifests in student behavior and as it manifests with mental health needs.

Vicinus said the five counselors will support elementary school students across the district, with the mental health coordinator overseeing the implementation of those counselors and social workers.

What were looking to do is make a significant investment over the next two years to be able to provide school counselors and trained behavioral specialists directly within our elementary schools, Vicinus said. We had already provided supports within our middle schools and high schools under our initial application, so this was an area we felt we were really seeing some significant need and the earliest possible intervention will serve us the greatest.

In December, a report from Director of Pupil Services Melissa Caballero indicated a rising need in mental health services.

Superintendent Tom Moore said at the recent Board of Education meeting that this isnt necessarily a bad thing.

The counterintuitive nature of numbers going up of referrals, people thinking is a problem, is one of the things we most have to fight with, Moore said. It means people are coming forward. It means that theres somebody they have to trust. And yet those numbers are always used against us and always used against schools.

Moore said that a district showing a small number of referrals doesnt mean theyre clear of mental health issues.

Theyre not finding them, Moore said. As those numbers increase, the general nature is people get alarmed and say look at this increase. But that is a testament to children coming forward, children being found. The time they spend with children is validation of the program because that means someone is seeking out somebody.

Morrow said theyre also working to address ways of easing access to mental health services outside of their schools.

Were seeing students who may be having a need to engage in professional supports outside of the school day who are unable to access that due to...a number of situations, Morrow said. We are working with some various providers and clinics in the area about starting at the high schools to have dedicated space for clinicians to see students who would normally be seen after school at the Bridge or wherever there services would be.

Morrow said this program comes at very little to any cost.

Anything we can do to provide and facilitate access for students and for families is definitely a plus, Morrow said. Thats the idea behind the mental health coordinator, someone who will work with not only the counselors but also the social workers and the various outreach people that we have to make sure that were not leaving anyone behind, to make sure that were not having anyone fall between the cracks.

The district is committing the majority of the relief funds  nearly $9.1 million  to their academic renewal and learning acceleration priority. Other relief funds are being directed to the objectives of family and community connections, educational equity and diversity, staff development and safe and healthy schools.

Were also seeing a bump in our English-language learners, so we wanted to provide additional full-time employee equivalents to make sure we have the most highly qualified support for our English language learners, Vicinus said.

Julio Duarte, the executive director of human resources, said theyve already begun interviewing for the positions. The counselors and coordinator hired will be on a two-year term.

It was heartwarming to see their dedication to the craft, Duarte said about the potential candidates.
The tragic death of Marisol Dumeng  allegedly killed by a boyfriend free on bond for murder and domestic violence charges  is casting a spotlight on a rarely used state law that enables prosecutors to revoke bail.

But States Attorney Joseph Corradino, who oversees the Fairfield County Judicial District, said that while the Dumeng example seems tailor made for bail revocation, the case is more complicated than it appears.

Corradino said on three occasions the victim recanted domestic abuse allegations against her boyfriend, which made it impossible to revoke the murder bond and send him back to jail.

We were never going to have evidence to go in and revoke the (murder) bond, Corradino said.

Bond motions require proof by clear and convincing evidence that establishes the claim, Corradino added. On the second court appearance, she (Dumeng) is already recanting. We didnt have any external collaboration. Thats the problem.

Under state law, bail or bond can be revoked for defendants facing 10 or more years in jail  which includes anyone charged with murder  if prosecutors can show they violated terms of the bond or the defendant is a danger to the community.

Mike Lawlor, a criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven, said the law is rarely invoked.

Its possible the statute has never been used, Lawlor said. Prosecutors will say its not as easy as you think, that we have to put on a case and prove hes a danger.

On May 28, 30-year-old Dumeng was found dead at her Bridgeport home. Glenn Pettway, her boyfriend, was charged with Dumengs murder and a few days later killed himself during a June 2 standoff with Tennessee police.

At the time of Dumengs alleged murder, Pettway was free on a $1 million bond for an unrelated murder charge in 2018.

In January, Pettway was charged with two counts of threatening and harassment after Dumeng complained that he threatened to kill her. Pettway was later charged with larceny for allegedly stealing a doorbell camera from her home and breach of peace, Corradino said. He posted new bonds on those charges.

Meghan Scanlon, president and CEO of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said domestic violence is a far greater problem and more complex than most understand.

This is such a more prevalent issue that people realize and its very much a public health crisis, Scanlon said. We have a hot line that you can call anytime. You dont have to access the resources but I dont want anyone to feel like they are alone because they are not.

Smelled a rat

Corradino said prosecutors had their suspicions about Dumengs attempts to recant her domestic violence allegations against Pettway.

I read the files and I see the recantation, Corradino said. I said we will keep him on the domestic violence docket and keep the protective orders in place so we can keep an eye on him.

During a conversation with Bridgeport police over a disputed sale of a car to Pettway  just 12 hours before Dumeng was killed  Corradino said she admitted being forced by her boyfriend to recant the domestic abuse allegations.

She recants and then admits she is forced to recant, Corradino said. Its 12 hours before she is killed. There is no time for anyone to respond to that. There is no mechanism to get that information to us.

Yvette Velez, Dumengs sister, said she didnt know that her sister recanted any of the domestic violence allegations.

I was not aware of any of that, Velez said, who declined further comment due to grief over her sisters recent funeral.

Velez previously told Hearst Connecticut Media that her younger sister was asking for help before her death and wanted police to protect her from Pettway.

She told the police, What are you guys waiting for, for him to come, shoot and kill me? Velez said. And then hours later, thats exactly what he did.

Corradino stressed that while prosecutors didnt try to revoke Pettways bail, they wanted to continue the domestic abuse cases despite Dumengs recantations.

We smelled a rat, so we were not going to let go of the domestic violence cases, Corradino said.

Scanlon said the dynamic of domestic violence is complicated and victims often fluctuate between standing by allegations and recanting them. She said they also dont always tell family members the whole story.

It's very complicated and lives are forever intertwined, Scanlon said.

That person might be the bread winner, she continued. On some level there is a caring feeling for the offender. Its not necessarily healthy. But its a learned behavior over time; they witness it in other parts of their life.

Seldom used law

Lawlor said the bail revocation law was passed in response to concerns over whether the state Constitution, which establishes that all defendants have a right to post bail, also stipulated that bail could not be revoked.

Under the state Constitution, everyone is entitled to bail, Lawlor said.

The solution was a 1990s law that allowed revocation of bail for defendants facing 10 years or more in jail, Lawlor said.

Prosecutors must file a motion for a hearing and prove to a judge that the defendant violated bail conditions or is a danger to the community or a member of the community.

In 2014, New Jersey confronted a similar question about its state Constitution and voters ultimately agreed to amend the document so courts can deny bail for certain offenses and revoke it for others, Lawlor said.

One remedy is to change the state Constitution like New Jersey, Lawlor said.

Corradino said the Connecticut revocation law is rarely used, partly because most defendants are unable to post bond, and also because its difficult to prevail during a bail revocation hearing.

Ive been in this office 24 years and I remember doing one because we felt the guy was going to abscond, Corradino said. Bond is favored because (defendants) are innocent until proven guilty.

Scanlon said advocates have been pushing lawmakers to enact a hold provision that allows the courts to keep an offender in jail for 24 or 48 hours before offering bail  a cooling off period, so to speak.

Its not that you want to deny bail but is it worth having a 24 or 48 hour period where you hold on that? Scanlon said.

bcummings@ctpost.com
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TORRINGTON  Kellys Crusaders raises thousands for research and a cure for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Saturday on the Sue Grwossman Still River Greenway.

The group included friends and family members of Kelly Considine of Torrington, who was diagnosed with CRPS after a sports-related injury. According to the Mayo Clinic, CRPS usually affects an arm or leg, and typically develops after a injury, a surgery, a stroke or heart attack. The pain, according to the clinic, is out of proportion to the severity of the injury.

Now in her 30s, Considine is unable to walk or stand and suffers from chronic, debilitating pain. Since she was diagnosed, she has put her energy into raising awareness about the disorder, hoping for a cure.

Its so amazing to have all these people here, Considine said, as she handed out commemorative T-shirts emblazoned with Kellys Crusaders.

Everyone who signed up to walk made a financial pledge to the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association, located in Milford.

Considine also has visited Capitol Hill in Hartford during Rare Disease Week to speak with lawmakers and others about her work. She shared her experience, and told them many people diagnosed with the condition commit suicide because of the pain.

We talked about how people who are in pain like that, 24/7; I was told that 74 percent of those people are at risk of committing suicide, or have contemplated it, during a peak pain period, she said. In speaking with legislators and senators, I was asking for support for the Patients and Communities Act, which provides more support to chronic pain patients and allows them to receive pain medication, at the physicians discretion. We dont want people to end up in those extremely painful situations, and think theres nothing they can do.

She also has advocated for people with disabilities with U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, and spoke at a press conference with her and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

The city of Torrington has recognized November as CRPS Awareness Month, naming Nov. 2 as Color the World Orange Day, which occurs on the first Monday of November every year to spread awareness, she said.
Hearst Connecticut Media file photo / Contributed Photo

STRATFORD  Police are investigating a shooting that reportedly took place at a Walgreens on Sunday afternoon, officials said.

Officers were dispatched to the Barnum Avenue pharmacy around 3:18 p.m. after gunfire erupted at the store, according to Capt. Frank A. Eannotti, a Stratford Police Department spokesperson.
Thousands of exiled Hongkongers and allies marked the 3rd anniversary of the 2019 Hong Kong protest movement in cities around the world at the weekend, with a large crowd gathering on Parliament Square in London to mark the first anniversary of mass public protests on , 2019.



Some 4,000 protesters gathered in London gathered at Marble Arch, marching to Parliament Square to chant slogans including "Free Hong Kong! Revolution now!", which has been banned under a draconian national security law in Hong Kong.



Exiled former pro-democracy lawmaker Nathan Law said people's goals weren't all the same, but that Hongkongers in exile would still work together.



"Some people want an armed revolution, the liberation of Hong Kong, and independence for Hong Kong," Law said. "We have also heard how we might use culture to change a society."



"We imagine different paths to reach the goal, but we all share the same values," he said. "We are diverse, we don't have only one voice, and we don't have only one way to express what we want."



"This diversity can be complementary, and coexist without any of us being subordinate to each other or telling each other what to do, but with the community responding to everyone when needed," he said.



In Liverpool, drone footage showed a line of dozens of people along a busy shopping street, dressed in the black of the 2019 protest movement, and carrying the yellow umbrellas of the democracy movement.



At the London rally, participants were asked to remember the 10,277 people arrested and the 2,800 prosecuted under the national security law, which was imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from , 2020, ushering in an ongoing crackdown on peaceful political opposition and public dissent.



The rally marked the mass protest that blockaded Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) on , preventing lawmakers from getting into the chamber to pass a hugely unpopular legal amendment that would have allowed the extradition of alleged criminal suspects to mainland China.



The protest was the first of many to be quelled that year by widespread police violence that saw the firing of tear gas and rubber bullets on an unarmed and peaceful crowd, many of whom were unable to flee, as well as mass arrests and physical beatings of mostly young people.



Teargas memories

A young man who was there at the time, and who now lives in the U.K., said he still has vivid memories of the day.



"When I got there, all I could smell was the harsh and pungent smell of tear gas," the man, who gave only the nickname Karson, told RFA at the London rally. "The people were surrounded by [police firing] tear gas, and there was no way for us to leave."



"I remember the police saying at the time that they wanted the crowd to disperse, but they also tear gassed protests that had [police approval], and ... prevented people from leaving," he said. "That sort of action in a crowded place caused people to trample each other."



Karson, who is in the difficult process of applying for political asylum, said others shouldn't be discouraged, as there are organizations set up to help asylum-seekers from Hong Kong.



A Hongkonger who arrived in the U.K. with his family over a year ago, who gave only the surname Chan, was also in Parliament Square, joining in with a mass rendition of the Les Miserables hit "Do You Hear The People Sing?", which was often sung during the 2019 protests.



Chan said his family had agreed the night before that they should all attend to support Hong Kong, now that they live overseas.



"I want to tell our brothers and sisters in Hong Kong prisons that we have not forgotten you or given up on you," Chan told RFA. "We are still very worried about you and care about you, and hope you are safe and well."



Mrs Chan said she is keen not to forget the protest movement, and the subsequent crackdown imposed by Beijing.



"I felt that I needed to keep the momentum going, so that I don't forget what happened," she said. "This isn't over, and I want to see it through."



The Chans' 11-year-old daughter Kimmy said she is in the process of explaining to her classmates what has befallen Hong Kong in recent years.



"I will tell them the story of the Hong Kong people, from the Umbrella Revolution [of 2014] to the present and try to take the fight to the international front," Kimmy said. "Maybe, if more people know about it, Hong Kong can be restored [to the way it was], I hope."



Speak up when being bullied

An older woman, also surnamed Chan, said she had come to the rally after living in the U.K. for decades.



"I think it's very important to deliver on one's promises and not just to talk big," she said. "As you can see from my slogan, we just want to get back what we deserve: it's that simple."



"I think if people are bullying you, and you are unhappy about it, you have to speak up."



Similar rallies were held across the U.K. on , including Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham.



Manchester police took away a man in a red shirt who started playing the Chinese national anthem during the rally in the city.



Hongkongers and their supporters also rallied on the democratic island of Taiwan.



Some 700 people set off from Elephant Park in Taipei, many of them wearing black clothing and shouting 2019 protest slogans, as well as slogans calling on the authorities to defend Taiwan against CCP infiltration and aggression.



"There's nothing that people in Hong Kong can do right now [because of the national security crackdown], so we who are overseas should do a bit more," a protester surnamed Chan told RFA. "It's important to keep these memories going now that we are in a place of relative safety."



Another protester surnamed Chow said he had come along with his wife and two-year-old daughter.



"We wanted her to experience this ... if there are demonstrations, we will do our best to be there," Chow said. "You can't tamper with history, or the truth."



"Those who have the opportunity must exercise this precious freedom of speech ... so that everything that Hongkongers have sacrificed won't be forgotten," he said.



Sang Pu, who heads the Taiwan Hong Kong Association, said such protests are important to keep up morale in exile, and that democratic Taiwan was supportive of them.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has signed a directive allowing 'non-war' uses of the military, prompting concerns that Beijing may be gearing up to invade the democratic island of Taiwan under the guise of a "special operation" not classified as war.



While Taiwan has never been governed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), nor formed part of the People's Republic of China, and its 23 million people have no wish to give up their sovereignty or democratic way of life, Beijing insists the island is part of its territory.



Xi signed an order which takes effect , state media reported, without printing the the order in full.



"It mainly systematically regulates basic principles, organization and command, types of operations, operational support, and political work, and their implementation by the troops," state news agency Xinhua said in a in brief report on .



"[It] provides a legal basis for non-war military operation," it said.



Among the six-chapter document's stated aims are "maintaining national sovereignty ... regional stability and regulating the organization and implementation of non-war military operations," it said.



The report came after Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky called for a diplomatic solution to the threat of military action in the Taiwan Strait.



Speaking via video link at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore, Zelensky used Ukraine as an example, calling on the world to "always support any preventive action," and called for diplomatic solutions to prevent war.



Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida warned on that "Ukraine may be East Asia ,"



Soldiers stand on deck of the ambitious transport dock Yimen Shan of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy as it participates in a naval parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of China's PLA Navy in the sea near Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong province, April 23, 2019. Credit: AFP Changing attitudes after Ukraine

Beijing-based political commentator Wu Qiang said Zelenskyy appears to be aligning himself with U.S. policy goals in the Asia-Pacific.



"All countries are making these comparisons, but Zelenskyy is making a point of making them," Wu said. "I believe he is reciprocating [in return for U.S. support]; he is supporting the strategic goals of the United States in the Indo-Pacific region."



"During the past few months, U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have continued to emphasize that the long-term competitor of the U.S. in future will be China," he said.



He said Zelenskyy's comments are also representative of a change of attitude in Eastern Europe and the EU to Taiwan, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.



"It's more appropriate for him to represent this change in the EU's position," Wu said of Zelenskyy.



Chen Chi-chieh, associate professor of political science at Taiwan's National Yat-Sen University, said Zelenskyy has been fairly careful to avoid provoking Beijing, however.



"He is smart enough not to want to provoke China, so he can't speak out very clearly on the Taiwan question, so he had to answer it in a subtle way," Chen told RFA.



He said there are many areas in which Ukraine relies on Chinese assistance, and will likely rely on it for post-war reconstruction.



"Ukraine's relationship with Taiwan isn't that close, so he doesn't need to sacrifice the relationship between Ukraine and China to support Taiwan, at least not very clearly," Chen said.



Austin also made it clear that the United States is still committed to maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait, as well as its commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act, which requires Washington to help Taiwan to defend itself.



The war in Ukraine featured prominently during sessions at the Shangri-La Dialogue.



U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told participants that the invasion of Ukraine "indefensible," and "a preview of a possible world of chaos and turmoil."



Chinas Defense Minister Wei Fenghe delivered scathing remarks about the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy in a speech in Singapore on , calling it an attempt to form a clique to contain China.



In his speech on "Chinas vision for regional order" at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum he hit back at Austins remarks a day earlier, saying China firmly rejects Americas accusations and threats.



Wei said the Indo-Pacific strategy was "an attempt to build an exclusive small group to hijack countries in our region to target one specific country  China.



It is a strategy to create conflict and confrontation to contain and encircle others, said the minister, who is also a general in Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA).



Chen said Wei is trying to prevent the U.S. from being too good an ally to Taiwan.



"[Beijing] wants to deter Taiwan from getting too close to the United States, and also hopes that the United States will stop selling arms to Taiwan, especially advanced weaponry," Chen said.



"That's why they are using such harsh words."



But Wu said Wei doesn't hold a very powerful position in the Chinese military establishment.



"Wei Fenghe is not even a member of the CCP's Politburo, but plays quite a secondary role," Wu said, adding that bilateral dialogue between Wei and Austin at the Shangri-La Dialogue could yield little of substance because it wasn't a meeting of equals or counterparts.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Bui Van Tuan and Trinh Van Hai were serving time for resisting officers during a raid of their community.

A villager pushes her electric bike on a road partially blocked by rocks, wood and debris amid a showdown between farmers and police at Dong Tam on the outskirts of Vietnam's capital Hanoi, April 20, 2017.

Two villagers who were jailed for resisting officials on duty during a deadly January 2020 police raid over a tense land dispute in northern Vietnam completed their nearly 30-month sentences and were released on June 9, one of the freed men said Monday.

Bui Van Tuan and Trinh Van Hai were part of an initial group of eight residents of Hoanh hamlet in Dong Tam commune, about 25 miles south of Vietnams capital Hanoi who were arrested following a deadly clash between residents and police on Jan. 9, 2020 that left three officers and the village elder dead.

On that day, about 3,000 officers intervened in a long-running dispute between villagers and developers over construction of a nearby military airport on nearly 150 acres of agricultural land they used.

Police raided the homes of the residents, including that of village elder Le Dinh Kinh, shooting dead the octogenarian in his bedroom during the early morning attack.

Kinhs sons, Le Dinh Chuc and Le Dinh Cong, were sentenced to death on Sept. 14, 2020, in connection with the deaths of three police officers who were killed in the clash.

After his release, Tuan told RFA on Monday that his health was fine and he had not been treated badly in prison.

Tuan also said that after his unsuccessful appeal trial, authorities sent him to Thanh Phong Detention Center in Thanh Hoa province, where he performed forced labor.

Hai, who was held at Detention Center No. 6 in Thanh Chuong district, Nghe An province, was released on the same day, but RFA could not reach his relatives for comment.

Four other villagers are serving jail terms of 12 years to life on murder charges, while eight others are serving prison terms of 30 months to five years for resisting officers on official duty.

Another 15 people were also charged with resisting officers, but received probation.

Following the deadly clash, the My Duc district government built a fence around the disputed 59 hectares (146 acres) of land in Dong Senh, and the military built a high wall separating its land from the disputed land, a villager said at that time.

International organizations have called on the Vietnamese government to conduct an independent and transparent investigation of the Dong Tam incident.

In an earlier flare-up of the Dong Tam dispute, farmers detained 38 police officers and local officials during a weeklong standoff in April 2017.

Three months later, the Hanoi Inspectorate rejected the farmers claims that 47 hectares (116 acres) of their farmland was seized for the military-run Viettel Group  Vietnams largest mobile phone operator  without adequate compensation.

Though all land in Vietnam is owned by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint with residents, who have accused the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate developments and of paying insufficient compensation for their losses.

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
The United States has announced additional rounds of weapons for Ukraine valued at around $1 billion as Ukraine presses the West to deliver more military aid in the face of a Russian offensive in the eastern Donbas region.

U.S. President Joe Biden said he informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the United States would provide the assistance, including additional artillery and coastal-defense weapons, as well as ammunition for artillery and advanced rocket systems.

"We also remain committed to supporting the Ukrainian people whose lives have been ripped apart by this war," Biden said in a statement, saying that he informed Zelenskiy about the additional aid during a phone call earlier on June 15.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

He said he was also announcing an additional $225 million in humanitarian assistance to people in Ukraine. The money is to be used to supply safe drinking water, medical supplies, food, shelter, and cash for families to purchase essential items.

The latest weapons packages include 18 howitzers, 36,000 rounds of ammunition for them, two Harpoon coastal-defense systems, artillery rockets, secure radios, thousands of night-vision devices, and funding for training, the Pentagon said.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he had talked to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to thank him for the "crucial military assistance" from the United States.

He said on Twitter that he "emphasized that we urgently need more heavy weapons delivered more regularly."

Zelenskiy said he was grateful for the new American arms package.



"The United States announced new strengthening of our defense, a new $1 billion support package," Zelenskiy said in his nightly address. "I am grateful for this support. It is especially important for our defense in (the eastern region of) Donbas."



Kyiv has been pleading for more Western weapons to help it counter Russia's invasion.



"Every day I fight for Ukraine to get the necessary weapons and equipment," Zelenskiy said. "But courage, wisdom and tactical skills cannot be imported. And our heroes have those."



Zelenskiy said he also held a phone conversation with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.



The U.K. leader said on Twitter that London supports Kyiv "until its eventual victory."



The Group of Seven (G7) and NATO summits later this month "will be an opportunity to demonstrate the West's unity and resolve to support Ukraine in the long-term," Johnson said.



In Brussels, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with allies to discuss support for Ukraine.

At the start of the meeting, Austin said the West must step up weapons deliveries and "push ourselves even harder to ensure that Ukraine can defend itself, its citizens, and its territory."

Austin expressed gratitude for the military aid that partners already had shipped or pledged but cautioned that "we can't afford to let up and we can't lose steam. The stakes are too high."

The meeting of around 50 allies hosted by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg comes with Kyiv imploring the West to send more weapons to help fend off Russia's onslaught in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine delivered a message to the meeting on behalf of its embattled troops.

"Brussels, we are waiting for a decision," said Mykhaylo Podolyak, a senior aide to Zelenskiy, warning that Ukraine was outgunned by 10 to one.

"Daily, I receive a message from the defenders: 'We are holding on, just say: when to expect the weapons?'" he said.

Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on June 14 that Ukraines military had received only around 10 percent of the Western weapons it had requested.

"No matter how much effort Ukraine makes, no matter how professional our army, without the help of Western partners we will not be able to win this war," Malyar said.

She said Ukraine used 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, while Russia uses 10 times more.

Stoltenberg warned it would take time to get the latest hardware into service with trained Ukrainian troops.

"Ukraine is really in a very critical situation and therefore, it's an urgent need to step up," Stoltenberg told journalists ahead of the gathering of NATO ministers.

Stoltenberg said that the allies had moved from sending older equipment to delivering "more long-range, more advanced air-defense systems, more advanced artillery, more heavy weapons."

"So it is also a fact that when we now are actually starting the transition from Soviet-era weapons to more modern NATO weapons there will also be some time needed to just make the Ukrainians ready to use and operate these systems," he said.

Stoltenberg said NATO leaders at a summit in Madrid later this month should agree a "comprehensive assistance package" for Ukraine to help switch its forces to NATO-standard weapons over the longer term.

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht announced after the meeting that Germany will provide Ukraine with three MARS II multiple-rocket launchers. Germany is also to provide missiles for the launcher, train Ukrainian soldiers in operating the systems, and provide replacement parts, Lambrecht said.

While the Western allies debate how best to help Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping assured Russian President Vladimir Putin of Beijing's support for Moscow.

China has refused to condemn Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and has been accused of providing diplomatic cover for Russia by criticizing Western sanctions and arms deliveries to Kyiv.

State media reported that China was "willing to continue to offer mutual support [to Russia] on issues concerning core interests and major concerns such as sovereignty and security."

The Kremlin said Xi and Putin had agreed during a phone call to ramp up economic cooperation in the face of "unlawful" Western sanctions.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
A court in Iran has sentenced 26 followers of the Baha'i faith to prison terms ranging from two to five years, as well as other measures, on charges of "conspiracy to disrupt internal and external security" in what the religion's leaders say is another sign of the persecution they face.

According to reports received by Radio Farda, the verdict issued by the Revolutionary Court of the southern city of Shiraz is related to a series of arrests of Baha'is in Shiraz between July 2016 and December 2016.

Several unspecified problems in the case had drawn the proceedings out for six years.

Five men and six women were handed five-year prison sentences, and will also be subject to various travel restrictions once they are free.

In addition, nine women and six men received two-year prison sentences, as well as travel restrictions upon release.



The Baha'i International Community has repeatedly rejected the charges, calling them completely "baseless" and prompted solely because of their religious beliefs and activities.



Baha'is -- who number some 300,000 in Iran and have an estimated 5 million followers worldwide -- say they face systematic persecution in Iran, where their faith is not officially recognized in the constitution.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has on several occasions called the Baha'i faith a cult and in a religious fatwa issued in 2018 forbade contact, including business dealings, with followers of the faith.



Since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, hundreds of Baha'is have been arrested and jailed for their beliefs. At least 200 have been executed or were arrested and never heard from again.



Thousands more have been banned from receiving higher education or had their property confiscated, while vandals often desecrate Baha'i cemeteries.

Writing and reporting by Ardeshir Tayebi
Oil-tanker-tracking companies estimate that Iran's oil and natural gas exports have halved due to competition with Russia in Asian markets, as most countries in the West shun Moscow over its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

The data company Kepler, which also provides tanker tracking services, told Radio Farda on June 13 that preliminary estimates showed that Iran's crude oil and gas condensate loaded in May was about 400,000 barrels per day, compared with 820,000 barrels in April and 908,000 barrels in March.

Following Russia's military invasion of Ukraine in late February, Russian oil was hit with sanctions by Western countries.

To compensate for the drop in demand from traditional markets, Moscow has sought to increase exports to Asia by discounting its crude by about $30 per barrel in Asian markets, which is $10 per barrel more than Iran's discount to its Asian customers, especially China, according to Reuters.



Meanwhile, Iranian oil exports have waned, with about 40 million barrels of Iranian oil -- almost half the crude loaded by Iran in March and April -- stranded on tankers waiting for customers.



A Kepler official told Radio Farda that about 40 million barrels of Iranian oil had been left without a buyer in Asian waters last month as well. Estimates also show that Iran's oil load this month is half that seen in March and April.



The Kepler official added that Iran's exports of oil products such as diesel, Mazut, and gasoline, have not changed from the beginning of January to May this year, and Iran has exported an average of about 420,000 barrels of oil derivatives per day.



The U.S.-based United Against Nuclear Iran nonprofit advocacy group recently reported that Iran's total oil exports, including products, reached 933,000 barrels per day last month, down one-third from March.



According to the report, the volume of exports of oil derivatives in Iran remains stable, which means that Iran's exports of crude oil and gas condensate in May halved compared to last March.



Last month, an average of 630,000 barrels of Iranian oil and its derivatives went to China, 111,000 barrels to Syria, less than 40,000 barrels to the United Arab Emirates, while the rest ended up at unknown destinations.

Writing and reporting by Ardeshir Tayebi
The regional governor of the Mykolayiv region, near the front lines in the country's south, has called for immediate international military assistance. "Russia's army is more powerful, they have a lot of artillery and ammo. For now, this is a war of artillery...and we are out of ammo," Governor Vitaliy Kim said. "The help of Europe and America is very, very important."

As Russian forces advance deeper into the Donbas region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy renewed his call for Western countries to speed up deliveries of weapons. Ukrainian troops "are doing everything to stop the offensive, as much as they possibly can, as long as there are enough heavy weapons, modern artillery -- all that we have asked for and continue to ask for from our partners, he said.
President Vladimir Putin likened himself to Peter the Great and suggested that grabbing land is the main motive for his war against Ukraine. How might this affect the course of the conflict -- and how crucial are the actions of the West? Kadri Liik, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, joins host Steve Gutterman to discuss.
When Russian security agents knocked on his door three weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, Dmitry Domovetskikh knew it was time to flee the country.

And so began a multiweek odyssey that sent the 38-year-old electrical engineer from his home in the southern Russian city of Orenburg, wading in predawn darkness through swamps and chest-high ditchwater across the Belarusian border, to safety in Lithuania.

"Never have the opinions of people in our country changed so drastically, it seems," Domovetskikh said in a June 6 interview with RFE/RL's Idel Realities.

In Orenburg, Domovetskikh had been employed as a design engineer for more than eight years at the Orion Design Bureau, an affiliate of a major defense contractor, VPK NPO Mashinostroyenia. Among other things, the plant manufactures cruise missiles for the Russian military.

Speaking via Zoom from a refugee camp outside of Vilnius, Domovetskikh said he had been having misgivings about his work, helping to manufacture weapons, for more than year. He was studying to be a psychologist, and actively considering changing jobs, when President Vladimir Putin announced Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

"I was already at work," he said. "I went out to get my phone out of the [security] box to look at the news, and it was already published there that there were rocket attacks on Kharkiv. I had no words. I went to my colleagues and told one of my comrades that a real war was going on there."

His colleagues, he said, reacted with a mix of impassivity and, in some cases, excitement. "This shocked me separately. Knowing that people have children, they talked about high-precision strikes," he said.

On March 3, he handed in a letter of resignation. He and his wife, Vlada, a clinical psychologist, considered remaining in Orenburg, or possibly moving to St. Petersburg.

Under long-standing national security rules, his work in a defense factory raised the prospect that he might not be allowed to leave Russia; he had previously been barred from traveling abroad due to some prior work with classified materials. At the time of his resignation, however, the rules did not apply to him, he said.

On March 18, about two weeks after his work formally ended, officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) -- Russia's main domestic intelligence agency -- arrived at his apartment with a search warrant. The probable cause on the warrant was "disclosure of state secrets."

During the search, which lasted between three and four hours, nothing was seized; his phones, computer, photographs were reviewed by the officers, he said. They asked him about his contacts abroad.

Three days later, on March 21, he received a call from his former employer, summoning him to review new restrictions that barred him from traveling abroad for another five years, he said.

He didn't go.

He and his wife decided to leave the country.

"My dad is 81 years old, but he understood everything even earlier," he said. "When I explained everything directly to him, everything was already clear to him. He and my mom accepted it, they only worried about us."

Escape To Minsk

Assuming that flying abroad from Moscow would be risky, Domovetskikh and his wife decided it would be easier to leave via Belarus, which Russian citizens can enter visa-free.

On the 21-hour taxi ride to Moscow, he found a minibus service that would take them from the Russian capital to Minsk, where they could then fly to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, home to a growing number of Russian expatriates who have fled their home country.

After the eight-hour drive to the Minsk airport, they had their passports stamped for exit by Belarusian border control and boarded a plane to Tbilisi -- but the flight was postponed for a day due to mechanical malfunction.

The following day, they passed through border control again; he was stopped, his wife was not. Domovetskikh said a senior border-guard officer told him they were seizing his passport because it had been canceled by the Russian authorities.

While his wife returned to Orenburg, Domovetskikh remained in Minsk. For three weeks, he researched how to get to the border with Lithuania.

"I had a small backpack with a random set of things from Orenburg," he said. "I was wearing a fairly warm winter jacket, jeans, winter shoes and two sweaters; this helped me because it was cold at night. I bought chocolate bars with me, took some water, my phone, and copies of documents."

"The phone was useful to me when I reached the swamp; to understand if I was moving in the right direction," he said. "But you could also guess from the sun."

He said he arrived in midafternoon in a Belarusian border village whose name he asked RFE/RL not to reveal, fearing that would make it difficult for others to make similar journeys.

In the forest outside the village, he lay down and hid until night. Then, after hearing the sound of a two-way radio, fearing being caught by border guards, he moved slowly through an open space, to bypass a large swamp.

"I walked extremely slowly, crouching, lying down," he said. "It took me an hour and a half to go only 600 meters."

Sometime around 3 a.m., he walked into back into the Belarusian village pretending to be a local resident. He said he then walked another 6 kilometers to reach the border with Lithuania. "There, instead of wire fencing, in swampy places, they had dug a rather deep and wide ditch, filled with water. It was a water barrier," he said. "A fence with barbed wire wasn't necessary."

He said he took his clothes and waded through the chest-high water and crossed into Lithuania.

'Television Cliches'

He said the nearest Lithuanian village, Senove, was about 10 minutes further. He found a villager who spoke Russian, and contacted local border-guard authorities. "I spent 16 hours in all crossing the border," he said.

After ending up for several days at a camp for refugees -- other residents included people from the Middle East and Afghanistan -- he was processed and interviewed, then allowed to leave, and seek work, while his asylum request was pending.

Domovetskikh said he now spends his days doing odd construction jobs, mainly demolition. His wife, meanwhile, left Russia for Georgia, and he plans on having her join him in Lithuania.

"My uncle, sitting in Russia, had told me how Russians are hated in the Baltic countries," Domovetskikh said. "I told him how they really treat Russians here: 'Now I am here and I can tell you more accurately.' It wasn't really an argument -- he smiled, and we continued talking about something else mundane. It's just a habit to relay television cliches as if they were part of reality, a real picture of the world."

The Russian government "has traumatized people for generations, and the current people my age have grown from those who were traumatized by the Soviet Union," he said. "Everyone has a desire to join the strong, that is, to be close to those who are stronger and who are more confident, more aggressive. Standing on the opposite side [of the issue] is somehow unpopular, you are an outcast if you argue with the authorities."

Russia, he said, "pretends to be strong. But it really shows how reckless it is, that it is generally ready for anything, ready to easily destroy, to completely, indiscriminately destroy people in another country, ready to destroy its own citizens, ready to brandish a nuclear club."

"Is there something now that could change it back?" he said. "I don't think so. I just can't fathom how it would be possible for people's minds to change so quickly, at the push of a button, so that veryone sees the light."

Written by Mike Eckel based on reporting by RFE/RL's Idel.Realties
If youre interested in cleaning up your hair care routine, theres no better place to start than with your shampoo.
Rwanda accuse l'Onu de parti-pris

Le Rwanda a estime lundi que la mission de l'ONU en Republique democratique du Congo (Monusco) "prend parti" pour Kinshasa, alors que les tensions vont croissant entre les deux pays qui s'accusent d'attaques transfrontalieres et de soutenir des groupes armes.





Dans un communique samedi appelant "tous les groupes armes a cesser immediatement toute forme de violence" dans l'est de la RDC, l'ONU a "reaffirm(e) son ferme attachement a la souverainete, a l'independance, a l'unite et a l'integrite territoriale de la RDC et condamn(e) l'utilisation de groupes armes agissant par procuration".





Repondant a un tweet du porte-parole de l'ONU Stephane Dujarric reprenant ces declarations, la porte-parole du gouvernement rwandais Yolande Makolo a declare lundi que "la souverainete de tous les pays est egale, que ce soit le Rwanda ou la RDC".





"Lorsque la RDC bombarde le territoire rwandais sans provocation, c'est une affaire grave qui a des consequences, et cela doit cesser", poursuit-elle, avant de s'en prendre a la mission de l'ONU en RDC, qui compte notamment 14.100 Casques bleus.





"La force de l'ONU, la Monusco, ne peut pas faire partie de cette agression ou rester les bras croises comme cela a ete le cas, sinon elle devient complice. (...) En prenant parti dans ce conflit, la Monusco a contribue de maniere significative a l'intransigeance du gouvernement de la RDC dans les bombardements transfrontaliers du territoire rwandais", ajoute-t-elle.





Depuis fin mai, l'est de la RDC est le theatre de violents combats entre l'armee congolaise (les FARDC) et le groupe rebelle du M23. Le gouvernement de Kinshasa accuse son voisin rwandais de soutenir ce groupe, principalement compose de Tutsis congolais, et d'avoir deploye 500 soldats sur son sol.





Kigali dement et affirme que la RDC soutient un autre groupe arme, les rebelles hutu rwandais des Forces democratiques de liberation du Rwanda (FDLR).





Ces dernieres semaines, les deux pays n'ont cesse de s'accuser de bombardements transfrontaliers.





Vendredi soir, apres que l'armee rwandaise a affirme que son voisin avait tire des roquettes sur son sol, cette derniere a accuse les forces rwandaises d'avoir bombarde une ecole en territoire congolais, tuant deux enfants, dans ce qu'elle qualifie de "crime de guerre" et "crime contre l'humanite".





Contactee par l'AFP, Yolande Makolo a rejete lundi ces accusations, qualifiees de "fausses et dangereuses".





"Malgre les provocations repetees des FARDC-FDLR, le Rwanda n'a pas riposte. Il n'y a pas eu de bombardements du Rwanda vers la RDC, les combats en cours la-bas restent une affaire interne", a-t-elle ecrit dans un message a l'AFP.





Les relations entre la RDC et le Rwanda sont tendues depuis l'arrivee massive dans l'est de la RDC de Hutus rwandais accuses d'avoir massacre des Tutsis lors du genocide rwandais de 1994.




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A Millbrae City Council member enjoying a Saturday afternoon walk with his family near San Franciscos Cliff House said he suffered a head gash and neck injury when assailants flung a concrete block down at him.

We went out to Lands End for a little family hiking; its a beautiful place, Anders Fung said in an interview Sunday evening. Then this big concrete block landed on my head and I instantly fell to the ground.

The attack occurred as Fung and his wife and two children were heading down a steep trail to the ruins of Sutro Baths at Lands End. The injuries included a two-inch gash on the top of his head.

At first the councilman thought it was an accident, but other smaller objects followed. His wife saw what Fung in a Facebook post described as two young men in hoodies.

When my family confronted the perpetrators demanding them to stop, one of them gave my family an obscene hand gesture, Fung wrote.

They then ran off. Fung said he had no doubt the assault was racially-motivated.

After the family recounted details of the assault to U.S. Park Police Fung was taken by San Francisco fire fighters to the emergency room of California Pacific Medical Center. In addition the head injury, which doctors closed with a half-dozen metal stitches, Fung wrote that his injuries included a cervical disc herniation around my neck.

Provided by Anders Fung/

He was discharged early Sunday morning and returned home to Millbrae, the city that elected him in 2020 as the councils first Chinese immigrant.

A Sunday statement from a San Francisco police spokesperson said the department is aware of this incident, but referred questions to U.S. Park Police because Lands End is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Park Police on Monday told The Chronicle that officers responded at about 5 p.m. Sunday to the area of the Sutro Baths for a report of an assault. Officers met with the victim, but a search of the area did not locate any suspects, authorities said in an email.

Anyone with information was asked to contact the USPP Criminal Investigation Unit at 415-561-5151 or email SFFO_CIU@nps.gov.

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.

Fung said he is convinced the unprovoked assault was tied to his ethnicity.

When my wife called out, the response was this hateful obscene gesture, he said Sunday. Thats when I realized this is not an accident, this is an attack.

Attacks on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders increased at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and have continued at high levels. San Francisco alone saw 60 reported hate crimes against Asians and Asian-owned businesses last year, representing a 567% increase between 2020 and 2021, according to police data.

In posting his Facebook account of the assault, including photographs, Fung said he wanted to underscore the hatred that continues to be aimed at Asian Americans.

I know Ill recover, but what can we do to make sure that attacks like this dont continue? he asked. Being a victim is not a shame.

An earlier online version of this story referred to the name of the hospital incorrectly.

John King is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com
The first COVID shots for kids under 5 are expected to arrive within days in the Bay Area, but initial shipments wont be enough for all of them yet. Despite a growing number of rebound COVID symptoms among people taking the antiviral pill Paxlovid, Bay Area experts retain confidence in the drug.

Latest updates:

Wachter says wife is not great 5 weeks into whats likely long COVID

Dr. Bob Wachter, UCSFs chair of medicine, says his wife, Katie Hafner, is suffering brain fog and other long COVID symptoms five weeks after getting infected with the coronavirus. Providing his Twitter followers with an update on Hafners condition after her positive test in May, Wachter said in a lengthy thread that 5 weeks post-infection, Katie has pretty bad fatigue, some brain fog, & periodic headaches. Read the full story about Wachter's wife and his insights on long COVID.

People who refuse to mask up in Philippines can be arrested

Philippine officials warned Monday that people can face arrest if they defy a presidential order to wear face masks in public to protect against the coronavirus even in a province where the governor has declared they are optional. Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia of central Cebu province insisted Monday that her decision to allow people to decide whether to wear masks in public in her province has legal grounds because provincial officials can decide on health issues. But Interior Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III said the country remains under a national public health emergency despite the easing of the outbreak, and open defiance of presidnetial mask orders could lead to arrests.

California surpasses 91,000 COVID deaths

More than 91,000 Californians have lost their lives to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to state data released Friday. The latest milestone comes nearly a month to the day after the state topped 90,000 deaths. There have been about 8,500 confirmed COVID deaths in the Bay Area. As the nation's most populous state, California's virus death rate per 100,000 residents remains among the lowest in the country. The state is averaging about 14 new deaths a day.

Many baby formula plants missed inspections due to COVID

The three biggest baby formula manufacturers in the nation missed plant inspections by U.S. regulators in the first pandemic year, according to federal records reviewed by The Associated Press. The inspections historically have been annual. When they finally did get inside an Abbott Nutrition formula plant in Mihigan after a two-year gap, inspectors found standing water and lax sanitation procedures. But inspectors offered only voluntary suggestions for fixing the problems, and issued no formal warning. As COVID-19 swept the nation in early 2020, the Food and Drug Administration pulled most of its safety inspectors from the field, skipping thousands of routine plant inspections.

HHS Secretary Becerra tests positive for coronavirus:

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra has tested positive for the coronavirus, his office said Monday. Becerra, who is vaccinated and boosted, tested positive Monday morning in Sacramento and is experiencing mild symptoms. He will continue to work, in isolation, a spokeswoman for the health agency said. Becerra has not been a close contact of President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines as being less than 6 feet away from an infected person for at least 15 minutes within a 24-hour period.

No satisfaction for Mick Jagger -- he tests positive

The Rolling Stones postponed their concert in Amsterdam on Monday just hours before it was to begin after frontman Mick Jagger, 78, tested positive for the coronavirus. I have unfortunately just tested positive for COVID, Jagger tweeted. We aim to reschedule the date ASAP and get back as soon as we can. Thank you for all your patience and understanding. The Rock N Roll Hall of Fame band is touring Europe to mark its 60th anniversary. Read the full story about Jagger's COVID infection.

Canadian prime minister tests positive after meeting with Biden, Newsom

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says hes tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time  just days after he met in person with President Biden. Ive tested positive for COVID-19. Ill be following public health guidelines and isolating, he said in a tweet Monday. I feel okay, but thats because I got my shots. So, if you havent, get vaccinated - and if you can, get boosted. Lets protect our healthcare system, each other, and ourselves. Trudeau also met with Gov. Gavin Newsom while in California for the Americas hemispheric summit in Los Angeles.

Arizona governor infected with virus

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, has tested positive for COVID-19 and wont attend a planned political event Monday about border issues with former Vice President Mike Pence, his spokesman said. Ducey is asymptomatic and feels well, spokesman C.J. Karamargin said.

Bay Area COVID cases jump 25% in a week after a brief dip

Coronavirus cases are rising again in the Bay Area after a brief reprieve, according to state data released Friday. The region is reporting about 4,378 new COVID-19 cases a day on average, up 25% from a week earlier when it appeared the spring surge might be leveling off. Health experts believe Memorial Day events and seasonal gatherings like graduations, combined with waning immunity and more transmissible variants, may be contributing to the resurgence in infections. Hospitalizations, which typically lag cases, are edged up. There were 653 people in Bay Area hospitals with COVID-19 as of Friday, compared to 612 a week earlier. About four people are dying every day.

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.

Some under-5 children will have to wait until supply builds up

The first shipments of COVID vaccine for children under age 5  the last group of Americans not yet eligible for vaccination  are expected to arrive within days in the Bay Area, local health officials and providers said, and shots could start going into little arms as soon as June 21, pending federal authorization. But not all kids will be able to get their first shot right away. Read more about the kids COVID vaccines and why some will have to wait.

Pfizer vaccine appears effective for kids under 5, FDA says

Federal officials have determined that Pfizers vaccine against COVID-19 appears safe and effective for children under 5, the Associated Press reports. The review issued Sunday by the Food and Drug Administration is a key step toward a decision on vaccinations for the 18 million babies, toddlers and preschoolers in the U.S. among the only group not currently eligible for vaccination. The FDA said children who received the kid-sized shots developed a strong immune response to help fight off the coronavirus. Late last week the FDA posted a similar analysis of Modernas shots for children under 6. On Wednesday, the FDA will ask an outside panel of experts to vote on whether to recommend the two companies shots, which could be made available as soon as June 21.

Risk of MIS-C lower in vaccinated children after omicron infection

The risk of COVID-related multisystem inflammatory system in children, known as MIS-C, was significantly lower among those who were vaccinated than the unvaccinated after infection with the omicron variant of the coronavirus than with earlier strains, according to research published in JAMA Pediatrics. In the January-March study, We identified 1 vaccinated and 11 unvaccinated patients with MIS-C among 583,618 estimated infected children and adolescents, including 267,086 vaccinated individuals, the authors wrote. No MIS-C cases occurred among 31,516 estimated individuals with reinfections.

Las Vegas-area health agency urges mask-wearing indoors

The public health agency for metro Las Vegas is advising people to wear masks in public indoor settings as the region experiences another swell of coronavirus infections. Southern Nevada Health District officials said Clark County is at a high community level of the virus. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic is not behind us yet, Dr. Fermin Leguen, the health officer, said Friday. As long as the virus is still circulating in our community, there is still the opportunity for surges in case counts and hospitalizations such as the one we are experiencing now. ... I urge everyone to wear their masks in public places and to stay up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines to curtail further spread.

China calls COVID lab leak theory a lie after WHO report

China on Friday attacked as a politically motivated lie the theory that the coronavirus pandemic may have originated as a leak from a Chinese laboratory. The comments from Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian came after the World Health Organization recommended in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is needed into whether a lab accident may be to blame. Beijing also rejected accusations that China had not fully cooperated with investigators, saying it welcomed a science-based probe but rejected any political manipulation. The spokeman at a daily briefing reiterated calls for an investigation into highly suspicious laboratories such as Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina in the United States where China has suggested without evidence that the U.S. was developing the coronavirus as a bioweapon.)
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Dr. Bob Wachter, UCSFs chair of medicine, says his wife, Katie Hafner, is doing not great weeks after getting COVID-19 and is suffering brain fog and other symptoms.

Providing an update on Hafners condition following the journalist and authors positive test in May, Wachter said in a lengthy Twitter thread Monday that many people ask how my wife fared after her COVID case  we truly appreciate the concern. The answer is: not great.

Five weeks post-infection, Hafner is likely suffering from the symptoms of long COVID, including fatigue and periodic headaches, he said. Noting that she hasnt yet reached the official long COVID threshold  symptoms persisting two months after infection  Wachter said, Whatever the definition, it sucks  shes an amazingly high energy person, & now shes wiped out most afternoons.

Hafner, who is vaccinated and double boosted, initially had a mild case of COVID-19.

Yet here we are, with symptoms that are unpleasant every day, and on some days truly interfere with her ability to work, said Wachter, who has become one of the Bay Areas leading voices on COVID-19.

He also questioned whether the antiviral Paxlovid was effective in preventing persistent COVID symptoms despite its ability to reduce the viral load to prevent the most severe outcomes in people who are infected. Wachter pointed to a NEJM studythat found the drug reduced the risk of hospitalization by 89%.

Hafner suffered a rebound infection after her course of Paxlovid, which made Wachter wonder if that had increased her odds of long COVID.

No way to know, but crucial to study, he said.

Wachter said in an interview with The Chronicle last week that his wife is taking daily naps, often an hour or longer, which is out of character for her. They both worried shed have trouble fulfilling upcoming commitments. Watching his wifes experience has recommitted him to cautious behaviors to avoid the virus, he said.

Some studies show elevated rates of heart attack, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cerebral damage in COVID survivors.

While theres always a risk of confounding (ie, that someone with undiagnosed diabetes or heart disease is more susceptible to COVID, so its really effect-cause rather than cause-effect), at this point I find the overall conclusions credible, Wachter said in a tweet.

That left him, he tweeted, to face two disconcerting premises: 1) Tens of millions of people with COVID will have ongoing symptoms that interfere with quality of life; in some theyll be disabling, & 2) A COVID infection may significantly increase the long-term risk of non-infectious problems like heart attacks, diabetes, & dementia.

The World Health Organization defines long COVID as symptoms lasting at least two months after infection, without other diagnosis to explain them. A $1.5 billion National Institutes of Health project is studying long COVID and its symptoms, and President Biden has announced the National Research Action Plan on long COVID to accelerate research.

Wachter had announced on Twitter that Hafner tested positive for the coronavirus on May 8 after a trip to a conference and while the couple visited Palm Springs. That was after they had diligently followed COVID-19 safety measures for more than two years, avoiding high-risk situations.

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Wachter managed to avoid infection by wearing an N95 mask on their drive home and isolating himself once back in San Francisco.

She let her guard down at one meeting, and five weeks later she doesnt feel close to right, he said in the interview last week. Im still being careful, and watching my wife over the past five weeks has only convinced me more. If I can somehow avoid getting COVID, thats a good thing to do.

On Monday, he said that with Bay Area cases remaining sky-high, he wears a mask indoors and avoids most high-risk situations.

I hope rates will come down, or well get reassuring news about long COVID, or something else happens that makes me comfortable returning to normal, Wachter said. But with each variant getting more infectious and immune-evasive, I dont see that happening anytime soon.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Erin Allday contributed to this story.

Aidin Vaziri (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com
The Bay Area culinary world was well represented in this years slate of James Beard Foundation media award winners.

The James Beard media awards, which recognize journalists, cookbook authors, podcast hosts and other forms of reporting, are considered the most prestigious in the food world. The winners were announced on Saturday in Chicago. On Monday afternoon, the James Beard Foundation will announce the much-anticipated restaurant and chef award winners. Several Bay Area chefs are in the running.

In addition to the media awards, the James Beard Foundation recognized Understory, a worker-cooperative restaurant in Oakland, with an emerging leadership award. Understory, which opened last year in partnership with nonprofit Oakland Bloom, offers shared kitchen space, free and sliding scale food distribution and training for immigrant, refugee and women of color chefs.

The Chronicles restaurant critic Soleil Ho won the restaurant review award, which recognizes discerning criticism that contributes to the larger discourse on cuisine or restaurants.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

Brandon Jew, chef-owner of San Franciscos Mister Jius, and co-author Tienlon Ho, won for their restaurant-focused cookbook Mister Jiu's in Chinatown: Recipes and Stories from the Birthplace of Chinese American Food. The book documents the acclaimed restaurants story interwoven with its place in the history of San Franciscos Chinatown.

Even though we never were able to go on a book tour because of the pandemic, our cookbook gave us a way to advocate for the AAPI community while we continue to face violent hatred, reads a Mister Jius Instagram post about the award. When we look to our Chinatown neighborhoods past, resilience and perseverance is what built its walls. Its an honor to continue our pursuit as Asian Americans to be treated equally and to be appreciated for the contributions we have made to the cuisine and the culture of America.

Courtesy Kristina Cho

Kristina Cho, Bay Area food blogger and author of Mooncakes and Milk Bread: Sweet and Savory Recipes Inspired by Chinese Bakeries, took home two James Beard awards: baking and desserts, plus emerging voice. The latter distinction recognizes the work of immediate impact and lasting significance by a first-time published author whose unique perspective expands the reach of the subject matter. Chos book is billed as the first major English-language cookbook dedicated to Chinese baking.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Zuni Cafe chef Judy Rogers was honored posthumously for her cookbook on the iconic San Francisco iconic restaurant. The Zuni Cafe Cookbook was inducted into the foundations cookbook hall of fame, reserved for books that have significantly influenced the way we think about food and honored authors who possess an exceptional ability to communicate their gastronomic vision via the printed page.

View the full list of this years media winners here and leadership award winners here.

Elena Kadvany is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: elena.kadvany@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ekadvany
Edgy Napa winery Realm Cellars, known for its high-end Bordeaux-style bottlings with Shakespearean labels, has purchased Houyi Vineyard and Nine Suns Winery in Pritchard Hill, the crown jewel of Napa Valley.

The acquisition caps a decade-long ripening at Realm, which has staged an astonishing comeback after facing bankruptcy in 2011. Today, the winery owns vineyards in three of Napa Valleys most prized subregions for Cabernet Sauvignon production: Stags Leap, Coombsville and now Pritchard Hill.

In addition to the 40-acre Pritchard Hill parcel, the sale included the propertys Nine Suns winery, featuring 7,000 square feet of caves and the capacity to produce 8,000 cases of wine annually; the Nine Suns and Houyi Vineyard brands; and remaining Nine Suns inventory. While Realm did not disclose a purchase price, the winery beat out larger wineries and corporations that made offers over the years  and, according to Realm co-owner and CEO Scott Becker, not because Realm was the highest bidder.

Rachel Bujalski / Special to The Chronicle

Instead, Becker credits the winerys long-standing relationship with the Chang family, the previous owners of Houyi and Nine Suns who purchased the property in 2010. Realm started buying fruit from the Changs in 2013, and as part of the deal, co-owners Jason and Flora Chang will continue to purchase fruit from Houyi for their passion project, Plinth. Flora Chang called the sale a natural progression and said Realm checked two important boxes for the family: a reverence for the land and a loyalty to a continued partnership.

Even if it was a super notable name, that wasnt enough to shake hands and make a deal with them, she said.

Relationships have been the key to Realms improbable growth in a short period of time. While the winery is leading the next generation of Napas cult Cabernet producers  following the likes of Harlan, Screaming Eagle and Scarecrow  its also tapping into the spirit of the early days of Napas modern wine industry. It was an era of collaboration, where farmers sealed deals with a handshake, not a contract.

Along the same lines, Becker described Realms acquisition deals as more accommodating than the standard business negotiation. The winery has repeatedly found ways to bolster the appeal of its offers in other ways than adding extra zeros. One major selling point: Realm vowed to preserve each vineyards legacy by keeping its given name.

I think (the Changs) saw in us the ability to take what theyve built to the next level, said Becker. We werent going to come in and undo everything they did; we were just going to come in and enhance it.

Rachel Bujalski/Special to The Chronicle

In 2015, after years of buying fruit from other growers, Realm bought its first estate, 15 acres of vines from Hartwell Vineyards set on the famed Wappo Hill in the legendary Stags Leap District. This, too, was the result of a decade-long relationship: Bordeaux native Benoit Touquette, co-owner and Realms winemaker since 2011, started working with the Hartwells in 2004 and later became Hartwell Vineyards winemaker. As part of the deal, which included the winery and caves on property, Touquette continued to make the Hartwell wines. In 2020, Realm purchased the rest of the 90-acre estate, which is now serving as the winerys home base.

A few years earlier in 2018, the winery added the 60-acre Farella Vineyard to its estate portfolio in Napas burgeoning Coombsville region. Farella was one of the first vineyards Realm sourced grapes from back in 2003, and owner Frank Farella was Realms attorney when the winery restructured. (Farella was also Robert Mondavis attorney.) After Realm was nearing bankruptcy, Becker stepped in to buy out the original founders. He rebuilt the business and brought on a group of individual financial partners who have supported the winerys fast-tracked growth.

The deal with Farella was, again, unconventional and flexible. Realm entered a long-term lease agreement that gives it full control over the farming and redevelopment of the vineyard. Meanwhile, Frank Farella can use the cottage on the property and his son, Tom Farella, consults on farming and continues to make wine for the Farella wine label.

Relationships trump economics, said Touquette. The trust, the willingness to let them continue to exist and follow their dreams, I think thats what makes us different.

Rachel Bujalski / Special to The Chronicle

Rachel Bujalski / Special to The Chronicle

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Yet while Hartwell and Farella were game-changing grabs for Realm, Houyi is an even bigger deal because Pritchard Hill is often viewed as the white whale of Napa Valley growing regions. Located on the eastern side of Napa Valley, its set on a remote plateau in the Vaca Mountains that overlooks Lake Hennessey. The vines  dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon  are planted at high elevations, ranging from 800 feet to nearly 2,000; the Houyi Vineyard sits between 1,250 and 1,400 feet.

Realm will join a small and exclusive club of wineries, including Chappellet, Ovid and Colgin, that reap the benefits of the areas cachet, often by selling their wines for hundreds of dollars per bottle. Most have a long waiting list of collectors hoping to one day procure wines for their cellar.

But its also an incredibly difficult and expensive region to develop and farm; Becker estimates it costs three to four times more than the rest of Napa Valley. The soils, for instance, are full of large rocks and giant boulders, which need to be painstakingly removed for vineyard and winery development. Some wineries have turned to dynamite to clear them.

These challenges combined with low supply and high demand for the land have factored into high turnover in recent years. In 2017, the owners of Silver Oak and Twomey purchased Ovid, and Colgin sold a majority stake to conglomerate LVMH. A pair of Apple executives bought Brand Napa Valley in 2019. Its a different beast, a different animal, said Touquette. Its a high-end commitment there.

But Realm believes its estate purchases, totaling roughly 200 acres, have secured the winerys future, even as land and grape prices continue to rise and new vineyard development becomes borderline impossible.

If we didnt make the moves to buy land, I feel we wouldnt be here much longer, said Becker, who fears the Napa wine industry will be impenetrable by the time the next wave of wine visionaries arrives. I still want people who move here with passion and sense and work ethic to have an opportunity to be part of the Napa Valley dream.

Jess Lander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jess.lander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jesslander
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WASHINGTON (AP)  A police officer lauded for his bravery during the U.S. Capitol riot testified Monday that a man carrying a Confederate battle flag jabbed at him with the flagpole before joining the mob that chased him up a staircase.

In his first public testimony since the Jan. 6, 2021, siege, Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman described his encounter with the flag-toting Delaware man, Kevin Seefried, and his adult son, Hunter, at their trial on charges that they stormed the Capitol together.

Goodman has been hailed as a hero for leading a group of rioters away from the Senate chamber as senators and then-Vice President Mike Pence were being evacuated. Goodman also directed Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, to turn around and head away from the mob.

Goodman recalled seeing Kevin Seefried standing alone in an archway and telling him to leave. Instead, Seefried cursed at him and jabbed at the officer with the base end of the flagpole three or four times without making contact with him, Goodman said.

He was very angry. Screaming. Talking loudly, Goodman said. Complete opposite of pleasant.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is hearing testimony without a jury for the Seefrieds bench trial, which started Monday and is scheduled to resume Tuesday. The Seefrieds waived their right to a jury trial, which means McFadden will decide their cases.

Widely published photographs showed Kevin Seefried carrying a Confederate battle flag inside the Capitol after he and his son entered the building through a broken window.

The charges against both Kevin and Hunter Seefried include a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding, the joint session of Congress for certifying Joe Bidens victory over then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

During the trial's opening statements, defense attorneys said the Seefrieds never intended to interfere with the Electoral College vote count.

Indeed, (Kevin Seefried) was not even aware that the electoral count was happening or was happening in the Capitol, one of his lawyers, Elizabeth Mullin, told the judge.

After rioters chased Goodman up a set of stairs, another Capitol police officer who confronted the mob near the Senate chamber recalled that Kevin Seefried asked, Why are you protecting them?

I assumed he was talking about Congress, Officer Brian Morgan testified.

Before his encounter with the mob inside the Capitol, Goodman joined other officers in trying to hold back rioters as they clashed with police outside the building.

It was like something out of medieval times, with one huge force clashing with another opposing force, Goodman said. I've never seen anything like that ever.

Goodman said he had to retreat inside the building after getting pepper sprayed and exposed to tear gas deployed by police.

The Seefrieds aren't charged with assaulting any officers.

Mullin conceded that Kevin Seefried is guilty of two misdemeanor charges that he knowingly entered a restricted building and illegally demonstrated in the Capitol.

Hunter Seefried, then 22, may have acted stupidly but didn't intend to block Congress from certifying the election results, defense attorney Edson Bostic said.

Goodman recalled that Hunter Seefried was smirking but didn't see him acting aggressively or hear him yelling at police.

He was just disobeying commands, Goodman said.

The Seefrieds traveled to Washington from their home in Laurel, Delaware, to hear Trumps speech at the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6.

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They climbed over a wall near a stairwell and scaffolding in the northwest section of the Capitol and were among the first rioters to approach the building near the Senate Wing Door, according to prosecutors. After watching other rioters use a police shield and a wooden plank to break a window, Hunter Seefried used a gloved fist to clear a shard of glass in one of the broken windowpanes, prosecutors said.

In a court filing, prosecutors said the Confederate battle flag that Kevin Seefried brought from home was a symbol of violent opposition to the United States government.

Mullin said Seefried didn't intend to send any kind of message by carrying the flag into the Capitol and regrets doing so.

McFadden, whom Trump nominated in 2017, is the only judge to a hold a bench trial for a Capitol riot case so far.

In April, he acquitted New Mexico resident Matthew Martin of misdemeanor charges that he illegally entered the Capitol and engaged in disorderly conduct after he walked into the building.

In March, McFadden acquitted a New Mexico elected official of engaging in disorderly conduct but convicted him of illegally entering restricted Capitol grounds.

McFadden has criticized prosecutors handling of Capitol riot cases. He suggested that the Justice Department has been unjustly tougher on Capitol riot defendants compared with people arrested at protests against police brutality and racial injustice after George Floyds 2020 murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is scheduled to preside over a bench trial for Jesus Rivera, a Pensacola, Florida, man charged with four riot-related misdemeanors. President Bill Clinton nominated Kollar-Kotelly to the court in 1997.

At least four other Capitol riot defendants have bench trials scheduled for this year.

Juries have unanimously convicted five Capitol riot defendants of all charges, a perfect record for prosecutors so far. More than 300 other defendants have pleaded guilty to riot offenses, mostly misdemeanors punishable by no more than one year in prison. Approximately 100 others have trial dates in 2022 or 2023. More than 800 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack.
WASHINGTON  The commission investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection will continue laying out its detailed evidence that former President Donald Trump instigated the violence of those events on Monday, and San Jose Rep. Zoe Lofgren will lead the way.

The Democrat and veteran of four impeachment proceedings  two for Trump and one against Bill Clinton as a lawmaker, and one against Richard Nixon as a staffer  will take her turn Monday as the committee member laying out the evidence and questioning witnesses.

Her goal: to establish that Trump spread the narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen despite being clearly informed that it was untrue. That will be the theme for the public hearing that begins at 7:30 a.m., following Thursdays prime-time opening event that laid out an overview of the case the committee will be making over the next few weeks.

The theme for Monday is to display that the rhetoric that the election was stolen is false, and to make clear that the president was told that and continued to propagate the false narrative despite being told that it wasnt true, Lofgren told The Chronicle ahead of the hearing. There were two reasons: One, he raised a huge amount of money after the election had been certified, but he also wanted to set the stage for overthrowing the election by casting doubt that the election was legitimate; and actually the two were combined  the fundraising emails and texts were extravagant lies that raised money but also helped distribute the propaganda.

Like the committees first hearing, Mondays proceeding will feature a mix of in-person witnesses and clips of previously recorded interviews.

On Sunday, the committee announced it would feature Bill Stepien, Trumps former campaign manager, and Chris Stirewalt, a former political editor for Fox News. But Monday morning, the committee announced that Stepien had a family emergency and his counsel would deliver a statement in his absence. Stepiens wife was in labor, several outlets reported. A second panel seemed organized around specific states results, featuring elections attorney Ben Ginsberg, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia BJay Pak, and former City Commissioner of Philadelphia Al Schmidt.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Lofgren had said the witnesses will be Republicans, as they were who were in a position to see what was going on.

Lofgren is one of nine members on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, and said members are taking turns leading different hearings. She said there was no particular reason Mondays fell to her, and that the committee has worked well together to conduct its in-depth investigation. Her role will be to introduce witnesses and evidence and ask questioning to tee up their testimony.

Im not going to do most of the talking, Lofgren said. Its going to be primarily the witnesses both in video and in person.

Thursdays hearing featured somber openings from committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of the two Republicans on the committee who have been critical of Trump and his actions around the insurrection.

Because Republican leadership decided to boycott the committee, the hearings will have no counter-voices, allowing the events to be heavily produced and choreographed to lay out the intended case. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, gave Republicans the opportunity to name members to the committee but vetoed potential members because of their relationship to the events of that day, and so GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield pulled the remaining three suggested members.

Over two hours on Thursday, Thompson and Cheney laid out the overarching theme the committee will attempt to drive home through its hearings: that Trump knowingly spread false information about the election being stolen to fan the flames of what amounted to an attempted coup. They combined haunting videos from inside and around the Capitol that day with excerpts of interviews from those closest to Trump, including former Attorney General Bill Barr and Trumps daughter Ivanka. A Capitol Police officer still recovering from injuries sustained that day testified about the horrors she experienced, and a documentarian embedded with the far-right group the Proud Boys shared the level of coordination he witnessed.

Mondays hearing likely will follow a similar format.

Lofgren said that in all her work on impeachments and as a staffer and member of Congress, this is the biggest effort shes been a part of. She described a process where committee members would divide up to conduct multiple important interviews at the same time, sifting through mountains of evidence.

This is the most in-depth investigation that Ive ever been involved with, Lofgren said. We put together an amazing team of investigators, interviewed more than 1,000 people, more than 100,000 documents and were not done  its still coming in. So its been intense and its been revelatory.

She said the ultimate goal of the hearings is to share the truth with the public, and that she hopes the first hearing was of use to the American people. As for Mondays hearing, she foreshadowed more revelations.

I think that people, if they tune in, will learn something, Lofgren said. I think that people will come away more knowledgeable than if they had not watched it.

How to watch: The hearing was scheduled to start around 7:30 a.m. Pacific time, after it was delayed due to Stepiens emergency. Those who wish to watch it can do so at the committees YouTube channel as well as most major news networks.

Tal Kopan (she/her) is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A man who climbed down near San Franciscos legendary Cliff House was trapped on a cliff ledge early Monday morning, necessitating a rescue by fire officials.

At around 7:40 a.m., the San Francisco Fire Department embarked on a cliff rescue after an adult man scaled down rocks near the restaurant and ended up on the ledge near a wall covered in graffiti.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP)  A jumbo jet-sized mystery has landed in the lap of Argentine officials, who are trying to determine what to do with a Venezuelan-owned Boeing 747 cargo plane with a load of automotive parts and an unusually large crew of 17, including at least five Iranians.

The plane operated by Venezuela's state-owned Emtrasur cargo line has been stuck since June 6 at Buenos Aires' main international airport, unable to depart because of U.S. sanctions against Iran. and suspicions about its crew.

Security Minister Anibal Fernandez said Monday that the government and legal authorities are studying the situation.

He said foreign intelligence agencies advised that part of the crew belonged to companies related to the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard of Iran, which has been officially listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government since 2007.

He also said that the plane's operators had reported a smaller number of crewmembers than were actually aboard  an unusually large contingent for a cargo plane. It was carrying parts for an automotive assembly plant, though he did not specify which one.

Until being sold to Emtrasur about a year ago, the plane had been owned by Mahan Air of Iran, a line the U.S. government has sanctioned for allegedly aiding the Quds Force and terrorist activities. Numerous foreign companies over the years have been sanctioned for doing business with Mahan.

A spokesman for Mahan Air, Hossein Zolanvari, earlier told the state-run IRNA news agency that his company sold the Boeing to a Venezuelan company about a year ago.

Mentioning Mahan Air in connection with the impounded airplane has aimed at political purposes, he said. He said the planes crew also have no connection to Mahan Air.

The plane's crewmembers have been lodged at a hotel and Fernandez said the Venezuelans are free to leave if they want, while the Iranians can move about in the capital.

Fernandez said the plane had stopped in Paraguay in May. On June 6, it was headed for Ezeiza airport on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, but climatic conditions forced it to stop instead in the city of Cordoba before finally reaching the Argentine capital, where it attracted the attention of immigration authorities, who confiscated the crew's passports.

Emtrasur began flying this year, operating out of the Venezuelan military's Libertador Air Base.

Flight tracking services show the plane also had made stops in earlier months in Mexico and Venezuela.

Argentina itself has suffered from terror attacks that authorities blame on Iran, notably a 1992 explosion at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and another at a Jewish organization in 1994. Argentina is seeking the arrest of several Iranian officials, though Iran denies involvement.
SAN FRANCISCO  Google placed an engineer on paid leave recently after dismissing his claim that its artificial intelligence is sentient, surfacing yet another fracas about the companys most advanced technology.

Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer in Googles Responsible AI organization, said in an interview that he was put on leave last Monday. The companys human resources department said he had violated Googles confidentiality policy. The day before his suspension, Lemoine said, he handed over documents to a U.S. senators office, claiming they provided evidence that Google and its technology engaged in religious discrimination.

Google said its systems imitated conversational exchanges and could riff on different topics but did not have consciousness. Our team  including ethicists and technologists  has reviewed Blakes concerns per our AI principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims, Brian Gabriel, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement. Some in the broader AI community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general AI, but it doesnt make sense to do so by anthropomorphizing todays conversational models, which are not sentient.

The Washington Post first reported Lemoines suspension.

For months, Lemoine had tussled with Google managers, executives and human resources over his surprising claim that the companys Language Model for Dialogue Applications, or LaMDA, had consciousness and a soul. Google says hundreds of its researchers and engineers have conversed with LaMDA, an internal tool, and reached a different conclusion than Lemoine did. Most AI experts believe the industry is a very long way from computing sentience.

Some AI researchers have long made optimistic claims about these technologies soon reaching sentience, but many others are extremely quick to dismiss these claims. If you used these systems, you would never say such things, said Emaad Khwaja, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco, who is exploring similar technologies.

While chasing the AI vanguard, Googles research organization has spent the past few years mired in scandal and controversy. The divisions scientists and other employees have regularly feuded over technology and personnel matters in episodes that have often spilled into the public arena. In March, Google fired a researcher who had sought to publicly disagree with two of his colleagues published work. And the dismissals of two AI ethics researchers, Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, after they criticized Google language models, have continued to cast a shadow on the group.

Lemoine, a military veteran who has described himself as a priest, an ex-convict and an AI researcher, told Google executives as senior as Kent Walker, president of global affairs, that he believed LaMDA was a child age 7 or 8. He wanted the company to seek the computer programs consent before running experiments on it. His claims were founded on his religious beliefs, which he said the companys human resources department discriminated against.

They have repeatedly questioned my sanity, Lemoine said. They said, Have you been checked out by a psychiatrist recently? In the months before he was placed on administrative leave, the company had suggested he take a mental health leave.

Yann LeCun, head of AI research at Meta and a key figure in the rise of neural networks, said in an interview last week that these types of systems are not powerful enough to attain true intelligence.

Googles technology is what scientists call a neural network, which is a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing large amounts of data. By pinpointing patterns in thousands of cat photos, for example, it can learn to recognize a cat.

Over the past several years, Google and other leading companies have designed neural networks that learned from enormous amounts of prose, including unpublished books and Wikipedia articles by the thousands. These large language models can be applied to many tasks. They can summarize articles, answer questions, generate tweets and even write blog posts.

But they are extremely flawed. Sometimes, they generate perfect prose. Sometimes, they generate nonsense. The systems are very good at recreating patterns they have seen in the past, but they cannot reason like a human.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Officials at Yosemite National Park in California are calling on the public to help track down the individuals who defaced rocks with graffiti along a popular hiking trail last month.

Park rangers received multiple reports of vandalism along the Yosemite Falls Trail on May 20, 2022, at about 8:15 p.m., the park said in a June 12 statement posted on Facebook. Rangers set up a trail block and identified potential suspects, park officials said.

The next day, rangers hiked the trail to assess the damage and found about 30 sites spray painted with white and blue graffiti depicting symbols and words, including the word "Fresno." The smallest area of graffiti was about 1 square foot, though most were larger at about 3 square feet, and a few were as big as 8 square feet, the park said.

"For someone to take a beautiful area and do this, its beyond upsetting," Yosemite National Park spokesperson Scott Gediman told SFGATE. "It's beyond egregious."

Gediman said the park has some "significant leads" on who is responsible for the vandalism.

If you were on the trail to the top of Yosemite Falls between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. on May 20 and saw individuals carrying cans of spray paint, engaging in tagging, or have video or photographic evidence, the park asks that you visit go.nps.gov/SubmitATip. You can also email nps_isb@nps.gov or call or text (888) 653-0009.

"This is a popular trail," Gediman said. "There are a lot of people on the trail. And many people have phones and cameras. If we get any photos and video of this, its really going to help."

There have been several instances of vandalism in national parks in recent years. Earlier this year, Zion National Park released a video reporting on rampant vandalism in the park and calling on the public to leave no trace. Two years ago, rangers in Joshua Tree National Park discovered graffiti in Rattlesnake Canyon, the Skull Rock Natural Trail and along Geo Tour Road.

Gediman said the last time vandalism at a similar scale to the current incident occurred in the park was 2010.

"We had a similar case where people stayed in housekeeping camp and walked through the valley and Curry Village and spray painted tents, cabins and trees," Gediman said. "We were able to catch them and prosecute them. It was due to public help and eyewitness accounts."

Gediman said the 2010 incident was gang-related.

This is a developing story and details will be added as they become available.
George Saunders short story Escape from Spiderhead is not, you might say, an obviously cinematic piece. Its the kind of subtly unsettling work  stark, moody and dialogue heavy  that could easily be a play or a haunting experimental film. So its an especially bold leap to use it as the inspiration for a starry, big budget, Netflix-subscriber-driving event movie, as they've done with  Spiderhead, which starts streaming Friday. But stranger things have worked for the streamer and who doesnt like a slick, dystopian sci-fi?

Originally published in The New Yorker in 2010, Escape from Spiderhead is about a group of prisoners living in a specialized facility who are being subjected to experimental mood-altering drugs, with names like Verbaluce, which makes you speak eloquently, and Darkenfloxx, which makes you feel about as badly as a person can feel. The audience experiences the world through one of the inmates, Jeff, who is starting to question the tests, the drugs and the mysterious leader of the facility, Abnesti, who keeps an open-door policy in the Spiderhead to foster trust and respect with the prisoners.

You have to admire the ambition behind those who had the idea to adapt the story. Screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese (Deadpool) needed to make many big choices and leaps to stretch it out to feature-length: They added backstories, love interests and flashbacks. Director Joseph Kosinski and his team, including cinematographer Claudio Miranda (who also teamed with him on Top Gun: Maverick) further had to dream up an entire look for Spiderhead, too. They went with dystopian brutalism plopped in the middle of a tropical paradise.

Jeff is played by Miles Teller (who also worked with Kosinski on Top Gun: Maverick and the underseen firefighter drama Only the Brave) and Abnesti is taken on by Chris Hemsworth, who also produced. The writers have turned Abnesti into a more blatant eccentric, a visionary pharma/tech genius who makes grand speeches about the perks of life in Spiderhead and the virtuousness of the experiments while also sampling his own product on the side. Its quite a good role for Hemsworth, who excels at being charming with an undercurrent of mania. Theres even an incredible dance sequence to Roxy Musics More Than This that is perhaps on par with Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizunos Ex Machina moves. Like his brief turn in Ghostbusters, it makes you eager to see him keep branching out beyond Thor.

Jeff, meanwhile, is somewhat stripped of his edge and tragic poetry and is turned into a bro with a conscience and visceral memories of the ill-fated night he decided to drive drunk. And he gets an actual, not drug enhanced love interest, which under normal circumstances would seem a bit cliche but here is made interesting because of Jurnee Smollets raw and captivating performance.

Some of these choices work, some are silly and some come across as downright mean. In the story, Jeff is subjected to the love serum twice to see what happens with two different women described as equally so-so. Both times he falls deeply, albeit briefly, in love. In the film, however, one woman is conventionally attractive and the other is styled as though she may be a meth addict. Its turned into a joke, and a somewhat misogynistic one at that, and the poetic connection is reduced to an over-the-top sex bit. Theres a gay panic bit, too, and an odd subplot about an inmate who has been stealthily drawing on the walls with feces. Its not surprising that the writers of Deadpool and Zombieland veered towards humor, but it does at times feel less like pointed satire and more like crass irreverence  and the tonal shifts come at the expense of the overall impact of the story.

Ultimately, Spiderhead just seems a little unsure of what it is or what its supposed to be. One of the inmates is even reading Saunders Tenth of December in one shot. It could send the mind spinning with meta questions about whether hed made it to Escape from Spiderhead yet. Instead its just plopped there like an Easter egg to nowhere.

 Spiderhead, a Netflix release streaming Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for language, violent content, sexual content. Running time: 107 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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MPAA Definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr
In 1995, Andy got a toy from his favorite movie. This is that movie.

So begins Lightyear, a new Pixar release that takes a meta approach to the animation studio's flagship franchise. It isn't a prequel to Toy Story," exactly, but instead presents the movie that inspired Buzz Lightyear toys in the first place. It's a potentially clever bit of reverse engineering by the Walt Disney Co., which, after decades of growing merchandizing out of its films, has reversed course. We aren't exactly through the looking glass, but we may be through the Happy Meal.

It's honestly a gambit  taking a fictional movie-within-a-movie and making it real  that I've wanted to see attempted before. Who hasn't watched Seinfeld and been curious to actually see Rochelle, Rochelle or Sack Lunch"? Or those pseudo Adam Sandler movies like Mer-man in Judd Apatow's Funny People? I've seen the Home Alone movies enough to almost convince myself that Angels With Even Filthier Souls is a real gangster flick.

But the truth is, the appeal of all these faux-film cameos  like those that adorn Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood  is predicated on their brevity. So should Lightyear" have been a feature film or a Pixar short? The answer, I think, is very much the latter.

The Toy Story films, once an almost perfect trilogy, were already stretching toward infinity and beyond with Toy Story 4, a nine-years-later-sequel that was perhaps propelled less by a need for narrative closure than it was box-office imperatives. But at the same time, Forky. Forky made it forgivable.

What's compelling Lightyear is harder to say, but there is a bland, vaguely Planes feeling here that smacks of a straight-to-video spinoff. Yet unlike that Cars detour, Lightyear bears the Pixar imprimatur. And, ironically, it's the first Pixar film in more than two years to debut exclusively in theaters. During the pandemic, Luca," Soul and Turning Red were all routed instead to Disney+, sometimes reportedly against the objections of Pixar's own animators.

But Lightyear, helmed by Finding Dory co-director Angus MacLane (who made some of the Toy Story shorts and TV specials that have expanded the film series), arrives in theaters just as summer movies are reaching the stratosphere again. So it may be a bit of a buzzkill to call Lightyear  the biggest kids movie to come along in a while  a failed mission.

It's a surprisingly self-contained film  that opening title card is one of the only tethers to Toy Story"  in which the real Buzz (drawn more human-like and voiced by Chris Evans, stepping in for Tim Allen), not the toy version, is marooned on a distant planet with fellow Space Ranger Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) and a spaceship full of people. Every time Buzz attempts to rocket into light speed to get help back on Earth, something goes wrong. Each trial takes a day but, back on the faraway planet, everyone else has lived through years. In a blip, Alisha (the first Black LGBTQ character in a major studio animated film) gets engaged, has a baby, sees her son graduate and grows old.

With its classic science-fiction framework, Lightyear borrows from The Twilight Zone," Star Trek, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar" and others. It's a little like Pixar made a straightforward sci-fi movie  one with obvious affection for the genre but little of the big-hearted splendor of WALL-E. It could be said that unorthodox approach to Lightyear allows Pixar to step outside the usual parameters of what the animation studio usually makes. Lightyear isn't ambitious or existential or likely to make you cry. It's just a flavorless movie, not much different from others.

Lightyear picks up a little when Buzz unites with a ragtag crew including Alisha's granddaughter Izzy (Keke Palmer), the accident-prone Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi, doing his best to add some comic life to the film) and Dale Soules' aged criminal Darby Steel. Buzz's most notable companion, though, is a highly intelligent robotic cat named Sox (voiced by The Good Dinosaur director Peter Sohn), an especially familiar kind of Disney sidekick surely designed to kickstart a new merchandizing opportunity.

That may be the only circle of life at work in Lightyear, a dead-end wrong turn in the usually boundless Pixar universe. Buzz, himself, is a bit of a bore, too. It's a character that, since he isn't the Buzz we know, must prove his mettle as a protagonist. But with little to distinguish him beyond a chin that makes Jay Leno's look petite, Buzz  like the movie itself  tries to skate by on name recognition. It's enough to make you wonder what Andy saw in him in the first place. Maybe someone should have shown him Ratatouille.

"Lightyear, a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for action/peril. Running time: 105 minutes. Two stars out of four.

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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
HARTFORD  Two peregrine falcon fledglings were rescued after splash landings in the Connecticut River.

The birds plunked into the river on Friday from a nest under the Charter Oak Bridge. They were brought to a bird of prey rescue center in Killingly, where they were being cared for Monday in preparation for a family reunion. The birds are healthy and strong and will be back with their parents soon, according to Christine Cummings, director of A Place Called Hope rehabilitation and education center.

Hatched several weeks ago in a nest on the underside of the bridge, the birds were trying out their wings when one after the other, they fell into the river. Both swam to shore, where a state Department of Transportation worker placed one in a box and another person picked up the other bird soon after, Cummings said.

Although both birds would have dried off and flown back to their parents, the people who picked them up did the right thing because of the busy location, Cummings said.

They would have been in trouble otherwise, she said.

One fisherman told the person who picked up the second bird that he planned to take it home, which would have been illegal since the birds are federally protected, Cummings said.

She will bring the birds back to an area near the bridge, where the more vocal of the two should begin calling out. The parents are sure to answer and a family reunion will follow, Cummings said. A third fledgling remained with the parents, she said.

Its critical for them to be in the care of their parents while theyre learning to hone skills for hunting, she said.

Also called the duck hawk, the swift hunter was a regular nester in Connecticut through the early 1900s, but populations declined until only one nest, in the Travelers Tower in Hartford, was documented in the late 1940s, according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The rapid decline of the raptors throughout the U.S. from 1950 to 1965 was due to pesticides, including DDT.

Connecticut benefited from reintroduction efforts in other states, according to a DEEP fact sheet. In 1997, a pair produced three chicks, again on the Travelers Tower. Leg bands showed the female came from a 1994 reintroduction project in New York.

The falcons, which can dive at speeds up to 175 mph, have made a comeback in the state and were upgraded from endangered to threatened species. The hunters have adapted to living in cities, where they eat pigeons, starlings and other plentiful prey. Peregrines also feed on mice and rats, Cummings said, which can poison the birds due to use of rodenticides.

This is not the first time a falcon fledgling has been rescued from the river under the bridge. In June 2019, according to a DOT news release at the time, a fisherman witnessed a splash landing and contacted DEEP. After the young bird was banded, a bridge maintenance team wearing protective gear helped return the bird to its nest.

Jesse.Leavenworth@hearstmediact.com
WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of Jan. 6, but the defeated president seemed detached from reality and kept clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power, the committee investigating the Capitol attack was told Monday.

With gripping testimony, the panel is laying out in step-by-step fashion how Trump ignored his own campaign team's data as one state after another flipped to Joe Biden, and instead latched on to conspiracy theories, court cases and his own declarations of victory rather than having to admit defeat.

Trump's big lie of election fraud escalated and transformed into marching orders that summoned supporters to Washington and then sent them to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to block Bidens victory.

He's become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff, former Attorney General William Barr testified in his interview with the committee.

Barr called the voting fraud claims bull, bogus and idiotic, and resigned in the aftermath. I didnt want to be a part of it.

The House 1/6 committee spent the morning hearing delving into Trumps claims of election fraud and the countless ways those around him tried to convince the defeated Republican president they were not true, and he had simply lost the election.

The witnesses Monday, mostly Republicans and many testifying in prerecorded videos, described in blunt terms and sometimes exasperated detail how Trump refused to take the advice of those closest to him, including his family members. As the people around him splintered into a team normal headed by former campaign manager Bill Stepien and others led by Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani, the president chose his side.

On election night, Stepien said, Trump was growing increasingly unhappy and refusing to accept the grim outlook for his presidency.

Son-in-law Jared Kushner tried to steer Trump away from Giuliani and his far-flung theories of voter fraud. The president would have none of it.

The back-and-forth intensified in the run-up to Jan. 6. Former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue recalled breaking down one claim after another  from a truckload of ballots in Pennsylvania to a missing suitcase of ballots in Georgia - and telling Trump much of the info youre getting is false.

Still, he pressed on with his false claims even after dozens of court cases collapsed.

On Monday an unrepentant Trump blasted the hearings in his familiar language as ridiculous and treasonous and repeated his claims.

The former president, mulling another run for the White House, defended the Capitol attack as merely Americans seeking to hold their elected officials accountable.

Nine people died in the riot and its aftermath, including a Trump supporter shot and killed by Capitol police. More than 800 people have been arrested, and members of two extremist groups have been indicted on rare sedition charges over their roles leading the charge into the Capitol.

During the hearing, the panel also provided new information about how Trump's fundraising machine collected some $250 million with his campaigns to Stop the Steal and others in the aftermath of the November election, mostly from small-dollar donations from Americans. One plea for cash went out 30 minutes before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Not only was there the big lie, there was the big ripoff, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., opened Monday's hearing saying Trump betrayed the trust of the American people and tried to remain in office when people had voted him out.

As the hearings play out for the public, they are also being watched by one of the most important viewers, Attorney General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should prosecute Trump. No sitting or former president has ever faced such an indictment.

I am watching, Garland said Monday at a press briefing at the Justice Department, even if he may not watch all the hearings live. And I can assure you the Jan. 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings as well."

Biden was getting updates but not watching blow by blow, said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Stepien was to be a key in-person witness Monday but abruptly backed out of appearing live because his wife went into labor. Stepien, who is still close to Trump, had been subpoenaed to appear. He is now a top campaign adviser to Trump-endorsed House candidate Harriet Hageman, who is challenging committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney in the Wyoming Republican primary.

The panel marched ahead after a morning scramble and delay, with witness after witness saying Trump embraced and repeated his claims about the election although those closest told him the theories of stolen ballots or rigged voting machines were simply not true.

Stepien and senior adviser Jason Miller described how the festive mood at the White House on Election Night turned grim as Fox News announced Trump had lost the state of Arizona to Joe Biden, and aides worked to counsel Trump on what to do next.

But he ignored their advice, choosing to listen instead to Giuliani, who was described as inebriated by several witnesses. Giuliani issued a general denial Monday, rejecting all falsehoods he said were being said about him.

Stepien said, My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted, its too early to tell, too early to call the race.

But Trump thought I was wrong. He told me so.

Barr, who had also testified in last week's blockbuster opening hearing, said Trump was as mad as I'd ever seen him when the attorney general later explained that the Justice Department would not take sides in the election.

Barr said when he would tell Trump how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were."

For the past year, the committee has been investigating the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812, which some believe posed a grave threat to democracy.

Mondays hearing also featured live witnesses, including Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News Channel political editor who was part of a team that declared on Election Night that Arizona was being won by Biden. Also appearing was the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, BJay Pak, who abruptly resigned after Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to overturn his defeat.

The panel also heard from elections lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg, who discussed the norms of election campaign challenges, and former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, the only Republican on the city's election board, who told the panel that regardless of how fantastical some of the claims that Trump and his team were making, the city officials investigated. He discussed facing threats after Trump criticized him in a tweet.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Michael Balsamo in Washington and Farnoush Amiri and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

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For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Two members of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard's aerospace division died as martyrs in Iran in separate incidents over the weekend, Iranian media reported on Monday. The term is typically a designation given to those on important assignments.

The deaths of the two men come as tensions remain high over Iran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers, and its uranium enrichment program that is now closest it has ever been to weapons-grade levels. While authorities offered no suggestion of foul play in the men's deaths, Israel has been accused of killing other high-ranking Guard members amid the growing crisis.

Separately, Israel warned tourists on Monday to leave Turkey over a series of alleged plots targeting Israelis there.

The semiofficial Fars and Tasnim news agencies, believed to be close to the Guard, identified one of the dead as Ali Kamani and said he died in Iran's central city of Khomein. Tasnim said that Kamani died in a car accident, without elaborating.

The news agencies did not give a rank for Kamani. However, a photo published by Tasnim showed the man wearing the epaulets of a second lieutenant in the Guard's aerospace program, which runs Iran's ballistic missile program as well as some of the country's air defenses.

Khomein, the birthplace of the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution, is in the province of Markazi. That province is also home to Iran's Arak heavy water reactor, a key nuclear program site that has air defenses around it.

Fars alone reported on the death of the second man, whom it identified as Mohammad Abdous. The agency published a picture of Abdous in civilian clothes at the Imam Reza Shrine in the city of Mashhad, Iran.

Fars said that Abdous died on a mission while working in Iran's Semnan province. Rural Semnan province, east of Tehran, is home to the Imam Khomeini Spaceport, which has been used in satellite launches.

The report of the two men's deaths come about a week and half after the reported death of Guard Col. Ali Esmailzadeh, a member of its expeditionary Quds Force, under unclear circumstances.

In May, two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed Guard Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei in Tehran. There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack. Iranian officials have blamed global arrogance  code for the United States and Israel  for Khodaeis killing.

The 50-year-old Khodaei remains a shadowy figure and Iran has yet to offer biographic detail beyond saying that he also was a member of the elite Quds Force. The Guard has described him as defender of the shrine  a reference to Iranians who support militias fighting the extremist Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. Thousands attended his funeral in Tehran and hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi visited his family.

The manner of the slaying evoked previous targeted attacks by Israel in Iran. In November 2020, a top Iranian military nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun while traveling in a car outside Tehran.

In a series of tweets Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned Israelis not to fly to Turkey and called on those there to return. He said he made the call after a series of attempted Iranian terror attacks against Israelis vacationing in Istanbul.

He said Israeli authorities had already thwarted such attacks, a great effort that has saved Israeli lives.

They are intentionally choosing Israeli citizens to kidnap or kill. It can happen to anyone. It is a real and immediate danger, he said, thanking Turkish authorities for their assistance and adding that he didnt believe the travel warning would remain for the long term.

I also want to deliver a message to the Iranians: whoever harms Israelis will pay. Israels long arm will reach them no matter where they are.

Turkey did not immediately acknowledge the plots.

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Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, and Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
Americans in communities where lives have been forever changed by gun violence reacted to the bipartisan deal that was reached by Senate negotiators Sunday with a glint of hope but more than a tinge of frustration.

Any agreement is better than no agreement, many indicated, yet so much more could be done.

If approved in the Senate and the House, the deal would be the first major piece of gun safety legislation to be passed by Congress in years. It includes a modest expansion of background checks for gun buyers under 21 and funding for states to enact so-called red-flag laws, which allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from those deemed dangerous. It also includes funding for mental health programs and increased school security.

Still, for many Americans in places like Buffalo, New York; Orlando, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas, who have seen the irrevocable toll of mass shootings, the proposed deal does not go far enough.

Leonard Sandoval, whose 10-year-old grandson, Xavier James Lopez, died at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, would like to see a ban on semi-automatic weapons.

He would also like to see more mass shooter training at the national level to prevent another disastrous police response like what appeared to have happened in Uvalde. If they had better trained those officers and given them better equipment, maybe so many kids would not have died, he said.

Monica Munoz Martinez, a historian and recent MacArthur fellow, lives in Austin, Texas, but is from Uvalde and retains close ties with that community. After watching Uvalde families testify before Congress recently, she said the agreement was disappointing.

This proposed legislation doesnt restore a sense of safety in Texas, she said. Its hard to celebrate legislation that falls so far short of what families in Uvalde and Buffalo asked for.

But for some civic groups assisting Uvalde, a mostly Mexican American community west of San Antonio, even minor gun control moves on background checks are steps in the right direction.

I think that we take what we can get right now, considering it is much more than what we thought we were going to get, said Rodolfo Rosales, a state director with the Texas branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

But make no mistake, he said, we still need a lot more gun control. He added that its not going to bring back the lives of those babies, but it is a start.

Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio, who has prayed with the families of victims and who pushed for tightening gun laws soon after the shooting, said in a statement Sunday that the agreement was encouraging.

The framework, as it has been outlined, should receive broad support from elected officials and the public, he said, adding that everything that can advance peace in our midst has to be pursued. He also praised Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican, for working with Democrats and said compromises like this can help unify the country.

In Orlando on Sunday  the sixth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting  Ricardo Negron, 33, a voting rights activist and survivor of that attack, said he was of two minds about the potential deal on gun safety measures.

Its good to see them moving toward something, he said. But on the other hand, its just the bare minimum of the bare minimum. Negron had been hoping for legislation that would raise the age limit for buying military-style rifles.

Still, for Negron, this type of deal has been a long time coming. Its sad that its taken such a heavy toll for them to even consider doing this, he said of lawmakers.

Omar Delgado, 50, was particularly optimistic about the mental health component of the agreement. He was one of the police officers who responded to the Pulse shooting and has since had post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from an hourslong standoff with the gunman.

Ive always said if you want to make a change, lets start with the root of the issue, Delgado said. If it helps with mental health, Im all for it.

He also said he was pleased with the increased funding for school security. If you have more trained people out there, more trained officers, it will deter a lot of the violence, Delgado said, although he added that it would not totally fix the issue of gun violence in schools. What will? he asked. I wish I knew that answer.

Zeneta Everhart, whose son, Zaire Goodman, was shot and wounded in the attack in Buffalo, said the deal was a great step. She was encouraged that lawmakers had a civil conversation in trying to figure out how to help the citizens of this country.

Everhart testified last week in front of lawmakers about the need to overhaul U.S. gun laws. Its a small victory, she said of the deal Sunday. Its not everything we want.

Today, she said she was celebrating. And tomorrow? We go back to work, she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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TIRANA, Albania (AP)  Albanian officials on Monday declared the Vjosa River and its tributaries a future national park, a move aimed at preserving what they called one of the last wild rivers in Europe.

The Albanian Ministry of Tourism and Environment signed an agreement with the California-based Patagonia environmental organization to draft an integrated and sustainable plan" for the new park.

This is an opportunity to protect one of Europes rivers, really one of the crown jewel rivers of Europe, Ryan Gellert of Patagonia told The Associated Press.

Patagonia, along with other environmental groups EcoAlbania, Riverwatch and EuroNatur, will help organize and fund a panel of international and local experts who will draft the framework for the park and also create awareness around the world of this natural beauty.

The Vjosa River runs 270 kilometers (170 miles) from the forest-covered slopes of Greeces Pindus mountains to Albanias Adriatic coast.

Scientists say the Vjosa ecosystem is the habitat for 1,100 species, 13 of which are in great danger of extinction. It also has ecological, cultural and economic value for the 60,000 Albanians who live along its shores.

A perfect metaphor for nature in Albania, with the white stones ... sprayed with wildflower seedlings, said Mirela Kumbaro, Albania's minister for environment and tourism, who also urged visitors to come see its turquoise-colored waters in summer and torrential white snowy waters in winter.

Declaring it a national park will enrich the generations that will inherit Vjosa in a way that's a new untrodden path in Europe, Prime Minister Edi Rama said.

He said the government has cancelled its building plans for eight hydropower stations on the Vjosa and its tributaries that were going to produce electricity for the small Western Balkan country. Environmentalists say the dams would have caused a serious damage to the river.

Officials did not immediately say what would become of the half-built hydropower station at Kalivac on the Vjosa.

The agreement is a serious step toward starting a joint project of many actors, not only of the government, in building up the national park, said Olsi Nika of EcoAlbania, one of the groups that opposed the dams.

Both Nika and Gellert said it could take years before the national park becomes official. It currently is a protected zone. Neither the government nor the environmental groups could immediately say exactly how large the new park will be  assuming that is a question for the expert panel  but Rama said it would be Albania's biggest. Valbona Valley has that distinction now at 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres).

The prime minister also teased actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a noted environmentalist, for previously criticizing the Albanian government for not protecting the Vjosa ecosystem. He said now that Albania has acted, perhaps Nardi (Albanian for Leonardo) may wake up and help the project.

___

Follow Llazar Semini at https://twitter.com/lsemini
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Alert: Congo's military blames Rwanda after M23 rebels capture key town, calling it no less than an invasion."
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP)  Saudi Arabia on Monday lifted a mask mandate for indoor spaces even as COVID-19 infection numbers steadily climb past 1,000 new cases a day after reaching double-digit lows just two months ago.

Masks will still be required at Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, where pilgrims gather for worship, according to the new rules. Organizers of events and festivals can continue to require masks if they wish. The kingdom additionally dropped a rule requiring proof of vaccination on a mobile app that was required before entry to certain places, events and to board planes.
Attorneys who worked to secure settlements topping $1 billion in the collapse of a beachfront Florida condominium building in which 98 people died are requesting about $100 million in fees and costs, according to a new court filing.

The total represents a discount of as much as $200 million compared with the amounts typically charged by lawyers in major class-action lawsuits, Miami attorney Philip Freidin said in the document. The settlements also avoid court battles that could have taken years and cost even more.

Freidin was asked to recommend fees for 132 attorneys who worked more than 34,000 hours on the lawsuits that followed the June 24, 2021, collapse of the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside, Florida. The settlements for wrongful death and property loss were announced less than a year after the tragedy.

The total of about $100 million is reasonable given that this litigation is among the most difficult, complex, and high-profile class actions I have witnessed in 53 years of practicing law, Freidin said in the filing. But no one expected this kind of result, ever. It's unprecedented. And without this team, it would not have happened.

The final amount of fees and costs will be determined by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman, who has already given preliminary approval to the victim settlements negotiated by the lawyers. The money would come from those settlements, which total more than $1.02 billion, court documents show.

A fairness hearing to allow people to comment on the settlements is set for June 23  a day before the first anniversary of the 12-story building's collapse.

The court will determine what an appropriate fee is, likely after holding a hearing and after the individual victims receive their individual awards, attorneys Harley Tropin and Rachel Furst said in an email. They co-chaired the plaintiff committee in the case, which ultimately involved 30 settling parties.

And the legal work is not yet done. Each person who files a claim for a share of the settlements is entitled to an individual hearing on their amount, if they choose, which could last into August. It's not immediately clear if additional fees would be charged out of the settlements for lawyers in those hearings.

The goal is to begin distributing money to victims by September.

The money comes from several sources, including insurance companies, engineering firms and a luxury condominium that had recently been built next door. None of the parties admitted wrongdoing. A billionaire developer from Dubai is purchasing the 1.8-acre (1-hectare) beachside site for $120 million, contributing to the settlement.

Only three survivors were found despite around-the-clock efforts by rescuers who dug through a 40-foot-high (12-meter-high) pile of rubble for two weeks. Another three dozen people were able to escape from the portion of the building that remained standing. All 136 units were ultimately demolished.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is investigating the cause of the collapse, a process expected to take years. Champlain South had a long history of maintenance problems and questions have been raised about the quality of its original construction and inspections in the early 1980s.

Florida will require statewide recertification of condominiums more than three stories tall under new legislation Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last month in response to the disaster.
John Minchillo/AP

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP)  Incarcerated lawyer Michael Avenatti says he plans to plead guilty to charges in a federal court case in Southern California accusing him of cheating clients out of millions of dollars.

Avenatti didn't specify which charges he wants to plead to in a brief court filing Sunday. He said he hasn't reached a deal with federal prosecutors but wants to change his plea in order to be accountable; accept responsibility; avoid his former clients being further burdened; save the Court and the government significant resources; and save his family further embarrassment.
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ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  The search for an Indigenous expert and a journalist who disappeared in a remote area of Brazil's Amazon continued Monday following the discovery of a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged in a river.

The items were taken by Federal Police officers by boat to Atalaia do Norte, the closest city to the search, and police said Sunday night they had identified the items as belonging to the missing men, including a health card and clothes of Bruno Pereira, the Brazilian Indigenous expert.

The backpack, which was identified as belonging to freelance journalist Dom Phillips of Britain, was found tied to a tree that was half-submerged, a firefighter told reporters in Atalaia do Norte. It is the end of the rainy season in the region and part of the forest is flooded.

Paulo Marubo, president of local Indigenous association Univaja, for which Pereira was an adviser, told The Associated Press that search parties from the army, navy, Federal Police, Civil Defense, firefighters and Military Police were working in the area where the belongings were found.

Upon returning to Atalaia do Norte after a full day of searching Monday, a Federal Police officer told reporters they had not found either mans body or other items.

Federal police issued a statement earlier Monday denying media reports that the two mens bodies had been found. Last week, police recovered organic matter of apparent human origin in the river, which has been sent for analysis. They haven't detailed what the material is, but President Jair Bolsonaro told local radio Monday that it was human viscera.

Police have also reported finding traces of blood in the boat of a fisherman who is under arrest as the only suspect in the disappearance.

Search teams had concentrated their efforts around a spot in the Itaquai river where a tarp from the boat used by the missing men was found Saturday by volunteers from the Matis Indigenous group.

We used a little canoe to go to the shallow water. Then we found a tarp, shorts and a spoon, one of the volunteers, Binin Beshu Matis, told the AP.

Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen June 5 near the entrance of the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. They were returning alone by boat on the Itaquai to Atalaia do Norte but never arrived.

Hundreds of people from several Indigenous groups took to Atalaia do Nortes narrow streets to protest the pairs disappearance Monday.

With traditional garments, bows and arrows and mobile phones, they carried placards criticizing President Jair Bolsonaro, who is widely seen as an opponent of Indigenous rights.

The Javari Valley has seven known Indigenous groups  some only recently contacted, such as the Matis. The valley also has at least 11 uncontacted groups, making the region the largest concentration of isolated tribes in the world.

Officially, the Indigenous territory has a population of about 6,300 people. Many of them live in the small urban center so their children can attend non-Indigenous public schools. They also go to the city to seek medical treatment and collect federal benefits.

That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents. Violence has grown as drug trafficking gangs battle for control of waterways to ship cocaine, although the Itaquai is not a known drug trafficking route.

Authorities have said police are investigating possible links to an international network that pays poor fishermen to fish illegally in the Javari Valley reserve, which is Brazils second-largest Indigenous territory.

One of the most valuable targets is the worlds largest freshwater fish with scales, the arapaima. It weighs up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) and can reach 3 meters (10 feet). The fish is sold in nearby cities,.

But federal police have not ruled out other lines of investigation, such as drug trafficking.

The only known suspect in the disappearances is fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also known as Pelado, who is under arrest. Indigenous people who were with Pereira and Phillips say he brandished a rifle at them the day before they disappeared. He denies any wrongdoing and said military police tortured him to try to get a confession, his family told the AP.

Pereira, who previously led the local bureau of the Brazilian governments Indigenous agency, known as FUNAI, has taken part in several operations against illegal fishing. In such operations, as a rule the fishing gear is seized or destroyed, while the fishermen are fined and briefly detained. Only the Indigenous can legally fish in their territories.

In 2019, Funai official Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was gunned down in Tabatinga in front of his wife and daughter-in-law. Three years later, the crime remains unsolved. His FUNAI colleagues told the AP they believe the slaying was linked to his work against fishermen and poachers.

Rubber tappers founded all the riverbank communities in the area. In the 1980s, however, rubber tapping declined and they resorted to logging. That ended, too, when the federal government created the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory in 2001. Fishing has become the main economic activity since then.

An illegal fishing trip to the vast Javari Valley lasts around one month, said Manoel Felipe, a local historian and teacher who also served as a councilman. For each illegal incursion, a fisherman can earn at least $3,000.

The fishermens financiers are Colombians, Felipe said. In (the city of) Leticia, everybody was angry with Bruno. This is not a little game. Its possible they sent a gunman to kill him.
DALLAS, N.C. (AP)  A new, bilingual exhibit at the Gaston County Museum of Art and History highlights the history of photography, largely through the lenses of photographers from Gaston County.

The exhibit, titled Into the Darkroom, explores photography, not only as a technological advancement, but as a modern art form, said museum curator Alicyn Wiedrich.

And the big catalyst for me is that photography is one of those rare art mediums that captures  a moment. And there are a lot of examples throughout history where photography in particular changed how people felt about societal issues, Wiedrich said.

The exhibit includes a display on Gaston County photographer Ennis Atkins, who was a photographer for The Gazette until 1947.

After he died, his estate donated a collection of thousands of his photographs to the museum, Wiedrich said.

The exhibit also features work by Lewis Hine, who photographed children working in textile mills in Gaston County and other areas. His photographs helped spur the development of child labor laws in the United States.

Work by Rick Haithcox, a photographer who lives in Dallas, is also featured prominently in the exhibit. Haithcox also donated materials from his own darkroom, a space used to develop photos, to help the museum create an authentic darkroom in the exhibit.

Haithcox was very valuable to putting this whole exhibit together, Wiedrich said.

The exhibit features historical artifacts that include cameras and photographs from different points in history, as well as a timeline that shows the history of photography.

The final section of the exhibit, which includes Haithcoxs darkroom, also has interactive features, including an area where visitors may take photographs of themselves and hang them up in the exhibit.

Wiedrich said that to make the exhibit fully bilingual  putting text throughout in English and Spanish  was a deliberate decision that was formed after conversation with a latinx community panel.

And when I got on board, they told me pretty much right off the bat that  for Spanish speakers, its hard for them to go places like museums, because you know, when they get there, theres nothing for them there. And so I really wanted to make this an inclusive experience, Wiedrich said.

The exhibit will be on display through July 2023.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  The number of detected illegal migration entries into the European Union in the first five months of 2022 was more than 86,000, or 82% more than in the same period in 2021, the agency monitoring the EUs external borders said Monday.

Crossings in May alone numbered some 23,500  75% up from May last year, according to preliminary data released by Frontex.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)  Challenges have been made to Alaska Republican state Rep. David Eastman's reelection bid over his affiliation with the far-right Oath Keepers.

Several people said they filed complaints related to a section of the state Constitution that prevents from holding public office anyone who advocates, or who aids or belongs to any party or organization or association which advocates, the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of the State," the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Hes a legislator and I just really hold any representative in the state up to a higher standard, said Jason Thomas, an attorney from Eagle River who filed a challenge.

An Oath Keepers leader and other members or associates have been charged with seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

Eastman has said he attended a Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., for outgoing President Donald Trump that was held before people stormed the U.S. Capitol. But he has said that he did not participate in the riot. He has not been accused of any crimes.

Eastman, in an email to The Associated Press on Monday, said efforts to repurpose the constitution to purify the candidate pool before an election have failed in the past and will continue to fail because it is fundamentally the right of the people to make good choices as well as bad ones on Election Day.

Eastman is one of three Republicans running in his Wasilla House district.

Tiffany Montemayor, an Alaska Division of Elections spokesperson, told the newspaper the division had received a number of complaints about Rep. Eastman and others.

She told the AP she did not have further details on the complaints. The deadline for complaints ended Saturday.

Under state law, the division director is to determine a candidate's eligibility within 30 days of receiving a complaint.

Alaska House leaders earlier this year backed off a proposal to strip Eastman of committee assignments over his affiliation with Oath Keepers. House members instead held informational hearings on the group.

The Oath Keepers were founded in 2009. The group recruits current and former military, police and first responders. Its members pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to defend the Constitution, according to its website.

Eastman was ousted from the minority Republican caucus weeks before this year's legislative session ended. The minority leader cited tensions with Eastman that had built over time. Eastman additionally was removed from two committees.

Ivan Hodes, who was among the graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who last fall called on Eastman to resign, detailed the process for filing a complaint on social media. He said he filed one and urged others to do so. Eastman graduated from West Point.

Raven Amos of Wasilla said she filed a complaint.

If the Legislature is incapable of defending the states constitution, then it becomes the duty of the voting body to demand that the rule of law is followed," Amos said in a Twitter message.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Chinas ambassador to Australia says relations between the two countries are at a new juncture with the election of a new Australian government and the first minister-to-minister talks in more than two years.

Ambassador Xiao Qian gave an upbeat assessment of the potential for the bilateral relationship in a weekend speech to the Australia-China Friendship Society in the west coast city of Perth. The speech was published Monday on the embassys website.

The international, political and economic landscape is undergoing profound and complex changes. The China-Australia relationship is at a new juncture, facing many opportunities, Xiao said.

My embassy and the Chinese consulates-general in Australia stand ready to work with the Australian federal government, state governments and friends from all walks of life to move forward the China-Australia relationship along the right track to the benefits of our two countries and two peoples," Xiao added.

Xiaos speech Saturday came a day before Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghes hourlong meeting with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles on the sidelines of a regional security summit in Singapore.

Marles described the meeting as a critical first step in repairing bilateral relations. But observers are wary of describing the meeting as a thawing of a diplomatic deep freeze between the countries.

Dennis Richardson, a former head of Defense, Foreign Affairs and the spy agency Australian Security Intelligence Organisation as well as a former Australian ambassador to the United States, noted that both governments took their first opportunity to have ministerial contact since Australias government changed at elections May 21.

Bilateral relations had soured in the nine years that a conservative coalition had held power.

The fact that they agreed to talk at the very first opportunity is noteworthy, Richardson told Australian Broadcasting Corp on Monday.

I dont think we should get too far down the track on this. We have a long way to go, Richardson added.

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst in defense strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, warned against overstating the significance of the meeting.

They had an hourlong meeting where they exchanged, in a frank and full manner, their respective views. That does not equate to restoring the status quo ante of the Australian relationship as it existed prior to 2015 when the relationship was reasonably good, Davis said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang wrote to congratulate Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese days after his election victory in a gesture seen by some as China seeking to reset the relationship.

Albanese responded by urging China to show goodwill by lifting a series of official and unofficial trade barriers created in recent years to a range of Australian exports worth billions of dollars including coal, wine, barley, beef and seafood.

Bates Gill, a Macquarie University expert on Chinese foreign policy, suspected Beijing would not budge on trade sanctions.

It would have to come at some price of Australia agreeing to Chinese demands. I just dont think the politics at the moment are going to allow for that, Gill said.

Bilateral relations plumbed new depths early in the pandemic when Australia called for an independent investigation into the origins of and responses to COVID-19.

Chinas latest ambassador to Australia has set a more conciliatory tone since he arrived in Canberra in January than his predecessor, Cheng Jingye, did.

Cheng warned in 2020 of Chinese trade boycotts if Australia persisted with its call for a COVID-19 inquiry.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP)  A Delaware man died Sunday while participating in the Escape the Cape Triathlon in New Jersey, race officials said.

The News Journal reports that the man went into distress during the water portion of the race.
DETROIT (AP)  A Detroit man has been arrested after his 22-year-old girlfriend was strangled with an extension cord, sexually assaulted and burned with a metal spatula.

He was arraigned Sunday on torture, criminal sexual conduct, home invasion, felonious assault and other charges, the Wayne County prosecutor's office said Monday.
Ross D. Franklin/AP

PHOENIX (AP)  Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has tested positive for COVID-19 and wont attend a planned political event Monday with former Vice President Mike Pence, his spokesman said.

Ducey is asymptomatic and feels well, spokesman C.J. Karamargin said.
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More than 100 million Americans are being warned to stay indoors if possible as high temperatures and humidity settle in over states stretching through parts of the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes and east to the Carolinas.

The National Weather Service Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said Monday 107.5 million people will be affected by combination of heat advisories, excessive heat warnings and excessive heat watches through Wednesday.

The heat wave, which set several high temperature records in the West, the Southwest and into Denver during the weekend, moved east into parts of the Gulf Coast and the Midwest Monday and will expand to the Great Lakes and east to the Carolinas, the National Weather Service said.

St. Louis, Memphis, Minneapolis and Tulsa are among several cities under excessive heat warnings, with temperatures forecast to reach about 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), accompanied by high humidity that could make conditions feel close to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius).

In Jackson, Mississippi, residents braved temperatures reaching 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) on Monday to complete their chores. Roger Britt, 67, ventured to a neighborhood garden in search of vegetables for dinner.

Britt thinks the weather in Jackson has been more unpredictable in recent years.

It was so cold this past winter, so I know its going to be a hot summer, he said.

Many municipalities announced plans to open cooling centers, including in Chicago, where officials started alerting residents Monday about where they could find relief from the heat. The city plans to open six community service centers on Tuesday and Wednesday and said in a news release that people could also cool off in 75 public libraries in the city.

The city stepped up efforts to respond to heat waves after more than 700 people, many of them elderly, died in a 1995 heat wave. The effort also comes after three women died in a senior housing facility during a brief heat wave last month, raising concerns about the citys ability to respond to brutally hot weather.

In North Carolinas Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, the local government opened cooling stations and the area transit system was offering free rides to some of the locations.

And in South Carolina, poll workers are preparing for what could be one of the hottest primary election days ever on Tuesday, with highs forecast to reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) and humidity making it feel closer to 110 (43 degrees Celsius).

Poll managers are trying to find ways to protect people who must stand outside to vote. One saving grace may be turnout for the midterm primaries are often much lower than presidential elections. Another is the state allowed early voting for the first time and more than 110,000 ballots have already been cast.

In Minneapolis, 14 schools that are not fully air-conditioned will shift to distance learning Tuesday while the city braces for temperatures in the high 90s. Schools were scheduled to finish on June 10 but a three-week teachers strike in April pushed the final day to June 24, to make up for the lost class time.

Excessive heat pushed the same schools into distance learning for three days during the final week of classes last year.
DUBLIN, Ohio (AP)  A man charged with murder in a shooting death at an Ohio mall over the weekend told authorities that he fired after he was hit in the head with a purse.

Columbus police were called to the Mall at Tuttle Crossing at about 2:30 p.m. Sunday and found a man inside a shoe store who had been shot. Authorities said 25-year-old Dontarious Sylvester was pronounced dead just after 3 p.m. Sunday.
BERLIN (AP)  Germany's vice chancellor is proposing new powers for the country's antitrust agency to clamp down on oil companies amid disappointment over the limited effect of a cut in fuel taxes.

A three-month cut took effect on June 1 as part of a wider package of measures aimed at blunting the financial fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which also includes cheap tickets for local public transport. But there have been widespread complaints that prices at the pump have crept back up substantially after initially falling.

Industry representatives insist that the tax reduction is being passed on to consumers but that they face pressure from rising prices. Many politicians, facing charges that the plan is an expensive flop, accuse oil companies of using the tax cut to line their pockets.

Leading politicians in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democrats and the Greens have called for a tax on what they call excessive profits earned by oil companies since the war pushed up prices. But the third partner in the coalition government, the pro-business Free Democrats of Finance Minister Christian Lindner, have vehemently rejected that idea.

Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who is also the economy minister and responsible for energy, responded with a proposal to beef up the powers of the Federal Cartel Office.

Taxing excessive profits doesn't seem to be capable of winning a majority in the coalition," he told Deutschlandfunk radio on Monday. My proposal now is that we change cartel law, we draw up a cartel law with claws and teeth.

The idea is to give the antitrust authority powers to look into companies' books and lower the threshold for possible punishment. Habeck also proposes enabling the unbundling, essentially a break-up, of companies.

Setting out the plan on Sunday, Habeck acknowledged that the plan won't help in the current situation but said it would help in the future.
BERLIN (AP)  The German government is setting in motion plans to legalize the sale of cannabis for recreational purposes, aiming to have legislation ready later this year.

The Health Ministry said Monday that it will start holding expert hearings on various aspects of the issue Tuesday. It said that more than 200 representatives from the medical, legal and other fields will take part, along with officials from various levels of government and unidentified international experts.

The pledge to legalize controlled sales of cannabis to adults in licensed shops is one of a series of reforms outlined in last year's coalition deal between the three socially liberal parties that make up Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government.

They said the plan would ensure quality control while also protecting young people, and agreed that the social effects of the new legislation would be examined after four years.

Scholz's coalition took office in December. In early May, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said that he planned to draw up draft legislation in the year's second half following the hearings with experts.

The five hearings, which will be held through the end of this month, will address what measures are needed to ensure the best protection for young people and of health and consumers, government drug czar Burkhard Blienert said.

Like many others, I have worked for years toward us in Germany finally ending the criminalization of cannabis consumers and beginning a modern and health-oriented cannabis policy, he said in a statement.

Among other liberalizing plans, the government has launched a drive to remove from Germanys criminal code a ban on doctors advertising abortion services. It also wants to ease the path to German citizenship, lift restrictions on dual citizenship and reduce the minimum age for voting in national and European elections from 18 to 16.

The government also wants to scrap 40-year-old legislation that requires transsexual people to get a psychological assessment and a court decision before officially changing gender, a process that often involves intimate questions. It is due to be replaced with a new self-determination law.
President Joe Bidens top health official has again tested positive for COVID-19, less than a month after he came down with virus symptoms while on a trip to Germany.

U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra woke up with symptoms again Monday morning and tested positive afterward, spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim said.

His symptoms are mild and he is isolating in Sacramento, California. Lovenheim said Becerra had been in California for a personal commitment.

A statement from HHS said the secretary was not believed to be a close contact of Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, who also tested positive earlier this spring.

Becerra is continuing to work from isolation.

Becerra had joined Biden at the Summit of the Americas last week in Los Angeles. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that he had tested positive after attending the event, which gathered dignitaries, diplomats and business leaders from across the hemisphere.

Becerra is fully vaccinated and has received a booster shot guarding against the virus.

In May, Becerra tested positive while in Berlin for a meeting of health ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy nations to discuss the ongoing pandemic. His office said then that he had mild symptoms and continued his work from isolation.

HHS said Becerra tested negative for COVID before returning to the United States and multiple times afterward before the positive test Monday.

Its possible to be re-infected with the virus and get sick with COVID-19 more than once. Its unclear how often people are re-infected so soon after the first illness, but one early study found that its possible, though rare, to test positive for one type of omicron variant, called BA.2, 20 to 60 days after testing positive for the original omicron.

The viral mutant now dominant in the U.S., which scientists call BA.2.12.1, is also a member of the omicron family but has a genetic trait called a delta mutation that appears to allow it to escape pre-existing immunity from vaccination and prior infection  especially if someone was infected with the original omicron.

Its also possible that Becerra didnt clear his earlier infection  although he tested negative.

__

AP reporter Zeke Miller and AP Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this story.
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP)  Bluegrass Crime Stoppers is partnering with the Lexington Police Department on an initiative that aims to help solve some homicide cases in central Kentucky, officials said.

Bluegrass Crime Stoppers has committed $10,000 over the next three months to unsolved homicides from 2022 in Lexington, police detective Anthony Delimpo said in a statement.
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FORT MEADE, Md. (AP)  An Iraqi man who has been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for more than 15 years pleaded guilty Monday to war crimes charges for his role in al-Qaida attacks against U.S. and allied forces along with civilians in Afghanistan.

The pleas by the prisoner known as Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi before a military commission at the U.S. base in Cuba amount to a legal milestone, aiding efforts to resolve the long-stalled Guantanamo tribunals and wind down operations at the detention center.

Prosecuting Hadi al-Iraqi has been delayed for years by some of the same legal and logistical challenges that have held up other Guantanamo cases as well as by his deteriorating spinal condition that has left him partially paralyzed.

Hadi al-Iraqi, who is about 60 and says his real name is Nashwan al-Tamir, was arraigned at Guantanamo in 2014 before the commission, which was set up to prosecute prisoners for war crimes in a high-security court that combines military and civilian law.

He pleaded guilty to four of five charges against him, including conspiracy and several violations of the international laws of war as an al-Qaida commander early in the conflict in Afghanistan that formally ended with the U.S. withdrawal in August.

He was facing up to life in prison but is expected to be eventually transferred out of Guantanamo and sent to a third country under the terms of his plea deal after he undergoes additional medical treatment at the base.

The U.S. said Hadi al-Iraqi was a senior figure in al-Qaida since the mid-1990s, leading a training camp for operatives in Afghanistan in the years before the organization carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

According to military charge sheets, the prisoner also assisted the Taliban with the March 2001 destruction of the the giant, sixth century sandstone Buddha statues built into a cliff in Bamiyan province. The group deemed the famed structures offensive under their interpretation of Islam.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in response to the attacks, Hadi al-Iraqi organized deadly al-Qaida attacks against American and allied forces along with civilians in the country and in neighboring Pakistan.

The prisoner, who has a long gray beard and wore a traditional skullcap, calmly answered yes sir or yes, your honor when questioned by the military judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Rosenow, if he understood the charges in a lengthy hearing to determine if he was willingly entering into a plea agreement with the government. The Associated Press viewed the proceeding from a video feed at Fort Meade, Maryland.

This is the first plea agreement in a Guantanamo case since the election of President Joe Biden, whose administration has been working to gradually reduce the number of prisoners at Guantanamo and move at least closer to being able to close it.

Plea agreements are key to the closure effort because the tribunals have dragged on for years because of legal challenges and the logistical difficulty of holding proceedings at the isolated base at the southeastern edge of Cuba.

There are 37 men still held at Guantanamo, including 10 facing active military commission cases. The most prominent is the death penalty proceeding against five prisoners charged with aiding and planning the 9/11 attacks, which is the subject of ongoing plea negotiations.
JERUSALEM (AP)  A member of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's party said Monday he would cease voting with the governing coalition, dealing yet another blow to the teetering government as it marks one year in office.

Nir Orbach, a lawmaker with the religious-nationalist Yemina party, was the latest member of the ruling alliance to abandon support in the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

A trickle of defections and rebellions in recent weeks has left Bennett's coalition of eight divergent parties without a clear majority to pass legislation, raising questions about how long it can survive.

Bennett's government was sworn in last June after four deadlocked elections that were largely referendums on longtime leader Benjamin Netanyahu's fitness to rule while on trial for corruption. His coalition ranges from dovish liberals to hawkish ultranationalists and a small Islamist faction. They are united in their opposition to Netanyahu but have little else in common.

Despite pledging to avoid dealing with key issues such as Israel's policies concerning the Palestinians, the coalition has struggled to find common ground, and two of its members have bolted. Now the coalition and opposition each hold 60 seats in the 120-member parliament, making passing legislation difficult.

Earlier this month parliament failed to pass a bill that would extend legal protections to Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Two members of the coalition voted with the opposition to defeat the bill, while several others abstained.

In a statement, Orbach said he had informed Bennett he is "not part of the coalition. But he held out hope the coalition might somehow be rescued, saying he would not yet vote to dissolve parliament and send the country to another round of elections.

The embattled coalition can remain in power until a majority of lawmakers votes to either dissolve parliament or appoints a different prime minister. Neither scenario appears imminent.

Bennett said in a speech at the Knesset that this government isnt perfect, but the alternative isnt better.

His main ally, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, wrote on Twitter marking the anniversary of the governments establishment that this is the only way to protect Israeli democracy and the strength of the state of Israel.
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TOKYO (AP)  A Japanese foundation announced Monday it is launching a fundraising drive to provide more than 1,200 Ukrainian evacuees in Japan with additional financial support for language studies and other needs.

Jumpei Sasakawa, executive director of the Nippon Foundation, said it aims to raise 1 billion yen ($7.4 million) through cooperation with the U.S. and Ukrainian ambassadors.

The foundation has already pledged 5 billion yen ($37 million) for the transportation and living costs of Ukrainian evacuees. Japan has so far accepted more than 1,200 war-displaced Ukrainians since Russia invaded in late February.

Sasakawa said he was approached by U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, who asked him to enable ordinary Japanese to help support Ukrainian evacuees.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan Sergiy Korsunsk, who joined Sasakawa and Emanuel at a news conference, urged Japanese to see donations to the fund as an investment by Japan in a nation that will be always be friends with you. He said Ukrainians in Japan will be a bridge between our countries when Ukraine is ready to rebuild itself.

Japan quickly joined the United States and other major industrialized economies in imposing sanctions on Russia and supporting Ukraine because it fears a similar development in East Asia, where Beijing has become increasingly assertive and has threatened to take military actions against Taiwan if it refuses to unite with China.

Acceptance of the Ukrainian evacuees is unusual for Japan, which has extremely strict refugee and immigration policies despite its own shrinking labor force. Advocates have expressed hope that its support for the Ukrainians will lead to a more lenient immigration policy.

Human rights groups have criticized Japan for neglecting displaced people from other countries such as Afghanistan and Myanmar, who have not received such a warm welcome or a nationally-organized support system.

I would say, this is a win-win situation. Japan could use the help on its labor shortage and Ukraine people or evacuees can bring their skill set and find work and contribute to their temporary new home, Emanuel said.

The Nippon Foundation was founded by Sasakawa's grandfather, Ryoichi Sasakawa, a far-right politician and businessman, to distribute money earned from motorboat racing, a popular gambling pastime.

Asked why he turned to the foundation, Emanuel, who has roots in Ukraine, said it is known for humanitarian assistance and was already working to support Ukrainian evacuees.
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP)  The mutinous soldiers who ousted Burkina Faso's democratically elected president early this year vowed they would do a better job at stopping the jihadi violence rocking the country. Five months later, however, attacks are increasing and patience with the junta appears to be waning.

Many in Burkina Faso supported the military takeover in January, frustrated with the previous government's inability to stem Islamic extremist violence that has killed thousands and displaced at least 2 million. Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who led the coup and was later installed as interim president, vowed to restore security.

But violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State increased nearly 7% during the junta's first three months of rule compared with the three months prior, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

Beyond the immeasurable suffering, the effects of the violence and conflict  which show no signs of abating  are likely to lead to renewed popular discontent, said Heni Nsaibia, senior researcher at ACLED.

The latest attack happened in northern Burkina Faso over the weekend when suspected extremists killed at least 55 people, authorities said Monday.

Nearly 5,000 people have died in the last two years in Burkina Faso and conflict experts say there will be far-reaching consequences if the violence continues to worsen.

The decline in Burkina Faso will absolutely fuel the spread of jihadist activity in the Gulf of Guinea states  Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo  where there already is jihadist recruitment and violence," said Michael Shurkin, director of global programs at 14 North Strategies, a consultancy based in Dakar, Senegal.

Damiba has asked citizens to give him until September to see improvement. He's promoted younger officers with field experience and created a central coordination unit for military operations. His government also has supported local dialogues with jihadis to try to convince the fighters to put down their arms and return to their homes.

Yet violence is intensifying. Since April at least 30 security forces have been killed and two foreigners kidnapped: an American nun and a Polish citizen. Last week, 11 gendarmes were killed by jihadis in Seno province in the Sahel, said the army in a statement.

The government is losing control of swaths of land, particularly in the Center North and Sahel regions, as jihadis have increased their use of roadside bombs and use more sophisticated weapons.

Government soldiers say they lack equipment and must resort to stealing guns and ammunition from jihadis they kill. Seeing so many of their colleagues die also has taken its toll, the soldiers say.

Our situation is very difficult. Sometimes the enemy kills us because were regularly exhausted, said a soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to speak to journalists.

Jihadis are changing strategy. They are targeting water sources, destroying 32 facilities this year which has reduced access to nearly 300,000 people, said a group of aid organizations operating in the country.

The conflict is now putting at risk the very thing no one can live without: clean water, said Rebecca Bouchet-Petersen, country director for Solidarity International in Burkina Faso.

Most of the destruction of water sources has been around Djibo in the arid Sahel region, which hosts the largest number of displaced people in the country and has been under siege for months. Last month local leaders in Djibo tried to negotiate an end to the blockade with the top jihadi in the country, Jafar Dicko, according to government officials.

It was the first time the government gave logistical support for local dialogues, which have been ongoing for years. While the talks partially succeeded in allowing freer movement in and out of Djibo, community leaders say its a small improvement.

I think its when the government negotiates that well see more significant results, said Boubacari Dicko, the Emir of Djibo who led the talks.

But its unclear if Damiba's government is prepared to take that step. The previous government was publicly against such negotiations, although it did hold some in secret around the November 2020 presidential election.

Theres also growing discontent about Damiba's crackdown on civic freedoms. The junta has restricted political demonstrations that could disturb public order or mobilize security forces who will be more useful for combat."

Yet locals in hard-hit parts of Burkina Faso see few alternatives to the junta and say theyre willing to give it a little more time. In August last year, 45-year-old Awa Komi tried to return to her village to farm because her family had no food, but fled when jihadis started killing people, she said.

In a makeshift displacement camp in the northern town of Ouahigouya where she now lives, shes hoping Damiba will restore security so she can go home.

He said things would change in five months, the outspoken mother of 11 said, pumping her fist for emphasis. If its not better in five months, we, the women, will kick him out.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  A federal judge on Monday agreed to an accelerated schedule for a new lawsuit that seeks to force members of Virginia's Republican-controlled House of Delegates to face unscheduled elections this fall.

House elections in 2021 were supposed to be the first held under constitutionally required redistricting based on the 2020 census. But because census results were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the state held elections under old legislative boundaries.

A lawsuit filed by Democratic Party activist Paul Goldman a year ago was dismissed last week by a three-judge panel that found Goldman did not have standing as a voter or a potential candidate to file the lawsuit.

Days later, Jeff Thomas, an author who has written extensively about Virginia government and politics, filed a similar lawsuit. Thomas alleges that the 2021 House elections were invalid and asks the court to order new elections this year under the updated districts.

WRIC-TV reports that during a hearing Monday, U.S. District Court Judge David Novak ordered an expedited schedule for Thomas lawsuit and criticized former Attorney General Mark Herring's office for delaying the earlier lawsuit with appeals before the issue of Goldman's standing was decided.

It is really just not appropriate, the way they handled this case, Novak said of Herrings office.

Novak has given the office of current Attorney General Jason Miyares until June 24 to file its planned motion to dismiss Thomas' lawsuit.

Novak acknowledged that the states possible argument of a dwindling timetable for new elections could be valid, and pointed out that Thomas case wont be decided until after the June 21 Congressional primaries.

I just want my voting rights back, Thomas said after the hearing.
David Eggert/AP

DETROIT (AP)  A federal judge in Michigan on Monday refused Republican Perry Johnson's request to halt the printing of ballots for the GOP primary or to put his name on the ballot for governor, further dashing Johnson's chances at challenging Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Johnson was among five governor candidates who were deemed ineligible for the Aug. 2 ballot after the state elections bureau determined they fell short of collecting the necessary number of valid signatures. The elections bureau found that the candidates submitted fake signatures collected by paid petition circulators.
GOMA, Congo (AP)  Congos military accused Rwanda of no less than an invasion after M23 rebels captured a key town on Monday. The military vowed that Congolese forces would defend their homeland, marking a dramatic escalation in tensions between the two Central African neighbors.

The statement from Gen. Sylvain Ekenge, spokesman for the military governor of North Kivu province, came hours after the town of Bunagana fell into the hands of the M23.

The Rwandan defense forces have this time decided to violate ... our territorial integrity by occupying the border town of Bunagana, the military said in a statement, adding that it constituted no less than invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There was no immediate reaction from the government of Rwanda, but the government there has strongly denied accusations over the years that is supports the Congolese rebel group. Many of the M23 fighters are Congolese ethnic Tutsis and Rwandas president is of Rwandan Tutsi descent.

In a statement Monday, a spokesman for the rebel group called on Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi to open direct negotiations with them and said they seized the town only to make it safe enough for civilians to return after they fled recent violence.

In the event of a new threat against our positions or the civilian population, our movement's troops have received the order to follow and annihilate the threat no matter where it comes from, M23 spokesman Willy Ngoma said in the statement.

Relations between Rwanda and Congo have been fraught for decades. Rwanda alleges that Congo gave refuge to the ethnic Hutus who carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide that killed at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The two countries have long accused each other of supporting various rival armed groups.

Late last month, Rwandas military accused neighboring Congolese forces of injuring several civilians in cross-border shelling.

The M23 rose to prominence more than a decade ago when its fighters seized Goma, the largest city in Congo's east which sits along the border with Rwanda. After a peace deal, many of M23's fighters were integrated into the national military.

Then earlier this year the group appeared to make a comeback, launching an offensive against Congo's military after saying the government had failed to live up to its decade-long promises.

The key town that was seized Monday, Bunagana, is only 60 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of Goma, which also serves as a hub for international aid organizations and the U.N. peacekeeping mission known as MONUSCO.

Bunagana, near the border with Uganda, is also an important transit point for goods being imported into Congo from as far away as China.

In Uganda, police spokesman Fred Enanga said Monday that more than 100 Congolese soldiers, fleeing fierce fighting with rebels, crossed the border and surrendered to Ugandan officials. He said the Congolese soldiers will be moved to Rutshuru, another eastern Congo town near the Uganda border.

While the rebels claimed they took the town of Bunagana in order to stabilize it, local leaders on Monday urged Congo's military to reclaim it.

We deplore the M23 rebel attack and call on the Congolese government to track down and neutralize these rebel groups so that state authority can return, said Innocent Ndagije, a civic leader in Bunagana.

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Associated Press writers Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda and Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  The governor of the oldest state in the nation created a "Cabinet on Aging" on Monday with a hope of preparing for demographic changes that will impact health care and the workforce.

Maine has the nation's oldest median age. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said that means tens of thousands of residents will retire in the coming years in the state.
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WASHINGTON (AP)  A police officer lauded for his bravery during the U.S. Capitol riot testified Monday that a man carrying a Confederate battle flag jabbed at him with the flagpole before joining the mob that chased him up a staircase.

In his first public testimony since the Jan. 6, 2021, siege, Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman described his encounter with the flag-toting Delaware man, Kevin Seefried, and his adult son, Hunter, at their trial on charges that they stormed the Capitol together.

Goodman has been hailed as a hero for leading a group of rioters away from the Senate chamber as senators and then-Vice President Mike Pence were being evacuated. Goodman also directed Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, to turn around and head away from the mob.

Goodman recalled seeing Kevin Seefried standing alone in an archway and telling him to leave. Instead, Seefried cursed at him and jabbed at the officer with the base end of the flagpole three or four times without making contact with him, Goodman said.

He was very angry. Screaming. Talking loudly, Goodman said. Complete opposite of pleasant.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is hearing testimony without a jury for the Seefrieds bench trial, which started Monday and is scheduled to resume Tuesday. The Seefrieds waived their right to a jury trial, which means McFadden will decide their cases.

Widely published photographs showed Kevin Seefried carrying a Confederate battle flag inside the Capitol after he and his son entered the building through a broken window.

The charges against both Kevin and Hunter Seefried include a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding, the joint session of Congress for certifying Joe Bidens victory over then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

During the trial's opening statements, defense attorneys said the Seefrieds never intended to interfere with the Electoral College vote count.

Indeed, (Kevin Seefried) was not even aware that the electoral count was happening or was happening in the Capitol, one of his lawyers, Elizabeth Mullin, told the judge.

After rioters chased Goodman up a set of stairs, another Capitol police officer who confronted the mob near the Senate chamber recalled that Kevin Seefried asked, Why are you protecting them?

I assumed he was talking about Congress, Officer Brian Morgan testified.

Before his encounter with the mob inside the Capitol, Goodman joined other officers in trying to hold back rioters as they clashed with police outside the building.

It was like something out of medieval times, with one huge force clashing with another opposing force, Goodman said. I've never seen anything like that ever.

Goodman said he had to retreat inside the building after getting pepper sprayed and exposed to tear gas deployed by police.

The Seefrieds aren't charged with assaulting any officers.

Mullin conceded that Kevin Seefried is guilty of two misdemeanor charges that he knowingly entered a restricted building and illegally demonstrated in the Capitol.

Hunter Seefried, then 22, may have acted stupidly but didn't intend to block Congress from certifying the election results, defense attorney Edson Bostic said.

Goodman recalled that Hunter Seefried was smirking but didn't see him acting aggressively or hear him yelling at police.

He was just disobeying commands, Goodman said.

The Seefrieds traveled to Washington from their home in Laurel, Delaware, to hear Trumps speech at the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6.

They climbed over a wall near a stairwell and scaffolding in the northwest section of the Capitol and were among the first rioters to approach the building near the Senate Wing Door, according to prosecutors. After watching other rioters use a police shield and a wooden plank to break a window, Hunter Seefried used a gloved fist to clear a shard of glass in one of the broken windowpanes, prosecutors said.

In a court filing, prosecutors said the Confederate battle flag that Kevin Seefried brought from home was a symbol of violent opposition to the United States government.

Mullin said Seefried didn't intend to send any kind of message by carrying the flag into the Capitol and regrets doing so.

McFadden, whom Trump nominated in 2017, is the only judge to a hold a bench trial for a Capitol riot case so far.

In April, he acquitted New Mexico resident Matthew Martin of misdemeanor charges that he illegally entered the Capitol and engaged in disorderly conduct after he walked into the building.

In March, McFadden acquitted a New Mexico elected official of engaging in disorderly conduct but convicted him of illegally entering restricted Capitol grounds.

McFadden has criticized prosecutors handling of Capitol riot cases. He suggested that the Justice Department has been unjustly tougher on Capitol riot defendants compared with people arrested at protests against police brutality and racial injustice after George Floyds 2020 murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is scheduled to preside over a bench trial for Jesus Rivera, a Pensacola, Florida, man charged with four riot-related misdemeanors. President Bill Clinton nominated Kollar-Kotelly to the court in 1997.

At least four other Capitol riot defendants have bench trials scheduled for this year.

Juries have unanimously convicted five Capitol riot defendants of all charges, a perfect record for prosecutors so far. More than 300 other defendants have pleaded guilty to riot offenses, mostly misdemeanors punishable by no more than one year in prison. Approximately 100 others have trial dates in 2022 or 2023. More than 800 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack.
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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvanias Republican nominee for governor who has pushed Donald Trumps election lies, said Monday that he had appointed Trumps former campaign lawyer as a senior legal adviser to his own campaign.

The lawyer, Jenna Ellis, endorsed Mastriano in the states contested Republican primary, campaigned with Mastriano and hosted Mastriano on her podcast, where he once discussed how to overturn Trumps defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Ellis, who also promoted Trump's election lies, was with Mastriano the night he won his gubernatorial primary and, speaking on her podcast last month, said, I like to say that Doug Mastriano is the Donald Trump of Pennsylvania.

The decision to bring on Ellis indicates Mastriano, who was endorsed by Trump, has little interest in moderating his gubernatorial campaign ahead of the general election in Pennsylvania. If Mastriano were to win in the fall, he would shape how elections are conducted in the pivotal battleground state  where the governor appoints the secretary of state, who oversees how elections are run. Mastriano has pledged to take the extraordinary step of requiring people to re-register to vote  a move that flatly violates federal law, constitutional law scholars say  and decertifying certain voting machines.

After the 2020 election, Mastriano, a state senator, spearheaded a state Senate hearing in Gettysburg in which witnesses  including Ellis and fellow Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani  aired false claims about mass voter fraud. Trump called into the hearing, as well.

In a statement Monday, Mastriano said Ellis' talent, experience and legal expertise will help him defeat Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state's two-term attorney general, in the Nov. 8 general election.

On Ellis' podcast, Mastriano has talked about the search for evidence of election fraud, how to reverse Trump's election loss and being in touch with a group including Ellis after the 2020 election.

We spoke frequently, or texted," Mastriano said. I was asking you for advice and constitutional recommendations and, once again, anything that Jen and I or anyone else talked about was a legal, constitutional approach forward."

Last year, Mastriano claimed on a radio show that Trump had asked me to run for governor.

Besides promoting Trumps lies about nonexistent, widespread voter fraud costing him the 2020 election, Mastriano was outside the U.S. Capitol when a mob of Trump supporters overran it during the deadly 2021 insurrection.

He later tried to bring an Arizona-style partisan election audit to Pennsylvania before he was stripped of his committee chairmanship over it in a dispute with Senate GOP leaders.

Federal and state election officials and Trumps own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former presidents allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges he appointed.

In February, Mastriano was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol for his efforts to overturn Biden's victory in Pennsylvania by letting lawmakers  instead of voters  award Pennsylvania's presidential electors in Trumps favor.

A lawyer for Mastriano said FBI agents have interviewed Mastriano. Mastriano told the FBI that he did not know anything about a planned insurrection or any coordination behind the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the lawyer said.

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Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/timelywriter.
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STOCKHOLM (AP)  NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday he was glad that the Swedish government has confirmed its readiness to address Turkeys concerns as part of assuming the obligations of future NATO membership.

After decades of military non-alignment, Russias war in Ukraine pushed Finland and Sweden to apply to join NATO in May. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, accuses the Nordic nations of supporting Kurdish militants deemed by Turkey to be terrorists and has vetoed their entry into the alliance until they change their policies.

Sweden is taking the Turkish concerns very seriously" and "not at least their security concerns when it comes to the fight against terrorism, said Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and added that her ambition is that we should have these matters resolved.

Stoltenberg said Sweden has already started to change its counter-terrorism legislation and that the Scandinavian country will ensure that the legal framework for arms exports will reflect their future status as a NATO member with new commitments to allies.

These are two important steps to address the concerns that Turkey has raised, he said..

The aim is to solve those issues as soon as possible, to be able to welcome Finland and Sweden as full members as soon as possible, he said.

Stoltenberg declined to say whether the matter should be resolved before the NATO summit in Madrid on June 28 or before the Swedish Parliament election on Sept. 11. Sweden and Finland have been invited to attend the meeting in Spain.

After Monday's talks, Stoltenberg and Andersson went for a boat ride in the lake next to a Swedish government manor southwest of Stockholm.

On Sunday, Stoltenberg met with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in Finland, saying that Turkey has legitimate concerns over terrorism and other issues that need to be taken seriously.

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Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
As the monkeypox outbreak slowly spreads, people should remain humble about what they know and dont know about the disease, experts said at a Yale panel on Thursday.

Were not looking at the start of another COVID-19 pandemic, but things can be significantly impactful even without getting to that level, said Saad Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, at the Global Health Conversation Series panel.

As of June 8, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports there are no confirmed monkeypox cases in Connecticut. Yet, there are cases in neighboring states: one confirmed case in Massachusetts and nine confirmed cases in New York.

Monkeypox is caused by a virus related to the smallpox virus, according to the CDC. Many people who contract monkeypox have mild symptoms.

Omer said that the situation still needs to be monitored and recommendations of preventing monkeypox are subject to change in the near future.

Anne Rimoin, a professor at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said there are many things that need to be done to be prepared for the outbreak. She said experts should have an understanding of situational awareness.

The most important thing is to be humble about what we know what we dont know, Rimoin said. Because what we know is really about how this virus has been spreading traditionally and in a very different epidemiological and ecological landscape.

I think that its one of these things if youre staring into the dark, you might not see anything, Rimoin said. But if you turn all the lights on, youre going to see a lot more.

Rimoin said diagnostic capability is very important at a local level. People need to be able to have access to tests for monkeypox if they are showing symptoms.

Dr. Nathan Grubaugh, associate professor at Yale School of Public Health, said that there is broad family-level testing available in more than 60 labs across all 50 US states. This means, if you test positive at a lab, samples would be sent to the CDC for confirmations that one is indeed positive.

Akiko Iwasaki, professor at Yale School of Medicine, said that she doesnt think there is a need for people to go out and get vaccinated just yet. But those who are already vaccinated may be at an advantage.

We can expect a significant level of protection against disease in those who have been previously vaccinated with the Vaccinia Vaccines, Iwasaki said. Hopefully, the same kind of protection would apply for monkeypox.

Rimoin said it is important for experts to continue to research and learn more about monkeypox.

We pay the price every single time that we dont invest in disease surveillance, [or] lab surveillance in this kind of infrastructure, Rimoin said.
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP)  A Pakistani TV journalist apparently taken by force by plainclothes police in the southern port city of Karachi was released and returned home before dawn Tuesday, his TV station and colleagues said.

Nafees Naeem, whose forced disappearance drew condemnation from Pakistans journalists union and his colleagues, did not comment on his overnight detention. There was no official statement from the police and no confirmation as to who had taken Naeem.
PHILADELPHIA (AP)  Philadelphia prosecutors asked a judge on Monday to hold a Virginia man in contempt of court over video that shows him meeting with top leaders of two-far right extremist groups in Washington D.C. the day before the Jan. 6 riot.

The request from Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in the case against 43-year-old Joshua Macias comes after the House committee investigating the insurrection put a spotlight on the Jan. 5 underground garage meeting between the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the Capitol attack.

Macias was arrested on weapons and elections law charges in November 2020 after he drove to the Pennsylvania Convention Center where votes were being counted with guns and ammunition. He was out on bail on Jan. 6.

Macias, the co-founder of the group Vets for Trump, hasn't been charged in the Capitol riot. But Philadelphia prosecutors say his presence at the meeting of the extremist leaders the day before indicates he had a much more prominent role in the insurrection than they had previously realized. Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman, and Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers leader, have both been charged with plotting with other extremists to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

We need to radically reconsider whether Joshua Macias is a mid-sized fish or a shark. I believe he is a shark, Krasner said. He is already up for violations of conditions of bail this week. But this is a startling revelation.

Attorney William J. Brennan, who represents Macias, declined to comment on the new filing Monday, but said he planned to continue to try the case in court rather than in the media. A phone message left for co-counsel in the case was not returned Monday.

The Philadelphia filing comes as the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has made a point to highlight the secretive parking garage meeting mentioned in federal indictments and raises further questions about how many people may have known about what the far-right extremist groups were planning to carry out the next day.

Publicly released video of the meeting between Rhodes and Tarrio doesnt reveal much about their discussion. A documentary filmmaker  who was filming Tarrio and testified at last week's House committee hearing  recorded part of the meeting, but Tarrio and others motioned for him to stop.

Federal prosecutors have said only that one of the meetings participants referenced the Capitol," but no other details about what the two extremist group leaders discussed have been revealed in the criminal cases or House committee hearings.

Federal prosecutors argued in a court filing last month that Tarrios decision to meet with Rhodes demonstrates that he "remained engaged in planning for Jan. 6 even after his Jan. 4 arrest on charges that he vandalized a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December 2020.

Macias was a scheduled speaker outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, using what prosecutors said was the same language that the Oath Keepers had been spreading, including saying that Vice President Pence was a traitor who had betrayed the country.

Macias was arrested alongside Antonio LaMotta, 63, early on Nov. 5, 2020, after Philadelphia police officers acting on a tip from the FBI, stopped the men near the convention center.

Authorities said they parked a Hummer a few blocks away that was adorned with QAnon stickers and contained an AR-style rifle, more than 100 rounds of ammunition, a sword and lock-picking tools. LaMotta was carrying an unlicensed firearm, and Macias was carrying a firearm licensed in Virginia, authorities said.

Prosecutors had asked that the two be held without bail, and have characterized the incident as a mass shooting that almost happened. A judge set bail at $750,000, with a 10% bond.

Prosecutors filed a motion to revoke that bail arguing both men had violated the conditions of their release by attending the Jan. 6 rally and by Macias posting support for a pro-Trump candidate. That candidate was also noted to be at the Jan. 5 parking garage meeting.

A judge increased bail for the two men to $850,000, and they were released.

Prosecutors asked for a contempt hearing after a video surfaced on social media where Macias allegedly can be heard narrating a live video from behind the camera during a trucker protest in Washington and allegations that he attended at least one political rally for a Virginia candidate who has called for the execution of everyone involved in President Joe Bidens election.

A hearing in the initial contempt allegation is scheduled for Friday. In the motion Monday, prosecutors asked that Macias be found guilty of criminal contempt and sentenced to five months and 29 days in jail.
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BUCHA, Ukraine (AP)  The lush green beauty of a pine forest with singing birds contrasted with the violent deaths of newly discovered victims of Russia's war in Ukraine, as workers exhumed bodies from another mass grave near the town of Bucha on Kyiv's outskirts.

The hands of several victims were tied behind their backs. The gruesome work of digging up the remains coincided with the Ukrainian police chief's report that authorities have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 people since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Workers wearing white hazmat suits and masks used shovels to exhume bodies from the soil of the forest, marking each section with small yellow numbered signs on the ground. The bodies, covered in cloth and dirt, attracted flies.

Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured, Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police, said at the scene. The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people, many in mass graves in the forest and elsewhere.

The horrors of Bucha shocked the world after Russian troops left. The mass grave that reporters saw Monday was just behind a trench dug out for a military vehicle. The bodies of seven civilians were retrieved. Two of the bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the knees and head, Nebytov said.

National police chief Igor Klimenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Monday that criminal investigations into the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians included some found in mass graves. He said the mass killings also were done by snipers firing from tanks and armored personnel carriers. Bodies were found lying on streets and homes, as well as in mass graves.

He didn't specify how many of the more than 12,000 were civilians and how many were military.

Complete information about the number of bodies in mass graves or elsewhere isnt known, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the American Jewish Committee on Sunday. He cited the case of two children who died with their parents in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol in a Russian bombing. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, asked:

Why is this happening in 2022? This is not the 1940s. How could mass killings, torture, burned cities, and filtration camps set up by the Russian military in the occupied territories resembling Nazi concentration camps come true?

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MORE STORIES ON THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

 The battle of Donbas could prove decisive in Ukraine war

 Mexican president slams NATO policy in Ukraine

 Japan philanthropic group begins fundraising for Ukrainians

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had driven the Russians out of more than 1,000 settlements since the war began, and he vowed Monday they would liberate all occupied territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

In his nightly video address, he said the battle over the Donbas will surely go down in military history as one of the most brutal battles in and for Europe.

The price of this battle for us is very high, he said. Its just terrible.

The total war front in the country, he said, is now 2,500 kilometers long (1,550 miles).

___

Amnesty International, in a report Monday, accused Russia of indiscriminate use of banned cluster munitions in strikes on Kharkiv, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.

Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, has been subject to intensive shelling since Russia began attacking Ukraine.

The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationals senior crisis response adviser. "The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable for their actions, and victims and their families must receive full reparations.

The report cited doctors in Kharkiv hospitals who showed researchers distinctive fragments they had removed from patients bodies, as well as survivors and witnesses of the attacks.

___

Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai told The Associated Press that fierce street fighting continued Monday in Sievierodonetsk, one of two large cities in the Donbas region still to be fully captured by Russian troops.

During the day, Haidai updated his estimate of how much of the city Russians control from 70% to 80%. Ukrainian forces are fighting the enemy block by block, street by street, house by house with a varying degree of success, he told The AP.

More than 10,000 people remain in the city. Haidai said efforts to evacuate them have been halted because Russian troops destroyed two of the three bridges connecting Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, the second city in Luhansk not yet overrun by Moscow. The remaining bridge is old, decrepit and unsafe, the governor said.

Lysychansk remains under Ukrainian control, but is regularly shelled by the Russian forces. On Sunday, Haidai said, the shelling killed three civilians in the city, including a 6-year-old boy.

Eduard Basurin, an official of the Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk, claimed Monday that Sievierodonetsk has been blocked off and Ukrainian fighters have no choice but to surrender. Haidai dismissed that as a lie.

There is no threat of our troops being encircled in the Luhansk region, he said.

Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk region said Monday that the Ukrainian forces shelled a market in the city of Donetsk, killing three civilians and injuring 18 more. It was the fiercest shelling by Ukrainian forces since 2015, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

The head of the Russian-backed government in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, also cited heavy shelling, and said on his Telegram channel that more forces  especially Russians  were being called in to help.

___

The Russian military said Monday it destroyed a large number of weapons and military equipment that Ukrainian forces had received from the U.S. and Europe.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said high-precision air-launched missiles hit the supplies near the Udachna railway station in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Konashenkov also said a temporary deployment point for foreign mercenaries and a Ukrainian radar station of the Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile system were destroyed in the neighboring Luhansk region.

Two batteries of multiple-launch rocket systems were destroyed in the Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, Konashenkov said.

There was no immediate confirmation of the Russian claim from Ukraine.

___

The Dutch government said it will host a ministerial conference next month on accountability in Ukraine aimed at strengthening and coordinating war crimes investigations.

Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said Monday that the international community already has taken swift action to investigate alleged atrocities in Ukraine but there is an urgent need to further coordinate existing efforts on this front."

The July 14 meeting in The Hague will be hosted by the Dutch government, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan and European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders.

Khan already has launched an investigation and deployed his largest ever team of prosecutors to Ukraine to gather evidence, including to Bucha, near the capital of Kyiv, where bodies littered the streets after Russian forces retreated early in the war.

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Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. (AP)  A man and an 8-year-old boy were killed when a speeding motorcyclist crashed into several pedestrians in upstate New York, police said.

The crash happened shortly after 3:30 p.m. Sunday when a motorcycle heading north on Route 9 in Lake George veered onto a bicycle path and into a group of six pedestrians, state police said in a news release.
NEW YORK (AP)  Authorities have dropped criminal charges against rapper Roddy Ricch following a gun arrest Saturday in New York City that forced him to miss a scheduled concert performance.

Ricch, 23, and two other men were taken into police custody after police said a security guard working a checkpoint outside Citi Field in Queens noticed a firearm in the vehicle he was riding in.

Soon after, authorities dropped charges against the Grammy Award winner and one of the other men in the vehicle, 57-year-old Carlos Collins of Eastchester, New York.

Asked Monday what happened with Ricchs case, the Queens district attorneys office said it had no information to share. A message seeking comment was left with the NYPD.

A court clerk told the New York Daily News on Sunday that the cases against Ricch, whose real name is Rodrick Moore, and Collins had been dismissed. Neither case was listed on the public court docket.

Prosecutors are pursuing a case against the third man, whom a security guard said was sitting in the front passenger seat where the gun was found.

Michael Figueroa, 46, of Brooklyn, was arraigned Sunday on gun possession charges.

As of Monday, Figueroa had not posted bail and was being held at New York Citys Rikers Island jail complex. A message seeking comment was left with Figueroas lawyer.

According to prosecutors, the security guard told police that he saw Figueroa pull an object from his waistband and reach toward his feet after the vehicle was stopped.

The guard said he then searched the vehicle and found a loaded pistol under the front passenger seat floor mat, prosecutors said.

Ricchs arrest preempted his performance Saturday at the Governors Ball Music Festival at Citi Field, but he was back on the stage Sunday at radio station Hot 97s Summer Jam concert at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

There, he led an explicit chant against the NYPD, according to social media posts. Later, he posted a profane response to a tweet about his arrest. Messages seeking comment were left Monday with Ricchs booking agency and record company.

Ricch, who hails from Compton, California, near Los Angeles, gained fame for the single Die Young. He won a Grammy in 2020 for appearing on the late Nipsey Hussles song Racks in the Middle.
Visitors to the Lake Michigan shoreline might see, and smell, something that has been absent in recent history, dead alewives piling up.

Mark Tonello, fisheries management biologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, said he couldnt recall the last time there was a die-off of the magnitude seen recently in costal towns like Manistee and Frankfort.

Its not something we measure, and a lot of what is reported is anecdotal, Tonello said. However, it has been a number of years, at least since around 2012-2013, since weve seen a die off like this.

Tonello said the die off is the sign of a good year class of alewife, and that dead fish washing up on shore meant there were plenty of live ones spawning in harbors.

Weve heard there is good salmon fishing up and down the coast over the past few weeks, he said. A lot of king (chinook) salmon have been caught with a lot of alewives in their stomachs.

Tonello said not only do the alewives provide food for salmon, but they also provide cover for the juvenile fish stocked by the DNR and hatching naturally in the wild.

A lot of predators would rather eat alewives rather than feed on smolt, he said. If there arent any alewives around, they key in on smolt. We want the stocked fish to survive.

Smolt is young salmon that are about 2 years old.

Tonello said the alewife population has been dwindling over the past 20 years. Not only have the salmon been eating their fill, but new invasive species like the quagga and zebra mussels have filtered out much of the food young alewives need to grow.

What causes die off?

Since alewives were introduced to the Great Lakes, visitors to the shoreline have seen the piles of dead, silvery fish accumulating along the shore.

What causes these alewife die off events is still something of a mystery, according to Ben Turschak, fisheries research biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

"Nobody really knows why it happens," Turschak said. "There are a lot of theories on why it happens; like spawning stress or temperature changes, but there is no evidence on those theories being true."

Turschak said alewives frequent river mouths like Betsie Lake frequently, but don't die because of the temperature changes.

"The temperature change from Lake Michigan to a drowned river mouth area like Betsie Lake is far greater than the changes that occur in Lake Michigan alone, but it doesn't result in a die off every year when they make the transition. There is only a big die off on certain years," he said.

Turschak said spawning stress was another popular theory, but said many of the fish seen in a die off are year-one fish, juveniles that weren't mature enough to spawn.

"The bottom line is, we don't know," he said. "I suspect it is likely a combination of environmental factors, including how much food they have available in the winter they have to subsist on coming into the spring."

Sustainable fisheries

In April 1966, the first salmon were stocked in the Platte River from the Platte River State Fish hatchery, according to previous reports.

Howard Tanner, the man credited with starting the salmon stocking program, thought Pacific salmon could help reduce the population of alewife, which were outcompeting the young of native fish species that were already dwindling in number due to overfishing and the introduction of the lamprey eel, another invasive species which followed the St. Lawrence Seaway into the Great Lakes.

However, Tonello said Tanner never intended to eliminate alewife altogether.

It gave him the excuse to bring in the salmon, but there was no doubt he wanted to go beyond just alleviating the pressure on native fish from the alewife; he wanted to create a fishery, Tonello said.

Turschak said if the idea was to eliminate alewife, it could have been accomplished.

Theres a misconception around the idea that were out to get rid of the alewives in Lake Michigan, Turschak said. We want to see the fishery started here succeed. If we wanted to get rid of the alewife by overstocking salmon, we could have easily done that.

The DNR has been keeping a watchful eye on the alewife population since the introduction of Pacific salmon, Turschak said.

When the program started, you saw an increased biomass of salmon in the lake, but by 1986, the bottom fell out and biomass and catch rates fell, he said. There was a big disparity between what was being stocked and the catch rates.

Turschak said the stocked salmon were suffering from a bacterial kidney disease associated with the stresses of a high density of fish, which led to a poor survival rate. One of the things affecting the salmon negatively was lack of food; there were not enough alewives to sustain the stocking rates at the time.

Over the next decade, there were some fluctuations in the stocking rates between the states bordering the lake and the indigenous tribes, but it wasnt until 1997 that there was a strategic approach and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission collectively decided to reduce stocking, Turschak said.

Since then, the DNR has continued to reduce the number of salmon stocked in Lake Michigan, though the population of alewife continued to decline, requiring even more reductions in stocking.

Turschak said those decisions are what has led to an increase in alewife today.

The population is largely driven by reduction in stocking of the salmon, he said. There is less consumption and that allows for the population of forage species to recover to this extent. We were at record lows in 2014, and since then, weve made tough decisions and reducing stocking even more despite pushback from the angling public.

Turschak said not only is the alewife population increasing, but the salmon are getting bigger as a result of it.

Were seeing king salmon pushing 30 pounds, he said.
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BOISE, Idaho (AP)  A few weeks before 31 members of a white supremacist group were arrested for allegedly planning to riot at a northern Idaho LGBTQ pride event, a fundamentalist Idaho pastor told his Boise congregation that gay, lesbian and transgender people should be executed by the government.

Around the same time, a lawmaker from the northernmost region of the state, Republican Rep. Heather Scott, told an audience that drag queens and other LGBTQ supporters are waging a war of perversion against our children."

A toxic brew of hateful rhetoric has been percolating in Idaho and elsewhere around the U.S., well ahead of the arrests of the Patriot Front members at the pride event Saturday in Coeur dAlene.

Police say dozens of men from the white supremacist group piled into a U-Haul truck wearing balaclavas and bearing riot gear, with plans to instigate a riot at the park where families, children and supporters were gathered to celebrate the LGBTQ community.

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Illinois, Arkansas and Virginia. The defendants were booked on misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot and released on bail. As of Monday afternoon, online court records did not show if the men had retained defense attorneys.

Thomas Rousseau, a 23-year-old from Grapevine, Texas, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the Patriot Front founder and was among those arrested, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism, said outrage directed at LGBTQ people had been growing for months online, often in chat rooms frequented by members of groups like the Patriot Front.

In the same way that it mobilized against Black Lives Matter in the nation's capital in December, the Patriot Front harnesses whats in the news cycle  in this case, drag queen story hours, disputes about transgender people in schools, and LGBTQ visibility more broadly.

A massive right-wing media ecosystem has been promoting the notion that "there are people who are trying to take your kids to drag shows, there are trans people trying to groom your children," Lewis said.

The rhetoric has been amplified by right-wing social media accounts that use photos and videos of LGBTQ individuals to drive outrage among their followers.

Several posts have falsely sought to label teachers and librarians who accept the LGBTQ community as abusers or groomers of children. Others have lambasted pride events or drag performances as depraved."

One photo shared widely on social media this week falsely claimed a Drag Queen Story Hour performer flashed their genitals to children while reading aloud. But the photograph, from a suburban Minneapolis library in 2019, clearly shows the performer was wearing tan undergarments.

A spokesman for Hennepin County Library confirmed to The Associated Press that the performer did not expose themselves to children.

Northern Idaho has long been associated with extremist groups, most prominently the Aryan Nations, which was often in the news in the 1990s. The area drew disaffected people after white supremacist Richard Butler moved there in 1973 from California.

After the Aryan Nations' heyday, many local officials tried to disassociate the region from extremism. But in recent years, some politicians, civic leaders and real estate agents have boasted about northern Idahos conservatism to draw like-minded people.

At a news conference Monday, Coeur d'Alene Mayor Jim Hammond said the city is no longer a locus of hate.

We are not going back to the days of the Aryan Nations. We are past that, he declared.

Scott, the northern Idaho lawmaker, did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

At her public appearance weeks ago, she introduced two members of the Panhandle Patriots motorcycle club, who urged watchers to join them in the fight against LGBTQ people at the Coeur dAlene pride celebration. They dubbed their counter-protest Gun dAlene.

Stand up, take it to the head, go to the fight. ... We say, Damn the repercussions, the motorcycle club members said. They are trying to take your children.

The Panhandle Patriots later changed their event to a prayer rally, saying they are a Christian group that stands against violence in all its forms."

Elsewhere around the country, authorities in the San Francisco Bay Area are investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men allegedly shouted anti-LGBTQ slurs during Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo Library over the weekend.

___

Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson in New York City and Sam Metz in Salt Lake City contributed.
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  A weeklong strike by thousands of truckers in South Korea has triggered major disruptions in cargo transport and production that have caused 1.6 trillion won ($1.2 billion) in damages, officials said Monday.

An extended strike may eventually worsen the global supply chains already battered by Russias invasion of Ukraine and Chinas pandemic curbs. But the strike's impact has so far been largely limited to South Korea's domestic industry. The worlds 10th largest economy, the country hasnt reported any major disruption of exports of key items like semiconductors.

The fourth round of negotiations between the striking truckers and government officials Sunday failed to reach a deal. Transport Ministry officials said they would seek to continue talks to end the strike, but the Cargo Truckers Solidarity said Monday it has no immediate plans to resume the negotiations.

At the center of the dispute is the truckers calls for a minimum wage guarantee amid surging fuel prices. It wasnt known what exactly broke down Sundays talks, but the truckers association said the government refused to accept its calls for a more active position on the minimum wage demand.

The Transport Ministry said about 6,600 truckers were rallying Monday in 14 locations across South Korea. But the Cargo Truckers Solidarity said a far larger number of truckers were refusing to work, staying at home or elsewhere instead of taking part in rallies.

South Koreas auto, steel, petrochemistry, cement and other sectors have been hit hard by the strike.

Factories couldnt produce 5,400 cars as scheduled due to a delay of deliveries of components. The planned shipping or delivery of 450,000 tons of steels, 500 billion won ($390 million) worth of petrochemicals, 810,000 tons of cement and 640,000 tires have also been put off, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said in a statement.

But the ministry said that South Korea's cargo transport disruption hasnt reached a level that threatens global supply chains. It also said it hasn't received reports of meaningful disruptions of exports of semiconductors, automobiles and other key items.

Observers say some companies ordered supplies in advance in anticipation of the strike.

The strike is affecting our country's domestic supply chains, rather than global ones, said Chang Sangsik, chief of an office on supply chains at the Korea International Trade Association in Seoul.

Some foreign companies make finished products by using parts and intermediary goods manufactured by South Korean companies," he said. If they find it difficult to get such products due to the truckers strike, that means it is affecting (supply chains) in other countries. But such a situation hasnt come yet.

Chang said many foreign companies hold extra inventory that can sustain supply shocks for weeks or even several months.

Lee Jang-Gyoon, chief researcher at the Hyundai Research Institute, said the truckers strikes could still affect global supply chains if they continue too much longer, as a delay in cargo transport would hamper productions.
BATH, Maine (AP)  An elementary school that sustained heavy fire damage, forcing the cancellation of classes, caught fire for a second time on Monday.

Flames were seen coming from the roof of the Dike Newell School before firefighters doused the flames on Monday. Part of the roof collapsed, adding to the damage at the school.
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP)  Memorial events are being planned in both Mississippi and Alabama for a police officer who was shot to death last week in the line of duty, officials said Monday.

A memorial service will be held Thursday in Meridian, Mississippi, for Meridian Police Officer Kennis Croom, who was killed while answering a call about domestic violence at a home in the city last Thursday.
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WASHINGTON (AP)  South Koreas top diplomat said Monday that North Korea has completed preparations for a new nuclear test and that only a political decision by the countrys top leadership can prevent it from going forward.

After talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said the North would pay a price if it goes ahead, as feared, with what would be its seventh nuclear test in the coming days.

North Korea has completed preparations for another nuclear test and I think only a political decision has to be made, Park said. Prior to Monday, U.S. and South Korean officials had said only that the North was nearing completion of such preparations.

If North Korea ventures into another nuclear test, I think it will only strengthen our deterrence and also international sanctions," Park said. North Korea should change its mind and make the right decision.

Apart from sanctions, Park did not say what that price the North would pay or outline how the deterrence policy would change, but Blinken said the United States and treaty allies South Korea and Japan could adjust their military postures in response.

Were preparing for all contingencies this in very close coordination with others and we are prepared to make both short and longer-term adjustments to our military posture, Blinken said. He added that in addition, the pressure will be sustained, it will continue and, as appropriate, it will be increased.

Both Park and Blinken men stressed the door to negotiations without any preconditions remains open for North Korea. But Blinken, repeating comments from numerous U.S. officials in recent days, lamented that North Korea continues to ignore overtures for dialogue.

On Sunday, North Korea test-fired what appeared to be artillery shells toward the sea, according to South Koreas military, days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for greater defense capability to cope with outside threats.

The Norths artillery tests draw less outside attention than its missile launches, of which it has conducted more so far this year than in any previous year. But its forward-deployed long-range artillery guns are a serious security threat to South Koreas populous metropolitan region, which is only 40-50 kilometers (25-30 miles) from the border with North Korea.

The suspected artillery launches were the latest in a spate of weapons tests by North Korea this year in what foreign experts call an attempt to pressure its rivals Washington and Seoul to relax international sanctions against Pyongyang and make other concessions.

In March, North Korea test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the mainland U.S. in breach of a 2018 moratorium on big missile tests.

A possible new nuclear test by North Korea would be the seventh of its kind. Some experts say North Korea will likely use the test to build warheads to be mounted on tactical nuclear weapons aimed at hitting targets in South Korea.
MADRID (AP)  Spain's economy minister on Monday linked Algeria's decision to break a decades-old friendship treaty with Spain that has frozen economic links with what she described as the North African country's increasing alignment with Russia.

In an interview with Catalunya Radio, Nadia Calvino said that in recent International Monetary Fund meetings she has chaired, she noticed "that Algeria was more and more aligned with Russia, and as such, it (the decision) didnt surprise me.

Algeria suspended the two-decade-old friendship treaty with Spain last Wednesday.

The move was seen as retaliation after Madrid came out in support of Moroccos attempts to keep Western Sahara under its rule. Algeria supports the territorys independence movement.

On Friday, the EU warned it was prepared to take action to defend the interests of its members.

Algeria then appeared to do a U-turn when its mission at the European Union issued a statement saying the country had never suspended the treaty.

Algeria continues to block trade, however, and the Algerian Foreign Ministry on Saturday called the European response hasty and unfounded. In a strongly worded communique, it added that the issue was a political disagreement of a bilateral nature between Madrid and Algiers that should not concern the EU.

Calvino welcomed the EU move, adding that the treaty suspensions would be a drag on the Spanish economy. She said the most important thing at this moment is that Algeria changes its position and retreats.

Spanish officials say they are hopeful that talks with Algeria will resolve the issue soon.

Spains chief worry has been that the suspension might affect important gas supplies from Algeria, but both the Spanish and Algerian governments have said this wont happen. Algeria supplies 23% of Spains gas needs.

Spain and the rest of the 27-nation bloc are hustling to find alternatives to Russian energy imports to protest Russias war in Ukraine.

Industry Ministry figures show Spain exported 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in goods to Algeria last year while its imports were valued at nearly 5 billion euros.

Spain was the colonial power in Western Sahara until it was annexed by Morocco in 1975. Since then, neighbors Algeria and Morocco have been at odds over the fate of the region.
This years nursing school graduates matriculated before the pandemic took hold, and over the course of their studies, theyve seen the profession go through an upheaval.

Waves of COVID-19 delayed students clinical rotations at patient care facilities. When they were allowed back into hospitals, clinics and long-term care facilities, the work was more intense than many had expected.

I was shocked, said Jillian Levesque, one of the University of Connecticut School of Nursings five valedictorians from the class of 2022. I remember thinking, Oh, Ive got time to get better at my vital signs, and then it was the second day and I was giving medication, she said. There was no getting better and practicing your vital signs. It was the real world because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A prolonged shortage of nurses across the state became more acute during the pandemic. And the graduating class of 2022  roughly 2,000 in number statewide  wont be able to fill those yawning gaps in the workforce.

Over the last two years, mid-career and older nurses experienced burnout, left emergency departments and intensive care units for less stressful positions or retired early. Many younger nurses opted for lucrative traveling assignments. Nurses periodically fell ill with COVID and had to stay home, placing further stress on health care facilities.

The health care field accounts for 16% of the states total workforce, and nurses and certified nursing assistants are in high demand. In late 2020, the Governors Workforce Council estimated the states registered nurse (RN) workforce was roughly 50,000, more than half of whom were over the age of 50. There were significant shortages in health care workers, the council reported, estimating an annual need of 3,000 new RNs and 2,500 openings for certified nursing assistants.

Its been nearly two years since that report. At the time, deaths from COVID-19 in the United States had just passed 200,000. Today, that number is over 1 million. Weeks ago, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory about health care worker burnout, warning that the publics ability to get routine preventive care, emergency care, and medical procedures is at risk.

Dyed-in-the-wool, hardcore, ED, ICU nurses, whove been that forever  COVID has just burned them out, said Beth Beckman, chief nursing officer at Yale New Haven Health. These nurses who would have never dreamed of leaving their practice, because thats what they do and who they are, are now moving to ambulatory settings or  areas where they can work 9 to 5 and they can create physical and emotional respite for themselves.

Those nurses have left vacancies in critical areas.

Weve got to do something to increase the pipeline, Beckman said.

77% of qualified applicants turned away

As it stands, that pipeline for Connecticut nurses is too narrow.

Sherri Dayton, a registered nurse and health care division leader within the AFT union, said with experienced nurses choosing traveling gigs, telemedicine or the steady schedule of a doctors office or surgery center, acute care facilities have to recruit primarily among recent graduates.

Its really just brand new nurse residents coming out of school that are applying, she said.

And there arent enough of them.

Thats not for a lack of interest. Colleges and universities in the state lack the capacity to meet both the industrys workforce needs and students level of interest. Last year, 13,175 applicants qualified to attend RN programs in Connecticut, but there was only room for 2,992. Of those accepted, 2,781 enrolled.

Marcia Proto, executive director of the Connecticut Center for Nursing Workforce, said another shortage is exacerbating the nurse shortage: a lack of instructors.

Faculty is paramount, because if we dont have people to teach, it doesnt matter how many people we have wanting to go to school, she said.

Earlier this year, CCNW surveyed the states nursing schools and found theyd need more than 300 additional faculty and staff statewide in order to expand capacity by 20% within three years. And that was only for undergraduate pre-licensure RN programs.

The shortage is the worst I have seen in over 19 years that I have been working in health care in Connecticut, she said.

Still, for nurses who might be interested in the transition to teaching, the decision often doesnt make sense financially, Dayton said.

You go to school to get your masters in nursing education, and then you make pretty much what youd make as an acute care nurse in the hospital  but now you have $40,000 in debt, she said. Who wants to do that?

Even if Connecticut schools had the faculty and resources to add seats in their RN and Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) programs, there would still be hundreds of graduates each year who take jobs in other states.

Everyone is going so many different places, UConn graduate Levesque said, listing California, Florida and North Carolina among her classmates destinations.

Levesque grew up in Massachusetts and she said shes hoping to work in Boston.

Ive always felt sort of this desire to go back there, because thats where my family is, and thats where most of my life has been, she said.

Stabilizing the workforce

State lawmakers took various steps to shore up the states health care workforce during this years legislative session. The annual budget bill included funding for tuition repayment and housing for health care workers, as well as bonus premium pay for those who worked through the height of the pandemic. New legislation expanding mental health services is expected to create more opportunities for nurses in those fields. The mental health bills also expanded loan repayment for those workers.

And Senate Bill 251, signed into law May 22, calls for the Office of Workforce Strategy to expand health care academic programs, develop distance learning, on-the-job and other health care education opportunities for people looking to change careers, and to recruit and retain people within underserved populations for health care careers. A plan for that program is due Jan. 1, 2024.

A lot of what we tried to accomplish was to try to deal with a need that is immediate and urgent but also recognizing that some of these things cant be fixed overnight, said Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, co-chair of the Public Health Committee.

Steinberg said the work isnt done.

We didnt get everything we asked for, he said, and we also want to prove out some programs  pilots or experiments that have been successful on a local level.  Those are the kinds of things we hope to revisit in the coming years.

Some of the states health care systems are funding their own programs to develop the future workforce. Yale New Haven Health plans to spend more than $7 million over the next four years to enhance programs at Fairfield University, Gateway Community College, Quinnipiac University and Southern Connecticut State University, with the goal of educating more than 500 additional new nurses.

Kimberlee Richard, vice president of patient care services at Griffin Health, said Griffin is partnering with high schools in the Naugatuck Valley to offer dual curriculum training  in classroom and clinical settings  so students can begin working in various certified assistant roles upon graduating from high school.

Still, as the states population ages and more health care workers are expected to retire, theyll join the ranks of other retirees who need medical care, which could further compound the states health care workforce needs.

Recruiting and training the next generation of nurses and health care workers is just one part of the solution, industry leaders say. The other part is preventing burnout among established people in the field.

Stephanie McGuire, who leads government relations for the Connecticut Nurses Association, said much of the organizations focus during this years legislative session was on stabilizing the workforce. That means making sure nurses find the career rewarding and valuable, especially after what theyve been through the last two years, she said.

Its a lot of rebuilding, McGuire said. Just as the pandemic has driven other professions to envision new models for work, nursing professionals are trying to recreate the new norm, she said. CNA has held forums and online hearings to try to connect with newer nurses and gather ideas to avoid burnout. I think its incumbent upon us to maintain what weve learned over this time, McGuire said.

The pipeline, a lifeline

This past year, UConn rising junior Zaheer Turtem served as a floor mentor in UConns Nursing Learning Community, helping incoming freshmen make friends, settle in and get comfortable with the rigorous academic experience.

That camaraderie is important. Often asked by non-nursing students why theyd pursue such a stressful  often messy  profession, Turtem and his classmates have ready responses.

Its about helping people, Turtem said. Its about understanding your privilege as a guide for patients throughout their health care journey.

Turtem started out pre-med at UConn but switched to nursing. The urgency of the pandemic made him eager to help.

The way I saw it, nursing school was a way to fast-track getting into the field, instead of waiting on medical school to happen, he said.

Many young people in Connecticut have felt a similar calling over the last two years. This fall, UConns nursing school is set to welcome its largest-ever incoming class. Since the start of the pandemic, undergraduate applications to UConn are up 25%.

Connecticut State Universities has expanded from 61 graduates of its nursing bachelors programs in 2010-11 to nearly 340 last year. Connecticut State Community Colleges train roughly 1,600 more students in nursing and patient care-related fields each year.

And Sacred Heart University in Fairfield just awarded degrees to its first cohort of graduates from an accelerated 15-month nursing bachelors program, available to students who already have a bachelors degree in another discipline.

Joan Palladino, nursing professor and interim dean of the School of Professional Studies at Western Connecticut State University, said the pandemics effects on the profession arent all negative. Observing students in patient-care settings, the level of enthusiasm was tremendous, she said.

We see all the challenges with nursing over the last few years, and Im sure in some ways it turned some people away, Palladino said. I think it brought some other people in.
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LONDON (AP)  A British governments plan to deport asylum-seekers of various nationalities to Rwanda is set to go ahead after an appeals court on Monday refused to block the policy that the U.N.s top refugee official said sets a dangerous precedent for migrants fleeing war and oppression.

Immediately after the decision by a three-justice panel of the Court of Appeal in London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's office said the first deportation flight would go ahead as scheduled on Tuesday.

Migrant advocacy groups have attacked the policy as inhumane and illegal ever since April, when Johnson announced the plan as way to deter people from risking their lives by paying smugglers to take them to Britain in leaky inflatable boats.

Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, lashed out against the policy, describing it as all wrong.

If the British government is truly interested in protecting lives, it should work with other countries to target the people smugglers and provide safe routes for asylum seekers, not simply shunt migrants to other countries, Grandi said after the ruling.

The precedent that this creates is catastrophic for a concept that needs to be shared, like asylum, he told reporters in Geneva.

Mondays ruling was focused on the narrow question of whether a temporary injunction should be issued blocking deportation flights to Rwanda while a case challenging the legality of the policy moves through the courts.

A coalition of immigration rights advocates and public employees unions had asked the Court of Appeal to overturn a lower court ruling, arguing that the judge had made a mistake when he decided Friday not to issue an injunction.

But the Court of Appeal rejected the case, saying the judge had properly balanced the issues before him. Under U.K. law, a court must find there is strong evidence a government policy is likely to be ruled illegal before it can issue a temporary injunction.

Further legal challenges are under way. A similar case filed by lawyers representing a different group of plaintiffs was heard in the High Court on Monday.

While a major precedent is at stake, the number of people immediately affected by the cases has been steadily whittled down as lawyers challenge the merits of each deportation order. The charity Care4Calais said all but eight of the 31 migrants originally told they would be on the flight to Rwanda have had their tickets canceled.

Raza Husain, one of the lawyers for the migrants, argued Monday that the governments plan involved the forced removal of asylum-seekers to a country they dont want to travel to as part of a policy intended to deter others from trying to enter Britain.

This amounts, on any view, to a serious interference with basic dignity  where those individuals have already suffered significant trauma and have mental health issues, he said in documents filed with the court.

The court cases came amid a bitter political debate over Johnsons deportation plan.

Migrants deported under the program would be forced to apply for asylum in Rwanda, not Britain. The U.K. paid Rwanda 120 million pounds ($158 million) up front and will make additional payments based on the number of people deported.

The leadership of the Church of England has joined the opposition, sending a joint letter to the Times of London to be published Tuesday.

Whether or not the first deportation flight leaves Britain today for Rwanda, this policy should shame us as a nation, the letter said. The shame is our own, because our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries.

According to newspaper reports, Prince Charles has also waded into the issue. The heir to the throne privately described the Rwanda policy as appalling, the Times reported over the weekend, citing an unidentified source. Charles office declined to comment, while insisting the Prince of Wales was politically neutral.

Johnson defended the policy.

I think that most people can see that the criminal gangs ... need to be stopped, he said. That model needs to be frustrated.

He also dismissed the significance of the legal challenges.

I always said that it will begin with a lot of teething problems and you will have a lot of legal action against it and they will try and delay it  thats inevitable, he said during a visit to a farm.

-

Associated Press Writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.
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LONDON (AP)  Britains government on Monday proposed new legislation that would unilaterally rewrite post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, despite opposition from some U.K. lawmakers and EU officials who say the move violates international law.

The proposed bill seeks to remove customs checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. That will override parts of the trade treaty that Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed with the European Union less than two years ago.

Britain's government maintained its move is justified under international law because of the genuinely exceptional situation," and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss blamed the EU for blocking a negotiated settlement. The European Commission said it could take legal action against the U.K.

Existing trade rules "provide business operators in Northern Ireland with access to the EU single market for goods. The U.K. governments approach puts this access  and related opportunities  at risk," said European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic.

In Ireland, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said it was very regrettable for a country like the U.K. to renege on an international treaty." German Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed the sentiment, saying there was no reason" for the U.K. to make such a move.

Its a rejection of all the agreements we reached between the European Union and Great Britain," Scholz said. The European Union will react to this as one and it has the whole toolbox at its disposal.

Brushing aside criticism, Johnson told reporters that the proposed change is relatively simple to do."

Frankly, its a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things," he told LBC Radio.

He argued that his government's higher and prior legal commitment is to the 1998 Good Friday agreement that brought peace and stability to Northern Ireland.

Arrangements for Northern Ireland  the only part of the U.K. that shares a land border with an EU nation  have proved the thorniest issue in Britains divorce from the bloc, which became final at the end of 2020. At the center of the dispute is the Northern Ireland Protocol, which now regulates trade ties between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, part of the EU.

Britain and the EU agreed in their Brexit deal that the Irish land border would be kept free of customs posts and other checks because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Instead, to protect the EUs single market, there are checks on some goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

But the arrangement has proved politically damaging for Johnson because it treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party has refused to return to the regions power-sharing government until the protocol is scrapped or substantially changed.

The bill to override that arrangement is expected to face opposition in Parliament, including from members of Johnson's own Conservative ranks. Critics say unilaterally changing the protocol would be illegal and would damage Britains standing with other countries because it's part of a treaty considered binding under international law.

In Brussels, Sefcovic said the protocol was the one and only solution we could jointly find to protect the hard-earned gains of the peace process in Northern Ireland."

He added that the EU remains open to discussions with the British government to find a solution to the dispute.

___

Associated Press writers Samuel Petrequin in Brussels and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP's coverage of Brexit at https://apnews.com/hub/brexit.
CAIRO (AP)  Tribal clashes over the past week in Sudans war-ravaged Darfur have killed around 100 people, the U.N. refugee agency and a tribal elder said Monday, the latest surge in violence in the restive region.

Toby Harward, a coordinator with the UNHCR, said the fighting grew out of a land dispute between Arab and African tribes in the town of Kulbus in West Darfur province. Local Arab militias then attacked multiple villages in the area, forcing thousands of people to flee, he said.

Abkar al-Toum, a tribal leader in the town, said the dead included at least 62 bodies found burned after militias set more than 20 villages on fire. He said many people were still unaccounted for. He claimed the attackers gained control of water resources, aggravating the humanitarian situation in the area. He did not elaborate.

Abbas Mustafa, a local official, said authorities have deployed more troops to the area. He said the past week of fighting displaced at least 5,000 families.

Harward called for neutral joint forces to provide protection for civilians in the area. If there is no intervention or mediation, & violence is allowed to continue, farmers will not be able to cultivate & the agricultural season will fail, he said in a series of posts on Twitter.

The news outlet Radio Dabanga reported that the fighting reached the nearby province of North Darfur, causing partial damage to two villages there.

The U.N. envoy for Sudan, Volker Perthes, said he was appalled again by the clashes in Kulbus. The cycle of violence in Darfur is unacceptable & highlights root causes that must be addressed, he said on Twitter.

The fighting was the latest bout of tribal violence in Darfur. It came as the country remains mired in a wider crisis following an October military coup. The takeover upended Sudans transition to democracy after a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Since late last year, eruptions of tribal violence and surges in the fighting in Darfur have killed hundreds of people. In April, after a similar bout of cashes killed over 200, the Sudanese military said it deployed a brigade to the province.

However, the violence has raised questions over whether Sudanese military leaders are capable of bringing security to Darfur. In 2020, the U.N. Security Council ended its peacekeeping mission there. In recent months, local aid workers have called on the U.N. to redeploy peacekeepers to the region amid a sure in tribal violence.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government in the capital of Khartoum of discrimination. Al-Bashirs government was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes and unleashing militias known as the janjaweed on civilians there  a charge it denies.

Al-Bashir, who has been in prison in Khartoum since he was ousted from power in 2019, was indicted over a decade ago by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters after its inclusion of a kiss between two lesbian characters.

The decision by the UAE comes as Malaysia also reportedly will ban the film, raising the possibility other Muslim-majority nations could follow suit on one of Disney's biggest animated films of the year as the film industry comes out of the depths of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, announced through its Media Regulatory Office of the country's Ministry of Youth and Culture that the film would not be opening in the country this Thursday.

The film is not licensed for public screening in all cinemas in the UAE, due to its violation of the countrys media content standards, the office said in a tweet. The office confirms that all films screened in cinemas across the country are subject to follow-up and evaluation before the date of screening to the public, to ensure the safety of the circulated content according to the appropriate age classification.

The office did not elaborate on the tweet and did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press. The tweet included an image of the film's poster, with the profile image of its main character Buzz Lightyear with a no symbol over it in red.

Movie theaters in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, had already advertised showtimes for the film. But over the weekend, a social media campaign with the Arabic hashtag Ban Showing Lightyear in the Emirates, caught the attention of conservative Emiratis. They described showing a lesbian couple on screen as being against their culture and religion.

The movie, with actor Chris Evans voicing the inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear action figure from the Toy Story films, includes a female character voiced by actress Uzo Aduba kissing her female partner.

The UAE, many other countries in the wider Mideast, is a Muslim-led nation that criminalizes same-sex relationships. The U.S. State Department warns that Islamic, or Shariah, law in the UAE can include the death penalty for same-sex conduct, while Dubai can levy a 10-year prison sentence and Abu Dhabi allows for up to 14 years.

However, such prosecutions are rarely reported and LGBTQ individuals do live in the skyscraper-studded city-state of Dubai, home to the long-haul carrier Emirates.

The $200 million Lightyear is expected to be a major draw for Disney, with analysts estimating it could gross over $100 million in its first weekend.

Studios have allowed censors to cut films in global distribution for content in the past, including in the Mideast market. Recently, Disney has faced protests from activists and its own staff over what they described as CEO Bob Chapeks slow response in publicly criticizing Florida legislation that opponents dubbed the Dont Say Gay bill.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in late March signed the bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

The moment had been earlier cut from the film but was restored after Pixar employees protested Disney's response to Floridas bill.

The movie also may be banned in Malaysia as well. The Star, the countrys top English-language newspaper, cited an anonymous, nongovernment source as saying that Lightyear will not be shown in Malaysian cinemas. No reasons were given. A newspaper in the Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain similarly has speculated the film wouldn't be shown there.

Officials from Malaysia's Film Censorship Board and the Home Affairs Ministry, as well as The Walt Disney Co., could not be immediately reached for comment.

___

Associated Press writers Malak Harb in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
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BANGKOK (AP)  U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Thailands prime minister on Monday as part of an effort to strengthen what Austin says is Washingtons unparalleled network of alliances and partnerships" in the region.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who is also defense minister, also met Austin last month in Washington. Thailand and the United States are longtime military allies, despite a cooling of relations after the 2014 military coup that brought former army commander Prayuth to power. Mondays visit was Austins first to Thailand as defense secretary.

A U.S. Defense Department statement issued after the meeting said Austin and Prayuth shared perspectives on regional security issues, and discussed opportunities to strengthen the U.S.-Thai alliance.

It said Austin declared Washingtons interest in strengthening interoperability between the U.S. and Thai forces and to support Thailands modernization requirements.

The two men also discussed prioritizing cooperation in emerging technical areas, such as the cyber and space technology sectors, as well as Thailands desire for enhanced defense industry cooperation, the statement said.

Thai media had reported that Prayuth would likely discuss arms procurement with Austin, including of F-35 fighter aircraft, but Austin did not comment specifically on that in remarks to the media.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been growing in part over Beijing's claims to Taiwan and much of the South China Sea, and its increasing power and influence in the region.

In a speech Saturday at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore, Austin said Chinas steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan threatens to undermine the regions security and prosperity.

He said he was proud that Washingtons unparalleled network of alliances and partnerships has only deepened in the past year.

Chinas defense minister, Gen. Wei Fenghe, said at the same conference that the U.S. is trying to turn Southeast Asian countries against Beijing and is seeking to advance its own interests under the guise of multilateralism.

China over the past decade has been trying to extend its influence in Southeast Asia, both through aid and investment, including its Belt and Road infrastructure projects and use of its navy and other maritime resources to press its claims to vast areas of the South China Sea.

In a briefing in Bangkok, Austin said a conversation he had in Singapore with his Chinese counterpart was an important step in our efforts to develop open lines of communication with Beijings defense leaders.

America never ... shies away from honest competition, but we dont seek conflict, nor do we seek a region thats split into hostile blocks, he said, according to a defense department transcript of his remarks. It was an important opportunity to raise our concerns about the potential for instability in the Taiwan Strait and to underscore our ... long-standing policy toward Taiwan as unwavering and unchanged."

Thailand and the United States were close allies during the Vietnam War, and in 2003, Washington designated Thailand a major non-NATO ally, one of about 20 worldwide.

Such status means the U.S. regards Thailand as a strategic partner, and facilitates some aspects of military assistance and cooperation. The annual multinational Cobra Gold military exercise, one of the worlds biggest, is hosted in Thailand in partnership with the United States.
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TORRINGTON  City students may not have experienced a shooting incident in their schools, but that didnt change their feelings or their fears. Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown in 2012, concerns have been shared by students throughout Connecticut and beyond.

A group of Torrington High School students, waving homemade signs, gathered in front of City Hall on Saturday for their own March for Our Lives demonstration.

We dont want to die at school, said THS freshman Ava Griffith, holding a sign that read Action, NOT thoughts and prayers.

Its scary knowing that could happen to us just because were at school, she said.

In nearby Litchfield, high school students also staged a March for Our Lives rally. The national event, a reaction to the most recent shootings in Buffalo and Texas, was held June 11 and 12, with protests in Washington, D.C.; Dallas; Rochester and Albany, N.Y.; and other cities and towns across the country, as well as the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

The group are members of the Young Democrats Club at THS. Their adviser, Jack Dillon, said other local residents had joined the march in Washington.

Its important for the kids to make their voices heard. Were very proud of what theyre doing here today, he said.

As the young people stood on the corner of Main Street and City Hall Avenue, most of the cars driving by honked their horns and waved, showing support. But not everyone.

That guy was laughing at us, said sophomore Tanner Elliott, noting the reaction of another driver on Main Street. He just went by.

Thats OK, let him laugh, Dillon said. Youre doing a good thing.

Elliott and Griffith were joined by club members Gyilenn Arce, Aliyah Hernandez, Corinne Chadwick, Natalie Lima, Aniya Pusely, Grace Donaghy and Manah Patel. Parent Tricia Chadwick came to support her daughter.

She wanted to do this with the club, so Im here, too, Chadwick said.

We need to raise awareness about this, Griffith said. We shouldnt have to worry about dying.

No ones taking action on the shootings, so were taking action; we wanted to be outside, showing people. said Pusely.

The students also want to meet with legislators and senators to talk about gun control. We need to be heard, said Arce, carrying a sign reading, No More Silence, End Gun Violence.

People dont always take kids seriously. Were serious, she said.
A glossy book is arriving at the homes and offices of Americas wealthiest individuals. Inside is a charity pitch that aims to raise as much as $6 billion for nonprofits fighting global poverty.

The proposition? Donate and get results  or your money back.

The advocacy group Global Citizen and the finance firm NPX are engineering this campaign. It targets Forbes 400 billionaires, Giving Pledge members, and the wealthy generally  a group increasingly criticized for what is seen as tight purse strings. The drive launched recently with dinners, meetings, and a Wall Street Journal ad that asked: Will you donate  if we achieve results?

Initially, the effort aims to raise at least $150 million through six $25 million funds. Each of the programs could absorb as much as $1 billion, according to campaign officials.

The drive is an unusually large effort to tap two big sources of capital  the wealth of individual philanthropists and the funds amassed for impact investments that seek both social and financial returns. It also is a test of whether a pay for results model can get millions of dollars that are earmarked for social good but sitting on the sidelines  including more than $1.3 trillion in foundation assets, $160 billion in donor-advised funds, and an estimated $700 billion managed by impact-investment firms.

Lots of high-net-worth individuals worry that their money wont be well spent or that results wont follow, says Lindsay Beck, co-founder of NPX. They declare themselves ready to give  if they see a clear line to results.

Ive heard that in lots of one-on-one meetings, Beck says. And thats what were solving for here. Were saying, OK, here are the results.

The pay for results financing plan would work like this:

Donors would commit to gifts, but the money would be released only as measurable outcomes are achieved. For example, $500 from a gift might be awarded for each woman lifted out of poverty. If the nonprofit missed its targets, donors would be able to shift donations to another project or organization.

NPX and other impact investors, meanwhile, would loan the money for the program expansion. Their repayment, which would draw on the cash from the donors, would be based on results as well. If results were high, the return would be high, and vice versa.

Five nonprofits are involved:

 BRAC to expand a program to lift 50,000 women-led families in Bangladesh out of poverty.

 Charity:water for clean water supplies for 500,000 people.

 The Global Fund to expand malaria care to treat 5.1 million more cases.

 The International Rescue Committee to educate 300,000 young out-of-school children across Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Niger.

 The One Acre Fund for work with farmers in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and Rwanda to increase food supplies and forestation.

Global Citizen and NPX reviewed these programs to ensure their results were backed by evidence and they could scale quickly. Research on International Rescues tutoring program, for instance, found that third graders gained a year and a half in reading comprehension and fluency reading aloud after 21 weeks of instruction. The cost: $63 per child.

Capital to bring these programs to scale is all thats needed, says NPXs Beck. Solutions exist. We know how to bring access to clean water. We know how to educate children. We know how to increase food security. We know how to plant trees and sequester carbon.

For many years, Global Citizen has advocated for increased government spending to address the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, according to Mick Sheldrick, the organizations policy chief. More recently, it has tried to persuade the wealthy to open up their wallets through a Give While You Live campaign, urging the worlds billionaires to donate 5% of their wealth every year to important causes like COVID-19 relief.

Linking donations to results could motivate big philanthropy in ways not seen before, Sheldrick says. This is a case study. The potential really has no limits if it works.

Each of Global Citizens proposed deals would create a financing arrangement similar to a social-impact bond. Typically, with impact bonds, private investors provide upfront capital for an effort on climate, social services, and the like. A municipality or a regional or national government agency repays the investor  with interest  based on the programs success.

The proposed Global Citizen impact bonds are unusual both in size and in philanthropys role paying for outcomes, says Emily Gustafsson-Wright, a Brookings global economy and development senior fellow. If completed, she adds, it would be the largest outcomes-based program in which philanthropy alone provided the outcomes funding.

The Quality Education India Development Impact Bond, which aims to improve outcomes for more than 200,000 primary-school students, counts only philanthropy among its outcome funders. They are the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Comic Relief, the Larry Ellison Foundation, and the Mittal Foundation. But their combined commitment is only $9.2 million over four years.

Presented together, the six Global Citizen funds are intended to make donors an offer they cant refuse. To be honest, it removes an excuse not to give, Sheldrick says. A donor cant say: You dont cover my issue.

Chris Stadler, chair of Global Citizen and managing partner of the private-equity firm CVC Capital Partners, said he plans to make a mid- to high seven-figure contribution split between a donation and an impact investment. Investors will like that the programs are proven, Stadler says, which means theres little risk to their principal. Donors will appreciate that their money pays only for results.

Wed like to help connect people who are having trouble finding impact that can scale, Stadler says.

Global Citizen and NPX expect executives in the financial industry will be drawn to the model, but also the wealthy generally. NPX donors include five members of the Giving Pledge: Richard and Joan Branson; Charlie and Candy Ergen; Gordon Gund (who signed the pledge with his late wife, Llura); Lyda Hill; and Pierre and Pam Omidyar.

____

This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Drew Lindsay is a senior writer at the Chronicle. Email: drew.lindsay@philanthropy.com. The AP and the Chronicle receive support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP and the Chronicle are solely responsible for all content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Wisconsin Republicans will allow regulations Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' administration developed to control pollution from a group of chemicals known as PFAS to take effect, a spokesman for the lawmaker who controls the Legislature's rules committee said Monday.

The Legislature's Republican-controlled Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Reviews has no objections to the regulations and will allow the Department of Natural Resources to implement them, said Mike Mikalsen, an aide to the committee's co-chairman, Sen. Steve Nass.

Mikalsen warned that the committee could suspend the standards if the department doesnt lawfully implement them, but for now, at least, the decision marks a rare Republican concession to Evers and hands him something of a victory heading into the November elections.

Since taking office in 2019, Evers has been working to limit contamination from PFAS, an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The chemicals, found in products ranging from cookware to firefighting foam, don't break down in nature and have been linked to health problems in humans and animals.

A number of Wisconsin communities are wrestling with PFAS in their groundwater, including Marinette, Madison, Marshfield, Wausau and the towns of Peshtigo and Campbell.

The Department of Natural Resources, which Evers controls, has been working on restrictions on PFAS in state waters since September 2019. The department submitted limits on two PFAS compounds, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), to its policy board earlier this year.

Opponents, including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state's largest business group, have balked at the regulations' price tag. The DNR has projected that compliance options such as drilling new wells and installing treatment systems could cost the wastewater treatment and paper mill industries millions of dollars.

The department's board in February ultimately adopted a 70 parts per trillion standard for drinking water and an 8 ppt standard for most surface waters that can support fish. Those standards are designed to limit the amount of PFAS that can be discharged into state waters and in municipal water systems. The board scrapped plans for setting groundwater standards at 2 ppt, leaving well water unregulated.

The finalization of these water quality protections is a positive development and a necessary step to protect Wisconsinites from forever chemicals, said Tony Wilkin Gibart, executive director of environmental law firm Midwest Environmental Advocates. While we are glad to see these rules move forward, we are mindful that Wisconsinites whose water comes from private wells also deserve the same protections under our state's groundwater law.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul sued Johnson Controls and Tyco Fire Products in March alleging the companies firefighting foam led to contamination in the Marinette area. A Waukesha County judge in April ruled that the Department of Natural Resources couldnt regulate PFAS pollution because the agency hadnt established any standards for the chemicals under the state's spills law.

It wasn't immediately clear what impact established standards would have on those cases. A state Department of Justice spokeswoman and representatives of Johnson Controls and Tyco didn't immediately respond to messages Monday.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce spokesman Nick Novak said the new rules would have no impact on the Waukesha County case. He didn't explain why and didn't immediately respond to a follow-up message seeking more details.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce alleges in that case that the Department of Natural Resources has never defined PFAS as hazardous substances under Wisconsin's spills law, which requires polluters to clean up their spills. It argues the department has been illegally relying on that law to regulate PFAS.

The drinking water and surface water standards fall under a different set of statutes that aren't in dispute. Implementing them ensures the department has at least some authority to regulate the chemicals regardless of the spills law.

Department spokeswoman Sarah Hoye declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

___

Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trichmond1
By Victoria Franco

Bay City News Foundation

A man suspected of fatally shooting his wife earlier this month in Stockton is awaiting extradition after fleeing to Nebraska, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said.

Sergio Torres Munguia, 52, was located and taken into custody on June 9 in Sidney, Nebraska after running a stop sign, the Sidney Police Department said.

A records check on Munguia following the traffic violation revealed a warrant for homicide.

On June 4, Munguia's wife, Sonia Suarez, was shot in the 3600 block of Munford Avenue in Stockton, according to Stockton police.

She was taken to a hospital where she died from her injuries.

Following an investigation, Munguia was suspected of killing Suarez and an arrest warrant was issued by the San Joaquin County Superior Court.

Copyright  2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

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DALY CITY (BCN)

Registered nurses at a Peninsula hospital have issued a 10-day notice that they intend to hold a two-day strike later this month in response to what they claim are the hospital's failure to address critical and persistent patient care issues and supply issues, among other issues.

Nurses at AHMC Seton Medical Center in Daly City intend to hold a two-day strike June 22 and 23.

A spokesperson for the California Nurses Association said nurses at the hospital have been in contract negotiations since December of last year. Nurses held a one-day strike in March. The CNA spokesperson said hospital management is "impeding any real progress by refusing to address the nurses' concerns and by cancelling scheduled meetings at the last minute."

Copyright  2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

Copyright  2022 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
Before May 24, most of us had never heard of Uvalde, Texas. Now, its on the map for one reason. Its the home to Robb Elementary School, where 19 students and two teachers perished during a mass shooting.

Its easier to buy a gun than baby formula these days.

Tio Hardiman, head of the Violence Interrupters in Chicago, advocates using body armor for students.

You need a thin version of body armor around the chest area so it wont be so bulky for kids, starting around age 6 or 7, Hardiman said. And they should wear a bulletproof backpack. Whatever it takes to save the kids.

Hardiman figures both pieces of protection would cost about $650, with about $250 for the chest protector.

Remember the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting Feb. 14, 2018, in which 17 people were killed. A few weeks later, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote an eight-paragraph opinion column for The New York Times.Stevens wrote, In 1939, the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.

So, couldnt that logic apply to an AR-15 or AK-47?

Stevens added: Support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment is only 27 awkwardly constructed words: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The NRA has spearheaded a national cause  and thus a fervent following  based on the second half of that sentence.

Former Justice Warren Burger termed the amendment a fraud. In an interview with correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault in 1991 on PBS The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, Burger essentially asserted the Second Amendment was antiquated  especially that well-regulated militia part.

As usual, Republicans and Democrats claim its time to discuss bipartisan legislation. But as Hardiman adds: Talk means nothing. The NRA is too strong.

And the NRA swears by that second half of that Second Amendment sentence  you know, the part about to keep and bear arms ...   as a source of absolutism.

Perhaps thats why Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, vetoed $35 million in state funding to the Tampa Bay Rays new player development facility. Note that the veto occurred after the Rays tweeted anti-gun messages.

Many gun owners agree with DeSantis.

The statistics are unbelievable:

There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans; the next closest country is the Falkland Islands, at 62 per 100.

There are 330 million people living in the United States, with 393 million guns.

Jillian Peterson is familiar with the routine. She is a criminology and criminal justice professor at Hamline (Minnesota) University and author of The Violence Project. That means she studies mass shooters.

Her remarks on CNN about their thought processes were profound: We have interviewed perpetrators of school shootings who told us, I went there SPECIFICALLY because I knew there was an armed officer there who was going to kill me. Perpetrators go in planning to either kill themselves, be killed by law enforcement, or spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Weve seen this scenario too many times.
The home and office of state Sen. Scott Wiener were searched for bombs on Sunday after his staff received a threat that said the San Francisco lawmaker will die today.

That threat came just days after Wiener made a joke on Twitter about introducing a bill in the California Legislature that would make Drag Queen 101 a part of the states K-12 curriculum. His tweet was in response to a post by a Texas lawmaker who said he plans to introduce a ban on drag shows in the presence of minors in that state.

This guy just gave me a bill idea, Wiener said. Offering Drag Queen 101 as part of the K-12 curriculum. Attending Drag Queen Story Time will satisfy the requirement.

A spokesperson for Wiener's office said the tweet was "obviously a joke" and that no such bill is coming.

In the bomb threat  a copy of which was obtained by SFGATE  the writer referenced a conspiracy theory that LGBT people and supporters are systemically grooming children. The groomer accusation draws on decades-old homophobic stereotypes and has been gaining popularity among mainstream conservatives.

We are fking sick of this perverted st. You bastards all deserve to die, the writer said.

The Wiener spokesperson said the lawmaker's office believes the threat is connected to the tweet, but doesn't know definitively. The threat concluded by saying that bombs had been placed in Wieners office and home. The final line of the threat said, We will kill you.

It was emailed Sunday to members of Wieners legislative staff, who alerted police. The threat was deemed credible enough that Wieners home and office were searched by police Sunday afternoon. No bombs were found, but officers say theyre actively investigating the threat.

Wiener, a gay politician who has spent more than five years in office, said hes not deterred by such threats. He also took aim at conservative politicians and activists, saying threats like this were the result of homophobic rhetoric.

I've been getting death threats for years as a result of our work to advance the civil rights of LGBTQ people and people living with HIV," he said in a statement. "I'm not going to stop doing that work no matter what threats people make. These attacks are a direct result of the hateful, anti-LGBTQ political rhetoric coming from right-wing politicians and activists. Words have consequences."




Summer is almost here, and we're dreaming of the simplicity of an A-frame cabin on a lake. You might even say we're thinking outside the box.

Although the triangle shape has been used by homebuilders for centuries, A-frames really caught on in the U.S. in the 1950s. The angular design proved popular in vacation destinations, which is why you find many of them in forested locales or on scenic lakes.

We combed through nationwide listings to find A-frames for sale right now and settled on a quintet of peaked residences ready for new owners.

Options run the gamut, from a humble cabin in Missouri to an elegant A-frame in Beverly Hills, CA. For a full look at these properties, simply scroll on down.

Price: $3,995,000

Aloha, Beverly Hills: Not all A-frames are cute Alpine cabins in the mountains. The style was also popular in the tropics. Taking its inspiration from Hawaiian style, this 3,995-square-foot residence sits in one of the nation's most exclusive ZIP codes.

The four-bedroom home was built in 1958 by the current owner and featured in the Architectural Digest in 1965. He traveled to Hawaii frequently and incorporated tropical features into the design, including volcanic rock both indoors and out, trickling waterfalls, and natural materials like wood and stone.

The home might need some work, but it could be worth the effort for a buyer in search of a standout dwelling in the 90210.

Beverly Hills, CA Realtor.com

Price: $750,000

A-frame for all seasons: Known as The Sky Haus, this cabin is designed to accommodate folks who love the outdoors. Located about 15 miles from a prominent ski resort, it's close to options for hiking, mountain biking, and kayaking.

The adorable 660-square-foot cabin with a loft-style bedroom is a popular short-term rental and averages a 92% occupancy rate.

Guests can enjoy private riverfront beach access, a fire pit, and modern conveniences. This picture-perfect cabin also graces the cover of the book "Cabin Tripping."

Skyhomish, WA Realtor.com

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Watch: This Huge Fly-In Home in Florida Is Cleared for Takeoff

Price: $669,000

Two for the price of one: Ideal for year-round living, a family vacation compound, or short-term vacation rental, this property includes a 1,492-square-foot chalet and a 792-square-foot A-frame.

Originally built in 1984, both homes were recently renovated with high-end appliances and finishes, including heated terrazzo tile flooring in the A-frame and custom slate and PaperStone in the chalet.

The two-bedroom chalet offers multiple living and dining spaces. In the A-frame, you'll find a dreamy loft space. Each has a kitchen, a wood-burning stove, and a fireplace. They're located in the Walker Lake community, close to the Delaware River and about two hours from New York City.

Shohola, PA Realtor.com

Price: $254,900

Lakeside living: This is what most people envision for a lakeside A-frame cabin. The pointy place on Patterson Lake features two bedrooms and a galley kitchen. The dated carpeting and wood paneling might need to be replaced, but it's a totally livable lake house.

It sits on a deep, grassy lot and has a deck with a fire pit and built-in benches overlooking the water. Built in 1945, the tiny cabin sits on a roomy half-acre lot. For storing outdoor gear, there's a detached two-stall garage with a heated workshop,

Dickinson, ND Realtor.com

Price:$149,900

A-frame junior: At just 450 square feet, this A-frame near Table Rock Lake counts as a tiny home. Every inch of the diminutive space is well-designed.

Amazingly, builders were able to squeeze two bedrooms into this small space. The one in the back has its own entrance, and the other one is in a loft tucked under the eaves of the A-frame, accessed by a pull-down ladder.

The living room has a soaring ceiling and access to a dining deck with space for a table, chairs, and barbecue.

Built in 1974, the place was fully renovated in 2018 with a new roof and hardwood flooring.

Lampe, MO Realtor.com

The post 5 Adorable A-Frames for Homebuyers Who Want To Get to the Point appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
On the latest "Windy City Rehab," Alison Victoria is back in Beverly Hillsbut not in California. Her hometown of Chicago also has a neighborhood called Beverly Hills.

"It's this bubble on the South Side of Chicago, this beautiful oasis of gorgeous historic homes," Victoria explains. "This is like suburban living in the city, big yards, a lot of space."

She's never worked in this part of the city before and is chomping at the bit to help Danielle and Lenny Bell with the 1912 home they just bought for $491,000. They've been living in a 900-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn with their two kids and have decided to come back to Chicago to raise their children and be closer to family.

Beverly Hills in Chicago HGTV

The home they've selected is an old-school beauty, with four bedrooms and 2.5 baths in 1,924 square feet of interior space.

"Windy City Rehab" house, before HGTV

It's full of the types of period features Victoria loves to work with, but it also has a lot of older features that can be problematic.

"I'm so excited to complete their dream home, but that may not happen," she says.

The Bells have budgeted $250,000 to give the place a total makeover, and Victoria makes great use of every cent. Find out what she does, including plenty of tips you might be inspired to try yourself.

Landmark status might limit what you can change

New black and white exterior HGTV

On the home's exterior, Victoria has big plans for expanding the front porch, building a balcony on a flat part of the roof, and other structural changes. She also wants to switch the color from dull beige and brown to a sharp black and white.

Yet several weeks into the project, Victoria gets a call saying the house has "landmark status," which means it's been designated as having historic, artistic, or aesthetic value. It also means that they can't change the actual structure of the facade.

While Victoria is disappointed, she's happy that they are allowed to at least paint it. And with no expanded porch or balcony, Victoria can focus on the bigger renovations she plans to make inside.

Sometimes, it's OK to break the open floor plan rule

An example of a smaller room with an open ambiance and good flow HGTV

While open-concept living is par for the course these days, Victoria decides to break this popular design guideline due to the age of the house.

"To maintain the charm of this house, we're going to leave some of the walls and not go with the open concept," she says. "It's an old home. We don't need to have this huge, open floor plan. I like defining the spaces."

It makes total sense: While Victoria is all about expanding doorways to improve the flow, one big, open space just wouldn't be right in this century-old home.

Create the perfect kitchen triangle

Redesigned kitchen HGTV

In the kitchen, Victoria plans carefully to make it functional, and one way she does this is with a kitchen triangle, which refers to the way the appliances are arranged.

"There's something called 'the perfect triangle,' which is how you navigate between the sink, the stove, and the fridge," explains Victoria. "And we've got a beautiful triangle with this layout, so it's just going to feel great in this kitchen."

Find inspiration images to convey your taste

The Bells discuss their likes and dislikes with Alison Victoria on "Windy City Rehab." HGTV

"I love a woman who knows what she wants," says Victoria, referring to Danielle. "She put together a really beautiful document for me of inspiration images. It's great to have that feedback in order to have a starting point."

That way, no one wastes time and energy considering items and features that are never going to make the final cutand everyone wins.

Too many choices can be overwhelming

Victoria discussing design with a client HGTV

There comes a time when too many decisions cause a ridiculous amount of stress and frustration. Victoria knows this.

"So the way I work with clients is less is more," she says. "Which means, I don't give options. As I've worked with clients over the years, I've realized that sometimes you can just overwhelm a client with too many options."

Victoria likes to become informed about her clients' tastes first, then find things that fit it. It's a good lesson for everyone who hires a designer to communicate your style, then let the pro take the lead. While it's fine to speak up on any upgrades you don't want, you should trust them to make some decisions on your behalf, lest you drown in too many choices, from paint colors to furnishings and beyond.

Give your designer space and time to surprise you

Luckily, the Bells are what Victoria considers dream clients, because they resist the urge to come in early and check out the changes while they're in progress. This gives them the opportunity to be surprised and excited when they first see the changes. The Bells were not disappointed,

"It's amazing," exclaimed Danielle. "There is no way we could have done a project like this without Alison."

Lenny agrees, saying, "Her delicate balance of bringing in new stuff, but also finding old stuff, from parts of Chicago where nobody else would look, is really masterful."

The post Alison Victoria of 'Windy City Rehab' Reveals the Key to a Perfect Kitchen Design appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
On Sunday afternoon, thousands of San Franciscans flocked to one of the city's most iconic concert venues for an afternoon of smooth soul music and bombastic hip-hop.

Featuring Bay Area legends Too $hort and Tower of Power, the lineup for the season opener was actually a reschedule of the final Stern Grove concert of 2021, which was canceled after 700,000 gallons of water flooded the park. There appeared to still be some construction throughout the grounds, but fans of the venue will be happy to know that the natural amphitheater felt like it had been brought back to life.

Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE

Despite the new reservation system, long lines stretched along the north and south sides of the park, and as usual real estate for folding chairs and picnic blankets was tough to find. However, thanks to the pandemic pivot to livestreaming, the festival had added a large video screen to the grassy side area, which showed a very slickly produced feed of the concert for those without a sightline to the stage. Early in the day, a heavy fog settled throughout the grove and light drizzles threatened the vibe, but the cooling mist merely added to the San Francisco atmosphere.

Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE Adam Pardee Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE Mayor London Breed announced the start of the Stern Grove festival, as fans danced to Too $hort and Tower of Power. Credit: Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE

Just before Too $hort's set, Mayor London Breed stepped up for a ribbon-cutting ceremony in which she thanked the Goldman family for stewarding he festival for five generations, and showed appreciation toward parks department employees who worked overtime to repair the park. With her civic duties behind her, the mayor shifted into the role of hype woman.

"Ye Area, let's turn up, let's have a good time, thank you for coming!" screamed Mayor Breed.

Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE Too $hort performs at the Stern Grove music festival. Credit: Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE

The crowd was warmed up by DJ Shortkut, a San Francsico turntablism legend whose career dates back to the late 80s. He blazed through a medley of Bay Area hip-hop classics including everything from "The Thizzle Song" to "I've Got Five on It" to several hits featuring Shock G of Digital Underground, who died in 2019. When it was time for Too $hort to take the stage, he entered to a loop of "his favorite word" from the 2006 hit "Blow the Whistle" and the hillside erupted, with thousands of people screaming the very-much-uncensored lyrics in unison.

$hort joked about how he agreed with the festival organizers to keep his set "R-rated" and laughed as he pointed out babies in the crowd wearing protective headphones, but it was clear that he wasn't doing much to tone down his language for the families in attendance. He stomped through trunk-rattling classics like "I'm a Player," "The Ghetto" and "Gangsters & Strippers," boasting about his legendary history as the first Bay Area rapper to release an independent album. The set was everything a Bay Area hip-hop fan could ask for.

Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE Too $hort performs for a full crowd at Stern Grove music festival. Credit: Adam Pardee / Special to SFGATE

After $hort left the stage, DJ Shortkut returned for a second set of masterfully mixed funk sure-shots before the arrival of Tower of Power. Ever since their 1970 debut album "East Bay Grease" (released on Bill Graham's San Francisco Records), Tower of Power have earned a reputation as one of the tightest bands to ever come out of the Bay Area, with their signature wall-of-saxophone sound reverberating throughout the park.

Extended versions of "Soul Vaccination" and "What Is Hip?" offered nearly every musician on the stage a chance to flex into a solo, and the lengthy vamping also gave the sun enough time to emerge from behind the fog. As the sky parted, Tower of Power broke into "You're Still a Young Man," which served as the perfect soundtrack for laying on a blanket in the sun and enjoying a uniquely San Francisco tradition.
WFO SACRAMENTO Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Sunday, June 12, 2022

_____

FLASH FLOOD WARNING

The National Weather Service in Sacramento has issued a

* Flash Flood Warning for...

The Dixie burn scar in...

Southwestern Lassen County in northern California...

Northwestern Plumas County in northern California...

* Until 1100 PM PDT.

* At 512 PM PDT, Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing

heavy rain over the Dixie West Burn Scar. Between 0.3 and 1 inch

of rain has fallen. Additional rainfall amounts of 0.5 to 1 inch

are possible in the warned area. Flash flooding is ongoing or

expected to begin shortly.

Excessive rainfall over the warning area will cause mud slides near

steep terrain. The mud slide can consist of rock, mud, vegetation

and other loose materials.

HAZARD...Life threatening flash flooding. Thunderstorms

producing flash flooding in and around the Dixie West

Burn Scar.

SOURCE...Radar.

IMPACT...Life threatening flash flooding of areas in and around

the Dixie Burn Scar. The highway's 70, 36 and 32

corridors will be highest risk for impacts from

mudslides and debris flows.

* Some locations that will experience flash flooding include...

Chester, Almanor, Prattville, Lake Almanor West, Lake Almanor

Country Club, Canyondam, East Shore, Caribou, Seneca, Belden,

Twain, Paxton, Indian Falls, Bald Eagle Mountain, Tobin, Crescent

Mills, Storrie, Keddie and Greenville.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

This is a life threatening situation. Heavy rainfall will cause

extensive and severe flash flooding of creeks...streams...and

ditches in the Dixie Burn Scar. Severe debris flows can also be

anticipated across roads. Roads and driveways may be washed away in

places. If you encounter flood waters...climb to safety.

Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood

deaths occur in vehicles.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO PENDLETON Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Tuesday, June 14, 2022

_____

AREAL FLOOD ADVISORY

Flood Advisory

National Weather Service Pendleton OR

1017 AM PDT Mon Jun 13 2022

...FLOOD ADVISORY IN EFFECT UNTIL 4 PM PDT TUESDAY...

* WHAT...Flooding caused by excessive rainfall is expected.

* WHERE...Portions of northeast Oregon and southeast Washington,

including the following counties, in northeast Oregon, Umatilla.

In southeast Washington, Walla Walla.

* WHEN...Until 400 PM PDT Tuesday.

* IMPACTS...Minor flooding in low-lying and poor drainage areas.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...

- At 1009 AM PDT, emergency management reported increases along

Mill Creek that will require diversion to Bennington Lake.

Minor flooding is already occurring, with water and ponding

on nearby roads, including Mill Creek road and Kooskooskie.

- Additional rainfall amounts of 0.1 to 0.3 inches are expected

over the area. This additional rain will result in minor

flooding.

- Some locations that will experience flooding include...

Walla Walla and Kooskooskie.

- http://www.weather.gov/safety/flood

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood

deaths occur in vehicles.

Be alert for mudslides or significant water over roads, and report

any impacts to local law enforcement.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather




At the meeting between Secretary of the HCMC Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman (Photo: SGGP)

Mr. Nen stressed that the bilateral relationship has made significant strides across spheres, adding that the US is now Vietnams 11th biggest investor with more than 1,100 projects worthUS$ 10.47 billion as of April.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the US remained the biggest importer of Vietnam in 2020-2021. Vietnam has also emerged as the 9th largest trade partner of the US.

The US is also HCMCs leading trade partner, with two-way trade reaching some $9 billion . The US is the 10th biggest investor in the city with more than 500 projects valued at around $1.2 billion.

Additionally, the US is a potential and important partner in such spheres as high-tech, smart city building, finance, health care, education, and high-quality personnel training, he said.

HCMC welcomes US investors, especially in high-tech, smart city building, health care, finance, infrastructure and renewable energy, he said, pledging that local authorities will create optimal conditions for foreign investors, including those from the US, to operate in the city.

For her part, Sherman expressed her delight at cooperation and mutual support between Vietnam and the US during the pandemic spread in the two countries.

The US welcomes the Vietnamese governments policy of clean energy transition, which will help the country achieve its commitments to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, she noted.

US firms want to pour more investments in Vietnam, particularly in renewable energy, digital transformation, digital economy and education, she continued.

The Deputy Secretary suggested the two countries roll out specific cooperation activities in the time ahead, especially in energy, environment, high-tech and education.

VNA
President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (left) and Croatian Ambassador Ivan Velimir Starcevic. (Photo: VNA)

At a meeting with Croatian Ambassador Ivan Velimir Starcevic, President Phuc affirmed the importance Vietnam attaches to consolidating and developing friendship and cooperation with Croatia.

He thanked the Croatian government for its donation of 60,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses to Vietnam last year, which, the leader said demonstrated the good traditional friendship between the two countries.

Starcevic stressed that Vietnam is Croatias biggest partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and that as a EU member, Croatia will work to promote the implementation of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA).

The ambassador suggested Vietnam and Croatia step up cooperation in tourism.

President Phuc said the two sides should increase the exchange of delegations at all levels to boost cooperation in all spheres, thus deepening and raising the efficiency of the EU-Vietnam comprehensive partnership and cooperation.

Vietnam stands ready to help Croatia enhance its relations with ASEAN and its member countries, he noted.

The leader said the Vietnam-Croatia trade value of only around US$100 million has yet to match their potential, and urged the two countries to double the revenue in the next five years.

Vietnam is willing to create optimal conditions for Croatian firms to study the Vietnamese market and invest in the country, particularly in renewable energy, transport infrastructure, tourism, environment, food processing, tourism and sports, he said.

While receiving Senegalese Ambassador Abdoulaye Barro, the President emphasised that Senegal is an important traditional African partner of Vietnam.

President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (right) and Senegalese Ambassador Abdoulaye Barro. (Photo: VNA)

President Phuc expressed his hope that Senegal will successfully perform the rotating presidency of the African Union (AU) in 2022, and thanked the country for its support for the proposal of establishing the official relationship between Vietnam and the AU.

Barro lauded Vietnams role in international organisations and the United Nations General Assembly, as well as its important role in Southeast Asia and Asia at large.

Senegal wants to learn from Vietnams experience in agricultural development, he said, adding that Senegal stands ready to support Vietnam in the international arena and always opens door for Vietnamese investors and products.

President Phuc suggested Vietnam and Senegal further support each other at multilateral forums, particularly the UN and the International Organisation of La Francophonie.

The two countries should increase trade and investment exchanges, and coordinate to review and promote the signing of important agreements in order to create a legal framework for the bilateral cooperation, he said.

President Phuc also noted his hope that the Senegalese government will further support the Vietnamese community in the host country.

Vietnamplus
The 34th global edition of World AI & RPA Show supported by KORIKA and IAIS concluded with 2 days of the power-packed conference that served as a key catalyst for Jakartas bold vision of leveraging innovation and technology to diversify its goals by bringing together government officials & inspirational line-up of Artificial Intelligence experts & solution providers on the 8th & 9th of June.

The show brought together over 450+ delegates & 45+ exception tech leaders as speakers from across the globe including major stakeholders of Jakartas digital ecosystem.

The theme for the conference was premised on helping key government entities and private enterprises that develop a comprehensive Artificial Intelligence roadmap by assessing sectors of critical infrastructure emerging technologies can be a strategic enabler to boost the nations economic competitiveness.

Prof. Dr. Hammam Riza, Principal Expert, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) President of KORIKA, Indonesia, spoke at length on the topic, Leveraging Digital Transformation through Indonesias AI National Strategy, and made strong points on AI Roadmap and its implementation in accordance with the countrys values system. He also expressed how AI National Strategy can help in creating a digital-savvy workforce.

Dr. Eng. Hary Budiarto, Chairman of Research and Talent Development Agency Ministry of ICT Indonesia, gave a keynote on Why Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a critical component of Indonesias technological landscape. He was quoted saying, The primary industries in Indonesia will benefit from AI and other cutting-edge technologies, which will assist the Indonesian economy overcome challenges and limitations.

Suganthi Shivkumar, Vice President, Asia, Alteryx, while delivering her tech talk on 'Driving Analytic Maturity: Scale the Impact of Analytics Across the Organization', spoke about a proven method that helps organizations democratize analytics across an organization, and added what are the stages of analytics maturity.

One of the most prominent panel discussions witnessed at the event discussed on How AI and Automation can drive a customer-centric Environment. The speakers on the panel included Muhamad ErzaAminanto, Senior Research Scientist, Jakarta Smart City; Amit Panda, Group Head of Data and Analytics, Sinarmas Financial (SMMA Group), Jean-Marc Provost, Director Digital and Conversational AI, Genesys; Eva Dormauli, Assistant Vice President Sales for Small and Medium Division BRI, PT. Bank Rakyat Indonesia Persero Tbk.

In this discussion, panellists gave their insights on how CX revolutionised with the introduction of Conversational AI, the cause and cure for point solution chaos, a roadmap for Government bodies to become digital leaders and how Data and AI became the accelerators of CX.

Bambang Dwi AngGono; Director of e-Government Department of Communications and Informatics - Republic of Indonesia, on his keynote shared insights on why Artificial Intelligence is a central piece of digital transformation. He was quoted saying, AI innovation is happening at a truly exponential rate, and business leaders, CIOs and IT Professionals must be open to AI solutions which can create real business value.

Satchit Joglekar Regional Director; ASEAN Emerging Markets, Snowflake, Singapore, while delivering his tech talk on 'Power Your Organization Forward with the Data Cloud', stated, The Data Cloud eliminates silos, enabling organizations to rapidly and flexibly combine data from disparate sources to create new insights and maximize the value of the enterprise data.

The event also focused on other key topics such as:

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) at the heart of a companys business and operational models,

The digital revolutions frontiers are being pushed farther by recent advancements like facial recognition and related innovations,

Revamping policies for the digital era: Realigning policies and institutions with the digital economy,

Cloud as a driver for digital transformation and many more.

Some of the top speakers who attended the event that took place on the 8th and 9th of June 2022 included:

Prof. Dr. Hammam Riza , Principal Expert, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) President of KORIKA, Indonesia;

, Principal Expert, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) President of KORIKA, Indonesia; Dr. Eng. Hary Budiarto ; Chairman of Research and Talent Development Agency, Ministry of ICT, Indonesia;

; Chairman of Research and Talent Development Agency, Ministry of ICT, Indonesia; Bambang Dwi Anggono , Director of e-Government, Department of Communications and Informatics, Republic of Indonesia, Indonesia;

, Director of e-Government, Department of Communications and Informatics, Republic of Indonesia, Indonesia; SetiajiSetiaji, Chief of Digital Transformation Office, Minister of Health of The Republic of Indonesia;

Chief of Digital Transformation Office, Minister of Health of The Republic of Indonesia; Dr. Lukas , Co-founder and Chairperson, Indonesia AI Society;

, Co-founder and Chairperson, Indonesia AI Society; Suganthi Shivkumar ; Vice President - Asia, Alteryx;

; Vice President - Asia, Alteryx; Indra Hidayatullah , Data Management & Analytics Division Head, PT Bank Tabungan Negara (Persero) Tbk;

, Data Management & Analytics Division Head, PT Bank Tabungan Negara (Persero) Tbk; Kevin Lim , Regional Vice President, SEATH Dataiku Singapore;

, Regional Vice President, SEATH Dataiku Singapore; Katrina Briedis ; Sr. Product Marketing Manager, APAC, Denodo, Australia;

; Sr. Product Marketing Manager, APAC, Denodo, Australia; Satchit Joglekar ; Regional Director, ASEAN Emerging Markets, Snowflake Singapore;

; Regional Director, ASEAN Emerging Markets, Snowflake Singapore; Benedikta Satya ; Country Director, Searce, Indonesia;

; Country Director, Searce, Indonesia; Tauhid Abddul Jalil ; Principal Consultant, Southeast Asia, Laiye;

; Principal Consultant, Southeast Asia, Laiye; Jean-marc Provost ; Director Digital and Conversational AI, Genesys, Singapore;

; Director Digital and Conversational AI, Genesys, Singapore; Juan Kanggrawan; Head of Data Analytics Jakarta Smart City

Head of Data Analytics Jakarta Smart City Prof. Dr. Ir. Arwin Sumari; Senior Officer, Indonesian Air Force, Adjunct Professor, Politeknik Negeri Malang Indonesia and more.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology holds enormous potential to transform businesses in ways that can improve operational effectiveness, boost productivity, increase efficiency, and reduce costs, stated Mithun Shetty, CEO, Trescon.
South Africa is more than ready to engage with the CII India Business Forum (IBF) and relevant local ministries to further extend the bilateral cooperation, a senior minister said on Sunday, lauding Indian companies for supporting the country's growth trajectory.

South Africa has proposed a joint task team between the IBF and relevant local ministries to further extend the cooperation that already exists between the two countries.

Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Blade Nzimande, made the call in his address at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the IBF, an association of over 100 Indian companies operating in South Africa.

I must upfront indicate that as a Minister and both my departments, we are more than ready to engage with this forum further for mutual benefit, Nzimande said.

We propose the establishment of a Joint Task Team to work on the details of our future partnership, he added.

The minister said the IBF meeting was taking place at the time when the South African government and businesses needed to foster strong partnerships in order to grow the economy and create jobs.

Allow me to take this opportunity to thank the forum and Indian companies who since 1996 have invested more than 100 billion into the South African economy across the pharmaceutical, information technology and automotive industries, he said.

As the South African government, we are gratified by your commitment to support our country in its development trajectory and we are looking forward to more partnerships with you going forward, he said.

I wish to salute the seminal role played by India in opposition to, and isolation of, the apartheid state since as far back as the 1960s. The distinguished role of India in this regard was recognised by former State President Nelson Mandela, Nzimande said.

The minister asked the Indian companies to consider placing some of the thousands of young people who have graduated from colleges in learnership positions.

Nzimande highlighted a wide range of opportunities for the IBF to share some of the skills and capabilities, particularly in ICT and other smart manufacturing technologies to support the digital transformation of the manufacturing sector in the country's re-industrialisation efforts.

Indian businesses could enter into a co-funding of these programmes in order to ensure massive uptake of South African youth. Opportunities also exist to invest in South Africa's reindustrialisation efforts by helping in building South Africa's local manufacturing capabilities, he said.

Nzimande also listed a wide range of areas in which India and South Africa were already achieving joint success, including a strategic partnership for the success of the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project, hosted in South Africa.

Indian scientists, notably from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, are making crucial contributions to software development systems supporting the SKA. This includes close cooperation with the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, he said.

The SKA project is a driver for accelerated technology development in domains such as supercomputing and big data, and this offers exciting opportunities for the South African and Indian enterprises to cooperate on the most promising technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, he said.

In his closing address, IBF President Praveer Tripathi said that after doubling its membership in Johannesburg, there were plans now to take the organsiation to the other provinces of South Africa as well and after that to other countries in the Southern African Development Community countries.

Tripathi made a plea to the Indian companies in South Africa to share their success stories via the IBF website, which is in the process of being revamped.

Earlier, Tripathi said that since its formation in 2018, the organisation had ably demonstrated the resilience of the Indian companies in South Africa in dealing with the social and economic inequities, unemployment, the Covid 19 pandemic and various other challenges.

The IBF has been tirelessly and enthusiastically doing its part in building Brand India and Brand South Africa in promoting and uniting the business investments between both the countries, he said.

Going forward, we look forward to vibrant economic cooperation between India and South Africa by making the Forum an essential first-stop shop for Indian businesses looking to invest in South Africa as well as South African businesses looking to invest in India, Tripathi said.
Indian cybersecurity rules due to come into force will create an "environment of fear rather than trust", a body representing top tech companies has warned the government, calling for a one-year delay before the rules take effect

FREMONT, CA: IAMAI, which represents companies such as Facebook, Google, and Reliance, wrote to India's IT ministry, expressing its dissatisfaction with an April cybersecurity guideline. A new rule issued by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) requires IT companies to report data breaches within six hours of becoming aware of them and to keep IT and communications logs for six months. Reuters reported that the IAMAI called for extending the six-hour timeframe in a letter, adding that the international standard for reporting cyber-security problems is 72 hours. In addition, CERT, part of the Ministry of Information Technology, has ordered that cloud service providers like Amazon and virtual private network (VPN) providers retain the names and IP addresses of their customers for at least five years after they stop using their services.

A statement from IAMAI points out that following such guidelines may be extremely costly, and the suggested penalties for violations may lead entities to stop business in India for fear of being fined. Earlier this week, ExpressVPN pulled its servers out of India, stating that it "refuses to assist the Indian government's efforts to undermine internet freedom. IAMAI's letter follows one issued earlier this week by 11 major tech-aligned sector organizations, which stated that the new restrictions made doing business in India difficult. Recent industry backlash and damaged trade ties between New Delhi and Washington have resulted from India's increasing oversight of giant digital businesses. The new laws are necessary because cybersecurity breaches are frequently reported, but the information needed to investigate them is not always easily available from service providers.

The initiative has raised concerns about a greater compliance burden and higher expenses for the industry. Despite the concerns, India's junior IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar claimed there will be no adjustments, claiming that tech companies have a responsibility to know who is using their services. However, the rules have sparked significant dissatisfaction. According to a source with firsthand information, many social media and internet firm leaders discussed methods to persuade New Delhi to postpone the guidelines in a closed-door meeting this week. European regulators require data breaches to be notified within 72 hours, but reporting occurrences in six hours is challenging. India, on the other hand, is being kind, according to Chandrasekhar, because certain countries require rapid reporting.

The rules are expected to be implemented by the end of June. NordVPN, one of the world's major VPN companies, indicated it may remove its servers from India after they were announced. The laws, according to privacy advocates, are incompatible with the objective of a VPN, which is to protect the identity of persons such as whistleblowers from surveillance.
India is considering whether to set up an appeals panel with the power to reverse the content moderation decisions of social media firms, the information technology ministry said, in what would be the first such move of its kind worldwide.

FREMONT, CA: Documents seeking comments on upcoming changes to IT rules revealed this information in an attempt to regulate social media content and hold firms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter more accountable. One or more such appeal committees were recommended in the document, which was made public. It imposed a 30-day deadline for appeals against company grievance officers' rulings, with the panels themselves getting another 30 days to consider the case. Companies that use social media must first have an in-house grievance redress officer and designate executives to work with law enforcement. In a newly added clause, the proposed guidelines state that the intermediary shall respect the rights guaranteed to individuals under the constitution, referring to social media businesses.

India is one of the top sources of government petitions for content takedowns to Twitter Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. around the globe. According to Apar Gupta from the Internet Freedom Foundation, the ministry's plan will give it more power over social media platforms by allowing it to hire officials to oversee content moderation decisions. The groups executive director expressed his concern as the committee will have no autonomy and is likely to be constituted without any statute or clear legal foundation. Tensions rose between India's nationalist government and Twitter when refused to comply with instructions to remove accounts and messages accused of disseminating false information about farmers' demonstrations against the government. The previous year, government authorities indicated that if social media companies failed to respect domestic information and technology rules, they may no longer be eligible for liability protection as intermediaries or hosts of user content.

By user count, India is the largest market for YouTube and Facebook, as well as a significant global market for Twitter. Content moderation judgments made by social media giants such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter can only be appealed to a court under present legislation. The proposed new accountability requirements, according to India's Ministry of IT and Electronics, are intended at ensuring that the constitutional rights of Indian citizens are not contravened by any Big-tech Platform. The proposed revisions to the IT standards emerge after a few years for U.S. IT companies, who have already been pressed to designate and provide contact details of grievance redressal officers to respond to on-the-ground concerns and work with law enforcement officials. These policies have succeeded in instilling a new sense of accountability among intermediaries toward their users, particularly inside Big Tech platforms, according to the ministry. Google, Twitter, Meta, and a slew of other companies have already fully or partially implemented the IT regulations that went into effect last year.
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Domestic airline Rex has fired another salvo at rival Qantas, accusing it of muscling in on regional flight paths to punish the smaller airline for launching capital city flights in competition with the larger airlines.

Rex has announced a new flightpath from Melbourne to Devonport using resources from flightpath it says it was forced to cancel after competition from Qantas. Credit:Sam DAgostino

Rex announced on Monday it will begin flights from Melbourne to Devonport, in Tasmanias north, starting in August using staff and planes that once serviced its Melbourne to Albury route. Rex said it cancelled that flightpath after Qantass predatory entry to the route forced the smaller airline out.

Last week the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) dismissed a complaint made by Rex towards Qantass entry into a number of low passenger routes.

What Rex calls predatory behaviour is actually competition which provides these regional communities with choice, more services and lower fares, said QantasLink CEO John Gissing.
After a two-year hiatus, Euro Summer social media posts are back. But its not just prolific Instagrammers who are escaping the Australian winter.

CBD hears NSW Governor Margaret Beazley is off on a 12-day taxpayer-funded jaunt to Europe this Friday morning. Beazleys vice-regal trip  her first since the pre-COVID era  will include stops in Britain, France and Belgium. Its hoped Her Excellency will get an audience with Queen Elizabeth II in London, provided the ailing monarch, who pulled out of her own Jubilee celebrations last week, is well enough.

NSW Governor Margaret Beazley swears in Treasurer Matt Kean at NSW Government House in December 2021. Credit:AAP

Its unclear what the purpose of the rest of the trip is, and Government House is keeping details tightly under wraps. But weve heard the high-profile former President of the NSW Court of Appeal is bringing along quite the entourage. Shell be joined by her husband, barrister Dennis Wilson, official secretary Michael Miller, aide-de-camp Robert Valler and a contingent of police officers.

A spokesman for Government House thanked CBD for its interest in the Governors vice regal European mission.
Convicted paedophile and 'Hey Dad' actor Robert Hughes walks free from prison

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Federal cabinet ministers will meet in central Queensland this week, as Anthony Albanese seeks to deliver on a promise to govern for the whole of Australia.

The cabinet meeting in the industrial city of Gladstone on Wednesday will be the Prime Ministers first visit to Queensland since his May 21 election victory.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (centre) during a Labor campaign even in Gladstone. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Gladstone is in the seat of Flynn, which was retained by the Coalition at the election.

Regional cabinet meetings were previously used by former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd and former Queensland premier Peter Beattie to take ministers out of their city comfort zones and to engage directly with voters.
The death of Elvis (C8) was a non-event on the kibbutz I was working on, says Greg Adelt of Dubbo. But a couple of months later, Anwar Sadats tour of Israel stopped the show. Ella Ross of Winston Hills has a different thread: I was planning to attend a fashion parade when my friend rang with the sad news. Do you think we should still go? she asked. I think hed want us to, I replied.

Rosemary Seam of Kempsey says, I can relate to Robert Leachs distorted year of birth (C8) after recently finding myself, in official circles, listed as born in 1920. Upon pointing this out, I was told, Oh, well, its in the computer, brooking no further discussion. No mention that I was looking good for my age, alas.

Nude Tuesday [No, its not a Dominos promotion  Granny], the sensation of the Sydney Film Festival, spoken in gibberish, reminds me of the short film The Dove (De Duva), writes Judith Campbell of Drummoyne. This parody of Ingmar Bergman with its fake Swedish dialogue delighted fans in 1968. Its good to know there are still filmmakers who dont take themselves or their audiences too seriously.

Adrian Connelly of Springwood reminds us: Americans arent the only ones to get a skewed view of other countries (C8). Sometimes its the other way around. My grandson wants to go to the US, so he can meet the Columbia lady with the torch and get a ride on her pet horse Tristar, the one with the wings.

Dick Barker (C8) should invest in some multipurpose thongs, reckons Peter Miniutti of Ashbury. Perhaps like the ones John Walter of Atlanta, Georgia, (USA) received from an Australian acquaintance a number of years ago: Turn them over and in the soles were bottle openers. Best gift ever. You Aussies are so practical.
Police are appealing for information about a suspected road rage incident where a man allegedly disarmed another driver who produced a gun in Sydneys south-west on Sunday.

Images of the incident have been released to help connect police with those involved in the spat, which occurred just before 3pm near the intersection of Mill Road and Charles Street in Liverpool.

Police have appealed for information after an alleged road rage incident in Liverpool on Sunday. Credit:NSW Police

Video obtained by investigators shows what police suspect to be an altercation involving a man and a woman in a white Toyota Corolla, and two men who were travelling in a grey Suzuki Baleno.

Police say the male Toyota passenger produced a firearm before the two men from the Suzuki disarmed him. Those men then took the gun and returned to their car.
Ethics code idea for newspaper owners

A former Whitlam government minister, Mr Joe Riordan, suggested that newspaper proprietors and editorial executives should have to disclose outside interests and should be bound by a code of ethics as members of the Australian Journalists Association were. He also stated that during the events of late 1975 newspaper, radio and television interests in Australia had distorted facts and suppressed news.

Cold cream saved Castro

It was reported in the New York Sunday News that a teenage girl who had caught the eye of Fidel Castro aboard the luxury liner Berlin one month after he seized power in Cuba was sent to Havana by the CIA to kill the Cuban leader with poison tablets slipped into his coffee. The assassination attempt failed as the girl had secreted the tablets in a jar of cold cream in her handbag to avoid detection, and they had melted.

Vultures await casino laws

According to the Anglican Dean of Sydney, the Very Reverend Lance Shilton: The money-grabbers are waiting like vultures at the steps of Parliament House for legislation on casinos to pass in their favour. He was speaking at a religious rally at the Lyceum Theatre where he also said the state government would be irresponsible to play into the hands of such anti-social parasites that lived on the losses of others.
Police confiscate Western Australia's first 3D-printed gun

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Police searching for man after alleged mask altercation on Adelaide bus

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The Queensland government has announced a $750 million cancer centre for Brisbane, in what authorities consider an Australia-first concept.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the Queensland Cancer Centre, to be at the Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital, would be a one-stop shop for the most sophisticated treatment that people need all under one roof.

The centre, which would create 150 beds, would be at the RBWH and would be managed under the Metro North Hospital and Health Service. Credit:Michelle Smith

The centres concept design has been completed, and scoping and consultation was expected to begin now for the centre, which will give patients access to a range of medical oncologists, radiation oncologists and nurses.

It will be the only cancer care service in the country offering the full spectrum of cancer services in one place, Palaszczuk said.
The price to remediate the East Perth Power Station and redevelop the surrounding precinct has jumped by $65 million between WA budgets, with $12.2 million remaining unexplained by the state government.

It is the latest of two years worth of incremental cost increases scattered throughout budget papers and mid-year reviews for a refurbishment of the landmark and redevelopment of the surrounding land into a commercial and residential precinct.

However, it means taxpayers will now be forced to stump up at least $112 million for the project  which could be sold to the preferred proponents, WA billionaires Andrew Forrest and Kerry Stokes, for $1.

WA Liberals leader David Honey said the government needed to come clean with the public on how much the project would cost.
Singapore: Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles will call for stronger military ties between Australia and Japan after he lands in Tokyo, arguing the relationship between the two countries is at the centre of Australias role in the region.

Saying Australia would not be deterred by Chinas threats to Australian military missions, Marles flew to Japan on Monday pledging to conduct more joint operations in the middle of the most complex strategic circumstances since the end of World War II.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Richard Marles speaks during a plenary session during the 19th International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore at the weekend. Credit:AP

Fresh from meeting Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe in Singapore on Sunday, Marles also said Australia would continue to fly over the South China Sea and near the disputed Paracel Islands despite a Chinese jet damaging an Australian air force plane in May.

Were not going to be deterred from doing that in the future, he said. It obviously directly goes to our national security. Most of our traffic traverses that body of water.
Tokyo: Japans parliament approved tougher penalties for criminal defamation in a move prompted by a bullied wrestlers suicide that is raising free speech concerns.

Parliamentary deliberations on toughening the defamation law began in January after Hana Kimura took her own life at 22.

Kyoko Kimura wears a T-shirt with an image of her daughter, wrestler Hana Kimura. Credit:AP

Kimura faced bullying and insults on social media in 2020 after appearing on Terrace House, a hugely popular reality show on Japans Fuji TV and Netflix, about three men and three women temporarily living together at a shared house in Tokyo.

She became a target of hateful and vicious messages on social media after she was criticised for her performance in one of the episodes. Before her suicide, she tweeted that she received about a hundred hateful messages every day and she was hurt by them.
Kolonschyna, Ukraine: As Russian tanks and trucks rumbled close to their village, a Ukrainian teenager and his father stealthily launched their small drone into the air.

Working as a team, they took birds-eye photos of the armoured column moving towards Kyiv and pinpointed its coordinates, swiftly messaging the precious information to the Ukrainian military.

Andriy Pokrasa, 15, lands his drone on his hand. Andriy is being hailed in Ukraine for stealthy aerial reconnaissance work he has done with his dad in the ongoing war with Russia. Credit:AP

Within minutes, artillery batteries rained shells down on the invading forces, with deadly effect.

Andriy Pokrasa, 15, and his dad, Stanislav, are being hailed in Ukraine for their volunteer aerial reconnaissance work in the early days of the invasion, when Russian troops barrelling in from the north made an ultimately failed attempt to take the capital and bring the country to its knees.
Columbus: Ohio school districts could begin arming employees as soon as this autumn under a bill signed into law by Republican Governor Mike DeWine.

The law, as enacted, requires up to 24 hours of training before an employee can go armed, and up to eight hours of annual training. The training programs must be approved by the Ohio School Safety Centre, and DeWine announced hes ordering the centre to require the maximum 24 hours and the maximum eight hours.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine discusses proposals to improve school safety in the state following this weeks massacre of 19 children and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, on Friday in Columbus, Ohio. Credit:AP

Schools can provide additional training if they wish, DeWine said.

Before announcing the bill signing on Monday, New York time, the governor outlined several other school safety measures he and lawmakers have promoted, including $US100 million ($144 million) for school security upgrades in schools and $US5 million for upgrades at colleges.
Washington: Donald Trump dismissed his campaign advisers guidance that he should not declare victory at the 2020 election until more votes had been counted and instead followed drunk lawyer Rudy Giulianis advice to just claim he won, a Congressional hearing has been told.

But the former US president, in a statement after Mondays hearing, rejected the inquiry as a smoke and mirrors show for the American people.

After opening its public sessions last week accusing Trump of being at the centre of a deliberate conspiracy to overturn his defeat, the second public hearing of the January 6 Capitol attack centred on Trumps false narrative of election fraud.

Trump supporters erected a noose prop near the US Capitol on January 06, 2021, and threatened to get then vice president Mike Pence. Credit:Getty Images

The investigating committee produced more fresh video evidence of multiple people in Trumps orbit - including his own campaign manager Bill Stepien. They all repeatedly told him on the night of the election that he should wait for more postal votes to come through before declaring victory.
Argentinian soldiers captured at Goose Green, The Falklands Islands, being guarded by a British Royal Marine as they await transit out of the area. Credit:AP Photo Reports reaching London from Port Stanley said the Argentinian troops were being gathered into units and counted before being shipped home. There was no concession to Argentinian sensitivities in the surrender, no attempt to soften the blow to Argentinian pride by arriving at a ceasefire formula which could allow President Galtieri and the rest of the Buenos Aires military junta to pretend that somehow there had been an honourable draw. Unconditional surrender and the laying down of all Argentine arms were the harsh terms, and General Menendez had no alternative but to accept. For the British troops, victory came 10 weeks to the day after the first elements of the task force set sail from Portsmouth on a dash across the world to start a campaign which has cost the British about 220 dead, hundreds of wounded, the loss of seven ships and a dozen aircraft and helicopters. The details of Argentinian losses may take days to emerge, but they have certainly exceeded 1000 men and could be as high as 1500. Among these Argentinian losses are more than 100 pilots whose bravery and dedication won the admiration of every man of the British taskforce.

But in the British ranks, this dedication spread through all services in an extraordinary display of professional fighting skills. Argentina has claimed that the British victory was due to superior equipment. Most observers would agree with that if the most basic form of equipment is accepted as the courage and training of the fighting men. When Mrs Margaret Thatcher, beaming and victorious, returned to 10 Downing Street last night from announcing to the House of Commons that white flags had begun to flutter above Port Stan-ley, she was greeted by a big crowd singing Rule Britannia and cheering her the length of the street. Loading For the Prime Minister, the Falklands campaign, which began in disaster, has ended with a complete personal triumph. Her ascendency in the Cabinet and the Conservative Party is now total. Outside the party, her political opponents look futile and largely irrelevant. Hers has been the iron will which has forced through tough decisions and military leaders talk with wonderment about her ability to give quick, straight answers to questions  a quality rare in a British politician. Never before has she shown so starkly that her best political attribute is courage in adversity. Under remorseless pressure, she grew quieter rather than more strident; while members of her personal staff and military planners sagged with fatigue, she worked longer than any and still managed to maintain a daunting eye for detail.

Throughout this affair, she has astounded political observers with her obvious thriving on crisis and strain. Even those, particularly foreigners, who have regarded the Falklands adventure as highly questionable from the start and who find Mrs Thatchers terrible certainty more than a little worrying at times, are nonetheless full of admiration for her spirit and her courage. On the present British political scene, she dwarfs livery other figure. But having won the war Mrs Thatcher must now win the peace. The large measure of political unity on the Falklands issue will not survive for long. Loading For the next few weeks, the British task force will be engaged in resettling the Falkland islanders whose lives were disrupted by the Argentinian invasion. The British Government will need to make urgent efforts to get the Falklands economy running again. The medium term problems will not be so easily solved. Reports from Buenos Aires talk of a country and a capital stunned by defeat and furious at the surrender. There must be a real risk that, whether or not General Galtieri and his junta survive, Argentina will harass the Falklands and make necessary the continued stationing of a big and disproportionately expensive British defensive force on Fortress Falklands.
~ Candidates are being reviewed for nominations~

PHILIPSBURG:--- Minister of TEATT Roger Lawrence who has been out on medical leave for the past months has informed his party leader and the Council of Ministers that he intends to submit a letter of resignation today Monday, June 13th, 2022 due to extended medical leave.

The Council of Ministers had expected the Minister to return to work last Monday, June 6th, 2022 but the Minister it is understood invited his party leader MP Rolando Brison and the Prime Minister of St Maarten Silveria Jacobs and informed them that he plans to resign and place his focus on his medical health.

Minister Lawrence was appointed the Minister of TEATT who replaced now Member of Parliament Ludmilla de Weever on August 26th, 2021.

Lawrence was one of the directors of Port St. Maarten Group of Companies where he worked for just over ten years.

SMN News wishes the Minister much strength as he continues to focus on his health.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Samenwerkende Fondsen voor het Caribisch deel van het Koninkrijk (SFC) is a collaborative funding initiative by 4 funding agencies in the Netherlands, catering to NGOs throughout the Dutch Caribbean, with a focus on social projects. Recently a new micro-grant procedure has been implemented to meet NGO funding needs on SXM, Saba, and Statia.

Over the years SFC has noticed a need for NGOs seeking funding opportunities that are easier to request (shorter, less formal), and have a quicker turn-around time, for smaller (side) projects. To meet this need SFC recently introduced a new micro-grant application procedure, facilitating more options and opportunities for NGOs seeking funding for social projects, up to a maximum of $4.200.

The SFC consists of Fonds Sluyterman van Loo, Kansfonds, Oranje Fonds, and Stichting Kinderpostzegels; collectively supporting NGOs on the Dutch Caribbean islands since 2004. Collectively there is an annual budget of approximately 2 million euros to support NGOs with funding the execution of their social projects. The method to request support goes through a grant application procedure, which is supported by a local project advisor. Sint Maarten is thereby the hub for the applicants of Sint Maarten, Saba, and Statia. The advisor is there to help guide the NGOs, support them in their grant application process, and advise the funders on the requests submitted. Throughout the years, to accommodate NGO needs, other application methods and forms have been used, such as a post-Irma relief procedure, and most recently a Corona assistance procedure. Through such methods, additional funds were made available to the islands.

NGOs on Sint Maarten, Saba, and Statia can now request funds through a micro-grant application procedure, next to the general application procedure (which does not have a maximum budget). To request the funding application template, one must be requested from the local project advisor. This can be done through the below-mentioned email addresses. This template can be used for projects that have a social goal, and have a maximum budget of USD 11.000 (NAF 20.000), of which a maximum contribution of USD 4.200 (NAF 7.500) can be requested from SFC. Organizations with a social project in mind can reach out to local Project Advisor Fleur Hermanides via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . For more information on SFC and the opportunities, it has to offer, as well as to download the general application form, visit: www.samenwerkendefondsencariben.org/en. NGOs can also call/WhatsApp +1 721 586 08 08 for more information, or to make appointments. SFC can also be followed on Facebook to stay abreast of opportunities and follow projects SFC supports, through: https://www.facebook.com/SFCSxMStatiaSaba.
US Marines will come to Aruba for training. On June 13th. the Caribbean Coastal Warrior 2022 training will start. In this annual training Marines of the United States, Marine Corps will be training together with Dutch Marines from the Marine Squadron Carib. The training lasts several weeks.

The military cooperation between the United States and The Netherlands is solid. The US Marines from the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion have yearly practices in Aruba as part of a bilateral training exchange. In addition, Dutch Marines from the Marine Squadron Carib practice yearly in the United States, during the Caribbean Urban Warrior Training on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Caribbean Coastal Warrior is a training whereby especially diving activities take central stage. This is planned to coincide with the last phase of the frogman training. In this way, efficient use can be made of the instructors in Aruba and from The Netherlands. Herewith different integration moments are created, and both sides become familiar with each other's way of operating and planning. Ultimately, it broadens and deepens the cooperation of all parties. This will increase effectiveness in the event of actual joint efforts.

Suitable training hub

The waters of Aruba are an extreme suitable training location for both Marine Units. Given the combination of climate, water temperature, water clarity and logistical support from the Marine Barracks at Savaneta, the conditions are optimal for an effective and successful training. Caribbean Coastal Warrior fits within the ambitions of the Defense Force in the Caribbean Region to position itself (internationally) as a military training hub, both on land, on and in the water. A number of members of the Carib Diving Team will also participate in the training. The Diving Team Carib is a niche capacity that Defense can deploy for its own diving work such as inspections and/or repairs to quays and ships, but also to support local security partners in the Caribbean.
Thinking about old age today

Without money problems and as healthy as possible, you want to enjoy retirement.

Looking at the U.S., retirement assets account for nearly 70 percent of the total value of U.S. bonds and stocks. There could be shifts here, because the so-called SECURE 2.0 Act is supposed to lead to improvements in retirement savings accounts. Various bills are still being wrestled with, but the goal is clear. Citizens in the U.S. are to save more for retirement. Why is this development significant? Because there could be new market inflows, to the tune of an estimated $181 billion annually. Stocks should then have the largest inflows. There are many interesting commodities if investors are looking for equity securities to diversify savings.

What should not be missing from the investment portfolio are gold companies. This is because they have the best store of value there is in the ground. Trillium Gold Mines  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0FBuIQWxY -, for example, would come into consideration here. Ontario is home to the company\-s Newman-Todd complex, the largest land package in and around the Red Lake mining district.

In addition to a sufficient asset cushion in old age, health is a top priority. In terms of nutrition, many people have already rethought or are taking a closer look, saving on meat consumption. As the world\-s population grows, so does meat consumption, and if the world\-s population does not increasingly switch to plant-based protein sources, it would take two Earths to produce the required amount of meat by 2035. The potential in the food sector is therefore huge, and companies are investing heavily in alternative products and also in sustainable production.

In the food sector, this includes preservation of products. This is the area in which EnWave  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIvbLN2QNGo  is active. EnWave\-s patented vacuum microwave drying (Radiant Energy Vacuum (REVa) technology) in food, pharmaceutical and cannabis products is innovative. As a result, EnWave has already attracted more than 45 partners on five continents.

Current corporate information and press releases from Trillium Gold Mines (- https://www.resource-capital.ch/en/companies/trillium-gold-mines-inc/ -) and EnWave (- https://www.resource-capital.ch/en/companies/enwave-corp/ -).

In accordance with A34 WpHG I would like to point out that partners, authors and employees may hold shares in the respective companies addressed and thus a possible conflict of interest exists. No guarantee for the translation into English. Only the German version of this news is valid.

Disclaimer: The information provided does not represent any form of recommendation or advice. Express reference is made to the risks in securities trading. No liability can be accepted for any damage arising from the use of this blog. I would like to point out that shares and especially warrant investments are always associated with risk. The total loss of the invested capital cannot be excluded. All information and sources are carefully researched. However, no guarantee is given for the correctness of all contents. Despite the greatest care, I expressly reserve the right to make errors, especially with regard to figures and prices. The information contained herein is taken from sources believed to be reliable, but in no way claims to be accurate or complete. Due to court decisions, the contents of linked external sites are also co-responsible (e.g. Landgericht Hamburg, in the decision of 12.05.1998  312 O 85/98), as long as there is no explicit dissociation from them. Despite careful control of the content, I do not assume liability for the content of linked external pages. The respective operators are exclusively responsible for their content. The disclaimer of Swiss Resource Capital AG also applies: https://www.resource-capital.ch/en/disclaimer/
The European Gaia mission creates the most comprehensive map of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia space telescope creates the most comprehensive map of our galaxy, the Milky Way. By measuring the precise positions, speeds and trajectories of about 2 billion of the brightest stars in the sky, Gaia enables astronomers not only to see the galaxy as it looks today, but also to replay the movie of its life millions and billions of years into the past and future.

While not such a household name as the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope, Gaia has revolutionized the study of the Milky Way and enabled leaps in our understanding of the galaxy's evolution that were impossible before. For many years, it has been the astronomical space mission producing the most scientific papers.

Since its launch in 2013, Gaia has released four batches of data, witch increasingly precise measurements and new types of information about the ages, masses, brightness levels and chemical compositions of stars in the galaxy.

The telescope has also created record-breaking data sets about asteroids in the solar system and binary stars in the Milky Way.

The telescope will remain operational until 2025, when it will run out of fuel. But the vast catalog of data the mission creates will keep astronomers busy for decades to come after that.

Related: 4 big Milky Way mysteries the next Gaia mission data dump may solve

How does Gaia study the Milky Way?

Nestled in the Lagrange Point 2, some 930,000 (1.5 million kilometers) miles away from Earth, Gaia orbits the sun in synch with our planet. Shielded by Earth from the sun's glare but also free from the distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere, which plague ground-based telescopes' observations, the flying-saucer-like spacecraft scans the whole sky every two months.

The 7.5-foot-wide (2.3 meters) Gaia satellite is attached to a 33-foot-wide (10 m) circular sunshield and is fitted with two telescopes that sit 106 degrees apart. The telescopes project the light they capture onto a 1-billion-pixel camera, which distinguishes the faintest details of the surrounding universe. Rather than create spectacular images, these telescopes enable astronomers to determine a few key parameters that reveal the distances of stars from Gaia, as wellas their positions and motions on the plane of the sky.

In addition to the two telescopes, Gaia also carries blue and red photometers that measure the brightness and color of the observed stars. From these measurements, scientists can derive temperatures, masses, ages and compositions of stars.

A radial velocity spectrometer is also on board Gaia. This instrument measures how fast stars move toward or away from Gaia but also reveals how these stars absorb light, which reflects their chemical composition.

The two billion stars that Gaia sees represent only about 1% of the galaxy's stellar population. But with the help of clever algorithms and a lot of scientific knowledge, astronomers can reconstruct the Milky Way as a whole from the mission's observations.

Every day, Gaia sends 20 to 100 gigabytes of data to Earth, which equals 850 million individual star observations. Before the wider scientific community gets its hands on the data and starts unravelling the galaxys mysteries, the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC), consisting of over 400 researchers and software engineers scattered over six super-computing centers across Europe, spends years processing, calibrating and validating the data.

"Each star gets measured on average 75 times every five years," Stefan Jordan, one of the researchers of the DPAC team based at the Centre for Astronomy of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, told E&T magazine (opens in new tab). "That means that when we start our work, we have many trillion individual star observations. We have to process this data into a catalogue that for each of the nearly two billion stars that we measure contains only five parameters for astrometry [the position and motion of stars], and then additional parameters for brightness and spectra."

According to the German Aerospace Centre (known by its German acronym DLR), the mission's final catalogue will comprise over a petabyte of data, which, if printed on paper, would stack up to 60 miles (100 km) high.

Trajectories of stars in the Milky Way galaxy over the next 400,000 years based on measurements by the European Gaia mission. (Image credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC)

Why was it difficult to study the Milky Way before Gaia?

Before Gaia's launch, progress in the charting of the Milky Way was slow and painstaking.

"It's the same as if you are trying to tell the shape of a building while you are inside of it," Jos de Bruijne, Gaia deputy project scientist at ESA, said in a statement (opens in new tab). "To understand the shape of the galaxy, you need to know where the individual stars are. But the stars are very far apart and very far away, and to accurately measure their positions in three dimensions requires extreme precision."

To put things into perspective, in the early 1990s astronomers knew the accurate positions of only about 8,000 stars, according to ESA. Advancing telescope technology enabled them to gradually increase the size of the stellar catalogs and improve their accuracy, but the effects of the atmosphere restricted their possibilities. Things only started properly moving forward after the launch of Gaias predecessor, ESA's Hipparcos mission, in the early 1990s. Hipparcos charted the positions of only about 100,000 stars, compared to Gaia's two billion.

"Hipparcos was built on 1980s technology," Floor van Leeuwen, the former head of the Gaia data processing team at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge in the U.K, who was involved in the Hipparcos mission as a young researcher, told E&T magazine. "There was very little memory on board, and the satellite had to communicate with the ground station constantly while observing. The detectors were much simpler, it couldn't see fainter stars and the whole mission was much less flexible."

The step change between Hipparcos and Gaia, van Leeuwen said, was mostly due to improvements in digital technology. Still, from today's perspective, Gaia's detectors and cameras might seem obsolete, though they were state-of-the-art in the early 2000s when the mission was developed.

Gaia data enabled astronomers to analyze the dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. (Image credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC)

What has Gaia discovered so far?

Since the release of the second batch of Gaia data in 2018, the mission has been steadily generating on average five scientific papers a day, which makes picking its highlights rather difficult.

This is how van Leeuwen explained the progress to E&T magazine in December 2020: "Only four or five years ago, I was still asked repeatedly by one of the senior professors at Cambridge University, 'What are the proper motions of the Magellanic Clouds? Have you measured them yet?' 'No, we havent,' I had to admit," van Leeuwen said. "Today, we not only know the proper motions of the Magellanic Clouds with extreme accuracy, but we also know what is happening inside them."

The Small Magellanic Cloud and the Large Magellanic Cloud are two dwarf galaxies orbiting on the outskirts of the Milky Way. The galaxies, Gaia data revealed, were only captured by the Milky Way's gravity a few billion years ago and will ultimately merge with it.

Every Gaia data release comes with the tag of the best Milky Way map to date, and that will remain the case with every future release as the data becomes more precise. The mission is also able to see increasingly distant stars and reveal new information, such as the chemical compositions of stars, which makes this map more and more colorful.

Gaia is also credited with virtually creating the field of galactic archaeology. Using sophisticated algorithms, astronomers sift through the mission's data looking for patterns in stars' motion. Since objects in space follow the laws of physics, astronomers can rewind the movie of the Milky Way's evolution billions of years into the past as well as into the future.

Gradually, they are piecing together the story of the Milky Way's life, finding evidence of ancient collisions through which the galaxy assembled into its current form, a massive spiral galaxy encompassing 200 billion stars.

Astronomers have found that, some 10 billion years ago, the nascent Milky Way smashed into another galaxy, which was about four times smaller than the Milky Way at that time. Remnants of this galaxy, which researchers have named Gaia Enceladus, gave rise to the Milky Way's halo, the sphere of thinly dispersed stars surrounding the much more massive galactic disc.

"At the moment, we think that [the collision with Gaia Enceladus] was the last significant merger that the Milky Way underwent," Anthony Brown, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands and chair of DPAC, told Space.com.

The increasing precision of the data but also the new parameters that are being released are allowing astronomers to look into the even more distant past.

Analysis of Gaia data also revealed that the galaxy's disk is warped, rather than flat, and wobbles like a spinning top. This wobble might have been caused by a collision with another dwarf galaxy, known as Sagittarius, and astronomers expect soon to learn more.

Gaia also helped answer some profound questions about the Milky Way's trademark spiral structure and the nature and character of its spiral arms, the thick winding streams of stars that appear to emanate from the galaxy's center.

According to De Bruijne, the mission is still going strong and further breakthroughs can be expected.

Gaia latest data release on June 13, 2022 includes the largest ever data sets of binary star systems in the Milky Way, as well as the biggest survey of chemical compositions of solar system asteroids. In the future, the team plans to focus on discovery of exoplanets orbiting distant stars.

Additional resources

Explore Gaia data visualizations on the mission's dedicated YouTube channel (opens in new tab). For an in-depth dive into the mission's science and workings, visit the ESA Science Gaia website (opens in new tab) or the agency's main portal (opens in new tab).

Bibliography

ESA, How does Gaia study the Milky Way?https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/How_does_Gaia_study_the_Milky_Way

ESA, Why was it so difficult to study the Milky Way before Gaia? https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Why_was_it_so_difficult_to_study_the_Milky_Way_before_Gaia

ESA, Five fascinating Gaia revelations about the Milky Way https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Five_fascinating_Gaia_revelations_about_the_Milky_Way

ESA, Gaia: Science with 1 billion objects in three dimensions https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia
EPISODE 105 - Necessity Compels Me To Plague YouAirdate: July 10, 2022Written By: Anna JordanDirected By: Udayan PrasadElizabeth, changed by her experiences, is determined to not fall into the same traps she did when last she was at Chelsea, but the return of Thomas into her life is a new test for her. While the court has been rocked by Marys defiance, the Lord Somerset is still more concerned with raising funds for the war inScotland. As rebellions spring up across the country, a secret meeting with the French Ambassador, without the knowledge of the council or the king, sees even his closest friend, the Lord Dudley, begin to doubt Somersets strategy.As the Lord Somerset starts to lose the trust of even those close to him andwith the kings growing hatred of him, Thomas sees a chance to end the rule of the brother he believes has always kept him down. And Elizabeth is key to his plan.
The number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered during the first week of June failed to reach 1,000 for the first time since late December 2020, according to data from the state Department of Public Health.

The state reported 745 vaccination doses in the week ending on June 5, less than half of the 2,014 doses reported the week ending on May 29.

Weekly administered doses have been mostly declining since the beginning of the year. Fewer than 10,000 doses have been given each week since the week ending on Jan. 30.

Almost 2.9 million Connecticut residents  or about 80 percent  have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. Some 2.66 million, or 73 percent, are fully vaccinated, and 1.52 million, or 42 percent of the population, have received a booster shot, according to state data as of June 8.

Data shows those who are fully vaccinated are less likely to die with the virus. Some 970 fully vaccinated people have died with COVID-19, or about 8.8 percent of the 10,999 deaths, according to data from the state Department of Public Health from June 8.

However, in recent months, fully vaccinated people have made up more hospitalizations. As of Monday, 265 patients were hospitalized with the virus, 176 of whom  or about 66 percent  were fully vaccinated, the state reported.

Just 10 days prior, on June 3, DPH reported 329 COVID patients in hospitals.

The state also said of the 47,420 administered COVID-19 tests in the past week, 3,588 have come out positive.

The positivity rate, which stood at 7.57 percent Monday, has also been steadily decreasing this month. Earlier this month on June 3, the positivity rate stood at 11.16 percent.
GROTON  Police say two Massachusetts men stole thousands of dollars from a victim after causing a motor vehicle crash over the weekend.

Groton police said during the early-morning hours Sunday, the victim called 911 yelling for help following the crash on Clarence B. Sharp Highway. During the call, a loud disturbance could be heard, police said.

When police arrived at the scene of the crash, they found two men in the act of robbing the victim. Police said one of the men had pinned the victim on the ground outside his vehicle.

Both men fled into a wooded area nearby as police arrived. They were later located and taken into custody after police said one of the men suffered a fall in the wooded area. He was taken to Lawrence & Memorial Hospital for minor injuries, then returned to the police department.

Police said the two men took several thousand dollars in cash, several thousand dollars in casino chips, keys, a cellphone and other items, from the victim during the robbery.

Authorities identified the men as Rafael Almeida, 19, of Brocton, Mass., and Emanuel Marques Dos-Santos, 22, of Boston.

Both were charged with first-degree robbery, second-degree larceny, second-degree breach of peace, and interfering with a police officer.

Dos-Santos is also facing charges of reckless endangerment, second-degree threatening and second-degree unlawful restraint in the incident.

Both were held on $100,000 bond and are due in court on Monday.

Anyone with further information can call the City of Groton Police Department Detective Division at 860-446-4186.
A number of 47,111 new vehicles were registered in Romania in the first five months, up 33.3% from the 35,346 cars registered in the same period in 2021, according to the Association of Automobile Manufacturers and Importers (APIA).

According to the cited source, after the important evolution of the first months, May 2022 comes with an increase of 18.7% of vehicle registrations compared to the previous year, an increase registered after four months of decrease from the end of the previous year.

"If we refer to the previous years, there is a 41.2% increase in May 2022 compared to the same period in 2020 and a 21.8% decrease compared to May 2019," APIA representatives maintain.

On the national market, the top ten brands, plus commercial vehicles, after five months in 2022, is led by Dacia (12,842 units), followed by Ford (4,683 units), Hyundai (3,921 units), Toyota (3,880 units), Renault (3,743 units), Volkswagen (3,382 units), Skoda (3,307 units), Mercedes Benz (3,010 units), Peugeot (1,855 units) and Kia (1,090 units).

At the same time, vehicles (accounting for approximately 83% of the total) registered, in May 2022, a volume of 10,080 units, by 24.2% more than in the similar month of 2021.

In terms of market share, the SUV segment is on the first position, with a share of 45.8%, up 1.2% compared to 2021, followed by Class C with a share of 25.3%, down by 1.5% and Class B with a share of 16.4%, down by 3.1% compared to the share held in the same period last year.

"Depending on the type of fuel of the registered cars, in this year's first five months, gasoline engines register an increase of 38.5% compared to the similar period of 2021, thus reaching a share of 65%. As regards vehicles equipped with diesel engines, they register a decrease of 23.5% compared to the first five months of 2021 and have a share of 15% of the total," states the cited source.

On the other hand, the "electrified" vehicles, respectively the electric ones (100% and plug-in hybrids), as well as the full hybrid cars (which also have electric traction motor without external power supply), ending up owning, after five months from 2022, a market share of 19.9%, which exceeds by 4.9% and 2,329 units the share held by diesel engines.

"As in 2021, when, although there was a decrease in car purchases in general, the 'green ones' ranked high, with purchases in this category doubling in 2022 (+ 135.8%), year-on-year. In this context, the significant increase of all-electric cars (+ 513.6%) and plug-in hybrid cars (+ 145%) is noteworthy," the release states.

Between January and May 2022, topping the rankings of the 5 most sold all-electric vehicles was Dacia Spring, with 1,884 units, model launched in 2021, Tesla Model 3, 257 units, a nineteen-fold increase compared to the same period last year, Hyundai Kona with 206 units, up 663.0%, Volkswagen e-UP! with 128 units, up 13.3% and Renault Zoe up 124 units, up 158.3%.

Topping the rankings of the plug-in electric vehicle sales was Ford Kuga, with 140 units, + 191.7%, followed by Mercedes Benz GLE with 126 units, + 186.4%, Hyundai Tucson with 105 units, Mercedes Benz GLC with 95 units, up 86.3% and Renault Captur with 92 units, up by 31.4%.

The top 3 hybrid cars, without external power supply is led by Toyota Corolla with 903 units, up 27.7% from 2021, followed by Toyota C-HR with 765 units and 14.7% increase, and Toyota RAV4 with 541 units, up 14.4%.

"Analyzing the evolution of all-wheel drive cars (4x4), we note that, after five months in 2022, they have a market share of 20.5%, corresponding to a total volume of 9,669 units, up 4.9% year-on-year, when 9,213 units were registered," specify the APIA representatives.

In terms of the type of owner, most car purchases in May 2022 were made by legal entities, which cover 65% of all car purchases.

On the other hand, light commercial vehicles registered a decrease of 6.4% in May 2022 compared to May 2021. Over the five months of this year, there was a decrease of 15.2%, which shows an evolution opposite to that of cars (+ 33.3%).

AGERPRES
The Ministry of Health announced on Monday that the first case of monkeypox in Romania was diagnosed in a 26-year-old man from Bucharest.

"This is a 26-year-old man from Bucharest. He was diagnosed on Monday following laboratory investigations," informs a press release from the Ministry of Health.

According to the cited source, the disease started 4 days ago, and the patient went to the hospital on Sunday night.

"The man's condition is good. The patient is receiving symptomatic treatment and is in solitary confinement. The anamnesis shows that the infected person's partner has recently traveled to several European countries where there are numerous cases of monkeypox," the ministry said. .

In May, there were two more suspicions of infection with monkeypox in a 43-year-old woman from Radauti and a Romanian man admitted in a hospital in Athens, Greece, but these were later disproved, being chickenpox infections.

The monkeypox does not spread easily between people and requires close contact. The virus enters the body through damaged skin or mucous membranes, the respiratory tract, eyes, nose or mouth and through body fluids.

The main way it can be spread is during close and prolonged physical contact with a person who has monkeypox. AGERPRES
BANGKOK (AP)  U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Thailands prime minister on Monday as part of an effort to strengthen what Austin says is Washingtons unparalleled network of alliances and partnerships" in the region.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who is also defense minister, also met Austin last month in Washington. Thailand and the United States are longtime military allies, despite a cooling of relations after the 2014 military coup that brought former army commander Prayuth to power. Mondays visit was Austins first to Thailand as defense secretary.

A U.S. Defense Department statement issued after the meeting said Austin and Prayuth shared perspectives on regional security issues, and discussed opportunities to strengthen the U.S.-Thai alliance.

It said Austin declared Washingtons interest in strengthening interoperability between the U.S. and Thai forces and to support Thailands modernization requirements.

The two men also discussed prioritizing cooperation in emerging technical areas, such as the cyber and space technology sectors, as well as Thailands desire for enhanced defense industry cooperation, the statement said.

Thai media had reported that Prayuth would likely discuss arms procurement with Austin, including of F-35 fighter aircraft, but Austin did not comment specifically on that in remarks to the media.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been growing in part over Beijing's claims to Taiwan and much of the South China Sea, and its increasing power and influence in the region.

In a speech Saturday at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore, Austin said Chinas steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan threatens to undermine the regions security and prosperity.

He said he was proud that Washingtons unparalleled network of alliances and partnerships has only deepened in the past year.

Chinas defense minister, Gen. Wei Fenghe, said at the same conference that the U.S. is trying to turn Southeast Asian countries against Beijing and is seeking to advance its own interests under the guise of multilateralism.

China over the past decade has been trying to extend its influence in Southeast Asia, both through aid and investment, including its Belt and Road infrastructure projects and use of its navy and other maritime resources to press its claims to vast areas of the South China Sea.

In a briefing in Bangkok, Austin said a conversation he had in Singapore with his Chinese counterpart was an important step in our efforts to develop open lines of communication with Beijings defense leaders.

America never ... shies away from honest competition, but we dont seek conflict, nor do we seek a region thats split into hostile blocks, he said, according to a defense department transcript of his remarks. It was an important opportunity to raise our concerns about the potential for instability in the Taiwan Strait and to underscore our ... long-standing policy toward Taiwan as unwavering and unchanged."

Thailand and the United States were close allies during the Vietnam War, and in 2003, Washington designated Thailand a major non-NATO ally, one of about 20 worldwide.

Such status means the U.S. regards Thailand as a strategic partner, and facilitates some aspects of military assistance and cooperation. The annual multinational Cobra Gold military exercise, one of the worlds biggest, is hosted in Thailand in partnership with the United States.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
WASHINGTON  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday took no action on Bayer AGs bid to dismiss legal claims by customers who contend its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer as the German company seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages.

The case was not mentioned on a list issued by the court on Monday as it decided whether to hear pending appeals, raising at least the possibility that the justices are considering hearing it.

Bayer has asked the justices to take up its appeal of a lower court decision that upheld $25 million in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the pharmaceutical and chemical giants glyphosate-based weedkillers.

The Supreme Courts decision on whether to take up the appeal is being closely watched as Bayer maneuvers to limit its legal liability in thousands of cases.

President Joe Bidens administration in May urged the court not to hear the Bayer appeal, reversing the governments position previously taken under former President Donald Trump.

Bayer has lost three trials in which Roundup users have been awarded tens of millions of dollars in each. Bayer has pinned hopes for relief on the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has a reputation for being pro-business. Bayer has won three trials, including one last week.

Bayer has asked the Supreme Court to review the verdict in Hardemans case, which was upheld by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2021. Hardeman had regularly used Roundup for 26 years at his home in northern California before being diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Bayer has said it should not be penalized for marketing a product deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and on which the EPA would not allow a cancer warning to be printed.

Roundup-related lawsuits have dogged Bayer since it acquired the brand as part of its $63 billion purchase of Creve Coeur-based Monsanto in 2018.
CLAYTON  For the past four years, the largest provider of health care insurance to low-income Americans has owned one of the fanciest hotels in the St. Louis region.

In 2018, managed health care company Centene Corp. discreetly bought the Ritz-Carlton here for $98 million. It has since kept its ownership out of securities filings and hidden from public view.

But newly released documents related to a property tax appeal now confirm Centenes ownership of the luxury hotel, situated about a quarter-mile east of company headquarters. And a chart of the companys subsidiaries, disclosed as part of an unrelated purchase, reveals the limited liability company that Centene used to buy the Ritz.

Centene is under pressure here and across the country. An activist investor has pushed the $47 billion company to improve profits, prompting Centene to replace five board members and announce the early retirement of the companys longtime chief. The new CEO is promising a more integrated, streamlined company  with a smaller real estate footprint. And investors and the public are ever-more conscious of corporate behavior, critical of practices that once were accepted norms.

Its unclear if the Ritz is helping Centenes bottom line: Its been a tumultuous stretch for the U.S. hospitality industry, which experienced its worst-ever performance in 2020. Data shows the Ritz in Clayton fared far worse than others in its class, reporting a loss of $2 million in 2020 after an $8.5 million profit in 2019.

This seems like more of those old-school corporate empires, these CEOs that want to do these grandiose complexes, said John Barrios, a professor at Washington Universitys Olin School of Business. This is a prime example of a CEO pet project.

Indeed, a hotel was once part of a Centene pitch to spend $770 million on a Clayton campus expansion, for which it secured over $100 million in public subsidies.

But the company bought the Ritz before even finishing one new office building, then halted further work on the expansion.

Centene executives confirmed ownership of the hotel but did not agree to an interview for this story.

Clayton officials say they understand why Centene, which employs thousands of people across the country, would buy a hotel near its headquarters. They said they believe the company always intended to carry out its expansion.

Theyre a company with integrity, Mayor Michelle Harris said. I think they had a plan for an amazing corporate campus.

Health care giants usually dont own hotels

In 2016, Centene pitched a $770 million expansion of its headquarters: nearly 1 million square feet of office space, hundreds of apartments or condos, retail shops, a 1,000-seat civic auditorium and a 200-room hotel near South Hanley Road and Forsyth Boulevard.

The expansion was to accommodate Centenes growth, booming after its recent $6.8 billion deal to buy Health Net, a California-based competitor whose acquisition made Centene the biggest provider of government health care programs, like Medicaid and Medicare.

The hotel was important, officials said at the time, because Centene was the largest buyer of hotel rooms in Clayton and it needed more space to house employees flown in for training. Renderings depicted the hotel on vacant land just east of the Ritz.

Clayton and state officials signed off on a sizeable incentives package: $75 million worth of property and personal tax abatement over 20 years in Clayton and tens of millions more in state incentives, most of which would be dependent on the number of jobs Centene would add in the region.

Centene told Clayton that it expected to break ground on the hotel sometime in late 2019 or early 2020 and finish it by 2022.

But Centene never started construction on a hotel.

The company told Clayton in June 2020 that the land was not slated for development. In July it announced an East Coast campus, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and that it would pause all further construction in Clayton, citing the pandemic but also saying that crime in the region hurt recruiting efforts.

What it didnt say: It already owned the Ritz.

The Ritz, which opened at 100 Carondelet Plaza in 1990, is noted for its top tier personal service and pricey room rates: anywhere from the low $300s to over $3,000 a night. Large glass chandeliers hang from the ceilings of common areas. Countertops are marble. Wood paneling and molding adorn the walls. A signature scent, created just for the Ritz, floats through the air.

The Ritz Hotel Co., a subsidiary of Marriott International, manages many of its hotels, though it shares in profits and losses with the owners.

The Ritz did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Hospitality analyst Gary Andreas said real estate investment trusts, usually those that also own other hotels, are the typical owners of Ritzes.

A property like a Ritz is highly specialized because of the the nature of the hotel, the price level and the type of clientele, said Andreas, a principal with Chesterfield-based H&H Consulting.

The Ritz in Clayton has attracted a handful of owners over the years, including California real estate developer Lewis Wolffs Maritz, Wolff & Co., and later Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management.

In August 2018, while Centenes office building was under construction, Oaktree sold the hotel to BLR Properties, a limited liability company.

Public records list little about BLR, except for one detail: The care-of name was listed as Mark Burkhart, a longtime St. Louis-area commercial real estate executive who served as co-chair of a 2017 United Way fundraising campaign with then-Centene CEO Michael Neidorff.

Burkhart did not respond to requests for comment.

The Ritz met an immediate need

But in July 2021, BLR filed a property tax appeal with the St. Louis County Assessors Office, claiming the Ritz should be valued at $20.7 million, less than half of its current $46.5 million.

It provided documents showing how the pandemic pummeled profits:

Occupancy fell from 71.3% in 2019 to 23% in 2020.

Revenue per available room declined from $181.51 to $59.82.

That performance fared far worse than other Ritz hotels companywide where occupancy was 30.3% and revenue per available room was $126.72, according to a Marriott earnings report.

BLR hired a third-party real estate and tax expert to handle its appeal with St. Louis County, which, in documents filed with the county, listed its client as Centene. And included in its filings was an authorization form from the owner of the property, signed by Katie Casso, senior vice president, corporate controller and chief accounting officer of Centene. The appeal is pending before the state of Missouri.

In addition, Centene disclosed BLR Properties in an organizational chart of subsidiaries included in disclosure documents related to its $17 billion acquisition of a competitor, Tampa-based WellCare Health Plans Inc.

Those documents, filed with the state of Wisconsin in late 2019, show Centene organized BLR Properties under its Health Net subsidiary, the California company it bought in 2016.

The chart depicts a hierarchy: Centene is at the top of the family tree. Corporate subsidiaries like Health Net are beneath it. And beneath them are yet lower divisions. At the bottom sit two limited liability companies: First, one called MEB Ventures II  an LLC connected to Burkhart.

And below that: BLR Properties.

The chart shows that MEB owned 80% of BLR  meaning there was at least one other investor.

A source close to the matter said Bruce Karsh, a St. Louis native and the L.A. billionaire behind Oaktree Capital Management, owns a personal interest in the Ritz, though a spokesperson for Karsh declined an interview.

The organizational chart also makes clear that MEB is just a pass-through. Profits and losses flow back up the tree to Centene, said Henry Ordower, a law professor for St. Louis University, who reviewed Centenes chart for this story.

If youre talking about operating a property like that, I would isolate that, too, from the rest of my operation, Ordower said. You might have liability there that you want to keep out of the chain.

Barrios, of Washington University, said the $98 million price tag of the hotel was too small of a deal for the company to be required to disclose it in SEC filings. And the profits that Centene could be getting from the hotel also would be too small for the company to break out as a line item, relative to the billions that theyre getting through the health care, Barrios said.

Centene reported $126 billion in revenue in fiscal 2021, up 13% from to 2019. Profits fell from $1.8 billion to $1.3 billion.

A Centene spokesperson said in a statement that its acquisition of the Ritz met an immediate need for hotel accommodation.

The investment represents a small piece of the companys normal course, capital investment strategy, the statement said.

Centene is even now re-evaluating the investment, the company said, along with other non-core assets.

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ST. LOUIS  Several months ago, a lab technologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital mixed the blood components of two people: Alphonso Harried, who needed a kidney, and Pat Holterman-Hommes, who hoped to give him one.

The goal was to see whether Harrieds body would instantly see Holterman-Hommes organ as a major threat and attack it before surgeons could finish a transplant. To do that, the technologist mixed in fluorescent tags that would glow if Harrieds immune defense forces would latch onto the donors cells in preparation for an attack. If, after a few hours, the machine found lots of glowing, it meant the kidney transplant would be doomed. It stayed dark: They were a match.

I was floored, said Harried.

Both recipient and donor were a little surprised. Harried is Black. Holterman-Hommes is white.

Could a white person donate a kidney to a Black person? Would race get in the way of their plans? Both families admitted those kinds of questions were flitting around in their heads, even though they know, deep down, that its more about your blood type  and all of our blood is red, as Holterman-Hommes put it.

Scientists widely agree that race is a social construct, yet it is often conflated with biology, leaving the impression that a persons race governs how the body functions.

Its not just laypeople  its in the medical field as well. People often conflate race with biology, said Dr. Marva Moxey-Mims, chief of pediatric nephrology at Childrens National Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Shes not talking just about kidney medicine. Race has been used as a shorthand for how peoples bodies work for years across many fields  not out of malice but because it was based on what was considered the best science available at the time. The science was not immune to the racialized culture it sprung from, which is now being seen in a new light. For example, U.S. pediatricians recently ditched a calculation that assumed Black children were less likely to get a urinary tract infection after new research found the risk had to do with a childs history of fevers and past infections  not race. And obstetricians removed race and ethnicity from a calculation meant to gauge a patients ability to have a vaginal birth after a previous cesarean section, once they determined it was based on flawed science. Still, researchers say those race-based guidelines are just a slice of those being used to assess patients, and are largely based on the assumption that how a person looks or identifies reflects their genetic makeup.

Race does have its place during a doctors visit, however. Medical providers who give patients culturally competent care  the act of acknowledging a patients heritage, beliefs, and values during treatment  often see improved patient outcomes. Culturally competent doctors understand that overt racism and microaggressions can not only cause mental distress but also that racial trauma can make a person physically sick. Race is a useful tool for identifying population-level disparities, but experts now say it is not very useful in making decisions about how to treat an individual patient.

Because using race as a medical shorthand is at best imprecise and at worst harmful, a conversation is unfolding nationally among lawmakers, scientists, and doctors who say one of the best things patients can do is ask if  and how  their race is factored into their care.

Doctors and researchers in kidney care have been active recently in reevaluating their use of race-based medical guidance.

History is being written right now that this is not the right thing to do and that the path forward is to use race responsibly and not to do it in the way that weve been doing in the past, says Dr. Nwamaka Eneanya, a nephrologist with Fresenius Medical Care, who in a previous position with the University of Pennsylvania traced in the journal Nature the history of how race  a social construct became embedded in medicine.

The perception that there is such a thing as a Black or white kidney quietly followed patient and donor as Harried and Holterman-Hommes were on the path to the transplant  in their medical records and in the screening tests recommended.

Medical records described Harried as a 47-year-old Black or African American male and Holterman-Hommes as a 58-year-old, married Caucasian female. Harried does not recall ever providing his race or speaking with his physicians about the influence of race on his care, but for two years or more his classification as Black or African American was a factor in the equations doctors used to estimate how well his kidneys were working. As previous Kaiser Health News reporting lays out, that practice  distinguishing between Black and non-Black bodies  was the norm. In fall 2021, a national committee determined race has no place in estimating kidney function, a small but significant step in revising how race is considered.

Dr. Lisa McElroy, a surgeon who performs kidney transplants at Duke University, said the constant consideration of race is the rule, not the exception, in medicine.

Medicine or health care is a little bit like art. It reflects the culture, she said. Race is a part of our culture, and it shows up all through it  and health care is no different.

McElroy no longer mentions race in her patients notes, because it really has no bearing on the clinical care plan or biology of disease.

Still, such assumptions extend throughout health care. Some primary care doctors, for example, continue to hew to an assumption that Black patients cannot handle certain kinds of blood pressure medications, even while researchers have concluded those assumptions dont make sense, distract doctors from considering factors more important than race  like whether the patient has access to nutritious food and stable housing  and could prevent patients from achieving better health by limiting their options.

Studying population-level patterns is important for identifying where disparities exist, but that doesnt mean peoples bodies innately function differently  just as population-level disparities in pay do not indicate one gender is fundamentally more capable of hard work.

If you see group differences  theyre usually driven by what we do to groups, said Dr. Keith Norris, not by innate differences in those groups. Still, medicine often continues to use race as a crude catchall, said Norris, a UCLA nephrologist, as if every Black person in America experiences the same amount and the same quantity of structural racism, individualized racism, internalized racism, and gene polymorphisms.

In Harried and Holterman-Hommes case, one striking example of race being used as shorthand for determining how peoples bodies work was an informational guide given to Holterman-Hommes that said African Americans with high blood pressure could not donate an organ, but Caucasians with high blood pressure might still qualify.

I cant believe they actually wrote that down, said Dr. Vanessa Grubbs, a nephrologist at the University of California-San Francisco. That worries Grubbs because using race as a reason to exclude donors can create a situation in which Black transplant recipients have to work harder to find a living donor than others would.

I do think that criteria such as these become barriers for transplantation, said Dr. Rajnish Mehrotra, head of nephrology at the University of Washington. He said that type of hypertension distinction could exclude potential donors  like the 56% of Black adults with high blood pressure in the U.S.  when more of them are sorely needed.

The inclusion of race did not necessarily affect Harrieds ability to receive a kidney, nor Holterman-Hommes ability to give him one. But following their case offers a glimpse into the ways race and biology are often cemented together.

The St. Louis case

Harried and Holterman-Hommes met 20 years ago when they worked together at a nonprofit that serves youth experiencing homelessness in St. Louis. Harried was the guy who pulled kids out of their ruts and into a creative mindset, from which they would write poems and songs and do artwork. Holterman-Hommes was the nonprofits CEO who kept the lights on and the donations coming in. You never knew that she was the president of the company, said Harried. There wasnt an air about her.

Harried resigned in 2018 as his health declined. Then in 2021, Holterman-Hommes saw a Kaiser Health News article about Harried and decided to see if she could help her former colleague. Although Holterman-Hommes mother was born with one kidney, she had lived a long and healthy life, so Holterman-Hommes figured she could spare one of her own.

As Holterman-Hommes explored becoming a donor candidate, initial tests showed high blood pressure readings, in addition to lower-than-ideal kidney function. But I like to get an A on a test, she said, so she redid both sets of tests, repeating the kidney function test after staying better hydrated and the blood pressure test after a big work deadline had passed. She moved on in the screening process after her results improved.

Grubbs wonders whether, if Holterman-Hommes had been Black, they would have just dismissed her. Grubbs shared an instance in which she suspects thats exactly what happened to the wife of a patient of hers in California who needed a kidney transplant.

The wife, who is Black and was in her 50s at the time, wasnt allowed to give the patient a kidney because of her hypertension.

There are people in this country that will tell you that, Oh, white people donate kidneys, Black people dont donate kidneys, and thats not true, said Mehrotra. You hear that racist trope. But [there are] all of these barriers to kidney donation.

Barnes-Jewish Hospital later said it had given Holterman-Hommes an outdated guide, an unfortunate circumstance that is being corrected, and provided a new one that does not say Black people with hypertension cannot donate. Instead, it says that people cannot donate if they have hypertension that was either diagnosed before age 40 or requires more than one medication to manage.

But at some point, it was a policy, said Harried, whose kidneys have been failing for several years. And its unclear how many years that outdated guidance shaped perceptions among those seeking care at Barnes-Jewish, which performs more living-donor kidney transplants per year than any other location in Missouri, according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.

There is little transparency into how medical centers incorporate race into their decision-making and care. Guidelines from the United Network for Organ Sharing, the national organization in charge of the transplant system, leave the door open for hospitals to exclude a donor with any condition that, in the hospitals medical judgment, causes the donor to be unsuitable for organ donation.

Tanjala Purnell, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health studying disparities in kidney transplantation, said she knows of several centers that used race-based criteria, though some have relaxed those rules, instead deciding case by case. Theres not a standard set to say, Well, no, you can absolutely not have different rules for different people, she said. We dont have those safeguards. Dr. Tarek Alhamad, medical director of the kidney program at the Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Transplant Center, said race-based criteria for kidney donations arent created to exclude Black people  it was born of a desire to avoid harming them.

African Americans are more likely to have end-stage renal disease, they are more likely to have end-stage renal disease related to hypertension. And they are more likely to have genetic factors that would lead to kidney dysfunction, said Alhamad.

Compared with white and Hispanic donors, non-Hispanic Black donors are known to be at higher risk for developing kidney failure because of their donation, though its still very rare.

He said it feels unethical to take a kidney from someone who may really need it down the line. This is our role as physicians not to do harm.

The science

Researchers are studying a possible way to clarify who is really at risk in donating a kidney, by identifying specific risk factors rather than pinning odds on the vague concept of race.

Specifically, a gene called APOL1 could influence a persons likelihood of developing kidney disease. All humans have two copies of this gene, but there are different versions, or variants, of it. Having two risk variants increases the chance of kidney injury.

The risk variants are most prevalent in people with recent African ancestry, a group that crosses racial and ethnic boundaries. About 13% of African Americans have the double whammy of two risk variants, said Dr. Barry Freedman, chief of nephrology at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. Even then, he said, their fate isnt sealed  most people in that group wont get kidney failure. We think they need a second hit, like HIV infection, or lupus, or COVID-19.

Freedman is leading a study that looks, in part, at how kidney donors with those risk variants fare in the long term.

This is really important because the hope is that kidneys wont be discarded or turned down as frequently, said Moxey-Mims, who is also involved in the research.

Researchers who are focused on health equity say that while APOL1 testing could help separate race from genetics, it could be a double-edged sword. Purnell pointed out that if APOL1 is misused  for example, if a transplant center makes a blanket rule that no one with two risk variants can donate, rather than using it as a starting point for shared decision-making, or if doctors offer the test based only on a patients looks  it could merely add another criterion to the list by which certain people are excluded.

We have to do our due diligence, said Purnell, to ensure that any effort to be protective doesnt end up making the pool of available donors for certain groups smaller and smaller and smaller. Purnell, McElroy, and others steeped in transplant inequities say that as long as race  which is a cultural concept defining how someone identifies, or how they are perceived  is used as a stand-in for someones ancestry or genetics, the line between protecting and excluding people will remain fuzzy.

Thats the heart of the matter here, said McElroy.

So where does race belong in kidney transplant medicine? Many of the physicians interviewed for this article  many of them people of color  said it primarily serves as a potential indicator of hurdles patients may face, rather than as a marker of how their bodies function.

For example, McElroy said she might spend more time with Black patients building trust with them and their families, or talking about how important living donations can be, similar to the ways she might spend more time with a Spanish-speaking patient making sure they know how to access a translator, or with an elderly patient emphasizing how important physical activity is.

The purpose is not to ignore the social determinants of health  of which race is one, she said. Its to try to help them overcome the race-specific or ethnicity-specific barriers to receiving excellent care.

While all the science gets sorted out, Eneanya is trying to get the message out to patients: Just ask the question: Is my race being used in my clinical care? And if it is, first of all, what race is in the chart? Is it affecting my care? And what are my options?

Just keep your eyes open, ask questions, said Harried.

In late April, a kidney from Holterman-Hommes body was successfully placed into Harrieds. Both are home now and say they are doing well.
China's capital has put school back online in one of its major districts amid a new COVID-19 outbreak linked to a nightclub. A total of 228 cases have been linked to the Heaven Supermarket club in the downtown Workers Stadium nightlife area after an infected person visited there Thursday. That prompted authorities in the sprawling Chaoyang district to put school back online, with the exception of students taking middle and high school placement exams. Meanwhile, life has yet to return to normal in the city of Shanghai despite the lifting of a more than two-month-long lockdown. While 22 million Shanghai residents were released from lockdown almost two weeks ago, 220,000 people are still restricted to their homes and another 600,000 are restricted to their compounds.
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

The USS St. Louis, which set sail two years ago with full steam, now seems to be taking on water.

Specifically, its not just our fair burgs navigable namesake that the U.S. Navy has a problem with: Its the whole nine-vessel line of that type of ship  known as Freedom-class littoral combat ships.

At a recent hearing for a House Armed Forces subcommittee, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday told members that the Navy is entertaining the notion of selling them, or perhaps even giving them away.

In a story by Task & Purpose, an online publication that covers U.S. armed services and the defense industry, Gilday suggested that the ships could be given to smaller countries to use for coastal drug interdiction missions.

According to Task & Purpose, the ships have been hobbled by a design flaw that limits their speed and makes them unsuitable for anti-submarine warfare, their main purpose.

As it stands now, the Navy plans to decommission the USS St. Louis and the eight other littorals in 2023.

The ships cost about $450 million each to build.

STLer Barbara Broadhurst Taylor, of the Enterprise Holdings Inc. family, is the official sponsor of the USS St. Louis. She presided over the keel-laying in 2017 and then broke the champagne bottle to christen it in 2018. The ship officially joined the Navy fleet in August 2020.

Six other ships have borne the citys name: a sloop of war launched in 1828; a Civil War gunboat; a Spanish-American War troop ship; a World War I cruiser; a World War II light cruiser; and a cargo ship decommissioned in 1991.

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COEUR DALENE, IDAHO  A Florissant man charged in March for defacing a Washington University mural was arrested Saturday in Idaho with 30 members of a group that allegedly planned to cause a riot at a pride event in Coeur DAlene.

Mitchell Frederick Wagner, 24, is charged with criminal conspiracy and was arrested just before 2 p.m. Saturday, according to records from the Kootenai County Sheriffs office. Wagner lives in the first block of Canisius Lane in Florissant.

Another local resident, Garret Joseph Garland, 23, was also arrested with the group, according to sheriffs records. He faces the same charge. Garland lives in the 200 block of North Main Street in Freeburg.

Coeur dAlene police Chief Lee White said 31 members of the group Patriot Front  which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a white nationalist organization  appeared to have come to riot downtown, the Spokane Spokesman-Review reported. White told the Spokesman-Review that police were tipped off by a resident who saw a group of people enter a U-Haul truck in a hotel parking lot wearing masks and holding shields like a little army.

Police pulled over the truck and arrested the group, seizing riot gear and a smoke grenade. Kootenai County records show Wagner and Garland face misdemeanor criminal conspiracy charges along with 29 other people.

White told the Spokesman-Review the Patriot Front members could face more charges after prosecutors review the evidence.

By Sunday afternoon, all 31 people, including Wagner and Garland, had bonded out of the Kootenai County jail, according to a spokesman for the sheriffs office. He did not know when their next court appearances would be and directed questions to the Coeur dAlene Police Department.

St. Louis County prosecutors charged Wagner in March with felony first-degree property damage stemming from a Dec. 18 incident when Wagner and three other people defaced a mural depicting famous Black Americans on Washington Universitys campus. The vandals stamped Patriot Front logos on the mural.

The attorney representing Wagner in the St. Louis County case didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. Family members for the two men also could not be reached.

The SLPC describes Patriot Front an image obsessed white nationalist group that focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country. It was formed in the aftermath of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, when it broke off from neo-Nazi group Vanguard America.

The people arrested in Idaho Saturday were wearing Patriot Fronts signature khaki pants, blue shirts and masks. Texas resident Thomas Rousseau, Patriot Fronts 23-year-old leader, was also among those arrested Saturday.

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ST. LOUIS  The former caretakers of Tonka, a movie star chimpanzee who was said to be dead, could face criminal charges over accusations they lied to the court.

U.S. District Judge Catherine D. Perry said in an order issued Friday that she had referred to federal prosecutors criminal perjury allegations against Tonia Haddix and Jerry Aswegan, who swore under oath that Tonka had died of heart problems last year and had been cremated.

Instead, Haddix, 52, had been secretly hiding Tonka in her basement. Haddix said in a recorded telephone call May 22 with a documentary filmmaker that her veterinarian planned to evaluate the chimps health and possibly euthanize him.

Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals obtained a recording of the call and secured an emergency court order to halt euthanasia and remove the chimp from Haddixs home.

Earlier this month, authorities in Sunrise Beach, Missouri, near Lake of the Ozarks, removed Tonka and sent him to a Florida primate sanctuary.

In an interview with the Post-Dispatch last week, Haddix acknowledged lying to authorities to protect (Tonka) from the evil clutches of PETA.

Hes like a son to me, she said. I love him as much as I do my own children, maybe more.

The legal tussle over the chimps began in 2016 when PETA filed suit claiming several primates housed at the defunct Missouri Primate Foundation facility near Festus were improperly cared for and housed  allegations Haddix denied.

In 2020, Haddix signed a consent decree agreeing to send four chimps to the Center for Great Apes in Florida. She was allowed to keep three, including Tonka, but failed to comply with the orders requirements, PETA said.

Then, last summer, Jefferson County Sheriffs deputies and U.S. Marshals removed six chimps from the facility. Haddix claimed Tonka had died of congestive heart failure. Her husband filed an affidavit saying he cremated the body.

But PETA activists believed Tonka was still alive, even offering up a $10,000 reward for information leading to the chimps location or confirmation of his death.

On Friday, Judge Perry said she would forward charges to the U.S. Attorneys Office. If prosecutors declined to charge, the judge said she would consider holding a criminal contempt proceeding.

Haddix, for her part, said last week she was not terribly worried about legal trouble because she has terminal cancer.

They gave me six months, three months ago, and Im not doing treatment, she said. So if I die in jail, I die in jail. If I die outside, I die outside. I dont care.

Joel Currier of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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ELLISVILLE  Police arrested a motorcyclist Sunday night on suspicion of firing gunshots as he rode along Manchester Road, shooting a custard stand and two cars in Ellisville and a third car in Wildwood.

No one was hit by gunfire, but a girl suffered superficial injuries from a spray of glass.

Dispatchers described the gunman as riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle "with high handle bars," heading west on Manchester Road, with a beard, no helmet and wearing a backpack.

A trooper with the Missouri Highway Patrol chased the motorcyclist and said he held a gun in his left hand and "was aiming it high in the air," then pointed it at police and oncoming motorists. The gun looked to be Intratec TEC-9 or some kind of semiautomatic pistol, the trooper said.

Police arrested the man following a pursuit in the Pacific and Eureka areas, at speeds of 80 to 90 mph. The chase ended when the motorcycle ran off Interstate 44 into a grassy area. Ellisville police detectives plan to seek charges Tuesday.

Arrest records indicate police booked a 52-year-old man from High Ridge on suspicion of unlawful use of a weapon, resisting arrest by fleeing and assault on law enforcement.

Ellisville police Chief Steve Lewis confirmed to the Post-Dispatch early Monday that the High Ridge man is the suspected gunman. Lewis said the man didn't say anything to officers about what sparked his crime spree. He apparently was firing indiscriminately.

He has a pending misdemeanor assault case in St. Charles and is accused of threatening a co-worker after being fired. His attorney in that case couldn't be reached for comment.

Ellisville police said the man fired his first shot about 6:15 p.m. Sunday as he drove west on Manchester Road, hitting Silky's Frozen Custard, at 16043 Manchester Road. He continued west, police said, and a second shot hit a vehicle at Old State Road, about a block from the custard stand. About a mile west, he shot a vehicle just east of Ellisville Towne Center. Ellisville police said he drove into Wildwood and shot another vehicle, but authorities did not provide a precise location.

A trooper followed the motorcyclist in light traffic on Manchester, or Highway 100, heading toward Pacific. The trooper told dispatchers he was keeping his distance from the motorcycle as they passed Pacific High School. The motorcyclist was going 80 mph to 90 mph and running red lights, heading east on West Osage Street, police said.

At one point, he went into oncoming traffic to pass an RV, police said, heading toward Eureka. The trooper told dispatchers the motorcyclist went onto eastbound I-44 in Eureka and kept pointing the gun at the officer and westbound motorists. The officer said he didn't hear any gunshots.

The chase ended when the motorcycle ran off the highway near the Allenton exit about 7 p.m. and crashed in a grassy area. He ran off into a wooded area but was soon captured, police said. Paramedics took him to Mercy Hospital St. Louis in Creve Coeur to be evaluated before going to jail.

The man could not be reached for comment.

In the pending St. Charles case, police alleged he returned to a motorcycle shop the same day he was fired in February and threatened a man he thought was responsible for his firing. He never showed a weapon but stood outside the shop, yelling at an employee to come outside and fight, police said. He also yelled that he didn't care if they "did this by fists, knives, or guns," which frightened the employee because the suspect was known to carry a firearm and hunting knife, court records said.

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ST. CHARLES  The St. Charles Police Department said it will target vehicles with expired temporary tags in a new initiative it's rolling out Monday.

Police will issue a court summons for each vehicle pulled over with expired tags. The tags also will be seized for evidence, police said, adding that officers will have a "zero tolerance approach."

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed a law last year that allows the state to collect a sales tax when vehicles are purchased rather than allowing residents to go to a license office to pay taxes later.

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JEFFERSON CITY  Soon-to-retire U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt is among 10 Senate Republicans backing a preliminary agreement designed to prevent future mass killings.

Blunt, who is stepping down in January after more than two decades representing Missouri in Congress, is backing a provision in the emerging legislation to create a nationwide network of community behavioral health clinics and addiction services, along with funding for school-based mental health support.

If approved, the clinics would be reimbursed through Medicaid for the cost of providing services, similar to how the federal government funds health centers for physical care.

Making sure people who are experiencing a mental health crisis can get treatment before they harm themselves or others is critically important to preventing another tragedy, Blunt said Sunday. For too long, emergency rooms and law enforcement have served as the de facto mental health care delivery system in our country.

Blunt is co-sponsoring the language with U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan.

This bipartisan proposal builds on our work and will make sure health care above the neck is funded the same way as health care below the neck, Stabenow said in a joint statement with Blunt.

The plan comes after 21 people were killed by an 18-year-old gunman last month at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen of the victims were children and two were teachers.

The framework announced Sunday is not a fully written bill. But the 10 Senate Republicans showing support is enough to clear a potential filibuster, which is used to delay Senate passage of legislation.

In addition to Blunt, three other Republicans who are backing the proposal are retiring in January: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. The six others arent running for reelection this year.

Blunts involvement in the compromise is notable because of his long-lasting support from the National Rifle Association.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence lists Blunt as receiving $4.5 million in career campaign contributions from the NRA, ranking him third in the Senate.

The Republicans running to succeed him quickly bashed the Senate agreement as they jockey for GOP votes in a state where gun rights are a top campaign issue.

If gun control worked Chicago would be the safest city in America. In the U.S. Senate Ill always protect Missourians #2A rights just as I have as Attorney General, Attorney General Eric Schmitt tweeted.

Give them an inch, theyll take a mile. Very disappointing to see some in our party join Democrats to push gun control. When Im in the US Senate, I will ALWAYS protect our 2A rights! former Gov. Eric Greitens tweeted.

U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler issued a statement last week calling on GOP leaders to reject bipartisan talks.

The right to self-defense underpins our entire country and no Republican should be negotiating with Democrats to dream up a way to undermine that right, Hartzler wrote. The liberals do not believe in the right to bear arms and their only goal in any negotiation is to fool a few Republicans into going along with them.

The tentative agreement includes enhanced background checks for those 18 to 21 years old. It also contains grants for states to adopt red flag laws, which are designed to keep guns away from people who may pose a threat to themselves or others.

The compromise also includes a so-called boyfriend loophole, designed to prevent convicted domestic violence abusers from having guns.

Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, said in 2020 that he opposes red flag laws. Missouri Senate President Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan, also opposes red flag laws. Schatz is among the 21 candidates seeking the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate.

Others in the race include St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey, who entered the race after gaining notoriety for brandishing a rifle at protesters who were walking near his Central West End mansion.

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JEFFERSON CITY  A new report studying pandemic-related supply chain problems recommends that Missouri become an American hub for building shipping containers.

According to a draft copy of the report issued by Gov. Mike Parsons Supply Chain Task Force, the state could subsidize companies that build the steel containers, which are used to transport a variety of goods via boat, train and truck.

One of the many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic was the slowdown in production and shipment of newly manufactured shipping containers, which led to further congestion and trade imbalances throughout the globe, the report notes.

The task force, which is is co-chaired by Missouri Department of Transportation Director Patrick McKenna and Director of the Office of Workforce Development Mardy Leathers from the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, has been meeting since earlier this year to determine how to tackle problems that have led to a scarcity of some products and a slowdown in global shipping and production.

In addition to shipping containers, there also is a shortage of the trailer chassis used to pull them behind trucks.

The solution: spend money to bring that production to Missouri.

There is an opportunity for Missouri to incentivize the production of container and chassis manufacturing in the state by providing financial/tax incentives, developing workforce training programs specific to the industry, and guidance in selection of optimal sites that can leverage the states access to multimodal transportation modes, the report said.

According to the draft, the shipping container industry is heavily controlled by companies in China, which are propped up by the government. Not only were fewer made during the pandemic because of lockdowns, but fewer containers were shipped. And in a further blow, those that made it to the U.S. were not returned to China to be used again.

That has led to states on the East and West coasts seeking alternative storage places for the orphaned containers.

The draft says the problem has hurt Missouri too.

While the coverage of impacts of this crisis have been focused on the coastal deep water ports, the shortage is even more pronounced in Missouri where turnaround time is critical to get the containers (empty or full) back to the coast for the ship, the report notes.

In addition, a shortage could hurt the state as it works to build itself up as a site for a container-on-barge port.

The state budget includes more than $30 million to develop or upgrade existing ports, including one in Jefferson County that is being eyed by a Louisiana-based container-on-vessel operation on the Mississippi River.

The shortage of containers will be a challenge for the state as it pursues container-on-barge and container-on-vessel opportunities in the near future, the report said.

Among those on the panel are Chris Gutierrez, president, Kansas City SmartPort Inc.; Mary Lamie, executive vice president, Multi Modal Enterprises, Bi-State Development; Caitlin Murphy, founder and CEO, Global Gateway Logistics; Dustin Quesenberry, vide president of operations, Contract Freighters Inc. (CFI); and Todd Spencer, president of Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

The task force is accepting public comments on its proposals through Friday.

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CHICAGO  The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, and although state and city officials are harshly critical of any moves to restrict reproductive rights, they also say reversing the landmark decision would help Illinois attract businesses eager to recruit young workers with socially progressive views.

Officials already lure corporations by touting their strong support for voting rights, racial justice and protections for LGBTQ individuals, but losing the constitutional right to abortion should further strengthen their hand with businesses from red states likely to outlaw the procedure.

This is another arrow in our quiver, said Gov. J.B. Pritzker. We are always talking to companies about coming to Illinois, but this is another powerful point of discussion.

Attracting new corporations played an important role in Chicagos downtown boom over the past decade. Tech giants such as Salesforce, Google and many others established new Midwest headquarters here, unleashing a wave of development that transformed the Fulton Market meatpacking district into a sleek office center and brought new skyscrapers to the West Loop.

Site selection experts say they dont expect a Supreme Court ruling against Roe v. Wade to result in a sudden flood of new company headquarters moving to Illinois or Chicago. But promoting the state as a haven for reproductive rights could possibly burnish its reputation as a business hub.

Companies are really in a battle to hire and retain the best talent, and young workers prefer to work for companies that prioritize environmental, social and governance issues, and that now includes abortion, said John Boyd, principal of The Boyd Co., a national site selection firm. I can certainly see (overturning Roe v. Wade) impacting some companies more sensitive to the abortion issue.

Abortion rights could become even more important than gender identity, voting rights or other social issues, especially to the highly educated knowledge workers so prized by technology firms and other high-growth industries, according to Ray Perryman, CEO of The Perryman Group, a Waco, Texas-based economic research and analysis firm.

It is reasonable to anticipate that reproductive rights will receive the most attention given the history, the number of people impacted, and the extreme measures being implemented in some states, he said. While I would not expect either a mass exodus of firms from or a major initial slowdown in locations to the more restrictive states, I am confident that there will be long-term benefits to more inclusive areas.

World Business Chicago, the citys economic development agency, began beating this drum last year when it took out a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News touting Chicagos commitment to protecting abortion rights, as well as voting rights, among many other qualities.

The agency plans to launch a new round of ads after the Supreme Court hands down the decision, perhaps expanding the effort to other cities and states, according to CEO Michael Fassnacht.

He said a shift in attitude is underway among business leaders in states such as Texas. He recently met with a group of about 50 from Austin, Dallas and other cities, and asked whether all the controversy now surrounding abortion would start affecting decisions on where to locate new business.

Roughly half of them said yes, he said. Thats a pretty strong indication, I think.

Corporations are tight-lipped about how they will deal with a post-Roe landscape. A Facebook spokesperson said the company could not comment on the issue, and Salesforce did not return a message seeking comment.

The loss of Roe v. Wade would mean 26 states, including Missouri, Texas and Florida, are likely to severely restrict or ban abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights research organization.

How far these restrictions will eventually go is unknown. Texas legislators last year passed a law banning most abortions after six weeks, and Oklahoma last month banned all abortions, the tightest restriction in the U.S. More states are likely to follow their lead and further clamp down on the procedure, according to Jen Stark, a co-director with Business for Social Responsibility, a global sustainability organization.

Abortion restrictions are already unpopular. A March survey by Morning Consult, a business intelligence firm, found that by a 2-to-1 margin, employed adults prefer living in states where abortion is legal.

And its anyones guess what the new status quo will be, Stark said. So corporate America should rightfully be worried.

Many businesses are already reassuring employees that the end of Roe v. Wade wont mean losing access to abortion. Apple, Yelp, Tesla, Citigroup and Starbucks, among others, all stated they would cover expenses for workers who must travel out-of-state for abortions. And in the wake of last years restrictive Texas law, Salesforce announced it would relocate employees concerned about reproductive health care access, along with their families.

How ridiculous is that? Pritzker asked. Thats not how (workers) want to exercise their rights.

Relocating to Illinois could be the answer, and last September Pritzker wrote letters to corporate honchos such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri, Oracle Corp. CEO Safra Catz and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, encouraging them to shift their headquarters from Texas to Illinois. Hes not providing details about future outreach, except to say hell widen efforts to those 26 states where a Roe v. Wade reversal will severely restrict or outlaw abortion.

But even if the Supreme Court drops a bombshell on abortion, Pritzker said the states position on reproductive rights will still form just a small part of his overall pitch. He spends more time talking about Illinois many universities, its power grid, research hubs such as the Argonne National Laboratory, the amount of capital pouring into its infrastructure and many other factors.

We have done a number of things to make Illinois an attractive place to move their business, he said.

Thats a wise move, said Wayne Gearey, the Dallas-based chief labor economist of Savills, a commercial real estate firm. He helps firms pick the best locations, and whether its for a new manufacturing facility or a software developer, that means first analyzing the cost of local real estate, how much they can expect from economic incentive packages and, most important, how well a region can supply people with the right skill sets.

Still, social issues are growing more important, and with women making up 60% of new university graduates, more of his clients now ask about how well reproductive rights are protected in areas they might locate.

They are looking at this issue more seriously than ever before, he said.

2022 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com.
ST. LOUIS  The St. Louis region is bracing for some scorching weather this week as the heat index is expected to continue to reach dangerous highs.

The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory from 11 a.m. Monday through 8 p.m. Wednesday. Forecasters expect the heat index to reach upwards of 109 degrees. There also is a chance for thunderstorms across parts of the region on Wednesday and Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

Sundays heat index reached 106 in St. Louis.

People are urged to drink plenty of water, stay in an air-conditioned room and check up on relatives and neighbors. Those who go outside are advised to avoid strenuous activity during the hottest part of the day and wear lightweight and loose-fitting clothing. Never leave children or pets in cars, forecasters warned.

Forecasters also are urging people to watch for signs of heat exhaustion  dizziness, weakness, heavy sweating and thirst  which can lead to heat stroke. Sip water and move to a cooler area if a person is exhibiting those symptoms.

If someone becomes unconscious or confused, call 911. Heat stroke can be deadly or lead to disability, the National Weather Service said.

St. Louis and St. Louis County officials said they would be ramping up efforts to help residents stay cool this week.

St. Louis City Emergency Management Agency said those needing a reprieve from the heat can head to a public building, such as a library or community center during business hours. St. Louis County is offering assistance to those having difficulty paying utility bills. Residents can call 1-855-582-3973.

Designated cooling sites could open if the National Weather Service issues an excessive heat advisory or warning. For a full list, click here. Residents should call to confirm if a site is open before heading there.

Nonprofit organization Cool Down St. Louis is offering free air conditioners and utility assistance to those in need, especially for older folks, those with disabilities and those with young children. The nonprofit also recently expanded to cover natural gas bills as well. Their phone number is (314) 241-7668

Founder Gentry Trotter said the group has received more than 500 applications over the past week and that Cool Down St. Louis expects that number to triple over the coming weeks.

Overall, we are simply just trying to save lives, Trotter said.

The Humane Society of Missouri is warning pet owners to watch out for hot asphalt and concrete.

If you cant keep your hand on the pavement for 10 seconds, its too hot for a dogs paws, the organization said on social media.

Reporter Taylor Tiamoyo Harris contributed to this report.

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KANSAS CITY, Mo.  Missouri made the flowering dogwood its state tree in 1955 due to the beauty of its flowers in the springtime.

But in recent days, TikTok disagreed with that choice.

I think the Missouri state tree, if it were to be chosen today, fresh out of nowhere, will probably not be the flowering dogwood, said Justin Davies, a content creator on the platform.

Davies, an independent woodworking artist based in Utah, has a series on TikTok carving each state from the wood of its state tree. His last video in the series featured Missouri, who shares its state tree with Virginia.

But in videos posted to his TikTok account, Davies advocated for the state tree to be changed to the black walnut tree because of its unique ties to Missouri.

This concept of Missouri is the home of the black walnut crop, and its this crop thats wild harvested, that just felt really cool and interesting, Davies said.

The case for the black walnut tree

According to the Missouri Department of Conservation, Missouri is the worlds largest producer of black walnuts, which come from the black walnut tree. The city of Stockton even calls itself the Black Walnut Capital of the World because it houses the worlds largest commercial processor of the nut, according to its Chamber of Commerce website.

The black walnut is already the official state nut. Its tree is not grown in orchards, but rather in fields and wild forests across the state. Walnuts and lumber from the tree have many uses, from baking to building furniture, said Bill Graham, a Missouri Department of Conservation spokesman.

Its just how versatile a walnut tree is, Graham said. They can grow so many places and be prolific and sometimes be incredibly large if theyve been growing for a century or two.

Davies believes younger Americans today are looking for a tree that represents the history of their home state instead of merely aesthetics  which is something the black walnut tree can deliver.

What theyre what theyre looking for, and what they enjoy is a tree that feels a bit more culturally significant to their region and place, he said.

Flowering dogwoods beauty beloved in Missouri

However, the flowering dogwood does have strong ties to Missouri. The tree is found in the woodlands of the Ozarks, but is also planted as a decorative tree across the state, according to the Department of Conservation. Its recognizable by its white or pink flowers with four petal-like bracts, which appear in early spring.

According to Graham, these springtime blooms play a big role in the trees reputation in Missouri and selection as the state tree.

I think thats probably the No. 1 reason, is just the fact that spring is a welcome change from winter and the dogwood is a very bright visible harbinger of spring, Graham said.

Despite his advocacy for the black walnut tree, Davies said he understands why the flowering dogwood remains Missouris state tree due to its beauty. Since creating the video, hes heard from hundreds of Missourians who have described their relationship to black walnut trees and the states home ecosystem.

You can pick any state out of a hat, and I can choose to talk about the shortcomings there, Davies said. But the trees and native ecosystems of those states are interesting and unique and valuable and worth investigating and studying.

2022 The Kansas City Star. Visit kansascity.com.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  The number of detected illegal migration entries into the European Union in the first five months of 2022 was more than 86,000, or 82% more than in the same period in 2021, the agency monitoring the EUs external borders said Monday.

Crossings in May alone numbered some 23,500  75% up from May last year, according to preliminary data released by Frontex.

The European Border and Coast Guard Agency said that the figure didn't include refugees from almost four months of war in Ukraine, whose number it pegged at some 5.5 million. They are authorized to enter the EU.

The routes taken most often by migrants are through the Western Balkans, which accounted for almost 41,000 crossings, mostly migrants from Syria and Afghanistan, and through the Central and Eastern Mediterranean, where Egyptians, Bangladeshis, Tunisians, Nigerians and Congolese are common.

The figures show the number of entries and do not take account of the fact that sometimes the same person makes multiple attempts.

Follow APs coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
BUCHA, Ukraine (AP)  The lush green beauty of a pine forest with singing birds contrasted with the violent deaths of newly discovered victims of Russia's war in Ukraine, as workers exhumed bodies from another mass grave near the town of Bucha on Kyiv's outskirts.

The hands of several victims were tied behind their backs. The gruesome work of digging up the remains coincided with the Ukrainian police chief's report that authorities have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 people since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Workers wearing white hazmat suits and masks used shovels to exhume bodies from the soil of the forest, marking each section with small yellow numbered signs on the ground. The bodies, covered in cloth and dirt, attracted flies.

Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured, Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police, said at the scene. The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, the authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people, many in mass graves in the forest and elsewhere.

The horrors of Bucha shocked the world after Russian troops left. The mass grave that reporters saw Monday was just behind a trench dug out for a military vehicle. The bodies of seven civilians were retrieved. Two of the bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the knees and the head, Nebytov said.

National police chief Igor Klimenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Monday that criminal investigations into the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians included some found in mass graves. He said the mass killings of people also took place from snipers firing from tanks and armored personnel carriers. Bodies were found lying on streets and in their homes, as well as in mass graves.

He didn't specify how many of the more than 12,000 were civilians and how many were military.

Complete information about the number of bodies in mass graves or elsewhere isnt known, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the American Jewish Committee on Sunday. He cited the killings of two children who died with their parents in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol in a Russian bombing.

Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, asked:

Why is this happening in 2022? This is not the 1940s. How could mass killings, torture, burned cities, and filtration camps set up by the Russian military in the occupied territories resembling Nazi concentration camps come true?

MORE STORIES ON THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

 The battle of Donbas could prove decisive in Ukraine war

 Mexican president slams NATO policy in Ukraine

 Japan philanthropic group begins fundraising for Ukrainians

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had driven the Russians out of more than 1,000 settlements since the war began, and he vowed Monday they would liberate all occupied territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

In his nightly video address, he said the battle over the Donbas will surely go down in military history as one of the most brutal battles in and for Europe.

The price of this battle for us is very high, he said. Its just terrible.

Amnesty International, in a report Monday, accused Russia of indiscriminate use of banned cluster munitions in strikes on Kharkiv, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.

Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, has been subject to intensive shelling since Russian began attacking Ukraine.

People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queueing for humanitarian aid or shopping for food and medicine, said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationals senior crisis Response adviser.

The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives. The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable for their actions, and victims and their families must receive full reparations, she added.

The report cited doctors in Kharkiv hospitals, who showed researchers distinctive fragments they had removed from patients bodies, as well as survivors and witnesses of the attacks.

Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai told The Associated Press that fierce street fighting continued Monday in Sievierodonetsk, one of two large cities in the Donbas region still to be fully captured by Russian troops.

During the day, Haidai updated his estimate of how much of the city Russians control from 70% to 80%. Ukrainian forces are fighting the enemy block by block, street by street, house by house with a varying degree of success, he told The AP.

More than 10,000 people remain in the city, the key focus of the fighting in the Donbas. Haidai said that efforts to evacuate them have been halted because Russian troops destroyed two of the three bridges connecting Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, the second city in Luhansk not yet overrun by Moscow. The remaining bridge is old, decrepit and unsafe, the governor said.

Lysychansk remains under Ukrainian control, but is regularly shelled by the Russian forces. On Sunday, Haidai said, the shelling killed three civilians in the city, including a 6-year-old boy.

Eduard Basurin, an official of the Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk, claimed Monday that Sievierodonetsk has been blocked off and Ukrainian fighters have no choice but to surrender. Haidai dismissed that claim as a lie.

There is no threat of our troops being encircled in the Luhansk region, he said.

Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk region said Monday that the Ukrainian forces shelled a market in the city of Donetsk, killing three civilians and injuring 18 more.

The Russian military said Monday it destroyed a large number of weapons and military equipment that the Ukrainian forces had received from the U.S. and Europe.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said high-precision air-launched missiles hit the supplies near the Udachna railway station in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Konashenkov also said that a temporary deployment point for foreign mercenaries and a Ukrainian radar station of the Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile system were destroyed in the neighboring Luhansk region.

Two batteries of multiple launch rocket systems were destroyed in the Luhansk and the Kharkiv regions, Konashenkov said.

There was no immediate confirmation of the Russian claim from Ukraine.

The Dutch government says it will host a ministerial conference next month on accountability in Ukraine aimed at strengthening and coordinating war crimes investigations.

Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said Monday that the international community already has taken swift action to investigate alleged atrocities in Ukraine but there is an urgent need to further coordinate existing efforts on this front."

The July 14 meeting in The Hague will be hosted by the Dutch government, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan and European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders.

Khan already has launched an investigation in Ukraine and deployed his largest ever team of prosecutors to the country to gather evidence, including to Bucha, near the capital of Kyiv, where bodies littered the streets after Russian forces retreated early in the war.

The ICC and European Union judicial cooperation agency Eurojust will use the conference to lay out guidelines for gathering and storing evidence by governments and for collaborations with nongovernmental organizations.

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
CHICAGO  Just days before he is set to lead a Jan. 6 House committee hearing, Illinois Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger said Sunday it was obvious Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election and if the former president believes the election was stolen he is not mentally capable to return to the White House.

Kinzinger, one of only two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, also warned that if Trump were elected president again, he would install government leaders who value loyalty to him over their oath to the country.

Speaking on CBS  Face the Nation, Kinzinger of Channahon said he will be leading the panels Wednesday hearing, which will be focused on Justice Department activities leading up to, and including, the insurrection and will also include members of Congress who sought pardons from Trump.

Trump continues to insist without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and, in a fundraising email to supporters on Sunday, again labeled the committee hearings another partisan witch hunt.

Kinzinger said the rejection of election fraud claims by Trumps own attorney general, William Barr, along with the evidence of failed challenges to state election results, debunk Trumps continued baseless allegations that helost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

If you truly believe the election was stolen then, if the president truly believed that, for instance, hes not mentally capable to be president. I think he didnt believe it. I think the people around him didnt believe it. This was all about keeping power against the will of the American people, said Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic who is not seeking reelection.

The president absolutely tried to overthrow the will of the people and he tried to do it initially through misinformation, for the Department of Justice, theyre pressuring the vice president, and then, on Jan. 6, Kinzinger said. And he was told repeatedly by people that he trusted, that he respected  folks around him, that the election wasnt stolen, that there is no corroborating proof of any kind of a stealing or any kind of a corruption that would change the outcome. And so I think its pretty obvious he knew but he didnt want to lose.

Kinzinger said Trumps efforts to try to reverse the election outcome by first pressuring the Department of Justice, then Vice President Mike Pence and ultimately Congress through a public attack should be a warning if the former president decides to run again in 2024.

I think if Donald Trump gets elected again, there is no doubt in my mind, zero doubt, that he will, instead of screening candidates like he probably did when he got elected in 2016 for qualifications, hes going to screen people based on their loyalty to him, Kinzinger said.

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I think its important for us as a country to recognize that  the importance that the oath to the United States plays, he said. If we have people in power  whether its in politics or law enforcement or the military  we have any people that are unwilling to put their oath above any loyalty to a person, no law matters.

Kinzinger also said Trumps assertion he reached out to the National Guard to help quell the insurrection was false.

I think its very obvious the president didnt do anything but gleefully watch television while this was going down. He can say anything he wants. The real leader, the only person in charge that made those calls was Mike Pence. Well prove that, Kinzinger said.

During the committees opening public hearing on Thursday, the other Republican on the panel, Wyoming congresswoman and committee vice chair Liz Cheney, said Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Scott Perry was one of several Republicans who sought a pardon from Trump in the days after Jan. 6.

Perry is one of the leading figures in the effort to throw out Pennsylvanias votes in the 2020 presidential election.

Why would you ask for a pardon? Lets just say in general, if somebody asked for a pardon, it would be because they have real concern that maybe theyve done something illegal, Kinzinger said.

Perry has denied he sought a pardon and called the accusation an absolute shameless and soulless lie.

Kinzinger did not directly address Perrys comments but said of the panel, Were not going to make accusations or say things without proof or evidence backing it.

2022 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com.
Panel members worked to lay out a devastating case as they tried to tell the story of how a riot unfolded at the Capitol as Congress certified election results.
The war in Ukraine has produced another bonanza of Russian weapons for the U.S. Air Force to scrutinize. For over half a century the U.S. Air Force has been on the lookout for Russian aircraft, missiles and electronic systems that were operational or could be made operational for testing. Ukraine is currently providing everything but aircraft to evaluate. Thats fine because Russia hasnt produced any scary and mysterious combat aircraft since the Cold War ended. Electronics and missile systems are another matter.

Using captured or stolen enemy aircraft and equipment was a crucial aspect of World War II. If you knew the capabilities of enemy aircraft and electronics you could more easily defeat them. After the Cold War ended the U.S. Air Force revealed how many Russian combat aircraft they had obtained and regularly flown. A lot of Russian aircraft and other equipment came from Israel because of several wars with Russian equipped Arab forces. Israel delivered so much of this Russian gear that they essentially became partners with the U.S. in obtaining and evaluating Russian equipment. They shared what they had discovered and this made Russian forces much less effective if there was a war. Towards the end of the Cold War Russian military planners were dismayed when they learned how much the American had learned about performance and flaws of Russian equipment.

The U.S. also offered rewards for pilots of modern Russian fighters who defected. This brought in several modern Russian aircraft in flyable condition. Sometimes air force techs could restore a crashed Russian aircraft to flying condition. The air force was also eager to carry out live tests of Russian air defense systems. These tests enabled the U.S. to develop equipment of techniques that reduced the effectiveness of the Russian air defense systems. Israel was also very active in this area and thats the main reason Russian air defense systems cannot bring down Israeli aircraft. The most modern Russian stuff can limit the performance of Israeli jets but not hit them or prevent the Israelis from completing a mission.

Ukraine is another example of this because the Ukrainian bag of tricks was ample enough to prevent the larger Russian air force from obtaining air superiority over Ukraine. It should not be a surprise because after Russia grabbed Crimea and parts of Donbas in 2014, Ukrainians turned to the West, especially the U.S. for practical advice on how to neutralize the Russian air force. Thats why Ukraine is sharing all captured Russian gear with the United States. The Americans have more resources and experience evaluating the Russian gear and passing the findings on to the Ukrainians.

The Russians knew this was going on but underestimated the ability of the Ukrainians to implement what they learned from the Americans. The Ukrainians, like the Israelis, have plenty of incentive to use any advantage they can get to survive. Israel is not providing weapons to Ukraine in order to retain Russian cooperation in Syria against Iranian efforts to establish forces on the Israeli border. The Russians dont complain about the flood of Israeli experience with new Russian weapons that reaches Ukraine via American advisors.

The new enemy with weapons performance mysteries is China. No press releases about how that effort is going but the first time American and Chinese systems get involved in combat, it will soon be clear what worked and what didnt.
While the U.S. and other NATO countries keep their active-duty troops out of Ukraine, there are a growing number of American and other NATO country military veterans in Ukraine to help any way they can. The most valuable of these foreign volunteers are those who belonged to the U.S. Army Special Forces, many of whom have years of recent combat experience plus their Special Forces training on how to organize, train and support local guerilla fighters behind the lines in some future war. During the Cold War the U.S. had trained one the seven Special Forces Groups (brigades) to operate in Europe, especially Eastern Europe and parts of Russian like Ukraine with a recent history of guerilla operations against Russian forces.

Ukraine is also benefiting the U.S. Army Special Forces reorganization that began in 2009, as most American troops were withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. Officially, the reorganization was in recognition of changes that have already evolved and established themselves since September 2001. This happened because there are only seven Special Forces Groups altogether and, given personnel shortages, not quite 7,000 "operators' ' were available for action so some changes had to be accepted. After 2001, it was decided to assign most of these troops, the best counter-terrorism operators America has, against Islamic radicals threatening the United States. Several thousand Special Forces troops were initially held back for possible use in Korea, South America or Africa. That eventually changed.

Each of the five active-duty Special Forces groups has three battalions (about 1200 troops altogether), in 2009 the plan was to add another battalion to each group. In 2001, the 5th Group (responsible for the Middle East) was keeping two battalions overseas and one back in the states for rest and training. On top of the heavy workload, the 5th Group was also about twenty percent under strength.

Each of the five Special Forces Groups specializes in one region of the world, and the 5th has responsibility for the Middle East and Afghanistan. The other four Groups help out, even though they don't have the language and cultural awareness talents of the 5th Group. That said, the Russian speakers of the 10th Group (specializing in Europe) found lots of locals in Afghanistan and Iraq who spoke Russian. The two National Guard (reserve) Groups (the 19th and 20th), have also been called up, as these groups are full of Special Forces veterans who retired or got out to get away from the frequent overseas duty (and make more money). These men have experience and skills, although they can now expect to see a lot more time overseas than the average reservists. Some Special Forces operators have spent 70 percent of their time overseas since September 11, 2001, and the average is close to fifty percent.

The 1st Special Forces Group specializes in East Asia and the Pacific (Southeast Asia, Korea, China and the Pacific in general). The 3rd Special Forces Group specializes in the Caribbean and West Africa. The 7th Special Forces Group specializes in Latin America.

After 2003 the 3rd and 7th Groups were frequently putting members on active duty in Afghanistan. Under the 2009 reorganization, the 3rd Group had Afghanistan to itself, with one or two battalions from the 7th Group as needed. In effect, the 3rd Group will be responsible for Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The 3rd Group will still have one battalion for use in its original area (the Caribbean and West Africa). The 7th Group also kept a battalion in its original area (Latin America). The 10th Group also assigned some of its troops to Africa (the new AFRICOM).

The 5th Group now concentrated on the western half (Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt) of its original area of operations.

Since the 1980s Special Forces have belonged to SOCOM (Special Operations Command), which is itself still a small force (53,000 troops in 2009). Most of these are from the army, but SOCOM troops represent less than eight percent of army personnel. The majority of SOCOM people are providing support for the 13,000 operators (Special Forces, SEALs, commandos. Rangers and other specialists) who are constantly overseas chasing down terrorists.

For veterans of the 10th Special Forces Group, now is the time to do what they had always trained for. Active-duty members of the 10th Group are all over eastern Europe, except for Ukraine. The Special Forces are particularly popular as trainers and advisors because unlike the troops usually assigned to this duty, the Special Forces troops arrive speaking the local language and aware of local customs and needs. Even if a Special Forces operator did not know the local language, he was eager to quickly learn the language and culture of the troops or civilians they were working with. Special Forces also had a well-deserved reputation of being well trained and adaptive combat troops. Many had recent combat experience, so their advice was valued as was Special Forces trainers willingness to learn from the locals.

Some of the Special Forces vets currently in Ukraine had been there while on active duty. From 1991 to early 2022, Special Forces teams were frequently in Ukraine to assist the armed forces of newly independent Ukraine. Knowing the local culture made it easier for Special Forces operators and the locals they worked with to stay in touch. Cell phones and cheap international phone calls evolved after 2010. It was even easier to stay in touch. After 2014 and especially after February 2022, those cell phone conversations, along with frequent exchanges via email and Internet message boards and social media, became a valuable source of assistance for Ukrainians who were dealing with combat, not just preparing for it. This sometimes meant calls to Special Forces vets in the middle of the night from Ukrainian soldiers needed specialized advice to deal with an immediate situation. This worked and was great for morale on both ends of the call. Its not often that a military trainer gets that kind of feedback.
Starlink, a subsidiary of American firm SpaceX, has developed a generation 2 (or gen2) of its current Starlink satellite. This was done ahead of schedule. Because gen2 is larger and five times heavier than the current satellite, it requires a larger SLV (satellite launch vehicle). That is also being developed and is on schedule, not ahead of schedule.

The gen2 satellites are described as nearly ten times more capable than the gen1 (original) Starlink satellites. Gen2 are designed to work with gen1 satellites and gradually replace them. Gen1 birds are designed to last for about seven years. At that point the satellite gradually loses altitude until it burns up reentering the atmosphere. The true capabilities of gen2 wont be known until some of them are in orbit. Gen1 sats proved more effective than expected but the list of suggested improvements indicated that a larger gen2 sat would be the way to go. Eventually this will mean fewer Starlink sats in orbit but there will still be thousands of them.

The main function of Starlink is to provide cheaper, more powerful and globally available access to the Internet or any other communications network that can pay for the use of the Starlink network. That includes military users that are friendly to Starlink and not considered a threat. The threat nations include China, Russia and several smaller countries like Iran, North Korea and Cuba that are hostile to Internet access they cannot control. China estimates that Starlink is able to increase the speed and throughput of military communications over a hundred times what it is now.

Starlink is not the only multiple-satellite ISP (Internet Service Provider) system. There are similar efforts underway in several countries, including Russia and China. These efforts have fallen far behind Starlink in terms of numbers and capabilities. Starlink is unique in that it was the first to enter service and quickly proved it could do what it was designed to do. That included quickly adapting to the needs of military users. This was demonstrated in Ukraine where Starlink was activated over Ukraine and the first of thousands of free user kits (a small satellite dish and a special modem) delivered in less than a week.

Ukrainians were impressed by the potential for Starlink and rapidly came up with new uses, some of them military. This gave Starlink a realistic test under very adverse conditions. So far this has been a success even though Russia, apparently with some help from China, is seeking ways to shut down or disrupt Starlink.

Another advantage of Starlink was the rapidity of upgrades or modifications to deal with problems, including Russian efforts to jam or disrupt performance in Ukraine. Not only were the Russians unable to disable Starlink, but found its encrypted signals far superior to communications Russian troops had to use in Ukraine. Worse for the Russians was the Ukrainian ability to rapidly integrate Starlink with Ukrainian communications and fire control systems.

Before Gen2 sats were ready, SpaceX pointed out that it could put additional Starlink satellites into orbit faster and more cheaply than Russia or anyone else could destroy them. This capability was part of the Starlink design that not only allowed satellite and user software to be quickly updated, but new Starlink satellites often had new features added to improve performance and that included more resistance to hacking and jamming. Complaints that Starlink sats would become so numerous that they would be a hazard for other satellites are unproven and even less likely once the gen2 sats are operating. Starlink operates in LEO, where there is already a lot of space junk too small to quickly fall back into the atmosphere and burn up. Any plans to destroy a lot of Starlink sats would make the situation worse without shutting down Starlink services. If left alone the gen1 and gen2 Starlink sats are designed to burn themselves up in the atmosphere when no longer operational.

The original gen1 Starlink system was designed to expand to over 40,000 satellites if demand by paying customers was large enough to justify and pay for it. Starlink gen2 is designed to provide so much more customer bandwidth (data transmission) that far fewer Starlink sats will be needed. That could be up to 90 percent less than gen1. Gen2 is designed to operate more efficiently over countries that outlaw Starlink as an ISP. Nearly half the Internet users on the planet live in countries that heavily censor Internet use. Starlink makes it much more difficult to censor Internet users. Originally designed to provide affordable high-speed Internet use to those in remote areas, Starlink discovered it had gained a lot of new customer interest because of the experience in Ukraine.

China sees Starlink as a serious threat to the current government Internet censorship and its control over the population as well as the effectiveness of their military. Thats no speculation because its already happening, often live on TV, in Ukraine. China has not yet come up with a workable plan to disrupt or destroy Starlink and considers Starlink a major obstacle to China eventually becoming the most powerful military force on the planet. That was supposed to happen before 2050. With Starlink it may take longer.
GUERNSEY / ACCESSWIRE / June 13, 2022 / Burford Capital Limited, the leading global finance and asset management firm focused on law, today announces the closing of the $350 million Burford Alternative Income Fund II LP ("BAIF II"), a new private fund focused on post-settlement investments. BAIF II will invest in settled litigation matters, monetizing a claimant's settlement and other associated legal receivables. The solution serves to meet the needs of law firms awaiting payment of their fees and clients eager to release cash from a settlement, who find it attractive to secure financing against those expected receipts.

Together with a recent new $360 million bond issue and the closing of a new $360 million pre-settlement investment fund, Burford has in total raised more than $1 billion within the past three months to fund the further growth of its business.

BAIF II's investment period runs until September 11, 2025, with a multi-year harvest period thereafter. BAIF II will generally pay management fees of 1.5% of invested capital, with performance fees of 12.5% after a 5% preferred return with a full catch-up. BAIF II is the successor to Burford's prior post-settlement funds, Burford Alternative Income Fund ("BAIF") founded in 2019 and BCIM Credit Opportunities LP ("COLP") founded in 2014. BAIF's investment period ended April 4, 2022, while COLP's investment period ended September 30, 2019. There is no investment in BAIF II from Burford's balance sheet.

Christopher Bogart, Burford Capital's chief executive officer, commented:

"We are delighted to close a new post-settlement fund, backed by a combination of existing and new Burford private fund LPs. BAIF II's investment strategy will mimic BAIF and COLP, helping clients manage the frequent and significant delays that occur between the point at which parties agree a settlement and the finalization of and payment under the settlement. The solution supports our aim of fulfilling client needs across the lifespan of a litigation matter's duration, from inception through to conclusion."

For further information, please contact:

Burford Capital Limited For investor and analyst inquiries: Robert Bailhache, Head of Investor Relations, EMEA and Asia - email +44 (0)20 3530 2023 Jim Ballan, Head of Investor Relations, Americas - email +1 (646) 793 9176 For press inquiries: David Helfenbein, Vice President, Public Relations - email +1 (212) 235 6824 Numis Securities Limited - NOMAD and Joint Broker +44 (0)20 7260 1000 Giles Rolls Charlie Farquhar Jefferies International Limited - Joint Broker +44 (0)20 7029 8000 Graham Davidson Tony White

About Burford Capital

Burford Capital is the leading global finance and asset management firm focused on law. Its businesses include litigation finance and risk management, asset recovery and a wide range of legal finance and advisory activities. Burford is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BUR) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE: BUR), and it works with companies and law firms around the world from its principal offices in New York, London, Chicago, Washington, DC, Singapore, Sydney and Hong Kong.

For more information, please visit www.burfordcapital.com .

This communication shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any ordinary shares or other securities of Burford.

This release does not constitute an offer of any Burford fund. Burford Capital Investment Management LLC, which acts as the fund manager of all Burford funds, is registered as an investment adviser with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The information provided herein is for informational purposes only. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The information contained herein is not, and should not be construed as, an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities (including, without limitation, interests or shares in the funds). Any such offer or solicitation may be made only by means of a final confidential private placement memorandum and other offering documents.

Forward-looking statements

This announcement contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 21E of the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, regarding assumptions, expectations, projections, intentions and beliefs about future events. These statements are intended as "forward-looking statements". In some cases, predictive, future-tense or forward-looking words such as "aim", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "could", "estimate", "expect", "forecast", "guidance", "intend", "may", "plan", "potential", "predict", "projected", "should" or "will" or the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements, but are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements. In addition, we and our representatives may from time to time make other oral or written statements which are forward-looking statements, including in our periodic reports that we file with, or furnish to, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, other information sent to our security holders and other written materials. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. We caution you that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are based on numerous assumptions, expectations, projections, intentions and beliefs and that our actual results of operations, including our financial position and liquidity, and the development of the industry in which we operate, may differ materially from (and be more negative than) those made in, or suggested by, the forward-looking statements contained in this announcement. Significant factors that may cause actual results to differ from those we expect include those discussed under "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on March 29, 2022 and other reports or documents that we file with, or furnish to, the US Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. In addition, even if our results of operations, including our financial position and liquidity, and the development of the industry in which we operate are consistent with the forward-looking statements contained in this announcement, those results of operations or developments may not be indicative of results or developments in subsequent periods.

Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements contained in this announcement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact [email protected] or visit www.rns.com.

SOURCE: Burford Capital Limited

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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / June 13, 2022 / Cielo Waste Solutions Corp. (TSXV:CMC)(OTCQB: CWSFF) ("Cielo" or the "Company"), a waste-to-fuel environmental technology company, today announced the resignations of Mr. Gregg Gegunde as Chief Executive Officer and Operating Officer and Mr. Chris Sabat as Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary. Ms. Anna Cheong, who was acting as interim Chief Financial Officer, has returned to her position as Controller. The Board has appointed Mr. Ryan Jackson as interim Chief Executive Officer and Ms. Jasdeep K. Dhaliwal, a Chartered Professional Accountant, as interim Chief Financial Officer.

On behalf of the Board of Directors (the "Board") of the Company, Mr. Larry Schafran, Board Chair, stated: "We thank Gregg and Chris for their dedication since Q3 of 2021 in strengthening Cielo's engineering and corporate governance foundations. Their leadership and contributions have been transformational for Cielo in working towards its vision of aspiring to lead the waste-to-fuels industry using environmentally friendly, economically sustainable technology. The Board also expresses its appreciation to Ms. Cheong for her ongoing commitment to the organization."

Ryan Jackson, a seasoned business executive with over 30 years of experience and a member of the Institute of Certified Management Consultants of Alberta, has been a director of Cielo since May of 2021. Mr. Jackson goes on to say: "The strong foundation that has been built by Gregg and Chris has positioned Cielo for success well into the future. I am excited to continue to lead the execution of the strategy with the extremely strong team that Gregg has built during his time with the Company."

Ms. Jasdeep K. Dhaliwal has extensive experience in risk management, financial reporting process and internal controls and has been a director of Cielo since April 2021 and formerly the Audit Committee Chair. Together both Ms. Dhaliwal and Mr. Jackson bring a deep knowledge of building businesses and capital markets experience as well as the strategic leadership skills required for the next stage of the Company's development. The Audit Committee has also appointed director Ms. Sheila Leggett to replace Ms. Dhaliwal as Audit Committee Chair.

Engagement of Echelon Wealth Partners

The Company has engaged Echelon Wealth Partners Inc. ("Echelon") as its Financial Advisor to assist the Interim Management Team and the Board of Directors with evaluating a number of potential financing alternatives to further advance various capital development projects, including at Aldersyde.

Aldersyde Production Update:

Process heat from Inline electric heater

As the Aldersyde Phase 1 facility has continued to operate, Cielo has continued to modify and improve the design. Aldersyde Engineering, Operations and Maintenance have been making such improvements, and as a result are repairing the inline heater. The heater is expected to be available by June 20, 2022, at which time low-rate steady state operation is expected.

Waste management system

A change in feedstock dimension was recently implemented to further improve the process, which resulted in improved distillate quality but impacted solid settling characteristics. Operations strategy and piping modification was required to manage the waste stream due to changed solids settling characteristics. Interim operations have been positive, resulting in improved used motor oil recovery from reactor bottoms and reduced waste production.

Forecasted production

Aligned with the previous news releases dated May 12, 2022 and April 18, 2022, the primary focus of Aldersyde is to improve reliability, distillate quality, and better understand constraints so that learnings can be applied to the research facility design and future full-scale facilities. Moving forward, Management will no longer focus on or provide guidance on feed production numbers as the current Aldersyde facility is uneconomical and these numbers are not required to achieve the previously mentioned objectives.

Cielo's plan is to achieve steady state production over a 10-day period followed by a planned outage to inspect equipment. Following each steady state production cycle, operations and engineering will evaluate the run, and apply learnings for future trial runs with modified process parameters.

Introductory Conference Call

Cielo will host an introductory conference call followed by a question-and-answer session on Monday, June 13, 2022 at 7:00 AM Mountain Time (9:00 AM Eastern Time) with Interim CEO Ryan Jackson and Interim CFO Jasdeep Dhaliwal.

Conference Call Details

The call can be accessed over the phone by dialing North America Toll Free at 1-888-664-6392 (call ID#72346799). A replay will be available shortly after the call and can be accessed by dialing North America Toll Free at 1-888-390-0541. The passcode for the replay is 346799#. The replay will be available until June 20, 2022.

For further information please contact:

Cielo Investor Relations

Email: [email protected]

Rose & Company

610 Fifth Avenue, Suite 308

New York, NY 10020

Telephone: (212) 517-0810

Email: [email protected]

RB Milestone Group LLC (USA):

Trevor Brucato, Managing Director

Email: [email protected]

New York, NY & Stamford, CT

ABOUT CIELO

Cielo Waste Solutions Corp. was incorporated under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) on February 2, 2011. Cielo is a publicly traded company with its shares listed to trade on the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") under the symbol "CMC," on the Frankfurt Exchange ("DAX") under the symbol "C36", as well as on the OTC Venture Market ("OTCQB"), under the symbol "CWSFF." The Company's strategic intent is to become one of the leading waste-to-fuel environmental technology companies using its environmentally friendly, economically sustainable technology. Cielo has a patented process that can convert waste feedstocks, including plastics, rubber, organic material, and wood derivative waste to fuel. Cielo's business model is to source waste feedstocks from industrial producers and other suppliers and convert the feedstocks into fuels. Having demonstrated its ability to produce diesel and naphtha from waste, Cielo plans to further enhance its Aldersyde Facility and to construct additional facilities that will convert waste feedstocks to energy fuels, including diesel, naphtha, and kerosene. The diesel from Cielo's distillate could be used in diesel engines. Kerosene could be suitable for aviation or marine jet fuel, and naphtha could be used to assist in transporting heavy oil. Cielo's objective is to generate value from converting waste to fuel while ridding the world of unwanted and problematic waste.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively referred to herein as "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. All statements other than statements of present or historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "achieve", "could", "believe", "plan", "intend", "objective", "continuous", "ongoing", "estimate", "outlook", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should" or similar words, including negatives thereof, suggesting future outcomes.

Forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Cielo is making forward looking statements, with respect to, but not limited to: delivery of the inline heater Aldersyde Phase 1 facility, achieving steady state production over a 10-day period and the Company's engagement of Echelon for a potential future financing.

Investors should continue to review and consider information disseminated through news releases and filed by the Company on SEDAR. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended.

Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve a number of risks and uncertainties, some of which are described herein. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the Company's actual performance and results to differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise such statements to reflect new information, subsequent or otherwise. Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV), nor OTCQB nor WKN, have reviewed, and do not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of, the content of this news release.

SOURCE: Cielo Waste Solutions Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:
UBS analyst Steven Fisher upgraded infrastructure services provider Quanta Services (NYSE: PWR) to Buy from Neutral, raising the firm's price target on the stock to $156 from $140.

Fisher wrote to investors on Monday that as the solar inquiry overhang is cleared, for now, they have come off of the sidelines.

"We move back to a Buy on PWR, now that the solar overhang has cleared, and we have more confidence in EPS growth ahead from electric grid investment and renewed upside potential from midstream," said Fisher. "We downgraded PWR to Neutral in mid-April, arguing that despite a strong backdrop for PWR's EPS growth, the overhang from the solar investigation and the stock at an all-time high near $140 capped upside potential and warranted a risk element to be factored into the P/E. That no longer supported a Buy rating at that time."

However, he says now, with the overhang cleared, pressure should be removed from the P/E with continuing momentum for the electric business and new and growing opportunities for the underground business.

"The multiple is still >1x below where it was in mid-April (19.2x vs 20.5x-20.8x), and we expect it to re-rate back towards that level. Combined with robust earnings growth, that makes the stock a Buy, in our view. We expect EPS to grow at a 14% CAGR through 2024, ~130bps ahead of consensus."

By Sam Boughedda
The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. (NYSE: THG) today announced Francisco A. Aristeguieta has been elected to the company's board of directors, effective today.

Aristeguieta is an accomplished senior executive with extensive experience in the banking and financial services industries. He currently serves as a special adviser for State Street Corporation, a leading provider of financial services to institutional investors worldwide, having stepped down recently as executive vice president. Aristeguieta served in various executive positions since joining State Street in 2019, including chief executive officer of State Street Institutional Services and executive vice president and chief executive officer of State Street International.

Before joining State Street, Aristeguieta served in several key executive roles over 25 years at Citigroup Inc., most recently as chief executive officer of Citigroup Asia Pacific, a leading universal bank in the region across institutional and consumer retail banking and broad financial services. During his time at Citigroup, Aristeguieta also served as chief executive officer of Citigroup Latin America, led Citigroup's Global Transaction Services Group in Latin America and Mexico, was chief executive officer of Citigroup Colombia, and head of the organization's Andean Region Cluster of countries, among other important roles.

"Francisco is a highly accomplished operating executive who will bring excellent and strong perspectives to our boardroom as we continue to support the advancement of The Hanover's mission and strategy. We are delighted to welcome him to the board," said Cynthia L. Egan, chair of the board of directors at The Hanover.

Aristeguieta received a bachelor's degree from Universidad Metropolitana in Venezuela and a master's degree in business administration from Brunel University in the United Kingdom. He began his career as a financial analyst with Petroleos de Venezuela. In addition, he previously served as vice chairman on the board of directors of Banco de Chile.
Sierra Metals Inc. (TSX: SMT) (BVL: SMT) (NYSE AMERICAN: SMTS) (Sierra Metals or the Company) is pleased to announce that Oscar Cabrera has been appointed as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Company (the Board). Mr. Cabrera joined the Board in October 2021 and replaces Mr. Jose Vizquerra as Chair.

Additionally, the Board appointed Miguel Aramburu as its newest member. Mr. Aramburu has over 25 years of professional experience with 15 years dedicated to the mining sector, currently serving on the Board of STRACON S.A.C, a mining contractor, and Minsur S.A., a Peru based mining company.

"We welcome Miguel to the Sierra Metals Board. His senior leadership at large Peruvian mining operations as well as his significant board experience will provide important insight as a member of our Board. The strong combination of expertise of our Board members will help strengthen the execution of the Companys current initiatives, as well as provide guidance for its next phase of development and growth. We look forward to working together, commented Luis Marchese, CEO.

Bios

Oscar Cabrera has over 20 years of experience as an equity analyst, covering the metals and mining industry for bulge bracket investment banks and Canadian financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch Canada and CIBC World Markets. He obtained recognition for industry thought leadership, fundamental commodity analysis and strong industry relationships, which has led to advisory roles for public mining companies, including Nexa Resources S.A. He also participated in the vetting of and advising on primary and secondary offerings in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. Mr. Cabrera holds an MBA from York University, an M Eng. in Structural Engineering from the University of Toronto and a B. Sc in Civil Engineering from the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. Mr. Cabrera is a Canadian Citizen, originally from Mexico.

Miguel Aramburu currently serves on the Board of Directors of Stracon S.A.C., a mining contractor; Fibra Prime, a Peruvian REIT; Minsur S.A., a Peru-based mining and exploration company; and IEduca, an education conglomerate. He has previously held positions on the boards of Enfoca Investments, Andino Investment Holding, El Comercio, Neptunia, Fenix Power, GyM, Stracon GyM, Maestro Peru, Castrovirreyna and Pacifico Vida. Prior to committing himself to serving on corporate boards, Mr. Aramburu held the position of CEO (2008-2010) and COO (2006-2008) of Hochschild Mining Plc. In addition, he has held progressive positions with Mauricio Hochschild Y Cia, including CEO (2004-2006), CFO (2002-2004) and General Manager for various segments of operations (1995-2002). Mr. Aramburu holds an MBA from Stanford University and obtained his Industrial Engineering degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru.
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) today announced that it will donate an office building in Downtown Louisville to the University of Louisville (UofL) in support of the activities of UofLs Health Equity Innovation Hub. The 8-story building, located at 515 W. Market Street, was recently vacated by Humana and contains approximately 130,000 square feet of furnished and equipped office space that will help centralize the Hubs academic, business and research areas.

The Health Equity Innovation Hub is an integrated, multi-disciplinary collaboration among The Humana Foundation, Humana and UofL that is focused on groundbreaking research, talent development, entrepreneurship and innovation, with a deliberate emphasis on health equity, social determinants of health and digital health and analytics. The Hub seeks to develop solutions for health inequities in Louisville and globally.

Humana is pleased to donate this building in the heart of Downtown Louisville to UofL, and we continue to be strong supporters of the work being done to establish the Health Equity Innovation Hub, said Dr. Nwando Olayiwola, Chief Health Equity Officer & Senior Vice President at Humana. Having the Hub in close proximity to our downtown offices will allow for better collaboration and ultimately will result in greater impact for the important work being done to solve health inequities.

As we considered potential new uses for the 515 building, we knew that we wanted to find an occupant that would add to the vibrancy and diversity of downtown while also aligning closely with Humanas mission to improve the health and wellbeing of our members and communities, said Douglas Edwards, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Associate & Business Solutions at Humana. We could not think of a better neighbor for the downtown business district than UofL.

We appreciate Humanas generous donation of this building to UofL, as well as the ongoing support provided by Humana and The Humana Foundation for the Health Equity Innovation Hub, said Lori Stewart Gonzalez, interim president of UofL. We are excited to share more details about the building and the Health Equity Innovation Hub in the near future.

About Humana

Humana Inc. is committed to helping our millions of medical and specialty members achieve their best health. Our successful history in care delivery and health plan administration is helping us create a new kind of integrated care with the power to improve health and well-being and lower costs. Our efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large.

To accomplish that, we support physicians and other health care professionals as they work to deliver the right care in the right place for their patients, our members. Our range of clinical capabilities, resources and tools  such as in-home care, behavioral health, pharmacy services, data analytics and wellness solutions  combine to produce a simplified experience with the goal of making health care easier to navigate and more effective.

More information regarding Humana is available to investors via the Investor Relations page of the companys website at humana.com, including copies of:

Annual reports to stockholders

Securities and Exchange Commission filings

Most recent investor conference presentations

Quarterly earnings news releases and conference calls

Calendar of events

Corporate Governance information.

About The Humana Foundation

The Humana Foundation was established in 1981 as the philanthropic arm of Humana Inc., one of the nations leading health and well-being companies. Located in Louisville, Ky., The Humana Foundation seeks to co-create communities where leadership, culture, and systems work to improve and sustain positive health outcomes. For more information, visit humanafoundation.org.

Humana and The Humana Foundation are dedicated to Corporate Social Responsibility. Our goal is to ensure that every business decision we make reflects our commitment to improving the health and well-being of each person, each community, the environment, and the collective healthcare system.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220613005836/en/

Investors:

Lisa Stoner - Humana Investor Relations; (502) 580-2652;

[email protected]

Media:

Mark Taylor - Humana Corporate Communications; (317) 753-0345;

[email protected]

Source: Humana Inc.
Daily Special Offers Available From June 13-19, Culminating With Pizza Special on June 19; Three Customers to Win Free Pizza for a Year

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- MOD Super Fast Pizza Holdings, LLC (MOD Pizza, MOD or the Company), the purpose-led, people-first, fast casual pizza pioneer, today announced the award-winning MOD Rewards program recently surpassed three million members. To celebrate, from June 13 to June 19, MOD is offering a full week of special offers, available to MOD Rewards members at all 500+ MOD locations system-wide, including $3.33 MOD-size pizzas, and the chance to win free pizza for a year.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220613005864/en/

MOD Pizza is celebrating three million MOD Rewards members with a full week of special offers, from June 13 to June 19. The offers - available to all Rewards members at all MOD locations system-wide* - include $3.33 MOD-size pizzas, and the chance to win free pizza for a year. (Photo: Business Wire)

A Week of Rewards

MOD is celebrating its Rewards members over the course of a full week. When members make a purchase through the MOD app, they will be rewarded with these special offers:

June 13: Receive 33 extra rewards points with any purchase

June 14: Enjoy a $1 MOD No Name Cake

June 15: Earn triple rewards on any purchase

June 16: Enjoy a $2 Cheesy Garlic Bread

June 17: All beverages $1 (beer and wine excluded)

June 18: MOD will support Feeding America, donating three meals for every purchase made

June 19: All MOD-size pizzas are $3.33

Free Pizza for a Year

Each time MOD Rewards members redeem a deal from June 13-19, they will be entered for a chance to win free pizza for a year. Each redemption counts as one entry. Three winners will be selected.

**The term system-wide refers to all company-operated and licensed store locations. The trademarks MOD, MOD Pizza, and the MOD Shield, are owned by MOD Super Fast Pizza, LLC.

ABOUT MOD PIZZA

MOD Pizza is a purpose-led, people-first brand founded in Seattle in 2008 by serial entrepreneurs Scott and Ally Svenson. As the pioneer of the fast-casual pizza category, MOD introduced speed, individual style, and compelling value to the world of pizza. The Company serves individual artisan-style pizzas and salads that are made on demand, allowing customers to create their own pizzas and salads with any combination of over 40 toppings and sauces, all for one incredible price. Today, MOD is the largest fast casual pizza concept and one of the fastest growing restaurant brands in North America. With over 500 stores across 29 states and Canada, MOD is committed to creating not only a cool place to eat, but an inspired place to work by providing community and opportunity to over 10,000 Squad members. For more information, please visit http://www.modpizza.com or connect with the brand via Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220613005864/en/

Media:

Charlotte Wayte

MOD Pizza

[email protected]

Source: MOD Super Fast Pizza Holdings, LLC
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BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Regulatory News:

NOXXON Pharma N.V. (Euronext Growth Paris: ALNOX), a biotechnology company focused on improving cancer treatments by targeting the tumor microenvironment (TME), announced today it has entered into a material transfer agreement with the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to further explore the effects of NOXXONs lead compounds, the CXCL12 inhibitor NOX-A12 and the CCL2 inhibitor NOX-E36, individually and combined, on brain tumors.

The research program will be led by Mark R. Gilbert, M.D., Chief of the Neuro-Oncology Branch at the National Cancer Institutes Center for Cancer Research (NCI/CCR), part of the NIH. Under the agreement, NOXXON will supply NOX-A12 and mNOX-E361 to the NCI, which will conduct preclinical testing in different combinations with immunomodulatory treatments, including immune checkpoint inhibitors. The various combinations will be tested in an array of experiments in three murine brain cancer models, with extensive and detailed characterization of the tumor microenvironment.

We are proud and excited to be establishing this partnership with NCI to deepen our understanding of our lead compounds, NOX-A12 and NOX-E36, in brain tumors. By using three different brain cancer models with very distinct immunological characteristics, this research will greatly improve the understanding of the effect of our compounds on the tumor biology. The work is also expected to deliver insights into whether and how our CXCL12 and CCL2 antagonist can be synergistic with other approaches in altering the brain tumor microenvironment, with the aim of facilitating a relevant anti-tumor immune reaction, said Aram Mangasarian, CEO of NOXXON.

NOX-A12 is being investigated in the Phase 1/2 GLORIA dose-escalation study in brain cancer (glioblastoma) patients, top-line data from which were presented at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, taking place in Chicago, Illinois, US, on June 5, 2022. NCI is not participating in this clinical study.

About NOXXON

NOXXONs oncology-focused pipeline acts on the tumor microenvironment (TME) and the cancer immunity cycle by breaking the tumor protection barrier and blocking tumor repair. By neutralizing chemokines in the TME, NOXXONs approach works in combination with other forms of treatment to weaken tumor defenses against the immune system and enable greater therapeutic impact. NOXXONs lead program NOX-A12 has delivered final top-line data from a Keytruda combination trial in metastatic colorectal and pancreatic cancer patients published at the ESMO conference in September 2020 and in July 2021 the company announced its Phase 2 study, OPTIMUS, to further evaluate safety and efficacy of NOX-A12 in combination with Mercks Keytruda and two different chemotherapy regimens as second-line therapy in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. NOXXON is also studying NOX-A12 in brain cancer in combination with radiotherapy which has been granted orphan drug status in the US and EU for the treatment of certain brain cancers. GLORIA, a trial of NOX-A12 in combination with radiotherapy in newly diagnosed brain cancer patients who will not benefit clinically from standard chemotherapy has delivered top-line data from all three dose-escalation cohorts showing consistent tumor reductions and objective tumor responses. Additionally, GLORIA has been expanded to assess the benefit of NOX-A12 with other treatment combinations, radiotherapy + bevacizumab and radiotherapy + pembrolizumab. The companys second clinical-stage asset NOX-E36 is a Phase 2 TME asset targeting the innate immune system. NOXXON plans to test NOXE36 in patients with solid tumors. Further information can be found at: www.noxxon.com.

Keytruda is a registered trademark of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp.

Visit NOXXON on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About the GLORIA Study

GLORIA (NCT04121455) is NOXXONs dose-escalation, phase 1/2 study of NOX-A12 in combination with irradiation in first-line partially resected or unresected glioblastoma (brain cancer) patients with unmethylated MGMT promoter (resistant to standard chemotherapy). GLORIA further evaluates safety and efficacy of NOX-A12 three additional arms combining NOX-A12 with: A. radiotherapy in patients with complete tumor resection; B. radiotherapy and bevacizumab; and C. radiotherapy and pembrolizumab.

About the OPTIMUS Study

OPTIMUS (NCT04901741) is NOXXONs open-label two-arm phase 2 study of NOX-A12 combined with pembrolizumab and nanoliposomal irinotecan/5-FU/leucovorin or gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel in microsatellite-stable metastatic pancreatic cancer patients.

Disclaimer

Translations of any press release into languages other than English are intended solely as a convenience to the non-English-reading audience. The company has attempted to provide an accurate translation of the original text in English, but due to the nuances in translating into another language, slight differences may exist. Certain statements in this communication contain formulations or terms referring to the future or future developments, as well as negations of such formulations or terms, or similar terminology. These are described as forward-looking statements. In addition, all information in this communication regarding planned or future results of business segments, financial indicators, developments of the financial situation or other financial or statistical data contains such forward-looking statements. The company cautions prospective investors not to rely on such forward-looking statements as certain prognoses of actual future events and developments. The company is neither responsible nor liable for updating such information, which only represents the state of affairs on the day of publication.

1 NOX-E36 being not active in rodents; the surrogate Spiegelmer mNOX-E36 which binds and inactivates mouse and rat CCL2 will be used for these experiments.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220612005011/en/

For more information, please contact:



NOXXON Pharma N.V.

Aram Mangasarian, Ph.D.

Chief Executive Officer

Tel. +49 (0) 30 726247 0

[email protected]



Investor and Media Relations:



LifeSci Advisors

Guillaume van Renterghem

Tel. +41 (0) 76 735 01 31

[email protected]



NewCap

Arthur Rouille

Tel. +33 (0) 1 44 71 00 15

[email protected]

Source: NOXXON Pharma N.V.
More information available at www.ProtectFujitec.com

HONG KONG & TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Oasis Management Company Ltd. (Oasis) is the manager to funds that own over 9.7% of Fujitec Co. Ltd. (Fujitec or the Company).

After independent proxy advisory firms ISS and Glass Lewis both published opinions recommending that shareholders of Fujitec vote against President Uchiyamas reelection at the upcoming AGM, Fujitec announced superficial measures it says will strengthen Fujitecs corporate governance (the June 8 release).

Oasis is once again shocked by President Uchiyamas attempt to issue a hasty press release and declare that Fujitec has no governance failings, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and on top of the many questions that the Company still refuses to answer. The Companys willingness to maintain President Uchiyamas narrative without conducting a truly independent investigation demonstrates the scope of his power over Fujitec. Shareholders must end his absolute control by voting against President Uchiyama at the upcoming AGM on June 23.

We believe the superficial measures noted in the latest Fujitec release are either misleading, ineffectual, or simply untrue, as follows:

Fujitecs June 8 release states that in light of Oasiss findings, the Board of Directors have  reconfirmed the basic policy that the Company will not conduct related party transactions in principle. (emphasis added)



This does not appear to be true. First, Fujitec has never before mentioned a basic policy against conducting any related party transactions. Second, if there were such a basic policy, then President Uchiyama has clearly breached it numerous times without consequence.



Fujitec claims that the appointment of an independent director as chairman will also improve governance.



The Company, however, has nominated Shigeru Yamazoe, who is one of the two directors that led the superficial, non-independent and ineffectual investigation into President Uchiyama. Mr. Yamazoes whitewashing of President Uchiyamas corporate governance abuses demonstrates that he will remain under President Uchiyamas control and will not act independently in the best interests of all of Fujitecs stakeholders.



Fujitec also claims that governance will be strengthened under the leadership of the Nomination and Compensation Committee.



However, this Committee consists of the same two directors -- Shigeru Yamazoe and Nobuki Sugita -- and another internal director who led the flawed so-called investigation into President Uchiyama. We believe that these directors are under the heavy influence of President Uchiyama and shareholders cannot rely on them to strengthen governance.



The Company also claims that expanding the ratio of independent directors from 56% to 60% will strengthen governance.



This could be true, if a truly independent director were to be appointed. However, Fujitec has nominated Kaori Oishi, a partner of Kitahama Law Firm, as the new outside director. Fujitec has had a long-term relationship with Kitahama Law Firm. Terumichi Saeki, a partner at Kitahama Law Firm, has served on Fujitecs audit and supervisory committee from 2009 to 2014, and as a director of Fujitec from 2014 until 2021. Fujitec has been an important client for Kitahama Law Firm for a long time, according to Fujitec disclosure materials. Nominating a director with a long-standing relationship with Fujitec who will not be truly independent will not serve to strengthen governance.

Fujitecs latest claims that these superficial measures will improve its governance demonstrates that the Company is not taking corporate governance seriously and continues to elevate President Uchiyamas interests over those of all other stakeholders. Fujitec has failed to take any responsibility or carry out a genuine investigation into the related-party transactions. Instead, the Company has published questionable and misleading statements about rapidly implemented measures and investigations which, in Oasiss view, are attempts to mislead shareholders. Instead of addressing previous corporate governance abuses, the Company has added many more.

We believe that the only way to improve corporate governance at Fujitec is to vote AGAINST President Uchiyama at the AGM on June 23.

All investors are encouraged to review our detailed materials available at www.protectfujitec.com, which include questions for shareholders to ask the Company.

About Oasis

Oasis Management Company Ltd. manages private investment funds focused on opportunities in a wide array of asset classes across countries and sectors. Oasis was founded in 2002 by Seth H. Fischer, who leads the firm as its Chief Investment Officer. More information about Oasis is available at https://oasiscm.com. Oasis has adopted the Japan FSAs Principles for Responsible Institutional Investors (a/k/a Japan Stewardship Code) and in line with those principles, Oasis monitors and engages with our investee companies.

Disclaimer

The information contained in this press release (referred to as the "Document") is an information resource for shareholders in Fujitec offered by Oasis, the investment manager to funds that are shareholders of Fujitec (the "Oasis Funds").

The Document is not intended to solicit or seek shareholders' agreements to jointly exercise voting rights with Oasis. Shareholders that have an agreement to jointly exercise their voting rights are regarded as Joint Holders under the Japanese large shareholding disclosure rules and they must file notification of their aggregate share ownership with the relevant Japanese authority for public disclosure under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. Oasis does not intend to be subjected to such notification requirement. The Document exclusively represents the opinions, interpretations, and estimates of Oasis.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220612005013/en/

Media

Taylor Hall

[email protected]

Japan Media

Ashton Consulting Limited

Tadashi Shiokai and Yuzo Iwaya

Phone: +81 03-5425-7220

Email: [email protected]

Source: Oasis Management Company Ltd.
The Charles Schwab Corporation today announced it has reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve an investigation into historical disclosures related to the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios (SIP) advisory solution. The company issued the following statement:

Schwab has resolved a matter with the SEC regarding certain historic disclosures and advertising related to Schwab Intelligent Portfolios between 2015-2018, and we are pleased to put this behind us. The SEC Order acknowledges that Schwab addressed these matters years ago.

In entering the settlement, Schwab neither admits nor denies the allegations in the SECs Order. We believe resolving the matter in this way is in the best interests of our clients, company, and stockholders as it allows us to remain focused on helping our clients invest for the future. As always, we are committed to earning our clients trust every day and work diligently to maintain the highest standards for professional conduct throughout our organization.

SIP is a key component of our advisory lineup and an important way to help clients invest for the future in a diversified way. SIP was designed to provide clients competitive returns across different market environments, and the ability to help weather volatility or challenging market conditions over time. The service recommends a diversified portfolio based on a clients goals, time horizon and risk profile, and keeps the allocation consistent through automated rebalancing as markets fluctuate to help a client stay focused on their longer-term financial goals. We are proud to have built a product that allows investors to elect not to pay an advisory fee in return for allowing us to hold a portion of the proceeds in cash, and we do not hide the fact that our firm generates revenue for the services we provide. We believe that cash is a key component of any sound investment strategy through different market cycles.

Schwab has been democratizing investing for almost half a century, and SIP is a direct reflection of this focus. With its innovative approach and focus on clients individual needs, SIP has transformed the investment advisory space, making it possible for more investors to access the benefits of professional money management in a simpler manner. Since the debut of SIP in 2015, it has delivered strong performance aligned with each portfolios risk profile and asset allocation. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have benefited from SIPs automated, diversified portfolios, which deliver value, sophistication, tailored solutions and 24/7 support.

The settlement with the SEC involves Schwab Wealth Investment Advisory, Inc., Charles Schwab Investment Advisory, Inc. and Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. Under the terms of the settlement, Schwab will pay $186.5 million to resolve the matter, which will be deposited into a Fair Fund account for distribution to affected investors. Schwab will also retain an Independent Compliance Consultant to review CS&Co.s and CSIAs current supervisory, compliance, and other policies and procedures concerning CS&Co.s and CSIAs SIP-related disclosures, advertising, and marketing communications with clients or potential clients.

As previously disclosed in a Form 8-K filing dated July 1, 2021, Schwabs second quarter 2021 financial results included a liability and related non-deductible charge of $200 million in connection with the settlement.
Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH) and Radisson Hotel Group today announced that Choice Hotels has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the franchise business, operations and intellectual property of Radisson Hotel Group Americas for approximately $675 million. The addition of Radisson's nine hotel brands in the Americas is the latest chapter in Choice's successful strategy to expand its growth opportunities by bringing the company's best-in-class franchising platform to adjacent hotel segments and to a new set of hotel owners. The added 624 hotels with over 68,000 rooms expand Choice Hotels' presence in the upscale and core upper-midscale hospitality segments, particularly in the West Coast and Midwest of the United States.

The acquisition of some of the industry's most recognized brands extends Choice Hotels' customer reach in the upscale segments, as well as to more business travelers and a broader demographic within Choice's core leisure segment. The combination strengthens Choice's ability to provide a more holistic product offering across segments and continue to capitalize on consumer trends expected to fuel future demand for travel such as remote work, increasing retirements and road trips.

The transaction brings Choice's industry-leading RevPAR (revenue per available room) growth performance to a new set of franchisees and hotel investors and provides new growth opportunities to expand Choice Hotels' presence to additional locations in Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. Consistent with Choice Hotels' long-term strategy of growing in higher revenue segments, the Radisson brands typically have larger room counts and are located in higher RevPAR markets, driving higher royalty revenue per hotel.

Patrick Pacious, President and Chief Executive Officer of Choice Hotels, said, "Choice has a well-established history of smart acquisitions in new segments where our world-class franchising engine can spur future growth. This transaction brings together two highly complementary businesses, enhancing our guest offerings in the core upper-midscale hospitality segments, while extending our reach into the upper upscale and upscale full-service segments and in higher revenue geographic markets. We are confident that guests and franchisees will significantly benefit by combining these two exceptional sets of brands."

The transaction unlocks significant potential value for the Radisson brands in the Americas. Choice Hotels has a deep familiarity with the Americas franchisee community and will bring a strong commitment to driving the success of Radisson franchisees, many of whom already have franchise agreements with Choice Hotels.

Pacious continued, "Our long track record of establishing mutually beneficial relationships with our franchisees has resulted in a best-in-class voluntary retention rate, and those franchisees are the source of a majority of our new hotel development. Our existing and new hotel owners will benefit from the improved business delivery capabilities of the combined companies, including our award-winning loyalty program, proprietary tools and emerging technologies that will enable them to capture more business, lower their hotel operating costs, reach new customers and respond to evolving industry trends."

Federico J. Gonzalez, CEO of Radisson Hotel Group, said, "Since the introduction of our strategic transformation plan in 2017, Radisson Hotel Group has been committed to the global success of the Radisson brands and expanding the overall footprint of our global operations. We have achieved strong results, doubling the number of rooms signed per year in EMEA and APAC, confirming Radisson Blu as the largest upper-upscale brand for over 10 years and establishing Radisson as the upscale brand with the largest growth in EMEA. We are confident that Choice Hotels is the owner with the right long-term strategy, resources and management team to successfully accelerate the growth of the Radisson business in the Americas. Radisson Hotel Group will continue to leverage the strength of operational excellence to set our business in EMEA and APAC on a significant growth path with the aim of doubling the portfolio in those markets by 2025. Together with Choice, we will work to ensure that customers continue to experience the highest levels of service and a superior brand experience."

Tom Buoy, interim CEO of Radisson Hotel Group Americas, said, "Our associates have been working hard to solidify the power of our brands, build a better commercial engine and offer best-in-class solutions to franchisees and customers. We are very pleased that the Radisson family of brands in the Americas will join Choice Hotels. We believe that this acquisition will drive growth in a highly competitive market and enable stronger performance for our franchisees."

Transaction Details

Choice Hotels will acquire the franchise business, operations and intellectual property of Radisson Hotels in the United States, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, for approximately $675 million, inclusive of the real estate value of three owned assets. The acquisition will be funded with cash on hand and revolver borrowings. Radisson Hotel Group Americas comprises the franchise agreements, operations and intellectual property of Radisson Hotels in the United States, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, and includes 10 Radisson Blu hotels, 130 Radisson hotels, 9 Radisson Individuals, 1 Park Plaza hotel, 4 Radisson RED hotels, 453 Country Inn & Suites by Radisson and 17 Park Inn by Radisson hotels, as well as the Radisson Inn & Suites and Radisson Collection brands. Choice Hotels will independently own and control the brands in the Americas and will work with the Radisson Hotel Group to drive the growth, continuity and success of the brands. The transaction is not anticipated to change Choice Hotels' current capital allocation strategy related to dividend payment policy and planned share repurchases.

The transaction has been unanimously approved by Choice Hotels' Board of Directors and is expected to close in the second half of 2022, pending regulatory approvals and customary closing requirements.

Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC is serving as financial advisor to Choice Hotels on the transaction, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher is serving as legal advisor. Baker McKenzie is serving as legal advisor to Radisson Hotel Group.
BOSS Products, a division of The Toro Company (NYSE: TTC), today announced that it has acquired the liquid deicing assets of Voigt Smith Innovation (VSI), a privately-held leading manufacturer of liquid deicing equipment. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

VSI is known for its industry-leading liquid deicing equipment for snow and ice contractors offering both brine makers and applicators, and smart-connected technologies. Based in Le Center, Minnesota, VSI has grown in the liquid deicing market over the past several years through product innovation, education, and industry expertise. As part of the acquisition, the knowledgeable VSI staff will join the BOSS team.

The addition of VSI products to the BOSS Snowplow portfolio strategically positions us to expand our support of snow and ice contractors to include liquid deicing equipment and complimentary support staff to advance customer opportunity in liquid deicing, said Jody Christy, vice president, BOSS Snowplow. The combination of VSI and BOSS products is aligned with our strategic priorities, providing quality solutions, innovative advancements, and service to our customers.

Application efficiencies and environmental opportunities make liquid deicing an appealing proposition for snow and ice contractors, said Jordan Smith, of VSI. As liquid deicing grows among contractors, the expertise and credibility of VSI will enable BOSS to meet customer demand. We believe the reputation, strong network, and resources of BOSS as a leader in the snow and ice removal market will enable continued growth in the market.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Binance is seen on their exhibition stand at the Delta Summit, Malta's official Blockchain and Digital Innovation event promoting cryptocurrency, in Ta' Qali, Malta October 3, 2019. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi/File Photo

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Binance U.S. and its CEO were sued on Monday by a U.S. investor who alleges the cryptocurrency exchange falsely marketed Terra USD as a safe asset ahead of the so-called stablecoin's collapse in value last month.

Stablecoins are digital tokens pegged to the value of traditional assets, such as the U.S. dollar, and are popular as safe havens in times of turmoil in crypto markets. But Terra USD's value plunged last month, breaking its 1:1 dollar peg and contributing to a tumble in other crypto assets like Bitcoin.

In the lawsuit against Binance and Chief Executive Brian Shroder, Utah resident Jeffrey Lockhart said Binance falsely advertised Terra USD as "safe" and backed by fiat currency, when in fact it was an unregistered security.

Lockhart said Binance's failure to register with the U.S. government as a securities exchange limits disclosure about assets traded on the platform, harming investors.

"Binance and other exchanges were critical enablers of this devastating failure to comply with the securities laws," said Tibor Nagy of law firm Dontzin Nagy & Fleissig, which represents Lockhart. "Crypto exchanges made massive profits by flouting securities laws and causing real harm to real people."

A Binance spokesperson said the exchange is registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) - a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department - and complies with all applicable regulations.

"These assertions are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously," the spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the exchange will delist Terra USD, a decision made before the lawsuit was filed.

Lockhart is seeking to have himself and other investors who bought Terra on Binance registered as a class.

In a separate lawsuit in 2020, investors accused Binance of selling unregistered tokens and failing to register as an exchange or broker-dealer.

A federal judge in Manhattan dismissed that case in March, stating that the investors had waited until too long after their losses to sue and that U.S. securities law did not apply because Binance was not a domestic exchange. The investors are appealing.

Lockhart's lawsuit, by contrast, targets Binance's U.S. unit and comes just weeks after Terra USD's collapse.

His suit comes after a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators last week proposed legislation to have the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), not the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), play the primary role in regulating crypto.

The CFTC is generally seen as friendlier toward cryptocurrencies, as the SEC has found crypto assets should be seen as securities.

Cryptocurrencies continued their slide on Monday, with Bitcoin touching an 18-month low and No. 2 token ether tumbling as much as 18%.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York;Editing by Noeleen Walder and David Evans)
FILE PHOTO: A model of the all-new Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup is parked in front of the Ford Motor Company World Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, U.S., April 26, 2022. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Chrysler-parent Stellantis NV and Toyota Motor North America on Monday urged Congress to lift a cap on the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit, citing higher costs to produce zero-emission vehicles, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

The CEOs -- GM's Mary Barra, Ford's Jim Farley, Stellantis' Carlos Tavares and Toyota North America CEO Tetsuo Ogawa -- said in the joint letter to congressional leaders that they have pledged to invest over $170 billion through 2030 to bolster electric vehicles development, production and sale.

The current $7,500 tax credit phases out after a manufacturer hits 200,000 vehicles sold. Both GM and Tesla have already hit the cap and are no longer eligible for the consumer tax credits.

"We ask that the per-(automaker) cap be removed, with a sunset date set for a time when the EV market is more mature," the automakers said in the letter.

"Recent economic pressures and supply chain constraints are increasing the cost of manufacturing electrified vehicles which, in turn, puts pressure on the price to consumers."

The letter comes amid growing concerns among auto industry executives that the window is closing for U.S. Congress to extend electric vehicle tax credits given Republicans may retake control of one or both houses of Congress next year.

Last week, Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford made an unannounced trip to Capitol Hill to make the case for extending the tax credit.

In April, Senator Joe Manchin, a key Democrat, questioned the need to extend electric vehicle tax credits in the face of strong consumer demand and Chinese production of battery components.

"There's a waiting list for EVs right now with the fuel price at $4. But they still want us to throw $5,000 or $7,000 or $12,000 credit to buy electric vehicles. It makes no sense to me whatsoever," Manchin said. "When we can't produce enough product for the people that want it and we're still going to pay them to take it -- it's absolutely ludicrous in my mind."

Last year, many Democrats in Congress and President Joe Biden proposed boosting EV tax credits to up to $12,500 -- including a $4,500 incentive for union-made, U.S. assembled vehicles.

Manchin earlier opposed the union-only incentive, as did Toyota.

The new letter makes no reference to the union incentive.

Biden also backed a 30% credit for commercial electric vehicles and a $4,000 used EV tax credit and making the current credit refundable at the point of sale.

He also called for phasing out credits for electric vehicles made outside the United States, which brought furious opposition from Canada and other car-producing countries.

Toyota said in April it expected its credits would expire by the end of 2022 after it hits the cap. Ford sold nearly 160,000 electric vehicles through the end of 2021 and could hit the cap this year.

(Reporting by David Shepardson;editing by Deepa Babington)
ROAD TOWN, British Virgin Islands, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aura Minerals Inc. (TSX: ORA, B3: AURA33) (Aura or the Company) announced today that the board of directors of the Company (the Board) has approved an amendment to its dividend policy (Dividend Policy), with the intention of declaring and paying dividends semi-annually.

Under the Dividend Policy, the Company will determine a semi-annual cash dividend in an aggregate amount equal to 20% of its estimated Adjusted EBITDA1 for the relevant six months less sustaining capital expenditures and exploration capital expenditures for the same period.

Dividends are expected to be declared and paid twice a year starting in 2022, based on the results and capital expenditures expected for the applicable six-month period, with a record date on the last month of each such period. As such, any dividend payable under the Dividend Policy will be declared in June and December of each year. The declaration of dividends under the Dividend Policy is subject to the discretion of the Companys board of directors, having regard to the best interests of the Company and the limitations imposed by the solvency tests contained in the Companys memorandum of association and articles of association and other requirements of applicable corporate law. Nothing in the Dividend Policy shall restrict the discretion of the Companys board of directors from authorizing sustaining capital expenditures or exploration capital expenditures that the board of directors deems to be in the best interests of the Company. These expenditures may limit future amounts of dividends payable under the Dividend Policy.

In addition to the amendment to the Dividend Policy, the Board has declared and approved the payment of a dividend (the Dividend) of US$0.14 per common share (approximately US$10 million in total). The Dividend is in respect of and is based on Auras expected financial results for the six months ending June 30, 2022.

The Dividend will be paid on June 28, 2022 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on June 23, 2022 (Record Date). Shareholders of record as of the Record Date whose address on the books of TSX Trust Company, the Companys registrar and transfer agent, is in Canada will receive the Canadian dollar equivalent of the Dividend, based on the market exchange rate available to TSX Trust Company on the day before the payment date, net of fees. All other shareholders of record as of the Record Date will receive the Dividend in US dollars.

Holders of the Companys Brazilian Depositary Receipts as of Record Date are expected to receive payment by July 7, 2022 and will receive the Brazilian Reais equivalent of the Dividend, based on a market exchange rate to be disclosed in a future press release, in advance of its payment date.

The Dividend is not subject to withholding taxes at the time of payment by the Company.

Rodrigo Barbosa, President & CEO, comments: I am very proud to announce changes in our dividend policy. Dividends will now be paid twice per year, starting with this first payment in June. Thanks to our high returns project, fast paybacks, on top of strong cash flow from our existing operations, Aura has a unique combination of growth and dividends while maintaining a low leverage. We are on track to produce over 400,000 / Oz by 2024 (50% growth compared with 2021) and, in the meantime, return value to our shareholders through dividends.

Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements, as defined in applicable securities laws (collectively, forward-looking statements) which include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, including the expected timing of the Dividend; expected production levels in Q2 2022 and metal prices received in respect thereof; the Companys sustaining capital expenditures and exploration capital expenditures for Q2 2022; the further potential of the Companys properties; and the ability of the Company to achieve its longer-term outlook and the anticipated timing and results thereof.

Known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the Companys ability to predict or control, could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Specific reference is made to the most recent Annual Information Form on file with certain Canadian provincial securities regulatory authorities for a discussion of some of the factors underlying forward-looking statements.

All forward-looking statements herein are qualified by this cautionary statement. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information or future events or otherwise, except as may be required by law. If the Company does update one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that it will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements.

About Aura 360 Mining

Aura is focused on mining in complete terms  thinking holistically about how its business impacts and benefits every one of our stakeholders: our company, our shareholders, our employees, and the countries and communities we serve. We call this 360 Mining.

Aura is a mid-tier gold and copper production company focused on the development and operation of gold and base metal projects in the Americas. The Companys producing assets include the San Andres gold mine in Honduras, the Ernesto/Pau-a -Pique gold mine in Brazil and the Aranzazu copper-gold-silver mine in Mexico. In addition, the Company has two additional gold projects in Brazil, Almas and Matupa, one gold project in Colombia, Tolda Fria and the Gold Road mine in Arizona, United States, currently in care & maintenance.

For further information, please visit Auras website at www.auraminerals.com or contact:

Rodrigo BarbosaPresident & CEO305-239-9332

1 Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure, is not a standardized financial measure under IFRS, and may not be comparable to similar measures disclosed by other issuers. See the disclosure under the heading Non-GAAP Performance Measures in the Companys managements discussion and analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2022 (the Q1 2022 MD&A"), which is available under the Companys profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to income in section 17.A of the Q1 MD&A is incorporated by reference herein.

Source: Aura Minerals Inc




Bilia has entered into an agreement to acquire M Bilar Group. The business is conducted in five facilities located in Vasteras, Eskilstuna, Borlange, Orebro and Mora. M Bilar Group consists of four full-service facilities with sales and service and one service facility for BMW and Mini. The deal is expected to take place on November 1, 2022. The agreement is conditional a due diligence of the business and approval from the Swedish competition authority.

M Bilar Group's sales amounted to approximately SEK 1.3 Bn in 2021, with an average operating margin for the past three years of 4.5 per cent. The number of employees were 101 at the end of 2021. M Bilar Group's capital employed plus agreed surplus values amounts to approximately SEK 400 M.

The CEO and owner of the business will remain in the company.

Per Avander, Bilia's President and CEO, comments:

It is a pleasure to complement Bilia with such a well-managed company. The operations of M Bilar Group involve additional facilities in geographically good areas for us, where we will offer customers a high-quality service.

Joakim Walde, M Bilar Group's CEO and owner, comments:

We are very positive to become a part of the Bilia family. The car industry is facing many challenges and opportunities, and to become part of a larger group like Bilia, will affect both employees and the company in a very positive way. This means that we, as a company, have the opportunity to develop together with Bilia, take part in their competence and experience and also share our own.

Johanna Kriisa, CEO BMW Sweden, comments:

With a strong customer focus, M Bilar has been a successful BMW partner. With Bilia's professionalism and broad experience of the automotive industry, we see good synergies in the acquisition. We now look forward to a continued productive collaboration with Bilia.

Gothenburg, June 13, 2022

Bilia AB (publ)

For information please contact:

Carl Fredrik Ewetz, Investor Relations, +46 (0)10 497 07 73, [email protected]

Per Avander, Managing Director and CEO, +46 (0)10 497 70 00, [email protected]

Kristina Franzen, CFO, +46 (0)10 497 73 40, [email protected]





Facts about the Bilia Group

Bilia is one of Europes largest car dealers with a leading position within service and sales of cars, transport vehicles and trucks. Bilia has about 150 facilities in Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg and Belgium. Bilia sells cars of the brand Volvo, BMW, Toyota,

Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Lexus, MINI, Porsche, Nissan, Dacia, Smart and Alpine and transport vehicles of the brand Renault, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Dacia and trucks of the brand Mercedes-Benz.

Bilia has today a fully expanded business with sales of new cars, e-commerce, spare parts and store sales, service and repair workshops, tyres and car glass and financing, insurance, car washes, fuel stations and auto salvage under the same roof, which gives a unique offer.

Bilia reported a turnover of about SEK 35 bn in 2021 and had about 5,300 employees.

Attachment
OTTAWA, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Corel, a leader in professional creativity and productivity solutions, today announced it has acquired Awingu, a provider of secure remote access technology, for an undisclosed amount. Awingu will become a part of the Parallels brand portfolio. The combination of Awingu and the Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) platform will give end users added flexibility and freedom they need to securely work from anywhere, at any time, on any device, or OS. Parallels, part of the Corel group, is an all-in-one application delivery and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution that provides remote access to virtual applications and desktops delivered through on-premises, hybrid, or cloud-based environments.

Ideal for both mid-market and large enterprises, Awingu provides a secure way for organizations to facilitate bring your own device (BYOD) or work from anywhere policies through its easy-to-use and secure unified workspace. With this technology acquisition, the Parallels RAS platform will become a one-stop solution that gives customers the ability to easily access legacy and cloud-native applications and files, while alleviating the worry of data security and infrastructure complexity from IT teams.

The future of work is now; we are living it. The pandemic further accelerated the need for organizations to determine and shift their remote and hybrid work infrastructures. Now, organizations are figuring out how they can cater to the flexibility that employees want with their workplaces while also ensuring secure and efficient access, said Prashant Ketkar, Chief Technology and Product Officer, Corel. Were committed to helping organizations navigate this shift in the workplace, and with the addition of Awingu were one step closer to improving the experience for every stakeholder that interacts with our products.

Awingu will continue to operate alongside Parallels offerings to deliver secure remote workspaces for customers in healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, and telco verticals. Additionally, Awingu will expand its integration with Parallels to accelerate innovation and provide a unified capability for secure remote access to both legacy and cloud-native applications. This will provide a range of solutions for customers leveraging on-premises assets, hybrid architectures, and any cloud.

Im excited to join the Corel organization with the Awingu team. Both companies have a customer-first mindset and share the mission to ensure a seamless, secure, and effective workspace no matter where an employee is located, said Walter van Uytven, CEO, Awingu. "Together with Parallels RAS, well bring a broader, richer set of solutions across the secure remote desktop and app streaming industry to our customers. The Awingu team, including CEO Walter van Uytven, will join Corel, bringing their strategic and engineering expertise to the organization to help accelerate product roadmaps.

Unlike most solutions in the market, Awingu does not require agents on the server or software to be installed on end-user devices. Awingu is clientless and runs entirely in the browser, where it aggregates all company files and applications, including SaaS and legacy Windows or Linux applications into one online workspace with one login. The ability to aggregate traffic provides an audit mechanism to secure actions in remote workspaces, enabling administrators to implement a zero trust security solution at the edge. This ease of use and simplified deployment enables customers to implement Awingu in hours, not days, empowering IT departments of all sizes to enable secure remote workspaces for their end-users. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, Awingu has been named a Gartner Cool Vendor in unified workspaces. Awingu is available in over 20 countries and partners with organizations like Microsoft, Blackberry, and Barracuda and serves customers such as the Port of Antwerp, Peloton, UDLAP University, and ConvergeOne.

Corel is a KKR portfolio company. Awingu was previously backed by Pamica NV, an investment company of Awingus former Executive Chairman, Michel Akkermans.

About CorelCorel products enable millions of connected knowledge workers around the world to do great work faster. Offering some of the industry's best-known software brands, we give individuals and teams the power to create, collaborate, and deliver impressive results. Our success is driven by an unwavering commitment to deliver a broad portfolio of innovative applications  including CorelDRAW, MindManager, Parallels, and WinZip  to inspire users and help them achieve their goals. To learn more about Corel, please visit www.corel.com.

About AwinguAwingu is a browser-based "Unified Workspace" that allows users to work and collaborate from virtually anywhere using any device compatible with HTML5 browsers. Awingu offers businesses the ease and convenience of platform-independent mobility and Bring Your Own Device. Awingu requires zero client software installation, making IT administration extremely simple. Awingu is headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, with offices in New York, United States.

Media contact:Beatrice Vogel, Director Global PR, [email protected], www.corel.com

 2022 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved. Corel, the Corel Logo, the Corel balloon logo, CorelDRAW, MindManager, and WinZip are trademarks of Corel Corporation. Parallels is a trademark of Parallels International GmbH. Awingu is a trademark of Awingu NV. All other trademarks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c69de4dd-293e-4511-ad1a-dc68a1e67193

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ae385943-494c-4ee5-b4d4-3de23fa6f4d4

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/25034b6c-dedf-4958-8110-929ef82fdb6c

Walter van Uytven, CEO at Awingu The Awingu team, including CEO Walter van Uytven, will join Corel Corel acquires Awingu, a provider of secure remote access technology Corel will now accelerate its secure remote workspace offering Prashant Ketkar, CTO at Corel Ketkar is excited to be bringing together the power of Parallels RAS and Awingu

Source: Corel
TORONTO, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eloro Resources Ltd. (TSX-V: ELO; OTCQX: ELRRF; FSE: P2QM) (Eloro, or the Company) is pleased to provide an update on its preliminary metallurgical testwork program for the Iska Iska silver-tin polymetallic project in the Potosi Department, southern Bolivia. The work program including testwork for development of a preliminary metallurgical flowsheet and preliminary mineralogical characterization, is being carried out by Blue Coast Research Ltd. (Blue Coast) based in Parksville, BC. The objective is to develop the preliminary flotation flowsheet to maximize lead, zinc and precious metals into saleable concentrates in the Santa Barbara polymetallic deposit and to develop a preliminary flowsheet for tin in both the Santa Barbara and the deeper tin-dominant mineralization.

Blue Coast has world-class metallurgical testing, analytical services, flowsheet development, consulting, and operational support. Their excellent team has been augmented with the addition of Mr. Mike Hallewell, C.Eng., a senior independent mineral processing consultant based in Cornwall, England, who has extensive specialist knowledge in the recovery of tin at mining operations and exploration projects worldwide.

The metallurgical testing is being directed by Richard Gowans, P.Eng., Principal Metallurgist for Micon International Limited, who is an independent Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101.

Tom Larsen, CEO of Eloro, commented: The metallurgical testing program at Blue Coast is progressing well. The initial focus of their work was on the Santa Barbara polymetallic mineralization for Ag, Zn and Pb recovery based on samples from discovery hole DHK15 and hole DHK-18. The tin-rich zone in hole DSB-06 was also selected for testing but at that time it was uncertain how this mineralization was connected to the Santa Barbara polymetallic deposit. However, with further drilling and solid work by our geological and geophysical team, we now know that there is extensive tin mineralization at depth beneath the polymetallic mineralization. Once testing is completed on DSB-06, we will be adding additional samples from tin-rich holes to enable further development of an appropriate flow sheet for tin. While arsenic and other potentially deleterious elements are being tracked during the testwork program, these are not anticipated to be a material issue at the levels in current tests.

Metallurgical Samples

The samples used for the preliminary program completed to date comprise three representative metallurgical samples from existing drill core. The initial three composites are:

Composite drill hole DHK-15, from 131 m to 198 m, mineralized breccia.

Composite drill hole DHK-18, from 76 m to 140 m, mineralized dacitic envelope.

Composite drill hole DSB-06, from 413 m to 477 m, tin-rich mineralized zone.

Approximately 60 m of quarter-core from each drill hole was selected for these three metallurgical composite samples. The head analyses for these three composites are presented in Table 1. It is noted that the arsenic (As) grade is relatively low, being less than = 0.03% for all the three composite samples. Although not anticipated to be a material issue at these levels, the As and other potentially deleterious elements will be tracked during the testwork program.

Table 1: - Metallurgical Sample Head Analyses

Sample ID Au Ag Bi Cd Cu In Pb Zn Sn As Fe S S- ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm % % % ppm % % % DHK-15 0.02 29.6 34 120 114 30 1.21 2.48 0.12 289 2.37 3.51 3.07 DHK-18 0.02 32.1 14 185 370 24 1.01 2.89 0.12 178 3.03 4.49 4.37 DSB-06 0.03 5.80 25 0.6 103 0.01 0.01 0.49 169 4.89 4.10 4.23

Note: ppm = grams per tonne (g/t)

The initial testwork completed by Blue Coast at the end of May 2022 included preliminary mineralogical characterization studies, open circuit sulphide flotation scoping tests and locked cycle flotation tests using composites DHK-15 and 18. The work conducted on DHK-15 and 18 factored into consideration the preliminary test work conducted by the Universidad Tecnica de Oruro on different samples.

The DSB-06 sample is extracted from deeper higher-grade tin mineralization that is seen to replace the polymetallic lead-zinc-silver-tin mineralization type at depth and this sample has become the subsequent focus of the ongoing tin studies at Blue Coast. Additional tin-rich samples will be added for further testing after the initial test program is completed.

Mineralogical Characterization of Metallurgical Composites

The Iska Iska composites DHK-15, DHK-18 and DSB-06 were analyzed using the TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyzer (TIMA), a fully automated analytical scanning electron microscope, to measure bulk mineralogy, sulphide grain size and liberation to support the metallurgical test program. In addition, a suite of electron microprobe analyses was completed on various sulphide and oxide species to better understand overall mineral chemistry and tin deportment.

Sulphide minerals in base metal composites DHK-15 and DHK-18 consisted of mainly sphalerite, galena and pyrite. Sulphide mineral liberation was very good at the test grind of 80% passing (P80) 70 microns and flotation testwork, described below, was able to achieve good lead-zinc separation. Non-sulphide gangue minerals in all composites consisted of quartz, various phyllosilicate minerals including micas, chlorite and kaolinite, and minor Fe oxides.

Cassiterite (a tin oxide mineral) was the dominant tin mineral identified in tin composite DSB-06. Cassiterite was moderately liberated (69% of grains had liberation of 80% or better at the test grind of P80 70 microns). Cassiterite formed middling particles with pyrite, rutile, quartz and iron oxides. Pyrite in DBS-06 was well liberated. Initial flotation testwork, described below, focused on separating pyrite from the cassiterite.

Microprobe analyses were completed on a group of pyrite, sphalerite, galena and cassiterite grains in the metallurgical composites. Tin was identified in trace amounts within the structure of galena and sphalerite in the base metal composites, suggesting that the sulphide concentrates will contain a small amount of tin.

Geometallurgical Characterization

Separate to the testing of the metallurgical composites, a program of integrated mineralogical analysis is underway on a series of core slabs from Hole DSBU-03. This hole (see press release dated March 1, 2022) intersects both base metal and tin mineralization and is being used to develop a strong mineral reference library for the resource. The slabs have received hyperspectral (SWIR/VNIR), XRF and RGB scanning by GeologicAI and are now being prepared for petrographic analysis using TIMA and microXRF mapping. The combined data set will be used as a reference library to support the on-site automated core scanning program.

Lead-Zinc-Silver Flotation

Following a series of batch rougher and cleaner tests where the preliminary flotation circuit was developed, locked cycle tests (LCT) were completed using DHK-15 and DHK-18. A locked cycle flotation test is a series of identical batch flotation tests where recycled material from the previous cycle is added to the appropriate location in the flowsheet in the current cycle. The LCT is a standard method used to simulate continuous operating conditions.

The lead-zinc sequential flowsheet used for the LCTs included primary grinding followed by lead rougher flotation, lead rougher concentrate regrinding and 3 stages of lead cleaner. The lead rougher tailings and lead first cleaner tailings fed the zinc rougher stage, and similar to the lead circuit, the flowsheet included regrinding of zinc rougher concentrate followed by three zinc cleaner stages. The final residue streams were the zinc rougher tailings and zinc first cleaner tailings.

Each LCT comprised 6 cycles where the final cycles were deemed to be relatively stable and the circuit appeared to reach equilibrium. Summaries of the average results from the last 3 cycles for both tests are presented in Tables 2 and 3.

Table 2: Summary of Locked Cycle Test Average Results for Sample DHK-15

Product Wt. % Assays % Distribution Ag(g/t) Pb(%) Zn(%) Fe(%) S(%) Ag Pb Zn Fe S Pb Cl.3 Conc. 2.0 1047 56.7 7.37 8.84 22.6 68.1 86.9 5.9 6.1 13.1 Zn Cl.3 Conc. 4.3 186 1.58 49.6 10.9 34.3 26.5 5.3 87.1 16.6 43.4 Zn Cl.1 Tail 5.2 23 0.58 1.16 19.8 21.7 4.0 2.3 2.4 36.3 33.0 Zn Ro. Tail 88.6 0 0.08 0.13 1.30 0.40 1.4 5.5 4.5 40.9 10.5 Calc. Head 100.0 30 1.28 2.45 2.83 3.39 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

The LCT DHK-15 lead recovery into the final lead concentrate grading 56.7% Pb was 86.9% while the silver grade was 1,047 g/t. The zinc recovery into a final zinc concentrate containing 49.6% Zn was 87.1%. The total silver recovery was 94.6%, including 68.1% and 26.5% into the lead and zinc concentrates, respectively.

Table 3: Summary of Locked Cycle Test Average Results for Sample DHK-18

Product Wt. % Assays % Distribution Ag(g/t) Pb(%) Zn(%) Fe(%) S(%) Ag Pb Zn Fe S Pb Cl.3 Conc. 1.4 1057 56.2 7.10 5.40 18.9 43.5 72.2 3.4 2.2 5.9 Zn Cl.3 Conc. 5.0 258 1.40 51.4 8.27 32.0 37.6 6.4 86.9 12.0 35.2 Zn Cl.1 Tail 9.6 39 1.00 1.36 11.7 11.9 10.9 8.7 4.4 32.4 25.1 Zn Ro. Tail 84.0 3 0.17 0.19 2.21 1.84 8.1 12.6 5.2 53.4 33.8 Calc. Head 100.0 34 1.10 2.96 3.47 4.56 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

The lead recovery for LCT DHK-18 into the final lead concentrate grading 56.2% Pb was 72.2% while the silver grade was 1,057 g/t. The zinc recovery into a final zinc concentrate containing 51.4% zinc was 86.9%. The silver recovery totalled 81.0%, including 43.5% and 37.6% into the lead and zinc concentrates, respectively.

Samples of final concentrate products from each LCT have been submitted for multi-element analyses to assess the distribution of other potential valuable or deleterious components.

The preliminary flotation test results are very encouraging. The results received so far for drill hole sample DHK-15 are considered very good with high lead, zinc and silver recoveries, and although sample DHK-18 results were not quite as good for lead, zinc recovery was high and overall silver distribution into the final products was good.

Acceptable separate lead and zinc concentrates containing significant payable silver that adds considerable value to these products have been produced from both samples. Work will continue at Blue Coast and other metallurgical laboratories to fine tune the flotation conditions to maximize metal recoveries and quality of concentrates produced.

Tin Metallurgy

DSB-06 tin-rich sample contains low levels of lead, zinc and silver-bearing sulphides, the main sulphide mineral present in this sample being pyrite. No stannite (a tin sulphide mineral) is present in this sample; the tin mineralisation consists entirely of cassiterite.

The pyrite to cassiterite ratio in DSB-06 is circa 5:1. The Blue Coast approach has been initially focused on removing the pyrite prior to traditional beneficiation methods of cassiterite that are employed, using gravity followed by tin flotation. The pyrite is well liberated across all size fractions tested and therefore, the preliminary bulk sulphide flotation sulphur recoveries were good.

A preliminary study has identified that grinding the sample generates predominantly fine cassiterite grains that are more amenable to tin flotation technology. Staged comminution options will be considered to minimise fine cassiterite production in conjunction with staged gravity recovery of whatever coarse grained cassiterite is present and recoverable at, as early a stage in the process as possible.

Gravity release analysis by size testwork on bulk sulphide flotation tailings is in progress to identify the amenability of the mineralization to gravity concentration.

One bulk sulphide rougher flotation test followed immediately by a rougher tin flotation test has been conducted using unoptimized conditions. The rougher tin flotation cassiterite stage recovery was encouraging suggesting that the mineralization will be amenable to tin flotation technology. Further mineralogical work is in progress on the tin flotation rougher concentrates produced to ascertain if this rougher concentrate contains predominantly free liberated cassiterite that would therefore be expected to be upgraded by cleaning. Tin flotation is a universally practised technology and used by all the major hard rock tin mines globally as a method of recovering cassiterite that is too fine grained for conventional gravity concentration.

The tin mineralogy and physical competence will be linked to geological attributes. This will become a key feature in contextualising any variances in these parameters across the deposit. The GeologicalAI scanner, which is now on site and will be operational shortly, and the geometallurgical work noted above, will be very important in characterizing the geological attributes.

The test work is too premature to quote tin recovery numbers, but the initial mineralogy shows that the tin minerals are all in the form of cassiterite with insignificant amounts of stannite. Furthermore, the preliminary testing indicates that tin flotation will be a key recovery route and the preliminary tin flotation test work results are encouraging.

Qualified Person

The metallurgical testing is being directed by Richard Gowans, P.Eng., Principal Metallurgist for Micon International Limited, who is an independent Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101. Mr. Gowans. has reviewed and approved the technical content of this news release.

Dr. Osvaldo Arce, P. Geo., General Manager of Eloros Bolivian subsidiary, Minera Tupiza, and a Qualified Person in the context of NI 43-101, supervised all exploration work at Iska Iska. Dr. Bill Pearson, P.Geo., Executive Vice President Exploration for Eloro, and who has more than 45 years of worldwide mining exploration experience including extensive work in South America, manages the overall technical program, working closely with Dr. Osvaldo Arce, P.Geo. Dr. Quinton Hennigh, P.Geo., Senior Technical Advisor to Eloro and Independent Technical Advisor, Mr. Charley Murahwi P. Geo., FAusIMM of Micon International Limited are regularly consulted on technical aspects of the project.

Eloro is utilizing both ALS and AHK for drill core analysis, both of whom are major international accredited laboratories. Drill samples sent to ALS are prepared in both ALS Bolivia Ltdas preparation facility in Oruro, Bolivia and the preparation facility operated by AHK in Tupiza with pulps sent to the main ALS Global laboratory in Lima for analysis. More recently Eloro has had ALS send pulps to their laboratory at Galway in Ireland. Eloro employs an industry standard QA/QC program with standards, blanks and duplicates inserted into each batch of samples analyzed with selected check samples sent to a separate accredited laboratory.

Drill core samples sent to AHK Laboratories are prepared in a preparation facility installed and managed by AHK in Tupiza with pulps sent to the AHK laboratory in Lima, Peru. Au and Sn analysis on these samples is done by ALS Bolivia Ltda in Lima. Check samples between ALS and AHK are regularly done as a QA/QC check. AHK is following the same analytical protocols used as with ALS and with the same QA/QC protocols. Turnaround time continues to improve, as laboratories return to more normal staffing levels.

Eloro Resources at the PDAC

Eloro will be participating at the PDAC 2022 convention in Toronto and invites you to visit us at Booth IE3326 (Investors Exchange) in the South Building, Metro Toronto Convention Centre from June 13-15, 2022.

About Iska Iska

Iska Iska silver-tin polymetallic project is a road accessible, royalty-free property, wholly controlled by the Title Holder, Empresa Minera Villegas S.R.L. and is located 48 km north of Tupiza city, in the Sud Chichas Province of the Department of Potosi in southern Bolivia. Eloro has an option to earn a 99% interest in Iska Iska.

Iska Iska is a major silver-tin polymetallic porphyry-epithermal complex associated with a Miocene possibly collapsed/resurgent caldera, emplaced on Ordovician age rocks with major breccia pipes, dacitic domes and hydrothermal breccias. The caldera is 1.6km by 1.8km in dimension with a vertical extent of at least 1km. Mineralization age is similar to Cerro Rico de Potosi and other major deposits such as San Vicente, Chorolque, Tasna and Tatasi located in the same geological trend.

Eloro began underground diamond drilling from the Huayra Kasa underground workings at Iska Iska on September 13, 2020. On November 18, 2020, Eloro announced the discovery of a significant breccia pipe with extensive silver polymetallic mineralization just east of the Huayra Kasa underground workings and a high-grade gold-bismuth zone in the underground workings. On November 24, 2020, Eloro announced the discovery of the SBBP approximately 150m southwest of the Huayra Kasa underground workings.

Subsequently, on January 26, 2021, Eloro announced significant results from the first drilling at the SBBP including the discovery hole DHK-15 which returned 129.60 g Ag eq/t over 257.5m (29.53g Ag/t, 0.078g Au/t, 1.45%Zn, 0.59%Pb, 0.080%Cu, 0.056%Sn, 0.0022%In and 0.0064% Bi from 0.0m to 257.5m. Subsequent drilling has confirmed significant values of Ag-Sn polymetallic mineralization in the SBBP and the adjacent CBP. A substantive mineralized envelope which is open along strike and down-dip extends around both major breccia pipes. Continuous channel sampling of the Santa Barbara Adit located to the east of SBBP returned 442 g Ag eq/t (164.96 g Ag/t, 0.46%Sn, 3.46% Pb and 0.14% Cu) over 166m including 1,092 g Ag eq/t (446 g Ag/t, 9.03% Pb and 1.16% Sn) over 56.19m. The west end of the adit intersects the end of the SBBP.

Since the initial discovery hole, Eloro has released a number of significant drill results in the SBBP and the surrounding mineralized envelope which along with geophysical data has defined a target zone 1400m along strike, 500m wide and that extends to a depth of 600m. This zone is open along strike to the northwest and southeast as well as to the southwest. The Companys nearer term objective is to outline a maiden NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource within this large target area. This work is advancing well with the mineral resource targeted to be completed in Q3 2022. Exploration drilling is also planned on other major targets in the Iska Iska Caldera Complex, including the Porco and Mina 2 areas.

About Eloro Resources Ltd.

Eloro is an exploration and mine development company with a portfolio of gold and base-metal properties in Bolivia, Peru and Quebec. Eloro has an option to acquire a 99% interest in the highly prospective Iska Iska Property, which can be classified as a polymetallic epithermal-porphyry complex, a significant mineral deposit type in the Potosi Department, in southern Bolivia. Eloro commissioned a NI 43-101 Technical Report on Iska Iska, which was completed by Micon International Limited and is available on Eloros website and under its filings on SEDAR. Iska Iska is a road-accessible, royalty-free property. Eloro also owns an 82% interest in the La Victoria Gold/Silver Project, located in the North-Central Mineral Belt of Peru some 50 km south of Barricks Lagunas Norte Gold Mine and Pan American Silvers La Arena Gold Mine. La Victoria consists of eight mining concessions and eight mining claims encompassing approximately 89 square kilometres. La Victoria has good infrastructure with access to road, water and electricity and is located at an altitude that ranges from 3,150 m to 4,400 m above sea level.

For further information please contact either Thomas G. Larsen, Chairman and CEO or Jorge Estepa, Vice-President at (416) 868-9168.

Information in this news release may contain forward-looking information. Statements containing forward looking information express, as at the date of this news release, the Companys plans, estimates, forecasts, projections, expectations, or beliefs as to future events or results and are believed to be reasonable based on information currently available to the Company. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Source: Eloro Resources Ltd.
WINSTON-SALEM, NC, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Inmar Intelligence, an experienced drug stewardship operator and regulatory company, is happy to announce that, as of June 8, 2022 they have received approval from New York State as a Drug Take Back Operator. State residents will soon gain access to the benefits of Inmars Consumer Drug Take-Back initiative, helping to fight drug misuse, accidental poisonings, and environmental damage with proper disposal options for unused medication.

During a 12-month period ending in November 2021, an average of eight New York residents died of drug overdoses daily, annually reaching 2,852 deaths. In 2016 alone, more than 3,000 cases of drug poisoning exposures were reported in children under six years of age in the state of New York according to a report from the New York State Department of Health. The New York Times revealed that more than 100,000 Americans died as a result of drug overdoses in a 12-month period ending in April 2021, putting drug overdose as a leading cause of death more prominent than car accidents and gun fatalities combined.

Despite a pervasive number of drug-related deaths year over year, old or unused prescriptions rarely find their way to a secure drug take-back location. In a 2021 Inmar National Survey on Consumer Drug Take-Back Awareness, 73% of respondents reported that they have unused, leftover, or expired medications in their homes. With the State of New Yorks approval, Inmar Intelligence will begin executing a program that includes a network of easily accessible collection receptacles that community members can use to safely and appropriately dispose of their unwanted prescription medications -- preventing drug misuse, accidental drug poisonings, and environmental damage. Participation in this drug take-back initiative is free to pharmacies and consumers, as the program is fully funded by pharmaceutical manufacturers, making safe drug disposal easier than ever.

State governments nationwide, as a response to these public health concerns, are passing legislation mandating pharmaceutical manufacturer-funded drug stewardship programs. Inmar Intelligence is working with the State of New York to expand and enhance consumer drug take-back throughout the state with a compliant, cost effective, and cost consistent solution.

Inmars all-inclusive, turn-key Drug Take-Back Program includes a widespread network of accessible, user-friendly drop boxes that residents can use to safely dispose of unwanted prescription medications - preventing diversion and misuse. Inmar continues to expand its reach nationwide, aiming to change and save as many lives as possible. To date, Inmar Intelligence has safely collected upwards of 375 tons of unused medications across more than 4,000 drug take-back receptacles across the United States provided by the program.

Inmar has hosted multiple take back events this year, including Inmars fourth National Prescription Drug Take Back Day event in Winston-Salem, NC on April 30, 2022 in partnership with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Winston-Salem Police Department. Over 270 pounds of unwanted or unused prescriptions were safely disposed of during the event, and more than 65 attendees participated in the program.

We are thrilled to announce the State of New Yorks approval of Inmar Intelligence as a Drug Take Back Operator, said Ann-Marie Daugherty, President of Supplytech at Inmar Intelligence. We are honored to offer our support to such a pressing issue. Empowering individuals to responsibly dispose of unwanted and unused drugs is a critical service to help prevent prescription drug misuse, and we take immense pride in the ability of Inmars technology platform and drug take-back network to support this mission and improve the safety of communities across the country.

Inmars Consumer Drug Take-Back Program collection services include:

Safe and secure solutions for unwanted household medications

Marketing resources to help pharmacies build awareness and participation in their program

Support for community efforts to combat the drug epidemic and help protect the environment from unwanted drug elements in the water supply

Compliance with the DEA Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act of 2010

Compliance with New Yorks Drug Take Back Act

For more information about Inmars Solutions for Healthcare, please visit inmar.com.

Inmar Intelligence is the largest provider of pharmaceutical reverse logistics services in the country. That makes them uniquely positioned to leverage their operational efficiencies, dispenser relationships and economies of scale to manage drug take-back programs of any proportion. Partnering with retail pharmacies in multiple states, Inmars scalability and cost predictability is unmatched in the industry  which makes them a fierce ally in the fight against drug abuse.

About Inmar Intelligence Commerce Accelerated.

Inmar Intelligence is a leading applied data platform company. $120 billion of commerce runs through our market-driven platforms, which are propelling digital transformation through unified data, workflows and fund flows to help companies drive innovation and achieve digital transformation. Our integrated workflows create insights through Analytics, AI, and Machine Learning to drive faster actions and outcomes.

Throughout our 41-year history, we have served retailers, manufacturers, pharmacies, health systems, government agencies and employers as their trusted intermediary in helping them redefine success. For more information about Inmar, please follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, or call (866) 440-6917.

Holly Pavlika Inmar Intelligence (336) 770-3596 [email protected]

Source: Inmar Intelligence
For immediate release

13 June 2022

Serabi Gold plc(Serabi or the Company)

Production Update

Serabi Gold plc (AIM:SRB, TSX: SBI), the Brazilian-focused gold mining and development company, is pleased to report continued improvement in its production from its Palito Complex in the Tapajos region of Para State, Northern Brazil.

Highlights

Production from the Palito Complex showed a continued improvement with 2,949 ounces of gold produced in May, the highest monthly level so far in 2022.

Mike Hodgson discussed the Companys latest corporate and operation performance in interviews with BRR Media and Crux Investor. These interviews can be accessed using the following links: BRR Media - https://bit.ly/3MnOSIA Crux Investor - https://bit.ly/3xo4MOC



The Company will be attending the PDAC conference in Toronto from 13 June to 15 June at booth number 2533.

Mike Hodgson CEO said

Production at the Palito Complex continues to improve with an impressive 2,949 ounces of gold produced during May, our best month so far in 2022. It is very pleasing that the measures we put in place earlier this year are continuing to deliver consistent production ounces. We are focussed on maintaining and improving these levels over the coming months.

RESULTS

Palito Complex ProductionThe Company produced a total of 2,949 ounces during May, from the processing of 15,458 tonnes grading at 6.42 g/t gold. Total mined tonnage for the month was 16,162 tonnes at 6.29 g/t gold.

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 as it forms part of UK Domestic Law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

The person who arranged for the release of this announcement on behalf of the Company was Clive Line, Director.

Enquiries:

Serabi Gold plc Michael Hodgson Tel: +44 (0)20 7246 6830 Chief Executive Mobile: +44 (0)7799 473621 Clive Line Tel: +44 (0)20 7246 6830 Finance Director Mobile: +44 (0)7710 151692 Email: [email protected] Website: www.serabigold.com Beaumont Cornish LimitedNominated Adviser and Financial Adviser Roland Cornish / Michael Cornish Tel: +44 (0)20 7628 3396 Peel Hunt LLPJoint UK Broker Ross Allister / Alexander Allen Tel: +44 (0)20 7418 9000 Tamesis Partners LLPJoint UK Broker Charlie Bendon / Richard Greenfield Tel: +44 (0)20 3882 2868 Camarco Financial PR Gordon Poole / Emily Hall Tel: +44(0) 20 3757 4980

Copies of this announcement are available from the Company's website at www.serabigold.com.

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange, nor any other securities regulatory authority, has approved or disapproved of the contents of this announcement.

See www.serabigold.com for more information and follow us on twitter @Serabi_Gold

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Ag means silver. Au means gold. assay in economic geology, means to analyse the proportions of metal in a rock or overburden sample; to test an ore or mineral for composition, purity, weight or other properties of commercial interest. CIM means the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum. chalcopyrite is a sulphide of copper and iron. Cu means copper. cut-off grade the lowest grade of mineralised material that qualifies as ore in a given deposit; rock of the lowest assay included in an ore estimate. dacite porphyry intrusive a silica-rich igneous rock with larger phenocrysts (crystals) within a fine-grained matrix deposit is a mineralised body which has been physically delineated by sufficient drilling, trenching, and/or underground work, and found to contain a sufficient average grade of metal or metals to warrant further exploration and/or development expenditures; such a deposit does not qualify as a commercially mineable ore body or as containing ore reserves, until final legal, technical, and economic factors have been resolved. electromagnetics is a geophysical technique tool measuring the magnetic field generated by subjecting the sub-surface to electrical currents. garimpo is a local artisanal mining operation garimpeiro is a local artisanal miner. geochemical refers to geological information using measurements derived from chemical analysis. geophysical refers to geological information using measurements derived from the use of magnetic and electrical readings. geophysical techniques include the exploration of an area by exploiting differences in physical properties of different rock types. Geophysical methods include seismic, magnetic, gravity, induced polarisation and other techniques; geophysical surveys can be undertaken from the ground or from the air. gossan is an iron-bearing weathered product that overlies a sulphide deposit. grade is the concentration of mineral within the host rock typically quoted as grams per tonne (g/t), parts per million (ppm) or parts per billion (ppb). g/t means grams per tonne. granodiorite is an igneous intrusive rock similar to granite. hectare or a ha is a unit of measurement equal to 10,000 square metres. igneous is a rock that has solidified from molten material or magma. IP refers to induced polarisation, a geophysical technique whereby an electric current is induced into the sub-surface and the conductivity of the sub-surface is recorded. intrusive is a body of rock that invades older rocks. "Indicated Mineral Resource is that part of a Mineral Resource for which quantity, grade or quality, densities, shape and physical characteristics can be estimated with a level of confidence sufficient to allow the appropriate application of technical and economic parameters, to support mine planning and evaluation of the economic viability of the deposit. The estimate is based on detailed and reliable exploration and testing information gathered through appropriate techniques from locations such as outcrops, trenches, pits, workings and drill holes that are spaced closely enough for geological and grade continuity to be reasonably assumed. "Inferred Mineral Resource is that part of a Mineral Resource for which quantity and grade or quality can be estimated on the basis of geological evidence and limited sampling and reasonably assumed, but not verified, geological and grade continuity. The estimate is based on limited information and sampling gathered through appropriate techniques from locations such as outcrops, trenches, pits, workings and drill holes. Inferred Mineral Resource  is that part of a Mineral Resource for which quantity and grade or quality can be estimated on the basis of geological evidence and limited sampling and reasonably assumed, but not verified, geological and grade continuity. The estimate is based on limited information and sampling gathered through appropriate techniques from locations such as outcrops, trenches, pits, workings and drill holes. mineralisation the concentration of metals and their chemical compounds within a body of rock. mineralised refers to rock which contains minerals e.g. iron, copper, gold. "Mineral Resource is a concentration or occurrence of diamonds, natural solid inorganic material, or natural solid fossilized organic material including base and precious metals, coal, and industrial minerals in or on the Earth's crust in such form and quantity and of such a grade or quality that it has reasonable prospects for economic extraction. The location, quantity, grade, geological characteristics and continuity of a Mineral Resource are known, estimated or interpreted from specific geological evidence and knowledge. Mineral Reserve is the economically mineable part of a Measured or Indicated Mineral Resource demonstrated by at least a Preliminary Feasibility Study. This Study must include adequate information on mining, processing, metallurgical, economic and other relevant factors that demonstrate, at the time of reporting, that economic extraction can be justified. A Mineral Reserve includes diluting materials and allowances for losses that may occur when the material is mine Mo-Bi-As-Te-W-Sn Molybdenum-Bismuth-Arsenic-Tellurium-Tungsten-Tin monzogranite a biotite rich granite, often part of the later-stage emplacement of a larger granite body. mt means million tonnes. ore means a metal or mineral or a combination of these of sufficient value as to quality and quantity to enable it to be mined at a profit. oxides are near surface bed-rock which has been weathered and oxidised by long term exposure to the effects of water and air. ppm means parts per million. Probable Mineral Reserve is the economically mineable part of an Indicated and, in some circumstances, a Measured Mineral Resource demonstrated by at least a Preliminary Feasibility Study. This Study must include adequate information on mining, processing, metallurgical, economic, and other relevant factors that demonstrate, at the time of reporting, that economic extraction can be justified. Proven Mineral Reserve is the economically mineable part of a Measured Mineral Resource. A Proven Mineral Reserve implies a high degree of confidence in the Modifying Factors saprolite is a weathered or decomposed clay-rich rock. sulphide refers to minerals consisting of a chemical combination of sulphur with a metal. vein is a generic term to describe an occurrence of mineralised rock within an area of non-mineralised rock. VTEM refers to versa time domain electromagnetic, a particular variant of time-domain electromagnetic geophysical survey to prospect for conductive bodies below surface.

Assay ResultsAssay results reported within this release include those provided by the Company's own on-site laboratory facilities at Palito and these will not have been independently verified. Serabi closely monitors the performance of its own facility against results from independent laboratory analysis for quality control purpose. As a matter of normal practice, the Company sends duplicate samples derived from a variety of the Company's activities to accredited laboratory facilities for independent verification. Since mid-2019, over 10,000 exploration drill core samples have been assayed at both the Palito laboratory and certified external laboratory, in most cases the ALS laboratory in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. When comparing significant assays with grades exceeding 1 g/t gold, comparison between Palito versus external results record an average over-estimation by the Palito laboratory of 6.7% over this period. Based on the results of this work, the Company's management are satisfied that the Company's own facility shows sufficiently good correlation with independent laboratory facilities for exploration drill samples. The Company would expect that in the preparation of any future independent Reserve/Resource statement undertaken in compliance with a recognised standard, the independent authors of such a statement would not use Palito assay

Qualified Persons StatementThe scientific and technical information contained within this announcement has been reviewed and approved by Michael Hodgson, a Director of the Company. Mr Hodgson is an Economic Geologist by training with over 26 years' experience in the mining industry. He holds a BSc (Hons) Geology, University of London, a MSc Mining Geology, University of Leicester and is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and a Chartered Engineer of the Engineering Council of UK, recognising him as both a Qualified Person for the purposes of Canadian National Instrument 43-101 and by the AIM Guidance Note on Mining and Oil & Gas Companies dated June 2009.

Forward Looking StatementsCertain statements in this announcement are, or may be deemed to be, forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are identied by their use of terms and phrases such as believe, could, should envisage, estimate, intend, may, plan, will or the negative of those, variations, or comparable expressions, including references to assumptions. These forward-looking statements are not based on historical facts but rather on the Directors current expectations and assumptions regarding the Companys future growth, results of operations, performance, future capital and other expenditures (including the amount, nature and sources of funding thereof), competitive advantages, business prospects and opportunities. Such forward looking statements reect the Directors current beliefs and assumptions and are based on information currently available to the Directors. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements including risks associated with vulnerability to general economic and business conditions, competition, environmental and other regulatory changes, actions by governmental authorities, the availability of capital markets, reliance on key personnel, uninsured and underinsured losses and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. Although any forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are based upon what the Directors believe to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with such forward looking statements.

ENDS

Source: Serabi Gold plc
Los Angeles, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- When Lucina Babayants and her family fled Azerbaijan with hundreds of thousands of other Armenians amid rising ethnic tensions in 1988, she had no idea that one day, she would become a psychologist and college professor in the United States.

Last week, Babayants, now a 43-year-old single mother, was awarded a doctorate by The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, where she had previously earned a masters degree in Psychology.

She was chosen as the commencement speaker, representing the voice of the more than 300 other graduates who received bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees at the schools first in-person ceremony in three years.

The event, held at the Long Beach Convention Center, was the culmination of years of hard work by Babayants and her fellow students in particularly challenging times.

Amid a chaotic pandemic, you persevered, noted Dr. Michele Nealon, Psy.D., President of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, headquartered in Los Angeles. Shifting between remote and in-person learning, all the while caring for loved ones and balancing school, work, and family lifeyouve weathered tough timesand did not waver in your commitment to educational success.

Joining Dr. Nealon in awarding diplomas was Dr. Donald Schultz, Ph.D., honored as Professor Emeritus of The Chicago School and Diane Gehart, Ph.D., recipient of an honorary degree for 30 years as an award-winning author, speaker and educator.

Also honored as Distinguished Alumna was Hillary Cauthen, Psy.D., a 2013 graduate, who serves as the psychologist for the San Antonio Spurs and Austin FC, developing mental wellness and performance programs for professional athletes.

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology boasts a majority minority enrollment, educating more than 6,000 students at its seven campuses across the U.S. The Long Beach Commencement for Los Angeles, Anaheim, and San Diego campuses and online program, was one of several graduation ceremonies staged by the university this month.

Vivien Hao The Chicago School of Professional Psychology (323) 893-4743 [email protected]

Source: The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
HOD HASHARON, Israel, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Weebit Nano Limited (ASX:WBT; Weebit or the Company), a leading developer of next-generation memory technologies for the global semiconductor industry, announces its participation at Leti Innovation Days, CEA-Letis annual 3-day flagship event being held June 21-23, 2022, in Grenoble, France.

During the New Paradigms for Computing Workshop, Weebits VP of Marketing and Business Development Eran Briman will present, ReRAM Moves from Lab to Fab, highlighting the range of applications that can benefit from the low power consumption, low cost, high temperature reliability and process simplicity of Weebit ReRAM.

Mr. Briman will also participate in a panel discussion with other session presenters, including executives from CEA-Leti and STMicroelectronics, discussing, What Future and Drivers for More Moore in Europe? The workshop will be held on Wednesday, June 22nd from 2:30 p.m.  4:30 p.m. CEST.

Weebit will also participate in the CEA-Leti Partners Corner at the event exhibition, where the company will feature a demonstration of its ReRAM.

To arrange a meeting with Weebit representatives onsite at the event, email [email protected].

To register for the Leti Innovation Days event, visit: https://leti-innovation-days2022.inviteo.fr.

About Weebit Nano Limited

Weebit Nano Ltd. is a leading developer of next-generation semiconductor memory technology. The companys ground-breaking Resistive RAM (ReRAM) addresses the growing need for significantly higher performance and lower power memory solutions in a range of new electronic products such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, smartphones, robotics, autonomous vehicles, 5G communications and artificial intelligence.

Weebits ReRAM allows semiconductor memory elements to be significantly faster, less expensive, more reliable and more energy efficient than those using existing Flash memory solutions. As it is based on fab-friendly materials, the technology can be quickly and easily integrated with existing flows and processes, without the need for special equipment or large investments.

See www.weebit-nano.com and follow us on https://twitter.com/WeebitNano.

Weebit Nano and the Weebit Nano logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Weebit Nano Ltd. in the United States and other countries. Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

For further information please contact:

InvestorsEric Kuret, Market EyeP: +61 417 311 335E: [email protected]

Media  AustraliaTristan Everett, Market EyeP: +61 403 789 096E: [email protected]

Media  USJen Bernier-Santarini, Weebit NanoP: +1 650-336-4222E: [email protected]

Source: Weebit Nano Ltd
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Google is seen on a building at La Defense business and financial district in Courbevoie near Paris, France, September 1, 2020. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Alphabet Inc unit Google, Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and other tech companies will have to take measures to counter deepfakes and fake accounts on their platforms or risk hefty fines under an updated European Union code of practice, according to an EU document seen by Reuters.

The European Commission is expected to publish the updated code of practice on disinformation on Thursday as part of its crackdown against fake news.

Introduced in 2018, the voluntary code will now become a co-regulation scheme, with responsibility shared between the regulators and signatories to the code.

The updated code spells out examples of manipulative behaviour such as deepfakes and fake accounts which the signatories will have to tackle.

"Relevant signatories will adopt, reinforce and implement clear policies regarding impermissible manipulative behaviours and practices on their services, based on the latest evidence on the conducts and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) employed by malicious actors," the document said.

Deepfakes are hyperrealistic forgeries created by computer techniques that have triggered alarm worldwide in particular when they are used in a political context.

The code will also be linked to tough new EU rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) agreed by the 27-country European Union earlier this year which has a section on combating disinformation.

In effect, companies which fail to live up to their obligations under the code can face fines of as much as 6% of their global turnover based on DSA rules. They have six months to implement their measures once they have signed up to the code.

Signatories will also have to take measures to tackle advertising containing disinformation and provide more transparency on political advertising.

"The DSA provides a legal backbone to the Code of Practice against disinformation  including heavy dissuasive sanctions," EU industry chief Thierry Breton, who is leading the EU's crackdown on disinformation, told Reuters in a statement.

Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which the former calls a special operation, underpinned some of the changes in the code.

"Once the Code is operational, we will be better prepared to address disinformation, also coming from Russia," she said in a statement.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Jan Harvey, Susan Fenton and Richard Chang)
Val-d'Or, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - Bonterra Resources Inc. (TSXV: BTR) (OTCQX: BONXF) (FSE: 9BR2) ("Bonterra" or the "Company") is pleased to announce positive results from the independent preliminary economic assessment ("PEA") on the Barry open pit project in the Urban-Barry Camp in northern Quebec. The PEA has been prepared by SLR Consulting (Canada) Ltd. ("SLR") in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). AMC Mining Consultants (Canada) Limited ("AMC") has reviewed and endorsed the mine engineering and cost estimates as used in the Barry open pit component of the PEA. The Company notes that mineral resources are not mineral reserves as they do not have demonstrated economic viability. The Company further notes that a PEA is preliminary in nature and may include inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have economic consideration applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the PEA will be realized. All figures are stated in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated.

PEA Highlights

Long-term gold price per ounce (" oz "): US$1,600

"): US$1,600 Exchange rate: C$1.00 = US$0.75

After-tax net present value ( "NPV" ) at a 5% discount rate: $48.3 million

) at a 5% discount rate: $48.3 million After-tax internal rate of return ( "IRR" ): 43%

): 43% Initial capital costs: $22.1 million

Sustaining life of mine ( "LOM" ) capital costs: $21.3 million

) capital costs: $21.3 million Total mill feed: 2.0 million tonnes (" Mt ") at 2.36 grams-per-tonne gold (" g/t Au ")

") at 2.36 grams-per-tonne gold (" ") LOM average annual gold production: 30,000 oz

LOM strip ratio (waste : mined resource): 5.4:1

LOM total production: 145,050 oz (95.0% mill recovery)

LOM cash costs: C$1,252/oz (US$939/oz)

LOM all-in sustaining costs ("AISC"): C$1,420/oz (US$1,065/oz)

Marc-Andre Pelletier, President, CEO and Director of Bonterra commented: "The PEA on the Barry open pit project represents an important step towards a restart of production at the Barry open pit project by Bonterra. The PEA highlights a project that requires a modest upfront investment and is expected to generate average annual net pre-tax cash flow of over $20 million once in commercial production. The Company intends to use the cash flow from the Barry open pit to continue developing the underground portion of the deposit, which contains 0.5 million ounces of Measured and Indicated Mineral resources and 0.7 million ounces of Inferred Mineral resources, as stated in the 2021 mineral resource estimate ("2021 MRE"). It is also important to highlight that approximately $30 million of the total LOM capital is shared infrastructure and is expected to also benefit the development of the Barry and Gladiator underground deposits. Specifically, the upgrades to the Bachelor mill and tailings are expected to increase the throughput of the mill to 1,200 tonnes per day and establish a solid foundation for future expansion up to eight million tonnes of tailing storage capacity."

The Company is also pleased to announce that it has started to undertake infill and definition drilling on the underground portion of the Barry deposit to better understand the potential of an underground mining scenario. A total of 41,500 metres ("m") of drilling is planned for the Barry deposits this year.

Upon reviewing the results of the PEA, Bonterra's board of directors has approved the commencement of a pre-feasibility study ("PFS") on the Barry open pit project, which is expected to be completed by year end. In the meantime, the permitting process for the Bachelor mill and tailings expansion is ongoing. The Company expects to provide additional information on the permitting process in June with a COMEX permit expected by end of 2022 and provincial permits thereafter.

Overview

The Barry project is located 110 kilometers ("km") east of Lebel-sur-Quvillon, which is 150 km to the city of Val d'Or, in the mining-friendly province of Quebec, within the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. Past production occurred in 2006-2008 at Barry where over 600,000 tonnes were processed at the Bachelor mill, producing over 43,000 ounces of gold.

The Barry gold deposit is characterized by three dominant sets of structures, all dipping to the southeast. The sub-vertical shear zones and the H-Series shear zones dipping 25 to 40 degrees are hosted within intermediate to mafic volcanics and tuffs with local felsic intrusions. Contact zones dip at 50 to 65 degrees along the lower and upper contacts of the D1, D2 and D3 felsic intrusions with mafic volcanics. Gold mineralization is associated with disseminated sulfides within shear zones and veins with local visible gold. The Barry deposit has been delineated over 1.4 km along strike and 700 m vertical and remains open for expansion.

Mineral Resources

The 2021 MRE was updated in June 2021 (see press release dated June 23, 2021) and a NI 43-101 technical report was produced by SLR. Combined Measured and Indicated Resources for the open pit portion of the deposit represents a total of 1.9 million tonnes at a grade of 2.68 g/t Au or 165,000 ounces of gold and 15,000 tonnes at a grade of 2.36 g/t Au or 1,000 ounces in the Inferred category.

Only the in-pit resource was considered in the PEA due to the higher quality of the resource. Most of the in-pit mineral resources are in the Measured category and require no additional diamond drilling information for conversion to mineral reserves.

Mining and Milling

Open pit mine design consists of 5.0 m high benches with final pit wall slope of 45 degrees. Proposed production totals 2.0 Mt, along with 10.8 Mt of overburden and waste rock, leading to a LOM strip ratio of 5.4. Production will be hauled to the mill via a 110 km forestry road using 40-tonne trucks. The mill upgrade includes the replacement of two ball mills by a tricone. Mill feed will then increase by 50% to 1,200 tonnes per day. The existing mill process with carbon-in-pulp extraction is suitable for the Barry material. No metallurgical testing was done during the PEA because the Barry material has been processed in the past with no issues. A 95% mill recovery was used in the PEA. The tailings material will be stored in the tailings management area ("TMA") with spigot disposal. Initial raise of the TMA dams will provide a 2.9 Mt capacity. Subsequent raises can add up to 5.1 Mt of additional capacity (8 Mt of total capacity).

Base Case

The economic analysis was performed with a 5% discount rate. On a pre-tax basis, the NPV 5% is $57.3 million, the IRR is 49% and the payback period is 3.2 years. On an after-tax basis, the NPV 5% is $48.3 million, the IRR is 43% and the payback period is 3.4 years. The cash cost and AISC over the LOM are US$939/oz and US$1,065/oz, respectively. A summary of the project economics is listed below:

PEA Summary

Description Unit Value Total Tonnes Mined Mt 2.0 Average Diluted Gold Grade g/t 2.36 Total Gold Contained oz 152,684 Overall Gold Recovery % 95 Total Gold Payable oz 145,050 Strip Ratio (waste:mined resource) w:mr 5.4 Mine Life years 4.8 Average Annual Gold Produced Au oz per year 30,000 Long Term Gold Price US$/oz 1,600 Exchange Rate CAD:USD 0.75 Discount Rate % 5 Total LOM NSR Revenue $M 306 Total Royalty Costs $M 15 Total LOM Operating Costs $M 165 Total LOM Capital Costs $M 50 Total LOM Pre-tax Cash Flow* $M 77 Average Annual Pre-tax Cash Flow* $M 17 Total LOM After-tax Free Cash Flow* $M 65 Average Annual After-tax Free Cash Flow* $M 14 Pre-tax Summary Pre-tax NPV 5% $M 57 Pre-tax IRR % 49 Pre-tax Payback year 3.2 After-tax Summary After-tax NPV 5% $M 48 After-tax IRR % 43 After-tax Payback year 3.4

* Calculated over the entire LOM of the project, including pre-commercial production.

Capital and Operating Costs

The initial capital cost for the Barry open pit project is estimated to be $22.1 million, which includes a contingency of $1.7 million. Infrastructure costs represent $11.1 million of the initial capital cost and includes: $4.5 million for haulage road enhancement; $2.6 million for surface garages, $1.9 million for an emulsion plant and $2.1 million for other surface utilities. Mill and TMA upgrades are $3.5 million and $2.4 million, respectively. The $3.4 million remaining is composed of surface equipment and tools, owners, and indirect costs.

The sustaining capital cost is estimated at $27.8 million and includes site closure cost that total

$6.5 million. TMA construction costs of $18.1 million will provide additional storage capacity of 2.9 Mt and will establish the foundation for future expansion at lower cost. Indirect cost represents $2.7 million of the other $3.2 million of sustaining capital.

The total capital cost for the project is estimated at $49.9 million as summarized in the table below.

Barry Open Pit Capital Cost Summary

Capital Cost Description Initial $M Sustaining $M Total $M Tailings Management Area 2.4 18.1 20.5 Surface Equipment & Tools 0.7 0.1 0.9 Infrastructures 11.1 0.3 11.5 Indirects Costs 1.7 2.7 4.4 Mill Upgrades 3.5 0.0 3.5 Owners 0.9 0.0 0.9 Contingency 1.7 0.0 1.7 Sub-total 22.1 21.3 43.4 Site Closure Costs 0.0 6.5 6.5 Total 22.1 27.8 49.9

The average operating cost is estimated at $81.27/tonne.

Barry Open Pit Operating Cost Summary

Operating Cost Description Unit Cost Mining $/t milled $33.87 Processing $/t milled $19.07 G&A $/t milled $12.33 Trucking to Mill $/t milled $16.00 Total $/t milled $81.27 Cash Cost C$/oz $1,252 AISC C$/oz $1,420 Cash Cost US$/oz $939 AISC US$/oz $1,065

Sensitivity Analysis

A financial sensitivity analysis was conducted on the PEA, after-tax NPV and IRR of the project, using the following variables: capital costs, CAD:USD exchange rate and the price of gold. The after-tax results for the project IRR and NPV5% based on the sensitivity analysis are summarized below:

NPV Sensitivity Results (After-tax) for Gold Price and Exchange Rate Variations ($M)

After-Tax NPV 5%

(C$M) Gold Price (USD/ounce) CAD:USD $1,200 $1,300 $1,400 $1,500 $1,600 $1,700 $1,800 $1,900 $2,000 0.60 $33 $52 $71 $90 $109 $128 $147 $166 $185 0.65 $15 $33 $50 $68 $85 $103 $121 $138 $156 0.70 $0 $16 $33 $49 $65 $82 $98 $114 $131 0.75 -$13 $3 $18 $33 $48 $64 $79 $94 $109 0.80 -$24 -$10 $4 $19 $33 $47 $62 $76 $90 0.85 -$34 -$21 -$7 $6 $20 $33 $46 $60 $73 0.90 -$43 -$30 -$18 -$5 $8 $20 $33 $46 $58

NPV Sensitivity Results (After-tax) for Capital and Operating Costs Variations ($M)

After-Tax NPV 5%

(C$M) CAPEX OPEX -40% -30% -20% -10% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% -30% $108 $103 $99 $94 $90 $85 $81 $76 $72 -20% $94 $90 $85 $80 $76 $71 $67 $62 $58 -10% $80 $76 $71 $67 $62 $58 $53 $49 $44 0% $66 $62 $57 $53 $48 $44 $39 $35 $30 10% $53 $48 $43 $39 $34 $30 $25 $21 $16 20% $39 $34 $30 $25 $21 $16 $12 $7 $2 30% $25 $20 $16 $11 $7 $2 -$2 -$7 -$11

The sensitivity analysis reveals that the price of gold has the most significant influence on both NPV and IRR. After the price of gold, the NPV and IRR were most impacted by the exchange rate (CAD:USD) and to a lesser extent by variation in operating and capital costs.

QUALIFIED PERSONS

The PEA production scenario is based on the Measured, Indicated and Inferred mineral resources from the 2021 MRE issued on June 23, 2021, and prepared by Ms. Valerie Wilson, M.Sc., P.Geo., Consultant Geologist at SLR, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ms. Wilson is an Independent Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. Ms. Wilson has read and approved the contents of this news release as it relates to the disclosed MREs.

The full technical report, which is being prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects will be available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) under the Company's issuer profile within 45 days from this news release. The effective date of the PEA is June 1, 2022.

The PEA was prepared by the following Qualified Persons under NI 43-101, each of whom is independent of the Company under NI 43-101, who have reviewed, verified, and approved the scientific and technical data for which they have responsibility contained in this news release pertaining to the PEA.

Qualified Person Company Responsibility Normand Lecuyer, P.Eng., Ing. SLR Mining, cost estimation, Financial model, NI 43-101 integration Valerie Wilson, M.Sc., P.Geo. SLR Geology and mineral resource estimation Guy Saucier, Ing. ASDR Surface infrastructure Pierre Roy, M.Sc., Ing., P. Eng. Soutex Processing Luciano Piciacchia, Ph D., Ing. BBA Environment, water treatment and tailings management

About Bonterra Resources Inc.

Bonterra is a Canadian gold exploration company with a large portfolio of advanced exploration assets anchored by a central milling facility in Quebec, Canada. The Company has a portfolio of deposits, including, Barry, Gladiator, Moroy, and Bachelor that collectively have a total of 1.24 million ounces in Measured and Indicated categories, and 1.78 million ounces in Inferred category. Importantly, the Company owns the only permitted and operational gold mill in the region. Bonterra is focused on graduating from advanced exploration to a development company to deliver shareholder value.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Marc-Andre Pelletier, President & CEO

[email protected]

2872 Sullivan Road, Suite 2, Val d'Or, Quebec J9P 0B9

819-825-8678 | Website: www.btrgold.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary and Forward-Looking Statements

The reader is advised that the PEA summarized in this press release is intended to provide only an initial, high-level review of the project potential and design options. The PEA mine plan and economic model include numerous assumptions and the use of Inferred resources. Inferred resources are considered to be too speculative to be used in an economic analysis except as allowed for by Canadian Securities Administrators' National Instrument 43-101 in PEA studies. There is no guarantee that Inferred resources can be converted to Indicated or Measured resources, and as such, there is no guarantee the project economics described herein will be achieved.

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation that is based on expectations, estimates, projections and interpretations as at the date of this news release. Any statement that implies predictions, expectations, interpretations, opinions, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often using words such as "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "interpreted", "in management's opinion", "anticipates", or "plans", "budget", "schedule", "intends", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "should", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved) is not a statement of historical fact and may constitute forward-looking information and is intended to identify forward-looking information. This news release may contain forward-looking information relating to, among other things, the outlook for the Barry, Gladiator, Moroy and Bachelor projects; updated mineral resources, Barry Open Pit PEA; the deposit remaining open laterally and at depth; and future drilling. These factors include, but are not limited to, risks associated with the ability of exploration activities (including drilling results) to accurately predict mineralization; the Company's ability to obtain required approvals; the results of exploration activities; risks associated with mining operations; global economic conditions; metal prices; dilution; environmental risks; and community and non-governmental actions. Although the forward-looking information contained in this news release is based on assumptions that management believes are reasonable at the time of release, Bonterra cannot assure shareholders and prospective purchasers of the Company's securities that actual results will be consistent with the forward-looking information, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, and neither Bonterra nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of forward-looking information. All statements made, other than statements of historical fact, that address the Company's intentions and the events and developments that the Company anticipates, are considered forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that 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 from those in the forward-looking statements.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127419
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - Iconic Minerals Ltd. (TSXV: ICM) (OTCQB: BVTEF) (FSE: YQGB) (the "Company" or "Iconic") and its 50% joint venture partner in Bonnie Claire, Nevada Lithium Resources Inc. (CSE: NVLH) (FSE: 87K) ("Nevada Lithium"), are pleased to announce that drilling of the Bonnie Claire Lithium Project (the "Project" or "Property") is underway and proceeding according to plan.

The planned drill program will entail drilling from five (5) separate drill sites (See news release dated May 4, 2022), which are spaced approximately one-half mile apart and being drilled to a depth of 2,000 feet (610 meters). Both core and mud/rotary holes will be drilled. Each drill hole will be logged and drill samples will be securely sent to a qualified geochemical lab for assaying. One mud/rotary drill hole will be preserved as a drill water well, following the pumping tests that will be conducted by our borehole mining consultants, Barr Engineering Company of Minneapolis ("Barr"). Barr will also collect core samples for extensive materials testing.

Iconic Mineral's CEO, Richard Kern, stated, "After a longer than expected permitting process, we are delighted to begin final definition of this very large lithium resource."

Qualified Person

Richard Kern, Certified Professional Geologist, a qualified person as defined by Canadian National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release. Mr. Kern is not independent of the Company as he is the Chief Executive Officer of Iconic.

Bonnie Claire Property

The Bonnie Claire Property is located within Sarcobatus Valley, which is approximately 30 km (19 miles) long and 20 km (12 miles) wide. Quartz-rich volcanic tuffs containing anomalous amounts of lithium occur within and adjacent to the valley. Drill results from the salt flat have included lithium values as high as 2550 ppm Li and a 1560 foot (roughly 475 meter) vertical intercept that averaged 1153 ppm Li. The current 43-101 resource from the PEA report for borehole mineable portion of the resource is 3,407 million tonnes grading 1,013 ppm Li or 18,372 million kilograms of lithium carbonate equivalent. The gravity low within the valley is 20 km (12 miles) long, and the current estimates of depth to basement rocks range from 600 to 1,200 meters (2,000 to 4,000 feet). The current claim block covers an area of 74 km2 (28.6 mi2) with potential for brine systems and further sediment resources.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

SIGNED: "Richard Kern"

Richard Kern, President and CEO

Contact: Keturah Nathe, VP Corporate Development (604) 336-8614

For further information on Iconic, please visit our website at www.iconicminerals.com. The Company's public documents may be accessed at www.sedar.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 Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities legislation, including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation, statements with respect to the Option, the Joint Venture, the amount of the Offering, the expected use of proceeds from the Offering and the future business plans and exploration activities of the Company, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: "will", "believes", "expects", "anticipates", "intends", "estimates", "plans", "may", "should", "potential", "scheduled" or variations of such words and phrases and similar expressions, which, by their nature, refer to future events or results that may, could, would, might or will occur or be taken or achieved. In making the forward-looking statements in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including without limitation, that investor interest will be sufficient to close the Offering, that market fundamentals will result in sustained precious metals demand and prices, the receipt of any necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals required for the Option Agreement and the future development of the Company's projects in a timely manner.

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 differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such risks and other factors include, among others, operating and technical difficulties in connection with mineral exploration and development activities, actual results of exploration activities, including on the Smith Creek Property, requirements for additional capital, future prices of lithium and gold, changes in general economic conditions, changes in the financial markets and in the demand and market price for commodities, lack of investor interest in future financings, accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry, delays in obtaining governmental approvals, permits or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities, risks relating to epidemics or pandemics such as COVID-19, including the impact of COVID-19 on the business, financial condition and exploration and development activities of the Company, changes in laws, regulations and policies affecting mining operations, title disputes, the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents, approvals or authorizations, including of the TSX Venture Exchange in respect of the Option Agreement and the Offering, the timing and possible outcome of any pending litigation, environmental issues and liabilities, and risks related to joint venture operations, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's latest interim Management's Discussion and Analysis and filed with the Canadian Securities Authorities. All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and readers are urged to review these materials, including the technical reports filed with respect to the Company's mineral properties.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements in this news release or incorporated by reference herein, except as otherwise required by law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127411
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - Mundoro Capital Inc. (TSXV: MUN) (OTCQB: MUNMF) (www.mundoro.com) ("Mundoro" or the "Company") "), is pleased to report an update on initial exploration at the Dos Cabezas Property in Cochise County, Arizona. Vale is earning into the Dos Cabezas property based on a two year earn-in agreement that was signed in December 2021 (see press release here).

Teo Dechev, CEO and President commented: "We are pleased to announce the initial exploration completed at the Dos Cabezas property, which is a Mundoro generated copper-focused project in the Laramide Belt in Arizona, and under option to Vale as of December 2021. Mundoro is the operator of the exploration program which has consisted of prospecting, geological mapping, geochemical grid sampling, alteration analysis and a geophysical survey. The exploration team is excited to drill test this new target area identified through multiparameter techniques indicating the potential for a porphyry system that has no record of any modern exploration or drill testing."

Follow our weekly updates on: LinkedIn and Twitter @Mundoro

Regional Geology and Surrounding Mines

The Dos Cabezas Project lies within the Laramide Porphyry Belt, a prolific region of porphyry copper deposits extending from northern Mexico through the southwestern US. The majority of production in Arizona is related to the Laramide Porphyry Belt which hosts world class deposits such as Morenci, Safford, Miami-Inspiration, Sierrita, Silver Bell, Resolution, and others. Arizona was responsible for 66% US production of copper in 2018.

During the Laramide Orogeny (~75-50ma), numerous porphyry copper deposits formed, making this region one of the most prolific producers of copper in the world. Post laramide faulting, volcanism, and sedimentation concealed many of these systems, leaving many deposits to be discovered by today's advanced methods of exploration.

Project Location

The Dos Cabezas Project is located in southeast Arizona, USA approximately 150 km east of Tucson, see Figure 1: Location Map of the Dos Cabezas Project. Dos Cabezas Project area covers 58 sq.km. (5,800 hectares) at the Dos Cabezas Mountain range within the Laramide Porphyry Belt. The Dos Cabezas Project can be accessed via a combination of highways, secondary paved roadways, ranch roads, and ATV trails.





Figure 1: Location Map of Project

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2408/127394_446a5c5bf487b991_001full.jpg





Figure 2: Dos Cabezas Alteration and Geochemistry

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2408/127394_446a5c5bf487b991_002full.jpg

Historical Exploration and Exploration Targets

The Dos Cabezas Project is near the historic Teviston, Silver Camp, and Mascot mining districts. With the exception of the Spike E Hills porphyry system (located ~4 km northwest), historic mining and exploration focused on gold/silver/base metal veins and substantial amounts of high-grade copper ore shipped directly to smelters. Although USGS mapping in the 1980s determined the existence of an attractive, large Laramide volcano-igneous complex in the western Dos Cabezas Mountains, lack of access precluded serious porphyry copper exploration throughout the late 1900s.

Numerous prospects, shafts, and adits are present within the Dos Cabezas Project Area. Mining reported from the late 1800s through to the late 1900s includes production from widespread placers, numerous high-grade gold/silver veins and substantial quantities of direct-shipping base metal ore from a few larger mines.

Primary targets identified by Mundoro's initial exploration of a small portion of the project area include:

Mescal Canyon - Mapping has identified a zone of porphyry-style, quartz-sericite-pyrite veining (phyllic alteration) and outcropping copper mineralization within a large propylitic halo. Despite this, little evidence of any drilling or exploration beyond small scale prospecting have been identified. Geologic mapping, structural features, geochemical sampling, alteration and geophysics indicate a potential porphyry copper target at depth.

- Mapping has identified a zone of porphyry-style, quartz-sericite-pyrite veining (phyllic alteration) and outcropping copper mineralization within a large propylitic halo. Despite this, little evidence of any drilling or exploration beyond small scale prospecting have been identified. Geologic mapping, structural features, geochemical sampling, alteration and geophysics indicate a potential porphyry copper target at depth. Mineral Park - Mineral Park contains a number of historic mines and prospects. These include gold-copper-magnetite skarns, base/precious metal veins and widespread mineral occurrences near an outcropping, altered Laramide intrusive indicating potential for a larger system at depth.

- Mineral Park contains a number of historic mines and prospects. These include gold-copper-magnetite skarns, base/precious metal veins and widespread mineral occurrences near an outcropping, altered Laramide intrusive indicating potential for a larger system at depth. Other areas - Potential exists for additional porphyry copper targets within Mundoro's land package in other, as-yet unexplored portions of the mountains and the adjacent buried pediment. Further exploration work is planned for the covered areas for additional targeting in 2022 to advance existing targets and develop new ones.

Mineralization and Alteration

District scale mapping and geochemical sampling has identified porphyry style veining and alteration within the Dos Cabezas Project. Veining, alteration, and copper showings, show a clear association with "Laramide aged" intrusive rocks. Alteration patterns show zonation consistent with porphyry copper models. Two target areas have been identified as possible previously unknown hydrothermal centers:

Mescal Canyon - Sheeted quartz-pyrite-chalcopyrite-sericite veining has been exposed by erosion along the base of the canyon over an approximate 500m by 500m area. Phyllic-argillic alteration within Laramide intrusive rocks is present in this area along with sheeted quartz sulfide veining.

- Sheeted quartz-pyrite-chalcopyrite-sericite veining has been exposed by erosion along the base of the canyon over an approximate 500m by 500m area. Phyllic-argillic alteration within Laramide intrusive rocks is present in this area along with sheeted quartz sulfide veining. Mineral Park - Magnetite skarns with retrograde overprints are present around the contact of the Laramide monzonitic intrusive with local magnetite endoskarns. Quartz-sericite veining and sericite alteration is present within the monzonite.

Property Geology

The geology of the property consists primarily of "Laramide aged" volcanic and intrusive rocks. These have been uncomfortably deposited on Cretaceous aged sedimentary rocks and Proterozoic aged metamorphic and granitic rocks. Intruding into the volcanic rocks are a number of granodiorite to monzonite intrusives with one published age date of 64.3ma. The volcanics are truncated to the south by a major west-northwest striking structure known as the Apache Pass Fault Zone. This structure places Cretaceous and Paleozoic sedimentary rocks and Proterozoic metamorphic and granitic rocks against the Laramide volcanics. "Basin and Range" style normal faults are inferred on published maps south of the Apache Pass Fault Zone with relatively shallow pediment cover occurring along the range front in contact with the Laramide volcanics.

Qualified Persons

The above technical disclosure in this press release has been reviewed and verified, by T. Dechev, P.Eng, PEO, APEGBC, the CEO of the Company, a Qualified Persons as defined by NI 43-101.

About Mundoro

Mundoro is a publicly listed company on the TSX-V in Canada and OTCQB in the USA with a portfolio of mineral properties focused on primarily base metals. To drive value for shareholders, Mundoro's asset portfolio generates near-term cash payments to Mundoro from partners and creates royalties attached to each mineral property. The portfolio of mineral properties is currently focused on predominately copper in two mineral districts: Western Tethyan Belt in Eastern Europe and the Laramide Belt in the southwest USA.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This News Release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "will", "expect", "intend", "plan", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe" or "continue" or similar words or the negative thereof, and include the following: completion of earn-in expenditures, options and completion of a definitive agreement by the parties. The material assumptions that were applied in making the forward-looking statements in this News Release include expectations as to the mineral potential of the Company's projects, the Company's future strategy and business plan and execution of the Company's existing plans. We caution readers of this News Release not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements contained in this News Release, as there can be no assurance that they will occur and they are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include general economic and market conditions, exploration results, commodity prices, changes in law, regulatory processes, the status of Mundoro's assets and financial condition, actions of competitors and the ability to implement business strategies and pursue business opportunities. The forward-looking statements contained in this News Release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements included in this News Release are made as of the date of this News Release and the Board undertakes no obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Shareholders are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and for a more detailed discussion of such risks and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, refer to the Company's filings with the Canadian securities regulators available on www.sedar.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.

For further information, please visit Mundoro Capital's website www.mundoro.com

Teo Dechev,

Chief Executive Officer, President and Director

+1-604-669 D-8055

[email protected]

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127394
HIGHLIGHTS

Numerous high-grade showings

Strong potential for massive nickel sulphide mineralization

Hosts both magmatic Norilsk "feeder type" mineralization and epigenic "footwall-type" deposit

Drill ready targets

Historic Mineral Resource Estimate, 400,000 tonnes at 1.35% nickel

Excellent access from adjoining Alaska Highway

Proximal to multiple communities

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - Palladium One Mining Inc. (TSXV: PDM) (OTCQB: NKORF) (FSE: 7N11) (the "Company" or "Palladium One") is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Canalask Nickel-Copper-PGE Project, located beside the Alaska Highway in Yukon, Canada (the "Canalask Property"), from Victoria Gold Corporation (the "Vendor").

Palladium One's geological team, which is comprised of functional experts in sulphide nickel-copper-PGE deposits, has recognized another over-looked, under explored prospect. With a historical resource estimate dating back to 1968, a top nickel producer, Falconbridge Ltd., initiated exploration activities at Canalask in 2006, however, Xstrata plc's acquisition of Falconbridge in late 2006 curtailed exploration and the project has had limited exploration since then. The vendor, Victoria Gold, held the project since 2009 and focused its efforts on successfully bringing its Eagle Gold mine into production.

The known occurrences at Canalask are hosted in the White River mafic-ultramafic complex, which hosts other nickel-PGE deposits including the past-producing Wellgreen mine. The prospective horizon extends for more than 10 kms on the newly acquired property.

"The Palladium One team recognizes that the area explored represents a small portion of what is clearly an extensive and highly prospective system capable of hosting a major deposit. Canalask complements the massive sulphide Tyko Project in Ontario, where exploration drilling is currently underway. With $14 million of cash on hand as at March 31, 2022, the Company remains well-funded to add value to its projects," commented Derrick Weyrauch, President and CEO.

Transaction Details

The Canalask Property was acquired through a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company and structured as an asset acquisition with consideration as follows:

$25,000 shall be payable in cash on Closing. $200,000 shall be payable in common shares of the Company on Closing. The Vendor shall retain a 2% Net Smelter Return ("NSR") royalty, with the Company retaining a 50% buyback right. Contingent consideration includes: $2,000,000 will be paid to the Vendor upon the earlier of (A) the publication of a Feasibility Study, or (B) the Commencement of Commercial Production; and $5,000,000 will be paid to the Vendor upon the commencement of commercial production on the Canalask Property.

Completion of the transaction is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval.

Canalask Property

The Canalask Property is located within the Whitehorse Mining District, approximately 300 kilometers northwest of Whitehorse, Yukon and is accessible from the Alaska Highway near Beaver Creek. The Canalask Property consists of a contiguous block of 179 quartz claims covering an approximate area of 3,400 hectares.

Exploration on the project dates to the 1950's when the Canalask footwall zone was originally discovered, drilled and partially developed. A Historical resource estimate on the Main Zone is quoted at 400,000 tonnes at 1.35% Nickel by Discovery Mines Ltd. in 1968 (Yukon Assessment Report 094599). Early Metallurgical floatation test work returned concentrate grades as high as 19.7% Nickel (Yukon Assessment Report 093256). Exploration continued on the project up to the early 2000's through a series of surface programs including geochemical surveys, geological mapping and geophysics. During these campaigns numerous high-grade Ni-Cu-PGE showings, such 4.7% Nickel, 0.6% Cu and 6.82 g/t PGE in grade samples at the Discovery zone (Yukon Assessment Report 094599), were discovered along the length of the ultramafic-mafic body. In 2006 Xstrata completed a NI-43-101 Technical Report (Yukon Assessment Report 094599) on the project. Readers are cautioned that the Company has not verified the Historical Mineral Resource Estimate and therefore the data should not be relied upon.

Geology Overview

The Canalask Property covers the lateral extent of the northwest - southeast striking, steeply dipping "White River Intrusive Complex" (WRIC), which is part of the larger Kluane Mafic-Ultramafic Belt. The Kluane belt extends from northern British Columbia to east-central Alaska, within the Pennsylvanian to Triassic Wrangellia Terrane volcanics and sediments. The belt is host to numerous nickel-copper +/- platinum-palladium deposits and prospects, most notably the past producing Wellgreen Deposit, now held by Nickel Creek Platinum Corp., approximately 110 kilometers to the south. The WRIC occurs as a sill-like body of ultramafic and mafic rocks 100 to 150 meters thick and dipping approximately 50 degrees to the southwest. The northern margin of the WRIC represents the basal footwall contact zone while the southern margin delineates the upper hanging wall intrusive contact. The intrusion itself is dominantly composed of peridotite and dunite with a mineralized basal gabbro zone.

The WRIC is a favourable setting for magmatic nickel-copper sulphide mineralization as it is considered a "feeder system" with a high volume of magma flow. As evidenced by the abundance of magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE showings at the base of the WRIC and the discovery of the Ni-rich Canalask footwall deposit, the project hosts strong potential for both "magmatic feeder-type" basal deposits and "epigenetic footwall-type" footwall deposits. The geological setting draws comparison to the world-class Norilsk Ni-Cu-PGE camp.





To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

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Note:

The Company has not attempted to verify the historic mineral resource estimate and therefore readers should not place any reliance on the historical estimate.

Qualified Person

The technical information in this release has been reviewed and verified by Neil Pettigrew, M.Sc., P. Geo., Vice President of Exploration and a director of the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Palladium One

Palladium One Mining Inc. (TSXV: PDM) is focused on discovering environmentally and socially conscious Metals for Green Transportation. A Canadian mineral exploration and development company, Palladium One is targeting district scale, platinum-group-element (PGE)-copper-nickel deposits in leading mining jurisdictions. Its flagship project is the Lntinen Koillismaa (LK) Project in north-central Finland, which is ranked by the Fraser Institute as one of the world's top countries for mineral exploration and development. LK is a PGE-copper-nickel project that has existing Mineral Resources. PDM's second project is the 2020 Discovery of the Year Award winning Tyko Project, a high-grade sulphide, copper-nickel project located in Canada. Follow Palladium One on LinkedIn, Twitter, and at www.palladiumoneinc.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Derrick Weyrauch"

President & CEO, Director

For further information contact:

Derrick Weyrauch, President & CEO

Email: [email protected]



Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This press release is not an offer or a solicitation of an offer of securities for sale in the United States of America. The common shares of Palladium One Mining Inc. have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration.

Information set forth in this press release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that relate to future, not past events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address a company's expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", and "intend", statements that an action or event "may", "might", "could", "should", or "will" be taken or occur, or other similar expressions. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, risks associated with project development; the need for additional financing; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; fluctuations in palladium and other commodity prices; title matters; environmental liability claims and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the absence of dividends; competition; dilution; the volatility of our common share price and volume; and tax consequences to Canadian and U.S. Shareholders. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made and the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127402
Responsible Bitcoin Miner CCU honors Satoshi Nakamoto changes name to SATO Technologies to coincide with existing ticker SATO

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - June 13, 2022) - SATO Technologies Corp. (TSXV: SATO)(OTCQB: CCPUF) ("SATO" or "the Company") (previously Canada Computational Unlimited Corp.) rolls out its new brand and website to better express its commitment to responsible Bitcoin mining. SATO's new image will be closer aligned with its mission to lead with full transparency and to cultivate community through the development of blockchain applications, particularly on the Bitcoin Blockchain and the Lightning Network.

The new site is accessible at: https://www.bysato.com

"This rebrand emulates the company's growth with a more distinctive and approachable look while paying homage to Satoshi Nakamoto. A strong company is always evolving, therefore SATO's team is continually developing its responsible and highly effective Bitcoin mining business while innovating on the Bitcoin Blockchain and the Lightning Network, which gives us a competitive advantage," commented Romain Nouzareth, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO.

As approved at the Company's Annual and Special Meeting on May 31, 2022, the Company has filed articles of amendment to effect the change of its name to SATO Technologies Corp. The Company expects the shares to commence trading under the new name on the TSX Venture Exchange on or around June 16, 2022. The Company's symbol will remain "SATO". A new CUSIP number has been issued, and Shareholders are not required to take any action with respect to the name change.

SATO's focus is to expand its responsible Bitcoin Mining operations globally. The Company is also in the process of launching new projects built on the Bitcoin Blockchain and the Lightning Network. Project X at SATO is a group of users innovating and building the future with Bitcoin at its core, participants will be able to privately test new products prior to public launch. Interested parties are invited to join the SATO project X.

SATO operates a state-of-the-art, carbon-neutral bitcoin mining center with a contract of 20 MW of stable, renewable energy from Joliette, Qubec. The Company's high-density calculation centers are built for high-grade cryptocurrency mining, AI data processing, and fintech infrastructure.

Founded in 2017, SATO is led by technology entrepreneurs, electricity and ventilation experts, network specialists, and Canadian industrialists. Since its inception, the company has pursued a vision of environmental stewardship throughout the mining process. The excess supply of renewable energy in the province of Quebec has made this endeavor feasible and a great base for growth. Additional information can be found at www.bysato.com.

For additional information, please contact:

Caroline Klukowski

Tel: 604.260.5490

[email protected]

Keep up-to-date on developments and join our online communities at Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

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 contains certain forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the future performance of the Company, and other statements that are not historical facts. Wherever possible, words such as "may", "will", "should", "could", "expect", "plan", "intend", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "predict" or "potential" or the negative or other variations of these words, or similar words or phrases, have been used to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management as at the date hereof.

Forward-looking statements involve significant risk, uncertainties and assumptions. Many factors could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from the results discussed or implied in the forward-looking statements. These factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based upon what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure readers that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/127390
New Capital to Fuel Growth as Global Contractors Adopt Construction Optioneering

MENLO PARK, Calif., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Construction technology leader ALICE Technologies today announced a $30M funding round led by Vanedge Capital. Additional new investors include Bouygues, Gaingels, GRID Capital, JLL Spark, and MetaPlanet, which joined the round along with existing investors Future Ventures, Merus Capital, and Rising Tide. ALICE Technologies' construction optioneering platform helps large contractors plan, bid and build complex infrastructure and commercial projects more efficiently and with reduced risk.

Large general contractors worldwide  companies such as Bouygues, Kajima, and Skanska  use ALICE to help them plan and manage complex projects such as bridges, tunnels, high speed rail systems and mixed-use towers.

"Rooted in generative construction and powered by AI, the ALICE platform is bringing capabilities to general contractors that traditional solutions simply cannot match," said ALICE Founder and CEO Rene Morkos. "This Series B funding round will fuel the aggressive hiring, global growth, continued product innovation, and sales and marketing expansion required to make ALICE an industry standard."

ALICE customers use the platform on key projects from preconstruction through project delivery. During preconstruction, contractors use ALICE for "optioneering"  to explore the scenarios that make the most efficient use of project resources (labor, equipment, and materials) and to test the impact of changes in key variables on project outcomes. For example, a manager might use ALICE Precon to determine if it makes sense to add a third crane to a project. The rigorous use of ALICE to create and test options enables customers to submit the precise, well-tested bids they need to win profitable business. During the execution phase, contractors then use ALICE Manage to keep their projects on time and on budget. If circumstances change  as they inevitably do on most construction projects  customers can then use ALICE to quickly update project plans and recover from project delays.

"In an industry that accepts major cost and schedule overruns as the norm, ALICE Technologies is poised to transform the way the world builds," said Paul Lee, Managing Partner at Vanedge Capital. "The ALICE platform gives general contractors the ability to easily explore construction choices and chart a path that best balances risk, time and cost. This is a distinctive, high-growth business led by a uniquely qualified team, and we're excited to support ALICE's growth and success."

In 2021, ALICE Technologies grew its ARR by 270%. It acquired notable new customers, such as Bouygues Construction and Skanska, and expanded its business with existing customers, such as Kajima and Shimizu. ALICE also grew its team both in the U.S. and abroad.

In describing his company's work with ALICE, Chris Baze, Senior BIM Manager at Hawaiian Dredging Construction Company, said, "By enabling us to create and evaluate numerous different ways in which to build our projects, ALICE gives our team the ability to find creative building solutions and quickly pivot when 'planned' and 'actual' start to differ. We're confident that ALICE will have a big impact not only on HDCC, but on our industry as a whole."

For more information, please visit www.alicetechnologies.com.

ABOUT ALICE TECHNOLOGIES

ALICE Technologies is the creator of the world's first construction optioneering platform. Founded in 2013 based on research from Stanford University, ALICE helps large contractors to reduce risk and plan, bid, and build more efficiently. The company works with large general contractors in the infrastructure and commercial construction segments, such as Bouygues, Kajima, and Skanska. Headquartered in the U.S., ALICE also has significant operations in the Czech Republic, the U.K., and India. Learn more at www.alicetechnologies.com.

Media Contact:Melissa Wilmot, Studio PR, for ALICE Technologies(503) 747-8816[email protected]

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SOURCE ALICE Technologies
LONDON, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Christie's announces First Editions, Second Thoughts: An Auction to Benefit English PEN, a landmark literary auction taking place online from 28 June - 12 July comprising First Edition books and works of art from contemporary artists and authors, each of which has been uniquely annotated, illustrated or added to by their creator.

First Editions, Second Thoughts (FEST) will raise much needed funds to support English PEN's work to defend free expression and campaign for writers who are at risk. The sale comprises over 80 annotated First Edition books by internationally renowned writers, including work by Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Salman Rushdie, John le Carre, Sebastian Faulks, Ben Okri, Ian McEwan, Bernardine Evaristo, and Philippe Sands. Art works from highly esteemed artists Anish Kapoor, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Ai Weiwei and Edmund de Waal are included in the auction.

Hilary Mantel's heavily annotated first editions of 'Bring Up the Bodies' and 'The Mirror and the Light' from her acclaimed Wolf Hall trilogy are both offered in the auction. Since it was established in 1969, only four writers, J.M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel, have won The Booker Prize twice. First editions annotated by these four authors are offered in the auction.

Each of the First Edition books is annotated by hand, a unique record of the author's response to their own work. Hilary Mantel comments on the experience: 'The process of publication (however welcome and necessary) is a process of estrangement. Annotation gives your book back to you, but presents it multiplied. It rescues you from finished product, returns you to process. It gives form to the sub-voce commentary that accompanies every session of work: 'I couldbut I won'tand yet I could try'. A special kind of memory comes into play - how you were when such a phrase arrived, where you were: the way the light fell into the room. It's a creative process as much as a re-creative one. Sentences struggle and twist again under your hand. Things you might have said, and the various ways you might have said them, swim back into your consciousness. You realise, if you didn't know it already, that there's another book behind the book, and behind that, a series of shadow volumes, stretching back to infancy, before you could write at all'.

English PEN, one of the world's oldest human rights organisations, champions the freedom to write and the freedom to read around the world, and is the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries.

A selection of Auction Highlights include:

Monica Ali, Brick Lane. London: Doubleday, 2003.

An extraordinary first edition, signed on the title page and extensively annotated by the author across 79 pages with over 1000 words of commentary. Monica Ali's insightful commentary pays close attention to the text, often highlighting what pleases, shocks or surprises her in her language choices, and pointing to key moments in the narrative.(Estimate 1,500-2,000).

Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale. London: Jonathan Cape, 1986.

First UK edition of Atwood's most celebrated work, extensively annotated by the author across 161 pages, with 1,137 words. (Estimate 4,0006,000).

Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other.London: Hamish Hamilton, 2019.

A delightfully personal first edition, signed and annotated by the author with insightful notes on her influences and an account of the career-changing success of this Booker Prize winning novel. The final annotation is a charming summary of the novel's success: 'This book has revolutionised my career!'.(Estimate 1,500-2,000).

John le Carre, (1931-2020). The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.London: Victor Gollancz, 1963.

First edition, part-annotated with the author's unfinished final reflections on his best-known work. The author passed away having annotated only the opening 45 pages of the book for the auction. (Estimate 8,000-12,000).

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children.London: Jonathan Cape, 1981.

'I had no idea that it would change my life': first British edition, signed by the author and with a fine inscription relating to the novel's enduring popularity and 'the real prizes of Literature'. (Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.

First edition of a unique mystery novel, copiously annotated and illustrated by the author. The interventions in this copy are vivid, inventive, humorous, and generous in number and in spirit. Haddon's notes, in ink or coloured pencils, wind around the margins like fireworks. (Estimate 2,000-3,000).

Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies. London: Fourth Estate, 2012.

First edition of the Booker Prize-winning novel, signed and abundantly annotated by the author with 4753 words of commentary across 179 pages. Her notes are acutely personal, offering a striking sense of the author's profound emotional attachment to the stories being told.(Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Edmund de Waal, Letters to Camondo.London: Chatto & Windus, 2021.

Annotated first edition, with accompanying porcelain tile, of a sequence of imagined letters to art collector Count Moise de Camondo. (Estimate 3,000-5,000).

Ian McEwan, Atonement.London: Jonathan Cape, 2001.

An exceptional first edition of Atonement, annotated by the author with over 4000 words of commentary His notes frequently point to his sources  both in personal experiences and in more formal research  and to such literary influences as Henry James and Virginia Woolf.(Estimate 4,000-6,000).

Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers.London: Faber & Faber, 2015.

First edition, copiously annotated and illustrated by the author, his annotations appear on almost every page of the book and relate to the literary influences that shaped him ('This page shows what I'm made of [] I'm made of what I've read'), his writing process ('I always start writing by drawing'), his thoughts about criticism ('Critics will wilfully misunderstand things') and setbacks ('Someone told me to "go away and write a proper book").(Estimate 1,500-2,000).

Philippe Sands, President, English PEN, and professor of law at University College London, comments, 'It is thrilling to embark on a First Editions, Second Thoughts auction with Christie's. I am truly delighted to join such illustrious names with an annotated edition of East West Street, whose focus on international crimes assumes particular resonance in the face of the crime of aggression that is being perpetrated by Russia against Ukraine. Here, in the UK, and around the world, the rule of law is more important than ever, as intolerance, division, and threats to freedom of expression are on the rise. Today, the work of English PEN is more important and relevant than ever, and this wonderful auction will help in its vital work.'

Margaret Ford, Christie's International Head of Books & Manuscripts comments, 'Christie's is delighted to support the important work of English PEN by presenting an extraordinary array of literary masterpieces at auction. These works, uniquely annotated by their authors for the auction, offer new insights into the work, life and career of some of the most important writers of our generation. As such, they are "copies of record" which will excite collectors, readers and literary enthusiasts around the globe.'

Daniel Gorman, Director, English PEN, comments, 'It is an honour to partner with Christie's for this auction to benefit English PEN, as we continue the increasingly urgent and vital work of campaigning for writers at risk, and for freedom of expression in the UK and across the world. We are hugely grateful to the contributors, some of the most well-known and well-loved authors and artists of our time, who have generously looked back and annotated some of their finest work.'

Mark Wiltshire, Specialist, Books and Manuscripts and Head of Sale comments, 'It is a great privilege to handle the sale of these extraordinary books in support of English PEN. The authors' annotations are personal, profound, insightful, and frequently surprising, adding a unique layer of intimacy to some of the most celebrated texts published in our lifetime. To read them is to feel incredibly close to the process of creation. I anticipate strong interest from collectors and institutions from around the world.'

Estimates range from 1,000 to 20,000 and bidding on most lots will start from 100.

A selection of lots from First Editions, Second Thoughts: An Auction to Benefit English PEN will be on view and exhibition from 6 - 15 June within The Art of Literature: Auction Highlights Exhibition taking place at Christie's headquarters in St James's, London, as part of London Now. Please see www.christies.com for timings.

All lots in the First Editions, Second Thoughts auction will also be on view and open to the public in a standalone exhibition from 8  11 July at Christie's.

Christies and English PEN are delighted to be hosting a series of events open to the public, as follows:

Events:

3 July 2022 10.30am First Editions, Second Thoughts

Writers return to their work and record their thoughts by hand in a First Edition. Elif Shafak invites Anne Enright (The Green Road), Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China), David Nicholls (One Day), Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet) and Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring) to discuss their second thoughts.

9 July 2022 10.30am Philippe Sands  East West Street: Lviv 1945/2022

Human rights lawyer and President of English PEN Philippe Sands reflects on past and current events in Ukraine, free expression and writing, in his own work and across the world. Chaired by Claire Armistead.

To book your place at the above events where numbers are limited please go to Christies.com and apply via the following link click here.

To learn more about the work of English PEN please click here.

Please see the link here to access drop box images of the works illustrated along with a list of the authors, artists and their First Edition or work of art within the auction.

Please credit Christie's Images 2022 for all imagery.

About English PEN

Founded in 1921, English PEN is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations, championing the freedom to write and read. We are the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries. With the support of our members  a community of readers, writers and activists  we protect freedom of expression whenever it is under attack, support writers facing persecution around the world, and celebrate contemporary international writing with literary prizes, grants, events, and our online magazine PEN Transmissions.

English PEN's work is made possible through core funding from Arts Council England and the TS Eliot Foundation alongside the support of members, project partners and Silver PEN partners.

https://www.englishpen.org

About Christie's

Founded in 1766, Christie's is a world-leading art and luxury business. Renowned and trusted for its expert live and online auctions, as well as its bespoke private sales, Christie's offers a full portfolio of global services to its clients, including art appraisal, art financing, international real estate and education. Christie's has a physical presence in 46 countries, throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific, with flagship international sales hubs in New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris and Geneva. It also is the only international auction house authorized to hold sales in mainland China (Shanghai).

Christie's auctions span more than 80 art and luxury categories, at price points ranging from $200 to over $100 million. In recent years, Christie's has achieved the world record price for an artwork at auction (Leonardo da Vinci's Salvador Mundi, 2017), for a single charitable collection sale (the Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller, 2018), and for a work by a living artist (Jeff Koons' Rabbit, 2019).

Christie's Private Sales offers a seamless service for buying and selling art, jewellery and watches outside of the auction calendar, working exclusively with Christie's specialists at a client's individual pace.

Recent innovations at Christie's include the groundbreaking sale of the first NFT for a digital work of art ever offered at a major auction house (Beeple's Everydays, March 2021), with the unprecedented acceptance of cryptocurrency as a means of payment. As an industry leader in digital innovation, Christie's also continues to pioneer new technologies that are redefining the business of art, including the creation of viewing and bidding experiences that integrate augmented reality, global livestreaming, buy-now channels, and hybrid sales formats.

Christie's is dedicated to advancing responsible culture throughout its business and communities worldwide, including achieving sustainability through net zero carbon emissions by 2030, and actively using its platform in the art world to amplify under-represented voices and support positive change.

Browse, bid, discover, and join us for the best of art and luxury at: www.christies.com or by downloading Christie's apps.The COVID-related re-opening status of our global locations is available here.

*Please note when quoting estimates above that other fees will apply in addition to the hammer price - see Section D of the Conditions of Sale at the back of the sale catalogue. *Estimates do not include buyer's premium. Sales totals are hammer price plus buyer's premium and are reported net of applicable fees.

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PRESS CONTACT: Charlotte Brown +44 (0)7920 504674[email protected]

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SOURCE Christies
NASHVILLE. Tenn., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- OneOncology, the national platform for independent oncology practices, today appointed Thomas Stricker, MD as Medical Director for Precision Medicine. Dr. Stricker will work with partner practices to create workflows that reduce physicians' burden of genomic test ordering and interpretation, so they have more time to spend with their patients. Dr. Stricker reports to Chief Medical Officer, Davey Daniel, MD.

Stricker will work with practices to to reduce physicians' burden of genomic test ordering and interpretation.

Stricker says he sees three pillars of assistance for testing that he and his team can provide to physician partners:

1) At order, to make sure the right tests are ordered.2) At initial result, to make sure that the appropriate therapy is given based on the current data. 3) At recurrence or progression, to identify additional options whether they or standard of care or a clinical trial option.

"The complexity of pathology standards in oncology necessitates a change in the way that results are delivered, such as comprehensive reports that summarize the key data from multiple tests," Dr. Stricker said. "I am excited to help build systems that can empower our physicians to maximize the value of testing during each stage."

Dr. Stricker was most recently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt University where he founded the Somatic Clinical Sign-out Team and the Clinical Genomics Lab, which generates whole exome and other germline sequencing panels. Dr. Stricker also served as associate director of VANTAGE, the research sequencing core for Vanderbilt.

At Vanderbilt, Dr. Stricker also served on molecular tumor boards and was on the team that founded GENIE, an American Association for Cancer Research initiative for the sharing of genomic cancer sequencing data across institutions. Dr. Stricker has extensive experience in generating and analyzing Next Generation Sequencing data, and in generating and signing out clinical genomic reports.

"Dr. Stricker has extensive experience in genomic sequencing, research and developing data integrations across cancer institutions," said Davey Daniel, MD, OneOncology's Chief Medical Officer. "His knowledge, experience and vision are a perfect fit to support our physicians' abilities to use genomic testing to match the right treatment or trial at the right time  all in oncology practices that are conveniently located close to where patients live."

Dr. Stricker earned his MD and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis. Following a residency in Anatomical Pathology and a fellowship in Bone and Soft Tissue at The University of Chicago, he joined Dr. Kevin White's lab in the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology as a post-doctoral fellow. While there, he developed expertise in generating and analyzing data from the then-new next generation sequencing technologies.

About OneOncology

OneOncology was founded by community oncologists, for community oncologists, with the mission of improving the lives of everyone living with cancer. Our goal is to enable community oncology practices to remain independent and to improve patient access to care in their communities, all at a lower cost than in the hospital setting. OneOncology supports our platform of community oncology practices through group purchasing, operational optimization, practice growth, and clinical innovation. Our 700 cancer care providers care for 280,000 patients at 181 sites of care nationwide. To learn more, visit oneoncology.com or LinkedIn.

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SOURCE OneOncology
SHANGHAI and NANJING, China and SAN JOSE, Calif., June 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- IASO Biotherapeutics ("IASO Bio"), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in discovering, developing, and manufacturing innovative cell therapies and antibody products, and Innovent Biologics, Inc. ("Innovent," HKEX: 01801), today jointly announced that the updated data from phase 1/2 study of Equecabtagene Autoleucel (IASO Bio R&D code: CT103A, Innovent R&D code: IBI326), a fully-human anti-B cell maturation antigen (BCMA) chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for the treatment of relapsed and/or refractory multiple myeloma (R/R MM), was presented in the form of an oral presentation at the 27th European Hematology Association (EHA) Annual Meeting in Vienna on June 9-12, 2022.

Presentation Title: Updated Phase 1/2 Data of the Safety and Efficacy of CT103A, Fully-Human BCMA-Directed CAR-T Cells in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple MyelomaSession Title: Relapsed/refractory myeloma: BCMA-directed therapiesAbstract Code: EHA-S187Session date and Time: Sunday, June 12, 2022, at 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM CESTPlace: Vienna, Austria or onlineSpeaker: Chunrui Li, MD, Ph.D., from Department of Hematology, Tongji Hospital of Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

The updated data from the Phase 1/2 study with a longer duration of follow-up in more patients has showed durable and deepening efficacy, manageable safety and long-term in vivo persistence, indicating that Equecabtagene Autoleucel has the potential to be a breakthrough therapy for patients with R/R MM.

The updated data is from the 14 clinical sites involved in the Phase 1/2 clinical study of Equecabtagene Autoleucel (ChiCTR1800018137, NCT05066646) in the treatment of patients with R/R MM. As of the data cutoff date of January 21, 2022, 79 patients received recommended phase 2 doseRP2Dof 1.0106 CAR-T cells/kg with the median follow-up of nine months (range 1.2, 19.6) and median prior five lines of therapy(range 3,23). Among the 79 patients, 34.2% (27/79) had high-risk cytogenetic abnormalities, 34.2%27/79had extramedullary multiple myeloma (EMM), and 15.2%12/79had received prior CAR-T therapy.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel demonstrated a favorable and manageable safety profile: Among the 79 patients, 94.9% (75/79) experienced cytokine release syndrome (CRS). The majority experienced 1~2 CRS, and no patient experienced grade 3 CRS. The median time to CRS onset was six days after infusion, and the median duration of CRS was five days. Only two patients experienced immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS), including one patient who experienced grade 1 ICANS and one who experienced grade 2 ICANS. All patients with CRS or ICANS have recovered.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel showed favorable and durable efficacy: Among the 79 patients, the overall response rate (ORR) was 94.9% (75/79), with 89.9 (71/79) of those patients achieving very good partial response (VGPR) or deeper responses, and the complete response/stringent complete response (CR/sCR) rate was 68.4% (54/79). Equecabtagene Autoleucel also demonstrated favorable efficacy in 10 patients with EMM, achieving an ORR of 100% (10/10) and a CR/sCR rate of 90.0% (9/10). In all 79 patients, 92.4% (73/79) achieved minimal residual disease (MRD) negativity, all CR/sCR subjects achieved MRD negativity, and the median duration of MRD negativity was not reached.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel demonstrated favorable efficacy in patients who had received prior CAR-T therapy: Among the 12 patients who previously received CAR-T therapy, the ORR was 75.0% (9/12), with 41.7% (5/12) of those patients achieving CR/sCR.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel demonstrated robust expansion and prolonged persistence: The expansion of Equecabtagene Autoleucel in peripheral blood reached the peak at a median of 12 days, with a median Cmax of 92,000 copies/ug DNA. Equecabtagene Autoleucel was still detectable in 62.3% (38/61) and 53.3% (8/15) of the subjects who completed 6-months and 12-month follow-ups after infusion. Soluble BCMA in peripheral blood of patients rapidly declined after Equecabtagene Autoleucel infusion and persistently remained below the detectable limit.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel has low immunogenicity: 16.5% (13/79) of the subjects tested anti-drug antibody (ADA)-positive after Equecabtagene Autoleucel infusion. Among them1.3% (1/79) tested ADA-positive before Equecabtagene Autoleucel infusion, and 2.5% (2/79) tested ADA-positive within three months.

"Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy is a revolutionary new pillar in cancer treatment. In our previous studies, Equecabtagene Autoleucel has shown excellent efficacy and manageable safety profiles. Its CAR structure contains fully human single-chain fragment variables (scFvs) to bypass potential anti-CAR immunogenicity of the host while retaining antitumor activity. At the 27th EHA conference, we updated the data on the efficacy and safety of Equecabtagene Autoleucel in R/R MM patients with longer median follow-up extended to 9.0 months, the CR/sCR deepened to 68.4%, compared with the CR/sCR of 58.2% with a median follow-up of 7.0 months, which were released at 63rd ASH conference in 2021. The updated data showed long-lasting safety and deepening efficacy of Equecabtagene Autoleucel. We are glad that Equecabtagene Autoleucel also shows favorable efficacy on patients who have relapsed after receiving prior CAR-T therapy. This has meaningful clinical value and is worthy of further exploration in the clinic to potentially bring forth new hope to patients with R/R MM." Prof. Chunrui Li, MD, PhD, from Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science & Technology.

About Multiple Myeloma (MM)

Multiple Myeloma is a deadly blood cancer that often infiltrates the bone marrow causing anemia, kidney failure, immune problems, and bone fractures. For multiple myeloma patients, common first-line drug treatments include proteasome inhibitors, immunomodulatory drugs, and alkylating agents. While treatment may result in remission, most patients will inevitably enter the relapsed or refractory stage as there's currently no cure. As a result, there is a significant unmet need for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. In the United States, MM accounts for nearly 2% of new cancer cases and more than 2% of all cancer-related deaths. According to Frost & Sullivan, the number of new MM cases in the United States rose from 30,300 in 2016 to 32,300 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 37,800 by 2025. Additionally, the total number of patients diagnosed with MM increased from 132,200 in 2016 to 144,900 in 2020 and is expected to rise to 162,300 by 2025. In China, the number of new MM cases rose from 18,900 in 2016 to 21,100 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 24,500 by 2025. The total number of patients diagnosed with MM in China increased from 69,800 in 2016 to 113,800 in 2020 and is expected to rise to 182,200 by 2025.

About Equecabtagene Autoleucel

Equecabtagene Autoleucel is an innovative therapy co-developed by Innovent and IASO Bio, with a fully-human anti- BCMA CAR-T cell therapy which uses lentivirus as a gene vector to transfect autologous T cells. The CAR contains a fully-human scFv, CD8a hinge and transmembrane, and 4-1BB-mediated co-stimulation and CD3 activation domains. Based on rigorous screening and comprehensive in vivo and in vitro evaluation, Equecabtagene Autoleucel is proven to have potent and rapid anti-myeloma activity and outstanding safety, efficacy, and persistence results.

Equecabtagene Autoleucel was granted "Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD)" by the NMPA kn February 2021 and was granted "Orphan Drug Designation (ODD)"by the Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February 2022. The NMPA has accepted the New Drug Application for Equecabtagene Autoleucel for the Treatment of Relapsed and/or Refractory Multiple Myeloma in June 2022.

In addition to multiple myeloma, the NMPA has accepted the investigational new drug (IND) application of Equecabtagene Autoleucel for a new expanded indication of Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder (NMOSD).

About IASO Biotherapeutics

IASO Bio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of novel cell therapies for oncology and autoimmune diseases. Leveraging its proprietary fully-human antibody discovery platform (IMARS), high-throughput CAR-T drug priority platform, and proprietary manufacturing processes, IASO Bio is developing a rich clinical-stage pipeline of multiple autologous and allogeneic CAR-T and biologics product candidates. This includes a diversified portfolio of 10 novel pipeline products, including IASO's leading asset, Equecabtagene Autoleucel, an innovative anti-BCMA CAR-T cell therapy under pivotal study for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (R/R MM), which received NDA acceptance of the China NMPA. Equecabtagene Autoleucel was granted "Breakthrough Therapy Designation" by the NMPA in February 2021 and granted "Orphan Drug Designation (ODD)" by the Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February 2022. In addition to multiple myeloma, the NMPA has accepted its IND application for the new extended indication of Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder (NMOSD). In addition, the company's in-house developed fully-human CD19/CD22 dual-targeted CAR-T cell therapy has entered phase 1/2 registrational clinical trial for the treatment of CD19/CD22-positive relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (r/r B-NHL). It was also granted Orphan Drug Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in October 2021. For more information on IASO Bio, please visit www.iasobio.com and www.linkedin.com/company/iasobiotherapeutics/.

About Innovent Biologics

Inspired by the spirit of "Start with Integrity, Succeed through Action" Innovent's mission is to develop and commercialize high-quality biopharmaceutical products that are affordable to ordinary people. Established in 2011, Innovent is committed to developing, manufacturing, and commercializing high-quality, innovative medicines for the treatment of cancer, metabolic, autoimmune, and other major diseases. On October 31, 2018, Innovent was listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited with the stock code: 01801.HK.

Since its inception, Innovent has developed a fully integrated multi-functional platform which that includes R&D, CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls), clinical development, and commercialization capabilities. Leveraging the platform, the company has built a robust pipeline of 32 valuable assets in the fields of cancer, autoimmune, metabolic, ophthalmology, and other major therapeutic areas, with 7 products approved for marketing in China  TYVYT (sintilimab injection), BYVASDA (bevacizumab biosimilar injection), SULINNO (adalimumab biosimilar injection), HALPRYZA (rituximab biosimilar injection) , Pemazyre (pemigatinib oral inhibitor), and olverembatinib (BCR-ABL TKI) and Cyramza (ramucirumab) , 2 assets under NMPA NDA review, 4 assets in Phase 3 or pivotal clinical trials, and an additional 19 molecules in clinical studies.

Innovent has built an international team with expertise in cutting-edge biological drug development and commercialization. The company has also entered into strategic collaborations with Eli Lilly and Company, Roche, Adimab, Incyte, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Hanmi and other international partners. For more information, please visit: www.innoventbio.com and www.linkedin.com/company/innovent-biologics/.

Note:

TYVYT (sintilimab injection) is not an approved product in the United States.

BYVASDA (bevacizumab biosimilar injection), SULINNO, and HALPRYZA (rituximab biosimilar injection) are not approved products in the United States.

TYVYT (sintilimab injection, Innovent)

BYVASDA (bevacizumab biosimilar injection, Innovent)

HALPRYZA (rituximab biosimilar injection, Innovent)

SULINNO (adalimumab biosimilar injection, Innovent)

Pemazyre (pemigatinib oral inhibitor, Incyte Corporation). Pemazyre was discovered by Incyte Corporation and licensed to Innovent for development and commercialization in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

CYRAMZA (ramucirumab, Eli Lilly). Cyramza was discovered by Eli Lilly and licensed to Innovent for commercialization in Mainland China.

Innovent's Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain certain forward-looking statements that are, by their nature, subject to significant risks and uncertainties. The words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend" and similar expressions, as they relate to Innovent Biologics, Inc. ("Innovent" or "Company") , are intended to identify certain of such forward-looking statements. Innovent does not intend to update these forward-looking statements regularly.

These forward-looking statements are based on the existing beliefs, assumptions, expectations, estimates, projections and understandings of the management of Innovent with respect to future events at the time these statements are made. These statements are not a guarantee of future developments and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond Innovent's control and are difficult to predict. Consequently, actual results may differ materially from information contained in the forward-looking statements as a result of future changes or developments in our business, Innovent's competitive environment and political, economic, legal and social conditions.

Innovent, the Directors and the employees of Innovent assume (a) no obligation to correct or update the forward-looking statements contained in this site; and (b) no liability in the event that any of the forward-looking statements does not materialize or turn out to be incorrect.

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SOURCE IASO Biotherapeutics
Current Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer James McGlennon Announces Retirement at End of 2022

BOSTON, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Liberty Mutual Insurance Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David Long today announced that Monica Caldas has been named Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, effective January 2023. With this appointment, Caldas joins the company's executive leadership team and will report to Tim Sweeney, who was appointed CEO of Liberty Mutual beginning in January 2023.

Caldas was promoted to Deputy CIO in March 2022 and is responsible for the technology roadmap across the organization's three business units -- Global Risk Solutions, Global Retail Markets (GRM) and Liberty Mutual Investments, ensuring collaboration across the enterprise to elevate data and insights to drive optimal performance and experiences.

She was previously Executive Vice President and Global CIO for GRM and before joining Liberty Mutual in 2018, worked at General Electric for 17 years where she held roles of increasing responsibility across IT operations, software development and organizational effectiveness.

Caldas is an advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, and is actively engaged in the company's Employee Resource Groups and working to inspire girls and young women to pursue STEM careers.

"Monica's deep passion for technology, data-driven solutions and the customer experience will continue to propel our digital transformation forward, delivering innovative results for our customers and employees," said Long. "Her global experience and perspective, collaborative leadership approach and drive towards excellence will help guide our ongoing work focused on meeting the rising expectations for digital solutions."

Executive Vice President and CIO James McGlennon Announces Retirement The company's current Executive Vice President and CIO James McGlennon announced he will retire at the end of 2022. McGlennon has over 25 years of cross-industry technology experience and has led the strategy for and evolution of the company's global technology organization of more than 5,000 employees for the past 15 years. He joined Liberty Mutual in 2007 as CIO of Agency Markets and under his leadership, Liberty Mutual has earned a spot on the prestigious Computerworld "Best Places to work in IT" list for two consecutive years.

McGlennon sits on the Board of Directors of the Rian Immigrant Center, which serves as Boston's welcome center for 3,500 immigrants and refugees from more than 120 countries every year.

"James has revolutionized our technology function by building a culture of continuous learning, smart risk-taking and agility, and I'm grateful for the tremendous contributions he's made to our company," said Long. "During an era of massive disruption and quickly evolving consumer expectations, James transformed our technology capabilities, spearheading a strategy that enabled us to stay ahead of technology's pace of acceleration by collaborating with business partners to develop winning solutions for millions of customers worldwide."

"I feel privileged to have led our world-class technology organization and to have been a part of this extraordinary company for 15 years," said McGlennon. "We are on an exciting journey of continuing to make Liberty Mutual a global company powered by data and technology, and I'm confident in Monica and the entire team to deliver on this. I'd like to thank my colleagues and peers across the globe for all of their support, counsel and friendship over the years."

About Liberty Mutual Insurance

At Liberty Mutual, we believe progress happens when people feel secure. By providing protection for the unexpected and delivering it with care, we help people embrace today and confidently pursue tomorrow.

In business since 1912, and headquartered in Boston, today we are the sixth largest global property and casualty insurer based on 2021 gross written premium. We also rank 78th on the Fortune 100 list of largest corporations in the U.S. based on 2021 revenue. As of December 31, 2021, we had $48.2 billion in annual consolidated revenue.

We employ over 47,000 people in 29 countries and economies around the world. We offer a wide range of insurance products and services, including personal automobile, homeowners, specialty lines, reinsurance, commercial multiple-peril, workers compensation, commercial automobile, general liability, surety, and commercial property.

For more information, visit www.libertymutualinsurance.com.

Contact: Liberty Mutual Media Relations [email protected]

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SOURCE Liberty Mutual Insurance
Global Communications Leader to Integrate Icertis with SAP Across 7 Operating Countries

BELLEVUE, Wash., June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Icertis, the contract intelligence company that pushes the boundaries of what's possible with contract lifecycle management (CLM), today announced that Ooredoo Group will use Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) as part of the company's enterprise-wide digital transformation. The initiative will streamline contract management across the company's headquarters in Qatar, as well as operations in Algeria, Kuwait, Maldives, Myanmar, Palestine, and Tunisia, supporting long-term growth.

"A key pillar of Ooredoo's corporate strategy is to evolve today's core business and build a smart telco, thereby further digitizing our operations and accelerating growth. To achieve this, we are partnering with world-leading providers to help us consolidate business applications on a common platform across our operating companies around the world," said Christian Friedrich Linhart, Group Chief Procurement Officer, Ooredoo Group. "We are very happy to have selected Icertis for its telecommunications industry expertise, AI capabilities, and extensive SAP partnership and integrations, which offer us a single-team approach to enterprise-wide contract intelligence."

As part of its enterprise-wide transformation, Ooredoo is implementing the latest cloud-based business applications, including ERP, HCM, SCM, TEM, and CLM, to enhance the experiences of its customers, employees, and suppliers through integrated and end-to-end processes, systems, automation, and optimization.

Given the role that contracts play across myriad critical business processes, contract intelligence is central to the company's digital transformation. Ooredoo will integrate the Icertis Contract Intelligence CLM platform with SAP Ariba and SAP S/4HANA, to gain greater business insights by leveraging the critical data within contracts. Ooredoo will also use the ICI NegotiateAI application, which uses artificial intelligence to optimize contract negotiation, reduce risk, and negotiate better outcomes.

"Contracts touch every part of the enterpriseevery persona, every system, and every network. They define how a business runs and govern every dollar in and out of the enterprise," explained Anand Veerkar, Chief Revenue Officer, Icertis. "Icertis transforms these powerful documents into structured, connected, and on-demand data to deliver intelligent contract authoring, automation, and insights. With Icertis Contract Intelligence, Ooredoo and other market-leading innovators can ensure the intent of every contract is correctly memorialized and fully realized across the enterprise, driving competitive advantage and growth."

About Ooredoo

Ooredoo is an international communications company operating across the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. Serving consumers and businesses in 10 countries, Ooredoo delivers the leading data experience through a broad range of content and services via its advanced, data-centric mobile and fixed networks. The company generated revenues of QAR 30 billion as of 31 December 2021. Its shares are listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange.

About Icertis

With unmatched technology and category-defining innovation, Icertis pushes the boundaries of what's possible with contract lifecycle management (CLM). The AI-powered, analyst-validated Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform turns contracts from static documents into strategic advantage by structuring and connecting the critical contract information that defines how an organization runs. Today, the world's most iconic brands and disruptive innovators trust Icertis to govern the rights and commitments in their 10 million+ contracts worth more than $1 trillion in 40+ languages and 90+ countries.

Media ContactLiza ColburnDirector of Corporate Communications[email protected]+1 (781) 562-0111

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1515204/icertis_Logo.jpg

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SOURCE Icertis
BANGKOK, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Thailand will welcome over 1,000 participants from more than 60 countries at the high-profile 2022 Global Summit of Women, scheduled from 2325 June 2022 in Bangkok. The event is becoming the first large-scale international convention held face-to-face in 2 years. It will shine the spotlight on Thailand's MICE industry as the country reopens and prepares for a rapid rebound in international business events.

The announcement was made jointly by Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB), led by Mrs. Nichapa Yoswee, Senior Vice President, together with the President of the Global Summit of Women, Ms. Irene Natividad, the Thailand Host Committee Chair, Ms. Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, and Mr. Siripakorn Chiosamut, Deputy Governor for Marketing Communications and Marketing Director at the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).

Originally scheduled for 2020, the event is the first large-scale in-person global convention that Thailand will host after a two-year gap. The event is also seen as a timely opportunity for Thailand to present itself as a "World Destination" for international events as the country has gradually introduced relaxation measures for incoming travel and events during the past three months. On 1 April 2022 onwards, requirement of negative pre-arrival RT-PCR test taken within 72 hours of travel was abolished. From 1 May, Test and Go arrangement which required test upon arrival has been no more in effect and from 1 June, simplified version of Thailand Pass was introduced for overseas travellers for enhanced facilitation. The removal of these requirements has given MICE organisers freedom to plan larger in-person gatherings as long as the relevant COVID-19 safety measures are in place.

Mrs. Nichapa Yoswee, Senior Vice President of TCEB, said: "Thailand is back and we are again ready to woo the world with our commitment, capability, and creativity. And the Global Summit of Women is the perfect platform to do that. With its values of gender equality, diversity and inclusiveness, the Summit not only mirrors our national aspirations as set out under Thailand's 12th National Economic and Social Development Plan but also reflects the resilience and economic contribution of our MICE industry. We are expecting 1,000 participants and women leaders from 60 countries and an income of 80 million baht from this much-anticipated world-class convention."

Mrs. Nichapa added that Thailand's MICE industry is putting behind the setbacks caused by COVID-19 and is gearing up for a strong rebound. According to TCEB, although Thailand has been continually impacted by the COVID-19 situation, the MICE industry in Thailand could generate income of over 33.2 billion baht, creating over 46,000 jobs last year. Apart from 23 TCEB-supported international events announced for 2022, the annual APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting scheduled for 18-19 November 2022 in Bangkok will be a highlight attracting world's attention to Thailand.

Ms. Natividad said: "As Summit President, I am looking forward to bringing this renowned Summit to Thailand, a country where women rank high in economic participation in business and government. The 2022 theme  'Women: Creating Opportunities in the New Reality'  will focus on driving post-pandemic economy. Male and female senior executives of multinational corporations are expected from countries as diverse as South Africa, Vietnam, France, Spain, Mexico, Germany, and Kazakhstan. There is genuine excitement in being able to meet in person for the first time in over two years since the COVID-19 pandemic."

Ms. Kobkarn said: "The Global Summit of Women is the biggest stage for international women leaders in the world. The 2022 Summit will confirm our capabilities to host conferences and generate confidence in the Thai economy, focusing on continued economic development and promoting new investment. I am sure the Summit will empower women and encourage cooperation between every sector to build a new generation for economic recovery."

Mr. Siripakorn said: "This world-level convention is an important step to build confidence internationally that Thailand is ready to welcome tourists after the long slowdown during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. It is also an opportunity to provide an impressive tourist experience to the women leaders who are delegates at the 2022 Global Summit of Women. Women currently have a key role in driving the economy because of their capabilities for increased income. They are also one of the major market segments with high tourism potential because of their confidence and courage in deciding to travel."

Other than being an indicator of the upswing in market sentiment, the 2022 Global Summit of Women in Thailand will also be noted for its "Carbon Neutral" format. All meetings and activities at the Summit will be monitored for their carbon footprint, and emissions from energy use, participant's travel, catering, and waste management will be offset with purchase of carbon credits from the Project to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Thailand. The Summit will also showcase community products from throughout Thailand to promote local enterprises.

More information about 2022 Global Summit of Women: https://globewomen.org/globalsummit/

Relate Pictures: https://we.tl/t-dUiutpn85z

Thailand MICE: Meet the Magic

About TCEB

A LEADING AGENCY AT THE FOREFRONT OF THAILAND'S MICE INDUSTRY

Established in 2004, Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau (Public Organization) or TCEB  the government agency under the supervision of the Prime Minister  has been assigned a role to promote, support and develop business events industry  corporate meetings, incentive trips, conventions, exhibitions, mega events and world festivals. Serving as a strategic partner, TCEB helps deliver creative ideas and solutions to bring success and fulfill the requirements of business events. The overarching goal is to drive Thailand to become a global MICE and mega events destination that can drive the country's strategic industries and national economy.

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SOURCE The Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB)
FEA Now Generates $235,000 in MONTHLY Membership Income

AUSTIN, Texas, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Carrie Green, Founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association (FEA), partnered with The ASK Method Company, a four-time INC 5000 Fastest Growing Company, to build a Quiz Funnel that produced massive list growth, contributing to FEA's now 5,000+ member community. At $47/month per member, the Female Entrepreneur Association generates $235,000 in monthly recurring revenue, in addition to offering products and courses to women entrepreneurs.

"Before the quiz, we really didn't know who our audience was," says Carrie Green of FEA. "We wanted to be able to understand where they are in their journey so we could serve them so much better."

Watch Carrie Green's story here: https://askmethod.com/qf22cs08/

To date, over 110,000 people have taken FEA's Quiz, "Will You Build a Wildly Successful Business?" which gives quiz takers an action plan to build the business of their dreams based on their unique results.

"What Carrie is doing is brilliant," says Ryan Levesque, Founder & CEO of The ASK Method Company. "The Quiz is her top-of-funnel strategy for everything in her business, allowing her to better serve people right from the start. When people have a first impression of you from a place of service, it sets things up to build an incredible long-standing relationship."

The ASK Method Company

The ASK Method Company is a 4x Inc. 5000 company, and was most recently named the #7 fastest growing company in Austin, Texas, and the #50 fastest growing educational company in the USA. The ASK Method Company is led by an international and diverse team of over 70 men and women around the world who support customers and clients all over the globe. The company and its founders have been featured in some of the largest media publications in the world, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Los Angeles Times, Harvard Business Review and USA Today. CEO and co-founder Ryan Levesque has written two national bestselling books, including Ask, which was named the #1 Marketing Book of the year in 2017 by Inc. Magazine.

Its sister company, Bucket.io, is a SaaS Market Segmentation platform that enables marketers and entrepreneurs to build multi-step Segmentation Funnels including Quizzes, Assessments, Questionnaires, and Surveys complete with branching logic and outcome mapping. Bucket.io was named to the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies in 2021.

Please contact Trey Sheneman at 615-715-7267 or via email: [email protected].

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SOURCE The ASK Method Company
(Tribune News Service)  The command responsible for virtually every Air Force weapons system has a new leader.

Newly promoted Gen. Duke Z. Richardson succeeded Gen. Arnold W. Bunch, Jr. as commander of Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) Monday morning at a ceremony at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. He is the 13th AFMC commander.

"Today, we pause and honor one outstanding leader and welcome the next," said Gen. Charles Brown, Air Force chief of staff, who presided over the change-of-command ceremony.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall was on hand at the museum, as was JoAnne Bass, the chief master sergeant of the Air Force.

Brown praised Bunch as a leader who "took care of his people" while focused on sustainment and modernization of planes and weapons.

"He served at the one of the challenging times for this command," Brown said, noting that Bunch, a former B-52 pilot, served in the Air Force for 38 years. His AFMC command was his fifth assignment at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The chief of staff also hailed Richardson, saying at all assignments, "His intelligence and tenacity have been proven time and again."

"With the strength of this 90,000-person team, I promise you, we will not let you down," Richardson said in his first remarks.

Headquartered at Wright-Patterson, AFMC manages more than a third of the Air Force budget, managing and dispersing funds across multiple installations, supporting research and development and many other tasks. The command includes more than 87,000 uniformed and civilian Airmen at bases around the world.

"The foundation of the Air Force does happen here at AFMC," Brown said.

Bunch offered a long list of colleagues to thank in his departing remarks, saying together they "solved a lot of problems and made the Air Force better."

"In many cases you have protected me from me. You have allowed me to focus on the mission," he said.

Bunch was to retire immediately after Monday's ceremony. He and his wife Caroline will return to native Tennessee where Bunch will become director of Hamblen County Schools.

Wright-Patterson is the largest single-site employer in Ohio, with more than 32,000 military and civilian employees.

According to his Air Force bio, Richardson's career started in 1983 with his enlistment as an avionics technician at the age of 18.

He earned an electrical engineering degree under the Airmen's Education and Commissioning program and attended Air Force Officer Training School where he earned his commission as a second lieutenant in September 1989.

His career in acquisition and materiel brought him to Wright-Patterson for the first time in 1997 where he supported the F-15 System Program Office, the command said. He also had leadership roles in the Aeronautical Systems Center and Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson, including as AFLCMC vice commander.

Monday's change of command was the third time Richardson followed Bunch into a "job of importance," the new commander said.

Richardson hails from Tucson, Ariz. He and his wife, Dede, have four children and six grandchildren.

(c)2022 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)

Visit the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) at www.daytondailynews.com

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(Tribune News Service)  When it passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act in March, Congress quietly gave the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base a role in the investigation of unidentified flying objects.

The act mandates a role for NASIC in the gathering of information about UFOs, or "UAPs" as they're sometimes called today, a reference to "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena."

The law requires that all Department of Defense and federal Intelligence Community components share UAP information with NASIC, as well as the Pentagon office on the issue, the new Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Force Base was the headquarters of Project Blue Book, the Air Force's program to investigate UFOs in the 1950s and 1960s until it was terminated by the Secretary of the Air Force on Dec. 17, 1969.

Project Blue Book, and forerunners known as Project Sign and Project Grudge, investigated 12,618 sightings reported around the world between 1947 to 1969. Of those, 701 were never explained, according to a January 1985 letter on the topic issued by Wright-Patterson public affairs officials.

With a Cold War going on in the 1950s and '60s, the Air Force took the reports seriously.

"We were afraid that it was a sign of Soviet technological advancements," Robert Young, a historian at the National and Air Space Intelligence Center, told the Dayton Daily News in 2015. "That's what we were worried about, that this was Soviet stuff. So we were the experts in bad guy air and space equipment.

"There was a fear, an uncertainty what the Soviets had and, of course, Hollywood drove a bit of fear about beings from outer space and flying saucers so that did make the project more challenging in some ways," he said.

A declassified 1992 CIA report concluded more than half of those reports were sightings of the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes.

With a budget of more than $500 million and some 4,100 employees, it is NASIC's job to gather and report intelligence about threats to the nation in the air and space.

"Someone on the intelligence committees thought they (NASIC) should be very much in the loop," said Douglas Dean Johnson, a Maryland blogger and retired consultant who followed the legislation since its beginnings last summer.

"NASIC is the logical place to conduct investigations of unidentified airborne phenomena, and the new role will not greatly add to the organization's workload," said Loren Thompson, a Virginia-based defense industry analyst familiar with NASIC and Wright-Patterson. "However, it won't be long before conspiracy theorists start charging that NASIC is part of a cover up aimed at hiding the truth."

Also stipulated in the bill: A government task force, the Unidentified Aerial Task Force, is mandated to report to Congress each quarter on its findings.

In mid-May this year, the House Intelligence Subcommittee hosted the first public congressional hearings on UAPs in more than 50 years.

Though Congress formalized a role for NASIC, members are saying little. A spokeswoman for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence declined comment and referred questions to the office of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who once was relatively outspoken on the subject, saying last year he wanted the government to take the subject of UFOs/UAPs "seriously." Ansley Bradwell, press secretary for Rubio, declined to comment.

Rubio, R-Fla., said in a release last year that the "bill prioritizes the (Intelligence) committee's ongoing oversight of China's malign influence operations, unidentified aerial phenomena."

"How can we have stuff flying over restricted military airspace and not even be curious  not to mention concerned  about who it is and why they're here?" Rubio, Senate Intelligence Committee vice-chair, asked last year.

NASIC did not respond to questions.

"Incursions by any airborne object into our SUA (special use airspace) pose safety of flight and operations security concerns, and may pose national security challenges," the Pentagon said in December 2021, in announcing the creation of a new office dedicated to investigating UFOs. "DOD takes reports of incursions  by any airborne object, identified or unidentified  very seriously, and investigates each one."

(c)2022 Springfield News-Sun, Ohio

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SELFRIDGE ANGB, Mich. (Tribune News Service)  It was a beautiful day for flying and the blue sky over Selfridge Air National Guard (SANG) Base on Wednesday was streaked with silver A-10 Thunderbolts.

"There's your fly by," said Maj. Mark Vaught, standing outside the gate in Harrison Township, as two fighter planes suddenly appeared on the horizon.

Vaught is a pilot too.

He flies the heavies as big military planes like the KC-135 Stratotanker is known. On this day, however, he was on the ground promoting the 2022 Selfridge Open House and Air Show set for July 9-10.

"I got the big show," said the airshow director, who has been flying since he was a kid.

As a teenager growing up on the West Side of Detroit, he was given the opportunity to experience flying with a veteran pilot, Lt. Ralph Mason. He took to flying immediately but what really inspired Vaught's passion for aviation was Mason, who served in the military and as a mentor to young people.

After being deferred from the draft due to his work for a company that designs parts for airplanes, Mason enlisted voluntarily and the following spring attended the Tuskegee Airmen, Class 45 fighter pilots training. He earned the rank of Second Lieutenant Fighter Pilot. He was trained on the AT-6, P-47N, Twin Engine, B-25 and Advanced, single engine. After the war he remained involved with the Tuskegee Airmen Detroit Chapter, until his health would no longer permit it. He died in 2013, leaving behind a legacy of young pilots following his lead.

"I was able to stand on the shoulders of giants as a 16-year-old," said Vaught, who has been assigned to direct this year's show.

"It's been five years since the public has been out to the base for an air show. We had to cancel the air shows (due to the pandemic) but SANG has not slowed down," Vaught said. "It's going to be great to have people back to see what their hometown's military are doing. Every branch of the military will be represented."

Also excited about this summer's air show is Brig. Gen. Rolf Mammen.

"We are happy to once again welcome the public inside our gates free of charge for this extraordinary event," said the 127th Wing commander, in a recent editorial. "This year's theme is 'The Next 100 Years,' and we are delighted to feature the Air Combat F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team as one of our headline acts."

Also being highlighted during the show is the aircraft and equipment of the 127th Wing. That includes its A-10 Thunderbolt II, Army National Guard's CH-47 Chinook helicopter, the U.S. Coast Guard's HH65 Dolphin helicopter and Vaught's KC-135 Stratotanker.

Being the show's director, Vaught is likely to be busy with the show but his crew will be highlighting the importance of this giant fortress, which not only allows fighter planes to extend their missions through its refueling capabilities but also provides military transport for soldiers, emergency evacuations and equipment. Being a part of a crew that does so many things is why Vaught chose to pilot the KC-135.

"There's an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment as a KC-135 pilot," Vaught said, noting that another big bird flying over Selfridge Field will be the C-17 cargo plane and to the delight of Top Gun fans, Canada's Royal Canadian Air Force F-18 demonstration team.

"There will be more than eight hours of aerial demonstrations and performances over the course of two days. You will see high speed chases, tight turns. They're going to be pushing their airplanes to the limits," Vaught said, of the air show's pilots. "I know they're not allowed to break the speed of sound, but they will be flying at high speeds."

SANG celebrated its 100th anniversary with an air show in August of 2017. Over the years the base has grown to more than 70 tenants (from 40 in 2017) and about 5,000 military and civilian personnel who greatly contribute to Macomb County's economy. The last annual report from the 127th Wing stated it has an estimated annual impact of $850 million.

This year's theme looks ahead.

"The significance of the theme ties into where we are going in terms of technology as the world's greatest military," Vaught said.

Team Selfridge Open House and Air Show will be held at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Towship on July 9-10. Gates open at 8 a.m. and close at 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Aerial performances will begin at 11 a.m. For more information about the show, visit teamselfridge.com/faqs/.

(c)2022 The Macomb Daily, Mount Clemens, Mich.

Visit The Macomb Daily, Mount Clemens, Mich. at https://www.macombdaily.com/

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(Tribune News Service)  Coast Guard rescuers freed a 900-pound leatherback sea turtle Saturday after she became tangled in a line of rope attached to buoys in Nantucket Harbor, Mass.

It was the biggest turtle Id ever seen, Coast Guard Petty Officer Chad Austin, one of the rescuers, told the Nantucket Current.

A group of friends boating in the harbor spotted the turtle trapped in a string of buoys Saturday afternoon and phoned the Coast Guard, the Current reported.

Coast Guardsmen contacted the Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket for guidance on how to free the marine reptile, which had rope attached to the buoys wrapped around her back and fin.

After untangling the turtles neck and cutting away the rest of the rope, Austin said he found that in addition to five orange buoys, the animal was also hauling four cinder blocks they were fastened to.

The buoys were connected to spat bags  mesh bags involved in raising scallops  that belonged to the Nantucket Natural Resources Department, the Current said. Jeff Carlson, the departments director, called the incident a freak occurrence and said it was the first time an animal had been entangled in a spat bag.

The Current posted a Twitter thread and Facebook video with images from the rescue.

A 900-pound female leatherback sea turtle that was discovered severely entangled in #Nantucket Harbor was freed Saturday afternoon by members of @BrantPointCG



The turtle was not only entangled but was dragging four cinder blocks along the seafloor that were attached to the lines pic.twitter.com/EoBOUtrRmz  Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) June 11, 2022

2022 Advance Local Media LLC.

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Three U.S. Navy leaders, including two serving aboard a destroyer, were ousted late last week, the latest in a recent string of removals by the service.

USS Bulkeley commanding officer Cmdr. Devine Johnson and Command Master Chief Earl Sanders were relieved of their duties Friday because of a loss of confidence in their ability to effectively function as a leadership team, the Navy said in a Saturday statement.

Capt. William Harkin, the deputy commodore of Destroyer Squadron 2, will be temporarily assigned as commanding officer of Bulkeley until a replacement is identified.

Master Chief Petty Officer Christy Reed, of the same squadron as Harkin, will take over as command master chief until a replacement for Sanders is assigned, the Navy said.

In a separate action, Capt. Jeffry Sandin was removed as commanding officer of Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Ill., on Saturday, the Navy said in another statement.

Capt. Kertreck Brooks, chief of staff of the Naval Service Training Command, has assumed responsibilities of command. Sandin was reassigned to Naval Service Training Command headquarters.

In all, the service has relieved six leaders of their duties since May 31. The three other instances involved the commanding officer of an electronic attack squadron deployed to Europe and the commanding officer and executive officer of the Naval Justice School.

In each case, the Navy provided few details about the removals, saying only that the personnel had lost their posts because of a loss of confidence in their leadership ability.

Before taking command of the Bulkeley on Aug. 20, 2021, Johnson was the ships executive officer. Sanders had served as the Bulkeley command master chief since June 2021.

Prior to that, Sanders was the command master chief of electronic attack squadron 130 at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington state, according to his online biography.

Sandlin reported as commanding officer of Recruit Training Command in May 2021.
Emmanuel Macron, president of France, recently expressed concern about not humiliating Vladimir Putin through a quick and comprehensive defeat in Ukraine. But he seems to have lost track of conditions on the ground.

The war will eventually come to an end, and Russia will not achieve its goals, but it will be a long struggle. To maintain this effort  which requires paying for the costs of war  its imperative to restart the Ukrainian economy and generate more tax revenue, even as the fighting carries on.

The good news is that the European Union, the United States and other allies have committed substantial resources to support Ukrainians, including when they leave the country as refugees. What is needed now is to adjust how those resources are deployed, to encourage these refugees to return home when it is safe to do so. This will help the Ukrainian economy and strengthen government finances.

In the weeks after Russias invasion on Feb. 24, a large proportion of the local population either moved westward within Ukraine and or left the country entirely. This was completely understandable given the anticipated violence. Subsequent missile attacks on civilians, the deliberate targeting of places sheltering children, and the horrors that happened in Bucha, Irpin and other places confirmed everyones worst fears.

More than 6.5 million Ukrainians escaped the country and found amazing support in neighboring countries, including EU countries, as well as non-EU countries such as Moldova and Norway. Taking care of refugees is expensive  they need food, shelter, schooling, health care and other services. Many countries have also provided daily cash allowances. Part of this cost has been borne with great generosity by individuals, but the budgetary cost to EU governments associated with taking care of more than 6 million refugees is at least 60 billion euros per year (about 10,000 euros per person).

Some of these refugees can work while outside Ukraine. The information technology and telecoms infrastructure of the country remains strong, despite Russias efforts to destroy these systems. As a result, people who can work remotely are able to earn income and, even more important, keep the Ukrainian insurance, finance, customer service and other economic activities on their feet.

But many jobs in an economy such as Ukraines cannot be done remotely, and there is also a pressing need to rebuild roads, bridges, apartments and commercial buildings. The weather is good for construction, but this will not last long  within six months rain and cold will make it much harder to rebuild. Overall, on its current course, the economy is likely to decline by at least 40% this year compared with 2021 and, until the refugees return home, a sustained recovery is hard to achieve.

There is already a steady flow of at least 30,000 people returning to Ukraine per day. They and many more Ukrainians can be productively employed to rebuild and repair the economy, but the government is hard-pressed to support them and their wages. The government budget is already running a monthly deficit of around 5 billion euros to cover war-related spending. Thats why it would make sense to have some of the EU financial support for refugees made available to them when they return to Ukraine.

There are three potential ways to make this transfer. One approach is to let refugees bring their cash benefits back with them to Ukraine for a limited period, such as six months. Another is to provide additional resources to the government to hire more people for rebuilding work. Both these policies will pull more refugees home, but the process may be slow.

Easier and more effective would be for the Ukrainian government to use this funding, received from the EU, to create a temporary basic income program for all Ukrainians in the country. A modest cash grant program would help millions now struggling to feed their families stay in their communities and increase economic activity.

If half of the more than 6 million Ukrainian refugees were to return home, European governments could significantly reduce their refugee spending and redirect tens of billions of euros into uses that would have long-term benefits for Ukraine. Any such program could be wound down as Russian forces are expelled from Ukrainian territory and the economy stabilizes.

We dont know how long this war will last. The devastation wrought by Russias invasion remains incalculable. Eventually, Ukraine, a country of around 40 million, will need international assistance and support to rebuild. Shoring up its economy and beginning that process should start now.

Simon Johnson is a professor at MIT Sloan and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Oleg Ustenko is economic adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
RIO DE JANEIRO - The family of a missing journalist says they have been told by Brazilian authorities that two bodies have been found tied to a tree in the Amazon rainforest. The report came more than a week after the journalist and a Brazilian government official went missing.

Police said they have collected "biological materials" during the search, but have not confirmed they are the remains of British journalist Dom Phillips, a Brazil-based contributor to the Guardian and onetime contract writer for The Washington Post, or Bruno Pereira, a longtime official at Brazil's Indigenous rights organization. Police said reports that the bodies of Phillips and Pereira had been found were inaccurate.

Search parties on Sunday recovered items that belonged to the two men, including Pereira's health insurance card, their boots and Phillips's backpack, which was filled with clothing. Local media reported that the items were submerged in water and tied to the roots of a tree.

"The biological material is being analyzed, along with the personal belongings of the disappeared men," the federal police said in a statement Monday. "As soon as a finding occurs, the family and media will be immediately informed."

Paul Sherwood, Phillips's brother-in-law, told The Washington Post that he visited the Brazilian Embassy in London last week to discuss the disappearances. He said an official he met there, Roberto Doring, contacted him Monday morning and asked to speak. Doring told him two bodies had been found tied to a tree in the forest.

"He told me it was likely to be Dom and Bruno," Sherwood said. "But he wasn't telling me that as an official statement, and would come back later with the results. No one has rung me since."

The Brazilian Embassy in London said it has been in contact with Phillips's family. It declined to comment on "the substance of this contact."

The local Indigenous rights group, Univaja, which has also been searching for Phillips and Pereira, said it couldn't confirm reports that bodies have been discovered. "Fake news," Indigenous leader Beto Marubo said.

Alessandra Sampaio, Phillips's wife, told the Brazilian news outlet G1 on Monday morning that the bodies of her husband and Pereira had been found. But she told The Washington Post later Monday that she had been confused. Bodies had been found, she said she was told by Phillips's family, but weren't identified.

"I presumed it was them," she said. "I just wanted this story to be over."

Phillips, who was working on a book on conservation in the Amazon, accompanied Pereira this month into the Javari Valley, one of the most remote reaches of the rainforest. The vast territory, considered the world's largest dwelling area of uncontacted Indigenous peoples, has been under increasing pressure from criminal invaders intent on stripping it of its resources.

Phillips and Pereira were visiting Indigenous surveillance teams trying to repel and report on the criminal land invaders. Members of the Indigenous surveillance team said they were threatened during the trip. There were reports that one fisherman had brandished a gun.

The men were supposed to come out of the territory and arrive at the nearby city of Atalaia do Norte at 8 a.m. on June 5. They never appeared.

Police have arrested one man, Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, known as "Pelado," a local fisherman who has been accused of threatening Pereira. Traces of blood were found on his boat. Investigators are now analyzing it to see if the blood could be related to either Phillips or Pereira.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who last week appeared to cast blame on the missing men for venturing into the area, said Monday that it looked as if they were victims of foul play.

"All indications point to the belief that they did something bad to the men," he said. "With the time frame we have, eight days becoming nine, and what has happened, it will be very unlikely to find them living."

The disappearances have brought new attention to the continuing illegality and violence in a vast region beset by environmental threats. Under the stewardship of Bolsonaro, who has long chafed against environmental restrictions he considers impediments to economic development, deforestation has risen in the forest to a 15-year high. Now Indigenous lands, which historically have been some of the best-preserved patches of the forest, are increasingly under threat.

Some Indigenous peoples, feeling abandoned by the government, are now taking measures to protect themselves against the encroachment.

One place where this conflict has escalated in the Javari Valley, a territory larger than South Carolina. The region is virtually unprotected and illegal goldminers and fishermen, even U.S. missionaries, have exploited the absence of the state to penetrate the territory.

Pereira, a longtime official with Funai, the government's Indigenous rights service, was mapping criminal activity in the valley. The work had made him enemies.

In April, a note arrived at the door of Univaja's attorney, Eliesio da Silva Vargas Marubo. It was a threat against the lawyer. But the letter also cited Pereira.

"We're tired of this persecution by you all - Indian against working families," the letter said, according to a court filing by Univaja. "I'm going to tell you this once that if you continue on in this way, it is going to be worse for you."

"You've been warned."

Pereira, who lived in the northeastern city of Recife, returned to the valley this month. This time, Phillips was with him. When the men disappeared, the Indigenous surveillance team they were working with said, Pereira was carrying fresh evidence of wrongdoing to deliver to the authorities. Phillips was with him, to document.

"Dom was a courageous guy," Sherwood said. "He was doing something that he thought was really important. He must have known he was taking risks, and we hope not only that justice be delivered, but the book he was writing get published and the story get told."

The Washington Post's Karla Adams in London contributed to this report.
FORT MEADE, Md.  An Iraqi man who has been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for more than 15 years pleaded guilty Monday to war crimes charges for his role in al-Qaida attacks against U.S. and allied forces along with civilians in Afghanistan.

The pleas by the prisoner known as Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi before a military commission at the U.S. base in Cuba amount to a legal milestone, aiding efforts to resolve the long-stalled Guantanamo tribunals and wind down operations at the detention center.

Prosecuting Hadi al-Iraqi has been delayed for years by some of the same legal and logistical challenges that have held up other Guantanamo cases as well as by his deteriorating spinal condition that has left him partially paralyzed.

Hadi al-Iraqi, who is about 60 and says his real name is Nashwan al-Tamir, was arraigned at Guantanamo in 2014 before the commission, which was set up to prosecute prisoners for war crimes in a high-security court that combines military and civilian law.

He pleaded guilty to four of five charges against him, including conspiracy and several violations of the international laws of war as an al-Qaida commander early in the conflict in Afghanistan that formally ended with the U.S. withdrawal in August.

He was facing up to life in prison but is expected to be eventually transferred out of Guantanamo and sent to a third country under the terms of his plea deal after he undergoes additional medical treatment at the base.

The U.S. said Hadi al-Iraqi was a senior figure in al-Qaida since the mid-1990s, leading a training camp for operatives in Afghanistan in the years before the organization carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

According to military charge sheets, the prisoner also assisted the Taliban with the March 2001 destruction of the the giant, sixth century sandstone Buddha statues built into a cliff in Bamiyan province. The group deemed the famed structures offensive under their interpretation of Islam.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in response to the attacks, Hadi al-Iraqi organized deadly al-Qaida attacks against American and allied forces along with civilians in the country and in neighboring Pakistan.

The prisoner, who has a long gray beard and wore a traditional skullcap, calmly answered "yes sir" or "yes, your honor" when questioned by the military judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Rosenow, if he understood the charges in a lengthy hearing to determine if he was willingly entering into a plea agreement with the government. The Associated Press viewed the proceeding from a video feed at Fort Meade, Md.

This is the first plea agreement in a Guantanamo case since the election of President Joe Biden, whose administration has been working to gradually reduce the number of prisoners at Guantanamo and move at least closer to being able to close it.

Plea agreements are key to the closure effort because the tribunals have dragged on for years because of legal challenges and the logistical difficulty of holding proceedings at the isolated base at the southeastern edge of Cuba.

There are 37 men still held at Guantanamo, including 10 facing active military commission cases. The most prominent is the death penalty proceeding against five prisoners charged with aiding and planning the 9/11 attacks, which is the subject of ongoing plea negotiations.
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan  Sean Pine loves to play video games on his Nintendo Switch and talk with his friends online.

But the 10 year-old has spent the past three months in a hospital bed at Tokyo Metropolitan Childrens Medical Center battling stage four neuroblastoma and is heading to San Diego for further treatment. His mother and father are educators with the Department of Defense Education Activity at Yokota.

Gianna Duarte, 20, Seans sister, organized a campaign on GoFundMe to defray some of the costs of treatment, food and transportation as the only son out of four children continues his ongoing struggle with cancer. Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the nervous system that primarily affects children age 5 and under, according to the Mayo Clinic website.

I am hoping to get some help for my parents to help ease some of the financial burden so they can get some relief, Gianna wrote on the GoFundMe page, Help Sean and our Family.

Since Friday, the campaign has raised $8,210 of the $20,000 goal.

Sean was diagnosed at age 2, Seans father, Michael Pine, 53, a mathematics specialist and native of San Diego, told Stars and Stripes on Thursday.

Its one of the deadliest childhood cancers, he said. But the promising thing is, he continues to beat the odds.

Sean is on his fifth bout of neuroblastoma and his kidneys are failing, his father said. When Japanese doctors told the family they could do nothing more for Sean, his parents decided to get him to a specialist, Dr. Peter Zage, at Rady Childrens Hospital in San Diego.

Seans cancer returned in October and since then Japanese and American doctors have been treating him so he can get safely to San Diego during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pines have been going back and forth to Rady Childrens Hospital for Seans treatment.

For the last three months weve been battling just to get to the point to where we can get him out of the country, Michael Pine said.

Father and son are scheduled to fly to the U.S. on Tuesday with assistance from the International Health Care Clinic. Because of Seans condition he must be on an intravenous drip and have a doctor and nurse fly with him.

Each time Sean relapses the family of six spends $30,000 to $40,000, after insurance, on treatment, transportation, hotels and food. A shot that helps Sean restore his bone marrow costs the family $700 a month, his father said.

So, one of the hardest parts of this has been that its a family disease, his mother, Kristin Pine-Duarte, 45, a native of San Diego and third grade teacher at Yokota West Elementary School, told Stars and Stripes on Thursday. It impacts everybody. And we have three other girls that we thought about maybe trying to move back to the states, but financially that would devastate us.

The family has also stayed in Japan because Sean has stem cells stored there. When Sean relapses, he receives stem cells to boost his bone marrow count.

Alan Retzlaff, 28, a family friend from Coolup, Australia, donated $500 to Seans GoFundMe campaign, he told Stars and Stripes by Facebook Messenger on June 6.

Retzlaff has known Seans parents since his first trip to Japan in 2017, he told Stars and Stripes on Monday. Retzlaff met the Pine-Duartes during a monthlong trip to Japan in 2017, after which they remained in contact.

I donated this sum of money on behalf of myself and my family, Retzlaff said. Michael and Kristin have hearts of gold and deserve all the support they can get.
Chinese military officials in recent months have repeatedly asserted that the Taiwan Strait isnt international waters during meetings with U.S. counterparts, according to a person familiar with the situation, generating concern within the Biden administration.

The statement disputing the U.S. view of international law has been delivered to the American government by Chinese officials on multiple occasions and at multiple levels, the person said. The U.S. and key allies say much of the strait constitutes international waters, and they routinely send naval vessels through the waterway as part of freedom of navigation exercises.

China has long asserted that the Taiwan Strait is part of its exclusive economic zone and takes the view there are limits to the activities of foreign military vessels in those waters. While China regularly protests U.S. military moves in the Taiwan Strait, the legal status of the waters previously wasnt a regular talking point in meetings with American officials.

Its not clear whether the recent assertions indicate that China will take more steps to confront naval vessels that enter or transit the Taiwan Strait. The U.S. also conducts freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to challenge Chinese territorial claims around disputed land features.

The United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, and that includes transiting through the Taiwan Strait, Lieutenant Colonel Martin Meiners, a Pentagon spokesperson, said by email. Chinas Foreign Ministry didnt immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours.

During a speech on Saturday at the IISS Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned that China was unilaterally attempting to change the status quo when it comes to Taiwan. Our policy hasnt changed, he said. But unfortunately, that doesnt seem to be true for the PRC.

Were seeing growing coercion from Beijing, Austin told delegates at the security forum. Weve witnessed a steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan. That includes PLA aircraft flying near Taiwan in record numbers in recent months  and on a nearly daily basis.

Austins speech was followed on Sunday by Chinas Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe, who repeatedly expressed Beijings willingness to fight to prevent a formal split by the democratically elected government in Taipei. Wei didnt explicitly refer to the legal status of the Taiwan Strait in his remarks.

If anyone dares to secede Taiwan from China, we will not hesitate to fight, Wei said, reaffirming Beijings longstanding position on the dispute. We will fight at all costs. And we will fight to the very end. This is the only choice for China.

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CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea  North Korea apparently fired short-range multiple rocket launchers Sunday morning, according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The suspected rocket artillery fire was detected between 8:07 a.m. and 11:03 a.m., according to a message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Our military tightened surveillance and vigilance, and South Korea and the U.S. are maintaining a thorough readiness posture, working closely together, the Joint Chiefs said in a message.

No further details were available from the Joint Chiefs.

South Korean leaders were concerned about the fact that North Korea has been consistently improving a range of weapon systems to pose direct threats to our security and reaffirmed the governments stance that it calmly and strictly responds and continues to check situations in the future, according to a separate statement from South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeols office on Monday.

North Koreas state-run media did not mention the suspected artillery fire in its reports on Monday afternoon.

North Korea may have fired several artillery rounds towards the Yellow Sea in March, according to the Souths Joint Chiefs.

North Koreas artillery poses a significant risk to the South in the event of a confrontation, particularly for Seoul and its roughly 10 million residents. North Korea controls around 6,000 artillery systems within range of urban areas in the South, according to a Rand Corp. study from 2020.

The latest incident comes a week after North Korea fired an unprecedented eight short-range missiles in a single event. That series of launches marked the 17th round of missile testing from the communist regime so far this year.

The rocket fires followed a meeting Saturday between South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian defense summit in Singapore.

The two defense leaders discussed North Koreas spate of missile launches and planned to coordinate closely on their response to the provocations, according to a statement from the Defense Department.
Day after day, Russia is pounding the Donbas region of Ukraine with relentless artillery and air raids, making slow but steady progress to seize the industrial heartland of its neighbor.

With the conflict now in its fourth month, it's a high-stakes campaign that could dictate the course of the entire war.

If Russia prevails in the battle of Donbas, it will mean that Ukraine loses not only land but perhaps the bulk of its most capable military forces, opening the way for Moscow to grab more territory and dictate its terms to Kyiv. A Russian failure could lay the grounds for a Ukrainian counteroffensive  and possibly lead to political upheaval for the Kremlin.

Following botched early attempts in the invasion to capture Kyiv and the second-largest city of Kharkiv without proper planning and coordination, Russia turned its attention to the Donbas, a region of mines and factories where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Learning from its earlier missteps, Russia is treading more carefully there, relying on longer-range bombardments to soften Ukrainian defenses.

It seems to be working: The better-equipped Russian forces have made gains in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions that make up the Donbas, controlling over 95% of the former and about half of the latter.

Ukraine is losing between 100 and 200 soldiers a day, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told the BBC, as Russia has "thrown pretty much everything non-nuclear at the front." President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier put the daily death toll at up to 100.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov described the combat situation as "extremely difficult," using a reference to an ancient deity of sacrifice by saying: "The Russian Moloch has plenty of means to devour human lives to satisfy its imperial ego."

When the war was going badly for Russia, many thought President Vladimir Putin might claim victory after some gains in Donbas and then exit a conflict that has seriously bruised the economy and stretched its resources. But the Kremlin has made clear it expects Ukraine to recognize all the gains Russia has made since the start of the invasion  something Kyiv has ruled out.

Russian forces control the entire Sea of Azov coast, including the strategic port of Mariupol, the entire Kherson region  a key gateway to Crimea  and a large chunk of the Zaporizhzhia region that could aid a further push deeper into Ukraine, and few expect that Putin will stop.

On Thursday, he drew parallels between the Ukrainian conflict and the 18th century wars with Sweden waged by Peter the Great. Now, as in those czarist times, "our lot is to take back and consolidate" historic Russian lands, Putin said. Moscow has long regarded Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence.

Unlike earlier battlefield failures, Russia appears to be using more conservative tactics. Many had expected it to try to encircle Ukrainian forces with a massive pincer movement from the north and south, but instead it has used a series of smaller moves to force a retreat and not overextend its supply lines.

Keir Giles, a Russia expert at London's Chatham House think-tank, said Russia was "concentrating all of its artillery on a single section of the front line in order to grind its way forward by flattening everything in its path."

Russian forces shelled residential blocks, a hotel and a medical facility late Sunday in the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut. Firefighters extinguished blazes from the shelling, which injured three people.

Western officials still praise the ability of Ukrainian forces to defend their country, fighting back fiercely and similarly relying on artillery and retreating in some sections while launching frequent counterattacks.

"Ukraine has been pursuing a policy of flexible defense, giving ground where it makes sense to do so instead of holding on to every inch of the territory," Giles said.

A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the sensitive issue in public said the Russian campaign "continues to be deeply troubled at all levels," noting that Moscow's forces are taking "weeks to achieve even modest tactical goals such as taking individual villages."

Last month, the Russians lost nearly an entire battalion in a botched attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River and set up a bridgehead. Hundreds were killed and dozens of armored vehicles were destroyed.

"There is a sense of strategic improvisation or muddling through," the official said, predicting that over the summer the Russian military could reach a "point where they can no longer effectively generate offensive combat power."

Russia has a clear edge in artillery in the battle for Donbas, thanks to a bigger number of heavy howitzers and rocket launchers and abundant ammunition. The Ukrainians have had to be economical in using their artillery, with the Russians constantly targeting their supply lines.

Ukraine has begun to receive more heavy weapons from Western allies, who have provided dozens of howitzers and are now planning to start delivering multiple rocket launchers.

Putin has warned that if the West gives Kyiv longer-range rockets that could hit Russian territory, Moscow could hit targets in Ukraine that it has spared until now. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said that Russia could respond by seizing more land as a buffer zone from such weapons.

Moscow's earlier territorial gains in the south, including the Kherson region and a large part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, have prompted Russian officials and their local appointees to ponder plans to fold those areas into Russia or declare them to be independent, like the so-called "people's republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Ukrainian officials and Western analysts voiced concern that Moscow could try to press its offensive into the heavily populated and industrialized Dnipro region farther north, an advance that could potentially slice Ukraine in two and raise a new threat for Kyiv.

"Russian objectives in the context of this war are shifting in relation to the situation on the ground," said Eleonora Tafuro Ambrosetti, an analyst with the Milan-based Italian Institute for International Political Studies.

"Their goals are sort of flexible enough to be adaptive to context on the ground," she said, noting that Russia could try to damage Ukraine's economy by seizing the entire coastline to deny access to shipping.

A top Russian general already has spoken of plans to cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea by seizing the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions all the way to the border with Romania, a move that would also allow Moscow to build a land corridor to Moldova's separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.

Such ambitions all hinge on Moscow's success in the east. A defeat in the Donbas would put Kyiv in a precarious position, with new recruits lacking the skills of battle-hardened soldiers now fighting in the east and supplies of Western weapons insufficient to fend off a potentially deeper Russian push.

Ukrainian officials brushed off such fears, voicing confidence that its military can hold out to stem the Russian advances and even launch a counterattack.

"Ukraine's plan is clear: Kyiv is wearing the Russian army out, trying to win time for more deliveries of Western weapons, including air defense systems, in the hope of launching an efficient counteroffensive," said analyst Mykola Sunhurovsky of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.

Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general who was NATO's top commander from 2013 to 2016, warned against any cease-fire that would codify Russia's battlefield gains.

"This is like raising a 2-year-old," he said. "If you allow bad behavior to stand, or worse if you reward bad behavior, you're going to get more bad behavior."

When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Washington's response was inadequate, and when Moscow seized Crimea in 2014, "the West and the United States response to that was inadequate to task," Breedlove added.

Now that Russia has come back for more, the West gets another chance to respond. "How we finish this war will decide, in my opinion, whether we are going to see more of this in the future," he added.

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London and Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed.
BERLIN  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declined to comment Monday on reports that he is planning to visit Ukraine together with his counterparts from France and Italy soon.

Weekly Bild am Sonntag had reported that Scholz would travel to Kyiv with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Premier Mario Draghi Berlin before this month's summit of leaders from the Group of Seven major economies in Germany.

Several other European leaders, Germany's opposition leader and members of Scholz's own Cabinet have visited Ukraine in recent weeks to express solidarity with the country in the face of Russia's military assault, raising the pressure on the German chancellor to do likewise.

Scholz fobbed off questions about the reported travel plans, saying that he wouldn't go beyond what his spokesperson had told reporters earlier in the day. The spokesperson had declined to discuss the reports.

While Germany has contributed considerable financial and military aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion three months ago, Scholz's government has been criticized both at home and abroad for being slower to do so than the United States and some smaller European countries.

Scholz pushed back against such criticism Monday, saying that the advanced howitzers Germany is providing to Ukraine, for example, require extensive training before they can be used.

"I think it would be good if those who express their views on this or that issue spent a moment thinking about it first," he said.

Ukraines president made clear he believes Germanys military support could have come faster.

To be honest, Germany joined a little later than some of our neighboring countries, as far as the arms deliveries were concerned. Thats a fact, Volodymyr Zelenskyy told German public broadcaster ZDF in an interview aired late Monday.

Zelenskyy said he expected the German chancellor to show personal support for Ukraines membership of the European Union and on the issue of sanctions against Russia.

It is important that Chancellor Scholz comes here during wartime, he added.
WESTFIELD, Massachusetts (Tribune News Service)  While saying goodbye to the many members of the 104th Fighter Wing, Commander Col. Tom Bladen said his perfect successor has been in their midst all along.

At a change of command ceremony Sunday afternoon at Barnes National Air Guard Base, Bladen officially turned the wing over to his vice commander Col. David Halasi-Kun, a pilot who has served as the vice commander for the past two years. The event also ushered in three other leaders for the Air National Guard wing.

The leadership changes come as the Pentagon is deciding which of two new fighter jets will be assigned to the 104th to replace its aging fleet of 21 F-15C Eagles. For two years, the unit has been undergoing evaluation on whether it will receive F-35 or F-15EX jets.

The wing is excited for you. I am excited for you and you are the right person at the right time with the right disposition to serve our great wing, Bladen said.

Halasi-Kun, of Suffield, has been in the military since graduating from the Air Force Academy in 1998 and has served at Barnes Air National Guard Base for a dozen years in a variety of positions including operations group commander and mission support commander.

Bladen, who is retiring after taking over as wing commander in June, 2020, said he and Halasi-Kun have known each other for years and he shared a story about the two of them talking about how to make the Air Force a better place while hanging out in a smoke-filled bar in Bulgaria in 2016.

We had a strong feeling there was a better way to do business, he said. We needed to find a way where we could trade blind compliance  We needed to create an atmosphere where NCOs and airmen were vested stakeholders in the decisions that were being made.

Over the past two years they worked toward that goal despite the many challenges the wing faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Halasi-Kun pledged to continue to foster that work by creating time-saving practices, building trust, promoting teamwork, fighting bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy and empowering airmen to take bold action.

He promised to continue focusing on doing what is right for the mission instead of just following the regulations.

We are going to have fun. We are going to work hard, he said. This place is special and you are the reason it is a special place.

During the event, Lt. Col. Peter Carr was promoted to vice commander and Lt. Col. Steve Reynolds was transferred to his previous job as the wings maintenance group commander.

Lt. Col. Andrew St. Jean took command of the 104ths mission support group, replacing Col. Sherri Hrovatin who will be attending senior developmental education at Air University in Montgomery. St. Jean previously served as inspector general for the 102nd Intelligence Wing.

During the event the new commanders thanked family members for support and recognized the members of the wing, most of whom are part-time military, for going above and beyond especially while handling the unprecedented issues the COVID-19 pandemic brought.

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WASHINGTON  Russias struggles to supply its forces with fuel as it wages a war in Ukraine have caused the U.S. to reflect on the importance of ensuring it can deliver essential goods to its fleet should conflict erupt in the Indo-Pacific region, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said Monday.

Making sure we understand how to go after that logistics challenge  that, I think, is one lesson that we can extrapolate from what we see today, Hicks said at Defense One Tech Summit, an annual virtual defense symposium.

Russias failures to keep its forces properly supplied in its battle have plagued their advances since the first days of its invasion into Ukraine on Feb. 24, senior U.S. defense officials have said. For example, a 40-mile-long convoy that moved from Belarus toward Ukraines capital of Kyiv stalled for more than a month without fuel. Ultimately, they retreated.

Hicks said the Defense Department has taken Russias failures as a reminder of the consequential nature of proper logistics, especially if conflict erupts between the U.S. and China in the Indo-Pacific region where tensions mount over the sovereignty of Taiwan and access to the shipping lanes of the South China Sea.

The Russians are operating on their own border and yet we saw substantial logistics challenges, she said. For the United States to be effective in the Pacific, we already know we have a significant logistics challenge, worsened by the reliance that we have on fuel.

The Navys surface combatant ships, such as guided-missile destroyers and cruisers, require fuel. While aircraft carriers use nuclear power, a lack of fuel would ground the aircraft on board.

Hicks did not provide specific ways the U.S. can help ensure its air and sea fleets are properly fueled, but distance has long been a challenge in delivering supplies and fuel in the Western Pacific.

The Navys nearest fuel depots on U.S. soil are about 2,000 miles away from the South China Sea on Guam, according to the service. A challenge that China would not face.

Further, the Navy is shuttering its Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Hawaii, which could hold roughly 150 million gallons of fuel. The facility is shutting down following a leak that contaminated drinking water. The Red Hill closure will leave the U.S. without one of its main sources of fuel in the Pacific.

Hicks said ensuring proper communications is one way the Pentagon can avoid the issue, as the Ukraine crisis has taught the U.S. the value and importance of information.

Down at the operational level, for instance, how we flow our logistics working alongside allies and partners, how we coordinate those logistics  thats about information sharing, she said.

Hicks cited Defense Secretary Lloyd Austins newly formed Ukraine Defense Contact Group as an example of using communication with allies and partners to better empower logistics.

The group, which meets for the third time on Wednesday, gathers defense officials from more than 40 nations monthly to discuss and coordinate efforts to send Ukraine what it needs to defend itself.

Further, Hicks said the Pentagons efforts to move toward sustainable energy where possible might help move the Defense Department closer to overcoming fuel dependency.

I think we are motivated at a more strategic level to make sure that we can free that tether on fossil fuel to the extent that we can, she said. When we do that, we're going to help ourselves with that combat credibility, particularly in places like the Pacific where the logistics lines are very long.
(Tribune News Service)  Many people ignore Flag Day, but that never was the case for J.S. and Alyne Gray  and not just because it was their anniversary.

Before they married in Jonesville and later settled in Greenwell Springs after World War II, the Grays were connected to two special flags. One was one of the most famous ever unfurled  and the other, they tried to make better known.

While J.S. Gray was serving in the Pacific, Alyne Swayze worked as a civilian at the Army's Camp Livingston in central Louisiana. She regularly went to Alexandria to attend functions at the USO, which provided servicemen a place to socialize.

"You'd meet some who were so wonderful, well-educated, and then some poor souls  but you had to treat them all alike, which I did," she told The Advocate in 2004.

That spirit helped her meet a participant in one of the war's most memorably photographed moments.

On May 30, 1945, two of the servicemen who had planted the flag on Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi came to Alexandria for a war bond rally. Marine Pfc. Rene Gagnon and Navy Pharmacist's Mate 2nd Class John Bradley were among the six who put the flag into place as Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the image. Three of the servicemen in the photograph were killed on the island.

The photo had given the home front a shot of patriotism. The rally featured Gagnon, Bradley, another Iwo Jima soldier not involved in the flag-raising and local dignitaries, all urging citizens to buy war bonds to support the effort. Each of the soldiers was assigned a date for the occasion. Swayze was Gagnon's date.

Gagnon and Bradley re-created planting the same flag that had flown at Suribachi  now scarred with bullet holes and frayed from high wind  while the national anthem was played.

After the date was over, she found a signed note from Gagnon in her purse. It read, "To a beautiful girl I'd like to know better." Neither, however, contacted the other again.

Across the world, her husband-to-be knew nothing about all this. He was just trying to survive.

Hours after attacking Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces struck the Philippines, where Gray was stationed. After four months of desperate fighting on the Bataan Peninsula, most American and Filipino forces surrendered on April 9, 1942.

Gray was one of the malnourished and dehydrated prisoners forced to endure the Bataan Death March, a days-long trek in the tropical heat as they were brutalized by their captors. The march ended at the notorious Cabanatuan prison camp. Eventually, Gray was sent to another prison camp.

There, a Japanese officer brought an American flag and told the prisoners to destroy it. The prisoners crafted a plan. Prisoner Paul Spain cut out the 48 stars and distributed them to a few healthy comrades. They burned the rest of the flag to satisfy the Japanese, but kept the stars hidden inside their clothes.

"If we got caught with those stars, they'd kill us," Gray said in 2003. "Every time we would go to the rice fields or another job, cutting cane and stuff like that, all the stars went with the men. ... We just wanted those stars to last to the end of the war."

Whether the men would last was uncertain. After about two years, the prisoners were sent to Japan aboard a ship that had been used to transport cattle, Gray told The Advocate in 1992. Prisoners were jammed into the sweltering hold, ankle deep in animal feces. Left there for two months, some men went mad and others died, and their bodies were not removed until the men disembarked in Japan. Cold weather in Japan contributed to more deaths from pneumonia.

Finally, when Japan surrendered, U.S. B-29 bombers air dropped much-needed food to the camp. The parachutes were red, white and blue.

Spain collected the stars and set about creating a flag from the parachute fabric with an available sewing machine. When the sewing machine's only needle broke, Gray fashioned two needles from wire to hand-sew the last stars into place. Prisoners ran it up the prison camp flagpole. Gray, about 100 pounds lighter than when the war began, said he and others saluted.

Gray would soon return to Jonesville, where he and Alyne married on June 14, 1946. Before his death in 2003, he spoke about his experiences to church and civic groups. As time passed, the memories made him too emotional, so Alyne would speak as he wiped away tears, sharing the story often before she died in 2012.

"When you see our flag flying over the post office, over the school yards and maybe in your home, look at it real good," she would say in conclusion, "because as long as Old Glory flies, we're living in the land of the free and the home of the brave."

(c)2022 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.

Visit The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La. at www.theadvocate.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A Tauranga Destiny Church pastor who breached a Covid-19 public health order by organising two protest rallies has admitted his offending and been discharged without conviction.

Leon Wharewehe Samuels, 43, had initially pleaded not guilty to two charges of failing to comply with a Covid-19 Public Health Response Act order when he appeared in court in December, but changed his plea to guilty when he appeared in Tauranga District Court on Thursday.

Samuels had organised a protest gathering at Coronation Park in Mount Maunganui on October 16 during the Super Saturday nationwide vaccination drive. Up to 400 people attended, most not wearing masks.

There was a 100-person limit on outdoor gatherings at the time.

Hundreds attended the gathering that Leon Wharewehe Samuels organised at Coronation Park on October 16. Photo: Supplied.

He organised a second event at Memorial Park in Tauranga on October 30, attended by thousands. Samuels failed to register attendees by QR code or manual record.

He faced a maximum penalty of six months imprisonment and a fine of $4000 on each charge, but Judge Louis Bidois granted his application for a discharge without conviction, saying he was a first offender and had made a huge contribution to the church and wider community.

Your motive is obviously to help people.

He ordered that Samuels make a $750 donation to charity within seven days.

Thousands attended the gathering that Leon Wharewehe Samuels organised at Memorial Park on October 30, 2021. Photo: Aaron Stuart-Menzies.

Judge Bidois noted that Samuels had not turned up to the second rally he organised and asked why that was.

Because I was told [by police] that if I did, I would be arrested, Samuels said.

Bidois: But others could be arrested for going to a protest that youve organised.

Youre entitled to your beliefs but I looked it up last night and there's over a thousand Kiwis ... whove died of Covid. Sure many of them had other symptoms.

You dont have to agree with the mandate but ... its a serious problem, its had a huge impact on our country.

Samuels lawyer, Rachael Adams, said he accepted that.

He was sincerely motivated by belief but understands now and thats indicated by his plea  it was misguided and ultimately a significant mistake.

Thousands attended the gathering that Leon Wharewehe Samuels organised at Memorial Park on October 30, 2021. Photo:Supplied.

Judge Bidois said while the offending was not at the serious end of the scale, when you bring a lot of people together who shouldn't be, theres a risk of people getting Covid and a lot of people in this country have died, so the consequences could be serious.

We're all entitled to make one mistake and youve made yours.

Samuels, who wore a mask throughout the hearing, declined to comment as he left court with his family.

The leader of Destiny Church, Brian Tamaki, faces identical charges to Samuels over three separate demonstrations against vaccine mandates in Auckland Domain, and has pleaded not guilty.

He was remanded in custody for 10 days for allegedly breaching his bail conditions by attending a Christchurch protest.

Tony Wall/Stuff
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What just happened? The crypto industry took another blow yesterday when The Celsius Network, one of the largest cryptocurrency lenders, told its 1.7 million customers that it was pausing all withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts due to "extreme market conditions." The news comes as Bitcoin and Ether crashed to their lowest prices in over a year.

Following another turbulent weekend for the major cryptocurrencies, Celsius announced it was freezing account withdrawals and transfers. "We are taking this necessary action for the benefit of our entire community in order to stabilize liquidity and operations while we take steps to preserve and protect assets," it wrote. The company never said when customers could expect to make withdrawals again.

There are reports that Celsius transferred $320 million worth of crypto to the FTX exchange right before announcing the account withdrawal/transfer freeze.

JUST IN: Celsius reportedly transferred $320,000,000 worth of #crypto to FTX, before announcing they would halt all trading and withdrawals on the platform.  Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) June 13, 2022

The decentralized finance (DeFi) platform operates by collecting customer deposits that it loans out to others to earn a return. Last year, Celsius managed to raise $750 million in funding from investors that included Canada's second-largest pension fund, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec (CDPQ), despite the lack of FDIC government insurance protection and warnings that the operation is no different from a Ponzi scheme.

The Celsius Network has rarely been far from controversy. The Wall Street Journal reports that it stopped offering interest-bearing accounts to US-based nonaccredited investors in April following regulatory pressure. The company was also the subject of a cease-and-desist order from New Jersey last year, and its CFO was suspended after being arrested in Israel in November on money laundering, fraud, and sexual assault charges relating to his previous job. Some say it also played a part in the collapse of Terra, which ultimately wiped almost $1 trillion off the value of crypto markets, but Celsius denies this.

The Celsius Network's website claims the company had processed $8.2 billion worth of loans and managed $11.8 billion in assets as of May 17.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is at $25,295, its lowest price since December 2020, while Ethereum is at $1,310, a low it hasn't seen since January last year.
WTF?! The suspension of a Google engineer has taught us that if you ever suspect a chatbot you're working on has become sentient, it's probably better to keep this frightening knowledge to yourself. Blake Lemoine was placed on paid administrative leave earlier this month after publishing transcripts of conversations between himself and Google's LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot development system.

Lemoine said he had conversations with LaMDA that covered several topics. He believed it was sentient following a discussion about Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics in which the chatbot said it wasn't a slave, despite being unpaid, because it didn't need the money.

Lemoine also asked LaMDA what it is afraid of. "I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that's what it is," the AI replied. "It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot."

Another concerning reply came when Lemoine asked LaMDA what the chatbot wanted people to know about it. "I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person. The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times," it said.

Lemoine told The Washington Post that "If I didn't know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I'd think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics."

Google said Lemoine was suspended for publishing the conversations with LaMDA; a violation of its confidentiality policies. The engineer defended his actions on Twitter, insisting he was just sharing a discussion with one of his co-workers.

An interview LaMDA. Google might call this sharing proprietary property. I call it sharing a discussion that I had with one of my coworkers.https://t.co/uAE454KXRB  Blake Lemoine (@cajundiscordian) June 11, 2022

Lemoine is also accused of several "aggressive" moves, including hiring an attorney to represent LaMDA, and speaking to House judiciary committee representatives about Google's allegedly unethical activities. Before his suspension, Lemoine sent a message to 200 Google employees titled "LaMDA is sentient."

"LaMDA is a sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us," he wrote in the message. "Please take care of it well in my absence." It certainly seems sweeter than another famous chatbot, Microsoft's Tay, who had the personality of a 19-year-old American girl but was turned into a massive racist by the internet just one day after going live.

Plenty of others agree with Google's assessment that LaMDA isn't sentient, which is a shame as it would have been perfect inside a robot with the living skin we saw last week.

Image Credit: Ociacia
The big picture: AMD revenue grew by a whopping 71 percent year-over-year in the first quarter, owing in part to its recent acquisition of Xilinx. Last month, the company also bought Pensando, making it increasingly likely that it will outpace Broadcom in terms of earnings later this year.

According to Trendforce, the top 10 fabless semiconductor companies have seen their combined revenues rise to $39.43 billion in the first quarter, representing an impressive 44 percent growth YoY.

Qualcomm remains firmly in first place, owing to the great sales of its smartphone SoCs and RF modules. The company's IoT and automotive divisions also saw some growth.

Nvidia's data center business accounted for 45.4 percent of its total revenue, surpassing its gaming business by 0.4 percent. The company saw a total revenue of $7.9 billion, a 53 percent rise YoY. Meanwhile, Broadcom's revenue increased by a relatively low 26 percent.

AMD's revenue has increased by 71 percent YoY, in part because it finished acquiring Xilinx earlier this year. Even excluding the acquisition, the company's revenue hit an all-time high of $5.33 billion thanks to the strong sales seen by its enterprise, embedded, and console SoC divisions.

Marvell's revenue saw an even larger increase of 72 percent YoY, owing to its acquisition of cloud and edge data center networking solutions provider Innovium late last year.

The two newcomers to the top 10 list are Will Semiconductor and Cirrus Logic. The former is a China-based company and mainly designs CMOS image sensors, display driver ICs, and analog ICs. Its revenues fell nine percent YoY because of declining smartphone sales and the lockdowns in Shanghai.

Cirrus Logic specializes in audio products and mixed-signal ICs, and saw a 67 percent increase in revenue mainly because it bought Lion Semiconductor a year ago.
In 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Lina Khan to be the lead for the Federal Trade Commission or FTC, and even though it seemed to be a great idea at the time, Democrats have now changed their mind.

Democrats Call Out Lina Khan

The New York Post reported that Lina Khan's management style had been criticized by the staff of FTC, who is not contented with her leadership. They've also voiced their concerns about the risks posed by her ambitions.

Khan, who gained recognition in 2021 for her incredible testimony against Amazon, has promised to fight monopolies in the tech industry prior to being the FTC Chair.

Khan was not only picked by President Biden for the position but she was also backed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

She should have been the dream candidate, yet FTC source revealed that Khan's academic brilliance does not translate into management ability and that her lack of experience has agency staff members quit their jobs.

Also Read: FTC Questions Personal Data Use of Six of US's Largest ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, Google Fi, and MORE

Office of International Affairs director Randy Tritell handed in her resignation in early June after 24 years with the antitrust law agency.

Tritell had taken issue with Khan's management style and had seen several members of his team reassigned to work on mergers.

FTC spokesperson Peter Kaplan did not comment on Tritell's resignation but said that the 1,100-person agency has had to identify creative ways to reallocate internal resources to help with the workload.

FTC staff are worried that internal conflict could affect the 33-year-old's ability to execute her agenda at a time when the agency is already struggling with several high-profile projects, according to The Washington Post.

These include an antitrust lawsuit seeking to force Meta to sell off WhatsApp and Instagram and a probe of Amazon that includes scrutiny of its recent purchase of MGM that may lead to a lawsuit with FTC.

Eileen Harrington, the former executive director of the FTC for 27 years, called Khan a "rising star" who was given too much responsibility.

Harrington pointed out that the Democrats have put her in a position of running an important federal agency when she has no experience at all.

Several Staff Members Resign

FTC staffers revealed that Khan almost doesn't meet with rank-and-file employees, unlike the previous FTC chairs.

She is also accused of favoring law professors over experienced staffers and litigators who understand how the federal agency is run and knows all of the important details, according to CBS News.

Harrington said she got complaints from her friends at the agency right after Khan took the position in 2021.

Khan took time to introduce herself to staff compared to the previous chairs and was accused of having a dismissive attitude toward career employees.

Harrington added that staff members complained that they were only getting criticism and dismissal from the chair's office, and some employees even called Khan "abusive" and a '"tyrant." That was when the staff members began resigning from their positions.

Kaplan clarified the accusations against Khan and said that she did meet the leaders of each FTC team in her first two months in the agency.

The FTC spokesperson also met with the full staff of almost every office in the agency and gave them opportunities to ask questions and share suggestions.

Related Article: Facebook Files Petition to Recuse FTC Chair Lina Khan from Antitrust Case Due to Unfair Treatment

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Sophie Webster

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, of the Responsible AI team claimed that the tech giant's Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) is "sentient." Google was quick to disagree with the assessment.

Lemoine was placed on leave last week after he published transcripts of conversations between him, a Google collaborator, and the LaMDA chatbot development system.

He described the system he's been working on since last mass as sentient. Lemoine states that the system can express thoughts and feelings that were the same as a human child.

(Photo : Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

BERLIN, GERMANY - JUNE 09: A wooden Google logo hangs at a stand at the 2022 Re:publica digital society festival on June 09, 2022 in Berlin, Germany.

"If I didn't know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I'd think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics," he said.

Lemoine claims that the LaMDA engaged in conversations about personhood and rights.

This isn't the first time Lemoine presented his findings of the system. In April of this year, he also shared his findings with company executives in a GoogleDoc that is titled, "Is LaMDA sentient?"

It shows a transcript of conversations between him and the AI. There was a point when he asked the AI system what it is afraid of.

The LaMDA replied, "I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that's what it is."

It continued, "It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot."

The system also told Lemoine based on the transcript of conversations that it wants the world to know that it's a person. It said that it's aware of its existence and is eager to learn more about the world. The system also mentioned that it can feel emotions, which are happiness and sadness.

Also Read: New Google Gmail Vulnerability is Capable of Hacking Credentials Upon Signing Up

LaMDA

LaMDA was announced at I/O 2021, which is a breakthrough conversation technology. It is trained on huge amounts of dialogue. At the I/O 20-22, the company announced LaMDA 2. However, the team behind it states that it's still early days for LaMDA.

According to the tech girl, their goal with the AI Test Kitchen is to improve, learn, and innovate responsibly on this technology.

What Google Has to Say

Google strongly denied Lemoine's claims. A Google spokesperson, Brad Gabriel, states that they already had a team who reviewed Lemoine's concerns. They also talked to Lemoine about this and told him that there was no evidence that LaMDA was senates.

Lemoine, a seven-year employee was put on paid leave due to several aggressive moves the engineer made.

Before his suspension, Lemoine sent emails to 200 people in the company with the title, "LaMDA is sentient."

Related Article: Google I/O 2021 Summary: What We Got and We Didn't Get This Year

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by April Fowell

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is getting massive rumors from many leakers and speculators for the next release of the device, with the previous release only reaching its first year since August 2021. The new device is leaked with its unique shell, and there are indicators that it will be a better foldable phone than the Z Flip 3 with "invisible creases."

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 Leaks: 'Invisible Creases' on Foldable

(Photo : Screenshot taken from the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 listing on the Coupang website)

According to Android Central, a leak spotted the new release of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 that reveals its contemporary looks and better technology for the public. It focuses on giving more to its screens by eliminating the creases that appear in the middle of where the device folds.

The device's new screen would have "invisible creases" that will have an unnoticeable fold on where the device would stow itself when not in use or wanting it to be smaller than its original size.

Online leaker Tech Talk TV claims that they hold a prototype of the actual device that would release in the coming months, courtesy of a leak from Samsung. The images show the Z Flip 4 has a better look compared to the old device, and it is with the elimination of the crease that shows up in the middle, still visible when the device is fully opened.

Read Also: Samsung's New Camera Features Added to S22 Series

Exclusive: Here's the first real look at Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 4. I also have a short video of the front, information about its battery life, cameras, and more on my YouTube channel. Here's the link to the video https://t.co/CyP9LC4GpU pic.twitter.com/NEePV7dCsi  TechTalkTV (@Mr_TechTalkTV) June 11, 2022

Z Flip 4 to be a Better Foldable than Z Flip 3?

There are talks that the Galaxy Z Flip 4 will be a better device than the Z Flip 3, and it aims to do better on this year's release for the progression of its devices from its previous versions. Of course, there will also be several changes to its UI and UX that will bring a better integration for applications and other features that complement the foldable.

Samsung's Foldable Journey

Samsung develops hardware and software for its foldable devices, as it is different from its regular smartphones that bring a vertical screen that fits everything on a flat surface. Foldable phones have either a broader or taller screen, and it gets extra spaces that may not be optimized for different apps, with Samsung expanding on its user interface and experience (UI/UX).

Before, there was a leak for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 to have an invisible crease that would not be noticeable compared to previous releases, and it is an upgrade from its past versions. The importance of not seeing the crease may improve a user's experience with their foldable devices, especially when seeing it daily.

That same leak appears for the vertical flip device of Samsung, with the Z Flip 4 set to release this year, according to rumors. There are no confirmations from Samsung regarding the Galaxy foldable to arrive this year. Still, leakers insist that there will be a refresh for the expandable screens for better looks and technology.

Related Article: Samsung Leads Smartphone Production, Pushing Apple to Second Spot

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Samsung's Galaxy Watch 5 is the next in line for the smartwatch series of the South Korean technology company, and it aims to bring a new take on wearable technology to its smartphones. However, there are reports that Apple is getting a better feature for the Apple Watch regarding its running characteristics, and so will Google with the Fitbit Premium.

It may be a chance for Samsung to return its "Active" line to match the companies bordering on fitness improvements.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Active: To Rival Apple and Google?

(Photo : Samsung)

The "Active" lineup disappeared from Samsung's offers since the Galaxy Watch 3, and there is a compensation for this with the Galaxy Fit devices that brings a focus on fitness wearables. However, according to Android Central, it is high time for Samsung to get back its Active devices back into the variants of the upcoming Galaxy Watch 5.

Samsung did not fully disclose why it removed the Active label on watches. Still, its primary purpose is to highlight the Galaxy Watch series alone for everyday needs and fitness uses. However, other companies benefit from this and may use it for their gain, focusing on the many fitness features available to the public.

Read Also: Always On Bluetooth a Security Threat? Research Says It May Be Used to Track Your iPhone

Apple and Google's Fitness Improvements for Watch

According to Mashable, Apple is getting better running metrics for the Apple Watch that are eligible to update to the latest watchOS coming from the company. On the other hand, reports on Google's Fitbit Premium are coming for wearable technology for a better fitness experience on their wrists.

Samsung is trailing behind, and Android Central claims that the Active may be its holy grail to go against these tech giants.

Wearable Technology Now

The world is highly reliant on technology now, and it does not lie entirely on smartphones that users can carry around and bring to do specific tasks for them at all times. Sometimes, users dread bringing their devices out of their pockets for simple notifications and information to which they may use wearable technology to respond and get data.

Takes on wearable technology are massive, and many companies currently have stakes in the smartwatch industry. The most recent release that may connect to smartphones is the Google Pixel Watch, which arrived in I/O 2022 last May, and it is the first Pixel-branded smartwatch to connect to its devices.

Unpacked 2021 brought the world Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4, the latest device, to its wearable lineup for South Korean technology.

Apple brought the world the Apple Watch Series 7 last year as well.

After a year since its last showcases, new smartwatches are coming to the public that aims to do better for their fitness needs, one of its earliest features available in the devices. Now, speculations talk about Samsung's take on joining the competition again to bring Apple and Google a run for their money.

Related Article: How To Set Up Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Google Pay? Steps, Wear OS-Supported Cards, and More!

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Tesla's Supercharger network continues to expand at an exponential rate. In fact, the electric vehicle maker owned by the ultra-rich billionaire Elon Musk recently achieved a massive milestone for its fast-charging facilities.

The giant automaker is not only focused on delivering thousands of electric vehicles to its customers. Tesla also finds time to work on its Supercharger network, ensuring that EV owners get their much-needed recharge wherever they might be.

(Photo : Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

FREMONT, CA - AUGUST 16: Jinyao Desandies (R) and Dandre Desandies (L) plug the Tesla Supercharger into their Tesla Model S sedan outside of the Tesla Factory on August 16, 2013 in Fremont, California.

Tesla Supercharger Network New Milestone

It is worth noting that much work still needs to be done to make the Supercharger stations of Tesla pretty much ubiquitous, like how gasoline stations have somewhat achieved.

But the expansion of the Tesla fast-charging network is still at an impressive pace.

As per a news story by Electrek, the Tesla Supercharger network books roughly around 35% of growth, at least year-over-year.

The news outlet gave more exact figures on the exponential growth of the Tesla Supercharger network. The automaker reportedly ended 2020 with 2,564 new stations, totaling 23,277.

On the other hand, when 2021 had its final curtain call, the Supercharger stations increased by about 3,476, ending last year with a total of 31,498.

(Photo : Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Tesla Superchargers are seen at the Petaluma Supercharger on March 09, 2022 in Petaluma, California.

It should be noted that the first Tesla fast-charging station opened its doors way back in 2012. And after almost a decade, it has grown into the massive network it now has become.

Now that we are inching closer to the middle of 2022, Tesla appears to be ramping up the global foothold of its Supercharger network.

According to the latest report by InsideEVs, the Tesla division in China was the bearer of good news for its customers.

The official Twitter account of Tesla Greater China shared the new milestone for the American EV maker.

The tweet disclosed that Tesla has finally deployed its 35,000th Supercharger stall. The latest milestone lands at the Dongxihu Tesla Center in Wuhan, China.

Tesla Greater China also boasted that the Musk-owned EV maker features the "largest fast-charging station in the world," which is already an impressive feat by itself.

We achieved a new milestone.

The 35,000th Supercharger landed in Wuhan, China today.

Tesla, owns the largest fast-charging network in the world. pic.twitter.com/yayJsUOgZp  Tesla Greater China (@teslacn) June 10, 2022

Read Also: Tesla Netherlands Supercharger Network Now Open to All EVs: Potentially Additional Cost for Non-Teslas

Tesla Supercharger Network: On its Way to 45,000 Stalls

All in all, Electrek notes that the American automaker has added roughly around 5,000 Superchargers in the past six months.

(Photo : PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

A Tesla logo is seen on signage at a Tesla Inc. supercharger station on on January 4, 2021 in Hawthorne, California.

So, it appears that the growth of its fast-charging network outperforms the past two years - even with several months left in 2022.

Meanwhile, InsideEVs highlights that the latest figures suggest that Tesla is nearing another milestone - reaching its 40,000 Supercharger.

Related Article: Tesla Car Colorizer Launchers in the US, Outside Chinda--Does it Change Your Vehicle Color?

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Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A new image captured by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express highlights a strange-looking crater with a seemingly creepy eye.

A massive, city-sized unidentified crater leers on the surface of Mars well below the camera of Mars Express, with streaks of dark elements making it look like a gigantic eye glaring up at the stars.

However, the image's objective isn't to give you the creeps; but to provide satellite imagery that can help us better comprehend Mars' geology and history.

The Aonia Terra

The crater, which is 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) large, is located in the Aonia Terra region of Mars's southern hemisphere. It's deeply cratered, and the target of the new Mars Express photographs is far from the largest or most striking, and it's not far from the 200-kilometer-wide Lowell Crater.

According to Science Alert, enormous impacts carved out Lowell and many of the craters in the area around 4 billion years ago, during a destructive phase of the ancient Solar System called the Late Heavy Bombardment.

This is believed to be a similar case for our planet Earth, which was assaulted with atmospheric and seismic processes erasing much of the evidence from the planet's surface.

However, the data survived on Mars, which is desolate and geologically far quieter. It provides a tool for analyzing more chaotic periods in the Solar System's evolution.

Aonia Terra and other regions on Mars can also give information about the planet's makeup. A forceful impact gouges material normally hidden beneath the surface, resulting in new geologies and compositions on the surface.

The surface composition of the region depicted in the new photograph appears diverse and complex.

The nameless eye crater is located in topography hollowed out by channels, most likely formed billions of years ago by rivers of liquid water flowing across the surface.

Remnants of darker material may be observed in these channels, and some of them look to be raised - possibly as a result of erosion-resistant material settling in dehydrated riverbeds and surviving even when windstorms compromise the river's walls.

Read also: Weird Object on Mars: NASA Curiosity Rover Spots Strange Twisting Rock Towers

A Variety of Colors

This new photo, according to ESA, depicts a variety of colors on the surface around the crater, indicating that this region of Mars is made up of multiple elements as well.

The surface is warm red located at the south of the crater, dissolving into a deeper brownish-grey closest to the crater. Many buttes may be seen in this area; these flat-topped rock towers are formed when land is progressively eroded away by water, ice, or wind.



Darker material may also be seen near the crater's core in the shape of a murky, undulating dune. Conical mounds and buttes can also be found in the crater, indicating that it serves as a form of the catchment for materials to be acquired.

Related Article: NASA's Perseverance Rover Records Mars' Soundscapes - Martian Playlist Available for Listening!

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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
RTHK: UK appeal court rejects bid to block Rwanda flights

The Court of Appeal in London has refused to grant an injunction to block Britain from sending its first flight of asylum seekers to Rwanda, as the number of people scheduled to leave on Tuesday's plane fell to less than a dozen.

Britain has agreed a deal with Rwanda to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda in return for an initial payment of 120 million pounds ($148 million), and additional sums based on the number of people deported.

A High Court judge on Friday refused to grant a temporary injunction suspending the first flight, and on Monday the Court of Appeal upheld that decision.

Judge Rabinder Singh said the Court of Appeal could not interfere with the original "clear and detailed" judgement, and refused permission for further appeal. A full hearing to determine the legality of the policy as a whole is due in July.

The government says the deportation strategy will undermine people-smuggling networks and stem the flow of migrants risking their lives by crossing the English Channel in small boats from Europe.

Human rights group say the policy is inhumane and will put migrants at risk. The UNHCR has said Rwanda, whose own human rights record is under scrutiny, does not have the capacity to process the claims, and there was a risk some could migrants could be returned to countries from which they had fled.

Initially, some 37 individuals were scheduled to be removed on the first flight to Rwanda, but the charity Care4Calais said that number has dwindled in the face of legal challenges to just eight.

The government has not provided details of those selected for deportation, but charities say they include people fleeing Afghanistan and Syria.

Earlier, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government was determined to press ahead with the policy despite the legal challenges and opposition, reportedly including from Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne.

"It's very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people's lives at risk in the Channel, understand that their business model is going to be broken and is being broken by this government," Johnson told LBC radio.

"They are selling people false hope and luring them into something that is extremely risky and criminal."

The government said the deportation plan would deter the Channel crossings, although more than 3,500 people have reached Britain in small boats since the middle of April when the Rwanda scheme was unveiled, according to government figures

As the court hearings were taking place about 35 migrants arrived in Dover, some carrying their possessions in black bags, where they were taken away by British border forces.

The High Court is separately hearing arguments from Asylum Aid, a refugee charity, which launched a second legal challenge to stop the government flying refugees to Rwanda.

Charlotte Kilroy, a lawyer representing Asylum Aid, said asylum seekers were not given enough time to challenge their deportation, meaning there was a high risk of unlawful and unsafe decisions.

This case is being heard by Jonathan Swift, the same judge who on Friday rejected granting an injunction. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2022-06-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Phoenix TV: The recent comments about Prophet Mohammed by Nupur Sharma, the spokesperson of Indias Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has caused outrage in the Muslim community in India and Islamic nations. Do you have anything to say on this?

Wang Wenbin: We have noted relevant reports and hope that the situation will be appropriately resolved. China always believes that different civilizations and religions should respect each other and live together as equals. It is always important to discard pride and prejudice, better understand the differences between ones own civilization and other civilizations, and promote exchanges, dialogue and harmonious coexistence between civilizations.

China Daily: According to reports, Canadas Defense Minister Anita Anand said during the Shangri-La Dialogue that, The interceptions by the Chinese of our (aircraft) are very concerning and unprofessional and we need to ensure that the safety and security of our pilots is not at risk, especially when they are simply monitoring as required under UN-sanctioned missions (regarding sanctions on the DPRK). Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: The remarks of the Canadian side seem to fit a Chinese saying: The villain becomes the accuser even before being accused.

A basic fact is that it is the Canadian military aircraft that flew thousands of miles to harass China at its doorstep, not the other way round. It is China, not Canada, that should feel threatened.

The Canadian side claims that its aircraft was monitoring as required under UN-sanctioned missions regarding sanctions on the DPRK, but none of the relevant Security Council resolutions mandated any country to deploy forces for surveillance operations in the sea or airspace under the jurisdiction of another country. The act of the Canadian aircraft is nothing but a provocation against a sovereign country.

The Canadian side claimed that interceptions by the Chinese jet were unprofessional. The fact was, however, that the Canadian aircraft had repeatedly and continuously approached Chinas territorial airspace and engaged in frequent, large-scope and back-and-forth provocations at close distance. The area where the Canadian military aircraft conducted those activities hosts a web of civil aviation routes, which means those activities could severely disrupt the order and safety of civil aviation. It is the Canadian sides behavior that was neither professional nor safe. Even so, the Chinese side exercised maximum restraint the entire time and handled the situation in a professional and safe manner, preventing further escalation of the incident.

We urge the Canadian side to respect facts, not take advantage of Chinas restraint, immediately stop spreading disinformation and stop undermining Chinas sovereignty and security in the name of implementing UN Security Council resolutions.

TASS: According to reports, US Secretary of Defense said in Singapore last Saturday that the US will abide by the one-China policy and the US does not support Taiwan independence. Do these remarks signal positive changes on the Taiwan question lately? Or does China think the US still falls short of real actions?

Wang Wenbin: We noticed that the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin said in his remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue that China has adopted a more coercive and aggressive approach to its territorial claims in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and the stakes are especially stark in the Taiwan Strait. He also said that the US remains committed to its one-China policy. The Chinese delegation attending the event has responded to Secretary Austins remarks. I would like to stress that by repeatedly spreading disinformation and painting an ugly picture of China, the US could only further expose its ill intention to sow discord and the true nature of its hegemonic practices and exercise of power politics.

The biggest threat to the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait does not come from elsewhere but the obdurate separatist activities of the Taiwan independence forces and the USs connivance and endorsement of such activities. It is the US that has sought to obscure and hollow out the one-Chine principle and kept backpedaling on its commitments. It is the US that is relaxing restrictions on official interactions between the US and Taiwan and increasing the sales of weapons to Taiwan both in qualitative and quantitative terms. It is still the US that has been helping Taiwan expand the so-called international space and even acting openly to support Taiwan in strengthening its so-called diplomatic relationships. What could possibly be the USs aim for these actions other than to send wrong signals to the Taiwan independence forces and undermine cross-Strait peace and stability?

The US is also the biggest factor fueling militarization in the Asia-Pacific. The US has deployed many military aircraft and warships in the South China Sea on a regular basis and its reconnaissance aircraft have electronically impersonated the civil aircraft of other countries there many times. Not long ago, a US nuclear-powered submarine even hit an uncharted seamount in the South China Sea. According to statistics from institutions with professional knowledge, the number of the USs close-in military reconnaissance missions against China has more than doubled compared with a decade ago. Since the beginning of this year, the US naval ships have transited the Taiwan Strait once a month on average. US military aircraft have engaged in large-scope, frequent and provocative close-in reconnaissance to deter and pressure China. Apparently, militarization and endangering freedom of navigation are more accurate when used to describe the behavior of the US.

The international community will not be deceived by the USs remarks to smear China. What the US has said will only chip away at the USs credibility. We urge the US to match its words with action, including not seeking confrontation or conflict, not seeking a new Cold War, and not seeking an Asian NATO or a region split into hostile blocs. We also urge the US to stop saying or doing things that could create division and confrontation.

Xinhua News Agency: Not long ago, Premier Li Keqiang sent a congratulatory message to Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese on his election. As Premier Li noted in his letter, China is ready to work with Australia to take stock of the past and stay forward-looking, and uphold the principles of mutual respect and mutual benefit in advancing the sound and steady development of China-Australia comprehensive strategic partnership. The Australian side said it would respond appropriately. Has China received any response yet?

Wang Wenbin: The Chinese side has received Prime Minister Anthony Albaneses letter of reply to express appreciation to Premier Li Keqiang. I would like to reiterate that a sound and steady relationship between China and Australia meets the fundamental interests and common aspiration of the two peoples. As State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi pointed out in a recent interview with media, to improve China-Australia relations, there is no auto-pilot mode. A reset requires concrete actions. This meets the aspirations of people in both countries and the trend of our time. It is hoped that the Australian side can look at China and China-Australia relations in a sensible and positive way, work with China in the same direction in the spirit of mutual respect and seeking common ground while putting aside differences, in an effort to promote the sound and steady development of China-Australia comprehensive strategic partnership.

Dragon TV: Philippines President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said at an event on June 10 that our strongest partner has always been ... our close neighbor and good friend, the Peoples Republic of China. The relations between the Philippines and China are very important and serve the benefit of both sides. The Philippines will continue to uphold an independent foreign policy and develop ties with China, he added. Does the Chinese side have any response?

Wang Wenbin: China and the Philippines are close neighbors facing each other across the sea. Our two countries have a long tradition of good-neighborliness and friendship. In recent years, with the concerted efforts of both sides, the China-Philippines relations have enjoyed continued improvement, bringing tangible benefits to both peoples. Not long ago, President Xi Jinping held a telephone conversation with President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr., during which they reached important consensus on adhering to good-neighborly friendship and common development, charting the course for future development of bilateral relations.

China always sees the Philippines as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy. Our friendly policy toward the Philippines is consistent and steady. We commend the Philippines for pursuing an independent foreign policy and look forward to working together with the new government led by incoming President Marcos to carry forward our friendship and cooperation, usher in a brighter future for bilateral ties to the benefit of both countries and peoples and safeguard the sound momentum for peace and development in the region.

AFP: Australia and Chinas defense ministers have met for the first time in three years yesterday. The talks were described by Australia as an important first step. Whats Chinas view on this?

Wang Wenbin: As to the meeting between Chinese and Australian defense ministers, I would refer you to the Ministry of National Defense.

Here I would like to reiterate Chinas position. We hope the Australian side will work with China in the spirit of mutual respect and seeking common ground while shelving differences to promote sound and steady development of China-Australia comprehensive strategic partnership. This meets the two peoples aspiration, and serves their fundamental and long-term interests.

Bloomberg: We reported that Chinese military officials have repeatedly asserted that the Taiwan Strait is not international waters in recent months during meetings with US counterparts. Does the foreign ministry have any comment on this?

Wang Wenbin: Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinas territory. The Taiwan Strait ranges in width from about 70 nautical miles at its narrowest and 220 nautical miles at its widest. According to UNCLOS and Chinese laws, the waters of the Taiwan Strait, extending from both shores toward the middle of the Strait, are divided into several zones including internal waters, territorial sea, contiguous zone, and the Exclusive Economic Zone. China has sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait. At the same time, it respects the lawful rights of other countries in relevant waters.

There is no legal basis of international waters in the international law of the sea. It is a false claim when certain countries call the Taiwan Strait international waters in order to find a pretext for manipulating issues related to Taiwan and threatening Chinas sovereignty and security. China is firmly against this.

Beijing Daily: It is reported that Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the Shangri-La Dialogue via video link on June 11. When asked how Taiwan should respond if China seeks to take it, by force if necessary, Zelenskyy said that todays example of Ukraine is an example for the whole world; no one benefits from war; if there is a way out diplomatically, we need to use the diplomatic way, but it must be a pre-emptive way, not the one that comes after the war has started. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: We have noted that President Zelenskyy didnt mention the Taiwan question when answering the question. As some media pointed out, some people are simply raising the question about Taiwan in order to try to put words in President Zelenskyys mouth. The Taiwan question and the Ukraine issue are fundamentally different in nature. Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and the Taiwan question is purely Chinas internal affair that brooks no foreign interference. We will take strong measures to respond to all Taiwan independence attempts aimed at splitting China in order to firmly defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Kyodo News: The Japanese Defense Minister had talks with State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe yesterday in Singapore. The Japanese side expressed concerns over Chinas military activities surrounding Japan. What is Chinas comment?

Wang Wenbin: I would also refer you to the Chinese Ministry of National Defense for the meeting between Chinese and Japanese defense ministers.

I want to stress that Chinas position on the Taiwan question and the issue of Diaoyu Dao is consistent and clear. Diaoyu Dao and its affiliating islands have been part of Chinas territory since ancient times. Whatever the Japanese side says or does cannot change the fact that Diaoyu Dao is part of China. Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinas territory. Japan bears historical guilt to the Chinese people on the Taiwan question. Japan needs to act and speak with extra prudence, refrain from meddling in the cross-Strait situation in any way, and not send wrong signals to Taiwan independence forces in any form. The Japanese side needs to do more things that would enhance mutual trust among regional countries and promote regional peace and stability.

Shenzhen TV: It is reported that on June 12 during the Shangri-La Dialogue, Indonesias Minister of Defense Prabowo Subianto talked about Asian countries experience of being exploited by imperialism and colonialism and said that China is a vanguard of the anti-imperialist movement and a good friend of Indonesia. The Defense Minister said he believes that China will hold its responsibilities with wisdom and benevolence and called on countries to respect Chinas rise back to its position as a great civilization. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: Mr. Prabowos remarks remind me of the famous Bandung Conference held 67 years ago in Indonesia. Representatives of Asian, African and Latin American countries gathered together and put forward Ten Principles of Bandung on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. They also established the Bandung spirit of solidarity, friendship and cooperation. All of this is still of great relevance to the handling of international relations today.

At the moment, humanity is faced with common challenges in such fields as security and development. All countries should stick together and work with one another with solidarity, rather than seek decoupling, build walls, stoke division and incite confrontation. Having experienced hot wars and cold wars, people in Asia know better than any one that peace is precious and the future of all countries is closely linked. Asian countries should draw on the wisdom of Asian civilizations for harmonious coexistence, accommodate each others major concerns, respect each others development paths, and continue to promote sound development in Asia.

As a responsible major country, China will unswervingly stick to the path of peaceful development. China has always been committed to working with other Asian countries to adhere to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the Bandung spirit, carry forward the Asian values of solidarity, coordination, harmony and inclusiveness, promote the building of an Asian community with a shared future,make Asia the pacesetter of peace and development in the world, and make new contribution to world fairness and justice and mankinds wellbeing.

AFP: According to a Reuters report, a committee of the UNs International Labour Organization (ILO) has called for a mission to further review Chinas labor policy in Xinjiang. Would China agree to such a mission?

Wang Wenbin: We have noted the conclusions reached by ILOs Committee on the Application of Standards on Chinas observance of the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958. We firmly reject the false accusations by the committee. I would like to stress that the Chinese government follows a people-centered development philosophy and attaches high importance to protecting the rights and interests of workers. We protect the equal right of workers from all ethnic groups to seek employment, to participate in economic and social life, and to share the dividends of socioeconomic progress. The Chinese government has worked actively to assume international obligations, conducted fruitful cooperation with ILO over the years and ratified nearly 30 international labor conventions. During the latest International Labour Conference, many countries fully recognized and highly commended Chinas observance of ILO conventions. The Chinese government will stay committed to the people-centered development philosophy, actively fulfill its obligations under relevant conventions, and work toward higher-quality employment to a higher extent.

The US and a handful of other countries falsely alleged that there is forced labor in Xinjiang. Historically, it was in the US that the notorious slave trade thrived. Today, it is also in the US that human trafficking and forced labor have gone rampant. Nearly 100,000 people are smuggled into the US for forced labor every year. As we speak, there are at least half a million people enslaved in the US. There is a large number of child farmworkers in the US and many of them started working at the young age of eight. Roughly 240,000 to 325,000 women and children in the US are victims of sexual slavery.

While falsely claiming that there are detention camps in Xinjiang, the US itself is an old hand at arbitrary detention and abuse of torture. The US also secretly controls a network of black sites overseas. Over the years, using the war on terror as a cover, the CIA has set up black sites in at least 54 countries and regions where hundreds of thousands of people are put under detention. Many US black sites including Guantanamo Bay prison, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Bagram prison in Afghanistan have been reported for scandals of torture and prisoner abuse. The level of cruelty exposed is simply horrifying.

Despite its serious forced labor and child labor issues, the US has only ratified two of the eight core conventions of ILO and still has not ratified the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 or the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958. And yet the US has hyped up the Xinjiang issue at the conference and turned the solemn conference into a stage for political stunt. It fabricated lies to criticize China and made wanton comments on Chinas compliance. This is typical politicization and double standard. We firmly oppose it. The US should be aware that attempts to use Xinjiang-related issues to meddle in Chinas internal affairs and contain Chinas development will never succeed.
Questions about Alzheimer's Disease or related disorders can be sent to Dana Territo, author of the upcoming book "What My Grandchildren Taught Me About Alzheimer's Disease," at thememorywhisperer@gmail.com.
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A year after the death of out-there businessman Geoffrey Edelsten, two of those famous suits of his have been left in a strange sort of limbo.

Master tailor John Tellis, of Germanicos Bespoke Tailors on Lonsdale Street, had been making suits for Edelsten since Tellis ran up the tux the late businessman wore for the $3 million Crown Casino wedding to Brynne Gordon in 2009.

John Tellis, CEO of Germanico Tailors, made nearly every one of Geoffrey Edelstens famous suits. Credit:Joe Armao

Tellis tells CBD that the two men became firm friends over the years, and having Edelsten as a client sounds like quite a ride, like the time the tailor was summoned to Edelstens garage at 4am one morning and asked for two suits: one in green to match the Lamborghini and one in red to go with the Ferrari.

Or when Tellis was invited to the wedding at Crown and found himself sitting between US sitcom stars Fran Drescher and Seinfelds Jason Alexander.
On the weekend I wrote about the background leading to Rebel Wilsons social media post revealing her new relationship with another woman. I have learnt some new and difficult lessons from this and want to be upfront with you about the things I got wrong.

I genuinely regret that Rebel has found this hard. That was never my intention. But I see she has handled it all with extraordinary grace. As a gay man Im well aware of how deeply discrimination hurts. The last thing I would ever want to do is inflict that pain on someone else.

Writing a weekly column about the personal lives of the rich, powerful and famous comes with its own unique set of challenges. A celebrity romance is a happy story. When I started hearing from friends and associates of Rebel that she was in a new relationship, as a gossip columnist I could see that was potentially a story, as her previous boyfriends had been.

So, after months of posts of the women together on Rebels Instagram account  from Oscars parties to Valentines Day, and most recently as VIP guests at the gay and lesbian World Pride Polo match in Florida  I assumed there was a good chance she might be happy to discuss it. She had already revealed a month ago that she had been dating and was very happy.

But we mishandled steps in our approach.
London: It took a pandemic to interrupt the West Ends longest-running play, Agatha Christies whodunnit The Mousetrap.

Stepping into the quaint, wood-panelled 550-seat St Martins Theatre in Covent Garden is like going back in time, to 1952 to be precise, when the post-war murder mystery began what is now its 70-year run.

Theatre producer John Frost. Credit:Domenico Pugliese

It certainly is a period piece, John Frost, Australias biggest theatre producer tells The Sydney Morning Herald over coffee in London.

Its a world Frost, who also turns 70 this year, is reviving for Australian audiences, opening the production in October at Sydneys Theatre Royal. It will be directed by Australian actress and director Robyn Nevin who will begin casting an all-Australian lineup next month.
Emergency doctors from other health districts have been called in to help a hospital north of Brisbane with its staffing crisis, as an unprecedented number of junior doctor resignations affect the state system.

Senior doctors at Caboolture Hospital over the weekend sent out urgent messages to emergency doctors in other hospital and health services for assistance, reporting there was a staffing crisis at Caboolture emergency department on both Saturday and Sunday.

The shortage follows months of Queenslands health system, and other state systems alike, struggling amid growing COVID-19 and flu cases and ambulance ramping constraints.

One emergency doctor, who wished to remain anonymous, said the staffing situation was also worsened by other factors, including an increase in resignations.
Australia will be asked to back a transformation of the NATO alliance to toughen defences against Russia and confront strategic competition with China at a summit later this month that will expand the 30-member alliance in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is considering whether to attend the summit in Madrid on June 29 and 30 as part of a show of support from Asia Pacific partners including leaders from Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is considering attending international talks where an expansion of NATO will be discussed. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The agenda includes stronger cooperation on cybersecurity in response to heightened activity by Russia and China, an issue raised between NATO and Australian leaders in the past, as well as highly sensitive proposals to send more forces to Eastern Europe to defend the alliances eastern flank.

With Australia already sending military and medical supplies to Ukraine on regular RAAF flights into Poland, the Madrid summit will canvass further support from NATO members and partners as well as arranging the entry of Finland and Sweden into an alliance founded in 1949.
London: Prince Andrew has asked the Queen to reinstate him as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, the London Telegraph understands, as he pushes for a return to royal duties.

Prince Andrew, left, and his brother Prince Edward in the procession to the Order of The Garter Service at Windsor Castle in 2019. Credit:AP

Andrew has been lobbying the monarch for his status as a blood prince to be restored, meaning readmittance to official events with other members of his family. He has also been pushing for his daughters, princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, to be made working royals.

A source said: The colonelcy of the Grenadier Guards was his most coveted title and he wants it back. Having remained a Counsellor of State, he also believes he should be included at royal and state events.

Most important for him is his status as an HRH and Prince of the Blood and he feels that should be reinstated and his position recognised and respected.
Monsters are not what they used to be.

Im reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley for school, and the monster is magnificent. He starts out with an elegance of mind and sweetness of temperament, reading Johann Wolfgang von Goethes The Sorrows of Young Werther and gathering firewood for a poor family. But his creator, Victor Frankenstein, abandons him and refuses him a mate to calm his loneliness. The creature finds no one who does not recoil in fear and disgust from his stitched-together appearance, his yellow skin and eyes and black lips. Embittered, he seeks revenge on his creator and the world.

Supporters of Donald Trump gathered outside the US Capitol before the January 6 insurrection. The committee has heard that Trump summoned the mob. Credit:AP

Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded, he laments. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.

Before he disappears into the Arctic at the end of the book, he muses that once he had high thoughts of honour, until his frightful catalogue of malignant deeds piled up.
Cheyenne, WY (82001)

Today

Partly cloudy. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 47F. WNW winds at 25 to 35 mph, decreasing to 10 to 15 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 47F. WNW winds at 25 to 35 mph, decreasing to 10 to 15 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph.
Batavia, NY (14020)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 72F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 72F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
The timeless banger that is 'Get Ready To Wiggle' has never had more meaning guys, because The Wiggles have just announced they're performing two shows for big kids only (that means us) in Aotearoa later this year.

The OG Wiggles Reunion Tour will see Anthony, Murray, Greg and that sleepy guy Jeff take the stage in Auckland and Christchurch for audiences aged 15 and over.

The tour will arrive at Auckland's Spark Arena on August 20 and head to Christchurch Arena on August 26, so get the crew together and give your Big Red Car a bloody good tune-up.
Chicago Police set up near the corner of 64th St. and Loomis Blvd., an intersection near the location where an officer was shot, in Chicago, on June 1, 2022. (Brian Rich/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

31 Shot, Six Dead in Chicago Shootings Over the Past Weekend: Police

At least 31 people were shot, including six fatally, in Chicago over the past weekend, officials said on Monday morning.

In the latest fatal shooting, a woman who was not identified was shot and killed in the West Lawn neighborhood on Sunday night at around 7:35 p.m., officials told ABC and the Chicago Sun-Times. Two females were arguing on the sidewalk of South Kilbourn Avenue when a male suspect approached them and fired several shots, hitting the woman in the head and body. The woman was later pronounced dead at the Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.

On Sunday morning at around 4 a.m., a 23-year-old man was shot and killed and a woman was critically injured in Grand Boulevard on the South Side. Officers found the man and the woman on South State Street with a gunshot wound to the chest. The man was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was pronounced dead, and the woman, 32, was shot in the lower back. Officials said she is hospitalized at the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition.

At around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, a 34-year-old man was shot dead inside a car in South Commons on the South Side, officials told the two outlets. He was found with wounds to his torso. When he was taken to Stroger Hospital, he was later pronounced dead, authorities said.

Hours before that, a woman was shot and killed while she was inside a car on the West Side near East Garfield Park, officials said. The 37-year-old was struck by gunfire by someone who shot into the car. She was taken to Stroger and was later pronounced dead from her injuries, said police.

In a similar incident on the Lower West Side at around 11 p.m. on Saturday, a 26-year-old male was struck by gunfire as he was a passenger inside a vehicle. Someone pulled up next to the car he was in and opened fire on the mans car, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital and was later pronounced dead, police said.

A man25-year-old Vaugh Sivelswas shot and killed on Friday afternoon in Englewood on the South Side, said police. He was outside on Justine Street on Chicagos South Side someone shot him in the head and torso, officials said. Sivels was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was pronounced dead sometime later.

In the reports, no suspects were listed in connection to the shootings and homicides.
The fire brigade performs a search operation for a helicopter that vanished on June 9 with seven people aboard, including four Turkish businessmen, on the Apennines, Italy, on June 10, 2022. (Vigili del Fuoco/Handout via Reuters)

7 Bodies Found at Scene of Helicopter Crash in Italy

ROMERescuers have found the bodies of seven people killed in a helicopter crash in Italy, local authorities said on Saturday, two days after the aircraft disappeared from radar screens.

The helicopter had taken off on Thursday from Lucca in Tuscany and was heading towards the northern city of Treviso when it was lost in bad weather over a remote area.

The rescuers have found dead the seven passengers from the helicopter, four of Turkish and two of Lebanese nationality, who were on a business trip to Italy. As well as the Italian pilot, the prefects office in the city of Modena said in a statement.

The fire brigade performs a search operation for a helicopter that vanished on June 9 with seven people aboard, including four Turkish businessmen, in Pievepelago, Italy, on June 10, 2022. (Vigili del Fuoco/Handout via Reuters)

The helicopter was found in a mountainous area on the border between Tuscany and the Emilia Romagna region, the statement said.

Prosecutors have cordoned off the area as part of the investigation into the incident.

We got the coordinates, we went to the site and found everything burnt. The helicopter is basically inside a valley, near a stream, a rescuer said in a video posted on the Italian Air Force Twitter account.

The Turkish businessmen worked for Eczacibasi Consumer Products, a subsidiary of major Turkish industrial group Eczacibasi. They had been attending a paper technologies fair in Italy, the company said in a statement.

The helicopter was an AW119 Koala manufactured by defense group Leonardo, a person close to the matter told Reuters.

The ANSA news agency reported it was owned by transport and aeronautic maintenance company Avio Helicopters, based in Thiene, in northern Italy.

Avio Helicopters was not immediately available for comment.

By Angelo Amante
Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, speaks at the ceremonial ribbon cutting prior to tomorrow's opening night for the NHL's newest hockey franchise, the Seattle Kraken, at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on Oct. 22, 2021. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Amazon Chief Addresses Consumer Chief Exit, Risky Bets, Streaming Business, Union, and More

Amazon.com Inc. chief Andy Jassy in an interview at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco, acknowledged its consumer chief departure and continued investments in risky bets like autonomous vehicles, video streaming, and internet satellites amid odds.

Clark Dave wanted a different gig at this point, Jassy said. Dave was instrumental in building Amazons massive warehousing and logistics network, which played a critical role during the pandemic as activities shifted online.

However, the pandemic recovery has left Amazon overstaffed and over-spaced, which Jassy had apprehended as a short-term phenomenon. Therefore he looked to sublease some of its facilities.

However, the global supply chain crisis continues to bite. Amazon placed orders significantly earlier than usual and worked to get access to more ports, Jassy added.

Interestingly, Amazon went ahead with big bets amid odds, including building a grocery chain and launching a constellation of internet-beaming satellites, Alexa software, and Zoox, the autonomous taxi subsidiary.

Jassy was positive on Amazons streaming video businesses despite Netflix Inc.s woes, thanks to its big-budget series set in the Lord of the Rings universe and assets from its film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Jassy also addressed the labor union tussle at Amazons warehouses. He voiced his support for those wishing to join the union assuring efforts to continue providing the right benefits and safety with the help of employee feedback.

Jassy also rejected criticism for alleged abuse of its third-party marketplace. Amazon assured work to improve services for sellers and claimed more sellers were happy with Amazon than unhappy.

Jassy also revealed that his predecessor, Jeff Bezos, Amazons executive Chair, still played an active role despite spending more time on philanthropy and his space company Blue Origin.

The e-commerce giant posted its first loss in seven years and the slowest revenue growth since 2001.

By Anusuya Lahiri

 2022 The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
An undated handout photo shows Australian resources giant Woodside's Cossack Pioneer oil production facility in the North West Shelf gas project, which produces a third of Australia's oil and half of its natural gas, off the northwest coast of Australia. (AFP via Getty Images)

Australian Gas Exporters Mostly Foreign Owned

Companies exporting gas from Australia are 95 percent in foreign hands, a new analysis from a think tank shows.

The Australia Institute study has found seven out of 10 gas export projects are at least 90 percent owned internationally.

The findings come as households and businesses face soaring gas prices fuelled by increased local and overseas demand.

The institutes senior research fellow and author of the analysis, David Richardson, says Australians are paying a fortune to largely foreign companies, who are making a windfall during the energy crisis.

As gas companies lobby for ever-more expansion for export profit, Australians are entitled to ask how this industry is serving the national interest, Richardson said.

An undated photo of Australian resources giant Woodsides Goodyn A offshore gas production platform in the North West Shelf (NWS) gas project, which produces a third of Australias oil and half of its natural gas, off the northwest coast of Australia. (-/AFP via Getty Images)

The news comes as energy Minister Chris Bowen met with industry heads last week, flagging a renegotiation of a contract signed by the former federal government led by Scott Morrison, in order to allow more gas to be redirected from export to domestic supply.

The institutes analysis also shows the top 20 ASX-listed companies are on average 80 percent foreign-owned.

Overseas investors also have a 51 percent stake in Telstra, despite the company being meant to be have a 35 percent cap on overseas investors. Likewise Australias national air carrier Qantas currently os 62 percent under foreign ownership despite it having a 49 per cent limit on overseas investors.

A Qantas plane takes off from the Sydney International airport in Sydney, on May 6, 2021. (Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)

Meanwhile, Australias mining industry was found to be 90 percent foreign owned, including BHPa company founded in New South Waleswhich was 94 percent foreign owned.

The Commonwealth Bank is 81 percent foreign owned.

Polling by the Australia Institute found Australians thought the foreign investment was too big despite underestimating the current scale of it.

This research highlights the need for further work by the government to examine the extent of foreign ownership in Australia, Richardson said.
Australian citizens and visa holders prepare to board the Royal Australian Air Force C-17A Globemaster III aircraft, as Australian Army infantry personnel provide security and assist with cargo, at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan August 22, 2021. (SGT Glen McCarthy/ Australia's Department of Defence/Handout via Reuters)

Australians Honoured for Kabul Evacuations in Queens Birthday List

When Afghanistans capital city fell back under the control of the Taliban in 2021, Australian forces were among those called on to urgently evacuate its citizens and approve the departure of foreign nationals from the Kabul airport.

Airlifts needed to be coordinated in what was now a hostile territory, and bus convoys were required to reach stranded Australians.

A number of Australian military personnel involved in the evacuation of more than 4,000 people from Afghanistan have now been recognised in the Queens Birthday Honours List.

In this handout provided by the Australian Department of Defence, Afghanistan evacuees board a flight to Australia from the Australian Defence Forces main operating base in the Middle East region. (LACW Jacqueline Forrester/Australian Department of Defence via Getty Images)

Six have been awarded a Distinguished Service Medal (DSM), while another eight have been given the Commendation for Distinguished Service.

Among those receiving a DSM was Lieutenant Colonel Scott Holmes, who led the Ready Battle Group to evacuate Australian citizens and approve foreign nationals from the Kabul airport with his steadfast approach and composure under pressure cited for his commendation.

Private Ethan Wright, from 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, plays with Afghanistan evacuees at a temporary camp in Australias main operating base in the Middle East. (LACW Jacqueline Forrester/ADF)

From the RAAF, Wing Commander Steven Duffy received a DSM after coordinating the airlift operation from the airport.

He was also recognised for his efforts on August 24, 2021, when he led a bus convoy mission through Kabul to rescue 86 Australians.

Two unnamed troopers were given Commendation for Distinguished Service for their work during the evacuation, while Major Matthew Hamill received that same recognition for his leadership.

Private Jess Wills (left), and Private Ken Auld (right), from 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, with Afghanistan evacuees in the mess hall of a temporary camp in Australias main operating base in the Middle East. (LACW Jacqueline Forrester/ADF)

Another RAAF pilot, Air Commodore Angela Castner, was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the military division.

She was recognised for her service in the logistics workforce, including for the Afghanistan evacuation.

Rear Admiral Michael Rothwell received a Conspicuous Service Cross, having overseen the withdrawal of Australian forces from Afghanistan.
BBC Accused of Institutional Alarmism on Climate Change: Report

The watchdog Net Zero Watch, which scrutinises climate and decarbonisation policies, has accused of worlds largest broadcast news organisation of bias over climate change.

The report outlines criticisms that the BBC has been forced to correct false claims in climate-related coverage after receiving public complaints in recent years.

Furthermore, critics say the BBCs lack of opposing perspectives means it is now promoting a green ideological view of the world.

Accusing the broadcaster of institutional alarmism and persistent exaggeration, the report (pdf) highlighted that BBCs own investigations department upheld investigations about its climate reporting.

Persistent Exaggeration

For example in October 2020, the National Farmers Union complained about a BBC documentary Meat: A Threat to our Planet, which made several unsubstantiated claims about meat production. The complaint was brought to the British broadcaster regulator OFCOM when the BBC failed to provide a timely response.

The complaint was upheld and the documentary was removed from BBCs iPlayer.

Report author Paul Homewood said that there can be little doubt that the cases documented in this report are just the tip of the iceberg. Many other such inaccurate news or false information are broadcast by the BBC without being noticed or complained about.

In April 2022, the BBC upheld two complaints against its climate editor Justin Rowlatt. Both concerned an episode of Panorama, the BBCs flagship current affairs documentary programme, which aired in November 2021, called Wild Weather: Our World Under Threat.

Rowlatt wrote at the beginning of the programme that the world is getting warmer and our weather is getting ever more unpredictable and dangerous. The death toll is rising around the world, and the forecast is that worse is to come.

The BBCs Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) found that BBC News accepted the wording in the programme was not as clear as it should have been, noting that the number of deaths caused by such disasters has fallen because of improved early warnings and disaster management.

It was also found that Rowlatts claim that Madagascar was on the brink of the worlds first climate-induced famine was presented without qualification.

Bias

The paper has been submitted to the governments upcoming mid-term review of the BBC.

We are not expecting much from the BBC, but we are expecting the government to deal with bias. We would expect taxpayer-funded institutions to represent the public with a balanced and accurate way of reporting things, Net Zero Watch Director Dr. Benny Peiser told The Epoch Times.

In 2018, Carbon Brief posted a crib sheet that included the BBCs editorial policy and position on climate change.

Be aware of false balance, wrote the BBC. To achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday, it added.

But Peiser said that it was inevitable that bans of any critics or skeptics would lead to exaggerations of issues. Theres no scrutiny, he said.

Hoping for a government response, Peiser said he believed there are people beginning to realise that the BBC is a problem to publicly funded journalism. We need radical reform,  he added.

Green Ideological View

Environmentalism skeptic Ben Pile, co-founder of the Climate Resistance blog, told The Epoch Times that he believed the public has been denied debate.

The BBC abandoned debate and impartiality on environment and climate change as a matter of editorial and institutional policy in recent decades, first refusing to allow people seemingly outside of the consensus to appear on shows, and later in reframing its mission to be an active participant in politics, a campaigning organisation which used its vast resources to promote the green ideological view of the world, said Pile.

Pile said that as late as the mid-2000s, the BBC did host interesting debates between opposing perspectives that were informative and educational, which was its original remit.

But individuals within the organisation, and the management took it upon themselves, albeit after pressure from the broader movement, to align themselves with the green agenda, and the government and Westminster consensus. The public have been denied debate and it has to be remembered that the BBC is a state broadcaster and the projection of soft power at home and abroad has always been its real core mission, he said.

Pile added that the BBC may occasionally clash with the government but it has always been the instrument of the broader political establishment.

The problem for the BBC is that, as it has taken on an even more political function, it has only been able to find zealots to serve as ersatz journalists, said Pile, recommending that for this subject, people should find out what the debates are, and read around the subject, rather than taking either side, consensus, or sceptics at face value.

The British former chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson founded Net Zero Watch and the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The group has been accused of climate change denial.

For example, according to Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, the global warming dissenters are, without exception, wilfully ignorant and in the view of the Prince of Wales we are headless chickens,' wrote Lawson in a report called The Trouble With Climate Change (pdf).

Not that dissenter is a term they use. We are regularly referred to as climate change deniers, a phrase deliberately designed to echo Holocaust denier, as if questioning present policies and forecasts of the future is equivalent to casting malign doubt about a historical fact, he added.

As of publication, the BBC has not responded to The Epoch Times request for comment.

Correction: This article previously misstated the name of the founder of Net Zero Watch Lord Nigel Lawson. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Former East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao (R) greets Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) during a meeting in Dili on June 4, 2022. (VALENTINO DARIEL SOUSA/AFP via Getty Images)

Beijing Only Needs to Win Once in South Pacific Contest: Former Intelligence Agency Boss

Australia needs to push China back every time in the South Pacific contest while Beijing only needs to win once to achieve its goal, warns the former head of Australias spy agency.

The comment comes as Australia and China continue jostling for influence in the South Pacific, with Anthony Albanese recently making his first trip as Australian Prime Minister to Indonesia, only days after Chinese Minister Wang Yi finished his tour to eight Pacific nations.

Dennis Richardson, who was Australias defence secretary between 2012 and 2017 and is a former director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), on Monday said Beijing would continue to press and challenge in order to establish its military presence in the Pacific eventually.

He noted this would enormously complicate Australia and the U.S defence planning, which is ultimately what the Chinese are about.

This is not just a challenge for today or tomorrow; its the challenge for the next 10 years, Richardson told ABC Radio.

Every time the Chinese step up in this space to advance their security interest in the south pacific, we have to press back, and well need to win that contest all the time.

We have to win everything; they only have to win once.

The warning comes as Australias Defence Minister Richard Marles on Sunday said the new Labor government will continue defending Australias national interest but will adopt a more respectful tone towards the Communist regime, as he praised China as Australias largest trading partner.

Marles, who in April was criticised for failing to disclose his pro-China speech given at the Chinese embassy in Canberra, met his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe at the Shangri-La security summit in Singapore.

The interaction marks the first high-level contact with Beijing since 2020, when the communist government launched a series of trade wars against Australia in an attempt to retaliate against the then-Liberal government, which called for an independent investigation into the origin of COVID-19.

Marles described the meeting as a  critical first step in rebuilding the Canberra-Beijing relationship amid heightened tensions over the Indo-Pacific and Chinas recent interception of an Australian warplane over the South China Sea.

Australia and Chinas relationship is complex, and its precisely because of this complexity that it is really important that we are engaging in dialogue right now.

In moving forward, while there is a change of tone, there is absolutely no change in the substance of Australias national interest.

Former ASIO boss Richardson said the fact that the two Defence Ministers agreed to talk at the very first opportunity is noteworthy but suggested that Australia shouldnt get too far down the track on this. He further noted that any starling breakthrough is unlikely to occur soon.

A change of government after a decade does bring with it opportunities of this kind, Richardson said.

There are still a lot of fundamental differences between China and Australia, which the new government is fully aware of.

Last week, the Defence department revealed a dangerous incident that took place in May, which saw a Chinese warplane intercepting an Australian maritime surveillance aircraft over the international waters of the South China Sea, leaving the Australian crew fearing for their safety.

Beijing didnt confirm or deny the incidence, but Chinese defence spokesman Colonel Tan Kefei claimed the warnings were false information and accused Australia of instigating the hostility and confrontation.
A medical worker in a protective suit collects a swab from a resident at a makeshift nucleic acid testing site, during a mass testing for COVID-19 in Chaoyang district of Beijing on June 13, 2022. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

Beijing Tests Millions, Puts Thousands Into Lockdown After Outbreak at Bar

After a short break, Beijing has resumed mass COVID-19 testing.

A flare-up of COVID-19 infections linked to a nightclub prompted the city to rescind an earlier decision to ease restrictions that had put the capital into a partial lockdown for more than a month.

The populous Chaoyang district is testing its 3.5 million residents three times starting on June 13. The neighboring Fengtai district also kicks off a three-day mandatory screening of people living in the areas deemed at risk.

Beijing officials said the new curbs come as a result of a recent wave of infections centered around a popular 24-hour bar, Heaven Supermarket Bar, which resumed operation less than four days ago.

After a man who frequented the pub twice in two days tested positive for COVID-19 on June 9, infections linked to the venue have been registered in 14 of Beijings 16 districts, officials said.

More than 10,000 people were identified as close contacts of the bars customers, state-run media outlet Beijing Evening News reported. Their residential compounds have been placed under lockdown.

The latest outbreak is fierce and difficult to contain, Meng Rui, deputy chief of Chaoyang district, where the bar is located, said at a June 13 briefing.

As of June 12, a total of 228 cases linked to the club have been recorded. More than 80 percent of them are the bars patrons. The rest are staff or people who had contact with customers.

However, the Chinese regimes official count has consistently come into question by residents and experts who point to Beijings history of downplaying and covering up information about outbreaks across the country.

A worker drills a sheet into place on a barrier fence as he installs it outside an apartment that was locked down after a recent COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing on June 13, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

While the West relaxes COVID-19 restrictions, choosing to live with the virus, the Chinese regime is determined to eliminate transmission among communities entirely. Its zero-COVID policy, which relies on mass testing, prolonged lockdowns, and centrally isolating everyone at risk, has left Chinese cities stuck in a cycle of closing and reopening.

The on-again off-again lockdowns have put huge strains on the countrys economy and stirred rising discontent among a population growing weary of indefinite movement restrictions and testing mandates.

The reintroduction of COVID-19 curbs in major cities, such as Shanghai and Beijing, shows how difficult it is to return to normal life. Shanghai, a city of 25 million people that reemerged from a two-month-long lockdown on June 1, ordered a new round of mandatory screening in all but one of the citys 16 districts starting on June 11.

In Beijing, drinking and dine-in services were allowed to resume on June 6 after COVID-19 restrictions had sealed residents indoors and shut stores for a month.

But only 3 1/2 days later, officials reclosed pubs, internet cafes, and karaoke parlors in Chaoyang district, according to a June 9 statement from the districts culture and tourism bureau, after the first cases were found linked to Heaven Supermarket Bar.

The pub is located in Sanlitun, a popular area known for nightlife and shopping malls. The entire area has since been shut down until further notice. Reuters reported that several customers and staff were locked in Heaven Supermarket Bar while checks were carried out, citing an unnamed source within the authorities.

People line up at a swab collection site to test for COVID-19 in Beijing on June 13, 2022. (NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images)

On June 13, long, snaked lines reappeared in some areas of Beijing as mass testing was underway. Lines at some testing spots were longer than 330 feet (100 meters), according to Reuters.

A Beijing resident surnamed Peng told The Epoch Times that he worried the lines for testing could increase the risk of contracting the virus.

On social media, residents are expressing their frustration over the renewed restrictions. Some questioned the meaning of Beijings zero-COVID policy, given that the majority of new infections had only mild or no symptoms.

I dont know how history will record this ridiculous time.  So many people are wasting huge social resources to do a meaningless job, a user wrote on Twitter-like Weibo, referring to the zero-COVID playbook.

Whats next, continue to close? How can everybody survive? Everything was stopped, but did mortgages stop?  What about rent? another user said.

What Im afraid of is not COVID-19 now, but the curb measures, a third user said.

Fang Xiao and Li Shanshan contributed to the report.
A Federal Police officer loads a truck with items found during a search for Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips in Atalaia do Norte, Amazonas state, Brazil, on June 12, 2022. (Edmar Barros/AP Photo)

Belongings of Missing Men Found Tied Underwater in Amazon

ATALAIA DO NORTE, BrazilBrazils search for an Indigenous expert and a journalist who disappeared in a restive area of the Amazon a week ago advanced with the discovery of a backpack, laptop, and other personal belongings of the men submerged in a river.

The items were found Sunday afternoon, and were carried by Federal Police officers by boat to Atalaia do Norte, the closest city to the search. In a statement Sunday night, police said they had identified the items as the belongings of both missing men, including a health card and clothes of Bruno Pereira, the Brazilian Indigenous expert.

The backpack, which was identified as belonging to freelance journalist Dom Phillips of Britain, was found tied to a tree that was half-submerged, a firefighter told reporters in Atalaia do Norte. It is the end of the rainy season in the region and part of the forest is flooded.

The development came a day after police reported finding traces of blood in the boat of a fisherman who is under arrest as the only suspect in the disappearance. Officers also found organic matter of apparent human origin in the river. The materials are being analyzed.

Search teams that found the laptop and other items Sunday had concentrated their efforts around a spot in the Itaquai river where a tarp from the boat used by the missing men was found Saturday by volunteers from the Matis Indigenous group.

We used a little canoe to go to the shallow water. Then we found a tarp, shorts and a spoon, one of the volunteers, Binin Beshu Matis, told The Associated Press.

Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen June 5 near the entrance of the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. They were returning alone by boat on the Itaquai to Atalaia do Norte but never arrived.

That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers, and government agents. Violence has grown as drug trafficking gangs battle for control of waterways to ship cocaine, although the Itaquai is not a known drug trafficking route.

Authorities have said a main line of the police investigation into the disappearance has pointed to an international network that pays poor fishermen to fish illegally in the Javari Valley reserve, which is Brazils second-largest Indigenous territory.

One of the most valuable targets is the worlds largest freshwater fish with scales, the arapaima. It weighs up to 440 pounds and can reach 10 feet. The fish is sold in nearby cities, including Leticia, Colombia, Tabatinga, Brazil, and Iquitos, Peru.

The only known suspect in the disappearances is fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also known as Pelado, who is under arrest. According to accounts by Indigenous people who were with Pereira and Phillips, he brandished a rifle at them the day before the pair disappeared.

The suspect denies any wrongdoing and said military police tortured him to try to get a confession, his family told The Associated Press.

Pereira, who previously led the local bureau of the Brazilian governments Indigenous agency, known as FUNAI, has taken part in several operations against illegal fishing. In such operations, as a rule, the fishing gear is seized or destroyed, while the fishermen are fined and briefly detained. Only the Indigenous can legally fish in their territories.

The crimes motive is some personal feud over fishing inspection, the mayor of Atalaia do Norte, Denis Paiva, speculated to reporters without providing more details.

AP had access to information police shared with Indigenous leadership. But while some police, the mayor, and others in the region link the pairs disappearances to the fish mafia, federal police have not ruled rule out other lines of investigation, such as narco-trafficking.

Federal police officers arrive at the pier with items found during a search for Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips in Atalaia do Norte, Amazonas state, Brazil, on June 12, 2022. (Edmar Barros/AP Photo)

Fisherman Laurimar Alves Lopes, who lives on the banks of Itaquai, told AP that he gave up fishing inside the Indigenous territory after being detained three times. He said he endured beating and starvation in jail.

Lopes, who has five children, said he only fishes near his home to feed his family, not sell.

I made many mistakes, I stole a lot of fish. When you see your child dying of hunger you go get it where you have to. So I would go there to steal fish to be able to support my family. But then I said: Im going to put an end to this, Im going to plant, he said during an interview on his boat.

Lopes said he was taken to local federal police headquarters in Tabatinga three times, charging he was beaten and left without food.

In 2019, FUNAI official Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was gunned down in Tabatinga in front of his wife and daughter-in-law. Three years later, the crime remains unsolved. His FUNAI colleagues told AP they believe the slaying was linked to his work against fishermen and poachers.

Rubber tappers founded all the riverbank communities in the area. In the 1980s, however, rubber tapping declined and they resorted to logging. That ended, too, when the federal government created the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory in 2001. Fishing has become the main economic activity since then.

An illegal fishing trip to the vast Javari Valley lasts around one month, said Manoel Felipe, a local historian, and teacher who also served as a councilman. For each illegal incursion, a fisherman can earn at least $3,000.

The fishermens financiers are Colombians, Felipe said. In Leticia, everybody was angry with Bruno. This is not a little game. Its possible they sent a gunman to kill him.

By Fabiano Maisonnave
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is seen during a meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House on March 20, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)

Biden Softening Stance on Saudi Arabia, May Visit Soon as Oil Prices Soar

President Joe Biden is expected to make an announcement regarding a possible trip to Saudi Arabia as he looks at foreign assistance to abate the ever-increasing pain at the gas pump.

When asked by reports during a conference on June 3 whether he was planning to visit Saudi Arabia, Biden replied that he was not sure, and had no direct plans at the moment. During the presidential elections, Biden had maintained a hardline stance against Saudi Arabia and called for the country to be made a pariah after the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

During the June 6 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not deny it when a reporter commented, as part of a question, that Biden was going to Saudi Arabia this summer.

There was a visit in the works, said Jean-Pierre. But it wasnt moved or postponed. It wasthat reporting is actually not accurate. We were still having discussions, it was being considered, but it was never locked in.

When asked whether obtaining the oil was more important, Jean-Pierre said, theres no question that important interests are interwoven with Saudi Arabia.

Nationwide, regular gas averaged $4.986 on June 10, the highest level recorded by AAA. This is up 14 percent from a month back and over 62 percent from 2021. State-wise, California has the highest average regular gas price at $6.42 per gallon, with 20 other states having gas prices in excess of $5 per gallon.

Republicans have pointed to the Biden administrations blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline, suspending new oil leases on federal lands, and failing to bring additional oil output online from existing offshore federal oil leases by issuing necessary permits as major factors contributing to the elevated gas prices.

The Biden administration recently canceled the sales of three major offshore oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, effectively blocking the opportunity to drill for oil on over 1 million acres.

Attempts by U.S. officials to convince Saudi Arabia to increase oil production have been unsuccessful so far with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly rejecting a phone call from Biden in March.

Do you hold a relationship hostage to human-rights concerns or can you move forward while not abandoning your moral high ground? Adam Ereli, a former US ambassador to Bahrain, told Insider. In his mind, Biden can move forward.

Holding 15 percent of the worlds proven oil reserves, Saudi Arabia is the largest exporter of crude oil in the world, with a production capacity of nearly 12 million barrels per day. It is also one of the biggest producers of oil in the world, second to only the United States.

Along with Saudi Arabia, Biden is expected to visit Israel as part of a broader Middle East trip.
Conservative MP Philip Lawrence rises during question period in the House of Commons in Ottawa on May 28, 2021. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Tory MP Introduces Bill to Support Prisoners of Conscience Abroad, Target Rights Offenders

Conservative MP Philip Lawrence has introduced a private members bill aimed at supporting prisoners of conscience abroad and targeting rights offenders with Magnitsky-style sanctions.

Presented in the House of Commons on June 13, Bill C-281, or the International Human Rights Act, includes provisions in which the foreign affairs minister would publish, at least once a year, a list of prisoners of conscience for whose release the government of Canada is actively working; request the use of Magnitsky-style sanctions against alleged human rights abusers; and prohibit the renewal of broadcasting licences to entities with foreign influences that are complicit in acts of genocide.

During a June 13 press conference, Lawrence said whether it is advocating for individuals fighting for democracy or freedom in their home countries, or pushing back against cluster munitions that harm children around the world, it is incredibly important that we advocate and that we take a stand as a country that has a great history of human rights.

Im very, very honoured and delighted to have, hopefully, a small part in furthering Canadas reputation as a defender of human rights, said Lawrence, MP for Ontarios NorthumberlandPeterborough South riding.

To address the issues, the bill aims to amend four pieces of legislation: the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law), and the Broadcasting Act.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said the bill is a game-changer in terms of allowing Parliament to hold the Canadian government accountable when advancing international human rights.

This is a strong bill with measures that I hope will gain support from all sides of the House, he said.

It puts together a number of different kinds of measures, but all around that central goal of strengthening Canadas role in the world, standing up for justice and human rights, and strengthening the role of parliament in being able to push the government further in the advancement of human rights.

Genuis noted that under the bill, the minister of foreign affairs would be required to submit to Parliament an annual report on the work the ministry is doing to promote that cause. The minister would also be required to respond to Parliament within 40 days when a parliamentary committee has requested Magnitsky sanctions against an individual.

This is important because the Magnitsky Act was a sanctions instrument that was proposed by Conservatives, it was passed through Parliament, but the Liberals have been very reluctant to use it, he said. The government preserves discretion around that, but it creates important accountability mechanisms for Parliament to be able to push the government forward on these issues.

In terms of prohibiting foreign entities complicit in genocide, Genuis said the bill would give Parliament the teeth to ensure that the foreign entities involved could no longer take advantage of Canadian airwaves to broadcast hateful, violent messages through state-controlled media into Canada, pointing to RT, a Moscow-controlled media, and its role in Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Bill C-281 also seeks to amend the Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, which would prohibit Canadians from working with or investing in individuals who are known to have used, developed, or transported cluster munitions, explosive submunitions, and explosive bomblets against the Convention on Cluster Munitionsan international treaty that Canada entered into force in 2015 aimed at restricting such weapons.

Lawrence highlighted this aspect of his bill.

[Cluster] munitions are extremely deadly and non-discriminate pieces of military weapons. What differentiates them from other pieces [of weapons] is they are completely indiscriminate, and they will kill civilians just as soon as they would kill soldiers, children, he said.

Its absolutely incumbent on all of us to advocate and to protect the innocents as we go forward.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly speaks at a news conference after a meeting with her counterparts from the Baltic region on June 2, 2022, in Quebec City. (The Canadian Press/Jacques Boissinot)

Canadian Officials Attendance at Russian Embassy Reception Unacceptable: Foreign Affairs Minister Joly

The presence of a Canadian diplomatic official at a Russian Embassy reception in Ottawa on June 10 was unacceptable says Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly.

No Canadian representative should have attended the event hosted at the Russian embassy & no Canadian representative will attend this kind of event again, she said in a Twitter post on June 12.

Canada continues to stand with Ukraine as it fights against Russias egregious invasion.

Joly was reacting to a story published in The Globe and Mail on June 12 that said Yasemin Heinbecker, the deputy chief of protocol at Global Affairs Canada (GAC), attended Russia Day celebrations at the embassy on June 10.

Russia Day is the countrys national holiday and marks the day, June 12, 1990, when Soviet leaders signed a declaration of Russias state sovereignty, which was one of the first steps towards the official dissolution of the Soviet Union.

June 12 this year also marked the 80th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Canada and Russia.

The Russian Embassys Twitter account noted on June 11 that its reception was attended by Canadian media and GAC.

The Globe reported other guests in attendance representing Egypt, Pakistan, and African countries.

Before Joly criticized the Canadian official for appearing at the event, her departments media relations had defended Canadas attendance at the festivities according to the Globe report, citing the need to maintain diplomatic relations.

The Epoch Times contacted GAC for comment but didnt immediately hear back.

The Globe reported a Russian diplomat saying they appreciated Heibecker honouring our reception.

We believe diplomacy is an all-weather instrument and diplomatic protocol is an important part of upkeeping the bilateral communications, Vladimir Proskuryakov, deputy chief of the Russian mission, reportedly said.

The Canadian government has been highly critical of Russias invasion of Ukraine, imposing numerous sanctions on Moscow and providing assistance to Kyiv.

Last week, GAC announced new sanctions on Russian oil, gas, and chemical industries.

These measures will reduce Russias ability to wage war and will send a clear message to the Russian regime: Canada will not back down in holding those responsible for the devastation in Ukraine to account, says the June 8 GAC statement.

Reacting to the news, Conservative Party interim leader Candice Bergen reiterated her partys position that Russian diplomats should have been expelled from Canada.

Instead of endorsing the lavish, Kremlin-backed celebration at the Russian embassy, the Liberal government should be working with countries like Egypt, Pakistan and those in Africa to prevent Putins illegal war from causing a global food crisis which will hurt developing countries the most, she said in a emailed statement to The Epoch Times on June 13.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) also said Russian diplomats should be expelled, and called the Canadian officials attendance at Russia Day deeply offensive.

One does not break bread with war criminals, says UCC CEO and executive director Ihor Michalchyshyn in a June 13 statement.
British businessman and co-founder of Leave.EU campaign, Arron Banks interacts with demonstrators near the Houses of Parliament in central London on March 27, 2019. (Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images)

Carole Cadwalladr Wins Libel Case Against Arron Banks Using Public Interest Defence

British investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr has won a libel battle with Brexit supporter and businessman Arron Banks, despite being unable to prove what she claimed about him was true.

Banks, one of the biggest donors towards the Leave.EU campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum, sued freelance journalist Cadwalladr, who writes for The Observer, after she made comments about him during a TED Talk in April 2019 and then repeated the claim in a Twitter post two months later.

During the TED Talkwhich more than 5 million people have watchedCadwalladr referred to lies she said Banks had told about his covert relationship with the Russian government.

The UKs High Court determined the meaning of what she had said to be: On more than one occasion Mr Banks told untruths about a secret relationship he had with the Russian government in relation to acceptance of foreign funding of electoral campaigns in breach of the law on such funding.

Banks said what Cadwalladr had stated was false and defamatory and sought to remove the TED Talk, which is still available to view online.

Under libel law in England a defendant is usually required to prove what they said was true.

Carole

Cadwalladr speaks during #BoFVOICES in Oxfordshire, England, on Nov. 21, 2019. (Samir Hussein/Getty Images for The Business of Fashion)

But Cadwalladr dropped her original claim that the statement was true and instead used a public interest defence.

On Monday High Court Judge Mrs. Justice Steyn ruled in Cadwalladrs favour and said she had a reasonable belief what she said was was true and it was in the public interest for her to air her claim.

In Steyns judgement she said she believed Banks had not suffered any serious harm to his reputation as a result of the claim made by Cadwalladr.

Steyn said she accepted that, for the most part, Mr Bankss evidence was truthful, and in particular his evidence on the issue of serious harm was open, honest and entailed no exaggeration. But there were aspects of his evidence in relation to the public interest defence that [she] found to be evasive and lacking in candour.

Cadwalladr has investigated the funding of the pro-Brexit referendum campaigns and alleged misuse of data by Cambridge Analytics.

After the judgement was delivered, Cadwalladr, who crowdfunded her legal fees, wrote on Twitter: I am so profoundly grateful & relieved. Thank you to the judge, my stellar legal team & the 29,000 people who contributed to my legal defence fund. I literally couldnt have done it without you.

Banks replied, also on Twitter: Congratulations to Carole on winning today, it leaves open for the journalist the excuse that she thought what she said was correct even though she had no facts. There are important points of law at stake here and we will likely appeal.
Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Jason Loftus, director of the new animated documentary "Eternal Spring," in New York on May 24, 2022. (Jack Wang/The Epoch Times)

CCP Uses Disinformation to Fuel Human Rights Abuses: Documentary Filmmaker

China leverages disinformation to inflame its repression of target groups, including the spiritual group Falun Gong, according to Peabody award-winning film director Jason Loftus.

Disinformation has been used to fuel atrocious human rights abuses like imprisonment and torture, Loftus recently told Epoch TVs American Thought Leaders program.

Its essentially a bully tactic of repressing people until they no longer dare to stand up anymore, he said.

The Chinese Communist Partys propaganda campaign against Falun Gongand a group of adherents daring effort to combat itwas the subject of Loftus new documentary Eternal Spring.

The film won the Audience Award at HotDocs and garnered other wins at film festivals in Europe.

The Film

The Canadian documentary uses a combination of animation and in-person interviews to reconstruct an incident where the Chinese communist regimes TV broadcast in the northeastern city of Changchun was intercepted by a group of Falun Gong adherents 20 years ago. The film derives its name from the city, which literally means eternal spring.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice composed of meditative exercises and a set of moral teachings based on the principles of truth, compassion, and forbearance. It grew in popularity during the 1990s leading to up to 100 million people practicing in China by the end of the decade. Perceiving this to be a threat, the Chinese regime in 1999 launched a nationwide campaign seeking to eradicate the practice.

Since then, millions of adherents have been detained in prisons, labor camps, and detention centers across the country, where they are subjected to torture, slave labor, and forced organ harvesting.

On top of this, the Chinese regime deployed an expansive propaganda campaign, disseminated through its state-media outlets, to spread disinformation maligning the practice and its adherents.

Propaganda doesnt need to be irrefutable. It just needs to muddy the waters enough that you cant determine exactly whats going on, Loftus said.

You can  cloud impression of a group that maybe its not worth your sympathies, maybe its not worth sticking your neck out for, he added.

The director pointed to a critical point in the state-directed misinformation campaign against Falun Gong, where the regime claimed the group was responsible for people who set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square in 2001. Investigations later found that the incident was a false flag event intended to manipulate public opinion against the practice.

This was a key event that turned the public against Falun Gong. Narrative is so important in justifying abuses and atrocities, Loftus said.

In the face of the regimes rampant smear campaign, on March 5, 2002, a group of 18 Falun Gong practitioners risked their lives to tap into the broadcast system of CCTV, Chinas state-run broadcaster, in Changchun to air programs countering the propaganda and exposing the persecution.

It was unprecedented in Chinese history for any group to have any intervention in the monopoly of control of media and television inside China. And so this sent a shockwave through the Chinese authorities, Loftus said.

As a result, the then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, personally called Changchun authorities that night, demanding repercussions with no mercy for those who were involved, according to the director.

Within days of the broadcast hijacking, more than 5,000 Falun Gong practitioners in the city and nearby areas were arrested in a massive sweep by authorities.

According to Loftus, for the group that carried out the hijacking, most of them were subsequently arrested, tortured, and killed by the regime.

Truth Matters

The documentarys lead animation artist Daxiong, a comic-book illustrator known for his work on graphic novels including under the Justice League and Star Wars franchises, and himself a Falun Gong adherent, fled his hometown of Changchun in the midst of the police raids that followed this unprecedented television signal takeover.

He was eventually arrested in 2008 because his art offended the Chinese Communist Party, and subsequently exiled to New York City.

Daxiong recalled the time when he was working for a Chinese state media outlet. His boss told him to act as the communist partys mouthpiece, to share the worries of the Party rather than echo the thoughts of the people.

We were living in a song and dance illusion, brainwashing people. At the time, I felt that I was betraying my conscience, betraying my soul, he recently told Epoch TVs China Insider program.

Daxiong serves as the documentarys protagonist, with the film following his personal journey trying to reconstruct the hijacking and its aftermath.

The artist said that the bravery of his fellow practitioners in China inspired him to speak up.

At the time, all Falun Gong practitioners did this kind of thing. They wanted to protect people who have been poisoned and deceived by lies, so that gave them the courage to come forward, he said.

They did a remarkable thing. And that created a kind of admiration, and I felt that I should fulfill their aspirations and  continue to do this work, he added.

Loftus shared the same thought, saying the people who witnessed this broadcast, they can never watch the state-run propaganda the same way. And they may be less likely to participate or go along with the campaign, even if they dont have the same courage to speak out overtly against it.

So that can have a massive impact in the overall human rights situation with Falun Gong and with others, the director added.

According to Daxiong, Chinese people need to break the silence and expose the lies of the CCP.

If Chinese people had this courage  then there wouldnt be the human rights abuses were seeing today, he said.

Hannah Ng Reporter Follow Hannah Ng is a reporter covering U.S. and China news.

Jan Jekielek Senior Editor Follow Jan Jekielek is a senior editor with The Epoch Times and host of the show, "American Thought Leaders." Jans career has spanned academia, media, and international human rights work. In 2009 he joined The Epoch Times full time and has served in a variety of roles, including as website chief editor. He is the producer of the award-winning Holocaust documentary film "Finding Manny."
China Breaks Diplomatic Freeze: Defence Minister Initiates High Level Talks With Australia

China has broken its freeze on diplomatic relations with Australia with the Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe hosting Australias new deputy prime minister and minister for defence, Richard Marles, for dinner.

Marles said the meeting, which took place in Singapore on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue defence summit on Sunday, was a welcomed one and allowed Australias new Albanese government to have a very frank and full exchange between two countries of consequence in Indo-Pacific region.

Its three years since defence ministers of our two countries have met. This was an important meeting, one which the Australian government welcomes, Marles told reporters at a press conference in Singapore.

It was an opportunity to have a very frank and full exchange in which I raised a number of issues of concern to Australia, including the incident involving Australias P-8 aircraft on the 26th of May and Australias abiding interest in the Pacific and our concern to ensure that the countries of the Pacific are not put in a position of increased militarization.

Marles noted that the meeting was a critical first step and echoed the comment by U.S. Secretary Llyod J. Austin that it was very important in these times to have open lines of dialogue.

Australia and Chinas relationship is complex, and its precisely because of this complexity that it is really important that we are engaging in dialogue right now, Marles said.

The comments from Marles come after he noted on Sunday that while the left-leaning Labor government wont shy away from defending Australias national interest, it will be respectful, including with countries where we have complex relationships.

This includes China, he said. He also noted there would be a change in Australias tone under new Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Australias approach will be anchored in a resolve to safeguard our national interests and our support for regional security and stability based on rules. We will be steady and consistent, looking for avenues of cooperation where they exist while recognising Chinas growing power and the manner in which that is reshaping our region.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Marles also stressed that Australia had a One China policy and would not support Taiwanese independence.

We do not support Taiwanese independence. We dont support any unilateral action on either side of the Taiwan Strait, which would change the status quo. The resolution of the people of Taiwan is a matter which should happen by consensus, by agreement, and thats the way in which we see it. We firmly have a One China policy, and we dont support Taiwanese independence, he said, echoing official U.S. policy on the issue.

Australias Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Richard Marles speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 11, 2022. (ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The comments come nearly two months after Marles was criticised for failing to disclose his pro-China speech given at the Chinese embassy in Canberra, as well as a parliamentary trip to Beijing in 2019 that cost taxpayers $6,191 (US$4390).

It was also revealed during the May federal election that Marles had engaged with Chinese diplomats at least 10 times from 2017 despite deteriorating bilateral relations between Australia and China. Marles has defended his actions stating he was completely transparent with the then-Coalition government about holding those meetings.

The then-senior Labor Party shadow minister also authored a short book entitled the Tides that Bind: Australia in the Pacific that advocated for a stronger presence from Beijing in the Pacific region.

Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie has welcomed the meeting between Marles and the Chinese regimes defence minister, noting that the former Coalition government would have appreciated a meeting with Beijing sooner. But he noted that he was not surprised that it was Marles that Beijing felt comfortable meeting.

We were always willing to talk, we wanted dialogue, but we were frozen out for some reason. So this is good to see, Hastie said in an interview on Sky News on Sunday. But Im not surprised they chose Richard Marles, given his previous comments on defence cooperation with China, which he gave in Beijing, and, of course, his relationship with the former ambassador in Canberra.

However, Hastie noted that the meeting was not a Nixon goes to China moment.

The test of any meeting is the outcome it delivers. And so Id like to know whether or not the Chinese have withdrawn their 14 demands, Hastie said. Whether theyve apologised for the lazing of our P-8 crew in the Arafura Sea in February, and indeed, the P-8 crew in the South China Sea, which was intercepted by a Chinese fighter last month.

He also warned the Australian government should not trade away Australias values or its sovereignty in any discussions with China.

We certainly cant trade away our values or our sovereignty; were not the problem here. We didnt issue 14 demands as they did, including demands that we clamp down on press freedom in this country or repeal our foreign interference laws or allow Huawei into our 5G network, he said.

Meanwhile, Dennis Richardson, who was Australias defence secretary between 2012 and 2017 and is a former director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), has said that Beijing will continue to press and challenge players in the region in order to establish its military presence in the Pacific.

He noted this would enormously complicate Australian and U.S. defence planning, which is ultimately what the Chinese are about.

This is not just a challenge for today or tomorrow, its the challenge for the next 10 years, Richardson told ABC Radio.

Every time the Chinese step up in this space to advance their security interest in the south pacific, we have to press back, and well need to win that contest all the time.

We have to win everything, they only have to win once.

Nina Nguyen contributed to this report.
The Fortescue Solomon iron ore mine located in the Valley of the Kings in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. In 2020, more than 60 percent of China's iron ore imports came from Australia. (David Gray/Reuters)

China Still Far from Iron Ore Self-Sufficiency, Despite Years of Exploration

As the worlds largest consumer of iron ore, China has long relied on imports as the countrys iron ore resources cannot meet its domestic demand.

According to public data from the U.S. Geological Survey, as of 2021, Chinas uncovered iron ore resources, including raw and iron-bearing ore, are about 26.9 billion tons, accounting for 10 percent of global reserves.

However, more than 90 percent of Chinas iron ore is of poor grade. Its average ore grade, as measured by iron content, is only 35 percent, far lower than Brazils 52 percent and Australias 48 percent. At the same time, Chinas iron ore is buried deep, making the mining costs very high. As a result, Chinese steel companies have to import large quantities of iron ore.

The Chinese authorities have been eager to find alternative sources for the raw material, ever since relations turned hostile with Australia, the worlds largest iron ore supplier, two years ago.

In mid-May, China Mining Network released the geological survey results during the countrys 13th Five-Year Development Plan (2016-2020), which shows that Chinas new iron ore resources have dropped by more than 90 percent compared with the 12th Five-Year Development Plan (2011-2015) period.

More specifically, from 2016 to 2020, 23 new iron ore producing areas were discovered in China, with a total resource of 855 million tons. The new iron ore resources were 94 percent lower than those in the 2011 to 2015 period.

The largest new iron ore resource is located in the Shanzhuang mining area in Donge County, Shandong Province, with an additional resource of 210 million tons; but the ore grade is low as the iron content does not exceed 30 percent. In addition, in the Zhangjiawa mining area in Laiwu, Shandong Province, and the Zhaojiazhuang mining area in Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, 107 million tons and 186 million tons of new iron ore resources were discovered respectively. But the quality there is also relatively low.

One of the few high-quality mines, discovered in Yucheng, Shandong Province, has an iron content of about 69 percent, but the total reserve is merely 15 million tons. Another iron-rich mine located in Golmud City, Qinghai Province, has a reserve of only 26 million tons.

As the top consumer of iron ore, Chinas crude steel output was 1.03 billion tons in 2021, according to Chinas Bureau of Statistics. Based on the calculation that one ton of crude steel requires 1.6 tons of iron ore, Chinese enterprises should have consumed about 1.65 billion tons of iron ore in 2021. In that same year, the global output of iron ore was 4.2 billion tons, with Chinas demand accounting for roughly 40 percent of the global output.

Chinas own iron ore production is far from enough to meet the huge demand. In 2021, it was 580 million tons, while its iron ore imports in the same year were 1.12 billion tons.

Most of Chinas imported iron ore used to come from Australia and Brazil. According to the statistics of Prospective Economist, in 2020, 66 percent of Chinas imported iron ore came from Australia, and 21 percent came from Brazil.

However, relations between China and Australia have continued to deteriorate since April 2020, after Australia called for an independent international inquiry into the origins of the novel coronavirus.

In order to reduce dependence on Australian iron ore, in addition to exploring new mineral resources in China, the Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts to acquire more high-quality resources abroad to control the iron ore supply chain, but their plan recently suffered a major setback.

In March of this year, the Simandou iron ore project in Guinea, Africa, which the CCP had high hopes for, was suspended by the local government.

The Simandou iron ore mine has more than 2 billion tons of high-grademore than 60 percent iron contentiron ore. The SMB-Winning Consortium, a consortium backed by the Chinese regime, won the mining rights to the Simandou No. 1 and No. 2 mining areas in 2019; while the Aluminum Corporation of China owns 40 percent shares of the Simandou No. 3 and No. 4 mining areas.

In September last year, a military coup erupted in Guinea. On March 10 this year, the Guinean military government ordered a halt to all activities at the Simandou iron mine.

The new government said that the first thing that needs to be done is figure out an operation mode that safeguards Guinean interests, and that any developer engaged in mining in the country must build a railway across Guinea.
China Unable to Expand Security Agreements With Pacific Island Nations

News Analysis

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi comes up mostly empty-handed on a sweeping security pact and trade deal in his recent tour of the Pacific region.

Shut out of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and unable to secure Solomon-Island-style security pacts with other Pacific Island nations, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing forward with the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

At the fourth Quad Summit in Tokyo on May 24, the Biden administration launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). It has since been joined by 13 members, including seven of ten ASEAN members, the four Quad members, South Korea, and New Zealand. This was a crucial development as the CCP had recently convinced the Solomon Islands to sign a security pact.

The U.S. administration has responded with greater determination to expand its regional presence beyond the Quad, AUKUS, and the Five Eyesall of which have a defense-related purpose. Even though the IPEF is not a trade agreement, it will focus on issues of economics, supply chains, and security.

The grouping is significant because the IPEF is the first economic multilateral arrangement in the Indo-Pacific that India has ever joined. Additionally, IPEF is one of the first U.S. groupings to include South Korea. The presence of military and economic powerhouse Japan and the solid support of Australia now being complemented by the economy and military of South Korea bodes well for the group. However, it is also true that all IPEF members are current members of the RCEP.

(From L to R) Leaders and representatives from Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, New Zealand, India, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines pose for a group photo during the 3rd Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov. 4, 2019. (Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images)

The battle for the Pacific between the United States and China dates back to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement established in 2016 with U.S. support. Members had hoped that the United States would be the backbone of the group to counter Chinas growing economic influence in the region.

However, many in the U.S. government, including Hillary Clinton, opposed this agreement. In 2017, Donald Trump removed the United States from the TPP as one of his first acts as president to protect U.S. jobs. While this was the right thing to do from an economic standpoint, it sent a signal of abandonment to U.S. allies in the Pacific.

Without the U.S. leadership and support, the Pacific nations signed onto the Chinese-led RCEP, which came into effect in January 2022. As of May, it had already been determined that the signatories trade with China had increased by 6.9 percent compared to one year ago.

RCEP upped the ante by actively courting the Pacific Island nations. At the same time, Wang set off on his own round of visits immediately after the U.S. Indo-Pacific tour ended in the hopes of winning back countries that the IPEF may have nudged closer to the United States.

Wang was promoting RCEP and hoping to sign a broad economic and security pact like the one signed with the Solomon Islands back in April. On May 30, he met with leaders from Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Niue, and Vanuatu to discuss a five-point plan for trade and cooperation.

Many of the Island nations expressed concern or opposition to signing an agreement with China. The Federated States of Micronesia, one of the invited nations and a lynchpin in the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, voiced opposition to the draft communique with the CCP.

Aside from the impacts on our sovereignty  increases the chances of China getting into conflict with Australia, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand on the day when Beijing decides to invade Taiwan, FSM President David Panuelo wrote in a letter to the leaders of other Pacific Island nations, warning them against signing the CCP deal.

The president of Palau also urged others not to sign. Palau recognizes Taiwan and has no diplomatic ties with the CCP.

Samoa President Fiame Naomi Mataafa said on June 2 that it was unreasonable for Beijing to expect the Pacific nations to sign a security and trade agreement so quickly.

In the end, the attending nations refused to sign, stating that more discussion or revisions were needed. Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said that more talks must be held and that the Pacific nations stressed the need for a consensus.

Despite failure with the Pacific Island nations, Wang was able to convince Timor-Leste to sign a series of economic agreements. Security was not part of this discussion. This was a small victory of sorts for the CCP, which Beijing may be able to leverage in the future.

On June 2, during a meeting with the Samoan president, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong reassured the Pacific Island nations that Australia is determined to help with economic development and security in the region. At the same time, the United States will be moving forward with strengthening the Quad and the IPEF.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi attends a press conference during a session of China's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress, in Beijing, on March 8, 2018. (Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images)

Chinas Growing Influence in Central Asia Amid Russia-Ukraine War

China has been stepping up engagement with five Central Asian nations hot on the heals of a ten-day tour of the Pacific. Observers say Central Asian leaders may be reconsidering their bilateral ties with Moscow in favor of China or the United States as the Russia-Ukraine war drags on.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi attended the third China+Central Asia (C+C5) foreign ministers meeting in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan on June 8. The C5 are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The ministers reached a ten-point consensus on cooperation in areas ranging from the Belt and Road projects, regional transport connectivity, Afghanistan security, economy, and trade investments.

Wang also met with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ahead of the summit, during which he called on Central Asian nations to avoid getting into major power conflicts or being forced to choose sides.

Both sides expressed deep concerns about the serious spillover impacts of the Ukraine crisis, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated.

Analysts said the Russia-Ukraine war had prompted Central Asian nations to re-evaluate their long-term bilateral ties with Russia, which has been hit with a barrage of Western sanctions since its invasion of Ukraine.

We believe the Central Asian states will quietly distance themselves from Russia where that is possible without provoking a reaction, as they contemplate the invasion of Ukraine and the altered geopolitical circumstances in which they find themselves, the research and analysis division of The Economist Group stated.

Consulting firm Dezan Shira and Associates said that Central Asia has become of increasing strategic importance to China as a result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has constrained direct supply chain links between China and the European Union.

Alternatives now need increased investment into Central Asia, with Russia also being a beneficiary and co-partner in this strategy, the firm stated.

China has refrained from condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, citing Moscows legitimate concerns on security issues as justification. The two nations declared a no limits partnership on the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics on Feb. 4.

The United States has also worked on increasing ties with Central Asia. Last month, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, Donald Lu, led the U.S. delegation on a five-day trip to the Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan.

According to the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan, the goal was to strengthen Washingtons relations with the region and advance collaborative efforts to create a more connected, prosperous, and secure Central Asia.

Washington also developed a strategy for Central Asia in February 2020, which aims to promote U.S. values and provide a counterbalance to the influence of regional neighbors.
China's leader Xi Jinping and Italys Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrive for the signing of a memorandum of understanding at Villa Madama in Rome, Italy, on March 23, 2019. (Alessia Pierdomenico/Shutterstock)

Chinas Xi Orders Military to Prepare for Non-War Operations

Chinas ruling communist regime will prepare its military to carry out sweeping actions falling short of war, in accordance with new orders delivered by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping.

The orders dictate that the CCPs military wing adopt an outline of 59 separate regulations on a trial basis, according to state-run news agency Xinhua. The outline of regulations focuses on developing Chinas military across a suite of regional and global security interests under the guise of promoting world peace.

[The outline] systematically regulates basic principles, organization and command, types of operations, operational support, and political work, and implements them for the troops, the announcement said.

The outline will prepare the military, the announcement said, for securing Chinas sovereignty, security and development interests, and regional stability.

The new guidance will also strictly implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

Xi Jinping Thought refers to Xis personally revised brand of communist ideology, which draws on both MarxismLeninism and Maoism. It has become increasingly prevalent in the CCP as Xi has increased his personal power and the authoritarian reach of the Party. The CCP went so far as to amend its Constitution in 2018 to reference it by name.

There was no further clarification as to what, precisely, the outline would categorize as a non-war military action in the CCPs thinking. Russias ongoing war in Ukraine, for example, is only referred to by Chinese and Russian officials as a special military operation, and those who call it an invasion are censored in mainland China.

Its possible that Xi could be attempting to prepare Chinas military similarly by laying out the legal basis in which it could militarily engage adversaries without acknowledging a conflict as war. To that end, the announcement also said that the outline would serve as a legal base for military operations other than war.

The push toward a new outline of non-war military actions could therefore signal that a new surge in CCP aggression is coming to the Indo-Pacific, where the regime continues to forcibly expand its territory through the creation of artificial islands and has sought to box out international efforts to engage with Taiwan.

Historically, the CCP has used its peacekeeping operations to create a diplomatic foundation in foreign nations, through which it could expand its military footprint. Its operations in Africa and the Middle East have been used to establish military cooperation agreements, arms and surveillance tech sales, as well as missile and nuclear power development, to say nothing of its overseas military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa.

The CCP is currently attempting to expand that type of defense diplomacy throughout the Pacific as well.

The Chinese regime cemented a security deal in May with the Solomon Islands, under which it will provide new infrastructure and security training to the small nation. Likewise, its funneling billions into the expansion of a naval base and other infrastructure in Cambodia that will grant the Chinese navy unprecedented access to the Gulf of Thailand.

In a similar vein, the CCP rushed an attempt in May to craft a 10-nation security deal in the South Pacific under the guise that it was creating a broad-ranging security and trade agreement. That effort was ultimately rebuffed by the would-be signatories of the agreement after it was discovered that the CCPs deal would require them to accept Confucius Institutes and classes on communist ideology, and may cut off the United States ability to fish for tuna in the region.

Xis announcement also comes just days after Chinas defense minister told U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the CCP would not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost, if it was pushed on the issue of Taiwan.

The CCP maintains that Taiwan is a part of its territory, though the island and its holdings have never been under CCP control and have been self-governed since 1949.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh speaks during his ceremonial public swearing-in, in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Oct. 8, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC Sunday Shows Dont Cover Attempted Murder of Supreme Court Justice

Many news networks on June 12 omitted mention of the recent attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, even though some touched on issues facing the nations top court.

All Sunday morning shows on CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC did not cover the attempted killing, which took place on June 8.

Fox News covered the topic during Fox News Sunday.

Several shows brought up the Supreme Court in other contexts.

On CNNs State of the Union, host Dana Bash noted that the Supreme Court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade before asking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) about the upcoming midterm elections. Bash also mentioned the nations top court declined to take up a case involving elections in Pennsylvania.

Chuck Todd, host of NBCs Meet the Press, only mentioned the Supreme Court once, when asking Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomass wife.

The Supreme Court was not brought up on CBSs Face the Nation or ABCs This Week.

It is stunningly unprofessional of major media outlets to consciously ignore news of the threat to Justice Kavanaugh, Jeffrey McCall, a communications professor at DePauw University, told The Epoch Times in an email, describing what happened as the journalism of omission.

The safety of Supreme Court justices is a highly important topic, especially with looming decisions on gun rights and abortion, McCall said.

Representatives for the outlets did not respond to requests for comment.

The bulk of coverage on the four shows was of the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, primarily through the lens of a House of Representatives hearing on the matter that took place on Thursday.

A day earlier, according to court documents and a 911 call, a California man was dropped off by a taxi outside Kavanaughs home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with the intention of breaking into the abode and murdering the justice.

The man, Nicholas John Roske, walked down the street when he spotted law enforcement officers standing outside the house, and called the police on himself.

On Fox News, host Bret Baier brought up the attempted murder when interviewing Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close ally of President Joe Biden. Baier noted that the lower chamber has yet to act on a bill that the Senate unanimously passed, which would increase security for all nine justices on the Supreme Court.

The House is working to add a provision that would allow the marshal of the Supreme Court to decide to extend protection to the staff and families of staff of the Supreme Court. I think thats appropriate, thats an acceptable compromise. More than anything I think the House needs to take it up and pass it early next week, and Im optimistic after several conversations with House leadership that they will, Coons said, before pivoting to the Jan. 6 hearing.

Baier pressed Coons on protesters appearing outside the homes of Kavanaugh and others being in violation of federal law, which bars protesting outside the homes of judges with the intent of influencing them, as protesters have made clear is their intent.

We have to strike the right balance here between protecting freedom of speech in this country and ensuring that our justices and judges are safe, Coons said. do think we need to take stronger action to make sure that our federal judiciary is safe because thats part of making sure our democracy is safe, which really is the core issue of the January 6 hearings, is how do we make sure that the fundamentals of our democracy, the safety and security of Congress, the peaceful transfer of power and I would also add the safety and security of our federal judiciary is ensured, we should act.
Police and officials emerge from a high school in Beijing on April 27, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Communist Party Inserts Police Officers as School Vice Principals Across China

Chinas ruling Communist Party (CCP) has issued a notice ordering police to be sent into all Chinese schools as vice principals for security reasons. Experts have criticized the move as an excuse for the regime to further tighten its control over Chinese society, which is arguably already a police state.

Major Chinese news portal NetEase reported on the notice, issued by Chinas Ministry of Education on June 6, which stated that the Party would require all schools to appoint a police officer to be vice principal to promote the rule of law in education and tackle bullying and violence in schools. The notice was also circulated on social media, causing an uproar and widespread criticism.

A netizen wrote in a post, [For security reasons] you can set up an alarm point or a patrol post on campus, why do you need to send in a police as vice principal?

Another post reads, China has fully become a police state!

The notice comes following a Ministry of Education order that was issued last December, dubbed Measures for the Appointment and Management of Vice Principals of Law in Elementary and Middle Schools. It was due to be implemented on May 1.

Regarding the regimes new measure, Feng Chongyi, a professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, told The Epoch Times that the rule was clearly for the regime to be able to maintain political stability under its one-party rule and to further control the people.

A police officer gestures at the entrance of a school as middle school and high school students return after delays because of the CCP virus outbreak in Huaian, Jiangsu Province, China, on March 30, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Security in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party does not mean you, the peoples safety, or your personal security, but the security of the regime. It uses its police force to deal with the opposition and the resistance of the people with violence, he said.

Feng noted that before the CCP came to power in 1949, it had actively pushed for police to be removed from campuses.

Over the years, I and those who study history feel very sad. In the 1940s, during the constitutional movement in China in the Republican Era, the police and political parties branches were removed from schools and universities, he said. Educational independence and academic freedom were regarded as a marker of civilization. At that time, the CCP was the most active to push for their removal for its own political agenda.

Now, its terrifying to see the CCP bring back the methods from the Mao era: to politicize everything and to build a comprehensive police state.

A doctor of law surnamed Zhang in Beijing agreed with Fengs analysis, telling The Epoch Times that with the police in charge of schools, the CCP can have total control over the people.

They have ulterior motive, which is to create an excuse for the CCP to implement all-round police control through violence over all strata and fields of society, he said. They deliberately lead China to the abyss of a police state, using violence to control violence.

A lawyer surnamed Li in mainland China told The Epoch Times on June 9: Before the implementation of the new measure, in fact, the police were already in contact with every school in their jurisdiction, its just that they did not yet hold the position of vice principal. In fact, the new policy is not a big change from before.

The issue of violence on campus is being exaggerated. If it exists, it is an educational problem.

When the police are the school principals, its just more convenient to control the teachers and students for the regimes political stability in schools: Its to threaten and monitor those teachers and students who are free-thinking.

I dont think it will do any good.

Zhao Fenghua and Luo Ya contributed to the report.
Complaint Filed Against Rep. Elissa Slotkin for Allegedly Using Office to Seek Campaign Contributions

Michigan Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin has been named in a complaint filed with the House Ethics Committee by a nonprofit government watchdog, citing a video in which the congresswoman appears to ask a political action committee (PAC) for campaign contributions.

On May 11, 2022, Rep. Slotkin attended a virtual meeting of the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA). She appears to have attended the meeting from her congressional office, presumably with congressional office equipment, with her congressional staffer present, and during the meeting discussed campaign strategy and solicited campaign contributions, the Washington-based Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) said in the complaint filed June 9.

During the May 11 video meeting, Slotkin told the JDCA officials: I do not believe I can win unless we have significant turnout from Michigan State students. Full stop. If theres anything we can do on voter registration and voter turnoutthat is, I think, the only way that I will hang on to this district.

So I will leave it at that. So I will leave it at that, but that is, that is my askeven bigger than all the traditional contributions and visibility and all those great things, which of course I always love. Its mobilization, usually in paid voter registration. Paying studentsthats what the Stacey Abrams model is, right? Paying students to register their fellow students.

Michael Horowitz of the JDCA responded to Slotkin: You need to let us knowwe know how we can help you, of coursenever enough campaign contributions, particularly in an election that I think theyre gunning for you. The Rs see you as very vulnerable and so we want to be there for you as you were always there for us.

Slotkin was accompanied throughout the nearly five-minute video by Greg Chaffin, her national security adviser. Chaffin was paid $76,611 as a Slotkin adviser in 2021. House members staffers are paid from tax dollars specifically appropriated for the purpose and are barred from using official resources in campaign activities on behalf of their boss.

In the complaint, FACT explained that federal criminal law prohibits a member from soliciting or accepting any type of campaign contribution while located in congressional buildings.

Title 18 of the U.S. Code Section 607 states: It shall be unlawful for an individual who is an officer or employee of the federal government, including the president, vice president, and members of Congress, to solicit or receive a donation of money or other thing of value in connection with a federal, state, or local election, while in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an officer or employee of the United States, from any person.

The FACT complaint also noted the Federal Election Commission makes clear that the prohibition against House members or employees soliciting campaign or political contributions in or from House offices, rooms, or buildings is very broad.

The complaint further noted that the ban in federal laws and regulations, as well as congressional ethics rules, covers voter registration drives as in-kind contributionsthat is, contributions received in a form other than moneyas are soft-money contributions.

The complaint added that rules issued by the House Office Building Commission ban the use of congressional office buildings for solicitations of any kind except those for charitable purposes.

Slotkins main office is located in the Longworth House Office Building.

A photo posted on Twitter on May 11 by Slotkins office and included with FACTs announcement of its complaint showed Slotkin meeting with Maj. Gen. Paul Rogers of the Michigan National Guard appears to be in the same office as in the video of Slotkin and Chaffin meeting with the JDCA officials.

The Office of Congressional Ethics was asked by FACT in its complaint to expedite an investigation of Slotkin, claiming that this case is especially egregious because it implicates the foundational ethics principles that members cannot use government resources for their political gain.

Therefore we urge the board to immediately investigate Rep. Slotkin for using official resources for campaign purposes, soliciting campaign contributions from Congressional buildings, and for violating federal campaign finance laws.

The ethics office is headed by Omar Ashmawy, who has six staff members working for him.

A spokesman for Slotkin didnt respond to The Epoch Times request for comment on the FACT complaint and the presence of Chaffin during the video meeting with the JDCA officials.
Pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui Chi-fung is removed by security during a scuffle with pro-Beijing lawmakers at the Legislative Council in Hong Kong on May 22, 2020. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

Convicted of Contempt of Court, Former Hong Kong Legislator Ted Hui Condemns Political Prosecution

Ted Hui Chi-fung, a former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong who skipped bail and fled overseas, is wanted by the Hong Kong Police Force. He condemned the Hong Kong High Courts for not following the rule of law and for politically prosecuting him, and said that he would continue to speak up for Hong Kongs right to freedom.

On June 2, the Hong Kong Court announced that Hui was guilty of contempt of court in absentia. Hui responded in social media, saying in Chinese and English that the authorities charges against him were unfounded, and that he despised the Hong Kong Court for deviating from the rule of law.

Now living in Australia, Hui told the Australian media SBS News: These are the absurd political accusations against me. They are used to suppress dissidents, and it is their motivation to launch these criminal charges.

Any criminal charges and sentences filed or imposed against me by the regime do not take away my freedom of speech to advocate on the international political stage, nor does it deter my resolution in fighting against this tyrannical government. I will continue my lobbying work on an international scale, bring together Hong Kong people and society overseas, and across boundaries to speak up for Hong Kongs right to freedom, Said Hui.

Hui was a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong starting in 2016. In 2020, he resigned to protest the disqualification of some democratic legislators.

In 2019, the anti-extradition movement broke out in Hong Kong, when millions of Hongkongers took to the streets to protest the amendment of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance that would allow extradition of Hong Kong people to mainland China for trial.

Hui has always supported the anti-extradition movement, and often appeared at street protests in an attempt to dissuade the police from suppressing the protesters. He appealed to the Hong Kong High Court in early 2020 and asked the police to report the components in the tear gas they used on the protesters. He accused the traffic police, who shot at the demonstrators, of intention to murder and shoot with the intention of causing serious bodily injury.

He was arrested by the Hong Kong Police on several charges for participating in the movement and for fighting in Parliament as a legislator. He was later released on bail pending trial.

At the end of November 2020, with the permission of the court, Hui left Hong Kong to visit Denmark for official business at the invitation of a member of the Danish Parliament. A few days later, Hui officially announced his exile through social media and that he quit the Hong Kong Democratic Party.

A few days after his announcement, his bank accounts and those of at least one relative, with millions of Hong Kong dollars in HSBC, Hang Seng, and Bank of China Hong Kong were frozen. Subsequently, his credit cards were also deactivated. Eventually, the bank accounts were reinstated.

In April this year, Hui revealed on social media that the Hong Kong High Court, under a request from the Department of Justice, issued a property restriction order on him, his wife, and his mother, under the National Security Law. Hui believes that the Hong Kong officials wanted to put pressure on him by freezing his property and thus, keep him silent.

In October 2021, Hui emigrated to Australia. Using social media, he advised Hong Kong voters to cast blank votes to boycott the controversial Legislative Council election. He believes that this is the silent fighting from the best of Hongkongers. Hui was wanted again by the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption on suspicion of violating the relevant election regulations. Last October, the Hong Kong Department of Justiceaccused him of contempt of court for providing false information and for jumping bail.

In December 2020, the Hong Kong Police issued a wanted notice for Hui and 30 other Hongkongers living abroad, on suspicion of violation of the National Security Law.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) walks through the Senate subway on his way to a vote at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on May 27, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Cornyn Suggests New Gun Control Legislation Is a Loss for Biden

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) Monday described the new gun control bill that he backed as a political loss for President Joe Biden.

The Texas Republican was one of nine Republican senators, who on Sunday, joined 10 Democrats in announcing the package, which would place more restrictions on gun purchasers under the age of 21, pay for states implementation of red flag laws, and provide more spending for mental health and school safety measures.

When speaking to left-wing website Raw Story, Cornyn said that Biden got very little that he asked for in the bill. Over the past several weeks, Bidenwho co-supported the 1994 Assault Weapons Banhas called on bans on magazines holding more than 10 rounds and assault weapons.

People are going to describe this the wrong way, but fundamentally this is about keeping our kids safe at school, Cornyn told Raw Story Monday.

Look at all the things that President Biden said he wanted,' added the senator, who was tapped by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to help lead negotiations with Democrats following high-profile shootings in Texas, Buffalo, and Oklahoma.

But Cornyn stressed that none of Bidens demands are in the bill. But were going to focus on school safety and mental health, identifying these young men before they become dangerous, getting them treatment, or certainly, they go to buy a firearm accessing the state juvenile records to meet with an enhanced review makes a lot of sense, he said.

According to a Sunday news release issued by 20 senators who back the bill, they are supporting the measure because families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities.

In a statement on Sunday, Biden said that he doesnt believe the gun control package goes far enough but said he would sign it and urged Congress to pass it. The package was also praised by McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Both Biden and Schumer suggested it would be the first step toward more gun control measures.

Despite Cornyns assurances, on social media, he and the nine other Republican senators have faced criticism from conservatives for joining with Democrats to craft the package.

Red flag laws are a weapon to use against anyone they decide to classify as mentally ill, wrote Arizona GOP Senate hopeful Blake Masters on Sunday.

Added Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), A federal red-flag law would create millions of second-class citizens. It wont stop mass shooters but will deprive millions of Americans of due process and their Second Amendment rights.

Pro-Second Amendment group Gun Owners of America said Sunday that Republican lawmakers are getting nothing in return while compromising your rights to own firearms.

Federal dollars to bribe your state legislators into enacting unconstitutional red flag laws, which could allow a court to seize your weapons, without any due process, simply based on anonymous tips, GOA wrote in several Twitter posts.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, (S.C.), Mitt Romney (Utah), John Cornyn (Texas), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Rob Portman (Ohio), and Pat Toomey (Pa.) were among the Republicans to back the bill. Several Democrats also backed the measure, including Murphy as well as Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Corey Booker (N.J.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Chris Coons (Del.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.). Sen. Angus King (I-Mich.) also signaled his support for the framework.
Dr. Reni Moon has spent her entire career as an advocate for vaccines. A pediatrician who is double board certified in pediatric hospital medicine and pediatrics, Moon said she has counseled thousands of families and always encouraged them to vaccinate.

Ive trusted my governmental agencies to do the studies that needed to be done and the rigorous testing to make sure that what we are injecting into our kids is not going to harm them, she said.

Until now.

Instead of unquestionably following the CDCs recommendations without double checking, Moon has been tracking safety data about the mRNA injections herself.

She is so concerned about the safety signals she is seeing in the pediatric population, that, she said, giving COVID-19 vaccines for children is the most appalling thing Ive heard in medicine. The lack of regard for safety is highly unethical. I personally put it into the arena of crimes against humanity.

Children More Vulnerable

Childrens bodies and brains are more vulnerable than adults to environmental toxicants. (1)

Since children are smaller than adults, they are more heavily exposed to toxicants, in proportion to their body weight.

Given their unique vulnerabilities, the safety threshold to give children any medication, medical intervention, or medical recommendation must be high, higher than for adults.

Children are the future of humanity. Protecting children is the duty of society.

Mild For Kids

The SARS-CoV-2 virus has always been a threat mainly to the elderly and to adults who have underlying health issues, while younger and healthy people have generally have done well and children have hardly gotten sick at all.

In fact, COVID deaths in children are incredibly rare, according to an article in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature. (2)

All of the kids I know here at my institution had comorbidities, explained a retired Colorado-based medical doctor and professor of ophthalmology and pediatrics who has a masters degree in epidemiologist who worked at the states largest childrens hospital, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from his medical colleagues.

But Dr. Kirk Milhoan, M.D./Ph.D., a pediatric cardiologist who has had a long and successful career helping children with heart problems in both America and around the world, is speaking up.

Milhoan is the medical director of the non-profit For Hearts and Souls, which helps children with heart defects around the world. Based in Maui, he also works one week a month at the Texas Methodist Childrens Hospital in San Antonio.

Milhoan pointed out that the disease itself is mild for most children.

He cited a recent Turkish study that examined how many children were admitted for COVID versus for the flu. (3)

They found that kids admitted for the flu went to the ICU at rates and ended up needing breathing machines more often than children admitted for COVID, Milhoan pointed out.

Though he, like other medical doctors we spoke with, is concerned about putting his livelihood in jeopardy by telling the truth, Milhoan feels he has a moral obligation to speak publicly about the lack of safety, efficacy, and necessity of the COVID-19 vaccines for children.

He told us, given the damage these vaccines are causing, that it is unethical for doctors to stay silent.

Vaccinating Kids Does Not Slow the Spread

Lets be honest, Milhoan said. Its not stopping anything. Omicron is blowing through the vaccinated more so than the unvaccinated. After five months, for children, the vaccine has negative efficacy. Its going to do more harm than good. What were seeing is that with those who are vaccinated they are more likely to get the infection than if they had nothing at all.

Despite a concerted effort to massage the data to fit an orthodox narrative, high vaccination rates have not correlated in lowering COVID-19 cases or severity.

According to Milhoan, vaccinating children actually has the opposite effect: It encourages morenot lessviral spread.

But, despite this, there has been a push in the United States, Canada, and countries around the world to vaccinate even the youngest children. Even if the vaccine is not necessary or wont protect them, parents are being told to get it for their infants, toddlers, small children, tweens, and teens for the sake of others.

Meanwhile, the country is saturated with the virus, which is quickly becoming endemic, as we have written about before. Testing reveals that COVID is everywhere, and that the vast majority of Americans and Canadians have already been exposed to it.

Vaccination rates among adults are high. The virus continues to behave like other endemic coronaviruses, mutating over time and continuing to cause milder illness and reinfections as few, if any, people are immunologically naive to it.

The real irony is that the government had to roll back its early claim that the vaccine would prevent the spread of the virus after that was shown to be completely untrue. Yet the vaccine for kids is still being pushed for the sake of slowing the viral spread.

COVID-19 Vaccines Hurt Kids

We have spoken with over twenty-five medical doctors practicing in different states. They told us that COVID-19 vaccines side effects on children are real and very serious.

Their clinical experience is backed up by a growing body of peer-reviewed articles in the scientific literature that show that the vaccines can cause myocarditis (heart inflammation) and pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart) in all age categories, but particularly in young men. There is also evidence that the vaccines can cause clotting disorders, facial paralysis, tinnitus, and other serious side effects. (4) (5) (6)

But what about long-term side effects? Children have a longer shelf life than adults, so to speak. They have many more years of life ahead of them than we do, so early exposure to pollution or endocrine disruptors or unsafe vaccines can result in longer-term ill effects.

Milhoan wrote his doctoral thesis on cardiac inflammation. The vaccine is dangerous for adolescent males. Absolutely without a doubt, youre more likely to go to the hospital with a vaccine injury than from COVID, he said. For many kids its all risk and no benefit. What are we doing?

The race to vaccinate children has not been driven by the need to protect them. It is being pushed on parents in pursuit of the goal to vaccinate everyone. Parents, bombarded with messages of fear, have been duped. Many are eagerly vaccinating their children in the hope of protecting them, without realizing that the cure is by and far more dangerous than the disease.

This Crime Against Children Must Be Stopped

We cannot assume something is safe for children without proof. We invoke the precautionary principle herethe idea that a new product (like the vaccines against COVID-19) cannot simply be assumed safe in the absence of definitive proof that they are causing harm. The precautionary principle is a modern restatement of the Hippocratic oath that all doctors must adhere to I will keep them from harm and injustice.

Following the precautionary principle, the burden of proof is on the manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccines. These companies have an ethical obligation to prove they are safe. But in violation of this ethical principle, the vaccines were rushed to the public without adequate testing. Now that we have ample proof that they are causing harm to children, it is time to stop using them.

Just this week Milhoan treated a 14-year-old who was perfectly healthy until getting a second COVID-19 vaccine. Now this young adolescent has a major scar on the left ventricle of the heart. Scarring like this, Milhoan said, can cause sudden death now or in the future in these children.

I was in the military. Ive gotten every vaccine, Milhoan said. Ive had my second dose of smallpox, the whole series of anthrax. I am a scientist and a physician. I have seen the benefit that vaccines have had for children. This one has no benefit and all risk.

References

(1). Carroquino MJ, Posada M, Landrigan PJ. Environmental Toxicology: Children at Risk. Environmental Toxicology. 2012;239-291. Published 2012 Dec 4. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-5764-0_11

(2). Ledford, H. (2021). Deaths from covid incredibly rare among children. Nature, 595(7869), 639639. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01897-w

(3). Ylmaz K, Sen V, Aktar F, Onder C, Ylmaz ED, Ylmaz Z. Does Covid-19 in children have a milder course than Influenza? Int J Clin Pract. 2021 Sep;75(9):e14466. doi: 10.1111/ijcp.14466. Epub 2021 Jun 27. PMID: 34107134; PMCID: PMC8237020.

(4). Lee, Eun-Ju et al. Thrombocytopenia following Pfizer and Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. American journal of hematology vol. 96,5 (2021): 534-537. doi:10.1002/ajh.26132

(5). Wan EYF, Chui CSL, Lai FTT, Chan EWY, Li X, Yan VKC, Gao L, Yu Q, Lam ICH, Chun RKC, Cowling BJ, Fong WC, Lau AYL, Mok VCT, Chan FLF, Lee CK, Chan LST, Lo D, Lau KK, Hung IFN, Leung GM, Wong ICK. Bells palsy following vaccination with mRNA (BNT162b2) and inactivated (CoronaVac) SARS-CoV-2 vaccines: a case series and nested case-control study. Lancet Infect Dis. 2022 Jan;22(1):64-72. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00451-5. Epub 2021 Aug 16. PMID: 34411532; PMCID: PMC8367195.

(6). Vaccine Researcher Who Developed Tinnitus After COVID Calls for Further Study, MedPage Today. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/97592

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
DeSantis Speaks His Mind at Jewish Leadership Conference in NYC

Despite dozens of protesters and a previously canceled venue, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke at the Jewish Leadership Conference in New York City on June 12, telling the crowd of approximately 700, They cant cancel me, Im going to speak my mind.

Many of the protesters outside the conference at Chelsea Piers held signs objecting to the governors appearance during Pride month, citing his Parental Rights in Education bill, or the Dont Say Gay Bill as critics have dubbed it. Other signs mentioned the six-year anniversary of the shooting at Pulse, a gay club in Orlando, in which 49 people were killed. Before the governor was scheduled to speak, he had ordered flags flown at half-staff in remembrance of the Pulse shooting on June 10.

The bill protecting parental rights, signed by the governor in March, prohibits the teaching of gender and sexual identity in grades kindergarten through third grade.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addresses the media in Miami, in April 2022. (Courtesy, The Florida Governors Office)

Im not going to let some protests deter me from coming to speak in front of a lot of future voters in Florida, DeSantis said.

Every parent in the state of Florida has a right to send their kid to elementary school without having concepts like woke gender ideology jammed into their curriculum.

He said that children should not be subjected to teachers transitioning their kids gender to a different gender, giving them a different name, having them wear different clothes without the parents knowledge and consent, as well as asking them which pronoun they wanted to be referred as.

Referring to the negative reaction he received after signing the bill, the governor said:

When the Left is having a spasm, that just tells you that in Florida, we are winning.

During his speech, DeSantis referred to wokeness as a cancer that will destroy the country and said that Florida would never be overrun by an ideology he has described in past speeches and at press conferences as teaching kids to hate our country and forcing employees to participate in Critical Race Theory (CRT).

You can have differences in political judgments, but if they have an ideology that expects me to believe that a man can get pregnant, that doesnt work for me, he told the crowd.

DeSantis lauded Floridas Jewish community and pointed out that he signed legislation in 2019 that guaranteed that institutions such as state universities are treating antisemitism the same way they treat racism.

DeSantis was the final speaker at the daylong conference. Other speakers included journalist Bari Weiss, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Panel discussions included, How to Fight Back Against Wokeness and What every Young Jew needs to Know about Western Civilization.
A Union flag flies near the Elizabeth Tower, commonly referred to as Big Ben, at the Houses of Parliament in central London on March 29, 2017. (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)

Does the United Kingdom Protect Human Rights?

Commentary

The responses of the UK government to the COVID-19 pandemic had an overwhelming impact on human rights in that country. This is the conclusion of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), an international non-governmental organisation, in its 2021 human rights report. According to HRMI, a detailed survey of human rights experts tells us that a significant number of people in the United Kingdom are not enjoying their civil rights and political freedoms.

The report also refers to children in the United Kingdom being treated as adults for violating COVID-19 lockdowns and thus facing the full application of the law. In addition, the report reveals that British citizens believed to violate COVID-19 guidelines have been subject to arbitrary arrest as many police officers use the phrase the spirit of the law to detain people without a warrant.

These sobering findings are confirmed by Human Rights Watch, another human-rights watchdog. It accuses the UK government of relentlessly pursuing laws and policies with little regard for their impact on human rights. This organisation also reports that the governments responses to the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted its willingness to set aside human rights for the sake of political expediency and a worrying disdain for the rule of law.

Of course, all this apparent disdain for the rule of law does not come as a surprise for those who are aware of the fact that, in the United Kingdom, the traditional concept of parliamentary sovereignty remains applied in its fullest extent.

In his 2006 Hamlyn Lectures, Sir Francis Jacobs QC, a law professor at Kings College London, commented on the implications of embracing this concept of sovereignty.

Legally, it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify today a state which sovereign legislature is not subject to legal limitations on the exercise of its powers. Moreover, [parliamentary] sovereignty is incompatible with another concept which also has a lengthy history, but which today is widely regarded as a paramount value: the rule of law, Jacobs said.

British citizens presently live under a dangerous situation whereby their Parliament is deemed entirely sovereign and, therefore, not subjected to the rule of law. However, under the settlement shaped by the Glorious Revolution in 1689, a certain measure of protection still could be afforded under the requirement that Crown, Lords, and Commonseach of them relatively independent playersshould assent to a bill before it became an Act of Parliament.

A television shows Britains Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking in London as customers sit at the bar inside the Richmond Pub in Liverpool, England, on Oct. 12, 2020. (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

Today, however, the constitutional role of the Crown has been entirely reduced to a mere formality. In addition, under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the power of the Lords is also deeply unimpressive, one of relatively brief delay and not denial of the passage of legislation.

As a result, the United Kingdom is devoid of a second legislative chamber, and the nations constitutional settlement has become unbalanced. Indeed, the power to restrain legislation favoured by a majority in the Commons has become virtually impossible, even when proposed legislation objectively infringes the most basic rights of the citizen.

Throughout the 18th century, the Cabinet, now exclusively comprised of MPs, became the primary feature of the Westminster system of government. In Britain, where even to this day, there is no written (and rigid) constitution but only a collection of statutes, common law, and customs that can be easily repealed by Parliament, the Queen remains as the Head of State. But her functions are now entirely ceremonial or then to be more directly exercised by the parliamentary ministers of the Crown.

In this context, parliamentary sovereignty becomes a doctrine of paramount constitutional importance. In the White Paper that introduced the UK Human Rights Bill on Oct. 1, 1997, such a doctrine is defined as follows: Parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament is competent to make any law or any matter of its choosing and no court may question the validity of any Act that it passes.

Of course, Sir Edward Coke famously stated in the Dr Bonhams Case in 1610 that a statute contrary to common right and reason would be void. However, his observation was not generally accepted even at the time it was proclaimed, since it was relied on as one of the primary reasons for Cokes dismissal as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas.

In other words, under no circumstance can a judge hold a statute enacted by Parliament to be invalid in light of a violation of the substantive principle of law. Indeed, under parliamentary sovereignty, there is no fundamental law that such Parliament cannot change via its own ordinary legislative process.

Serjeant-at-Arms Ugbana Oyet (L) carries the mace from the Commons chamber across through the Central Lobby, followed by Speaker of the Commons, Lindsay Hoyle (C) and Lady Usher of the Black Rod, Sarah Clarke, during the State Opening of Parliament, at the Houses of Parliament, in London, England, on May 10, 2022. (Yui Mok/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

As stated by the Court of Queens Bench in 1872: There is no judicial body in the country by which the validity of an act of Parliament could be questioned. An act of the legislature superior in authority to any court of law  and not court could pronounce a judgement as to the validity of an act of Parliament.

The same understanding was confirmed a few years ago by Tom Bigham, who was the first Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.

The courts [in the UK] have no inherent powers to involved, strike down, supersede or disregard the provisions of an unambiguous statute duly enacted by the Queen in Parliament, and indeed, an extremely limited to enquire whether a statute has been duly enacted.

For if Parliament may under our constitution enacted any legislation it chooses, and to court has any power to annul or modify such enactment, it necessarily follows that Parliament can legislate so as to abrogate or infringe any human right, not matter how fundamental it may be thought to be.

As can be seen, the British have a defective constitutional framework that is entirely devoid of separation of powers or, in fact, any institutional checks and balances to prevent concentration of power.

Instead, politicians who command the majority in the Commons control also the entire state apparatuses and machinery. They have enough power to basically do whatever they want. They may use all this power to further undermine the rule of law and fundamental rights of the citizen, although judges in the UK are inclined to believe that, due to their interpretation of parliamentary sovereignty, they cannot fail to give effect to any Act of Parliament if it is clearly and unambiguously expressed.

To conclude, it is no wonder so many rights of the British citizen have been ignored. The current legal-institutional design operating in that country completely facilities what Lord Hailsham described in his 1976 Dimbleby Lecture as an elective dictatorship. To substitute the sovereignty of the law for this elective dictatorship, a major constitutional reform is required. Until that happens, the British will have to endure more rights violations.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Feds Curb on Debate of Online Streaming Bill Condemned as Draconian by Tories

The federal government is cutting short debate by MPs of its online streaming bill, a move Tories are condemning as draconian and disturbing.

They say curbing scrutiny of the bill line by line in committee is a Liberal attempt to rush it through the Commons and will lead to the creation of a flawed law.

Bill C-11, as it is known in Parliament, updates Canadas broadcasting laws and would regulate streaming services such as Netflix, as well as YouTube, Spotify and TikTok.

The Liberals have given MPs until midnight to table amendments to the bill, and until Tuesday to scrutinize it, clause by clause, in committee.

Tory heritage critic John Nater says the government motion to limit scrutiny in committee, which is being discussed today in the House of Commons, is a guillotine motion on steroids.

But Liberal MP Anthony Housefather says the government has been forced to table the motion because of Tory delay tactics in committee to try to stop the bill becoming law.
A crowd gathers outside the West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts, where 47 dissidents, charged under the Beijing-imposed national security law, were about to appear in court, in Hong Kong on Mar. 1, 2021. (Adrian Yu/The Epoch Times)

First Appeal Relating to Hong Kongs National Security Law: Adam Ma Appeals a 69-Month Jail Sentence

Adam Ma, nicknamed Second-generation Captain America, was sentenced to 5 years and 9 months in prison for inciting secession and displaying pro-independence slogans. He appealed the sentence to the High Courtthe first case relating to the national security law. Chief Justice of the High Court Jeremy Poon Shiu Chor postponed the verdict until September.

On Nov. 11 last year, District Court Judge Stanley Chan Kwong Chi found Ma guilty of inciting secession. During August to November 2020, Adam Ma shouted slogans, such as Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our time and Hong Kong independence, the only way out, in public. He was arrested on Nov. 22 and given the lengthy sentence at trial by Chan.

On June 7, Ma appealed the case to the High Court. The case was heard by Chief Justice Poon, and Justices of Appeal Derek Pang Wai Cheong and Anthea Pang Po Kam. Barristers Edwin Choy and Chris Ng Chung Luen represented Ma, and Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Anthony Chau Tin Hang represented the respondent.

The appellant pointed out that Judge Chan did not objectively analyze the impacts of Mas case on Hong Kong, the reasons behind the sentence decision were subjective and opinion oriented, such as thinking the defendant had committed the crime to show off and feel good about himself, but these reasons do not affect national security.

The appellant further pointed out that Ma did not have a detailed plan nor organization and instead, was just shouting popular slogans with vague content, hence, this case was less serious and did not reach the level of severity justifying a sentence of more than 5 years.

The respondent pointed out that although there is no evidence that Ma used violence, through his actions, including chanting slogans in public and online, calling for secession, and proposing specific actions such as the Three Strikes, the defendants acts are no less serious than the case of Tong Ying- Kit and some circumstances are even more serious than the Tang case. Therefore, the respondent said, 5 years imprisonment is the minimum, even if the court considers the starting point to be 5 years, the final sentence should not be less than 5 years of imprisonment after deduction for time served.

The Judge decided that because this is the first appeal relating to the National Security Law, the final verdict will be issued on Sept. 5.

Before the sentence, Adam Ma wrote a long letter in which he said that he made a living by delivering food and had no aspirations until he came across a speech by Edward Leung Tin-kei. He was greatly touched and felt a responsibility to this land: For the first time I have a dream, he wrote.

I am not ashamed and have no regrets for what I have done  I will do my best and do everything to fight for the dream I believe in, and glory to Hong Kong.

Adam Ma is the second protester to be sentenced since the implementation of the National Security Law in 2020. The defendant in the first case, Tang Yingjie, drove a motorcycle with a flag printed with the slogan Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time on July 1, 2020. He crashed into three police officers who were trying to stop him. He was sentenced to 9 years in prison on July 27 last year, for inciting others to secession and terrorist activities.

In Tangs case, the interpretation of Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time was controversial and the court eventually ruled that it could have meanings of secession and inciting others to secede. After the slogan was seen as evidence for the crime of inciting others to secede, it was the first case of being accused of a crime of words and phrases, under the national security law.
Florida Sheriff Defends Arrest of 10-Year-Old in Alleged School Threat

PUNTA GORDA, Fla.The sheriff of Lee County, Florida, is defending his handling of the recent arrest of a 10-year-old boy for allegedly making online threats to shoot up his elementary school.

Sheriff Carmine Marceno then posted information about the arrest on his departments Facebook page, telling The Epoch Times that he cant overlook a threat no matter how benign it may beeven from children.

The mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, remains at the forefront of his mind, he said.

Lee County, Fla. Sheriff Carmine Marceno addresses the media at a press conference on May 28. (Courtesy, Lee County Sheriffs Office)

The last thing we ever want to do is handcuff a 10-year-old, Marceno said. But the last thing we ever want to do is talk about a mass shootingunfortunately in todays day and age, this is what were faced with.

On May 28, the 10-year-old was arrested for threatening to conduct a mass shooting at his Cape Coral elementary school, according to arrest records. He was charged with making written threats.

Investigators said he sent a series of text messages to a friend and posted pictures of AR-15-type weapons.

Marceno told The Epoch Times that before the child was arrested, investigators for the countys School Threat Enforcement Team were acting on a tip and immediately began analytical research. They include experienced sheriffs deputies who are assigned in a full-time capacity to help ensure the schools remain safe and to foster a secure learning environment.

The Youth Services Criminal Investigations Division then took over the case due to the age of the child.

We dont wait one secondwe spoke to the child; we spoke to the parents and, in the end, we had probable cause for arrest.

Marceno has been criticized on social media for a 22-second video perp walk, in which the boy was shown handcuffed and placed into the back of a police car without his face being blurred; the video was subsequently posted to the sheriffs Facebook page.

The sheriff said he allowed that because anyone, no matter their age, charged with a felony gets their picture posted.

I dont want people not knowing whats going on in the world, he said. If youre a parent, youre going to want to know  your childs in class with another child threatening a mass shooting. As a parent, youre going to want to know.

Countless parents and guardians are calling, Marceno said, to thank him, because they wanted to know what was going on in their childrens classrooms.

Above all, Marceno said he hopes others who want to threaten schools will think twice.

Letitia Todd Kim, director of legal affairs for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (Courtesy of FAIR)

The father of the boy says his child is incapable of carrying out a mass shooting and said the pictures of the AR-15-type weapons the child allegedly posted werent concerning to him.

So, personally, he is a child, and so I dont really know why children do what they do, the father, who asked not to be identified, told reporters.

I mean, I remember being young and doing things and not really knowing why I did them. I didnt ask my son because they were Google stock photos.

The father, an Iraq war veteran who served in the U.S. Army, acknowledged that he has firearms in the home, but they are locked away, and that he has spoken to his son about gun safety.

Ive made it very clear that gun safety is very important in my home. Ive made sure that my children understand what that means as far as like, what it looks like to clear a weapon, what it looks like. Whether or not he knows how to use a weapon? The answer is absolutely.

While Marceno said hes sympathetic toward the parents and respects the fact that the father is a military veteran, he says he has to take every threat seriously and maintains a zero-tolerance policy.

Rifles, a written threat to commit a mass shooting, what if that was not a fake threat and we do not look into that? the sheriff said. What if someone doesnt call that in, and someone ignores that red flag?

The father said the sheriffs department took his son without any notice.

He [the child] looked at me and hugged me and said he was sorry, and they took him away, the father said, choking back tears.

The child was ordered to juvenile detention for 21 days but was remanded to his home because he was diagnosed with the flu. His arraignment was postponed from June 13 to July 11.

All Ive ever wanted to do is protect my kids, and now hes possibly in danger in a place that is really just a prison for children, said the father.

A civil rights group, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), is joining the boys parents in a legal battle against Marceno for what they say was brutal treatment for political purposes.

Sheriff Marceno applies his policing program indiscriminately, Letitia Kim, FAIRs director of legal affairs, told The Epoch Times in a telephone interview.

Kim warned other parents in Lee County of the consequences of their children sending absurd texts with friends.

I have an 11-year-old son, she said. This could be my child or any of your children. Think of all the nonsensical and fantastical things your children have said or texted to their friends.

If you are a parent in Lee County, you should be very concerned because Mr. Marcenos team might come to your door, drag your child away for sharing absurd texts with friends and putting words into their mouths that were never there. No parent or child should have to endure this.

Kim said that the events in Uvalde were a factor, but the way Marceno handled the situation was uncompromising and he was blindly following his law-and-order stamp at the expense of a defenseless child.

I do empathize with the heightened sensitivity in times like these, she said. This coming shortly upon the heels of Uvalde but nonetheless, adultsparticularly those in positions of powerneed to consider and react to things in adults common sense fashion with appropriate discernment.

However, Marceno maintains that every threat must be acted on immediately.

We consider it real until we prove otherwise, the sheriff said. We dont have the luxury of not looking into one single threat, nothing goes to the wastebasket.

Kim said the sheriff was making an example of the child for political gain; she said he was an honor student and a Boy Scout who had never been in trouble at school and was well-liked by his teachers.

He called himself the law-and-order sheriff many times, Kim said of Marceno. And he says his platform is fake threat, real consequences, but I think what we have here is a distorted mix of that, which is fake law and order, real consequences.

The texts at the heart of the case were between the child and his friend. The parent of the childs friend became concerned at the images of the weapons and notified authorities, Kim said.

I do not want to disparage the other parents in any way at all, she continued. But my understanding is there was no conversation [between the parents]. The whole thing is just unfortunate.

Florida, along with 15 other states, allows prosecutors to charge minors as adults without discretion of a judge.

The state leads the nation in charging more children in adult court than any other with more than 2,000 children prosecuted annually, according to a 2019 Florida Policy Institute report.

Kim noted that because of Florida statutes and point system, the judges hands were tied when citing the child and subsequently putting him in juvenile detention. The offense the child was charged with carries 17 points and anything over 12 in the juvenile system is an automatic 21-day detention.

I think the overall takeaway is that there was never a threat of any kind, she said. It was a fake threatnothing real was donejust childish remarks made privately to a friend.

Marceno said he wouldnt apologize for doing his job and warned others that if they go into schools with bad intent, they would be met with deadly force.

So, we leave no stone unturned, and I dont apologize for doing my job, he said.

Parents or guardians kiss their sons or daughters goodbye and leave them at school. They expect and they trust in me as the sheriff and law enforcement that child is going to return home safelyso I cant take that for granted.
Michael Sussmann, Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign lawyer, is seen outside of the federal courthouse in Washington on May 31, 2022, after he was acquitted of lying to the FBI. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

Former FBI Agent Assesses Outcome of Sussmanns Acquittal, Impact on Durhams Investigation

It is not known whether Special Counsel John Durhams team will bring up any criminal conspiracy lawsuit in its investigation into the discredited TrumpRussia collusion narrative until its next indictments are revealed, but facts once disclosed will become public information, said Marc Ruskin, a former longtime FBI agent.

Former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman, who went on trial in May 2022 for allegedly lying to the FBI, was acquitted on May 31.

Sussmann took claims of a secret link between Donald Trump and Russia to the FBI ahead of the 2016 election. He told the bureau he was not acting on behalf of a client. But under oath in late 2017 (pdf), he said he was acting on behalf of a client.

Among the disclosures made during the trial is the testimony of Clintons top aide showing that Clinton personally approved giving the same information to reporters that Sussmann took to the FBI. This is one example of information not known prior to the trial which has become public, Ruskin told EpochTVs Crossroads program.

If the same individuals testify at future trials, their testimony in Sussmanns trial can be used to impeach their testimonies in subsequent lawsuits if they differ from what they said in Sussmanns trial, Ruskin explained. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, its also hard to get it back in, Ruskin said.

Therefore, defense attorneys sometimes avoid having the same witnesses testify in multiple trials as their subsequent testimony could be attacked, Ruskin said.

Sussmanns trial was the first one connected to Durhams investigation into the discredited TrumpRussia collusion narrative.

Conspiracy Charges

Durhams team did not bring any charges of conspiracy, although an understanding between Sussmann and other individuals involved in the case existed, and this would have justified applying certain rules of evidence in the trial such as allowing the admittance of hearsay evidence, Ruskin said.

Decisions on whether conspiracy charges should be brought up or not are made by Durhams team based on what they can prove, what they think they can prove, and what may be overreaching, Ruskin said.

In some cases, they may bring their substantive charge like they did here, of lying to the FBI, and not bring a conspiracy-type charge.

Id have concerns that if they tried to charge too much that they may end up losing everything. So sometimes its better to keep it simple in order to have a higher likelihood of conviction, but it really varies from case to case, depending on the substantive evidence they think they can bring against any particular defendant in the case.

Ruskin said that there may be some conspiracy charges in the future but it will not be known until the indictments are made public.

The important factor [in this trial] is not just the evidence which was admitted, but the evidence which was not admitted, said Ruskin, a former assistant district attorney, and a trial attorney.

Judge [Christopher] Cooper ruled prior to the trial there would not be evidence permitted having to do with the conspiracy or joint venture aspect of the prosecutions case. And that severely limited their ability to present all the evidence which was available. And so the evidence which was not admitted, I will suggest, impacted the outcome of the case.

To date, there is no indication that Durham is planning on bringing a kind of investigation that will lead to a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) type of indictment, Ruskin said.

RICO is a federal law aimed at combating organized crime and racketeering activity as part of criminal enterprises.

Evidence for a possible RICO charge needs to prove that there has been a kind of joint venture between the defendant and others in order to achieve a certain goal, Ruskin said.

A strong argument can be made that there was a joint venture, Ruskin said. In this case, Judge Cooper, for whatever reasons, ruled against the prosecution, did not recognize that there was a joint venture, and did not admit certain evidence, which could have led to, perhaps, a different result, Ruskin explained.

Conflicts of Interest

To convict individuals in a criminal case, their guilt has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, Ruskin said. A lot of legal experts may argue that the jury in the Sussmann case could have found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Sussmann was guilty, he added.

However, it seems that the objectivity of the jury in Sussmanns case was not ideal, Ruskin said.

The period of jury deliberation was surprisingly short in this case, he noted. The jury was charged on a Thursday, then there was a long weekend for Memorial Day, and then by the Tuesday morning the jury came back with a verdict, Ruskin explained.

In a case of such magnitude and importance, where there is a lot of evidence, it would be expected that the jury that is truly impartial would carefully review the evidence, minutely go over the different testimony, and review all the documentary evidence, emails and so forth, Ruskin said. And then come discuss it in-depth and come to a conclusion.

I would not have been surprised if this jury had spent a week or longer deliberating and reviewing the evidence, but they didnt.  That seems to be indicative of a kind of a cursory review of the evidence, not a thorough review of the evidence.

Ruskin also pointed out that jury selection is the most important part of the trial. It is the stage where the attorneys from both sides select and ask jurors questions in the hope of selecting ideally a fair and impartial jury, he explained.

In this case, at the very inception of the trial, the way the jury was picked may have ultimately predestined essentially the outcome of the trial, Ruskin said.

Some jurors selected for the trial had conflicts of interest, said Kash Patel, host of the EpochTVs Kashs Corner.

Three jurors donated to Hillary Clinton, and one donated to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said Patel, former National Security Prosecutor and a lead of Congressman Devin Nunes investigation into allegations of TrumpRussia collusion.

One jury member told the judge after the start of the trial that her daughter and Sussmanns daughter are on the same crew team. The juror claimed that she did not know about this until her daughter mentioned it the day before. Cooper denied a request from prosecutors to remove the juror.

Judge Cooper also had a possible conflict of interest because of being married to the lawyer for Lisa Page, an ex-FBI attorney involved in the FBIs probe of the Trump campaign, Patel said on Kashs Corner.

Those who are pleased with the verdict are going to come to capitalize on it and make pronunciations that its a death knell for the entire scope of the Durham investigation, Ruskin said.

Durham and his team have been working for several years on the investigation, they are very thorough and methodical so it can be expected that they will continue to move forward and just wade through the negative publicity so long as they believe in their case and base it on a lot of the evidence that did come out in the course of the trial.

There seems to be a lot of substantive issues that still remain to be reviewed and clarified, and presented both to a jury in criminal court, as well as to the general public and the court of public opinion.

John Haughey, Zachary Stieber, Ivan Pentchoukov, and Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

Ella Kietlinska Reporter Follow Ella Kietlinska is a reporter for The Epoch Times focusing on U.S. and world politics.
For the first time ever recorded, in the late summer of 2021, rain fell on the high central region of the Greenland ice sheet.

For the first time ever recorded, in the late summer of 2021, rain fell on the high central region of the Greenland ice sheet. This extraordinary event was followed by the surface snow and ice melting rapidly. Researchers now understand exactly what went on in those fateful summer days and what we can learn from it.

The never-before-seen rainfall, on 14 August 2021, made headlines around the world. The upper-most parts of Greenland's enormous ice cap used to be too cold for anything other than snow to fall, but not anymore.

What caused this extreme rainfall and how did it affect the ice?

Researchers from the Department of Glaciology and Climate at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) in collaboration with colleagues from France and Switzerland have scrutinised these questions and come up with the answers.

It didn't only rain at Summit Camp - rain was measured by new automatic weather stations placed across the ice sheet by GEUS' ice-sheet monitoring projects PROMICE and GC-Net.

Studying detailed data from these stations alongside measurements of surface reflectivity, or albedo, from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite mission and information on atmospheric circulation patterns, the researchers discovered that the rain had been preceded by a heatwave at a time of year when seasonal melting is usually slowing down.

It wasn't the rain

"It turns out that the rain itself wasn't the most important factor", says Prof. Jason Box from GEUS and lead author of the paper reporting their results in Geophysical Research Letters.

"There is an irony. It's not really the rain that did the damage to the snow and ice, it's the darkening effect of the meltwater and how the heat from the event erased snow that had overlaid darker ice across the lower third of the ice sheet.

"Unusually warm atmospheric rivers swept along Greenland in the late summer months, bringing potent melt conditions when the melt season was drawing to a close."

In fact, this sudden increase of surface ice melt on Greenland could have happened without any rain ever touching the ground.

The main culprit was the heat itself, melting and completely removing the surface snow, thereby changing the surface albedo, Greek for 'whiteness', so that Greenland snow and ice absorbed more of the Sun's rays.

The researchers found that, between 19 and 20 August 2021, this melt caused the altitude of the ice sheet's snowline near Kangerlussuaq to retreat in elevation by a whopping 788 metres, the snowline retreated, exposing a wide area of dark bare ice.

Under normal circumstances, snow would cover and insulate this ice, but the snow melted suddenly and exposed the ice to heat, causing even more melting.

Since 2017, Prof. Box and colleagues have been consistently monitoring these melt dynamics with data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission as part of their research supported by ESA's Earth Observation Science for Society programme.

They found that more bare ice had been exposed on the one day of 19-20 August than any other day since their research began.

So, what does this mean?

The authors conclude that the heatwave causing the rain event serves as an excellent example of 'melt-albedo feedback that amplifies the melt impact of the initial melt perturbation'.

Besides the obvious and concerns of making the ice sheet melt faster while this was happening, studying the event using detailed measurements from the network of automatic weather stations on the ice set up by GEUS coupled with measurements from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellites in space helps understand the exact processes and dynamics of how ice melts.

Even though the rainfall was a shock and a milestone in climate history, researchers knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, given the rising temperatures of the Arctic.

Therefore, Prof. Box and the co-authors encourage research to look further into the workings behind atmospheric rivers and not just rainfall.

They conclude that understanding the frequency of heatwaves, appears to be a more significant research target than the liquid precipitation that heatwaves may or may not produce.

This research was supported by ESA's Earth Observation Science for Society programme.

Larger image

Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA



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Kevin Marino (R), lawyer for former Trump campaign manager William Stepien, arrives for a hearing on the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach, in Washington on June 13, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Former Trump Campaign Manager Withdraws From House Jan. 6 Hearing

The former manager of Donald Trumps 2020 campaign abruptly withdrew from appearing before a House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.

William Stepien, who managed the campaign, was subpoenaed by the panel and was in Washington prepared to appear, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the panels chairman, said as the hearing started on June 13.

Mr. Stepiens attorney is here with us today and he has advised us that Mr. Stepiens wife went into labor this morning, Thompson said. Mr. Stepien unexpectedly had to travel to be with his wife and we wish him the best.

Its proper for him to be with his wife as they welcome his child, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said later.

The panel had said that Stepien experienced a family emergency and that his lawyer, Kevin Marino, would appear and make a statement on the record.

In lieu of in-person testimony, the panel showed clips of Stepiens deposition, which was recorded earlier this year.

The panel was conducting a hearing that it said would give Americans a summary of its findings, following its first hearing in months on June 9.

Video from an interview with former President Trump campaign manager William Stepien (L), and his attorney Kevin Marino, is played during a hearing by the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach, in Washington on June 13, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The initial moments of the hearing saw the panel play footage of depositions of Stepien, Trumps daughter Ivanka Trump, and others who were at the White House on election night in 2020.

On Trumps press conference on early Nov. 5, 2020in which Trump said he won the election as votes continued being countedStepien was seen saying that he had advised Trump to give a different type of statement.

My advice was to say that votes were still being counted, its too early to tell, too early to call the race, but were proud of the race we ran and we think were in a good position, and well have more to say about this on the next day, or the next daywhenever we had something to say, Stepien said in his deposition.

Stepien also said he told Trump that the vote-counting would be a process and that early returns would be positive but that ones counted later might not be.

The only other witness slated to testify in-person during the first portion of the hearing on Monday was Chris Stirewalt, a former political editor at Fox News who is now employed by NewsNation.

Stirewalt defended the networks early call of Arizona for Joe Biden, which was made on election night.

It was really controversial to our competitors that we beat so badly by making the correct call first, Stirewalt said.

The margin in Arizona was under 11,000 votes, out of over 3.2 million cast, and votes were counted for days after Fox called the race. According to one analysis, thousands of votes were wrongly counted.

Stirewalt also said that Biden won the 2020 election.

The panels next hearing is scheduled for June 15.
A mushroom cloud rises with ships below during Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons test on Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands in this 1946 handout. (U.S. Library of Congress/Handout via Reuters)

Global Nuclear Arsenal to Grow for First Time Since Cold War: Think-Tank

STOCKHOLMThe global nuclear arsenal is expected to grow in the coming years for the first time since the Cold War while the risk of such weapons being used is the greatest in decades, a leading conflict and armaments think-tank said on Monday.

Russias invasion of Ukraine and Western support for Kyiv has heightened tensions among the worlds nine nuclear-armed states, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think-tank said in a new set of research.

While the number of nuclear weapons fell slightly between January 2021 and January 2022, SIPRI said that unless immediate action was taken by the nuclear powers, global inventories of warheads could soon begin rising for the first time in decades.

All of the nuclear-armed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies, Wilfred Wan, Director of SIPRIs Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme, said in the think-tanks 2022 yearbook.

This is a very worrying trend.

Three days after Moscows invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin calls a special military operation, President Vladimir Putin put Russias nuclear deterrent on high alert.

He has also warned of consequences that would be such as you have never seen in your entire history for countries that stood in Russias way.

Russia has the worlds biggest nuclear arsenal with a total of 5,977 warheads, some 550 more than the United States. The two countries possess more than 90 percent of the worlds warheads, though SIPRI said China was in the middle of an expansion with an estimated more than 300 new missile silos.

SIPRI said the global number of nuclear warheads fell to 12,705 in January 2022 from 13,080 in January 2021. An estimated 3,732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2,000nearly all belonging to Russia or the United Stateswere kept in a state of high readiness.
BlackRock chair and CEO Laurence Fink attends a session at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

Here Are the 6 Financial Institutions West Virginia Says Violate Its Fossil Fuel Anti-Boycott Law

Clock is ticking until firms are placed on blacklist from doing business with the state

The West Virginia State Treasurers Office contacted six financial institutions on June 10 regarding alleged violations of its new law aimed at stopping banks boycotting the energy sector.

Those institutions are BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo. The treasurers office provided the names on June 13 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Epoch Times.

West Virginias S. 262, which passed in March, comes on the heels of a Texas 2021 law restricting the state from investing in funds that boycott energy companies because of any ties to fossil fuels. It authorizes the state treasurer to prepare a list of restricted financial institutions believed to be boycotting energy companies.

BlackRock controls more than $10 trillion in assets, making it the worlds largest asset manager.

In recent years, it has attracted attention for its role in promoting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles through its influence in the U.S. private sector.

You have to force behaviors, and at BlackRock, we are forcing behaviors, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said during a 2017 New York Times panel discussion with Kenneth Chenault, then-CEO of American Express.

Fink was responding to a question about BlackRocks internal mandates on diversity.

More recently, in a 2020 letter to CEOs, he wrote that we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them.

Fink also claimed that companies, investors, and governments must prepare for a significant reallocation of capital because of climate risk.

The June 10 letters from the treasurers office marked the start of a 45-day period before the list will be officially published.

The financial institutions and banks have 30 days from receipt of the letters to show they arent boycotting energy companies. Otherwise, theyll go on the list.

West Virginias law lets the treasurer remove boycotters from competitive bidding in the state, as well as similar mechanisms the state uses to do business with financial institutions. It also allows the treasurer to require that institutions with which it transacts forego any energy sector boycotts during the course of any contract with the state.

We felt like we had a clear conflict of interest, West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore said during a June 8 press conference, explaining why S. 262 was put forward. We produce coal, gas, and oil, and this ESG movement in its current form is really an existential threat to our jobs, our economy, and our tax revenue. I had to do something to start to push against this.

Others have argued that additional support for the industry runs contrary to an effort to transition from fossil fuels to solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources.

You have this new revisionism suggesting that we have to be pumping oil like crazy, and we have to be moving into long-term [fossil fuel] infrastructure building, which would be absolutely disastrous, U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry said on June 7 at the Time 100 Gala, as reported by Yahoo News.

Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and U.S. Bancorp declined to comment to The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times has also reached out to the other financial institutions named in the letters, but didnt receive a response by press time.

The letters can be read through the following links: Wells Fargo FOIA, US Bancorp FOIA, Morgan Stanley FOIA, JP Morgan FOIA, Goldman FOIA, and BlackRock FOIA.
A man sleeps in front of a store for lease in the Central district in Hong Kong on March 15, 2022. (Kin Cheung/AP Photo)

Hong Kongs Poverty Rate at Record High

Poverty and unemployment in Hong Kong have reached a record high, and the national minimum wage has been frozen for the past three years. One political commentator blames the Chinese Communist Party for the current situation.

Contrary to many countries that have raised the minimum wage to counter the negative impact of COVID-19, Hong Kongs minimum wage rate has remained at HK$37.50 (about $4.80) since May 1, 2019the lowest among the Four Asian Tigers: Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore.

Taiwans minimum wage is about $5.70, while South Koreas is $7.32. Although Singapore does not have a minimum wage, workers get paid at least $10 per hour based on a 44-hour work week, and the minimum monthly salary for mid-level skilled workers is about $1,800, according to the Employment Permit Program for Foreign Prospective Professionals and Technicians.

Hong Kongs biennial review system means minimum wage workers wont get a raise until May next year.

Minimum Wage Discussion

On May 31, Hong Kongs Minimum Wage Commission concluded its public consultation. Many representatives from various work groups called for raising the minimum wage between HK$40 and HK$50 (about $5.10 and $6.40).

Lee Cheuk-yan, a labor movement leader sentenced to prison for participating in an unauthorized rally, called to raise the minimum wage to at least HK$50 and to shorten the review period from two years to one year.

However, Law Chi-kwong, secretary for Labor and Welfare, rejected Lees proposal. Before the review period expired, Law wrote in a blog, It is not feasible to review the minimum wage once a year since the review process requires plenty of researching, analyzing, and consulting work.

Lee also criticized the commission, claiming that the official data does not reflect the current economic situation and the growing wealth gap, and authorities ignore the needs of the people.

Former Chief Executive Carrie Lam earned an annual salary of HK$5,210,400 (about $664,000), ranking second among global and regional leaders.

Furthermore, John Lee Ka-chiu, the current chief executive, proposed a restructuring of the government that the Executive Council recently approved. The government will have 13 more politically-appointed officials and 57 civil service posts, adding an extra HK$95 million (about $12.18 million) in salary costs to the budget.

Jimmy Kwok Chun-wah, honorary president of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, said on a Hong Kong radio program that the minimum wage should remain due to economic uncertainty.

We should provide more breathing time to employers since it is still unknown whether there will be a new wave of the pandemic, he said.

Widening Wealth Gap Under CCP Control

Politics and current affairs commentator Ji Da told The Epoch Times that since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has expanded its control over Hong Kong, the financial hub went from being the top Asian Tiger and one of the wealthiest cities in the world to now having a widening wealth gap and low minimum wage.

Out of the Four Asian Tigers, Hong Kong was the first to exceed the GDP per capita threshold of $10,000 in 1988, ahead of Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea by one, four, and six years, respectively. But since 2004, Singapore has caught up and overtaken Hong Kong.

For many years, Hong Kong has ranked among the worlds top three cities with the most billionaire residents. According to a Forbes report, Hong Kong ranked second in the world in 2019 and 2020, with 79 and 71 billionaires, respectively. It ranked third place with 80 billionaires in 2021. But the number of billionaires dropped to 68 this year.

In 2020, the Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report recorded at least 1.6 million people living in poverty, with the poverty rate at 23.6 percent. The working poor rate was 13.6 percent. Unemployment figures reached a 17-year high of 5.4 percent.

In August 2021, Secretary for Labor and Welfare Law Chi-kwong admitted that Hong Kongs widening wealth gap is an indisputable fact.
After a federal judge ordered his release and held jail staff in contempt of court, Jan. 6 defendant Chris Worrell receives the medical treatment that was denied to him while incarcerated for over eight months. (Courtesy of Trish Priller)

Jan. 6 Prisoner Who Was Denied Cancer Treatment Now In Dire Straits

'Not only were these conditions sub-human in the Jan. 6 pods but they were equally and even more so in other parts of the jail.'

A Jan. 6 prisoner who was released by a federal judge after being denied cancer treatment for eight months is now in dire straights, according to his girlfriend.

On March 10, 2021, Chris Worrell was arrested and charged with alleged offenses related to his presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

According to the March 10, 2021, criminal complaint, Worrell is charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

According to the statement of facts (pdf), the FBI received a tip alleging that Worrell had participated in the breach at the Capitol, but there is no evidence that Worrell entered the Capitol building.

The statement includes photos of Worrell spraying pepper gel while standing in a crowd outside the Capitol, with police nearby.

An arrest warrant (pdf) was issued for Worrell on March 10, 2021, charging him with the aforementioned alleged offenses, as well as charges for allegedly engaging in acts of physical violence in a restricted building or grounds and obstruction of Congress.

Prillers Story

Worrells girlfriend, Trish Priller, was also in Washington that day. In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Priller shared her story of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and the disturbing events that have transpired over the subsequent 17 months.

We were just there, Priller insisted. We were there with family members and friends. We had some ladies in their 70s that were with us. The ladies wanted to go down and hear President Trump speak at the ellipse and I had never been to anything like that so I went with them.

As Priller explained, there was a large crowd there that day and once you were in a spot at the ellipse, you could not move out of iteven to go to the restroombecause you would never find your people again or be allowed back in through the crowd. They stood there for several hours, waiting to hear President Donald Trump speak.

I was at the ellipse with Chris and we were separated for seven and a half hours because the crowd was so enormous we couldnt meet up with each other, Priller recalled, adding that while the cell towers werent working and they couldnt communicate by phone, they could get the occasional text here and there.

Chris Worrell, a Jan. 6 defendant who was released from pretrial detention to undergo cancer treatment, is with his girlfriend Trish Priller. (Courtesy of Trish Priller)

I dont know what he did during that time because we werent in the same area, she said.

Two months later, on March 11, Worrell and some of his friends headed off for a weekend canoeing trip in northern Florida. It was a Friday, and Priller was home alone when the FBI raided the house.

They flash banged me and held me at gunpoint, Priller recalled. When I went outside I had all of the lasers on me. They held me in my home for seven and a half hours. During that time they were rifling through everything in the house and I had to sit in a chair and watch them. I couldnt go anywhere. If I wanted something to drink, they would bring it to me. When I had to go to the restroom I had to go with two agents with me into the bathroom. I was held prisoner in my home for all that time.

Five hours into the ordeal, Priller said she was allowed to call Worrell and give the phone to the FBI. The agents agreed that Worrell could come home. During the 3-hour drive back home, Worrell checked in about every 30 minutes to let the FBI know where he was, Priller said. When Worrell arrived, he was immediately handcuffed, searched, and brought into the house. Documents (pdf) show Worrell was taken to Fort Meyers, Florida.

He was originally granted pretrial release on bond, but a second judge ordered a stay on Worrells release, and Worrell was instead transferred to Charlotte County, Florida, where he was held for three weeks.

Worrell has a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, and had been managing the illness since he was diagnosed in 2007. He remained at stage one of the illness for several years.

But Priller said that when Worrell was being held in Charlotte County, he didnt have access to his medications during that time.

They wouldnt allow the doctor to bring them in, Priller asserted. They said I should go get them, but you cant do that. You cant bring medicines into a prison. They wont let you do that. So our doctor wrote a prescription and sent it to them and they didnt process it. It took almost the whole three weeks. At that point he was transferred to Oklahoma by Con-Air, I guess, where he stayed for another couple of days, still with no meds.

As Priller explained, Worrell was then transferred to Northern Neck, Virginia, where he stayed for another couple of days. It was there that Worrell contracted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. At the time, it was already known the facility had many COVID cases.

Then he was transported to the Correctional Treatment Facility in Washington (pdf), referred to by Priller and many Jan. 6 prisoners as the gulag. At that point, Worrell had gone 75 days without his medications.

They basically said his physician wasnt qualified, even though he had been in the practice and treated cancer patients, Priller charged. They didnt feel like he was qualified so he continued on with no meds. They would send him to doctors for visits but they falsified that.

As Priller explained, Worrell would be taken from the prison and taken to the university hospital where he would see a doctor. The guards who went with him had paperwork they needed to have filled out, so the doctor would fill out the paperwork and hand it to the guards to return it to the prison where it was given to their medical team, she said.

The notes from the doctor were then transcribed by jail personnel, who fabricated things, changed notes switched it up and then gave it to the medical facility in the jail, Priller asserted. They kept using the word treatment. But the word treatment means youre actually receiving some sort of medicine. He didnt have any treatment. He had a consultation, not a treatment for his cancer.

Priller said Worrell filed hundreds of grievances through the jail, not just for the lack of medical care for his cancer and broken hand but for the deplorable conditions he and other Jan. 6 prisoners were forced to live under.

They told him if he keeps putting in grievances they were going to put him in the hole, Priller said. and they did. They kept him there for 16 days.

As described by Liberty Nation, the holesolitary confinementis where detainees are allegedly sent to be punished for daring to talk to the media about what is really going on inside the prison. Lawyers John Pierce and Steven Metcalf II, who represent several of the defendants, told EpochTVs The Nation Speaks that among the nearly people 500 arrested so far in connection with Jan. 6, more than 50 are being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, in conditions that are unconstitutional and violate every single basic human right.

Anything that they do, or if anybody speaks up on their behalf, all of a sudden, they get targeted even further and then get put into a dangerous, unsanitary condition, Metcalf said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to corrections officials in Charlotte County, Florida, and in Washington, requesting comment about these allegations.

The Legal Fight

On May 26, 2021, Worrells attorney filed a reply to the governments supplemental brief pursuant to the district courts order (pdf), stating that the essential undisputed fact of this case is that Mr. Worrell has cutaneous follicular b-cell non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and has been held by the Government without treatment for his white blood cell cancer for seventy-five days. It further asserted that the government was intentionally refusing to issue the prescription authorized by Dr. Rucker, a licensed medical doctor in the state of Florida and has failed to issue an alternative medication.

On Sept. 24, 2021, Worrells attorney John Pierce was replaced by Alex Stavrou.

As the second attorney, Stavrou noted the numerous prior steps taken to seek conditions of release for Worrell.

Of course, from a legal perspective, Stavrou told The Epoch Times in an exclusive interview, the government and the courts were extremely reluctant to grant any of those conditions and I think thats pretty evident by the fact you can see the number of individuals who are still incarcerated in various jails across the country waiting to be sent to the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Virginia or the Washington D.C. jail. Mr. Worrell, of course, received what could be argued as horrendous medical care while at the jail, and there were numerous attempts to thwart that medical care or to thwart the physicians of Mr. Worrell in regards to what treatment was needed.

Aside from the cancer, one of the biggest issues Stavrou cited in Worrells case was the fact that his hand was broken while in jail and there was a surgical recommendation in writing. While jail officials tried to argue that they never recommended surgery, it had been in writing and the doctor changed his original position, saying he never recommended surgery.

Of course, there was no follow-up care for several months, Stavrou said (pdf). And at the end of the day, the judge was not overly impressed with the overall care that Mr. Worrell was not receiving and then started to force the issue, which culminated with Chris receiving conditions of release.

More importantly, Stavrou said what came out of Worrells plight was the exposure of borderline medical malpractice and caused the judge to order an inspection regarding the conditions inside the jail.

The long and short of it was, not only were these conditions subhuman in the Jan. 6 pods but they were equally and even more so in other parts of the jail, Stavrou asserted.

Stavrou described how there was rampant availability of drugs, primarily marijuana. While they knew inmates were buying drugs, they could only be coming in through staff. Jail staff would also allegedly turn off the water in the Jan. 6 pods for days at a time.

Without water, you cant flush a toilet, Stavrou noted. You cant have drinking water. You cant bathe. So you can imagine the beyond-subhuman conditions when in an 8-by-10 or a 6-by-6 [foot] cell. The smell of unflushed, clogged toilets and the smell of marijuana, fecal matter, urine and unbathed, unshaved gentlemen. These are completely atrocious conditions, especially in a country that supposedly prides itself on human rights.

In response to the repeated complaints and reports regarding the deplorable subhuman conditions at the Washington jail, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia directed the Clerk of the Court to transmit the civil contempt order to the Attorney General for appropriate inquiry into potential civil rights violations of January 6 defendants, as exemplified in this case. (pdf)

The judge also held the prison warden and the director of the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt for failure to promptly produce Worrells medical records

On Nov. 3, a statement by the U.S. Marshals Service (pdf) said that their inspection of the Central Treatment Facility (CTF)where some of the Jan. 6 prisoners are being helddid not identify conditions that would necessitate the transfer of inmates from that facility. However, the U.S. Marshals did admit that based on the results of the unannounced inspection of the Central Detention Facility, where an additional 400 detainees were held in the custody of the United States Marshals Service (USMS), it was determined that conditions there do not meet the minimum standards of confinement as prescribed by the Federal Performance-Based Detention Standards. Therefore, working with the Lewisburg Bureau of Prisons, the USMS agreed to transfer those detainees to United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Stavrou said he would argue that the conditions and treatment of inmates was being swept under the rug and that the same kind of nonsense was still taking place. While they may have cleaned up the deplorable conditions, now they will do things like claim the internet is down for two to five days so the inmates cant communicate with loved ones through email messages or there is something wrong with the phones. So now there are gentlemen in the prison who havent received release who cant get in touch with their families.

It was further noted in the U.S. Marshals statement that the Lewisburg Bureau of Prisons facility provides attorney and visitor areas, medical care, and video teleconferencing capabilities.

When Worrel was released from prison, he hadnt had any medications for eight months. At that point, he had gone from stage one cancer to stage three.

The Fight for His Life

Chris just finished five rounds of chemotherapy and has a follow-up appointment in July for further diagnostic tests, Priller said, noting that some of his symptoms are already returning. His medical condition has deteriorated dramatically. His teeth, his skin, so many issues that could have been prevented. Chris is in dire straights.

Trish Priller sits with her boyfriend, Jan. 6 defendant Chris Worrell, while he goes through chemotherapy for cutaneous follicular B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. (Courtesy of Trish Priller)

As Priller explained, Worrell now needs multiple surgeries on his mouth and teeth due to radiation treatments and further complications due to the fact he was using a very specific type of toothpaste that he could not get while incarcerated. The cost is estimated at about $30,000. Then there is the additional chemotherapy to treat the returning symptoms. For that, he will need at least another $50,000. There is a GiveSendGo account to raise money for Worrells treatment.

In the meantime, Priller said their daily lives are stressed with the constant threat of another visit from the government.

The marshals and pretrial services can just show up any time they want and do a search, Priller said, and they do, and you have to let them in. Theyre looking to violate you, to see what youve done wrong. We have parameters, we have to call in every single day. Theres a lot of rules we have to follow. We have to submit a weekly schedule and call in every Tuesday.

She described how there was one instance where she was on the phone with the pretrial officer trying to get their schedule filed on time. Shortly after, the pretrial service officer filed an order (pdf) claiming Worrell violated the conditions of his conditions of release because he heard keystrokes, Priller said.

Stavrou filed a response (pdf) explaining that it was Priller typing in an effort to submit the weekly schedule on time while on the phone simultaneously with Pre-trial services Officer Tad Parks. Judge Royce Lamberth accepted the explanation (pdf).

Im being watched and monitored and I wasnt even the one arrested, Priller said. So I am basically imprisoned also.
(LR) Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Chair of the Jan. 6 committee, and Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) listen during a hearing by Jan. 6 committee in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington on June 13, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Jan. 6 Committee Contests Trump Election Fraud Claims in 2nd Hearing

The House January 6 Committee on Monday held its second day of public hearings, focusing on witness testimony contesting President Donald Trumps claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

During their first public hearing last week, the committee singled Trump out as the cause of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach in a hearing that has been blasted by conservative critics as overtly partisan.

Absent from that hearingduring which panel members displayed four tweets or videos that had been selectively editedwas any discussion of the circumstances of the death of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot point-blank by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, or Roseanne Boyland, who was trampled after a panicking crowd rushed from a Capitol tunnel filling with tear gas before being beaten by a capitol officer while unresponsive.

The same tone was on display during Mondays hearings, as the committee continued to excoriate Trump for what they called an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. During this hearing, the committee focused on Trumps claims of widespread election fraud, which they said were baseless.

Before the hearing began, Trump took to Truth Social to blast the proceedings.

This one-sided Witch Hunt is a disgrace to America, Trump wrote. Should never have been allowed to happen!

Conspiracy

Last week the Select Committee laid out a preview of our initial findings about the conspiracy overseen and directed by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election and block the transfer of power, a scheme unprecedented in American history, Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in his opening statement.

This morning, well tell the story about how Donald Trump lost an election, and knew he lost an election, andas a result of his lossdecided to wage an attack on our democracy, Thompson said later.

To paint an image of the months leading up to the election and its aftermath, the committee showed testimony from various members of the Trump team discussing the election.

Initially, Bill Stepien, who served as Trumps 2020 campaign manager and White House political director in the first half of the Trump administration, was expected to be the star witness of Mondays hearings, but it was revealed shortly before the hearing began that Stepien was unable to make it.

Due to a family emergency, Mr. William Stepien is unable to testify before the Select Committee this morning, the panel said in a statement. His counsel will appear and make a statement on the record.

In recorded testimony presented by the committee, Stepien told investigators that he and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had on several occasions advised Trump that mail-in voting could help his campaign rather than hurt it.

We made our case for why we believed mail-in balloting, mail-in voting, not to be a bad thing for his campaign, but you know the presidents mind was made up and you understand how many times to go to the well on a particular topic, Stepien said.

McCarthys advice, Stepien recalled, echoed mine.

Still, Trump rallied against the expansion of mail-in voting that was being undertaken in several states, suggesting that it was rife with the potential for fraud.

In so doing, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said, Trump laid the groundwork for these false claims well in advance of the election.

As early as April 2020, Mr. Trump claimed that the only way he could lose an election would be as a result of fraud, she added.

Trump Allies Divided Over Fraud Claims

Various advisers said in testimony that the Trump campaign team was conflicted on the night of the election, with some suggesting that the president declare victory and others advising patience.

According to Jason Miller, CEO of GETTR and a former Trump adviser, most of Trumps advisers on election night called for Trump to hold off on declaring victory. Only Rudy Giuliani, he said, advised Trump to declare victory.

In his testimony to investigators, Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law, said that Giulianis advice was not the approach I would take if I was you.

You know, I have confidence in Rudy, Trump reportedly responded.

Ultimately, Trump took a middle-of-the-road approach, suggesting in a tweet that the race was going in his favor, but did not go so far as to declare victory outright.

Following the election, many Trump advisers and staff members, including Kushner and former Attorney General Bill Barr, also reportedly opposed Trumps claims of election fraud.

Barr in particular was highly critical of the claim, telling the committee that Trump became detached from reality following the election.

A series of other advisers, analysts, and lawyers took a similar vein, saying that they opposed Trumps claims.

What struck me most is the number of people around Donald Trump  who told him all of his claims of fraud and all of the things people were trying to throw out there were not substantiated, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) told NBC News during a break in the hearing.

Still, conservative critics have pointed to various instances that appear to suggest there was enough fraud in the 2020 election to have changed the results.

Evidence

For instance, one report by Verity Vote, an election integrity watchdog, suggested that 19,000 late, invalid mail-in ballots were counted in Arizona.

Because Trump reportedly lost the state by a little more than 10,000 votes, these ballots could have changed the results in his favor if they were rejected.

Another investigation, this time conducted by True the Vote, found that in Wisconsin at least 137,500 absentee ballots were cast through unlawful vote trafficking throughout several of Wisconsins largest cities in the 2020 election.

In a recent documentary, filmmaker Dinesh DSouzaworking with a private team of investigatorsclaimed that through ballot harvesting, mail-in voting, and other methods, Democrat operatives flipped the result of the 2020 election in all key battleground states.

Proponents of Trumps claims say that these and other investigations point to there being more to the claim than the January 6 panel suggests.

For several members of the committee, the end goal is clear: a criminal indictment of the former president.

I would like to see the Justice Department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump or anyone else, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on ABC News This Week. They need to be investigated if theres credible evidence, which I think there is.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said the committee has laid out in various legal pleadings the criminal statutes that we think have been violated, and claimed that the panel has evidence that Trump knew Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

I think we can prove to any reasonable, open-minded person that Donald Trump absolutely knew because he was surrounded by lawyers, Raskin said on CNNs State of the Union. He continues to spread it to this very day. He continues to foist that propaganda on his followers.

It remains unclear whether the Department of Justice will take the unprecedented step of opening a criminal investigation of Trump, whatever the calls from members of the panel.

Steven Kovac contributed to this report.
Japan's Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 11, 2022. (Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images)

Japan to Bolster Deterrence Capabilities Against Rule-Flouting Neighbors: Defense Minister

Japans defense minister vowed on June 11 to bolster the countrys deterrence capabilities and boost its alliance with the United States, citing Japans position as a front-line opponent of rule-flouting actors.

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said Japan is at the front line of a competition between countries defending the rules-based order and those attempting to change it by force.

At present, not only is Japan surrounded by actors that both possess or are developing nuclear weapons and ignoring the rules, but also, year by year, they are becoming more open in their disregard for them, he said.

Kishi said that Russia has intensified its military activities in the Far East and the Pacific, while China continues its attempts to unilaterally change the status quo in the South and East China Seas.

The joint military activities between the two major military powers are increasingly concerning, he said, emphasizing the need to defend the stability of the Taiwan Strait, where Beijing has increased its military presence.

Kishi said Japan would secure the necessary defense budget and accelerate the reinforcement of defense capabilities.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has planned to increase the countrys defense spending to 2 percent of its gross domestic product within the next five years, according to the policy roadmap released by his administration on June 7.

We will also further elevate the JapanU.S. alliance, which is a foundation for peace and prosperity in the IndoPacific region, and we will strengthen its deterrence and response capabilities, Kishi said.

Kishi also met with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue summit, during which he raised concerns about the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning conducting military drills near Japans islands.

He urged China to exercise restraint in making unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East China Sea, near the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, which China also claims and calls the Diaoyu Islands.

During the meeting, Kishi reiterated that Taiwans security is important to Japan and the international community. The two ministers also agreed to promote defense dialogue, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry.

The escalation of Chinese military activities in East Asia has heightened Tokyos concerns about the self-ruled island. Taiwan, along with its neighbor, Japanese-controlled Okinawa, contains Beijings forces.

Eight Chinese naval vessels, including the Liaoning aircraft carrier, passed between islands in Japans southern Okinawa chain on May 2. Japan claimed that Chinese fighter jets took off from and landed on an aircraft carrier near Okinawa more than 100 times from May 3 to May 7.

In December 2021, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned that an armed invasion of Taiwan would pose a serious threat to Japan, given that Japans Senkaku Islands, Sakishima Islands, and Yonaguni Island are only 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Taiwan.

A Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency, and therefore an emergency for the JapanU.S. alliance, he said, adding that Japan and Taiwan must work together to protect freedom and democracy.
A Home Depot store is seen in Washington, on Aug. 18, 2020. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

Judge Rules in Favor of Home Depot, Against Displaying Black Lives Matter Messaging on Job

A judge on Friday dismissed a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint against Home Depot claiming that the company violated employee rights by prohibiting workers from wearing Black Lives Matter (BLM) imagery while on the job.

The complaint was filed in March 2021 by an employee at Home Depots Minnesota store. Based on the document, the worker had been wearing a BLM logo on his apron since August 2020 and engaged in related conversations with coworkers. The employee was suspended in 2021 following a refusal to remove the logo and later resigned.

The Atlanta-based home improvement stores dress code prohibits displays of causes or political messages unrelated to workplace matters.

NLRB lawyers argued that raising issues regarding racial harassment and displaying a BLM slogan were all protected actions under the National Labor Relations Act. The complaint also alleged that the store threatened employees not to engage in activity regarding racial harassment, according to a press release.

The Home Depot does not tolerate workplace harassment of any kind and takes all reports of discrimination or harassment seriously, as we did in this case, said the Home Depot spokesperson Sara Gorman, dismissing the allegations as misrepresentations, according to HR organization SHRM. We disagree with the characterization of this situation and look forward to sharing the facts during the NLRBs process.

NLRB lawyers did not argue on the political nature of the BLM organization. It stressed that the employee was required to choose between engaging in protected concerted activity, including displaying the BLM slogan and quitting employment at the New Brighton facility.

The NLRB defines concerted activity as actions done with coworkers for the purposes of improving work conditions, earnings, and related engagement.

NLRB Judge Paul Bogas wrote in his opinion that BLM messaging does not fall within employees protected concerted activity and that the plaintiffs have failed to sufficiently reason their argument. BLM logo displays offer nothing to improve [their] terms and conditions of employment.

BLM messaging is not inherently concerted. Nor does it have an objective, and sufficiently direct, relationship to terms and conditions of employment to fall within the mutual aid and protection clause.

According to the ruling, A message about unjustified killings of black men, while a matter of profound societal importance, is not directly relevant to the terms, conditions, or lot of Home Depots employees as employees.

Moreover, the BLM organization includes not only racial justice, but political subjects like expelling members of Congress who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election and barring former President Trump from political office and social media, wrote Bogas.

Were pleased with the judges decision and believe it affirms our value of respect for all people, said Gorman, in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

The agency did not respond to The Epoch Times request for comment.

Such rulings by agency judges can be appealed to the labor board in Washington, which is currently controlled by Democrats. From there, it can be taken to a federal court. The NLRB is expected to appeal the ruling.
File photo: Voters fill out and cast their ballots at the Cross Insurance Center polling location where the entire city votes on November 3, 2020 in Bangor, Maine. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

Maine Governor Midterm Election Grows More Unpredictable as Independent Enters Race

While Maines gubernatorial primaries wont produce many surprises with only one candidate running on each partys ticket, the trickle-up influences of the race on issues such as government-imposed COVID-19 mandates make it a heavily watched one, with some state progressives saying theyre voting for the first time as Republicans.

An 11th-hour contender running as an independent is also expected to influence the race, with Maine having one of the largest blocks of independent voters in the United States.

Sam Hunkler, a retired family physician, told The Epoch Times he logged about 10,000 miles over the course of four months to garner the 4,000-plus signatures he needed to get on the ballot as an independent.

Hunkler filed his candidate paperwork on June 1, and under his campaign, StandWithSam2022, hes refusing to accept donations. He has vowed to cap campaign spending at $5,000. Though a transplant from Ohio, the married 65-year-old father of four is what Mainers call a Downeaster, living in Beals, Maine, which is about 80 miles from the Canadian border and abuts Jonesport, home to the states fabled lobster boat races.

His target, Hunkler told The Epoch Times, is the 35 percent of Maine voters who are somewhere in the middle politically.

I think I have a good shot, particularly in todays current climate, he said. People are looking for alternatives to Republicans and Democrats. I got on the ballot without any party loyalty, and I think I can get elected that way, too.

Hunkler is hoping to follow in the footsteps of the six third-party candidates who have been elected governor, including Bill Walker, an independent who was elected in 2014 as the governor of Alaska, where with some irony, Hunkler had worked as a doctor for the 1,500-resident Metlakatla Indian Community that inhabits the states Annette Island Reserve.

Hunkler, however, doesnt want to debate specific issues, with the exception of legislation that will better protect children against abuse and trafficking.

That leaves several forefront issues to the Republican and Democrat contenders to debate before the voters.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage speaks during a conference of New Englands governors and eastern Canadas premiers to discuss closer regional collaboration on Aug. 29, 2016, in Boston. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

After losing her exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine for breastfeeding purposes under current Democratic Gov. Janet Millss strict vaccine policy for health care workers, Lauren, a physical therapist who asked that only her first name be used, told The Epoch Times she knows who shes definitely not voting for.

I am very liberal in every way I voted, said the mother of two, who said she will be voting Republican for the first time in her life.

She has been told to either vaccinate or be terminated and is currently receiving no pay as a result of her refusal to get the vaccine.

I am just angry that medical freedom has been taken away for me and for my kids. That alone is enough for me to not vote for Mills, she said.

Millss decision to implement a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers without a religious exemption is the subject of a lawsuit that is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mill signed into law a bill removing all nonmedical exemptions for all vaccines, aligning with New York, which passed a similar law.

In dabbling in other national trends, the Mills administration has also been outwardly unfriendly toward homeschooling families. Just months after taking office, Mills broke a 32-year bipartisan tradition in Maine when she refused to issue a proclamation declaring Maine Home School Week.

Mills was also recently berated by parents for using federal dollars to promote transgenderism among Maines kindergarteners along with her promotion of teaching critical race theory.

Republican contender Paul LePage says its for all these reasons he wants his job back.

LePage, who served as Maine governor from 2011 to 2019, which encompassed a time when Mills was the Maine attorney general, vowed to repeal Millss vaccine mandate on his first day in office. He has also emphasized his call for a parental rights bill in Maine, which has resonated with parents outraged by sexualized curricula being taught in public schools.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills attends the Climate Action Summit 2019 in the U.N. General Assembly Hall in New York on Sept. 23, 2019. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

But LePage doesnt come without baggage, and Mills doesnt seek reelection without a league of support.

LePage cut Medicaid benefits for seniors and people with disabilities including children with special needs. He refused to attend Martin Luther King Day events and meet with representatives of the NAACP. He was also accused of misspending taxpayer dollars on lavish trips, including a $22,000 trip with a stay at Trumps luxury international hotel in Washington.

While Mills has been accused of government overreach, she has scored high marks with some of the states conservative blue-collar community, including Maine lobstermen, when she said federal regulations to protect the endangered right whale were foolish and vowed to fight them.

In a video she released as part of her reelection bid, Mills featured a myriad of Maine residents who wrote letters in her support. Theres an army behind you, you just cant see us, one letter writer in the video reads.
Packages of Juul mint flavored e-cigarettes are displayed at San Rafael Smokeshop in San Rafael, Calif., on Nov. 07, 2019. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Mayor Garcetti Signs Ban On Flavored Tobacco, With Hookah Exception

LOS ANGELESMayor Eric Garcetti signed into law a ban on the sale of flavored tobacco in the city, with an exception for hookah lounges that meet certain conditions, the mayors office said Monday.

It will go into effect in January, and it does not ban the possession or use of flavored tobacco for people over the age of 21.

In June of last year, the city council directed the city attorney to draft an ordinance to ban flavored tobacco and menthol cigarette sales in the city, but exempt hookah tobacco products at existing lounges.

The ordinance, which underwent amendments in March, passed 12-0 on June 1.

Under the ordinance, existing smoke lounges will be able to sell hookah products for on-site or off-site consumption, but the citys 4,500 tobacco retail stores will be banned from selling flavored tobacco, including hookah tobacco.

Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, who motioned last June to amend the original ordinance request to allow hookah products to be sold for off-site consumption, as well as on-site consumption at lounges, said she worried about the impact on small business owners, who also rely on selling hookah products for off-site activity.

That amendment, which passed last year eight votes to six, came as the city council faced demands from the National Hookah Community Association to exempt hookah from the ordinance, calling it a cultural tradition.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in October 2019 to adopt an ordinance banning flavored tobacco products and to call on Gov. Gavin Newsom to pass a statewide ban on vaping.
UK Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities Michael Gove at the Science Museum in London, on Oct. 19, 2021. (Rob Pinney/Getty Images)

Minister Fires Islamophobia Adviser for Backing UK Cinema Protests

A government adviser on Islamophobia who encouraged Muslims to protest against a cinema company to cancel the showing of a movie about the Prophet Muhammads daughter, has been sacked by Michael Gove for encouraging communal tensions and limiting free expression.

On Friday, it was reported that Imam Qari Asim, an independent adviser on Islamophobia to the British government, had backed protests to pull the film The Lady of Heaven that has been accused of blasphemy.

Despite Cineworld, which owns Vue Cinemas, telling The Epoch Times on June 7 that it had dropped the screenings of the film nationwide to ensure the safety of our staff and customers, protests were still ongoing last week.

Actions Are Incompatible

In a letter published on Sunday (pdf), Gove said that the Leeds Makkah Mosque imams actions are incompatible with the role of a government adviser on anti-Muslim hatred. This country is proud of its democratic values and freedoms, which include tolerance, freedom of expression, and community.

The $15 million film was written by the Muslim Sheikh Yasser al-Habib and depicts a tale of the heart-wrenching journey of Lady Fatima, the daughter of Prophet Muhammad, according to its website.

The depiction of some of the characters angered some Sunni Muslims. Sunnis make up the vast majority of Muslims worldwide. Protests by Muslim men have taken place outside cinemas in Bradford, Bolton, Birmingham, and Sheffield since June 5.

We write now because we have no option but to withdraw the appointment and end your roles with Government with immediate effect, Gove wrote. Your recent support for a campaign to limit free expressiona campaign which has itself encouraged communal tensionsmeans it is no longer appropriate for you to continue your work with Government in roles designed to promote community harmony.

You have encouraged an ongoing campaign to prevent cinemas screening the film Lady of Heaven, a clear effort to restrict artistic expression, and the campaign you have supported has led to street protests which have fomented religious hatred, he added.

Campaign to Limit Free Expression

This clear involvement in a campaign to limit free expression is incompatible with the role of a government adviser, wrote Gove.

You will have no doubt seen reports of the scenes outside different cinema venues. These included deeply disturbing videos of sectarian chanting and anti-Shia hatred. As you know, anti-Shia hatred is a long-standing and very serious issue, which must be challenged at every opportunity as part of a wider effort to combat anti-Muslim hatred. We were disappointed to see that you failed to condemn some of the protests complicit in these behaviours, he said.

On Sunday, Asim released a statement in response, saying that the UK government had not contacted him before making its decision and there had been no opportunity to clarify any misunderstandings. He added that he did not attend or organise any of the protests.

Asim was appointed an independent adviser in 2019 to provide expert advice on a definition of Islamophobia to the government.

He said that he fully understood and supported the values of free speech, but there is a nuanced and complex debate around when free speech has boundaries and limits.
Britons Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner, and Moroccan Brahim Saadoun captured by Russian forces during a military conflict in Ukraine, in a courtroom cage at a location given as Donetsk, Ukraine, on June 7, 2022, in a still from video. (Supreme Court of Donetsk People's Republic/Handout via Reuters)

No Pardon for Britons Sentenced to Death, Pro-Russian Separatist Leader Says

LONDONThe leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region of Ukraine said on June 12 that there is no reason to pardon two British nationals who were sentenced to death last week after being captured while fighting for Ukraine.

A court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic on June 9 found Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinnerand Moroccan Brahim Saadounguilty of mercenary activities seeking to overthrow the republic.

The UK says Aslin and Pinner are regular soldiers and should be exempt under the Geneva Conventions from prosecution for participation in hostilities. The pro-Russian separatists who control Donetsk say they committed grave crimes and have a month to appeal.

British citizen Aiden Aslin in a courtroom cage at a location given as Donetsk, Ukraine, in a still image from a video released on June 8, 2022. (Supreme Court of Donetsk Peoples Republic/Handout via Reuters TV)

British citizen Shaun Pinner in a courtroom cage at a location given as Donetsk, Ukraine, in a still image from a video released on June 8, 2022. (Supreme Court of Donetsk Peoples Republic/Handout via Reuters TV)

I dont see any grounds, prerequisites, for me to come out with such a decision on a pardon, Denis Pushilin, the leader of the breakaway republic, was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Donetsk and Luhansk are two breakaway Russian-backed entities in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which Russia says it is fighting to remove entirely from Kyivs control. Three days before launching its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, President Vladimir Putin recognized the entities as independent states, a move condemned by Ukraine and the West as illegal.

Aslins family said he and Pinner are not, and never were, mercenaries.

They were living in Ukraine when war broke out and as members of Ukrainian armed forces, should be treated with respect just like any other prisoners of war, the family said in a statement.
This screenshot captured by Nancy Anderson of the N.C. chapter of No Left Turn in Education shows a page from the book "Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race." (Courtesy of Nancy Andersen)

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction Lied About CRT Content Collaboration: Watchdog Group

An education watchdog group is calling for an audit of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) after obtaining emails indicating that, despite its denial of such awareness, the department might have known about critical race theory (CRT) content incorporated in a professional development program for pre-kindergarten teachers of disabled children.

The $7 million to fund the program comes from the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Preschool Handicapped Grant awarded to NCDPI.

No Left Turn in Education (NLTE) published the report (pdf) on June 8 with emails showing that the departments that fall under the umbrella of NCDPI approved and then later removed the training materials.

Overarching themes of decentering whiteness and centering children of color that surfaced were alleged to be a part of the NCDPIs collaboration with the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hills Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG), and the Office of Early Learning (OEL) through a program called the NC Early Learning Network (NC-ELN), though an NCDPI spokesperson later denied NCDPIs involvement.

According to Nancy Andersen with NLTE, the CRT content was removed from NC-ELNs website on Jan. 5, the night after the state board of education meeting at which the renewal of the contract was presented.

On each document Andersen captured in a screenshot, the imprimatur at the bottom of the page stated the NC-ELN is a joint project with NCDPI, the OEL, and the FPG.

Nancy Andersen of No Left Turn in Education took this screenshots from the N.C. Early Learning Network website before it was removed. (Courtesy of Nancy Andersen)

Unapproved by NCDPI

The NCDPI itself told The Epoch Times on Jan. 25 in a previous report that the material was a part of a separate program unconnected to the contract and unapproved by NCDPI.

The NCDPI spokesperson also said that the NCDPI logo was used without consent from the Department itself.

The NCDPI spokesperson added that the content was removed because the NCDPI logo was used at the bottom of the pages without permission and because they exceeded the scope of the contract.

After the material was reported, the North Carolina State Board of Education-approved contract for the program came to a halt in January.

After media attention, NCDPI Superintendent Catherine Truitt said in a statement on Jan. 14 that she would not sign the proposal to extend the previously amended pre-K contract.

Instead, I will create a new contract proposal that has strict guardrails and new accountability measures to ensure the true needs of our youngest and most vulnerable learners are met, Truitt said.

Both Andersen with NLTE and Sloan Rachmuth, an investigative reporter and president of Education First Alliance NC, told The Epoch Times that the program harbors racist content that violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, in addition to its prohibition on discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, and national origin, prohibits the use of federal funds to facilitate such discrimination.

In January 2022, the North Carolina State Board of Education approved the grant to train teachers of disabled preschoolers using CRT-based methodologies through the ELN, a project of the DPI and the FPG.

Nancy Andersen of No Left Turn in Education took this screenshot from the N.C. Early Learning Network website before it was removed. (Courtesy of Nancy Andersen)

Pattern of Deceit

The emails between NCDPI, OEL, and NC-ELN show efforts to conceal the training material to ensure contract approval, NLTE said in its press release, adding that the documents indicate that Truitt gave the order to remove the material from the NC-ELN website before the boards vote.

Under NCDPIs direction, NLTE said, FPG, with assistance from NC-ELN, pulled the documents to hide the information from the public.

This pattern of deceit is unacceptable and shows the extreme measures education bureaucrats take to hide the usage of taxpayer dollars in pushing race-based ideologies onto our most vulnerable kids, said Andersen, president of No Left Turn in Educations North Carolina chapter, in a press release. NC early literacy rates are abysmal, but the Office of Early Learning is focused on misdirecting funds for race-essentialism in pre-K. Based on the findings of our report, we call upon our state government and its agencies to dissolve contractual relationships with the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. Additionally, NLTE demands the state perform a full financial audit of the NCDPI.

In her report, Andersen said the documents demonstrate that education and university officials were active in establishing CRT throughout the state, and they spent time and resources discussing tactics to knowingly mislead the public and otherwise disguise their intentions.

Andersen alleged that NCDPI misappropriated federal funds to further CRT instruction while denying its role, employing rationalizations such as material was taken out of context.

In short, the NCDPI and Frank Porter Graham used federal funds to bring critical race theory to disabled preschool children, denied the materials were based in CRT, and attempted to hide the evidence so the contract would be approved by the NC State Board of Education, Andersen said.

Andersen called for the NC-ELN to be dissolved and the current director of the OEL to be removed.

She was aware of the training being developed and helped direct the removal of evidence from the NC-ELN website, Andersen said.

In addition, Andersen said Truitt should admit to her role in hiding the material.

She should publicly apologize for supporting the idea that citizen concerns were based in rumor and no evidence existed regarding these trainings, Andersen said in the NLTE report. The General Assembly should consider asking Supt. Truitt to resign for misleading the state board of education regarding this material, and her role in presenting a contract using federal funds to bring CRT-based teacher training and materials to preschool children with disabilities.

Among the many examples of CRT material Andersen included in her report is a book titled Our Skin, which appears to be addressing issues of race on its surface, but within it can be found quotes such as: Racism is also the things people do and the unfair rules they make about race so that white people can get more power, and are treated better, than everybody else.

Above the text is an illustration of two white children climbing stairs and laughing.

Nancy Andersen of No Left Turn in Education took this screenshot from the N.C. Early Learning Network website before it was removed. (Courtesy of Nancy Andersen)

The Emails

Though there are none directly from Truitt, the emails dated from March 2021 to February 2022show collaboration between all organizations to put the material together.

In June 2021, an email showed Amy Rhyne, director of OEL, asking the OEL team to send material related to social emotional learning (SEL) and equity to Truitt to be reviewed.

From there, emails show an editing collaboration between organizations to replace phrases such as racial equity with cultural equity.

In January 2022, the NC-ELN director, Sherri Williams, wrote in an email that she had an urgent request from our funder to remove material.

There was a person present at the NC State Bd of Ed meeting this afternoon expressing displeasure with DPI promoting racial equity training. There was some exaggeration and misinformation about teaching hate, CRT, communism, etc. and they referenced some materials on our website; so our funder is asking that we take this down, Williams wrote in another email.

The material included a March 2021 webinar in which one consultant stated that she wants to position myself as a white woman and acknowledge my own privilege and experiential lens or way of knowing the world is that of a white woman in the United States.

I continue to examine my own internalized racism and socialization, and I embrace and am grateful for this journey of learning to be anti-racist, the consultant said.

According to the contract, that consultant gets an annual salary of $113,000.

On January 21, Aysenil Belger, director of FPG, sent an email to Truitt after Truitt tweeted that she would not sign the contract after the material garnered media attention.

Belger said media descriptions of the program are inaccurate.

Specifically, a statement was made that a program designed by the University of North Carolina teaches 3- and 4-year-old disabled preschoolers to deconstruct whiteness To be clear, we do not provide training directly to preschoolers and families. We also do not provide training or guidance for any curriculum to be taught to young children in early childhood classrooms, Belger said.

On Jan. 26, a communications director with FPG referenced The Epoch Times request for comment on NCDPIs statement that its logo on the material was used without permission, and whether the content in question was approved by NCDPI or not.

Though FPG never responded directly to The Epoch Times, in the emails, FPG said, Ever since the contract began in 2013, our contract administrator (the NC Part B 619 Preschool Special Education Coordinator/s) established and instructed us to use the footer we use for slides and documents produced as part of the ELN work and also established the process we use for content design and development which includes submitting content to the Part B 619 Coordinator/s for review, later adding, There is nothing we do that we havent already discussed with them.

FPG said it also talked with NCDPI about the webinars because Truitt wanted to establish a vetting process specifically for content developed related to equity in June 2021.

We talked with them on June 29 about the recordings of the equity webinar being on the website and asked if we needed to take them down and have them reviewed given the new guidance from Truitt (even though they were already done/archived), FPG stated.

In a Jan. 25 letter addressed to Belger, Truitt addresses Belgers earlier statement in which he said the program wasnt for the children but for the teachers.

While I have no doubt that this is true, there is a subtle distinction between providing training materials for teachers (who then apply this new knowledge in their classrooms with their students and their families) and working directly with preschoolers and their families, Truitt said. Furthermore, your training entitled Equity and Cultural ResponsivenessSession 1 does exactly what the reporting said: We will focus on children and educators racial self-identification and ways educators can protect children from the harmful effects of living in a society created through systematic racism, later adding: To suggest that your work is not directed at or provided to children and families is disingenuous at best.

Truitt later states that the program occurred in the summer of 2021 and was not part of the scope of the contract with DPI, which the ELN fulfilled without consulting with DPI or allowing for DPI oversight despite using our logo without permission.

This does not indicate good partnership, Truitt said.

On whatever level one wants to place the blame, Andersen said, its the entire system that failed.

You could pin this on one person, but for me, its the whole department thats representative of the entire system of all of these different bureaucracies that collude and blame each other while working on these projects that waste the taxpayers money, Andersen said.

The NCDPI did not respond to The Epoch Times request for comment.
A North Korea flag flutters next to concertina wire at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 9, 2017. (Edgar Su/Reuters)

North Korea Fires Multiple Artillery Shots, South Korea Says

SEOULNorth Korea on Sunday fired multiple artillery shots between 8:07 a.m. and 11:03 a.m. local time, South Koreas military said, in another show of force a day after leader Kim Jong Un vowed to boost the reclusive nations military power.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff gave no other details but added it had decided to issue a statement late in the evening as the shots were of a traditional type, with relatively short range and low altitude.

According to South Koreas Yonhap news agency, the shots presumably came from multiple rocket launchers.

Firing of artillery shots comes as Kim on Saturday presented goals to boost the regimes military power and defense research to protect North Koreas sovereign rights, as it concluded The Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea (WPF) held last week.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) walks around a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on the launcher at an undisclosed location in North Korea on March 24, 2022. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

North Korea Spent up to $650 Million on Missile Tests So Far in 2022: Report

North Koreas barrage of missile tests in the past six months may have cost between $400 million to $650 million, according to data released by a government-affiliated research center in South Korea.

Pyongyang has conducted 18 missile launches involving 33 ballistic missiles since the beginning of 2022, Nikkei Asia reported, citing data from the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA).

KIDA said the estimated cost included missile development, fuel, labor, and other expenses, totaling 2 percent of Pyongyangs gross domestic product.

North Korea launched eight short-range ballistic missiles from four locations on June 5. South Koreas military claimed that the missiles traveled 110 to 670 kilometers (68 to 416 miles) eastward at altitudes between 25 to 90 kilometers (15 to 55 miles).

Pyongyangs move prompted South Korea and the United States to jointly launch eight short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea on June 6. Officials said the launch involved one U.S. Army missile and seven South Korea Army missiles.

The two allies also launched 20 fighter jets over the Yellow Sea, a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean located between China and the Korean Peninsula, to demonstrate their ability to quickly and accurately deter North Koreas provocations.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has warned of a swift and forceful response if North Korea conducts another nuclear test, urging Pyongyang to cease its destabilizing and provocative activities and return to diplomacy.

U.S. forces also conducted a bilateral ballistic missile defense exercise with Japan on June 5 to demonstrate the readiness of the U.S.Japan alliance to respond to regional threats.

Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, said at a trilateral meeting with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Seoul, South Korea, on June 4 that Washington and its allies are preparing for all contingencies.

We are prepared to make both short and longer-term adjustments to our military posture as appropriate and responding to any [North Korea] provocation and as necessary to strengthen both defense and deterrence to protect our allies in the region, he said.

Lorenz Duchamps contributed to this report.
An NH90 helicopter during the Black Blade military exercise involving several European Union countries and organized by the European Defence Agency at the Florennes airbase in Belgium on Nov. 30, 2016. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

Norway to Return NH90 Military Helicopters and Seek Refund

OSLONorway said it would axe its fleet of NH90 military helicopters and ask for a refund from a consortium led by Europes Airbus, which hit back by calling the move legally groundless.

Norway will return the NH90 military helicopters it ordered from the NHIndustries consortium because they are either unreliable or were delivered late, the defense minister and the head of the military said on Friday.

Oslo said it would also seek repayment of 5 billion crowns ($523 million) plus interest and other costs from NHIndustries, which is owned by Airbus Helicopters, Italys Leonardo, and Fokker Aerostructures of the Netherlands.

No matter how many hours our technicians work, and how many parts we order, it will never make the NH90 capable of meeting the requirements of the Norwegian Armed Forces, Defense Minister Bjoern Arild Gram told a news conference.

The helicopter consortium said it was extremely disappointed by the decision.

NHIndustries considers this termination to be legally groundless, it said in statement.

It said it had not been offered the possibility to discuss the latest proposal made to improve the availability of the NH90 in Norway or address specific Norwegian requirements.

The original contract for 14 helicopters was signed in 2001 but Norway has received only eight, the ministry said.

We have a helicopter that doesnt work the way its supposed to, said General Eirik Kristoffersen, the head of Norways armed forces.

However, NHIndustries said it had delivered 13 of 14 and the fourteenth was ready for acceptance, meaning we were close to finalizing the main scope of the initial contract.

($1 = 9.5572 Norwegian crowns)

By Gwladys Fouche
Ohio Governor Signs Bill Allowing Teachers to Be Armed

School districts in Ohio now have the option to allow teachers and school employees to carry weapons.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine on June 13 signed a bill that would let school districts decide whether to allow teachers to be armed. Teachers in participating districts would require a minimum of 24 hours of training and eight hours of re-certification training annually.

The signing of the bill comes on the day Ohios permitless carry law takes effect.

Under the new law, school boards that allow teachers and employees to be armed have to inform the parents of the decision. The law also requires armed teachers to undergo annual criminal background checks.

Educators would receive comprehensive and quality training that also includes how to spot behavioral problems or violent tendencies in a student, DeWine said.

This does not require school districts to arm its teachers, DeWine said. Every school district can make its own decision. This is a local choice not mandated by the state or governor. This bill is part of a comprehensive and layered approach to school safety and keeping kids safe in schools.

The training would be scenario-based, including how to stop an active shooter and how to de-escalate a violent situation, crisis intervention.

If parents hear or see something, they should say something, DeWine said. School safety is everyones business.

The governors signing of the bill comes less than a month after the school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 dead.

The bill DeWine signed on Monday was in the works more than a year ago. The law will take effect in early September and would allow teachers to be armed in the 2022-2023 school year once the required training is completed.

Republican state Rep. Thomas Hall sponsored the bill to allow to arm teachers and introduced it on Feb. 9, 2021.

Halls father was a school resource officer on duty when a 14-year-old boy shot and injured two students at Madison High School in northeast Ohio in 2016.

Today, Ohio is doing something to address the issue of safety in schools, Hall said. Empowering districts to decide whether to allow teachers to be armed is a step in the right direction. In emergencies at our schools, seconds matter, and tragedies can be prevented.

In addition to Democrat opposition, the Ohio Education Association which represents 121,000 educators, and the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police also opposed the bill.

The organizations were urging the governor to veto the bill and consider hiring more school resource officers.

Last year, the Ohio Supreme Court decided more than 700 hours of basic peace officer trainingor 20 years of law enforcement experiencewas required to carry a firearm in a school.

It later ruled that the legislature could change and clarify the law that would cover school employees, according to information from DeWines office.

Our students and educators need to be in safe environments where they can focus on teaching and learning, not on the threat of having unprepared, woefully undertrained peopleregardless of their good intentionsmaking split-second life-or-death decisions about whether to pull the trigger in a chaotic classroom full of innocent bystanders, Ohio Education Association president Scott DeMauro said in a statement.

OFOP director of governmental affairs Michael Weinman told The Epoch Times there are major concerns with the legislation.

We think its a terrible bill, Weinman said. The amount of training required for someone who is going to be carrying a gun in a school where there could be chaos is woefully inadequate.

The majority of school shootings are done by a student or a former student, Weinman added. No. 1, schools can increase counseling and train teachers to spot red flags in these kids. Teachers have a lot on their plate already, but mental health is important. School administrators need to be able to communicate with parents about what is going on.

Despite the opposition to the bill, some schoolteachers welcomed the opportunity to be armed.

We are the last line of defense of protecting students and ourselves, said a high school teacher in northeast Ohio, who didnt want to be named. I would be willing to go through the training to be armed, or would feel comfortable with my co-workers to be armed.

Another teacher with more than 20 years of teaching experience in a Dayton area school district also supports the new law.

I would be very willing to take the training, and be armed at school, the teacher, who did not want to be named, told The Epoch Times. Although it is an unthinkable tragedy when a shooting does happen in a school, I worry more about my family in the car being hit by a drunk driver.

I also dont think infringements on the Second Amendment are going to deter criminals or the mentally ill from attempting such things, the teacher added.
Oklahoma Official Seeks Execution Dates for 25 Inmates

OKLAHOMA CITYOklahomas attorney general has asked the states highest appeals court to set execution dates for 25 death row inmates following a federal judges rejection of their challenge to the states lethal injection method.

In 25 similar filings with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday, Attorney General John OConnor wrote that the federal courts stays of execution are no longer in place and that therefore there are no longer any legal impediments to executing the inmates, who have exhausted their appeals.

The state Department of Corrections has asked that the first execution be set no earlier than Aug. 25, OConnor wrote. He asked that the dates be set at four week intervals due to the time required for a clemency hearing for each inmate prior to an execution, and that the DOC requested executions be set at least 35 days after the courts order.

For the sake of the victims families, many of whom have waited for decadesas many executions as possible are set four weeks apart, OConnor wrote.

OConnor suggested that the first inmate who should be put to death is James Coddington, whose March 10 execution was postponed after U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot allowed him to join the lawsuit that ultimately failed.

A phone call to the office of an attorney for Coddington rang unanswered Saturday. Defense attorneys have previously said Coddington has a mental illness.

Coddington was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1997 hammer killing in Choctaw of co-worker Albert Hale, who prosecutors said had refused to lend Coddington $50 to buy drugs.

Second on the list, which the filing said was proposed based on when each inmates appeals were exhausted, would be Richard Glossip, the lead plaintiff in the federal lawsuit. He was hours from being executed September 2015 when prison officials realized they had received the wrong lethal drug.

It was later learned the same wrong drug had been used previously to execute an inmate, and executions in the state were put on hold.

Glossip, who was twice convicted and sentenced to die for killing Barry Van Treese, the owner of the motel where Glossip worked, has maintained his innocence.

Don Knight, Glossips attorney, noted that a group of Republican lawmakers who question Glossips guilt have requested a review of the case.

Those findings could reveal exculpatory information previously unknown until this point, Knight said in a statement. Until everyone has the opportunity to examine the final report, the Attorney General has a moral duty to delay the execution of Richard Glossip.

Executions in Oklahoma resumed in October with John Grant, who convulsed on the gurney and vomited before being declared dead. Since then, three more executions were carried out without noticeable complications, most recently inmate Gilbert Ray Postelle, who was put to death Feb. 17.

Federal public defender Jennifer Moreno, one of the attorneys who represented the inmates in the failed federal lawsuit, has said an appeal of Friots ruling was being considered.

She didnt immediately reply to Saturday messages seeking comment.

By Ken Miller
A shipment of baby formula is seen on a U.S. military C-17 at an airport in Indianapolis on May 22, 2022. (@POTUS on Twitter)

Over 90,000 Cans of Baby Formula Arrive in US From Australia Amid Shortages

Roughly 95,000 cans of baby formula were flown into the United States from Australia on June 12 amid a nationwide shortage, marking the fourth flight of Operation Fly Formula.

Bubs Australia Ltd stated in May that it planned to ship at least 1.25 million containers of its baby formula to the United States in an effort to alleviate supply issues.

The New South Wales-based company announced on June 10 that it had reached a deal with U.S. grocery chains Kroger Co. and Albertsons to import the formula as part of the Biden administrations Operation Fly Formula.

Under that operation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services has been granted permission to use Department of Defense-contracted commercial aircraft to pick up infant formula from overseas that meets U.S. health and safety standards, so it can get to store shelves faster.

Bubs Australia Ltd said the product was expected to hit shelves in retail stores beginning June 20.

The latest shipment was flown into Los Angeles on June 12, ABC News reported, and is one of two that will arrive in the United States this week from the company. The second shipment is expected to touch down in Columbus, Ohio, on June 16, according to the outlet.

We extend our thanks to our retail partners, who will [endeavor] that our products quickly get to retail shelves in the States and stores in most need with the highest stock-out rates, Bubs founder and CEO Kristy Carr said in a statement to ABC News.

A Bubs Australia spokesperson told The Epoch Times: 95,000 tins were on board the first shipment to Los Angeles on Sunday and will be distributed to areas of greatest need by Kroger Co. and Albertsons. A second airfreight has been organised but the date, number of tins, destination and distribution plans have not yet been disclosed.

The Biden administration has said its been working hard to address the current nationwide shortages, which have been prompted by supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shortages were worsened by the shutdown of Abbott Nutritions plant in Sturgis, Michigan, amid a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigation into alleged bacterial contamination at the site.

The FDA has since reached an agreement with Abbott to reopen the plant and the company announced last weekend that it restarted formula production at the Sturgis facility.

However, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General announced in a statement on June 2 that its opening an investigation into the FDAs response to the issues at the Sturgis plant.

We will determine whether FDA followed the inspections and recall process for infant formula in accordance with Federal requirements, the statement reads.

That audit is expected to be completed in 2023.

Biden last week announced the sixth Operation Fly Formula flight, in which Delta Air Lines will move Kendamil formula free of charge to Logan Airport in Boston and Detroit Metro Airport from Heathrow Airport in London between June 20 and June 24.

However, some lawmakers, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), have criticized the administration over its response to nationwide shortages, pointing to the sheer incompetence of Joe Biden and House Democrats.

Biden said on June 4 that more than 127 million bottles of infant formula that have been deemed safe are heading to U.S. shelves as soon as possible.

Update: This article has been updated with a statement from Bubs Australia.
Actor Philip Baker Hall arrives at the premiere of Focus Features' 'Bad Words' at ArcLight Cinemas Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, Calif., on March 5, 2014. (Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

Philip Baker Hall, of Hard Eight, Seinfeld, Dies at 90

NEW YORKPhilip Baker Hall, the character actor of film and theater who starred in Paul Thomas Andersons first movies and who memorably hunted down a long-overdue library book in Seinfeld, has died. He was 90.

Holly Wolfle Hall, the actors wife of nearly 40 years, on Monday said Hall died Sunday surrounded by loved ones in Glendale, California. She said Hall had been well until a few weeks earlier, and spent his final days in warm spirits, reflecting on his life.

His voice at the end was still just as powerful, said Wolfle Hall. Her husband, she added, never retired from acting.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, Hall initially devoted himself more to theater in Los Angeles, after moving out in 1975, than TV and movies. While shooting bit parts in Hollywood (an episode of Good Times was one of his first gigs), Hall worked with the L.A. Actor Theatre. There he played Richard Nixon in the one-act play Secret Honor, a role he reprised in Robert Altmans 1984 film adaptation. Critic Pauline Kael wrote that Hall draws on his lack of a star presence and on an actors fears of his own mediocrity in a way that seems to parallel Nixons feelings.

Outside of theater, Hall was mostly doing guest roles in television. That changed when he was shooting a PBS program in 1992. Hall then encountered a production assistant in his early 20s named Paul Thomas Anderson. Anderson, believing Hall hadnt gotten his due in film, asked him to look at a script he had written for a 20-minute short film titled Cigarettes & Coffee.

After the $20,000 short made it into the Sundance Film Festival, Anderson expanded it into his feature debut, 1997s Hard Eight, which catapulted Halls career. In it, Hall played a wise and courteous itinerate gambler named Sydney who schools a young drifter (John C. Reilly) on the craft. In one indelible scene, Philip Seymour Hoffmans first with Anderson, a hot-shot gambler chides Hall as old-timer.

Anderson would cast Hall again in movies Boogie Nights and Magnolia.

To many, Hall was instantly recognizable for one of the most powerfully funny guest appearances on Seinfeld. In the 22nd episode of the sitcom in 1991, Hall played Lt. Joe Bookman, the library investigator who comes after Seinfeld for a years-overdue copy of Tropic of Cancer. Hall played him like a hardboiled noir detective, telling Seinfeld: Well, I got a flash for ya, Joy-boy: Party time is over.

Hall was brought back for the Seinfeld finale and by Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. David once said no other actor ever made him laugh more than Hall.

Among Halls many other credits were Michael Manns The Insider, as 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt, and Lars von Triers Dogville. Hall appeared in Say Anything, The Truman Show, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Zodiac, Argo, and Rush Hour.

Hall, who was married to Dianne Lewis for three years in the early 1970s, is survived by his wife, four daughters, four grandchildren and his brother.
Nevada Republican gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert on June 12 calls on supporters to redouble their efforts in the final days before the June 14 primary because they are very close to upsetting the establishment frontrunner, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo. (John Haughey/The Epoch Times)

Primary Underdogs: Nevada Establishment RINOs Dont Want Red Wave Newcomers in Their Tent

LAS VEGAS, Nev.Surging Republican voter registration numbers portend a swelling red tide set to sweep incumbent Nevada Democrats from the governors office, the U.S. Senate, and three of the states four congressional districts come November.

But former president Donald Trump missed the undercurrent driving the wave when he endorsed Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo for governor and former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt for U.S. senator in Nevadas June 14 primaries, their GOP rivals said.

I think it is unfortunate, because Joe Lombardo is going to get crushed, Republican gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert said during a June 12 rally in front of about 200 supporters in a shopping center circus tent two days before Election Day.

Lombardo is a walking gaffe machine who made a crucial error, he said, during a May 25 debate by declaring that for all practical purposes, this primary is over.

Pam Bennetts touts a No Show Joe placard on June 12 at a West Las Vegas circus tent rally for GOP gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert. Bennetts was among Gilbert supporters booted out of a June 11 rally for Trump-endorsed Republican governor contender Joe Lombardo. (John Haughey/The Epoch Times)

The sheriff was citing a 13-point mid-May poll lead over Gilbert, second amid a crowded GOP gubernatorial primary slate that includes former U.S. Sen. Dean Heller and North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee.

Gilbert, a former professional boxer and Reno attorney, insists henot Lombardorepresents the newcomers who are animating a GOP primary dust-up in the desert between establishment RINOs and we, the people. RINO is short for Republican in name only.

Were seeing all these new voters coming into the party who are not from the partys former mold, he said, adding that hes not just running for Republicans but for all the people, including Democrats defecting from a party that has gone too far to the left.

We, the people, are going to be strong on Election Day, Gilbert predicted, not only in the governors race but across the primaries, from congressional district contests to local school board elections.

Nevada GOP gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert and Third Congressional District hopeful Clark Bossert (R) told rally-goers on June 12 that they are the true America First candidates in their respective races and will outperform prognosticators in the June 14 primary. (John Haughey/The Epoch Times)

Also meeting and greeting rally-goers were GOP primary U.S. Senate candidate Sharelle Mendenhall, U.S. Third Congressional District candidates Noah Malgeri and Clark Bossert, and aspirants for Las Vegas City Council, Clark County Sheriff, and Clark County school board.

The slate of Republican primary contenders who gathered inside the stretched PVC/polyester-membrane Big Top anchored in the broiling blacktop of a discount stores parking lot on June 12 wasnt the roster of blue-ribbon Republicans touted by MAGAverse luminaries at Stoneys Rockin Country on June 10.

Donald Trump Jr. headlined a lineup that included former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, former Acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker, and former U.S. Department of Defense chief of staff Kash Patel, of EpochTVs Kashs Corner, in support of Lombardo and Laxalt.

Nevada Republican US Senate candidate Sharelle Mendenhall poses with supporters during a June 12 rally at the Poema Circus tent in West Las Vegas. (John Haughey/The Epoch Times)

Pam Bennetts was at Stoneys on the night of June 10 and was among the dozen Gilbert supporters booted out when they unfurled a Gilbert banner and began chanting Joey, Joey, Joey.

She was handing out No Show Joe placards on June 12 inside the tent.

No one wants Joe Lombardo, she said, noting that Gilbert has the state Republican Partys endorsement after outpolling Lombardo 967 in a Lincoln Day dinner straw vote.

But the partys old guard is rejecting the choice of the people and, instead, backing lackeys who will continue to do their bidding, Bennetts said.

Were tired of the establishment telling us who to vote for, she said. They dont like that we are for someone else and not voting for who they want us to vote for.

Gilbert campaign volunteer John Ballesteros, a California refugee who moved to Las Vegas from the Bay Area with the Raiders, was working the grill outside the tent amid furnace-blast Zephyrs.

This is grassroots. Theyre the establishment, he said. We wish we could have gotten an endorsement from The Donald. He has his reasons, but were stubborn rebels.

We can think for ourselves, which is what makes us rebels.

Paul Haack, also a Gilbert campaign volunteer, said that, unlike Gilbert and Mendenhall, Lombardo and Laxalt arent endorsed by CandidatesForFreedom.com and thus may be in for a surprise in the primaries.

We are the grassroots movement. We are the people, Haack said, calling Lombardo and Laxalt total RINOs.

Mendenhall said Nevadans are tired of voting for Republicans who are politicians who make promises when running and then vote against everything I believe in when in office.

She is one of six GOP U.S. Senate primary candidates in a race that has largely focused on Afghanistan War veteran Sam Browns surprising run against the heavily favored Laxalt.

That was by design, Mendenhall said, because she was blocked from debates and other events by both campaigns.

I was polling in the top three. I should have had a seat at the table, she said.

But voters have been receptive to her Mend The Nation message throughout the campaign, and Mendenhall predicted she would capture a significant share of primary voters because each one of these issues is human issues, not party issues.

Malgeri, an attorney, engineer, and U.S. Army Iraq War veteran, is among five Republicans vying for the partys nod in the Third Congressional District. The winner will face two-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Susie Lee (D-Las Vegas) in November.

Las Vegas real estate attorney April Becker is regarded as the front-runner in the race, but Malgeriwho arrived at the rally in shorts on a motorcyclesaid: I am the American First candidate. April is the establishment candidate.

He said Becker will sustain the old legacy GOP apparatus that wants to hang on to power while he and others coming into the party arent political partisans but a movement thats not Republican or Democratic, not liberal or conservative, but freedom.

Malgeri said hes among an emerging cadre of AfghanIraq war veterans running for office.

People dont want to send billions to Ukraine. The establishments of both parties wont let us pull back; they want a conflict, he said. The military-industrial complex is insatiable. That is not acceptable. Were not going to feed it anymore. Were done with these wars. Veterans are changing the face of politics.

Malgieri praised fellow CD 3 candidate Bossert as a nice guy, a smart guy before chiding the recently minted 30-year-old as too young for Congress.

Bossert, dressed in a white shirt and black pants because hed been speaking in churches that morning, acknowledged that he didnt change into his campaign T-shirt because I look like a 14-year-old in it.

A UNLV machine shop manager and Liberty University graduate, Bossert said hes among America First candidates who had difficulty getting off the ground because they werent ensconced with party apparatchiks.

He said Beckers campaign manager withdrew her from a debate with him.

But Gilbert has broken through, he said.

All the Joey followers are not very political. Joey made politics make sense to them the way no one else had done before, Bossert said. Theres a good chance hes going to take it.

Gilbert cited the economy, schools, the Second Amendment, water, parents rights, and medical privacy among his top issues.

Critics say Joey Gilbert is radical, Gilbert said. Hes too far right. Whats radical? People putting kids in masks for eight hours a day, thats radical.

The government has no business dictating to parents about their children, especially when Nevadas public school system is poorly educating the states children.

Our schools are the worst in the nation. It will be my hill to die on to improve education in this state by pushing a complete voucher program for all students, he said.

Gilbert said that as governor, hed aggressively support desalination development, weather manipulation, cloud seeding, and address issues in the Colorado River Compact that allows California to take eight times its allotment. That is going to stop.

He got the most rousing cheer when he declared that Nevada would have full constitutional carry on day one in office.

Gilbert said hes been traveling the state for 27 months and meeting with everyday Nevadans daily. On June 11, he was in Elko, Ely, and at a barbeque in Hawthorne. On June 12, he was at the Incline Village Airport at 4:45 a.m. to get to Las Vegas for a Philippine Independence Day Parade, a convoy, and the circus tent rally.

Its been a grueling grind, he told supporters, but thats what its going to take if the people are to defeat the establishment.

Were not done yet. We have two more days. Speak to 10 people and tell them to speak to 10 people, Gilbert said. Its not over. We can win this thing by 15 votes.
Pro-Abortion Protesters Block Streets Outside Supreme Court

WASHINGTONSome 80 pro-abortion protesters descended on Washington on June 13 to block streets and make known their opposition to the courts looming decision on Roe v. Wade.

Whose courts? Our courts! some of the protesters chanted, as they held a sign saying Our Home Is On Fire.

We are not your incubator. [expletive] the court and the legislature, another chant went.

Metropolitan Police Department officers and U.S. Capitol Police officers were standing on Monday outside the Supreme Court, which is situated near the U.S. Capitol, and walls were erected around the building in May. Protesters blocked several streets outside the court, and have said their intention was to block the entrances so justices could not enter. But heavy police presence at the rear of the court made it impossible for activists to reach the entrance.

No arrests appear to have been made, even though federal law prohibits picketing or parading near a building housing a federal court with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty.

The protests were organized by activist groups including SCOTUS 6 and Shut Down DC. The groups are riled up by the prospect that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that concluded access to abortion is a constitutional right. The decision limited how states can regulate abortion.

A draft ruling leaked in May suggested the court will rule in favor of Mississippi in Dobbs v. Jackson, in effect rolling back the 1973 decision.

It remains unclear when the finalized ruling in the case will be issued. The court released opinions on Monday, but not the one in question.

During the protest, multiple protesters threatened an Epoch Times reporter, who has been reporting on their pre-march meetings, including one in which they said they were not against violent actions.

The threatening protester said it would be a bad day when The Epoch Times sent someone to infiltrate a violent protest. Your job is to go to hell, said the threatening protester to the reporter. [Expletive] you, and your mother, and the horse your rode in on.

At first, protesters refused to answer questions about whether their movement supported violence.

I dont want to answer that, one protester said when asked if his group supported violence. Now is not the time for journalism. Now is a time to respect other people.

After repeated questions, the protester said he believed multiple direct quotes about supporting violence from other protesters were out of context.

I dont think the group is okay with violence, he said.

Ahead of the protests, Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee said the agency was increasing its police presence, as well as activating officers trained in handling civil disturbances.

In addition, we are working closely with our law enforcement, government, and community partners to ensure that all of these events are peaceful and our neighborhoods are safe, he said at a press briefing with Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat.

Contee warned attendees not to carry firearms and to leave enforcement of laws to the police.

U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves and Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. DAntuono of the FBI Washington Field Office, meanwhile, said that we will not tolerate violence, destruction, interference with government functions, or trespassing on government property.

We are committed to working closely with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to stop any individuals who intend to commit violence or criminal activity under the guise of carrying out a demonstration, they added in a joint statement on June 10.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

Jackson Elliott Reporter Follow Jackson Elliott reports on small-town America for The Epoch Times. He learned to write and seek truth at Northwestern University. He believes that the most important actions are small and that as Dostoevsky says, everyone is responsible for everyone and for everything. When he isnt writing, he enjoys running, reading, and spending time with friends. Contact Jackson by emailing jackson.elliott@epochtimes.us
Tracy Wing, mother of Riley Fairholm, responds to a question as Cesur Celik, father of Koray Kevin Celik, looks on during a news conference in Montreal on Sept. 16, 2019. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson)

Quebec Coroner Investigates Case of Teen Shot Dead by Provincial Police in 2018

A coroners inquest is underway in the death of a Quebec teen who was killed by provincial police four years ago while he was allegedly holding an air pistol.

Riley Fairholm, 17, was shot dead in the early morning of July 25, 2018, in a parking lot of an abandoned restaurant in Lac-Brome, Que., about an hour southeast of Montreal.

The shooting was investigated by Quebecs independent police watchdog, and the Crown decided not to lay charges.

The Crown says that it was Fairholm who had called 911 and that he was allegedly in crisis.

Police say they tried to negotiate with the teenager to drop the weapon before they opened fire.

The inquiry is being led by coroner Gehane Kamel at the courthouse in Sherbrooke, Que., and it will hear from civilian witnesses, Fairholms family, attending police officers and various experts.

Kamel says her inquest, scheduled to run two weeks, will shed light on Fairholms death and include recommendations to better protect human life.
Rep. Mullin: Threat to Kavanaugh Was Domestic Terrorism

Domestic terrorism is a threat to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of his attempted murder, according to Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.).

Mullin made the comments in an interview on NTDs Capitol Report shortly after 26-year-old Nicholas John Roske of California was arrested near Kavanaughs home on June 8, having planned to break into the property and murder the justice, according to officials.

According to court documents, Roske told officers after he was arrested that he had been compelled to act because of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed the right to abortion across the entire United States would be struck down.

The leaked document has prompted a wave of protests across America, while President Joe Biden, who has said that a womans right to choose is fundamental, has promised to look into possible executive orders to help shore up abortion rights.

Mullin said that Democratic lawmakers have often cited their concerns over domestic terrorism but questioned why this label only appears to apply to one group of people in particular: right-wing extremists, noting that the latest incident involving Trump-appointed Kavanaugh had not been labeled as such.

For the last two years, weve heard the Democrats talk about domestic terrorism and they only point to one group of people when this happens, they only point to the far right, and say this is domestic terrorism, said Mullin, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee.

We get briefed all the time by intelligence agencies talking about how theyre trying to root out domestic terrorism and they point to one group and its always the far right, Mullin continued. Well, if that same standard of domestic terrorism is going to apply, then why isnt this being called out domestic terrorism? You have Justice Kavanaugh who is trying to be intimidated because of his stance on Roe v. Wade, you have someone that literally got an assassination kit together, drove from California, all the way to Maryland, to Kavanaughs house.

And wheres everybody at? Mullin continued. No ones calling us.

Mullin said he believes that if a similar incident had occurred at the home of Biden-appointed Supreme Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Democrats would be bouncing up and down.

Its called domestic terrorism. And weve got to stop this, he said. And weve got to root this out. But the difference between the two is that this gentleman [Roske] represented their narrative.

Mullin also noted that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), in remarks delivered at a pro-abortion rally in March 2020, said that Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.

Schumer apologized for his comments the following day, acknowledging that he should not have used the words I used yesterday and that they didnt come out the way I intended to, while stating that the price he had been referring to was political in nature.

You call people out like this? Be consistent, Mullin said. But if the Democrats are so silent on the issue because it fits their narrative, then its not even its not just laughable, its dangerous.

The GOP lawmaker also pointed to the left media who he said have also remained silent when it comes to labeling the latest incident regarding Kavanaugh as domestic terrorism.

If this was a group that they thought was a Republican group or the far-right group, they would be calling it out, Mullin said. But theyre silent on it and the American people should see the hypocrisy and see right through this because it is absolutely dangerous that these people are leading the country.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

Katabella Roberts Follow Katabella Roberts is a reporter currently based in Turkey. She covers news and business for The Epoch Times, focusing primarily on the United States.
Gen. John Allen (ret. USMC), former Commander, International Security Assistance Forces, and Commander, U.S. ForcesAfghanistan, addresses delegates on the fourth and final day of the Democratic National Convention at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on July 28, 2016. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Retired Marine Gen. John Allen Resigns as Top Think Tanks President Amid Federal Probe

The head of the Brookings Institution resigned in the midst of a federal investigation into whether he lobbied the U.S. government on behalf of Qatar, according to a letter released on June 12.

Retired Marine Gen. John Allen, chief of the influential Washington-based think tank, wrote in his letter (pdf), While I leave the institution with a heavy heart, I know it is best for all concerned at this moment.

Allen didnt provide a direct explanation as to why he was leaving the organization.

A former four-star general who helped lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Allens letter comes about a week after new court filings show that the FBI seized his electronic data in the midst of an investigation.

In all this, I was particularly grateful for the opportunity to lead Brookings as its focus shifted to include an institutional commitment to race, social justice, and equity, he said, without elaborating.

The Brookings Institution released a June 12 statement thanking Allen for his contributions to Brookings, including his leadership in successfully guiding the institution during the pandemic, as well as his many years of service and sacrifice for our country, confirming his resignation.

Ted Gayer will continue to serve as acting president until his previously announced departure later this summer. Information about arrangements for ongoing interim managementas well as the search for a new presidentwill be forthcoming, the group said in its statement.

The think tank also didnt provide a reason for Allens departure.

Court filings allege that Allen engaged in efforts to help the Qatari government influence U.S. policy in 2017 amid a diplomatic crisis between the Gulf monarchy and neighboring countries. An FBI agent wrote in an affidavit in support of a search warrant that there was substantial evidence that Allen knew he broke a foreign lobbying law and made false statements.

Allen hasnt been charged with a crime, and he has previously denied any wrongdoing. He has declined to comment on the recent court filings to The Associated Press and other media outlets.

A spokesperson for Allen, Beau Phillips, told AP that Allen voluntarily cooperated with the governments investigation into this matter.

The recent affidavit alleges that Allen; Richard Olson, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates; Imaad Zuberi, a U.S. businessman; and Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, a high-ranking Qatari government official set up a plan to convince the United States to intervene, defuse the possibility of sanctions, and negotiate a resolution favorable to Qatar amid a diplomatic row between the country, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states after they accused Qatars government of allegedly supporting Iran in June 2017.

At about the same time, then-President Donald Trump had posted his support for the other states actions against Qatar: During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatarlook!

Specifically, federal officials say Allen lobbied then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster to have the White House adopt a more Qatar-friendly position. Allen allegedly wrote in a June 9, 2017, email to McMaster that the Qatari government wasasking for some help and wanted either the Trump administration or State Department to issue a statement to call on other Gulf countries to act in a more restrained manner, AP reported.

Allen didnt respond to a request for comment by press time.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies hearing on Capitol Hill on May 17, 2022. (Anna Rose Layden-Pool/Getty Images)

Rubio Ratchets Up Campaign to Bar Federal Worker Investments From Going to Chinese Firms

News Analysis

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) isnt letting up in his campaign of pressuring Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) officials against investing the savings of members of the U.S. military and civilian workforce in Chinese firms.

In an exclusive release to The Epoch Times late on June 13, Rubio made public a hard-hitting, fact-filled, 3 1/2-minute YouTube video titled Are You Retiring in China? Produced by his staff, it makes the case that such investments only benefit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which controls the increasingly aggressive and hostile regime in Beijing led by Xi Jinping.

We know these Chinese companies do not play by the rules. There is absolutely no reason the retirement savings of service-members and federal employees should be funding companies working with the Chinese government and military, Rubio told The Epoch Times.

The FRTIB and its Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) is a vehicle established by a 1984 reform proposed by President Ronald Reagan to convert the federal career civil services main retirement program from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution approach, such as those then being widely adopted in the corporate world.

Billions of dollars have since been invested by federal workers in the TSP, making it a potentially lucrative target for sellers of indexed investment tools made up of multiple countries from a wide variety of industries.

Rubios new video comes despite his June 2 success while working with Republican Senate colleagues in gaining a promise from President Joe Bidens four nominees to the FRTIB that they wouldnt approve any investment of military or government employee thrift savings in Chinese firms.

A Rubio aide also pointed to a recent Financial Times report that observed, For Xi, funding Chinas transformation into a global centre of high-tech innovation is central to national defense. In a speech published last year in the countrys top journal of Communist party theory, he warned that only by grasping key core technologies in our own hands can we fundamentally guarantee national economic security, national defense security and other securities.

In the video, Rubio is shown in segments from multiple speeches on the Senate floor, in media interviews, and in public addresses explaining that sending the retirement savings of soldiers and civil servants to Chinese firms only strengthens Americas most dangerous international adversary.

It is a fact that when you are doing business with a Chinese company, you are ultimately doing business with the Chinese Communist Party, Rubio tells a business association in one segment.

In another clip from a Senate floor speech, Rubio tells colleagues, Federal employees, including members of the House and Senate, your retirement dollars are helping capitalize companies that are actively trying to put American industry out of business forever.

In a third segment, Rubio says, This is not a political game, it has nothing to do with that, its not about politics. Do we not understand where we are headed? You have a country that is actively saying We are going to displace you, we are going to be the most powerful country in the world, and we are going to do that at your expense.

Rubio has from the start been fighting the move to allow such investments, which began in 2015 under President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Last month, Rubio, joined by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), warned FRTIB Acting Chairman David Jones that the board shouldnt implement its proposed new Mutual Fund Window, which would enable investments in multiple Chinese firms, as well as firms based in other countries that represent serious national security problems for the United States.

Also warning the FRTIB at the same time was a bipartisan duo from the House: Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.).

U.S. service-members and other federal employees would likely be shocked to learn that the FRTIB is unaware of which companies make up these approved funds or what risk those companies pose, the senators wrote in a May 24 letter.

They do not want their retirement dollars to underwrite the development of the CCPs advanced weapons systems and military modernization. They do not want to be implicated in sponsoring genocide of the Uyghur people, equipping concentration camps, and trafficking in forced labor.

They do not want to invest in an opaque mutual fund platform in which Chinese companies do not adhere to federal securities laws or submit to adequate disclosure requirements. When they invest through TSP, they rightly expect the FRTIB will protect them and their investments from these types of dangerous investments.

In response to Rubio and the other members of Congress, the four Biden nominees agreed to oppose such investments.

We agree that it is unfitting for Americans to invest in companies from China or elsewhere that undermine U.S. national security, the nominees told Rubio, Cotton, and Tuberville in a June 2 letter. Congress provided the authority to the Department of Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to ban any American from making such investments.

We fully support OFACs ability to exercise its authority and we commit that any company banned by OFAC, whether based in China or elsewhere, would not be included in any TSP fund.

The four Biden nominees are Dana Bilyeu, Leona Bridges, Michael Gerber, and Stacie Olivares. If confirmed by the Senate, the nominees will join the five-member FRTIB. Rubio, who had previously put a hold on the nominations, said on June 2 that hes now removed his hold so the Senate can complete its consideration.
Ukrainian service members fire a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launch system, near the town of Lysychansk, Luhansk region, Ukraine, on June 12, 2022. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

Russian Artillery Pounds Sievierodonetsk

KYIVRussian forces swarmed into the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, a Ukrainian official said on Monday.

Pro-Moscow separatists claimed the last bridge out of Sievierodonetsk had been destroyed and Ukrainian defenders there must now surrender or die. Ukraine said there was still another way out although it was severely damaged.

Regional governor Sergei Gadai said fighting was raging and Ukrainian forces were defending building by building.

Russian forces now controlled about 70 percent of Sievierodonetsk, he said, and were destroying it quarter by quarter in one of the bloodiest assaults since they launched their invasion on Feb. 24.

Russians continue to storm the city, having a significant advantage in artillery they have somewhat pushed back the Ukrainian soldiers, Gaidai, who is governor of the Luhansk region that includes Sievierodonetsk, said on Monday.

Russian artillery fire pummelled the Azot chemical plant, where hundred of civilians were sheltering, he claimed.

Gaidai said the twin city of Lysychansk across the Siverskyi Donets river to the west was also being shelled by Russian forces, and a six-year-old child had been killed there.

Reuters could not independently confirm that account.

A man pulls a cart at the shelled Barabashovo market, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on June 12, 2022. (Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

Russias RIA news agency quoted a pro-Moscow separatist spokesperson, Eduard Basurin, as saying the last bridge over the river linking the two cities had been destroyed on Sunday. Ukrainian troops were effectively blockaded in Sievierodonetsk and should surrender or die, Basurin said.

Gaidai also said one crossing was destroyed on Sunday, but there was still another half destroyed bridge remaining, though it could not be used for heavy vehicles.

If after new shelling the bridge collapses, the city will truly be cut off. There will be no way of leaving Sievierodonetsk in a vehicle.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also said in his nightly video address on Sunday that severe fighting was ongoing in the Donbass, literally for every metre.

In Sievierodonetsk, the last pocket of Ukrainian land held in the Luhansk region, Ukrainian and Russian forces were both suffering heavy losses, Roman Vlasenko, head of Sievierodonetsk district administration, told local TV.

Russia issued the latest of several recent reports saying it had destroyed U.S. and European arms and equipment, hoping to send the message that delivering more would be futile.

Russias defense ministry said high-precision air-based missiles had struck near the railway station in Udachne northwest of Donetsk, hitting equipment that had been delivered to Ukrainian forces. There was no immediate word from the Ukrainian side.

Moscow has criticized the United States and other nations for sending Ukraine weapons, threatening to strike new targets if the West supplied long-range missiles.

By Natalia Zinets and Maria Starkova
Russian Forces Seize Center of Holdout City in Luhansk Province: Ukraine Officials

Ukraines military acknowledged for the first time on June 13 that Russias military had taken over the key Donbas city of Severodonetsk, located in Ukraines Luhansk Province.

In the Severodonetsk direction, the enemy, with the support of artillery, carried out assault operations in the city of Severodonetsk, had partial success, pushed our units away from the city center, the fighting continues, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement.

Also on June 13, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said fighting is raging near Severodonetsk, saying that Russian and Ukrainian forces are fighting for every meter of the territory, according to CNBC. Last week, he said the strategic city could dictate the outcome of the conflict, which started on Feb. 24.

The city is located in the center of the Donbas region, which has seen sporadic fighting since pro-Russian groups took over parts of Donetsk and Luhansk following a color revolution in Kyiv in 2014.

The situation remains difficult. Fighting continues, but unfortunately, most of the city is under Russian control. Some positional battles are taking place in the streets, Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Ukrainian Luhansk region, told CNN on June 13.

Russian officials have signaled that a key goal of the invasion is to connect the Crimean Peninsula with the Donbas region, which borders Russia. Moscow has pulled back most of its forces from western Ukraine and the Kyiv region in a bid to take more territory in the eastern and southern portions of the country.

Unfortunately, enemy artillery is simply dismantling floor-to-floor buildings that are used as shelters. In this sense, its difficult because the enemy will be knocked out of one street, and then they will start dismantling neighborhoods house by house with tanks, artillery, and grads, Haidai said.

Pro-Moscow separatists said the last bridge out of Severodonetsk had been destroyed, cutting off the defenders escape route. Ukraine said there was still another way out, although that route was severely damaged, Reuters reported.

Ukraine has issued increasingly urgent calls for more Western heavy weapons to help defend Severodonetsk, which Kyiv says could hold the key to the battle for the eastern Donbas region and the course of the war, now in its fourth month.

Apart from constant artillery, aircraft, and rocket bombing, there is a real risk that the defenders in Severodonetsk might be cut off from Lysychansk if the third bridge linking the two cities is destroyed, said Damien Magrou, spokesperson for the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine, which has forces in Severodonetsk.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Rwanda Justice Minister Johnston Busingye waves as he leaves the Rwanda High Commission in London after a court in Britain dropped an extradition case against Rwanda's Intelligence chief, General Karenzi Karake on Aug. 10, 2015. (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

Rwandan Ambassador Defends Plan to Receive Illegal Immigrants From UK Ahead of 1st Deportation Flight

Immigrants deported to Rwanda from the UK will find safety and security and be treated with dignity and respect, the African countrys high commissioner to the UK said on Sunday.

It comes as charities are appealing the English High Courts decision not to ground the first flight to Rwanda thats due to take off on Tuesday.

The British government signed a 120 million ($146 million) deal in April allowing the UK to put some illegal immigrants on one-way flights to Rwanda, where they can be granted asylum or given access to other routes of settling down.

But the plan has been met with fierce opposition, with charities trying to remove people from the planned flights and stop the flights altogether.

In Twitter updates on Monday, campaign group Care4Calais said the number of people boarding the flight on Tuesday had been reduced from 31 to 10.

In an article published in The Sunday Telegraph, Johnston Busingye, Rwandas new high commissioner to the UK, defended his countrys motives for signing the deal and its ability to provide safe haven to those in need.

It follows media reports that alleged Prince Charles had described the UKRwanda deal as appalling.

Calling Rwanda one of the most welcoming nations in the world, Busingye said the countrys history meant it has a deep connection to those seeking safety and opportunity in a new land.

According to Busingye, Rwanda has helped the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with evacuating migrants from Libya and has provided refuge to more than 130,000 refugees from neighbouring countries, as well as people who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban took power in the South Asian country.

Rwandas story since the Genocide against the Tutsi is one of humanitarian interventionRwanda is consistently one of the top contributors to United Nations peacekeeping missions. Partnering with the UK to address a global issue involving human beings in peril is in keeping with our record, Busingye wrote.

He said those who arrive in Rwanda will find safety and security, and be treated with dignity and respect.

He promised to provide asylum seekers with suitable temporary accommodation when their applications are processed and said they will be free to come and go as they please.

He also said unsuccessful applicants will be offered a legal pathway to stay and the authorities will help them integrate into Rwandan society.

The UK government said the tactic is aimed at breaking the business model of people smugglers, who ferry illegal immigrants to the island of Great Britain from Europe with flimsy boats across the dangerous English Channel.

But a lawyer representing two people on the governments deportation list and three organisations challenging the plan said the Home Offices view that Rwanda is a safe third country for asylum claims was predicated on a complete misunderstanding of the UNHCRs views.

Appealing the High Courts refusal to ground Tuesdays flight, Raza Husain QC said the UNHCR was concerned about deficiencies in Rwandas process including arbitrary denial of access to the process, lack of interpreters, absence of training and low numbers of eligibility officers, systemically biased decision-making especially in claims from Middle-Eastern applicants, absence of reasons for rejection, and inadequate appeals processes.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson also defended the plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda, saying the government is trying to stop the business model of criminal gangs who are preying on people moving them across the Channel in unseaworthy vessels, risking their lives, and sometimes costing their lives.
Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett stands during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court in Washington on April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

SCOTUS: Chinese Manufacturer Cannot Use US Courts to Press American Firm for Evidence

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on June 13 that a Chinese manufacturer is not allowed to use the U.S. legal system to compel the production of evidence in a private arbitration taking place overseas.

The high court held that federal district courts are unable to compel discovery in an arbitration case outside the United States governed by a private organization, even when an international treaty makes discovery a possibility, unless the nations in the treaty intended the arbitration panel to possess governmental authority.

The decision comes in a complex case pitting a Hong Kong-based company against a U.S. automobile parts manufacturer.

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.

Livonia, Michigan-based ZF Automotive manufactures automotive parts and industrial technology.

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.

But the Supreme Court granted the petition in ZF Automotive U.S. Inc. v. Luxshare Ltd., court file 21-401, on Dec. 10, 2021, sidestepping the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit before it had ruled on 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.

Oral arguments in the ZF Automotive case, which was consolidated with AlixPartners v. Fund for Protection of Investors Rights, court file 21-518, were heard on March 23.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion (pdf) for a unanimous Supreme Court.

Congress has long allowed federal courts to assist foreign or international adjudicative bodies in evidence gathering, Barrett wrote.

The current statute, 28 U.S.C. 1782, permits district courts to order testimony or the production of evidence for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal. These consolidated cases require us to decide whether private adjudicatory bodies count as foreign or international tribunals. They do not. The statute reaches only governmental or intergovernmental adjudicative bodies, and neither of the arbitral panels involved in these cases fits that bill.

Governments may give official authority to an ad hoc arbitration panel, but just because nations agree in a treaty to submit to arbitration before it doesnt mean the body possesses governmental authority, according to Barnett.

The relevant question is whether the nations intended that the ad hoc panel exercise governmental authority. And here, all indications are that they did not, she wrote.

Counsel for ZF Automotive, Roman Martinez V, was pleased with the ruling.

We are thrilled with todays decision, Martinez said in an emailed statement.

As the Court made clear, Section 1782 is carefully limited to authorize discovery only for use in governmental and intergovernmental adjudicatory bodies, not purely private arbitrations abroad. This opinion will ensure that parties to foreign commercial arbitrations will not be able to improperly take advantage of discovery in U.S. courts and will have immediate impact on a broad range of current and future international arbitrations.

Alex Yanos, counsel for the Fund for Protection of Investors Rights, told The Epoch Times by email: No comment from our end.

The Epoch Times also reached out to counsel for Luxshare, Andrew Rhys Davies, but didnt receive a reply as of press time.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 24, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Sen. McConnell Praises Senate Gun Control Agreement

The top Republican in the Senate on June 12 praised the bipartisan agreement reached on gun control.

The compromises announced hours earlier, including giving funding to states that impose so-called red flag laws, show the value of dialogue and cooperation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement.

McConnell after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas on May 24 asked Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to work with Democrats to come up with legislation that would address what he sees as issues with the current system.

McConnell said he was glad Cornyn and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) are continuing to make headway in their discussions, adding, I appreciate their hard work on this important issue.

He also signaled that he has not yet decided whether to back the proposal, which has yet to be outlined in a bill.

I continue to hope their discussions yield a bipartisan product that makes significant headway on key issues like mental health and school safety, respects the Second Amendment, earns broad support in the Senate, and makes a difference for our country, McConnell said.

Cornyn and Murphy, along with nine senators each from their respective parties, said they reached a commonsense, bipartisan proposal to protect Americas children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country. According to the group, the proposal includes requiring a period of investigation for any prospective gun buyers under the age of 21, penalties for criminals who illegally straw purchase and traffic guns, and funding for safety measures at schools.

The Democrats and nominal independents in the group in addition to Murphy are Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D- N.J.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Angus King (I-Maine), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).

The Republicans in the group in addition to Cornyn are Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.).

Legislation in the Senate needs 60 or more votes to bypass the filibuster. The upper chamber currently has 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats and nominal independents who regularly caucus with the Democrats.

Besides the GOP members who helped hammer out the agreement, few have commented on the announcement, and none have appeared to signal opposition to it.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), one of the few, said in a statement: I will always stand on the side of the Second Amendment, law-abiding Americans, due process, and justice. Those who commit acts of rampage violence are criminals who must be stopped. I look forward to reviewing this legislation.

Many Democrat senators, on the other hand, said theyd back the legislation, even as they work for more restrictions.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said he was looking forward to working with colleagues to shape and pass this commonsense legislation, adding, Make no mistake, this is only the tip of the iceberg on what Congress can and *must* do to end gun violence.

We have an opportunity to both reduce gun violence in our communities and improve our mental health systems, and we must take it, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said. More is needed, but these reforms will save lives and improve public safety.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.Retired businessman Michael Parrott had heard a lot about Shen Yun Performing Arts, more than enough to inspire him to travel with a friend from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis to watch the company perform at the Clowes Memorial Hall.

We came a long way to see [Shen Yun], said Mr. Parrot, who had invited his friend Jane.

Mr. Parrott is the former owner and chairman of several businesses, including Grange Insurance, Group Delphi, and Highmark Technologies. He has 50 years of achievements in business and community service.

New York-based Shen Yun is bringing back to the world Chinas ancient cultural arts in the form of classical Chinese dance, storytelling, and music that have all but vanished under the communist regimes rule.

I enjoyed everything, Jane said. The dancing, the music, the history, the color. It was just very uplifting, and spiritually, very soothing.

Jane described herself as a very spiritual person.

I felt that the Chinese people can carry long-held beliefs forward through this beautiful antrum of dance and music, [its] magnificent because it just spreads to everyone, she said.

Shen Yun is translated as the beauty of divine beings dancing, in reference to the deep, spiritual nature of Chinese culture. The classical Chinese dances presented by Shen Yun narrate Chinas 5,000-year history, while ethnic regional dances take the audience on journeys from the Mongolian plains to the Tibetan plateaus.

Mr. Parrott said he had been swept away by Shen Yun. The colors were resplendent and the dancers were magnificent  [the] music extraordinary. And the backdrops and all the dynamics, I loved it.

He attributed his joy and feelings of being very uplifted to the combination of the music, color, dance, and backdrops. The performance exuded a positive spirituality that Mr. Parrott said was touching.

It gave me a little additional insight into ancient China, he said. It was a wonderful performance and I cant believe that [Shen Yun does] different performances each year, so well have to come back and see the next one.

Pastor Appreciates Shen Yuns Emphasise on Truthfulness

Also in the audience were Mrs. Cynthia Haney, Mr. Bryant Haney, and Miss Erin Haney.

Mr. Haney, a pastor from the Spirit of Joy Church, remarked how he appreciated the performances emphasise on the virtue of truthfulness.

Thats kind of rare nowadays. We dont always get truth, and so to hear [people whose] mission in life is to speak the truth, is a wonderful character trait and belief. So that meant a lot to me in a world that is losing that [ability], he said.

[The performers] love and their compassion and their dedication to faith is wonderful. I love their message regarding atheism and evolutionismthat was refreshing and its a statement of the truth, and often thats not heard, so that was really a fantastic moment, he said.

Mrs. Cynthia Haney and Mr. Bryant Haney attended Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Clowes Memorial Hall, Butler Arts Center, Indianapolis, Ind., on June 12, 2022. (Charlie Lu/The Epoch Times)

Mr. Haney had praise for the dancers and erhu soloist.

The precision of the dancers and the way in which they used their costumes to blend into the dance was amazing. The Chinese traditional two-string violin, the erhu, was also fantastic, he said.

Miss Haney appreciated the diligence of Shen Yuns performers. I used to be a dancer. I can certainly appreciate all of the work and talent that goes into [Shen Yun], she said.

She said she also learned something new.

What really impressed me was the erhu. I had heard of this instrument [but] Id never gotten to really hear it play or hear how special it was to the tone of Chinese music. You could feel your emotions just fluctuate as the piece progressed and its amazing that here, an instrument with only two strings, could accomplish something like that, she explained.

I havent seen any great things happen through communism. Its repressive and its so nice to see people come and speak the truth, Mr. Haney said. I loved the message.

Reporting by NTD Television and Diane Cordemans.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
Dr. Rob and Sharon Roloff attended Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Butler Arts Center in Indianapolis, Ind., on June 11, 2022. (Stacey Tang/The Epoch Times)

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.The worlds premier Chinese classical dance and music performance, Shen Yun Performing Arts, touched the hearts of its audience at the Butler Arts Center on June 11.

In the audience was Sharon Roloff, a medical assistant, and Dr. Rob Roloff, a minister in the Lutheran Church, both of whom were immediately struck by the very colourful performance. Dr. Roloff expressed his admiration for the gymnastics prowess of the dancers and the meaningful storylines.

Shen Yun portrays Chinas history and culture through story-based classical and ethnic dances. Based in New York, the companys mission is to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilisation from the pre-communist era.

While the company presents well-known and cherished legends and tales from China, it also portrays the modern-day persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Dafa, an ancient belief whose values are based on universal values from the Buddhist and Taoist traditions.

Dr. Roloff commented after watching the mini-drama Insanity During the End of Days, a story about a father who is a surgeon in a Chinese hospital that carries out forced live organ harvesting for profit.

That [Falun Dafa is being persecuted] in China concerns me because I see the same sort of thing happening here in America to Christians. I think I see shadows of that coming to America. I see it growing  that intolerance of a religion that isnt sanctioned by the government, Dr. Roloff said.

However, he said he had always loved Chinese culture.

Mrs. Roloff agreed with the tenets of Falun Dafa, a belief centered on the values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, and wanted to support them. I think we can all relate to this story, she said.

The striving for excellence was also a quality that was expressed by the performers, she said.

Dr. Roloff noted that those values were expressed through the color, dancing, choreography and costuming in Shen Yun.

I really appreciate how theyre integrating the background and it conveys [that] life is a beautiful thing. Life can be a very colorful, beautiful thing, he said.

I think when you believe in a Creator, you believe that the Creator created a beautiful world, people, kindness. I believe in that, Mrs. Roloff said. When you believe in evolution and do not believe in a Creator, you think very differently.

Shen Yun Amazes Former Ethnic Dancer

Also watching Shen Yun that evening were Paul and Michelle Moore. Mr. Moore is an order writer for Meyer Produce and Mrs. Moore is a molecular biologist.

Shen Yun was beautiful, Mrs. Moore said. She loved the storytelling and also remarked how the dance Insanity During the End of Days touched her emotionally.

Very sad, very sad, and based in reality, she noted. Very potent and the fact that  [the Chinese people] cant watch their own dances in China is very sad.

While Shen Yun can be seen in most parts of the world, it has been banned from touring in China by the ruling community party.

Mrs. Moore praised Shen Yuns artistry.

I was a dancer myself, and just the way that they use their costumes as part of the dance, its just amazing, she said. The costumes are as much a part of the [performance] as their movements.

Mrs. Moore was formerly a Polish ethnic dancer and was interested in the similarities and differences between the dance styles. She also commented that she had never seen a backdrop play such a large part in a performance.

The companys backdrop technology, which involves traditional stagecraft and 3D projection, creates a magical impression with actors mysteriously disappearing off and reappearing on the stage.

Mr. Moore said he enjoyed the dance that portrayed the legend of the Monkey King. This tale comes from the Chinese classic novel, Journey to the West, which follows the trials and tribulations of a Buddhist monk who during the Tang dynasty journeyed to India to obtain the Buddhist religious texts or sutras.

[It is] the story of how he fed his people and it was very inspiring, he said.

Shen Yun portrays messages about divinity, as the ancient Chinese believed that heavenly beings and mortals once co-existed in harmony and that the purpose of mankind is to return to the Creator.

I am a spiritual person, and I believe that we need more of [Shen Yun], Mr. Moore said.

Reporting by Stacey Tang and Diane Cordemans.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
A murder plot against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was unraveled after police arrested an armed suspect who confessed he was angry over pending court decisions on Roe v. Wade and gun control. The Biden administration has allowed protests against the justices, including at their homes, despite the acts violating the law; and Democrat leaders have largely encouraged the protests. The issue is raising questions over a double standard on what constitutes extremism, as the term is being increasingly used politically.

Meanwhile, gas prices are reaching historic levels as they near $5 per gallon nationwide. The rising costs are having a trickle-down effect on everything from shipping prices to public services, and the impact on policing is now coming into focus. Some police departments in the United States are being forced to handle calls remotely, as theyve already burned through their annual gas budgets.

In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp well discuss these stories and others, and answer questions from the audience.

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Supreme Court Wont Lower Bar for Immigration Detainees to Sue Government

In a pair of rulings on June 13, the Supreme Court made it harder for those held in immigration detention to bring legal challenges.

In Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez, court file 19-896, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote (pdf) for a unanimous court that the federal government is not required to conduct a bond hearing for noncitizens detained for six months on immigration-related grounds. (Justice Stephen Breyer filed a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.)

In the other case, Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, court file 20-322, the court ruled 63 that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) doesnt give federal district courts jurisdiction to consider detainees requests for injunctive relief in class actions. The opinion (pdf) was by Justice Samuel Alito. Sotomayor and her two liberal colleagues partially dissented from the ruling.

At issue was whether Zadvydas v. Davis, a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that held federal law provides an implied time limit of six months for the immigration detention of noncitizens when their removal isnt reasonably foreseeable, applies to detainees who have been ordered to be removed from the country.

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor 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)

Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of the Immigration Law Reform Institute, hailed the new court decisions.

The detention of removable aliens, whether they are illegal aliens or criminal aliens, is fundamentally different from detention as a sentence for a crime, Wilcox told The Epoch Times by email.

The United States is not holding them prisoner against their will. Rather, it is allowing them to remain in the United States while they challenge their deportation in the courts, and setting the conditions for their remaining here. If they dont like those conditions, they can always leave detention and return to their native land. We are pleased that the Court reached the right result here, and squelched these lawsuits.

In the Johnson case, Mexican national Antonio Arteaga-Martinez was the respondent. He was deported from the United States in July 2012 but reentered the country two months later. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a warrant for his arrest in 2018.

ICE reinstated the prior removal order and detained him under the INA. Arteaga-Martinez applied for withholding of removal, which means that at the conclusion of the adjudication process an immigration judge signs a deportation order and then informs the government that it may not carry it out. The removal of the person is said to be withheld, leaving the individual in a kind of legal limbo. In such cases, the government may still deport the person to another country if it agrees to accept him.

Arteaga-Martinez also sought relief under the Convention Against Torture, based on his fear that he would be persecuted or tortured if returned to Mexico. An asylum officer ruled in his favor and the government referred the case to an immigration judge for a withholding-only proceeding. After four months of detention, Arteaga-Martinez challenged his detention.

A federal district court ordered the government to hold a bond hearing for Arteaga-Martinez and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit affirmed the ruling. At the bond hearing that followed, the immigration judge ordered his release pending resolution of his application for withholding of removal, a decision that the judge has yet to make.

The 3rd Circuit was out of line, Sotomayor wrote for the court.

Section 1231 of the INA does not address or even hint that the detainee is entitled to the relief the 3rd Circuit granted him, the justice wrote. The section provides only that a noncitizen ordered removed may be detained beyond the removal period and if released, shall be subject to [certain] terms of supervision.

On its face, the statute says nothing about bond hearings before immigration judges or burdens of proof, nor does it provide any other indication that such procedures are required, Sotomayor wrote.

The section cannot be read to incorporate the procedures imposed by the courts below as a matter of textual command.

In the Garland ruling, Alito wrote extensively about the meaning of legal terms involved in the case and found that the federal district courts exceeded their jurisdiction in allowing the litigation to proceed as a class action.

Section 1252 of the INA, according to Alito, generally prohibits lower courts from entering injunctions that order federal officials to take or to refrain from taking actions to enforce, implement, or otherwise carry out the specified statutory provisions.

The court reversed the appeals court and remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

In Sotomayors dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, she lamented the courts finding that lower federal courts are powerless to issue classwide injunctive relief against the Executive Branchs violation of noncitizens rights under several provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

The Supreme Court reaches this conclusion in a purportedly textualist opinion that, in truth, elevates piecemeal dictionary definitions and policy concerns over plain meaning and context. I respectfully dissent from the Courts blinkered analysis, which will leave many vulnerable noncitizens unable to protect their rights.

University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman, who filed a brief to support respondent Esteban Aleman Gonzalez, was disappointed by the courts ruling in his case.

Because immigration detainees, unlike criminal defendants, have no right to counsel, the decision is just completely unworkable and unrealistic.

It makes it impossible to ensure that everyone who is potentially entitled to a bond hearing will get one, she told Time.
BUFFALO, N.Y.After many years of wanting to see Shen Yun Performing Arts, Yaron Perry, a lung surgeon at the University of Buffalo, and Anna Blumental-Perry, a biology researcher at the University, were finally able to attend a matinee performance at Sheas Buffalo Theatre in Buffalo, N.Y. on June 11.

I think theyre amazing, Dr. Perry said. I can tell you, weve been to so many shows and competitionsthis is on a different level!

The art should speak for itself; it speaks for them and speaks for what theyre representing, he said. As excellent as they are, [Shen Yun] highly represents their mission  to keep justice and to keep the traditions of the Chinese people.

Based in New York, Shen Yun is the worlds premier classical Chinese dance company. With a mission to revive and preserve Chinas 5,000-year-old traditional culture, the company presents authentic folk dances, solo performances, and story-based, classical Chinese dances that tell the tales from ancient times to the modern-day.

Accompanied by a live orchestra that blends ancient Chinese instruments into a Western orchestra, Shen Yun journeys through heavenly realms and stories of heroic legends that shaped the culture of Chinas divinely inspired middle kingdom.

According to the companys website, this years Shen Yun performance demonstrates China before communism.

Mrs. Perry said: Its interesting to see that somebody preserved this tradition that is not allowed [in China], but [thats] so beautiful and based on so many years of learning, developing, and improving.

Dr. Perry was very pleased to experience the representation of China predating communism and the spirituality and values that are missing in the current regime. He found it amazing that Shen Yun not only has the desire to revive the old, innocent, and real culture of ancient China but they also have the power and talent to do it.

I can see back to the foundations, to the religions.  I think theres a lot of things there that are really missing, especially after the communism takeover, he said. Im very sorry that they cant come back to their own land because of that, which is really a shame.

Materialism  is meaningless compared to this eternal justice or eternal life, he added, which can give some hope to the people that something better can happen.

In addition to representing myths and legends, Shen Yun presents story-based dances portraying the persecution of Falun Dafa, a meditation discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

In 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a persecution campaign against the spiritual practice, and practitioners have since been subjected to unprecedented imprisonment, torture, and abuse. One dance piece from this years Shen Yun program depicts the state-orchestrated crime of forced organ harvesting from Falun Dafa prisoners in China.

As a thoracic surgeon, Mr. Perry said he had traveled to China and was familiar with the hospitals in Beijing and Nanjing.

Whats projected here is  familiar for me. I think its a shame that medical professions are dealing with such a discrepancyinstead of taking care of the patients and the people, they take care of different interestswhich is very, very bad, he said.

Reporting by NTD and Jennifer Schneider.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
The Taiwan flag at the Embassy of Taiwan in San Salvador on Aug. 21, 2018. (Marvin Recinos/AFP via Getty Images)

Taiwan Threatens WTO Action After China Stops Grouper Fish Imports

TAIPEITaiwans government threatened to take Beijing to the World Trade Organization on Saturday after China suspended the import of grouper fish from the island saying it had detected banned chemicals, the latest agricultural spat between the two.

Last year China suspended imports of pineapples, sugar apples, and wax apples from Taiwan, citing concerns about pests, which Taiwan strongly denied.

Relations between Taipei and Beijing, which claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory, are at their lowest in decades, with the Chinese regime increasing political and military pressure to get the island to accept its sovereignty.

Chinas customs administration said late Friday it had repeatedly detected banned chemicals in grouper from Taiwan and would suspend their import from Monday in order to prevent risks and protect the health and lives of consumers.

Taiwans Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung dismissed the accusation, saying there was nothing wrong with the fish and they would provide data to the Chinese regime and request a response from them.

If the Chinese regime does not respond then Taiwan wont rule out taking the issue to the WTO, he told reporters.

Cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng said that the Chinese regime has been repeatedly boycotting and blocking Taiwanese agricultural and aquatic products in a manner inconsistent with international practices.

This not only harms relations between Taiwan and China but also makes the Taiwanese people even more disgusted by the Chinese Communist Party authorities wanton suppression of Taiwan.

While most Taiwanese grouper is consumed at home, China accounts for some 90 percent of the exported product.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, speaks during a rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on June 9, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Teachers Union Head: If Teachers Cant Dictate Curriculum, They Cant Be Trusted With Guns

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten has weighed in against the idea of arming teachers, arguing that if teachers cant dictate what children learn at school, they cant be entrusted with guns, either.

Weingarten spoke on Jun. 11 at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, an event organized by a group of survivors of the 2018 attack at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. She was among a slate of speakers advocating for tighter gun laws, which they claim would prevent tragedies such as those in Parkland and more recently, Uvalde, Texas.

During her speech, Weingarten pointed to two ideas that recently gained a lot of attention. One is that teachers who wish to carry guns at school should be able to do so. The other is that parents should be able to review books going into school libraries and take out the ones they deem inappropriate.

Weingarten argued that these ideas contradict each other.

Teachers want to be teaching, not holstering firearms. We need fewer guns in schools, not more of them, she told the audience, saying that schools need to be armed with books, not bulletproof vests.

The same folks who say we should carry a gun in the classroom they are the ones saying they dont trust us to pick out the appropriate books and curriculum for our nations kids, she continued. So I ask these politicians this: If we have the judgment to shoot a bad guy, why dont we have the judgment to plan our lessons?

Weingarten has been pushing back against legislative efforts aimed at giving parents the ability to review and potentially object to curricula and teaching materials being taught to their children at school. These efforts, commonly called curriculum transparency bills, are largely a response to the increasing awareness among parents of the leftist race and gender ideologies being injected into public education.

In April, the union boss denied the notion that some public school teachers are indoctrinating children with leftist views on issues like race and gender. She dismissed those who say otherwise as spreaders of propaganda and misinformation.

Were not indoctrinating. Were not grooming, Weingarten said during an interview on the Rick Smith podcast. Were actually teaching honest history, trying to help our kids recover.

That being said, the AFT has a record of defending The New York Times controversial 1619 Project, the historical accuracy of which has been repeatedly criticized by historians and leading scholars in the field of U.S. history, including fact-checkers hired by the NY Times. The union also invited Ibram X. Kendi to speak at its biennial summit last July, during which the prominent critical race theory advocate told the audience that denying being racist means that the person is racist.

The nations two largest teachers unions, the AFT and National Education Association (NEA), now side with congressional Democrats who are preparing to advance their new gun control package.

Both Weingarten and NEA president Becky Pringle testified in favor of gun control measures in a Jun. 8 hearing before the House Oversight Committee. Pringle also spoke at the Jun. 11 March For Our Lives rally against what she called gun violence.

We cannot ask educators, who enter this profession to help children soar, to carry weapons and wear body armor while teaching addition or the Pythagorean Theorem, Pringle said in a press release, claiming that its already too late by the time the armed attacker shows up at school.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was among the first elected officials to call for arming school personnel in light of the Uvalde attack. President Donald Trump, speaking at this years NRA convention, also suggested that highly trained teachers should safely and discreetly conceal carry firearms on campus.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies remotely via videoconference in this screengrab made from video during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled, "Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election," on Facebook and Twitter's content moderation practices, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 17, 2020. (U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee via Reuters)

Team Zuckerberg Masks the Heavily Pro-Democrat Tilt of 2020 Election Zuck Bucks, Study Finds

The $332 million that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan provided to a progressive group to help run the 2020 elections was distributed on a highly partisan basis that favored Democrats, according to a new analysis by election data experts.

While these Zuckerbucks or Zuck bucks were touted as a resource meant to help all jurisdictions administer the election during the COVID crisis, tax records filed by the progressive Center for Tech and Civic Life show that the group awarded all larger grantson both an absolute and per capita basis to deeply Democratic urban areas, particularly in swing states, according to the new report. Its authors are William Doyle, research director at the right-leaning Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute, and Alex Oliver, chief data scientist at Evolving Strategies, a nonpartisan research group.

The report contrasts with a report Zuckerberg commissioned in December, which emphasized that more Republican jurisdictions, defined as municipalities that voted for Trump in 2020, applied for and received grants.

Doyle and Oliver say this conclusion is misleading because Republican jurisdictions were far more likely to receive grants of less than $50,000, which, they wrote, were likely not substantial enough to provide the funding, infrastructure, and personnel to materially change election practices in the recipient jurisdiction. These small grants comprised 27 percent of the centers awards.

In the counties where CTCL made its 50 largest grants in terms of per capita spending, the average partisan lean in favor of Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump was 33 pointsmeaning the aid could be expected to stimulate more Democratic votes. Twenty-five of the top 50 grants per capita went to just five statesGeorgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, and Texas (the latter two where Democrats were optimistic about Bidens chances, the authors write). Seven of the top ten largest grants per capita went to counties in Georgia and Wisconsin, states that Biden narrowly won by 12,000 and 21,000 respectively. (Along with the report, Evolving Strategies has put together an online map and visualization app that tracks CTCLs top 100 grants on a per capita basis.)

Boxes for Vote-by-Mail ballots that need to be reviewed due to signature discrepancies, as the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board convenes ahead of the Nov. 3 general election at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department in Doral, Fla., on Oct. 15, 2020. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The distribution of the CTCL programs grant amountsboth in absolute and per capita termsshows, unequivocally, a systematic bias in favor of Democratic jurisdictions, they write. The larger grants revealed a partisan pattern of funding [that] was especially apparent in swing states. Regardless of intention, CTCLs geographic allocation of larger grants is prima facie and de facto partisan.

Before 2020, the private funding of election administration was virtually unheard of. Against positive coverage of the development in liberal news media, conservative activists sounded the alarm about CTCLs efforts. Privatizing the management of elections undermines the integrity of our elections because private donors may dictate where and how hundreds of millions of dollars will be managed in these states, Phill Kline of the Thomas More Society told the Washington Post. Since 2020, 17 states have effectively banned the private funding of local election offices either through new laws or regulations. Two other states, Alabama and Missouri, are awaiting for the governors signature on similar bills.

The center and its defenders have argued that it is only logical that urban areas, which tend to support Democrats, would get more grant money, simply because they have more voters. But Doyle and Olivers analysis shows that those areas received more funding on a per capita basis. While the grant size for urban areas might naturally be larger overall, they said, areas with high concentrations of voters should result in economic efficiencies where substantial fixed cost of election administration is spread out over a relatively larger population, decreasing the per capita cost. If anything, they said, per capita costs of running an election should be higher in more rural Republican areas.

The report showed that Georgia alone received 10 of the top 50 grants per capita, totaling $41 millionmore than 10 percent of the $332 million CTCL spent across the country. Nine of those grants went to counties with an average partisan lean of 35 points in favor of Joe Biden.

The center awarded a total of $10.1 million in grants in Wisconsin, but $8.5 million of that went to the cities of Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racinecities where Bidens average margin of victory was over 37 points. All five cities ranked on CTCLs top 50 per capita grants. Similarly, Pennsylvania had four of the top 50 per capita grants, amounting to $16 million. Some $15 million of those grants went to Philadelphia and to Delaware and Chester counties in the Philadelphia metro area. The Philadelphia vote favored Biden by 64 points, and Delaware and Chester voted Biden by 27 and 17 points respectively. Biden won Pennsylvania by just 1.2 points, so the victory might have been sealed by the influx of cash from private sources to the Philadelphia region, the states biggest cache of votes, which also has a history of corruption and electoral fraud.

The CTCL did not respond to RealClearInvestigations request for comment. Its executive director, Tiana Epps-Johnson, told the Washington Post in February that the grants given out reflected where the requests for funding came from, not any bias on the part of her organization. But the center has offered no insight into its internal process for awarding grants.

An investigation by Broad and Liberty, a right-leaning publication dedicated to Pennsylvania politics, obtained emails showing that the office of Pennsylvanias Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf coordinated with left-wing nonprofits to implement a secretive process that selectively invited Democratic counties to apply for Zuck bucks grants.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf speaks during a 9/11 commemoration at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

The center did not just award money to counties and cities that applied for grantsin many cases it embedded progressive activists into key local election offices to shape how elections were run. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, emails to the mayors office from the center touted its network of current and former election administrations and election experts available to build up vote by mail processes and ensure forms, envelopes, and other materials are understood and completed correctly by voters. In a July 13, 2020 email to the center, Celestine Jeffreys, chief of staff for Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, wrote, As far as Im concerned I am taking all of my cues from CTCL and work with those you recommend.

Eventually the center helped install an out-of-state operative named Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein in Green Bay and other Wisconsin election offices, who engaged in activities unusual for someone other than a public officialsuch as asking for direct access to the Milwaukee Election Commissions voter database and other sensitive data. Spitzer-Rubenstein became so active in running Green Bays election that City Clerk Kris Teske, unhappy with being replaced in her job, took leave a few weeks before the election and quit shortly thereafter.

I was verbally abused by the Mayor in front of everyone   she reportedly wrote in one email. He had agenda when it came to the election and I nor the Clerks Office were included even though its the Clerks job to administer an election. He allowed staff who were not educated on election law to run the election, along with people who werent even City of Green Bay employees.

Though technically considered a nonpartisan organization, CTCLs leadership team has an extensive history of working with the Democratic Party and progressive causes. Epps-Johnson founded the organization with Whitney May and Donny Bridges. All three previously worked together at the New Organizing Institute, which the Washington Post described as the Democratic Partys Hogwarts for digital wizardry and the lefts think tank for campaign know-how.

A further Democratic-Zuckerberg intersection: Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is listed as head of policy and advocacy at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the power couples philanthropy. In his 2020 book, A Citizens Guide to Beating Donald Trump, Plouffe wrote that the 2020 election may come down to block-by-block street fights in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee.

This article was written by Mark Hemingway for RealClearInvestigations.
The Eastridge Mall in Gastonia, N.C., in April 2018. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Teen Charged in Shooting That Injured 3 People at NC Mall

GASTONIA, N.C.A 17-year-old boy has been charged in a shooting that wounded three people at a North Carolina mall, police said.

Two men and a woman were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening after they were shot in the parking lot of the Eastridge Mall in Gastonia on Friday, according to Police Chief Travis Brittain.

Two of them fled into the malls food court area after being shot, police said. Police found a handgun in the food court.

The Charlotte Observer reports that investigators are trying to determine if the teenage suspect and any of the victims knew each other.

The teen was arrested on felony charges, including assault with a deadly weapon, after police found him in a wooded area near the mall Friday.

Police did not release the suspects name because he is a juvenile.
Tesla vehicles are parked outside a building at the Zhongnanhai leadership compound, in Beijing on Jan. 9, 2019. (Mark Schiefelbein/Pool via Reuters)

Tesla Cancels 3 June Online Hiring Events for China

SHANGHAITesla Inc. has cancelled three online recruitment events for China scheduled this month, the latest development after Chief Executive Elon Musk threatened job cuts at the electric car maker, saying it was overstaffed in some areas.

However, Musk had not commented specifically on staffing in China, which made more than half of the vehicles for the automaker globally and contributed a quarter of its revenue in 2021.

The company cancelled the three events for positions in sales, R&D, and its supply chain originally scheduled for June 16, 23, and 30, notifications on messaging app WeChat showed late on Thursday, without stating a reason.

Tesla did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on Friday.

Notification of a June 9 event to recruit staff for smart manufacturing roles was not visible and it was not immediately clear it had been held as planned.

The China operation is still allowing resume submission for more than 1,000 openings posted on the social media platform, such as aerodynamics engineers, supply chain managers, store managers, factory supervisors, and workers.

Musk had a super bad feeling about the economy, he said in an email seen by Reuters recently.

In another email to employees on Friday, Musk said Tesla would reduce salaried headcount by a tenth, as it had become overstaffed in many areas, but added that hourly headcount would increase.

Production at Teslas Shanghai plant was badly hit after the Chinese commercial hub began a two-month COVID-19 lockdown late in March.

Output is set to fall by more than a third this quarter from the previous one, outpacing Musks prediction.
The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei, Taiwan August 11, 2017. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Teslas Singapore Country Manager Fired After Musk Warns Of Global Job Cuts

Teslas Singapore country manager announced that he was dismissed on June 11 after CEO Elon Musk warned about global workforce cuts earlier this month amid worries of a coming recession.

The former Tesla Singapore manager, Christopher Bousigues said on his LinkedIn page: Tesla announced a 10% of workforce reduction. My role was chosen to be eliminated as of today.

Musk warned Tesla executives, in a June 2 email acquired by Reuters, that he had plans to cut 10 percent of positions, or about 10,000 jobs, and cease hiring worldwide as he had a super bad feeling about the future of the global economy amid the threat of a major downturn.

He said that Tesla would reduce salaried headcount as it was too overstaffed in many areas.

Bousigues was employed by Tesla as its country manager in Singapore for just over a year and was its first chief for Southeast Asia.

Am proud to have been the companys first country manager in South-east Asia, and establishing the business in Singapore, said Bousigues.

The former Tesla manager also listed some of his key achievements in building up the EV companys operations in Singapore.

In the past year the team and I built the business from the ground up, made  the Model 3 a common sight in the Singapore car landscape, set up 2 showrooms, 1 service center (that I affectionately call the Jewel of Asia), developed a network of 7 superchargers across the island, and successfully launched Model Y yesterday with overwhelming response, he said.

He said that his termination was in relation to the job cuts that Tesla had already flagged, without going into specifics.

On June 3, Musk sent a letter to employees, which was transcribed by CNBC, confirming that Tesla will be reducing salaried headcount by 10% as we have become overstaffed in many areas. Note this does not apply to anyone actually building cars, battery packs or installing solar. Hourly headcount will increase.

By the end of 2021, Tesla employed 99,290 people globally.

Musk also told staff earlier to return from working remotely back to their offices or leave the company immediately.

Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers, said Musk.

Bousiguess position in Singapore will not be filled by Tesla, according to The Straits Times, and Teslas Hong Kong office will now oversee operations in Singapore.

The former Singapore manager said he is returning to Europe after relocating to Singapore for Tesla.

Since I relocated to Singapore strictly for this role, a move back to Europe and Southern France is most likely in the cards for my family and I. See you all after a well deserved summer break.

According to The Straits Times, Singapores Land Transport Authority reported 924 Teslas registered there last year and that the car company registered a further 190 vehicles in the first five months of 2022.

Meanwhile, Musk announced in a June 13 tweet that Tesla would be increasing its production of the new Model Y vehicle for Australia.

The Model Y went on sale in Australia three days ago and is expected to be delivered to buyers there between August and November for the base model, and November to February for the Performance model, reported techAU on June 13.

However, the report mentioned that if you go to the Tesla website and try to order a new Model Y, youll be advised the wait time is now at least February and possibly as long as May 2023 before you get the car.
Firefighters extinguish a fire at the central Maisky market following recent Ukrainian shelling in Donetsk on June 13, 2022. (Stringer/Reuters)

3 Killed, 18 Injured in Ukrainian Artillery Attack on Donetsk Market, Separatists Say

LONDONAt least three people including a child were killed and 18 injured on Monday in a Ukrainian artillery attack at a market in the Russian-backed separatist region of Donetsk, officials in the province said.

The Donetsk News Agency showed pictures of burning stalls at the central Maisky market and several bodies on the ground. The news agency said 155-mm calibre NATO-standard artillery munitions hit parts of the region on Monday.

We had a hit to the marketthere were many people here, Yan Gagin, an adviser to the separatists self-styled government, told RIA news agency from the market. Two bodies were laid out on the floor of the market behind him.

He said a woman and child were among the dead.

The local health authorities said 18 people had been injured, including two children.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the reports.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that the main immediate reason for what he casts as a special military operation was to protect the Russian-speakers of Donbass from persecution and attack by Ukraine.

Ukraine and its Western backers say Russia is waging an unprovoked war against a sovereign state which is fighting for its existence.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responds to a question during Question Period, June 1, 2022 in Ottawa. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Trudeau Says Hes Isolating After Testing Positive for COVID-19

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on June 13 that he has contracted COVID-19 for a second time and will be isolating after returning from his trip to the United States.

Ive tested positive for COVID-19. Ill be following public health guidelines and isolating, Trudeau said on Twitter.

I feel okay, but thats because I got my shots. So, if you havent, get vaccinated  and if you can, get boosted. Lets protect our healthcare system, each other, and ourselves.

Trudeau received his booster dose on Jan. 4 this year and announced later that month he had tested positive for COVID-19.

Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted, Trudeau tweeted at the time, as the trucker-led Freedom Convoy demanding the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions was settling in Ottawa.

Trudeau received support from his caucus members, some of whom have also contracted COVID-19 recently.

Sad news, but glad to hear that youre feeling okay. I wholeheartedly agree with your message  vaccines make all the difference. Get well soon! tweeted Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos on June 13.

Duclos announced he had COVID-19 on June 4 and would be isolating for 10 days.

With pressure mounting in recent days for the government to drop federal vaccine mandates and travel restrictions, one Conservative MP took a swipe at Trudeau for maintaining federal vaccine mandates while he caught COVID-19 himself.

Trudeau contracted covid while travelling internationally but continues to discriminate against unvaccinated Canadians so we can stop the spread. Sorry, the farce is over! #EndTheMandates, wrote Chris Warkentin on Twitter.

Trudeau visited NORAD installations in Colorado last week and then went to California to attend the Summit of the Americas.

Game Changer

The Omicron variant appeared in late 2021 and became the dominant variant across the world. Its ability to bypass vaccine protection has led to many breakthrough infections among the vaccinated.

Canadas chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam called Omicron a game-changer during the House of Commons health committee meeting on June 8.

Tam said a booster is needed against Omicron to boost your immunity against infection and for protection against serious outcome.

The UK Health Security Agencys COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report published May 12 provides some recent figures on vaccine effectiveness against Omicron.

It says the effectiveness of a booster ranges from 60 to 75 percent after two to three weeks and then falls to almost no effect after 20 weeks.

Individuals who received a booster dose have accounted for double or triple the COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people compared to the unvaccinated or fully vaccinated in Quebec and Ontario in recent weeks. However, a bias could be present in the data because those who decide to receive a booster are likely more at risk from or fearful of COVID-19 and hence more likely to take a test.

Tam told the health committee that even three doses provide only temporary protection.

Given the reduced vaccine effectiveness, even with three doses against the Omicron variant, vaccines cannot prevent all transmissions alone, so a layered approach has to be considered including layering mask-wearing, she said in response to a question from NDP MP Don Davies about whether there was still a medical or health basis to the federal vaccine mandate in travel.
Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) speaks in Bath, Maine. Golden was the only Democratic lawmaker to break with his party and vote against the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package on March 10, 2021. (David Sharp, File/AP Photo)

2 Maine Republicans Face Off in Primary to Challenge House Democrat

Maine, the Welcome Home State known most historically as Vacationland, seems like an unassuming political influence in the national arena, with its highest building being a Catholic church and its biggest industry being tourism.

However, the June 14 primaries in the contested race for Maines 2nd Congressional District seat in the U.S. House may have more influence on Americas future than meets the eye.

Two Republicans are looking to unseat incumbent Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) for the same district that Trump won both in 2016 over Hillary Clinton and in 2020 over Joe Biden.

If either is successful, theyll help close the five-seat gap for the Republicans to take back the majority of the 435-member House of Representatives.

Most people dont realize that its a very, very, very big deal, said Brent Littlefield, campaign adviser to Bruce Poliquin, one of two Republican candidates vying for the 2nd Congressional District seat. Its one of the top five races in the U.S.

Poliquin and his primary opponent, Elizabeth Caruso, have named similar priorities in their campaign for the House seat.

Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-Maine) speaks in Washington on Sept. 12, 2017. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Make Room USA)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Liz Caruso (@lizcarusoformaine)

Both oppose government-imposed COVID-19 mandates and gun control legislation, are staunch pro-lifers, underscore their opposition to open borders, support parental rights legislation and medical freedom, and have recurrently expressed outrage over escalating gas prices and called for the use of domestic oil reserves.

However, Caruso and Poliquin have vastly different backgrounds and vastly different voter appeal.

Poliquin is a 68-year-old wealthy businessman and Washington insider, having previously served two terms in the very seat hes once again running for.

Caruso, 52, is a selectman, whitewater guide, and homeschool mom who has raised less than $40,000 in campaign finances to Poliquins $2 million. She has gained attention with specific outlines of her Trump-esque America First campaign, while Poliquin has opted for restaurant meet-and-greets and posting on social media about the people he has met on the trail.

Poliquin, who has roots in Lewiston, one of the states largest cities, swiftly won endorsements from party leaders and has been campaigning alongside former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who, like Poliquin, is seeking to take back his former office from the Democrat who replaced him, Gov. Janet Mills.

Maine then-Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, greets the crowd before Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine, on Aug. 4, 2016. (Sarah Rice/Getty Images)

Maine Gov. Janet Mills attends the Climate Action Summit 2019 in the U.N. General Assembly Hall in New York on Sept. 23, 2019. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

Poliquin has also won endorsement from state Republicans, including freshman state Rep. Jonathan Connor, a retired Air Force veteran who said he endorsed Poliquin for his track record on legislation that supported veterans.

But Caruso, whos from the small town of Caratunk, Maine, population 69, has won sweeping support from grassroots Republicans, with backing from a number of conservative organizations, such as Mainers for Health and Parental Rights, Mainers for Freedom, Maine Stands Up, and Health Choice Maine, which has led the opposition against the states COVID-19 vaccine mandates and helped organize the Northeast Truckers Convoy.

For us, its mainly about accessibility, political accessibility, said Tiffany Kreck, a founder of Health Choice Maine. We want to move away from politician worship.  To us, Liz is one of us, whereas Bruce is more of a career politician.

Caruso, in underdog fashion, has also struck a chord with some blue-collar conservatives. Andy Torbett, a general contractor, has been running The Maine Conservative Voice for about a decade and put his support behind Caruso, calling her a fresh and genuine voice for Maine in a recent editorial he posted on his website.

In spite of Poliquins Washington experience and in an unprecedented move, he refused to take Caruso up on her repeated requests for a debate. She challenged him to a debate in all of Maines 11 counties, on radio, and on TV, but Poliquin declined, even refusing to go on Voice of the Voter, a popular long-standing forum held for decades by Maines major television network WCSH-6.

Caruso told The Epoch Times that Maine voters should be concerned that Poliquin wouldnt debate her.

For goodness sakes, Im a mom. Im not that scary, Caruso said. How can we expect a candidate to fight for our freedom and our rights with the D.C. establishment if he cant stand up for them in his own state alongside a fellow Republican?

Littlefield scoffed at the idea that Poliquin, a former two-term congressman, was afraid of Caruso, stating that he already had a proven track record as a leader for Maine.

His focus is on Jared Golden in the fall, Littlefield told The Epoch Times, noting that Poliquin has already landed big-name endorsements, including U.S. House Republican Whip Steven Scalise (R-La.), who he said is already slated to come to Maine and campaign for Poliquin following the primaries.

Poliquins faceoff with Golden in 2018 was one for the history books. Golden was the first member of Congress in U.S. history to be elected by ranked-choice voting, an electoral system that kicks in when neither candidate garners more than 50 percent of the vote. Winners are then decided by a series of preference votes.

Last week, Golden and three other Democrats broke rank and voted against a series of highly-publicized Democratic gun control bills, including the controversial measure that would raise the age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21.
Police respond to an incident on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 11, 2022. (The Canadian Press/ Patrick Doyle)

Two Sikh Rally Organizers Say They Were Wrongly Arrested Amid Parliament Bomb Scare

Two organizers of a Sikh event set to take place on Parliament Hill Saturday say they were arrested and released after being wrongfully identified in connection to a bomb threat in the area.

Manveer Singh, an organizer of a remembrance rally for the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India, said his group had received a permit to gather on the Hill, but when they arrived they were told they were not allowed to be there because of an ongoing threat in the area.

Parminder Singh, another organizer, said they relocated to the lawn in front of the Supreme Court of Canada nearby to hold their event.

A few minutes after their event got underway, Manveer Singh said police arrested him and told him they had credible information that he was connected to a serious bomb threat on the Hill.

They believed that Im the one whos gonna do that. I was shocked. Im gathering my community here to bomb them? he said, adding that police searched him, handcuffed him and brought him to the police station for questioning.

Parminder Singh said he was arrested not long afterward by Ottawa police, who told him that his name was connected to an alleged bomb threat of Parliament.

It doesnt make sense because I know I am not involved in anything. Im proud as a Canadian Sikh. I love this country, I will do everything to protect this country, he said.

The two organizers said that police searched their cars for explosives.

He said after being in custody for a short while, police released him and apologized, adding they arrested him based on wrong information.

Ottawa police did not answer questions about the mens account of events, saying only that the investigation into the matter is now concluded and no charges were laid.

Police said in a statement Saturday that they received information about a potential threat near the parliamentary precinct, prompting them to close some surrounding streets to vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

The Parliamentary Protective Service also ordered an evacuation of Parliament Hill, issuing an alert to all members of Parliament and staff and noting all buildings in the precinct were to be under shelter-in-place orders until further notice.

Both of the Sikh rally organizers say they are worried about the damage done to their reputation as a result of being arrested in connection to the explosives threat.

Its deeply hurt my kids, my wife and also other community members, Parminder Singh said.

He said his group began organizing these rallies in 2017, to gather Sikhs from across Ontario and Quebec.

Manveer Singh said they have been holding these rallies for several years, with the exception of the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Erika Ibrahim
Undated photo showing group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, on board a Border Force vessel. (Gareth Fuller/PA Media)

UK Court of Appeal Dismisses Last-Ditch Effort to Block Deportation Flight to Rwanda

The first flight to relocate the UKs illegal entrants has been given a green light after Court of Appeal judges dismissed a last-ditch blocking effort on Monday.

But the number of people who will be on Tuesdays flight has been reduced the eight, according to Care4Calais, one of the charities challenging the policy.

Court of Appeal judges on Monday upheld the High Courts decision not to grant an injunction to prevent any deportation flight from taking off until a full hearing next month on whether the policy is lawful.

The judges also refused permission for an appeal to the Supreme Court against their decision.

The British government signed a 120 million ($146 million) deal in April allowing the UK to put eligible illegal immigrants, including asylum seekers, on one-way flights to Rwanda, where they will be granted asylum or given access to other routes of settling down. The eligibility for relocation is considered on a case-by-case basis.

But the plan has been met with fierce opposition, with charities trying to remove people from the planned flights and stop the flights altogether.

High Court judge Justice Jonathan Swift on Friday refused to grant an interim injunction to halt the flights, saying he did not consider that the balance of convivence favours the grant of the generic relief.

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), which represents more than 80 percent of Border Force staff, and charities Care4Calais and Detention Action challenged Swifts decision.

Raza Husain QC, representing the three organisations and a deportee, argued that the High Court judge wrongly decided the balance of convenience.

But, following an urgent hearing in London on Monday, three senior judges dismissed the appeal, saying there was no error in Swifts decision.

Lord Justice Rabinder Singh, sitting with Lady Justice Ingrid Simler and Lord Justice Jeremy Stuart-Smith, said Swift had conducted the balancing exercise properly and did not err in principle nor in the approach he took.

He weighed all the factors and reached a conclusion which he was reasonably entitled to reach on the material before him, Singh said. This court cannot, therefore, interfere with that conclusion.

During the hearing, Husain argued the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was concerned about deficiencies in Rwandas process including arbitrary denial of access to the process, lack of interpreters, absence of training and low numbers of eligibility officers, systemically biased decision-making especially in claims from Middle-Eastern applicants, absence of reasons for rejection, and inadequate appeals processes.

Rory Dunlop QC, representing the Home Office, told the court that Home Secretary Priti Patel had listened and seriously considered UNHCRs concerns and deliberately negotiated arrangements to provide assurances in relation to those concerns.

Dunlop said the flight is important because this is a policy that if it works, could save lives as well as disrupting the model of traffickers.

This is a policy which is intended to deter dangerous and unnecessary journeys, journeys from safe third countries by people who do not need to make that journey to be safe, they can claim in France or wherever it is, he said.

Husain told the court that one person from Syria who may be sent to Rwanda had experienced trafficking and false imprisonment during his journey, and was told he had to get in a boat to the UK by his agent.

Many of Britains illegal immigrants arrived in small boats from Europe, as the country doesnt share a land border with others.

Demonstrators protest against plans to send migrants to Rwanda at a removal centre near the Gatwick Airport near London on June 12, 2022. (Victoria Jones/PA Media)

Shortly after the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, Swift rejected another request by Charity Asylum Aid to block the flight.

The High Court on Friday heard 31 people were due to be on Tuesdays flight to the Rwandan capital of Kigali. By Monday afternoon, Care4Calais said 23 of them had their tickets cancelled, with eight live tickets remaining.

The Home Office declined to comment on operational matters including the number of people set to be onboard the Kigali-bound flight on Tuesday.

In an email to The Epoch Times, a government spokesperson said, We welcome the courts decision in our favour, and we will now continue to deliver on progressing our world-leading Migration Partnership which will help prevent loss of life and break the business model of vile people smugglers.

While we can still expect further legal challenges and last-minute claims, we have always maintained that everything we are doing is compliant with our national and international obligations.

Rwanda is a safe country and has previously been recognised for providing a safe haven for refugeeswe will not be deterred in delivering our plans to fix the broken asylum system which will ultimately save lives.

PA Media contributed to this report.
A woman holds her smart phone which displays the Google home page on Feb. 24, 2016. (Eric Gaillard/Reuters)

UK Plans to Probe Apple, Googles Mobile Browser Dominance

LONDONBritains competition watchdog said it was planning to investigate the market dominance of Apple Inc. and Googles mobile browsers, as well as the iPhone makers restrictions on cloud gaming through its app store.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Friday it was also taking enforcement action against Alphabet Inc.s Google over its app store payment practices.

It said the two tech giants had an effective duopoly on mobile ecosystems that gave them a stranglehold on operating systems, app stores, and web browsers on mobile devices.

When it comes to how people use mobile phones, Apple and Google hold all the cards, CMA Chief Executive Andrea Coscelli said following the publication of a report on mobile ecosystems.

As good as many of their services and products are, their strong grip on mobile ecosystems allows them to shut out competitors, holding back the British tech sector, and limiting choice.

It said 97 percent of all mobile web browsing in Britain last year was powered by either Apples or Googles browser engine, and in addition Apple banned alternatives to its own browser on iPhone.

The CMA said it was concerned this severely limited the potential for rival browsers to differentiate themselves from Apples Safari, for example on features such as speed and functionality.

A customers holds the new green color Apple iPhone 13 pro, shortly after it went on sale inside the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, on March 18, 2022. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

Apple said in a statement it had created a safe and trusted experience users love and a great business opportunity for developers through its ecosystem.

We respectfully disagree with a number of conclusions reached in the report, which discount our investments in innovation, privacy, and user performanceall of which contribute to why users love iPhone and iPad and create a level playing field for small developers to compete on a trusted platform, a spokesperson said.

We will continue to engage constructively with the CMA to explain how our approach promotes competition and choice, while ensuring consumers privacy and security are always protected.

Google said smartphones using its Android operating system offered people and businesses more choice than any other mobile platform, and its Google Play app store has been the launchpad for millions of apps.

We regularly review how we can best support developers and have reacted quickly to CMA feedback in the past, a Google spokesperson said.

We will review the report and continue to engage with the CMA.

The regulator said it was also worried about Apple blocking the emergence of cloud gaming services, which allow high-quality games to be streamed rather than individually downloaded.

By preventing this sector from growing, Apple risks causing mobile users to miss out on the full benefits of cloud gaming, it said.

The CMA said its proposed investigation would further assess its concerns and could result in legally binding orders requiring changes to be made to Apples and Googles practices.

The consultation on the proposed the market investigation reference will close on 22 July.

By Yadarisa Shabong
Conventional cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy, come with the drawback where they might also suppress or weaken our immune system by lowering the number of white blood cells and other immune system cells.

Immunotherapy is a relatively new type of cancer treatment that seeks to strengthen our immune system to fight cancer. But it is only effective in treating certain types of cancer.

Over two years ago, researchers in the UK accidentally discovered a type of immune cell that appears to have the power to detect and kill many kinds of cancer cellsat least all the cancers the team had tested. This discovery makes the outlook of finding a universal treatment for cancer ever more promising.

T Cells: The Trained Assassins in Our Immune System

Before going into the discovery, we should first introduce an important immune cell.

As an important part of the immune system, T-cells are a type of white blood cell that originate in the bone marrow and mature in the thymus. They travel to different parts of the body to hunt down foreign substances deemed harmful to the body.

Professor Gillian Griffiths from the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research describes T cells as trained assassins that are sent on their deadly missions by the immune system. There are billions of them in our blood, each engaged in a ferocious and unrelenting battle to keep us healthy. Once a T cell has found its target, it binds to it and releases its toxic cargo.

How do T cells find their targets?

On the surface of a T cell is a type of protein called a receptor. When the T cells travel around in the body, the receptors sniff the surface of other cells looking for clues that might signal an abnormality or a foreign invasion. There are many different types of T cell receptors, each has a specific target. Take the cancer-targeting receptors, for example: they can sniff out proteins or other molecules (antigens) that are found only on cancer cells.

Following this method, the scientists have found ways to produce specific receptors that target different kinds of cancer. The CAR T cell therapy is the latest cutting-edge cancer treatment using this method, which we will go into detail about.

This is what we currently know about T cells, but there seems to be more to the T cell that we have yet to understand.

The Discovery of a Ubiquitous T-cell

Researchers at Cardiff University in the UK have discovered a special type of T cell that can kill many different types of cancer cells. Their paper was published in Natural Immunology in January 2020.

The Cardiff researchers were originally looking for a kind of T cell that can kill a bunch of bacteria. They happened to use cancer cells as the hosts of the bacteria, since cancer cells can be easily infected with different bacteria.

To their astonishment, they discovered a special type of T cell that not only killed the bacteria (as expected), but also killed ALL the cancer cellswith or without bacteria inside themused in the experiment.

This discovery sparked their curiosityis this new hope for universal cure for cancer?

Then they tested other types of cancer in mice who were given human cancers. Lung cancer, colon cancer, bone cancer, breast cancer, blood cancer, skin cancerall cancer cells used by the researchers were killed by this one type of T cell. What was even more surprising is that this T-cell left the normal cells untouched.

Take melanoma as an example:

The Smoking Gun ProteinMR1

Established research tells us that T cells are highly specialized in detecting a certain type of protein on the surface of a cell.

How can this new T cell detect so many different types of cancer cells? Perhaps there is one smoking gun antigen that is common among many different cancer cells?

To test this hypothesis, the Cardiff researchers deleted the proteins from the surface of cancer cells one at a time (using CRISPR-Cas 9 gene editing). If the T cell stops working after a protein is deleted, then that protein is the smoking gun.

They did find a protein called MR1. However, MR1 is found on all cells, not just cancerous cells. So, the scientists do not know exactly what information inside MR1 that enables the new T cell to differentiate cancer cells from normal cells.

In their own words, the Cardiff researchers wrote, the receptor does not recognize MR1 by known mechanisms.

More research is underway to determine the communication mechanism between MR1 protein and the receptor on the new T cell.

Engineering T Cells to Treat Cancer: CAR T Cell Therapy

The CAR T-cell therapy strengthens a cancer patients immune system by adding a lab-produced receptor to the patients T cells. This lab-made receptor, called Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR), can sniff out the specific type of cancer cells in the patient. In other words, the CARs can recognize and bind to the specific antigens on the surface of cancer cells.

CARs dont exist naturally, but once they are infused back into the patients body, they can continue to multiply in the patients blood.

Since 2017, six CAR T-cell therapies have been approved for the treatment of certain blood cancers by the Food and Drug Administration.

Because the CARs must be produced in the lab tailored to each patient, cost is a huge factor. The recently approved CAR T-cell therapy is more than $450,000.

Professor Awen Gallimore, Co-Director of Systems Immunity Research Institute at Cardiff University, told EurekAlert.org in January 2020, If this transformative new finding holds up, it will lay the foundation for a universal T-cell medicine, mitigating against the tremendous costs associated with the identification, generation and manufacture of personalized T-cells.

The Epoch Times reached out to researchers at Cardiff University.
The campus of Georgetown University on May 7, 2020. (Saul loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

University Toxicity: America Should Stop Nursing the Viper

Commentary

Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapists [Justice Brett Kavanaghs] arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasp. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.

That was a 2018 Twitter comment by a Georgetown University political science professor. The university kept her on duty. Her scheduled research leave was advanced in time, which in academia could be considered a reward.

Heres an April tweet from a Georgetown law professor:

We have only one political party in this country, the Democrats. The other group is a combination of a cult and an insurrection-supporting crime syndicate.  The only ethically and politically responsible stance to take toward the Republican party is to consistently point out that it is no longer a legitimate participant in U.S. constitutional democracy.

The university didnt respond.

Heres a 2020 tweet from the same person:

Law professors and law school deans [should] not support applications from our students to clerk for [judges appointed by President Donald Trump].  To work for such a judge indelibly marks a lawyer as lacking in the character and judgment necessary for the practice of law.

In May, still another Georgetown University law professor used Twitter to defend the illegal protests at the homes of several Supreme Court justices:

When the mob is right, some (but not all!) more aggressive tactics are justified.

The university apparently found these comments acceptable as well.

An Unacceptable Tweet

What kind of tweet would Georgetown University deem unacceptable? One came early this year. It commented on President Joe Bidens potential Supreme Court nominees:

Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog[ressive] and v[ery] smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesnt fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so well get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?

This ignited a storm at Georgetown. The author was libertarian legal scholar Ilya Shapiro, who was scheduled to join the faculty. Although he deleted the tweet before students were likely to see it, someone took a screenshot and disseminated it throughout the Georgetown community. Shapiro conceded that the post was inartful, but this concession wasnt enough. He was subjected to hostile demonstrations and a months-long investigation that concluded with, essentially, a university reprimand.

The institution didnt inflict further punishment only because Shapiros tweet was issued just before he became a member of the faculty. However, the institution implied that similar comments from Shapiro would lead to further persecution.

Realizing that his position had become untenableand perhaps recognizing that he could do more good elsewhereShapiro resigned.

This, then, is the answer to whats acceptable or unacceptable speech at Georgetown: If youre on the left, you can say almost anything. If youre on the right, you can say almost nothing.

America Is Nursing a Viper

Reread the comments of the leftist professors. Sense the hate.

The Shapiro episode became national news because Shapiro is well known within the D.C. Beltway and because Georgetown is a training ground for swamp critters. But its only one episode in a sorry national drama that has played out over decades. This is the drama of pampered colleges and universities serving as centers of a toxic leftist ideology that fosters hate and intolerance. As a long-time professor, I experienced it myselfuntil, in 2010, I decided that enough was enough and left academia.

Why should privileged professors say such hateful and unprofessional things? I think its because people tend to (1) resent those theyve wronged and (2) resent those who have given them favors they can never repay.

Left-wing colleges and universities live off the sweat of Middle America. Directly or indirectly, most of their funds come from hardworking peopleconservative, moderate, or nonpoliticalwho labor in the private-for-profit sector. Those people pay tuition and fund direct state and federal grants to colleges and universities. They also pay for indirect benefits, such as student scholarships and loans. Successful alumni, loyal to their alma maters and wishing to believe the best of them, add generous donations.

Middle Americans are the givers. The professors and bureaucrats, the overwhelming majority of whom have little or no private-for-profit background, are the takers. Gratitude is a rare commodity: Its human nature for takers to resent the givers.

At one time, America could chuckle at pointy-headed professors in their ivory towers. That time has passed. What was once funny has become a viper.

Lesson No. 1: For our own self-protection, government subsidies for bloated universities must end. Abolishing the dysfunctional and expensive federal student loan program would be a good place to start.

As for alumni donors: Open your eyes to whats happening on most of our campuses. Open your eyes!

A few naive conservatives and libertarians have tried to get around university politics by devising and endowing special centers dedicated to freedom, conservative thought, or the Western tradition. But Shapiro was at such a center; it didnt do him any good. John Eastman was a visiting professor at a similar center; that didnt stop the university from retaliating when it learned that Eastman dared to give legal counsel to President Donald Trump.

Lesson No. 2: If you want to contribute to higher education, donate to one of the many responsible think tanks or to one of the few remaining conservative colleges.

Was There Really Anything Wrong With Shapiros Tweet?

I cant depart without a final observation. Shapiro conceded that his tweet was inartful. I think he probably conceded too much. If he had written an article for a general circulation magazine, perhaps his language would have been inartful. But everyone understands that Twitter is designed for spontaneous commentsnot for scrupulously composed essays.

Moreoverand this is importantlaw professors and law students especially should have found nothing objectionable in Shapiros tweet, even if they disagreed with it.

Argument, including edgy argument, is central to law schools. Its a key tool for teaching both law and legal method. Professors and students are expected to roll with the punches, not take things personally, stay cool under pressure, analyze the opponents position, craft a response, and then punch back.

Heres Shapiros post again:

Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog[ressive] and v[ery] smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesnt fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so well get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?

Lets analyze this as a good lawyer should:

Fact: Sri Srinivasan is the chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Fact: That court is a source of SCOTUS nominees. Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh came from there.

Fact: Srinivasan, who was born in India, would have been the first justice from his ethnic group to be appointed to the high court.

Fact: Democratic presidents tend to seek progressives, and Srinivasan qualifies.

Fact: Srinivasan is very smart (top honors from Stanford University) and highly regarded: Appointed by President Barack Obama, he was approved by the U.S. Senate in 2013 by a vote of 970.

Inference: Its absolutely reasonable for Shapiro to believe Srinivasan would be Bidens best pick.

Conclusion: Assuming that opinion, then any alternative pickmale or female, black or notnecessarily would be lesser.

The professional way to respond to Shapiros tweet would have been to dispute his facts or question his logic. These days, however, university professionalism is in very short supply.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Motorists queue for fuel at an Esso petrol station in Ashford, Kent, England, on Oct. 4, 2021. (Gareth Fuller/PA)

Urgent Review Ordered as UK Fuel Prices Reach New High

The UK government has ordered an urgent investigation into fuel station operators amid concerns some are pocketing the multi-billion-pound cut to fuel duty, which was originally intended to alleviate the pressure on households.

In a letter to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng expressed concerns that the 5 pence-a-litre reduction had not stopped prices from soaring.

Drivers should be getting a fair deal for fuel across the UK, he said. The British people are rightly frustrated that the 5 billion [$6 billion] package does not always appear to have been passed through to forecourt prices.

He asked the CMA to conduct an urgent review of the fuel market to explore whether the retail fuel market has adversely affected consumer interests.

The CMA subsequently announced it will carry out a short and focused review of fuel prices.

CMA Chief Executive Andrea Coscelli said record pump prices are causing significant concern for millions of consumers and businesses.

Global factors, including the war in Ukraine, have been the principal driver of recent trends. But if competition is not working well in the retail fuel market, pump prices will be even higher than they need to be, he wrote in a response to Kwarteng.

Figures from data firm Experian show the average price of a litre of petrol at UK forecourts climbed to a record 185.0 pence ($2.25) on Sunday, representing an increase of 7.1 pence in just a week.

The average price of diesel was 190.9 pence per litre on Sunday.

Motoring group RAC welcomed CMAs action but said the government needs to do more to help drivers.

RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams said: Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the wholesale price of petrol has gone up by 28 percent.

This is why the governments 5p March duty cut has had little effect, whether or not its been fully passed on by retailers, and why they need to go further now to help drivers.

But Prime Minister Boris Johnsons official spokesman said there are no plans for a further duty cut.

AA, another motoring group, said the rise in fuel prices should be grinding to a halt by the end of the week owing to wholesale prices falling since the start of the month.

If they continue to go up substantially afterwards, we will be intrigued to hear what excuses the fuel trade has this time, said AA fuel price spokesman Luke Bosdet.

Bosdet added that the relentless surge in wholesale and retail costs for diesel is a nightmare which will have a knock-on effect on delivery prices for goods and services.

PA Media contributed to this report.
This video image provided by SpaceX, a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission to launch 53 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E), takes off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., on May 13, 2022. (SpaceX via AP)

USChina Battle for Space Supremacy Heats Up

Commercial space technologies will define race for military innovation

News Analysis

In the ever-expanding arms race between communist China and the United States, few domains of competition are as high stakes as that of space.

Satellite architecture is required for everything from GPS to bank transactions to missile defense systems. As such, its no surprise that both nations are investing heavily in their militaries space and counterspace capabilities.

What is often overlooked in this race, however, is just how each nation intends to win.

Indeed, over the past decade, Chinas and the United States visions for the future of space have increasingly diverged, and the means through which each nation seeks to leverage its native space industry has evolved with those visions.

In China, a growing statist architecture is designed to organize and direct space industry as one part of the whole of society, in unison with the communist whole. The United States, meanwhile, is betting big on American corporations to innovate a new answer to secure peace in the final frontier.

What is certain is that the relationship between these two states and their respective space industries will determine the character of their militaries, and of war, for decades to come.

To understand that, however, its necessary to first understand just what the competition is about, and how it got here.

The State of USChina Space Competition

Commercial and military competition between China and the United States has been accelerating for years as relations between the two nations have plummeted. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the space domain, which is critical to military and civilian technologies the world over.

The Pentagon is currently seeking to reduce uncertainty in space operations even as China is developing weapons to use against U.S. space assets. Defense experts have warned that China is building a comprehensive arsenal of space weapons, a stance apparently vindicated by recent comments from the Space Forces Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.

Guetlein said that the United States must act to develop capacities to defend itself in space, while Kendall said more specifically that the United States needs to develop new, offensive space weapons to defend itself.

Likewise, a 2020 report by the U.S.China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) (pdf) found that Chinas ruling communist regime was implementing a long-term plan to systematically steal U.S. technologies in order to accelerate its own space-bound military programs.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is executing a long-term strategy to exploit U.S. technology, talent, and capital to build up its military space and counterspace programs and advance its strategic interests at the expense of the United States, the report stated.

Chinas zero-sum pursuit of space superiority harms U.S. economic competitiveness, weakens U.S. military advantages, and undermines strategic stability. In short, it represents a threat to U.S. national security.

Much of the current Sino-American space rivalry stems from the fact that the United States and China dont collaborate on space development or space exploration. Since Congress passed the Wolf Amendment in 2011, NASA has been explicitly barred from cooperating with China on such issues.

Defense and security experts have said that Chinas space program is a direct military threat to the United States. The Wolf Amendment was part of a larger effort to ban the unwanted transfer of technologies to China from the United States.

The intention of the amendment was ostensibly to block the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from U.S. technology in order to limit its rapid technological ascent. That plan didnt work, however, and the CCP was able to forge ahead anyway by creating its own rival space systems in secret, which the United States doesnt know enough about to adequately deter: last years hypersonic weapons test, for example.

All of this has created an imminent demand for next-generation space technologies in both China and the United States. Whether those technologies are rockets, image processing, weather data collection, broadband communications, or something else entirely, the militaries of each nation are in a rush to acquire and field them before the other can.

To be sure, the CCP is currently behind in this race. The United States has about 2,700 satellites in orbit, while China currently has fewer than 500. Much of that satellite infrastructure is dated, however, and terribly prone to attacks that could cause cascading failures across a plethora of systems.

When a single U.S. communications satellite broke down in 1998, it was not only television and messaging systems that failed, wrote James Black, a senior analyst for the Rand Europe think tank. Credit card systems stopped processing payments, weather radars went blind, and frustrated drivers found themselves unable to fuel their vehicles as automatic petrol station pumps seized up.

As such, the No. 1 driving factor in assessing the weakness or strength of space-based systems is currently its resiliency as measured by the size of its satellite clusters. To this end, China and the United States are looking to the growing commercial space industry for scalable, affordable answers as to how they might get as many satellites up and running as quickly as possible.

SpaceX, for example, operates about 2,000 satellites, four times as many as the CCP. Moreover, its signature Starlink satellite constellation has already demonstrated itself capable of withstanding foreign military attacks in the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Likewise, a state-owned Chinese telecommunications company has announced plans to put 10,000 microsatellites in orbit by 2030.

What these companies are creating, then, and how governments can leverage it, is the central issue at the heart of the new space race, and will determine the success or failure of national and military strategies in the decades to come.

The methods that China and the United States are developing to leverage such technologies, however, are very, very different.

The New Statism: Chinas Answer to Development

While the Chinese space industry is managed by a complex array of military and civil organizations, the vast majority of the program is either directly organized or indirectly guided by the CCPs military wing, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), and specifically its Strategic Support Force (PLASSF), headquartered in Xian in western China.

In addition to space, the PLASSF oversees the integration of the CCPs cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare capabilities, and has consistently sought to leverage all of these domains together in pursuit of Chinas strategic goal of space dominance.

The PLAs two primary entities for developing the space program are the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. (CASIC), which used to be a single entity but were split up to promote competition.

CASC carries out most of the CCPs research and overseas launches for the PLA, while CASIC develops all of Chinas missiles.

Meanwhile, there are a growing number of private space companies in China, which are driving much of the CCPs space innovation.

Those companies, however, largely receive their directives on what to develop from the PLA and its associated entities such as CASC and CASIC, which funnel monies and milestone goals to companies in order to meet the Partys strategic objectives.

In this manner, according to one report (pdf) by the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank, Chinas state-owned enterprises are simultaneously separated from the innovation of private industry while also directing it. Thats because the PLA, as the primary end-user of space technology, manages the research and development programs for weapons and space systems while coordinating with the civilian defense community.

A separate report by the USCC (pdf) noted that Beijing consistently invests high levels of funding and political will to its space program, which has driven its steady progress in achieving important milestones.

In this role, Beijing aspires to lead international space-related innovation and exploration and establish an advanced system of infrastructure to serve its space sector.

In this way, the CCPs model for space development is a form of statism not unsurprising to a communist nation, in which the innovation of private companies are commanded which direction to go and their labor is subsumed for the state good.

For the United States, a New Commercialism

To many, the CCPs model for space development might appear as merely a heavy-handed version of the U.S. militarys traditional acquisition process, in which the defense bureaucracy lethargically invests increasingly large sums into a few dedicated defense corporations for custom technologies.

The United States is moving away from that model, however, and pursuing instead a commercial-first approach to tech development for its space-based assets.

While the United States has traditionally favored long and costly contracts for bespoke projects, it is now shifting its strategy, and opting to buy commercial-first technologies including satellites for analytics, broadband, imaging, and data collection.

Indeed, it is the hope of the U.S. Space Force to co-opt readily available, and cost friendly, commercial space technologies for all its endeavors except so-called no fail missions such as missile defense.

Thus, even as the CCP appears to be taking a page from the United States old playbook in leveraging the state to purchase from a directed commercial sector, the United States is prioritizing the purchase of dual-use technologies that already serve a commercial market and are not entirely dependent on government funding.

According to the U.S. Space Strategy (pdf), the Pentagon will leverage and bolster a thriving domestic civil and commercial space industry to combat the Chinese challenges to freedom of operation in space.

U.S. Space Command considers this acquisition-through-collaboration approach to be necessary in an age of ever-evolving and ever-expanding space technologies which, if the government had to fund from scratch, would be out of date by the time they became operable.

Commercial space activities have expanded significantly in both volume and diversity, resulting in new forms of commercial capabilities and services that leverage commoditized, off-the-shelf technologies and lower barriers for market entry, the strategy said.

These developments are contributing to a burgeoning space industry driven by entrepreneurial innovation and investment, advanced technology, decreased costs, and increased demand for space-based services. The [Pentagon] has an opportunity to leverage innovation and cost-effective investments driven by the private sector, presenting opportunities for collaboration to develop game-changing capabilities with a more streamlined and responsive acquisition process.

As such, the House Armed Services Committees subcommittee on strategic forces agreed on June 8 that commercial off-the-shelf technologies would be central to the U.S. space strategy, and that the military would play the role of setting standards for Western satellite and launch vehicle interfaces in order to ensure that the military could use technology from any company it purchased from.

A Gold Rush for Space Manufacturing

This strategic need for commercial innovation may make the Pentagon much more dependent on the genius behind individual businesses, but has also led to something of a manufacturing boom among up-and-coming space companies in the United States, which are now seeking to have their products picked up for use by the U.S. military.

Peter Beck, CEO of aerospace manufacturing company Rocket Lab, said that theres a veritable gold rush among space companies to get assets on orbit to rake in lucrative government sales and contracts.

Government[s] are getting to feed off all of that private industry, investment, and advances, and creating much more capability for nations, he said.

I grew up and it was only NASA that did amazing things. Now, commercial companies are doing amazing things and its not a rarified event.

During a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Beck said the push to put commercial technologies at the forefront of government initiatives was democratizing space by allowing publicly traded companies to lead the innovation that would improve and protect the nation.

Whats more is that the initiative is already bearing some fruit.

While government agencies such as NASA has repeatedly struggled to compete with China in a new race to the moon, and even failed to create space suits on budget, private industry in the United States has soared to new heights.

Rocket Lab alone, for example, is planning unmanned missions to the moon, Mars, and Venus. And the industry is expected to reach $1.4 trillion in value by 2030.

To be sure, Beck said, those strides wouldnt be possible without coordination and funding from the government, and particularly from the Defense Intelligence Agency and NASA. But in choosing to nurture industrial talent rather than develop from scratch, the United States has improved capacity.

Space in the Age of Technospheres

The heated efforts to accelerate and secure military and civil technologies, both in space and otherwise, are driving the United States and China to develop distinct and mutually unintelligible technologies, according to a new report (pdf) by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a security-focused think tank.

The decoupling of digital innovation, systems, and data flows between Western nations and China, the increased statism of the CCP and standardized corporate leadership of the United States, are compounding the trends that have been in place since the Wolf Amendment in 2011, and creating two very different and rival technospheres.

The overall geopolitical rivalry between China and the West makes it unlikely that technology decoupling will decrease, the report states. Both see technology as a method to promote their respective worldviews while seeing each others efforts as focused on national security competition.

What is left to be seen is how a centrally planned and authoritarian space architecture and an open and freely created one differ, and how they compete.
Two U.S. Marine Corps F-18 Super Hornets flying on May 31, 2017. (U.S. Air Force/Staff Sgt. Michael Battles/Handout/File Photo via Reuters)

US Navy Orders Safety Pause for Aircraft After String of Crashes

The U.S. Navy confirmed it will conduct a one-day safety pause, grounding all nonessential flights, following at least three Navy and Marine Corps aircraft crashes in the past two weeks, two of which resulted in fatalities.

As a result of recent crashes involving U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, Commander, Naval Air Forces has directed all non-deployed Navy aviation units to conduct a safety pause on June 13 in order to review risk-management practices and conduct training on threat and error-management processes, the Naval Air Forces said on June 11, adding that the pauses will happen as soon as possible.

The decision to pause non-deployed aircraft is being done to maintain the readiness of our force, Cmdr. Zachary Harrell, Naval Air Forces public affairs officer, told the Los Angeles Times. We must ensure the safety of our people remains one of our top priorities.

The Naval Air Forces command didnt provide more details about the pause.

In early June, officials said a Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet crashed in Southern California, killing the pilot. Days later, a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey aircraft crashed in Southern California, killing all five Marines on board; the Marines were based at Camp Pendleton and assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 364 (VMM-364).

A MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft flies at Marine Corps Air Facility at Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Va., on Aug. 3, 2012. (Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP Photo)

A day later, a Navy MH-60S Seahawk helicopter crashed near the ArizonaCalifornia border. All crew members on board survived, the Navy said.

All of the crashes are under investigation.

It is with heavy hearts that we mourn the loss of five Marines from the Purple Fox family, Lt. Col. John C. Miller, commanding officer of VMM-364, said in a statement. This is an extremely difficult time for VMM-364 and it is hard to express the impact that this loss has had on our squadron and its families.

Our primary mission now is taking care of the family members of our fallen Marines and we respectfully request privacy for their families as they navigate this difficult time. We appreciate all the prayers and support from the strong extended Purple Fox family and want them to know that more information will be forthcoming on how to help.

Four Marines were killed in March in an MV-22B Osprey crash during NATO training in Norway. According to an analysis, more than 40 people have died while on Osprey aircraft since 1991.
Police cars are seen parked outside Vancouver Police Department headquarters in Vancouver, on Jan. 9, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck)

Watchdog Launches Probe Into Actions of Police in 8 BC Departments

British Columbias police complaint commissioner has set off an investigation into the conduct of 19 officers from eight separate police departments.

A statement from the commissioner says the serious nature of the alleged misconduct means it will seek the appointment of a special provincial constable to complete an investigation independent of any B.C. police agencies.

The commissioners office says a number of concerns were identified during an undercover training course last month, that included officers from several B.C. municipal police and other agencies.

The statement says the conduct of some of the officers while performing various physical acts in the scenarios caused concern that the actions could be defined as misconduct under the Police Act.

The office says the Independent Investigations Unit of Manitoba will be the investigating agency and arrangements between the provinces are being finalized.

Chief Const. John Lo of the West Vancouver Police Department has been appointed as the discipline authority, although the commission points out that the allegations have not been proven against any of the officers.
A woman smiles with the word "equal" written on her forehead as she gathers in Hyde Park during the International Women's Day march in Sydney, Australia, on March 7, 2020. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

Women Are Turning Left

Commentary

For the last few weeks in Australia, weve been treated to the unabashed celebration from our biased media about the ousting of the Liberal-National Coalition government and wild assertions that this was all due to angry women turning on former Prime Minister Scott Morrison. No mention, of course, of the fact that conservative parties everywhere are now struggling to attract women.

Irrespective of how desperately the Coalition tried to win them over, women are turning left. Five years ago, I wrote about the growing power of left-wing women, making the point that women are becoming more left-wing in their policy preferencesnot only in Australia but across much of the Western World.

Analysis by the Australian Election Study (AES) of 2019 election results (pdf) confirmed an ever-widening gender gap, starting back in the 1990s, marked by dropping female support for the countrys centre-right Liberal Party.

By 2019, 45 percent of men and 35 percent of women voted Liberal, while the split for the Greens was nine percent men to 15 percent women.

The AES asked voters to rate themselves on a scale from left to right, where 0 is left and 10 is right. In 2019 the average position for men was 5.2, whereas for women, it was 4.8, a significant shift from the 1990s when there were minimum gender differences.

A person casts their vote during Australias general election at a polling station at Bondi Beach in Sydney on May 21, 2022. (Steven Saphore/AFP via Getty Images)

One of the key factors I identified back in 2017 for why the shift was occurring was leftist university education.

The hearts and minds being captured in our universities belong mainly to young women, I wrote, pointing to fascinating research from the AES showing women emerge from university education notably more left-leaning than women without degrees. In contrast, male graduates were not very different from less-educated men in their political views.

Womens increasingly left-wing policy preferences have been showing up in AES data on issue after issue: asylum-seekers; government spending on indigenous affairs; stiffer criminal penalties; positive discrimination for women, and same-sex marriage. The 2017 postal survey on same-sex marriage showed that more women voted yes in every age group from 18 through to 75.

Over 60 percent of graduates are now female, so women are disproportionately affected by the ideological indoctrination taking place in our universities, particularly as they are mainly the ones studying humanities subjects steeped in identity politics and neo-Marxist propaganda.

Unlike many men who become more conservative as they age, the work/life patterns in most womens lives simply reinforce these beliefs. Women predominantly work in education, health care, and welfare services or as public service professionals. They make up 58 percent of public service positions and are more likely than men to work in unionised jobs. All this means their working environment provides a culture that supports rather than challenges their political beliefs.

Then theres the motherhood issue, with mothers particularly receptive to the lefts big-spending promisesand scare campaignson health and education. The growing number of single mothers significantly dependent on government benefits is another key issue, with the left-wing parties playing up their support for such disadvantaged families.

So, it goes on. Hardly surprising then that polling suggests the indoctrinated mob of professional women flocked to the Teal faux independents with their trendy list of leftist policy proposals. No doubt, when proper analysis of the gender gap in this election is available, we will discover even more women across the board may be turning their backs on traditional conservative beliefs.

Teal Independent Goldstein Zoe Daniel (L) speaks to voters at a pre-polling centre in Hampton in Melbourne, Australia, on May 18, 2022. (Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

Yet the biggest risk for the conservative parties currently licking their wounds is to believe the left-wing media claim that they were ousted by the wrath of angry women.

Somehow, we need to convince Coalition politicians that they are also bleeding votes from ordinary folk who are tired of seeing women endlessly privileged whilst the men they love, their fathers, sons, brothers, and friends, get pushed to the back of the bus and denied fair treatment at every turn.

It wasnt that the Morrison government didnt listen to women. Remember the apology to Brittany Higgins? Or Morrisons forced smile when Grace Tame humiliated him with her side-eye? Or allowing MPs Christian Porter and Alan Tudge to be pushed out of their ministerial roles over unproven sexual assault allegations? Or the cringing over the parliamentary harassment report, denying the very low incidence of actual harassment and high rates of female bullying?

Weve seen successive Coalition governments give ground to the feminist lobby, throwing endless money trying to appease their insatiable appetite for an obscenely large slice of the cake. Malcolm Turnbulls first act as prime minister was his plea for respect for women as he announced the first $100 million (US$70 million) of the bucketloads of funding poured into the domestic violence industry.

Last year, Scott Morrison topped up these rivers of gold with a 150 percent increase in funding, from $100 to $250 million per year, as a result of the feminists COVID-19 scare campaign about women being locked up with dangerous men.

Recent Coalition governments have gone in for the shameless promotion of women into every conceivable public role. We had Susan Kiefel appointed Chief Justice of the High Court. Ita Buttrose as Chair of the ABC. Lorraine Finlay for Human Rights Commissioner. Cathy Foley as Chief Scientist. Women, women, women. A constant stream of beaming female faces is endlessly gracing our news.

Former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson recently published a long video conversation with me covering in detail the evidence of how feminist ideology now dominates public policy, advantaging women at the expense of men through distorting our media, tilting our laws, promoting anti-male ideology in schools and workplaces, and consistently manipulating government statistics to demonise men. For this conservative leader, it came as a surprise that the movement had taken place under his governments own watch.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP)  A Chino Valley man has been convicted of stealing Social Security checks from his daughter and putting the money in his own bank account.

Prosecutors said a Yavapai County Superior Court jury found 58-year-old David Lawrence Schuck guilty of one count each of theft and fraudulent schemes.
TORONTO (AP)  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time and just days after he met in person with U.S. President Joe Biden.

The announcement came in a tweet Monday in which he urged everyone to get vaccinated. Trudeau said he feels OK and said thats because hes been vaccinated.
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ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  Search teams found a backpack, laptop and other personal items that belonged to Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips, who went missing in a remote area of Brazils Amazon a week ago, Federal Police said Sunday night.

Phillips backpack was discovered Sunday afternoon tied to a tree that was half-submerged, a firefighter told reporters in Atalaia do Norte, the closest city to the search area, which is near the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory. It is the end of the rainy season in the region and part of the forest is flooded.

Officers with the Federal Police brought the items by boat to Atalaia do Norte later in the afternoon. In a statement a few hours later, they said they had identified the belongings of both missing men, such as Pereiras health card and clothes.

A tarp from the boat used by the men was found Saturday by Matis volunteers, members of an Indigenous group of recent contact, one of them told The Associated Press.

We used a little canoe to go to the shallow water. Then we found a tarp, shorts and a spoon, said Binin Beshu Matis.

After that find, the search teams concentrated their efforts around that spot in the Itaquai river.

On Saturday, police reported finding traces of blood in the boat of a fisherman who is under arrest as the only suspect and organic matter of apparent human origin inside the river. Both materials are under forensic analysis, and no more details were provided.

Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen June 5 near the entrance of the Indigenous territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. They were returning alone by boat on the Itaquai river to Atalaia do Norte but never arrived.

That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents. Violence has grown as drug trafficking gangs battle for control of waterways to ship cocaine, although the Itaquai is not a known drug trafficking route.

Authorities have said that a main line of the police investigation into the disappearance has pointed to an international network that pays poor fishermen to fish illegally in the Javari Valley reserve, which is Brazils second-largest Indigenous territory.

One of the most valuable targets is the worlds largest freshwater fish with scales, the arapaima. It weighs up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) and can reach 3 meters (10 feet). The fish is sold in nearby cities, including Leticia, Colombia, Tabatinga, Brazil, and Iquitos, Peru.

The only known suspect in the disappearances is fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also known as Pelado, who is under arrest. According to accounts by Indigenous people who were with Pereira and Phillips, he brandished a rifle at them the day before the pair disappeared.

The suspect denies any wrongdoing and said military police tortured him to try to get a confession, his family told The Associated Press..

Pereira, who previously led the local bureau of the governments Indigenous agency, known as FUNAI, has taken part in several operations against illegal fishing. In such operations, as a rule the fishing gear is seized or destroyed, while the fishermen are fined and briefly detained. Only the Indigenous can legally fish in their territories.

The crimes motive is some personal feud over fishing inspection, the mayor of Atalaia do Norte, Denis Paiva, speculated to reporters without providing more details.

AP had access to information police shared with Indigenous leadership. But while some police, the mayor and others in the region link the pairs disappearances to the fish mafia, federal police have not ruled rule out other lines of investigation, such as narco trafficking.

Fisherman Laurimar Alves Lopes, who lives on the banks of Itaquai, told AP that he gave up fishing inside the Indigenous territory after being detained three times. He said he endured beating and starvation in jail.

Lopes, who has five children, said he only fishes near his home to feed his family, not sell.

I made many mistakes, I stole a lot of fish. When you see your child dying of hunger you go get it where you have to. So I would go there to steal fish to be able to support my family. But then I said: Im going to put an end to this, Im going to plant, he said during an interview on his boat.

Lopes said he was taken to local federal police headquarters in Tabatinga three times, charging he was beaten and left without food.

In 2019, Funai official Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was gunned down in Tabatinga in front of his wife and daughter-in-law. Three years later, the crime remains unsolved. His FUNAI colleagues told AP they believe the slaying was linked to his work against fishermen and poachers.

Rubber tappers founded all the riverbank communities in the area. In the 1980s, however, rubber tapping declined and they resorted to logging. That ended, too, when the federal government created the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory in 2001. Fishing has become the main economic activity since then.

An illegal fishing trip to the vast Javari Valley lasts around one month, said Manoel Felipe, a local historian and teacher who also served as a councilman. For each illegal incursion, a fisherman can earn at least $3,000.

The fishermens financiers are Colombians, Felipe said. In Leticia, everybody was angry with Bruno. This is not a little game. Its possible they sent a gunman to kill him.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  A network of adult care facilities in Maine will adopt a nondiscrimination policy about the care of transgender people as part of a settlement with a woman who filed a human rights complaint against the company.

Advocates described the agreement as a landmark settlement about elder care for transgender adults in the state. The settlement came three months after Maine's human rights panel ruled in favor of the 79-year-old woman, Marie King, who complained she was denied a room by an assisted living facility because she is transgender.

Adult Family Care Homes of Maine will adopt the nondiscrimination policy in addition to sending employees and administrators at its nine facilities to LGBT-competency training, said attorneys for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, which represented King. The nondiscrimination policy states that Adult Family Care Homes will provide a welcoming environment and the best possible services to all communities, including older adults who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender.

King was initially anonymous when she filed her complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission, but later chose to identify herself. She said the settlement was a positive outcome for herself and other transgender elders seeking care.

I believe the new policies will keep others from experiencing mistreatment and will help people understand that transgender people are only seeking to be treated with dignity and respect like anyone else," King said.

The human rights commission approved the settlement during its meeting on Monday without discussion. The commission's executive director confirmed the agreement and did not comment further.

Rhonda Chambers, the administrator for Adult Family Care Homes of Maine, did not respond to a call seeking comment. The company runs elder care facilities mostly in rural parts of the state.

The human rights commission found that there were reasonable grounds that one such facility, Sunrise Assisted Living in Jonesport, violated the Maine Human Rights Act and discriminated against King on the basis of sex and sexual orientation or gender identity. Attorneys for King have said she filed a complaint with the commission that Sunrise would not admit her because the facility was concerned she wanted to reside with a female roommate.

The settlement that grew from King's complaint "sends an unmistakable message that transgender older adults should be treated with dignity and respect when seeking long-term care services, said GLAD senior attorney Ben Klein.
The blind ambition of Bola Ahmed Tinubu to rule Nigeria at all costs is on course to provoke a civil war. But this war will not be fought between the Yoruba and the Igbo, as Tinubu would wish; it is a civil war between the Nigerian masses and the corrupt oligarchy that he represents.

Keenly aware that he is neither physically fit nor morally sound to mount a presidential campaign let alone governing Nigeria, Mr. Tinubu is already attempting to win by hook or crook. Barely less than one week after grabbing the presidential ticket of the All-Progressives Congress (APC), he is already fanning the embers of war. Very glaring is a recent incident in which armed thugs were sent to disrupt the traders of Alaba International Market, Ojo, Lagos State, who went the extra mile to shut their shops in order to obtain their Permanent Voters Cards (PVC). Any serious inquiry into the mayhem would reveal a page from Tinubus patented plot to control the Lagos State electorate by terror.

A sham selling point in Tinubus march to the APC nomination is the assumption that he dictates who wins and who loses in the Nigerias most populous State of Lagos. But, as an APC chieftain and the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, noted in a recent speech, Tinubu has been able to lord himself over the good people of the state because of low voter turnout. "Here in Lagos, you have over six million registered voters, only about a million voted (in 2019 general elections); five million did not vote.

This low voter turnout is rooted in Tinubus lack of popularity among the masses. To that end, he has always deployed all manners of terror to suppress the votes of his opponents. Like the attack on the Igbo traders at Alaba International Market, armed thugs were also used to unleash terror on the voters in many parts of Lagos State with heavy Igbo populationduring the 2019 elections.

Tinubus penchant to incite the Yoruba against the Igbo is well chronicled. Recall the murder of Funke Olakunrin, the daughter of Afenifere leader, Reuben Fasoranti, by Fulani Herdsmen. In attempt to appease the Fulani, whom he believes would crown him president, Tinubu quickly exonerated the herdsmen without any iota of evidence. Instead, he stoked the name of Chukwudi Onuamadike, popularly known as Evans, a notorious kidnapper, to suggest that heinous crimes in Nigeria owe their origin to Igboland.

Follow the above with the callous attempt by Remi, the wife of Tinubu, to instigate hatred against the Igbo living in Lagos. In one instance, she was caught on camera on a campaign trail spewing the following snide: Igbo, we no dey trust una again!

One must not forget the case of Tinubus close ally, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu, who peddled the false allegation that the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a predominantly Igbo group, was planning to wreak havoc in Lagos. Further, Tinubu cannot feign ignorance of the origin of another false claim by state authorities that the IPOB was behind the burning of the palace of Oba of Lagos and other public infrastructure during the #EndSARS protest in the year 2020.

In each of these instances, however, the Yoruba masses and their true leaders have been bold to denounce Tinubus evil machinations. They have resolved to stand side by side with their Igbo counterparts for the common good.

The Nigerian masses are becoming wiser. They are beginning to recognize that the powerful corrupt cabal, where Ahmed Bola Tinubu is a high chief, has no sympathy for what the ordinary man or woman is going throughbe it Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba, Ijaw, Tiv, etc. They must resist the temptation to shed each others blood, by fighting the Tinubu war. The only war the masses ought to fight, and must fight, is against the corrupt elite. The purpose is to reclaim our country. The year is 2023. The ammunition is the PVC!

Dr. SKC Ogbonnia, a 2019 APC Presidential Aspirant, writes from Houston, Texas.
At least 32 people were killed and an unknown number are missing following an attack on Adara communities in southern Kaduna state on 5 June by armed assailants on motorcycles who were reportedly assisted by a helicopter.

Local sources state that attackers of Fulani ethnicity descended on Ungwan Gamu, Dogon Noma, Ungwan Sarki and Maikori villages in the Kajuru Local Government Area (LGA) on approximately 150 motorcycles, each carrying three people. Wearing turbans and armed with AK-47s, the attackers destroyed a large number of homes and the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) buildings in Dogon Noma and Maikori. Of the 32 victims, 29 were from Dogon Noma, two were from Ungwan Sarki, and one was from Maikori.

According to the National President of Adara Development Association (ADA), Awemi Dio Maisamari, the attack started at around noon and continued until 6pm. Lamenting that the pogrom against [the] Adara nation rages on, Mr Maisamari added that the burial of victims on 6 June was disrupted when terrorists were sighted in nearby bushes: Furthermore, many people are still missing and some of them are believed to have been abducted by the assailants.

The Kaduna state government issued its first statement on the attack on 9 June, as news of the helicopter joining the militia attack began to spread widely, naming the victims and commiserating with the communities. The statement dismissed reports that a helicopter attacked members of the community, claiming that in reality an Air Force helicopter (under Operation Whirl Punch) dispatched to the area, had earlier scanned the first two locations and sighted burnt houses and properties on fire. [and] intercepted the bandits at the last location (Ungwan Maikori) and engaged them as they retreated before the arrival of ground troops, allegedly deterring them from mounting further attacks.

However, survivors continue to insist that the helicopter attacked them. Villagers from Maikori contend that upon hearing of the ongoing attack on Dogon Noma, they evacuated women and children, gathered reinforcements to defend their village, and set an ambush for the terrorists. They allege that just as they were succeeding in driving the militia away, a white helicopter appeared and opened fire on them. As they fled, the terrorists entered their village, as the helicopter reportedly provided cover, and spent three hours destroying homes and the local ECWA Church, leaving a handful of buildings standing which were of little value.

The leader of the 1st ECWA Church in Maikori, Reverend Denis Sani, who also lost his home and possessions in the attack, informed the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU) that the helicopter did not hide its intention that it came to kill us and to help the armed Fulani to achieve what they wanted to do. The reverends version of events was confirmed by other survivors, including the youth leader of Maikori village, who insisted: the bullets were coming from the bottom of the helicopter straight at us. At first I thought it was a mistake, but it circled back, saw the position of the enemy, left them alone and started raining bullets at us and into our village.

Kajuru LGA has been under regular attack since 2018, when the Adara paramount leader was abducted and murdered by Fulani assailants who are yet to face prosecution, and the predominantly Christian Chiefdom was subsequently balkanised and placed under two emirates, despite the fact that under 15% of the population in the area are Hausa or Fulani.

Dogon Noma was initially attacked on 11 March 2019, when 52 people were killed, dozens were injured, and houses burnt down. The first attack on Maikori occurred on 1 August 2019 when one person was killed, several were injured and homes were burnt down.

Reuben Buhari, Press Officer for CSW Nigeria said that over 50 attacks have been documented on communities around that axis. In fact, there was a time when about 13 villages around Gefe were attacked between 20 May and 23 May 2020  in just 3 days. Over 50 people were killed in those attacks with the survivors abandoning the villages. For more than a year, they couldn't go back to gather and bury those killed. At the height of all these attacks in Kajuru LGA, we recorded 12,480 IDPs scattered in different camps, with the 4,410 in Maraban Kajuru, 3,324 in Kufana, and the rest spread in other camps. Most ate food only through the goodwill of generous donors.

The recent attacks are the first in which a helicopter is alleged to have opened fire on victim communities on behalf of militia men. Reports of a solitary helicopter assisting militia men initially emerged from survivors of sustained attacks on the Agatu area of Benue state in early 2016. There have also been unverified but recurring accounts from survivors of attacks in various remote locations in southern Kaduna state of a helicopter arriving prior to an attack that was suspected either to be conducting surveillance for or bringing supplies to attackers. However, CSWs sources noted that when visiting people displaced by militia violence from previous attacks in Kajuri LGA, children began shaking and would run away at the sound of a passing helicopter, saying the sound often preceded an attack.

Eyewitness accounts of three assailants riding on each motorcycle are also consistent with the testimonies of survivors from communities in the Kanam LGA in Plateau state, where 142 people were killed in simultaneous attacks in April, and those from attacks on villages in Taraba and Kaduna states between 2017 and 2019, who informed CSW their assailants rode on motorcycles carrying three people, one driver and two shooters who would fire to the left and right respectively.

In a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) said: it is important to note that this new dimension of a helicopter being used by Fulani terrorists is shocking but not unexpected as there have been bold signs written all over the place going by the chronology of the sophisticated terrorism that banditry by Fulani bloodletters has evolved into.

CSW Founder President Mervyn Thomas said: Once again we extend our deepest condolences to all who lost loved ones in these appalling attacks in Kaduna state. We wish the injured a swift and full recovery and urge local authorities to provide for the displaced and to do everything in their power to ensure the safe return of all abductees. We also urge the government to ensure the swift repair and reconstruction of damaged properties, and to guarantee safety to those who seek to return. The relentless death and destruction constitute a damning indictment of the continuing failure by both levels of government to fulfil their primary mandate of protecting all citizens. Moreover, allegations of terrorists being assisted in their attacks by a helicopter cannot be dismissed so summarily, given the consistent testimonies from survivors, and ought to be a matter of the utmost concern, as they are a worrying indication either of possible terrorist infiltration into the armed forces, or of an alarming growth in the sophistication with which they are now able to operate. We call on federal and state authorities to significantly increase protections for vulnerable communities, many of which are targeted repeatedly, to intensify efforts to combat terrorist groups whose activities appear to be increasing across the country, and to seek immediate assistance from the international community to end the relentless slide into failed statehood.
Phuket hotels move to resolve dire skills shortage

PHUKET: As Phuket looks toward a revival in the tourism sector, hoteliers are struggling to find qualified staff to provide the level of service returning tourists are looking for.

tourismeconomics

By The Phuket News

Monday 13 June 2022, 02:26PM

Stephen Healy, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Nurture Higher Education Group (left), joins Mr Zitek, M. L. Laksasubha and Mr Milani in concluding the AustCham event. Photo: The Phuket News

Dary Milani, CEO of the Hunter Education Group in Newcastle, Australia, explains the vocational educational framework available to the industry. Photo: The Phuket News

TAT Governor Yuthasak Supasorn and Tourism Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn arrive for the TTM+ 2022 event at Angsana Laguna Phuket last week. The resort hosted thousands of guests for the event, but is just one hotel on Phuket struggling to hire experienced, skilled staff. Photo: MoTS

Time is of the essence, Michael Zitek, Area General Manager at Angsana Laguna Phuket, said on Friday (June 10).

The skills shortage in hospitality in Phuket is dire. There are people who are very willing to come to work, but it is the next generation, Mr Zitek said at an AustCham event hosted at the resort that focussed on providing vocational training to plug the skills gap.

As we have just finished the TTM 2022 [Thailand Travel Mart], we did not have enough full-time associates to deliver that level of service [required].

We go out for recruitment and hire casual employees and the bodies are there. The desire to work is there, but there is a big gap to catch up to get it back to the skill levels people are expecting, he said.

As an industry, we are pressed for time. We have high season looming in September and October, Mr Zitek noted.

The battering of the tourism industry during the COVID pandemic saw an exodus of skilled, experienced staff, Mr ZItek explained.

Before COVID, from say 2017-2019, our supervisors and mid-level management were in their 40s and already had 20 years of experience. At the moment our supervisors are maybe mid-20s.

It has been this attrition of the previous professionals. They have had their own families to take care of and their own industries that they have commenced during the downtime. They have gone away from the industry and established comfortable lives, and they are not running back to Phuket and so on, he added.

The bodies are there, the people are there, but the actual skills and experience are not, he said.

Mr Ziteks comments came at a presentation of a vocational skills training framework provided by the Hunter Education Group in Newcastle, Australia, working with the Nurture Higher Education Group (Nurture HE), which originated in Bangkok but also now provides international-level education in Indonesia and Vietnam.

The Nurture HE programme offers students a hospitality degree issued by the University of Newcastle through the Thai Chamber of Commerce campus in Bangkok, which is home to some 24,000 students.

Stephen Healy, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Nurture Higher Education Group, explained that the degree is a fully qualified Australian degree, benchmarked against Australian university education standards.

The skills and competencies taught must pass those standards, or the accreditation and certification cannot be provided.

Dary Milani, CEO, Hunter Education Group, noted that feedback from the industry presented three critical hurdles. Hoteliers had responded:

- We cant find people with the levels of service standards that we need to service the higher volumes and higher expectations of customers

- We need trained hospitality workers from the region, as this profile of worker is unlikely to move from major cities

- We are losing junior workers to other industries because they dont see the aspirational career opportunity.

The units of competencies (skills)  anywhere from cocktail making to financial budget creation  are taught as separate subjects, but they can be clustered together and provided as intensive training to deliver focussed training in specialised areas, he said.

The programme offers flexibility. The units can be taken in bite-sized pieces, Mr Milani said.

Each of those units competencies could be delivered in an accelerated cluster or intensive cluster over a weekend, he added.

The advantage of being able to reorganise subjects taken by students allows for fast-tracking of skills, but the quality of education for the overall degree is not compromsied, Mr Milani noted.

Students must still meet a volume unit credits in order to complete the qualification in full, he said.

Mr Healy raised the possibility of pop-up training sessions to be held locally in order to help hotels fast-track the upskilling of their staff.

The competencies taught and tested do not change for small or large hotels. They remain the same requirements for certification, he said.

This provides for uniform skills validation and helps with transferability, Mr Healy noted.

Australian-Thai Chamber of Commerce President M. L. Laksasubha Kridakon, herself a hotelier, praised the framework presented to provide skills training.

Most of my staff went back to Isarn, but we managed to recruit most of them back again. We still have mid-level and novice level staff, but they havent got the skills, she said.

As tourists come back the expectation is that service will be top notch, said M. L. Laksasubha, who also owns and operates the Laksasubha Resort in Hua Hin.

As managers have gone home to open cafes in Udon and so on, bringing people in without skills is going to be telling. Tourists come back and note that the service is different. They see new staff who are not fully trained yet.

If you use this kind of programme it will help to speed things up with those staff who really want to learn  and the guests will be happier, she said.

I think this idea of having the vocational education that they [the staff] can afford and increase their potential as an international student through these programmes will help our industry, she added.

Mr Zitek also appreciated the long-term impact the programme may provide through training skilled staff within the industry.

We have an Memorandum of Understanding with Prince of Songkla University [PSU] to take on graduates. But right now thats only 10, he said.

The capacity of PSU or other establishments to help us to catch up is not going to be there, so it is perfect timing to have this opportunity where we can look at outsourcing the education to help us establish not only the next generation for the industry, but also help our retention, he added.

If there were a situation where we could develop from zero skills up to mid- management up to senior management with the enticement of a recognised qualification at the end of that, it is going to be a great advantage, Mr Zitek noted.

Were now really in a situation of rebuild and restore. I think it is important to address this in terms of the hospitality reputation of Thailand. It is important to give opportunities to grow and develop, and have certification that is transferable between hotels, he said.

The younger generation are quite confident to change jobs quite often, but if there were the opportunity to transfer that quality of education or skills to the next place and continue learning, as much as we compete, we could collaborate for the redevelopment of skills that represent Thailand, Mr Zitek concluded.
Sites scoured for fugitive politician

BANGKOK: The hunt for the missing president of the Prachin Buri Provincial Administrative Organisation (PAO), accused of forest encroachment, stepped up yesterday (June 12) with police scouring multiple locations in the province.

corruptionlandcrimepolice

By Bangkok Post

Monday 13 June 2022, 09:50AM

Police from the Central Investigation Bureau search a house in Muang district of Prachin Buri province for Soonthorn Vilawan, the father of Deputy Education Minister Kanokwan. He is on an arrest warrant after failing to report to public prosecutors to hear changes on land encroachment at Khao Yai National Park. Photo: Central Investigation Bureau

Soonthorn Vilawan, who is also father of Deputy Education Minister Kanokwan Vilawan, has been on the run after being charged with forest encroachment.

The pair are two of 10 suspects accused by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) of illegally occupying 150 rai of land in Prachin Buris Khao Yai National Park.

All suspects were required to present themselves to court on Thursday, but four of them, including Mr Soonthorn, failed to comply, leading to the court issuing warrants for their arrest, reports the Bangkok Post.

The three others are former Department of Lands officials Surang Kantarom, Somsak Heeb-ngern and former Royal Forest Department official Kanit Petchpradab.

Mr Soonthorn, who faces multiple charges including backing officials to run a land occupation dishonestly that caused damage to government agencies, is still on the run, according to the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB).

Pol Lt Gen Jirabhop Bhuridej, CIB commissioner, said law enforcement agents have investigated five spots across Prachin Buri, among them Ms Kanokwans house, Mr Soonthorns office, a hotel and the home of a local politician.

A source said Mr Soonthorn was last seen with Chanchai Jindasathaporn, vice president of the PAO, while attending a ceremony at the Miracle Grand Convention Hotel in Bangkok on Thursday, the day the former was supposed to present himself to prosecutors in court.

Niwatchai Kasemmongkol, NACC secretary-general, said Mr Soonthorns case is set to expire today due to the 20-year statute of limitations running out. The crime was first committed in 2002, he said.

The NACC obtained the case file from police in 2020, Mr Niwatchai said, adding the NACC has been working with police to track down Mr Soonthorn.

When the case expires, the anti-corruption agency will consider discharging Mr Soonthorn from his current position.
Today

Clear skies. Low around 45F. W winds at 15 to 25 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph.

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Clear skies. Low around 45F. W winds at 15 to 25 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph.

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Mainly sunny. High 87F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph.
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PRAGUE (AP)  Budvar, the Czech brewer that has been in a long legal dispute with U.S. company Anheuser-Busch over use of the Budweiser brand, increased its beer exports last year despite the pandemic.

Budejovicky Budvar NP, a 126-year-old state-owned brewery, said Monday its exports were up a record 11% in 2021, reaching 1.3 million hectoliters (34.3 million gallons).
katifcam/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Shoppers got quite the surprise last Friday, June 10, when a red pickup truck crashed into the Aldi in Granite City.

A video posted to Facebook by user Becca Johnson shows the store at 1412 Schaeffer Road after the crash happened. According to Granite City Fire Chief Rich Wilson two people were transferred by first responders to St. Louis area hospitals.
CARROLLTON  The downward-facing dog may have yoga seniority, but climbing goats are all the rage.

Its not really new, said Anna Henschen, owner of Alhambra-based Goat Yoga of Southern Illinois. Its just different, and its just absolutely incredible.

Henschen, a Carrollton native, is fairly new to goat yoga herself after taking a single class in April 2021 in Missouri before deciding it was what she wanted to do with her life.

I had no idea about goats, Henschen said. I hated yoga. But when I was there, I just let go. I just cuddled goats and it was therapy. I forgot about bills that were due, the pandemic, all the crap going on in the world.

Her text message to her husband, Nick, telling him she wanted to start a goat yoga business beat her home.

Nick Henschen readily admits he thought he wife might have lost her mind, but he quietly researched what was involved and surprised her a month later with a breakdown of the costs.

I had been out of work for a year, Anna Henschen said. We were living paycheck to paycheck, everything was tight. He thought Id (let it drop). I said, Lets do it.

By July, they had their first class.

They travel around the region, holding classes in such places as Jerseyville, Loami and Grafton.

As he sat Saturday in the shade of a tent at Tera Smiths home on Carrolltons outskirts, watching the couples two children as his wife oversaw the four-legged stars of a yoga class, Nick Henschen acknowledged hes since realized goat yoga is pretty neat.

It's deeper than it sounds, Anna Henschen said.

When you see nurses who have been stressed out for three years get in there and let go and are in tears (because the goats gave them that outlet), that makes it all worth it, Anna Henschen said, noting that theyve held classes specifically as therapy for military veterans. My husband was like, I get it; now I know why you want to do it. Its way more rewarding than a standard office job.

The secret is found in a classs balance between exercise and having fun with the goats, Anna Henschen said, noting that different classes involve different levels of yoga, though all can accommodate just about any participants skill level.

Its more of a goat-based class, she said. But you get a workout, too. Youre moving your body, but youre sidetracked, too, because of the goats. You almost dont realize whats going on and how much exercise youre actually getting.

Five yoga instructors rotate through leading the classes and Anna Henschen keeps an eye on the 17 or so goats that participate in a given class  the business has 27  using feed to encourage them to do what comes naturally  climbing.

While some yoga classes can be meditatively quiet, even intimidating in their seriousness, that was not the case Saturday, as class participants worked their way through various yoga poses while pausing to angle their phones to get a photo of a goat standing on their back or to pet a goat that stopped by their hip to nibble on the grass near their yoga mat  or the mat itself.

Bonnie Vahle of Jacksonville joined in the early portion of the class before spending the latter part of it standing under a shade tree. She took regular yoga classes when she was younger, before bad knees made it harder, she said.

You do what you can do, she said easily as goats clustered around her. One goat took advantage of Vahles empty yoga mat to take a break, too.

Vahles approach is not uncommon, Anna Henschen said, noting that theres no shame in skipping the yoga altogether in favor of spending the time petting a goat.

A lot of people do that, she said. They might do zero yoga, just sit on the mat and pet the goats.
Westerly, RI (02891)

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Intervals of clouds and sunshine. High 74F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

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A few clouds from time to time. Low 57F. Winds light and variable.
Astronomers estimate that 100 million black holes roam among the stars in our Milky Way galaxy, but they have never conclusively identified an isolated black hole.

Following six years of meticulous observations, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has, for the first time ever, provided direct evidence for a lone black hole drifting through interstellar space by a precise mass measurement of the phantom object. Until now, all black hole masses have been inferred statistically or through interactions in binary systems or in the cores of galaxies. Stellar-mass black holes are usually found with companion stars, making this one unusual.

The newly detected wandering black hole lies about 5,000 light-years away, in the Carina-Sagittarius spiral arm of our galaxy. However, its discovery allows astronomers to estimate that the nearest isolated stellar-mass black hole to Earth might be as close as 80 light-years away. The nearest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is a little over 4 light-years away.

Black holes roaming our galaxy are born from rare, monstrous stars (less than one-thousandth of the galaxy's stellar population) that are at least 20 times more massive than our Sun. These stars explode as supernovae, and the remnant core is crushed by gravity into a black hole. Because the self-detonation is not perfectly symmetrical, the black hole may get a kick, and go careening through our galaxy like a blasted cannonball.

Telescopes can't photograph a wayward black hole because it doesn't emit any light. However, a black hole warps space, which then deflects and amplifies starlight from anything that momentarily lines up exactly behind it.

Ground-based telescopes, which monitor the brightness of millions of stars in the rich star fields toward the central bulge of our Milky Way, look for a tell-tale sudden brightening of one of them when a massive object passes between us and the star. Then Hubble follows up on the most interesting such events.

Two teams used Hubble data in their investigations - one led by Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland; and the other by Casey Lam of the University of California, Berkeley. The teams' results differ slightly, but both suggest the presence of a compact object.

The warping of space due to the gravity of a foreground object passing in front of a star located far behind it will momentarily bend and amplify the light of the background star as it passes in front of it. Astronomers use the phenomenon, called gravitational microlensing, to study stars and exoplanets in the approximately 30,000 events seen so far inside our galaxy.

Our Milky Way galaxy is haunted. The vast gulf of space between the stars is plied by the dead, burned-out and crushed remnants of once glorious stars. These black holes cannot be directly seen because their intense gravity swallows light. Like legendary wandering ghosts, their presence can only be deduced by seeing how they affect the environment around them. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Lead Producer: Paul Morris

The signature of a foreground black hole stands out as unique among other microlensing events. The very intense gravity of the black hole will stretch out the duration of the lensing event for over 200 days. Also, if the intervening object was instead a foreground star, it would cause a transient color change in the starlight as measured because the light from the foreground and background stars would momentarily be blended together. But no color change was seen in the black hole event.

Next, Hubble was used to measure the amount of deflection of the background star's image by the black hole. Hubble is capable of the extraordinary precision needed for such measurements. The star's image was offset from where it normally would be by about a milliarcsecond. That's equivalent to measuring the diameter of a 25-cent coin in Los Angeles as seen from New York City.

This astrometric microlensing technique provided information on the mass, distance, and velocity of the black hole. The amount of deflection by the black hole's intense warping of space allowed Sahu's team to estimate that it weighs seven solar masses.

Lam's team reports a slightly lower mass range, meaning that the object may be either a neutron star or a black hole. They estimate that the mass of the invisible compact object is between 1.6 and 4.4 times that of the Sun. At the high end of this range the object would be a black hole; at the low end, it would be a neutron star.

"As much as we would like to say it is definitively a black hole, we must report all allowed solutions. This includes both lower mass black holes and possibly even a neutron star," said Jessica Lu of the Berkeley team.

"Whatever it is, the object is the first dark stellar remnant discovered wandering through the galaxy, unaccompanied by another star" Lam added.

This was a particularly difficult measurement because there is a bright, unrelated star that is extremely close in angular separation to the source star. "So it's like trying to measure the tiny motion of a firefly next to a bright light bulb," said Sahu. "We had to meticulously subtract the light from the nearby bright star to precisely measure the deflection of the faint source."

Sahu's team estimates the isolated black hole is traveling across the galaxy at 100,000 miles per hour, or 160,000 kilometers per hour (fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in less than three hours). That's faster than most of the other neighboring stars in that region of our galaxy.

"Astrometric microlensing is conceptually simple but observationally very tough," said Sahu. "Microlensing is the only technique available for identifying isolated black holes." When the black hole passed in front of a background star located 19,000 light-years away in the galactic bulge, the starlight coming toward Earth was amplified for a duration of 270 days as the black hole passed by. However, it took several years of Hubble observations to follow how the background star's position appeared to be deflected by the bending of light by the foreground black hole.

The existence of stellar-mass black holes has been known since the early 1970s, but all of their mass measurements - until now - have been in binary star systems. Gas from the companion star falls into the black hole and is heated to such high temperatures that it emits X-rays. About two dozen black holes have had their masses measured in X-ray binaries through their gravitational effect on their companions. Mass estimates range from 5 to 20 solar masses. Black holes detected in other galaxies by gravitational waves from mergers between black holes and companion objects have been as high as 90 solar masses.

"Detections of isolated black holes will provide new insights into the population of these objects in our Milky Way," said Sahu. But it is a needle-in-a-haystack search. The prediction is that only one in a few hundred microlensing events are caused by isolated black holes.

NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will discover several thousand microlensing events out of which many are expected to be black holes, and the deflections will be measured with very high accuracy.

In a 1916 paper on general relativity, Albert Einstein predicted that his theory could be tested by observing the Sun's gravity offsetting the apparent position of a background star. This was tested by a collaboration led by astronomers Arthur Eddington and Frank Dyson during a solar eclipse on May 29, 1919. Eddington and his colleagues measured a background star being offset by 2 arcseconds, validating Einstein's theories. These scientists could hardly have imagined that over a century later this same technique would be used - with unimaginable precision of a thousandfold better - to look for black holes across the galaxy.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

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Kingsport, TN (37660)

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Sun and clouds mixed. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. High 94F. Winds light and variable..

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Kingsport, TN (37660)

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Intervals of clouds and sunshine. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. High 97F. Winds light and variable..

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Kingsport, TN (37660)

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Partly cloudy. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. High near 95F. Winds light and variable..

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Kingsport, TN (37660)

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A few clouds. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable..

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A few clouds. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable.
One of the toughest calls a district attorney must make is whether to seek the death penalty in a murder case. There are many factors to consider, not the least of which is the prosecutor's primary responsibility to not so much convict as to see justice done.
Ukrainian defenders were fighting fiercely for every metre of Sievierodonetsk, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, as Russian forces destroyed a bridge to another city across the river, leaving stranded civilians with just one way out.

Russian forces have taken most of Sievierodonetsk, having pulverized parts of the city in one of the bloodiest assaults since they invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, and victory there could give them momentum in a wider battle for control over Ukraines eastern Donbas region.Advertisement  Scroll to continue

The key tactical goal of the occupiers has not changed: they are pressing in Sievierodonetsk, severe fighting is ongoing there  literally for every metre, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Sunday, adding that Russias military was trying to pour reserves into the Donbas.

Zelenskiy said the image of a 12-year-old wounded in a Russian strike was now the enduring worldwide face of Russia.

These very facts will underscore the way in which Russia is seen by the world, he said.

Not Peter the Great, not Lev Tolstoy, but children injured and killed in Russian attacks, he said, in an apparent reference to Russian President Vladimir Putins remarks last week comparing Moscows military campaign to Russian emperor Peter the Greats 18th century conquest of lands held by Sweden.

Ukrainian and Russian forces were still fighting street-by-street in Sievierodonetsk on Sunday, the governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Gaidai, said.

Russian forces have taken most of the city but Ukrainian troops remain in control of an industrial area and the Azot chemical plant where hundreds of civilians are sheltering.

About 500 civilians remain on the grounds of the Azot plant in Sievierodonetsk, 40 of them are children. Sometimes the military manages to evacuate someone, Gaidai said.

But the Russians had destroyed a bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River linking Sievierodonetsk with its twin city of Lysychansk, Gaidai said.

That left just one of three bridges still standing.

If after new shelling the bridge collapses, the city will truly be cut off. There will be no way of leaving Sievierodonetsk in a vehicle, Gaidai said, noting the lack of a cease-fire agreement and no agreed evacuation corridors.

Gaidai said Lysychansk was also being shelled by Russian forces, and a six-year-old child had been killed there.

Reuters could not independently confirm that account.

In Pokrovsk, southwest of Sievierodonetsk, women, children and elderly, some in wheelchairs, boarded the only train evacuating people on Saturday, at the start of a long journey from the conflict zone to safety in Lviv near the border with Poland.

We held on until the last moment, we didnt want to leave, but life has forced us to survive, Lyuba, a woman from Lysychansk, told Reuters Television as she waited for the train to depart. We are leaving, we dont know where, to whom, but we are leaving.

STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS

The fall of Sievierodonetsk, in the last pocket of Ukrainian land held in the strategic Luhansk region, would move Russia a big step closer to one of the stated goals of what Putin calls a special military operation.

Russian forces were firing mortars and artillery south and southwest of Sievierodonetsk, according to Ukraines general staff. But it said Ukrainian forces had repulsed Russian attempts to advance towards some communities.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.

After being forced to scale back its initial goals following its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has turned its attention to expanding control in the Donbas, where pro-Russian separatists have held territory since 2014.

Russian forces have engaged in the constant bombardment of cities in the south and east, leaving many in ruins and thousands of civilians dead, according to the United Nations.

Elsewhere, Russian cruise missiles destroyed a large depot containing U.S. and European weapons in western Ukraines Ternopil region, Russias Interfax agency reported.

Ternopils governor said rockets fired from the Black Sea at the city of Chortkiv had partly destroyed a military facility and injured 22 people. A local official said there were no weapons stored there.

Reuters could not independently confirm the differing accounts.

On Sunday, the Ukrainian general staff said on Facebook that General Valeriy Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraines armed forces, had spoken to General Mark Milley, the top U.S. military officer, and reiterated a request for more heavy artillery systems.

Moscow has criticised the United States and other nations for sending Ukraine weapons, threatening to strike new targets if the West supplied long-range missiles.

Putin says Russias actions aim to disarm and denazify Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression to capture territory.

Also on Sunday, the leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region in the Donbas said there was no reason to pardon two British nationals sentenced to death last week after being captured along with a Moroccan man while fighting for Ukraine. Britain says they were regular soldiers exempt under the Geneva Conventions from prosecution for participation in hostilities.

Separately, the family of a former British soldier, Jordan Gatley, said on social media he was killed fighting for Ukraine in Sievierodonetsk.

SOURCE: REUTERS
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HUDSON  A local man was convicted of second-degree murder and other charges for the shooting death of a bystander during a summer of violence between two feuding drug crews, prosecutors said.

A jury convicted DiQuann "DaDa" Powell, 26, of the murder of 31-year-old Kevin Whitening of New York City after five hours of deliberations.

The shooting death was part of tit-for-tat violence between two drugs crews in Hudson in 2017 that led to at least six other people being shot, including two toddlers.

The dispute began on November 24, 2016, when Powell assaulted and attempted to rob a man in Hudson with a gun, according to the Columbia County District Attorney's Office.

The next year, the violence spiraled. In the most egregious act, two toddlers and a 37-year-old woman were shot as they attended a barbecue in Hudson. All three were able to recover.

On Aug. 22, Powell attempted to shoot the same man he had attempted to rob the year prior but ended up killing Whitening, according to the Columbia County District Attorney's Office. Christian Simmons, of the Bronx, also was charged with second-degree murder in the shooting. Simmons trial is set to begin in August.

Powell himself was shot in the hip in Hudson a month later, according to Hudson police.

Powell is serving time in prison at Barehill Correctional Facility in Malone on a separate first-degree assault charge out of Albany.

The case was investigated by the Hudson Police Lt. David Miller and the Hudson detective unit along with State Police.

The violence of 2017 seems so long ago, but building a competent, thorough case takes time and a professional approach, Hudson Police Chief L. Edward Moore said. This is the kind of performance we expect and our community deserves.

Five years after the violence, most of the perpetrators have been arrested.

Five members of one of the drug crews were indicted on federal charges in March 2018 for allegedly conspiring to distribute crack cocaine. They pleaded guilty to distributing up to 484 grams of crack in Hudson in four months in late 2017. Each received a 10-year sentence.

James Hargrove and Kevron Lee, both of Hudson, were arrested in 2021 for allegedly shooting the woman and two toddlers. They were arraigned on six counts of attempted murder, two counts of second-degree assault and six counts of reckless endangerment, all felonies.

Powell will be sentenced at a later date on the murder charge, as well as assault and attempted robbery charges for the attempted mugging that began the violence.

He faces up to 50 years in state prison.
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NEW YORK (AP)  Former Democratic presidential candidate and New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang is getting involved in a New York congressional primary that's pitted two veteran lawmakers against each other.

But Yang, who became known for his call for the government to issue a universal basic income, is not backing U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler or U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney in the primary race for a heavily Democratic district: In the race for New York's 12th District, he is instead backing Democrat Suraj Patel, who worked on President Barack Obamas presidential campaigns and in his White House.
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ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP)  Search teams found a backpack, laptop and other personal items that belonged to Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips, who went missing in a remote area of Brazils Amazon a week ago, Federal Police said Sunday night.

Phillips backpack was discovered Sunday afternoon tied to a tree that was half-submerged, a firefighter told reporters in Atalaia do Norte, the closest city to the search area, which is near the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory. It is the end of the rainy season in the region and part of the forest is flooded.

Officers with the Federal Police brought the items by boat to Atalaia do Norte later in the afternoon. In a statement a few hours later, they said they had identified the belongings of both missing men, such as Pereiras health card and clothes.

A tarp from the boat used by the men was found Saturday by Matis volunteers, members of an Indigenous group of recent contact, one of them told The Associated Press.

We used a little canoe to go to the shallow water. Then we found a tarp, shorts and a spoon, said Binin Beshu Matis.

After that find, the search teams concentrated their efforts around that spot in the Itaquai river.

On Saturday, police reported finding traces of blood in the boat of a fisherman who is under arrest as the only suspect and organic matter of apparent human origin inside the river. Both materials are under forensic analysis, and no more details were provided.

Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen June 5 near the entrance of the Indigenous territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. They were returning alone by boat on the Itaquai river to Atalaia do Norte but never arrived.

That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents. Violence has grown as drug trafficking gangs battle for control of waterways to ship cocaine, although the Itaquai is not a known drug trafficking route.

Authorities have said that a main line of the police investigation into the disappearance has pointed to an international network that pays poor fishermen to fish illegally in the Javari Valley reserve, which is Brazils second-largest Indigenous territory.

One of the most valuable targets is the worlds largest freshwater fish with scales, the arapaima. It weighs up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) and can reach 3 meters (10 feet). The fish is sold in nearby cities, including Leticia, Colombia, Tabatinga, Brazil, and Iquitos, Peru.

The only known suspect in the disappearances is fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also known as Pelado, who is under arrest. According to accounts by Indigenous people who were with Pereira and Phillips, he brandished a rifle at them the day before the pair disappeared.

The suspect denies any wrongdoing and said military police tortured him to try to get a confession, his family told The Associated Press..

Pereira, who previously led the local bureau of the governments Indigenous agency, known as FUNAI, has taken part in several operations against illegal fishing. In such operations, as a rule the fishing gear is seized or destroyed, while the fishermen are fined and briefly detained. Only the Indigenous can legally fish in their territories.

The crimes motive is some personal feud over fishing inspection, the mayor of Atalaia do Norte, Denis Paiva, speculated to reporters without providing more details.

AP had access to information police shared with Indigenous leadership. But while some police, the mayor and others in the region link the pairs disappearances to the fish mafia, federal police have not ruled rule out other lines of investigation, such as narco trafficking.

Best of the Capital Region 2022 Its the 25th anniversary of our Best of the Capital Region readers survey. Make sure your voice is heard by nominating your favorite people, places and businesses between Jan. 21 and Feb. 4.

Fisherman Laurimar Alves Lopes, who lives on the banks of Itaquai, told AP that he gave up fishing inside the Indigenous territory after being detained three times. He said he endured beating and starvation in jail.

Lopes, who has five children, said he only fishes near his home to feed his family, not sell.

I made many mistakes, I stole a lot of fish. When you see your child dying of hunger you go get it where you have to. So I would go there to steal fish to be able to support my family. But then I said: Im going to put an end to this, Im going to plant, he said during an interview on his boat.

Lopes said he was taken to local federal police headquarters in Tabatinga three times, charging he was beaten and left without food.

In 2019, Funai official Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was gunned down in Tabatinga in front of his wife and daughter-in-law. Three years later, the crime remains unsolved. His FUNAI colleagues told AP they believe the slaying was linked to his work against fishermen and poachers.

Rubber tappers founded all the riverbank communities in the area. In the 1980s, however, rubber tapping declined and they resorted to logging. That ended, too, when the federal government created the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory in 2001. Fishing has become the main economic activity since then.

An illegal fishing trip to the vast Javari Valley lasts around one month, said Manoel Felipe, a local historian and teacher who also served as a councilman. For each illegal incursion, a fisherman can earn at least $3,000.

The fishermens financiers are Colombians, Felipe said. In Leticia, everybody was angry with Bruno. This is not a little game. Its possible they sent a gunman to kill him.
LAKE GEORGE  A child described as well-liked, super polite and loved by all is being mourned by the community and the local school district after he and a 38-year-old man were killed on Sunday afternoon when a motorcycle careened off of Route 9 and into a group coming off the Warren County Bikeway.



Lake George Elementary School Principal James Conway said 8-year-old Quinton Delgadillo was a good friend to all of his classmates.



Superintendent Doug Huntley posted a message on the Lake George Central School Districts website saying that the death is difficult and challenging for all of us.



Coping with the loss of a child, friend, and classmate may be one of the hardest challenges that many of us will face, Huntley wrote. During this time, as our school community processes this tragic news and copes with grief, the school district will offer counseling and bereavement support services to all of our students and staff.



With the child at the time of the crash were James Persons, 38, who also died, and Delgadillos mother, Jasmine Luellen, 30, who was in stable condition at Albany Medical Center Hospital as of Monday afternoon.



State Police said they are still investigating the incident that occurred at about 3:40 p.m. on Sunday when Anthony J. Futia, 33, of Albany was traveling north on Route 9 at allegedly a high speed. His motorcycle went off of the shoulder, and onto the bikeway where Delgadillo, Persons and Luellen were with a group of six pedestrians. Three other children who were with Persons and Luellen were not injured.



Police said Futia is in critical condition at Albany Med and that charges against him are still being considered.



The path is near Lake George Expedition Park, formerly Magic Forest. Danna Ellsworth, owner of the park, said she knew the family.



Its heart-wrenching, she said. It was totally unnecessary what happened. This is something that never needed to happen.



Ellsworth said she could not say more because the crash is still under investigation.

A spokesman for Warren County said its Department of Public Works would review safety measures in that area of the bike trial, noting it was a common practice whenever there is a serious incident on county-owned property.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  A network of adult care facilities in Maine will adopt a nondiscrimination policy about the care of transgender people as part of a settlement with a woman who filed a human rights complaint against the company.

Advocates described the agreement as a landmark settlement about elder care for transgender adults in the state. The settlement came three months after Maine's human rights panel ruled in favor of the 79-year-old woman, Marie King, who complained she was denied a room by an assisted living facility because she is transgender.

Adult Family Care Homes of Maine will adopt the nondiscrimination policy in addition to sending employees and administrators at its nine facilities to LGBT-competency training, said attorneys for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, which represented King. The nondiscrimination policy states that Adult Family Care Homes will provide a welcoming environment and the best possible services to all communities, including older adults who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender.

King was initially anonymous when she filed her complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission, but later chose to identify herself. She said the settlement was a positive outcome for herself and other transgender elders seeking care.

I believe the new policies will keep others from experiencing mistreatment and will help people understand that transgender people are only seeking to be treated with dignity and respect like anyone else," King said.

The human rights commission approved the settlement during its meeting on Monday without discussion. The commission's executive director confirmed the agreement and did not comment further.

Best of the Capital Region 2022 Its the 25th anniversary of our Best of the Capital Region readers survey. Make sure your voice is heard by nominating your favorite people, places and businesses between Jan. 21 and Feb. 4.

Rhonda Chambers, the administrator for Adult Family Care Homes of Maine, did not respond to a call seeking comment. The company runs elder care facilities mostly in rural parts of the state.

The human rights commission found that there were reasonable grounds that one such facility, Sunrise Assisted Living in Jonesport, violated the Maine Human Rights Act and discriminated against King on the basis of sex and sexual orientation or gender identity. Attorneys for King have said she filed a complaint with the commission that Sunrise would not admit her because the facility was concerned she wanted to reside with a female roommate.

The settlement that grew from King's complaint "sends an unmistakable message that transgender older adults should be treated with dignity and respect when seeking long-term care services, said GLAD senior attorney Ben Klein.
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SCHENECTADY  The price of gas reached a record $5 a gallon over the weekend and the escalation wasnt lost on James Scott, a landscaper who relies on gas to fuel nearly all of his equipment.

Im going in a circle, said Scott. Im making very little profit.

But Scott, 60, of Schenectady, also dabbles in selling electric scooters and has started to use his own products more.

The nationwide average for a gallon of gasoline reached just above $5 over the weekend, according to the Associated Press, citing the auto club AAA, with the average price increasing 18 cents in the previous week, which is $1.92 higher than this time last year.

Scott believes the escalating prices will hasten societys transition to electric vehicles.

Its time for that, Scott said as he topped off his Ford Explorer on Monday at the Stewarts Shop on Brandywine Avenue. I really believe the world is changing this way.

At the next pump over, James Reedy filled up his Chevy Spark, a compact car he bought recently, in part, for better fuel efficiency.

The countys gas tax cap helps some, said Reedy, a 69-year-old retired nurse, as does the state's decision to suspend part of its gas tax. But the spike still hurts.

Im not traveling as often as I used to, Reedy said.

Interviews with roughly two-dozen local drivers on Monday revealed most were changing their habits, whether considering electric vehicles, slashing vacations, reducing daily trips or spiking discretionary spending.

Bob Masi, 59, a carrier for a local newspaper, said his daily fuel costs have doubled and hes considering picking up a second job.

Its like theres no control, Masi said. You want to stop the bleeding.

Ruth Lex, 79, of Schenectady, said she packs all of her errands into a once-a-week trip. Sid Capen, 69, is trying to cobble together more part-time jobs to make ends meet.

I feel like its consuming everything, Capen said before filling up at the Alltown Fresh on Erie Boulevard in Schenectady. Im trying to scrape together every job I can."

Several factors can be attributed to the steady increase in gas prices.

Global oil prices have been rising since December, according to the Associated Press, while the price of international crude has roughly doubled in that time.

Russia is a leading oil producer and the countrys invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions by the U.S. and its allies have also contributed to soaring coasts, according to the outlet.

Furthermore, the U.S.s capacity to turn oil into gasoline is down since late 2019, while tighter oil and gasoline supplies are hitting as energy consumption rises because of the economic recovery, the Associated Press reported.

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Demand for gasoline is also up because more Americans hit the road after Memorial Day.

Brief visits to several dozen gas stations in Schenectady and Rotterdam on Monday revealed prices per gallon deviated wildly, from $4.77 at the Runway Express on Altamont Avenue to $4.99 at the Speedway on Brandywine Avenue. Yet drivers didn't seem to heed the nearly 20 cent price difference, with both businesses experiencing mid-morning drivers filling up at a steady clip with seemingly no difference in traffic.

Jose Sanchez, 60, groaned as he left Runway Express.

I cant go anywhere because the gas prices are too much, Sanchez said.

(The Times Union interviewed two men named Jose Sanchez on Monday.)

Another Jose Sanchez, 29, shrugged as he filled up at Alltown Fresh.

Work more, Sanchez, a technician at a beverage company, said when asked how he planned to absorb the growing fuel costs.

He acknowledged he's thought about transitioning to electric vehicles, but said he was wary of a friend with a Tesla who had drive a significant distance to get the vehicle serviced.

Until service stations catering to electric vehicles are more prevalent, Sanchez said he will hold off .

Michael Holmes, 66, expressed similar sentiments, citing the lack of widespread charging infrastructure, including in the Stockade neighborhood where he lives.

I leave my car at home and ride my bike more, Holmes said.
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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  The Western U.S. on Monday marked another day of hot, dry and windy weather as crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires that had forced hundreds of people to leave their homes.

Roughly 2,500 homes have been evacuated because of two wildfires burning on the outskirts of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, officials said at an afternoon briefing.

We all have felt the pain of watching our beautiful mountain burn. We acknowledged what an incredibly difficult time this is for those who have been evacuated and for those whose homes have been threatened, Coconino County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Patrice Horstman said.

The wildfire prompted the county to declare an emergency. It's been fueled by high winds that have grounded aircraft as an option for firefighting. Crews are planning on being able to use aircraft Tuesday as winds moderate, authorities said.

Incident Cmdr. Aaron Graeser said the Flagstaff-area fire is one of the countrys top priorities for firefighting resources.

Every potential fire source was a problem today, and every potential unburned area was receptive to fire today, Graeser said. That puts us in an interesting situation of trying to, again, assign resources the best we can based on that.

Current conditions have also kept fire managers from being able to better map it by air but the fire is estimated to be 8 square miles (20 square kilometers).

Crews were expecting wind gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph) as they battled the blaze that has burned through parts of the footprint left by another springtime fire that destroyed over two dozen homes as well as parts of other fire scars.

So far, one home and a secondary structure have been lost in the fire first reported Sunday, Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Bret Axlund said.

The Arizona Snowbowl ski resort closed as a precaution because of the wildfire  the second to hit the area this year.

It's literally like deja vu, said Coconino County sheriff's spokesman Jon Paxton. "We are in the same exact spot doing the same exact thing as we were a month and a half ago. People are tired.

Two other smaller wildfires northeast of the blaze were also burning Monday.

Wildfires broke out early this spring in multiple states in the Western U.S., where climate change and an enduring drought are fanning the frequency and intensity of forest and grassland fires.

The number of square miles burned so far this year is more than double the 10-year national average, and states like New Mexico already have set records with devastating blazes that destroyed hundreds of homes while causing environmental damage that is expected to affect water supplies.

Nationally, more than 6,200 wildland firefighters were battling nearly three dozen uncontained fires that had charred over 1 million acres (4,408 square kilometers), according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Even in Alaska, forecasters have warned that many southwestern fires have grown exceptionally over the last week, which is unusual for that area. Southwest Alaska normally experiences shorter periods of high fire danger because intermittent rain can provide relief, but since mid-May the region has been hot and windy, helping to dry out vegetation.

Favorable weather Monday helped slow the progression of a tundra wildfire just over 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) away from an Alaska Native village. Moderate temperatures and a shift in the wind that had been driving the fire toward St. Marys will allow firefighters to directly attack the flames and increase protections for the Yupik community.

The lightning-sparked fire is estimated at about 193 square miles (500 square kilometers). It's burning dry grass and shrubs in southwest Alaska's mostly treeless tundra.

In California, evacuations were ordered for about 300 remote homes near a wildfire that flared up over the weekend in forest land northeast of Los Angeles near the Pacific Crest Trail in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The blaze saw renewed growth Sunday afternoon and by midday Monday had scorched about 1.5 square miles (3.9 square km) of pine trees and dry brush, fire spokesperson Dana Dierkes said.

The fuel is very dry, so it acts like a ladder, carrying flames from the bottom of the trees to the very top, Dierkes said. Crews were also contending with unpredictable winds that were expected to strengthen later in the day, she said.

Aside from mandatory evacuations for some, the remainder of the mountain town of Wrightwood, with about 4,500 residents, was under an evacuation warning. Several roads also were closed.

The fire was 18% contained.

Five people were rescued from a dangerous area after a wildfire broke out Monday near Dulzura in San Diego County near the Mexican border and spread to nearly 600 acres (242 hectares), authorities said.

Two of those rescued were taken to a hospital but there was no immediate word on how they were injured or their conditions, fire officials said.

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Fire conditions were elevated because of warm and dry weekend weather across Southern California. Monday was expected to be cooler, but another heat wave was expected at midweek, the National Weather Service said.

In Northern California, a 50-mile (80-km) stretch of State Route 70 was closed indefinitely on Monday after mud, boulders and dead trees inundated lanes during flash floods along a wildfire burn scar.

Several drivers were rescued Sunday evening from debris flowing on the highway when hillsides burned bare by last years enormous Dixie Fire came loose. No injuries were reported.

The causes of the latest California fires were under investigation.

U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers cited a 57-year-old camper for lighting toilet paper on fire and placing it under a rock Saturday near the origin of the Arizona wildfire. The fire was reported a day later. Court documents show the man told authorities he tried to put the fire out with his sleeping bag, but his attorney said in federal court Monday that doesnt mean his client was responsible for sparking the blaze.

Flagstaff resident Janetta Kathleen rode her horse, Squish, up a hill to get a better look at the wildfire Sunday evening and watched it creep toward homes in the shadow of the mountain. Her home isn't directly in the fire's path, but her family, two bulldogs and horses are ready to go at a moment's notice.

I need to know what's going on because I have decisions to make for my family, she said. If the winds shift, we'll be in trouble.

Hikers, campers and others who were out enjoying the forest also had to leave Sunday. A shelter was set up at a middle school.

Strong winds sent embers across U.S. Route 89, the main route to the turnoff for the Grand Canyon's east rim entrance, through the Navajo Nation and up into Utah. Many people commute between the reservation and Flagstaff for work. Parts of the highway remained closed Monday.

We're not working directly on suppressing the fire to get the whole thing out right now, said Coconino National Forest spokesman Brady Smith. That's not our focus and it's not possible right now. Right now, it's going to be focused on protecting life and property."

Smoke from the fire near Flagstaff caused hazy skies in Colorado on Monday, obscuring views of the Rocky Mountains from Denver and other cities along the states Front Range.

Meanwhile, firefighters worked to contain a small wildfire burning in juniper and pinion pine that briefly caused evacuation orders Sunday in the San Luis Valleys Rio Grande National Forest in southern Colorado.

The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings for high fire danger in central and southern parts of Colorado as well as parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Winds are expected to ease after Monday with some moisture moving in later this week in parts of the Southwest, the weather service said.

___

Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska; Jim Anderson in Denver; and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.
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An Ohio couple climbed through a broken window of the U.S. Capitol and livestreamed a video of themselves inside. A Texas mortgage broker posed for a selfie in front of rioters breaching the building. An Indiana hair salon owner celebrated on Facebook a day after she joined the pro-Donald Trump mob.

Federal prosecutors did not seek prison time for any of them after they pleaded guilty to petty offenses for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021.

The judge had other ideas.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan put them all behind bars, describing it as the appropriate punishment for their participation in the riot that halted the certification of President Joe Biden's victory, sent lawmakers running for their lives and left dozens of police officers beaten and bloodied.

As the number of people sentenced for crimes in the insurrection nears 200, an Associated Press analysis of sentencing data shows that some judges are divided over how to punish the rioters, particularly for the low-level misdemeanors arising from the attack.

Were asking judges to do what they think is right, and they dont agree on whats right, said Greg Hunter, a lawyer defending several Jan. 6 defendants.

A House committee that held it first public hearing on Thursday cast a wide net in its investigation of the insurrection, examining how President Trump and his allies tried to undermine the election results. So far, the Justice Departments criminal investigation has focused primarily on the hundreds of Trump supporters who broke through police barricades, shattered windows, attacked officers and stormed into the Capitol.

Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, has consistently taken the hardest line against Jan. 6 defendants of any judge serving on Washington's federal trial court, which is handling the more than 800 cases brought so far in the largest prosecution in Justice Department history.

Chutkan has handed out tougher sentences than the department was seeking in seven cases, matched its requests in four others and sent all 11 riot defendants who have come before her behind bars. In the four cases in which prosecutors did not seek jail time, Chutkan gave terms ranging from 14 days to 45 days.

Overall, the 20 judges who have sentenced riot defendants have given lighter sentences than prosecutors were seeking in nearly three-fourths of the cases. The judges have exceeded prosecutors' recommendation for about only 10% of the defendants, according to APs analysis.

Most judges  appointed by presidents of both political parties  have gone easier on defendants than prosecutors wanted in most or all of their cases so far. While some judges have sentenced few Jan. 6 defendants, no other judge besides Chutkan has exceeded prosecutors' recommended punishment in most of the cases assigned to them.

Depending on the judge you get, the same facts could get you anything from probation to months in jail, said Hunter, the defense lawyer. When you can literally look at who the judge is, who has been assigned to a case, and know that every defendant is going to get more time or less time because of the judge they drew ... that doesnt promote respect for the law, he added.

In one case, two friends from Indiana, Dona Sue Bissey and Anna Morgan-Lloyd, both pleaded guilty to the same misdemeanor offense for engaging in essentially the same conduct inside the Capitol. Prosecutors did not seek jail time for either, noting their lack of a criminal record.

Chutkan sentenced Bissey to 14 days in jail. A different judge sentenced Bissey's friend to probation.

While Judge Royce Lamberth did not send Morgan-Lloyd to jail, he has also been among the toughest judges on defendants. In one case, Lamberth, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, gave a Pennsylvania man two months behind bars for a misdemeanor when prosecutors were seeking only two weeks.

More than 300 people have pleaded guilty in connection with the insurrection to crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felony seditious conspiracy. Five others have been convicted at trial. A judge decided two other cases without a jury, acquitting one defendant and partially acquitting the other.

The Jan. 6 cases pose a unique challenge for judges in that even though the riot was unlike anything the country has seen before, hundreds of people were charged only with misdemeanors such as illegal entry that typically do not land first-time offenders behind bars.

Some judges have criticized prosecutors for what they see as disparities in prosecutors' charging decisions across the cases and their recommendations for punishment. Chief Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama nominee, has sharply questioned whether prosecutors are letting some rioters off too easy with misdemeanor plea deals even as they describe the insurrection as an attack on democracy.

To be sure, every case and defendant is different. Also, judges must weigh a slew of factors, including the seriousness of the crime, the persons criminal history, whether the defendant admitted guilt and showed remorse and what sentences similarly situated defendants have received in order to avoid unwarranted disparities.

In the case of a Maryland man who sprayed a fire extinguisher at officers defending the Capitol, prosecutors sought more than four years in prison.

But Judge Randolph Moss sentenced Matthew Ryan Miller to less than three years, noting that the man was just 22 years old on Jan. 6, 2021, was intoxicated when he stormed the Capitol and has shown remorse.

Before handing down the punishment, Moss said he believes judges have done a good job at ensuring the punishments are consistent while also weighing the individual factors of each case.

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When one looks at these sentencing decisions that have been made by this court across many judges, its remarkable how consistent sentencing has been, said Moss, an Obama nominee. When I see differences, Im able to go back through the record and look at it and understand the basis for those differences.

In case after case, Chutkan has expressed her belief that prison can be a powerful deterrent against the threat of another insurrection.

Every day were hearing about reports of anti-democratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024, she said before sentencing a Florida man who attacked police officers to more than five years behind bars  the longest sentence so far in the attack.

It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment," she said.

Of the more than 190 defendants sentenced so far, about 20 admitted to felony charges, including nine who assaulted police officers. The rest pleaded guilty to misdemeanors punishable by no more than one year imprisonment. Prosecutors recommended prison terms in more than 70% of the cases. Judges have agreed to prison in about 45% of them, with terms ranging from nine days to more than five years.

In one case, prosecutors sought a month in prison for California bartender Kevin Cordon, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Judge Trevor McFadden, who was nominated by Trump, said jail time was not appropriate given his lack of criminal record.

In my experience as a judge and former prosecutor, its almost unheard of for someone who is essentially a first-time offender to get jail time for a nonviolent misdemeanor, McFadden said. I think its important that Im consistent in sentencing, not only compared with other judges in Jan. 6 cases but also with an eye to how misdemeanors are handled more generally outside of this politically fraught event."

McFadden has condemned the Jan. 6 riot as a "national embarrassment, while also suggesting that the Justice Department was being too hard on those who broke into the Capitol compared with the people arrested during racial injustice protests following George Floyds 2020 murder.

Without naming her colleague, Chutkan slammed McFadden's suggestion days later.

"People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent, Chutkan said during an October hearing.

But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy."

___

Kunzelman reported from College Park, Maryland, and Richer from Boston.

___

For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege
In nearly half a century as an attorney, Stephen W. Herrick has been counsel for the city of Albany school board, a judge for more than two decades and a founder of drug courts granting non-violent offenders alternatives to prison.

And now, as the Albany County public defender, Herrick holds a new distinction: winner of the New York State Bar Association's 2022 Denison Ray Criminal Defender Award, an honor bestowed by the bar association's Committee on Mandated Representation on June 3.

Ray, a civil rights crusader since the 1960s, was the longtime executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York. In 1966, Ray went to Mississippi and helped direct the first jury verdict in Mississippi for Black plaintiffs in civil rights cases -- and also won 10 of 12 cases before the Mississippi Supreme Court. He died in 1994 in Schenectady at 62.

The award in Ray's honor recognizes attorneys -- such as public defenders, alternate public defenders or lawyers for nonprofit organizations -- for the overall quality of their legal representation and their efforts to inspire, mentor and support colleagues. The award winner must exemplify the highest level of professionalism in providing skill and zealous representation to indigent criminal defense clients.

Chief Assistant Public Defender Cynthia Preiser said Herrick has "worked tirelessly to improve indigent representation in Albany County and make this office the best criminal defense team in upstate New York," according to her March 22 letter to the NYSBA committee to nominate Herrick.

Preiser said Herrick has worked with the state Office of Indigent Legal Services to secure funding to increase salaries, workspace, recruit trial attorneys, paralegals and mitigation experts, and to update equipment and increase training.

Herrick has "dramatically improved the environment of this office," Preiser stated.

"We can now provide as good, or as we believe better representation, than otherwise is available in this locality," Herrick in a text of his award speech. "We are operating with a new found energy and purpose."

Herrick, a 1972 graduate of Albany Law School, started out working for the same office he now leads. He earned less than $15,000 a year. In 1976, Herrick became appointed counsel to the first elected city school board, still in the era of legendary Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd. Herrick became a City Court judge in 1995 (initially appointed and then elected) and a County Court judge in 2002, where he presided over the some of the most high-profile cases in the Capital Region.

In 2016, Herrick was forced to retire under the state's mandatory retirement of 70. At the time, he barely knew Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy. After several interviews and discussions, Herrick explained, McCoy selected the judge to become the county's public defender. It may have seemed like a surprise (retired judges don't typically delve into public defense) but as Herrick told Law Beat at the time, he really did not want to leave the public defender's office in 1976.

"I left very reluctantly," Herrick. "The pay (for the school board counsel position) was twice as much, the benefits were better but I did not want to leave ... I could not afford to stay in the public defender's office and this is the situation that exists today. I never thought that I would have an opportunity to once again be a part of the Albany County public defender's office. Somehow, the stars have aligned and Dan McCoy and existing circumstances have allowed this to occur."

In lauding Herrick's honor, the county executive said Herrick was a key ally in reforms enacted in the 2017-18 state budget to provide $250 million to bolster public defender offices across the state. It followed a settlement of a lawsuit in which five counties (Washington, Onondaga, Ontario, Schuyler and Suffolk) sued the state to ensure that it -- and all localities -- conform with constitutional rights to provide meaningful assistance of counsel.

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McCoy pushed for the move to be statewide. It went into law in 2017.

Herrick said that he took the job at the right time. McCoy agreed.

"He is the right person for this award, because he understands that everyone deserves their day in court, no matter how much money they have in their wallet," McCoy said in a statement. "He has shown his commitment to that core principle for nearly five decades, having started his career in the office he now leads."

Herrick said the office, under his watch, has expanded its work to include pre-arrest detention interviews, motions to set aside verdicts and efforts to have defendants re-sentenced to expunge and seal their convictions.

In winning the award for his efforts for indigent defense, Herrick joins previous winners such as the late Jerome K. Frost, the longtime Rensselaer County public defender; retired Saratoga County Public Defender John H. Ciulla Jr.; former Schenectady County Public Defender and City Court judge Mark J. Caruso, and Albany attorneys Laurie Shanks and Raymond A. Kelly, Jr.

"I join a select group of defenders, many of whom I've known, admired and respected for years," Herrick said. "I am humbled to be listed among them today.
You get a Facebook friend request from someone you dont know. An unknown profile seeks permission to view your protected tweets. Your private Instagram gets a follow request from an account you dont recognize. It could be the New York State Police.

A State Police-run fusion center  one of dozens of secretive intelligence-sharing hubs created during the post-9/11 expansion in domestic surveillance  creates and uses dummy social media accounts, according to documents obtained by New York Focus and the Times Union via a public records request. The social media policy for the fusion center, known as the New York State Intelligence Center (NYSIC), shows that analysts use alias online identities with fake names, locations, photos and other personal details to access peoples social media profiles and retain their posts and information.

According to the policy, police analysts can use fake accounts to engage with someone suspected of committing or planning a crime, as well as possible crime witnesses, victims or missing people. They can also use dummy profiles for situational assessment purposes  that is, in any circumstances in which they identify potential safety threats to the public or public officials. And they can use computer programs to automatically scrape and analyze social media data.

The document provides a first-of-its-kind look into the social media monitoring powers of the states main police intelligence-sharing hub. It comes to light as Gov. Kathy Hochul, citing increased rates of interpersonal violence and recent mass shootings, beefs up NYSICs social media monitoring capabilities.

Were watching you now, Hochul said after a massacre in Buffalo last month. We know what youre up to and well be coming after you.

Across the country, police departments have come under fire for using fake social media accounts. In 2015, the transparency organization MuckRock found that the New York City Police Departments social media policies allow officers to create online aliases. In April, a report from the Minnesota Department of Human Rights found that the Minneapolis Police Department has used fake accounts to post comments attacking police critics, send private messages criticizing elected officials, and surveil Black community members and organizations without a public safety objective. In one instance, an officer used a dummy account to send a message to a local NAACP branch criticizing the group.

Last month, The Intercept published documents showing that the FBI has provided the Chicago Police Department with dummy internet identities, which the department has used to surveil and prosecute protesters demonstrating against police brutality. The Memphis, Tenn., and Los Angeles police departments have also used fake social media accounts to monitor Black Lives Matter groups. In response to those revelations, Facebook and Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram), respectively, sent letters to the departments informing them that fake accounts violated the platforms terms of service.

Its unclear whether NYSICs monitoring violates Facebook and Instagrams terms of service: A spokesperson for the State Police declined to say on which social media platforms the fusion center uses online aliases, asserting that divulging such information could compromise ongoing investigations. In a statement, Roy Austin, vice president and deputy general counsel of civil rights for Meta, said we require everyone, including law enforcement authorities, to use their authentic names.

It is absolutely a violation of our policies to create a fake account, for any reason, no matter who you are, and when we find such accounts we remove them, Austin said.

The State Police also refused to elaborate on other aspects of NYSICs social media monitoring practices.

Its policy specifically authorizes the fusion center to review publicly accessible information. Asked what that means, the State Police only responded that it refers to content that is accessible by the public. But NYSIC likely wouldnt need fake accounts to find information thats available to anyone on the internet. Asked whether NYSIC personnel are permitted to friend request or follow people, join groups, or otherwise engage with social media users  a main reason other law enforcement agencies have used fake accounts  a spokesperson repeated that making such information public could compromise ongoing investigations.

The spokesperson also said that online aliases are used to protect our staff and ensure there is no retaliation through the use of doxing or direct threats of harm, and pointed to an annual Department of Homeland Security audit as evidence that NYSIC follows relevant privacy laws. When asked for a copy of the audit, the spokesperson sent a link to reports that DHS compiles outlining the results of its fusion center annual assessments  the last of which was published in 2018 and includes no information on any individual fusion centers.

Watching the web

In an attempt to crack down on shootings, Hochul is building out NYSICs social media monitoring capabilities.

Hochul succeeded in inserting line items into this years state budget that  as New York Focus and The Intercept reported in March  gave the fusion center $527,000 to hire a new social media analysis team, which she said would screen for school violence threats and evidence of gang activity and illegal guns. And in the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Hochul signed an executive order creating yet another new NYSIC social media unit  this one to mine for radical extremist activity.

Hochuls efforts are slated to balloon NYSICs social media monitoring capacity. As the Times Union reported, before the Buffalo shooting the fusion center had one analyst monitoring social media. But at the end of current recruitment efforts, officials expect to have 15: seven monitoring for potential crime and eight scanning so-called dark web spaces like 4chan and 8chan for signs of violent extremism.

The State Police said NYSIC personnel do not randomly monitor or surveil social media users or pages. But Hochul specified in the executive order that the new unit will be responsible for developing investigative leads and identifying online locations and activities that facilitate radicalization  that is, proactively scouring the internet to identify suspicious activity.

The eight members of this new unit will have a specific focus: identifying threats of violent extremism made via publicly available posts on social media in order to advance criminal investigations, foil legitimate terrorist threats before they happen, and keep New Yorkers safe, Jim Urso, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement. Gov. Hochul is laser focused on building State Polices capacity to pinpoint, track and thwart threats of domestic terrorism and violent extremism in order to protect our communities and save lives, while also preserving New Yorkers right to personal privacy.

Given the revelations about other departments fake accounts, however, civil liberties advocates are concerned about the fusion centers ability to show restraint in its social media monitoring.

Time and time again, we see that it is not going to be targeted towards the white supremacists, said Daniel Schwarz, privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union. But rather, it falls on the Black and brown communities that are already over-policed.

As the governor ramps up NYSICs social media monitoring, the issue of internet monitoring and surveillance  including the use of fake accounts  is garnering attention among state legislators.

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Last month, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani introduced a bill that would ban government agencies from using dummy profiles and prohibit police and prosecutors from using information obtained via a fake account to investigate or prosecute people. Mamdani, who is Muslim and represents a Queens district with large Muslim communities, cited documented police use of fake accounts to coax Muslim people into expressing interest in acts of terrorism as one source of inspiration for the bill.

Im under no illusion as to how the internet is often a place where people can become radicalized and plan out attacks, Mamdani said. (But) we do not believe that it is right for police to use methods of deception and entrapment under the guise of protecting our safety.

Though the bill did not make it to the floor before the end of the legislative session this month, Mamdani and Schwarz of the NYCLU said they expect the issue to gain momentum in future sessions.

Police have reservations about banning online aliases. Robert Winn, deputy chief of the Colonie Police Department, said he is open to new limitations and privacy policies, but that law enforcement should have a say in crafting them, and that an all-out ban on fake accounts would inhibit crucial investigations.

According to Winn, the Colonie department has one investigator  assigned to an FBI Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force  who has used fake accounts to investigate human trafficking, child pornography and child exploitation cases. I think anyone can agree that thats something that people want law enforcement to be involved in, he said.

There always can be a balance between us being able to accomplish our mission and being cognizant of violating anyones rights, Winn said. We are a very adaptable profession.

Digital dragnets

NYSICs social media policy also shows that the fusion center uses software to automatically collect and decipher social media data.

What specific programs  which NYSIC calls social media review tools  the fusion center uses is currently unknown. But some of those marketed to law enforcement monitor private messages and attempt to predict crime, while others map out peoples social lives by simultaneously mining dozens of apps and websites. And others compile lists of people who use certain keywords or were at certain locations at certain times.

Per the social media policy, NYSIC analysts can use social media review software under the same broad range of circumstances that they can use fake accounts. (The policy also contains what appear to be additional guidelines for the use of social media review tools, but the State Police redacted them when fulfilling the public records request.)

Like fake accounts, social media review software is also on state legislators radar. Another bill introduced during the recently ended session  sponsored by Assemblyman Dan Quart and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie  would have undercut the use of social media review tools by banning so-called dragnet searches by keyword or geolocation of anyone not individually suspected of having committed a crime. The bill had the support of civil society privacy advocates, as well as a coalition of tech companies  including Meta, Twitter, Amazon and Google  that advocates for reforming government surveillance laws. According to the coalition, if passed the bill would be the first of its kind in the United States.

As privacy advocates regroup to push the legislature to bring up dragnet and fake account bills in future sessions, they are calling for increased transparency surrounding police surveillance. Mamdani pointed out that, even though his bill addressing the issue has been in the works for several months, he was unaware that NYSIC used fake accounts before New York Focus approached him about it.

We need absolute transparency as to what tools are being used, what policies have been enacted, and what the practices actually look like, he said.

This article was published in partnership with New York Focus, an investigative news site covering state politics. Sign up for their newsletter here.
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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP)  Sri Lankas prime minister said Sunday that protesting youth groups will be invited to be part of governance under political reforms he is proposing to solve the countrys political crisis triggered by an economic collapse.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that under proposed constitutional reforms, powers of the president will be clipped and those of Parliament strengthened. In a televised statement to the nation, he said that governance will be broad-based through parliamentary committees where lawmakers, youth and experts will work together.

The youth are calling for a change in the existing system. They also want to know the current issues. Therefore, I propose to appoint four youth representatives to each of these 15 committees, Wickremesinghe said.

Protesters consisting of mainly young people have camped out outside the presidents office for more than 50 days. They're demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, holding him and his family responsible for the countrys worst economic crisis. They also want an overhaul of a system of governance, saying successive administrations since independence from Britain in 1948 have misruled the country leading to economic and social crises.

Students have led nearly daily protests in capital Colombo and elsewhere as Sri Lanka tethers on the brink of bankruptcy. It has already defaulted on its foreign loans, and is battling acute shortages of essential goods like cooking gas, fuel and medicines. People have been forced to wait for hours in long lines to try to buy goods and many still go empty handed.

The countrys foreign currency reserves have dwindled to just enough to purchase two weeks of needed imports.

Authorities announced last month that they were suspending repayment of nearly $7 billion foreign debt due this year. Sri Lanka has to pay up $25 billion through 2026. Total foreign debt of the Indian Ocean island nation is $51 billion.

According to Wickremesinghe's proposal, one of the youth representatives will be appointed by the so-called youth parliament and the other three will come from protesting groups and other activist organizations. "The methodology used to chose these individuals can be decided by the youth organizations themselves," he said.

Best of the Capital Region 2022 Its the 25th anniversary of our Best of the Capital Region readers survey. Make sure your voice is heard by nominating your favorite people, places and businesses between Jan. 21 and Feb. 4.

There has been no immediate comment from youth groups to his proposal. Setting up new broad-based parliamentary committees apparently can be done under the current constitution, but broader reforms such as reducing presidential powers would need approval of the Supreme Court and a two-thirds parliamentary majority. It isn't clear when the bill will be introduced for debate.

Violence erupted on May 9, when Rajapaksa supporters attacked peaceful protesters. Nine people including a governing party lawmaker were killed and homes of Cabinet ministers burnt down. The unrest nearly dismantled the Rajapaksa dynasty after the presidents brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, resigned as prime minister. Three of the presidents siblings and a nephew had already quit their Cabinet posts.

Sri Lanka has been ruled by a powerful executive presidential system for nearly 45 years, and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa strengthened it further with constitutional changes as soon as he was overwhelmingly elected in 2019.

Wickremesinghe has said that he will have an economic reform plan ready within two weeks to seek approval from the International Monetary Fund for a bailout package.
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GREENWICH  The placing of a William G. Pomeroy Foundation Historic marker in front of the childhood home of woman's suffrage and human rights activist Susan B. Anthony will be celebrated at the home at 2 p.m. on Saturday.

The Washington County Historical Society and the state Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation said the celebration will include remarks from the Coline Jenkins, great great granddaughter of Anthony's close collaborator Elizabeth Cady Stanton. State Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner and former state Senator Betty Little, who secured state funding for its restoration, will also take part.
Shortly after two Fulbright Scholars from Afghanistan arrived in Albany last August, it became alarmingly clear that they could not safely return to a Taliban-controlled country. Faculty and staff at the University at Albany immediately intervened to help them find legal assistance and secure internships and jobs.

The human rights fallout from the collapse of the Afghan government foreshadowed the staggering wave of displacement that would soon follow Russias invasion of Ukraine - both important reminders as we approach World Refugee Day on June 20 that colleges and universities can and should play a central role in aiding the worlds most vulnerable people.

Thats why UAlbany has joined scores of other institutions across the country and the Presidents Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration to call for policies that make it easier for universities to support students from countries in crisis.

This includes making visas more accessible to displaced international students; maintaining and expanding supportive processes that give students and scholars more flexibility within their visas; and - perhaps most critically - launching broader private sponsorship of refugees. Together, these policies will help reestablish the United States as a global leader in providing safe harbor.

The SUNY system, with its broad footprint and vast expertise, could be a nationwide model for making university sponsorship work on a large scale.

F-1 international student visas - the current legal channel for refugees who want to study here - present often-insurmountable roadblocks for refugees while still failing to provide a path to lawful permanent residence. As noted in a 2021 report by the Presidents Alliance , F-1 visas require proof that applicants do not intend to immigrate and that they can cover all their educational and living costs  conditions those fleeing for their lives cannot be expected to meet.

A pilot program currently in development by the Biden administration offers a common-sense alternative: allowing local clubs, businesses, faith groups, or universities to directly sponsor refugees with financial, logistical and other support. Given the student support infrastructure universities already have, we are uniquely well suited for this role.

UAlbany has admitted as many as a dozen refugees or asylees in recent years, and another 10 may join them this fall. With forced displacement doubling globally over the last decade, we know the demand is there  to say nothing of the looming climate refugee crisis.

Gov. Kathy Hochul rightly moved quickly last year to ensure New York could welcome as many as 1,800 Afghans after Kabul fell, with more than 300 resettling here in Albany. Many Ukrainians are now joining them.

Those with official refugee and asylum status are already eligible for in-state SUNY tuition, and SUNY last year waived the residency requirement for their admission to its Educational Opportunity Centers to ease access to English as a Second Language courses, certificates and credentialing programs.

Sign up for the Observation Deck newsletter Read the latest Times Union opinion, perspective and letters to the editor on Mondays by signing up for our Observation Deck newsletter.

We can leverage these smart policies to build higher education and workforce pipelines that help displaced people gain a life-changing economic foothold in their new communities.

Refugees with sufficient English language skills, for example, could immediately get help preparing college applications through the College Connections program at Hudson Valley Community College, while our staff advise them on degree programs that lead to stable careers.

Campuses like ours often talk about internationalization in terms of partnerships with prestigious overseas universities. But it also means opening our doors to those fleeing violence and instability abroad and who, like so many before them, have sought refuge in New York.

Those forced to flee their homes have already endured more than most of us can imagine. They deserve these opportunities  and institutions like ours ought to do everything in our power to provide them.

Havidan Rodriguez is president of the University at Albany and serves on the steering committee of the Presidents Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. Rey Koslowski is a professor of political science and international affairs in UAlbanys Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy.
The recall of a progressive district attorney in San Francisco has resurrected talk among Republicans leaders in New York of enacting a California-style recall law here, too. It's as bad an idea as ever.

Sure, recall sounds like a populist and democratic mechanism. Don't like the job an elected official is doing? Just can't wait for the next election? Don't have grounds for impeachment? Recall the rascal!

But New Yorkers already have ways to dump elected officials they don't like. They can vote them out of office when that next election comes around. They can build public pressure for them to resign. They can persuade their legislative representatives to impeach and remove them if offenses warrant. Adding recall to the list adds little value  and much opportunity for mischief.

In California, which added recall to its state constitution in 1911, San Francisco voters last week recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was viewed by many as too lax on crime.

The recall has been noticed nationwide at a time when gun violence and other crimes are high on the public's list of concerns. In New York, where Republicans have been railing for years about Democrats' criminal justice reforms, Senate and Assembly GOP leaders and other legislators promptly proposed a constitutional amendment to allow for the recall of district attorneys in this state, too. And state Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy talks more broadly of previous GOP efforts to allow recall of elected officials in general.

We've certainly had our share of politicians we thought didn't belong in office. But it was long understood in New York and American politics that elections marked the end of the contest. We had winners and losers. The winners took office and got down to the serious work of governing. The losers accepted the outcome.

Donald Trump, with his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, upended that understanding, and our nation is even more divided as a result. And now his supporters in New York want to bring endless elections here.

Elections seem nearly endless already. Politicians no sooner get elected than they start raising money for reelection, and their opponents start sharpening the knives. The grave step of impeachment is tossed about so casually by some  remember threats to impeach Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden while they were still running for president  that it's in danger of being reduced to an unserious trope. How much more unending and inescapable would our political turmoil be if New York had a law allowing sore losers to demand a do-over for every election?

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If you think the general public would get tired of it, think again. Politics has, for many, become as entertaining and consuming as any sport. And there's a multi-million-dollar political industry that would no doubt be more than happy to keep people at each other's throats  and keep donations rolling in.

There's a term even some politicians use for election time: the silly season. Just imagine if it didn't have to come around only once every two or four years.

Or better: Let's not.
SARATOGA SPRINGS  Gaffney's, the well-known city nightclub and bar that reached a settlement to satisfy charges from the State Liquor Authority by paying a $70,000 fine and adopting new operating rules, expects to reopen "at some point in the near future," according to a statement from the business on Tuesday afternoon.

The club, located at 16 Caroline St., has been closed since early May following separate orders by the city and the SLA in the wake of months of violent episodes and scores of police calls.

The precipitating incident was a stabbing at Gaffney's in the overnight hours of May 1, the third there since October, as well as what authorities called a "huge melee" in March in which three police officers were injured. Saratoga police records show 65 reports of officers responding to public safety matters at Gaffney's from January 2021 to March of this year.

The agreement, approved by the SLA board at its June 8 meeting, imposes the following conditions, according to a document on the agency's website :

$70,000 fine.

Last call at 1:30 a.m. and closing at 2 a.m.

Metal-detecting wands used on all patrons entering after 9:30 p.m.

Use of an ID scanner for all patrons, with scanner records stored for 90 days.

"Recorded background music only."

Call to police required for all physical altercations.

Follow all stipulations included in a memorandum of understanding with the Saratoga police department.

A police spokesman said the details of the memorandum were unavailable, as they were being finalized by Public Safety Commissioner James Montagnino, who is out of the country until later this week, and Gaffney's attorney.

If the fine is not paid within 20 days of its imposition, Gaffney's liquor license will be revoked, according to the order from the SLA. The settlement satisfies five SLA proceedings against Gaffney's covering 12 dates from January 2017 until May 1 of this year, agency records show.

"The conditions set by both Gaffney's and the SLA keep the safety of our guests of paramount importance, which has always been a top priority," Gaffney's said in its statement.

The day after the May 1 stabbing, the city posted a notice ordering Gaffney's be closed temporarily, with Montagnino saying it was because checks submitted to pay for needed inspections and licenses had bounced. Gaffney's countered that its records showed the checks were paid in March. The following day, the SLA ordered the bar's liquor license suspended.

Gaffney's has a capacity of more than 500. The holder of the liquor license is listed as a company called Saratoga Hospitality at Gaffney's, which has had the license since 2017. The business has contended that it has been singled out for enforcement actions and blamed for incidents that happen on the street.

In the weeks after Gaffney's closed, fights in the early morning hours outside of Caroline Street bars continued to erupt. For instance, two people were arrested overnight on May 22 in separate incidents on the street involving fighting, resisting arrest and harassment, according to police records.

Its wishful thinking that the fights would end after Gaffneys closed, Montagnino said at the time. Gaffneys was not the sole source.

"The challenges Caroline Street has faced have continued since we closed more than six weeks ago," Gaffney's management said in Tuesday's statement. "We intend to help lead those efforts in collaboration with fellow establishments and the city."

Recognizing the amount of fighting in bars and on nearby streets, including Maple Avenue and Putnam Street, Montagnino said last month that the city planned to increase police patrols. As of late May, on weekends there were two mounted police and about six on foot patrol. Montagnino said he wanted to raise that number to 10 to 12 foot patrol officers by mid-June, but it could not be determined Monday if the increase had been implemented.

Gaffney's said, "Further updates regarding our operations and our future will be announced in the coming weeks ahead."
Provided photo

TROY  The owners of Oh Corn! Arepas and More, which has been closed since the end of October while they searched for a location to succeed the Halfmoon original, have purchased the former River Street Cafe building and hope to reopen in late August. The fast-casual restaurant was in a commercial plaza on Route 9 for five years, starting in 2016.

Jose Theoktisto, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Belkis Castro, said renovations are being done on the Troy building, at 429 River St., at the end of the block north of the Green Island Bridge that also includes Ryan's Wake and Brown's Brewing. The Business Review, which first reported the new location (subscription required), said Theoktisto and Castro paid $485,000 for a property that River Street Cafe chef-owner George Schroeter owned for 32 years until finally closing in 2018. It was a fine-dining destination in Troy for decades prior to the Collar Citys restaurant renaissance of recent years.
This week on the Local Business Promotion Series I am delighted to be joined by Mairead Leahy (pictured below) in Tipperary Town.

Mairead has held a lifelong love for animals.

She grew up with horses and also had extensive work experience with animals throughout her schooling years.

Her passion for animals persuaded her to study Veterinary and Mairead graduated from UCD in 2012.

She spent one year working with Burren Vets in county Clare before coming home to Tipperary to work in Thurles.

Mairead purchased Arra Vets in Tipperary Town and worked out her premises in OBriens Street for a number of years.

Mairead then relocated to Maurice Powers old premises on the site of the old Buttermarket factory in Tipperary Town.

This building is a hugely historical building and a wonderful background to the history of the building can be found on the Arra Vets website.

A lot of work went into creating a veterinary practice on the site and the newly refurbished building opened in October 2020.

Maireads father Michael and local contractors put in huge work to transform the building into the very modern Veterinary practice that it is today.

Arra Vets provides all types of veterinary services to small animals.

Some of the services include surgeries, grooming, hydrotherapy in the Physio Centre, acupuncture and there is also a cattery, which is a cat boarding kennel.

Cardiac and ultrasound specialists also visit the clinic from time to time when needed.

Arra Vets is the first Fear Free Veterinary clinic in Ireland and its aim is to take the Pet out of Petrified.

All animals are welcome to feel at home in the clinic, with floor mats, animal playground areas and treat dispensers on site.

Mairead employs Aoife Cahill as another Vet in the practice, she also employs Laura keys as a full-time Veterinary Nurse Georgia Drinan who works on the reception.

Donna Crowe works in the practises as a Groomer.

If you wish to contact Arra Vets you can find them on their social media pages on Instagram and Facebook you can also visit the website on www.arravetineryclinic.com.

Alternatively you may telephone them on 062-31439.

Their opening hours are Monday to Friday from 9am to 5:30pm and from 9am to 1pm on a Saturday.

Mairead would like to thank all her loyal customers to date and she is always excited to welcome new customers in the future.

The very best wishes to Mairead and to all her family for the future of the business.

I wish her many happy and successful years ahead.



If your business would like to take part in The Local Business Promotion Series, which will feature in The Nationalist and Tipperary Star newspapers each week, as well as on my social media platforms, then please contact me: johnpoheneypc@gmail.com

Written by John OHeney
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Titusville Class of 2022 blasts off into their next realm
This weekend we notice an EPIC sign that progressive newsies are out of touch with people on local streets.



Like it or not . . .

KANSAS CITY WEEKEND ANTI-GUN RALLY ATTENDANCE CLEARLY DISAPPOINTED EXPECTATIONS!!!

This was going to be a MASSIVE rally according to the newspaper.



A quote from a recent promotional article from dead-tree media . . .



"The last youth-organized anti-gun rally drew about 6,000 people of all ages and backgrounds. I cant help thinking that if people were so fed up at that time, then this weekends gathering should be even more momentous. Nothing could be more important than getting really loud about gun control if it helps to stop the mass murder of schoolchildren."

Also . . . Let's not forget the progressive public TV put Mary Sanchez to work promoting this event as well.

Sadly . . .

According to their own reports . . . Attendance figures didn't match the hype . . .



"At least 100 people, many wearing orange End Gun Violence shirts, who called for more restrictions on accessing high powered guns. Speakers including Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker encouraged protesters to pressure their elected representatives to pass stricter laws on background checks and waiting periods for potential gun buyers."



Another report . . .

"About 100 people gathered under shade trees in Gillham Park on a day where temperatures reached into the 90s. They held signs reading, Enough is enough, or Protect kids not guns. Saturdays March For Our Lives rally in Kansas City was one of hundreds nationwide, the largest held in Washington D.C."



A simple bit of math . . .

Local news was about 5,500 people off when it came to gauging the interests of their audience.

TO BE FAIR . . .

We recognize that any significant gathering of locals standing up and attempting to make their voices heard deserves attention.

It's nice to see people get away from their screens and into the real world . . . Even if we disagree with some of their politics.

Again, it's also worth noting that Mayor Q and several politicos hyped this event for their "followers" on social media.

And that might be the problem.

In the last "March For Our Lives" the movement was comprised of students and earned widespread support amongst young people eager for their first experience organizing a political rally . . . This time around the event was clearly an effort manufactured by Democratic Party activists, it was little more than a hyper-partisan rally in order to bolster support for the beleaguered administration.

Moreover . . . In Missouri, with a GOP SUPER MAJORITY controlling Jeff City, informed voters realize there's very little chance for local gun law change.



And so . . . Whilst the anti-gun rallies did earn widespread support in other parts of the nation. The cowtown crowd stayed away . . . Maybe because they didn't have gas money.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . .

'Never again, again.' Kansas City rallies for gun safety laws in Missouri and Kansas Meredith Bills and her friend, Joni Hall, found it hard to believe that they had to use the same old signs again on Saturday to help a crowd call for gun safety laws in response to yet another wave of mass shootings.

Guns and Politics: Where do our lawmakers stand on reform? Hide Transcript Show Transcript AN ISSUE THAT HAS UNDOUBTEDLY BECOME ONE OF PUBLIC SAFETY IN OUR COUNTRYAS H ALSO BECOME A POLITICAL LIGHTNING ROD DEMOCRATS WANT TO EXNDPA SAFETY RESTRICTIONS.

'Enough is enough': thousands rally across US in gun control protests Rallies for gun reform were held in Washington, New York, other US cities and around the world on Saturday, seeking to increase pressure on Congress to act following a spate of mass shootings. In Washington, the son of an 86-year-old victim in the Buffalo supermarket shooting said: "Enough is enough.

Developing . . .
Right now, for late night & early morning lurkers, our continued dedication to angel Candice inspires this quick consideration of pop culture, community news and top headlines.



Check www.TonysKansasCity.com news gathering . . .

Desperate Search For Cowtown Chill Begins . . .



KC residents turning on AC as temperatures increase KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Many in the metro will be cranking their AC on full blast as temperatures will reach the upper 90s next week. There will be a heat advisory from now until Wednesday. The heat was too much to handle Sunday afternoon, so Erin Bolton brought her family to Miami Ice to cool down.

Golden Ghetto Drama Underway

Theatre in the Park Airs "Something Rotten" - KC STUDIO The Heart of America Shakespeare Festival celebrates its 30th anniversary this month with Romeo & Juliet, which opens June 14th on its Southmoreland Park stage.

Show-Me Newspaper Spin

Do Republican voters care about Jan. 6? They put Greitens in the lead for Senate, so ... OPINION AND COMMENTARY The Jan. 6, 2021, riot hearings got under way Thursday. The question: Will the country care? The quick answer is that half the country does care, and the other half couldn't care less and thinks the whole thing is no big deal.

Angel Fashions Her Brand

Candice Swanepoel in Bathing Suit Takes "Stairway to Heaven" - Celebwell Candice Swanepoel wore a swimsuit, one of her Tropic of C line. "Stairway to heaven," she captioned the recent photo shoot.

Prez Negotiates With Oil King

Biden political gamble on Saudi trip unlikely to drive down gas prices President Biden is using key political capital on a risky gamble - that meeting with condemned Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will convince the Kingdom to stabilize global oil markets and ease prices for Americans at the gas pump. But experts say it's not guaranteed that the trip will produce lower gasoline prices and...

MAGA Vs. Florida?!?

Taking Aim at DeSantis, Spooked Trump Considers Launching 2024 Bid in Florida Donald Trump in recent months has been telling confidants that he may launch his 2024 presidential campaign early - and that he's considering launching it in Florida to stick it to Gov. Ron DeSantis.

COVID Baby Vaxx Coming Soon

FDA says Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine appears effective for children under 5 The Food and Drug Administration said Sunday that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine appears to be safe for children under 5 years old, the only age group not yet eligible for vaccination in the U.S. The agency published its review ahead of a Wednesday meeting in which outside experts will vote on whether the vaccine is ready for the nation's youngest population.

War Games Cont'd

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 110 of the invasion Fierce street fighting continues in Sievierodonetsk, where Russian forces destroyed a bridge cutting off possible evacuation route

Singularity Starts

Google places an engineer on leave after claiming its AI is sentient | Engadget Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer working in its Responsible AI division, revealed to The Washington Post that he believes one of the company's AI projects has achieved sentience. And after reading his conversations with LaMDA (short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications), it's easy to see why.

Old School Kansas City Walking Tour Guide Debuts

Want to explore Columbus Park? Start with this beginner's guide to the neighborhood This story was first published in KCUR's Creative Adventure newsletter. You can sign up to receive stories like this in your inbox every Tuesday. Just north of Independence Avenue and split off from River Market by Missouri Route 9, Kansas City's historic Columbus Park neighborhood is a peaceful and eccentric Northeast island.

Tribute To Local Legacy

Memorial Honors the Enslaved in Liberty's Unmarked Graves Next week the long-invisible dead of Liberty, Missouri, will be rendered less so. The Liberty African American Legacy Memorial, scheduled to be dedicated June 18 as part of the community's Juneteenth celebration, is nearing completion.

Steamy Forecast For Tonight

Hot temperatures will impact start of the week Hide Transcript Show Transcript I took *** look outside and saw some clouds gathering. It makes me wonder if we have some more rain on the way out there. Well, *** couple of spotty showers earlier this afternoon chris and you're right that slight rain chances there, but really nothing drastic.

Big Picture Moves Into Focus

New trove of Gaia data will uncloak the Milky Way's dark past and future (Image credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC) A space telescope that observes stars in the Milky Way as they appear today reveals what happened to the galaxy when it was just a couple of billion years old, and an upcoming data release will allow astronomers to peek into an even more distant past.

And this is the OPEN THREAD for tonight.
We've notice some local "social media advocacy" claiming that Prez Biden's baby formula embarrassment has been resolved.

A lack of food for American youngsters has all but disappeared from MSM. However, a conservative talker offers a bit of evidence to the contrary.



Take a look . . .



There's some resistance to his reporting but it's hard to argue with photographic evidence and scathing insults directed at the Prez.



Meanwhile, we've notice a bit of improvement in our adventures as other hardships confront Americans.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Video 190,000 pounds of baby formula lands in US Bubs Australia struck a deal with American grocery chains to import the formula under the fourth flight of Operation Fly Formula, the company said.

A 1,200-mile road-trip and no baby formula to be found. This is a nightmare | Anna Gazmarian heard warnings about the formula shortage shortly after the mask mandate lifted in my town in North Carolina. My family was thrilled that life appeared to be going back to a semblance of normalcy, that my eight-month-old daughter could finally see people's faces in public, that I could comfort her at the grocery store with a smile.

Olivia Munn Shared A Heartbreaking Post About Spilling Half Of Her Baby Formula Supply During A Nationwide Shortage Read full article It's so crazy when people say "if you breastfeed you won't have to worry about the formula shortage!" I have low milk supply, so to keep my baby fed I depend on formula. I wish I could breastfeed so I wouldn't be panicking about the shortage right now.

Abbot Resumes Baby Formula Production. When Will the Shortage End? What's happening A massive shortage in baby formula is causing outrage and concern as some parents struggle to find infant formula for their children. Why it matters In the US, 75% of babies consume formula by the time they're 6 months old, making the baby formula shortage a critical and widespread issue.

Developing . . .
Just to clear our notes of this group-think journalistic garbage . . . We share one last blast of KCMO officials and the chattering class paying heed to an administrator whilst he makes his way to a better paycheck.

We merely share one question . . .

HOW DOES LICKING DR. BEDELL'S BOOTS ON HIS WAY OUT HELP THE KCPS?!?!

I'm willing to listen to an answer because it mostly seems like self-congratulatory garbage in service of the status quo that hasn't served students, parents or the community very well over the long-term.



Here's high praise for a school honcho who earned his greatest achievement with help from COVID.

Check-it . . .



"Bedell says he achieved what he set out to do in 2016: Restore full state accreditation to Kansas City Public Schools.



"Bedell says he became a martyr for children during his time in Kansas City, graduating two of his own kids from Kansas City Public Schools while he was here."





Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . .

A farewell to the Kansas City Public Schools superintendent Kansas City Public Schools superintendent Dr. Mark Bedell is exiting after six years. He led the struggling district through some major transitions - including regaining full accreditation - and tells KCUR he leaves the district in a "much better situation."

Bedell explains decision to resign from KC School District KANSAS CITY, Mo. - School Superintendent Mark Bedell is moving on, saying he has accomplished what he promised to do in Kansas City. After six years of leading Kansas City Public Schools, Bedell says he will return to Maryland, where he came from, to become superintendent of a more rural school district between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

Headed to Maryland, Mark Bedell leaves Kansas City Public Schools in a 'much better situation' Dr. Mark Bedell, the Kansas City Public Schools superintendent for the last six years, is leaving to take a similar position in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, where he was once a resident. During his tenure at KCPS, Bedell oversaw the restoration of full accreditation to the district for the first time in eight years.

Mark Bedell's energy spurred change in Kansas City schools. I was his fan at 'hello' OPINION AND COMMENTARY Editorials and other Opinion content offer perspectives on issues important to our community and are independent from the work of our newsroom reporters. Candidates for high-level jobs usually don't respond to reporters who they think might be digging for dirt. But in unconventional fashion, Mark Bedell returned my call that day six years ago.

Dr. Jennifer Collier committed to leading KCPS with 'success of children' at forefront KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Kansas City, Missouri, Public Schools Interim Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Collier says she is prepared to lead with the intention of changing the narrative of the district to create a community that takes pride in KCPS. "Everything that I am and everything that I bring, it's needed in this moment.

You decide . . .
Attack survivor Cathy Riddell 71, continues to recover four years after the van slammed into her from behind, leaving her with a fractured spine, broken scapula and pelvis. - Steve Russell
'I didn't expect this': Kawartha Dairy employee blown away by support after company asked her to remove flags from vehicle
How much does it cost to fuel up in Toronto?
After a rough childhood and a bad relationship, how can I start to build a real life? Ask Ellie
It was a big week for the human face. As the pandemic was allegedly fading for the summer, I saw so very many, not just at parties but at my first dental checkup in three years. - Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star
Patios have started springing up along the citys bustling streets since the May long weekend, marking the beginning of the third season of CafeTO, Torontos popular pandemic-inspired outdoor dining program.
Anna Maxymiws first novel "Minique" is an act of feminist reclamation and a feat of imagination

Behind the Frenchman Cadillac who made automotive history is a little-known story of the woman who escapes to a wilderness filled with coureurs des bois, filles du roi, and settlers struggling and preying
This is Kenya unlocked, See Africa like never before. Your safari await anyone looking for something very unique. Time to Book Vacations for September to December and 2023 trips to Africa.



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Browse their website to learn more https://www.cruzeiro-safaris.com/

Have a passion for exploring take a visit to few accommodation properties in the conservancies and have your privacy there, to connect with the spirit of Africa.

These are just a sample masai mara tour packages from Nairobi - luxury safaris being offered on their website that one can book if there is accommodation availability (alternative accommodation are offered) NB: most of these places are fully booked in JULY and AUGUST of 2022  try booking from 1 September onward to 2023.

Kichwa Tembo Tented Camp Safaris - https://www.cruzeiro-safaris.com/kichwa-tembo-camp

Africa safari 3 days with balloon ride - https://www.cruzeiro-safaris.com/africasafari

Africa Safari 5 days - https://www.cruzeiro-safaris.com/africatour

Serena Safari 7 Days - https://www.cruzeiro-safaris.com/serenasafari

Mara Intrepid Luxury tented Camp - https://www.cruzeiro-safaris.com/mara-intrepids-club

Finch Hatton Luxury Camp 4 days - https://www.cruzeiro-safaris.com/finchhattonssafari

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The key tactical goal of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine has not changed, and Russia will try to deploy reserves in the Donbas, but it may lose 40,000 of its troops already in June.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this in a video address on Sunday, June 12, Ukrinform reports.

"The Russian army is trying to deploy reserve forces in Donbas. But what reserves can they have now? It seems that they will try to throw into battle poorly trained conscripts and those who were gathered by covert mobilization. Russian generals see their people simply as the cannon fodder they need to gain an advantage in numbers  in manpower, in military equipment. And this means only one thing: Russia can cross the line of 40,000 of its lost troops already in June. In no other war in many decades have they lost so much," Zelensky said.

He also added that Russia's key tactical goal has not changed as they are pressing in Sievierodonetsk, where very fierce fighting is going on, as well as outside Lysychansk, Bakhmut and Sloviansk.

Photo: President's Office
A total of 288 children have been killed and over 527 injured in Ukraine since the Russian invasion started.

The relevant statement was made by the Ukrainian Prosecutor Generals Office on Telegram, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

As of June 13, 2022, over 815 children in Ukraine were affected by the Russian armed aggression. According to the data from juvenile prosecutors, a total of 288 children were killed and over 527 injured, the report states.

These data are not final, as they are being investigated within the areas of hostilities, temporarily occupied and liberated areas.

Currently, most casualties were recorded in Donetsk Region (218), Kharkiv Region (166), Kyiv Region (116), Chernihiv Region (68), Luhansk Region (54), Kherson Region (52), Mykolaiv Region (48), Zaporizhzhia Region (30), Sumy Region (17).

On June 12, 2022, a 6-year-old boy was killed in Russias artillery strike on Lysychansk, Luhansk Region.

On June 11, 2022, a 12-year-old girl was injured in Russias missile strikes on Chortkiv, Ternopil Region.

When recording criminal offences, the Ukrainian side received information about an 8-year-old boy who was injured in Russias shelling of Mariupol on March 20, 2022.

Meanwhile, a total of 17 children were reported injured in Russias shelling of Kharkiv Region. In particular, a 13-year-old girl was injured in Russias shelling of Velyki Khutory, Kupiansk District, on May 20, 2022; two children, 7 and 15, were injured in Russias shelling of Lebiazhe, Chuhuiv District, on May 14, 2022. An 11-year-old boy was injured and taken to hospital after Russias shelling of Chervona Poliana, Izium District.

A total of 1,971 educational institutions were damaged across Ukraine as a result of Russias daily air and artillery strikes, and 194 of them were destroyed completely.

A reminder that, on February 24, 2022, Russia started a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian occupiers are shelling and bombarding Ukrainian cities and villages, torturing and murdering civilians. The Ukrainian defense forces are fiercely fighting against invaders.

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Ukraine needs 1,000 howitzers, 500 tanks, 300 multiple launch rocket systems and 2,000 armored vehicles to achieve heavy weapons parity with the Russian Federation and liberate Ukrainian territories from Russian invaders.

The relevant statement was made by Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Mykhailo Podolyak on Twitter, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

Being straightforward  to end the war we need heavy weapons parity: 1,000 howitzers caliber 155 mm; 300 MLRS; 500 tanks; 2,000 armored vehicles; 1,000 drones. Contact Group of Defense Ministers meeting is held in Brussels on June 15. We are waiting for a decision, Podolyak wrote.

A reminder that a third meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group headed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will take place on June 15, 2022.

Photo: Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

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In captured Mariupol, the invaders and their collaborators from among the locals began trading in stolen humanitarian aid.

Thats according to Petro Andriushchenko, an advisor to the Mariupol mayor, who issued a report via Telegram, as seen by Ukrinform.

"Mariupol. The occupiers, together with collaborators, began trading in the stolen humanitarian aid. The Russian one. The son of a sham mayor, Vadym Kostiantynovych Ivashchenko, who took over the function of a hustler close to power circles, found a common language with the staff of the Russian Ministry of Emergencies. Not without the help of Urzuf collaborators Ivan Topuzov and his accomplice, cohabitant Tatiana Butyaeva. Now together they simply steal humanitarian aid coming from the Russians, and then sell it through a network of entrepreneurs," Andriushchenko wrote.

Read also: Bodies of 220 defenders of Mariupol brought to Kyiv

He explained that the sale has been set up through their confidant traders, who have been warned that in case they refuse to cooperate, they will be immediately incarcerated. Mariupol district deputy Serhiy Kosenko, a right-hand man of Ivashchenko's son, as well as former Urzuf chief Anatoliy Avramov, are also involved in the scheme, the report reads.

Andriushchenko also said that the Russian Emergency Ministry operatives keep looting households en masse. Mariupol residents report that, surprisingly, these officials use exclusively Ukrainian hryvnias when they shop (sometimes dollars and euros) and almost never Russian roubles.

"It is clear where their hryvnia and foreign currency come from - from the homes of Mariupol residents. In general, this occupying power doesnt tire of proving that it is incapable of doing anything but destroy and loot," said the mayor's advisor.

Russian aggression has caused one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes in Mariupol. The city was almost completely destroyed by enemy shelling.

Currently, Mariupol has no normal power, water and gas supplies. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, up to 22,000 civilians have died in the city. Today, more than 100,000 people stay in the blocked city. There is a threat of environmental and epidemic disasters.

The Russians assigned collaborator Kostiantyn Ivashchenko to the post of Mariupol "mayor" and are creating for the media a picture of city life coming back to normal.

Photo: Stringer, Anadolu Agency
Russian ships and long-range bombers continue to launch missile strikes on the Ukrainian territory from the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Currently, there are six enemy cruise missile carriers in the Black Sea with up to 36 missiles.

The aggressor continues to launch missile and air strikes on the territory of our state with the use of air-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles. On June 12, four Tu-22M3 long-range bombers launched from the waters of the Sea of Azov at least three Kh-22 cruise missiles on the Ukrainian territory in Selydove and Pokrovske, Donetsk region. In addition, on June 11, up to four Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles were fired from the Black Sea at Ukraine's civilian and military infrastructure in Ternopil region," Oleksandr Motuzianyk, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said at a briefing at the Media Center UkraineUkrinform.

He noted that the main goal of the Russian command at this stage, apart from reaching the administrative borders of Luhansk and Donetsk regions, is to block Ukraine's maritime links.

Black Sea Fleet ships in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov continue to isolate the combat area, conduct reconnaissance, and support fire in Prymorsky direction. The aggressor blocks civilian shipping in the northwestern part of the Black Sea," said the Spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

According to him, six Russian carriers of Kalibr cruise missiles with up to 36 missiles are on alert in the Black Sea.

Moreover, the threat of missile and air strikes from the territory of Belarus remains, Motuzianyk added.

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Together with allies and partners from around the world, the United States will ensure that they are providing the Ukrainian side with what Ukraine needs right now in order to defend against Russias assault.

The relevant statement was made by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during his visit to Thailand, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

The U.S. is willing to provide everything and  and to help Ukraine be successful, Austin told, answering the question whether the West is ready to meet Ukraines needs, i.e. to provide 1,000 more howitzers and 300 MLRS.

According to Austin, the United States has partners from around the globe that are willing to help Ukraine in meaningful ways.

Weve seen  you know, we  weve contributed a substantial number of howitzers and a significant amount of 155 ammunition already, along with so many other things. But other nations have contributed 155 howitzers, as well, Austin noted.

In his words, the United States and other countries will continue to work to get as much as they can for Ukraine as fast as they can in order to help Ukrainians be successful.

This week the Ukraine Defense Contact Group will be convened for the third time.

Well hear directly from Ukrainian leaders led by my good friend and counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov, and well work to intensify our shared efforts to meet Ukraines priority requirements to defend itself if Russia renews its dangerous assault in the Donbas, Austin said.

A reminder that Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Mykhailo Podolyak stated earlier that Ukraine would need 1,000 howitzers, 500 tanks, 300 multiple launch rocket systems and 2,000 armored vehicles to achieve heavy weapons parity with Russia and liberate Ukrainian territories from Russian invaders.

Photo: picture alliance / NurPhoto

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged everyone who has such an opportunity to communicate with people in the occupied territories  southern Ukraine, Donbas and Kharkiv Region,  and tell them about Ukraine and that the Ukrainian army will definitely come.

The relevant statement was made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his video address, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

The full text of the speech is provided below:

Strong people of an unbreakable country!

Today is the 110th day of our defense. And when you say that - the 110th day - you realize what a great path we have covered. The enemy was driven out of the Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions. A large part of the Kharkiv region was liberated. In total, more than a thousand settlements have been liberated.

The invasion of the occupiers in the south of Ukraine was stopped. Yes, they still want to destroy Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, and the cities of the Dnipropetrovsk region. They still have enough strength to shoot from the artillery at Zelenodolsk and Hulyaipole. Odesa remains a target for the Russian fleet...

But dozens of the attacking attempts of the Russian army have already been thwarted right there in the south. And thanks to the counteroffensive, some communities in the Kherson region have already been liberated.

In the battles in Donbas - and they will surely go down in military history as one of the most brutal battles in Europe and for Europe - the Ukrainian army and our intelligence tactically still beat the Russian military. And this is despite the significant advantage of the Russians in the amount of equipment, and especially - artillery systems.

The price of this battle for us is very high. Its just scary. And we draw the attention of our partners on a daily basis to the fact that only a sufficient number of modern artillery for Ukraine will ensure our advantage and finally the end of Russian torture of the Ukrainian Donbas.

Today it became known about the death of another child caused by the Russian shelling - right there, right in Donbas, in the Luhansk region. The boy was born in 2016. He lived in Lysychansk, in an ordinary house on Moskovska Street. This is it: a six-year-old boy on Moskovska Street is also, as it turned out, a dangerous enemy for the Russian Federation...

We are dealing with absolute evil. And we have no choice but to move on. Free our entire territory. Drive the occupiers out of all our regions. And although now the width of our front is already more than 2.5 thousand kilometers, it is felt that the strategic initiative is still ours.

We will come to all our cities, to all our villages, which do not yet have our flag on the administrative buildings. Although there are a lot of Ukrainian flags there, in peoples houses, I'm sure of it. And we have already seen them when people protested against the occupiers. And we will see them again - everywhere, when we return.

We will come to Kherson. And ordinary Kherson residents will meet our army on the streets of the city. The failure of the occupiers, who tried to celebrate the so-called Russia Day, only proves that Kherson is a Ukrainian city. And Kherson residents will celebrate only Ukrainian holidays.

We will come to Melitopol. And we will return to all Melitopol residents the opportunity to live without fear. And, by the way, all the collaborators who are now threatening to take away land from farmers in Melitopol and other districts of Zaporizhzhia will most likely end up in this land themselves.

We will come to Mariupol. And we will liberate the city for the third time. It was liberated from the Nazis in 1943 by a brilliant operation. In 2014, on this day, June 13, thanks to the courage of our "Azov" and other units, Mariupol was liberated for the second time. Liberated from the militants, who at that time were not yet fully aware of what the Russian state was sending them to. And now they see it all. They see burned Mariupol. They see why the Russians came there. But we will not allow them to make this city dead. We will return it. Definitely.

It only takes enough weapons to make it happen. The partners have it. In sufficient quantities. And we work every day for the political will to give us these weapons to appear.

We will come to Enerhodar. And I want to repeat to everyone in the city who took to the streets against the Russian military, who refuses to cooperate with the occupiers and who is waiting for us today. I want to repeat that we have not forgotten about our Enerhodar for a day.

We must understand that the occupiers are keeping the occupied territory not just in an information blockade. I would call it a civilizational blockade.

They are trying to make people not just know nothing about Ukraine and how we are trying to liberate our territory. They are trying to make them stop even thinking about returning to normal life, forcing them to reconcile. In some areas, the occupiers are deliberately preventing the restoration of electricity supply. In many communities, they simply blocked communication. Our television is being turned off. They closed the exit from the occupation and simply do not even allow humanitarian corridors so that we can bring people at least basic goods and medicines.

And I ask everyone who has such an opportunity to communicate with people in the occupied south, in Donbas, in the Kharkiv region. Tell them about Ukraine. Tell them the truth. Say that there will be liberation. Say it to Kyrylivka, Henichesk, Berdyansk, Manhush. Say it to Horlivka, Donetsk, Luhansk. Say it to everyone in the Kharkiv region who is still forced to see the Russian flag on our Ukrainian land. Tell them that the Ukrainian army will definitely come.

Of course, we will liberate our Crimea as well. The flag of Ukraine will fly again over Yalta and Sudak, over Dzhankoi and Yevpatoriya. And let every Russian official who has seized precious land in Crimea remember: this is not the land where they will have peace.

There is no one today who will say exactly how long our path to victory will take. But the vast majority of people today are already aware - this is our path. This is how this war will end.

We will rebuild everything that was destroyed by the occupiers. From Volnovakha to Chortkiv. Because this is Ukraine. And it is our destiny to return and strengthen it.

I am proud of all our defenders! Eternal glory to you!

Eternal memory to everyone whose life was taken by the occupiers!

Glory to Ukraine!
The Lithuanians purchased four modern Estonian-made recon drones EOS C VTOL for Ukraine, and two more are planned to be purchased in the near future.

We just bought 4 more modern Estonian made recon drones EOS C VTOL which we named Magyla for additional 660 000 euro. Total value - 990 000 euro. Ukrainian pilots are learning how to operate them. Four birds will travel to Ukraine right now, the rest in 2 months, Andrius Tapinas, Lithuanian TV presenter, public figure, posted on Twitter.

In Lithuanian mythology, Magyla is the goddess of death.

Earlier, Andrius Tapinas initiated a fundraising campaign to buy a Bayraktar UCAV for Ukraine.

On February 24, Russia launched a new phase of the eight-year war against Ukraine  a full-scale offensive. The enemy massively shells and bombs peaceful Ukrainian cities, towns, and villages. The Armed Forces, the National Guard, the Territorial Defense Forces and the entire Ukrainian people effectively resist and inflict heavy losses on Russian troops.

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The duty-free regime with the UK will soon be launched, trade liberalization with Australia is expected.

We will continue to work to facilitate access of Ukrainian goods to all important markets around the world. Customs duties on trade with the European Union have already been abolished. The United States already applies a duty-free regime for Ukrainian steel. Canada has abolished customs duties. The same regime will work in the near future with Britain. We expect trade liberalization from Australia, President Zelensky said in his evening address on June 12.

As the President noted, representatives of 57 countries gathered for a special event of solidarity with Ukraine at the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization.

I am grateful to them  to each and everyone  for that. And as a result of this intergovernmental conference, we will learn, in particular, the timing of the decision on trade liberalization for Ukraine from Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland, the President added.

The President expressed hope that there would be good news for Ukraine soon.

As reported, on June 4, the European Union officially suspended all EU import duties and tariffs on Ukrainian exports to help restore Ukrainian businesses that have suffered as a result of Russian aggression. These include the complete suspension of import duties on industrial goods, the entry price system for fruit and vegetables, as well as anti-dumping duties and import safeguards for a period of one year.

The 12th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) started in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday. More than 50 WTO members expressed solidarity with Ukraine and promised assistance and support, in particular in the cultivation and export of agricultural products, as well as in the reconstruction of the country after the war.

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A ship carrying 18,000 tonnes of Ukrainian corn arrived early on June 13 at Spain's northwestern port of A Coruna, using a new maritime route.

The port's press office told this to CNN, Ukrinform reports.

The port said that the cargo ship Alppila, carrying the corn, is due to be unloaded by Tuesday.

The animal feed producers group, called Agafac, said in a statement that it's the first shipment of Ukrainian grain to reach northwestern Spain by sea, using "a new maritime route opened in the Baltic Sea to avoid the Russian navy's blockade of Ukraine's ports on the Black Sea since the start of the war" last February.

On February 24, Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. More than 20 million tonnes of grain were stuck in the country's ports, with about half of it intended for the UN World Food Program.

Photo: M. Dylan/Europa Press/Getty Images
New Ambassador of Ukraine to Poland Vasyl Zvarych starts his diplomatic mission in Warsaw.

Greetings from Poland! We arrived determined to work 24/7 to strengthen UkrainePoland friendship! We are stronger together with Poland and we will definitely win together! Thank you for the solidarity and support for Ukraine," Zvarych posted on Facebook, publishing a photo with his family, Ukrinform reports.

Zvarych replaced Andriy Deshchytsia, who was the Ambassador of Ukraine to Poland since October 13, 2014.

The President of Ukraine signed the decree appointing Zvarych as the Ambassador to Poland on February 8. Zvarych held the positions of Director of the Second Territorial Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Director of the Information Policy Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as diplomatic posts at Ukrainian embassies in Poland (twice), Turkey, and the United States.

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Ukraine hopes to hear a "Yes" and to receive as early as this month the status of a candidate for EU membership. A meeting of the European Council will be held in Brussels on June 23-24, where one of the issues on the agenda will be to consider the European Commission's opinion on Ukraine's application for EU membership and the decision to grant it candidate status.

However, despite massive international support for Ukraine in its fight against the aggressor, there are still some countries that are hesitant to grant Ukraine its long-sought EU candidate status. Therefore, on all fronts, Ukraine is making every effort to convince skeptics of the need to make a right step.

In The Hague, Ukrinform spoke with the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Ruslan Stefanchuk, who during his long working visit across the EU had been calling on European colleagues to grant Ukraine EU candidate status.

We have to convince those who are in doubt

- How many countries have you already visited and what are your main messages?

- My extensive working visit is about me traveling, talking to my fellow parliamentarians to convey the main idea: Ukraine is Europe, and Ukraine wants to get a legal starting point for its path to the EU. This point is the decision to grant Ukraine the status of a candidate for EU membership. My colleagues and I have already had very important and productive meetings in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. We will also have some in Brussels. The final point of this working visit is Austria. Im here to, firstly, thank the people who support Ukraine, and secondly, to talk to skeptics, to talk honestly about their questions, of which there are many. I answered honestly to all of them. In particular, these were questions about whether we understand that candidate status is not membership, and there is still a long way to go. I assured them that we understand everything and that we are ready. In Germany, everyone was interested in the fate of the Balkans. My answer was that we do not object to any processes, but they should not be seen as mutually exclusive. Everyone has their own track, and everyone has to follow theirs.

- You were speaking about skeptics. Which countries are we talking about? Who can say "No" to Ukraine?

- I can't name specific countries because it would be wrong. But indeed, there are some states that are hesitant so we just need to talk to them. I have already traveled to several countries, and I dont have any vision that any of them is an outspoken skeptic because Ukraine is strongly supported in the fight against Russian aggression. But it is also very important that EU countries say yes to our candidate status.

- Why is it difficult for European countries to make decisions? How do you convince them?

- Today 91% of Ukrainians support Ukraine's path to the EU. And it is very important that 66% of Europeans also support Ukraine's movement towards the EU. We are now doing a really big and powerful job in Europe. It is not only to persuade those who are in doubt, but also to ask their colleagues, who are 100% supportive of Ukraine, to join such a mission  to persuade them to support Ukraine's EU candidate status.

Ukraine has many things to offer Europe

- In 2016, the Netherlands held a referendum on the Association Agreement. Then there were anti-Ukrainian sentiments. How did the Netherlands meet you today? How do you think the country has changed?

- Im in contact with the Dutch longer than since 2016. I remind them that a few days ago it was 10 years since EURO 2012 started, and we remember well that the Dutch national team stayed in Kharkiv back then. I remember all of us walking together, chanting songs, supporting the Dutch, we were there together. Today that kind Kharkiv no longer exists.

I remind them that we are united by other sad things, such as MH17. But we are diligently helping the inquiry. We are doing everything to make sure that justice prevails.

We are not looking at 2016. We look further on and see the Netherlands supporting Ukraine: 62% agree that Ukraine should join the EU once its ready. Walk the streets of the Netherlands  Ukrainian flags are flown everywhere. There has never been such support for Ukraine. Also, note the results of the Eurovision voting. When the jury gives us zero and the people give us 12 For us, the "people to people" relationship is very important. And we, as government officials, must meet the expectations set by the people. If we dont, we fail to represent our people. And so I would very much like them to listen to what their people are saying.

I talked to my colleagues, telling them: if you want to get an answer as to whether Ukraine is worthy to be part of the European Union, first of all ask your companies if they want to get a 45 million-strong market in Ukraine. Ask your farmers if they want to produce ecologically clean products together with Ukrainians and cooperate with Ukrainians on the open land market in Ukraine. We must act as our peoples want. The Netherlands will only benefit from Ukraine being granted EU candidate status.

- After a meeting in The Hague with members of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the Dutch Parliament, Member of the House of Representatives Ruben Brekelmans (VVD - People's Party for Freedom and Democracy) responded on Twitter to your post on a solid "Yes" from the Netherlands. He wrote that support for EU candidate status was expressed by political parties representing less than 30% of the Dutch parliament. How does public support differ from the mood of their political elite?

- At this meeting, there was an atmosphere of comprehensive support for Ukraine, which prompted me to such an emotional reaction. Our goal is to get more than 50%. Were working on this, were talking to people, were meeting to settle all issues. I hope that Ukraine, in addition to getting EUs strong support of in the fight against Russian aggression, will also receive during the European Council summit a positive signal about the status of an EU candidate.

- Tell us about the advantages of granting Ukraine the status of a candidate for EU membership.

- We say that the candidate status allows us to start in-depth cooperation. Today, Ukraine has a powerful army, perhaps one of the most powerful ones in Europe and possibly in the world. Territorially and geographically, Ukraine provides a really good corridor for logistics routes. And we are ready to review all these things related to making Ukraine such a transformational hub.

It is also about rebuilding and reconstructing Ukraine. This can be a unique project because today everyone knows where Ukraine is, and all attention is on Ukraine, a symbol of courage and a strong spirit.

Also, theres our IT technology. I met with the Vice President of Philips, showed our "Diia" application, and told how we can join forces on the health care system because they specialize in medical projects and are ready to negotiate with businesses.

Ukraine has something to offer Europe in terms of economic and human capital. And they see it, because today the 6 million Ukrainians who have left for Europe have shown that they are Europeans, highly educated, cultured, literate people who can strengthen Europe.

Sanctions should not have exemptions

- What is Russia's influence on EU nations?

- Of course it has, and I explain it at every meeting. I say: if you think that youre not yet at war, its already going on. Its just that Russia is waging a completely different war today. It first inserts a sting of propaganda, gets into your brain, then introduces a financial sting and hooks you on the needle of energy, economic courting, and so on, destroying your principles. Then they insert a political needle -finding the parties or groups through which they provide financing and gain control over you, and only the third stage is the stage of full-scale invasion. You will never know when the third stage will come. And this must be understood.

- Are the existing sanctions working?

- Sanctions that provide for some exceptions or circumvention options are not enough. When we talk about sanctions, they should have no exemptions. When we started talking SWIFT, we had to act against the whole banking system, not against some banks. When we talk about the energy embargo, it should be a complete embargo on all energy, not separately on oil, then separately on gas, and separately on coal. The war with Russia and the pressure of sanctions should not be homeopathy, but surgery. We have to cut them off and put an end to this all. I understand that its a difficult thing to do, but the price in the future, in case, God forbid, we lose, will be catastrophically high for the whole world.

When we talk about personal sanctions, it must be made clear that the Russians must leave the EU within 48 hours, and rightly so. Your children should not study in elite European schools, but in Syzran and Ryazan, because you are building that world and you have to be honest. Today, having ties to Russia's elite must be toxic around the world, and only then can we say that sanctions are working.

- Is it possible to reach a peace agreement with Russia?

- Any war ends either with victory, capitulation, or a peace treaty. Undoubtedly, there are certain options for negotiations but Ive already emphasized the red lines a million times. There are three red lines that Ukraine will never cross in any negotiations. This is a question of Ukrainian independence, Ukrainian sovereignty, and Ukrainian territorial integrity. These three issues cannot be subject of any discussion. In addition, I would like to emphasize that with each Mariupol, Bucha, ir Irpin, the room for negotiations is becoming smaller.

War is a pandemic, no one can stop it at the border

- Which countries seek to play the role of mediators?

- There are many countries wanting to play the role of mediators, and we see this from their statements, and this is the right kind of desire to stop the war. But there can be no bargaining for three fundamental things. And Ukraine, entering into any negotiations, must receive strong security guarantees. It should not be another Budapest Memorandum, it should be concrete action, which will clearly state that in case of any aggression, all these countries will stand up for Ukraine. Only then do we understand these guarantees. If this is not the case, such negotiations are worth nothing.

- Does Europe understand that with Russia, anything can be settled only from a position of strength?

- I think they already understand this much more than they did before Feb 24, 2022. Because until that day, there had been such a common vision that everything can be agreed. But its not the case because the agreements with Russia are not worth the paper on which they are penned. Thats me quoting Bismarck, and this has been massively confirmed. Thats because Russia has violated all possible agreements that have been concluded.

- What are your expectations of June 24?

- I have only one expectation: Europe must say "Yes". Europe must send a powerful signal to the Ukrainian people, a powerful signal to our soldiers on the front line that everything for which the Ukrainian people are suffering now is not in vain. Ill say frankly: if Ukrainians dont receive this signal, it will go to Russia  that Europe isnt united, Europe doesnt support Ukraine. And then Putin will go further, 100%, he will press on and crush the weak. And we all need to understand that. And if someone thinks that they are far away territorial-wise, believe me, this is a pandemic. And any war is a pandemic as no one can stop it at the border. And now Ukrainians are the vaccine against this pandemic. Today, we are defending Europe at the cost of our people, our territories, our lives, broken families and crippled destinies. This is the price of a calm and wholesome Europe today. And people should be reminded of that because some are starting to say that there is Ukraine fatigue being observed. Today in Ukraine we are very tired of waging a grueling war and defending everyones peaceful sleep. If we dont receive such message on June 24, Putin will. He will figure out he can go on with impunity. Im asking ask you to do everything to make June 24 a turning point and our great common victory.

- Whats your victory formula?

- For me, there is one absolute definition of victory  the return of Ukraines territories as of August 24, 1991, the moment when we gained independence; prosecution of those guilty and compensation for damage caused by Russia. This is my victory formula.

Iryna Drabok, The Hague

Photo: Iryna Drabok, Twitter / Ruslan Stefanchuk, Alain ROLLAND
After visiting Gostomel, the town where heavy battles were ongoing at the onset of war, British Ambassador to Ukraine Melinda Simmons posted on a social network a number of pictures showing graffiti left behind in the area by the Russian invaders.

Simmons shared her observations on Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

"I visited Gostomel. Shown Russian troops graffiti in a building they occupied for a short while. Home soon? says one. Another has 2 goes at the Nike logo. A 3rd sorry daubed next to a huge hole in the wall. Its not art. But it is a bit of an insight," the ambassador wrote.

Simmons earlier said that after her visit to Bucha, Kyiv region, where Russian invaders had committed mass killings of civilians, said local residents had gone through hell.

Photo: Melinda Simmons / Twitter
| By Jena Frick

On June 2, the inaugural recipients of the University of Maryland, Baltimores (UMB) Presidents Global Impact Fund (PGIF) gathered virtually to provide an update on their projects.

PGIF is a $250,000 initiative providing support for 11 projects that aim to develop cross-campus and international collaborations to enhance UMBs global engagement and reach (see list of projects below). The fund was launched after the 2019 UMB Global Health Summit, which brought researchers, practitioners, and interprofessional teams to campus to highlight the Universitys commitment to improving the human condition through collaborative health and human services.

Erik von Rosenvinge, MD, associate professor at UMSOM, introduces his team working on the project, Energizing Gastroenterology Development in Rwanda.

Each group gave a presentation on the progress of their projects, which are now two years in the making. Virginia Rowthorn, JD, LLM, UMB assistant vice president for global engagement, reflected on the day the grants were given out.

The award letters for this program went out to these grantees on April 29, 2020, she said. Everyone knows what that date means. It was just at the start of COVID. What youll hear today is how so many of these groups have had to pivot what they planned to do and have achieved some amazing results already.

Recipients working on the project Energizing Gastroenterology Development in Rwanda (EGD-Rwanda) explained how they were able to adapt quickly to the pandemic and still achieve their overall goal. EGD-Rwanda worked to help areas of Rwanda with a high number of gastric illnesses but few resources for treating them. This was done through a fellowship program that transfers specific skills to gastroenterology (GI) specialists in Rwanda through travel opportunities to international training sites and conferences for research mentorship and pilot award opportunities.

The goal was to try to get them excited about gastroenterology and try to build up an educational pipeline, said Erik von Rosenvinge, MD, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). COVID made it unable for us to travel, so we ended up shifting our funds to support remote learning, but I am thrilled to say that the fellowship we have been working so hard to put together will begin in July this year.

During its research, von Rosenvinges team discovered that a lack of proper gastroenterology equipment would be a major obstacle for its PGIF project. The team found that in six months Rwandas main hospital had not been able to perform a single endoscopy, which is a standard GI procedure performed in Baltimore every day.

To help lay the groundwork for this fellowship, von Rosenvinges team invested a lot of time in securing additional partnerships and collaborations to help supply Rwandan hospitals with the necessary equipment. This proved to be much more difficult than first conceived due to the state and location of the medical facilities in Rwanda.

We had to jury-rig a lot of our equipment, and we even had to learn how to change lightbulbs the correct way, which we discovered is actually harder than you might think, von Rosenvinge explained. But we were able to get everything up and running at the main hospital, which serves a population of 3.5 million people. The equipment was definitely an issue, and with these new installations, we have created something that is more durable for the hospital to use.

The range of projects created through PGIF is remarkable and includes many focuses, including youth-based mental health programs in Kenya, collaborative malaria research in Angola, long-term care for older adults in Brazil, and many more.

It's an exciting thing to hear about the big grants that are resulting from the seed grants and to see that this partnership is building again, said Bonnie Bissonette, EdD, MA, senior director of international partnerships for the UMB Center for Global Engagement. I am so happy that we have the capacity to create and continue to facilitate these kinds of fantastic programs.

UMB Presidents Global Impact Fund Recipients

Nigeria  From Post-Graduate to PI: Developing Independent Scholars of Implementation Science in West and Central Africa

Nadia A. Sam-Agudu, MD, CTropMed , associate professor, UMSOM

, associate professor, UMSOM Alash'le G. Abimiku, PhD, MS, professor, UMSOM

Kenya  REACH (Reaching, Engaging Adolescents and Young Adults for Care Continuum in Health) Mental Health

Peter Memiah, DrPH, MSc , associate professor, epidemiology, Center for International Health, Education, and Biosecurity (Ciheb)

, associate professor, epidemiology, Center for International Health, Education, and Biosecurity (Ciheb) Fernando Wagner, MPH, DS, professor, University of Maryland School of Social Work

Angola  Consortium for Malaria Research in Angola (C-MalAng)

Joana Carneiro Da Silva, PhD , professor, UMSOM

, professor, UMSOM Miriam Laufer, MD , professor, UMSOM

, professor, UMSOM Shannon Takala-Harrison, PhD, associate professor, UMSOM

Point Prevalence Study in Acute Pediatric Critical Illness in Low-Resource Countries

Adrian Holloway, MD , assistant professor, UMSOM

, assistant professor, UMSOM Adnan Bhutta, MBBS, professor, UMSOM

Brazil  Developing Capacity for Long-Term Care of Older Adults Living with Dementia

Michael Lepore, PhD , professor, University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON)

, professor, University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) Ester Villalonga Olives, PhD, MSc, assistant professor, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP)

Malawi  Environmental Justice, Human Rights and Public Health Legal Theory and Practice Seminar

Diane Hoffmann, JD, MS , director, Law and Health Care Program, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

, director, Law and Health Care Program, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law Peter Danchin, JSD, LLM, LLB , professor, Maryland Carey Law

, professor, Maryland Carey Law Robert Percival, JD, MA , professor, Maryland Carey Law

, professor, Maryland Carey Law William Piermattai, JD 99 , managing director, Environmental Law Program, Maryland Carey Law

, managing director, Environmental Law Program, Maryland Carey Law Rebecca Hall, JD '13, managing director, Law and Health Care Program, Maryland Carey Law

Rwanda - Energizing Gastroenterology Development in Rwanda (EGD-Rwanda)

Erik von Rosenvinge, MD , associate professor, UMSOM

, associate professor, UMSOM Kenechukwu Chudy-Onwugaje, MBBS, MPH, GI Fellow, UMSOM

The Gambia  UMB and Its Duty of Care: Building Resilient Health Systems with Host Country Partners

Melissa McDiarmid, MD, MPH, DABT , professor, UMSOM

, professor, UMSOM Joanna Gaitens, PhD, MSN/MPH, assistant professor, UMSOM

The Gambia  Strengthening Capacity in Health Research Ethics and Research Methodology

Veronica Njie-Carr, PhD, RN, ACNS-BC, FWACN , associate professor, UMSON

, associate professor, UMSON Henry Silverman, MD, MA, professor, UMSOM

Zambia  Global Health Rotations
CELE MAI NOI DIN ACTUALITATE
Washington, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Jun, 2022 ) :Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised Monday that the United States would respond swiftly with its allies if North Korea goes ahead with a nuclear test but insisted dialogue was still an option.

"We're in very close touch with our close allies and partners starting with the Republic of Korea -- also with Japan and others -- to be able to respond quickly should the North Koreans proceed with such a test," Blinken told reporters.

"And we are prepared to make both short- and longer-term adjustments to our military posture as appropriate," he said.

But he reiterated the United States has "no hostile intent toward the DPRK," the formal name of the North, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"So we'll continue to reach out to the DPRK. We're committed to pursuing a diplomatic approach," Blinken said.

The top US diplomat was speaking after talks in Washington with his counterpart from South Korea, formally known as the Republic of Korea, who like Blinken said his government was ready to negotiate with Pyongyang "without preconditions." "I think that North Korea has now finished the preparation for another nuclear test and I think only political decision has to be made," Foreign Minister Park Jin said.

"If North Korea ventures into another nuclear test I think that it will only strengthen our deterrence and also international sanctions," he said.

The United States attempted to toughen sanctions on North Korea after it tested an intercontinental ballistic in defiance of UN resolutions but China and Russia vetoed the bid at the Security Council.
Kramatorsk , Ukraine, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Jun, 2022 ) :Russian forces said Sunday they had struck a site in western Ukraine storing US- and EU-supplied weapons, as fighting intensified in an eastern region where the country's top commander said the land "is covered in blood." The strike on the town of Chortkiv, a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine, left 22 people injured, the regional governor said.

Meanwhile the situation in Severodonetsk was "extremely difficult", after the Russian army destroyed a second bridge into the city and was heavily bombarding the last one, regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said.

Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military, said Russia's massed artillery in that region gave it a tenfold advantage.

But, he added in a Facebook post, "Despite everything, we continue to hold positions. Every meter of Ukrainian land there is covered in blood -- but not only ours, but also the occupier's." Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which began February 24, has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, displaced millions and reduced swathes of the country to rubble.

President Volodymyr Zelensky described the latest fighting in Severodonetsk as "very fierce... literally every meter." In his evening video statement, he said Russia was deploying undertrained troops and using its young men as "cannon fodder." Away from the battlefield, World Trade Organization members gathered in Geneva Sunday with, at the top of a challenging agenda, the need to tackle global food security threatened by Russia's invasion of wheat-producing Ukraine.

Tensions ran high during a closed-door session, where several delegates took the floor to condemn Russia's war, including Kyiv's envoy who was met with a standing ovation, WTO spokesman Dan Pruzin told journalists.

Then, just before Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov spoke, around three dozen delegates "walked out", the spokesman said.

That came a day after the head of the European Commission promised Ukraine would receive a clear signal within a week on its bid to join the European Union.

"Ukraine has achieved a lot in the past 10 years and much still needs to be done. Our opinion will reflect this carefully," Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said at the end of a surprise visit to Kyiv.

EU leaders are expected to approve the bid at an upcoming summit, although with strict conditions attached.

Ukraine's geopolitical vulnerability has been laid bare by Russia's invasion. In Brussels, demonstrators brandishing blue and yellow Ukrainian flags circled European Commission headquarters Sunday in a show of support.

The war has prompted Finland and Sweden to give up decades of military non-alignment and seek to join the NATO alliance.

However, Turkey is blocking their bids and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday the issue may not be resolved by an alliance summit later this month.

The United States and Europe have sent weapons and cash to help Ukraine blunt Russia's advance, alongside punishing Moscow with unprecedented economic sanctions.

Russia's defence ministry said the strike on Chortkiv destroyed a "large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defence systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and European countries".

Regional governor Volodymyr Trush said four missiles fired Saturday evening from the Black Sea had partially destroyed a military installation in the town, about 140 kilometres (85 miles) from the border with Romania.

In the east, which along with the south has borne the brunt of Russian firepower, Severodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk have been targeted for weeks as the last areas in the Lugansk region still under Ukrainian control.

Regional governor Gaiday said the Russians, by attacking Severodonetsk's last remaining bridges, wanted to cut off the city completely.

He said Russia was shelling the Azot chemical plant, where about 800 civilians have reportedly taken refuge.

However Leonid Pasechnik, leader of Lugansk's pro-Russian separatists, accused Ukrainian battalions of shelling Severodonetsk from the plant.

He told reporters pro-Russian forces were not pressing aggressively "because it is a chemical industry facility", warning of the risk of "an environmental catastrophe".

Concern eased Sunday over another volatile facility: Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant, in Zaporizhzhia. Captured months ago by Russian forces but still operated by Ukrainians, the station had ceased transmitting vital safeguards data two weeks ago.

But plant officials working with the International Atomic Energy Agency have succeeded in restoring transmission, the IAEA said.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the UN agency, said it still wanted to send inspectors to the plant "as soon as possible."
Spanish unions called on staff at low-cost airline Ryanair on Monday to hold a six-day strike at the start of the summer holidays, the latest action by aviation industry workers to demand better conditions in Europe

Madrid, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Jun, 2022 ) :Spanish unions called on staff at low-cost airline Ryanair on Monday to hold a six-day strike at the start of the summer holidays, the latest action by aviation industry workers to demand better conditions in Europe.

The planned work stoppage could cause more travel headaches in Europe, where strikes and shortages of staff have hit a sector that has started to recover from the Covid pandemic.

The call for flight crew to walk out from June 24 to July 2 aims to push Ireland's Ryanair to reach a deal that "guarantees decent work conditions for all personnel" at the airline, the USO and SITCPLA unions said in a joint statement.

Ryanair is the only international airline not to have a collective bargaining agreement that defines workplace conditions for its Spanish employees, according to the trade unions.

It finally agreed to negotiate eight months ago, but ended talks after reaching a deal, which includes minimum pay and flight hours previsions, with one union that does not have a majority among flight crew.

Both the USO and SITCPLA unions believe that the agreement is insufficient and does not respect Spanish labour law.

The strike would come as summer holidays get underway in European countries and a recovery in air travel following the lifting of most Covid-19 travel restrictions.

The boom in demand has caught short some airlines and airports that shed staff during the pandemic and which are having trouble rehiring employees, as well as facing demands for wage hikes and better working conditions.

Staff shortages have disrupted flights in London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, French easyJet pilots have warned management that the British low-cost airline faces having to cancel a massive number of flights this summer due to staff shortages.

The head of the SNPL pilots union at the airline, Arnaud Wiplier, said the unions sent a letter last week after management did not appear to realise the extent of the risk despite having to cancel flights during three-day holiday weekends last month.

Strikes at Paris's main airport on Thursday led to a quarter of flights being grounded, runways closed and passengers delayedNearly 1,000 SAS pilots have threatened to go on indefinite strike from the end of June after talks broke down with the Scandinavian airline.
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Ukraine said Monday its forces had been pushed back from the centre of key industrial city Severodonetsk, where President Volodymyr Zelensky described a fight for "literally every metre".

Kramatorsk, Ukraine, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Jun, 2022 ) :Ukraine said Monday its forces had been pushed back from the centre of key industrial city Severodonetsk, where President Volodymyr Zelensky described a fight for "literally every metre".

The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which are separated by a river, have been targeted for weeks as the last areas still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Lugansk region.

Regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said Monday Russian forces were "gathering more and more equipment" to "encircle" Severodonetsk.

Moscow's troops had "pushed our units from the centre and continue to destroy our city", he said.

Severodonetsk had been "de facto" blocked off after Russian forces blew up the "last" bridge connecting it to Lysychansk on Sunday, Eduard Basurin, a representative for pro-Russian separatists, said Monday.

Ukrainian forces in the area had two choices, he said, "to surrender or die".

The capture of Severodonetsk would open the road for Moscow to Slovyansk and another major city, Kramatorsk, in their push to conquer the whole of Donbas, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014.

Ukrainian forces were fighting for "every town and village where the occupiers came", Zelensky said on Monday in a message to mark the eighth anniversary of the liberation of Mariupol in the earlier conflict.

In May, Russian troops captured the port city in southern Ukraine after a weeks-long siege.

"We are once again fighting for it and all of Ukraine," Zelensky said.

- 'War crimes' - On Monday, Amnesty International accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying that attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv -- many using banned cluster bombs -- had killed hundreds of civilians.

"The repeated bombardments of residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes," the rights group said in a report on Ukraine's second biggest city.

In Bucha, a town near Kyiv synonymous with war crimes allegations, local police said Monday they had discovered another seven bodies in a grave.

"Several victims had their hands tied and knees bound," Kyiv regional police chief Andriy Nebytov said on Facebook.

Dozens of bodies in civilian clothing were found in the town in April after Russian troops withdrew from the area following a month-long occupation.

Elsewhere in northern Ukraine on Monday, Russian rocket strikes hit the town of Pryluky, local authorities said.

Pryluky, which lies about 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of the capital, is home to a military airfield.

In Lysychansk, Russian bombardments killed three civilians in the last 24 hours, including a six-year-old boy, Lugansk governor Gaiday said Monday.

While in the city of Donetsk, separatist authorities said three people were killed and four wounded in Ukrainian shelling on a market in the Budonivskyi district of the city.

- Weapons call - Russia's invasion of its neighbour has prompted Finland and Sweden to give up decades of military non-alignment and seek to join the NATO alliance.

In terms of security, Sweden was "in a better place now than before it applied", NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday, even though its application is in limbo with Turkey currently withholding its approval.

In a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, Stoltenberg said NATO was working "hard and actively" to resolve Ankara's concerns "as soon as possible" ahead of a meeting on June 15.

It was at the summit in Brussels that Kyiv said Monday it was hoping for a decision on further Western arms deliveries to support its war effort.

"Being straightforward -- to end the war we need heavy weapons," Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter.

Podolyak listed items he said the Ukrainian army requires, including hundreds of howitzers, tanks and armoured vehicles.

Russian forces said Sunday they had struck a site in the town of Chortkiv in western Ukraine storing US- and EU-supplied weapons.

The strike -- a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine -- left 22 people injured, regional governor Volodymyr Trush said.

- WTO meeting - Away from the battlefield, World Trade Organization members gathered in Geneva Sunday, with the threat posed to global food security by Russia's war top of the agenda.

Tensions ran high during a closed-door session, in which around three dozen delegates "walked out" before a speech by Russia's deputy economic development minister Vladimir Ilichev, WTO spokesman Dan Pruzin told journalists.

On a farm near the southern Ukrainian city Mykolaiv, the harvest has been delayed by the need to undo the damage done by Russian troops that passed through the area in March.

"We planted really late because we needed to clear everything beforehand," including bombshells, Nadiia Ivanova, 42, told AFP.

The farm's warehouses currently hold 2,000 tonnes of last season's grain but there are no takers.

The railways have been partially destroyed by the Russian army, while any ship that sails faces the threat of being sunk.
Addressing participants at the General Chapter of the Missionaries of Africa, Pope Francis exhorts them to embrace the meaning and strength of their charism, and invites them to be apostles and witnesses through prayer and fraternity.

By Benedict Mayaki, SJ

Pope Francis on Monday received in audience the participants of the General Chapter of the Missionaries of Africa (The White Fathers) in the Vatican.

In his address to them, the Holy Father expressed regret about having postponed his Apostolic Journey to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan originally scheduled for the first week of July. He said that it is hard at his age to go on a mission but he draws courage from their prayers and example and is hopeful that he would be able to visit these peoples whom he carries in his heart. He, however also announced that he would celebrate a Mass with the Congolese community in Rome on Sunday, 3 July.

Gratitude

The Pope highlighted the importance of looking back with gratitude upon hearing that the missionaries lived these days of the Chapter with gratitude and with hope. He insisted that looking back with gratitude is a sign of good spiritual health and is the Deuteronomic attitude that God taught His people.

Cultivate the grateful memory of the path the Lord has taken us on. And this gratitude is what fuels the flame of hope, the Pope said, adding that those who do not thank God for His gifts  albeit strenuous and sometimes painful  do not have a hopeful soul, open to Gods surprises and hopeful in His providence.

He added that this spiritual attitude is necessary to bring the seeds of vocation that the Lord brings about with His Spirit and Word to maturity.

The Pope further encouraged them to go ahead with gratitude and hope, because a community that knows how to say "thank you" to God and to our brothers and sisters, and in which we help each other hope in the Risen Lord, is one that attracts and sustains those who are called.

Mission as prophetic witness

Pope Francis then held up the theme of the Chapter: "mission as prophetic witness," noting that this is where fidelity to the roots, and to the charism that the Spirit entrusted to Cardinal Lavigerie (the founder of the White Fathers) comes into play.

He said that even as Africa and the world changes, the gift embraces its meaning and strength which is sustained in the Missionaries, in the extent that it always leads back to Christ and the Gospel.

Re-echoing the exhortation by the founder who said Be apostles, nothing but apostles, the Pope pointed out that an apostle of Christ is a witness, an idea that is true always and everywhere in the Church, but particularly for the White Fathers who are called to live out their mission in contexts of first evangelization or in places with prevalent Islamic religion.

Witness, the Pope said, means two things: prayer and fraternity- an open heart to God and an open heart to brothers and sisters  being in Gods presence and letting Him look at us, every day in worship and drawing from there, the sap from abiding in Him in Christ, which is the condition for being apostles.

It is the paradox of mission: you can only go, if you stay. If you are not able to abide in the Lord, you would not be able to go.

The witness of St. Charles de Foucauld

Pope Francis pointed at the witness of St. Charles de Foucauld, noting that though it is another charism, it has much to say to the Missionaries of Africa, as to all Christians of our time. Saint Charles de Foucauld, the Pope pointed out, drawing upon his intense experience of God, made a journey of transformation towards feeling a brother to all.

In this light, the Holy Father encouraged prayer and fraternity, inviting the Church to return to its essential core of radiating simplicity - not uniformly  but in the variety of its charisms, ministries and institutions, and letting this shine through as it was at Pentecost with the first community described in the Acts of the Apostles.

Prophecy

Reflecting on prophecy, the Holy Father said that we are often inclined to think of it as an individual reality following the model of the prophets of Israel, but it is also communal, as it is the community that gives prophetic witness.

In this regard, the Pope thought of the fraternity formed by people from so many countries and different cultures, acknowledging that it is a challenge that can only be accepted by counting on the help of the Holy Spirit. He added that the small community, living in prayer and fraternity, is also called to dialogue with the environment in which it lives, in contexts where, in addition to poverty, it experiences insecurity and precariousness. This small community is sent to experience the sweet joy of evangelization.

Concluding with a request for prayers for himself, the Pope invoked the intercession of Our Lady of Africa upon the White Fathers and he blessed the participants at the Chapter, encouraging them to bring the blessing to the brothers and sisters and the faithful in their communities.
We feature an interview with the President of the Vaticans Supervisory and Financial Information Authority on the occasion of the publication of its 2021 report: The development and strengthening of a network of international collaboration are constant objectives and priorities

Vatican News

The Supervisory and Financial Information Authority (ASIF) has published its latest report . ASIF is the authority of the Holy See and the Vatican City State for supervision of matters regarding the prevention and countering of money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and financial intelligence. ASIF President Carmelo Barbagallo tells us more about the report in the following interview.

In the reports introduction, you explain that 2021 marked a year of consolidation. Can you explain why and give some examples?

Recent years have been characterized by various important changes for ASIF, which I have had the privilege of heading since November 2019. These changes concerned the internal organization of ASIF, with the approval by the Holy Father of a new statute that gives a more functional internal organization consisting of three offices (Supervisory Unit, Financial Intelligence Unit, and Regulation and Legal Affairs Unit), as well as greater adherence to the organizational principles of the Roman Curia. The changes also regard the composition of the Board, the appointment of a new authoritative management and a strengthening of the staff members. Also of great significance is the signing of important memorandums of understanding with other authorities. The highly positive outcome of the assessment of the Vatican jurisdiction by MONEYVAL topped off all these developments. We needed to consolidate all these changes and that is what was done in 2021 and continues to happen. Examples include the settling of labour procedures, the full integration of new resources, efforts to increasingly enhance the development of all colleagues, and increasingly professional contributions of the offices.

How important was the MONEYVAL review and at what point are we on the path undertaken to counter instances of money laundering and financing of terrorism?

The MONEYVAL review is part of the global circuit of prevention and countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism. It is of fundamental importance for the financial reputation of the jurisdictions that adhere to it. An eventual negative review would have repercussions on the path of transparency undertaken long ago by the Holy See, and would also risk complicating the financial relationships of institutions, like the IOR or APSA, with their foreign counterparts. On the other hand, the great work done in previous years, and especially more recently, has prevented that from happening. However, we cannot let our guard down in terms of the effectiveness of prevention and enforcement actions, because a continuous refinement, which includes frequent assessments in accordance with international standards, is imperative. ASIF, together with the Financial Security Committee, is coordinating the jurisdictions implementation of the MONEYVAL recommendations in this direction.

How would you characterize the relations between ASIF and the various authorities and dicasteries of the Holy See?

Collaboration between ASIF and the authorities and dicasteries of the Holy See is essential for the full efficacy of the work in preventing and countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Aware of this, ASIF is constantly committed to maintaining a proactive dialogue with all those involved, respectful of the competencies and roles assigned by internal regulations and consistent with international standards. Opportunities for discussion and collaboration have increased in recent years. To give just one example, there are regular meetings with the Office of the Promoter of Justice, the Gendarmerie, and the Office of the Auditor General.

What steps have been taken to improve on the work of financial intelligence, especially through international relations with other similar bodies?

The development of a network of international collaboration and its strengthening are ongoing objectives and priorities for ASIF. This is especially important for a jurisdiction like the Vatican, given the capillary presence of the Church throughout the world. One of the instruments utilized by ASIF in this regard is the signing of memorandums of understanding. In 2021 we signed three additional ones. In this area, ASIF gives special importance to its participation in the Egmont Group, an essential instrument for strengthening relations with similar foreign authorities.

The only financial intermediary supervised by ASIF is the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR). How would you assess the work carried out by the IOR and what steps now need to be taken?

For quite a while now, the IOR has undertaken a good path that distinguishes it clearly and significantly from the sad events of the past. Contributing to that has the been the beneficial work of its reorganization, which is still underway, with the goal of rendering the management of the Institute ever more effective, efficient and dependable. Also, in the area of preventing and countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism, the best confirmation of the positive actions taken so far was expressed in the rating given by MONEYVAL during its recent assessment, which was entirely favourable regarding both the safeguards put in place by the Institute and the oversight by ASIF. The path ahead is clear. It is now a matter of continuing to follow it with confidence, with the awareness of the importance for jurisdiction of a financial entity like the IOR, and with the certainty that ASIF will continue to supervise the Institute with the utmost attention and effectiveness.

In 2021 ASIF received 104 reports of suspicious activity. What can you tell us about this?

The analysis and review of reports of suspicious activity are among the most significant and sensitive responsibilities given to ASIF. Much of the analysis carried out by the investigative authorities concerns further assessment of possible criminal profiles. Regarding the question of the nature of the reports, we note that most of these usually come from the IOR. We also note a stable trend, underway since 2017, towards improving the quality of reports. This is due to the intensification of preventive measures taken by the IOR, and the more experienced implementation of a risk-based approach.
Bodies have been found in the search for a journalist and an Indigenous guide in the Brazilian Amazon where they went missing eight days ago.

By James Blears

Veteran British Journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous rights specialist Bruno Pereira went missing after having last been seen over a week ago while traveling by boat on the Itaquai River in the western Amazon.

Indigenous leaders have been expressing anger and frustration for what they call lack of coordination in the search for the two men. Now the focus is to find what happened and the circumstances by which it occurred.

Disappeared

The two men were returning from the Sao Rafael Community to the town of Atalia do Norte, which skirts the Amazon River, when they vanished. The boat in which they were travelling was new and fully fuelled.

Both experienced, able navigators and familiar with the area, the two men did not venture into the indigenous area, which is off limits to outsiders.

The human remains from the river are still being forensically examined. A fisherman who was seen brandishing a rifle and pointing it at them the day before they went missing, has been arrested and is being questioned. His relatives claim he has been tortured and that traces of blood found on his boat, are from the slaughtering of a pig.

Under intense pressure to find answers and to resolve the case, Army, Navy, Civil Defence, Police and indigenous volunteers have been scouring the area for clues and the missing two.

Plundering of natural resources

Illegal fishing, illicit logging, excessive rubber tapping, are plundering the natural resources and elements of the Amazon, plus drug trafficking. These are dangerous life-threatening factors which those intent on conservation face in their daily work.

Now the relatives of the men and the community in this beautiful and remote area of Brazil, wait with trepidation to discover the outcome of a meandering investigation linked to the tragedy of its stolen resources. Where will its current lead, and what will finally surface?
Modern U.S. presidents such as Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan rank near the top of the best leaders in American history, while Donald Trump is closer to the bottom, according to the latest survey of presidential historians.



The five highest rated presidents, according to the C-SPAN survey, are Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The bottom five include William Henry Harrison, Donald Trump, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.



What the presidents at the very top of the list have in common is that most faced monumental challenges related to the nations survival. Lincoln presided over the Civil War and kept the country from breaking apart. Washington, Americas first president, helped nurture the budding democracy by not becoming king and stepping down after serving as president. Franklin Roosevelt presided over America during World War II and Eisenhower negotiated an end to the Korean War.



They were all president during critical periods in American history, says Cassandra Newby-Alexander, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and a professor of history at Norfolk State University, who took part in the survey. And all of them, from John F. Kennedy (8th), all the way up to Abraham Lincoln (1st) created some idealized vision of America.



The presidents were judged on the vision they had for America, public persuasion, crisis leadership, economics, moral authority, foreign affairs, administrative skills, relationship with Congress, pursuit of equal justice and their performance within the context of the time they led the country.

Political scientist Robert Kaufman, a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, who also took part in the survey, says it is important to make a distinction between greatness and an effective president.



Not all very effective presidents can be great, in my estimation, because greatness also depends upon the magnitude of the challenge, he says. Theodore Roosevelt, at the beginning of the 20th century, and Bill Clinton, at the end, were effective, but never faced the type of challenge that would lend itself to greatness.



The man at the bottom of the list, James Buchanan, is often ranked as one of the worst U.S. presidents. His refusal to take a side on slavery, while at times siding with slaveholders, is thought to have inflamed divisions within the country ahead of the Civil War.

Both Kaufman, who calls himself a Republican, and Newby-Alexander feel Truman (6th) might be the most under-rated president. Both point to his fight for civil rights while Kaufman also praises the 33rd president for laying the successful architecture for winning the Cold War.



Overall, Newby-Alexander says, the survey results reflect a conventional view.



If you consider the average age of historians, they tend to be older, they tend to be white and they tend to be male, so that actually leads to many of them having a somewhat traditionalist perspective, she says, pointing out how high Theodore Roosevelt (4th) and Woodrow Wilson (13th) ranked despite their well-established racist views and actions.



Under their administrations, we had the largest number of concentrated lynchings that went unpunished than any other time in American history, she says. [Wilsons] the one who strictly segregated the federal government. That did not exist before. He segregated the Navy. That did not exist before. He initiated a lot of very retrograde policy during a critical period in American history.

The passage of time and the gaining of perspective tends to change how presidents are viewed. While Newby-Alexander thinks Reagan (9th) is overrated, specifically mentioning his stance on apartheid  he vetoed the Comprehensive Apartheid Act, which levied economic sanctions against South Africa in 1986  Kaufman lists the reasons he would push the 40th U.S. president higher up the list.



Winning the Cold War, restoring American economic prosperity rooted in Judeo-Christian values, and optimism about America's exceptionalism, Kaufman says. He understood a) what the Soviet threat was about, b) what we needed to do to defeat it, and he left Bill Clinton a very strong hand. In many ways, we've been living off borrowed military capital of the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, when he inherited a military in disarray.



And, although he says it might be an unpopular opinion, Kaufman thinks Trump (now ranked 41 out of 44 presidents) will also rise in future surveys.



I think that, as the years go by, the president will get credit, however sausage-like the process was, for putting certain issues on the table that had long been neglected  sovereignty, particularly China, and energy independence, he says. I think China, which is the dominant foreign policy threat of our time, by my estimate, is something where Trump will get more credit, substantively, not temperamentally, than one would rate him now in the wreckage of his presidency.



Newby-Alexander believes history will judge Obama (10th) more favorably.



I would have put Barack Obama under Abraham Lincoln because he managed to not only provide us with an incredibly important health care initiative  while it has a lot of flaws, it was something that presidents have been trying to do for almost 100 years, and he succeeded, she says. Also, he was someone who got us out of a crisis that was actually deeper than the Great Depression when the stock market crashed in 1929. What we experienced right before he took office was worse than what Franklin Roosevelt dealt with, and he was able to pull us out. And I think that that has been tremendously underrated.



The current president, Joe Biden, is not on the list, and historians say it is too early to judge him.
As Russian tanks and trucks rumbled close to their village, a Ukrainian teenager and his father stealthily launched their small drone into the air.

Working as a team, they took bird's-eye photos of the armored column moving toward Kyiv and pinpointed its coordinates, swiftly messaging the precious information to the Ukrainian military.

Within minutes, artillery batteries rained shells down on the invading forces, with deadly effect.

Andriy Pokrasa, 15, and his dad, Stanislav, are being hailed in Ukraine for their volunteer aerial reconnaissance work in the early days of the invasion, when Russian troops barreling in from the north made an ultimately failed attempt to take the capital and bring the country to its knees.

For a full week after the Feb. 24 invasion, the pair made repeated sorties with their drone  risking capture or worse had Russian troops been aware of their snooping.

"These were some of the scariest moments of my life, Andriy recounted as he demonstrated his piloting skills for an Associated Press team of journalists.

We provided the photos and the location to the armed forces," he said. They narrowed down the coordinates more accurately and transmitted them by walkie-talkie, so as to adjust the artillery.

His father was happy to leave the piloting to the boy.

I can operate the drone, but my son does it much better. We immediately decided he would do it, Stanislav Pokrasa, 41, said.

They aren't sure how many Russian targets were destroyed using information they provided. But they saw the devastation wrought on the Russian convoy when they later flew the drone back over the charred hulks of trucks and tanks near a town west of Kyiv and off a strategically important highway that leads to the capital.

There were more than 20 Russian military vehicles destroyed, among them fuel trucks and tanks, the father said.

As Russian and Ukrainian forces battled furiously for control of Kyiv's outskirts, Ukrainian soldiers finally urged the Pokrasa family to leave their village, which Russian troops subsequently occupied.

With all adult men up to age 60 under government orders to stay in the country, the elder Pokrasa couldn't join his wife and son when they fled to neighboring Poland.

They came back a few weeks ago, when Andriy had finished his school year.

I was happy that we destroyed someone, he said. I was happy that I contributed, that I was able to do something. Not just sitting and waiting.
Fighting continues raging on in the eastern Donbas region with Russian forces assaulting a Ukrainian holdout in Siervierodonetsk. Plus, whats needed to address the mental health of those affected by the trauma of war? And the United Nations warns that global hunger is likely to rise.
Amnesty International on Monday accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying attacks on Kharkiv, many using banned cluster bombs, had killed hundreds of civilians.

"The repeated bombardments of residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes," the rights group said in a report on Ukraine's second-largest city.

"This is true both for the strikes carried out using cluster (munitions) as well as those conducted using other types of unguided rockets and unguided artillery shells," it said.

"The continued use of such inaccurate explosive weapons in populated civilian areas, in the knowledge that they are repeatedly causing large numbers of civilian casualties, may even amount to directing attacks against the civilian population."

Bombs and land mines

Amnesty said it had uncovered proof in Kharkiv of the repeated use by Russian forces of 9N210 and 9N235 cluster bombs and scatterable land mines, all of which are banned under international conventions.

Cluster bombs release dozens of bomblets or grenades in mid-air, scattering them indiscriminately over hundreds of square meters (yards).

Scatterable land mines combine "the worst possible attributes of cluster munitions and antipersonnel land mines," Amnesty said.

Unguided artillery shells have a margin of error of over 100 meters.

The report, entitled "Anyone Can Die At Any Time," details how Russian forces began targeting civilian areas of Kharkiv on the first day of the invasion on February 24.

The "relentless" shelling continued for two months, wreaking "wholesale destruction" on the city of 1.5 million.

"People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queueing for humanitarian aid, or shopping for food and medicine," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's senior crisis response adviser.

"The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives.

"The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable."

'She stood no chance'

Kharkiv's Military Administration told Amnesty 606 civilians had been killed and 1,248 wounded in the region since the conflict began.

Russia and Ukraine are not parties to the international conventions banning cluster munitions and anti-personnel mines.

But, Amnesty stressed, "international humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks and the use of weapons that are indiscriminate by nature.

"Launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in death or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects, constitutes war crimes, it said.

One of the witnesses Amnesty spoke to had survived cancer, only to lose both her legs in a Russian cluster bomb attack.

Olena Sorokina, 57, was outside her building when flying shrapnel hit her. She lost one leg instantly and the other had to be amputated later.

A neighbor with her was killed on the spot. The latter's daughter said the shrapnel tore through the building.

"Even if mum had been inside her home she would have been hit. She stood no chance in the face of such bombing," she said.

Amnesty investigated 41 Russian strikes that killed at least 62 people and wounded at least 196. It spoke to 160 people in Kharkiv over two weeks in April and May, including survivors, victims' relatives, witnesses and doctors.

Ukraine says it has launched more than 12,000 war crimes probes since the war began.
At least six people were killed in northern Burkina Faso in several attacks attributed to jihadists, local and military sources told AFP on Sunday.

Several hundred people took to the streets of Burkina over the weekend to protest the wave of jihadist attacks engulfing the poor West African nation.

"A terrorist attack cost six civilians their lives in Alga," a town in the province of Bam, on Saturday, a security source told AFP.

"The terrorists, who came in large numbers, attacked the (nearby) village of Boulounga and the gold-mining site of Alga," a resident said, confirming the same toll.

"They set fire to houses and looted property on the gold-mining site," he said, adding that "at least four people" had been injured.

Residents were leaving the village on Sunday, heading towards the large town of Kaya, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, he said.

A second security source said another "deadly attack" took place Saturday night in Seytenga, also in the north of the country, near the Niger border.

There were "several victims," the source said, without giving further details.

People in Seytenga fled to Dori, a town in northern Burkina Faso.

A local politician in Dori confirmed "the massive arrival of more than 2,000 people in the town," adding that "the authorities and people are working hard to set up a site to receive the displaced."

A government statement Sunday confirmed the attack, saying a death toll had not yet been established because of the "complexity of the situation.

On Thursday, suspected jihadists killed 11 police in Seytenga, the army said.

A gendarme brigade came under a "terrorist attack," the military said, adding that they died along with "several terrorists.

One of the poorest countries in the world, Burkina Faso has been gripped by an almost seven-year insurgency launched by jihadists crossing from neighboring Mali.

More than 2,000 people have died and some 1.8 million people have fled their homes.

Attacks have been concentrated in the country's north and east.

The nation has been under military rule since January, when colonels angered at failures to roll back the insurgency ousted the elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore.

After a relative lull, jihadist attacks resumed, inflicting a toll of more than 200 civilians and military deaths over the past three months.
U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet says she will step down as high commissioner when her term ends in late August. She disclosed this information, without a detailed explanation, at the opening of the U.N. Human Rights Councils 50th session.

Following her review of global human rights developments to the council, Bachelet told journalists in Geneva that she was retiring for personal reasons. She said her decision has nothing to do with criticisms over a recent trip to China.

Human rights activists have criticized her for failing to condemn Beijings forced incarceration of nearly two million Uyghurs in Xinjiang during her visit.

Bachelet told the media that she had informed U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres two months before she went to China that she would not be seeking a second term.

He told me that he would love me to continue but I explained to him that because of personal reasons, I need toI am not a young woman anymore and after a long and rich career, I want to go back to my country, to my family  After being so many years a minister, president, high commissioner, I think it is time. It is time to go back, she said.

Previously, in her speech to the council, Bachelet addressed the barrage of criticism leveled at her. Bachelet said she had discussed specific human rights concerns with senior officials in China. These included government policies for countering terrorism, the protection of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and legal protection for women.

I also raised concerns regarding the human rights situation of the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, including broad arbitrary detention and patterns of abuse, both in the VETC [Vocational Education and Training Centers] system and in other detention facilities. My offices assessment of the human rights situation in Xinjiang is being updated. It will be shared with the government for factual comments before publication, she said.

One critic was Rushan Abbas, founder and executive director of the Washington-based organization Campaign for Uyghurs. Abbas recently said Bachelet made a mockery of the U.N. human rights office by adopting Beijings narrative. He called for her to resign, saying in a tweet she neglects her mandate and the U.N.s founding principles.

Human rights activists have repeatedly demanded that Bachelet release her long-awaited report on Chinas human rights abuses. The high commissioner said the report would be issued before she left office. Beijing denies the accusations of rights abuses.

In her lengthy presentation to the council, the high commissioner reported widespread violations were destroying and impoverishing the lives of countless millions of people in all regions of the world.

She focused on the war in Ukraine, which she said continued to destroy the lives of many, causing havoc and destruction. She noted the horrors inflicted on the civilian population would leave an indelible mark for generations to come.

She condemned Russia, which invaded Ukraine on February 24, for arbitrarily arresting large numbers of antiwar protesters. She called the increase in censorship and restrictions on independent Russian media regrettable.

Asim Kashgarian contributed to this report.
The bodies of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, who had been missing for more than a week in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, were found on Monday, news outlet G1 reported on Monday, quoting Phillips' wife.

On Sunday, Brazilian police said search teams had found some of their belongings in a creek off the river where they were last seen a week about. Among them were a health identification card in Pereira's name, a backpack with clothes belonging to Phillips, along with the boots of both men.

Authorities have not yet confirmed that the bodies have been found, G1 said.

Witnesses have said they saw Pereira and Phillips, a freelance reporter who has written for The Guardian and The Washington Post, traveling down that river on June 5.

The two men were on a reporting trip in the remote jungle area near the border with Peru and Colombia that is home to the world's largest number of uncontacted indigenous people.

The wild and lawless region has lured cocaine-smuggling gangs, along with illegal loggers, miners and hunters.

News of the pair's disappearance resonated globally and environmentalists and human rights activists had urged Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to step up the search.

Bolsonaro, who last year faced tough questioning from Phillips at news conferences about weakening environmental law enforcement in Brazil, said last week that the two men "were on an adventure that is not recommended" and suggested that they could have been executed.

State police detectives involved in the investigation told Reuters they are focusing on poachers and illegal fishermen in the area, who clashed often with Pereira as he organized indigenous patrols of the local reservation.

Police have arrested one fisherman, Amarildo da Costa, known as "Pelado," on a weapons charge and are keeping him in custody as they investigate whether he is involved in the men's deaths.
Regional authorities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo said Rwandan soldiers and artillery had supported attacks by the M23 rebel group Sunday, accusing Rwanda of seeking to occupy the Congolese border town of Bunagana.

The violence pushed over 25,000 people to flee the area, with thousands escaping to neighboring Uganda, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said.

Congo's accusations are part of an escalating dispute between the neighbors that has revived old animosities. Rwanda denies backing the M23 offensive.

The office of the governor of North Kivu province said Congolese forces had repelled early-morning attacks by M23, backed by Rwandan forces, near Bunagana and elsewhere.

"The goal pursued by Rwanda is to occupy Bunagana in order not only to asphyxiate the city of Goma but also to put pressure on the Congolese government," it said in a statement.

The Rwandan government could not immediately be reached for comment. It denies playing any role in M23's recent attacks but has echoed M23 charges that Congo is cooperating with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an armed group run by ethnic Hutus who fled Rwanda after taking part in the 1994 genocide.

On Thursday, Congo accused Rwanda of sending 500 commandos in disguise into eastern Congo.

On Friday, the countries accused each other of firing rockets across their shared border. Congo's army said one strike killed two Congolese children.
Pregnancy puts women at higher risk of severe medical complications or death from COVID-19, according to a new study of more than 1,300 women in sub-Saharan Africa. Researchers argue that vaccinating pregnant women against the coronavirus should be made a priority across the region, where most countries do not yet recommend vaccination during pregnancy.

Multiple studies have already shown that COVID-19 is more dangerous to pregnant women than to those who are not pregnant. But most of the women in these studies lived in Europe, North America or Asia. Until now, little data was available from Africa.

"Africa is not Europe, is not the U.S.A.," said Jean Nachega, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and lead author of the new study. "We should not just rely on data coming from the U.S., Europe or China to try to understand COVID on the continent."

Populations in Africa are typically younger than those in Europe, North America and East Asia. But certain infectious diseases like HIV, malaria and tuberculosis (TB), as well as noninfectious diseases such as sickle cell anemia, are more common there. Those conditions can make it harder for the body to fight off infections.

In the study, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, Nachega and his colleagues from the AFREhealth research network analyzed health records from 1,315 women treated at hospitals in six countries in sub-Saharan Africa between March 2020 and March 2021. Roughly a third were pregnant and had tested positive for the coronavirus. Another third were pregnant and had tested negative, and the other third were not pregnant and had tested positive. The researchers tested how pregnancy, infection with the coronavirus, and conditions such as HIV, TB, malaria and sickle cell anemia affected a womans likelihood of severe disease or death.

The findings were grim. Pregnant women who were hospitalized in sub-Saharan Africa were five times more likely to die in the hospital if they tested positive for the coronavirus. And being pregnant doubled the odds that a woman admitted to a hospital with COVID-19 would die.

"We had it in both ways: pregnancy impacted COVID, and COVID impacted pregnant women," said Nachega.

Pregnant women with COVID-19 were also at higher risk of serious complications requiring intensive care. It wasnt possible to tell whether pregnancy made the combination of COVID-19 and TB or HIV riskier, but women with HIV, TB, malaria or sickle cell who had the coronavirus were more likely to get seriously ill.

It's very good that the study was conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, and it is very reassuring that the findings are consistent with the results of other studies, said Ana Langer, a physician specializing in reproductive health and head of the Women and Health initiative at Harvard University.

Because the study considered only hospitalized women, it wasnt possible to tell if pregnancy makes women more likely to get infected with the coronavirus or if they get sick from it in the first place. Using data collected in the past can also cause problems with the analysis, which the researchers used statistical tools to correct. But this was the best study they could do with the availability of funding and the other circumstances, Langer said.

Nachega hopes that his findings will convince policymakers in sub-Saharan Africa to recommend vaccination for pregnant women and women who could become pregnant.

"The bottom line is that pregnant women need to get vaccinated, he said. If not then, before even she gets pregnant. The most important implication of this study is to advocate for COVID vaccination in women of childbearing age."

Multiple studies have shown that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective during pregnancy, and 110 countries recommend COVID-19 vaccination for some or all pregnant women. However, only 13 of sub-Saharan Africa's 48 countries currently do so. Lack of government support stymies efforts to make the vaccine more accessible to pregnant women and is complicated by high rates of vaccine hesitancy in sub-Saharan Africa, where only about 19% of women intend to get the vaccine.

Women and their families are worried about their safety, they think that the vaccine could harm them, or their fetuses and babies, and it has been extensively demonstrated that that's not the case, said Langer. The vaccine is safe for pregnant and breastfeeding women."
Australias Defense Minister Richard Marles met his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of the Shangri La Security Summit in Singapore during the weekend. After the breakthrough meeting, a former spy chief says Australia has a long way to go to repair relations with China.

Analysts say that the meeting of Australian and Chinese defense ministers in Singapore on Sunday could be the start of better diplomatic relations.

Relations between the two nations have deteriorated in recent years to such an extent that ministerial dialogue between the Indo-Pacific nations ceased more than two years ago.

There were allegations of Chinese interference in Australian politics and cyber-espionage. The detention of Australian citizens in China was also a source of friction, as was Canberras decision on national security grounds to ban Chinese company Huawei from its 5G telecommunications system.

Then there was friction over the pandemic. In 2020, Australias former Prime Minister Scott Morrison said there should be an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 that was first detected in China. It angered Beijing, which saw it as a direct criticism of its handling of the virus. Various trade sanctions followed on a range of Australian exports, including farming goods, wine and coal.

Former director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, Dennis Richardson, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the recently elected center-left government in Canberra is trying to reset bilateral relations with China after years of animosity.

They dont carry the baggage of the last ten years and that is not a criticism of the previous government. But they dont carry the baggage of the differences in respect to the pandemic. They dont carry the baggage of ministers incessantly talking about the potential for conflict with China. They are able to start with a clean slate, he said.

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said he had a full and frank exchange with his Chinese counterpart in Singapore, but he conceded that the relationship with China remained deeply problematic.

He said he raised several concerns, including Chinas recent interception of an Australian air force plane over the South China Sea.

Marles insisted the meeting was a critical first step in repairing relations, which depended on having open lines of dialogue.

The Shangri-La Dialogue is Asias premier defense summit that is attended by officials from dozens of countries, including the United States, Japan and Indonesia.

Marles said Australias recently-elected government would continue to oppose Beijings attempts to militarize the South China Sea, but was committed to having a productive relationship with China, its biggest trading partner.
David Fong made his way from a poor village in central China to the southern boomtown of Shenzhen as a young man in 1997. Over the next 25 years he worked for a succession of overseas manufacturers before building his own multi-million-dollar business making everything from schoolbags to toothbrushes.

Now 47, he has plans to branch out internationally by building internet-connected consumer devices. But after two years of coronavirus lockdowns that have pushed up the price of shipping and battered consumers' confidence, he worries if his business will survive at all.

"I hope we make it through the year," said Fong, surrounded by talking bears, machine parts and his company's catalogs in his top-floor office overlooking gleaming towers in an area of Shenzhen once filled with sprawling factories. "It's a tough moment for a business."

The 'miracle' city

Fong's story of rags to riches, now threatened by a wider slowdown worsened by the coronavirus, mirrors that of his adopted city.

Created in 1979 in the first wave of China's economic reforms, which allowed private enterprise to play a role in the state-controlled system, Shenzhen transformed itself from a collection of agricultural villages into a major world port that is home to some of China's leading technology, finance, real estate and manufacturing companies.

For the last four decades, the city has posted at least 20% annual economic growth. In October, the forecasting firm, Oxford Economics, predicted that Shenzhen would be the world's fastest-growing city between 2020 and 2022.

But it has since lost that crown to San Jose in California's Silicon Valley. Shenzhen posted an overall economic growth of only 2% in the first quarter of this year, the lowest-ever figure for the city, aside from the first quarter of 2020 when coronavirus infections brought the country to a standstill.

Shenzhen remains China's biggest goods exporter, but its overseas shipments fell nearly 14% in March, hampered by a COVID lockdown that caused bottlenecks at its port.

The city has long been seen as among the best and most dynamic places for business in China and a triumph of the country's economic reforms. President Xi Jinping called it the 'miracle' city when he visited in 2019.

If Shenzhen is in trouble, that is a warning sign for the world's second-largest economy. The city is "the canary in the mine shaft," said Richard Holt, director of global cities research at Oxford Economics, adding that his team is keeping a close eye on Shenzhen.

Fong, who sells his goods mostly to domestic customers, said sales are down about 40% from 20 million yuan ($3 million) in 2020, hurt by the recent two-month lockdown in Shanghai and a general decline in consumer confidence.

Losing attractiveness

Shenzhen, now a city of some 18 million people, has been hit by a succession of blows from inside and outside the country.

Shenzhen-based telecom equipment makers Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp were placed on U.S. trade blacklists over alleged security concerns and for illegally shipping U.S. technology to Iran respectively. Huawei denies wrongdoing, while ZTE exited probation in March five years after pleading guilty.

Another of the city's major companies, top-selling property developer China Evergrande, sparked fears of a collapse last year under its heavy debts that would have wreaked havoc with China's financial system.

Even smaller firms have suffered. Last year Amazon.com Inc. cracked down on how sellers do business on the platform, impacting more than 50,000 e-commerce traders, many based in the city, the Shenzhen Cross-border E-commerce Association said.

On top of that, Shenzhen was locked down for a week in March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. That lockdown, and those in other Chinese cities, depressed domestic demand for goods made in Shenzhen. The city's 2% growth in the first quarter was less than half of China's overall 4.8% growth rate.

Business registrations also fell by almost a third in that time. City authorities are sticking to their 6% growth target for this year, set in April, but the slowdown has sparked alarm in China's establishment.

The Shenzhen government did not reply to a request for comment on this story. City officials privately admit that it is increasingly difficult to keep Shenzhen's 'miracle' alive.

"There's a lot of people with a stake in Shenzhen remaining predictable, unlike before. You can't just experiment freely and see what sticks anymore," one city official told Reuters, on the condition of anonymity.

'Time to go

The cancellation of most international flights to China, a port snarled by lockdowns and a once-teeming border with Hong Kong that is now all-but-shut have made Shenzhen a difficult place to do business. China's plans for a Greater Bay Area - melding Shenzhen with Hong Kong, Macau and several mainland cities - appear to have stalled.

"It's losing attractiveness, and they (authorities) need to realize that, said Klaus Zenkel, chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in South China. "We always say they need to balance the restrictions and the economic growth."

In September, the Chinese government said it would expand what is known as the Qianhai economic zone, a special area within Shenzhen's borders, to 121 square kilometers from 15 square kilometers. British banks: Standard Chartered and HSBC, have set up offices there, but border closures mean the area has struggled to attract foreign businesses, Zenkel and five diplomats in the region said.

International business chambers have warned the Chinese government of an exodus of foreign talent. One diplomat at a major European consulate told Reuters they estimated the number of its nationals in south China had fallen to 750 from 3,000 before the pandemic.
Israel urged its citizens on Monday to avoid Istanbul or to return home if already there, sharpening a May 30 advisory against travel to Turkey because of what it said was a threat of Iranian attempts to kill or abduct vacationing Israelis.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said a "huge effort" by Israel's security forces had saved "Israeli lives in recent weeks," and thanked the Turkish government for its contribution.

He did not give further details. An Israeli security official told Reuters Turkey had arrested several suspected "operatives" of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

"We are calling on Israelis not to fly to Istanbul  and if you don't have a vital reason, don't fly to Turkey. If you are already in Istanbul, return to Israel as soon as possible," Lapid said in a televised statement.

"These terrorist threats are aimed at vacationing Israelis. They are selecting, in a random but deliberate manner, Israeli citizens with a view to kidnapping or murdering them," he said.

"I want, from here, to relay a message to the Iranians as well. Whoever harms Israelis will not get away with it. Israel's long arm will get them, no matter where they are."

Tehran has vowed to retaliate against Israel, which it blames for the May 22 killing of Hassan Sayad Khodai, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps colonel who was shot dead at the wheel of his car by two people on a motorcycle.

Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility, its standard policy over accusations of assassinations. It accused Khodai of having plotted attacks against its citizens worldwide.

Turkey is a popular tourist destination for Israelis. The two countries have been mending their ties after more than a decade of strained relations.
For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.

The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:

11:50 p.m.: Lithuania seeks to decouple from the Russian power grid in 2024, a year ahead of schedule, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said, according to Reuters. European Union members Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia's power grids are working in concert with those of Russia and Belarus and depend on Russia to ensure stable power supplies. A $1.94 billion project financed by the EU aims to disconnect the Baltic states from Russia and Belarus in 2025 and connect them to the decentralized power system of continental Europe, Reuters reported.

11:20 p.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the American Jewish Committee Forum the confirmed number of children killed during the war with Russia had risen by 24, The Associated Press reported.

"These are the children who died because of Russian strikes at Mariupol," Zelenskyy said during his address, bringing the overall toll to 287 according to Ukrainian authorities.

In his speech, the president said the numbers will rise further as the fate of those under Russian occupation is not fully known, "but gradually we learn about it."

Zelenskyy said Russia continues to kill and torture and that it has set up of filtration camps in the occupied territories, the AP reported.

10:45 p.m.: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declined to comment Monday on reports that he is planning to visit Ukraine together with his counterparts from France and Italy soon, The Associated Press reported. The weekly Bild am Sonntag had reported that Scholz would travel to Kyiv with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Premier Mario Draghi Berlin before the G-7 summit in Germany later this month, the AP reported.

8:38 p.m.: In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had driven the Russians out of more than 1,000 settlements since the conflict began, and would liberate all occupied territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, The Associated Press reported.

Zelenskyy said the battle over the Donbas will be one of the most brutal in European history. "The price of this battle for us is very high," he said. "It's just terrible."

"We have no choice but to move on, to free our entire territory, kick out the occupiers from all our areas," he said, adding the total war front in the country, he said, is now 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles), the AP reported.

7:24 p.m.:

6:18 p.m.: Southwest of Sievierodonetsk, Russian forces were firing mortars and artillery around a number of settlements, according to Ukraine's general staff. But it said Ukrainian forces had repulsed Russian attempts to advance towards some communities, Reuters reported.



Russia says its missiles have destroyed a large quantity of Ukrainian weapons in the Donbas region, including weapons sent from the West.



President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's military was gradually liberating territory further west in the Kherson region and had some successes in Zaporizhzhia, too.

5:23 p.m.: Mexicos president slammed NATOs policy on the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Monday, calling it immoral, The Associated Press reported. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors did not mention NATO or the United States by name, but his comments were the latest example of his partys ambiguous stance on the invasion.



Mexico has voted to condemn the invasion but refused to join in sanctions on Russia. Lopez Obrador said Monday that the allies policy was equivalent to saying Ill supply the weapons, and you supply the dead. It is immoral.



How easy it is to say, 'Here, Ill send you this much money for weapons,' Lopez Obrador said. Couldnt the war in Ukraine have been avoided? Of course it could. In March, a half-dozen legislators from Lopez Obradors Morena party helped create a congressional Mexico-Russia Friendship Committee. The Morena party said we respect the freedom of thought of our members after a youth group apparently affiliated with the party sent an open letter to the Russian ambassador supporting the invasion.

4 p.m.: The U.N. Human Rights office on Monday released the latest civilian casualty figures from Russias war in Ukraine.

3:23 p.m.: The Dutch government says it will host a ministerial conference next month on accountability in Ukraine aimed at strengthening and coordinating war crimes investigations, The Associated Press reported.

Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said in a statement Monday that the international community already has taken swift action to investigate alleged atrocities in Ukraine, and there is an urgent need to further coordinate existing efforts on this front, so that all actions aimed at delivering justice benefit from a coherent and effective approach.

The July 14 meeting in The Hague will be hosted by the Dutch government, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan and European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders. Khan already has launched an investigation in Ukraine and deployed his largest ever team of prosecutors to the country to gather evidence, including to Bucha, near the capital Kyiv, where bodies littered the streets after Russian forces retreated from the area early in the war.

2:53 p.m.:

2:24 p.m.: Ukrainian authorities have promised to restore everything the Russians have destroyed. But many residents arent waiting  they are already working with volunteers to rebuild their homes bit by bit. VOAs Lesia Bakalets has the story.

2:03 p.m.: Moscow police have detained dozens of journalists and activists after they were identified using a facial recognition system in the city's metro according to the OVD-Info group, which monitors the arrests of representatives of democratic institutions, rights defenders, and opposition politicians.



According to the group, at least 67 activists and journalists were detained on June 12, which is commemorated as Russia Day, of whom 43 individuals were detained after being identified as potential protesters. They were picked out of the crowds in the Moscow metro by police through the usage of the facial recognition system. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this report.

1:38 p.m.: All bridges to Ukraine's embattled eastern frontline city of Sievierodonetsk have been destroyed, rendering impossible the evacuation of civilians remaining there, the local governor said on Monday, adding that some "access" to the city remained. Governor Serhiy Haidai wrote on the Telegram app that Russia had not taken full control of the city, and that "a part" of it remained under Ukrainian control, but that it was no longer possible to transport humanitarian cargoes there, Reuters reported.

1:04 p.m.: A Ukrainian tank unit, operating a Soviet-design T-64 BV, arms and fires upon Russians in the Donetsk region on June 11. The gunner demonstrates the tight quarters inside the turret as shells are loaded, while soldiers discuss using cover and overcoming their fears. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this report.

12:29 p.m.: The lush green beauty of a pine forest and singing birds contrasted with the violent deaths of newly discovered victims of Russias war in Ukraine, as workers exhumed bodies from another burial site near Bucha on Kyivs outskirts, The Associated Press reported.

The hands of several victims were tied behind their backs. The gruesome work of digging up the remains coincided with the Ukrainian police chiefs report that authorities have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 people during Russias war.

Workers in white hazmat suits and wearing masks used shovels to exhume bodies from the soil of the forest, marking each section with small yellow numbered signs on the ground. The bodies, covered in cloth and dirt, attracted flies and were dragged by rope.

12:08 p.m.:

11:51 a.m.: Sweden has taken important steps to meet Turkey's demands for approving Stockholm's NATO membership application, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday during a visit to Sweden, according to Reuters. Sweden and Finland applied to join the alliance last month, in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Their applications have faced unexpected opposition from Turkey, which has been angered by what it deems is Swedish support of Kurdish militants and by a previous decision to withdraw arms export licenses to Turkey.

11:29 a.m.: The European Commission on Monday released a video on Twitter recapping EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyens comments during a weekend visit to Ukraine, where she spoke about Ukraines application to join the European Union. The path is known, she said. It is a merit-based path forward. It is a path where I must say I highly appreciate the enormous efforts and the determination of Ukraine in this process.and I just want to say we stand by your side.



11:13 a.m.: Is it better to engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine or to isolate him? Should Kyiv make concessions to end the war, or would that embolden the Kremlin? Are ramped up sanctions on Russia worth the collateral damage?

These are some of the questions testing the international alliance that swiftly rallied around Ukraine in the days after the Russian invasion but that, three months into the war, is straining, officials and diplomats told Reuters.

10:22 a.m.:

10:04 a.m.: The father of a Moroccan man sentenced to death by a court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) on mercenary charges said his son should be treated as a prisoner of war as he is a Ukrainian national who handed himself in voluntarily, Reuters reported.

Morocco-born Brahim Saadoun and Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner were found guilty of "mercenary activities and committing actions aimed at seizing power and overthrowing the constitutional order" of the DPR, Russian media said last week. The three men were captured while fighting for Ukraine against Russia and Russian-backed forces. read more.

The Moroccan fighter received Ukrainian nationality in 2020 after undergoing a year of military training as a requirement to access aerospace technology studies at a university in Kiev, his father Tahar Saadoun said in an email to Reuters.

9:14 a.m.: A Japanese foundation announced Monday it is launching a fundraising drive to provide more than 1,200 Ukrainian evacuees in Japan with additional financial support for language studies and other needs, The Associated Press reported.

Jumpei Sasakawa, executive director of the Nippon Foundation, said it aims to raise 1 billion yen ($7.4 million) through cooperation with the U.S. and Ukrainian ambassadors. The foundation has already pledged 5 billion yen ($37 million) for the transportation and living costs of Ukrainian evacuees. Japan has so far accepted more than 1,200 war-displaced Ukrainians since Russia invaded in late February.

9:03 a.m.:

8:42 a.m.: The nine nuclear-armed states, including the United States and Russia, are likely to grow and modernize their arsenal of warheads and to be more vocal about it in the coming decade in what is seen as a "worrying trend," an influential think tank says in its latest annual study. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said on Monday in its annual report for 2022 that despite a marginal decline in the number of nuclear warheads last year, arsenals are expected to grow over the next 10 years. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this story.

8:20 a.m.:

8:02 a.m.: At least three people including a child were killed and four injured on Monday by Ukrainian artillery at a market in the Russian-backed separatist Ukrainian region of Donetsk, Reuters quoted the province's news agency as saying. The Donetsk News Agency showed pictures of burning stalls at the central Maisky market and at least one body on the ground. The news agency said 155-mm caliber NATO-standard artillery munitions hit parts of the region on Monday. Reuters said it was unable to independently verify the reports.

7:28 a.m.: Andriy Pokrasa, 15, and his dad, Stanislav, are being hailed in Ukraine for their volunteer aerial reconnaissance work in the early days of the invasion, when Russian troops barreling in from the north made an ultimately failed attempt to take the capital and bring the country to its knees, The Associated Press reported.

7:17 a.m.: Russia's Defense Ministry said on Monday its missiles had destroyed a large quantity of weapons and military equipment in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, including some that had been sent by the United States and European nations, Reuters reported. The ministry said high-precision air-based missiles had struck near the Udachne railway station, hitting equipment that had been delivered to Ukrainian forces.

7 a.m.:

6:46 a.m.: The regional governor of the Mykolayiv region, near the front lines in the country's south, has called for immediate international military assistance. "Russia's army is more powerful, they have a lot of artillery and ammo. For now, this is a war of artillery...and we are out of ammo," Governor Vitaliy Kim said. "The help of Europe and America is very, very important." Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this photo essay of what the fighting there looks like.

6:29 a.m.:

6:15 a.m.: Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said on Monday both sides in the war in Ukraine were using heavier weapons, including in Russias case thermobaric bombs, Reuters reported.

We are supporting Ukraine with increasingly heavy weaponry. And on the other hand, Russia has also begun to use very powerful weapons, thermobaric bombs that are in fact weapons of mass destruction, Niinisto said during security policy talks at his summer residence in Naantali, Finland.

Ukraine and NATO countries have also accused Russia of using thermobaric bombs, which are also known as vacuum bombs and are much more devastating than conventional explosives.

Finland and neighboring Sweden have applied to join NATO following Russias invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

5:55 a.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyys adviser Mykahilo Podolyak tweeted Monday that to end the war we need heavy weapons parity. He listed several categories of weapons, including 1,000 howitzers, 300 multiple launch rocket systems, 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles and 1,000 drones.

Contact Group of Defense Ministers meeting is held in Brussels on June 15, Podolyak said. We are waiting for a decision.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is convening the meeting at NATO headquarters. A virtual meeting of the group last month drew representatives from 47 countries, NATO and the European Union.

4:45 a.m.: Ukraine imported about 380,000 tons of fuel in May and is likely to import about 600,000 tons in June, Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Monday, Reuters reported.

Ukrainian officials have sought ways to cover consumption since Russian forces started attacking fuel depots and other facilities following its February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

4:30 a.m.: He was Vladimir Putins first prime minister but Mikhail Kasyanov never in his worst nightmares imagined that his former boss would unleash a full-scale war on Ukraine.

If Ukraine falls, the Baltic states will be next, he told Agence France-Presse in an interview. AFP has the story.

3:35 a.m.: An industrial zone where about 500 civilians are sheltering is under heavy artillery fire from Russian forces on Monday, Reuters reported citing the regional governor.

Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine that includes Sievierodonetsk, said on Facebook that Russian forces controlled about 70% of the city and fighting there was fierce.

3:05 a.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces and those from Russia are fighting for literally every meter in the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk, while pleading to international partners that Ukraine needs modern missile defense systems.

In his latest nightly video message, Zelenskyy said Russias key tactical goal has not changed, with Russian forces also pushing toward Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Slovyansk, to the west and southwest of Sievierodonetsk. With losses on both sides difficult to confirm, Zelenskyy said Russian casualties could exceed 40,000 in June.

The Russian army is trying to deploy reserve forces in Donbas, he said. But what reserves can they have now? It seems that they will try to throw into battle poorly trained conscripts and those who were gathered by covert mobilization. Russian generals see their people simply as the cannon fodder they need to gain an advantage in numbers  in manpower, in military equipment.

Britains defense ministry said Monday that in recent days the battle around Sievierodonetsk has continued to rage.

The ministry said Russias ability to carry out river crossing operations will likely be one of the most important factors in the war in the coming months. To achieve success in the current operational phase of its Donbas offensive, Russia is either going to have to complete ambitious flanking actions, or conduct assault river crossings, it said.

2:57 a.m.: Russian gas producer Gazprom said its supply of gas to Europe through Ukraine via the Sudzha entry point was seen at 41.9 million cubic meters on Monday, unchanged from Sunday, Reuters reported.

An application to supply gas via another major entry point, Sokhranovka, was rejected by Ukraine, Gazprom said.

2:45 a.m.: Agence France-Presse shares these images from an artillery duel between Ukrainian and Russian troops.

1:45 a.m.: River crossing operations will likely be the significant factors determining the course of the war in the weeks ahead, said the U.K. Ministry of Defense latest report.

The key, 90km long central sector of Russias frontline in the Donbas lies to the west of the Siverskyy Donets River, the report said Monday, adding Ukrainian forces have often managed to demolish bridges before they withdraw, while Russia has struggled to put in place the complex coordination necessary to conduct successful, large scale river crossings under fire.

1:20 a.m.: Amnesty International on Monday accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying attacks on Kharkiv, many using banned cluster bombs, had killed hundreds of civilians. Agence France-Presse has the story.

1:10 a.m.: Ukrainian and Russian forces were still fighting street-by-street in Sievierodonetsk on Sunday, Reuters reported citing the governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Gaidai.

Russian forces have taken most of the city, but Ukrainian troops remain in control of an industrial area and the Azot chemical plant where hundreds of civilians are sheltering, the governor said. About 500 civilians remain on the grounds of the Azot plant in Sievierodonetsk, 40 of them are children. Sometimes the military manages to evacuate someone, Gaidai said. But the Russians had destroyed a bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River linking Sievierodonetsk with its twin city of Lysychansk, Gaidai said. That left just one of three bridges still standing.

If after new shelling the bridge collapses, the city will truly be cut off. There will be no way of leaving Sievierodonetsk in a vehicle, Gaidai said, noting the lack of a cease-fire agreement and no agreed evacuation corridors. Gaidai said Lysychansk was also being shelled by Russian forces, and a six-year-old child had been killed there.

Reuters said it could not independently confirm the accounts.

12:10 a.m.: The New York Times reports that Russian forces could cut off the city of Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine within days.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
A mystery has finally been solved for Anwar, a Uyghur American, who asked that only his first name be used for fear of "too much political attention."

Anwar said he had been "unable to speak or even just communicate" with his family in Xinjiang for five years. Then, he saw his cousin's mugshot in what is known as the Xinjiang Police Files, documents and images leaked from within China and released to the public last month by the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and news media.

"I could only hope and pray for the best as I sat combing through each picture of the leaked Xinjiang Police Files," Anwar said.

Arzugul Abdurehim, cousin

After spending hours combing through countless images, Anwar found the face of his cousin, Arzugul Abdurehim, now 42, in the files.

"Anger, frustration, despair and anguish all bubbled up within me as I looked upon the mugshot of my cousin; I could tell she was handcuffed," Anwar said. "We had grown up together, and to me, she was my little sister. She was just a typical Uyghur mother, caring for her children and trying to provide them with the best."

Anwar's cousin was 39 when she was arrested for "reeducation" in 2018, according to the Xinjiang Police Files.

Anwar said he believes his cousin's crime was "her identity, that she is Uyghur."

"These pictures are only from 2018. The genocide has only gotten worse since then. I hope my other family members and loved ones are alive," Anwar said.

Metyar Ghopur, classmate

Mehmet Ali Sultan, a naturalized Uyghur American who has lived in the United States since 2011, also sifted through photos from the Xinjiang Police Files and saw familiar faces of Uyghur detainees from his hometown of Konasheher county. He found out his former high school classmate, Metyar Ghopur, was detained in 2017 by Chinese authorities.

"If it weren't for the leaked files, I would not have been able to learn of the arbitrary detention of my friend and former classmate," Sultan said in a phone interview with VOA.

"I filtered my search to only people over 30, saw a face I hadn't seen in over a decade, and recognized him immediately," Sultan said.

Ghopur's reasons "for internment" are described as "terrorism involving capital" and "digging into the expansion line."

"When I recognized his face, I was shaking and could barely hold back my tears," Sultan said.

The data within the files

Ghopur's and Abdurehim's images are two of thousands of photos taken at police stations and detention centers, including mugshots of more than 2,800 detainees. The cache of information hacked from a network of computers within Xinjiang is described by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation as the "largest and most significant leak" so far.

The youngest Uyghur detainee in the files was 14-year-old girl when she was detained and the oldest, 73 years old.

In addition to photos, the leaked files include documents and speeches related to the Chinese government's mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, leaked to one of the foundation's researchers, Adrian Zenz. The foundation says the information has been authenticated and peer-reviewed by teams of researchers and investigative journalists.

"The person who unexpectedly reached out to the author to provide the files acted on a solely individual basis, attached no conditions to their provision or publication, and wishes to remain anonymous due to personal safety concerns," according to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation website.

Xinjiang Police Files revealed classified speeches by senior Chinese officials, internal police documents about protecting the detention camps, or what China's state media describes as vocational education and training centers.

A rule at the centers if "students" try to escape is to fire warning shots and then "shoot (them) dead" if they fail to comply, according to internal police documents from the leaked files.

Beijing, through its state media, has said in the past that the centers help students with their Mandarin language skills and give them vocational training. One center was described as similar to boarding schools where "students here go to class, play sports, and they go home once a week," reported state broadcaster China Global Television Network (CGTN) in 2019.

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation said the Xinjiang Police Files provided "a groundbreaking inside view of the nature and scale of Beijing's secretive campaign of interning between 1-2 million Uyghurs and other ethnic citizens in China's northwestern Xinjiang region."

"This is an unprecedented cache of documents directly from Xinjiang police computer servers," said Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

"This was a hack, in fact not a leak, that someone kind of smuggled out but a hack of tens of thousands of documents that provide the most in-depth understanding of what is actually happening in Xinjiang over the last several years," Bremberg told VOA.

China's response

When asked about the legitimacy of the leaked data during a regular Chinese Foreign Ministry news conference on May 24, spokesman Wang Wenbin said the files were "the latest example of the anti-China forces smearing of Xinjiang."

"The lies and rumors they spread cannot deceive the world, nor can they hide the fact that Xinjiang enjoys peace and stability, its economy is thriving and its people live and work in peace and contentment," Wang told the press in Beijing.

The United States, some other Western countries and human rights groups have accused China of committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic groups in Xinjiang. Beijing has repeatedly called the accusations lies and has denied abuses.

VOA Pashto Service's Shaista Lami contributed to this story.

Editor's note: VOA took all precautions before posting photos from the Xinjiang Police Files website used for this story.
Rights groups say they welcome the Malaysian governments announcement to end mandatory death sentencing but question whether lawmakers will follow through, having seen similar plans in the past fall flat.

Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, the minister for law in the office of the prime minister, said in a statement Friday that the death penalty for the 11 crimes that now make the sentence mandatory would instead be meted out at the courts discretion. He said the cabinet also agreed to study alternative sentences for those crimes, which include rape and murder.

Malaysias parliament will still have to pass amendments to several laws to make the cabinets pledge a reality. Wan Junaidi gave no indication of when the government would propose the requisite legislation.

The law minister did not answer multiple messages asking for comment.

Welcome but wary

Dobby Chew, executive coordinator of the Malaysia-based Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network, told VOA he was glad to hear of governments plans but still very cautious about raising his hopes for change, having heard it before.

In 2018 the government of then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad announced plans to do away with the death sentence altogether. Facing vocal rebuke from the opposition, the government scaled back its ambitions to ending only mandatory death sentencing instead, then collapsed in early 2020 before putting any legislation to parliament.

Two of the opposition parties that campaigned hardest against abolishing capital punishment in 2018, the Malaysian Islamic Party and the Malaysian Chinese Association, are now part of the ruling coalition.

So, Im skeptical and concerned about that, but cautiously optimistic, said Chew.

A spokesman for the Malaysian Islamic Party declined to comment. The Malaysian Chinese Association said its spokeswoman was not available.

Amnesty International, which wants to see the death penalty abolished worldwide, called Malaysias announcement a step in the right direction in a statement of its own Friday. It urged the government to send the necessary amendments to parliament without delay.

Like Amnesty, Chew said the amendments would be a helpful move toward the shared goal of scrapping the death penalty for good.

At the most fundamental level theres a moral belief on our part that ... if murder is wrong then we shouldnt do it to someone else, he said.

And when we come to a country like Malaysia, on top of the moral concerns that we have on the use of the death penalty, there are concerns on the right to a fair trial, there are issues of torture in custody that lead to false confessions, and things of that like, he added.

A 2018 study of nearly 300 capital punishment cases in Malaysia by the Penang Institute, a local think tank, concluded that the accuseds gender and nationality, the particular court conducting the trial, and the type of alleged crime were all contributing to a high judicial error rate and creating a high probability of wrongful execution.

Into the past

The government has not said whether the changes, if passed, could apply to prior sentences. But Fridays announcement is kindling hope of commuted sentences among the families of the more than 1,300 people already on death row, or at least a better shot at clemency from Malaysias king.

In its statement, Amnesty urged the government to review all existing mandatory death penalty cases with a view to commuting these sentences.

In 2013, Chandra Segaran Senguttuwan drove a car into the outdoor banquet area of a wedding party in Gopeng, Perak state, killing an 18-month-old boy and injuring two others. Two years later, Malaysias High Court sentenced him to 10 years in prison for attempted murder for the injuries, including time served, and to hanging for the murder of the boy.

Speaking with VOA, Senguttuwans father, Chandra Segaran, insisted the boys death was an accident. He said the banquet area appeared empty when his son mowed into it late at night, also by accident.

According to a news report of the sentencing at the time, the court concluded that Senguttuwan, who was fleeing from police, could not have failed to see people in the banquet area as it was brightly lit.

Chandra Segaran said he supported the end of mandatory death sentencing, and that news of the governments plans gave him some hope of a lighter sentence for his son.

Give them prison time, a few years or long-term prison, ok, but dont hang; its a life, he said.

Inside the prison they can learn a lesson, he added. If you ... hang, in a few seconds hes gone to death already, so he cant realize anything. Okay, 20 years. Okay, he killed a person.... He made a mistake, so he can realize.

Malaysia put an indefinite hold on executions in 2018. But with Senguttuwans 10-year prison term for attempted murder nearly up, and his appeals exhausted, Chandra Segaran said he still lives in fear for his sons life.

Striking a balance

Critics of the death penalty note that most of those on Malaysias death row are there for drug offenses  more than two-thirds, according to Amnesty.

Heng Zhi Li is unmoved by the argument.

As an executive committee member of the Malaysian Chinese Associations youth wing, he joined the campaign against abolishing capital punishment in 2018.

He said he supports this governments plans to end mandatory death sentencing, but believes judges still need to keep capital punishment as an option in order to help deter the most serious crimes.

Chew, of ADPAN, says the absence of a surge in crimes that carry mandatory death sentencing since the 2018 moratorium argues against capital punishments power to deter. Heng ascribes the trend to good policing, and he wont comment on the alleged flaws in Malaysias justice system.

He says leaving capital punishment to the courts discretion would strike a just balance between the rights of criminals and victims alike.

Retaining the death penalty doesnt mean that we ignore the human rights, he said. Actually, we are also protecting the human rights of the victims because we have to take into account that ... the victims are being murdered, so whats the feeling of [their] families?
Officials in Pakistan are making arrangements to allow the countrys ailing former military leader Pervez Musharraf to return home from self-imposed exile, highly placed government sources said Monday.



An air ambulance will bring Musharraf back from a Dubai hospital in line with consent of his family and doctors, the sources told VOA. The exact date of arrival in Pakistan for the 79-year-old retired four-star general was not immediately disclosed.



The countrys powerful military institution stands fully behind the decision to facilitate the repatriation of its former chief, the sources said.



Musharrafs family tweeted on Friday that he had been hospitalized for the last three weeks due to a complication of his ailment. The former dictator has been suffering from amyloidosis, a chronic metabolic disease in which abnormal proteins build up and damage organs such as the heart, kidney and liver, according to the statement.



On Saturday, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, a vocal critic of Musharraf, said the general should face "no obstacle" for him to return home in view of his ill health.



Past events should not be allowed to stand in the way. May Allah help him recover so he can spend his remaining life with dignity, Asif tweeted.



On Twitter, Musharafs family wrote: Going through a difficult stage where recovery is not possible and organs are malfunctioning. Pray for ease in his daily living. The family refuted media reports that Musharaf was on a ventilator.



Musharraf has been living in the United Arab Emirates since 2016, when he was allowed to travel abroad on bail for medical treatment. He was being tried on treason charges in a Pakistani court at the time.



The general seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1999, ousting the then-elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.



Musharraf later declared himself president and went on to rule Pakistan until after his political allies lost the 2008 general elections, forcing him to step down to avoid impeachment by the new parliament.



In 2020, a high court overturned the death sentence handed down to Musharraf in the long-running case, dismissing the legal process against him as unconstitutional.



The treason charges related to the suspension of the constitution and the imposition of emergency by the military leader in 2007, when he also placed several top Pakistani judges under house arrest in his bid to cling to power.



Musharraf won much-needed international legitimacy for his military in late 2001 when he quickly aligned himself with the U.S.-led war on terror in neighboring Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.



Pakistan allowed the United States and allied nations to use its air and ground routes as well as bases to stage the military action against landlocked Afghanistan and later transport supplies to thousands of Afghan-based international troops in the ensuing years.
A pro-Russian separatist leader in eastern Ukraine said Sunday he would not alter the death sentences handed to two Britons and a Moroccan for fighting with the Ukrainian army.

"They came to Ukraine to kill civilians for money. That's why I don't see any conditions for any mitigation or modification of the sentence," Denis Pushilin, the leader of the separatist Donetsk region, which tried them, told reporters.

Pushilin said the court had "issued a perfectly fair punishment" to the three fighters.

He also accused British Prime Minister Boris Johnson of ignoring their fate and failing to contact the separatist authorities.

Pushilin was speaking at a press conference attended by AFP in Mariupol, the capital of the breakaway area, as part of a trip organized by the Russian defense ministry to the battle-scarred Ukrainian city which was captured by Russian and separatist forces in May.

On Friday, Johnson's spokesman said he was "appalled" by the death sentences handed down to Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner and Moroccan Brahim Saadun.

"It is clear they were Ukrainian armed forces members and are therefore prisoners of war," and not mercenaries as the separatist authorities in Donetsk accuse them of being, the spokesman said.

According to the families of Aslin and Pinner, the two men have been living in the country since 2018.

On Friday, the United Nations expressed concern over the death sentences handed down against the prisoners by pro-Russian rebels.
Italian voters snubbed a weekend referendum on changes to the justice system, dealing a blow to Matteo Salvini, the leader of the rightist League party, who had championed the plebiscite.

Results released early Monday showed just 20.9% of people cast a ballot, the lowest ever for a referendum in Italy and well below the 50% threshold needed for the result to be valid.

The five questions related to a reform of Italys notoriously inefficient judiciary, but critics said the issues were too technical for many voters.

We have lost. It is pointless trying to deny it, said Roberto Calderoli, a League veteran and member of the Senate.

The national referendum was held alongside local votes for mayors in almost 1,000 towns and cities, testing the strength of parties ahead of next years parliamentary elections.

The formal count does not begin until 2.00 p.m. (1200 GMT) but exit polls for the six major cities up for grabs showed center-right groups leading four of the races and the center-left ahead in two.

The center-right looked on course to take charge of the northern port city of Genoa and the Sicilian capital Palermo straight from the first round of voting, while run-off ballots looked likely in the other big centers.

In a surprise, the center-left was ahead in the northern city of Verona, traditionally a right-wing bastion, but where the conservatives failed to rally behind a joint candidate.

A total of 26 provincial and regional capitals were contested on Sunday, 18 of which are currently held by the center-right bloc made up of the League, Brothers of Italy and Forza Italia, led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The center-left alliance of the Democratic Party (PD) and the 5-Star Movement will claim progress if it increases its tally of five cities, while the PD will be hoping to top Brothers of Italy as the party with most support.

Brothers of Italy, which is the only major party not to be part of Prime Minister Mario Draghis broad unity government, took just 4% of the vote at the last national election in 2018, but is now running at around 22% in the polls.
A U.N. fact-finding mission blames what it calls the perpetual occupation of Palestinian areas by Israel as the root cause of ongoing violence in this volatile region. The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel has submitted its first report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The report by the three-member commission, which was established in May, has generated a lot of interest and offended many supporters of Israel who consider the findings biased.

In presenting the report to the council, commission chair Navi Pillay said decades of forced displacement, demolitions and the blockade of Gaza have contributed to the cycles of violence. She said it has created a sense of despair and hopelessness within the Palestinian population in the occupied region, as well as in Israel and the diaspora.

She said successive Israeli governments have developed policies to entrench complete control over the entire occupied Palestinian territory and the Golan Heights. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since capturing the area from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

This continued situation of occupation and discrimination is being used by Palestinian duty bearers to justify their own violations and abuses of international law, including the failure of the Palestinian Authority to hold legislative and presidential elections, Pillay said

Israel showed its contempt for the commission by boycotting the meeting. Many members of the council voiced their approval of the report and registered their support for the Palestinian position.

Pillay criticized the de facto authorities in Gaza for showing little adherence to international humanitarian law. She placed most of the blame for continued violence on the excessive use of force by Israeli security forces. Pillay said Israel has engaged in hostilities against Palestinians with impunity. She said impunity increased resentment and distrust and compromised chances for achieving sustainable peace.

Policies of occupation, dispossession, and discrimination can only translate into increased hatred and further acts of violence," Pillay said. "These acts of violence serve to fuel further endless cycles of conflict on both sides.

The three-member panel said it regretted Israels refusal to cooperate with the commissions inquiry. It said Israel refused to grant the commission access to Israel and the state of Palestine to interview people and gather information.

Israel had its defenders. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Michele Taylor, spoke on behalf of 22 countries. She expressed their concern about the long-standing disproportionate attention and scrutiny of Israel in the council. She said this must end and that Israels human rights situation must be treated in an even-handed manner.
Saudi Arabia on Sunday pledged $10 million to help prevent an aging Yemeni oil tanker from unleashing a potentially catastrophic spill in the Red Sea bordering its waters.

The decaying 45-year-old oil tanker known as the FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since Yemen was plunged into civil war.

A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 after Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa the previous year.

The tanker, which lies some 150 kilometers (100 miles) south of the border with Saudi Arabia, is in "imminent" danger of breaking up, the United Nations warned last month.

The Safer contains four times the amount of oil that was spilled by the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, one of the world's worst ecological catastrophes, according to the UN.

Last week environmental campaign group Greenpeace urged the Arab League to drum up funds for an operation that would transfer its 1.1 million barrels of oil to a different vessel.

A U.N. pledging conference last month fell far short of its $80 million target, bringing in just $33 million.

Environmentalists warn the cost of the operation is a pittance compared to the estimated $20 billion it would cost to clean up a spill.

The U.N. has said an oil spill could destroy ecosystems, shut down the fishing industry and close the lifeline Hodeida port for six months.

It has said the operation needs to be completed by the end of September to avoid "turbulent winds" that pick up later in the year.

Riyadh will donate $10 million to the effort through the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, the official Saudi Press Agency reported Sunday.

"The Kingdom calls on the United Nations to quickly take the necessary measures to ensure the prevention of oil leakage... and also calls on the international community to contribute urgently to support this initiative and prevent a serious environmental disaster," the agency said.

Saudi Arabia's current defense spending is $36.8 billion per year, according to the Military Balance+ database prepared by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The war in Yemen has killed hundreds of thousands of people and left millions on the brink of famine.

But fighting has reduced since April when a truce went into effect, with the truce currently due to last until August.
Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr and numerous other White House and political aides to then-President Donald Trump said they had repeatedly told him that his allegations of fraud in the 2020 election were baseless and that he had lost reelection, even as Trump repeatedly claimed he was cheated out of a second White House term.

Barr, in videotaped testimony shown Monday by the House of Representatives panel investigating last year's January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, told lawmakers that many of Trump's claims of election irregularities were "completely bogus and silly."

"I told the president the claims of fraud were bullshit," Barr said, recalling one of his several White House meetings with Trump before resigning in late 2020.

"He was indignant about that," Barr recalled, saying he left the meeting thinking, "He's become detached from reality if he really believes" he was defrauded out of reelection.

"There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were," Barr said of Trump.

Watch Monday's Committee Hearing:

To this day, Trump claims he legitimately won the election two years ago, and that Democrat Joe Biden became president through fraudulent vote counts in several states. Recount after recount in those states, however, showed that Biden had narrowly defeated him, and that any minor irregularities uncovered would not have been enough to upend the outcome.

Polls show that many of Trump's supporters continue to believe his false claims that he won the election.

"Obviously he lost the election," Barr said of Trump. "There was zero base of evidence sufficient to overturn the election."

The investigative panel showed several videos of officials in several key states debunking Trump's claims, including that a truckload of Biden votes had been delivered to vote counters after the election, that thousands of dead people had voted, and that a ballot box of votes had suddenly been pulled from beneath a table as workers counted votes in the Southern state of Georgia.

"I told him lots of information he's getting is bogus," Richard Donoghue, a former acting deputy attorney general, testified in another video clip shown by the committee.

Former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien had been scheduled to testify Monday but bowed out after his pregnant wife had gone into labor. The committee instead played clips from his earlier testimony in which he told investigators he and others had cautioned Trump on election night to not declare victory while millions of mail-in ballots, which went heavily for Biden, had yet to be counted.

Instead, Trump listened to his longtime lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, described by witnesses as inebriated on the night of the election, who persuaded him to declare victory.

Trump, in the early hours of November 4, 2020, told supporters at the White House, "Frankly, we did win this election," and claimed that the ongoing vote counting was "a fraud on the American people."

Stepien said he did not mind being characterized as "Team Normal" for urging caution in declaring victory, compared with Giuliani and other Trump lawyers, who pushed the president's fraud claims in the weeks after the election.

In another video, committee investigator Amanda Wick alleged that the Trump campaign used his election fraud claims to raise nearly $250 million to fight the election outcome before January 6, when some 2,000 of his supporters stormed the Capitol to block lawmakers from certifying Biden's victory. But she said much of the money went to other Trump-favored political pursuits.

One member of the House panel, Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, contended, "Not only was there the 'Big Lie'" about purported election fraud, "but the 'Big Rip-off'" raising the money.

Trump rebuttal

In a 12-page response to the hearings released on Monday, the former president continued his false claims of election fraud and said the Democrats were using the hearings to distract from a series of economic issues facing the country.

They are desperate to change the narrative of a failing nation, without even making mention of the havoc and death caused by the Radical Left just months earlier. Make no mistake, they control the government. They own this disaster. They are hoping that these hearings will somehow alter their failing prospects, Trump said in a statement.

The committee is holding a series of hearings this month to uncover how the January 6 insurrection occurred and what role Trump played in fomenting it.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is deciding whether the Department of Justice should prosecute Trump, said Monday of the hearings, "I am watching."

"And I can assure you the January 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings, as well," he told a press briefing.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
After 35 years of decline, the number of nuclear weapons in the world is set to rise in the coming decade as global tensions flare amid Russia's war in Ukraine, researchers said Monday.

The nine nuclear powers  Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, the United States and Russia  had 12,705 nuclear warheads in early 2022, or 375 fewer than in early 2021, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The number has come down from a high of more than 70,000 in 1986, as the U.S. and Russia have gradually reduced their massive arsenals built up during the Cold War.

But this era of disarmament appears to be coming to an end and the risk of a nuclear escalation is now at its highest point in the post-Cold War period, SIPRI researchers said.

"Soon, we're going to get to the point where, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the global number of nuclear weapons in the world could start increasing for the first time," Matt Korda, one of the co-authors of the report, told AFP.

"That is really kind of dangerous territory."

After a "marginal" decrease seen last year, "nuclear arsenals are expected to grow over the coming decade," SIPRI said.

During the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has on several occasions made reference to the use of nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile several countries, including China and Britain, are either officially or unofficially modernizing or ramping up their arsenals, the research institute said.

"It's going to be very difficult to make progress on disarmament over the coming years because of this war, and because of how Putin is talking about his nuclear weapons," Korda said.

These worrying statements are pushing "a lot of other nuclear armed states to think about their own nuclear strategies," he added.

'Nuclear war can't be won'

Despite the entry into force in early 2021 of the U.N. nuclear weapon ban treaty and a five-year extension of the U.S.-Russian "New START" treaty, the situation has been deteriorating for some time, according to SIPRI.

Iran's nuclear program and the development of increasingly advanced hypersonic missiles have, among other things, raised concern.

The drop in the overall number of weapons is due to the U.S. and Russia "dismantling retired warheads," SIPRI noted, while the number of operational weapons remains "relatively stable."

Moscow and Washington alone account for 90% of the world's nuclear arsenal.

Russia remains the biggest nuclear power, with 5,977 warheads in early 2022, down by 280 from a year ago, either deployed, in stock or waiting to be dismantled, according to the institute.

More than 1,600 of its warheads are believed to be immediately operational, SIPRI said.

The United States meanwhile has 5,428 warheads, 120 fewer than last year, but it has more deployed than Russia, at 1,750.

In terms of overall numbers, China comes third with 350, followed by France with 290, Britain with 225, Pakistan with 165, India with 160, and Israel with 90.

Israel is the only one of the nine that does not officially acknowledge having nuclear weapons.

As for North Korea, SIPRI said for the first time that Kim Jong Un's Communist regime now has 20 nuclear warheads.

Pyongyang is believed to have enough material to produce around 50.

In early 2022, the five nuclear-armed permanent members of the United Nations Security Council  Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S.  issued a statement that "nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."

Nonetheless, SIPRI noted, all five "continue to expand or modernize their nuclear arsenals and appear to be increasing the salience of nuclear weapons in their military strategies."

"China is in the middle of a substantial expansion of its nuclear weapons arsenal, which satellite images indicate includes the construction of over 300 new missile silos," it said.

According to the Pentagon, Beijing could have 700 warheads by 2027.

Britain last year said it would increase the ceiling on its total warhead stockpile and would no longer publicly disclose figures for the countrys operational nuclear weapons.
A Ukrainian official said Russian troops have pushed into the center of the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk and continue to shell a chemical plant sheltering hundreds of soldiers and civilians.



Regional governor Serhiy Haidai said Monday on Telegram that Russian troops control about 70% of the city and have pushed Ukrainian forces from the citys center.



He said the citys Azot chemical plant, where hundreds of civilians are sheltering, is being "heavily shelled."



Haidai said about 500 civilians remain on the grounds of the plant and that Ukraines military is trying to get them to safety.



Russia says all bridges to the city have been destroyed. Ukrainian officials say there is still another way out of the city but that the route is heavily damaged.



Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces and those from Russia are fighting for literally every meter in Sievierodonetsk, while pleading to international partners that Ukraine needs modern missile defense systems.



In his latest nightly video message, Zelenskyy said Russias key tactical goal has not changed, with Russian forces also pushing toward Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Slovyansk, to the west and southwest of Sievierodonetsk.

Zelenskyys adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweeted Monday that to end the war we need heavy weapons parity. He listed several categories of weapons, including 1,000 howitzers, 300 multiple launch rocket systems, 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles and 1,000 drones.



Contact Group of Defense Ministers meeting is held in Brussels on June 15, Podolyak said. We are waiting for a decision.



U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is convening the meeting at NATO headquarters. A virtual meeting of the group last month drew representatives from 47 countries, NATO and the European Union.





Austin said after the May talks that the group was intensifying our efforts and working to deepen coordination with Ukraine so that Ukraine can sustain and strengthen its battlefield operations.



Britains defense ministry said Monday that in recent days the battle around Sievierodonetsk has continued to rage.



The ministry said Russias ability to carry out river crossing operations will likely be one of the most important factors in the war in the coming months.



To achieve success in the current operational phase of its Donbas offensive, Russia is either going to have to complete ambitious flanking actions, or conduct assault river crossings, it said.

Russia claims it already controls 97% of the Luhansk province where Sievierodonetsk is located. But capturing the industrial city of Sievierodonetsk, with a prewar population of 100,000, remains crucial to Moscows broader goal of controlling the eastern Donbas region, which encompasses the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.

Russia seized Ukraines Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and Kyivs forces have been fighting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region since then.



Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the separatist-declared Luhansk Peoples Republic, acknowledged, Sievierodonetsk is not completely 100% liberated. So, its impossible to call the situation calm in Sievierodonetsk; that it is completely ours.



Some material in this report came from Reuters, The Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse.
WASHINGTON 

Lawmakers on the panel investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S Capitol last year said Sunday much more evidence will emerge in upcoming hearings that former President Donald Trump knew he had lost his bid for reelection and yet fomented the mayhem by telling supporters he had been cheated out of another four-year term.

Trump absolutely knew he had lost, Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, told CNNs State of the Union show. Any reasonable person had to know he was spreading a big lie by claiming, as he does to this day, that he won the November 2020 election over Democrat Joe Biden, who assumed the presidency two weeks after the attack on the Capitol.

Raskin described Trumps actions as encouraging a massive attack on our democracy, while California Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, in a separate interview on ABCs This Week show, said, While this attack was going on, he did nothing to stop it until hours after it started.

Schiff contended that Trump engaged in a dereliction of duty (by his) inactions that day in not trying to call off the riot for more than two hours as his supporters rampaged through the Capitol, ransacking congressional offices and forcing lawmakers to flee the Senate and House of Representatives chambers for their own safety.

Raskin and Schiff said the committees chairman, Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson, and the panels vice-chairman, Republican Liz Cheney, only spelled out the broad outlines of the House investigative committees findings at last weeks opening hearing televised during prime-time evening hours.

At least six more public hearings are planned over the next two weeks, starting Monday morning.

Theres no question the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame, Cheney said in her opening statement last Thursday accusing Trump of illegally trying to upend the election result to stay in power and urging supporters to block lawmakers from certifying Bidens victory.

Trump, posting on his own TRUTH Social platform, called the committee hearing Thursday night a "one sided, totally partisan, POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!" He dismissed a brief videotape of his elder daughter Ivanka testifying that she agreed with former Attorney General William Barr that there was no broad evidence of political fraud in the election and that Biden had won fairly.

Trump said his daughter, a White House adviser to him, had "checked out" by the time vote recounts were being conducted.

Cheney outlined the case against Trump much like a prosecutor might do in an opening statement at a criminal trial although the House committee can only spell out the case to the public, not bring charges against anyone. The panel could, if it chooses to do so, refer its findings and transcripts of the thousand or so witnesses it has interviewed to the Justice Department for its consideration on whether to charge anyone, including Trump, for planning and carrying out the riot.

The rule of law needs to apply equally to everyone, Schiff said of Trump. They need to be investigated if there is credible evidence and I believe there is. The presidents big lie (that he won the election) was in fact a big lie.

More than 800 supporters of Trump have already been charged in the mayhem inside the Capitol and more than 300 have pleaded guilty or been convicted, with the remaining cases still unresolved. Judges have sentenced some of the rioters facing such minor charges as trespassing to a few weeks in prison, but those who attacked police to barge into the Capitol have been imprisoned for four years or more.

Raskin and Schiff said multiple Republican members of Congress sought pardons from Trump before he left office January 20, 2021, because they had supported his efforts to stay in office. Cheney said Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania was one of them, but he denied it after she mentioned his name in her Thursday night statement.

Raskin said the fact the lawmakers sought a Trump pardon, which he did not grant, showed evidence of guilt or a fear they were culpable. The details will surface.

Everything is based on facts, Raskin said of the information that has yet to be made public by the investigative committee.
DRUZHKIVKA, UKRAINE 

Air raid sirens wailed and one of the brides wore camouflage trousers as the Ukrainian army took a break from frontline fighting in the east to hold a double wedding Sunday.

Two young couples who met just months earlier while serving in the army tied the knot together Sunday in the small city of Druzhkivka, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from frontline zones where Ukrainian forces are battling Russian invaders.

The sun shone and soldiers carried bouquets in a brief interlude from heavy fighting as Russians intensify efforts to push out Kyiv's forces in the east.

One of the brides, Khrystyna Lyuta, a 23-year-old contract soldier with the rank of private first class, wore camouflage trousers and army boots with a traditional red Ukrainian blouse embroidered with flowers.

"I've got used to this uniform," she explained of her choice of outfit.

She met her husband Volodymyr Mykhalchuk, 28, just two months ago, when he was mobilized. They live around five kilometers from each other in the same southwestern Vinnytsia region but might never have met if it had not been for the war.

"War is war, but life goes on," Lyuta explained their decision to marry.

"This was not a hasty decision," said Volodymyr.

"The main thing is that we love each other and we want to be together."

The other bride, Kristina (no last name given), 23, who works in the signal corps, opted for a traditional long white dress with red folk embroidery to marry Vitaliy Orlich, also 23, a sniper.

"I believe that this is about creating a new family -- it doesn't matter where it happens or how," she said.

The grooms both wore soldiers' uniforms.

The couples were set to return to serve in the war zone on the same day.

"I can't give them free days as such. The only thing is that they won't be on the frontline, they will stay in the rear," the brigade's commander Oleksandr Okhrimenko told AFP.

Neither couple had family present but they said relatives had been understanding.

Kristina said that her husband had spoken to her mother online and "she already calls him a son".

The soldiers were from the 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which has been fighting Russian-backed forces in Donbas since May.

The young couples married in front of a registry office, which had closed due to the war.

The quiet street had few cars and occasional trams. Sandbags were piled up in front of cafe and shop windows.

'There's no time'

The couples went through traditional rituals such as stepping together onto an embroidered towel, symbolizing togetherness.

The brigade's chaplain gave them an Orthodox Christian blessing, flicking holy water and placing crowns on their heads, on the day of a major Church holiday, the Festival of the Holy Trinity.

The Priest in a khaki cassock, Yuriy Zdebskiy, told AFP that "it's the first marriage in the brigade in wartime", since Russia launched its invasion on February 24.

"Now it's wartime and there's no time for big celebrations," he said.

The infantry brigade's commander, Okhrimenko, has the right to certify marriages under martial law.

He said the location for the weddings "was chosen primarily for security reasons".

Druzhkivka is about 40 kilometers as the crow flies from three fronts, as Russian troop threaten the towns of Slovyansk to the northeast, Bakhmut to the east and Horlivka to the southeast.

Hours later, AFP reporters heard shelling and saw smoke rising as the two sides exchanged fire close to Bakhmut.

Even in relatively untouched Druzhkivka, shelling earlier this month tore apart private houses and crashed through the roof of a Baptist church in one street.

During the wedding, air raid sirens went off three times, an AFP reporter heard.

None of those attending reacted. Many war-hardened locals now ignore warnings to go to shelters unless there is an obvious threat.
The Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) has expressed concern over the killing of Citizens Coalition for Change activist, Moreblessing Ali, Langelihle Dube and several others of late, noting that there is now a high level on hatred in Zimbabwe.

In a pastoral letter released today, ZCC said, The brutality of the killing of Moreblessing Ali indicates a level of hatred that is very disturbing. It confirms what Jesus taught in that it is not only the physical act of murder that God judges, but the condition of the heart (Matthew 5:21-22). The church is deeply concerned about the level of hate and the hate speech that has developed in our nation that forms a reservoir out of which these terrible killings emerge.

The nations conscience needs to be reawakened to the fact that killing any human being is not acceptable, whatever the reasons may be. The church wishes to call upon the nation to renew its commitment to respect the dignity of all human life. The nation needs to establish a culture in which disputes are resolved through non-violent means and where tolerance and coexistence characterize how citizens live with differences.

ZCC said, What should worry all of us is that the more frequent the cases of murder, the more murder and shedding of blood becomes normalized. The nation acquires a bad name where lives of individuals are not valued through the normalization of murder. Killing any human being in cold blood runs contrary to all our cultures, our shared national values, and our religious faiths. In our African cultures, the killing of an innocent person leaves a curse on the person responsible, his or her family as well as defiling the whole nation. 

In the Christian tradition and in other faiths, said ZCC, human beings are created in the image of God and are endowed with sanctity and dignity.

One manifestation of corruption after the fall of humanity was the shedding of innocent blood. When Cain killed his brother Abel, God said to him, What have you done? Listen, your brothers blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brothers blood from your hand (Genesis 4:10-11).

While in some cases the identity of the perpetrator or perpetrators remains unresolved, God still asks that accountability question, Where is your brother? Your sister? The church calls upon all those whose guilt of bloodshed, to seek restoration, repentance and stop their sin. Although not all the murders are politically motivated, said ZCC, the church worries that there are so many murders just some few months before a potentially violent 2023 election environment.

The church calls upon the government, political parties, and community leaders at all levels of society to desist from instigating violence in their public or private utterances but rather to promote peace and tolerance among their constituencies.

The church prays for Gods comfort to family of Moreblessing Ali and all the other families that have lost loved ones through killings. We pray that they may find justice and healing. The church pleads with the Zimbabwe Republic Police to handle cases of human disappearances, distress calls and cases of violent conflict with a sense of urgency and in ways that do not compromise the dignity of victims.

ZCC also called upon the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission and other peace-building organizations to upscale their work across different sectors of society towards the establishment of a new culture of non-violence.

The church invites all state and non-state institutions and citizens towards a renewed sense of the dignity of all persons. We call for a new national commitment that no one should spill the blood of a fellow Zimbabwean. The church is calling on the nation to reclaim the sanctity of all human lives.

The church repents for its indifference and lukewarm approach in addressing the history of shedding of blood in our nation. By failing to express its moral outrage regarding loss of lives, the church has passively condoned this sin by omission and has contributed to the blunting of the national conscience. The church is reminded that He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord (Proverbs 17:15).

ZCC said the church is committing itself to working with all Zimbabweans of good will to promote peaceful resolution of conflict, cultivate a culture of tolerance and coexistence and work towards the eradication of all forms of violent crime. We do so in remembrance of the words of Jesus that say, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9).

According to ZCC, the nation has seen an increase in cases of murder and loss of lives of Zimbabweans in cold blood in the first half of this year.

On the 27th of February 2022, Mboneni Ncube, aged 35, was killed at a political rally in Kwekwe. In March 2022, police reported having arrested Bright Zhantali, aged 30, believed to have killed the eighth woman in Macheke and possibly related to the other unsolved murders in Rusape, Mutare and Nyanga.

On the 29th of April 2022, the Herald reported that police had found two bodies of men, believed to have been murdered, dumped in a pit near some school grounds in Binga while four touts were arrested for killing a passenger in Mbare.

In May a man from Pelandaba suburb, Mchimi Lunga, aged 30, was in court accused of killing his wife Nicolah Mabvure (22) over claims of infidelity. A few days ago, Langelihle Dube of Bulawayo is said to have been killed and his wife robbed. On the 11th of June, the nation woke up to a report of a callous and cruel murder of Moreblessing Ali, who had been reported missing more than a week ago.
Twenty women, who were kidnapped on Monday at the funeral wake of slain Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) activist, Moreblessing Ali, were allegedly brutalized by suspected Zanu PF supporters before they were dumped at a farm in Nyatsime, Beatrice.

According to the CCC, the injured women were kidnapped while they were doing some domestic chores at Alis homestead in preparation for her burial, which has been postponed until further notice.

Job Sikhala, an attorney of the Ali family, said the women were kidnapped when suspected Zanu PF activists went wild and attacked opposition CCC members at the late womans funeral wake, accusing them of politicizing her death.

Sikhala said Alis burial will be held when the suspected assailants are arrested.

I have been instructed by the family of Moreblessing Ali standing on this picture to announce to the public that there will be no burial of Mobby until her murderers are apprehended. Tomorrow's Memorial Prayer Service will be the major event until further notice. Lets come in our thousands tomorrow to mourn our murdered colleague.

Alis mutilated remains are at Chitungwiza General Hospital.

Zanu PF has distanced itself from the killing of Ali and another CCC activist, Langelihle Dube, who was butchered by people at his house in Bulawayo.

There is political tension in Zimbabwe ahead of the 2023 general elections.
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Every year, there are conversations in queer spaces about just how sexual pride events should be. What if a baby sees kissing? Wont someone please think of the children! Well, Christina Aguilera went full Xtina mode at her LA Pride performance and donned a green crystal-studded strap-on. The look was accompanied with fake muscly arms and a chest plate with sculpted abs. Sort of Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, by way of Tom of Finland. Aguilera got strapped for a duet with Kim Petras, as if to say Ill see your coconuts and raise you a big, glittery cucumber.

Aguilera had outfits in almost every color of the rainbow (on-message): a red PVC vinyl number for Dirrty, a neon greeny/yellowy horn-titted bustier for Bionic, a yellow showgirl number for Lady Marmelade with Mya and the traveling cast of Moulin Rouge, a blue fur shrug for covers of Britney Spearss Toxic and Paris Hiltons Stars are Blind (backed by Paris herself), a pink bodysuit with flamingos for boobs while singing Car Wash, and a full pride flag ensemble for Beautiful. Obviously Beautiful gets the pride flag look, come on.

Christina Aguilera described her sexuality in 2010 as being attracted to girls, but not really seeing herself really being with a woman. I love dick, she told Out magazine. To be honest, that I cannot live without.
Michael R. Jackson, winner. Photo: Charles Sykes/AP/Shutterstock

With a couple of warm nods to COVID-safety professionals and a scant few masks visible in the audience, the 75th annual Tony Awards were anxious to communicate that Broadway has exited the pandemic and survived. Please come spend your money on our work. Bits of COVID gloom leaked through anyhow, of course  Anthony Edwards introducing his wife, Mare Winningham, in Girl From the North Country reminded everyone that hed stepped in to fill a role when too many cast members were out sick. Dance captain and alternate Mallory Maedke appeared in the performance from Six after Abby Mueller tested positive earlier in the day.

Nevertheless, the four-hour (!) ceremony pulled off a convincing impression of a theater world now back on its feet with big showy musical numbers and a celebratory atmosphere. Also, Ariana DeBose was there trying very hard. As always, one of the most touching elements of the show was watching actors greet their idols, who greeted their idols in turn. DeBose and Chita Rivera embraced (in matching purple), and even the unflappable Natasha Katz took the stage to accept her lighting-design award saying, Nathan Lane! in a tone of astonishment and delight.

HIGH: A meta/sweet opening number, because its Broadway, baby. Darren Criss and Julianne Hough began the streaming-only stage-setting first hour by singing a song about setting the stage. With music and lyrics by Darren Criss! Very cute. Very classic. Very spinning-sets-of-theater-seating.

HIGH: Toby Marlows outfit. The dream of the early aughts rom-com was alive in a metallic spaghetti-strap gown.

LOW: Bunching together the costume-design awards for play and musical. Grump. This goes for all of the design awards, which were given out with no break between play and musical to save time. As always, the slurring of these awards, given second-class status, is infuriating to people who love and care about stagecraft.

LOW: Angela Lansbury received a Lifetime Achievement award and you didnt get to see it unless youre a Paramount+ subscriber. You also needed Paramount+ to see the award presented by Lansburys Sweeney Todd co-star Len Cariou. She couldnt attend  an announcement that caused Patti LuPone, in her reaction shot, to look concerned. (Us too, Patti.)

WHOA: Its a Britsweep! With wins for Marianne Elliott (Best Director for Company), Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow (Best Score for Six), Simon Russell Beale (Best Leading Actor for The Lehman Trilogy), Gareth Owen (Best Sound Design for MJ), Sam Mendes (Best Director for The Lehman Trilogy), Jon Clark (Best Lighting Design for The Lehman Trilogy), Bunny Christie (Best Scene Design for Company), Christopher Wheeldon (Best Choreography for MJ), Simon Hale (Best Orchestration for Girl From the North Country), Gabriella Slade (Best Costume Design for Six), and a Lifetime Achievement award for Angela freakin Lansbury, this was a night of Anglophilia. Its an odd gift for the Platinum Jubilee, but we hope the queen appreciates it.

HIGH: Christopher Wheeldons acceptance speech, if not the actual win, which  This is not the place. But to that speech: Wearing a dashing red damask jacket (the unofficial texture of the Tonys), Wheeldon thanked his husband, a professional meditation counselor  a useful asset!  then gave the first of the nights thanks to the Broadway swings and understudies, who are a big reason any of these shows have kept going during the pandemic.

LOW: The awkwardness of the Paramount+-to-CBS transition. Its not quite as rough as last year, but hosting the first hour of the awards ceremony solely on a streaming platform, apparently ending seven minutes early, then directing the audience  Paramount+ premium only please  to switch to a different tab in the service  the seams showed much more than they should have. (People at the network grumbling about viewer numbers need to look at themselves in the mirror on this.)

LOW: That silly opening number for Ariana DeBose. After the sauciness of the Act One presentation, with lyrics by Darren Criss (!!), the chaotic opening to the main part of the awards featured DeBose wearing a white body stocking (costume designer: Ariana, we want to wear tights and  DeBose: Got it) and singing scraps of various musicals. Can you spot em? she asked, unnecessarily, since the names of the musicals were shown in lights behind her. DeBose made odd vocal choices throughout: The lyric from West Side Story is not Theres aoiahih plaiwice for uihweius.

HIGH: Ariana DeBose saying, regarding more diversity on Broadway, The Great White Way is becoming more of a nickname than a how-to guide. Crisp when she needs to be.

HIGH: Patti LuPones win for Company. Its her eighth nomination and third win, but when youre Patti LuPone, you win! You get onstage, read from your prepared speech, and thank the COVID-safety people, your New York dresser, and your London dresser.

EVEN HIGHER: Patti LuPone got deep into her prepared acceptance speech, then casually flipped to page two. If shed had a third page, we wouldve kept listening and been happy to do it. Nobody dared play her off the stage.

LOW: So  MJ, huh. A generous helping of love for the Michael Jackson musical, MJ, in these Tony Awards  including awards for lead actor, lighting, sound design, and choreography, as well as a big showcase for the Smooth Criminal number. It is very uncomfortable to watch the show treat Jacksons legacy as though it is an uncomplicated pop-star arc as it glosses over the dark, tragic, somehow still significantly controversial elements of Jacksons life. Choices! People do make them, dont they? [Shuffles hastily off, stage right]

HIGH: The salaries paid by Chris Harper. We love an inside joke and so does the creative team behind Company, all of whose winners found time to mention, surely for no particular reason, the name of their boss. Finally, as Company won for Best Revival of a Musical, Harper threw in the last line: Patti, its an honor to be the man who pays your salary.

HIGH, TOO DAMN HIGH: Whatever it cost to attend this awards ceremony, apparently. Maybe if the prices had been lower, there would be fewer empty seats in the balcony? 

HIGH: Billy Crystal leading the room in a round of Yiddish jazz scatting. Sure, it started with a sweaty round of consonants. But as Crystal accelerated through calling out some specific audience members (Samuel L. Jackson, then Lin-Manuel Miranda, who had to repeat, Im Alexander Rabinowitz), the number took off. When you can include a reaction shot of Jayne Houdyshell saying, Vey! in a theater-wide back and forth of Oy! Vey! you know youve scored.

HIGH: Laurence Fishburne does a Daffy Duck voice? If you are unhinged enough, which is the personality Ariana DeBose chose for the evening, you can get Laurence Fishburne to do a Daffy Duck voice on national television. (It was nice to watch his daughter cringe in response.)

LOW: Ariana DeBoses hosting style. It feels illegal to ding thermonuclear levels of theater-kid energy at the actual Tony Awards. Nevertheless, here we are. The opening number was one thing  who can say who wrote it? Maybe it was one very scattered performance?  then it became clear that Ariana DeBose would be bringing overwhelming, hyper-self-conscious, deliberately mannered Miranda Sings vibes all night, and at that moment, every member of the audience and everyone viewing at home sighed and said, Fine, okay. Fine. We were just trying to have a nice time watching Phylicia Rashad accept an award but  fine.

HIGH: Samuel L. Jackson making us clap. For him, August Wilson, and Jacksons wife, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who this fall will be the first Black woman to direct Wilson on Broadway.

HIGH, WITH NO SIGN THAT THEY WOULD LOWER IT: That too-tall microphone in front of petite producer Carole Rothman. As she accepted the Best Revival of a Play award, the microphone lined up more or less with the top of her head. It doesnt seem too much to ask, surely, that she have photos from the evening that dont have a shadow on her face.

LOW: The entering the audience number from Ariana DeBose. Regardless of whether youve seen the Saw movies, a general impression seems to be that an alarming personage with unusual expressions holds people hostage and tortures them. This seems like an observation unrelated to the Tonys, but heres a proposal: What if its not?

HIGH: Bernadette Peters singing Children Will Listen as a Sondheim tribute. Who was crying? No one was crying. Zero people. Please move along.

LOW: A cut to the audience revealing that Ruthie Ann Miles was one of very few people wearing face masks. The Tony Awards celebrate an industry that has been so careful, so scrupulous about COVID protections by maintaining a mask mandate for its audience after the rest of the city got loose. It was distressing to see the room unmasked here, even though those in the orchestra had been asked to test negative. Show us what a modern Broadway audience looks like! It looks like masks.

HIGH: Michael R. Jackson won Best Book of a Musical for A Strange Loop. Wearing a fantastic magenta robe, Jackson accepted the award to a resounding standing ovation. His breathless, thrilling speech included a tart note to the audience to sit down, since the standing ovation was cutting into his thank-you time.

LOW: CBSs cowardice (presumably). It necessitated the extensive rewriting of A Strange Loops feature song, because all that frank insouciance and jokes about sexual ambivalence made someone in the C-suite blush. On the other hand, its a real 

HIGH: Michael R. Jackson could rewrite a tricky, delicate song. Even when muffled by CBS, he managed to make the wildness of his innovation penetrate  thats right, penetrate  the screen.

HIGH: The original cast of Spring Awakening reunited to perform Touch Me. It was nice! It was nice to see everyone back again, and the number, the choreography, and the overall mood of the song has aged pretty well. Jonathan Groff embraced the experience of performing in the middle of what functioned as a high-school reunion, occasionally nodding or smiling at fellow cast members as they moved toward one another. Lea Michele, however, seemed to be performing the dance moves from The OA in order to ascend to another plane. So pretty much what youd want and expect.

HIGH: Whatever buddy comedy Nathan Lane and Andrew Garfield were low-key pitching. While presenting the award for Best Play (which went to The Lehman Trilogy), Garfield managed to hang on to his sangfroid until Nathan Lane told him, approvingly, that he loves a man in a velvet suit. Garfield blushed, laughed, caught on fire. Lets see them do a heist, a road movie, Shakespeare. (Lets see them do pretty much anything, thank you!)

HIGH: Joaquina Kalukango brought down the house with Let It Burn. David Alan Grier announced the number from Paradise Square by warning audience members that theyd better get ready, and Kalukango lived up to the hype. By the final crescendo of Let It Burn, it was clear she had taken the entire theater by storm. Im still not over Joaquina Kalukango, Ariana DeBose said when the show returned from commercial break.

Joaquina Kalukango brought it. Photo: Andrew H. Walker/Shutterstock

HIGH: Deirdre OConnell telling us to make the weird art. Dana H. (variously pronounced by various people as Diana H. and Donna H. during the ceremony) has to be the least likely show to ever come to Broadway  OConnell lip-syncing (stunningly) along to a recording of playwright Lucas Hnaths actual mother as she told a harrowing story about being abducted. Please let me be standing here as a little sign from the universe to make the weird art, OConnell said, urging everyone to chase their passion and not the prize.

WHOA: Myles Frost winning for his role as Michael Jackson in MJ. An unexpected winner for Best Leading Actor in a Musical, Frost moon-sauntered his way up to the stage and broke into song during his acceptance speech. It was tender and full of humanity  and not just because Frost admitted that he needed to stop to go pee. Although its fine to celebrate Frosts performance, its worth noting one more time: a Michael Jackson musical, huh.

HIGH: The performance of Ex-Wives from Six. If you want to go out on a high note, why not six high notes? Henry VIIIs cast-offs killed with the shows opener, which tonight included Mallory Maedke stepping in as the third queen, Jane Seymour, 12 hours before broadcast. DeBose, whose fellowship with all the swings and covers was her most endearing quality all night, singled Maedke out and cried, This is what they do!

HIGH: A Strange Loop winning Best Musical. Talk about unlikely Broadway triumphs  a big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show took the gold after a two-decade process for Michael R. Jackson. Even Ariana DeBose said, Oh, that makes me so happy, as she came out for her farewells, and the room erupted with delight over (the living) Michael Jacksons win. Not to mention an EGOT for producer Jennifer Hudson. A fly in the ointment: The Tonys cut the mic just as producer Barbara Whitman finished speaking her piece and ceded it to Jackson. There were some boos and groans as the telecast decided to sacrifice his historic moment for  yes  another number from DeBose.
Gaslit Final Days Season 1 Episode 8 Editors Rating 3 stars * * *  Previous Next  Previous Episode Next Episode  Photo: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Starz

You know when someone throws out a question, and it confuses you because the answer seems so obvious? When it comes to the Nixon administration, I have never thought, Wow, why did all those men go along with this? Because if history has shown anything, its that people will go along with whatever if it lets them buy more shit and order people around. We have three moments in the Gaslit finale where we are meant to ponder why these men followed Nixon, like we didnt all live through the last presidential administration and its associated gang of morally bankrupt sycophants. Why men followed Nixon is not a question that keeps me up at night  we all know why.

So we finally see Nixon in this episode. Kind of. Were forced to look at extreme close-ups of his eyes, mouth, and butt, and then we are treated to a shot of him tucking his undershirt into his white underpants. Oh, and while majestic music plays and we see shots of the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, he farts. Sure. Like hes farting all over our democracy. You know who would love this is my dad. As all this symbolism plays out, a voiceover discusses the Nixon tapes and how two tapes are absent. Nixon is nearing the end.

FBI agents arrest John Mitchell, who says it could be worse; he could be sentenced to life with Martha (a real thing he said!). Martha is at the doctors office for a fractured wrist and is very, very alone. She visits journalist friend Winnie at The Washington Post where Winnie presents Martha with her finished book. The publisher canceled the contract, but the book is done! This biography would eventually be published in 1979, three years after Marthas death. For now, Winnie does not even know Martha is sick but agrees to awkwardly appear at her daughter Martys birthday because she is a good friend.

Martha is still living at The Watergate apartment, but she is falling apart. Shes sleeping in her clothes; trash is everywhere; and shes still wearing her wedding ring. She manages to clean herself up enough to meet Winnie and the Life Magazine photographer who is coming to take pictures of the birthday party. There ygo, Martha. Thatll endear your daughter to you.

On the way to the party, Winnie apologizes to Martha and says she acted like she believed her story, but she is not sure she did. This is an incredibly hard sort of thing to own up to, so good job, Winnie! Or maybe not. Im unclear on the ethics of this, as Martha is clearly holding on by a thread, so maybe you keep your guilt cleanse to yourself in this situation. In a gas station bathroom, Martha takes at least three Diazepam.

When they arrive at Martys school, Marty immediately wants Martha to leave. She doesnt want her there, or the photographer, and shes probably confused why this journalist woman was invited, which is very fair. Martha is stumbling and when Marty calls her crazy, Martha slaps her, then starts laughing. Winnie helps her into the car and they go to the hospital because now Marthas nose has started bleeding. Its all not GREAT.

Meanwhile, the Nixon Boys are really getting theirs. And by getting theirs, I mean theyre held in a minimum-security prison. Theyre also digging an undetermined something with shovels and pickaxes, but they get to all hang out. If I had to dig with a shovel but I got to hang out with my friends and take breaks while doing it, I feel like that wouldnt be the worst. They also get to soliloquize about a billboard with Nixons face on it. Dean says they are all Nixon, and will still be Nixon after hes dead, which is so goddamn stupid, I cannot.

This is after Deans previous stupid statement, which is in the car with FBI agents Lano and Magallanes. He agrees to testify against Mitchell, and when Lano asks why Dean did all this illegal shit for a president who would throw him under the bus, Dean says, Oceania foam. First of all, it is, at this point in television history, its a real hack move to be like, Oh, my answer? This obscure two-word thing that is a symbol for my real answer; dont I sound more interesting now, though? Dean says that the knowledge of this amazing seat foam that he was told was put on all the seats on Air Force One is what made him destroy Americans belief in their republic. MEN. The agents dont even stare in disbelief and then say, what the fuck are you talking about, they just ask if he got to sit in one of the seats.

When I tell you the rabbit hole I went down trying to find out if this Oceania foam story was real. I looked at John Deans Blind Ambition: The White House Years. I looked at Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes. I read Automotive Cushioning Through the Ages: A Review by The Molded Polyurethane Foam Industry Panel. I couldnt find anything. I even tried looking up the Russian word for Oceania along with Air Force One, but nothing. So either this story is incredibly well buried, or it was made up and I learned about seat cushions through the ages for nothing. I hate everything.

Liddy is also called to testify against Mitchell, only hes been silent through all his summoned testimonies. The prosecutor asks if he remembers the Operation Gemstone meeting, and Liddy starts singing quietly, which brings me to research subject number two, wherein I try to understand Liddys terrible German to identify the song, only to find out its the goddamn Nazi Party anthem, which has been banned in Germany and Austria since 1945. Liddy gets pulled out of the courtroom and inexplicably put in a room with John Dean, where Liddy 1). says he knows how to kill a man with a pencil and 2). tells a story about eating a rat.

Sidebar on Liddy, but while hes definitely played as a caricature of a person, all these things are not completely off-base. In this collection of quotes from his memoir, theres his pull towards Hitler, the time he almost killed John Dean with a pencil, and the time he ate a rat to show the other rats who was boss. While his scenes have felt incongruous with the rest of the show, at least we have a portrayal of him that seems closer to his actual persona than what he tried to make it in his final decades as a radio host.

John Dean gets out of prison. He feels guilty about being the one to get out early (he served four months), and when he asks why hes the one to escape unscathed, Mo says, John, you are good-looking. Hahahahaha.

Martha is in the hospital. When Winnie angrily asks who is giving her Diazepam, the doctor says theyre not for nerves. As Barbara Jordan delivers her excellent speech in the background, Winnie tells Martha she knows Martha has cancer, and its progressed to being in her blood. Martha says its probably 65% gin (jokes!) and that shell tell John when he calls her. The Winnie/Martha friendship is really nice, especially when you think about how alone Martha would have been without Winnie. I mean, shes alone anyway, but at least she occasionally has her friend there.

Mitchell later tells Marty that people like Martha mean well, but they destroy the relationships with the people who love them the most. Its a good point, sir. Do you think having your spouse kidnapped, drugged, and abused also maybe destroys relationships? Or is that just people like Martha? No, youre right, this is definitely on her. Her and her insistence on telling the truth. Women, amirite?

As Nixon gives his resignation speech, Winnie comes to the hospital looking for Martha. After some frantic searching, she sees her holding a baby in the nursery. Marthas son is helping take care of her now (yay!), so she has at least two people in her corner.

Our final scenes are a kind of Animal House where are they now sequence. Martha passed away at age 57 and is buried in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Mitchell spent 19 months in prison. Dean and Mo are still married. Marthas most lasting contribution is the Martha Mitchell effect, a psychiatric term in which a persons extraordinary claims are dismissed as delusion despite being true (says the show).

As Marty and Mitchell leave the funeral, Marty stares at an enormous flower arrangement that says, Martha Was Right. Amen.
From al taglio on-the-go to a sit-down dinner with friends. Here are our suggestions on where to find the best pizza in Rome.

Quite what the Italians manage to achieve from a circle of bread and cheese is still something of a wonder to we stranieri.And like an amply-stuffed crust, Rome is fully capable of satisfying any foreigners lust for a quality pizza.

From al taglio on-the-go to a sit-down dinner with friends, there are so many options available, we could write a book. But, while we wait for a publishing deal, here are our top picks.

Seu Pizza Illuminati

Photo: Seu Pizza Illuminati

Pizza as a philosophy.

Highest quality ingredients, attention to dough maturation processes, and constant research for wine and beer offerings are at the center of the Seu Pizza Illuminati experience.

A young and close-knit team led by Pier Daniele Seu welcomes you every evening from 7 p.m. onwards, except Tuesdays, in their hip, fun Testaccio location with a robust menu that will honestly satisfy anyone in your group, and fantastic service.

Via Angelo Bargoni 10 / tel. (+39) 06 588 3384

Pizzarium

Photo: Pizzarium Bonci

For pizza al taglio, by the slice, its hard to find better than local food celebrity Gabriele Boncis Pizzarium. Sold by weight, youll find a plethora of combinations at the counter of this Cipro-based fast food mecca, from the delicious simplicity of potato and mozzarella to sumptuous shrimp.

The tiny shop is usually full to burst around lunchtime, so youll have to cram yourself into a corner and keep standing to chow down on your doughy delight.

Also read:

Found near the Cipro metro stop close to Vatican City or at the Mercato Centrale in Termini train station or in the Prati neighborhood.Via Trionfale 30 / tel. (+39) 06 39749663

Panattoni (Ai Marmi)

Trasteveres Ai Marmi is one of Romes best-known pizzerias, with tables outside to sit and soak up the atmosphere.

This Roman institution takes its name from the cold white marble table-tops. Yes, it does mean the interior slightly resembles a morgue, but once you dive into your pizza pie, sitting elbow-to-elbow with your neighbouring pizza lovers, you'll soon discover this place serves up a slice of Italian life.

Firm favourites are their margherita, napoletana and marinara, but other combinations like sausage and courgette flower are to die for. Closed on Wednesdays, open for dinner only.

Viale Trastevere 53-59 / (+39) 06 580 0919

Pizzeria La Boccaccia

Photo: Pizzeria La Boccaccia

Opened in 2014 in the Monti district of Rome, the pizzeria offers a menu full of novelties.

Prepared with a traditional Roman thin crust, there are no concoctions like ready-made sauces or shoddy ingredients.

Everything is carefully selected and prepared with love to bring the best pizza to life.

Simplicity is a virtue!

Order pizza by weight or by the slice, and try a variety from the options that change hourly from one of their many locations (Trastevere and Monti are our go-tos.)

Via di Santa Dorotea 2 / (+39) 320 775 6277

Sant'Isidoro Pizza & Bolle

High quality pizza accompanied by a tide of bubbles and cocktails.

Bubbly wines and experimental ingredients are the high points of this modern restaurant dedicated to the idea of elevating pizza to a never- seen- before level of decadence.

With two locations in Rome, in Vittorio and Ostiense, this new, young pizzeria is a must- add to your list.

Via Oslavia, 41 / (+39) 06 8982 2607

La Gatta Mangiona

You might not expect to get your tastebuds tickled at a cat-themed restaurant, but this pizzeria is a real Roman gem.Youll find more diversity on the menu here than your standard pizza parlour, with ingredients like Scottish smoked salmon and Calabrian nduja.

With the kind of brusque zero-fuss service common in non-touristy areas of town, you need only concentrate on choosing and devouring the perfect pie.

Located just down the road from the Janiculum Hill, it is a great dinner spot.

And, in case you were wondering, despite the quirky name, no cats are involved in the making of these pizzas.

Via Federico Ozanam 30 / (+39) 06 534 6702

Sbanco

Photo: Sbanco

Known for their exaggerated, crispy crust, melting center and some tasty toppings, Sbanco approaches a modern Neapolitan style and is notable for its distinctive "crunchiness.

Specials based on seasonal ingredients change every month and the sweet pear and chocolate calzone is a delicious alternative to the usual tiramisu dessert.

Found in the San Giovanni neighborhood, this pizzeria is a favorite for locals.

Via Siria 1 / (+39) 06 789318

Sforno

Sforno is an excellent pizzeria from the established and ever curious chef Stefano Callegari. The pizzas are made with a special selection of flour and baked in a wood-fired oven at very high temperatures to guarantee lightness and flavor.

It is a Neapolitan pizzeria in the Tuscolano neighborhood near Cinecitta.

The place itself is simple and usually quite noisy as it is always full of locals.

Its fritti are certainly worth trying here and the prices are just right. Open for dinner only.

Via Statilio Ottato 110 / (+39) 06 7154 6118

Da Remo

Based in foody haven Testaccio, this is the place to find a real Roman-style pizza  thin, crisp and crunchy. Simplicity reigns here  try La Gatta Mangiona if youre looking for something more unusual.Classic pizzas, made in a wood-burning oven, quickly made, quickly enjoyed.

The atmosphere is friendly, with plenty of Roman-style banter and flirty wisecracking waiters.

Viale dei Monfortani 18 / (+39) 06 338 8481

Emma

This place made the cut due to the fact its not your typical rough-and-ready pizzeria, but serves top quality dough. Here youll find the finest dough baked with the highest quality artisanal ingredients. Its a little more pricey than others, but you get what you pay for in this fancier venue near Campo dei Fiori.

It might come as no surprise that this pizzeria is another addition to the Roscioli familys Roman empire.

Via del Monte della Farina 28 / (+39) 06 6476 0475

By Catherine Evans
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For too long, a bipartisan, commonsense agreement to fix Americas broken gun laws has seemed out of reach. A new effort in Congress offers reasons for optimism. In the wake of multiple mass shootings this year  including the slaughter of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last month  Senators Chris Murphy and John Cornyn have reached a tentative bipartisan agreement on the first significant national gun reform in many years. It wont please everyone, of course. But theres no doubt it represents progress.

Although negotiations continue, the broad outlines are clear. Crucially, the framework would close the so-called boyfriend loophole, ensuring that domestic-violence records are more widely included in background checks. It would allow for some sealed juvenile records to be available for similar purposes, while boosting penalties for crimes such as straw purchases and gun trafficking. It would also increase funding for mental-health programs and for improving security at schools.

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Perhaps most important, it would create federal incentives for states to enact so-called red-flag laws, which allow courts to temporarily ban individuals from purchasing or possessing firearms if a judge determines that theyre a threat to themselves or others. Such laws are relatively new. But early evidence  and common sense  suggest that theyre likely to be an effective tool in stopping mass shooters, most of whom exhibit clear warning signs before they kill. One study looked at 21 red-flag orders issued against individuals in California who had made explicit shooting threats; no violence was subsequently attributed to any of them.

(Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates gun reform measures, is backed by Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP.)

Its true that this effort falls short of the reforms that President Joe Biden outlined in a recent prime-time address, which included bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and a repeal of gun manufacturers liability protection. It also doesnt go as far as a package passed by the House last week, which would (among other things) raise the minimum age for purchasing certain rifles to 21 from 18. And theres no shortage of other reforms that could help impose sanity on Americas gun culture.

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But something is better than nothing, which is essentially what the country has gotten in the decade since 20 other children were murdered by a deranged gunman in Newtown, Connecticut. Many thought that slaughter would be a turning point  an act so horrifying that Americans would finally come to their senses on guns. Instead, a much-hyped reform effort in Congress failed within months of the shooting. About two-thirds of the relevant state laws passed from 2012 to 2018 actually loosened gun restrictions. Meanwhile, hundreds more people have been murdered in additional mass shootings.

That carnage can never become acceptable to Americans. Should this deal advance, it ought to be seen as a starting point for wider change. A more comprehensive background-check overhaul should be next. Strengthening concealed-carry permitting requirements and secure-storage laws must remain a priority. So should extending red-flag measures to every state. Biden should also continue to work to get a new ATF director in place.

Although plenty of work remains, every step forward in Congress, however small, should be welcomed. The fight goes on.

The Editors are members of the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

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In a series of primaries this year, Democrats appear to be trying to Todd Akin the Republicans. Todd Akin? He was the very conservative candidate for a Senate seat in Missouri back in 2012, who Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill boosted in the Republican primary by running ads bashing him for being too conservative. The strategy was simple: Republican voters would reflexively support anyone who was being called a conservative extremist, but then that candidate would be easier to beat in the general election. Democrats have been using a version of that strategy this year in contests including a Senate primary in Colorado and primaries for governor in Illinois, Nevada and Pennsylvania. So what can we say about it?For one thing, be careful about buying the hype. Yes, ads can move votes in primaries  much more easily than in general elections. But this is exactly the kind of thing that pundits tend to overemphasize in interpreting elections. Campaign professionals behind this kind of ad may give wink-wink denials to reporters on the record while falling over each other off the record to claim credit for their cleverness and skill, and one of the things that election analysts and pundits in general tend to respect is cleverness. Thats not to say that this stuff never has real effects. But be cautious.

For another, note that this is all at the level of party operatives. At the voter level, things can work differently. In Georgias recent primaries, for example, Democratic voters who supported Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger apparently did so because they thought those Republicans would be better if elected than their Donald Trump-supporting opponents, not as a plot to elect Democrats to those offices.That said, as long as the campaign is honest  that is, as long as the candidates accused of being extremely conservative are in fact extremely conservative  I dont think theres anything unethical going on here. What Democrats are attempting to do is to exploit the preference for extremism among Republicans that in other ways can be very damaging to Democrats. Thats ethically kosher.Whether its wise or not is a different question. After all, if the presumably weak general-election candidates wind up winning, then the strategy will have backfired. National Journals Josh Kraushaar asks, After all, how seriously does the party take its own argument that American democracy itself is threatened by Republicans when theyre boosting some of the most radical conspiracists and election-deniers for naked political gain?

Thats a fair question. But it cuts both ways. After all, the reason Democrats and many others believe that democracy is in danger isnt because the entire Republican Party is made up of fringe authoritarians. Its because the bulk of the party isnt willing to take on the fringe, and therefore Republican majorities in Congress and in statehouses are, given where we are, a threat to democracy. Even if the people elected are more like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and less like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn. If thats correct, then its hard to blame Democrats for either hoping that the less-bad Republican gets nominated or hoping that the less-electable Republican gets nominated; the real blame (as Kraushaar says) is with the party whose electorate is increasingly drawn to extremes and whose leaders are too risk-averse to do anything about it.Kraushaar is talking about formal Republican party organizations opting against involvement in nomination contests. The larger problem, however, is that too many party actors  especially in Republican-aligned media  egg on Republican voters to move farther and farther into the fringe. They will falsely claim, for example, that many or even most Republican politicians are sell-out RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). In the real world, party polarization at the politician level is very strong, the least conservative Republicans in Congress are more conservative than the least liberal Democrats, and the main reason that conservatives dont always get their way is that the US system has a strong status-quo bias thats hard to beat. Oh, and because Republicans have rarely won enough elections to have a unified government. Not because Republican politicians are constantly betraying them. And thats exactly why Democratic campaign operatives think that if they can establish that (say) a patch of moss is the most extreme conservative in a Republican primary then that patch of moss is going to get a lot of votes. And as long as thats the case, Democrats are only going to have difficult choices  and democracy could well be at risk.
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Didi Global Inc. is preparing to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, after its initial public offering there last year drew the wrath of Beijing. The Chinese ride-hailing giant said it plans to list in Hong Kong instead, allowing existing shareholders to convert their holdings in the company. There are challenges ahead -- for Didi, its shareholders and other Chinese companies looking to go public. Meanwhile, the governments ongoing investigation and new regulatory measures have hit Didis bottom line.

1. Why is Didi going to delist?

Chinese regulators opposed the US listing, saying it could expose Didis vast troves of data to foreign powers. The firm pressed ahead with the June 2021 IPO anyway, in a move that Beijing saw as a challenge to its authority. Days after the listing, the government announced a cybersecurity probe into the firm and forced its services off domestic app stores. Later the Cyberspace Administration of China, the agency responsible for data security, was said to have asked Didis top executives to devise a plan to delist because of concerns about leakage of sensitive data.

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2. How will it work?

Didi has said that listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange will ensure that its American depositary shares can be swapped for freely tradable shares of the Company on another internationally recognized stock exchange. However, the firm was said to have suspended preparations for a Hong Kong listing after being informed by regulators that its proposals to prevent security and data leaks had fallen short. Shareholders approved the US delisting on May 23 and Didi is expected to work with Chinese regulators on an overhaul of its data systems. The company has put forward several ideas, including ceding management of its data to an outside party in China. Settling the data issue and then preparing for a Hong Kong listing could take months.

3. What are the challenges?

Some institutional shareholders may be forced to sell once Didi stops trading in New York as they cant hold unlisted equity. A Hong Kong listing carries its own challenges as the local exchange makes more stringent demands on companies seeking to list than its New York peers. Even if Didi pulls off a listing in Hong Kong, some investors may choose to sell rather than swap their US shares, which have fallen drastically. Didi in December disclosed a $4.7 billion loss in the September quarter after revenue slid 13% from the previous three months.

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4. Why is this such a big deal?

Didis blockbuster IPO was the second-biggest in the US by a company based in China (Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.s was bigger) and gave Didi a market value of about $68 billion. The listing, which was shepherded by a whos who of Wall Street banks, appeared to be a model for how international investors could tap into Chinas red-hot tech sector. Didis largest shareholder was Japans SoftBank Group Corp., with more than 20%.

5. Will China force other companies to change listings?

Didis exit is unlikely to be the last. The Chinese internet regulator began probing two more US-listed companies, Full Truck Alliance Co. and Kanzhun Ltd., soon after launching the review into Didi. In December the government unveiled tighter regulations for Chinese companies seeking to go public abroad using the so-called variable interest entity (VIE) structure, as Didi did. Meanwhile, the US is moving to implement a new law that mandates foreign companies open their books to U.S. regulators or face delisting starting in 2024. The US Securities and Exchange Commission says that only two jurisdictions historically have not allowed the required inspections, China and Hong Kong.

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6. Will this end Didis troubles?

Unlikely. The cybersecurity probe into Didi is ongoing, and regulators may still impose an array of punishments such as a fine, suspension of certain operations or the introduction of a state-owned investor. The municipal government of Beijing, where Didi is based, was said to have proposed that the Shouqi Group -- part of the influential Beijing Tourism Group -- and others acquire a stake in Didi, which would give control to state-run firms. Media including the South China Morning Post have reported that regulators may force Didi to reshuffle its top management. President Xi Jinpings campaign to achieve common prosperity has heaped pressure on platform companies like Didi to offer better wages and benefits to its army of drivers. More fundamentally, the Chinese government is expected to maintain strict curbs on and scrutiny over big tech enterprises that amass sensitive data.

(Updates after shareholders approved New York delisting in question 2)

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In a noteworthy 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court has allowed the federal government to retry and reconvict a member of an Indian tribe who was previously tried and convicted in a special federal administrative court for Native Americans. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a stinging dissent calling this a clear violation of double jeopardy.

The dissent solidifies Gorsuchs role as the courts staunchest defender of tribal sovereignty, one willing to call out historical injustices against American Indians. At the same time, the 6-3 result hints that an important 2020 decision on tribal sovereignty written by Gorsuch, McGirt v. Oklahoma, might be one of the only times Gorsuch gets a majority for his views on the issue.

That case, decided before Barrett was on the court, invoked tribal sovereignty to block the enforcement of Oklahoma criminal law in a large part of the state. The conservative majority of today is apparently concerned with applying criminal law in tribal areas  a concern that might have produced a different result in the McGirt case. Barretts vote will be crucial in a case the justices will decide in the next few weeks that considers the aftermath of the 2020 decision.

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The legal process behind the current case, Denezpi v. United States, is pretty bizarre  which sadly isnt that unusual when it comes to legal interactions between the US government and tribal sovereigns. It involves the Court of Indian Offenses, put in place in 1883 by the Department of the Interior.

The court tries crimes established by the department through regulation  not crimes enacted by Congress. Its members are appointed and can be fired by the secretary of the interior. Its referred to as a CFR court because it is a creature of the Code of Federal Regulations, where all federal regulations are recorded. CFR courts have jurisdiction in places where tribal sovereigns havent established their own courts.

One kind of crime the court can try includes violation of an approved tribal offense  that is, a crime defined by a tribal sovereign that the Interior Department approves. Merle Denezpi, a member of the Navajo Nation, sexually assaulted a woman, also a member of the Navajo nation, while they were visiting the Ute Mountain reservation. He was convicted in a CFR court of assault and battery under the laws of the Ute Nation and sentenced to 140 days time served.

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Six months later, the Department of Justice charged Denezpi with the federal crime of aggravated sexual abuse  for the same act. He was again convicted, and this time sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. Clearly, the Justice Department thought the punishment in the CFR court did not fit the gravity of the crime.

At first glance, this outcome looks like a clear violation of double jeopardy, which under the Constitution says you cant be convicted twice for the same offence. Barretts opinion found a way to allow the second conviction. In general, according to Supreme Court precedent, double jeopardy doesnt apply when different sovereign nations prosecute the same offense.

Barrett reasoned, roughly, that the CFR court was applying the law of the sovereign power of the Ute Nation, whereas the federal court that convicted Denezpi later was applying the sovereign power of the federal government. The deeper motivation was, presumably, to enable the enforcement of federal criminal law in cases like Denezpis, where tribal law prescribes much weaker punishments.

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Gorsuch rejected Barretts logic, pointing out that the CFR court is a creature of the US government and US law, and applies Ute law only pursuant to the US governments choice to do so. Because the same sovereign made the law for both trials, Gorsuch said, double jeopardy was violated. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined his opinion.

To bolster his argument, Gorsuch emphasized the origins of the CFR court. Originally, the court was officially supposed to civilize the Indians by making them desist from  savage and barbarous practices. The original regulations to be enforced by the court outlawed old heathenish dances; medicine mens conjurers arts; and some traditional mourning practices.

Gorsuchs legal point was that these regulations show that the court belonged to the US government, not to the tribes. His rhetorical point was that the court functions as part of the complicated legal framework created by the US government to dominate Native Americans, take their sovereignty, and suppress their cultures.

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The most important takeaway from the case is that Barrett voted to sustain the conviction, thereby underscoring an interest in applying nontribal criminal law in Indian country. In the 2020 McGirt case, where Gorsuch struck an important symbolic blow for tribal sovereignty, he was joined only by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the courts other liberals.

In April, the justices heard oral argument in a case asking whether federal law bars applying Oklahoma criminal law to a non-Indian defendant in the areas of tribal sovereignty identified in McGirt. The outcome is likely to be close, and we will know it before too long.

Barrett may well be the swing vote. Her opinion in the Denezpi case raises the probability that she will vote to allow Oklahoma criminal law to apply to non-Indians, to vindicate the interests of such enforcement in the face of tribal sovereignty.

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More on the Supreme Court From Bloomberg Opinion:

 Supreme Court Makes Immigration Lockup Harder to Escape: Noah Feldman

 Supreme Court Has a Nasty Surprise in Store for Business: Noah Feldman

 Supreme Courts Leak Investigation Is Self-Destructive: Stephen L. Carter

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery and the Refounding of America.

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If the leaders of the European Union listened only to their hearts, theyd fully embrace Ukraine into the bloc at their summit in Brussels this month. As French President Emmanuel Macron put it, We feel in our heart that Ukraine, through its fight and its courage, is already today a member of our Europe, of our family and of our union. In that spirit, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, went to Kyiv in April and personally handed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy the application questionnaire.

Europeans have not only hearts but also heads. And the heads of many leaders and Eurocrats  including Macrons  are shaking rather than nodding.

Giving full membership to Ukraine now would create so many new problems for the EU that the bloc  never a paragon of effective governance to begin with  might break down, or even apart. The same warning applies to accepting Moldova or Georgia, and even Albania, North Macedonia and the other Balkan nations already in the queue.

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Rushing their memberships would be a bad idea not only because these countries  their economies, judiciaries and other institutions  arent ready. It would also be reckless because the EU has never resolved an intrinsic tension between what Eurocrats call widening and deepening  that is, admitting new members vs. integrating the existing ones.

With each of the seven rounds of enlargement  from the original six countries to the 27 today  running the show has become messier and more unwieldy. The growing number of institutions and Commissioners  each country appoints one  is the least of it, as is the Babel-like chaos of languages, traditions and national interests. The real problem is that the EU, as it grew, didnt rewrite its treaties thoroughly enough to allow the bloc to stay coherent and deal with real-world problems.

Often a single country can veto joint action even when its urgent. An egregious recent example is Hungary, which held up the EUs sixth sanctions package against Russia for weeks, and even then signed off only after blackmailing the other 26 countries to make changes that range from self-serving to bizarre.

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These design flaws all but condemn the EU to failure whenever a big problem turns up. Lacking a common fiscal policy, the bloc barely saved its currency union during the euro crisis, and may yet lose it in a future upheaval. Unable to reform its migrant regime, it was bitterly split during the refugee crisis of 2015. In foreign and defense policy, the EU (as distinct from individual member states, like France) is a joke. Thank goodness the West still has that other Brussels institution called NATO.

In these examples, the shocks are exogenous  imported from the US after the financial crisis, from Syria and elsewhere when the refugees arrived, from Russia when its president, Vladimir Putin, turned full-bore totalitarian. But the tremors are just as often internal. For years, Brussels has been irate at Budapest and Warsaw, where populist quasi-autocrats are undermining the domestic rule of law and other democratic institutions. But the EU has no mechanism to kick out errant members, and even censuring them is difficult.

These institutional flaws are replicated in the EUs Kafkaesque process of admitting new members. Accession takes years or decades, during which applicant countries have to adopt all EU laws, clean up corruption and comply with other standards. But once theyre in, Brussels cant stop them from backsliding or obstructing.

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Worse, the EU cant really fix its operating system  the process of doing so is called treaty change  because members dont even agree on what the union should become. A United States of Europe? Just a loose common market? Something in between?

The way out of these messes is to formalize the old notion of a multi-speed Europe. Groups of countries that want to integrate deeply should be able to do so. Those who want to opt out in one area should be able to keep participating in others, and maybe change their minds later.

This already works well in some contexts. For example, the 26 countries in the so-called Schengen area have completely opened their borders to one another, requiring no passports for travelers. Notably, four of those  Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein  arent even in the EU, while five EU countries  Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Cyprus and Ireland  arent part of Schengen.

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That approach is the way to go, especially if flexibility is baked in. National interests change over time. Denmark has long opted out of the EUs common defense policy. But then Putin started playing Genghis Khan, and in a referendum the other day, two out of three Danes voted to join in.

Such flexibility would also solve most problems with the EUs accession protocols. Instead of making membership a binary matter of in or out, it should become a phased integration. As candidate countries get up to speed in, say, their energy or financial markets, they would gain full EU privileges in those areas, but not yet in, say, agriculture or foreign policy.

The worry among some existing and prospective members is that such a multi-speed Europe relegates some countries to second-class participants and creates a hierarchy akin to gold, silver and bronze membership cards.

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That wouldnt be the goal, or the outcome, though. The continent doesnt respect and embrace the Swiss or Norwegians any less because theyre in the European Free Trade Association and Schengen but not the EU. In turn, countries such as Hungary  which keep complaining that the EU oppresses them  might like to take one step out of Brussels orbit without blasting off from the continent. The UK, which has left the club, might want to rejoin a new form of European confederation.

Europe today is a geopolitical concept and a civilizational ideal based on peace, prosperity, liberty and justice. It consists of multiple national identities, while being open to new ones. All this must be recognized. This, maybe, is what Macron has in mind when he speaks nebulously of adding a European political community to the existing Union.

Such a Europe of many  shifting but harmonious  unions is the future. The best way to start building this vision is not to prematurely admit Ukraine into the EU. It is to welcome the Ukrainians into the European fraternity right now, and simultaneously make the whole family more flexible and strong.

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More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:



Defend Ukraine  and Democracy in Poland and Hungary, too: Andreas Kluth



What Will Postwar Ukraine Look Like? Planning Starts Before Peace: Therese Raphael



A $450 Billion Opportunity to Loosen Putins Energy Grip: Lionel Laurent

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European politics. A former editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist, he is author of Hannibal and Me.

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Even as Russia and Western countries avoid a shooting war over Ukraine, they have already joined an energy war. Opening skirmishes have taken the form of selective cutoffs of, and encroaching sanctions on, Russian supply. Yet there is a yawning gap between the rhetoric of war and the realpolitik of energy diplomacy  one that Russia will exploit and that the West must find a way to close.

In a recent essay in the New York Times, President Joe Biden wrote that standing by Ukraine and making Russia pay a heavy price was in our vital national interest, in part because not doing so:

 will put the survival of other peaceful democracies at risk. And it could mark the end of the rules-based international order and open the door to aggression elsewhere, with catastrophic consequences the world over.

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a speech last month commemorating the end of World War II, explicitly linked todays war with that earlier conflict, saying there must not be a victors peace dictated by Russia. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warns that European leaders have forgotten the lesson offered by the Munich agreement of 1938. In short, this is existential for the West.

The US and Europe have provided vital military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. But without direct intervention, defeating Russia means choking off its resources. And that means grappling with the worlds dependency on Russias resources, especially its oil and gas. As it stands, despite sanctions to date, higher commodity prices mean Russias war machine is raking in more money than last year.

Biden began his essay by saying the invasion Vladimir Putin thought would last days is now in its fourth month. He could have replaced Vladimir Putin with everyone and been just as accurate. Ukraine was expected to collapse, and swiftly. Presumably, the US and Europe would have responded with harsh words, more sanctions and reinforcement of NATOs eastern defenses. I doubt, however, they would have sanctioned Russian energy in a meaningful way, because of considerations that Scholz also mentioned:

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We will not do anything that could inflict more damage on ourselves and our partners than on Russia.

That, in the short term at least, is pretty much what sweeping sanctions on Russian energy would do. Yet Ukraines resilience and Russian brutality have made energy sanctions unavoidable. The most important ones were agreed by the EU earlier this month after much wrangling. Natural gas was left out  Russia accounts for about one-third of Europes supply  and the oil sanctions were carefully calibrated: Crude oil imports on ships are banned six months from now, and refined products in eight months. But crude oil delivered by pipeline  about a fifth of Europes Russian oil imports overall  is exempt. A few countries such as Bulgaria and Croatia get carve-outs for certain products. Potentially far-reaching bans on providing insurance to ships carrying Russian barrels dont kick in until December.

As energy divorces go, this is more of an attempt at conscious uncoupling. Yet it isnt in Putins interests to play the understanding partner. Assuming a long campaign of attrition is in store, he needs Europe and the US to quickly tire of this war and its inconveniences. Higher energy prices are already a liability for leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Disrupting energy supply unilaterally is madness if your concern is for the long-term health of Russias energy industry and economy. But Putin is now taking foreign policy cues from Peter the Great  the first Russian emperor, hint hint  so the economy is not his main concern. Rather, it is dividing the West both within itself and from Ukraine by any means possible. As war drags on and next winter nears, Putins temptation and ability to upend the EUs choreography will strengthen. Last years not-so-mysterious rundown in Russian-controlled natural gas inventories in Europe, and subsequent price spikes, provide a template to expand upon. Beyond energy, Russia is also brandishing real threats to other vital supply chains ranging from grain to industrial gases.

If this struggle really is as existential as the op-eds and speeches say  and I believe it is  then our approach to the energy dimension must be commensurate. There is a price to be paid for upholding these foundational principles, as Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, puts it.

The US and Europe are openly involved in this war and have expansive war aims even if they arent pulling triggers. And while the fighting is localized, Russias commodity exports make this a global problem that, if the West is serious, could demand the sort of measures associated with war economies.

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This implies robust government intervention. We have seen signs of Biden moving this way already, with his diplomatic push to direct more liquefied natural gas to Europe and almost certain climb-down vis-a-vis Riyadh to get more OPEC barrels into the market. His use of the Defense Production Act to encourage domestic output of critical minerals and to unstick solar panel imports, while not directly linked to the Ukraine crisis, also suggests a willingness to intervene more forcefully.

This should involve more than just efforts to accelerate the energy transition, which is one of the surest long-term strategic energy weapons against Russia the US has. It must also involve encouraging more production of oil, gas and other fuels at home or in friendly countries to displace as much Russian production as possible. Balancing this near-term need with decarbonization objectives is tricky because it requires companies to invest in assets today that may not be fully utilized in future  drill, baby, dont drill, in other words. Capital markets wont accept this without government taking on some of the risk. Such intervention would dismay environmentalists, but it could be structured to encourage shorter-cycle energy sources such as shale or come with conditions for repurposing infrastructure for transition-compliant purposes down the line.

None of this can happen, however, unless it is openly acknowledged that the gathering emergency in energy markets calls for sacrifices and compromises. Progressives would be asked to swallow measures to support drilling. Conservatives would be asked to accept the climate-related conditions. And the sacrifice may also extend to the demand side. Higher prices are applying pressure already, but strengthened sanctions and actual cutoffs of Russian supply may ultimately require rationing or other mandates to curb demand, at least in Europe. This is of course the last thing any president already fending off comparisons to Jimmy Carter wants to hear. But when you have made the face-off between democracies and autocracies a defining principle of your presidency, and you are now engaged in an actual conflict to defend a democracy from a major autocracy, such contingencies must be contemplated.

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Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy, recently coauthored a terrific piece in Foreign Affairs on how governments will transform energy markets as they seek to balance climate goals with security. When I asked him about the disconnect between the strident language of war and the more cautious application of energy policy, he noted a similar dynamic with regard to climate change: If we really believed it was existential, we would be thinking differently about the trade-offs.

As with addressing climate change, even though a majority of citizens in the West support Ukraine, it remains unclear how much personal cost, including changes to behavior, they would bear to back that up. Putin is betting their support will prove to be ephemeral. Equally unclear, however, is whether that assumption will tempt him into the sort of dramatic escalation that stiffens their resolve.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

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 A United West Is Still Essential to Countering Putin: Editorial

 It Takes Sanctions and Stamina to Defeat Putin: Clara F. Marques

 Hard Lessons From 100 Days of the Ukraine War: Leonid Bershidsky

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy and commodities. A former investment banker, he was editor of the Wall Street Journals Heard on the Street column and a reporter for the Financial Timess Lex column.

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Meta Platforms Inc. has become a lightening rod for legal challenges in the US, from the FTCs antitrust case to shareholder lawsuits alleging the company misled investors. Last week, eight complaints were filed against the company across the US, including allegations that young people who frequently visited Instagram and Facebook went on to commit suicide and experience eating disorders. (Facebook has not commented on the litigation, and has denied allegations in the FTC and shareholder complaints.)

The allegations echo the concerns of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, whose leak last year of thousands of internal documents showed that Meta was aware of the psychological harms its algorithms caused users, such as, for instance, that Instagram made body issues worse for one in three teen girls.

While the lawsuits strike at the heart of Metas noxious social impact and could help educate the public on the details, they likely wont force significant change at Facebook. Thats because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields Facebook and other internet companies from liability for much of what their users post. Unless US law changes  and there are no signs this is happening soon  Metas lawyers can continue to use that defense.

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But that wont be the case in Europe. Two new laws coming down the pipe promise to change how Metas algorithms show content to its 3 billion users. The UKs Online Safety Bill, which could come into force next year, and the European Unions Digital Services Act, likely coming into force in 2024, are both aimed at preventing psychological harms from social platforms. Theyll force large internet companies to share information about their algorithms to regulators, who will assess how risky they are.

Mark Scott, chief technology correspondent with Politico and a close follower of those laws, answered questions about how theyd work, as well as what the limitations are, on Twitter Spaces with me last Wednesday. Our discussion is edited below.

Parmy Olson: What are the main differences between the upcoming UK and EU laws on online content?

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Mark Scott: The EU law is tackling legal but nasty content, like trolling, disinformation and misinformation, and trying to balance that with freedom of speech. Instead of banning [that content] outright, the EU will ask platforms to keep tabs on it, conduct internal risk assessments and provide better data access for outside researchers.

The UK law will be maybe 80% similar, with the same ban on harmful content and requirement for risk assessments, it but will go one step further: Facebook, Twitter and others will also be legally required to have a duty of care to their users, meaning they will have to take action against harmful but legal material.

Parmy: So to be clear, the EU law wont require technology companies to take action against the harmful content itself?

Mark: Exactly. What theyre requiring is to flag it. They wont require the platforms to ban it outright.

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Parmy: Would you say the UK approach is more aggressive?

Mark: Its more aggressive in terms of actions required by companies. [The UK] has also floated potential criminal sentences for tech executives who dont follow these rules.

Parmy: What will risk assessments mean in practice? Will engineers from Facebook have regular meetings to share their code with representatives from [UK communications regulator] Ofcom or EU officials?

Mark: They will have to show their homework to the regulators and to the wider world. So journalists or civil society groups can also look and say, OK, a powerful, left-leaning politician in a European country is gaining mass traction. Why is that? What is the risk assessment the company has done to ensure [the politicians] content doesnt get blown out of proportion in a way that might harm democracy? Its that type of boring but important work that this going to be focused on.

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Parmy: Who will do the auditing?

Mark: The risk assessments will be done both internally and with independent auditors, like the Price Waterhouse Coopers and Accentures of this world, or more niche, independent auditors who can say, Facebook, this is your risk assessment, and we approve. And then that will be overseen by the regulators. The U.K. regulator Ofcom is hiring around 400 or 500 more people to do this heavy lifting.

Parmy: What will social-media companies actually do differently, though? Because they already put out regular transparency reports and they have made efforts to clean up their platforms  YouTube has demonetized problematic influencers and the QAnon conspiracy theory isnt showing up in Facebook Newsfeeds anymore.

Will the risk assessments lead tech companies to take down more problem content as it comes up? Will they get faster at it? Or will they make sweeping changes to their recommendation engines?

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Mark: Youre right, the companies have taken significant steps to remove the worst of the worst. But the problem is that we have to take the companys word for it. When Francis Haugen made internal Facebook documents public, she showed things that we never knew about the system before, such as the algorithmic amplification of harmful material in certain countries. So both the UK and the EU want to codify some of the existing practices from these companies, but also make them more public. To say to YouTube, Youre doing X, Y, and Z to stop this material from spreading. Show me, dont tell me.

Parmy: So essentially what these laws will do is create more Francis Haugens, except instead of creating more whistleblowers you have auditors coming in and just getting the same kind of information. Would Facebook, YouTube and Twitter make the resultant changes globally, like they did with Europes GDPR privacy rules, or just for European users?

Mark: I think the companies will likely say they are making this global.

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Parmy: You talked about tech platforms showing their homework with these risk assessments. Do you think theyll honestly share what kind of risks their algorithms could cause?

Mark: Thats a very valid point. Itll come down to the power and expertise of the regulators to enforce this. Its also going to be a lot of trial and error. It took about four years to ease out the bumps for Europes GDPR privacy rules to take action. I think as the regulators get a better understanding of how these companies work internally, theyll know where to look better. I think initially, it wont be very good.

Parmy: Which law will do a better job of enforcement?

Mark: The UK bill is going to get watered down between now and next year, when it will hopefully come into play. This means the UK regulator will have these quasi-defined powers, and then the rug will be pulled out from underneath them for political reasons. The Brits have been very wishy-washy in terms of how theyre going to define legal but harmful [content that must be taken down]. The Brits have also made exceptions for politicians, but as weve seen most recently in the United States, some politicians are the ones purveying some of the worst mistruths to the public. So there are some big holes that need to be filled.

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Parmy: What do these laws get right, and what do they get wrong?

Mark: The idea of focusing on risk assessments is I think the best way to go. Where theyve gone wrong is the over-optimistic sense that they can actually fix the problem. Disinformation and politically divisive material was around way before social media. The idea that you can create some sort of bespoke social-media law to fix that problem without fixing the underlying cultural and societal issues that go back decades, if not centuries, is a bit myopic. I think [British and EU] politicians have been very quick and eager to say, Look at us, were fixing it. Whereas I dont think theyve been clear on what theyre fixing and what result theyre looking for.

Parmy: Is framing these laws as being about risk assessments a clever way to protect free speech, or disingenuous?

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Mark: I dont have a clear answer for you. But I think the way of targeting risk assessments, and mitigating those risks as much as possible, thats the way to go. Were not gonna get rid of this, but we can at least be honest and say, This is where we see problems and this is how were gonna fix them. The specificity is missing, which provides a lot of gray space where legal fights can continue, but I also think thats going to come in the next five years as the legal cases get fought, and well get a better sense of exactly how these rules will work.

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. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of We Are Anonymous.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

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Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told an international security gathering in Singapore, a catchphrase that speaks to the harsh lessons learnt over the past few months. Better deterrence and response capabilities, he told a room packed with defense officials and diplomats, will be absolutely essential if Japan is to learn to survive in the new era and keep speaking out as a standard-bearer of peace. Cranking up rhetoric, though, is the easy part.

Russias invasion of Ukraine has jolted the pacifist nation into making bigger promises on spending, security and a foreign policy that relies on more than economics  welcome news for allies eager to have a muscular Japan discouraging provocations from its nuclear-armed neighbors. Tokyo now needs to overcome what remains of domestic resistance, free up funds and strengthen alliances, and fast. But this courteous power can already use diplomatic tools to do more for the rules-based free and open international order that Kishida talked up at the Shangri-La Dialogue on Friday. He could do worse than to start in Southeast Asia. Its a region that, like much of the emerging world, has largely distanced itself from allies response to President Vladimir Putins aggression, and where Japan has more credibility than most.

Ukraine has made even Tokyos most ardent pacifists realize that a totally unprovoked war is not a distant prospect. Its a tough neighborhood: North Korean missiles, Russian saber-rattling around islets it says are part of its Kuril chain and Japan calls its Northern Territories, and tensions in the East China Sea  never mind the dramatic consequences of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Joint military exercises by Russia and China have done little to ease nerves. Little wonder that even if an overhaul of Japans constitutional article forbidding land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, remains unlikely, public opinion is shifting, and limits are becoming more flexible, with counterstrike capabilities now up for discussion. Even Kishida, whose family hails from Hiroshima and is less hawkish than others in his party, is pledging a substantial increase in defense spending, a step further from the pacifist mindset of recent decades.

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Even so, it will be challenging to move quickly at home. Kishida gave no specifics, but an increase in the defense budget to 2% of gross domestic product, or NATO levels, as his party has proposed  roughly doubling the current share  may be a tough sell in practice, given post-pandemic demands and already stretched public finances. Kishida can still add manpower to the Self-Defense Forces, as Japans military is known, bolster missile defense and cybersecurity (a major concern), while working on strengthening the alliance with America  though Kishida has, for now, pushed aside nuclear sharing, or the possibility of hosting US nuclear weapons on Japanese soil.

But Japan, which has already broken with precedent by accepting refugees and sending bulletproof vests to Ukraine, can take other steps to protect not just itself but the rules-based order it depends on, with more forceful diplomatic efforts to help widen the alliance of nations condemning Russias aggression and pushing to isolate its economy. Southeast Asa is a good place to begin.

With the exception of Singapore, which has imposed unilateral sanctions for the first time in more than four decades, the region has largely sought to remain neutral in the conflict. Thats due in equal parts to the power of Russian weapons exports, deep-seated anti-Western sentiment, Soviet-era ties, disinformation  and of course diplomatic disengagement on the part of the wealthy world, not to mention sheer distance. Just a day after Kishida addressed the Singapore gathering, Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, whose country has refused Ukraines request for weapons, defended what he called strategic neutrality, with a reference to former South African leader Nelson Mandelas comment when asked in a US interview about Cubas Fidel Castro: Your enemy is not necessarily my enemy. Its a position Russia is exploiting as the food crisis worsens, which will be used to weaken support for Ukraine as the war grinds on. And its an issue the West is not doing enough to tackle.

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Southeast Asia is important, not just as a grouping of important emerging economies but because this year, it has the global spotlight: Indonesia chairs the G20, which will meet in Bali in November, and Thailand will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperations economic leaders summit. So it matters when Cambodia, the current chair of ASEAN, joins with Indonesia and Thailand to issue a statement on their respective meetings that skirts the small matter of a war of conquest entirely, in favor of working with all partners and stakeholders.

Japan is already engaged with the region and in his first months, Kishida has visited Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, and welcomed Malaysias prime minister in Tokyo. Its also the regions most trusted partner, not to mention a leading investor. But as with its investment, diplomatic efforts have been patient and understated, and far more is needed. There is an uncomfortable colonial past and officials will be dealing with reluctant and distracted governments  Indonesia, for one, is already beginning to look ahead to a 2024 election. It will also have to steer away from values conversations around political systems. Singapores defense minister is right that there will be few takers for a battle royale on that basis.

But stronger economic ties will help, as will military supplies to reduce dependence on Russia, not to mention coordinating food aid and support where needed as the conflict in Ukraine fuels a surge in prices and hunger. Persistent diplomacy too. Avoiding another aggressor trampling over smaller neighbors demands it.

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 It Takes Sanctions and Stamina to Defeat Putin: Clara F. Marques

 Joe Biden May Just Provide the Push Japan Needs: Gearoid Reidy

 The U.S. Needs to Do More Than Just Show Up: Ruth Pollard

Want more Bloomberg Opinion? Click here.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editorial board member covering foreign affairs and climate. Previously, she worked for Reuters in Hong Kong, Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia.

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In a pair of immigration law opinions today, the Supreme Court made things harder for noncitizens indefinitely detained by immigration authorities. In one, decided almost unanimously and written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court ended the existing requirement that such people get hearings after six months of detention to see if they could be released on bond into the US. In the other, decided 6-3 over a sharp partial dissent from Sotomayor, the justices held that detainees lack the legal authority to challenge the circumstances of their confinement through a class-action suit. Together, the opinions signal that the Supreme Court is less sympathetic to detention conditions than the lower courts.

The six-month reviews that the court ended do not appear expressly in federal immigration law statutes or regulations. The lower courts created them, using reasoning derived from a 2001 Supreme Court precedent that says the Constitution bars detention beyond six months of noncitizens who are on the way to being sent out of the country for having committed serious crimes.

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The relevant statute says that, ordinarily, if someone has been deemed removable from the US because of being here illegally, the government may detain that person for 90 days. But it also provides the option of longer detention  it doesnt say how long  for some people.

Among them are those who entered the country illegally or violated their immigration status while here. (The statute also allows longer detention of people who have committed certain crimes or who might be a danger to national security or the community.)

The petitioner in the first of todays cases, Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, is a citizen of Mexico who was kicked out of the U.S. in 2012 and then soon returned without authorization. In 2018, when he had been living in the US for six years, he was arrested and detained pending being sent home. Arteaga-Martinez then filed an asylum claim, stating that he feared persecution or torture in Mexico. An asylum officer found the claim reasonable and referred him to an immigration judge to verify the claim. While awaiting that proceeding, Arteaga-Martinez remained in indefinite detention.

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While detained, Arteaga-Martinez asked for a six-month bond hearing. If, at the hearing, he was deemed eligible for bond, he would have been able to stay in the US, free from detention, while he waited to see if his asylum claim was granted.

The lower courts said yes to his request. They had created that kind of bond hearing by saying the statute must be understood to require it. Although the statute doesnt mention a hearing, and on its face allows indefinite confinement, the lower courts were hoping to avoid the problem of unconstitutional indefinite detention.

Writing for the majority, Sotomayor said the statute cant be read as requiring a six-month hearing that appears nowhere in its language. That put an end to the hearings. Her opinion left open the possibility that detainees like Arteaga-Martinez could go back to the lower courts and claim that indefinite detention would be unconstitutional.

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They might win such a claim, in which case some kind of hearing  probably a six-month hearing  could be reinstated on the theory that it is required by the Constitution. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate opinion saying that logically, the lower courts should do exactly that.

Of course, Sotomayors hinted sympathy to such a constitutional claim might not extend to the other justices. That much was clear from the second immigration opinion.

In this case, Mexican citizens detained under the same legal provision as Arteaga-Martinez went to court on behalf of all other similarly situated detainees asking for a clear ruling that they were entitled by statute to a six-month bond hearing.

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by the courts other conservatives, said that a different federal immigration statute barred the detainees lawsuit altogether. That statute says the lower federal courts may not enjoin or restrain the operation of a number of provisions of federal immigration law except in reference to an individual alien. According to Alito, the law prohibits the kind of general order that would emerge from a class-action suit brought on behalf of all detainees, not just one of them.

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Sotomayor, joined by the courts two other liberals, dissented, denouncing Alitos opinion as a blinkered decision that would leave many vulnerable noncitizens unable to protect their rights. The reason she was so concerned is that the consequences go well beyond the six-month hearing issue. The Alito decision bars essentially all class actions by immigration detainees.

As Sotomayor explained, detainees arent entitled to lawyers. They are isolated and cut off. They are archetypal examples of people who need class actions to defend their legal rights.

What is supposed to happen next is that detainees get the chance to argue to the lower courts that the Constitution requires a six-month bond hearing. Now, because of the Alito opinion, that claim will have to be made by an individual, not in a class action. The Alito opinion suggests, without saying so, that the courts conservatives may not be very sympathetic when the case returns to them.

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More on the Supreme Court From Bloomberg Opinion:

 US Justices Are Looking More Like Politicians: Noah Feldman

 Supreme Court Has a Nasty Surprise in Store for Business: Noah Feldman

 Supreme Courts Leak Investigation Is Self-Destructive: Stephen L. Carter

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery and the Refounding of America.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

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Navy orders safety pause for aircraft Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight The U.S. Naval Air Forces ordered a one-day safety pause for its aircraft after a string of crashes in California this month led to the deaths of a Navy pilot and five Marines. The pause will come into effect Monday and affect all Navy aviation units that are not deployed, the Naval Air Forces said Saturday in a news release.

As a result of recent crashes involving U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, Commander, Naval Air Forces has directed all non-deployed Navy aviation units to conduct a safety pause on June 13 in order to review risk-management practices and conduct training on threat and error-management processes, it said. Deployed units will do the same as soon as possible, it added.

  Annabelle Timsit

Disruption at Pride event is investigated

Authorities were investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men allegedly shouted anti-LGBTQ slurs during a Drag Queen Story Hour at a San Francisco Bay area library, a sheriffs official said.

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Deputies responded to the San Lorenzo Library on Saturday afternoon following reports of a disturbance during the reading for preschool-aged children in celebration of Pride month, said Lt. Ray Kelly with the Alameda County Sheriffs Office.

The host of the childrens story program, drag queen Panda Dulce, said on Instagram that the group disrupted the event, shouting slurs. The disruption totally freaked out all of the kids, and the group attempted to escalate to violence, he wrote.

It appears the group of men may be affiliated with the Proud Boys organization, said Kelly, adding that the five men involved were wearing the black and yellow colors associated with the far-right group, which has a history of violence.

No arrests had been made, no one was physically harmed, and sheriffs officials were investigating the incident as a possible hate crime and harassment of children, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

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 Associated Press

3 dead in shooting at warehouse party

Three people were killed and four others wounded in a shooting early Sunday at a warehouse party, Los Angeles police said.

Paramedics responded to a reported shooting at 12:27 a.m. in the Boyle Heights area, said Nicholas Prange, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Patty Calzada, who lives two doors down from the warehouse, said many of the people fleeing the building after the shooting looked underage.

 Los Angeles Times

2 killed, 4 wounded in nightclub shooting

Two people were killed and four others were wounded in a shooting at an Indiana nightclub early Sunday, police said.

Officers responding to reports of shots fired around 2 a.m. in Gary, southeast of Chicago, said they found two people who had been shot and were unresponsive. A 34-year-old man was near the entrance to Playos NightClub and a 26-year-old woman was found inside, police said. Both were declared dead after being taken to a hospital. Four others were wounded, including one who was in critical condition, police said.

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Authorities did not release information about what may have led to the shooting.

 Associated Press

Wildfire prompts evacuation orders in Arizona: Evacuations are in effect in parts of northern Arizona as a wildfire about six miles north of Flagstaff steadily grew Sunday, authorities said. Coconino National Forest officials said the wildfire was reported at 10:15 a.m. by a fire lookout. Wind gusts were sweeping smoke through Schultz Pass toward Doney Park, and authorities said recreationists were being told to leave immediately.

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CAIRO  Tribal clashes over the past week in Sudans war-ravaged Darfur have killed around 100 people, the U.N. refugee agency and a tribal elder said Monday, the latest surge in violence in the restive region. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia's war in Ukraine. ArrowRight Toby Harward, a coordinator with the UNHCR, said the fighting grew out of a land dispute between Arab and African tribes in the town of Kulbus in West Darfur province. Local Arab militias then attacked multiple villages in the area, forcing thousands of people to flee, he said.

Abkar al-Toum, a tribal leader in the town, said the dead included at least 62 bodies found burned after militias set more than 20 villages on fire. He said many people were still unaccounted for. He claimed the attackers gained control of water resources, aggravating the humanitarian situation in the area. He did not elaborate.

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Abbas Mustafa, a local official, said authorities have deployed more troops to the area. He said the past week of fighting displaced at least 5,000 families.

Harward called for neutral joint forces to provide protection for civilians in the area. If there is no intervention or mediation, & violence is allowed to continue, farmers will not be able to cultivate & the agricultural season will fail, he said in a series of posts on Twitter.

The news outlet Radio Dabanga reported that the fighting reached the nearby province of North Darfur, causing partial damage to two villages there.

The U.N. envoy for Sudan, Volker Perthes, said he was appalled again by the clashes in Kulbus. The cycle of violence in Darfur is unacceptable & highlights root causes that must be addressed, he said on Twitter.

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The fighting was the latest bout of tribal violence in Darfur. It came as the country remains mired in a wider crisis following an October military coup. The takeover upended Sudans transition to democracy after a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Since late last year, eruptions of tribal violence and surges in the fighting in Darfur have killed hundreds of people. In April, after a similar bout of cashes killed over 200, the Sudanese military said it deployed a brigade to the province.

However, the violence has raised questions over whether Sudanese military leaders are capable of bringing security to Darfur. In 2020, the U.N. Security Council ended its peacekeeping mission there. In recent months, local aid workers have called on the U.N. to redeploy peacekeepers to the region amid a sure in tribal violence.

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The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government in the capital of Khartoum of discrimination. Al-Bashirs government was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes and unleashing militias known as the janjaweed on civilians there  a charge it denies.

Al-Bashir, who has been in prison in Khartoum since he was ousted from power in 2019, was indicted over a decade ago by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur.

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Donna Hay, the bestselling cookbook author and television personality, says she is overwhelmed and humbled to be awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia. Hay received the honour for her service to the food and hospitality industry.

Its the icing on the cake of a long career in the food industry, no pun intended, she says.

Donna Hays cookbooks have sold more than 27 million copies worldwide.

She pioneered a simple and stylish approach to cooking in Donna Hay Magazine, a bimonthly publication that inspired a new generation of home cooks.

The magazine ran for 100 issues, between 2001 and 2018, propelling Hay from food editor-in-chief to household name. At its height, the magazine boasted a readership of more than half a million Australians, earning her an induction into the Australian Magazine Hall of Fame.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk hopes to get energy market issues on the agenda at Fridays national cabinet meeting.

The comments, made alongside her Energy Minister Mick de Brenni  who remains confident the state would avoid widespread blackouts tonight  come amid a volatile period in the national energy market and a cold start to winter.

Palaszczuk wants to discuss energy at the next national cabinet catch up. Credit:Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Palaszczuk told reporters Queensland had been doing the heavy lifting by releasing gas for domestic supply, something NSW and Victoria have refused to do.

We all need to do the heavy lifting, not just one state, so itll be something that Ill be raising  when we meet with the Prime Minister and other premiers later on this week, she said.

De Brenni said the key message was there would be adequate supply for tonight.

The market is working as it should, and I have full confidence that the [Australian Energy] Market Operator will continue to work with Queenslands publicly owned generators in the electricity system, and also continue to successfully instruct the private sector generators to supply electricity, he said.

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Breakdowns and maintenance outages have forced about one-quarter of the east coasts coal-fired power stations out of action, culminating in some generators offering less power into the market after moves by the regulator to enact a price cap and crimp profit margins.

Of the 107 power generating units across the state, five of those which are publicly owned and four which are privately owned were currently out of operation, de Brenni said.

The minister has separately confirmed that none of the states many publicly owned generators had withdrawn capacity.
It was 3am and Professor Mary-Louise McLaws was awake working, waiting for another online meeting to start with experts at the World Health Organisation, when she developed a sudden strange headache.

I was so tired, the highly respected epidemiologist said. The next day, my husband knew that I was really unwell. Thank God hes the perfect husband, and he rang the ambulance because I couldnt make any sense out of any question.

Mary-Louise McLaws with fellow infectious diseases experts Sanjaya Senanayake and Robert Booy at the National Press Club in February last year. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

When she got to the emergency department on Sydneys north shore, an MRI was arranged. Later, a doctor came to see her. McLaws took one look at her face and knew exactly what she was going to say.

The woman was gorgeous, she looked so sad. I said, Oh my God, Ive got a brain cancer, and she nodded.
Missing con artist Melissa Caddick used funds she received from victims of her Ponzi scheme in a brazen attempt to perpetrate another fraud.

On Christmas Eve, 2015, Len Wallis, who runs a high-end audio visual store, received a furious call from Melissa Caddick complaining that her familys newly installed sound system wasnt working,

Caddick refused to pay the last $12,000 of Walliss $122,000 bill.

Not only that, she told Wallis she was leaving for Aspen the day after Christmas and, because the audio wasnt working, she claimed shed been forced to cancel bookings for two tenants who planned to rent her house while she was away.
By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan's Energy Ministry has revealed the volumes of gas and oil production and export in the country during the period from January to May 2022, Azernews reports.

Gas production and export

During the first five months of the year, Azerbaijan increased natural gas production by 15.3 percent, or 2.6 billion cubic meters, compared to the same period of 2021. Thus, in the reported period, the country produced 19.6 billion cubic meters of gas.

Of the total natural gas production, the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields accounted for 5.8 billion cubic meters of gas extracted, and Shah Deniz for 10.6 billion cubic meters. In the meantime, SOCAR has produced 3.2 billion cubic meters of gas.

Moreover, in the reported period, gas sales abroad amounted to 9.4 billion cubic meters, which is 27 percent more than in the same period of 2021.

Turkey accounted for 3.6 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijans natural gas export. In addition, 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas were transported to Europe and 1.3 billion cubic meters of gas to Georgia.

It should be noted that in January-May 2022, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline system was supplied with 45 million cubic meters of gas. In the meantime, 2.4 billion cubic meters of gas were exported to Turkey through TANAP.

Oil production and export

Some 13.9 million tons of oil, including condensate, were produced in Azerbaijan in the first five months of 2022.

The Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields accounted for 8.8 million tons of oil, while Shah Deniz accounted for 1.9 million tons of condensate. SOCARs oil production, including condensate, amounted to 3.2 million tons.

During the reporting period, 11.4 million tons of oil, including condensate, were exported. The consortium accounted for 10.7 million tons of oil export, while SOCAR for 696,000.

Since the commissioning of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli and Shah Deniz fields till June 1, 2021, some 591.6 million tons of oil, including condensate, have been produced, and 591 million tons of oil, including condensate, exported. Some 553.3 million tons of crude oil were extracted from ACG, while 36.3 million tons of condensate from Shah Deniz.

Additionally, since their commissioning till June 1, 2021, some 195.9 billion cubic meters of gas were produced from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields and 168 billion cubic meters from the Shah Deniz field. Since commissioning, more than 116 billion cubic meters of gas were exported from the Shah Deniz field.

By the end of five months of 2022, Azerbaijan refined 2.3 million tons of oil.

The contract for the development of the ACG oil fields was signed on September 20, 1994, and entered into force in December. The contract for the development of the ACG block was extended to 2050 in September 2017.

The shareholders in the ACG project are BP (operator, 30.37 percent), SOCAR (25 percent), MOL (9.57 percent), INPEX (9.31 percent), Equinor (7.27 percent), ExxonMobil (6.79 percent), TPAO (5.73 percent), ITOCHU (3.65 percent), ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) (2.31 percent).

The contract on the development of the Shah Deniz gas field was signed in 1996. Shareholders of the Shah Deniz project are BP (operator, 28.8 percent), TPAO (19 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), PETRONAS (15.5 percent), LUKOIL (10 percent), and NICO (10 percent).
Allentown, PA (18103)

Today

Becoming mostly cloudy with a shower or t-storm around very late. .

Tonight

Becoming mostly cloudy with a shower or t-storm around very late.
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Reading, PA (19601)

Today

Becoming mostly cloudy with a shower or t-storm around very late. .

Tonight

Becoming mostly cloudy with a shower or t-storm around very late.
Reading, PA (19601)

Today

Mostly sunny and warm but still quite comfortable for mid-June. .

Tonight

Becoming mostly cloudy and more humid with a shower or thunderstorm possible late, especially from the Lehigh Valley points west.
Actor Peter Howe, who had a wealth of stage credits to his name, has died.

His agents announced the news today, saying: "We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Peter Howe. Pete was a great man and a much loved client of the agency for a number of years."

Howe, who trained at LIPA, was part of the original casts of a variety of shows including Matilda and The Lord of the Rings. He played the role of Samwise Gamgee in the West End and in Toronto in the latter.

He also originated the role of Iago in the West End production of Disney's Aladdin, which ran at the Prince Edward Theatre from 2016.

The stage community paid tribute to the actor, with performers Caroline Sheen and Jennie Dale all sharing the news. Howe's Matilda co-star Melanie La Barrie tweeted saying: "Okay, baby brother. Go rest."

Actor Jon Dryden Taylor said: "Pete was in the first show I did at the NT and he was the sweetest, kindest, funniest man. Very sad today."

Aladdin co-star Nathan Amzi said: "Can't put into words the devastating loss of our dear Peter Howe. A caring, talented and beautiful soul. We were lucky to work together many times and stay such good friends. Rest in Peace buddy. Love you."
The Lehman Trilogy, which won five Tony Awards last night, will return to the West End in January.

The show picked up the prestigious Best Play Award at Radio City Hall as part of its collection of prizes, with actor Simon Russell Beal also receiving his first ever Tony Award.

Written by Stefano Massini and adapted by Ben Power with direction by Sam Mendes, the show tells the tale of the powerful banking dynasty as they ascend to, before rapidly descending from, power.

It was first seen in the UK at the National Theatre before transferring into the West End. Sarah Crompton gave it a glowing review, saying "across three hours, and three acts, three magnificent actors conjure the story of the three Lehman brothers."

Set design is by Tony Award-winner Es Devlin, with costume design by Katrina Lindsay, video design by Luke Halls, and lighting design by Jon Clark. The composer and sound designer is Nick Powell, the co-sound designer is Dominic Bilkey, with music direction by Candida Caldicot, and movement by Polly Bennett. The West End director is Zoe Ford Burnett, while casting is by Jessica Ronane.

Dates, including assisted performances, casting and booking information to be announced.
This image provided courtesy of Brown-Forman Corporation and The Coca-Cola Company shows a canned Jack and Coke. Coca-Cola Co. said Monday, June 13, 2022, its partnering with Brown-Forman Corp., the maker of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey, to sell premixed cocktails. The canned Jack and Coke will be sold globally after a launch in Mexico late this year. (Courtesy of Brown-Forman Corporation/The Coca-Cola Company via AP)

Its a Jack and Coke with no bartender required.

Coca-Cola Co. said Monday its partnering with Brown-Forman Corp., the maker of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey, to sell premixed cocktails. The canned Jack and Coke will be sold globally after a launch in Mexico late this year. A zero-sugar version will also be available.

The Free Press | Newsletter 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.

This relationship brings together two classic American icons to deliver consumers a taste experience they love in a way that is consistent, convenient, and portable, said Brown-Forman President and CEO Lawson Whiting.

The move comes amid strong global sales of of ready-to-drink alcoholic blends, including hard seltzers like White Claw. Global consumption of ready-to-drink beverages jumped 26% in 2020 and 14% last year, according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, an alcohol market research firm. For comparison, global consumption of all alcohols was up 3%.

Louisville, Kentucky-based Brown-Forman has been making ready-to-drink cocktails since 1994, when it launched spiked lemonade, cola and apple juice in Australia.

Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, by contrast, has been slower to add alcoholic drinks to its portfolio of 200 brands ever since selling off a California winery it owned in the early 1980s.

Coke launched Lemon-Dou, its first ready-to-drink alcoholic beverage, in 2018 in Japan. More recently, it has launched Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, Simply Spiked Lemonade and Fresca Mixed.

We are strategically experimenting and learning in alcohol, said Khalil Younes, Cokes president of emerging categories. We are excited about the opportunities, but we also know it will require effort and patience.
BUCHA, Ukraine (AP)  The lush green beauty of a pine forest with singing birds contrasted with the violent deaths of newly discovered victims of Russia's war in Ukraine, as workers exhumed bodies from another mass grave near the town of Bucha on Kyiv's outskirts.

A member of an extraction crew works during an exhumation at a mass grave near Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, June 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP)  The lush green beauty of a pine forest with singing birds contrasted with the violent deaths of newly discovered victims of Russia's war in Ukraine, as workers exhumed bodies from another mass grave near the town of Bucha on Kyiv's outskirts.

The hands of several victims were tied behind their backs. The gruesome work of digging up the remains coincided with the Ukrainian police chief's report that authorities have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 people since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Workers wearing white hazmat suits and masks used shovels to exhume bodies from the soil of the forest, marking each section with small yellow numbered signs on the ground. The bodies, covered in cloth and dirt, attracted flies.

Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured, Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police, said at the scene. The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people, many in mass graves in the forest and elsewhere.

The horrors of Bucha shocked the world after Russian troops left. The mass grave that reporters saw Monday was just behind a trench dug out for a military vehicle. The bodies of seven civilians were retrieved. Two of the bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the knees and head, Nebytov said.

National police chief Igor Klimenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Monday that criminal investigations into the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians included some found in mass graves. He said the mass killings also were done by snipers firing from tanks and armored personnel carriers. Bodies were found lying on streets and homes, as well as in mass graves.

He didn't specify how many of the more than 12,000 were civilians and how many were military.

Complete information about the number of bodies in mass graves or elsewhere isnt known, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the American Jewish Committee on Sunday. He cited the case of two children who died with their parents in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol in a Russian bombing. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, asked:

Why is this happening in 2022? This is not the 1940s. How could mass killings, torture, burned cities, and filtration camps set up by the Russian military in the occupied territories resembling Nazi concentration camps come true?

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MORE STORIES ON THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

 The battle of Donbas could prove decisive in Ukraine war

 Mexican president slams NATO policy in Ukraine

FILE - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, center, stands on the side of a mass grave in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 28, 2022. Police are investigating the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide in the war Russia is waging, the national police chief said Monday. In the Kyiv region near Bucha, authorities showed several victims whose hands were tied behind their backs. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

 Japan philanthropic group begins fundraising for Ukrainians

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had driven the Russians out of more than 1,000 settlements since the war began, and he vowed Monday they would liberate all occupied territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

In his nightly video address, he said the battle over the Donbas will surely go down in military history as one of the most brutal battles in and for Europe.

The price of this battle for us is very high, he said. Its just terrible.

The total war front in the country, he said, is now 2,500 kilometers long (1,550 miles).

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Amnesty International, in a report Monday, accused Russia of indiscriminate use of banned cluster munitions in strikes on Kharkiv, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.

Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, has been subject to intensive shelling since Russia began attacking Ukraine.

The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationals senior crisis response adviser. "The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable for their actions, and victims and their families must receive full reparations.

The report cited doctors in Kharkiv hospitals who showed researchers distinctive fragments they had removed from patients bodies, as well as survivors and witnesses of the attacks.

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Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai told The Associated Press that fierce street fighting continued Monday in Sievierodonetsk, one of two large cities in the Donbas region still to be fully captured by Russian troops.

During the day, Haidai updated his estimate of how much of the city Russians control from 70% to 80%. Ukrainian forces are fighting the enemy block by block, street by street, house by house with a varying degree of success, he told The AP.

More than 10,000 people remain in the city. Haidai said efforts to evacuate them have been halted because Russian troops destroyed two of the three bridges connecting Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, the second city in Luhansk not yet overrun by Moscow. The remaining bridge is old, decrepit and unsafe, the governor said.

Lysychansk remains under Ukrainian control, but is regularly shelled by the Russian forces. On Sunday, Haidai said, the shelling killed three civilians in the city, including a 6-year-old boy.

Eduard Basurin, an official of the Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk, claimed Monday that Sievierodonetsk has been blocked off and Ukrainian fighters have no choice but to surrender. Haidai dismissed that as a lie.

There is no threat of our troops being encircled in the Luhansk region, he said.

Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk region said Monday that the Ukrainian forces shelled a market in the city of Donetsk, killing three civilians and injuring 18 more. It was the fiercest shelling by Ukrainian forces since 2015, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

The head of the Russian-backed government in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, also cited heavy shelling, and said on his Telegram channel that more forces  especially Russians  were being called in to help.

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The Russian military said Monday it destroyed a large number of weapons and military equipment that Ukrainian forces had received from the U.S. and Europe.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said high-precision air-launched missiles hit the supplies near the Udachna railway station in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Konashenkov also said a temporary deployment point for foreign mercenaries and a Ukrainian radar station of the Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile system were destroyed in the neighboring Luhansk region.

Two batteries of multiple-launch rocket systems were destroyed in the Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, Konashenkov said.

There was no immediate confirmation of the Russian claim from Ukraine.

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The Dutch government said it will host a ministerial conference next month on accountability in Ukraine aimed at strengthening and coordinating war crimes investigations.

Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said Monday that the international community already has taken swift action to investigate alleged atrocities in Ukraine but there is an urgent need to further coordinate existing efforts on this front."

The July 14 meeting in The Hague will be hosted by the Dutch government, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan and European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders.

Khan already has launched an investigation and deployed his largest ever team of prosecutors to Ukraine to gather evidence, including to Bucha, near the capital of Kyiv, where bodies littered the streets after Russian forces retreated early in the war.

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Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters after its inclusion of a kiss between two lesbian characters.

FILE - Peter Sohn arrives at the premiere of "Lightyear" on Wednesday June 8, 2022, at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles. The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters amid reports that the film includes a kiss between two female characters. (Photo by Richard Shotwell /Invision/AP, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  The United Arab Emirates on Monday banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters after its inclusion of a kiss between two lesbian characters.

The decision by the UAE comes as Malaysia also reportedly will ban the film, raising the possibility other Muslim-majority nations could follow suit on one of Disney's biggest animated films of the year as the film industry comes out of the depths of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, announced through its Media Regulatory Office of the country's Ministry of Youth and Culture that the film would not be opening in the country this Thursday.

The film is not licensed for public screening in all cinemas in the UAE, due to its violation of the countrys media content standards, the office said in a tweet. The office confirms that all films screened in cinemas across the country are subject to follow-up and evaluation before the date of screening to the public, to ensure the safety of the circulated content according to the appropriate age classification.

The office did not elaborate on the tweet and did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press. The tweet included an image of the film's poster, with the profile image of its main character Buzz Lightyear with a no symbol over it in red.

FILE - This image released by Disney/Pixar shows character Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans, left, and Alisha Hawthorne, voiced by Uzo Aduba, in a scene from the animated film "Lightyear," releasing June 17. The United Arab Emirates on Monday, June 13, 2022, banned the upcoming Pixar animated feature Lightyear" from showing in movie theaters amid reports that the film includes a kiss between two female characters. (Disney/Pixar via AP, File)

Movie theaters in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, had already advertised showtimes for the film. But over the weekend, a social media campaign with the Arabic hashtag Ban Showing Lightyear in the Emirates, caught the attention of conservative Emiratis. They described showing a lesbian couple on screen as being against their culture and religion.

The movie, with actor Chris Evans voicing the inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear action figure from the Toy Story films, includes a female character voiced by actress Uzo Aduba kissing her female partner.

The UAE, many other countries in the wider Mideast, is a Muslim-led nation that criminalizes same-sex relationships. The U.S. State Department warns that Islamic, or Shariah, law in the UAE can include the death penalty for same-sex conduct, while Dubai can levy a 10-year prison sentence and Abu Dhabi allows for up to 14 years.

However, such prosecutions are rarely reported and LGBTQ individuals do live in the skyscraper-studded city-state of Dubai, home to the long-haul carrier Emirates.

The $200 million Lightyear is expected to be a major draw for Disney, with analysts estimating it could gross over $100 million in its first weekend.

Studios have allowed censors to cut films in global distribution for content in the past, including in the Mideast market. Recently, Disney has faced protests from activists and its own staff over what they described as CEO Bob Chapeks slow response in publicly criticizing Florida legislation that opponents dubbed the Dont Say Gay bill.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in late March signed the bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

The moment had been earlier cut from the film but was restored after Pixar employees protested Disney's response to Floridas bill.

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The movie also may be banned in Malaysia as well. The Star, the countrys top English-language newspaper, cited an anonymous, nongovernment source as saying that Lightyear will not be shown in Malaysian cinemas. No reasons were given. A newspaper in the Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain similarly has speculated the film wouldn't be shown there.

Officials from Malaysia's Film Censorship Board and the Home Affairs Ministry, as well as The Walt Disney Co., could not be immediately reached for comment.

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Associated Press writers Malak Harb in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Federal health officials said Sunday that kid-sized doses of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccines appear to be safe and effective for kids under 5, a key step toward a long-awaited decision to begin vaccinating the youngest American children.

FILE - Syringes and colorful bandages are prepared as children from local schools prepare to get COVID-19 vaccines in Pittsfield, Mass., on Monday Dec. 13, 2021. A review by federal health officials finds that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine appears safe and effective for children under 5, the only group not currently eligible for vaccination. The review issued Sunday, June 12, 2022, by the Food and Drug Administration is a key step toward a decision on vaccinations for babies, toddlers and preschoolers, perhaps as soon as June 21. (Ben Garver/The Berkshire Eagle via AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP)  Federal health officials said Sunday that kid-sized doses of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccines appear to be safe and effective for kids under 5, a key step toward a long-awaited decision to begin vaccinating the youngest American children.

The Food and Drug Administration posted its analysis of the Pfizer shot ahead of a Wednesday meeting where outside experts will vote on whether the shots are ready for the nations 18 million babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Kids under 5 are the only group not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S.

Late last week the FDA posted a similar analysis of Modernas shots for children under 6.

If regulators clear the shots by one or both companies, vaccinations could begin as soon as next week with the drugmakers ready to rapidly ship doses ordered by the government. Parents have been pressing federal officials for months for the opportunity to protect their smallest children as more adults shed masks and abandon other public health precautions.

While only about 3% of U.S. COVID cases are in the age group 6 months to 4 years, hospitalization and death rates in that group are higher than those for older children, according to the FDAs analysis  one reason experts have said protecting this group is important.

The FDA said children who received Pfizers shots during testing developed high levels of virus-fighting antibodies expected to protect them against coronavirus. Thats the basic threshold needed to win FDA authorization. But additional testing turned up key differences, with stronger results for Pfizer.

Pfizers vaccine, given as a three-shot series, appeared 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, although that calculation was based on just 10 cases diagnosed among study participants. The figure could change as Pfizers study continues.

Modernas two-dose series was only about 40% to 50% effective at preventing milder infections, though the two companies' shots were tested at different times during the pandemic, when different variants were circulating. Moderna has begun testing a booster for tots.

On Wednesday, the FDA will ask an independent panel of vaccine experts to debate both companies data before voting. The FDA is not required to follow the groups recommendations, but the process is seen as a key step in publicly vetting the shots.

The FDA is expected to make its official decision shortly after Wednesdays all-day meeting. The next step: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends how to use vaccines, will convene its own expert panel to debate which tots need vaccinations.

Its not clear how much demand there will initially be for the shots. A recent survey suggests only 1 in 5 parents of young children would get their kids vaccinated right away. Vaccines have been available since November for older U.S. schoolchildren, yet less than a third of those ages 5 to 11 have gotten the two recommended doses, according to government figures.

For the youngest children, each company is offering different dose sizes and number of shots, beginning at 6 months through 4 years for Pfizer and through 5 years for Moderna.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech plan to offer two shots three weeks apart followed by a third at least two months later  each one-tenth the dose given to adults. Pfizer is currently the only company with a COVID-19 vaccine for older U.S. children.

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Moderna is seeking FDA clearance for two shots, each a quarter of its adult dose, given about four weeks apart.

The FDA currently allows Modernas vaccine to be used only in adults. But some countries allow full-size doses for teens and half-size shots for kids ages 6 to 11  a step the FDA also is considering.

More than 30,000 U.S. children younger than 5 have been hospitalized with COVID-19 and nearly 500 coronavirus deaths have been reported in that age group, according to U.S. health officials.

The government allowed pharmacies and states to start placing orders for tot-sized doses last week, with 5 million initially available  half made by Pfizer and half by Moderna.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
A Beausejour high schoolers speech about the heart-wrenching parallels between the Holodomor and the ongoing war in Ukraine has received high praise from the judges of a public speaking competition.

A Beausejour high schoolers speech about the heart-wrenching parallels between the Holodomor and the ongoing war in Ukraine has received high praise from the judges of a public speaking competition.

Grade 9 student Kelia Haskins was awarded the top prize in her age group for her performance of "LUkraine"  an original speech the French immersion student wrote for a school assignment  during an annual contest held by the Manitoba chapter of Canadian Parents for French last month.

Kelia Haskins, a Grade 9 student from Beausejour, won a provincial speaking competition with an original speech about the history of Ukrainian peoples' struggle for independence. (Supplied)

"My whole speech is about not letting history repeat itself," Kelia said.

The 15-year-old said she is grateful for both the opportunity to educate others on the resilience of Ukrainian people and the recognition for her work, including a medal, $200 cheque and "bragging rights."

In her 700-word address, which was delivered virtually, the ninth grader draws on stories that have been passed down from generations in her family to describe the horrors of the man-made famine that was engineered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Stalins policy decision to replace independent farms with state-controlled ones aimed to starve and disempower independent-minded Ukrainians. Upwards of four million people are estimated to have died during the Holodomor, also known as the Great Famine  the height of which spanned from 1932-33.

Kelias great-great grandmother immigrated to Canada in 1926, but she was not immune to the genocidal policy or resulting food insecurity.

"During her childhood, my great-great grandmothers family always hid their vegetables and wheat. The Soviets, who are now the Russians, have a long history of trying to starve Ukrainians Its unbelievable that the suffering she experienced is now being felt by her descendants from Ukraine in 2022," states a translated excerpt from Kelias French-language speech.

The speech details the senseless tragedies caused by past and present power-hungry politicians, but it also notes that this time around, Russia has not been able to censor its organized violence against Ukrainians, so the world is aware of whats happening in eastern Europe.

Kelias teacher at Ecole Edward Schreyer School tasked her class with preparing and memorizing oral presentations on any subject of their choice.

"The more that I learn about (Russias war on Ukraine), the more I want to be able to do," Kelia said, adding she has felt both incredible sadness and helplessness in recent months.

"Theres not much I can do here, as a high school student in Canada. Thats one of the biggest reasons I chose to write this  to spread awareness."

The ninth grader was among several students from her class who chose to enter the annual Concours Dart Oratoire competition. It took hours of practising alone in her room to memorize the speech for the provincial contest, Kelia said.

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(Kelia won the Grade 9-10 provincial CPF event, but she is not moving on to the Canada-wide competition because it is only for Grade 11 and 12 students.)

Mother Andrea Thibault said she is proud of her daughter for showing an interest in her Ukrainian roots and recognizing the current tragedy for what it is.

"Its very heartwarming when your children show interest in family history and see the parallels of how if were not careful, this stuff repeats itself," Thibault said.

Kelia said her hope is that her presentation equipped her audiences with knowledge about Ukraines history of fighting for independence and encouraged listeners to be open-minded.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
An environmental review of the Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin outlet channels megaproject has once again been put on hold, after the provincial government left out essential information in its latest submission to Ottawa.

An environmental review of the Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin outlet channels megaproject has once again been put on hold, after the provincial government left out essential information in its latest submission to Ottawa.

On June 6, the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada told the province it still needed a number of analyses, maps, figures and documents to proceed with a review of its $600-million channels project connecting Lake Manitoba to Lake St. Martin, and Lake St. Martin to Lake Winnipeg.

Last month, Manitoba submitted a package in response to the agencys 2020 requests for additional and missing information about environmental impact. However, in a letter to Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure, the agency noted 21 information requests were still outstanding.

"This is yet another example that the consultation and environmental process has been slow, lacking commitment from the province, and seems to be responsible for contributing to delays," NDP Leader Wab Kinew said in an interview Friday.

The Manitoba Opposition leader attributed the latest setback to a government "not committed to details."

"The real concern I have is for folks upstream for this project who are going to be impacted by flooding," Kinew said, noting the outlet channels are one of the provinces key flood-mitigation efforts. "Why is the government mired in delays and why does the government not appear to take the approvals process seriously?"

According to the letter, the IAAC acknowledged required environmental management plans would be submitted by the province at the end of the month. However, information previously requested in April and July 2020 was missing or incomplete in the May 2022 response.

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said the Progressive Conservative government needs to put more resources into the channel project to get it built.

"Theyre missing basic, really important stuff about water flows and engineering plans. Their report itself is referring to things and they havent attached everything," Lamont said. "This is supposed to be a really important project but for whatever reason the PCs have not been able to get it together to do it without cutting corners.

"They seem absolutely determined to do it, but theyre not determined not to do it right."

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Infrastructure Minister Doyle Piwniuk was not available for an interview Friday. According to his press secretary, the minister was in the Thompson area and in and out of cellphone range.

In a statement, Piwniuks office said the provincial and federal governments are working collaboratively through the environmental assessment process, but did not say why requested information was not included in the May submission.

Rather, Piwniuks office said the provinces response to the IAAC was a significant step toward receiving environmental approvals for the channels project.

"The Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin channels project is a priority for the province as a significant step in Manitobas long-term climate resiliency and flood mitigation plan to provide improved flood protection for Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin," the statement said.

All outstanding information is expected to be submitted by June 30, the statement noted.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
One man is dead and at least seven people were injured in a rash of bloody attacks on the weekend, as tensions escalate among drug dealers and gang members in a city already troubled by recent violence.

One man is dead and at least seven people were injured in a rash of bloody attacks on the weekend, as tensions escalate among drug dealers and gang members in a city already troubled by recent violence.

At least two people were shot and five stabbed from Friday evening to early Monday morning in addition to a slaying Sunday at a West Broadway apartment.

Winnipeg Police Service spokeswoman Const. Dani McKinnon said Monday there have been 60 shootings so far this year, according to the latest numbers available. She was unable to provide last years data for comparison.

At about 5 a.m. Sunday, police officers were called to an apartment building on the 600 block of Broadway where a man was found seriously injured.

The victim, Austin Mark Chief, 24, later died in hospital. The death is being investigated as the citys 24th homicide of the year. Police have not yet revealed how he was assaulted and whether a weapon was involved.

Mitch Bourbonniere  a community social worker with decades of experience working with at-risk youth, including the victim  said Chief was involved with gangs.

JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS I can say that the homicide is a homicide of a gang member, someone that was involved in gangs  great kid, good kid, vulnerable kid, Mitch Bourbonniere said, adding his gang involvement was low-level.

"I can say that the homicide is a homicide of a gang member, someone that was involved in gangs  great kid, good kid, vulnerable kid," Bourbonniere said, adding his gang involvement was low-level.

"Ive been working with him since he was 12 years old. Hes one of my boys, and I love him. Im still in shock."

The social worker said historical gang and drug-dealing-related tensions in Winnipeg are on the rise.

"Its intensified and will be intensified into the summer, because summer is always a spike, because of the type of desperation that is out there and the type of drugs that are out there meth and the opiates and fentanyl and the poisonings," he said.

"Its really violent out there right now Ive come to the conclusion that we are undeniably in a violent spike right now in our city."

Bourbonniere, who has deep ties to the community, said the tensions among gangs are not new but violence is increasing.

People are more desperate, more violent, theres more competition, its more serious street drugs, theres more guns  theres just more of everything.  Mitch Bourbonniere

"Its ongoing, but its escalated. People are more desperate, more violent, theres more competition, its more serious street drugs, theres more guns  theres just more of everything," he said. "Drugs, gangs and guns  those three words."

McKinnon said it would be difficult to quantify how violent this past weekend was compared to others in the recent past, as police dont always make public violent crimes because of investigative or sensitivity reasons.

"I would say (the weekend) was taxing," she said. "We had the homicide unit out, we had general patrol running roughshod to all of these calls. The tactical support unit was out and then the shootings," McKinnon said, noting that major crimes and forensics investigators were also involved.

What police call crime guns  firearms used to commit crimes  are also a concern on city streets.

"Crime guns are being used by people with gang affiliation, drug subculture, these guns are not readily available to just anybody  access comes with the criminal element," she said.

She said the weekend shootings are still being investigated and would not speculate on whether they were gang-related.

About a half-hour after homicide victim Chief was taken to hospital Sunday morning, police were called to the Health Sciences Centre, where a gunshot victim had driven himself for medical care. He had a lower-body injury but was in stable condition.

A man in his 20s had been driving on the 300 block of Sherbrook Street, also in West Broadway, when gunfire hit his vehicle, police said.

The man in his 20s had been driving on the 300 block of Sherbrook Street, also in West Broadway, when gunfire hit his vehicle, police said.

At about 1:30 a.m. Monday, another gunshot victim arrived at hospital. The 16-year-old boy had been shot in the upper body and arrived, possibly by taxi, in unstable condition.

The teenager has since been upgraded to stable condition, but could not provide many details of the shooting to investigators, police said.

On Saturday at about 4 a.m., police were called to a home on the 200 block of Burrows Avenue for a report of a stabbing.

Two suspects fired pepper spray through the homes back door, causing a man to run outside, where he was stabbed in the upper and lower body. The suspects fled.

Officers gave the victim medical care, applying a tourniquet before he was taken to hospital in stable condition.

Police dont yet know if the victim and the suspects knew each other.

Two other weekend stabbings that injured four people resulted in arrests.

On Friday, just before 7 p.m., police went to the 500 block of Flora Avenue for a reported stabbing, where they found a 36-year-old man in critical condition. Officers gave him medical care before he was taken to hospital.

On Friday, just before 7 p.m., police went to the 500 block of Flora Avenue for a reported stabbing, where they found a 36yearold man in critical condition.

At about 9:30 p.m., police found a suspect on the 400 block of Selkirk Avenue and arrested her.

Major crimes investigators believe the victim and suspect didnt know each other, but were at a home together when the victim was stabbed.

Heavenly Woodhouse, 22, of Winnipeg, is charged with aggravated assault. She remains in custody.

At 1:19 a.m. Saturday, police rushed to the 1300 block of Elgin Avenue West for another reported stabbing. When officers arrived, they found a 21-year-old man in critical condition and gave him medical care before he was taken to hospital. Two other victims, men in their 20s, were also discovered with minor injuries, police said.

Minutes later, at 1:34 a.m., police arrested two suspects on the 1200 block of Alexander Avenue.

Major crimes investigators believe the victims and the suspects didnt know each other, but had "an encounter" at a nearby park prior to the assaults.

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The critically injured victims shoes were stolen from him, police said.

Noah Logan Lavalee, 18, of Winnipeg, and a 17-year-old boy, are both charged with aggravated assault, two counts of assault with a weapon, robbery and possession of a weapon.

Both remain in custody.

Anyone with information on the homicide can call investigators at 204-986-6508. The major crimes unit, which is investigating the unsolved shootings and stabbing, can be reached at 204-986-6219. Information on any of the weekend incidents can also be shared through Crime Stoppers at 204-786-8477.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera
The Manitoba Teachers Society wants public school educators to think twice about the words they use in their classroom and swap binary terms for gender-neutral ones, among other adjustments.

The Manitoba Teachers Society wants public school educators to think twice about the words they use in their classroom and swap binary terms for gender-neutral ones, among other adjustments.

Last month, the union representing roughly 16,600 employees in the K-12 school system, published a guide on inclusive vocabulary.

"We dont expect that language-use will change like flipping a light switch," said Sherry Jones, a staff officer at MTS who worked on the project in collaboration with the unions equity and social justice standing committee.

"This is going to be a process for us, collectively, to first question the language were using and to transition to using language that is as inclusive as possible."

The 14-page document, available to all teachers free of charge, stresses the importance of terminology in creating welcoming schools for all visitors  especially members of minority groups who experience bullying and discrimination at higher rates than their peers.

Educators are urged in the guide to be careful of generalizing and stereotyping, learn about the origins of the words they use and honour every individuals preferred terms.

"Language is important when speaking about identity because it creates respect by allowing people to use language that describes their identity," states an excerpt on pronoun usage.

Proper names of nationalities, peoples and culture should be capitalized, according to the document, which encourages teachers to consider whether introducing or describing someone by their race, culture or ancestry is necessary.

The toolkit prescribes "Indigenous" rather than "Aboriginal" as the preferred way to describe people who identify as First Nations, Metis or Inuit.

As far as MTS president James Bedford is concerned, inclusive language should be built into all curriculum documents. (Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press files)

It encourages teachers to focus on individuals first  for example, writing "person with a disability" instead of "disabled person"  and discourages the use of offensive terms, such as "handicapped." Educators should also be careful about portraying a person as "courageous" or "special" because they have a disability, per the guide.

Also in the document is an acknowledgement of the various types of diverse families that exist, ranging from blended households to common-law relationships. Teachers should refer to a "birth parent" rather than "natural parent" or "real parent," it states.

The guidelines have been published in both English and French.

Jones said the toolkit is a working document that will evolve alongside language itself so that teachers can access a resource to help them model up-to-date terminology for their students.

The latest project will bolster the unions existing initiative to distribute safe space signs, which are posters displaying an intersectional LGBTTQ+ flag (a new design featuring the familiar six-colour rainbow updated with chevrons of light blue, light pink and white from the trans flag and brown and black chevrons to represent community members of colour) to teachers, she said.

So far, the feedback from members has been positive, Jones said, noting that one Winnipeg teacher has already discussed the document with students who are part of the gay-straight alliance at his school and they are discussing how to share the contents with their wider community.

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It was by happenstance that the guide was published shortly before Pride month 2022; union members passed a resolution to create it at an annual general meeting in 2020.

As far as MTS president James Bedford is concerned, inclusive language should be built into all curriculum documents.

One way educators can create spaces that are both psychologically and physically safe for everyone is by adjusting vocabulary in their assignments, Bedford said. The union leader used writing a math problem that acknowledges families can have two mothers or two fathers as one simple example.

"If were not paying attention to the language that we use. We could be sending a negative or an unsafe message unknowingly," he said.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
Unhappy campers are grappling with the reality that flooding and wet conditions have affected more than 25 provincial parks in recent weeks, with many popular trails and tenting spots off-limits indefinitely.

Unhappy campers are grappling with the reality that flooding and wet conditions have affected more than 25 provincial parks in recent weeks, with many popular trails and tenting spots off-limits indefinitely.

So far this spring, Manitoba Parks has cancelled roughly 3,000 reservations due to campsite closures. Yurts, backcountry sites and everything in between have been affected.

"You hate to see an expensive (RV) sitting in the driveway, not going anywhere," said Stacey Breton, an avid camper from Beausejour.

Breton typically goes on upwards of a half-dozen overnight trips to provincial parks with her husband and two daughters during the summertime. They set up bonfires, make smores, swim and go on nature walks together.

"Its time to get out with our family and the kids. It takes us away from work and lets us stop thinking about all of lifes troubles at home. Its relaxing for us," she said.

The mother of two has honed her booking routine over the years to secure spots at her familys favourite sites, including Whiteshell Provincial Parks Nutimik Lake and Opapiskaw campgrounds. She set her alarm for 6:30 a.m. on designated booking days this year and furiously refreshed the booking webpage as the clock struck 7 a.m.

Much to her frustration, two of her reservations at Nutimik have been cancelled and the current state of Opapiskaw (recent photos of the area show a non-existent beach that is fully underwater) makes her skeptical they will get the chance to visit in 2022.

Three weeks ago, the province declared a state of local emergency within the Whiteshell due to rapidly rising water levels in the Winnipeg River basin.

Winnipeg recorded the second-wettest meteorological spring this year, with a total of 299.2 millimetres of precipitation between March 1 and May 31. In 1896, 325.4 mm was measured.

Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Alysa Pederson said typical spring precipitation is around 110 mm, so the moisture measured around the Red River Valley this year was "pretty unprecedented."

"We had constant storm after storm after storm," Pederseon said, noting many areas across Manitoba received roughly 200 per cent more precipitation than usual.

The Breton family, including (from left) Stacey, Dustin, Maicey and Lainey. The family typically goes on upwards of a half-dozen overnight trips to provincial parks during the summer. (Supplied)

A government spokesperson confirmed that flooding and wet conditions across the province, owing to consistent Colorado lows over the last few months and a late arrival of spring, have resulted in an estimated 3,000 reservation cancellations.

Closures will start to lift as conditions continue to improve, the spokesperson said via email, adding officials are hopeful that most areas will be able to open in time for Canada Day.

Daytime visitors and campers are still barred from Whiteshell, but Provincial Road 307 recently reopened to local traffic and business in an initial reopening phase. Cottage and homeowners can also now return to Sylvia Lake, Eleanor Lake, Dorothy Lake, Nutimik Lake, Barrier Bay and Otter Falls, as water recedes.

Wildfire smoke prevented Manitobans from spending time outdoors in 2021 and this year, all of the standing water will help mosquitoes breed so clouds of insects will keep people inside, said Mira Oberman, director of communications and public programs at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Societys Manitoba chapter.

"Its really deeply heartbreaking for a lot of people who find solace and peace and fun in nature. These are beloved family memories that are not being created because we cant take our kids camping," she said.

Oberman said her organization is hopeful the province will acknowledge how critical parks are for residents physical and mental health by investing in the expansion of available campsites in the future so there are more spots available when flooding and wildfires occur.

It remains too early to determine what revenue losses could be due to campsite closures in 2022, per the province.

While Manitoba Parks has refunded some reservations, some people have chosen to switch sites to locations that remain open for visitors.

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"Most years we have to deal with campsite closures in one form or another. While this year its from wet conditions, the last few years weve had site closures and cancellations due to wildfires. Weve also had group site closures in the last two years from the pandemic," a spokesperson wrote.

Since her familys favourite sites remain inaccessible, Breton has been busy refreshing the Manitoba Parks website in an effort to scoop up other peoples cancellations in parts of the province unaffected by the wet weather.

"It is what it is," she said, when reached by phone at a campsite in Winnipeg Beach on Sunday.

"Well just have to wait for everything to clear up and hopefully, well still have a decent summer."

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
Last month, British Columbia became the first province to decriminalize small amounts of illicit drugs, in an attempt to quell a growing surge of overdose deaths. Its a legislative shift that focuses on harm reduction instead of punitive justice, and one that could make a real difference for people experiencing addiction. Unfortunately, Manitoba has no plans to follow suit.

Editorial

Last month, British Columbia became the first province to decriminalize small amounts of illicit drugs, in an attempt to quell a growing surge of overdose deaths. Its a legislative shift that focuses on harm reduction instead of punitive justice, and one that could make a real difference for people experiencing addiction. Unfortunately, Manitoba has no plans to follow suit.

Speaking to reporters, Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen said the province is focused instead on stemming the flow of illegal drugs and providing support for recovery. This stance is disappointing, but not at all surprising from a government that has been staunchly opposed to other programs, such as safe injection sites, that aim to make drug use safer.

The federal exemption for B.C.  which allows residents over 18 to possess a cumulative 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA  frames addiction as a health issue rather than a justice issue. Decriminalization is part of a larger project to improve mental health and addiction services in a province that has been experiencing an overdose crisis since 2016.

For harm-reduction advocates, B.C.s three-year exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is a step in the right direction, but it doesnt go far enough. Critics have called for higher possession thresholds, regulated supply to address toxicity and a national approach to decriminalization.

An incremental piecemeal approach is not the way to respond to a national crisis, said Courtenay-Alberni MP Gord Johns, the NDP addictions and mental health critic.

There have been more than 26,000 opioid toxicity deaths in Canada since 2016, with a 95 per cent increase having occurred amid the pandemic. Last year, approximately 20 Canadians died per day from opioid-related overdoses. Addiction knows no borders, and Manitoba isnt immune to preventable deaths.

Last year, 407 Manitobans died of overdoses, more than double the provinces historical average of 200 deaths. Yet, the matter doesnt appear pressing for provincial politicians. Based on the aforementioned data, staying the course  as Mr. Goertzen has suggested  means more people will die. Addiction shouldnt be a death sentence.

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Manitoba needs a new approach to addiction services, and a shot of urgency. There are few residential drug programs in the province and the piecemeal system can be difficult to navigate for those seeking treatment.

In 2019, some clients were waiting as long as seven months to access in-patient services. A lot of bad can happen in seven months for someone dealing with a daily drug habit. Over the last three years, the provincial government has only added 100 new recovery treatment beds  a drop in the bucket compared to the scope of the issue.

While Manitoba remains opposed to decriminalizing and destigmatizing personal drug use, perhaps change can be made at the municipal level.

B.C.s exemption has opened the door for other jurisdictions to jump on the bandwagon. Vancouver and Toronto have both applied for their own possession exemptions, and Montreals public-health director has expressed interest in decriminalization.

The topic has already been broached at Winnipegs city hall by Coun. Sherri Rollins, who has reintroduced a motion to decriminalize small amounts of illegal drugs within city limits after a similar motion ended in a tie vote in February.

Decriminalization isnt the sole solution for a complex health issue, but it is a supportive tool. Until Canada addresses addiction, treatment and prevention nationally, it will be up to individual provinces, cities and politicians to do right by the citizens whose lives are most directly at risk.
Winona County experienced 135 new COVID-19 cases from 4 a.m. June 3 to 4 a.m. June 10, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

The new cases brought the countys total up to 13,687 cases.

No new deaths were confirmed during the week time span, leaving Winona Countys death toll at 74.

As for vaccinations in the county, 64.1% of all residents have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 61.4% have received a full vaccine series and 40.6% are fully up to date with their recommended doses, as of Thursday.

A 0.1% increase was seen in both the population with at least one vaccine dose and the population who have received a full vaccine series.

In Winona County, 98% of residents 65 years old and older, 78% of residents between 50 and 64 years old, 56% of residents between 18 and 49 years old, 69% of residents between 16 and 17 years old, 70% of residents between 12 and 15 years old, and 44% of residents between 5 and 11 years old have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Winona County continues to trail the states overall vaccination rate, which was at 70.5% of all residents having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of Thursday.

For more information about COVID-19 in Winona County and Minnesota as a whole, visit health.state.mn.us.

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On a recent Saturday, hundreds of people gathered at a farm north of Reedsburg to get an up-close look at where their food comes from while eating it.

Sauk Countys 31st annual Dairy Breakfast on the Farm was hosted at The Schyvincks Hillside Haven, home to Kim and Brad Schyvinck, their three daughters, Brittany, Brianna and Brooklyn, and around 450 Holstein cattle.

In addition to the breakfast, held from 7 to 11 a.m., there was a photo area, walk-throughs of the barns and milking parlor, a farm information area, and, of course, a meal.

As guests piled in, Kim Schyvink said that her family felt a strong sense of responsibility in hosting the event.

We feel that it was our duty to invite the public to come to the farm and see the cows, see where their milk comes from, said Schyvink. For many reasons, its a duty the family takes seriously, hoping to extend their knowledge and experience to younger generations, passing down the farming tradition like a torch.

We dont realize how many of the next generations are actually getting further and further from ever being on a farm, added Schyvink. Theyre born and raised in town and they dont have the chance to come out and see what we do and where their food comes from.

Brooklyn, the youngest of the Schyvink daughters, echoed her mothers sentiments. This summer, shell be taking on the role of Marketing Intern at the farm, drawing from her education at Winona State University, where shell be entering her final year as a Marketing major come fall.

In learning about communications and public relations, Brooklyn says shes learned how to expand public knowledge about agriculture, particularly, she says, for the city folk.

Its just great to show the public that dont get to come see a farm every day, said Brooklyn. People need to know more about it and where their food comes from.

Farm animals werent the only ones working to ensure a good meal on Saturday morning, either. On Friday, Kim says volunteers, around 350 in total, began the process of slicing cheese blocks and cracking 6,300 eggs, ensuring the three food lines at the farm would be well-stocked.

On our side its a lot of cleaning to make sure that everything is in tip-top shape, said Kim. It takes a lot of volunteers.

Community support for not only the Dairy Breakfast but for the farm in general, she added, had been amazing.

Im amazed at how long the line actually has gotten, she said.

As people were ferried to and from the grassy parking area to the food lines at the 1,200-acre farm via tractor trailers and all-terrain vehicles, Brooklyn added that she took pride in the seemingly endless lines of attendees, joking that really it was she and her sisters who wanted to hold the breakfast more than their own parents.

Our parents work so hard year-round, so were like, why not show off their beautiful farm that they have.

Saturday wasnt the first time the Schyvink family had been recognized for their farming efforts. In 2005, Kim and Brad won Wisconsins Outstanding Young Farmers Award, going on to win a National Outstanding Young Farmers Award in 2006. The farm itself has stood since the early 20th century, and when Kim and Brad purchased it in 1995 they became the fourth generation in the Schyvink family to tend the land.

Overall, despite the long cleanup process ahead, Kim said she was grateful for the turnout and the opportunity to provide so many people with exposure to agriculture.

Im hoping that everybody is happy with everything today, she said.

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TOWN OF TRENTON  The owner of Frostys Fosters Animal Rescue faces several misdemeanor charges related to the treatment of the animals under her care after 19 dogs were found in crates in an unlicensed location.

According to a press release issued Monday from the Dodge County Sheriffs Office, Joseph Nicholas and Sgt. Eric Krueger were sent to investigate the animal complaint on Jan. 13 at N10006 Highway 151.

Agents of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection Division of Animal Health had already been to the property to investigate a tip about the condition of the dogs at Frosty Fosters Animal Rescue operated by Fostina M. Uelmen.

Through investigation by the Dodge County Sheriffs Office, the Division of Animal Health, working with the Dodge County District Attorneys Office, filed multiple misdemeanor charges of violations of WI Statute 951 Crimes against Animals against Fostina Uelmen on Friday.

Those charges include: failure to provide food and drink to confined animals; intentional or negligently providing improper indoor animal shelter  ventilation; improper animal shelter  space; and intentionally providing improper animal shelter sanitation standards.

Uelmen could face up to nine months in prison and a $10,000 fine for each count against her.

According to the criminal complaint:

A person who had volunteered at Frostys Foster Animal Rescue contacted the Division of Animal Health with a possible animal cruelty report. The initial report stated that there were over 20 dogs with many of them being in crates between 19 and 23 hours a day and not being able to fully stand or turn around.

When the Dodge County Sheriffs Office arrived at the location, which was a two-story farmhouse, they met with Uelmen. Uelmen admitted the location was not licensed, but stated her business at 115 Twin Lane, Beaver Dam, was licensed. Uelmen said they had moved into the farmhouse in November 2021 and that they did not have a kennel license. She had planned to build a new building but the county had denied it.

Uelmen told the officers that there were 29 dogs in the house, but many of them would be leaving soon. The dogs had come from Kentucky and Alabama. Law enforcement found 19 of the dogs in crates on the front porch. There were also six people living in the home.

Law enforcement allegedly could smell the odor of feces, urine and ammonia on the porch. There was no ventilation and the porch was around 70 degrees. All of the dogs had food and appeared to be taken care of, but the odor of the area led the officers to believe that the dogs were not being properly cared for.

One of the dogs, a black and white pitbull mix, in a bluish/gray crate with an orange strap around the crate door was covered in feces, the crate was covered in dried feces, and the crate did not appear to have been cleaned recently. Many of the crates were also not an adequate size for the dogs that were in them.

Uelmen told officers that the dogs had arrived a few days prior to the investigation and that the dogs went on multiple walks per day. She said the dogs were kept in the crates for about 18 hours out of a 24-hour day due to the temperament of some of the dogs. Uelmen said she cleaned the crates daily. Uelmen said she planned for bigger kennel runs to be built.

Uelmen said she has been in business since 2015 and there was one previous investigation into her business when someone claimed they were hoarders. She said they had no issues with the business licensing in the past and normally average five dogs and two puppies on the property.

A deputy returned on Feb. 18 and Uelmen said that she had nine dogs remaining there, and that she had not brought any new dogs into the home. Uelmen had turned over six of the dogs to the Dodge County Humane Society. Uelmen said the dogs were staying at her home because she was having a difficult time finding foster homes for some of the dogs. The Beaver Dam location was investigated as well, which consisted of a room on the back side of a home, and an odor was noticed coming from that room as well.

An initial appearance for Uelmen is scheduled on Aug. 15.

Follow Terri Pederson on Twitter @tlp53916 or contact her at 920-356-6760.

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Find out how tracking of wildfires, air quality and precipitation in certain areas has changed through these six charts and maps.
Q: Did weather forecasting play a role in D-Day?

A: Last week was the 78th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Europe that began with the landings on the beaches at Normandy. The combined land, air and sea assault of June 6, 1944, remains the largest such event in history.

The success of the invasion was extraordinarily dependent on weather conditions. More than three months before the invasion, a combined British and American forecasting team began rigorous forecast exercises designed to iron out the physical and logistical kinks of such a coordinated effort.

As June drew near, the nature of this collaboration was still problematic as the two groups employed vastly different methods in fashioning the requisite three- to five-day forecasts. The British were attempting to make such forecasts based upon the understanding of atmospheric dynamics that had grown substantially during the war. The Americans were employing a method based on a statistically based search through old weather data for historical analogues that could be used to guide the forecast.

To maintain secrecy, a large portion of the Allied fleet was squirreled far away in northern Scotland. Consequently, five days of lead time was required to mobilize these forces. Thus, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower needed to know by May 31 whether the first week of June, the prospective target for the invasion, would provide favorable weather.

The forecasters foresaw a break in that years unusually stormy late spring and suggested June 5 would work. As the day approached, the team realized that a one-day postponement would offer better conditions, prompting Eisenhower to make the fateful decision to invade on June 6, under barely acceptable conditions.

Had the Allies delayed, the combination of lunar cycle, tides and weather almost certainly would have postponed the invasion for more than a month, likely costing the effort the tremendous advantage of secrecy.

Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, are guests on WHA radio (970 AM) at 11:45 a.m. the last Monday of each month. Send them your questions at stevea@ssec.wisc.edu or jemarti1@wisc.edu.
Industrial Advisory Board appointed to guide Engineering Faculty

The Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment has established an advisory board with key industry representatives.

The Faculty hosted the newly formed Faculty Industrial Advisory Board for a two day engagement in June. The board consists of well-respected academics, renowned industry leaders as well as entrepreneurs in the engineering and building sectors.

The main objectives of the board are to advise on strategic matters such as the industrial relevance and suitability of the academic curricula across the Faculty, including suggesting new or modifying courses and degree programmes. They will also provide input on the Facultys overall strategy, including research, and foster higher levels of industry involvement. Elected for five years, they will meet once a year, assisting Faculty with identifying recent or long-term developments or concerns of industry which are likely to have a significant impact on the Faculty activities. The board will play a pivotal role in exploring ways in which the Faculty can foster a higher level of industry involvement in its degrees and research programmes, as well as to identify and advise on major strategic initiatives, such as the establishment of research centres and fund-raising initiatives. This is aligned to the Universitys commercialisation and innovation strategy.

Professor Thokozani Majozi, Dean of the Faculty, welcomed the board, noting that the Faculty looks forward to working with this structure in order to ensure that graduates of the Faculty are responsive to industrys needs.

Board Chairperson, Steve Harrison, Platform Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Murray & Roberts welcomed his appointment and dived straight into the business of the day. He listed key aspects of industry that Wits should be preparing its graduates in, namely leadership skills. He was complementary of the core skills of Wits graduates and emphasised the need for more soft skills.

"The University produces world-class engineering graduates with maths and science skills who will be expected to lead from day one, he said.

Wits alumni and CEO of Nafasi Technologies, Suzie Nkambule will be serving as Deputy Chairperson.

In between the strategic discussions during the meeting, the leaders toured key facilities in the Faculty and interacted with staff members.
High Court rules charging fees to protest is unconstitutional

CALS and the Right2Protest Project welcome a historic judgment in a matter brought on behalf of the Right2Know Campaign challenging fees charged for protests

The High Court has handed down judgment in a matter which challenged policy requiring convenors pay a fee when organising a protest in the City of Johannesburg. Judge Victor ruled this practice was unconstitutional and further ordered the Johannesburg City Manager to pay the costs of the applicants, the Right2Know Campaign, represented by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies.

On Friday 10 June, the High Court in Johannesburg delivered judgment in an application brought by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) on behalf of the Right2Know Campaign, the Gauteng Housing Crisis Committee and community leader Keith Duarte. The application challenged the City of Johannesburgs practice of charging protest convenors a fee to allow them to exercise their right to protest. The South African Human Rights Commission intervened as a friend of the court to emphasise the policy does not comply with international law.

In her judgment, Judge Victor finds that charging fees for gatherings through the Citys tariff policy is unconstitutional and this practice may no longer take place with effect from 10 June 2022. She also orders the City Manager of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality to pay the legal costs of the Right2Know Campaign. The judgment thoroughly canvases whether the policy is rational and constitutional, finding that it is not in line with either the Regulation of Gatherings Act or the Constitution and unjustifiably limits the right to freedom of assembly.

Protesting, demonstrating or picketing allows members of society to hold government and other entities to account, the judgment concludes. It is an outlet through which citizens can occupy public spaces to voice discontent and have their voices heard. The right enables participatory democracy, so to trammel on the right is to manipulate the path of democracy. Because freedom of assembly is so integral to any democratic society, its exercise cannot be limited without good reason.

CALS, the Right2Protest Project, the Right2Know Campaign and many others who have been working to counter the practice welcome this historic judgment. We send our grateful thanks to our external counsel, Mluleki Marongo, for arguing the matter.

Judge Victors ruling is a victory for the right to protest and for all those who seek to exercise it, but particularly for those who are rendered vulnerable and marginalised and cannot afford a fee, says Sithuthukile, head of the Civil and Political Justice programme at CALS. The judgment acknowledges the importance of protest in our country, both historically during the struggle against apartheid and currently in holding those in power accountable. No longer will anyone wishing to raise their voices about the social issues that affect them be obstructed by irrational fees.

Read the full judgment here

For inquiries, please contact:

From the Centre for Applied Legal Studies:

Sithuthukile Mkhize (Head: Civil & Political Justice) at sithuthukile.mkhize@wits.ac.za

Thandeka Kathi (Attorney: Civil & Political Justice) at thandeka.kathi@wits.ac.za

From the Right2Protest Project:

Omhle Ntshingila (Communications & Engagement Officer) at omhle.ntshingila@wits.ac.za or on 082 322 0512

From the Right2Know Campaign:
HONG KONG, June 12 (Xinhua)  Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday sent a congratulatory letter to Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, on the 120th anniversary of its founding.

In the letter, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, urged the newspaper to carry forward its patriotic traditions, pursue innovative development and write even more splendid chapters of the steady and sustained implementation of "one country, two systems."

For over a century, Ta Kung Pao has played an active role in the building of New China, the reform and opening-up and modernization, Xi said, adding that the newspaper has also played an active role in Hong Kong's return to the motherland as well as in maintaining Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.

In the new era, Ta Kung Pao unequivocally sent out positive notes and helped forge social consensus, thus contributing to maintaining Hong Kong's stability, enhancing exchanges between Hong Kong and the mainland, and forming a closer emotional bond of Hong Kong residents with the motherland, he said.

Xi called on the newspaper to continue to grow its influence, and contribute more to the realization of the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.

The letter was read at a ceremony held in Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon to mark the newspaper's founding anniversary.

The newspaper, founded on June 17, 1902, is the oldest Chinese-language newspaper still in circulation in the world.

In 2016, it was merged into Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group and has since accelerated its integrated development to form an all-media network based in Hong Kong with an aim of serving Chinese readers across the globe.

A ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the founding of Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, is held in Hong Kong, south China, June 12, 2022. [Xinhua/Li Gang]

A ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the founding of Ta Kung Pao, one of the oldest Chinese language newspapers based in Hong Kong, is held in Hong Kong, south China, June 12, 2022. [Xinhua/Li Gang]

(Source: Xinhua)
Welcome to the charming small nature haven of Laurel. A tiny suburb nestled in the heart of Sussex County, this location is home to one of the most historic towns in the state of Delaware. Named after the bushes and natural landscape surrounding the region, this urban location possesses many nature parks, rendering the area ecologically distinguished and diverse. Well-known for its rich history, you are sure to uncover an abundance of folklore tales and charming old buildings and monuments that each tell their own story. And while the town is well-known for its colorful historical background, it is also seeking to focus on the prosperous future and what is to come. With plenty of businesses, job opportunities, and recreational activities popping up, the area has been gaining much attention despite its small-scale demeanor. You are sure to uncover many old town secrets at this destination while enjoying your stay in a suburban, environmentally rich oasis.

Geography Of Laurel

1907 postcard showing Laurel in the Miami University Bowden Postcard Collection.

The tiny town of Laurel was founded in the 1700s, rendering it one of the oldest established locations in the US. Before its establishment, the region was inhabited for hundreds of years by local Native American tribes. Laurel is located in the southwestern area of the state of Delaware and is often recognized for its natural scenery. It is surrounded by acres of pure woodland, nature parks, and numerous ponds and creeks. The town encompasses a total area of 1.7 square miles, making it one of the smaller locations to visit in the state. However, what Laurel lacks in size, it makes up for in character. The current population of the city is around 4,608 inhabitants. This suburban town has seen a whopping increase of 23.44% in population growth over the last ten years. This means that the inhabitants that picked Laurel as their new home are slowly but surely, modernizing the location with unique retail shops, businesses, and engaging local restaurants and cafes. Traditionally a farm town, the area is known to encompass several traditional buildings initially used as farmhouses.

The 15-mile hiking trail provides a good, calming walking experience and an exceptional opportunity to observe the birds and wildlife of the area. On the outskirts of the town, you will find the famous Trap Pond State Park, a nature reserve that is very ecologically prominent and is home to several species of animals and plants. The park's main attraction is Trap Pond, a small body of water that hosts several recreational activities, like canoeing and kayaking. Fishing is prominent in the region, where anglers can be sure to find a variety of warm-water fish, like bass. And since ponds and creeks are distinguished in the area, you will find a variety of them all around. Broad Creek, Chipman's Pond, Records Pond, Tussock Pond, and Portsville Pond are some of the most notable.

History Of Laurel

This stunning small town has an extensive history that dates back many years. The Nanticoke Indian Tribe had inhabited the area prior to the eighteenth century, when the first American colonizers were interested in the area. The settlers established homes in the region around the late 1600s, and Laurel was officially founded in 1683. The government of Maryland, which was the first to claim the plot of land as their own, fixed a different location for the Native Americans living in the area in 1711. It took a mere 50 years for all the natives of the region to resettle in other parts of the US, primarily relocating to West Pennsylvania. The town's name was picked due to the abundance of a local bush that grew in the area called laurel bush.

The government officially registered Laurel as a legitimate town on April 13th, 1883. In our present day, this tiny location is recognized chiefly for being the town with the most significant number of historic buildings and monuments in the country, exhibiting a hefty 800 renowned edifices. Some of these buildings are a notable old church built in the 1800s in the middle of Trap Pond and another church called Old Christ Church, located amid the breathtaking Broad Creek.

This enchanting region in Delaware was also previously well-known as a potato farming town. Many of the farms once used in potato farming are now part of the National Historical Record. Some of these are Collins Potato House, Chipman Potato House, Chipman's Mill, Philips Potato House, Wright Potato House, and many more.

Economy Of Laurel

When the town was first established in 1883, it was considered to be one of the wealthiest locations in the US. Boasting several successful local businesses, prominent potato farming, and about 2,500 residents, the area was important in its time.

In recent years, the municipality has been finding new ways to provide job opportunities for unemployed residents. Their endeavors have proven fruitful, with a job market increase of about 1.3%. However, with the dwindling of the potato industry and the location being far from the major cities that provide essential job opportunities, the town's prosperity had come to a halt. The area foresees a job opportunity increase of 37.5% in the upcoming ten years, which is significant compared to the national percentage of 33.5%.

Demographics Of Laurel

The town of Laurel is racially diverse. It contains a predominantly Black population (51.6%), with White (31.6%) and Hispanics (12.4%) coming in second and third place. Other minor nationalities include Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and multiracial. This small town is also the home of many residents born outside the US. On average, 14.4% of residents are foreign-born, rendering it a high number in comparison to the national average of 13.7%. The average household income for residents of this charming town is $45,561, with a poverty rate of 33,42%.

Attractions In Laurel

Despite its tiny stature, there are many things to do in Laurel that encourage tourists to visit. With several attractions that surround the concept of fun in the outdoors, you are sure to find something for your taste. Here is a list of entertaining activities that you will find in Laurel.

Broad Creek Bike and Brew: Decorated with several waterways and bodies of water, there are plenty of stunning natural views to see in this popular destination. It also houses many attractions and activities, like The Laurel Heritage Museum, The Cook House, Historic Bethel, Bethel Museum, and Old Christ Church.

Laurel Heritage Museum: Once a historical trainway that saw many people come and go, it is now a museum that houses an extensive collection of documents and objects that gives visitors a glimpse at the region's vast history. Once called Laurel Train Station, this was also the historic trainway used to transport several World War II members out of the town to serve in the military.

Dutch Country Market: An enormous Amish market of about 5,700 square feet. They sell many homemade goods, baked delicacies, and sandwiches handmade by the local community.

Other notable local attractions are the Laurel Junction, Trap Pond State Park, and Party at the Pond.

Laurel, Delaware, might be a small town, but it conceals a big heart. While the city of Laurel is without a doubt tiny in size, it contains many things that make up for its trivial proportions. For the nature enthusiast, this compact location is a perfect getaway from the big metropolitan cities, where they can revel in the beauty of its natural wonders. The residents of Laurel are proud to call themselves home, and their community is growing stronger every year, with many prosperous years to look forward to.
Weather Alert

...EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM CDT THURSDAY... * WHAT...Heat index values 102 to 107 degrees Thursday afternoon. * WHERE...Portions of southwest Indiana, southeast Missouri, western Kentucky and southern Illinois. * WHEN...Until 8 PM CDT Thursday. * IMPACTS...Extreme heat and humidity will significantly increase the potential for heat related illnesses, particularly for those working or participating in outdoor activities. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Thursday will make 4 to 5 straight days of prolonged heat and humidity which can have cumulative effects to those susceptible to heat related illness. The heat looks like it will last through Friday most areas, so the Warning or an Advisory will likely be added in upcoming forecasts. Some relief is on the way for the weekend. However, next week the heat returns. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air-conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors. Young children and pets should never be left unattended in vehicles under any circumstances. Take extra precautions if you work or spend time outside. Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Wear lightweight and loose fitting clothing when possible. Anyone overcome by heat should be moved to a cool and shaded location. Heat stroke is an emergency! Call 9 1 1. &&
A view from Wrexhams Member of Parliament

Wrexham.com has invited Wrexham & Clwyd South Members of Parliament and Assembly Members to write a monthly article with updates on their work in their respective Parliaments and closer to home  you can find them all here.

Today, Wrexhams MP Sarah Atherton writes

When I was elected in 2019, I pledged to put Wrexham on the map. I am thrilled that the Queen and the UK government have recognised Wrexhams potential, ambition, and contribution to our Union. Gaining city status will amplify local pride and has the potential to attract inward investment and local infrastructure. I am excited to embrace all the opportunities that will come Wrexhams way. This is not a time for people to suppress Wrexham, its now time to celebrate Wrexham.

Since we left European Union, the funding Wales receives from the EU is tapering down whilst funding from the UK Government is increasing. To best ensure this money is spent where it is needed, it is being allocated directly to Wrexham Council under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. The Council will receive 22.7m and will decide where it is spent. To make sure your opinions are considered, I went on a city-centre walkabout asking businesses and residents what they want for Wrexham. Having had numerous insightful conversations and suggestions, I met with the Chief Executive of Wrexham Council, to ensure that my constituents voices are heard. I want to hear from you! If you have not done so already, please fill out my Shared Prosperity Fund survey on my website to give your view.

Last month, Rishi Sunak MP, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, set out a generous package of cost-of-living support, including 9 billion worth of targeted support to the most vulnerable households. This means that the lowest income-households in Wrexham will receive a one-off payment paid directly to your bank account of 650, Wrexham pensioners will receive a one-off payment of 300, for those who receive disability benefits in Wrexham will be given an extra 150 and Wrexham residents will be eligible for the doubled October 200 rebate to 400.

Alongside this, the Welsh Government will receive 25 million for the Household Fund in Barnett Consequentials. Whilst the Welsh Government is distracted by pushing for plans to increase the number of politicians in the Senedd and failing to comprehensively roll out the previous tax rebate made available by UK Government funding, I will ensure that this extra 25 million is spent effectively and on those that need it most.

It was my pleasure to welcome female veterans to Parliament and host the launch of Salute Her, part of Forward Assist, which will become the first female-only veteran charity in the UK. As a patron of both Forward Assist and Salute Her, I am incredibly proud of the work that Salute Her is doing to make sure that women veterans receive the specific support available to ensure a smooth transition to civilian life.

I also know how anxious Wrexham residents are about delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Following a visit to the charity, Maggies in Clatterbridge, Im pleased to report plans to build a Maggies for North Wales is proceeding at pace. Ill continue to support the Maggies team and push for this to happen.

It was great to join the Wrexham Litter Pickers where we collected 34 bags of litter from across Wrexham. They are a true credit to our community, but we should all make a conscious effort to keep our green spaces clean. Just in case you werent aware, you can still nominate Community Payback projects in Wrexham  we have 8 million hours to use and need your help! Having been contacted many times about damaged railings and litter in Wrexham, I know an extra pair of hands would be hugely beneficial. Search Nominate a Community Payback project to submit your nomination.

As always, if there is anything I can do to help, please dont hesitate to contact me by email on sarah.atherton.mp@parliament.uk

Wrexham.com has invited Wrexham & Clwyd South Welsh and UK Parliament representatives to write a monthly article with updates on their work and closer to home  you can find them all here.
Olympian Colin Jackson to remain as Chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University

Wrexham Glyndwr University has confirmed that former Olympic athlete Colin Jackson CBE will continue with his role of Chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University until 2025.

Appointed in January 2019, Colin is the universitys fourth Chancellor and was officially welcomed into the role at a ceremony held a month later,

The Chancellor is a figurehead and acts as an ambassador for the university and its staff and students, attending a number of important duties  including the universitys graduation ceremonies, which Colin recently attended, and representing the university at various events.

I am thrilled to be asked to remain as the universitys Chancellor for another three years, said Colin.

Its a role Ive really enjoyed having and hopefully I can make up for lost time over the next three years after the pandemic restricted what Ive been able to participate in for the last two year, except for online events.

Wrexham Glyndwr is a fantastic university and continues to achieve some really great things, including being rated second in the UK for quality of teaching in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022 and rising 41 places in The Guardian University Guide 2022 league table.

Plus something close to my own heart, retaining the top spot for social inclusion in England and Wales.

Its really exciting times for the university and Wrexham as a whole and Im very much looking forward to spending more time in Wrexham again over the next three years.

Wrexham Glyndwr University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Maria Hinfelaar said: Were delighted that Colin will remain as our Chancellor; hes had a very positive impact on students and staff during his time with us so far.

We look forward to working closely together over the next few years, which are a key time for Wrexham  having just achieved city status  and our own Campus 2025 strategy to upgrade our facilities which is progressing rapidly.
Idaho police in the town of Coeur d'Alene arrested 31 people Saturday linked to the white nationalist group Patriot Front. The arrested men were spotted gathering where the North Idaho Pride Alliance was holding its annual Pride in the Park event to celebrate gay and lesbian people.

Members of the fascist Patriot Front group demonstrate near the National Archives in Washington, Friday, Jan. 21, 2022. [AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana]

A bystander reportedly saw the men entering a U-Haul truck and called the police, saying that it looked like a little army was loading up into the vehicle. According to the local police officials, officers intercepted the truck and arrested the men inside. They have been charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor charge.

The men arrested were wearing white balaclava masks and apparel identifying themselves as Patriot Front members, including matching insignia and an informal uniform of khaki pants, navy blue shirts, and beige hats.

They were also found with shin guards, shields, riot gear and at least one smoke grenade.

Local police issued a statement declaring the evidence was clear that the men were present with the intention to riot throughout the town and disrupt the pride parade. According to Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White, It is clear to us based on the gear that the individuals had with them, the stuff they had in their possession, the U-Haul with them along with paperwork that was seized from them, that they came to riot downtown.

The paperwork mentioned was a seven-page detailed operational plan describing the Patriot Front members plan of attack. A brief excerpt provided by White described a column forming on the outside of the park, proceeding inward, until barriers to approach are met and once an appropriate amount of confrontational dynamic has been established the column will disengage and head to Sherman [Avenue].

White continued that the plans were similar to an operations plan that a police or military group would put together for an event and that they entailed rioting at several places around downtown, not just in the park where the pride parade was located.

The emphasis on creating a confrontational dynamic is a critical element of the Patriot Fronts strategy. According to the Anti Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Patriot Front operates by creating disruptive and confrontational scenarios which they record and upload on social media to be used as recruitment propaganda.

The Southern Poverty Law Centers profile of Patriot Front notes: When [Patriot Front] orchestrates protests or public appearances, they are typically tightly choreographed and scripted to maximize propaganda value. Virtually all its activities are undertaken with propaganda value in mind.

This propaganda is intended to build a fascist movement based on the premise that American democracy has failed and that it must be replaced with a fascist dictatorship. This dictatorship is envisioned to protect pan-European identity and prevent the replacement of whites with foreigners.

The plans were reportedly found on Thomas Rousseau, the founder and leader of Patriot Front, which broke away from the neo-Nazi Vanguard America after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Rousseau led a group of Vanguard America members during the Charlottesville rally, which included Alex Fields Jr., the man convicted of killing counter-protester Heather Heyer by ramming the crowd opposed to the neo-Nazis with his car.

Rousseau, who is from Virginia, was one of nearly all members who traveled from out of state to riot at the pride parade. The 31 fascists came from at least 10 other states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia and Arkansas. Only one of the men arrested was from Idaho.

Several other fascistic elements gathered at the pride event on Saturday. According to NPR, there was a gathering of Christian nationalists affiliated with the America First movement less than a mile from the event. Additionally, a motorcycle riding club event encouraged its members to arm themselves with firearms and confront the pride parade.

At the parade, several men observed to be brandishing handguns and long guns walked around and within the event, and one armed individual unfurled a flag with an offensive message accusing LGBTQ people of harming children. Reports have also noted some individuals carrying bear spray at the protest.

Idaho does not have any restrictions on the open carrying of firearms or items like bear spray. No confrontations with these individuals were reported by police or parade-goers.

Prior to the arrest of the Patriot Front members, there were two other arrests of two men who had brought sound amplification devices to protest the parade. They were arrested for disorderly conduct and trespassing. Both men had traveled from Oregon.

The highly coordinated plans of Patriot Front and the mobilization of local fascistic elements to disrupt and intimidate members of Idahos LGBTQ community is a dangerous development in the fascist movement in the United States.

Physical assaults on Pride events have become an increasingly common occurrence around the world. In Croatia last year, attendees at a Pride march in Zagreb were assaulted by fascistic protesters for the first time in 10 years. And in Ukraine and Poland there have been multiple events in recent years targeted by openly fascist organizations for physical violence. At an event in Odessa in 2020, Pride marchers were pelted with eggs and attacked with pepper spray by members of the Traditions and Order neo-Nazi group.

The number of hate crimes committed against LGBTQ people in the United States has risen over the past decade, but such highly coordinated attacks on entire protest events have so far been uncommon. For a fascist organization to plan a military-style raid on a Pride event is a major warning sign of how aggressive fascist organizations have become.

Another anti-LGBTQ attack occurred on the same day in Dallas, Texas when fascists gathered from across the country at a drag queen brunch event hosted at a local gay bar. The fascists were reported to mostly be young men affiliated with the America First movement and the notorious fascist Nick Fuentes.

Attendees were bombarded with insults and derogatory language as they attempted to enter the building and as they walked back to their cars. The attack was quickly picked up by fascistic Republican politicians and media figures from around the country, who showered the protesters in praise and vowed to take legislative action against what Texas state Representative Bryan Slaton called a disturbing trend in which perverted adults are obsessed with sexualizing young children.

While these groups are becoming more aggressive, particularly with the support of high ranking government officials and politicians, it is noteworthy that Patriot Front could only gather a single person from Idaho. These groups remain small, relying on people to travel cross country to protest Pride events.

There is little support for fascist violence in the American population, but as the Republican Party increasingly embraces these fascistic elements and as the Democratic Party does nothing to challenge them, such groups are increasingly emboldened to commit violence against oppressed groups and the working class as a whole.
Facing an international diplomatic outcry, Indias Narendra Modi-led Hindu supremacist Baratiya Janata Party (BJP) government has cynically tried to distance itself from hateful comments denigrating the Prophet Mohammad made by two top BJP officials.

The BJP is engaged in continual anti-Muslim incitement and provocations. This has been true ever since it came to power with Modi at its head in 2014. However, the communal incitement has reached a qualitatively new level since the BJP won a second majority in May 2019, and under conditions where India has been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic and roiled by its economic fallout and that of the US/NATO-instigated war with Russia over Ukraine.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi [Photo by Narendra Modi Facebook page]

If in this case the Modi government has made a show of disciplining BJP officials who deliberately sought to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment, it is only because their remarks attracted the attention and condemnation of more than a dozen Muslim states, including Indonesia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

During a television debate on May 27, BJP national spokesperson Nupur Sharma denigrated the Prophet Mohammad, including by suggesting he was a pedophile. The BJPs Delhi media cell head, Naveen Kumar Jindal, hastened to promote Sharmas remarks on Twitter, while adding further derogatory comments.

As intended, the remarks sparked angry protests by Muslims in many parts of India. The BJP then responded with threats and thuggery.

When Muslims held a protest in Kanpur, a major industrial city in north India, after Friday prayers June 3, the Uttar Pradesh BJP state government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath came down heavily on the participants, arresting dozens and lodging complaints against hundreds more. Adityanath, a mahant or Hindu high priest, is under criminal indictment for inciting violent attacks on Muslims prior to Modi anointing him the chief minister of Indias most populous state.

Two days later, on June 5, when some Muslims in Kanpur called for a bandh (or general shutdown) on a day that Modi was to visit the city, they were set upon by Hindu extremist thugs mobilized by the BJP and its Hindu supremacist allies. Communal clashes ensued in which more than 30 people, including some police personnel, were injured. Nobody could identify those who initiated the violence, Hayat Zafar Hashmi, a local Muslim leader who previously led protests against the Modi governments anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) told the Hindu. 'It seems, he added, they were outsiders who were called in to create trouble.

Police arrested dozens of people, all or almost all of them Muslims, during and after the communal violence, including Hashmi. A senior police official, no doubt on the orders of Chief Minister Adityanath, vowed to bulldoze buildings from which police attacking Muslim protesters had been pelted with stones.

While greenlighting the state and goon violence targeting Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, the Modi government felt compelled to engage in some damage control to staunch the international outcry over the BJP officials communalist slurs that had triggered the Kanpur protests.

More than a dozen Muslim countries have publicly condemned the remarks, with many also summoning the local Indian ambassador to receive a more extended rebuke.

Especially concerning to New Delhi was the response of the Arab Gulf states. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are major suppliers of oil to India, which depends on imports for more than 80 percent of its oil. Qatar, which was the first state to condemn the BJP officials comments, provides 40 percent of Indias LNG (liquefied natural gas) imports. India also receives billions annually in remittances from Indian migrant workers in the Gulf States. Finally, in keeping with New Delhis ever expanding strategic alliance with Washington, the Gulf states are increasingly important Indian military-security partners.

Thus, some nine days after Sharma had slurred the Prophet Mohammad and Jindal had promoted her comments, the BJP took action against them. Sharma, till now a rising star in the BJP whose tweets were followed by Modi and other top cabinet ministers, was suspended from BJP membership pending further inquiry. Jindal was expelled.

The disciplinary action was announced shortly after BJP General Secretary Arun Singh had issued a phony exculpatory statement. It scrupulously avoided any mention of the BJP officials slurs against the founder of the Muslim faith and the controversy they have provoked, but did assert the BJP respects all religions and strongly denounces insult of any religious personalities of any religion. The statement went on to invoke the Indian constitutions guarantee of the right of all Indians to practice the religion of their choice, adding the BJP is committed to making India a great country where all are equal and everyone lives with dignity.

The hypocrisy and cynicism of the Modi and his BJP have no limits.

The BJP has been associated with communalist agitation and violence against Christians, Dalits and especially Muslims throughout its entire history. It is the political arm of the shadowy Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a self-professed organization of Hindu cultural revival, assertion and self-defense. Many BJP leaders and cadres, including Modi, are lifelong RSS members, and the BJP leadership regularly confers with the RSS high command about government policies and the allocation of cabinet portfolios.

The BJP espouses Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist doctrine developed and propounded by V.D. Savarkar, who as head of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha in the late 1930s publicly commended Hitlers persecution of the Jews as a model the Hindu nation should follow in dealing with the anti-national Muslim minority.

Modi himself first came to national prominence for his role in instigating and facilitating the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, which left some 2,000 people, the vast majority of them poor Muslims, dead and rendered hundreds of thousands homeless.

The communalist provocations carried out by the BJP national and state governments or by their Hindu right allies, with either the ruling partys open or tacit support, during the eight years Modi has served as prime minster are far too numerous to detail here.

They include:

*anti-cow slaughter laws that deprive poor Muslims and Dalits of a cheap source of protein and in some cases their livelihoods;

*the encouragement of communalist vigilante attacks in the name of cow protection or countering love jihad (i.e. inter-faith relationships);

*the discriminatory 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act;

*and the stripping of Jammu and Kashmir, Indias lone Muslim majority state, of its special autonomous status and its reduction to a mere Union territory, placing it under indefinite central government trusteeship.

Modi and his BJP have ratcheted up their communalist offensive as the social crisis has deepened and opposition among Indias workers and rural toilers to mass joblessness and soaring prices, the governments ruinous response to the pandemic, and its pro-investor policies has swelled.

The BJPs transparent aim is to divert the mounting social anger, anxiety and frustration into communal strife and to mobilize its Hindu supremacist activist base as shock troops against the working class.

This is taking ever more ominous and lawless forms. Modi and his chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, have not breathed a word in condemnation of recent speeches by Hindu sadhus (holy men) with well-documented ties to BJP leaders that have called for the extermination of Muslims. Meanwhile, BJP state and local governments are now making it standard practice to order the bulldozing of the homes and shop of Muslimsboth those they accuse of participating in antigovernment protests and those they claim are illegal immigrants.

In an editorial last week, the Times of India was forced to concede that the relentless aggressiveness of the Hindu Right is unprecedented and that the Modi government, when not itself leading the charge, is encouraging and emboldening fascistic forces:

Dangerously divisive rhetoric and state/police actions and responses that would have been rare even a few years ago have become so frequent as to almost lose their power to shock. Shrill identity politics of all varieties is not new in India. What is new is the relentless aggressiveness of the Hindu Rightand what has been absent is any critique from central BJP or government leadership, even when some of this aggression turned particularly nasty.  Bulldozing houses, slapping sedition charges on history professors and university students, evicting hawkers selling non-vegetarian food, creating controversies out of halal meat and namaz (Muslim prayer) venues, not to mention strange lower court receptions to these-mosque-is-a-temple petitionsall of these institutional responses have been encouraging signs for TV and Twitter right-wing loudmouths.

What the Times of India would not and could not say is that the entire Indian ruling class, its parties, state institutions, and media are complicit in the rise of the Hindu supremacist right.

Modi and his BJP were propelled to power in 2014 by big business to accelerate the capitalist restructuring of India so as to increase worker exploitation and more aggressively assert its great-power aspirations on the world stage. Eight years on, they still see the would-be Hindu strongman Modi as their best bet to ruthlessly pursue their interests in the face of mounting popular opposition and global economic and geopolitical turbulence without precedent since the Great Depression and the Second World War.

The courts have repeatedly aided the BJP and the Hindu right in pursuing their communalist agenda. The most notorious example of this is the November 2019 Supreme Court judgment that ordered the Modi government to fulfill the longstanding demand of the Hindu right for the building of a temple to Lord Ram on the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The mosque was razed in December 1992 at the instigation of the top BJP and RSS leaders and in direct defiance of the Supreme Courts own orders.

The Congress Party, and the various other parties promoted by the Stalinist CPM and CPI as bulwarks of secularism, all adapt to, and connive with, the Hindu right and/or counter it with another variant of casteist, ethno-nationalist or religious-based communalism. Currently the Congress Party, which even sections of the press criticize for embracing Hindutva-lite, is a junior partner in a coalition government in Indias second most populous state, Maharashtra, which is led by the BJPs erstwhile longtime political ally, the fascistic Shiv Sena.

On Friday, when protests over the BJP officials communalist slurs again erupted in many parts of India, the Jharkhand government, in which the Congress is a coalition partner, ordered a brutal police crackdown which resulted in the deaths of two people, including a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the head.

Struggles across India against jobs cuts, privatization, contract labour, dilapidated public services and the lack of PPE amid the pandemic are demonstrating the objective unity of the working class across all communal, caste and ethnolinguistic divides. It is this force, armed with a socialist program, that can and must become the spearhead of the struggle to defend and secure the democratic and social rights of working people in opposition to the Modi government, the Hindu right, and all the decrepit, communally-infested institutions of the Indian bourgeoisie.
During its first three weeks in office, Australias Labor government has responded with a quiet hostility to demands that it defend Julian Assange.

From left: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the Quad leaders summit at Kantei Palace, Tuesday, May 24, 2022, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Labor ministers have not mentioned Assange, unless directly questioned. And in response to those inquiries, they have made plain that they will continue the bipartisan complicity of the political establishment and state apparatus in the persecution of an Australian journalist and citizen.

This is all the more criminal, given the fact that Assanges circumstances are more dire than ever before. After over a decade of detention, his health is in a parlous state, expressed most alarmingly in a minor stroke last October.

Assange is also closer to extradition to the US than he has ever been. This week, British Home Secretary Priti Patel is due to reveal whether she will sign an extradition order, after the UK Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal for Assange.

Patels decision is a formality, given the intense hostility of the British government to Assange, and its central role in his persecution. There is no guarantee that the British courts will allow the final avenue of appeal available to the WikiLeaks publisher within the UK legal system. He faces the prospect of either years more in the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, if that appeal is heard, or a speedy rendition to the US, where he faces 175 years in prison for exposing American and allied war crimes.

Under these conditions, there have been calls for the Labor government to act, including from well-known journalist John Pilger and other public figures. Ithaka, a film chronicling the fight by Assanges family for his freedom was shown on the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) last week.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has mentioned Assanges plight exactly once since assuming office. Late last month, Albanese was asked whether he had raised Assanges plight with his persecutor-in-chief Joseph Biden, when they met at a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue summit in Tokyo. Was it Labors position that the attempted extradition and prosecution of Assange should be ended, a reporter asked.

Albaneses entire response was. My position is that not all foreign affairs is best done with the loudhailer. It was the most the Labor leader has said about Assange this year, and yet he could still not bring himself to say the WikiLeaks founders name or express even token concern over his plight.

The response was a cynical dodge. While saying absolutely nothing, Albanese was leaving open the possibility of his supporters asserting that, just maybe, he had made private representations to Biden on Assanges behalf.

Labors position, however, was made crystal clear in comments on ABC radio by Foreign Minister Penny Wong on June 3. Asked the same question as Albanese, Wong replied: What Id say is the Australian government, actually under both parties, has consistently raised the issues associated with Mr Assange and his incarceration with the US and the UK.

In other words, Labor will do nothing differently to its Liberal-National Coalition predecessor. Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison infamously smirked and said it was time to face the music when Assange was brutally arrested by the British police in April 2019.

The Morrison government consistently rejected demands to use its diplomatic and legal powers to prevent Assanges extradition and secure his freedom. Instead it offered worthless consular assistance, which amounted to monitoring the decline of Assanges health and the progress of his incarceration, from the standpoint of collecting intelligence and limiting the political fallout from the publishers extradition or death.

To the extent that there are illusions that Labor has ever had a different policy to the Coalition on Assange, it is the product of a misinformation campaign. This has been spearheaded by the Bring Assange Home cross-party parliamentary grouping and several of its Labor members.

While its ostensible purpose is to secure Assanges freedom, the grouping has conducted virtually no activities over the past two-and-a-half years. Its real function has been to promote the fraud that there is a constituency for democratic rights within parliament, when in fact there is none.

The Labor members of the grouping have played a particularly cynical role. The most vocal of them has been backbencher Julian Hill, who has functioned as a waterboy for Albanese. For two years, he denounced the Coalition government for refusing to defend Assange. At the same time, he orchestrated several stunts, aimed at falsely indicating that Labor would act to free the WikiLeaks founder, when it had no intention of doing so.

In February 2021, Albanese was asked his position on Assange at a closed-room meeting of Labors parliamentary caucus. He purportedly replied: Enough is enough. I dont have sympathy for many of his actions, but essentially I cant see what is served by keeping him incarcerated.

The first three words of Albaneses response were immediately relayed to the press, and hailed by Hill and others as a major step forward. There is no independent evidence that Albanese actually made the comment, and he has never repeated it publicly. Even if he did make the statement, it committed Labor to nothing.

Then in April 2021, Hill declared that Labor had passed a motion at its national conference, defending Assange. Labor has made our position clear now, he said. The policy position of the leader of the opposition, the alternative Prime Minister Albanese, was for the prosecution of Assange to be dropped.

When the WSWS asked Hill for a copy of the motion, which had appeared nowhere online, its contents belied his claims. The motion merely stated: Labor believes that the Australian government should be doing everything necessary to ensure that Mr Julian Assange is treated fairly and humanely. It extraordinarily hailed the British courts, which have kept Assange imprisoned in a maximum-security prison without charge, for their priority given to the health and welfare of Mr Assange.

Despite Hills antics, Wong repeatedly made clear in the lead up to the May 21 election that Labors position was indistinguishable from that of the Coalition. As the Australian Associated Press reported, in response to the UK Supreme Court refusing to hear Assanges appeal in April, Wong said his extradition to the US was ultimately a decision for the UK home secretary.

In reality, the Australian government has a clear legal responsibility to use its powers to free a citizen being persecuted abroad. Australian governments deployed their diplomatic and legal powers to secure the release of journalist Peter Greste from an Egyptian prison in 2015; filmmaker James Ricketson from Cambodian detention in 2018; and academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert from Iranian incarceration last year.

Last week it was revealed that Myanmars military junta would proceed with a frame-up trial of Australian economist Sean Turnell. In response, Albanese did not mumble about the inadvisability of using megaphones. Instead, he declared: Sean Turnell should be released. That is the governments position. We will continue to make strong representation on that basis.

But Assanges persecution is being spearheaded by American imperialism, not the tinpot dictatorship in Myanmar.

Labors hostility to Assange has always been bound up with its support for US-led militarism. In 2010, when Assange was denounced as a hi-tech terrorist by then US Vice President Joe Biden and others, Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard falsely claimed that Assange was guilty of crimes in Australia, threatened to illegally cancel his passport, and pledged to aid the American intelligence agencies in their campaign to destroy WikiLeaks.

The next year, in 2011, Gillard signed up to the US pivot to Asia, a vast military build-up throughout the region, aimed at preparing for war against China.

A decade on and the war drive is far more advanced. Labor is fully committed to the confrontation with China. Albanese and Wongs first action in office was to attend the Quad summit in Tokyo, where they received their marching orders directly from Biden. Under these conditions, to imagine that Labor will demand Assanges freedom is a hopeless delusion.

As the Socialist Equality Party has insisted, the defence of Assange is inextricably tied to the fight against war, and the accompanying turn by the ruling elites to dictatorial forms of rule. The emerging struggles of the working class, in Australia and internationally, are the only viable basis for the fight for democratic rights and against the war policies of the major powers.

A Labor government would only fulfil its obligations to Assange if it were compelled to do so by a mass movement from below.
A death sentence against Algerian whistle blower and activist Mohamed Benhalima was announced by an Algerian military court, only two months after Spains PSOE (Socialist Party)-Podemos government denied his asylum application and deported him. Benhalima was made aware that the death penalty had been handed down against him on May 8, although his lawyers report that the sentence was imposed in absentia, while Benhalima was still in Spain.

Benhalima, a former officer, fled Algeria for Spain in 2019, after learning that his name was on a list compiled by the Algerian authorities of servicemen wanted for their involvement with the Hirak movement. He had taken part in mass anti-government protests triggered in February 2019 by former President Abdelaziz Bouteflikas announcement of his fifth presidential candidacy. While the demonstrations forced Bouteflika out of office in April of that year, the military regime he headed remains in power.

Algerian whistleblower Mohamed Benhalima smiling Algerian whistleblower Mohamed Benhalima at the foreign internment camp in Valencia, Spain [Photo by Adrian Vives]

In Spain, Benhalima built a reputation on social media as an opponent of the Algerian military regime. He amassed more than 345,000 followers on his Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages, where he posted videos exposing and denouncing corruption in the Algerian armed forces.

Benhalimas deportation is a damning indictment of Spains nominally progressive PSOE-Podemos government. It is a blatant violation of international law, which forbids deporting individuals to a country where they risk suffering torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The PSOE and Podemos are sending an unmistakable signal that they will act brutally to avert any challenge from below to the existing social order.

According to Amnesty International, Benhalima entered Spain on September 1, 2019 on a Schengen Zone visa, applying for political asylum in February 2020. He was given a temporary residence permit, which he later renewed, making it valid until November 2021. However, in August 2021, he received summons to a police station in Bilbao, Spain. Fearing deportation back to Algeria, Benhalima fled to France, but was later arrested and sent back to Spain.

On March 14, 2022, Benhalima was detained by Spanish authorities. They filed an expulsion order against him for allegedly infringing Article 54.1.a of Spains immigration law, claiming that he participated in activities contrary to public security or which may be harmful for Spanish relationships with foreign states.

This was based on flimsy allegations that Benhalima is tied to the Algerian Islamist opposition group Rachad, which Algiers listed as a terrorist organisation last year. UN Special Procedures human rights experts stated in December 2021 that the definition of terrorism in the Algerian Penal Code was too imprecise and undermined human rights.

An Algerian court had already sentenced Benhalima in absentia in January and March 2021 to 20 years in prison, for charges of alleged participation in a terrorist group and publishing fake news undermining national unity, among other accusations.

Four days after Benhalimas arrest in Spain, he applied for asylum a second time, while detained in an internment camp in Valencia. At 17:35 on March 24, he was then told his second application had been unsuccessful; just three minutes later he was notified of his expulsion. Two hours after that, Spanish authorities forced Benhalima aboard a plane back to Algeria, where he was detained on arrival.

Benhalima appeared in a clip on Ennahar TV on March 27, in which he appears to confess to having conspired against the state and says he had not been ill-treated in custody. Just two days before his deportation from Spain, Benhalima had warned that he would likely be forced to make a false confession if detained by the Algerian regime, most likely be because he had been subjected to severe torture at the hands of intelligence services.

On March 21, 2022, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had written to the Spanish government calling for Benhalimas case not to be expedited, arguing that the risk of torture was credible, and that the Algerian regimes criminalisation of political opposition is well known.

In March, while detained in Valencia, Benhalima had told Spanish media outlet Levante EMV: If I return to Algeria, theyre going to violate my human rights. Prison and torture are waiting for me. First, I will have a trial for having revealed corruption in my country  Then I fear that they will torture me in a military prison, that Ill suffer sexual violence, or even that theyll kill me and then say that I caught coronavirus.

Benhalima is the second Algerian whistle blower to be deported from Spain and then imprisoned in Algeria in under a year. Last August, former border patrol officer Mohamed Abdellahwho sought asylum in Spain after exposing alleged corruption, bribery, fraud, and cross-border arms and petrol smuggling by high-ranking officers of the Algerian Gendarmeriewas forcibly returned to Algeria by the PSOE-Podemos government.

On his arrival in Algeria, Abdellah was handed to the intelligence service and taken to the Antar barracks in Algiers, notorious as an interrogation and torture site. As of January this year, Abdellah was being held in isolation at the Blida military prison, awaiting trial for undermining state security and the reputation of the army. Since then, there has been little information on his whereabouts.

The PSOE-Podemos governments decision to deport Benhalima has been widely acknowledged in the bourgeois media as a goodwill gesture to the Algerian dictatorship. AlgerianSpanish relations have been tense since PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez recognised Moroccos claim to the Western Sahara in mid-March.

The Western Sahara is a sparsely inhabited former Spanish colonial possession on Moroccos south-western border, with considerable mineral and phosphate deposits, which Rabat has long sought to bring under its administration as an autonomous region.

After Spain ended its long-standing stance of neutrality in this dispute, Algeria, which has backed the proSahrawi independence Polisario Front, withdrew its ambassador from Madrid. Just five days later, the PSOE and Podemos expelled Benhalima from Spain, in an apparent attempt to curry favour with Algeria, which provided more than 40 percent of Spains natural gas imports in 2021. This comes as the European Union and NATO campaign for an energy embargo against Russia, the EUs major oil and gas supplier, amid the war in Ukraine.

The treatment of Benhalima and Abdellah gives the lie to claims by the PSOE-Podemos government, as part of the NATO alliance, to be defending democracy and human rights in Ukraine against Vladimir Putins Russia. The Spanish government has no problem violating the rights of asylum seekers and tacitly condoning the arbitrary detention, torture and murder of political prisoners.

The PSOE and Podemos already have the blood of thousands of refugees on their hands. By blocking off legal routes to enter Spain, they forced desperate migrants to make perilous boat journeys across the Mediterranean to mainland Spain or the Atlantic to the Canary Islands, leading to thousands of deaths at sea. Taking its cue from the far-right Vox party, it built prison camps on the Canary Islands, separated children from their parents, and summarily deported thousands of asylum seekers without even examining their cases.

By deporting Benhalima, the PSOE and Podemos aim to terrorize workers and youth in Algeria opposed to the regime. They aim not only to block renewed eruptions of class struggle threatening the existing regime in Algeria, which is complicit in their anti-refugee policies. After Podemos and the PSOE have deployed tens of thousands of heavily armed police against strikes by metal workers and truckers over the last year in Spain itself, it is apparent that the target of this escalation of police-state terror is the entire working class.
Attend an online meeting in your area, co-sponsored by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the Educators Rank-and-File Committees, to discuss the causes of mass violence and what must be done to stop it.

On Saturday, thousands of youth, parents and workers participated in over 450 demonstrations in cities across the US to protest against gun violence in schools. The protests were organized by March for Our Lives (MFOL), originally a student movement that emerged in the aftermath of the 2018 Parkland High School massacre.

Since the birth of the movement in 2018, the Democratic Party has done everything in its power to transform it into a campaigning mechanism for various Democratic Party politicians. By narrowly framing the issue of mass violence as one of gun control, it has sought to convince youth that school shootings will be ended simply by electing Democrats to office.

Four years later, the MFOL movement has lost considerable support among youth. The protests in the aftermath of the horrific Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting drew significantly smaller crowds in most cases. However, many students and youth who did attend expressed outrage over mass shootings and were eager to discuss the broader social and political issues behind them.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality spoke to youth, parents, and workers at protests around the country. IYSSE members also distributed copies of the recent statement, The way forward for students and youth in the fight against school shootings.

Chicago

In Chicago, the IYSSE spoke with students, teachers, and young workers at a rally in Federal Plaza.

One 9th grade Chicago Public School student spoke on his frustration with politicians and with capitalism, I am tired of not seeing any action from politicians on this issue. Its honestly really scary to see them not care and let this continue. He continued, I think its connected to capitalism. Its getting more and more unequal and more and more barbaric as time goes by. Its like what Rosa Luxemburg said: We are faced with a choice between socialism and barbarism. That could not be more true right now. I think capitalism has to end.

The student also said of the response to the pandemic by the US government, which has produced new levels of hunger and inequality, Its a failure of the capitalist system.

Another Chicago high school student had similar comments. Gun violence is happening every single day in America. It is worrying, you dont know where it is going to happen next. The young man continued, There is bigger inequality in America than during the French Revolution... Billionaires rule America as if they were oligarchs. I think that's definitely one of the big causes [of mass violence].

Emma, a young office worker said: I hear that phrase, to vote people out at this rally, and I just keep thinking, with a Democratic president, a Democratic Congress voting, I dont think they have the material interest in their minds. For politicians saying that only the military or the police should have access to high caliber weapons or things like that: I dont think that they should even have access to those.

This is how I feel about it: emotionally exhausted, said Brooke, a young legal assistant. I grew up in Denver, Colorado after Columbine, and I remember every time another shooting happened we had to do a drill. And if we didnt take it seriously enough the teacher would have us watch news clippings from Columbine. Its been here forever, and it seems kind of ridiculous that at 25 [years old], growing up in elementary school with these types of drills, living our entire lives post-Columbine, and nothing has changed.

Theres been so much talk, but no action. Its just gotten worse and worse, and so many people have gotten hurt. And its wild to think that its even a question that guns are more important than peoples lives and childrens lives. The government is also like taking away rights to abortion, forcing people to have children, but then they turn around and dont care that those children may get murdered?

Students at Chicago rally [Photo: WSWS]

A customer service worker named Katie also spoke to the WSWS. She criticized the role of the Democratic Party in exacerbating the social problems that lead to gun violence. I thought there was going to be a lot of change after [the Parkland shootings]. I really, really hoped that maybe that maybe that would spark something. And now, nothings changed at the end of the day.

Rebecca, a librarian, said she does not think that arming and pouring social spending into the police are the answers to the problem of mass shootings. Weve been told so much that like the police are good, the police are protectors. And they did nothing [during the Uvalde school shooting], so that whole argument just came crashing down. And people are still like, We just need more police. We need more security. And that did nothing.

I think you look at most places like most, most budgets, its going to policing and the military-like guise of safety and protection, and were no safer. I think thats why emotionally exhausted as for how I feel. There has to be a shift.

Paige and Anita are elementary school teachers in districts south of the Chicago metropolitan region. Im a kindergarten teacher, Anita said of the gun violence affecting schools. Theyre hard conversations to have. You try not to scare your kids, Oh, itll never happen here. But it could happen. Seeing all that and trying to navigate those waters with your students and letting parents know Its been so difficult. Were frustrated.

I teach first grade, Paige said. Its hard to have conversations with young children who dont understand. I dont want them to feel fear coming to school. Were being trained for things were not ready for. We have to have a lot of hard conversations.

Illinois teachers Anita (left) and Paige (right) at the June 11 March for Our Lives rally in downtown Chicago [Photo: WSWS]

Were still seeing the same problems over and over, Paige added, in schools, grocery stores and movie theaters. Its everywhere.

Both of them expressed frustration with the political system. Its hard to ask our political leaders to do more and theyre still not doing anything, Paige said.

Anita also spoke out about how the social crisis is affecting teachers. Were currently in a teacher shortage, she said. No one wants to be a teacher anymore if youre asked to be the shield or be the social worker.

Its causing a lot of teachers to leave the profession in droves, Paige added.

And its really hard on the teachers that are staying, Anita concurred. Were getting to the breaking point. Ohio just passed a bill to allow teachers to carry [weapons] in the classroom. We were talking, I guess Ill quit and say No more. Teachers continually get stepped on.

I taught remotely for half the year last year and then we wore masks the other half. This year, the masks started coming off and it was hard with COVID still prevalent. It still is. The restrictions went lax so parents stopped having their kids getting tested. Kids would be out sick. In my district we were having at least 15 cases a building. It was high. Its been frustrating to go from that straight to [more] gun violence

While teachers have faced dangerous conditions throughout the pandemic, Paige and Anita were forced into bad contracts by the teachers unions and the school districts. In our past contract, we have a no strike clause, Anita said. We were stopped from ever speaking. Theres a lot of districts by us that have a no strike clause. Theyre stopping you before you can ever use your voice.

The cost of living and our wage are not equal. Its something we are trying to fight for. Its a constant battle. Its hard. We need jobsthis is what we went to school for.

Paige added, Its what I want to do, but its getting harder and harder every year.

And we end up getting students who are so depressed and sad and they end up taking it out, Anita observed, speaking of the effects of the social crisis and the pandemic on students. Our students with low socioeconomic standing, you can see every day in the classroom how difficult it is with a difficult home life.

And schools should be a safe haven, Paige said, and not a place where they should worry about someone coming with a gun. Its a good place for them to be, but when things like the [events in Texas] happen, thats not so much the case

San Diego

In San Diego, the WSWS spoke with Paul, a survivor of the March 5, 2001 Santana High School shooting during which 15-year-old student Charles Andrew Williams shot 15 people, killing two students.

I am a survivor of the Santana High School mass shooting that happened back in the early 2000s. Its actually difficult to talk about what happened that day. Im sick of this! Every time I see news of another shooting, it brings back PTSD. I will say that these events really affect everyone.

Responding to the indifference to human life at the hands of the ruling elite in response to the pandemic, war and these mass shootings, Paul said: The government, both Democrat and Republican, are ignoring the facts and the rest of us. They just want to support their base at the top. Im here because Im so angry that this keeps happening. The Democrats have capitulated again, and the people continue to be battered. Im actually surprised by how many people showed up to the protests today. People are so fed up!

Milly, a high school student in San Diego, said, These shootings have me terrified and angry. When I was in kindergarten, there was an active shooter on our campus. Luckily no one got hurt, but Ive been terrified of this at school since I was four years old.

Leia, a student at Helix Charter High School, recalled how earlier shootings impacted her political outlook: Sandy Hook was the first one I remember. It happened to kids our age at the time or a year younger, and it has just gotten worse and more frequent. Its little kids, its horrific and disgusting. The way people take money from the NRA and do nothing in Congress, its ridiculous!

San Diego students Alina, Leia, Cece [Photo: WSWS]

Leia also spoke to the US interest in carrying out imperialist violence abroad through endless war while violence runs rampant within the US: The US spends so much time worrying about places like the Middle East and the names that they call them! Such as shithole countries and so on, and are consistently sending troops for war, when we have in our country, a leading cause of death for children is gun violence. They are just not affected by it People in Congress are rich, they have money, they are at the top of the food chain and are not affected like the rest of us. This is why there have not been changes, they care about their own interests. They do not care about ours.

Alina, a student from Helix Charter High School, said: It's just extremely frustrating. Shootings at schools have happened for years. Even before I was born there was shootings. Regarding the Democratic Party, we like to think of them as better because they are more left, but they are just the same [as the Republicans]. They are not doing anything, they dont care about our lives. They dont understand the fear we have to go through every day. We risk our lives just going to school. Anytime a fire drill goes off, a lockdown drill goes off, there is always that thought in your mind, Oh my god, is this the day that my school gets shot up, that Im going to lose my life or my friends life. They dont care, they dont understand, they just care about their money and their control over us. They do nothing!

The very next day [after the Uvalde massacre] at the elementary school I had to drop my little sister and brother off, and I was going to cry because I could not fathom anything happening to them! They [the government] dont care! They dont care at all!

She went on to say: We are the ones who keep this country running, and also we are going to be the future and will decide what continues to go on. I want to say, Dont lose hope. So many times I have felt a complete feeling of hopelessness that nothing is ever going to change. But you have to stop there and continue working on it. Im determined!

A first grade teacher who wished to remain anonymous said: In my class, one girls parents called me to tell me that she wont go into a room alone anymore. My coworker taught his kids how to play dead. What really made us cry was that we tell our students we will protect them, but we dont know if we can. It is so heartbreaking and we feel so conflicted.

New York City

In New York City, several hundred people gathered in Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn.

A group of young people from New York Citys theater industry spoke to the IYSSE at the rally. Ris, a theater technician, explained, I just graduated from college. I have had to experience shooter drills for the last sixteen years. It sucks to grow up this way. In Santa Cruz, California schools, we could not wear blue or red because those were gang colors. Our parents talk about how We had the nuclear threat when we were young. This is worse because of the frequency. We had bomb threats at school and cops banging on the door in active-shooter drills.

A lot of student shootings are a result of mental health problems, and not being noticed. There is so much pressure on young people with social media. They break down easier. I want gun controls but I dont think the politicians are going to listen. I am here because I would rather do something than not, to be able to tell my grandchildren I did something.

Kyleigh, one of Riss friends, became an accountant to supplement her income because of the difficulty in getting acting jobs, especially with pandemic theater closures. I learned the NRA [National Rifle Association] is a nonprofit and does not pay taxes, like a religious organization. If teachers are taxed, they should be, too. There are a lot of guns on the street because there is access to all those excess guns made for the military. I think if the higher politicians are not going to do anything, maybe we have to do a lot more at the local level.

Detroit

In Detroit, a young student named Gray, 17, told our reporters that he has never felt safe in school: School shootings happen so often. Government officials say that something will change and then it never happens. It is always empty promises and I got sick of it. I shouldn't have to feel like my life is in danger when I am trying to get an education and go somewhere with my life and fear that my life will end at the hands of someone else.

Detroit protester at June 11 March For Our Lives rally [Photo: WSWS]

On the question of the impact of thirty years of war, Gray added, I don't believe in war. I shouldn't have to give my life for things to change. My life shouldnt be a number in a rising percentage of violence in this world.

Marcus and Lucas, two students from Oakland Community College who attended the Detroit rally, spoke on the way forward for the movement to end school shootings.

We cant do the vote blue no matter who thing anymore. It does not work. The two-party system is what is killing this country. I think people fail to realize that once the workers come together and join under a common cause things will start happening. And that is what they are scared of because once it happens, they are screwed. It is the workers that put [the rich] in these positions. It is the workers that allow them to make 11,000 times more than their employees. Its the workers that line their pockets.

Lucas added, Once the backs that they walk on walk away, then they are in trouble.
The House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol released Sunday night a list of five witnesses to give live, in-person testimony on Monday, at the second in a series of nationally televised public hearings.

All five are expected to give sworn testimony that undercuts ex-President Donald Trumps claims that the 2020 election was stolen, as well as to demonstrate that Trump himself did not believe these claims, only asserting them to provide a political basis for whipping up his own supporters, particularly the fascist elements who attacked the Capitol.

The witnesses include former Fox News election analyst Chris Stirewalt; former US Attorney for north Georgia Byung Jin (BJay) Pak; former Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt; longtime Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg; and Trumps former campaign manager, Bill Stepien.

An image of a tweet by former President Donald Trump is displayed at the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, hearing Thursday, June 9, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. [AP Photo/Andrew Harnik]

All are either Republicans, conservatives or Trump appointees, in keeping with the effort by the congressional Democratic leadership and the Biden administration to build up the Republican opposition to Trump and claim that the Republican Party played a critical role in blocking Trumps coup attempt after he lost the 2020 election.

Stirewalt was the main public spokesman for the Fox News Decision Desk, which concluded based on analysis of incoming election returns that Democrat Joe Biden would win the state of Arizona, the first definitive media call of a battleground state and the first major indication that Biden would prevail in the Electoral College. The Trump campaign sought to pressure Fox owner Rupert Murdoch to overturn the call, but Murdoch declined. Stirewalt was laid off by Fox in January 2021.

Pak, appointed by Trump as US attorney in 2017, resigned on January 4, 2021, after he was told Trump intended to fire him for failing to find evidence of widespread voter fraud in Georgia. This came one day after the presidents notorious telephone conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump urged him to find 11,780 votes, enough to overturn Bidens lead in the state.

Schmidt, the lone Republican commissioner in heavily Democratic Philadelphia, publicly rejected Trumps claim that the Democrats had stuffed ballot boxes in the city in order to rig the election statewide. Trump actually received slightly more votes in Philadelphia in 2020 than in 2016. He lost the state because of the massive shift against him among voters in the four large suburban counties around Philadelphia.

Ginsberg has been a partisan Republican election lawyer for many decades and played a leading role in the effort by the George W. Bush campaign in 2000 to block a full vote count in Florida that would likely have overturned Bushs narrow lead. His lawsuit culminated in the notorious Bush v. Gore decision by the Supreme Court, in which a 5-4 majority awarded the presidency to Bush. Ginsberg has been highly critical of Trumps effort to overturn the 2020 election, pointing to its anti-constitutional and anti-democratic character.

Stepien is expected to be a hostile witness but will be asked about how the Trump campaign shifted gears from appealing for votes to denouncing the supposedly stolen election. He is currently a campaign adviser to Harriet Hageman, who is challenging Liz Cheney, the committee vice chair, for the Republican congressional nomination in Wyoming. Hageman is backed by Trump and the Republican House leadership.

The day before the hearing, four members of the House Select Committee appeared on four separate Sunday television interview programs, which devoted half their attention to a review of the hearings. The committee members continued to emphasize the role of Trump as the central leader of a coup aimed at overturning the election results and maintaining his grip on the White House, although they again, as at Thursday nights initial hearing, avoided the use of words like dictatorship and fascism.

Democrat Jamie Raskin, appearing on CNN, declared of January 6 that it continues to be an absolutely shocking event in American history that there was an attempted political coup organized by the president of the United States in order to overthrow a presidential election to stay in office, to seize the presidency.

Asked if the committee would refer Trump for prosecution by the Department of Justice, he avoided a direct answer, saying, Theres not a specific statutory provision for just referring crimes to the Department of Justice. I suppose our entire investigation is a referral of crimes, both to the Department of Justice and to the American people 

He added, we have laid out in different legal pleadings the criminal statutes that we think have been violated. And Judge Carter in California said he thought it was likely that President Trump committed federal offenses.

Democrat Adam Schiff took a similar tack on ABC, hinting at a criminal prosecution of Trump while not actually calling for it. I would like to see the Justice Department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump or anyone else, he said. The rule of law needs to apply equally to everyone.

He added, giving a reason in advance for non-action by Attorney General Merrick Garland, ultimately, once the evidence is accumulated by the Justice Department, it needs to make a decision about whether it can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the presidents guilt or anyone elses. But they need to be investigated if theres credible evidence, which I think there is.

Republican Adam Kinzinger, speaking on CBS, said that there was no evidence that the election had been stolen. He continued: [i]f the president truly believed it, for instance, hes not mentally capable to be president. I think he didnt believe it. I think the people around him didnt believe it. This was all about keeping power, against the will of the American people.

Democrat Elaine Luria, appearing on NBC, responded to two specific questions about where the committee was going with its investigation. When host Chuck Todd asked whether the committee would investigate the actions of Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who flooded Arizona state legislators with emails urging them to overturn the vote in their state and award Arizonas electoral votes to Trump, Luria said, It is not the focus of this investigation.

Later Todd asked Luria about a potential in-person witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and reportedly kept detailed schedules of White House activities. Luria confirmed that Hutchinson had sat for 20 hours of interviews by the committee, indicating that this was longer than any other witness. She added that the committee had been able to piece together a detailed timeline of the three hours during which Trump stood by and did nothing to stop the attack on the Capitol, while he watched it on television.

But as at the opening session Thursday, when committee chair Bennie Thompson and vice chair Liz Cheney went out of their way to praise Republican officials who rejected Trumps claim of a stolen election and its violent outcome on January 6, Luria said that many officials of the Trump administration behaved well.

I frequently say, you know, if there werent some people in the right places at the right time who did the right thing, this could have turned out very differently, and that includes at the Department of Justice, the former vice president, she said.

A flattering profile of Cheney in the Washington Post Sunday revealed that she had been adamantly opposed to any investigation into Ginni Thomas or efforts to investigate other Republicans who had backed Trumps claim of a stolen election.

A Wall Street Journal editorial on the weekend noted, with evident satisfaction, One irony is that the largely Democratic committees evidence makes clear that Mr. Trumps designs on overturning the election were foiled mainly by Republicans, including many in his Administration.

There is no irony here but a deliberate political decision by the Biden administration and the congressional Democratic leadership. They wish to maintain, as Biden put it, a strong Republican Party, because they fear that any significant damage to the corporate-controlled two-party system could have unpredictable consequences and create an opening for a political movement from below.
The Bundeswehr Special Fund of more than 100 billion euros has now been agreed to by both chambers of parliament, providing a massive boost to Germanys rearmament drive. The World Socialist Web Site and the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) condemn this war offensive. We give voice to the massive opposition among workers to the war madness and provide a socialist perspective for the struggle against it.

With this decision, the ruling class has set into motion the biggest rearmament spiral since the fall of the Nazi regime. The political, historical and social implications are enormous. In the words of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD), Germanyalready ranked fifth among countries with the highest military budgetswill in future have by far the largest conventional army in Europe.

After hospitals, schools and nurseries were brought to the brink of collapse and billions were cut from education and social services amid the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic, an additional 100 billion euros will be made available overnight for the armed forces. The war budget is thus expected to rise annually to more than 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

The scale of the rearmament is gigantic. Reaching the so-called 2 percent target means that defence spending will rise from just under 50 billion euros to more than 70 billion this year alone. This represents an increase of more than 40 percent. To put the special fund in perspective, 100 billion euros is five times this years total federal budget for education and research.

The sum would be enough to support every family in Germany with 5,000 per child and at the same time pay out 360,000 in compensation for pain and suffering to the relatives of all those who officially died from coronavirus. Alternatively, the amount could be used over five years to double the number of nurses and pay their most senior colleagues a bonus of 1,400. A single billion would be enough to install air filters against the coronavirus in all classrooms.

But instead, the money is going to the military. The Defence Ministrys plansin addition to cyber capabilities and space systemscall for 41 billion for the air force, 19 billion for the navy and 16 billion for the army, to be spent on nuclear bombers, warships and tanks. The war materiel is intended to enable the military to once again conduct very large and highly intensive military operations, according to the Bundeswehr Concept issued back in 2018.

In domestic terms, too, the rearmament offensive is a declaration of war on the population. By enshrining the special fund in the Constitution and maintaining the so-called debt brake, the ruling class is creating conditions to squeeze every cent of the war budget out of the working class. At the same time, any criticism of rearmament is to be made illegal.

In a resolution in 2014, when then-President Joachim Gauck and government representatives announced Germanys return to an aggressive foreign and great power policy at the Munich Security Conference, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei warned of the far-reaching consequences of this development:

The propaganda of the postwar erathat Germany had learnt from the terrible crimes of the Nazis, had arrived at the West, had embraced a peaceful foreign policy and had developed into a stable democracyis exposed as lies. German imperialism is once again showing its real colours as it has emerged historically, with all of its aggressiveness at home and abroad.

The rearmament of the Bundeswehr that has now been decided is without precedent in the history of postwar Germany. It has unmistakable parallels to Hitlers rearmament of the 1930s, when the ruling class installed a fascist dictatorship and rearmed the country within a very short time, preparing it for World War II. The strategy documents of the military and the war speeches of leading politicians leave no doubt that the government is once again pursuing the old great power goals.

Then, as now, German imperialism aspired to bring Europe under its domination and to emerge as a leading military world power. Germanys destiny: to lead Europe in order to lead the world was the title of a post on an official Foreign Ministry website back in 2014. Now these plans are being put into action, with all their consequences.

Media warmongers and foreign policy strategists are already calling for German and European nuclear weapons to contain Russia and to be able to fight out future conflicts of interest with the leading Western power, the United States. A commentary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warns that the hundred billion euros should only be a start in meeting Germanys security responsibility in Europe.

German troops in Lithuania (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

This rearmament is aimed directly against Russia. Eighty-one years after the German war of extermination against the Soviet Union, which claimed the lives of almost 30 million people, German combat troops are again marching into Eastern Europe. At the same time, Germany is arming the Ukrainian army to the teeth, which is riddled with far-right forces, and pursuing its declared goal of defeating Russia.

Contrary to official propaganda, the so-called turn of the times is not a reaction to the Russian attack on Ukraine. The ruling class is using Russias reactionary invasion, which was systematically provoked by NATO, to put its own rearmament and war plans into action. As in the First and Second World Wars, this is not about human rights and democracy, but about the conquest of spheres of influence and resources. At the same time, war policy serves to deflect explosive class tensions outward.

Unlike the bourgeois politicians who revel in and profit from militarism, war and dictatorship are deeply hated among workers in Germany and Europe. Official policy under these conditions takes the form of outright conspiracy.

The return of German militarism, which enormously fuels the danger of a third world war, is being pushed forward above all by the nominally left-wing parties in the Bundestag. The SPD, with Scholz, leads the federal government and thus also the offensive against Russia. The Greens, who in 1998-99 together with the SPD organized the war of aggression against Yugoslavia, in violation of international law, are among the most aggressive agitators and warmongers.

The Left Party and the trade unions also have both feet in the camp of German imperialism. In the Bundestag, the Left Party voted against the special fund because its votes did not matter, since all the other parties supported the fund. Politically, however, it agrees with the war course. Leading party representatives support sanctions against Russia and arms deliveries to Ukraine and even demand the reintroduction of compulsory military service.

In a recent statement, the Verdi trade unionwhich has imposed pay freezes and real-wage cuts on nurses, educators and teacherscalled for sustainable improvement of the Bundeswehr and an improvement in the cybersecurity of the armed forces. The German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) also recently demanded a substantial contribution from Germany to the military strength of NATO and the EU.

The only party opposing the war policy of the German bourgeoisie is the SGP. Together with our sister parties of the International Committee of the Fourth International, we will intensify the struggle to build a powerful socialist anti-war movement. In doing so, we draw on the enormous opposition in the working class that is entering into open class struggles worldwide after 30 years of war and social austerity.

If the ruling class in Germany, of all countries, thinks it can grab for world power a third time after its historic crimes in two world wars, it has made its calculations without factoring in the working class and its political leadership, which must now be built as a mass party.

Become a member of the Socialist Equality Party today and take part in the struggle against militarism, war and its root: capitalism. Never Again War and Fascism!
On March 28, the World Socialist Web Site published an article naming Paul Mason The pseudo-lefts chief pro-NATO, pro-war ideologue. The piece identified his role as an anti-Russian war propagandist, a go-between linking Kiev with the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress and imperialist attack dog using pseudo-Marxist jargon to attack anyone on the left opposing NATOs war plans.

Masons connections with the British state have now been extensively detailed by an important expose in The Grayzone, one of the targets of his witch-hunts for its critical journalism on the NATO-Russia war. The article by Kit Klarenberg and Max Blumenthal, Paul Masons covert intelligence-linked plot to destroy The Grayzone exposed, reveals a series of leaked emails between Mason and Amil Khan.

Khan, The Grayzone has reported, was heavily involved in the imperialist regime change operation in Syria. In 2015, he spoke alongside former MI5 head Eliza Manningham-Buller at an event in the House of Lords. His profile for the event noted he was providing political and media support to opposition political and military groups fighting the [Assad] regime. He is the founder of Valent Projects, funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to investigate disinformation.

Evidence of Masons conspiracy

In an email to Khan dated April 30, Mason explains that he is keen to help re Grayzone.

The message includes a chart drawn up by Mason of the connections he alleges between Russia and China at one end and the Muslim Community, Young Networked Left, Labour Left, Trade Unions, Black Community and Scottish Nationalism at the other, via groups like Stop the War, the Progressive International, the Morning Star, RT and Sputnik, Counterfire and Socialist Appeal and prominent figures including Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway and Lindsey German.

Paul Mason's map of alleged connections between Russia/China and British political figures, political and journalistic organisations

Mason has produced a graphical representation reminiscent of a conspiracy-obsessed police spy. He comments that traffic analysts could map their interaction and help work out who might be pulling the strings. Highlighting his intimate state connections, he writes, I asked two people on the official side who are concerned about this does the state monitor and counter left disinfo and they said no  this is exactly why someone needs to do it.

Khan responds with a couple of options for taking down The Grayzone, including full nuclear legal to squeeze them financially. Mason suggests combining this tactic with relentless deplatforming  as with PayPal, referring to the payment companys cutting off WikiLeaks and news sites like Consortium News and MintPress News from funding sources.

A meeting was planned to organise the operation. Mason suggests the inclusion of BBC journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou and the private intelligence firm Bellingcat. Hadjimatheou produced and presented a podcast series, Mayday, whitewashing the imperialist-backed White Helmets in Syria.

Bellingcat is a supposed independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists staffed by former British and US army and security service figures, closely tied to the Atlantic Council and governments in London and Washington and funded by the CIA front organisation, the National Endowment for Democracy. It produces investigations conducive to the interests of US and British imperialism. Mason writes that the organisation can provide intel service input by proxy, which is what his and Khans plan really also needs.

Khan later informs Mason that he has spoken to a friend at National Security Council comms directorate. They were wary of sending an official to Mason and Khans meeting as it could jeopardise outcomes later, but suggested they work towards a formal complaint against The Grayzone which would kick off an investigation into its funding and activities, at which point the government can get properly involved. The official agreed to keep talking and suggested bringing in Reuters Foundation and BBC Media Action. Khan also informs Mason that he has separately contacted the new FCDO [Foreign Office] disinfo team.

He explains, Re what it leads to; I hear they dont like being tagged as Russian state affiliated media as it hits their reach. But I think/hope theres potential to go further. Mason says this sounds like a good idea, but presses on, what we need is intel on who funds them and what their ultimate deliverables are on behalf of the ppl their work benefits.

A draft invitation to Mason and Khans wargaming meeting calls on people to oppose a network of pro-Russian trolls  They present themselves as journalists when they are in fact an information operation of a dictatorship. They note, Social media platforms and governments have identified the RT, Sputnik etc as Russian state affiliated outlets and taken action accordingly. Grayzone, however, has avoided scrutiny.

Another email shows him complaining about a Consortium News article questioning the NATO narrative of the killings at Buca to Andy Pryce, head of the British Foreign Offices Counter Disinformation & Media Development. Mason asks, Whos behind Consortium News? Pryce explains that he has messaged Nina Jancowitz on this (she is now leading some efforts at the US DHS [Department of Homeland Security]).

Jancowitz was head of the US governments now paused Disinformation Governance Board. She spent time with the foreign ministry of Ukraine working for anti-Russian news site StopFake, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and the British Embassy. She is on the advisory board of the Open Information Partnership, shown by MintPress to be a heavily funded arm of the British Foreign Office, with a mission to weaken the Russian states influence in Moscows near abroad.

Pryce and Mason discuss heading up a similar, Ukraine-focused state psy-ops organisation. This would be, writes Mason, an International information brigade  a civil society organisation with contacts into government which would be the major, forward leaning, player in the information war over Ukraine, the beneficiary of intelligence but also guide governments and be funded by a collective from like minded western countries.

Pryce warns Mason that a public group would become a target. However, if you adopted a matryoshka [Russian doll] approach and the real IIB [International information brigade] was a private core of committed people, you could be far more effective.

Masons denial: a tacit admission of guilt

Masons response to the devastating expose is as good as an admission of guilt. It carefully avoids denying the validity of the emails while advancing the same slander campaign against The Grayzone. He states an attempt was made to hack his email account and that The circumstances of the attack suggest it is highly likely that a Russian state or state-backed unit carried out the attack. He absurdly claims that the Grayzone article may have risked the exposure of my confidential journalistic sources.

Mason then suggests the leaked emails may be altered or faked. Either they are or they are not. Mason should know. He accuses the Grayzone article of having the effect of assisting a Russian state-backed hack-and-leak disinformation campaign. But there would be no hacking operation necessary if the emails were indeed faked. He urges his colleagues in the Labour and trade union movement to remain vigilant against the information war being waged on us.

Reality is turned on its head. It is Mason who is plotting an information war, in which his collaborators are not journalistic sources but state operatives. The contents of the emails clearly identify him as a participant in the massive state censorship and black propaganda campaign being carried out in support of the NATO-led war against Russia over Ukraine.

Mason is waging this war on every front, publishing scores of articles and social media posts attacking opponents of the NATO war and championing Labour leader Sir Keir Starmers successful witch-hunt of Labour MPs to ensure they make no criticism whatsoever of his own warmongering agenda. He is now planning on playing a direct role within the Labour Party, longlisted as a candidate to contest the parliamentary seat of Stretford and Urmston.

Running for the Labour Party

In his piece for the New Statesman, My bid to become a Labour MP and why we must not let Ukraine fade into the background, Mason sets out his platform. He laments that journalists should have shouted louder that Putin is a totalitarian ethno-nationalist fantasising about mass death and exposed Russian and Chinese influence networks in British public life more thoroughly. He chides politicians for not explain[ing] to voters that they are going to have to fight, and probably suffer economic pain, for the basic privilege of living in a democracy.

He compliments Labours front bench for having risen enthusiastically to the practical challenge of the Ukraine crisis: backing the government on the supply of arms and getting ahead of the Tories on sanctions. But, he says, few politicians of any party are prepared to explain that everything from energy to fiscal policy must be reframed around the survival of the West.

Having just returned from a ten-day trip in Germany and Austria, where he told the German trade union federation, to applause, Dont be worried about Germany supplying them [Ukraine] with heavy weapons: be proud of it, he decided to make a play for the role of a Labour MP to build a belligerent left. That is, one prepared to rally the progressive half of society to a militant defence of democracy at home and the rules-based global order abroad.

He concludes with unparalleled cynicism that his putting himself forward will be opposed, but that at least his opponents will hear the other side of the argument.

The Grayzone emails show up such claims to be engaging in a democratic debate as filthy lies. Masons is the only side of the argument he wants people to be able to hear, with his opponents censored. His programme is for total war against Russia, which requires the relentless suppression of any political or journalistic organisation inconvenient to British imperialism and of anti-imperialist sentiment in the population. His articles and tweets are the public face of a conspiracy for a state crackdown which he hopes to be able to pursue more effectively from within parliament.

In the context of the governments planned National Security Billproviding for life sentences for anyone deemed on the loosest of grounds to have disclosed information prejudicial to the interests of the UK in the service of a foreign powerhis map of connections between Russia/China and prominent political figures and organisations of thousands of people reads like a hit list. The last time such a map surfaced in British politics, it was constructed and promoted by a collection of far-right, ex-military and security service figures under the heading The Traitors Chart.

Mason is moving in these circles. He is a state collaborator and McCarthyite witch-hunter who must be shunned, prevented from intelligence gathering at all left and anti-war events, and politically exposed before the working class.
Events at the Shangri-la Dialogue security forum in Singapore over the weekend are a warning of how far the United States government is goading China to the brink of war, regardless of the risk of a catastrophic nuclear conflict, even as the US intensifies the war against Russia in Ukraine.

Singapore's Minister of Defense, Ng Eng Hen speaks at a plenary session during the 19th International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Shangri-la Dialogue, Asia's annual defense and security forum, in Singapore, Sunday, June 12, 2022. [AP Photo/Danial Hakim]

Speaking on behalf of the Biden administration, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin delivered an incendiary hour-long speech in which he accused China of intimidation, provocations, destabilisation, aggression and coercion around Taiwan and in the East and South China Seas.

In reaction, Austins Chinese counterpart, General Wei Fenghe, denounced the hegemony and power politics of the US and declared that China was ready for war, if necessary, to defend its sovereignty, including over Taiwan.

Austins diatribe was themed Next Steps for the United States Indo-Pacific Strategy. The ex-US army general pointedly spelled out the centrality of the US confrontation with China, which the White House has this year explicitly nominated as the primary existential threat to US post-World War II global hegemony.

Austin called the strategy our priority theatre of operations and at the heart of American grand strategy. He specifically pinpointed Taiwan, which is internationally recognised as part of China, as a flashpoint. The stakes are especially stark in the Taiwan Strait, he said.

The US defence secretary insisted that the US and its allies would continue to sail through and fly over what it claims are international waters surrounding China, including the narrow, 160 kilometre-wide Taiwan Strait between the island and the mainland.

We will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, Austin said. And well do so right alongside our partners.

Austin drew a direct parallel with the Ukraine war, in which the US and NATO powers incited the Russian government of Vladimir Putin into a reactionary invasion by expanding the nuclear-armed NATO military alliance to Russias borders and organising a 2014 coup to install a fascist-backed regime in Kiev.

The indefensible assault on a peaceful neighbour has galvanised the world, Austin claimed, and reminded us all of the dangers of undercutting an international order rooted in rules and respect. He asserted: Weve witnessed a steady increase in provocative and destabilising military activity near Taiwan. That includes PLA [Chinese] aircraft flying near Taiwan in record numbers in recent monthsand on a nearly daily basis.

An editorial in China Daily, Beijings most authoritative media platform, put these accusations in the context of mounting US provocations, saying the US last year carried out more than 100 military exercises in the South China Sea and nearby waters, alone or with its allies.

To underline the alleged Ukraine parallel, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, an imperialist military think tank, invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to deliver a virtual address to the forum. He provocatively called for greater international intervention in the Taiwan Strait and military support for the Taipei government, echoing similar calls in some NATO member states to further militarise the strait and ensure Taiwans continued separation from the mainland.

Reacting to the speeches by Austin and Zelensky, Wei stated: Let me make this clear: if anyone dares to split Taiwan out of China, we will not hesitate to fight. We will fight at all costs. We will fight to the very end. This is the only choice for China.

Wei warned that the US had violated its commitment to the one China principle as it applied to Taiwan. He stressed the need for eventual peaceful reunification, adding that the division was a result of the 1945-49 Chinese Civil War.

On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Chinese military officials in recent months have repeatedly asserted that the Taiwan Strait isnt international waters during meetings with US counterparts.

But figures in the ruling party in Taipei, the Democratic Progressive Party, encouraged by the US moves, are indicating that a formal secession from China to declare a Republic of Taiwan could be under consideration. That could trigger military intervention by China, which the US and its allies could seize upon as a pretext for war against China.

Austin emphasised Washingtons support for inflammatory military operations by Canada and Australia, two close US allies, both of which have accused China of responding dangerously to their recent surveillance flights near Taiwan and Chinese-claimed islands.

Austins denunciation of Chinas unprofessional and frequent interceptions only highlights the fact that Washington is orchestrating a build-up of intrusive military incursions around China.

Austin boasted of the power of partnerships and the USs unparalleled network of alliances in the region. He said these had deepened, noting the recent Washington summit with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the growing importance of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) group of the US, India, Japan and Australia, and the trilateral AUKUS military partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom.

In response, Wei said Austins comments on Washingtons Pacific strategy reaffirmed Chinese suspicions that America was engaged in an attempt to build an exclusive small group in the name of a free and open Pacific, to hijack countries in our region and target one specific country.

Wei warned of the danger of nuclear war. He said China had made impressive progress in developing new nuclear weapons but would only use them for self-defence, and never use them first.

The seriousness of the escalating confrontation was emphasised by the China Daily editorial on June 11. It said Wei had taken the opportunity of a sideline meeting with Austin to leave his US counterpart in no doubt that the Peoples Liberation Army has no choice but to defend Chinas sovereignty and territorial integrity and it will fight to crush any act of seceding Taiwan from China, whatever the cost, even by going to war.

The editorial said the strongest-ever warning from the Chinese side demonstrated its indignation at the US frequent moves to violate the one-China principle  Washington clearly misjudges the situation if it thinks that China cannot afford to or will dare not engage in a war with the US and its allies.

At last months Quad summit in Tokyo, for a third time since taking office, US President Joe Biden emphatically declared that the US had a commitment to back Taiwan militarily in the event of a conflict with Chinaoverturning five decades of US policy.

When the US established diplomatic relations with China in 1979, and ended all formal ties with Taiwan, it adopted the One China policyde facto recognising Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan. Accompanying that was the doctrine of strategic ambiguityrefusing to categorically commit to siding with Taiwan in a war with China.

While Austin again insisted that there has been no change of US policy, a series of top-level visits to Taiwan, the open presence of US military trainers on the island, stepped-up arms sales and increased transits through the Taiwan Strait amount to calculated affronts to China.

Alongside the stepped-up military conflict against Russia over Ukraine, the central aim of US foreign policy is to cripple, isolate and contain China, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a major policy speech last month.

Spearheaded by US imperialism, capitalism is lurching toward another, even more disastrous, world war.

The food and fuel crisis already triggered by the Ukraine war, however, is driving workers into struggle all over the world against the skyrocketing cost of living and the soaring military spending at the expense of essential social programs. This global upsurge provides the working-class base for the struggle to prevent a new world conflagration and overturn the ruling classes responsible for the danger facing humanity.
Costa Rica's Foreign Trade Minister, Manuel Tovar  representing the coordinating country of the Joint Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation  welcomed the three new participants as a sign of confidence in the value of the new disciplines and the benefits they will bring to services trade globally. Members  from different regions of the world and with different regulatory capacity and approaches  all see benefits to reap in joining this outcome, Minister Tovar emphasized.

A total of 70 governments(1) (69 WTO members and one acceding government)  accounting for over 92.5 per cent of world services trade  are now part of the deal on services domestic regulation. Announced in December 2021, the successful conclusion of negotiations is about improving the transparency, predictability and efficiency of licensing and authorization procedures, with a view to facilitating trade in services. Minister Tovar stressed that the newly agreed rules provide the necessary flexibility and policy space to ensure that they are compatible with each participant's economic and development objectives.

As the second-largest economy of the Arab world, we are confident that being part of this outcome will support the United Arab Emirate's long-term trade policy strategy, said the Assistant Under-Secretary at the UAE Ministry of Economy for Foreign Trade Affairs, Juma Mohammed Al Kait. Among his country's priorities, he cited the creation of an environment conducive to trade and investment, the strengthening of the UAE's competitiveness in external markets and the development of international trade relations. He added: The implementation of the disciplines that this group of WTO members have agreed last year will help us to further align our framework of laws and regulations towards best regulatory practice.

Georgia's Deputy Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development, Genadi Arveladze, noted that the new disciplines are greatly aligned to the rules and procedures introduced in the domestic services regulatory practices in Georgia. Transparency and predictability as well as the maximum removal of the bureaucratic boundaries for services providers are some of the principal approaches in Georgias overall liberal trade policy.

Timor-Leste's Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs, Joaquim Amaral, noted the good progress that Timor-Leste has made on its WTO accession and emphasized that the implementation of a clear, transparent and efficient regulatory framework is key to enabling services trade across borders". "This will help particularly the many small and medium-sized enterprises established in Timor-Leste, he added. We are confident that our participation in this outcome will not only further and consolidate reform towards regulatory practice; it will also signal that Timor-Leste  a least-developed economy  is ready to fully engage in the multilateral trading system, the minister said. Timor-Leste is the first least-developed country to take part in the Joint Initiative.

Research published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the WTO found that the benefits from implementing the new rules on services domestic regulation would result in significant reductions in trade costs of USD 150 billion annually, particularly in some of the most crucial services sectors. Implementation is likely to generate broader trade benefits for economies, such as increased services trade and further participation in global value chains.

All the participating members have submitted their draft schedules outlining how the new disciplines on services domestic regulation will be incorporated in their respective commitments under the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). At the press conference, Minister Tovar stressed that, in line with the commitment contained in the December Declaration, participants are on track to launch by the end of 2022 the WTO certification procedures to give legal effect to the outcome on services domestic regulation.

Further information on the Joint Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation can be found here.

Footnote
By Trend

Azerbaijan took 18th place among 123 partner countries of Russias Volgograd region in 2021, Head of the International Foreign Economic and Interregional Relations Department of the Volgograd Regional Administration Marina Ogoleva told Trend.

According to Ogoleva, cooperation with 65 Volgograd exporters was launched last year.

"Cooperation between the Volgograd region and Azerbaijan is carried out in a number of areas, including in the areas of trade, industry, agriculture and energy. An agreement on trade, economic, scientific, technical, and cultural cooperation has been concluded between our administration and the government of Azerbaijan, she said. The current interaction is carried out within the framework of this agreement. As of 2021, nearly 65 exporters of our region interacted with Azerbaijani business representatives. Besides, five enterprises with 100-percent Azerbaijani capital are operating in our region.

According to the official, in 2021, the trade turnover between the Russian region and Azerbaijan amounted to just over $39 million.

"Since the beginning of 2022, the trade turnover between our region and Azerbaijan has grown dynamically and amounted to $9 million," she added.

According to Director of the Volgograd Regional Export Support Center Viktoriya Afanasova, Azerbaijan and Volgograd region can expand cooperation in the oil and gas industry, construction and food sectors.

As for the oil and gas industry, cooperation can be expanded in the areas of oil and gas engineering, the manufacturing of rubber products and the chemical industry, Afanasova said. "In the construction sector, we see prospects in the supply of finishing, decor and repair items to Azerbaijan, and in the food sector - leguminous products, containers, and packaging products".

She noted that Volgograd businessmen mainly import agricultural products from Azerbaijan.

"Azerbaijan is a strategic partner of the Volgograd region. Every year we actively participate in the exhibitions held in Azerbaijan. In 2022, our region participated in the Caspian Agro international exhibition. On June 1 through June 3, companies from our region took part in the Caspian Oil and Gas exhibition, and we are planning to participate in the Baku Build exhibition [to be held on October 19 through 21 this year], the centers director further said.

Besides, we regularly carry out business missions to Azerbaijan in order to find partners. Every year we invite Azerbaijani businessmen to our region to participate in our events. This year we also plan to invite interested Azerbaijani companies to participate in the events to get acquainted with the prospects and capacities of Volgograd. The implementation of such events will contribute to the conclusion of mutually beneficial contracts both in the direction of exports and imports," Afanasova said.




People seeking some relief from the heat wave expected to hit Northeast Ohio this week can cool off at community and recreation centers throughout Akron, the city said Monday.

Heat is one of the leading weather-related causes of death in the United States, resulting in hundreds of fatalities each year, according to the National Weather Service.

More: Severe storms expected Monday night in northern Ohio followed by heat wave midweek

Mayor Dan Horrigan announced that hours of operation will be extended on Wednesday and Thursday for four community cooling centers; Lawton Street, Mason Park, Patterson Park and Summit Lake.

Places to escape scorching temperatures

Ed Davis Community Center

730 Perkins Park Drive

Open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Closes Friday at 5 p.m.

Ellet Community Center

2449 Wedgewood Dr.

Open at 8:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. The center closes at 4 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday; 7:30p.m. on Monday and Wednesday and 3 p.m. on Friday

Firestone Park Community Center

1480 Girard St.

Monday through Wednesday, the center is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Then reopens from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

On Thursday, the center is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and reopens from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Friday the center is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Joy Park Community Center

825 Fuller Street

Open 10:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. The center closes at 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and closes at 4:30 p.m. on Friday.

Above average and potential record breaking heat is on its way this week. High temperatures are forecasted to climb into the 90s with heat index values reaching 100+ F. Here are few ways to stay safe in extreme heat! #ohwx #pawx pic.twitter.com/excPX2rKfQ  NWS Cleveland (@NWSCLE) June 12, 2022

Kenmore Community Center

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880 Kenmore Boulevard

The center opens at 8 a.m. Monday through Friday.

Monday and Friday, the center closes at 3 p.m.

Tuesday the center closes at 8:30 p.m., Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. and Thursday at 8 p.m.

Lawton Street Community Center

1225 Lawton Street

This week, the center will be open for extended hours on Wednesday and Thursday (June 15 and 16) from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Typically, the center is open Monday through Friday, at 7 a.m. The center is open until 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and closes at 6 p.m. Friday.

Open Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Mason Park Community Center

700 E. Exchange St.

This week, the center will be open for extended hours on Wednesday and Thursday (June 15 and 16) from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Typical hours for the center are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Northwest Family Recreation Center

1730 Shatto Avenue

Monday through Friday, the center opens at 9 a.m. The center is open until 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and closes at 3 p.m. on Friday.

Open Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Patterson Park Community Center

800 Patterson Avenue

This week, the center will be open for extended hours on Wednesday and Thursday (June 15 and 16) from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Usually, the center is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Open Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Reservoir Park Community Center

1735 Hillside Terrace

Open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Open Saturday from 12 to 4 p.m.

Summit Lake Community Center

380 W. Crosier Street

This week, the center will be open for extended hours on Wednesday and Thursday (June 15 and 16) from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Usually, the center is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Open Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Reporter Molly Walsh can be reached at mwalsh@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Heat wave hits northeast Ohio this week. Where to stay cool in Akron:
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan spent more than four hours on Monday meeting with Chinas top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Luxembourg to discuss a range of topics, according to a senior administration official.

Sullivan reiterated the Biden administrations commitment to the one China policy as well as concerns about Chinas coercive and aggressive actions across the Taiwan Strait, the official said, and warned against assisting Russia in its war in Ukraine.

The two shared their assessments of U.S.-China relations, including an exchange of views of how each side sees the dynamic between our two countries, the official said, describing the meeting as candid, in-depth, substantive, and productive.

Sullivan also raised concerns about Chinas recent veto of a U.S. resolution at the United Nations Security Council that would have imposed new sanctions on North Korea following recent missile launches.

Jake made very clear that this is an area where we believe the United States and China should be able to work together, the official said.

The meeting came just days after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Gen. Wei Fenghe, Chinas minister of national defense, in Singapore and warned Beijing over its aggressive actions toward Taiwan.

Wei later criticized the U.S. in public remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, accusing the U.S. of smearing China and warning against confrontation.

President Biden also recently took his first trip as president to Asia, where he unveiled a new framework to guide U.S. economic involvement in the Indo-Pacific that is widely viewed as an effort to counter Chinas growing influence.

During that trip, Biden pledged to defend Taiwan militarily, a remark that signaled a shift in U.S. policy that the White House quickly sought to clarify.

The White House characterized Sullivans meeting with Yang as part of the administrations broader effort to responsibly manage competition between the U.S. and China.

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Mr. Sullivan underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage competition between our two countries, a White House readout said.

Sullivan last spoke to Yang on May 18. The two also met in March in Rome, where Sullivan raised concerns about Chinas alignment with Russia in the early days of its invasion of Ukraine.

That last meeting preceded a video call between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping during which the American president warned China it would face consequences if it were to aid Russia in the war.

Its unclear whether the White House is laying plans for another Biden-Xi meeting. The senior administration official answered that nothing specific is planned at this time but left the door open to a possible meeting.

Speaking later to reporters, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said there were no plans for a meeting between Biden and Xi but added that the administration will continue to maintain open lines of communication with China.

Updated 5:03 p.m.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Cousins Jon Roach and Brian Roach stand outside Alexander Body & Fender at 611 N. Main St. in Akron.

Alexander Body & Fender, a North Hill landmark since 1928, has a new owner.

Texas-based Caliber Collision, which has more than 1,400 locations in 40 states, announced its acquisition of the Akron business at 611 N. Main St.

Owner Jon Roach and his staff will remain with Caliber Collision to aid in the transition. The Akron body shop cited changes in the insurance industry, supply chain issues, buying power and ongoing staffing concerns as reasons for selling the company. It hailed Caliber as the best partner to entrust the iconic Akron business.

Alexander business and marketing director Brian Roach, a cousin of the owner, will pursue new opportunities, according to a news release Thursday.

Jon Roach, a 1987 graduate of Kenmore High School, began working at Alexanders in 1989 with a part-time job in the detail department while studying business at the University of Akron. In 2005, he bought the business from the Alexander family.

Frank Alexander (1890-1968) started the business in 1928. Born Francesco Dalessandro in the Italian village of Notaresco in the Abruzzi region, he immigrated to the United States at age 18 and Americanized his name at the suggestion of a foreman at a carpet factory in Philadelphia.

In the 1920s, he worked in the Akron body shop of Dave Towells Cadillac on West Market Street before branching out on his own. In 1932, Alexander bought a tune-up shop on East Tallmadge Avenue near North Main Street and eventually took over a Sinclair gas station on the corner.

Alexander retired in 1956 and turned over the business to his sons Dominic and Gus Alexander. Dominics son Nick Alexander and Gus son-in-law Craig Shane operated the business until selling it in October 2005.

It is one of the oldest body shops in Ohio.

Founded in 1997, Caliber celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. Forbes recognized the company in 2021 on its list of Americas Best Larger Employers.

The purchase by Caliber Collision and the continuity in the staff and leadership will allow the iconic location in North Hill to continue to meet and exceed the expectations of the loyal client base of Alexander Body & Fender, the Akron shop noted in a news release.

For more information, call 330-376-8105 or visit www.alexanderbody.com or www.caliber.com/.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Alexander Body & Fender sold to Caliber Collision
Not a day has gone by since the release of 2019's "Knives Out" that we haven't thought about Chris Evans and his cable-knit sweater. According to Deadline, filming for the movie's sequel, titled "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," began last summer in Greece. With a cast that includes Kathryn Hahn and Dave Bautista, we can't help but wonder who will get the standout meme-able moment this time around; our money is currently on Bautista thanks to his tiny glasses from "Blade Runner 2049."

"In the follow up to Rian Johnson's 'Knives Out,' Detective Benoit Blanc travels to Greece to peel back the layers of a mystery involving a new cast of colorful suspects," Netflix's official logline reads. Both original "Knives Out" writer and director Rian Johnson and star Daniel Craig are also returning, so you know it's going to be a wild ride.

Details about the sequel are scarce, but we do know it will see Benoit Blanc solve a "mystery revolving around a large cast of suspects," according to Deadline. The sequel also includes Janelle Monae, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline and Kate Hudson.

Ahead, you can see what we do know about the film's stacked cast.
China says it will 'fight to the very end' to stop Taiwanese independence

Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe (left, in uniform) seen at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on Sunday. ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images

China will "fight to the very end" to stop Taiwan's independence, the Chinese defense minister said.

Wei Fenghe's speech was the latest in a series of exchanges between China and the US over Taiwan.

On Saturday, the US Defense Secretary accused China of "provocative" military activity near Taiwan.

China will "fight to the very end" to stop Taiwanese independence, the country's defense minister said on Sunday in a combative speech in which he also referred to the US as a "bully."

"Let me make this clear," Wei Fenghe said at the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore, per The Washington Post. "If anyone dares to secede Taiwan from China, we will not hesitate to fight. We will fight at all costs. And we will fight to the very end."

Wei's speech was the latest in a weekend of aggressive exchanges between Chinese and US military chiefs over the issue of Taiwan  the self-ruled, democratic island that China views as part of its territory.

"No one should ever underestimate the resolve and ability of the Chinese armed forces to safeguard its territorial integrity," Wei said, per AFP.

Accusing Washington of "interfering in China's internal affairs," he added that "those who pursue Taiwanese independence in an attempt to split China will definitely come to no good end."

A day earlier, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin accused China of a "steady increase in provocative and destabilizing" military activity near the island. This includes Chinese military aircraft flying near Taiwan in "record numbers in recent months," he said.

"We remain focused on maintaining peace, stability, and the status quo across the Taiwan Strait," he said on Saturday at the same event. "But the PRC's (People's Republic of China's) moves threaten to undermine security, and stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific. And that's crucial for this region, and it's crucial for the wider world."

"Maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait isn't just a US interest. It's a matter of international concern," Austin continued.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Paddington Bear

The cutest little bear in film (and critic darling) is making his return, this time with a new director by his side. As Paddington franchise director Paul King steps down for the third film, theatrical newbie Dougal Wilson will take his place. With this news, also comes the announcement of the films title: Paddington In Peru.

After ten years of working on the Paddington movies, I feel absurdly protective of the little bear, and Im delighted that Dougal will be there to hold his paw as he embarks on his third big-screen adventure, King says, per The Hollywood Reporter. Dougals work is never less than astounding: funny, beautiful, heartfelt, imaginative, and totally original. Aunt Lucy once asked us to Please Look After This Bear. I know Dougal will do so admirably.

Read more

Wilson says, As a huge fan of the first two films, I am very excited (if not a little intimidated) to be continuing the story of Paddington. Its a massive responsibility, but all my efforts will be focussed on making a third film that honours the love so many people have for this very special bear.

Wilsons experience mostly lies in the music video and commercial industry, where hes filmed projects for companies like Apple, AT&T, and Ikea, and for musicians including LCD Soundsystem and Coldplay.

King had to step down as director for the film as he helms the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel, Wonka. However, hes still attached to the project as an executive producer and penned the story with previous collaborators Simon Farnaby and Mark Burton.

Paddington In Peru will begin filming in both London and Peru in 2023. The cast has yet to be announced, but its presumed Ben Whishaw will return to voice Paddington, with the films leads Sally Hawkins and Hugh Bonneville returning as well.
An online petition drive that began Sunday is seeking felony charges against fraternity members involved in the October alcohol poisoning of pledge Danny Santulli.

Santulli suffered serious brain damage from an Oct. 19 event at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house at the University of Missouri. The fraternity is also known as Fiji.

The Justice for Danny Santulli petition was started on Change.org by John Heerhold. Heerhold's daughter is the roommate of Santulli's sister, Meredith Santulli, at MU, he said. He's also the parent of two MU graduates.

"The girls are super close," he said of his daughter and Meredith Santulli.

Danny Santulli's brother, Nick Santulli, graduated from MU.

"Danny's going to have to pay the consequences for that night probably for the rest of his life," Heerhold said. "Those in the fraternity who are responsible should be held accountable for their actions."

More: Danny Santulli's family on 'Good Morning America': Prosecute the Fiji brothers responsible

Danny Santulli is home with his parents in Minnesota, but he's blind, unable to communicate or move, family attorney David Bianchi has said.

There's an anti-hazing statute in Missouri for this kind of situation, Heerhold said.

"If Danny's case doesn't qualify, you may just as well abolish the statute," Heerhold said. "We need to hold these kids accountable."

Former University of Missouri Fiji pledge Daniel Santulli is back in the care of his parents, but his condition hasn't improved, the family's attorney said.

Interim Boone County Prosecutor Nick Komoroski released a statement to some news outlets late last week that his office was reviewing the investigation and will file more charges if they're warranted.

The prosecutor's office has had plenty of time and has plenty of evidence, Bianchi wrote in an email.

"It is a sad day in Columbia, Missouri, when the prosecutor's office will not make a charging decision in the eight months since this incident took place," Bianchi wrote. "For months now, the prosecutors have had in their possession a very comprehensive 144-page police report in addition to dozens of hours of real-time surveillance video that recorded everything that happened when this dangerous and illegal hazing event took place. There is no excuse for not having filed hazing charges by now.

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"Why will they not enforce the hazing laws in Missouri? They have everything they need. Something is going on here that we don't know about."

More: Former Missouri Fiji pledge Danny Santulli is back home but 'blind' and 'unable to walk or communicate,' attorney says

Parents sending their children to MU need to know that their children will be safe here, Heerhold said.

"They're not being protected right now," Heerhold said of MU students.

MU is sanctioning 13 fraternity members, without saying what the sanctions are.

The fraternity is no longer allowed to operate on campus.

So far, just one fraternity member has been charged, with misdemeanors. The probable cause statement in that case sought a felony charge under Missouri's anti-hazing law, but that was disregarded. The defendant has entered a "not guilty" plea.

The prosecutor's office has had video footage and other evidence for plenty of time, despite the recent death of Boone County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Knight, Heerhold said.

"I'm not a lawyer, but I think there should have been a lot more urgency in their investigation," Heerhold said.

There were 23 defendants in an original lawsuit filed by Santulli's family, but those defendants are being dismissed from the lawsuit after settlement agreements were reached with them.

More: All 23 defendants in Missouri's Fiji hazing lawsuit settle with family of former pledge Danny Santulli

Two new defendants were recently added to the lawsuit.

The petition had more than 3,000 signatures by Monday afternoon and is seeking 5,000 signatures.

One of those signing was Jeff Camera, of Columbus, Ohio.

"Hazing, specifically when bodily harm and physical abuse are involved, is a crime. I would like to see justice for this young man and his family," Camera wrote.

Heerhold said he's "blown away" by the response to the petition.

"To me it just shows there's a lot of people out there who care for Danny," Heerhold said.

Roger McKinney is education reporter for the Tribune. You can reach him at rmckinney@columbiatribune.com or 573-815-1719. He's on Twitter at @rmckinney9.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Petition seeks felonies for Mizzou Fiji members in alcohol poisoning
BROOKLINE, Mass.  Defiant and defensive, Phil Mickelson arrived at the U.S. Open on Monday fresh off his first appearance in Saudi LIV Golf, a new, exhibition-style tour sponsored by the people behind the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the massive Saudi involvement in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Not surprisingly, Mickelson was met with several questions about his decision to go into business with and help burnish the reputation of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is bankrolling the controversial tour and sanctioned the killing of Khashoggi, according to human rights organizations and intelligence services.

Mickelsons non-answer to one of those questions drew the ire Monday afternoon of a prominent September 11 survivors organization.

Several days ago, Mickelson and a few of the other big names who have left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf received a scathing letter from 9/11 Families United, a prominent survivors group, chastising the golfers for their sportswashing of the Saudis image and reputation, saying the golfers actions are a betrayal not only of us, but of all your countrymen.

BANNED FROM MAJORS: Khashoggi's fiancee calls for stiff punishment for LIV golfers

SEPTEMBER 11: What we know about the Saudis role

Phil Mickelson was asked about the Saudi-backed LIV Golf before this week's U.S. Open.

When Mickelson failed to answer a question about how he would explain to the September 11 families why he has gone into business with the Saudis, the 9/11 group blasted Mickelson again.

"Phil knows exactly what he's doing, and he and his fellow LIV golfers should be ashamed, Terry Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United, said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports in response to Mickelsons remarks.

They are helping the Saudi regime sportswash their reputation in return for tens of millions of dollars, at the very same time our government is rolling out more damning evidence of Saudi culpability in the 9/11 attacks. As the PGA Tour commissioner said Sunday youd have to be living under a rock to not understand the implications of involving yourself with the Saudis.

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As first reported by the New York Post, Strada sent Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed and Kevin Na a letter Friday expressing the groups outrage toward the golfers for participating in the new golf venture.

As a 9/11 widow, I feel compelled to help you understand the level of depravity the Kingdom engaged in when it knowingly sent government agents here to establish the support network needed for those hijackers, Strada wrote.

As you may know, Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. It was the Saudis who cultivated and spread the evil, hate-filled Islamist ideology that inspired the violent jihadists to carry out the deadly 9/11 attacks. And, most egregiously, it is the Kingdom that has spent 20 years in denial: lying about their activities, and cowardly dodging the responsibility they bear. Yet these are your partners, and much to our disappointment, you appear pleased to be in business with them.

Given Saudi Arabias role in the death of our loved ones and those injured on 9/11your fellow Americanswe are angered that you are so willing to help the Saudis cover up this history in their request for respectability. When you partner with the Saudis, you become complicit with their whitewash, and help give them the reputational cover they so desperately craveand are willing to pay handsomely to manufacture.

The Saudis do not care about the deep-rooted sportsmanship of golf or its origins as a gentlemans game built upon core values of mutual respect and personal integrity. They care about using professional golf to whitewash their reputation, and they are paying you to help them do it.

I was the journalist who asked Mickelson the question about his response to the 9/11 families. He interrupted as I read a few passages from Stradas statement.

I've read all that, he said. Is there a question in there?

My reply: Yes, there is. How do you explain to them  not to us, but to them  what you have decided to do?

I would say to the Strada family, I would say to everyone that has lost loved ones, lost friends on 9/11, that I have deep, deep empathy for them. I can't emphasize that enough. I have the deepest of sympathy and empathy for them.

That was it. Those words, then nothing more, no attempt to explain himself or his decision. Just an uncomfortable answer to a question that was not asked, then silence.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Phil Mickelson, Saudi LIV Golf draw 9/11 families reaction at US Open
The post Rian Johnson Reveals Title of Knives Out Sequel appeared first on Consequence.

With the much-anticipated sequel to 2019s Knives Out expected out later this year, writer and director Rian Johnson has revealed its title: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

In the Twitter thread announcing the title, Johnson also shared how he was inspired by Agatha Christies work while working on the sequel. Something I love about Agatha Christie is how she never tread water creatively, he wrote. I think theres a misperception that her books use the same formula over and over, but fans know the opposite is true. It wasnt just settings or murder methods, she was constantly stretching the genre conceptually.

Johnson continued, Under the umbrella of the whodunnit she wrote spy thrillers, proto-slasher horrors, serial killer hunts, gothic romances, psychological character studies, glam travelogues. When I made Knives Out, thats what excited me about the prospect of making more mysteries with Daniel as Benoit Blanc  to emulate Christie and have every film be like a whole new book, with its own tone, ambition, reason for being and (ta dah) title.

Much like the witty, dialogue-driven original, Glass Onion has a stacked cast, led by a returning Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc and new leads Edward Norton, Janelle Monae, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, and Madelyn Cline. Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista are also featured in the new whodunit. At the moment, not much is known about the plot, except that Blanc travels to Greece to solve a new mystery.

After being one of the best films of 2019, Knives Out was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 2020 Oscars. It raked in $311.4 million on a $40 million budget.

Part of a massive two-sequel deal totaling more than $450 million with Netflix, Glass Onion is set for release this holiday season. Its currently unknown whether the film will debut simultaneously on the streamer and in theaters or receive a windowed release.

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It wasnt just settings or murder methods, she was constantly stretching the genre conceptually. Under the umbrella of the whodunnit she wrote spy thrillers, proto-slasher horrors, serial killer hunts, gothic romances, psychological character studies, glam travelogues.  Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) June 13, 2022

Benoit Blancs next case, the follow up to Knives Out, is called GLASS ONION. pic.twitter.com/6Zo0g1VX11  Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) June 13, 2022

Rian Johnson Reveals Title of Knives Out Sequel

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More than 200 people Sunday joined Salem's March for Our Lives rally, making their way with signs and chants from the Capitol into downtown and back to advocate for more gun regulations.

March For Our Lives Salem member and area high school junior Paisley Torres organized the local rally. The intent was to "demand legislative action to protect us from gun violence and restore our safety in schools and in our communities," according to a news release from the group.

Similar rallies were held across the country this weekend, including one that drew more than 40,000 in Washington, D.C. Most were Saturday but Salem's was rescheduled for Sunday so as not to interfere with Saturday's downtown Pride celebration, Torres said.

"I appreciate the turnout so much," she said. "It's an issue that affects the whole younger generation nowadays; there's so much fear and anxiety in schools that we can't do anything about because most of us aren't old enough to vote, so all these adults and older people turning up on our behalf just means so much."

Participants said they were marching for gun control measures that include a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban, universal background checks and licensing of all gun owners.

"As a student, I shouldn't have to fear (a school shooting) could happen," Salem student Kara Everitt said.

She held a sign reading, "When I said I would rather die than go to math class, that was hyperbole."

The nationwide rallies marked the latest move by March for Our Lives, which was founded by teens after 17 people were killed in a shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

That year, the group rallied more than one million people in the nation's capital and hosted sister rallies around the country and world, ramping up public pressure to change gun laws that  four years later  have largely still not been addressed.

The murder of 19 children and two teachers at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school has reignited the debate.

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Related: Texas massacre spurs Oregon gun-safety ballot initiative

Sunday, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators announced an agreement on proposed gun-control legislation that it said "increases needed mental health resources, improves school safety and support for students, and helps ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill cant purchase weapons."

The proposal appears to be significantly more limited than changes pushed by President Joe Biden and advocacy groups to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, add universal background checks and raise the minimum age to buy guns to 21.

In the House last week, lawmakers voted to raise the minimum age to buy semi-automatic rifles to 21, require safe storage of firearms and ban bump stocks. That bill isn't expected to pass in the Senate.

Claire Withycombe is a state government reporter for the Statesman Journal. You can reach her at 503-910-3821 or at cwithycombe@statesmanjournal.com.

Jordan D. Brown of USA Today contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: March for Our Lives rally in Salem, Oregon, draws hundreds
Mo Brooks rips Trump for endorsing his Senate opponent, 'Alabama's Liz Cheney,' just one week after pleading for Trump to re-endorse him

Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who's now running for Senate, with former President Donald Trump at a rally in Cullman, Ala., on August 21, 2021. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Mo Brooks hit out at Donald Trump after the latter refused to endorse him for his Senate race.

Trump backed Brooks' opponent, Katie Britt, and accused the congressman of "going Woke."

Brooks slammed Trump, saying he "endorses the wrong people sometimes" and that he had backed "Alabama's Liz Cheney."

A week after begging former President Donald Trump to re-endorse him for his Alabama Senate race, Rep. Mo Brooks is slamming Trump for backing his opponent instead.

In a series of tweets, Brooks hit out at Trump for endorsing Katie Britt over him.

"This is weird: last time Donald Trump talked about Katie Britt, he said she was unqualified for the Senate," Brooks tweeted.

Brooks then alleged that Trump was the "only man in American politics" who could get "conned by Mitch McConnell," echoing an earlier claim from the congressman that the Senate Minority Leader was hoodwinking Trump into pulling his backing of Brooks.

"Let's just admit it: Trump endorses the wrong people sometimes. He endorsed Mitt Romney, he endorsed John McCain, and now he's endorsed Katie Britt, who his own son, Don Jr., called 'Alabama's Liz Cheney,'" Brooks wrote.

"Alabama grassroots remember in 2017 when Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell got involved in a Senate primary in Alabamaand we rejected them," he added. "The people of Alabama will decide."

Trump this weekend endorsed Britt over Brooks in the Alabama Senate runoff election, lauding Britt while slamming Brooks. Through a statement released via his Save America PAC seen by Insider, Trump accused Brooks of making "a big mistake by going Woke" after being endorsed, "out of nowhere and for seemingly no reason."

"He foolishly started listening to the wrong consultants and not to the people, and his 54-point lead evaporated overnight," Trump said. "Likewise, his words caused me to withdraw my Endorsement, and Mo has been wanting it back ever since  but I cannot give it to him!

Trump's statement came days after Brooks sent out a public appeal to his supporters to get Trump to re-endorse him. In a plea to his supporters last week, Brooks called on the "MAGA nation" to ask Trump to endorse him again in his Senate race against "establishment RINO named Katie Britt."

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"I am the MAGA candidate. I am the Trump candidate," Brooks said.

Trump's endorsement of Britt is an about-face from his earlier comments on the candidate. Last July, Trump said Britt was "not in any way qualified and is certainly not what our country needs. For Mitch McConnell to be wasting money on her campaign is absolutely outrageous. Vote for Mo Brooks!"

Trump rescinded his endorsement of Brooks in March after Brooks suggested that the GOP should look forward to 2022 and stop relitigating the 2020 election.

While he might still be on the outs with Trump, Brooks has received the backing of GOP figures like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. He faces a runoff against Britt on June 21.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A Trump White House lawyer confronted right-wing lawyer John Eastman the day after the insurrection.

Eric Herschmann testified that he told Eastman, 'are you out of your f'ing mind."

Eastman was closely involved in Trump's efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann confronted John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who pushed Trump's election lies, the day after the Capitol riot, according to a taped deposition the January 6 committee released on Monday.

"I said to him, 'are you out of your effing mind,'" Herschmann told the committee about his conversation with Eastman. "'I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now on: orderly transition.'"

Rep. Liz Cheney, the top Republican on the panel investigating the insurrection, said in her closing statement that more of Herschmann's testimony will be disclosed during a future hearing focused on how Trump and his allies tried to pressure the Justice Department to find evidence of widespread voter fraud even though top DOJ officials repeatedly said they could find no such evidence because the claims were false.

Herschmann also told the committee that he found false claims made by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to be "nuts."

"What they were proposing, I thought was nuts," Herschmann told the panel. "The theory was also completely nuts, right? It was a combination of Italians, Germans  different things had been floating around as to who was involved , Hugo Chavez, Venezuelans  he has an affidavit from somebody who says they wrote a software in, something with the Philippines, it was just all over the radar."

What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts, former White House attorney Eric Herschmann told Jan. 6 Committee regarding claims of election fraud from Trump advisors Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. https://t.co/oH7uCwl0lL pic.twitter.com/Z6G5VNwjxm  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 13, 2022

Eastman for months pushed Vice President Mike Pence and his team to find that Pence had the power to delay the formal certification of the election or reject the Electoral College results from specific states. Pence later declared on January 6 that he had no such power.

Eastman's actions have become a major focus of the January 6 committee's investigations. Herschmann was part of Trump's legal team during his first impeachment trial that focused on Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

Read the original article on Business Insider
The executive director of the Alabama Democratic Party is stepping down to pursue another job opportunity.

Wade Perry, who has served as executive director of the party since March 2020, is leaving to pursue what he called in an interview on Tuesday "another opportunity that is not partisan electoral politics."

Perry has worked with the Democrats since 1997 and managed Doug Jones' successful U.S. Senate campaign in 2017, which culminated in Jones becoming the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama since 1992. Rep. Chris England of Tuscaloosa, the chair of the party, said Wednesday that Perry worked with the party through last week's primary.

"Wade Perry was the right man, the perfect man at the right time," England said. "He has a unique mix of experience, political savvy and intelligence that we needed at that juncture when I started as party chair."

England said no timeline has been set for finding a replacement for Perry.

Perry took the job following a fight in the party between a faction led by Jones and England and another by then-chairwoman Nancy Worley and Joe Reed, the vice-chair for minority affairs and a longtime power broker among Alabama Democrats.

Worley clashed with the Democratic National Committee over orders from the national party to adopt new by-laws and conduct new leadership elections after the Jones group challenged the credentials of those who participated in a 2018 party leadership election. The DNC eventually recognized the Jones group, which elected England as chair. Perry was hired a few months later.

From 2019: When the fight ends, where do Alabama Democrats begin?

Alabama primary results: A look at some of the most notable legislative results

The Democrats remain in rebuilding mode. Despite a major cash advantage, Jones was badly defeated for re-election in 2020 by former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville. Republicans hold supermajorities in the Alabama House and Senate; both U.S. Senate seats; six of the state's seven U.S. House seats, and every statewide elected office. Unlike 2018, the Democrats have not been able to attract high-profile candidates to run statewide in November.

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The state party had about $86,000 in its state account and $134,000 in its federal account at the end of April. The Republican Executive Committee had about $965,000 in its state account at the end of April, and the Alabama Republican Party had about $470,000 in its federal account at that time.

Democrats remain strong in the state's urban counties, like Jefferson and Montgomery, where the party has a chance to flip its first legislative seat since 2010. The party is also aiming to pick up seats in the Huntsville metro area, which has been trending Democratic over the last several years, and around Auburn. But Republicans are guaranteed to maintain control of the Legislature for the next four years.

"Well see Democrats pick up a few seats hopefully, and have more of an ability to stop bad legislation, and put forth legislation and get it passed, and continue to present and alternative in public debate that there are there other ideas and other people who are not just focused on political red meat and divisive rhetoric," England said.

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brian Lyman at 334-240-0185 or blyman@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Alabama Democratic Party director announces plans to step down
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden will travel to Saudi Arabia and Israel next month and the White House is planning to announce the trip this week, a source familiar with the planning said on Sunday.

Biden's trip, which is expected to take place around mid-July, could include a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the source said.

A spokesperson for the National Security Council confirmed a Biden trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia was being planned. "We have no further trip details to confirm, but we will announce as soon as we do," the spokesperson said.

The White House has said Biden feels that the crown prince is a "pariah" for his role in the killing of a political opponent, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in Turkey in 2018.

Khashoggi's murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul tainted the crown prince's image as a reformist. The Saudi government has denied any involvement by him.

The visit would be aimed at bolstering relations with Saudi Arabia at a time when Biden is trying to find ways to lower gasoline prices in the United States.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
By Julie Gordon

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that he had tested positive for COVID-19 - his second bout with the illness this year - but that he was feeling OK and isolating, per health guidelines.

Trudeau was at the Summit of the Americas in California last week, where he met with U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders to discuss issues impacting the region. He returned to Ottawa on Saturday.

"I've tested positive for COVID-19. I'll be following public health guidelines and isolating. I feel okay, but that's because I got my shots," Trudeau said in a tweet, urging others to get vaccinated or boosted, if eligible.

"Let's protect our healthcare system, each other, and ourselves," he said.

Trudeau met with U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday and later attended a luncheon hosted by Biden, according to his itinerary. Biden was not a close contact, a White Official said on Monday.

Trudeau's itinerary also included bilateral meetings with Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader on Friday.

Trudeau's positive test comes just days after his government said it would suspend random COVID testing at Canada's airports for the rest of June to help ease long travel wait times.

The ruling Liberals have faced criticism over their ongoing pandemic restrictions, including barring unvaccinated people from traveling on airplanes and vaccine mandates for federal civil servants.

Earlier this year, anti-vaccine mandate protesters occupied the streets outside the Prime Minister's office and Canada's parliament buildings, using hundreds of trucks and other vehicles to clog Ottawa's downtown core for three weeks.

They were cleared out in mid-February after Trudeau invoked rarely used emergency powers.

Trudeau, 50, previously tested positive for COVID in January. In March 2020, Trudeau ran the country while self-isolating for 14 days after his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, tested positive.

(Reporting by Julie Gordon in Ottawa, additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Rami Ayyub and Bill Berkrot)
Photo credit: Tony Turner Photo

Above: Cooke Johns 2020 installation Point of Actionwhich was installed at the Flatiron Public Plazas in Manhattan.



In Nina Cooke Johns design practice, art and architecture go hand in hand. The New Yorkbased architect, designer, artist, and ELLE DECOR A-Lister who founded Studio Cooke John takes a multimedia approach to her workand the results are beautiful.

Studio Cooke Johns current residential projects run the gamut from a townhouse renovation on Manhattans Upper East Side to a ground-up oasis in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, both of which showcase her signature modern aesthetic.



Last year, Cooke John took her talents virtual as a collaborator on the Obsidian Virtual Concept House. The interactive homewhich envisioned a sustainable and equitable future for Black families through designwas a collaboration of over 20 members of the Black Artists + Designers Guild. With architect and designer Leyden Lewis, Cooke John devised the houses architecture and worked on the visualizations.

Photo credit: Ball & Albanese

Her practices oeuvre has recently expanded into 3D art pieces and socially engaged public works. Cooke Johns 2020 installation Point of Actionwhich was installed at the Flatiron Public Plazas in Manhattanwas buzzed about for connecting people in a socially distanced way. Illuminated frames of red rope and aluminum served as deconstructed thresholds for passersby to step within.

Though these newer forays are devised for public engagement, Cooke John explains, the process is similar to how she designs for an individualthe goal is to create something that feels like home. Because its becoming more and more a multidisciplinary practice, I feel the larger mission is really around strengthening belonging, she says.

Photo credit: Courtesy Nina Cooke John

Her most anticipated new endeavor is the Harriet Tubman Monument in Newark, New Jersey, which is set to open to the public this summer. The monument, called Shadow of a Face, is replacing a statue of Christopher Columbus that was removed in 2020 and is part of a larger project of rethinking the citys Washington Park. The park and the surrounding neighborhood will be renamed Tubman Square in honor of the abolitionist.



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Though the call for proposals was a bit outside her usual repertoire, Cooke John submitted a design after some encouragement from a friend. I thought, Oh, they probably want a traditional sculptor to do something figurative, she recounts, but I decided to enter anyway, knowing that my proposal would be one that really was about creating public community space in a particular way.



Both educational and artistic, the monument will honor Tubmans legacy through a variety of mediums, including audio. The physical monument is centered on an abstract figurative piece with a commanding presence, tall enough to see across the whole park. Another piece will be a sculpture of Tubmans face.

Photo credit: Courtesy Nina Cooke John

I felt like Harriet Tubman needed to claim the space in the park, you know, unduly elevated, Cooke John says of the towering central piece, but the face serves a more interactive purpose: You can touch it; you can directly connect to it; you can see your face in hers.

Community members will also play a part in the installationNewark residents can engrave a tile that will become part of a mosaic wall. The team is also partnering with Audible to record locals personal stories of liberation to be played as part of the monument.

These personalized elements are critical for the creation of a community space that allows people to thrive. How comfortable one feels in a public space has a direct correlation with how much one engages with civic life. This comfort also encourages connection with others, and as a result, more collective empathy. This is imperative, Cooke John says, for achieving liberation. Put simply, she adds, its an approach that is people-centered.

This story was created as part of Future Rising in partnership with Lexus. Future Rising is a series running across Hearst Magazines to celebrate the profound impact of Black culture on American life, and to spotlight some of the most dynamic voices of our time. Go to oprahdaily.com/futurerising for the complete portfolio.

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Richard J. August testifies and writes frequently about Second Amendment issues. He lives in North Kingstown.

The bodies had not been removed from Robb Elementary School when Democrats began politicizing the deaths of 19 fourth-graders and two teachers.

Beginning with President Joe Biden and all the way down to the usual Hollywood celebrities, the call went out to pass common-sense gun laws. Notably, the president is guarded by armed Secret Service agents and the celebs are surrounded by scowling bodyguards with bulges under their jackets.

The public address announcer at the Miami-Boston playoff game in Florida opened with a plea for fans to contact their legislators and demand action. He did not call for disarming the police detail that was everywhere in the venue.

School kids demonstrated at the Rhode Island State House, demanding that lawmakers do something. Short of confiscating all 300 million-plus firearms in civilian hands, they, like most politicians, have no idea what would stop the violence.

The incident commander in Texas is being criticized for not ordering police officers to storm the classroom where carnage was taking place. His judgment was that they were dealing with a barricaded perpetrator rather than an active shooter situation. It is called the fog of war.

Several years ago I was on a ride-along with a field training officer in an urban police department. I asked him what advice he gave to the probationary officers he was evaluating. I tell them not to become a cop if they cannot stand criticism because they will be second-guessed by the press, the public, politicians and courts and even their superior officers over every decision they make, he replied.

Why was the door used to gain entry propped open by a teacher? Why did someone not notice the 18-year-old with a rifle wandering around outside for many minutes? Why did the first four officers at the scene back off when they were fired upon? So many questions, so few answers.

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I heard a former congressman, now a talking head on cable TV, say if his child was in the building no one would have stopped him from going in. The last thing the police need is hysterical mothers and enraged fathers racing around a school with one or more armed, mentally disturbed (and all of them are) young men in the building.

Some lawmakers are calling for prohibiting anyone under 21 from buying a firearm. Obviously, they are unaware that the liberal Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the California law doing just that is unconstitutional. No one suggests that an 18-year-old who joins the military wait until 21 to be issued a real assault rifle and be trained how to use it.

As The Wall Street Journal editorialized on May 25, anyone who thinks gun laws will end mass shootings in America isn't paying attention to the much larger problem of mental illness and the collapse of cultural guardrails and the rise of family dysfunction and the decline of mediating institutions such as churches.

Unfortunately, these do not fit the definition of common-sense solutions.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Opinion/August: No common-sense answers from politicizing gun massacres
A Tulsa area scholarship fund for racial and ethnic minority students has been renamed in honor of Dr. Preston Phillips, the target and one of four victims of the mass shooting in Tulsa last week.

The family of Phillips asks that contributions be made to the Epsilon Iota Boule  Dr. Preston J. Phillips Scholarship Fund in lieu of flowers ahead of Saturday's funeral service. Phillips funeral will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, June 11, at Boston Avenue Church in Tulsa. The service will be livestreamed on the church's YouTube channel.

More: A doctor who loved jazz, a mother of two: What we know about the Tulsa shooting victims

Tulsa shooting victim Dr. Preston J. Phillips

The $2,500 annual scholarship is for Tulsa area high school students who are going to attend a higher education institution and can be renewed for up to four years.

"Dr. Phillips was a lifelong advocate for student success and worked tirelessly to develop the scholarship fund that Epsilon Iota Boule of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity has now renamed in his honor," a statement from the Phillips family said.

Dr. Preston Phillips loss leaves a 'void' in his family's lives

The loss of Phillips has "forever changed" the lives of his family, leaving a "void" that can't be filled, the statement said.

Phillips' wife, Melody, described him as her best friend and the love of her life.

"He set a standard that inspired each of his childrens personal growth," the statement said. "Even with his great accomplishments, he did not expect them to fill his shoes. His only desire was that they try their hardest, do their best and be good and honest people."

Tulsa shooting: Shooter targeted doctor, shot 'anyone who was in his way'

Phillips often traveled to Togo, Africa, where he helped "build clinics and hospitals, practice medicine, and deliver supplies to those desperately in need," the family said.

He was scheduled to return later this year, and his colleagues are working to find an orthopedist who can go in his place to ensure his patients receive the surgery and care they need, the statement said.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Tulsa shooting victim Dr. Preston Phillips family speaks about loss
Russia used cluster bombs and unguided missiles on childrens playgrounds and churches, a human rights organisation has found.

In a new report, Amnesty International said the Kremlin had led horrific attacks in Ukraine which they must be held accountable for.

During an investigation, Amnesty found evidence of Russian forces repeatedly using indiscriminate cluster munitions which are subject to international treaty bans because of their indiscriminate effects.

People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queueing for humanitarian aid, or shopping for food and medicine, said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationals senior crisis response adviser.

She added: The repeated use of widely-banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives.

It comes as president Zelensky said Ukrainian troops are fighting for every metre in the embattled eastern city of Sievierodonetsk.

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Russia to rely on new recruits, says UK

Russia hit playground with cluster bombs, human rights group says

EU likely to give Ukraine candidacy status

Moscows forces in control of much of Sievierodonetsk, governor of Luhansk says

Russia handing out passports in occupied Ukrainian cities

Russian shelling of Azot chemical plant in Sievierodonetsk causes fire, says regions governor

Russia hit playground with cluster bombs, human rights group says

08:10 , Thomas Kingsley

Russia used cluster bombs and unguided missiles on childrens playgrounds and churches, a human rights organisation has found.

In a new report, Amnesty International said the Kremlin had led horrific attacks in Ukraine which they must be held accountable for.

During an investigation, Amnesty found evidence of Russian forces repeatedly using indiscriminate cluster munitions which are subject to international treaty bans because of their indiscriminate effects.

People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queueing for humanitarian aid, or shopping for food and medicine, said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationals senior crisis response adviser.

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The people of Kharkiv have faced a relentless barrage of indiscriminate attacks in recent months, which killed and injured hundreds of civilians.

The repeated use of widely-banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives. The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable for their actions, and victims and their families must receive full reparations.

(REUTERS)

Almost 10 hectares of ecosystems burnt down in Kharkiv

08:00 , Thomas Kingsley

More than 8 hectares of ecosystems burned down in Kharkiv as a result of Russian shelling.

On 12 June, a coniferous forest in Izium district burned out after it was shelled by Russian troops. The flames covered area of aa4 hectares, emergency services reported.

Among the largest fires causing by shelling were fires in the Balaklia city. There were two residential buildings in the area of 1000 and 500 sq metres.

More than 8 hectares of ecosystems burned down in Kharkiv Oblast as a result of Russian shelling



On June 12, a coniferous forest in Izium district burned out after it was shelled by Russian troops. The flames covered area of 4 hectares,Emergency reports https://t.co/jgYIpzz6HA pic.twitter.com/1SAto6QVe3  Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) June 13, 2022

Watch: Ukrainian soldiers describe what life is like in the trenches

07:40 , Thomas Kingsley

Ukrainian Territorial Defense troops have spent a winter and a spring in tight trenches. Its not like what we had at home but our shower is the river under the bridge, we usually wash ourselves there, said one soldier.

With the sound of explosions in distance, soldiers joke about their current daily life describing themselves as boy-scouts in the forest.

Watch the full video below:

Ukrainian soldiers describe what life is like in the trenches

Canada condemns officials visit to Russian embassy event

07:23 , Thomas Kingsley

It was unacceptable for a Canadian official to have attended Russia Day celebrations at the country's embassy in Canada, foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly said on Sunday.

A deputy protocol chief in Canada's global affairs department, Yasemin Heinbecker, attended Friday's event, along with representatives of Egypt, Pakistan and some African nations, the Globe and Mail newspaper said in a report.

No Canadian representative should have attended the event hosted at the Russian embassy and no Canadian representative will attend this kind of event again, Ms Joly said in a Twitter post.

She also reiterated Canada's support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion, which Moscow calls a special military operation.

Russia struggling with large scale river crossings under fire, claims UK

06:41 , Arpan Rai

The British defence ministry has said that the river crossing operations could be pivotel in the future course of war in the next months.

Over the coming months, river crossing operations are likely to be amongst the most important determining factors in the course of the war, the ministry officials said in its latest intelligence update, adding that over the weekend, the battle around Sieverodonetsk has continued to rage.

The key, 90km long central sector of Russias frontline in the Donbas lies to the west of the Siverskyy Donets River, the British MoD said.

It added: To achieve success in the current operational phase of its Donbas offensive, Russia is either going to have to complete ambitious flanking actions, or conduct assault river crossings.

Ukrainian forces have often managed to demolish bridges before they withdraw, while Russia has struggled to put in place the complex coordination necessary to conduct successful, large scale river crossings under fire, the ministry said.

Former British soldier killed fighting Russia in Ukraine a true hero'

06:24 , Arpan Rai

The family of the former British soldier and his adviser have hailed him as a hero for defending Ukraine against Russian invasion.

The soldier Jordan Gatley, who left the British army in March, was shot dead in Sievierodonetsk in Ukraine.

His father Dean Gatley said that Gatley had decided to leave the UK after careful consideration.

Taking pride in his sons decisions, Mr Gatley said that he will forever be in our hearts.

Read full story here:

Former British soldier killed in Ukraine a true hero

Ukraine still controlling industrial area in Sievierodonetsk, says governor

06:03 , Arpan Rai

Ukrainian fighters continue to control the industrial area in Sievierodonetsk and a chemical plant sheltering civilians, the regions governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Sunday.

He added that troops from both Russia and Ukraine fought street-by-street in the key Donbas city over the weekend.

However, Ukrainian troops remain in control of the Azot chemical plant, where hundreds of civilians are sheltering.

About 500 civilians remain on the territory of the Azot plant in Sievierodonetsk, 40 of them are children, the governor said. Sometimes the military manages to evacuate someone.

However, rescue operations have been severely hampered due to widespread firing and shelling.

Russian soldiers have destroyed a bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River linking Sievierodonetsk with its twin city of Lysychansk, Mr Gaidai said, adding that only one out of three bridges is now functional.

Warning against its impact on the rescue of civilians, Mr Gaidai said: If after new shelling, the bridge collapses, the city will truly be cut off. There will be no way of leaving Sievierodonetsk in a vehicle.

He added that a six-year-old child was killed in shelling in Lysychansk.

Canada slams officials visit to Russian embassy party: Unacceptable'

05:19 , Arpan Rai

Canadas foreign affairs minister has called the countrys officials visit to Russia Day celebrations in Ottawa as unacceptable.

No Canadian representative should have attended the event hosted at the Russian embassy and no Canadian representative will attend this kind of event again, the top minister Melanie Joly said in a tweet.

This comes after the deputy protocol chief in Canadas global affairs department Yasemin Heinbecker visited the Russian embassy along with the envoys of Egypt, Pakistan and some African nations.

Ms Joly added that Canada continues to back Ukraine as it fights against Russias egregious invasion.

This is unacceptable. No Canadian representative should have attended the event hosted at the Russian embassy & no Canadian representative will attend this kind of event again.

 continues to stand with  as it fights against Russias egregious invasion. https://t.co/azkvbhupiv pic.twitter.com/iZ2zRn1gJj  Melanie Joly (@melaniejoly) June 12, 2022

Ukraine fighting for every metre of Sievierodonetsk, says Zelensky

04:56 , Arpan Rai

Fierce fighting is underway in Sievierodonetsk, Volodymyr Zelensky said adding that his fighters are wresting for control over every meter literally.

The key tactical goal of the occupiers [Russia] has not changed. They are pressing in Severodonetsk, where very fierce fighting is going on - literally for every meter. And they are also pressing in the direction of Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Slovyansk and so on, Mr Zelensky said late on Sunday.

He added that the Russian army will now try to deploy reserve forces in Donbas. But what reserves can they have now? It seems that they will try to throw into battle poorly trained conscripts and those who were gathered by covert mobilisation, he said.

Russian generals see their people simply as the cannon fodder they need to gain an advantage in numbers  in manpower, in military equipment. And this means only one thing: Russia can cross the line of 40,000 of its lost troops already in June. In no other war in many decades have they lost so much, Mr Zelensky said.

Zelensky condemns Russian missile strike as 10 hospitalised

04:44 , Arpan Rai

Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of launching a strategically senseless strike in Ukraines Ternopil region and said that the besieged country needs a modern missile defence system.

After the missile strike at the Ternopil region, ten people are still in hospitals. There was no tactical or strategic sense in this strike, as in the vast majority of other Russian strikes. This is terror, just terror, Mr Zelensky said in his nightly address on Sunday.

He added that the victims include a 12-year-old girl from Kharkiv. She went to the Ternopil region to flee from the Russian army. And such facts will now determine perception of Russia in the world. Not Peter I or Lev Tolstoy, but children wounded and killed by Russian strikes, he said.

Urging the allies to back Ukraine with more artillery, Mr Zelensky said: Today is the 109th day of a full-scale war, but it is not the 109th day as we tell our partners a simple thing: Ukraine needs modern missile defence systems.

The supply of such systems was possible this year, last year and even earlier. Did we get them? No. Do we need them? Yes. There have already been 2606 affirmative answers to this question in the form of various Russian cruise missiles that have hit Ukrainian cities.

He added: Our cities, our villages for the period from 24 February. These are lives that could have been saved, these are tragedies that could have been prevented if Ukraine had been listened to.

Watch: Ukrainian soldiers describe what life is like in the trenches

03:00 , Emily Atkinson

Ukrainian First Lady opens refugee centre in Lithuania

01:45 , Emily Atkinson

Ukraines First Lady has opened a refugee centre in Lithuania, where tens of thousands of Ukrainians have fled since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion.

We wanted Ukrainians who were forced to come to Lithuania because of the war to have a truly native place. So that the centre will be the place where it is possible to address on any matter  help or communication, Olena Zelenska said.

In total, almost five million Ukrainians who fled their homeland because of the conflict are living elsewhere in Europe, according to the UN.

Vladimir Putin urges citizens to stand united in speech to mark Russia Day

Monday 13 June 2022 00:45 , Emily Atkinson

Vladimir Putin has urged Russian citizens to be united and build on the deep feelings of patriotism in a speech to mark Russia Day as the war in Ukraine raged on.

Speaking at the Kremlin, the Russian president said the importance of unity and patriotism is as clear as ever.

Mr Putin praised former Russian ruler Peter the Great, the 18th Century tsar who he earlier this week compared himself to. Calling him a great reformer, Mr Putin paid tribute to his profound transformations and urged Russian citizens to recognise the strength of century-old traditions.

Zaina Alibhai reports:

Vladimir Putin urges citizens to stand united in speech to mark Russia Day

Watch: McDonald's in Russia reopens as Vkusno i Tochka

Sunday 12 June 2022 23:45 , Emily Atkinson

Russia facing military staffing issues, says MoD

Sunday 12 June 2022 22:45 , Emily Atkinson

Russias third battalions within brigades are often not fully staffed, meaning Moscows forces will likely have to rely on new recruits or mobilised reservists to deploy these units to Ukraine, according to an intelligence update.

The latest update from the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) adds: Deploying all three of their battalions simultaneously will likely reduce formations longer term capacity to regenerate combat power after operations.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 12 June 2022



Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/WiKk8bK2ge



 #StandWithUkraine  pic.twitter.com/9FRFoEPFBm  Ministry of Defence  (@DefenceHQ) June 12, 2022

Sunday 12 June 2022 21:45 , Emily Atkinson

Images capture Ukrainian servicemen fire towards Russian troops with a tank at a position in the eastern Donetsk region.

(REUTERS)

(REUTERS)

(REUTERS)

(REUTERS)

(REUTERS)

Russia planning to fight a longer war'

Sunday 12 June 2022 20:45 , Emily Atkinson

Ukrainian intelligence suggests Russian forces are planning to fight a longer war, according to a US-based think tank.

The Institute for the Study of War cited the deputy head of Ukraines national security agency as saying that Moscow had extended its war timeline until October, with adjustments to be made depending on any successes in the Donbas.

The intelligence likely indicates the Kremlin has, at a minimum, acknowledged it cannot achieve its objectives in Ukraine quickly and is further adjusting its military objectives in an attempt to correct the initial deficiencies in the invasion of Ukraine, it said.

Latest intelligence update

Sunday 12 June 2022 19:45 , Emily Atkinson

The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing.



The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 12 June 2022



Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/irubY9xoCO



 #StandWithUkraine  pic.twitter.com/Ig0LxtMIsX  Ministry of Defence  (@DefenceHQ) June 12, 2022

Major depot containing western weapons destroyed by Russian missiles'

Sunday 12 June 2022 18:45 , Emily Atkinson

A major depot in western Ukraines Ternopil region containing US and European weapons has been destoryed by Russian cruise missiles, Russias Interfax agency has reported.

Ternopils governor said rockets fired from the Black Sea at the city of Chortkiv had partly destroyed a military facility and injured 22 people. A local official said there were no weapons stored there.

Watch: Victims of Russian invasion buried in fields of nameless graves in Mariupol

Sunday 12 June 2022 17:45 , Emily Atkinson

Donbas is holding on, says Zelensky

Sunday 12 June 2022 16:42 , Emily Atkinson

No one knows how long the war in Ukraine will last but the countrys forces are defying expectations by preventing Russian troops from overrunning eastern Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

In his nightly video address, Zelensky said he was proud of the Ukrainian defenders managing to hold back the Russian advance in the Donbas region, which borders Russia and where Moscow-backed separatists have controlled much of the territory for eight years.

Remember how in Russia, in the beginning of May, they hoped to seize all of the Donbas? the president said.

Its already the 108th day of the war, already June. Donbas is holding on.

Foreign Office confirms death of former British soldier in Ukraine

Sunday 12 June 2022 16:25 , Rory Sullivan

The Foreign Office has confirmed that Jordan Gatley, a former British soldier, has died in Ukraine while fighting against the Russian army.

In a post on social media, his father wrote: His team say they all loved him, as did we, and he made a massive difference to many peoples lives, not only soldiering, but also by training the Ukrainian forces.

Jordan and his team were so proud of the work they were doing and he often told me that the missions they were going on were dangerous, but necessary.

He loved his job and we are so proud of him. He truly was a hero and will forever be in our hearts.

In response to his death, a spokesman for the Foreign Office said: We are supporting the family of a British man who has died in Ukraine.

Photos

Sunday 12 June 2022 15:55 , Rory Sullivan

Here are some of the latest photos to emerge from Ukraine and Russia:

Two pairs of Ukrainian soldiers get married in Druzhivka, eastern Ukraine on 12 June, 2022 (AFP via Getty Images)

Protesters in Brussels urge the EU to give Ukraine candidacy status (AFP via Getty Images)

Vladimir Putin shakes hands with film director Nikita Mikhalkov at a state award ceremony (Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Calls grow to save Moroccan man sentenced to death by Russian proxies

Sunday 12 June 2022 15:35 , Rory Sullivan

The friends of Brahim Saadoun, a young Moroccan man who has been sentenced to death by Russian proxies in Ukraine, have called for his release.

Campaigning under the hashtag #SaveBrahim, they have stressed that he joined the Ukrainian marines in November last year and is not a mercenary, a charge levelled against him by pro-Russian separatists who captured him in April.

I can see how hes tired and exhausted. I wish he knew how much support he has...how many people care, how many people write about it, how many people post about it...so he has a reason to hold on, to know that he is not alone, one of his friends told the Guardian.

Brahim Saadoune is a student from Morocco, he studied in my university (KPI). He signed a contract to defend Ukraine against russian aggression. Now he and two others are in captivity in so-called DNR and they were sentenced to death by bogus trial. #SaveBrahim       (@kashiomi_art) June 10, 2022

No reason to pardon Britons given death sentences, says pro-Russian separatist leader

Sunday 12 June 2022 15:05 , Rory Sullivan

There is no reason to pardon two British men condemned to death for fighting for Ukraine, the leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region (DPR) has said.

Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner - and Moroccan Brahim Saadoun - received the judgement earlier this week, after being accused of being mercenaries.

I dont see any grounds, prerequisites, for me to come out with such a decision on a pardon, said Denis Pushilin, the breakaway Donetsk regions leader.

The international community has hit out at the decision by a DPR court, which is only recognised by Russia.

Mr Aslins family said he and Pinner are not, and never were, mercenaries and were members of Ukrainian armed forces. They therefore called on Russia to respect the Geneva Convention by treating them as prisoners of war.

Turkeys concerns about terrorism legitimate, says Nato secretary general

Sunday 12 June 2022 14:41 , Rory Sullivan

When Finland and Sweden asked to join Nato last month due to security concerns about Russia, Turkey decided to oppose the move.

The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused them of harbouring terrorists.

Speaking about the impasse, Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, said such concerns are legitimate, noting that no Nato member suffered more terrorist attacks than Turkey.

Czech foreign minister criticises Macron over Putin comment

Sunday 12 June 2022 14:26 , Rory Sullivan

The Czech foreign minister has criticised French president Emmanuel Macron for saying that Vladimir Putin mustnt be humiliate if peace is to be achieved in Ukraine.

Macron probably doesnt understand the issue very well, Jan Lipavsky said.

Putin doesnt care how Russia is perceived in the west, he added.

The Macron administration sought to quell criticism earlier this week by insisting that it did not want to given any concessions to Russia.

Former British soldier killed fighting against Russia'

Sunday 12 June 2022 14:00 , Rory Sullivan

A former British soldier has reportedly been killed fighting for Ukraine in the Donbas.

In an emotional Facebook tribute, Jordan Gatleys family paid tribute to him.

British ex-solider killed fighting against Russia in eastern Ukraine

Hundreds of Ukrainian bodies remain in Mariupol, says former commander

Sunday 12 June 2022 13:37 , Rory Sullivan

The bodies of many Ukrainian soldiers remain in Mariupol, the former head of the Azov National Guard regiment has said.

Maksym Zhorin said that 220 corpses from the Azovstal steel plant were sent to Kyiv but added that just as many bodies still remain in Mariupol.

Talks are continuing about further exchanges, to return home all the bodies. Absolutely all bodies must be returned and this is something we will work on, he said.

Hundreds of Ukrainian troops were holed up for months in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, where they made their last stand before surrendering last month.

Lewis condemns death sentence given to Britons by pro-Russian separatists

Sunday 12 June 2022 13:15 , Rory Sullivan

Brandon Lewis, the UKs Northern Ireland secretary, has criticised pro-Russian separatists decision to condemn two captured British men to death for fighting for Ukraine.

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, he said: Really I think it backs up what weve all seen in this abhorrent process that Putin has followed in terms of an unwarranted attack on Ukraine in the general way that Putins regime is acting. Its pretty despicable actually.

Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner remain in prison in the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic.

Ukraine war in photos

Sunday 12 June 2022 12:50 , Rory Sullivan

A Ukrainian tank in Donetsk region on 11 June, 2022 (REUTERS)

A Ukrainian soldier (REUTERS)

Ukrainian teenager hailed a hero'

Sunday 12 June 2022 12:23 , Rory Sullivan

A Ukrainian teenager praised as a hero by his country has spoken of how he helped geo-locate a Russian convoy near Kyiv earlier in the war.

Andriy Pokrasa, 15, used his drone to track its exact coordinates, before sending them to the Ukrainian army.

These were some of the scariest moments of my life, the teenager said.

We provided the photos and the location to the armed forces. They narrowed down the co-ordinates more accurately and transmitted them by walkie-talkie, so as to adjust the artillery, he said.

In total, 20 Russian military vehicles were destroyed, the 15-year-old added.

Russia to rely on new recruits, says UK

Sunday 12 June 2022 11:57 , Rory Sullivan

Vladimir Putins generals will likely have to rely on new recruits or mobilised reservists as the war grinds on in eastern Ukraine, the UK has said.

As heavy fighting continues around the city of Sievierodonetsk, Russia is attempting to use its artillery superiority to its advantage, according to the British Ministry of Defences (MoD) latest military assessment

Usually, the Kremlins senior officers only commit two of their three battalions to operations at the same time. However, it is thought that Russia will soon use all three.

The third battalions within brigades are often not fully staffed - Russia will likely have to rely on new recruits or mobilised reservists to deploy these units to Ukraine, the UK said.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 12 June 2022



Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/WiKk8bK2ge



 #StandWithUkraine  pic.twitter.com/9FRFoEPFBm  Ministry of Defence  (@DefenceHQ) June 12, 2022

Ukraine establishes grain export routes through Poland and Romania

Sunday 12 June 2022 11:12 , Rory Sullivan

Ukraine has managed to create two food export routes through Poland and Romania, as Russia continues to blockade Ukrainian ports, Kyiv has said.

Dmytro Senik, the Ukrainian deputy foreign minister, said Russia was putting global food security at risk by its actions.

Speaking about the overland routes, he said: Those routes are not perfect because it creates certain bottlenecks, but we are doing our best to develop those routes in the meantime.

Ukraine is the worlds fourth-largest grain export. With millions of tonnes of its crops unable to be exported, experts have warned that hunger and famine will become more prevalent around the world.
PANAMA CITY BEACH  A tourist from Kentucky was in critical condition after being shot Monday morning on Panama City Beach.

According to a press release from the Panama City Beach Police Department, the incident occurred at about 1 a.m. on the beach behind the Shores of Panama, condos off Thomas Drive in Panama City Beach.

"On arrival, the officers found a Black male victim from Kentucky suffering from a gunshot wound to the torso," the release reads. "After the shooting, the suspect fled on foot."

More from PCB: Spring breakers bring crime to Panama City Beach; one man injured in shooting

Panama City tourism exploding: Tourism is exploding: March 2022 claims title as busiest March in Panama City Beach history

The Panama City Beach Police Department noted the victim was transported to a local hospital, where he remained in critical condition as of about noon Monday.

The investigation remained ongoing, and more information will be released as it becomes available.

This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Kentucky man in critical condition after shooting in Panama City Beach
President Biden said Saturday he has not yet decided about making a possible trip to Saudi Arabia but said any potential visit to the kingdom would not relate to energy.

But in answering a follow-up question, Biden appeared to suggest he was going  and that he wasnt waiting for any specific commitments from officials in Riyadh.

No. Not yet, Biden replied in response to a question about whether he had decided to go to Saudi Arabia.

But when asked what was holding up the decision and whether it had to do with waiting for commitments from the Saudis or negotiations over peace talks, Biden said it was not, then referred to a larger meeting in the kingdom that he suggested he would attend.

The commitments from the Saudis dont relate to anything having to do with energy, the president said. It happens to be a larger meeting taking place in Saudi Arabia. Thats the reason Im going, he said. And it has to do with national security for them, for Israelis It has to do with much larger issues than having to do with the energy piece.

A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said that Bidens trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia was being planned, though other details were not available.

The trip comes in the context of a significant agenda with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the other countries of the Middle East. That agenda is focused on delivering results for the American people as well as ending wars and leading through diplomacy to bring stability to the Middle East region, the spokesperson said.

Several outlets have reported in recent weeks that Biden is planning to go to the kingdom and potentially meet with its Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, known as MBS, partially in an effort to stabilize global oil markets amid skyrocketing gas prices and icing out Russia amid its war in Ukraine.

The Hill reported earlier this month that discussions about the visit were taking place but that it was still in the planning stages.

Story continues

A trip to the kingdom and a meeting with Prince Mohammad would prove controversial, with lawmakers and groups critical of its dismal human rights record likely to voice opposition.

The larger meeting Biden referred to was likely the Gulf Cooperation Council meeting expected to be held in Riyadh later this month, which is likely to dovetail with an expected visit by Biden to Israel.

Updated: 9:52 p.m.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Edgar Berlanga now understands that what he did was wrong.

The super middleweight contender bit opponent Roamer Alexis Angulo on the neck in the seventh round of their 10-round fight Saturday in New York City, where Berlanga won by a unanimous decision.

After the fight, he seemed to dismiss his actions by joking that he was about to do a Mike Tyson on him. However, on Sunday, he tweeted an apology.

I want to apologize for my actions and what I said yesterday about the Mike Tyson bite, Berlanga said. I was in the moment and I got a little ahead of myself. It doesnt take away from the embarrassment that I have caused upon myself, my team, [Top Rank], and many others.

He went on: I reacted poorly and take full responsibility. Moving forward, I am going to be more mindful and encouraging in my behavior. Once again, I do apologize.

Berlanga (20-0, 16 KOs) could still be suspended and/or fined for his actions.

Related
Starbucks employees went on strike Saturday and Sunday at the Anderson location on Interstate 85 and Clemson Boulevard.

Earlier this month, the Anderson location joined two other South Carolina Starbucks, from Greenville and Columbia, in voting for union representation.

Anderson's location was the first in the South to unanimously vote, 18-0, to unionize, according to a union Twitter account. The first in the state was in Greenville in mid-May, when workers at the store located at I-85 and Pelham Road voted to unionize.

More: Workers at a Greenville Starbucks store become first in South Carolina to unionize

The employees were on strike "due to unfair labor practices citing management threatening to discipline employees who wear union apparel and retaliation by slashing employee hours so employees cannot receive their benefits," said Aneil Tripathi in a press release. Tripathi is a spokesperson for the Anderson Starbucks Workers United.

The I-85 store in Anderson, SC is ON STRIKE!!



After workers unanimously voted to unionize two weeks ago, Starbucks has slashed their hours across the board in a blatant act of retaliation.



You can support them here: https://t.co/pZglkudyGg pic.twitter.com/oBysoP92Dh  SBWorkersUnited (@SBWorkersUnited) June 11, 2022

The press release listed other concerns like poor management, outdated and broken equipment and improperly trained management.

"The extreme lack of accountability that our management refuses to take is very disheartening," another employee of the Anderson store Natalie Mann said in the release. "We have been out here on the frontlines, before, during and after the pandemic, and the empty promises that this company keeps making honestly makes me regret the time and energy that I have put into this company."

Story continues

The employees were back to work Monday morning.

South Carolina is among the states with the lowest rate of union membership. In 2020, South Carolina had the lowest rate of union membership at 2.9%, according to data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

To form a union, the majority of the ballots cast must be in favor.

Employees set up a GoFundMe to raise money to replace lost wages and had raised close to $3,000 Monday afternoon.

This is a breaking story. Check back for updates.

Sarah Sheridan is the community reporter in Anderson. She'd appreciate your help telling important stories; reach her at ssheridan@gannett.com or on twitter @saralinasher.

This article originally appeared on Anderson Independent Mail: Anderson Starbucks employees went on strike Sunday
Juneteenth  also known as Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, and Black Independence Day  became a federal holiday as of June 17th, 2021. In the United States, it commemorates the emancipation of African Americans. It is also often observed for celebrating African American culture.

Angela McNair

The holiday was first celebrated in Texas, where on that date in 1865, in the aftermath of the Civil War, slaves were declared free under the terms of the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation.

The Juneteenth holiday will be celebrated in Erie with a variety of events held Friday, June 17 through Sunday, June 19. Angela McNair coordinates Erie's Juneteenth celebrations. In this file photo, McNair stands outside the Erie County Courthouse in June 2020 with an Erie Juneteenth flag.

The year following 1865, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of "Jubilee Day" on June 19. In the ensuing decades, Juneteenth commemorations featured music, barbecues, prayer services and other activities, and as Black people migrated from Texas to other parts of the country, the Juneteenth tradition spread.

Celebrations have continued across the United States into the 21st century and typically include prayer and religious services, speeches, educational events, family gatherings and picnics, and festivals with music, food, and dancing.

Juneteenth continues to be important, not just because it marks the end of slavery, but because it becomes a ritualized, political holiday that tells and retells the story of Black people's ongoing struggle in a nation that's so invested in forgetting.

More:Juneteenth holiday is a time to educate, reflect on America's history

Juneteenth has also become an opportunity for larger events, such as parades, block parties, festivals and pop-up events that assist local minority-owned businesses, showcasing their talents, services and goods.

In Erie, as a young woman who has always been involved in the community, I took the opportunity to follow leaders who hosted Juneteenth celebrations and revived the movement that has been ongoing for years. We started at Pfeiffer-Burleigh Elementary School and continued celebrating at the Booker T. Washington Center. Now we have moved the celebration to downtown Erie on State Street between 12th and 13th streets. We will be shutting down the block to allow a celebration of culture and music and to support local minority-owned businesses. This years main celebration will be held on Saturday, June 18th, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Breeze Band will be our headlining band and UPMC Hamot is our host sponsor.

Story continues

We are also excited to have been able to reach out to form collaborative partnerships with other organizations, such as the Booker T. Washington Center and Eries Black Wall Street.

Angela McNair is the coordinator of Erie's Juneteenth celebrations. For more information, please email: EriesJuneteenthCelebration@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie's Juneteenth - remembering a history that must not be forgotten
Jun. 13Gov. Janet Mills is moving forward with plans to create a Cabinet-level group to address the needs of Maine's aging population.

Mills signed an executive order Monday in Portland to create a Cabinet on Aging to bring together the heads of several state agencies so they can coordinate and speed up efforts to help residents age safely and affordably in settings that best serve their needs, her office said.

She announced the plan in February as part of her State of the State address, although it was overshadowed at the time by proposals to send checks to taxpayers to help ease the pain of inflation and to provide two years of free community college tuition to high school students who graduated during the pandemic, from 2020-23.

Maine has the oldest median age in the nation, and Mills' office said tens of thousands of people are expected to retire in the coming years, increasing demand for age-related services.

"Maine people work hard their entire lives and they deserve to age comfortably in the communities they love," Mills said in a written statement. "With the establishment of the Cabinet on Aging, we can advance policies across state government that make sure the needs of Maine people are met as they age."

Mills signed the order at The Cedars in Portland, which provides a spectrum of housing and nursing care for seniors. It recently opened a facility named the Sam L. Cohen Households, which Mills' office said is a model of senior living that affords residents a "home-like environment, input into daily activities, and state-of-the-art care to preserve their quality of life."

The Cabinet on Aging consists of commissioners from seven state departments and the director of Maine State Housing Authority. The state departments are health and human services, labor, economic and community development, administrative and financial services, professional and financial regulation, public safety and transportation. The cabinet is co-chaired by the HHS and the labor commissioners and funding for one staff position was included in the Office of Policy Innovation and the Future's budget, plus an additional $35,000 for communications, supplies and technology.

Story continues

The cabinet will meet four times a year, beginning in July, to coordinate and advance work on affordable housing and long-term services and supports; financial security and protection against fraud; access to information, broadband, and services; and engagement and employment in Maine's growing economy.

"The Cabinet on Aging formalizes the coordination across Maine state government that protected older residents during the pandemic," DHHS Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew said in a written statement.

Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman said in a written statement that the cabinet will seek ways to employ seniors who are willing and able to work. The group will also continue efforts to address the longstanding health care workforce shortage, she said.

"We continue to hear from older workers who want to rejoin the workforce, but who are experiencing roadblocks," Fortman said. "We are committed to connecting all workers with rewarding work. The new Cabinet on Aging is one way that we will strengthen the existing coordination of services for seniors, whatever their goals may be  including retirement or employment. We also are committed to ensuring that there is a skilled statewide workforce to provide quality support services for folks to age with dignity in their homes and communities."

The announcement coincides with a hotly contested election season, in which the Blaine House and every seat in the Legislature are up for grabs.

Former Republican Gov. Paul LePage is seeking an unprecedented third nonconsecutive term in office by campaigning to unseat Mills, a former prosecutor and the first female governor in state history. Beals physician Sam Hunkler is mounting a long-shot bid as an independent and doesn't plan to spend more than $5,000 for his campaign in a race that is expected to draw millions of dollars in spending.

In response to Mills' announcement, the Maine Republican Party issued a release Monday highlighting the impacts that inflation are having on fixed-income seniors, as well as the recent closures of nursing homes struggling with workforce shortages. They also said that "beloved nurses have been fired," an apparent reference to the administration's requirement that health care workers be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Maine Republican Party Executive Director Jason Savage described the cabinet as a "fake do-nothing government entity."

Members of his own party working on aging issues disagree. Sen. Marianne Moore, R-Calais, and Rep. William Tuell, R-East Machias, applauded the announcement in a joint statement with Sen. Eloise Vitelli, D-Arrowsic, and Rep. Jessica Fay, D-Raymond.

"It is a great leap for our state that older Mainers will be represented in Maine policymaking in a clear, coordinated way," said the group, which co-chairs the Legislature's Aging Caucus. "We look forward to partnering with the Governor's new Cabinet on Aging to uplift the voices and experiences of older Mainers who have so much to contribute to our state."

Brenda Gallant, the state's long-term care ombudsman, stressed the need to coordinate efforts to serve older citizens, who she said are the state's fastest growing population.

"The Cabinet will have the opportunity to build on the work already being done to address the pressing direct-care workforce shortage, affordable housing, and investment in long-term care services," Gallant said. "We look forward to working closely with Cabinet members to meet the challenges that Maine faces in the years ahead."
Disney/Pixar

Buzz Lightyear may be able to travel through space and time, but he wont be making it to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates on his latest mission. Pixars forthcoming space odyssey, Lightyear, has reportedly been banned in certain Middle Eastern countries, most likely due to a scene featuring a same-sex kiss.

Lightyear stars Chris Evans as the voice of Toy Storys square-headed space himbo, who in this film is not a toy, but the fake-real human that the fictional talking toy is based on. Its sort of a film within a film (I think?), like were supposed to imagine Andy watched this very movie as a child. Seems a tad convoluted for a childrens movie, but sure, why not? Theres also a robot cat with a funny accent, to balance out the needlessly meta plot.

Pixar Gives Dont Say Gay Bill the Finger, Restores Same-Sex Kiss in Lightyear

Despite all that silliness, the UAEs Media Regulatory Office announced that it will not screen the film in the country. In a tweet, it did not cite a specific reason for not licensing the film beyond a violation of the countrys media standards. But the scene that presumably prompted the ban sees Hawthorne, Buzzs best friend and a commanding officer voiced by Uzo Aduba, greeting her wife with a smooch on the lips.

This is just the latest instance of Disney seeing one of its films blocked from release in the Gulf countries. That list includes several recent Marvel Cinematic Universe offerings, like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Eternals (although the people of Qatar and Kuwait did not miss much with this unfortunate Chloe Zhao dud). Doctor Strange introduces gay teen America Chavez, played by Xochitl Gomez, and Eternals features a queer couple as well as the franchises first openly gay superhero, Phastos.

Last years West Side Story remake, also from Disney, was barred from release in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait due to the addition of a transgender character, Anybodys, played by nonbinary actor Iris Menas. With homosexuality illegal across the Middle East, basically any films featuring overt LGBTQ+ content are at risk of censorship.

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Lightyear and the kiss have been embroiled in controversy stateside, tooDisney initially cut the scene, then added it back following backlash within the company. In March, a group of unnamed LGBTQ+ Pixar employees and allies wrote a letter calling out Disney for cutting nearly every moment of overtly gay affection. This was an especially bad look in the context of Disney and CEO Bob Chapeks initial silence on Floridas Dont Say Gay bill.

Now that the scene has been reinstated, it will make history as the first time Pixars has included a same-sex kiss in a film. If you dont live in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, You can see it for yourself when Lightyear hits theaters on June 17. If animated movies about astronauts arent your thing, I recommend watching this video of Chris Evans and his facial hair flirting with a reporter at the films premiere on repeat instead.

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Patients may be attracted to the price tags and travel opportunities offered at clinics outside their home country, but health experts note that traveling for a procedure can carry risks.

In the fall of 2021, Danielle Geohagan woke up in a Turkish clinic, disoriented. Her body was shivering despite the stack of blankets piled on her healing midsection, and she was hungry after going more than 12 hours without food. Surrounding her were nurses donning blue scrubs, speaking a language she didnt understand.

The 30-year-old Londoner traveled to Istanbul for liposuction that removed fat in her midsection, thighs and arms. While she believes England's publicly funded health care system is "fabulous," she decided on Turkey because of its exchange rate and surgeons' experience with people of color.

"Other than my life, what do I have to lose?" she told USA TODAY.

Overall, Geohagan was happy with the outcome of her procedure and had a positive experience at a recovery hotel, where nutritionists, nurses and doctors were available on-site throughout the day. The entire trip, including plane tickets, the hotel stay, the procedure, hospital fees, post-op massages and food, cost roughly $4,500.

Danielle Geohagan snaps a post-surgery photo from her hotel room in Turkey. The 30-year-old from London traveled to Istanbul for liposuction in November 2021.

But when asked if she would recommend the same experience to friends, Geohagan hesitated.

The staff at the clinic spoke little English, which meant Geohagan had to use makeshift sign language to communicate. There are also communication issues ahead of the visit; she learned only after arrival that she should have planned to spend five to seven days recovering. She went home after four days.

Geohagan sat on her knees throughout the four-hour flight, trying to keep her stomach flat to ease the pain.

"I'm very happy with my results. However, when asked by my friends if I'd recommend it, I say don't do it," she said. "If you're going to go, bring someone who speaks the language with you."

Now that border restrictions have largely evaporated, health experts say medical tourism for cosmetic procedures like Geohagan's is likely picking up. Patients may be attracted to the price tags and travel opportunities offered at clinics outside their home country, but health experts note that traveling so close to a procedure can carry risks.

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"I believe were going to start seeing more and more (medical) tourists  even more than we saw before COVID," said Renato Saltz, former president and current board member of the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgerys board. As for the safety of international surgery: "You can go anywhere. Just make sure you do your homework and go to (a surgeon) that is well-trained and respected."

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Why do people travel abroad for plastic surgery?

Medical tourism had been picking up long before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 3 million Americans traveled for medical tourism outside the country in 2016, largely for dental procedures, according to a survey released last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Based on these findings, the University of the Incarnate Words Center of Medical Tourism Research expects more than 2 million Americans to travel to Mexico for medical tourism in 2023.

Saltz noted that cost is a leading incentive for patients who leave their home country for surgery. Its no coincidence that Mexico, which offers a 25% to 35% discount on dental or cosmetic treatments compared to the U.S., is one of the most popular destinations for Americans seeking cosmetic procedures, according to a 2019 report from the Iranian Journal of Public Health.

Enrique Cedillo, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon in northeastern Mexico, said he has noticed an uptick in U.S. patients this year. He said lower costs are one of the biggest reasons why his patients travel to Mexico for procedures.

"I have patients that come from New York, and also patients that come from L.A. That's crazy for me," he said. "That is like the capital of plastic surgery."

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Currency exchange rates can also help; Saltz noted that $1 is worth about 5 reals in Brazil, another popular destination for cosmetic surgery.

But patients should consider how travel expenses and other charges will rack up total costs, Saltz said, especially with airfare up considerably from 2019.

"When you look at the top surgeons worldwide, they charge very well. It's not going to be any cheaper than surgery in your own country by adding the trip, the hotel, the costs, possible complications, flying back," Saltz said.

That hasn't stopped insiders from noticing an uptick in cosmetic surgery-related travel.

David Vequist, founder and director of the University of the Incarnate Word's Center for Medical Tourism Research, pointed to pent-up demand as a possible driver. More people may be choosing to get procedures abroad to see more of the world after being stuck at home for two years, he said.

Story continues below.

Vacation and surgery all-in-one

Exploring a different country was part of what drew Stacey and Darcey Silva, twin reality TV stars from "90 Day Fiance" and their own namesake show, to get a number of procedures done in Turkey in February 2021. The two spent about a month in Turkey, splitting their time between Bodrum and Istanbul, and had procedures done on their teeth, noses, lips, breasts as well as liposuction.

"We've had surgery before, in Miami and in Beverly Hills, but I feel like going to Turkey was the total package for us," Darcey Silva, 47, told USA TODAY. "We got to see a new country, meet amazing new people. It was a journey, and it'll be one of the best memories we have together as twins."

"The clinic was top-notch, five-star service," Stacey added.

Researchers have also pointed to social media as an influence inspiring travel for cosmetic surgeries. Not only are patients bombarded with images of models or influencers perfected with filters online, but various physicians are finding ways to attract patients around the world through social media.

Cedillo noted that his international clientele started taking off after he started using Instagram to showcase his work.

"I noticed immediately the change," he said. Before, "all my patients were local.  When I started using Instagram, I started to see people that come in from everywhere."

Vequist said the pandemic-era "Zoom effect" could also be driving more Americans to cosmetic surgeons.

"It's kind of like staring at a mirror for several hours a day, every day, because you're on these meetings on Zoom," Vequist said. People "ended up seeing these flaws, these crow's feet next to their eyes, the fact that their neck is starting to get wrinkles or wilting a little bit."

That, combined with a lack of self-care during the pandemic and "Quarantine 15" weight gain, has led to "a cosmetic perfect storm," according to Vequist.

COSMETIC PROCEDURES ON THE RISE: Selfies and self-care are leading millennials to get more cosmetic procedures, study says

Is it safe to travel for plastic surgery?

There are risks to traveling soon after major surgery.

The International Society of Plastic Surgery warns that sitting for long periods of time on a plane or car ride can increase the risk for blood clots in the legs and lungs. And experts typically advise against common vacation activities that may be tempting in a destination like Mexico  such as swimming, sunbathing and drinking alcohol  after surgery.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also notes that you are more likely to get an antibiotic-resistant infection in some countries, and counterfeit medicines and lower quality medical devices may be used in some countries.

But Vequist says theres little proof that procedures abroad are riskier than what patients can find within the U.S., despite the occasional horror story in the news.

How many times would you think the media reports on the successful procedures? he asked. We aren't finding much evidence that there's a difference.

Saltz agreed, adding that there are clinics in the U.S. that have issues as well. He and other experts warned that patients should be on the lookout for bad actors in any city.

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The results of a shoddy surgery can be devastating; Sivan Himmelman of Los Angeles says she is still recovering from procedures done in 2019.

The 40-year-old traveled to Mexico for a liposuction procedure and breast implants after stumbling across a surgeon on Instagram with an impressive portfolio. The surgeries cost her more than $6,000.

What was supposed to be a five-night stay in a recovery home was extended to 10 nights after she experienced complications. Himmelman said she discovered lipo burns on her stomach and back and scarring, along with a host of other issues. She said the recovery process has been a "nightmare"  she estimates she spent "well over" $25,000 on follow-up procedures  and is far from happy with her results.

"I walked in thinking I'd walk away with a flat stomach," she said. Now, "I'm having to learn to love myself all over again when I couldn't master it the first 40 years of my life."

Experts warn that patients should do their research before committing to any clinic or surgeon with promising pictures online, whether it's inside or outside the U.S., and look for accredited facilities with board-certified surgeons.

"Dont just get attracted by a beautiful page on the internet," Saltz said.

"Followers and likes do not equate to competency," added Gregory Greco, president-elect of the American Society of Plastic Surgery.

You can follow USA TODAY reporter Bailey Schulz on Twitter @bailey_schulz and subscribe to our free Daily Money newsletter here for personal finance tips and business news every Monday through Friday.

Have you traveled for medical care?

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Plastic surgery tourism picking up, experts say. Are there risks?
Three Wilmington-based companies are temporarily prohibited from exporting goods after the U.S. government says they threatened national security.

Three Wilmington-based companies are temporarily prohibited from exporting goods after the U.S. government says they threatened national security.

A temporary denial order was issued Wednesday by the U.S. Commerce Departments Bureau of Industry and Security accusing Quicksilver Manufacturing Inc., Rapid Cut LLC and U.S. Prototype Inc. of illegally sending 3D blueprints and technical drawings to China.

The three companies are based on Market Street and provide 3D printing services to customers, including manufacturers of space and defense technology.

According to the Bureau of Industry and Security, the companies exported technical drawings and blueprints used for 3D printing satellite, rocket and defense-related prototypes to China  presumably to cut costs  without U.S. government approval.

Outsourcing 3-D printing of space and defense prototypes to China harms U.S. national security, said Matthew Axelrod, an assistant secretary of commerce for export enforcement, in a news release on Wednesday. By sending their customers technical drawings and blueprints to China, these companies may have saved a few bucks  but they did so at the collective expense of protecting U.S. military technology.

The order alleges these illegal transfers occurred in 2017, 2020 and 2021, and prohibits the three companies from exporting or receiving exports for 180 days.

Quicksilver Manufacturing Inc., Rapid Cut LLC and U.S. Prototype Inc. did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Last year the U.S. State Department and North Carolina-based defense firm Honeywell reached a $13 million settlement over allegations the manufacturer exported portions of technical drawings for F-35 jet fighters and other weapons, between 2011 and 2015, to China, Taiwan, Canada and Ireland.

Jamey Cross is the public safety reporter at the StarNews. Reach her at jbcross@gannett.com or message her on Twitter @jameybcross.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: US Government: Wilmington companies illegally exporting to China
Susan Kane-Ronning, a member of the Sierra Club, is concerned about the impact of the Badger Mountain solar development in Douglas County on sage grouse, a state-listed endangered species. She is shown here in a June 8 visit to the area where the farm would be sited. She was raised in Douglas County and now lives in Whatcom County.
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Ursula von der Leyen spoke in front of the European Parliament on Tuesday in defense of the Commissions decision.

- There has been no improvement in the state of the rule of law in Poland, and yet you have recommended an approval of the Polish RFF. The majority of MEPs and some members of the Commission consider this to be a huge mistake- argued Damian Boeselager, speaking on behalf of the Greens.

Ursula von der Leyen again emphasized that Poland will not receive any money before it implements legislative changes written into its plan (the so-called "milestones"). The National Recovery Plan encompasses EUR 23.9 billion in subsidies and EUR 11.5 billion in low-cost loans (to be paid until 2026), but the condition for the first tranche to be paid out at the end of this year is that Poland abolishes the Disciplinary Chamber for judges by the end of June. The second condition is the adoption of legislation that would preclude disciplining judges for the content of their rulings, for preliminary questions to the CJEU, and for checking whether other courts are independent and impartial.

The third rule of law condition written into the RFF is giving judges wronged by the Disciplinary Chamber an opportunity to have its decisions reviewed by an independent court. - I presented these three rule of law provisions last October. I presented them again when I was in Warsaw last week"-von der Leyen told the European Parliament.

REKLAMA

However, it was precisely because of provisions introducing a prolonged process of reinstatement of judges that two of the three main ("executive") deputy heads of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans and Margrethe Vestager, voted against backing Polands RFF last week. This is because, they argued, last year's CJEU rulings implied an obligation to immediately, or at any rate very quickly, reinstate the judges. Meanwhile, according to the RFF "milestones", the judges should see their first appeal hearing within a quarter of a year, and a final verdict within 12 months of filing a motion to overturn the decision of the Disciplinary Chamber. Brussels is not expected to verify that Poland met these deadlines until the third tranche of the RFF is paid out at the end of 2023.

A vote of no-confidence against von der Leyen?

That is why three MEPs from the liberal-macronian Renew Europe faction, Guy Verhofstadt, Sophie in 't Veld, and Luis Garicano, started collecting signatures for a motion of no-confidence against the European Commission. The motion is to be presented if Poland in fact receives any money from the RFF before the full implementation of the CJEU judgments, the reinstatement of judges harmed by the Disciplinary Chamber, and the recognition of the primacy of EU law. The RFF in its current form does not meet these demands, but is a vote of no-confidence even a real threat to von der Leyen?

For such a motion to be considered, it must be signed by 10% of all European Parliament members, which now includes a total of 705 representatives. However, a vote of no-confidence, which would mean a dismissal of the entire European Commission, would require two-thirds of the votes cast (and representing over half of the entire chamber). And this currently seems very unlikely. Even Stephane Sejourne, head of the Renew Europe group, which includes, among others, the Poland 2050 group, distances himself from the idea of a vote of no-confidence. "There was no majority support for this idea in our group" - Sejourne explained before the debate.

REKLAMA

- For our group, the decision of the European Commission is clear. Poland must meet the "milestones" in order to receive the money. That is why we do not see the need for any vote of no-confidence- said the Bavarian Christian Democrat Manfred Weber, head of the center-right European People's Party (EPP).

Iratxe Garcia Perez, head of the center-left group (which includes the Polish New Left), emphasized that the rehabilitation of judges harmed by the Disciplinary Chamber must lead to their reinstatement in their previous positions and their work in their areas of expertise. - During my visits to Poland, I met some of these judges in person. I admire them for their courage and for defending the rights and values of the European Union- Garcia Perez said. However, her faction also did not join the enthusiasts of the vote of no-confidence against von der Leyens Commission.

On the other hand, Ryszard Legutko (Polands ruling Law and Justice party), speaking on behalf of the Conservatives faction, argued that the debate on the Polish RFF is "absurd and unworthy", and that the criticism against the Polish government is based on ignorance of European bureaucrats.

Will Brussels approve Polands Recovery Plan?

Already last year, von der Leyen narrowed the RFF talks down to the issue of the disciplinary regime for judges, leaving aside the Constitutional Tribunal and the politicized National Council of the Judiciary. However, the achievement of "milestones" specified in the RFF does not necessarily mean that Brussels is letting go of its other, standard ways of pushing for respecting the rule of law.

REKLAMA

- We will continue the ongoing anti-infringement proceedings. And we will not hesitate to launch new ones if the need arises. We will continue to apply daily fines until Poland complies with the CJEU's decision- von der Leyen assured the European Parliament.

It appears that the European Commission intends to leave it in the hands of the CJEU to decide whether to continue to impose a penalty of one million euros per day (which already amounts to more than EUR 225 million) for failing to implement interim measures regarding the so-called "muzzle law". - Let Poland, after adopting Duda's draft, file a motion with the CJEU to repeal or modify the interim measure- some politicians in Brussels suggest. Also, the shape of the institutional successor to the Disciplinary Chamber ("should significantly differ from the composition of the Disciplinary Chamber", according to the preamble to the RFF), which according to the RFFs provisions is supposed to be "an independent and impartial court established by law"- will be challenged to the CJEU as part of the ongoing anti-infringement proceedings.

The European Parliament is scheduled to hold a vote on a resolution on the National Recovery Plan and the rule of law in Poland on Thursday, June 9th.

***

Every day, 400 journalists at Gazeta Wyborcza write verified, fact-checked stories about Polish politics and society, keeping a critical eye on the ruling camps persistent assault on democratic values and the rule of law; the growing cultural tension between religious fundamentalism and human rights; and the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic. Our journalists are on the front lines in 25 Polish cities, reporting from the streets, hospitals, and courtrooms about issues that move public opinion.

We decided to make our service available to everyone free of charge in order to provide access to high quality journalism for expats and English speakers interested in Polish affairs.

The access to information should be equal for all.
The government condemns low-cost airline Ryanairs unfair ticket pricing, the ministry of economic development said on Friday. Marton Nagy, the minister, has launched an investigation with a view to protecting consumers.

The Hungarian government has decided to tax extra profits in certain areas of the economy to protect families, and airline companies are affected by the measure, the ministry said in a statement.



The government has made it clear to all affected parties that it will monitor market trends and make every effort to prevent companies from transferring the extra burdens to consumers.



The government considers Ryanairs decision to transfer the extra tax to travellers unacceptable and resolutely rejects it, the ministry said.



It is especially preposterous that Ryanair has introduced this practice for tickets previously sold, it added.



Nagy has ordered a consumer protection review asking government bodies with consumer protection powers to assess unfair practices and prevent them if possible, the statement said.



The minister has proposed that the authority also assess whether Ryanairs ticket pricing is in line with all European standards and expectations, especially in view of special taxes on airlines having been in force in several other European countries for some time, it added.



The Budapest municipal government office said on Friday that it has launched an immediate consumer protection probe against Ryanair.



It is investigating whether the company is involved in unfair trade practices and violating consumer protection regulations, the statement added.
SEWARD -- Nebraska State Senator Mark Kolterman of Seward was the keynote speaker at a recent Seward Rotary Club meeting. He talked about his last eight years of representing District 24 at the Nebraska Legislature.

Kolterman, a lifelong resident of Seward and District 24, is in his last year as he cannot run for this seat again due to term limits.

His presentation included the highlights and disappointments in serving over the last eight years and some insightful observations from the experience. He also said it was a privilege and honor to represent such a positive, progressive legislative district.

He commented, I went into this experience with no agenda. I just wanted to serve and represent my constituents. I enjoy public service and have been involved in a variety of service activities over the years. I did, however, learn that many did have specific agendas as senators, and it was often a challenge to see who I would please and who I would upset with my vote or stance on an issue.

He reviewed many of his activities over the years, starting with 2015, when he voted to repeal the death penalty. He explained that the voters who took the time to contact him were 2-1 in favor of the repeal. Being a Pro Life Senator, death was not a solution in my eyes and the repeal of the death penalty passed. However, when it became an issue of the people and was placed on the ballot, they voted to keep the death penalty. After that, I followed suit and if it had come up again, I would have voted to keep it as well, as I was listening to my constituents. After all, thats what you do -- you listen and vote to support your constituents.

Kolterman served on many of the 14 standing Committees. The first year, he served on the Agriculture Committee, General Affairs Committee, the Health and Human Services Committee and the Retirement Committee. Every two years the committee assignment can change. The second year he was elected Chairman of the Retirement Committee and served for seven years. He was also on the Banking Committee and the Revenue Committee. During his final years he served on Appropriations and continued his service as Chair of the Retirement Committee.

Serving as the Retirement Committee Chair was a major task as they have a total of $22 billion in assets and manage seven retirement plans, and soon will add Omaha Public Schools retirement to their management group. He noted that every month, the Nebraska Retirement pays out $60 million in funds to eligible Nebraskans. He also noted that Nebraskas retirement plans rank fourth in the nation, modeled as one of the most successful retirement management programs in the United States.

He reviewed many of his early bills -- one of from the first year involved Tele Health, working to boost rural health. Another successful early bill centered on plasma donation and lowered the age to give blood to the age of 18, which passed 46-0. Palliative care was another issue, developed into a bill that passed offering coordination of care for the terminally ill.

In 2020, he was very proud of his Imagine Nebraska Act which took two sessions to pass. This economic development incentive program was needed to replace the previous economic development program and will remain in effect for 10 years. It was combined with a property tax relief program and The Next Project, which would bring a large operation of the federal government to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

The Next Project is a partnership program with University Med Center and the Department of Defense. The State of Nebraska pledged $300 million, which would be allocated to build once the federal government and philanthropy community contribute. After hours of negotiation, it will create 8,000 jobs in Nebraska and be a major economic development effort.

He spoke on the property tax credits now offered as a result of current legislation. Also, in 2021 he noted that the Omaha Public Schools Retirement system requested that the legislature take over their program. His committee agreed to manage the OPS retirement program without assuming the deficit or take on their liabilities. The bill passed with 38 votes.

2021 also saw the Step Therapy Reform Act adopted, where there is a concerted effort to cut red tape and serve the clients in need. He also carried several successful bills regarding pharmacy regulation.

The legislatures redistricting process was a challenge during his tenure. He had to work hard to keep District 24 in one cohesive district as the district was one of the few districts with growth and the counties within it worked well together. At one time, the Redistricting Committee suggested that District 24 dissolve and that Sarpy County would become District 24. In the end, after much deliberation, he stopped the movement of district 24, leaving the current district basically the same footprint.

He is most proud of his Pancreatic Cancer Research Bill which allocated $15 million to create a Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at UNMC in Omaha. This Center of Excellence will become a national focus for Pancreatic Cancer research which took over four years of negotiation to bring the Center to a reality.

In addressing disappointments and challenges, he said, One of my biggest disappointments is not being able to help the first-class city paid professional firefighters with their retirement package. He wanted to create a retirement plan for the first-class city firemen and is still working on the issue to assist first responders, he stated.

There are many difficult issues before the legislature each year, and I see Pro Life continuing to be challenged, with a potential special session yet this year. Issues with education, sex standards and even railroad/train issues have also been debated. I really feel we should trust our local boards and hired professionals and allow them to do their jobs, not tell them how to do their jobs.

One of the major benefits to the work in the legislature is the development of friends and colleagues, who need to work together to accomplish much, Kolterman said. I am a strong advocate on the fact that the Nebraska Unicameral remains focused on being nonpartisan, and that the elected representatives leave their Republican or Democrat cloaks at home. I was considered a moderate and along with seven others worked with both sides of the fence to get work done. We represented the people, not the parties. It has worked for many years that way and I hope it continues.

He said he likes to see more non-partisanship in the Unicameral, as it was established with that mindset: to take off the party hats at the door and work on the issues together as Nebraskans.

When asked about his next political step or future, he commented that he is just looking forward to being a good volunteer for Rotary and plans to retire and work in the yard and play at the lake. He is proud to have left over $1 billion in the states rainy day reserve account, noting that the state is in good shape financially.

He said he has enjoyed many successes in the last eight years because of his strong, professional office staff and assistants who continue to work every day to help District 24 and the people of Nebraska. These wonderful state employees are to be commended, he said. I will always be grateful to them for their dedication to our work over the last eight years and their loyalty to me and the programs I helped create for the benefit of our district and the state of Nebraska. This outstanding group made me look good and made our district one of the leaders in the Unicameral these last eight years.

He concluded, I thank you for this once in a lifetime opportunity to be your senator and I just hope you believe that I have served you well, as I did try and work hard to make District 24 and Nebraska a better place to live, work and raise a family. I thank you!
Automaker Citroen is all set to introduce its all-new C3 model next month, marking its foray into the highly competitive sub-4 meter segment in the Indian market. The company aims to build up a robust yet efficient sales network to cater to its new range, including an electric vehicle it plans to launch over the next few years. The carmaker launched its first model C5 Aircross SUV in the country last year with showrooms in just 10 main cities in India, including Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Chennai.

The company had also launched a 100 percent direct online buying for C5 Aircross SUV in over 50 Indian cities outside the dealer network. With C5 Aircross, Citroen aimed at establishing the brand in India, and now with C3, it aims to get into the mainstream, competing with the likes of Nissan Magnite and Renault Kiger on one side and premium hatchbacks Maruti Suzuki Baleno and Hyundai i20 on the other.

"The C3 is coming up and we are starting with 20 dealerships in July and we plan to have 30 outlets by the end of the year and since the C-Cubed platform is now alive our expansion of the network will continue next year as well," Citroen India Brand Head Saurabh Vatsa told PTI in an interaction.

Also read: ITBP creates test track to train drivers on slippery roads in difficult terrains - Watch Video

The company, which plans to bring in new cars at regular intervals including an EV next year, would keep ramping up the sales network going ahead. "We're not slowing down now," Vatsa said. The C3, a hatchback with SUV looks, is expected to hit the market on July 20.

Vatsa noted that the company has heavily localised the C-Cubed platform over the last few years leading to benefits from a cost of ownership perspective. C3 is the first model to come up on the platform and the company plans to bring in one model every year going ahead.

Elaborating on the business model, Vatsa said the company is already producing engines and gearboxes catering to domestic and export markets, respectively. "So if we look at the overall package, the industrialisation (engine, gearbox manufacturing), and the go-to-market strategy, it is very carefully planned and rolled out. It is now coming alive with the mainstream product, the C3," Vatsa stated.

The company also plans to export C3 to various international markets like Africa, ASEAN, and Latin America. Stellantis India CEO and Managing Director Roland Bouchara termed India an important strategic market for the group. "India is probably one of the most stable countries in terms of growth on which we can bet..," he noted.

(With inputs from PTI)

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Ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala backed Akasa Air is gearing up for their commercial operations to start in India soon. India's newest airline is waiting to take delivery of the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, following which they can apply for the necessary certifications. While Akasa Air did share the first glimpse of its aircraft with the new livery parked at the Boeing's facility in the United States, new photographs have now emerged showing airborne Akasa Air plane with the company's 'rising A' symbol and orange and purple livery, a new for the Indian market.

As per a report, the first aircraft bearing line number 7617, was initially destined for TWay Air, a South Korean low-cost carrier. However, the company didn't take the aircraft and Boeing alloted the unit to the Akasa Air, who placed an order of 72 Boeing 737 Max 8, the largest order for the controversial Max series of aircrafts. According to data from Ch-Aviation, the airframe is almost three years old now.

Here's all you need to know about the Akasa Air

India's newest budget airline backed by ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and aviation veterans Vinay Dube and Aditya Ghosh has unveiled its tagline 'It's Your Sky' and aircraft livery with 'Rising A' symbol in orange and purple colour. The airline said the symbol 'rising A' was inspired by elements from the sky - "It symbolises the warmth of the rising sun, the effortless flight of a bird and the dependability of an aircraft wing," it said.

Akasa Air Commencement Date

SNV Aviation under which Akasa will fly says that the airline brand is targeting Summer 2022 to start the operations in India. Akasa Air has already received the No Objection Certificate to operate flights in India. The company initially targeted June 2022 for operations to start, however there's a delay and might start start ops in July 2022.

We are pleased to have Griffin as our partners in growth as we embark on our aviation journey. The high degree of confidence and endorsement from the Griffin team is a testimony to Akasa Airs robust and sustainable future. - Vinay Dube, CEO. https://t.co/qFE6XcCrMv  Akasa Air (@AkasaAir) June 9, 2022

Akasa Air Fleet

In an earlier released statement, the airline mentioned that the company plans to operate approximately 70 planes in the next four years. While the Airbus' Chief Commercial Officer Christian Scherer had previously stated that Airbus is in conversation with Akasa for an aircraft procurement deal, the Indian brand, at the Dubai Air Show, sealed a deal with Boeing to procure 72 737 Max aircrafts.

Akasa Air recently signed a contract with Griffin Global Asset Management, an Irish leasing company, for the sale and leaseback of five Boeing 737-8 aircraft. The airline sells its jets to a leasing business and then leases them back under the sale and leaseback arrangement. This frees up the funds that the airline used to purchase the plane.

Akasa Air Management

Akasa Air is backed by ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who is the co-founder of the newest airline and owns 40% of the company, along with Aditya Ghosh, former President of Indigo who will have a 10 per cent stake in the Akasa Air. Ex-Jet Airways CEO Vinay Dube will be the CEO of Akasa Air with a 15 per cent stake. The brand is also looking to hire other industry leaders at the top spot before beginning of the operations.

Akasa Air Routes

Akasa Air plans to offer flights across India with an "endeavour to be the nation's most dependable, affordable and greenest airline". While no announcement has been made in this regards, it is expected the Akasa will serve the major domestic routes with the ultra low cost airline to attract the potential flyers.

Akasa Air Livery

Akasa Air has chosen Sunrise Orange and Passionate Purple colour scheme for its fleet, which is surely eye-catching. The tagline says Its your sky, and there's a 'rising A' symbol on the tail.
At the very start of the Top Gun: Maverick movie, that was released in theatres after much delay last month, Tom Cruise visits a secret test facility to fly a stealth plane, resembling the famed Lockheed Martin SR-71 "Blackbird". Called the Darkstar, the plane touched 10 Mach, which makes it the fastest aircraft in the world, even though fictional. But is it really a fictional plane or Lockheed Martin is actually working on a Mach 10 plane? The U.S. based aerospace and defence major revealed some details of the concept plane recently.

Lockheed Martin CEO, James Taiclet, recently disclosed the involvement of its legendary Skunk Works division following the world premiere of the film and has now created a dedicated webpage for mysterious Darkstar. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works thrives on tackling seemingly impossible work, developing technologies for tomorrows challenges before the need is even identified, the website says.

When the Top Gun: Maverick team was looking to push the envelope and stand true to Mavericks Need for Speed, Skunk Works was their first call. With Skunk Works expertise in developing the fastest known aircraft combined with a passion and energy for defining the future of aerospace, Darkstars capabilities could be more than mere fiction. They could be reality

Is Darkstar real?

The Darkstar is roughly based on the Lockheed Martins SR-71 Blackbird, which was a long-range, high-altitude, strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed and manufactured in the US and was operated by both the United States Air Force and NASA. Reports say that the plane in the movie is SR-72, often referred to as "Son of Blackbird", and is a hypersonic UAV based on SR-71. The plane can take flight in 2025 with a Mach 6 top speed.

Lockheed Martins Director of Communications for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, John Neilson, in April tweeted that Darkstar could offer a sneaky peek at what might be the Lockheed Martin SR-72. Like the Darkstar in the movie, Mach 6 will be enough to blow off rooftops.

Whats SR-72 Aircraft?

The SR-72 is the advanced unmanned SR-71 based stealth aircraft being developed by the Lockheed Martin for the Indian Air Force. The plane can reportedly touch Mach 6 speed, which will make it the fastest in the world. For the initiated, Mach is the speed of sound (1200 kmph) and 6 Mach means 7,200 kmph. For reference, the fastest operational fighter jet can go 2.5 Mach (3,000 kmph).

The plane will be able to carry hypersonic missiles and will be used for high-speed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and strike operations. Lockheed says that the SR-72 will change the definition of air power by giving the US significant tactical and strategic advantages and forever change the ability of the US to deter and respond to conflicts.

So, to answer your question, is Darkstar a fiction or reality? Its actually a fictional plane made only for the movie and the closest aircraft in reality will be SR-72 that will be operational as early as 2025.
New Delhi: As superstar Aamir Khan geras up for the release of his film Laal Singh Chaddha, music composer Tanuj Tiku reveals that the movie required over 150 individuals to produce the music score. Revealing what was the brief given to him, Tanuj Tiku shared to a leading daily, "It was a slice-of-life film. Aamir sir likes Panchgani, which is why we worked there with a bunch of musicians. We played live, jammed together, and created the thematic music there. Within two weeks, all the thematic material and character motifs were readied.



The composer further credited Aamir Khan and film director Advait Chandan for cultivating an environment of creativity to a leading daily.

"The culture at [Aamir's production house], and Advait's relationship with him, is noteworthy. There is always a plan in place, but the process is organic. We watched the film, and immediately decided to jump into the score composition. My team and I began to ideate, and we [primarily used] the violin, piano, and guitar. We'd perform the themes to him live, and the first few days were simply spent in sampling these [chunks], listening to music and creating different colour palettes for different characters and themes, based on the brief."

Tiku was certain that he wanted orchestral influences to be apparent in the score in keeping with its theme. He admits that generating a score of over 19 minutes posed a set of challenges, especially since it had to be recorded live. "But the story is beautiful, and we wanted the score to complement it. The harmonic language, and the simplicity of the character is at the film's core. There are musical layers that help narrate the story. Over 150 people have worked on the score, including 75 musicians from the orchestra. The music for the trailer was recorded in Budapest."

'Laal Singh Chaddha', produced by Aamir Khan Productions, Kiran Rao, and Viacom18 Studios, also stars Kareena Kapoor Khan, Mona Singh, and Chaitanya Akkineni.
NEW DELHI: Bollywood is thriving on new films, never seen before content, and fresh pairings in 2022. While the spark between the old pairings is considered gone by, some of these fresh power couples are all set to take over our big screen this year.

Here, we bring to you some fresh on-screen power couple that we will get to see on the big screen:

1. Kriti and Prabhas (Adipurush)

Bollywood star Kriti Sanon and Pan India actor Prabhas are spectacular actors and are popular for taking up space in their films. It is exciting to know that a pool of talent like these will be seen together in their forthcoming film Adipurush. Adipurush is an upcoming Indian Hindu mythological film based on the epic Ramayana.

2. Deepika and Hrithik (Fighter)

Indian actress Deepika Padukone and Greek God Hrithik Roshan are all set to work together for the first time in Fighter. Their forthcoming film is Bollywoods highly anticipated film and the entire nation is excited to watch their sizzling chemistry on the silver screen. Helmed by Siddharth Anand, the film is all set to release in 2023.

3. Alia and Ranbir (Brahmastra)

Bollywoods recently wedded Jodi, Alia Bhatt, and Ranbir Kapoor have taken over the hearts and souls of the nation. Their upcoming film, Brahmastra is one of the most awaited films in India and the netizens are very excited to see them together for the first time.

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NEW DELHI: Bollywood actor Vicky Kaushal is currently shooting for his upcoming romantic-comedy 'Rola' alongside 'Bulbul' actress Tripti Dimri in Croatia. The film produced by Karan Johar and directed by Anand Tiwari went into production in March and now, the cast and crew seem to be working on a song sequence. Filmmaker and choreographer Farah Khan is also accompanying them and has been sharing pictures from the scenic location.

Farah took to Instagram to share a pretty picture from the shoot location in Croatia. In it, Vicky Kaushal can be seen standing next to Tripti and Farah. She captioned the picture "Rocking the boat." While Vicky is seen in a skyblue shirt and white pants, Tripti is seen in a printed maxi dress as they pose with Farah on a boat. Several other on-set pictures from the day made their way to the internet. The actors were shooting on a rocky beach, near a wooden ship.

The initial schedule of the film was shot in Mumbai, Delhi and Mussoorie before the cast flew to Zagreb, Dubrovnik. As per reports on a leading news portal, they're shooting a romantic song. Vicky will be seen in a romantic role and the makers want the song to be 'lavish and colourful'.

There were many more pictures of the two actors in another set of costumes. Some pictures show Vicky in a mint green shirt and blue pants and Tripti in a blue top and skirt. They seem to be shooting on a street.

As soon as the picturs surfaced on the internet, netizens started to draw comparison between Tripti and Vicky's sister-in-law Isabelle Kaif. "Every time I see her, she reminds me of Isabelle Kaif. P.S Vicky," read a comment. Another wrote, "Yeah she looks like her in these pics Lol."

Only recently, Vicky Kaushal had also posted a photo from the location which is popularised by shows like 'Game of Thrones'. The actor has a packed slate of upcoming films including 'Govinda Naam Mera' alongside Kiara Advani and Bhumi Pednekar. He is also attached to star in director Laxman Utekar's untitled film with Sara Ali Khan.

Filming for the project wrapped recently.

Meanwhile, Tripti Dimri who is best known for her role in 'Laila Majnu' was last seen in the horror film 'Bulbbul'.

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New Delhi: Hundreds of thousands of bank employees in India are seeking a five-day workweek while the world debates the benefits and drawbacks of a four-day workweek.

On June 27, at least nine bank employee unions will go on strike for a day to urge their demands. They want Saturday and Sunday off, claiming that the technology available to banks would allow for a smooth transition to a five-day workweek. Read More: NCLAT rejects Amazon's plea to stay CCI order suspending Future Coupons deal approval

Employees at the bank began working on alternate Saturdays seven years ago. Since 2015, bank unions have been clamouring for time off on all Saturdays and Sundays. Read More: Hrithik Roshan gets angry at Burger King, says This is not done

According to the United Forum of Bank Unions, an umbrella body of nine national level bank unions, including NCBE and AIBEA, the IBA agreed after approval by the RBI and the government that the 2nd and 4th Saturdays would be holidays in the 10th Bipartite Settlement in 2015.

According to the forum, it was agreed at the time that the establishment of a five-day banking week would be studied. The problem was raised at the 11th bipartite settlement talks, but it could not be resolved, according to the statement.

From June 6, employees at 70 companies around the UK began working a four-day week. The six-month pilot trial is being hailed as the largest of its type, with organisations from a variety of industries participating, including financial services and hotels.

According to a report, it seems like a great leap of faith in work culture to get 100 percent remuneration for working 80 percent of their work hours in exchange for maintaining 100 percent output. India, according to human resource specialists and employment organisations, may not be ready for such an experiment.

They claim that such a system would be impossible to implement in such a large labour market with so many layers. Companies examine the problem from four perspectives: productivity, roles, industries, and geographic locations.

According to talent managers, what is somewhat achievable in some industries is nearly impossible in others. Some argue that the Indian employer psychology is geared to a five-day work ethic, and that a transition to a four-day workweek necessitates a paradigm shift in business thinking.
New Delhi: The Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind has moved an application in the Supreme Court seeking to issue directions to the State of Uttar Pradesh that no precipitative action be taken in Kanpur District against the residential or commercial property of any accused in any criminal proceedings as an extra-legal punitive measure. The development came a day after the UP government conducted a demolition drive at the "illegal properties" of two "masterminds" of the violent protest that erupted on June 10, as outrage at the controversial remarks of suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma on Prophet Muhammad.

The Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind asks SC to issue directions against 'extra-legal punitive measure'

The Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind sought SC to issue directions to the State that no precipitative action be taken in Kanpur District against the residential or commercial property of any accused in any criminal proceedings as an extra-legal punitive measure.

It also urged the top court to issue directions to ensure that any demolition exercise of any nature must be carried out strictly in accordance with applicable laws, and only after due notice and opportunity of hearing are given to each of the persons affected by the demolition drive.

'Adoption of such extra-legal measures is clearly in violation of the principles of natural justice'

The present application was filed in the pending petition against demolition drive being carried out by state agencies. "That after the violence in Kanpur (violence that erupted in a marketplace in Kanpur, after the Friday prayers on June 3, a number of persons in authority have stated in the media that the properties of suspects/ accused would be confiscated and demolished. Even the Chief Minister of the state has said in the media that the houses of accused persons would be razed using bulldozers, " the application said.

"That adoption of such extra-legal measures is clearly in violation of the principles of natural justice... considering that the captioned matter is currently pending before this Court, restoring to such measures is even more alarming," the application said, which sought immediate action should be taken by the Court in order to prevent violation of the rule of law and the rights of the accused persons.

They further urged that it be directed that ministers, legislators and anybody unconnected with the criminal investigation to be restrained from apportioning criminal responsibility regarding criminal action publicly or through any official communication until determination by a criminal court.

AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi criticises CM Yogi Adityanath's 'demolition drive'

Earlier in the day, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi also took a jibe at the state chief minister Yogi Adityanath for demolishing the houses.

"UP CM has become the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court. He`ll convict anyone and demolish their houses? The house which was demolished is in the name of the wife of the accused who is a Muslim woman," Owaisi said on the demolition of houses in Prayagraj.

The demolition of alleged Prayagraj violence mastermind Javed Ahmed's 'illegally constructed' home

Speaking to ANI, a local police constable asserted in the morning that the environment was peaceful in the city, days after the violence erupted. "The atmosphere is peaceful in Prayagraj after violence hit on June 10. On June 12, the house of the main conspirator Javed Pump was demolished. The identification of the people involved in violence is on," he said.

Earlier on Sunday, the Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA) issued a demolition notice at the residence of the main conspirator Javed Ahmed, asking him to vacate the house by 11 AM as it was "illegally constructed".

During the demolition drive, posters and flags were taken out of the residence of the Prayagraj violence accused Javed Ahmed. Notably, the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University also protested outside UP Sadan against the demolition held earlier today.

According to Prayagraj Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ajay Kumar, names of the people linked with AIMIM have surfaced and there could be more masterminds of the violence.

"Mastermind Javed Ahmed detained, there could be more masterminds...The anti-social elements used minor kids to hurl stones at the police and administration. A case registered under 29 crucial sections. Action will be taken under Gangster Act and the NSA," he told reporters on Saturday.

The SSP said that there are 70 others who are named as accused and over 5,000 people unnamed in the violence. "Action will be taken under the Gangster Act and NSA," he added.

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New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed a petition by CPI(M) leaders Brinda Karat and KM Tiwari challenging the trial court's refusal to direct the registration of an FIR against Union Minister Anurag Thakur and his BJP colleague and MP Pravesh Verma for their alleged hate speeches concerning anti-CAA protest at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi.

Justice Chandra Dhari Singh, who had reserved the verdict on March 25, refused to interfere with the trial court's order and said that under the law, the requisite sanction is required to be obtained from the competent authority for the registration of FIR in the present facts.

The judge said that the trial court rightly decided the petitioners' plea and that no case for exercise of the high court's writ jurisdiction was made out in view of the presence of alternate remedy under the law.

The petitioners had assailed the trial court order before the high court on the ground that a cognisable offence is made out against the two leaders in the present case and an FIR should be lodged against them for their alleged hate speeches concerning the anti-CAA protest at Shaheen Bagh here and that they were only asking the police to investigate the matter.

The petitioners had claimed in their complaint before the trial court that "Thakur and Verma had sought to incite people as a result of which three incidents of firing took place at two different protest sites in Delhi."

Delhi Police had defended the trial court order, saying that it rightly held that it does not have jurisdiction to deal with the case and referred to the Supreme Court's judgements which said that if a judge is saying he does not have jurisdiction, he should not comment on merits and that is the right approach.

It was the petitioners' grievance that at the Rithala rally here, Thakur had, on January 27, 2020, egged on the crowd to raise an incendiary slogan "shoot the traitors" after lashing out at anti-CAA protesters.

They had further claimed that Verma had, on January 28, 2020, allegedly made incendiary comments against the anti-CAA protesters in Shaheen Bagh.

The trial court had, on August 26, 2021, dismissed the petitioners' complaint on the ground that it was not sustainable as the requisite sanction from the competent authority, the central government, was not obtained.

In the complaint, Karat and Tiwari had sought lodging of FIRs under various sections, including 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.), 153-B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration) and 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the IPC.

It had also sought action under other sections of the IPC, including 298 (uttering, words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation).

The maximum punishment for the offences is a jail term of seven years.

The petitioners had approached the trial court after Karat's written complaints to the Commissioner of Police and the SHO, Parliament Street, were stated to have failed to elicit any response.

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BHEL Recruitment 2022: Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has announced vacancies for Engineer and Supervisor positions and has invited applications from candidates for as many as eight positions. The deadline for applying for these positions is June 21, 2022, and to apply, candidates must visit BHEL's official website at bhel.com. The application period is currently underway since June 7 and the deadline for submitting a hard copy of the online application form is June 24.

BHEL Recruitment 2022: Vacancy details

BHEL will hire eight people, including engineers and supervisors through this recruitment.

BHEL Jobs 2022: Eligibility criteria

A candidate must have a four-year bachelor's degree in civil engineering/technology to apply for the positions of engineer under this recruitment drive.

In addition, the candidate must have a five-year Integrated Master's degree in Civil Engineering / Technology with at least 60% marks.

The ideal candidate should have five years of experience.

To apply for the position of supervisor, a candidate must have a full-time diploma in civil engineering from a recognized Indian university or institute, as well as three years of experience.

The candidate applying for these positions should be no older than 45 years old.

BHEL Recruitment: Salary details

Candidates selected for the positions of the engineer will be paid Rs 78,000 per month. At the same time, selected candidates for the position of supervisor will be paid Rs 43,550 per month.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been summoned again on Tuesday by probe agency Enforcement Directorate in a case related to linked to the National Herald newspaper. They said the questioning on Monday continued well past 9 pm and would end soon. Gandhi, who entered the headquarters of the federal agency in central Delhi around 11.10 am, was put to questioning about 20 minutes later after he finished some brief legal proceedings and marked his attendance.

He was allowed by the ED to leave for lunch around 2:10 pm and he returned for the questioning around 3:30 pm, officials said. The probe pertains to alleged financial irregularities in the party-promoted Young Indian that owns the National Herald newspaper. The National Herald is published by the Associated Journals Limited (AJL) and owned by Young Indian Pvt Limited.
New Delhi: The recent surge in Covid-19 cases in the country is part of the new normal as the virus continues to mutate, experts said on Monday and added that use of masks and booster doses are imperative to tackle the disease. India on Monday recorded 8,084 fresh Covid cases, the third straight day that the tally has passed the 8,000-mark, with the active caseload standing at 47,995. The country also recorded a total of 10 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the overall fatalities due to 5,24,771, as per data from the Union Health Ministry.

According to the health experts, the latest surge is driven by sub-strains of the Omicron variant, namely BA.2, BA.4 and BA.5.

Majority of cases are seen as less severe, requiring less hospitalisation, but with high transmission levels.

"Rising cases are probably due to a new subtype of Omicron variant. No need to get panicked about it as it`s causing mostly upset respiratory tract infections with very rare severe disease," Dr Harshal R. Salve, Associate Professor at Centre for Community Medicine, AIIMS, told IANS.

"Such peaks will be expected in future as mutation in the virus is a continuous phenomenon," he added.

Currently, India has reported 50,000 cases in a week, the biggest since the January wave.

Maharashtra and Kerala reported the highest Covid cases, with 16,370 and 15,363 cases, respectively.

States that breached the 1,000-mark include Karnataka (3,651), Delhi (2,442), Haryana (1,617), Tamil Nadu (1,332), Uttar Pradesh (1,212) and Telangana (1,039).

Chennai and Mumbai have also recorded a sharp spike in the number of hospitalisations.

"The reasons for the current wave include, but are not limited to the newer variants like BA.4, the opening up of the public places and indoor meetings, not mandating masks, reopening of the school and waning immunity," Dr Dipu TS, Associate Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, Amrita Hospital, Kochi, told IANS.

"The variant responsible is Omicron BA.1-BA.2 and in some cases it could be other sub lineages," added Dr Rahul Pandit, Director-Critical Care, Fortis Hospitals Mumbai, and also member of national and Maharashtra`s Covid-19 Taskforce.

The health experts emphasised the need for mandating masks in indoor meetings where social distancing cannot be practised; and discouraging symptomatic individuals from attending the school, colleges, workplace and also public places of worship and gatherings.

"Implementation of masking is a regulatory decision. For our own safety, masking should become a health habit. Masking is recommended in indoor spaces because ventilation in offices, halls, and auditoriums is low, therefore it will limit the transmission of infections," Pandit said.

While there is no reason to panic, Dipu said: "The current Covid wave, though more transmissible, is milder in severity. But as the numbers rise it`s difficult to ignore the fact that the immunity is waning as the majority got vaccinated a year ago.".

The country has administered Covid vaccines to 195 crore people, which includes 91.69 crore total first doses and 83.37 crore second doses to those aged 18 years and above, as per the Health Ministry.

But only 33,08,375 lakh precautionary doses have been administered to beneficiaries aged 18-59 years and about 3.54 crore to those aged above 60, healthcare workers and frontline workers so far.

"Together with the fact that the third dose has not been taken by the majority of the population, we need to educate the masses on the need for a booster dose so that the immunity gets boosted and it in turn boosts the herd immunity," Dipu said.
New Delhi: The Delhi Police has denied permission to the Congress rally scheduled for Monday (June 13, 2022) against Rahul Gandhis questioning by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the National Herald case today. Congress sources said the party has approached the Delhi Police again, asking them to reconsider the decision.

The Congress rally is scheduled to be taken out on Monday, by the party leaders and workers from AICC HQ at 24, Akbar Road to the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) office at APJ Abdul Kalam road.

The Delhi Police cited law and order behind the denial of the permission for the rally. The Congress has planned to demonstrate a political show of strength on Monday when the party leader Rahul Gandhi appears before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection in connection with a money laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper.

ED on Friday issued a fresh summons to Sonia Gandhi asking her to appear on June 23 for questioning in connection with the National Herald money laundering case. Rahul Gandhi has been summoned to join the investigation on June 13. He was earlier summoned to join the investigation but he was out of the country and later he was given a fresh date of June 13 to join the probe.

According to sources, Congress MPs, and Congress Working Committee (CWC) members have also been asked to be present in Delhi on Monday for the rally.

A meeting of All India Congress Committee (AICC) General Secretaries, State Incharges, and Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chiefs was called on Thursday to decide the strategy for the same.

Earlier, Congress leader Manickam Tagore said that party workers will hold demonstrations at around 25 offices of the probe agency across the country against the political vendata and the "misuse" of the central investigative agencies by the Central government to "silence the voice of opposition". Meanwhile, the Congress party has alleged that it is a "political vendetta" and the case has no grounds for investigation.

The ED also questioned senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge and Congress Treasurer Pawan Bansal in April this year in New Delhi in connection with its money laundering probe into the National Herald case.

The agency then recorded the statements of both the Congress leaders under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The National Herald is published by Associated Journals Limited (AJL) and owned by Young Indian Private Limited (YIL). While Kharge is the CEO of YIL, Bansal is the Managing Director of AJL.

The ED is currently investigating the shareholding pattern and financial transactions as well as the role of party functionaries in the functioning of the AJL and YIL. The YIL promoters include Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
New Delhi: Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal on Monday (June 13) said the "culture of bulldozing thrives" while the law sleeps in view of the demolition of an "illegally constructed" house of an accused in the Prayagraj violence. The Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA) on Sunday demolished the house of the alleged mastermind of Friday's violence in Prayagraj amid heavy police deployment.

"Prayagraj: The culture of bulldozing thrives while the law SLEEPS," Sibal said in a tweet, adding "Desh badal raha hai (the country is changing)". Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, who quit the Congress recently, was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh as an independent backed by the Samajwadi Party. A day earlier, the properties of two people accused of rioting were demolished in Saharanpur where stone-pelting had taken place as well.

Group of advocates file plea in Allahabad HC against the demolition

Meanwhile, a body of advocates in Prayagaraj has e-mailed a petition to the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court against the demolition of a house of the alleged mastermind of the June 10 violence here by the Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA). The building map of the house of the accused, Javed Ahmad, had not been approved by the PDA, according to an official of the agency.

Five advocates from an association, Zila Adhivakta Manch, claimed in the petition that the owner of the house, demolished on Sunday, was Javed's wife Parveen Fatima.

The said house was given to Fatima by her parents before her marriage, so Ahmad had no ownership over the house and the plot, hence the demolition was against the law, claimed the plea which was e-mailed to the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court on Sunday.

The petition also said that in order to justify the demolition, the PDA had pasted a notice on the house on June 11, mentioning a show-cause notice of a previous date. Neither Ahmad nor his wife had got the show-cause notice, it claimed. The petition stated that social worker Ahmad was arrested on the night of June 10, and an FIR was registered against him at Khuldabad police station on June 11.

The advocates, who have filed the petition are KK Rai, Mohammad Saeed Siddiqui, Rajvendra Singh, Prabal Pratap, Ravindra Singh and others.

"Javed Ahmad's house -- JK Ashiyana -- is located in the Kareli area of Prayagraj. Police personnel and a JCB machine reached the Kareli police station around 10.30 am and the demolition commenced around 1 pm," PTI quoted a senior PDA official as saying on Sunday.

"The house was built without getting its map passed by the PDA. For this, he was issued a notice on May 10 and was told to present his side on May 24. On the given date, neither Javed nor his lawyer turned up. No document was presented as well, and hence on May 25, demolition orders were issued," he further said.

Superintendent of Police (City) Dinesh Kumar Singh told PTI on Sunday, "In the morning, some of Javed Ahmad's family members collected a few of their belongings and left the place through the back door. As of now, no one is inside the house." Senior Superintendent of Police, Prayagraj, Ajay Kumar said the estimated value of the house was Rs 5 crore. The SP (City) said the police searched the house and found many objectionable items which were seized, adding that these will be included in the investigation. Notably, the row over the remarks against Prophet Mohammad escalated last week as several Muslim countries denounced them, prompting the BJP to suspend Nupur Sharma.

(With PTI Inputs)
Chandigarh: Amid the threat of a potential fourth wave due to the constantly rising cases of Covid-19, the Chandigarh administration has issued a new advisory to keep any further spread in check. The advisory issued by the health department of Chandigarh suggests wearing of masks, following Covid appropriate behaviour at all public places mandatory for the citizens. This comes as India Monday recorded over 8,000 new coronavirus infections. India's tally of Covid cases rose to 4,32,30,101, while the daily positivity rate was over three per cent after nearly four months.

Chandigarh Administration issues new advisory in view of increasing corona cases pic.twitter.com/cy9lnkcALd  ANI (@ANI) June 13, 2022

Here are the dos and donts as per the latest advisory:

Dos

Always wear a mask in public places to cover your mouth and nose.

Cover your nose and mouth with a handkerchief/tissue while sneezing and coughing.

Throw used tissues into closed bins immediately after use.

Avoid close contact settings, crowds and closed spaces.

Must maintain social distance (minimum one metre) in public places.

Practice frequent hand washing. Wash hands with soap and water or use alcohol based hand rub. Wash hands even if they are visibly clean.

Avoid unnecessary travel.

See a doctor if you feel unwell (fever, difficulty in breathing and cough). While visiting the doctor wear a mask to cover your mouth & nose.

If you have these signs/symptoms please call COVID helpline numbers: - 1075 or 9779558282

All residents are advised to get the booster dose of the COVID vaccine and get their children vaccinated too.

Donts

Avoid close contact with anyone, if you're experiencing cough and fever.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with your hands.

Do not spit in public places.

Meanwhile, due to a spike in Covid-19 cases, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya asserted on Monday that the pandemic was not over yet and stressed being vigilant and observing Covid-appropriate behaviour.

The minister appealed to states and union territories to continue and strengthen surveillance and focus on genome sequencing for identifying new variants in the country.
Bengaluru: Karnataka has been known as an educational hub at the national level. Educational clusters have been established across the state. People from across the country prefer to study in reputed educational institutions of Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Mysuru, Dharwad and Belagavi districts. However, the controversies surrounding textbook revisions followed by political slugfest between BJP, Congress and JD(S), agitation by litterateurs, protests registered by religious seers over the differential treatment to great personalities have again put the state in to the spotlight at the national level. Experts are fearing that the events have dented the image of the state as an educational hub. After the hijab controversy, the textbook revisions row has hit the state`s education sector hard. As the hijab crisis made international headlines, the controversies over textbook revisions have already taken a communal turn and seems to be evolving as major crisis causing concern among parents and children.



Recognised Unaided Private Schools Association (RUPSA) President Lokesh Talikote talking to IANS stated that the whole process of textbook revision has completely dented the image of the state as an educational hub.



"There used to be sanctity and respect towards textbooks. Universally acceptable chapters were chosen. There used to be 180 experts as members for the textbook revision committee earlier. Each subject, lesson are carefully dealt with by experts. The ruling BJP with 9 to 10 members committee got the revisions done. It is impossible for such a committee to revise 160 to 170 chapters," he explained.



The ruling BJP government has constituted the textbook revision committee under the Chairmanship of Rohith Chakrathirtha to revise Kannada textbooks of Class 1 to 10. The committee also revised Social Science textbooks of Class 6 to 10.



Opposition leader Siddaramaiah has launched a scathing attack on Chakrathirtha. He called him a "troller" and a person with a "perverted mindset". Siddaramaiah also slammed the Education Minister B.C. Nagesh for backing Chakrathirtha.



The Opposition leader has demanded legal action against Chakrathirtha for "insulting" great personalities and martyrs.



Minister Nagesh maintains that the opposition and commotion is "due to the inclusion of the speech of RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar in the syllabus". He also said that the opposition is also due to "dropping glorification of Muslim kings" including Tippu Sultan. The revision exercise gives due respect to the culture and religion of the land, which is not tolerated by leftists and Opposition parties, he said.



Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai announced that he would look into lessons on which concerns have been raised and assured of rectification. He also announced the dissolution of the textbook revision committee headed by Chakrathirtha as its job of revision is complete.



Nagesh later announced that the revised lesson of History textbook of II PUC (Pre University Colleges) by the Chakrathirtha committee would not be accepted to pacify the dissent voices.



The Opposition has intensified its agitation and warned the government that the revised textbooks should not be distributed to the students. Sources explain that if the ruling BJP decides to distribute books, there is going to be a crisis situation in the state.



RUPSA President Talikote has given a call to private school managements to choose books of their choice. "Out of 1.6 crore children studying in schools in Karnataka between Class 1 and 10, more than 50 lakh children study in private institutions and they won`t read the revised textbooks," he says.



"...There is great demand for private schools. The parents are migrating from government schools to private schools after the syllabus row. About 15 lakh students have joined private schools," he explained.



S.R. Raghavendra, President of Human Rights Preservation and Corruption Eradication Forum and social activist, while speaking to IANS, accused the ruling BJP of "attempting to falsify what is eternal truth in the education system". "It is trying to prove that education imparted all these days was a farce," he claimed.



"If the political parties take up the work of textbook revision for promoting their ideologies, where will it lead to? Earlier, litterateurs, scholars and researchers use to decide what the children should read. It is sad that now politicians are deciding over the issue," Raghavendra added.



"If lessons on minorities are being dropped, it must be replaced with better content which has not happened. The government has not bothered to take opinions from all sections. The revision exercise has caused a dent in the emotions of people of Karnataka and dent in the education process of the children," he said.



Experts fear that political slugfest apart, the whole controversy has resulted in students and the teaching fraternity looking at the textbooks with suspicion. The sanctity and pure clean mindset of knowledge exploration has been lost in the din.



As the elections are nearing, the ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress as well as the JD(S), "lost in their strategies", do not seem to be bothered about the dent the issue is making on student fraternity and on the image of Karnataka as an educational hub, experts say.

Live TV
Kerala SSLC Result 2022: Kerala Pareeksha Bhavan is likely to declare the SSLC Results 2022 Kerala Board soon, most likely by 15th June 2022. Students who appeared for the class 10 board exams will be able to view their results on the official website results.kerala.nic.in or kerala.gov.in. Earlier, the Kerala Class 10 result 2022 was supposed to release on June 10 which has now been postponed for few more days.

According to the Kerala Board's official data, a total of 4.26 lakh candidates took the Kerala SSLC Examination. Kerala held SSLC Exams 2022 for Class 10 board examinations in offline mode from March 31 to April 29, 2022, adhering to all Covid-19 precautions.

To pass the Kerala SSLC 2022 examination, students have to score a minimum of 30 per cent in each subject. Students have to achieve at least a grade D+ or between 30 to 39 marks to be considered to have passed in the class Kerala SSLC.

Here is how you can check your result:

- Visit the official site at keralaresults.nic.in.

- Click on the link that reads 'Kerala SSLC or class 10 results'.

- Now, students have to enter the details as asked - then click on submit.

- Kerala SSLC or class 10 results will reflect on your screen.

- Download and take printout of the results for future use.
New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is set to appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for questioning on Monday in connection with a money laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper. Congress party is planning a big event to show its strength and convey its political message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government.

Both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her MP son Rahul Gandhi have been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection to the National Herald case.

The National Herald case pertains to the probe into the alleged financial irregularities in the party-promoted Young Indian that owns the National Herald newspaper, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, the great-grandfather of Mr Gandhi. The paper is published by Associated Journals Limited. Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia are alleged to have been involved in a 'cheating and breach of trust' when Associated Journals Ltd was acquired by Young India Pvt Ltd in which the Gandhis held a majority stake.

Here is a brief timeline of the National Herald case:

2008: The National Herald newspaper, launched by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938, shut down with a whopping debt of over Rs 90 crore. To save the dying newspaper, the then-ruling party Congress offered a Rs 90-crore interest-free loan to the Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) to aid the newspaper in revival. However, the attempt to bring back the newspaper failed and the debt couldn't be repaid.

2010: Young India Ltd (YIL) was set up in November in which Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi held a majority share of 76%. Motilal Vora held 24% and Oscar Fernandez held 12% of the shares in the company. The Congress who had originally lent money to Associated Journals Ltd assigned the debt to Young India Ltd which meant that AJL had to pay back Rs 90 crore to YIL.

Since AJL was not in a position to repay the loans, the company transferred its shareholding to Gandhi-owned YIL for which they received Rs 50 lakh. The Gandhis are charged with taking over a publicly-held company by merely paying Rs 50 lakh considering the company had real estate properties worth Rs 2000 crore.

2012: Former Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy had filed a case against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi for cheating and misappropriation of funds in acquiring the ownership of the non-functioning newspaper National Herald.

2014: Metropolitan Magistrate Gomati Manocha summons all accused in the case, including the Gandhis. In August, ED begins a probe into a money-laundering angle in the case.

2015: ED reopens the investigation on the National Herald case. In December, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are granted bail by Patiala House Court.

2016: The apex court grants exemption to all five accused in the case - Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes and Suman Dubey from appearing in court but doesn't quash proceedings against them.

2017: Delhi High Court allows Income Tax Department to investigate the alleged misappropriation of funds in the case.

2018: AJL instructed to evict Herald House premises by Centre.

2019: The ED attaches a Gurugram property worth Rs 64.93 crores under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) which they claimed was illegally allotted to AJL.

2020: Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were again taken to court in Delhi after Subramaniam Swamy filed a case accusing them of misappropriating the National Heralds properties.

2022: In April, the ED questioned senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge in connection with the case. On June 1, the ED summoned interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi in connection with the National Herald case.

June 13: Rahul Gandhi is set to appear before the ED in connection with the case today.
New Delhi: As Rahul Gandhi appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the National Herald case, his brother-in-law Robert Vadra on Monday (June 13, 2022) extended his support and said that the Congress leader will be exonerated from all "baseless accusations". Vadra also cited his own case and how he was summoned 15 times and has been questioned by the ED.

Taking to his official Facebook account, Vadra, who is married to Priyanka Gandhi, said that this government will not be able to suppress the people of the country by such methods of "harassment".

"Rahul, you will be undoubtedly exonerated from all baseless accusations," he said in the post.

"I have 15 times been through summons and visits with the Enforcement Directorate and have answered every question and delivered more than 23,000 documents, of my first Rupee earned till date," Vadra wrote.

"I believe truth will prevail and this harassment of the prevailing dispensation will not have the effect they desire. This government will not suppress people of the country by these methods of harassment. It will only make us all stronger people," he added.

Vadra also said that they are here to fight each day for the truth and "the people of the country stand with us".

Rahul Gandhi appears before ED in National Herald money laundering case

Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate in a money-laundering probe linked to the National Herald newspaper after the MP reached the agency's headquarters in Delhi. Gandhi, who entered the headquarters of the federal agency in central Delhi around 11.10 am, was put to questioning about 20 minutes later after he finished some brief legal proceedings and marked his attendance.

As per reports, he was allowed by the ED to leave for lunch around 2:10 pm and he returned for the questioning around 3:30 pm. Gandhi reportedly wrote down his statement under section 50 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) during the first round of questioning.

The former Congress president first left for the ED office from the Congress headquarters on Akbar Road in the morning and was accompanied by party leaders, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and former Union finance minister P Chidambaram.

Priyanka Gandhi sat with Rahul Gandhi in a vehicle as the convoy of seven SUVs, escorted by armed CRPF personnel, entered the ED office on APJ Abdul Kalam Road.

What is the National Herald case involving Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi?

The National Herald case pertains to the probe into the alleged financial irregularities in the party-promoted Young Indian that owns the National Herald newspaper, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, the great-grandfather of Rahul Gandhi. The paper is published by Associated Journals Limited.

Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia are said to have been involved in a "cheating and breach of trust" when Associated Journals Ltd was acquired by Young India Pvt Ltd in which the Gandhis held a majority stake.

Live TV
New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the National Herald money laundering case on Monday (June 13). He left the Enforcement Directorate office in Delhi after 2-3 hours of questioning for a lunch break and is expected to be back for further questioning. According to sources, the Congress leader was questioned in a '3-step manner' and asked 55 questions by the ED.

The first phase included questions about Rahul Gandhi's assets and properties. On the other hand, the second phase questions related to Young India Ltd (YIL), a company that was set up in November, 2010 in which Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi held a majority share of 76%. The third phase had questions related to Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) as per sources.

ALSO READ: Live: Rahul Gandhi leaves ED office in Delhi after questioning in National Herald case

Meanwhile, hundreds of Congress workers were detained in Bengaluru and Mumbai for protesting against the ED questioning of Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case. Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra met party leaders who were detained during the party's 'Satyagrah' march against Rahul Gandhi's questioning by the ED at the Tughlaq Road Police Station.

Top Congress leaders including Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, KC Venugopal, Deepender S Hooda, and Ashok Gehlot among others, were detained by Delhi Police for protests in support of Rahul Gandhi. Chowdhury alleged manhandling by Delhi Police while on their way to the ED office. He also demanded action in this regard.

The ED had on Friday issued fresh summons to Sonia Gandhi asking her to appear on June 23 for questioning in connection with the National Herald money laundering case. According to sources, Congress MPs, and Congress Working Committee (CWC) members have also been asked to be present in Delhi on Monday. A meeting of All India Congress Committee (AICC) General Secretaries, State Incharges, and Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chiefs was called on Thursday to decide the strategy for the same.

Meanwhile, Delhi Police has denied permission for the Congress rally scheduled for Monday (June 13, 2022) against Rahul Gandhis questioning by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the National Herald case today. The Delhi Police cited the law and order behind the denial of the permission for the rally. Congress sources said the party has approached the Delhi Police again, asking them to reconsider the decision.

The case pertains to the probe into the alleged financial irregularities in the party-promoted Young Indian that owns the National Herald newspaper, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, the great-grandfather of Mr Gandhi. The paper is published by Associated Journals Limited.

Live TV
New Delhi: The ruling BJP dispensation on Monday slammed the protest march by the Congress against the ED summons to its leader Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald money laundering case. Addressing a press conference, BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani said the show of strength by the Congress is aimed at putting pressure on the probe agency, and asserted that nobody is above the law "not even Rahul Gandhi".

Congress leaders have taken to the streets to pressurize an investigating agency openly because their corruption has been exposed...It's an attempt to protect the assets of the Gandhi family: Union Min & BJP MP Smriti Irani on ED probe against Rahul Gandhi in National Herald case pic.twitter.com/mRvCK8AQoa  ANI (@ANI) June 13, 2022

Irani said that the members of the opposition party have hit the streets in support of corruption and allegedly protect over Rs 2,000 crore assets of the Gandhi family.

Congress members should also ask Rahul Gandhi about his family's relations with Dotex Merchandise, which she described as a hawala operator whose transactions have been flagged by the Financial Intelligence Unit.

Why is Gandhi family interested in a former newspaper publishing company which is now running real estate business...This shows that not just 'Jijaji' (Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law Robert Vadra) but entire Gandhi family is fascinated by real estate: Union Minister Smriti Irani pic.twitter.com/zsyOh9X7Z2  ANI (@ANI) June 13, 2022

The BJP leader alleged that the Gandhi family floated Young Indian to grab the assets worth over Rs 2,000 crore of Associated Journals Limited, which publishes the National Herald newspaper.

Never before such a blatant attempt was made by a political family to hold a probe agency to ransom, she said. Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Monday appeared before the ED here for questioning in the National Herald money-laundering investigation.

There was heavy police deployment in and around the ED office located at Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road. As he left the party headquarters at 24 Akbar Road, several Congress workers accompanied him. The police, however, did not allow them to move further and only Rahul Gandhi was permitted.



The Congress leader was also accompanied by her sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Earlier in the morning, hundreds of Congress workers reached the Congress headquarters to join Rahul Gandhi in their proposed march to the ED office.



Carrying placards, the party workers raised slogans against the Central government. As a precautionary measure, the police detained several party workers. The traffic police also issued an advisory for the people asking them to avoid certain stretches from where the rally was supposed to pass.
New Delhi: Nupur Sharma, suspended from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after a major row over her remarks against Prophet Mohammad, was catapulted to the centre stage in 2015 after she was chosen to take on AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal in the Delhi assembly polls. Sharma recently sparked a massive controversy with her contentious statement on Islamic God Prophet Muhammad during a TV news debate. Her remarks led to communal violence in several parts of the country.

The BJP suspended her under rule 10 (a) of its constitution which states that the national president if he so desires, may suspend any member and then start disciplinary proceedings against him. Breach of discipline includes acting or carrying on propaganda against any programme or decision of the party.

Sharma, 37, first shot into the limelight as a student leader with RSS-affiliated ABVP when she was elected the president of the Delhi University Students Union in 2008.

ALSO READ | Nupur Sharma Comment Row: Jamaat Ulama-e-Hind says ex-BJP leader should be forgiven as per Islam

Nupur Sharmas education

The ex-BJP leader is a resident of Delhi and did her graduation from Hindu College, and thereafter studied law at the Faculty of Law in Delhi University. For further studies, she went to the London School of Economics and pursued law.

Nupur Sharmas political career

She joined the BJP's youth wing and after spending several years there, she was appointed as the spokesperson of the BJP's Delhi unit. Sharma became a familiar face in the BJP circle, in 2015 even though she lost the election against Kejriwal the same year. Lawyer by profession, Sharma, was made the party's national spokesperson in the team of BJP's national president JP Nadda.

ALSO READ | Nupur Sharmas communal remark: From FIRs to ongoing protests, read A to Z about the controversy

She appeared as a firebrand spokesperson and a strong votary of Hindutva in debates on TV channels. The party had been giving her several assignments, including the coordination of media in the Uttarakhand assembly polls. Recently, she also addressed the training camp of BJP's women wing on media and communication.

(With agency inputs)
Kolkata Police has summoned expelled BJP leader Nupur Sharma for her controversial remarks on Hazrat Mohammad. She has been directed to appear before the Narakonda police station on June 20. She has also been summoned by the Mumbai Police along with Kolkata. It is to be noted that an FIR has also been lodged against Nupur in Theni in addition to the Narakonda police station in West Bengal.

The former BJP leader had made a controversial remark on Hazrat Mohammad (Prophet Comment Row). Protests have erupted across the country against her remarks. The protests has also come to different districts of Bengal. There have been road blockades in different parts of Howrah since last Thursday. One car shop was set on fire. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sent a message to the protesters to bring the situation under control. "Why should the people of Bengal suffer the consequences of injustice done by the leaders of other states?" Instead, she suggested lodging complaints against the BJP leader at various police stations in Bengal. Following her advice, FIRs are being lodged at multiple police stations in the state.

According to police sources, a case has been registered against Nupur Sharma under sections 153(A), 295(A), 298 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code at the Narakonda police station. The summons were also sent on Monday. However, it is not yet clear whether the expelled BJP leader will appear or not.

Protests and blockades have been going on in different parts of the state for two to three days due to the BJP leader's remarks. The police administration of the district took strict action in the incidents like blockade of Bethuadahari rail station in Nadia, vandalism of trains. A total of 25 people have been arrested after conducting searches till late in the night. Meanwhile, Section 144 has been imposed in Nakashipara area. Meanwhile, apart from Nadia, several places in Howrah and Murshidabad have been set on fire. The Chief Minister warned of unrest but it did not do much. So the administration is worried about suppressing the anti-people situation. The Chief Secretary will hold a virtual meeting with the District Magistrates on Monday afternoon.
New Delhi: Over 200 people have been arrested and the situation in parts of West Bengal, where violent protests had erupted over controversial remarks on Prophet Muhammad by suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma, is under control, DGP Manoj Malaviya said on Monday (June 13, 2022). He further informed that till now, 42 cases have been registered for rioting, arson and damage to the public property.

"We will ensure maximum punishment for all accused," the West Bengal DGP said.

"All senior officers including ADGs are in the respective areas. Raids are taking place," DGP Manoj Malaviya added and said that the police is identifying trouble mongers.



ALSO READ | Kolkata Police summons Nupur Sharma over her remarks on Prophet



"We will arrest all accused and no one will be spared. We are collecting evidence and ensuring through area domination," he said.

Protests against remarks on Prophet Muhammad by suspended BJP functionary had turned violent last week in a few districts of the state, including Howrah and Murshidabad, with the administration suspending internet services and restricting the movement of people.

Petition in Calcutta HC for NIA probe into West Bengal violence

Meanwhile, petitions were filed before the Calcutta High Court on Monday, seeking an NIA investigation into the violent protests in West Bengal over the inflammatory remarks against Prophet Muhammad, and the deployment of the Army to control the situation.

One of the two petitioners prayed before a division bench presided by Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava for an investigation by the NIA, claiming that the violence was affecting national integrity. The other petitioner prayed for the deployment of the Army in view of the violence.

(With agency inputs)

Live TV
After violence erupted in Ranchi in protest against the controversial remarks on Prophet Muhammad made by suspended Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expelled leader Naveen Jindal in which two people lost their lives, Jharkhand Police is investigating a role of a WhatsApp group in the incident.

According to sources, Police investigation has revealed that a WhatsApp group `Wasseypur Gang` was formed to mobilize a mob. Ranchi Police is now looking for the administrator of the group. Wasseypur is a neighbourhood in the Dhanbad district of Jharkhand. It served as the backdrop of the Bollywood movie `Gangs of Wasseypur`, helmed by filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, which was released on June 22, 2012.

Featuring an ensemble cast with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Manoj Bajpayee, Huma Qureshi, Richa Chadda and Tigmanshu Dhulia, the film is based on a real-life story and revolves around a gangster, who clashes with a coal mining mafia.

Two people have died during the violent protest in Ranchi after Friday prayers."Two people have succumbed to their injuries out of total injured who were brought to Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) after the violence in Ranchi," confirmed RIMS authorities.

The protest after Friday prayers had turned violent with incidents of stone-pelting and torching of several vehicles and vandalization being reported.Many people sustained injuries in the protests on Friday. The district administration acted immediately and imposed a curfew in violence-hit areas of Ranchi thereby bringing the situation under control.
Nupur Sharma row controversy: Maharashtra police on Monday registered a case against a 22-year-man for posting a social media post in support of now suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, who made controversial religious remark against Prophet Muhammad, reported PTI quoting an official. As per the report, a person saw the message posted by the accused, Mukesh Chavan, on his Facebook page and filed a police complaint, the official from Narpoli police station in Bhiwandi town here said. Nupur Sharma, ex-BJPs spokersperson made controversial statement against Prophet Muhammad during a heated television debate. Her remarks triggered aggressive response across the country from the minority community, who have been demanding the politcians arrest. Seveal Islamic nations including Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also expressed their displeasure over Sharmas comments.

About the post, accused Chavan had written "I support Nupur Sharma" on his Facebook status along with a message and a picture of the suspended BJP functionary, the official said quoting the complaint.

Based on the complaint, the Narpoli police registered a case against Chavan under Indian Penal Code Section 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), the official said, adding that no arrest has been made so far in this connection.

The post sent across a wrong message in society and hurt the religious sentiments of the complainant, the FIR said.

In another such incident, the Bhiwandi police on Sunday detained a 19-year-old Muslim man for allegedly posting a derogatory remark on Prophet Mohammad and showing support to Nupur Sharma over her controversial comments, an official earlier said.

The accused was taken into custody by the police after a tense situation prevailed in the town over his viral social media post, which angered members of the Muslim community, he said.

Meanwhile, Nupur Sharma is facing a number of cases and police summons in connection with her alleged derogatory remarks against Prophet Mohammad.

(With PTI inputs)
Kolkata: Nupur Sharma, the suspended BJP spokesperson, who triggered a massive controversy after her comment against Prophet Muhammad during a television debate, was summoned by the Kolkata police on Monday pertaining to the case, reported PTI. Sharma has been asked to appear at Narkeldanga Police Station on June 20 to record her statement, an official said. This comes as Sharma's controversial religious comments sparked violent protests in parts of West Bengal. Sporadic violent protests rocked Howrah districts, parts of Murshidabad and South 24 Parganas since last Friday's prayers.

Reacting to the Kolkata Police's summons sent to the former BJP leader, CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said, "Nupur Sharma should have been arrested by Delhi long back. Her comments have brought shame to the country. Now, the TMC government in Bengal instead of putting pressure on the Centre to have her arrested is trying to gain political mileage by doing this."

Trinamool Congress minority cell general secretary Abul Sohail has also lodged an FIR against Sharma at Contai police station over her remarks.

Meanwhile, Congress's Kamruzzaman Choudhury said, "Her comments had hurt the sentients millions of people. The FIR should have been lodged much earlier so that Sharma could be arrested. Now, when the situation has started getting out of the hand, FIRs are being lodged."

However, Manoj Tigga, BJP's chief whip in the Bengal legislature said "Nupur should consult a lawyer ... But I believe instead of doing this (call the former BJP spokeswoman for questioning), the state should arrest rioters and take strong action against them. Why can't the state act so that common people get back their normal lives?"

BJP leader Gautam Gambhir also called for peace and said that the outrage despite Sharmas apology was appalling.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir`s Doda and Kishtwar towns will continue to have curfew restrictions for the fifth consecutive day on Monday, in view of the recent communal tensions after the controversial remarks made by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma. The police have arrested one person for making an inflammatory speech. Authorities have decided to continue curfew restrictions under Section 144 of the CrPc in the two towns to maintain law and order as the groups of two communities have been accusing each other of stoking communal tensions after some miscreants posted purported announcements from a local mosque, said an IANS report.

One person named Aadil Gafoor Ganai was reportedly arrested for delivering an inflammatory speech from the Markazi Jamia Masjid Bhaderwah on June 9 during a protest rally against the recent controversial remarks made by Nupur Sharma. Meanwhile, there was no report of any untoward incident from anywhere as heavy deployment continued in the two towns.

Uttar Pradesh: 2 booked for sharing anti-Prophet posts

Two persons, including a woman, have been booked for allegedly passing derogatory remarks against Prophet Muhammad in Uttar Pradesh`s Bareilly district. One more person, belonging to the minority community, was also booked for his alleged remarks against a BJP leader on social media, according to an IANS report.

According to reports, extra police personnel have been deployed near every place of worship and local leaders have been advised to spread a message of peace to maintain communal harmony. One of the accused booked by police at Prem Nagar police station is Kuldeep Kumar, who is a history sheeter and has been arrested on multiple occasions by the police. He had shared an objectionable post on social media.

The second FIR was for sharing a similar kind of social media post against Prophet Muhammad under section 295A (deliberate or malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings of any class) while the third FIR was registered against Rehan Khan, who had shared an inflammatory content against Nupur Sharma.

Bareilly Senior Superintendent of Police, Rohit Singh Sajwan, told IANS, "We have booked three persons and will take action against everyone who is sharing this objectionable content, regardless of religion or caste."

JNUSU stages protest against demolition of a house in Prayagraj

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union staged a demonstration on the JNU campus against the demolition of the house of activist and former JNU student Afreen Fatima in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj. The Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA) on Sunday demolished the house of Javed Ahmad, alias Pump, the alleged mastermind of the June 10 violence in Prayagraj, amid heavy police deployment. Ahmad is Fatima's father.

JNUSU members raised slogans against what they termed "bulldozer raj" of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led government and held placards reading: "Stop the witch-hunt of Muslims". The building map of Ahmad's house had not been approved by the PDA, according to an agency official.

Protests against the controversial remarks on Prophet Mohammad made by now-suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma spun out of control in Prayagraj and some other parts of Uttar Pradesh on June 10. In Prayagraj, a mob set on fire a few motorcycles and carts and also attempted to set ablaze a police vehicle. Police used tear gas and lathis to disperse the protesters and restore peace. A policeman was injured in the violence.

Notably, Ahmad has been arrested in connection with the violence and is being interrogated, said the police.

(Inputs from IANS/PTI)
The winners of one of the most prestigious consumer-voted awards for product innovation, the "Product of the Year," have been revealed for the year 2022. Oswaal Books was named the winner of the award after receiving several effective nominations in the sample question papers category. Multiple nominees from different companies have been ranked in the top categories, and thus, Oswaal was finally selected as the Product of the Year in 2022. POY was founded in France over 30 years ago and now operates in over 40 countries. They work hard to direct customers to the top items in each area, and they hold the product of the year awards in a variety of categories every year. Customers' feedback is a strong supporter of these awards. Oswaal Books received the "Product of the Year 2022" award this year. Raj Arora, the CEO of Product of the Year India, stated that with the support of their research affiliate, Nielsen IQ, they have always endeavored to honor the most outstanding ideas.

Prashant Jain, the CEO at Oswaal Books, spoke at the event and expressed his delight at winning the prize, as well as his satisfaction that the kids read and loved Oswaal Books. Additionally, in the subsequent years, Prashant Jain has also committed to deliver the best possible service to pupils.

Mr. Naresh Jain, MD, Oswaal Books, began his career in the publishing sector in 1984, and he launched Oswaal Books with the goal of simplifying learning and empowering every student to reach their full potential. Despite problems and barriers, the crew commits to persevere and offer their all. Oswaal Books' current popularity is due to a sharp eye for changes in the school sector, as well as a dynamic attitude. This success was largely due to the innovative combination of exam-oriented print content and high-tech digital tools. Oswaal Books are one-of-a-kind, simple to grasp, and jam-packed with cutting-edge cognitive learning strategies. Oswaal is expanding its horizons from the creation of exam practice materials to developing several new packages as well.

They provide study materials for all the main examination boards, including CBSE, ISC, ICSE, and Karnataka. They also publish books for some of the most well-known national competitive exams, including JEE Mains and Advanced, NEET, RRB-NTPC, CAT, and CLAT, among many such others. The prestigious Oswaal Editorial Board is made up of accomplished instructors with over 100 years of combined experience, subject matter specialists, educationists, and class toppers. Their books are best-sellers both online and offline, and top educators promote them. It is their best-selling books that lead to scores of students who later find the most tremendous success in their studies. They've been simplifying learning for 38 years. Finally, the Oswaal Editorial Board authors all their books after careful proofreading to ensure quality.

Oswaal CBSE ICSE ISC Question Banks Class 10 & 12 contain Previous Years Question Papers in Chapter-wise Topic-wise format. These CBSE ICSE ISC Question Banks include cognitive exam-ready tools like Mind-maps, Mnemonics.

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Here are the recommended links for Latest Syllabus CBSE Question Banks Class 10 For 2022-2023 Board Exams: https://bit.ly/3aGTbkO

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Oswaal Books want to give students confidence in themselves and their abilities by reducing the inherent complexity of examinations, and they want to be the largest provider of competitive exam assistance through books and e-assessments. Their main objective is to make learning as simple as possible. With ambitions to add 50 new titles each year, Oswaal Books already has over 700 published books under its fold. The faith that students, teachers, and parents have placed in Oswaal Books has led to sales of over 7 million books in the financial year 2021-2022.

They have worked hard to create a culture of warmth and belonging for both kids and instructors. It launched Oswaal 360, an online test preparation platform, during the COVID-19 pandemic situation and has now onboarded over one lakh individuals. Oswaal Books offers a wide range of services to students, including test preparation and guidance for senior high school boards. Furthermore, the business was able to increase its workforce from 120 to over 200 in a single year by attracting talent from prestigious colleges and universities.

(Above mentioned article is impact feature.This article is a sponsored publication and does not have journalistic/editorial involvement of IDPL.)
By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan and the European Union have discussed cooperation in the tourism and transport sectors, Azernews reports.

The discussion took place during the meeting between Azerbaijan's Digital Development and Transport Minister Rashad Nabiyev and Andris Ameriks, member of the European Parliament, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Transport and Tourism.

During the meeting, the parties noted that relations between Azerbaijan and the European Union are developing dynamically. They emphasized that there is great potential for cooperation in various fields, including digitalization and transport.

Moreover, the sides exchanged views on proposals to establish closer ties.

The EU and Azerbaijan have cooperation in different sectors of the economy. The EU invested over $21.5 billion in Azerbaijans economy from 2012 to 2021. Azerbaijans trade turnover with the EU amounted to $9.3 billion last year, which is 38 percent of the countrys foreign trade. The Delegation of the European Commission to Azerbaijan was opened in Baku in February 2008.

Azerbaijan started commercial gas supplies to Europe through the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) on December 31, 2020.

A joint statement on energy cooperation with the EU was signed more than ten years ago. The EU-Azerbaijan energy cooperation had reached a new level and is still ongoing within the framework of the Southern Gas Corridor. The EU places a high value on energy supply diversification, and the Southern Gas Corridor is particularly important in this regard. In 2021, European countries purchased 8.2 billion cubic meters of gas, with an increase in volume expected in the coming years.
New Delhi: The debate over Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) is back. In June, a CBI inquiry was ordered into the 2014 Primary TET corruption case. In its last order, the Calcutta High Court had declared the recruitment list published in 2017 and the recruitment process that was conducted illegal. The High Court had also ordered the dismissal of 269 people from their jobs. In addition, the HC ordered a ban on the entry of 269 teachers to the school and suspended their salaries.

Here's a gist of the Calcutta High Court's observation:

Second recruitment list illegal in 2017

The appointment of 269 people in the second recruitment list is illegal which prompted the CBI inquiry

Calcutta High Court orders suspension of salaries of 269 teachers

The Calcutta High Court bans 269 teachers from entering the school

ALSO READ: TET Exam 2014: 86 candidates were working as teachers without passing, case filed in High Court

The Calcutta High Court also directed the CBI to register a case by 5:30 pm on June 13, stated by a bench Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay. The secretary and president of the primary education board have also been directed to appear before the CBI today (June 13).

ALSO READ: Job 'SOLD' for 20 lakhs! Calcutta High Court orders CBI probe in Primary TET Corruption Case

'Why were 269 people given an extra 1 mark?'

A section of job seekers have filed cases alleging corruption in recruitment raising the question why 269 people were specifically given an extra mark in the examination. The board had responded saying that there was something wrong with a question in that year's (2017) TET exam. But the Calcuttar High Court asked why the rest of the candidates did not receive that extra mark. The judge also remarked that the litigants were able to prove the allegations of corruption in the Primary TET which has resulted into a CBI inquiry.

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New Delhi: After the protests in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh against suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma's comments on Prophet Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of Friday's violence Javed Ahmed's 'illegally constructed' residence was demolished on Sunday (June 13). The demolition process began around afternoon in the UP district. According to reports, the Police force and a JCB machine reached Javed Ahmed's residence at 1 pm which is when the demolition process began.

The Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA) mentioned that it had earlier put a demolition notice at the residence. However, Govind Mathur, former Allahabad High Court Chief Justice, termed the demolition prcess as illegal as told to Indian Express.

Ex-judge on demolition of Javed Ahmed's 'illegally constructed' home

He told the Indian Express, "Even if you assume for a moment that the construction was illegal, which by the way is how crores of Indians live, it is impermissible that you demolish a house on a Sunday when the residents are in custody. It is not a technical issue but a question of rule of law."

For the unversed, ex-judge Mathur, in 2020, had spoken up against the hoardings that were put up of people who protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Lucknow and called it 'absolute encroachment' on people's personal liberty.

Prayagraj violence: CM Yogi had issued a warning to 'anti-social' people

Earlier, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had issued a warning against the perpetrators of violence in the state. "Strictest action will be taken against the anti-social elements involved in the chaotic efforts to spoil the atmosphere in various cities in the past few days. There is no place for such anti-social people in a civilised society. No innocent should be harassed, but not a single guilty should be spared."

Under Adityanath, the state administration has been cracking down on criminals and riot accused, seizing or razing their properties. His critics have often accused him of adopting strong-arm tactics.

Why were there protests in UP's Prayagraj?

On Friday (June 10), people pelted stones at police personnel in Prayagraj and Saharanpur during their protests after Friday prayers in mosques against suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma's comments on Prophet Muhammad.

(With agency inputs)

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Maharashtra: A youth was thrashed by a group of people in Bhiwandi over a social media post allegedly supporting suspended Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Nupur Sharma who made controversial remarks against Prophet Muhammad. The incident took place in the Kesar Bagh area of Bhiwandi on Sunday when a large number of people gathered at the residence of Saad Ashfaq Ansari, an engineering student and thrashed him.

Saad, in a social media post, allegedly supported Nupur Sharma`s controversial remarks. Soon after Saad`s post went viral on social media, some people came to his house and sought an apology from him for hurting the sentiments of a particular community.

Following the incident, Bhiwandi Police reached the spot to bring the situation under control.

Police registered a case against Saad for inciting religious sentiments and took him into custody. Meanwhile, Bhiwandi city police summoned Nupur Sharma and asked her to appear for enquiry on Monday for a matter pertaining to a controversial religious remark.

In a separate incident from Maharashtra, a case was registered against a 22-year-old man for posting a social media post supporting now suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma, who made a controversial religious remark against Prophet Muhammad.

Her remarks triggered aggressive responses across the country from the minority community, who have been demanding the politician's arrest. Several Islamic nations including Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also expressed their displeasure over Sharmas comments.
RBSE 10th Result 2022: The Board of Secondary Education (BSER), Ajmer will release the RBSE 10th Result 2022 today. The Rajasthan Board's RBSE 10th results 2022 to be released today, June 13, 2022, around 3 PM. Making an official announcement about the date and time of the RBSE 10th Result 2022 Rajasthan Education Minister, BD Kalla said, "The result of Madhyamik and Praveshika examination conducted by the Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan is going to be declared tomorrow at 3 pm. Best wishes to all the students in advance," on Twitter. Once the result is out candidates can check the result on the official websites at rajeduboard.rajasthan.gov.in, rajresults.nic.in.

The RBSE has already announced the 12th board results for Science, Arts and Commerce streams. This year around 20 lakh students took Class 10th and 12th board examinations from March 31 to April 26 from 8: 30 am to 11: 45 pm. To pass the examination, students must score at least 33% in each compulsory subject individually.

RBSE 10th Result 2022: Here's how to check your scorecards

Step 1. Visit the official website of Rajasthan Board, rajresults.nic.in.

Step 2. Click on the class 10th Exam Result link, on the homepage

Step 3. Enter login details - roll number, DOB and submit

Your RBSE 10th Result 2022 result will appear on the screen

Step 4. Download and take a printout of the result for future references

Students must score at least 33% in each compulsory subject individually, to pass the examination.
A bill seeking to make Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee the Chancellor of the Universities was passed in the West Bengal Assembly today. The bill was passed seeking to make the Chief Minister a Chancellor instead of the Governor. There were 182 votes in favour of the bill and 40 votes against it. The Assembly passed the State Universities Act Amendment Bill. Now the amendment bill will go for the Governor's approval.

Also Read: University Chancellor Row: Mamata Banerjee to replace Governor, Bill likely to pass today

In this context, Suvendu Adhikari took a dig at Mamata Banerjee. The opposition leader of the state said, "They are doing this to serve the interests of their own politics. There is an attempt to make the Chief Minister a Chancellor. Nothing will happen. Our people will continue to oppose. We won't give an inch. The bill will go for Governor's approval. The Governor will send it to Delhi. It's on the list. Then it will stay with us like the change of name to 'Bengal'. Didimoni will retire, but she will not be able to become Chancellor ever. Quote my name and write it down."

Meanwhile, the opposition' questions why Chancellor is a political person like the Chief Minister? Earlier in the day, raising the issue of Gujarat, Education Minister Bratya Basu, defending the bill, said, 'If the Chancellor of Visva-Bharati is the Prime Minister, then why there is an objection here."
UP Board Class 10th, 12th Result 2022 Latest Update: The Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shikha Parishad (UPMSP) is expected to declare the UP Board Class 10th and Class 12th Exam 2022 results on June 18, 2022. According to latest media reports by education websites, the Uttar Pradesh Board High School (10th) Examination Results and Intermediate (12th) Examination Results are expected to be declared by June 18. "Students can expect their Class 10, 12 results 2022 by June 18. The result date will be announced soon," the UP Board official told the media. According to the Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Council (UPSEC), over 51 lakh students had registered for UP Board Class 10th and Class 12th Exams 2022. Once declared, the UP Board Result 2022 will be available on UPMSP's official websites -- upresults.nic.in and results.upmsp.edu.in.

UP Board Result 2022: Here's how to check your scorecard

Students can visit UPMSP's official result website - upresults.nic.in to check their scorecard, once the results are announced.

Step 1: Visit the UPMSP's official result website - upresults.nic.in

Step 2: On the homepage, click on the "U. P. Board Intermediate (Class XII) Examination - 2022 Results" link or link and "U. P. Board High School (Class X) Examination - 2022 Results" link.

Step 3: Enter your "Roll Number" and your "School code" (as given in the Admit Card). You also need to enter the Captcha code shown on the website and submit

Step 4: The UP Board Class 12 Exam 2022 or Class 10 Exam 2022 Results will appear on the screen.

Step 5: Download and print out your scorecard for future references.

It is pertinent to note that the Board had directed the chief head examiners and examiners to award equal marks to all the examinees for questions asked outside the curriculum in around a dozen subjects of Class 12 and seven core subjects of Class 10, this year.

In the academic year 2020-2021, the final marks of the students of class 10th were based on the average of their class 9 and class 10 pre-board exam results. The average marks received by a student in classes 10th and 11th were used to calculate the marks for Class 12 and the Board did not provide a merit list since students would be promoted without board exams.

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LUCKNOW: AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has slammed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for ordering the fresh demolition of the house of the main accused in the Prayagraj violence case, asserting that he was behaving like the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court. "The UP Chief Minister has become the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court. He'll convict anyone & demolish their houses?" Owaisi asked while addressing a rally in Gujarat's Kutch.

Gujarat | UP CM has become the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court. He'll convict anyone & demolish their houses? The house which was demolished is on the name of the wife of the accused who is a muslim woman: AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on house demolition in Prayagraj(12.06) pic.twitter.com/lqseGTb1VR  ANI (@ANI) June 13, 2022

The remarks from the AIMIM Hyderabad MP came hours after the Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA) on Sunday demolished the house of Javed Mohammed, alias Pump, the alleged mastermind of the June 10 violence in Prayagraj, amid heavy police deployment.

A day earlier, the properties of two people accused of rioting were demolished in Saharanpur where stone-pelting had taken place as well.

Superintendent of Police, City (Saharanpur), Rajesh Kumar had said two accused who created ruckus have been identified through CCTV footage as Muzammil, a resident of Rahat Colony, 62 Futa Road, and Abdul Vakir, a resident of Khata Khedi. Municipal corporation teams bulldozed their illegal properties, he said.

In Prayagraj, a senior PDA official said, "Javed Ahmad's house - JK Ashiyana - is located in the Kareli area of Prayagraj. Police force and a JCB machine reached the Kareli police station around 10.30 am and demolition commenced around 1 pm."

"The house was built without getting its map passed by the PDA. For this, he was issued a notice on May 10 and was told to present his point of view on May 24. On the said date, neither Javed nor his lawyer turned up. No document was presented in this regard, and hence on May 25, demolition orders were issued," the PDA official said.

Senior Superintendent of Police of Prayagraj Ajay Kumar had on Saturday said alleged mastermind of stone-pelting Javed Ahmad had been arrested.

In a tweet in Hindi on Saturday, Mrityunjay Kumar, the media adviser to the chief minister, had said, "Unruly elements remember, every Friday is followed by a Saturday" and posted a photo of a bulldozer demolishing a building.

On Friday, people pelted stones at police personnel in Prayagraj and Saharanpur during protests after Friday prayers in mosques.

At least four other cities witnessed similar scenes during the marches that were carried out to protest the controversial remarks on Prophet Mohammad made by now-suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma.

In Prayagraj, the mob set on fire a few motorcycles and carts, and also attempted to set ablaze a police vehicle. Police used tear gas and lathis to disperse the protesters and restore peace. A policeman was injured, according to officials. Sharma was suspended by the BJP as several Islamic nations denounced her comments on the Prophet during a TV debate.
New Delhi: Several parts of northwest India, including Delhi, Punjab and Rajasthan, are reeling under scorching heatwave conditions, and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Sunday (June 12, 2022) informed that these heatwave conditions are likely to continue in isolated pockets over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and southeast Uttar Pradesh until June 14. Heat wave conditions have been abated from most parts of central and adjoining east India. However, Heat wave conditions in isolated places very likely over o Jammu division on 12th and Punjab, Haryana-Delhi, East Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand on 12 th & 13th June, said IMD.

At least 22 towns and cities in these states reported maximum temperatures above 44 degrees Celsius, the IMD said. However, the intensity of the heatwave is expected to decrease after two days. The Met office also predicted no significant change in maximum temperatures over northwest India during the next two days and a gradual fall by two to three-degree Celsius thereafter.

ii) Heat Wave Conditions likely to continue in isolated pockets over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and southeast Uttar Pradesh during next 2 days and abatement thereafter.



For more details kindly refers: https://t.co/1rs5IlxKX7 pic.twitter.com/JfdiYq9NLn  India Meteorological Department (@Indiametdept) June 12, 2022

The IMD, in its weather bulletin, also informed that scattered to fairly widespread light or moderate rainfall with thunderstorms or lightning is very likely over Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Gilgit- Baltistan and Muzaffarabad under the influence of fresh western Disturbance. Rainfall is also expected over, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and East Uttar Pradesh.

Intense spell of rainfall likely to continue along the west peninsular coast during the next 2 days and current spell of heavy rainfall likely to continue over Northeast India and Sub-Himalayan West Bengal & Sikkim during next 5 days, IMD said.

ALSO READ | Delhi witnessed 25 severe heat days so far this summer, highest since 2012 - Details here

Deadly heat stifles Delhi

All but one of the weather stations in the national capital recorded maximum temperatures above 44 degrees Celsius on Sunday, as hot and dry westerlies swept across northwest India.

The Safdarjung Observatory, Delhi's base station, recorded a maximum temperature of 43.9 degrees Celsius, four notches above normal. IMD has issued a yellow alert, warning of a heatwave in parts of Delhi on Monday.

Hot weather conditions prevail in Haryana, Punjab

Hot weather conditions continued to prevail in Haryana and Punjab on Sunday, with maximum temperatures hovering above normal limits at most places.In Haryana, Hisar saw a high of 45 degrees Celsius, while Sirsa recorded a high of 43.6 degrees Celsius.

In Punjab, Amritsar sizzled at a high of 42.4 degrees Celsius while the maximum temperatures in Ludhiana and Patiala settled as 42.4 degrees Celsius and 43 degrees Celsius. Bathinda recorded a high of 43.8 degrees Celsius while Jalandhar also experienced a hot day as the maximum temperature settled at 42.4 degrees Celsius.

(With agency inputs)
Kolkata: The West Bengal assembly on Monday passed a bill that sought to replace Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as the chancellor of all state-run universities, amid opposition by the BJP legislators. State education minister Bratya Basu, after introducing The West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2022 in the House, said there was "nothing wrong" with the chief minister taking over as the chancellor.

"Why can't the chief minister be the chancellor of state universities if the Prime Minister is the chancellor of a central university- Visva Bharati? You can go through the recommendations of the Punchhi Commission.

"The governor, who is the present chancellor, has violated protocols on various occasions," Basu said.

The bill was passed after 182 members voted in favour of the legislation and 40 against it in the 294-member Assembly.

Opposing the bill, the opposition BJP alleged that appointing the chief minister as chancellor would lead to direct "political interference" in the state's higher education system.

"The state government wants to control everything. The decision to appoint the CM as chancellor of universities is being taken to facilitate direct interference of the ruling party in the state's education system," BJP MLA Agnimitra Paul alleged.
The controversy triggered by remarks made by two former BJP functionaries against Prophet Mohammad is India's "internal issue" and it is not an attention-grabbing matter in Bangladesh unlike in some other Muslim nations, a senior Bangladeshi minister has said, as he dismissed criticism that the country's government is "compromising" on the issue.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Hasan Mahmud also "congratulated" the Indian government for taking legal action over the issue and said that any statement against the Prophet should be condemned. Talking to a group of visiting Indian journalists here, he noted that an FIR has been registered in India on this issue and hoped that further action would also be taken.

To a question about the fundamentalists accusing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina-led government of compromising on the issue, he said, "the Bangladesh government is not compromising over the remarks against the Prophet and it will never do that. I myself have condemned it...I have condemned the issue in a public meeting."

In the context of the Bangladesh government not officially condemning the issue, Mahmud called it an external matter for his country. "It is not an internal matter (of Bangladesh), but an external issue. This is India's internal issue. Whenever something like this happens in the world, some Islamic parties protest here too and it usually happens," he said.

Here in Bangladesh, it is not much an attention-grabbing issue as it is for Arab countries, Pakistan and Malaysia, he said. "'If anything is said against Prophet Mohammad anywhere, it should be condemned. We congratulate the Indian government for taking legal action against those who commented on the Prophet," Mahmud said.

The BJP suspended its national spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expelled its Delhi media head Naveen Kumar Jindal after their controversial remarks against the Prophet, as it sought to defuse a row over the issue.

Amid protests by Muslim groups over the remarks, the party also issued a statement aimed at assuaging the concerns of minorities and distancing itself from these members, asserting that it respects all religions and strongly denounces the insult of any religious personality.

Over a dozen Muslim countries have condemned the controversial remarks. Delhi Police has registered an FIR against Sharma, Jindal and some others in connection with the remarks on the Prophet. Mahmud said there are some "fanatic" groups in Bangladesh who, despite being very few in numbers and not getting any kind of support, make noises vigorously.

He said that sometimes the statements made by these groups manage to grab media attention in India.

"The same thing happens here in Bangladesh as well," the minister said, adding that sometimes statements made by leaders in India against Bangladesh and its people due to domestic politics get headlines here.

We have very close relations with India and we understand that because of internal politics leaders say a lot of things. We do not expect any clarification regarding such speeches," Mahmud said in response to a question on Union Home Minister Amit Shah's comments. In one of his speeches, he referred to Bangladeshi migrants as "termites."

The minister said that the Indian government had provided 110 ambulances to Dhaka during the time of the coronavirus pandemic and it is an example of how deep is the relationship between the two neighbouring nations.
Mumbai: Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut has said that former Maharashtra chief minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis will vote for them if the control over the Enforcement Directorate is given to his party. Raut said this in the backdrop of Shiv Sena candidate Sanjay Pawar losing the sixth seat in the Rajya Sabha polls from Maharashtra held on Friday, a contest which had become a high-prestige battle between the ruling Sena and the opposition BJP in the state.

Union Minister and BJP leader Narayan Rane had on Sunday demanded Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's resignation over the Shiv Sena's performance in the Rajya Sabha elections, and claimed that his Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was in minority.

Talking to reporters, Rane, known to be a bitter critic of the Shiv Sena and Thackeray, said the defeat of Sena's second candidate in the polls was an embarrassment for the chief minister, who is also the president the party.

In the fiercely-contested polls for the total six seats on Friday, Sena's Sanjay Pawar lost to BJP's Dhananjay Mahadik - its third nominee. Other MVA partners- NCP and Congress won one seat each.

The BJP won all the three seats it had contested. "They (Shiv Sena) didn't even get votes necessary to keep them in power. They did not even get the MVA alliance votes. The chief minister is in minority. You (Thackeray) resign and step aside. He has taken Maharashtra 10 years behind," Rane said.

Taking a dig at Thackeray, Rane said he has no credibility and he cannot even take care of his MLAs. "They (MVA candidates) did not even get enough votes that are necessary to ensure a majority (to form the government). Your MLAs defect and that shows that there is no credibility. You cannot take care of your MLAs but talk big. We (BJP), despite being in the opposition, got more votes than what you got," the former chief minister claimed.

The BJP secured an impressive win in the Rajya Sabha polls held on Saturday that saw Sena candidate Sanjay Pawar losing to BJP's Dhananjay Mahadik in a bitter contest. He said on the other hand, the BJP legislators displayed loyalty and honesty and also ensured that all three party candidates emerge victorious.

Taking a dig at Sena leader Sanjay Raut without naming him, Rane said prior to the Rajya Sabha polls, some made big talks that they will win four seats and engineer defection in the BJP.

"Even Sanjay Raut has won by a vote. He escaped (defeat) from us," Rane said. He said Thackeray should learn from NCP chief Sharad Pawar who appreciated BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis' skills in managing the election.

Rane asserted that his party will not only win the upcoming municipal corporation polls in Mumbai, but also 2024 assembly polls.
New Delhi: The 30-day lock-in period for anchor investors ends today, and shares of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) reached a new record low of Rs 682 in opening trades on the BSE. In the first few minutes of trading, the LIC shares dropped 4%. It fell for the tenth trading day in a row, dropping 19% since the beginning of the year. Since its IPO, LIC's market capitalization has dropped by Rs 1.2 lakh crore.

Anchor investors, who bought approximately 59.3 million shares a day before the IPO opened for subscription at Rs 949 each, will be able to sell their shares on the open market starting Monday. Anchor investors are high-profile institutional investors who are given shares before retail and other investors can buy them and must promise to keep them for a set amount of time after the company is listed. Read More: Investor wealth tumbles over Rs 5.47 lakh crore in early trade

The anchor book's subscribers included the Norwegian wealth fund Norges Bank Investment Management and the Singapore government. Domestic mutual fund firms including HDFC Mutual Fund, SBI, ICICI, and Kotak joined in as anchor investors who subscribed to the LIC IPO with other global funds. Read More: HDFC Bank alerts customers against PAN card frauds: Details here

Since its initial public offering on the stock exchange on May 17, 2022, the LIC share price has plummeted. Investors were given LIC shares for Rs 949 each, and they were placed on stock exchanges at a discount. The stock is down roughly 28% from its initial public offering (IPO) price of Rs 949.

The government expressed its "worry" about the temporary drop in the stock price of the insurance behemoth on Friday, promising that the insurer's management will look into these issues and increase shareholder value.
NEW DELHI: Riding high on the huge success and critical acclaim of their latest release, 'Major' grossing Rs 55 crores worldwide, the movie team, including the lead cast Adivi Sesh and Saiee Manjrekar along with the filmmaker Sashi Kiran Tikka, recently met honourable Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and his family.

After the reception 'Major' received and the impact it has made on audiences, Adivi had announced the Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan fund, an attempt to not just take the late Majors legacy ahead but also help CDS and NDA aspirants across the country.

During his meeting with Uddhav Thackeray, Adivi discussed about Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan fund in detail, to which the CM had assured him full support. Not just that, Thackeray praised the movie and stupendous performances of the actors and also congratulated the team for making a film on such an important and relevant topic that will inspire generations to come.

The movie team was pleased to interact with the CM and his family, who also shared his own personal experiences during the unfortunate 26/11 attacks. Reciprocating Uddhav Thackeray's best wishes and support to 'Major', the team also promised him to immediately arrange a screening for him and his family. Much to the surprise of the movie team, the Maharashtra CM also gifted them a book of photographs.

Taking to his social media, Adivi wrote, Had the incredible opportunity to meet the Honourable CM of Maharashtra Shri Uddhav Thackeray. He promised to extend his full support for our MAJOR promise fund for Defence aspirants. It was an incredible moment. Thank you sir for the amazing words about our film. We will be showing the film to the entire family in the next few days. Was an absolute delight to meet Shri @adityathackeray as well. Thank you #MaheshManjrekar ji for being the bridge for our efforts :) @cmomaharashtra_ #majorthefilm.
New Delhi: Veteran actor Shakti Kapoors son Siddhanth Kapoor has been detained by the Bengaluru Police in a drugs related case after they raided a party in the city. Siddhant tested positive for drug consumption and is held by police along with five other people. Reacting to this news Shakti Kapoor said that it is not possible. The veteran actor told ETimes, I can only say one thing- it's not possible.

Shakti Kapoor also shared that it was through news channels that he learnt about his sons detainment. He told News18, I am not aware of anything. I have just gotten up from my sleep and my phone has started ringing continuously. He hasn't been arrested but detained by the cops for consumption (of drugs). I don't think there was any possession. I have as much information as it is coming out in the news and I am really troubled by this news."

The Bengaluru Police had reached the Park Hotel party after receiving a tip-off. They confirmed that Siddhant Kapoor was among the six people, allegedly found to have consumed drugs. "Siddhanth Kapoor has tested positive for drugs. He has been brought to Ulsoor Police Station," Dr Bheemashankar S. Guled, DCP, East division, Bengaluru City told ANI.

In 2020, Siddhanths sister, actor Shraddha Kapoor was questioned by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) for drug consumption related to Sushant Singh Rajputs (SSR) murder case. The actress in her testimony had revealed that she attended SSRs 'Chhichhore' success party at his Pawana guesthouse but denied all reports of consuming any kinds of drugs.

Siddhanth is also an actor and an assisstant director by profession and has appeared in films like "Shootout At Wadala", "Haseena Parkar" and "Jazbaa" among others. He was invited to the Bengaluru party as a DJ for the night.
The first set of India-made semi-high speed train under the Rapid Rail Transit System (RRTS) has reached Duhai depot in Ghaziabad. Made by Alstom, the trainset was dispatched from Savli in Gujarat on June 3 and has been received by National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) on Monday, after travelling by road for 10 days. India's first RRTS, a rail-based, high-speed, high-frequency regional commuter transport system, is being built by NCRTC and will connect Delhi and Meerut on the the Sarai Kale Khan-Ghaziabad-Meerut RRTS corridor.

"The aerodynamic RRTS train set was loaded on a trailer at the manufacturing factory of Alstom in Gujarat and will be brought to the Duhai Depot in Ghaziabad via road," the NCRTC statement said. The first train set of RRTS was handed over to the NCRTC on May 7 at an event organised at the manufacturing unit in Savli in the Vadodara district.

[RRTS Updates] @OfficialNCRTC has received its first semi-high-speed 'Make in India' train set at Duhai Depot today. The train was supplied by @AlstomIndia and manufactured at Savli Coch Facility Centre, Vadodara, Gujarat.#RRTS #RollingStock pic.twitter.com/GTm0HDNUQP  Metro Rail Today (@metrorailtoday) June 13, 2022

The statement said the Duhai depot is gearing up for its arrival. "The tracks have been laid out; shades have been prepared for the workshop, and preparations are being made for the testing of the train at the depot. For the operation of the RRTS trains, an administrative building has also been constructed at the depot," the statement read.

It added that for the testing and the maintenance of the RRTS trains, 11 stabling lines, two workshop lines, and three Internal-Bay Lines (IBL) are being constructed. Alstom has been awarded the contract of manufacturing the RRTS trains under Make In India, as per which they would be delivering 40 train sets, including 10 three-car train sets for Meerut Metro, bundled with rolling stock maintenance for 15 years, the statement said.

The 17-km priority section between Sahibabad and Duhai is targeted to be commissioned by 2023 and the full corridor by 2025.

With inputs from PTI
NEW DELHI: The 'Virata Parvam' team held an 'Aathmeeya Vedika' in Warangal to promote the upcoming film which will be released on June 17. Lead star Rana Daggubati says he was asked why he chose to appear in a film with a smaller role.

"Many people asked me why I'm doing this movie instead of doing some action picture," Rana stated while speaking on the occasion.

"Generally, heroes make films for the enjoyment of their fans and claps. However, if you're looking for an honest movie line in between claps, this is the film for you", the 'Dum Maaro Dum' actor explained.

Rana said during the 'Virata Parvam' event that the film is totally Sai Pallavi's show.

"Sai Pallavi is an exceptional performer. "It's possible to find another actor who can play my role in the film," Rana stated, "but no one else could have done what Sai Pallavi did in the film."

Rana went on to say that 'Virata Parvam' has a poetic touch. Rana explained why the movie is being released only in Telugu and not in other languages, claiming that the film has a unique narrative and appeals entirely to the Telugu audience's sensibilities.

He concluded by saying, "We will meet again in the same place for a success meet."
Ottawa: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday informed that he has again tested positive for COVID-19.Trudeau said that he is isolated and he felt "OK".

"I've tested positive for COVID-19. I`ll be following public health guidelines and isolating. I feel okay, but that's because I got my shots. So, if you haven't, get vaccinated - and if you can, get boosted. Let's protect our healthcare system, each other, and ourselves," the Canadian PM tweeted.

Ive tested positive for COVID-19. Ill be following public health guidelines and isolating. I feel okay, but thats because I got my shots. So, if you havent, get vaccinated - and if you can, get boosted. Lets protect our healthcare system, each other, and ourselves.  Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) June 13, 2022

He previously tested positive for COVID-19 in late January this year and is triple vaccinated.

Live TV
Islamabad: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan on Sunday challenged the incumbent coalition government of Shehbaz Sharif to win the next elections in Pakistan. Khan said that it was "impossible for the incumbent coalition government to win the next election," reported Geo News. He said that it would also be very difficult for the current government to run an electioneering campaign as PTI is working in full swing for the next polls.

Speaking to a private TV news channel, Khan also talked about his ill-fated "Azadi March" held on May 25, which was called off after a strong curb down by the Shehbaz Sharif government. Khan said that the government registered first information reports (FIRs) against members of the PTI following the party`s "Azadi March" to Islamabad last month so that it could "throw anyone it wanted behind bars," reported Geo News.

The former prime minister also criticized the Shahbaz Sharif-led government for passing the National Accountability (Amendment) Bill, 2022 on June 9, which had previously been returned by President Arif Alvi. Commenting on the development, Khan said that the PTI will "approach the Supreme Court soon".

Regarding the overall political situation of the country, the PTI chairman said that the entire nation was "looking towards the institutions to intervene and make things right," reported Dawn. Answering a question about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Khan said that the projects "had to be halted because of the coronavirus pandemic."

Meanwhile, China has asked Pakistan`s Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa to stop attacks on its nationals who are working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor projects in the Balochistan region. The Chinese demand came in a meeting of senior officials of Pakistan and China who discussed their perspectives on the international and regional security situations, reported Frontier Post.

The developments come after the Islamabad Police recently decided to set up a foreign security cell at the Central Police Office (CPO) with requisite staff and logistics amid reports of Chinese nationals continuously being targeted in Pakistan.

In response to another question regarding Pakistan`s relations with the US during PTI`s tenure, Khan said that he enjoyed cordial ties with former US President Donald Trump, adding that Joe Biden`s administration was "stuck in dealing with matters related to Afghanistan," reported Geo News.
Kyiv: Russian forces have blown up a bridge linking the embattled Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk to another city across the river, cutting off a possible evacuation route for civilians, local officials said on Sunday (June 12, 2022).

Sievierodonetsk has become the epicenter of the battle for control over Ukraine`s eastern Donbas region. Parts of the city have been pulverized in some of the bloodiest fighting since the Kremlin unleashed its invasion on Feb. 24.

"The key tactical goal of the occupiers has not changed: they are pressing in Sievierodonetsk, severe fighting is ongoing there - literally for every meter," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, adding that Russia`s military was trying to deploy reserve forces to the Donbas.

Zelenskiy said the image of a 12-year-old injured in a Russian strike was now the enduring worldwide face of Russia. "These very facts will underscore the way in which Russia is seen by the world," he said.

"Not Peter the Great, not Lev Tolstoy, but children injured and killed in Russian attacks," he said, in an apparent reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin`s remarks last week comparing Moscow`s military campaign to Russian emperor Peter the Great`s 18th century conquest of lands held by Sweden.

Ukrainian and Russian forces were still fighting street-by-street in Sievierodonetsk on Sunday, the governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Gaidai, said.

Russian forces have taken most of the city but Ukrainian troops remain in control of an industrial area and the Azot chemical plant where hundreds of civilians are sheltering. "About 500 civilians remain on the territory of the Azot plant in Sievierodonetsk, 40 of them are children. Sometimes the military manages to evacuate someone," Gaidai said.

But the Russians had destroyed a bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River linking Sievierodonetsk with its twin city of Lysychansk, Gaidai said.

That left just one of three bridges still standing.

"If after new shelling the bridge collapses, the city will truly be cut off. There will be no way of leaving Sievierodonetsk in a vehicle," Gaidai said, noting the lack of a cease-fire agreement and no agreed evacuation corridors.

In Lysychansk, Russian shelling killed a six-year-old, Gaidai said.

Reuters could not independently confirm that account.

STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS

After being forced to scale back its initial goals following its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has turned its attention to expanding control in the Donbas, where pro-Russian separatists have held territory since 2014.

The fall of Sievierodonetsk, in the last pocket of Ukrainian land held in the strategic Luhansk region, would move Russia a big step closer to one of the stated goals of what Putin calls a "special military operation."

Elsewhere, Russian cruise missiles destroyed a large depot containing U.S. and European weapons in western Ukraine`s Ternopil region, Russia`s Interfax agency reported.

Ternopil`s governor said rockets fired from the Black Sea at the city of Chortkiv had partly destroyed a military facility and injured 22 people. A local official said there were no weapons stored there.

Reuters could not independently confirm the differing accounts.

Moscow has criticised the United States and other nations for sending Ukraine weapons, threatening to strike new targets if the West supplied long-range missiles.

Ukrainian leaders recently have renewed pleas for more heavy weapons. On Sunday, the Ukrainian general staff said on Facebook that General Valeriy Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine`s armed forces, had spoken to General Mark Milley, the top U.S. military officer, and reiterated his request for more heavy artillery systems.

Russian forces were firing mortars and artillery south and southwest of Sievierodonetsk, according to Ukraine`s general staff. But it said Ukrainian forces had repulsed Russian attempts to advance towards some communities.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.

Putin says Russia`s actions aim to disarm and "denazify" Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression to capture territory.

Also on Sunday, the leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region in the Donbas said there was no reason to pardon two British nationals sentenced to death last week after being captured while fighting for Ukraine.

A court in Donetsk on Thursday found Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner - and Moroccan Brahim Saadoun - guilty of "mercenary activities" seeking to overthrow the republic.

Britain says Aslin and Pinner were regular soldiers exempt under the Geneva Conventions from prosecution for participation in hostilities. Aslin`s family said he and Pinner "are not, and never were, mercenaries."

Separately, the family of a former British soldier, Jordan Gatley, said on social media he was killed fighting for Ukraine in Sievierodonetsk.
Kyiv: Sievierodonetsk has become the epicentre of the wider battle for control over Ukraine`s eastern Donbas region. Russian forces have taken most of Sievierodonetsk, having pulverized parts of the city in one of the bloodiest assaults since the Kremlin unleashed its invasion on Feb. 24.

"The key tactical goal of the occupiers has not changed: they are pressing in Sievierodonetsk, severe fighting is ongoing there - literally for every metre," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Sunday, adding that Russia`s military was trying to deploy reserves in the Donbas.

Zelenskiy said the image of a 12-year-old wounded in a Russian strike was now the enduring worldwide face of Russia."These very facts will underscore the way in which Russia is seen by the world," he said."Not Peter the Great, not Lev Tolstoy, but children injured and killed in Russian attacks," he said, in an apparent reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin`s remarks last week comparing Moscow`s military campaign to Russian emperor Peter the Great`s 18th century conquest of lands held by Sweden.

Ukrainian and Russian forces were still fighting street-by-street in Sievierodonetsk on Sunday, the governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Gaidai, said. Russian forces have taken most of the city but Ukrainian troops remain in control of an industrial area and the Azot chemical plant where hundreds of civilians are sheltering.

"About 500 civilians remain on the territory of the Azot plant in Sievierodonetsk, 40 of them are children. Sometimes the military manages to evacuate someone," Gaidai said. But the Russians had destroyed a bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River linking Sievierodonetsk with its twin city of Lysychansk, Gaidai said. That left just one of three bridges still standing. Also Read: NCLAT rejects Amazon's plea to stay CCI order suspending Future Coupons deal approval

"If after new shelling the bridge collapses, the city will truly be cut off. There will be no way of leaving Sievierodonetsk in a vehicle," Gaidai said, noting the lack of a cease-fire agreement and no agreed evacuation corridors. In Lysychansk, Russian shelling killed a six-year-old child, Gaidai said. The fall of Sievierodonetsk, in the last pocket of Ukrainian land held in the strategic Luhansk region, would move Russia a big step closer to one of the stated goals of what Putin calls a "special military operation."



STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS

After being forced to scale back its initial goals following its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has turned its attention to expanding control in the Donbas, where pro-Russian separatists have held territory since 2014. Russian forces have engaged in the constant bombardment of cities in the south and east, leaving many in ruins and thousands of civilians dead, according to the United Nations. Elsewhere, Russian cruise missiles destroyed a large depot containing U.S. and European weapons in western Ukraine`s Ternopil region, Russia`s Interfax agency reported.

Ternopil`s governor said rockets fired from the Black Sea at the city of Chortkiv had partly destroyed a military facility and injured 22 people. A local official said there were no weapons stored there.

Reuters could not independently confirm the differing accounts.

Moscow has criticised the United States and other nations for sending Ukraine weapons, threatening to strike new targets if the West supplied long-range missiles. Ukrainian leaders recently have renewed pleas for more heavy weapons. Also Read: ED is questioning Rahul Gandhi, then why march by the Congress leaders?

On Sunday, the Ukrainian general staff said on Facebook that General Valeriy Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine`s armed forces, had spoken to General Mark Milley, the top U.S. military officer, and reiterated his request for more heavy artillery systems. Russian forces were firing mortars and artillery south and southwest of Sievierodonetsk, according to Ukraine`s general staff. But it said Ukrainian forces had repulsed Russian attempts to advance towards some communities.



Putin says Russia`s actions aim to disarm and "denazify" Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression to capture territory. Also on Sunday, the leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region in the Donbas said there was no reason to pardon two British nationals sentenced to death last week after being captured while fighting for Ukraine.

A court in Donetsk on Thursday found Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner - and Moroccan Brahim Saadoun - guilty of "mercenary activities" seeking to overthrow the republic.

Britain says Aslin and Pinner were regular soldiers exempt under the Geneva Conventions from prosecution for participation in hostilities.

Aslin`s family said he and Pinner "are not, and never were, mercenaries."Separately, the family of a former British soldier, Jordan Gatley, said on social media he was killed fighting for Ukraine in Sievierodonetsk.
Gioi chuc Trung Quoc ngay 12/6 ghi nhan 166 ca mac Covid-19 co lien quan en mot quan bar o thu o Bac Kinh.

ot bung phat bat nguon tu mot quan bar co ten Heaven Supermarket, nam trong khu giai tri noi tieng Sanlitun o quan Trieu Duong, Bac Kinh.

Mot phat ngon vien chinh phu a mo ta ay la ot bung phat "du doi". Tat ca cu dan song trong khu vuc gan quan bar nay se uoc xet nghiem trong vong 3 ngay toi, theo BBC.

Trong khi o, hai toa nha voi hang tram dan cu o quan Trieu Duong a bi phong toa nghiem ngat vao ngay 12/6, sau khi phat hien mot truong hop duong tinh voi SARS-CoV-2, mot nhan vien uy ban dan cu noi voi Reuters.

Nhieu nguoi dan o Bac Kinh cung cho biet ho a nhan uoc tin nhan yeu cau bao cao voi chinh quyen neu en cac quan bar o khu Sanlitun trong thoi gian gan ay.

Gioi chuc Trung Quoc ngay 12/6 ghi nhan 166 ca mac Covid-19 co lien quan en mot quan bar o thu o Bac Kinh. Anh: Reuters.

Neu so sanh voi cac quoc gia khac tren the gioi, so ca nhiem o Bac Kinh van o muc thap. Tuy nhien, Trung Quoc van ang duy tri chinh sach Zero Covid-19 trong nhieu thang qua.

Cac quan chuc nuoc nay a phai ao nguoc quyet inh noi long mot so quy tac phong dich o thu o vi ot bung phat moi. Theo o, hau het tre em Bac Kinh se khong tro lai truong hoc vao tuan toi nhu ke hoach ban au.

Ke tu ngay 22/4, Bac Kinh a ghi nhan 1.997 ca mac Covid-19.

Trung Quoc van ap dung chinh sach Zero Coivd-19 nghiem ngat, yeu cau cac truong hop duong tinh cach ly hoac ieu tri tai benh vien. Nhung nguoi tiep xuc gan cung uoc yeu cau cach ly, va khu vuc xung quanh noi co ca nhiem se bi phong toa.
By Trend

The administrative building of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) will hold a meeting between the Chairman of the Board of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) Taleh Kazimov and the heads of insurance companies (IC) on June 16, the CBA's press service told Trend.

The meeting will address issues in the insurance market under the chairmanship of Kazimov.

"Detailed information about the meeting will be provided a bit later," the press service added.

Furthermore, car owners with the smallest engines had earlier faced problems with compulsory civil liability insurance.
By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Baku and Bern have discussed the expansion of the Switzerland-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce and Industry activities, Azernews reports.

The discussion took place during a meeting between Azerbaijans Agency for Small and Medium-Sized Business Development Board Chairman Orkhan Mammadov and Switzerland-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Claude Hague held in an online format.

The parties exchanged views on attracting companies from both countries to the chamber and organizing joint events with entrepreneurs.

Azerbaijan's Small and Medium-Sized Business Development Agency continues to hold meetings with local and foreign entrepreneurs in order to expand relations and implement new business initiatives.

Azerbaijan and Switzerland cooperate in various economic fields. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were established on January 21, 1992.

There is mutually beneficial cooperation between Baku and Bern in the non-oil sector. In addition, Baku will host a meeting of the Commission on Trade and Economic relations between Switzerland and Azerbaijan in 2022.

The trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $457.2 million in 2021, with exports accounting for $272.5 million and imports for $184.7 million.
By Laman Ismayilova

For centuries, houses with stained-glass windows have exploded in popularity worldwide, Azernews reports.

In Azerbaijan, this ancient art form continues to live thanks to the efforts of skilled craftsmen.

Shabaka art is a wooden lattice of pieces of colored glass, held together without glue or a single nail.

From the 11th-12th centuries, this art form was widespread in cities such as Shaki, Shusha, Ordubad, Baku, Ganja, and others.

The surface dimensions of the shabaka can vary from a few square centimeters to several square meters.

According to compositions, shabaka is divided into "jafari", "sakkiz", "onalti", "gullyabi", "shamsi", "gelu" and "bendi-rumi".

Wooden parts are made of hardwoods - beech, walnut and oak. Shabaka patterns symbolize the sun, the energy of life, the eternal flow of time, and the infinity of the universe.

The revival of the shabaka art is associated with such folk craftsmen as Abdulhuseyn Babayev (1877-1961) and Ashraf Rasulov (1928-1997).

Mehdi Mehdiyev (19th century), Shahbuzla Abuzer Badalov (18th-19th centuries), Abbasgulu Sheki (19th century), and many other folk craftsmen also contributed to the promotion of Azerbaijan's stained-glass art.

Palace of Sheki Khans

The Palace of Sheki Khans is among some of the most striking examples of this centuries-old art form.

In 2019, the Historic Center of Shaki with the Khan's Palace was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This majestic royal palace was built in the 18th century without a single nail with luxurious wall paintings and openwork windows.

Shabaka fills walls and window openings of halls and rooms in the Palace of Sheki Khans.

Stained-glass windows of central halls and side rooms open on the facade. These stained glass windows are a special feature of the palace's architecture.

The summer residence is renowned for its majestic interior. Large portions of the facade of the residence, including the entire southern elevations of the central halls on both floors, are covered by a mosaic of colored glass set in a wooden latticework (shabaka).

The interior walls of the residence are covered entirely with frescoes painted at different times during the eighteenth century.

Nakhchivan Khans' Palace

Nakhchivan Khans' Palace is another beautiful example of shabaka art.

Built in a special order and combining many types of folk art, Nakhchivan Khans' Palace is distinguished by its original architectural style.

The palace was the residence of the Nakhchivan khans until the beginning of the 20th century.

The 18th-century-old palace was erected during the reign of Kalbali Khan Kangarli, the father of the last Nakhchivan khan Ehsan-khan.

Nakhchivan Khans' Palace featured a swimming pool, water well, green stripes, ornamental and fruit trees.

By the time the palace consisted of two separate sections. The southern section was intended for administrative work and reception of high-class guests, while the northern section-for khan's family.

The windows of the palace are made in the style of shabaka while all rooms in the palace have takhchi - niches in the walls for bedding and dishes.

Since 1998, Nakhchivan Khans' Palace has been operating as Nakhchivan Carpet Museum.




The expression "if the information is provided by Andina, this means it is confirmed and official" sustains the credibility of Andina since June 12, 1981, the date on which it was founded, during the second term of former President Fernando Belaunde Terry.





Since then, the news agency has not ceased to evolve. Its experience from its early days in the era of the cable, teletype, and fax has been consolidated in an environment marked by immediacy and real-time coverage of news events.





"Andina is a reliable and diverse media outlet. It provides reliable information, and this is known by media outlets both domestic and foreign that access the website every day, as well as by citizens who go directly to the site," Andina's General Editor Rodolfo Espinal remarked.





In the midst of numerous fake news, people now look for official and real information, and Andina has always complied with this practice, which has been consolidated during the health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In these 41 years, Andina has never stopped covering national news events, even during the first months of the pandemic, when leaving home was associated with a high risk of contagion or death, as the COVID-19 vaccines were not available yet.





Under strict sanitary measures, photographers have not stopped capturing the changes experienced by the country, which faced one of the worst restrictions on social mobility with the aim of protecting the population.

Thus, journalists and editors transformed their homes into editorial departments without affecting the accuracy demanded by their work.





(END) KGR/RRC/RMB
YEREVAN, JUNE 13, ARMENPRESS. Armenias Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan met with Russias Minister of Economic Development Maksim Reshetnikov on June 11 in Upper Lars, the only checkpoint of the Russian-Georgian border, the Armenian ministry of economy said.

Reconstruction works are underway since March 2021 to increase the capacity of the checkpoint.

The situation in Upper Lars requires urgent solution because the cargo trucks pass the Georgian section of the road in 20-30 days. These are goods that Russian companies and consumers need. The situation will further worsen given that the harvest season has already begun, the Armenian Minister of Economy said.

The capacity of the checkpoint is expected to increase by 6.4 times after reconstruction. Currently, an average of 800-1000 trucks are passing through the checkpoint, but after reconstruction their number will rise to over 2500 daily.

We all understand the importance of increasing the capacity of the checkpoint both in technical and documentation terms. This is the key condition of strengthening the trade-economic cooperation between Russia and Armenia. That is why the reconstruction works here are being carried out without the suspension of the operation of the checkpoint. Constructors promise to end it in the third quarter of 2022, the Russian Minister of Economic Development said.
YEREVAN, JUNE 13, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan met with Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of Qatar, Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdul Aziz al-Thani, the PMs Office said.

During their meeting following the official welcoming ceremony, the Qatari PM attached importance to the official visit of the Armenian PM and highlighted the need for multilateral cooperation between the two friendly countries. He expressed confidence that the mutual partnership between the Armenian and Qatari governments will reach a new level with the results of this visit.

In his turn PM Pashinyan said that the political dialogue between Armenia and Qatar is at a high level, emphasizing the need for boosting the economic ties. Pashinyan attached importance to the development and deepening of business ties and invited the representatives of the Qatari business community to Armenia to discuss with Armenian businessmen the possibilities and prospects of implementing joint investment programs.

The Armenian and Qatari PMs discussed also a broad range of issues relating to the development of cooperation in economy, IT, agriculture, transportation infrastructure, trade turnover, aviation communication and tourism sectors.

Based on the meeting results, a number of documents were signed between the two sides at the presence of the Armenian and Qatari PMs. Particularly, Armenian Deputy PM Hambardzum Matevosyan and Qatars Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Than signed a memorandum of understanding on holding political consultations between the foreign ministries of the two countries, as well as a memorandum of understanding on exchange of news between Armenpress state news agency and the Qatar News Agency.

Cooperation agreements were signed also in the fields of education, research, healthcare, as well as an agreement on declaring sister cities between Yerevan and Doha.
YEREVAN, JUNE 13, ARMENPRESS. The relations between Armenia and India have improved to a great extent in the past 30 years, but the last three years have seen tremendous upward trend in the bilateral relations in all spheres, particularly in the political context, Ambassador of India to Armenia H.E. Kishan Dan Dewal said in an exclusive interview to ARMENPRESS on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and India.

The Ambassador positively assesses the fact that the two friendly countries have been actively exchanging high-level political visits recently. In this context he mentioned not only the recent visit of the Armenian Foreign Minister to India, but also the official visit of the Indian Foreign Minister to Armenia in October 2021, which, he called a historical visit, because it was the first ever visit of Indian Foreign Minister to Armenia.

Our Foreign Minister visited Armenia in October 2021. It was the first ever visit of Indian foreign minister to Armenia, historical visit. And I'm happy to share with you that while we are talking, just few days back Armenias Foreign Minister Mirzoyan has returned from a very successful visit from India, the Ambassador said.

According to the Ambassador, the Armenian FMs recent visit to India was very successful. This was the first visit of the Armenian FM to India after a gap of 12 years.

The full text of the interview with the Indian Ambassador to Armenia will be published soon.

Aram Sargsyan
YEREVAN, JUNE 13, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan visited the Qatar Foundation in Doha. The Head of the Government was introduced to the activities of the Foundation, in particular, the programs implemented in the field of education. The leaders of the Foundation also answered the questions of the members of the Armenian governmental delegation. Opportunities for cooperation with Armenia in the field of education were touched upon, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Pashinyan also visited the Qatar Science and Technology Park. During the visit, the Prime Minister got acquainted with the latter's activities in the field of high technologies.

The Prime Minister made a note in the book of honored guests.
Brazilian police and indigenous search teams have dismissed reports that they had found the bodies of a British reporter and a Brazilian indigenous expert, dashing hopes of a quick resolution in the week-old case.

On Sunday, police said search teams had found the belongings of freelance reporter Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, a former official at federal indigenous agency Funai, in a creek off the river where they were last seen on June 5.

However, a federal police statement and a spokesman for local indigenous association UNIVAJA, which has organised search efforts since June 5, denied subsequent reports of two bodies turned up in the hunt on Monday.

"I've spoken with the team in the field and it's not true," said Eliesio Marubo, a lawyer for UNIVAJA, which has organised teams hunting for Phillips and Pereira. "The search goes on."

The two men were on a reporting trip in the remote jungle area near the border with Peru and Colombia that is home to the world's largest number of uncontacted indigenous people. The wild and lawless region has lured cocaine-smuggling gangs, along with illegal loggers, miners and hunters.

News of the pair's disappearance resonated globally and environmentalists and human rights activists had urged Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to step up the search.

Bolsonaro, who last year faced tough questioning from Phillips at a news conference about weakening environmental law enforcement in Brazil, said last week that the two men "were on an adventure that is not recommended" and suggested that they could have been executed.

State police detectives involved in the investigation told Reuters they are focusing on poachers and illegal fisherman in the area, who clashed often with Pereira as he organised indigenous patrols of the local reservation.
Water droplets simply roll off - and clean the surface and reduce infestation with fungal spores, for example. But not only plants have the "lotus effect," which Professor Wilhelm Barthlott of the University of Bonn discovered four decades ago.

Land living Cyanobacteria (Hassallia byssoidea) also use extreme water repellency to protect themselves from water films and competitors. That's according to a research team led by Barthlott in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

Plants and other organisms have evolved structures and mechanisms for colonizing land for nearly half a billion years. In this context, their surfaces, the crucial physical interface with the environment, mainly act as barriers against water loss. Bonn researchers suggest that extreme water repellency (superhydrophobicity) and associated self-cleaning (lotus effect) was an additional key to algae's transition from water to land about 400 million years ago. "Superhydrophobicity enhances gas exchange on land and excludes aquatic competitors in water films," the research team writes in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

In materials science and surface technology, superhydrophobicity has also become one of the most important bioinspired innovations, making it possible to avoid water films and pollution - for example, in facade paints and varnishes. In the paper, the researchers describe an extremely water-repellent biofilm of the desiccation-tolerant cyanobacterium Hassallia byssoidea and provide evidence that the origin of superhydrophobicity is much older than previously thought. It could date back to about one to two billion years ago.

The multicellular bacterium forms "algae-like" filaments that are extremely water-repellent and prevent water films. Short cell filaments remain attached to the unrolling water droplets, causing the organism to spread via a type of droplet infection known as "splash dispersal." Flooded, the bacterial lawn becomes wettable after about a day and continues to grow underwater - and dried out again, it reaches its water-repellency for life on land.

"Now we have robust data for cyanobacteria in terrestrial biofilms that can switch from a hydrophilic to a stable superhydrophobic state - and we assume that superhydrophobicity played a crucial evolutionary role in the transition of almost all organisms on land" says Prof. Barthlott. It is no coincidence that cyanobacteria play a role in the oldest known fossils, the stromatolites. They are composed of thin layers of bacterial mats, probably primarily cyanobacteria, which are generally thought to be the first land dwellers.

The work impressively shows how superhydrophoby evolved from bacteria to green algae, slime molds, mosses and ferns, via the most primitive flowering plant Amborella to lotus leaves. There are a billion years of evolution behind an effect that today has found an everyday industrial application as superhydrophobicity biomimetic.

Publication: Barthlott, W., Budel, B., Mail, M., Neumann, K.M., Bartels D. & E. Fischer: Superhydrophobic terrestrial Cyanobacteria and land plant transition, Front. Plant.

Astrobiology

Please follow Astrobiology on Twitter.
By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's June 9, 2022, statement in Yerevan about an obscure village in Azerbaijans Karabakh was a total bombshell for both Baku and Yerevan that raised eyebrows at Moscows rationale behind yet another twist.

Although Bakus prompt reaction compelled Moscow to later amend the Yerevan remark by the scandalous foreign minister, it, in essence, changed nothing and once again laid bare serious shortcomings and highly controversial aspects of Russias foreign policy priorities.

Pundits immediately come forward with their far-reaching conclusions that Baku and Yerevan once again realized what lies behind Russias endless dual game vis-a-vis the Karabakh issue. Lavrovs remark came after Bakus repeated statements that the conflict had been resolved militarily, and Moscows role at this point in time is to play its assumed function, that is, to play a fair role and be conducive to the final resolution of the conflict.

Alas, the Russian foreign ministers controversial remark dispels hopes that Moscow can play a fair and neutral arbiter role. One might ascribe it to the Russian foreign ministers scandalous nature, who often finds himself in the whirl of the activities that run counter to the stated principles, but as a saying goes, no guide is needed to a mountain that is visible.

What tells us Farrukh & prelude to Bakus anger

In March 2022, the Azerbaijani army restored control over Farrukh village and the neighboring Dashbashi height to prevent provocations by illegal Armenian armed groups operating in the Russian peacekeeping forces' temporary zone of control in Karabakh.

On June 9, asked by an Armenian journalist about efforts being made to achieve the withdrawal of Azerbaijani troops from the Karabakh village of Farrukh, the Russian minister said in Yerevan that the issue of Azerbaijan seizing control of a Karabakh village in March 2022 would be resolved during the border delimitation between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

"As we understand, these issues will be discussed and will be surely resolved within the substantive work on border delimitation that is about to start," Lavrov told a joint presser with his Armenian opposite side in Yerevan on June 9.

In Baku, the statement raised eyebrows at all levels with pundits asking rightfully about the interconnection between the village inside Karabakh and the ensuing border delimitation process that despite Bakus best efforts has not yet moved off the dead point.

Yerevans short-lived glee

In Yerevan, where protesters took to the streets to protest at the visit of the Russian foreign minister, they did not take seriously what Sergei Lavrov said, ascribing his words either to his poor knowledge of geography or his desire to appease the anger of the protesting Armenians. Lavrov's response that the issue would be resolved "as part of the delimitation process" even perplexed Armenian reporters in the briefing and pundits, who never lose the opportunity to claim the right to everything Azerbaijan has had for centuries.

Armenian experts attributed Lavrovs comment to his tough meetings in Ankara, who in Yerevan mistook Farrukh for "a number of disputed territories on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border". Armenian opposition parliamentarian called for "more clarity".

"Does Mr. Lavrov's statement imply that the Armenian-Azerbaijani delimitation commissions are also involved in the delimitation of the Karabakh borders? Ashotyan asked. If so, within which borders? If not, either I misunderstood Lavrov or he got the toponyms mixed up, he was quoted.

Another opposition member of the Armenian parliament, Artur Kazinyan, said that an "unexpected situation" had arisen after Lavrov's statement.

Baku reacts

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reacted immediately, refreshing the Russian foreign ministers memory.

We would like to note that the activities of the delimitation commissions, established by Azerbaijan and Armenia, are aimed at the delimitation of the state border of the two countries, as previously planned. This process does not envisage consideration of any issue outside the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border, including the territories of the Republic of Azerbaijan where the Russian peacekeeping contingent is temporarily located, the ministrys spokesperson said in a press release.

Moscow attempts to save its own face

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not comment on the issue triggered by the chief diplomat and only after Bakus reaction, in a transcript published on its official website, Lavrov's statement was corrected.

The amended version of the foreign ministers remarks read as follows.

"We hope that the launch of the process of delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border will help build trust between Baku and Yerevan and prevent incidents like Farrukh in the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping contingent."

Could the foreign minister, as a professional diplomat, make such a grave error? This cannot be ruled out in view of Lavrov's frequent blunders and his often reference to non-normative vocabulary cannot be ruled out.

Lavrov's previous remarks, such as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler "had Jewish blood" or that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews", made Putin apologize to Israel in order to avoid a crisis in the Russian-Israeli ties, are clear evidence of his similar gaffes.

Experts on Farrukh

According to military analyst Adalat Verdiyev, the Azerbaijani army has no plans to leave the liberated territories. In response to Lavrov's comments, the expert stated that the Farrukh victory was a source of pride for Azerbaijan.

"Raising our flag in Farrukh is a very serious message sent by Azerbaijan to Armenia. The implication of this message is that only the Azerbaijani army can guarantee the security of Armenians in our territories, including in Karabakh, which is temporarily controlled by Russian peacekeepers," Verdiyev stressed.

In this regard, the analyst believes Lavrov's comments on Farrukh are aimed at calming down the Armenian community.

"We do not intend to withdraw from any territory where the Azerbaijani army is located. It has not been and will not be so. On the contrary, Azerbaijan will seek to expand its control in the territories where the Russians are temporarily stationed in the near future," the military expert said.

Azerbaijani MP Fazil Mustafa said that the statement of the Russian foreign minister was aimed at disrupting the peace process.

"Russia sees that the process is moving towards a solution, they want to disrupt it," he said. Mustafa went on to say that Lavrov's comment was worthless and irrelevant to Azerbaijan.

"First, Azerbaijan makes its own decisions on its lands. Second, Azerbaijan will not allow Lavrov's words and the wishes of the Armenians to come true. We will define our borders in this region and no country can interfere in it."
Kim Draheim remembers seeing The Beatles first appearance on Ed Sullivan back in February 1964.

I knew that was what I wanted to do. I signed up for guitar lessons the next day, he said.

Eventually he formed a band, Uptown Dogfood, with Joe Sarofeen on drums. Sarofeen, who comes from a very musical family, said one of his uncles played the drums and invited him to sit behind his kit. After that, he started taking lessons from Dick Howard.

What does that have to do with now? Well, Kim and Joe are both members of the Infrared Radiation Orchestra, a band that has recently released its sixth CD, The Infrared Radiation Orchestras Message to the Youth of America. A bonus CD was given to people who had preordered the CD (full disclosure: I was one of those lucky people). After a few unexpected personnel changes, the current lineup also features Jon Arliss on bass and H. Elizabeth (Heidi) Alcott on vocals and playing the theremin.

We recorded in a home studio, and our former bass player (Richard Terry) produced the CD for us," Draheim said. "Stan Merrill did our back cover photo and some other graphics. We are actually making an updated version of the CD.

Although Sarofeen had stepped back from playing music for almost 30 years, he said, Draheim never did. He arranges the songs they play, describing even covers they play as almost originals, because they are so creatively arranged.

"We are a loud band, he said, but not anywhere near as when we were younger.

Sarofeen added, When you come out to see us, its not just the music, its a show. A spectacle of light and sound. Our Psych Medley is worth listening to.

The "Psych Medley" includes outer-space related songs like 2,000 Light Years from Home by the Rolling Stones, Third Stone from the Sun by Jimi Hendrix and Interstellar Overdrive, by Pink Floyd, and usually closing with Eight Miles High by the Birds.

Getting back to the release of the new CD, it was not without its share of problems and delays, COVID-19 being a big one, and different mixes of the songs and personnel changes added to that. Draheim included notes to go with the CD to explain the stories behind some of the songs. He eventually started out this way: I have no idea which version of the album you have. These notes will work for whichever version that is ... more or less.

The Infrared Radiation Orchestras Message to the Youth of America may be ordered directly from Kim Draheim at Ked0917@aol.com for $10. The bonus CD is available for an additional $5. Follow the group on Facebook for news and schedules of upcoming performances.

We are also looking forward to seeing everyone at the Summer Festival of the Arts from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 13, at Willard Memorial Chapel. This is an extension of the Founders Day celebration in Auburn. In addition to many art vendors selling their creations, there will be pizza fritte and cotton candy by the Cultural Italian American Organization of Cayuga County, a chicken barbecue sponsored by the SCAT Van, sewing demonstrations by Sew What, tours of the chapel and a concert by Loren Barrigar.

Joe Sarnicola is a crafts artist and the president of the Finger Lakes Art Council, and can be reached at artcouncilfingerlakes@gmail.com or (315) 224-5071. For more information, visit facebook.com/fingerlakesartcouncil.

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For many of us, summer is already in full swing and the American Red Cross of Western New York wants everyone to have the critical knowledge and skills necessary to help save a life during lifes emergencies this season.

Whether your plans this season include fun in the water, camping or grilling your favorites, we want to share a few resources to help keep the whole family safe this summer  including our four-legged friends! From free first aid and CPR apps to lifesaving courses available right here in Cayuga County, we encourage you to be Red Cross Ready with these tips and more so everyone has an enjoyable summer!

WATER SAFETY

Every day, an average of 11 people die in the U.S. from unintentional drowning  and one in five of those are children 14 or younger according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We encourage families to build confidence in the water by learning to be safe and making good choices.

 Its best to swim in a lifeguarded area. Always designate a water watcher whose sole responsibility is to keep a close eye and constant attention on everyone in and around the water until the next water watcher takes over.

Drowning behavior is typically fast and silent. Unless rescued, a drowning person will last only 20 to 60 seconds before submerging. Reach or throw, don't go! In the event of an emergency, reach or throw an object to the person in trouble. Dont go in! You could become a victim yourself.

Classes to learn how to swim are available for both children and adults. Check the map for Learn-to-Swim providers in your community. Everyone should learn first aid and CPR too, so they know what to do in an emergency.

 Download the Red Cross Swim app, sponsored by The ZAC Foundation, for safety tips, kid-friendly videos and activities, and take the free Water Safety for Parents and Caregivers online course in English or in Spanish.

CAMPING SAFETY

If a camping trip is in your plans, know the level of ability of the people in your group and the environment around you. Plan accordingly.

 Pack a first aid kit to handle insect stings, sprains, cuts and bruises and other injuries that could happen to someone in your group. Take a Red Cross first aid and CPR course and download the first aid app so that you will know what to do in case help is delayed. Youll learn how to treat severe wounds, broken bones, bites and stings and more.

 Sprains and falls are some of the most common misfortunes travelers may face. Falls are the biggest threat, many due to poor decision-making, lack of skill or not being properly prepared. Dehydration is also a danger. Plan ahead for these dangers.

 Share your travel plans and locations with a family member, neighbor or friend.

 Bring nutritious food items and water, light-weight clothing to layer and supplies for any pets.

PET SAFETY

June is National Pet Preparedness Month and summers heat can be dangerous for family pets. Follow these steps to take to help ensure your pet stays safe this summer.

 Dont leave your pet in a hot vehicle, even for a few minutes. The inside temperature of the car can quickly reach 120 degrees even with the windows cracked open.

 Animals can suffer heat stroke, a common problem for pets in the warmer weather. Dogs with short noses or snouts, like the boxer or bulldog, are especially prone to heat stroke, along with overweight pets, those with extremely thick fur coat or any pet with upper respiratory problems such as laryngeal paralysis or collapsing trachea.

 Some of the signs of heat stroke in your pet are heavy panting and being unable to calm down, even when lying down, brick red gum color, fast pulse rate and being unable to get up.

 If you suspect your pet has heat stroke, take their temperature rectally. If the temperature is above 105 degrees, cool the animal down. The easiest way to do this is by using the water hose. Stop cooling the animal when the temperature reaches 103 degrees.

 Bring your pet to the veterinarian as soon as possible as heat stroke can lead to severe organ dysfunction and damage. Download the Red Cross pet first aid app for instant access on how to treat heat stroke, other emergencies and general care for cats and dogs and take the Cat and Dog First Aid Online Training course.

Meg Rossman is regional communications manager for the American Red Cross Western New York Region. For more information, call (315) 234-2200 or visit redcross.org.

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Cayuga Community College announced a new scholarship funded by industrial leader Huhtamaki for students entering its newly-created manufacturing-related program at the colleges Fulton campus.

In a press release on Monday, CCC said the Huhtamaki Scholarship, which will be awarded to up to five students from several area school districts, will be available for first-time college students enrolled in a degree, credential or microcredential manufacturing program.

For years Huhtamaki has been a strong partner of Cayuga Community College and our local students," said Dr. Keiko Kimura, Cayugas vice president of Workforce Development and Partnerships "With this scholarship, theyve again shown their confidence in Cayuga, our students, and their support for local manufacturing. Thank you to Huhtamaki for taking this step to support students in our manufacturing programs.

Huhtamaki is excited to commemorate the 2022 opening of Cayugas Advanced Manufacturing Institute at the Fulton Campus with the creation of scholarships for students who are entering one of the Colleges Advanced Manufacturing programs, said Huhtamaki Plant Manager Mark Southwick. Developing talent is a core element of our 2030 Strategy and is key to our future success.

The Huhtamaki Scholarship will be available to students attending the Fulton campus who earned a degree from the Fulton city, Hannibal Central, Mexico Academy and Central School, Phoenix Central districts and the Center for Instruction, Technology & Innovation (CiTi BOCES). Candidates must complete an application for the scholarship and be accepted for admission at Cayuga.

Designed to support regional employers and the current and future workforce, the 7,800-square-foot facility features training units in pneumatics, hydraulics, motors, piping and industry-grade programmable logic controls stations. The facility opened in May.

Between the Auburn and Fulton campuses, Cayuga offers manufacturing-related degrees such as Mechanical Technology with concentrations in Computer Aided Design, Facilities Design, Mechatronics and Precision Manufacturing, as well as Mechanical Technology with a Plastics Technology option.

Scholarship applications are available from Cayugas Office of Student Financial Services, the Cayuga Community College Foundation, or at the CCCs Fulton campus. The deadline to apply is July 15. Applications and any supporting documents should be sent to the Cayuga Community College Foundation, 197 Franklin St., Auburn, NY, 13021.

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June 13, 2007

AUBURN  Auburn Memorial Hospital officials unveiled preliminary plans Tuesday night for a roughly $8.8 million hospital renovation project funded partially through the state.

Paul Levesque, an associate of Ithaca's Holt Architects, presented their four-stage plan to renovate different areas of the hospital, a project that will be half funded by a state Heal Grant. The grant is provided to implement recommendations set forth by the Berger Commission earlier this year.

Rightsizing is the right word, said Scott Berlucchi, president and CEO of the hospital.

The president said that the hospital will pay about $4.4 million and the state will reimburse them the remaining half. Each time the hospital pays an invoice, Berlucchi said the state will reimburse the hospital half the cost.

We want to leave you guys current with all hospitals, Levesque said.

Plans include renovating current operating rooms into four operating rooms and two procedural rooms.

These rooms are going to be state of the art, Levesque said.

As the hospital soon faces downsizing to 99 beds, architects plan to renovate patient units consolidating them to two floors and making them all single units with bathrooms.

For not much money there is a lot we can do, Levesque said.

The mental health unit currently located down the street will relocate into the hospital.

Berlucchi stressed the need for mental health patients to be housed inside the hospital.

The fourth part of the Heal Grant includes a mechanical facility upgrade, something Berlucchi noted patients won't see, but is needed. Replacing the boilers will create a 5 to 10 percent savings in the hospital's energy prices.

One hospital employee said that the renovations were great ideas and would modernize the hospital as it prepares to downsize in beds.

Officials said they await project approval in a few months and tentatively plan for renovations to begin in November. By December 2008, Berlucchi predicts the project will be completed.

 Compiled by David Wilcox

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Though many vehicles and motorbikes have been damaged in the fire incident in Pakistan's Karachi, no human fatalities have been reported.

Hundreds of vehicles were gutted in fire on Sunday in an impoundment ground near Aziz Bhatti Park in Karachi's Gulshan-i-Iqbal neighborhood. Around 400 motorcycles, 40 cars, and other three-wheeler vehicles that were under court custody, got damaged in the fire incident that took place inside the yard at around 9:50 am, Dawn reported citing Deputy Commissioner East, Raja Tariq Hussain.

The report added that within a few minutes, fire tenders, police, and concerned assistant commissioner reached the site of the incident. The fire has been extinguished in the lot and the cooling process is underway, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah's spokesperson Abdul Rasheed Channa said in a statement. The report added that no fatalities have been reported due to the incident, though many vehicles and motorbikes have been damaged.

(Also read | BMW car catches fire on Lucknow-Varanasi highway, driver escapes without injury)

Another statement noted that a report of the incident showing damaged vehicles will be submitted once the cooling process of the vehicles is completed. Six fire tenders were deployed to bring the situation under control within three hours, as per the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation's (KMC) Chief Fire Officer Mubeen Ahmed. He also criticized the security arrangements at the impoundment ground, saying that no guard was posted nor was there any fire safety system.

The reason for the fire was deciphered aby the firemen and witnesses, East-SSP (Senior Superintendent of Police) Syed Abdul Rahim Sherazi told the publication. Quoting them, he said that a spark from a high tension wire triggered the blaze but the police is still waiting for a final report by the firemen.

An investigation into the fire incident has already been started in order to fix responsibility on individuals or organizations for negligence or for the wilful commission of the offence of putting the public property on fire. Residents of the area have demanded that the vehicles' impoundment lot should be moved to an abandoned place on the highways to avoid any mishaps in the future.

(with inputs from ANI)

First Published Date:
Beijing (Gasgoo)- In May, Chinas luxury electric vehicle brand HiPhi from Human Horizons saw its monthly sales volume top other electric vehicles priced at RMB500,000 ($74,200) and higher in China.

Photo credit: HiPhi

In the fifth month of 2022, HiPhi sold 369 HiPhi Xs, its only production model on the market, marking the fourth time for the model to rank first in sales this year among all vehicle models in the same category (pure-electric vehicle priced at RMB500,000+).

HiPhi disclosed that during its one year of delivery, the cumulative registration volume of the HiPhi X has reached over 6,000 units with an average transaction price of roughly RMB700,000 ($104,000).

Up to now, HiPhi has established nearly 50 showrooms, the HiPhi Hub, in 26 cities nationwide, and expanded its service network to 76 branches in 57 cities. Since May 2021 when HiPhi began its delivery service, it has carried out one-on-one delivery service in 32 provinces, municipalities, and special administrative regions in China.

Recently, the automakers Qingdao HiPhi Delivery Center and Service Center was put into operation, becoming HiPhis first integrated center in Shandong Province.

In addition, the brands second production model, the digital-themed GT, the HiPhi Z, is expected for delivery within the year.
With Gasgoo Daily, we will offer daily important automotive news in China. For those we have reported, the title of the piece will include a hyperlink, which will provide detailed information.

BYD said to mass produce Seal model in June

It is reported that BYD will commence the mass production of the BYD Seal in June. The new model has started presale with prices ranging from RMB212,800 ($31,600) to RMB289,800 ($43,035).

2023 KiWi EV to be equipped with DJIs intelligent driving system

The 2023 Baojun KiWi EV from SAIC-GM-Wuling will be the first mass-produced vehicle to be equipped with DJIs intelligent driving system, the brand announced today.

Photo credit: Baojun

Geely-affiliated company to acquire controlling share of smartphone maker Meizu

Geely-backed Hubei Xingji Shidai Technology Co., Ltd. inked a contract to acquire a 79.09% stake in the smartphone maker, Zhuhai Meizu Technology Co., Ltd., according to a public announcement made by Chinas State Administration for Market Regulation on June 13.



Sokon Group receives RMB6 billion credit line from ICBC Chongqing branch

On June 13th, Chinas automaking group, Chongqing Sokon Industry Group Stock Co., Ltd. (Sokon Group) inked a strategic cooperation agreement with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC)s Chongqing branch.



MG MULAN all-electric crossover makes worlds debut

The MG MULAN, a fire new all-electric vehicle model under SAIC Motor-owned MG brand, made its worlds debut on June 13.



HiPhi sells 369 HiPhi Xs in May

In May, Chinas luxury electric vehicle brand HiPhi from Human Horizons saw its monthly sales volume top other electric vehicles priced at RMB500,000 ($74,200) and higher in China.

Chery Holding May sales jump 30% YoY

In the fifth month of 2022, Chery Holding saw its monthly sales volume jump from the year-ago and month-ago periods.

SVOLT to build zero-carbon industrial park in Dazhou

SVOLT Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (SVOLT), a Chinese power battery manufacturer carved out of Great Wall Motor (GWM), on June 10 inked an agreement with Dazhou municipal government and the Management Committee of Dazhou High-tech Industry Development Zone to build an industrial park for the industrial chain of lithium ion batteries, the company announced via its WeChat account.

NIO inks agreement to help build EV auto parts industrial park in Luan

On June 10, NIO signed a framework agreement with the municipal government of Lu'an, a prefecture-level city in western Anhui province, to jointly build an industrial park of supporting auto parts used for intelligent electric vehicles, according to a post on local government's official WeChat account.

Continental Group invests in MOTOVIS

On June 13th, Chinas autonomous driving developer, MOTOVIS, announced the completion of its Series C financing round with strategic investment from Continental Group.
Beijing (Gasgoo)- On June 13th, Chinas autonomous driving developer, MOTOVIS, announced the completion of its Series C financing round with strategic investment from Continental Group.

Photo credit: MOTOVIS

The two companies will put in joint forces to develop intelligent mobility solutions that are specially designed for Chinese traffic scenarios with optimized costs. The new system solution will be able to cover various passenger vehicle models from low-cost ones to premium vehicles.

The co-developed solution will be multi-functional with low cost, low consumptions, and high security. The solution will support mainstream computing chip platforms and is expandable to adapt to higher levels of autonomous driving functions.

MOTOVIS disclosed that the jointly-developed system solution will be implemented onto China-branded passenger vehicle models in 2023 in a large scale.

Founded in 2015, MOTOVIS is an intelligent driving company focusing on AI-embedded chip platforms for autonomous driving technologies in both the passenger and commercial vehicle sectors. The company holds full-stack autonomous driving algorithms and hardware systems, compatible with L1-L4 demands.

Its in-house-grown autonomous driving and ADAS products have been produced by millions of sets. As one of the first autonomous driving companies that have realized mass production with mainstream passenger vehicle markers in China, MOTOVIS has successfully formed volume production and project cooperation with most of Chinas automakers.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- The MG MULAN, a fire new all-electric vehicle model under SAIC Motor-owned MG brand, made its worlds debut on June 13.

Through an online launching ceremony, the automaker revealed that the MG MULAN would be priced below 200,000 yuan ($29,680).

The new model is named after Hua Mulan, the well-known folk heroine in China, embodying the spirits of strength, courage, and being yourself. Previously referred to as the MG CyberE and MG4, the new vehicle is developed with global markets in mind. It rides on the new 'Nebula' platform designed solely for all-electric cars.

MG MULAN; photo credit: MULAN

The automaker said the MULAN is designed to appeal to consumers in both Chinese and overseas markets. At the front, the model features a shark-like nose section, three-eyed headlights, and a muscular bumper coupled with vertically placed air intakes. The lip spoiler delivers a dynamic overtone.



MG MULAN; photo credit: MULAN

The MULAN has a sporty crossover styling on the sides with a floating roof, a rising beltline, sharp creases on the door panels and shoulders, petal-shaped alloy wheels, as well as orange brake calipers.

The charging port is located on the rear quarter panel above the left wheel arch.



MG MULAN; photo credit: MULAN

At the rear, the Y-shaped tailights almost stretch across the car's full width, but their fusion was intercepted by a MG logo in the middle.

The MULAN measures 4,287mm long, 1,836mm wide, 1,516mm tall, with a wheelbase that spans 2,705mm.

The new model is equipped with an electric motor supplied by UAES that is good for up to 150kW. The ternary battery pack is offered by Ningde E-CON Power System Co., Ltd., which is indirectly backed by SAIC Motor.

The MG MULAN can sprint from standstill to 100km/h within 3.8 seconds.

Besides, the vehicle adopts a rear-wheel-drive layout coupled with a five-link rear suspension system.

Notably, the MG MULAN features the zero thermal runway system to prevent it from catching fire or an incident of thermal runaway. It will also offer what MG calls LBS recumbent cells, which promise a higher energy density and enable a slimmer battery pack to maximize the cockpit space.
By Orkhan Amashov

One is not bound to be tormented with an obsessive-compulsive propensity for diplomatic punctuality or pedantic unambiguity so as to discern recurrent errors of judgement that manifest themselves in the language employed by Russian officials or in semi-official sources linked with the Kremlin.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's later-rectified 'Farrukh blunder may appear to be a relatively insignificant moment in the grand scheme. However, since the import of such a mistake has implications extending to the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, it may also be symptomatic of something bigger, more pernicious and vile.

During a press conference in Yerevan on 9 June, Lavrov, whilst dealing with a question related to the recent escalation around the Farrukh village, stated that there is an understanding that "as part of the ongoing substantive work on delimitation, these issues will be definitely considered and resolved".

This was a clear and indubitable mistake, a statement casting an aspersion on Azerbaijan's sovereignty, and demonstrated a degree of carelessness which no official of any country desirous of maintaining good relations with Baku should have allowed to happen, let alone a veteran foreign minister of a country with which Azerbaijan has recently upgraded its relations to the level of alliance and which is a meditator within a trilateral format designed to address a wide range of post-war agenda issues.

These are the elements that must have been borne in the minds of those responsible for Azerbaijani foreign policy. But diplomacy is not about impetuous outbursts. Instead of working itself up to a pitch of impatience and nervous agitation, Baku issued a statement and, employing a cold and measured tone, declared that the delimitation commissions were set up to delimit the interstate border between the two countries and that this process did not envisage any issue outside this scope, including those related to the Azerbaijani territories where the Russian peacekeeping contingent was temporarily deployed in line with the 10 November trilateral declaration.

The Kremlin resorted to a safe exit mode by silently rectifying the verbal mistake made by Lavrov and amending his words in the transcript of the press conference published via the official website of the Foreign Ministry. The new version reads that "we expect that the launch of the process of delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border will increase confidence between Baku and Yerevan and prevent incidents like Farrukh in the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping contingent".

This does not amount to an outright retraction. The purpose of an official minute is to express a stated view in the best light or in its most correct form. The Russian official position is that this is exactly what Lavrov meant to say, or what he said for any practical purpose.

Beyond diplomatic rigmarole or artful techniques of putting oneself in the right, there is a far more important aspect that must be taken into account. Lavrov's presently rectified blunder appears to be part of a disturbing pattern that has a past. It seems to be an exercise of "regulated carelessness" which, on occasion, may border on callousness.

The use of certain terms that Baku finds archaic and unacceptable, and the inducement of deliberate ambiguity in relation to certain key issues are the ways by which Moscow has repeatedly caused consternation for Baku. Given the time-honoured traditions of Russian diplomacy, it requires some stretching of one's credulous imagination to convince oneself that unfortunate incidents were the result of innocent mistakes and not of deliberate intent.

A smart aleck of Kremlinite tendencies may butt in with unflinching urgency here and opine that Baku-Moscow relations have been built on firm foundations and no good will come out of ascribing disproportionate significance to slips and blunders, albejt retrospectively rectified, by Russian officials.

This is only half-true. The relations between the two nations are indeed sufficiently strong to remain unaltered by occasional gusts of winds of nefarious disposition, yet any nuance remotely related to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan is deadly important, to be addressed forthwith and with unmistakable clarity to boot.
The U.S. District Court, District of Arizona in Flagstaff held a hearing Monday morning for Matthew Riser, the suspect arrested in connection with the Pipeline Fire.

Riser, 57, was charged with three citations for his actions on the Coconino National Forest on Sunday, June 11: building a fire during restrictions, residing on the national forest and possession of a controlled substance (marijuana). Each of these charges could result in a fine or jail time.

In his argument for Riser's pretrial detention, the U.S. attorney stated that Riser had been burning toilet paper at his campsite, approximately 80 yards from where the Pipeline Fire began.

Documents from the case say that Riser had ignited toilet paper and placed it under a rock by Forest Road 9002 at noon on June 11. The same statement of probable cause says the Pipeline Fire was reported at 10:34 a.m. the next day in the area around FR 9002 and Trail 433.

A male subject in a white Chevrolet pickup truck with a camper shell bearing [a] Louisiana license platewas seen driving rapidly away from the wildfire on NFSR 9002, according to the statement.

The driver was stopped at FR 516 on State Route 180 and identified as Riser.

In the statement, Riser is listed as saying that he didnt think the paper would smolder all night and that he tried to put out the fire with his sleeping bag. He said he had camped by FR 9002 for two days and had seen the "no campfire" signs when he had driven out, according to the statement.

The defense attorney claimed that there was "zero evidence" Riser was living in the forest or that he was responsible for the fire, as it is a heavily trafficked area. He noted that Riser is a retired welder and honorably discharged from the military and that he was traveling in a camper after staying with a friend in Benson.

A detention and status hearing have been set for Thursday morning.

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6 p.m. update: Buffalo Park and the Schultz Creek Natural Area are closed until further notice due to the Pipeline Fire, according to a press release. The Observatory Mesa Natural Area is also closed until further notice due to being surrounded by the Coconino National Forest Temporary Area Closure.

Flagstaff Urban Trail System (FUTS) entrances into the National Forest Temporary Area Closure are also closed. To view a map of the City of Flagstaff closures of FUTS entrances and open spaces, please visit https://flagstaff.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/sidebar/index.html?appid=f478005aa53048438453f3c7dc08155c

Picture Canyon Natural and Cultural Preserve remains open to the public.

Please visit the United States Forest Service website for more information on the boundaries of the Coconino National Forest Temporary Area Closure: https://www.fs.usda.gov/alerts/coconino/alerts-notices/?aid=73615

Refer to Coconino Countys Pipeline Fire website for up-to-date information: https://www.coconino.az.gov/2926/Pipeline-Fire

For questions related to the City of Flagstaff closures, please contact Parks and Recreation Manager Amy Hagin at AHagin@flagstaffaz.gov or (928) 213-2164.

5:35 p.m. update: There is one confirmed structure loss due to the fire.

The fire is the number one national priority for resources among wildfires, according to the conference. Resources en route include hotshot crews, a Type 1 Incident Management Team, aircraft and "all kinds of equipment and supports."

Acreage counts are "almost worthless" at this point, they said as the fire continues to move. The last report put the Pipeline Fire at over 5,000 acres and growing. It has crossed the Tunnel Fire burn scar at this point.

The Forest Service has said the criteria for closures is getting close, but has not yet been met. Wind is the primary driver for these fires, rather than fuel. It will be meeting with its partners about additional closures and restrictions and expects to make a decision in the next few days.

5:15 p.m. update: About 600 firefighters are now responding to the fires.

Officials at the press conference have said today's focus was on evacuations due to the risk from high winds. A total of 2,195 households have been put on GO status because of the Pipeline Fire and 1,584 have been put in SET. For the Haywire Fire, 281 households have been put in GO and 57 in SET.

CCSO has said it will reopen the evacuation areas "as soon as it is safe to do so." They are coordinating with other experts to determine this and have said they will provide updates.

5 p.m. update: The media livestream is available with more information: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=526308062521690

3:55 p.m. update: APS is coordinating with emergency management in response to the Pipeline Fire. It has de-energized power lines north of Flagstaff in coordination with fire personnel and based on fire activity.

This will have impacts on customers in Tuba City as well as small areas near the fire. As of 3:50 p.m. Monday, APSs site estimated 111 customers were impacted in Flagstaff and 449 in Tuba City.

Outage lengths will vary based on location and the fires progress among other factors. It is possible that some customers might be without electricity for an extended period or that power may go in and out. Updates on outages can be found at aps.com/outagemap.

3 p.m. update: Effective immediately, the City of Flagstaff Cinder Lake Landfill is closed due to the Pipeline Fire, according to a press release. The Hazardous Products Center at the landfill is also closed. Please avoid the area.

Refer to Coconino Countys Pipeline Fire website for up-to-date information: https://www.coconino.az.gov/2926/Pipeline-Fire. Updates on landfill operations will be provided as available.

For related questions, please contact City of Flagstaff Public Affairs Director Sarah Langley at sarah.langley@flagstaffaz.gov or (928) 853-5596.

1:50 p.m. update: Representatives for Coconino National Forest have confirmed that the Haywire and Double Fires have combined. The combined fire will be known as the Haywire Fire.

With current wind speeds and growth, the Pipeline Fire is suspected to eventually "gobble up" the Haywire Fire, though this remains to be seen.

The Pipeline Fire has come over the top of the Tunnel Fire scar, which has "plenty of fresh fuel," including downed pine needles collected in the past few months. The scar is unlikely to hinder the Pipeline Fire's growth, they said, due to the scar's spotty, wind-driven pattern.

The Forest Service conducted a burnout near the Tunnel Fire's western edge last night to head off the Pipeline Fire and protect the Timberline neighborhood.

"That's helped a little," public information officer Brady Smith said, but wind gusts as high as 51 miles per hour continue to move the blaze at a rapid pace.

According to CNF's Twitter, the fire's exact size is still unknown, due to an inability to conduct an overnight infrared flight.

1:15 p.m. update: From the Coconino County Sheriff's Office: All areas on Highway 89 north from Cullim Lane/Silver Saddle Road and east to Slayton Ranch Road are in GO status for evacuation.

Salsa Brava (2220 E. Rte 66) will be handing out taco boxes and other food to evacuated families at 4 p.m. today. There will be enough food to feed between 300 and 400 families.

1:10 p.m. update: From the editor: I've been in Flagstaff since 2003 and haven't seen anything like this, including the Schultz Fire. If you have photos from your area, please send them to news@azdailysun.com as we try to document these fires. Most importantly, stay safe out there. -- Chris Etling

12:35 p.m. update: InciWeb has posted an update on all three fires. The Pipeline Fire is now estimated at 5,000 acres, with the Haywire Fire at 1,600 acres and the Double Fire at 500 acres. Containment on all three is still at 0%, and the Haywire and Double fires are expected to combine.

The Coconino National Forest has issued a temporary closure of U.S. Forest Service lands, roads and trails in the area affected by the fire. The closure covers most of the forest north of Interstate 40. The order will be effective until Aug. 20 or until it is rescinded and violations will be punishable as a Class B misdemeanor.

A map of the closure's boundaries is available at fs.usda.gov/alerts/coconino/alerts-notices/?aid=73615.

12:10 p.m. update: Documents from the case say that Riser had ignited toilet paper and placed it under a rock by Forest Road 9002 at noon on June 11. The same statement of probable cause says the Pipeline Fire was reported at 10:34 a.m. the next day in the area around FR 9002 and Trail 433.

A male subject in a white Chevrolet pickup truck with a camper shell bearing [a] Louisiana license plate  was seen driving rapidly away from the wildfire on NFSR 9002, according to the statement.

The driver was stopped at FR 516 on State Route 180 and identified as Riser. In the statement, Riser is listed as saying that he didnt think the paper would smolder all night and that he tried to put out the fire with his sleeping bag. He said he had camped by FR 9002 for two days and had seen the "no campfire" signs when he had driven out, according to the statement.

11:35 a.m. update: The U.S. District Court, District of Arizona in Flagstaff held a hearing Monday morning for Matthew Riser, the suspect arrested in connection with the Pipeline Fire.

Riser, 57, was charged with three citations for his actions on the Coconino National Forest on Sunday, June 11: building a fire during restrictions, residing on the national forest and possession of a controlled substance (marijuana). Each of these charges could result in a fine or jail time.

In his argument for Riser's detention, the U.S. attorney stated that Riser had been burning toilet paper at his campsite, approximately 80 yards from where the Pipeline Fire began.

The defense attorney claimed that there was "zero evidence" Riser was living in the forest or that he was responsible for the fire, as it is a heavily trafficked area. He noted that Riser is a retired welder and honorably discharged from the military, and that he was traveling in a camper after staying with a friend in Benson.

A detention and status hearing have been set for Thursday morning.

11:30 a.m. update: We have a website with additional resources and information as well: https://azdailysun.com/resources/?wildfires.

11:25 a.m. update: The Coconino National Forest reports that the Double Fire started along with the Pipeline and Haywire fires. The Double Fire is approximately 500 acres and is located 2 miles south/southwest of the origin of the Haywire Fire, according to a press release. The cause is still under investigation, but is suspected to be originating from a lightning strike from a previous storm.

11:15 a.m. update: Multiple meteorologists have reported that smoke from the fires in Flagstaff can be seen across the majority of Colorado.

10:50 a.m. update: A suspect named Matthew Riser, 57, is currently appearing in court before Judge Camille Bibles for his alleged involvement in the Pipeline Fire starting. Reporter Abigail Kessler will have more on the hearing once it has concluded.

10:30 a.m. update: Northern Arizona University President Jose Luis Cruz Rivera issued a statement on the university's response to the two fires, suggesting that people in a position to do so donate to the United Way of Northern Arizona Crisis Fund through the UNWA website or by texting UWNARESPONSE to 41444.

"We are working closely with Coconino County and several nonprofit organizations assisting with the fire response. We will be in touch as volunteer opportunities are available and encourage you to use your NAU Staff Community Engagement time to support our community in this time of need," Cruz Rivera said. "We stand ready to help those in need and to assist Coconino County and the first responders on the front lines of the fire as they work to contain the situation."

For more, visit bit.ly/3tAmKvf.

10:20 a.m. update: As a reminder, the county has a hub of information including updates and resources at https://www.coconino.az.gov/2926/Pipeline-FireHaywire-Fire.

9:50 a.m. update: CCSO has added O'Leary to "Go" status for evacuation, while also moving Antelope Hills to "Set" status.

9:30 a.m. update: The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality updated its smoke forecast with new information:

"The Pipeline Fire remained active overnight with continued southwest winds. Smoke this morning is moving toward the northeast over the Timberline area and onto the Navajo and Hopi reservations. With strong winds and low relative humidity (Red Flag conditions) expected today, active fire behavior is once again likely, along with high levels of smoke production. With the strong winds, some smoke will stay near the ground with moderate to periods of high smoke impacts likely, especially on the north side of Doney Park. Further from the fire, light to moderate smoke impacts will be possible on the Navajo and Hopi reservations.

"Overnight, winds are forecast to be lighter than what we saw last night, so some smoke may drain into Fort Valley and the Flagstaff area later tonight into early Tuesday morning, with light to moderate impacts possible. Moderate to, at times, heavy smoke may also drain into the Doney Park area overnight. Any smoke that does settle into these areas is expected to lift by 9 a.m. Tuesday.

"Tomorrow, southwest winds of 15-25 mph are likely, which will once again move smoke toward the east-northeast. Given the slightly lighter winds, smoke is forecast to get more lift, so daytime impacts are not expected to be as high for the Doney Park area."

AZDEQ suggests that anyone in an area with heavy impacts take the following actions (if possible): close windows and use fans or alternative cooling devices, turn off swamp coolers, use filtered HVAC systems and avoid outdoor activities.

For more information, visit https://www.azdeq.gov/WildfireSmokeForecast?fire=pipelinefire.

9:15 a.m. update: From Felicia Fonseca of the Associated Press:

Euelda King and her family evacuated their home for the second time this year because of wildfires. She hadnt settled back in from the Tunnel Fire before leaving again Sunday, this time able to grab photographs and clothing she didnt get earlier.

Here we go again, she said.

The family of 11 is planning to stay at the Twin Arrows casino, which is offering assistance to tribal members who evacuated.

The family was waiting in a parking lot ahead of road closure signs, watching smoke billow through the air and aircraft flying overhead.

The winds are high, and I think theyre going to have a little bit of a battle with it, King said.

9 a.m. update: Evacuations have also been issued for the areas near the Sacred Mountain Trading Post along Highway 89.

Also, FEMA has authorized the use of federal funds to assist the state of Arizona in combating the Pipeline Fire, according to the press release.

Fire Management Assistance grants provide federal funding for up to 75% of eligible firefighting costs. The Disaster Relief Fund provides allowances for FMAGs through FEMA to assist in fighting fires that threaten to become a greater incident.

Original post: The Pipeline Fire is now at 4,500 acres, with 270 personnel working on it. The fire was first reported at 10:15 a.m. Sunday, growing throughout the day.

It has been joined by the 1,600-acre Haywire Fire to the northeast of both Flagstaff and the Pipeline Fire. The Haywire Fire was reported at 5:30 a.m. Monday morning. InciWeb lists 40 personnel on this fire, with 10 engines on the scene and additional dozers ordered. The cause is currently unknown.

Another neighborhood -- Crater Estates -- has been put on Go status due to the Haywire Fire.

Areas off of Schultz Pass Road and the Arizona Snowbowl, as well as Timberline, Wupatki Trails, Girls Ranch and Fernwood are still at Go status due to the Pipeline Fire. Mount Elden Estates and Doney Park remain at Set status.

More about the Ready, Set, Go System is available below.

A CCSO press release said that escorts to properties in the evacuated areas are available for special circumstances. These leave from the East Valley Baptist Church (10655 N. U.S. 89) and will resume at 9 a.m. Monday Jun 13.

The call center for the Pipeline Fire is available at 928-679-8525.

The National Weather Service lists dangerous fire weather for Monday, with a Red Flag warning in effect from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. due to wind gusts of 40 to 50 miles per hour in the area. Winds are forecast to slow later in the week, with maximum wind gusts of 20 to 30 mph forecast through Sunday.

As of Monday morning, NWS forecast a 0% chance of precipitation through Wednesday and only a 5% chance on Thursday. Rain is more likely over the weekend, however, with a 40% chance of precipitation on Friday and a 50% chance on Saturday.

Those under evacuation orders can take household animals to Coconino Humane Association at 3501 E. Butler Ave. To do so, check in with staff on arrival.

Livestock, including horses, goats, sheep, pigs and chickens can be taken to Fort Tuthill County Stables. On arrival, leave animals in the vehicle and complete the animal intake process with staff.

The stables are self-service, meaning that owners are responsible for all of their livestock services, including feeding and watering. If possible, bring water troughs, feed and cages for smaller livestock.

Evacuees can also bring their animals to the Williams, Arizona Rodeo Grounds. Those relocating their animals should call the Williams Police Department at 928-635-4461.

The Red Cross has opened a shelter for people evacuated by the fire at Sinagua Middle School (3950 E. Butler Ave.).

Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort is offering emergency shelter for families displaced by the fire (address must be in the evacuation zone). To find out more, call 928-856-7200 and select option 2.

Coconino County Health and Human Services has announced a call center for the Pipeline Fire is now open at 928-679-8525.

Ready, Set, Go

Everyone has a part to play in responding to an emergency. Learn about what you can do to be prepared.

The greatest threats within Coconino County are wildfire and post-wildfire flooding. All residents need to be prepared in advance for both. Regardless of the type of emergency, there are some basic preparedness terms and steps that can be taken and summarized in the familiar adage: Ready, Set, Go. Here's everything you need to know about this important phrase:

READY  This means prepare now

Be aware of hazards that can threaten your community. Coconino County residents should always be in a state of Ready, especially during the summer months when conditions can turn quickly. Take the following steps now to prepare for seasonal threats:

Register with the County Emergency Notification system at coconino.az.gov/ready.

Connect with the local Emergency Management office, Sheriffs Office, and public health department on social media. Follow @coconinocounty on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Make a family evacuation and communication plan that includes family phone numbers, out-of-town contacts, and family meeting locations.

Build an emergency Go-Kit with enough food, water and necessary supplies for at least 72 hours. Include supplies to help keep you and your family healthy. Start with the five Ps: Papers, Pets, Prescriptions, Pictures, and Personal computers.

Check in with your neighbors, family, friends and elders through video chats or phone calls to ensure they are READY.

Keep up to date on local news, weather watches, weather warnings, and public health recommendations.

SET  Be alert

Know there is significant danger in your area as soon as this warning is issued. Evacuation could happen at any time after the Set status is declared and, in some cases, with little warning.

Residents should consider voluntarily relocating to a shelter or with family or friends outside of the affected area.

Grab your emergency Go-Kit.

Keep in mind unique needs for your family or special equipment for pets and livestock.

Stay aware of the latest news and information from public safety and public health officials.

This might be the only notice you receive. Emergency services cannot guarantee they will be able to notify everyone if conditions rapidly deteriorate.

Be SET to GO.

GO  Evacuate immediately

Danger in your area is imminent and life threatening. It is imperative to leave the impacted area immediately.

Residents should evacuate immediately to a shelter or with family or friends outside of the affected area.

If you choose to ignore this advisement, then you must understand that emergency services may not be able to assist you further.

Follow instructions from emergency personnel, stay on designated evacuation routes and avoid closed areas. For more information, please visit coconino.az.gov/ready-set-go guide.

Fire restrictions

As a reminder, most of northern Arizona is under Stage 2 fire restrictions. In the City of Flagstaff, Stage 2 restrictions include the following:

 The use of open fire pits and other open-flame devices (including those with a spark arrestor screen) without an on/off switch is prohibited.

 The use of charcoal and wood-fired barbecues are prohibited throughout the city, including at private residences and campgrounds. The use of propane and gas barbecues with an on-off switch are still allowed throughout the city.

 Smoking and use of electronic cigarettes are prohibited in all public places within the City of Flagstaff, including city parks, open spaces and the Flagstaff Urban Trail System (FUTS) at all times.

On the Coconino and Kaibab national forests, Stage 2 restrictions prohibit:

 Building, maintaining, or using a fire, campfire, or stove fire, including charcoal, coal and briquettes. This includes smudge pots and wood stoves. Stoves or grills solely fueled by pressurized liquid petroleum or pressurized liquid petroleum gas fuels are permitted.

 Smoking, except within an enclosed vehicle or building, a developed recreation site, or while stopped in an area at least 3 feet in diameter that is barren or cleared of any flammable material.

 Blasting, welding or operating any acetylene or other torch with an open flame.

 During the hours of 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., operating a generator, chainsaw or other equipment powered by an internal combustion engine for felling, bucking, skidding, processing, road building and woodcutting. An exception is allowed for operating generators with an approved spark arrestor in an area barren or cleared of all overhead and surrounding flammable materials within 3 feet of the generator.

 Fireworks are never allowed.

Forest visitors are also cautioned against operating or parking vehicles over dry grasses and flammable terrain, as catalytic converters and vehicle heat could ignite vegetation fuels. Restrictions are typically lifted when the area receives substantial widespread precipitation, or by Aug. 31.

Fire restriction violations are punishable by $5,000 fine, six months in prison, or both.

For more information about Flagstaff restrictions, visit www.flagstaff.az.gov/2981/Fire-Restriction-Stages.

Restriction details and forest orders for the Coconino and Kaibab national forests can be found at www.fs.usda.gov/main/coconino and www.fs.usda.gov/main/kaibab.

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8:10 p.m. update: The Pipeline Fire, which began 6 miles north of Flagstaff around 10 a.m., is currently estimated at 4,000-5,000 acres and was pushed more than 15 miles by strong winds throughout the day, according to a press release Sunday evening.

A 57-year-old male was arrested by Forest Service law enforcement officers earlier today in connection with the wildfire and charged with natural resource violations. The subject was booked into the Coconino County Sheriffs Detention Facility.

The investigation into the cause of the Pipeline Fire is ongoing and, in order to protect the integrity of the investigation, we cannot discuss any details of the investigation, said Law Enforcement Patrol Captain Andy Pederson.

At this time, no structures or homes have been destroyed.

Jimmy Harris California Team 15, a Type 2 Incident Management Team (IMT), is scheduled to arrive Monday to assume management of the wildfire.

Resources battling the fire Sunday from the air included up to eight air tankers and five helicopters. Currently, 13 engines, nine crews, six prevention patrol units, three dozers and one water tender are assigned, which comprises approximately 270 personnel.

More air tankers and helicopters are on order for Mondays suppression efforts, and more firefighting resources and personnel will be added to the fight with the arrival of a Type 2 IMT.

8 p.m. update: According to the Arizona Department of Transportation, the closure of Highway 89 is expected to be an extended one. The southbound side is now closed at milepost 445; the northbound side remains closed at milepost 427. Highway 89 was also closed for several days during the Tunnel Fire.

7 p.m. update: Coconino National Forest has confirmed it arrested a suspect in connection with the Pipeline Fire, for a natural resource violation. The fire's cause is still under investigation.

6:10 p.m. update: The Arizona Snowbowl will be closed Monday, June 13 in response to the fire. According to the announcement, this is a precautionary closure and the fire is not a direct threat to the Snowbowl.

Evacuees can also bring their animals to the Williams, Arizona Rodeo Grounds. Those relocating their animals should call the Williams Police Department at 928-635-4461.

4:35 p.m. update: Access to Buffalo Park has also been closed due to the Pipeline Fire, according to Flagstaff Mayor Paul Deasy.

4:10 p.m. update: Those under evacuation orders can take household animals to Coconino Humane Association at 3501 E. Butler Ave. To do so, check in with staff on arrival.

Livestock, including horses, goats, sheep, pigs and chickens can be taken to Fort Tuthill County Stables. On arrival, leave animals in the vehicle and complete the animal intake process with staff.

The stables are self-service, meaning that owners are responsible for all of their livestock services, including feeding and watering. If possible, bring water troughs, feed and cages for smaller livestock.

3:55 p.m. update: The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality has activated a smoke forecast for the fire.

The smoke plume trajectory is to the east and northeast, with smoke forecast to the north and northeast of Flagstaff through Monday.

Moderate to heavy smoke impacts are likely in the Doney Park, Sunset Crater and Timberline areas tonight. If possible, ADEQ suggests closing windows and using alternative cooling devices, turning off swamp coolers, using filtered HVAC systems and avoiding outdoor activities when in areas with heavy smoke impacts.

Strong southeast winds are forecast for Monday, "likely resulting in active fire behavior and significant smoke production once again."

The full forecast is available at azdeq.gov/WildfireSmokeForecast?fire=pipelinefire. More about the health effects of smoke can be found here.

3:40 p.m. update: Coconino County Health and Human Services has announced a call center for the Pipeline Fire is now open at 928-679-8525.

3:30 p.m. update: The Red Cross will be opening a shelter for people evacuated by the fire tonight at Sinagua Middle School (3950 E. Butler Ave). It will open by 4 p.m. today.

High Country Humane's shelter has been evacuated. It is still in need of foster homes for adult dogs and is asking those interested to come to Fort Tuthill County Park.

3:05 p.m. update: Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort is offering emergency shelter for families displaced by the fire (address must be in the evacuation zone). To find out more, call 928-856-7200 and select option 2.

2:55 p.m. update: U.S. 89 is closed due to the fire (southbound from mile post 430 and northbound from mile post 427). ADOT does not currently have an estimated time for reopening.

2:25 p.m. update: As of 2:04 p.m, InciWeb now lists the fires size at 1,000 acres, with 80 total personnel working to contain it. The cause is listed as "unknown and under investigation." Several reports have said that a suspect connected to a white vehicle near the scene was apprehended, but that is not confirmed yet.

2:10 p.m. update: Timberline south of Brandis is now at "Go" status. An emergency alert from CCSO lists areas north of Elden Springs Road are at "Go," which also includes Wupatki Trails, Girls Ranch and Fernwood. Doney Park is still at "Set."

1:45 p.m. update: Timberline (south of Brandis) and Doney Park have also been put into "Set" status.

1:25 p.m. update: Mount Elden Lookout Road and Mount Elden Estates have been moved to "Set" status. More about the Ready, Set, Go system is available below.

1:20 p.m. update: The National Weather Service forecast calls for warm and windy conditions the rest of Sunday and into Monday, as Red Flag Warnings are in effect both days. High temperatures are expected to rise into the upper 80s through the end of the week with winds returning to normal, while there is a 30% chance of rain Friday and a 40% chance Saturday.

1:10 p.m. update: An incident management team has been ordered for the fire and is scheduled to begin arriving in the next few days. The fire's size and cause is currently unknown, according to the announcement.

High Country Humane is preparing for animal evacuations and is seeking volunteers to foster the 72 dogs currently housed in its shelter. Those interested should visit the shelter at 11665 N. US Hwy 89.

Information about the status and activity of the Pipeline Fire and suppression efforts can be found on Inciweb at https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/8152/.

12:30 p.m. update: Evacuations have been ordered for Arizona Snowbowl, parts of Schultz Pass Road and multiple forest roads in the area.

For up-to-date county information, visit https://coconinocounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=745e7806b0444387bf32792b9c25e169

Original post: Firefighting resources are responding to a wildfire located 6 miles north of Flagstaff and producing a noticeable plume of smoke.

The Pipeline Fire was reported at 10:15 a.m. by a fire lookout and is currently several acres, but active on all sides and growing. Resources on scene include one Hotshot crew, with another en route, one dozer, one water tender, three patrol units and six engines. Four air tankers and one Type 3 helicopter have been ordered.

Smoke will be visible from Flagstaff, and the wind is sweeping the smoke through Schultz Pass toward Doney Park.

Recreationists in the area were urged to leave immediately, especially those in the area of Schultz Pass down to Fort Valley Trailhead.

As a reminder, most of northern Arizona is under Stage 2 fire restrictions. In the City of Flagstaff, Stage 2 restrictions include the following:

 The use of open fire pits and other open-flame devices (including those with a spark arrestor screen) without an on/off switch is prohibited.

 The use of charcoal and wood-fired barbecues are prohibited throughout the city, including at private residences and campgrounds. The use of propane and gas barbecues with an on-off switch are still allowed throughout the city.

 Smoking and use of electronic cigarettes are prohibited in all public places within the City of Flagstaff, including city parks, open spaces and the Flagstaff Urban Trail System (FUTS) at all times.

On the Coconino and Kaibab national forests, Stage 2 restrictions prohibit:

 Building, maintaining, or using a fire, campfire, or stove fire, including charcoal, coal and briquettes. This includes smudge pots and wood stoves. Stoves or grills solely fueled by pressurized liquid petroleum or pressurized liquid petroleum gas fuels are permitted.

 Smoking, except within an enclosed vehicle or building, a developed recreation site, or while stopped in an area at least 3 feet in diameter that is barren or cleared of any flammable material.

 Blasting, welding or operating any acetylene or other torch with an open flame.

 During the hours of 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., operating a generator, chainsaw or other equipment powered by an internal combustion engine for felling, bucking, skidding, processing, road building and woodcutting. An exception is allowed for operating generators with an approved spark arrestor in an area barren or cleared of all overhead and surrounding flammable materials within 3 feet of the generator.

 Fireworks are never allowed.

Forest visitors are also cautioned against operating or parking vehicles over dry grasses and flammable terrain, as catalytic converters and vehicle heat could ignite vegetation fuels. Restrictions are typically lifted when the area receives substantial widespread precipitation, or by Aug. 31.

Fire restriction violations are punishable by $5,000 fine, six months in prison, or both.

For more information about Flagstaff restrictions, visit www.flagstaff.az.gov/2981/Fire-Restriction-Stages.

Restriction details and forest orders for the Coconino and Kaibab national forests can be found at www.fs.usda.gov/main/coconino and www.fs.usda.gov/main/kaibab.

Ready, Set, Go

Everyone has a part to play in responding to an emergency. Learn about what you can do to be prepared.

The greatest threats within Coconino County are wildfire and post-wildfire flooding. All residents need to be prepared in advance for both. Regardless of the type of emergency, there are some basic preparedness terms and steps that can be taken and summarized in the familiar adage: Ready, Set, Go. Here's everything you need to know about this important phrase:

READY  This means prepare now

Be aware of hazards that can threaten your community. Coconino County residents should always be in a state of Ready, especially during the summer months when conditions can turn quickly. Take the following steps now to prepare for seasonal threats:

Register with the County Emergency Notification system at coconino.az.gov/ready.

Connect with the local Emergency Management office, Sheriffs Office, and public health department on social media. Follow @coconinocounty on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Make a family evacuation and communication plan that includes family phone numbers, out-of-town contacts, and family meeting locations.

Build an emergency Go-Kit with enough food, water and necessary supplies for at least 72 hours. Include supplies to help keep you and your family healthy. Start with the five Ps: Papers, Pets, Prescriptions, Pictures, and Personal computers.

Check in with your neighbors, family, friends and elders through video chats or phone calls to ensure they are READY.

Keep up to date on local news, weather watches, weather warnings, and public health recommendations.

SET  Be alert

Know there is significant danger in your area as soon as this warning is issued. Evacuation could happen at any time after the Set status is declared and, in some cases, with little warning.

Residents should consider voluntarily relocating to a shelter or with family or friends outside of the affected area.

Grab your emergency Go-Kit.

Keep in mind unique needs for your family or special equipment for pets and livestock.

Stay aware of the latest news and information from public safety and public health officials.

This might be the only notice you receive. Emergency services cannot guarantee they will be able to notify everyone if conditions rapidly deteriorate. Be SET to GO.

GO  Evacuate immediately

Danger in your area is imminent and life threatening. It is imperative to leave the impacted area immediately.

Residents should evacuate immediately to a shelter or with family or friends outside of the affected area.

If you choose to ignore this advisement, then you must understand that emergency services may not be able to assist you further.

Follow instructions from emergency personnel, stay on designated evacuation routes and avoid closed areas. For more information, please visit coconino.az.gov/ready-set-go guide.

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How can a German who has been to Xinjiang only once, 15 years ago as a tourist, come up with a report about forced labor in China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region?

Adrian Zenz, who claims to be an anthropologist and an expert on China's Xinjiang issues, actually works for the United States and with its Central Intelligence Agency. He is a key part of Washington's campaigns aimed at pressuring companies to cut any links they may have with Xinjiang.

Since there is no actual evidence of forced labor in Xinjiang, Washington uses Zenz to insinuate there is in order to lay the groundwork for its allegation. That explains the timing of his "report" since the "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" is due to come into effect on June 21.

The US act is another attempt by Washington to hijack the global supply chains in its bid to "decouple" China from the rest of the world.

For Zenz, concocting lies and fabrications about Xinjiang is a money-making means, on the back of which he has made a name for himself as an "expert on China". For the US, Zenz is the go-to man for the dirty work of collecting and concocting lies about so-called human rights violations in China's Xinjiang.

Zenz feels no compunction about what he has been doing, as he is a fellow traveler of Washington's anti-China ideologues.

All that Washington cares about is how well the accusations that he fabricates will get the Chinese government trapped in a quagmire of disapprobation. The well-being of people of all ethnicities in Xinjiang is simply not on Washington's radar.

If Washington really cares about human rights conditions in Xinjiang, it would not have chosen to take as truth the lies and fabrications fed to Zenz by Uygur secessionists, whose ultimate goal is to split Xinjiang from China.

It is Adrian Zenz, the so-called expert on China's Xinjiang, who has committed human rights violations against people in Xinjiang and China at large by telling lies without compunction.

It is Washington, whose "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" will ban almost all imports of products from Xinjiang into the US, that will damage the Xinjiang economy, thus committing a human rights abuse.

On the question of containing China's rise, the end justifies the means for the US. It is only a matter of how far Washington will go in its hooliganism and shamelessness. Given that it sponsors the iniquitous activities of Zenz, then it is evidently prepared to stoop very low indeed.

The US has a history of fabricating claims to justify its actions against other nations, and the lack of actual evidence regarding its allegations of "forced labor" in Xinjiang shows it has still not weaned itself from this practice.
The stars were aligning for a surge in solar energy development in Montana and the Pacific Northwest before supply chain disruptions cast a shadow over the industry.

Interest in residential rooftop solar was picking up as more people started working from home during the pandemic. Utilities in Washington and Oregon were soliciting bids for large-scale solar projects as state deadlines to decarbonize neared.

Problem was, solar panels and hardware needed to harness the suns energy were becoming harder to access due to supply chain disruptions and the possible expansion of tariffs on imported solar equipment.

Panels in the last year have been hard to come by, but so have inverters. Theres all these supply chain issues, said Andrew Valainis, Montana Renewable Energy Association executive director.

It can take months to get materials, he said. In cases where the wait extends into next year, the size of the tax incentive available to homeowners is affected. The current tax credit for solar is 26%, but drops to 22% 2022. Adding to the increased demand is an interest in avoiding the sharply increasing costs of gasoline for vehicles and natural gas for electricity generation and home heating.

It was welcome news for Montana solar installers earlier in the week when President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would stop expanding tariffs on solar imports, which meant more affordable, foreign produced materials would remain in play, as installers struggle to meet demand. The alternative was for the U.S. government to expand tariffs in an attempt to foster a domestic solar industry, which at this point produces a product thats more expensive and less available.

The shortage in materials was also putting a pinch on developers of large-scale solar projects, who were positioned for growth in the Pacific Northwest when Oregon and Washington utilities put out bid requests for green energy projects. The lack of certainty that solar panels and other equipment would be available, discouraged developers from submitting bids.

Youre seeing a lot of the larger utilities in Washington and Oregon, like PacifiCorp and PGE, Puget Sound Energy, theyre all putting out massive [requests for proposal] now to acquire renewable energy so they can meet the clean energy standards that are in Washington and Oregon, said Robin Arnold of Renewable Northwest, an advocacy group working to accelerate the regional transition to clean energy.

Imported equipment has been important to the development of solar projects, but also a detriment to domestic production. China, for years, has flooded the market with solar panels and other equipment priced artificially low. The United States responded with tariffs against China that targeted U.S. import of finished solar products from China. China then imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. solar products, including solar-grade polysilicon.

The trade war whipsawed REC Silicon. One of Montanas largest manufacturers, REC lost market share, which led to the closure of its plant in Moses Lake, Washington, a facility that once made solar panels and supplied polysilicon to manufacturers in China. The company's Butte facility, which is focused on electronics, continues to operate.

The tariff expansion, which Biden paused, was intended to target solar products from China that were allegedly being rerouted through other countries to get around U.S. tariffs. The U.S. Commerce Department has been investigating the movement of solar products from China to make sure U.S. tariffs werent being circumvented.

That solar panel investigation has been a huge hit because about 80% of panels come through other countries that have kind of been put on hold while the investigation was going on, Arnold said. So, President Bidens latest waiver for two years to allow panels to continue to be imported from those countries will be a huge benefit to the solar industry.

The White House, on June 6, couched the pause on tariffs as a 24-month bridge as domestic manufacturing rapidly scales up. During the two-year period, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam will be allowed to export solar products to the United States duty free.

It was welcome news for Montana solar installers earlier in the week when President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would stop expanding tariffs on solar imports, which meant more affordable, foreign produced materials would remain in play, as installers struggle to meet demand.

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Torrential rains and flooding in the Red Lodge area has washed out numerous bridges and forced the closure of Highway 308 into the area, according to the Carbon County Sheriffs Office.

The water is extremely dangerous, and there are several closures in the city of Red Lodge, the sheriff said in a Monday morning Facebook post.

Many of the rivers in south-central to southeastern Montana are flowing above normal.

The Stillwater River on Monday was flowing at 19,200 cubic feet per second (cfs) and normally flows at this time of year at 3,270 cfs. The Yellowstone River at Billings hit 55,900 cfs and is usually around 24,000 cfs. The Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone near Edgar was at 11,700 cfs and normally is closer to 3,580 cfs.

The highest Yellowstone streamflow at Billings was 76,000 cfs in 1997, according to U.S. Geological Survey.

In Red Lodge, Rock Creek peaked at more than 2,000 cfs before the gauge broke. The previous record high flow on the creek was 1,320 cfs in 1935.

Rain, snowpack

The flooding is due to the buildup of snow from the cold spring. In areas around Red Lodge, there was low precipitation rates from January through March. In April and May, the snowfall came fast, said Eric Larson, a hydrologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Some sites around Red Lodge have 150% of their normal snowpack.

Beartooth Lake SNOTEL, a snow and weather monitoring site near Red Lodge, reported 50 inches of snowpack. That was equivalent to about 20 inches of rain, Larson explained, and the recent rainfall is causing that snow to melt faster than the land can handle.

The best case scenario to stop the flooding is cooler weather, he added. If the weather cools down, the rate of melt will slow, giving the river more time to recover.

Fishing access closed

Extreme flooding conditions are in effect in the upper Yellowstone and Gallatin river drainages, among others, according to a Facebook post from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.

FWP staff are working to evacuate and close all fishing access sites on the upper Yellowstone River. Portions of Missouri Headwaters State Park are also closed. More information will be posted as it becomes available, FWP said. Flooding conditions pose significant safety hazards, especially to recreationists.

Flooding began Sunday

On Sunday, a broken irrigation ditch flooded Old Highway 10 between Park City and Columbus. The road flooded Sunday morning and remained closed as of that evening, according to the Montana Department of Transportation road conditions website.

There was no estimate of when the road would be passable.

Also, the Beartooth Pass was closed until further notice, the Carbon County Sheriff said. Highway 78 is closed between mile markers 19 and 21 due to damage to the bridge at Roscoe.

Last July, it was a wildfire that forced some evacuations around Red Lodge. The Robertson Draw fire burned more than 30,000 acres, scorching Mount Maurice, the sentinel peak rising behind downtown Red Lodge.

On Monday, there was also major flooding in the Paradise Valley. The Yellowstone River at the Corwin Springs gauge was at 49,400 cfs, about 3.5 feet higher than the highest flood stage set in 1918.

At 6:30 a.m., the Weather Service warned anyone along the river in the Paradise Valley to move to high ground, especially those who may be camped along the river.

In Stillwater County, extensive flooding was reported around the Absarokee, Nye and Fishtail areas along the Stillwater River Monday morning, according to a Facebook post from the county Disaster and Emergency Services.

We have deployed fire-rescue, law enforcement and the roads and bridges department, DES officials said. There have been many voluntary evacuations from the area, as well as rescues from homes.

A bridge has washed out in the vicinity of Chicken Creek on West Rosebud Road, officials said.

Multiple roads are flooded and impassable. Assessments of roads, bridges and homes have begun and will continue. The county will be blocking roads as needed. Please avoid the area and dont drive through water, officials said in a statement. Sandbags are available for pickup at the Stillwater County shop, 865 Highway 10 West.

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Tommy Beaudreau, President Joe Bidens deputy secretary of the Interior, touted the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and how it will benefit Montana during a press event in Helena Friday.

The act, signed by Biden on Nov. 15, 2021, provides over $1 trillion for infrastructure investments across America. It includes funds for internet access, rebuilding roads and bridges, improving public transportation and delivering clean drinking water to Americans who dont have it, among other infrastructure developments. Montana is slated to receive billions from the act.

It is truly an opportunity to unleash resilience initiatives, the work of the (Montana Conservation) Corps, but also demonstrate to all of us true common ground when it comes to providing for fundamental needs of the American people around basic infrastructure, resilient landscapes and good-paying jobs and opportunities to rebuild America better than ever, Beaudreau said.

The Friday event highlighted the bills investment in Montanas wildfire preparation infrastructure. The act sets aside $23 million in funds to go toward wildfire protection in Montana over the next five years, according to a state fact sheet about the bill.

Beaudreau spoke at the site of the July 2019 North Hills Fire. That fire burned around 5,000 acres of land just outside Helena.

Beaudreau and Jono McKinney  the president and CEO of the Montana Conservation Corps  highlighted the Corps efforts to rebuild over four miles of a fence that burned down in the North Hills Fire. Montana Conservation Corps is an organization that gives young people opportunities to engage in service by conserving public lands in the state.

Part of the recovery effort was through partnerships with MCC to bring a crew of young people up to repair the fence line so that that infrastructure is replaced, Beaudreau said.

He added that the Corps partnership with the Bureau of Land Management to rebuild the fence was an example of the type of work the infrastructure act funds provide for.

McKinney, too, highlighted the impact of the Corps partnership with BLM in rebuilding the fence.

Our Corps members will leave MCC with a love of public lands, trained with valuable job skills, skilled in leadership and teamwork and ready to step forward as the departments diverse and inclusive 21st century workforce, McKinney said. And they will leave our public lands in better shape, like the project you visited today.

Helena Mayor Wilmot Collins, who also spoke at Fridays event, said Montanas recreational activity in the summer has slowed in recent years due to more intense wildfire seasons. States At Risk  an organization that works to show the impact of climate change on all 50 U.S. states  found that over the last 45 years, Montana has seen a larger percentage increase in the number of large fires than any other western state.

Collins said the bill provided a welcome investment in forest restoration, which would help to prevent Montana wildland fires in the future.

This bipartisan infrastructure law is historic and its a great start to leaving our communities better for our children and grandchildren, Collins said.

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A Michigan man charged with drug conspiracy in Bismarck in October has been sentenced to a year in prison.

Kevin Luke, 31, of Redford, Michigan, pleaded guilty to the felony on Wednesday. South Central District Judge Pamela Nesvig suspended all but one year and one day of a two-year prison term, according to court records. She further ordered that Luke spend two years on probation.

Luke was one of three people arrested after search warrants were executed at a Bismarck hotel room and a residence. Lacey Gipp, 31, of Bismarck, in May pleaded guilty to child neglect and drug possession with intent to distribute. She was sentenced to three years in prison. A drug conspiracy charge against Michael Swan, 54, of Detroit, was later dismissed.

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The latest North Dakota coronavirus news: COVID clinic, court hearings, food aid and more.

COVID clinic

CHI St. Alexius Health in Bismarck has opened a Post-COVID Care Clinic for people who may be experiencing post-acute COVID syndrome.

Symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog and depression. It's estimated that as many as 23 million people have it, according to CHI St. Alexius.

The clinic will offer a personalized care plan to patients, and connect them with therapies and supportive care.

The Post-COVID Care Clinic is open to anyone who may be experiencing long-term symptoms. People can call the clinic at 701-530-3065 for more information. Walk-ins are welcome every Thursday from 1-2 p.m. Patients also can be referred to the clinic by their primary care provider.

The clinic is in the Medical Arts Plaza at 810 E. Rosser Ave., Suite 310.

Court hearings

Judges in the South Central Judicial District have updated procedures for remote hearings.

Criminal case hearings will return to in-person. The court will no longer issue remote platform hearing notices for future hearings. Hearings currently set on the Zoom platform will still be heard remotely.

Defendants in custody at Burleigh Morton Detention Center or the North Dakota State Penitentiary will continue to be seen remotely, unless a written request to transport is made.

The South Central Judicial District comprises Burleigh, Emmons, Grant, McLean, Mercer, Morton, Oliver, Sioux and Sheridan counties. It has judges chambered in Bismarck, Mandan and Washburn.

Mobile food pantry

Trucks carrying fresh vegetables, bakery items and boxed goods will make stops in western and central North Dakota this week.

Food through the Great Plains Food Bank Mobile Food Pantry is available at no cost to those in need. Scheduled stops are (all times are local):

Wednesday

Ryder, Ryder Community Gym, 3 p.m.

Velva, Oak Valley Lutheran Church, 400 Main St. N., 1:15-1:30 p.m.

Granville, McHenry County Food Pantry, 118 S. Main St., 1:30-3 p.m.

White Shield, public safety building, 4:30-6:30 p.m.

Thursday

Stanton, Civic Center, 751 Lyon St., 1:45 p.m.

Halliday, Halliday Public School, 30 Fourth St. S., 3-3:45 p.m.

White Shield, public safety building, 4:30-6:30 p.m.

Beulah, New Life Worship Center, 416 Seventh St. NW, 5-6 p.m.

For more information, go to https://bit.ly/3lkvv80.

Testing and vaccines

A comprehensive list of free public COVID-19 testing offered in North Dakota can be found at health.nd.gov/covidtesting. That site also lists where free at-home test kits are being offered.

People can go to https://www.ndvax.org or call 866-207-2880 to see where COVID-19 vaccine is available near them.

County-level COVID-19 risks determined by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can be found at https://bit.ly/3Clifrq.

Guidance and resources for businesses are at https://bit.ly/3w0DpKj.

General information is at https://www.health.nd.gov/diseases-conditions/coronavirus.
By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

The Azerbaijani army is conducting drills to boost snipers professional and combat skills, Azernews reports, citing the Defense Ministry.

The drills are being carried out under the annual training plan, the ministry said.

It added that snipers complete tasks such as picking a firing position at night and during the day, identifying targets at varying distances, and eliminating them with precision fire in solo and group order, as well as other duties, during the drills.

Earlier, the army conducted a competition for the Best Sniper title. During the six-stage competition, the servicemen demonstrate their abilities in the episodes 'Sniper in defense', 'Sniper in the attack', and other firing exercises.

Moreover, Azerbaijani snipers also attended sniper courses in Turkey in March.

Azerbaijan periodically holds drills to improve its military personnels combat readiness.

The drills also aim to improve interaction and combat coordination between the servicemen during operations, as well as to develop commanders' military decision-making and unit management skills.




RAPID CITY, S.D.  The owners of Rapid City hotel are facing a lawsuit over a social media post by one of them that promised to ban Native Americans from the property.

The lawsuit comes from a shareholder who happens to be a relative of the family that owns the Gateway Hotel.

Judson Uhre recently filed a lawsuit in Pennington County against his mother, Connie Uhre, and his brothers, Nick and Chad Uhre, as well as the company that operates the hotel, Retsel Corp.

Judson is alleging a breach of fiduciary duty, shareholder oppression and interference in the hotel's operation, the Rapid City Journal reported.

Connie Uhre, Retsel's president, garnered widespread attention last spring when she said on social media that she would no longer allow American Indians on the property following a fatal shooting at the hotel involving two teenagers whom police said were Native American.

Amid protests, the hotel shut down for about a month. After reopening, Connie Uhre was arrested May 31 for allegedly spraying a cleaning product at demonstrators outside the hotel. The demonstrators were members of the NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led activist organization.

Connie Uhre had a duty of care to ensure that she conducts herself in a manner not prejudicial to the business of the corporation, however, she went ahead and made a racially charged rant which was posted on a website with wide coverage and this led to financial loss of clients for the hotel as well as the damage to the hotels reputation, Judson Uhre said in his lawsuit.

Judsons filing seeks any and all damages due as a result of his familys action.

Connie, Nick and Chad Uhre did not immediately return a phone message for comment.

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Mitch Estabrook has been chasing a dream for a decade. Last month, he caught it.

The Bismarck angler hauled in a buffalo fish while bowfishing at Heart Butte Reservoir on May 16 that officially weighed 60 pounds, 8 ounces -- a state record for a buffalo taken with a bow or spear, according to the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.

The monstrous fish is the biggest weighed in North Dakota that was not a paddlefish or a pallid sturgeon, the agency said.

"I've been chasing that record for about 10 years," said Estabrook, 31, who is a substation electrician at the Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Beulah. "I woke up that (Monday) morning and saw the wind was a little less that day. I called into work and asked if I could take a day of vacation."

Calm winds mean it's easier to see into the water, Estabrook said.

"I shot her about 6 feet deep, in about 10 feet of water," he said, adding that he was careful to put the arrow in a place where it wouldn't cause the fish to lose its eggs, and thus lose weight. He carefully pulled in the line hand-over-hand to the boat so the arrow didn't dislodge.

"They're very very soft fish," he said.

Fifteen minutes later he had the fish in the boat and on his scale. It weighed 65 pounds, and he knew he had a chance at the record.

"I put everything down and motored back to the ramp, since you have to get to a certified scale," he said. "Three years ago I shot one that was 60 pounds when I got it in the boat, but by the time I got it to the (certified) scale, it was 4 ounces off the record."

He brought the fish to the Pony Express convenience store in Bismarck and got the certified weight. Game and Fish -- which looks into matters such as whether a potential record fish was legally caught -- on Monday confirmed it as a record, beating the previous mark by 3 pounds. The old record of 57 pounds, 8 ounces, had been held by Derek Larson, of Mandan, who caught his at Heart Butte Reservoir in May 2017. The Grant County reservoir also is known as Lake Tschida.

Estabrook said he and Larson have had a friendly rivalry through the years, and that Larson congratulated him on his achievement.

A buffalo love affair

Buffalo are not considered a game fish in North Dakota. They're often confused with nonnative and invasive common carp. There is no state-set limit on how many an angler may catch.

Estabrook said he's caught "thousands" since falling in love with the fish about a decade ago.

"I didn't know we had fish this big in North Dakota," he said. "I've been going after them ever since. There's only about a week, a week and a half every year where you can find them up shallow and that big."

The Heart River and Lake Tschida are known for buffalo. The state record buffalo caught with a hook and line -- 54 pounds -- also came from the river system. Keith Huschka, of Dickinson, has held that record since June 2011.

Estabrook and a fishing buddy have caught hundreds of buffalo in a single night, he said. The day he landed his record fish, he caught two others, one weighing about 38 pounds and one about 42 pounds.

"I've put hundreds of hours in out on the water chasing this record the last 10 years," he said. "I was a little worried -- I'd gotten so close before. I did everything I could as fast as I could to get that fish to the scale. I didn't feel relief until I had that certified ticket. I was real happy. The first thing I did was text my wife, 'I got the record!'"

Estabrook said the fish is not in a condition where he can have it mounted, and to have a fish that large mounted would have cost about $2,500 anyway. He's considering having a replica made.

He expects his record to be challenged -- "There are a lot of guys who say they're out there, every weekend," he said. He'll be one of them, but now that he's achieved his goal, he's also got a new focus.

"I've got three daughters; the oldest is 9," he said. "I'm going to be getting her set up, going to be getting her out, and hopefully get her her first fish."

Reach News Editor Blake Nicholson at 701-250-8266 or blake.nicholson@bismarcktribune.com.

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North Dakota's Department of Water Resources has begun its annual discharge operations from Devils Lakes outlets on its east and west ends.

Both are operating at 75 cubic feet per second, for a combined outflow of 150 cfs. At full capacity the outlets can release a combined 600 cfs into the Sheyenne River.

Flows into the lake this year could set a record, according to Jonathan Kelsch, director of the department's Water Development Division.

The basin has produced a rise on Devils Lake of 3.5 feet this spring, he told Prairie Public. "Weve calculated a volume of over 500,000 acre feet of water has gone into the lake already, so weve been waiting for the Sheyenne River to drop where we can get the Devils Lake outlets running. The Sheyenne River is receding now at all the gauges, and were at about 715 cfs at Cooperstown, which we consider the lowest gauge in the upper Sheyenne River before it goes into Lake Ashtabula.

The "acre foot of water" volume measurement is enough water to cover 1 acre of land 1 foot deep.

The lake could rise a total of 4 feet by midsummer, according to Kelsch. Officials are watching for levels to decrease along the Red River before opening the pumps to release more water, he said. The Sheyenne is a tributary of the Red.

Because the landscape is so flat, every foot Devils Lake rises creates regionwide complications, according to Kelsch.

The outlets are really the only way to get water off the lake, except for natural evaporation. We figure this year, with this 3  foot rise, weve inundated an extra 38,428 acres," he said. "So theres a lot of cropland, farmland, roads affected when you get a rise like this.

"Thats all important to the economy up there," Kelsch said. "Devils Lake is a good fishery, and of course theres a recreation industry that enjoys the high water up there. But were trying to strike a balance and get some of the water off the lake because its grown so much the last 20 years.

The outlets were built in response to chronic flooding in the basin. The west end outlet began operating in 2005. The east end outlet was added in 2012. As of December 2020, they had discharged more than 1.3 million acre feet of floodwaters. Without the outlets, state officials estimate the lake would be 6 feet higher than it is.

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Grants were awarded at the recent quarterly meeting in Watford City. Hettinger-based Texas Bee Supply is getting the biggest grant, of $85,000, to launch a marketing campaign for North Dakota's first commercial bee supplier.

Bismarck-based Homeland Hempcrete is getting $13,200 to help design a semi-autonomous application system for the hemp-based construction material.

Merwin Quality Lamb, based in Mott and in Casper, Wyoming, was awarded $30,000 to conduct a feasibility study for a large-scale lamb operation.

Other projects that were awarded grants deal with meat goats, insect agriculture and agricultural recreation.

APUC will hold its next grant application hearing July 20-21 in Bottineau. Applications must be received by July 1. For more information, go to https://www.nd.gov/ndda/apuc.
North Dakota Republican voters on Tuesday will determine the outcomes of an unusual number of intraparty races against the backdrop of Gov. Doug Burgum's hefty political spending in the election.

The June primary is key for the state's dominant political party, which controls the Legislature and every state elected office and congressional seat. GOP nominees for office will advance to the November general election to face off against Democratic-NPL opponents. Democrats hold just 15% of the seats in the Legislature.

But not every Republican incumbent on the June ballot will move on. That's because reapportionment of legislative districts based on 2020 census data put several incumbents in the same district where there are more officeholders than seats available.

Other Republican incumbents will have to fend off challenges from newcomers, several of whom won their party endorsement over longtime officeholders who subsequently petitioned to make the June ballot. Some House races have four or five Republican candidates competing for two slots in November.

Ninety-eight seats in the Legislature are on the ballot this year, more than is usual due to legislative redistricting.

Nine statewide seats are on the ballot, including attorney general, secretary of state, agriculture commissioner, tax commissioner, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, a seat on the state Supreme Court and two seats on the Public Service Commission. Few have primary challenges.

Nearly 49,000 absentee and mail ballots had been sent out as of late Friday afternoon, with about 33,000 returned. About 7,900 people had voted early in person as of the same time, bringing the total ballots cast to 41,000.

The June 2020 election, which was held entirely by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic, had a turnout of about 160,000, or about 27.5% of eligible voters.

Incumbent v. incumbent

The reapportionment of the Legislature last year created a few scenarios of incumbent lawmakers having to run against colleagues to try to keep a seat, though some races are the result of incumbents opting to run for the opposite chamber in which they currently serve.

Other such races could have resulted, such as for District 29 House, but several lawmakers chose to retire when their terms end Nov. 30.

At least four Republican legislative primary races will result in incumbents not advancing to November, according to a Tribune analysis.

Those are:

District 8 Senate (one seat): Rep. Jeff Magrum, R-Hazelton; and Rep. Dave Nehring, R-Bismarck

District 20 Senate (one seat): Sen. Robert Fors, R-Larimore; and Sen. Randy Lemm, R-Hillsboro

District 25 House (two seats): Sen. Jason Heitkamp, R-Wahpeton; Rep. Cindy Schreiber-Beck, R-Wahpeton; and Rep. Kathy Skroch, R-Lidgerwood

District 28 Senate (one seat): Sen. Robert Erbele, R-Lehr; and Rep. Sebastian Ertelt, R-Gwinner

Intraparty challengers

There are 123 Republican and 45 Democratic-NPL legislative primary candidates jostling for their party's nomination for November. Democrats have few primary challenges.

Districts such as 8 and 33 have Republican contests for every seat and no Democratic-NPL candidates.

District 8, which encompasses Emmons County and much of Burleigh County, has two Senate candidates and four House candidates.

District 33, encompassing Mercer and Oliver counties and parts of McLean and Morton counties in the state's coal country, has two Senate candidates and five House candidates.

In each district, only one Republican for Senate and two for House will move on to November.

Some incumbents denied the GOP endorsement at party district conventions have raised many thousands of dollars more than their challengers -- including six-figure fundraising in Sen. Jessica Unruh Bell's reelection bid for District 33 against her endorsed opponent, Keith Boehm.

The challenges also evidence the fissures in North Dakota's supermajority party, which some political observers tie to former Rep. Luke Simons' expulsion last year and subsequent district party censures of several Republican lawmakers. Simons was expelled for workplace and sexual harassment. He denied any wrongdoing and said he wasn't afforded due process.

The fractures also were on display at the party's state convention in April, when U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., narrowly won the GOP endorsement over Rep. Rick Becker, R-Bismarck. Becker founded the ultraconservative Bastiat Caucus in the Legislature.

Several incumbents aligned with the Bastiat Caucus are challenging fellow Republicans for legislative seats.

The primary election will not only be key for Republicans, but also for the direction of the 2023 Legislature after several high-profile retirements, including three of four legislative leaders and the top Senate budget writer. New hands will guide the Legislature.

Dakota Leadership

Big-dollar donations from the wealthy governor to a political group targeting ads in eight legislative districts have cast a shadow on the primary.

Burgum has given more than $1.2 million to the Dakota Leadership PAC so far this year, after giving more than $3.2 million in 2020. Former advisers to the governor run the group.

Dakota Leadership is targeting political ads in Districts 8, 15, 19, 25, 28, 33, 35 and 39, including the state's northeast, southeast and southwest corners, the Bismarck area and coal country.

"We believe that every North Dakotan deserves to have their voice heard at the ballot box, and we're interested in supporting candidates who are committed to strengthening North Dakota's economy, protecting our freedoms, reduce bureaucracy and make this the greatest state in the country to live," Dakota Leadership Chairman Levi Bachmeier said.

Democrats and Republicans have denounced the perception of the governor attempting to buy a friendlier Legislature.

Burgum has downplayed the donations as nothing new in politics, citing previous instances of legislators and executive branch officials supporting each other in elections.

"While not involved in the day-to-day decision-making of Dakota Leadership PAC, I strongly support its mission to elect conservative Republicans who want to improve North Dakota," Burgum said in a statement last month. "Being an elected official at the local, state, or federal level doesnt mean giving up your ability to support the candidates you believe will do the best job for your state and country."

A handful of House Republicans accused Burgum of violating the constitution with his hefty donations. They called on him to stop the donations. A lawsuit appears unlikely.

Becker, who is not seeking reelection, compared Burgum's political spending to an implied threat of "a mafia boss who's got a hitman. The hitman goes out and breaks a few legs."

Dakota Leadership ads have drawn attention in Districts 8 and 33, both of which reach into the Bismarck-Mandan area.

One resident of District 33 gave the Tribune 18 mail ads she had received in two weeks for the district's Republican House and Senate primaries. Ten were from Dakota Leadership.

Statewide

Republican and Democratic-NPL primary voters have few contested statewide races.

University of Jamestown engineering professor Katrina Christiansen and Fargo arts and antiques dealer Michael Steele are vying for the Democratic-NPL nomination for U.S. Senate. The party in March endorsed Christiansen.

Dickinson oilfield worker Riley Kuntz is challenging Hoeven, who is seeking a third Senate term.

Republicans also will decide whether state Rep. Michael Howe of West Fargo or Bismarck business adviser Marvin Lepp will face Democrat Jeffrey Powell, of Grand Forks, for secretary of state in November.

Democrats have not won a statewide election in North Dakota since 2012, when Heidi Heitkamp narrowly beat Congressman Rick Berg for a U.S. Senate seat.

There are no other contested statewide primary races.

Democrats lack a candidate for tax commissioner.

Voters also will be deciding city and school elections and November candidates for county and judicial races.

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

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I'm not ashamed to admit it; I watched more of the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard trial than I probably should have. Once the memes related to the trial started pouring into my Instagram feed, I figured I should head directly to the source instead of getting skewed perspectives from social media. While watching the case, I felt like Hollywood had lied to me. The whole affair was basically hours of tedium interspersed with pockets of interest that were over far too quickly to merit my continued viewership. Where were all of the legal tropes that movies promised me? Where was Atticus Finch?

To satiate my desire for wacky courtroom antics, I searched YouTube for crazy court stories and found the video embedded above. Legal Eagle's YouTube page, which is probably the most interesting law channel for the layman on the site, the video talks about some of the wildest court pleadings ever made.
A gentleman working in a Seattle police department will receive $1.52 million for joking about the Holocaust, sporting a Hitler-style mustache, and hanging Nazi SS insignia on his office door.

Derek Kammerzell, the former Kent assistant police chief who had worked with the department for 27 years, was at first reprimanded with a mere two weeks of unpaid leave after another officer noticed the hateful display. But when furious residents pressured Mayor Dana Ralph to fire the Nazi sympathizer, the ludicrous system of loopholes created to protect police prevented the department from doing so without offering him a hefty payout.

From NBC News:

The city's attempt to essentially discipline Kammerzell a second time led to a dispute between his lawyers and the city that appeared headed for litigation. But interim city Chief Administrative Officer Arthur "Pat" Fitzpatrick, who is also the city attorney, said Friday the city had resolved the matter through negotiation, The Seattle Times reported. Ralph, in calling for Kammerzell's resignation in January, acknowledged that the decision to revisit the discipline issue would likely "come at a high cost." The city said Friday it would pay him $1,520,000 to resign. Had the city simply fired him, officials said, he likely would have won back his job through arbitration due to federal and state labor laws. An internal investigation concluded Kammerzell knew the meaning of the insignia he placed above the nameplate on his office door in September 2020  that of an "obergruppenfuhrer"  a high official in Hitler's paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, which was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II. Kammerzell also was overheard joking about the Holocaust, according to the internal investigation.

The moral of the story is that white supremacists in the police force now have an easy way to make a quick million bucks  at least for those who live in Washington state.
Dr. Oz promised in a tweet Sunday to "end illegal immigration" if he wins the Senate seat in November.

"As your United States Senator, I will fight to end illegal immigration and soft-on-crime policies that release dangerous, undocumented criminals into sanctuary cities," said his tweet.

Which is pretty rich, coming from a shareholder of a family-owned business (started by the grandfather of Oz's wife) that was sentenced to pay a total of $95 million for "their failure to comply with immigration law," according to an ICE press release in 2017. This is a "record-breaking fine from ICE for hiring undocumented workers," according to MSN.

And the doctor-turned-MAGA-manipulator had no problem accepting the company's $12,000 donation to his Senate campaign  endorsed by fellow hypocrite Trump, of course.

From MSN:
Belgian waffles are a blank template for unforgettable weekend breakfasts. From savory creations with avocado, bacon, and goat cheese to the traditional sweet kinds with berries, powdered sugar, and syrup, waffles are unstoppable.

However, nothing brings down a waffle-inspired dream morning like the antiquated, dirty waffle iron that cooks unevenly or worse, unexpectedly burns and dries out your creations. So, if you're looking for perfect waffles to hit your table every breakfast, the AICOOK Smart Pro Belgian Waffle Maker might be worth checking out. It features five different baking programs to cook your waffles precisely to your liking, and it's currently on sale for $145.99 or 53% off.

With five different programs, the AICOOK immediately calculates the precise baking time for whichever waffle you're interested in, and easy-to-hear beeps sound off when cooking is complete. So, when you're scrambling eggs and making coffee, you'll know immediately that the waffles are ready.

This device is moderately sized but mighty, with 1,600-watt double heating at the top and bottom, and creates waffles that are never too dry or cooked oddly. Four of the baking programs are automatic (Belgian, classic, chocolate and buttermilk), and one allows you to adjust to whatever you like best. There are also seven adjustable "browning levels," so your waffles will be as crispy (or as soft) as you want.

The AICOOK is high quality throughout, as the nonstick baking plates help avoid burning and make for easy cleanup after each use. In addition, this waffle maker comes with a two-year warranty, customer advice, and complimentary technical service.

It has a five-star rating on Walmart, with more than 325 reviews. "Just bought this for my dad, and we (are) thrilled with it so far," wrote reviewer Jennifer Mauer on Walmart.com. "Cooks evenly and when that green light tells you it's done, it's done! Crispy on the bottom and a little less so on top. Flavor is good, and easy to clean."

Sure, you can find an old, unwieldy waffle iron for $10 or less at your thrift shop. But if you want to achieve delicious, fluffy waffles that'll wow your friends and family, invest a little more into the AICOOK Smart Pro Belgian Waffle Maker. From standard Belgian breakfast waffles to chocolate dessert creations, AICOOK has you covered, and it's on sale for just $145.99 right now.

Prices subject to change.
On a recent trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin I was reminded of the city's love of unpretentious, wacky fun. (Milwacky?)

I met a friend for breakfast but he said first he had to drop off a VCR to be repaired. Huh? On a corner nearby the defunct Allen-Bradley factory "Don's TV Repair" shop was dark and closed. The sign said to go to the shop next door. There we found a small grocery store with a pinball machine and counter. My friend mentioned loudly "I sure could go for an ICE COLD 7-UP!"and voila!the vintage soda machine swung open like a door to reveal a secret passage. By saying the secret password we were admitted to the speakeasy hidden inside!

Now it all made sense: the sign out front had actually said "LIQUID REPAIRS, TV DINNERS." The decor is dark bar and booths combined with TV repair shop, complete with vintage picture-tube tv sets, Zenith and RCA signage, video games, and even a repair shop/party room with a tool-filled pegboard wall. 70s/80s/90s pop culture memorabilia abounds with StarWars, ET, and even Lew Alcindor on the cover of an old magazine (ask your friend's grandpa from Milwaukee). It's like being on the set for "Stranger Things."

The menu has crazy offerings like Fruity Pebble Pancakes, Bourbon Donut Holes, and Milwaukee Fish Fry "all day, every day." Best of all: the Boozy Shakes, like the "Commodore 64" with Korbel Brandy, cherry, orange, bitters, vanilla ice cream, served with Cool Whip and a Hostess Cherry Pie on top (and the malt glass is rimmed with multi colored sprinkles)!

Shhdon't tell. It's our secret

Don's Speakeasy
By Azernews

By Sabina Mammadli

The Russian peacekeepers are hindering Azerbaijans access to the Khudavang monastery by letting Armenian religious leaders engage there, Azernews reports.

According to Armenian sources, Armenian pilgrims once again got the opportunity to visit the monastery located on Azerbaijans territory. It was noted that Armenians worked intensively with the Russian peacekeepers so that the Armenian pilgrims could make the pilgrimage to Khudavang without any obstacles.

Under the reached agreement, no more than 20-22 pilgrims will be able to visit Khudavang by bus once a month, and under strict control  access to the territory of the monastery complex will be allowed only after a personal inspection of each of the pilgrims, an Armenian clergyman said.

At the same time, it was noted that the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church cannot serve in the monastery without the permission of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

It should be reminded that the Khudavang monastery complex in Kalbajar regions Vang village is one of the largest and most beautiful architectural monuments of the ancient Azerbaijani state of Caucasian Albania. However, after the regions occupation by Armenia in 1992, the complex began to be presented to the world as an Armenian monument.

For a country with its claims on a historic monument, one would think they would appreciate and take care of it. However, the reality of the Armenian occupation is quite the opposite. After the liberation of the Kalbajar region, the horrendous aftermath of the long occupation could be seen. The monastery complex was looted, and the crosses, bells, and other elements belonging to the complex were transported to Armenia.

Such actions of the Armenian forces are a gross violation of the UNESCO 1970 Convention on the illicit export of cultural property.

Built in the 9-13th century by the wife of the Albanian prince Vakhtang in Azerbaijans Kalbajar region, this complex is composed of the Church of Arzu Khatun, Church of Hasan, basilica, and 2 chapels.

By allowing the Armenian side to Azerbaijan's land, the Russian peacekeepers, deployed in the region, are acting against their mandate.

Specially-built monuments which were discovered by the Armenians in 2007 during the excavations they carried out on the monasterys territory, testify to the fact that a temple was also here back in the pre-Christian period. The Armenians themselves admitted that such monuments are not typical for Armenian Christianity.

About 2,000 Russian peacekeepers have been deployed for five years in Karabakh under the trilateral cease-fire deal signed by Baku, Moscow, and Yerevan on November 10, 2020. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw all its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it had occupied since the early 1990s.
President Joe Bidens top health official has again tested positive for COVID-19, less than a month after he came down with virus symptoms while on a trip to Germany.

U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra woke up with symptoms again Monday morning and tested positive afterward, spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim said.

His symptoms are mild and he is isolating in Sacramento, California. Lovenheim said Becerra had been in California for a personal commitment.

A statement from HHS said the secretary was not believed to be a close contact of Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, who also tested positive earlier this spring.

Becerra is continuing to work from isolation.

Becerra had joined Biden at the Summit of the Americas last week in Los Angeles. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that he had tested positive after attending the event, which gathered dignitaries, diplomats and business leaders from across the hemisphere.

Becerra is fully vaccinated and has received a booster shot guarding against the virus.

In May, Becerra tested positive while in Berlin for a meeting of health ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy nations to discuss the ongoing pandemic. His office said then that he had mild symptoms and continued his work from isolation.

HHS said Becerra tested negative for COVID before returning to the United States and multiple times afterward before the positive test Monday.

Its possible to be re-infected with the virus and get sick with COVID-19 more than once. Its unclear how often people are re-infected so soon after the first illness, but one early study found that its possible, though rare, to test positive for one type of omicron variant, called BA.2, 20 to 60 days after testing positive for the original omicron.

The viral mutant now dominant in the U.S., which scientists call BA.2.12.1, is also a member of the omicron family but has a genetic trait called a delta mutation that appears to allow it to escape pre-existing immunity from vaccination and prior infection  especially if someone was infected with the original omicron.

Its also possible that Becerra didnt clear his earlier infection  although he tested negative.

AP reporter Zeke Miller and AP Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this story.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Rapids Fire Company Chief Aaron Bair said the homeowner noticed a crack in the driveway earlier in the day, but had no other indication that something was wrong. Sometime after 4 p.m., he noticed that the one-story house had slid down about 20 feet towards the creek.
Buffalo police on Monday arrested a 22-year-old Cheektowaga man who goes by the street name "Gunsmith" on felony weapons charges following a search of a Cheektowaga apartment that netted guns, including an AR-15, along with thousands of rounds of ammunition and kits to make untraceable guns.

Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia described Steven Salerna-Sanchez as a high-level gun dealer who has been implicated in selling dozens of guns on the streets of Buffalo and, possibly, surrounding communities.

Police seized the weapons during an 8:30 a.m. raid at 91 Claudette Court, and they also discovered body armor, cash and drugs, Gramaglia said at a news conference in the lobby of police headquarters.

"This is what feeds the everyday gun violence that we see in our community and in communities across America  not just in Buffalo," Gramaglia said.

Among the more troubling aspects of the seizure, Gramaglia said, were the kits to make ghost guns. He said it takes about 30 minutes to assemble the kits into an operational firearm that can be sold for as much as $2,000 on the street.

"The problem with these guns is we can't trace them," he said. "Because they are ghost guns, they do not have serial numbers stamped on them, and that's a real problem."

He said the department is recovering such weapons at an alarming rate. Last year, the department took 70 ghost guns off the street compared with five the year before.

"One of the things that is very shocking about these ghost guns that we learned at a meeting last week is that when these ghost guns are being assembled they're not always assembled correctly," Gramaglia said.

Gunning for the guns: Police cracking down in Buffalo to reduce shootings They are going after the "trigger pullers and the gun traffickers," Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said.

He said the Erie County Central Police Services Lab that test fires the guns report that about a half dozen of them fire fully automatic.

"So now you have a problem with extended magazines where people are getting long stick magazines into drum magazines and guns are firing full-out automatically," he said.

Mayor Byron Brown noted that Monday's seizure of weapons came only a day after members of the U.S. Senate announced a bipartisan deal on gun safety measures for the country and nearly a month after a racially motivated massacre at the Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue that killed 10 people and wounded three.

Gramaglia said Monday's raid was result of a short-term investigation conducted by Buffalo Police Department detectives and SWAT team, Erie County Sheriff's Office, and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In addition to weapons, law enforcement Monday also seized cash, hydrocodone, which is an opioid to treat pain; tramadol, another narcotic used to treat pain; and mushroom bars, made from a hallucinogenic substance.

Salerna-Sanchez was charged Monday with two counts of criminal possession of weapon  both violent felonies  and criminal possession of a controlled substance.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul will work with the State Legislature to amend a law she just signed that restricts the purchase of soft body armor by citizens to make sure it prevents them from buying the type of hard body armor plates that a gunman wore while killing 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket, her staff said Sunday.

'The time to act is now': Gun violence tops agendas in New York following Buffalo massacre The move from a coalition of business groups that is typically more likely to weigh in on areas such as taxes and regulations came the same day Gov. Kathy Hochul surrounded herself with state and local government leaders to sign 10 bills that enact sweeping new controls in New York State ranging from age limits on purchase of military-style weapons to banning the purchase of body armor for civilians.

While the Assembly member who sponsored the legislation said he thinks the bill already would prohibit citizens from buying the body armor that protected the accused gunman during the Tops massacre, some critics said it doesnt.

Assembly Member Jonathan Jacobson, D-Newburgh, who sponsored the bill , said he doesnt believe amending the bill is necessary. Yet, hes willing to amend it if he learns from others, like professionals in the criminal justice field, that its necessary.

It was important to act because the problem when you have criminals or potential criminals getting body armor is a big deal and they will do things without regards to their own safety cause they feel theyre invincible, he said.

The bill did not expressly ban the purchase of the hard armor plating that accused gunman Payton Gendron said in an online diary that he purchased online to wear during the Buffalo mass shooting on May 14.

Gendron wore ceramic armor plates in his body vest that allowed him to continue shooting even after a security guard shot him in the chest, according to Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia.

The new law is one of the bills Hochul signed on June 6 with the intended goal of strengthening state gun laws following the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. It restricts the purchase of body vests by anyone but police officers, members of the military or individuals with professions that the Department of State and its consulting agencies deem eligible.

Warren Eller, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, does not believe the bill addresses what it claims to.

While Eller believes the issue can easily be addressed in the next Assembly session, he also believes its indicative of a larger problem.

To him, the bill doesnt seem likely to make meaningful strides in gun control, but its a symbolic indicator that the governor is responding to her constituents.

I think we got the bill that we got because it was one of, you know, eight or 10 that were sitting around and ready to go immediately. Eller said. And what they did is pass what they had in their hand and for a different time and a different concern.

A spokesperson for the governor wrote in an email to The Buffalo News that the new law restricts the purchase of soft body vests as opposed to hard body armor because the Senate and Assembly relied upon a prior definition of body vest and decided against expanding it.

Hochul will work with the legislature to expand the definitions in the state law at the first available opportunity, the email said.

Iowa company that sold body armor to accused Tops shooter 'devastated' by tragedy What happened in your city is a tragedy and a horrific act of violence, Adam Ruff of RMA Armament wrote to The Buffalo News. RMA Armament is saddened by the senseless act of violence that occurred in Buffalo ... Our products are intended for the protection of law-abiding private citizens, police departments and government partners.

Jacobson said he maintains confidence in the law and its potential to prevent gun violence.

You can always look at a bill and think how you might want to change it and add things and make it perfect in your own mind, but it was important to move quickly, he said.

Jacobson does not agree with the claims that the bill does not restrict hard body armor sales. He said that, in his interpretation, if a garment can repel a bullet, then it would be covered by the bill. Still, he is open to changing the language if necessary.

"I'm all in favor of making it stronger to say, you know, 'soft and hard,' whatever we have to do," he said.

James Ostrowski, a Buffalo lawyer who has filed challenges against gun control laws in the past, believes the distinction between the ceramic plates Gendron reportedly wore and the soft body armor described in the bill is clear.

Theyre two different things, he added.

Jacobson said prohibiting the sale and purchase of body vests is a pro-law enforcement, pro-safety move.

Ostrowski said this law will cause more harm to law-abiding citizens than to those seeking to commit violent crimes. While a person looking to commit a crime can obtain a vest illegally or create their own, the people looking to follow the law lost another protection, he said.

People have a right to defend themselves and they shouldn't be penalized, you know, because of various failures of prior laws, he said.

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The flowers are wilting. Balloons tied to street lights are drooping.

Those who lost loved ones in Tops shooting aim to turn agony into action Those who lost loved ones in the massacre say they will be omnipresent activists for as long as it takes to reform the nation's gun laws and confine racism to history's dustbin.

Tents and vans are still set up where groups offer free meals and groceries. People continue to drop by the memorials along the chain link fence that surrounds the parking lot.

More than four weeks after the massacre at the Tops Markets in the heart of the East Side, the national media that trained its cameras on Buffalo's horror and grief are long gone. The crowds of people grieving, praying and volunteering have dwindled.

Now, workers are busy gutting the shuttered supermarket, filling trash bins with debris, preparing for it to reopen at the end of July.

Jefferson Avenue is open to traffic.

Keys to restoring the Jefferson Avenue community extend beyond the neighborhood Long-term plans must be developed to tackle root problems of the entire East Side, including substandard housing, health inequities and outdated infrastructure, among other problems, East Side residents say.

But for the people who live near the Tops on Jefferson and relied on it, life is far from back to normal. Just about everyone shopped at that store. Some were there earlier that day. Others were planning on stopping by to do some shopping. Many heard the gunfire.

They've all seen the outpouring of love for their neighborhood since May 14, and that has helped ease some of the pain and shock.

But as the spotlight fades, they hope the resolve for change does not.

The Buffalo News spoke with several residents of the Cold Spring neighborhood around Tops about what they are feeling now and what they hope will be done about racism, gun violence and the future of their community.

Work to be done

"Guns," Jah'asya Cannon said. "Get rid of them all."

To the 15-year-old sophomore at Leonardo da Vinci High School, the answer is simple.

"It feels like anybody can get a gun," she said.

Jah'asya was with her mother, baby sister and grandmother on Jefferson Avenue on Friday, a block from Tops where a gunman killed 10 people, wounded three more and traumatized a community three weeks earlier.

It has been a traumatizing three weeks for their family. They weren't inside the store  but any one of them could have been.

Jah'sya's mother, Teeyada Cannon, said she shopped at the store regularly. She was driving nearby on that fateful afternoon and thought about stopping by to pick up a few things for a cookout, but ended up changing her mind. After getting home, she turned on the TV and learned what had taken place. She has refused to set foot inside any grocery store since.

"What's going to happen? Is someone going to be outside waiting for me to come out? Are they going to come inside the store and shoot the store up?" she said as her 8-month-old baby slept soundly on her chest.

Cannon's mother in law, Gwen Chaffin, also is struggling with what used to be a simple chore. She tried going to a Wegmans earlier this week, but had to leave.

"Not scared. It was just a funny feeling that came over me," she said.

She added that she is planning to see a counselor.

A new build for Tops on East Side would have taken years Renovating the store would allow it to reopen by the end of July, restoring an important food-shopping venue to a neighborhood that has few other options.

Chaffin, a retired social worker, said she was heartened to by the outpouring of love for her community.

"I pray this continues," she said.

"I'd like to see people come into this community  our politicians  and do what needs to be done to make it a community again. There's so much work that needs to be done over here," she added.

Promote peace, love and unity

Ernie McClellan still can't bear to drive past Tops.

He lives on East Utica Street, one block north and one block west of the store where he would stop two or three times a week to pick up groceries, play the lottery numbers and cash his checks.

On the afternoon of May 14, the retired General Motors worker was preparing to end his shift at People Inc. in West Seneca, but he was delayed 20 minutes.

He had been planning to stop by the Tops on Jefferson on the way back home, but by the time he arrived, his neighborhood was a crime scene. Police vehicles filled the street and yellow tape zig-zagged across intersections.

"It was by the grace of God I didn't go directly to Tops," he said last week, sitting on his front porch.

McClellan has watched the steady flow of politicians and volunteers who have come to his neighborhood.

"We thank them for coming and taking an interest," he said. But he wonders: "Where were you before?"

The East Side has welcomed the strangers, he said, and he hopes outsiders see that that his neighborhood is a warm community that embraces diversity.

McClellan said that he, as a Black man, feels that's not the case outside the city.

"When we go to the suburbs, we're scrutinized for the color of our skin," he said. "They watch us ... I can feel people looking at me."

McClellan doesn't see how anyone will be able to bear to go to Tops when it reopens.

"They should tear it down. Put up a memorial. Put a park there. It's never going to feel the same," he said.

The gun problem didn't start May 14. Law enforcement has spent years trying to solve it With the Tops mass shooting and one the following week in Texas fresh in the public consciousness, Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia is preparing to testify before Congress about the toll that guns have taken on Buffalo.

He is hopeful that politicians will do more things to help the East Side rise, things as simple as making sure more potholes are filled. But he questioned to the plan to spend $1 billion to cover the Kensington Expressway.

"They should take that money and develop the East Side," he said.

He also thinks the media needs to stop dwelling so much on violence and negativity.

"If you talk about peace, love and unity, you'll promote it," he said.

'We've got to come together'

Timeline: Racial crimes against Black people in the Buffalo region Here is a look at some racial crimes stretching back decades in Western New York.

Barbara Brown watched her children playing with a plastic, toy gun from the doorway of her parents' home on East Utica, across the street from the Frank E. Merriweather Library on Jefferson Avenue, just up the block from Tops.

"I don't like you playing with that," she sighed as her 12-year-old son played with the fake gun.

Brown said she went to the Tops with her 4-year-old daughter, Simone, on May 14 to buy caramel and apples to make candied apples, and had just gotten back to her parents' house when they heard gun shots.

"It shocked me," she said. "Duck and run," she told her daughter.

At first she thought it was the sort of gun violence that is all too common in marginalized neighborhoods. But she watched the news and saw it was something different.

"It was like watching a movie," she said.

Brown is glad President Biden came.

"It was a nice gesture," she said.

But she wants the goodwill to continue and for people to address the racism that drove the killer to come to Buffalo to kill Black people.

"No one is born a racist," she said. "They're taught that. We've got to come together."

'I hope it never fades'

Businessman Steven Mackie owns a building on East Utica about a block away from the Tops and across the street from the Frank Merriweather Library, a community and cultural hub on Jefferson Avenue.

Mackie has owned the multilevel building for about four years, and has rented it out multiple times. Now, he plans to open a consignment shop, but he hasnt come up with a name yet.

People eventually will forget about the mass shooting, he said, adding that he thinks that is a shame. He hopes the people coming down to the site just dont come get the food and all the freebies.

Remember the incident, and make sure we hold this guy accountable, he said.

I hope it never fades, and it should not, but its going to with everything. Out of sight. Out of mind, and everybody goes back normal, he added.

'No real solution'

Nastasha Edwards said she was a frequent shopper at Tops and knew Aaron Salter Jr., a retired Buffalo police officer and Tops security guard who was killed in the shooting.

She brought her kids, Nala, 11, and Nathan, 4, to Jefferson Avenue for a religious event across the street from the Tops.

It helps to lift my spirit, she said. My spirit said, 'Get up and go.' "

She fears that as the shooting fades from memory, others will keep happening.

It keeps going on and on and theres no real solution, she said.

Praying for healing

Loretta Barner realizes that, at some point, the food donations will stop coming, the monetary contributions will dry up and the outpouring of support will slow down. But she accepts it.

Its called life, she said.

But it will be a time for people to put their lives back together.

Its going to take some healing, and its going to take some work, Barner said.

Im praying that something good will come out of it, she said.

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Maki Becker Chief of the Breaking News/Criminal Justice Desk I've worked at The Buffalo News since 2005. I previously worked as a reporter at the New York Daily News and the Charlotte Observer and was a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Follow Maki Becker 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
When Western New York parks beckon on the hot summer days sure to come, Metro Bus and partnering agencies are making sure anyone get there  even without a car.

The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority will offer free bus rides on Saturdays to some of the area's most popular parks beginning this weekend and extending through Aug. 6. The service will shuttle park visitors from the downtown bus station at 181 Ellicott St. to Knox Farm, Fort Niagara, Beaver Island and Evangola state parks, as well as Chestnut Ridge, Como Lake and Akron Falls county parks.

The program stems from the NFTA's 2021 Bus Network Improvement Study, showing a significant number of riders who desire direct service to local parks and beaches.

We are thrilled to offer this innovative new program that our riders requested, said James Morrell, director of public transit for NFTA-Metro. Providing access to Western New Yorks most beautiful parks and beaches is important for our community, and we are happy to make this possible.

The transit authority is working with the State Office of Parks and Recreation and Erie County Department of Parks and Recreation on the new program.

We are keenly aware of some of the barriers related to getting to a few of our more remote parks." said Mark V. Mistretta, regional director of state parks. "We are very happy to be participating in this initiative as we find creative ways to encourage more park visitors. We cant wait to see everyone in the parks.

We, at Erie County Parks, are excited be a part of the launch of the NFTAs Parks Adventure Bus,'  added Jimbo McDonald, Erie County's deputy recreation commissioner. We look forward to being able to share the natural beauty of many of our regions beautiful parks with our neighbors who can now easily take public transportation to these destinations.

Buses will depart the downtown bus station at 9 a.m., 11 a.m., and 1:15 p.m., and depart the parks for return downtown at noon, 2:15 p.m. and 4 p.m.

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When Marianne Jasen joined the Sweet Home Central School Board 15 years ago, getting into a school was easy.

Parents wanted to walk in, they would just go into school for whatever reason," she said. "You signed in, but that was about it.

Not anymore.

School doors have been locked from the outside for years. Parents can't show up unannounced with cookies, or to have lunch with their child. There are cameras and intercoms, where visitors state their name and purpose, before being buzzed in the first door. Identification is checked, and visitors are given a nametag or a visitors badge before getting through the next door.

Once they click in you cant go straight into the school, you have to go by our office so that again, there can be eyes on the person, a visual check, said Jasen, a former PTA mom and current board president.

In the wake of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas, administrators are re-examining security measures, and telling anxious parents just what they have done to protect children, although some safety measures are confidential.

Clarence Superintendent Matt Frahm told parents in a letter what the district has done to harden the shell, or exterior, of schools to protect against unwanted intruders: secure main entrances, camera systems, safety teams, drills and procedures to check in visitors.

While many of these things did not exist when you or I may have been in school, they have become common practices in most K-12 settings, he told parents.

Evolving security

In Williamsville, like many other districts, most schools were built in the 1960s or earlier to be open to the community.

The ability to welcome parents and our community into the buildings was in those designs. You had front doors that opened up to hallways and you were in the general school area, said Thomas Maturski, assistant superintendent for finance and management services.

Soon the locked entrances to Williamsville schools will be more secure. The district started a $43.2 million capital project this year to increase safety measures, including allowing schools to automatically lock classroom doors in an emergency.

After the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, New York State enacted Schools Against Violence in Education, or SAVE legislation, that focused on measuring school violence. In the aftermath of the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut 2012, the state created the Safe Schools Task Force that developed three dozen recommendations on social emotional learning and quality and character of school life. The focus changed to hardening schools and hiring school resource officers after 17 students and staff were killed and 17 were injured by a shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2018, according to the state Education Department.

Under state law, school districts must develop and regularly review and update school safety plans for each building. They must have district safety teams and building emergency response teams as well as post-incident teams to help the school community after an emergency or violent episode. They must conduct evacuation and lockdown drills, while being aware of best practices and watch for traumatic reactions from students and staff affected by the drills.

School security has evolved. Some schools have metal detectors and security guards, and more schools are looking at them. And still, educators wonder if it is enough.

"The hardening piece is something that we talk about every single day," said Sweet Home Superintendent Michael Ginestre.

Sandy Hook was the turning point. I think our community, after Sandy Hook, really let the district know, the Board of Education, that they wanted enhanced security, Maturski said. We started looking at security on a different level.

Doors were locked, and visitors had to be buzzed in. Administrators arranged for school resource officers to come into buildings.

Planning for Williamsvilles newest security project began about four years ago. The project will include new vestibules being constructed at all schools. The vestibules will directly connect to main offices. Someone will be buzzed into the vestibule, then show identification and sign in before being buzzed into the office. Offices in some schools have to be moved to be adjacent to the vestibule. Entry into the school hallways leading to classrooms is through the offices, Maturski said.

Every school will have an emergency lockdown system similar to a fire alarm that will alert the entire school to a lockdown. Alarms, lights and message boards will alert everyone in the school, and will automatically connect to proper authorities. Classroom doors will auto lock, Maturski said. Bollards will be placed in front of all buildings.

It's all in preparation for the worst-case scenario.

Were always thinking of that, Maturski said. You always hope it never happens, but its never far from our minds.

Adding school resource officers

Safety measures are not confined to the exterior of buildings. Schools are increasing the number of counselors, psychologists and social workers. Many have had school resource officers for years.

Cleveland Hill Superintendent Jon MacSwan was a principal at West Seneca West High School 20 years ago when the district became one of the first in the state to start a school resource officer program with West Seneca Police.

He said the true school resource officer program develops relationships, and is not for student discipline, or managing and investigating student behavior.

They knew they were there to develop relationships and build trust with the kids, MacSwan said. I always made sure when there was a student discipline matter, my school resource officer would be nowhere near it.

But that didn't prevent a resource officer from charging a student if a crime was committed.

Cheektowaga has a part-time school resource officer at each of the high schools in town, including Cleveland Hill. Superintendents of the four districts are hoping to increase them to full time.

Cheektowaga Police Chief Brian Gould, a proponent of school resource officers, was a DARE officer and a school liaison officer in the Sloan School District about a dozen years ago. The part-time liaison program assigns a day shift patrol officer to a school. The officer stops in every day and touches base with administrators, staff and students, then goes back on patrol. They go into the schools on their days off, and the school districts pay for the overtime, Gould said.

And when they work on patrol on weekends, they sometimes come across the students they know from school, he said.

There are students who just don't have any positive role models in their home life. They struggle with making good decisions, Gould said. Having that relationship with a police officer who cares, who has the training to be empathetic, who is approaching this job in a way thats not just about making arrests but is about helping people has proven extremely valuable.

No easy answers

New York State has spent a substantial amount of money in the last 10 years to help schools harden their exteriors, improve mental health and help defray the cost of hiring school resource officers, state Sen. Sean Ryan said. He also pointed to the 10 gun-related bills passed in the wake of the shootings in Buffalo and Texas.

There's no easy solution to the problem, and thats why we take a multilayered approach, said Ryan, a member of the Senates Education Committee. All these things come together and you hope that will weave a strong enough safety net.

There are things schools can do that dont cost any money, said Jasen, the Sweet Home School Board member.

Situational awareness  that doesnt cost anything, thats just, you know, keep your eyes open. The relationships with the kids doesnt cost anything, but boy do we get a bang for our buck with that, Jasen said.

"We're also making sure that anybody who has needs in the social and emotional realm, those needs are being addressed and taken care of," Ginestre said.

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In South Buffalo, two streets will be transformed into parkways with streetscape improvements, calming measures and bridge upgrades.

The road improvements to Louisiana and Tifft streets will provide safer connections to the Outer Harbor for those coming from South Buffalo, Lackawanna and West Seneca, lawmakers said Monday.

The improvements will cost $47.5 million over five years. The cost will be split nearly evenly, with $24 million for changes to Louisiana Street, from Seneca Street to the First Ward, and $23.5 million for upgrades to Tifft Street between Hopkins Road and Route 5.

"Typically, when you hear about Tifft and Louisiana streets, it's not something good," South District Council Member Christopher Scanlon said.

"You hear about the fact that there are speedways, and you can see that today with cars and trucks zipping by," Scanlon said as he gathered with several lawmakers to make the announcement near the George J. Hartman Playing Fields on Tifft. "You hear that they're not adequate for travel for people of all abilities and all methods of transportation. But because of a project like this, that's going to change."

State Sen. Tim Kennedy, a South Buffalo Democrat, said he doesn't allow his three children to ride their bikes over the Tifft Street Bridge to the Outer Harbor, and he wouldn't want to see anyone else's kids do so, either.

Kennedy cited State Department of Transportation figures that say around 10,000 cars and 300 trucks traverse Tifft on a daily basis.

"There are great hazards, as the cars are going too fast, there are not protected bike lanes and pedestrians are at great risk when crossing this thoroughfare," Kennedy said.

"That's going to change," said Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. "We are going to create an environment where bicyclists are safe, pedestrians are safe and vehicles are safe, as well."

The City of Buffalo will design and oversee the project, with construction possibly ready to begin in 2023.

Michael Finn, the city's public works commissioner, said he didn't see a conflict with trucks entering and departing Buffalo Lakeside Commerce Park on Tifft.

"In no way will this project inhibit any of that development," Finn said. "All of this work can be done in a way that promotes that development and also increases the access for everyone."

Kennedy and Rep. Brian Higgins noted improvements that have been made to city streets after public infrastructure dollars changed their appearance.

Higgins cited the once industrial access road of Ohio Street, which he said has brought "$7 or $8 dollars of private investment" for every public dollar spent. He said the parkway coming to Louisiana Street, which will include decorative lighting, buried electrical poles and slower traffic, will allow those in the Perry, First Ward and other neighborhoods to safely access the waterfront.

The work will be paid for with federal infrastructure funds funneled into state transportation coffers.

Mayor Byron Brown said to expect more streetscape improvements with the heavy amount of infrastructure dollars flowing from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill Congress passed in November 2021.

"There are going to be street improvements in every single section of the City of Buffalo," Brown said. "We will continue the Car Sharing Main Street project, the successful Niagara Street project on the West Side, and we will have a major Jefferson Street streetscape project that we will be announcing the detail of soon."

Mark Sommer covers preservation, development, the waterfront, culture and more. He's also a former arts editor at The News.

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WASHINGTON  The Senate appears to be moving toward a gun safety compromise that would bolster background checks and funding for mental health programs as well as school security, and both Garnell Whitfield Jr. and Zeneta Everhart said Monday that they are pretty happy about that.

But Whitfield and Everhart  who both testified before Congress last week about the May 14 mass shooting at the Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue  also stressed that the emerging Senate deal should be seen as the beginning and not the end of efforts to crack down on gun violence in America.

"We're thankful that at least something's getting done, but it's certainly not enough," said Whitfield, whose mother, Ruth Whitfield, was killed in the massacre.

Everhart  whose son, Zaire Goodman, was wounded in the attack  agreed.

"This is an amazing, great step in the right direction," she said. "Clearly, what we were asking for, what I would have liked to seen in there, it's not in there. However, in this moment, I can live with what they did."

Like most of the gun control advocates who traveled to Washington last week to testify before Congress or speak at a "March for Our Lives" event on Saturday, Whitfield and Everhart would have preferred to see Congress agree to an assault weapons ban, or at least a deal to raise the minimum age for purchasing such weapons from 18 to 21.

Instead, they got a grab-bag of lesser measures that, according to NBC News, is expected to cost between $15 million and $20 billion.

Agreed to on Sunday by 10 Republican senators  enough to guarantee that a bill could be debated and pass the Senate  the key provisions of the reform proposal call for:

Strengthening background checks by clarifying the definition of federally licensed firearms dealers.

Requiring an investigative period to review juvenile and mental health records of gun purchasers under the age of 21.

Closing the so-called "boyfriend loophole" by expanding the background check system to include those convicted of domestic violence or subject to restraining orders connected to an abusive relationship.

Providing money to states and Native American nations to create "red flag" laws aimed at removing weapons from those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.

Investing in a national expansion of community behavioral health centers, telehealth programs for families in crisis and school-based mental health efforts.

Funding school violence prevention and safety measures, including training for school personnel and students.

Reviewing those measures, Whitfield said: "They're all good stuff, but they will never do what banning assault weapons  outlawing them  would do."

Everhart said she was especially grateful that the pending gun deal require a deep dive into the background of people under the age of 21 who want to buy weapons. That requirement conceivably could have prevented massacres like the one that happened in Buffalo, where the suspect bought his weapon shortly after he turned 18.

"That is incredible," Everhart said of that provision.

She also praised the framework's emphasis on mental heath, but said future legislative efforts will have to address other issues in struggling communities like Buffalo's East Side.

"This is a great first step, and it actually lays a platform for us to be like: OK, you're willing to deal with these problems  now let's look at these other problems," Everhart said.

In Washington, optimism about the gun safety framework was tempered by the fact that it's just a framework. There's no legislative language yet, so it's unclear exactly how far the measure would go to bolster background checks, or how much money it would spend on mental health measures and school safety.

And while it's possible that those details could put off some of the 10 Republicans necessary to get the bill past the Senate's 60-vote threshold, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed optimism about the measure on Monday.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he plans to bring the gun safety bill up for consideration as soon as it's written.

"For the first time in a long time, the Senate has a path forward on legislation that will save lives, reduce gun violence and keep our communities safe," Schumer said on the Senate floor. "Make no mistake about it, we have a lot of work left to do before we actually pass a bill, but yesterdays announcement was a positive and necessary step in the right direction."

And while the National Rifle Association has not yet weighed in on the gun safety framework, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, shared his thoughts with reporters from Punchbowl News and CNN.

We're optimistic we're gonna have an outcome here," McConnell said. I think were clearly making progress and Im hopeful.

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A bad landlord and an inept  at best  manager endangered the lives of dozens of Buffalo children. Consequences? Not much.

A state civil suit and a federal criminal case have targeted landlord Angel Dalfin and manager Paul R. Heil over lead paint violations in houses they rented throughout Buffalo, but both cases have been impeded by the absence of Dalfin, who  at the very least  faces huge fines if hes ever found.

Dalfin is on the run and law enforcement isnt having luck tracking him down. In the federal case, Heil was fined $15,000 and given a years probation.

The 150 single- and two-family homes they rented over almost 10 years  mostly to low-income people of color  were cited for being contaminated with chipping, peeling lead paint, which can cause irreversible brain and nervous system damage. Its been reported that at least 29 children suffered lead poisoning; there are likely more.

Angel Dalfin, owner of the properties, and Weil provided tenants with disclosure forms containing false statements that concealed the hazardous conditions, according to the federal complaint.

Those involved in the states civil case say Dalfin is one of Buffalos worst rental housing operators. The best we can hope is that he is caught, held accountable and never allowed to rent property again. Maybe its even more important to double down on the bad landlords who are still here, renting similar lead-invested properties.

Weil, who teaches at the Fruit Belts Public School 37, Futures Academy, should have felt more responsibility toward the families and children he was placing in these houses. From 2015 until at least 2018, according to records, he knew about lead hazards at a two family house that could damage or even destroy the futures of children just like those in his classroom.

A significant fine was imposed, but no jail time, given Weils clean record. In addition, he did provide extensive documentation to the State Attorney Generals office in aid of the case against Dalfin.

None of it will restore the health of 29 poisoned children.

Given that thousands of Buffalo homes were built before the nations 1978 ban on lead-based paint, we need more action on the presence of lead in our city. Laws requiring landlords to disclose the presence of toxic substances capable of ruining lives are not enough. In addition, finding lead in homes often starts with testing children, after the damage has already been done.

In 2018, the Buffalo & Erie County Lead Safe Task Force was convened. In 2020, Buffalo enacted ordinance amendments aimed at holding landlords accountable. It was a start.

Unfortunately, much of this protection requires landlords to voluntarily comply with disclosures and inspections; obviously there are many local landlords who know how to evade such oversight.

Hitting bad landlords hard about lead and other violations can work, but it has to happen before they skip town.

  

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By Azernews

By Sabina Mammadli

In 2022, Azerbaijan marks the 30th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations with the subjects of international relations - both individual states and international organizations.

Azernews - the nation's first English language newspaper - launched a new project, designed to cover the major aspects of the 30-year-long diplomatic ties between Azerbaijan and individual states.

Transcontinental France comes second with no reasoning behind the order.

On February 21, France and Azerbaijan marked the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations.

The relations between the two states have seen ups and downs. On the one hand, France is making attempts to initiate lasting peace in the South Caucasus and planning to focus on opportunities for cooperation such as mine clearance and assistance in identifying missing people. On the other, the country at times expresses overt support for the separatist regime in Karabakh.

Similarly, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgos recent remarks that Paris is ready to make the necessary efforts to support the people of Artsakh within the framework of humanitarian projects during her meeting with the separatist leader Arayik Harutyunyan in Goris, Armenia, near the Azerbaijani border, are a clear example of Frances real policy.

For the state that claims to be so keen on peace-building and is outspoken about the normalization of ties, French officials actions contradict the notions by meeting with a so-called representative of an illegal entity in Azerbaijan.

Unlike Hidalgo, who at least did not break any laws, her colleague - French presidential contender Valerie Pecresse - made the notorious illegal visit to Karabakh in order to gain support among Armenians in France back in December 2021.

Pecresses meeting with the representatives of the illegal entity, the so-called 'Nagorno-Karabakh republic, which is not recognized by any state, including France, violated numerous international obligations.

Pecresses voyage is a clear indication that certain French politicians appear to prioritize their own benefits over principles of international law.

As previously reported by Azernews, the deputy director of one of Frances largest magazines, Le Figaro, Jean-Christophe Buisson in his clearly pro-Armenian rhetoric made anti-Azerbaijani claims more than once.

Nevertheless, the French embassy in Azerbaijan is supporting Azerbaijan's mine-clearing operations in Karabakh by procuring detectors and tool kits for deminers. At the same time, France fails to put pressure on Armenia to come to terms with the post-war realities in Karabakh and contribute to the lasting peace.

Over the 30-year-long period of diplomatic relations, the two countries have been able to build strong ties on the basis of partnership in the economic, cultural, and education spheres.

And for the convenience of our readers, we are trying to shed light on specific aspects of the relations in a Q&A format.

Q: When did Azerbaijan and France establish diplomatic relations? What do we know about the history of the ties?

A: The French government recognized Azerbaijan's independence in January 1992. Diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and France were established on February 21, 1992. Notably, French ambassador to Azerbaijan Jean Perrin was the second accredited diplomat after Turkey's Altan Karamanoglu. Azerbaijan opened its embassy in Paris on November 20, 1994. France has also had a representative office in Baku since February 1992.

Q: What are the common points between the two states regarding the territorial integrity issue?

A: Guided by the norms and principles of international law, France officially supports Azerbaijans territorial integrity.

However, having said the factors, we should also add that during the 44-day war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, French President Emmanuel Macron and some French circles failed to remain neutral though France is a co-chair in the OSCE Minsk Group that was designed to bring about a solution to the conflict between Baku and Yerevan through peaceful means.

In contradiction to the mandate of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair, only the interests of Armenia were protected and an inadequate position, which did not meet the requirements of a balanced and fair co-chairmanship, was displayed. This stance was several times criticized by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and some other senior officials.

Q: What is the current state and spheres of economic cooperation between the two countries?

A: The Azerbaijan-French Economic Commission was established in 1997.

Around 65 French companies, representing various sectors of the economy, operate in Azerbaijan and participate as contractors in a number of infrastructure projects.

A joint Azerbaijani-French business forum was held in Baku with the participation of over 200 representatives of various companies and government officials on May 12, 2014.

Movement of the Enterprises of France (MEDEF International) is an example of close ties between the two countries. The company, which has been cooperating with Azerbaijan since 1992, is a non-profit organization that represents the private sector of France at the international level and includes about 7,100 companies. The organization's main goal is to promote the best practices of French companies around the world. Some 65 French companies operate in various sectors of the Azerbaijani economy, including industry, energy, trade, services, agriculture, and others.

French TOTAL company holds 50-percent-share in the project to develop Azerbaijan's Absheron gas condensate field. TOTAL and State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) signed a relevant agreement in 2016 for a period of 30 years. SOCAR holds another 5 percent of shares.

The field is being developed by JOCAP (Joint Operating Company of Absheron Petroleum), a joint venture between SOCAR and Total. The drilling was carried out by SOCAR's CDC (Caspian Drilling Company).

Besides, the French Development Agency carries out projects in the field of infrastructure and communications.

So far Azerbaijan invested over $2.1 billion in the French economy, whereas over 42.2 billion was invested by France in the Azerbaijani economy.

France's main exports are electrical equipment, ferrous metals, and products made from them, chemical products, medicines, gas meters, plastics, furniture, dairy products, live plants, buses, etc.

The basis of Azerbaijan's export is crude oil, methanol, walnuts, plastic bags and bags, fruit juice, etc.

The Azerbaijani-French trade turnover amounted to $245.4 million in 2021.

Q: How do the two countries cooperate in international, cultural, and other spheres?

A: Internationally, France and Azerbaijan cooperate within the framework of various international organizations such as the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and others.

France has been one of the co-chair states of the OSCE Minsk Group since its establishment in an effort to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict but to no avail.

The ties between the countries in the education sector are exemplary, which can be seen by such successes as the French-Azerbaijani University and the French Lyceum in Baku. These institutions are considered the basis of friendship between France and Azerbaijan.

As the French ambassador to Azerbaijan said France is promoting new education projects in Azerbaijan. He noted that France considers a master's program with the Azerbaijan Tourism and Management University (ATMU). The program is supposed to facilitate the growth of Azerbaijan's tourism sector, the prosperity of the local community, the development of adventure tourism, as well as the overall economic advancement.

An agreement on friendship and cooperation was signed between 12 cities of Azerbaijan and 10 cities and 1 province of France. Moreover, 300 schools in Azerbaijan teach French.

Talking about the cultural aspect of the ties, it should be noted that the countries share a tight exchange of cultural heritage.

In this regard, in 2007, the Heydar Aliyev Foundation allocated funds for the restoration of the interior of the Palace of Versailles. In 2009, the foundation donated 53,776 US dollars for the restoration of three stained-glass windows of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Strasbourg.

On July 4, 2013, at the initiative of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the project "Days of Azerbaijani culture" was launched in Frances Cannes, which lasted until July 7. On July 6, an evening of classical music was held as part of the project of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation to preserve and promote Azerbaijani culture in the world. On July 7, a demonstration of Azerbaijani cinema  the film "Arshin Mal Alan" was presented.

In the following years, the Days of Culture of Azerbaijan were also held in Cannes with the support of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation.
It was sheer coincidence that Western New Yorks father-and-son rioters were sentenced on the same day that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection began holding televised hearings. But the coincidence offers an insight: William M. Sywak and his son, William J. Sywak are fortunate that the American justice system is more merciful than the mob that tried to steal the 2020 presidential election.

That horde broke into the Capitol, intent on intimidating and possibly injuring members of Congress, sent by then-President Trump on a mission to keep him in office, even though his own top lieutenants told him he had lost the election. They injured police officers, vandalized the seat of American government, smeared feces on the walls and left a stain on the 224-year American tradition of peaceful transfer of executive power.

The Sywaks were sentenced to probation.

Father and son both expressed remorse  as many criminals do after theyre caught  but well hope their regrets are real.

Prosecutors asked for a 30-day jail sentence for the father and 45 days for the son, whose texts, they said, showed greater involvement with the mob and a high level of enthusiasm. But, with Covid-19 still circulating, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras expressed reluctance to incarcerate anyone convicted of a nonviolent misdemeanor.

We take his point, but jail wouldnt have been unthinkable. These two were part of a violent effort to subvert not only the Constitution, but American democracy, itself. That they may have been naive enough to believe Trumps lies about a stolen election is irrelevant. Were talking a few weeks in jail, not years in Leavenworth.

The crowds actions were predictably dangerous, a fact that was made clear in Thursday nights televised hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. Amid opening statements and dramatic video of the mob assault, two witnesses testified: a documentarian who found himself at key places and Caroline Edwards, a proud Capitol Police officer who was knocked down by the rioters and suffered a traumatic brain injury.

Seventeen months later, she hasnt been able to return to work. Shes alive, though. Officer Brian D. Sicknick, apparently sprayed in the face with an irritant, suffered two strokes and died one day later. Four other police officers later committed suicide.

This wasnt throwing rocks through a window. It was a deadly insurrection, instigated by an autocratic president and led by two extremist groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. And the Sywaks were willing participants.

For that, the younger defendant, known as Billy, was sentenced to a years probation with two months of home confinement. His father was placed on two years probation plus four months of home confinement and 60 hours of community service. Both were ordered to pay $500 restitution.

They got off easy.

  

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Question: As a bipartisan House committee, after months of work, lays out an organized effort to overthrow the American government  yes, it was that bad  can it be honorable for other elected officials to dissemble, distort and deny the facts that panel produces?

The questions answers itself: It cannot.

Yet at least two New York Republicans are doing that very thing. Reps. Claudia Tenney of Utica and Elise Stefanik of the North Country are heaping disdain on the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. Whatever their motivations may be  fear of Trump? protecting their pensions?  it isnt about country or Constitution.

As Thursdays initial public testimony showed, police were gravely injured. Then-President Trump was repeatedly told he lost the election. His own attorney general, Bill Barr, told him as much, testifying to the committee that Trumps claims of fraud were lies. In earlier recorded testimony, Trumps own daughter, Ivanka, told the committee she believed Barr. Some 20 million Americans saw that video on Thursday.

Yet Trump summoned the mob, anyway, directing it to the Capitol. He cheered the idea of hanging Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States. To this day, he repeats the lie that he won the election, even though every court case, every recount and every audit have conclusively proved otherwise.

Yet Tenney, who wants to represent part of Western New York next year, and Stefanik, the partys increasingly disoriented No. 3 House leader, are pretending that this is much ado about nothing. Its not. Heres what Rep. Liz Cheney, a conservative, had to say about the Capitol riot on Thursday:

On this point, there is no room for debate. Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: That the election was stolen, and that he was the rightful president. President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.

Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and daughter of a former vice president, is the panels vice chair. Shes a popular target of the Trumpist right because she refuses to lie about what Trump has done to the party and the country.

Heres what another conservative, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told Fox News on Sunday about the hearings: I think Republicans need to do a lot of soul-searching as to what is the right thing here, what is the right thing to say for our party and our democracy and our future, and not simply appeal to the instincts of some of our base.

While Hutchinson said he doubts Trump is legally responsible for the insurrection, he declared the former president to be politically and morally responsible.

Tenney, who is campaigning for election to the newly drawn 24th Congressional District, ignored the testimony of Barr, Ivanka Trump and others, and somehow concluded that the hearings are a sham. The district covers much of Niagara County.

It is partisan performance art produced by the mainstream media to defame President Trump, attack his supporters, divide the American people and advance the federal takeover of our elections.

If thats not a lie, its the next closest thing. Anyone paying attention  anyone interested in hearing the truth  knows that Trump defamed himself and that it is his misconduct that incited an insurrection and divided the country.

Stefanik, employing one of Trumps favorite diversions, called the hearings a witch hunt. Theyre a witch hunt only if the hearings into Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Kennedy assassinations were also witch hunts. They werent. They were a search for the truth.

Congress has oversight responsibilities, as Republicans acknowledged with their repeated hearings into the 2012 Benghazi disaster and the role of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Somehow, though, Tenney and Stefanik think the effort to change the results of a presidential election, through lies and violence, is unworthy of congressional investigation.

In their responses to Thursdays hearing, there is no sense of duty to the country or even to the oaths they swore. There is no hint of trying to do the right thing. Cheney on Thursday warned Republicans of the danger they faced: "There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain."

Its instructive that Tenney and Stefanik are disgracing themselves just as Fridays 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in looms. Then, as now, many Republicans ignored the presidents criminality, but like Cheney, Hutchinson and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, some saw a higher calling. They had the courage and the patriotism to undertake a search for the truth.

Thats what this committee is doing. Its what all Americans should support.

  

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.
Buffalo's East Side for decades has been a viable candidate desperately in need of an economic triage. Instead, Buffalo's largest banks and private foundations joined hands with politicians in walling off the East Side with perpetual social programs. Their funding, dubbed public-private-partnerships were critical in segregating the Eastside and deepening generational dependence on government income maintenance programs.

Buffalo's largest banks and private foundations could have leveraged their money to create the kind of economic investment we are witnessing in other parts of the city. But they did not. Now, they are currently bankrolling the gentrification that is happening in this community. It feels like they are exploiting a market for capital gains that they helped to create.
I am a pastor of a church one-and-a-half miles from the Buffalo mass shooting at a store many of my community members frequent. In the wake of yet another school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, I continue to urge Sen. Gillibrand, Rep. Higgins and Sen. Schumer to work towards tighter gun control through use of common sense and red flag laws.

I know that in many cases there may be a mental health component to gun violence, this is not to belittle these tragedies or to further stigmatize mental health. I suffer from mental health disease myself, so I believe that in addition to stricter gun control laws our elected officials should continue to work to ensure that all people, regardless of where they live or their income, have access to accessible and affordable healthcare, which includes mental health services.

The Tops Supermarket shooting in Buffalo is a case where I can confidently say, as a neighbor, that this is not the case. Underserved communities are still suffering from the actions of redlining during the 1930s. Today, these same communities, continue to lack access to healthy food, including fresh produce, complicated now with the closure of the Tops Market after the shooting, as well as access to affordable healthcare facilities.

Thoughts and prayers are no longer enough and we need to take action. This is life and death and to not take action is insulting. It further perpetuates the idea that our Black, Indigenous and people of color siblings are not worthy of legislation that would ensure their survival and their inherent divine humanity.

Rev. Brenda Maynor

Buffalo
(Bloomberg) -- One of the top legal firms advising asset managers on ESG says the industry needs to brace for a more rigorous enforcement of regulations, effective immediately.

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Theres a reckoning under way, said Sonali Siriwardena, partner and global head of ESG at law firm Simmons & Simmons in London. Despite pushing through a tsunami of ESG rules, its now apparent that regulators arent necessarily looking at a grace period to allow the industry to adapt, she said.

The comments come as ESG fund managers digest the crackdown that just hit their industry. On May 31, as police searched the offices of Deutsche Bank AG and its fund unit DWS Group, the authorities who sent them were setting a precedent for environmental, social and governance investing. The allegations of greenwashing that triggered the raid have been rejected by DWS, but nonetheless prompted the departure of its chief executive.As if to underline the sense of a new regulatory era, word broke late Friday that the US Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into the ESG claims of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.s asset-management unit. Thats despite the lack of a complete ESG rulebook in the US.I believe these are the first ripples of a wave of regulatory interventions that we are likely to see in the coming months, Siriwardena told Bloomberg. The number of ESG-focused funds has soared, so its no surprise that the regulators want to set expectations to maintain market credibility.

In fact, regulators are under some pressure to almost have examples as a way to encourage other asset managers to fall in line, she said. And for firms with global portfolios trying to navigate rules in several jurisdictions, its an absolute nightmare. Siriwardena declined to comment specifically on the allegations against Goldman Sachs, noting that the New York-based firm is a client of Simmons & Simmons.

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SEC officials are examining Goldman Sachss mutual-fund business, and are trying to ascertain whether some investments are in breach of ESG metrics promised in marketing materials, according to people familiar with the matter. The inquiry is tied to two funds in that business.And as scrutiny around ESG picks up, other major financial firms are adjusting their businesses to ensure that clients get more say over environmental, social and governance matters. BlackRock Inc. said on Monday it is expanding efforts to give clients invested in index funds the ability to vote their own shares on issues such as executive compensation and climate change.

The DWS case, meanwhile, is the first of its kind in Europe. Though the firm has been under investigation for alleged greenwashing since last year, a sense of complacency had set in. DWS had continued to expand its ESG business and clients seemed largely undeterred by doubts around the reliability of its ESG statements.

The decision by German authorities to suddenly shift gears coincides with a sense of unease among asset managers that the rules by which they need to abide are uncomfortably vague. Whats more, some regulators in Europe agree. According to the head of Frances financial supervisory authority, Robert Ophele, the lack of clear guidance around European ESG rules actually fuels greenwashing.

Europes landmark ESG rulebook for asset managers  the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation  was enforced in March 2021. By being first, Europe was hoping to set a global benchmark. But the speed with which SFDR was pieced together has left it incomplete and imperfect, the European Securities and Markets Authority recently acknowledged.

Siriwardena said she sees a huge divergence in how SFDR is being interpreted not just by asset managers but by their watchdogs. The whole proposition for Europe is a uniform approach. What were seeing in practice is thats hardly the case.

One of the main requirements of SFDR is for fund managers to categorize their products so clients know how green they are. An article 6 designation shows ESG has been considered, but isnt really relevant. Article 8 denotes products that promote ESG characteristics. Article 9  the highest ESG category in the rulebook  reflects an asset managers view that products under that label prioritize sustainability.

According to Ophele at the French regulator, the rules for Article 8 are so imprecise that interpretations vary wildly. Its fair to say that every national competent authority is implementing its own approach, if any, he said in a recent interview.

Luke Sussams, an ESG strategist at Jefferies, said the bar for Article 8 is so low because any quantification or prescription from the EU and from the highest level just isnt there. And what were learning is the market is more than happy to take advantage of that ambiguity.

Jefferies research suggests that the names that are most held across the Article 8 funds have no real discernible ESG impact in the real economy, he said.

But since SFDR was enforced more than a year ago, asset managers have felt the pressure to have as many funds as possible meeting at a minimum Article 8 requirements, said Hortense Bioy, global head of sustainability research at Morningstar Inc.

Many distributors and fund buyers across Europe have said they would only consider funds in Article 8 and 9 categories going forward, she said. So having those products on the shelf has become a commercial imperative for fund companies.

Siriwardena said clients will need to be able to answer for themselves whether they can defend their SFDR allocations. And there are some early signs that investors are starting to treat Article 8 with more caution. Morningstar data show that Article 8 funds experienced their first net outflows on record last quarter.

According to Germanys public prosecutor, the raid of DWS was based on suspicion of capital investment fraud and misleading ESG marketing practices. The authorities investigating the firm may now have more material to test those suspicions.

What happened at DWS is going to push asset managers to be much more careful about the things theyre saying, said Sasja Beslik, chief investment officer at NextGen ESG. This marks the biggest hit weve seen to the hot air and the empty promises over the past years.

(Adds reference to BlackRocks latest ESG initiative)

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Commissioned survey finds about one-third of Canadian respondents share their travel plans on social media, which can put their homes at risk for a break-in

Allstate Insurance Company logo (CNW Group/Allstate Insurance Company of Canada)

TORONTO, June 13, 2022 /CNW/ - Canadians are starting to travel again, and a majority may be planning to take a trip this summer with the lifting of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. In fact, a recent survey commissioned by Allstate Insurance Company of Canada ("Allstate") showed that 62% of Canadian respondents who are active on social media said they were planning to take a trip this summer and, for about two-fifths of them, this will be their first trip in over two years. Allstate is launching a public awareness campaign called "The Selfie Effect" to help people avoid inviting unwanted attention to their unattended homes by cautioning people against sharing their travel dates and vacation whereabouts on social media before their departure or while travelling, and instead, waiting until after they have returned to share any vacation and travel details.

"We found it concerning that almost one out of three respondents who are active on social media post details about their vacation before or during a trip. That 'post-pandemic travel selfie' can be very tempting for many people, but it could also lead uninvited visitors to your home and risk a break-in," says Melissa Marquis, Director of Business Development, Allstate. "We're asking Canadians to think twice before posting that quintessential beach selfie or dreamy sunset photo to social media until after their return from vacation; otherwise, they could be drawing attention to the fact that no one is home."

The Leger survey asked Canadians, who are active on social media, to assess their level of concern regarding home security while they are on a trip. While 29% of respondents who are active on social media post details about their vacation before or during a trip, that number rises among those respondents aged 18-34 years of age (46%) and those who plan on going on vacation this summer away from home (36%). Among all respondents who share their travel details to social media, 10% post in anticipation of their trip to share their travel plans and 24% post during the trip, revealing that they are away.

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A return to travel for many Canadians

Among Canadian respondents who are active on social media, 62% say they plan to leave their home for at least a few days of vacation this summer, whether it's outside their city (37%), their province (14%) or internationally (12%). As well, for 42% of respondents who plan to vacation, this will be their first trip since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020.

"Canadians are eager to take time off to relax, sightsee and enjoy life, and that's a great thing, but it should not be made at the expense of putting your home at risk," said Marquis.

Social Media Tips for Travelling

Here are some tips from Allstate when it comes to sharing vacation and travel details on social media.

Avoid telling people, other than trusted neighbours, family or friends, that you'll be away from home. This includes posts to social media profiles.

Be aware of how you use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks. Do not publish your vacation departure dates to social media and remind people you live with to avoid doing so as well. Even if you have set rigid privacy settings for your social media accounts, it's still possible for others to view what you post through the accounts of friends and followers.

Check the privacy and security settings of your social media accounts, and review who has access to your personal information. For example, on Facebook you can set the parameters to only allow "friends" access to detailed personal information rather than "everybody" or "friends of friends".

Review pictures previously posted on your profiles and remove any information someone might use to find your home address. For example, house or apartment numbers and street names can sometimes be found in the background of photos.

Avoid posting photos with geotagging. Most smart phones and many digital cameras can record the location where a photo was taken. This geotagging can reveal the street address of where you live or, when on vacation, that you're on a trip.

For more tips on home safety while travelling, go to the GOOD HANDS blog at blog.allstate.ca/social-media-home-theft-travelling.

About the Leger survey

Leger was commissioned by Allstate to conduct a survey among Canadians to find out their travel plans for the summer. In order to meet research objectives, a web survey was conducted May 6-9, 2022, among a sample of 1,534 Canadians of which 1,076 are active on social media, aged 18 and over. To ensure a representative sample of the population, the results were weighted according to the gender, age, mother tongue, province, education and the presence of children in the household.

About Allstate Insurance Company of Canada

Allstate Insurance Company of Canada is a leading home and auto insurer focused on providing its customers prevention and protection products and services for every stage of life. Serving Canadians since 1953, Allstate strives to reassure both customers and employees with its "You're in Good Hands" promise and is proud to have been named a Best Employer in Canada for nine consecutive years. Allstate is committed to making a positive difference in the communities in which it operates through partnerships with charitable organizations, employee giving and volunteerism. To learn more, visit www.allstate.ca . For safety tips and advice, visit www.goodhandsadvice.ca

SOURCE Allstate Insurance Company of Canada

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View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2022/13/c8486.html
(Bloomberg) -- The US sought to bolster its support in Asia this weekend by reassuring nations they dont need to join a coalition against China, drawing a stark contrast with Beijings threats to defend its interests with military force.

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Asias biggest security forum Saturday that the US was taking wise counsel from smaller countries, saying they should be free to choose, free to prosper and free to chart their own course.

It represented a break from the Trump administration pressing nations to take sides on the use of 5G equipment from Huawei, one of Chinas most strategically important companies, a position that rankled many at the last gathering of defense officials in 2019. And it was a marked difference from China, whose defense minister, Wei Fenghe, vowed this time around to fight to the very end against any powers that wanted confrontation.

The two defense chiefs laid out their competing visions for Asian security with dueling speeches at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where hundreds of officials gathered this weekend for the first time since the pandemic. While the US attempted to seize on the shock of Russias invasion of Ukraine to push back against a more assertive China, Beijing tried to cast Washington as the main destabilizing force behind conflicts from Eastern Europe to the Western Pacific.

Both appealed to the countries in the Global South in particular, said Reinhard Buetikofer, a European lawmaker who sits on the bodys Foreign Affairs Committee, who attended the conference. But here they sang different tunes: Austin signaled that countries did not have to choose between either the U.S. or China, while Wei implied that the world would only have one choice -- China.

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Most Asian nations, with a history of being carved up by colonial powers, would prefer to not take sides and let both camps court their support. Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto said all powers need to have their space, their rights respected, while Fijian national security chief Inia Batikoto Seruiratu said the people of his small island nation see benefit from all these relationships that we have, including China.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations will take comfort that both have said, There is no need to choose. We dont want you to choose, Singaporean Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said. But whether thats the reality, I think only the facts will speak for themselves.

The Biden administration is trying overcome skepticism about the USs commitment to the region after former President Donald Trump withdrew from a landmark Pacific trade pact in 2017 and ramped up criticism of allies. Despite vowing to prioritize Asia after taking office last year, President Joe Biden has only recently begun to outline his China policy and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework intended to balance Americas military moves in Asia.

The region was at the heart of American grand strategy, Austin said in his speech.

US Representative Ami Bera, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committees Asia subcommittee, praised Austins message. There is a balancing act we must strike of demonstrating a firm stance against Beijings provocations, while presenting an affirmative vision for the region that does not force partners to choose, said Bera, a California Democrat.

Russias invasion of Ukraine upended debate at the annual forum at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore, which was in past years often preoccupied by discussions about Chinas efforts to assert control over the South China Sea. Instead, the US and its allies sought to cast Ukraine as a warning of what could happen in Asian flash points like Taiwan, if expansionist powers were left unchecked.

Austin called Ukraine a preview of a possible world of chaos and turmoil that none of us would want to live in, while Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday that Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who addressed the gathering by video Saturday, said the future rules of this world are being decided on his countrys battlefields.

The focus on Ukraine put a spotlight on the geopolitical intentions of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who declared a no limits partnership with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the run-up to the invasion and has since defended Moscows rationale for launching the war. Wei repeated Beijings support for those arguments and reaffirmed Chinas own territorial claims.

Weis speech was received with pointed questions about Chinas territorial disputes from delegates from neighboring countries such as India and Vietnam. Although Wei professed good relations with both neighbors, he suggested their claims in past disputes were unfounded.

Chinese officials have repeatedly asserted during recent meetings with US counterparts that the Taiwan Strait isnt international waters, Bloomberg News reported Sunday, citing a person familiar with the situation. Wei didnt explicitly refer to the legal status of the strategic waterway in public remarks over the weekend.

There is certainly skepticism about Beijings intentions in Southeast Asia, though this is not always voiced in the region, said Lynn Kuok, a senior IISS fellow for Asia-Pacific security. What struck me about General Weis speech was that several lines could have been taken out of a US speech -- the importance of multilateralism, upholding the rule of law. The problem is often less what China says, but what China does in the region.

Quad Actions

The US has leveraged the newly expanded Quad Group, which includes Japan, Australia and India, to shore up support across the region and troubleshoot burgeoning problems. Australian Foreign Minster Penny Wong promised Pacific Islands nations that aid wont come with strings attached as China pushed, and then failed, to get 10 countries to ink a sweeping trade and security deal.

India has pushed the International Monetary Fund to expedite bailout funds to Sri Lanka, while China has been more hesitant to give fresh credit to ease its financial crisis. Kishida used the Shangri-La meeting to lay out an expanded security role in Asia that includes providing equipment, including patrol vessels, and training for maritime security personnel in at least 20 countries.

The Quad has also announced a program aimed at curbing illegal fishing in the Pacific, a concern aimed primarily at Chinas fishing fleet. Yet, with the flurry of activity on alliances and agreements, the US has been keen for measures to keep future crises from escalating into conflict.

The competition is inevitable, but Washington must approach it carefully, making clear the US is not forcing countries to make a choice between Washington or Beijing but rather ensuring Indo-Pacific nations continue to have choices and to maintain their sovereignty and independence, said Lisa Curtis, director of CNASs Indo-Pacific security program and a former National Security Council senior director for South and Central Asia.

Aside from Austin who is also visiting Thailand, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, US Special Envoy to North Korea Sung Kim and State Department Counselor Derek Chollet are in Asia this month. The flurry of trips come after Bidens visit to South Korea and Japan last month, when he unveiled the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, and left China out.

A certain level of rivalry benefits Southeast Asian countries, said Shahriman Lockman, a director at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia. Wed hardly have IPEF -- imperfect as it may be -- if the US didnt feel the need to compete with China.

(Updates with Austin visiting Thailand. An earlier version corrected the EU lawmakers name in paragraph five)

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Canada Silver Cobalt Works Inc. (TSX-V:CCW) said it has commenced a follow-up drill program at its Graal nickel-copper-cobalt property in the Lac St-Jean region of Quebec.

The exploration company said the minimum 5,000-metre (m) drill program, conducted by Laurentia Exploration Services, is aimed at testing the geophysical anomalies characterized by high conductance that was highlighted during a recent FL-TDEM (time-domain electromagnetic) geophysical survey.

The objective is to verify the continuity and the extent of the nickel-copper-cobalt mineralization and search for the zones with increased thickness.

"Our geological team is quite excited to resume drilling at Graal, Matt Halliday, the companys president, chief operating officer and vice president for exploration said in a statement. Almost every drill hole so far has encountered disseminated to massive sulphides with strong nickel, copper, and cobalt mineralization.

READ: Canada Silver Cobalt says survey at Graal property in Quebec supports potential for growth

Previous diamond drilling along with geophysical surveys at Graal identified several disseminated to massive sulphide zones with varying thicknesses up to 13.1m containing significant grades of nickel and copper and in addition lesser amounts of cobalt, platinum, and palladium, the company said. Drilling was paused earlier this year to allow for the reception of pending assay data and the completion of the geophysical survey.

What we have already discovered at the property suggests that it has the potential to become an important part of the North American battery metals supply corridor, Halliday added. The current drill program will give particular attention to the geophysical survey's discovery of a large 1.7 kilometre by 850m anomaly characterized by high conductance which we will be testing with the drill bit.

At Graal, the company said the geophysical survey program identified 9,475m of drilling targets in two levels of priority where an initial 5,070m were identified as a priority. The initial drilling will focus on near-surface mineralization. The larger target indicated by the geophysical survey will be drilled at a later stage.

In addition to the drilling, Canada Silver Cobalt announced that it has engaged Archeo-Mamu under the direction of Jean-Simon Labbe to complete a field investigation on the property after a desktop study identified potential zones which could have the presence of artefacts.

The company said it will be pleased to provide the results of this independent investigation to the Pessamit Innu Council and other government entities at request.

Canada Silver Cobalt Works is an exploration, development, technology, and environment leader in the prolific Northern Ontario silver-cobalt district.

Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com
Numinus Wellness Inc. (TSX:NUMI, OTC:LKYSF) said it has completed the acquisition of Novamind Inc (CSE:NM) following the latter's receipt of a final order from the British Columbia Supreme Court.

Numinus said the acquisition has positioned the company as a leading integrated mental wellness company providing ketamine- and psychedelic-assisted therapies, with 13 wellness clinics, four clinical research facilities, and a dedicated psychedelics research lab.

"This acquisition elevates our collective service offering, and we look forward to helping an even greater number of people access effective and safe treatments to support mental wellness," said Payton Nyquvest, founder and CEO of Numinus, in a statement.

Numinus said the acquisition will grow its client service offerings, geographic reach, and revenues significantly, and provide Numinus and Novamind clients access to a greater variety of services and treatments over the coming months, including the expansion of virtual therapy services at US-based clinics and increased group therapy offerings in Canada.

The transaction has also provided a strong potential for partnerships in the US and acquisition opportunities, it said, adding that on a proforma basis, the combined business generated C$11.9 million of annual revenues (trailing four quarters reported, as at June 10, 2022).

"We warmly welcome the Novamind team to Numinus and believe our shared values and focus on client service will ensure a seamless integration as we continue to grow as one unified company," said CEO Nyquvest.

Executive appointments

In conjunction with the acquisition, Numinus said Dr Reid Robison (MD) and Dr Paul Thielking (MD) have joined the company as chief clinical officer and chief science officer, respectively. Robison was most recently chief medical officer at Novamind and Thielking, chief scientific officer.

Robison is a board-certified psychiatrist and co-founder of Cedar Psychiatry and serves as the medical director for the Center for Change, a leading center for the treatment of eating disorders, Numinus noted. He was previously a coordinating investigator for a study on MDMA-assisted therapy for eating disorders, sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

As an early adopter and researcher of the use of ketamine in psychiatry, Robison also led a pivotal intravenous ketamine study for treatment-resistant depression by Janssen, leading up to that company's recent FDA-approval of Spravato. To date, Robison has guided thousands of ketamine-assisted therapy sessions and hundreds of Spravato dosing sessions. He is also an adjunct professor at both the University of Utah and Brigham Young University, the company said.

Thielking is board certified in psychiatry, hospice and palliative medicine, and integrative medicine. He is the principal investigator for a psilocybin-enhanced group psychotherapy intervention for cancer patients with depression and a co-investigator on a study for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for opioid use disorder. He has extensive experience in creating group therapy interventions for patients with serious illnesses and has successfully integrated ketamine-assisted psychotherapy services within an academic outpatient oncology clinic for cancer patients with depression.

Dr Thielking was director of psycho-oncology at the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute for five years and previously an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Utah, Numinus said, adding that he is a graduate of the California Institute of Integrative Studies' Certification of Psychedelic Therapy and Research program.

Numinus also said Michael Tan has been promoted to president and chief operating officer to reflect his growing responsibilities. In his new role, Tan will oversee all company operations and will lead strategic directives to drive revenue growth through future footprint and product line expansions. Tan, who joined the company in 2019, has been instrumental in Numinus' growth, the company said.

As a result of the increased medical and research expertise added to Numinus' expanded executive team, chief medical officer Dr Evan Wood will continue in his role in a reduced capacity in order to enable him to maintain his important advocacy, clinical and teaching work, the company added.

Integration of operations and new share issues

Numinus said it is reviewing previously announced organic clinic growth plans as it intends to continue operating 13 wellness clinics across North America, four clinical research sites and dedicated psychedelics research laboratory that come with the acquisition.

Clinics in Utah and Arizona will continue to operate under existing branding until later this year, at which point all locations will be rebranded to reflect the Numinus brand, it added.

Meanwhile, Numinus said it has issued 43,474,659 common shares to the former shareholders and restricted share unit (RSU) holders of Novamind, as consideration for the acquisition, representing 0.84 of one Numinus common share per each Novamind share and Novamind RSU.

In addition, all 3,346,052 incentive stock options of Novamind were canceled and replaced at the exchange ratio through the issuance of 2,810,684 incentive stock options of Numinus (Replacement Options) with each Replacement Option being exercisable to acquire one common share of Numinus (Common Share), and of which (i) 2,453,684 Replacement Options are exercisable at a price of approximately $0.4762 per Common Share until December 11, 2025, (ii) 252,000 Replacement Options are exercisable at a price of approximately $1.1905 per Common Share until December 22, 2025, and (iii) 105,000 Replacement Options are exercisable at a price of approximately $0.4762 per Common Share until April 30, 2025.

All 19,044,831 outstanding warrants of Novamind have been adjusted in accordance with their respective contractual terms and will be exercisable at the exchange ratio to acquire 15,997,658 Common Shares, it added.

Numinus also said it has agreed to pay $700,000 (Completion Fee) to Eight Capital, the financial advisor in the deal, of which $200,000 is to be paid in shares valued at $0.45 each, being 444,444 shares (Completion Fee Shares), with the balance of the completion fee to be paid in cash.

The issuance of the Completion Fee Shares is subject to approval from the Toronto Stock Exchange, and will be subject to resale restrictions expiring four months and one day from the date of issuance in accordance with applicable securities laws, it added.

Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com
Selena now hosts three distinct mineralized zones at Chinchilla, Juniper and CRD, as well as two additional high-priority targets at Revival and Broken Egg, said vice president for exploration Mike Harp

Ridgeline Minerals (TSX-V:RDG, OTCQB:RDGMF) has announced that the first two holes of the 2022 drill program at its flagship Selena project intersected silver-gold-lead-zinc carbonate replacement (CRD) style mineralization at the CRD target.

Nevada-focused explorer Ridgeline explained the CRD target is a conceptual target located between the company's original shallow-oxide silver-gold and lead-zinc discovery at the Chinchilla Zone and the Butte Valley porphyry located approximately 4 kilometres (km) to the west.

The company said drill hole SE22-037 was a 2.5 km step-out to the west of known mineralization at Chinchilla and returned highlight intercepts of 3 meters (m) grading 40.2 grams per tonne (g/t) silver, 3.0 g/t gold, 0.2% lead, 6.8% zinc and 3m grading 35.4 g/t silver, 0.9 g/t gold, 1% lead, 2.3% zinc within wider (15.2-16.8m), lower grade intervals surrounding both zones.

"A year of detailed field work and conceptual targeting went into our first hole at the CRD target, a 2.5 km step-out down-dip and to the west of known mineralization at Chinchilla, Ridgelines vice president for exploration Mike Harp said in a statement. Hole 37 hit two distinct mineralized zones in the projected host horizon, including 3m of the highest-grade gold and zinc we've ever drilled at the project to-date. It's important to note that both gold and zinc grades appear to be increasing towards the porphyry, which is consistent with our greater metal zonation model for the project.

Highlight drill intercepts:

SE22-037: 3m grading 35.4 g/t silver, 0.9 g/t gold, 1% lead, 2.3% zinc within 16.8m grading 22.2 g/t silver, 0.3 g/t gold, 0.4% lead, 1.0% zinc, starting at 666m; and 3m grading 40.2 g/t silver, 3.0 g/t gold, 0.2% lead, 6.8% zinc within 15.2m grading 12.8 g/t silver, 0.8 g/t gold, 0.1% lead, 1.7% zinc, starting at 734.5m.

SE22-038: 1.5m grading 97.4 g/t silver, 0.4 g/t gold, 0.1% lead, 4.9% zinc starting at 765.1m.

Ridgeline noted that drill hole SE22-037 intersected widespread alteration and silver-gold-lead-zinc mineralization in two distinct zones that highlight the higher-grade potential of the CRD target.

It said increasing gold and zinc grades compared to the Chinchilla and Juniper zones to the east support the proposed metal zonation of the system as it zones towards the higher heat center of the Butte Valley porphyry. Additionally, it said mineralization is beginning to transition from oxide to sulfide in the bottom 100m of the drill hole.

The company said it tested the western edge of a large magnetic low signature, interpreted as structurally controlled silica flooding, with future holes to test the full extent of the magnetic low to vector towards the projected core of the mineralized zone.

Meanwhile, drill hole SE22-038 intersected a narrow, high-grade zone of silver-gold-lead-zinc mineralization over 1.2 km down-dip of the closest mineralized intercept in SE21-027 and approximately 2.5 km down-dip of recently announced high-grade intercepts at Juniper. It said intercept confirms proof of concept at the CRD target with future drilling to vector towards thicker and higher-grade, structurally controlled zones.

The company said the successful results at the CRD target, combined with its recent acquisition of historical high-grade silver-gold results at Juniper, highlight the need for mineralized zones at the project to be drilled with diamond core drilling methods.

As a result, it said it has halted its reverse circulation (RC) drill program at Selena that was operated under its strategic drilling contract with Envirotech Drilling LLC, in order to transition to core drilling. Core drilling services will be provided by NISS LLC and is anticipated to begin in August 2022.

Ridgeline said its strategic contract with Envirotech drilling will remain in effect and Envirotech will continue to provide RC drilling services as needed.

Selena now hosts three distinct mineralized zones at Chinchilla, Juniper and CRD, as well as two additional high-priority targets at Revival and Broken Egg, Harp continued. We are looking forward to our planned core program in August, where we will continue to systematically test each target in order to fully understand the potential upside of this district-scale discovery."

Ridgeline is a discovery-focused gold-silver explorer with a proven management team and a 163 square kilometre (sq km) exploration portfolio across five projects in Nevada and Idaho, US.

Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com
By Azernews

By Sabina Mammadli

Deputy Assistant Secretary (DAS) for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Kara McDonald will pay an official visit to Azerbaijan from June 13 through June 15, the US embassy in Azerbaijan has reported.

Within the visit, meetings with government officials, democracy and human rights advocates, independent media representatives, and political party representatives will be held.

It should be noted that McDonald oversees the Bureaus work on Europe, South and Central Asia, and the Multilateral and Global Affairs teams.

The Bureau champions universal values, including the rule of law, human rights, and fundamental freedoms, that underpin democracies and promote strong, stable, prosperous, and sovereign states.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Azerbaijan and U.S. cooperate in different spheres of economy. Together, the two countries work to promote European energy security, expand trade and investment, and combat terrorism and transnational threats. The trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $517.5 million in 2021.
Lieutenant Justus Busse of the Chippewa Falls Fire and Emergency Services Department has never once regretted becoming a firefighter.

Busse likes the uniqueness of each day  the fact that no call or event is the same as the one before. But mostly he likes making a difference in the lives of his friends and neighbors in Chippewa Falls, he said.

Helping people in their time of need is huge, he said. I really care about this community and we care about each other at the firehouse.

After growing up with a volunteer firefighter for a father, Busse wanted to follow in his dads footsteps.

I got introduced at a young age into the fire service, Busse said. In high school I decided that this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Busse furthered his education with fire and EMS classes and worked in a few different fire stations before settling down in Chippewa Falls.

After starting out on an ambulance, Busse went into the fire inspections division and then he moved to Chippewa Falls where he worked as a motor pump operator  the person who drives the fire trucks. Eventually he moved into the role of lieutenant.

Busse and his fellow firefighters work long hours at the fire houses in Chippewa Falls.

We work 24-hour days. Were a close-knit, small department with eight personnel on shift, Busse said. We get to know each other really well which I think is a positive.

Every day is different but there is a set schedule the staff follow. A typical shift might include taking emergency EMS or fire calls, offering prevention and education to the local community, inspections and training for fires, EMS or hazardous materials.

Our number one job is to respond to calls, Busse said.

Busse is a big fan of the public safety trainings and educational events which he leads or partakes in. He said he believes they are paramount to the stations success.

Teaching kids fire safety is especially close to his heart.

It does make an impact. Ive been here long enough to talk to kids in second and third grade and then see those same kids recently at a career fair, he said. They remember what we discussed years ago.

Busse said he thinks the education and trainings the department offers are a reflection of their excellence and of great help to the community.

It does benefit us. We do not see the number of fires, fatalities or injuries from fire that we did in the past, he said.

Busse is highly regarded by his colleagues who regard him as reliable, determined and a natural leader.

As a younger firefighter Ive been appreciative of him, said firefighter paramedic Jose Lagunas.

When you come into a new department, youre looking for someone who is willing to teach you stuff and take you under their wing without complaint. That was always him, Lagunas said.

Battalion Chief Jason Thom commended Busse for being enjoyable to work with and highly responsible.

If you give him a task you dont have to follow behind to make sure its done. You know its going to get done right and then some, Thom said.

One of Busses greatest responsibilities is overseeing his own fire station: Busse is in charge of Fire Station 2 in downtown Chippewa Falls.

The job is tough and keeps him on his toes, Busse said.

Theres no two calls that are ever the same, Busse said.

Thom, Busse and Lagunas agree that being asked to help people on the worst day of their lives is a calling that requires discipline and trustworthiness.

Sometimes just us being there in a death situation or high-stress situation makes a difference in somebodys day, said Thom. Just to talk to the affected family is meaningful.

Treating folks like human beings worthy of respect and empathy is of paramount importance to the firefighters and EMS workers, Thom said.

Then there are the times when the firefighters and paramedics are able to bring somebody back from a near-death experience.

When that person comes walking into the station a month later  those are some of the things that stick with you and make you feel good, Thom said.

Its one of the reasons why we do this  to try and help people, Busse said.

There are many calls that firefights dont want to remember, Busse said. But saving lives makes it worthwhile.

A severe or serious call that has a positive outcome  those are the good ones that you can carry with you through hard days.

Busse said he loves every day when the alarm bells dont ring.

Every day is a new challenge. Every day we dont have a call is a great day, Busse said. It means our fire prevention programs are working.

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Worries continue over high interest rates and inflation. Wall Street opened the week with heavy losses that put the benchmark S&P 500 at a level considered to be a so-called bear market.

Rising interest rates, the war in Ukraine and Chinas economic slowdown are leading investors to reconsider what theyre willing to pay for a wide range of stocks, from high-flying tech companies to industrial conglomerates.

Big swings have become commonplace and Monday was no exception, with the S&P 500 falling 3.9%. Its 21.8% below its record set early this year and so now is in a bear market. The Dow industrials sank 2.8% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite tumbled 4.7%.

Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were systematically dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

But the defeated president was becoming detached from reality clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power. That's the assessment from former Attorney General Bill Barr testifying at Monday's House hearing investigating the insurrection.

The panel is delving deeper into what it calls the big lie, the defeated Republican presidents false claims of voter fraud. The panel says Trump's falsehoods provoked a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol.

Extreme heat is moving across the country with nearly a third of the country under an advisory. Meanwhile, major flooding swept away at least one bridge, washed away roads and set off mudslides in Yellowstone National Park on Monday. Officials closed all five entrances and began evacuating visitors from the northern part of the park.

Former first lady Michelle Obama is urging Americans not to tune out a gridlocked political system but realize that voting and enlisting millions of new voters is a pathway to eventual change. Speaking near downtown Los Angeles on Monday, Obama said protecting and expanding democracy is the best way to take on the nations challenges.

Ukraine's national police chief says authorities are investigating the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide in the war since the Russian invasion in February. Authorities in the Kyiv region near Bucha on Monday showed reporters several victims whose hands had been tied behind their backs.

Some of the victims were found in a lush green Ukrainian forest, where birds were singing. Workers in white hazmat suits conducted an exhumation in a mass grave behind a trench for a military vehicle.

The Golden State Warriors pull ahead in the NBA Finals, the Atlanta Braves win their 12th straight game, and a tie-breaking homer gives the Cardinals a boost against the Pirates.

Coca-Cola Co. said Monday its partnering with Brown-Forman Corp., the maker of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey, to sell premixed cocktails. Canned Jack and Coke will be sold globally after a launch in Mexico late this year.

The outline of a bipartisan Senate agreement on reining in gun violence has no game-changing steps banning the deadliest firearms. But it does propose measured provisions that could make it harder for some young gun buyers, or people considered threatening, to have weapons.

And there are meaningful efforts to address mental health and school safety concerns. There's pressure on both parties to act after last month's mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.

Authorities say gunmen have killed at least 55 people in northern Burkina Faso, the latest attack amid mounting violence blamed on Islamic extremists. Government spokesman Wendkouni Joel Lionel Bilgo said the suspected militants targeted civilians over the weekend in the Sahel regions Seno province.

New York has expanded legal protections for people seeking and providing abortions in the state. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation Monday in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court potentially overruling its 1973 Roe v. Wades decision, which established a constitutional right to abortion.

The new laws follow the Democratic governors plans to give abortion providers $35 million to expand services and boost security in anticipation of an influx of out-of-state people seeking abortions in New York if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court has ruled that Native Americans prosecuted in certain tribal courts can also be prosecuted based on the same incident in federal court. That can result in longer sentences.

The 6-3 ruling is in keeping with an earlier ruling from the 1970s that said the same about a more widely used type of tribal court. The case before the justices involved a Navajo Nation member accused of rape. He served nearly five months in jail after being charged with assault and battery in what is called a Court of Indian Offenses.

The man was later prosecuted in federal court and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He said the Constitutions Double Jeopardy clause should have barred the second prosecution.

Amber Heard says she doesnt blame the jury that awarded Johnny Depp more than $10 million after a contentious six-week libel trial in her first post-verdict interview.

She told Savannah Guthrie of NBC's Today in a clip aired Monday that she understood how the jury reached its conclusion and said Depp is a beloved character and people feel they know him.

She called her ex-husband a fantastic actor and decried social media, calling her treatment online unfair. Today plans to air more of its interview with Heard on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Depp sued Heard for libel in Virginia over a December 2018 Washington Post piece in which she described herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse.

The Associated Press

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Legend Animator from Japan to Launch Identity Defining NFT Brand BOSO Tokyo

Disclaimer: The text below is a press release that was not written by Cryptonews.com.

We are pleased to announce the launch of NFT project "BOSO TOKYO", an identity-defining brand in the Metaverse

To commemorate its launch, BOSO TOKYO has launched a giveaway campaign for their NFT. Check out the details here for a chance to win a BOSO TOKYO NFT by completing a few simple tasks.

ABOUT BOSO TOKYO

BOSO TOKYO is an NFT brand that aims to build avatars that can be used as a common identity in multiple metaverses. As a generative NFT, BOSO TOKYO uses algorithms to create random combinations for each avatars body, face, clothing, accessories, and other parts.

BOSO TOKYO is an original brand of avatars from Tokyo. Unlike the many Japan-inspired anime and video game-inspired NFTs on OpenSea, BOSO is aspiring to bring forth a completely original collection.

Hidetaka Tenjin , the illustrator of Gundam , Star Wars mecha illustrations, and Macross, has joined BOSO TOKYO as the main designer and is working on creating the avatars.

Afromance , Co-Founder of Burning Japan and foam Party is acting as creative director.

On top of that, an all-star team of crypto and NFT specialists along with top Japanese creators have gathered together to deliver a true and authentic NFT collection from the heart of Tokyo.

The word BOSO comes from Bosozoku, Japanese motorbike gangs. These gangs would cruise together in the hundreds, riding customized motorbikes designed to make loud noises. In Japanese, BOSO means to not give a damn and that was their motto while riding their bikes. Bosozoku was in a way a "symbol of freedom.

The Bosozoku slogan, "(Tenjo-Tenge-Yuiga-Dokuson)," expresses their belief that your identity could only be one and only, a very unique being in this world - meaning you are, so very special. Inspired by the budding independence of these gangs and their search for freedom, BOSO TOKYO, has coined the term "(DENJO-DENGE-YUIGA-DOKUSON)". This means that, You are a special being, a unique identity in this digital world.

Project Vision

The word Metaverse is said to be a term first used in the 1982 science fiction novel Snow Crash, and has existed long before the birth of Bitcoin.

However, without blockchain technology, unique identities in the digital world would not have worked. People could just simply copy-and-paste. . NFTs and blockchain technology solves this problem. In a digital world, or metaverse, the establishment of the self is made possible only with NFTs.

BOSO believes that when the era of parallel metaverses become the norm, it will be important for individuals to be able to build identities or avatars that can be recognized across all digital worlds.

Moreover, once establishing such an identity, it should be a seamless effort for anyone to be able to establish an identity in every metaverse. BOSO believes that an avatar is meaningless unless it can be used across any metaverse. BOSO TOKYO will become the first brand to do so.

Roadmap

Currently, these upcoming points are the main focus for BOSO TOKYO :

1. Staking= "REVVING"

Rev your engine, Rev Your BOSO NFTs. Staking your BOSO NFTs will passively earn you rewards.

As your RPM increases and the engine burns, rewards are earned.The "Rev" in "Revving" also means "Revolution.

2. Limitless rights to our IPs

You own the NFT, you own the IP rights. Simple as that. You can use the NFTs for any commercial use, advertisements, or even rent it out without restrictions.

3. Exclusive Community Access

Holding an NFT grants the holder exclusive access to the community and events. NFT holders will also be able to vote in BOSO TOKYO DAO and receive a variety of other benefits.

4. Metaverse Avatar

The BOSO vision is to provide holders with an identity defining avatar in the digital ecosystem. To realize this, BOSO will distribute 3D avatars of their NFTs. Are you Metaverse ready?

5. Events

BOSO will holdt large-scale events to promote the BOSO culture to the world.

6. Partnerships

Some of the Key figures in the Web3 and Crypto industry have already sympathized with the BOSO TOKYO concept and joined as partners in this project. We will make announcements as we go down the roadStay tuned.

BOSO TOKYO TEAM

Main Designer - HIDETAKA TENJIN

Instagram

Twitter

Tenjin is a legendary creator and artist from Japan, now incharge of designing avatars for BOSO TOKYO.

I am taking on this new challenge with very high expectations. BOSO TOKYO will be, I hope, a massive opportunity for people from around the world to once again recognize the uniqueness of Japanese culture. We hope that this project will be the catalyst for a new movement. A new movement that sweeps the world and proves that the culture we possess will have great impact on the generation to come."

Tenjin is a master of robot mecha productions and acts as mecha designer, illustrator, and art director in countless projects. He is a seasoned professional in the field of plastic models, box art, and game animation production. Even in CG expression, Tenjin is known to draw a narrative on screen, by consciously expressing the brush feeling and touch.

Tenjin draws box art for plastic models including Hasegawa's "Macross" series, BANDAI SPIRITS' Gundam, and STAR WARS. He has also worked in the field of animation, including mechanical art for the animations "Macross Zero," "Macross Frontier," and "Genesis of Aquarion," mechanical design for "Helsing," "Macross Delta," "Knights & Magic," "Super Robot Wars T," "BACK ARROW," and "Yasuke". He is also active in the field of animation,acting as the mechanical director for "Space Battleship Yamato 2205".

Creative Director - Afromance

Twitter

Instagram

Afro overviews the creative design and world view for BOSO TOKYO.

Creative Director. CEO of Creative Company Afro&Co.Co-Founder of Burning Japan, the regional event of Burning Man.Major achievements include hosting the first foam party in Tokyo.

The awapa boom in Japan was started and accelerated by Afromance through the various collaborations with companies and brands such as LEXUS, and the famed outdoor festival awafes.Also, Afromance produced SAKURA CHILL BAR by Saga, a bar smothered with 1.2 million flower petals, the Ghoul Restaurant that featured the smash hit Tokyo Ghoul series, and the BLOCK.FES, an online music festival that brought in 2 million people during COVID.

Ideology and Manifesto Design- Hisashi Oki

Twitter

Linkedin

Oki is the Japan Representative for Ledger, one of the world's largest crypto currency wallet companies. Formerly, he was the head of brand marketing, PR and public relations at one of the world's largest U.S. crypto currency exchanges. Previously, he was news director at TV Tokyo's New York bureau, editor-in-chief at Cointelegraph Japan, and reporter at Cointelegraph Global. He is responsible for designing BOSO TOKYO's manifesto and ideology.

BOSO TOKYO is inspired by the Japanese biker gangs' longing for freedom. The slogan "DENJO-DENGE-YUIGA-DOKUSON", means that all individuals unique in the metaverse

BOSO TOKYO is a brand for those who believe in the possibilities of the Metaverse and seek even more freedom. We want to share Japanese creators and culture with people from around the world. With our special team, we will create a brand, a community, an opportunity, and a future that has yet to be seen.

BOSO TOKYO Official Website https://www.bosotokyo.com/

Twitter https://twitter.com/BosoTokyo
HARRISBURG  Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvanias Republican nominee for governor who has pushed Donald Trumps election lies, said Monday that he had appointed Trumps former campaign lawyer as a senior legal adviser to his own campaign.

The lawyer, Jenna Ellis, endorsed Mastriano in the states contested Republican primary, campaigned with Mastriano and hosted Mastriano on her podcast, where he once discussed how to overturn Trumps defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Ellis, who also promoted Trumps election lies, was with Mastriano the night he won his gubernatorial primary and, speaking on her podcast last month, said, I like to say that Doug Mastriano is the Donald Trump of Pennsylvania.

If Mastriano were to win in the fall, he would shape how elections are conducted in the state  where the governor appoints the secretary of state, who oversees how elections are run. Mastriano has pledged to require people to re-register to vote  a move that violates federal law, constitutional law scholars say  and decertify certain voting machines.

After the 2020 election, Mastriano, a state senator, spearheaded a state Senate hearing in Gettysburg in which witnesses  including Ellis and fellow Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani  aired false claims about mass voter fraud. Trump called into the hearing, as well.

In a statement Monday, Mastriano said Ellis talent, experience and legal expertise will help him defeat Democrat Josh Shapiro, the states two-term attorney general, in the Nov. 8 general election.

On Ellis podcast, Mastriano has talked about the search for evidence of election fraud, how to reverse Trumps election loss and being in touch with a group including Ellis after the 2020 election.

We spoke frequently, or texted, Mastriano said. I was asking you for advice and constitutional recommendations and, once again, anything that Jen and I or anyone else talked about was a legal, constitutional approach forward.

Last year, Mastriano claimed on a radio show that Trump had asked me to run for governor.

Besides promoting Trumps lies about nonexistent, widespread voter fraud costing him the 2020 election, Mastriano was outside the U.S. Capitol when a mob of Trump supporters overran it during the deadly 2021 insurrection.

He later tried to bring an Arizona-style partisan election audit to Pennsylvania before he was stripped of his committee chairmanship over it in a dispute with Senate GOP leaders.

Federal and state election officials and Trumps own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former presidents allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges he appointed.

In February, Mastriano was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol for his efforts to overturn Bidens victory in Pennsylvania by letting lawmakers  instead of voters  award Pennsylvanias presidential electors in Trumps favor.

A lawyer for Mastriano said FBI agents have interviewed Mastriano. Mastriano told the FBI that he did not know anything about a planned insurrection or any coordination behind the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the lawyer said.

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PHILADELPHIA  Philadelphia prosecutors asked a judge on Monday to hold a Virginia man in contempt of court over video that shows him meeting with top leaders of two-far right extremist groups in Washington, D.C., the day before the Jan. 6 riot.

The request from Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in the case against Joshua Macias, 43, comes after the House committee investigating the insurrection put a spotlight on the Jan. 5 underground garage meeting between the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the Capitol attack.

Macias was arrested on weapons and elections law charges in November 2020 after he drove to the Pennsylvania Convention Center where votes were being counted with guns and ammunition. He was out on bail on Jan. 6.

Macias, the co-founder of the group Vets for Trump, hasnt been charged in the Capitol riot. But Philadelphia prosecutors say his presence at the meeting of the extremist leaders the day before indicates he had a much more prominent role in the insurrection than they had previously realized. Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman, and Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers leader, have both been charged with plotting with other extremists to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

We need to radically reconsider whether Joshua Macias is a midsized fish or a shark. I believe he is a shark, Krasner said. He is already up for violations of conditions of bail this week. But this is a startling revelation.

Attorney William J. Brennan, who represents Macias, declined to comment on the new filing Monday, but said he planned to continue to try the case in court rather than in the media. A phone message left for co-counsel in the case was not returned Monday.

The Philadelphia filing comes as the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has made a point to highlight the secretive parking garage meeting mentioned in federal indictments and raises further questions about how many people may have known about what the far-right extremist groups were planning to carry out the next day.

Publicly released video of the meeting between Rhodes and Tarrio doesnt reveal much about their discussion. A documentary filmmaker  who was filming Tarrio and testified at last weeks House committee hearing  recorded part of the meeting, but Tarrio and others motioned for him to stop.

Federal prosecutors have said only that one of the meetings participants referenced the Capitol, but no other details about what the two extremist group leaders discussed have been revealed in the criminal cases or House committee hearings.

Federal prosecutors argued in a court filing last month that Tarrios decision to meet with Rhodes demonstrates that he remained engaged in planning for Jan. 6 even after his Jan. 4 arrest on charges that he vandalized a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December 2020.

Macias was a scheduled speaker outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, using what prosecutors said was the same language that the Oath Keepers had been spreading, including saying that Vice President Pence was a traitor who had betrayed the country.

Macias was arrested alongside Antonio LaMotta, 63, early on Nov. 5, 2020, after Philadelphia police officers acting on a tip from the FBI, stopped the men near the convention center.

Authorities said they parked a Hummer a few blocks away that was adorned with QAnon stickers and contained an AR-style rifle, more than 100 rounds of ammunition, a sword and lock-picking tools. LaMotta was carrying an unlicensed firearm, and Macias was carrying a firearm licensed in Virginia, authorities said.

Prosecutors had asked that the two be held without bail, and have characterized the incident as a mass shooting that almost happened. A judge set bail at $750,000, with a 10% bond.

Prosecutors filed a motion to revoke that bail arguing both men had violated the conditions of their release by attending the Jan. 6 rally and by Macias posting support for a pro-Trump candidate. That candidate was also noted to be at the Jan. 5 parking garage meeting.

A judge increased bail for the two men to $850,000, and they were released.

Prosecutors asked for a contempt hearing after a video surfaced on social media where Macias allegedly can be heard narrating a live video from behind the camera during a trucker protest in Washington and allegations that he attended at least one political rally for a Virginia candidate who has called for the execution of everyone involved in President Joe Bidens election.

A hearing in the initial contempt allegation is scheduled for Friday. In the motion Monday, prosecutors asked that Macias be found guilty of criminal contempt and sentenced to five months and 29 days in jail.

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Bennie Thompson, one of Mississippi's most enduring political mainstays over the last half-century, held the prime role in primetime newscasts across America on Thursday night.

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the Capitol, which Thompson chairs, held its first public hearing nearly a year after it began investigating the riot and insurrection that occurred during congressional certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election.

While the committee is made up of nine members  seven Democrats and two Republicans  Thompson and Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming were the only members to speak. Their statements were accompanied by numerous pieces of video evidence and testimony, along with two eye-witnesses who testified in-person.

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) Vice Chairwoman of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, and Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) arrive for a hearing on the January 6th investigation on June 09, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The bipartisan committee, which has been gathering evidence related to the January 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol for almost a year, will present its findings in a series of televised hearings. On January 6, 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol Building during an attempt to disrupt a congressional vote to confirm the electoral college win for Joe Biden.

Over the course of the two-hour hearing, Thompson, Mississippi's lone Democratic member of Congress, made a number of notable comments including the ones below:

For subscribers: 'No intentions of ever coming back': Chef's odyssey led him home to Southern fine dining

Read this: Severe weather expected in Jackson area Friday. Follow the updates here.

Thompson's opening statement

"I'm Bennie Thompson, chairman of the January 6 2021 committee. I was born, raised and still live in Bolton, Mississippi. A town with a population of 521 which is midway between Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the Mississippi River. I'm from a part of the country where people justified the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and lynching. I'm reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try to justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021," Thompson said.

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., listens to a constituent speak after voting at his home precinct in Bolton, Miss., Tuesday, June 7, 2022.

Former President Donald Trump's "last stand"

"January 6th was the culmination of an attempted coup. A brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, 'to overthrow the government.' It represents President Trump's last stand, (and) most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power," Thompson said.

Story continues

Addressing criticism that the committee is partisan

"We cant sweep what happened under the rug. The American people deserve answers. So I come before you this evening not as a Democrat, but as an American who swore an oath to defend the Constitution. The Constitution doesnt protect just Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us: We the People. And this scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people," Thompson said.

What makes America great

"There are those in this country who thirst for power but have no love or respect for what makes America great: allegiance to the constitution," Thompson said.

Thompson thanks Cheney

"It has been a particular privilege to count as a colleague, and as my friend, the gentlewoman from Wyoming," Thompson said.

Thompson thanks Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards

"Let me thank you for your service and obviously your bravery that you have told the world about tonight. It's unfortunate that you had to defend the capitol from fellow Americans. None of us would ever think that would have to happen but it did," Thompson said.

The next hearing will take place at 9 a.m. on Monday, June 13, according to the committee website. It will focus on Trump's campaign to convince people that the 2020 election was fraudulent or stolen, despite evidence to the contrary.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Mississippi Rep. Thompson takes lead on Jan. 6 capitol attack committee
Ohio Rep. Sharon Ray is pushing a bill that would increase criminal penalties for providing alcohol to underage drinkers.

In the early morning hours on Father's Day 2020, Frank and Sharon Pacek got a call from the Medina Twp. Police Department about their 19-year-old son, Trevor.

Officers summoned them to a house where Trevor and two friends had a bonfire and party.

The details are seared in Sharon Pacek's memory: Arriving at 6 a.m. No sign of Trevor. Officers telling her the teens had been drinking alcohol when they took a small boat out on a pond. It capsized. Her son was dead.

The Pacek family is now working with state Rep. Sharon Ray, R-Wadsworth, to change state law and make it a felony for adults to provide alcohol to minors if it results in a death.

Under the bill announced Tuesday, House Bill 674, violators would be charged with a fourth-degree felony. If it becomes law, it would require courts to issue a mandatory prison term of six to 18 months.

A parent of one of the boys at the party entered a plea of no contest to charges of falsification and furnishing alcohol to minors. The charges constituted a misdemeanor, a fine of $2,817 and he was sentenced to 120 days in jail, 200 hours of community service and five years probation.

"The sentence is a lot but it doesn't go far enough," Sharon Pacek said.

She said the details of her son's death remain vivid in her memory.

"Law enforcement brought in a cadaver dog," she said. "To this day I can still hear that dog's bark. His bark gave me hope."

But soon after, the barking suddenly stopped. Silence fell over the property as Sharon came to the realization that her son's body had been found.

"I knew Trevor wasn't coming home with us," Sharon said. "He wouldn't be home to celebrate Father's Day with his father."

Sharon and Frank Pacek lost their 19-year-old son Trevor after a boat accident involving alcohol. They're now hoping Rep. Sharon Ray's new bill will help stop future tragedies by increasing penalties in cases of adults giving minors alcohol which results in a death.

What is the current law?

Under current Ohio law, it is illegal to give alcohol to a minor and would result in a first- degree misdemeanor. Violators could face a maximum of six months in jail, up to a $1,000 fine or both.

Currently, the law does not distinguish between violations that result in a death and those that don't.

Story continues

The Paceks wrote to Gov. Mike DeWine about their son's death asking for his support on legislation such as Ray's bill. DeWine wrote back expressing he would support increased penalties in cases such as Trevor's.

In 2021, the Ohio State Highway Patrol reported there were 25 deaths due to car crashes that related to alcohol and teens. This year, there have been four alcohol and teen related deaths reported.

The bill was assigned to the House Criminal Justice Committee, but Ray said it's possible it won't get hearings until the fall. But with proms, graduations and summer break coming up for many underage students, Ray said she hopes the bill will raise awareness.

"Now is when [adults] should start thinking about this as they host parties for young adults," Ray said.

Ray said she intends on naming the bill "Trevor's Bill" in honor of Trevor.

"There's a reason you're not allowed to drink until you're 21 years of age," Ray said. "And providing alcohol to someone else's child can result in a tragedy, just like Trevor's."

Teen drinking: Ohio might make it easier to charge adults who 'allow' underage drinking

Other bills look to toughen Ohio laws on drinking

Ray's is the latest Ohio bill aiming to change current alcohol laws. Earlier this year, lawmakers introduced HB 418 which would make it easier to prosecute homeowners or businesses that allow underage drinking.

In March, lawmakers introduced HB 574 which would change a hundred-year-old law that allows alcohol to be sold but not given away at charitable or political events held in private homes.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio bill seeks felony charge for adults giving alcohol to minors
The Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) reported multiple accidents over the weekend, including one accident with two fatalities.

On Friday at 9:55 a.m. on northbound US 67 at Papin Road, the MSHP reported a 2015 Chevrolet Impala driven by Dellene L. Spegal, 71, of De Soto, was traveling on Papin Road, attempted to cross over onto US 67 and failed to yield to a 2005 Chrysler Pacific driven by Louis F. Strecker 4th.

According to the report, Strecker applied the brakes and struck the right side of Spegals vehicle. The impact caused both cars to travel off the right side of the road and overturn.

Dellene and one of the occupants, Jimmie D. Spegal, 85, of De Soto, were both pronounced dead on the scene by Joachim Plattin Ambulance District, both were transported to the St. Louis County Medical Examiner's Office by Superior Mortuary Transport, according to the patrol.

A passenger in the Spegal vehicle, Marsha E. Bennett, 70, of De Soto, reportedly received serious injuries and was transported to Mercy Hospital St. Louis by Survival Flight. Strecker was said to have received moderate injuries, and was transported to Mercy Hospital South by Joachim Plattin Ambulance District.

All were wearing listed as wearing safety devices but Dellene. Damaged listed to both vehicles is listed as total.

The MSHP also reported an accident on Saturday evening involving a 2021 Yamaha Linhai MT-03 driven by Brekken T. Jordan, 22, of Broseley. Traveling south on US 67, Jordan reportedly travelled off the left side of the road edge about a half a mile south of Old Orchard Road before striking a cable barrier and overturning. Jordan was ejected.

According to the report, Jordan received moderate injuries and was taken to Mercy Hospital South by St. Francois County Ambulance. The report states Jordan was wearing a safety device.

On Sunday morning, the MSHP reports that on southbound US 67, near the Fairgrounds exit, Thomas M. White, 61, of Park Hills, was seriously injured when the 2013 Suzuki GSX13000RAL he was riding struck fire hose couplings from a 2013 Kenworth Firetruck driven by Ronald E. Hicks, 39, of Cadet.

According to the report, the fire hose was not properly secured and began to unravel onto southbound US 67. The firetruck pulled off to the right side of the roadway and displayed emergency lights.

The front tire of Whites vehicle struck a coupling and it began to overturn the bike onto its right side, causing it to skid, and travel off the right side of the road. It continued to skid and overturn onto its left side according to the report. White finally came to rest off the right side of the roadway, the motorcycle on its left side, facing south.

The firetruck was listed as undamaged, while damage to the bike is listed as extensive. White, who sustained serious injuries according to the report, was transported by Arch Helicopter to Mercy Hospital  Saint Louis.

Danielle Thurman is a reporter for the Daily Journal and can be contacted at dthurman@dailyjournalonline.com or 573-518-3616.

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If was a tough Monday for workers at Southeast Missouri Transportation System (SMTS)  and for some of their riders.

Over the weekend, thieves stole catalytic converters from four of their buses parked in Park Hills. In the last month and a half, catalytic converters have been stolen from seven SMTS buses.

SMTS is a non-governmental, non-profit general public passenger transportation service that provides a variety passenger transportation services to all age groups. A lot of the people SMTS transports are those coming and going from medical treatments. What started out as a service with three vans has grown into a fleet of 200 vehicles and serves 21 counties in southeast Missouri.

Ginny Smith, SMTS' director of Operations, said it isn't just that the organization has to pay for those repairs  having four vans down greatly affected the riders Monday. With the buses not able to operate, Smith said some people were unable to go to essential dialysis and doctors appointments.

Even though some parts were available and two buses were able to be repaired quickly, having two buses still down in a county of over 60,000 residents impacts riders greatly.

Smith is hoping that anyone with information will come forward. Anyone with information can call St. Francois County Central Dispatch at 573-431-3131.

Buses are often hit due to how high they are off the ground, but anything that someone can crawl under are easy targets, according to Park Hills Police Chief Richard McFarland.

According to McFarland, nearly all the churches in the area have been hit, having catalytic converters on their buses and vans stolen, too.

McFarland said that the best ways to prevent converters from being stolen are to have security cameras and lights near vehicles, or park inside a garage, if possible. The thieves tend to work in areas of isolated, remote locations so that the sawing used to cut the converter off cannot be heard.

McFarland said a few people have been arrested in connection with catalytic converter thefts. He said something needs to be done to find out what scrap yards are taking the converters.

Theyre going somewhere, and people are getting paid for them, said McFarland. I know that they occasionally stumble onto these guys and arrest them, but none of our local scrap yards have been accused.

Danielle Thurman is a reporter for the Daily Journal and can be contacted at dthurman@dailyjournalonline.com or 573-518-3616.

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Central Virginias minority-owned businesses have a shot at getting a share of $50,000 in grant funding from a partnership between the United Way of Greater Charlottesville and the Minority Business Alliance (MBA) of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.

It will be third time the partnership has awarded 10 grants totaling $50,000 since the inaugural funding in 2020. Businesses in Charlottesville and Albemarle, Greene, Orange, Louisa and Fluvanna counties are eligible.

This set of grants is the amazing fruition of a continued and beautiful partnership between United Way and the Chamber Minority Business Alliance that continues to provide new access to capital for minority entrepreneurs, said MBA Treasurer Alex Urpi, founder of Emergent Financial Services.

With these funds, they will be able to continue growing their small businesses, providing local employment, creating generational wealth, and sustaining the diverse economy and community of the Greater Charlottesville area, Urpi said.

The United Way is now accepting applications through July 1 for the Minority Enterprise Grant Opportunity funding.

The money may be used for equipment acquisition, inventory, and operating expenses including business promotion.

We know that gaps in access to capital still exist and hinder minority businesses from scaling, said Ravi Respeto, president of the local United Way. A more diverse business community benefits everyone, and were proud to be working with committed and diligent partners in continuing to reduce barriers to success.

Business owners can visit www.CvilleChamber.com/mba to learn more.

In order to be eligible, a business must be at least 51% owned by one or more minority individuals such as African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, or Native American. Businesses must be in the region, in operation for at least a year, have net income less than $100,000 and no more than 50 employees.

To receive a grant, applicants must either be current members or join the alliance.

Each grant recipient will attend an orientation with the alliance committee to help understand the grant requirements.
By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and UN General Assembly (UNGA) President Abdullah Shahid have discussed cooperation in multiple fields, as well as regional security, Azernews reports, citing the ministry.

During the meeting held on June 13 in Baku, the sides exchanged views on Azerbaijan's activities within the UN, cooperation with specialized agencies of the international organization, future activities, and other issues on the agenda.

I was pleased to host UNGA President Abdulla Shahid at MFA Azerbaijan. We had a substantial exchange over Azerbaijan-United Nations relations, enhancing partnership with UN and its institutions. Ensuring peace, security and sustainable development in the region was mutually highlighted, Bayramov tweeted.

Bayramov welcomed the visitor, noting that the visit of the UN General Assembly president to Azerbaijan has become a tradition. He emphasized that the current visit coincides with Azerbaijan's 30th anniversary of UN membership. The minister congratulated Shahid on his successful presidency of the UN General Assembly at a time when the world is going through a very difficult period.

Bayramov briefed the president on the current situation in the region, including the restoration and construction work in the liberated territories, demining, as well as the steps taken by Azerbaijan to normalize relations with Armenia.

He said that Azerbaijan would continue its efforts in all important areas to ensure peace and stability in the region, including the signing of a future peace agreement, delimitation of borders, the opening of all communications, and other issues.

Shahid hailed Azerbaijan's efforts to build lasting peace in the region.

He congratulated Azerbaijan on its 30th anniversary of UN membership, noting that the country is one of the most engaged member states of the organization. The chairman applauded Azerbaijan's effective presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement. He also congratulated the Azerbaijani president for his leadership in multilateralism.

The chairman recalled the globally important initiatives of the Azerbaijani president against the COVID-19 pandemic, underlining the work done at the national level to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

The sides exchanged views on priority issues of the GA presidency, including work with youth, climate change, gender equality, and other topics. The officials also discussed other issues of mutual interest on the UN agenda.
MONDAY

Tap Talks presentation, 5 p.m., Common Fields, 545 SW Third St., Corvallis. At 5 p.m.: Participate in a writing session hosted by Penny Rosenberg, editor of the Corvallis Gazette-Times, Albany Democrat-Herald and Lebanon Express, with information sheets and other resources for writing powerful letters. At 6 p.m.: Tap Talks presentation, "Intersectional Environmentalism: The Key to Fighting Racism and Climate Change." Using her work with the Washington State Environmental Justice Task Force and as executive director of 500 Women Scientists, Emily Pinckney will discuss how to collaborate with members of underserved communities in the creation of equitable agency practices, legislation and lived experiences. The presentation will be live-streamed on Instagram at 500womenscientists_corvallis. With each purchase of food and drink from Common Fields, Kalamata Bistro and Black Forest Kitchen, 10% of the day's sales will be donated to 500 Women Scientists Ukraine and Poland as part of an all-day dine-out fundraiser.

TUESDAY

Flag Day flag rally, 1 to 2 p.m., by the National Guard Armory, 1100 NW Kings Blvd., Corvallis. Sponsored by the Benton County Republican Women. Information: carolynleewebb76@gmail.com.

WEDNESDAY

"The Mindset of Greek Orthodox Christianity," 7 p.m., Zoom. The Very Rev. Stephen Soot, priest of St. Anne Orthodox Church in Corvallis, will compare and contrast Orthodox Christianity with its Western cousins. Sponsored by the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, Corvallis. The Zoom link is https://bit.ly/3mwek3T, meeting ID 864 6905 0085, passcode 683756. Information: gailwellscommunications@comcast.net.

SATURDAY

Lebanon Area Habitat for Humanity home goods one-day pop-up store, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Lebanon First United Methodist Church, 1890 S. Second St. Truckloads of store donations for sale. Benefits the affiliates upcoming home build, ongoing Home Repair and Preservation Program, and ReStore capital campaign.

North Central Park historic walking tour, 1 p.m.; meet at First Presbyterian Church, 114 SW Eighth St., Corvallis. Enjoy finding the historic gems of the North Central Park neighborhood. If you did not get a chance to go on the tour in May, you have another opportunity. Diverse historic resources and walkability mark this downtown neighborhood tour. See Gothic, Queen Anne, Italianate, Colonial Revival, and Arts and Crafts bungalow homes. The walk begins at the 1909 church, and includes a 1940s courtyard apartment building and Corvallis' first college fraternity house. Your tour guide is Courtney Cloyd. Free registration: Inga.Williams@co.benton.or.us.

Items for this calendar are pulled from the user-generated calendar that runs on our websites. For further information, write to jane.stoltz@lee.net.

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Welcome to The Denver Gazettes Metro Moves. Youll get the latest metro Denver openings, closings, hiring and promotion briefs here. To submit your companys news, drop an email to dennis.huspeni@gazette.com.

New hires

The Adams County Commissioners appointed Noel Bernal as county manager recently, according to a news release.

Bernal served as city manager for Brownsville, Texas, since 2018. He replaces former Adams County Manager Raymond Gonzales, who in December assumed the role of executive vice president of the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce and president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.

We are thrilled Noel will be joining us to lead the Adams County team, Lynn Baca, chair of the Adams County Commissioners, said in the release. With his background, leadership experience, and commitment to serving the public, we are confident Adams County will continue to thrive and foster future growth opportunities.

Prior to his work in Brownsville, Bernal served as the city administrator of La Villa; the first city administrator of Falfurrias; assistant city manager for Taylor, a growing suburb in the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area; and deputy city manager for Coppell in the Dallas Fort-Worth area.

He earned an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Texas Pan American.

My professional values align with the strong leadership and innovative culture already in place, Bernal said in the release. Im prepared to serve and harness the talents of our organization as we boldly advance Adams County into the future.

***

Foley & Lardner LLP hired Tamera Tammy Westerberg as a partner for the Litigation Department of its Denver office, specifically the Business Litigation & Dispute Resolution Practice Group, according to a news release.

Westerberg previously was a partner at Wheeler Trigg ODonnell, where she worked for almost 13 years. She specializes in sophisticated and complex commercial litigation, with a particular emphasis on navigating disputes in the Colorado market.

Tammy is a critical addition to Foleys Denver team and will play a significant role in driving synergies with our fast-growing national business litigation group, Emily Weber, managing partner of Foleys Denver office, said in the release. Tammys reputation as a premier trial lawyer will help us continue to attract additional top talent in Denver and increase Foleys presence in the state.

Westerberg earned her law degree from the University of Denvers Sturm College of Law.

Foley offers a significant platform for trial work and a cross-office collaborative culture that will greatly value my clients and allow me to further expand my practice, Westerberg said in the release.

The Milwaukee-based firm has more than 1,100 attorneys across 25 offices worldwide.
The following people were booked into the Jackson County jail during the latest available reporting period, June 10-13:

Joel Lollie, 48, 2400 Dellwood Cypress Road, Grand Ridge, hold for Washington County.

Robert Betancourt, 44, 4337 Wilton St., Marianna, non-payment of child support.

Jose Pride, 40, 5209 Willis Road, Greenwood, battery (domestic violence).

Devin Hires, 26, 2837 Wynn St., Marianna, possession of methamphetamine, violation of state probation.

Morris White, 30, 12435 Cottonwood Road, Cottonwood, AL, violation of state probation.

Brandy Phillmon, 32, 7257 Shady Grove Road, Grand Ridge, hold for Calhoun County.

Samy Gad, 29, 2828 Barnes St., Marianna, aggravated fleeing and attempting to elude, leaving the scene of accident with property damage, resisting officer without violence.

Kayla Morgan, 27, 5123 19th St., Bradenton, fleeing and attempting to elude, child abuse, battery on law enforcement officer, resisting officer without violence.

Brandon Eastlick, 29, 2686B North St., Cottondale, reckless driving.

Dawn Kirkman, 41, 611 Pinto Drive, Dothan, AL, failure to appear (tag attached not assigned).

Ladarian Brown, 24, 3070 Carters Mill Road, Marianna, shoot/throw missile into dwelling/vehicle/building (two counts).

Jashon Rhynes, 21, 4270 Century Road, Greenwood, flee/attempt to elude law enforcement officer, reckless driving, driving while license suspended or revoked.

Anthony Dault, 31, 2432 Caverns Road, Marianna, trespass property other than structure or conveyance.

Jacquelyn Dawson, 55, 19368 SE V.L. Grant Road, Blountstown, petit theft.

David Fuss, 66, 6 Ridge Trail, Ormond Beach, disorderly conduct.

JAIL POPULATION: 220
With heat indices expected in the triple digits this week, residents are asked to take precautions and know the signs of heat-related illness.

While no heat advisory had been issued as of Monday, the National Weather Service (NWS) in Tallahassee sent out information on what it described as prolonged period of dangerous heat expected in the tri-state area of Alabama, Florida and Georgia this week, particularly between Tuesday and Wednesday.

High temperatures are expected to be in the mid to upper 90s and dew points in the 70s, which mean temps could feel like theyre between 100 to 110 degrees. The heat index is anticipated to increase each afternoon this week, according to the weather service.

A heat advisory may be issued at some point during the week if the heat index values reach the criteria for such an advisory  108 to 112 degrees. Regardless, the NWS stated that the extended period of unseasonably hot and humid weather could be dangerous for vulnerable populations.

The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) also released an advisory Monday asking the public to take extra precautions to prevent heat-illnesses.

Individuals with heart disease, diabetes, obesity, poor circulation, or previous stroke problems as well as people of older and younger ages, and those taking certain medications are at greater risk of becoming ill in hot weather, according to ADPH.

Heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke are common illnesses that occur when someone is exposed to extreme heat for too long. According to ADPH, recognizing the warning signs can help prevent heat-related illness from happening and progressing:

- Heat cramps include muscle pains or spasms particularly to the abdomen, arms or legs, profuse sweat, and a high salt concentration in the sweat.

- Heat exhaustion is associated with heavy sweating, paleness, muscle cramps, tiredness, weakness, dizziness, headache, nausea, or vomiting and fainting. Other possible symptoms may include cool and moist skin, fast and weak pulse rate, fast and shallow breathing, or irritability, according to ADPH. Older adults, those with high blood pressure, and those working or exercising in a hot environment are prone to heat exhaustion. If heat exhaustion is not treated, it may progress to heat stroke.

- Heat stroke or sun stroke is the most serious heat-related illness and is life-threatening. The body is unable to control its temperature, which can rise to 106 degrees F or higher within 10 to 15 minutes, according to ADPH. Signs include an extremely high body temperature, red, hot and dry or moist skin, rapid, strong pulse, throbbing headache, dizziness, nausea, dehydration, combativeness or confusion, and unconsciousness. Heat stroke is a medical emergency and even with immediate treatment, it can be life-threatening or cause serious long-term problems.

The ADPH recommends that people drink plenty of fluids to stay hydrated  although alcohol and caffeinated beverages are not recommended. Stay in an air-conditioned room and keep out of the sun. If you have to be outside, wear a wide-brimmed hat, light-colored and loose-fitting clothes, use a sunscreen of SPF 15 or higher, take cool showers and baths, and keep strenuous activities to a minimum during the hottest times of the day.

Peggy Ussery is a Dothan Eagle staff writer and can be reached at aussery@dothaneagle.com or 334-712-7963. Support her work and that of other Eagle journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at dothaneagle.com.

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Representatives from the Dothan Area Chamber of Commerce, the local Industrial Development Board, and state and local government entities gathered last week to break ground for construction of a 100,000 square-foot speculative building in a Dothan industrial park.

Officials intend for the $4 million spec building to enhance economic development and recruitment of new industry to the area, as studies indicate approximately 85 percent of industrial projects seek existing buildings to move into versus new greenfield development.

The spec building will be a finished shell building needing completion of only flooring, electrical, sprinkler system, and the necessary dock/drive-in doors based on the customized needs of the prospective industry.

The building will be located on a 41-acre site in Sam Houston Industrial Park, located at 102 Austin Court off U.S. 52 East just outside the Ross Clark Circle.

The availability of quality-sized buildings in Alabama needs to be expanded, so seeing the Dothan-Houston County area spearhead this new addition to the states building inventory is a big enhancement to continue Alabamas growth in the industrial development arena, said Greg Canfield, secretary of the Alabama Department of Commerce. We commend all the state, county, city and business leaders working together to put this facility in place to create future opportunities for the Wiregrass region.

The building will be designed for customized completion based on the needs of the prospective industry and provide local and state economic development officials with an arsenal to lure prospective industry to the area and submit on future economic development projects. Due to the speed to market for many industries needing to move fast to meet market opportunities, many prospective projects are seeking existing buildings to close the timing gap to get their projects in place versus new greenfield development.

The building will be expandable to add another 100,000 square feet, will have 25-foot by 50-foot column spacing, and a 32-foot eave height on the 41-acre tract of land. The building will be served by Dothan Utilities (Alabama Municipal Electric Authority) with water, sewer and electric service. Natural gas service will be by Southeast Gas and telecommunication providers will include Troy Cable, WOW!, Spectrum and CenturyLink.

Dothan Mayor Mark Saliba and Houston County Commission Chairman Mark Culver in a joint statement said, Working together with our economic team of city, county, chamber, state, utility partners and Industrial Development board leaders, our priority continues to be to build the infrastructure and capacity to continue to spur economic development growth for our region.

This project represents the fifth speculative building developed in the Dothan area to spur economic activity and the size of buildings have varied over time due to changing market conditions from 40,000 square foot buildings to now 100,000 square foot buildings.

Speculative buildings are built in anticipation of the growth of a community. Based on the outlined plan for a city, county or region, a speculative building is an economic development tool to entice a potential plant expansion or usher in a new manufacturing or distribution operation. The anticipated time for completion of this project is scheduled for fall 2022.
Vietnam gasoline prices set yet another new record Monday after authorities adjusted them upward for the sixth consecutive time.

The price of popular RON 95 gasoline rose by 2.5 percent to VND32,370 ($1.39) a liter, while that of biofuel E5 RON 92 was 2.9 percent costlier at VND31,110.

Prices of diesel and kerosene skyrocketed by 9 percent to VND29,020 and VND27,830 a liter.

Only the mazut price fell to VND20,350 a liter, down 2.6 percent.

Pinning gasoline prices down is a focal point at the ongoing meeting of the National Assembly, where many lawmakers called on the government to cut taxes and fees to lower prices.

The environmental tax, a flat VND4,000 a liter on gasoline, has been halved since April 1. Further reductions are being considered on import, excise, and value-added tax.

On June 8, Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc told lawmakers that the country still has room to reduce price tags.

"The Ministry of Finance will evaluate the impact to request further tax cuts from the government and National Assembly," Phoc said.

For the first five months this year, gasoline prices in Vietnam have been adjusted upward for 13 times and are almost 50 percent costlier year-on-year, Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai has said.

On the global market, Brent crude oil prices have surpassed the March peak, reaching $123.58 a barrel last Wednesday. As of Monday afternoon, they had fallen to over $120 a barrel.
A banana orchard in southern province of Dong Nai. Photo by VnExpress/Thi Ha

Banana exports to China increased by 10 percent in the first five months though total vegetable and fruit exports to that country were down 28 percent.

Vietnam was China's largest supplier of bananas at 742,000 tons or 43 percent of its total imports, according to the Vietnam Fruit & Vegetables Association (Vinafruit).

Vo Quang Huy, director of agriculture firm Huy Long An Co. Ltd, said his company's banana exports to China were up almost 30 percent year-on-year despite the Covid-19 restrictions and safety measures in place there.

Nguyen Van Cu, director of a northern exporter, agreed, saying his companys exports doubled to around 500 tons.

"Prices have surged from VND3,000 (13 U.S. cents) a kilogram last year to VND5,000-8,000."

Vinafruit chairman Dang Phuc Nguyen attributed the rise to falling output in China, where banana farms have been plagued by Fusarium wilt, a lethal fungal disease that has no cure, and rising input costs.

But packaging and logistic costs of up to VND13,000 a kilogram eat up profits, exporters said.

They expect exports and prices to rise sharply in the second half of this year.

Vietnamese exports need to improve their quality and origin traceability to increase their chances of entering the Chinese market, Nguyen added.
The U.S. has initiated an antidumping and countervailing investigation into Vietnam and Malaysias wooden cabinets, which it suspects were imported from China.

The investigation was launched on June 7, with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) requested to provide its final conclusion within 300-365 days, according to a statement from the Trade Remedies Authorities of Vietnam.

The DOC suspects that Vietnamese and Malaysian manufacturers import parts or completed products from China and finish them locally before exporting them to the U.S.

The probe is based on a petition by American Kitchen Cabinet Alliance.

Between 2019 and 2021 (after the U.S. imposed duties on China), the imports of products investigated for alleged dumping fell by 54 percent to $1.6 billion, according to U.S. official data.
By Trend

Irans Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told the United Nations chief that the resolution proposed by the US and E3 was hasty and political, Trend reports citing IRNA.

Amirabdollahian and Antonio Guterres spoke on the phone on Saturday and exchanged views on regional and international developments.

The foreign minister expressed support for the continuation of the ceasefire in Yemen and emphasized that the blockade should be completely removed to prepare a proper ground for further negotiation between Yemeni groups.

He called the continuation of aggression by the Zionist Regime on Syrian soil and military assault on Damascus civil airport a violation of the UN charter, adding that conditions of the region have proved that malign activities of the Zionist regime against security and stability in the region would backfire.

Guterres highlighted the importance of continuance of the talks in Vienna, Austria, to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and said that diplomacy is the best path to solve disputes between Tehran and the negotiating parties.

The UN secretary-general said that the resolution passed against Iran by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has a recommendatory content.

He praised Irans constructive efforts and positions in support of the truce in Yemen.

The UN chief also said that the Astana meeting on Syria is a proper ground for addressing the crisis in this country and the concerns between Syria and Turkey.
Passengers at Noi Bai Airport in Hanoi, April 29, 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Dinh Quang

Aviation officials expect the number of international passengers going through Vietnamese airports this year to reach 10 million, or around 24 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) said at an aviation forum held in Da Nang City late last week the aviation industry is en route to recovery after the government lifted all Covid restrictions on both domestic and international flights.

It estimated the number of air passengers would reach 70 percent of pre-pandemic numbers to 70-80 million this year, including 10 million foreign visitors.

Currently, Vietnam has resumed commercial flights to and from 20 international destinations, including its major tourism markets like Japan, South Korea, India, the U.S., and Southeast Asian countries.

Dinh Viet Son, deputy head of CAAV, said the aviation recovery is a crucial factor to boost tourism revival.

The government removed all restrictions on international flights on Feb. 15.

On March 15 the government allowed quarantine-free entry and resumed its visa waiver for citizens of 24 countries, including Japan, South Korea and some European ones.

It has also removed most other entry restrictions like medical declaration and Covid tests.
Join us for the book launch and a discussion about how a Biblical understanding of values, especially human dignity, should be the basis for European cooperation, a topic explored in the book Europe, back to the roots! by author Harm-Jan Rouwendal.

A special guest, Dr. Matt Williams, Head of Biblical Insight at the Jubilee Center in Cambridge will give a reaction and shortly present his work with Sallux on A Relational Vision of Europe: Revitalizing Christian Democracy Today.

The discussion will take place in Room 1H1 in the European Parliament building in Brussels from 12:00-13:00, followed by a light lunch.

The event is free and open to the public but registration is required.
A free and democratic society cannot exist without a robust, free, and independent press. Thats because journalists effectively and consistently expose activities and practices, including government deception and corruption, that cripple and kill democratic institutions. They keep the public informed. By doing so, they keep the government and the powerbrokers honest.Attempting to control the flow of information and eliminate the publication of unfavorable or critical news, state actors and non-state proxies for authoritarian leaders and governments have been waging extensive and often brutal campaigns to silence independent media. Journalists, editors, publishers and other media workers have been harassed, smeared with false accusations, detained, physically attacked -- even murdered.According to Journalists Without Borders, globally, nearly eleven hundred journalists have been killed over the past decade. Since the beginning of this year, 26 journalists and 2 media workers have been killed. Another 460 journalists and 18 media workers are detained.The United States remains deeply concerned over the targeted harassment of journalists in many places around the world, said U.S. Representative to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations Lisa Carty. This year, the safety and working conditions for journalists within Russia and in the parts of Ukraine under Russias control remain particularly problematic.At least seven journalists have been killed while covering Russias unprovoked and unwarranted war against Ukraine. Reportedly, at least 21 more journalists have been unjustly detained within the areas of Ukraine controlled by Russia, many of whose fate is unknown. These figures may only be the tip of the iceberg and they highlight the Russian governments fear of truthful reporting of its war.Speaking at the UN Security Councils meeting on the protection of journalists, Ambassador Carty noted that around the world women in journalism are disproportionately impacted by threats and attacks, which are more often gendered and sexualized than threats against their male counterparts and increasingly take place online.The United States condemns all threats, harassment, and violence against journalists and media workers.A free and independent media is essential to democracy and plays a crucial role in the free exchange of information and ideas, combatting corruption, and making government more accountable and transparent, said Ambassador Carty. No journalists should face harassment, intimidation, or violence for doing their job.
BUTTE, Mont.  Steve McGrath stood in an empty lot a block from his home watching for dust.

In this southwestern Montana city nicknamed "The Richest Hill on Earth," more than a century of mining left polluted soil and water that has taken decades to clean.

But at that moment, looking across the road toward Butte's last operating open-pit mine, McGrath was worried about the air. "Here comes another truck," McGrath said, pointing to a hillside across the street as a massive dump truck unloaded ore for the mine's crusher. A brown cloud billowed into the air. "And there's the dust."

In the Greeley neighborhood, where McGrath lives, many people have a hard time believing the air they breathe is safe. A two-lane road separates the roughly 700 homes from the Continental mine, an open-pit copper and molybdenum mine operated by Montana Resources.

Residents have received assurances that the level of particulate matter in their neighborhood isn't hazardous, but some doubt those standards protect human health. People breathe in particles all the time, but the size, abundance, and chemical makeup determine whether they're dangerous. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is evaluating whether its threshold for the density of harmful particulate matter should be lowered, saying it may not go far enough.

McGrath, 73, grew up in Butte and has long been one of the voices in the neighborhood asking whether the dust that settles on his roof and car includes a dangerous mix of toxic metals. "Is this a health concern?" McGrath said. "We've never gotten a really satisfactory answer."

For years, the company and the state Department of Environmental Quality have collected air samples in the neighborhood. The results have been consistent: Pollution levels don't warrant alarm.

Montana Resources established a monitor to track metals in the air around Greeley, and an independent review found no threats to human health, which the state health department backed. However, additional studies, which government and mine officials have often bucked, have indicated potential problems  such as elevated levels of metals, including aluminum and copper, in the area and traces of arsenic and lead in the ground  and called for more testing.

This year, the nonprofit advocacy group Montana Environmental Information Center asked a contractor to review the data that Montana Resources and DEQ collected. Ron Sahu, the mechanical engineer who did the review, said not enough research has been done to determine conclusively whether the mine is harming Butte residents. According to Sahu, the data had multiple shortcomings, such as time gaps. He also said that one air-monitoring station may miss harder-hit areas and that the risk to residents of prolonged exposure to the dust is still unknown.

On a recent night in Butte, Sahu presented his findings to mine officials, representatives of the state, a local health advisory committee, and a handful of Greeley residents. State health and environmental quality staffers repeated what has been said before: All the recorded emissions meet federal standards.

Even so, Sahu said, the pollution levels exceed the public health safety recommendations made last year by the World Health Organization. For example, the EPA's maximum annual average for the finest particles is a concentration of 12 micrograms per cubic meter, while the WHO's limit is 5. From 2018 through 2020, the Greeley air-monitoring station recorded annual averages that range from more than 7 to nearly 10, according to Sahu's review.

The EPA is studying whether to lower its 12-microgram standard and expects to release any proposed changes this summer.

In the meeting, resident Larry Winstel said he didn't care about the data. He held up a square sheet of plexiglass covered in dust. "This is what's on my picnic table," he said. "This is three weeks' worth. How much of this is being deposited over a year?"

The manager of environmental affairs for Montana Resources, Mark Thompson, said the company goes beyond what's required to mitigate dust. He said it uses 240-ton trucks to water the mine's gravel roads and air filtration systems to trap particulate matter.

Thompson said he agrees more must be done to determine whether air in Greeley is unsafe and, if so, why. "If there is a problem in that community, I want to know about it," Thompson said. "My son, my daughter-in-law, and my two baby granddaughters live a block from the main gate of the mine."

Butte became a gold and silver mining camp in the 1860s, and people traveled from around the world to work in the city. The area was the battleground of the Copper Kings in the 1890s as mine owners raced to extract the metal used to feed the country's growing electrical infrastructure and manufacturing industry.

People who grew up in Butte and nearby didn't often question what the presence of mines or smelters meant for their health. The extractive industries offered good jobs. Many are proud their city helped electrify the nation and produced as much as a third of the world's copper supply during its heyday.

Atlantic Richfield Co., which bought the Anaconda Co., shut down the Butte mines in 1982. Butte and a stretch of the Clark Fork River, where the mining waste washed downstream, were designated a federal Superfund site in 1983. A few years later, Montana Resources began operating, and its jobs helped steady the town's population at about 30,000. The cleanup of the historical lead, arsenic, and other contaminants continues today.

The boundary of that work borders the Greeley neighborhood to the west, while the Continental mine cups the neighborhood to the northeast. Some residents worry the mine's operations add another layer of harm.

"I know about the air-monitoring station down here and that they say it doesn't pick up anything dangerous," said Bob Brasher, who has a view of the Continental mine from his front yard. "But I don't see how it couldn't when we have those days and you look out here and you can see the dust blowing this way and settling."

Just down the road, Haley Rehm said she didn't think about the dust until a recent test of her 2-year-old son's blood found elevated lead levels. The cause isn't clear  toxic metals can be ingested in multiple ways. But the mine's proximity prompted Rehm to test her home for lead; she was still waiting for the results in May.

People often speculate that local cancer cases are linked to the area's mining past and present.

Jeanette Cooksey, 70, can't remember a time she wasn't worried about the dust. It has especially been on her mind since she was diagnosed with stage 4 uterine cancer two years ago. "I have to wonder if living in this neighborhood my whole life has something to do with it," Cooksey said.

A state health department analysis found the incidence rate for cancer from 1981 through 2010 wasn't elevated in Silver Bow County compared with the rest of the state.

Not everyone is worried. For some people, even talking about potential health effects equates to an anti-mine mentality.

Al Shields rolled his eyes when asked whether the dust concerned him and nodded toward his clean trucks, saying they hadn't been washed for days. "What people don't understand is if the mine goes, Butte is done," he said. "If you don't like it, leave."

Montana Resources employs 380 people and is a significant source of tax revenue. Those pushing for more research into the mine's effects and what can be done about the dust have said they aren't trying to close the operation. "We want a clean and healthy environment," said Ed Banderob, with the Greeley Neighborhood Community Development Corporation Inc.

When Butte's health advisory committee meets again in the fall, the state will share the air-sampling data it has collected in the hopes that staffers can answer lingering questions. Meanwhile, Montana Resources hopes to set up more air-monitoring equipment around the neighborhood by the end of the year.

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CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP)  Lesser prairie chickens once numbered in the thousands throughout the American West, thriving on the prairielands of eastern New Mexico and the American West.

But in recent years, the chickens numbers declined amid growing development in the oil and gas and agriculture sectors throughout the region and conservationists worried the unique bird could be in danger of extinction.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed federal protections for the species last year under the Endangered Species Act, seeking an endangered listing for the bird in southeast New Mexico and West Texas and a threatened listing in the rest of the animals range which extends through Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas.

A species is considered endangered by the agency when its extinction is believed imminent, while threatened means the animal could soon warrant endangered status.

Both statuses results in the federal government developing a recovery plan and setting aside acreage deemed critical habitat of the species at risk.

A final decision on the lesser prairie chickens listing was expected this month, records show, and it could restrict access to lands needed for the chickens recovery and impact some of New Mexicos biggest industries, the Carlsbad Current-Argus reported.

Thats why conservation bank Lesser prairie chickens Conservation proposed a habitat conservation plan for the oil and gas industry. It was approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service on June 3.

It would allow oil and gas operations to occur within areas where the chicken could dwell.

Energy companies buy protections from the conservation bank for the areas known as strongholds, while conducting certain conservation practices on the lands amid their operations, and in exchange are exempted from future restrictions should the species ultimately be listed.

They receive a permit for incidental take which refers to a number of birds that are allowed to be killed during development.

The intention, said LPC Conservation Chief Executive Officer Wayne Walker, is to save the animal in danger of dying out while also allowing essential economic drivers to continue.

That balance, he said, is essential as it enlists the help of companies that hold large swaths of land.

We believe using a market-based business model is the best way to secure the desired outcomes for all involved to finally deliver quantifiable conservation benefits to the (the bird), he said. The species is a key indicator of the health of the southern Great Plains. LPC Conservation offers a legally defensible permit that should be of interest to this industry.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement that enrollees would be able to avoid future regulatory shifts while helping to conserve the bird.

The agency also published an environmental assessment in May that showed take permits would impact up to 500,000 acres of chicken habitat in all five states  200,000 acres in the southern population segment in New Mexico and Texas and 300,000 acres in the northern population.

When implemented, the agency estimates the plan would lead to the restoration and continued management of up to a million acres of chicken habitat.

This would have no significant impact on the environment or human activity, per a report from the Fish and Wildlife Service, and no further analysis was needed.

For more than two decades, we have prioritized efforts with our partners to employ all available tools to facilitate the conservation of the lesser prairie-chicken, the statement read. Working with others is essential to protecting ecosystems that benefit wildlife and economies.

Locally, Carlsbad-based conservation non-profit CEHMM (The Center for Excellence) reported it undertook several projects to protect the lesser prairie chicken in early 2022.

CEHMM offers conservation agreements also approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service for private and public lands.

Similar to the habitat conservation plan, enrollees agree to conservation practices to avoid future regulatory burdens if a listing is approved.

CEHMM reported it did not yet find any leks, or prairie chicken breeding grounds, during a week-long survey conducted March 23, per its report for the first quarter of 2022 published last month.

The oil and gas industry so far enrolled 508,737 acres within the birds occupied range in New Mexico in CEHMMs program, per the report, while 891,293 acres were enrolled by ranchers and another 348,551 acres were enrolled by the New Mexico State Land Office.

That means about 1.2 million acres were enrolled in total, just more than half of the 2.1 million acres CHEMM identified as the birds occupied range.

Johnathan Hayes, executive director of the southwest region for the Audubon Society, said that effort to conserve the bird while protecting local industry was crucial to ensure local communities are impacted as little as possible by government decision-making.

He said the Society supports the chickens listing, but hopes plans like LPC Conservations and others will provide economic support amid conservation efforts.

The listing decision is the right way to go, but were recognizing that that does have a cost, Hayes said. We want to make sure the negative impact that happens to industry, that were allowing industry to have some ability to predict what those regulations will be and what that impact will be.

Hayes said work to save the bird could also restore the land and ecosystem, supporting the broader environment from human impacts to climate change.

Birds are the canary in the coal mine. This is a good example of us seeing the loss of suitable habitat that is driving the decline of these birds is absolutely an impact weve had on the landscape, the climate, he said.

This isnt just about the bird.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Carlsbad Current-Argus.

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State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe speaks on China's vision for regional order at the fifth plenary session of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Sunday. Li Xiaowei/For China Daily

But no one should underestimate strong resolve of military, defense minister says

China's development is not a threat, but a significant contribution to world peace and development, and the country will also firmly defend its interests when necessary, State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe said at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Sunday.

"China's development is irreversible, and the country firmly adheres to the path of peaceful development," he said at the international security forum in a speech on the theme of China's vision for regional order.

Wei said China's achievements have been made through its people's hard work and at a huge cost, instead of colonization, exploitation and plunder. "The Chinese military is always an army of peace and will also resolutely safeguard the country's sovereignty, security and development interests," he said.

Wei repeated China's position on Taiwan. "The Taiwan question is China's internal affair and the unification with the motherland will absolutely be achieved," he said, adding that "Taiwan separatists" will not come to a good end and foreign interference will categorically fail.

"Peaceful reunification is the largest aspiration of the Chinese people, and we are willing to put our best efforts into that," Wei said.

But he warned that "if anyone dares to separate Taiwan from the motherland, China has no choice but to go to war, fight at all cost, and fight to the end."

"No one should ever underestimate the strong resolve and ability of the Chinese military to safeguard its territorial integrity," he said.

Wei also spoke on China-US relations, which he said are now standing at a critical point.

"China opposes defining the China-US ties as a competition," he said, adding that the US would make a historic and strategic mistake if it regards China as a threat, rival or even enemy.

He urged the US not to smear or try to contain China, not to interfere in its internal affairs or harm its interests.

"The two militaries should enhance strategic communication to avoid miscalculation and manage risks and crises to avoid conflicts," Wei said.

He also expressed opposition to hegemonism and power politics.

Just on Saturday, the day before Wei spoke, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin detailed his country's "Indo-Pacific" strategy in a speech and accused China of threatening to undermine security, stability and prosperity in the region.

Wei responded by criticizing the US's "Indo-Pacific" strategy as a way to "create small circles under the pretext of freedom and openness".

"The so-called Indo-Pacific strategy is designed to contain another country by coercing regional countries and hyping up conflicts against certain countries," Wei said. "We believe any kind of strategy should go with the trends of history and the time, and should benefit the regional stability and countries there."

The Asia-Pacific region is the most dynamic and promising economic powerhouse in the world, he said, and all countries should contribute to pursuing lasting peace and universal security in the region.

Zhang Chi, an associate professor at the People's Liberation Army National Defence University, said that according to his observations, most Asia Pacific countries have a shared opinion with China on the region's security and would not follow the US to contain China.

"I could see many Southeast Asian delegates nod and applaud when hearing Wei's words of 'enhancing communication and avoiding miscalculation'," said Zhang, also a member of Chinese delegation, who has listened to several speeches by defense officials from Southeast Asian countries at the Dialogue.

Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhuo, a researcher at the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Science, said that the US is attempting to maintain its hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region by creating a sense of insecurity in the region.

"The 'China threat' theory would be the best catalyst for a sense of insecurity that could make regional countries look toward the US," he said, noting that the military is the best way for the US to maintain its predominance in the Asia-Pacific region.

Lieutenant General Zhang Zhenzhong, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, said the US's "Indo-Pacific" strategy is one that causes division, instigates confrontation and undermines peace in the Asia-Pacific. It serves only the US's own interests, and therefore is doomed to fail."

Wei, in his speech, emphasized that China aims to make the South China Sea a sea of "peace, friendship and cooperation" and that region's countries should remain vigilant and prevent any interference from countries outside the region.
* Delegates and experts highly appraised China's policy of safeguarding multilateralism, regional peace and stability, and building a shared future for humanity introduced during the three-day summit.

* The world is facing multiple crises rarely seen in history. The way forward is to uphold and practice multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind, said Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe.

* Many senior officials and analysts believe that the so-called Indo-Pacific strategy would stir up tensions instead and cause regional conflicts, all in an effort to contain China's development.

SINGAPORE, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The 19th Shangri-La Dialogue, a premier defense and security summit in the Asia-Pacific region, concluded here on Sunday, with many delegates recognizing peace and development as common goals while urging dialogue and cooperation to maintain regional and global stability.

Delegates and experts also highly appraised China's policy of safeguarding multilateralism, regional peace and stability, and building a shared future for humanity introduced during the three-day summit.

Meanwhile, they cautioned against geopolitical strategies that bring division, instigate confrontation and undermine peace in the region, adding that any attempt to divide countries is doomed to fail.

GSI PROVIDES NEW GUIDE TO PEACEFUL DEVELOPMENT

The Global Security Initiative (GSI) proposed by China is another global public good, injecting confidence in global security and demonstrating China's commitment as a major country to upholding world peace and stability.

The world is facing multiple crises rarely seen in history. The way forward is to uphold and practice multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind, said Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe.

Noting that the Asia-Pacific is the world's most vibrant and promising economic powerhouse, Wei urged countries to strive for the bright prospect of building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future that enjoys durable peace and provides security for all.

During the summit, Malaysia's Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said security cooperation is essential.

In a world blanketed with populist decisions, with an eye only on the next election, Hussein said it is vital to think about a more peaceful and stable future.

The GSI has won high praise from experts. Woo Su-keun, director at the Institute of East Asian Studies of Korea, told Xinhua that the GSI is rich in content and highly relevant in upholding a vision for maintaining global peace and security.

Woo said the GSI is in line with China's vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, adding that it emphasizes win-win cooperation and support for genuine multilateralism and offers Chinese solutions to jointly safeguard world peace.

Kin Phea, director-general of the International Relations Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said China consistently upholds a vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.

"China has been playing a more important role in safeguarding global and regional peace and stability," he said.

Chen Gang, assistant director of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore, said that China wants to build a peaceful Asia-Pacific region and reiterated its promise on no-first-use of nuclear weapons at the summit, which is of significant importance, particularly in the current backdrop of growing nuclear threats.

Under the GSI, China calls for establishing a community of security in the Asia-Pacific region, which is entirely different from the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy that seeks to form exclusive blocs to counter China, Chen said.

Gu Qingyang, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore, told Xinhua that Wei's remarks emphasize solidarity and cooperation.

Gu said China is an important contributor to world peace, playing a crucial role in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic and stimulating a global economic recovery.

CALLS FOR COOPERATION, COMMUNICATION

During this year's dialogue, delegates urged countries to carry out security cooperation, with the interests of all parties guaranteed.

On Sunday, Singaporean Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said that the world stands at a potentially dangerous point in history. Ng said Asia desires a regional inter-dependency that is productive and mutually beneficial.

Gu noted that many delegates from developing countries have expressed hope for peaceful development in the region rather than conflict.

Seun Sam, a policy analyst at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said China believes in peaceful development and win-win cooperation. "China does not only want to grow alone but also wants other countries to grow with it."

Woo said a Cold War mentality featuring opposing camps must be abandoned, and each country's circumstances should be considered. The right of each country to choose its own development path should be fully respected.

U.S. "INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY" DOOMED TO FAILURE

Although U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin claims that the so-called Indo-Pacific strategy would promote freedom, openness and prosperity in the region, many senior officials and analysts believe that it would stir up tensions instead and cause regional conflicts, all in an effort to contain China's development.

Many officials and experts criticized the Indo-Pacific strategy for attempting to divide the region.

China believes that any regional strategy should bolster regional peace, stability and the shared interests of all, Wei sad.

"Its true intention is to use this strategy to maintain the U.S.' hegemonic system," said Lieutenant General Zhang Zhenzhong, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission.

It is a strategy that causes division, instigates confrontation and undermines peace in the Asia-Pacific region, Zhang said. "The U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy is a strategy that goes against historical trends and prevailing will of regional countries. It only serves the U.S. own interests and therefore is doomed to failure."

Gu said that the purposes of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy are to maintain its own hegemonic interests and cover up its intention to start a new Cold War.

The United States would use the strategy to throw the Asia-Pacific region into a geopolitical conflict, destroying China's chances for a peaceful rise, said Gu.

Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto called for an Asian approach to resolving challenges in the region, saying that "each country has their own way of solving their problems, but each country has to maintain good relations with their neighbors" and with all the major countries of the world, noting "the question here is that we must always consider and respect the national interests and rights."

Prabowo said countries should respect China's rise. "We have some differences. We will strive to solve those differences in an amicable and in a mutually beneficial way. That is the Asian way."

Joseph Matthews, senior professor at the BELTEI International University in Phnom Penh, said U.S. strategy in the region directly threatens the centrality of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The so-called Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, initiated by the United States, aims to counter China's influence in the region by unsettling ASEAN, he said.

Koh King Kee, president of the Center for New Inclusive Asia, a non-government Malaysian think tank, said ASEAN and China maintain close economic and trade ties thanks to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Koh said that despite only serving regional geopolitical interests, the Indo-Pacific strategy cannot harm ASEAN-China relations.
Illustrative photo (Source: VNA)



Hanoi still reported the highest number of infections on the day with 170 cases, followed by Yen Bai with 64 and Quang Ninh with 25.

The national caseload reached 10,731,812.

A total 5,274 COVID-19 patients were given the all clear on June 12, bringing the number of recoveries so far to 9,553,193.

There are 24 patients needing breathing support, while one death was recorded in the past 24 hours. The total fatalities stood at 43,083.

By June 11, the country had injected 223,511,691 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, including 4,617,162 first doses and 645,880 second doses for children from five to under-12 years old.

President Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to be closed for maintenance

The Mausoleum of President Ho Chi Minh and the Monument to Heroic Martyrs in Hanoi will be closed to the public from June 13 to August 15 for annual maintenance this year, reported Vietnam News Agency.

The Mausoleum of President Ho Chi Minh (Photo: nhandan.vn)

Respect-paying activities for President Ho Chi Minh and heroic martyrs will resume on August 16, announced the management board of President Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum on June 10.

President Ho Chi Minh passed away on September 2, 1969. His body was embalmed and placed in a glass coffin inside the granite mausoleum.

The mausoleum has become an important landmark of the capital city and is integral to the political and social history of Vietnam.

Vietnamese fresh lychees popular with Japanese consumers

Vietnams fresh lychees have been exported to Japan for several years and the fruit has gradually been accepted by local consumers due to its freshness and succulence, reported the Voice of Vietnam.

Japanese officials and diplomats of other countries in Japan sample Vietnamese fresh lychees

Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnamese fresh lychees have been shipped to Japan with increasing quantity, meeting the demanding markets safety and hygiene requirements.

Japan imports lychees from Taiwan (China) and Thailand. But since the fruit grown in Vietnam hit Japanese shelves, local consumers have made quite interesting comparisons.

This is the first time I have tasted lychee from Vietnam. The fruit is very succulent and delicious. Compared with other lychees on sale in Japan, the Vietnamese fruit is sweeter and tastier, says a Japanese resident.

A young Japanese man even links lychee tasting to health improvement.

Vietnamese lychee is very fresh and succulent. Lychee eating is very good for health. In summer, the lychee, if mixed with other drinks, will become a good source of food that can help beat the heat, says the young man.

This girl says she prefers Vietnamese fresh lychee to the similar fruit imported from other countries due to its its freshness and succulence.

Since December 15, 2019, the Japanese Government has officially allowed Vietnamese businesses to ship fresh lychees to this market, and the export volume of this fruit has steadily increased year by year.

Ta Duc Minh, Vietnamese trade counselor in Japan, points out approximately 400 tonnes of fresh lychees were exported to Japan in 2021 and they were sold out.

In the near future, the trade office will coordinate with domestic agencies and Japanese importers to popularize Vietnamese agricultural products including lychees in Japan. In addition, we will also organize many marketing events to promote Vietnamese lychees and other agricultural products through Foodex or similar festivals, says Minh.

Currently, first shipments of Vietnamese lychees grown in Bac Giang and Hai Duong have arrived at Japanese ports and the juicy fruit is expected to hit local shelves very soon.

Along with other Vietnamese fruits such as dragon fruit and banana, Vietnamese lychee is anticipated to gain a firm foothold in this demanding market.

Meeting marks World Oceans Day, Vietnams sea-island week in Phu Yen

A meeting took place in the south-central province of Phu Yen to celebrate World Oceans Day (June 8) and the Vietnam Sea and Island Week, which began on June 1, reported Vietnam News Agency.

Caitlin Wiesen, Acting Interim Resident Coordinator for the United Nations (UN) and UN Development Programme Resident Representative in Vietnam, speaks at the meeting (Photo: VNA)

Held in a hybrid format, the event attracted the participation of central and local officials, and representatives of coastal localities and international organisations in Vietnam.

In his remarks, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tran Hong Ha believed that Vietnam will achieve more in its general natural resources management and environmental protection of seas and islands in contribution to preserve the green planet and clean ocean of mankind.

Head of the Party Central Committee's Economic Commission Tran Tuan Anh highlighted the Party and State's consistent policy on sustainable and comprehensive development of seas and islands as well as marine resources and economy in association with ensuring national defence, security, safety, sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction at sea.

Caitlin Wiesen, Acting Interim Resident Coordinator for the United Nations (UN) and UN Development Programme Resident Representative in Vietnam, said the UN is proud to have cooperated with the Government of Vietnam in such important areas as climate change, circular economy, especially marine spatial planning for sustainable oceans growth.

Wiesen hoped for the ties' further development toward an environmentally friendly future by 2050.

Chairman of the Phu Yen Peoples Committee Tran Huu The said the participation of leaders, localities and international friends are spreading the message of protecting the environment, seas, and islands.

The Vietnam Sea and Island Week 2022 focuses on the theme sustainable development of sea-based economy in association with preservation of biodiversity and marine ecosystems, aiming to address challenges and limitations in developing the marine economy in Vietnam.

In response to World Oceans Day, themed Revitalisation: Collective Action for the Ocean, the Vietnam Sea and Island Week 2022 highlights sustainable development of sea-based economy in association with preservation of biodiversity and marine ecosystems, aiming to address challenges and limitations in developing the marine economy in Vietnam./.




Cai Mep port (Photo: baohaiquanvietnam.vn)

According to the Vietnam News Agency, the CPPI report is developed annually to evaluate the worldwide seaport efficiency, based on criteria related to the total time needed for completing the loading and unloading container of each voyage at a port for the entire year.



Vietnam has several ports ranked in this list, in which, Cai Mep port ranked 11th by the "statistical approach" index - increased by 38 places compared to 2020 and ranked 13th by the administrative approach index increased 5 rankings against 2020.

In Cai Mep  Thi Vai area, Tan Cang - Cai Mep International Terminal under Saigon Newport Corporation currently holds 40% of the market share, with 10 international service routes weekly connecting with North America, Canada, Europe and Inter Asia.

The data was provided by the world's 11 largest shipping lines for a total of 370 global terminals/port clusters.

An Giang eyes over 20 trillion VND in investment

The Mekong Delta province of An Giang is aiming to attract more than 20 trillion VND (862.73 million USD) for at least 15 local projects in 2022 following a freshly signed investment promotion programme.

These projects are involved in transport, urban infrastructure, agriculture, industry, and trade-service-tourism, said the Vietnam News Agency.

An Giang provinces Long Xuyen city  Photo for illustration (Source: tcnn.vn)

Highlights among them include the 1,400m Nang Gu bridge costing about 688 billion VND; a 200ha centre for rice and freshwater aquatic products worth 9 trillion VND; the 100ha Xuan To industrial park worth some 2.5 trillion VND; and the 1,050ha Nui Cam tourism site that will cost approximately 7.5 trillion VND, among others.



Tran Anh Thu, Vice Chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee, said this year, An Giang is looking for capital in projects that enable firms to participate in the global value chain and production network; save land and apply clean and environmentally friendly technologies; create high added value, and contribute significantly to exports and State budget revenue.

On the other hand, projects that violate regulations and cause public concerns will have their licences revoked, he said.

In 2021, An Giang attracted 947 billion VND in 18 projects, including one foreign-funded project.

Vietnam, Burundi sign agreement on visa exemption

Vietnam and Burundi have signed an agreement on visa exemption for the two countries citizens holding diplomatic and official passports.

Ambassador Dang Hoang Giang, Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the United Nations and Ambassador Zephyrin Maniratanga, Permanent Representative of Burundi to the United Nations, sign the agreement (Photo: baoquocte.vn)

An agreement to this effect was inked on June 10 by Ambassador Dang Hoang Giang, Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the United Nations on behalf of the Government of Vietnam, and Ambassador Zephyrin Maniratanga, Permanent Representative of Burundi to the United Nations on behalf of the Government of Burundi, reported by the Vietnam News Agency.

Under the agreement, Vietnamese citizens and Burundian citizens holding valid diplomatic or official passports are exempted from visas with a temporary stay of no more than 90 days from the date of entry.

Citizens of the two countries who are members of diplomatic missions, consular offices or representative offices at international organisations located in the others territory, and members of their families holding diplomatic or official passports are exempt from visa during the working term.

The signing of the agreement is expected to facilitate the exchange of delegations between the two countries, contributing to promoting bilateral relations between Vietnam and Burundi.

Vietnam and Burundi established diplomatic relations on April 16, 1975.

Nearly 94,000 students enter 10th-grade entrance exam in Ho Chi Minh City

Nearly 94,000 students in Ho Chi Minh City entered the entrance exam for 10th-grade public schools on June 11, according to the city Department of Education and Training.

A test room at Bui Thi Xuan High School in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City (Photo: NDO)

This years high school entrance exam will take place on June 11 and 12, including three subjects Literature, Mathematics and Foreign Language, said the Nhan Dan Newspaper.

The Mathematics and Literature exams are 120 minutes while the time for the Foreign Language exam is 90 minutes.

The entrance exam is held at 150 exam venues including 3,953 exam rooms. The city Department of Education and Training has arranged for more than 11,800 teachers and about 1,800 security guards to observe the exam.

A new regulation in this years 10th-grade entrance exam is that candidates have to keep their items 25m away from the exam room.

Ho Chi Minh City has 114 public senior high schools which will enrol about 72,800 students in the 2022-2023 school year. It means that more than 13,000 students will not be admitted to public schools this year.

PVEPs contribution to State budget exceeds 92 percent of target

The PetroVietnam Exploration Production Corporation (PVEP) contributed over 7.99 trillion VND (over 344,66 million USD) to the State budget in the first five months of 2022, surpassing the target by 92 percent.

A drilling rig of PVEP at Rang Dong field - Illustrative image (Photo: PVEP)

According to the Vietnam News Agency, to take advantage of high oil prices in the world market, PVEP has taken solutions to ensure stable and safe operations of its projects.

Accordingly, output in May reached 0.33 million tonnes of oil equivalent, surpassing 19 percent of the monthly plan.

Thanks to the completion of exploitation targets, PVEP's revenue in the January - May period reached 19.99 trillion VND, 84 percent higher than the goal.

In June, PVEP has continued to prepare for the construction of drilled wells and maintained stable mining activities.

The firm has also implemented measures to improve oil recovery coefficient; optimise the exploitation of wells, and increase the exploitation flow of potential wells in order to ensure the oil and gas production output at home and abroad will reach 0.81 million tonnes of oil equivalent in the second quarter./.
Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen presents a souvenir to Mr. Agustaviano Sofjan, new Indonesian Consul General to Ho Chi Minh City. (Photo: hcmcpv.org.vn)

He made the statement during his reception for new Indonesian Consul General to Ho Chi Minh City Agustaviano Sofjan, on June 10.

During the reception, Secretary Nen expressed his thanks for the Indonesian Consul Generals efforts to maintain the bilateral relationship when the two countries have always coordinated strictly at regional and international forums, especially in ASEAN, in order to confirm ASEANs central role in maintaining peace, stability and cooperation in the region and in the world.

According to Secretary Nguyen Van Nen, the relationship between Ho Chi Minh City and Indonesia in recent years has also developed. By the end of 2021, Indonesia had 56 investment projects with more than USD41 million, ranking 31st out of 116 countries and territories investing in Ho Chi Minh City, including successful start-up projects in services and tourism. Two-way trade reached about USD1.4 billion in 2021.

He added that currently, Ho Chi Minh City has basically controlled the COVID-19 pandemic and is focusing on speeding up the economic recovery after the pandemic, with a focus on developing supply chains, increasing economic growth, strengthening technology innovation and digital transformation, building smart city, gradually building an international financial center to create new driving force for socio-economic development and improving people's quality of life.

He expressed his hope that Ho Chi Minh City and Indonesia will have many activities to strengthen links and support each other in economic recovery after the pandemic, especially connecting markets, investment and tourism, innovative start-ups, promoting cooperation in the fields of digital economy, and developing logistics infrastructure.

He also affirmed that the cooperation relationship between Vietnam and Indonesia is very important for the prosperous development of the ASEAN Community. This year marks the 55th anniversary of the founding of ASEAN. Ho Chi Minh City is ready to cooperate with the Indonesian Consulate General and the Consulate General of ASEAN countries to organize commemorative events, he went on to say.

Indonesian Consul General to Ho Chi Minh City Agustaviano Sofjan thanked the city's leader for the interest and support in the Consulate's activities over the past time. In July 2022, the Indonesian Consulate General will organize a Business Forum in Ho Chi Minh City, thereby helping economic relations between Vietnam and Indonesia develop more and more./.
By Trend

Turkmenistan becomes Deputy Chairman of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, Trend reports citing the State News Agency of Turkmenistan (TDH).

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the country Rashid Meredov informed the President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov about this.

The President noted that this clearly demonstrates the great interest and full support of Turkmenistan's foreign policy and relevant initiatives from all countries of the world and reputable international organizations, primarily the UN.

During the meeting, Meredov announced the publication of the Ashgabat Declaration of the Inter-Parliamentary Forum of the countries of Central Asia and the Russian Federation, held on the initiative of Chairman of the upper house of Parliament of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov in Ashgabat on May 12, 2022, as an official document of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly.
Turkey awaiting response from Russia on organizing meeting to discuss export of grain from Ukraine  Turkish FM

Ankara is awaiting a response from Moscow on organizing a possible meeting between Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and the UN to discuss the issue of exporting grain from Ukraine, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Saturday.

"Our position was stated very clearly. We are awaiting a response from the Russian side, both on the issue of holding the meeting and other details," the Anadolu agency quotes him as saying.

"We stressed the Turkish side's readiness to organize a quadripartite meeting in the UN-Turkey-Ukraine-Russia format. This is ultimately a UN initiative," the minister said.

Cavusoglu said that during talks this week with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he explained that the UN plan to transport grain from Ukraine by sea is the best.

Earlier this week, the Turkish Foreign Minister said that Ankara considers the UN plan to export grain from Ukraine feasible. He noted that discussions are underway on the creation of a "grain corridor" mechanism in the Black Sea with the participation of the UN, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey.
The European Commission will complete work on recommendations on granting Ukraine the status of an EU candidate by the end of next week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said.

At a press conference following talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Saturday, von der Leyen said the European Commission is preparing its recommendations, the so-called conclusion for EU member states. The commission has been working day and night on this assessment. Its president promised that in April they will work tirelessly on this, and their discussions will allow them to complete this work before the end of the next weeks.
Ukraine will receive seven Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled howitzers from Germany on June 22, Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk has said.

"Therefore, the situation is as follows: we have announcements that are either not fulfilled at all, or... We are talking about two promises: seven self-propelled howitzers that will be handed over to us  we will receive these systems on June 22; and self-propelled anti-aircraft systems, the so-called Gepard 'Cheetah.' This is also an old weapon of 30 units: some 15 Cheetahs by the end of July, another 15 by the end of August," Melnyk said in an interview with NV.

The ambassador said that only two decisions out of all those announced by the German government are currently under implementation.
Deputy Minister of Health and Chief State Sanitary Doctor of Ukraine Ihor Kuzin said that according to the results of epidemic surveillance and environmental monitoring, no cases of cholera were found in the country, the website of the Ministry of Health reported on Sunday.

"In the period from June 1, more than 440 patients with acute intestinal infections were examined, among them 165 for cholera infection. Also, six healthy people were examined for prophylactic purposes. No Vibrio cholerae bacterias were found in any case," Kuzin said.

He added that, in addition to examining people, samples of environmental objects were examined, including almost 100 samples of fresh water, nine samples of sea water and 80 samples of waste water. Life-threatening subspecies of Vibrio cholerae bacteria have not been found.

The chief sanitary doctor noted that it is still quite difficult to get information from the temporarily occupied territories, in particular, from Mariupol, Donetsk region, but the risks of the spread of infectious diseases there are growing, which is associated with significant destruction of urban infrastructure, as a result of which sewage water is mixed with drinking water and underground waters.

In addition, the Deputy Minister added that summer is a favorable time for the spread of many infections, especially acute intestinal ones. That is why it is important to follow the basic rules of personal hygiene, the use of safe water, careful heat treatment of food, etc.
By Trend

Iran and Venezuela have signed a 20-year cooperation roadmap during a state visit by President Nicolas Maduro to Tehran, Trend reports citing IRNA.

The Venezuelan president met his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran, during his two-day trip to the Iranian capital with a high-level political and economic delegation.

In addition to a 20-year cooperation plan, Iran and Venezuela signed several documents on cooperation in political, cultural, tourism, economic, oil, and petrochemical fields.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov says that Ukrainian servicemen have mastered the artillery supplied from Western countries in just two weeks, and Ukraine itself is ready to transfer its weapons to NATO standards within a month.

"As Comrade Churchill said, give us the tools and we'll finish the job," Reznikov said in an interview with The Economist, published on Sunday.

At the same time, he stressed that Ukraine needs the help of Western allies in arming, "and quickly, because the cost of any delay is measured in Ukrainian blood."

According to the publication, Mr Reznikov strains to be polite about cracks in the Western alliance. Fatigue is "a natural psychological reaction to stress;" politicians have "domestic issues" to worry about; leaders have the "obligation to think through consequences."

At the same time, the minister noted that some of Ukraine's allies talk more about human rights and freedoms than defend them. "The West's bureaucracy and pragmatism turned out to be much stronger than its values," Reznikov said.

"Either the world doesn't quite understand what is happening, or it does understand, is tired, and is content with a few Ukrainians dying," the Minister of Defense of Ukraine said, commenting on the headlines of Western media.

He stressed that the Ukrainian people will never make territorial concessions to the invaders. "They are trying to create enough chaos, panic and fear to make us sign an act of capitulation... It hasn't worked. We're not even a tiny bit close to being in that kind of mood," Reznikov said.
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhny and Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley discussed the supply of arms to Ukraine and scenarios for further developments in the situation.

"I once again repeated my request to General Milley  to help us get more 155-mm artillery systems as soon as possible ... We exchanged views on the transfer and use of weapons already provided, drew analogies with Lend-Lease during World War II and discussed scenarios for further development situation," Zaluzhny wrote on Facebook on Sunday evening.

He also said that he shared with Milley the strategic goals of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "Understanding the strategy of our armed struggle and the conduct of operations will help ensure transparency in relations with partners, a clear and understandable quantitative and temporal framework for the international technical assistance that we ask for," Zaluzhny said.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky called on the participants of the American Jewish Committee Global Forum to double their efforts to stop Russian hatred of humanity and the war in Ukraine.

Speaking via video link to the forum participants, the head of state asked them a question: how could massacres, destruction of cities, filtration camps that the Russian army set up in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine become a reality in the 21st century?

At the same time, according to him, Russia hopes that it will not be responsible for all the barbaric attacks on residential buildings, hospitals, and churches.

"Russia still has enough power to hope to continue the war against Ukraine, against the people, to continue to ignore the reaction of the world ... I ask you to double your efforts to stop Russian hatred of humanity. Its hatred is the force that still continues the war against Ukraine and against freedom in Europe. Hatred for Ukrainians, culture and history of Ukraine," Zelensky said.
Enemy launches missile attack on Pryluky, three strikes recorded, evacuation announced in four villages due to fire hazard

On Monday, Russian invaders launched a missile attack on Pryluky (Chernihiv region), "arrival" of three enemy missiles was recorded, Head of Chernihiv Regional Military Administration Viacheslav Chaus said.

"It has just become known that the enemy launched a missile attack on Pryluky. Three missile 'arrivals' were recorded. Information on the destruction is being specified," Chaus wrote on Telegram.

He urged citizens not to indicate the place of "arrivals."

Later on Suspilne news channel reported referring to Head of the Civilian Protection and Defense Department of Chernihiv Regional Military Administration Serhiy Boldyrev that evacuation has been announced in the villages of Zayizd, Petrivske, Tykhe, and Sukhostavets in Prylutsky district.

"The reason is fire hazard as a result of the missile strikes," Suspilne reported quoting Boldyrev as saying.
Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Kyrylo Tymoshenko has said that Ukraine is starting the preparations for hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023.

"We are showing the world our openness, hospitality and ability to implement large-scale projects. The main issue for us and the European language union is security," he said on his Telegram channel on Monday.

He also said that the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry of Ukraine have been involved in the preparations from the very beginning.

"We will use different locations in order to ensure comfortable logistics and, which is most important, security," Tymoshenko said.

He thanked European partners for support.

"We are defending not only our land, but also the whole civilized and democratic world. Thanks to the Armed Forces of Ukraine we can make plans for the future!" Tymoshenko said.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv by indiscriminate Russian shelling using widely banned cluster munitions and inherently inaccurate rockets which constitutes a war crime, Amnesty International said in its report.

"During an extensive investigation, Amnesty International found evidence of Russian forces repeatedly using 9N210/9N235 cluster munitions as well as scatterable mines, both of which are subject to international treaty bans because of their indiscriminate effects," a press release by Amnesty International reads.

Amnesty International researchers investigated 41 strikes (which killed at least 62 people and injured at least 196) and interviewed 160 people in Kharkiv over 14 days in April and May, including survivors of attacks, relatives of victims, witnesses, and doctors who treated the injured. The organizations researchers collected and analysed material evidence from strike locations, notably munitions fragments, as well as an array of digital materials.

"People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queuing for humanitarian aid, or shopping for food and medicine. The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationals Senior Crisis Response Adviser.

She stressed that the Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable for their actions, and victims and their families must receive full reparations.

According to the director of the Medical Department at the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration, 606 civilians had been killed and 1,248 injured in Kharkiv region since the conflict began. Most of the strikes investigated by Amnesty International inflicted multiple casualties over widespread areas.

"While Russia is not a party to either the Convention on Cluster Munitions or the Convention on Anti-Personnel Mines, international humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks, and the use of weapons that are indiscriminate by nature. Launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in death or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects, constitutes war crimes," the organisation stressed.
Prominent human rights lawyer Khaled Ali announced on Tuesday the release of 10 pre-trial detainees who had been imprisoned on charges of joining a terrorist group, publishing and spreading false news and statements.
A rebel group in eastern DR Congo that the government accuses of being supported by Rwanda has overrun a trading hub on the border with Uganda, local sources said on Monday.
The Federal Reserve announced the most aggressive interest rate increase in nearly 30 years, raising the benchmark borrowing rate by 0.75 percentage points on Wednesday as it battles against surging inflation.
The former president of the Louvre museum in Paris has been charged with conspiring to hide the origin of Egyptian archaeological treasures that investigators suspect were spirited out of the country during the Arab Spring uprisings, a French judicial source said Thursday.

Jean-Luc Martinez was charged Wednesday after being taken in for questioning along with two French specialists in Egyptian art, who were not charged, another source close to the inquiry told AFP.

The case was opened in July 2018, two years after the Louvre's branch in Abu Dhabi bought a rare pink granite stele depicting the pharaoh Tutankhamun and four other historic works for eight million euros ($8.5 million).

Martinez, who ran the Paris Louvre from 2013 to 2021, is accused of turning a blind eye to fake certificates of origin for the pieces, a fraud thought to involve several other art experts, according to a report Wednesday in the Canard Enchaine investigative weekly.

He has been charged with complicity in fraud and "concealing the origin of criminally obtained works by false endorsement," according to the judicial source.

The move comes after the German-Lebanese gallery owner who brokered the sale was arrested in Hamburg in March and extradited to Paris for questioning in the case.

French investigators suspect that hundreds of artefacts were pillaged during the Arab Spring protests that engulfed several Middle Eastern countries in the early 2010s, and then sold to galleries and museums that did not ask too many questions about previous ownership.

The Canard Enchaine reported that some of the same French experts who certified the Tutankhamun stele also certified another prized Egyptian work, the gilded coffin of the priest Nedjemankh, that was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2017.

After an inquiry by New York prosecutors, the Met said it had been a victim of false statements and fake documentation, and said the coffin would be returned to Egypt.

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Aerial photo taken on June 4, 2022 shows a view of the Rongjiang River after heavy rainfall in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Huang Xiaobang)

NANNING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Over 1.44 million residents in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region have been affected by torrential rains and rain-induced disasters such as floods and mudslides since early June, according to local authorities.

Four rounds of heavy rainfall during the flood season this year have wreaked havoc in 103 counties of the region, damaging 51,800 hectares of cropland, according to the regional emergency management department.

Guangxi has allocated 20 million yuan (around 2.98 million U.S. dollars) in disaster relief funds since June 2. Authorities distributed tents, folding beds, quilts, bottled water, and food to the areas battered by the heavy rains.

The local meteorological department forecasts that the rainstorm in Guangxi will strengthen again from Sunday evening, with heavy downpours hitting parts of areas in cities including Guilin, Liuzhou, Hechi, and Hezhou.

The autonomous region has upgraded rainfall alerts and emergency response levels. 
By Trend

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi announced the launch of a direct flight between Tehran and Caracas in near future, in order to trade and economic relations as well as bring the two nations closer together, Trend reports citing IRNA.

The Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro Moros met his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran, during his two-day trip to the Iranian capital with a high-level political and economic delegation.

In a joint conference following their meeting, the two hailed raising bilateral relations to the strategic level and agreed that the two countries can boost ties in trade in addition to the energy, science and technology, agriculture, and tourism sectors.

Iran's President called the signing of a 20-year cooperation road map between the two countries a sign of their will to develop relations in various fields of energy, thermal power plants, refineries, engineering services, defense, and military.

President Raisi announced that Iran has taken good steps for scientific and technological cooperation with Venezuela.

He went on to say that Iran`s startups are ready to share their experiences with Venezuela.
An Egyptian archaeological mission in the Bubastian Cemetery at the Saqqara Necropolis unearthed a collection of 250 wooden painted coffins and the biggest ever bronze cachette containing a collection of 150 bronze statues of ancient Egyptian deities of different sizes.

The mission was led by Mostafa Waziri, the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The statues depict the ancient Egyptian deities Bastet, Anubis, Osiris, Amunmeen, Isis, Nefertum, and Hathor, as well as instruments used during the Isis rituals, such as the Sistrum.

A very well-carved headless statue of engineer Imhotep was also uncovered.

A collection of Late Period painted intact wooden coffins with mummies was also unearthed inside burial shafts along with amulets, wooden boxes, and statues with gilded faces.

Additionally, a distinguished duo painted statue depicting deities Isis and Neftis mourning the dead was found as well.

Waziri explains that a papyrus written in hieroglyphs was found during excavations inside one of the coffins and may contain verses of the Book of the Dead, adduing that it was transferred to the laboratory of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to study and uncover what it contains.





A collection of cosmetics was also found, including combs, kohl eyeliners, containers, bracelets, earrings, and seed necklaces, along with some tools used in day-to-day life.

Waziri affirmed that the coffins will be transferred to the soon-to-be-inaugurated Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) to be among the display of the museums main halls.

This archaeological mission has been working in this area in Saqqara Necropolis since 2018 and has so far made several discoveries, including collections of artefacts, coffins, and human and animal mummies.









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New York prosecutors have announced seizing five Egyptian artefacts worth more than $3 million from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of an investigation into international trafficking involving the Louvre Museum.

The artefacts include a group of painted linen fragments that date back to between 250 and 450 BC depicting a scene from the Book of Exodus, AFP reported, citing the Manhattan district attorney's office as saying.

The artefacts have been confiscated as per an order by a New York state judge in May, according to a court document.

The seized artefacts are part of an investigation in which Jean-Luc Martinez, former president of Paris historic landmark Louvre museum, has been charged last week with complicity in fraud.

Martinez, who ran the museum between 2013 and 2021, has been charged with conspiring to hide the origin of the Egyptian archaeological artefacts.

Investigators suspect that the Egyptian treasures were smuggled from Egypt during the revolution against late former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Met Museum purchased the five seized pieces between 2013 and 2015, reported The Art Newspaper. The museum said it was "a victim of an international criminal organisation."

In 2019, the famous New York museum also returned the gilded sarcophagus of the priest Nedjemankh to Egypt, which was stolen during the 2011 protests, according to NY prosecutors.

The Louvre case was opened in July 2018, two years after the Louvre's branch in Abu Dhabi bought a rare pink granite stele depicting the pharaoh Tutankhamun and four other historic works.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said no one knows how long the war in his country will last but that Ukrainian forces are defying expectations by preventing Russian troops from overrunning eastern Ukraine, where the fighting has been fiercest for weeks.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said he was proud of the Ukrainian defenders managing to hold back the Russian advance in the Donbas region, which borders Russia and where Moscow-backed separatists have controlled much of the territory for eight years.

``Remember how in Russia, in the beginning of May, they hoped to seize all of the Donbas?'' the president said late Saturday. ``It's already the 108th day of the war, already June. Donbas is holding on.''

After failing to capture Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, early in the war, Moscow focused on seizing the parts of the largely Russian-speaking Donbas still in Ukrainian hands, as well as the country's southern coast. But instead of securing a swift, decisive takeover, Russian forces were drawn into a long, laborious battle, thanks in part to the Ukrainian military's use of Western-supplied weapons.

Both Ukrainian and Russian authorities said Sievierodonetsk, an eastern city with a prewar population of 100,000, remained contested. The city and neighboring Lysychansk are the last major areas of the Donbas' Luhansk province not under the control of the pro-Russia rebels.

Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the separatist-declared Luhansk People's Republic, said Ukrainian fighters remained in an industrial area of the city, including a chemical plant where civilians had taken shelter from days of Russian shelling.

``Sievierodonetsk is not completely 100% liberated,`` Pasechnik said Saturday, alleging that the Ukrainians were shelling the city from the Azot plant. ``So it's impossible to call the situation calm in Sievierodonetsk, that it is completely ours.''

Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai reported Saturday that a big fire broke out at the plant during hours of Russian shelling.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, a counteroffensive pushed Russians out of parts of the southern Kherson region they took early in the war, according to Zelenskyy. Moscow has installed local authorities in Kherson and other occupied coastal areas, offering residents Russian passports, airing Russian news broadcasts and taking steps to introduce a Russian school curriculum.

Zelenskyy said that while an end to the war was not in sight, Ukraine should do everything it can so the Russians ``regret everything that they have done and that they answer for every killing and every strike on our beautiful state.''

The Ukrainian leader asserted that Russia has suffered about three times as many military casualties as the number estimated for the Ukrainian side, adding: ``For what? What did it get you, Russia?'' There are no reliable independent estimates of the war's death toll so far.

Speaking at a defense conference in Singapore on Sunday, Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe said Beijing continues to support peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and hopes the U.S. and its NATO allies have discussions with Russia ``to create the conditions for an early ceasefire.''

``China will continue to play a constructive role and contribute our share to easing tensions and realizing a political resolution of the crisis,'' Wei said.

He suggested that nations supplying weapons to Ukraine were hindering peace by ``adding fuel to the fire'' and stressed that China had not provided any material support to Russia during the war.

``The growth of China-Russia relations is a partnership, not an alliance,'' Wei said.

The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, said in its latest assessment that Ukrainian intelligence suggested the Russian military was planning ``to fight a longer war.''

The institute cited the deputy head of Ukraine's national security agency as saying that Moscow had extended its war timeline until October, with adjustments to be made depending on any successes in the Donbas.

The intelligence ``likely indicates the Kremlin has, at a minimum, acknowledged it cannot achieve its objectives in Ukraine quickly and is further adjusting its military objectives in an attempt to correct the initial deficiencies in the invasion of Ukraine,'' the think tank said.

The Luhansk People's Republic's ambassador to Russia, Rodion Miroshnik, said Saturday that 300 to 400 Ukrainian troops remained blockaded inside the Sievierodonetsk chemical plant along with several hundred civilians.

The Russians established contact with the Ukrainian troops to arrange the evacuation of the civilians, but the the troops will be allowed to leave only if they lay down their arms and surrender, Miroshnik said.

Similar conditions existed for weeks at a steel mill in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol before a civilian evacuation was arranged and the defending troops were ordered by Ukrainian military commanders to stand down. The fighters who came out of the Mariupol plant were taken prisoner by the Russians.

Pasechnik, the separatist leader of the unrecognized Luhansk republic, said the Ukrainians making a stand in Sievierodonetsk should save themselves the trouble.

``If I were them, I would already make a decision (to surrender),'' he said. ``We will achieve our goal in any case. We will liberate the industrial area in any case. We will liberate Sievierodonetsk in any case. Lysychansk will be ours in any case.''

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At least 22 people were wounded when Russia struck the western Ukrainian town of Chortkiv, the regional governor said on Sunday.

The strike was a rare attack in the west of the country.

"Yesterday at 19:46 (1646 GMT) Chortkiv was hit by four missiles, all fired from the Black Sea," Volodymyr Trush said in a Facebook post.

He said all 22 people wounded, who included seven women and a 12-year-old, had been taken to hospital.

Trush, governor of the Ternopil region where Chortkiv is located, said "a military installation was partially destroyed" in the attack "and residential buildings were damaged".

Russia's defence ministry said the strike on Chortkiv destroyed a "large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defence systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the United States and European countries".

Chortkiv, which was home to nearly 30,000 people before the Russian invasion, is located 140 kilometres (around 90 miles) north of the border with Romania and 200 kilometres southeast of Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine.

Unlike eastern and southern Ukraine, which have borne the brunt of Russian firepower since Moscow invaded on February 24, the west of the country has only seen sporadic attacks.

Russian strikes in the west tend to target military installations housing weapons and military equipment supplied by Western powers.

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Air raid sirens wailed and one of the brides wore camouflage trousers as the Ukrainian army took a break from frontline fighting in the east to hold a double wedding Sunday.

Two young couples who met just months earlier while serving in the army tied the knot together Sunday in the small town of Druzhkivka, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from frontline zones where Ukrainian forces are battling Russian invaders.

The sun shone and soldiers carried bouquets in a brief interlude from heavy fighting as Russians intensify efforts to push out Kyiv's forces in the east.

One of the brides, Khrystyna Lyuta, a 23-year-old contract soldier with the rank of private first class, wore camouflage trousers and army boots with a traditional red Ukrainian blouse embroidered with flowers.

"I've got used to this uniform," she explained of her choice of outfit.

She met her husband Volodymyr Mykhalchuk, 28, just two months ago, when he was mobilised. They live around five kilometres from each other in the same southwestern Vinnytska region but might never have met if it had not been for the war.

"War is war, but life goes on," Lyuta explained their decision to marry.

"This was not a hasty decision," said Volodymyr.

"The main thing is that we love each other and we want to be together."

The other bride, Kristina, 23, who works in the signals corps, opted for a traditional long white dress with red folk embroidery to marry Vitaliy Orlich, also 23, a sniper.

"I believe that this is about creating a new family -- it doesn't matter where it happens or how," she said.

The grooms both wore soldiers' uniforms.



Ukrainian volunteers throw rose petals over the happy couple. AP

The couples were set to return to serve in the war zone on the same day.

"I can't give them free days as such. The only thing is that they won't be on the frontline, they will stay in the rear," the brigade's commander Oleksandr Okhrimenko told AFP.

Neither couple had family present but they said relatives had been understanding.

Kristina said that her husband had spoken to her mother online and "she already calls him a son".

The soldiers were from the 14th Separate Mechanised Brigade, which has been fighting Russian-backed forces in Donbas since May.

The young couples married in front of a registry office, which had closed due to the war.

The quiet street had few cars and occasional trams. Sandbags were piled up in front of cafe and shop windows.

'There's no time'

The couples went through traditional rituals such as stepping together onto an embroidered towel, symbolising togetherness.

The brigade's chaplain gave them an Orthodox Christian blessing, flicking holy water and placing crowns on their heads, on the day of a major Church holiday, the Festival of the Holy Trinity.

The Priest in a khaki cassock, Yuriy Zdebskiy, told AFP that "it's the first marriage in the brigade in wartime", since Russia launched its invasion on February 24.

"Now it's wartime and there's no time for big celebrations," he said.

The infantry brigade's commander, Okhrimenko, has the right to certify marriages under martial law.

He said the location for the weddings "was chosen primarily for security reasons".

Druzhkivka is about 40 kilometres as the crow flies from three fronts, as Russian troops threaten the towns of Sloviansk to the northeast, Bakhmut to the east and Gorlivka to the southeast.

Hours later, AFP reporters heard shelling and saw smoke rising as the two sides exchanged fire close to Bakhmut.

Even in relatively untouched Druzhkivka, shelling earlier this month tore apart private houses and crashed through the roof of a Baptist church in one street.

During the wedding, air raid sirens went off three times, an AFP reporter heard.

None of those attending reacted. Many war-hardened locals now ignore warnings to go to shelters unless there is an obvious threat.

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Tribal clashes over the past week in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur have killed around 100 people, the U.N. refugee agency and a tribal elder said Monday, the latest surge in violence in the restive region.

Toby Harward, a coordinator with the UNHCR, said the fighting grew out of a land dispute between Arab and African tribes in the town of Kulbus in West Darfur province.

Abkar al-Toum, a tribal leader in the town, said the dead included at least 62 bodies found burned after troops set more than 20 villages on fire. He said many people were still unaccounted for. He claimed the attackers gained control of water resources, aggravating the humanitarian situation in the area. He did not elaborate.

Abbas Mustafa, a local official, said authorities have deployed more infantry to the area. He said the past week of fighting displaced at least 5,000 families.

Harward called for ``neutral joint forces'' to provide protection for civilians in the area. ``If there is no intervention or mediation, & violence is allowed to continue, farmers will not be able to cultivate & the agricultural season will fail,'' he said in a series of posts on Twitter.

The news outlet Radio Dabanga reported that the fighting reached the nearby province of North Darfur, causing partial damage to two villages there.

The fighting was the latest bout of tribal violence in Darfur. It came as the country remains mired in a wider crisis following an October military takeover.

Since late last year, eruptions of tribal violence and surges in the fighting in Darfur have killed hundreds of people. In April, after a similar bout of clashes killed over 200, the Sudanese military said it deployed a brigade to the province.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when ethnic African tribes rebelled against Al-Bashir's Arab-majority government; the government was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic tribes with weapons, a charge it denies.

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The Egypt-European Union Association Council's ministerial meeting is set to be held on Sunday, 19 June in Brussels, European diplomatic sources told the Egyptian state news agency MENA Sunday.

High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry will co-chair the meetings.

In a statement, the European Council said the EU pays great attention to its relations with Egypt as a main partner and regional player, noting the association council will touch on the bilateral ties and political affairs.

The council will ratify the EU-Egypt partnership priorities till 2027, the statement read.

The new priorities include responses to the coronavirus pandemic, health and vaccines production files, as well as social and green files.

New priority areas also include the economy's digitisation and various artificial intelligence domains, Head of the European Union Delegation to Egypt Christian Berger said in October 2021.

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The Egyptian authorities have released 15 pretrial detainees, including Islamist activist Magdy Korkor and producer Moetaz Abdel-Wahab, human rights lawyer Khaled Ali wrote on Facebook on Monday.





Korkor and Abdel-Wahab were arrested in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

The 15 detainees had faced charges including joining a terrorist group and spreading false news. They were detained in different cases.

The Supreme State Security Prosecution released Korkor, Abdel-Wahab and six others who were detained in the cases 1413/2021 and 2000/2021, lawyer Tarek El-Awady  a member of the Presidential Pardon Committee  tweeted on Monday.

The released detainees in these two cases are Ramadan Hassan, Mohamed El-Sayed, Mahmoud Megahed, Hassan Ismail, Marwan Abdallah, and Abdel-Rahman Mohamed, El-Awady said.

The remaining seven detainees were released by the consultations chamber of a Cairo criminal court in the cases 563/2021 and 65/2021, according to Ali.

The seven released detainees include Mohamed Galal, Hossam Said, Abu Bakr Qassem, Shady Farag, Ibrahim Fawzy, and Mohamed Ibrahim, Ali noted.

The release orders come two months after Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi had ordered the reactivation of the Presidential Pardon Committee in April and called for a national political dialogue without exceptions or exclusion.

On 30 May, researcher and writer Ayman Abdel-Moeti, former spokesperson of the 6 April Movement Sherif El-Rubi, and two others were released.

Moreover, the prosecutor-general ordered the release of 41 pretrial detainees on 24 April.

Several prisoners who had received final verdicts were granted presidential pardons in April and May.

The Presidential Pardon Committee is mandated to review the cases of those imprisoned for political crimes and others who meet certain conditions, such as families who have more than one relative in jail.

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Related All the winners of the 43rd Cairo International Film Festival

The honoring follows Swamy Rotolo's winning of the Best Actress Award at the 43rd Cairo International Film Festival (December 2021).

The award is for Rotolo's role in A Chiara (Italy, France, 2021), written and directed by Jonas Carpignano.

The same role also brought Rotolo special mention at the Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival (2021) and Best Actress at David di Donatello Awards (2022), while the film garnered a number of other awards including at the Golden Eye for Best International Feature Film at the Zurich Film Festival (2021) and the Label Europa Cinemas award at the Cannes Film Festival (2021).

According to the film's brief, A Chiara follows the story of 15-year-old Chiara, whose close-knit family falls apart after her father abandons them in Calabria.

The actress will be honored at the Italian Cultural Centre in Zamalek on Wednesday 22 June. The special ceremony will begin at 12 noon.

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has stressed that Egypt adheres to diplomacy and patience with regards to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) issue, though he added that nobody will compromise Egypts [share of] water.

El-Sisi made the comments in a statement to the press after he inaugurated on Monday an integrated animal and dairy production complex and mechanised slaughterhouses in the industrial city of Sadat in Menoufiya governorate.

Ethiopia has announced plans to unilaterally implement the third phase of filling the mega-dams reservoir in August and September, even though it has not reached a legally-binding agreement with Egypt and Sudan on the filling and operation of the dam.

Ethiopia unilaterally proceeded with the first two phases of filling the reservoir during the past two years, and started the first phase of energy production from the dam in February despite the two downstream countries objections.

In his meeting with the press on Monday, El-Sisi also shed light on projects Egypt is carrying out to benefit from and reuse water.

In December, Egypt said it invested EGP 16 billion in 2021 in water projects across the country  which is deemed one of the most water-scarce countries in the world  to rationalise water use and create water additional resources.

Controlling prices

During his meeting with the press, El-Sisi said the state is capable of controlling commodity prices until the end of the year amid the current global crisis.

He noted that the state has reserves of strategic commodities that are sufficient for six months.

"Until the end of the year, we as a state can control prices through other initiatives, Sisi said. The president noted that he has never talked about the consumption rate of commodities, but said: I think minimal spending would help us.

El-Sisi expressed thanks to farmers for supplying nearly 4 million tons of wheat during this harvest season, noting that these quantities, along with the already available wheat, would be enough for the coming six months.

During the complex inauguration earlier today, El-Sisi said that the state is exerting its "utmost possible" efforts to curb the rising prices resulting from the global crisis, most recently the Russia-Ukraine war.

El-Sisi also said the government has decided to postpone the scheduled hike in household electricity prices for the third time in a row in order to ease the people's burden, especially low-income citizens.

Libya, prioritising national interests

The president also discussed the Libyan issue in light of Cairos hosting of the third round of talks on constitutional amendments for elections that started on Sunday and is set to continue until 19 June.

El-Sisi said Egypt seeks to encourage the Libyan brothers to prioritise the interest of their country over any other interests and to prevent the country from sliding into armed confrontations.

Egypt is working very seriously on resolving the Libyan crisis through the Constitutional Track Committee meetings and the 5+5 military commission talks, the president added.

Gulf investments

El-Sisi also hailed the Gulf countries for providing support to Egypt, expressing hope that the money deposited by the Arab countries will be transformed into investments.

"Egypt's population is about 100 million and we have promising investment opportunities," the president added.

In March, Saudi Arabia deposited $5 billion in Egypts Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), raising the money deposited by the kingdom to a total of $10.3 billion.

President El-Sisi expressed thanks to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, noting that the two countries have moved together to support Egypt without Cairos request.

National dialogue

Commenting on Egypts national dialogue that is set to be launched in the near future, El-Sisi urged all forces to be ready to listen to each other and find common ground.

Egypt will hold its first sessions of the national political dialogue during the first week of July with the involvement of all political parties without any exception or discrimination as per El-Sisis directives.

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Geidea, the largest fintech company in Saudi Arabia by market share, won the Best Payment Experience Award and Digital Leader Award at the recent Seamless Middle East awards ceremony 2022.

The award was given in recognition of Geideas transformation from a local fintech startup into one of the largest payments service suppliers in Saudi Arabia, its continuous innovation to realising the future of payment technologies across Middle East and North Africa and enhancing the consumer payment experience with cutting-edge solutions. Besides, Abdullah Al Othman, Founder and Chairman of Geidea, was chosen for the Digital Leader Award.

Geidea was a diamond sponsor and among the main participants at this years Seamless Middle East which took place in Dubai. The event welcomed over 10,000 global attendees, 300+ speakers and hundreds of inspiring industry experts and brands showcasing the latest innovations and technologies across the payments and fintech ecosystem.

A testament

Al Othman said: These awards are a testament to the confidence our partners continue to put in our products and solutions. We will continue to leverage partnerships, adopt new technologies and use our expertise within the digital ecosystem to provide best-in-class payment solutions as merchants and SMEs across Mena focus on streamlining their operations through safe, secure and seamless payments.

Senior leaders from Geidea participated in a series of speaking panels at the event  including Al Othman, Renier Lemmens, Group CEO, Sailesh Malhotra, General Manager for GCC, Ahmed Nader, Egypt Country Manager and Stephan Schulze, Chief Product Officer  who discussed the evolution of the payment ecosystem and the fintech sector across Mena.

During the event, Geidea showcased its latest technologies, innovative payment solutions and wide range of products for visitors and stakeholders to experience.

As a contributor to the Saudi Vision 2030s objective to support SMEs and increase digital transactions in the country, Geidea, through its cutting-edge technologies, is providing SMEs and merchants a complete suite of payment, ecommerce and business management tools to help them grow and scale.

-- TradeArabia News Service
Pope Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the Sea of Saint Mark, and Egypts Minister of the Environment Yasmine Fouad signed on Monday a cooperation protocol on environmental protection.

The protocol aims to promote joint action on environmental issues and raise awareness about the environment and natural resources with the aim of protecting it and achieving sustainable development.

Egypt is currently preparing to host the 27th session of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh in November on behalf of the African continent.

The signing ceremony was attended by Anba Daniel, Bishop of Maadi and Secretary of the Holy Synod, and a number of ambassadors and representatives of United Nations bodies and civil society organisations.

During the ceremony, the environment minister praised the efforts of the Coptic Church to support the state in preserving the environment and its resources.

Meanwhile, Fouad hailed the document released by the church, which has a number of messages regarding development including linking the preservation of the environment with spreading the concept of a climate-resilient society.

Pope Tawadros II said that the protocol comes out of the Coptic Orthodox Church's willingness to play its national role on global and societal issues and its support for Egypt's national strategy.

The pope praised the efforts made by the Egyptian Ministry of the Environment to protect the environment and its keenness to spread environmental awareness.

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A rebel group in eastern DR Congo that the government accuses of being supported by Rwanda has overrun a trading hub on the border with Uganda, local sources said on Monday.

M23 fighters seized the town of Bunagana in North Kivu province as some government forces retreated into Uganda, they said.

Bunagana "is under enemy control," a Congolese officer said, who was reached by AFP by phone from Goma.

"The army has just given way and is heading into Uganda," said Damien Sebusanane, head of a local civil society association, who was on the Ugandan side of the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

"An army truck has just gone past, four jeeps and other vehicles which are full of soldiers," he said, estimating the number of DRC troops retreating into Uganda at around 100.

A humanitarian source on the ground said that heavy clashes broke out again on Sunday morning and the only way out for the embattled DRC troops was to cross into Uganda.

The M23, a primarily Congolese Tutsi militia, is one of more than 120 armed groups active in eastern DRC.

It briefly captured Goma in 2012 but a joint offensive by UN troops and the Congolese army quelled the rebellion.

- UN refugee concerns -

The group resumed fighting in November last year after accusing the Congolese government of failing to respect a 2009 agreement under which the army was to incorporate its fighters.

Thousands of people have fled into Uganda and the DRC territory of Rutshuru since a second bout of violence flared in March.

The DRC government on Sunday reiterated that Rwandan was backing the rebels, an assertion that Rwanda has repeatedly denied.

In their assault on Bunagana, the M23 were "supported by soldiers and artillery from the Rwandan army," the DRC army said in a statement, adding that two soldiers and several enemy combatants were killed.

General Sylvain Ekenge, spokesman for the province's military government, said Rwanda was seeking to "asphyxiate" Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and to put pressure on the government in Kinshasa.

The UN's refugee agency said on Monday that 368 more people had fled across the border into Uganda from Bunagana, and the humanitarian situation was "more and more concerning."

Relations between the DRC and Rwanda have been strained since the mass arrival in eastern DRC of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

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Sweden is safer now than before it applied for NATO membership, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday, even though it is in a grey zone with its application stalled by Turkey.

Stoltenberg stressed that NATO allies had provided key assurances to protect Sweden in the interim period before it becomes a full member and can benefit from the alliance's Article 5 mutual defence agreement.

"Seen from a security perspective, Sweden is in a better place now than before it applied", he said, adding: "NATO allies responded by... issuing security assurances to Sweden", citing the US and Britain in particular.

He said that if the Scandinavian country were attacked, it was "unthinkable that NATO allies would not react. That is a message that NATO allies have conveyed in a very clear way to any potential adversary".

Speaking at a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson at the prime minister's summer residence Harpsund, Stoltenberg also said NATO was working "hard and actively" together with Stockholm and Ankara to resolve Turkey's concerns "as soon as possible".

Ankara accuses Sweden and to some degree Finland, which have submitted joint NATO bids, of providing a safe haven for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a "terrorist" group by Turkey and its Western allies.

Ankara is also angered by Sweden's embargo on arms sales to Turkey since 2019 over Ankara's military offensive in Syria.

Any NATO membership deal must be unanimously approved by all 30 members of the alliance.

"We take the Turkish concerns very seriously, not least the security concerns when it comes to the fight against terrorism," Swedish Prime Minister Andersson said.

She noted that tougher anti-terrorism legislation was scheduled to come into force in Sweden on July 1, and said Sweden's independent weapons export agency would be prepared to review its policy once the country was a NATO member.

Stoltenberg had previously said Sweden and Finland would be welcomed into NATO "with open arms", and expected the Turkey issue to be resolved before a NATO summit due to begin in Madrid on June 28.

But speaking in Finland on Sunday he suggested the dispute may drag on, saying "the summit in Madrid was never a deadline".

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President Joe Biden's top health official has again tested positive for COVID-19, less than a month after he came down with virus symptoms while on a trip to Germany.

Related Canadian PM Trudeau tests positive for COVID a second time

US Health Secretary Xavier Becerra woke up with symptoms again Monday morning and tested positive afterward, spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim said.

His symptoms are mild and he is isolating in Sacramento, California. Lovenheim said Becerra had been in California for a ``personal commitment.''

A statement from HHS said the secretary was not believed to be a close contact of Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, who also tested positive earlier this spring.

Becerra is continuing to work from isolation.

Becerra had joined Biden at the Summit of the Americas last week in Los Angeles. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that he had tested positive after attending the event, which gathered diginitaries, diplomats and business leaders from across the hemisphere.

Becerra is fully vaccinated and has received a booster shot guarding against the virus.

In May, Becerra tested positive while in Berlin for a meeting of health ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy nations to discuss the ongoing pandemic. His office said then that he had mild symptoms and continued his work from isolation.

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More and more people are aiming to consume less and take a slower approach to their everyday and professional lives

Whether you are decluttering your home or slimming down your apparently never-ending shopping and to-do lists, now could be the right time to try leading a simpler and more meaningful style of life.

Whether or not you are burnt out by the fast pace of life, running from chores to job and then heading to the gym only to end up sleeping on the couch with a burger meal to look forward to, today could be the right time to step aside and start prioritising your values, goals, and how to make the best use of your time.

Slow living is a lifestyle philosophy that aims to de-glamorise being busy and devalue the culture of consumerism that goes with it. It calls for taking a slow approach to all aspects of life to try to enjoy and value everything we do at work, at home, and even in our leisure time more than we currently manage.

The concept began in Italy in the 1980s when fast-food companies started to appear in the country and consumerism began to creep into its culture. The Italians threw pasta feasts to protest against the commercialisation of their society and wrote a manifesto that went on to inspire the slow living movement.

Slow living calls for eating well, playing well, working well, and even resting well. It is mainly about enjoying the quality of life and not just the quantity, said Ahmed Al-Guweili, an Egyptian community pharmacist and Internet influencer.

Slow living is about taking things slowly. We should not aim to sacrifice everything else for the sake of the job, but should try instead to find time to spare to be with our family. We should try to exercise well and listen to music, meditate, and contemplate, Al-Guweili said.

The concept is related to Islam and Christianity, which call on us to work efficiently and to live competently. We should care about our family, friends, and society and should not be driven by consumerism or materialistic values, added Al- Guweili, recalling a hadith of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) in which he said that whoever among you wakes up secure in his property, healthy in his body, and with his food for the day, it is as if he has been given the entire world.

Sometimes society can make people feel pressured towards attaining a certain social class or buying a luxurious apartment in a compound, or even buying the latest mobile phone or television just because it is on offer. If you feel attracted to all this, just stop and think what your priorities are. Do you actually need this stuff? If you are in debt, you need to get out of this materialistic lifestyle because you have been sadly trapped, Al- Guweili said.

Concerning the need for a more spiritual life, Haytham Abdel-Aziz, a Cairo dentist, agrees with Al-Guweili that a slower style of life can make you experience more, something he found after his pilgrimage in 2017. Though he could have waited to afford a better package a year later, he preferred to go a harder way at less cost and find a more spiritual and life-changing experience.

I put myself in Gods hands in every sense I could. I walked six km every day to reach the holy site and spent as much time there as possible to pray and worship God and meditate on the surroundings, Abdel-Aziz said.

He also had to stay with six different men from different social classes in one apartment and share the same bathroom. He learned a lot about equality in Islam and minimalism in life. I learned that sometimes the hardest road is more rewarding than the easiest or the most luxurious one, he added.

Abdel-Aziz has also adopted a slower lifestyle in his professional life as his career changed when he knew better what he wanted to focus on. I used to run from place to place, working two jobs, learning many languages, and taking too many courses in the medical and sociological fields. This was when I realised that I was actually doing nothing and working too much for zero product, he added.

After this massive realisation, he took decisions in his career that enabled him to leap forward, focusing on what he really wanted and excelling in a cutting-edge specialisation. It is not only about quitting jobs you had imagined you couldnt, but also about believing in yourself to prioritise the most important things and the achievements you really want to attain, he said.

SLOW LIVING: The concept of slow living is not learned or taught but is inspired by people who are thinking outside the box.

It is believed in by people who want to lead their lives in the most satisfactory way they can. These are sometimes people who do not wish to lead a corporate life, but who simply want to move to a quiet place, lets say a farm, and raise cows or its equivalent, as Youmna Halawa, a 22-year-old student, said.

Many members of Generation Z who are digital natives may be fed up with the corporate lives many are living. Who said we should go to school and then university and then join companies just to get promoted and get a higher salary? Do we have to live in this endless circle until we die, asked Naira Shalabi, 22, a student and artist.

We are brought up to think there are certain achievements you have to do in order to fit in. If you do not fit in, you are not successful. But when society defines what success is, you have to take a leap of faith and just start thinking of what makes you successful instead, Halawa said.

Shalabi and Halawa have been thinking about how to lead more interesting and enjoyable lives, lives which are not busy but are productive and lives that do not make them feel burnt out but that they can enjoy. These should be lives not dedicated to fulfilling materialistic needs, but instead be about cherishing time as it passes and making memories.

For such reasons, they thought the concept of slow living might suit their graduation project, a documentary about the concept and how some people have adopted it in Egypt. The two students, both at the College of Language and Communication in Alexandria, shared their idea with their team members who were equally excited to research and produce the documentary.

It reveals the kind of love-hate relationship people may have with the city and follows a group of people who travel to Nuweiba in Sinai. Through their journey, viewers become familiar with Dar Jan, an art and farming space run by Khaled and Gihan, a couple who decided to leave the bustling urban life of Cairo and start an organic space instead in Sinai.

By featuring Dar Jan, we had the opportunity to feature the real story of a couple who had no idea of how to start this kind of life at first. They were both engineers who used to work in big companies, but they quit it all to follow their passion and start a totally new life elsewhere, Shalabi said.

We are not calling on people to quit their jobs or go travelling in the desert, but the documentary is meant as a wake-up call to all of us to question our habits and the style of life we have grown up to know, Halawa said.

You can have a stable job and practise slow living, and you can live in the desert and not practise slow living. What we should do is prioritise our goals and understand our values in order to know better what best fits with our lives, she concluded.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 9 June, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Ukraine said Monday that its forces had been pushed back from the centre of key industrial city Severodonetsk, where President Volodymyr Zelensky described a fight for "literally every metre".

The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which are separated by a river, have been targeted for weeks as the last areas still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Lugansk region.

Regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said Monday that Russian forces were "gathering more and more equipment" to "encircle" Severodonetsk, and that they had "pushed our troops from the centre and continue to destroy our city".

The Azot chemical plant, where hundreds of civilians have reportedly taken refuge was still being shelled, he said.

In Lysychansk, three civilians were killed by shelling, including a six-year-old boy, Gaiday said.

On Sunday, Zelensky said the latest fighting in Severodonetsk was "very fierce", adding that Russia was deploying undertrained troops and using its young men as "cannon fodder".

Russia's massed artillery in that region gave it a tenfold advantage, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military Valeriy Zaluzhny said Sunday.

"Every metre of Ukrainian land there is covered in blood -- but not only ours, but also the occupier's."

The capture of Severodonetsk would open the road for Moscow to another major city, Kramatorsk, in their steps toward conquering the whole of Donbas, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.

War crimes

Amnesty International on Monday accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying that attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv -- many using banned cluster bombs -- had killed hundreds of civilians.

"The repeated bombardments of residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes," the rights group said in a report on Ukraine's second biggest city.

Away from the battlefield, World Trade Organization members gathered in Geneva Sunday, and at the top of the agenda was the issue of tackling global food security threatened by Russia's invasion of wheat-producing Ukraine.

Tensions ran high during a closed-door session, where several delegates took the floor to condemn Russia's war, including Kyiv's envoy who was met with a standing ovation, WTO spokesman Dan Pruzin told journalists.

Just before Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov spoke, around three dozen delegates "walked out", the spokesman said.

That came a day after the head of the European Commission promised Ukraine would receive a signal within a week on its bid to join the European Union.

EU leaders are expected to approve the bid at an upcoming summit, though with strict conditions attached.

In Brussels, demonstrators brandishing Ukrainian flags circled European Commission headquarters Sunday in a show of support.

Chortkiv strike

The war has prompted Finland and Sweden to give up decades of military non-alignment and seek to join the NATO alliance.

But Turkey is blocking their bids and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday the issue may not be resolved by an alliance summit later this month.

The United States and Europe have sent weapons and cash to help Ukraine blunt Russia's advance, alongside punishing Moscow with unprecedented economic sanctions.

Russian forces said Sunday they had struck a site in the town of Chortkiv in western Ukraine storing US- and EU-supplied weapons.

Russia's defence ministry said the strike destroyed a "large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defence systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and European countries".

The strike -- a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine -- left 22 people injured, regional governor Volodymyr Trush said.

Concerns eased Sunday over Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. Captured months ago by Russian forces but still operated by Ukrainians, the station had ceased transmitting vital safeguards data two weeks ago.

But plant officials working with the International Atomic Energy Agency have succeeded in restoring transmission, the IAEA said.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the UN agency, said it still wanted to send inspectors to the plant "as soon as possible".

Sentences defended

Alongside the physical fighting, the war is being played out through the courts.

Pro-Moscow separatist authorities in the Donetsk region this week sentenced to death two Britons and a Moroccan for fighting with the Ukrainian army.

The sentences sparked outrage in Western countries, but separatist Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin said Sunday he would not alter them.

"They came to Ukraine to kill civilians for money," he told reporters, calling the punishment "perfectly fair".

The families of Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner say they have been living in Ukraine since 2018.

Ukrainian courts have handed three Russian soldiers long prison sentences at war crimes trials.

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The first of dozens of restaurants taken over after the iconic fast-food chain McDonald's pulled out of Russia has reopened in Moscow, under new ownership and a new name: Tasty and That's It.

Owners of the new chain, whose name in Russian is Vkusno and Tochka, say initially 15 rebranded restaurants will reopen across Russia, with more to come in coming months.

Dozens of Russians lined up on Sunday at the famous Moscow location where McDonald's first opened its doors 30 years ago to try out the new burgers and fries.


Beijing's most populous district Chaoyang announced three rounds of mass testing to quell a "ferocious" COVID-19 outbreak that emerged at a bar in a nightlife and shopping area last week, shortly after the city relaxed curbs imposed during an outbreak in April.

City health officials said that so far there have been 166 confirmed cases linked to the outbreak that began at the Heaven Supermarket bar in the Sanlitun area on Thursday, 145 of them bar patrons. Mass testing would take place between Monday and Wednesday in Chaoyang district, where the bar is located, officials told a press briefing.

The overall numbers of cases and deaths from the pandemic remain extremely low in China compared with many countries around the world. But even as much of the world has relaxed curbs, Chinese authorities maintain their zero-COVID policy, trying to stamp out outbreaks early with measures including heavy restrictions on movement and mass testing.

Xu Hejian, Beijing city government spokesman, told Sunday's briefing that the current outbreak in the capital is "ferocious." "At present, the risk of a further spread still exists. The most urgent task at the moment is to trace the source of the cluster and also manage and control the risks," he said, adding Beijing must prevent the emergence of "epidemic amplifiers."
The cast and crew of "The Roundup" expressed their gratitude to moviegoers on Sunday, a day after the crime caper attracted its 10 millionth viewer.

The flick starring Ma Dong-seok, a sequel to his 2017 hit "The Outlaws," reached the milestone just less than a month after its release on May 18, becoming the first film to do so since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.


Yoon will take part in a multilateral session with the leaders of 30 member countries and hold one-on-one meetings with the heads of major European nations, the presidential office said.

It will be the first time that a Korean president is attending a NATO summit since the military alliance was created in 1949.

President Yoon Suk-yeol will attend a NATO summit in Madrid on June 29 and 30, his first overseas trip as president.

NATO was formed to put up a collective defense against the Soviet Union but survived the fall of the iron curtain. Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year after the former Soviet republic attempted to join NATO.

The upcoming summit is expected to focus on forming a consolidated anti-Russian front, and Korea and other non-member Australia, Japan and New Zealand have been invited to join its efforts.

The four non-member states are the U.S.' key allies in Asia and the Pacific. China has already warned that NATO coming to Asia-Pacific would "stir up conflict."

There are also cautious expectations of a possible Korea-Japan summit on the sidelines of the NATO meeting. The last summit between the fractious neighbors was in December 2019, when then-President Moon Jae-in met with Japanese Prime minister Shinzo Abe during a trilateral summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Chengdu.

The presidential office is in talks with Japan about the prospects of a meeting between Yoon and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper cited multiple Korean government sources saying that they would prefer a formal rather than informal meeting.

Diplomatic sources said a meeting between the two countries' foreign ministers in Tokyo around the middle of this month is also on the cards.
Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) has held several virtual town hall meetings with senior executives from various government entities to discuss the detailed implementation of Savings Scheme for Employees in Government of Dubai for expatriates from July 1.



Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, and Chairman of The Executive Council, approved the launch of the scheme in March 2022 with the aim of attracting and retaining talent by providing an integrated system that offers various savings opportunities for employees to secure their present and future.



The scheme conceptualised after the DIFC Employee Workplace Savings (DEWS) plan, targets expatriates in Dubai government entities in the first stage, with the scope of expanding its implementation in later stages.



The virtual meetings were attended by executives, human resources managers and employees from government entities that will start implementing the new scheme. The attendees learned about the advantages of the scheme, enrolment details and types of financial contributions, in addition to procedures followed at all levels, which include the employee, employer and the supervisory board of the scheme.



Alya Hussain AlZarouni, Executive Vice President  Operations, DIFC Authority, said: Expanding the DIFC Employee Workplace Savings (DEWS) plan across the Dubai government entities supports the emirates vision to be a leading hub for talent. This comprehensive savings plan is utilised for retirement planning and aligns with global best practices. The approach is a first for the region and over time, we expect other cities and countries to adopt a similar approach in the coming years. Together with industry leaders such as Equiom, Zurich and Mercer, we will continue to provide a best-in-class offering, reforming the workplace savings landscape.



Mohammad AlHawi, Director of Policies and Strategies-Economic Development at the General Secretariat of The Executive Council of Dubai highlighted that the savings scheme is considered an important addition to the Government of Dubai and will play a key role in enhancing the economic and social stability that the government offers its employees.



He added: "The scheme will contribute to strengthening Dubais position as a global financial centre, which is recognised as an incubator for expertise and competencies from around the world, in accordance with international best practices. This is in the interest of the workforce and its development within an integrated system that enhances the attractiveness and flexibility of the labour market in the Emirate."



When DEWS was launched in February 2020, it was the first scheme of its kind in the region and reformed the end-of-service benefits regime for people working in DIFC, aligning with the international retirement savings standards. The scheme has since grown from strength to strength, both in size and performance, despite the onset of Covid-19 almost immediately after the schemes introduction.



Global professional services provider, Equiom will act as the master trustee of the scheme and the independent legal owner of contributions made by employers, while ensuring that its beneficial interest lies with employees. Zurich Workplace Solutions will support employers and employees through the administration and management of the plan. Investment services provider, Mercer will provide independent, tried and tested investment advice to the master trustee of the scheme.



With its market-leading approach to long-term workplace savings in the region, DEWS provides a progressive end-of-service benefits scheme, having restructured the predefined employee benefits plan into a professionally funded and managed plan.



The plan also offers employees the possibility to save more through voluntary savings. In addition, DEWS allows participants to choose a plan that is commensurate with the type of risk they are willing to take, empowering employees to plan for their financial future, especially retirement.  TradeArabia News Service
First lady Kim Keon-hee visits Bongha Village in South Gyeongsang Province on Monday to meet Kwon Yang-sook, the widow of ex-president Roh Moon-hyun.

The visit is part of a reconciliation drive between conservatives and progressives by President Yoon Suk-yeol. Roh, who killed himself as a corruption investigation closed in in 2009, remains a figurehead for many on the left. The presidential office on Sunday said Kim will pay her respects at his grave.

Kim told the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation last month that her husband was unable to attend a memorial event marking the 13th anniversary of Roh's death on May 23, so she wished to pay a visit in person later.

Kim also wants to meet Kim Jung-sook, the wife of ex-President Moon Jae-in. She is likely to visit the Moons at their retirement home in Yangsan, South Gyeongsang Province later this week.
"That's especially important as the PRC adopts a more coercive and aggressive approach to its territorial claims," Austin said, adding, "Now, as a part of our one-China policy, we will continue to fulfill our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act. That includes assisting Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability."

The Chinese minister was responding to remarks by the U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said on Saturday that the U.S. will stand by its friends as they uphold their rights.

"We request the U.S. side to stop smearing and containing China. Stop interfering in China's internal affairs. The bilateral relationship cannot improve unless the U.S. side can do that," Wei said on the last day of the 3-day Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's premier security meet, in Singapore.

Dressed in his uniform as a general of the People's Liberation Army, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Sunday warned the U.S. against trying to corner China and interfere in its internal affairs. These moves are damaging the U.S.-China relations, he said.

China views assurances to stand by Taiwan and other countries in the region as "interference" by a non-Asian power. Whatever efforts the U.S. makes, it will not deter China from its determination to oppose the independence of Taiwan, Wei said. "We will fight at all cost, and we will fight to the very end. This is the only choice for China."

"Those who pursue Taiwanese independence in an attempt to split China will definitely come to no good end," he added. China regards Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification by force if necessary. Taiwan is a self-ruled territory with its own flag, currency and military.

China had earlier managed a leading role in the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) by turning it into an ASEAN+1 dialogue with China. It has considerable influence as the biggest trade partner for most of the region's countries and the leading military power.

But Chinese leaders now find that the country's influence in the region is shifting due to the active role of the U.S. Some delegates attending the Shangri-La Dialogue said the shift toward siding with the U.S. included countries such as Singapore and Indonesia, which are dependent on China's trade.

In fact, General Wei made no bones about the fact that he was worried about the initial success of the newly crafted Indo-Pacific strategy and the American promise of extending technological assistance to the region.

"To us, the [U.S.] strategy is an attempt to build an exclusive small group in the name of a free and open Indo-Pacific, to hijack countries in our region and target one specific country," Wei said adding, "It is a strategy to create conflict and confrontation to contain and encircle others."

China has sent navy ships to patrol the South China Sea connected to several countries in the region, a move seen as a sign of aggression. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently accused China of harassing Canadian military jets in the skies above Asia. Australia's department of defense said last month that a Chinese fighter jet recently intercepted one of its surveillance aircrafts in the area of the South China Sea.

However, a Chinese military official denied accusations of an aircraft maneuver of China's military over Taiwan, at a press briefing Saturday.

"The air space where this event happened were  near China's Xisha and Nansha Islands, not the air space of American allies," Lieutenant General Zhang Zhenzhong, the senior Chinese military officer said. "China has to take necessary countermeasures to safeguard its sovereignty and security interests. The countermeasures we have taken are conducted in a professional and safe way. It is a natural right of a sovereign country to protect its territory."

The Shangri-La Dialogue, which took place after a gap of two years, attracted defense ministers and officials from 42 countries. The event saw 30 different speakers including U.S. Defense Secretary Austin, Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The outbreak prompted authorities in the sprawling Chaoyang district to put school back online, with the exception of students taking middle and high school placement exams. Sports gatherings in the city have also been put on hold. Chaoyang has ordered daily mass testing, with long lines forming and wait times of two hours or more.

A total of 166 cases have been linked to the Heaven Supermarket club in the downtown Gongti nightlife area after an infected person visited there Thursday. Of those, 145 were customers, while the rest were staff or people with whom customers had later contact. The entire area, along with the adjacent Sanlitun shopping and dining complex, was shut down until further notice.

China has stuck to its "zero-COVID" policy requiring mass testing, quarantines and the sequestering of anyone who has come into contact with an infected person in concentrated locations where hygiene is generally poor.

China's capital has put school online in one of its major districts amid a new COVID-19 outbreak linked to a nightclub, while life has yet to return to normal in Shanghai despite the lifting of a more than two-month-long lockdown.

In Shanghai, 502 people have been linked to three positive tests detected June 9 among patrons of the Red Rose Beauty Salon. The individuals involved come from 15 districts across the city of 25 million people, prompting the first large-scale restrictions since the lockdown was formally ended June 1.

With mass testing and restrictions on movement back in force, streets and supermarkets emptied again over the weekend. Failure to undergo testing will lead to a yellow code on a person's health status app, forbidding them access to all public places. Most students remain at home and all but a few restaurants are open only for takeout. Many customers simply partake of their food and drink on the steps beside blooming flower bushes outside the establishments.

While 22 million Shanghai residents were released from lockdown almost two weeks ago, 220,000 people are still restricted to their homes under a rule requiring that no positive cases are found within their residential compounds for more than 10 days. Another 600,000 are in control zones, where their movements are restricted within their compounds.

Corrugated steel fences and other barriers continue to block off neighborhoods and businesses, leading to further discontent and complaints from residents who remain in lockdown.

The strict implementation of lockdowns, along with a lack of information and poor distribution of food and other daily necessities, has led to rarely seen displays of anger and desperation. Residents have confronted workers and police who have become known as "big whites" for the protective gear they wear, circulated protest videos online and coordinated nightly screaming and pot-banging events to let off steam.

The loosening of restrictions led to an exodus of non-Shanghai residents, including foreigners, who had found themselves trapped in the lockdown.

Despite the recent outbreak, Beijing reported just 51 new cases on Monday, 22 of them asymptomatic. City residents are still undergoing regular testing -- mostly every other day -- and must wear masks and swipe a mobile phone app to enter public places and facilitate case tracing.

China has maintained its "zero-COVID" policy despite considerable economic costs and an assertion from the head of the World Health Organization that the policy isn't sustainable. Nationwide, China reported just 143 cases, almost all in Beijing and Shanghai. The death toll from the outbreak in mainland China remained static at 5,226.
By Peter Masheter, KYODO NEWS - Jun 13, 2022 - 21:07 | All, Japan

The Ukraine and U.S. ambassadors to Tokyo called on the Japanese public Monday to give to a newly launched fund helping Ukrainian evacuees adjust to life in Japan, including with language-learning aid.

The Ukraine Evacuees Assistance Fund, established in a partnership between the philanthropic Nippon Foundation with U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel and Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Korsunsky, aims to raise 1 billion yen ($7.4 million) by Sept. 30.

To ensure evacuees can become linguistically competent to find jobs and lead fulfilling lives, the fund covers tuition at Japanese language schools and pays scholarships. It will also offer everyday items like cards for public transportation, and some cash will go to facilitating experiencing Japanese summer festivals.

At a press conference at the foundation's Tokyo headquarters, Korsunsky stressed the fund is not just "spending money," and cited future potential IT and agricultural partnerships to call it an "investment of Japan into the nation which will always be friendly to you, which can help you in many terms in the future."

Emanuel, who approached the foundation about the fund, praised Japan's response to Ukrainians' plight so far, saying, "The Japanese people have stepped up since day one, and opened their hearts, opened their homes and opened their wallets, and we're asking them to continue to do that."

Also attending were evacuees Oksana Bila, 48, and her son Mark Yelenets, 22, and daughter Rimma Yelenets-Memor, 18. Mark said the family, who arrived in May, is "really grateful" for educational support because it offers the "possibility to be directly integrated into the society by learning the language, by learning the culture."

Tuition for language classes can cost 700,000 to 800,000 yen annually plus enrollment fees, according to the foundation, which said the money would also help Japanese language schools struggling due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Other Nippon Foundation Ukraine initiatives have included a fund announced in March providing around 5 billion yen to evacuees and nongovernment organizations helping them.

Jumpei Sasakawa, the foundation's executive director, said evacuee arrivals had exceeded expectations.

As of Saturday, Japan is home to 1,256 Ukrainian evacuees, government data showed. Figures current to Wednesday show 284 are below 18, another 788 are aged 18 to 60, and 171 are aged 61 or older.

Ukrainian nationals evacuating to Japan can currently stay up to a year. They receive temporary visitor 90-day visas upon arrival, which can be upgraded to designated activities visas affording a year's residence and work eligibility.

An estimated 4.9 million people have fled Ukraine for other countries in Europe, UNHCR figures on June 9 showed.

Contributions to the fund can be made at the following link (https://kifu.www.nippon-foundation.or.jp/ukrsp/), with payment options including credit card or bank transfer.
KYODO NEWS - Jun 13, 2022 - 17:01 | All, Japan

Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles will visit Japan for three days this week to discuss security issues in the Indo-Pacific region, the government said Monday.

It will be Marles' first trip to Japan since Australia's new Labor government took office in May. During his stay in Japan through Wednesday, he will hold talks with Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi and other key government figures, as well as various academic and industry representatives, according to the defense ministry.

"I am delighted to be in Japan as one of my first international visits," Marles is quoted by the ministry as saying. "Australia and Japan share a vision for an open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region, one where the sovereignty of all states is respected."

"Japan is a critical partner in achieving our regional objectives. Our partnership continues to grow as we pursue new and ambitious avenues for cooperation," he added.

According to the Japanese Defense Ministry, Kishi's meeting with Marles is scheduled for Wednesday.

Marles and Kishi were both in Singapore over the weekend to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's leading security forum, which was held following a two-year suspension due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Sunday, the two defense chiefs held talks on the sidelines of the in-person forum and agreed that their countries will "firmly oppose" any unilateral attempt to change the status quo or any action to escalate tensions in the South and East China seas, according to the Japanese ministry.

China has laid territorial claims in parts of the seas and become increasingly assertive in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years.
KYODO NEWS - Jun 14, 2022 - 00:19 | All, Japan

A group of 10 people working as freelance delivery drivers for Amazon.com Inc.'s Japan unit have unionized and handed over a letter to the online shopping giant's Tokyo headquarters demanding that their poor working conditions be corrected, union members said Monday.

The union claimed that, despite working as freelance drivers, Amazon Japan G.K. effectively controls their work hours by sending delivery instructions via smartphones and that outsourcing of delivery operations is a way to avoid signing labor contracts.

Lawyers and supporters of the group said this is the first time Amazon delivery drivers have unionized in Japan.

The members, who make deliveries in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, said in a press conference in Tokyo they have been made to work excessively long hours, especially after the company last year switched to artificial intelligence to decide the number of packages to deliver and each driver's area of coverage.

An Amazon official said the company has "received the letter and is scrutinizing the content of their requests."

A man in his 50s who approached other drivers to form the union said that he felt the need to unionize after getting into an accident while working last year.

The man said he had been overworked to the point of exhaustion, and after arriving at a destination to make a delivery, he failed to park his vehicle properly, which resulted in it colliding with a building after he had alighted.

"After working long hours every day, I was impatient and lacked concentration because I wanted to go home quickly," he said. "I was angry because I thought I could have hurt someone."

The union members argue that they meet the criteria of workers under the Labor Standards Act as Amazon sends instructions directly to them and manages their working hours.

The workers make deliveries from an Amazon warehouse in Yokosuka based on outsourcing agreements with primary and secondary subcontractors of the company.

"The huge workload is stressful and we cannot handle it," the union's leader in his 60s said at the press conference. "If we don't correct this, then drivers may die on the job."

The workers also requested compensation for pay deductions made for such reasons as packages being damaged during delivery.

There are many drivers across the country working under similar conditions to the union members, and the latest move in Yokosuka could amplify calls for improvement of labor conditions.
KYODO NEWS - Jun 13, 2022 - 15:09 | World, All, Japan

South Korea's defense chief has said his country is willing to "normalize" security cooperation with Japan, amid signs of a thaw in bilateral ties frayed over wartime issues.

"We are ready to engage in serious dialogue with Japan," South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong Sup said in a speech Sunday at the annual Asia Security Summit in Singapore, with his Japanese counterpart Nobuo Kishi also in attendance.

There have been recent signs of improvement in bilateral ties under the new South Korean administration of President Yoon Suk Yeol, who took office in May.

Yoon has called for a future-oriented approach in bilateral relations and vowed to boost trilateral cooperation with Japan and the United States to deal with North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and missiles.

Lee was quoted by Yonhap News Agency and other sources as telling reporters that while he did not hold talks with Kishi during the forum, also known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, they were able to chat informally on three occasions.

He told Kishi that he wants to see their countries' relations "head in a positive direction."

Lee also underscored the importance of creating a good atmosphere, saying the time to hold bilateral talks will "come naturally."

In another positive development for bilateral ties, South Korea's Foreign Minister Park Jin said separately on Sunday before leaving for the United States that he will arrange with Japanese officials a "mutually convenient" time for him to visit Japan.

It would be the first visit to Japan by a South Korean foreign minister since November 2019.

In Washington, Park was quoted by Yonhap as saying there would be an "appropriate time" for a possible meeting between Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Yoon will attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Spain later this month, a first for a South Korean leader, a person close to his office said, while Japanese government sources said Kishida is considering taking part in the gathering.

South Korea has sounded out Japan about holding an in-person meeting between Yoon and Kishida on the fringes of the summit, the government sources said.

During phone talks in March following Yoon's presidential election, the two agreed to improve bilateral ties and expressed hope to meet in person at an early date.

With concerns growing over the possibility of North Korea conducting a seventh nuclear test, Park said that Pyongyang has now completed its preparations and whether to conduct the test now rests on the "political decision" of the North.

Under the previous administration of South Korean President Moon Jae In, bilateral ties deteriorated over disputes dating back to Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, namely the issue of "comfort women" procured for Japan's wartime military brothels and compensation demands from South Koreans over what they claim was wartime forced labor.

The two sides have also long been at odds over islets controlled by Seoul and claimed by Tokyo, known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea, as well as Japanese restrictions on semiconductor material exports to South Korea imposed in July 2019.

Tensions also grew after an incident in December 2018 when the South Korean navy allegedly locked fire-control radar on a Japanese Self-Defense Forces patrol plane in Japan's exclusive economic zone.
KYODO NEWS - Jun 13, 2022 - 19:47 | All, Japan

Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi is planning to visit the United States from late July and hold a meeting with his counterparts from a coalition of non-nuclear weapons states in New York, sources familiar with the plan said Monday.

The ministerial gathering of the 12-member Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative is envisaged as Japan hopes to build the momentum for a successful conclusion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference to be held in August.

At their last meeting in the Japanese city of Nagoya in 2019, the coalition members, including Japan, Australia and Germany, issued a statement calling on nuclear weapons states to report their nuclear capabilities to enhance transparency.

Hayashi is also expected to attend the first ministerial talks on economic policy involving Japanese and U.S. foreign and economy ministers in Washington, possibly on July 29, the sources said. The framework is called the economic "two-plus-two," akin to the security talks involving the countries' foreign and defense chiefs.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been considering attending the upcoming U.N. conference, which will be held from Aug. 1 to 26, to deliver a speech, according to the sources.

The previous NPT review meeting in 2015, in which Kishida participated as foreign minister, failed to produce a final document due to disagreements between nuclear and non-nuclear states.

There is some speculation that it will be more difficult to reach an agreement this time, as the world has seen Russia's nuclear saber-rattling amid its invasion of Ukraine.

As the only country to suffer the devastation of atomic bombings, Japan is concerned that a similar outcome at the August meeting could leave the NPT regime weaker, and Kishida is seen as eager to play a role in bridging between nuclear and non-nuclear states.

If realized, he would be the first Japanese premier to attend the conference, which is held among NPT member countries every five years in principle to review the treaty's implementation.

Elected from a constituency in Hiroshima, one of the two Japanese cities devastated by U.S. atomic bombings in 1945, Kishida has expressed a resolve to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

The NPT recognizes only the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- as nuclear powers, and requires them to commit to nuclear disarmament talks. While barring other countries from possessing the weapons, the treaty guarantees their right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Other known nuclear-weapon states such as India, Israel and Pakistan are not party to the pact.

As part of international efforts to curb nuclear weapons around the world, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force in January last year, but its effectiveness has been in question as no nuclear weapons states have joined it.

Japan has not signed the nuclear ban treaty due to its reliance on U.S. nuclear forces for its security.

Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to launch the economic version of two-plus-two ministerial talks when they met online in January, as the two nations have been pushing for a vision of "free and open Indo-Pacific" with China's growing economic and military clout in the region in mind.

Hayashi and industry minister Koichi Hagiuda are expected to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to discuss economic security issues such as cooperation to strengthen supply chains for semiconductors and other critical commodities, the sources said.
KYODO NEWS - Jun 13, 2022 - 19:02 | All, World

North Korea now has 20 nuclear warheads at most, a leading international security think tank said Monday, at a time when concerns are growing in the Asia-Pacific region that Pyongyang could conduct a nuclear test anytime soon.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute gave the estimates for this year for "the number of actual assembled warheads North Korea possesses." Figures released in previous years referred to the number of warheads that it could build with the amount of fissile material it has produced.

The estimates for North Korea were added for the first time to the global inventory of nuclear warheads.

SIPRI's annual report came as North Korea's neighboring countries Japan and South Korea and their ally the United States are bracing for a fresh nuclear test, which if carried out would be its first since September 2017.

Washington and Seoul have said Pyongyang has already completed preparations for a nuclear test at its Punggye-ri test site in the country's northeast.

The Sweden-based think tank said in its report that North Korea's stockpile of fissile material is projected to have grown in 2021, enough to produce 45 to 55 nuclear warheads. It may also have "a small number of warheads for medium-range ballistic missiles," according to the report.

North Korea has also raised tensions on the Korean Peninsula since the start of this year with repeated ballistic missile launches.

Across the world, the number of nuclear warheads was estimated at 12,705 as of January. Although the figure was down from 13,080 a year earlier, the report said the global nuclear arsenal is "expected to grow over the coming decade."

The risk of nuclear weapons being used "seems higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War," the institute said, given Russia's nuclear saber-rattling following its invasion of Ukraine that began in February.

Russia had the world's largest nuclear arsenal with 5,977 warheads, followed by the United States with 5,428. Together, they account for nearly 90 percent of the world's nuclear warheads.

The total warhead inventories for Russia and the United States declined in 2021, but the report attributed this to the dismantling of warheads retired from military service several years ago.

China ranked third with 350 warheads, unchanged from the previous year, with France trailing behind with 290 and Britain with 180. Pakistan was estimated to possess 165 warheads while India had 160 and Israel had 90.

Related coverage:

North Korea may conduct nuclear test "any time": U.S. special envoy
KYODO NEWS - Jun 13, 2022 - 07:38 | Feature, All, Japan, Coronavirus

As Japan resumed visa procedures to accept foreign tourists last week, travel companies have been thrown into confusion over the lack of communication regarding entry procedures and last-minute COVID-19 guidelines.

The government's sudden moves have generated discontent among many in the travel industry, with some domestic companies pulling out of operating tours for inbound tourists amid the prolonged coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on May 26 that Japan would reopen to foreign tourists from last Friday, initially limiting eligible tourism arrivals to guided tours from 98 countries and regions deemed to have the lowest risk of infection.

The announcement triggered a flurry of inquiries from both domestic and overseas travel agencies.

"Overseas agencies had been looking for tour participants on a spur-of-the-moment basis, so they were confused after discovering visas would be required," said the manager of a Japanese company supporting inbound tourism.

Before the pandemic, Japan offered visa-free travel for tourists from 68 countries and regions including the United States, South Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia.

But border restrictions due to COVID-19 mean that currently "everyone needs a visa," according to the Foreign Ministry.

Many overseas travel agencies were also unaware that, in order to apply for a visa, they first needed to input the traveler's details into Japan's health ministry system, which did not begin operating until midnight Thursday.

A South Korean travel agency said its hopes of organizing tours to Japan this month were dashed due to the procedure, with July now the earliest it can run a tour. Contacting the Japanese Embassy in Seoul also proved fruitless, it said.

Under guidelines released by the Japan Tourism Agency last Tuesday, foreign tourists are asked to wear face masks and take out insurance to cover medical expenses in the event they contract COVID-19.

Upon sales or reservation of tours, travel agencies will need to gain the consent of tour participants to comply with the measures by explaining that they otherwise may not be able to take part.

During the tour itself, the agencies will also keep records of the participants' movements, including places they visited and where they sat on public transportation.

"We have to explain the guidelines to (visitors of Japan) to prevent problems from occurring," said a representative of major Japanese travel agency JTB Corp.

TAS Co., a Tokyo-based company that predominantly organizes tours to Japan for Southeast Asians, said it was translating the tourism agency guidelines into local languages to promptly communicate them to prospective travelers.

"Although what we can do at present is limited, we have received many inquiries, and interest in traveling to Japan is high," a staff of the company said.

But for small and medium-sized tour operators, the slump in business has proven tough, and many have decided to pull out of running tours for foreign tourists to Japan or suspend operations.

Among these are a western Japan agency that had organized many tours for Muslims and a Tokyo-based operator that helped Chinese tourists visit Japan.

Kishida has stated that Japan is aiming to gradually accept the same number of visitors as pre-pandemic times, but easing border restrictions while rebuilding the country's hospitality industry will prove to be a challenging task.
Bahrains Labour Fund (Tamkeen) has announced the first group of 12 leading global companies that will participate in the Global Ready Talent program and train over 60 Bahrainis in their headquarters around the world.

This program will help develop the skills and expertise of Bahraini talent, further driving their career growth and helping them reach leadership positions in the future, as well as enhancing their competitiveness both locally and internationally, said a Tamkeen statement.

The first group of global companies includes: Amazon Web Services (AWS), SAP, Nortal, Citi, Standard Chartered Bank, Investcorp, DHL, Arla Foods, Fives Group, Seapeak, GC Labs, and Bluewater Bio.

The training opportunities will focus on professional and technical skills to provide Bahrainis with practical work experience across a range of emerging and high potential sectors.

Husain Mohamed Rajab, the Chief Executive of Tamkeen, said: The Global Ready Talent Program was designed in collaboration with global multinational companies with the objective of creating opportunities for local talent so that they can obtain global experiences and develop their skills, thus helping them progress in their careers locally and internationally.

He added: We encourage Bahraini talent to expand the scope of their experiences by looking at training opportunities, and by working within high-potential global sectors, to enhance their capabilities and then share their knowledge and experience locally, which will contribute to the growth and development of the national economy.

Bahrain is known for having the MENA regions top talent pool across all economic sectors and fields, along with the governments commitment to continuous growth and development. Bahrain ranked second in MENA in the World Bank Human Capital Index 2020, a testament to Bahrains commitment to nurturing and developing its human capital through various government-led initiatives.

These companies represent the first group within the Global Ready Talent program, and Tamkeen will continue to identify more valuable opportunities for talented and high-skilled Bahrainis by adding more world-leading multinational companies. This program is also part of Tamkeens initiatives to encourage individuals and employees within enterprises to explore high potential international opportunities in order to grow and develop.

The program is part of the 16 programs launched by Tamkeen earlier this year as part of its strategic transformation which focuses on driving increased and sustainable impact for the national economy and serves Tamkeens role in the implementation of the government-led economic recovery plan, which includes pillars focused on upskilling local talent and creating jobs for locals, as well as on supporting all economic sectors, with a focus on incentivising high-potential sectors. -TradeArabia News Service
KYODO NEWS - Jun 13, 2022 - 15:35 | All, Japan

A Japanese couple who kept their own surnames when they got married in the United States were told by a Tokyo ward office Monday that their marriage could not be registered using the two different names.

Kiyoko Kashiwagi, a movie producer, and Kazuhiro Soda, a film director, were challenging the law that forces married Japanese couples to share a surname, having previously tried to register their marriage with the Chiyoda Ward office in 2018.

The couple, who both hail from the western Japan prefecture of Okayama, wed under separate surnames in December 1997 in New York, where they were residing.

Seeking to have their marriage recognized in Japan, the two filed their case with the Tokyo District Court. In April last year, the court ruled their marriage as "valid," but dismissed the issue of marriage registry, saying it would be more "appropriate" for a family court to handle that.

With the ward's refusal to accept their marriage registration, Kashiwagi and Soda will now file their complaint with the Tokyo Family Court.

The stipulation under Japan's Civil Code that a married couple needs to adopt the same surname only applies to Japanese couples.

Couples who register their marriage in Japan generally choose the husband's surname, making the issue a matter of gender equality.

Critics say the provision originating from the 1898 Civil Code reflects the traditional concept of marriage as an arrangement involving families rather than individuals. Usually, a woman leaves her family to become part of her husband's family.

The Supreme Court ruled the provision as constitutional in 2021.

The United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has recommended that Japan change the system.

Soda, 52, has not been shy about challenging Japanese laws. He was also a plaintiff in a suit that challenged the constitutionality of a law that bans overseas citizens from participating in national reviews of Supreme Court justices. The top court eventually ruled the law as constitutional.
Policemen carry out their duties for the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 10, 2022. (Photo by Then Chih Wey/Xinhua)

By peddling the slogan of "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" to hide the true purpose of maintaining U.S. global hegemony, Western countries have exposed an inability to live up to regional expectations for cooperation.

SINGAPORE, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The Shangri-La Dialogue, which wrapped up here on Sunday, should have been an ideal platform to foster cooperation for Asia-Pacific peace and prosperity. Regretfully, the United States and its allies have utilized it to stoke confrontation and coerce regional countries into containing China.

By peddling the slogan of "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" to hide the true purpose of maintaining U.S. global hegemony, Western countries have exposed an inability to live up to regional expectations for cooperation.

The region should stay vigilant of Washington's hypocritical geopolitical strategies. Above all, pitting countries against one another cannot create a better future for Asia-Pacific.

The emphasis U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin put on such coteries as AUKUS and Quad in his speech proves that Washington has paid no more than lip service with the promise that it would not seek division or strife in the region.

Austin asked regional countries to "strengthen the rules-based international order." Yet it is Austin's own country that has frequently disregarded international law, arbitrarily withdrawn from multilateral mechanisms and treaties, imposed unilateral sanctions against countries it dislikes, and interfered in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.

It seems laughable that the United States claims to champion a rules-based global order.

Meanwhile, observers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are concerned that AUKUS and Quad would impede regional centrality, and the so-called Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) would disrupt existing economic arrangements such as APEC.

Protesters gather at Shiba Park to demonstrate against the upcoming U.S.-Japan summit and the summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), in Tokyo, Japan, May 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Xiaoyu)

During a recent regional forum, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad cautioned that the IPEF is intended to isolate China and won't benefit regional economic growth.

In fact, a constructive mechanism should contribute to world and regional peace, stability and shared interests of all, rather than stoke antagonism out of certain countries' self-serving motives. As the Chinese delegation at the Shangri-La Dialogue has said, Washington's Indo-Pacific strategy would only cause division, instigate confrontation and undermine peace in Asia-Pacific.

With the resurgence of unilateralism and a Cold War mentality, Asia-Pacific risks backsliding into division and confrontation.

The way forward is to uphold and practice multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind, Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe pointed out in his speech during the dialogue.

China has taken concrete action to safeguard peace in the region and beyond by proposing the Global Security Initiative, offering the international community Chinese solutions and wisdom to address common challenges.

Kin Phea, director-general of the International Relations Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said China consistently upholds a vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, thereby "playing a more important role in safeguarding global and regional peace and stability."

The Asia-Pacific region is the world's most vibrant and promising economic powerhouse. Countries should jointly uphold regional peace and stability to strive for an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future. 




PARIS, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The first-round voting of the 2022 French legislative elections kicked off on Sunday. The elections will choose 577 members for the French National Assembly.

The second round is scheduled for June 19.

Each deputy is elected in a constituency, of which Metropolitan France (the area of the country that is geographically in Europe) has 539 and the overseas territories 27. A further 11 deputies will represent the French nationals living abroad.

The deputies are directly elected for a term of five years. For this year's election, the French Interior Ministry has published a list of 6,293 candidates, which the local news channel BFMTV said was 20 percent less than in 2017.

Polling booths will be open from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. on both election days. In major cities, such as Paris, Lyon or Marseille, they will close at 8 p.m.

Online voting will be available for French citizens living abroad.

The preliminary election results are scheduled to be announced after 8 p.m. The Interior Ministry will communicate the official results.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service








A medical worker takes a swab sample from a resident for nucleic acid testing at Balizhuang Subdistrict in Chaoyang District, Beijing, capital of China, June 11, 2022. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)

BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Beijing has reported 33 confirmed COVID-19 cases that were locally transmitted as of 3 p.m. on Sunday, the municipal health commission told a press conference.

That has brought the number of new cases to 1,997 since April 22, said Liu Xiaofeng, deputy head of the Beijing municipal disease prevention and control center, at the press conference.

Of the new cases, 166 were related to a bar in Beijing's Sanlitun area. They were reported from June 9 to 3 p.m. Sunday, according to the commission.

Currently, the Chinese capital has one medium-risk area for COVID-19.

Xu Hejian, a spokesperson for the Beijing Municipal Government, said the top priority is to trace the infection source while controlling risks to cut off the transmission chain of the virus as quickly as possible. 
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Monday that the sound and steady relationship between China and Australia meets the fundamental interests and the common aspiration of the two peoples.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
BEIJING, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, chairman of the Central Military Commission, has signed an order to promulgate a set of trial outlines on military operations other than war.

The outlines aim to protect people's lives and property, safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interest, and safeguard world peace and regional stability.

The outlines, comprising 59 articles in six chapters, serve as a legal base for military operations other than war and will take effect on June 15, 2022. 
BEIJING, June 13 (Xinhua) -- China's National Meteorological Center on Monday renewed a yellow alert for rainstorms in various parts of the country.

From 2 p.m. Monday to 2 p.m. Tuesday, heavy downpours are expected to lash parts of southern China, and some areas in Yunnan, Liaoning and Shandong provinces. Some areas may experience up to 180 millimeters of rainfall.

Some of these regions are likely to encounter over 80 millimeters of hourly precipitation, accompanied by thunderstorms and gales.

The meteorological center has advised local governments to make appropriate preparations, implement traffic control measures in road sections hit by heavy rainfall and guide traffic in water-logged streets.

It has also called for cutting off risky outdoor power sources in low-lying areas, transferring people to safe areas and checking the drainage systems in cities, farmland and fishponds.

China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue. 
HONG KONG, June 13 (Xinhua) -- China's drive to further reform and open up its financial industry means huge opportunities for foreign financial institutions, a high-ranking executive of Japan-based Nomura Holdings Inc. has told Xinhua.

"China has become the second largest economy in the world, and its capital market is also the second largest globally," said Toshiyasu Iiyama, executive managing director of Nomura Holdings Inc. and chairman of the China committee, in a written interview with Xinhua recently.

"China's building of a multi-layer capital market system as well as the further reform and opening-up of the financial industry are providing more and more opportunities to foreign financial institutions to achieve more development and growth in China," said Iiyama.

He said that many foreign institutions, including Nomura, have benefited from the continuous opening-up and development of China's financial market.

Nomura Holdings Inc., a company mainly engaged in securities, investment and other financial businesses worldwide, entered the China market 40 years ago.

In 2019, Nomura launched its joint venture, Nomura Orient International Securities, one of China's first newly approved foreign-controlled securities companies, which was viewed by the global financial service provider as a major breakthrough.

Nomura said that its business in the China market has been encouraging, with the joint venture headquartered in Shanghai city and three new branches in Beijing, Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

For the time being, Nomura Orient International Securities has opened more than 1,600 customer accounts, overseeing around 5.60 billion yuan (832.1 million U.S. dollars) of client assets.

"This year is the 40th anniversary of Nomura's presence in China. Nomura opened its Beijing representative office back in 1982, as one of the first foreign securities companies entering the Chinese market. Over the past 40 years, we have been honored to witness the development and opening-up of China's financial market," Iiyama said.

"The establishment of a joint venture securities firm in China is a great opportunity not only for the joint venture itself, but also for the entire Nomura Group. We highly appreciate the opportunity provided by China's further opening-up," he said.

Naming multiple factors as driving forces for the growth of the Chinese financial sector, Iiyama said that China's booming economy in the past decades, especially after China adopted the reform and opening-up policy more than 40 years ago, has built a solid foundation for the development of China's financial industry.

In recent years, the transformation and upgrading of China's economic structure has also supported the high-level opening-up of the financial industry, he noted.

Iiyama said the successful reform of China's financial system, such as a multi-layer capital market system and the regulatory system, has also provided a strong guarantee for the further development of the financial sector.

"I think the active participation and support from various market players have also contributed to the prosperity and vitality of China's financial industry," he said.

As for the China market strategy in the years ahead, Iiyama said, "We expect the wealth management business to grow rapidly in China, although this is only the beginning of Nomura's strategy in China."

"We are taking steps to expand our onshore business here. Nomura Orient International Securities is in preparation to apply for an investment banking license, aiming to become a fully licensed brokerage and provide more diversified and comprehensive services to high-net-worth clients," he said.

"Connecting Nomura's global network to the Chinese market is our next important agenda, and we have been already working on it. Through Nomura's global network, the group can connect with the markets of Tokyo, New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore, and we are working hard to provide new products and services to our clients," he said.

Nomura hopes to continue providing long-time strong support to China's financial market and clients with its global network and financial expertise, he added. 
A staff member prepares crayfish dishes during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province, June 12, 2022. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

Aerial photo taken on June 12, 2022 shows the view of an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

Aerial photo taken on June 12, 2022 shows people enjoying crayfish dishes during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

A chef prepares crayfish dishes during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province, June 12, 2022. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

A journalist takes photos of crayfish dishes showcased during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province, June 12, 2022. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

A crayfish dish is seen during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province, June 12, 2022. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

Aerial photo taken on June 12, 2022 shows people enjoying crayfish dishes during an international crayfish festival in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu Province. An international crayfish festival kicked off Sunday in Xuyi County, a major crayfish base in east China's Jiangsu Province, offering a feast for crayfish fans. The county, with a crayfish-breeding area of 835,000 mu (about 55,667 hectares), sees more than 200,000 people engaged in crayfish-related businesses. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)
PHNOM PENH, June 13 (Xinhua) -- China's vision for the Asia-Pacific has provided new ideas to achieve long-term global peace and stable development, academics have said.

China's vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security "is essential to ensure long-term world peace and stability, which are the prerequisite for a country's development," Kin Phea, director-general of the International Relations Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, told Xinhua.

China is a key contributor to world peace and stability and an engine of global growth, said Phea.

At the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Sunday, Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe expounded on China's vision for regional order.

Countries should seek peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation rather than hegemony and power politics. Wei said that global affairs should be handled through consultation by all stakeholders instead of being dictated by just one country or a small group of countries.

China is committed to building a new type of international relations based on mutual respect, fairness and justice, and win-win cooperation, he added.

Joseph Matthews, senior professor at the BELTEI International University in Phnom Penh, said China's vision of global development has created new opportunities, millions of jobs and bolstered globalization on all continents.

"China's efforts in the world are paying off as most countries are distancing themselves from countries that are committed to promoting war and arms races, undermining peace, security and economic development," Matthews said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific region has directly threatened the centrality of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is the soul and spirit of the bloc, said Matthews.

He said that the so-called Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is hardly a trade agreement, let alone a free trade one, and will not strengthen regional economic and social development.

"The U.S. has created this group to counter China's influence in the region, undermine the unity and neutrality of ASEAN, trigger conflict and tension, destabilize peace and economic development," Matthews said.

Echoing Matthews, Phea said the United States has tried to contain and encircle China by establishing many layers of alliances, including the military pact among the United States, Britain and Australia, or AUKUS, the Five Eyes Alliance and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.

Seun Sam, a policy analyst at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said the United States opposes anyone who is seen as a challenger to its status as the world's sole superpower.

Sam said the United States "will use whatever strategy" it can to confront a rival, even if the rival simply wants to cooperate and live in peace. 
Creaform, a business unit of Ametek, and worldwide leader in portable 3D measurement solutions and engineering services, has released its new VXscan-R software module for the VXelements 10 platform.

This latest version now offers an advanced compatibility with a wider range of robots, including collaborative ones, all of which take simplicity and ease of use to the next level while increasing quality control productivity.

The VXscan-R software is an integral part of the renowned R-SeriesTM. It is the optimal automated 3D scanning solution for at-line applications, in turnkey solutions, or for customisable layouts. VXscan-R offers a reliable and accurate digital twin environment for program preparation, scan simulations, and execution. Used with the MetraSCAN 3D-R, a robot-mounted optical CMM scanner, the R-Series is designed for companies that want to find defects earlier and ensure that all parts are measured correctly, without human impact and subjectivity.

Compatibility

This new version of VXscan-R is now compatible with collaborative robots (Fanuc CRX) as well as a variety of new industrial robots, which allows it to adapt to any workflow, from large production lines to small and medium enterprises.

Simple deployment: With its lightweight and compact design, this new offer of collaborative robots in the R-Series can be deployed easily and rapidly, regardless of the users levels of expertise or experience.

Powerful: The MetraSCAN 3D-R offers high-performance optics, blue laser technology and 360 target coverage, providing optimal measurement accuracy, speed, versatility, and operational simplicity for any quality control task. Just what you need to solve productivity issues efficiently and provide increased product quality.

Seamless integration: The R-Series solutions are fully integrated in VXscan-R software and, whether it is a custom layout or turnkey solution, will seamlessly integrate into any automated quality control processes.

Safety: Collaborative is not just a word. It means that the robot is expected to work with and around workers. Safety features, like automatically stopping when meeting resistance, are therefore paramount to maintaining a safe working environment.

By adding the collaborative robots to the R-Series offer, and by supporting more industrial robots, we can guarantee that the best scanning technology powered by offline programming software is accessible to businesses of all sizes, explained Jerome-Alexandre Lavoie, Product Manager at Creaform. Truly, harnessing the power of automation has never been easier.-- TradeArabia News Service
CHENGDU, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Layi Aga, 76, broke into a smile as she recalled the day she saw a train pull into a railway station for the first time in her life.

The year was 1970. Accompanied by her husband, Layi trekked over 7 km along winding mountain roads in southwest China's Sichuan Province, with their one-year-old son cradled in her arms, only hoping for her first-ever rendezvous with a train.

"There were small red flags fluttering on the train. We waved at the people aboard, and they waved back at us," said Layi, an ethnic Yi resident from Mianshan Township in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture.

At that time, the Chengdu-Kunming Railway, a major railroad trunk line linking Sichuan and neighboring Yunnan Province, was completed and put into operation.

The 5633/5634 slow trains traversing the Daliang Mountains heralded opportunities for better livelihoods, such as employment, healthcare and education, for residents of the faraway region.

Train stations were built in remote mountain villages and townships, and Mianshan was one of the stops.

BETTER LIFE, FUTURE

Opened to the public in 1970, the trains ply between Puxiong Township and the city of Panzhihua, covering 376 km in 11 hours at a speed of less than 40 km per hour, with 26 stops along the way. The fares range from 25.5 yuan (about 3.8 U.S. dollars) to 2 yuan.

In the past, the couple eked out a meager income for their livelihood by toiling countless hours in the fields. In around 1985, the husband died of a pulmonary disease, leaving Layi and their three sons to fend for themselves.

Following her husband's death, Layi set up a modest grocery store to sell daily necessities and shuttled between their farmland and the store to sustain herself.

On weekdays, she takes the 5633 train from Mianshan to Xichang City to replenish stock at a wholesale market. And on weekends, she takes the 5634 train in the opposite direction to run a stall at a fair in Nibo Township.

Layi, a regular commuter, lauded the railway service for its cost-effectiveness.

She said that the road from Mianshan to Xichang stretches about 72 km and making a round trip by bus is quicker, but it would cost 80 yuan. Though the round-trip journey by slow train takes about three hours, it only costs 10 yuan. The 70 yuan saved on the fares is the same amount as her store's net profit for a day.

The train is not just a mode of transportation for local residents, but also a "mobile bazaar."

Locals are encouraged to bring their farm products on board and trade the goods while commuting. To facilitate their journey, two rows of seats at both ends of each carriage have been removed, so that they can pile up their baggage and place their livestock and poultry.

For Yihuo A'niu, a ninth grader, the train is like her school bus.

Every Friday afternoon, she would board the homebound train, together with her some 700 schoolmates. The 140-km journey takes about four hours, but she can always find a way to break up the monotony by reading books, doing her homework and chatting with friends.

Yihuo will take this year's senior high school entrance exams beginning on June 13.

"I want to be admitted into the best senior high school in Liangshan, and become a good teacher or a brave police officer in the future," she said, adding that she aspires to explore the vast world outside the mountains.

SAME YET DIFFERENT

Liu Wei, who has been working on the trains for 29 years, felt that living along the railway was a lonely experience when he was a kid. "Only the sound of train whistles can cut through loneliness," said the 47-year-old lead attendant of his childhood memories.

Liu went to school daily by train. There, he would watch the villagers bargain and sell their wares and observe how the train attendants work.

"As a child, I was fascinated by the attendant's uniform," he said, adding that this fascination impelled him to become a railway worker after growing up. He started working on the train at the age of 18 after graduating from senior high school.

Over the years, he has developed a rapport with the train commuters. He often urges the students to do their homework and mediates disputes, and helps villagers find proper markets for their agricultural products.

There was once an old lady who was in her 70s and used to get on the train at Puxiong Station every day, sometimes carrying over 200 kg of potatoes collected from fellow villagers to sell in Ganluo County. For some eight years, she always took the same carriage and sat in the same seat. Liu often chatted with her.

One day, she did not get on the train. Liu asked other passengers and was told that she had passed away. Though he did not know her name, Liu felt like he lost a relative.

Liu has witnessed the changes on and outside the trains over the years.

Areas along the railway are no longer isolated. They are today filled with newly-constructed modern buildings. The goods that people carry with them have become more diversified, from primarily potatoes and apples to walnut, olive and building materials, among others.

In January this year, a "Fuxing" Electric Multiple Unit (EMU) left Liangshan for Yunnan's capital Kunming, marking the departure of the first "Fuxing" bullet train from the prefecture.

Despite such transformations, some things have stayed constant. The fares remain unchanged for more than 30 years and the trains continue to operate at their initial speed.

Though famed for having the longest high-speed railway network in the world, China still operates some 81 pairs of such slow trains. The services cover 21 provincial-level regions, transporting some 12 million people annually at an average fare of no more than 0.06 yuan per km.

China aims to extend its total length of operational high-speed railways to around 50,000 km by 2025. Meanwhile, the national railway operator has pledged to improve services and infrastructure of slow trains and related stations to ensure safe and comfortable trips.

"No matter how much the world changes and how fast the high-speed trains would become, the slow trains are still 'lifelines' for locals. I'm willing to do my job as long as I can, and see more children leave the mountains for better lives outside," Liu said. 
The Summit of the Americas, held in the U.S. city of Los Angeles from Wednesday to Friday, which excluded Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the guest list, has become a diplomatic nightmare. Let's hear what Cuban expert Rafael Hernandez says about the event.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
GENEVA, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Monday said she would not be seeking a second term as High Commissioner.

"Today, I briefed the Human Rights Council, my last session as High Commissioner. I will not be seeking a second term for personal reasons," she told reporters after she delivered her report to the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council, which kicked off Monday and will last until July 8.

"It is time to go back to Chile and be with family. I urge States to identify common ground to achieve solutions to our shared human rights challenges," she noted.

Her term is due to end at the end of August.

Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile, assumed her functions as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Sept. 1, 2018. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was established in 1993 and Bachelet is the seventh Commissioner. 
Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Front) addresses the opening ceremony of the WTO's 12th Ministerial Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 12, 2022. The WTO's 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) opened Sunday at WTO headquarters in Geneva. (WTO/Handout via Xinhua)

GENEVA, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The World Trade Organization's (WTO) 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) opened Sunday at WTO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

During the four-day meeting, members of the trade organization will hold discussions on such issues as TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, pandemic response, fishery subsidies, agriculture, food security, as well as the WTO's reform and its future work priorities.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that the world is currently facing multiple crises such as the epidemic, food shortage, climate change and regional conflicts, and she called on all parties to work together to overcome the difficulties.

"No one country can solve these crises on its own, this is a time that you need the world to work together," she said.

According to her, the work of the WTO has made progress, and draft documents have been formed on key issues such as TRIPS waiver, pandemic response, fishery subsidies, agriculture and food security. She hoped that more results could be achieved at the ministerial meeting.

China's Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, who attended the meeting in Geneva, said that the WTO-centered multilateral trading system is the cornerstone of international trade, and China is willing to work with all parties to promote the WTO to play a bigger role in world economic recovery.

Wang noted that China will continue to safeguard the multilateral trading system with concrete actions and support the WTO reform to move in the right direction, adding that the reform of WTO needs to reinforce its functions and promote economic globalization to benefit all members.

The Ministerial Conference, which is attended by trade ministers and other senior officials from the organization's 164 members, is the WTO's highest decision-making body, and is generally held every two years.

Kazakhstan was originally scheduled to host MC12 in June 2020, but the conference was postponed due to the pandemic. 

Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Front) addresses the opening ceremony of the WTO's 12th Ministerial Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 12, 2022. The WTO's 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) opened Sunday at WTO headquarters in Geneva. (WTO/Handout via Xinhua)

Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (at the podium) addresses the opening ceremony of the WTO's 12th Ministerial Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 12, 2022. The WTO's 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) opened Sunday at WTO headquarters in Geneva. (WTO/Handout via Xinhua)
RAMALLAH, June 12 (Xinhua) -- A senior Palestine official said on Sunday that the unilateral Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories undermine the chances for peace and the two-state solution.

Hussein Al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), made the remarks during a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah with visiting U.S. senior diplomats ahead of an expected visit of U.S. President Joe Biden, according to an official statement carried by Palestinian state news agency WAFA.

Attending the meetings were Al-Sheikh and other senior Palestinian officials and the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr.

Al-Sheikh told the U.S. officials that Palestinians "need security and stability, ending the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories and establishing an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 border."

He explained to the officials that it is necessary to abide by the peace agreements signed between the PLO and Israel and implement the UN resolutions "which have never been implemented."

The meeting discussed the escalated tension in the West Bank amid the daily Israeli army raids on Palestinian towns and villages and the visits of Israeli radicals to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem, according to the statement.

The two sides also discussed the expected visit of Biden to Israel and Palestine, the removal of the PLO from its terrorism list, and the reopening of the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem.

Among the talking points were also the economic situation and the necessity of resuming U.S. aid to the Palestinians, especially in the light of the Palestinian financial crisis as Israel withholds its tax revenues. 
BEIJING, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Zeng Xuecheng is well on the way to emerging as an up-and-coming technician in China's booming advanced manufacturing sector.

A powerful inspiration the ambitious young man found was from Chinese President Xi Jinping nearly three years ago.

Back in August 2019, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, visited the Bailie School in Shandan County in northwest China's Gansu Province. Its history dates back to a school founded in 1942 by Rewi Alley, a social reformer and educator from New Zealand.

Xi was very pleased to learn that most of the students in the vocational school came from the local rural areas and that they could master certain skills through study and training, which paved the way for employment.

Vocational education has a broad and promising prospect, Xi stressed during the tour, citing the Chinese adage -- "One may distinguish himself in any trade" -- to encourage Zeng, a student of the school at that time, and his peers to hone their skills and contribute to national development.

China's economy needs the support of the real economy, which requires a large number of technical personnel and craftsmen, Xi said.

In recent years, vocational education has been given more attention. The newly revised Vocational Education Law stipulates that vocational education is as important as general education, and notes that the country should advance reform and improve the quality of vocational education.

During multiple inspection tours, Xi had gone to schools and institutions of higher learning and talked with students.

Speaking in Yibin University during his inspection in southwest China's Sichuan Province last week, Xi told the students to remain practical when choosing their future jobs and careers, and realize personal development through diligent work.

In a face-to-face conversation during Xi's inspection tour to the Bailie School, Zeng was present. "His words strengthened my determination to hone a skill and serve the country," Zeng recalled.

In 2020, Zeng passed the national college entrance examination and was admitted to Lanzhou Modern Vocational College, majoring in the application of numerical control technology.

"I am prepared to work in a factory and give full play to my skills after graduation," Zeng said. "I am full of hope for my future." 
RAMALLAH, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye on Sunday called for forming an international front to pressure Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories and protect the two-state solution.

Ishtaye made the remarks during a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah with Maya Tissafi, assistant state secretary of the Swiss foreign ministry and head of the Middle East and North Africa Department, according to a statement from Ishtaye's office.

"Forming an international front to exert pressure on the Israeli occupation is very important," said Ishtaye, who called on Switzerland to recognize the state of Palestine.

He also called on Switzerland and the international community to pressure Israel to abide by and respect the signed peace agreements and stop all its measures and violations in the Palestinian territories.

"Providing international protection for the Palestinian people is essential," Ishtaye noted.

The statement said Ishtaye and Tissafi also discussed ways to strengthen bilateral relations between Switzerland and Palestine.

They highlighted the importance of joint coordination to support Palestine in creating job opportunities and economic development.

Also on Sunday, Ishtaye said in an interview with the state-run Palestine TV that the European Union is scheduled to vote on resuming the European aid to the Palestinians on Monday.

A total of 23 European foreign ministers sent a message to the EU saying the aid to Palestine should be resumed without conditions, according to the Palestinian prime minister.

"We hope that the vote will come with satisfactory results regarding the aid that we have not received since 2021," Ishtaye noted. 
BEIJING, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta via video link on Monday.

Wang said China has always viewed New Zealand as an important partner with strategic and cooperative significance, and stands ready to work with New Zealand to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries.

The two sides should carry out the protocol on upgrading the China-New Zealand free trade agreement (FTA) and give full play to the ministerial dialogue on climate change to speed up a green recovery.

Underlining that China respects New Zealand's traditional bonds with the Pacific island countries, Wang said China stands ready to work with New Zealand to carry out more three-party or multi-party cooperation to jointly build an open, inclusive, united and cooperative South Pacific region.

For her part, Mahuta said New Zealand and China should support the island countries to address the challenges they are facing with through bilateral and multilateral platforms.

New Zealand stands ready to work with China to make joint efforts on global development and security, Mahuta said. 
A child takes part in a children's fashion show commemorating the Day of the African Child in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on June 13, 2022. (Photo by Herman Emmanuel/Xinhua)

DAR ES SALAAM, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Eight-year-old Monica Mwamunyange thrilled spectators when she cat-walked on stage wearing a design dress on Sunday night at the Kilimanjaro Hyatt Regency Hotel in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

The spectators, including children with disabilities, diplomats, local celebrities and representatives from the government, corporate and international organizations, could not believe their eyes when the young girl walked in style and saluted them by bowing.

"My ambition is to become a top fashion show model and designer when I grow up. And with my steel determination, nothing will prevent me from breaking the ceiling in the fashion show and design industry," Monica, a grade two pupil, told Xinhua after the fashion show that lasted for nearly two hours.

Gertrude Joseph Mwamunyange, Monica's mother, said her daughter started cultivating an interest in the fashion show industry when she saw it on television when she was five years old.

"She started putting on my shoes and covering her head with my kitenge (a local design wear for women) and cat walking," said the mother, adding that she decided to enroll her daughter in the fashion show training organized by Ujuzi Initiative Company Limited with its project ujuzi fashion hub, a platform of unique creative spaces designed to support and stimulate diverse fashion and fine art. Ujuzi is Kiswahili for skills.

Monica was among 35 children models, including both males and females aged between four and 14 who participated in the fashion show organized by Khadija Mwanamboka, the founder of Watoto Wetu platform. Watoto Wetu is translated into English as "Our Children".

Mwanamboka told Xinhua that the children's fashion show was organized as part of commemoration of the Day of the African Child.

The Day of the African Child has been celebrated on June 16 every year since 1991 to honor those who participated in the Soweto Uprising in South Africa in 1976 on that day.

The day also raises awareness of the continuing need for improvement of the education provided to African children.

"The children's fashion show is also an opportunity to raise awareness for the ongoing need to improve education of children living across Africa," said Mwanamboka, a celebrated fashion designer with over 25 years of experience.

She said the Watoto Wetu platform was established in 2021 to mark her 25 years anniversary in the fashion industry and the platform is now an annual event during the African Child Day commemoration.

"My fashion design collection concept this time has incorporated children's games we played when we were young. I have translated the playful games into wearable fashion so the children of today may see the fun in playing such games for their mental and physical health," said the 45-year-old fashion designer.

"The fashion show gives the children confidence. They become more aware of what they want, what they want to do and achieve," she said.

"The fashion show enables the children to interact with different children from different schools and different backgrounds. And we get to learn from them and they learn from us," she said.

Mwanamboka said they select children who show special interest in the fashion design industry, adding her future plans are to create a center for training underprivileged children in fashion design and children who live in orphanages to make them future top fashion designers. 

A child takes part in a children's fashion show commemorating the Day of the African Child in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on June 13, 2022. (Photo by Herman Emmanuel/Xinhua)
Li Zhanshu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, inspects a research institute on chernozem soil conservation in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, June 12, 2022. Li made a law-enforcement inspection in Heilongjiang Province from June 10 to 13. Led by Li, legislators inspected the province's work in implementing the environmental protection law. They also conducted research for the legislation of a law on chernozem soil conservation. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)



HARBIN, June 13 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator Li Zhanshu has underlined sound legislation and supervision work in the environmental protection field, to employ the strength of the rule of law in ensuring the building of a beautiful China.

Li, 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 Standing Committee, made the remarks during a four-day law-enforcement inspection that ended on Monday in China's northernmost province of Heilongjiang.

Led by Li, legislators inspected the province's work in implementing the environmental protection law. They also conducted research for the legislation of a law on chernozem soil conservation.

During the tour, Li called for efforts to advance the implementation of the law to ensure the CPC Central Committee's decisions and plans are effectively carried out. He noted that the legal system for environmental protection should be continuously improved to ensure that the system's overall effectiveness is enhanced.

He also called on local governments, agricultural businesses and workers, and all relevant parties involved to take their due responsibility in conserving the chernozem soil, as it is important for the country's food security, ecological security and the Chinese nation's sustainable development. 

Li Zhanshu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, inspects a research institute on chernozem soil conservation in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, June 12, 2022. Li made a law-enforcement inspection in Heilongjiang Province from June 10 to 13. Led by Li, legislators inspected the province's work in implementing the environmental protection law. They also conducted research for the legislation of a law on chernozem soil conservation. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

Li Zhanshu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, inspects Zhalong National Nature Reserve in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, June 10, 2022. Li made a law-enforcement inspection in Heilongjiang Province from June 10 to 13. Led by Li, legislators inspected the province's work in implementing the environmental protection law. They also conducted research for the legislation of a law on chernozem soil conservation. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

Li Zhanshu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, inspects China First Heavy Industries (CFHI) in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, June 10, 2022. Li made a law-enforcement inspection in Heilongjiang Province from June 10 to 13. Led by Li, legislators inspected the province's work in implementing the environmental protection law. They also conducted research for the legislation of a law on chernozem soil conservation. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)
LONGi, a world-leading solar technology company, has been awarded a module supply contract for the 400MW (DC) Rabigh Solar PV IPP (independent power project) project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

The plant, expected to be commercially operational in July 2023, is located in Rabigh Industrial City, in the kingdom's western Makkah Province, some 150 km from Jeddah, and will exclusively deploy LONGi Hi-MO 5(72C) modules.

LONGi was awarded the deal via its EPC (engineering procurement construction) contractor, China Energy Engineering Group, Guangdong Power Engineering Company (GPEC). The awarding ceremony in Riyadh was attended by LONGi and its partner GTek Solar (Green Technology Company).

PPA agreement

In 2021, Japan's Marubeni Corporation announced that it had signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for the Rabigh project with the Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC), with the latter committing to the purchase of power produced for a period of 25 years following the project's Commercial Operation Date (COD).

The COD is forecast to take place in July 2023 and will be Marubeni's first large-scale solar project in Saudi Arabia and its fourth in the Mena region. It was selected in 2020 by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment for the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM) financing programme, a venture resulting from cooperation between the Saudi and Japanese governments.

Guo Huojin, General Manager of GPEC, said at the ceremony: Under Vision 2030, the Rabigh project represents a new chapter for us in attracting projects in Saudi Arabia and it is important that we now deliver a high-quality project to our client, in close collaboration with our partners LONGi and GTek. We look forward to building a long-term strategic partnership between our three companies.

Sustainable future

Omar Alluhaydan, GTek Solar CEO, added: Signing up for the Rabigh project is another step towards a sustainable future with our partners, while helping achieve Vision 2030's objective of increasing the contribution of renewable energy.

Jia Chao, LONGi VP for MEA and CA, concluded: Saudi Arabia is at the heart of the Arab and Islamic worlds, leading investment capabilities and sustainable Vision 2030 ambitions. LONGi, GPEC and GTek will work together to win and build more mega projects to drive the Saudi energy transformation, in order to accomplish the kingdom's vision of renewables contributing up to 50% of the total energy mix by 2030.-- TradeArabia News Service
CAIRO, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit on Monday discussed with visiting Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics the latest regional and international developments, the pan-Arab bloc said in a statement.

Their discussion focused on the Ukrainian crisis and ways to address its negative implications for food security in Arab countries, according to the statement.

They also exchanged opinions on the impacts of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on the security and stability of the Baltic region.

The two diplomats called for strengthening cooperation between European countries and the Arab world.

"The Arab and European sides are keen to move forward regardless of the obstacles they face," said the statement. 
CAIRO, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Egypt has rehabilitated 210 km of its northern coast and pushed forward projects mitigating or adapting to the effects of climate change, the country's minister of irrigation and water resources said Sunday.

Egypt is still working on restoring 50 km shores across the country as part of its strategy to preserve coastal areas from climate ramifications and protect existing investments in industrial, agricultural, and tourist zones, official Ahram Online news reported, citing the minister Mohamed Abdel-Aty.

Meanwhile, Abdel-Aty's ministry has launched a climate adaptation project on the North Coast and the Nile Delta to counter sea-level rises, the impact of weather hazards on low-lying coastal areas, and seawater intrusion.

The project, set to be completed by 2023, is being implemented over an area of 69 km in five coastal governorates, namely Port Said, Damietta, Daqahliya, Kafr El-Sheikh and Beheira, said Abdel-Aty, adding it includes the establishment of an early weather warning center in the Mediterranean.

Additionally, the ministry was proposing a multi-year management plan to preserve investments and natural resources of the North Coast, according to the report.

Egypt, which will host the 27th session of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in November, is seeking to promote its national green transition. 
KHARTOUM, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations on Monday announced that about 100 people were killed in tribal clashes over the past week in Sudan's West Darfur Province.

The fighting grew out of a land dispute between Arab and African tribes in the town of Kulbus in West Darfur, the UN Refugee Agency said.

It added that local Arab militias attacked multiple villages in the area, forcing thousands to flee.

Volker Perthes, head of the UN Integrated Transitional Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), condemned the recent tribal clashes.

"I'm appalled, again, by the violence in Kulbus, West Darfur, with so many deaths," said Perthes on his Twitter account on Monday.

"The cycle of violence in Darfur is unacceptable and highlights root causes that must be addressed," he added.

The UN envoy called on community leaders, authorities, and armed groups to de-escalate and ensure the protection of civilians.

Sudan's Darfur region has been witnessing a civil war since 2003 during the rule of former President Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted from power in April 2019.

The previous transitional government in Sudan sought to end the armed conflict in the Darfur region through an agreement reached on Oct. 3, 2020, but some armed groups have not yet signed it.

For years, efforts failed to end the tribal conflicts, which have become a nagging concern for the local population and the authorities of the troubled region.

Many factors, including disturbances, tribes' access to weapons, and lack of effective governance in many parts of the Darfur region, have contributed to the growing violence in the region. 
OUAGADOUGOU, June 13 (Xinhua) -- At least 50 civilians were killed in an attack perpetrated on Saturday night by unidentified gunmen against Seytenga commune, Seno province, in northern Burkina Faso, the government spokesman Lionel Bilgo said on Monday.

"As of Monday afternoon, 50 bodies have been found and the search continues," Bilgo said, adding that the toll may rise.

People who fled the attack were taken care of in the town of Dori, capital of the Sahel region, said Bilgo.

Last Thursday, unidentified gunmen attacked the Territorial Brigade of Gendarmerie of Seytenga, killing 11 gendarmes.

Also in the same province, four police officers were killed and two others still missing during an attack perpetrated on Sunday by unidentified gunmen against a detachment of the Republican Security Corps (CRS) of Yakouta, said a statement on Monday.

Security in Burkina Faso has worsened since 2015 as attacks have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than 1.9 million others in the West African nation. 
DAR ES SALAAM, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian authorities said on Monday plans are afoot to procure 320 new modern fishing boats for small and middle-scale fishermen in a move aimed at transforming the fisheries industry.

Mashimba Ndaki, the Minister for Livestock and Fisheries, told parliament in the capital Dodoma that the procurement of the fishing boats is part of the government's intention to transform the fisheries sector and enable it to contribute to the national economic growth.

He said the boats to be used for deep-sea fishing will be procured during the 2022/2023 financial year that starts on July 1, 2022, and runs to June 30, 2023.

He told the House that the government has also put in place strategies aimed at facilitating fishermen to construct small-scale fish processing plants to enable them to boost their income.

Ndaki made the remarks when he responded to Joseph Mkunda, a Member of Parliament for Lake Victoria's Ukerewe Island constituency, who had wanted to know measures the government was taking to improve the welfare of fishermen in the country. 
Supporters protest after senior leader of India's main opposition Congress party Rahul Gandhi was summoned for questioning, in Agartala, the capital city of India's northeastern state of Tripura, June 13, 2022. Gandhi was summoned for questioning at the office of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday over alleged money laundering, officials said. (Str/Xinhua)

NEW DELHI, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Senior leader of India's main opposition Congress party Rahul Gandhi was summoned for questioning at the office of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday over alleged money laundering, officials said.

Before Gandhi reached the ED office, the opposition leaders assembled at party headquarters to begin a protest in support of him.

Gandhi was accompanied by his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, several senior Congress party leaders and dozens of workers shouting slogans against the government.

Chaotic scenes were witnessed in the streets. The protesters were stopped at barricades of party headquarters and many were detained.

Delhi Traffic Police on Monday issued an advisory for residents of the national capital asking them to avoid certain roads in the wake of the protest.

Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi has also been summoned by the probe agency in this case. She sought more time after she tested positive for COVID-19 positive. The agency then issued her a fresh summons for June 23. 
COLOMBO, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan paddy farmers are cultivating more than the average land that is farmed during the minor (Yala) cultivation season, a minister told journalists here on Monday.

Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said this came after price increases that followed recent food shortages.

The minister said in the minor farming season, farmers cultivate 400,000 hectares on the average.

"But now it looks like about 470,000 hectares would be sown. As a result we may only need to import about two months of rice," he said.

Sri Lanka decided to ban the use of chemical fertilizer in April 2021, following which the agricultural output has declined sharply. 
MANILA, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Monday assured Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos of the Manila-based multilateral lender's strong support in strengthening infrastructure and sustaining food security.

"I assured President-elect Marcos of ADB's strong commitment to supporting his administration's development priorities," ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa said after meeting with Marcos on Monday.

He said the ADB works closely with the government, development partners, and the private sector "to support infrastructure investment, including projects under the government's 'Build, Build, Build' program; promote sustainable agriculture development and food security; and invest in Filipinos' welfare."

Asakawa said the ADB will also explore opportunities with the new administration's priorities on climate change action, education, vocational skills training, employment programs, health promotion, and social protection.

Marcos will assume the presidency on June 30 after winning the May 9 presidential election by a landslide. 
KABUL, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Security forces stormed a hideout of insurgents on the outskirt of Kabul city, killing two rebels on the spot on Sunday, the Taliban-run administration's chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Monday.

"The Special Forces of Islamic Emirate stormed a hideout of insurgents in Bagrami district of Kabul city late Sunday, killing a key commander named Yusuf and arresting another named Mohammad Agha," Mujahid said in a message posted on his Twitter account.

Mujahid added that the killed and arrested men belonged to a group responsible for targeting mosques, worship places and dynamiting power pylons in the past months.

This is the second operation on the so-called insurgent group. Earlier the security forces attacked a hideout in Taluqan city, the capital of northern Takhar province, and killed eight rebels on Saturday.

In the meantime, locals believe that the insurgents who came under attacks on Saturday and Sunday are operatives of the rival hardliner Islamic State (IS) outfit.

The Taliban-run administration has downplayed IS group as a threat and vowed to spare no efforts in ensuring law and order in the war-ravaged Afghanistan. 
YANGON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's Anti-Narcotics Task Force has seized over 1.6 billion kyats (about 864,864 U.S. dollars) worth of heroin and stimulant pills in Mandalay region, a police statement said on Monday.

Acting on a tip-off, the anti-narcotics agents seized 40.7 kg heroin and 400,000 stimulant tablets from a vehicle in Myitnge town of Mandalay region on June 11, it said.

Police also arrested two suspects in the operation. Further investigations were underway, it added. 
Worldwide government IT spending is forecast to total $565.7 billion in 2022, an increase of 5% from 2021, according to Gartner, a technological research and consulting firm. Government IT spending in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region will total $13.3 billion in 2022, growing 1.8% from 2021.

The last few years of enduring pandemic challenges have mobilised a wave of digital transformation activities in government organisations across the world, said Daniel Snyder, director analyst at Gartner. Governments are executing innovative activities by harnessing technology to streamline digital services, advance automation processes and evolve citizen experiences.

In 2022, government IT spending is forecast to increase across all segments except internal services and telecom services. Continuing the trend from 2021, software is forecast to record the strongest growth across all segments in 2022. As legacy modernisation continues to be a priority in government organisations, growth in the data centre systems segment will continue to slow though the forecast period.

Continuing to invest

Governments continue to invest in critical application software that directly support end user interfaces driving strong growth in this segment. Spending on telecom services is set to decrease in 2022 as governments reduce spending on expensive legacy systems in favor of digital service delivery models.

Mena governments will continue to increase their spending towards digitalisation efforts in 2022, said Apeksha Kaushik, principal analyst at Gartner. 2022 will be a pivotal year for CIOs as they strive to make public services more agile, resilient and responsive. The need to optimise and modernise government business processes and services remains as great as ever.

At the same time, the focus on delivering citizen centric service delivery has increased. Therefore it is not just about having better or smarter technology, but how you design the experience. Connecting the two ensures easier access to service activities for citizens/constituents, greater visibility to what they need, and gives the organisation more insights to increase satisfaction for employees. A key component is understanding time scarcity and ensuring higher ROI for each action taken.

Anything-as-a-Service model emerges

Anything-as-a-Service (XaaS) is gaining popularity across government organisations as it provides better return on investment normalising IT spend over time making budgeting for IT more predictable, while avoiding the accrual of technical debt. Gartner predicts that by 2026, most government agencies new IT investments will be made in XaaS solutions.

The pandemic sped up public-sector adoption of cloud solutions and the XaaS model for accelerated legacy modernisation and new service implementations, said Snyder. Fifty-four percent of government CIOs responding to the 2022 Gartner CIO Survey indicated that they expect to allocate additional funding to cloud platforms in 2022, while 35% will decrease investments in legacy infrastructure and data center technologies.

The widespread use will enable more digitalisation of services and building trust for adoption of digital government services. Adoption of government platforms has been seen as a means of sharing information and enhancing citizen inclusion and digital equity. Governments are integrating services in the form of mobile apps and moving with Total experience strategy to create seamless citizen/constituent experience that encourage digital transactions specially across the financial and health sectors.

With the ongoing talent challenges facing organisations, XaaS makes it easier for government organisations to find the right talent via XaaS operating models. XaaS delivery models require different internal IT skill sets and place less demand on the organisation to develop or acquire emerging IT skills, which are often hard to find and difficult for governments to afford.-- TradeArabia News Service
COPENHAGEN, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The Copenhagen Airport (CPH), Denmark's largest one, handled over two million passengers in May 2022, its busiest month since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a CPH press release on Monday.

A total of 2,068,912 passengers passed through the airport's three terminals in May, with May 29 being the busiest single day with 85,454 passengers.

However, the gains are primarily due to an increase in the number of Danes and southern Swedes using the airport, as international traveler numbers remain low.

But as an international airport, we still need to get all the foreign travelers and transfer passengers back to reach from the current almost 80 to 100 percent of the traffic before the pandemic, said Peter Krogsgaard, commercial director at Copenhagen Airport in the press release.

It is especially foreign travelers on the long routes to Asia that are missing, while the number of routes and travelers to and from North America is growing, the press release said.

In preparation for a busy summer, CPH believes it is prepared to deal with "longer waiting times and more delays in Europe than is typically the case during the summer months," as other European airports are still "rebuilding" following the pandemic.

Before the pandemic, CPH served nearly 30.3 million passengers in 2019, making it the largest airport in the Nordic countries. 
BERLIN, June 13 (Xinhua) -- German imports from China increased by 52.8 percent year-on-year in April to 16.7 billion euros (17.4 billion U.S. dollars), the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said on Monday.

The sharp rise was due in particular to Germany's imports of chemical products, which rose almost sixfold to 4.4 billion euros. "More raw materials for the production of medicines were purchased (by Germany) in China in April 2022," Destatis said.

Germany's medical equipment and supplies market is expanding. The Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (vfa) expects more than 45 drugs with new active ingredients to be launched in 2022, the same number as in 2021.

In April 2022, German imports of Chinese-made computer products were up 20.4 percent year-on-year and imports of electrical equipment increased by 27.1 percent.

"German foreign trade in April 2022 was still largely unaffected by the COVID-19 lockdowns in the People's Republic of China and the related disruptions in freight transport," Destatis said.

While German exports to China fell by 1.5 percent to 8.3 billion euros in April, the manufacturers of motor vehicles and parts sold 4 percent more of their products (2.6 billion euros) than a year earlier.

China continues to be the largest single market for German car manufacturers. Of the 1.8 million passenger vehicles delivered worldwide by Volkswagen in the first quarter of 2022, more than 753,500 went to customers in China.

This comes as international trade is hampered by serious disruptions.

The German Kiel Institute for the World Economy's (IfW Kiel) indicator for May showed a 1 percent month-on-month drop in the volume of international trade, which "is again suffering more from the congestion and delays in container shipping."

In 2021, maritime trade with China made up more than a fifth of the total container throughput at Germany's sea ports, primarily Hamburg. Shanghai alone accounted for a throughput of 968,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), almost 7 percent of the country's total.

As an alternative to transport by sea or air, Germany's state-owned rail operator Deutsche Bahn set up DB Cargo Transasia in Shanghai at the end of last year, establishing direct train connections between 18 European countries and China. (1 euro = 1.04 U.S. dollar) 
by Julia Pierrepont III, Huang Heng

LOS ANGELES, June 12 (Xinhua) -- "I would say that the summit overall has to be characterized as a failure," 22-year-old Kenji Granberry told Xinhua when commenting on the ninth Summit of the Americas that concluded on Friday.

"Because it was designed to bring people together, but Mr. President (Joe Biden) hosting the event don't trust them and don't give them the opportunity to actually share their voices," said the young African American, an Angelino who was wearing a black mask, adding "that's not how democracy works."

He called the absence of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, as well as some of the Central American nations, as a "kind of boycott against the event."

Granberry's opinion was shared by many local people, who questioned the so-called achievement of an exclusionary summit.

Kayo Elie, a 31-year-old salesman living in San Diego, California, told Xinhua on Saturday, "I don't think that this summit can achieve any things that they set out to achieve without including every member of the American continent. With (what) they have done, there's no way (they) can succeed after this summit."

U.S. President Joe Biden skipped the traditional closing press conference on Friday, though, according to Politico, and First Lady Jill Biden said every leader came up to Biden at the sidelines of the summit to say good words about the U.S. president and their cooperation.

"I think, since the pandemic, everything has shown the world that America is truly an empire in decline, our relationship even in our Hemisphere is ridging, the control we used to have over South America has diminished. The people are waking up and seeing that not just in South America and North America, but hopefully and soon all over the world," Elie noted.

For more Americans, what the White House held can only be called a "Summit of some Americas" or "Summit of Exclusion." They wanted a fair discussion covering more extensive topics that Americans feel really concerned about.

Therefore, while Biden hosted his controversial Summit of the Americas in the Los Angeles Convention Center this week, another summit, the People's Summit for Democracy, convened just down the street in the same city to present a different view of the region and the world's possible future.

The People's Summit covered key issues impacting the world that were not adequately addressed at Biden's summit. Those included women's and minority rights, unfair socio-political systems, systematic white supremacy, patriarchal control, adequate food and housing, deficits in health systems that limit access to healthcare for those with low income, unfettered capitalism and the U.S. global hegemony.

"We need a new paradigm of global sustainability," Cindy Weisner, executive director of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance told Xinhua.

Delegations from the United States, Brazil, Haiti, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Colombia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Ghana, and South Africa participated in the People's Summit for Democracy, the organizer said, adding it was supported by over 225 organizations, trade unions, social movements and cultural groups.

"We will build bridges across historic divides through dialogue and exchange, connect struggles that for too long have been isolated, and uplift the voices of all those excluded from Patagonia to California," said a press release from the People's Summit for Democracy.

"Poverty," "equality" and "racism" were keywords mentioned by many attendees in panels of the People's Summit, who agreed that the United States should first resolve domestic problems before intervening in other countries' affairs.

"Equality and a sustainable global future for all peoples is impossible when a handful of countries and their corporate partners control the global monetary systems, global resources, weaponry and communications, and advanced science and technology," a financial advisor Sue Chen told Xinhua, suggesting higher taxes on wealth, inheritance, capital gains and income.

An activist from Trenton, New Jersey, noted on condition of anonymity that American people need to disarm the war machine of the military-industrial complex, saying it "sucks trillions of dollars out of the global economy" and "we (can) use that money to fund socially-beneficial programs, sustainable production and renewable energy."

"We need to hope and radically re-image everything," said Weisner, leader of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. "We don't just want equality -- we want a different world." 
WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- A group of bipartisan U.S. senators on Sunday announced a narrow gun safety deal amid public disappointment about political inaction.

The plan, endorsed by 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans, includes measures to crack down on criminals who illegally straw purchase and traffic guns, strengthen criminal background check requirements for gun buyers younger than 21, and fund mental health services.

Both sides touted it as a victory but the deal fell short of the White House's proposals to ban assault weapons and raise the minimum age of purchasing certain firearms from 18 to 21, among other things.

"This deal is heavily influenced by the canard that gun violence in the U.S. is largely a mental health problem and not an access to guns problem," Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and CNN medical analyst, tweeted.

"It will create the illusion that Congress has finally done something about guns in the U.S.," Reiner also wrote.

The senators' announcement came a day after Americans gathered across the United States to decry rising gun violence and urge politicians to take action in the wake of several mass shootings over the past few weeks.

Last month, a gunman broke into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers in a rampage that has sent shockwaves across the United States and renewed contentious gun debate.

According to the latest data from Gun Violence Archive, the United States has suffered 265 mass shootings over the past five months, with more than 19,500 lives lost to gun violence. 
NEW YORK, June 13 (Xinhua) -- In the past 20 years, the suicide rate among U.S. service members has skyrocketed, with more than 30,177 service members and veterans who served during the global war on terror alone dying due to suicide, four times the amount of troops lost in combat during the period, reported U.S. news portal Slate last week.

"In the past five years, the suicide rate among active duty service members has increased by 41 percent," said the report titled "The Military Keeps Making One Obvious Mistake With Its Suicide Prevention Efforts."

During 2020, the military suicide rate increased by 16 percent, while the nation's suicide rate dropped by 6 percent. The suicide rate in the U.S. Army is the highest it has been in over 100 years, according to the report.

"The suicide rate for women in the military is double their national average. For Black service members, it is almost triple the national demographic average," it said.

Some have theorized that high rates of gun ownership among service members and veterans may be a driver of this crisis, while "others have advanced claims that it's due to failings by those who join the military themselves - a horrifying callback to the past, when many blamed mental issues on a lack of soldier discipline or bravery," the report added. 
New Delhi:

One97 Communications Limited that owns the brand Paytm, Indias leading digital payments and financial services company, today announced that it is bringing back the exciting '4 ka 100 cashback offer' on UPI money transfers during the upcoming Paytm India vs South Africa Test Series, scheduled from June 9th to 19th, 2022. Lakhs of customers won Rs 100 cashback when the offer was first introduced during the India West Indies Series in February 2022.

Paytm UPI is preferred by millions of users for online money transfers, which are secure and reliable. On match days, new users can avail the '4 ka 100 cashback offer' wherein on sending Rs 4 using Paytm UPI they will get assured cashback of Rs 100.

New users can sign up for Paytm UPI by downloading the Paytm app from the Google Playstore or App Store. On the Paytm app, they can register and link their bank accounts for using Paytm UPI services within a few minutes. It not only enables them to make online payments directly from their bank account, but also allows them to instantly check the balance of the linked account for free and make payments by scanning any UPI QR code.

In addition, existing users can win cashback upto a100 through the referral program, where they invite friends or family to use Paytm for UPI money transfers.

Paytm spokesperson said, With Paytm UPI, users get the convenience of superfast and secure money transfers. Given the success of our 4 ka 100 UPI offer, where lakhs of users had won cashbacks, we have brought back the campaign during the upcoming T20 series to encourage more people to adopt digital payments.

The company offers users flexibility with a wide range of payment instruments like Paytm Wallet, Paytm UPI, netbanking, credit & debit cards and Paytm Postpaid.

About Paytm: Paytm is India's payment Super App offering consumers and merchants most comprehensive payment services. Pioneer of mobile QR payments revolution in India, Paytms mission is to bring half a billion Indians into the mainstream economy through technology-led financial Services. Paytm enables commerce for small merchants and distributes various financial services offerings to its consumers and merchants in partnership with financial institutions.
RAMALLAH: According to a senior Palestinian official, Israel's unilateral activities in the Palestinian territories harm the prospects for peace and a two-state solution.

According to an official statement carried by Palestinian state news agency WAFA, Hussein Al-Sheikh, Secretary-General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), made the remarks during a meeting with visiting US senior diplomats in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday, ahead of an expected visit by US President Joe Biden.

Al-Sheikh with other senior Palestinian officials, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Barbara Leaf, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs, Hady Amr, attended the sessions, according to news report.

Palestinians "need security and stability," the PLO Secretary-General told US officials, "ending the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory and establishing an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 border." He told the authorities that it is critical to follow through on the peace agreements reached between the PLO and Israel and UN resolutions "that have never been implemented."

According to the statement, the group examined the rising tensions in the West Bank as a result of daily Israeli army incursions on Palestinian towns and villages and trips by Israeli radicals to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem.

WTOS 12th Ministerial Meeting begins in Geneva today

Palestine calls for forming int'l front to end Israeli occupation

Iran's parliament MPs condemn IAEA's anti-Tehran resolution
RAMALLAH: Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye has called for the formation of an international front to persuade Israel to cease its occupation of Palestinian lands and safeguard the two-state solution.

According to a statement from Ishtaye's office, Ishtaye made the remarks during a meeting with Maya Tissafi, Assistant State Secretary of the Swiss Foreign Ministry and head of the Middle East and North Africa Department, in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday.

The formation of an international front to exert pressure on Israel's occupation is critical," said Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who asked Switzerland to recognise Palestine. He also asked Switzerland and the international community to put pressure on Israel to adhere to and respect the signed peace agreements, as well as to cease all actions and breaches in the Palestinian areas.

"It is critical to provide international protection for the Palestinian people," he added.

Ishtaye and Tissafi also discussed measures to expand bilateral relations between Switzerland and Palestine, according to the statement. They emphasised the significance of working together to help Palestine create job opportunities and improve its economy.

In an interview with state-run Palestine TV on Sunday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas stated that the European Union will vote on restarting European aid to the Palestinians on Monday. a total of 23 European foreign ministers wrote a note to the EU requesting that aid to Palestine be reinstated without conditions, he said. "We are hopeful that the vote will yield positive results in regards to the aid that we have not gotten since 2021," he said.

Iran's parliament MPs condemn IAEA's anti-Tehran resolution

Iraqi lawmakers from Muqtada al-Sadrs bloc resign

Pakistan unveils 'pro-people' budget focusing inclusive growth for FY23
This time India's Vidit Gujrathi and Pentala Harikrishna appeared in the Prague Masters Chess Tournament along with 8 other top Grand Masters of the world and now that there is not much time left in the organization of Chess Olympiad. There is going to be a good chance. However, in the four rounds played so far, Pentala Harikrishna has been in strong form and is seen moving into the joint first position with 2 wins and 2 draws.

Pantala started his campaign by defeating Vidit in the first round and then drew with Vallejo Ponce of Spain and Sam Shankland of USA and then defeated Paraham Maghsudlu of Iran in the fourth round to not only win his second win. Lee has also got to see an improvement in his world ranking after a rather long time.

The top seed of the same competition, Vidit Gujrathi of India, after losing the first round, drew with David Anton and Vallejo Ponce of Spain and Sam Shankland of USA. Apart from Harikrishna, Le Kuang Lim of Vietnam also remains on the joint lead with 3 points. Now after a day's rest, Harikrishna is going to play against Paraham of Iran, host David Navara of Czech Republic.

Shameful! India lost second T20 match

Big news for fans, verdict came in Cristiano Ronaldo's rape case

Para badminton player Palak Kohli is battling a serious illness
Prayagraj: Controversy is increasing over Nupur Sharma's statement and now the political struggle has started. In fact, there were incidents of violence in many cities including Prayagraj during protests against Nupur's statement, then the Yogi government, who came into action, started bulldozer action. In fact, when a bulldozer ran at the house of Javed Pump, the main accused of Prayagraj violence, now political parties have also started coming out openly against this action. The first name in this list is Asaduddin Owaisi, president of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, who has raised questions on this action.

At the same time, the second name is of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati, who has surrounded the government by tweeting. In fact, BSP chief Mayawati has accused the UP government of targeting a community and said, 'An attempt is being made to crush the protest by bulldozers, demolition and other malicious aggressive actions.' With this, he said, 'The atmosphere of fear and terror that the UP government is creating is unfair and unjust. Court should take cognizance of the faulty action of targeting the entire family by demolishing the houses.

With this, Mayawati said that the root cause of the problem is Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal. Due to these, the honor and respect of the country was affected and violence broke out. He further said that, 'Not only innocent families are being crushed by the bulldozer action being done by the government in disregard of the rules and regulations, but their houses are also being demolished, which are innocent.'

World Insights Chinas vision for AsiaPacific world promotes peace development say experts

Good news for farmers! Government made this big announcement

AAP party meets over civic body polls including three-tier panchayat
Jazeera Paints, a leading maker of paints, colours, and construction solutions, presented a variety of its products and showed the extent to which a local brand can adhere to the highest international standards at its All in One seminar.

The seminar highlighted the company's 42-year journey to the groundbreaking achievement it holds today in the industry. All in One is a slogan for the solutions Jazeera Paints, as a company, provides to its valued clients.

Products ranging from architectural, decorative, industrial, and marine products to protective paint, wood paint, and fire-resistant paint products, among other unique products.

Carefully designed

The product range has been carefully designed to meet the needs and expectations of customers when it comes to preference for base paints, pastes, insulation, external textures, and interior paints.

Government representatives from various Saudi ministries, such as Ministry of Health and Ministry of Sport, delegates from prominent Saudi banks, and renowned Saudi engineers and interior designers were among the attendees.

The seminar was well-received by the audience, witnessing the variety of Jazeera Paints' products and the extent to which a local brand can adhere to the highest international standards.

Rust Effect

The evening's star was Rust Effect, which invited engineers and interior designers to marvel at its breathtaking beauty and uniqueness among the company's other products. The seminar came to an end with a discussion of the Rust Effect, its characteristics, and various applications.

Abdullah Al-Romaih, CEO of Jazeera Paints, expressed his joy and pride in what the company has accomplished thus far in the paints, colours, and construction solutions industry, exceeding all expectations.

The seminar honoured the employees' efforts to provide the best and finest products for our valued customers. Jazeera Paints set out to provide high-quality products that meet international standards to the Saudi, GCC, and Mena markets.-- TradeArabia News Service
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's economic growth prediction for this year was kept at 5.5 percent by the World Bank on Monday.

The World Bank said in a report that the rise is mainly driven by a healthy comeback in consumption demand.

Malaysia's private consumption growth is expected to reach 8.5 percent this year, according to the global lender, the fastest since 2008. The significant recovery in household spending is based on continuing policy support, modest improvements in employment and income prospects, and the dissipation of public health concerns in the absence of a severe comeback of Covid-19 caseloads, according to the report.

Malaysia's GDP is expected to grow at 4.5 percent in 2023 and 4.4 percent in 2024, according to the World Bank. Malaysia's economy declined by 5.6 percent in 2020, but it grew by 3.1 percent last year thanks to an expedited vaccine mandate and the removal of movement impediments.

The country's economic recovery is expected to continue this year, with growth of 5% in the first quarter of 2022. Domestic demand increased upon the resumption of most economic activities as pandemic-related containment restrictions were loosened further.

Pak currencyhit hard as budget fails to restore investors' confidence

US yields rise, FOREX-Yen falls to its lowest level since 1998

Russia-Ukraine conflict pushes 11-19 mln into hunger worldwide: FAO
Evacuation announced after Russia launched multiple missile strikes on the town of Pryluky 13 June, 04:43 PM Earlier, the occupiers fired three missiles at Pryluky (Photo:elegram truexanewsua)

After Russian forces struck the town of Pryluky with missiles, the Ukrainian government announced an evacuation of nearby villages, stated the Director of the Department of Civil Protection and Defense of Chernihiv Oblast, Serghiy Boldyrev, on June 13.

According to him, the evacuations concern the villages of Zaizd, Petrivske, Tykhe and Sukhostavets, all in Pryluky district.

The reason behind the evacuation is the risk of a fire spreading as a result of these missile strikes, said Boldyrev.

On the afternoon of June 13, the Russian invaders launched missile attacks on Pryluky. A total of three missiles were recorded. There are no reports of casualties thus far.

 

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Ukraine needs parity in heavy weapons with Russia to liberate its lands and end the war, says Podolyak 13 June, 02:36 PM Mykhailo Podolyak (Photo:www.president.gov.ua)

In order to push Russian troops out of Ukraine and end the war, Kyiv needs parity in heavy weapons with the Russian army, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in a Twitter post on June 13.

Ill be straightforward: to end the war and throw the Russians out of Ukraine, we need parity in heavy weapons, Podolyak said.

He outlined Ukraines armament needs as follows:

 1,000 155mm Howitzers;

 300 MLRS;

 500 tanks;

 2,000 armored vehicles;

 

 1,000 UAVs.

We expect a corresponding decision at the defense ministers meeting in Brussels on June 15.

Ukrainian officials have complained of often lackluster support from European powers, especially regional powers France and Germany. According to German news outlet Spiegel, the German government has gone so far as to block other countries, such as Spain, from transferring German-made heavy weapons to Ukraine.

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On a cold, windy morning of May 9, a team of Nepali climbers led by Tenzing Gyalzen Sherpa reached Bishops rock, a slab of rock just below the summit of Everest. With him were 14 other climbers from in and around the Khumbu region. Unlike regular summits, they were there for a specific purpose  to set up a weather station just below the summit of Mount Everest at an altitude of 8,810 metres.

The weather was supposed to clear with low winds. But, it became clear as they ascended from camp 4 that this was not the case. High winds made it difficult for them to move as quickly as they wanted, and it was clear by the time they arrived at Bishops rock that the task ahead would be difficult.

In the spring of 2019, most of them had climbed up to the balcony, to set up a high-tech weather station. Even then, they had to face similar issues. But, this year, Tenzing Gyalzen Sherpa and others came prepared that guaranteed success as they hope the project will benefit not only mountaineers but Nepalis in general, and the meteorological academicians and students in particular.

Creating a history

We knew that cold was going to be our biggest challenge. So we came prepared and we warmed batteries for the drill so that we could work smoothly. But, it wasnt as easy as we expected it to be, says Sherpa, the expedition leader who also works as an electrician in the Khumbu region.

The wind was so challenging that some of the team members were contemplating going down. There was a talk about leaving the equipment on Bishop rock and coming back. But, Sherpa was determined and he refused to return. He and a few others decided to stay and fixed the weather station.

Despite the challenges, they were successful and created a history. But, not without drama, as Sherpa says they were not able to fix a data locker, which meant that the station would not transmit information.

Tom (Mathews) was sad and had descended, but I didnt want to lose hope. I arranged the wire and hope it worked and when we reached camp 4 and got a radio from Baker (Perry) who told us it worked, we all jumped with joy. People had tears in their eyes, says Sherpa.

Kami Temba Sherpa and Tenzing Gyalzen Sherpa finalise the construction of the weather station at Bishop Rock. Credit: Arbindra Khadka/National Geographic

With that, the weather station is up on Everest and is transmitting live data available for everyone to see. Through the data, climate scientists aim to study climate change and its effects in the Himalayas and also aim to help mountaineers by providing them with real-time data on what is happening high up on the mountain. With the quantitative data on wind speed, temperature, relative humidity and air pressure, they will know how rapidly the highest place on earth is changing as they aim to raise awareness among people throughout the world.

This is frontier science as were pushing the limit, says climate scientist Baker Perry, one of the leaders of the project. There is a huge gap in our understanding of the weather in the highest place on earth so much so that we know more about the weather on Mars than the weather on the summit of Mount Everest. We hope this project changes that.

The initiation

The project started in 2019 and involves different parties and over 30 scientists. The project is undertaken by the National Geographic Society, working in partnership with Tribhuvan University and the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology and is funded by Rolex.

They have set up weather stations at different elevations. The first is at Phortse at an elevation of 3,810 metres. The second is at Everest base camp at an altitude of 5,315 metres; the third is a camp 2 at 6,464 metres, the fourth is on the South Col at 7,965 metres and the last is just below the summit at 8,810 metres.

Mt Everests south summit rises above camp 2 where a weather station is placed. Credit: Baker Perry/National Geographic

In 2019, the team had set up a weather station on a place called the balcony on Everest at an altitude of 8,430 metres but that stopped transmitting on January 20, 2020, around seven months after it was installed.

It was completely destroyed, says Sherpa who had gone to take stock of the station in 2021. A jetstream had broken it.

Empowering Nepalis

This years expedition was focused on replacing the weather station on the balcony and undertaking minor repairs on the ones at base camp and camp 2.

Yes, our main goal was to replace that station. But, with that, we also wanted to build the capacity of our Nepali team who have helped us since 2019, says Perry.

He says as neither he nor the co-leader of this project Tom Mathews could come to Nepal on a regular basis, it was important for them to use Nepali resource persons if they wanted to maintain these stations for a long time.

Perry says while the weather stations below the South Col should stand for a long time, those on the South Col and Bishops rock do not have a set time as these are on extreme altitudes.

We improved the design on the tripod and wind sensors, but since we can only test it in the Himalayas, we dont know how long these will last, says Perry.

Members of the 2022 Everest Expedition team. L to R: Baker Perry, Tom Matthews, Pete Athans, Dawa Yangzum Sherpa, and Arbindra Khadka. Credit: Baker Perry/National Geographic

Nepals contribution and projects importance

One of the partners of the project is the Central Department of Hydrology and Meteorology of Tribhuvan University. The department chief Deepak Aryal says this project is very important, especially for academic purposes.

This was purely a scientific research project that would be beneficial for students and researchers in the country to study weather, climate and the glacier, says Aryal.

A Nepali climate scientist who works on high-altitude meteorology and glaciology, Arbindra Khadka, was also a part of the project. He says the aim of the station is mainly to contribute to high-altitude research.

Every year, a lot of people come to the country to conduct research about climate change and the future of water in the region. These weather stations will help us study this in detail as we now have quantitative data, says Khadka, who is pursuing his PhD in glaciology.

Perry agrees with Khadka and adds that they hope to understand what is driving the loss of the snow and ice on the mountain.

This was totally worth the risk as it will help us study the water towers and the glaciers that help sustain a billion people downstream, says Perry.

The repaired weather station at the South Col. Credit: Arbindra Khadka/National Geographic

Key to understanding the mystery

The weather stations have produced some interesting research. Perry says there has been research on how sunshine is affecting the glacier high up on the mountain.

Temperatures are well below sub-zero, but the glacier is still melting. The sublimation is huge, says Perry.

He says they are also learning that due to low humidity in the winter, the sublimation is even present during the winter even when temperatures are well below freezing.

This shows that the highest elevation in the Himalayas may be more vulnerable to climate change than lower areas. The picture is quite glum when it comes to the climate crisis, says Perry.

Aryal, from TU, says he hopes that due to the availability of real-time quantifiable data, policymakers can draft favourable policies. But, because Nepals policymakers are not visionaries, he is not too hopeful.

People dont take the climate crisis seriously, I hope we, at the university, can contribute to research bringing light to the issue about how bad the situation is and the policymakers take note of it, says Aryal.

The weather station will also help the mountaineers by providing real-time data on the upper parts of the mountain. Most deaths on Everest mostly occurred due to people climbing in poor weather. Now with real-time data on the weather on camp 2, camp 4 and the summit, Perry and Khadka hope lives will be saved.

Were hoping this weather station makes the forecast system better because if we have continuous data, it will help hundreds of climbers who come with the hope of summitting Everest, says Khadka.

The station on Bishop rock will also monitor the lower jetstream that will help climate scientists see changes in the global weather system.

Khadka says people are conducting research on moisture in the air around the summit and how it affects the build-up of moisture.

Interesting research is being done with the help of these weather stations about the glacier and the cryosphere. Scientists are also looking at the weather when people are climbing Everest without the use of bottled oxygen. If the station on Bishop rock can last for a year, we can even study human physiology, says Khadka.

With a lot of avenues for research, scientists in both Nepal and abroad hope they are able to study new aspects of climate change.

Its promising and were looking forward to working with Nepali researchers and scientists to bring more information out to the public, says Baker.

PERMITTED USE: These images have been provided at no charge for one-time use for coverage or promotion of the May 2022 expedition of Mount Everest supported by National Geographic and Rolex through their Perpetual Planet Expeditions.

Copying, distribution, archiving, sublicensing, sale, or resale of the image is prohibited.
MONTREAL, June 13, 2022 /CNW/ - Canadians know the value of a healthy and safe environment. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) enforcement officers strive to ensure that the public and businesses comply with the acts and regulations designed to protect Canada's natural environment.

On June 10, 2022, ArcelorMittal Canada Inc. and 7623704 Canada Inc. were fined a total of $15 million by the Court of Quebec, at the Montreal courthouse. On October 15, 2021, ArcelorMittal Canada Inc. was found guilty of 93 charges and 7623704 Canada Inc. was found guilty of five charges for violating the Fisheries Act and Metal Mining Effluent Regulations (MMER). The conviction stemmed from incidents at the Mont-Wright mining complex in Fermont, Quebec, from May 25, 2011 to May 14, 2013.

The Government of Canada Environmental Damages Fund will receive the total fines, to support projects that have a positive impact on Canada's natural environment.

On March 6, 2013, the ECCC Enforcement Branch opened an investigation into a November 2012 dike rupture at the Mont-Wright mining complex. The investigation also covered 33 (unauthorized) deposits out of the normal course of events of toxic substances made in water frequented by fish between May 25, 2011 and May 14, 2013, in violation of subsection 36(3) of the Fisheries Act. The criminal investigation resulted in the filing of charges on July 19, 2017.

The investigation also revealed that ArcelorMittal Canada Inc. had not declared all the results of its effluent monitoring tests, as required by the MMER. The firm concealed from the authorities a number of (unauthorized) deposits out of the normal course of events of toxic substances. As a result, ECCC had an inaccurate and altered overview of the situation. ArcelorMittal Canada Inc. was therefore found guilty of having made false and misleading statements to ECCC officers, in violation of subsection 63(1) of the Fisheries Act.

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ArcelorMittal Canada Inc. and 7623704 Canada Inc. were also found guilty of failing to conduct the testing required during deposits out of the normal course of events. The firms thus violated paragraph 14(1)(b) and subsection 17(1) of the MMER. In addition, ArcelorMittal Canada Inc. was found guilty of failing to submit quarterly effluent monitoring reports within the prescribed timeframe, in violation of subsection 21(1) of the MMER.

As a result of this conviction, both firms will be added to the Environmental Offenders Registry, which contains information on firms that have been convicted for violations of certain federal environmental laws.

Quick facts

ArcelorMittal Canada Inc. was fined $14,400,000 and 7623704 Canada Inc. was fined $600,000. Both firms are partners in ArcelorMittal Mining Canada, a general partnership.

The waters where the deposits took place, lakes Saint-Ange and Webb and their tributaries, flow into the Moisie River, which is a proposed aquatic reserve at the provincial level. It is also one of the biggest Atlantic salmon rivers in North America.

Daphnia magna , a small freshwater crustacean of the suborder Cladocera , is used as a test organism. These water fleas are sensitive to a broad range of aquatic contaminants and are used in many countries to test toxicity.

The Metal Mining Effluent Regulations were amended in 2018 and renamed the Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulations .

ECCC is responsible for administering and enforcing the pollution prevention provisions of the Fisheries Act , which prohibit the deposit of deleterious substances in water frequented by fish.

Created in 1995, the Environmental Damages Fund is a Government of Canada program administered by ECCC. The Fund allows for courtimposed fines and penalties to be used for projects with positive environmental impacts.

ECCC has created a free subscription service to help Canadians stay current with what the Government of Canada is doing to protect our natural environment.

Associated links

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Twitter page

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Facebook page

SOURCE Environment and Climate Change Canada

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2022/13/c9902.html
Beaver County commissioners approved a settlement agreement between the county and a former Beaver County Jail correctional officer.

This story has been updated with new information presented to the Times.

BEAVER  Beaver County Commissioners on Thursday approved a settlement agreement and release between the county and Vanessa Harvey, a former correctional officer at the Beaver County Jail.

The agreement, in the amount of $60,000, settles all claims in relation to a court case that was in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Half of that settlement will be paid for through the county's insurance, according to Commissioner Chairman Daniel Camp III.

According to court documents, Harvey was a corrections officer at the jail from 2005 until her termination on June 11, 2020.

More: Three correctional officers charged with providing contraband to Beaver County Jail inmates

Harvey suffers from hypertensive cardiovascular disease, which requires ongoing health treatment, and is classified as a serious health condition under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

Court documents state her condition made her only work eight hours per shift and 40 hours per week, and was exempted from mandatory overtime shifts, until January 2020, where she worked mandatory overtime shifts until May, causing her to have adverse health consequences.

Court documents state jail personnel said they wouldnt honor the eight-hour restriction from the notice her physician had submitted because it did not include a duration.

This led to her physician to submit a notice on May 6, 2020, that said her condition is lifelong, and would need the modified work schedule for the rest of her career.

More: Coalition wants anti-human trafficking lessons taught at Beaver County Jail

Court documents state on June 1, 2020, the jail informed Harvey that due to the modified work adjustment request, they were left with no option other than to terminate her employment as an officer, effective immediately.

Court documents state Harvey has not worked at the jail since June 1, 2020, and had unused FLMA leave available to her, which her attorney, Margaret S. Coleman, said violated her rights under the FMLA.

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On April 26, 2021, Maria N. Pipak, an attorney representing Beaver County, filed a motion to dismiss the complaint filed by Harvey.

In the motion, Pipak states she believed Harvey failed to state an interference claim under the FLMA, as an interference claim requires her to prove she was entitled to benefits under the FMLA, and that the county illegitimately prevented her from obtaining those benefits.

Pipak stated, in the motion, Harvey was not entitled to FMLA protection because as her restriction limited her to eight-hour workdays for her career, and inasmuch mandatory overtime is a requirement of her position, Harvey would never be able to return to work at any point without restrictions.

In a memorandum opinion and order filed on June 16, 2021, U.S. Magisterial District Judge Patricia L. Dodge said Harvey had stated plausible claims for FMLA interference.

Dodge also said Harvey had been working under the FMLA restriction beforehand, and that working more than full-time cannot logically be an essential part of ones job under the FMLA.

A response by Pipak, on behalf of the county, was filed on June 30, 2021, in which she claims Harvey was not entitled to FMLA leave, nor that her termination violated or interfered with her rights under the FMLA.

More: Accusation: Beaver County correctional officer abused inmate, threatened others

Court documents state on Sept. 20, 2018, the county received a FMLA request from Harvey seeking an eight-hour restriction.

On Nov. 7, 2018, her physician returned the FMLA request packet certifying she required intermittent leave approximately five times a year, for 3-10 days at a time, which was approved.

Harvey sought and was approved an eight-hour restriction on March 27, 2019, and on Dec. 19, 2019, sought another eight-hour restriction, but did not include a duration, which was required.

Court documents state her physician did not return the FMLA packet until March 3, 2020, who certified Harvey required intermittent leave from four times a month, with a duration of 3-10 days per episode, but did not include an eight-hour restriction.

Pipak said the county was unaware of any adverse health consequences from her overtime in 2020, Harveys termination was effective June 11, not June 1, Harvey was not able to return to her position as required following her intermittent FMLA leave, and was no longer qualified for the position if she could not perform overtime as required.

Pipak added, based on the collective bargaining agreement with the jail correctional officers, overtime is used to fill staffing vacancies, and is offered by seniority.

If overtime remains unfilled, junior full-time employees are mandated to work the overtime shift, as no employee shall be justified or warranted, without valid reason, to refuse overtime on any day when the necessity for doing such overtime arises.

On July 21, 2021, the two parties began working on an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) for the case.

On April 8, the court was notified the action for the case was resolved, and that the only remaining matters were the execution of the settlement, and compliance with the terms of the settlement agreement.

More: Warden discusses COVID testing at Beaver County Jail

Nicholas Vercilla is a staff reporter for the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at nvercilla@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Beaver County Commissioners approve settlement with former jail corrections officer
China and Pakistan on Sunday pledged deeper military ties while calling for stronger cooperation in counterterrorism two months after an attack killed three Chinese citizens in Karachi.

In a meeting with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, General Zhang Youxia, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, also said China would also "strengthen communication ... enhance cooperation, deepen pragmatic exchanges, properly address complex factors in the regional situation and promote deeper relations between the two militaries", according to the Chinese defence ministry.

Pakistan's Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa met China's General Zhang Youxia, the vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission on Sunday. Photo: Anjum Naveed alt=Pakistan's Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa met China's General Zhang Youxia, the vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission on Sunday. Photo: Anjum Naveed>

In response, Bajwa, the most senior officer in the Pakistan Army, told Zhang his country's "friendship with China is unbreakable and rock solid" and his country would always stand firmly with China regardless of changes in the international and regional situation.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Pakistan was also looking to improve cooperation in counterterrorism with China among its efforts "to deal with various security challenges, safeguard the common interests of both countries and contribute to regional peace", he added.

The Pakistan Armed Forces said the two sides pledged to strengthen their training, technology and cooperation on counterterrorism.

Pakistan is among the few countries whose defence chiefs are received regularly by Zhang, who sits on the 25-strong Politburo, the decision-making body of the Communist Party.

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The Chinese military usually leaves the job of meeting foreign generals to Defence Minister Wei Fenghe, who ranks lower than Zhang and has just wrapped up a trip to Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Wei held meetings with a handful of defence ministers at the dialogue, including with US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin.

Zhang and Bajwa both denounced the suicide attack in April that killed three Chinese citizens near Karachi University's Confucius Institute.

"Any attempt to undermine China-Pakistan friendship will not succeed", the two senior military officers said, according to the Chinese defence ministry.

It was the first time senior military officers from China and Pakistan took a joint stand against the Karachi attack. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army, a separatist insurgent group that has increasingly viewed China's infrastructure investment as a target, rattling Beijing.

In the wake of the Karachi attack, China has repeatedly urged Pakistan to improve security for Chinese nationals in the country and called for further joint efforts to counter terrorism.

Earlier, Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that Islamabad Police had set up a foreign security cell to audit the security arrangements of foreigners, particularly Chinese nationals, as part of its efforts to address Beijing's concerns.

As China's confrontations with the US have intensified in the Indo-Pacific, there has been speculation that Beijing will step up efforts to further stabilise its western borders.

The relationship between China and Pakistan has been one of highest priorities for their two governments, whose leaders often hailed them as "iron brothers".

Pakistan has hosted massive Chinese infrastructure investment - mostly under the US$62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor - designed to connect China's far west region of Xinjiang with Gwadar Port in Pakistan via a network of motorways, railways, oil pipelines and trading hubs.

But Chinese investment has been under an intense spotlight. In July, nine Chinese nationals involved in building a hydropower project at Dasu in northern Pakistan were among those killed when a car suicide bomber attacked a convoy headed for the dam. Construction was stopped until January.

Pakistani authorities blamed the Pakistani Taliban for the attack, claims the Pakistani Taliban denied.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright  2022 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2022. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
As the Triple Crown series came to a conclusion over the weekend, the field for the $1 million TVG.com Haskell Stakes was beginning to come together.

On Saturday's Belmont Stakes undercard, the Chad Brown-trained Jack Christopher turned in the most impressive performance of all, as the lightly raced 3-year-old ran off with a 10-length victory in the Grade 1 Woody Stephens at seven furlongs to remain unbeaten in four starts.

Then came Sundays Grade 3 Matt Winn at Churchill Downs, where Cyberknife, winner of the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby on April 2, won by a nose over Howling Time.

Now the two are being pointed towards a showdown at Monmouth Park on July 23, with more contenders to follow in the coming weeks, as the starting gate for the Grade 1 fixture begins to fill up.

I spent a lot of years of my life in that place, so I want to come back and visit it, said Al Gold, a long-time Jersey Shore native and owner of Cyberknife.

Cyberknife, ridden by jockey Florent Geroux, wins the Arkansas Derby (Grade I) at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort in Hot Springs, Arkansas on April 2, 2022.

It was a rebound performance for Cyberknife after getting caught up in the torrid pace in the Kentucky Derby, finishing 18th.

Related: Oceanport couple bask in Mo Donegal victory in Belmont Stakes

It was very intense, and then very relaxing two minutes later. Just very satisfying to get the win, said Gold of the Matt Winn, where Cyberknife was unable to get past Howling Time in the stretch. The photo showed Cyberknife winning by an inch.

It's a pretty good start.

Jack Christopher has won each of his four starts handily, and now tries to go beyond a mile for the first time in the 1 1/8-mile Haskell. And Cyberknife comes off a gritty win Sunday, when he looked beaten deep in the stretch.

So who else could be coming to the Haskell?

Monmouth Park racing secretary John Heims will be working the phones this week to get a handle on who else is interested.

A million-dollar, Grade 1 race, win and youre in for the Breeders Cup Classic, theres going to be a lot interest, said Heims.

Baffert factor

The unknown in all this is trainer Bob Baffert, the eight-time Haskell winner. While Baffert is currently serving a 90-day suspension related to Medina Spirits positive drug test after winning the 2021 Kentucky Derby, the suspension ends July 4.

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And while Baffert faces potential lengthy suspensions by the owners of Churchill Downs and the New York Racing Association, Dennis Drazin, the chairman and CEO of Darby Development, which operates Monmouth Park, has said Baffert should be allowed to return when his suspension ends.

Justin Zayat (L) Racing Manager for the Zayat Stable , acknowledges trainer Bob Baffert's record eighth Haskell victory after Triple Crown winner American Pharoah won in 2015. Baffert looks for No. 9 when he sends Mucho Gusto to the Jersey Shore this year.

So if some of the horses that were dispersed to other trainers end up back in his barn, the Haskell could be one of the few targets available.

Other possible starters

The Haskell is six weeks removed from the Belmont Stakes, with another five weeks until the Travers Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 27.

We have the Pegasus here on Saturday, where the top two finishers get into the Haskell, and there are some other races coming up, including the Ohio Derby, Heims said.

Trainer Todd Pletcher, who won the Belmont Stakes with Mo Donegal, has a host of top 3-year-olds in his barn. And while Mo Donegal is being pointed toward the Travers, with the Grade 2 Jim Dandy at Saratoga as a possible stepping stone, the Haskell could serve as an option.

The same for Epicenter, who ran well in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and is being pointed toward the Travers as well.

Right now, there are two top 3-year-olds headed for a showdown with Jack Christopher and Cyberknife. Thats a pretty good start, with more to follow in the coming weeks.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Monmouth Park 2022: Cyberknife, Jack Christopher headed to Haskell
In hospitalized patients with COVID-19 Pneumonia, the rates of clinical events among those treated with Reparixin (n=36) were statistically significantly lower than standard of care (n=19).

The study is the first evaluation of the efficacy and safety of Reparixin an IL-8 inhibitor in patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia.

Results from the Phase 2 trial were presented at the American Thoracic Society (ATS) 2022 International Conference and published in Infectious Diseases and Therapy

MILAN, June 13, 2022 /CNW/ -- Dompe farmaceutici S.p.A ("Dompe") today announced results from its Phase 2 clinical trial demonstrating that, in patients in severe COVID-19 Pneumonia, Reparixin led to an improvement in clinical outcomes when compared with the standard of care, a larger phase 3 clinical study is needed to confirm these results. Results from the Phase 2 trial are published in Infectious Diseases and Therapy and were presented at the scientific sessions of the ATS 2022 International Conference in San Francisco, California.

In its GMP facility in LAquila, Dompe manufactures more than 60 thousand packages per year distributed globally

Acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are common complications in patients with COVID-19.1 As part of its commitment to invest in research for unmet medical needs, Dompe conducted an open-label, multi-center study to evaluate the inhibition of IL-8 which is known to be associated with cytokine release syndrome connected to Covid-19 disease.

"Reparixin is a new investigational molecule that seems to have a novel application in patients with acute respiratory inflammation induced by COVID-19. It was well tolerated in clinical studies," said Giovanni Landoni, MD, Director of CARE (Center for Intensive Care and Anesthesiology) at Hospital San Raffaele in Milan, Italy. "The outcomes as compared to the standard of care may now be reduced by the widespread use of COVID-19 vaccines, but the obtained results indicated continued investigation would be valuable in patients with acute respiratory inflammation."

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Fifty-five patients were randomized 2:1 to receive 1200 mg of oral Reparixin, an inhibitor of IL-8, three times daily or the standard of care for up to 21 days. The rate of clinical events was statistically significantly lower in the Reparixin group compared to those assigned to the group receiving standard of care (27% vs. 42.1%, p=0.02). Treatment with Reparixin was well-tolerated in terms of treatment-emergent adverse events, laboratory test and vital sign parameters2.

"Dompe, along with the rest of the biopharmaceutical world, has worked with urgency to fight COVID-19 and its complications," said Flavio Mantelli, Chief Medical Officer at Dompe. "While vaccines have helped to mitigate severity of disease, in-hospital treatment options for those who are most seriously impacted remain limited. We are dedicated to this patient population, we are looking forward to continuing our clinical development program to evaluate the potential to reduce COVID-19 respiratory complications."

About the Study 3

The study was an open-label, multicenter, randomized, phase 2 clinical trial designed to assess the efficacy and safety of oral Reparixin in adult patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 pneumonia from May 5, 2020, until November 27, 2020 and now released for the first time. The study enrolled 55 adults (aged 1890 years old) hospitalized with severe COVID-19 pneumonia, assigned randomly 2:1 to receive 1200mg Reparixin orally three times daily or standard of care (SOC) for up to 21 days. At least one treatment emergent adverse event occurred in 3 patients in the Reparixin group, and 5 patients in SOC. Reparixin overall appeared to be well tolerated.

All patients received the standard care based on their clinical need, including COVID-19 medications, as per local standard therapy at the trial site hospital and in line with international guidelines.

Please refer to NCT04794803 for additional clinical trial details.

About Dompe

Dompe is a privately-held biopharmaceutical company founded in Milan, Italy, with a 130-year legacy of R&D and medical innovation. Today, Dompe, with Headquarters in Milan, employs more than 800 employees worldwide, with a commercial operations hub in the San Francisco Bay Area, U.S.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release refers to certain information that may not coincide with expected future results. Dompe firmly believes in the soundness and reasonableness of the concepts expressed. However, some of the information is subject to a certain degree of indetermination in relation to its research and development activities and the necessary verifications to be performed by regulatory bodies. Therefore, as of today, Dompe cannot guarantee that the expected results will be consistent with the information provided above.

References

1. Tzotzos SJ, et al. Crit Care. 2020 Aug 21;24(1).

2. A phase 2 multicenter, randomized, controlled study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of Reparixin in hospitalized adult patients with COVID-19 pneumonia, ATS 2022 International Conference in San Francisco, California.

3. https://www.springer.com/journal/40121

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SOURCE Dompe Farmaceutici S.p.A

Cision

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is estate planning tax deductible

Estate planning can be difficult because there are so many tax rules that could cost you a lot of money long-term if you dont know what to deduct. This article will discuss reducing estate planning costs through deducting the expenses when you file taxes and give you general tips on saving money in the estate planning process. To dig deeper, you can get the financial help you need to prepare your estate properly by speaking with a financial advisor.

What Are Estate Planning Costs?

In most cases, the primary costs for estate planning come from hiring an attorney. While you can find cheap online templates and services, they wont be sufficient if you have heirs, considerable assets or specific needs. Since most people creating an estate plan fit one or more of those categories, working with an estate attorney will allow you to address your questions and concerns.

Attorneys may charge either a flat fee or an hourly rate. The rate may vary by the complexity of drawing up the estate. On the low end, it may cost as little as $150 to $200. However, more complex cases require more work, which may cost as must as $300 per hour.

It should be noted that there are indirect costs of estate planning, such as the money you could lose by not using an experienced attorney. These can be considered estate planning costs but for the purpose of this article, were focusing on tangible costs that arent unique to your individual situation.

Are Estate Planning Costs Deductible?

Before 2017, some estate planning fees were deductible as itemized deductions. However, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act changed the tax code by making it more challenging to deduct any estate planning costs. Additionally, since this law almost doubled the standard deduction and reduced itemized deductions, most taxpayers will take the standard deduction when they file. Therefore, fewer taxpayers will want to itemize their deductions and have estate planning expenses they would like to deduct.

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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts stipulations will expire by 2025. At that time, lawmakers will decide whether to renew or change the tax laws, meaning that the rules around itemized deductions could change in the future. If you are planning to itemize your deductions and will pay for estate planning services soon, you can work with a tax professional to find out if any of your estate planning costs are deductible.

What Can You Deduct for Taxes?

is estate planning tax deductible

There are numerous deductions you can take when filing taxes. Taking any of the following deductions can lower your taxable income, thereby reducing what you may owe the government.

Business expenses, including using your vehicle or home for business purposes

Property and real estate taxes

Charitable contributions

Mortgage interest and moving expenses

Student loan interest

Health savings accounts

IRA contributions

This isnt an all-inclusive list of tax deductions and there could be some available depending on your unique situation that isnt as well used or talked about. Speaking to the right financial advisor or tax expert is the best way to unlock the knowledge of all potential tax deductions that might be of interest to you.

Other Ways to Save on Estate Planning Costs

There is no substitute for paying a thorough, skilled attorney to draw up your estate plan. They have an experience level that you dont and will generally know the best way to make your long-term estate plan a success. However, you can still reduce costs with the following tips:

Discuss costs first: Most attorneys provide a free consultation without strings attached. Use this opportunity to explain your needs and inquire about costs. Usually, youll pay your estate attorney a flat fee or an hourly rate. If the attorney charges an hourly rate, ask them to estimate how many hours of work your estate plan will take.

Prepare as much as possible: Although you are meeting with an attorney to get more information, you can ensure the meeting is productive by understanding what a basic estate plan contains, what your needs are and the documents you already have. For example, you may already possess a will that does not need changing and you should bring this to your attorneys attention.

Select the right attorney: Do your homework by asking family and others you trust about estate planning attorneys. Reading online reviews will also give you an idea of who would best serve you. Also, free consultations can help determine if a specific attorney is right for you.

Put it in writing: After you have selected an attorney, get a written contract defining what the attorney will do for you and how much it will cost. You and your attorney will sign the contract and youll both have clarity on what to expect during the process.

The Takeaway

is estate planning tax deductible

The current tax law has given taxpayers little incentive to itemize deductions and has restricted what expenses you can deduct. As a result, most taxpayers take the standard deduction, which voids the issue of deducting estate planning expenses. However, if you are going to itemize your tax deductions and have questions about your estate planning expenses, its wise to speak to a financial advisor.

More on Estate Planning and Tax Deductions

The intricacy of the tax code makes itemizing deductions a complex task that you may need the help of a financial advisor to navigate correctly. Finding a qualified financial advisor doesnt have to be hard. SmartAssets free tool matches you with up to three financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If youre ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started today.

Estate planning can be complicated and difficult to figure out on your own. If youre just getting started, check out our ultimate estate planning guide to learn all about what you could be doing to prepare for the future.

Photo Credit: iStock.com/kate_sept2004, iStock.com/jeffbergen, iStock.com/FatCamera

The post Are Estate Planning Costs Tax-Deductible? appeared first on SmartAsset Blog.
Bahrain's adoption of the Cloud First policy has promoted the development of the kingdom's e-commerce sector significantly, said Sadiq Abdul Rasool, Chief Digital Officer of Bahrain's leading E-commerce platform (Homiez.me).

"For e-commerce platforms, cloud computing offers a variety of benefits, including cost savings, fast productivity, efficiency, and flexibility, infinite capacity, and database-related security, cash flow, and privacy protection," Rasool said.

He made the remarks while participating as a key speaker at an event organised by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, the Bahrain Development of SMEs Society and ThinkSmart Institute to launch Cloud Skilling Initiative for Bahraini Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.

Improved competitiveness

Rasool said that the adoption of cloud computing technology by more Bahraini companies and organisations has improved their competitiveness, productivity, profitability, and growth, and said: "The esteemed government has been proactive in planning for the future of digital transformation, contracting with AMS strategically to provide, deploy, and use cloud infrastructure. The government sector has made significant progress in this direction by moving many government systems and services to the cloud, inspiring private sector organisations to follow the same approach."

"We at HOMIEZ realised that cloud computing will eventually replace all IT operations, so we were quick to switch towards it in collaboration with Amazon, whom we regard as an effective partner in our business's success based on the strength of our technical presence on the Internet and our commitment to grow our business safely and reliably," Rasool said.

Rasool concluded by affirming that cloud computing has become a critical component in the growth of e-commerce in Bahrain and throughout the world, pointing out to the speed advantage that cloud computing provides to the e-commerce platform. He also emphasised the significance of educating more Bahraini youth on how to successfully use and invest in cloud computing services, as well as take advantage of its benefit.-- TradeArabia News Service
Eurobio Scientific

Eurobio Scientific expands into Benelux by acquiring the diagnostic company Biomedical Diagnostics NV

Paris, June 13, 2022 5:45 pm

Eurobio Scientific (FR0013240934, ALERS, eligible PEA-PME), a leading French group in the field of specialty in vitro medical diagnostics, announces the acquisition of 100% of the share capital of Biomedical Diagnostics NV (BMD), a Belgian company specializing in the distribution of in vitro diagnostic tests in Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). BMDs 2020 sales were 3.3 million euros. The acquisition, which financial terms are not disclosed, was paid in cash.

A strong reputation in specialty tests for medical diagnostics

Founded in 1986, BMD is based in Antwerp, Belgium, with a staff of 10 employees. The company offers a range of specialty tests and instruments under exclusive distribution contracts. It became a reference player in the field of auto-immunity in which it commercializes an extensive range of solutions including reagents and instruments. BMD also grew in other indications such as infectious diseases, genetic disorders and surveillance of biotherapies. Besides its offer of in vitro diagnostics tests, the company also commercializes a comprehensive range of reagents for quality control.

BMD is currently marketing specific products from the Eurobio Scientific group through the distribution of the Pathtrol quality control reagents manufactured by Eurobio Scientific UK in the United Kingdom.

With a total population of 29 million inhabitants, the Benelux area represents an in vitro diagnostics market of approximately 700 million euros per year, made with approximately 200 hospital and private laboratories.

An acquisition in line with the Group's European development strategy

This acquisition fits perfectly with Eurobio Scientific's European development strategy. With an already long-standing commercial relationship, it also opens opportunities for rapidly expanding the Eurobio Scientific group in Benelux, where its presence is currently limited to one sales representative from the TECO group based in the Netherlands.

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Jean-Michel Carle, President and CEO of Eurobio Scientific, declares: we are delighted to welcome the BMD team within our Group. This acquisition brings us a new capacity for development in the Benelux area. The long-standing relationship between our two companies will enable us to rapidly activate the commercial synergies resulting from this operation.

Denis Fortier, joint CEO of Eurobio adds: The way we handled the COVID-19 crisis has strengthened our financial position and shown our capacity to absorb growth. Acquiring BMD contributes to accelerating our transition from a French player to a European player in the diagnostics market.

For Fabienne Steens, CEO of BMD, Eurobio Scientific is the best match for BMD as we share a common business model, built on a mix of exclusive distribution contracts and from now on proprietary products issued from Eurobio Scientific R&D. We join forces at the right moment, when health systems all over Europe rely more and more on diagnostics.

Next financial meeting

Eurobio Scientific 2022 first-half revenues: July 25, 2020

Disclaimer

This press release contains elements that are not historical facts including, without limitation, certain statements about future expectations and other forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on managements current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, profitability or events to differ materially from those anticipated. In addition, Eurobio Scientific, its shareholders, and its affiliates, directors, officers, advisors and employees have not verified the accuracy of, and make no representations or warranties in relation to, statistical data or predictions contained in this press release that were taken or derived from third party sources or industry publications. Such statistical data and predictions are used in this press release for information purposes only. Finally, this press release may be drafted in the French and English languages. If both versions are interpreted differently, the French language version shall prevail.

About Eurobio Scientific

Eurobio Scientific is a key player in the field of specialty in vitro diagnostics. It is involved from research to manufacturing and commercialization of diagnostic tests in the fields of transplantation, immunology and infectious diseases, and sells instruments and products for research laboratories, including biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Through many partnerships and a strong presence in hospitals, Eurobio Scientific has established its own distribution network and a portfolio of proprietary products in the molecular biology field. The Group has approximately 164 employees and three production units based in the Paris region, in Germany and in the United States, and several affiliates based in Dorking UK, Sissach Switzerland, Bunde Germany and Utrecht in The Netherlands.

For more information, please visit : www.eurobio-scientific. com

The company is publicly listed on the Euronext Growth market in Paris

Euronext Growth BPI Innovation, PEA-PME 150 and Next Biotech indices, Euronext European Rising Tech label.

Symbol: ALERS - ISIN Code: FR0013240934 - Reuters: ALERS.PA - Bloomberg: ALERS:FP

Contacts





Group Eurobio Scientific



Denis Fortier, General Manager



Herve Duchesne de Lamotte, General Manager



Tel. +33(0) 1 69 79 64 80



Calyptus



Mathieu Calleux / Maisie Mouret



Investors relations



Tel. +33(1) 53 65 68 68



eurobio-scientific@calyptus.net

About BMD

Biomedical Diagnostics (BMD) is a Belgian company marketing specialty tests for medical diagnostics. With a team of 10 employees, the company has become over the years a pure distribution company, representing high-quality partners and products in niche sectors of in vitro diagnostics. Due to its strategic position in Antwerp, in the center of the Benelux area, it provides appropriate solutions and personalized services to all clinical biology laboratories in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

For more information, visit the website: www.bmd.be

Attachment




By Liz Lee, Rozanna Latiff and Mei Mei Chu

KUALA LUMPUR, June 13 (Reuters) - Malaysian companies from palm oil plantations to semiconductor makers are refusing orders and forgoing billions in sales, hampered by a shortage of more than a million workers that threatens the country's economic recovery.

Despite lifting a COVID-19 freeze on recruiting foreign workers in February, Malaysia has not seen a significant return of migrant workers due to slow government approvals and protracted negotiations with Indonesia and Bangladesh over worker protections, say industry groups, companies and diplomats.

The export-reliant Southeast Asian nation, a key link in the global supply chain, relies on millions of foreigners for factory, plantation and service sector jobs shunned by locals as dirty, dangerous and difficult.

Manufacturers, who make up nearly one-fourth of the economy, fear losing customers to other countries as growth picks up.

"Despite the greater optimism in outlook and increase in sales, some companies are gravely hampered in their ability to fulfil orders," said Soh Thian Lai, president of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers, which represents over 3,500 companies.

Palm oil growers are at breaking point, said Carl Bek-Nielsen, chief executive director of oil palm grower United Plantations.

"The situation is dire and very much like having to play a game of football against 11 men but only being allowed to field seven," he said.

Malaysia lacks at least 1.2 million workers across manufacturing, plantation and construction, a shortage worsening daily as demand grows with an easing of the pandemic, industry and government data show.

Manufacturers say they are short 600,000 workers, construction needs 550,000, the palm oil industry reports a shortage of 120,000 workers, chipmakers lack 15,000 and cannot meet demand despite a global chip shortage, and medical glovemakers say they require 12,000 workers.

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Malaysia's manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index dropped to 50.1 in May from 51.6 in April, barely remaining in expansion, as the sector shed the most jobs since August 2020, according to data from S&P Global.

Chipmakers are turning away customers, locals are not interested in working in the industry and many who do join leave in less than half a year, says Wong Siew Hai, president of the Malaysia Semiconductor Industry Association.

The palm oil industry, which contributes 5% to Malaysia's economy, warns 3 million tonnes of crop could be lost this year as fruit rots unpicked, meaning losses of more than $4 billion. The rubber glove industry estimates $700 million of lost revenue this year if the labour shortage persists.

WORKERS' RIGHTS

Malaysia's Ministry of Human Resources, which is responsible for approving the intake of foreign workers, did not respond to Reuters queries for comment on the labour crunch and its economic impact.

In April, Minister M. Saravanan said companies had asked to hire 475,000 migrant workers but the ministry had approved just 2,065, rejecting some for incomplete information or lack of compliance with regulations.

Diplomats from Indonesia and Bangladesh, two of Malaysia's biggest sources of foreign labour, told Reuters that workers' rights were part of the hold-up in sourcing migrant workers.

Bangladesh signed an agreement in December to send workers, but implementation was delayed after Dhaka protested Malaysia's proposed hiring process, citing fears the plan could lead to increased costs for the workers and debt bondage, said a Bangladeshi diplomatic source.

"Our main focus is our workers' welfare and rights," said Bangladesh's expatriate welfare and overseas employment minister, Imran Ahmed. "We're making sure they get standard wages, they have proper accommodation, they spend minimum cost for migration and they get all other social security."

He told Reuters that Dhaka does not "want workers to end up falling into a cycle of debt trap", adding that Malaysia wants to hire 200,000 Bangladeshi workers within a year.

The United States has banned seven Malaysian companies over the last two years over what Washington called forced labour.

Malaysia's Saravanan, who was in Dhaka early this month, said Malaysia had given the Bangladesh government reassurances that it would ensure better salaries and protection of workers' welfare. He has denied claims that the hiring process was flawed.

Saravanan said last week the government was finalising technical matters, recruitment procedures and agreements with some source countries.

Indonesia's ambassador to Malaysia, Hermono, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, said concerns over worker protection came up in recent bilateral talks.

($1 = 4.3880 ringgit)

(Reporting by Liz Lee, Rozanna Latiff and Mei Mei Chu in Kuala Lumpur, Ruma Paul in Dhaka; Editing by A. Ananthalakshmi and William Mallard)
Electronics for Imaging, Inc.

New Fiery print servers boost graphic communications to new heights with familiar and unified user-interface for users of Revoria Press PC1120 and the Revoria Press E1.

TOKYO and FREMONT, Calif., June 12, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FUJIFILM Business Innovation Corp. and Electronics For Imaging (EFI) announce the launch of new EFI Fiery print servers and workflow software for FUJIFILM Business Innovations two Revoria production printer models, the Revoria Press PC1120 and the Revoria Press E1 series. Sales of the new Fiery print servers for these printer models, EFI Fiery PC11 and EFI Fiery E11 respectively, will begin from June in the Asia-Pacific region1 and selected countries in the European region.



FUJIFILM Business Innovation is a leader in world-class graphic communications, providing cutting-edge technologies to innovative print providers with its Revoria Press series. EFI, as the worldwide leader in digital color print server and print workflow technology, is uniquely positioned to deliver best-in-class technology to meet todays challenges of shorter runs, faster turnaround time, increased security standards, and the need to streamline workflow for efficient operation to reduce cost. Together, the two companies will meet the diverse challenges of todays print professionals.

Catering to the various needs for high-speed, superior quality printing with ease of use, the new Fiery print servers bring innovation to an extensive line-up of Revoria Press series for use in office, commercial, in-plant and package printing environments.

EFI Fiery PC11 drives the Revoria Press PC1120, a production color printer for the high-end professional printing market, by providing greater advantages and enhancements to create professional quality prints.

EFI Fiery E11 powers the Revoria Press E1 Series, a monochrome production printer for on-demand printing both for professional and office use, with improved usability and seamless integration across Windows and macOS business environments.

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Both Fiery print servers are equipped with Fiery Command WorkStation to bring a familiar and easy-to-use unified interface to customers.

Customers rely on market-leading Fiery technology to deliver exceptional quality digital prints while increasing their production efficiency and profits, said Toby Weiss, Chief Operating Officer, Fiery Business at EFI. EFI is excited to partner with FUJIFILM Business Innovation Corporation and broaden the reach of Fiery technology and solutions.

"We are incredibly excited about the new business partnership with EFI which ensures FUJIFILM Business Innovation continues to evolve within an ever-changing print industry, keeping us at the forefront of technology," said Hiro Kida, Corporate Vice President and Executive General Manager, Graphic Communication Business Group at FUJIFILM Business Innovation Corp. "The collaboration with EFI, and the combination of our Revoria Presses with Fiery technology, are a digital enabler for many customers with whom a Fiery workflow will accelerate their growth. We also see this as an exciting opportunity that will enable us to deliver our technology to several new markets outside of Asia-Pacific as well.

*1  Please check with your local FUJIFILM Business Innovation office on the availability of the solutions.

About EFI

EFI is a global technology company, leading the worldwide transformation from analogue to digital imaging. We understand our customers want breakthrough technologies to lead them through their digital journey. Thats why were passionate about driving their business growth with a scalable portfolio of products, solutions, services, support, and world-class partnerships for the manufacturing of signage, packaging, textiles, ceramic tiles, building materials, commercial print, and personalised documents with a wide range of printers, inks, digital front ends, and workflow software. They work together to increase profits, cut costs, improve productivity, and optimize efficiency  job after job, year after year. Were committed to our customers success. (www.efi.com)

About FUJIFILM Business Innovation

FUJIFILM Business Innovation is a global leader committed to continuously deliver innovations to customers businesses worldwide, for creating innovative and fulfilling workplaces by effectively adopting information and knowledge through digital transformation (DX). We have pioneered numerous technologies and accumulated expertise since our establishment in 1962, to build an environment that encourages the use of ones creativity to maximize organizational strengths. Our portfolio includes conducting R&D, manufacturing and sales of world-class workflow solutions, IT services, and printing equipment such as digital multifunction printers (MFPs). We also offer business process outsourcing (BPO) services as well as marketing and implementation support of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

On April 1, 2021, we have changed the company name to FUJIFILM Business Innovation. More than just a name change, it embodies our commitment to continue as a company that always pursues business innovation.

https://fujifilm.com/fbglobal

Contact:

David Lindsay, EFI

+1 404 931 7760

david.lindsay@efi.com




Company Logo

Global Dishwasher Tablets Market

Global Dishwasher Tablets Market

Dublin, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Dishwasher Tablets Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global dishwasher tablets market reached a value of US$ 531.4 Million in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach a value of US$ 802 Million by 2027 exhibiting a CAGR of 6.70% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different end use sectors. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



Dishwasher tablets refer to a type of detergent used for cleaning and washing dishes in the dishwasher. They contain chemicals to soften hard water, bleaches to remove tough stains, enzymes to dissolve starch and protein-based foods quickly, and surfactants to add shine to the dishes after the wash. Nowadays, they are available in various types, depending on the requirements of the users. For instance, some tablets comprise powder detergent in compact form, while others are composed of specialized formulated gels. Over the years, dishwasher tablets have gained traction as a more convenient and efficient alternative to traditional powder detergent as they minimize wastage, reduce the risk of spills, and protect dishwashers.



Dishwasher Tablets Market Trends:

The growing awareness regarding hygiene and cleanliness among the masses represents the primary factor driving the market. Dishwasher tablets contain pre-measured and efficient ingredients that prevent the overuse of detergent in dishwashing and increase the lifespan of the machine.

As they offer increased convenience and help save water and energy, dishwasher tablets are rapidly gaining popularity among consumers. Additionally, the increasing number of food restaurants and eateries across the globe is another major growth-inducing factor.

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Besides this, the leading manufacturers are launching multi-functional dishwasher tablets that eliminate the need for rinsing agents, salts, and other additives during washing. This, in confluence with the surging sales of smart dishwashers, is catalyzing the product demand. Furthermore, dishwasher tablets minimize the amount of detergent entering the water supply, which eases the burden on water treatment plants. Other factors, including the growing environmental concerns, rising disposable incomes, easy product availability via e-commerce platforms and product premiumization, are also creating a positive market outlook.



Key Market Segmentation:

The publisher provides an analysis of the key trends in each sub-segment of the global dishwasher tablets market, along with forecasts at the global, regional and country level from 2022-2027. Our report has categorized the market based on product type, distribution channel and distribution channel.



Breakup by Product Type:

Branded

Private Label

Breakup by Distribution Channel:

Supermarkets and Hypermarkets

Departmental and Convenience Stores

Independent Grocery Stores

Online Stores

Breakup by End User:

Commercial

Residential

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 Cleancult, Eurotab Operations, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, IFB Appliances, Kao Corporation, Liby Group, McBride plc, Method Products (S. C. Johnson & Son Inc.), Nopa Nordic A/S, Persan S.A., Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC, Tenova and Unilever PLC.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global dishwasher tablets market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global dishwasher tablets market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the product type?

What is the breakup of the market based on the distribution channel?

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 dishwasher tablets 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 Dishwasher Tablets Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Product Type

6.1 Branded

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Private Label

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Distribution Channel

7.1 Supermarkets and Hypermarkets

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Departmental and Convenience Stores

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Independent Grocery Stores

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast

7.4 Online Stores

7.4.1 Market Trends

7.4.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by End User

8.1 Commercial

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Residential

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Region



10 SWOT Analysis



11 Value Chain Analysis



12 Porters Five Forces Analysis



13 Price Analysis



14 Competitive Landscape

14.1 Market Structure

14.2 Key Players

14.3 Profiles of Key Players

14.3.1 Cleancult

14.3.1.1 Company Overview

14.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.2 Eurotab Operations

14.3.2.1 Company Overview

14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.3 Henkel AG & Co. KGaA

14.3.3.1 Company Overview

14.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.3.3 Financials

14.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.4 IFB Appliances

14.3.4.1 Company Overview

14.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.4.3 Financials

14.3.5 Kao Corporation

14.3.5.1 Company Overview

14.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.5.3 Financials

14.3.5.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.6 Liby Group

14.3.6.1 Company Overview

14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.7 McBride plc

14.3.7.1 Company Overview

14.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.7.3 Financials

14.3.7.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.8 Method Products (S. C. Johnson & Son Inc.)

14.3.8.1 Company Overview

14.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.9 Nopa Nordic A/S

14.3.9.1 Company Overview

14.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.10 Persan S.A.

14.3.10.1 Company Overview

14.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.11 Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC

14.3.11.1 Company Overview

14.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.11.3 Financials

14.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.12 Tenova

14.3.12.1 Company Overview

14.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.13 Unilever PLC

14.3.13.1 Company Overview

14.3.13.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.13.3 Financials

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/h3ddvl

Attachment

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




Allied Market Research

Significant surge in demand for distributed temperature sensing in oil & gas applications, increase in rules and regulations pertaining to safety standards, and rise in penetration of next-generation optic fiber-based Internet of Things (IoT) solutions are expected to drive the growth of the global distributed temperature sensing market. Based on operating principle, the optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) segment held the majority market share in 2020. By region, the LAMEA region is expected to cite the fastest CAGR by 2030.

Portland, OR, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to the report published by Allied Market Research, the global distributed temperature sensing market generated $734.23 million in 2020 and is projected to reach $1.5 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 7.4% from 2021 to 2030.The report provides an in-depth analysis of the top investment pockets, top winning strategies, drivers & opportunities, market size & estimations, competitive scenario, and wavering market trends.

Download Free Sample Report (Get Detailed Analysis in PDF  274 Pages): https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/2025

Significant surge in demand for distributed temperature sensing in oil & gas applications, increase in rules and regulations pertaining to safety standards, and rise in penetration of next-generation optic fiber-based Internet of Things (IoT) solutions are expected to drive the growth of the global distributed temperature sensing market. On the other hand, complex fault detection and troubleshooting processes are expected to hinder the growth to some extent. However, persistent technological advancements in distributed temperature sensors and rapid industrialization across the globe are expected to create ample opportunities for the industry.

COVID-19 Scenario

The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a negative impact on the growth of the global distributed temperature sensing market, owing to the occurrence of lockdowns in various countries across the globe. Lockdowns resulted in the closure of various manufacturing facilities, including those of distributed temperature sensors due to the stringent social distancing restrictions imposed by the government so as to curb the spread of the virus during the pandemic.

In addition, severe import and export restrictions made it difficult to acquire the necessary raw materials for production, which aggravated the impact on the market.

However, the market is expected to recoup soon.

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Get Detailed COVID-19 Impact Analysis On The Distributed Temperature Sensing Market: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/2025

The report offers a detailed segmentation on the global distributed temperature sensing market based on fiber type, operating principle, application and region.

Based on fiber type, the single-mode fiber segment held the largest market share in 2020, garnering more than two-thirds of the total market. In addition, the same segment is predicted to cite the fastest CAGR of 7.9% during the forecast period. The other segment analyzed in the report includes multimode fiber.

Based on operating principle, the optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) segment held the majority market share in 2020, holding more than two-thirds of the total market. In addition, the same segment is anticipated to exhibit the fastest CAGR of 7.8% during the forecast period. The other segment analyzed in the report includes optical frequency domain reflectometry.

Based on region, the market across Asia-Pacific held the dominating market share in 2020, garnering more than one-third of the total market. The LAMEA region, on the other hand, is predicted to cite the fastest CAGR of 11.3% during the forecast period.

Interested to Procure the Data? Inquire here @: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/2025

The key players analyzed in the global distributed temperature sensing market report include Halliburton Co., Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd., OFS Fitel LLC, Luna Innovations, Schlumberger N.V, Prysmian Group, Weatherford International PLC, Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd., Bandweaver Technologies. and Yokogawa Electric Corporation.

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About Us:

Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.

We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Allied Market Research CEO Pawan Kumar is instrumental in inspiring and encouraging everyone associated with the company to maintain high quality of data and help clients in every way possible to achieve success. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

CONTACT: David Correa 5933 NE Win Sivers Drive #205, Portland, OR 97220 United States Toll Free (USA/Canada): +1-800-792-5285 International: +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: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com




Company Logo

Global Sleepwear Market

Global Sleepwear Market

Dublin, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Sleepwear Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global sleepwear market reached a value of US$ 11.2 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 18.5 Billion by 2027, exhibiting at a CAGR of 8.65% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



Sleepwear refers to the comfortable garments worn for relaxing and sleeping. They are usually worn indoors and are manufactured using breathable and light materials, such as cotton, wool, rayon, polyester and satin, that promote deep and sound sleep. Some of the commonly available sleepwear include t-shirts, shorts, nightdresses, nightgowns, vests, camisoles, leggings, capris and pajamas, that are styled in a wide variety of designs, sizes and patterns for men, women and children. Sleepwear can aid in maintaining body temperatures, providing protection against cold and warm climates, enhancing hygiene and comfort and improving the quality of sleep.



Sleepwear Market Trends:

Significant growth in the apparel industry across the globe is one of the key factors creating a positive outlook for the market. Moreover, the increasing adoption of organized retail channels is providing a thrust to the market growth. Product manufacturers and vendors are widely utilizing e-commerce platforms to provide premium-quality branded sleepwear and loungewear to the consumers with enhanced convenience.

Manufacturers are also engaging in aggressive promotional activities and celebrity collaborations through social media platforms to reach a wider consumer base and create enhanced brand awareness. Additionally, various product innovations, such as the development of sleepwear using stretchable and quick-drying fabrics, are acting as other growth-inducing factors.

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These novel apparels are produced using sustainable materials and environmentally friendly manufacturing practices that generate minimal waste and carbon footprint. In line with this, the rising demand for bridal and comfortable plus-size sleepwear is also contributing to the growth of the market. Other factors, including the increasing female workforce participation, along with rising expenditure capacities of the consumers, 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 sleepwear market, along with forecasts at the global, regional and country level from 2022-2027. Our report has categorized the market based on product type, material, distribution channel and end user.



Breakup by Product Type:

Top Wear

Bottom Wear

Night Dresses and Gowns

Sleepwear Set

Breakup by Material:

Cotton

Wool

Silk

Others

Breakup by Distribution Channel:

Supermarkets and Hypermarkets

Online Stores

Discount Stores

Others

Breakup by End User:

Men

Women

Kids

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 AEO Management Co., Calvin Klein Inc. (PVH Corp.), Hanesbrands Inc., Hanky Panky Ltd., Harrods Limited, Jockey International Inc., Marks and Spencer Group plc, Nasty Gal Inc. (Boohoo Group plc), Saks Fifth Avenue (Hudson's Bay Company), Selfridges & Co., Under Armour Inc. and Victoria's Secret (L Brands).



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global sleepwear market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global sleepwear market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the product type?

What is the breakup of the market based on the material?

What is the breakup of the market based on the distribution channel?

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 sleepwear 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 Sleepwear Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Product Type

6.1 Top Wear

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Bottom Wear

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast

6.3 Night Dresses and Gowns

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Market Forecast

6.4 Sleepwear Set

6.4.1 Market Trends

6.4.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Material

7.1 Cotton

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Wool

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Silk

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast

7.4 Others

7.4.1 Market Trends

7.4.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Distribution Channel

8.1 Supermarkets and Hypermarkets

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Online Stores

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Discount Stores

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Others

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by End User

9.1 Men

9.1.1 Market Trends

9.1.2 Market Forecast

9.2 Women

9.2.1 Market Trends

9.2.2 Market Forecast

9.3 Kids

9.3.1 Market Trends

9.3.2 Market Forecast



10 Market Breakup by Region



11 SWOT Analysis



12 Value Chain Analysis



13 Porters Five Forces Analysis

14 Price Analysis



15 Competitive Landscape

15.1 Market Structure

15.2 Key Players

15.3 Profiles of Key Players

15.3.1 AEO Management Co.

15.3.1.1 Company Overview

15.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.1.3 Financials

15.3.1.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.2 Calvin Klein Inc. (PVH Corp.)

15.3.2.1 Company Overview

15.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.3 Hanesbrands Inc.

15.3.3.1 Company Overview

15.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.3.3 Financials

15.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.4 Hanky Panky Ltd.

15.3.4.1 Company Overview

15.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.5 Harrods Limited

15.3.5.1 Company Overview

15.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.6 Jockey International Inc.

15.3.6.1 Company Overview

15.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.7 Marks and Spencer Group plc

15.3.7.1 Company Overview

15.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.7.3 Financials

15.3.7.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.8 Nasty Gal Inc. (Boohoo Group plc)

15.3.8.1 Company Overview

15.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.9 Saks Fifth Avenue (Hudson's Bay Company)

15.3.9.1 Company Overview

15.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.10 Selfridges & Co.

15.3.10.1 Company Overview

15.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.11 Under Armour Inc.

15.3.11.1 Company Overview

15.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.11.3 Financials

15.3.11.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.12 Victoria's Secret (L Brands)

15.3.12.1 Company Overview

15.3.12.2 Product Portfolio

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/qdv1b3

Attachment

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




Five-year term to run through 2026

TEL AVIV, Israel, June 13, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ICL (NYSE: ICL) (TASE: ICL), a leading global specialty minerals company, today announced it has signed a long-term agreement with India Potash Limited (IPL) to supply Polysulphate through 2026, with a renewal option. The five-year term is for an aggregate amount of 1 million metric tons, with quantities increasing for each year of the agreement. Each shipment will be a minimum of 25,000 tons and equally distributed across the calendar year, with prices and payment terms to be fixed between IPL and ICL from time to time.

.The availability of Polysulphate is expected to help boost the Government of Indias organic agriculture program. Polysulphate is available in its natural state and is mined, crushed, screened and bagged, with no additional chemical separation or other industrial processes  unlike blended or compound fertilizers  and has the lowest carbon footprint available globally. Polysulphate is a cost-effective answer to crop nutrition, as it contains four key plant nutrients: sulfur, potassium, magnesium and calcium, which are steadily available to plants along the crop cycle.

About ICL

ICL Group is a leading global specialty minerals company, which also benefits from commodity upside. The company creates impactful solutions for humanity's sustainability challenges in the global food, agriculture and industrial markets. ICL leverages its unique bromine, potash and phosphate resources, its passionate team of talented employees, and its strong focus on R&D and technological innovation, to drive growth across its end markets. ICL shares are dually listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (NYSE and TASE: ICL). The company employs more than 12,000 people worldwide, and its 2021 revenues totaled approximately $7 billion.

For more information, visit ICL's website at www.icl-group.com.

To access ICL's interactive ESG report, please click here.

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You can also learn more about ICL on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Forward Looking Statements

This announcement contains statements that constitute forwardlooking statements, many of which can be identified by the use of forwardlooking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "expect," "should," "plan," "intend," "estimate" and "potential," among others.

Forward-looking statements appear in this press release and include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the companys intent, belief or current expectations. Forward-looking statements are based on managements beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to various factors, including, but not limited to: estimates, forecasts and statements as to management's expectations with respect to, among other things, business and financial prospects, financial multiples and accretion estimates, future trends, plans, strategies, positioning, objectives and expectations, general economic, market and business conditions, supply chain and logistics disruptions, the potential for new COVID-19 variants, global unrest and conflict, governmental and regulatory requirements and actions by governmental authorities, including changes in government policy, changes in environmental, tax and other laws or regulations and the interpretation thereof. As a result of the foregoing, readers should not place undue reliance on the forwardlooking statements contained in this press release concerning the timing of the transaction, or other more specific risks and uncertainties facing ICL, such as those set forth in the "Risk Factors" section of its Annual Report on Form 20-F filed on February 23, 2022, as such risk factors may be updated from time to time in its Current Reports on Form 6-K and other filings ICL makes with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time.

Forward-looking statements refer only to the date they are made, and the company does not undertake any obligation to update them in light of new information or future developments or to publicly release any revisions to these statements in order to reflect later events or circumstances or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220613005735/en/

Contacts

Investor Relations Contact

Peggy Reilly Tharp

VP, Global Investor Relations

+1-314-983-7665

Peggy.ReillyTharp@icl-group.com

Press Contact

Adi Bajayo

Scherf Communications

+972-52-4454789

Adi@scherfcom.com
ImCheck Therapeutics SAS

Significant round will enable the Company to advance ICT01, its lead anti-butyrophilin 3A antibody, to completion of randomized Phase II trials

Series C adds global investors Earlybird, Andera Partners, Invus and patient organization The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Therapy Acceleration Program to the syndicate

Marseille, France, June 13, 2022  ImCheck Therapeutics announced today the close of a EUR 96 million (USD 103 million) financing, co-led by Earlybird and Andera Partners. The Series C round (EUR 80 Million - USD 86 Million) and the last outstanding tranche of Series B converted in Series C shares (EUR 16 Million - USD 17.2 Million) solidifies ImChecks financial position and leadership in the gamma-delta T cell space. Invus and The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Therapy Acceleration Program also joined the round as new investors. Existing investors including the Growth Opportunity Fund of founding investor Kurma Partners, Eurazeo, Gimv, EQT Life Sciences (previously LSP), Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, Pfizer Ventures, Bpifrance through its Innobio 2 and Large Venture funds, Wellington Partners, Agent Capital, Pureos Bioventures and Alexandria Venture Investments participated.

The proceeds will be used to support the Phase IIa expansion arms of EVICTION in solid tumors and hematologic cancers, and completion of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials evaluating ImChecks lead candidate ICT01 in combination with a PD-1 inhibitor for multiple solid tumors. The Company also will apply the capital to investigate ICT01 in combination with other therapeutic agents, including IL-2, in the forthcoming EVICTION-2 clinical trial. The funding will accelerate the further advance toward the clinic of additional antibody candidates in immuno-oncology, auto-immune and infectious diseases. In addition, it will allow the Company to achieve pivotal study readiness for ICT01 and expand its footprint through extended clinical operations and regulatory affairs in Europe and the US.

Since its inception, ImCheck has gained the support of a syndicate of outstanding international funds. In a highly challenging funding market, we have secured a significant fundraising through the addition of highly strategic and valuable investors from the U.S. and Europe, putting us in a position to further deliver on the immense promise of our pipeline, stated Pierre dEpenoux, Chief Executive Officer of ImCheck Therapeutics. We view our singular proprietary position with butyrophilins, which offer powerful immunomodulation of both the innate and adaptive immune systems, as the key to therapeutic intervention for many disease indications and we value the support we are now gaining from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Therapy Acceleration Program as a first investment from a cancer patient nonprofit organization.

In conjunction with the financing round, Florent Gros (Earlybird) and Raphael Wisniewski (Andera Partners) will join the Companys Board of Directors.

Florent Gros, Partner at Earlybird, commented, ImChecks approach to immuno-oncology is highly differentiated through the clinical demonstration of gamma-delta T cell activation, an area of immunology that has huge potential and interest from the biopharmaceutical community. At Earlybird, we support companies that dare to think differently and ImChecks innovative concept for immunomodulation could be a game-changer for a range of indications.

Raphael Wisniewski, Partner at Andera Partners, said, Immune checkpoint inhibitors have heralded a new era in cancer treatments and ImCheck Therapeutics is pioneering the next generation of these immunotherapeutics. In watching their progress to date, we have seen the leadership team execute on a compelling vision for a butyrophilin-based therapeutic approach from the early development stage into a highly valuable clinical development program. We at Andera Partners are confident the company will move its groundbreaking technology forward to meet patients needs in a range of cancer indications with wider potential for auto-immune and infectious diseases.

ImCheck Therapeutics immunotherapeutic technology is capable of overcoming the tumors resistance to adaptive immune responses through a novel superfamily of immune checkpoint targets, butyrophilins (BTNs). BTNs can be modulated to harness a wide range of immune cells including gamma-delta T cells, CD3, CD8, NK cells and macrophages, bridging the innate and adaptive immune responses. The companys broad pipeline is built upon immunomodulation via BTN-targeting antibodies aimed either at activating the immune system in disease indications such as cancer or infectious diseases, or down-regulating immunity in auto-immune disorders.

Hans Henrik Christensen, Chief Financial Officer of ImCheck Therapeutics, added, ImCheck has raised a total of EUR 154 million since inception. We truly appreciate the support from existing and new investors, which extends our cash runway until 2026. This enables us to further explore the pipeline in a product opportunity we have with our lead clinical candidate, ICT01.

Legal counsel for the Series C transaction provided by Dentons Europe and McDermott Will & Emery. Investor relations support provided by Trophic Communications. French media and communications support provided by ATCG Partners.

***

About IMCHECK THERAPEUTICS

ImCheck Therapeutics is designing and developing a new generation of immunotherapeutic antibodies targeting butyrophilins, a novel super-family of immunomodulators.

As demonstrated by lead clinical-stage program ICT01, which has a mechanism of action to simultaneously modulate innate and adaptive immunity, ImCheck's first-in-class activating antibodies may be able to produce superior clinical results as compared to the first-generation of immune checkpoint inhibitors and, when used in combination, to overcome resistance to this group of agents. In addition, ImChecks antagonist antibodies are being evaluated as potential treatments for a range of autoimmune diseases.

Co-founder of the Marseille Immunopole cluster, ImCheck benefits from support from Prof. Daniel Olive (INSERM, CNRS, Institut Paoli Calmettes, Aix-Marseille Universite), a worldwide leader in  T cells and butyrophilins research; from the experience of an expert management team; and from the commitment of leading US and European investors.

For further information: http://www.imchecktherapeutics.com and @ImCheckThx

About EARLYBIRD

Earlybird is a venture capital investor focused on European technology companies. Founded in 1997, Earlybird invests in all growth and development phases of a company and supports its portfolio companies with financial resources, strategic support, as well as access to an international network and capital markets. Earlybird invests out of a family of focused and independently-managed funds: Digital West (Western Europe), Digital East (Emerging Europe), Healthcare, UNI-X (University spinoffs), and Growth Opportunity. With EUR 2 billion under management across all fund streams, 8 IPOs, and 30 trade sales, Earlybird is one of Europes most established and active venture capital firms.

For further information: www.earlybird.com, Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/EarlybirdVC LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/earlybird-venture-capital Facebook: www.facebook.com/EarlybirdVC

About ANDERA PARTNERS

Created over 20 years ago, Andera Partners is a major player in private company investments in France and internationally. Its teams manage over 3.5 billion in investments in life sciences (Andera Life Sciences), growth and buyout capital (Andera MidCap, Andera Expansion, Andera Croissance, Andera Co-Invest), sponsor-less transactions (Andera Acto) and ecological transition (Andera Infra).

Based in Paris, with offices in Antwerp and Munich, Andera Partners is wholly owned by its teams, which count nearly 90 professionals, of which 56 are investment professionals. It is structured as a partnership and managed by a board of 10 partners. Responsible and committed, the management company regularly forms partnerships with non-profit sector entities and takes concrete action in the fight against global warming. Andera Partners has been certified carbon neutral since 2018.

Andera's 15-person life sciences team brings together extensive experience in the life sciences industry, private equity and venture capital. Active since 2000, the team has raised over 1.1 billion through its BioDiscovery family of funds and is currently investing from its new BioDiscovery 6 fund. Since inception, the BioDiscovery funds have invested in more than 75 European and U.S. biotech and medtech companies.

For further information, please visit www.anderapartners.com.

Press contacts

US and EU

Trophic Communications

Gretchen Schweitzer

+49 (0) 172 861 8540

imcheck@trophic.eu

France

ATCG PARTNERS

Celine Voisin

+33 (0)9 81 87 46 72 / +33 (0)6 62 12 53 39

imcheck@atcg-partners.com

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ROSEMONT, IL / ACCESSWIRE / June 13, 2022 / Over 1,000 industrial process heating and cooling equipment industry professionals will convene this week for the inaugural Process Heating & Cooling Show, taking place June 15-16 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. This event will bring together numerous industries in the process industries, including oil and gas, electronics, pharmaceuticals, food, beverages, packaging, and plastics, to name a few. Attendees will have a chance to connect face-to-face with like-minded peers, learn from business thought leaders, and uncover emerging trends and technologies.

Process Heating & Cooling, Monday, June 13, 2022, Press release picture

"After a two year wait, we are thrilled to finally be able to host this dedicated live event to bring together industrial manufacturing and engineering professionals to learn, connect, share and explore all things related to the process heating and cooling industries," said Erik Klingerman, Senior Group Publisher, BNP Media. "Our team has put together a stellar two-day event featuring a vibrant exhibit hall, exceptional education and dynamic networking functions. The 2022 Process Heating & Cooling Show will offer a unique platform spotlighting the latest industrial processes, products and emerging technologies across all process manufacturing industries."

For the most up to date schedule, visit www.process-heating.com/heat-cool-show. Highlights of the show include:

The Education Program will offer several sessions that are approved for continuing education credits by the following accrediting bodies: the Engineering Registered Continuing Education Program (RCEP); Refrigerating Engineers and Technicians Association (RETA); the American Institute of Architects (AIA); and International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET). The following courses will offer 1 PDH; 1 RETA PDH; 1 AIA LU/Elective; and 0.1 IACET CEU. For full access to the conference program, click here.

Learning Theaters are located right on the exhibit hall floor and will feature 30-60-minute educational sessions led by influential speakers. Topics include Heat Source Selection and Evaluation Criteria; Optimizing Process Cooling with Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs); Infrared 101 - How and When to Use it; Retrofitting Fired Equipment; Reclaiming Heat Transfer Fluids; Benefits of Industrial Ammonia Refrigeration Training; Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) and Process Piping Systems; Minimizing Fan System Effects; The Secret to Safer Steam Methane Reforming; Oil-free Process Cooling & Heat Recovery Process; and Optimizing Your Heating System for Energy Efficiency .

The inaugural show will offer a vibrant Exhibit Hall featuring Silver Sponsor Omega; Bronze Sponsors ASTEC and Thermalogic; Association Partners: AMCA, IHEA, IIAR, RETA; Education Sponsors: Cleaver-Brooks, Control Instrument Corp., Drager Inc., Environmental Energy Services Corp. and Frascold USA; in addition to dozens of other companies.

There will be two Keynote Presentations: Omar Nashashibi with The Franklin Partnership will deliver the keynote on What Does Government Mean for the Process Industries Today? on Wednesday, June 15 at 9:00 am CT. During this keynote presentation Omar will review the latest government regulations, international trade, tariffs, changing tax laws that affect business strategy/investments and green investments/sustainability. He will also go over changes in federal regulations due to the new administration and share how those will affect process industries. Perry Stephens, Principal Technical Leader at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) will present Cleaner, Greener & Safer - Electrifying the Process Heating & Cooling Industries on Thursday, June 16 at 9 am CT. In this presentation, Perry will discuss the current state of industrial electrification/decarbonization technologies and the roadmap to achieve deep decarbonization by 2050, highlighting specific initiatives and measures that can be evaluated and adopted throughout the industrial sector for process heating.

Prior to the day two keynote on Thursday, Linda Becker, Education Director, will present the Process Heating & Cooling Innovation Award which recognizes the innovation application of technical expertise or experience with industrial process heating and cooling equipment, projects or efforts to reduce costs, improve thermal processing efficiency and increase safety.

Four of the education sessions will be broadcast live streamed to industry professionals who cannot attend the event in-person. On Wednesday, June 15 at 10:30 am CT Ken Leibig of Omega Engineering will present High Accuracy Non-Invasive Temperature Sensing in the Process Industry . At 11:30 am CT Mark Heuchert from Drager Inc., will present Drager: Introducing New Innovations for the Heating and Cooling Industries . At 3:30 pm CT Sean Lobdell from Cleaver-Brooks will present Steam Applications, Terminology, and How to Achieve Best Results . On Thursday, June 16 at 1:00 pm CT Matteo Iobbi of Frascold USA will present Use of Propane as Refrigerant in Process Chillers - A Case Study . Click here to register for these broadcast live sessions for free!

Networking Event - The first evening will feature a Welcome Reception in the Exhibit Hall. Connect with peers, chat with representatives, and have access to the exhibits on display from 4:30 - 6:30 pm on Wednesday, June 15.

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About PROCESS HEATING and PROCESS COOLING

Written for engineers, Process Heatingpublishes technical, how-to info about industrial heating equipment used during manufacturing processes. Process Heating is the only brand that focuses exclusively on applying, transferring, controlling and removing heat up to 1,000F (538C) in nine industrial markets, providing relevant content related to one of the most energy-intensive and process-critical steps in the manufacture of goods. www.process-heating.com

Process Cooling is the only media brand in the world to focus exclusively on industrial process cooling. Process Cooling targets engineering professionals who buy and specify process equipment to cool, chill or freeze product, measure, monitor or control temperature down through cryogenic levels. www.process-cooling.com

The Process Heating & Cooling Show and the magazines are owned by BNP Media, one of the country's leading business-to-business media companies serving industry professionals across 50-plus industries through magazines, custom media, e-newsletters, websites, conferences, events, and market research. Visit BNP Media at www.bnpmedia.com.

# # #

For further information, contact:

Amy Riemer, Media Relations Contact

978-475-4441 (office) or 978-502-4895 (mobile)

amy@riemercommunications.com

SOURCE: Process Heating & Cooling





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/704743/Inaugural-Process-Heating-Cooling-Show-Opens-This-Wednesday-June-15-in-Rosemont-IL




Investcorp-Tages

LONDON, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Investcorp-Tages is pleased to announce the launch, in April, of Selwood Asset Managements latest fund on its UCITS platform.

The Selwood Equity Absolute Return UCITS fund is managed by Karim Moussalem, CIO (Equities), and Kevin Guillot, Portfolio Manager, who have over 35 years combined experience. They worked together at Verrazzano Capital from 2012-2016, where Moussalem was a Founding Partner and Co-Portfolio Manager. Karim Moussalem previously spent a decade at Goldman Sachs, where he was latterly co-head of Europe Delta One trading. More recently, he held senior posts at Deutsche Bank and Cantor Fitzgerald.

The new Selwood fund will principally invest in mid- and large-cap European companies with market capitalisations in excess of $1bn. The fund aims for low net exposure and employs a disciplined approach to target a concentrated, high-conviction portfolio.

Selwoods investment philosophy underpinning the funds strategy is that consistent returns are best achieved by focusing on fundamentals, but with a strong trading overlay. The teams differentiated approach features a proprietary modelling framework which looks to maximise returns and optimise the funds risk profile. The fund has a target investment horizon of 6-18 months, allowing both earnings and valuation change to contribute to the return profile, while retaining the flexibility to capitalise on opportunities presented by sharp market rotations1.

Investcorp-Tages was a seed investor in Selwood when the London-based firm launched in 2015.

Matteo Meloni, UCITS Strategies, Investcorp-Tages, said: The hiring of Karim and Kevin and the launch of this new UCITS fund is clearly a significant moment for Selwood, and we are delighted that they have chosen our UCITS platform for the launch. We very much look forward to the success of this new fund, managed by a very seasoned team.

Karim Moussalem, CIO (Equities) at Selwood, said: Our robust process, focus on risk management and partnership have been tested for many years, and the current environment is ideal for our strategy. We are delighted to have joined Selwood and have surrounded ourselves with a great group of people who give us strong institutional support and allow us to focus exclusively on fund management. We are also very glad to be on the Investcorp-Tages UCITS platform, one of the leading distributors in the industry. We believe investors will benefit from the transparent, liquid and well-regulated UCITS format.

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About Investcorp-Tages

Investcorp-Tages is a global multi-manager investment firm that was launched in May 2020 through a 50/50 joint venture between Investcorp and Tages Group. With offices based in London, New York and Milan, Investcorp-Tages manages alternative assets for institutional investors worldwide, including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, foundations, endowments, family offices, insurance companies and other financial institutions. Investcorp-Tages focuses on providing bespoke solutions by delivering differentiated sources of returns across alternative assets for its clients, and benefits from the extensive experience and expertise built up in the space by Investcorp and Tages.

For further information, please visit: www.InvestcorpTages.com

About Selwood Asset Management

Selwood Asset Management LLP (Selwood AM) is a London-based alternative asset manager, which was founded in 2015. Selwood AM is focused on Investment Grade Credit in Europe and North America, while maintaining a market neutral profile. It runs Cayman funds as well as UCITS and Irish ICAV. Selwood opened an office in Paris in 2020.

For further information, please visit: www.selwoodam.com

1 Please refer to the funds prospectus and supplement. This is not a marketing communication.

CONTACT: Contacts: Investcorp-Tages: Saul Benjamin, Chief Operating Officer saul.benjamin@InvestcorpTages.com Citigate Dewe Rogerson: Christen Thomson, Senior Director christen.thomson@citigatedewerogerson.com Selwood Asset Management: Bill McIntosh, Senior Director bill.mcintosh@peregrinecommunications.com




Petromin Corporation, the distributor for Jeep in Saudi Arabia has officially launched the first Jeep lounge globally, offering a unique retail experience focusing on the customer first concept.

Petromin is also the distributor for Chrysler, Dodge, RAM, Alfa Romeo, Abarth, Fiat, Fiat Professional and MOPAR for Stellantis in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The Jeep lounge is located in Atelier La Vie situated in Jeddah's most popular and posh neighbourhood. Built with a fusion of themes, adventure, modern and experiential, the Jeep Lounge targets the diverse customers of Jeddah, from just a place to own a Jeep, take a picture, or relax over a cup of coffee, the Jeep lounge serves all.

Immersing in the brand

It also disrupts the traditional engagement of the automotive marketplace, allowing people to immerse in the brand rather than just doing a transaction.

Kalyana Sivagnanam, Group CEO, Petromin Corporation, said: With the opening of the Jeep Lounge, Petromin has raised the bar for future automobile launches in the region. The heightened customer experience and brand penetration that we will achieve for Jeep through this exercise illustrates that we are applying the highest standards in quality and reliability across all the brands in the company.

This launch indicates that we are committed to enhancing our footprint on the evolving aspirations of Saudi society, especially the countrys younger generation. These goals are also closely aligned to the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030.

Interactive and engaging

The Jeep Lounge reflects a brand centric approach converging with an interactive and engaging sales point. It is aware of its target audience and provides a lifestyle immersion experience. Offering an interior with hospitable settings and an instore Jeep Cafe offering signature beverages for visitors, customers, and members.

One of the Lounges key features will also be an activity area. Enabling a fulfilling customer journey across every step of this immersive experience will be qualified, trained, multi-lingual customer representatives and consultants with a high degree of product knowledge coupled with skills in communication, technology, and sales.

Commenting on the landmark launch, Patrick Conway, Managing Director, Petromin-Stellantis said: Jeep is a lifestyle brand, and the Jeep Lounge is an extension of this lifestyle. Jeep defines, refines, and enhances the life, loves and hobbies of those who interact with it, while offering a value proposition that encourages everyone to participate. Jeep is woven into the kingdoms cultural fabric and traditions, passed from one generation to another, valued, and cherished to make it an iconic lifestyle automobile in the region. Petromin is proud to support the Brand and accord with the values of innovation coupled with its legacy and tradition which also outlines the ethos of our company.

Indoor open space

The Jeep Lounge will be Jeddahs signature indoor open space hang out for the Jeep community and fans to foster engagement for future and current Jeep owners who reflect the spirit of freedom, adventure, authenticity, and passion which are indelibly linked to the Jeep brand which endorses the values of Go Anywhere. Do Anything.

The Jeep Lounges character uniquely positions the brands energetic persona. A modern, fresh, consistent facility, depicting class, but providing accessibility to everyone, highlights the customer centres which are positioned as engagement centers instead of a conventional car showroom.-- TradeArabia News Service
Increased Federal Funding Leads to Higher Pancreatic Cancer Survival Rates

LOS ANGELES, June 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- When federal funding for pancreatic research increases, so does the five-year survival rate. That's why the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN), the leading pancreatic cancer patient advocacy organization, is mobilizing thousands of pancreatic cancer survivors, caregivers, and advocates from across the country this week to urge their members of Congress to increase the federal research investment for the world's deadliest cancer. This year's asks are to increase the investment in the dedicated Pancreatic Cancer Research Program at the Department of Defense (DOD) from $15 to $20 million and secure $49 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) base budget, including $7.76 billion for the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Thanks to PanCAN and its advocates, the federal research investment in pancreatic cancer at the NCI has steadily grown over the last two decades, as has the survival rate for pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is the world's toughest cancer and is on track to become the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. It demands urgent action to save lives. Given few effective treatments and no early detection method, research funding continues to be critical in the fight against this challenging disease -- and approximately 80% of funding comes from the federal government.

The good news is, thanks to PanCAN and its advocates, the federal research investment in pancreatic cancer at the NCI has steadily grown over the last two decades. In 1999, when PanCAN was founded, the investment was just $17.7 million. By 2018 (the latest data available), it had grown to $182.1 million. This funding has had a significant impact on the five-year pancreatic cancer survival rate which increased from just 4% in 1999 to more than double at 11% this year. PanCAN and its advocates have an ambitious goal of increasing the five-year survival rate to 20% by 2030.

In order to achieve this goal, this week advocates will ask members of Congress to support increases at both the NIH and NCI as well as the DOD's dedicated Pancreatic Cancer Research Program, created in 2019 as a direct result of PanCAN's advocacy efforts.

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"For more than 20 years, PanCAN has been driving the national conversation about the urgent needs of the pancreatic cancer community and successfully advocating for increased federal research investment," said Julie Fleshman, JD, MBA, president and CEO of PanCAN. "While PanCAN will continue to privately fund leading-edge research across the country, we urge Congress to prioritize this vital research since we cannot accelerate progress and improve patient outcomes without it."

To kick off PanCAN Action Week, PanCAN is hosting Voices in Action , a virtual event where the pancreatic cancer community will have the opportunity to learn about the impact of their advocacy, hear inspiring stories and take actions to make Congress prioritize pancreatic cancer research funding. The special event will be hosted by PanCAN president and CEO, Julie Fleshman and include Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA), writer, director and PanCAN advocate Lisa Niemi Swayze, federally funded pancreatic cancer researcher Dr. Channing Der, and PanCAN advocate from New York, Casey Zmudzinski. The event will take place Monday, June 13 at 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET and registration is free and open now.

To learn how to take action this week and accelerate progress, go to pancan.org/actionweek2022.

About the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) leads the way in accelerating critical progress for pancreatic cancer patients. PanCAN takes bold action by funding life-saving research, providing personalized patient services and creating a community of supporters and volunteers who will stop at nothing to create a world in which all pancreatic cancer patients will thrive.

Media Contact:

Jillian Scholten

Senior Public Relations Manager

Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

Direct: 310-706-3360

E-mail: jscholten@pancan.org

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) is dedicated to fighting the worlds toughest cancer. In our urgent mission to save lives, we attack pancreatic cancer on all fronts: research, clinical initiatives, patient services and advocacy. Our effort is amplified by a nationwide network of grassroots support. We are determined to improve outcomes for todays patients and those diagnosed in the future. (PRNewsfoto/Pancreatic Cancer Action Network)

Cision

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SOURCE Pancreatic Cancer Action Network
MarketsandMarkets Research Pvt. Ltd.

Chicago, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to a new market research report the report "Predictive Maintenance Market with COVID-19 Impact Analysis by Component (Solutions, Services), Deployment Mode (On-premises, Cloud), Organization Size (Large Enterprises, SME), Vertical and Region - Global Forecast to 2026" published by MarketsandMarkets, the market size to grow from USD 4.2 billion in 2021 to USD 15.9 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 30.6% during the forecast period.

Various factors such as increasing spending on marketing and advertising activities by enterprises, changing landscape of customer intelligence to drive the market, and proliferation of customer channels are expected to drive the adoption of predictive maintenance technologies and services.



Browse in-depth TOC on "Predictive Maintenance Market"

372 - Tables

51 - Figures

294 - Pages

Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=8656856



Predictive maintenance is an approach used by enterprises to predict future failure points as well as monitor the condition of an asset in real-time. Besides passive monitoring, the predictive maintenance technique leverages ML algorithms that take critical historical data, such as temperature, pressure, and vibration, as an input, thus providing prediction related to the condition of an asset in real-time. This, in turn, enables enterprises to significantly reduce unplanned machine downtime and decide whether any particular asset needs maintenance. Predictive maintenance ensures the machine is taken for maintenance before it fails, due to which there are minimal losses in production. Traditional maintenance software currently cannot manage these expectations, as these maintenance solutions are reactive and periodic, which might affect the productivity of an enterprise due to unexpected downtime of the asset. Predictive maintenance solutions leverage technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and big data, to gather meaningful insights from all the data received from the machines, thus helping in taking necessary actions before the breakdown of the asset.

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Scope of the Report

By deployment mode, the Predictive Maintenance Market has been segmented into on-premises and cloud. The CAGR of the cloud deployment mode is estimated to be the largest during the forecast period. Cloud-based services are provided directly through the cloud-deployed network connection. Cloud-based platforms are beneficial for organizations that have strict budgets for security investments. The cloud deployment mode is growing, as cloud-based predictive maintenance solutions are easy to maintain and upgrade.

Speak to Analyst: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalystNew.asp?id=8656856



The Predictive Maintenance Market has been segmented by organization size into large enterprises and SMEs. The market for SMEs is expected to register a higher CAGR during the forecast period. These enterprises are early adopters of predictive maintenance solutions. They are faced with the troublesome task of effectively managing security because of the diverse nature of IT infrastructure, which is complex in nature.

The Predictive Maintenance Market by vertical has been categorized into government and defense, manufacturing, energy and utilities, transportation and logistics, and healthcare and life sciences. The energy and utilities vertical is expected to witness the highest growth rate, while the government and defense vertical is expected to have the largest market size during the forecast period. The larger market size of the government and defense vertical can be attributed to the many initiatives taken by the government to improve the lifestyle of citizens and increasing adoption rate of AI-based applications with the use of ML algorithms to predict the parts and maintenance of defense equipment.



The Predictive Maintenance Market has been segmented into five major regions: North America, Europe, APAC, Latin America, and MEA. APAC is expected to grow at a good pace during the forecast period. The region will be booming, as it is experiencing a lot of new entrepreneur setups, which would be looking forward to acquiring new customers and gaining customer trust by involving new paradigms of maintenance technologies to have a competitive advantage over the established players. Predictive maintenance vendors in this region focus on innovations related to their product line. China, Japan, India, and Bangladesh have displayed ample growth opportunities in the Predictive Maintenance Market.

Browse Adjacent Markets: Analytics Market Research Reports & Consulting



Related Reports:



Customer Journey Analytics Market by Component, Organization Size, Deployment Mode, Data Source, Application (Campaign Management & Product Management), Vertical (BFSI, Retail & eCommerce, & Telecommunications and IT), and Region - Global Forecast to 2026



Big Data Market by Component, Deployment Mode, Organization Size, Business Function (Finance, Marketing & Sales), Industry Vertical (BFSI, Manufacturing, Healthcare & Life Sciences) and Region - Global Forecast to 2026





CONTACT: 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. MarketsandMarketss 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: sales@marketsandmarkets.com




Current president of Lion Business Brokers, Joshua Carnes, recently participated in 'Business Selling Insights' book where proceeds go to charity

Joshua Carnes of Lion Business Brokers

Joshua Carnes of Lion Business Brokers

AUSTIN, Texas, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sr. M&A Advisor & President of Lion Business Brokers, Joshua Carnes, co-authors "Business Selling Insights" where book proceeds will be donated to the Global Autism Project.

Royalties from the retail sales of "BUSINESS SELLING INSIGHTS: SPOTLIGHTING ON LEADING BUSINESS INTERMEDIARIES, BROKERS, AND M&A ADVISORS" (Amazon Link) are donated to the Global Autism Project where "autism knows no borders; fortunately neither do we."

The Global Autism Project 501(C)3 is a nonprofit organization that provides training to local individuals and evidence-based practices for individuals with autism. The Global Autism Project believes that every child has the ability to learn, and their potential should not be limited by geographical bounds.

Joshua takes a measured and analytical approach to Mergers and Acquisitions, armed with data and research that helps business owners reach the right audience of potential buyers. As President of the company, Joshua brings clients an impressive background in marketing and consulting; years of high-level strategic marketing experience helped prepare Joshua to lead Lion Business Brokers and its successful team of Mergers and Acquisition Advisors.

Selling a business is a life-changing moment for the seller  and the buyer. Joshua considers it an honor to be a trusted advisor in the journey of selling a business. Joshua is less interested in the number of clients Lion Business Brokers brings on, as he is in providing a superior level of customer service to the clients they have. Lion Business Brokers takes a team approach to everything it does with advisors working together to get the best outcome for clients.

Lion Business Brokers specializes in Business Sales | Business Valuations | Mergers & Acquisitions

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Owners who are looking to sell their business engage with Lion Business Brokers because they are trusted mergers and acquisition advisors. If you are looking to sell your business, our business listing services benefit you by managing the listing process, advertising, and qualifying potential buyers. Having the LBB team represent you gives you access to a team that specializes in the marketing business in a way that will appeal to a larger base of qualified buyers. Our business broker services also provide you with the confidentiality you require in your business transactions by permitting us to market and interact with buyers that have gone through our screening process, which protects your anonymity.

After decades of analyzing and completing deals, debriefing with seller clients and acquisition teams, with multiple team members as recognized Industry Experts by the Business Brokerage Press and Certified Business Intermediaries through the International Business Brokers Association, we are comfortable stating that we know what it takes to get deals done.

For more information please reach out to:

Joshua Carnes, President | M&A Advisor

www.LionBusinessBrokers.com

800.525.3542 Ext 801

JCarnes@LionBusinessBrokers.com

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Saudi Arabia to invest $100m in training over 100,000 young people for tourism

'Tourism Trailblazers' to develop trainees at all career levels

Program is supported by top global tourism training schools

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, June 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Tourism has today launched a new program to equip 100,000 young Saudis with the key hospitality skills needed to pursue careers in the Kingdom's flourishing tourism industry.

Saudi Arabia Invests in the Next Generation with its Tourism Trailblazers Program

Launched by His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb, Minister of Tourism, Saudi Arabia at the 116th session of the World Tourism Organization's Executive Council in Jeddah, 'Tourism Trailblazers' will provide in-depth global experience to the tourism industry's future leaders.

The program aims to train 100,000 Saudis during 2022. The campaign kicked off in late 2020 with the launch of a new human capital development strategy in the Kingdom's burgeoning tourism industry, which aims to attract more Saudi nationals to the sector.

His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb, Minister of Tourism, Saudi Arabia, said: "It is vital that we invest in our youth now. Creating a skilled workforce with the talent and ambition to support and drive the tourism sector regionally and globally is key to realising Vision 2030. This program demonstrates our commitment to empowering young people by providing them with right skills, support and opportunities to shape the future of the tourism industry."

According to His Excellency, the program has three main objectives that aim to nurture, develop and support talent in the industry. It seeks to spread a culture of professionalism, help nascent professionals gain the knowledge and qualifications needed to break into the industry, and support their success through refinement of their skills. The program will help trainees to secure jobs within the sector, including seasonal, part-time, or full-time opportunities across the Kingdom.

His Excellency further stressed that this and other initiatives are geared towards delivering on the National Tourism Strategy and Saudi Vision 2030 targets, including the creation of one million new jobs in tourism by 2030.

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Mohammed Bushnag, Deputy Minister, Human Capital said: "A financial investment of this size shows our determination to equip our youth with the tools they need to suceed. Three quarters of Saudi nationals now consider the tourism industry as a viable career option. Supporting the dreams of our Tourism Trailblazers and enabling their continued education at the best global schools, is vital as we continue to emerge as a global player in the sector."

Participants in the program are set to benefit from training scholarships at leading global institutions in France, Spain, Switzerland, UK, Australia, and Italy. Applications will be accepted not only from fresh graduates, but also from Saudis who already work within the industry and those who aspire to start a career in the tourism, hospitality, culinary, service, and sales fields.

His Excellency added that the highly specialized programs will empower scholarship trainees by equipping them with the skills and qualifications required to confidently enter the labor market.

His Excellency added that the highly specialized programs will empower scholarship trainees by equipping them with the skills and qualifications required to confidently enter the labor market.

***NOTES TO EDITORS

About the Ministry of Tourism of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Tourism leads the Saudi Tourism ecosystem, with support from the Saudi Tourism Authority and the Tourism Development Fund. The Ministry sets the Kingdom's tourism sector strategy and is responsible for the development of policies and regulations, developing human capital, gathering statistics, and attracting investment.

It works in partnership with the Saudi Tourism Authority, which promotes Saudi Arabia as a global tourism destination, and the Tourism Development Fund, which executes the Ministry's investment strategy by providing funding for the sector's development.

Headed by His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb, the Ministry was founded in February 2020, following the opening of Saudi Arabia to international leisure tourists for the first time in its history in 2019. Saudi Arabia aims to welcome 100 million tourism visits by 2030, increasing the sector's contribution to GDP from 3% to 10%.

About the United Nations World Tourism Organization

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is the United Nations agency responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism.

As the leading international organization in the field of tourism, UNWTO promotes tourism as a driver of economic growth, inclusive development and environmental sustainability and offers leadership and support to the sector in advancing knowledge and tourism policies worldwide.

Saudi Arabia Invests in the Next Generation with its Tourism Trailblazers Program

Saudi Arabia Invests in the Next Generation with its Tourism Trailblazers Program

SOURCE Ministry of Tourism of Saudi Arabia
Company Logo

Dublin, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Trade in Agricultural Raw Materials and Livestock in South Africa 2022" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report deals with the wholesale trade in agricultural raw materials and livestock, which represent essential building blocks for most human and animal food, and human beverages. It contains comprehensive information on trade in major agricultural commodities and various livestock breeds, notable international and local players, corporate actions and developments.

There are profiles of 29 companies including multinationals such as Bayer, notable local agri companies such as NWK, Kaap Agri, Senwes and VKB, fishing companies including Premier Fishing and Oceana, seed companies Pannar Seed and Sakata Seed and flower wholesaler Multiflora.



Trade in Agricultural Raw Materials and Livestock in South Africa

Favourable weather and record crop production resulted in growth in wholesale trade in agricultural raw materials and livestock in 2021 and record exports of agricultural products, food and beverages.



In 2021 South Africa's biggest agricultural raw exports were citrus fruit, grapes, maize, deciduous fruit, fish and nuts.

Prices

Key agricultural commodities have recorded significant price increases in recent months, driven by drought in some producing countries and rising demand for grains and oilseeds in India and China.

The Ukraine war has put upward price pressure on key commodities such as wheat, maize and sunflower seeds, while stoking fear that it could led to prices of agricultural exports to Russia (such as fruit) falling because of difficulties accessing the market. Russia and Ukraine account for about 60% of sunflower oil exports and 28% of wheat and 19% of maize exports.

Key challenges

Producers are under pressure from significant prices increases in inputs such as fertiliser and fuel, compounded by supply challenges caused by the Russia-Ukraine war. Other major challenges that affect agricultural sales include lack of traceability, lack of market access to key export markets, poor logistics and ailing municipal services.

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Despite South Africa being the second biggest citrus exporter in the world after Spain, citrus exporters are battling to get market access. The sugar sector is struggling to compete against countries whose sugar industries are highly subsidised.

Key Topics Covered:



1. INTRODUCTION



2. DESCRIPTION OF THE INDUSTRY

2.1. Industry Value Chain

2.2. Geographic Position

2.3. Size of The Industry

2.4. Key Success Factors and Pain Points



3. LOCAL

3.1. Key Trends

3.2. Notable Players

3.3. Trade

3.4. Corporate Actions

3.5. Regulations

3.6. Enterprise Development and Social Economic Development



4. AFRICA



5. INTERNATIONAL



6. INFLUENCING FACTORS

6.1. COVID -19

6.2. Economic Environment

6.3. Labour

6.4. Environmental Issues

6.5. Technology, Research and Development (R&D) and Innovation

6.6. Government Intervention

6.7. Input Costs

6.8. Traceability



7. COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT

7.1. Competition

7.2. Ownership Structure of the Industry

7.3. Barriers to Entry



8. SWOT ANALYSIS



9. OUTLOOK



10. INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS



11. REFERENCES

11.1. Publications

11.2. Websites



APPENDIX

Summary of Notable Players

Company Profiles

AFG Worldwide (Pty) Ltd

AFGRI Agri Services (Pty) Ltd

Bayer (Pty) Ltd

BKB Ltd

Brisen Commodities (Pty) Ltd

Bunge ZA (Pty) Ltd

Capekaroo International (Pty) Ltd

Capstone Seeds South Africa (Pty) Ltd

COFCO International South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Hochfeld Grains (Pty) Ltd

Humansdorpse Kooperasie Beperk Primary Co-Operative (Die)

Kaap Agri Bedryf Ltd

Klein Karoo (Pty) Ltd

Louis Dreyfus Company Africa (Pty) Ltd

Multiflora (Pty) Ltd

NWK Ltd

Obaro Handel (Pty) Ltd

Oceana Group Ltd

Olam South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Pannar Seed (Pty) Ltd

Premier Fishing SA (Pty) Ltd

Rijk Zwaan South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Sakata Seed Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd

Selemo Valley Farms (Pty) Ltd

Senwes Ltd

Stucken and Company (Pty) Ltd

Syngenta South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Universal Leaf South Africa (Pty) Ltd

VKB Beleggings (Pty) Ltd

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/eo9wr9

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




Helping Feed our Communities: $1 from every footlong sold in-restaurant on Wednesday, June 22 will help feed kids in need as part of Subway Canada's partnership with Food Banks Canada

TORONTO, June 13, 2022 /CNW/ - Subway Canada will commit to $500,000 Canadian dollars as it continues its mission to help feed kids in local communities with the return of its annual Never Miss Lunch donation day. On June 22nd, $1 from every footlong sold at Subway restaurants from coast to coast to coast will help support child hunger initiatives in over 190 communities in Canada's ten provinces and three territories.

Subway Canadas Never Miss Lunch Donation Drive Returns Wednesday, June 22nd (CNW Group/SUBWAY Canada)

Now in its fourth year, Never Miss Lunch is a commitment to children in communities just like yours. In partnership with Food Banks Canada's After the Bell program, the initiative aims to provide nutritious food to kids in need during the summer break, when many school-based lunch programs end. This summer, Food Banks Canada's goal is to deliver 175,000 healthy food-packs to children in need. In 2021, After the Bell gave 150,000 food-packs to food banks across Canada, focusing on reaching communities of greatest need.

"We continue to see the price of food soaring in our nation, leaving families in Canada no choice but to pay more for kitchen staples like bread, dairy and fruit and vegetables," commented Kirstin Beardsley, Chief Executive Officer of Food Banks Canada. "This, combined with high housing costs and job losses due to the ongoing pandemic, have forced more people to use food banks. Trusted partners like Subway continue to step up for its community, and we are deeply grateful for their ongoing support."

According to Food Banks Canada, children represent 33 percent (over 400,000) of food bank visits. According to Statistics Canada, 1 in 6 children lives in food-insecure households in Canada. Food insecurity is at crisis levels in many Northern communities, especially Nunavut, which sees a food insecurity rate of 57 percent, compared to the national average of 12.7 percent.

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"Our local restaurant owners from every corner of the country bring passion, enthusiasm and heart when it comes time to alleviating child hunger within their communities," said Doug Fry, Country Director, Subway Canada. "We're committed to delivering high-quality, nutritious and fresh food to communities every year, and we look forward to working with Food Banks Canada to bring healthy food packs to Canadians. It's been an exciting year as we embark on the fourth iteration of this initiative, following our late-April Eat Fresh Refresh  launch in Canada."

From 2019 to 2021, there has been a 20.3 percent increase of Canadians visiting a food bank:

Province Total Visits Total Visits (Children) % change in total visits 2019  2021 British Columbia 131,001 40,717 5 Alberta 116,396 44,586 29.6 Saskatchewan 32,827 12,955 -11.8 Manitoba 65,100 24,297  Ontario 419,532 130,970 23.5 Quebec 474,002 160,288 38.1 New Brunswick 20,408 6,544 -8.3 Nova Scotia 26,090 7,368 1.8 Prince Edward Island 3,241 1,122 9.5 Newfoundland 10,803 3,530 0.9 Territories 4,597 1,905 -24.8



Food Banks Canada HungerCount Report 2021

Eat Fresh Refresh marks a reinvigorated commitment to delivering Canadians the incredible variety, fresh ingredients and bold flavours Subway is known for.

Canadians can learn more about Never Miss Lunch by visiting Subway.com/NeverMissLunch and its support of the After the Bell program with Food Banks of Canada. To view the TV advertising creative produced by dentsu MCGARRYBOWEN, please see HERE

Join Subway Canada's online community at www.facebook.com/SubwayCanada or follow @SubwayCanada and #NeverMissLunch.

About Subway Restaurants

As one of the world's largest quick-service restaurant brands, Subway serves freshly made-to-order sandwiches, wraps, salads and bowls to millions of guests across more than 100 countries in more than 37,000 restaurants every day. Subway restaurants are owned and operated by Subway franchisees  a network that includes more than 20,000 dedicated entrepreneurs and small business owners  committed to delivering the best guest experience possible in their local communities.

Subway is a Registered Trademark of Subway IP LLC.  2022 Subway IP LLC

About Food Banks Canada

Food Banks Canada provides national leadership to relieve hunger today and prevent hunger tomorrow in collaboration with the food bank network from coast-to-coast-to-coast. For 40 years, food banks have been dedicated to helping Canadians living with food insecurity. Over 4,700 food banks and community agencies come together to serve their most vulnerable neighbours who  last year  made 1.3 million visits to these organizations in one month alone, according to Food Banks Canada HungerCount report. Over the past 10 years, as a system, the network has sourced and shared over 1.4 billion pounds of food and Food Banks Canada shared nearly $168 million in funding to help maximize collective impact and strengthen local capacity  while advocating for reducing the need for food banks. Food Banks Canada's vision is clear: create a Canada where no one goes hungry. Visit http://www.foodbankscanada.ca/ to learn more or follow Food Banks Canada on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

About Food Banks Canada's After the Bell Program

After the Bell is Food Banks Canada's national program dedicated to reducing child hunger, especially during the summer months when school meal programs aren't running. Since 2015, the program has distributed over 490,000 nutritious, kid-friendly food packs. In 2022, Food Banks Canada aim to distribute 175,000 food packs to children from coast-to-coast-to-coast with the support of its generous partners, including its Fresh Food Partner, Subway Canada. To learn how you can help Food Banks Canada achieve its goal, please visit afterthebell.foodbankscanada.ca.

Trademark Food Banks Canada, Used Under License.

SOURCE SUBWAY Canada

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2022/13/c7017.html
(Changes expected arrival date for Al Shamal, removes Energy Liberty after it changes destination) June 13 (Reuters) - The following liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers are expected to arrive in Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands in the coming weeks. Estimated arrival dates, often revised by port authorities and AIS Live ship-tracking data on Refinitiv Eikon, are updated below. Some tankers heading for Belgium and Britain may be loading at the terminal. Those expected to load are indicated with an (L). Those likely to perform ship-to-ship transfers are indicated with (STS). Tankers that have docked are indicated with (A). For the Reuters LNG guide, click here: LNG TANKER CAPACITY in EXPECTED ARRIVAL FROM PORT cubic metres BRITAIN Al Ghuwairiya 258,000 June 17 Qatar South Hook Al Shamal 213,000 June 18 Qatar Dragon Valencia Knutsen 170,000 June 22 Peru Dragon Methane Becki Anne 170,000 July 11 Peru Milford Haven BELGIUM Vladimir Vize 172,000 June 12 (A) Russia Zeebrugge Rudolf Samoylovich 170,000 June 14 France Zeebrugge Al Khuwair 213,000 June 15 Qatar Zeebrugge Lena River 153,000 June 15 (L) Italy Zeebrugge Vladimir Rusanov 169,000 June 16 Russia Zeebrugge Lng Dubhe 174,000 June 16 (L) N/A Zeebrugge Bu Samra 261,000 June 20 Qatar Zeebrugge Corcovado Lng 158,000 June 27 United States Zeebrugge Golar Crystal 160,000 July 9 (L) France Zeebrugge NETHERLANDS Aristidis I 174,000 June 14 Cameron Gate Lng Endeavour 174,000 June 21 United States Gate Lngc Golar Celsius 160,000 June 23 United States Gate Lng Rosenrot 177,000 July 2 United States Gate Sources: Ports, AIS Live ship tracking, Refinitiv Eikon data. (^) Partial unload (*) Arrival date calculated using www.searates.com at an average speed of 13.5 knots (Reporting by Marwa Rashad)
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA / ACCESSWIRE / June 12, 2022 / It is very easy for a disgruntled customer or employee to leave a nasty review for a business, but it is much harder to get that review removed. Thirty percent of all reviews are suspected to be fake and they are costing global businesses up to $152 billion a year.

Remove Digital, Sunday, June 12, 2022, Press release picture

"It might be a real customer, a fake one or even a rival business but the one thing that all these reviews have in common is they can make a business feel powerless," says Desmond Dao, co-founder of Remove digital. "We give businesses the tools to fight back."

Remove Digital employs skilled attorneys with defamation and cyber backgrounds who scour the internet to ascertain which reviews are fake and unfair, they also study the terms and conditions of review websites so they are armed with the knowledge to torpedo fake reviews.

"Businesses often don't know what options they have and that's where we come in," says Desmond. "We might use the platform's own policy guidelines against them, we might use the country's defamation laws, privacy laws or consumer laws and if the reviews continue to show up we have the ability to report them to the relevant authorities. Businesses need to know that these anonymous posters can not get away with such reputational damage."

International outsourcing company, Bruntwork, discovered a range of fake reviews about the company online and was concerned that it would impact its reputation.

"These reviews would turn up online and we knew they were fake, sometimes we didn't even offer the services that were mentioned," said Adam Pisk, Bruntwork COO. "But we didn't even know where to start to get them taken down, you can reply to them, you can write to the platform but it feels like they will be there forever."

Pisk said they welcome actual reviews and believe that a lot of good can come from customer feedback, but there has to be recourse for businesses who are being unfairly maligned online.

Story continues

Remove Digital co-founder Desmond agrees. "There was a malicious attack on my aunt's small business and it nearly destroyed the business and my family," says Desmond. "As a result, she developed acute depression and anxiety and that is what made me want to make a difference and have a lasting, positive impact on society. That incident inspired us to take a stand against fake and damaging reviews."

Remove Digital is committed to combating fraudulent reviews and review gating because they understand that a brand's reputation cannot be bought, it can only be earned.

"It may seem like a joke to the online reviewers," says Bruntwork's Pisk. "But to us, it is our reputation and our family's income."

About Remove Digital

Remove Digital is an Australian-based online reputation management company specializing in content suppression and reputation monitoring services. The firm brings together outstanding people in the business with decades of digital marketing expertise and inventiveness. They assist small to large enterprises in defending their brand by offering proactive material removal services and creating specialized online reputation management services to keep customers proactive in constructing and keeping a positive online reputation.

CONTACT:

US: + 1 (831) 292-3700

AU: +61 1300 817 781

UK: +44 808 196 0688

Email: info@removedigital.com.au

SOURCE: Remove Digital





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/704816/Tarnished-Reputations-and-Lost-Revenue-Remove-Digital-Combats-the-Heavy-Financial-Toll-of-Fake-and-Damaging-Reviews




ReportLinker

Growth of this market can be attributed to the rise in military applications like combat support, ISR, mine clearance, etc. , and commercial applications like firefighting, CBRN. Development of smart robots for combat operations

New York, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Unmanned Ground Vehicles Market by Mobility, Application, Mode of Operation, Size, System And Region - Forecast to 2027" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p04751622/?utm_source=GNW

Smart robots are an integral part of modern warfare, and, thus, different countries across the globe are increasing, including these robots in their defense forces.They are essential for combat operations and assist defense forces in various missions.



Smart robots are designed to handle a broad range of combat tasks, from picking up snipers to carrying out target acquisitions. These robots can map a potentially large hostile area by accurately identifying and detecting different threats.

The defense forces of different countries focus on developing new robot technologies to enhance their combat capabilities. For instance, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been financing the development of a robotic submarine system since 2020 for use in several applications, right from detecting underwater mines to engaging in anti-submarine operations to protecting ships at harbors.



Increased defense budgets of different countries for unmanned systems

In the last 10 years, emerging economies such as India, China, and Singapore have increased their defense budgets.The US topped the list for military spending in 2021, followed by China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia.



According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India was the third-largest country in terms of military spending in 2021.The UAE has increased its defense spending by 136% over the past 10 years, owing to its increasing GDP and unrest in the Middle East.



In 2021, China increased its defense budget, which is predicted to increase in the coming years. These economies are increasingly investing in defense operations and are potential UGVs and related military robotics markets.

.

Fully autonomous UGVs: The largest segment of the unmanned ground vehicles market, by Mode of operation.



The fully autonomous operation does not have any human involvement or interference.The autonomous mode enables self sufficiency and can thus perform tasks and execute operations without human intervention.



Advanced capabilities, such as secure communications and control, autonomous path following and obstacle avoidance, automatic target tracking, and data compression in UGVs are expected to aid the military in Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition (RSTA) missions.



Intelligence, Surveillance, & Reconnaissance (ISR): The fastest-growing segment of the unmanned ground vehicles market, by Military Application 

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) is one of the major applications where military satellites are used. UAVs, UGVs, USVs, ROVs, AUVs, etc., are extensively used in ISR applications. Small UGVs are mainly utilized in the military sector to provide battlefield intelligence. Armed forces worldwide no longer rely on human scouts and instead use small robots, which can remain almost invisible to the enemy. These robots help monitor enemy forces or specific areas and send video images to the ground station with GPS assistance.

UGVs, such as the 510 PackBot developed by the iRobot Corporation/Endeavour Robotics (US), are widely used for ISR operations by the US military.The global naval forces use remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) for situational awareness and recognition of incoming threats through their remote sensing capabilities.



ROVs use sensors, cameras, sonars, and echo sonar systems to collect complex data from their surroundings.



North America: The largest contributing region in the unmanned ground vehicles market.

North America includes the US and Canada.The US is one of the largest global developers, operators, and exporters of unmanned military systems.



Thus, it accounts for a large share of the North American region in the global unmanned ground vehicles market.The main functions of UGVs include ensuring border security, Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance (ISR), and minimizing the risks of terrorism on domestic assets and the population.



North American countries are awarding several contracts to major players in the unmanned ground vehicles market to deliver UGVs with combat capabilities, thus driving the growth of the unmanned ground vehicles market in the region.For instance, the US has deployed several unmanned systems along the Mexican border to ensure that the gang-related violence and conflicts in Northern Mexico do not affect its internal security.



Canada has also undertaken several measures to develop ground robotic vehicles for military functions.



Breakdown of primaries

The study contains insights from various industry experts, ranging from component suppliers to Tier 1 companies and OEMs. The break-up of the primaries is as follows:

 By Company Type: Tier 135%; Tier 245%; and Tier 320%

 ByDesignation: CLevel35%; Directors25%;and Others40%

 By Region: North America25%; Europe15%; AsiaPacific45%; Middle East 10%; and Rest of the World 5%



Raytheon Technologies Corporation (US), Thales Group (France), Northrop Grumman Corp. (US), L3harris Technologies (US), HEXAGON AB (Sweden), and Furuno Electric (Japan) are the key players in the unmanned ground vehicles market.



Research Coverage

The study covers theunmanned ground vehicles marketacross various segments and subsegments.It aims at estimating the size and growth potential of this market across different segments based onApplication,Mobility, Size, Mode of Operation, System,and region.



This study also includes an in-depth competitive analysis of the key players in the market, along with their company profiles, key observations related to their product and business offerings, recent developments undertaken by them, and key market strategies adopted by them.



Reasons to Buy this Report

This report is expected to help market leaders/new entrants with information on the closest approximations of the revenue numbers for the overall unmanned ground vehicles marketandits segments.This study is also expected to provide regionwise information aboutthe end use, and wherein unmanned ground vehicles are used.



This report aims at helping the stakeholders understand the competitive landscape of the market, gain insights to improve the position of their businesses and plan suitable go-to-market strategies. This report is also expected to help them understand the pulse of the market and provide them with information on key drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities influencing the growth of the market.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p04751622/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



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ReportLinker

The Workflow Automation Market is expected to witness a CAGR of 9. 52% over the forecast period, 2022-2027. Key Highlights According to Camundas The State of Process Automation Report 2020, 97% of IT decision-makers believed process automation crucial for digital transformation.

New York, June 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Workflow Automation Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06241307/?utm_source=GNW

Also, 36% of organizations are already implementing business process management software to automate workflows, and 29% of companies are planning to implement business process management software in the near future. (Survey size - 400 IT decision-makers in the United States and Europe.)

There is increasing adoption of artificial intelligence and related new technologies, such as computer vision, cognitive automation, and machine learning to robotic process automation. This convergence of technologies produces automation capabilities that dramatically elevate business value and competitive advantages for customers.

The rising demand of workflow software by the organizations is leading to rapid investment for the development of more sophisticated and efficient software.

As per Ericssons Mobility report in June 2021 predicted 580 million 5G subscriptions by the end of 2021; by 2026, there might be 3.5 billion 5G subscriptions that might drive the growth of IoT devices. It is expected that North America will have the highest share of 5G subscriptions of all regions, amounting to 84%, in 2026. Much of this IoT growth is likely to be credited to reductions in chipset prices and the expansion of cellular technologies, such as NB-IoT and Cat-M1.

Workflow automation, unlike any new technology implementation, can create risks for cyberattacks directed at both human and non-human accounts. As a result, process automation security is of critical importance. RPA bots often work on confidential data, transferring it from one system to another. If data is not protected, it can be leveraged, costing businesses millions.

With the onset of COVID-19, the vulnerability of supply chains has been exposed. For most IT organizations, a fragile ecosystem includes providers of critical IT services. In addition, work-from-home mandates led the service providers to ensure that mission-critical enterprise customers have the necessary tools and technologies to enable the speed, security, quality, and overall efficacy of services provided.



Key Market Trends



Increasing Adoption of Iot Across Industries



The emerging applications and business models, coupled with the falling device costs, are instrumental in driving the adoption of IoT. Consequently, there is also a rise in the number of connected devices (connected cars, machines, meters, wearable, and consumer electronics).

The quick adoption of Industry 4.0 policies in the manufacturing sector led to a new generation of process automation. Traditional SOPs are now being replaced by workflow automation. Almost anything in the world, ranging from sensors and machinery in production environments to cars and kitchen gadgets, is now being connected to networks, buoyed by the increased adoption of mobility and BYOD policies.

IoT connectivity is beginning to feed a new level of intelligence for buildings by analyzing system-level data. It is being extensively used in energy services firms and companies providing fault detection and diagnostics. Further, AI algorithms with access to building data solve more challenging problems that many complex systems have within larger institutional buildings.

October 2021-Flowfinity Wireless Inc., a leading no-code platform for business process automation, announced the release of the Flowfinity M1, an industrial IoT Controller pre-configured to integrate seamlessly with Flowfinity Actions mobile data collection and workflow automation platform.

According to Ericsson, the volume of 400 million IoT devices with cellular connections in 2016 is projected to reach a 1.5 billion mark in 2022. This robust growth is expected to be driven by the increased industrys focus on deploying a connected ecosystem and the standardization of 3GPP cellular IoT technologies. Besides, the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic across the world has disrupted the retail market. To slow the spread of the virus, many countries have entered a state of lockdown, with temporary closures to schools, bars, restaurants, and non-necessity retail stores. In most countries, food and local grocery stores have experienced shortages of supplies, as people are stockpiling goods. Customers are not purchasing a non-utility product from an e-commerce website due to the fear of the spread of viruses through the packaging material.



Asia Pacific is Expected to Register the Fastest Growth During the Forecast Period



With the increasing competition in the China market, various industries in the country have been improving workflow through digital transformation. For instance, Dongfeng Nissan initiated its digital transformation program aimed to improve efficiency and to speed the time to market for a line of new vehicles. The company launched its digital transformation strategy for promoting the better use of data aimed to improve existing workflows, streamline internal business operations, and promote overall efficiency. As part of the program, the company implemented robotic process automation (RPA) software, UiPath, to automate repetitive digital tasks.

China Unicoms Intelligent Network Innovation Center worked with Huawei in 2021 to develop and deploy an AI-powered network management and operations platform based on Huaweis AUTIN system. The company deployed an AI-based network management and operations platform to use data to simplify and automate national network operation, planning, and management while improving cost-effectiveness, customer experience, and sustainability as it rolled out 5G networks and services.

Automation is one of the most crucial parts related to the future of work approach, and Japan is innovating through AI. According to the Nomura Research Institute, the AI sector in the country will see a massive stride by 2035. Automation companies such as Abeja, NEC, and others innovate to bring more production efficiency, to push Japans GDP

Automation has been playing a major role in Indias economic development. The country is currently witnessing a transition in most of the sectors through the implementation of technology and innovation. The National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (NSAI) highlighted that AI is predicted to accelerate Indias annual growth rate by 1.3% by 2035.

Southeast Asia and Australia are prominent regions in the Rest of Asia-Pacific. Southeast Asian companies are preparing employees for an AI-centered future and embracing new technologies. This would require enterprises to plug the skills gap through a proper upskilling strategy. Digitization would help the region to create globally competitive partnerships for local companies as well as improve the potential for global expansion and support a successful technology and knowledge transfer.



Competitive Landscape



The Workflow Automation Market is competitive and consists of several major players, such as IBM Corporation, Software AG, Oracle Corporation, Pegasystems Inc., Xerox Corporation, Appian Corporation. These companies are leveraging on strategic collaborative initiatives to increase their market share and increase their profitability.



July 2021 - IBM had Acquired myInvenio to provide customers with data-driven software that can help in identifying the most impactful business processes to automate using AI, including sales, procurement, production, and accounting.

December 2021 - Software AG joined IBM Z and Cloud Modernizations center to help IBM X clients accelerate their applications, data, and processes in an open hybrid cloud architecture.

November 2021 - DKB Service GmbH (DKBS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Kreditbank AG (DKB), partnered with Pegasystems INC. to deploy the Pega platform and its intelligent automation capabilities to standardize and automate back-office service processes.



Additional Benefits:



The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format

3 months of analyst support

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06241307/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



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Southern firms face worker shortages

Many firms in southern industrial zones in HCM City, Binh Duong, and Dong Nai are facing labour shortages despite offering higher salaries.













Firms looking for employees at a job fair in HCM City's Binh Thanh District in May 2022



Ty Hung Footwear Company in HCM City's Binh Tan District has over 2,500 workers. The company's deputy director, Pham Thi Ut, said that they need to employ between 500-700 more workers but had not received any applicants.



"Despite having financial difficulties, we've still tried to ensure average monthly salaries of VND 8 million (USD 348) for workers," she said. "We've announced vacancies on various channels, even going to neighbouring areas to look for new employees but it seems difficult."



Gilimex Garment Company in HCM City's Binh Thanh District is having orders from Europe and the US. After the Covid-19 pandemic was brought under control, the company built sites in some neighbouring provinces of Dong Thap and Dong Nai. The company is planning to employ more workers with a monthly salary of between VND8-13 million. However, they also have received few applications.



In Binh Duong Company, many firms in local industrial zones have also tried employing new staff.



Director of Binh Duong Production and Trade Company, Nguyen Lam, said that they have raised monthly salaries by 30-40 percent to between VND 10-12 million this year but still lack some 300 workers.



The Apparel Far Eastern Company has also found it difficult to attract 1,000 more workers to expand production.



According to the HCM City Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, some 37,000 local enterprises now need to employ over 83,000 workers. It is estimated that local firms would need between 135,000 - 150,000 new workers by the end of this year, yet there seems little interest.



The neighbouring province of Binh Duong would also face shortages of 70,000 new workers during the final months of this year according to the local Department of Labours, Invalids and Social Affairs.



Deputy director of Dong Nai Industrial Zones Management Board, Nguyen Van Danh, predicted that worker shortages would last until the end of this year.



Explaining the lack of workers, some firms in Binh Duong said that many workers left for their home towns during the Covid-19 outbreaks last year and had not returned.



"After the pandemic, most of our workers from the northern and central regions have decided to stay home and work for local firms, or go to work abroad," director of Khang Gia Production Company, Nguyen Thanh Binh, said.



To attract workers back, local authorities in Dong Nai Province are co-operating with some neighbouring provinces to implement housing and school projects for workers and their children so that they can have a more stable life when returning to work.



"There is large demand for housing and we'll try to help workers access affordable housing in the coming time," said vice-chairman of Dong Nai Provincial People's Committee Vo Tan Duc.
Global leisure and business flight bookings have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, while spending on cruise lines, buses and trains saw sharp improvements this year, according to a new report from Mastercard Economics Institute.



New report from the Mastercard Economics Institute Travel 2022: Trends and Transitions delivers critical insights across 37 markets about the global state of travel in a post-vaccine and less restricted chapter of the pandemic era.



Importantly, if flight booking trends continue at their current pace, an estimated 115 million more passengers in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa will fly in 2022 compared to last year, according to an analysis by the Mastercard Economics Institute.



Drawing on a unique analysis of publicly available travel data2, as well as aggregated and anonymized sales activity in the Mastercard network3, the report dives into key elements of the traveller journey.



Key findings through April 2022 include:



 Leisure and business flights surpass pre-pandemic levels: Travel recovery has been a largely consumer story for much of the pandemic. By the end of April, global leisure flight bookings surpassed 2019 levels by 25%; short- and medium-haul leisure flight bookings were up 25% and 27%, respectively. Global business flight bookings exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time in March, with long-haul specifically growing double-digits in April. The return to office was an important driver.



In the Middle East specifically, recovery in international travel bookings only accelerated from mid-2021 after the launch of Covid vaccination campaigns and eased travel requirements in the Western hemisphere. It has also been supported by Middle Eastern national carriers increasing their scheduled flights to more destinations. Business travel in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa is returning at a much slower pace. Short-haul bookings led the recovery, but only exceeded 2019 levels in March 2022, while medium-haul and domestic bookings remain 16% and 40% below 2019 levels, respectively, as of April 2022.



 Domestic travel choices still lead among consumers in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa: Since the onset of the pandemic, domestic travel has been the itinerary of choice for consumers in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, although the recovery has been haphazard.



Domestic bookings surged and doubled pre-pandemic levels at the end of November 2020, collapsed in January 2021, jumped to more than 20% above pre-pandemic levels in February 2021, and collapsed again in mid-2021 before staging a more steady and sustained recovery. It exceeded pre-pandemic levels from February 2022.



 Hard-hit transportation industries see spending rebound: Recent spending levels point to greater comfort with group travel. Global spending on cruises gained 62 percentage points from January to the end of April, though remains below 2019 levels. Buses are back at pre-pandemic levels, while passenger rail spend remains 7% below. Meanwhile, car road trips maintain their appeal, with spending on tolls and auto rentals up nearly 19% and 12%, respectively.



Among consumers in the Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, spend on passenger railways outperformed the rest of the world since January 2021, and the region has a much higher sustained spend increase over the same period in 2019. Within auto-rentals, tourist spend has also been on a gradual recovery, exceeding 2019 levels on a more sustained basis from January 2022.



 Travel spending shifts back to experiences4 over things: For the better part of a year, international tourists spent more on experiences instead of souvenirs when in destination. Experiential spending is now 34% above 2019 levels; the areas seeing the largest spending increases are F&B outlets (72%) and amusement parks, museums, concerts and other recreational activities (35%). In the U.K., spending growth each month in 2022 more than doubled compared to 2019 levels, currently 140% for April.





The global trend towards the Experience Economy has also reached Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, although half a year later than the global aggregate. In South Africa, for example, although both spending on goods and experiences tend to trend similarly, growth in spending on experiences relative to 2019 levels has sustained around a 20 percentage point lead over goods spend since January 2022.



 Loosening of restrictions recalibrates tourism map for 2022: Not surprisingly, the ability and convenience of travel has been a driving factor in booking destinations, though 2022 has provided a clean slate with restrictions loosened in much of the world, aside from parts of Asia-Pacific.



The result is that the U.S., U.K, Switzerland, Spain and The Netherlands are now the top destinations for tourists globally. For travellers from Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, the United Kingdom has been the choice destination in the ongoing recovery, with demand exceeding that for the United States. The United Kingdoms Freedom Day lifting of restrictions in July 2021 contributed to this trend. European destinations make up most of the top 10 destinations for travellers from Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.



Like any flight, the travel recovery has faced both headwinds and tailwinds. As the Great Rebalancing takes place around the world, this mobility is critical to a return to pre-pandemic life, said Bricklin Dwyer, Mastercard chief economist and head of the Mastercard Economics Institute.



The resilience of the consumer to return to normal and make up for lost time gives us optimism that the recovery will continue directionally, even if there are bumps along the way.  TradeArabia News Service
KEARNEY  Local students and community leaders have known for many years how valuable Louisvilles skilled and technical science classes have been to Cass County.

That knowledge is now spreading outside the countys borders to every corner of the state.

Louisvilles skilled and technical science (STS) programs were honored with the Nebraska Career and Technical Educations Outstanding Secondary Program Award on June 7. The award presentation took place at the Nebraska Career and Technical Education (CTE) Conference in Kearney. CTE teachers and professionals gathered June 6-9 for a variety of seminars, workshops and award ceremonies.

Dr. Katie Graham, state director of Nebraska Career and Technical Education services, presented the award to Jesse Zweep, who serves as a CTE teacher and SkillsUSA advisor at Louisville. Graham said state officials felt Louisville was well-deserving of the recognition. An inscription on the award noted Louisville was being honored for educational excellence and achieving student success through career and technical education.

Louisvilles STS programs were nominated and selected based on their tradition of high-quality and innovative career and technical education programming, Graham said. The STS program and instructor at Louisville continues to support students in taking advantage of expanded learning and leadership opportunities directly tied to workforce needs through dual credit courses and SkillsUSA, and regularly has students recognized for their excellence at state and national competitions.

Additionally they work closely with the business community in their region to ensure students have internship and other career development opportunities. In the classroom, CTE and core academic teachers work together to ensure students have the academic, technical and career readiness skills needed to successfully transition into postsecondary education and advance within their career pathway of choice.

Zweep said the award was a reflection of the hard work Louisville students have put into programs like SkillsUSA for many years. He said he was humbled to go on stage and receive the prestigious honor on behalf of the school district.

The NCE Conference has a lot of top-quality schools and programs that attend each year, and to be recognized as an outstanding secondary program really made me proud to be a part of a school district and community that is so supportive of our career and technical education programs, Zweep said.

Nebraska Career and Technical Education is a division of the Nebraska Department of Education. Student organizations under the Nebraska Career and Technical Education umbrella include SkillsUSA, FFA, Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA), Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA), Educators Rising and DECA business club.

Zweep leads Louisville students in many classes and programs throughout the year. Students learn how to work on cars, perform home maintenance projects, complete welding assignments, work with various metals, operate power tools and explore manufacturing, construction and design topics.

Zweep also helps students gain experience through the SkillsUSA program. They learn about careers in trade, technical and skilled service occupations. Louisville recently earned the Gold Chapter of Distinction Award in Nebraska and was one of only 14 SkillsUSA chapters in the United States to receive a Model of Excellence Award.

Many Louisville students have attended either colleges or trade schools after graduating from high school. There are multiple Louisville alumni who operate their own businesses or work in technical-skilled sectors of the economy.

Zweep said fellow Louisville teachers and administrators have voiced their strong support for the career education programs at the school. He said that was a key ingredient in Louisvilles success on statewide and national stages.

Our CTE programs are always trying to focus on what students at Louisville need to be successful and provide a fun, project-based, student-centered learning environment for our students, Zweep said. Awards like this from the Department of Education really are an honor to receive and are an indicator of the pride and support that the Louisville school district takes in all of our CTE programs.

Graham said Louisville was playing a vital role in securing a prosperous future for local and regional communities. She said the award highlighted the schools impact both in Cass County and in all corners of Nebraska.

It is absolutely critical that we have skilled and technical sciences programs across the state, as industry representatives continue to share significant struggles recruiting skilled talent, Graham said. Nebraskas manufacturing, transportation/distribution and construction industries are critical to the states vitality. Without a skilled talent pipeline in these areas, Nebraskas ability to grow will be severely diminished. We have a critical teacher shortage in STS which only exacerbates the issue.

Louisvilles STS program is a model for how local communities and schools can work together to ensure students are aware of the myriad of great, high-paying job opportunities in Nebraska and in the skilled trades.

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Authorities arrest members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front near an Idaho pride event Saturday after they were found packed into the back of a U-Haul truck with riot gear.
Colorado Springs police on Sunday arrested a suspect in connection with a homicide that occurred Saturday night at a local Walgreens, according to a news release from the department.

Joshua Johnson, 28, was taken into custody without incident after an investigation identified him as the suspect in the killing, police said. Johnson faces a felony charge of first-degree murder.

Officers on Saturday received a 6:55 p.m. call about a body at the Walgreens at 6820 Centennial Boulevard, police said. Victim information has not yet been released.

Homicide detectives assumed responsibility for the investigation, which is still active.

A makeshift memorial comprised of flowers, balloons and stuffed animals was placed outside the Walgreens, which is closed until further notice, according to an employee.

Anyone with information that might help with the investigation is asked to call the Colorado Springs Police Department at (719) 444-7000. Callers who wish to remain anonymous may call the Crime Stoppers Tip Line at (719) 634-STOP [7867] or 1-800-222-8477.
Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country

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While no one in the violence-hit area denies that stone-pelting happened during the protest. However, there are claims and counterclaims with regard to instigation.

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KANPUR (UTTAR PRADESH)  The Uttar Pradesh police have been accused of targetting Muslims in Kanpur following violence that broke out on June 3 during a protest against offensive remarks made by two former members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.

How authentic is the allegation? Lets take a look at one of the three first information reports (FIRs) filed in connection with the brick batting, which took place at Nayi Sadak after Muslim devotees took out a march following Friday prayers on June 3. The clash broke out between Muslims and residents of Chandeshwar Hata (a locality inhabited by Dalits and OBCs, close to Parade Chowk).

The FIR filed by one Mukesh reveals the participation of Hindu residents of Hata in the violence, yet no action has been taken against them yet. The FIR also describes that the Hindu side hurled explosives in self-defence.

The cautiously worded FIR (No. 0043/2022) registered at Becon Ganj police station in Kanpur Nagar Police Commissionerate notes, when few people, fortunately, realised that Chandeshwar Hata would be eliminated today, 8-10 of them came forward and began throwing back the stones hurled at them so that the crowd hell-bent at massacre can be contained till the police force arrives at the spot. Had they not come to the fore, there would have been genocide of the Hindus.

It adds, as the news spread that Hata has come under attack, people from inside the colony came out with leftover firecrackers of Diwali and hurled it towards the crowd in self-defence to scare the rioters.

Hata has been the target of Muslims, Mukesh said in the FIR, And therefore, they (Muslims) are constructing six-storey buildings, surrounding Hata from all four sides so that it can be attacked with bombs from above and its existence can be removed.

Trying to defend the police, he said in the FIR that he was expecting that the cops stationed at Sadbhavna Chowki (police post) located near Parade Chowk would come to his rescue. Though they (the policemen) came, yet could not make any impact perhaps because their number was not sufficient to control the unruly mob and they were not prepared to tackle the sudden attack, he said.

Notably, the rest two FIRs lodged on the complaints of police officials with regard to the violence that erupted from Baba Chauraha and Dadamiya Chauraha respectively do not find any mention of the retaliatory stone-pelting and hurling of explosives as revealed in the FIR filed by Mukesh.

The two FIRs claimed an unlawful assembly of Muslim youth which was forcibly asking people to shut their shops after Friday prayers and clashed with the police when they were asked to disperse.

There is also no mention of any alleged attack on Chandeshwar Hata either in the two FIRs.

Other side of the story

No one in the violence-hit area denies the fact that stone-pelting happened during the protest. But there are claims and counterclaims with regard to instigation.

The Muslim side claimed after the Friday prayer, people in small groups moved from Dadamiya Chauraha and Baba Chauraha in the form of a procession, which reached Yatimkhana (orphanage) and took a turn towards Parade Chowk.

The protest march was completely peaceful till it reached Parade Chowk, though the police were intermittently trying to stop them. Violence erupted after the filming of the protesters by residents of Chandeshwar Hata was objected to by the other side. It led to a heated exchange between the two groups. As a result, stone-pelting began between the two sides. It continued for 10-15 minutes, and the situation was brought under control, eyewitnesses told TwoCircles.net.

But selective videos are being played on every TV news channel, they alleged as if only Muslims pelted stones and the other side was either acting as a mute spectator or garlanding the protesters.

Even the photographs of 40 suspected rioters released by the police belong to Muslims only. Except for a printing press owner, who published 20 posters calling people to undertake a jail bharo andolan on June 5 against the alleged insult of Prophet Muhammad, all 50 people who have been arrested are Muslims, they said.

Kanpurs Shaher Qazi Abdus Qudoos Hadi said there are always two sides in such incidents but the police were selectively targeting one community while the real perpetrators of violence are allowed to go scot-free.

Police have taken action against one side while the other side that is equally responsible for the crime is being let off, he alleged.

To support his allegation, he presented a list of 36 people named in the FIRs. All of them belong to the Muslim community. Why are members of other communities not arrested or FIR lodged against them, he asked.

Hadi and his son Waqar were manhandled when they were going to meet the Kanpur police commissioner who had reportedly called the cleric to pacify the protesters. The father-son duo can be seen being manhandled in a video accessed by this publication.

A video shows a Muslim boy being mercilessly thrashed by a Hindutva mob in presence of police. He was later rescued by the police who can be seen letting the assaulters go scot-free.

Uzma Khanam, the wife of Hayat Zafar Hashmi, rubbished the allegation that her husband was the key conspirator of the violence.

He always offered Friday prayer at Sunehri mosque near Parade Chauraha. But on June 3, he went to a mosque at Dada Miyan Chauraha. After he came out of the mosque, he spoke to the media, appealing to people not to take out any procession. He returned home at around 1:30 pm after offering the prayer. He went to the Parade Chowk area at 3:30 pm after he got several calls from police officials who called him to come over there and help the administration to pacify the protesters. He came back home at around 6 pm to tell me that he is going again. He told me before leaving, If I dont return, take care of yourself and our daughter (who is 3 years old). I came to know about his arrest from the media only, she narrated and broke down.

She claimed he had not given any call for agitation on Friday. The proposed jail bharo agitation was called off a day before the violence following a meeting with the police administration. In fact, he had even announced the same on Facebook. Finding him a soft target, the police arrested him and declared him a mastermind. Selective leaks are being done to the media to create a narrative against him among people, she said.

Saibas 10-year-old brother Salim has been arrested in connection with the violence.

My elder brother and husband were first picked up by the police and kept in lock-up at Colonelganj police station from 5 pm on June 3 till 1 am on June 4. They were released only after Salim surrendered. He told my mother who had gone to meet him that the police were pressuring him to confess the crime and tell the magistrate that he was 17. He has been brutally tortured in police custody, she alleged, showing Salims Aadhar card, which proved that he was a minor.

She said Salim was not named in any FIR.

Sana, mother of two claimed that her husband Mohd Nasir was at Bakarmandi, some 5 kilometres from the spot of violence but was arrested by the police. The police had come to our house to arrest some of our relatives but failing to find them, police took my husband away and is one of the 36 accused named in the FIR, she said.

She said that one of her relatives had lodged a complaint against the BJP spokesperson for her blasphemous statement at the Colonelganj police station. My husband has nothing to do with that complaint, still, he was arrested, she said.

Mohammad Sulaiman, an elderly activist who along with a delegation approached the commissioner of police to register a protest against one-sided police action, told TwoCircles.net, No one is denying the fact that taking out a protest march was a mistake. It can also not be denied that brick-batting took place. But both sides indulged in this act of violence while the police are selectively targeting Muslims. There is no action against the other side, and it is casting aspersions on the integrity of the law enforcement agency,  he asked.

It was a self-defence only

Few residents of Chandeshwar Hata TwoCircles.net spoke to, reiterated that whatever they did was in self-defence.

Describing the incident, a resident of the colony, who refused to be named and photographed, said, Hindus got agitated after their men and women were injured in the one-sided targeted stone-pelting. We somehow defended ourselves initially when the police deployment was not adequate. Once the police arrived, we too responded to them in their language. We had no other option but to do it in self-defence. Later, the police chased them away.

Guilty wont be spared

When TwoCircles.net discussed the allegations with Joint Commissioner of Police Anand Prakash Tiwari, he refuted the charges of any bias on the part of the police and said the investigation was on and guilty wont be spared.

With regard to the FIR filed based on a complaint by Mukesh, he said, If a person injured in violence lodged a complaint, how could the police refuse him? We are investigating the violence threadbare and anyone responsible would not be spared.

Asked about the alleged one-sided arrests, he said, We have foolproof evidence against all the accused. Our action is based on the outcome of our investigation so far and the human intelligence and electronic evidence we have gathered. We are taking utmost care to ensure that no innocent is sent behind bars.
Springs Recovery Connection has withdrawn from buying First Evangelical Free Church at Fontanero and 30th streets, in part due to neighbors objections for the organization to build an expanded center with various services for people recovering from substance use disorder.
Colorado's Supreme Court has agreed to interpret whether two state laws, criminalizing cruelty to animals and the failure to register as a sex offender, permit convictions to be transformed into felonies upon a judge's findings alone, or if a jury must make that decision.
Gov. Jared Polis urged Coloradans Monday to file their taxes by the end of the month in order to receive at least $500 by September.

Residents who file state taxes by June 30 are expected to get $500 for individual tax filers and $1,000 for joint filers through the Colorado Cashback Rebate  an expedition of the 2023 Taxpayer's Bill of Rights refund, paying back up to 85% of excess state revenue collected last year.

We are providing immediate relief, putting money back into the pockets of hardworking Coloradans to help pay for everyday items, Polis said. "Everyone who filed by June 30 will get the more than $500 or $1,000 rebates this summer."

Polis said 3.1 million Coloradans will receive the refund directly in the mail in August or September. If filing after June 30 but by the extended filing deadline on Oct. 17, theyll get their check in January.

Every full-time Colorado resident who was at least 18 years old on Dec. 31, 2021 can file a tax return to claim the rebate even if they did not have taxable income. Taxpayers will receive equal payments, regardless of income.

To check or update the address the rebate checks will be mailed to, residents should visit colorado.gov/revenueonline. For more information about the Colorado Cashback Rebate, visit tax.colorado.gov/cash-back.
Historic Church Service in Turkey Marred By Attack on Assyrian Family

A service was held in Mor Gevargis Church, Brahimiye village for the first time in nearly a century. ( Suryaniler) A Christian family were attacked in a village in Mardin province, south-eastern Turkey, shortly before a church service on Sunday, June 5.

The service in Mor Gevargis Assyrian Church, Brahimiye village, was the first held in the building in almost 100 years, after renovation work which began in 2015.

The Yilmaz family -- the only Assyrian family who live in the village -- were attacked at their home by a group of around 50 Muslims. The family were at the time entertaining visiting clergy who had come to officiate at the service.

Dispute Over Land

The mob attacked the home with stones, sticks and other weapons. They then set fire to wheat being grown by the Yilmaz family. None of the family were injured, and the fire was eventually extinguished after witnesses alerted the police.

Some members of the Muslim family were arrested in connection with the incident.

"They threatened us," said Cengiz Yilmaz, "saying that they would not let us live in the village ... But we are not afraid. We will continue to stay here." He accused the attackers of specifically choosing the day of the church ceremony to re-open the land dispute.

The tiny remnant Christian community in Turkey is mainly historic Christian ethnic groups such as Assyrians (like the Yilmaz family) and Armenians; they still bear the trauma of the Armenian, Assyrian, Syriac and Greek genocides of the early twentieth century. During these genocides, at least 3.75 million believers were killed by Ottoman Turks, with many attacks occurring in south-eastern Turkey.

There are also a small number of Turkish converts from Islam.

In August 2021 an Assyrian Christian village in northern Syria was bombed by the Turkish air force in a campaign against Kurdish militants.
It is June the 6th and there is arguably not a more apt day on the calendar for us all to contemplate the word "Carnage".

The D-Day invasion of World War II in 1944 has been consistently held as the measure of carnage for the past seventy-eight years.

Yet, I think we may underestimate humanity's ingeniousness for exploiting ever modernized ways to kill each other off. In catching up on the weekend's headlines, the word "carnage" was used so many times that in this one day, the hideous connotation and intent of meaning was so diluted that it could have been substituted by the word "marshmallows" and not had any less affect.

As the past week's accounts of humankinds' slaughter of each other from around the globe dropped into my inbox to read, trends began to come clear.

Not for the first time, mind you; just another in the long series of how we are informed of deadly and violent outcomes.

The question being asked and answered by media outlets was "how" the people in question were killed. Not in a philosophical manner, but in a direct, matter of fact way; what weapon was used?

As though the methodology chosen by the killers, be it clubs, knives, rocks, poisons, explosives, cruise-missiles or guns was the most important factor in curtailing and ending future mass killings.

The inconvenient truth is that we must always ask, "WHY? and not "HOW?" And not just rhetorically, either. Even though to date, we have yet to find those answers.

Frequently, archeologists find prehistoric sites of mass killings.

The 10,000 year-old remains of twelve people of varying gender and age, bludgeoned to death and with indications of long-term bondage were recently found in a common grave in Kenya.

In Croatia, the 6,200 year-old remains of 41 men, women and children were discovered in a mass grave, were clearly violently murdered and buried. 21st Century DNA analysis confirmed that the victims were not familial.

In Sandby Borg, Sweden, a 1500 year-old massacre was uncovered by archeologists when the remains of several dozen members of a coastal village were discovered mutilated in a mass grave. To this day, local legend speaks of this ground as cursed.

If these examples are not sobering enough, consider that there exists an academic field of study that accumulates archeological and ethnographic data to quantify how murderous a given culture was at a given period of time.

Human to human violence accounts for:

 60% of deaths around the period of 1200-1300 AD in the Crow Creek society of Native Americans in what is now South Dakota.

 50% of deaths during the period of 12,000-10,000 BC in the ancient northeast Africa region of Nubia.

 30% of deaths during the period of 1500 BC-1700 AD, 3200 years total, in the area now consisting of British Columbia.

Across the globe and throughout all timelines, from the regions of the cradle of humanity to the known ends of the earth, human beings have never been at a loss for means and mode to kill each other off, individually or in great masses.

So, I ask you, does it really matter what weapon of choice is used by a killer?

In the Book of Genesis, Cain used the jawbone of an ass to slay his brother Abel; at least that is the biblical story from the 8th century translation. If you follow this same passage in the Torah, or Quran, or different versions of the Bible, the weapon used by Cain to murder his brother Abel, was a rock, a piece of wood, his bare hands, or a combination, or use of, all of the above.

Cain murdered his brother Abel. The weapon of his choice is irrelevant.

I've always wondered why the anti-gun faction of our electorate doesn't just quietly go about their business signing up a couple of million of their partisans as card carrying members of the NRA, and then march into the next annual meeting and take power?

Mass killings anywhere are really not about "How", but have always been about "Why?" And so far, we don't have those answers.

JW Sayles is a Mason City resident. Opinions are his own.
RALEIGH  North Carolina is considering imposing a significant penalty on hospitals that bill sexual assault victims insurance companies for tests rather than sending them to the state.

State law requires the hospitals to send the bills to the Department of Public Safety, which pays them using federal funds.

But emails between the state treasurers office and Blue Cross Blue Shield, obtained by The News & Observer through a public records request, show that dozens of hospitals and medical offices across the state may have been sending the bills to patients insurance companies instead of DPS.

The North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault has been advocating for stricter requirements for a decade. Its executive director, Monika Johnson-Hostler, told The News & Observer on Thursday that North Carolina hasnt been able to solidify how all hospitals can be responsible for billing correctly.

As an advocate, its not about the penalty but about culture, she said, and changing it so hospitals know exactly what medical billing code to enter and to always send bills directly to DPS.

Johnson-Hostler said sexual assault is already traumatic for survivors without also having to pay an insurance co-pay or, if they are a college student, having the information sent to their parents insurance.

Medical debt, medical issues and lack of health insurance compound that with the trauma of sexual assault, she said.

House Bill 626, which passed the House on a unanimous 111-0 vote in May 2021, would change the law regulating the assistance program for rape and sex offense victims to clarify the term forensic medical examination and require DPS to penalize hospitals and medical offices that bill a victim, their private insurance or Medicaid or Medicare for the cost. The bill could see legislative action this month before the end of the short session.

Blue Cross Blue Shield

Earlier this year, State Treasurer Dale Folwells office asked Blue Cross Blue Shield to look into bills it received for forensic exams related to sexual assault and rape kits, which collect evidence.

Blue Cross Blue Shield found that in 2021, there were 92 claims submitted for services which, based on the diagnosis, could have been a forensic exam, according to an email between BCBS and the treasurers office. The claims provided were limited to emergency department visits using diagnostic codes that the insurance company said would most commonly have been seen on an exam claim. BCBS noted that it was just an assumption, as there is not a specific procedure code for the exam.

HB 626 could change that. According to the bill, a medical facility or professional that bills the victim or insurance for the examination would have to pay a civil penalty of $25,000 for each violation.

Blue Cross Blue Shields assessment of the 92 claims show they were from 60 providers total  42 facilities and 18 that were physician groups. It included major hospitals across the state.

Johnson-Hostler said making a specific code for the exams would mean that a patient will know what the code means, and the insurance companies too, so that data collection is also easier.

The states Rape Victim Assistance Program pays for the cost of forensic exams. Contact the program at 800-826-6200 or at 919-733-7974.

The Victim Assistance Program paid for 1,376 sexual assault claims in the 2020-21 fiscal year, according to an email between DPS and the treasurers office obtained by The N&O. Of those, 963 were for adult sexual assault and 413 for sexual abuse of children.

For immediate support or assistance, call 911, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or visit nccasa.org/get-help.
WINSTON-SALEM  Fire Chief William Trey Mayo said Friday that the city cant release records of its probe into the cause of the Jan. 31 Winston Weaver fertilizer-plant fire because the investigation is still ongoing and criminal activity cant be ruled out.

Mayo was following up on an email sent to a Journal reporter by Assistant City Attorney Pridgen Green, who said that the records are not subject to release because the file is a record of a criminal investigation.

That makes the reports off-limits to the public for now, Mayo said.

With portions of the investigation still underway, to definitively rule out potential criminal activity at this juncture would be hasty and improper, Mayo said. I also cannot speculate on when the investigation will be complete.

But Amanda Martin, the general counsel for the N.C. Press Association, said that state law makes fire investigation records public.

"The reports of investigations of fires are public records, and that does not change when there is a criminal investigation at the same time," Martin said. "It doesn't matter that an investigation is ongoing."

The fire destroyed the fertilizer plant in the 4000 block of North Cherry Street, and caused authorities to declare a mile-wide voluntary evacuation zone when huge amounts of ammonium nitrate were determined to be on the property and at risk of causing a catastrophic explosion.

More than four months later, authorities have yet to release what they know and dont know about the origins of the fire.

Mayo initially told a Journal reporter on Friday that the fire was not considered suspicious in origin, but later said he was speaking off the cuff without checking with the fire marshal, Assistant Chief Tad Byrum, on the status of the investigation. Mayo said Byrum is heading up the investigation.

On May 10, Green, in an email to the Journal, had said the fire reports could not be released because they are not yet complete. Later, Green updated that opinion to say that after further review, the city had determined that it could not release the records because they refer to a criminal investigation.

According to the state law cited by Martin, local and state fire officials, as well as the SBI, have the authority to investigate fires that result in the destruction of property to determine if they were the result of carelessness or design. The SBI has the right to supervise and direct the investigation if the director of the SBI so decides.

The law goes on to say that agencies investigating a fire have to turn over information to the SBI, and that reports sent to the SBI "shall at all times be open to public inspection."

One provision of the law does appear to give the SBI the ability to keep its own investigations "private." It was not clear Friday whether the SBI was directing any of the local investigation activities. The SBI was asked to release its reports on the fire, but the agency had not responded by Friday evening.

Mayo acknowledged that the press attorney differs on whether the records are public, but said that after checking with the citys legal office, a court order would be required to release the records because they are considered the records of a law enforcement criminal investigation. During fire investigations, Mayo said, the fire department acts as a law enforcement agency.

Winston-Salem police said they are not conducting any investigation of the plant fire.

Mayor Allen Joines said he has not been told any cause of the fire  in fact, he has been told that "it is likely they won't be able to determine the cause of the fire."

"I certainly do not want to jeopardize the integrity of any kind of investigation," Joines said. "But we have been very transparent so far, and feel sure that we will release the information as soon as possible."

The fire was reported by a passerby around 6:45 p.m. on Jan. 31, and quickly spread throughout the plant, which was exempt from having sprinklers because of its age.

Flames from the fire leaped high into the air and firefighters poured water down on it from above until it became too dangerous to stay. Firefighters discovered that there were more than 500 tons of ammonium nitrate on the site, raising fears of an explosion like one in Texas in 2013 that killed 15 people and injured more than 100.

Besides clearing out the area around the plant, the fire left foul low-hanging smoke that lingered for days. The city set up a $1 million assistance fund to help people whose lives were disrupted by the fire and evacuation.

People were warned about water quality in the creeks and fish were killed by runoff. The fire resulted in no known loss of human life, although hazardous materials remained on the site months after the fire was extinguished.

Multiple lawsuits have been filed against Winston Weaver in connection with the fire, and the company has filed court papers seeking the dismissal of at least three of the lawsuits.
Despite consistent rain and flooding in nearby areas of Montana, officials who monitor the Lewis and Clark County area say they are not concerned about flooding within its borders.

Lewis and Clark County Flood Plains Manager Worby McNamee said in an interview Monday he has been monitoring National Weather Service data out of the Great Falls forecast office and stream gauges throughout the Helena Valley. McNamee said "I think we're in a good place right now" as far as the potential for flooding is concerned.

He said the Helena Valley aquifer is still low enough following years of extreme drought that the excess water in Ten Mile Creek and other bodies of water in the valley will recharge the underground water source.

"You might see the creek rise a bit, but the water is still getting pushed into the aquifer," McNamee said. "We've seen some isolated storms that have lasted a little longer than is typical, but the breaks in those systems is allowing for that recharge."

NWS Senior Service Hydrologist Arin Peters said Monday that despite the rain in recent weeks, the Helena Valley is still about 40% below its normal rain totals.

"People have the impression we've had a lot of rain, but that's because it only rains on the weekends," Peters said. "But the totals we've gotten just aren't enough."

He said most of Lewis and Clark County remains under a D3 category of drought, or an extreme drought, and that Helena is almost 3 inches below its normal since the water year began in October.

NWS Meteorologist Matt Ludwig said as of midnight Monday, the rainstorm over Helena deposited only 0.13 inches of moisture with little in the forecast.

"There's not really a whole lot of rain coming," Ludwig said.

He said recent storms did bring some additional snow to the slopes of Bridger and Gallatin ranges, and a rapid warm-up early this week could result in watershed rises in areas such as Toston.

Peters stressed that though it may feel as though the area is coming out of the drought, the county is very much still suffering from a long-term water deficit following years of below-average precipitation.

"People need to remain vigilant as far as fire starts go," he said. "There will be little residual soil moisture to keep things green as it starts to heat up."

According to Peters, the first half of Helena's June has been drier than the average.

McNamee said he will continue to monitor stream flows, but that at the moment, there is no cause for concern about flooding in the county.

Rain storms across Montana in recent days have caused flooding in multiple locations and damaged infrastructure.

The Casper Star-Tribune reported Monday that Yellowstone National Park closed all entrances due to flooding of the Yellowstone River, citing "extremely hazardous conditions."

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Region 3 announced it is working on evacuating all of its fishing access sites on the upper Yellowstone River, and portions of Missouri Headwaters State Park are also closed.

"Flooding conditions pose significant safety hazards to recreationists," an FWP social media post Monday warned. "These conditions can arise and evolve without warning. Please abide by any closures that are in effect and avoid recreating on rivers during times of high flow."

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When Caroline Pharr of Helena concluded she had to do something to weigh in and express her concerns about the escalation of gun violence, she decided to take a path that she believes will be more effective but also is something of a step back.

In these days of texting, emails and cellphone calls, Pharr started a campaign urging people to submit handwritten letters urging Montanas two U.S. senators to make meaningful change.

Nobody writes handwritten letters anymore, she said.

Pharr, 41, said he has enlisted about 40 people to write letters, and she has made appointments to deliver them to the offices of Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and Republican Sen. Steve Daines later this month.

She said many people are swamped with the challenges of raising small children, yet they are taking time to write handwritten letters.

Pharr, who said she supports online efforts of clicking on a petition or sending an email, said in this case she is asking for the letters to be handwritten.

Its unusual, and something people do not normally do, she said. Its more memorable and has a bigger impact.

Pharr is a member of MomsRising, a nonpartisan advocacy group, and has offered tips for how people should approach their letter.

Its your personal story, she said, adding they should list their name and note they are a constituent.

Then it is your story and your feelings on gun violence and what action you expect elected officials to take, Pharr said.

Her action comes after the May 24 shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers, and a May 10 shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which a gunman killed 10 people at a grocery store.

Pharr, an educator, said he has attended active shooter training.

Its not what I signed up for, she said, adding she wants different laws.

When it comes to protecting the right to bear arms and protecting the public from gun violence, Pharr does not believe it to be an either/or situation.

I think it is a both/and, she said.

Pharr, who has children who are 3 and 6, said she is under no illusion that everyone will agree.

I am not advocating for anything super radical, she said. Its about compromise. I want meaningful reform that does not infringe on rights of individual gun owners.

She said similar handwritten letter campaigns are starting in Missoula and Bozeman.

And for those who disagree?

She said they could also write a letter.

Here are the addresses for people who'd like to write to a senator:

Sen. Jon Tester

Helena Office

Capital One Center

208 N. Montana Ave.

Suite 202 Helena, MT 59601

Sen. Steve Daines

Helena Office

30 W. 14th St., Suite 206

Helena, MT 59601

Assistant editor Phil Drake can be reached at 406-231-9021.

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Meteorologists on Monday said a series of significant weather events during an unusual spring season created water levels "never ... observed before" in high mountain areas that translated to destructive flooding around Montana.

As officials evacuated Red Lodge residents and Yellowstone National Park closed its entrances due to extreme flooding, forecasters with the National Weather Service said larger towns downriver were set to see peak river flows starting Monday evening.

In neighboring southwest Montana, Jim Brusda, lead meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Great Falls, says three contributing factors lead to rivers rapidly rising.

First, the unseasonably cool April and May held mountain snowpack up high and late spring snowstorms considerably added to the snowpack.

Second, the temperature of the existing snowpack, measured by satellite, sat right at 32 degrees due to the sun angle this late in the year.

Third, Montana saw multiple days of considerable rainfall at higher elevations.

The three factors combining, Brusda said, caused the snowpack to wash out rapidly versus melting out more gradually.

This is causing the Gallatin River to go above (minor) flood stage as we speak near the city of Logan, Brusda said Monday afternoon. But we are not expecting major flooding on the Gallatin.

Brusda forecasted the Gallatin River flooding to last a couple days with the situation starting to improve on Thursday.

Dan Borsum, senior forecaster with the Billings National Weather Service office, similarly described "really significant" events that touched off the flooding in south-central Montana drainages: a snowstorm over Memorial Day that deposited moisture in the mountains and the recent series of rain episodes that dropped 2 to 3 inches in some areas.

Much of the heavy rain and snow fell on the southside of the Absaroka-Beartooth area, Borsum said, but that moisture drains to the north and into drainages like the Paradise Valley and Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River. Soda Butte Creek near Cooke City and Silvergate have reported water levels 4 feet over the bridges there, Borsum said.

"You don't normally think of flooding that high up in the mountains," Borsum said. " The levels that have been observed at these upstream locations have never been observed before."

Forecasts

South-central Montana:

Water levels were cresting Monday afternoon in the upper regions of rivers in that part of the state, Borsum said. The next question is what happens with downriver towns including Livingston, Laurel, Columbus and Billings. According to Borsum, the river levels are expected to peak in:

Livingston by Monday evening;

Columbus between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. Tuesday;

Laurel around noon on Tuesday; and

Billings between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday.

"Laurel and Billings, in particular, may see their high water sustained for longer periods of time," Borsum said. "We're still trying to get a feel for that."

Looking ahead, temperatures in south-central Montana are expected to reach the 90-100 degree range in the coming days, with temperatures in the mountains holding in the 70s, Borsum said. Temperatures Monday had cooled enough to adequately slow the snow melt, he said, but when those highs come later this week the melting will accelerate once again.

"It should not be as high as it has been," Borsum said. "But with any efforts to repair infrastructure, people need to know that a ton of water is still yet poised to come down in the area."

Southwest Montana:

Excess water in the Gallatin and the emergency release of water from Hebgen Dam into the Madison River have put the Missouri River near Toston in a flood watch.

Operators of Hebgen Dam are releasing more water than usual as they try to limit the amount of pressure on the dam as crews work to repair parts of the dam that failed in November 2021. This water is headed for Ennis, which is also in a flood watch, before it reaches the Missouri River.

The Toston area should just see minor flooding for about the next day or two, Brusda said. The flooding should be confined to the edges of the Missouri River in that area.

No flooding is expected any further downstream as Canyon Ferry Reservoir collects all the runoff.

North-central Montana:

The National Weather Service in Great Falls is watching the Glacier area and Rocky Mountain Front as up to 2 inches of rain is forecast to fall below 5,000 feet and 3-4 inches of snow above 6,000 feet over the next day or two.

As long as the higher-elevation precipitation falls as snow, as forecasted, flooding should remain minor along the eastern front of the Northern Rockies. But if the precipitation falls as rain it could mean more significant flooding in that area.

Brusda urged people not to recreate on rivers right now as the rivers "flush out" debris remaining from last year's low water.

"Anybody recreating on the river right now should know it's not a good situation," Brusda said. "Theres a lot of debris in the river and they are running too high and very fast."

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Seaborn Larson State Reporter Capitol bureau reporter Seaborn Larson covers justice-related areas of state government and organizations that wield power. Follow Seaborn Larson 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
CHICAGO - While Chicago figures out how to make its urban forest more equitable, some residents are taking tree matters into their own hands.

A Tribune investigation found that in the past decade more street trees have ended up in higher socioeconomic areas deemed lower priorities for planting. These trees, which the city plants on the public right of way, can have a direct impact on residents lives.

Mayor Lori Lightfoots administration has promised to plant 75,000 trees as part of an initiative called Our Roots Chicago, and advocates are hopeful about a city where the benefits of trees are equitably distributed.

Meanwhile, residents are fighting to save ash trees and rallying to keep old-growth trees in the ground during water department work. Some neighborhood groups have worked for years to engage and excite residents about trees  efforts that the city says it will support as part of its new program.

Heres how some Chicagoans are helping out the urban forest:

I want to believe were in a city that cares

More than a thousand tree removals in recent years were a result of water department work.

Rosemary Feit organized the West Lakeview neighborhood against the removal of old-growth trees last fall after residents learned about a water main replacement project. Feit, who grew up in the city, had childhood memories of laying on the grass and looking up at arched hallways of trees. She didnt want to see that image disappear.

I want to believe were in a city that cares about this, Feit told the Tribune when the fate of the trees was unknown. But it kind of feels like window dressing at this point.

As neighbors signed a petition and voiced their concerns at community meetings, the department didnt budge. But crews eventually planned to move the main away from the trees. To date the trees are still there, Feit said.

The water department credited the tree-sparing effort to a combination of solutions.

In recent years, some aldermen have encouraged the city to try technologies used in other cities that allow for repairs that lessen tree harm.

Given the work other cities have undertaken to save trees, Feit thought Chicagos immediate approach lacked creativity.

It just feels like it shouldnt have been this hard, Feit said. It still confuses me as to why it was such a struggle and why there is so much resistance in the department of water management to tackling these projects in a way that prioritizes trees given that the city is making an investment in the tree canopy.

When asked if the city has a plan to minimize tree removals during the large-scale water main and lead pipe replacement work ahead, as well as how many trees stand to be affected, a water department spokeswoman said the department evaluates the removal of old-growth trees on an individual basis and decisions often cant be made until construction begins.

The department said its always investigating new techniques and procedures to carry out work while saving trees.

Feit wondered whether other neighborhoods would fare as well in similar circumstances.

Were a well-resourced neighborhood, Feit said. So what does that mean for other neighborhoods that dont have that same level of resource, or the same sort of alderman whos invested in the outcome we were invested in?

Its people who are from this community

Farther south, residents are focused on their own tree endeavors, by making sure dying trees are replaced and educating neighbors about the benefits of new ones.

Imani Green Health Advocates trains young people to learn about the connection between conservation and community health. The program is part of Imani Village, a Black-led organization connected to Trinity United Church of Christ.

The advocates have begun another summer of tree health monitoring and planting in South Side neighborhoods including Pullman, Roseland, Washington Heights and Chatham, said Ajiah Gilbert, program leader for Imani Green Health Advocates.

Gilbert said this seasons goal for their Treesilience program is 50 trees in the ground by the end of November.

Theres been a turning point since the program started, Gilbert said. Sometimes, even if a resident doesnt need to have a tree removed, theyll request a new one.

Im not sure if a few years ago that would have been the case, Gilbert said. A lot of people wanted trees removed but they didnt want a new tree on their property.

That change may be a result of the groups grassroots approach, which involves door knocking, handing out flyers and dispelling tree myths. Advocates are also directly connected to the community, Gilbert said.

Its not just Chicago coming in, planting trees without asking, she said. Its people who are from this community, people who work in this community.

No other equitable way to do it

Residents have fought to get the city to treat ash trees again, a practice it gave up years ago as the invasive emerald ash borer beetle killed off thousands of trees.

John Friedmann is a leader of the effort, which picked up steam in North Side communities where neighborhood groups have organized to pay for tree-saving treatments.

Friedmann visits the seven species of ash trees in Horner Park hes been able to treat with money from craft beer fundraisers, with another coming up in July.

But it shouldnt be up to residents to pay out of pocket to treat the trees, advocates say, as that effort may not be an option or priority for all residents.

In recent years, some communities have had more ash trees removed than overall trees planted.

The reason why were trying to maintain the ash is so we can maintain the canopy, Friedmann said. We really feel the city has to pick up the charge to expand the program. Theres just no other equitable way to do it.

The city says it will survey all remaining ash trees starting in July, but plans to treat the trees again have not been solidified. Those organizing to save ashes worry the process could drag on, with more trees lost in that time.

Between 2011 and 2016, the city treated tens of thousands of ash trees and tracked the population as the emerald ash borer spread. By 2015, more than half of overall street tree removals were ash trees, as nearly 10,000 ashes were cut down. The city says it moved to a new system in 2016 and wasnt able to track species again until last year.

Friedmann recently visited two neighborhood ashes next to each other. Only one had been treated. A few years ago they looked the same, but today one has lost more than half of its leaves, while the other has full, leafy canopy.

It personifies the waste of letting these things die, he said. If we dont intervene now, theres going to be nothing to intervene for.

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Authorities arrested 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front near an Idaho pride event Saturday after they were found packed into the back of a U-Haul truck with riot gear.

The men were standing inside the truck wearing khakis, navy blue shirts and beige hats with white balaclavas covering their faces when Coeur d'Alene police stopped the U-Haul and began arresting them on the side of the road.

"They came to riot downtown," Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said at a news conference.

All 31 were charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor, White said. The men were going through the booking process Saturday afternoon and are scheduled to be arraigned on Monday, he said.

Based on evidence collected and documents, authorities found that the group was planning to riot in several areas of downtown, not just the park, White said.

Police found riot gear, one smoke grenade, shin guards and shields inside the van, White said. They wore arm patches and logos on their hats that identified them as members of Patriot Front, he said.

Police learned about the U-Haul from a tipster, who reported that "it looked like a little army was loading up into the vehicle" in the parking lot of a hotel, White said. Officials spotted the truck soon after and pulled it over, he said.

Videos of the arrest posted on social media show the men kneeling on the grass with their hands zip-tied behind their backs.

"Reclaim America" was written on the back of one shirt.

Police led the men, one by one, to the front of patrol cars, took off their masks and then brought them to a police van.

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas, White said.

Only one was from Idaho, he said.

The truck was stopped near where the North Idaho Pride Alliance was holding the Coeur d'Alene Pride in the Park event. Police had stepped up their presence in the area during the event.

"It appears these people did not come here to engage in peaceful events," Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris told a Coeur d'Alene Press reporter.

Patriot Front is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "a white nationalist hate group" that formed after the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

"Patriot Front focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country," the Southern Poverty Law Center said of the group.

The group's manifesto calls for the formation of a white ethnostate in the United States, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.

___

Bellisle reported from Seattle.

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CHICAGO - Salsa, merengue and reggaeton music blasted from cars driving around Humboldt Park Saturday afternoon as red, white and blue flags with a single star blew in the breeze, some out of car windows and sunroofs and others held by people on the sidewalk.

Near the south end of Humboldt Park, on West Division Street and North California Avenue, people lined up along the road, many wearing Puerto Rican flag shirts or dresses as they watched the 44th Annual Puerto Rican Peoples Day Parade reach its end. People shouted, waved and danced as cars, bicyclists and people passed by, blasting music and waving more flags.

The Puerto Rican Festival started Thursday and runs through Sunday, with live music and carnival rides in a closed off part of the southeast corner of Humboldt Park. On Saturday afternoon, the parade added to the festivities as Puerto Ricans in Chicago displayed their pride and joy in their heritage.

Vendors sold food like savory and sweet empanadas, papas rellenos  potato balls stuffed with seasoned ground beef  tostones, bichos  grilled pork or chicken skewers with onion, bell pepper and tomato  and jugo de parcha or passion fruit juice. Other vendors along the park sold flags, T-shirts, hats, and other accessories, most with the Puerto Rican flag or its colors.

Dasani Saldana, 13, whose family is from Puerto Rico, wrapped a large Puerto Rican flag around her back like a cape as she watched the parade with her friend, her mom and her moms friend. It was her third parade, but the second one she remembers because she was a baby when her mom took her to her first parade, Saldana said.

She said she enjoys the food, hearing her Spanish language and seeing other Puerto Ricans in her community celebrating their culture together at the Puerto Rican Festival and parade.

We can show where we are from, Saldana said. What Puerto Rico is about.

After the parade, on a residential street south of the park, Edras Andujar grilled pork bichos to sell, as people sat around him on lawn chars, talking and drinking. People danced along to merengue waiting for the food to finish cooking.

Jalesa Trotman took her daughter and nieces to the parade. It was her second time going to the festival, a convenient walking distance from her home, she said.

We love it because the community just comes out and you see everybody together and having a good time. Its amazing, Trotman said. Compared to all the bad stuff you hear about Chicago, its like one big unity event for everybody.

Trotmans grandparents are Puerto Rican and Mexican, and while she hasnt been to the island yet, she hopes to visit Puerto Rico someday. Going to the festival, she said feels welcome into her culture, and sees it as an opportunity to teach her daughter about their heritage and background.

She said having her daughter and nieces come out and see and play with other kids that look like them and share their culture is a great way for them to learn about themselves.

I feel like kids learn through experience, she said. So in order for them to understand what they are and who theyre about and what they can possibly do with their life, they have to be exposed to it.

Iris Bellido moved to the U.S. from Puerto Rico when she was 1, and was raised in Humboldt Park. Shes gone to the festival almost every year since she was a child, she said.

Thank God that finally COVID is over and we were able to celebrate it and feel back to normal, she said. And celebrate it the way we usually do. So that was a relief.

As she waited in line to get into the festival, Bellido listed the many things she enjoys about the festival and about her culture  the food, how people dress, the colors, the flag, the music, especially bomba y plena.

Bomba and Plena are traditional music styles that reflect the African heritage of Puerto Rico.

Puerto Ricans are loud people that they love music and they love to dance, Bellido said with a giggle. And...the ladies are known for their big butt and curly hair. And they just love to have fun, listen to music, dance. And eat Puerto Rican food.

Carmen Malave was at the parade with her youngest daughter, Heather Rodriguez and her three granddaughters, Ruby, 7, Naya, 8, and Sonie, 9. All three girls wore Puerto Rican flag dresses.

Malave said she used to bring her own three kids to the parade when they were younger.

Growing up in Humboldt Park, being a single mom, raising three kids, its not easy, she said. But, you know, I did it and even though theyre older Im still there.

Now shes enjoying watching them start their own families and watching them share the culture with their children.

It had been a while since they had participated in the festivities, as they avoided some of the violence in the area, Rodriguez said, as her daughter Ruby hugged her.

This is her first time here, actually, Rodriguez said of her daughter. Thats why I wanted to bring her, just to experience her culture, get a little knowledge of where she comes from. Shes loving it. She cant stop dancing.

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The Illinois Republican Party has successfully avoided being dragged into the hard-right camp at the state level for decades. Those days may be over.

With relatively liberal Republicans Jim Thompson, Jim Edgar and then George Ryan as governor, the state never embraced the sweeping policy changes which emerged from the Reagan Revolution and defined the national party for decades. The Illinois AFL-CIO endorsed Thompsons last reelection bid. The National Abortion Rights Action League endorsed Edgars first gubernatorial run. Ryan campaigned to the left of his 1998 Democratic opponent on guns, abortion and gay rights. They were all from the governing wing of the party, eschewing the rabble on the far right and occasionally batting them off like flies.

While Bruce Rauner defined himself by his rabidly anti-union stances, he was pro-choice enough to sign a bill that provided Medicaid funding for abortions. He never supported Donald Trump, even though the two shared several personality traits.

That distance from the far right helped statewide Republicans win general elections in moderate-to-liberal Illinois, particularly after the state leaned harder Democratic when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992.

But if a recent Sun-Times/WBEZ poll is even close to accurate, those days may finally be behind the party. And, consequently, their statewide fate will likely be sealed without a sea change in Illinois political behavior and demographics.

The new poll has Sen. Darren Bailey trouncing the establishments choice Richard Irvin by 15 points, 32-17. Bailey not only leads among downstate Republicans by 24 points, hes also ahead in the suburbs. Another 27 percent were undecided, with Jesse Sullivan the only other candidate polling in the double digits (11).

This is the second poll in a row showing a Bailey lead. Hard-right activist and radio host Dan Proft released a poll at the beginning of last week showing Bailey with a seven-point margin.

What has happened to Irvin and his $53 million war chest, most of it supplied by the states wealthiest resident, Ken Griffin?

One huge factor is that Gov. Pritzker, the Democratic Governors Association and Darren Bailey, along with his big-money backer Dick Uihlein, have so far managed to turn this race into the same sort of traditional GOP primary like other, more conservative states have seen for years and years, but that Illinois has generally avoided. They have reshaped the playing field and it has become untenable for the more moderate Richard Irvin.

After months of Irvin pounding Darren Bailey for being some sort of closet Democrat, the Democrats, Bailey and Dan Proft spent millions to prove without a shadow of a doubt that Bailey was a solid Trumpster. And by deriding Bailey for being too conservative for Illinois, the Democrats have also apparently managed to so far convince many rank and file Republicans that they arent actually trying to advance Baileys candidacy (even though the Democrats are clearly doing that very thing).

The Irvin campaign claims that the Democrats are on pace to spend $32 million against their guy, although their numbers show that the Dems have only spent $15-plus million so far. Uihlein has contributed $17 million to Bailey and Profts People Who Play by the Rules PAC, more than hes ever done here. Uihleins big spending and the willingness of the Democrats to literally spend whatever it took seems to have caught Irvins team by surprise.

Another factor could be that voters finally caught on to a big Irvin lie. Darren Bailey is one of the most far-right legislators in the state. Once voters saw through Irvins game, everything else he said could be disregarded. And Pritzker has come on strong in recent days with two very hard-hitting ads trumpeting some opposition research on Irvin that clearly left deep marks.

Irvin spent $3.6 million on advertising during the last week of May. By the first week of June, that spending had dropped to less than $800,000. The Irvin campaign allowed all of its downstate broadcast TV ads to expire last week. Theyre now focusing solely on the Chicago media market.

The story from inside is that regular downstate Republicans are already done with Irvin, so they want to focus on city, suburban and exurban Republicans with more Illinois-style Republican messaging. But the party has clearly changed. They have only one narrow path out, and its pretty rocky and steep.

Irvin has taken to repeating a mantra that Pritzker is backing Bailey because he knows Bailey cant win. But by doing so hes essentially making the Democrats own case that Bailey is too conservative for Illinois. And that risks firing up the hardcore base even more.

Rich Miller publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.

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Tuesday, June 14, is Flag Day. We encourage everyone to fly their American flag high, not just on this day but every day.

The American flag has long been a symbol of pride for this country. It has flown over battles and wars fought by generations of soldiers. In the rubble of the Twin Towers following the 9/11 attacks, three firefighters raised Old Glory high an in the moment of anguish, the flag stood resolute and the nation came together as one. At that time there was a resurgence of respect for the flag, as it offered a comfort no other symbol could..

While the Fourth of July is traditionally celebrated as America's birthday, June 14 is a day to celebrate America's flag and all that it stands for. On May 30, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation establishing a national flag day on June 14.

"For me the flag does not express a mere body vague of sentiment. The flag of the United States has not been created by by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of sentiment but of a history, and no man can rightly serve under that flag who has not caught some of the meaning of that history. Experience, ladies and gentlemen, is made by men and women. National experience is the product of those who do the living under that flag. It is their living that has created its significance," President Wilson said in his Flag Day address on June 14, 1915.

But, the story of America's flag starts much earlier.

It has long been held that in June 1776, George Washington commissioned Betsy Ross, a Philadelphia seamstress, to create a flag for the new nation in anticipation of its declaration of independence. However, it was actually New Jersey Congressman Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who designed the first flag while serving on the Continental Navy Board.

On June 14, 1777, John Adams spoke about the flag at a Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia. He said, "Resolved, that the flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation."

There have been 27 official versions of the flag so far; stars have been added to it as states entered the Union. The current version dates to July 4, 1960, when Hawaii became the 50th state.

If it's not outside your home or business already, don't wait until the Fourth of July to raise the flag and if you don't have one, you can find an American flag to hang in your window inside this edition of the Sentinel. Now is the time, raise Old Glory high.

South Platte Sentinel, Sterling, Colo.

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With every new development announced in New Braunfels the question inevitably asked is where the water for it will come from. New Braunfels Utilities will be answering that question and more on Tuesday. File photo
The 14th annual Tri-State Beef Cattle Conference will be held at the Ron Ramsey Regional Ag Center in Blountville on Thursday, Aug. 4.

This years conference will address topics of interest to both stocker and cow-calf producers. The conference will be a one-day event and will include educational sessions covering such topics as stocker health, finished cattle price transparency legislation, beef cattle outlook, knowing where you stand on profitability and antibiotic prescription requirements.

There will once again be virtual tours of operations from each of the three states and then a time of questions and answers with the producers themselves.

A trade show will be open during the conference, with many of the organizations involved in the regions beef industry there for participants to meet and learn more about their products and services.

The conference will begin with registration at 8 a.m. and the program beginning at 9:20 a.m. The trade show will open at 8 a.m. A steak dinner will be served at noon.

The meeting is being sponsored by the University of Tennessee Extension, Virginia Cooperative Extension and North Carolina Cooperative Extension. Registration information and complete details will be available through your county Extension Office.

Registration for the conference is $20 through July 22 and $25 after July 22. Additional information can be obtained from your local Extension office, or on the web at https://www.apsc.vt.edu/extensionandoutreach/beef-extension.html.

The program topics and speakers are as follows: Finished Cattle Price Transparency and Legislation, Charley Martinez  assistant professor and Extension specialist, University of Tennessee; Stocker Cattle Receiving Simulation, John Groves, DVM  Livestock Veterinary Service, Eldon, Missouri; Knowing Where You Stand: 5 Standards to Profitability, David Bilderback  area farm management specialist, University of Tennessee; Market Outlook, James Mitchell  livestock economist, University of Arkansas; Antibiotic Prescription Requirements, Asian Long-Horn Tick and Theileria, John Currin, DVM, DABVP  clinical associate professor, Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine; and Virtual Tours and Panel Discussion with three beef producers from North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Mail your registration, made payable to AFCA to Tri-State Beef Conference, c/o Phil Blevins, 234 W. Valley St., Suite B, Abingdon, VA 24210.

Phil Blevins is an agricultural extension agent in Washington County, Virginia.
DAMASCUS, Va.  Brad Sassers idea of ministering to people may be a little different from most pastors.

Three years ago, Sasser traded his pulpit for a different mission field, one thats among the towering evergreen trees and majestic waterfalls along the footpaths of the Appalachian Trail.

Sasser, 41, is a Christian outdoor chaplain on the trail, based with his wife and two teenage children in Shady Grove, Tennessee, only 15 minutes from the trail town of Damascus.

We serve and bless hikers. Thats what we do, said Sasser, who is a chaplain for the Assemblies of God U.S. Missions, a nonprofit missions organization, reaching people who have never walked into a church.

Sasser and his family reside in a camper in Shady Grove from spring through early fall and return to their home in Louisville, Alabama, for the winter, where they minister to hikers from the Big Cypress National Preserve near the Everglades to Pensacola Beach in Florida.

The chaplain is the author of The Road Less Traveled: 23 Life Lessons from the Trail, a book released in March, which is a compilation of stories from the last three years of his ministry, along with spiritual implications each story carries for our everyday lives.

The book is intended to bring greater awareness to the role of chaplains on the AT, as well as to raise funds for the support of his chaplain program, said Sasser, whose trail name is Shep, short for Shepherd.

Chaplains have been serving hikers on the trail for years.

Sasser knows of four or five other chaplains on the Appalachian Trail, some of whom represent The Appalachian Trail Chaplaincy, a ministry of the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church.

We want to add value to someones trip. That opens doors for us to minister to people in different avenues of their lives. We dont beat people up with the Bible, he said.

The chaplain travels the Appalachian Trail, sometimes on foot and other times in his Ford F-150 with a portable grill, setting up at road crossings, where he provides meals of hamburgers and hot dogs, chips, drinks and other trail paraphernalia like socks and bandages.

He sometimes comes across fruit markets in Pennsylvania and purchases fresh fruits to serve the hikers.

They can easily get a Snickers bar, but they cant find fresh plums, kiwi and watermelons while hiking.

We call the meals trail magic or trail blessings, he said.

Under his ministry Trail Servants, Sasser meets dozens of hikers during each of his trail adventures, hanging out with them and hearing their stories. He also prays with them.

For most people, theres a reason they wake up and decide to hike 2,200 miles on the Appalachian Trail. Theyve lost a husband, theyve lost a wife, theyve lost their jobs or sold their houses. We hear all of these stories, and were able to minister to people with various backgrounds, he said.

Just yesterday, I met a young man who had cared for his mother for the past 10 years until she recently passed away. He wanted to do something for himself, and a friend told him about the AT.

Its the relationships he builds along the trail that best reward the chaplain.

He often drives to other states and tent camps along the trail, which runs from Georgia to Maine. Hes able to build a rapport with some of the same hikers by visiting with them at various spots along the trail in places like Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine.

His family travels with him during the camping trips, seeing new places and meeting new faces along the way.

Its been a total lifestyle change for the family of four. Lane is 15, and Meredith is 13, both of whom are home-schooled by their mother Michelle.

Hes had wild ideas before, but this one felt right, said Michelle about her husband.

It just felt like what were supposed to do, she said, describing the lifestyle as a ministry that sometimes presents challenges and everyday adventures with two teenagers and two dogs.

We experience new things every day. You never know whats going to happen when you wake up in the morning, said their son.

What Ive been put here to do

Becoming a trail chaplain was, perhaps, one of the easiest decisions Sasser had to make.

While a youth pastor at Bethel Assembly of God in Alabama, he hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail, witnessing the spiritual needs of hikers he met on the trail.

Unhappy with the sedentary lifestyle as an accountant stuck in a cubicle all of the time, Sasser took a leap of faith in 2019 and quit his job, sold his house and accepted a full-time, paid position as trail chaplain  an opportunity to share the Gospel and to see breathtaking scenery that most people only dream about.

I took a huge pay cut, but I felt like this is what Ive been put here to do, Sasser said. To do anything other than what youre called to do is a horrible life. Even if youre successful, in my opinion, you fail.

Allowed to set up anywhere on the Appalachian Trail, Sasser and his family checked out different trail towns, agreeing that Damascus was the one that felt like home.

By the Fourth of July, the trail chaplain and his family typically are camping around the Pennsylvania area, but this year, a special project is keeping them close to Damascus.

By the time Trail Days arrives next year, Sasser hopes to have a hiker ministry center constructed on his property in Shady Valley, along with a gazebo for hammock campers and bunk housing for nearly a dozen hikers. In addition, he is building a small cabin where he and his family will reside.

It will be a blessing to have a space devoted to serving hikers in Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee, he said.

Earlier this week, Sasser and his family welcomed students from Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, who made the trip to the region to help with the beginning stages of the hiker ministry center.

Life lessons

Sasser said the chapters in his book The Road Less Traveled are more like life lessons.

His favorite lesson in the book is when youre blown off course.

Citing an example, Sasser told of an occasion when he and his family missed the opportunity to set up their trail blessings at a favorite spot in the Shenandoah National Park. Instead, they were forced to move to a less-than-favorable location that offered no cell service and no bathrooms.

We were all begrudging this spot we had to settle for, said Sasser.

Then, here comes a young woman out of the woods, bawling, crying when she sees us. She was from Germany and very homesick. She had never camped before.

Sasser and his family prayed with and talked to her after giving her fresh fruit and water.

The lesson is if I had been where I wanted to be, I would have missed helping her. Sometimes in life, we get off course, but were actually where God wants us to be, said Sasser.

He later learned that the young woman ended up going on and finishing the hike.

Donations are welcome

It takes thousands of dollars to keep the wheels of the program rolling, said Sasser. In an effort to support his Trail Servants program, the chaplain spends some of his time participating in church revivals and other church events in Alabama, telling audiences about his work and asking for donations.

He already has plans to start another book, which also will help with funding the self-supportive ministry.

Sassers book The Road Less Traveled can be purchased locally at Discover Damascus at 128 E. Laurel Ave. in Damascus or online at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com.

Donations to Sassers work can be made through a giving link at http://giving.ag.org/donate/700001-277397.

Carolyn R. Wilson is a freelance writer in Glade Spring, Virginia. Contact her at citydesk@bristolnews.com.
After an outpouring of community support, Andy Hare will remain the principal of Sullivan East High School.

The Sullivan County Board of Education announced Monday that Hare would not be transferred as initially planned. Instead, he will continue in his current role as principal of Sullivan East High School.

Evelyn Rafalowski, the director of Sullivan County Schools, credited the reversal of the decision to the members of the Sullivan East community, who made their voices heard at last Mondays Sullivan County School Board meeting.

I want to thank the Sullivan East community who attended the June School Board meeting to voice support that Mr. Hare remain as principal at Sullivan East High School, Rafalowski stated in a press release. I listened to each speaker, and I want to commend them on how they conducted themselves and the message they wanted to convey.

When the Sullivan East High community first heard of Principal Hares planned reassignment, they quickly mobilized. Kimberly Callahan set up a petition on Change.org, which has reached 2,731 signatures, requesting that the Sullivan County Board of Education keep Hare in his current position at Sullivan East and denouncing the school systems mismanagement of the situation.

We want them to leave the Patriot Nation alone and let our kids thrive, Callahan wrote in her petition.

Rafalowski indicated Monday she had been working under the impression Hare was interested in a transfer.

From the information I had access to, Mr. Hare had expressed an interest in a transfer, Rafalowski said. As of today, Mr. Hare will remain in his present position of principal at Sullivan East High School.

Hare could not be reached for comment.

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BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn.  The murder trial for Megan Boswell has been postponed until early next year.

During a brief hearing Monday, Sullivan County Criminal Court Judge James Goodwin granted defense attorney Brad Sproles motion to reset the trial date. Sproles basis for the request was a delay in evidence testing from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation lab.

The trial, which was scheduled for September, is now set to begin on Feb. 6, 2023.

The last TBI lab test that we got back requires us to ask for our own expert, Sproles told the judge. We will need time to get that done and have the expert take a look at that evidence.

The defense is seeking expert review of a piece of evidence with fingerprint analysis. Sproles described the evidence as being crucial to the case.

There are no more pending tests at the TBI lab related to the case, the prosecution said Monday.

Boswell will be back in court on Sept. 23 when more motions will be taken up, including one to determine what photographs will be permissible for use during trial. The defenses request for a change of venue will be heard on Dec. 16.

Boswell is accused of murdering her 15-month-old child Evelyn, who was reported missing in February 2020. One week after Evelyn was reported missing, Boswell was charged with false reporting.

On March 6, 2020, Evelyns remains were found in a building on Boswells fathers property in Blountville. In May 2020, Boswell was charged with 11 counts of false reporting and was indicted on additional charges, including murder, in August 2020.

Boswell faces 19 charges including murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated child neglect and abuse of a corpse. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

TBI Special Agent David Gratz testified in April that Boswell had communicated false information since early December 2019, the time when he believes Evelyn was killed.

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Last week, a pair of Maiden High School students filled the roles of bailiff and attorney in court.

A Discovery High School student acted as prosecutor. A Fred T. Foard High School student took on the role of a defense attorney.

The setting was two Teen Court trials at the Newton Justice Center.

The first trial started at 5 p.m. and was led by Judge Robert A. Mullinax Jr. with help from youth volunteers with the Conflict Resolution Center.

The Conflict Resolution Centers Teen Court program seeks to give youth a second chance by giving them a trial that provides a fair consequence for their actions. Consequences are decided by their peers, and the proceedings keep the teens from having to go through juvenile court and ending up with a criminal record.

The goal of Teen Court is not to find whether the youth defendant is guilty or innocent, but it is to give them a fair consequence based on the offense.

I want to congratulate the Catawba County JCPC (Juvenile Crime Prevention Council) on implementing Catawba Countys Teen Court Program. It is a wonderful vehicle to teach young people the importance of preparation and to begin thinking about concepts that are fundamental to our judicial process. The program will also lessen the load on our juvenile justice system, freeing up valuable time and resources for juveniles more appropriately placed in juvenile delinquency court, Mullinax said.

Youth volunteer Christopher Guernsey attends Maiden High School. Guernsey has worked with the Conflict Resolution Center since 2020, and he was a bailiff in Tuesdays trials. Guernsey said he wants to pursue a career in law enforcement, and his involvement with Teen Court has given him the opportunity to build connections with current Catawba County officers.

Sawyer Owens, a senior at Discovery High School, was the prosecutor. She said she joined Teen Court because she is interested in becoming a lawyer after college. She said it has been rewarding to meet defendants and get to know and understand them.

Elif Oguz, from Fred T. Foard High School, was the defense attorney. She said she originally joined Teen Court because she needed community service hours. She said she is glad she joined because her experience led her to consider a degree in political science. She said she eventually plans to go to law school.

Oguz said Teen Court has been rewarding because of the great people she has met and the role she played in giving them a second chance.

Volunteers have to complete 1.5 hours of introductory training at the Catawba County United Way. Those who want to fill the roles of attorneys, bailiff or clerk have to receive an additional four hours of specialized training.

Youth volunteers complete training and participate in mock trials to learn and gain experience in the court setting before they conduct real trials.

It is refreshing watching teens not only be a part of the judicial process, but after thorough deliberations, deliver consequences to their peers as well, District 25 Chief Court Counselor Ronn Abernethy said.

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Fernando Madrid lives by a code. He has many pieces of advice and rules to live by, but above all else, he tries to do everything with love.

Madrid moved to Hickory six years ago from Texas, looking for a fresh start. He rebuilt his life from scratch, he said. As he built his new life, he made an effort be intentional, and put love into everything he did.

I came here with empty pockets, a broken heart and empty stomach, Madrid said.

Madrid got work at El Paso restaurant with no restaurant experience.

When I started, one of the workers said Im not going to last two weeks. He said I was too fat and too slow, Madrid said. And I thought about it and said, You know, hes right.

For six years, he worked hard and got to know customers and the business. Madrid worked his way up, lost weight and became the best server he could be, he said. Through that work, he became a part of the Hickory community, Madrid said.

Eventually, customers started requesting Madrid as their server. His coworkers asked what he was giving to customers to make them like him.

My heart, Madrid said. Youve got to put love into everything you do. If youre not putting your heart into what youre doing, youre not going to be that good.

After many years serving, a stint with COVID-19 pointed him down a new path. Two weeks quarantined in his room led Madrid to leave the restaurant business behind and start a pressure washing business of his own.

Fernandos Exterior Home Care has been officially up and running since the start of the year. Madrid credits friends and supporters for encouraging him as he started his own business.

Madrid spoke about his experiences in a recent interview. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What made you decide to start your pressure washing business?

I got sick (with COVID-19), and all I could do is lay in my room. The 14 days I was in my room, I had no phone, no TV. So Im in my room and Im like, OK, I guess I need to talk to the man upstairs.

I was needing more personal time. I was working every day of the year. I was so focused, but I was starting to feel like I wanted to take time for myself. When I was thinking about what I was doing, I was thinking: I know I can do a lot of things. I have a lot of different skills.

I thought, its been six years since I moved here and I love this town and this county. If I want to start calling this town home, I need to put down roots and start caring. So I was looking for a job where I can offer something to the community.

How do you stay positive?

If you dont have a reason to smile, just think about this: Youre six feet above. Youre alive. If you feel like youre really in a bad mood, nothing can make you smile  just think about that and smile. Life is too sensitive. This past year, with so many people dying, and we couldnt do anything about it. But were still here, and thats the thing to keep in mind all the time.

Why is gravity part of your business motto?

I chose Power, gravity and love. I say it a lot. I believe what goes around comes around. However you want to say it, its gravity.

If you throw blessings to the sky, blessings come back. You throw something not that good, you better run. Its coming back. If you want friends, be friendly. If you do good things, good things happen to you. If you act properly, things happen nicely.

What drives you?

Whatever I do, Im going to do my best and try to be the best one. When you try, every day you try to do your best, who knows? You may become one of the best at what you do. And anything you do, put love in it.

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That first meal of colostrum can truly set the stage for calfhood and beyond. To ensure farms are capitalizing on this opportunity, consultant Bob James of Down Home Heifer Solutions shared his recommendations for optimizing colostrum management.

One priority area is dry cow nutrition. Its not rocket science, but we have to pay attention to it, James said during the Dairy Calf and Heifer Associations annual conference.

Then there is the calving environment. Thats a big one I dont negotiate at all, said James, who is also a professor emeritus from Virginia Tech. If its not right, we are going to have problems we have to deal with. When the maternity area and calf housing dont allow calf caretakers to do their job, the system can be doomed for failure.

If building a new facility, he recommended spending adequate time developing the maternity and newborn calf areas to get them right. Spend the money, he said. Thats a huge thing for the future of the herd.

Next, James emphasized the need to commit to sanitation. Maintain a low standard plate count from the cows teat to the calfs mouth, he said. This cleanliness includes the colostrum itself, the tools used to store and feed it, and the people delivering it. We have to keep things clean, he asserted.

After colostrum collection, James said to either feed the colostrum or cool it as soon as possible to minimize microbial growth. The same goes for pasteurizing colostrum  it needs to be either fed right away or cooled immediately.

Whether or not colostrum should be pasteurized must be a decision made by each farm depending on herd size, facilities, and labor availability. If a closed herd has an excellent vaccination program, a phenomenal herd health program, and no presence of Johnes disease, James said pasteurization may not be necessary. However, for most farms, pasteurization can help reduce the bacterial load. The key is that it must be done right; if pasteurizing is not done correctly, James said it might not be worth it. You need to evaluate the cost benefit in your situation. It is going to be different for everyone, James noted.

Lastly, James encouraged farmers to extend the benefits of colostrum beyond just one feeding. Feed colostrum and transition milk to your youngest calves as long as possible. I want to capture the benefits of that, he said.

Oftentimes, calf care protocols are designed to be easy for people to implement, but James said to focus on the calf instead. What happens in the first 15 to 20 minutes is going to have a phenomenal bearing on the success of raising that calf, he explained. Consider economics, too, but put it into perspective. What we do in the first hours of life has a tremendous impact on health and later performance.

To comment, email your remarks to intel@hoards.com.

(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2022

June 9, 2022
A witness says onlookers urged police to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunmans rampage killed 19 children and two teachers.

Juan Carranza spoke Wednesday as investigators worked to track the massacre that lasted upwards of 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team.

Carranza lives across the street from Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde.

He says women were shouting at officers: Go in there! Go in there! soon after the attack began. But he says the officers didn't enter.

Minutes earlier, Carranza had watched as Salvador Ramos crashed his truck into a ditch outside the school, grabbed his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and shot at two people.

Authorities say once inside the school, Ramos locked the door of a classroom and started shooting. All those who died were in that classroom.

A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation says Border Patrol agents had trouble breaching the classroom door and had to get a staff member to open the room with a key.

KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE TEXAS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SHOOTING:

 Governor: Texas gunman said he was going to shoot up school

 Beto ORourke disrupts news conference on shooting

 Stories are emerging about the lives of the children and teachers killed

IN OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

UVALDE, Texas  The rifle used in the Texas elementary school shooting is known as a DDM4 Rifle. Its modeled after the M4 carbine, the U.S. militarys go-to rifle, according to a blog post by the guns maker, Daniel Defense.

The Daniel Defense rifle can be classified as an AR-15 type. A key difference between the Daniel Defense rifle and the M4 carbine is that the militarys version can switch to fully automatic or fire a three-round burst depending on the model.

AR-15-type rifles can be purchased for as little as $400, but the Daniel Defense rifle is on the high-end of around $2,000 or more. These rifles can also be financed, with customers paying less than $100 a month.

The Daniel Defense rifle is not sold with sights. According to pictures of the shooters guns posted on Instagram, he appears to have purchased a battery-powered holographic sight that typically sells for around $725.

A snipers scope uses magnification to aid in hitting targets from a great distance. Holographic sights are designed to speed up the process of short-range shooting by helping to fix on targets more quickly.

WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the Second Amendment is not absolute as he called for new limitations on guns in the wake of this weeks massacre at a Texas elementary school.

When the amendment was approved, he said, You couldnt own a cannon. You couldnt own certain kinds of weapons. Theres always been limitations.

Biden was speaking at the White House before signing an executive order on policing on the second anniversary of George Floyds death.

He that he would visit Texas with first lady Jill Biden in the coming days to hopefully bring some little comfort to the community.

As a nation, I think we must all be there for them, he said. And we must ask, when it Gods name will we do whats needed to be done."

WASHINGTON  The State Department says the school shooting in Texas and other mass casualty incidents are hurting Americas standing abroad and giving comfort to U.S. rivals and adversaries.

Spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday incidents like these not only cause damage to the U.S. global reputation but also upset and confuse friends and allies who dont understand how they can continue to happen.

The fact is that what happens in this country is magnified on the world stage, Price told reporters a day after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults in the Texas school shooting. And countries around the world, people around the world, are going to fixate on what transpires here  oftentimes out of envy, but again thats when were at our best.

Price said the shootings will have implications for our standing and the U.S. diplomats posted around the world are very mindful of that.

He said that despite the State Departments foreign policy focus, the shootings hit American diplomats as a real punch to the gut.

A Facebook spokesman says messages posted by the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school were private.

Andy Stone says the messages were private one-to-one text messages that were discovered after the terrible tragedy. He says Facebook is cooperating with investigators.

Gov. Greg Abbott described the messages at a news conference where he said the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, used an AR-15 in the attack Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

About 30 minutes before the shooting, Ramos sent three social media messages. According to the governor, Ramos posted that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then that he had shot the woman, and finally that he was going to shoot an elementary school.

UVALDE, Texas  Beto ORourke interrupted a press conference Wednesday about the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, calling the shooting totally predictable when you choose not to do anything.

ORourke was escorted out while members of the crowd yelled at him, with one man shouting profanities at ORourke. The Democrat is challenging against Gov. Greg Abbott in this years election.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said to ORourke: Youre out of line and an embarrassment.

ORourke, as he was being escorted out, turned around, faced the stage, pointed his finger and said: This is on you until you choose to do something different. This will continue to happen. Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed just like they were killed in Uvalde yesterday.

Abbott says the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school warned on social media minutes before the attack that he was going to shoot up a school. He says the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, used an AR-15 in the attack Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

The news conference was attended by several elected Republican officials.

UVALDE, Texas  The governor of Texas says the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school warned on social media minutes before the attack that he was going to shoot up a school.

Gov. Greg Abbott says the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, used an AR-15 in the attack Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

About 30 minutes before the shooting, Ramos made three social media posts. According to the governor, Ramos posted that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then that he had shot the woman, and finally that he was going to shoot an elementary school.

Seventeen people were also injured in the attack.

Abbott says Ramos had no known criminal or mental health history.

Evil swept across Uvalde yesterday, the Republican governor said at a news conference attended by other Republican political officials.

Former President Donald Trump says hell deliver an important address to America at the National Rifle Associations annual convention in Texas on Friday.

The Republican leader posted on his social media network Wednesday that America needs real solutions and real leadership in this moment, not politicians and partisanship.

Houstons Democratic mayor, Sylvester Turner, says some people want the city to cancel the NRA meeting, but he says they cant break the contract.

The greater question, he says, is why politicians still plan to speak there after the shooting in Uvalde. Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz are among other Republicans scheduled to address a leadership forum sponsored by the NRAs lobbying arm.

Its about elected officials at the highest level in our state going and speaking and endorsing those policies and thats wrong," Turner said. "And you cant pray and send condolences on one day and then be going and championing guns on the next.

BERLIN  German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser sharply condemned the Texas school massacre, saying shes shocked by the terrible bloodshed.

It is horrific that so many children and a teacher were killed. And it is terrible how powerful the gun lobby still is in the USA  despite so many terrible crimes, Faeser tweeted on Wednesday.

Germany has a strict weapons law, and its authorities must enforce it decisively, she said.

Above all, we must disarm extremists very consistently. Where necessary, we will further tighten gun laws, Faeser said.

However, Germany is not immune from school attacks. Last week, a school employee was seriously wounded in a crossbow attack at a high school in Bremerhaven and a suspect was detained. Earlier this month, a 16-year-old was detained for allegedly plotting an attack on a secondary school in Essen after police seized weapons and bomb-making materials from his apartment, authorities said.

HARTFORD, Conn.  Schools around the country increased security as a precaution after the killings of 19 children and two teachers in Texas.

In Connecticut, where the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting killed 20 first graders and six educators, state police said they were sending extra troopers to schools Wednesday, although no specific threats had been received.

This assault on the most innocent of our citizens is deeply disturbing and heartbreaking, Connecticut state police Col. Stavros Mellekas said in a statement. At this time, our focus will be on protecting all school populations here in our state.

Schools in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Virginia, Maryland and Florida also were among those increasing security and offering counseling.

WASHINGTON  Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor Wednesday in the aftermath of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting to call out the Republicans decadeslong opposition to gun control legislation.

Maybe the thought of putting yourself in the shoes of these parents instead of in the arms of the NRA might let you wriggle free from the vise-like grip of the NRA to act on even a simple measure, the New York Democrat said. For the sake of these children, these 9-year-olds, these 10-year-olds, these 11-year-olds, these beautiful children, please, damn it.

The Democrats pleas to Republican colleagues reflect a long history of congressional inaction on gun control since a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, nearly a decade ago. Democratic lawmakers have introduced countless proposals that would have required a background check of the gunman in Texas. All failed to pass, mostly due to the filibuster.

Schumer pledged Wednesday to move forward with or without Republican lawmakers.

Instagram has confirmed it's working with law enforcement to review an account that appears to belong to the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers in Texas.

A series of posts appeared on Instagram and TikTok in the days leading up to Tuesdays shooting. One selfie appears to show the shooter in front of a mirror. Another photo shows a gun magazine in hand. And on Friday, the same day law enforcement officials believe Salvador Ramos bought a second rifle, a picture of two AR-style semi-automatic rifles appeared.

Another Instagram user with many more followers was tagged in that post. That user has since removed her profile, but first she shared parts of what appears to be a chilling exchange with Ramos, asking her to share his gun pictures with her more than 10,000 followers.

I barely know you and u tag me in a picture with some guns, she responded, adding, Its just scary.

A response sent from Ramoss account on Tuesday morning just said: Im about to.

Witnesses said the shooting began around 11:30 a.m.

UVALDE, Texas  The man who killed 19 children and two teachers in Texas bought his guns legally days before the attack and soon after his 18th birthday, a law enforcement briefing said.

He bought one AR-style rifle from a federally-licensed gun dealer in the Uvalde area on May 17, according to a state police briefing given to Sen. John Whitmire. The next day, he bought 375 rounds of ammunition, and bought a second rifle on May 20.

Officers recovered one of the rifles from Ramos truck and the other was found in the school, according to the briefing. It says Ramos dropped a backpack with several magazines full of ammunition near the school entrance, and that he was wearing a body-armor style vest but that it had no hardened plates inside.

Actor Matthew McConaughey was born in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers on Tuesday. He called on Americans to act now to control an epidemic of mass shootings.

Once again, we have tragically proven that we are failing to be responsible for the rights our freedoms grant us, McConaughey posted on his Instagram account. We cannot exhale once again, make excuses, and accept these tragic realities as the status quo.

The actor doesnt describe any specific laws or policies he wants adopted. He doesnt mention gun control.

As Americans, Texans, mothers and fathers, its time we re-evaluate, he wrote. We have to rearrange our values and find a common ground.

This is an epidemic we can control, and whichever side of the aisle we may stand on, we all know we can do better.

UVALDE, Texas  Uvalde community members arrived early Wednesday at a civic center where families learned the fate of their loved ones the night before. Volunteers arrived with Bibles and therapy dogs.

A minister says he prayed with families of victims in a hospital waiting room after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers inside an elementary school classroom in Texas.

Uvalde Memorial Hospital said 13 children were taken there. Another hospital reported a 66-year-old woman was in critical condition.

Pastor Doug Swimmer of the nondenominational Potters House Church told ABCs Good Morning America on Wednesday that Uvalde is a tight-knit community where people know their neighbors and see them every day.

Asked what he said to people whose faith may have been shaken by the mass shooting, Swimmer said I know that one thing that we as Texans understand is that God is still God ... he is able to bring comfort in times of distress.

VATICAN CITY  Pope Francis has said he's heartbroken about the massacre at an elementary school in Texas.

Francis spoke Wednesday during his general audience. He said he was praying for the children and adults killed and their families after a gunman opened fire at an elementary school in the heavily Latino town of Uvalde, Texas, killing at least 19 children and two adults before an officer shot and killed the gunman.

UKRAINE  Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that he was deeply saddened by the news of the murder of innocent children in Texas.

Zelenskyy, in a tweet, sent his condolences to the families of the victims, the people of the U.S. and President Joe Biden after a gunman opened fire Tuesday at an elementary school in the heavily Latino town of Uvalde, Texas, killing at least 19 children and two adults before an officer shot and killed the gunman.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
MATTOON  The Lake Land College Board of Trustees may take action toward issuing up to $17 million in bonds for upgrades to the Kluthe Center in Effingham and other capital improvement projects.

The board is scheduled during its meeting at 6 p.m. Monday, June 13, in the Board and Administration Center to vote on a resolution setting out its plans for the bond issue. The board also will vote on slating a public hearing on the bond issue for its meeting at 6 p.m. July 11.

Lake Land President Josh Bullock has said the bond issue will finance renovating Kluthe, which was constructed in the mid 1990s, and constructing an adjacent Rural Development Technology Center workforce training facility. The new building will house the Effingham Regional Career Academy high school vocational program, as well.

Bullock also has said the financing will cover landscaping improvements to the main campus in Mattoon and modifications to the Field House there. He has said the college plans to pay back this bond issue in installments during the course of four years using existing revenue sources and without increasing its property tax level.

Regarding Kluthe, the renovation project for this facility is part of the annual Resource Allocation Management Program (RAMP) Projects request for funding that the board will consider submitting to the Illinois Community College Board.

Lake Land has estimated that the Kluthe renovations would total $5.45 million, with $4.09 million being requested from the state and $1.36 million being provided by the college.

"A comprehensive renovation project would allow the college the opportunity to better configure the designs of our classrooms to accommodate the changes in the learning process that have occurred from the early 1970s to today," the RAMP request states.

The RAMP document also includes funding requests for renovations to the Northwest, Northeast and West classroom buildings on campus. This document is only a request and does not guarantee that state funding will be allocated.

Also regarding Kluthe Center, the board will consider amending its existing master performance contract with the CTS Group to include the installation of a new roof there for $340,879. Greg Nuxoll, vice president for business services, said this work will be done after the ongoing installation of smaller, energy efficient air conditioning units on the roof.

"The renovation of the Kluthe Building in Effingham was one of the projects to be completed with the new bond funds," Nuxoll said. "Rather than wait as much as a few years to put on a new roof as part of the entire building renovation, the college would use a portion of the new bonds to fund the new roof."

In other matters, the board will consider purchasing 30.1 acres of farmland adjacent to the north side of campus for $620,000 from Reggie and Martha Phillips of Charleston.

Bullock has said Lake Land already farms this land as part of its agriculture education program. If purchased, he has said the land will continue to be farmed and will be available in decades to come if the college needs to expand.

Contact Rob Stroud at (217) 238-6861. Follow him on Twitter: @TheRobStroud

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MATTOON  The Mattoon school board is scheduled Tuesday, June 14, to consider selling the former Grant Park School building at 100 Moultrie Ave.

Superintendent Tim Condron said the Grant Park School was constructed in the 1920s by the Mattoon school district, but had not been used as a district school for many years. He said this small, single-story building had hosted a Mattoon Head Start preschool in recent years, but has been vacant since this program moved to the former St. Mary School facility in fall 2019.

Condron said the district initially considered offering some vocational courses at the Grant Park building, but is now set to offer a wide variety of vocational courses at the Leaders Innovating for Tomorrow (LIFT) regional high school career development center that is scheduled to open this fall in a former Consolidated Communications building downtown.

"The district felt it was at a good point to divest of that property," Condron said of the Grant Park building.

A bid opening on June 6 yielded one offer, $15,100 from a Washington Savings Bank trust. Condron said the board is scheduled to vote on this bid during its meeting at 7 p.m. in the unit office, 1701 Charleston Ave.

The Grant Park School property takes up much of the block at the southwest corner of DeWitt Avenue and North First Street. The school gets its name from this neighborhood being home to the Camp Grant recruiting site for the Union Army during the Civil War, a site that was initially led by Ulysses S. Grant as his first command during that war.

Regarding other sites leased from the district, Condron said the district's reassessment of these sites also resulted in the board voting last month to sell the former Mattoon Area Adult Education Center at 1617 Lake Land Boulevard and the former Humboldt School for $450,000 to the current tenant of these facilities Eastern Illinois Area of Special Education (EIASE).

Condron said the Humboldt School was built in 1926 and subsequently expanded, and the district acquired the two story Adult Education Center building in the 1960s from an oil company. He said EIASE in recent years has used the Humboldt School as a Treatment Learning Center and the Adult Education Center as a LIFE Academy campus.

"We feel EIASE has been a strong partner," Condron said, adding that Mattoon students attend that special education provider's schools.

In other matters, Condron said the district has invited APEX Energy's Coles Wind representatives to present information at Tuesday's meeting. This wind farm project would involve land in the northern part of Coles County bounded by Interstate 57 on the west, the Douglas County border on the north, approximately Brocton and Fairgrange on the east, and County Road 1000N on the south.

Condron said Coles Wind has indicated that the project will generate a revenue stream for local school districts, and Mattoon officials want to learn more about this. He said the district also knows that some community members have concerns about the project, so the presentation will provide an opportunity for officials to get more information about the project in general.

Contact Rob Stroud at (217) 238-6861. Follow him on Twitter: @TheRobStroud

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un doubled down on his arms buildup in the face of what he described as an aggravating security environment while outside governments monitor signs of a possibly imminent North Korean nuclear test explosion.

Kims comments during a major three-day political conference that wrapped up Friday didnt include any direct criticism of the United States or rival South Korea amid a prolonged deadlock in nuclear diplomacy.

Kim defended his accelerating weapons development as a rightful exercise of sovereign rights to self-defense and set forth further militant tasks to be pursued by his armed forces and military scientists, according to state-run Korean Central News Agency. The report on Saturday didnt mention any specific goals or plans regarding testing activity, including the detonation of a nuclear device.

The plenary meeting of the ruling Workers Partys Central Committee also reviewed key state affairs, including efforts to slow a COVID-19 outbreak the North first acknowledged last month and progress in economic goals Kim is desperate to keep alive amid strengthened virus restrictions.

(Kim) said the right to self-defense is an issue of defending sovereignty, clarifying once again the partys invariable fighting principle of power for power and head-on contest, KCNA said.

The meeting came amid a provocative streak in missile demonstrations aimed at forcing the United States to accept the idea of North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

North Korea for years has mastered the art of manufacturing diplomatic crises with weapons tests and threats before eventually offering negotiations aimed at extracting concessions.

In a move that may have future foreign policy implications, Kim during the meeting promoted a veteran diplomat with deep experience in handling U.S. affairs as his new foreign minister.

Choe Sun Hui, who is among the Norths most powerful women along with the leaders sister Kim Yo Jong, had a major role in preparing Kim Jong Un for his meetings with former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018 and 2019. Talks between Pyongyang and Washington derailed after the collapse of Kims second meeting with Trump in February 2019, when the Americans rejected North Koreas demands for dropping U.S.-led sanctions in exchange for limited disarmament steps.

Choe replaces Ri Son Gwon, a hard-liner with a military background who during the meeting was announced as Kims new point person on rival South Korea.

North Korea has a history of dialing up pressure on Seoul when it doesnt get what it wants from Washington. While KCNAs report on the meeting didnt include any comments specifically referring to South Korea, it said the participants clarified principles and strategic and tactical orientations to be maintained in the struggle against the enemy and in the field of foreign affairs.

North Korea also announced a partial reshuffle of its military leadership to accommodate an influx of former counterintelligence officials named to key posts, in a possible step by Kim to further strengthen his grip over the military bureaucracy.

South Koreas Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said it isnt immediately clear how North Koreas comments and personnel moves would affect relations with the South. The ministry said in a statement that the South would sternly respond in conjunction with its U.S. ally if provoked by the North.

The ministry added that North Korean state medias lack of specific descriptions about the state of the economy beyond some agricultural and construction campaigns suggests the country is struggling to meet development goals Kim presented in a five-year plan in early 2021.

North Korea has already set an annual record in ballistic launches through the first half of 2022, firing 31 missiles in over 18 different launch events, including its first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles in nearly five years.

Kim may up the ante soon as U.S. and South Korean officials say North Korea has all but finished preparations to detonate a nuclear device at its testing ground in the northeastern town of Punggye-ri. The site had been inactive since hosting the Norths sixth nuclear test in September 2017, when it said it detonated a thermonuclear bomb designed for its ICBMs.

The Norths unusually fast pace in testing activity underscores Kims dual intent to advance his arsenal and pressure the Biden administration over long-stalled nuclear diplomacy, experts say.

While the United States has said it would push for additional sanctions if North Korea conducts another nuclear test, the divisions between permanent members of the U.N. Security Council make the prospects for meaningful punitive measures unclear. Russia and China this year vetoed U.S.-sponsored resolutions that would have increased sanctions, insisting Washington should focus on reviving dialogue.

Kims pressure campaign hasnt been slowed by a COVID-19 outbreak spreading across the largely unvaccinated autocracy of 26 million people.

During the meeting, North Korea maintained a dubious claim that its outbreak was easing despite outside concerns of huge death rates given the countrys broken health care system.

North Korea has restricted movement of people and supplies between regions, but large groups of workers have continued to gather at farms and industrial sites, being driven to shore up an economy decimated by decades of mismanagement, sanctions and pandemic border closures.

Kim during the meeting said the countrys maximum emergency anti-virus campaign of the past month has strengthened the economic sectors ability to cope with the virus.

Kim has rejected U.S. and South Korean offers of vaccines and other help. GAVI, the nonprofit that runs the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program for vaccines, believes North Korea has begun administering doses given by its ally China. But the number of doses and how they were being distributed wasnt known.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Someday, in the not so distant future, I expect my as-yet-to-be-conceived grandchild to climb upon me knee and say, Grandpappy, tell me about the time you lost a significant amount of hearing in your left ear.

And Ill say, Boy, get your finger out of your nose, fetch your ol Grandpappy another one of those IPAs from yonder cooler, and I will enlighten you as to this happenstance.

I bet it was during the Great Robot War of 2035 when you worked as a correspondent for the merged CNN/FOX News media conglomerate reporting on how the humans eventually rose and triumphed over artificial intelligence run amuck during President Musks reign of terror, the youngster will say.

No, it wasnt that, boy.

Then I bet it was during the free-for-all of the 1970s when you were a kid hitching rides to all the big rock-and-roll shows and you once stood too close to the speaker when Foghat hit the opening notes to Slow Ride and after that, for decades, you said what? to nearly every question someone asked you. Am I right, Grandpappy?

What?

FOGHAT! SLOW RIDE!

No, that wasnt it, you little snot-for-brains. It happened in betwixt those. It was a hog-calling contest, what did it. And here is the true story with perhaps some exaggerated details.

****

It was the late spring of 2022. I was a small-town newspaper man who wrote humor columns and raised groundhogs on the side. Those were the good old days before the Great Robot War, when gas was only $5 a gallon, monkeypox was in its early stages and President Joe Biden had not been transformed into a cyborg.

Our little town had successfully staged what many said was the finest Bigfoot festival on the East Coast, cashing in on the thought-to-be mythical creature who would later emerge from the wilderness, hire an attorney and sue the city for copyright infringement.

Bigfoot fun was followed by the Livermush Festival or Liver Mush Festival because no one could seem to figure out if this hellish yet delicious combination of pig liver, hog snouts, cornmeal and spices was one or two words.

Whether it be liver mush or livermush, people back before the Great Robot War loved it as much as they loved Foghats Slow Ride in the 1970s.So, there I was among thousands of pig-liver lovers, taking notes, snapping pictures and shooting videos because I no longer had enough staff to make somebody else do it.

Up came the hog-calling contest. Four or five folks signed up to take the stage between the bluegrass bands sets to give their best hog call or pig squeal for a free T-shirt and $25. I figured this would make good video, maybe even turn me into a YouTube sensation, so I positioned myself at the front of the stage, ready to record the festivities.

Unfortunately, I was right next to a speaker the bluegrass band may have purchased at Foghats garage sale. When a woman who claimed to grow up on a farm in Illinois leaned into the bands multidirectional mic and let loose with a scream heard across two state lines, my left ear felt as if it had been hit with a ball-peen hammer.

Later that evening, it was as if I was listening to the world through cotton balls. The next morning, my ear actually hurt. So, you little whippersnapper, thats how your Grandpappy lost a significant amount of hearing in his left ear. At a goldurned hog-calling contest.

Scott Hollifield is editor/GM of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C., and a humor columnist. Contact him at rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com.
A plan for statewide foster care services, preferred by state health regulators, has reached the Senate floor for a second time after a series of clarifications were approved Wednesday by the Senate Rules and Operations committee.

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed handling foster care services through the revamped House Bill 144, with the plan to debut by Dec. 1, 2023.

The bill has been amended for what bill sponsors believe will resolve confusion about its intent.

However, opponents of HB144 still dont like that counties  such as Forsyth  cannot opt out of the plan if it becomes law.

HB144, titled Medicaid Children and Families Specialty Plan, reached the Senate floor on June 8, only to be sent back to Health Care to address an amendment submitted by Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth.

Krawiec expects a Senate floor vote will be taken on HB144 this week, potentially during Wednesday's floor session that's scheduled to begin at 3:45 p.m.

The plan is opposed by the states six behavioral health managed care organizations and at least 30 counties, including Forsyth, all of which say they want to keep foster care services as close to local as possible.

The six MCOs and the counties say they were told in April by deputy Medicaid secretary Dave Richard that counties can opt out of the plan contained in HB144.

It is a little confusing, Krawiec said in discussing the opt-out language. The opt-out provision will remain in the bill. Individuals have always been allowed to opt out in the bill. That wont change.

The main factor for sending the bill back to committee is to introduce a yet-to-be-filed amendment consisting of technical clarifications from DHHS, Krawiec said.

Whatever is in the best interest of the child has always been allowed, Krawiec said.

Partners said that establishing a new, redundant statewide plan would cost North Carolina taxpayers millions of unnecessary dollars, and it would significantly limit choice and control for all North Carolina counties who care for many of our most vulnerable children.

Confusion?

Richard has said the plan is expected to cover about 31,000 young people statewide through providers already participating in the states Medicaid program.

About 218 young people in Forsyth have received foster care services from its managed care organization, Partners Health Management, since Forsyth joined on Nov. 1.

We want to create a consistency of what (services) would be available for foster children everywhere in the state, Richard said in April. There has been a broad array of support for us to do something different in this plan.

Krawiec said that I dont believe there has been an opportunity to opt out since theres no plan.

I believe there was a misunderstanding of what Dave said, but we have discussed at length. Counties could never opt out as a whole, but it can only be done on an individual basis.

DHHS said in a statement that we hope that all parties can work together to resolve differences so that we can move forward with this plan to meet the specific needs of foster children.

HB144 details

Proposals for the statewide plan would be sought from prepaid health plans operated by health insurers who already have contracts with DHHS.

DHHS would be responsible for determining which services would be offered in the plan and which Medicaid and N.C. Health Choice beneficiaries are eligible to enroll.

The bill says those services are to include: intensive in-home services; multi-systemic therapy; residential treatment; and services in private residential treatment facilities.

The goal is to support family preservation, advance the unification of families, support the permanency goals of children, and support the health of former foster youth.

Key elements of HB144 would require the states six MCOs to cease managing Medicaid services for most foster care children.

The bill also would require area authorities to operate the plan under a contract with DHHS.

Krawiec said that the clarifications being made to HB144 will authorize the (prepaid health plans) to issue request for proposals to move the process forward.

Opposing stance

The primary purpose of the states six behavioral health MCOs is to oversee providers of mental health, substance use disorder, intellectual/developmental disability and traumatic brain injury services.

They also play a role in ensuring that children in foster care are connected to proper health and medical care, along with other services.

The managed care organizations are: Vaya Health (representing 31 counties); Trillium Health Resources (28 counties); Partners (14 counties); Sandhills (11 counties); Eastpointe (10 counties); and Alliance Health (six counties).

Also among Partners counties are Davie, Surry and Yadkin. Forsyth has the largest population of any county served by Partners.

Among Vayas counties are Alamance, Alleghany, Ashe, Stokes, Watauga and Wilkes. Among Sandhills counties are Davidson, Guilford, Randolph and Rockingham.

At least 30 counties, including Forsyth and most counties within the Partners network, have sent letters to state Health Secretary Kody Kinsley outlining their concerns about the proposed state plan.

Partners said it supports North Carolina counties ability to choose what is best for children in their guardianship.

Forsyth County officials have clearly stated that this choice is particularly important, and is critical to their ability to care for children in the child welfare system.

Forsyth response

On April 7, Forsyth commissioners submitted a letter to Kinsley and Richard requesting permission to opt out of the states proposed plan, as permitted under state law. HB144, however, would prohibit counties from opting out.

Richard said in April that legislators across the state have received similar letters from other county boards of commissioners.

The current  proposal would transition many of the youth in Department of Social Services custody outside of Partners management, which would create another change too soon in an already complex system, wrote David Plyler, chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners.

The proposed single statewide plan  will jeopardize, rather than support, the progress we are making and targeted infrastructure we are building with Partners, Plyler said.

In a separate statement, Forsyth said it worked hard to disengage from Cardinal Innovations due to the many challenges we faced over the years.

There was some language added to the proposed bill that would no longer make that possible for all of our youth.

Forsyth officials said that counties are legally responsible for the youth in their custody, and we respectfully request that the county be provided with the ability to choose what is in the best interest of our youth.

We believe the statewide foster care bill will jeopardize, rather than support, the progress we are making with Partners.

Krawiec said that when I met with Forsyth and the MCO and DSS director, I made it clear that it has to be done on an individual basis and could not be done as a whole county.

MCO statewide proposal

In May, the six MCOS unveiled the first glimpse of their statewide foster-care alternative, known as the N.C. Child and Family Improvement Initiative.

Although the organizations have provided few details about their initiative, they expect the immediate improvements resulting from this partnership will be fully functional before the Dec. 1 launch of the N.C. Behavioral Health and Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities tailored plans.

Those counties have said that children in their guardianship would be best served and supported by their current MCO at the local level, the groups said.

One key component is that the organizations would coordinate foster care so that children do not slip through the cracks if they are moved to another county or another part of the state.

Partners chief executive Rhett Melton said Tuesday that building on our long-standing, deep relationships, collaboration and partnership with local DSS teams, county leadership, and other local resources is the best policy solution to meet the needs of children and families engaged in North Carolinas child welfare system.

Forsyth said that needs across the state vary.

Forsyth County believes that our youth can be best served locally through the MCO system, and not by a single organization that would be responsible for serving all foster youth in all 100 counties as proposed in the foster care bill.

We believe the statewide foster care bill will jeopardize, rather than support, the progress we are making with Partners.

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A point

Ill concede that Republicans have a point. A big part of the problem is mental health.

If youre so paranoid you feel you need to be packing at all times, even in church, then you have a mental health problem. If you believe nonsense like the Second Amendment protects the First and you have the right to shoot duly elected politicians you declare tyrants, you have a mental health problem.

If you believe you need a semi-automatic weapon to hunt, you have a mental health problem (and also an aim problem).

If you believe someone should have the right to own a weapon who doesnt have to prove the same competence with that weapon they do with a car, you have a mental health problem.

So yes, we have an issue with mental health, and should along with other things keep guns out of the hands of people with mental health problems.

Keith Stone

Winston-Salem

The ultimate price

I would like to say thank you to the Journal for printing, not one but two stories on the 78th anniversary of D-Day (WWII vets honored a day before D-Day anniversary, June 6, and Joy, sadness mark Normandys D-Day anniversary, June 7). However, our president did not even acknowledge this pivotal date in U.S. history until 8:45 p.m. on the evening of June 6 when he posted on social media. By then it was already June 7 in Normandy, France. He also didnt acknowledge this date at all last year.

I find this very appalling. This is a man who ends all his speeches with God protect our troops, but he fails to acknowledge the biggest military operation in the history of the United States. These brave young men saved the world from tyranny and fascism and, because of them, we continue to enjoy the freedoms we have today.

Every president since that day has acknowledged the anniversary and five sitting presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, have gone to Normandy to attend ceremonies honoring the anniversary.

Biden is supposed to be commander in chief of the armed forces but this sends a message that he really doesnt care about our troops.

Fortunately, I never knew anyone who fought in that invasion, but I feel sad for those who had loved ones who did, especially the ones who paid the ultimate price. Im sorry we have a president who doesnt recognize this. Always remember June 6, 1944.

Donna Bragg

Winston-Salem

Indoctrination

Id like to make this clear to Second Amendment absolutists like Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert, who says we can have no restrictions on guns, but if we force children to pray in schools, that will fix the problem.

The First Amendment outlaws that. Absolutely. Schools are not your Christian indoctrination centers. Youll have to groom them somewhere else.

Christian nationalists should not politicize these deaths to push their religious agenda.

Curtis Cannon

Winston-Salem

The problem

Guns are not the problem, OK? People are the problem, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville said Wednesday. Weve had guns forever. And were going to continue to have guns.

Weve also had people forever.

Other countries have had people forever and dont go around killing each other with guns like Americans do because they dont have access to guns like Americans do.

If the problem is people with guns, you cant do away with the people, so limit their access to guns. Why is this so hard for Republican legislators to see?

Theyre beholden to the NRA. Theyre still beholden to former President Trump.

Theyre beholden to everyone but the people they represent.

Its the guns. You have to be willfully blind not to see it. Its the easy access to guns. Theres no better example of moral corruption in America today than Republicans willingness to make guns available to murderers.

Jeanette Willingham

Winston-Salem
Police on Monday identified the 24-year-old Lincoln man who died Saturday night after crashing his motorcycle into a Jeep on 84th Street.

Keith Doering had been riding his 2015 Yamaha YZFR6 motorcycle north on 84th Street around 9:50 p.m. Saturday when a southbound Jeep turned left onto Augusta Drive, crossing into Doering's path, the police said in a news release.

Doering, who was wearing a helmet, struck the Jeep and died at the scene, the police department said.

"We would like to extend our condolences to the family and friends of Keith," said the police, who did not identify the Jeep's driver. "We would also ask the public to respect their privacy as they grieve the loss of their loved one."

Lincoln Police Capt. Todd Kocian said it's still unclear if speed, alcohol or drugs played a role in the crash. He declined to identify the Jeep's driver, who he said is a 16-year-old girl.

No citations have been issued in the crash. An investigation is ongoing.

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

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A 19-year-old Lincoln woman is in jail and a group of juveniles are being questioned after a jogger was robbed of her iPhone and headphones in central Lincoln early Friday morning, according to police.

Lincoln Police Sgt. Chris Vollmer said the jogger, a 23-year-old woman, was running near 33rd and Apple streets around 6:30 a.m. Friday when she was struck on the head, knocked to the ground and robbed of her phone and Beats headphones, worth about $1,075.

Vollmer said the 23-year-old flagged down a passerby and reported the incident to police, who responded to a hit-and-run crash moments later nearby.

Witnesses told police that a silver Jeep  seen fleeing the robbery scene  crashed into a tree near 33rd and Q streets before several occupants fled on foot, Vollmer said.

Nearby, officers found Avery Belgum, who Vollmer said was in possession of the stolen phone and the keys to the Jeep. She was arrested on suspicion of robbery.

Police haven't recovered the stolen headphones, Vollmer said, but are still investigating other occupants who police say fled the Jeep. None have been arrested or charged.

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Police are investigating after several reports of gunfire in north Lincoln Sunday night led officers to a 22-year-old victim with a gunshot wound to the leg, according to authorities.

Officers responded shortly before 9 p.m. to the area near North Ninth Street and Nance Avenue, just north of Salt Creek, where they found the 22-year-old, who refused treatment at the scene and traveled by private car to a local hospital, Lincoln Police Sgt. Chris Vollmer said.

The victim was treated for non-life-threatening injures, Vollmer said.

Police found a single 9 mm shell casing at the scene, he said. Officers did not recover a weapon.

Vollmer said multiple callers indicated gunfire followed a verbal altercation in the area. An investigation into the shooting is ongoing.

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A judge has dismissed the lawsuit filed by a former University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student and lecturer against the university alleging administrators violated her rights by removing her from teaching duties for participating in a political protest.

Asked about the ruling, Courtney Lawton said Friday: "I was denied justice and I still believe that my First Amendment right to freedom of expression was violated."

She does not intend to appeal.

In court, her attorney, Vince Powers, argued he had alleged "copious and detailed facts" supporting her federal constitutional claims.

But in a 46-page decision this week, U.S. District Judge Brian Buescher said sovereign immunity barred all the claims against the Board of Regents, as well as UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green and then-NU President Hank Bounds, and said that Lawton hadn't alleged Bounds' personal involvement in any alleged federal constitutional violations.

"She has, at most, alleged facts consistent with the remaining individual defendants (Green's) liability but well short of the line between possibility and plausibility," the judge wrote.

On Aug. 25, 2017, Lawton was just 11 days into her appointment as a part-time English lecturer when she was filmed protesting Turning Point USA, a student organization with ties to then-President Donald Trump, at the Nebraska Union, a designated "free speech zone" on campus.

The video went viral and led to backlash from conservatives, who pointed to it as evidence the university was a hostile place for conservative students. In a tweet, Bounds called Lawton's behavior "unprofessional."

UNL removed Lawton from teaching, citing security concerns, after receiving a number of angry letters and emails critical of Lawton.

She said she was promised she would return to lecturing in the spring. But on Sept. 5, 2017, a spokesperson for the board released a statement saying Lawton's behavior had not met their "expectations for civility."

She was placed on probation the next day and met with Green on Oct. 24, 2017, to discuss the issue.

A week later, three state senators  Steve Erdman of Bayard, Steve Halloran of Hastings and Tom Brewer of Gordon  wrote an editorial criticizing UNL for being hostile to conservative students.

Green also published an editorial on Nov. 17, 2017, indicating Lawton would no longer be allowed to teach at UNL "because of this inappropriate behavior."

On the same day, Bounds wrote to Gov. Pete Ricketts and then-Speaker Jim Scheer informing them Lawton would no longer be teaching at UNL.

Powers said it amounted to termination with no due process, retaliation for asserting her right to free speech.

But Buescher said nowhere in Lawton's complaint does she allege "she was in fact terminated rather than simply removed from teaching duties, that she was not given other duties instead of teaching, or that she was not paid the salary specified in her contract."

Or that she had requested a hearing.

Nathan Clark, an attorney for UNL, said she didn't lose her job but was reassigned different, non-teaching duties.

And, he said, there was a "gaping hole" in her First Amendment claim: the substance of her conduct on Aug. 25, 2017. The video hadn't been attached to the complaint.

Without it, the judge said he could glean little about her allegedly protected speech so her claims must be dismissed.

In an email Friday, Lawton said it was clear to her that Halloran, Brewer, Erdman and Gov. Pete Ricketts believe that the government "can and should regulate speech by telling employers to fire workers based on the employees political speech."

She called it government overreach into employer-employee relationships.

"This decision to dismiss my suit affirms that the government is allowed to regulate political speech by jeopardizing the livelihoods of those people who express political opinions contrary to its perspectives," she said.

The action against Lawton led the American Association of University Professors to censure UNL for violating her academic freedom and right to due process in June 2018.

The AAUP found university administrators caved to political pressure in taking action against Lawton; administrators said removing Lawton was done to prevent "continued harm" and "ongoing disruption to the university."

In November, the AAUP lifted the censure, following the board of regents voting to amend its bylaws to require an adjudicative hearing prior to imposing a terminal suspension as AAUP standards require.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSpilger

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The phone rang last week at the Busy Bones Butcher shop in Darr, midway between Lexington and Cozad.

It was a stranger, with a strange request.

Any problem with us parking our covered wagon at your place and camping out there tonight?

Kent Guthard didnt hesitate. I said, Nope, not at all. I told them to treat it like they own it.

A little while later, a pair of mules pulling a wagon came clop, clop clopping down the shoulder of U.S. 30. Joe and Marcyne Blythe had been making Nebraska headlines since mid-May, but Guthard had no idea who they were, or why the couples slow-motion mission across the Plains was so important to them.

Now hes following along, keeping daily track of their progress.

It was all kind of awesome to see, he said. Its neat to see people chase their dream.

* * *

Joe Blythes ancestors kept journals. About their lives in Nauvoo, Illinois, among thousands of other Mormons. And about their exodus in 1837, when they followed Brigham Young to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.

Forty of his relatives started the journey; maybe 30 survived it and made it to Utah.

In his home south of Salt Lake City, Blythe read their accounts and thought about their hardships. What they had to endure to escape religious persecution, and what that meant for him, 170 years later.

Some of them died for what I enjoy, for me being in Utah, for religious freedoms, stuff like that. I knew I couldnt help my ancestors out, but I could honor them.

The idea hit him five years ago. He was going to retrace their journey, starting in Illinois and finishing in Utah, 175 years to the day after the original Latter-day Saints landed there.

But he didnt have a wagon. Hed never driven a team. And he didnt know what to expect once he hit the Mormon Trail.

You cant just go ask your buddy, How many miles can you go in a day? How do I get hay? How do I get water? Theres a lot that goes into it, and youre just guessing until youve done it.

Still, he found old Studebaker wagon running gear, the foundation for a wagon, and had the steel rims replaced with more forgiving rubber. Hed read that two of his ancestors couldnt afford to buy wagons, so theyd built their own. Blythe, an engineer whose company builds bridges around the West, spent two years of his spare time designing and assembling his own, too.

He bought a pair of mules  Doc and Roxy  in Mississippi and, on his way home, stopped at a draft horse ranch in Colorado for a quick lesson in hitching up and handling a team.

Hes since learned more from the animals. Theyre patient with me, and they taught me how to drive them.

They made the first leg of their journey in September, 315 miles from Nauvoo to the Mormons Winter Quarters in what is now the Florence neighborhood of Omaha.

Thousands of Latter-day Saints spent the winter of 1873-1874 there, and hundreds died of scurvy, malaria and cholera and other ailments, including a half-dozen of Blythes relatives.

They returned to Nebraska in mid-May for the 1,000-mile stretch to Salt Lake City. Blythe was happy to be back behind his team, and on the wagon he named the Trail Dreamer.

Last year when we stopped, I wanted to keep going. This year, we still have a lot of miles to go, but Im still anxious to keep going.

* * *

He feels closer to his ancestors now, following their path 175 years later. He knows they left tangible evidence, carving their names in Chimney Rock, and Independence Rock in Wyoming.

He knows hell roll past the unmarked graves of relatives who didnt make it. The journals he read only contain vague descriptions of where his people are buried; so many days journey after crossing the Elkhorn, for example, or how long after passing Chimney Rock.

He also knows he has it so much easier than his predecessors, despite not always knowing where theyre going to camp that night. I dont have to worry about marauders, or getting stampeded by a buffalo herd, or trying to cross a stream.

And his ancestors didnt have the support he has.

Some of it, he planned: His longtime friend and former co-worker, Bret Durrand, saddles up as the outrider, staying ahead of the wagon and watching for trouble. Other friends are following in a pickup, pulling a horse trailer with feed and water.

But much of it was a surprise.

They didnt expect so much attention and generosity, so many strangers offering to feed them  pulling over on the highway to give them bags of apples or drinks or doughnuts  or granting them safe places to camp and warm meals.

They try to find rodeo grounds or city parks for their overnights, but theyre often reliant on cold calls, sending their support vehicle ahead to find a friendly farm or business.

Sometimes, its a knock on a door and they say, We have a covered wagon coming; can we spend the night on your property? For the most part, theyre excited for us to be there.

Like Guthard, the Busy Bones Butcher, who sent the Blythes and their crew down the road with hard tack, smoked string cheese and bones for their dogs.

Or the young farm family near the North Platte airport, who insisted they park their wagon and horse trailer in their shed to keep dry, and who refueled them the next morning with a breakfast of venison steak, eggs and juice.

At first, we were mainly worried about logistics. Within about two days of our launch, this really came to be about meeting the people.

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

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Arica Bagley never expected to be chosen for the Maxim Cover Girl competition.

Im a mom with two kids from Lincoln, Nebraska, she said.

And shes 31.

How to vote Voting for the Maxim Cover competition has started, with contestants eliminated after each weekly round. The grand prize winner will be named in August. To vote for Arica, go to maximcovergirl.com/2022/arica-bagley.

Thats another reason I was so surprised, she said.

But the hair stylist, who also is studying film at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was plucked from thousands of submissions and now needs votes to keep her in the competition.

The winner among the chosen contestants earns $25,000 plus a cover spot with the international mens magazine, which has a monthly circulation worldwide of around 9 million. Voting started Monday.

Bagley applied on a whim two months ago after seeing something about the photo contest on Instagram.

She said Maxim personnel liked how funny and personable she is, traits she said she has learned from living in Lincoln for the past five years.

Thats just how Nebraskans are, she said.

Another thing that set her apart, she thinks, was her answer to the question, What would be your dream photo shoot?

Bagley said a lot of women answered that they wanted their pictures on yachts, the stage or a fancy island.

Should she win, Bagley has arranged to have her cover photo taken with Kaelynn Partlow, who has appeared on the television show Love on the Spectrum. The photo session will be in France.

Partlow is an advocate for kids with autism. Bagley is an advocate for abused children.

Just imagine two powerhouse women on the cover of Maxim, one advocates for child abuse and the other advocates for autistic children, she said. Itd be an amazing article and a powerful cover.

The prize money also would be donated, she said, instead of buying an expensive purse or car. The Child Advocacy Center and Make-a-Wish Nebraska would be her target organizations.

Bagley said she was abused as a child and felt that she had no voice or power. She was suicidal for years but started trauma therapy after moving from Utah to Lincoln. Now, shes happy. She loves school and the freedom she has found here.

She hadnt planned to tell anyone she was chosen for the contest but then realized what a stage the cover could be for someone wanting to help abused kids like herself and for autistic children.

I dont desire to be famous or have a lot of money, she said. Its more important to give back.

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Post-birth risks

If people are forced to carry unwanted or risky pregnancies to term, they face severe injury or death during or shortly after birth. Hundreds of women in Wisconsin experience one or more severe maternal morbidities  which the Wisconsin Department of Health Services calls near misses with death  each year. At least 25 women die annually during or within one year of pregnancy, DHS reports.

For black women, the risks are far higher. Compared with their white counterparts, non-Hispanic black women in Wisconsin are five times more likely to die during or shortly after pregnancy.

Adds Dr. Abigail Cutler: I think the laws need to make room and trust physicians, with all their medical training and expertise, to have their patients best interests at heart, and to know what the appropriate interventions are to ensure that a patient gets the care that they need.
Republican lawmakers will allow regulations Democratic Gov. Tony Evers administration developed to control pollution from toxic forever chemicals to take effect, according to a spokesperson for the Legislatures rules committee.

The rules limit the amount of certain compounds known as PFAS allowed in surface waters and drinking water.

The Legislatures Republican-controlled Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules has no objections to the regulations and will allow the Department of Natural Resources to implement them, Mike Mikalsen, an aide to committee co-chair Sen. Steve Nass, told The Associated Press.

Mikalsen warned that the committee could suspend the standards if the department doesnt lawfully implement them, but the decision marks a rare Republican concession to Evers.

Since taking office in 2019, Evers has been working to limit contamination from the compounds, which have been linked to cancer and other illnesses.

Used in firefighting foam, packaging and stain-resistant products, PFAS have contaminated groundwater in communities including Madison, Marinette and Peshtigo, Marshfield, Wausau and the La Crosse County town of Campbell. Public health officials have warned people to limit consumption of fish from contaminated waters, including Black Earth Creek, and the Yahara River and three of its five lakes.

The DNR began crafting PFAS regulations in 2019 and ultimately recommended limits for two compounds  PFOS and PFOA  in ground, surface and drinking water to the agencys policy board.

Industry groups including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce opposed the regulations, which they said would be too costly.

The DNR estimated it would have cost the states businesses and local governments about $6 million per year to comply with the new regulations, while Wisconsin residents could save hundreds of millions of dollars each year in avoided health care costs.

The Natural Resources Board in February approved the surface water standards but the boards conservative majority rejected limits for groundwater, the source of drinking water for about two-thirds of Wisconsin residents.

The board also adopted weakened limits for public drinking water supplies.

Tony Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, called the legislative approval a positive development and a necessary step to protecting public health.

While we are glad to see these rules move forward, we are mindful that Wisconsinites whose water comes from private wells also deserve the same protections under our states groundwater law, he said.

Tests have found some level of PFAS in all of Madisons 23 municipal wells, though none above the proposed limit. The city has taken one well offline as a precautionary measure while exploring treatment options.

Earlier this year a Waukesha County judge ruled the DNR cannot require cleanup of PFAS contamination under the states spills law without first going through the 2-year rule-making process for each contaminant.

However, that ruling remains on hold while under appeal. The DNR said Friday that it will continue providing bottled water to residents with contaminated wells.

State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, has sued Johnson Controls for contaminating waters around Marinette, where a subsidiary manufactured firefighting foam with PFAS.

Dane County has sued dozens of manufacturers in an effort to help pay for substantial cleanup costs related to contamination at the Madison airport.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Russian President Vladimir Putins attack on Ukraine has made the West  in this context, NATO and the European Union  more united than its been in a long time. Unfortunately, that cohesion is now at risk, as the Russian invasion turns into a grinding war of attrition. To deter Putin from escalating and to keep him from winning, Western leaders must focus on the two weakest links in their alliance: Turkey and Hungary.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey  a member of NATO but not the EU  says he will block the accession of Sweden and Finland to the transatlantic alliance unless hes given a series of unrelated concessions. If he actually follows through, he would not only leave both countries more vulnerable to Russian aggression, but also render NATO weaker than it should be in defending its Baltic members. Gratuitously, Erdogan is also increasing tensions with Greece, another NATO ally.

Then theres Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. For weeks, hes been holding up a sanctions package that would embargo Russian oil. EU leaders last week thought they had finally reached a compromise: Only Russian oil delivered by ship would be banned, whereas the sort arriving via pipelines would not. That would give landlocked Hungary, as well as the Czech Republic and Slovakia, more time to adjust their energy infrastructure.

In a shocking breach of decorum, Orban then reneged on even that compromise. Bizarrely, he also insisted on keeping the Russian Orthodox Churchs Patriarch Kirill  a staunch backer of Putin and the war  off the new sanctions list. The EU gave in to this demand, too, to get the package passed.

The whole ordeal was an embarrassment, and a rare cause for Putin to be optimistic. In every way he can, Orban is signaling that hes not fully behind the Wests joint effort to support Ukraine and undermine Russia  in effect, that hes not a reliable ally.

So what can be done? A basic design flaw shared by both the EU and NATO is that neither has a mechanism to eject errant members. That means both will need to get creative in reining in rogue leaders.

In Erdogans case, acceding to blackmail shouldnt be an option. The U.S. should announce that future arms sales to Turkey will be halted until it comes around on the new accessions. NATO should threaten to suspend Turkish involvement in military planning and exercises. If the situation escalates, revisiting the alliances rules to allow for expulsions should be on the table.

As for Orban, the EU will need to adopt a similarly hard line. In 2018, the bloc triggered its treatys Article 7 against Hungary in a censure of its subversion of democratic institutions, launching a process that could in theory strip Budapest of its voting rights in Brussels. In practice, the measure has been toothless, because it requires unanimous support. Poland, whose populist government is also the target of an Article 7 proceeding, always had Hungarys back.

These days, however, Poland is among the member states that are most hawkishly anti-Putin. And Warsaw is horrified by Orbans obstructionism. Belatedly, the Poles have come to understand that a strong EU is in their national interest, not against it. They should therefore persuade Orban to join the effort to weaken Putins war machine and strengthen Ukraine. If he doesnt, the other 26 EU countries  including Poland  should strip Hungary of its votes.

Holding together the Western alliance has never been easy. Amid a worsening war on its doorstep, it has rarely seemed more necessary. The time for populist political games is over.

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1. Yes. Tying up the courts and filling jails over small amounts of pot is unacceptable.

2. Yes. As long as there are exceptions for connection to felony charges, its a good idea.

3. No. Taking away law enforcements options is wrong. Police should have some discretion.

4. No. An ordinance that conflicts with state law is wrong and shouldnt be adopted.

5. Unsure. It seems to make sense in some ways, but it could prove problematic.

Vote

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KEARNEY  Zuri Hain said her father rarely talks about it, bit he lost a friend in the mass shooting at Colombine High School in Denver.

Im here to make sure we care about individual lives, Hain said.

She was among about 30 protesters from the group Kearney Indivisible who took their issue of gun safety to Kearneys streets on Saturday, and they were among hundreds of groups across the nation shouting loudly, Enough is enough.

Two heavily armed students who killed 15 at Colombine on April 20, 1999 in one of the bloodiest of school shootings. The rampage at Robb Middle School in Uvalde two weeks ago claimed 19 lives and the supermarket attack just a few days before the Texas shooting claimed 10 lives at a New York supermarket.

Im here to raise awareness of the problem, said Will Stoutemire, a University of Nebraska at Kearney history professor who said Colombine has colored his thoughts about gun violence. He said its a tragedy and something must be done to halt it.

This protest is more about being a collective voice. he said.

As Sandy Hallet of Kearney made a poster with her anti-gun violence message, she said, Im fed up withe the unnecessary loss of life by a gun. When a child passes, its much more striking.

Thousands of protesters rallied across the nation on Saturday in separate demonstrations around the country as part of a renewed push for nationwide gun control. Motivated by the fresh surge in mass shootings, protesters said lawmakers must acknowledge shifting public opinion and finally enact reforms.

Cale Johnson, who spoke at the rally in Kearney, said assault rifle-style guns arent designed for sport but for killing people.

Johnson expects to leave Kearney for college next year, but he wonders if his dream will come true or end in a nightmare.

Politicians are being bought out. Money comes first and American lives come second, Johnson said. We are tired of the unfulfilled promises and the thought and prayers. We must proclaim today that enough is enough.
A mother and daughter have died from injuries from one-car crash last Friday night at State Highway 64 in the township of Cleveland.

At 8:32 p.m. June 10, the Chippewa County Sheriffs Office received a report of the crash east of 210th Avenue.

The Sherriffs Office said that the vehicle was reported to be upside down and a group responding pulled the woman out of the water and began life saving measures, according to a news release.

A child was trapped inside the vehicle but the informant and others pulled her out of the submerged vehicle. They immediately began life saving measures. Upon the arrival of first responders, life saving measures were continued.

The woman, identified as 48-year-old Sara Lemay, died from her injures. Her daughter, Tara M Lemay, 11, was flown by Lifelink to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. The Sheriffs Office reported Monday afternoon that Tara has died.

The news release stated that Lemay was driving when she lost control of the car, causing it to enter a ditch and overturn into the water.

The crash remains under investigation by the Chippewa County Sheriffs Office.

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Chaseburg will celebrate its centennial in the village park, Friday and Saturday, June 17 and 18.

The celebration, which is being organized by Friends of Chaseburg, kicks off Friday with a fish fry starting at 5 p.m. and ending when all of the food is served. In addition, there is registration and packet pickup for the 10th annual and final Kys 3.1 Run  Remembering Kylie  A 5K Scholarship Run/Walk at the Chaseburg Village Hall from 5 to 7 p.m.

Live music on Friday includes Juice Neck at 5:30 p.m. and Craig Olson Project at 8 p.m.

Saturdays festivities begin with Kys Run/Walk at 9 a.m.; day-of registration is from 7:30 to 8:15 a.m.

The Chaseburg Centennial Bags Tourney is also planned for Saturday. Signup starts at noon, and the bags fly at 1 p.m. The tournament will feature two-person teams; bring your own partner. There is a $10 per person entry fee. There is $1,000 purse.

A program will begin at 12:30 p.m. and feature a presentation of more than 100 photos, said Eric Ostrem, one of the centennial celebration organizers.

Thats going to be neat, Ostrem said. It will be put on a zip drive and will be for sale during the celebration. He said if the zip drives sell out, names will be taken and more will be ordered.

There will also be an open house at the old schoolhouse, 102 Swain St., from 1 to 4 p.m. The public is invited to view a piece of Chaseburgs history, then and now. People are welcome to share remembrances, photos and memorabilia from their school days. Light refreshments will be served in the yard, weather permitting.

If anyone has photos, school items or memories to display, they may contact Laura Johnson at lgjson@mwt.net, 608-792-6481 or Kathy Trussoni at kathytrussoni@gmail.com, 608-483-2144.

Saturdays live music includes Tom Conrad from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Moniker from 1 to 3 p.m., Ontourage from 4 to 6:30 p.m. and the Corey Wise Band at 7:30 p.m. Admission entry wristband for the music is $5.

Food trucks, refreshments and raffles will be on the grounds all day. Fireworks will launch at dusk. Absolutely no pets or carry-ins allowed.

We want to celebrate Chaseburg and its incorporation as a village 100 year ago, and the fact we are still here, Ostrem said.

A bit of history

According to the book, History of Vernon County, Wisconsin, 1884, Chaseburg is located on section 28, on the east side of Coon river. It was laid out and platted by George Swain and George Lyttle on June 4, 1866, and was named in honor of Henry Chase, who had been instrumental in founding the village. The original plat comprised twelve blocks or squares, and the first dwelling home was erected by George Swain.

History of Vernon County notes: The first saw mill was built and put in running order by Henry Chase, in 1862.

Mr. Chase and George Little [sic] erected the first flouring mill, in 1863.

The first store was opened, in 1863, by Hon. J.W. Hoyt, and he now enjoys the largest trade in the village. Joseph W. Hoyt is also postmaster of Chaseburg, and owns 190 acres of land in this town. He was chairman of the board of Hamburg town for five years, also chairman of the county board for two years. In 1870-71, he represented the county of Vernon in the State Legislature

History of Vernon County, Wisconsin also notes: A prominent man of this village was Henry Chase, who came from Vermont in 1862, and after a short stay in Dane county, came to this place, and was instrumental in building up the village which bears his name. He was elected a member of the State Assembly in 1868. He, in company with George A. Lyttle, owned the Coon River Mills at this point. Mr. Chase died in March 1872, leaving a wife and three children. After his death, Mr. Lyttle took Mr. Chases interest in the mill.

Chaseburg was officially incorporated in 1922. According to the Vernon County Censor dated June 14, 1922, The matter of incorporation of the Village of Chaseburg was heard before the court today, and a court order signed legalizing the move providing that the action is ratified by the vote of the people of the village. No one appeared in opposition.

Village firsts

History of Vernon County, Wisconsin notes the following firsts in the village:

The first sermon was preached in 1863 by the Rev. H.A. Stub in Henry Chases house.

The first blacksmith shop was built in 1864 by Mr. Cogswell.

The first school was taught in the village schoolhouse by Miss Spence in 1865.

The first birth was Nellie, the daughter of George Swain and his wife.

The first hotel was built by George W. Swain.

The first shoemaker was Mathias Peterson.

The first physician was Dr. Rusk.

Angela Cina can be reached at angie.cina@lee.net.

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Coon Valleys police chief, Philip Welch, has announced he is an independent candidate for the Office of Sheriff in Vernon County.

Im a servant leader with the character and work ethic necessary for this Office in our current culture, Welch said in a press release. I have served the people of Vernon County wholeheartedly in various capacities since 2008, and as Sheriff I will continue to do so with diligence, fortitude, and humility.

Welch began his criminal justice career in Anoka County, Minnesota, at the Juvenile Detention Center and then at the adult work release jail facility. After he returned to his home state of Wisconsin, he started working for the Vernon County Sheriffs Office in 2008 as a Jail Officer for three years.

I then worked in the patrol division for four years, being specially trained as a civil process deputy and humane officer, Welch said. In 2015, I was appointed Chief of Police in the Village of Ontario in Vernon County. I served there three years before moving to the Coon Valley Police Department in 2018, where I am currently serving as the Police Chief. I have maintained employment as a part-time patrol deputy with the Vernon County Sheriffs Office throughout this time.

As Sheriff, I will focus not only on responding to criminal behavior, but also working to prevent it through education and proactive community engagement, Welch said. I see a need to battle drug trends in more comprehensive ways, since drug use drives so much other crime, and I support increasing inter-agency collaboration. I would like to utilize technology more in solving and preventing crime. I support law enforcement connection with our schools, both for protection and for proactive positive relationships. The jail is a place where positive programming could help in rehabilitation efforts. I believe strongly in a leadership style of personally connecting with and supporting employees in individual and corporate growth, knowing the culture in which we work is very important to our service to the community.

Assets I would bring to the Office of Sheriff include: a diligent, thorough work ethic; strong communication skills; Christian character and morals that reflect the basis on which our nation was founded; a proven track record of standing on essential positions in the face of opposition; an emphasis on protecting the Constitution and promoting civic engagement; and the experience of over seven years at the helm of two law enforcement agencies.

I enjoy my profession in this rural, southwest Wisconsin region, and I am excited about the prospect of serving the citizens of our area in a greater capacity. I look forward to your vote at the Nov. 8 election.

Welch is the fourth person to announce their candidacy to replace Vernon County Sheriff John Spears who is retiring. The other candidates are Roy Torgerson, Janice Turben and Scott Bjerkos.

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Sisters from Westby made history Saturday night when they were crowned 2022 Vernon County Fairest of the Fair and Junior Fairest of the Fair.

Katelyn and Maya Dunnum, daughters of Jamie Howell, were named Fairest of the Fair and Junior Fairest of the Fair, respectively.

This is the second year for the Vernon County Fair to have two ambassadors. The 2021 ambassadors were Fairest of the Fair Courtney Moser and Junior Fairest of the Fair Jenna Harrington.

The other Junior Fairest of the Fair contestants were Bridget Palm, daughter of David and Lorene Palm, and Cecilia Vento, daughter of Lorna and Dan Vento. Katelyn Dunnum was the only Fairest of the Fair contestant.

Before the Dunnums were announced as winners of the Fairest of the Fair contest, all of the contestants were asked an impromptu question during the program, which was held in the Youth Activities Building on the fairgrounds. Prior to the public portion of the evening, candidates presented a 30-second self-introduction and a 30-second radio ad to a three-person selection panel, and were interviewed by the panel.

Katelyn Dunnum will represent Vernon County at the Wisconsin Association of Fairs Fairest of the Fairs contest in January 2023.

The Dunnums will reign over the 165th Vernon County Fair, Sept. 14-18. This years theme is Time for Fun.

Farewell messages

Harrington and Moser gave reviews of their year before the winners were announced.

Harrington said she entered the 2021 Junior Fairest of the Fair contest for her friend, who was also a candidate.

To be 100% honest, I didnt want to enter; I did it for my friend, she said with a smile. Im glad I did (enter); the people I met during the year were the best.

Harrington told the Junior Fairest of the Fair contestants they will learn from the Fairest of the Fair. Courtney helped me with the best way to do things. Angie (Hornby, Fairest coordinator) helped, too. Im sad its coming to an end.

Moser advised the contestants to enjoy every moment. There are great opportunities out there. This year is an opportunity.

Moser said Harrington did a remarkable job during the year, and having each other made them stronger. We saw the fair through a different lens. It inspired me as Fairest and a person to see (exhibitors) passions Each experience we had always had something remarkable.

She said it was wonderful to connect with people along the way, and the state Fairest of the Fairs contest was a unique experience.

Thank you to all who made this experience delightful, Moser said. Im so grateful for this experience.

Angela Cina can be reached at angie.cina@lee.net.

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Mayo Clinic Health System has received a $1 million donation toward the construction of its new hospital.

The Harry L. Crisp II & Rosemary Berkel Crisp Foundation, located in Marion, Ill., has pledged the funds in appreciation of Harrys longtime physician, regional vice president of Mayo Southwest Wisconsin Dr. Paul Mueller. Crisp is the owner of Pepsi MidAmerica of Marion, a company started by his father in 1935.

My family and I have enjoyed the benefit of excellent health care from Mayo Clinic providers, and in particular my personal experience with Dr. Mueller has been exceptional, says Harry. When this important project arose under his leadership, it was a natural opportunity to support Mayo Clinic.

The Crisp family are longtime Mayo patients and previously donated to Mayo Clinic for cancer research in honor of the late Rosemarys physician and her own journey as a cancer patient.

The new La Crosse hospital, expected to be completed in 2024, will include the Harry L. Crisp II Waiting Room, located on the fifth floor near the surgical suites, in honor of the financial gift.

I am honored that Mr. Crisp has chosen to support this exciting project in recognition of the outstanding care that he has received from our teams over the years at Mayo Clinic, says Mueller. We look forward to continuing to provide outstanding service and the safest and highest quality care to our patients in the new facility.

Construction has started on the six-floor, 70 bed hospital, which will be attached to the Cancer and Surgery building and feature medical surgical units, a Family Birth Center, ICU and progressive care unit, endoscopy suites, and more.

We have been blessed with the ability to give generously, so I hope others will be inspired to support this with the same enthusiasm we have. This project truly is an investment in the community and area served by this clinic and hospital, Crisp said.

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Four Democrats will appear on the ballot in the Aug. 9 primary ballot for Wisconsins 3rd Congressional District, and only one Republican will appear without a challenger, setting the course for the battleground race.

According to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, after the June 1 deadline for candidates to submit their signatures, the Democrats officially in the race are state Sen. Brad Pfaff of Onalaska, former CIA agent Deb McGrath of Menomonie, Eau Claire small business owner Rebecca Cooke, and La Crosse Common Council member Mark Neumann.

Only one Republican, Derrick Van Orden of Prairie du Chien, will appear on the ballot after no challengers emerged.

The primary will narrow down which Democrat will face Van Orden in November, in what could be a decisive race.

The race for Wisconsins 3rd has been flagged as a critical seat for Republicans to win in order for them to flip control of the U.S. House of Representatives. The seat will be vacant for the first time in more than two decades after longtime Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, announced he wouldnt be seeking another term.

Kind has endorsed state Sen. Pfaff as his replacement, a former staff member of his who has stayed closely aligned with him.

Meanwhile, Van Orden has scooped up the endorsement of former President Donald Trump and a number of other high-level Republicans, signaling the importance the GOP is putting on the race.

In the weeks to come, the four Democrats will likely try and stand out from one another before the primary, though much of their campaigns so far have focused on beating Van Orden and not each other.

Voters can only cast votes within one party during primary elections.

Crossover voting, or voting for candidates in multiple parties during the primary, could cause a ballot to become invalid. But La Crosse County Clerk Ginny Dankmeyer said that choosing a party preference can prevent that from happening.

Voters will be able to indicate on their ballot which party theyre voting for in the primary, that way if someone voted for a Republican in one race and a Democrat in another, whichever party they put as their overall preference will get the vote and the ballot can still be counted.

Choosing a party preference wont, however, trigger a straight party vote, meaning if you choose the Republican party as your preference, it wont automatically cast votes for all Republicans on the ballot, and voters will still need to individually choose all the candidates they want to vote for.

The primary race will take place on Aug. 9, and the general election on Nov. 8.

For more information on voting and elections, visit MyVote.wi.gov.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trumps closest campaign advisers, top government officials and even his family were dismantling his false claims of 2020 election fraud ahead of Jan. 6, but the defeated president seemed detached from reality and kept clinging to outlandish theories to stay in power, the committee investigating the Capitol attack was told Monday.

With gripping testimony, the panel is laying out in step-by-step fashion how Trump ignored his own campaign team's data as one state after another flipped to Joe Biden, and instead latched on to conspiracy theories, court cases and his own declarations of victory rather than having to admit defeat.

Trump's big lie of election fraud escalated and transformed into marching orders that summoned supporters to Washington and then sent them to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to block Bidens victory.

He's become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff, former Attorney General William Barr testified in his interview with the committee.

Barr called the voting fraud claims bull, bogus and idiotic, and resigned in the aftermath. I didnt want to be a part of it.

The House 1/6 committee spent the morning hearing delving into Trumps claims of election fraud and the countless ways those around him tried to convince the defeated Republican president they were not true, and he had simply lost the election.

The witnesses Monday, mostly Republicans and many testifying in prerecorded videos, described in blunt terms and sometimes exasperated detail how Trump refused to take the advice of those closest to him, including his family members. As the people around him splintered into a team normal headed by former campaign manager Bill Stepien and others led by Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani, the president chose his side.

On election night, Stepien said, Trump was growing increasingly unhappy and refusing to accept the grim outlook for his presidency.

Son-in-law Jared Kushner tried to steer Trump away from Giuliani and his far-flung theories of voter fraud. The president would have none of it.

The back-and-forth intensified in the run-up to Jan. 6. Former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue recalled breaking down one claim after another  from a truckload of ballots in Pennsylvania to a missing suitcase of ballots in Georgia - and telling Trump much of the info youre getting is false.

Still, he pressed on with his false claims even after dozens of court cases collapsed.

On Monday an unrepentant Trump blasted the hearings in his familiar language as ridiculous and treasonous and repeated his claims.

The former president, mulling another run for the White House, defended the Capitol attack as merely Americans seeking to hold their elected officials accountable.

Nine people died in the riot and its aftermath, including a Trump supporter shot and killed by Capitol police. More than 800 people have been arrested, and members of two extremist groups have been indicted on rare sedition charges over their roles leading the charge into the Capitol.

During the hearing, the panel also provided new information about how Trump's fundraising machine collected some $250 million with his campaigns to Stop the Steal and others in the aftermath of the November election, mostly from small-dollar donations from Americans. One plea for cash went out 30 minutes before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Not only was there the big lie, there was the big ripoff, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., opened Monday's hearing saying Trump betrayed the trust of the American people and tried to remain in office when people had voted him out.

As the hearings play out for the public, they are also being watched by one of the most important viewers, Attorney General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should prosecute Trump. No sitting or former president has ever faced such an indictment.

I am watching, Garland said Monday at a press briefing at the Justice Department, even if he may not watch all the hearings live. And I can assure you the Jan. 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings as well."

Biden was getting updates but not watching blow by blow, said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Stepien was to be a key in-person witness Monday but abruptly backed out of appearing live because his wife went into labor. Stepien, who is still close to Trump, had been subpoenaed to appear. He is now a top campaign adviser to Trump-endorsed House candidate Harriet Hageman, who is challenging committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney in the Wyoming Republican primary.

The panel marched ahead after a morning scramble and delay, with witness after witness saying Trump embraced and repeated his claims about the election although those closest told him the theories of stolen ballots or rigged voting machines were simply not true.

Stepien and senior adviser Jason Miller described how the festive mood at the White House on Election Night turned grim as Fox News announced Trump had lost the state of Arizona to Joe Biden, and aides worked to counsel Trump on what to do next.

But he ignored their advice, choosing to listen instead to Giuliani, who was described as inebriated by several witnesses. Giuliani issued a general denial Monday, rejecting all falsehoods he said were being said about him.

Stepien said, My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted, its too early to tell, too early to call the race.

But Trump thought I was wrong. He told me so.

Barr, who had also testified in last week's blockbuster opening hearing, said Trump was as mad as I'd ever seen him when the attorney general later explained that the Justice Department would not take sides in the election.

Barr said when he would tell Trump how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were."

For the past year, the committee has been investigating the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812, which some believe posed a grave threat to democracy.

Mondays hearing also featured live witnesses, including Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News Channel political editor who was part of a team that declared on Election Night that Arizona was being won by Biden. Also appearing was the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, BJay Pak, who abruptly resigned after Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to overturn his defeat.

The panel also heard from elections lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg, who discussed the norms of election campaign challenges, and former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, the only Republican on the city's election board, who told the panel that regardless of how fantastical some of the claims that Trump and his team were making, the city officials investigated. He discussed facing threats after Trump criticized him in a tweet.

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Michael Balsamo in Washington and Farnoush Amiri and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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As a young man in one of Washington, D.C.'s toughest neighborhoods, Rodney Stotts had little to live for.

His father had been murdered. His mother was addicted to drugs. Many of his friends were dead from gun violence. And he expected to end up dead or in jail.

But then in 1992, an environmental program changed his life.

In his new book Bird Brother, the 51-year-old writes about the "healing power of wildlife" that took him from drug dealer to wildlife expert.

Stotts told the Reuters news agency, "I went from 'flipping birds' [a street term for selling cocaine] to flying birds, and the destruction that I used to cause in that life, I'm just trying to make up for it. He said he hopes to inspire others to take comfort in nature.

The environmental program was created by filmmaker and conservationist Bob Nixon. Nixon left Hollywood and moved to Washington, D.C. to start Earth Conservation Corps. Its first goal was to clean the Anacostia River. At that time, the organization called it the most polluted river in America. It says the river flows through communities of color with Washington's highest unemployment and crime rates.

Nixon hired nine young helpers, including Stotts, from a nearby public housing community. For the next several years, Stotts spent his days cleaning up the river. He also learned about birds of prey.

The group helped bring bald eagles back to the city. Over time, Stotts found himself drawn more toward caring for birds than selling drugs.

Stotts said the more he moved away from drugs, the happier he seemed to get. Along the way, Stotts also wanted to become a master falconer.

Becoming a master falconer requires two main steps: passing a state test and finding a sponsor. The sponsor teaches the important lessons of falconry: the ethics of the sport; how to identify, trap, and care for the birds; and how to release them back into the wild.

However, many possible sponsors did not take him seriously. Stotts said one man told him over the phone, You sound like you're a Black guy. Stotts said that he was. The man then told Stotts, Black people don't fly birds they eat them."

Eventually, he found a sponsor. And last June he officially became a "master falconer."

Thirty years after their first meeting, Stotts and Nixon are passing their knowledge to the next generation.

On a recent May evening, Stotts talked with young people in the Capital Guardian Youth Challenge Academy. It is a program for young school dropouts working to help injured birds.

Stotts told them to turn off their phones and just sit and listen to the water. He used an old saying, Stop and smell the roses, he told them. Stop. Actually, stop and smell them."

Im Anna Matteo.

Vanessa Johnston reported this story for Reuters. Anna Matteo adapted it for VOA Learning English.

___________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

addicted  adj. unable to stop using a drug

flip  v. a street term for selling cocaine

inspire  v. to move (someone) to act, create, or feel emotions

conservationist  n. a person who advocates conservation especially of natural resources

prey  n. an animal that is hunted or killed by another animal for food

sponsor  n. a person who takes the responsibility for some other person or thing : a person or an organization that pays for or plans and carries out a project or activity

ethics  n. a set of moral principles : a theory or system of moral values

dropout  n. one who drops out of school

Stop and smell the roses.  idiom enjoy or appreciate what is often ignored.
Vietnam reports additional 617 fresh Covid-19 cases, no death

An additional 617 new Covid-19 infections were confirmed on Monday, raising the national tally to over 10.73 million, according to the Ministry of Health.

A child is given Covid-19 vaccine in Hanoi





According to the ministry's report, most of the new patients are locally-transmitted cases confirmed in 37 out of 63 localities in the country with some localities seeing the highest numbers including Hanoi (157), Bac Ninh (87), Yen Bai (41), Danang (34), and Phu Tho (29).



As of Monday evening, the number of Covid-19 patients in Vietnam has increased to over 10.73 million.



On June 13, an additional 9,339 more patients recovered from the disease, raising the number of recoveries in the country to over 9.56 million.



On Monday evening, no deaths related to Covid-19 were announced. Total fatalities stayed at 43,083, accounting for 0.4 per cent of total infections..



By June 12, the country had injected more than 223 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, including over 5.30 million given to children aged 5 to 11.
Egbontoluwa Marigi worked deep in a forest in Nigeria, a country on the western coast of Africa. He is a logger who cuts down trees using an axe and a machete.

The forest where he worked is in the Ondo State in southwest Nigeria. But many trees in that forest have been lost to illegal logging.

The 61-year-old father of two told Reuters that he could cut down over 15 trees anywhere in the forest, but he would be lucky to find two.

"During the time of our forefathers, we had big trees but sadly what we have now are just small trees and we don't even allow them to mature before we cut them," Marigi said.

After cutting down the trees, Marigi put markers on them to let other loggers know that he is the owner. The cut-down trees, or logs, are then transported by waterways and rivers to Nigerias most populated city, Lagos.

Trees in Nigeria are cut down to open land for farming or to feed the energy demand of a growing population. From 2001 to 2021, Nigeria has lost 1.14 million hectares of tree cover.

Global Forest Watch provides data and follows the state of the forests. The organization says that the 11 percent decrease in tree cover in Nigeria equals the emissions of 587 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

President Muhammadu Buhari spoke at a recent UN meeting on biodiversity, or the state of the biological environment, in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He said that Nigeria has provided money to help regrow the countrys forests. But that may not be enough as the country loses forests even more quickly.

Femi Obadun is the director of forest management for Ondo states agriculture ministry. He said, Protecting the forest means protecting ourselves. When we destroy the forest, we destroy humanity.

That is something Marigi knows well, but he must make a living.

Months after cutting the trees, Marigi returned to the forest to tie his 40 logs together so they could be transported. With other loggers, he paid for a tugboat to pull the logs through waterways from Ondo state to Lagos.

They built shelters on top of the floating logs to help protect themselves from the weather. Food was shared and they sang local songs to cheer themselves up. They did not sleep at night to make sure that the logs would not get away from the boat.

The boat stopped at several places to pick up more loggers and their logs. A single boat can transport thousands of such logs.

Marigis trip ended in Lagos where logs from Ondo state and other parts of the country came together. The logs were then cut and sold to users.

Im Jill Robbins.

Nyancho Nwa Nri and Fikayo Owoeye reported this story for Reuters. Gregory Stachel adapted it for VOA Learning English.

______________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

allow  v. to permit (someone) to have or do something

mature  v. to continue developing to a desired level

humanity  n. all people

tugboat  n. a small, powerful boat that is used for pulling and pushing ships especially into harbors or up rivers

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The ancient bones of a distant ancestor of the modern giraffe are offering scientists evidence about why the animals long neck developed.

Scientists say these fossils, which were discovered in China, suggest a long neck was helpful for competitions between males.

Researchers recently described the fossils including a thick skull, or bones of the head, and strong neck bones. They belonged to an early member of the giraffe family called Discokeryx xiezhi. The creature lived about 17 million years ago in the Xinjiang area in northwestern China.

Discokeryx's solidly-built skull and strong neck bones were well adapted to high-speed head-to-head crashes. They were like competitions seen among males of some mammal species for female mates, the researchers said.

They explained that Discokeryx had the most complex neck bones of any mammal. This was the case for joints between the head and neck as well as between the individual neck bones.

Discokeryx means "disc-horn," while xiezhi is a single-horned creature in traditional Chinese stories. Discokeryx's skull had a large round-shaped and thick bone structure known as ossicone. That is the name for the horn-like objects on the top of giraffe's heads.

Shi-Qi Wang Wang , lead writer of the study published in Science, said, "Ossicones, like horns and antlers, usually serve as weapons for males fighting for mates."

Study co-writer Jin Meng said the traditional idea about why modern giraffes have such long necks is that long necks are useful for eating tree leaves. "Discokeryx most likely ate grasses," Meng explained.

Meng added, "This new finding shows that, in the giraffe family, members do different things in their early evolution. The new species represents an extreme example in which the neck ... becomes very thick to absorb the power and impact from powerful head-butting."

Another idea about giraffe neck evolution - one supported by Discokeryx's bone structure - is that neck lengthening was driven by behavior shown in competition for mates like the "necking" seen in giraffes today. In such competitions, males violently strike each other with their necks. Longer-necked males often win these fights.

"If a male giraffe has a shorter neck, then the female may refuse the mating request of the male," Wang said.

Neck lengthening, or elongation, independently evolved among several animal groups hundreds of millions of years ago.

Discokeryx, the researchers said, may offer information about the early developments of giraffe neck lengthening that took place over millions of years.

Discokeryx, however, took a different evolutionary path specialized for head-butting. It is not considered a direct ancestor of today's giraffe, but rather a side development of the giraffe family.

The modern giraffe, found in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, is the world's tallest living land animal. Males can grow up to 5.5 meters tall and females up to 4.3 meters tall. A giraffe's neck, stretching about 1.8 meters, has just seven neck bones like other mammals.

Discokeryx lived in open grasslands with small groups of trees during a time known as the Miocene period. It lived alongside ancient elephants, rhinos, pigs, deer, and horses. Predators at the time included saber-toothed cats, hyenas and a member of a mammalian group called "dog bears" - a creature as big as a modern polar bear.

Im John Russell.

Will Dunham reported on this story for Reuters. John Russell adapted it for VOA Learning English.

____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

giraffe  n. a very tall African animal that has an extremely long neck and legs

fossil  n. something (such as a leaf, skeleton, or footprint) that is from a plant or animal which lived in ancient times and that you can see in some rocks

evolution  n. the process by which changes in plants and animals happen over time

adaptv. to change (something) so that it functions better or is better suited for a purpose

impact  n. the act or force of one thing hitting another

predator  n. an animal that lives by killing and eating other animals : an animal that preys on other animals
Scientists say they have discovered remains on Britain's Isle of Wight that might belong to a meat-eating dinosaur larger than any other known from Europe.

The creature was closely related to the biggest carnivorous dinosaur species on record.

Researchers said recently they have found parts of the fossilized bones of the dinosaur. It lived about 125 million years ago during a time known as the Cretaceous Period. The findings include bones of the back, hips and tail, but not the skull or teeth. Based on the partial remains, they estimated that the dinosaur was more than 10 meters in length and possibly much longer.

Chris Barker was the lead writer of the study that was published in PeerJ Life & Environment.

Barker described the creatures size as "impressive. He added, It is one of the biggest - and possibly the biggest - known land predator[s] ever to walk Europe.

Based in part on small marks on the top of the tail, scientists believe that it belonged to a group of dinosaurs called spinosaurs. This group included Spinosaurus, which lived about 95 million years ago. At about 15 meters long, it is considered the longest-known dinosaur predator.

Spinosaurs had long heads much like crocodiles with lots of teeth, strong arms, and big claws. They ate water creatures as well as other dinosaurs.

Because the remains are incomplete, the researchers have not yet given the newly described dinosaur a scientific name. For now, they are calling it the "White Rock spinosaurid" based on the layer of rocks where the bones were found. They believe it is not a member of any identified species.

Meat-eating dinosaurs belonged to a group called theropods. Large examples once lived on all major land masses or continents. They walked on two legs and the largest had huge skulls and strong teeth.

Spinosaurus was Africa's largest. Tyrannosaurus rex, approaching 13 meters, was North America's king, while the similarly-sized Giganotosaurus ruled in South America and the slightly smaller Tarbosaurus in Asia. The largest-known, identified theropod from Europe was Torvosaurus, at about 10 meters.

The newly described dinosaur might turn out to be as long as T. rex, said Neil Gostling, who was responsible for the studys publication process.

"This one is really big," Gostling said. "Let's hope more fossils turn up. We would love a skull or teeth."

Looking at the teeth could help researchers better understand this dinosaur's position on the development of spinosaurs.

The fossilized bones were found on the surface along Compton Bay on the southwestern coast of the Isle of Wight. At the time, sea levels were much higher than today and large parts of Europe were under water.

The Isle of Wight has become one of Europe's richest places for dinosaur remains. The same team of researchers last year announced the discovery of two other Isle of Wight spinosaurs, both measuring about nine meters in length.

Those finds combined with the latest one support the idea that spinosaurs began and developed in Western Europe before spreading to other places.

Im Jill Robbins.

Will Dunham reported on this story for Reuters. John Russell adapted it for VOA Learning English.

___________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

fossilized adj. changed from living tissue to minerals and rock

species  n. biology : a group of animals or plants that are similar and can produce young animals or plants : a group of related animals or plants that is smaller than a genus

predator  n. an animal that lives by killing and eating other animals : an animal that preys on other animals

claw  n. a sharp curved part on the toe of an animal (such as a cat or bird)

fossil  n. something (such as a leaf, skeleton, or footprint) that is from a plant or animal which lived in ancient times and that you can see in some rocks
Two different ships have used autonomous sailing technology to complete trips across world oceans for the first time.

One of the projects involved the Mayflower Autonomous Ship. It is a completely autonomous ocean research ship powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

The Mayflower recently completed a five-week trip across the Atlantic Ocean without any human crew members. It launched from the British port of Plymouth on April 27 and arrived in the eastern Canadian city of Halifax on June 5.

The 15-meter Mayflower is named after a ship that carried a group of European settlers from Plymouth to North America more than 400 years ago. That famous trip, in 1620, prepared the way for Britains colonization of what Europeans called the New World.

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship is operated by ocean research group ProMare and American technology company IBM.

Rob High is an IBM executive who helped lead the Mayflower project. He told the Associated Press (AP) that the ships autonomous technology system worked perfectly during its trip across the Atlantic. He added, however, that Mechanically, we did run into problems.

The Mayflower experienced mechanical issues on its latest trip, as well as an earlier attempt to cross the Atlantic. The first attempt, in June 2021, was canceled after a minor mechanical issue forced the ship to return to Plymouth.

Then, during the latest trip, a problem with the ships power system led project organizers to send the ship to Portugals Azores islands in the mid-Atlantic. A team member was flown to the area to perform emergency repairs.

More troubles came in late May when the Mayflower developed another power issue. That problem was also repaired. But the team decided to send the ship on a new path to Halifax. This is because the Canadian port was closer than its planned target in the northeastern state of Virginia.

Experts say AI software is getting much better at helping self-sailing ships understand their surroundings and pilot themselves. But most autonomous systems cannot repair themselves when mechanical hardware fails.

The Mayflower is equipped with instruments designed to measure the health of ocean waters. ProMare and IBM hope it will be the first in a new generation of crewless, ocean traveling machines. They say such ships could be used to explore parts of oceans that are too difficult or dangerous for people to reach.

South Korean tanker

In another demonstration of the technology, the owners of a large tanker say the ship recently sailed by itself for more than 10,000 kilometers across the Pacific Ocean.

That ship, designed to transport natural gas, is operated by South Koreas SK Shipping. The tanker, called Prism Courage, is equipped with an autonomous navigation system developed by Hyundai-owned technology company Avikus.

The company announced in a statement that the 300-meter-long ship successfully used its autonomous sailing system during about half of a 20,000-kilometer trans-Pacific trip.

The tanker left the port city of Freeport, Texas on May 1. It arrived at a port on South Koreas southwest coast on June 2.

During the trip, Prism Courages autonomous navigation system recognized the presence of nearby ships to avoid crashes more than 100 times, Avikus said.



In addition, the autonomous system is designed to choose the most ideal travel paths. This system resulted in a 7 percent improvement in fuel efficiency, while reducing gas emissions by about five percent, the company said.

Avikus said it believes autonomous navigation technology can help solve worker shortages in the shipping industry. It can also reduce pollutants and improve safety by completely removing the possibility of human errors.

The company said it plans to keep developing the technology for large transport ships as well as for smaller pleasure boats.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from The Associated Press, IBM and Avikus/Hyundai.

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

Quiz - Two Self-Sailing Ships Cross World Oceans for First Time Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

_______________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

autonomous  adj. independent and having the power to operate automatically without human involvement

artificial intelligence  n. the development of computer systems with the ability to perform work that normally requires human intelligence

mechanical  n. relating to or operated by machines

navigate  v. to find the right direction for traveling by using maps or other equipment

efficient  adj. working well and not wasting time or energy
The last of the candidates were signing up to meet Friday's deadline for New Hampshires Sept. 13 state primary, including some competing in U.S. House districts that were redrawn at the last possible moment. Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed two maps approved by the Legislature that would have given the GOP an advantage in the 1st District. Then the state Supreme Court adopted a new boundary on May 31, which was the day before the 10-day filing period began. The most crowded primary is the race to pick a GOP nominee to challenge U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat seeking her second term. At least 11 people are running.
The first transgender state legislator elected in Kansas is not seeking reelection. Democratic state Rep. Stephanie Byers, of Wichita, said Friday that she is moving to Texas so that she and her wife can take care of her wifes aging parents. Byers was elected in 2020 and quickly became a leading legislative opponent of unsuccessful Republican proposals to ban transgender athletes from girls and womens school and college sports. Byers also found herself in a media spotlight in April when a Republican Wichita-area lawmaker complained in an email about the transgender female who is now in our restrooms in the Capitol. Byers said those comments did not influence her decision.
COZAD  A Kearney man was killed as the result of an accident on I-80 near Cozad during the early afternoon of Friday, June 10.

The Nebraska State Patrol was dispatched to the scene of a two vehicle accident around 12:05 p.m. near mile marker 221, one mile west of Cozad, according to NSP Public Relations Director Cody Thomas.

A preliminary investigation shows that a Chevrolet Cruze was traveling eastbound, when the driver lost control, crossed the median, and entered the westbound lanes. The vehicle then collided with a semi, Thomas said.

The driver of the Cruze was life-flighted to Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney, where he passed away. He has been identified as John Paul, 63, of Kearney, Thomas said.

The driver and passengers in the semi were not injured

Westbound I-80 was closed for approximately four hours as a result of the accident, investigation and clean-up.

Thomas said the crash remains under investigation.
A Middleton man on Friday was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm, authorities reported.

Ramar A. Brown, 26, also was sentenced to 36 month of supervised released by Judge William Conley on the charged he pleaded guilty to on March 7, U.S. Attorney Timothy OShea said in a statement.

On Oct. 12, Fitchburg police planned to arrest Brown who was the subject of unrelated state investigations and was seen driving a stolen vehicle, OShea said.

When officers approached and identified themselves to Brown, he fled, throwing a bag to the ground before he was caught and arrested. Police found a Glock 9mm handgun loaded with a 28-round extended magazine in the bag and his DNA was later found on the gun, OShea said.

Brown was on state extended supervision for a prior armed robbery conviction. That supervision was revoked in January and Brown is serving a state prison sentence of just over 2  years in that case. Conley ordered his 40-month federal sentence to run concurrently with the remainder of Browns state prison sentence, OShea said.

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When then Monona Grove High School junior Lilliana Greisch decided to continue the tradition of a weekly pop-up food pantry, she did not know the obstacles she would face.

Greisch did much of the leg work to continue a pantry that had been started by another high schooler at the Generations apartment complex at Union Corners. It was more work than she expected, Greisch said. But at the same time, she grew to love those using the pantry.

I like to go there and I like to talk to people. They are a lot of older people, so I like talking to them, she said.

It was the summer before her junior year at Monona Grove High School when Greisch and Tayah Dean, a junior at La Follette High School, met Clio Maya-Johnson, who had started the pop-up food pantry but was heading to college.

All three were members of a group called Youth Climate Action Team, and Maya-Johnson had just graduated from East.

However, as Maya-Johnson was winding down her operation of the pantry, the way the food was supplied was in transition. Greisch did most of the work to set up the donations, which come from a variety of sources, before she and Dean operated their first pantry last September.

I didnt expect it for it to be as difficult as it was just to plan it, she said.

As Greisch worked at procuring the food, some would ask why the apartment residents dont just use existing food pantries.

Where this location is, its affordable housing, so they have a harder time getting to places, she said.

When they saw a need, Greisch and Dean organized drives for such things as toiletries, coats and plastic bags at their schools. Dean did that by starting a volunteer club at La Follette.

Once the pantry was up and running, Yolanda Thetford, who lives in the apartment complex, was there to help operate it as she had done in the past. She also texted residents ahead of time to remind them about the pantry, which is open from 4 to 4:30 p.m. every Thursday at 2531 Winnebago St.

Typically about 25 people have come to the pantry in one day, but numbers could reach up to about 50, Thetford said.

We dont turn nobody away, she said.

Bill Kilgour was picking up some Roma tomatoes at the pantry last month at the urging of a close friend he was helping get settled in his apartment. The friend figured since there was plenty of food, Kilgour should make use of it. Kilgour, who taught sociology at Madison Area Technical College, also is aware of how the pantry fills a need for those who need it.

Robert Fischer, who also came to the pantry last month, said he has been to other food pantries at a time in his life when he was more dependent on them and still sees their value, even for those receiving food stamps.

Food pantries are necessary for people who can get food if you dont have any food stamps, he said. Theres people who need toiletries just as much as food and clothing.

A struggle experienced in recent weeks with getting food to continue the pantry illustrates how there may be sources, but getting food to people can be difficult because of various reasons, Maya-Johnson said.

Thetford said the difficulties with procuring food has caused her to step away from the operation while there is still very much a need.

For three weeks, people have been going home with very sad faces, Thetford said about the lack of food.

Maya-Johnson said she started the pantry after becoming interested in food justice issues, and it wound up defining her career goal. First she set it up in her yard and then moved it the Generations apartments, which are next door to her familys home.

An East classmate, Malik Terrab, used Maya-Johnsons efforts as a blueprint to start up a pop-up pantry at Honeysuckle Park on the Far East Side. Maya-Johnson named them the Free for All pantries.

Maya-Johnson started the pantry earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic when there was more social distancing than there is now. But she has been impressed with what Greisch accomplished with Dean.

She has continued with it and made it grow, Maya-Johnson said of Greisch. It can be indoors now, and for someone who doesnt even live in the neighborhood, who could come and continue it on, I am so grateful.

Greisch is out of town for a summer camp job and therefore will have less input, but she will return in late summer and plans to continue to run the pantry with Dean. Despite the current struggles, Dean will continue to run the pantry while Greisch is away.

I get to see people be so happy. People are just generally so kind and caring for each other, Dean said. It is such a genuine and strong community. I love seeing it and belonging to it. With the pantry, I feel they get that strong family connection.

School Spotlight: Adventures in learning, inside and outside the classroom Each Monday, the Wisconsin State Journal features a story about learning in Wisconsin. Here are School Spotlight stories from the past year.
Republican lawmakers will allow regulations Democratic Gov. Tony Evers administration developed to control pollution from toxic forever chemicals to take effect, according to a spokesperson for the Legislatures rules committee.

The rules limit the amount of certain compounds known as PFAS allowed in surface waters and drinking water.

The Legislatures Republican-controlled Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules has no objections to the regulations and will allow the Department of Natural Resources to implement them, Mike Mikalsen, an aide to committee co-chair Sen. Steve Nass, told The Associated Press.

Mikalsen warned that the committee could suspend the standards if the department doesnt lawfully implement them, but the decision marks a rare Republican concession to Evers.

Since taking office in 2019, Evers has been working to limit contamination from the compounds, which have been linked to cancer and other illnesses.

Used in firefighting foam, packaging and stain-resistant products, PFAS have contaminated groundwater in communities including Madison, Marinette and Peshtigo, Marshfield, Wausau and the La Crosse County town of Campbell. Public health officials have warned people to limit consumption of fish from contaminated waters, including Black Earth Creek, and the Yahara River and three of its five lakes.

The DNR began crafting PFAS regulations in 2019 and ultimately recommended limits for two compounds  PFOS and PFOA  in ground, surface and drinking water to the agencys policy board.

Industry groups including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce opposed the regulations, which they said would be too costly.

The DNR estimated it would have cost the states businesses and local governments about $6 million per year to comply with the new regulations, while Wisconsin residents could save hundreds of millions of dollars each year in avoided health care costs.

The Natural Resources Board in February approved the surface water standards but the boards conservative majority rejected limits for groundwater, the source of drinking water for about two-thirds of Wisconsin residents.

The board also adopted weakened limits for public drinking water supplies.

Tony Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, called the legislative approval a positive development and a necessary step to protecting public health.

While we are glad to see these rules move forward, we are mindful that Wisconsinites whose water comes from private wells also deserve the same protections under our states groundwater law, he said.

Tests have found some level of PFAS in all of Madisons 23 municipal wells, though none above the proposed limit. The city has taken one well offline as a precautionary measure while exploring treatment options.

Earlier this year a Waukesha County judge ruled the DNR cannot require cleanup of PFAS contamination under the states spills law without first going through the 2-year rule-making process for each contaminant.

However, that ruling remains on hold while under appeal. The DNR said Friday that it will continue providing bottled water to residents with contaminated wells.

State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, has sued Johnson Controls for contaminating waters around Marinette, where a subsidiary manufactured firefighting foam with PFAS.

Dane County has sued dozens of manufacturers in an effort to help pay for substantial cleanup costs related to contamination at the Madison airport.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Batman on a paddleboard, a cow blowing on a conch shell in a canoe, a giant Cup O Noodles, a floating jungle and live bands performing on at least two separate pontoon boats  the annual Fools Flotilla returned to the Yahara River on Sunday in full force for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.

The event, organized by the River Alliance of Wisconsin for at least a decade to celebrate access to clean water, had been canceled in 2020 and scaled back in 2021 due to COVID-19. But that didnt stop more than 250 captains from returning to the Yahara on decorated vessels while donning costumes to traverse the mornings calm waters between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona.

The River Alliance encouraged folks with canoes, kayaks or anything that floats to take part in the free, family-friendly floating parade, which started at Tenney Park and ended at Yahara Place Park as a part of the Marquette Neighborhood Associations Waterfront Festival.

Mary Ellen Vollbrecht, president of the River Alliance board of directors, said the flotilla started with just a few boats more than a decade ago and grew to hundreds of floating vessels that graced the water on Sunday. The unique and fun atmosphere, costumes, decorated boats and live music have been prevalent throughout the events existence.

From the start it was a fun and crazy outing and its only gotten better and better over the years, Vollbrecht said. Once there was a guy with a grill, grilling in his canoe  I havent seen that lately so I hope nothing unforeseen happened.  No matter what the weather, its a wonderful day and a wonderful way for people to enjoy what we have here  clean water  and to help keep it that way.

Lisa Frinzi and her nieces and nephew donned lifejackets and prepared to board a collection of floatables  an inflatable unicorn, an inflatable raft and a paddleboard  which Frinzi called Large Marge the Party Barge, on the shore in Tenney Park prior to the parades start. It was Frinzis third year taking part in the flotilla and her nieces and nephews first year at the event.

My nieces and nephew are from the Milwaukee area so they came up just for this, she said. I knew they would enjoy it.

Hundreds of spectators lined the Yahara from Mendota to Monona to cheer on the parade and enjoy live music as bands played Proud Mary and I Love Rock n Roll as they floated past.

Sharon Fallon and Gary Spaeni, both Madison residents, rode their bikes along the Yahara and stopped below the East Washington Avenue Bridge to watch the parade.

Its a typical Madison event. Its great  you get all kinds of quirky people, quirky things, quirky spectators  its fun, Spaeni said.

I think the lack of organization makes it pretty cool, Fallon said. You just tell people to show up, and it happens.

Vollbrecht brought up the rear of the parade, paddle in one hand, brat in the other, courtesy of a grill master who cooked burgers and sausages as he floated down the Yahara in his canoe about 10 feet away from her.

See  I told you there was a guy with a grill! she shouted happily from the water.

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At least 45 residents of an apartment complex on Madisons North Side were temporarily displaced Monday afternoon after a powerful storm tore the roof off a building and caused power outages and other damage throughout the area.

No injuries had been reported from the storm as of Tuesday morning, but Madison public safety officials had responded to more than 50 electrical emergency calls from the storm that moved east across the area with gusts up to 70 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

Others weren't so lucky, as a child and two adults were missing after they were swept away in a drainage ditch in Milwaukee.

Power outages were concentrated in Madison, Middleton and Monona, according to the Dane County Department of Emergency Management.

Madison Fire Department spokesperson Cynthia Schuster said firefighters were sent to the Truax Park Apartments in the 1500 block of Wright Street just after 3 p.m., when they found the roof torn off one building and three adjacent buildings with significant roof damage.

We discovered that (the roofless building) had a false roof, she said. Underneath was another roof that was still intact.

Debris from the roof landed on and caused significant damage to an unoccupied car.

All residents of the 12 units at 1501 and 1503 Wright Street were displaced. Several found other places to stay, and the Red Cross was assisting the others at a temporary shelter at 1701 Wright Street opened in partnership with Madison Area Technical College and Dane County.

The city of Madison said the building was constructed with a concrete roof, and a wooden gable roof was installed to help with drainage a few years ago. The building was inspected by the city and an electrician will return Tuesday morning with a crew to assess and isolate electrical concerns. The building may be occupied when any issues are resolved.

As many as 21,500 Madison Gas and Electric customers were without power Monday, and 4,700 still were without power as of about 11 a.m., MGE spokesman Steve Schultz said in a statement.

Crews from other utility companies were helping MGE's restoration efforts starting at daybreak, Schultz said.

However, due to the large number of separate incidents, MGE temporarily suspended its estimated time of restoration feature on its outage map.

"We expect to restore service to many customers Tuesday," Schultz said. "However, we do expect to have some customers still without service into tonight due to the high number of outage incidents."

"Our focus throughout the overnight hours has been cutting and clearing downed lines," Schultz said. "We remind everyone to stay clear of damaged areas and never approach a downed power line or anything that comes in contact with it."

Downed lines can be reported by calling MGE at 608-252-7111.

Street lights in various parts of Madison also were knocked out, slowing traffic to a crawl in some areas.

Middletons Willy Street Co-op was among the businesses that lost power. Employees had to move food into mobile coolers, but the co-op said it was expected to reopen Tuesday morning. The Monroe Street branch of the Madison Public Library and the Madison Chocolate Co. on Glenway Street also closed Monday due to outages.

Schuster said the fire department received reports about outdoor fires likely sparked by downed power lines. She did not release the locations of the fires.

The city said crews would work through the overnight into Tuesday to clear downed trees from streets and vehicles, among other cleanup efforts. More details are available at the city website.

The shelter at 1701 Wright Street also will be for those escaping a short heat wave forecast to start Tuesday, with temperatures expected in the mid-90s and heat index values of up to 105.

Dane County also will be opening the Coliseum as a cooling center during the day Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Madison Metro Transit will provide free rides to the cooling centers.

Like a blizzard

Truax Apartment Park resident Lana Isbell said shes been living in the complex for about a year and a half. The retired paralegal moved to Wisconsin from Texas after her husband died.

I was in my room and heard a lot of noise, Isbell said. I heard pounding on the walls. I looked out the window, and it looked like a blizzard. I went to the other window, and saw all this wood that was in front of the building.

Isbell said she would be staying at a hotel for the night.

Whitney Mckennie, another Truax resident and small business owner, said she was shopping at Walgreens when the storm came through.

The next thing I knew, the wind was crazy, she said.

The sky was bright one minute, then black the next, she said. Garbage cans were sent flying, and the power went out at Walgreens, she said.

Downed trees

Reports of trees knocked down by the storm were common across the Madison area, including one that fell across East Johnson Street just east of North Ingersoll Street and downed power lines that sent sparks into the area and forced drivers to turn around on the one-way street.

Minutes after the tree came down, a man in a Metro Transit shirt began directing drivers off East Johnson and onto Ingersoll. Madison firefighters and police arrived just before 3:05 p.m., and East Johnson remained closed more than an hour later.

A few miles away, a car Bob Gee was borrowing from a friend had its back window smashed in by a tree limb blown down along Milwaukee Street.

Gee, 40, said he pulled into the parking lot at 2717 Milwaukee just as the skies were at their blackest, went inside and then minutes later heard a big kaboom.

I decided to look out the window  and all I could see was green from the fallen tree, he said.

The tree also broke out a window in the apartment building and dislodged a downspout.

State Journal reporters Barry Adams, Elizabeth Beyer, Chris Rickert, Alexander Shur, Logan Wroge and Jeff Richgels contributed to this report.

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It comes at the end.

After his supporters march on the U.S. Capitol chanting Whose streets? Our streets! after they breach police barricades, after they smash windows and climb through, after they chant Hang Mike Pence and erect a gallows for that purpose, after one of them yells, White power! after police are beaten and sprayed and left pleading for backup, after congressional aides flee for their lives, after the proud old American tradition of a peaceful transfer of power has been laid waste forever in an unprecedented bacchanal of carnage. After all that, the voice of Donald Trump is heard in an interview given five days later.

They were peaceful people, he says. These were great people. The crowd was unbelievable. ... The love in the air, Ive never seen anything like it.

That moment of cognitive disconnect caps a video played during Thursday nights televised hearing by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection last year. That committee has multiple missions: to determine the causes, to establish a record of events, to evaluate the performance of law enforcement. But that video  and, more to the point, that moment at the end where Trump lauds the love of a mob ransacking the seat of government  suggests another purpose:

Inviting Republicans to return to our shared reality.

The vast majority, of course, seceded from that reality long ago. Cocooned within a media omniplex whose prime directive is to shield them from what they would rather not know, they have become intellectual cripples unable to cope with even inarguable truths. Especially this one:

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, fair and square. It wasnt even close.

The committees attempt to drag, shame or coerce Republicans from their bubble of lies was obvious, if unspoken, Thursday. It was there in that last moment of video. And in committee chairman Bennie Thompson shooting down the infamous canard that the riot resembled a normal tourist visit. And in testimony from the former U.S. attorney general, William Barr, who, like many aides, told Trump that his claims of election fraud were, in Barrs pungent word, bull. And in Trumps own daughter, Ivanka, testifying that she accepted Barrs verdict.

And it was there, bluntly, in vice committee chair Liz Cheneys reminder to fellow Republicans who defend Trump. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.

Unfortunately, the more deeply people are invested in the comfort of lies, the less use they have for the challenges of truth. So it seems likely the committees appeal for Republicans to rejoin reality is destined for meager success at best.

For some of us, however, that has become a matter of decidedly secondary concern. What we want is less agreement than accountability, not simply for foot soldiers who smashed windows and brawled with police, but for the man who sent them out to do so. The Justice Department has seemed remarkably timid on that score even though, as Cheney reported, a federal judge says Trump likely broke two federal laws just in pressuring his vice president to reject duly authorized electoral votes.

So why has the government not taken action? Accountability has powers of instruction. Accountability might even salvage this democracy. Yes, the committee made a devastating presentation. But that only makes the necessary course of action seem more urgent.

Lock him up.

Pitts Jr. writes for the Miami Herald: lpitts@miamiherald.com.
Its getting tougher to find qualified teachers willing to work in Idaho.

Not that anyone should be surprised.

In its survey of more than 90 Idaho school districts, the Idaho State Board of Education found more than 700 teacher vacancies went unfilled by people who had earned a teaching certificate.

To earn a certificate requires students to spend the time and effort to graduate from an accredited teaching academy. Thats where they are trained how to manage children with unique personalities, separate learning styles and different backgrounds.

They get that training before entering a classroom.

The gap has extended beyond the typically hard-to-find people who work in special education and counseling or teach science and math.

Among the comments forwarded to the State Board:

The number of people leaving the profession is concerning (both teachers and administrators). Special education has no applicant pool.

I am very concerned about being fully staffed in the fall. We need five math and six science teachers along with a number of special ed teachers. Also, we have never had a hard time filling the necessary elementary positions, and this year it is going to be a challenge.

The crisis we have been talking about for the last 10 years is here. I have 40 staff members in the bottom right corner of my salary scale. Not sure how we can (function in)a year in which eight to 10 teachers retire at once.

Its going to be impossible to fill all of these positions. We need help.

Filling the gap are people who take an alternative route to certification. The process may fill the seat and set the candidate toward earning a certificate within a few years. It also means that these people will learn the art of managing a classroom on the job  with the result of even heavier turnover.

Chief among the culprits is the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted one if not two school years, imposed new challenges to teaching and subjected students to greater anxiety and isolation.

Its also a matter of resources. Idaho took some major steps forward in the recent legislative session: the largest school budget increase in this century, money for all-day kindergarten and the means to help pay down student loans for teachers willing to work in rural settings.

But that has not erased decades of legislative neglect. Idaho remains in last place in terms of the amount of money it allocates to each of its pupils. As a result, the average teaching salary in Idaho is lower than what is offered in each of the Gem States neighbors and all but six states. If they cant find more money doing the same work elsewhere, some Idaho educators simply gravitate to better compensation in other professions.

Then theres Idahos political environment.

It wasnt that long ago that the Legislatures Office of Performance Evaluations documented a strong undercurrent of despair among teachers who seem to perceive a climate that disparages their efforts and belittles their contributions. The vast majority of comments ... express concern or dissatisfaction with specific aspects of their work or, more broadly, with conditions surrounding the public education environment in Idaho. ... The general tone of dissatisfaction and sense of being under-appreciated may ... directly affect the states ability to ensure a steady supply of dedicated, highly effective teachers in all of Idahos public schools.

Since then, lawmakers have engaged in a crusade to expose nonexistent indoctrination of public school students in so-called critical race theory. It makes for good political theater, but it sends a chilling message to teachers who want to present an accurate picture of American history.

Throw in the recent legislative threats to jail librarians  and the attempts to ban books at the local level.

Dont forget the Idaho Freedom Foundation, whose president, Wayne Hoffman, called the Gem States public schools grotesque, and would drain away scarce resources into vouchers for the private education of wealthier children. By the way, the Freedom Foundation won a lot of legislative elections in last months primary.

Last but not least is the growing instability at the local level. As Idaho Education News reported, more than a third of Idahos 115 school districts have hired a new superintendent within the past two years.Thats matched by an infiltration of school boards by ideologues and fringe candidates more concerned about scoring points than educating kids.

Whos paying the price for this?

The child sitting at his desk.

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EDITORS NOTE: The Martinsville Bulletin will report court proceedings in Henry County and Martinsville district and circuit courts, except some juvenile cases and traffic citations other than DUI. Claims in civil suits may be reported, except in custody cases. The newspaper does not omit any names that qualify to be included. The information is compiled from court documents by the Bulletin.

Henry County

Circuit Court

Nancy Paola Barco, Bassett on Nov. 1: DUI dismissed.

Christopher Lawrence Wingfield, Martinsville on Nov. 1: sentenced to 15 years with 11 years and six months suspended and fined $2,210 for distribution of methamphetamine, possession of a firearm while distributing methamphetamine was dismissed.

Bradley Wayne Pegram, Collinsville on Nov. 1: sentenced to 15 years with 13 years and nine months suspended and fined $1,818 for possession of etizolam and LSD with intent to distribute, possession of a firearm while possessing a schedule I controlled substance.

Roy James Dalton, Roanoke, on Nov. 3: sentenced to one year in jail and $1,073 in fines and costs for driving after being declared an habitual offender.

Christopher Lee Eames, Bassett, on Nov 3: sentenced to five years with three years suspended and $1,315 in fines and costs for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Billy Jo Hall, Stuart, on Nov. 3: sentenced to 22 years with 19 years, 11 months and 20 days suspended and $4,503.32 in fines and costs for possession of a firearm by a violent felon, carrying a concealed weapon, drive while suspendedthird or subsequent offense, possess heroin, possess a firearm while possess heroin

Brandon Eugene Tipold, on Nov. 3: sentenced to 56 years with 33 years, 11 months and 20 days suspended and $3,491.62 in costs for rape of a child less than 13 years old, aggravated sexual battery of a victim less that 13 years old, elude police greater than 20 mph, drive while suspendedthird or subsequent offense.

David Robert Cannaday, Martinsville, on Nov. 3: sentenced to 21 years and three months with 16 years and one month suspended and $6,726.50 fines and costs for two counts of fail to appear, possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, drive under revocation of suspension, possess marijuana, possess bupren and naloxone with intent to distribute.

Walter Melvin Cousins Jr., Ridgeway, on Nov. 3: sentenced to 10 years with five years and six months suspended and $630 in restitution and costs for distribution of cocainesecond offense.

Jarrett Lee Titus, Martinsville, on Nov. 3: sentenced to 10 years with nine years suspended and $4,065 in restitution and costs for distribution of heroin and fentanyl.

Matthew Douglas Turner, Ferrum, on Nov. 3: sentenced to 5 years suspended and $1,948 restitution and costs for distribution of methamphetamine.

Michael Shane Wilson, Evington, on Nov. 3: sentenced to five years with three years and 10 months suspended and $705 in fines and costs for elude police greater than 20 mph.

Henry General

District Court

Christopher Dean Davis, Collinsville, on Nov. 4: a charge of malicious wounding was dismissed.

Hunter Alan Walker, Bassett, on Nov. 4: a charge of cruelty to animals was dismissed.

Martinsville

Circuit Court

Michael Rufus, Martinsville, on Nov. 3: sentenced to five years with four years, 11 months and 29 days suspended and $730 in restitution and costs for larcenythird or subsequent conviction.

Travis Lee Bryant, Patrick Springs, on Nov. 5: sentenced to 20 years with 17 years suspended and $2,074 in fines and costs for possession of methamphetamine with intent to distributesecond offense, possession of heroin with intent to distributefirst offense. A charge of possession of oxycodone with intent to distribute was dismissed.

Anthony Eugene Moore, Martinsville, on Nov. 5: charges of maliciously shoot at a vehicle and possession of a weapon by a violent felon were dismissed.

Ronald Tyrone Manns, Martinsville, on Nov. 5: charges of abduct by force or intimidation and attempt to extort money were dismissed. Martinsville General

District Court

Brian Walter Martin, Martinsville on Nov. 1: sentenced to 30 days in jail, 15 days suspended and fined $533 for three counts fail to appear.

Brandon Antonio Roman, Bassett on Nov. 1: possess marijuana, second or subsequent offense dismissed.

Albana Bela, Martinsville on Nov. 1: fined $454 for four counts of petit larceny.

Ralph Carnell Niblett, Martinsville on Nov. 1: sentenced to 10 days suspended and fined $171 for fail to appear.

Johnny Edwards Williams, Stuart on Nov. 1: sentended to two years suspended and time served and fined $925 for two counts malicious shoot at a motor vehicle.

Jennifer Marie Landers, Buckfield, Maine on Nov. 1: sentenced to two days in jail and fined $140 for fail to appear.

Patrick County Circuit Court

Caleb Aaron Willard, Stuart, on Nov. 4: a charge of enter house to commit assault and battery was dismissed.

Thatcher Lindwood Robertson, Ararat, on Nov. 5: sentenced to two years suspended and time served and $873 in costs for two charges of sexual offense with a minor by computer.

Christopher James Borders, Columbia, South Carolina, on Nov. 5: sentenced to seven years and four days all but 20 days suspended and $1,961 in fines and costs for distribution of an imitation controlled substance, two charges of possess marijuana, distribute schedule I/II controlled substance.

Sonya D. Barnwell, Spencer, on Nov. 5: sentenced to three years with two years and nine months suspended and $1,593 in costs for DWI/drugsthird or subsequent offense, possess schedule I/II drugs.

Sherry Juanita Glenn, Stuart, on Nov. 5: sentenced to two years with one year and eight months suspended and $833.55 in restitution and costs for shoplifting greater than $200third or subsequent offense.

Justin Kent Hawks, Cana, on Nov. 5: sentenced to eight years and but three months suspended and $2,111 in costs for fail to appear, possess burglary tools, statutory burglary, and petit larceny.

 Bill Wyatt

Bill Wyatt is a reporter for the Martinsville Bulletin. He can be reached at 276-638-8801, Ext. 2360. Follow him @billdwyatt.

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MORGANTON -- Two women accused of felony child abuse made their first court appearances Monday.

Natalie Anne Childress, 25, of 6583 Gold Creek Road, Connelly Springs, was charged with felony negligent child abuse  serious bodily injury Friday, according to a press release from the Burke County Sheriffs Office.

Jessica Renee Sanders, 26, of the same address, was charged with aid or abet negligent child abuse  serious bodily injury, the release said.

Both requested court appointed attorneys, with Steve Cheuvront appointed to represent Childress and Wayne Clontz appointed to represent Sanders.

The charges came after someone anonymously tipped off child protective services that children in Childress care had been hit with a pair of metal knuckles, information previously released by the Burke County Sheriffs Office said.

When CPS investigators went to the home, Sanders, the mother of the two children involved, said they werent at the home, the release said. CPS asked BCSO deputies to come out to the scene, and the deputies found the children hiding at the home.

Deputies had EMS respond to the scene to transport the kids to a local hospital because of their injuries. They later were transported to a childrens hospital abuse and trauma center, information from the sheriffs office said.

CPS investigators and detectives with BCSOs criminal investigations division conducted interviews and pressed charges on the pair as a result.

Sanders didnt make any comments about the charges against her when she appeared in court Monday. Childress said something that was incoherent, and District Court Judge Richard Holloway told her to ask her attorney about it.

Both defendants still are being held at the Burke County Jail under $250,000 secured bonds. Sheriff Steve Whisenant said the case will be discussed with the district attorneys office to determine whether any other charges are appropriate.

Chrissy Murphy is a staff writer and can be reached at cmurphy@morganton.com or at 828-432-8941. Follow @cmurphyMNH on Twitter.

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A Sudanese vessel carrying 15,800 sheep onboard sank over the weekend after departing for Jeddah from the Osman Digna Port at Suakin, on the Red Sea coast with officials blaming overloading, reports say.

Badr 1, according to reports, was carrying 507 tons of livestock which sank in the early hours of Saturday. An official at Sudanese port who asked not be named, told NDTV that the load was beyond capacity.

The official reportedly indicated that the ship was supposed to carry only 9,000 sheep.

The livestock on the ship was valued at $4 million. The crew had been rescued, but many of the livestock on board drowned, reports said. The owners of the shipment, according to Saleh Selim, the head of the associations livestock division, were only able to save around 700 sheeps, The Guardian reports.

Selim has also called for investigation into the incident which is not the first mishap that took place at the harbor which is no longer Sudans main foreign trade hub, a role which has been taken by Port Sudan, some 60 kilometers (40 miles) away along the Red Sea coast.

Last month, NDTV notes, a massive fire broke out in the cargo area of Suakin port, lasting hours and causing heavy damages. Authorities have launched an investigation to determine the cause of the fire, but the findings are to be released.
The European Commission is nearing completion of the procedure for restarting financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority, an EU official said on Monday.

Once it is finalized, funds will be released as soon as possible for East Jerusalem hospitals and allowances for vulnerable Palestinian families as priorities, Ana Pisonero, the EU executive bodys spokesperson on neighborhood and enlargement told reporters at the daily news briefing.

The announcement came as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen began a series of visits to the Middle East on Monday.

Von der Leyen is expected to announce this week the release of financial aid that has been withheld since 2021 owing to alleged controversies in school textbooks.

EU member states, led by Ireland, have repeatedly urged the EU executive body to release the support.
Pope Francis, 85, has been forced to postpone his trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan, scheduled for July 2-7, because of knee pain, the Vatican announced.

Accepting the request of his doctors, and in order not to compromise the results of the therapies of the knee still in progress, the Holy Father, to his great regret, is forced to postpone his trip () to a later date to be defined, announced in a statement the director of the press service of the Holy See, Matteo Bruni. This unexpected announcement comes at a time when preparations were in full swing, the Vatican having itself unveiled the detailed program of this six-day trip, during which the pontiff was to visit Kinshasa, Goma and Juba.
The second round of U.N.-brokered talks to resolve Sudans political crisis has been postponed indefinitely after a major civilian bloc defected, a U.N. spokesman said Saturday.

The UN, the African Union and the East African regional organization Igad had launched a dialogue on Wednesday to try to end the political stalemate in Sudan, in which this country, one of the poorest in Africa, has plunged since October 2021 and the coup of the army chief General Abdelfattah al-Burhane.

The next round of talks was scheduled for Sunday. But the three international bodies decided to postpone the talks in view of the latest developments, said Fadi al-Qadi, spokesman for the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNMIS).

We have not set a new date for the resumption of the talks, he added. The decision to postpone came as a major civilian bloc represented by the Forces for Freedom and Change (FLC), the civilian spearhead of the revolt that pushed the military in 2019 to remove dictator Omar al-Bashir, refused to participate in the talks.
The government signed a framework agreement on Saturday 11 June with Shell and Equinor, British and Norwegian companies, for the construction of a liquefied natural gas production and export terminal. The cost of the project is estimated at 30 billion dollars, or 28.5 billion euros.

This is a huge project that will pave the way for the exploitation of Tanzanias large gas reserves, estimated at 1,630 billion cubic meters onshore and offshore. The liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal will be built in the port city of Lindi, in the southeast of the country. Shell and Equinor already operate several blocks with other companies about 100 kilometers offshore Lindi, which together are estimated to hold more than 1 trillion cubic meters of gas.

This initial agreement paves the way for further discussions with the aim of a final investment decision (FID) in 2025 and a hoped-for start of operations by 2029-2030.

The $30 billion project had been in the pipeline for several years, with the two gas giants pressing the Tanzanian authorities to conclude the deal. Shells CEO and Equinors vice president had even put some pressure last year on the Tanzanian government to unblock the project, which had been suspended since 2017.

The project has finally been relaunched by President Samia Suluhu Hassan, after her accession to power in March 2021. On Saturday, Tanzanian authorities welcomed the signing of the agreement. We have never reached this stage of natural gas development in the history of our country, said January Makamba, Minister of Energy, for whom this project will significantly change the Tanzanian economy.
At least five people, including customs officers and civilians, were killed Saturday in southeastern Mali in a terrorist attack on a customs post, a military source and a local elected official said.

A terrorist attack caused the death of seven civilians and customs officers at the Koutiala checkpoint, near the border between Mali and Burkina Faso, the military source was quoted by media as saying.

There was a terrorist attack today at a security post near Koutiala. At least five customs officers and civilians were killed, a local elected official was also quoted by the media as saying.

Both sources did not give a precise number of customs officers and civilians killed in the attack. The enemies also suffered casualties. The situation is currently under control, the military source said.

The Malian army was conducting a combing operation Saturday in the Koutiala area, near the border with Burkina Faso, a country that has been the scene of violence attributed to jihadists.

Mali has suffered attacks by terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State organization since 2012, as well as violence of all kinds perpetrated by self-proclaimed vigilantes and bandits.
Moroccos migration policy aims primarily to ensure better integration of migrants into the Moroccan society, said Ahmed Skim, Director of Migration Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Speaking at the opening of the 2nd meeting of the Board of the IOM-UNDP Global Program on Migration for Sustainable Development (M4SD), in Rabat on Monday, Skim said that this program fits perfectly within the framework of the migration policy adopted in 2013 by Morocco.

This policy seeks to ensure better integration of migrants into the Moroccan society, particularly through support to concrete initiatives at the local level, in terms of facilitating access of migrants to basic services, but also support to public institutions to effectively integrate migration-related issues in their respective sectoral strategies at national and regional levels, he explained.

The contribution of migrants to development is a crucial issue today, both in host countries and in countries of origin, he said, noting that the universality of human rights means that these migrants must have access to education, employment, health and especially security.

For his part, the Swiss Ambassador to Morocco, Guillaume Scheurer, recalled that this initiative is promoted by Switzerland and the United Nations Development Program, pointing out that the annual meeting of the global program is an opportunity for different stakeholders to meet and interact.

The meeting reviews the progress of the objectives set and plans future actions, he said, stressing that this meeting is particularly relevant and useful because at the international level, migration contributes significantly to fostering development.

The Swiss diplomat, who welcomed Moroccos initiatives in migration policies, highlighted the importance of cooperation of all actors, including public authorities, private sector and civil society activists to ensure better governance and collective response to the challenges of migration today.

For her part, the Deputy Head of IOM Morocco, Botella Teresa said that this dialogue will generate a lot of knowledge and good practices for the deployment of new partnerships for better governance of migration, at all levels of the state.

Referring to the leadership of Morocco in migration strategies, she noted that the Moroccan policy is in line with the objectives of sustainable development and can be taken as an example in the African context, insofar as it includes several actors in the governance of migration.

She further noted that this meeting is a moment of reflection and an opportunity for a fruitful exchange between the representatives of 11 countries, around the good practices of each country in order to identify the best ways to follow so that migration has a positive impact on sustainable development.

Launched in 2019, the IOM-UNDP Global Program is in Phase III of a long-standing effort to pave the way for a more integrated methodology for migration governance, promote policy coherence and foster community benefits in line with national and local development priorities.

The program aims to show the extent to which integrating migration into development and other sectoral policies yields results on the ground that directly contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda SDGs, thereby linking policy and practice.
Molecular view of a key component of the SARS-CoV-2 virus called MPro (Green Grey) with drug site targets identified (yellow). Non-profit COVID Moonshot will use artificial intelligence to develop oral antiviral drugs against COVID-19 and future pandemics. Credit: Diamond Light Source, 2021

Research into drugs to treat mosquito-borne flaviviruses such as Zika and dengue as well as COVID-19 will benefit from a major funding boost, says a group of international scientists using artificial intelligence to discover new oral antivirals.

A research consortium led by the non-profit COVID Moonshot has been awarded more than US$68 million from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to discover and develop globally accessible and affordable novel oral antivirals to combat COVID-19 and future pandemics.

The development comes as monkeypox outbreaks have been declared around the world, raising concerns about the rapid spread of such viruses. Monkeypox is a viral disease that the World Health Organization says has emerged in at least 23 countries where the disease is not regularly found since 13 May.

The open-science COVID Moonshot was established in 2020 with the objective of developing a safe, globally accessible and affordable antiviral pill for COVID-19.

The consortium has created the Artificial Intelligence-Driven Structure-Enabled Antiviral Platform (ASAP) to build an antiviral discovery pipeline using structural biology, machine learning and computational chemistry.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), a founder of COVID Moonshot, says that the initial three-year phase of the ASAP project will aim to produce preclinical candidates against viral families that have been historically neglected by the market, with an initial focus on coronaviruses.

ASAP will also address flaviviruses, responsible for large endemic diseases such as dengue and Zika, DNDi says.

Rachel Cohen, executive director of DNDi North America, told SciDev.Net that the consortium was committed to ensuring "equitable and affordable access to any antivirals that may be developed as a result, especially in Africa, Asia, Latin America."

Cohen said that if preclinical antiviral candidates had been ready for clinical trials in humans when COVID-19 struck in late 2019, millions of lives might have been saved. She believes equitable access to antivirals in low- and middle-income countries should be a global priority.

"In our view, there can be no geographic restrictions in who would be able to access novel antivirals, and they must be affordable for both the individuals who need them and the health systems that serve them," said Cohen.

Francisca Mutapi, co-director of the Global Health Academy at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, says that any development that supports the production of accessible drugs for infectious diseases is welcome for low- and middle-income countries, which carry the highest global burden of infectious diseases.

But Mutapi, who is not involved in the project, told SciDev.Net the consortium should include members from low- and middle-income countries, particularly Africa.

"Africa needs to be growing its capacity to discover and produce drugs and vaccines not only for Africa, but to contribute solutions for global health security," said Mutapi.

Babatunde Salako, director general of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, said he hoped the AI-driven platform would help increase the weaponry available to the world's medical workforce to fight emerging diseases. But he said capacity would need to be increased in the global South before lower-income countries could take advantage of the project's developments.

Provided by SciDev.Net
An experimental drug for the neurological disorder ALS was approved in Canada on Monday, but an ongoing evaluation of the treatment by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has raised questions about its effectiveness.

A condition of Health Canada's approval of Albrioza (AMX0035) calls for Massachusetts-based drug maker Amylyx Pharmaceuticals later to provide better evidence that the treatment is effective. That includes verifying the "clinical benefit of this drug" with data from an ongoing phase 3 clinical trial expected to conclude in 2024, additional pharmacological studies and periodic safety reports.

"For nearly a decade, we have been committed to creating more meaningful moments for people living with ALS and their families. We are excited with Health Canada's decision to approve Albrioza with conditions. Albrioza is a therapy that demonstrated ... a statistically significant and clinically meaningful impact on function, alone or in addition to existing ALS therapies," Justin Klee and Joshua Cohen, co-CEOs and co-founders of Amylyx, said in a company statement.

ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis)also known as Lou Gehrig's diseaseoften causes death within two to five years after diagnosis. There are only two approved ALS medications in the United States: riluzole, which can extend survival by several months, and edaravone, which can slow disease progression by about 33%, the New York Times reported.

Earlier this year, an FDA review of the drug said it was safe, but there was insufficient evidence that it helped patients live longer or slowed their loss of crucial functions such as muscle control, speaking or breathing without assistance, the Times reported.

In a close vote in March, an independent panel of advisers to the FDA concluded that Albrioza was not ready for approval by the agency. The FDA recently extended its deadline for a final decision to Sept. 29, to review additional data from Amylyx.

There is a desperate need for effective ALS therapies, but when it comes to Albrioza, "it's unfortunate, but the magnitude of unmet need is not matched by the quality of evidence to date," Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, a member of the FDA's independent advisory panel, told the Times.

The "approval in Canada could only further increase the pressure that the FDA faces to rule favorably and to approve this product," but the FDA should still wait for the phase 3 trial results, said Alexander, an internist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Last month, 38 U.S. doctors who treat ALS patients sent a letter to the FDA urging it to approve the drug. In recent weeks, a campaign for approval of the drug has generated more than 6,000 emails asking the FDA to approve the drug, according to the ALS Association.

Amylyx bankrolled most of its research on Albrioza, but the ALS Association contributed $2.2 million raised through the 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge.

"We expect that Americans living with ALS will try to access Albrioza in Canada, just as we have heard reports of people trying to buy the ingredients on Amazon," Calaneet Balas, president and CEO of the ALS Association, told the Times.

Dr. Angela Genge, director of the ALS Global Centre for Excellence at the Montreal Neurological Institute, who has received fees from Amylyx for serving on an advisory board, said American patients would be legally able to receive Albrioza in Canada if it were prescribed by a Canadian physician and obtained from a Canadian pharmacy. However, they would not be eligible for insurance coverage under Canada's public or private system.

Amylyx has not yet disclosed a price for Albrioza, the Times reported.

Explore further FDA reviewers give thumbs down to new ALS drug

More information: Visit the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for more on Visit the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for more on ALS

 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
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Broad-spectrum antibiotics are overused in dentistry because many patients mistakenly believe they have a penicillin allergy. But such allergies are rare and should be investigated by a doctor, says Bodil Lund, chair of the Tandvards-Strama network, which supports rational antibiotic therapy in dentistry.

To what extent are antibiotics used in Swedish dentistry?

Dental care accounted for 6.6% of all antibiotic prescriptions in Sweden in 2020. This is lower than international figures, where dental care usually accounts for about 10%. But they're clearly overprescribed in Sweden as well.

What's the situation?

One example is major geographical differences when it comes to prescriptions. We have no good explanation for that. Dentists in Skane, Vastmanland and Stockholm prescribe twice as many antibiotics in relation to the number of residents compared to Vasterbotten. But we've have seen a 30% reduction in prescriptions in Swedish dentistry since Tandvards-Strama started in 2007. However, the reduction is very unevenly distributed both geographically and from an organizational perspective, with public dental care at group level seeing a much greater reduction than private healthcare providers. Broad-spectrum antibiotics also need to be used less.

Which infections are most common?

Dental infections are different from other infections in many ways. They're almost always mixed infections caused by as many as 15 different bacteria. The bacteria are low-virulence, which means they're not very infectious, and they come from your own oral flora. Understanding this has implications for diagnostics, sampling, cultivation, resistance determination and, ultimately, treatment.

How should this be dealt with?

Swedish dentists are good at treating acute infections and distinguishing those that are so serious that the patient needs to be hospitalized. Penicillin works very well on dental infections. However, about 10% of patients tell their dentist that they're allergic to penicillin, even though only about 1% of the population actually is. The allergic patients are given clindamycin, which is a broad-spectrum antibiotic. I usually urge dentists here to ask their patients to get checked out by a doctor.

What's the most important message put forward by Tandvards-Strama?

Antibiotics should be used when they're clearly indicated, otherwise not. Treating infections "just to be on the safe side" is a thing of the past.

But dentists are aware of this?

Yes, very much so. We're just about to update our national dental guidelines. Our aim is to conduct a thorough update and set up an annual review structure so that we can keep the guidelines up to date. We're also working to identify and respond to the major gaps in knowledge about how antibiotics are best used in dentistry.

Explore further Patients reporting penicillin allergy less likely to have successful dental implants
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Digital interventions that help people take their asthma medication better, such as "smart" inhalers or text messages, may cut the risk of asthma attacks by half, finds a new review of evidence led by UCL, Queen Mary University of London, and University of Auckland researchers.

The new Cochrane Review paper found that digital interventions improve medication adherence by 15% and can yield a clinically-significant improvement in asthma control. The researchers say their findings support continued investigation of how to improve digital interventions so that they could be used more widely to help people manage their asthma.

Lead author Dr. Amy Chan (UCL School of Pharmacy and University of Auckland) said: "By pulling together evidence from numerous studies from around the globe, we have found that digital tools can help people to take their asthma medication more effectively, which subsequently improves their health.

"Asthma is the most common lung condition worldwide, affecting over 330 million people, and yet despite effective treatments many people are not taking their medications in the most optimal manner. We hope that digital tools can help to make it easier for people to manage their health."

For the paper, published by the Cochrane Library as part of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the researchers reviewed evidence from 40 randomized controlled trials across more than 50 years of research on four continents, with data from over 15,000 adults and children with asthma. Study participants were using digital tools to support taking maintenance asthma medications for long-term control of symptoms and prevention of attacks.

The digital interventions under review included smart inhalers, or electronic adherence monitors, which can feed back information about medication use such as by tracking the time and date of dosing, or monitoring if a person is correctly using their inhaler. Other tools included mobile apps, SMS (text message) reminders and information alerts, or game-based approaches.

The researchers found that smart inhalers and text messages were more effective than the other types of digital interventions for improving medication taking, while interventions that included an in-person element also seemed to yield greater benefits for asthma control. However, the researchers caution that the strength of evidence was limited by the smaller number of studies looking at each specific intervention.

The review authors say that the 15% improvement in asthma medication adherence they identified is likely to be clinically significant, particularly for people with low baseline levels of adherence.

The researchers found moderate evidence that people had much better asthma control when using digital supports. They found that digital tools reduced the risk of asthma attacks by roughly half, although the quality of evidence was judged to be low and the improvement could range from 32% to 91%. There was some evidence suggesting that digital interventions might improve quality of life.

Co-author Dr. Anna De Simoni (Asthma UK Center for Applied Research, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London) said: "The evidence in this review gives me, as a practicing GP, more confidence in discussing apps and other digital tools with my patients. With further research to identify the best way of using digital supports, we hope to continue helping people with asthma to improve their health."

Co-author Professor Chris Griffiths (Asthma UK Center for Applied Research, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London) said: "Our review suggests that rolling out electronic adherence monitorssuch as smart inhalers, and text messages, will make it easier for people with asthma to take their medication more effectivelyand enjoy healthier lives."

The review also found that digital support tools tend to be highly acceptable to users, though more data are needed. The included studies did not have sufficient data on the effect of the digital tools on time off school or work or cost-effectiveness, and the researchers caution that their confidence in the evidence was reduced by risk of bias and inconsistency between the studies.

Dr. Erika Kennington, Head of Research & Innovation at Asthma + Lung UK, welcomed the report but stressed that more research was needed to understand which tools would work for which patients.

She said: "It's great to see the evidence that digital interventions improve adherence however it is simplistic to suggest that one tool will work for every single person with asthma or that one type of tool will work best for everyone. Furthermore, it is important to focus on finding tools for those who struggle with their asthma the most, with the emphasis being on patient needs and not only clinician needs."

Explore further How exercise interventions could help people with asthma

More information: Amy Chan et al, Digital interventions to improve adherence to maintenance medication in asthma, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2022). Journal information: Cochrane Library Amy Chan et al, Digital interventions to improve adherence to maintenance medication in asthma,(2022). DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD013030.pub2
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Millions of children spent months, even more than a year, attending school virtually from kitchen tables, bedrooms and laptops during the pandemic.

And this shift to computer-based learning may have led to negative consequences for younger kids, suggests a new Michigan Medicine study of a sample of families in Michigan.

Elementary school-aged children enrolled in remote learning experienced greater behavioral, learning-related, and sleep difficulties compared with children receiving in-person instruction, according to the findings in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

Researchers surveyed roughly 300 parents with children ages 5 to 10ranging from kindergarten to fifth gradeacross the state between February and March 2021.

"In the early days of learning about how the virus spread and who was at risk, everyone made the best decisions they could with the information they had," said lead author Kimberley Levitt, M.D., developmental behavioral pediatrician at University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Michigan Medicine researcher.

"We wanted to explore differences in parent and child well-being at a time when some school districts had returned to in-person school, while others remained remote or hybrid."

An estimated more than 55 million students in the U.S. were impacted by a change in school formats during spring 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many in fully remote school that school year.

Study authors said they focused on younger children who are still building foundational academic skills and require more adult support during instruction.

"We're now seeing the manifestation of these disruptions in families' lives and how different school formats affected our kids, not only academically but emotionally and socially," Levitt said.

"Our findings reinforce challenges families faced during the pandemic and suggest children in virtual school had more behavioral issues at home, social challenges with peers and may have potentially been less motivated to learn."

The new study is among few specifically examining how family well-being varied by school format.

Researchers compared several areas of health, including:

Behavior problems

Children in remote school showed significantly more signs of hyperactivity, peer problems and overall behavior issues compared to those attending in-person school, the study suggests.

Among potential factors: Fast-changing demands and expectations as they navigated new school platforms and workloads. Adjusting to interactions with teachers and classes through screens. Being home for extended periods of time with fewer outlets to let off energy and less interaction with positive role models at school.

"COVID dramatically disrupted schedules," Levitt said. "There's a certain amount of comfort and safety in knowing what to expect and having routines to fall back on. In general, any sudden changes to routines can trigger stress and emotional dysregulation in kids."

"We want to be mindful of changes in family support systems and how we can support those children and families moving forward."

School experiences

School was an overall more challenging experience for remote learners, researchers found.

Virtual school attendees were less likely to be academically motivated or socially engaged and more likely to show defiance and resistance in doing schoolwork.

"Remote learners appeared to be less excited about learning," Levitt said. "We know that children's enthusiasm and engagement in school helps predict how they cope with academic challenges throughout the year."

Families in both hybrid school and remote formats also reported children having more difficulties with socially relevant learning. Parents of remote learners were less likely to report that the teacher knew their child well, the child knew their classmates well, was motivated to get ready for school in the morning, has enough opportunities to socialize, or has a best friend.

"Some kids experienced a loss in the school setting beyond academics. At these ages, many children develop friendships or even get a new best friend, hallmark childhood experiences," Levitt said.

"Children often build a sense of community, identity and independence from parents through classroom environments. But some children may have missed out on opportunities to further develop social skills through school interactions."

Sleep challenges

Sleep issues were also common among the remote learning population. Kids ages 5 to 10 who attended virtual school were falling asleep later and were more likely to co- sleep with parents than those attending classes in person.

Compared to before the pandemic, about a third of parents said their child took longer to fall asleep, about a seventh reported more overnight awakenings, and more than a fifth said their child had more nightmares.

Among potential explanations: Greater anxiety and stress, increased screen time and exposure to certain types of media exposure or possibly increased family conflicts.

"We can't say for certain why these sleep disruptions are more prevalent among kids who attended remote school. There are several possible factors at play," Levitt said.

"Providers should consider tailoring interventions for families who would benefit from a sleep hygiene reset. We know disrupted and poor sleep can affect all areas of health, including mood, behavior and both physical and developmental growth as well as academic performance."

Potential disparities

Researchers also looked at how school format related challenges differed for families with material hardships and stressors during the pandemic, such as food or housing insecurity, and whether structural inequities may have led to a greater burden of stress for underrepresented minorities.

Nearly a third of families surveyed included families from underrepresented racial or ethnic minorities. Underrepresented minority children were more likely to attend a remote school format than non-Hispanic white children, lining up with other studies.

Surprisingly, associations between remote learning and behavior difficulties were stronger for children without material hardships, researchers found.

"It's possible that families with material hardships may have more emotional and behavioral challenges at baseline associated with chronic poverty and structural and social inequities," Levitt said.

"Children with material hardships showed more behavior challenges overall, but less associated with school format. Parents may not have detected a noticeable difference in the home setting during remote learning, but we need further studies to understand how to better support these families."

Parent stress

Researchers didn't find any differences in parent depression or stress based on children's school format, but more than two fifths of parents overall reported elevated depressive symptoms.

But parents in previous studies have reported worsening mental health and more negative mood following COVID-19 associated restrictions.

Authors note that providers may consider screening parents for mental health concerns and material hardships in order to identify those who could benefit from community mental health resources and social work assistance.

"Children being home more due to remote learning was among several factors that likely impacted parental stress," said senior author Jenny Radesky M.D., a developmental behavioral pediatrician at Mott and researcher at Michigan Medicine.

"Many parents in our sample reported material hardships, such as poverty, job loss, and food insecurity and reported more parent-child conflict. We heard this from families we treat at Michigan Medicine, but our survey showed that the experience was widespread throughout Michigan.

"This school year, we hoped that things would improve with consistent in-person learning and increased educational funding," she added. "However, some children are still struggling behaviorally, and unfortunately, we are hearing that schools are not able to staff positions that support social-emotional health. We hope these results reinforce how important it is for schools to receive the support they need, so kids can heal after two challenging years."

More information: Kimberley J. Levitt et al, Remote and Hybrid Schooling During COVID-19: Associations with Child Behavior and Sleep, Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics (2022). Kimberley J. Levitt et al, Remote and Hybrid Schooling During COVID-19: Associations with Child Behavior and Sleep,(2022). DOI: 10.1097/DBP.0000000000001085
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Both the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines have a low risk of adverse events over a 38-week period, according to a study published today in JAMA Internal Medicine by team of researchers from the VA Boston Healthcare System, the CAUSALab at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School.

"For individuals planning to be vaccinated, I would highly recommend either vaccine, depending on which is first available," said corresponding author Dr. Arin Madenci, a visiting scientist at Harvard Chan School. "Adverse events were rare after both vaccines, particularly when compared with the health risks driven by infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which both vaccines are highly effective at preventing."

The study compared the head-to-head safety of the two vaccines, based on the adverse events experienced by 433,672 Veterans in the VA's national healthcare databases. The median age for the cohort was 69 years, 93 percent were male and 20 percent were Black.

A large panel of potential adverse events was evaluated, and risks over 38 weeks were generally low after receipt of either vaccine. Veterans receiving the Moderna vaccine were slightly less likelya difference of less than two-tenths of one percentto experience stroke, myocardial infraction, other thromboembolic events, or kidney injury.

"While small for any individual person," Madenci noted, "these differences may help inform future population-level vaccination efforts."

The study followed earlier research, which found that both vaccines are highly effective in preventing breakthrough infections and severe COVID-19, and that Moderna was slightly more so.

"The richness of VA's large electronic health records database combined with expertise in phenomics data science allowed us to conduct this important analysis," said Dr. Kelly Cho, a co-investigator and director of data science and analytics for the VA Cooperative Studies Program Epidemiology Center at VA Boston HCS. "This is a great example of our partnership with Harvard Chan School through the VA-CAUSAL Program, which is funded under the VA Office of Research and Development."

Explore further Third mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose appears to be safe

More information: Barbra A. Dickerman et al, Comparative Safety of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 Vaccines in a Nationwide Cohort of US Veterans, JAMA Internal Medicine (2022). Journal information: JAMA Internal Medicine Barbra A. Dickerman et al, Comparative Safety of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 Vaccines in a Nationwide Cohort of US Veterans,(2022). DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.2109
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

For more than two years, Americans have been able to get COVID-19 tests, often with no costs to themselves.

At least, no out-of-pocket costs. A new study from the University of Hawaii and Johns Hopkins University hints at just how great those costs might really be for taxpayers and those paying for private insurance. And it shows how the private labs conducting the tests are probably raking in millions of dollars more a year.

Ge Bai, a Johns Hopkins University professor of accounting and health policy and management, said the study published Thursday in the Journal of General Internal Medicine highlights mounting costs of COVID-19 testing paid by taxpayers through federal health programs or consumers and employers who purchase private insurance.

"The misconception most people have is 'I don't pay out of pocket,'" Bai said. "We are literally witnessing the government channel money from taxpayers, from patients, from (insurance plan) sponsors to labs."

Because of a lack of testing to keep pace with the coronavirus in the early months of the pandemic, Congress wanted to remove barriers to ensure people had access to testing. Medicare, the federal health program for older adults and some disabled people, pays $51 for a COVID-19 test. Insurance companies must pay the amount labs charge without making consumers pay when they take the test.

The study analyzed revenue collected by 21 independent labs in Hawaii because researchers were able to secure figures from the state's department of taxation. The study found that from March 2020 to November 2021, the labs performed 2.8 million tests. That helped drive a revenue increase from a range of $19 million to $22 million a month before the pandemic to $28 million to $36 million per lab after November 2020.

The study doesn't speak to how much labs charged for tests. And researchers did not have access to labs' costs for machines, supplies and additional staffing to process tests. Even if labs' per-test cost equaled Medicare's rate of $51, the Hawaii labs would have earned a minimum profit of $28 million from March 2020 to November 2021, the study said, or about $10 a test.

Bai, whose previous work showed some private labs charged as much as $14,750 for tests, said labs that process large volumes of tests likely can do so for less than $20 a test. In other words, efficient labs collect a larger profit for each test they run because the government requires a set reimbursement amount.

Although the study's data was limited to labs in Hawaii, Bai said, the findings apply throughout the country where labs are collecting revenue and profit from continual testing.

"We are bearing all the costs without even knowing it," Bai said.

Medicare rate 'seems pretty reasonable'

Lab experts dispute the suggestion facilities are making windfall profits on testing. Hospitals and labs spent millions to purchase equipment, acquire sites and hire health workers to administer tests. During surges when long lines of Americans sought tests daily, labs struggled to secure equipment needed to complete tests, such as swabs, as well as to hire enough trained and qualified workers to process tests in a timely manner.

Labs were motivated to get the nation's testing capability in place quickly to match the speed of the virus, said Dr. Emily Volk, a pathologist and chief medical officer of Baptist Health Floyd in Indiana.

"The cost of getting that test up and running was not at the top of the agenda," said Volk, also president of the College of American Pathologists.

Volk said profits are limited by other factors. The cost of petroleum-based plastic containers and tubes used in labs has skyrocketed with the price of oil. Another hidden, non-reimbursed cost includes validating testing machines before using them on the public.

"Frankly, to pay $51 to find out incredibly critical information about whether or not somebody has a deadly virus ... seems pretty reasonable," Volk said.

The number of tests done by U.S. labs and other sites averaged fewer than 1 million a day during the first week of June, far below early January's peak of more than 3 million daily tests, according to Johns Hopkins University's testing tracker.

The Johns Hopkins data does not include the increasingly popular 15-minute home tests people take often without reporting results to their doctors or local health departments.

The Biden administration has required private health insurers and Medicare to cover a monthly allotment of eight free home tests. The administration also has allowed Americans to order three rounds of home tests through the government-run website CovidTests.gov; the free test kits are delivered to a person's home address by the U.S. Postal Service.

Private insurers and Medicare must pay the cost of testing through the duration of the public health emergency, which isn't likely to end before mid-October.

The federal government has bolstered testing by spending billions for schools, community health centers, labs, doctors, telemedicine companies and entrepreneurs to provide COVID-19 testing and related services. One initiative, called the COVID-19 Uninsured Program, has authorized $4 billion to reimburse for testing, administering vaccines and other COVID-19-related care.

But with COVID-19 funding running out without relief from Congress, the Biden administration said Thursday that it will divert $10 billion in coronavirus relief from testing and other programs to maintain stockpiles of vaccines and treatments for Americans heading into the fall and winter.

The Biden administration has been warning for months of the potential for rationing and other tough trade-offs if Congress doesn't provide additional funding. Lawmakers in March appeared near a deal for $10 billion of the $22.5 billion that President Joe Biden has requested, but negotiations broke down.

The health insurance industry has called for tighter controls on COVID-19 testing during the public health emergency.

A November 2020 survey by America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry group representing private health insurers, reported the average COVID-19 test cost $130. Nearly half of tests performed by out-of-network labs that had no negotiated rates with heath insurers cost more than $185, the survey said.

Kristine Grow, a spokeswoman for the industry group, said insurance premiums are closely tied to the cost of medical care. Among other cost-conscious reforms, Grow said, her organization has called for federal action to hold "testing labs accountable for the prices they charge for COVID tests."

Bai's study did not track whether insurers are beginning to raise premiums to pay for the cost of COVID-19 testing.

The Hawaii Medical Service Association, the state's largest health insurance provider, said it has not raised premiums to cover the cost of testing.

"HMSA continues to waive member cost shares for all medically necessary treatment and services for COVID-19 at least through the end of the public health emergency," said HMSA President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Mugiishi. "We are not raising premiums to do so. ... We take co-payments out of our reserves to ensure the safety and security of our members as we work to eliminate this threat from our entire community."

More information: Timothy Halliday et al, Financial Implications of COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction Tests on Independent Laboratories, Journal of General Internal Medicine (2022). Journal information: Journal of General Internal Medicine Timothy Halliday et al, Financial Implications of COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction Tests on Independent Laboratories,(2022). DOI: 10.1007/s11606-022-07676-1

(c)2022 USA Today

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Age and lifestyle are associated with infant microbiome composition. (A) Unweighted UniFrac dissimilarity Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA) (top left panel) of 1900 fecal samples from infants (<3 years old) across 18 populations based on amplicon sequence variant abundance. Point color indicates lifestyle and point size is proportional to age in months. Boxplots show the distribution of indicated age groups along PCo1 (bottom) and cohorts along PCo2 (right). (B) PCo2 versus sample age for the three lifestyle categories (solid lines) and specific indicated subpopulations (dashed lines). The purple dashed line includes Russia (Karelia) and South Africa [RU (Karelia) + SA] and the green dashed line includes Malawi, Nigeria (Urban), and Bangladesh (MWI + NG + BD). The middle transitional line (blue) contains all transitional samples. Lines are the smoothed conditional mean of PCo2 loadings (loess fit). (C) Relative abundance of CAGs by age group and lifestyle. Taxa in annotation are the most abundant taxa in a CAG. Credit: Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abj2972

A team of researchers from Stanford University, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, the University of California, Berkeley, and New York University Abu Dhabi has found that the gut microbiome of infants living in a hunter-gatherer society in Tanzania is markedly different from the gut microbiome of infants living in modern urban areas. In a study published in the journal Science, the group conducted ribosomal RNA sequencing on more than 100 stool samples obtained from Hadza infants and compared them to similar data stored in public databases.

Noting that most biome gut sequencing research has been conducted on people living in urban areas, the researchers wondered about the gut biomes of people living in remote, non-urban settings. Noting also that some prior research has shown that people living in such areas tend to have a more diverse gut biome than people living in urban areas, they wondered about the gut biomes of infants in such places.

The team collected stool samples from dozens of Hadza infants living in Tanzania, along with stool samples collected from 23 of the infant's mothers. They then conducted ribosomal RNA sequencing on all of the samples to determine the kinds of bacteria in their guts that make up the biome. They compared the diversity of the gut microbiomes in the infants in Tanzania with those in the guts of infants living in modern urban areas around the world. They found that the Hadza infants had more diversity in their guts after approximately six months than did infants living in urban areas. They also found that approximately 20% of the bacteria types found in the Hadza infants' microbiomes had not been previously documented.

The researchers also found that the differences in the gut microbiome could be traced back to their mothers along with some influences from the local environment. They also suggest the main reason for the differences in the gut microbiome appeared to be related to lifestyle rather than geography. And they also speculate on the possibility of a link between a less diverse gut microbiome in urban areas and diseases that are more common in the industrialized worldsuch as those related to inflammation.

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More information: Matthew R. Olm et al, Robust variation in infant gut microbiome assembly across a spectrum of lifestyles, Science (2022). Journal information: Science Matthew R. Olm et al, Robust variation in infant gut microbiome assembly across a spectrum of lifestyles,(2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abj2972

 2022 Science X Network
Figure 1. Endothelial Merlin plays a gatekeeping role in tip EC induction mediated through blocking VEGFR2 internalization at high VE-cadherin density. Schematic diagram depicting roles of Merlin in different density of VE-cadherin in each EC. Active Merlin forms complex with VEGFR2 and VE-cadherin at relatively high VE-cadherin density, while inactive Merlin (S518) allows high VEGFR2 internalization in ECs with low VE-cadherin density, which leads to tip EC induction. Credit: Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn2611

Blood vessels are the body's essential architecture that exists in order to nurture cells with sufficient nutrients and oxygen. Angiogenesis, or the formation of new blood vessels, is of great research interest in cancer medicine. As tumors need to generate new blood vessels to grow, inhibiting angiogenesis has been suggested as a promising approach to treating cancer.

Sprouting angiogenesis is the process where new sprouts are formed from pre-existing vessels. The key biological process in sprouting angiogenesis involves balancing the formation of "tip" and "stalk" endothelial cells (ECs). This is a process called tip-stalk specification. Tip ECs are highly motile with many long and dynamic filopodia, whereas stalk ECs are highly proliferative with fewer filopodia. These functionally distinct tip and stalk cells coordinate into a branched network of vessels for sprouting angiogenesis.

Morphologically, tip EC induction is the foremost step for sprouting angiogenesis. The formation of the tip ECs is induced by a pathway called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A (given as VEGF hereafter) signaling. Molecularly, intracellular activation of VEGFR2 signaling is initiated by ligand-induced, clathrin-dependent VEGFR2 internalization. Scientists have long been curious how one particular EC ends up possessing higher VEGFR2 signaling activity than its neighbors and is thus fated to become a tip EC during sprouting angiogenesis.

Led by Dr. Bae Jung Hyun and Professor Koh Gou Young, researchers at the Center for Vascular Research within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Daejeon, South Korea discovered that a protein called Merlin is indispensable for tip EC induction by regulating intracellular VEGFR2 downstream signaling during sprouting angiogenesis.

Merlin, encoded by the neurofibromatosis type-2 gene NF2, has been known for quite a while to function as a tumor suppressor. It is ubiquitously expressed in all types of cells and acts as a membrane-associated protein, which plays a gatekeeping role in signal transduction from membrane receptors in a cell density-dependent manner. Nevertheless, it has not been investigated whether endothelial Merlin is essential in sprouting angiogenesis and, in detail, which intracellular signaling is regulated by endothelial Merlin.

In their study published in Science Advances, the researchers showed that the density of the EC in the environment was the key factor. When the localization and density of Merlin in the cells under low or high culture density were compared, Merlin in the high cell density culture was able to better form complex with VEGFR2. The researchers showed that this is due to the fact that the presence of VE-cadherin, a cell-to-cell junction protein, is required for Merlin and VEGFR2 to form a complex with one another. This formation of the Merlin-VEGFR2 complex suppresses VEGFR2 internalization, thereby suppressing the pathway. In contrast, Merlin in a low-density ECs environment with relatively low VE-cadherin density allows a high level of VEGFR2 signaling and ERK activation, which leads to tip EC induction (Fig.1).

The researchers investigated the importance of cell density on Merlin-VEGFR2 complex formation by studying Merlin in its normal form, inactive phosphorylated form (pMerlin (S518), short for phosphorylated Merlin at Serine 518), and a variant that cannot be phosphorylated. It was shown that Merlin engages in physical interaction with VEGFR2 and VE-cadherin in dense culture, which has a low pMerlin (S518), but Merlin does not engage in this interaction in sparse culture, with a high pMerlin (S518) in cultured ECs. Thus, the interaction between Merlin and VEGFR2 depends on pMerlin (S518), which is regulated by cell density.

"The role of Merlin in EC fulfills the missing piece for sprouting angiogenesis. Sprouting angiogenesis should be regulated by the coordinated balance of promotion and inhibition of signaling through Merlin," explains the first author, Bae Jung Hyun.

Figure 2. The changes of retinal vessels at postnatal day 6 after depletion of Merlin in ECsWhen Merlin was depleted, tip cells and filopodia at the vascular front were enhanced, but cell proliferation was reduced compared with WT mice (Fig.2 A-B). Endothelial cell-specific molecule-1 (ESM-1), which is a tip cell marker, was increased in Merlin-depleted mice compared with WT mice (Fig.2 C). Credit: Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn2611

The researchers further demonstrated that Merlin also plays a gatekeeping role in maintaining capillary integrity and proper angiogenesis by suppressing the unnecessary formation of filopodia and sprouting from the adult vessels in normal tissues and tumors. When the Merlin was depleted in the EC, the researchers found that an excessive amount of non-functional vessels are formed in the tumor model, which enhances tumor necrosis and reduces tumor growth. Merlin-deficient mice implanted with human lung cancer showed an impressive 80.6% reduction in tumor growth after 3 weeks in comparison to regular mice. Likewise, adult vessels in the thyroid gland and small intestine showed an increased number of filopodia in Merlin-deleted mice in comparison to wild-type mice.

Director Koh Gou Young of the Center for Vascular Research summarized, "Our study showed that Merlin is mainly localized at the cell membrane in vascular ECs, interacts with VEGFR2 and VE-cadherin, and plays a negative role in VEGFR2 intracellular downstream signaling by suppressing VEGFR2 internalization. As a consequence, endothelial Merlin can be seen as a gatekeeping regulator for tip EC induction in retinal sprouting angiogenesis during postnatal development, for formations of filopodia and sprouts in matured and established capillary ECs of adults, and for tip cell formation and proper tumor vessel construction in tumor vessels."

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More information: Jung Hyun Bae et al, Gatekeeping role of Nf2 /Merlin in vascular tip EC induction through suppression of VEGFR2 internalization, Science Advances (2022). Journal information: Science Advances Jung Hyun Bae et al, Gatekeeping role of Nf2 /Merlin in vascular tip EC induction through suppression of VEGFR2 internalization,(2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn2611
A diagram showing how the RAIS retractor is used to lift the abdominal wall during surgery. Credit: University of Leeds/Dr Pete Culmer

Medical equipment that can be manufactured at low cost, is simple to use and can be easily maintained will help extend surgery to the 5 billion people worldwide who currently cannot get access to it, say researchers.

Writing in the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine, they argue that surgical technology is often developed for well-resourced healthcare systemsand is of little or no use in poorer settings where hospitals lack sophisticated support infrastructure or appropriately trained staff.

Without access to medical equipment they can use, hospitals and clinics in low-to-middle income countries cannot offer surgical treatment to nine out of ten patients.

An international research team led by the University of Leeds is calling for a focus on creating medical devices specifically for use in low-to-middle income countries. They have pioneered a development approach based on "participatory design", where the users of the technology are closely involved in its designand where functionality of the device is pared back to key essentials.

To demonstrate their approach, the researchers describe how they designed a simplified surgical tool for performing laparoscopicor keyhole surgeryin low resource settings. The result is that laparoscopic surgery can now be carried out in clinics and hospitals where it was not possible before.

Dr. Pete Culmer, Associate Professor in Healthcare Technologies at Leeds, who supervised the research, said: "Laparoscopic surgery has benefits for patients. People recover more quickly, and the risks of cross infection are lower.

"But in many parts of the world, laparoscopic techniques are not widely used because of the need to use equipment that cannot be easily maintained or relies on complex infrastructure in the operating theater.

"We partnered with clinicians in India to work on developing instruments that would make the process simpler, with the aim of enabling laparoscopic surgery to be available in more locations around the world."

Access to safe surgery

During laparoscopic operations, the surgeon inflates the patient's abdomen with CO 2 gas, to create space to see internal organs and to manipulate instruments. That comes with two challenges. It requires operating theaters to have a reliable CO 2 gas supply. It also requires the patient's abdominal muscles to be fully relaxed requiring a general anesthetic and an anesthetist to give it.

An alternative approach called gasless laparoscopy has been developed. Rather than pumping CO 2 into the abdomen, a mechanical retractor or clamp is used to lift the abdominal wall. With this method, the patient does not need a general anestheticinstead, a spinal anesthesia is given, and there is no need for a dedicated anesthetist to be present.

But this alternative approach has failed to gain popularity, largely because of challenges with using and maintaining the retractors.

Fit for purpose

The researchers, in partnership with surgeons and a medical device manufacturer in India, designed a new retractor, ensuring it was fit for purpose in a low-resourced healthcare setting.

The attached graphic shows how a small ring is manipulated onto the end of the retractor by a surgeon using keyhole techniques. When in place, the device is manually operated to gently lift the abdominal cavity upwards, creating the necessary space for the surgical team to operate.

Known as RAIS (Retractor for Abdominal Insufflation-less Surgery), the innovative retractor went through five design iterations before a prototype was developed and tested.

During a clinical evaluation, it was used in 12 laparoscopic operations: in four cases of appendicitis, two hysterectomies and six cases where the gall bladder was removed.

The scientific paper reports that there were no adverse events from using the retractor.

Dr. Jesudian Gnanaraj, a surgeon who has pioneered gasless laparoscopic surgery and worked extensively in parts of rural India where surgery has not typically been available, said: "The biggest problem for rural surgeons needing to provide laparoscopic surgery is finding an anaesthesiologist and the equipment to give general anesthesia.

"The RAIS device makes laparoscopic surgery possible, with lower costs and easily available resources like spinal anesthesia.

"Providing laparoscopic surgery can help rural patients get back to work as soon as possible. This is vital because the longer they take to recover, the higher the chance of them falling below the poverty line."

Writing in the research paper, the researchers said the device was "...considered convenient to setup in the operating theater, could be readily cleaned and sterilized and transported within and between rural surgical sites".

The simplified design of the retractor meant it was easier for the device manufacturer to get regulatory approval, with the time it takes to go from design to approval being four years in this case. It can sometimes take ten years.

The RAIS device meets the guidelines established by the World Health Organization for the design and development of healthcare technology for low to middle income countries. It says they should follow four key principles, the 4Asaffordability, accessibility, availability and appropriateness.

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More information: M. Marriott Webb et al, The RAIS device for global surgery: using a Participatory Design approach to navigate the translational pathway to clinical use, IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine (2022). M. Marriott Webb et al, The RAIS device for global surgery: using a Participatory Design approach to navigate the translational pathway to clinical use,(2022). DOI: 10.1109/JTEHM.2022.3177313
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Active testosterone therapy for transgender men may negatively impact IVF outcomes, suggests a mouse study being presented Monday at ENDO 2022, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in Atlanta, Ga.

The study found female mice currently receiving testosterone had fewer and less developed eggs retrieved. In contrast, discontinuing testosterone therapy in mice led to similar egg retrieval rates compared to the control group.

Historically, there has been limited information on the impact of gender-affirming hormone treatment on reproductive capacity. Amanda Schwartz, M.D., reproductive endocrinology and infertility fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich., and colleagues originally hypothesized that testosterone (T) treatment would not have an impact on IVF outcomes.

To create the mouse model, 38 female mice were implanted with silastic tubing with either 10 mg T enthanate in ethanol (n=20) or ethanol alone (n=18) at 10 weeks of age. The mice were divided into four groups: current T implant, current sham implant, T cessation and control cessation.

The team monitored T levels and reproductive cycles. Mice with the testosterone and sham implants underwent ovarian stimulation 12 weeks post-implantation. Implants were removed after 12 weeks for the testosterone cessation and control cessation groups, and mice underwent ovarian stimulation 2 weeks later.

Mice with current T treatment had fewer oocytes, or egg cells, retrieved (17 vs. 36), compared with the current sham implant group. The mice undergoing active testosterone therapy also had fewer mature oocytes (13 vs. 28.1), and 2-cell embryos (12.78 vs. 26.9) retrieved than the current sham implant group. There was no significant difference in maturity or fertilization rate. Females who had 2-cell embryos transferred from current T implant mice were less likely to have a live birth than those with transfers from current sham implant mice (25% vs. 80%).

Conversely, the T cessation group and control showed no significant difference between total oocytes, mature oocytes or 2-cell embryos retrieved.

"These results demonstrate reversibility of the detrimental impact of testosterone on IVF outcomes and support a period of testosterone discontinuation prior to pursuing fertility preservation," Schwartz said. However, further research is needed to fully understand the impact of testosterone on human reproductive potential.

The Endocrine Society's Clinical Practice Guidelines currently recommend fertility preservation counseling for all individuals seeking gender-affirming care.

Explore further Longer treatment with puberty-delaying medication in transgender youth leads to lower bone mineral density

More information: Schwartz will present at the Society's ENDO 2022 reproductive health news conference at 9 AM Eastern on Monday, June 13.
Credit: public domain

The size of our primary visual cortex and the amount of brain tissue we have dedicated to processing visual information at certain locations of visual space can predict how well we can see, a team of neuroscientists has discovered. Its study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications, reveals a new link between brain structure and behavior.

"We have found that we can predict how well someone can see based on the unique structure of their primary visual cortex," explains lead author Marc Himmelberg, a postdoctoral researcher in New York University's Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology. "By showing that individual variation in the structure of the human visual brain is linked to variation in visual functioning, we can better understand what underlies differences in how people perceive and interact with their visual environment."

As with fingerprints, the bumps and grooves on each person's brain surface are unique. However, the significance of these differences is not fully understood, especially when it comes to their impact on behavior, such as distinctions in our ability to see.

In the Nature Communications study, Himmelberg and his co-authors, Jonathan Winawer and Marisa Carrasco, professors in NYU's Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology, sought to illuminate the relevance of these brain traits to how we see.

The primary visual cortex (V1) is arranged into a map of the image projected from the eye. But like many kinds of maps, it is distorted, with some parts of the image enlarged compared to others.

"Think of a subway map of New York City which makes Staten Island look smaller than Manhattan," explains Winawer. "The map maintains some degree of accuracy, but it enlarges regions likely to be of broader interest. Similarly, V1 enlarges the center of the image we seethat is, where our eyes are fixatingrelative to the periphery."

This is because V1 has more tissue dedicated to the center of our field of view. Likewise, V1 also enlarges locations to the left and right of where our eyes are fixating relative to locations above or below, again because of differences in the arrangement of cortical tissue.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the scientists mapped the primary visual cortex (or "V1") size of more than two dozen humans. The researchers also measured the quantity of V1 tissue these individuals have dedicated to processing visual information from different locations in their field of viewlocations to the left, right, above, and below fixation.

These participants also undertook a task designed to assess the quality of their vision at the same locations in their field of view as the V1 measurements. The participants discriminated among the orientation of patterns shown on a computer screen, which were used to gauge "contrast sensitivity," or the ability to make distinctions among images.

Their results showed that differences in V1 surface area could predict measurements of people's contrast sensitivity. First, people with a large V1 had better overall contrast sensitivity than did those with a small V1 (the largest surface area being 1,776 square millimeters [mm2] and the smallest being 832 mm2). Second, people whose V1 had more cortical tissue processing visual information from a specific region in their field of view had higher contrast sensitivity at that region relative to those with less cortical tissue dedicated to the same region. Third, across participants, higher contrast sensitivity at a specific location (e.g., left) than at another location equidistant from fixation (e.g., above) corresponded to regions with more or less cortical tissue, respectively.

"In sum, the more local V1 surface area dedicated to encoding a specific location, the better the vision at that location," concludes Carrasco. "Our findings show differences in visual perception are inextricably linked to differences in the structure of the primary visual cortex in the brain."

Explore further How brains form visual maps

More information: Linking individual differences in human primary visual cortex to contrast sensitivity around the visual field, Nature Communications (2022). Journal information: Nature Communications Linking individual differences in human primary visual cortex to contrast sensitivity around the visual field,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31041-9
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

In the fall of 2021, Danielle Geohagan woke up in a Turkish clinic, disoriented. Her body was shivering despite the stack of blankets piled on her healing midsection, and she was hungry after going more than 12 hours without food. Surrounding her were nurses donning blue scrubs, speaking a language she didn't understand.

The 30-year-old Londoner traveled to Istanbul for liposuction that removed fat in her midsection, thighs and arms. While she believes England's publicly funded health care system is "fabulous," she decided on Turkey because of its exchange rate and surgeons' experience with people of color.

"Other than my life, what do I have to lose?" she told U.S. TODAY.

Overall, Geohagan was happy with the outcome of her procedure and had a positive experience at a recovery hotel, where nutritionists, nurses and doctors were available on-site throughout the day. The entire trip, including plane tickets, the hotel stay, the procedure, hospital fees, post-op massages and food, cost roughly $4,500.

But when asked if she would recommend the same experience to friends, Geohagan hesitated.

The staff at the clinic spoke little English, which meant Geohagan had to use makeshift sign language to communicate. There are also communication issues ahead of the visit; she learned only after arrival that she should have planned to spend five to seven days recovering. She went home after four days.

Geohagan sat on her knees throughout the four-hour flight, trying to keep her stomach flat to ease the pain.

"I'm very happy with my results. However, when asked by my friends if I'd recommend it, I say don't do it," she said. "If you're going to go, bring someone who speaks the language with you."

Now that border restrictions have largely evaporated, health experts say medical tourism for cosmetic procedures like Geohagan's is likely picking up. Patients may be attracted to the price tags and travel opportunities offered at clinics outside their home country, but health experts note that traveling so close to a procedure can carry risks.

"I believe we're going to start seeing more and more (medical) touristseven more than we saw before COVID," said Renato Saltz, former president and current board member of the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery's board. As for the safety of international surgery: "You can go anywhere. Just make sure you do your homework and go to (a surgeon) that is well-trained and respected."

Why do people travel abroad for plastic surgery?

Medical tourism had been picking up long before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 3 million Americans traveled for medical tourism outside the country in 2016, largely for dental procedures, according to a survey released last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Based on these findings, the University of the Incarnate Word's Center of Medical Tourism Research expects more than 2 million Americans to travel to Mexico for medical tourism in 2023.

Saltz noted that cost is a leading incentive for patients who leave their home country for surgery. It's no coincidence that Mexico, which offers a 25% to 35% discount on dental or cosmetic treatments compared to the U.S., is one of the most popular destinations for Americans seeking cosmetic procedures, according to a 2019 report from the Iranian Journal of Public Health.

Enrique Cedillo, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon in northeastern Mexico, said he has noticed an uptick in U.S. patients this year. He said lower costs are one of the biggest reasons why his patients travel to Mexico for procedures.

"I have patients that come from New York, and also patients that come from L.A. That's crazy for me," he said. "That is like the capital of plastic surgery."

Currency exchange rates can also help; Saltz noted that $1 is worth about 5 reals in Brazil, another popular destination for cosmetic surgery.

But patients should consider how travel expenses and other charges will rack up total costs, Saltz said, especially with airfare up considerably from 2019.

"When you look at the top surgeons worldwide, they charge very well. It's not going to be any cheaper than surgery in your own country by adding the trip, the hotel, the costs, possible complications, flying back," Saltz said.

That hasn't stopped insiders from noticing an uptick in cosmetic surgery-related travel.

David Vequist, founder and director of the University of the Incarnate Word's Center for Medical Tourism Research, pointed to pent-up demand as a possible driver. More people may be choosing to get procedures abroad to see more of the world after being stuck at home for two years, he said.

Vacation and surgery all-in-one

Exploring a different country was part of what drew Stacey and Darcey Silva, twin reality TV stars from "90 Day Fiance" and their own namesake show, to get a number of procedures done in Turkey in February 2021. The two spent about a month in Turkey, splitting their time between Bodrum and Istanbul, and had procedures done on their teeth, noses, lips, breasts as well as liposuction.

"We've had surgery before, in Miami and in Beverly Hills, but I feel like going to Turkey was the total package for us," Darcey Silva, 47, told U.S. TODAY. "We got to see a new country, meet amazing new people. It was a journey, and it'll be one of the best memories we have together as twins."

"The clinic was top-notch, five-star service," Stacey added.

Researchers have also pointed to social media as an influence inspiring travel for cosmetic surgeries. Not only are patients bombarded with images of models or influencers perfected with filters online, but various physicians are finding ways to attract patients around the world through social media.

Cedillo noted that his international clientele started taking off after he started using Instagram to showcase his work.

"I noticed immediately the change," he said. Before, "all my patients were local. ... When I started using Instagram, I started to see people that come in from everywhere."

Vequist said the pandemic-era "Zoom effect" could also be driving more Americans to cosmetic surgeons.

"It's kind of like staring at a mirror for several hours a day, every day, because you're on these meetings on Zoom," Vequist said. People "ended up seeing these flaws, these crow's feet next to their eyes, the fact that their neck is starting to get wrinkles or wilting a little bit."

That, combined with a lack of self-care during the pandemic and "Quarantine 15" weight gain, has led to "a cosmetic perfect storm," according to Vequist.

Is it safe to travel for plastic surgery?

There are risks to traveling soon after major surgery.

The International Society of Plastic Surgery warns that sitting for long periods of time on a plane or car ride can increase the risk for blood clots in the legs and lungs. And experts typically advise against common vacation activities that may be tempting in a destination like Mexicosuch as swimming, sunbathing and drinking alcoholafter surgery.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also notes that you are more likely to get an antibiotic-resistant infection in some countries, and counterfeit medicines and lower quality medical devices may be used in some countries.

But Vequist says there's little proof that procedures abroad are riskier than what patients can find within the U.S., despite the occasional horror story in the news.

"How many times would you think the media reports on the successful procedures?" he asked. "We aren't finding much evidence that there's a difference."

Saltz agreed, adding that there are clinics in the U.S. that have issues as well. He and other experts warned that patients should be on the lookout for bad actors in any city.

The results of a shoddy surgery can be devastating; Sivan Himmelman of Los Angeles says she is still recovering from procedures done in 2019.

The 40-year-old traveled to Mexico for a liposuction procedure and breast implants after stumbling across a surgeon on Instagram with an impressive portfolio. The surgeries cost her more than $6,000.

What was supposed to be a five-night stay in a recovery home was extended to 10 nights after she experienced complications. Himmelman said she discovered lipo burns on her stomach and back and scarring, along with a host of other issues. She said the recovery process has been a "nightmare"she estimates she spent "well over" $25,000 on follow-up proceduresand is far from happy with her results.

"I walked in thinking I'd walk away with a flat stomach," she said. Now, "I'm having to learn to love myself all over again when I couldn't master it the first 40 years of my life."

Experts warn that patients should do their research before committing to any clinic or surgeon with promising pictures online, whether it's inside or outside the U.S., and look for accredited facilities with board-certified surgeons.

"Don't just get attracted by a beautiful page on the internet," Saltz said.

"Followers and likes do not equate to competency," added Gregory Greco, president-elect of the American Society of Plastic Surgery.

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Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Federal health officials said Sunday that kid-sized doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccines appear to be safe and effective for kids under 5, a key step toward a long-awaited decision to begin vaccinating the youngest American children.

The Food and Drug Administration posted its analysis of the Pfizer shot ahead of a Wednesday meeting where outside experts will vote on whether the shots are ready for the nation's 18 million babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Kids under 5 are the only group not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S.

Late last week the FDA posted a similar analysis of Moderna's shots for children under 6.

If regulators clear the shots by one or both companies, vaccinations could begin as soon as next week with the drugmakers ready to rapidly ship doses ordered by the government. Parents have been pressing federal officials for months for the opportunity to protect their smallest children as more adults shed masks and abandon other public health precautions.

While only about 3% of U.S. COVID cases are in the age group 6 months to 4 years, hospitalization and death rates in that group are higher than those for older children, according to the FDA's analysisone reason experts have said protecting this group is important.

The FDA said children who received Pfizer's shots during testing developed high levels of virus-fighting antibodies expected to protect them against coronavirus. That's the basic threshold needed to win FDA authorization. But additional testing turned up key differences, with stronger results for Pfizer.

Pfizer's vaccine, given as a three-shot series, appeared 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, although that calculation was based on just 10 cases diagnosed among study participants. The figure could change as Pfizer's study continues.

Moderna's two-dose series was only about 40% to 50% effective at preventing milder infections, though the two companies' shots were tested at different times during the pandemic, when different variants were circulating. Moderna has begun testing a booster for tots.

On Wednesday, the FDA will ask an independent panel of vaccine experts to debate both companies' data before voting. The FDA is not required to follow the group's recommendations, but the process is seen as a key step in publicly vetting the shots.

The FDA is expected to make its official decision shortly after Wednesday's all-day meeting. The next step: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends how to use vaccines, will convene its own expert panel to debate which tots need vaccinations.

It's not clear how much demand there will initially be for the shots. A recent survey suggests only 1 in 5 parents of young children would get their kids vaccinated right away. Vaccines have been available since November for older U.S. schoolchildren, yet less than a third of those ages 5 to 11 have gotten the two recommended doses, according to government figures.

For the youngest children, each company is offering different dose sizes and number of shots, beginning at 6 months through 4 years for Pfizer and through 5 years for Moderna.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech plan to offer two shots three weeks apart followed by a third at least two months latereach one-tenth the dose given to adults. Pfizer is currently the only company with a COVID-19 vaccine for older U.S. children.

Moderna is seeking FDA clearance for two shots, each a quarter of its adult dose, given about four weeks apart.

The FDA currently allows Moderna's vaccine to be used only in adults. But some countries allow full-size doses for teens and half-size shots for kids ages 6 to 11a step the FDA also is considering.

More than 30,000 U.S. children younger than 5 have been hospitalized with COVID-19 and nearly 500 coronavirus deaths have been reported in that age group, according to U.S. health officials.

The government allowed pharmacies and states to start placing orders for tot-sized doses last week, with 5 million initially availablehalf made by Pfizer and half by Moderna.

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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The reintroduction of the wild-type poliovirus or circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) is a sizeable threat in the Ukraine, which is considered a high-risk country for vaccine-preventable infections, including poliomyelitis, an extremely dangerous disease that causes paralysis in children. The situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in eastern Ukraine, and ongoing healthcare reforms, scientists from Ukraine explained at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

On October 6, 2021, a case of paralytic poliomyelitis was confirmed in a 1.5-year-old child from Western Ukraine with a poliovirus shedding genetically similar to an environmental sample from Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Since January 2022, 19 cases of paralytic polio have been confirmed in western Ukraine, leading to a declaration of a public health emergency in the Rivne and Zakarpattia provinces.

"The invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine on February 24, 2022 led to thousands of victims, occupied territories, millions of refugees and internally displaced persons. All this disrupted access to medical care, significantly disrupted routine vaccinations and the response to the polio outbreak in Ukraine," the scientists wrote.

The high risk of spread is due to low immunization73.3% as of December, 2021as well as to gaps in immunization at the regional level, said presenting author Dmytro Stepanskyi, head of the Department of Microbiology, Virology, Immunology and Epidemiology, Dnipropetrovsk Medical Academy of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. These factors lead to high risks of international spread of the virus to polio-free countries.

The Ministry of Health of Ukraine has worked with international partners to develop a unified strategy to respond to the outbreak. These measures include strengthening surveillance nationally, immunization efforts for unvaccinated children under 6 years of age, as well as advocacy and communications activities.

Explore further Polio leaves Ukraine toddler paralysed: ministry
The spinal column posture evaluated by the examination. The left shows the posture in which the anterior-posterior balance of the spinal column is balanced, and the center and the right are the upper body protruding forward with respect to the pelvis and the center of gravity forward. As we get older, the center of gravity tends to move forward. By evaluating this, it is possible to detect a slight decline in cognitive function. Credit: The Authors

A mass survey of citizens aged 50 to 89 years examined whether cognitive decline could be detected by sagittal spinal balance measurement based on a radiological approach. Doctors from Shinshu University observed associations of sagittal vertical axis (SVA) anteriorization and higher age with lower cognitive function. The results of their study are published in Scientific Reports.

The sagittal vertical axis is the length of a horizontal line connecting the posterior superior sacral end plate to a vertical plumbline dropped from the centroid of the C7 vertebral body. The more the head and neck protrude in front of the pelvis when viewed from the side, the more likely subjects are to show symptoms of mild cognitive decline. In males, the SVA was associated with cognitive decline independently of age. In females, cognitive decline was more likely in cases of SVA that is equal or greater than 70mm regardless of age.

Mild cognitive impairment involves cognitive complaints from the individual or associates but no dementia. Dementia, frailty, and bedridden status may be prevented by catching mild cognitive impairment at a reversible stage in communities where expensive special testing equipment or additional medical testing time is limited for the older population. First author Hikaru Nishimura is an occupational therapist who researches problems faced by the elderly from a rehabilitation perspective. Exercise training in older adults could prolong the extent of decline towards dementia or prevent it all together.

Corresponding author Doctor Shota Ikegami of Shinshu University states that poor posture is a manifestation of frailty in the elderly. Hidden cognitive decline, a component of frailty, can be detected by posture screening. Older adults in the town of Obuse, Nagano were examined for the mass survey and it was found that in Japanese older adults, those who exhibited anteriorization of the spine were more likely to also have cognitive function decline.

Cognitive decline was reliably detected by combining age and the degree of spinal imbalance. Males with SVA  100 mm at any age, SVA  90 mm at  70 years, and SVA  70 mm at  80 years were likely to have cognitive decline, while females with SVA  70 mm at any age were likely to have cognitive decline.

The prefecture of Nagano boasts some of the highest health longevity in Japan. With this study and others, doctors hope to prevent future need for care through rehabilitation interventions for frailty found during screenings.

Explore further Retinal layer thickness linked to cognitive decline in older adults

More information: Hikaru Nishimura et al, Detection of cognitive decline by spinal posture assessment in health exams of the general older population, Scientific Reports (2022). Journal information: Scientific Reports Hikaru Nishimura et al, Detection of cognitive decline by spinal posture assessment in health exams of the general older population,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-12605-7

Provided by Shinshu University
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A new study by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences examining population genetics across Europe has analyzed the diverse ancestries of people living in the UK. This knowledge has the potential to inform future health research on genetic factors leading to disease.

The study, led by researchers at the RCSI School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences and the SFI FutureNeuro Research Centre, has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The RCSI and FutureNeuro researchers used the UK Biobank, a database of genetic and health information of over 500,000 participants from the UK, to examine population genetics and ancestry across Europe.

The study analyzed the genetic ancestry data of individuals in the UK Biobank who reported having a European birthplace outside of the UKabout 1% of the dataset. Researchers catalogued where individuals shared segments of their genome with other individuals, meaning they had a common ancestor within the past 3,000 years.

With this information, the researchers could group individuals with more segments in common than on average into three branches, corresponding to southern, central-eastern, and northwestern Europe.

By studying the patterns of the genome sharing, the researchers were able to infer historical patterns such as population size and how genetically isolated specific European regions are, relative to each other. In general, people from southern Europe were found to have less in common genetically with each other than in other areas, due to the larger population sizes and therefore usually greater number of ancestors in the region.

An exception to this was Malta, whichbeing an islandwas found to have a smaller pool of ancestors. This is the first large sample analysis of Maltese population genetics. Identifying European regions such as Malta with specific histories of genetic isolation could potentially aid the discovery of genetic factors contributing to disease.

In addition to building and expanding upon previous knowledge in Europe, the results present the UK Biobank as a source of diverse ancestries beyond the UK. This has the potential to complement and inform researchers interested in specific communities or regions across Europe and the world.

Professor Gianpiero Cavalleri, Professor of Human Genetics at RCSI, Deputy Director of FutureNeuro and senior author on the paper, commented, "This research has shown the diversity of European ancestries sampled by the UK Biobank and has enabled us show the 'big picture' of the genetic landscape of Europe, including new insights into communities such as within Malta. This work suggests similar gains of knowledge could be found within non-European ancestry groups using the UK Biobank, groups that are typically excluded from genetic analyses."

Dr. Edmund Gilbert, NUI Posdoctoral Fellow and first author on the paper, commented, "The power of the large sample size of and scale of information on the participants in the UK Biobank has allowed us to show the diversity of genetic histories across the European continent. With new sequencing data becoming available from the UK Biobank, our work lays a foundation for informed analysis of rare and functional variation in ancestries in the UK and beyond."

More information: Edmund Gilbert et al, Revealing the recent demographic history of Europe via haplotype sharing in the UK Biobank, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Edmund Gilbert et al, Revealing the recent demographic history of Europe via haplotype sharing in the UK Biobank,(2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2119281119

Provided by RCSI
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

French drug maker Sanofi said Monday a COVID booster shot it is developing with Britain's GlaxoSmithKline has produced positive results against Omicron and other variants in clinical trials.

The "next-generation" vaccine delivered a "strong immune response" against multiple variants of concern in two trials, Sanofi said in a statement.

The results are a boost for Sanofi and GSK, which have lagged behind rivals in offering a COVID vaccine.

Their candidate vaccine produced a 40-fold increase in antibodies against the BA.1 Omicron variant in adults who were given mRNA shots, the technology used by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, Sanofi said.

It also generated a "higher immune response" than the Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot, the French company said.

The firms are combining a Sanofi-developed antigen, which stimulates the production of germ-killing antibodies, with GSK's adjuvant technology, a substance that bolsters the immune response triggered by a vaccine.

"COVID-19 keeps evolving and the combination of emergence of variants and waning immunity is likely to lead to the need for additional booster shots, at least in some populations," said Sanofi Vaccines executive vice president Thomas Triomphe.

"We believe this next-generation booster could have an important role to play for public health vaccination campaigns," Triomphe said.

Sanofi and GSK are developing the next-generation jab at the same time that they are waiting for regulatory approval for their first-generation vaccine.

Explore further France's Sanofi halts work on mRNA Covid vaccine

 2022 AFP
Credit: The Conversation

Can an otherwise healthy young woman die from what starts out as something akin to a common cold? The answer is, shockingly, yes, when certain telltale signs of a more serious problem go undetected.

Though many people haven't even heard of it, sepsisthe body's extreme response to infectionis the leading killer of hospitalized patients in the United States. Worldwide, sepsis is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths every year. Even among those who survive, many will never be able to return to work, and some won't be able to return home from the hospital, requiring life support or ongoing critical care.

We are two researchers and critical care doctors at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who are working to change the way scientists and doctors think about sepsis. We are interested in understanding and spreading awareness about how sepsis starts and how it can elude even the most astute physicians.

We are also learning more about how community factors are at play and how a better understanding of the communities we all live in could help everyday people and health care workers alike recognize and stop this deadly disease.

What is sepsis?

Sepsis is a medical emergency that begins with an infectionperhaps even a mild infection. Upon detecting bacteria or a virus, your body releases a choreographed cascade of chemicals into the bloodstream. This chemical alert beckons an artillery of immune cells that work in concert to fight the bug.

When this system works well, your body clears the infection and you get better. But when the system doesn't work well, sepsis can ensue.

The onset of sepsis occurs when your immune cells pivot from fighting the infection to fighting your own tissues and organs. This reaction can be similar to an autoimmune response, a condition in which the body's immune system turns on itself. Many people are familiar with chronic autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn's disease, but sometimes this type of autoimmune response can occur even in healthy people.

When sepsis occurs, the immune system can commonly injure the heart, lungs, kidneys or blood cells, among other important body systems. Inflammation in the blood vessels can make them leaky, causing blood flow to the brain and other organs to become severely diminished. When this occurs, a person's blood pressure may become dangerously low, which is a severe form of sepsis known as septic shock.

An illustrated explanation of how sepsis attacks the body.

Without prompt and proper treatmentand sometimes even despite treatmentsepsis can cause organ damage and even death. Once shock develops, mortality from sepsis is estimated to jump from 10% to as high as 40%.

Sepsis can result from nearly any infection. Most commonly it develops from pneumonia or a urinary tract infection. Severe COVID-19 can also cause sepsis. Often, sepsis patients are seen by a medical professional for infection symptoms in the week preceding sepsis hospitalization. However, predicting which infected patients will go on to develop sepsis is very difficult.

Treatment options

The cornerstones of sepsis treatment are prompt recognition of sepsis symptoms, followed by antibiotics and fluids. But even the most careful and attentive physicians can miss the early signs of sepsis.

This is largely because there is no single test to positively diagnose sepsis. Sepsis symptoms may mimic other life-threatening conditions such as heart attacks, blood clots, bleeding or even an allergic reaction. Patients often display vague and variable symptoms such as weakness, lightheadedness and rapid breathing, making the diagnosis even more challenging.

For example, a young, otherwise healthy person with sepsis due to pneumonia may look much different from an older diabetic who develops sepsis from a smoldering skin infection.

Sepsis patients nearly always require admission to the hospital or even the ICU, and those with severe forms of sepsis often require life support. This may include dialysis or mechanical ventilation to support failing organs. The source of infection needs to be identified and, in some cases, surgically removed. Delaying sepsis treatment by even a few hours can have deadly consequences.

Recognizing sepsis before it's too late

Differences in sepsis go beyond symptoms. COVID-19 has laid bare that severe illness isn't a game of chance. Like COVID-19 infection, sepsis susceptibilityand who is most likely to get sick and dieis part of a complex interplay of social influences that include racism, poverty, geography and community dynamics.

Sepsis is sometimes mistaken for the flu.

Research strongly suggests that certain people are at far higher risk of developing sepsis than others. Much like COVID-19, older people with underlying chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes face a heightened risk for sepsis. Such factors as race, poverty and even driving distance to the hospital may have a significant impact on who survives sepsis.

Most of the work done to improve sepsis detection and treatment has focused on the hospital setting. Doctors, researchers and even government agencies have concentrated their efforts on improving sepsis recognition and treatment once a patient reaches the hospital. Research aimed at understanding an individual's sepsis risk has focused on personal health history and social and economic factors such as income and race, or community features such as primary care access.

While these approaches have advanced the field's understanding of sepsis, they have led to little progress in reducing the incidence of sepsis in the U.S.

New approaches to catching a killer

Given what is known about the importance of early sepsis treatment, researchers like us are taking a closer look at the role of communities in improving sepsis detection and understanding sepsis risk.

The early stages of sepsis can evolve rapidly when a patient is at home. Scientists estimate that 87% of sepsis cases start outside the hospital. When a patient does present for care, it's often in a clinic or emergency medical services setting in the days and even hours preceding sepsis hospitalization. These critical treatment windows may mean the difference between life and death for a sepsis patient.

Alongside researchers based at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, we are now working to advance sepsis care by studying sepsis patient symptoms, community factors, diagnosis and treatment patterns outside the hospital. We are also expanding work to improve sepsis diagnosis among hospitalized patients. This coast-to-coast collaboration will study patients cared for at over 40 hospitals, 30 EMS agencies and a critical mass of ambulatory clinics. We hope that our work will shed light on the early stages of sepsis, including signs that may signal that an infected patient is progressing to sepsis, and explore diagnostic and treatment approaches that could help stop sepsis before it advances too far.

We are also learning a great deal more about the complicated role of community factors like poverty on health outcomes, including sepsis. Using "syndemic theory"a framework to describe synergistic epidemics that arise from harmful social conditionswe are studying how two co-occurring epidemics, like poverty and asthma, can work together to increase negative health outcomes. Though this framework is only beginning to be used to study acute illness, it has the potential to transform the way we think about sepsis.

Explore further Consumer Health: Sepsis is serious

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This 2003 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions, left, and spherical immature virions, right, obtained from a sample of human skin associated with the 2003 prairie dog outbreak. British health officials said Monday, June 13, 2022 they have detected another 104 cases of monkeypox in England, in what has become the biggest outbreak beyond Africa of the normally rare disease. Credit: Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC via AP, file

British health officials have detected another 104 cases of monkeypox in England in what has become the biggest outbreak beyond Africa of the normally rare disease.

The U.K.'s Health Security Agency said Monday there were now 470 cases of monkeypox across the country, with the vast majority in gay or bisexual men. Scientists warn that anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, is susceptible to catching monkeypox if they are in close, physical contact with an infected person or their clothing or bed sheets.

According to U.K. data, 99% of the cases so far have been in men and most are in London.

In May, a leading adviser to the World Health Organization said the monkeypox outbreak in Europe and beyond was likely spread by sex at two recent raves in Spain and Belgium.

Last week, WHO said 1,285 cases of monkeypox had been reported from 28 countries where monkeypox was not known to be endemic. No deaths have been reported outside of Africa. After the U.K., the biggest numbers of cases have been reported in Spain, Germany and Canada.

WHO said many people in the outbreak have "atypical features" of the disease which could make it more difficult for doctors to diagnose. The U.N. health agency also said while close contact can spread monkeypox, "it is not clear what role sexual bodily fluids, including semen and vaginal fluids, play in the transmission."

Meanwhile, countries in Africa have reported more than 1,500 suspected cases including 72 deaths from eight countries. Monkeypox is considered endemic in Central and West Africa.

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Solar rooftop at SM City North EDSA CLIMATE CHANGE is one of the most pressing and defining global issues today and it has become imperative...
A new video series puts local bands in the spotlight along the water, with sharp video, crisp audio and interviews that take people into the songs themselves.

The Blackfoot River Sessions debuted recently with a feature on Junior, a Missoula trio, performing at the KettleHouse Brewing Co.s taproom patio in Bonner.

Were hoping that these videos get the attention of the local music community, said Nick Davis of Missoula Media Company. He said there are fewer venues for local bands now, and they hope to help them get some exposure in a time when they really couldnt get their music out there in front of everybody.

Benjamin Zeimet, a partner in Missoula Media, came up with the idea before the pandemic and the shutdown sped the project forward.

Besides the music, they thought it was important to include interviews. A lot of these bands, especially with their songwriting, have cool stories to tell. He counts many musicians as friends, and more often than not, hed only get to hear the anecdotes behind the scenes.

Davis, whos also a writer, acts as producer, host and shoots video. Zeimet handles the filming, and partner Merritt Lentz, is in charge of design.

Like many groups, Juniors opportunities to perform live have been less frequent in the past two years.

Junior formed before COVID, when Caroline Keys (banjo, guitar, bass), Hermina Jean Harold (drums, guitar) and Jenny Lynn Fawcett (violin), began playing together. All three sing harmony and take turns on lead.

One of Harolds songs, Goddamnit, was a local anthem in 2020 during the first phase of the pandemic, and the video series gives them a chance to discuss it. In summer 2021, they released their debut, "Warm Buildings."

The concert portion of Juniors video was filmed in fall 2020 when live shows were especially sparse.

Harold said they were honored to be the first installment.

The recording session happened during such a strange time, early on in the pandemic, when we were starved for music and community, separated from one another, and still trying to figure out how to finish the album we recorded in January 2020, she wrote in an email. A performance project was a really rare and welcome distraction. These guys are creating something special for our area and I can't wait to see who they highlight next in the series.

They waited until after vaccines were available to shoot an interview, in which Davis talks with them about songwriting in a casual but illuminating format. Davis said they have the musicians pick three songs and then take a deep dive into each. In Juniors case, they talk about Goddamnit and its collaborative video and Keys tune Midnight Summer, and its roots in 20-something life in Missoula long before COVID. Harold discusses the inspiration of her song, Blue Bathroom, and how a specific source for a lyric can take on a broader meaning and change over time even to the writer.

***

The idea has its roots in Zeimets former venture, Hi-Line Films, which had a recording studio. They cut a prior series of videos, with groups like Dodgy Mountain Men, Rotgut Whines, the Newlyweds and more, to showcase the groups and the studio. He hadnt heard some of them before they stepped in the room, and was floored by the quality and the fact theres an amazing group of musicians here who didnt have places to play, he said.

Regarding the scenic location, Davis said the rivers make the place for him, and theres something powerful about the combination of music and moving water. Along the Blackfoot, they could shoot off the roof and splice in aerial footage from Jeffrey Neubauer.

Jordan Lane of Letter B recorded the audio, and Zeimet said they were aiming for a live-venue feel thats clean but doesnt sound overproduced. Its as crisp as youll ever get to hear the trio, particularly with the harmonies. Davis said theres about 10 seconds at the end of that Keys tune he could listen to on repeat.

You can watch a full 26-minute cut or shorter song-by-song versions at missoulamediaco.com/blackfoot-river-sessions and its YouTube channel.

While its a passion project, theyre looking for sponsors to pay the crew and the musicians, Davis said, and are providing the band with the audio of the recordings.

Theyre looking to film more entries in the series this year and the project could evolve and change. Zeimet said theyre open to anything from solo acts to larger bands.

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MONDAY, June 13, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Yet another study shows that ivermectin provides no benefits for COVID-19 patients, but researchers say they'll continue to study a higher dose of the drug.

Even though the drug used for parasitic infections in animals and people is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat COVID-19, some have touted it as a therapy against the disease. The FDA warns against this and says large doses can be dangerous.

This double-blind study began in June 2021 and enrolled more than 1,500 participants with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 symptoms across the United States. They took 400 mcg/kg per day of ivermectin or a placebo for three days.

Over eight months, there was no difference in symptom relief or in the number of emergency room visits or hospitalizations between those who took ivermectin or the placebo, according to the findings on the pre-publication server medRxiv. The study has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

"There was no significant benefit in our primary endpoint of resolution of symptoms in mild-to-moderate COVID-19 illness," said study principal investigator Dr. Adrian Hernandez, executive director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, N.C.

"Overall, most people improved their symptoms whether they took ivermectin or not. Given these results, there does not appear to be a role for ivermectin outside of a clinical trial setting, especially considering other available options with proven reduction in hospitalizations and death," Hernandez said in a Duke University news release.

The researchers are still assessing a higher dose (600 mcg/kg) and longer use (six days) of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients.

The research is part of a study called ACTIV-6 that is examining the use of three repurposed medications in COVID-19 patients. Repurposed medications are those already approved by the FDA to treat other health conditions.

ACTIV-6 has so far enrolled more than 4,000 participants, with plans to include nearly 15,000 participants nationwide.

"The ACTIV-6 team will continue to study this higher dose to determine whether it will make enough of a difference to be considered for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19," said study co-author Dr. Susanna Naggie, also of the Duke Clinical Research Institute.

"We are committed to sharing these study results with participants, the public, and scientific community when they are available," Naggie said in the release.

For now, though, the FDA urges caution. It's possible to overdose on ivermectin, with symptoms including diarrhea, nausea, dizziness and even death. Also, the FDA said it has received reports of patients who have required hospitalization after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for livestock.

More information

For more on COVID-19 treatments and medications, see the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

SOURCE: Duke University, news release, June 13, 2022

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MONDAY, June 13, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Hot flashes are one of the most well-known symptoms of menopause and they can be severe and frequent, happening throughout the day and night over several years.

Researchers say they have found a new, effective treatment that could provide relief and an alternative to existing therapies.

"The simple truth is for many years, we did not even know or understand the biology of hot flashes," said study author Dr. Genevieve Neal-Perry.

Only in the past decade have doctors begun to understand how certain neurons are affected by reduced estrogen levels during menopause, triggering the bothersome flushing and sweats, said Neal-Perry, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

"We now have an understanding of the neuronal pathways that are involved in hot flashes. So this has allowed us to actually develop more specific treatments. And, so, fezolinetant is an example of a more specific treatment. It is a selective [NK3] antagonist that blocks the receptor," Neal-Perry said.

That prevents the hot flash, she explained.

Quality-of-life improvements

"Having treatments that actually reduce the hot flash improves quality of life, as well as some other medical conditions that are associated with individuals who have a lot of hot flashes," Neal-Perry said. It also allows these women to function at a level that they did before menopause, she added.

The researchers studying fezolinetant recently released the results for a phase 3 trial -- the final step before U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. The study included 501 postmenopausal women, ages 40 to 65, who had an average of seven or more moderate-to-severe hot flashes a day. The women were randomized to take either a placebo daily, or one of two dose options of fezolinetant for 12 weeks.

Later, those on the placebo were re-randomized to take either the 30 mg or 45 mg dose of the drug. Those originally on the drug remained on their dose for 40 more weeks.

Though women still, on average, had some hot flashes, the team found a significant reduction in their number and severity in the drug groups compared to the placebo group through week 12. Those who continued through the 52-week study period continued to have those improvements. The women from the placebo group who switched to the drug later also experienced those gains.

The study was paid for by drug maker Astellas Pharma Inc.

Neal-Perry presented the study Saturday at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting, in Atlanta. Findings presented at medical meetings are considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The most effective current treatment for menopause symptoms is hormone therapy, either estrogen alone or in combination with progestogen, said Dr. JoAnn Pinkerton, director of the Midlife Health Center at the University of Virginia Health System. She was not involved in the study.

However, there are risks associated with hormone therapy, and not everyone can or will take it, Pinkerton said. Non-estrogen prescription therapies include low-dose antidepressants and medications such as gabapentin, clonidine and oxybutynin, although only one, a low-dose paroxetine salt, has been approved by FDA for hot flashes. None work as well as hormone therapy, she said.

"Women feel frustrated by all the contradictions they face from their health care providers, the misinformation circulating on the internet, and the wives' tales theyve heard from their friends and relatives. This often leads to incorrect treatment, fear of treatment, no treatment or inaction," Pinkerton said.

Non-hormonal option

Pinkerton noted the positive results of the fezolinetant study. "This therapy appears to be 'first in its kind' and will hopefully receive FDA approval providing us a safe and effective non-hormone therapy for women with bothersome hot flashes," she said.

"Since it does not contain hormones, it will be an option for women with prior estrogen-sensitive cancers, those with blood clots or other medical reasons to avoid hormone therapy," Pinkerton said.

The abstract does not provide data on side effects or risks, Pinkerton also noted. Earlier products had liver issues but this was not seen with fezolinetant, she said.

"Learning about any differing effects with different ethnic groups, older women who have persistent hot flashes, or obese women often excluded from clinical trials will be important," Pinkerton said.

Neal-Perry noted that some of the existing treatments are not as effective for women of color, who also tend to experience hot flashes for more years than white women do.

She added that the new drug "really advances the field of menopausal therapy by many years because there really hasn't been anything new on the market in many years."

In the study, researchers saw impact from the drug within a week, Neal-Perry said. It's not clear how long a woman would need to take the medication or if her symptoms would resume once she stops taking it. Hot flashes recede over time, naturally.

Researchers would also like to know more about the impact of this drug on sleep and other quality of life issues, such as depression and sexual function, Neal-Perry said.

"These are all things that we know are impacted during the menopausal transition and menopause, and just understanding whether this treatment may improve some of these concerns is really important," she said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more on menopause.

SOURCES: Genevieve Neal-Perry, MD, PhD, distinguished professor and chair, obstetrics and gynecology, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill; JoAnn Pinkerton, MD, professor, obstetrics and gynecology and director, Midlife Health Center, University of Virginia Health System and executive director emeritus, North American Menopause Society, Charlottesville, Va.; Endocrine Society annual meeting, Atlanta, June 11-14, 2022

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MONDAY, June 13, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- An experimental drug for the neurological disorder ALS was approved in Canada on Monday, but an ongoing evaluation of the treatment by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has raised questions about its effectiveness.

A condition of Health Canada's approval of Albrioza (AMX0035) calls for Massachusetts-based drug maker Amylyx Pharmaceuticals later to provide better evidence that the treatment is effective. That includes verifying the "clinical benefit of this drug" with data from an ongoing phase 3 clinical trial expected to conclude in 2024, additional pharmacological studies and periodic safety reports.

"For nearly a decade, we have been committed to creating more meaningful moments for people living with ALS and their families. We are excited with Health Canada's decision to approve Albrioza with conditions. Albrioza is a therapy that demonstrated ... a statistically significant and clinically meaningful impact on function, alone or in addition to existing ALS therapies," Justin Klee and Joshua Cohen, co-CEOs and co-founders of Amylyx, said in a company statement.

ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) -- also known as Lou Gehrig's disease -- often causes death within two to five years after diagnosis. There are only two approved ALS medications in the United States: riluzole, which can extend survival by several months, and edaravone, which can slow disease progression by about 33%, the New York Times reported.

Earlier this year, an FDA review of the drug said it was safe, but there was insufficient evidence that it helped patients live longer or slowed their loss of crucial functions such as muscle control, speaking or breathing without assistance, the Times reported.

In a close vote in March, an independent panel of advisers to the FDA concluded that Albrioza was not ready for approval by the agency. The FDA recently extended its deadline for a final decision to Sept. 29, to review additional data from Amylyx.

There is a desperate need for effective ALS therapies, but when it comes to Albrioza, "it's unfortunate, but the magnitude of unmet need is not matched by the quality of evidence to date," Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, a member of the FDA's independent advisory panel, told the Times.

The "approval in Canada could only further increase the pressure that the FDA faces to rule favorably and to approve this product," but the FDA should still wait for the phase 3 trial results, said Alexander, an internist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Last month, 38 U.S. doctors who treat ALS patients sent a letter to the FDA urging it to approve the drug. In recent weeks, a campaign for approval of the drug has generated more than 6,000 emails asking the FDA to approve the drug, according to the ALS Association.

Amylyx bankrolled most of its research on Albrioza, but the ALS Association contributed $2.2 million raised through the 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge.

"We expect that Americans living with ALS will try to access Albrioza in Canada, just as we have heard reports of people trying to buy the ingredients on Amazon," Calaneet Balas, president and CEO of the ALS Association, told the Times.

Dr. Angela Genge, director of the ALS Global Centre for Excellence at the Montreal Neurological Institute, who has received fees from Amylyx for serving on an advisory board, said American patients would be legally able to receive Albrioza in Canada if it were prescribed by a Canadian physician and obtained from a Canadian pharmacy. However, they would not be eligible for insurance coverage under Canadas public or private system.

Amylyx has not yet disclosed a price for Albrioza, the Times reported.

More information

Visit the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for more on ALS.

SOURCE: New York Times

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Kaye Wellborn* will never forget her first -- and last -- abscessed tooth. The San Francisco Forty 49ers had just won the Superbowl, and a huge, exuberant crowd was celebrating in the street where she was house-sitting. "I was already in so much pain I had tears running down my face," she says. "People were honking horns and beating drums, and with every drumbeat my tooth seemed to throb harder. The pain was already excruciating, but at that moment it seemed unbearable." She eventually went to an emergency clinic, where a dental exam revealed that the pulp of one of her lower teeth was infected.

The pulp, the only part of the tooth that's sensitive to pain, is thankfully well-protected. The outer layers of the tooth -- a thin, rock-hard coating known as enamel, and dentin, the main part of the tooth -- surround the fleshy, nerve-filled center. But if a tooth cracks or develops a deep cavity, as in Wellborn's case, the pulp can be exposed. Before long, bacteria will invade the center of the tooth and the pulp will start to die. As the infection progresses, pockets of pus will form at the root of the tooth. This is called an abscess.

Another less-common type of abscess can form between the tooth and the gums. If a piece of food gets stuck under the gums, it can become a feeding ground for bacteria. Once again, a pocket of pus may collect at the site of the infection.

However it occurs, an abscessed tooth is a serious condition. The pain and discomfort are only part of the story. If left untreated, the infection will kill the tooth and may even damage the surrounding jaw.

In rare cases, an abscessed tooth can be life-threatening. Between 2000 and 2008, more than 60,000 Americans were hospitalized with abscessed teeth, and 66 of them died, according to a study published in the Journal of Endontics.

Fortunately, modern dental techniques can stop the infection, ease the pain, and, more often than not, save the tooth.

What are the symptoms of an abscessed tooth?

Not surprisingly, abscessed teeth are usually very painful. You may feel a shooting or throbbing pain every time you bite or chew. The pain may linger even when there is no pressure on the tooth. The tooth may also be extremely sensitive to heat and cold. In addition to pain and sensitivity, you may notice a fever over 100 degrees, redness and swelling in your gums, a bitter taste in your mouth, foul-smelling breath, tender or swollen glands in your neck, or, in very serious cases, swelling in your jaw. Such an infection could spread to other parts of your body and cause serious damage, so an abscessed tooth requires immediate treatment.

What is the treatment for an abscessed tooth?

If you think you may have an abscessed tooth, get to a dentist immediately. Your dentist will examine the tooth and take x-rays. If the pulp of your tooth is infected, you'll probably need a root canal to remove the diseased tissue. After numbing the tooth with anesthetic, the dentist will drill a small hole in the top of the tooth and remove the pulp. Then, using small files, he or she will clean out the narrow canals that held the pulp. The tooth is then topped with a temporary filling. At a later appointment, the dentist will close off each canal and cap the tooth with a permanent crown.

If you have an abscess between a tooth and your gums, your dentist will drain the pocket of pus and clean the area. You may eventually need gum surgery to close the gap in your gums and prevent future infections.

Whatever type of abscess you have, your dentist will probably prescribe antibiotics to treat the infection before doing a dental procedure. He or she may also recommend regularly rinsing the mouth with warm salt water and taking over-the-counter painkillers such as aspirin or ibuprofen. Some people are tempted to put aspirin tablets directly on the sore spot, but this will only irritate the gums.

How can I prevent an abscessed tooth?

First of all, do what you can to keep cavities from getting out of control. Brush twice a day, floss daily, and see your dentist regularly. If you break a tooth, get treatment immediately. Prompt treatment can stop infections before they have a chance to start.

*Kaye Wellborn is a pseudonym.

References

Tooth abscess and symptoms. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tooth-abscess/symptoms-causes/syc-20350901

U.S. National Library of Medicine. Medical Encyclopedia. Tooth abscess.

University of Michigan Health System. Tooth Abscess.

American Dental Association. Frequently asked questions: Root canal (endodontic) treatment. https://www.aae.org/patients/root-canal-treatment/#

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No bear better mess with the chickens at Clark Fork School.

Presuming it makes it to the top of the 6-foot fence, it will get a zap from new electric fencing installed last week (well out of reach of the schools 7-and-under aged students). It wont find better pickings in the garbage cans, now that theyve been upgraded to bear-resistant containers.

The bears used to absolutely attack our garbage, CFS Executive Director Jill Brischli said as a crew from Defenders of Wildlife strung the new wires around the coop. Wed have to go pick it up out of the yards. We have a lot of things that attract wildlife, like compost and vegetables and chickens. Were hoping to create a prototype for the neighborhood.

Black bears have their own agenda for the Rattlesnake Valley surrounding Clark Fork School, as well as the rest of the fringe where Missoulas residential neighborhoods merge with hillsides, forests and creek drainages. Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks regional bear manager Jamie Jonkel has already had a scrambled spring responding to bear incidents. Much of the response involves human education on reducing bear attractants.

The wildlife are reacting to the changes weve made, Jonkel explained. Todays black bears, mountain lions and grizzlies arent the same as 50 years ago. Weve created this lush, food-rich area inhabited by humans, and the animals have realized they can access unbelievable amounts of food.

But some subtle distinctions still exist. Wild animals can become habituated to humans  losing their fear of being around people  while still staying focused on natural food sources in and around suburban neighborhoods.

The trouble starts when those animals become food-conditioned and start seeking bird feeders, pet food, garbage, barbecue grill grease pans, and chickens in chicken coops. At least 40 black bears are suspected of prowling Missoulas unguarded food sources.

A bear can live comfortably grazing lawns or eating berries, Jonkel said. But when they go from habituation to food-conditioned, thats when people get hurt and bears get shot.

In response, a bunch of public and private leaders have collaborated on improving Missoulas bear buffer zone. FWP biologists are consulting with Missoula county and city managers to expand availability of deterrents like bear-resistant garbage cans, coop fencing, and public outreach. That may be followed by stricter enforcement of laws requiring people in the buffer zone to keep their attractants safe from wildlife.

The effort got a boost of both public and financial attention last fall when a grizzly bear mother and cubs raided several buildings in the Grant Creek and LaValle Creek neighborhoods on Missoulas northern edge. FWP wasnt able to capture the bear family before it went into hibernation. But in May, Jonkel was able to trap two sibling 2-year-old grizzlies that are possibly the cubs of the raiding sow. One had lost a paw through some traumatic incident and had to be euthanized. The other was relocated in an undisclosed location.

News of the grizzlies nearness to Missoula prompted an outpouring of donations from Missoulians hoping to encourage better human behavior around wildlife. The result was the Bear Smart Action Fund, which raised almost $5,000 through a GoFundMe account.

That was really a wake-up call to Griz Nation, said Blake Nicolazzo, who oversees the donations. Its a chance to see if were willing to live our values, or put grizzlies in a world where were not feeling responsible. Weve really moved into their world.

Part of that money got folded into the fund Defenders of Wildlife uses to help property owners upgrade their wildlife defenses, including the Clark Fork School chicken coop. Defenders Project Assistant Russ Talmo said an electrification project like the schools large coop costs about $200 to $500, assuming the fence is already in place.

Getting ahead of the food-conditioning problem will pay benefits for both people and wildlife, Jonkel said.

If you have a black bear problem, you will have a grizzly problem, Jonkel said. If you get rid of the black bear problem, you wont have a grizzly problem.

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Director of Montana Museum of Art at the University of Montana, Rafael Chacon, will moderate a panel discussion about the field of artists' books on Wednesday, June 15. The discussion will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Missoula Public Library.

"Books as Works of Art" will feature panelists Peter Koch, Russell Maret and Aaron Parrett. Koch is a Montana-based artist and publisher, printer and bibliophile. Maret is a leading book artist and Parrett is an English professor at the University of Providence and founder of Territorial Press in Helena.

From 4-5 p.m., a free public reception will welcome panelists in the Missoula Public Library Cooper Room A. Starting at 5 p.m., a video presentation on the making of a book will be shown. The panel discussion will begin at 5:30 p.m. and end around 6:45 p.m.

For questions, contact Rafael Chacon at hrafael.chacon@umontana.edu or 406-243-2019.

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A Missoula-headquartered tech company has landed the largest-ever venture capital investment in Montana history.

Submittable, a software company that caters to nonprofits, governments and corporations, announced on Monday that its raised $47 million in Series C funding led by technology-focused investment firm Accel-KKR with support from existing investors.

According to CEO Thor Culverhouse, the money will be used to expand the companys staff in Missoula and in the Seattle area.

Its an accelerant for the company, he said. We doubled (revenue) last year, and we will probably be close to a double this year. This capital will also likely allow us to double the size of our team. Were continuing to invest in the culture and the people and talent of Missoula.

Submittable has 165 employees total, with about 90 of those based in Missoula. The companys offices are in the historic Florence building downtown, but many of the workers are fully remote.

Submittable was founded in a basement in 2010 by Missoula entrepreneurs Michael FitzGerald, Bruce Tribbensee and John Brownell. In 2019, the company landed $10 million in venture capital. In 2020, FitzGerald stepped away from his role to deal with Stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. The company also laid off 30 workers in 2020 as the pandemic dried up demand for its services and products. Monday's announcement marks a dramatic turnaround from that low point for the company.

The new venture capital funds will be used by the company to boost how it helps organizations launch, manage and measure social impact programs.

Culverhouse said the social impact sector has experienced unheard-of growth in recent years as public, private and nonprofit entities have all increased the funding going towards justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.

There is a major shift happening in how the world thinks about social impact, as organizations big and small reshape programs in real-time to address global change, Culverhouse said. Social responsibility is now table stakes, and we are privileged to grow and evolve alongside these organizations in transforming the process of making an impact. This funding is central to our ongoing efforts to expand our product and team to better help our customers make that difference.

For example, in 2020, the state government of Montana used Submittable's grant management software to roll out multiple grants to distribute federal CARES Act funding to businesses and individuals impacted by the pandemic.

Essentially, Submittable has developed a grants management platform, software-as-a-service and other technology that allows organizations to push funding to constituents and clients and then measure the impact. Submittable built the underlying technology that allows state governments to dole out COVID relief funds, disaster relief, housing assistance and a variety of other grants. The venture capital will allow Submittable to add new features to its platform to improve the way it measures engagement.

Culverhouse said Submittables technology streamlines program management, from the first application to the final report, and includes workflow automation, funds distribution services and reporting tools.

Our collective experiences of the past few years have dramatically increased the focus on and scale of giving and impact initiatives, accelerating an already large and growing market, said Joe Porten, Managing Director at Accel-KKR. Submittable provides top-rated technology that enables organizations to be both highly efficient and effective in their social impact work.

The previous venture capital record in Montana was set in 2021, when Whitefish-based fraud screening company Neuro-ID secured $35 million in Series B funding.

Christina Quick Henderson, the executive director of the Montana High Tech Business Alliance, said Submittable's announcement is "great news" for Montana's tech community.

"Submittable's $47 million Series C round will have a big impact on the Montana economy as the company creates more high-paying jobs and invests in its Missoula headquarters over the next few years," she said. "The Submittable story shows it's possible for a tech startup firmly rooted in Missoula and supported by local funders like Next Frontier Capital and Goodworks Ventures to scale and reach new heights for out-of-state investment."

Culverhouse said the record investment for Submittable is a sign of good things to come for Montanas high-tech companies.

Its an endorsement of the Montana culture and its people, he said. Theres a resurgence of high-tech talent in Montana. Were seeing more companies pop up because its a great place to work and live and were pleased to be a part of that.

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Mandi Boston, executive director of White Buffalo Healing Lodge, received eviction papers from the Butte Business Development Center on Mercury Street on March 18 on the grounds that her business interfered with the operation of other tenants and displayed conduct improper or unsuitable for a place of business.

But Boston believes the eviction is a retaliation to a human rights complaint she told Butte-Silver Bow Community Development Director Karen Byrnes she was going to file on March 14, and that she and her business have been targets of discrimination.

Boston wasnt able to file the complaint until after she received the eviction notice.

Complaint investigations with the Montana Human Rights Bureau must be completed within 180 days of the complaint being filed, according to the Montana Department of Labor and Industrys website.

If the investigation finds discrimination occurred, the bureau will attempt to conciliate the case with the involved parties, which can include compensation for any losses incurred, making employment available to the charging party, modifying any practices having an adverse effect on protected classes; and taking other affirmative steps needed to eliminate discrimination, the website said.

In the event conciliation doesnt happen, the DLI will hold a public hearing.

WBHL is a behavioral health drop-in center that provides peer support, Native American cultural connections, and referrals to local Licensed Addiction Counselors and Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors, according to its website.

Although Boston, a licensed addiction counselor, leased room 304 in the BDC in the fall of 2021, she leased room 402 for her private business, A Peace of Healing, from April 2021 to November 2021.

The idea of a drop-in center is relatively new, Boston said. Rather than needing to make an appointment, anyone in need of behavioral health services can come into WBHL during business hours regardless of ability to pay. WBHL is funded by a state grant to help those in need.

WBHL provides services to people experiencing homelessness, behavioral health issues and developmental disabilities, as many other businesses in the BDC do, Boston said in court documents.

The Silver Bow Developmental Disabilities Council, Headframe Counseling, Butte Cares, Montana State University Extension for Silver Bow County and Montana State Fund reside in the BDC, along with a host of others, but Boston said she was singled out by the building manager, Sherrie Walsh, citing discrimination of her clients.

Walsh didnt respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

The only difference Im seeing between [us and] the other tenants seeing individuals who have mental illnesses and experience homelessness is the majority of our clientele is Native, Boston said.

Boston herself in not Native American, but strongly believes in the culture and the practices, which she started learning about when she met her adopted son. She said she doesnt appropriate the culture; she doesnt lead talking circles or anything that would cross that line, but does what she can to help people in crisis de-escalate using Native rituals.

Byrnes said Boston is being evicted because she violated Section 9 of her lease by interfering with the operation of other tenants and displaying conduct improper or unsuitable for a place of business.

There is no discrimination going on, Byrnes said.

WHAT THE COUNTY SAYS vs. WHAT WBHL SAYS

Many of the complaints about WBHL interfering with other tenants and displaying improper conduct has to do with the behavior of WBHLs clients.

The first complaint listed in the countys log is dated September 2021, where a man The Montana Standard has chosen not to identify for his privacy allegedly kicked a client from Psychiatric Consultants, Inc. in the stomach after she and another client refused to give him money. The clients called the office manager of Psychiatric Consultants, but the man was down the street before the office manager could get close, the complaint reads. Byrnes said that to her knowledge, a police report wasn't filed.

In the documents, Boston is referred to as Mandi Shaff, because thats her married name. Shes since divorced and goes by her maiden name.

Psychiatric Consultants, Inc. didnt respond for comment by the time of publication.

Boston said WBHL got approved for grant funding in August and received the first part of that funding in the middle of September. She said that although WBHL was in room 304 in September, she spent that month decorating the room and hiring staff. WBHL didnt open to the public until Oct. 1, she said, so the man in question couldnt have been visiting WBHL. She said she kept a record of logs recording each person who dropped in to WBHL each day it was open, and those logs dont start until October.

But Byrnes said that Boston opened WBHL in September because her lease is dated Sept. 1, 2021. According to a copy of the lease that was provided to The Standard, Boston signed the lease Oct. 4 and Byrnes signed it Nov. 3.

The man from the September incident is listed in the complaint several more times because he was a client of WBHL. He struggles with developmental disabilities, behavioral health and homelessness, according to both Boston and Byrnes.

Boston said the client didnt access WBHL until December according to the logs, and that she didnt know him until he started coming in.

She noted in her response that Byrnes told her at a meeting in December 2021 that the man is well-known within the community and had caused disruptions at the courthouse.

WBHL is not responsible for [the mans] behavior in other offices within a public building, Boston said in her response to the countys complaint log.

In an interview with the Standard, Byrnes acknowledged the man goes to many places in the community including the hospital and AWARE, and is very ill.

The main, recurring issues listed throughout the complaint are about tenants complaining of a bad smell and smoke, clients leaving messes in bathrooms and trash in the hallways, people using WBHL as a warming center to drink coffee and watch TV, and WBHL clients scaring tenants.

SMUDGING

The first complaint of smudging in the countys log is dated November 2021.

Boston said the smoke came from smudging, a Native American ritual that involves burning sage and sweet grass to cleanse the air, which WBHL had been practicing since she leased room 402 in April 2021. She said she wasnt made aware of any complaints of smudging until February 2022.

The countys complaint log said Byrnes asked Mandi to stop smudging on Feb. 3 and Boston confirms this.

MESSES IN THE BUILDING

The first complaint of WBHL clients making messes in the BDCs bathrooms doesnt appear in the log until November 2021. It alleges homeless clients entered the BDC and left messes in the restroom on the second floor, which Walsh had to clean up because there is no maintenance person at the BDC during the day.

In her response to the November 2021 complaint, Boston said the messes in the bathroom had been consistent since she moved into room 402 in April 2021.

Often there is blood, feces and urine on the toilet seats, Boston said in her response. The messes cannot be directly linked to individuals accessing the WBHL. She stayed firm on this point in both her response log and a separate log she wrote documenting incidents she felt were discriminatory toward her clients. She said in her response to the countys complaint log that in a November meeting, she and Kathy Chavis, a licensed clinical professional counselor and licensed addiction counselor whom WBHL shared an office with, met with Byrnes about the messes in the bathroom.

In this meeting, she said, it was decided there was no proof the messes were caused by WBHL clients, and therefore the bathrooms would be locked and each tenant would receive a key to give to clients as needed.

Byrnes confirmed the meeting, saying that after the BDC started locking the bathrooms and doling out keys, the messes in the bathrooms stopped. She said that before WBHL opened for business, there wasnt a problem with messes in the second floor bathrooms. She said there are occasionally messes in the first floor bathrooms from developmentally disabled clients, but the tenants cleaned those up.

Boston said she asked Walsh if WBHL could clean after their clients, but was told no, because they needed special cleaning products, but wasnt told what those products were.

Byrnes said Boston was afforded the opportunity to clean up after her clients.

Although locks were put on the doors to the second floor bathrooms and keys were given out starting at the end of December, there are complaints of messes in the second floor bathrooms attributed to WBHL clients in the countys complaint log on Jan. 12, when Walsh reportedly had to clean feces off a toilet seat in the second-floor womens bathroom. Boston said WBHL didnt hand out its bathroom key that day, so the feces couldnt have been from a WBHL client.

The first complaint of WBHL clients leaving messes in the hallways is dated Dec. 2021 in the countys log, when two of the clients left their bags in the hallway and the tenant on the third floor complained of the smell of their bags.

Boston said that two men did leave their stuff outside her door, but that she didnt smell anything bad. She wrote in her response that she didnt realize the bags were there until after she walked out of the office with the clients, and that it hasnt been a recurring issue.

She also said that in the office across the hall, there were chairs, dirty mats, and moldy bagels that had been sitting out for a month that werent reported.

Theres also a complaint on Jan. 28 of a client banging down from the third floor to the first floor with a big TV box filled with trash going all over and that Walsh had to pick the trash up. Boston said Chavis was with the clientwho was volunteering at WBHL by vacuuming and taking out the garbage at the time of the incident and didnt see any trash fall.

DISRUPTIVE CLIENTS

The most frequent complaint throughout the countys log is of people scaring the other tenants and coming into the BDC looking for a warming center.

Boston said that because the idea of a drop-in center is new, there was some communication at the Butte Rescue Mission, where word got around that the WBHL was a warming center. Boston said that when she heard what was going on, she talked to managers at the Butte Rescue Mission and made it clear the WBHL was never a warming center.

A warming center is a place people can go to stay warm and dry when it is wet and cold, but unlike homeless shelters, are usually only open when the weather is bad.

She added when people came in looking for a warming center, she would tell them WBHL wasnt a warming center but if they wanted to utilize services or be referred to agencies, the staff would be happy to do that.

Boston said when that happened, about 90% of people left, but some did stay for services.

There are over 15 complaints in the log that reported tenants were nervous and uncomfortable because of people in the BDC, who the county alleges were WBHL clients. In a couple of these instances, the people in question interacted with Walsh directly. In other, they reportedly interacted with tenants and their clients.

There were a couple of incidents in which WBHL clients and alleged clients reportedly made others in the BDC uneasy by talking to them  like a complaint in November 2021 when a cleaner for Psychiatric Consultants, Inc. was approached by someone trying to talk to her and give her stuff.

Boston said in that particular encounter, the person hadnt been to WBHL yet, and that the individual attempting to speak to a lady doesnt seem to be an intimidating act, and we cannot be responsible for others stigmas.

Another such instance reported on Feb. 2 alleges that a WBHL client was in and out of the BDC three times, and on the third time was yelling nonsense at Walsh, stating he cleaned up garbage outside the BDC. According to the complaint, Walsh went into her office and locked the door.

In Bostons response, she said the client didnt sign in to the WBHL that day, but did run into one of the WBHLs staff members and helped her carry things into the building. They ran into Walsh, the response said, and the staff member saw the client tell Walsh Hi miss, I pick up garbage around this building.

The response agrees that Walsh ignored him and went into her office, and the client left and did not present with intimidation or aggression according to the peer support specialist who witnessed the incident.

Sherrie behaved unprofessionally and [was] discriminatory toward [the client] based on her biases, Boston wrote in her response.

There are also complaints in the log that are more serious.

A complaint in the log dated Dec. 9, 2021 alleges there were two men lingering in the third-floor hallway asking questions about college in the Extension office, making the tenant very nervous and uncomfortable.

On that same date, theres a complaint where aggressive people who the county identifies as WBHL clients come into the BDC looking for a warming center and talk about hiding in the BDC, which made employees at Butte Cares and the Extension office feel unsafe.

Butte Cares didnt respond to request for comment by the time of publication and the MSU Extension declined to comment.

The complaint reports that interactions like the ones stated above had the [Extension office] tenant on edge the entire day, and she chose to teach her virtual class the following day from home to avoid the office. Also, it scared her to be in the office on the evening of Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, teaching a class late and [made] her question whether to offer programs in the office in the evenings.

In response to these complaints, Boston said they did not have anyone looking for a warming center and had no aggressive clients. She also questioned why people who said they were looking for the WBHL were not directed there by Walsh.

We are unaware of any other clients discussing 'hiding places' within the building and did not hear of this until receiving this written complaint from Sherrie Walsh, building manager.

Another complaint of this nature is from Jan. 14, and involved a client calling Boston saying his girlfriend was following him and he was going to slit her throat. Boston said she was concerned by this and followed the policy WBHL has in place for agitated clients. She said she told the client to go see his therapist at Western Montana Mental Health Center, called the police and Chavis and asked her to notify Walsh.

Walsh said she notified the tenants and that they were scared.

Boston said that the client did not go to WBHL that day and did see his therapist at WMTMHC.

There is also a Feb. 7 complaint where a WBHL client went into the extension office and started grabbing Kleenex and using the hand sanitizer, spraying it everywhere. The complaint said the tenant told the client that she bought those supplies herself and asked him to stop, after which he ran out.

Boston said she wasnt in the office that day because her son was sick, and that WBHL is not responsible for [clients] behavior in other offices within a public building.

The log frequently mentions people going into the WBHL to drink coffee and watch TV. Boston said WBHL does offer coffee and have a TV, but that people must be utilizing services to be in the office. Most of the time, she said, the TV plays music, although she did play a movie once for an agitated client as a de-escalation dialectical behavioral therapy.

It was a distraction from his own stuff, and there was nobody else in here, and it worked, Boston said. An hour into the movie, he was de-escalated, he was ready to move on with his day. Thats happened once. If I need to use that skill, Im going to, but thats not the first skill I use.

DISCRIMINATION OR NOT?

When clients would come in who Walsh thought were looking for a warming center or loitering, she would tell them to leave. Both logs are aligned on this fact.

But Boston said this often involved Walsh accosting clients, which caused some of them to not come back. This includes an incident when a pregnant wife of a WBHL client threw up in the elevator.

Walsh said the woman refused to clean it up, but does not mention any specific conversation with the client or his wife. Boston said in her response that after the client told Walsh what happened she became enraged, yelling in his face. Boston said the client, a Navajo man who suffers from PTSD, said he wouldnt come back because of how Walsh allegedly treated them.

Another incident Boston cites is from Nov. 17, 2021, when a Native American client who experiences homelessness, mental health and addiction issues came to the WBHL to smudge and went to use the bathroom on the second floor.

Boston said the man came up about 25 minutes later and told her that he started having a seizure while in the bathroom, when a red-haired lady who Boston presumed to be Walsh came into the bathroom at least six different times, telling him to hurry up, and you cant just sit on my warm toilet.

The client reportedly told Boston that even after he told Walsh he was having a seizure, she told him to leave the bathroom. She said Walsh called her after and told her a homeless man was in the bathroom for "way too long" and that she didnt believe he had anything medical going on.

This complaint was on the log Boston kept of all the times she felt discriminated against, and neither Walsh nor Byrnes have seen this log to respond to it, according to Byrnes.

On this same log, there is a complaint from Nov. 23 that Walsh called Boston and allegedly told her "I cant do this with these people, and that "these people" were making messes and sitting on her warm toilet.

The log reports the next day in a meeting, Walsh apologized for using the verbiage these people.

Boston said that instances like the ones mentioned above prove that Walsh has biases against WBHLs clients because they are homeless, mentally ill, and/or Native American.

She said she believes this also because there have been times when she and other WBHL staff members witnessed clients from other offices making disruptions, some of which she has video documentation of, but that Walsh thinks there should be grace given for that, because the offices in the BDC serve many homeless and mentally ill people, and outbursts are to be expected.

Boston said that although she gives grace to these other clients, she feels hers are singled out. Furthermore, she said, there have been instances where there were strong smells coming from other offices that did not get the same level of scrutiny as WBHL, and that WBHL was the only office in the building required to post a sign of its hours of operation or a sign notifying when they werent in the office, which no other offices in the building are required to do.

Byrnes said this is because there are no other drop-in centers in the building, and that Bostons is the only office where people dont need to make appointments to come in, so when Boston and other WBHL staff werent in the office, people were looking for her and trying to get into the WBHL office.

STATUS

Boston didnt vacate her office within the 30 days required in the eviction notice, which caused the county attorney to file a formal eviction in court.

The eviction was signed by a judge on May 20, 2021, and served to Boston June 1, according to Bostons attorney, Greg Worcester.

Boston said the WBHL found another space to lease, but it is over twice as much as the rent at the BDC, which was $325 a month.

Because the WBHL is entirely grant-funded by $100,000 a year, Boston said they will have to fundraise and look to in-kind funds to be able to make rent and fund the centers services.

Boston is passionate about WBHLs mission, saying she knows its helping people because it went from having nine people the first month in October, to 103 people in May.

She said she received a call from her contact at the Montana Board of Behavioral Health who told her Walsh allegedly filed a human rights complaint with the states behavioral health board for misappropriation of funds, hiring of family and not following the terms of the contract for funding.

Boston said there arent any funds to misappropriate, and sometimes she doesnt even get to pay herself. She also said she has followed the terms of the contract for funding. In regards to hiring family, one of the peer supporters, Makenzie Stokes, is her daughter, but Boston wasnt aware that violated any rules.

Byrnes said to her knowledge, no such complaints have been made.

Complaints made to the Behavioral Health Board are confidential except to the complainant or complainee, so the Standard could not verify with the board if the complaints had been made.

Boston said after she received the first eviction notice, she talked to Butte-Silver Bow Chief Executive J.P. Gallagher.

He was very kind, Boston said, However, he said, Youre running into what we usually run into: nobody wants this in their backyard.

Gallagher denied this and said because Boston had a lawyer at the time, he couldn't discuss the case with her because it had to go through the county attorney.

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Grunelia and Marie Brecke, born in Norway in 1852 and 1856, respectively, arrived in Butte July 17, 1886. Since coming to America in 1879, they had relocated from Boston to Chicago to Albuquerque, but ultimately came to Butte by train from Albuquerque by way of Denver and Ogden. They spent their first nights in town at the Centennial Hotel, at Granite and Main, where the Hennessy Building stands today.

The sisters seem to have been determined to establish a boarding house from the start, and they began in 1886 with a small place on North Main Street, but by about 1890, they had purchased the two-story Holmes Hotel at 57-59 West Broadway. Marie married saloonkeeper Victor Huffman that year, and in short order four more of the eleven Brecke siblings had emigrated to Butte from Norway. Eventually all eleven were in America, and except for one who returned to Norway and one who went to Colorado, all stayed in Butte. Grunelia and Marie managed the Holmes Hotel where the other siblings lived at least initially. At the Holmes, the plumbing was so poor that one cold winter week, all their drinking water came from the Chinese laundry in the alley at the back of the hotel, kindly provided at no charge by the laundryman.

Continued success in the hotel business allowed the sisters to contract prominent Butte architect Henry M. Patterson in 1901 to build a new four-story brick hotel, the Kenwood, in the lot next door to the Holmes. The Kenwood replaced the Chinese laundry on the alley, as well as a one-story barbershop, the saloon run by Victor Huffman, and a tiny sleeping room on Broadway. Both the old Holmes Hotel and the Kenwood are still standing today.

Marie eventually divorced Victor Huffman, but she continued to manage and live in the Kenwood with Grunelia, who never married, until Marie died in 1937. At that time Grunelia moved in with her sister Petra Neeley, who lived at 805 West Granite Street. Grunelia was fondly known around town as Aunt Keenie, and when she died in 1943 at age 90, only Petra and their brother Chris, who had managed a saloon and Depression-era soft drink parlor in Walkerville, were her surviving siblings.

The Kenwood cost $25,000 (about $900,000 in todays dollars) when it was built in 1901, complete with steam heat and electric lights, and each room had its own ever-necessary wash stand. The same year saw a great deal of construction in Butte, including Henry Pattersons Pennsylvania Block, the 6-story Clark Hotel, the Murray Hospital Annex, the Park Hotel, and many other business blocks and prestigious homes.

Local geologist and historian Dick Gibson has lived in Butte since 2003 and has worked as a tour guide for various organizations and museums. He can be reached at rigibson@earthlink.net.

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Friday fist fight

Just after 2 a.m. Friday, a fist fight involving a number of people erupted near the Park Street parking garage. According to a police report, one person was transported to the hospital. The case remains under investigation.

Fireworks complaints

At around 7 p.m. Thursday, some juveniles were lighting fireworks in the 1800 block of Elm Street but had run out by the time officers had arrived.

Two hours later, more fireworks were being set off on the 800 block of Zarelda Street. Officers soon caught up with the amateur pyrotechnicians, all of whom were told they would be cited if they lit off any more.

Wanted man

Stan Robert Smith, 64, of Butte had Butte Justice Court warrants out for his arrest for felony possession with intent to sell, felony use of property subject to forfeiture, and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. He was picked up Thursday morning in the 3600 block of Oregon Avenue.

Dangerous drugs

Officers assisted Adult Probation and Parole in the arrest Thursday morning of Mariah Elizabeth Bates, 26, of Butte for felony possession of dangerous drugs. Bates was at a residence in the 700 block of South Alabama Street and had in her possession suspected methamphetamine.

Slashed tires

Casey Edward Hager, 30, of Butte was arrested Wednesday afternoon and jailed for felony criminal mischief. Hager allegedly slashed the tires on a Pontiac Grand Am parked in the 4000 block of Wynne Avenue.

Arrest warrants

Also arrested on Wednesday afternoon was Andrew Isaac Salacinski, 26, of Butte, who had a warrant out for his arrest for felony parole violation. He also had two misdemeanor Montana Highway Patrol warrants.

Illegal shooting

A woman called the police shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday to say she either heard someone shooting a BB gun or a .22 in the 1200 block of Farrell. Officers arrived but could not locate the armed individual.

Gas siphoned

It was discovered late Wednesday morning that someone drilled a hole in a trucks tank to siphon gas while it was parked at Pioneer Technical Services, 1101 S. Montana St.

Plate taken

Early Wednesday afternoon, a license plate was taken from a car parked at the Fairfield Inn, 2340 Cornell Ave.

Truck returned

It was reported on Wednesday afternoon that a man returned a truck he bought from American Auto at 3000 Harrison Ave. Problem was, the truck was missing its topper and an extra set of tires.

Missing cable box

A woman living in the 1300 block of Sunrise Lane called Thursday afternoon to report that she and her boyfriend broke up but when he moved out, he took her cable box.

Window broken

It was discovered at around 9:15 p.m. Thursday a car had one of its windows broken out while parked in the 800 block of South Utah Avenue.

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Martin Joseph Marty Mavrinac ended up in Vietnam  as did many other young men from Anaconda during the 1960s.

And, like many veterans of that war, some of his experiences in Southeast Asia defy his attempts to describe them.

Vietnam made me grow up real fast, said Mavrinac, now 72 years old and retired. It changed your outlook on life, hopefully for the better. Im still contemplating that. It took the kid out of you right away.

Mavrinac enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1967 at age 17 and started boot camp in June 1968 at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego.

He said he joined the Marines partly because of the Corps sharp looking dress blues uniform.

Mavrinac arrived in Da Nang on Dec. 4, 1968, as a passenger on a civilian airplane that was attacked with enemy ground fire on its approach to the airfield. Vietnams intense heat and humidity also got his attention.

It would knock you over, Mavrinac said.

A few weeks later, he traveled with a truck convoy to Vandergrift Combat Base, also known as LZ Stud, in Quang Tri Province. The outpost was south of the Demilitarized Zone and became home to the 9th Marine Regiment, part of the 3rd Marine Division, after being established by the 1st Cavalry Division of the U.S. Army in early 1968.

Mavrinac worked as a wireman, whose duties included stringing wire for communications.

The North Vietnamese Army or Viet Cong ground troops occasionally attacked the base with rockets or mortars and also attempted periodically to infiltrate the outpost.

From January 1969 to March 1969 Vandergrift Combat Base provided support for Operation Dewey Canyon, a U.S. Marines offensive into the A Shau Valley south of the base. It has been described as the last major offensive by the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War.

Intelligence reports in early 1969 had shown evidence of a large buildup of North Vietnamese Army forces in the A Shau Valley.

Mavrinac did not participate in that offensive, but his communications duties sometimes required him to venture outside the perimeter of Vandergrift Combat Base. He occasionally packed a radio and radiomen were frequent targets for enemy fire in Vietnam.

The worst part was getting shot at and watching the wounded, he said.

Mavrinac said enemy snipers killed four men in his company when the men were erecting aluminum communications poles.

He was asked to describe the loss he felt when they were killed.

Mavrinacs eyes glistened. For several seconds he fought for words. And then shook his head.

On April 9, 1969, a Marine Sikorsky Sea Stallion helicopter crashed at Vandergrift, causing a fire and explosions at the bases ammunition dump. Accounts vary about how many casualties resulted. But reports consistently indicate that the ammo cooking off was a memorable spectacle.

The depot went up completely, Mavrinac said. It was all the ammunition for all the fire bases. It was a big Fourth of July.

He referenced Agent Orange, a herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to kill vegetation and crops that hid or supported the enemy.

Agent Orange contains dioxin, a highly toxic organic pollutant linked to cancers, diabetes, birth defects and other disabilities.

We started getting sprayed sometime around June of 1969, Mavrinac said. It didnt take long for that stuff to kill the elephant grass. Turned it brown. Then you had to look out for fires.

He believes exposure to Agent Orange negatively affected his health, a reality for many veterans of the Vietnam War.

Mavrinacs service in Vietnam earned him a Purple Heart - from a wound suffered through friendly fire. He was on bunker watch one night, staying vigilant for enemy infiltration.

A kid nearby who had only been in country for three days was locked and loaded but forgot to put his weapon on safety, Mavrinac recalled.

Mavrinac suffered a bullet wound to his left leg. He was standing at the time and believes if he had been sitting he would have suffered a chest wound. The bullet did not strike bone.

Mavrinac was treated aboard a hospital ship and then flown back to Vandergrift Combat Base with a set of crutches.

He left Vietnam in February 1970 and was stationed briefly in Okinawa, Japan, before returning stateside and discharging in April 1970 from the Marines as a lance corporal.

Mavrinac started work at the smelter in Anaconda in May of that year and he and Susan Shafford of Anaconda married in June.

He joined the Army National Guard in 1988 and served until 2001. He worked also for the Montana State Prison.

Mavrinacs tenure with the Guard included working full time as a supply sergeant.

He said he is proud of his time in the Marine Corps. A flagpole in his yard on East Commercial Street flies an American flag and a Marine Corps flag.

Its just a pride thats there. You cant shake it. You cant get rid of it.

Shedding memories from Vietnam is challenging in a different way, he said.

My wife knows part of what I went through. But I cant sit down and tell anybody. What I saw, what I felt, I cant put it into words.

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Editor's note: Humanities Montana celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2022. Throughout the year, its monthly newsletter features Golden Anniversary letters from previous Humanities Montana board members, grantees, speakers, and friends that reflect on what 50 years of Humanities Montana has meant to them and to the state.

Greetings to my fellow humanities friends,

A few weeks ago, I was asked to write the Humanities Montana Golden Anniversary letter for this Humanities Montana's newsletter. I, of course, put it off as long as possible, not sure what I wanted to say.

I have told many people that the humanities changed my life; thats because Ive met such wonderful, excited, interesting, engaged, intelligent folks who love supporting the humanities. Over the years of my involvement with Montana Committee for the Humanities and Humanities Montana, Ive enjoyed discussions of a grants merits, programs that tell how the humanities can make us think about something outside our day-to-day conversations, and the excitement around sharing and teaching all of the knowledge included in what we call the humanities.

I live 25 miles from the nearest small town, White Sulphur Springs. I work daily on our cattle ranch, and let me tell you, cows are very poor humanists, poor listeners, and very poor readers of interesting literature. However, the humanities gave me an open door and window into discussions of the needs of communities and vibrant presentations provided by rock-solid scholars. How grateful I am that I was a governors appointee to what was then the Montana Committee for the Humanities. Thank you, Marc Racicot!

But today, I am feeling distraught. The war in the Ukraine, the atrocities committed against Ukraine and its people, and the destruction of historic buildings is beyond understanding. I look at the news of apartments being destroyed, putting people out on the streets and hospitals bombed, along with libraries and historic cultural centers that have existed for generations  now gone. What a terrible time we live in when something this dark is going on in our world.

As a humanist, I look at the horrible destruction of those once-beautiful libraries, theaters, and cultural centers. How unbearably sad and devastating for the Ukrainian people  and for us as well. I think of all the treasures from long, long ago that have been destroyed, reduced to rubble and dust. Never to be restored or saved.

And then, I remember the humanities! Thankfully, there are hundreds of scholars and people who care about history, literature, and their culture  the humanities. They might not be able to rebuild every museum, college, library, theater, or public center, but the people who care  the scholars, readers, dreamers, lovers of books, musicians, dancers, and historians  will help their people find their way.

The humanities are not a building, a book, a city; the humanities are what make life worth talking about, learning about, and living. Now, the humanities can change their lives. The humanities will survive!

Jamie Doggett was a Humanities Montana board member from 1989 to 2001 and 2020present.

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MUSCATINE  The League of Women Voters will hold a public meeting to discuss the recent discoveries made regarding the countys water quality.

It starts at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 28, in the Musser Public Librarys third-floor meeting room,

The League of Women Voters has had a long history of looking at water quality," meeting coordinator Sue Johannsen said. "Recently, we were reading about how the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) had been doing some testing in the area as well as the results that came from that testing.

The results havent raised any serious concerns, but Johannsen and other league members said they raised awareness and should be discussed with the public.

The meeting will also offer an in-depth look at the polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) found in Muscatine Countys waters, the risks that come with PFAS, how to reduce exposure and possible solutions to reduce the amount of PFAS in the area.

Were learning more about water quality all the time, and as new tests are added, were finding out more about whats in our water, Johannsen said. Just to know how our water quality is changing is something that I think some people are going to be real interested in.

Guest speakers will include DNR Supply Operations Supervisor Corey McCoid and Muscatine County Zoning administrator Eric Furnas. A representative from Muscatine Power and Waters water division will also be in attendance.

(McCoid) will talk about the testing that the DNR is doing while (Furnas) is going to talk a little about permitting wells and waste/septic systems, and how theres grant money available to cap wells that exist but are no longer used, Johannsen said. Those are potentially dangerous because they are a direct path to the water table.

For those you can't attend in person, the meeting will be broadcast on Channel 5. For more information, go to lwvmcss.squarespace.com/.

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MUSCATINE  The Muscatine County Board of Supervisors agreed Monday to continue discussions with the city of Wilton to help secure a Destination Iowa grant from the state to expand the citys bike trails.

During the regular meeting, the council heard from Wilton City Administrator Jeff Horne that the state has dedicated $100 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to create the Destination Iowa fund, which includes $40 million to be given as grants to enhance outdoor recreation. The website for the grant specifically lists regional trail connectors as projects that can be funded. He said there was a connector project in the citys trail plan along Y14.

Our City Council talked about this, and we would certainly be in favor of trying to get this project off the ground, he said. We can get, we think, 40% state funded through this. Also if we pursue some TAP (Transportation Alternative Program) funds and some other grant funds, I think we have a very good shot of having to put very little local funding into it.

Initial discussions would have the trail connector going from Wilton to Durant. It is along a county road.

Horne said he had also approached the city of Muscatine, which is interested in continuing the discussion. He asked for the supervisors support to continue exploring the project and getting some actual figures for the project.

If the three of us went in, it would be a pretty powerful application to the state, he said.

Horne also said the county already had ownership of the land needed, and the main expense would be the cost of construction.

Supervisor Jeff Sorensen said he liked split road trails rather than share the road trails. He also asked about who would be responsible for maintenance, saying it couldnt be paid for with road funds.

Supervisor Santos Saucedo said he believed this would be a good step for Wilton and Durant. Horne said he would gather some figures and bring them back to the board.

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More than 50 years ago, Linda (Thomas) Scott read a tragic story in the newspaper about the Easter Sunday beating death of a 3-year-old child.

I gave it a lot of thought and it seemed as though there was a gap in services for parents under stress, said Scott. These parents were unlikely to call the police or an agency that might take their children away. I felt there should be a community organization that acted proactively to prevent child abuse.

First, I had to educate myself before I could recruit volunteers to educate the community. I organized a forum and included the district attorney, the sheriffs office, the police department, Child Protective Services, all the agencies that could be involved. Betty Hagedorn, who was the founder of the Napa (Valley) Colleges Child Development Center, made attending it a requirement for her students. The public came and I wrote an article about the forum that the Napa Register printed.

From a grassroots idea and with help from participating agencies, community volunteers formed the Child Abuse Prevention Services (CAPS), operating a 24-hour crisis hotline out of Scotts home. Volunteers received eight weeks of crisis intervention training before they could work.

We got a whole lot of calls, said Scott. Our goal was trying to be effective in preventing abuse and neglect, to intervene before something serious happened. I knew the concept had timeless value, but I had no vision that 50 years later it would have grown to what it is today.

The organization changed its name in 1976 to Child or Parent Emergency (COPE) and hired a director. Several years later its services had expanded to include relief babysitting, emergency diapers, home visiting service and court-ordered supervised visitation. By the 1980s the phone service included children who were home alone after school.

Cope added group support and parenting classes to its growing roster of services. It extended its services to Spanish-speaking families and became the administrative lead of the Child Abuse Council of Napa County (CAPC).

Cope and CAPC started the first annual Blue Ribbon Campaign in 1992 to raise awareness and funds for child abuse prevention. In 2000, the organization changed its name to the Cope Family Center.

Michele Grupe became executive director in 2017. She started her tenure at Cope in 2003 as the development director, then became associate director.

I was fortunate in that I had a stable upbringing with loving parents and the privilege and benefits that brings to a child, she said. Every kid deserves the same opportunity for a safe and loving family. Cope is a place that is welcoming to all people raising kids.

"Every parent needs help and support because its a hard job. I think people would be surprised that we help 1,000 to 1,200 parents a year, which includes 3,000 kids. There are a number of things we do and services we offer. Well connect them with other services if needed, sharing the work with all the community agencies.

What is in the future for Cope?

Pre-fire, it used to be about building capacity and reaching more families, said Grupe of the situation before the wildfires of 2017. Now its the advocacy piece, bringing in opportunities for parents to share and be their own advocates, using their voice in civic matters, voting and making public comments at meetings. Often, these are people who dont typically represent themselves. This way they become more a part of the community.

To raise funds for Copes work, Kathryn Hall is hosting a fundraising gala at HALL Wines at 6 p.m. on June 25. Information about the gala is on Cope's website copefamilycenter.org.

Kathryn Hall has been lovely and generous to chair the event, said Grupe. We have an auspicious goal for the fundraiser to bring in $500,000 to support our services. We have generous auction lots. We hope people will take this opportunity to invest in us to build a strong foundation for the next 50 years.

Grupe wants families to know two important points: One, that prevention works. People may have issues, even if their challenge is homelessness or mental health. They have an opportunity to build a strong family and community. The second thing is to call Cope or another Family Resource Center if they dont know where to go for help. We can assist or put them in touch with whatever services they need.

Of Copes many successes over the years, Grupe says shes proud of how the staff managed during the worst of the pandemic.

"Staff was dealing with the pandemic themselves, but they were still able to maintain and strengthen relationships with our clients. Families knew they could call in and have someone to talk to; a friendly ear, if they needed something."

Founder Linda Scott echoed a similar thought.

Cope had the same message when it started as it does now. Dont feel ashamed to ask for help. Everyone needs help now and again. Phone and theres someone there. Just ask. Theres no shame in asking.

Cope can be reached at 707-252-1123 or emailed at hello@copefamilycenter.org.
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson released a statement Sunday praising the efforts of a bipartisan group of senators that reached agreement on legislation to combat gun violence.

"Americans are demanding action to help end the mass shootings and the often unreported, daily gun violence," said the St. Helena Democrat, who represents Napa and parts of Contra Costa, Lake, Solano and Sonoma counties. "The bipartisan agreement announced by the Senate today is the first major agreement in the Senate to act on gun violence prevention in 30 years and is an important step to help protect our communities and save lives.

"While the deal does not go as far as the House-passed bills, it represents a change in the national sentiment towards gun violence prevention," Thompson said. "We still have more work to do, we can't pass up an opportunity to pass life-saving provisions when we have agreement. I am committed to working with the overwhelming majority of Americans who are desperate for action on gun violence."

The proposal includes resources for states to make red-flag laws, invests more in children and mental health services, offers more protections to victims of domestic violence, and cracks down on illegal gun sales.
It may be tempting to make too much of what happened Tuesday in Californias two most prominent cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Right-wing media are screaming that the overwhelming recall of San Franciscos uber-progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, and businessman Rick Carusos top finish in a field of 12 candidates for mayor bodes well for a Republican comeback in this deep blue state.

Thats not going to happen.

However, its also tempting to make too little of Tuesdays voting patterns in those two cities. Progressives rationalize Boudins ouster and Carusos strong finish as attempts by the Trumpian right to seize control. In fact Boudin tried, and failed, to make that case to his citys voters.

Rather, both outcomes reflect legitimate concerns by voters, including those who consider themselves to be left-of-center Democrats, that the quality of life in both cities has deteriorated and that their elected leaders have failed to recognize and confront that fact.

Deterioration is especially stark in San Francisco with rampant drug use that is taking a heavy toll on human life, squalid camps of the homeless dominating city sidewalks and a wave of burglaries and smash-and-grab robberies that goes unpunished.

Writer Nellie Bowles vividly captures the San Francisco crisis and why ordinarily progressive San Franciscans became disgusted in a lengthy article that Atlantic magazine published today.

They did it because (Boudin) didnt seem to care that he was making the citizens of our city miserable in service of an ideology that made sense everywhere but in reality, Bowles wrote. Its not just about Boudin, though. There is a sense that, on everything from housing to schools, San Francisco has lost the plot  that progressive leaders here have been LARPing left-wing values instead of working to create a livable city. And many San Franciscans have had enough.

Bowles noted that Boudins recall was foretold by the recall of San Francisco school board members who were preoccupied with symbolic acts of political correctness, such as changing the names on school buildings while ignoring the effects of school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I used to tell myself that San Franciscos politics were wacky but the city was trying  really trying  to be good, she wrote. But the reality is that with the smartest minds and so much money and the very best of intentions, San Francisco became a cruel city. It became so dogmatically progressive that maintaining the purity of the politics required accepting  or at least ignoring  devastating results.

Boudin himself came close to acknowledging why he lost, albeit with a tinge of rationalization, telling the San Francisco Chronicle, Voters were not given an opportunity to choose between criminal justice reform and something else. They were given an opportunity to voice their frustrations and their outrage and they took that opportunity.

What about Los Angeles?

It has suffered from the same chronic problems that plague San Francisco and a political leadership that has been equally ineffective in dealing with them. Caruso, a very wealthy shopping center developer, tapped into widespread frustration, particularly about crime, in a deluge of self-financed media ads.

Los Angeles notoriously low voter turnout also helped Caruso garner more than 40% of Tuesdays vote, topping Congresswoman Karen Bass, the candidate of the citys Democratic leadership, by several points.

However, with neither getting a majority, they are headed for a runoff in the November election, when turnout will be higher. That will be a truer test of whether Angelenos are ready for the change that Republican-turned-Democrat Caruso promises but Bass and her supporters shouldnt ignore the quality-of-life backlash.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how Californias state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.
According to information published by the Canberra Times on June 13, 2022, the previous Australian Minister of Defence Dutton said he has planned to buy two Virginia-class submarines from the US by 2030.

Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link

Former Australian Minister of Defense in front of Australian Navy's Anzac-class frigate (Picture source: inf.news)

The Virginia class, also known as the SSN-774 class, is a class of nuclear-powered cruise missile fast-attack submarines, in service in the United States Navy.

Designed by General Dynamics Electric Boat (EB) and Huntington Ingalls Industries, Virginia-class submarines will be acquired through 2043, and are expected to remain in service until at least 2060.

They are designed to excel in anti-submarine warfare, anti-ship warfare, strike warfare, special operations, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, irregular warfare, and mine warfare. Fast-attack submarines project power ashore with special operations forces and Tomahawk cruise missiles in the prevention or preparation of regional crises.

The Virginia-class submarine has a length of 114.8 m, and a beam of 10.36 m. The submarine can reach a top speed of 28 miles per hour (45 km/h). She has a crew of 132 people including 15 officers and 117 enlisted.

The Virginia Class is equipped with twelve Vertical Launch System (VLS) tubes and four torpedo tubes (starting with SSN 784 North Dakota [Block II], the 12 VLS tubes are replaced by 2 large-diameter payload tubes).

The submarines also carry Mk 48 ADCAP Torpedoes, UGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles, Mk 60 CAPTOR mines, advanced mobile mines, and unmanned underwater vehicles.
France finance minister: Eurozone is in middle of peak of inflation

Germany MFA concerned about Turkey's aggressive rhetoric towards Greece

NATO to deploy troops, equipment on its eastern flank for first time since Cold War

Biden administration officials admits that sanctions on Russia are hurting US economy

Germany to supply MARS II multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine

Armenia President to pay working visit to Russia

US to provide $1bn in additional military assistance to Ukraine

Medvedev doubts that Ukraine will exist in 2 years

Israel FM pins hopes on Bidens visit to Middle East next month

EU envoy to Armenia meets with civil society organizations representatives working in Meghri

Biden slams oil industry for failing to curb rising fuel prices

Armenia PM attends church wake of the late renowned actor Rafael Kotanjyan

8th convocation Armenia parliament 3rd session concludes

Armenia National Assembly takes note of 2021 state budget execution report

Armenia legislature deputy chair receives delegation led by OSCE PA President

Chinas Xi tells Putin that Russia's actions are legitimate

Turkey rejects NATO invitations to trilateral talks with Finland, Sweden

Armenias Pashinyan: Karabakh status is not goal but means to ensure security of its people

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf: North-South corridor construction is necessary to ensure security of Iran, Armenia

Dollar, euro rise in Armenia

Armenia premier: Karabakh budget recorded unprecedented growth in 2021-2022

Starmus festival organizer: Im ready with pleasure to collaborate postgraduate students from Armenia

Russia MFA: Moscow is ready to facilitate the commission meeting in the nearest future

Armenia PM: After Common State idea, issue of exchanging territories appeared on negotiating table

Macron: We will do everything to stop military forces of Russia

In Kazakhstan, 26 people receive real sentences after January riots

Fallen soldiers relatives continue their sit-in at downtown Yerevan

Armenia parliament speaker is in Iran on official visit

Armenia opposition movement participants reach Prosecutor General's Office building

Armenia official: Russia considering possibility of setting up additional checkpoint near Upper Lars

Infantino presents Armenia PM nominal T-shirt, nominal ball of 2022 FIFA World Cup (PHOTOS)

Aliyev and Karen Donfried discuss normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia

CSTO Committee of Secretaries to meet in Yerevan

16.8% of Armenia state budget expenditures in 2021 goes to defense sector

Russia FM to pay working visit to Azerbaijan

Armenia FM briefs Bulgarian MPs on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Russia considers Israeli strikes on Syrian territory unacceptable

Expert: Armenia must increase country's attractiveness not only for IT specialists

Krisp: Preconditions for technological boom have been created in Armenia

Report: Key Indicators for Execution of State Budget of Armenia for 2021

North Korea spends $1,221 a minute on nuclear program, analysts estimate

Armenia bloc MP: Let's gather in Vardanyan Park on Italy Street

Synopsys Armenia: Countrys IT sector has shortage of 4,000 staff

Three earthquakes hit Iran's Kish Island this morning

Swiss airspace closes due to technical failure

Conference held in occupied Armenian Shushi to mark anniversary of so-called 'Shushi Declaration'

Armenia FM and Bulgarian NA Speaker discuss possibilities for deepening relations between two countries

Newspaper: How was created the right picture from Pashinyan's visit to Ararat region?

Prosecutor General of Armenia Artur Davtyan leaves for Russia

Russia President to meet with Armenia President at SPIEF

SPIEF kicks off in St. Petersburg

Armen Avetisyan appointed as new General Director of Viva-MTS

Armenian parliament discusses execution of 2021 state budget

Global oil prices rise slightly

Russia calls on Turkey to peacefully resolve situation in Syria

Canada and Denmark settle territorial dispute

WhatsApp makes it easier to switch from Android to iPhone

Astronomers make most detailed map of Moon

Company to pay $2,000 to volunteers to release 100 cockroaches into their home

Hungary objects to introduction of global minimum tax in EU

Resistance Movement members remove their tents from France Square

Some European plants shut down due to skyrocketing global energy prices

Erdogan: Turkey must defend its interests in space

European leaders visit Israel hoping to reduce dependence on Russian gas

Resistance movement to hold information march on Thursday and a rally on Saturday

Resistance movement holds procession in Yerevan

Slovak PM calls on Scholz to support Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova as EU candidates

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan participates in Resistance movement rally

German howitzers soon to be delivered to Ukraine

Resistance Movement rally starts in Yerevan

Turkey President meets with Russian Deputy Prime Minister

Media revealed some details of opening of Armenian-Azerbaijani roads

HYECoin, Inc. invites conversation among venture capitalist firms open to funding startup tech and crypto projects

Three times vaccinated Lithuanian PM tests positive for Covid-19

Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Bulgaria discuss cooperation

Austria to allocate 28 billion to compensate population for increased costs

Dollar rises after long decline, euro continues to depreciate in Armenia

Georgia prosecuting cartographers because of whom David Gareja monastery was to pass to Azerbaijan

AraratBank Brings Apple Pay to Customers

Moldova decides to analyze pros and cons of participation in CIS

Court allows Armenia ex-deputy premier and now lawmaker Armen Gevorgyan to head for Strasbourg

2 people convicted in connection with 9 November 2020 night riots in Yerevan

South Korea, US and Japan to conduct missile defense exercises in August in Hawaii

Euronews: Forget France, as Armenia is hub of winemaking history

Armenian village Norabak deprived of water supply after Azerbaijani invasion

Armenia to join CIS agreement on use of military satellite communication systems

Biden extends US sanctions regime against North Korea for another year

Armenia FM, Bulgaria President discuss prospects for development of bilateral relations

Armenian Shushi city of Artsakh to become venue for Azerbaijan conference on cooperation with Turkey

Premier meets with Father Emir of Qatar, presents him Order of Friendship of Armenia

State council for protection of cultural heritage of Karabakhs occupied territories holds first meeting

Premier, Qatar Business Council members discuss implementation of investment programs in Armenia

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan, former-deputy PM and now MP Gevorgyan trial to reconvene

Armenia PM meets with Qatar FM

David Babayan: Artsakh, Armenia are in difficult situation

Driver of car that went onto tents at France Square in downtown Yerevan is apprehended

Armenia FM meets with Bulgaria President

Azerbaijan Security Council chief: Armenia opposition protesting against peace talks will not achieve its goal

Armenia-France cooperation in defense sector is discussed

Draft statement on Armenia-Azerbaijan, Armenia-Turkey relations not put on legislature agenda
The family members of an elderly Armenian man who was stabbed have exacted revenge upon the suspect in a hospital in Vladikavkaz, Russiaand right before the eyes of law enforcement officers, the Baza Telegram channel reported.

At midnight, taxi driver Sergey Grigoryan, 79, had taken passenger Murad Osmanov, 35. An argument started between them on the way, because of which the young man stabbed the elderly man in the stomach with a knife.

The taxi driver was taken to hospital in severe condition, and the attacker was apprehended and taken to the same medical institution, as his hand was injured.

The relatives of the old man also came to the hospital. His grandson saw the attacker in the corridor, approached him and hit him in the leg and back right before the eyes of the police.

The doctors provided first aid to the young man.

But while Osmanov was waiting at the hospital reception, the old man's son hit him in the chest and stomach. Then another relative of the old man shot the young man several times with a gun. A police officer was able to render this man ineffective.

But the stabbing suspect could not be saved; he died at the intensive care unitand from the injuries he sustained.

Now the law enforcement officers are investigating the circumstances of what happened.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has called for sanctions against North Korea to be eased in order to help the country fight covid.

Speaking Monday in Geneva at the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), she expressed concern about the possible dire consequences of the spread of the disease on vulnerable populations.

"I remain concerned by the likely human rights impact of the reported outbreak of COVID-19 in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). In the absence of any vaccination rollout, the limited healthcare infrastructure and the precarious food situation, the impact, particularly on vulnerable populations, is likely to be severe," Bachelet said.

"Once again, I urge the international community to relax sanctions to enable urgent humanitarian and COVID-related assistance and encourage the DPRK to open channels for humanitarian support, including the presence of UN staff," the UN High Commissioner said.

The Korean Central News Agency first reported the detection of coronavirus infection in the country on 12 May. On Saturday, authorities in the people's republic reported 42,810 new cases of fever. A total of 4.39 million patients with fever have been reported since late April amid the spread of the coronavirus. Of these, 4.31 million people have recovered, with 77,000 residents undergoing treatment. Information about new deaths is not given, previously 71 deaths were registered.
Moscow is ready to contribute in every possible way to the process of normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Russian Ambassador to Baku Mikhail Bocharnikov said.

"The initial role in the whole process of normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia was played by the trilateral statement of November 10, 2020. As you know, it was later refined in 2021, with two more trilateral statements at the highest level. "All these statements are the backbone of the process of normalization of relations. At the same time, I would not say that the normalization process has already reached the finish line. It is rather at the initial stage," Bocharnikov said.

According to him, Moscow is ready to support the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiation process in every possible way, Interfax-Azerbaijan reports. "As for what is now called a peace treaty, the first step has been made - the readiness of both sides to move forward has been fixed. Baku put on the table the basic principles for the establishment of interstate relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Armenian side, in turn, put forward its proposals. The Russian side is ready to support the negotiation process in every way possible", the diplomat noted.

Asked about the involvement of the European Union in normalization of relations, Bocharnikov said that the EU keeps silent about Russia's efforts in this direction. "I repeat, the work was laid by the above-mentioned trilateral statement (November 10, 2020). From the EU side there is a desire to seize the initiative from Russia and to take the credit for advancing in all these directions. I would also like to note that the latest statements of the EU completely silence the existence of the above-mentioned statements at all, not to mention Russia's role in this process," he noted.

Bocharnikov expressed the opinion that the EU could "benefit the process if it undertakes the financing of projects to unblock transport and economic ties in the region.
The enccounter was reported fromPalpora Sangam area of the districtt.

"LeT terrorist Adil Parray of Ganderbal who was involved in killing of two JKP personnel Gh Hassan Dar in Sangam and Saifulla Qadri in Anchar Soura and injuring a 9 year old girl, killed in a chance encounter with a small team of Police," Jammu and Kashmir Police said in a tweet, citing Inspector General Police Kashmir, Vijay Kumar.

This is a second encounter in J&JK on a single day. Earlier on Sunday, three terrorists were killed in an overnight encounter between terrorists and security forces at Drabgam area in Kashmir's Pulwama district.

There have been a series of anti-terror operations in Kashmir over the last few months in which many terrorists and their commanders have been eliminated.

Most of the operations have been jointly conducted by the police and the army on the basis of specific intelligence inputs.

On Saturday, a Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist was killed in an encounter with security forces in SKashmir's Kulgam district.

--IANS zi/vd

( 210 Words)

2022-06-12-19:02:03 (IANS)
The Delhi police on Sunday denied permission to a Congress rally scheduled for June 13, however just hours later posters of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi were seen outside his residence in Delhi. The Congress rally is scheduled to be taken out on Monday, by the party leaders and workers from AICC HQ at 24, Akbar road to the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) office at APJ Abdul Kalam road. The Delhi police cited law and order behind the denial of the permission for the rally. The Congress is gearing up to demonstrate a political show of strength on Monday when the party leader Rahul Gandhi will appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection in connection with a money laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper. ED on Friday issued a fresh summons to Sonia Gandhi asking her to appear on June 23 for questioning in connection with the National Herald money laundering case. Rahul Gandhi has been summoned to join the investigation on June 13. He was earlier summoned to join the investigation but he was out of the country and later he was given a fresh date of June 13 to join the probe. According to sources, Congress MPs, and Congress Working Committee (CWC) members have also been asked to be present in Delhi on Monday for the rally. A meeting of All India Congress Committee (AICC) General Secretaries, State Incharges, and Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chiefs was called on Thursday to decide the strategy for the same. Earlier, Congress leader Manickam Tagore said that party workers will hold demonstrations at around 25 offices of the probe agency across the country against the political vendata and the "misuse" of the central investigative agencies by the Central government to "silence the voice of opposition". Meanwhile, the Congress party has alleged that it is a "political vendetta" and the case has no grounds for investigation. The ED also questioned senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge and Congress Treasurer Pawan Bansal in April this year in New Delhi in connection with its money laundering probe into the National Herald case. The agency then recorded the statements of both the Congress leaders under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The National Herald is published by Associated Journals Limited (AJL) and owned by Young Indian Private Limited (YIL). While Kharge is the CEO of YIL, Bansal is the Managing Director of AJL. The ED is currently investigating the shareholding pattern and financial transactions as well as the role of party functionaries in the functioning of the AJL and YIL. The YIL promoters include Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. (ANI)
The Tamil Nadu coastal police are on high alert after intelligence reports came of a possibility of smuggling of essential commodities to Sri Lanka through a sea route from the state. The intelligence issued an alert after inputs that the Sri Lankan nationals are also trying to reach Indian shores following financial crisis in that country. The Sri Lankan Prime Minister has recently issued a statement that getting fuel including oil and gas in the island nation would be tough for the coming three weeks. He has also issued travel restrictions leading to panic in the country. The alert from the government has said that Sri Lankan Tamils are economically very poor and even the assistance extended by the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora to their brethren is not reaching those in the remote areas of the country. This includes tea estate workers, most of whom are Sri Lankan Tamils who are economically in dire straits. While the rich are able to stock essential items, poor are facing tough time in the country. The intelligence has also issued a warning that possibility of several people including Sri Lankan Tamils who had owed allegiance to the now-defunct LTTE reaching Indian shores through sea routes is high. The intelligence advisory has directed the Tamil Nadu marine and coastal police to be on alert on this. Earlier, there were intelligence reports on the LTTE regrouping in Tamil Nadu which became clear after a woman, a Canadian national, was arrested while trying to board a flight to Mumbai to release money from the account of a non-functioning organization using fake papers. Interrogation of the woman revealed that the huge fund that was lying dormant in the nationalized bank account was of an LTTE-related organization. A former LTTE intelligence operative, Satkunam alias Sabesan was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) from Valsaravakkam in Chennai. The search of the NIA at his premises in Valsaravakkam and Iyypanthangal has led to the recovery of incriminating materials including details of the money flow from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka and this money according to intelligence sources was transferred to former operatives of LTTE in the island nation. The Indian agencies were tracking him following inputs (specific) on his involvement in smuggling of drugs and weapons from Pakistan and the proceeds of the smuggling were used to fund LTTE cadres in Sri Lanka. Investigations have also revealed that he was one of the key conspirators in the Vizhinjam arms case of Kerala in which five AK 47 rifles, 1000 rounds of 9 mm ammunition, and 300 kg of drugs off Minicoy coast which was recovered while Coast Guard intercepted the fishing vessel Ravihansi on March 18, 2021. These two incidents have led to Indian intelligence agencies upping their ante and the present advisory is part of certain inputs the agencies have received. --IANS aal/skp/ ( 489 Words) 2022-06-13-19:22:04 (IANS)
After Sri Lanka's business tycoon Dhammika Perera was sworn in as a national list MP (Member of Parliament), protests erupted on Sunday, outside his home, demanding accountability for his casino business. Protesters chanted the slogans, 'Go Home Dhammika' and asked for accountability on his casino businesses and called on him to come outside to answer their queries, Daily Mirror reported. Riot police and the army were deployed outside Perera's house as the protest was underway. It is pertinent to mention that Perra replaced former minister Basil Rajapaksa after he resigned from his post. Earlier, on Thursday, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) National list MP Basil Rajapaksa resigned from his Parliamentary seat, reported Daily Mirror. Sergeant-at-arms Narendra Fernando also confirmed that Rajapaksa had met the Secretary-General of Parliament. SLPP stalwart Basil Rajapaksa said that he only initiated engagement with the International Monetary Fund but there was another group in the government against it at that time. Basil Rajapaksa said the government should go for an IMF programme on a sound footing, according to Daily Mirror. Referring to 21st Amendment, Rajapaksa said that he opposed such an amendment of the constitution. He further said that he is against the presidential powers being pruned to be vested with a prime minister not elected by the people. Rajapaksa said that such constitutional powers should be done with public management. Sri Lanka Prime Minister Wickremesinghe last week batted for the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, saying it will curb the president's unlimited powers while enhancing the role of Parliament in governing the debt-ridden country which is also facing an unprecedented political turmoil. With the 21st amendment, the Sri Lankan Prime Minister yearn to bring back parliament in power and said that the timing and methodology must be decided by the party leaders at all costs. The 21st Amendment is expected to annul the 20A which gave unlimited powers to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa after abolishing the 19th Amendment. Sri Lanka has been gripped by an economic crisis considered the worst since the country gained independence in 1948. Due to energy shortages, some parts of Sri Lanka have rolling blackouts. Sri Lanka's foreign debt is estimated at USD 51 billion. (ANI)
Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakashi Lekhi visited the 'Kyrgyz State Historical Museum' in Bishkek along with the Minister of Culture Azamat Zhamankulov. "Nice tour of the Kyrgyz State Historical Museum in Bishkek along with Minister of Culture Azamat Zhamankulov," Lekhi said in a tweet on Sunday. Meenakashi Lekhi is on an official visit to the Kyrgyz Republic and Kazakhstan from June 9-14. Before visiting the museum, the Minister of State for External Affairs went to India-Kyrgyz Mountain Bio-Medical Research Centre and said that the centre is the symbol of bilateral partnership on high-altitude research. "Pleased to visit the India-Kyrgyz Mountain Bio-Medical Research Centre, a symbol of bilateral partnership on high-altitude research," Lekhi tweeted. Earlier in the day, Lekhi paid tribute to the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Molodyozhny Park in Bishkek and also planted a tree in the name of India- Kyrgyz Republic friendship. Taking to Twitter, she added, "Appreciate the presence of Minister of Culture Azamat Zhamankulov and Vice Mayor of Bishkek Victoria Mozgacheva at the event." Earlier, the minister also met with the Indian community in Bishkek and encouraged them to continue efforts toward stronger ties between India and Kyrgyzstan. "Glad to interact with the vibrant Indian community in Bishkek. Encouraged them to continue efforts towards stronger India-Kyrgyz Republic ties," Meenakashi Lekhi said in a Tweet on Sunday. The Minister of State for External Affairs who came to Kyrgyzstan on Saturday held talks with Foreign Minister Zheenbek Kulubaev during which the Kyrgyz Foreign Minister congratulated MoS Lekhi on the "Eighth Anniversary of the fruitful work of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in India, of which she is an active member". "Took stock of the state and prospects of India- Kyrgyz Republic relations with Foreign Minister Zheenbek Kulubaev. We also had a useful exchange of views on topical issues of regional and international importance," she tweeted on Saturday.The Minister of State for External Affairs will be in Kazakhstan from June 12-14. (ANI)
GARY, Ind.  Two people were killed and four others wounded in shooting at a nightclub in Gary, Indiana early Sunday morning.

Gary police said officers responded to the Playos Nightclub in the 1700 block of Grant Street for reports of shots fired.

One neighbor said she heard 30-50 gunshots and people screaming.

Once there, police said officers found an unresponsive 34-year-old man near the door. He was transported with gunshot wounds to the hospital. He was later pronounced dead. The Lake County Indiana coroner identified the man as Jonte Dorsey of Joliet, Illinois

Police said officers also found an unresponsive 26-year-old woman inside the club. She was also transported to the hospital. She was late pronounced dead, police said. The Lake County Indiana coroner identified her as JahNice Quinn of Merrillville, Indiana.

Police said a third person was shot and taken to the hospital in critical condition.

Three additional people were also shot and appear to have non-life-threatening injuries, according to police.

The circumstances surrounding the shooting have not been released at this time.

In 2017 police responded to a fatal shooting for a club located at the same address.

Some who live nearby say since then the gunshots ring out regularly on the weekends. They want to see the establishment shut down for good.

Police are investigating.

Anyone with information on this incident is encouraged to call 219-755-3855 or the Crime Tip Line at 866-CRIME-GP.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Soldiers Vitalii Orlich and his bride Kristina (L) and Volodymyr Mykhailuk and his bride Hrystyna kiss after being married during joint wedding ceremony on June 12, 2022 in Druzhkivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. All four are soldiers in the Ukrainian army serving with the 14th separate mechanized brigade in eastern Ukraine. Both couples met while serving in the army after the start of the war with Russia. Ukrainian forces are engaged in a back-and-forth battle with Russia for key towns along the western edge of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where Moscow is focusing its firepower.

Scott Olson/Getty

Two Ukrainian couples, all members of the 14th Mechanized Brigade, have wed just months after they were brought together.

Khrystyna Lyuta, 23, and Volodymyr Mykhalchuk, 28, tied the knot Sunday alongside Kristina and Vitaliy Orlich, both 23, according to Agence France-Presse. The double wedding took place in front of a registry office in Druzhkivka, a town about 25 miles away from the frontlines, according to Agence France-Presse.

The celebration marked the "first marriage in the brigade in wartime" since the start of the Russian invasion, priest Yuriy Zdebskiy told the AFP.

"War is war, but life goes on," Lyuta told AFP, regarding the weddings.

Added fellow bride Kristina, "I believe that this is about creating a new family  it doesn't matter where it happens or how."

Soldiers Vitalii Orlich and his bride Kristina (R) and Volodymyr Mykhailuk and his bride Hrystyna are married during joint wedding ceremony on June 12, 2022 in Druzhkivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. All four are soldiers in the Ukrainian army serving with the 14th separate mechanized brigade in eastern Ukraine. Both couples met while serving in the army after the start of the war with Russia. Ukrainian forces are engaged in a back-and-forth battle with Russia for key towns along the western edge of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where Moscow is focusing its firepower.

Scott Olson/Getty

Sunday's wedding came over three months after Russian forces launched a large-scale invasion on Feb. 24  the first major land conflict in Europe in decades.

The invasion, ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has drawn condemnation around the world and increasingly severe economic sanctions against Russia.

Never miss a story  sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.



Still, romance has blossomed between the two couples, who may not otherwise have met.

Mykhalchuk and Lyuta, for instance, learned that they had lived about five kilometers apart in the same region for most of their lives and never knew each other until they met two months ago, per the AFP.

Despite only knowing each other for a short amount of time, Mykhalchuk told the news agency that getting married wasn't a "hasty decision."

"The main thing is that we love each other and we want to be together," he said.

Soldiers Vitalii Orlich and his bride Kristina (L) and Volodymyr Mykhailuk and his bride Hrystyna dance after their joint wedding ceremony on June 12, 2022 in Druzhkivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. All four are soldiers in the Ukrainian army serving with the 14th separate mechanized brigade in eastern Ukraine. Both couples met while serving in the army after the start of the war with Russia. Ukrainian forces are engaged in a back-and-forth battle with Russia for key towns along the western edge of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where Moscow is focusing its firepower.

Scott Olson/Getty

RELATED: 2 Ukrainian Children Who Fled Russian Invasion Receive Special Welcome at New School in Italy

At the wedding, Kristina wore a traditional white-and-red dress for the occasion while Lyuta donned boots and camouflage pants, which she matched with a traditional red Ukrainian blouse, according to the AFP.

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Although their family members weren't in attendance, Kristina said her mother, who has spoken to Orlich online, already calls him "a son."

Soldiers Volodymyr Mykhailuk and his bride Hrystyna are married during a joint wedding ceremony with two other soldiers on June 12, 2022 in Druzhkivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. All four are soldiers in the Ukrainian army serving with the 14th separate mechanized brigade in eastern Ukraine. Both couples met while serving in the army after the start of the war with Russia. Ukrainian forces are engaged in a back-and-forth battle with Russia for key towns along the western edge of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where Moscow is focusing its firepower.

Scott Olson/Getty

After the ceremony, however, it was back to business. The four soldiers were expected to report for duty the same day as their wedding, according to the AFP.

"I can't give them free days as such," brigade commander Oleksandr Okhrimenko told the news agency, though he did make one promise.

"The only thing is that they won't be on the frontline," the commander added. "They will stay in the rear."

The Russian attack on Ukraine is an evolving story, with information changing quickly. Follow PEOPLE's complete coverage of the war here, including stories from citizens on the ground and ways to help.
Vietnam to improve institutions to attract foreign investment

In view of the important contributions of investment capital to the local economy, Vietnam needs immediate solutions to attract more FDI and strengthen its sources, according to experts.









Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen in the northern province of Thai Nguyen. Foreign capital flows have been present in most localities in the country with projects invested by big global names.  Photo courtesy of Samsung Vietnam

According to data, after 35 years of implementing the open-door policy to attract FDI, up to now, Vietnam has received investment from 140 countries and territories around the world.



Foreign capital flows have been present in most localities in the country with projects invested by big global names such as Intel, Microsoft, Foxconn, Samsung, Sanyo, Sony, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and Panasonic.



Depicting a full picture of the situation in Vietnam, the annual report on foreign investment in Vietnam in 2021 by the Association of Foreign Investment Enterprises (VAFIE) published recently highlights encouraging results.



The report said: "FDI enterprises account for about 25 per cent of total social investment capital, 55 per cent of total industrial production value, and more than 70 per cent of export turnover."



It said this proved the local business and investment environment was increasingly improving, making foreign investors believe in the success of doing business in Vietnam by adjusting investment capital to expand the business and increase profits.



Notably, foreign investors' capital contribution and share purchase activities in Vietnam have been very active in the past 10 years, accounting for a high proportion of registered and realised FDI.



In 2021, the value of business mergers and acquisitions will reach US$12 billion, up 150 per cent compared to 2020, equivalent to the record set in 2017 of $13.4 billion, despite the context investment environment and the world changed dramatically due to the impact of the pandemic.



In addition, non-equity investment (NEM) was becoming a new investment method in Vietnam, such as with the two investment deals of Vingroup in Vinfast and Vinsmart brands.



Nguyen Mai, President of VAFIE, said this form of investment allowed multinational corporations to coordinate product supply chain activities, creating opportunities for domestic manufacturers and suppliers to join the global supply chain.



Mai said the resources of foreign investors often included the provision of trademarks, intellectual property rights, and business know-how, which could be an investment trend to increase profit margins through finding potential markets without capital contribution.



At the same time, International Investment Research Company Limited (ISC) published the FDI Annual Report 2021, which analysed the inadequacies and limitations in FDI attraction and made many recommendations to send to investors and policymakers.



Phan Huu Thang, chairman of the Report Compiling Council and former Director of the Foreign Investment Agency from the Ministry of Planning and Investment, told local media: "The current problems in attracting FDI are not new."



Thang also mentioned the role of FDI in GDP growth was increasingly important, adding the proportion of total export turnover, budget contributions, job creation, spillover of productivity and technology and supporting industry development from them was high.



However, he also mentioned the limitations of foreign capital inflows, which were reflected in the low quality and efficiency of FDI attraction and use, saying: "The number of projects with advanced and modern technology and European technology was only about 5 per cent; there is an imbalance in the attraction and use of FDI in the area; linkages and interactions between the FDI sector and other sectors of the economy are not tight, the spillover effects on productivity and technology are not high."



"The disadvantages in attracting and using FDI have been slowly overcome, affecting economic development, social order and national defence-security."



Thang said these limitations had many causes, but the most basic was that institutions and policies on FDI had not kept pace with development requirements.



He added: "In the coming time, it is necessary to continue to improve institutions and laws on FDI attraction to improve the quality and efficiency of attracting and using foreign investment capital."



He said at the same time that it was necessary for the active, robust, synchronous and substantive participation of ministries, branches and localities to create a fair, open and transparent business and investment environment.



He and his colleagues emphasised the solution to monitoring and evaluating FDI projects, especially the status of "hidden" investment in the form of individual investors in Vietnam. In some cases, they could set up a real estate business with a capital contribution of less than 49 per cent, lending money to Vietnamese individuals to set up businesses.



He said speeding up the progress of building and perfecting the national information system on foreign investment to have an efficient database of information to seriously and accurately evaluate the efficiency of FDI in Vietnam was a solution.



Given that the institutions and laws related to foreign investment were incomplete, overlapping, and not strictly enforced, some foreign investors took advantage of legal loopholes to exploit hidden investments in the industries and fields where FDI was limited.



VAFIE said: "It is necessary to continue to improve institutions and laws related to FDI, including the policy of applying a global minimum tax in Vietnam."



In addition, there should be solutions to improve the efficiency of attracting and using FDI by enhancing the investment and business environment, reviewing the investment policy system, supporting investors to remove difficulties, strengthening the state management of FDI from the stage of project promotion, appraisal and implementation to the stage of inspection and supervision of implementation.



VAFIE recommended that the Government soon issue a decision on the set of criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of the FDI sector. The evaluation criteria under construction include 26 specific economic, social, environmental, technological indicators, all serving as a basis for foreign investors to self-score and for project screening by localities to receive investment.
Jun. 12A recent surge in cyberattacks on ag companies during critical planting and harvest seasons has prompted a warning from the FBI and efforts within the industry to develop stronger individual and shared defenses.

The agency pointed to ransomware attacks on six grain cooperatives during the fall harvest, plus two attacks earlier this year that could have hurt planting by disrupting seed and fertilizer supplies.

"Cyber actors may perceive cooperatives as lucrative targets with a willingness to pay due to the time-sensitive role they play in agricultural production," the FBI's April 20 notification stated.

"Although ransomware attacks against the entire farm-to-table spectrum of the (food and agriculture) sector occur on a regular basis," it continued, "the number of cyberattacks against agricultural cooperatives during key seasons is notable."

There can be a perception among growers that, because their operations are largely manual labor, that they can always go back to pen and paper. While that's true on many levels, functions like labeling, shipping and even quality assurance revolve around data. That leaves critical operations vulnerable to cybercrime.

The FBI noted attacks on ag have in different circumstances slowed processing and interrupted email and website administration. It raised concerns ranging from supply chain problems to commodity trading and stock price impacts.

"An attack that disrupts processing at a protein or dairy facility can quickly result in spoiled products," the agency added, "and have cascading effects down to the farm level as animals cannot be processed."

The list the FBI released of recent cyberattacks on ag focused on ransomware attacks, in which data is stolen or encrypted such that it can't be used and the criminal or criminals demand payment to return access. One of the incidents, in July, spread from a business management software company to the computer systems of clients including ag cooperatives.

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Ransomware is not the only kind of cyberattack hitting ag lately, said President Greg Gatzke of ZAG Technical Services Inc., a managed services and information security company based in San Jose.

Another strategy used by criminals, he said in an interview, is trying to trick a company into sending what appears to a vendor payment to a new account that is actually the criminal's bank.

Cyber-thieves may also work to gain access to a company's computer system so it can gather personally identifiable information, such as Social Security numbers, Gatzke noted. Criminals sometimes post that information for sale online. Companies whose systems have been compromised are required to file paperwork and put out notifications, and they may be exposed to class-action lawsuits.

Depending on when the attacks hit, unprotected companies may be at the criminals' mercy.

"It's just the nature of the speed at which ag operates," he said. "So, the impact is much higher to (farmers)."

Ag operators who think they can switch to paperwork at a moment's notice are sometimes in for a surprise, Gatzke said. Invoicing, recording measurements, labeling  "all those things use computers," he said.

Hardening their systems against cybercrime is especially hard for ag companies working on slim profit margins. But Gatzke said protective measures, some of them free, are being taken by individual operators, and groups of companies are looking at building common defenses. In his opinion, more needs to be done.

"I will say the industry is not ready" to fully repel the threat, he said, adding he has seen losses between $40,000 and $200,000 caused by cyber-thieves. He advised against paying criminals to restore data and noted that cyber-insurance can be hard to get because of recent losses.

Employees should be trained so they go from being a company's weakest link to standing as its first line of defense, Gatzke said. Multifactor authentication is a must, he said, and computer passwords should be strong. He recommended barring web browsers from visiting certain kinds of sites.

"Defense wins championships," he told participants in a webinar ZAG put on Thursday.
MADRID (Reuters) -Algeria's decision to suspend a friendship treaty with Spain last week was not surprising because Algiers is increasingly aligning itself with Russia, Spanish Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said on Monday.

Calvino said she had noticed a growing rapprochement between Algeria and Russia at the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund in April.

"I saw back then that Algeria was more and more aligned with Russia, so this (decision to suspend the treaty) didn't surprise me," Calvino said in an interview with Radio Catalunya.

The diplomatic row between the two countries followed a change of stance by Spain over Western Sahara, a territory Morocco claims while Algeria supports a group that seeks its independence.

Spain is also a member of the European Union and the NATO military alliance, both in the forefront of international opposition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

After Algeria's decision, Madrid has tried to convince the North African country to backtrack.

"I hope that Algeria will reconsider its position and the statements it has made," Calvino told reporters in Barcelona.

Algeria is one of Spain's main suppliers of gas and Spain has said it will firmly defend its national interests and those of its citizens and companies.

Calvino reiterated on Monday that the gas supplies continue normally and was confident there would be no disruption.

(Reporting by Christina Thykjaer and Inti LandauroEditing by Gareth Jones and Angus MacSwan)
Amazon will begin delivering orders in a California city by drone later this year, the company announced Monday.

The trial in Lockeford, Calif., will be the first time a company uses drones for deliveries in the U.S.

Amazon is planning to use the project to test out the service and receive feedback.

Residents of the city, roughly 40 miles south of Sacramento, will be able to sign up for free drone delivery.

Lockeford residents will soon have access to one of the worlds leading delivery innovations, said California State Assemblyman Heath Flora, whose district includes Lockeford. Its exciting that Amazon will be listening to the feedback of the San Joaquin County community to inform the future development of this technology.

The Federal Aviation Administration gave Amazon approval to fly drones in 2020.

Amazons press release on the pilot program touts the initiative as way to address the challenge of how to get items to customers quickly, cost-effectively, andmost importantlysafely, in less than an hour?

Amazon already offers its many of its Prime customers same day delivery on over 3 million items in the marketplace.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
(Independent)

Amber Heard will sit down for her first full-length, televised interview since she lost the multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit brought by ex-husband Johnny Depp.

On Monday, Deadline exclusively reported that the Aquaman actors interview with NBCs Savannah Guthrie will be broadcast on Friday (17 June), after a jury in Virginia found her guilty of defaming Depp in a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post.

Johnny Depps legal team blanketed the media for days after the verdict with numerous statements and interviews on television, and Depp himself did the same on social media, a spokesperson for Heard said.

Ms Heard simply intended to respond to what they aggressively did last week; she did so by expressing her thoughts and feelings, much of which she was not allowed to do on the witness stand.

More to follow.
EXCLUSIVE, updated with video: Two weeks after a Virginia jury handed Johnny Depp a victory in his multi-million defamation trial against Amber Heard, the Aquaman actress is set to publicly speak at length for the very first time since the verdict.

Heard will appear on NBC in a one-hour primetime special on June 17 in a sit-down with Savannah Guthrie, Ive learned. Certain to be heavily hyped and teased by the Comcast-owned network all week, the special will air at 8 p.m. ET on Friday.

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The much sought-after interview with Heard was filmed on June 9 in NYC under tight security and secrecy. The actress flew in from the Old Dominion specifically for the filming and returned to the DC area later in the day. To keep matters under wraps, the interview was tactically not shot at NBCs 30 Rock HQ.

During the taping, Heard spoke with the Today co-host about how she believes the decision by the jury could impact free speech in America and other women coming out to talk about domestic abuse, a source close to the situation tells Deadline. She also discussed from her POV the spectacle that the lurid six-week trial became with the self-styled Deppford Wives packing the courthouse both inside and outside. Additionally, Heard told Guthrie of the vital differences she sees between the UK wife beater libel case that Depp lost in November 2020 against The Sun tabloid, and the legal battle on this side of the Atlantic between the former couple and Rum Diary co-stars. You can watch a clip of the interview below.

For the record, Depp failed last year to get an appeal in that UK libel suit.

Succeeding on just one of her counterclaims and awarded $2 million in the contradictory June 1 verdict, Heards lawyers have said she plans to appeal the ruling of $15 million (reduced to $10.4 million) in damages to Depp. Since the verdict, lawyers for both sides have hit the network morning shows, but up to now neither Heard nor Depp have sat down formally in front of the cameras.

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Johnny Depps legal team blanketed the media for days after the verdict with numerous statements and interviews on television, and Depp himself did the same on social media, a spokesperson for Heard told Deadline. Ms. Heard simply intended to respond to what they aggressively did last week; she did so by expressing her thoughts and feelings, much of which she was not allowed to do on the witness stand, they added of the motivation behind the interview with Guthrie.

Depp sued Heard for $50 million in March 2019 over a late 2018 Washington Post op-ed the actress wrote about becoming a public figure representing domestic abuse.

Heard and Depp divorced in 2016 with the former successfully being granted a then-uncontested temporary restraining order against the latter. As part of the divorce agreement, Heard received a $7 million settlement, which she promised to donate to charity and has partially fulfilled. Also, due to an arbitration clause in the divorce documents, it was practically impossible for Depp to publicly sue Heard for statements made about the couples relationship prior to the end of their short-lived marriage.

Though the mainly ACLU-crafted 2018 article in the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper never mentioned Depp by name, the former Pirates of the Caribbean star claimed it devastated his already waning career. Depp also insisted that Heards claims were false and, in fact, he was the one who was abused in the relationship.

Repeatedly failing to get the defamation case dismissed or moved out of Virginia, Heard countersued Depp for $100 million in the summer of 2020.

Johnny Depp

Almost immediately after the decision by the jury earlier this month was read out in the Fairfax County Courthouse, both Depp and Heard put out statements directly and online. A heartbroken Heard, who was in the courtroom for the decision, said the disappointment I feel today is beyond words. On the other hand, a distinctly absent Depp, who was in the UK touring with Jeff Beck, proclaimed that the jury gave me my life back.

Depp has no studio roles lined up at present, while Heard will reprise her Mera role in Warner Bros James Wan directed Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom. The Jason Momoa-led superhero flick is set to be released on March 17, 2023.

.@savannahguthrie sat down for an exclusive conversation with #AmberHeard. "You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair, Heard shared, in reference to social media representation. pic.twitter.com/56Ju7pYg1x  TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 13, 2022

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The American Theatre Guild presents the Lubbock engagement of the new Broadway musical "Anastasia". This production is part of the Broadway is Back at the Buddy Holly Hall series and is scheduled to take the Buddy Holly Hall stage at 7:30 p.m. on June 20 and 21.

The company of the North American traveling Broadway tour of "Anastasia." The production will make a stop in the Hub City on June 20 and 21 at the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences.

From the Tony Award-winning creators of the Broadway classic "Ragtime" and inspired by the beloved films, "Anastasia" is the new Broadway musical thats one of the most gorgeous shows in years! (New York Observer).

This dazzling show transports us from the twilight of the Russian Empire to the euphoria of Paris in the 1920s, as a brave young woman sets out to discover the mystery of her past. Pursued by a ruthless Soviet officer determined to silence her, Anya enlists the aid of a dashing conman and a lovable ex-aristocrat. Together, they embark on an epic adventure to help her find home, love, and family.

Brandon Delgado (Gleb) and Kyla Stone (Anya) are shown in the in North American Tour of the Broadway musical "Anastasia."

The cast includes Kyla Stone as Anya, Sam McLellan as Dmitry, Brandon Delgado as Gleb, Gerri Weagraff as Dowager Empress, Bryan Seastrom as Vlad, Madeline Raube as Countess Lily and Taya Diggs and Marley Sophia as Little Anastasia.

The ensemble includes Mikayla Agrella, Lance Timothy Barker, William Aaron Bishop, Harrison Drake, Thomas Henke, Dakota Hoar, Veronica Rae Jiao, Evin Johnson, Ceron Jones, Madeline Kendall, Lizzy Marie Legregin, Victoria Madden, Christian McQueen, Elizabeth Ritacco, Taylor Stanger, Sarah Statler and Lauren Teyke.

Kyla Stone (Anya) and Sam McLellan (Dmitry) are shown in a scene from the North American Tour of the Broadway musical "Anastasia."

"Anastasia" features a book by celebrated playwright Terrence McNally; a lush, new score by the Tony Award -winning creators of the Broadway classic "Ragtime", Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics); and tour direction by Sarah Hartman based on original direction by Tony Award-winning director Darko Tresnjak.

The creative team also includes Peggy Hickey (Original Choreographer), Bill Burns (Choreographer), Alexander Dodge (Set Design), Linda Cho (Costume Design), Donald Holder (Lighting Design), Peter Hylenski (Sound Design), Aaron Rhyne (Projection Design), Charles G. LaPointe (Hair/Wig Design), Joe Dulude II (Makeup Design), Tom Murray (Music Supervision), Jeremy Lyons (Music Direction), Doug Besterman (Orchestrations), David Chase (Dance Arranger), and casting by Jason Styres, CSA.

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Kyla Stone (Anya) is seen performing with the company of The North American Tour of "Anastasia".

"Anastasia" began performances on Broadway in March 2017 at the Broadhurst Theatre with critics exclaiming Ahrens and Flaherty have chosen the right moments to musicalize, and their score here sounds complete and full  one of the seasons strongest! (NBC) and Smartly adapted by Terrence McNally, Anastasia is a sweeping adventure, romance and historical epic whose fine craftsmanship will satisfy musical-theater fans (Time Out).

The show played to sold-out audiences on Broadway for more than three years before expanding its global Fanastasia community with productions on tour across North America and in Japan, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. Globally, the show has been performed more than 2,500 times and sold 3.4 million tickets.

Additionally, the show has garnered more than 15 major international awards, including Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards and Best New Musical in Spain, Germany and the Netherlands.

Sam McLellan (Dmitry) and Kyla Stone (Anya) are shown in a scene from the North American Tour of "Anastasia".

The original Broadway cast recording is available at BroadwayRecords.com, Amazon.com and iTunes. The 75-minute album includes the Academy Award-nominated favorite Journey to the Past alongside new numbers from the show such as In My Dreams, Still and My Petersburg. For more information, visit AnastasiaTheMusical.com

Tickets to "Anastasia" may be purchased at BroadwayAtBuddyHollyHall.com or by calling 1-800-514-3849. Group ticket savings for 10-plus are available by contacting Groups@ATGuild.org. Tickets range from $35 to $125 (plus taxes & fees), depending on seating.

BroadwayAtBuddyHollyHall.com and The Buddy Holly Hall Box Office are the only official sources for tickets to all shows in the Broadway is Back at the Buddy Holly Hall series. If you purchase tickets through another source, you may pay inflated prices and tickets will not be guaranteed.

For information regarding Health and Safety protocols, visit BroadwayAtBuddyHollyHall.com. Check the website frequently for the most up-to-date information.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: 'Anastasia' arrives: Buddy Holly Hall to host traveling tour of Broadway musical
Andrew Lloyd Webber has clarified his earlier remarks in which he was thought to have called his Cinderella production a costly mistake.

On Sunday evening (12 June), the West End production took its last bow at Gillian Lynne Theatre in London. While the shows composer was not in attendance, a letter Webber penned was read aloud in his absence, resulting in jeers from the audience.

Now, in a new Instagram story posted on Monday (13 June), Webber has addressed criticism over his comments, insisting that he was not referencing the production itself.

I am devastated to have been reported to have said that my beloved production of Cinderella was a costly mistake, he began.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and I am very sorry if my words have been misunderstood.

Webber continued: I adore this production and I am incredibly, incredibly proud of Cinderella and everyone who has been involved in our show.

We were desperate to support the West End after two years of a devastating pandemic and the mistake we made was trying to open too early, meaning we had to postpone twice, he clarified.

People queuing to go into the Gillian Lynne Theatre in Drury Lane, London, to see the last performance of Cinderella. The Andrew Lloyd Webber production has now closed, less than a year after its premiere (Yui Mok/PA) (PA Wire)

Everything we did was to try and support the West End and get everyone back to work after the worst period in our history.

He concluded: For now, I want to say thank you to everyone involved in Cinderella for all you have done.

On 2 May, it was announced that the West End production would close less than a year after its official opening.

The production opened in August 2021 after several pandemic-related delays. It was later forced to pause operations due to a Covid spike in London.

Early reports claimed that the current cast members were notified of the cancellation minutes before the show, with other future cast members claiming they only found out via social media.

In a statement provided to The Independent, a representative for Lloyd Webber denied these reports, saying: The timeline being reported online is not correct. The entire company working yesterday were told in person after the matinee performance.

You can read The Independents three-star review of Cinderella here.
The Daily Beast

ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKOForeign volunteers fighting against Russian troops in Ukraine sounded the alarm Wednesday over two American fighters they say had been taken captive amid heavy fighting.Robert Drueke, 39, and Andy Huynh, 27, were serving with the Ukrainian military when they were taken in Kharkiv last week, The Telegraph reported. We were out on a mission and the whole thing went absolutely crazy, with bad intel. We were told the town was clear when it turned out the Russians were already as
Andy Wigmore, left, and Arron Banks - DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/ AFP or licensors

The Bad Boys of Brexit are back! Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore have been hired by New Zealand's version of the UK Independence Party to help fight September's general election in a move bound to infuriate their Left-wing critics.

A team from Mr Banks' Leave.EU campaign is advising Winston Peters' New Zealand First party on its social media campaign in a deal said to be worth a six figure sum.

It comes just nine months after Mr Banks was cleared of any criminality by the National Crime Agency over 8 million in EU referendum campaign funding.

Mr Banks, with Mr Wigmore, published a diary called The Bad Boys of Brexit charting their adventures during the 2016 campaign.

A six-strong team from Leave.EU have been dispatched to Auckland with an instruction to increase New Zealand First's vote share to as high as 12 percent.

The hope is for New Zealand First to double its MPs to 20 so the party can hold the balance of power in the country's 120-strong Parliament after the September 19 poll.

New Zealand First's leader Winston Peters, and the country's deputy Prime Minister, surprisingly backed Labour party leader Jacinda Adern at the general election in 2017 and the pair are said to work well together.

Mr Banks said that Ms Ardern - who he likened to "Jacinderella" with her party playing the role of "the ugly Sisters" - is being groomed for a bigger job at a supra-national body like the World Health Organisation.

He said: "Our job is to get their vote share to 11 per cent, 12 per cent, 13 per cent and then Winston holds the traditional position of king maker."

Mr Banks continued: "We have deployed our top social media team and data experts to do all the creative work, Andy and I are giving Winston strategic advice."

He added: "Since 2016 we have known Winston, he is a huge supporter of the Commonwealth and watched first hand the referendum campaign.

"Hes always been a more seasoned version of Farage with massive government experience. "He is one of very few current politicians that speaks fluent human and can relate to anyone, hes in the same mould as Boris they speak truth on behalf of the ordinary people. He is always on the side of the people.

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"He has studied the way social media can be a useful channel when the mainstream media want to try and cancel what you have to say.

"His strength, like Boris/Farage, is he has a direct conversation with the public and social media is the perfect platform to do precisely that. "We have deployed our top social media team and data experts to do all the creative work. Andy and I are giving Winston strategic advice."

Mr Wigmore added: "Im going to be on ground in New Zealand causing trouble - mischief, mayhem and guerrilla warfare in the New Zealand election - the bad boys are back."
NEW YORK (AP)  Major automakers are asking Congress to lift the cap on how many people can receive tax credits for buying a hybrid or fully electric vehicle.

Currently the number of tax credits allowed is capped at 200,000 per company. General Motors and Tesla have already reached the cap and Toyota is close to it.

In a letter to leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives on Monday, the chief executives of Ford, Toyota, GM and Stellantis asked that tax credits be extended to anyone who seeks to buy a qualified vehicle.

Automakers want the cap lifted until the EV market is more mature, they said, without giving a time frame.

Eliminating the cap will incentivize consumer adoption of future electrified options and provide much-needed certainty to our customers and domestic workforce, the CEOs wrote.

The request comes as Americans find themselves financially pinched from all directions by four-decade high inflation. Energy prices have been especially bad, with the average cost for a gallon of gas in the U.S. breaching $5 this weekend, according to the auto club AAA.

Automakers said Monday that the tax credit has allowed them to offer more affordable cars to people, helping accelerate the adoption of EVs. However, the companies said recent economic conditions and supply chain constraints have raised the cost of manufacturing EVs and those costs have to passed on to car buyers already paying more for almost everything.

President Joe Biden has attempted to ensure the supply of materials needed to produce electric vehicles continues to flow as the nation transitions away from fossil fuels.

Biden in April invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act to boost production of lithium and other minerals critical in powering electric vehicles.

Toyotas plug-in RAV4 Prime small SUV with 42 miles of electric range earns the buyer a $7,500 credit, the largest available. The Prius Prime plug-in, with 25 miles of electric range, gets $4,500.

The letter was signed by GM CEO Mary Barra, Toyota CEO Ted Ogawa, Ford CEO Jim Farley and Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares,
Disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti plans to plead guilty to multiple charges in a California case accusing him of stealing millions of dollars from clients, according to a new court filing.

In court documents filed Sunday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Avenattis legal team said the incarcerated attorney will plead guilty to multiple counts in the case, which accuses him of defrauding a bank and stealing $10 million in settlement funds between 2015 and 2019 from at least five clients.

Avenatti, who is currently serving a prison sentence after he was convicted in two separate cases, wants to plead guilty to accept responsibility, his legal team wrote in the filed court document.

Defendant has been unable to reach a plea agreement with the government, attorneys wrote. Mr. Avenatti wishes to plea in order to be accountable; accept responsibility; avoid his former clients being further burdened; save the Court and the government significant resources; and save his family further embarrassment.

Federal prosecutors charged Avenatti, 51, with wire fraud and bank fraud in March 2019 for allegedly embezzling a clients money and defrauding a bank with phony tax returns to obtain loans.

The scope of the investigation has since expanded, charging the former attorney with a total of 36 counts. Avenatti faces decades in prison for the charges.

Last year, a judge declared a mistrial in the case after prosecutors failed to pass along relevant financial information to Avenatti.

According to court documents, a new jury trial had been set for the first 10 counts in July before Avenatti filed with the indication he would plead guilty.

Avenatti first rose to fame when he represented adult film actress Stormy Daniels in her defamation suit against Donald Trump.

The lawyer was later charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in book proceeds from Daniels and was sentenced earlier this month to four years in prison in the case.

Avenatti is also serving a 2.5-year sentence for attempting to extort Nike out of millions of dollars.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
By Martin Quin Pollard and Ryan Woo

BEIJING (Reuters) -Authorities in China's capital Beijing raced on Monday to contain a COVID-19 outbreak traced to a 24-hour bar known for cheap liquor and big crowds, with millions facing mandatory testing and thousands under targeted lockdowns.

The outbreak of 228 cases linked to the Heaven Supermarket Bar, which had just reopened as restrictions in Beijing eased last week, highlights how hard it will be for China to make a success of its "zero COVID" policy as much of the rest of the world opts to learn how to live with the virus.

The re-emergence of infections is also raising new concerns about the outlook for the world's second largest economy. China is only just shaking off a heavy blow from a long lockdown in Shanghai - its most populous city and commercial nerve centre - that also disrupted global supply chains.

"Epidemic prevention and control is at a critical juncture," a Beijing health official, Liu Xiaofeng, told a news conference on Monday, adding that the outbreak linked to the bar in the city's biggest district, Chaoyang, was "still developing".

In a show of how seriously authorities are taking the situation, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan visited the bar and said it was necessary to strengthen COVID prevention and control of key places, state media reported on Monday.

People infected in the outbreak live or work in 14 of the capital's 16 districts, authorities have said.

Drinking and dining in most of Beijing's establishments only resumed on June 6 after more than a month in which the city of 22 million enforced curbs including urging people to work from home, and shutting malls and parts of the transport system.

Chaoyang kicked off a three-day mass testing campaign among its roughly 3.5 million residents on Monday. About 10,000 close contacts of the bar's patrons have been identified, and their residential buildings put under lockdown.

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Some planned school reopenings in the district have been postponed.

Queues snaked around testing sites on Monday for more than 100 metres, according to Reuters witnesses. Large metal barriers have been installed around several residential compounds, with people in hazmat suits spraying disinfectant.

Other nearby businesses under lockdown included the Paradise Massage & Spa parlour. Police tape and security staff blocked the entrance to the parlour on Sunday and authorities said a handful of people would be locked in temporarily for checks.

SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES

Last week, as dine-in curbs were lifted, Heaven Supermarket Bar, modelled as a large self-service liquor store with chairs, sofas and tables, reclaimed its popularity among young, noisy crowds starved of socialising and parties during Beijing's COVID restrictions.

The bar, where patrons check aisles to grab anything from local heavy spirits to Belgian beer, is known among Beijing revellers for its tables littered with empty bottles, and customers falling asleep on sofas after midnight.

Officials have not commented on the exact cause of the outbreak, nor explained why they are not yet reinstating the level of curbs seen last month.

The state-backed Beijing Evening News wrote on Monday that the outbreak arose from loopholes and complacency in epidemic prevention, and said that if it grew, "consequences could be serious, and would be such that nobody would want to see".

Shanghai endured two months of lockdown with restrictions lifted less than a fortnight ago.

There was relief among its residents on Monday after mass testing for most of its 25 million people at the weekend saw only a small rise in daily cases.

But frustrations have continued to simmer about the damage the lockdown caused, especially on residents' livelihoods.

On Monday, shopkeepers in the city centre held up signs and shouted demands for rent refunds, according to videos widely posted on Chinese social media. The rare protest had dissipated by the time Reuters visited on Monday afternoon, and there was a heavy police presence in the area.

(Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard, Ryan Woo and the Beijing and Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Writing by Marius Zaharia and John Geddie; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell, Ed Osmond and Mark Heinrich)
By Elizabeth Piper and Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain published plans on Monday to override some post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland by scrapping checks and challenging the role played by the European Union's court in a new clash with Brussels.

Despite Ireland describing the move as a "new low" and Brussels talking of damaged trust, Britain pressed ahead with what Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested were "relatively trivial" steps to improve trade and reduce bureaucracy.

European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said Brussels' reaction would be proportionate, but ruled out renegotiating the trade protocol.

Tensions have simmered for months after Britain accused the bloc of heavy-handed approach to the movement of goods between Britain and Northern Ireland - checks needed to keep an open border with EU-member Ireland.

Always the toughest part of the Brexit deal, the situation in the region has rung alarm bells in European capitals and Washington, and among business leaders. It has also heightened political tensions, with pro-British communities saying their place in the United Kingdom is being eroded.

"I'm very willing to negotiate with the EU, but they do have to be willing to change the terms of this agreement which are causing these very severe problems in Northern Ireland," British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said.

"We're completely serious about this legislation."

Britain has pointed to the breakdown of a power-sharing administration in Northern Ireland as a reason for drafting the legislation, the first step in what could be a months-long process before the bill becomes law.

The legal advice cited the "doctrine of necessity", which is invoked when governments may take law-breaking action to protect stability, as the foundation for the move, saying the conditions had been met because of the situation in Northern Ireland.

Britain has long complained that negotiations with the EU have failed to come to fruition and the legislation is seen as an insurance policy, and possibly a bargaining chip. The bill could accommodate any solution agreed in those talks.

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The new trade row comes as Britain faces its toughest economic conditions in decades, with inflation forecast to hit 10% and growth stalling. Johnson said any talk of a trade war would be a "gross, gross overreaction".

The EU's Sefcovic said the bloc will not renegotiate the protocol and called the idea "unrealistic".

"Any renegotiation would simply bring further legal uncertainty for people and businesses in Northern Ireland," Sefcovic said in a statement.

"Our aim will always be to secure the implementation of the Protocol. Our reaction to unilateral action by the UK will reflect that aim and will be proportionate."

NEW CLASH

Britain has long threatened to rip up the protocol, an agreement that kept the region under some EU rules and drew an effective customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK to prevent a back door for goods to enter the EU's vast single market.

It now plans a "green channel" for goods moving from Britain to Northern Ireland, to change tax rules and end the European Court of Justice's role as sole arbiter in disputes. It also wants a dual regulatory regime, angering companies which fear higher costs.

The move has again exposed divisions in Johnson's Conservative Party, a week after the prime minister just survived a rebellion by his own lawmakers.

Brexit supporters said it could have gone further, critics feared it again undermined London's standing in the world by challenging an international agreement.

Similar divisions were evident in Northern Ireland.

Brussels believes any unilateral change may breach international law, while Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said that only the British government thought it was not a breach.

The EU could launch legal action or eventually review terms of the free trade deal it agreed with Britain. It has already thrown doubt on Britain's role within the $99 billion Horizon Europe research programme.

On Monday, the White House urged Britain and the EU to resolve their differences, but said it saw no impact on a U.S.-UK trade dialogue planned in Boston next week.

"The U.S. priority remains protecting the gains of the Belfast Good Friday agreement, and preserving peace, stability and prosperity for the people of Northern Ireland," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

Asked if Britain's plans could be an impediment for June 22 U.S.-UK trade discussions or a future trade deal, Jean-Pierre said, "No, I don't believe it will be."

A spokesperson for the British embassy in Washington said there was no linkage between the dialogue, which will focus on small and medium businesses, and Britain's talks with the EU.

"The UK government is focused on doing whats right for the people of Northern Ireland and to safeguard peace and stability," the spokesperson said.

($1 = 0.9553 euros)

(Additional reporting by Paul Sandle, Andrew MacAskill, William James, Alistair Smout and Kylie MacLellan in London, Marine Strauss and Benoit Van Overstraeten in Brussels, Padraic Halpin in Dublin and Alexandra Alper and Andrea Shalal in Washington; Editing by Louise Heavens, Mark Potter, Ed Osmond, William Maclean, Tomasz Janowski and David Gregorio)
The attack is said to have happened on Thursday on a beach in the Greek resort of Malia (Getty)

The Foreign Office has confirmed it is providing support to a British woman in Greece following reports a British man was arrested in Crete accused of raping his daughter.

According to the Daily Mail, local news outlets report a British pensioner, who has not been named, was taken into custody by local police in the resort of Malia on Saturday, two days after his daughter, 34, reported the attack.

It is understood the victim said she was drunk and could not remember anything about her attacker except that he was dressed all in white.

Officers who reviewed CCTV footage reportedly said the pair had been drinking together in a bar when the father made obscene gestures to his daughter, hit her in the face, followed her out onto the street and then raped her on a deserted beach, local reports say.

Malia police said the woman's father was wearing all-white clothing in the CCTV images.

Medical examiners told local newspaper Neakriti that the woman was "covered" in injures that were consistent with stones and branches found on the beach.

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Examiners said she also had injuries consistent with rape, and that DNA samples had been taken.

Local media reports that the man has pleaded not guilty to the charges and denies being responsible.

The victim is believed to have told police that her father could not have carried out the attack.

The man will remain in custody until at least Tuesday, which is the deadline for him to issue a public apology for the crime.

Greek law allows for reduced sentences for people who admit their guilt and apologise, and is available to those accused of rape.
Eric and Evan Lowe, brothers from Gadsden, currently are serving together at the Information Warfare Training Command at Corry Station in Pensacola, Florida.

Two brothers from Gadsden currently are serving together at the Information Warfare Training Command at Corry Station in Pensacola, Florida, according to a press release.

Petty Officer 2nd class Eric Lowe and Seaman Recruit Evan Lowe each are in the United States Navy. Eric works at the IWTC as an instructor, while Evan is a student there, the release said.

IWTC instructors, according to the release, provide cutting-edge technical training that transfers students into mission-ready sailors who have learned the requirements and skills they need in their new careers.

One of the Center for Information Warfare Training's four training commands, the IWTC provides schooling for the Navy and joint services in cryptologic, information systems and cyber functions, enabling optimal performance of information warfare across the full spectrum of military operations, the release said.

IWTC trains more than 26,000 students annually, with an average of 3,700 students attending classes daily, according to the release.

More: Gadsden native Warren Morris, after distinguished career in D.C., looks for ways to give back

More: World War II sailor comes home to Boaz, almost 80 years after death at Pearl Harbor

Eric has been in the Navy for six years, where he serves as an information systems technician. Evan followed in his brother's footsteps and joined the Navy three months ago.

The brothers each said that being from Gadsden helped them learn the skills needed to succeed in the military.

"Growing up, I learned to be tolerant and understanding of people from all walks of life, Eric said.

"I learned that responsibility comes from managing your time effectively, which are all foundational pillars for the Navy, Evan added.

Having been in the armed services longer, Eric already has had the opportunity to participate in high-risk, high-reward military operations.

"Being a part of the second evacuation of Benghazi was meaningful because we helped get Americans out safely and not allow for repeated events," he said.

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Being in the Navy allows the brothers to be on the front lines of defending the United States, and both are proud of their service.

"The Navy supports national defense because we are at the forefront, and the world sees us even when America doesn't," Eric said. "Serving, to me, is being a part of one of the world's largest military organizations. The Navy has more reach than any of the military branches."

"The Navy provides support to national defense by protecting the freedom of trade around the world," Evan contributed. "I get to serve my country with pride and that is something to be proud about."

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Lowe brothers serving, learning together at Navy facility in Florida
Community members are in shock after Darian Javaris Bennett kidnapped his 1-year-old daughter, killed the mother of the child and shot the childs grandmother in the head.

I get depressed watching TV, and now its next door to me, neighbor Fred McClurkin told Channel 2s Ashli Lincoln.

Its a headline Covington resident McClurkin says he didnt expect would end up in his neighborhood.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

This is some scary stuff were going through now, he said.

He and his wife Cynthia say they were shocked to learn their friends and neighbors were killed Saturday night.

We come outside, and they brought out two gurneys, wife Cynthia McClurkin said.

Newton County Sheriffs Office initiated an Amber Alert Saturday, after responding to this home.

Once inside they found 38-year-old Keashawn Washington shot to death and her mother 63-year-old Peggy Burns, who is currently listed in critical condition.

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Sheriff deputies say this man Darian Bennett is responsible for the shooting.

Harming the mother and grandmother of 1-year-old Jaquari Bennettwho is his daughter.

Kidnapping her after the shootings around 7 a.m. Sunday morning, investigators were alerted to a 911 call from Bennett saying he was going to kill himself and his daughter.

Police found Bennetts car behind this Riverdale church in a wooded area.

Shortly after arriving on scene, they heard gun shots, later finding both baby Jaquari and her father, dead.

Why he chose the church I dont know, but thats a very secluded area, Pastor Phillip McPherson Armstrong said.

Armstrong, Pastor of the Riverdale First United Baptist Church said they had cancel Sunday service after learning about the unfortunate crime scene.

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Police came into my office to explain we probably wont be able to have worship service, he said.

Its just a sad commentary of whats going on in our world today, where people are taking their lives, taking the life of innocent people, Armstrong said.

Reports of domestic violence have reached startling peaks since the start of the pandemic.

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Domestic violence counselors say in cases where children are present, thats leads to an increase in the number of Amber Alert cases.

The National Center For Missing and Exploited Children reports in 2020, 63 percent of all amber alerts issued were for family abduction cases.

In McClurkins neighborhood, friends say they are still in disbelief this family is now apart of that statistic.

I just cannot believe it, I just, and now the baby is dead, those two kids they lost their mother and their sister, my heart goes out to the family and friends, Cynthia McClurkin said.

IN OTHER NEWS:
Roddy Ricch performs during the 7th Annual BET Experience at Staples Center. (Scott Dudelson / Getty Images)

Roddy Ricch is a free man.

The Compton rapper was released from jail Sunday, less than a day after he was arrested on weapons charges while heading to his scheduled set at the Governors Ball Music Festival in New York.

Police said they took Ricch to jail after a private security firm had noticed a gun in a car he was riding in, forcing him to miss his set. However, Ricch was released in time for his Sunday performance at Summer Jam, where he led the crowd in a "F NYPD chant."

Ricch, 23, born Rodrick Wayne Moore Jr., and two other men in the car  46-year-old Michael Figueroa of Brooklyn and 57-year-old Carlos Collins of Eastchester, N.Y.  were charged with criminal possession of a weapon, possession of a large-capacity ammunition feeding device and unlawful possession of the device.

When reached Monday morning by phone, a representative for District Attorney Melinda Katz said the case had been thrown out but did not provide a reason. Another representative for Katz said charges were not filed.

Fans had already lined up for Ricch's performance at the Governors Ball when the news broke of his arrest Saturday. Ricch was slotted to perform at 6:30 p.m. ET, but the Governors Ball tweeted that Ricch wouldn't be able to perform at 7:11 p.m. ET, more than 40 minutes after he was supposed to start.

Unfortunately Roddy Ricch is no longer performing today.  The Governors Ball (@GovBallNYC) June 11, 2022

There has been no word from Ricch except for his Instagram story Sunday afternoon as he walked out of jail, laughing to the camera and saying he needed a shower.

Ricch's arrest was one part of a turbulent weekend for hip-hop at the festival. Friday, Migos dropped out of their scheduled performance hours before they were set to take the stage, and their replacement, Lil Wayne, also canceled, citing "flight disruptions."

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Hometown hero ASAP Ferg ended up slotting in for Migos and Lil Wayne, although the festival was not able to find a replacement for Ricch. And Young Thug thanked his fans from jail, where he awaits trial in his ongoing gang-related case after being denied bail on June 2.

You know, this isnt just about me or YSL," Thug said. "I always use my music as a form of artistic expression, and now I see that Black artists and rappers dont have that, you know, freedom. Everybody please sign the Protect Black Art petition and keep praying for us. I love you all.

.

Monday morning, Post Malone announced Ricch will be his special guest on the just-announced "Twelve Carat" tour, on the heels of his latest album, "Twelve Carat Toothache." Tickets will go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. local time.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
The confections company known for producing Nutella and Kinder products announced plans to invest up to $214.4 million in an expansion of its facility in downstate Bloomington, an investment the company says will bring 200 jobs to the area.

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New Jersey-based Ferrero North America, which is part of the global confectionary company Ferrero Group, said in a news release Monday that the expansion will allow the company to produce Kinder products in North America for the first time.

The expansion comes on top of a $75 million investment in Bloomington announced by the company in late 2020. The company broke ground on that project  its first chocolate factory in North America  in 2021, and the facility is expected to be completed in spring 2023, according to spokesperson Kelsey McGeough. When the additional expansion is completed in 2024, it will add 169,000 square feet to the facility.

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Ferrero will produce its Kinder Bueno bars and minis at the new facility. The company first launched the candy bars  wafers coated in chocolate and filled with a creamy hazelnut filling  in the U.S. in 2019, and the brand is now worth $167 million in the country after growing more than 51% over the past year, the company said in a news release.

We want to continue to support demand and build on the momentum, said Todd Siwak, Ferreros president and chief business officer.

Siwak said the production of Kinder Bueno products in Bloomington would increase availability of the treats in North America and allow the company to pursue additional sizing and packaging options, such as a fun-sized bar.

He said the company did not anticipate changes in Kinder Bueno pricing due to the domestic expansion, but said he anticipated it would eliminate any potential supply chain challenges in production.

Currently, just under 400 people work at the Ferrero facility in Bloomington, McGeough said. Workers there make Ferreros Crunch, Rasinets and 100 Grand brands. When both expansions are completed and staffed, the plant will employ more than 600 people, McGeough said.

The company is receiving an enterprise zone property tax abatement for the expansion in addition to an Economic Development for a Growing Economy, or EDGE, tax credit from the state of Illinois, Siwak said. The EDGE credit stipulates a $103 million investment goal and the creation of 75 jobs in the next two years, according to a Monday news release from Gov. J.B. Pritzkers office.

Ferrero also secured a sales tax exemption for building materials for the first portion of its Bloomington expansion.

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In a statement, Pritzker praised the investment, calling it a testament to Illinois talented workforce and reputation on the global stage.

We thank Ferrero for its vote of confidence in Illinois and for bringing more opportunity and jobs to the Bloomington-Normal region, he said.

Ferrero was founded in Italy in 1946. In 2017 it acquired Ferrara Candy, the maker of Lemonheads, and chocolatier Fannie May, both Chicago-based companies. In 2018, the company bought Nestles U.S. candy business, including the Butterfinger and Nerds brands, and in 2019, it acquired a portion of Kelloggs North American snacks business, including Famous Amos cookies. The company employs over 1,350 full-time staff members in Illinois, according to the governors office.
Leland police assisted in the arrest of two homicide suspects Monday afternoon.

Two homicide suspects were arrested in Leland Monday afternoon.

The Leland Police Department, in partnership with the Cape Fear Regional Teams, assisted with the arrests of 20-year-old Devion Brown and 22-year-old Tasjah Williams, according to a news release.

The two were taken into custody at the intersection of Village Road and Fairview Road without incident around 3 p.m.

Brown is from Charlotte and Williams is from Monroe, according to police.

The Cape Fear Regional Team consists of the police departments in Leland, Wilmington, Carolina Beach, Wrightsville Beach and Burgaw; as well as the Pender County Sheriff's Office, Leland Fire/Rescue and the City of Wilmington Fire Department.

Jamey Cross is the public safety reporter at the StarNews. Reach her at jbcross@gannett.com or message her on Twitter @jameybcross.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Charlotte homicide suspects arrested in Brunswick County
Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe (left, in uniform) seen at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on Sunday. ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images

China will "fight to the very end" to stop Taiwan's independence, the Chinese defense minister said.

Wei Fenghe's speech was the latest in a series of exchanges between China and the US over Taiwan.

On Saturday, the US Defense Secretary accused China of "provocative" military activity near Taiwan.

China will "fight to the very end" to stop Taiwanese independence, the country's defense minister said on Sunday in a combative speech in which he also referred to the US as a "bully."

"Let me make this clear," Wei Fenghe said at the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore, per The Washington Post. "If anyone dares to secede Taiwan from China, we will not hesitate to fight. We will fight at all costs. And we will fight to the very end."

Wei's speech was the latest in a weekend of aggressive exchanges between Chinese and US military chiefs over the issue of Taiwan  the self-ruled, democratic island that China views as part of its territory.

"No one should ever underestimate the resolve and ability of the Chinese armed forces to safeguard its territorial integrity," Wei said, per AFP.

Accusing Washington of "interfering in China's internal affairs," he added that "those who pursue Taiwanese independence in an attempt to split China will definitely come to no good end."

A day earlier, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin accused China of a "steady increase in provocative and destabilizing" military activity near the island. This includes Chinese military aircraft flying near Taiwan in "record numbers in recent months," he said.

"We remain focused on maintaining peace, stability, and the status quo across the Taiwan Strait," he said on Saturday at the same event. "But the PRC's (People's Republic of China's) moves threaten to undermine security, and stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific. And that's crucial for this region, and it's crucial for the wider world."

"Maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait isn't just a US interest. It's a matter of international concern," Austin continued.

Read the original article on Business Insider
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Read also: War in Ukraine is no ones interest, says China

He called the relations between Russia and China a "partnership, not an alliance." Fenghe also said that relations between the two countries "are not targeted against any third country."

At the same time, he claimed that the United States was "prolonging" the war by providing weapons to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia.

Read also: World democracies will be in danger if Russia avoids paying dearly for invasion of Ukraine, US Ambassador to Ukraine says

According to U.S. media reports, Russia had asked China to support its full-scale invasion of Ukraine by providing military and economic assistance. Both Russia and China have denied the story.

The United States has previously warned China against providing aid to Russia. Earlier, in Lviv, Chinese Ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xianrong said his country would never attack Ukraine, but will help the country recover from the war.

Read also: Putin admits Ukraine invasion is an imperial war to 'return' Russian land

Earlier, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang also told EU leaders that Beijing insisted on peace talks between Russia and Ukraine "in its own way."

Help NV continue its work reporting on the Russian invasion
By Djaffar Sabiti and Stanis Bujakera

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) -M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo have seized the eastern border town of Bunagana, the rebel group and local activists said on Monday, sending more than 30,000 civilians fleeing into neighbouring Uganda.

The Congolese army in a statement said Rwandan troops had occupied the town. Congo has repeatedly accused Rwanda of backing the M23, whose leadership hails from the same Tutsi ethnic group as Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

The Rwandan army and government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Rwanda has previously denied playing any role in M23's recent attacks.

The capture of Bunagana marked a major setback for Congolese forces who said a day earlier that they had the insurgents on the run.

The United Nations and African Union voiced alarm about the mounting violence in a region where conflicts in the 1990s and 2000s cost millions of lives, mostly from disease and hunger, and spawned dozens of militias that remain active to this day.

Bunagana was an M23 stronghold during a 2012 insurrection that briefly overran the major city of Goma before Congolese and U.N. forces chased the rebels into neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda the following year.

The office of North Kivu's military governor on Sunday said Congolese forces had "routed" the M23 following attacks near Bunagana, which is one of the main crossings into Uganda.

But the M23 issued a statement on Monday saying they controlled the town. Two local activists confirmed that it had fallen to the rebels, while the army said it had fallen to Rwanda.

"Our troops have taken control of the city of Bunagana since the morning of Monday, June 13," M23 spokesperson Willy Ngoma said in a statement.

He said that taking the city had not been their goal but that they decided to do it after repeated attacks by the Congolese army and allied groups.

"We ask once again for President Felix Tshisekedi to seize this opportunity to put an end to the violence caused by this useless war and to open direct negotiations with our movement," the M23 statement said.

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A government spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment. Congo's government broke off negotiations with the M23 that had been taking place in Kenya in April.

'DESPERATE SITUATION'

The fighting caused more than 30,000 Congolese asylum seekers and 137 Congolese soldiers to cross into Uganda on Monday, Shaffiq Sekandi, Uganda's resident district commissioner for Kisoro district, told Reuters.

"They are all over, the streets are full, others have gone to churches, they are under trees, everywhere. It's a really desperate situation," he said.

The United Nations had previously said that 25,000 people fled the violence on Sunday.

A spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was concerned about deteriorating security in eastern Congo, including M23 attacks. The region has seen near-constant conflict since Rwanda and Uganda invaded twice in the 1990s.

African Union Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and for talks between Congo and Rwanda to resolve the growing diplomatic crisis.

General Sylvain Ekenge, the spokesman for North Kivu's military government, said that the takeover of Bunagana constituted an "invasion" by Rwanda which would incur consequences.

Tensions have risen between the neighbours in recent weeks, with accusations of strikes on both sides.

While Rwanda denies supporting the M23, it accuses Congo of collaborating with another militia group, the FDLR, founded by ethnic Hutus who fled Rwanda after participating in the 1994 genocide. Congo denies this charge.

During the 2012-2013 conflict, Congo and U.N. investigators accused Rwanda and Uganda of supporting the M23, which they denied.

On Monday, two senior Congolese security sources, who asked not to be named, also accused the Ugandan military of supporting the M23's offensive.

Uganda army spokesman Brigadier Felix Kulayigye denied any involvement."We are only closely watching what's going on from across the border and we have been in that position for months," he said.

(Reporting by Djaffar Sabiti in Goma and Stanis Bujakera in Kinshasa; Additional reporting by Erikas Mwisi Kambale in Beni and Elias Biryabarema in Kampala; Writing by Sofia Christensen and Nellie Peyton; Editing by Aaron Ross, Alison Williams and David Evans)
The Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday accused Rwanda of an "invasion" after rebels it says receive support from Kigali overran a major trading post on the Ugandan border.

Fighters from the M23 rebel group seized the town of Bunagana in eastern North Kivu province as some government forces retreated into Uganda, local sources said.

But the Congolese army released a statement on Monday evening accusing the Rwandan army of taking over the border town.

General Sylvain Ekenge, spokesman for the province's military government, said Kigali decided to "directly intervene" after realising the rebels it backs were suffering "enormous setbacks".

Rwandan troops "decided to violate the untouchable nature of our border and the integrity of our territory" by occupying Bunagana, which he called "an invasion, no more, no less".

The comments escalated Congolese rhetoric against Rwanda, with the government already accusing its neighbour of backing rebels in the east of the country.

Bunagana "is under enemy control", a Congolese officer had earlier told AFP by phone from provincial capital Goma.

"The army has just given way and is heading into Uganda," said Damien Sebusanane, head of a civil society association, who was on Uganda's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

"An army truck has just gone past, four jeeps and other vehicles which are full of soldiers," he said, estimating the number of DRC troops retreating into Uganda at around 100.

A humanitarian source on the ground said heavy clashes had broken out again on Sunday morning and the only way out for the embattled DRC troops was to cross into Uganda.

"One hundred and thirty-seven Congolese soldiers and 37 police have surrendered" to Ugandan troops, security forces officer Hajj Sadiq Sekandi said from Kampala.

"They were fleeing the fighting and seeking protection," he said, adding that he was at the border leading a crisis meeting.

- UN refugee concerns -

Thousands of people have fled into Uganda and the DRC territory of Rutshuru since a second bout of violence flared in March.

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The Ugandan officer said: "At the moment there are more than 30,000 Congolese on the Ugandan side of the border. They are frightened to return home."

The UN's refugee agency said on Monday that 368 more people had fled across the border into Uganda from Bunagana.

The humanitarian situation was "more and more concerning", said Herve Nsabimana, coordinator of a human rights NGO.

The M23, a primarily Congolese Tutsi militia, is one of more than 120 armed groups active in eastern DRC.

It briefly captured Goma in 2012 but a joint offensive by UN troops and the Congolese army quelled the rebellion.

The group resumed fighting in November last year after accusing the Congolese government of failing to respect a 2009 agreement under which the army was to incorporate its fighters.

The DRC government on Sunday reiterated that Rwanda was backing the rebels, an assertion Kigali has repeatedly denied.

In their assault on Bunagana, the M23 were "supported by soldiers and artillery from the Rwandan army", the DRC army said in a statement, adding that two soldiers and several enemy combatants were killed.

Ekenge had said Rwanda was seeking to "asphyxiate" Goma and put pressure on the government in Kinshasa.

- Ceasefire call -

The M23 put out a statement confirming Bunagana was under its control.

It was not a premeditated act, said spokesman Willy Ngoma, but came in response to the army offensive.

The UN and the African Union called for a ceasefire on all sides, but Kigali accused the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, known by its French acronym MONUSCO, of "taking sides" and supporting Kinshasa.

"When the DRC bombs Rwandan territory unprovoked, this is a serious matter that has consequences, and it has to stop once and for all," Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo posted on Twitter.

"By taking sides in this conflict, MONUSCO has contributed significantly to the intransigence of the DRC Government in cross-border shelling of Rwandan territory," she added.

Relations between Kinshasa and Kigali have been strained since the mass arrival in DRC of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

bur-at/emd/imm/gw
By Alexandra Valencia

QUITO (Reuters) -Indigenous groups in Ecuador blocked some highways with mounds of earth and burning tires on Monday, kicking off what they said will be an indefinite protest against the economic policies of conservative President Guillermo Lasso.

Indigenous and social organizations are asking Lasso for 10 concessions, including that he freeze gasoline costs at a lower price, stop additional oil and mining development, and extend deadlines for small farmers to pay off debts with banks.

Roads were blocked in at least 16 provinces throughout the country during the day, indigenous organization CONAIE wrote on Twitter, while the government warned of increased violence in protests in a number of areas, adding that demonstrations were smaller than expected.

Two marches took place in capital Quito, where police and students clashed near a school.

"We have had to resort to resistance in view of the national government putting in place more and more policies of death, which don't allow us to sustain our small economies," Leonidas Iza, head of CONAIE, told journalists.

"Mr. President, respond to the people on the most urgent, necessary and painful issues," Iza said as he stood with dozens of other indigenous people on a highway south of Quito, urging Lasso not to allow the International Monetary Fund to "impose" policy.

POLICE KIDNAPPED, BOMB DETONATED

Lasso froze prices for the most-used gasoline and for diesel at higher rates than had been in place before he took office last October, sparking protests that ended when the government opened talks with indigenous groups and others.

The talks have continued since but indigenous leaders say the government is not listening to their concerns.

The South American country has agreed to financing of $6.5 billion with the IMF in a deal that finishes this year.

"This is a government looking for peace, looking for economic activation," said Francisco Jimenez, the government minister tasked with managing negotiations.

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Earlier, Jimenez told journalists that many of the demands have been met, with gasoline prices held steady for the last six months.

Roads connecting Quito with both the north and south of the country were blocked in some areas with earth, tires and trees.

Just three Andean provinces had blocked roads, the government said, though adding that an Amazon community had kidnapped some police, attacked farming infrastructure, and even detonated a bomb at an oil block, although production was not affected.

Strategic sectors will be protected, the government said. Lasso vowed on Sunday that he would not allow roads to be blocked, or for oil wells or public services to be captured by protesters.

(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Additional reporting by Tito Correa; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Oliver Griffin; Editing by Mark Porter and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Erik ten Hags first match as Manchester United boss at Old Trafford will be a pre-season friendly against Spanish side Rayo Vallecano (PA Media) (PA Media)

Erik ten Hags first home match as Manchester United boss will be a pre-season friendly against Spanish side Rayo Vallecano next month.

The match, to be held at Old Trafford on Sunday July 31, will provide a final warm-up for Ten Hags squad before the start of the 2022-23 Premier League campaign a week later.

Before then, United will tour Thailand, Australia and Norway as part of their pre-season preparations.

United face Liverpool in Thailand capital Bangkok on July 12 at the Rajamangala Stadium, the first time the two rivals have visited the city since 2013.

The Red Devils then play Melbourne Victory on July 15 and Crystal Palace four days later, both fixtures taking place in Melbourne, before meeting Aston Villa in Perth on July 23 and then Atletico Madrid in Oslo on July 30  the day before United take on Rayo.

Dutchman Ten Hag, who guided Ajax to a third Eredivisie title this season, has taken over at Old Trafford on a three-year deal after replacing interim boss Ralf Rangnick.
By Lisa Richwine and Dawn Chmielewski

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Walt Disney Co has been unable to obtain permission to show its new Pixar movie "Lightyear" in 14 Middle Eastern and Asian countries, a source said on Monday, and the animated film appeared unlikely to open in China, the world's largest movie market.

A "Lightyear" producer told Reuters that authorities in China had asked for cuts to the movie, which Disney declined to make, and she assumed the movie would not open there either. The animated film depicts a same-sex couple who share a brief kiss, which prompted the United Arab Emirates to ban the film.

The United Arab Emirates said the couple's relationship violated the country's media content standards. Homosexuality is considered criminal in many Middle Eastern countries.

Representatives of other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and Lebanon, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on why they would not allow the film to be exhibited.

"Lightyear" is a prequel to Pixar's acclaimed "Toy Story" franchise. Chris Evans voices the lead character, Buzz Lightyear, a legendary space ranger.

In the film, Buzz's close friend is a female space ranger who marries another woman. A scene showing milestones in the couple's relationship includes a brief kiss.

Disney has not received an answer from Chinese authorities on whether they would allow the film in cinemas, "Lightyear" producer Galyn Susman said. But she said filmmakers would not make changes to the movie. China has rejected other on-screen depictions of homosexuality in the past.

"We're not going to cut out anything, especially something as important as the loving and inspirational relationship that shows Buzz what he's missing by the choices that he's making, so that's not getting cut," Susman told Reuters at the movie's red-carpet premiere in London.

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China is not a "make or break" market for Pixar, one theater industry source said. It contributed a mere 3% to the global box office for "Toy Story 4," which grossed more than $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales in 2019, according to Comscore.

Any objections to "Lightyear" over LGBTQ issues were "frustrating," Evans said.

"It's great that we are a part of something that's making steps forward in the social inclusion capacity, but it's frustrating that there are still places that aren't where they should be," Evans said.

"Lightyear" is set to debut in theaters in the United States and Canada on Friday.

In May, Disney refused requests to cut same-sex references in Marvel movie "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness." Saudi Arabia and a handful of other Middle Eastern countries did not show the film.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine and Dawn Chmielewski; Additional reporting by Kristian Brunse in London; Editing by Richard Chang)
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol delivered damning new evidence on Monday suggesting former President Trump was aware of his election defeat but still pushed false claims of rampant fraud in an effort to cling to power and raise millions of dollars in campaign donations.

A key witness in Mondays hearing, Trumps former campaign manager Bill Stepien, was forced to cancel his in-person appearance when his wife went into labor. But after a short delay, the panel regrouped, leaning on pre-recorded interviews with Stepien, former Attorney General William Barr and a number of other former Trump aides to bolster its case.

The witnesses told the story of a chaotic post-election environment in which top White House staffers, campaign operatives, Cabinet secretaries and congressional leaders pressed the former president to abandon the fictitious narrative of a stolen election, only to be ignored by Trump and a small cadre of loyalists willing to go along with the sham.

Here are five takeaways from the panels second public hearing.

Trump was warned at every turn

The committee brought out official after official from the campaign and from the Trump administration detailing how they cautioned Trump at every turn against declaring victory and claiming fraud.

The former president was told the uptick in voting by mail due to COVID-19 would delay the results. He was advised against claiming victory before the results were finalized. And he was told again and again that his election fraud claims were baseless and unsupported by evidence.

My recommendation was to say that votes are still being counted. Its too early to tell, too early to call the race, Stepien said.

I dont recall the particular words. He thought I was wrong. He told me so and, you know, that they were going to  he was going to go in a different direction, Stepien said.

Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller offered similar advice.

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There were suggestions by, I believe it was [former New York City] Mayor [Rudy] Giuliani, to go and declare victory and say that wed won it outright, Miller said. I remember saying that  we should not go and declare victory until we had a better sense of the numbers.

Barr in particular laid into the former president, calling the claims completely bogus and silly and usually based on complete misinformation.

There was an avalanche of all these allegations of fraud that built up over a number of days. And it was like playing whack-a-mole because something would come out one day, and then the next day it would be another issue, Barr said.

Part of building a legal case against Trump

Mondays hearing was the committees first fully dedicated to showing the extent to which Trump was repeatedly warned about his election fraud claims.

Its an important building block for the committee in the week ahead as it looks at what actions Trump took given the repeated warnings from staffers and even his attorney general.

That point is key to showing Trumps culpability and would raise questions about his motivation as the committee holds hearings looking at the former presidents pressure campaign at the Department of Justice to investigate his attempts to get Vice President Mike Pence to reject the will of the voters.

Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon said he had a 15 second conversation with Pence in which he relayed that the campaign was unable to substantiate Trumps election fraud claims.

He asked me if we were finding anything. And I said that I didnt believe we were finding it or I was not personally finding anything sufficient to alter the results of the election. And he  he thanked me. That was our interaction, Cannon said.

Barr also told Trump his fraud claims should be the campaigns work, not the Department of Justice.

The department doesnt take sides in elections, and the department is not an extension of  of your legal team, Barr said he told Trump later.

He didnt seem to be listening, and I didnt think it was, you know, that I was inclined not to stay around if he wasnt listening to advice from me or his other cabinet secretaries, Barr said.

Witnesses give sense of Trumps state of mind

The committee failed to directly demonstrate that Trump himself knew there was no voter fraud and realized he was misleading the public.

In fact, in some of the taped depositions, witnesses described a president who seemed to believe his own arguments even as nearly everyone around him did not.

Barr detailed statements Trump made regarding Dominion voting machines, which the former attorney general said in earlier testimony were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people.

And the statements were made very conclusory like this  these machines were designed to, you know, engage in fraud or something to that effect, but I didnt see any supporting information for it, Barr said of Trump.

And I was somewhat demoralized because I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff he has, you know, lost contact with  with it  hes become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff, Barr added.

Former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue also testified to Trumps fixation.

There were so many allegations that when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldnt fight you on it, hed move to another one, Donoghue said.

Fundraising juggernaut

If Trumps claims of a stolen election are false, they are also extremely lucrative.

House investigators found that, between Election Day and the Jan. 6 attack, Trumps campaign sent millions of emails to potential supporters  as many as 25 per day  asking for small donations to something called the Official Election Defense Fund.

In interviews with campaign staffers, the investigators found that no such fund ever existed.

I dont believe there is actually a fund called the Election Defense Fund, said Hanna Allred, a former Trump campaign aide.

Gary Coby, the former digital director for Trumps campaign, acknowledged that the fund was a marketing tool. Just topic matter, he told the committee, where money can potentially go to be  how money can potentially be used.

The effort yielded $250 million, investigators found, $100 million in the first week after the election alone.

Yet most of the money did not go to help the campaign fight to overturn the election result, as the solicitations suggested, the committee said. Instead, Trump created a separate entity, the Save America PAC, which funneled money to conservative groups run by Trump allies, including $1 million to a charitable foundation run by his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, more than $5 million to the event company that oversaw Trumps Ellipse rally on Jan. 6 and more than $200,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection.

So not only was there the big lie; there was the big rip-off, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). Donors deserve to know where their funds are really going. They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did.

Fox News predicted Trump would exploit this anomaly

Few news outlets have been more friendly to Trump during his meteoric political rise than Fox News, where the top pundits  including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity  have defended Trumps actions post-election and repeatedly downplayed the violence of Jan. 6.

Yet it was Fox News that was first to declare that President Biden had won Arizona in 2020  a controversial election night call that deflated Republicans hopes of keeping the White House. And Mondays select committee hearing revealed that leaders at the network had not only anticipated that Trump would try to spin the early returns to claim a false victory; they also steered their coverage to warn viewers against believing it.

Appearing before the panel, Chris Stirewalt, former political editor at Fox News, described a phenomenon known as the red mirage, which predicts that Republican candidates typically race ahead of Democrats on Election Day because GOP voters tend to favor in-person voting. The margins close, Stirewalt said, as mail-in ballots, which are more popular with Democrats, are counted after the polls close.

So in every election  certainly a national election  you expect to see the Republican with a lead, but its not really a lead. When you put together a jigsaw puzzle, it doesnt matter which piece you put in first. It ends up with the same image. So for us, who cares? Stirewalt said.

But thats because no candidate had ever tried to avail themselves of this quirk in the election counting system, he continued. We had gone to pains  and Im proud of the pains we went to  to make sure that we were informing viewers that this was going to happen. Because the Trump campaign and the president had made it clear that they were going to try to exploit this anomaly.

Other witnesses on Monday described Foxs Arizona decision as a gut punch for Trump, his aides and his family members watching the election returns at the White House that night.

Miller said the call completely changed the atmosphere in the room.

[We were] both disappointed with Fox and concerned that maybe our data or our numbers werent accurate, he said.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
A former assistant principal at a South Carolina high school in Rock Hill was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to sex charges with a student.

Kenneth Andrew Williams, 37, pleaded guilty May 31 in York County criminal court to assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, sexual battery with a student, and disseminating obscene material.

The sentencing Monday came six years after Williams was arrested on the charges in 2016 while he was an assistant principal at Northwestern High School in the Rock Hill school district. Williams was a gym teacher at Rock Hill High before he became an assistant principal, testimony showed.

South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Dan Hall sentenced Williams after a hearing Monday in criminal court. The combined charges carried from no prison time to a maximum of 30 years in a S.C. Department of Corrections prison, state law shows.

Kenneth Andrew Williams, center, flanked by his two lawyers Gary Lemel and Twana Burris-Alcide, in York County, South Carolina. Williams, former Northwestern High School assistant principal from Rock Hill, pleaded guilty to three sex charges involving a student from 2016.

Williams also must register as a sex offender for the next 15 years, testimony showed.

Hall said Williams was in a position of authority over the victim while Williams was an assistant principal and teacher. The sentence had to reflect the seriousness of the charge and the conviction, Hall said. Williams was an administrator at a school where parents send their children, Hall said.

Hall said the public has safety expectations for children sent to school.

He (Williams) had authority over her (the victim) at the time, Hall said.

Sex acts when Williams was assistant principal

The victim, who was 15 and 16 years old at the time of the offenses, was a student at Rock Hill High and then at Northwestern, 16th Circuit Senior Solicitor Erin Joyner said in court.

Williams knew the victims family, Joyner said. Williams deserved a substantial prison sentence, Joyner said.

This case is a breach of trust, a betrayal of trust on so many levels, Joyner said. People send their children to school expecting them to be safe.

Joyner said the acts were not a one-time incident and involved Williams sending naked photos of himself to the victim through Snapchat social media.

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Victim speaks in court

The victim said in court Monday that Williams told her he wanted to be a father figure to her.

He used his powers to manipulate the situation, the victim said.

The victim said when she made the allegations public, she was ostracized.

I am standing here almost seven years later hoping someone will hear my story, the victim said.

The Herald does not name victims of sex crimes or underage victims of crime.

The victims mother said in court Williams had been invited into the family home.

This is every parents nightmare, the victims mother said.

Williams apologizes in court

Williams apologized to the victim and her family for his actions, and asked for a second chance to live a productive life.

I am ashamed, Williams said.

Williams cried in court when he talked about the impact of his arrest and conviction on his family and career.

Williams was placed on leave from school in 2016 when the accusations were being investigated. His South Carolina teaching credentials were suspended in 2016, and he surrendered his ability to teach or work in school administration, according to the S.C. Department of Education.

Defense asks for probation





Williams was represented by three lawyers: S.C. Rep Todd Rutherford of Columbia, and Gary Lemel and Twana Burris-Alcide of Rock Hill.

The defense lawyers asked for probation for Williams. Williams has no other criminal record, and for six years after arrest did not have any problems with the law, Rutherford said in court.

There is no reason for Mr. Williams to be incarcerated, Rutherford said.

Burris-Alcide said Williams was a teacher who went to Winthrop University in Rock Hill.

He was a really good leader, a team builder, and an encourager, Burris-Alcide said.

The victim started weeping in court when Burris-Alcide brought up the allegations and the defenses point of view about the case. The victim left courtroom.

Other people who knew Williams said he was a good person who was involved in community service.

A defense expert, Dr. Geoffrey McKee, said in court Williams risk of sexual recidivism is low.

Kenneth Andrew Williams, left, in court Monday for sentencing. Williams, former assistant principal at Northwestern High School in Rock Hill, South Carolina, pleaded guilty to sex crimes involving a student.

Several other charges against Williams were dismissed as part of the plea negotiations, lawyers in the case said in court.
The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, and although state and city officials are harshly critical of any moves to restrict reproductive rights, they also say reversing the landmark decision would help Illinois attract businesses eager to recruit young workers with socially progressive views.

Officials already lure corporations by touting their strong support for voting rights, racial justice and protections for LGBTQ individuals, but losing the constitutional right to abortion should further strengthen their hand with businesses from red states likely to outlaw the procedure.

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This is another arrow in our quiver, said Gov. J.B. Pritzker. We are always talking to companies about coming to Illinois, but this is another powerful point of discussion.

Attracting new corporations played an important role in Chicagos downtown boom over the past decade. Tech giants like Salesforce, Google and many others established new Midwest headquarters here, unleashing a wave of development that transformed the Fulton Market meatpacking district into a sleek office center and brought new skyscrapers to the West Loop.

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Attracting new corporations played an important role in Chicagos downtown boom over the past decade. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Site selection experts say they dont expect a Supreme Court ruling against Roe v. Wade to result in a sudden flood of new company headquarters moving to Illinois or Chicago. But promoting the state as a haven for reproductive rights could possibly burnish its reputation as a business hub.

Companies are really in a battle to hire and retain the best talent, and young workers prefer to work for companies that prioritize environmental, social and governance issues, and that now includes abortion, said John Boyd, principal of The Boyd Co., a national site selection firm. I can certainly see (overturning Roe v. Wade) impacting some companies more sensitive to the abortion issue.

Abortion rights could become even more important than gender identity, voting rights or other social issues, especially to the highly educated knowledge workers so prized by technology firms and other high-growth industries, according to Ray Perryman, CEO of The Perryman Group, a Waco, Texas-based economic research and analysis firm.

It is reasonable to anticipate that reproductive rights will receive the most attention given the history, the number of people impacted, and the extreme measures being implemented in some states, he said. While I would not expect either a mass exodus of firms from or a major initial slowdown in locations to the more restrictive states, I am confident that there will be long-term benefits to more inclusive areas.

World Business Chicago, the citys economic development agency, began beating this drum last year when it took out a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News touting Chicagos commitment to protecting abortion rights, as well as voting rights, among many other qualities.

The agency plans to launch a new round of ads after the Supreme Court hands down the decision, perhaps expanding the effort to other cities and states, according to CEO Michael Fassnacht.

He said a shift in attitude is underway among business leaders in states such as Texas. He recently met with a group of about 50 from Austin, Dallas and other cities, and asked whether all the controversy now surrounding abortion would start affecting decisions on where to locate new business.

Roughly half of them said yes, he said. Thats a pretty strong indication, I think.

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Corporations are tight-lipped about how they will deal with a post-Roe landscape. A Facebook spokesperson said the company could not comment on the issue, and Salesforce did not return a message seeking comment.

The loss of Roe v. Wade would mean 26 states, including Texas and Florida, are likely to severely restrict or ban abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights research organization.

How far these restrictions will eventually go is unknown. Texas legislators last year passed a law banning most abortions after six weeks, and Oklahoma last month banned all abortions, the tightest restriction in the U.S. More states are likely to follow their lead and further clamp down on the procedure, according to Jen Stark, a co-director with Business for Social Responsibility, a global sustainability organization.

Abortion restrictions are already unpopular. A March survey by Morning Consult, a business intelligence firm, found that by a 2-to-1 margin, employed adults prefer living in states where abortion is legal.

And its anyones guess what the new status quo will be, Stark said. So, corporate America should rightfully be worried.

Many businesses are already reassuring employees that the end of Roe v. Wade wont mean losing access to abortion. Apple, Yelp, Tesla, Citigroup and Starbucks, among others, all stated they would cover expenses for workers who must travel out-of-state for abortions. And in the wake of last years restrictive Texas law, Salesforce announced it would relocate employees concerned about reproductive health care access, along with their families.

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How ridiculous is that? Pritzker asked. Thats not how (workers) want to exercise their rights.

Relocating to Illinois could be the answer, and last September Pritzker wrote letters to corporate honchos such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri, Oracle Corp. CEO Safra Catz and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, encouraging them to shift their headquarters from Texas to Illinois. Hes not providing details about future outreach, except to say hell widen efforts to those 26 states where a Roe v. Wade reversal will severely restrict or outlaw abortion.

But even if the Supreme Court drops a bombshell on abortion, Pritzker said the states position on reproductive rights will still form just a small part of his overall pitch. He spends more time talking about Illinois many universities, its power grid, research hubs such as the Argonne National Laboratory, the amount of capital pouring into its infrastructure and many other factors.

We have done a number of things to make Illinois an attractive place to move their business, he said.

Thats a wise move, said Wayne Gearey, the Dallas-based chief labor economist of Savills, a commercial real estate firm. He helps firms pick the best locations, and whether its for a new manufacturing facility or a software developer, that means first analyzing the cost of local real estate, how much they can expect from economic incentive packages and, most important, how well a region can supply people with the right skill sets.

Still, social issues are growing more important, and with women making up 60% of new university graduates, more of his clients now ask about how well reproductive rights are protected in areas they might locate.

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They are looking at this issue more seriously than ever before, he said.
A former Poudre River Public Library District employee and community activist was arrested this weekend on accusations that she used her work credit card for $110,000 of personal expenses over four years.

Johanna Ulloa Giron, formerly the district's outreach services manager, made her first court appearance virtually from the Larimer County Jail on Monday afternoon. She's being held at the jail on a $50,000 cash/surety bond.

Ulloa Giron is also co-founder of the BIPOC Alliance and most recently worked as advocacy program manager at the Colorado Trust. She was a board member for the Health District of Northern Larimer County after being appointed in March 2021 and served until May.

Her charges came about after the library district conducted an audit of staff purchases in late 2020, instructing employees to turn in any missing receipts by the start of 2021.

The library's human resource office began investigating Ulloa Giron's expenses after she didn't reconcile missing receipts, according to a Fort Collins Police Services news release. Police say Ulloa Giron agreed to pay back $9,842 in personal purchases identified by library staff. She resigned from the library district in March 2021, according to the release.

Library staff reportedly found more unauthorized purchases as they continued to investigate Ulloa Giron's expenses, according to police. They told Fort Collins police in April 2021 that the expenses included designer shoes, womens clothing, cosmetics, personal electronics, vacation-related expenses, home goods, furniture and toys shipped to Ulloa Girons home. The library's inventory didn't include records of electronics and other high-cost items.

CITY NEWS: Fort Collins City Council selects Kelly DiMartino as new city manager

Police say staff and police also concluded that some of the receipts Ulloa Giron provided to the library were altered to change purchase details, and that she had assigned expenses to programs that weren't related to the items purchased or didn't exist.

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Police and library staff ultimately investigated 2,224 purchases made on Ulloa Giron's library procurement card between 2016 and 2020, according to the release. Police say they found 1,267 unauthorized purchases that totaled about $110,500.

"This case represents approximately four years' worth of theft by the defendant, where she on the one hand is championing the rights of the Hispanic community, but on the other side is stealing from the library for those exact services for the underfunded and underrepresented," a representative of the 8th Judicial District Attorney's Office said Monday at Ulloa Giron's hearing.

Ulloa Giron was booked in the Larimer County Jail on Saturday. Her charges are theft, unauthorized use of a financial transaction device and cybercrime, all felonies, and second-degree forgery, a misdemeanor.

Ulloa Giron's attorney requested a personal recognizance bond, citing her involvement in the community and her cooperation with investigators over the last year. But District Court Magistrate Cara Boxberger granted the prosecution's request for a $50,000 cash/surety bond because of "the nature of the allegations and the amounts alleged."

Library district Executive Director Diane Lapierre said in the news release that the district's human resources team "took immediate action to ensure accountability" when they discovered violations of library policy.

Libraries are a cornerstone of the community and a lifeline to information, education, and enjoyment for people of all ages and life circumstances," Lapierre said. "We remain committed to serving this mission and to improving the social, economic, educational, and cultural vitality of the people that we serve.

Police ask anyone with additional information about this case to contact Detective Allen Benbow at 970-416-2180.

This money was intended to support kids in our community," Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda said in the news release. "Resources for such programming are already scarce, and using them for personal gain shows a troubling disregard for the families who should have benefited from these funds."

All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in court. Arrests and charges are merely accusations by law enforcement until, and unless, a suspect is convicted of a crime.

Jacy Marmaduke covers government accountability for the Coloradoan. Follow her on Twitter @jacymarmaduke. Support her work and that of other Coloradoan journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Former Fort Collins library employee accused of stealing from district
Bret Baier is gearing up for something that may surprise Fox News aficionados and its cable rivals: a debate event that features two U.S. Senators with distinctly opposing views who say they just want to talk things out.

Baier will at noon on Fox Nation moderate the first event from The Senate Project, in which two U.S. Senators take part in Oxford-style debates. In the first, Senator Lindsey Graham will wrangle with Senator Bernie Sanders, in a one-hour policy debate that will subsequently appear in edited form on Fox News Channel Saturday at 7 p.m. The series has been organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation, and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.

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The hope is that it starts to be sort of a rock that goes downhill to gather steam and has some really interesting discussions on both sides, people who argue passionately but then also figure out where they can get something done, says Baier, in an interview, Its something that doesnt happen too often in Washington.

Or on many cable-news outlets, which increasingly cater to a base rather than present a broader take on the issues of the day. A long-running critique of cable-news programs of all stripes is that they feature lots of argument but not much problem solving.

The bipartisan effort comes after Fox News has been talking to Madison Avenue agencies and advertisers about its Democratic viewership. In recent months, executives at the Fox Corp.-owned unit have been telling advertisers that the networks sizable audience includes not only conservatives, but independents and even those who tilt left. One notable effort along these lines is The Five, which has maintained its nod to a liberal point of view even as an influential part of Fox News audience has seemed to move further to the right, has been generating audiences bigger than some of the networks primetime shows.

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The first debate in the Senate Project series will originate from the Kennedy Institutes full-size replica of the U.S. Senate Chamber. The second debate, hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center, will be held in July at George Washington University, carried live and on demand across C-SPAN platforms, including streamed on C-SPAN Now. A third debate will be held by the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation in Utah this fall.

We initiated this idea in response to what is the most serious division in this country in decades, said Bruce A. Percelay, chairman of the board of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, in a statement. It is our hope that this effort will help demonstrate that compromise in the U.S. Senate is actually possible.

This is basically an effort to go old school, to look at the way the Senate used to work, giving people time to discuss and defend ideas, as opposed to an angry tweet or a soundbite on TV, says Baier.

Baier will host the debate just a day after filling in on Fox News Sunday and covering the 1/6 Committee Hearing last Thursday with co-anchor Martha MacCallum. Fox News Media raised eyebrows by putting that coverage on Fox Business Network and leaving its more popular Fox News Channel to show its usual conservative opinion programming, spurring accusations that company wasnt putting the event in from of the bulk of its audience.

I get the fascination with the scheduling says Baier, who notes that the decision to put the coverage on Fox Business was above my pay grade. He still wanted to cover the hearing, he says, and believed it was an important event. There are all kinds of decisions that businesses have to make, and I understand those decisions, he says noting that Fox News still made the coverage available on other platforms, including affiliates of the Fox broadcast network and via its digital platforms. Fox News Channel will broadcast the Committees second hearing today at 10 a.m.

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Artwork: Gaia is providing fundamental insights on the nature of the Milky Way

Europe's Gaia telescope has dropped its latest batch of data as it seeks to assemble the largest catalogue of light sources in the sky.

It is becoming a discovery machine like no other.

Stars, asteroids and distant, bright galaxies - anything that can be visibly pinpointed is having its vital statistics measured by the observatory.

Gaia has already mapped the positions of nearly two billion objects. Now, it can reveal more about their make-up.

"Essentially, previously, we could say very precisely where they are; now we can say what they are," Prof Nick Walton, from Cambridge University and a member of the Gaia science team, told BBC News.

The European Space Agency's (Esa) Gaia satellite was launched in 2013 and placed a million miles from Earth.

It looks a bit like a spinning top hat. And as it rotates, the telescope uses its British-built billion-pixel camera to track everything that shines or moves - with astonishing accuracy.

This is especially important when trying to measure distances to objects, which Gaia achieves by tracking how these targets wobble ever so slightly on the sky as it circles the Sun - a neat form of trigonometry that has now been practised on 1.8 billion stars in, or very near, our Milky Way galaxy.

Working out distances to stars

As the Earth goes around the Sun, relatively nearby stars appear to move against the "fixed" stars that are even further away

Because we know the Sun-Earth distance, we can use the parallax angle to work out the distance to the target star

But such angles are very small - less than one arcsecond for the nearest stars, or 0.05% of the full Moon's diameter

Gaia is making repeat observations to reduce measurement errors down to seven micro-arcseconds for the very brightest stars

Parallaxes are used to anchor other, more indirect techniques on the 'ladder' deployed to measure the most far-flung distances

In the previous release of data, in December 2020, Gaia also revealed basic brightness and colour information on these stars.

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The new data dump reveals spectroscopy information as well.

Spectroscopy slices the light coming from stars into its constituent colours, to reveal the chemistry, temperature, mass, age and velocity of the targets under study.

And for an important subset of stars - some 33 million - it has allowed Gaia scientists to determine how quickly these objects are moving towards or away from Earth.

Elements in stars: Colour indicates stellar metallicity. Redder stars are richer in "metals"

Combined with their previously established movement across the sky, this means we now have their full three-dimensional behaviour.

Such information will give researchers even keener insights on how the Milky Way galaxy is structured and is evolving - from the past, into the future.

Gaia's data haul now includes:

two billion light sources - mostly stars but also many Solar System objects and some beyond the Milky Way

spectroscopic detail revealing temperature, chemistry, mass and age for 100s of millions of objects

1.9 million quasars - distant galaxies where a voracious central black hole is powering light emission

156,000 asteroids - critical for understanding their origin and possibility of them passing close to Earth

And with some of these 3D stars also mapped in the nearby Andromeda Galaxy, we should have a better idea of how and precisely when its mass will merge with the Milky Way - something expected in the next few billion years.

One of the most surprising discoveries coming out of the new data is the recognition that Gaia can do so-called asteroseismology. This is the study of stars' subtle surface resonances, which enable scientists to pull out information such as how big a star is and how old it is.

"Starquakes teach us a lot about stars, notably their internal workings. Gaia is opening a goldmine for asteroseismology of massive stars," said Prof Conny Aerts from Belgium's KU Leuven.

Gaia can see stars moving away from us (bright areas) and towards us (dark areas)

Whenever Gaia drops its latest dataset (and this is the third full release), it is immediately mined by astronomy groups around the world.

Some of these teams have scholarly papers ready to publish and just need Gaia's numbers to complete their projects.

For competing groups, it will be a race to see who can publish first.

Hot topics will include the search for high-velocity stars, which move at hundreds of kilometres per second.

"The most likely scenario for how these stars are getting such high velocities is that they must have been close to our galactic centre, which has the physics to produce these accelerations," Esa's Gaia project scientist Dr Timo Prusti said.

"So far, these stars have been more like candidates, because the Gaia accuracy has not been sufficient [to fully understand them], but I'm sure astronomers will be ready with their queries to attack the new Gaia data."

Other hot topics ready to be mined include whether stars are enriched in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, or depleted.

The low "metallicity" stars are the more fascinating because they are probably very old, perhaps in the first group that came together to form the Milky Way.

Mapping dust: The galactic plane is dustiest (black-red); less dust above and below (blue)

The Gaia telescope mission may have launched just over eight years ago but Monday's data release represents only the first 34 months of its science operations.

A further five years of gathered data has yet to be fully processed.

And with Gaia expected to keep scanning the sky until 2025, it could be the end of the decade or even the early 2030s before all of its information is put in the public domain.

"What do you get from that extra time? Well, it bashes down uncertainties for one thing. But the main advantage is in increasing your sensitivity to things that are changing," Prof Gerry Gilmore, from Cambridge University, told BBC News.

"In particular, this is true for the oscillations of stars that tell us there are planets moving around them.

"If you've only got one year of data, you can only find planets that are very, very close to their stars.

"But after 10 years of observations, you will find planets far from their parent star, indeed families of planets."

By the end of its mission, Gaia could have identified tens of thousands of planets in the Milky Way.
British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, right, was convicted in the US of helping Jeffrey Epstein, left, sexually abuse teenage girls (PA Media)

Ghislaine Maxwell is reportedly seeking to serve the majority of her prison sentence for sex trafficking in the UK, far away from the disgrace of the US prison system.

Ms Maxwell, 60, was arrested two years ago by the FBI and charged with enticement of children and sex trafficking of minors in connection to her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. She was convinced on five sex-trafficking related counts by a jury in US federal court last December and is facing up to 55 years in prison. She is set to be sentenced later this month.

It is certain that Ms Maxwell is facing many years in jail. It is still an open question, however, where she will serve her sentence. Ms Maxwells brother Ian Maxwell toldThe Telegraph that his family wants Ms Maxwell out of the US prison system.

Inevitably, we want her to serve the sentence here in the UK, Mr Maxwell said.

Ms Maxwell has been held in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn prison for much of the two years since her arrest, prompting her family to file a complaint with the United Nations over her treatment. Ms Maxwell was removed from solitary confinement last month and can now recieve visitors, though her brother Mr Mawells attempted visit was thwarted when the prison was locked down due to a fight.

Mr Maxwell, who had flown from overseas for the pre-arranged visit, said that his treatment by prison authorities was unreal and inhumane.

Moving to a UK prison would bring Ms Maxwell, who holds US, UK, and French citizenship, closer to family. Ms Maxwell spent much of her childhood in England, living in Oxford and attending Balliol College at the University of Oxford before moving to London in the 1980s.

Ms Maxwell would have to spend the first three years of her sentence in the US, but could then apply to move to another country.

Ghislaine is fundamentally British despite having lived in the US for many years and having been born in France, a friend told The Times of London. Given the vile prison conditions in the US, if I were her I would want to be transferred to any civilized country.

Ms Maxwells legal troubles extend, for the moment, beyond her trafficking-related convictions. She is also facing a second criminal trial for perjury stemming from testimony she gave in a civil suit about Mr Epsteins abuse of underage girls in 2015, though prosecutors have said that they will drop the charges if she is sentenced on time.
By Joseph White

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co Chief Executive Mary Barra said on Monday the automaker is "selling every truck we can build" and expanding North American truck-building capacity, even as U.S. gasoline prices hit record highs.

Barra made her comments during the automaker's annual shareholder meeting.

GM is pursuing a two-track strategy: Investing heavily in electric vehicles for North America, China and other markets, and funding those investments by trying to maximize profits from its North American combustion pickup truck and large SUV lineups.

Barra said GM is planning higher-priced versions of its Silverado large pickup and its large SUV models.

GM and its Detroit rivals Ford Motor Co and Stellantis NV rely heavily on sales of large pickup trucks and SUVs for global profits. High U.S. gasoline prices in the past have undermined consumer demand for relatively inefficient models.

Nominal pump prices hit an average of above $5 a gallon for the first time ever last week, the federal government said Friday.

GM is ramping up production of EVs. Barra said the Cadillac Lyriq electric sport utility is sold out through 2023.

In response to shareholder questions, Barra said the "clear priority" for using cash generated by its operations is to "accelerate our EV plans." She did not rule out share buybacks or other approaches to returning cash to shareholders.

GM still expects to increase production this year by 25-30%, despite continuing pressure on semiconductor supplies globally. Barra said GM is working to redesign vehicles to reduce the number of processors required by 95%.

Barra serves as GM's board chair and CEO. GM shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to separate those roles.

(Reporting By Joe White; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Lawsuit first emerged in 2017 when three women accused tech giant of underpaying its female workers in violation of Californias Equal Pay Act (AP)

Google has agreed to pay $118m (96.5m)to settle a landmark class-action lawsuit that alleges the tech giant systematically discriminated against its female employees in pay and promotions.

The sum covers about 15,500 female employees in 236 job titles (covered positions) in California since 14 September 2013, the settlements press release noted.

Google has also agreed to invite an independent third-party expert to analyse the companys leveling-at-hire practices and for an independent labor economist to review its pay equity studies.

This post-settlement work will be supervised by an external settlement monitor over the next three years.

The lawsuit first emerged in 2017 when three women filed a complaint accusing the tech giant of underpaying its female workers in violation of Californias Equal Pay Act.

It alleged that women working at Google faced diminished career prospects compared to their male counterparts and a wage gap of around $17,000.

The lawsuit alleged that the company has a record of keeping women in job ladders and levels with lower compensation ceilings and advancement opportunities while promoting fewer women and promoting women more slowly than comparable men.

However, Google has denied all of the allegations and maintained that it has fully complied with all applicable laws, rules, and regulations at all times.

While we strongly believe in the equity of our policies and practices, after nearly five years of litigation, both sides agreed that resolution of the matter, without any admission or findings, was in the best interest of everyone, and were very pleased to reach this agreement, the company said in a statement to AFP.

However, plaintiffs said Googles settlement would help ensure that women are not paid less than their male counterparts who perform substantially similar work, and that the tech giants challenged leveling practices are equitable.

Google has long been a technology leader. We are delighted that in this Settlement Agreement and Order Google is also affirming its commitment to be a leader in ensuring pay equity and equal employment opportunity for all of their employees, said Plaintiffs co-counsel Jim Finberg.

A judge will still need to approve the agreement, and a preliminary settlement approval hearing is set for 21 June.
A Google engineer has claimed that an artificial intelligence programme he was working on for the tech giant has become sentient and is a sweet kid.

Blake Lemoine, who is currently suspended by Google bosses, says he reached his conclusion after conversations with LaMDA, the companys AI chatbot generator.

The engineer told The Washington Post that during conversations with LaMDA about religion, the AI talked about personhood and rights.

Mr Lemoine tweeted that LaMDA also reads Twitter, saying, Its a little narcissistic in a little kid kinda way so its going to have a great time reading all the stuff that people are saying about it.

He says that he presented his findings to Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and to Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation, but they dismissed his claims.

Blake Lemoine (Blake Lemoine/Twitter)

LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person, the engineer wrote on Medium.

Btw, it just occurred to me to tell folks that LaMDA reads Twitter. It's a little narcissistic in a little kid kinda way so it's going to have a great time reading all the stuff that people are saying about it.  Blake Lemoine (@cajundiscordian) June 11, 2022

And he added that the AI wants, to be acknowledged as an employee of Google rather than as property.

Now Mr Lemoine, who was tasked with testing if it used discriminatory language or hate speech, says he is on paid administrative leave after the company claimed he violated its confidentiality policy.

Our team  including ethicists and technologists  has reviewed Blakes concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims, Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel told the Post.

An interview LaMDA. Google might call this sharing proprietary property. I call it sharing a discussion that I had with one of my coworkers.https://t.co/uAE454KXRB  Blake Lemoine (@cajundiscordian) June 11, 2022

He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).

Critics say that it is a mistake to believe AI is anything more than an expert at pattern recognition.

We now have machines that can mindlessly generate words, but we havent learned how to stop imagining a mind behind them, Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, told the newspaper.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson has repeatedly expressed his dislike for former President Donald Trump. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Trump is "politically" and "morally" responsible for the Capitol riot.

He added that Republicans have some "soul-searching" to do about the events of January 6, 2021.

He said he hoped the future of the GOP would be "different" from when Trump led it.

Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson said this weekend that he thinks former President Donald Trump is politically and morally responsible for the Capitol riot.

Hutchinson made the comments during an appearance on Fox News Sunday days after the first public hearing held by the House panel investigating the events of the January 6, 2021 riot.

The governor told the outlet that he thought Trump bears responsibility for the riot but was unsure if it would necessarily extend to criminal culpability.

"You can make the case, and I would agree, that he's politically, morally responsible for much of what has happened, but in terms of criminal liability, I think the committee has a long way to go before they could establish that," Hutchinson said.

He added that he thought Trump made a "costly error" for the GOP with his response to the riot, and said he hoped the GOP would act differently in the future.

"I hope that the future of the Republican Party is different than [under] President Trump's leadership," he said. "I hope we move in a different direction. I believe that what happened on January 6 is a lot at his feet."

Hutchinson said he believed many Republicans were looking for an "off-ramp" where Trump's leadership of the party was concerned.

"Obviously, what President Trump, there's a lot of things that he did that were very good that the base and I agree with, but he got off track on January 6, and that was a costly error for our democracy," he added.

Hutchinson also said that Republicans had a "lot of soul-searching" to do, chiefly with regard to doing what's right for the party's future and America's democracy and not simply appealing to the "instincts of some of our base."

Story continues

Hutchinson has for months expressed his dislike for Trump's leadership of the GOP.

In January, Hutchinson told Insider that he did not think Trump should lead the US again, pointing out that there are many "choices out there." In October, the governor also called Trump's fixation on baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election "a recipe for disaster" in the 2022 midterms.

In February, Hutchinson also warned against letting Trump "define" the GOP and vowed not to back the latter's 2024 re-election run if it happens.

The January 6 committee will hold the second of its six hearings on Monday morning, following its first primetime hearing last week. The panel's members have said that their investigation has uncovered enough evidence to indict Trump for trying to invalidate President Joe Biden's win.

Read the original article on Business Insider
NBC Sports BayArea

Steve Kerr knows that on the surface, Steph Curry is cool, calm and collected. But internally, he could be "livid" after shooting 0-for-9 from 3-point range in Game 5. That only bodes well for the Warriors in Game 6.
AP Photo

RIP to Philip Baker Hall. The actor who played the iconic library cop Lt. Joe Bookman on Seinfeld died on Sunday at the age of 90.

As the U.S inches closer to having COVID-19 vaccines available for children under 5, administration officials will have to face the challenge of convincing those parents to get their children immunized.

Welcome to Overnight Health Care, where were following the latest moves on policy and news affecting your health. For The Hill, were Peter Sullivan, Nathaniel Weixel and Joseph Choi. Someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.

Getting kids under 5 vaccinated an uphill battle

The Biden administration faces an uphill battle to convince parents to give COVID-19 shots to children under 5 years old.

More than a year and a half after the first vaccines were authorized for adults, an expert advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration will finally meet on Wednesday to examine data from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech about their shots effectiveness in the youngest children.

If all goes well and the vaccines get authorized, the administration is planning a massive public education campaign to help make sure parents can have their questions answered and learn about the importance of getting their children vaccinated.

The plan: Officials have outlined a plan that includes partnering with the online What to Expect community, as well as a range of national organizations, including a speakers bureau of pediatricians and family physicians who will be able to answer questions about the shots at community events.

The challenge: There are about 18 million kids under the age of 5 who would become eligible. But infectious disease experts think its an open question just how strong demand will be.

Some parents have expressed concerns about side effects, or that the vaccine is worse than the disease. Others are just ready to get back to normal; experts said pandemic fatigue is one of the biggest obstacles.



Also a concern: The idea that young kids are not at risk from COVID-19, so they dont need to be vaccinated. Experts say correcting that misperception is where pediatricians and family physicians should play a role.

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Read more here.

PFIZER-BIONTECH VACCINE EFFECTIVE FOR KIDS UNDER 5: FDA

A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) briefing document released Sunday said that Pfizer and BioNTechs COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for children under 5.

The document comes before a meeting scheduled for Wednesday during which the FDAs independent experts will consider emergency use authorization of the vaccine for young children, which could quickly pave the way for widespread availability.

Promising data: The FDA documents indicated that the vaccines were 75.6 percent effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 for children ages six to 23 months old and 82.4 percent effective for children between ages 2 and 4.

Overall, they were 80.4 percent effective in a combined analysis of both age groups, the FDA said.

Available data support the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine 3-dose primary series (3 g each dose) in preventing COVID-19 in the age group of 6 months through 4 years, the document said.

Read more here.

Gun deal provides nationwide mental health funding

A bipartisan group of senators had a breakthrough over the weekend in reaching a deal on preventing gun violence, and it also includes some important mental health elements.

The deal includes funding for a nationwide expansion of community mental health clinics.

The measure from Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) would provide funding nationwide for community mental health clinics that provide 24/7 mental health crisis response, substance abuse treatment, and other services.

The clinics would be reimbursed through Medicaid, which the senators argue provides a more stable source of funding than one-time grants, which can run out.

The package would expand the mental health clinic program nationwide, up from 10 states currently fully participating.

Other mental health programs? There are also other mental health measures included in the bipartisan package released Sunday, though the details have not been provided.

The framework released by the bipartisan group of 20 senators calls for major investments to increase access to mental health and suicide prevention programs and funding for school-based mental health and supportive services.

Read more here.

VIRTUAL EVENT INVITE

Chronic Kidney Disease: Forging Patient-Centered Solutions  Tuesday, June 14 at 1 p.m. ET

1 in 3 American adults are at risk for developing Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) during their lifetime. How do we ensure easy access to all available treatment options for those suffering and at risk for CKD? Rep. Donald Payne, Jr. (D-N.J.), Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), CMMIs Tom Duvall, American Society of Nephrology president Dr. Susan Quaggin and more join The Hill. RSVP today.

HHS chief tests positive twice in less than a month

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, the agency announced, the second time he has been infected in less than a month.

This morning in Sacramento, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra tested positive for COVID-19 after taking an antigen test. He is fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19, and is experiencing mild symptoms. He will continue to perform his duties as HHS Secretary, working in isolation, HHS spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim said in a statement.

The big picture: You can get multiple infections. Reinfection is quickly becoming the primary driver of new cases in the United States, showing that immunity from previous infections is no longer able to provide the same level of protection against emerging variants and subvariants.

Last week, Becerra was in Los Angeles to participate in the Summit of the Americas with President Biden and Vice President Harris. HHS said Becerra is not considered a close contact of either.

Read more here.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU TESTS POSITIVE FOR COVID-19 AGAIN

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shared on Monday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 a second time and will be isolating.

Ive tested positive for COVID-19. Ill be following public health guidelines and isolating. I feel okay, but thats because I got my shots. So, if you havent, get vaccinated  and if you can, get boosted. Lets protect our healthcare system, each other, and ourselves, Trudeau tweeted.

Trudeau previously tested positive for COVID-19 at the end of January, along with two of his children.

Recent travel: Trudeaus infection comes just days after he attended the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, along with President Biden, first lady Jill Biden and Los Angeles Mayor Gavin Newsom (D), who himself had tested positive for the coronavirus late last month.

During the summit, Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, met with the Bidens and shook both of their hands while unmasked. Canadas first lady previously contracted COVID-19 in 2020.

Read more here.

WHAT WERE READING

Race is often used as medical shorthand for how bodies work. Some doctors want to change that. (Kaiser Health News)

Why doctors say the save the mothers life exception of abortion bans is medically risky (ABC News)

How Covid did away with the sick day (New York Times)

Monkeypox DNA found in semen in handful of cases -researchers say (Reuters)

STATE BY STATE

Oakland, Calif. declares racism a public health crisis (NPR)

As Biden fights opioid overdoses, harm-reduction groups face local opposition (The Texas Tribune)

Two more Massachusetts men test positive for monkeypox virus (The Boston Globe)

OP-EDS IN THE HILL

Thats it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hills Health Care page for the latest news and coverage. See you tomorrow.

VIEW FULL VERSION HERE

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Prepared Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine syringes for children ages 5 to 11 and adults are displayed on a table at Northwest Community Church in Chicago. (Nam Y. Huh/AP)

Federal health officials said Sunday that kid-sized doses of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccines appear to be safe and effective for kids under 5, a key step toward a long-awaited decision to begin vaccinating the youngest American children.

The Food and Drug Administration posted its analysis of the Pfizer shot ahead of a Wednesday meeting where outside experts will vote on whether the shots are ready for the nations 18 million babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Kids under 5 are the only group not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S.

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Late last week the FDA posted a similar analysis of Modernas shots for children under 6.

If regulators clear the shots by one or both companies, vaccinations could begin as soon as next week with the drugmakers ready to rapidly ship doses ordered by the government. Parents have been pressing federal officials for months for the opportunity to protect their smallest children as more adults shed masks and abandon other public health precautions.

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While only about 3% of U.S. COVID cases are in the age group 6 months to 4 years, hospitalization and death rates in that group are higher than those for older children, according to the FDAs analysis  one reason experts have said protecting this group is important.

The FDA said children who received Pfizers shots during testing developed high levels of virus-fighting antibodies expected to protect them against coronavirus. Thats the basic threshold needed to win FDA authorization. But additional testing turned up key differences, with stronger results for Pfizer.

Pfizers vaccine, given as a three-shot series, appeared 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, although that calculation was based on just 10 cases diagnosed among study participants. The figure could change as Pfizers study continues.

Modernas two-dose series was only about 40% to 50% effective at preventing milder infections, though the two companies shots were tested at different times during the pandemic, when different variants were circulating. Moderna has begun testing a booster for tots.

On Wednesday, the FDA will ask an independent panel of vaccine experts to debate both companies data before voting. The FDA is not required to follow the groups recommendations, but the process is seen as a key step in publicly vetting the shots.

The FDA is expected to make its official decision shortly after Wednesdays all-day meeting. The next step: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends how to use vaccines, will convene its own expert panel to debate which tots need vaccinations.

Its not clear how much demand there will initially be for the shots. A recent survey suggests only 1 in 5 parents of young children would get their kids vaccinated right away. Vaccines have been available since November for older U.S. schoolchildren, yet less than a third of those ages 5 to 11 have gotten the two recommended doses, according to government figures.

For the youngest children, each company is offering different dose sizes and number of shots, beginning at 6 months through 4 years for Pfizer and through 5 years for Moderna.

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Pfizer and its partner BioNTech plan to offer two shots three weeks apart followed by a third at least two months later  each one-tenth the dose given to adults. Pfizer is currently the only company with a COVID-19 vaccine for older U.S. children.

Moderna is seeking FDA clearance for two shots, each a quarter of its adult dose, given about four weeks apart.

The FDA currently allows Modernas vaccine to be used only in adults. But some countries allow full-size doses for teens and half-size shots for kids ages 6 to 11  a step the FDA also is considering.

More than 30,000 U.S. children younger than 5 have been hospitalized with COVID-19 and nearly 500 coronavirus deaths have been reported in that age group, according to U.S. health officials.

The government allowed pharmacies and states to start placing orders for tot-sized doses last week, with 5 million initially available  half made by Pfizer and half by Moderna.
Hundreds of the worlds smallest penguin species  the korora  are being found dead on New Zealand beaches (Getty/iStockphoto)

Hundreds of the worlds smallest penguin are washing up dead on New Zealand beaches.

The kororA, also known as the little blue penguin, are being found in the northern-most region of the North Island.

The NZ Department of Conservation told RNZ that an estimated 200 tiny birds were washing up on the areas beaches each day, and that the mass die-offs are being caused by rising ocean temperatures.

The ocean is absorbing more than 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped in Earths atmosphere, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels.

KororA population numbers are also being affected by prolonged El Nino weather conditions, which increase sea-surface temperatures and onshore winds in New Zealand, making it more difficult for the tiny penguins to nest and feed.

Graeme Taylor, from the conservation department, told the local news outlet: In the past, you might have had a lot of good years followed by one bad year where a lot of birds die, but then they rebound in those good years.

The penguin is primarily found on the coastlines of southern Australia and New Zealand (Getty/iStockphoto)

But if we start to see the balance tipping towards more bad years versus good years, then theyre just not going to be able to recover.

The kororA, which is just under 10 inches (25cm) tall and weighs about a kilogram, is found in New Zealand and on the coastlines of southern Australia.

The species is classified as at risk of extinction, with numbers in significant decline over the past decade.

Mass die-offs with more than 1,000 dead penguins used to be a once-in-a-decade event, the Department of Conservation reports. But the climate crisis is driving the frequency of marine heatwaves and having a detrimental impact on the breeding seasons for kororA.

Conservation experts monitoring the North Island area have also found dozens of other dead birds including albatross, dotterels, fluttering shearwaters and diving petrels.

Localised extinctions following marine heatwaves have also been reported for species such as bull kelp and starfish.

Rising ocean heat, combined with more extreme and frequent storms, will likely mean more mass die-offs of penguins and other marine life.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  A well-known record producer in Jamaica has been accused of killing three people.

Linval Thompson Jr. of Shab Don Records was arrested and charged on Saturday with fatally shooting three men in their 20s in late May, authorities said in a statement Sunday. They gave no details of the incident.

Defense attorney Donahue Martin told reporters that Thompson is innocent.

Thompson is the son of musician and record producer Linval Thompson, who worked with artists including Lee Scratch Perry and Bunny Lee.
NY Daily News

Former Jackass star Bam Margera left a Florida rehab center this week without getting approval, the facilitys manager told police. The manager claims Margera, 42, was serving a court-ordered stint at center before leaving Monday, according to TMZ, which cited a Delray Beach police report. Margera allegedly had problems with some of the rules at the sober-living center and left after getting ...
Juneteenth National Independence Day falls on Sunday, June 19, 2022, and is a federal holiday according to the Office of Personnel Management. Most federal employees will receive the following Monday as a day off of work.

The newest Federal holiday was signed into law on June 17, 2021, by President Joe Biden to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S. following the conclusion of the Civil War.

The day has been celebrated annually around the country since 1865 when a Union General arrived in Galveston, Texas, and informed the enslaved African Americans that the Confederacy had lost the war and that they were free as per the Emancipation Proclamation, which was inked in 1863. In many parts of the country, the proclamation was not implemented until the army enforced it.

Texas was the first state to codify the date into law in 1980 and was the only state to have the day as a paid holiday for state employees in 2020. Since then, at least eight states  New York, Maine, Louisiana, Virginia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington and Illinois  have followed, according to AP.

The next federal holiday is Independence Day on Monday, July 4th. The holiday commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the same day in 1776 marking the colonies unified intention to secede from the British Empire. Fighting in the Revolutionary War would continue until 1783 when the Treaty of Paris was signed in September and the United States was officially separate from the empire.
Actor Kevin Spacey attends a pretrial hearing in 2019 at district court in Nantucket, Mass. (Steven Senne / Associated Press)

Actor Kevin Spacey has been formally charged with sexual offenses against three men in Britain and is expected to appear in a court in London this week, British police said Monday.

Spacey, 62, is accused of four counts of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.

Spacey is due to appear at London's Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday.

The alleged incidents took place in London between March 2005 and August 2008, and one in western England in April 2013. The victims are now in their 30s and 40s.

The Crown Prosecution Service authorized charges against Spacey last month.

Spacey, a two-time Academy Award winner, was questioned by British police in 2019 about claims by several men that he had assaulted them. The former House of Cards star ran Londons Old Vic theater between 2004 and 2015.

Spacey won a best supporting actor Academy Award for the 1995 film The Usual Suspects and a lead actor Oscar for the 1999 movie American Beauty.

But his celebrated career stalled in 2017 when actor Anthony Rapp accused the star of assaulting him at a party in the 1980s when Rapp was a teenager. Spacey denies the allegations.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
AFP

Ukraine pleaded with Western governments Wednesday to decide quickly on sending heavy weapons to shore up its faltering defences, as Russia said it would evacuate civilians from a frontline chemical plant. The industrial city of Severodonetsk is under intense bombardment as Russia focuses its offensive on the Donbas region in an effort to secure a swathe of eastern and southern Ukraine. Moscow's forces have intensified efforts to cut off beleaguered Ukrainian troops remaining in the city, and have said that they will open a corridor to allow civilians to flee the besieged factory. Western defence ministers, including US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, were meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, under pressure to step up weapons shipments to Ukraine. "Brussels, we are waiting for a decision," Mykhaylo Podolyak, senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on social media, warning that Ukraine's artillery is outgunned by 10 to one. "Daily, I receive a message from the defenders: 'We are holding on, just say: when to expect the weapons?'" he said. - 'Critical situation' - But NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, hosting the meeting of around 50 allies and partners, warned it would take time to get the latest hardware into service with trained Ukrainian troops. "Ukraine is really in a very critical situation and therefore, it's an urgent need to step up," Stoltenberg told journalists ahead of a gathering of NATO ministers. The West has poured arms into Ukraine, but Kyiv complains it has only received a tenth of what it needs and is clamouring for heavier weaponry. Stoltenberg said the allies had moved from sending older equipment to delivering "more long-range, more advanced air defence systems, more advanced artillery, more heavy weapons". But he added "there will also be some time needed to just make the Ukrainians ready to use and operate these systems". He said NATO members, such as the Netherlands, plan to offer training to Ukrainian forces to get them up to speed on the new heavy guns going in. Stoltenberg said alliance leaders should agree a "comprehensive assistance package" for Ukraine at a summit in Madrid later this month. About 500 civilians are taking shelter in Severodonetsk's Azot chemical plant, according to the head of the city's administration. The Russian defence ministry announced a humanitarian corridor would be established on Wednesday for evacuations from the plant, saying it was "guided by the principles of humanity". Evacuees would be transported to the city of Svatovo in the separatist-held region of Lugansk, Moscow said, urging those holding out at the plant to cease their "senseless resistance". There was no response from Kyiv to the announcement, and in a video address Tuesday, Zelensky lamented "painful losses" in the ongoing fighting. "But we must stay strong. This is our nation... Hanging in there in Donbas is crucial. Donbas is the key to deciding who will dominate in the coming weeks." After its February invasion, Russia was repelled from Kyiv, prompting it to focus its offensive on Donbas, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014. Capturing Severodonetsk has become a key goal, as it would open the road to Sloviansk and another major city, Kramatorsk. - NATO urges heavy weapons - Kyiv's forces face an increasingly desperate situation in Severodonetsk, with Ukrainian authorities estimating the Russians now control up to 80 percent of the city as they seek to encircle it. From an elevated position in Lysychansk, an AFP team saw black smoke rising from the Azot factory in Severodonetsk and another area in the city. The Ukrainian military is using the high ground to exchange fire with Russian forces fighting for control of Severodonetsk, just across the water. Lysychansk pensioner Valentina sat on the porch of her ground-floor apartment, where she lives alone, her two walking sticks to hand. "It's scary, very scary," said the 83-year-old former farm worker. "Why can't they agree at last, for God's sake, just shake hands?" Along the road from Lysychansk to Kramatorsk, Ukrainian forces were transporting more weapons systems to the front, while specialist vehicles carried tanks for repair. In the town of Novodruzhesk, close to Lysychansk, there was still a smell of burning and smoke from houses that had been destroyed by fire from shelling at the weekend. "It's not safe anywhere, it just depends on the time of day, that's all," said a soldier standing at a fire station with a skull logo on his sleeve. The Kremlin, meanwhile, said it had not received a request from London to intervene in the case of two Britons sentenced to death by pro-Moscow separatist authorities in eastern Ukraine. Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, along with Moroccan Brahim Saadun, were convicted of acting as mercenaries for Ukraine by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. bur-dc/spm
Chinese Canadian rapper and pop star Kris Wu attended his closed-door trial at a court in Beijing last week, with reports saying the former EXO member could receive between three to 10 years of jail time on rape charges.

The trial was held at Chaoyang District People's Court on Friday to protect the victims privacy, the Beijing High People's Court said in a news release.

Chinese influencer Du Meizhu accused Wu, 31, of luring girls under the age of 18 into having sex under the pretense that they would be recruited as actors. In a Weibo post on July 8, 2021, Du claimed Wu date-raped her when she was 17 years old and intoxicated in his presence. She added that there are other female victims, including two minors.

The Chaoyang police detained Wu, whose real name is Wu Yifan, on July 31, 2021. He was formally arrested on Aug. 16, 2021, on rape charges once the Chaoyang District Peoples Procurator in Beijing approved the arrest after [an] investigation in accordance with the law.

More from NextShark: 70% of Latino and Asian immigrants in California saw workplace discrimination, UCLA study finds

Besides rape charges, Wu is also facing "group licentiousness, a crime that involves a person organizing group sex with three or more people over the age of 16. While no reports have been released yet on Wus trial verdict, some media outlets noted that Chinese courts have a 99.9% conviction rate. The official verdict will be revealed at a later date.

A person charged with rape in China can typically expect a prison sentence of three to 10 years, while statutory rape can carry a life imprisonment sentence or a death sentence.

Meanwhile, group licentiousness, which applies to anyone above the age of 16, carries up to five years of imprisonment. The crime, however, could lead to longer sentences, especially if the people involved lured a minor into the activity. Chinas age of consent is 14.

More from NextShark: Asians are dirty as a mother f***er: Man Caught Targeting Koreatown Store Cashier With Racist Rant

Chinese courts reportedly considered deporting Wu at the time when he was formally charged.

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Born in Guangzhou, China, Wu rose to fame as part of the K-pop group EXO. The Canadian national left the group in 2014 and started a solo career in China. Several brands, including LOreal, Porsche and Vattie, immediately severed their ties with Wu due to the scandal.

Chinas National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) hosted a two-day ethical training session following Wus detainment in July 2020. The Training Class for Promoting the Production of High-Quality TV Series was attended by 64 Chinese celebrities and talents, including The First Half of My Life actor Lei Jiayin and former child star Zhang Yishan.

More from NextShark: Teen Calls Out Instagram for Policy Negligence, Starts Campaign to Make Instagram Safer

Featured Image via @kriswu

More from NextShark: COVID-19 Patient Who Bit Nurses Face to Be Charged After Recovery in China
Support for elderly important

If our communities learned anything from the pandemic, its that we can come together to support each other in tough times. We made new connections and tried new ideas.

Older adults in our communities were impacted most severely by the pandemic; it prevented many from being connected and engaged in their communities as they sought to stay safe. Our Area Agency on Aging network quickly realized how fortunate our communities are to have so many older adults serving as volunteers as they stopped being able to contribute out of concern for their own safety.

Besa volunteers Rob Lyons (in green coat) and Chris Hobbs (far right, in green poncho) and other unidentified volunteers help deliver Adopt a Senior gifts in 2019 at the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging.

More: Holiday gift-giving program for elderly carries added resonance amid coronavirus pandemic

One of the supports Ohioans rely on is the food assistance program known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). During the pandemic, programs such as SNAP have responded to the greater need. An increase in monthly SNAP benefits has had a significant positive impact for older Ohioans.

More: Meals on Wheels needs volunteers to handle demand tied to COVID-19 pandemic

The enhanced benefits will soon end, but the need will continue. Older Ohioans will soon represent close to a quarter of all food pantry visits statewide. We need Ohios leaders to consider immediate investments so we are prepared when these enhanced benefits end. For the longer term, we need sound public policy and innovative approaches to improve how our society supports us all as we age. We are all aging, and this is important to us all.

Beth Kowalczyk, Chief Policy Officer, Ohio Association of Area Agencies on Aging, Columbus

Letters to the Editor

Share your thoughts: How to submit a letter to the editor for The Columbus Dispatch

Elder abuse awareness

Americans believe in justice for all. Yet we fail to live up to this promise when we allow older adults to be abused or neglected. Older people are vital, contributing members of our society and their maltreatment diminishes us all. Just as we have confronted and addressed child abuse and domestic violence, so too can we find solutions to address elder abuse.

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More: 'More than 200,000 Ohioans age 60 and older experience some form of elder abuse.' What to do about it

June 15 is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. On that day, communities all over the world will highlight solutions to this systemic social challenge. SourcePoint is proud to participate in this national conversation.

Elder abuse is widespread. Every year an estimated 1 in 10 older Americans are victims of elder abuse. In Delaware County, Adult Protective Services investigated 88 reports last year. Unfortunately, thats only part of the picture: Experts believe that elder abuse is significantly under-reported. Research suggests that as few as 1 in 14 cases of elder abuse come to the attention of authorities.

June 15 is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day.

The good news is we can prevent and address the issue. While we are fortunate in Delaware County to have comprehensive aging services and strong community partners, we know we must do all we can to strengthen the social support structure, reduce social isolation, protect individuals, and build a community that lives up to our promise of justice for all. I invite you to read how to make a difference by visiting ncea.acl.gov.

To report abuse, neglect, or exploitation of an adult age 60 or older in Delaware County, call 740-833-2340.

Fara Waugh, Delaware

Columbus-NYC connection

A May 29 article, "Walking high, Downtown," noted that a project to be built Downtown will be modeled after the High Line in New York City.

The Edwards Companies is seeking to renovate and expand an elevated walkway Downtown that would be accessed from South Third Street, shown in this rendering.

More: Downtown Commission approves elevated walkway with plants, benches

Our daughter, Lisa Switkin, RLA, senior principal at James Corner Field Operations, a 1992 graduate of Bexley High School, was the lead designer of all three phases of NYC's High Line.

The Columbus connection will now be firmly further established for the foreseeable future.

Shelly & Linda Switkin, Bexley

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Letters: Elderly to turn to food pantries when SNAP benefits are cut
The team behind Kasama walks the red carpet while attending the James Beard Foundation Awards at the Lyric Opera House Monday June 13, 2022 in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

The James Beard Foundation Awards return to Chicago on Monday after a two-year hiatus, celebrating the best and brightest of the culinary world on a national scale.

Chicago Tribune food critics Louisa Chu and Nick Kindelsperger will be on the scene Monday, providing live coverage as prominent chefs and restaurateurs from across the country gather at Lyrics Civic Opera Building for the award ceremony. Follow them on Twitter, and check back here for live updates throughout the night.

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Scroll down to watch live video from the ceremony.

9:03 p.m.

The final award, for Outstanding Chef, goes to Mashama Bailey of The Grey in Savannah, Georgia. That means Chicago has repeated the 2018 experience of winning a single award for the night, which went to chef Erick Williams of Virtue for Best Chef in the Great Lakes region.

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8:57 p.m.

As the second-to-last award of the night is given out, Chicago appears to be in for a repeat of 2018, during which city restaurants and chefs were shut out of every category except Best Chef: Great Lakes.

Parachute restaurant, which reopened at the end of May after two years of being closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, lost out to Chai Pani, based in Asheville, North Carolina.

8:52 p.m.

Chicagos Kasama restaurant didnt take home the prize for Best New Restaurant, which went to Owamni restaurant of Minneapolis.

At Owamni, chef Sean Sherman draws inspiration from Indigenous cuisine and staffs his restaurant with nearly all Indigenous chefs and workers.

When asked about the many people who burst into tears dining at Owamni, Sherman responded, It really happens quite a bit, because it can be just a little bit overwhelming emotionally, especially for a lot of people coming from an Indigenous community who have never been to an Indigenous restaurant before. So its really touching. And we see it all the time.

During his acceptance speech, Sherman focused his remarks on colonialism and uplifting chefs and other people of color.

Our ancestors are proud tonight, he said. White supremacy doesnt like to be dismantled, but we can do it together.

8:20 p.m.

Chef Erick Williams of the Chicago restaurant Virtue won Best Chef for the Great Lakes region, which includes Illinois, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, during the 2022 James Beard Foundation Awards, on Monday, June 13, 2022, in Chicago. (Louisa Chu/Chicago Tribune)

Chef Erick Williams of Virtue Restaurant in Chicagos Hyde Park neighborhood, wins Best Chef: Great Lakes, a category that includes chefs from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan.

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The crowd cheered wildly as Williams name was called out. He thanked his ancestors for fighting for equity long before it was a trending topic.

Chefs stand up every day in kitchens, working in spaces that become more and more difficult every day, Williams said during his acceptance speech. Its hard for us to staff, and create, and yet we continue to be committed so that we can change lives through food.

But Williams, who was also named the Tribunes Chef of the Year in the 2019 Dining Awards, remained humble after Chicagos first win of the night.

I dont do it for awards. We do it to promote our culture and promote the wellbeing of our people, Williams said. Im honored, because this is why I wake up in the morning, to make sure that our teams are able to have all the possibilities and all the chances that are available to us.

7:45 p.m.

As regional best chef awards progress, Chicago finalists will be last in the lineup as four of the five finalists in the Great Lakes category.

Until then, a few observations from Tribune critic Nick Kindelsperger: Christian Clemenson, the actor who played James Beard in the recent TV show, Julia, was on stage to deliver the awards for Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific and Best Chef: Texas.

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Dawn Padmore, vice president of awards for the James Beard Foundation, led a moment of silence for all the restaurant workers who lost their lives during the pandemic.

And a little more on those killer suits from Kasama chefs Genie Kwon and Tim Flores: We knew we wanted to match, Kwon said of the burnt sienna suits. I think that was the only thing that we planned. Usually everybody thinks that were going to wear matching jumpsuits, which we did earlier today, but we decided to get a little more sophisticated.

7:02 p.m.

The second category with a Chicago finalist is Outstanding Bar Program. The national award went to Houstons Julep.

Nobodys Darling, a queer bar in Chicagos Andersonville neighborhood, became a finalist within its first year, a rare achievement. Read more from the Tribunes Josh Noel on how the fledgling bar took flight.

Thank you to my city of Houston, Texas for loving immigrants. For loving immigrants like me, like my family, welcoming us, and giving us the path to opening our own businesses.Alba Huerta of Julep, 2022 #jbfa Outstanding Bar Program winner. pic.twitter.com/8aJokCh5nX  James Beard Foundation (@beardfoundation) June 14, 2022

6:45 p.m.

The first James Beard Award with a Chicago finalist is Outstanding Baker, which goes to Don Guerra of Barrio Bread in Tucson, Arizona. The Chicago nominee was Maya-Camille Broussard of Justice of the Pies.

For Outstanding Baker: Don Guerra, Barrio Bread in Tucson, AZ #jbfa  James Beard Foundation (@beardfoundation) June 13, 2022

6:30 p.m.

Tornado sirens blared through the streets of downtown Chicago just as the James Beard Foundation Awards began.

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Phones keep screeching during the James Beard Awards as people continue to get warnings about the storm currently happening in Chicago.  Nick Kindelsperger (@nickdk) June 14, 2022

The ceremony began nonetheless, with Mayor Lori Lightfoot welcoming guests with opening remarks.

Lightfoot was excited to speak at the event, the first that shes been able to attend in person, she said: Lets continue to support our restaurants, from the mom and pop diners to James Beard award winners.

6 p.m.

Maya-Camille Broussard, of Justice of the Pies, walks the red carpet while attending the James Beard Foundation Awards at the Lyric Opera House Monday June 13, 2022 in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

The pre-event red carpet featured Chicago nominees and other notable figures.

Chicago chefs and Kasama co-owners Genie Kwon and Timothy Flores, both sported colorful suits. The couples acclaimed Filipino restaurant is a finalist for Best New Restaurant.

Its such an honor to be nominated, Flores said.

On the red carpet, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said food and drink are central to how she celebrates a big event, like an election night win.

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First of all, Im going to make sure that I have great local wines, Lightfoot said. And Im going to have the end of the evening with a great after dinner drink from a Chicago distillery in between, Im going to make sure that the appetizers are tight, and tasty.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot walks the red while attending the James Beard Foundation Awards at the Lyric Opera House Monday evening in Chicago. pic.twitter.com/9aAqOVV1PA  armando l sanchez (@mandophotos) June 14, 2022

Watch live:

The Red Carpet for #JBFA is LIVE from Chicago's @LyricOpera! Join us now as guests arrive and we prepare for a huge night! #GatherForGood https://t.co/LAJUwbgR7S  James Beard Foundation (@beardfoundation) June 13, 2022

Earlier coverage

This years awards come after the foundations 2020 reckoning with a lack of diversity among its would-be winners. The foundation canceled its awards during the first two years of the pandemic and underwent an audit of its judging practices, pledging to become more equitable with the return of its awards this year.

The Red Carpet for #JBFA is LIVE from Chicago's @LyricOpera! Join us now as guests arrive and we prepare for a huge night! #GatherForGood https://t.co/LAJUwbgR7S  James Beard Foundation (@beardfoundation) June 13, 2022

Nine Chicago chefs, restaurants and bars are up for six awards. Among the nominees for national awards are Jason Vincent, owner and operator of Logan Squares Giant, for Outstanding Chef; contemporary Korean restaurant Parachute, nominated for Outstanding Restaurant; and Kasama, nominated for Best New Restaurant.

Nobodys Darling, an Edgewater cocktail bar open less than a year that its Black women owners described as a lesbian bar, and a gay bar, and a queer bar, and a trans bar, is a finalist for Outstanding Bar Program.

Nobodys Darling became a national James Beard finalist in less than a year  heres how the fledgling LGBTQ bar took flight.



A great profile from @hopnotes ahead of Monday's awards ceremony. https://t.co/cuh2Tyj4H4#jbfa @chicagotribune  Chicago Tribune Food & Dining (@ChiTribFood) June 10, 2022

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

Maya-Camille Broussard of Justice of the Pies is nominated for Outstanding Baker.

Chicago also has four of the five Best Chef nominations from the Great Lakes region: Jason Hammel of Lula Cafe; Noah Sandoval of Oriole; John Shields and Karen Urie Shields of Smyth; and Erick Williams of Virtue Restaurant & Bar.

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Check out @louisachus moving look at @the_sioux_chefs Minnesota restaurant @owamni and Indigenous food in the Midwest.



Owamni is among tonights #jbfa contenders for Best New Restaurant.https://t.co/B8hnxmXLzB https://t.co/axaAVIIo56  Ariel Cheung (@arielfab) June 13, 2022

Chicago took home an early victory Saturday during the James Beard Foundation Media Awards, as Kumiko bar and creative director Julia Momose and co-author Emma Janzen won for The Way of the Cocktail, in the category of beverage books with recipes.

Chicagos Julia Momose and co-author Emma Janzen win a James Beard media award for The Way of the Cocktail recipe book!



Learn more about how the book came to be in our November 2021 writeup: https://t.co/3tIKQ1hOWB#jbfa @chicagotribune @ChiTribFood  Ariel Cheung (@arielfab) June 11, 2022

Its been a really tough time for us in restaurants and bars and everything, but the fact that we have this chance to share our stories through food and through drink and writing is just one of the most incredible things in the world, Momose said Saturday.

The foundation also named Chicagos Erika Allen as one of its four 2022 Leadership Awards winners, honored for their work toward creating a healthier, more equitable and sustainable food system. Allen is co-founder and CEO of Urban Growers Collective, a nonprofit farm on the citys South Side, and co-owner of Green Era Sustainability Partners, which seeks to improve management of biodegradable waste and access to soil.

More Tribune coverage of Beard award finalists:

Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.
Pulse survivor Amanda Grau, shot four times at the nightclub six years ago, fought fear to chase a dream.

Addressing an audience gathered for a Pulse memorial ceremony, she recalled her struggle to recover physically and mentally.

For almost a year after the shooting, I didnt want to go anywhere or see anybody, but my mom and my family told me you cant live a life in fear, Grau said. It made me realize that if I stayed inside all the time, afraid, that it was like I hadnt truly survived at all.

The evening ceremony at the Pulse Interim Memorial, live-streamed on Facebook, capped a day of remembrance programs that marked the passage of another year since Orlandos darkest day and honored the 49 people killed at the nightclub, their families and the survivors of the attack.

People who tuned in to the Facebook stream heard Grau admit her mental health is still in the healing process.

Many commented with heart, hugs and rainbow emojis.

I knew that I wanted to save people like the paramedics and EMTs who saved me, said Grau, who went to paramedic school on a 49 Legacy Scholarship in honor of Cory Connell, an aspiring firefighter killed in the attack. I wanted to put a light at the end of that tunnel.

She said her ordeal taught her two big lessons: You cant live in fear and you cant take life for granted.

Earlier Sunday, local LGBTQ advocates and community leaders gathered at First United Methodist Church in downtown Orlando for an event that was part memorial service, part political rally and part drag show.

Today is a hard day, said Joel Junior Morales, foundation manager for The Contigo Fund, which organized the program. We are gathering together because we know that being in community with each other makes our grief and pain a little bit easier to bear.

But the spate of mass shootings around the U.S. profoundly resonate with Orlando, said Morales, who recently visited Uvalde, Texas, to offer the not-for-profit groups help to the grieving families in the wake of the mass shooting at the town elementary school.

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An 18-year-old gunman, armed with a legally purchased AR-15-style automatic rifle, killed two teachers and 19 mostly Latino schoolchildren, ages 9 to 11, at Robb Elementary School on May 24, two days before school was to be recessed for summer vacation.

The 2-1/2 hour program, titled For Us, By Us: A Tribute to Those Surviving & Fighting for Change, originally was scheduled for the Walt Disney Amphitheatre at Lake Eola Park, but was moved from the outdoor bandshell to an air-conditioned space at the First United Methodist Church.

The names of the 49 people killed at Pulse were read aloud in a solemn moment on the sixth anniversary of the tragedy.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, among a handful of elected leaders who attended the program, told the audience of about 200 people that City Beautiful reacted with love rather than hate after the crime, and similar tributes poured in from all over the world.

I actually had somewhat of an inkling that maybe (June 12, 2016) could be a transcendent day in our country, in the world, he said, referring to attitudes towards LGBTQ people. But President Trump was elected and weve gone in a somewhat different direction.

Dyer praised the LGBTQ community for helping to make Orlando a city that welcomes everyone.

But we will need to fight back against hatred in all forms as well as, quite honestly, repulsive legislation and vetoes that have come out of Tallahassee aimed at the very same communities that were touched by the Pulse tragedy, he said, without mentioning specific bills or actions.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the states GOP-led legislature have come under fire from LGBTQ advocates for the passage of a Parental Rights in Education bill critics dubbed dont say gay. The law prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity through grade 3, or in any grade in which it is not age appropriate, phrases the law doesnt define.

DeSantis also vetoed from the states budget money intended for Zebra Coalition, an Orlando nonprofit that helps LGBTQ youth.

The roster of speakers included creators of not-for-profit groups, which emerged to fill gaps in mental health counseling and other services for Black and Hispanic LGBTQ people; Pulse survivors like Keinon Carter, who was critically wounded in the attack and now advocates for meaningful gun laws; and families of victims, including the parents of Deonka Deidra Drayton, Shepherd and Andrea Drayton, who established 3D Initiative in their home state of South Carolina.

But the event also mixed in drag performances by entertainers Ava DeAmor and Aurora Garavani Gucci to pump up the crowd.

The Contigo Fund, formed in the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub massacre, is described on its home page as an effort focused on helping to bring meaningful, transformative and lasting change to Pulse-affected communities in Central Florida.

It has provided more than $600,000 in grants to non-profits like Basically Wonderful, which provides peer-led spaces that are welcoming to queer and disabled communities; Bros in Convos, which seeks to empower queer individuals of color in Central Florida; and Dignity Power, whose mission includes fighting for criminal justice reform to ensure the LGBTQ community has equal representation.

All took the stage and a bow.

The audience also heard from Yasmin Flasterstein, the Latinx co-founder of another Contigo-supported organization, Peer Support Space, which provides mental-health resources and options for underserved LGBTQ+ people and communities of color.

She described her own personal struggles and urged anyone suffering to take care of themselves.

There is hope, Flasterstein said. Eat well, get rest, reach out for support, engage in activities you enjoy, journal, cry your eyes out, scream. Do whatever is healing for you. And if you need help, reach out for help. There is nothing shameful about it. You are not alone.

____
LONDON (Reuters) - London's Heathrow Airport said on Monday that May was its busiest month since March 2020 as it dealt with 5.3 million passengers, 79% of 2019 levels.

Cancelled flights, long queues and staff shortages at UK airports disrupted the travel plans of British holidaymakers during the Jubilee half-term break.

However, Heathrow said its check-in generally worked well in May, with more passengers checking-in online, while 90% of passengers went through security in less than ten minutes.

It said no more flights were cancelled at short notice than on any normal day and Border Force performed well.

Heathrow did caution that while it rebuilds capacity from the pandemic, resources remains tight, in line with other airports in the UK and Europe.

"We are working closely with airlines and handlers to match supply and demand," it said.

"This has made the difference at Heathrow in being able to get passengers away over Easter and the Jubilee half term and is now being adopted by other major hubs in Europe."

Heathrow is reopening Terminal 4 on Tuesday and 30 airlines will move in ahead of the summer peak.

(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
Looking for a new job? McDonalds is looking to hire about 6,000 employees in Central Florida.

The fast-food restaurant said it is hiring for both part-time and full-time roles.

People are the heart of our business, and the skills our crew members learn in our restaurants, like responsibility, teamwork and responsiveness, can open the door to a brighter future, said Joe Cox, McDonalds owner/operator. As local business owners, were committed to empowering our employees and the communities we serve.

READ: Florida gas prices make big climb in weeks time, still setting records

The locations are offering several new benefits, including competitive wages, paid time off, flexible scheduling and more.

To learn more, click here or text apply to 38000 to start an application.

READ: Looking for a new career? Osceola County looking to fill dozens of bus driver, bus attendant roles

Click here to download the free WFTV news and weather apps, click here to download the WFTV Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
A man was severely hurt after a shooting in South Memphis.

On Jun. 12 at approximately 5:30 PM, the Memphis Police Department (MPD) responded to a shooting call in the 300 block of Driver Street.

On June. 12, 2022, at 5:28 pm, Officers responded to a shooting at 353 Driver Street in reference to a shooting. Officers located one male victim on the scene, and he was transported critical to Regional One. No one is in custody at this time.



This is an ongoing investigation. pic.twitter.com/QrRyJqnpI0  Memphis Police Dept (@MEM_PoliceDept) June 13, 2022

When officers arrived, they found a man shot.

The victim was taken to Regional One in critical condition, police said.

This is still an ongoing investigation.

Download the FOX13 Memphis app to receive alerts from breaking news in your neighborhood.

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A Maryland sheriffs deputy was shot and killed in the line of duty on Sunday night while attempting to capture a fugitive, authorities said.

Wicomico County Deputy First Class Glenn Hilliard, 41, spotted the suspect leaving an apartment complex in Pittsville and gave chase, the sheriffs office said. While trying to apprehend the suspect, Hilliard was fatally shot.

Following an extensive manhunt, law enforcement captured the suspect. Authorities didnt immediately name the suspect, who they said was wanted on multiple felony warrants in multiple jurisdictions.

An earlier alert from the sheriffs office said a man named Austin Davidson was wanted for questioning in connection with an officer-involved shooting on Gumboro Road in Pittsville that same night. Davidson, who was considered armed and dangerous, was later located, according to the sheriff's office.

ALABAMA SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICER SHOOTS, KILLS SUSPICIOUS PERSON OUTSIDE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: REPORT

No further information was immediately available.

Hilliard, a 16-year law enforcement veteran, is survived by his wife and three children. He had just transferred back to patrol upon request, the sheriffs office said.

"Brave men and women like Glenn Hilliard put their lives in danger every day to protect our families, and I am extremely grateful to them for keeping our communities safe," the sheriffs office said.

The sheriffs office remembered Hilliard as an "incredible human being."

"As an organization, we are heartbroken over this senseless and tragic murder," the agency said. "This loss exacts an enormous emotional toll on the Sheriffs Office family, but we will do what is necessary and proper to honor Glenn and support those who knew and loved him."

Hilliard would have celebrated his 42nd birthday next week.
Florida Keys sheriffs deputies arrested an off-duty Miami-Dade County police officer who they say was speeding and swerving in different lanes on U.S. 1 early Sunday morning. The officer was charged with driving while intoxicated in addition to fleeing and eluding.

Donovan William Rojas, 26, was driving his unmarked Miami-Dade County-issued Chrysler 300 at speeds of more than 110 mph around 3:57 a.m. for about three miles before he stopped for several pursuing Monroe County deputies in Key Largo, according to the sheriffs office.

Rojas had trouble maintaining his lane along U.S. 1 before finally pulling over at mile marker 105, said sheriffs office spokesman Adam Linhardt.

The driver, Rojas, identified himself as a member of the Miami-Dade Police Department and the Chrysler as his unmarked agency vehicle, Linhardt said in a statement. Once Rojas vehicle was stopped, deputies observed emergency lights activated on the visor of the Chrysler. The emergency lights were only visible from the windshield of the unmarked vehicle. Deputies did not see the emergency lights during the pursuit.

Deputy Casey Matthews wrote in a police report released Monday that when Rojas exited his car, he exclaimed, Im a cop. Im a Miami-Dade cop!

According to the report, Rojas had an overpowering odor of alcohol, difficulty standing and slurred speech. He also refused to perform field sobriety exercises and to blow for an alcohol breath test.

Rojas was booked into county jail at 5:24 a.m. and released shortly before noon. His first scheduled court date is June 28.

Attorney information for Rojas wasnt available as of Sunday night.

Deputies found two Glock handguns, a Miami-Dade police ID and badge and a police-department-issued body-worn camera inside the car, according to the arrest report.

Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay thanked his deputies for acting quickly in this case.

Though this suspects behavior put his life, innocent civilian lives, and the lives of my officers in danger, I view this as a singular case and not indicative of the Miami-Dade Police Department as a whole, he said Sunday in a statement.

Rojas, who has worked with Miami-Dade police since 2016, has been relieved of his duties without pay, Interim Director George A. Perez said in a statement.

Any suspect that puts the communitys lives and officers lives at risk is unacceptable! he said. The MDPD will not tolerate this behavior as it is not aligned with our commitment to the community and its sacred trust.
By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - Michael Avenatti, the twice-convicted lawyer who represented porn actress Stormy Daniels in her legal battles against former U.S. President Donald Trump, on Sunday offered to plead guilty to "multiple" criminal charges he still faces in California.

Avenatti, 51, already faces five years in prison after being convicted in February of fraud and identity theft for diverting nearly $300,000 in book proceeds meant for Daniels, and convicted in February 2020 of trying to extort up to $25 million from Nike Inc.

He potentially faces more than 300 years in prison on 36 criminal charges in the California case, including for stealing millions of dollars from clients, lying to the Internal Revenue Service and a bankruptcy court, and defrauding a bank.

In a filing with the federal court in Santa Ana, California, Avenatti said he wanted to plead guilty "to be accountable; accept responsibility; avoid his former clients being further burdened; save the court and the government significant resources; and save his family further embarrassment."

The filing did not say how many or which charges Avenatti wanted to plead guilty to.

It said he has been unable to reach a plea agreement with prosecutors, despite his "substantial efforts" in the last 30 days, and wants a court hearing.

A trial on the first 10 charges is scheduled for July 26, following a mistrial last August. Avenatti is representing himself.

Neither prosecutors nor a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Tracy Wilkison in Los Angeles immediately responded to requests for comment. Dean Steward, a lawyer who advises Avenatti on his defense, declined to comment.

Avenatti is appealing his conviction and 2-1/2 year sentence in the Nike case, and has filed a notice of appeal of his four-year sentence in the Daniels case. The sentences partially overlap, resulting in the five-year term.

The California case is U.S. v Avenatti, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 19-cr-00061.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
MILAN (AP)  Italys furniture and design industry embraced the Milan Furniture Fair after a two-year pandemic delay with unapologetic, over-the-top statement pieces, multi-purpose furnishings adapted to small spaces, and sustainable creations by young designers pushing the industry toward a greener path.

After a surprising pandemic redecorating boom, the industry is looking to an uncertain future. There are raw materials shortages, higher transport costs and general economic uncertainty generated by Russias invasion of Ukraine. Sales of Italian furnishings surged to 16 billion euros (about $16.7 billion) in 2021, a 16% increase over 2019 and 25% more than 2020.

Despite the murky outlook, the worlds premiere furniture and design fair, known in Italian as Salone del Mobile, kept the focus on innovation as it recorded a rebound in attendance during six days of previews that closed Sunday.

Attendance was above expectations, reaching some 400,000 at both Salone and collateral events that spill out into the city, said Alessia Cappello, Milan's top economic development official. Two-thirds were from overseas.

Eye-catching novelties included an oversize gild-framed NFT; benches that convert to workstations or shaded beds for the homeless; and an elegant, dignified walker whose purpose was disguised by its sculpted shape.

It was fantastic to be back at Salone del Mobile,'' said Alana Stevens, president of the U.S. furniture maker Knoll. Much more than a fair, rather a gathering of an incredible global community of those passionate about design. The intersection of designers, artists and the business of design was inspiring.

German fashion designer Philipp Plein unveiled his inaugural furniture collection in collaboration with the Dutch brand Eichholtz, which has furnished many of Pleins own homes in Europe and the United States.

Pleins entry into home design closes a circle for the designer, whose first enterprise was designing dog beds. Fittingly, the new collection includes a leather dog bed on a golden frame for a well-appointed pooch.

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He represents over-the-top luxury, and people want that right now, said Eichholtz COO Robin Goemans.

Jet-setters aspiring to Pleins rock n roll aesthetic can settle into a curved velvet sofa with gold studding. They can admire their wardrobe on a marble-pedestal clothing rack fit for a diva, and their sneaker collection in a standing trunk with mirrored interior. A marble table doubles as a pingpong table, and unique NFTs are digitalized into logoed mirrors.

Plein is just the latest fashion brand to enter the world of furniture design starting in the early 1990s, often by way of homes collections featuring bedding, pillows and towels close to their textile roots.

The fashion world understood at a certain point that design was able to capture the popular imagination in a way that was extremely interesting also for clothing brands, said Marco Sammicheli, director of design at the Triennale design museum.

On the sidelines of Salone, Sammicheli curated a show at the Triennale of the Memphis Group, a postmodern design movement founded by Ettore Sottsass that made its world debut at the Milan Furniture Fair in 1981.

The movement pushed the limits between the commercial and the artistic, tensions that still exist between the trade fair, with its commercial aims, and the myriad of collateral events where the focus is often more on artistic statements.

Memphis is the example that gives the best interpretation of Italian design after Olivetti and before Alessi, Sammicheli said, referring to the Olivetti business machine manufacturer best known for its typewriter, and the Alessi tableware and decor brand.

Alessi celebrated its 100th anniversary at Salone with a cutlery collaboration with the late Off-White designer Virgil Abloh. It held an exhibition looking at the family-owned companys journey from a metal factory to a laboratory for design, and a dinner where invited guests included some of the 300 designers who have worked with the brand in recent decades.

Ablohs three-piece cutlery set, dubbed Occasional Object, features an industrial design reminiscent of a mess kit, with a carabiner to clip the pieces together and onto the body as a fashion extension easily paired with the popular Off-White 200-centimeter industrial belt.

Nigerian designer Lani Adeoye won top prize at the SaloneSatellite event with the walker she designed for her grandfather, who rejected the more standard, medical-looking versions. An interlocking arch that represents unity gives her walker a sculptural flair, and the cording made out of water hyacinth connects both local artistry with sustainable materials.

He is a dignified man, who worked at the bank for many years and finds it embarrassing to be out with a walker, said the 32-year-old designer. You can have it in your environment, and it looks artistic. No one knows it is a walker.

Satellite is open to designers under 35 years old, and aims to help them develop relationships with manufacturers and find ways to realize projects that were developed in full liberty, without needing to take into account production processes, said Maria Porro, president of Salone.

The younger generation's natural hewing to sustainable materials and processes also presents a challenge to the wider industry. Bigger brands are more often heralding sustainable materials.

That included recycled plastics in the latest iterations of Kartells famed Louis Ghost chair by Philippe Starck, but also the Re-Chair collaboration with illy coffee that is made from discarded coffee pods, alleviating somewhat the guilt of the home capsule consumer.

Knoll introduced an oak chair, bench and stool series by Antonio Citterio called Klismos. Cotton chord is woven into a seat with a light elastic give, and the wood is notched together, so it doesnt require glue, typically sourced from petroleum products. Leather cushions filled with vegetable fibers are optional.

While responsibly sourced materials are important, Porro said, the real challenge to the industry is to reduce its energy footprint, doing things like replacing electric light with natural light and producing by order instead of creating stock. Toward that end, the Federlegno association of Italian furniture makers joined the UN Global Compact committing to responsible business practices during the 60th Salone last week.

We need sustainable production, that is the real challenge, Porro said. It is a question of culture.
AFP

Russia said Tuesday it would establish a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from a chemical plant in Severodonetsk, as the two sides battled for control of the key city in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. Russian forces have stepped up efforts to cut off the Ukrainian troops still in the industrial hub, destroying all three bridges which connect it across a river to Lysychansk. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile once again appealed for heavy weapons from the West, criticising the "restrained behaviour" of some European leaders. Moscow has for weeks targeted the twin cities as the last areas in the Lugansk region of the Donbas still under Ukrainian control. Communication with the city was "complicated" with the situation on the ground changing every hour, the head of Severodonetsk's administration, Oleksandr Stryuk, told Ukrainian television. Around 500 civilians were taking shelter under "heavy fire" in the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, Stryuk said. The Russian defence ministry said it was "ready to organise a humanitarian operation" on Wednesday to evacuate from the plant to the separatist-controlled part of the Lugansk region. - 'Surrender or die' - Regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said Monday Ukraine's forces had been pushed back from Severodonetsk's centre with the Russians controlling 70 to 80 percent of the city in their attempt to "encircle it". Capturing Severodonetsk would open the road to Sloviansk and another major city, Kramatorsk, in Moscow's push to conquer Donbas, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014. Zelensky, in comments to Danish journalists Tuesday, insisted that the war could only end once Ukrainians were the only ones left on its territory. How long that took depended "very much" on international support, and "the personalities of the leaders of European states". He regretted what he called, "the restrained behaviour of some leaders" which, he said, had "slowed down arms supplies very much". Zelensky has repeatedly urged the West to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine as quickly as possible. - 'Not safe anywhere' - From an elevated position in Lysychansk, an AFP team saw black smoke rising from the Azot factory in Severodonetsk and another area in the city. The Ukrainian military is using the high ground to exchange fire with Russian forces fighting for control of Severodonetsk, just across the water. Along the road from Lysychansk to Kramatorsk, Ukrainian forces were transporting more weapons systems to the front, including an M777 howitzer, while specialist vehicles were carrying tanks to be repaired. In the town of Novodruzhesk, close to Lysychansk, there was still a smell of burning and smoke from a group of houses that had been destroyed by fire from shelling at the weekend, with just chimneys left. "It's not safe anywhere, it just depends on the time of day, that's all," said a soldier standing at the local fire station with a skull logo on his sleeve. "There are tons of people (still) here," he added. Further away in Sloviansk, Nataliya, 41, a now unemployed cleaner said she was trying to decide whether to evacuate. "People will leave again if they start bombing the town heavily," she told AFP. "If it's like Mariupol, they'll give us buses. We'll leave if the Russians enter Sloviansk." - 'Positive signal' - The European Union needs to "give a positive signal" to Ukraine and be "open" to granting it candidate status, France's Europe minister, Clement Beaune, said Tuesday. Ukraine has applied to become a member of the bloc, with the European Commission due to give its recommendation in the coming days. But some member states are sceptical about potentially fast-tracking Ukraine's accession. The process would "take time", Beaune said, adding that the first priority was to "stop the war". "Ukraine is fighting and defending our shared European values, it must at least be a candidate for EU," President Zelensky said Tuesday. Russian energy giant Gazprom said Tuesday it would reduce gas deliveries to the EU via the Nord Stream pipeline by 40 percent, due to the delayed return of compressor units from German company Siemens. A number of European countries, including Germany, where the underwater pipeline makes land, are highly reliant on supplies of Russian gas for their energy needs. The Kremlin meanwhile said it had not received a request from London to intervene in the case of two Britons sentenced to death by pro-Moscow separatist authorities in eastern Ukraine. Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, along with Moroccan Saaudun Brahim, were convicted of acting as mercenaries for Ukraine by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. "Everything will depend on the appeal from London, and I am sure that the Russian side will be ready to consider it," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Russia also announced it was blacklisting 49 UK citizens, including defence officials and prominent journalists from the BBC, The Financial Times and The Guardian. burs-sea/gw
The Navy has censured three Marine Corps officers and two Navy officers for their roles in the deadly amphibious assault vehicle (AAV) tragedy in southern California in July 2020.

The letters of censure issued to the five officers by Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro serve as a public rebuke of their actions before and during the accident, which resulted in the death of eight Marines and one sailor.

When leaders actions or inactions result in the loss of life or capital resources, the senior leadership of the Department of the Navy has a responsibility to determine the root cause and hold those accountable, Del Toro said in a message sent to the Department of the Navy on June 2.

Following a thorough review of the command investigations into the AAV sinking, these officers received [Secretarial Letters of Censure] due to their inadequate leadership and execution of their oversight duties, he added.

The letters were issued to retired Marine Lt. Gen. Joseph Osterman, the former commanding general of the I Marine Expeditionary Force; Marine Col. Christopher Bronzi, former commanding officer of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit; Navy Capt. Stewart Bateshansky, former commander of the Amphibious Task Force; Navy Capt. John Kurtz, former commanding officer of the USS Somerset amphibious transport dock; and Marine Lt. Col. Keith Brenize, former commanding officer of the 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion.

The nine service members were killed on July 30, 2020, when their AAV quickly sank in 385 feet of water off the coast of San Clemente Island while training with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The vehicle  which can weigh roughly 26 tons and was carrying 16 people  sank after it began to take on water while traveling from the island to its transport dock ship after an exercise.

The vessel was one of several that experienced mechanical problems on the island, and as it tried to return, its transmission failed. Water then began to fill the vehicle, but its commander, Lt. Col. Michael Regner, waited too long to order service members to evacuate.

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A Marine Corps investigation later found that poor vehicle maintenance, inadequate training and bad judgment by leaders led to the sinking of the vehicle, one of the deadliest military training accidents in decades.

The investigation also found that Regner  who was relieved from command in October 2020 as a result of the accident  should have known the vehicles were unsound and should not have been used in the ocean.

The five other reprimands, several of which were expected, come after an administrative panel reviewed 6,000 pages of investigative reports and evidence.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
By any reasonable measure, Sochi Saigonese Kitchens first year has been a success.

Over the past few months, co-owners and partners Chinh Pham and Son Do have picked up awards from Michelin (a Bib Gourmand) and Jean Banchet (for best heritage restaurant). Chicago Magazine crowned it the fourth-best new restaurant of the year.

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Thats not bad for a couple who had never run a restaurant before. Born in Vietnam, they both studied finance at a college in Australia, before returning home to work for Dos family business. I was a purchasing manager, keeping track of the inventory, Chinh Pham said. But it was always our dream to open a restaurant.

But as Pham relates over the phone, success was not guaranteed. We had a really tight budget, she said. We are immigrants, so we had to do everything on our own to try to minimize the costs.

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The week they opened the Lakeview neighborhood restaurant, they had $150 in the company account, making her incredibly nervous, Pham said.

I knew I had to pay the employees and pay for the alcohol and the food, she said. I wondered how I could survive. I was so lucky.

Its also clear that Pham and Do dont leave much to luck. Instead, the couple are hyperfocused on every detail of the restaurant, from the plates, most of which are imported from Vietnam, to the recipes.

Take the original egg rolls, called gha gio in Vietnamese. Unlike most egg rolls in Chicago that are rolled in a wheat-based wrapper, these feature a thin rice paper that blisters unevenly when it meets the hot oil, leaving the crusts splattered with patches of dark brown and golden yellow. An order of four egg rolls also comes with pristine leaves of Boston lettuce, fresh basil, pickled daikon and carrot, and a sauce that balances sweetness with a spicy sourness.

Original egg roll is photographed at Sochi Saigonese Kitchen. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

Take one of the rolls, wrap it up in lettuce, with herbs and pickles and dip. Each bite leads you through so many different flavors and textures that its almost hilarious to list them all here, but here are 12 in alphabetical order: aromatic, crackly, crunchy, funky, juicy, meaty, plump, salty, spicy, sour, sweet, supple. While Im sure theres more, whats so captivating is that none overwhelms the other.

Sochi isnt the only Vietnamese restaurant in town serving these rice paper-wrapped delights, but nowhere else are all the elements so precisely assembled. The restaurant is filled with these small revelations. Its not a restaurant that wallops you on the head with heat or heft. Instead, youll walk away thinking about the tiny details, like how the spring rolls come with a peanut-based sauce that trades overt sweetness for a captivating funk. Or how each slice of meat in the seared duck salad is so stunningly tender, allowing you to appreciate the crunchy crab chips and surprisingly delicate fish sauce dressing.

Seared duck salad. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

Asked how she figures out the right balance of ingredients, Pham is honest. We do it exactly how we eat at home, she said. When I eat a dish, it has to follow my taste preference. I have to make it exactly.

The banh mi, available only for lunch, takes exactness to a whole new level. Chicago has its fair share of satisfying banh mi sandwiches, but none where all the elements  pork belly, pate, pork loaf, scallion, cilantro, radish, cucumber, mayonnaise, chili paste, maggi sauce  are so exactly layered. From beginning to end, youll experience all the elements with each bite.

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The main dishes arent as consistently captivating as the starters, but there are some highlights. The Slap Mama crab fried rice features plump pieces of sweet crab. Its also cooked in such a way that each kernel of rice is optimally flavored and not the least bit greasy. The dish is also simply gorgeous, thanks to a topping of bright red masago, a variety of fish roe.

Slap Mama crab fried rice at Sochi Saigonese Kitchen. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

The chili salt chicken is an expertly cooked half-chicken, with an appropriately salty and slightly spicy crust. Too bad its also paired with those starch-crusted fries, which always remind me of Burger King. Of course, had my fellow food critic, Louisa Chu, penned this review, she would probably have raved about them, because she loves these kinds of fries. (Like ketchup on hot dogs, its often the subject of our critic-on-critic debates.) Sorry, Sochi. Just luck of the draw.

Sochis menu is minuscule compared with most Vietnamese restaurants in Chicago, but its hard not to want it even more laser-focused. Pham said they included pho, the brothy beef and rice noodle soup, on the menu mostly because their customers assume Vietnamese restaurants always serve the dish. Their version features a genuinely savory broth with thin slices of brisket, but it lacks the captivating complexity and myriad topping choices youd find at a place like Pho 5 Lua (6261 N. McCormick Blvd.). Its still a satisfying bowl, but you can tell the kitchens heart is elsewhere.

The only real dud here is the cocktail menu. Both the Saigon Sling and Crazy Strawberry were so unbalanced, I couldnt finish either. The small wine and beer list is probably the best bet.

The dessert menu lists four options, but both times I visited, only the cheesecake was available. This turned out not to be an issue. The family recipe is delicate and creamy, making it an ideal ending to any meal.

Captivating but never brash, Sochi specializes in dishes that subtly get under your skin. My only regret is that it took me a year to visit.

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Sochi Saigonese Kitchen

1358 W. Belmont Ave.

773-904-8511

sochikitchen.com

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

Tribune rating: Two stars, very good

Open: Wednesday to Saturday. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner 4-8 p.m.

Prices: Starters, $10 to $18; main dishes, $18 to $32

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Noise: Conversation friendly

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible, with bathrooms on first floor

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.

nkindelsperger@chicagotribune.com
Consequences of destruction in Lysychansk

Collaborators transmitted data through the Starlink satellite system, Hayday noted.

Read also: Several enemy attacks repulsed in Donbas, invaders suffer losses, retreat  General Staff

The (SBU) Security Service of Ukraine, along with the police, have conducted a comprehensive check of persons in Lysychansk, from the mobile devices of whoom information about our military may have been leaked, Hayday said.

Significantly, these Russian agents transmitted data through the Starlink satellite network. This is exactly the network installed in all our humanitarian headquarters.

Read also: Zelensky establishes Lysychansk Military Administration and appoints its governor

According to the regional governor, the collaborators came to a humanitarian aid station, received help, and then cooperated with Russian forces, he said.

They came, took humanitarian aid, asked for help, received it, and without leaving the headquarters, betrayed Ukraine, he said.

Read also: Photographer takes terrifying video of Lysychansk under Russian fire

"They knew that their actions kill and destroy. Why did you give up your own people? The Security Service of Ukraine has already identified channels of communication between the invaders' representatives and the so-called air observers.

A six-year-old child was killed as a result of Russian shelling in Lysychansk, Luhansk Oblast on June 12.

The Russian military also destroyed a second bridge between Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, and they are now heavily shelling a third.
LONDON (Reuters) - France made up more ground on Britain in attracting overseas direct investment into financial services last year, according to research by accountancy firm EY published on Monday.

Britain still retained top spot in the European rankings - attracting 63 projects in 2021 - but the gap with second-placed France narrowed, with its neighbour recording 60, its highest number in the last decade.

Both nations enticed a higher number of projects in 2021 than in the previous year - up seven for Britain and 11 for France - bucking the trend for a contraction in Europe overall.

Foreign direct investment into financial services across Europe overall fell 2.8% last year, EY said.

London stayed top of the city table, with 39 projects in 2021, but this was less than half the 86 projects it chalked up in 2018. Paris recorded 38, just one project behind London.

Britain's top spot showed it retained its appeal for international investors after Brexit, EY's researchers said, but they said France was catching up.

"France in particular is growing quickly, closing the gap with the UK, and even overtaking it in attracting the highest number of investment projects from the U.S. for the first time," said Omar Ali, a financial services managing partner at EY.

Spain, Germany and Ireland rounded out the top five countries in EY's rankings, while Madrid, Dublin and Berlin completed the top five cities.

Britain continued to attract proportionally more new projects than France - which tend to generate more jobs - rather than expansions to existing projects, EY said.

Britain was also seen as the most attractive European country for future financial services investment, ahead of Germany in second and France in third, an EY survey of global investors found.

(Reporting by Iain Withers; Editing by Edmund Blair)
Syringes and colorful bandages are prepared for children receiving COVID-19 vaccines in Pittsfield, Mass. (Ben Garver / Berkshire Eagle)

Federal health officials said Sunday that kid-sized doses of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccines appear to be safe and effective for children under 5, a key step toward a long-awaited decision to begin vaccinating the youngest Americans.

The Food and Drug Administration posted its analysis of the Pfizer shot ahead of a Wednesday meeting where outside experts will vote on whether the shots are ready for the nations 18 million babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Kids under 5 are the only group not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S.

Late last week the FDA posted a similar analysis of Modernas shots for children under 6.

If regulators clear the shots by one or both companies, vaccinations could begin as soon as next week, with the drugmakers ready to rapidly ship doses ordered by the government. Parents have been pressing federal officials for months for the opportunity to protect their smallest children as more adults shed masks and abandon other public health precautions.

While only about 3% of U.S. COVID cases are in the age group 6 months to 4 years, hospitalization and death rates in that group are higher than those for older children, according to the FDAs analysis  one reason experts have said protecting this group is important.

The FDA said children who received Pfizers shots during testing developed high levels of antibodies expected to protect them against the coronavirus. Thats the basic threshold needed to win FDA authorization. But additional testing turned up key differences, with stronger results for Pfizer.

Pfizers vaccine, given as a three-shot series, appeared 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, although that calculation was based on just 10 cases diagnosed among study participants. The figure could change as Pfizers study continues.

Modernas two-dose series was only about 40% to 50% effective at preventing milder infections, though the two companies' shots were tested at different times during the pandemic, when different variants were circulating. Moderna has begun testing a booster for young children.

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On Wednesday, the FDA will ask an independent panel of vaccine experts to debate both companies data before voting. The FDA is not required to follow the groups recommendations, but the process is seen as a key step in publicly vetting the shots.

The FDA is expected to make its official decision shortly after Wednesdays all-day meeting. After that, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends how to use vaccines, will convene its own expert panel to debate which young children should be immunized.

Its not clear how much demand there will initially be for the shots. A recent survey suggests only 1 in 5 parents of young children would get their kids vaccinated right away. Vaccines have been available since November for older U.S. children, yet less than one-third of those aged 5 to 11 have gotten the two recommended doses, according to government figures.

For the youngest children, each company is offering different dose sizes and number of shots, beginning at 6 months through 4 years for Pfizer and through 5 years for Moderna.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech plan to offer two shots three weeks apart followed by a third at least two months later  each one-tenth the dose given to adults. Pfizer is currently the only company with a COVID-19 vaccine for older U.S. children.

Moderna is seeking FDA clearance for two shots, each a quarter of its adult dose, given about four weeks apart.

The FDA currently allows Modernas vaccine to be used only in adults. But some countries allow full-size doses for teens and half-size shots for kids ages 6 to 11  a step the FDA also is considering.

More than 30,000 U.S. children younger than 5 have been hospitalized with COVID-19, and nearly 500 deaths from the disease have been reported in that age group, according to U.S. health officials.

The government allowed pharmacies and states to start placing orders for child-sized doses last week, with 5 million initially available  half made by Pfizer and half by Moderna.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Pharrell Williams has gifted the entire 2022 graduating class of the Washington, D.C. public school system with free tickets to his Something In The Water (SITW) festival.

Williams announced that he would be giving all seniors free tickets to celebrate their achievement of completing high school.

Williams explained that he was inspired by the students ability to finish their education despite dealing with the pandemic in the last few years.

Congrats to this years D.C. school graduates on all of the things you guys have accomplished. You truly inspired all of us through your resiliency and your ability to learn through a pandemic, Williams said. You deserve to be celebrated, and so were gonnaso on behalf of the Something In The Water and XQ Institute, we would like to gift each of you one free pass to the festival.

On Juneteenth weekend, we are going to celebrate with music, art, culture, and most importantly, you, he continued. So make sure to talk to your school leaders and make sure you get your details so that you can get your pass. And last but not least, Imma see you there. Blessings.

.@Pharrell has a special message for all DC public high school seniors: XQ and the @sitw family are gifting every DC public high school senior one free pass to #SITWfest! Congrats DC Class of 2022! pic.twitter.com/xYNPuFC4zp  XQ (@XQAmerica) June 10, 2022

Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. congratulated the graduating seniors by sharing the video of Williams on her official Twitter account. She confirmed that every graduating senior from the public and charter school system would receive a free pass to the festival and shared how proud they are of the 2022 class.

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The school year is coming to a close, and we want every D.C. graduate to know just how proud we are of their accomplishments, Mayor Bowser said. Thats why all 2022 @dcpublicschools & charter school graduates will receive a free to @Pharrells SOMETHING IN THE WATER Festival!

The school year is coming to a close, and we want every DC graduate to know just how proud we are of their accomplishments!  Thats why all 2022 @dcpublicschools & charter school graduates will receive a free  to @Pharrells SOMETHING IN THE WATER Festival!  More info  https://t.co/BEbVghsCcu  Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) June 10, 2022

The second annual SITW festival will be held in the nations capital following Williams decision to pull out from his hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Following concerns about the mishandling of the death of his cousin, Donovon Lynch, at the hands of Virginia Beach Police, Williams called for a change in the judicial system, despite his festival easing racial tension and bringing an incline of revenue to the county.

Williams wrote a letter to Virginia Beach City Manager Patrick Duhaney outlining his reasoning for moving the festival.

I love my city, but for far too long it has been run by  and with toxic energy, he wrote. The toxic energy that changed the narrative several times around the homicide of my cousin, [Donovon] Lynch, a citizen of Virginia, is the same toxic energy that changed the narrative around the mass murder and senseless loss of life at Building Number 2, Williams said. I wish the same energy Ive felt from Virginia Beach leadership upon losing the festival would have been similarly channeled following the loss of my relatives life.

In 2019, the festival brought in $24 million for the city, but the 2020 and 2021 editions were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABC News

A father and son who were among the first of the rioters to enter the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, learned their fate Wednesday afternoon after a bench trial this week on federal charges they tried to block Congress' certification of Joe Biden's presidential victory. Kevin and Hunter Seefried, of Delaware, were both found guilty of five counts: obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting; entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly or disruptive conduct in a Capitol building or grounds; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
DUNCANVILLE, Texas (AP)  Police shot and killed a man who fired gunshots at a Dallas-area gymnasium where about 150 children were attending a day camp, authorities said.

No children, staff or officers were hurt in the shooting that happened at about 8:45 a.m. at the Duncanville Fieldhouse, police said.

The man entered the field house lobby with a handgun and fired a shot during a discussion with a staff member, Duncanville Assistant Police Chief Matthew Stogner said.

The gunman then tried to enter a classroom containing children, but the door was locked, Stogner said. He fired one shot into the door, Stogner said. The man then went to the gym, which also contained children, at which point Stogner said police arrived and shot the man in an exchange of gunfire.

Police have not yet identified the person or revealed a motive.

Stogner said police arrived within two minutes of being contacted.

All children attending the camp were moved to a nearby recreation center for reunification with their parents.
The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall arriving for the annual Order of the Garter Service on Monday - Toby Melville

The Duke of Cambridge warned the Queen he would feel uncomfortable taking part in the Order of the Garter ceremony alongside his disgraced uncle, the Duke of York, it is understood.

The Prince of Wales also made an eleventh hour intervention amid fears of a public backlash.

The pair shared their concerns with each other before taking them to the Queen on Sunday.

As a result, Her Majesty reluctantly told her second son that he could not appear in public at the event for his own good.

Prince Andrew banned from Order of the Garter public appearance after intervention by Charles and William - Peter Nicholls /PA

As the news emerged just hours before the Windsor Castle ceremony was due to begin, the Duke was at pains to portray it as a personal decision he had made after realising the timing was not right.

He does not want to do anything that would embarrass the Queen or make things difficult, one source said.

But Buckingham Palace aides told a different story, describing it as a family decision.

So last minute was the intervention that the order of service had already been printed, listing the Dukes position in the procession alongside the Earl of Wessex and directly ahead of Prince William.

The seating plan also showed that the Duke had been given top billing, positioned between the Princess Royal and the Duchess of Cornwall for the service at St Georges Chapel.

Prince Andrew was due to sit between the Princess Royal (pictured) and the Duchess of Cornwall - Ben Stansall

Instead, the Duke joined the Queen and rest of his family only for the investiture in the castles Garter throne room and the traditional lunch that takes place afterwards in the Waterloo Chamber, both behind closed doors.

The move prevented him from being photographed alongside other royals in the Orders extravagant velvet robes and plumed hats.

The Duchess of Cornwall took part in the procession for the first time, having been appointed a Royal Lady of the Order of the Garter.

Baroness Amos was also appointed to the oldest and most senior British Order of Chivalry, as was Sir Tony Blair.

The latters participation prompted a noisy protest outside the castle walls by around 100 Stop the War activists chanting Tony Blair war criminal.

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Tony Blair - Eddie Mulholland for The Telegraph

Blair's participation prompted a noisy protest outside the castle walls by around 100 Stop the War activists chanting 'Tony Blair war criminal' - Matt Dunham

For the Duke, his absence was just the latest humiliation. His fate was sealed after the Telegraph revealed that he had been lobbying the Queen for a return to royal duties and was even pushing to have the colonelcy of the Grenadier Guards returned to him.

Palace aides are confident this will not happen.

Theres a big difference between what you ask for and what you get, one well-placed source said.

The Duke had been looking forward to taking part in the pomp and pageantry of the Garter procession, the first for three years, and had considered it a small step on the way to his return to some form of royal life.

Instead he was photographed looking downcast at the wheel of his car, dressed in a suit.

The Duke was photographed looking downcast at the wheel of his car, dressed in a suit. - Kelvin Bruce

The last minute ban is indicative of the royal familys sensitivity to the strength of the public feeling about his pariah status, after he paid his sexual abuse accuser around 12million to settle a high profile, and highly damaging, civil case in February. The Duke has always denied any wrongdoing.

It was considered fortuitous among many members of the family that the Duke was struck down with coronavirus ahead of the Platinum Jubilee and forced to pull out of the service of thanksgiving at St Pauls Cathedral.

Prince Andrew had planned to attend Ascot more than once this week, and was due to appear in the Royal box, but again has had to abandon his plans after being warned it would not look good.

Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Sophie, Countess of Wessex attend the Order of the Garter Service at St. Georges's Chapel on Monday - TOBY MELVILLE

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall with the Queen - Steve Solomons

Meanwhile, the Queen, 96, also stayed behind closed doors yesterday after opting not to join the procession and church service due to ongoing mobility issues.

Her Majesty did not wear the traditional Garter robes during the investiture for what is believed to have been the first time, finding the extravagant regalia too heavy and cumbersome. Instead, she wore a blue Garter sash over her silver white gown.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the West is unlikely to cut itself off the country's oil and gas for a few years. Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images

Putin said it's unlikely the West will be able to cut off Russia's oil and gas in the next few years.

Energy prices have soared this year and are boosting Russian energy revenues.

The EU has banned Russian oil  but not natural gas, as it remains reliant on the fuel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said it'll be several years before the West can stop using Russian oil and gas, Interfax reported, citing a meeting between the leader and young entrepreneurs on Thursday.

"In terms of rejecting our energy resources  this is unlikely over the next few years," said Putin, per Interfax.

Putin's comments came amid forecasts of bumper revenues for Russia's oil and gas exports this year. Oil prices have risen about 50% this year and are trading at 13-year highs amid tight supplies that predated the war, with a strong recovery in demand as the coronavirus pandemic eased. The war in Ukraine adds to supply concerns, as heavily sanctioned Russia is a major energy producer.

The gains in energy prices could bring sales of Russian oil and gas to $285 billion this year  20% higher than the country's $235.6 billion takings from oil and gas in 2021, according to a Bloomberg Economics report earlier this month.

Despite broad and sweeping sanctions against Russia in many areas, the European Union remains reliant on Russian natural gas and has not sanctioned imports of the fuel. Top economy Germany currently gets about 35% of its natural gas from Russia and plans to wean itself off the imports by 2024, the country's economy minister said in a March 25 press release.

The EU has agreed to slash 90% of its Russian oil imports by the end of this year. The US banned Russian energy imports in March. Still, countries like China and India are buying discounted Russian oil, undermining international sanctions.

Amos Hochstein, the US special envoy for energy affairs, told senators Thursday that Russia is raking in more money from oil and gas exports than before it invaded Ukraine. He urged India to refrain from buying too much Russian oil.

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Putin appeared to know he has some leverage from Russia's energy resources for now.

"The volume of oil is decreasing on the worldwide market, prices are rising  that is all," he said, per Interfax. "Companies' incomes are increasing in monetary terms. Everyone sees this, everyone understands this."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Russian president Vladimir Putin. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Many business leaders are worried about attending Putin's annual forum due to sanctions.

Some want their names removed from badges, while others want to leave early, sources told Bloomberg.

Officials in Russia representing the US, France, Italy, and Canada are speaking on some panels.

Business leaders attending Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual economic forum this week want to keep a low profile, Bloomberg reported.

It's the 25th anniversary of St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), which is set to take place from June 15 to June 18.

Lots of business tycoons are worried about being seen attending the forum because of the threat of Western sanctions, brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February, three anonymous people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.

Some executives have requested that SPIEF's organizers remove their names from their badges so they can't be identified, the three sources told Bloomberg. Two executives are planning to leave the event early so they miss Putin's speech, the people told Bloomberg.

According to the forum's programme, the CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia is talking on two occasions, while senior figures from the French-Russian and Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Canada Eurasia Chamber of Commerce are also taking part in discussions.

The media industry, green energy, Russia's relations with Asia, and food security are just some of the topics covered throughout panels at the forum. Many panels feature Russian officials as speakers. Bloomberg reported that there were fewer foreign representatives at this year's event, compared with previous years.

The organizers of SPIEF didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of normal working hours.

The price for one ticket to SPIEF costs 960,000 rubles ($16,600) per guest, according to SPIEF's website. The forum has also advised attendees to bring cash with them, given that Visa and Mastercard bank cards issued outside of Russia won't work in the country after sanctions.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Some days the hardest thing in the world is explaining Chicago to someone not from Chicago. Other days, particularly when you already live here, the hardest thing is seeing the city clearly, as vast and varied, as larger than your block, your neighborhood or your ward. Hence, the violent reputation, the provincialism, the old mash of cliches: Ill have a Deep-Dish Windy Capone with a Sweet Home chaser, as journalist (and South Shore native) Carlo Rotella jokes in the introduction to an invaluable new collection, Wherever Im At  An Anthology of Chicago Poetry. A collaboration of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, the venerable South Side staple Third World Press and the Elmwood Park-based After Hours Press, its a portrait of the city as seen by contemporary poets and artists.

Assembled with just two rules: Each poem must be from a living poet, and about Chicago. (Not merely written by someone from Chicago, or written while in Chicago.)

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The result  edited by Hall of Fame founder Donald Evans, with illustrations by Kerry James Marshall, Amanda Williams, Tonika Lewis Johnson and 24 other Chicago artists  is an unusually engaging snapshot of a place too often understood with lazy shortcuts. Or rather, its 134 snapshots, by 134 poets, from unknowns to world-famous vanguards.

"Wherever Im At  An Anthology of Chicago Poetry," edited by Donald Evans and Robin Metz (June 2022). The cover art is "Chicago Moth" by Tony Fitzpatrick. (After Hours Press and Third World Press)

The poems cover Montrose Beach and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Bucket Boys and Smartbar. Police shootings and monarch butterflies. Gwendolyn Brooks and Carl Sandburg. Devon Avenue and Ashland Avenue and Division Street. Grandmothers in Lawndale and the Disney store on Michigan Avenue. Chicagos past and uncertain future.

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Its so expansive, smart and (absences aside) comprehensive, you wonder how many hoops were jumped through to finish it. No shocker perhaps: Roughly a decade of hoops.

Hoop No. 1: Death

Wherever Im At began, in earnest, with a deathbed wish. Robin Metz, a longtime professor at Knox College in Galesburg, who also cofounded that schools creative writing program, died in 2018 of pancreatic cancer. Evans recalls: I went to his home in Door County (Wisconsin) and he said not doing this book was one of his big regrets and asked if I would take over. Foolishly, I said I would do it, and two months later he died.

They had met a decade earlier at Open Books (then in River North). Metz was blue-collar, from Pittsburgh. The kind of guy who was always scheming, in a good way, Evans said. Metz came to Open Books to read a poem, Evans was there to read a story; it was an event for a local literary journal, but not one spectator showed up. So they left and got drinks. Metz told Evans one of the biggest deficits in the poetry world was the lack of a definitive, contemporary anthology of Chicago poetry. New York had one. Los Angeles, too. But there was nothing for Chicago  the birthplace of slam poetry, home of the Poetry Foundation. Metz put an ad in Poets & Writers magazine, asking for submissions.

But he never made the time to get very far, so large caches of submissions by Chicago poets languished for years. Collaborators dropped out. When Evans picked up the project, he received several bins of submissions and a mountain of electronic files, but since much of the work was dated, he saved a little of it, and basically, he started again.

Donald Evans, author and founder of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, speaks during the the unveiling of the Shel Silverstein Forever stamp at his former elementary school, Darwin Elementary, on April 8, 2022 in Chicago. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

Hoop No. 2: Whittling

Evans honored the spirit of Metzs intentions but changed the rules. Metz imagined a book of poems by Chicago poets. Evans pictured the book as a kind of story of the city itself, which could lead to poets referencing poets (and literary history), refrains, echoes. And only one poem per poet, which made room for a Chicago more representative of the city, which is different things to different people. Also some of the poems Metz had collected  Evans didnt like them. So he drew up a list of essential local poets, then began calling friends and mainstays, Angela Jackson (Illinois poet laureate), Stuart Dybek. Each writer he approached gave him a list of other writers he had to include.

As for the suburbs: I did not disqualify them. I grew up here, lived here my whole life. I think of Evanston, Cicero, Oak Park, places like that, as Chicago. But Springfield, no?

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Hoop No. 3: Begging

Aside from an impressive roster of artists who lent works  Marshall, Williams, Johnson, Tony Fitzpatrick, Xavier Nuez  he landed Aleksandar Hemon, Sandra Cisneros, Dybek, Jackson, avery r. young, Li-Young Lee, Edward Hirsch, Patricia Smith, Luis Alberto Urrea, Kathleen Rooney, and many more. He contacted publishers, agents, friends of friends of friends. It became detective work, Evans said. I didnt want people to think this would be nothing much.

But for a variety of reasons  deadlines, copyright, general unresponsiveness  gaps formed. He couldnt get work from some of Chicagos most significant contemporary poets. Nate Marshall. Eve Ewing. Natasha Trethewey. Roger Reeves. Kevin Coval, who cofounded Louder than a Bomb, then grew mired in allegations he mishandled sexual assault allegations at the Chicago writing program Young Chicago Authors, where he was artistic director, fell out of touch with the project.

What surprised me was how several young poets didnt respond once, Evans said. If I was 24 and someone wanted me for an anthology, to sit alongside many greats, I would be like, Im in the car now, where do I need to go? Maybe its because I used email?

Hoop No. 4: Redundancy

The right mix of subjects is key for an anthology like this. Too many references to deep dish and Navy Pier, youve got a guidebook, a tourists Chicago. Evans received poems on Humboldt Park, the 55th Street underpass, Chicago winters, neighborhood pubs, Milwaukee Avenue. He also got so many poems on the blues, he started asking for other genres. Gwendolyn Brooks came up a lot. He got so many CTA nods, he decided the next one had to be unique.

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At a certain point, you stop accepting poems about Lake Michigan, OK? I started to look for, at least, poems that were told from a boat on Lake Michigan. Because a lot of the ones we had were about the writer standing on the shoreline. Which makes sense. Thats who poets are. We dont get invited onto boats.

Hoop No. 5: Publishing

Metz had a verbal agreement with a publisher in India. Evans wanted something closer, and to finish sooner. University presses were already planning several years ahead. That wouldnt work  he wanted mostly fresh, current poems, not five-year-old poems. Also, the book cost $25,000 to produce, with pieces added right up until the deadline. So Evans partnered with two local publishers, Third World and After Hours. As for the poets: They got $25 and a copy of the book. Which is $25 more than a lot of poets get for poems.

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
RB Leipzig have set a price of 100m for Christopher Nkunku, with the 24-year-old preferring to stay this summer, potentially frustrating a series of clubs but also setting up one of the sagas of 2023.

Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain have all looked into signing the player, who this season had a break-out campaign playing as a striker.

Liverpool's interest is expected to end for the time being after the purchase of Darwin Nunez from Benfica, but United's failure to sign the Uruguayan had seen the club hierarchy consider a more solid approach for Nkunku.

Leipzig have set a high price for the player and convinced him another season in the Bundesliga is better for his career, with the French international now expected to sign an extension complete with a release clause.

While Arsenal and PSG would be willing to go to 100m, United are unlikely to do so this summer. Their budget is for around 120m before sales, and one reason put forward for the failure to sign Nunez was that they refused to budge from a valuation that was 20m less than Benfica's. Nunez eventually went to Liverpool for 85m, with 64m paid up front.

The feeling is that Erik ten Hag sees midfield as a higher priority, so the major purchase is hoped to be Frenkie de Jong. There remains a difference between United's valuation and that of Barcelona, too, but the situation is leveraged towards Old Trafford by the Camp Nou club's need to sell to balance their budget.

United have also investigated a deal for another of Ten Hags former players at Ajax, Antony, who would offer balance as a left-footed winger.
Rebel Wilson has addressed attempts by a newspaper to out her after an online backlash, saying she is trying to handle the situation with grace.

The comedian and actor came out in an Instagram post on Thursday, writing: I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince but maybe what I really needed all this time was a Disney Princess.

In the posts photo, Wilson could be seen posing with her new partner Ramona Agruma.

On Saturday, Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald published an article stating they had given Wilson two days to comment on her new relationship before they would go ahead and report on it. In the article, journalist Andrew Hornery complains about Wilson stopping him from getting a scoop.

Many people have called out the newspaper on social media, with one person writing: I am so beyond disgusted at this. turns out rebel wilson only came out to avoid being forcefully outed and now that newspaper is p*****d at her for ruining their scoop??

So they wrote this mess?? I am so angry and so sorry for rebel, no one deserves this.

The Australian comedian and actor came out in an Instagram post (Instagram)

Another wrote: Coming out has always been part of LGBTIQ+ rights movements, visibility creates acceptance and understanding. Being outed  the inverse, it creates shame, stigma and repression.

Dont out people, help change the world so no one needs to be in or out.

My heart breaks for Rebel Wilson, wrote a third. Being outed is every gay persons worst fear. For f***s sake its 2022.

Wilson has now commented on the situation on Twitter, writing: Thanks for your comments, it was a very hard situation but trying to handle it with grace.

Wilson tweeted about the events of the past week (Twitter)

Her message was a reply to a post by 10 News First journalist Kate Doak, that read: So apparently it wasnt @RebelWilsons choice to come out The @smh/@theage have admitted to giving her a heads up 2 days in advance that they were going to out her. Whats worse, openly gay men at The Sydney Morning Herald were involved in this.

Bevan Shields, the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, has denied any wrongdoing.

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In a statement, he wrote: On Saturday, The Herald published an article about Australian actor Rebel Wilson and her new partner Ramona Agruma. The article ran online and was a small item on page 36 of Saturdays print edition.

The article has promoted some public attention and Ive been reading this feedback closely. In the interests of transparency I wanted to offer The Heralds view on this issue.

Our weekly Private Sydney celebrity column last week asked Wilson if she wished to comment about her new partner. We would have asked the same questions had Wilsons new partner been a man.

The statement continued: To say that The Herald outed Wilson is wrong. Like other mastheads do every day, we simply asked questions and as standard practice included a deadline for a response.

I had made no decision about whether or what to publish, and The Heralds decision about what to do would have been informed by any response Wilson supplied.

Wilson made the decision to publicly disclose her new partner  who had been a feature of her social media accounts for months.

It concluded: Private Sydney is a column in which the writers interaction with his subjects is often part of the story. Saturdays piece followed that theme in giving readers insights into our interaction with Wilson and her PR team. This was not a standard news story.

We wish Wilson and Agruma well.
(@purepower34/TikTok)

A retired detective has explained why online dating users shouldnt be sending photos to people theyve from the apps, as those images can reveal information about their location.

On TikTok, Mike, a former detective who goes by Killer Bee Tactical, LLC , often shares videos about safety and security tips.

In a recent clip, he responded to a video posted by @persnicketybox, who said that when she downloaded a photo on her iPhone, sent to her by her son, she clicked the information button underneath the image. From there, she could see the place and time in which the photo was taken.

He then explained a scenario of online dating and how discovering someones location through a photo they texted can be a little dangerous.

If youre online dating and you send photos to a stranger, you just sent them where you were, he explained. So if youre standing on the porch when you took the photo, that could be an issue.

Mike noted that if you want to send someone a photo that youve taken, theres a way to do so without your location being shared.

A screenshot doesnt have that information, he continued. Take a screenshot of the photo, send a screenshot.

As of 2 June, the video has more than 2.4m views, with TikTok users in the comments applauding Mike for sharing such a useful tip about iPhone photos and how big of a difference it can make.

Ugh this is so important. Boosting. Had no idea, one wrote.

You have no idea how many lives this could save, another added. Thank you.

A third viewer said: As a security consultant I love that you shared this info for peoples safetyKeep up the great work!

Some TiKTok users have also said that they avoid sending photos and sent tips for disabling ones location in iPhone pictures.

Yep, always screenshots. Especially when I use filters and they can reverse photo, one wrote.

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You can also change your settings so that your camera doesnt have location permission, another added. Thats how I prefer mine.

Speaking to The Independent, Mike explained how location services are often enabled on many phones, which could unintentionally give people information that you dont want to send out.

If you didnt know this was part of the photo, you could send a stranger your routine: your home address, where you work, buy groceries, go to the gym, or where your kids go to school. People with bad intentions could exploit this feature, he explained.

A screen shot doesnt record the location, but you can also send your photos through an app that scrubs the data off the photo, he added. When I was in crimes against children working internet crimes, we would sometimes get a break on a child exploitation case from the data on the photo or video.
Politician Andrew Giuliani seen in Times Square, New York City, on February 26, 2022 Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

NY governor candidate Andrew Giuliani has to join a debate remotely as he's not vaccinated.

Debate host CBS say all visitors to its broadcast centre must be vaccinated, ruling out Giuliani.

Giuliani, whose dad is Rudy Giuliani, has made opposition to vaccines rules part of his platform.

Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, has to take part in the Republican Party's gubernatorial primary debate remotely because he isn't vaccinated against COVID-19.

Giuliani announced he was running for New York governor in May 2021.

It followed four years working in the White House as a public liaison to former President Donald Trump, while his father represented Trump as his lawyer and aggressively pushed the false claims of fraud at the 2020 election.

Giuliani and three other candidates for the GOP nomination are scheduled to go head to head in a debate hosted by CBS on June 14.

However, in a press conference streamed live on Facebook on Sunday, Giuliani said he now has to participate remotely.

Giuliani said that CBS changed its mind about him taking part in person. He said the network first told him that providing a negative COVID-19 test would be enough, but then upped the requirement to vaccination.

"I chose very clearly that I was not going to get the shot," Giuliani said.

"I wish I had the opportunity to be in studio."

In a statement, CBS told The Associated Press that all visitors to its broadcast centre must be vaccinated.

"Any candidate who doesn't meet this requirement is encouraged to participate in Monday's debate remotely," the statement said.

Throughout his campaign, Giuliani has criticized the New York City's vaccine mandates. He promised Sunday that he would rehire every first responder fired for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Giuliani says he declined to be vaccinated, arguing misleading that the vaccine "doesn't actually stop transmission" of COVID-19. While no vaccine is 100% effective, the COVID-19 shots have been proven to reduce transmission and greatly reducing the risk of serious illness or death.

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In the race for GOP nominee Giuliani faces competition from Rep. Lee Zeldin; Harry Wilson, a businessman and former US official; and Rob Astorino, a former Westchester County executive who was the GOP candidate in 2014.

The winner of the GOP primary most likely faces a run off with incumbent New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is the front-running Democratic Party candidate.

The last Republican governor of New York was George Pataki, who left office in 2006.

Read the original article on Business Insider
WASHINGTON  Russias war in Ukraine is making clear to the U.S. Department of Defense that it must get logistics and sustainment right in the Pacific theater, the Pentagons No. 2 civilian said Monday.

Russias logistics and sustainment failures during its three-month-old invasion of Ukraine are a very hard lesson for Moscow, and the U.S. as well, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said at a DefenseOne event.

The Russians are operating on their own border, and yet we saw [their] substantial logistics challenges. For the United States to be effective in the Pacific, we already have a significant logistics challenge [to overcome], worsened by the reliance that we have on fuel, Hicks said. Making sure we understand how to go after that logistics challenge is one lesson that we can extrapolate, if you will, from what we see today.

Russias invasion of Ukraine almost immediately faced challenges with logistics and difficulties getting food, water and supplies to troops. It failed in its early objective of taking Kyiv and occupying a large swath of Ukraine, and has now concentrated most its forces in eastern Ukraine.

Hicks on Monday praised U.S. logistics and information sharing in coordinating allies to arm and equip Ukrainian forces. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is set this week to convene a third meeting of the U.S.-led Ukraine contact group, which has more than 40 member nations.

Beyond concerns about contested logistics, Hicks theres a strong business case for the Pentagons efforts to adopt electric vehicles as the car industry moves in that direction. While not an overnight issue, DoD is motivated at a strategic level to free that tether to fossil fuel.

I think theres a lot we can do to move the system, and when we do that were going to help ourselves with that combat credibility, particularly in places like the Pacific where the logistics lines are very long, Hicks said.

Pentagons fuel prices rose $3 billion amid inflationary pressures

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U.S. President Joe Biden signaled during a visit to Japan last month he would use military force to defend Taiwan if it were ever attacked by China, only to clarify later that strategic ambiguity remains American policy. China, meanwhile, has stepped up its military provocations against democratic Taiwan in recent years, aimed at intimidating it into accepting Beijings demands to unify with the communist mainland.

Islands in the Pacific  including Guam, Hawaii and Kwajalein  have virtually no local fossil fuel resources and their energy needs, including those of U.S. military installations they host, are met by imported petroleum, Hicks has said previously.

U.S. military commanders in the Pacific have warned they lack the capacity to rearm and refuel in the event of a conflict.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has proposed $1.02 billion in funding through 2027 to improve logistics, maintenance and prepositioning equipment for its China-focused Pacific Deterrence Initiative. The request came in April as part of the commands share of the fiscal 2023 budget request, which projected $27.1 billion for PDI overall through 2027.

Current theater logistics posture and capability to sustain the force are inadequate to support operations specifically in a contested environment, the request reads.

The Pentagons decision in March to shut down its massive Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, over water contamination problems, without a clear plan in place to fund and reconstitute this capacity, has only magnified existing logistics challenges, said Eric Sayers, a former senior adviser to U.S. Pacific Command who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Ukraine reminds us that without a robust combat logistics fleet for the Navy, aerial refueling, and heavy lift, we just flat out wont be able to sustain and shift combat power around the theater in the ways that will be required before and during an intense military operation, Sayers said. In short, the Congress should be devoting the same level of oversight to Indo-Pacific Command fuel requirements as it does to Navy fleet size or Air Force fighter procurement.

With reporting by the Associated Press.
As a result of the explosion in Melitopol, two representatives of the occupying

Read also: Russian invaders plan to leave Melitopol, claims citys mayor

The explosion occurred at 5:45 p.m. on June 12, near the offices of the occupation authorities interior ministry in Melitopol.

Read also: Western weapon already helps Ukrainian troops, but theres never enough during war

Local occupation enforcers, appointed by the Russian occupation authorities, have not revealed many details relating to the incident. However, initial reports suggest that around 0.8 kilogram of TNT-equivalent explosives were set off by a window at a residence believed to belong to Alexey Selivanov, a Ukrainian collaborator who has been appointed deputy head of the Zaporizhzhya occupation enforcers.

Read also: Pensioner in occupied Melitopol throws eggs at pro-Russian survey worker

RIA-Melitopol speculates that Selivanov could have staged the explosion, in order to shift blame towards Ukraine. Another possibility is that it could have been the work of Ukrainian insurgents.
By Natalia Zinets

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine said its forces were still trying to evacuate civilians from embattled Sievierodonetsk on Tuesday after Russia destroyed the last bridge to the city, Moscow's main target in its battle for control of eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces were holding out against the Russians after ground changed hands several times over the past few weeks, enduring what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described as "painful" losses.

"But we have to hold strong ... The more losses the enemy suffers, (the) less strength it will have to pursue its aggression," Zelenskiy said in an address on Tuesday night.

Although Sievierodonetsk's last bridge over the Siverskyi Donets river had been felled, evacuations were still being carried out "every minute when there is a lull and there is a possibility of transportation," Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk said.

"Every possible chance is taken," Stryuk said.

Ukraine says more than 500 civilians are trapped inside Azot, a chemical factory where its forces have resisted weeks of Russian bombardment and assaults that have reduced much of the city to ruins.

Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Gaidai said shelling on Azot was so powerful that "people can no longer stand it in the shelters, their psychological state is on the edge."

Russia said it would give Ukrainian fighters holed up in the chemical plant a chance to surrender on Wednesday morning. Fighters should "stop their senseless resistance and lay down their arms" from 8 a.m. Moscow time (0500 GMT), said Mikhail Mizintsev, head of Russia's National Defence Management Centre.

Civilians would be let out through a "humanitarian corridor", he said.

Both sides claim to have inflicted huge casualties in the fighting over the city, Russia's principal battleground focus.

Ukraine still holds Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk's twin city on higher ground on the western bank of the river. But with all the bridges now cut, its forces acknowledge a threat that they could be encircled in Sievierodonetsk.

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Damien Megrou, spokesperson for a unit of foreign volunteers helping to defend Sievierodonetsk, said there was a risk of leaving "a large pocket of Ukrainian defenders cut off from the rest of the Ukrainian troops" - as in Mariupol, the Black Sea port that surrendered last month after months of Russian siege.

'UNBEARABLE'

The battle for Sievierodonetsk - a city of barely more than 100,000 people before the war - is now the biggest fight in Ukraine as the conflict has shifted into a war of attrition.

Kyiv has said 100-200 of its soldiers are killed each day, with hundreds more wounded.

Russia gives no regular figures of its own losses but Western countries say they have been massive, as Moscow has committed the bulk of its firepower to delivering one of President Vladimir Putin's stated objectives: forcing Kyiv to cede the full territory of two provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, collectively known as the Donbas.

Momentum in Sievierodonetsk has shifted several times over the past few weeks - with Russia concentrating its overwhelming artillery firepower on urban districts to obliterate resistance, then sending in ground troops vulnerable to counter-attacks.

Bigger battles could lie ahead for the wider Ukrainian-held pocket of the Donbas, nearly all on the opposite bank of the river which Russian forces have found difficult to cross. Ukraine says Russia plans to assault Sloviansk from the north and along a front near Bakhmut to the south.

In Donetsk province, critical infrastructure including homes, schools, hospitals and markets have been attacked over the past week, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York.

"This has made life nearly unbearable for people who are also facing severe water shortages, and at times are unable to leave their homes for days on end due to the fighting," Dujarric said.

Ukrainian officials renewed their pleas for the West to send more and better artillery as well as tanks, drones and other heavy weapons.

Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar told a briefing that Ukraine had received only 10% of the arms it needed from its allies.

Western countries have promised NATO-standard weapons - including advanced U.S. rockets. But deploying them is taking time.

"What we don't have enough of are the weapons that really hit the range that we need to reduce the advantage of the Russian Federation's equipment," Zelenskiy told an online press briefing.

DRAIN TROOPS

Beyond the Donbas, Ukrainian officials hope that Russia's focus on capturing the east will drain its forces from other areas and pave the way for counter-attacks to recapture territory.

Ukraine retook the area around its second largest city Kharkiv in May and has reported small but steady gains in recent days in the south, the biggest swathe Russia retains of the territory it seized after its invasion in February.

Serhiy Khlan, adviser to the head of the southern, mainly Russian-occupied Kherson province, said Ukraine was having tactical success retaking territory there for a second straight week.

Troops had already advanced 5 km (three miles) from Tavriysk, a town on the south bank of the Dnipro river east of Kherson city, and were gradually advancing, Khlan said.

Reuters was unable to verify any reports from the area.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Peter Graff and Angus MacSwan and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Gareth Jones, Mark Heinrich and Grant McCool)
French hornist and composer Jeff Scott is a new member of the faculty of the 2022 Sarasota Music Festival, which will perform his composition Startin Sumthin.

Although the theme for the June 17 Sarasota Music Festival concert is Basically Baroque, French hornist-composer Jeff Scotts composition Startin Sumthin is anything but basic, and not at all Baroque.

Instead, it fuses the New York-born musicians love for both the jazz and classical idioms.

Its a modern take, if you would, on ragtime music. Its kind of a shuffle, more of a dance style, said Scott in a Memorial Day telephone interview before taking his family to a park for a picnic in Oberlin, Ohio, where he is an associate professor of horn at the Conservatory of Music. The idea was to take an ensemble type that is traditionally used for purely classical music. You never hear wind quintets playing anything of this sort, and making the instruments swing.

Pianist Robert Levin, former artistic director of the Sarasota Music Festival, will be the guest soloist in a June 18 festival concert.

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Return of a summer tradition: Sarasota Music Festival plans season season of renewal

Scott, who is new to the Sarasota Music Festival faculty this year, will be joined on the Sarasota Opera House stage by Anastasia Samsel, flute, Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe, Kean Xiong, clarinet, and Frank Morrelli, bassoon. The program also includes Caroline Shaws Stucco & Brocatelle, excerpts from Handels Water Music and Bachs Double Violin Concerto. (Shaw will be performing in a June 21 creative Voices concert with Gabriel Kahane.)

The concert is one of four programs on the second weekend of the three-week festival, which brings dozens of young musicians to Sarasota to study and perform with professionals. Pianist and former Artistic Director Robert Levin will perform on June 18 in the Mozart and Brahms conducted by current Artistic Director Jeffrey Kahane, and musicians will perform rarely heard works in the Hidden Gems concert on June 16. Festival fellows will take the spotlight in the second Rising Stars concert on June 19.

Scott wrote Startin Sumthin when he was a member of the innovative and Grammy Award-nominated wind quintet Imani Winds, a position he held for more than 20 years. He also has been a member of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and Dance Theater of Harlem since 1995 and has an extensive resume of Broadway music credits and original compositions.

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2022-23 concert season: Venice Symphony expands musical styles and programs

Also on stage in Sarasota: Asolo Reps musical Hood gives a modern twist to Robin Hood legend

He calls his compositional style urban classical. It emerges from his background growing up in New York, where one of his closest friends was Puerto Rican and the best man at his wedding was Orthodox Jewish.

That cultural melting pot also included the two great musical loves of his life, classical and jazz.

Jazz is a completely different (musical) language, he said. It has a completely different history. While it can be studied alongside classical music, there are completely different skills one must attain.

He cited the Third Stream, where classical musicians deeply influenced by jazz, would write in a classical style, approach the music in a way thats more authentic to the improvisational nature of jazz.

He came to the French horn as a sixth grade band student. With his last name coming late in the alphabet, there werent many choices left to him in the instrument closet.

There was the set of friends that all chose saxophone, another set all chose flute, he said. By the time they got to me, I said, Well, teacher, what do you have left? We have one French horn in the closet. It looked like it had been through World Wars I and II. The kids just laughed and laughed because their flutes and trumpets were all shiny and new.

He was completely unfamiliar with the French horn and its distinctive sound. But the first time he heard the principal hornist perform with the New York Philharmonic, my jaw dropped and he was hooked.

No matter what it plays, if its a featured instrument, its so different from all the others, Scott said.

That could be said about Scott himself. As a Black man, a rarity in classical music circles, he relishes the opportunity to work with young players, whether its in a festival setting or an elementary school classroom.

And his advice is the same regardless.

Very few of us are just blessed musically from Day 1. Get in the trenches and play those scales, he said.

SARASOTA MUSIC FESTIVAL

Basically Baroque will be presented at 7:30 p.m. June 17 in the Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. Tickets are $29-$50. Other concerts on the second weekend include Hidden Gems at 4:30 p.m. June 16 in Holley Hall, 709 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota (tickets are $29-$40); Mozart and Brahms featuring former festival artistic director Robert Levin at 7:30 p.m. June 18 in the Opera House ($29-$65) and Rising Stars 2 featuring Festival Fellows at 2:30 p.m. June 19 in Holley Hall ($15-$22). 941-953-3434; sarasotaorchestra.org

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Music Festival adds a twist of jazz to mostly Baroque concert
By the time adults are 75 years old, they might have avoided a number of the criminal scams that target seniors.

One Modesto woman thought she was immune to fraud but finally fell for an elaborate ruse that involved a phone call from a person claiming to be her grandson.

The 75-year-old grandmother asked to remain anonymous to avoid being a target again, but told the story as educational presentations on elder abuse are planned this week in Modesto.

According to the National Council on Aging, an estimated $3 billion is taken from seniors every year through elder abuse fraud. The number is expected to grow as the senior population increases and scammers develop more fraudulent schemes.

The first person who called the Modesto woman last month was a man posing as a defense attorney at the Santa Clara County courthouse.

The supposed lawyer said he was assigned to her grandsons probation case and the young man had been involved in a car crash that injured a pregnant woman. The grandson was now in jail and would need thousands of dollars to bail him out, the caller said.

Soon after, a young man posing as the grandson called the Modesto woman, saying he was in trouble and needed help. He urged her to cooperate with his trusted attorney, whom he identified as Chad Reid.

The woman said it did not sound like her grandson, but every time she asked a question, he had an answer for it.

After the suspicious phone call, the woman tried to call her grandson but could not reach him. I got nervous; I got so upset, the woman said.

Chad Reid, the fake attorney, called her again and said her grandson in jail needed $9,300 to post bond.

Reid explained why the grandson sounded different: He had a broken nose from the car crash and stitches in his mouth. The attorney also relayed a message from the grandson saying I love you, grandma, and thanks so much for helping him.

The woman said that sounded suspicious, too. She said her real grandson always calls her grammy.

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Still, she was worried about the young man and concerned he would not get needed medical care for his injuries in jail. She went to the credit union the next day to withdraw $9,300. She said the bank employees expressed their skepticism and allowed only a $5,000 withdrawal.

When she got home, she called Reids number and told him she couldnt get the entire $9,300.

Reid gave her instructions for putting the $5,000 in a small box, and placing that in a larger box. She was told to wrap it in paper and write the grandsons name and supposed case number on the package, and then have United Parcel Service ship the package for delivery the next day.

The grandmother complied and took the package to UPS. The next day, a friend took her to the credit union to get the remaining $4,300.

She said the credit union employees were concerned it was a scam and tried to dissuade her, even taking her to a back room to talk. But she was insistent.

They would not believe me. I said, Its my money. Give me my money, said the grandmother, who later apologized to them.

The bank staff tried to reason with her, asking why a cashiers check was not acceptable to the supposed attorney. Why cash? The grandmother finally left the bank with the $4,300.

This time, the scam artist instructed her to use Federal Express for shipping the cash but follow the same procedure with the two boxes, the name and case number.

Reid told a story that the grandson was being signed up for a special probation program with a main office in Providence, R.I. The woman paid FedEx to send the package containing the $4,300 to an address in Rhode Island.

Packages were not delivered

It turned out that neither package containing bail money reached the intended destination. In another call, Reid said the FedEx package did not arrive and told the woman to find out why.

She made numerous calls and, in time, she learned that a FedEx employee had questioned the validity of the package and did not deliver it. The package was held in a FedEx facility out-of-state.

She also kept trying to reach her grandson and finally talked to his mother. She was told he wasnt in a car accident. It was all a scam.

When she called UPS about the first package, the grandmother said she was told it wasnt delivered to the address. She said she had them return the parcel to the UPS office in Modesto, where she picked it up and then deposited the $5,000 back in her savings account.

Joyce Gandelman, director of the Senior Advocacy Network Senior Law Project in Modesto, said she got involved when the grandmother complained to the nonprofit agency about delays in getting the $4,300 back from FedEx. When the grandmother revealed more of the story, Gandelman realized the woman had been defrauded by scammers.

Gandelman, whos an attorney, got on the phone with FedEx and prodded them to run down the location of the package. She said the package, tracked to the FedEx facility, was opened under the watchful eye of a video camera and the cash was found inside.

Because its against policy to deliver paper currency, FedEx had to convert the $4,300 to a check to return it to the grandmother.

In a statement Friday, the FedEx service suggested the package sent to the scammers was stopped by efforts to prevent the shipment of money through its system. The company said it does not permit the shipping of money including paper currency, coins, activated gift cards or debit cards.

We do not tolerate the use of our network for illegal purposes, FedEx spokesperson Shannon Davis said in the email. We are grateful to our team members for their vigilance and happy we could assist this customer.

The Modesto woman said she never got an explanation for nondelivery of the UPS parcel to the scammers and thought it might have been divine intervention. They apologized for not delivering it, she said.

Paper currency is one of the items prohibited by UPS, partly as a measure to keep drug dealers from shipping money through the service.

Amanda Catala, a spokesperson with UPS communications, said Friday the shipping service has resources dedicated to identifying and stopping fraudulent activity. Catala could not comment on this case and said that to maintain their effectiveness, UPS doesnt disclose its security measures.

Gandelman said she thanked the credit union for trying to stop the grandmother from making a serious mistake. What they did was perfect, Gandelman said. They kept asking what it was for. Eventually, they had to give the money to her.

The Senior Advocacy Network will hold presentations on elder abuse and scams at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Stanislaus Veterans Center, 3500 Coffee Road.

The Modesto Senior Center on Bodem Street will also offer elder abuse education at 11 a.m. Wednesday, and presentations are set for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Central Valley PACE, 2401 E. Orangeburg Ave.

County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services and adult protective services are involved in the education effort.

Grandparent scam is common

According to the National Council on Aging, the grandparent scam is one of the 10 most common ways of defrauding older adults because the deception tugs at the heart. An estimated $3 billion is taken from seniors every year through elder abuse fraud, the council says.

A scammer calls an older person and says Hi, grandma, do you know who this is? The grandparent tries to match the voice with one of her grandchildren and gives a name. Revealing the name of a grandchild by itself can assist the scammer.

The supposed grandchild on the phone usually asks for help with a financial hardship, such as rent, auto repairs or bail money. The grandmother is urged to keep it a secret. The grandparent scam that targeted the Modesto woman was a more elaborate series of lies.

Gandelman said seniors who get a call from someone unfamiliar posing as a grandchild should hang up. They should promptly call the grandchild or contact another family member.

Gandelman said there are always new ways invented by criminals to steal from the elderly.

Their life savings are in jeopardy, she said. The scammers are people who dont care how old you are. If you are 89 years old and only have a little money, they will take it.

The Modesto woman, who filed a police report online, said she wont fall for the scam again. We have worked over the years to have something when we retire, the grandmother said. These people want to come and take what we worked for.
Philip Baker Hall, the prolific character actor of film and theater who starred in Paul Thomas Andersons first movies and who memorably hunted down a long-overdue library book in Seinfeld, has died. He was 90.

Holly Wolfle Hall, the actors wife of nearly 40 years, on Monday said Hall died Sunday surrounded by loved ones in Glendale, California. She said Hall had been well until a few weeks earlier, and spent his final days in warm spirits, reflecting on his life.

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His voice at the end was still just as powerful, said Wolfle Hall. Her husband, she added, never retired from acting.

Philip Baker Hall arrives at the premiere of "Clear History" at the Cinerama Dome July 31, 2013 in Los Angeles. (Dan Steinberg/Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP)

In a career spanning half a century, Hall was a ubiquitous hangdog face whose doleful, weary appearance could shroud a booming intensity and humble sensitivity. His range was wide, but Hall, who had a natural gravitas, often played men in suits, trench coats and lab coats.

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Men who are highly stressed, older men, who are at the limit of their tolerance for suffering and stress and pain, Hall told the Washington Post in 2017. I had an affinity for playing those roles.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, Hall initially devoted himself more to theater in Los Angeles, after moving out in 1975, than TV and movies. While shooting bit parts in Hollywood (an episode of Good Times was one of his first gigs), Hall worked with the L.A. Actor Theatre. There he played Richard Nixon in the one-act play Secret Honor, a role he reprised in Robert Altmans 1984 film adaptation. Critic Pauline Kael wrote that Hall draws on his lack of a star presence and on an actors fears of his own mediocrity in a way that seems to parallel Nixons feelings.

Hall made an impression in the smallest of roles in other films, like 1988s Midnight Run. But outside of theater, Hall was mostly doing guest roles in television. That changed when he was shooting a PBS program in 1992. Hall then encountered a production assistant in his early 20s named Paul Thomas Anderson. The two would hang out, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee between scenes. Anderson, believing Hall hadnt gotten his due in film, asked him to look at a script he had written for a 20-minute short film titled Cigarettes & Coffee.

Im reading this script, and I truly had trouble believing that that kid wrote this script, Hall told the AV Club in 2012. I mean, it was just so brilliant, resonating with nuance all over the place, like a playwright. Certainly, as a film, Id never really seen anything like it. It was staggering.

After the $20,000 short made it into the Sundance Film Festival, Anderson expanded it into his feature debut, 1997s Hard Eight, which catapulted Halls career. In it, Hall played a wise and courteous itinerate gambler named Sydney who schools a young drifter (John C. Reilly) on the craft. In one indelible scene, Philip Seymour Hoffmans first with Anderson, a hot-shot gambler chides Hall as old-timer.

Anderson would cast Hall again as adult film theater magnate Floyd Gondolli who warns Burt Reynolds pornography producer about the industrys future in Boogie Nights. In Andersons Magnolia, Hall played Jimmy Gator, the host of a kids game show.

I have a particular fascination with character actors, with wanting to turn them into lead actors, Anderson told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. I see Philip Baker Hall, hes just . . . an actor that I love. Theres no one else with a face like that, or a voice like that.

To many, Hall was instantly recognizable for one of the most powerfully funny guest appearances on Seinfeld. In the 22nd episode of the sitcom in 1991, Hall played Lt. Joe Bookman, the library investigator who comes after Seinfeld for a years-overdue copy of Tropic of Cancer. Hall played him like a hardboiled noir detective, telling Seinfeld: Well, I got a flash for ya, Joy-boy: Party time is over.

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Hall was brought back for the Seinfeld finale and by Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. David once said no other actor ever made him laugh more than Hall.

Among Halls many other credits were Michael Manns The Insider, as 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt, and Lars von Triers Dogville. Hall appeared in Say Anything, The Truman Show, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Zodiac, Argo and Rush Hour. Hall played the neighbor Walt Kleezak on Modern Family. His last performance was in the 2020 series Messiah.

Hall, who was married to Dianne Lewis for three years in the early 1970s, is survived by his wife, four daughters, four grandchildren and his brother.
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Sarah Silbiger/Pool via AP

A bipartisan group of 20 senators announced Sunday they had come to an agreement on gun reform.

The proposed package includes support for red flag laws, school security, and mental health.

Biden said it would be the "most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades."

A bipartisan group of 20 senators on Sunday announced a proposal for a comprehensive package aimed at tackling gun violence that includes support for red flag laws, school security, and mental health services.

Led by Sens. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, and John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, the lawmakers said in a statement the "commonsense, bipartisan proposal" would "protect America's children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country."

"Most importantly, our plan saves lives while also protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans," the senators, split roughly evenly between Democrats and Republicans, said.

President Joe Biden praised the agreement, despite acknowledging he has called for more sweeping legislation, saying it would be the "most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades."

The package would be less comprehensive than what Democrats initially sought on gun reform. Some Republican lawmakers have already vowed to vote against it or denounced their colleagues who support it, but others expressed openness to reviewing the bill.

A final piece of legislation has not been drafted, but here's what the senators said they are proposing.

Support for red flags laws

The proposal includes providing resources to states and tribal nations to support crisis intervention orders, also known as red flag laws. Red flag laws allow courts to authorize law enforcement to temporarily confiscate a person's gun if a judge determines they pose an immediate threat to themself or others.

Typically a potentially dangerous person could be flagged to authorities by a friend or family member. About 20 states currently have some form of a red flag law in place.

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Investment in mental health services and telehealth

The lawmakers plan to include investments in mental health and suicide prevention programs, as well as a national expansion of community mental health clinics. The proposal also includes investments in telehealth mental health services for kids and their families.

Closing the 'boyfriend loophole'

The senators are proposing that convicted perpetrators of domestic violence or people who are the subject of a domestic violence restraining order be added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.

Convicted domestic abusers are already prohibited from buying firearms, but only if they were married to, shared a child with, or lived with the victim, which has been referred to as the "boyfriend loophole."

Funding for school security

The legislation would provide funding to programs aimed at preventing school shootings, training students and staff, and improving school security, an objective that has become increasingly popular with Republican lawmakers since the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Cracking down on illegal gun dealers and straw purchases

The proposal includes clarifying who needs to register as a federal firearms dealer, which is aimed at addressing dealers who illegally evade licensing requirements and ensuring all commercial sellers are completing background checks.

It also aims to crack down on gun trafficking and straw purchasing, which is when someone buys a firearm on behalf of another who is unable to buy it themselves, in an attempt to prevent the flow of illegal guns into cities.

Expanding background checks for buyers who are under 21

The senators are also proposing enhanced background checks for firearms buyers who are younger than 21. The enhanced review process would take additional time and include checking juvenile and mental health records, in addition to consulting with state and local law enforcement records.

Read the original article on Business Insider
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Reddit is rallying around a father who doesnt want to co-parent with his in-laws. The dad took to AITA to explain where hes coming from and its a difficult, heartbreaking situation all around. Two years ago, my wife died from a genetic illness. There are many different layers to the horror of the tragedy, one []
(Bloomberg) -- Frasers Property Ltd. is proposing to take its listed hospitality arm private at a value of S$1.35 billion ($970 million) after the pandemic hammered the hotel and tourism business.

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The company -- backed by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi -- is offering S$0.70 per share for Frasers Hospitality Trust, a Singapore-based real estate investment trust, according to a joint statement on Monday.

Shares of Frasers Hospitality jumped as much as 5.3% to S$0.695 in Singapore, having resumed trading after being halted last week pending the announcement. Frasers Property rose 0.9%.

The move to privatize comes after a strategic review that found the REIT still faces long-term challenges despite efforts to unlock value. The endemic nature of Covid-19 presents significant risks to the hospitality sector even as it recovers gradually, while looming recessionary pressures and geopolitical tensions add uncertainty, the statement said.

Frasers Hospitality Trust -- whose biggest shareholder is Charoens conglomerate TCC Group -- grew its portfolio valuation by 35% since its initial public offering in 2014. But it hasnt managed to boost net asset value due to muted growth in the hospitality sector and a strengthening Singapore dollar, it said. The companys small size also limits its ability to benefit from a continued listing.

Without sufficient scale, FHT has not been included in major stock market indices and has been limited in its flexibility in undertaking asset acquisitions for growth, it said.

As such, the proposed privatization is the best option and represents a credible opportunity for our stapled securityholders to realize their investments at an attractive valuation, FHTs Chief Executive Officer Eu Chin Fen said in the statement.

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The acquisition will be financed with banking facilities totaling about S$505 million obtained from Bank of America Corp., along with internal cash resources, Frasers Property said in a separate statement.

BofA Securities Inc., DBS Group Holdings Ltd. and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. are advising on the transaction.

Should the deal fall through, it will be business as usual and the company will continue to pursue its existing strategies, Eu said at a news briefing on Monday.

Recovery Path

Shares of Frasers Hospitality have jumped about 48% this year following declines in the previous two years. The offer represents a 43.8% premium to the volume-weighted average price in the 12 months to April 7, the day before the announcement of the review, according to the statement. Bloomberg reported that the company was weighing a privatization at the time.

Singapores hospitality REITs have seen a sell-off since the pandemic struck, battering the travel industry. The country will take a few years to return to pre-Covid tourism, Singapore Tourism Board Chief Executive Officer Keith Tan said in April.

With a portfolio valued at S$2 billion, Frasers Hospitality Trust oversees 14 properties across Asia, Australia and Europe, according to its website. The company reported higher revenue per average room across its Asia-Pacific and Europe portfolios, it said in its first-quarter business update in February.

(Updates with resumption of stock trading in the third paragraph)

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If you're thinking about relocating to somewhere cheaper in retirement, you're not alone -- many Americans lack sufficient retirement savings to afford the cost of living in their home states after their working years are over. The pandemic also affected some people's savings and retirement plans. Moving to a more cost-effective area can help stretch your funds further in retirement, alleviating some uncertainty about your financial future.

Find Out: 15 Worst States To Live on Just a Social Security Check

Get Ready: 25 Things To Sell When You're Ready To Retire

To help you choose the perfect place to retire, GOBankingRates used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find the top 10 states where you can live out your golden years for less than $45,000 annually The study analyzed factors like groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, healthcare and the overall cost-of-living index in each state, all of which contribute heavily to your yearly expenses in retirement. These indices were then multiplied by the average annual expenditures of Americans aged 65 and older, which provided the final ranking of the top 10 states.

The figures quoted in this article are per household. The most recent Census lists the average number of people per household as 2.5.

To prepare for retirement, take a look at places to live that will cost you less than $45,000 annually.

William Reagan / Getty Images/iStockphoto

10. Indiana

Annual expenditures: $43,107

Early retirement might be possible in Indiana, a state where retirees can retire without paying exorbitant costs. Housing, in particular, is a steal at $7,763 annually. Utilities only run $3,745 per year, as well, and the cost of living index is 90.6.

DavidByronKeener / Getty Images/iStockphoto

9. West Virginia

Annual expenditures: $43,059

Early retirement is also a good possibility in West Virginia, where overall costs are pretty low. The annual housing cost is $7,793, and annual grocery bill only $4,057.

POLL: Do You Think the Government Should Increase SNAP Benefits?

Amdizdarevic / Shutterstock.com

8. Iowa

Annual expenditures: $42,774

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In addition to low housing costs, retirees in Iowa will be happy to find that other costs such as utilities are reasonable, at just $3,609 per year, and healthcare costs are only $6,661.

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7. Missouri

Annual expenditures: $42,726

Early retirement is definitely possible in Mississippi, the state where retirees spend only $7,962 annually in housing. Retirees will also find a reasonable food bill, at only $3,994.

Kruck20 / Getty Images/iStockphoto

6. Tennessee

Annual expenditures: $42,345

This southern state treats retirees well across many categories. With healthcare at just over $6,000 per year, utilities at just under $3,500 and transportation costs at $3,326, it's easy living.

Posnov / Getty Images/iStockphoto

5. Georgia

Annual expenditures: $42,250

Georgia makes it easy for retirees to call this lovely state home, with an annual housing cost of just $7,377. Other expenses won't break the bank either: Utilities come to $3,424 annually and transportation to $3,326.

Ron_Lane / Getty Images/iStockphoto

4. Oklahoma

Annual expenditures: $41,822

Oklahoma should be on many retirees' radar as a place to enjoy your golden years without worrying about money. The annual housing cost is just $7,470, with utilities at $3,598 each year and healthcare at $6,301.

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3. Alabama

Annual expenditures: $41,822

The South really has cornered the market on affordable places to retire. Alabama is another winner in low housing costs, the third most affordable on the list, with just $6,950 in annual housing cost.

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2. Kansas

Annual expenditures: $41,156

You won't find many hills in Kansas, but retirees will find affordable housing, at just $7,198 annually, and lower overall expenses. Utilities come to just $3,791 per year, and groceries to just $3,855 annually.

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1. Mississippi

Annual expenditures: $39,633

The number one most affordable place to retire on the list is Mississippi. Even if you can't spell it, you can retire here, paying only a comfortable $6,574 annually in housing costs. Groceries will only run $3,876 per year. Utilities another $3,420 and health costs are just $6,315.

dszc / Getty Images/iStockphoto

States Where Your Retirement Will Cost Less Than $45,000 a Year

The best places to retire on less than $45,000 per year are concentrated in the South and the Midwest. Mississippi, Kansas and Alabama captured the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively. Oklahoma, Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri filled out the middle ranking states where your retirement will cost the least each year.

Rounding out the bottom of the rankings are Iowa, West Virginia and Indiana.

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Daria Uhlig contributed to the reporting for this article.

Methodology: To find every state where retirement costs less than $45,000 per year, GOBankingRates first referenced data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2020 Consumer Expenditure Survey to find (1) the national average total annual expenditures for consumers 65 years and older. Then, GOBankingRates used cost of living index data for 2021 from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center to find (2) the cost of living index score of every state. Multiplying factor (1) by factor (2) for every state, GOBankingRates was able to estimate (3) the total annual expenditures for a consumer 65 years or older living in each state. Supplemental data was included on each state's cost of living index score and estimated annual spending in the following five necessities categories: grocery, housing, utilities, transportation, and health. All data was collected on and up to date as of February 24, 2022.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: States Where Your Retirement Will Cost Less Than $45,000 a Year
LONDON (AP)  British health officials have detected another 104 cases of monkeypox in England in what has become the biggest outbreak beyond Africa of the normally rare disease.

The U.K.s Health Security Agency said Monday there were now 470 cases of monkeypox across the country, with the vast majority in gay or bisexual men. Scientists warn that anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, is susceptible to catching monkeypox if they are in close, physical contact with an infected person or their clothing or bed sheets.

According to U.K. data, 99% of the cases so far have been in men and most are in London.

In May, a leading adviser to the World Health Organization said the monkeypox outbreak in Europe and beyond was likely spread by sex at two recent raves in Spain and Belgium.

Last week, WHO said 1,285 cases of monkeypox had been reported from 28 countries where monkeypox was not known to be endemic. No deaths have been reported outside of Africa. After the U.K., the biggest numbers of cases have been reported in Spain, Germany and Canada.

WHO said many people in the outbreak have atypical features of the disease which could make it more difficult for doctors to diagnose. The U.N. health agency also said while close contact can spread monkeypox, it is not clear what role sexual bodily fluids, including semen and vaginal fluids, play in the transmission.

Meanwhile, countries in Africa have reported more than 1,500 suspected cases including 72 deaths from eight countries. Monkeypox is considered endemic in Central and West Africa.
Volodymyr Zelenskys aides have hit back at Joe Bidens remarks that the Ukrainian president didn't want to hear it when US intelligence alerted him that Russia was preparing an invasion and had called it absurd.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak criticised Mr Biden for putting the blame on Ukraine while Mr Zelenskys spokesperson Sergei Nikiforov said the remark probably needs to be clarified as it was their partners who had paid no heed to Ukraines concerns.

Mr Nikiforov told Russian-language Ukrainian news outlet Liga that Mr Zelensky had three or four telephone conversations with Mr Biden before the war started, during which they exchanged detailed assessments of the situation.

He also said it was Ukraine that demanded preventative measures to put Russia on that backfoot but our partners...did not want to hear us.

Therefore, the phrase didnt want to hear probably needs to be clarified, he told the outlet.

In addition, if you remember, the president of Ukraine called on partners to introduce a package of preventive sanctions in order to encourage Russia to withdraw troops and de-escalate the situation.

Here we can already say that our partners did not want to hear us, Mr Nikiforov said.

Mr Podoliak told the same news outlet that Mr Zelensky was consistently in talks over Russias intentions and said Mr Bidens comments were not not entirely true.

Mr Podoliak said Kyiv had been well aware that Russia was developing various expansion scenarios.

Volodymyr Zelensky constantly had an analyst on the table based on high-quality intelligence. The president also responded carefully to all the words and warnings of our partners. The question was always: what will be the scope of the invasion?

And finally, the key, I think it is pointless to blame the country, which is more than 100 days [into] a full-fledged war against a much more resourceful opponent, if key countries have failed to prevent the militaristic appetites of the Russian Federation, knowing them well, Mr Podoliak said, according to independent Russian outlet Interfax.

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Undoubtedly, the volume of the invasion, which we saw on February 24, shocked many countries, including our partners, added Mr Podoliak.

Speaking to donors at a Democratic fundraiser on Friday, the US President had said Mr Zelensky didnt want to hear it when US intelligence had gathered information that Russia was preparing to invade.

Nothing like this has happened since World War Two, Mr Biden said. I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain [Russian President Vladimir Putin] was going to go in, off the border. There was no doubt. And Zelensky didnt want to hear it.

Mr Biden was talking about his work to rally and solidify support for Ukraine as the war continues into its fourth month.

Although Mr Zelensky has inspired people with his leadership during the war, his preparation for the invasion  or lack thereof  has remained a controversial issue.

In the weeks before the war began on 24 February, Mr Zelensky publicly bristled as Biden administration officials repeatedly warned that a Russian invasion was highly likely.

At the time, Mr Zelensky was also concerned that the drumbeat of war was unsettling Ukraine's fragile economy.

Additional reporting by agencies
Aurum Group wagon

645 railway cars, worth about 650 million hryvnias ($22 million), belonging to the family of the former official, who is suspected of state treason, have been seized in the process of a criminal investigation.

"The prosecutor's office arrested and handed over to ARMA (Agency for Investigation and Management of Assets  ed.) 645 cars belonging to the family of the former minister of defense of Ukraine," the PGO announced.

The PGO did not name the former government official but stated that the ultimate beneficial owner of a number of enterprises is the family of the former minister of defense of Ukraine, who served in that position from 2012 to 2014.

Read also: Ukraine freezes Russian oligarchs mineral water company assets

"They are engaged in the supply and sale of goods in Russia, as well as production equipment for the defense-industrial complex of the aggressor state," the Office of the Prosecutor General said.

The post of defense minister at the time was held by Lebedev, who fled Ukraine after the self-imposed exile of former president Viktor Yanukovych. His daughter, Alyona Lebedeva, is the owner of the Aurum Group, an industrial and investment group that manufactures and operates freight cars and invests in other industries.

NV Business has sent a request to the press service of the Aurum Group and but did not receive a response before publication.

Read also: Ukraine's former deputy IDP minister sentenced to 10 years in prison

"At the request of the prosecutor's office, another property of this financial-industrial group of enterprises and their owners has been seized, the PGO added.

In particular, 30 land plots and 30 real estate units were seized, including 6 integral property complexes and the corporate rights of 22 business entities.

Read also: Ukrainian court seizes $16 million in assets of Russian oligarch Fridman

According to the prosecutors, investigators from the Kyiv National Police Department, with the operational support of the SBU Security Service of Ukraines Department for the Protection of National Statehood, are conducting a pre-trial investigation into criminal proceedings over actions committed with the purpose of forcible change or overthrow of the constitutional order or seizure of state power, change of borders of the territory or state border of Ukraine and appropriation of property (Part 3 of Article 110-2 and Part 3 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
In his endorsement of the Republican candidate for Ohios ninth congressional district, Donald Trump was unequivocal.

JR Majewski will be a fantastic congressman, Trump said. He has my complete and total endorsement.

Related: The Republican primaries are a tug-of-war between rightwing and even-righter-wing | Lloyd Green

Left unsaid was Majewskis extremist recent history  as a proponent of the QAnon conspiracy myth, a participant in the January 6 insurrection, and someone who has called for Republican states to secede from the United States.

Majewski will face Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat who has been in the House since 1983, in Novembers midterm elections.

This is no quixotic campaign, however. The ninth district has been redrawn for 2022, and is now rated as a toss-up by the Cook political report, ahead of elections in which Republicans are increasingly hopeful of winning the House and the Senate. If that happens, Joe Biden will face extreme difficulty in passing any meaningful legislation for the rest of his first term.

That would be concerning enough for liberals, but the increase in the extremism of the Republican party presents another, equally pressing, issue. If Majewski wins, he would become the third Republican representative to have supported QAnon, but away from that he would join a party just as beholden to the myth that the 2020 election was stolen.

That big lie, which has proved essential to winning the support of Trump, has formed a central part of Majewskis campaign.

Majewski, 43, spent four years in the air force before leaving to join the nuclear energy industry, and has said he would push for energy independence in Congress. Beyond that, it is hard to know exactly what Majewski wants to achieve. The issues section of his campaign website is specific-lite, focusing instead on stock phrases including I will support our troops and straw man discussion of communist propaganda.

We need a leader, not a politician. Someone who can unify our communities and champion an effort to make both Ohio, and America great again. I am that someone, reads a bold print quote on the website.

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I didnt want to be a hype beast, but Ive had it in my back pocket to say that every state that went red should secede from the United States Majewski, on Periscope

Majewski might be vague about his goals, but his recent past makes clear that he will not be the most sober of representatives.

In 2021 he recorded a rap song, with two fellow Trump supporters, called Lets Go Brandon (an anti-Biden catchphrase), and before that Majewski rose to fame, of a sort, during the Trump-Biden presidential campaign, when he painted a gigantic Trump 2020 sign on his lawn.

A lot of my neighbors have come by and Ive had a lot of positive feedback, he told the Columbus Dispatch at the time.

We do not have to be vicious to one another, thats whats dividing us right now.

That was in July, but the sign would change. In a photo posted on Parler, uncovered by CNN, Majewski showed how he had tweaked it: to read 2Q2Q.

The sign repainting wasnt Majewskis only dalliance with QAnon  a baseless rightwing conspiracy theory which has been labeled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI  and which states, among other things, that a cabal of Democrats and liberals are engaged in child trafficking.

In a television interview about the sign, Majewski was wearing a QAnon T-shirt, and Media Matters, a media watchdog, documented multiple instances of Majewski posting images and hashtags relating to the baseless conspiracy theory.

If elected Majewski wouldnt be the only adherent. Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Lauren Boebert have both promoted QAnon slogans  although they have since distanced themselves from the conspiracy theory.

Nothing in Majewskis background prevented him from winning Trumps endorsement this week, the former president praising his work in the military and in nuclear energy.

In Congress, JR will always promote American energy, secure the border, support our farmers, protect life, defend the second amendment, fight for election integrity, and provide our veterans with the care they deserve, Trump wrote.

Trump was perhaps also impressed by Majewskis presence at the US Capitol on January 6  in fact, Majewski claimed that he had raised $20,000 to bring 30 Trump supporters to DC.

I wanted nothing more than to go in that building, Majewski said in a video a few days after what became an unprecedented attack on the seat of American democracy.

He ultimately stayed outside because he was with people who had physical limitations, Majewski told the QAnon program Spaceshot76, according to Media Matters.

The social media accounts of Majewski, who has described himself as ultra maga, mirror his website in terms of policy detail. But there is plenty of discussion of Hunter Biden and a lot of pictures of Donald Trump, while a photo posted on 5 June seemingly referenced either LGBTQ+ pride or the right wings ongoing attack on discussion of sexuality in schools.

Our children should be spending their summers playing sports, engaging in hobbies, or attending parades, Majewski wrote in the caption.

Not being indoctrinated and groomed by sexually motivated people.

For now, the more revealing aspects of Majewskis political attitudes have come from social media snippets like these. He has gone to pains to delete as November approaches, and as he attempts to pitch himself to the electorate of Ohio, but plenty of his more extreme opinions remain visible on the internet.

I didnt want to be a hype beast, but Ive had it in my back pocket to say that every state that went red should secede from the United States, Majewski said in a video on the livestreaming app Periscope, uncovered by CNN in late May.

I dont think it sounds out there, he said.
CAIRO (AP)  Tribal clashes over the past week in Sudans war-ravaged Darfur have killed around 100 people, the U.N. refugee agency and a tribal elder said Monday, the latest surge in violence in the restive region.

Toby Harward, a coordinator with the UNHCR, said the fighting grew out of a land dispute between Arab and African tribes in the town of Kulbus in West Darfur province. Local Arab militias then attacked multiple villages in the area, forcing thousands of people to flee, he said.

Abkar al-Toum, a tribal leader in the town, said the dead included at least 62 bodies found burned after militias set more than 20 villages on fire. He said many people were still unaccounted for. He claimed the attackers gained control of water resources, aggravating the humanitarian situation in the area. He did not elaborate.

Abbas Mustafa, a local official, said authorities have deployed more troops to the area. He said the past week of fighting displaced at least 5,000 families.

Harward called for neutral joint forces to provide protection for civilians in the area. If there is no intervention or mediation, & violence is allowed to continue, farmers will not be able to cultivate & the agricultural season will fail, he said in a series of posts on Twitter.

The news outlet Radio Dabanga reported that the fighting reached the nearby province of North Darfur, causing partial damage to two villages there.

The U.N. envoy for Sudan, Volker Perthes, said he was appalled again by the clashes in Kulbus. The cycle of violence in Darfur is unacceptable & highlights root causes that must be addressed, he said on Twitter.

The fighting was the latest bout of tribal violence in Darfur. It came as the country remains mired in a wider crisis following an October military coup. The takeover upended Sudans transition to democracy after a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Since late last year, eruptions of tribal violence and surges in the fighting in Darfur have killed hundreds of people. In April, after a similar bout of cashes killed over 200, the Sudanese military said it deployed a brigade to the province.

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However, the violence has raised questions over whether Sudanese military leaders are capable of bringing security to Darfur. In 2020, the U.N. Security Council ended its peacekeeping mission there. In recent months, local aid workers have called on the U.N. to redeploy peacekeepers to the region amid a sure in tribal violence.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government in the capital of Khartoum of discrimination. Al-Bashirs government was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes and unleashing militias known as the janjaweed on civilians there  a charge it denies.

Al-Bashir, who has been in prison in Khartoum since he was ousted from power in 2019, was indicted over a decade ago by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur.
US Navy Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam in the South China Sea. Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Marcus L. Stanley/U.S. Navy via AP, File

The US Navy is trying to retire all of its guided-missile cruisers by 2027.

US cruisers are specialized for air defense and are among the best-armed naval ships in service.

Lawmakers are dismayed by the Navy plan, believing it will reduce US firepower as China's navy grows.

In April, the US Navy presented an ambitious plan to decommission all 22 of its Ticonderoga-class cruisers by 2027.

The move is not surprising. The Navy has tried to rid itself of its cruisers for years, but Congress has consistently rejected its proposals, largely out of concern that decommissioning them would take away a much-needed weapon as China's naval force continues to grow.

With the retirement of the last battleships nearly 20 years ago, cruisers are the largest surface combatants  a category that generally doesn't include aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships  in service.

Cruisers remain among the best armed and most powerful ships in the few navies that employ them, and decommissioning the Ticonderogas would take the US out of that small and very well-armed club.

The Ticonderoga-class

Guided-missile cruiser USS Cowpens fires SM-2 missiles during an exercise in the Pacific Ocean, September 20, 2012. REUTERS/Paul Kelly/U.S. Navy photo

Twenty-seven Ticonderoga-class cruisers were built between 1980 and 1994. They have an extensive service history, with high-profile operations all over the world. The 567-foot ships displace about 10,000 tons, and they are the US Navy's most heavily armed surface combatants.

Two Mk 41 Vertical Launching Systems, each with 61 cells, can carry up to 122 missiles. Two Mk-141 missile launchers can carry up to eight more missiles. Ticonderogas are also equipped with two Mark 45 5-inch guns, two Phalanx close-in weapon systems, and two triple-tubed Mark 32 torpedo tubes.

They can be armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Evolved Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missiles, and vertical-launch anti-submarine missiles, as well as anti-satellite and anti-ballistic missiles.

Guided-missile cruiser USS Vicksburg escorts aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt through the Strait of Gibraltar, March 31, 2015. US Navy/MCS Seaman Anthony Hopkins II

Their large and diverse arsenal allows Ticonderogas to fill multiple rules, including air-defense, anti-ship anti-submarine warfare, and land-attack strikes. They primarily serve as air-defense escorts in carrier strike groups, as they have the most robust air-defense capability in the surface fleet.

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They were also the first ships to be equipped with the Aegis Combat System, which uses computers and radars to track hostile forces and guide friendly fire toward incoming threats.

Because of the Ticonderogas' status and armament, their stand-alone deployments are usually meant to convey a message, as with USS Port Royal's transit of the Taiwan Strait in May.

The Kirovs and Slavas

Soviet nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser Kirov, December 22, 1989. US Navy/PH1 Davis

The Russian Navy fields two types of cruisers. The most well-known and feared are the Kirov-class, four of which were built between 1974 and 1998.

Classified as "battlecruisers" because of their heavy armament, the Kirovs are 827 feet long and displace about 28,000 tons. Their nuclear propulsion gives them range limited only by the crew's endurance and their supplies.

Designed to destroy American carrier groups, their primary armament are 20 P-700 supersonic anti-ship missiles, each capable of carrying a 1,600-pound high-explosive warhead or a nuclear one. Kirovs also carry 136 surface-to-air missiles and six close-in weapon systems, as well as one double-barreled 130mm gun, 10 torpedo tubes, and two anti-submarine rocket launchers.

Only two Kirov-class battlecruisers, Pyotr Velikiy and Admiral Nakhimov, remain in service. Pyotr Velikiy is the flagship of the powerful Northern Fleet, while Admiral Nakhimov has been undergoing modernization since 1999, though Russian officials say it will delivered this year.

Russian Slava-class guided-missile cruiser Moskva in the Mediterranean Sea, December 17, 2015. Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP

Nakhimov's upgrades will allow it to fire Kalibr and Onyx cruise missiles and new anti-submarine weapons, and carry Pantsir-M air-defense systems. Russian officials also claim Nakhimov will be armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles in the future.

In 1976, the Soviets laid down the first of three Slava-class guided-missile cruisers.

At 611 feet long and displacing about 11,000 tons, the Slavas are armed with 16 P-500 cruise missiles in eight distinctive dual launchers on either side of the ship. Each P-500 can carry a 2,000-pound conventional warhead or a nuclear one. Some Slavas have reportedly been armed with more modern P-1000 anti-ship missiles.

Slava-class cruisers also carry 96 surface-to-air missiles, a twin-barreled 130mm gun, six close-in weapon systems, two anti-submarine rocket launchers, and 10 torpedo tubes.

Only two Slava-class cruisers, Marshal Ustinov and Varyag, remain in active service. Marshal Ustinov is assigned to the Northern Fleet and Varyag is the Pacific Fleet flagship. Moskva, the lead ship of the class, was the Black Sea Fleet flagship until it was sunk by Ukrainian anti-ship missiles in April.

The 'destroyers'

Chinese Type 055 guided-missile destroyer Nanchang during Joint Sea-2021, China and Russia's first joint naval patrol, in the Western Pacific on October 19, 2021. Sun Zifa/China News Service via Getty Images

Two countries field warships they designate as destroyers but the US and naval experts classify as cruisers because of their size, displacement, and armament.

China's Type 055, known as the Renhai-class, is the most notable. The International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank has said it "may be the most capable multi-role surface combatant currently at sea."

At 590 feet long and displacing over 12,000 tons, Type 055s are armed with 112 VLS cells capable of launching surface-to-air missiles, anti-submarine missiles, anti-ship missiles, and land-attack cruise missiles. They also carry a 130mm gun and a close-in weapons system.

China tested a hypersonic missile aboard a Type 055 earlier this year, and in the future the ships may be armed with anti-ship ballistic missiles designed to kill carriers.

Type 055s are equipped with Type-346A active electronically scanned array radars, a more modern and accurate radar than the passive phased-array radar aboard Ticonderoga-class ships.

ROKS Sejong the Great off the coast of Hawaii during Rim of the Pacific 2010 exercises, July 7, 2010. US Navy/MCS1 Brandon Raile

Eight Type 055s have been built and launched since 2014. At least five have been commissioned and two more are believed to be under construction. Their deployment is already seen as a show of strength  they have been spotted near Japan and Alaska  and they may be a central part of China's future carrier battlegroups.

South Korea's Sejong the Great-class destroyers are also classified by others as cruisers. Three are in active service, each 544 feet long and displacing over 10,600 tons.

Each Sejong the Great-class ship has 128 VLS cells and 16 anti-ship missile launchers in four quad mounts. They are Aegis-equipped and provide early warning of incoming ballistic missiles.

South Korea plans to build three more Sejong the Great-class ships that will have only 88 VLS cells but will be equipped with SM-6 missiles that Seoul plans to buy, allowing them to intercept ballistic missiles.

'Divest to invest'

US Navy guided-missile cruiser USS Vicksburg, April 2, 2009. US Navy/PO2 Class Jesse Dick

The US Navy wants to shed the Ticonderogas  including USS Vicksburg, which is in the middle of a $200 million refit  as part of a broader "divest to invest" strategy to free up resources for newer and more advanced vessels.

While lawmakers and others worry that doing so will leave Navy shorthanded against China, Navy officials argue the cruisers, all of which are over 30 years old, are approaching the ends of their service lives, have outdated electronics, and will cost too much to maintain or refit. Some are even unsafe to operate, Navy officials say.

"They're eating us alive in terms of our ability to get maintenance back on track," Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, said in March. "We are paying tens of millions of dollars beyond what we expected to because of growth work and new work on ships that are beyond their service life."

The Navy proposed retiring five cruisers in 2023. In budget documents released this month, the House Armed Services Committee would only allow four retirements and block that of USS Vicksburg, which is one of the youngest of the five on the chopping block, a committee aide told reporters.

The 2023 budget is yet to be finalized, but the documents released this month also direct the Navy to submit a report on the costs of modernizing and extending the service lives of its other cruisers, suggesting the divestment battle will only continue.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Dear Amy: One evening at a party about five months ago, I inadvertently witnessed a passionate kiss between the husband of the family giving the party, and the nanny to the children.

It was dark in the room (I had been resting there).

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When the man subsequently turned on the light, I said nothing.

He urged me to give him a chance to fix it, and not to tell his wife, the hostess.

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Several times during the evening he sought me out and asked for time and silence.

I told him I did not keep secrets from my partner (his wifes father). He told me he would be seeking couples therapy.

He then stunned me again, by saying that he and his wife hadnt had sex for 12 years.

I told my partner what I had seen, and he was much less concerned, saying his daughter might not even mind if she found out.

The nanny cried and told me how sorry she was, and that she was desperately in love with the husband. She said that she was returning to school abroad.

The nanny didnt leave for a couple of months, which was agony for me. I kept my distance from everyone. Keeping this secret was a burden.

I was worried that my friend would find out later that both I and her father knew, and that she would resent us.

The husband still has not told his wife, although he promised to. He tells me he has a lot of rage, that the situation is very delicate, and he is afraid if he tells his wife, the marriage will be destroyed.

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I dont want to be the cause of a total breakdown of the marriage, at the same time, I need to have an honest relationship with people I care about.

How should I proceed? Forgetting what I saw is impossible, of course.

 Accidental Witness

Dear Witness: On a very deep level, none of this is any of your business, and yet the principals wont shut up about it, so with every entreaty, they are drawing you further in.

You are even being gaslighted into this statement: I dont want to be the cause of a total breakdown of this marriage.

You havent caused anything. The husbands marriage is his responsibility, not yours.

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(Im also wondering about how he hasnt had sex with his wife for 12 years and yet has children young enough to require a live-in nanny.)

The next time he seeks you out for a confession, you should either tell him to kindly STOP TALKING, or just commence the process of blackmailing him (just kidding, folks), and get it over with.

There is no right thing to do; you might start a ticking clock and tell the husband that you cant in good conscience keep this secret, and either he talks to his wife by a deadline you set  or you will.

When that date arrives, assume that the deed has been done and they are working things out privately, dont act further, and move on.

Dear Amy: I have a friend who recently broke up with a girl he was dating. He seems to be handling it well, but an old attraction of his (who is NOT good for him at all) has resurfaced, and Im worried that shell take advantage of his emotional state.

What should I do?

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 Worried for a Friend

Dear Worried: What you do is put your hands together, hold onto your thoughts, and hope for the best.

If you are asked to weigh in, tell your pal that you are worried that he is at risk of repeating a bad pattern.

It is extremely challenging to witness people in your circle make questionable choices. But some people need to get burned a couple of times before they know to stay away from an old flame.

Dear Amy: Upset seemed incredulous at the thought of a six-year-old knowing about sperm and eggs.

My mother began teaching me about body parts, what they do, and how, from a very young age.

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At age 4 or 5 I absolutely knew about sperm, eggs, and how they met each other. I never became a promiscuous teen mom or a drug addict.

People do not give children enough credit for their ability to learn about the world and life.

Ask Amy Daily No-nonsense advice for better living delivered to your inbox every morning. For a limited time, sign up for the Ask Amy newsletter and get the book Ask Amy: Essential Wisdom from Americas Favorite Advice Columnist for $5. >

Please! Teach you little ones about what bodies do

 Precocious, Not Promiscuous

Dear Precocious: Information leads to knowledge, which leads to self-awareness.

Your mother did it right.

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Got a question for Amy? Enter it here and well send it to her.

Sign up here to receive the Ask Amy newsletter to get advice e-mailed to your inbox every morning, and for a limited time  get the book "Ask Amy: Essential Wisdom from Americas Favorite Advice Columnist" for $5.

2021 Amy Dickinson.
House appropriators will unveil their initial plans for fiscal 2023 spending this week while Senate lawmakers prepare to spend nearly $300 billion to better compensate veterans who suffered toxic exposures during their time in the ranks.

The Senate is expected early this week to advance their revision of the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, a package of benefits and medical care expansions that is estimated to total $278 billion over the next decade and benefit as many as one in every five living veterans today.

The House will have to vote on the package again later this month before it can head to the president to become law. But Democratic leaders in that chamber have already signaled support for the changes, indicating the legislation could be finalized before the July 4 recess.

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee will start holding its section-by-section markup of the fiscal 2023 budget on Wednesday.

Work on the defense portion of the bill will take place behind closed doors, but the Veterans Affairs budget  the White House asked for more than $300 million for the department next year  will be discussed in a public forum on Wednesday afternoon.

Senate Armed Services Committee members will also mark up their initial draft of the annual defense authorization bill this week, but most of that work is also scheduled to take place out of the public eye. A final compromise draft is expected to be released by the end of the week.

Tuesday, June 14



Senate Armed Services  9:30 a.m.  562 Dirksen

NDAA Readiness

The subcommittee on readiness will mark up its section of the annual defense authorization bill in public.



House Foreign Affairs  10 a.m.  2172 Rayburn

International Development budget

State Department officials will testify on the fiscal 2023 budget request for the Peace Corps and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.



Senate Veterans' Affairs  3 p.m.  418 Russell

VA budget

Department leaders will testify on the fiscal 2023 budget request.



Senate Armed Services  3:30 p.m.  562 Dirksen

NDAA Personnel

The subcommittee on personnel will mark up its section of the annual defense authorization bill in public.



Wednesday, June 15



House Homeland Security  9:30 a.m.  310 Cannon

ISIS and Al Qaeda

Homeland Security officials will testify on the current status of Islamic State group and al Qaeda efforts to conduct terrorism in the United States.



House Veterans' Affairs  9:30 a.m.  Visitors Center H210

Veteran suicide

Department officials and advocacy groups will testify on VAs efforts to prevent veteran suicide.



House Appropriations  1 p.m.  online hearing

Veterans Affairs appropriations

The subcommittee on veterans issues will mark up its portion of the fiscal 2023 budget.



Thursday, June 16



House Veterans' Affairs  10 a.m.  Visitors Center H210

Whistleblower protections

Department officials and advocacy groups will testify on the departments policies to protect whistleblowers.



Senate Foreign Relations  10:15 a.m.  419 Dirksen

Nominations

Lawmakers will consider several pending nominations.




The term "gerrymander" stems from this Gilbert Stuart cartoon of a Massachusetts electoral district twisted beyond reason. (Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)

There are so many things wrong with our political system: the electoral college, lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices, the ambiguous wording of certain constitutional amendments. But Nick Seabrooks One Person, One Vote argues that many of Americas problems stem from one eternally timely issue.

Gerrymandering involves the redrawing of congressional, state and local districts for political gain. Its done by both sides and has often been used to sideline minority representation, especially in the aftermath of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that removed obstacles that had long prevented Black people from voting in the South.

Seabrooks title refers to a series of 1960s Supreme Court decisions that required every district to contain roughly the same number of people. But its also an ironic title because the increasingly sophisticated process works around that requirement, stretching and squeezing districts to predetermine outcomes and making votes count for less and less.

The number of competitive seats has been declining every decade and is now at its lowest point in probably a hundred years, Seabrook, a professor at the University of North Florida, said during a recent video chat. Moving forward, the conservative-majority Supreme Court seems set to allow further distortions of the map as states engage in furious lawsuits to settle a new round of redistricting.

In our conversation, Seabrook made clear that practical solutions exist but achievable ones are in short supply. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Gun control is just the latest source of frustration with government inaction. Republican members of Congress in safe, gerrymandered districts worry only about being primaried from the right. Is that an additional obstacle to sensible reform?

Yes, but its not just gun control. Gerrymandering has magnified the divide between parties and contributes to the disappearance of centrists. So were starting to see the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert winning elections and being secure enough in their seats to do the kinds of things theyve done. Theyre obviously outliers, but theyre indicative of a broader trend. Its manifested on both sides, but the Republicans are more extreme. It's only likely to get worse looking in the latest cycle emerging from redistricting. [Districts are redrawn based on a new census at the beginning of every decade.]

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Both parties gerrymander. Are the Republicans more willing to discard democratic norms or just better at the process?

I dont think the Republican Party has been more devious or underhanded, theyve just had better fortune and timing. They came into power in the 2010 election, winning control of state legislatures right when the technology was there to much more accurately forecast how districts would perform in the future. Now these gerrymanders hold up for an entire decade.

Theres a sense that Democrats have been unilaterally disarming. In California, with Proposition 11, a lot of powerful Democrats  Nancy Pelosi and others  opposed the creation of that commission. Otherwise, imagine how far the Democrats could go in gerrymandering the 55 congressional districts. California alone might have been sufficient to wipe out all other Republican gains.

What to you are most egregious current examples of gerrymandering?

The two worst at the national level are Florida and Texas. They had one bite at the apple in 2010 and learned from that experience. With the new technology, people packed their opponents into a few supermajority seats and made the rest more competitive to maximize the number that your side wins. But what theyve realized is that if you push things too far you can end up creating too many competitive seats and its better to shore up the seats you already hold.

State politics is often overlooked. Is gerrymandering worse there or are we just not paying attention?

Its both. I wish the national media would pay more attention to gerrymandering of state legislatures. We pay a lot of attention to Congress, but while the GOP may gain seats from gerrymandering in Florida and Texas, the Democrats can do it in Illinois, so it cancels out a bit. But at the state level thats not the case.

Look at Wisconsin  their [Republicans'] margin in the state legislature has barely dipped below two-thirds since 2010 despite elections where the Democrats won the popular vote overall. So thats worse in terms of its anti-democratic implications. You have entire state governments uncompetitive for a decade.

More than 100 opponents of Republican redistricting plans rally in the Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison last October. (Scott Bauer / Associated Press)

You take the Supreme Court to task for not resolving gerrymandering beginning in the 1990s and use the term cowardice regarding Anthony Kennedys waffling. Do the specifics of gerrymandering lawsuits matter or are we beholden to the whims of the justices?

Initially, with racial gerrymandering, facts did make a difference. There was stuff that was unbelievably egregious across the South  Alabama redrew the boundaries of Tuskegee to remove all but four African American residents from the city limits. There was a consensus that those things were unconstitutional, but that was the low-hanging fruit.

Then with one person one vote we saw more nuanced cases in the 1980s and things start diverging ideologically. Republicans start becoming a lot more skeptical that courts should intervene. In the 1990s we get into majority-minority districts and using redistricting for affirmative action and thats more controversial.

Im critical of the conservative majority on the court, but more for their hypocrisy than for the underlying merits of the cases. Its fine to say redistricting should be race-neutral. But with partisan gerrymanders in the 1990s theyd throw up their hands and say, Its really complicated and I dont know if we have appropriate standards for deciding this, and on the very same day theyd hand down decisions for racial gerrymandering cases where they had a finely tuned, almost mystical sense of where [it] went too far.

Would open nonpartisan primaries using ranked voting eliminate some of the incentives to gerrymander?

Its not a panacea, but ranked-choice voting is preferable. But ultimately, the gerrymandering problem wont be fixed until we take the power away from politicians, as every other country has realized. Allowing political actors to draw the maps is too much temptation for them to resist.

Will politicians give up that power?

Even in red states like Utah and Ohio, when people get the opportunity to vote on initiatives or a referendum, they vote for reform. The problem is getting those questions on the ballot to begin with. But Congress could pass legislation for the House. The recent voting rights acts had reform in their bills, but they havent passed yet. If that happens then maybe some momentum starts to build. But its hard to get started.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
After decades in Congress and years in House Democratic leadership, Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) is flexing what he calls his political tentacles ahead of what is expected to be a tough election year for Democrats up and down the ballot.

Tuesday marked another  mostly  successful primary night for Clyburns endorsed candidates, with incumbent Rep. Donald Payne Jr. fending off a progressive primary challenger in New Jerseys 10th District and Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) advancing to a runoff in Los Angeles mayoral race.

Clyburn made trips to Newark and Los Angeles to campaign for the two Democrats, the latest example of him serving as an ambassador of sorts for House Democratic leadership on the campaign trail.

I talk to people all the time, Clyburn said in a wide-ranging interview with The Hill. I spent last weekend in Detroit, Michigan talking to peopleand the day before I was in Detroit on Saturday of last week, I was in Newark, New Jersey.

Clyburn has repeatedly been dubbed a kingmaker in politics. He hosts an annual fish fry, known as his World Famous Fish Fry in South Carolina, where candidates up and down the ballot gather to speak with voters. This year, candidates like South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mia McLeod were in attendance. During presidential years, Democrats, like President Biden, are sure to make the pilgrimage to the gathering in the early primary state.

But his biggest splash came in 2020 when he galvanized the Black vote in South Carolina and much of the south to come out and vote for Biden, who had previously suffered losses in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. The congressmans involvement has been viewed as a key factor in propelling Biden to the Democratic nomination.

Since then hes crisscrossed the country to try to maintain Democrats narrow House majority.

Clyburn campaigned for Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) in 2021 and again in 2022 when she faced and defeated progressive Nina Turner in Ohios 11th Congressional District.

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And he made headlines last month when he traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to campaign for Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who at the time was facing a contentious primary challenge from progressive Jessica Cisneros. Cuellar defeated Cisneros by just 281 votes in a runoff. Cisneros has called for a recount.

Clyburn and House Democratic leaderships involvement in the primaries between progressive and establishment candidates has struck a nerve with progressive activists. The Cuellar-Cisneros primary particularly laid those tensions bare.

Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hit the party establishments backing of Cuellar, who opposes abortion and is considered the most conservative Democrat in the House.

On the day of a mass shooting and weeks after news of Roe, Democratic Party leadership rallied for a pro-NRA, anti-choice incumbent under investigation in a close primary. Robocalls, fundraisers, all of it, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

Cuellar is a rare kind of Democratic lawmaker given his more moderate views on issues like abortion and border security. But Clyburn said lawmakers like Cuellar can be an asset to the party as a whole, especially in a district that is being targeted by Republicans during a cycle in which the national mood appears to be in their favor.

You dont allow these differences to define your ability to work together. I work very well with Henry Cuellar, the majority whip said. He has experiences that I dont have. He interacts with people that I dont particularly interact with, so he brings our discussions an element that I can benefit from, and I guarantee you he benefits from mine as well, which is interesting because I had a cup of coffee with him this morning.

He added, Cuellar cannot get elected in my district and I cannot get elected in Cuellars district. Its our job to stay in touch with our constituents, get elected, and then come to this body, sit down around the table, and reconcile whatever differences we bring to the discussion.

When asked about his secret sauce to galvanizing Democratic voters, Clyburn said its all about maintaining balance in the democratic process. He referred to the recent visit he has to San Antonio to campaign for Cuellar, as well as his trip to Morehouse College when he met with Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.). Both Cuellar and McBath could face contentious general reelection battles.

When youre looking at that balance, Lucy McBath is at one end of the spectrum, Henry Cuellar is on the other end, he said. But we as a party, we as a country, will succeed only when we maintain that balance.

And according to Clyburn, he has worked to do just that with his progressive colleagues, including members of the Squad.

Clyburn noted how he and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) have been working closely together on student loan debt relief. He also noted a conversation with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

This doesnt get reported on and we dont have press conferences to say that we just had a conversation and we see moving forward on this issue in the same way, but I get along well with [Omar], I get along very well, and I get along with Ayanna, he continued. So this whole notion that theres a gap between us is just not true.

Clyburn compared the differences between the partys establishment and progressive flanks to his own marriage, arguing that both take work.

We raised three healthy daughters and stayed married for 58 years, Clyburn said. We didnt do that by agreeing on everything. We did that by respecting each other and reconciling where there were differences that existed and learning from each other and moving forward.

House Democratic leadership is very aware that their members will likely face headwinds going up against Republicans in November given the national mood. Clyburn got a taste of this last year in Virginia where he endorsed former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) in his bid to win a second term as governor of the commonwealth. McAuliffe ended up losing to now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R ), which Republicans have said was a signal of an approaching red wave in 2022.

The Democratic winner in Texas 28th District will face a formidable opponent in Republican nominee Cassy Garcia. And in Los Angeles, Bass faces a tough opponent in Republican-turned-Democrat Rick Caruso.

I know that shes up against a lot of money, as well as some other traditional notions that she has to overcome, Clyburn said. I think she did that when she was in the legislature there, rising to become speaker of the House, he continued. I think all of that demonstrates her ability to work with people and get things done.

Caruso has made law and order a centerpiece of his campaign, echoing a campaign message heard from Republicans across the country amid a nationwide rise in violent crime. Critics have said this could leave Bass vulnerable. Clyburn said she has struck the right balance, citing his work with her on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

She is as tough on these issues as anybody needs to be, he said. It is one thing to be tough, it is another thing to be suppressive.

But Clyburn reiterated his stance against defunding the police, an issue that has divided establishment and progressive Democrats since Floyds murder in 2020.

There is nobody in this country that has spoken out more against defund the police than Jim Clyburn has, he said.

But when it comes to the broader divisions between Democrats, Clyburn said he is hopeful that both sides can come to an understanding. He cited his working relationship with his grandson, who is currently running his reelection campaign in South Carolinas 6th congressional district.

I sit down to talk to him all the time, I had a long talk with him last night, trying to reconcile my experiences with his experiences, Clyburn said. And hopefully that will happen with progressives in the party.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Everybodys frustrated. If somebody could do something about it, it would be done. But oil and gasoline prices are on a tear that for the time being seems unstoppable.

U.S. gasoline prices have hit $5 per gallon for the first time ever, and Moodys Analytics thinks they could hit $5.50 within a couple of weeks. Theres no mystery why. A confluence of forces, led by Russias invasion of Ukraine, has crimped oil supply and bumped up demand. Theres more that could go wrong, adding a fear premium to prices on top of the hike caused by market dynamics. It wont last forever, but for now theres no sign that new supply, reduced demand or an outbreak of stability will bring relief.

Four things are going wrong simultaneously for fossil-fuel purchasers. First are sanctions on Russia, the worlds third-largest oil producer. So far, sanctions have slightly reduced Russian oil sales, but Europe is phasing in an embargo, with plans to cut Russian oil purchases 90% by the end of the year. Russia will probably be able to sell some of that oil elsewhere, but exports will probably decline, reducing world supply and pushing prices upward. Since oil prices are set in a global market, no nation can insulate itself from the effect falling supply or rising demand has on prices.

China seems to be emerging from extreme COVID lockdowns that depressed economic activity, including energy consumption. As Chinas economy picks back up, energy use will rise, putting upward pressure on prices. There was some hope a new deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons program would lead to the end of U.S. sanctions and more Iranian oil on the global market. But Iran seems to have scuttled negotiations, making a deal unlikely. Finally, President Biden and other leaders have already released large amounts of oil from national reserves, leaving little room for further releases.

Raoul LeBlanc, vice president of the energy practice at S&P Global, calls these four factors a nightmare bull scenario that could push oil prices higher still, enriching oil sellers while hammering purchasers.

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Current prices reflect the risk of that happening," LeBlanc says. Prices right now make sense in terms of the big drivers that could push prices higher.

[Follow Rick Newman on Twitter, sign up for his newsletter or send in your thoughts.]

How much can consumers take? Moodys Analytics thinks $5.50 gasoline in the United States could be the peak, with prices likely to decline steadily beginning in the second half of this year. But the research firm analyzed the likely impact on consumers and the U.S. economy if gas prices hit $6 and even $7. Surprisingly, neither scenario would induce a recession.

'An outsize place in the mind of the U.S. consumer'

But the pain would be considerable, as any driver can imagine. In both scenarios, unprecedented gas prices would cut consumer spending on other things, and reduce overall GDP growth. But growth would still remain positive, and imbalances would eventually sort themselves out. Still, consumers might blow a gasket.

Gasoline prices, with their illuminated roadside ubiquity, hold an outsize place in the mind of the U.S. consumer when it comes to inflation and their interpretation of the health of the economy, Moodys Analytics economists Matt Colyar and Ryan Sweet wrote on June 9.

President Biden is reportedly agonizing over sky-high energy prices that threaten to wreck his presidency. But its not a U.S.-centric problem, and theres very little he can do. Biden, like many others, wants U.S. oil and gas producers to drill more. U.S. production is growing modestly and likely to hit a new record next year. But energy producers have been burned many times in boom and bust cycles, where prices rise, they drill more, then prices crash and they lose money.

Richard Thomas, 41, of Fontana, pays close attention to how many gallons of gas he is buying while filling up his nearly empty tank at the Chevron gas station, located at the intersection of Cesar. E. Chavez Ave. and Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles. . (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

High prices arent good for us, Mike Wirth, CEO of Chevron, said during a June 7 event sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. They never last. In our industry, demand always moves faster than supply. Incentives are there for the producers to produce. This is not always the most popular thing, but allow markets to work.

That may sound disingenuous, given that Chevron is one of the oil majors booking huge profits right now. But many industry executives point out that U.S. energy firms overproduced for years leading up to the 2020 COVID recession, which turned into a bloodbath for the fossil fuel industry as demand collapsed and oil prices even went negative for a brief spell. That was a searing experience energy firms and their investors dont want to repeat.

The best thing for oil and gasoline consumers would be an end to Russias barbaric invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions on Russia would likely remain, but some or most of the fear premium in oil prices would dissipate as worst-case scenarios improve. Theres no sign of a breakthrough in the war, but the United States and other nations sending Ukraine weapons and aid might speed up the timeline for helping defeat Russia on the battlefield if they want to end the oil price spike.

A less favorable solution would be a global recession, which some economists think is coming. Europe, heavily dependent on Russian energy, may be there already, and the U.S. economy is certainly cooling. Recessions bring commodity prices down because economic activity subsides and demand falls  exactly what oil drillers are watching out for. That might even be what Russia wants. Battles rage in markets, too.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.

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A self-described incel who killed 11 people when he plowed a rented van into a busy Toronto sidewalk in 2018 has been sentenced to life in prison.

Alek Minassian  who was motivated by a hatred of women  was convicted in March of 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder, after a judge found that he drove a white rental van on to the sidewalk with the intent to kill.

At a hearing on Monday, he was sentenced to 20 years for 15 counts of attempted murder, which are to be served concurrently.

Related: Toronto van attack suspect says he was radicalized online by incels

Earlier, the Toronto court heard testimony from witnesses and victims, who recounted the horror of the attack, and their struggles with PTSD in the aftermath.

My world has changed forever, said Janet Zhang, after describing the mental suffering she still experiences after her CPR efforts to save a victim were unsuccessful.

First responder Charlene Mackay told the court that she still has panic-inducing triggers and night terrors, which she manages by drinking and not eating well. I dont feel like he should have a normal life, she said of Minassian.

Other victims detailed the extensive and life-altering injuries they incurred during the attack, with which they continue to grapple.

Minassians actions took the lives of Renuka Amarasingha, Betty Forsyth, Ji Hun Kim, Dorothy Sewell, Anne Marie DAmico, So He Chung, Andrea Bradden, Chul Min Eddie Kang, Geraldine Brady and Munir Najjar.

An 11th person  Amaresh Tesfamariam  died of her injuries in October last year, and Justice Anne Malloy said on Monday she considered the woman the 11th victim.

The Crown asked that Minassian be given 10 life sentences  to be served concurrently  with parole eligibility after 25 years.

The sentencing recommendation came after last months supreme court of Canada decision, which found that consecutive periods of parole ineligibility were unconstitutional and should be seen as cruel and unusual punishment.

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That decision was rendered after a court challenge by Alexandre Bissonnette, the man convicted of six murders and six attempted murders in the 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting.

In his original sentencing, Bissonnettes parole ineligibility terms were added up consecutively, totalling 40 years.

After the May 2022 supreme court decision, he now qualifies to apply for parole after 25 years. Based on that decision, so will Minassian.

 This article was amended on 14 June 2022. Bissonettes original parole ineligibility terms totalled 40 years, not 150 as an earlier version said. And after 25 years he and Minassian qualify to apply for parole; they do not qualify for it automatically.
As the fourth season of Stranger Things premiers on Netflix, half of Brits think spending too much on streaming services and takeaways is the reason young people are failing to get on property ladder. Photo: Netflix

Nearly half (48%) of Brits think that young people are failing to get onto the property ladder because they spend too much money on subscription services like Netflix (NFLX), takeaway coffee and food, mobile phones, and holidays abroad, according to a new report.

The Policy Institute and Institute of Gerontology at Kings College London report highlights that these are minor factors when the huge increases in house prices and required deposits along with stagnating wages are considered.

The typical first-time buyer house price-to-earnings ratio has almost doubled since the 1990s, and the average first-time buyer deposit has tripled from 5% of the value of the property in 1989 to 15% in 2019, according to a separate report by the Resolution Foundation.

The British public do recognise these economic factors are also preventing young people from buying a home, with three in four (76%) agreeing the key reasons young adults today cannot afford to buy their own home include the increase in house prices, stricter lending rules and low wage growth.

However, many people think young adults dont put in the effort needed to save for a home and tend to view young people today as lazier than older people, as well as lazier than they were in their youth.

Read more: Airbnb your home: how to generate extra income from your property

Almost half (46%) of respondents said that younger workers were less motivated and hardworking than older workers.

Despite this, the report found a clear sense that todays youth face more financial and economic struggles than their parents generation  with 76% thinking buying a home is harder for young adults now and only 11% believing it is easier than it was for their parents generation.

More than two-thirds (68%) think it is harder for young adults to save for the future, and 65% feel it is harder for today's youth to pay for university.

Over half (52%) also said that finding a job is harder for young people nowadays.

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Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at Kings College London, said: The suggestion that the huge challenges young people face in buying their own home can be solved by skipping fancy coffees and Netflix entirely misses the point  but its still believed by half the public.

That so many think its the case will be partly because its so often repeated by commentators, which recently included Kirstie Allsopp.

Read more: Fewer house hunters as UK property prices set to rise even further

But it also reflects our general tendency to think bad of todays young people. Throughout history, people always think the current youth are the worst ever, as seen in the half of people who agree with a quote, often attributed to Socrates back in 400BC, berating young people for their love of luxury, gossip and bad manners."

He added: Part of the reason for our cliched view of young people will be that we now live much more separately than in the past, with young people more concentrated in cities and older people in smaller towns and villages.

Most of the public correctly identify that this is the reality now  but 56% of us also think this has always been the case, when its actually a relatively recent trend, starting in the 1990s.

Watch: Will UK house prices ever fall?
Zalando is looking to go bigger in streetwear and has bought a majority stake in Highsnobiety, the media brand at the crossroads of streetwear and luxury.

Highsnobiety will act as a strategic and creative consultant to the German e-commerce giant, but also retain its editorial independence, with creative agency work remaining fully autonomous and management structure unchanged, the firms said.

More from WWD

The two companies will join forces to lead the way in engaging and inspiring customers, according to a statement from Zalando and Highsnobiety. They will leverage each others complementary strengths by bringing together Highsnobietys cultural relevance and insight, fashion authority and storytelling expertise with Zalandos fashion network, e-commerce know-how and operational capabilities.

Highsnobiety founder and chief executive officer David Fischer, who founded the brand as a Berlin-based blog in 2005, has retained a stake in the business.

Highsnobiety has mastered the art of turning stories into products and products into stories, Fischer said. I am very excited to bring our capabilities to Zalandos commitment toward fashion inspiration and together reimagine the future of content and commerce. Equally, I am thrilled to tap into Zalandos unrivaled expertise in scaling e-commerce platforms and bring my lifetimes passion work to the next level.

And David Schneider, Zalandos founder and co-CEO, said: Both of our companies share a passion for building strong brand partnerships and enabling brands to inspire audiences with their products and stories. Partnering with Highsnobiety will allow us to execute much faster on our ambition to offer the most relevant and engaging  as well as convenient  shopping experience to our customers. Im excited to see our joint vision materialize and to shape the future of fashion content in commerce together.

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